February 8, 2020

"I am invincible!!"

From the Bond film Goldeneye

There will be an unpredictable Deus ex machina. It is how things work: best laid plans and all that.

The fact is that an embolus which tests itself loose: a 4-5 mm hunk of fat or bacteria can change the course of human history. We have seen it in our lifetimes: the stroke, the cancer, the accident, the killer are out of our control or plans. Think about your own family: you’re at work or school or preparing to sit down to dinner and the phone rings. Everything is now different. It’s life.

I have been in practice now for 43 years and have lost over 11000 patients to the “eternal slumber”. It often comes out of the blue: just a few days following a visit I open the paper or get a call. It is surprising but no longer shocking.

Not everyone is Kirk Douglas, Olivia DeHavilland, the Queen Mother, or even Ruth Westheimer, despite what some frightened and politicized White House physician may say.

February 8, 2020

Actor Orson Bean struck and killed by an auto

Just saw it on 6abc.com

I remember him from my childhood on tv dramas and game shows. He was extremely personable and witty.

☹️

February 8, 2020

I am insane...

I was thinking about Trump’s face and somehow I remembered an old Mad Magazine parody of Dick Tracy which had the line: “Mucousface escaped while Tracy was heaving, Chief”.

Yeah I’m that nuts...

February 7, 2020

War of the Worlds

Recall that the Martian invaders had all but destroyed the centers of population of the human race and were systematically “mopping up” when they were felled by disease.

So it will happen in real life.

February 5, 2020

I figured it all out:

Trump patterned himself on the DC comic Aquaman. I say this because:

1. Yellow hair
2. Orange Body
3. Believes he can will others to behave and do tasks for him.

I submit for your approval the first excerpt of the following animated clip:

I also wish to state that what Nancy Pelosi did at the end of the speech was positively brilliant and gutsy beyond comprehension. Kudos to her.

February 3, 2020

As a clinician of 43 years:

Everybody dies. Yes, even you and your beloved family will die eventually. Today, three years from now, 80 years hence. Soon it will be Limbaugh's Turn.

It shows that behind all the bluster, all the money, all the self-adulation, all these people are just men and women and all the bloviating and posturing will ultimately not do them one iota of good. Those metastatic lesions, those wildly reproducing cells and their insanely mutated mitochondrial DNA will fell these people as they destroy so many others, as it destroyed my brother of blessed memory.

I hope Limbaugh suffers the way he made so many others suffer: it eats at your viscera, his by cancer, many others by his words and the ramifications of his words. Lest we not forget the bitter hatred which spewed from his mouth.

So to paraphrase a Hebrew prayer, let the memory of his hatefulness and rancor be remembered and always be stated as a warning to those who destroy others. May he dwell in the house of the devil forever.

(Yes I know...but his followers do. Jews will certainly understand as will many others. )

February 2, 2020

Bread and Circuses

When I was a kid taking my six years of Latin, I cannot tell you how many times my Cambridge-Oxford educated British teacher would repeat the phrase: Bread and Circuses were indicative of the downfall of the Roman Empire.

I am a moderate sports fan and have attended well over 100 rock concerts and probably 800 classical music concerts so it’s not that I’m anti-entertainment BUT...

Everyone in Philly for example is extolling the virtues of the city in recent years and when queried as to the criteria, one universally hears about the terrific new restaurants and the access to first-class entertainment at a plethora of venues.

We are having troubles finding our libraries, our Pulitzer Prize winning papers are dying, our schools are dreadful, street crimes are not being prosecuted, a tertiary care hospital was closed in the middle of the city so a real estate developer whose corporate name is Paladin (you kids look up the tv show Have Gun Will Travel to see a show about a rich, intellectual gunslinger/killer), and other atrocities. But no one cares: because you can get a superb meal at any one of two hundred restaurants and then go see Springsteen or the Stones or any one of dozens of first rate headliners. Our kids have essentially zero education and are fundamentally nihilists. They don’t vote and don’t care to. This is what happens at the end: no one cares. Until it’s too late.

February 2, 2020

Oldie but goodie and never truer

February 1, 2020

It's all about blackmail

We aren’t gonna call it kompromat, or exerting influence, or pork-barrel politics, or arm-twisting. This is showing someone a video clip or a series of bank statements, or documentable stories about the offspring, or documents which are criminally incriminating to the elected official, his or her spouse, or any very very bad publicity.

The fact of the matter is that the vast number of individuals possess moments in their past which are problematic in this regard. People in the political sphere often have easier access and frequency to exploit their desires and lusts, and as we adults know, many behaviors practiced behind closed curtains are not consistent with the public persona of the individual. For instance, I knew that a well-known businessman here in Philadelphia was addicted to coprophilia. Another wife of a famous politician here was an embezzler of charitable and political donations and was constantly being arrested for shoplifting in many center city stores. Any of these stories if provable, and they were, would have destroyed these individuals politically and financially, since much income is derived from the familial proximity to the individual of importance.

In my opinion, each of these people have been warned, or the people who control them, and those people do exist, have been warned. We are living by the rules of the big-city mob of the Thirties. Make no mistake.