The Second Coming of Someone

The death of Charlie Kirk has exposed a deep need in America for something, or someone, to believe in. 

While Kirk was undoubtedly an outspoken advocate for truth and godliness who connected with students on college campuses across the country, the reaction since his death has been beyond any I have ever seen in my lifetime, and I'm old enough to remember what went on after the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Medgar Evers and John Lennon.

Wasn't Kirk just a brash podcaster with a conservative message? Considering how his influence has exploded since his murder, with thousands of new followers online and at least 18,000 new chapters of his Turning Point organization opening across the US (and requests for another 32,000), one might suspect he was more than just an outspoken conservative with a strong ego and a desire to change people's hearts and minds to his way of thinking. Much more.

Personally, I never saw or heard Kirk speak and knew almost nothing about him until his murder. So I was surprised by the outpouring of grief, the exalted testimony from lawmakers including the President, and the dramatically emotional speech made by his grieving widow praising him as the world's greatest dad and most loving husband who now "stands at the side of Jesus in Heaven."

The ongoing prayer vigils for Kirk, held in cities from coast to coast, suggest we lost not just a man but a god. But he wasn't a god, he was simply a man, albeit one with a mission. Hopefully the members of the media, always seeking to fill a 24/7 news hole, and Charlie's followers, empty inside and looking for a hero, won't turn him into the second coming of Jesus Christ -- or worse, Jim Jones.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

We've all heard the expression, "Money can't buy happiness." Apparently it can't buy smarts either. 

Recently Larry Ellison, who last week topped Elon Musk as the world's richest person due to his ownership of Oracle, a billion-dollar company that does something I don't understand (which is why I am not rich myself), said he wants to live for as long as he can. To that end, the 81-year-old has donated hundreds of millions to aging research, explaining, "Death has never made any sense to me. How can a person just be there and then vanish?"

Larry, baby, listen to yourself -- talk about not making sense! People don't vanish when they die. That would be fantastic if they did: Poof, you're gone, no cleanup necessary.

Anyway, maybe he could work on that at his big company. Or else ask Elon, they must be friends.

The Risks of Parenthood

Admit it: Having a baby is a crap shoot. You don't know what you'll get. If it's healthy at birth with all limbs and organs in the right place, you can breathe a sigh of relief -- at least for a while. Pretty soon all the other stuff shows up: can it talk, does it smile, can it see and hear? Yes? Okay, time to celebrate!

But what if 22 years later your perfect baby turns out to be the killer of Charlie Kirk? How did that happen? The young man's father is the one who turned him in, and that's understandable -- he made the creature. I cannot imagine the Hell this young man's parents now occupy and will occupy for the rest of their lives, wondering what they did wrong and when they did it. Surely there was something.

I thank God, as I have since the day he was born, that my only offspring is kind, thoughtful, intelligent and empathetic, with all his limbs and organs in the right place and with a sense of humor as a bonus. Maybe my husband and I did something right after all.

Rosie O'Donnell Killed Charlie Kirk

The level of violence in America has sent me scrambling to find a new home, no easy task at my age since very few countries allow seniors to immigrate. But I'll keep searching because these United States are far from united, and the chasm between the ideologies of our political parties widens every day.

What's worse, Hollywood's biggest stars make their feelings known. This takes a toll. For example, I can no longer see any film with Robert DeNiro, who at one time was among my favorite actors. But his vicious anti-Trump rants have turned me off completely, to the point where I can never again see him as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II. Instead, he's just a rich ass who hates Republicans.

So it is with Rosie O'Donnell, shown above. Once an endearing actress who delighted fans with her stand-up routines and adorable performances in movies like Sleepless in Seattle, A League of Their Own and The Flintstones, now she's just a grumpy dyke with a huge chip on her shoulder, which she occasionally uses to hurl at some unsuspecting Republican who did the unthinkable and voted for Trump.

But wait! I thought we were done with Rosie when she fled to Ireland in early 2025, shortly after Trump was inaugurated, and applied for Irish citizenship. But now she's busy posting videos of herself making foolish comments and riling up her base, which one assumes is other grumpy Democrat dykes. A recent one cites Trump's assassination attempt as a phony setup, based on the fact that, "His ear grew back. It miraculously regenerated!"

Okay, two things: First, Trump's earlobe was not shot off, it was grazed by a bullet which caused it to bleed profusely. And second, what about Corey Comperatore, the man who was killed during that failed assassination attempt? Was he a paid actor? Is he still really alive? (Someone should tell his grieving family it never happened, they'll be delighted.) 

Incendiary comments by the likes of Rosie O'Donnell spur insane people to commit acts of violence in the name of their supposed truths. Rosie surely had a hand, albeit remotely, on the trigger that shot the bullet that killed Charlie Kirk yesterday afternoon. 

What's Good About America?

Charlie Kirk, 1988-2025

While Chuck Schumer and his ilk worry about the sexual misbehavior of Jeffrey Epstein, a very rich and now very dead man who never held any political office and mattered only to his friends and family, a crazed gunman is on the loose in Utah after murdering Charlie Kirk, the vibrant 31-year-old father of two whose only crime was being an outspoken Republican with an affinity for Donald Trump.

America is in a rapid decline. On the same day as the heinous murder mentioned above there was a school shooting in Colorado resulting in three students injured. 

Crime is rampant and shows no signs of slowing down, yet half of Congress is going bananas over an alleged birthday card from President Trump to Epstein showing a childish drawing of a woman's body. It was created 22 years ago, long before Trump had political aspirations.

Half of our Congress is a joke and who knows how many of our citizens are mentally unstable. What's good about America? Remind me.

Living With FOBM

This morning I went out to run a few errands in town. I parked my car and was just about to hop out when I noticed a young black man walking in my direction. Making sure the doors were locked, I stayed in my car until he got into a car and drove away. I did this because I suffer from moderate to severe FOBM (Fear of Black Men), and it's getting worse.

Oddly enough, my condition is much more pronounced here in Maine than years ago when I lived in Washington, DC., a majority black city. But things have gotten much worse in society since then, with black hatred of whites currently off the charts. From what we see on the news, the feeling is mutual.

Most recently, a surveillance video that has gone viral shows a young white woman enter a subway train in Charlotte, NC, take a seat and then moments later get fatally stabbed three times in the neck from behind by a black man with long dreadlocks. This incident serves to reinforce a growing racial divide leading to new cases of FOBM among white women. It's too bad, but a gut reaction is a gut reaction.

Like all of us, I am hoping for a cure. Until then I am staying off public transportation, not going out at night, walking only on busy main roads and having a pair of eyes installed in the back of my head.

Maine's #1 Sport: Virtue Signaling

Janet Mills, the current governor of Maine,  is very concerned about gays. In fact, she's concerned about all those people in the LGBTQA+ community. She's also worried about the Wabanaki, a tribe of native Americans who were here before there was anything but rocks and trees and rivers until the white man arrived and ruined everything. 

In Maine, if you are a Wabanaki you are very special indeed; some places let you in for free, like the Coastal Botanic Gardens in Boothbay which charges between $25 to $29 for adults -- tickets for students and kids are cheaper -- but is free for the Wabanaki, and all you have to do is say you are one. (Woo woo!) 

On the other hand, Jews don't count for much here. Heck, you won't get hired by LLBean if they suspect you're a Jew. But I live here anyway, mostly because to date there have been no random stabbings on the street, no people pushed onto subway tracks --there's no subway --and no mass shootings, school or otherwise. 

While it's troubling that here in Maine, every transgender, queer person or "New Mainer" is more accepted than any intelligent and societally contributive Jew, still I must admit it's very pretty here, especially in autumn. At least there's that.

Your Best Friend is Always With You

Typical American gorging at breakfast?

The illustration above accompanied an article online about how American tourists are seen by those in other countries. But who cares? According to our country's "fat acceptance movement," we should all applaud this woman for being herself and not worrying about what other people may think of her. 

Since I am constantly berating obesity in this blog, I receive plenty of hate-filled comments saying that I suck and that I must be a very unhappy person. Why else would I be so judgmental?

I'm judgmental because I have a functioning brain. And while I may be unhappy, it's not because I can't walk up a flight of stairs (without breathing hard) or fit into an airline seat (or any seat) or buy clothes off the rack or touch my toes (or see my toes) or do 50 sit-ups (or one sit-up). Though many people may dislike me, my body remains my best friend. And in the end, that's the one I need the most to be on my side.

We all do.

Boring Never Looked So Good

I just returned to Maine after three days in New York City, city of my birth, and I'm so happy to be back. Granted, I was there for an unhappy reason: a dear friend is suffering from a terminal illness and is currently hospitalized, possibly for the last time -- it's hard to know. Thus much of my time was spent at his bedside, or in the hospital lounge when he needed a break from visiting. Not fun.

Still, there were long hours spent not at the hospital but on the streets of Manhattan, which supplied plenty of their own misery. Skyscrapers so tall you couldn't see their tops, apartment buildings that looked like beehives, graffiti everywhere. But most noticeable was the non-stop blaring of sirens: ambulances, fire trucks, cop cars -- you name it, it blared -- all day with perhaps 10 minutes between blasts. 

Not that there was ever silence. The constant mayhem of street traffic was everywhere: buses, automobiles and trucks rumbling, honking and belching fumes were just one part. Another horror was the addition of New York's relatively new bike lanes tucked between the sidewalk and the parked cars, a speedway of bikers threatening to run you down if you didn't stay back, look both ways and let them pass.

Back home in Maine, boring seems heavenly.

Friends Matter More

So far September has sucked for my husband and me, as we feel sad and depressed over our dying friend in the hospital. And it's likely that he will continue to do so until he is done, which means things won't be looking up anytime soon. In fact they may get a lot worse before they start to get better. Just this one person is leaving our world and both our lives will be diminished without him. 

Meanwhile, in the Crazy Department, the front page of today's Wall Street Journal has the headline, "Afghanistan Earthquake Kills More Than 800" across the top. Since we didn't know any of those people, we aren't upset about it. Of course it's a shame, how terrible, blah, blah, blah, but we aren't losing any sleep over it. 

Funny how those strangers we meet randomly and who become our friends matter so much more than people we don't know.

Pay Attention, It Goes By Fast

Admittedly I lead a boring life. I like it that way. Small pleasures shared with a few chosen people beat the chaotic frenzy of the Woodstock Music Festival shared with thousands of strangers, which in my youth seemed exciting, albeit wet and muddy. For me now, turning over the calendar page to the first day of September is quite possibly the most exciting thing I do all year. 

Taken on its own merits, September is nothing special: still hot and muggy, with little to celebrate except the gradual lessening of mosquitos and bees in certain parts of the country, notably mine. The month slogs along until the 22nd, when it finally delivers on the promise of cooler days and even some downright cold nights with the arrival of autumn, nature's true party season.

Sadly, it all goes by in the blink of an eye and suddenly it's winter and you're shoveling snow and losing power in ice storms and disappointed that once again, Christmas was so un-Christmasy. So pay attention to every golden moment before it's just a fading glow in the rear-view mirror.

The Trouble With Old Friends

The trouble with old friends is that even if they don't gossip about you behind your back, or abandon you for someone they like better, or ultimately bore you, but instead amuse you the longer you know them, sharing your life and helping you through the hard times, they eventually still hurt you terribly by dying, leaving you bereft in a sea of strangers with nowhere to turn in the dark times. Ironically, the darkest time of all is when they're gone, which is when you need them the most.

I'm still pissed (and sad) that one of my closest friends left this world three years and one month ago, suddenly and without warning, in a random meeting with an 18-wheeler. I hated not being able to say goodbye. Now another one is on the way out and even though I've had plenty of notice, it's no better.

Yeah yeah, I know -- that's life. Well, it sucks.

Everyone's An Artist Now

The illustration shown above was a collaboration between my friend Ted DeWeese and Google's AI. Ted is not an artist despite the evidence to the contrary as seen here. Instead he works in the field of electronics maintenance. But after reading my recent post about telling AI what to draw, he decided to try it himself and came up with this fantastic image.  Below is another of Ted's creations:

According to Ted, "Each was done with a sentence less than 10 words in length." Which means it took him less than one minute to create a complex illustration any art director would love. 

So this is life now: everyone's an artist. I remember my days as a newspaper illustrator, toiling well into the wee hours of the morning over a drawing that would garner few, if any, accolades and ultimately end up in the next day's trash. So I guess AI is a good thing, except for it being a bad thing, i.e. eliminating an entire career.

At the very least you have to marvel that someone who earns his living fixing electronic equipment has this wild and crazy imagery rattling around in his brain. Who knows -- perhaps your plumber or insurance salesman is harboring an inner Picasso. Or maybe even you.

The First Gay Pope?

Pope Leo with his BFF and personal secretary, Father Edgard Rimaycuna.

The current pope, Leo XIV, is a groundbreaker on several fronts: Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost is the first pope born in the U.S., the first to hold American and Peruvian citizenship, and the first to have a live-in gay lover. At least if you ask me. 

The 69-year-old's recent decision to "break from tradition" and, rather than live alone in the customary papal lodgings, share an apartment with four roommates including his "longtime closest companion" certainly points in that direction.

Hey, I'm Jewish -- these days I've got other things to worry about. Gay, schmay -- who cares. But it seems nutty for the Catholics to have a gay pope as their leader. Considering their decades-long coverup of widespread and systemic child abuse by priests, you'd think they would aim for a lower profile, sexuality-wise.

Oh well. I guess even popes get lonely.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

One of my favorite maxims that I came across long ago is, "The only reason that Man tops the evolutionary list is because he wrote the list." Surely if all the other animals could read and write, we would be somewhere near the bottom.

An excellent example of how lame and clueless our species is can be found in what is referred to as the "9-9-9," a ballpark tradition for the last decade. It entails eating nine hot dogs and drinking nine beers during the course of a 9-inning baseball game. Sad but true, many people opt for this revolting activity which has no reward other than saying you did it. One person who thought it was a good idea wrote an article that appears in today's Wall Street Journal, in which he mentions it is "against the advice of every cardiologist ever." 

Inherent in the challenge is avoiding vomiting on anyone sitting near you. Also, it helps if you are brain-dead.

Nothing Is Real

The image above is my latest piece of work. Isn't is pretty? I created it last night, right before I went to bed. The best part is that it took less than one minute to produce, and there were no dirty paintbrushes to clean since unlike most of my paintings it was not done in oils. Instead, I used Artificial Intelligence. 

Yes, that's right, I made it using Grok. All I had to do was open the app and describe the image I wanted, and within 60 seconds this popped up. But I decided to add a window and change the background color, and told the app. It then sent me this image:

In 2025, nothing is real. Just keep that in mind the next time you read anything, see anything and hear anything. (BTW, there are exceptions: this post is real.)

All Advertising, All the Time

When I was growing up in New York, my parents attended the theater often and took me and my sister along to the hit musicals. The lights of Broadway were thrilling, as was every minute of every show. From the first notes of the orchestra to the exciting finale, the magical world of make-believe was always engrossing, capped with the crescendo of wild applause from the audience. I loved it. 

Hoping for that feeling again, a few years ago my husband and I bought season tickets to the Maine State Music Theater, located one town over. 

Despite great sets and talented performers, whatever magical feeling that may have surfaced during last night's production of West Side Story was squashed at the outset by an infomercial for the theater. The marketing director himself yammered on for too long, plugging the theater's sponsors. Among them were local bars and restaurants, a few banks, a curtain shop and a deli, their logos projected onto a black screen while the names of each were read aloud. The audience was invited to give each one of them a hand for their generosity. (Clap, clap, clap.)

The theater's marketing director doing his job -- onstage.

After that came descriptions of next year's roster, each one deserving more applause. Then special events -- clap, clap-- with discounts available in the lobby -- clap, clap, clap. I wonder -- does clapping for a bank or a grocery store differ from clapping for the actual performers? 

This boring litany happens at every show, diluting any enthusiasm one might have had going into the evening. But last night there was a bonus: Besides the pre-game yammering, a video shown during the intermission featured a giant talking head -- that of the Artistic Director this time -- spouting the same information we had heard 90 minutes earlier. Far from being magical, it was more like being at a used car auction, or maybe a bank foreclosure of mobile homes. (We're not going back.)

Jumping to Conclusions

Not every person who likes to cut up an avocado and spread it on a piece of toast for breakfast lives in Brooklyn, goes to yoga classes and has a pierced nose. These generalizations are popular among people who lack functioning brain cells and thus parrot what they hear on a podcast or see in a meme.

Summer is not always fun, full of picnics and swimming and sunshine as depicted in TV commercials. More often it's devilishly hot, severely buggy and overwhelmingly muggy, with devastating thunderstorms that can cause flooding and even death. Constant itching, asthmatic attacks, sunburns, profuse sweating and a debilitating lack of energy are the true signs of summer.

Not all white women named Karen are demanding, hate black people and think they know what's best in every situation. The two Karens that I know are both very soft-spoken and sweet, and if anything, self-deprecating to a fault, and certainly are not racist.

It's possible to be a Republican and still find fault with President Trump. Not all Trump voters think alike, which is vastly different from Democrats who all repeat whatever nonsense they heard Anderson Cooper or Rachel Maddow say on TV the night before.

Just because it is round with a hole in the middle, not everything sold as a bagel is actually a bagel. Some of them are imposters -- just round white bread with a hole in the middle. One way to tell is the presence of blueberries, cranberries or chocolate chips, all dead giveaways that you are not dealing with the real thing.

Owning a cat is not less work than owning a dog. Scooping their litter never ends. Neither does changing their water and feeding them food they will reject. Many, if not most, cats are incredibly needy and crave constant attention. Thinking they are aloof and standoffish just confirms that you never owned one.

What I Do For Love

My husband has a vegetable garden that he may love more than he loves me. At least, he loves every individual vegetable like a mother with a newborn child. Oddly enough, to show that I love him, I have to eat them. And eat them. And eat them. That means constant ingestion of whatever happens to be growing, be it broccoli, carrots, kale, lettuce, peppers, squash, zucchini, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, beets -- are you nauseous yet?

In the last couple of weeks, the zucchinis started coming at a rapid pace. That means zucchini omelets, grilled zucchini, fried zucchini, zucchini with pasta, zucchini and whatever. Despite a growing revulsion to the vegetable I have been very accommodating, but hey -- what are wives for? Until last week, when I was suddenly sickened with a severe case of -- excuse me for writing the heinous word -- diarrhea. Like really bad. Like shoot me bad.

It wasn't stopping and finally I did what I always do before calling a physician: I checked the internet. I learned that an abundance of zucchini can cause an abundance of diarrhea, especially in people with pre-existing stomach issues like IBS. That's me! There is even something worse called "zucchini poisoning" which I don't have yet but there's still time since I ate some for dinner last night before I googled it.

If we ever renew our vows, I am definitely inserting a line saying I don't have to eat the stuff he grows.

D.C. Hellscape

Ignorant people are outraged at President Trump's decision to call out the National Guard as peacekeepers in our nations' capital.  Following is a tiny part of why it's a good idea.

From 1970 until 2009 I lived in Washington, D.C. and just across the line in Maryland, with time off for good behavior (four years in Salt Lake City, a year in Baltimore and a year in Berkeley, California). During my D.C. days I was mugged by three teenage assailants in the parking lot of a Safeway supermarket, had my car stolen from a repair shop three blocks from my home, had a glass entry door broken at night by a would-be intruder at my home six blocks from the Capitol and lost two friends to murder during their home invasion in the Logan Circle neighborhood. 

Another friend was raped by two men while she was pregnant with twins, her husband forced to watch, in their Georgetown ground-floor apartment. More recently, the young son of a close friend had his throat slit one night as he was about to enter his home in the trendy neighborhood of Adams Morgan, on the same street where Justice Sotomayor lived.

I did not have one friend or acquaintance who was not the victim of crime while living in D.C. My young son -- at the time he was 19 -- had his bike taken from him just blocks from the White House, by a group of thugs who surrounded him.

Our family endured three weeks of terror in 2002 during the reign of the so-called "D.C. Sniper," when 14 random people were shot down -- seven fatally -- on the streets of the city for no reason.

I walked my dog carrying a baseball bat at night and locked my doors when I took the trash down to the end of the driveway, even in daytime.

I never slept when my husband was out of town on business, despite the fact that we had an alarm system installed. 

That's why it's a good idea.

Drunk Post, Or I Don't Care About Your Grandchildren

I had two big glasses of wine with dinner, which is twice as much as I can handle, and so now I'm pretty drunk but had to get this down before I forget.

Some people are obnoxious and ridiculously self-absorbed. Tonight I had dinner with two of them. They talked and talked and talked and talked and talked about themselves and their children and their children's jobs and then their grandchildren and how they were conceived, which was hard because their son is gay and married to a man. We had to hear every detail about the conception and the egg donors and the two surrogate mothers, and one of the fathers is the father of one child and the other is the father of the other one but they are still twins, etc., ad infinitum. ad nauseam, and then came the pictures. So many pictures.

People with grandchildren are the worst. They think people are interested, but nobody is.

Not one question was put to me. Not one shred of interest was directed at me or my husband or my husband's brother, who they know suffered a traumatic brain injury years ago.

Then it was over. Thank god. At least the food was good.

Note to self: Never go out again.

Artificial Unintelligence

If you ask me, I'm much smarter than AI. I'm also smarter than my phone and my computer and all those apps and Siri and Alexa and the whole lot of them. They think they know everything but they're wrong.

I'll give you an example. Not long ago, maybe an hour or so, I ordered a new pair of running shoes online. (Full disclosure -- I don't run anymore because I had a new hip installed nine years ago and my doc said that I could keep running if I wanted to but that I would "use up" my new hip and have to get it done again in like ten years, if I lived that long. So I walk in running shoes, okay?)

Anyway, I bought a pair and since then my computer and my phone have been flooded with ads for running shoes, including the brand I just bought. If AI is so smart, how come it can't grok that I don't need running shoes anymore since I just bought a new pair and maybe try to sell me some socks instead? Because it's dumb, that's why. It should be called AS for Artificial Stupidity.

Enough With the Talking Babies Already!

The whole thing of making videos featuring celebrities as babies was once a bright, new and original idea that was hysterical! The internet was instantly flooded with talking-baby versions of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and the casts of The Sopranos and The Golden Girls and My Cousin Vinny and Seinfeld. It was definitely worth a few hardy guffaws -- at first. But then it was everywhere, with everyone who could figure out how to do it doing it. And now it's just been- there-done-that annoying.

Sadly, that's what happens in a society where only a special few people possess the wits and intelligence to create something brand new. Through overuse by people scrolling desperately for anything different, ultimately it ends up on the trash heap of annoying copycats.

I hope and pray that happens to AI, and soon.

Metamorphoses

Tom Cruise in "Risky Business", 1983.

1) Conceived in 2004 by a group of college students, Facebook originally served as a catalog of who was "hot" and who was not, a precursor to today's dating websites like Tinder that was limited to Harvard students. In just 19 years it has turned into a miserable depository of anything and everything. Just this morning a friend of mine posted a video of a starving Israeli hostage held by Hamas inside a dark tunnel, emaciated and digging his own grave. 

2) Happy couples who are madly in love get married and then years later the husband murders his wife, or vice versa.

3) Actor Tom Cruise was once beloved by all, and now he is considered to be a creep into plastic surgery and Scientology who lies about doing his own movie stunts.

4) This blog was started in 2007 to be funny, and today I'm writing this.

Death Keeps Happening

Actress Loni Anderson, ex-wife of actor Burt Reynolds and former blonde bombshell on TV's WKRP in Cincinnati that aired from 1978-1982, recently died, just days shy of her 80th birthday. According to reports she had  battled a "serious illness" for the last year. 

Sad news, yes, but surprising? No. Yet her friend and fellow sitcom actress Barbara Eden, star of I Dream of Jeannie back in the day, posted online that she was "stunned" by the news. (BTW, Barbara is now 93 so she better be prepared for something even more stunning.)

How could anyone be stunned about the death of someone who was 80 years old and had cancer? Or even who was just 80 years old without cancer? Or even young with cancer? Or without cancer and any age? In fact, anyone at all?

We all need to get with the program and accept the fact that everyone dies -- at any time, at any age, for a variety of reasons. You can be sad about the death of a friend or loved one -- or depressed, suicidal, grief-stricken and bereft -- but seriously, you cannot be stunned, which basically means amazed, shocked, astonished, surprised, horrified and dumbstruck. 

Until we all learn to view death as a natural end to life, we will never feel relaxed.

Good Dog! (Bad Human!)

Reading the paper this afternoon, I came across two stories on the same page. One was about a teenager whose foot was badly burned at Yellowstone National Park when he stepped through the crusty earth near a boiling hot geyser. Having been to Yellowstone many times, I know that there are many signs warning visitors to steer clear of the geysers, as they pose a serious danger. So the kid must have ignored those signs and been foolhardy and oh well, too bad for him. I cared not a whit.

The next story was about a dog rescued in Parkland, Florida during a Category 5 hurricane last year by a state trooper who received a radio call about an animal trapped in rising waters. It went into great detail about how the dog's collar had gotten caught on a fence after his owner, a 24-year-old brat, left him tethered by the side of the road because he didn't want to take him along as he raced to escape the hurricane. 

I cried reading the second article, imagining the terror the dog had felt until his rescue. I hated the dog's owner, a lowly human, and was elated to read he had been tracked down and punished, and that Florida passed a law making the abandonment of animals during a storm a felony.

There is no punchline. People are truly the worst, and believe me, it's upsetting that I am one. Dogs are so much nicer, kinder, sweeter, more loyal and loving, except for pit bulls, whose inborn nature has been destroyed by generations of human owners.

How I'm Different From Kamala Harris

I'm not a moron.

I speak in complete sentences.

I'm never offended when people pronounce my name incorrectly.

I do not cackle.

I'm actually Jewish and my child never once called me "momala."

I told everyone that Joe Biden was demented.

How I'm Like Kamala Harris

I love a good green salad!

I never realized before yesterday just how much Kamala Harris and I have in common. It's uncanny, really, when you stop and think about it. For example, her rambling answers to an interviewer's questions are called "word salads," and I love all kinds of salads -- in fact, I eat at least one every single day, often two. 

Another thing is that her husband is Jewish, and so is mine! And talk about coincidences -- she was born in Oakland, California but lived in the neighboring city of Berkeley, and when I worked at the Oakland Tribune, I too lived in Berkeley. Also, while she is "leaving the door open" for a presidential run in 2028, everyone knows she will never be the President, and that's certainly true for me as well.

But perhaps the biggest similarity between us was revealed yesterday with her announcement that she won't be running for Governor of California next year (me either), explaining, "For now, my leadership and public service will not be in elected office." That is so me! In fact, just like Kamala, nobody knows what my public service is, or just how I'm a leader or to whom.

It's crazy that I never noticed all this before. It's like we're twins.

Satan Is Running the Show

Anyone who still believes that a merciful God is in control of things is delusional. I once thought that, but then I started reading the daily news. Obviously Satan has taken over our planet and has recruited a lot of willing soldiers. Be on the lookout for them; sometimes they are easy to spot.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Barbara Stanwyck in the 1948 film, "Sorry, Wrong Number"

This afternoon, while I was in the shower, I missed a call from our leading local medical conglomerate named, ironically, MaineHealth. It is described this way online: "MaineHealth is a not-for-profit family of high-quality providers and health care organizations committed to the health and well-being of the communities and people we serve."  Translation: Call us when you're sick. 

Anyway, as I said I missed the call but they left a message which threw me into a tizzy. It was from a nurse named Katrina at Portland Nephrology, saying I should call her back as soon as possible, along with a phone number. I had to Google "nephrology" and naturally freaked out thinking oh great, now I have kidney disease. Frantically scouring my brain for who might be a willing donor, I called back and of course reached nothing like a human, just a series of recordings saying how very important I am to everyone at Portland Nephrology.

I called four times, each time pressing another number and each time leaving a message along the lines of, "Am I dying? Do I need a transplant? What's wrong with me? Please call me back." All to no avail.

Finally I crossed that line in the sand and pressed the number for "If you are a physician trying to reach another physician." Annoyingly, yet thankfully, someone picked up right away. I explained my dilemma and a nice young man named Jason found my chart and said, "Nope, nothing here about you regarding nephrology. In fact, according to this chart you did not receive a call from us today."

"Oh, but I did, Jason." To prove it, I played him the phone message left by Katrina at Portland Nephrology on my landline. (Fortunately I had called him on my cell phone.)

"Hmmmm, that's odd. We are supposed to document every phone call and make notes, and there is nothing written here about a call to you from the nephrology team today. Would you like me to put Katrina on the line?"

"Please, no. Just tell her for me that she should be fired." And with that I hung up, angry at the error but also glad I hadn't had the wrong leg amputated, which happens.   At least for today I am fine kidney-wise, unlike whoever Katrina thought she was calling.
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Fat Is Not Adorable (Except In Babies)

This morning I made the mistake of posting a comment on Facebook concerning a video of an obese woman complaining that her "apron stomach" never looks good in any clothes she can find in stores. One commenter told her not to worry about it and that her stomach "is adorable." I pointed out that it was not adorable at all, and that being overweight signifies a serious addiction. Would anyone describe needle marks on a heroin user's arm as being adorable?

That same commenter found my statement "evil" and evidence that I have a "dark soul" with "a lot of work to do" to fix myself. Naturally I went straight to her personal page and saw from her posted photos that she is morbidly obese. What a surprise.

I don't care about her, but I do care about obesity. My entire childhood was spent in the enormous shadow of an obese sibling who was miserable because of her size, and who was confined to a wheelchair for the last ten years of her life -- she died recently at the age of 83 -- because she was so fat she couldn't walk. Get it?

In our twisted society, everyone hates being fat but nobody is allowed to say the word. People give themselves injections of pharmaceuticals, at great cost and with bad side effects, in their quest to avoid being fat. Children are getting fat earlier and earlier, with many developing diabetes by age 11.

Wake up, America -- we are now the fattest nation! If you aren't obese yourself, then help someone who is. 

Don't Say Nuthin' Bad About My Bibi

Okay, break's over. I was planning on staying away longer until I saw the cover of today's New York Slimes Sunday Magazine and lost my mind. (See photo.)

Not just as a Jew but as a human being, I find it repulsive, abhorrent, and downright libelous for a newspaper of record to publicly insinuate that Bibi Netanyahu, a tireless champion for his people and the state of Israel, is intentionally slaughtering innocent people in order to keep his job. 

To the contrary, he's likely sick of the whole thing and would welcome spending his remaining years lying on a beach somewhere enjoying his friends and family, and of course the company of all the freed hostages.

Bye For Now

This is my last post for a while. I'm taking a break from the Internet which
has become very sick and twisted, leading to feelings of depression,  disheartenment, disgust and more like that. 

Instead I'll be turning back to reading books for mental stimulation, starting with an old favorite shown here.

Hoping more people do the same. See ya!

Death Happens

Lately the news is full of famous, newly-dead people, including Connie Francis, Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, Chuck Mangione and that actor who played the son on The Cosby Show, which I never watched so I don't know him but his name is Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Many online comments lament their passing, but my favorite one is, "So many celebrities are dying -- what's going on?"

I had to laugh, since "what's going on" is life as usual. With the exception of Warner, who drowned at the relatively young age of 54, the others were old enough to die a natural death, if you get my drift. Dying, a normal occurrence that ends living, happens to everyone. Still, we are always shocked, even stunned, when it happens to someone close to us.

The worst thing is when a doctor says we have limited time left, like a friend of mine who was recently told she had "months to live." First of all, doctors are not gods, despite what all their mommies think. And secondly, let's not forget the actress Valerie Harper who made a public announcement that she had three months to live and then lived another three years, even making a movie during that time.

What everyone reading this has, for sure, is right now. So go make the most of it.

Nobody Knows Anything

A couple of birthdays ago, my son gave me the gift of two plants growing in adorable pots he knew I would like -- one in the shape of a cat and the other an elephant. For no reason at all I posted a photo of them on my Facebook page and a friend responded with, "Elephant trunks should always be upward for good luck!"

Needing all the help I can get in the luck department, I decided to do some research before deep- sixing the clearly unlucky elephant planter. Good thing, since a Google search netted the following statements:

"The spiritual significance of an elephant with its trunk pointed upwards is associated with good fortune and luck. This belief stems from ancient civilizations and cultures, where the elephant was revered as a symbol of strength, power and stability." -- spiritual mojo.com

2. "An elephant with its trunk down is used as a symbol for good fortune and abundance. Placing an elephant with its trunk down on your kitchen table will invite fortune and abundance into your house." -- Angelicalbalance.com
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