The holidays are over. In that part of the world that has real winter, January will creep along drearily. Even outside the lands of snow and ice, January is stern. And, to top it off, tomorrow is Monday.
So what are ya gonna do?
Pick your face up off the floor and think about the following things, past, present and future:
1. This great new Pope Francis is shaking things up! Why didn't the Catholic church get a Jesuit pope a long time ago! This guy is the gift that never quits giving. Humane, compassionate, funny, humble, shrewd and - most of all - telling it like it is! Go get 'em, Francis! A Catholic friend of mine in Little Rock who has to use closed caption TV reports that, when Francis was elected, the transcriber struggled with understanding "the first Jesuit pope" and instead wrote "the first Jewish pope". Says the Little Rock friend, "The Church is an equal opportunity employer."
2. Think about Gene Kelly doing the number "Singin' In the Rain" in the movie of the same name. Monday or not, you gotta smile!
3. Rejoice that the feds are ordering the farmers to stop routinely feeding antibiotics to animals we are going to eat. This is a major cause of the mutations in bacteria that make them impervious to antibiotics. It's a long overdue regulation but it's come at last! Chalk another one to President Obama. Left to itself the fed department would never have stood up like this to the farmers.
4. In September the EPA issued regulations on coal-fired plants that will virtually shut down the old plants and prevent any new ones being built. These regulations will save lots of lives in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states where the particulates in coal smoke blowing from Ohio produce aggravated asthma that kills thousand every year. Further, coal smoke is a major cause of global warming and acidification of the oceans.
5. Season IV of Downton Abbey starts tonight in the USA. In this season all the characters will be killed off. Except Thomas. Meantime, our own super-rich citizens will get further schooling in how to employ the rest of us as servants. You'll notice I used a Roman numeral for Season 4. The reason? It's show biz tradition! Sheet music and movies always have Roman numerals for dates. This greatly troubled the guy I used to write comedy with because he was somewhat handicapped as a movie historian and the same re songs. He lamented, "I was absent that day in high school when they taught Roman numerals".
6. The role of Thorin Oakenshield in the new Hobbitt movie is played by Senator Ted Cruz.
7. Six more Guantanamo prisoners have been released. They could have left years ago but they preferred to stay in prison rather than go to the countries that offered to take them: Costa Rica, Palau, the Maldives, El Salvador, Bermuda, and Switzerland. These guys weren't guilty of terrorism, but if they were put on trial for stupidity....? They've just now picked Slovakia!
Have a great Monday! Just keep thinking about Gene jumping in those puddles! And stay tuned in to this blog all year for handy hints on how to change the world. Which you absolutely can do.
Wait! Wait! I'll go to Bermuda even if those released prisoners don't want to!
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