Quote
“Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.”
Benjamin Franklin
Joke
I know a lot of jokes about retired people but none of them work!
Fun Fact
There is a McDonald’s in every continent except Antarctica.
Reading Fact
Written in AD 123, Chariton’s Chaereas & Callirhoe is the oldest existing novel in the world.
This ancient Greek prose romance narrates the adventures of a just-married couple, overwhelmingly beautiful Callirhoe and handsome Chaereas, whose relationship is put to a test when Callirhoe’s former suitors plot a scheme to rip the lovers apart.
History Fact
Write it Down
Since written accounts of history only began about 6,000 years ago, about 97% of human history is lost to the sands of time; modern humans first appeared around 200,000 years ago.
Movie/TV Trivia
An original ending for the classic serial killer film Seven saw Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) shooting John Doe (Kevin Spacey). This was followed with the cringeworthy kiss off line, “I’m retiring”. In a move that may well re-establish your faith in a God the scene was storyboarded but never filmed.
Movie/TV Quote
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Spider-Man (2002)
Mention "Spider-Man" to anyone who's ever dipped a toe into the pop culture wave pool, and they'll probably reply with some variation of this quote. It's a classic line from Marvel's Spider-Man comics that, because of the popularity of Sam Raimi's 2002 superhero masterpiece, is now ubiquitous. (Plenty of people probably don't even know it's from Spider-Man!) In Raimi's movie, Uncle Ben says it to Peter Parker while trying to have The Talk, not knowing that Peter is currently dealing with a puberty transformation of a different kind (the kind with six more legs than usual), and yet what he says to him in this moment ends up being the force that drives Spidey for the rest of his life. It's the inverse of "absolute power corrupts absolutely": people with strengths and abilities beyond others -- superpowered or not -- have a duty to understand how to use those abilities. Just because you CAN do something, just because you have a certain level of power that others don't, doesn't always mean that you should.
Conversation Starter
Do you play sports video games? Which ones? Is playing the video game or sport more fun? Why?
Writing Prompt