Donald Trump’s presidency began with calls to imprison his opponent in the race (“Lock her up!”). It ended with a violent failed coup to overturn the legal election of his successor.
Yes, he is a fascist.
Cover to Carlton Gibbs’ “Neighbors and Lovers,” 1964
Softcover Library. I cannot determine the artist.
“Solitude,” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
(It’s generational humor.)
What I want is a “Star Trek” episode where one dyslexic Borg embarrasses the whole cube by telling entire planets that they will be ass-limited.
Variant cover to “Batman Incorporated” #2, Cameron Stewart, 2012
DC Comics.
Good artwork.
Seen in downtown Roanoke this weekend. I have a pal out west who exemplifies the maxim, and we were having a conversation about it only the night before. Synchronicity.
Cover to “Marvels” #3, Alex Ross, 1994
Marvel Comics.
Run!! It’s Five-Oh!!
My dudes, THANK YOU for all of the fun and hilarious birthday messages yesterday. It means a lot to me.
I’m happy to mark my half-century on this planet with such thoughtful friends. 🙂
Photo credit: Ominae, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo of Falco Tinnunculus, 55129 Hechtsheim, Germany, by Vera Buhl, 2009
“Among the creatures of middle age.”
A cloudless night like this
Can set the spirit soaring:
After a tiring day
The clockwork spectacle is
Impressive in a slightly boring
Eighteenth-century way.
It soothed adolescence a lot
To meet so shameless a stare;
The things I did could not
Be so shocking as they said
If that would still be there
After the shocked were dead
Now, unready to die
Bur already at the stage
When one starts to resent the young,
I am glad those points in the sky
May also be counted among
The creatures of middle-age.
It’s cosier thinking of night
As more an Old People’s Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,
That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome
Or myself at seventeen.
— excerpt from W. H. Auden’s “A Walk After Dark”
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 