A Gallimaufry

As I write this, I am listening to WAMU’s Hot Jazz Saturday Night, and this first program of the year is a “gallimaufry” — a mixed bag, a potpourri, a hodgepodge.

I happen to like the word “gallimaufry.” I used it once in an email at work. No one in that email knew what I meant by it, and one person replied that he didn’t even have an idea of where to start in pronouncing it!

It’s a perfectly good word! It has a five-hundred year history!

So, here’s a gallimaufry of things I saw today that have nothing to do with the United States’ illegal military action in Venezuela overnight.

Screenshot of a Tweet by John Cleese. It features a political cartoon of Pope Leo standing against MAGAts, and Cleese's caption reads: 'This is truly a great cartoon. It questions why the beliefs of America's Evangelical Christians are so often further to the right than the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

Well said, Tim the Enchanter. Well said.

Screenshot of a post from The Economist seen on Facebook which tries to map work-life balance at work on two axes, work-life and leadership.

Facebook’s algorithms served me this content from The Economist which tries to determine which companies have the best work-life balance, with better work-life balance to the right and better leadership to the top.

Diamond Comic Distributors I would have placed in the lower left quadrant of this graph, ranking low on both the horizontal work-life balance scale and low on the vertical leadership scale. The United States Postal Service ranks very low on leadership (so it’s far to the left) and only slightly below average on work-life-balance (so it’s a little bit into the lower half). I would place Diamond below the USPS on the vertical graph.

Screenshot of a Tweet by Elon Musk's former girlfriend, Katie Miller, with a map of Greenland overlaid with the American flag and the caption, "SOON'

We’re really going to do it, aren’t we? Attempt to take Greenland by force and become embroiled in a war with our (former) NATO allies.

The United States under Donald Trump is unmistakably a nuclear-armed failed and rogue state. Donald Trump has taken Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” and burned it to the ground to satisfy his own ego and greed.

“Empires crumble all the time. Pay it no mind. You just happen to witness mine.” — Guy Garvey

On a different note, I started writing a short story yesterday. An idea struck me in bed sometime Thursday night. I’m not quite sure where it’s going, nor am I certain it will amount to anything and I only have 700 words down, I like the feel at least at the moment. Why this and not the novel I wrote of on Thursday? I need to review the twenty pages I wrote in late October and early November, get back into that headspace, and pick it up from there. It’s lurking, though, and I’ll come back to it next week.

Published by Allyn Gibson

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over fifteen years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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