By John Mattingly
In the late days of fall and early days of winter, we get long nights, we wrap ourselves, we resolve, and we make lists: the Top Tens of the prior year, acknowledging that at this time of year, the benign indifference of the universe is simply more precise.
Just as science fiction is having a hard time competing with science fact, Inner Old Man is having a hard time competing – or perhaps the word is coping – with the voices of complaint, despair and outrage. Terrorism is horrible, but so are car accidents and train wrecks and the fact that more teenagers have been killed in Chicago gun violence than have been killed in action in Iraq, yet we are not spending trillions to reduce these horrors. U.S. citizens are truly incapable of accurately and appropriately assessing risk, and Donald Trump knows it.
One might say the only thing we cannot ignore is ignorance itself.
By John Mattingly
Inner Old Man (IOM) understands that these New Year’s Reservations are written one fiscal quarter late, but IOM is, after all, old and forgetful. He spends an alarming amount of time each day hunting down things he has apparently hidden from himself, so keep in mind the views and opinions of IOM should never be confused with those of the author.
By John Mattingly
Getting old is supposed to be “no fun.” My Inner Old Man (IOM) hears this all the time from various uninformed folks who have failed to grasp that life is a terminal disease.
Meaning: the Right to Life advocates have it backwards. Death begins at conception, not birth. The only guarantee that comes with birth is death. There are those who hope for eternal life, but as far as IOM can tell, this expectation is based solely on belief, and, as should be obvious, only fictions require belief. Reality does not.
By John Mattingly
Someone told me the other day that I needed to get in touch with my inner child.
Nope.
I neither have – nor have I ever had – any interest in being a child, especially when I was one. At every age, I wanted to get older: old enough to walk, go outside, run, ride a bike, drive a car – not to mention drink a beer, serve my country, date a girl, get married, start a job, and eventually be old enough to know better.
