Finding My Niche

I read a newspaper profile of a young woman described as a "content creator." I wondered, what is that? So I did some research -- i.e. Googled it -- and found out that a content creator is someone who creates content on social media, like with a blog. OMG, I already am one and didn't even know it! The only thing is, you're supposed to make money doing it, whereas I 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, Iit used to be Humor, but these days being funny can get you sued, so I've pretty much stopped that one.

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

So my blog continues to create content and 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 content creator and only made content for other people 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"

3. Dumb 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 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 don'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 and 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!

Alone In A Crowd

Do you prefer having just one or two friends and eschew group think? You might be an otrovert!

I just found out I'm an otrovert. I've always known I'm not an introvert or an extrovert, so after living with no label for my entire life it's exciting to be considered something other than "a kook" by at least one New York psychiatrist, who coined the term in 2025. 

Since then it has taken hold in the wider psychological community, earning a Wikipedia page wherein it is described as, "A persistent sense of being an outsider in group settings, even when the person is socially included, and a preference for selective, one-to-one connections over group affiliation."

That's me to a tee. I'm not shy and can easily hang out within a large group of people, be they strangers or friends, without anxiety. It's just that I never enjoy it. So for me it's ixnay to book clubs, volleyball games, yacht clubs, bowling leagues, group exercise classes, parades, parties and political functions.

However, I do enjoy my Loners Anonymous club, which meets only in my mind and on this blog. 

Harry Potter Is A Jew

It's laughable that antisemitism is on the rise in America today, or so it is said. So many actors, movie producers, inventors, business leaders, scientists, biologists and writers are Jewish, it's hard to imagine what life would be like today without all their efforts. And of course, no bagels. Everyone would be eating what for breakfast? Crumpets and plum pudding?

Instead, people should start hating that one ethnic group that has contributed nothing to society -- there must be one. (Google it.) That would at least make some sense.

Videos To Die For

Fat people are helpless and pathetic addicts, no less than someone who shoots heroin. But there are no videos of anyone doing that online. I guess give it time.

I've known about mental illness since I was a very small child. My first introduction to it was seeing the classic 1948 film, The Snake Pit, starring Olivia de Havilland, who became my favorite female film star of those old black & white days. I must have been very young, having been born in 1946, and it stayed with me. There were lots of people in strait jackets, with dirty, stringy hair walking around with dazed expressions like zombies. Starring the usual manic depressives, schizophrenics, bi-polars and psychopaths, some of them were confined to cages.

Today's crazies are more fortunate. They are not only free to be their looniest selves, but they are actually online "influencers" applauded by a vast number of "followers" on TikTok and Instagram who enjoy watching their insanity. Their output is called "mukbang", wherein they eat large quantities of food and post videos of themselves doing so online. The name comes from two South Korean words and literally means "eating broadcast." 

Very obese people -- and even some who are not overweight at all -- eating unimaginably large amounts of terribly unhealthy foods is beyond disgusting. Several of these mostly young people, in their 20s and 30s, have actually died while eating online from a heart attack or some other obesity-related disease. Almost worse is the enormous cult of people, called "Feeders," who get off on watching people stuff themselves and actually send them food and money to support their addiction. 

The pro-obesity sub-culture makes me feel sorry for the entire human "race", which apparently has already been lost.

Open Letter to All Dumbocrats

Connecticut's Democrat Congresswoman, Rosa DeLaurio

Okay, come on. Maybe you don't like Donald Trump because he's a braggart who is rich and successful with bad taste in furnishings and a penchant for self-aggrandizement. I get it. But he's very smart, and very accomplished, and has great political instincts, and he's done a great job as POTUS.

Now let's look at the contenders for president on the Democrat side in 2028: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a goofy bartender-turned-socialist cheerleader, Pete Buttigieg, a one-time small-town mayor who's gay and that's about it, Governor Hair Gel, a good-looking jerk with a bad political record, and worst of all, loser extraordinaire Kamala Harris,who cannot even speak plain English and is clearly a mental midget of monumental proportions.

How anyone can be a Democrat anymore is simply beyond my comprehension. Really, what are you all thinking? 

Series Review: CLARKSON'S FARM SEASON FIVE

After what seemed like an eternity (but was really only 11 months), the gang at Clarkson's Farm has returned this month on Amazon Prime. I hadn't realize how empty my life has been without them until I watched the first episode of Season 5 last night. There are seven hour-long episodes left, and I'm thrilled at the prospect of watching them and already sad that they will come to an end.

If you've never seen the show you are missing out on something totally unique and exhilarating. First of all it's a documentary, so you're seeing real lives play out, not some Hollywood writer's inner, often drug-induced, fantasy world. The series is set on a thousand-acre farm in the Cotswolds, perhaps the most beautiful part of the English countryside. (You'll want to drop everything and go there immediately; we did exactly that last year, eventually making our way to the farm.) 

Just the color-drenched photography alone makes it all worthwhile. Some of the stunning images that take your breath away include drone shots of impossibly-green farmland, all species of farm animals living their best lives -- growing, having babies and running free, birds soaring in flight, darkening clouds gathering for a storm, magical sunsets and sunrises, and intense close-ups of flowers and vegetation. 

The accompanying music is great, and the characters are even better. Jeremy Clarkson, the star, is a total hoot and it's easy to see why he was, and has remained, such a fan favorite all across Great Britain. His partner Lisa is adorable and funny, adding a feminine slant to the basically all-male cast. The assorted, sometimes wacky, locals who help Jeremy make a go of his farm and the village beer pub he opened in Season 4 will soon become your favorite neighbors. 

Best of all, the show is free of evil drug lords, monstrous murderers and rapists, racism, flying wizards, international spy rings, wild car chases, political infighting and violence -- although last night's episode did show the aftermath of a wild dog attack on a poor, innocent sheep that was quite gory and all too real. But in general you can watch Clarkson's Farm with your children without worry. They'll likely want to be farmers when they grow up, which in our current economy and with AI taking everyone's jobs away, isn't such a bad idea.