Shotgun Honey is a great little crime fiction publisher (a few other of my flash fiction stories have appeared in their online archives) and I’m really happy to have gotten one of my short stories picked up and appearing in print.
Also in this anthology is a short story from Nick Kolakowski, one of my favourite crime authors.
Looking forward to giving the whole collection a read as soon as I finish tearing through book 7 of Maurice Druon’s Accursed Kings historical fiction series.
In case you missed it, Donald Trump has been boasting on national TV about how he recently “aced” a test, bragging that:
“The first few questions are easy, but I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions.”
Not only did he manage to get all 35 questions right, he claims, but the test was remarkably difficult. So difficult in fact that he challenged Fox News host Chris Wallace to take it, expecting the other man to fail miserably.
All this boasting begs the question: what on Earth could this challenging test actually be asking? What were the questions which Donald Trump, President of the United States and titular Leader of the Free World have found so ruthlessly challenging?
Well, fortunately we know.
Yes, indeed. The test that Trump is boasting to the world about having defeated is asking him if he can tell the difference between a snake and an elephant.
A snake and an elephant.
One is the largest land animal which currently exists. And the other is a snake.
I suppose it it’s not quite as jejeune about bragging that he could answer “1+2=???” or completing a paint by numbers picture without painting over the lines, but it’s certainly below the caliber of the other perennially challenging exam that demand students write 200 words about what they did during summer vacation.
Though, let’s bear in mind that the above test comes from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA) test to ascertain whether the taker is suffering from dementia.
Still, all this begs the question: did Trump in fact ace this test?
Looking at his past history, Trump has a tendency to loudly boast about his failures by pretending that they were successes, all in his audience will be immune to the Streisand effect this time.
After all, this was the man who on the first days of his tenure, had his spokesperson declare in a bold faced lie that his inaugural crowds were the largest ever in history and then circulate a cropped image that made the crowd size look more flattering.
He also boasted that he knows the best people who could help him drain the swamp, even as most of them were revealed to be petty criminals and many of whom landed in jail in under 2 years.
And then there were his failed businesses and scam college. All these rubbish fires certainly are what brought in the wealth he loves to brag about.
Let’s not forget this is the man who Colin Powell said “Lies all the time.“
Now, I assume he doesn’t law all the time – I mean, when he orders a big mac, I assume he really wants it – but his track record is certainly lying most of the time.
So let’s face it, and go with what we know. The old orange probably failed his exam and wants to cover his tracks by boasting that he aced it.
Of course, like the Streisand effect, if he hoped this would make people look the other way, it’s only done the opposite.
As I pointed out above, the whole world knows the President is proud of the fact he can successfully name an elephant and not confuse it with a snake.
In 2019, I read 39 books. About half were for my research and the other half novels or non-fiction.
2019 List
Harari – Sapiens Morgan – Woken Furies Morgan – Market Forces Rose + Bourdain – Hungry Ghosts Puzo – Fools Die Puzo – The Last Don Archer – Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less Archer – Sins of the Father Archer – Best Kept Secrets Lynch – Selling Catholicism Crichton – Timeline Cantor – Prime Time Television Noonan – Missionary with a Mike Noonan – The Passion of Fulton Sheen Hoover – Media, Television, Family Ridpath – Where the Shadows Lie Ridpath – 66 degress North Ridpath – Meltwater Ridpath – Sea of Stone Gaiman – American Gods Olsen – The Scarred Woman Sheen – Treasures in Clay Berle – My Father, Uncle Miltie Shannon – From Bowery to Broadway Fisher – On the Irish Waterfront Ray – Diary of a Space Traveller and other stories Ludlum – The Bourne Identity Murakami – South of the Border, West of the Sun Murakami – Sputnik Sweetheart Sopher – The Mind Body Syndrome Kepler – Rabbit Hunter Kimball – Galaga Pane – Megaman 3 Dowd – Irish Americans in Popular Culture Various – Columbia Guide to Relgion in American Culture Wilson – Watching Television Doherty – Cold War, Cool Medium Corey – Leviathan Wakes
