The Twittings of @jmcdonnell123

  When I first started reading newspapers, my favorite section (after the funnies and sports) was the Editorial Points at the bottom left side of the editorial page of the old Boston globe. Every morning there'd be a neat little collection of ten or twelve zingers. I don't know if one genius was responsible for them all or if everyone lent a hand. It amazed me that they would appear there day after day. I don't know when they disappeared, but they're gone now. I remember only one of them, not for it's brilliance, but because it shocked me. It appeared the day after JFK's assassination. It said, "Our only consolation is that there are at least 50 people capable of running the country today." It probably said "50 men," but I'm going to update it. I  wish one of those people was taking over next month. What shocked me was that it was not foreordained by the Lord that LBJ was necessarily the best person for the job.
  Ennaways, this post is about gnarly thought bombs. Succinctness. Aphorisms, maxims, proverbs, Just Enough Information. When you cut the good ones they bleed. I'm a sucker for books like "Greatest Aphorisms Ever." They are always short books. You can read them through in an hour. They're full of things like, "Some lies are so cunningly told, only a fool would not believe them." That's a French one  I believe.
   I never thought I'd be an aphorist myself, but I am. When my excellent friend Mr. Steve Reynolds and I started The Raven twenty years ago (he and Jackie now do 99% of the work) it came out monthly. There was endless white space to fill. That's when my proverbial self surfaced. These things always arise from the fog of thought. They're as unpresentable at first as a newborn child. It took weeks to work up my first one: "Three views of knowledge: LaoTzu- 'He who knows does not speak.' Montaigne- 'What can I know?' Sergeant Shultz- 'I know nothing!'"  Because it feels so good to produce an original thought, I didn't care what anyone else thought. It was my baby and I loved it.
  After that first one, they started gushing out. One of the old time local papers, The Badger Rustler  used to have a section called Squibs From the Township. A squib is a tiny firecracker so I adopted that heading for my squibs in The Raven. I am proudest of the one that my mother said she liked: "Rhetoric is the Greek word for b.s." That has the virtue of brevity and does not require footnotes like the above crack.
  But sadly, as the Raven became more elaborate, production slowed and without a deadline, the squibs dried up. The one bright spot for me from the recent election is that it reignited my aphoristic fire. The upcoming head of the free world uses and abuses Twitter. I have a Twitter account. I would start plugging away as a counterweight to the looming nightmare.
  Yes I've had a Twitter account since 2009. I don't understand how Twitter works. I could get one of those Dummies books but they tend to confuse me even more. Between 2009 and the election I had 13 mostly fumbling tweets. I'm up to 90 now. I used to have five followers (all as moribound as myself) now I have 14, two of whom actually read my tweets. I can tell because they "like" some of them. I'm at the same stage I was at in my early Facebook days. I had a handful of friends but my page was dead. By posting occasionally, I got more friends and now the page is so busy I have Teresa curate it for me.
  Maybe the same thing will happen with Twitter. I tweet almost daily, but it's lonely. How do I get to the point that I no longer have time to look at it anymore? Baby pics helped my FB page take off, but I don't think that will work on Twitter.
Here are some of my best.

Political ones first:

My sin was taking him for a grotesque clown. My penance is to be determined.

I scorned his reality show, but I'll be a rapt watcher of the real show.

The abyss is always there. Our view has just been clarified.  

Genghis Khan is gone. So too the Ayatollah. At length all scourges pass.

He continues to exhibit whatever the opposite of Magnanimity is.

Give thanks for the doers of evil who died at birth and in other accidents.

Post-truth era? Pilate wondered too, though Jesus told him.

We shall leave the earth without baggage with a man we do not know- our country's on it's practice run.

Obama never made me miss W, but I'm starting to get nostalgic (no Cheney please).

Next prez no smoke-um peace pipeline.

Obama was on Kimmel. So let's see White House Apprentice: "You're Dead!"

Republican crowing would depress me if I didn't know the public's fickleness, which also depresses me.

No matter what he said or did the voters loved him. What will the judges and lawmakers make of his antics.

Our neighbors who voted wrongly: how much more quickly we'd forgive them had their candidate lost.

Judge not lest ye be judged. I'm giving a personal fresh start to all evildoers, president-elects, and offenders of good taste.

I started tweeting in earnest after the election. Like a guppy nudging the Titanic away from the iceberg.

Lies brought Nixon down and almost got Clinton (Bill). Time now for truth to take a crack.

The good people of NM are livid over a proposal to change the name of their state to "Not Mexico"
Minnesotans had a foreboding. We elected a wrestler. It was funny till it got ugly, but a least he couldn't lob missiles at Wisconsin.
Naming rights to the states now on sale. Don't delay! Trumpsylvania and New Melania already taken.
The rich are like those cars with the high-powered headlights. "Come bask in our light," they benignly say.
Wealthy towns have a seedy street or two. Someplace for the help to sleep.

And a few apolitical ones:

Duty before pleasure. But with age, pleasure's call grows like a benign tumor.
It's ok to dance like no one's watching, but please don't sing that way.
Chatting at a party with a disillusioned VA shrink a light bulb went on: as a vet I'm entitled to swap my character flaws for cash for life.
The old are doomed to ill health. And endless chatting about it
I thank God every morning for my life, but mean it more on sunny days.
Too bad there's no bypass surgery for alcoholics.
Heroin is for people who want to leave the world. Pot for those who want to jolly it up.
As you spin down the whirlpool to oblivion, grab enough debris to build a raft for your yoga mat.
To the young on the job, the iPhone makes the boredom just bearable.
Herod should have followed the Wise Men to Bethlehem if he was serious about killing his rival.
The basics are simple but we fail to learn them and fall prey to the hucksters.
Northern Minnesota porch as appliance: Oct, Nov, March & April it's a refrigerator; Dec, Jan & Feb it's a freezer.
Meditation helps you see what size fish you are; in what size pond.
As a retiree I wonder how I ever got through those eight-hour workdays. I forget how much time I spent thinking about lunch.