Easy to Be Hard

So many strangers are so mean-spirited and nasty, it's getting tougher and tougher to "have a nice day" if you dare leave your home. Funny thing -- everyone is always telling you to have a nice day, despite not giving a damn about you. Most people couldn't care less if you are depressed, just found out you have cancer or have to put your dog down, they only say it so they won't be fired from their job as a supermarket checkout person, server, convenience store clerk or whatever.

Today I was actually having a nice day until I went to my local post office to mail some bills. I noticed just in time that I had put the payment slip into one envelope upside-down so that the address was not showing. Trying to open it carefully to remedy the situation, I still ripped the envelope and needed some Scotch tape to fix it. No big deal, right?

Wrong. The bitchy postmistress, who everyone in town hates because she is, well, bitchy, refused to give me some tape. "Get your own damn tape," she barked, adding, "I'm not even allowed to give you tape."  I asked if she could tape it herself. "That's not my job, you did it, you fix it!" (This is a woman who does very little work, since ours is a teeny, tiny post office with few customers, and thinks nothing of closing hours early to attend to personal business.)

I am not proud to say that I completely lost my mind, yelling vulgarities at her as I left while tossing all my collected junk mail on the floor of the facility. Then I drove home and wrote a formal complaint about her to the USPS, as if that will do anything. But it made me feel better, just like writing this is making me feel better. In fact, if I had written this post right away I might not have eaten all that peanut butter straight from the jar, with a spoon of course. (I'm not an animal.)

Peanut butter is so much nicer than most people.

Kudos to Kennedy

The human race is in big trouble. People are getting fatter and sicker from the poisons they ingest daily, often without their knowledge. At the same time they are getting dumber, dimming the likelihood of halting the damage being done to them by food purveyors profiting from the average American's outsized appetite. 

The biggest pushers of lies and propaganda are the advertising agencies that create happy stories concerning the foods we eat. Their very existence depends on us believing those woke commercials full of blacks, gays and mixed-race couples hired to distract us from whatever garbage they are hawking.

Weight-loss is a leading moneymaker, especially online. I recently saw a commercial for a company selling smoothies that would make pounds disappear miraculously just by drinking them. The ad showed a fat young woman who supposedly weighed 180 pounds, then showed her at 134 pounds after using their product. Oddly enough, she had a tattoo sleeve on her left arm when she was fat that was on her right arm when she was thinner. Plus she had a different face! I mean really, just how dumb do they think we are?

Who knows -- maybe we are that dumb. Democrats are melting down over Trump's appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, repeating the tired charge that he's an "anti-vaxxer." The real reason they hate RFK is because he promises to go after the manufacturers of those addictive, unhealthy foods that turn well-proportioned, healthy American kids into big fat diabetic blobs by the time they hit their teen years. Naturally they just keep getting fatter as adults, which is why Americans now have the lowest life expectancy of all other high-income countries. 

So drop the bag of Cheetos and do some research on RFK. He's not just against vaccines, he's against you dying young.

Democrats Gone Wild!

One of  the latest to fall ill from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is Laura Helmuth, former editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine, following her mental breakdown after the election. Her bratty rant about Donald Trump voters went viral on X, and even though she eventually deleted the posts it was too late -- she was canned anyway, so kudos to Scientific American. (Who wants to lose 50% of their readers?)

It is well-known in publishing circles that when Covid showed up in 2020, Helmuth developed a tip sheet for journalists covering the pandemic, saying that, "repetition makes misinformation feel more true." That's some tip!

Posting online, Helmuth called Trump voters "the meanest, dumbest, most bigoted” group, and “fascists.” After her comments went viral she backed down, obviously lacking the courage of her convictions. In fact, they aren't even her convictions -- she was just repeating things she heard until they felt true, just like she had instructed her journalists.

Helmuth has since apologized, calling her comments “offensive and inappropriate. I respect and value people across the political spectrum. These posts do not reflect my beliefs; they were a mistaken expression of shock and confusion about the election results.”

Hardy har har, Laura. Yup, you'll get a new job somewhere soon. You might try McDonald's, I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once  hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. 

It's A Good Time to Be A Shrink

Let's recap: The Republicans won the White House, the Senate, the House and hold a majority in the Supreme Court. Trump won not only in the Electoral College but also won the popular vote. Clearly, more Americans today are in sync with the policies and proposals of the Republican Party than with those of the Democrats.

And yet the depressed, delusional and disdainful Democrats are out there, on TV and in print, shamelessly advocating that their followers are right to cut Republican friends and family members from their Christmas celebrations and exclude them from Thanksgiving dinners.

It's a sorry state of affairs when so many depressed people are in need of psychiatric help all at the same time. On the flip side, it's a great time to be a shrink! For the next four years -- possibly eight -- they can rake in big bucks helping the losers through the five stages of grief, all while the meter is running.

Bye Bye, Kamala!

It's like my dream come true: Today's paper contains not one photo or article about you-know-who. Despite raising a billion dollars during the campaign, just a week later she'd barely get enough for a Happy Meal if she stood on a street corner with a sign saying, "Deeply in debt, anything helps." 

This is as it should be, since her stairway to the stars -- including Oprah, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Robert DeNiro, Lizzo, Queen Latifah and the rest of those glitzy lapdogs -- was built on mere quicksand.

If only all the sad Democrats could recognize that our election gifted us a strong leader instead of that lamebrained follower, the doom and gloom of the last four years would be lifted. Instead, they wallow in misery and cling to the baseless belief that all Republicans are scoundrels and Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.

As Kamala herself said repeatedly in the last few months, it's time to turn the page. Rise up and rejoice: Not only is Trump going to be President, but Sen. Marco Rubio will be Secretary of State. Finally I will sleep soundly again. Now all we have to do is make it to January 20th without incident. Fingers crossed that the dismal duo currently at the helm doesn't blow it before then.

Grocery Shopping 101

As my husband was leaving to go to the supermarket, I looked at his list and offered to rewrite it because there were so many things already crossed off. What concerned me was that he would come home with things I already bought, but he took it to mean I was calling him an idiot. "You know I only use that word when referring to Kamala Harris," I replied. 

That calmed him down, but he was still miffed. Our exchange reminded me of a column I wrote 28 years ago for Utah's Deseret News. I post it below, shaking my head in disbelief that little has changed: 

I consider myself a liberated woman, despite the fact that I go by Mrs. and not Ms. So I was somewhat shocked when I had the following conversation with my 9-year-old son the other day:

"Honey, would you like to come to the supermarket with me this afternoon?"

"No way."

"Why not?"

"It's boring."

"You know, when I was little I liked going shopping for food with my mom. I thought it was fun."

He was silent for about 15 seconds, then he said, "Yeah, but you were practicing. I don't need to."

Swerving to avoid a head-on collision with a FedEx truck, I wondered where I had gone wrong. Studiously avoiding sexual stereotyping from day one, I painted Zack's nursery yellow. Risking divorce, or at least a bad night, I boldly dressed him in pink when he was a baby. (OK, it was rare, but it happened.) I didn't freak out if he chose to play with dolls when he was a toddler, and I never bought him guns or war toys. And now this!

I was stunned. But then, out of the darkness came light. That must be why my husband can't go grocery shopping -- not enough practice! When I asked him if he ever accompanied his mother to the market as a child, he replied, apparently confused, "Why would I?"

He should have. It's a skill that could come in handy on those difficult days, like when I'm in a body cast or delirious with 104-degree fever. In all fairness, I'll admit that on days like that, my husband cheerfully volunteers to pick up a few things at the market.When he does, unloading his grocery bags is like entering the Twilight Zone: everything is normal, yet nothing looks familiar. He refuses to buy the brands we commonly use. I ask why and he says it's more interesting.

"We're in a rut with this Grey Poupon, so I got this instead."

"But we like Grey Poupon," I replied. (Okay, I whined.)

"You're in a rut! Life is too short to have Grey Poupon all the time."

"My point exactly - my life is too short not to have it. And my life is shorter than yours since I'm older. What if I die before we have it again? A jar of mustard is around for quite a while -- anything could happen between jars."

Mitch makes the point that he might have been killed on the way home from the store, and I might at this moment be down at the morgue or at least the emergency room, so I should quit complaining and count my lucky stars.

Our arguments often escalate into discussions of existential proportions, dwarfing the issue of who buys what. It's a basic tactic he uses to make me forget the problem at hand, which is how I am supposed to make a meal out of this stuff.

He brings home vegetables that defy identification. I can't even figure out how to cut into them, let alone what to do once I've achieved that. There's usually some dangerous-looking fruit with spikes, two or three canned foods with names I can't pronounce, and the biggest offender, whole milk instead of skim.

"I asked for skim."

"Oh, lighten up."

"That's what I'm trying to do!"

I keep foraging. I asked for Saran Wrap, he got Handiwrap.

"So what?" 

"Handiwrap doesn't tear off clean. I have to spend about 15 minutes looking for the start of the roll."

"You know, I wondered what you do all day."

A few weeks ago, I gave him this list: skim milk, eggs, broccoli, apples, bread, mayonnaise, juice, turkey. He came home with whole milk, jalapeno peppers, WD-40, star fruit, egg rolls, a bag of sour gummy worms, hot garlic stir fry sauce, Diet Snapple and batteries.

"What is this? Where are all the things on the list?"

"Oh, I left the list in the car. When's dinner?"

"I think what's dinner is more the question."

For the welfare of my future daughter-in-law, I devised a plan. Now when my husband goes to the market, I insist that he take our son with him for practice. And it's working. Today they brought home skim milk, ground beef, spaghetti sauce, broccoli and orange juice. Just what I wanted! Still, my son was apologetic. "Sorry we forgot the WD-40, Mom."

He's learning. 

The Worst Person in America

Not only is she fat and ugly, she's stupid too. One-time comedian Whoopi Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson -- and she is not Jewish, she just picked a name she thought would get her some attention -- said on national TV that the reason for high food prices has nothing to do with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or inflation, but it's because, "grocery store owners are pigs."

Way to alienate the little guy, Whoopi. I'm guessing you don't do your own food shopping, although it's obvious someone is doing it for you -- and a lot of it.

Now, didn't you promise to leave the country if Trump won -- again? If you need any help packing I'm sure hundreds of thousands of Americans would be thrilled to lend a hand.