My Bigotry

A recent outing to the supermarket has sent me into a funk, making me wonder if I'm crazy or if it's just everyone else. The thing is, the teenage checkout girl was a boy.

Her pinned-on name tag said "Eleanor." She was quite pretty, with a lovely blond braid cascading down the front of her feminine blouse. She wore tiny stud earrings and lipstick . But the voice was deep and her hands were huge and an Adam's Apple was quite evident. Eleanor was male, plain as day.

This troubles me. I find it unacceptable. I've tried, and failed. Whenever I see one, I feel like either laughing or crying, usually both. Does that make me a bigot? Because I don't want to be one, with a couple of exceptions (fat people and Jew-hating Muslims). The worst part is, it's too late for me to get over it. After so many decades of thinking there were two sexes, I can't stop now. 

Anyway, Eleanor was certainly very nice. But I couldn't help wondering how his grandmother felt about the whole thing.

Dear Fat Ladies ....

This is not a good size to be, but you chose it.

I just watched a video in which a very obese woman walked around a Target store pointing to the many, many racks of clothing for regular-sized women, as compared to only two for what she called "plus-size" ladies. She ranted at how unfair this is. 

I'd like to say it's not unfair. In fact, she should be glad they stock any elephantine-sized apparel outside of a costume store. Furthermore, I'd tell her we do not need to applaud your size. You got that way through bad habits that are unhealthy and ungodly.  So when you go out shopping for clothes, don't expect a huge selection for people of enormous sizes. If you want more choices, lose some weight.

To all fat ladies, please don't post videos showing us your gross naked stomachs hanging over your gross naked legs. Don't try on different dresses and ask us which one is more flattering. None of them are. You look bad in everything.

And don't call normal-sized women who look perfectly fine "too skinny" just to make yourselves feel better. Being thin is admirable. Being fat is not.

The Fall of New York City

Muslims praying in Times Square.

The city of my birth exists only in my mind. That's because I refuse to go there since that Muslim, Jew-hating socialist Mamdani was elected mayor. I went there last year to visit my dying friend, a lifelong New Yorker. Also a Jew, Ira had become too sick to follow what the campaigning Mamdani was spouting, and he died just three weeks before the fateful election now dismantling the former "greatest city in the world."

The Democratic Socialists of America -- they only keep that first word to hoodwink clueless followers into thinking they are -- want to defund the police, get rid of the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College, and abolish prisons. Imagine living in such a world. 

Incredibly, they are growing in number, mostly because many young people eschew working for a living and applaud the idea of free food, free health care and cheap housing. They see Mamdani as the Santa Claus they idolized as toddlers. Also, most of them are ignorant of facts, one of them being that their chosen form of government has been tried and failed before, many times.

Lucky for me I'm old, so I won't be around for the fall of NYC and the rounding up of Jews. Now if only I could magically make my young son older and have him also avoid those disasters, I could just relax and watch it all fall apart.

A Second Chance

Hardly anyone reads anymore. Certainly not an obscure blog written by an 80-year-old that doesn't tell you how to get rich, lose weight or find true love. So why do I write it? It's fun for me. Few things are anymore, at least after you've done whatever it is about a couple dozen trillion times. But as a former professional feature writer, writing still gives me a kick. And afterwards I get to edit it, and freely make changes wherever I choose. 

That's something that's possible almost nowhere else: The Do-Over. If it were, life could be perfect. Everything that haunts me would be erased and I could finally get a good night's sleep. One thing I would definitely change is I would watch Star Trek in my youth, or maybe the later remake with those Klingons with the weird foreheads, and understand so much more about modern life. 

Help Us, Jesus!

It's a wonder I haven't picked up some terrible gangrenous disease that will cause me to lose all four limbs and then die of sepsis, considering how much time I spend swimming in a cesspool. It's called the Internet and it's everywhere, all over the world. In fact, you're in it right now.

Today I heard a dastardly rumor swirling around in the darkest reaches of said pool claiming that Senator Lindsey Graham was having sex with a transgender prostitute when he suffered his heart attack. That really irks me. I was deeply saddened to hear of Graham's death over the weekend. One of our finest Senators of all time, his fatal condition was unknown and yet not all that uncommon. Actor John Ritter died of the same thing -- aortic dissection -- in 2003.

Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine and had spoken with President Trump two hours before his heart attack. He was scheduled to appear on "Meet the Press" the following morning. If he was consorting with some skanky underworld character, it seems highly unlikely that he would have done so under those trying circumstances. 

The Internet is a sickness we all have, spreading lies, stupidity and misinformation everywhere. The galloping growth of AI has only made it worse. Nothing is real, no place is safe and nobody is held accountable. Someone should pull the plug on the whole damn thing. If Jesus Christ really is coming back, now would be a good time.

Finding My Niche

I read a newspaper profile of a young woman described as a "content creator." Wondering just what that is, I did some research -- i.e. Googled it -- and learned that it's someone who creates content on social media, like with a blog. OMG, I've been one since 2007 and didn't even know it! The only thing is, you're supposed to make money doing it, whereas I definitely do not.

The ways to make money are through advertising and finding a niche, the article went on. Since I find advertising morally reprehensible, that's out. As for finding a niche -- mine used to be Humor, but these days being funny can get you sued, or worse, cancelled, and nobody wants that. 

Next. I'm supposed to charge money for reading my blog. That's insane. How much could I possibly ask? And how would I ask it? Should I just post a photo of me holding a cardboard sign scrawled with, "Anything helps"?

So while my blog continues to create content, I remain niche-less and penniless, except for all the dough my husband has and is kind enough to share with me. And of course all my past earnings before I became a social media content creator and only made content for stone and mortar businesses, for a fee. As for finding a niche, I'm considering one of these:

1. Crimes against humanity, who's committing them, and how to stop it

2. Abuse of the English language by almost everyone, led by people who say,
"At the end of the day" when they mean "ultimately" or "when it's over"

3. Dumb Hollywood movies that get huge audiences because the audiences are themselves dumb

4. Things that are wrong with living in Maine and how they get worse over time

5. How anyone with a head can find Timothy Chalemet sexy, or even male

6. What foods will help you live longer and not get cancer, as opposed to what foods won't

7. Lists of things. (Apparently they get more clicks.)

Headlines I Didn't Click On

Go ahead and make fun of me but I still get my email at AOL. It's been like 20 years and it's too much trouble to change it now. Anyway, the only bad thing about it is seeing the stupid news stories they post when I go to my home page. I try to look away but they seep in somehow.

Following are just a few headlines for the trashy, dumb and possibly untrue stories they print. While I didn't click on any of them, some of them made me laugh.

Indiana Man Accused of Cutting Off His Genitals And Lighting Them On Fire Charged With Arson 

"Little House on the Prairie" Star Melissa Gilbert Discovers She Has 3 Older Brothers 

Bear Feasting On Salmon Surprised As Another Fish Leaps Into Its Mouth

Inside Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's Ultra-private Honeymoon

Ice Spice Shows Off World's Biggest Tongue Ring 

Violent Abuser Who Made Victim Bark Like A Dog Found Hiding In Fridge

What Your Favorite Nail Color Says About Your Personality

Dad Fights Back Tears While Watching His Daughter, 25, Perform for the First Time 

Only You Can Be You

Obviously nobody besides saints and surgeons knows what to do with themself every day. How else to explain the universal obsession with the lives of celebrities that results in nothing of value for anyone? The recent marriage of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, a singer and a football player of all things, is a perfect example. It has dominated the news as if it matters to everyone else as much as to the couple. I wonder, will their eventual divorce also be seen as interesting?

Comparing our lives with those of famous people makes as much sense as comparing our lives to those of squirrels and ants. More sensible is comparing our present lives to our past lives. If there's been no progress, perhaps it's because you've wasted so much time voyeuristically envying other people's lives that you forgot to live yours.

Who Left The Door Open?

My friend Ron, who is 90 but looks and acts 70, said when I bemoaned turning 80, "Don't worry, the eighties are a piece of cake!" Well I don't know what kind of cake he meant, but for me it's been a total drag since that milestone birthday one month ago. My back constantly hurts, I pulled my shoulder somehow, and I'm more fatigued than ever despite getting to bed earlier and earlier. But what happened today was the worst so far.

I had gone out to do some errands which took me about 45 minutes. Arriving back home, I was stunned to see my front door wide open. It wasn't just ajar -- it was as wide open as it could be, letting in a parade of moths and mosquitos. WTF? I was 100% certain I had shut it hard when I left, still paranoid about break-ins from 30 years of living in crime-ridden Washington, D.C.

After checking with my husband and son to see if either one had come in  during my absence and left the door open -- they hadn't -- I undertook a full-scale search of the premises, fearing I was about to be murdered by some intruder hiding in a closet. I found none, but the call to my son was disheartening. 

He recounted an article he recently read suggesting that aging does not happen gradually, but at three distinct times in life: at about age 34, then at age 60, and finally at age 78. So apparently I am now an old coot who leaves doors open without knowing it. I wonder, does plastic surgery help with that or is Jane Fonda, looking fabulous and spry at age 88, also wondering who left the door open, or who went and closed it, or why did I come in here anyway?

Off The Rails Online

Yesterday the picture shown here appeared on my Facebook page. It was posted by a relief organization in Venezuela that was distributing food to the survivors of last week's massive back-to-back earthquakes which killed thousands, leaving thousands more missing and presumed buried under the rubble. 

I found it odd that, amidst the death and destruction, the little boy had a cellphone on his lap, and commented, "at least he has his cell phone." The following response to my bland observation came from a woman named Claudette Veitia: 

"Andrea Rouda he can’t hear you but US VENEZUELANS CAN! Shame on you! What kind of evil lives inside you? It’s disgusting to even read your IGNORANT AND EVIL comment! I am going to be much kinder to you than you were to this little boy in wishing you that you never see what he has seen as a young little boy and I wish you never live what he is living and all Venezuelans are living since the devastating earthquakes. I am sorry life or someone in it has put that much hate inside you, my last wish is for you to heal from whatever it is that fudged you over this bad, but you probably won’t, because only damaged goods would make a comment like that about other human being’s suffering!"

Thank God I hadn't written anything incendiary.

Happy Hot Holiday

Tomorrow is supposed to be a day to celebrate the birth of America 250 years ago. But it's just too damn hot. If it's outdoors and 90 degrees, count me out. That includes tomorrow's 4th of July Parade in our little town. 

Instead of standing on a street corner watching retro cars and fire trucks filled with waving people who somehow were convinced to participate, I will be at home in my air-conditioning. Is that wrong? Remember, heat waves kill. 

In fact, yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an article about that very subject, which asserted that in Europe, heat waves have "often caused tens of thousands of deaths." That was a hard fact to swallow so I did some fact-checking, and so far in Europe 1,000 people have died in France, another 1,000 in Spain and 25 in England during this current hot spell. I also looked up the meaning of "tens of thousands" and it means between 20,000 and 99,000, so I guess their AI bot/writer got that wrong.

Anyway, stay cool and Happy Fourth!