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Here It Comes Again
I was almost liking summertime until I took a peek at the forecast…
Ugh, Summer…
As if I wasn’t having enough problems with the never-ending issue of costochondritis, I’ve been feeling quite fatigued. Anybody’s guess as to why that is. We’ll see what the blood draw shows. The obvious guess is that I need yet another tweak of my thyroid medication.
Adding insult to injury, the ten day forecast shows me at least five in the nineties and the rest in the high eighties.
Blech!
We were having such a nice week. How could it end on such a high temperature?
Just the same, at least I get to wake up with my beloved, beautiful wife even if I’m drowning in my own perspiration.
Flame On!
Top 10 Alternate Versions Of The Human Torch
One of the Sentinels is somewhat like the Human Torch. Foxfire was the first professional superhero in the Sentinelsverse.
Technically, Captain Freedom was the first (known) superhuman but he wasn’t a superhero in the typical comic book sort of way. He discovered his powers while serving in the Army in the late 19th Century and became a military secret.
Foxfire went more the route of Silver Age superheroes like Spider-Man or the Flash. He was just an average Joe living out in the boonies. Next thing he knew, he had superpowers. Like Spider-Man, he took some time to understand and learn how to use his powers. Unlike Spider-Man, he didn’t get anyone (like Uncle Ben) killed in the process.
Foxfire had more or less accidentally foiled some crimes up in his neck of the woods when he met Lucius “Lucky Dog” Deagle.
Lucky is Captain Freedom’s godson. When Lucky was a child, Uncle Matt (as he knew him) saved his life by picking a car up over his head as Superman did in his first appearance in Action Comics #1. This spurred Lucky to become almost obsessed with comic books and superheroes. He spent his life looking for other superheroes like his godfather.
After learning of Foxfire’s crime-fighting exploits, Lucky sought him out and found a kindred spirit. The two of them began working on what would eventually become The Sentinels. With Foxfire’s flame powers and Captain Freedom’s super strength, the world’s first super team was well on its way to becoming a reality.
Of course, that was some time back. Foxfire got his powers in 1976. As of the first book of the Sentinels series, he has just had his 50th birthday and is looking to retire. It makes for an interesting conflict to start things off.
Seeking The Beauty
Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people – the beauty within themselves. ~Langston Hughes
There’s not a whole lot of that on display these days.
Maybe it’s because people are antsy from being cooped up during the quarantine.
Maybe it’s because people are being fed a diet of constant fear, uncertainty and dismay.
Maybe it’s because people are actually generally just assholes.
Who knows?
The thing is, it is indeed an artist’s prerogative to try to shine a light on life’s beauty so that people can perhaps, maybe…
Unclench their pucker-butts!
Perhaps it’s unartful for me to point out that people are definitely capable of turning coal into diamonds with their sphincters these days, but it’s true nonetheless.
The dark side of human nature has been running rampant worldwide for the last couple of months and it seems to be getting worse.
I don’t know what it’s going to take for things to start getting better again.
Perhaps a bit of actual law and order. Perhaps if certain mayors could actually protect their citizenry instead of letting a special interest group cause violence and chaos unimpeded by the people whose job it is to stop such things, it might actually stop.
Sadly, they don’t want it to stop.
Not even our own pathetic governor will lift a finger to stop the madness. He’ll slam his fist down on people opening their businesses or making a living but don’t ask him to stop people with a very, very dull axe to grind. Don’t ask him to interfere with a Marxist plot to disrupt the country and impact the upcoming election.
Finally, we’re seeing some action. Apparently, federal law enforcement has been dispatched to some of the country’s worst hot spots to clamp down on the insane insurrection.
Again, the nutty mayors have actually had the gall to ask these law enforcement professionals to leave. In my opinion, the mayors ought to have been the first people detained. If you’re not doing your job, you shouldn’t have it. Mayors who do not look out for the best interests of their communities ought not to be mayors anymore.
So, where to find the beauty?
How do you find beauty when children are being murdered in the streets of cities where the jackass mayors have decided to cut funding of their police departments?
How do you find beauty when people shoot the mother of a young child because she said “all lives matter”?
How do you find beauty when kids are curb-stomping a mom and her toddler for who even knows why?
How do you find the beauty when guys are punching people, sometimes with brass knuckles, for being members of a different demographic?
How do you find the beauty when people who were defending their home from people who had violently torn through their gate and were pointing weapons at them are being prosecuted for defending themselves on their own property from armed intruders?
How do you find the beauty when the propaganda machine is trying to deprive a sitting President of the ability to even run for his second term?
How do you find the beauty when the world is literally on fire with thoughtless stupidity?
I don’t freaking know. I really don’t.
Perhaps I’m not an artist after all. Perhaps there’s not enough beauty left in the world to pluck from the ashes and rubble.
I really don’t know how we’re getting out of this mess.
I’m writing my story in the hope that we’ll still have a functioning civilization when I’m ready to publish it. I can’t honestly be sure.
The morons are trying to turn this country into Weimar Germany. They’re trying to replay the AntiFA vs Nazis struggle.
They’re trying to win where their atrocious forebears lost.
It’s not going to work.
The more they act up and try to drag us to the Left, the more they’re going to force an equal and opposite reaction.
Apparently, people in Portland are being swept up and taken gosh knows where. One assumes they’re being taken to a quiet location for a little heart-to-heart with people who have not much in the way of a sense of humor. Given how they’ve been acting for quite a few years now and how they’ve been left to fester and think that this behavior is the way forward, the quiet attitude adjustment may actually be too little, too late.
If we are the Nazis they claim we are, these idiots may have a one-way helicopter ride in their future. If the only people who can beat AntiFA are Nazis, they may be driving us to become what they claim we’ve been all along.
That’s not going to be beautiful.
They should probably stop while we’re all ahead.
This is not Weimar Germany. We do not need to replay the 1920s. We really don’t. They’re not going to like how it turns out.
I don’t know how to find the beauty in people who are so dedicated to their own self-destructive stupidity. I’m not sure I want to try. I’d kind of like for these people to go back into all the basements they crawled out of and leave the rest of us alone.
Seriously, go home before something terrible happens. It would be pretty awful for COVID19 death statistics to spike like that.
If a guy who died in a motorcycle accident can be ruled a COVID19 death, I guarantee that thousands of violent, looting, burning, vandalizing malcontents could easily become the next victims of the pandemic. Don’t push it, folks. You’re definitely going to find out the hard way what a determined, organized and possibly ruthless opposition force is capable of.
The original AntiFA found out back in the 1920s. The new, even more pathetic version is on the cusp of finding out now.
Watch out what you wish for.
You might get it.
There’s no beauty to be found there. None at all.
People may be beautiful inside, but sweltering summer days definitely are not. As Queen Victoria is known to say, “We are not amused.“