Orphaned Elephants

I like to give money to worthy causes. My favorites are those having to do with the health of children, so I donate to various children's hospitals and disease research programs. I am also partial to animals, so some of my money is earmarked for the ASPCA and a particular cat sanctuary in Hawaii.

Veterans of war don't get my money since I am a pacifist. Besides,  what did they expect would go on when they went to a foreign country bent on killing total strangers for wearing different uniforms? Parties every night and brunch on Sunday? 

I also don't fix children who need that euphemistic "smile surgery." I agree it's terrible that they are born with their upper lip half-gone, and I hope other people help them, but I'm not going to. Sue me.

I also will reject the plea for aid I got in the mail today to support orphaned elephants. While I know that baby elephants are very adorable and if they lose their mommies that's sad, especially since they never forget, but still, that's a bridge too far. What about all the orphaned humans? There are plenty of them and yet I've never received a plea to help them out. Surely they must need things too. 

So, for me it's a "No" to the elephants and a "Yes" to the kitties. You can see what they're up to at lanaicatsanctuary.org.

What's That Third Sex Called?

Okay, so there are males, females and ... what else? What should we call them? Somebody should come up with a word for it.

This morning at a doctor's office I had a conversation with a nurse about an upcoming medical procedure. The person was either a man who had changed into a woman or a woman who had changed into a man, I couldn't tell. 

I know it's not supposed to matter and people are people and blah, blah, blah, unless of course we are about to have sex with them, but still it's disturbing and more than a little distracting. I'm pretty sure I missed some important instructions while I was busy trying to figure out if it was a he or a she. Either way, their final outcome was not good since I noticed.

So what can we call them? Shemales? That might work. Anyway, I suppose over time we will all just take it for granted that we have three sexes here on Earth. Until then, I remain puzzled.

MRI Mind Games

It's been a long time since I had a new experience. Been there, done that describes most of what I find myself engaged in. So it was somewhat interesting, despite being hellish and dreadful, to undergo a cardiac MRI, which I did recently. 

I won't bother with the details -- just ask Grok or Gemini or ChatGPT. Suffice it to say that at the start of the 45-minute procedure, it sucked. Stuck in a tight tube, unable to move or, God forbid, scratch an itch, my mind turned into a sewer of fear, panic, distress and loathing. I immediately wanted out, but I knew that would be self-defeating, especially since my husband and I had just driven more than two hours, some of it through agonizing rush-hour Boston traffic, to get myself in. 

Sleep would have been a welcome escape, but with a cardiac MRI that's impossible since you've got a job to do. Every few minutes a distant voice intoned: "Please breathe in. Breathe out, and hold your breath."  Then after a period ranging from four to perhaps 19 seconds, the voice said, "Please resume breathing." Far too soon, it came again.

After about 20 minutes of thinking surely this is Hell, how did I get here, when will this end, I can't stand it another second, I hit upon a great idea that turned the whole thing into a lark. What if I thought of myself as an astronaut instead of a patient with a potentially devastating heart problem? Yeah, that's it -- I'm training for my next mission to Pluto or whatever, somewhere the air is thin. And not only that, but I'm getting paid a lot of money to do it! Suddenly the whole thing wasn't so bad. In fact, it was sort of fun. And when it did end, part of me was a tad disappointed. Just when I was getting into it! 

Turns out I don't have the terrible disease after all. And although I'm not an astronaut, I came away knowing that instead of my mind playing tricks on me, I can play tricks on it, whenever I need to. 

Good to know.

Oprah's Mascara

A video advertisement on my Facebook page showed a woman proclaiming excitedly, "This is Oprah's favorite mascara and she put it on her list of favorite things!"  This brought to mind so many questions:

1. Who cares what Oprah likes?

2. Why is Oprah even wearing mascara? Isn't that something young women use to make them more attractive when they are seeking a mate? Oprah is 72 and has been in longtime relationships with her cover story, Steadman Graham, and her girlfriend Gayle King. She no longer needs to bat her eyelashes and I doubt she even wears mascara.

3. If I wore the stuff and I bought Oprah's favorite mascara, would I get rich like her? What, exactly, would I gain by using it instead of someone else's favorite mascara?

4. What is mascara anyway?

This is what makes the Internet great. It is so thought-provoking.

Online Commenters Are the Worst

Instagram is full of stuff you might like, and some you might hate. I scroll right past ads trying to sell me something, photos of very fat women in skimpy attire, bad comics and all videos of an AI Donald Trump doing anything. What stops me cold are dance videos. Love those! John Travolta's disco scenes in Saturday Night Fever and Gregory Hines doing any tap number anywhere, anytime. 

I recently came across a video of Bob Fosse, the great choreographer, doing a dance number in a 1974 film version of "The Little Prince," wherein he plays a character called The Snake. (See photos above.) Dressed in a black suit, with white spats, gloves and black top hat, naturally who comes to mind but Michael Jackson! But wait: he dances exactly like Michael Jackson in Thriller, which was released in 1982. He even moonwalks!

Okay, so MJ has stated he was "influenced" by Fosse. But this is downright plagiarism. (See it for yourself, just Google it.) More interesting are the comments following the video, some defending  Michael and others saying he stole the whole routine. But one comment really got my goat: "Michael wouldn't steal anything from this loser!"

Somebody somewhere, likely sitting in front of their computer eating pizza, probably a tattooed, unemployed, out of shape nobody, called Bob Fosse "a loser." This cracked me up and pissed me off at the same time. Here's a tiny excerpt of Fosse's very lengthy Wikipedia entry:

"At the 1973 Academy Awards, Fosse won the Academy Award for Best Director for Cabaret. That same year he won Tony Awards for directing and choreographing Pippin and Primetime Emmy Awards for producing, choreographing and directing Liza Minnelli's television special Liza With a Z. Fosse was the only person to win all three major industry awards in the same year."

The Internet is the gutter.

Be Your Own Doctor

At least where I live, in the state of Maine, it's very important to take charge of your own medical care. If you can't because you are mentally unfit to do so, then make sure someone can act on your behalf. Otherwise you might just die sooner than you should.

I recently was diagnosed with the "suspicion" that I have a "disease" that might be quite serious and in need of treatment, possibly medication or even surgery depending on the results of a necessary diagnostic test called a Cardiac MRI.  This bleak news was delivered to me by a nurse practitioner in the office of my cardiologist who works at Maine Health Cardiology in Scarborough, Maine. She said the earliest they could schedule me for that test is next January. She also said I shouldn't drive until then as I might black out at the wheel. (Which I did a few weeks ago.) January. Hmmmm, let's see -- that's five months from now. 

Deeming that unacceptable, my husband spent a few diligent hours on the phone finding other sources of this test, and I am now having it in two days at one of the most reputable hospitals in the country, in a neighboring state a two-hour drive away from our home. (Odd that my doctor didn't suggest that!)

Maine's Democratic Governor Janet Mills earmarks plenty of money for free food, free housing, free daycare and free health care for all those "new Mainers" who flock here from foreign countries, but apparently not enough for a few more MRI machines which are desperately needed by many "old Mainers."

The Cocker Spaniels of TV News

Svannah Guthrie

Caroline Downey

Kimberly Strassel

Julie Banderas

Dana Perino

Kayleigh McEnany

Cocker Spaniel

Leslie Marshal

Erin Burnett

Martha McCallum

Abby Phillip

Ashley Earnhardt

Emily Compagno

 

How's Your Heart?

I currently have a small, round, plastic disc glued to my chest. It has wires coming out of it, which are also glued to my chest. Called a heart monitor, it is sending information to somebody in Idaho, where I know nobody, about the workings of my heart. If I feel faint, or dizzy, or pain, I've been instructed to push the center of the disc one time. I will wear the device for two weeks.

Certainly there are countless people wearing the same thing as I write this, since heart disease is the Number One killer of Americans, and isn't that comforting. Last week a friend of mine felt a little funny and so went to the ER and next thing you know he was strapped into a helicopter and Life-Flighted to a nearby hospital where he had open heart surgery. (He's doing fine.)

Just yesterday I had an echocardiogram, which is a diagnostic test that looks at the inner workings of your heart. The technician who did the procedure was a personable woman who looked just liked a young Teri Garr (before she got MS and gained weight and ended up in a wheelchair and ultimately died at the age of 79). We chatted easily while she stared at a computer screen and moved a wand all over my chest. She said the facility where she works employs 13 such technicians who perform 80 echocardiograms a day.

That's just one facility in one small town in one small state. Multiply that by all the hospitals in Maine, and all the hospitals in all the towns of America, and one can hardly comprehend such a number. As I write this, hundreds, maybe thousands, of people are having echocardiograms.

My echo results were posted electronically last night on a page called My Chart. Of course I couldn't interpret them but they didn't look all that great to me. One unfortunate word that popped out was "suspicious." Anyway, if you want to avoid having this test, stop smoking and limit your alcohol and don't eat ice cream, bread, croissants, bagels, French fries, cereal, cookies, crackers, cakes, pies, brownies, red meat, hot dogs, sausages, burritos, fajitas, tacos, pretzels, chips, processed foods, salt, and all dairy.

Have a nice day!

I'll Stick With Google

I just learned that it's no longer cool to say "Google it" because young people no longer use Google to find out things they don't know, which is pretty much everything on Earth and in our solar system and the entire galaxy.

Instead they use ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever search engine they heard about five minutes ago on TikTok, so saying "Google it" makes you seem/sound old.

Well, guess what. I am old, and thank God for that. I just came back from the bank where I made a cash deposit of $45.00 into an account I rarely use. The teller, a young woman of about 25, took the money and first went through the bills and made them all face the same way. Then she counted the bills three times. Yes, three times. Two fives, a ten, a twenty and five singles. After counting them three times, she asked me, "Are you depositing $45.00?"

I'm pretty sure she doesn't use Google.

Floods In All the Wrong Places

I have slowly come to the realization that this place we call home is run by Satan. There is simply no other explanation. So I'm guessing that Heaven is run by God. This makes me happy as I think that almost all the people I know who have died are in Heaven now, enjoying their deaths.

How else to explain the recent flood in Nepal that swallowed up thousands of peaceful villagers and tourists in mere moments? Or the more recent flood in the Grand Canyon that came after half an hour's rainfall and swept through the canyon, killing more innocents who were out for a good time, hiking and camping and not hurting anyone?

Why are there no floods in bad neighborhoods full of warring gang members and drug dealers who run amok, killing and maiming for no reason other than violence for the sake of violence? Or maybe a flood in Russia that takes out the Kremlin in one fell swoop, ending the death toll in Ukraine? That would at least be understandable.

What Are We To Do?

My husband went to the Y to swim.  A friend called and she said she made 29 meatballs. (She's Italian.) My son is teaching teens how to drive. And I am doing nothing of any import.

It's Sunday so that means we did the New York Times crossword puzzle in the magazine. It was ridiculously easy, as usual, since these days the-puzzle creators are less intelligent than those who made them in years gone by, so instead of it taking us several hours, off and on, we finished it in under half an hour.

I went in the hot tub. That took 20 minutes. I am considering cleaning my closet and making a pile for Goodwill. I could paint but I'm not in the mood, and once again I wonder what for anyway.

So I'm writing this blog, wondering what people are supposed to do on a Sunday if they are not clergymen, firemen, surgeons, ambulance drivers or new mothers.  I wish people would read this and leave their suggestions, just not the crazy lesbian who I think I finally shook.