Short Shrifts / TWEETS 7

or, The Autocrat of the Algonquin table

Created Sunday, April 2, 2017

• It's a bird!  It's a plane!  It's a drone.

• While everybody is congratulating the #MeToo movement, may I suggest that we seriously parse the phrase "Me Too" minus the hashmark?  That would reveal, if we allow it, which is problematical indeed, aspects of "me too" that are appallingly self-centered.  And self-centeredness is not all that commendable, not by Christ's standards. But by current standards the quality is marvelously ethical and more righteous than thou.   Hey, self-centeredness is the American Way.

• Last year it was tolerance.  This year, #MeToo.

• NEW: How can you be tolerant of others and yet be so offended by what others say that you are obsessed with shutting them up?

• Currently everybody in Washington is calling each other liars.  The accusation is bandied about like deodorants and cocktails or awards and entitlements, minimum hourly emoluments and perks.   But like proverbs exhorting thrift and admonitions to Godliness, the lie is way way out of date.  The postmodern era that has settled like fog over Washington, yea the whole planet, informs that there is no such thing as truth.  So how CAN there be such a thing as a lie?  That Trump, or Clinton, lie, is itself a lie, by the unimpeachable standard of postmodernism, folks.  Fake news.  Fake lies.  And over and under it all is fake truth.

• So which, at the end of the day, is the more desirable: fake lies or virtual truth?  Fake news or artificial intelligence?  Smart phones or idiot savants?

• Our Lord Himself said, "The truth shall set you free." (John 8:32).  Fake freedom?  Virtual freedom?  Artificial freedom?  In any case, what a relief -- postmodernism has set us free from truth!  ... and freedom.

• But, but, but.... isn't "freedom!" the war cry, the call to revolt and riot?  It is, it is, it is ... all fake news, which to me is the ultimate truth.

• Fake truth was the original sin (as mouthed by the serpent in the Garden of Eden) and is also the terminating end-time sin, as is asserted by Christ, who declared, credibly as well as truthfully, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:6).

• I believe I caught on the news last night that some very highly placed lier has actually admitted lying, but insisted that she (this time around it was a she, I believe) did no wrong?  Now finally, that makes sense -- situational sense!  Case closed; investigation over.

• Our rights, for which activists, theoreticians, and bloggers are fighting, are burgeoning, burgeoning.  Both the rights and the activists.  The right to lie surely must be canonized somewhere, though clearly not in the 10 commandments ("thou shalt not lie") and if it's in the Bill of Rights, lawyers will find it.

• "I lied but I did nothing wrong!"  Right...

• The right to lie has come out of the closet.  I'd send it to the woodshed.

• The trick to a level playing field is mass burials.

 

• Be smart. Whatever you're doing, ask yourself, "how would a robot do this?" • Did Christ really warn that those who had pierced his side and parsed his words would cry for the rocks and mountains to fall on them? • Did Senior Bush really say, "Parse my lips"? • Or was it the Lone Ranger who said, "Parse these parched lips!" • Help! Thief! A pickpocket stole my parse with all my credit lines. • So what do you call a high-priced lawyer? A posh parse. • SHOCK! Recently, right on the streets of San Francisco, a sanctuary city, Nancy Pelosi's parse was picked! (Parse, that's not a typo.) • God grant me a firm spine, forgive my stiff neck! • So now, April 2017, Trump has put the military back on the North Korea table. Good for him. But let's hope that at the end of the day that's where it stays. Or the playing field will be leveled, all right, and radioactive. • New: May 7, 2017. Total free care for everybody includes free contraceptives and abortions, even for nuns. That's a start, but it won't be truly comprehensive until it includes free iphones for everybody waiting forever in the ER to finally be seen by a doctor. • New: Sept 19, 2017. Except for my shirt-tails, I let it all hang out. • But I don't hang out with people who let it all hang out. • New: October 17, 2017. This current curiously loud expose´ of Hollywood "culture" gone corrupt, the Weinstein fondling brouhaha, it's so trivial. Please, if you want to talk about Hollywood corruption, there's bottomless corruption at a theater or screen near you! -- Hollywood's movies! About this infinitely more corrupt corruption, dead silence. • November 19, 2017. A few months ago I changed the title box to read, "or, the Autocrat of The Algonquin and Fox Round Tables." Did you notice? Just as well. I've just removed the "Fox" part. I've stopped watching the Fox Table (I go wash dishes instead). It's not the same now that wit Dr. Krauthammer is indisposed and can't even be propped up in his familiar right-most chair around the table, and may never return. • Maybe I'm weird but I see gender change as a pretty sizable lie. • I'm old and dense and, as O-Reilly likes to say, a simple man. So explain to me how lives of any hue can matter if truth doesn't? • Being an old man I do have a very slow learning curve, especially for the new vocabulary. Near's I've been able to figure it, robots are grounded, drones fly. If a drone crashes into robots, is there a sound? • Both drones and robots have no brains, but lots of smarts. And parts.