Monday, December 18, 2023

Not for Sissies

 

A few months ago, I was getting one of the annual fall vaccinations at my favorite grocery store pharmacy. I had a short wait and during that time three older gentlemen in a row shuffled up to the window to pick up prescriptions. Prompted to give their name each stated their name and added without a prompt their birthdate. We all get used to the verbal routine.

I noted that each of the gentlemen were walking slowly, one with a walker, one a cane. The years and perhaps the reasons for the medication had clearly taken a toll.

I clearly remember this birth years: 1953, 1951 & 1949.

They were all younger than me.

Despite the various aches and pains, I am thankful and still above ground.



Wednesday, September 13, 2023

The Orange Mule

 


For those olde Sci-Fi readers from ages past. It struck me today that the Orange Menace is playing the role of The Mule from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. A disrupter that no one anticipates, who brings with him destruction and decay. 

Actually, there are scores of memes in social media warning about the dangers of someone like Trump. Here's a favorite from Alexander Hamilton:

"When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'"

And I'm not the first to draw the Mule to Trump connection, as far back to 2016 The Electablog saw it.

​Donald Trump is playing the role of The Mule from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy | Eclectablog

But my favorite is comparison is this visual.