Author: patd

By PatD, a Trail Mix Contributor

“Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government involves heart, whereas in business most things don’t involve heart,” Trump told The Associated Press. “In fact, in business you’re actually better off without it.”

Too bad he didn’t think of that when he picked all those business men for his cabinet posts and his top how-to advisors.

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Hey there, Bunkie, they say the big turnip’s got you down, you’ve lost it – whatever it was. Take heed of the old philosophers: not to worry, this too will pass.

And as it says in Matthew 6:34 (CJB) “Don’t worry about tomorrow — tomorrow will worry about itself! Today has enough tsuris already!”

By PatD, a Trail Mix Contributor

The first law of tragicomedies and dramedies is the drama rises proportionally with the level of tension in the story. The comedy does the reverse. [tvtropes]

With the mystery and intrigue surrounding congressional investigations this week, the level of tension has sufficiently risen now to let in the clowns.  In observation of the axiom “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don’t rule out malice” let us consider the possibility that the surveillance which scared a certain committee chairman to run for cover and cover-up is nothing but comical in nature.

Instead of evil plots, were the wire-tapped participants overheard making embarrassing comments? Were they giggling over the Grabber-in-Chief? Did they make bets on impeachment odds? Was their conversation peppered with n-words and c-words? Were they caught stuffing money in their pockets like Chuckles the clown’s “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants?”

Will it be malice or stupidity? How do you think this dramedy, this tragicomedy, plays out?

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By PatD, a Trail Mix Contributor

Thursday was National Puppy Day and the Trail was remiss. However, those cute but not so cuddly Congress critters, in their scampering about and messes made, left us enough today to ponder puppy love and its ephemeral infatuation with the untrained and unrestrained. The first few stanzas of Linda Harnett’s poem so well describes the silliness:

I had a little puppy,
It piddled on the floor,
And every time I mopped it up,
It piddled even more.

He didn’t get the message,
I tried to teach in vain,
He didn’t give much notice,
Oops, there he goes again.

Another little puddle,
To mop up once again,
The place is in a guddle,
When will he ever learn.

I chase him round with papers,
To lead him to the door,
I have to watch his every move,
In case he leaves me more.

And just when I had given up,
On such a hopeless case,
He scampered to the door then,
Panic etched upon his face.

At last we turned the corner,
With help from God above,
And looking back I realise why,
They call this Puppy Love.

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Caption Contest Winner:
Corey

By PatD, a Trail Mix Contributor

Wiki tells us that Trompe-l’oeil (French for “deceive the eye” — pronounced trômp ˈloi) is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions.

Just after the election, an astute writer wrote this in a letter to The Star:

… we have the political version of a trompe-l’oeil painting, in which objects offer the illusion of three-dimensionality. The textures of Clinton’s fictional criminality – even monstrosity – were ultimately rendered more prominent than her opponent’s actual racism and sexism. Sadly, a rational, qualified and progressive candidate was obscured in this Trump-l’oeil. (Kirsten Munro, Toronto)

More to the point in general, the hopenchange blog also equated the new president with the art technique:

The idea is to create a nearly 3-dimensional illusion of grandeur, when the reality is that the decorative urn, Greek columns, or window looking onto a magnificent Mediterranean vista is only the depth of a coat of paint. And that’s where we’re at right now with Trump L’oeil – trying to separate the illusion from the reality.

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