President Pothead

Kamala Harris might be just what we need after all the nasty bickering inspired by President Trump. She is quoted as saying she is in favor of legalization of recreational marijuana, which she admits to smoking in college, because it "brings people joy." Right on, Kamala! Maybe if she were to be elected she would provide some for all the miserable immigrants stuck in those cages at the border. After all, if Elizabeth Warren is promising free college for everyone, what's a few ounces of pot?

Of course, we would all agree that smoking pot sometimes clouds your memory.....

Bernie the Mensch

If you were a poor student in school and have few options available, you're in luck. You can either join the military and get an education, possibly learn a trade, receive all the health care you need, with plenty of food and a place to sleep, and with laundry service. Of course your legs might get blown off in a foreign country; there's that. If you'd rather play it safe you can become a sloppy criminal and get yourself caught. Then you'll also get three square meals a day, lots of exercise, health care including dental and surgery if required, and all the drugs you want. And in prison, while it's true your legs could get broken by a rival gang member, they likely won't get blown off.

Best of all, if Bernie Sanders wins the next election, which he just might, in prison you'll be able to vote in the presidential election or any election in your district, even if you are a convicted felon. What if you murdered or raped someone, or killed a whole lot of people with a bomb? No problem, says Bernie, who advocates prisoners be allowed to the vote even while they're doing time. After all, nobody should feel disenfranchised, especially if you are a person of color, which you might be since they are four times as likely as whites to be incarcerated.

Bernie believes that every citizen --  even deranged psychopaths -- should have a say in who runs our government. (Such a mensch!) Is this a great country or what? No wonder all those immigrants want in.

Fat Is Not Beautiful

This magazine cover is supposedly "a step in the right direction" of making society more inclusive, of making fat people feel less ashamed of their bodies, and all sorts of other wrong thinking. It's supposed to empower young girls who are chubby to feel good about themselves. I find it sickening to think that anyone could be happy with this body, or that they are told they should be. Why not put a photo of an anorexic woman on the cover? There are lots of those out there too.  Should they also be applauded for their mental aberration? Apparently we are heading towards a society of fatties. After all, it's so much easier.

Nice Girls Finish Last

Three popular, nice American Girls.

Despite the furor made by those protesting, pink-hatted #MeToo proponents a while back, it looks like sexy babes still have it all over wholesome gals. One indicator is in the doll market, which caters to little girls who will grow up into the women of tomorrow.

According to today's Wall Street Journal, toy maker Mattel, Inc. saw sales fall 3% in the first quarter of this year within the American Girl brand. Not so with their Barbie line: Global sales were up 7% in the same quarter for the hot chick with the tiny waist, big boobs and long blonde hair.

Maybe all those TV news babes are influencing impressionable young minds into believing you have to look like a prostitute in order to make it as a career woman.

Hot Barbies still rule!

My Prediction for 2020

According to everything I have read on the subject, I am what is called "highly sensitive." Another word for it is "hyper-empathic." This means that every little thing bothers me. This has been true since childhood, when my parents called me "The Princess and the Pea," referring to the story of that name about, well -- about a princess and a pea. The pea was stuck under a pile of about 20 mattresses but the princess could still feel it and couldn't fall asleep, or something like that.

One of the worst things about my condition is tolerating all the average, normal people stomping through life with nary a thought of how their clumsy, selfish, loud, boorish and bullish behaviors impact those around them. This is most evident in restaurants, airports and movie theaters. Thus I stay home with my cat, who silently tiptoes around. (It's his nature.) One of the best things about my condition is the ability to intuit future events through relentless and careful observation of society.

Thus, my prediction for 2020: People hate Donald Trump for just about every reason imaginable, but I dislike him only for one: He's klutzy. I bet he makes a lot of noise around the house. This is exactly why I wrote in John Kasich in the 2016 election; he's a quiet guy. This time around my vote would go to Mayor Pete, who seems quite light-footed and considerate of others. Of course he won't be the candidate, since quiet folks never get to the top of any heap. Therefore I predict that the noisiest of the Democrats will win the nomination.

The Learning Never Stops

While I was happily Facebook-stalking my son this morning, an ad popped up hawking, "The slip-on sneaker literally everyone wants." The accompanying photo showed a shoe I would not even want to be buried in, if I were going to be buried -- which I am not, thank you very much. Who would be? Anyway, that's another post.

Since I definitely did not want that sneaker, I wondered about the true meaning of the word literally. Had I been wrong all these years? Turns out I had. While one definition is "exactly, word for word, letter for letter," the more informal meaning is "used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true."

Conventional wisdom says we learn something new every day. Well, I already have and it's just past eight in the morning! I guess this will be a great day.

Murder of a Tree

For the past few hours I have been a witness to a murder occurring across the street from my house. There are many people involved, so in that sense it's a mass murder: at least eight people have a hand in it, not counting the two masterminds, Bruce and Brenda, who took out the contract on the innocent tree but are nowhere to be seen. I guess they simply couldn't watch. But I did. (Somebody had to.)

A tall, proud pine sprouting copious new growth at the top to herald the return of Spring, it had no idea that today would be its last. No more drinking in carbon dioxide along with the sun's rays and contributing to the health of our environment by improving air quality, conserving water, preserving soil and supporting wildlife, not to mention producing the oxygen we all need to stay alive.

No more impish squirrels running up and down its trunk, playing hide and seek among the branches. No more birds building nests up high to house a new family. No more hosting flying lessons for the fledglings. That's all over now, mere memories being fed into the wood chipper.

Why? Seems that the tree was "starting to lean a little," and the property owners didn't like it. They worried it might fall over in a storm -- just like any other tree, leaning or not. Then too, it blocked the sun from their living room for part of the afternoon. It simply had to go. One of the young men on the murder squad admitted to me that it was a healthy tree now but that "someday" it wouldn't be.

"Someday" turned out to be today.

Quit Your Bellyaching

I am so sick of the whole race thing! Here are the facts: people are born in different parts of the world, with different skin color, and they had nothing to do with it and never will. It just happened and will continue to happen.

Some people, almost always the self-designated, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, whining and complaining "People Of Color," have decided that anyone born with white skin (the Absence of Color) should feel guilty for having been born not black, or brown or whatever skin tone they, the People of Color, deem acceptable.

Well guess what: I am absent of color and it's fine with me. I do not feel guilty, nor do I feel privileged. I had a damn heart attack a couple of years ago, so how privileged am I? Also, I was born into a Jewish family so I'm a Jew. Many people hate the Jews and some in the past have slaughtered my kind, but still I do not bemoan the fact that I am one. It's who I am, and I am what I am, as Popeye famously said.

Everyone should just STFU about whites and blacks and Latinos and Indians, I mean Native Americans (I mean Indians) and just get on living their lives before it's all over in the blink of an eye.

How to End Racism

When I was in high school in the late 60s, my history teacher posed this question to the class: How can we as a society end racism? The students called out lots of solutions, but the best one that I have never forgotten came from a boy named Roger Lorberbaum, who I remember only because of his brilliant, though ultimately unworkable, solution: Kill all the adults and leave only babies.

Babies who never knew about slavery or Jim Crow or lynchings or Rosa Parks or plantation owners or the white man as Master. Just innocent babies starting out life together, crawling around playing happily, untainted by harmful knowledge passed down from parents and grandparents still bitterly harboring ugly grudges stemming from a distant time of inequality.

Everyone agreed that was a great plan, until one of the other kids pointed out, "But who would feed the babies? Wouldn't they all die?" Fortunately the bell rang signalling the end of class. But I still remember that discussion, and in all the years since I've never heard a better solution than Roger's.

Covering Up the Past

There's something nobody talks about that's even more pervasive than white privilege and white guilt: White fear. White people are afraid of black people. They're afraid they will finally get sick of the whole second-class citizen thing and come after them, robbing their homes and raping their women. This is the only possible explanation for all the nonsensical, moronic things that take place in order to prove that we don't condone our past and will happily erase it, if only they will forget that their ancestors were slaves until 1865, or that they had to sit in the back of the bus in Alabama until 1956, and especially forget the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and the lynchings, etc. We are so sorry for all that, and to prove it we're considering giving each one of them some money to make them feel better, and especially to not hurt us.

How else to explain the latest folly involving the long-dead singer Kate Smith, a.k.a. The First Lady of Radio? Smith was a white American singer whose recording career spanned five decades, reaching its pinnacle in the 1940s when she was dubbed The Songbird of the South because of her rousing popularity during World War II.  Smith hosted her own TV show for several years, appeared frequently on The Ed Sullivan Show and other variety shows, performed at Carnegie Hall and with the Boston Pops, and gave concerts around the country at great music halls and in small clubs. Since her death in 1986 her voice has lived on in her soaring rendition of Irving Berlin's classic, "God Bless America," played for 18 years during the 7th-inning stretch of the Yankees baseball games.

The Philadelphia statue of Kate Smith covered in black plastic. That should fix things.

Until now, that is. It has recently come to light that Smith, after recording hundreds of non-racist songs, once sang a popular 1931 tune called "That's Why Darkies Were Born." Keep in mind that Smith did not write the song, she only sang it -- as did Paul Robeson, an African American concert artist and stage and film actor who attained stardom for his beautiful voice as well as for his political activism. The song's offending lyrics go like this:

"Someone had to pick the cotton,

Someone had to plant the corn,

Someone had to slave and be able to sing,

That's why darkies were born."

Another recently unearthed Smith recording was the 1933 song, "Pickaninny Heaven," which asks "colored children" living in an orphanage to dream about a magical place with "great big watermelons." Clearly the woman was a racist, a fact she likely never even knew about herself! So now, in 2019, her music has been banned by the Yankees and a statue of her that stands in Philadelphia has gotten the same garbage bag treatment given to those Confederate statues in Charlottesville, Virginia of Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson a year ago.

My theory also explains how the mentally-impaired mouthpiece known as "Maxine Waters" is permitted to open her denture-laden maw within the hallowed halls of Congress, not to mention trash America's sitting president daily and continue to hold public office. Because she's black, she's untouchable. And since she's old enough to have actually been a slave herself, she's probably going to get a huge check when the Dems start handing out those reparations.

The Upside of Getting Old

A baby battery in The Matrix.

More and more I run across people of indeterminate gender. This happens most often at Whole Foods, where most of the checkout people are tattooed, purple-haired, nose-pierced sexual mysteries. I find this disturbing since I am 72 and have spent a lifetime dealing with people who could be identified as either male or female, giving me at least a tiny hint to their expected behavior. But these neither-here-nor-there folks strike me as oddities whose lack of obvious gender signals make them as inscrutable as aliens from another planet.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with being gay or straight. I have always had many homosexual friends and family members and couldn't care less about who's zooming who. But the current trend of being neither male nor female seems to be leading to a dark place, one similar to that memorable scene in The Matrix where thousands of manufactured babies sucking on tubes stretch as far as the eye can see.

Add all that to the ubiquity of Big Brother, a.k.a. anyone with a cell phone, watching every move we make and ready to report and/or record the slightest offense, and I'm happy I won't be around in 50 years. I do feel intense sadness for my son who likely will be, and for his kids who he might just purchase at a trinket shop in Fisherman's Wharf while vacationing in San Francisco. If there still is a San Francisco.

No Stars in Heaven

After logging on to my AOL account to read my email, that familiar miasma of stupidity emanating from my computer settled over me and I started surfing all kinds of dumb shit. This went on for some time until I hit rock bottom: Hollywood Celebrities Who Despise Jennifer Aniston. How could that matter to me?

Why anyone tolerates being famous for five minutes is a question for the ages. What's worse, the main reason they became famous and remain famous is because the little people -- that's you and me -- continue to show interest in their lives. Come on people, we've got to stop it!

Imagine how much nicer the world would be if there were no more celebrities. We would all focus on our own lives instead of wondering about the lives of people we will never meet, have no influence over, and whose actions impact us not one bit. Sounds like Heaven to me.

Nature's Revenge

Having recently read that walks in the woods greatly enhance happiness, reduce feelings of anxiety and lower blood pressure, last night as I went to bed I promised myself that I would go for a long walk today. I awoke this morning all set, but was dismayed to see that it was extremely windy outside, like Wizard of Oz, witch-on-a-broomstick windy. I decided not to go out lest a wayward tree limb fall on my head and kill me. 

After all, there are over 250 billion trees in America today, and I bet many of them are pissed off at the lousy deal they have gotten thanks to our ongoing need for boats, furniture and houses. "I'm not taking any chances," I said to my husband. Mitch scoffed, seeing this as nothing but a transparent excuse to avoid exercise. However, thanks to the wonders of the Internet I was able to find the following information on a website belonging to a group of personal injury lawyers:

"While sustaining injury due to tree fall is relatively unlikely, there are ample opportunities for accidents to happen.  In some cases, accidents — sometimes fatal — have happened."

"In 2009, Mary Kathryn Ladany was out for a jog in Philadelphia’s famed Fairmount Park when  a 30-foot branch from a tulip poplar loosened and fell 50 feet to the ground below. The massive branch struck Ladany and killed her instantly."

"In March of 2013, 12-year-old Connecticut girl Gabriela Hudak was struck fatally on the head by a tree which collapsed in her own yard."

"In August of 2013, 30-year-old New Yorker Yingyi Li was sitting on a park bench in Queens when she was crushed and killed by a falling oak tree."

"In January of 2014, 50-year-old North Carolina woman Cheryl Harrison was killed after high winds caused a tree branch to sever and fall on top of her."

Adding in the two people I personally know who were killed by falling trees, both females, I concluded that trees obviously blame women for all their problems. Tomorrow's forecast calls for no wind. I'll go for a walk then.

A Mother's Lament

A fleeting joy like no other.

Being the parent of another adult sucks. You have none of the power over his or her life decisions that you think you have earned, and in fact you may rank lower than your kid's newest friend in that department. What's worse, it all brings back memories of how badly you treated your own parents, who are likely now deceased, when you were that age.

I struggle with these feelings daily, often thinking they are mine alone. But then today I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how so many boomer parents (that's most of us) face this predicament today. Hearing how other people's lives are just as bad or worse than mine never makes me feel better. It just adds on another layer of heartache, compounding the problem.

My only child is now a 31-year-old man and I still miss the little boy he once was. I cry about him often, as if he had been abducted when he was six or seven -- or more accurately, 14. My husband says, "That's the reason God made grandchildren," although I'm pretty sure that God made grandchildren in order to carry on the human race. Besides, the only grandchild I want would have to look and act just like my son once did, and that's not possible.

And so I lament.

Mr. Coffee for President

The older I get, the less I care what people think of me. And in my case that's saying something, since I can't remember a time when I ever cared about what people thought of me, except Eddie Weeks for a year in high school. 

But certainly now as I settle into my eighth decade on Earth (that means I am not 80 yet, for all you math wizards), it's silly to care what others think since I have so little respect for most of them. After all: They lie. They cheat. They steal. They have sex with children. And those are the priests -- just imagine what regular people do!

My not caring extends to other things too, like who is the president. As long as it's not Hillary Clinton, I shall watch the unfolding political follies with a detached retina. (Not really, although I had one of those for real once and it was no fun.)  I just meant I am watching, but not emotionally invested, and so far it's a hoot. I can hardly wait to see which poor sap gets called all the insulting names by Trump in the debates.

There's the wet-behind-the-ears gay guy, the delusional white Injun, two crusty old men, one of whom likes to sniff women's hair, a couple of strident black ladies and one strident black man who will chalk it up to racism if they lose, a bitchy blond who never said a nice word about anyone, that skinny Beto with his skateboard like that's going to get him votes, and plenty of others nobody ever heard of.

Personally my money is on Howard Schultz. He's Jewish, a billionaire from years of wise business decisions, and he loves coffee. Plus he's neither a Democrat nor a Republican. What's not to like? He's got my vote already.

The Quickest Way to Happiness

Yesterday, Day Two of my self-imposed house arrest due to the blanketing sleet, ice and snow called "a wintry mix" by the weather people and "a pain in the ass" by everyone else, I was desperate for a diversion. Finally, I thought, I could paint the table I bought at an auction three years ago sitting patiently in the corner of my studio. But I had no paint, at least none that fit the job. 

A work in progress.

Unwilling to shed my comfy flannel PJs and shovel my way out to the hardware store, I hunted around my house and brain for another solution. There, in the lower reaches of a drawer in my art studio, I found it: a sheaf of handmade papers imprinted with exotic designs I had purchased eons ago, knowing I would want them for something, someday. Someday had apparently arrived.

Switching gears, I decided to decoupage the table instead. I got busy and the day flew by. Best of all, I stayed in my PJs the whole time. It was only later that a friend sent me this quote: "To be happy the quickest possible way, choose what you already have." (Werner Erhard, founder of the training known as "est" that operated from 1971-1984.)

Finding Your Inner Mommy

There's a lot of talk about finding inner peace. All sorts of gurus and therapists and yogis and people who wear long flowing robes and burn incense are always yammering about it. But what should you do if instead of inner peace you have only inner turmoil? Can you change your turmoil into peace?

The answer is it's really difficult, especially if you live in Maine and it's already the start of the second week in April and it's effing snowing, a lot. That's where I live and what it's doing right now, and I don't like it one bit.

On my constant search for inner peace I have finally come up with the only thing that sort of works, or at least gets you started towards it. You've got to realize and accept that once your birth mother is gone, nobody else will care about you to that degree except yourself. That's a fact you can take to the bank.

I have long suspected this but found out for sure this morning when my blood pressure soared to 192/102, and my visiting friend who is a nurse practitioner nevertheless climbed into a waiting Uber in order to arrive at the local airport a full five hours before her scheduled flight just in case the snow got worse, leaving me simmering in my pre-stroke BP anxiety. As she left me teetering on the edge of freaking out, she said, "I love you." Two hours earlier, my "in sickness and in health" husband had flown the coop to attend a business meeting halfway across the country.

You are all you've got. Once you fully grok that nobody is coming to save you, devising a plan is easy. Until then you just lay there in your crib waiting for Mommy. But there's only one Mommy and when she's gone, you're it. (I hope my son reads this.)

Go Ahead, Be President!

Apparently knowing a damn thing about how to run the world matters not a whit anymore. All you need is a good personality and a better sense of humor, which by the way is how Trump got elected. (The haters can't see it but the man is pretty funny.)

Next up: Big-personality Stacie Abrams is toying with joining the motley crew of Democrats hoping for a chance to have their own airplane for eight years. Although she lost the election for Georgia's governor, she has since loomed large on the national stage. One thing in her favor is that she is a POC, which these days is a whole lot more bankable than being a POS. Eager to get started on her pet projects (Medicaid expansion, election reform and abortion rights), Abrams is pretty sure that "change is coming" and that it's already arrived, at least in Georgia. (I hope fixing that gap between her front teeth is one of the changes.)

It's happening all over, not just here. Popular Ukrainian TV comic Volodymr Zelensky has catapulted to the top of the presidential race in that country. Nobody knows what he stands for, what he would do if elected or who's behind him, but despite his lack of any political experience he received twice as many votes as the incumbent in a first round of voting.

So if you're hankering to be treated like royalty, hate carrying a wallet, yearn for bodyguards 24/7, want lots of fun stuff to do without having to make any plans yourself, enjoy eating well but hate cooking and love foreign travel, go for it. Apparently nobody will try to stop you.

A Hair-raising Double Standard

When actor Zac Efron posted a photo on Twitter with his hair in dreadlocks, "just for fun," a lot of people were outraged, not finding it any fun at all. Instead it was a gross example of "cultural appropriation." Those dreadlocks were not for him; he's white. So how come it's okay the other way around? Top actresses and others in the public eye, like news anchors and models, straighten their naturally curly black hair, sometimes even bleaching it blonde and dying it red.

Halle Berry

Gayle King

Beyonce Knowles

Viola Davis

Naomi Campbell

Michelle Obama

Oprah Winfrey

Try Hating Yourself Instead

The level of hatred aimed at Donald Trump defies all comprehension. The man, who is after all just a human being made of flesh and blood like the rest of us, has become the scapegoat, whipping boy, call it what you will, for so many American citizens, despite the fact that he was elected and serves as their president! He is hated as much as Hitler, who murdered millions of innocent people in horrific ways. Trump has done no such thing, yet the mass hatred of him is of equal, if not greater, intensity.

Trump's family is also hated. Poor Ivanka is despised for being too pretty, too smart, too stylish, too rich, and just for having Trump for a father. No matter what she says, it is mocked and criticized by the likes of Joy Behar, that do-nothing, know-nothing, no-talent TV talk show host, which is surely the lowest thing one can be, certainly several rungs below a janitor at a highway rest stop.

Trump's wife is too beautiful, so we hate her. His sons grew up rich, so we hate them. Their wives are beautiful and rich too, so naturally we hate them. And not only do we hate them in private texts, we hate them openly on Twitter and Facebook, at dinner parties with our friends, in newspaper articles and on endless discussion panels on TV and in university classrooms. In fact, we feel pretty damn proud of our hatred, boastfully wearing it like a medal of honor.

Well guess what: I firmly believe that so much hate has to come from within. The more someone hates Trump, the more they hate themselves. It's so obvious, it's almost embarrassing. The louder someone bitches about him, the bigger the void in their own life. Remember that the next time you hear someone railing against the president.

Facebook People

I remember the first time I heard of Facebook. It was about a dozen years ago, when  my son complained that a distant relative of my husband was "Facebook-stalking the shit out of me." His remark made me laugh, even though I didn't quite understand it. Now I do, since I do it myself from time to time.

Yes, I admit it: I look up people on Facebook that I want nothing to do with in real life. They are  people I once knew and have long since discarded. That sounds cruel, but it's simply what happened.  I check them out to see if perhaps they've they changed. Did they stop the drinking and partying and lying? Was I wrong about them? Was I too hasty? (So far, not.)

Some people set up Facebook accounts but never go there. Their last post was like May 2011 or September 2016. Or never, they just have the page but no photos, no friends, no nothing. I give them credit for wanting to be counted. 

Then there are the no-shows. I wish I were one of them but it's too late for that, I have like six Facebook accounts under slightly different names and for different reasons. But the people who are not on Facebook and never were -- now those are some interesting people. You wonder: What gives? Are they wanted by the police? International spies? Or just too damn snooty to hobnob with the masses? Anyway, they're mysterious, a good quality if you ask me.

Finally there are the Dead. I hate their pages. One of my oldest and closest friends died last September and every so often he shows up in that stupid parade of People You Might Know or People We Think You Would Like, whatever it's called, and it always bums me out. Another one who committed suicide several years ago is still alive on Facebook, with people stopping by to say happy birthday every year. She would hate that. I mean, don't you think, considering?

What's Wrong with Amy Schumer?

Sad but true, there are people walking among us suffering from severe personality disorders. Whether those disorders stem from a traumatic childhood, missing or defective genes, drug or alcohol addiction or something else, they have gone haywire and ended up with no idea of how to behave. We call these people "celebrities" and are fascinated by them, like the freaks in a side show at circuses long ago.

One of the most offensive is a woman named Amy Schumer. She became famous by talking non-stop about the condition of and visitors to her own "pussy" and "cunt" as the basis of her stand-up comedy act. Her foul mouth endeared her to the huddled masses, who envied her ability to let it all hang out and be shocking. Fittingly, she got indecently rich off her indecent behavior, while my dear friend Teresa, a nurse practitioner (who's a lot better-looking than Ms. Schumer) working daily 12-hour shifts in a hospital helping to heal the sick earns a tolerable income, but not a particularly comfortable one.

Now Ms. Schumer is pregnant and is compelled by her neurosis to post the above picture of herself online, as if we all want to see it, need to see it, or should. Has she no modesty? What's wrong with her? Even more, I worry about the editorial decision made by several popular magazines that have published this very photo, as if it's actually newsworthy. I can't help but wonder: what got us here?