Becoming trapped in the self proclaimed “Happiest Place on Earth” really happened on Monday in China. Apparently, a recent visitor to Disneyland in Shanghai tested positive for COVID and when word reached the park the gates were promptly shut and no one was allowed to leave until having a negative COVID test. Mobilizing and testing an estimated 20,000 visitors and workers was done swiftly and when everyone reportedly was cleared their detention ended after only a few hours.

During the confinement the park’s rides continued to operate and while any dreams of sleeping overnight with Sleeping Beauty didn’t get realized, goofing off with Goofy likely was possible.

Now, let me ask you a question. What do you think the response in either of America’s Disney parks would have been if a similar action had been taken by the management? Would 20,000 of us have been calm and compliant? 

Americans have been divided since the beginning of the pandemic over how seriously to deal with COVID and millions ducked sensible measures that might have prevented many thousands of deaths. I can only imagine the reaction in Anaheim or Orlando if the gates of those parks had been shut and visitors told, “Nobody gets out of here until we test you!”

The authoritarian screws are tightly fastened in China. Xi Jinping is positioning himself to be its dictator for life. His uncompromising zero-COVID edict that has at times locked down vast swaths of the country’s population may not be popular but has been virtually unopposed. Protest is anathema in China. Its citizens get very little uncensored information on which to judge their government’s activities and cruel consequences if they oppose it.

In our country on the other hand our freedom of information has now been thoroughly corrupted by misinformation and the ease by which it has been spread and astonishingly believed. Nobody I know would call today’s China a democracy. The sad thing is that it’s getting harder to call what we are evolving to be in the United States the democracy we used to know either.

One of the more popular rides at all the Disneylands around the world is Pirates of the Caribbean. The attraction has inspired five movies that have grossed $3.7 billion. At Disneyland in Shanghai the ride’s name has been amended to include Battle for the Sunken Treasure.

Seems to me that change is appropriate to make at America’s parks as well. It’s a battle we should have seen coming and I only hope we can wage successfully.

—————–

It’s November in Midcoast Maine and today the temperature is in the 40s. That’s seasonally appropriate. But yesterday, according to the thermometer that’s outside the window by my desk, the temperature here reached 70 degrees.

This past weekend it hit 75 in Portland which was the all-time record high in November for the state. My golf course has already closed for the season but it’s been strange realizing that winter is on the way while raking leaves in shorts and a t-shirt.

There are way too many things to be anxious about these days and although having lunch outside on our patio Monday felt like a gift, I know it’s a gift horse. The earth is heating up and our country, if not our species, seems to be melting down.

Over the weekend I took our grandsons to a high school production of the musical Mamma Mia. Afterward the ten year old said he enjoyed it. When I asked the six year old if he’d been bored, he said, “Only for an hour.” For me it was sweet and inspiring to see a bunch of teenagers dance and sing their hearts out but I wondered if they saw the future as fearlessly and unlimited as I had at their age.

My generation thought we were going to change the world. We have but not in the ways many of us expected and hoped for. I just returned from voting. The polling place in the Camden firehouse was crowded. Climate Change wasn’t on the ballot but democracy as we believe we know it most likely was.

—————–

I had just arrived in Israel in 1972 and expected to stay six months which would turn into seven years. The country was still celebrating its surprisingly decisive victory in the Six Day War that had occurred five years earlier. Most Israelis felt their future existence had been secured but of course in 1973 the Yom Kippur War demolished their optimism and bruised their self confidence.

That September I watched the 1972 Olympics one night with a group of kibbutz members. The games were being held in Munich and a few days later 11 members of the Israeli team would be murdered. My Hebrew was nearly non-existent at this point and when the announcer started screaming during a swimming qualifying heat, I was confused. Israel’s entrant wasn’t even close to the lead. I turned to the person beside me and asked…

Me: “What’s he screaming about?”

Kibbutznik: “He’s saying, ‘She’s not last!. She’s not last!'”

While the results of yesterday’s midterm elections may not be something to scream hysterically about too loudly, they are certainly something to be thankful for. My cartoons today represent three of my own takeaways that I think we can celebrate…

Up here Paul LePage is still the ex-governor of Maine and I’m betting will return to Florida and reestablish residency like he did after he termed out four years ago. Florida of course has no state individual income tax and why would anyone who’d held the state’s highest office stay here and support it afterward

Florida governor Ron DeSantis seems to be the big Republican winner yesterday and although you can never count Donald Trump out, his statement about the candidates he endorsed that, “I think if they win, I should get all the credit, and if they lose, I should not be blamed at all,” is epitaph worthy. He wasn’t joking. I guess when you play with fire you should make sure you keep your coattails from igniting. However, trading Trump for DeSantis is likely to be a devil’s bargain.

And disagreement and anger over the Supreme Court’s striking down Roe v. Wade was made clear at the polls across the country where it could be expressed, although in Montana a ballot measure that would impose criminal penalties on health care providers is too close to call. Bottom line though is that we’re still stuck with the makeup and decisions of this Supreme Court for a long time to come.

So, last night wasn’t a red wave but it isn’t all blue skies ahead either. The United States is still a dangerously divided country but what could have happened to make things worse last night didn’t and I’ll drink to that.

——————

It often surprises me that when I think of an idea for a cartoon, I end up learning something I didn’t know and what was just an idea for a joke turns more serious. An hourglass having to fill up with sand in the desert was going to be a lighthearted comment on the price of gas these days. That led me to discovering that there are different types and grades of sand and something else that I had no inkling about… The earth is running out of it!

Sand is mined more than any other mineral. Sand is the second most used resource by humans after water. Construction uses the most sand for concrete, cement and glass and it takes 18,000 tons of it to build a mile of highway and 200 tons for the average single family house. How much sand is used in the world in a year? How about 55 billion tons, enough to build a wall 90 feet high and 90 feet wide around the circumference of the planet.

So, why are we using it up? A wide range of things require sand that I hadn’t realized. Take fracking where sand is injected into rock to fracture it. Take the phone in your pocket which is one quarter silica– yes, that’s why it’s called Silicon Valley –which comes from sand. But the biggest reason we’re running out of sand is simply because there are so many more of us and we’re building housing and infrastructure at a pace that’s never occurred before in human history.

Oh well, another thing to keep me up at night. But then again there may be one absurd benefit of climate change here. Hey, as more of the earth becomes parched and less inhabitable, I assume we’ll at least have more sand.

—————–

Oh, I got plenty of nothing

Just pennies is what’s left for me
I sold the car, I hocked the jewels, I smashed the big TV

Folks with plenty of crypto
They got a shock still in store
Soon they gonna be sellingThen they sure gonna be yelling

When they’re not gonna be rich no more
That’s for sure!

Don’t need a lock on my door

Look inside you’ll see

Not even a rug on the floor
But that’s Ok with me
Cause the things that I prized
Like the yacht that’s capsized
I’m no longer the leasee!

Oh, I got left with a penny
Ain’t nothing left for you to see
I’ll get along, still got my bong
Got grass that’s not my lawn

No use complaining…
Got my grass, got a stash, got my bong!

With apologies to the Gershwin brothers and DuBose Heyward who wrote the first draft of the lyrics for I’ve Got Plenty of Nothing as well as the novel Porgy on which the opera was based.

Here’s a fine rendition…

—————–

“What goes up must come down.”

That phrase above is now 200 years old and originated as a description of gravity. It’s also used when talking about other things than watching what happens when a ball gets tossed in the air. Take the stock market, PLEASE!

In 2021 the gains in the S&P 500 (up 27%), the Dow Jones Industrial Average (up 19%) and the Nasdaq Composite (up 21%) made me think my investments were attached to helium balloons. This year, contrary to what I reported the other day, there apparently is enough sand still left in the world to have weighed down and thrown my own stocks and bonds off a pier in cement shoes.

“Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it…

Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”
–Tom Toro

A rerun of the dotcom bubble that burst 20 years ago was bound to re-happen (my word) and once highflying tech and internet companies that are not Apple are un-perking (my word again). No more free drycleaning and take home meals at Meta. The company’s stock has lost nearly 80% of its value since January. That makes Meta the biggest loser of 2022 on all of Wall Street. Call it an about face for Facebook or maybe simply Mark Zuckerberg’s bad bet on virtual reality versus reality.

I for one don’t think the future of the universe is tied to that of the metaverse. I don’t know where I might be going when it’s that time but I doubt I’ll be wearing goggles or a mask to get taken there.

I’m obviously hoping for a stock market rebound in 2023. Any recovery however, will likely be without those helium balloons lifting our investments back into the sky. It turns out that at the moment there’s a worldwide helium shortage that’s been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Russia is a major producer of helium that the United States counts on when supplies of it are tight. Instead of being our safety net, Russia is now a “nyet” exporter!

A shortage of helium isn’t a laughing matter. Doctors are worried about a scarcity of helium because without its liquid form that’s used in magnetic resonance imaging machines the MRIs can’t function. A single MRI needs over 450 gallons of liquid helium— the coldest element on earth —to be able to keep its magnets cool so it can work.

But fear not if you’re worried about the giant helium inflated balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in a few weeks. Although there will be half as many of them as in years past, Snoopy, Smokey the Bear and even the Pillsbury Doughboy will be pumped up and lighter than air as usual.

—————–

All Things Reconsidered or Why a Tesla Isn’t Called an Edison

In Conversation with Thomas Edison and Elon Musk

Moderated by Mark Twain

Twain: Welcome! Suffice it to say, and what I say will suffice… I am sitting here with two of America’s great inventors. You two have never met before and I’m sure you have a lot to discuss with one another.

Edison:Yes, we do! Mr. Musk, I understand you are a great admirer of mine.

Musk: As I’ve said, you brought your stuff to market and made your inventions accessible to the world…

Edison:Then why the hell did you name your car after that schmuck TESLA?

Musk:Actually Mr. Edison, I had to buy the name from this fellow in Sacramento who was using it for his company called Tesla Motors. Cost me $75,000. If he hadn’t sold it to me I was going to name my electric car the Faraday…

Edison:Michael Faraday, the Brit! He never even saw a car in his life. He was dead before there were any.

Musk: That’s right, but he was the one who had more to do with the invention of the first electric motor than either of us. More to the point, the motors in my cars use alternating current– AC –you worked primarily with direct current– DC.

Edison: That’s correct.

Musk: And didn’t Nickola Tesla at one point work for you?

Edison: Yes, but not for very long…

Musk: And didn’tyou offer him a lot of money if he could redesign your direct current motors and make them more efficient?

Edison: I might have joked about it.

Musk: But Tesla did come up with a better design and you stiffed him!

Edison: Tesla was from Serbia. He didn’t understand American humor.

Musk: Well Thomas, I guess he had the last laugh because Westinghouse bought his alternating current patents and Tesla was paid a fortune.

Edison: Quite right, Elon, and then he lost it all like you’re on a path to do yourself with purchases of things you know nothing about like Twitter. (Edison singing) nah, nah, nah, tweet, tweet, tweet, goodbye…

Musk: At least I’ve never electrocuted dogs and cats to try to smear my rival’s discoveries… And the elephant!

Edison: The pachyderm’s electrocution wasn’t my doing. I believe alternating current is a dangerous form of electricity that can kill people.

Musk: Yes, you would know. You’re the one who invented the electric chair but didn’t want anyone to find out…

Twain: Gentleman, gentlemen STOP! It is better to keep your mouths closed and let people think you are both fools– I mean assholes –than to open them any further and remove all doubt.

And mercifully that’s all we have time for.

Editor’s note: All of the above information is true. The invective is my own. 

—————–

I’ve offered a triptych today and borrowing from Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, I’ve filled my panels with visions of an American political landscape now that Donald Trump has officially launched his Make America Cringe Again campaign for president.

In Bosch’s work paradise, represented by Adam and Eve in Eden before the fall, is the left panel and hell, full of fire and sharp objects, is on the right. One art historian interprets the middle panel with its nudity and frolic to represent an “unspoilt pre-moral existence” while another observer describes it as “life without consequence.”

My only connection to Bosch is our dishwasher but at this time in our country’s history paradise just might perversely be Trump as the Republican candidate for president redux or even better, Trump not getting the nomination and running independently out of hubris. Hell of course would be having Trump win. I don’t know what Bosch had between his ears but in his hell he inserted a knife there.

I didn’t watch Trump’s announcement but I’ve read it was long and reportedly even he seemed bored delivering it. Apparently, at no point did he claim the 2020 election was stolen from him (For now at least he’s accepting he’s a loser.) and his trotting out his other tried and untrue grievances was so lethargic even Fox News didn’t stick with him for the duration.

Trump’s die hard supporters will likely never abandon him but the campaign train is leaving the station with one formerly fellow traveler waving goodbye. His daughter Ivanka simultaneously released a statement yesterday that she’s done with politics and didn’t attend her father’s speech last evening. That must have hurt the Don-ald.

No political figure in our history has ever exploited the dark side of America more successfully and consequentially than Donald Trump. He’s back and now we will see who still has his.

My favorite cartoonist was Mad Magazine’s Don Martin. One of my favorite cartoon stories of his was about a guy who rose to fame by having things dropped on his head– heavy things. At the peak of his success he played filled stadiums and had the Queen Mary bounced off his skull. But eventually his unique talent waned and in Martin’s last frame the man is shown crumbling to the floor under a chintzy banner that locates him in Sheboygan. A plate emptied of creamed spinach lies by his side.

Let art imitate life!

—————–

BREAKING NEWS!

And this was heard in the House of Representatives a few moments ago

Kevin… You’re in heaven
But I think you know this isn’t what you seek
And I don’t think that the nastiness has peaked
I’m out, you’re in too bad it’s lookin’ bleak

Kevin… It ain’t heaven
And the creeps that are your caucus through the week
Will not vanish and will make you want to shriek
I’m out, you’re in too bad it’s lookin’ bleak

Oh, I hope you have been counting
And you realize you’re weak
But if you cross that slither-ing Jordan
You’re really up the creek

It’s no picnic in green pastures
The still waters don’t run deep
And if her name is Marjorie
Well, she’s all yours!

With apologies to Irving Berlin who wrote Cheek to Cheek, Fred Astaire who sang it in the movie Top Hat in 1935 and Ginger Rogers who I bet could sing it backwards.

–

Too bad for the “King of Beers.” Budweiser paid $75 million for the rights to be the only seller of alcohol to fans in the stands at the World Cup in Qatar. Less than two days before the games begin the Emir has reneged on the deal. Now, all those in attendance will be sitting soberly through the matches and the only bottoms up will be when they get up from their seats. But all is not lost. I found this headline from five years ago in the Daily Mail…

Forget Petrol! Vehicles Could Run on Renewable Fuel Made From BEER by 2022

Here’s the link…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5151381/Vehicles-run-fuel-BEER-2022.html

I don’t drink a lot of beer but I do have memories from drinking too much of it. The first time I ever got inebriated I got kicked out of a drive-in movie for scaling a fence in front of the projector and making an obscene hand gesture. That’s probably sharing more than you want to know…

Beer advertising slogans of the past are lodged forever in my head. One beer company even has two– “The beer that made Milwaukee famous!” and “If you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer!” 

And then there’s…

“When you see the three-ring-sign, ask the man for Ballantine”

“Schaefer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one”

Or this one…

“If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer!”

Do you know which beer’s tagline this was? Why don’t we have a contest? I’ll list some slogans minus a word or two and we’ll see if you can complete them and name their beers. Ready?

“Brewed with pure ___ ___ spring water.”

“You never forget your first ___.”

“Stay ___ my friends.”

“___ for beer”

“A whole lot can happen out of the ___.”

“___ never forget.”

Yes, they got tougher as the list got longer.

My favorite sentence ever about beer was uttered in an episode of the Britcom Keeping Up Appearances. If you’ve never seen the series, it’s about a social climber who never misses an opportunity to try to forget where she came from and her two sisters who never miss an opportunity to remind her. One of their husbands is particularly good at it.

In one episode that character is seated in his customary pose in front of the “telly” with a bag of “crisps” in hand when with as much dismay as he can muster he declares, “I’m surrounded by no beer!” I wonder if he plans to watch the World Cup?

—————–

As Musk Meddles Twitter Teeters

One of my favorite things about writing for print has always been composing headlines. It’s fun to have fun but obviously, a headline’s purpose is to get you to read what comes under it.

Sometimes though, after you see the headline you don’t need to…

Big Rig Carrying Fruit Crashes on Freeway, Creates Jam

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge

Head of Iraq Seeks More Arms

Man Accused of Killing Lawyer Gets New Attorney

Students Cook and Serve Grandparents

Crematory Plans Put on Back Burner

Sisters Reunited after 20 Years in Checkout Line at Supermarket

And sometimes a headline is fine but where it’s placed…

Yes, this unfortunate timing really happened and Will and Kate delayed their honeymoon.

—————–

Nearly 50 million turkeys will make the ultimate sacrifice for their country this week and although Benjamin Franklin isn’t personally responsible for putting us in such a fowl mood every Thanksgiving, he did accuse our nation’s national bird– the bald eagle –of being “of bad moral character” compared to the more “respectable” turkey.

Franklin deemed turkeys “birds of courage and true natives of America.” Hmm… sounds like Ben may have wanted first dibs on the Trump-shtick at his own Thanksgiving table.

Yes, we’ll be having turkey as always at our home and it will be wonderful to be with a dozen others around the table in the “life goes on despite COVID and all the other bad stuff” era. I’ll be the designated carver and it’s become a lot easier task for me since we bought an electric knife.

I’m the kid in my high school biology class who screwed up the dissection of a fish so badly that the teacher, upon seeing my lack of discernible surgical skill, told me to get out my math homework.

I’ve always assumed that the bird turkey and the country Turkey have about as much to do with each other as grease as in elbow, and Greece as in the Acropolis. Guess what? I was wrong. I’ve found a couple theories attempting to explain the connection between turkey and Turkey and both seem to… well, be winging it. 

One claims that, while the bird is indiginous to North America, it somehow got named a turkey when it first ended up in London markets in the 16th century. The British back then were claiming and naming lots of things that arrived from anywhere were from Turkey– Turkey rugs, Turkey flour — even if they weren’t.

Another explanation that seems a bit more plausible is that a bird like a turkey that was native to Africa entered Europe by way of trade with the Ottoman Empire and was also christened to be a turkey.

But there’s a problem. The Turkish word for turkey isn’t turkey, it’s Hindi! In Turkish that’s the word for India. And what does India have to do with turkey? I have no idea but the Turks have an ally on this one in Israel. The word for turkey– the bird –in Hebrew is hodu which is also the word in Hebrew for India. Are you still with me?

If you’ve read enough of my stuff by now, you’ll understand why after concluding that a turkey is not from turkey nor India I asked myself this question– Why is India ink called India ink? Turns out that attribution also has a blotched history. This type of ink had been used in China for centuries before getting the India prefix.

It appears, even though it was shipped to them from China, the Brits failed world geography again. France corrected their mistake—l’ encre de Chine is India ink in French. 

One needs to keep abreast of these things. 

And here’s something to think about when your carver dissects and offers up your own Thanksgiving bird. It’s become a tradition for American presidents to pardon a pair of turkeys every November. In fact the ceremonial clemency for this year is scheduled to take place today at the White House. I’m not sure though how scrupulously anybody has ever followed up afterward to see whether or not the chosen birds might have ended up merely as lame ducks who termed out terminally.

I do know of one period of time when the emancipated duo got the royal treatment. For five years the pardoned turkeys were flown first class to Disneyland and Disney World and honored with parades down Main Street until the Magic Kingdoms axed– pardon me — the practice in 2010.

One of my cousin’s sons, who worked for United Airlines at the time, told me that Disney had to buy up the entire first class cabin for transporting the turkeys. I forgot to ask him what was served for the inflight meal.

—————–

Our bird spent the night in the driveway in the back of our station wagon along with the mashed potatoes and the stuffing. They were all there this morning and obviously missed the gravy train out of here…

Hope you have a wonderful gathering with family and friends today! And here’s a blessing from Ralph Waldo Emerson that I happened upon…

“This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life.”

—————–

Our mailbox is empty

The one beside the road

But the one that’s here in front of me

Is way past overload

Why is this day different

And what does it forbode

Yes, it’s only Black Friday

Cyber Monday’s still on hold

I vow not to buy a thing

But lest this solemn pledge erode

I’ve stashed all my credit cards

In the empty mailbox by the road

A polemic disguised as a poem by Peter Imber

—————–

So, I wondered when the World Cup ends with its final match the week before Christmas if its venues in Qatar would be left to be ravaged by the sands of time. And I’ve pondered if that be the case, whether or not thousands of years from now the stadiums’ original purpose will become a mystery like Stonehenge was until a British professor presented convincing evidence that the rocks placed in a field 5,000 years ago charted accurately that we on our planet have a 365 and a quarter day annual voyage around the sun.

I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one of you who has thought to yourself what is Qatar going to do with the soccer stadiums it built to host the World Cup when the event is over? Are these structures going to be just left standing and serve as a monument to the power of oil wealth and the greed of the FIFA executives who took bribes so that Qatar was awarded the games 12 years ago?

Of course not? The Qataris have money and they have plans. But here’s a number I’ve unearthed about the stadiums’ cost. When broken down for a single game played in each of the venues that have been constructed, a single day’s use for one match has a cost of $357 million. Yes, you read that correctly. And how many games will be played in the month-long competition? The answer is 64. So, what’s the total that Qatar spent on its eight venues alone? Divided up equally it works out to $1.25 billion apiece.

Architecturally, I think some of the stadiums appear stunning but up against the $220 billion Qatar is estimated to have spent on everything to put it’s country’s best foot beyond football forward, the whole endeavor’s price tag is staggering.

So, what is to become of the stadiums? One– Khalifa –already existed and was erected nearly 50 years ago. It was refurbished and will be the only one to remain in its present form. Another will become a sports facility for Qatari university students. Two others will become the home venues for the country’s best soccer clubs.

This World Cup’s largest capacity stadium– Lusail has room for 80,000 spectators. –will be repurposed with its seats removed so that shops and cafes will replace them and its upper decks transformed into housing. The second largest stadium– Al Bayt is the one shaped like a tent. –will be converted into a hotel and shopping center.

But the most interesting venue called Stadium 974 will be disassembled and vanish completely. Stadium 974 is the first “temporary” stadium ever used in the World Cup and is composed of 974 shipping containers. 974 is also Qatar’s international dialing code– I guess if you can have a play on words, you can have a play on numbers.

So, should we be critical of Qatar’s extravagance in the name of football? Take a look at this picture…

It’s an abandoned venue that was used in the 2004 Olympic Games held in Athens. I guess not every country cares what happens after hosting the main event. Ancient stadiums built in Greece over 2,000 years ago are in better shape.

Qatar’s oil is predicted to run out only centuries from now if it maintains its current extraction level. Its stadiums might well last longer than our species.

—————–

My one– Ok, all modesty aside, I actually had a couple brief shining moments in a college classroom. One was in freshman English when my professor challenged us to find a single passage in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad in which Twain wasn’t being sarcastic or cynical. I did!

While attending an opera in Italy, Twain was appalled and quite forcefully chided an audience’s mocking of an aging diva. Definitely, a side of Twain not often displayed. My professor looked a bit startled when I revealed my discovery and to this day I think that maybe until that moment he hadn’t thought there was an example to be found.

But there was another passage in the book Twain wrote while in the Holy Land that has never been very far away from my consciousness…

The priests tried to show us, through a small screen, a fragment of the genuine Pillar of Flagellation, to which Christ was bound when they scourged him. But we could not see it, because it was dark inside the screen. However, a baton is kept here, which the pilgrim thrusts through a hole in the screen, and then he no longer doubts that the true Pillar of Flagellation is in there. He can not have any excuse to doubt it, for he can feel it with the stick. He can feel it as distinctly as he could feel anything.

And that, dear readers, sums up my attitude toward bitcoin and crypto currency and a few other things I either find incomprehensible or unknowable. Most everything I can’t see or understand I’m unlikely to invest my time, belief or money in. I think of myself as a curious person but then “curious” has a couple of meanings and you might be thinking of the one I’m not.

I don’t know who was the first to utter the sentence “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn’t” but that’s my credo and I’m sticking to it come hell or high water.

Hmmm… and there’s a phrase that unfortunately now appears to be prophetic. Words are really something aren’t they!

—————–