The new Margaret Cho? Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka [the u's are silent] is known for finding humor in the dysfunction of her immigrant family.
Born in Taiwan to Japanese and Taiwanese parents, she traveled from Japan to Los Angeles with her grandmother and mother when she was 8 for what she thought was a short vacation.
In fact, they were moving.
It would be years before Okatsuka saw her father again. She later described being "kidnapped" by her grandmother on a 2023 episode of This American Life.
"My grandma and I hadn't really talked about it in depth until [then]," she says. "And it helped that I got to do with Ira [Glass, host of This American Life] and the thousands and thousands of thousands of listeners at the same time, then I'm really not alone." More + AUDIO
[Asperger's Syndrome] Elon Musk appeared to extend an olive branch to [Would-be King and likely Epstein Island-visiting child molester] Donald Trump in a social media post over the LA protests, fueling speculation that they could be soon "back together."
The tech billionaire's gay "bromance" [on his way to being a trillionaire] with Donna came to a fiery end last week in an ugly online spat between the pair on Thursday after several days where Musk had been criticizing the US government over the president's "big beautiful bill" [which actually an "abomination" according to Musk].
[Musk can't afford to lose all those U.S. government contracts that made him the richest man on the planet, just behind fellow AfricanMansa Musa and perhaps a few others who secretly hold their wealth in ways that prevent them from getting credit for it by curious bean counters, like multibillionaire heads of state and dictators, to say nothing of hedge fund managers and professional blackmailers like Epstein and Diddy].
Trump threatened to cut Musk’s government contracts and the tech billionaire claimed that US government hasn’t released all the records related to sex abuser trafficker Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is mentioned in them.
Sickly makeup Queen Donna with smudged lipstick after bromance "session" with Elana
Donna loves my big Cyber with its electric power. He knows it. Or I put these two in like this...
.
Elana vs. Donna? Prof. Quinn Slobodian on the risks of billionaire (oligarch) rule
Why choose June for all this drama, Donna?
(Democracy Now!) June 6, 2025: Is the Donna Trump-Elana Musk bromance finally over?
Pres. Trumpy is threatening to cut off billions of dollars in federal contracts from Musky after the two multi-billionaires engaged in a dramatic public feud just days after manly Musk called hypocrite Trump's ["big beautiful"] budget bill a "disgusting abomination."
Bill Gates was best buddies with Jeffrey "Pedo Island" Epstein?
Hey, Diddy, happy Donut Day! Are you gettin out? - Yeah, Trump's pardonin me! - Woo-hoo!
. Musky appeared to call for and promise to back the impeachment of Trump and claimed the current president is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files.
"They are people who always have their eye on the bottom line, but they also are, obviously, titanically sized egos," says author Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at Boston University, who is working on a new book about Elon Musk.
"This is just a sign of how dangerous it is to put…the whole future of the American economy and the political scene in the hands of two sole [and very unstable and not too bright] human beings."
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch LIVESTREAM at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8:00-9:00 am ET. Subscribe to Daily Email Digest: democracynow.org/subscribe.
Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow.org, June 6, 2025; Daily Beast; Jimmy Dore; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
What in the world do you mean four? Half are gone, and there were only ever five. The Fifth Beatle (Brian Epstein or any of the others) didn't even play, just managed.
He can manage again, if he's around. There's the real Paul McCarthy living a peaceful life in England:
There's pretty boy Pete Best still cashing checks for a little sessions work, replacement Ringo Starkey doing everything he can to prove he was a Beatle after all, like this great song:
And there's Fake Paul, touring and making speeches like always:
The son of Yoko "Chuck Berry Fan" Ono and John Lennon, Julian, the inspiration for the song "Hey Jude." That's more than enough to reform and go out on tour, maybe even make a few mega mass selling singles with the help of AI, psychics (in touch with George and John in the beyond), and old found tapes that can be developed into something:
(Big Fox News) Feb. 21, 2024: Today is National Breakup Day. (Is it because it's "2/21" -- "two, two, one" as in "couple, couple, single" as in "going, going, gone"? No, this is no May 4th, Star Wars Day, when we say, "May the 4th be with you." It's because it's a week after Valentine's Day and Boo was only sticking around to not be alone on the momentous triumph for Kama/Cupid (Mara/Eros) or to get a gift, dinner, and to avoid the humiliation of sitting alone at a restaurant on the biggest day of the year for daters, lovers, and soon to be heartbroken and pathetic hungry ghost humans).
Love hurts, and breaking uphurts worse. So hu-man up! Don't act like such a clingy ghost. That is to say, get out of Buddhist cosmology'sRealm of Hungry Ghosts.If you can't help it, talk to addiction medicine specialist Dr. Gabor Maté, who says we can become addicted to anything, even a partner (even though no person, sexual act, or substance is, in and of itself, addictive. If it were, everyone partaking would become an addict, and they don't. So why did we? It's because of our history of early childhood traumas. We are predisposed. That history combined with pleasant dopamine-pleasures = hardcore addiction. And today is the day we are disposed.
Now are ye undeceived.*
It gives singles -- and even those who are attached in a committed relationship, marriage, or handfasting -- a day to reflect on past relationships and realize our own personal growth gained from those experiences.
Feb. 21, 2025: The five fastest ways to get broken up with are: (5) hogging the remote (taking too much ownership of the TV, the complaint of 15% of partners), (4) fake listening (failing to communicate because of distraction, ADHD, and not listening), (3) bad money management (splurging, gambling, no control of finances), (2) forgetting [Is it forgetting?], and (1) smoking (the worst thing a partner can do for 64% of people about to breakup with us). Note that neither stinking, snoring, nor cheating made the list. Lesbian Ally Johnson looked it up and presented it to horny hetero co-host Klein on KROQ this morning.
Nothing hurts worse than realizing the person you were in love with is an evil jerk
I'll never write a spiteful song about this guy. He's perfect. And we'll always be happy!
.
Let's stand by this star as the world burns.
*American author Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an allegory, the climactic part of which reads: "by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
“Lo! there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic [now demonic] nature could yet mourn for our miserable [human] race.
“Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are ye undeceived! — Evil is the nature of [hu]mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!”
“Welcome!” repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph. And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness, in this dark world.
A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own.
The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband. “Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!”
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew ("Young Goodman Brown" classic American literature, 1835 short story about 17th century Puritan New England).
If only the Buddha had had anything to say about suffering
On many occasions, being asked questions, the Buddha reminded people that he only really taught two things. Any guesses? Did he teach magic and koans? Yin and yang? Mojo and moxie? The Kama Sutra and The Art of Not Giving a F***?
No. Of course, it was suffering (dukkha) and the end of suffering (nirvana). Why would anyone "teach suffering"? The Buddha had to make clear what "suffering" means. He defined it very handily and broadly, a functional definition for the cure he is about to present. What is the use of being told there's a cure if we haven't realized what disease we have been suffering from? "Pain" is much broader than we've imagined, as it includes disappointment, frustration, loss, separation, and even the excruciating agony of heartbreak.
But that's so pessimistic!
No, it isn't. It's a setup for the presentation of the antidote, solution, cure -- the path of practice to bring ALL suffering to a final end. We never even imagined we could bring it to an end, hoping death would do that for us. Death does not do that at all! Why? There is rebirth, and the reason there is rebirth is because there is craving and karma as yet to bring about its many results of all our skillful and unskillful deeds.
ALL disappointment, unsatisfactoriness, and woe CAN be brought to an end, a final end for it to never arise again. That is the great optimism of Buddhism, the "good news" of the Buddha's message to a benighted world of humans and devas (light beings, shining ones).
Suffering (dukkha): Disappointment is one of the Three Universal Marks of Existence. Various sutras sum up how cognitive processes result in our aversion (resistance, hate, fear, revulsion) to unpleasant things and experiences as we are moved to crave, grasp at, and cling to pleasure (sukha), keeping us in saṃsāra, the Cycle of Death and Rebirth. It is at the root of the Five Aggregates clung to as "self": (re)birth is suffering, aging, illness, death, sorrow, lamentation, mental pain, grief, and despair are s; suffering, asociation with the unloved, separation from the loved, NOT GETTING what one wants, getting what one does not want, all of this is "suffering." In brief, the Five Aggregates clung to as self (khandha, skandhas) are suffering.
The Four Noble Truths are Buddhism in a nutshell because they present the whole of the path of practice in four ennobling (enlightening) statements, like the assessment of a master physician:
Diagnosis: There is a disease (suffering)
Etiology: There is a cause of that disease (craving rooted in ignorance and associated with aversion)
Prognosis: There is a solution
Cure: There is way to the solution (magga, the path).
Early emphasis is on the importance of developing liberating insight (vipassana) to penetrate these fundamental truths about existence is key, and that insight is arrived at by the path of purification, the path to freedom, which is calm leading to samma samadhi, the meditative absorptions (jhanas), to reach a foundation of balanced stillness and intensification of mind able to penetrate them. It is not by thinking or study, belief or powerful faith. One needs to experience these truths until they are self-evident, not statements, not assessments, not doctrines.
The fourth truth is the general Ennobling Eightfold Path, but there is a more detailed summary enumerated in the 37 Requisites of Awakening/Enlightenment (bodhipakkhiya-dhamma).
Why does dating in America have to be hard? Why can't it be easy? If only there were a way to be natural, like Zen, going with the flow (Tao), and just talking based on chemistry and attraction rather than secret agendas and mind games. Ah, but 'tis not so. It's a minefield, and all we can do is learn to be authentic with our virtue intact and in integrity.... Hey, what's your name, Baby? Like the shirt. Come here often? Was it something I said?
Duncan Trussell deleted himself from existence on 5-MeO-DMT: Tales from the Trip
Peter Griffin says, Don't do Toad. (Family Guy)
(Animated) WEST HOLLYWOOD, California - Duncan Trussell had his mind annihilated, dry-erased, extirpated, voided when he smoked too much 5-MeO-DMT (aka "The Void" or Sonoran toad venom).
ABOUT Tales from the Trip: Don’t have the time, the money, or the connections to take drugs with famous comedians? Tales from the Trip is here to help. Go on an animated psychedelic journey with funny people as they recount their scary, hilarious, and sometimes dangerous experiences with DMT, acid, shrooms, Salvia divinorum, Molly (MDMA, Ecstasy), and more.
There is no ego, so is Toad mental medicine?
It's always fun to answer this easy question about drugs, whether they are natural entheogens or industrial waste synthetic chemicals. The answer is easy. Look at people who have taken these drugs. Do they look and behave like enlightened individuals, rational, sensitive, and aware of their surroundings? Or are they space cadets with ticks, quirks, and loopy tales from beyond?
If, for example, LSD were the answer, hippies would be well-adjusted spiritual leaders, and "Jim" from TAXI would be his bright Harvard self with depth and clarity.
Let's front. These are our stage egos.
"Man, I hallucinated I was Fat Happy Budda, like all rotund and bald, and like giving out candy to kids from my sack. It was supremo. Totally recommend it." Is this the person to take advice from?
What the heck was that? Were we dreaming?
Another person, gardening in the Plant Pharmacy, cobbles together experiences and joins them with reflection and insight, realizes anything might advance one toward awakening, not because of the experience so much as the response to experiences.
Anything might ignite an expansion, an opening of the heart or mind. What happens happens because of the state of mind. Set and setting are vital, mental state and environment. Ready for a near-death experience? Toad is like an NDE. Ready to meet GOD (Brahman)? Imagine a meditation experience before we're ready for it, before we're settled, steady, calm, and tranquil.
Psychedelic Experience (Leary)
Advice? Proceed with caution. Have a shaman at the ready. This is not a game and nothing to play with. The stoned ape did not enjoy its rude awakening. Looking back, it was good that it happened, but to do it again, take precautions or do not call it "journey." It's just reckless recreational psychonauting punishable by death (or near-death). Follow with integration or expect to sound half-baked for years.
#TalesFromTheTrip #DuncanTrussell
Tales from the Trip merch is now available. Head over to comedycentralstore.com or click this link to check it out: bit.ly/2QumT2E
Credits:
Live Action, Video Directors: Greg Washburn/Nik Kazoura. Animation Director: Grant Lindahl. Editor: Nik Kazoura. Lead Animator: Ben Luce. Lead Animator: Jasmine Soompholphakdy.
ABOUT Animated:
Looking for funny cartoons? Comedy Central’s Animated channel is a one-stop shop for animated comedy that’s fun – though not always appropriate – for the whole family. Immerse in clips, livestreams, and compilations from new and legendary series alike. Check out brand-new episodes of Tales from the Trip and other originals or catch up on old favorites like Dr. Katz and TripTank.
Subscribe to Animated: @comedycentraloriginals.
Is "Kill Bill" the greatest song of the year or a sucky piece of garbage, confection for the masses, a one-way ticket to stardom for a half-butt talent? Who knows? But we love it. It was the greatest pop hit for 2023.
What rivals it, other than Olivia Rodrigo's brilliant Guts? Better than Beyonce, greater than Taylor, it's all about crazy love and deadly about that feeling of being jilted. Whatcha gonna do? Blame it on Cupid. Blame the stars. Say there's something wrong with GOD's plan,
Hello, my name is Eros. I'm here to destroy you.
"GOD" (not to be confused with God or the gods, Maha Brahma and the devas) being the perfect arrangement of the reality behind the illusion known as Brahman in India. It's a killer track.
Who knows how SZA came up with it or who wrote it for it. Was it, as one TikTok suggests, her unconsciously remembering the killer guitar duo in Avenged Sevenfold's "Bat Country"? It sure sounds like it. Who owns a melody? Ask your friends. They'll all tell you the same thing: "Don't hate the Player. Hate the Game." What is a Dater to do?
All materials on this site are submitted by editors and readers. All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain.
In the event that there is still a problem, issue, or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial, and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof.
Contact us by submitting a comment marked "private."
Do not follow this journal if you are under vinaya or parental restrictions. Secure protection by Sucuri.
Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at creativecommons.org/about/licenses.
%20wiki.jpeg)
