Liberals say it's racist to even notice it. I wonder, would they notice Meryl Streep playing the lead in a biopic about Rosa Parks? How about one with Timothy Chalamet as Emmet Till?
The Odyssey is being dubbed a fantasy, and with good reason. Trans actress Ellen Page, who still looks like a pre-teen girl but wants us to believe she's a man and calls herself Elliot, is also in the film, playing a male character.
I cannot wait to not see this movie!
Here's some advice you can take to the bank: Stay away from the news if you want to be happy.
Then I read the newspaper. Big mistake. Turning the pages, my good mood evaporated in less than five minutes. Here's what I learned:
1. President Trump is apparently out of his mind, using his Truth Social platform "to spread conspiracies and attacks" while the rest of us were sleeping.
2. Teenagers are being banned from shopping malls due to their violent "takeovers" that have "devolved into physical fights, robberies and gunfire."
3. Restaurants across the country are losing money because so many Americans are on weight-loss drugs.
4. AOC, that dummy-spinoff of Kamala Harris, is definitely considering a presidential run in 2028. Not only that, but she's a front-runner! (No, this is not a dream.)
5. Drug overdose deaths fell to a new low of 70,000 in 2025, which is considered a positive trend.
6. Young men in their 20s and 30s are smashing their faces with hammers and other blunt instruments in order to get a stronger jawline.
7. "Jew-hatred" is on the rise in America.
8. Most students at Princeton cheat on exams using AI.
Sorry. I don't write the news, I just report it.
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| "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali |
To paraphrase, and at the same time completely alter the meaning of a popular saying, "We can't go on not meeting like this!" It's been seven months since our last get-together and we've likely got so much bottled up inside us to not share with anyone. This is an especially appropriate time for me to be a Loner since my husband, who I live with, has been out of town for the past three days and will remain so for one more day. Consequently I have hardly spoken to a soul, except my trainer at the gym for an hour one day and another one tomorrow.
Since my closest local friends are still in quarantine owing to a bone marrow transplant last November, it's basically been me and my cat Lurch from dawn to dusk, and I do mean dawn. (Lurch starts meowing for breakfast before five in the morning.) Sad to say, he isn't much company these days, being 19 and suffering from feline dementia. While I find it unfair that my cat should be so afflicted after having had a mother who suffered from early-onset Alzheimer's, clearly we don't get to choose our troubles.
The truth is, being alone has its benefits. It allows us to focus on the fact that life is ticking by, minute by minute, hour by hour. (See illustration.) When we distract ourselves with meaningless activities, the days pass quickly in a blur, and suddenly it's tomorrow, or next month, or Christmas! As we who have chosen the loner lifestyle understand, being alone allows us to savor every minute. I hope you are all doing that and not squandering it online, absorbing the crap posted by all the morons out there or trying to decipher what's real and what's AI in the news.
Until next time, keep the faith -- and do something productive all by yourself. And if you can't think of anything, read "White Noise" by Don DeLillo, one of my all-time favorite novels which puts everything in perspective.
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| Tova and her octopus pal Marcellus share a moment. |
Based on a book of the same name, Remarkably Bright Creatures centers on Tova (Sally Field), a widow still grieving the mysterious death of her teenage son 30 years later. Her lonely life as a night-shift cleaning lady in an aquarium is brightened by the sudden appearance of a young drifter (Lewis Pullman) whose truck breaks down in her small seaside village, forcing him to stick around and eventually find work in the same aquarium. Their relationship deepens over time, and eventually blossoms into something touching and unexpected.
Besides the unique story and flawless performances, the underwater photography of stunning sea creatures makes the film special. One word of advice for the faint-hearted: Have tissues handy.
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| Ford as Indiana Jones in "Raiders" |
But enough about him. I too did not know the meaning of the slang term. I figured it probably didn't mean eating uncooked hot dogs since that would have made the most sense, so I googled it and learned it means either having sex without a condom or doing an activity without any distractions, like flying without headphones or reading a book, just sitting there undistracted for the entire flight.
Turns out I've been rawdogging -- both definitions -- for my whole life. Who knew I'm so hip?
People are using AI for so much content these days, it's hard to tell what's real and what's computer-generated. Because of that, writers are deliberately messing up their original content just so readers will know they are not hiring robots, throwing in random slang, jargon and typos. There's even a new startup called Writehuman wherein the company's software "edits AI-generated text to make it sound more human."
Similarly, fake videos and altered photographs pepper the internet. Nothing is real anymore, it seems -- which means it's all sanitized and perfect. For example, I asked ChatGPT to make an image of a vase of flowers in front of an open window with a boat on the water outside. It is shown here below.
Nice. But I forgot to tell it to make it interesting, or stylized, or unique in any way. Now here's one of my own paintings that fits the same description.
Why do we have to know the sexual preferences of movie stars, celebrities, royalty or anyone, in fact, other than someone we are about to have sex with? How does it impact anyone's life but their own?
If I run into you somewhere, please don't tell me who you like to sleep with, unless it's a cat or a dog.
I rushed to tell her that when I lived in DC, which I did for 30 years, the restaurant in question, Comet Ping Pong Pizza, was a mile from our home and we ate there very often and never saw any funny business. Also, my son's best friend from high school was the manager of the place and he was a nice Jewish boy who would not engage in anything nefarious.
She remained unconvinced, still pretty sure that Hillary and some guy she couldn't name (John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chairman) were knee-deep in child trafficking in the basement of Comet. She then added her belief that it had something to do with "adrenochrome," a chemical which people harvest from the adrenal glands of children and ingest to stay young.
I still consider this woman a friend, mostly because she is decent and kind and, best of all, a Republican, which in my part of Maine is as rare as a four-leaf clover. Also, it's basically impossible to find anyone who doesn't believe in some sort of conspiracy theory. Take me, for example: I still don't believe we ever landed on the Moon. And I'm pretty sure the CIA played a part in JFK's assassination.
Still, harvesting a chemical compound from children to reverse ageing is a bit much. Then again, Hillary herself was the one who said that when it comes to raising children, "It takes a village." Who knows -- maybe that's what the village was for.
Naturally all the websites claim the same things: Their cruise line is the best, their food is prepared by award-winning chefs, their staff is extremely attentive to your every need and their on-shore excursions are exciting and memorable. Digging deeper, we realized that we would have to read some reviews from real people. Those were no help at all.
For example, the same cruise was described quite differently by different people. Some said the food was awful, while others on the very same ship on the very same dates said it was gourmet at its best. Some cited technical difficulties with the ship, like the AC not working, toilets not flushing, and being stopped dead in the water for a day because of engine trouble, while others claimed the same trip was flawless.
Throw in those odd cruise viruses that befall multitudes of passengers, potential bad weather and debilitating seasickness, and something tells me we're not going quite yet.
I can't relate to most of their habits. I never like anything of the things most of them seem to enjoy. In fact, I am blown away by many of the ways they spend their time. Like so many of them do nothing of value and only spend their time shopping, eating and criticizing celebrities. And the celebrities are no better, albeit thinner and prettier. But most of them become drug addicts and alcoholics.
Just a few weeks ago, the humans in charge of such things spent untold billions for four of them to squeeze into a little compartment and get catapulted into space and circle the Moon one time, and then come back the same as when they left. And everyone thought that was just great -- like a big deal! But it accomplished nothing. While lots of diseases run rampant here on Earth, killing and maiming people daily -- including babies who didn't ask to be born and suddenly here they are without a stomach or a with a heart growing outside their chest, stuck in the NICU at some hospital for months -- people are busy circling the Moon like it's a theme park attraction.
And speaking of theme parks, many people ride roller coasters to thrill themselves because their lives are so dull, I guess. Roller coasters are extremely popular, and all they do is take people up very high and then drop them down very low, at super-fast speeds. After you get off it you are still the same as before, only with less money.
So yes, I'm unhappy to be a person. But until someone invents an inter-species procedure I'm stuck as one, watching others get tattoos and eat pizza and take lots of antidepressants, probably because they also hate being people but don't know how to stop doing it.
Some people in Hollywood are in a tizzy about a new movie coming to theaters this summer. In director Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, ...
