Jewish Paranoia On Sale Now

I keep hearing that antisemitism is on the rise everywhere, especially in this country. 

There are videos online about it, showing lots of protests pro and con, and scary shit going down in major cities like New York and Chicago. News articles and op-eds discussing the problem show up more and more frequently. Reports about NYC's Muslim mayor dissing a pro-Israel parade recently, coupled with an alleged rise in anti-Jewish crime, have increased my worst fears about some gestapo guys barging in and taking my house. 

But the funny thing is, I have not experienced one bit of antisemitic behavior myself. In fact, not once in my entire life. So far it's all hearsay. So is it real or not? And is it really as bad as it's being portrayed by people who sell disaster for a living?

Who knows. You are what you watch.

Time For A Name Change

When he's not posting on Truth Social or running the world, President Trump keeps himself busy by re-naming things. Well, I've got a suggestion for him that I'm pretty sure everyone would accept. Instead of calling our country the United States of America, which is a complete joke since the very last thing we are is united, it should be the Divided States of America. That at least makes sense.

Everyone's An Expert

I used to think there were people who were smarter than everyone else, including me. Then somewhere in my 30s it hit me: there aren't. I came to this conclusion when my gynecologist, a man I respected who had a great reputation, told me, and I quote, "All penises are the same size when erect."  Right away I knew two things about him: First, he was not gay and second, he was an idiot.

Around that same time I started seeing a shrink. I saw him on and off for 20 years and thought he was brilliant, giving me sage advice. But then after his unseemly death -- he drowned, drunk, in a hotel swimming pool -- I learned he was a raging alcoholic who was in and out of rehab several times a year. 

That was long ago and since then I've run into lots more dumb people. The internet is rife with them, all of them "experts" at something, who make videos touting their superior knowledge. A favorite of mine is a woman whose shtick is etiquette and how to dress and behave properly. Her Reels have titles like, "Five Things To Avoid Doing That Make People Dislike You" and "Six Things Never to Wear In Public." It's wild because she is so unlikeable and her clothes are always so ugly, yet she keeps making these videos and I'm pretty sure she's not kidding.

The truth is, each one of us is an expert in one thing -- ourself. Nobody is smarter about you than you. Just listen to your inner voice, unless you are schizophrenic and it's telling you to do bizarre things, in which case you should seek professional help. But Jesus -- good luck finding any.

Not All Birthdays Are Happy

As I have mentioned in this space recently, I am about to turn 80. This fact does not make me happy, and yes, I have considered the alternative.  I don't want to be dead, I just don't want to be 80. At least not in our society, where being old is the only handicap that is still allowed to be mocked. You can't say someone is a cripple or a retard or a fat whale, but you can call anyone an old coot, a geezer, a hag, an old fogey or an old bat, or say they are "over the hill" or "ready for the glue factory" and nobody cares.

Because of that, I do not see this upcoming birthday as cause for celebration. Still, others do and thus far I have had three different friends say they want to "take me to lunch" on my birthday, and I have already agreed to "go out to dinner" with my husband on that day.

Understand, I have lunch out several times a week, often with friends. And my husband and I go out to dinner frequently, certainly once a week if not more. So these outings do not in any way seem special, or make up for the fact that I am now an old hag, old bat and old fogey who is over the hill and ready for the glue factory.

My husband keeps asking what I want for this very special birthday. All I can think of is to be younger. Certainly chowing down some random restaurant food, probably poorly prepared by some 20-something, heavily tattooed and pierced line cook, isn't it. 

Living In Maine Without A Boat

When I take a break from making art, I am not interested in doing the following things: 

Bungee jumping off a bridge

Skydiving

Mountain climbing

Fishing

Eating lobster

Clamming

Shopping 

Demonstrating against Donald Trump

Kayaking

Camping

Going to a Whoopie Pie Festival, or any sort of festival

If I were, I'd be in hog heaven living here in Maine. Alas, I was born and bred in New York and thus like to do the following:

Attend professional theater

Wander through old bookstores

Eat great pizza

See famous comedians and musicians live in concert

Since nothing on that last list is possible here in Maine, I'm sort of at a loss on cold, wet, dark days like today, when hiking in the woods -- the one thing this state is good for -- is less appealing. Also, if I had a boat I could "go down to the boat" and work on it, or just sit on it and read, which is a very popular activity with boat-owners in these parts. I don't have a boat, so one of my major weekend activities is Wondering: How to spend this most precious gift of a day when I'm not sick or in the hospital or committed to someone else's project. I am doing that today -- in fact, right now.

Planet of the Apes

Whatever happened to modesty? How about privacy? These qualities simply do not exist anymore here in America. Everyone shows everything that once was considered too personal, and not just to a few people but to the entire world, or at least anyone with a Facebook or TikTok account. This might be explain why I feel slightly nauseous all the time.

Like just now, when I logged on to my Facebook account and instantly saw a video of a skinny young woman in her underwear exhibiting the gruesome stitches on the inside of both of her thighs, explaining that "most of the swelling has gone down" from her recent surgery for God knows what -- I didn't stick around to find out. What I wondered is, who cares? Why do we, or more specifically I, need to see that? Is Facebook now also an anatomy class in med school? 

What's next? Will people start posting photos of their bowel movements floating in a toilet bowl for praise or diagnosis? When will the downward slide of humanity come to an end? And how? Will we go back to being apes, or go all the way to primordial slime?  (Personally I have met many people who I'm pretty sure are already primordial slime.)

Circling the Drain, Feline Style

Both my parents died relatively young: My mother was 62 and my father was 70. (Or 72, depending on who you ask.) While I deeply mourned their early passings, I was spared the horror of seeing them disintegrate before my very eyes, a sad situation I have watched many of my friends endure. So I guess it's fair that I now have an old cat, who at age 19 or 20 -- depending on who you ask -- is slowly dying, or as one friend said bluntly, "circling the drain."

Big Lurch, his proper name at birth, was once a fierce competitor in the feline world. A Maine Coon who in his prime topped the scales at 18 pounds, he was down to 10 at his last vet visit and grows thinner every day. I'm pretty sure he is deaf and half-blind, with a touch of arthritis.

Even worse, he has feline dementia, also known as cognitive dysfunction syndrome, which says it all. He is definitely dysfunctional to the max, and yet atop his skeletal, un-cuddly body, his face is as beautiful and adorable as ever. 

Lurch has become very demanding, like a crotchety old person in a nursing home who hates the food, is always too cold, and splits his time staring out the window for hours or complaining loudly about his current situation. He tells me minute by minute when he is unhappy, or in pain, or wants treats, or wants to go outside, or wants to come back inside. His thirst is unquenchable, causing him to pee in his two litter boxes approximately 500 times every day. If I don't empty them immediately he will pee on the floor next to the box. As a result, I have stopped accepting all invitations in order to stay home and scoop his litter, since cleaning the mess on the floor is so much worse.

My conclusion is that God makes sure everyone gets a little of everything. 

Turning 80

The cover of People jumped out at me as I was paying for a tube of Preparation H and some Miralax at the CVS and it pissed me off, seeing as how Cher is the same age as me and looks like that, and I don't. She's likely got the same things in her medicine cabinet, since internal organs can't have plastic surgery. At least not yet.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm a big Cher fan. Her voice still thrills me and I love her spunky personality. But the blond wig, cheek implants, lip filler and God only knows what else make her look years younger, and that's cheating.

BTW, you know who else would be 80 years old today? Diane Keaton and Freddie Mercury, that's who. And I look a whole lot better than them. (But then I'm still only 79.)

 

Thank You, Fatties!

We didn't get any of these.

This morning my husband and went to a farmer's market in the next town, something we do on Saturdays in spring and summer. Held on the grounds of a local farm, it's a wholesome scene straight from a Lifetime movie set in New England. Vendors offer flats of seedlings and bags of full-grown spinach and lettuce so beautiful they look fake. Goat cheese and natural soaps and candles are showcased next to homemade pickles and bean salads. Three fiddlers sit in the middle of it all, filling the air with lively folk tunes. With lots of babies in carriers and little kids running around excitedly, it truly warms the heart. Except for the long, long bread lines.

No, not those bread lines -- the kind your parents said they had in Russia. I mean the ones you see all over America at any fair or public market: People waiting to buy scones, pies, bagels, popovers, doughnuts, biscuits, buns, cinnamon rolls, cookies, cakes, baguettes, pies, croissants and fruit tarts. Those vendors had the longest lines of all, and most of the people patiently waiting on them were, to put it bluntly, obese. I mean big.

Luckily, obese people are everywhere, showing us just how they got that way. Today I took them as a welcome warning to steer clear of those lines. Instead we left with a lovely hanging nasturtium and several cherry tomato and mini-pepper plants ready for planting, and not one unhealthy calorie-laden treat, proving that all those fatties serve a higher purpose beyond keeping sugar producers in business.

Paging Tony Soprano

It costs $30,000 annually per inmate to imprison someone in Missouri. So if someone around age 40 gets life in prison without the possibility of parole in that state and lives to be maybe 80, that's $1,200,000 of taxpayer dollars spent to allow him to keep breathing and contributing nothing to anyone.

This sentence has just been handed down to a man in Missouri who decapitated his 63-year-old mother in 2018 and has been in prison since then. At the time, he called the police and said he was "concerned about his mother," then when they arrived on the scene he wrote on a piece of paper that he had killed her, showed it to them, and then ate the piece of paper. 

Clearly our legal system is in need of some fine-tuning if that man is not worthy of the death penalty. Imagine what would happen to him if his mother had been a mob boss.

What A Way To Go

Some people die at home, surrounded by their loved ones. Others die alone, peacefully, in their sleep. And then there are those less fortunate, like the 56-year-old woman in New York City who stepped out of her car two nights ago and immediately fell 15 feet into an open manhole, its cover having been dislodged by a passing truck just minutes before. She landed sitting up and could be heard by a passer-by to cry out, "I'm dying, I'm dying," which she did shortly after at a local hospital. 

I think that's not fair and that God got that wrong. Everyone deserves a dignified death.