InstaPunk Returns

  The day he finally cast off the Lilliputians and stood tall again Everything about the day was memorable. The decision to hold the swearing-in indoors, inside the Capitol Rotunda, was brilliant, regardless of the reasons for it. Instead of watching an over-coated old man’s hoarsely declaimed words made visible as plumes of frigid exhalation, we got a far more intimate and less distracting view of a President speaking directly to the people of the United States. To us. Not to the assembled horde of those privileged enough to be admitted to the show through the filters of security and influence. All of that and more will be preserved and displayed in a Presidential Library to be built at some remote later date. Not what we’re interested in here. The stuff we might lose is also indispensable to remembering and preserving an iconic two days of ceaseless movement, talk, gravity, and hilarity. With the most emphasis in this post on the funny, the absurd, the outrageous, and even the co...

  Can cats be herded? Yes. One at a time. Yes, it’s Inauguration Day, but I won’t be talking about the event itself until after he’s safely sworn in and finished delivering his address to the people. This is related, of course, but otherwise directed. The topic is the ceasefire. Watching the reactions to the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire deal has been instructive in multiple ways. Typically, the strongest objections have come from the right, including the “true-blue” MAGA advocates among the intelligentsia.  “Bad Deal,” they’re telling us, claiming it’s a false step by Trump for an immediate media splash that will ensnare him in Biden’s decrepit neocon policy of playing both ends against the middle as a means of merely kicking the can down the road. Maybe. That was my first impression too. I understand the bad deal perspective. Couple thousand Hamas killers released into the wild in exchange for a handful of surviving hostages and the bodies of many others. All for a big Inauguratio...

  I’m not writing about the Inauguration until it’s safely accomplished. Trying to look everywhere else today. So I dug up the remains of a brief dalliance I had with a medium called Substack. It’s a subscription service, a thing I’ve been long leery of; you have write regularly whether you feel like it or not. What you owe to your readers. But I also think you owe your readers content you care about, not hasty products drenched in flop sweat catalyzed by a ticking clock. Gave it a try though. The way to start was with free stuff, which would lead to part-free as a teaser followed by the good stuff below the fold where only subscribers could go. I wrote entries when I felt the presence of a topic at the back of my mind. For me, writing is synonymous with thinking. Can’t claim to have thought about it if I haven’t worked the thoughts into coherent sentences, paragraphs, and other media designed to share my perspective and understanding to others. I lasted for about eight months doin...

  Available at TUBI and Pluto streaming services. PREAMBLE This will turn out to be relevant. I promise. There is a 1982 movie called “The Secret of NIMH,” which is an animated story for children about quite dramatic and dangerous events in a world most of us pay little attention to. In fact the movie itself has been characterized as one of the greatest and yet most forgotten masterpieces of its film genre. NIMH won a prestigious ‘Saturn’ Award but achieved only modest initial success at the box office, though it became quietly popular with home purchases over the 40+ years since. Here’s a quickie plot overview, courtesy of Google: “Mrs. Brisby, a widowed mouse (Elizabeth Hartman), must move her children out of their home in a field before the local farmer starts plowing. Unable to leave because her son is ill, Mrs. Brisby seeks the help of nearby rats, who have heightened intelligence after being the subjects of scientific experiments. She receives an unexpected gift from the elde...