Suspending Disbelief In the arena of the cinema, the breadth of realizable stories put on film is vast. There are entire genres of film in the SciFi and Fantasy categories that are quite popular. It is often said that the big hurdle these sort of films must cross is the ability to get the audience to suspend disbelief. Technically, this term is used for any sort of piece of fiction for which reality is not…
And As For The Gander Projection can be a wonderful thing. In this case I mean the kind of projection used so often by the liked of Donald Trump. If he calls someone out for lying, it is because he lies and is lying. If he calls someone out for corruption it is because he is inherently corrupt and is probably picking someone’s pocket the very minute he is making the accusation. When he calls…
The COVID Two-Step When the curtain comes down on the COVID story (assuming it ever does come down) the fundamental tales will include stories about Trump’s bungling of the science for presumed political gain (ironic given that it was probably his ultimate undoing), the testing challenge (including Trump’s moronic argument that less testing would lead to a better story through under-reporting), the development of therapeutics (overshadowed by the Sarah Cooper tweets mimicking Trump’s bleach-up-the-butt program)…
The Next Donald Trump No, I am not going to go off on Don Junior…though I easily could. And no, I am not going to wave the warning flag of autocracy by describing the dangers of not convicting him in this new Impeachment Trial such that another despot-in-waiting will rise to new atrocities…though I easily could and should. I want to talk a little about what is next for Donald J. Trump. I believe this…
Seize the Day After Day For years I have adopted Carpe Diem as one of my personal themes. I have a copy of my 60th Birthday invitation which declares Carpe Diem. It was seeing that invitation on my office wall that caused me to think about how long I have been working to seize the day, over and over again. Today and tomorrow (as well as yesterday), I have been focused on seizing the moment…
The New World Yes, the market expected modest jobs growth of 50,000 in the first reporting of the new year, and the number fell short by 1,000 with non-farm job growth of 49,000, but unemployment, which was expected to stay at about 6.7% at least fell to 6.3%. Overall, I suspect the markets and economists will take that as good news for the economy. Jobs growth is one of the common measures that everyone agrees…
Hitting the Low Note This morning, while watching the morning news on MSNBC, Gary and I spoke about the upcoming Second Impeachment trial of Donald Trump and what sort of vote we are likely to see. We have listened to many politicians and pundits alike saying that the outcome of the trial is a foregone conclusion and that Republicans show no ability to set aside partisan thinking and vote the facts and their conscience. People…
Hear Me Roar There is a little movie out there that has some great stars in it, but only ever did less than $50 million in box office receipts, so was not widely seen. It is called Secondhand Lions and starred Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Haley Joel Osment and Kyra Sedgwick. It was written and directed by an obscure Tim McCanlies who’s only other claim to fame was the Iron Giant animated film. The film…
Stopping the Steal I woke up this morning to noisy gusting winds. It woke up Betty and probably scared her, so I brought her up onto the bed and she did what she never does, promptly curled up to sleep some more rather than go out and brave the wind. I too would have preferred to stay in bed, which is equally unusual, but I got up because I have a doctors appointment for a…
Feelin’ Good We have all spent the day watching the Biden/Harris inauguration and I just listened to John Legend sing it best when he said he was “feelin’ good”. We are all feelin’ good today. We feel good because a terrible episode is over and already starting to fade to black. As bad as the four years have been, the longest four years I can recall, the last three months have seemed even longer and…