Category: Fourre-tout

“Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”
Terry Pratchett 

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Unlike some people, I don’t look forwards to Christmas. No personal feud with Santa mind you (even though I find Amazon more reliable) but it can be a drag.
It is just that, being a Capricorn (goat-horned), it reminds me that a few days after getting a new tie or a corkscrew, I will be officially one year older.

Do I mind getting older? No. Maybe… Yes.

It is not the age that bothers me. It is the vexing realization that I cannot anymore do what I was doing so easily a few years back.
For one thing, I am definitely not as flexible as I used to be.
Picking jellybeans off the floor now requires concentration and determination.

“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”
Eubie Blake

You are damn right Eubie!

People tend to forget that the human machine needs as much (if not more) maintenance as a car.
And if you want you pimpmobile to still run smoothly at 100,000 miles, you don’t start maintenance at 50,000 miles.
But that’s what most people do.
They start seeing a doctor, 50,000 miles too late, when they begin to have serious transmission problems.

You also need to run the machine regularly. If you leave it in the garage and only take it out for Sunday rides, don’t expect it to perform as smoothly as the teenager’s jalopy next door.
A fair amount of daily physical exertion is highly recommended. Just Ask Tamara.

Getting older does not mean getting bitter or ornery.

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”
George Bernard Shaw

So, to forestall aging, keep on laughing. Laugh at anybody and at anything. And especially at yourself.

Not only do you need to exercise your body, you also need to keep your neurons flashing.

Remember what your mother was saying: “An idle mind is the devil’s playground.”
You don’t want to start fooling with Lucifer, do you? We already have too many gun toting disciples running around.

To remain on top of things, you also need to keep learning.
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
Henry Ford

For instance, you are never too old to learn how to use a computer. If your 6-year-old grandkid can do it, don’t you think that you could also do it? Or do you want to be laughed at by a whippersnapper?

In conclusion:

“Nature gives you the face you have at 20. It is up to you to merit the face you have at 50.”
Coco Chanel

Modesty aside, despite the advancing years I think that I totally deserve the beautiful face (belle gueule) that is now mine. Don’t you agree?

Alain

 Old Men Grooving:

 

 

“Thanksgiving is an emotional time. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year he’s way too often.”
Johnny Carson

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Every year the press makes a big hullaballoo of the President of the United States pardoning a rather puzzled looking turkey.

Pardoning?
What kind of crime has the turkey committed to benefit from the president’s clemency?
Has he murdered a bunch of people? Has he planted a bomb somewhere? Has he sold military secrets to ISIS?
No sir. That bird was accused of a crime he didn’t commit!

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Thanksgiving often reminds me of a cartoon that I saw in a magazine a few years ago.
It shows a chicken talking to a man and saying “Well he may be Colonel Sanders to you but to us, he’s Adolf Eichmann”.
Shouldn’t it be the turkey pardoning the president?

I definitely side with the chicken… And the turkeys.

Every year millions of turkey are slaughtered to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Turkeys shouldn’t be the centerpieces of this holiday.
Thanksgiving was originally a secular shindig to celebrate a successful harvest.
So the centerpieces should be harvest products, shouldn’t it?

I have to admit though that a turkey looks a little stupid… and vainglorious.

As far as I am concerned, when I think turkey, Donald Trump comes to mind.
Plump and garish.

His trophy wife (Slovenian born Melania) looks and sounds infinitely better than the Donald. Besides English, I understand that she is fluent in French, Slovenian, Serbian and Austrian German.
How many languages does the Donald speak? As far as I can tell, he speaks only in tongues.

But enough with turkeys of all sorts.
In a little while, they will just be faint memories.

Personally, I could easily do without turkey. It does not taste that great anyway.
I would happily go vegan or swap pieces of that bird for “escargots” or “cuisses de grenouilles”.

But that’s just me…

“Thanksgiving, man. Nor a good day to be my pants.”
Kevin James.

Happy “Donald Day” you all!

 Alain

We now live in very uncertain times, and yesterday’s rules and regulations have become somewhat obsolete to cope with the evil of terrorism.
These rules need to be updated and made more exacting to meet new challenges.

And the curtailing of individual freedom is the price we will have to pay to prevent the reoccurrence of horrible incidents like the Paris carnage.
In our troubled times, the key to survival is adaptation to new realities.
The new realities are that murderous fanatics can strike almost anywhere and everything possible should be done to thwart their plans.

Privacy (the condition of being free from being observed or spied on) is a casualty of this state of affairs.

Islamist sociopaths are becoming more sophisticated and are embracing new communication technologies.
They are “going dark”.
They have moved to the latest methods of encrypted transmissions making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to monitor their chatter.

Software companies have been reluctant to provide a “back door” to allow authorities to monitor terrorists chats.
I think that this wrong.

I understand the hesitation of the tech companies to divulge trade secrets, but the safety of many should take precedence over the interest of a few.
In my book, security trumps privacy.

And those individuals who so zealously protect their secrets might become victims of their own intransigence.

We have got to become more conscious of our environment and stop wearing virtual horse “blinkers”; our eyes should not be glued on our smartphones but on the fidgety looking characters sitting next to us.

Like it or not, Big Brother has got to have a way to keep an eye on its wayward flock.

Few people like it, but like cod liver oil it might be good for our health.

Alain