Category: Fourre-tout

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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I guess that I am not very smart or very well informed. I read magazines, I listen to the radio, I watch TV news but I still fail to understand what’s happening.
For instance, why is it that pundits can always explain “facts” after they occurred, but never before those damn things happened?

And what exactly pray tell is a fact?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines a fact as “something known to have happened or to exist.

I like facts. They are like concrete blocks used to construct solid structures. With good quality facts, you can build a great variety of sturdy walls, houses, dams, etc.
The problem though is that lately some people have been using “alternative facts”. In other words cheap knockoffs of real facts.
If you look up “alternative” in the dictionary, you will find synonyms like substitute, replacement, emergency, fallback.
Is this the kind of facts you would feel comfortable with?

For a fact to become genuine, dependable, a few people must have witnessed it. It then becomes irrefutable, isn’t it?
Not quite, because some people play fast and loose with facts nowadays.

Take the Holocaust for instance. Thousands of people have witnessed it or were victims of this gory episode, but today some individuals still continue to deny that this crime against humanity ever happened.
They use “alternative facts” to account for what really happened.

Personally I’m too poor to buy cheap stuff or ersatz facts. I believe in utilizing good quality products because they last longer.
I will buy genuine facts before stooping to shoddily made “alternative facts”.

Counterfeit facts are like fake one hundred dollars bills. They are everywhere, can easily pass for genuine and do a lot of damage to the economy.
Before accepting a “fact” as genuine, you should scrutinize it, hold it to the light.
If your fact remains murky under a bright light, it is likely a counterfeit.

So before cashing in substitute, replacement, emergency, fallback facts, turn off your ideology and try hard to be impartial.

A fact is like a parachute; it is safer to use the genuine article than to trust an alternate product.

Alain

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. Benjamin Franklin

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When news are scarce you look for material hiding in plain sight, and if you have not yet noticed, women are all around us.
I am not complaining. Womenfolk always make an interesting subject of conversation.

Because what else is there to talk about besides money and politics? Money and politics are actually a single entity. It is a two-headed serpent called Greed.
But enough with greed. Women make a much more compelling topic.

Talking about that, I just read about a woman called Jeanne de Clisson.

“Jeanne de Clisson, the Lioness of Brittany, was a Frenchwoman whose husband was beheaded for treason. She swore revenge and sold her family lands to buy 3 warships. For the next 13 years she went on a pirating binge, targeting French King Philip VI’s ships, and personally beheading French noblemen she captured with an axe.”

 This is my kind of woman… a “nasty woman” with the rightful kind of wrath.

For you should never underestimate the power craftiness of a woman. They are capable of everything. The best and the worst.

Given a chance women can outdo men at every turn.
They have conquered politics, the clergy, the army, space… what is left to overcome? The papacy? Why not after all? The Church would be better much off with a woman at the helm.

I am not saying that women are perfect, far from it, but they seem to be more open-minded and more willing to compromise than men.
If all heads of state were women, I believe that we would have fewer conflicts.

A woman said:

“A closed country is a dying country… A closed mind is a dying mind.‘ from a radio broadcast in 1947” ― Edna Ferber

Our newly minted commander in chief would be very well advised to keep that in mind. Conservatism basically means, “let’s keep things the way they are” or in other words keep women “barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

Beware fossilized legislators! Remember Jeanne de Clisson! She has borne many daughters and these “nasty women”all over the world are not cowering in the kitchen anymore.

Alain

I find that most men would rather have their bellies opened for five hundred dollars than have a tooth pulled for five. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

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Minor surgery is an operation performed on somebody else.
Sure!

Nobody (at least me) relishes to have some remodeling done on his or her anatomy, but recently almost within a week’s span I had to submit to medical practitioners to have a tooth yanked out and my pacemaker replaced.

Strangely enough, the tooth pulling business was more traumatic than the cardiac procedure.

I don’t know about you, but the only person authorized to explore the inside of my mouth is ME. Anybody else (including dentists) is not welcome. But with an abscessed tooth tormenting me, I had to make an exception and allow an outsider to sully the sanctity of my mouth.

So I went to my dentist who said categorically that tooth number 14 had to come out. I had no better option, so va bene.

Before proceeding with his ghastly task, he had the charity to numb my gums with a few shots of “curare” that he specially buys (I have been told) from the Macusi Indians of Guyana. I absolutely abhor syringes. They always remind me of Mengele or a mad scientist about to inject a nasty substance into the helpless hero tied to a chair.

My slightly psychotic dentist likes to use a hammer. I don’t know if the American Dental Association condones this practice, but he does it anyway. And when he bangs on your tooth, your head resonates likes a giant bell.
But to my relief, the damn tooth finally came out. I made sure of it by having my tongue inspect a newly found gap on my upper jaw.

The pacemaker replacement was a totally different story. It was a very smooth and painless procedure.
After prepping me and asking me a bunch of very pointed questions, the operating team simply numbed the area below my left clavicle with some cream and went to work.
While feeling no pain, I was totally conscious during the entire procedure and could hear everything that the operating personnel was saying.
Unfortunately I didn’t catch any good financial tip, just some lame joke.

The operation took about thirty minutes and I could stand up and walk immediately after the surgery. Unlike the tooth pulling business, this procedure was totally devoid of trauma.

Next day though, I felt some discomfort in the pacemaker area. I guess that the body has to check and accept that foreign object.

OK, it seems that I am all set for another decade. I certainly hope to far outlast a newly minted carny messiah.

Alain