The Last Days

There were few people left. Most had opted to leave and go to Zaptar years ago. After all, Earth had become an unfriendly place to all but the ridiculously good-looking, the very young and the super-wealthy. Everyone else was chopped liver, scrounging around for a handout or a pat on the head. So when the government offered free rides to Zaptar, no questions asked, most average people went, hoping to at least be able to live out their lives in peace and maybe hear some music on the Intercom and get a candy bar every once in awhile.

Barlow had stayed. He was very handsome and tall and muscular and completely hairless, with beautiful green eye implants, just like all the other men on Earth. (See photo above.) In fact, everyone looked pretty much the same, with a few differences here and there supplied by tattoos and body piercings. His wife Grenada was of course also beautiful, with long, flowing hair and a generous bosom. Together they had three gorgeous kids who all attended the School and were studying to become broadcast journalists like their parents. With non-stop news running 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the huge monitors that were everywhere, it was quite a lucrative profession, even more prestigious than becoming a movie star, lawyer or plastic surgeon.

Most of the news they reported had to do with who was dating who, the newest advances in Youth Surgery, and most importantly, the latest fashion trends. Shoes had become very important, and anyone not properly shod risked ridicule. People of all sexes wore high heels, and the higher the better.

Everyone was sent to Zaptar on their 36th birthday on what was called the End of Life Flight. On Zaptar, nobody wore makeup and many people still wore sandals and denim jeans, both of which were outlawed back on Earth.

Everyday Magic

It is now 52 degrees here in Freeport, Maine, and that's just crazy! Last year we got snow three days before Halloween and never saw the grass again until May; this year we have not yet had one flake. Everyone is buzzing about it, wondering if this is global warming rearing its ugly head, but I know the truth.

When I was growing up, before my mother learned to drive (when I was 16 and she was ashamed because I got my license and she didn't have hers), we took the bus everywhere, except when we took the train.  On a typical afternoon we'd be waiting at the bus stop, and waiting and waiting, until finally my mother, frustrated, would pull out one of her Kents and light it up, saying, "Watch this, now the bus will come." And it pretty much always did, pretty much right away, causing her to grumble about wasting a perfectly good cigarette.

So this year, after the last six winters of getting stuck and being afraid to drive in a blizzard, I finally gave in and spent $1,000 on snow tires ($1,120 counting labor). So far we're well into December and we haven't seen as much as a frozen raindrop. If I knew I had inherited my mother's powers I would have used them long ago.

Top 10 Reasons Obama Sucks (IMHO)

The Leader of the Free World out for a spin.

1. He continues to say "ISIL" even though the rest of the world (except his underlings) says "ISIS," yet offers no explanation for his deviation from the norm. Just tell us why, once and for all!

2. His ears are way too big, making him look just like Curious George, a fictional character. This is distracting and makes it hard to pay attention when he gives one of his boring speeches or attempts to give a bumbling news conference without a script.

3. He abruptly ended his 20-year-long friendship with a man he had respected for 20 years (yes I know I already said that) because it made him look bad. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright often spewed hatred against white people in his weekly sermons, yet Obama later claimed in his own defense that he "wasn't listening." Well then what was he doing there anyway?  

4. He looks very silly when attempting anything remotely physical or athletic. (See photo above.)

5. He hates Israel and Bibi Netanyahu. As a Jew, this offends me.

6. He sent his daughters to a ritzy, ultra-private, over-the-top expensive middle and high school in Washington, D.C. instead of setting a great example and uplifting every single African-American citizen in the nation's capital (and the entire country) by sending his kids to the mostly-minority public schools, like former president Jimmy Carter did with his daughter Amy.

7. Talk about low energy -- he often seems like he took too much Valium. This might explain why he comes off as weak, ineffectual and sort of girly (not that there's anything wrong with that) most of the time.

8. He married Michelle, a woman who admitted she was "never proud of her country" until he was elected. (WTF?)

9. His middle name, Hussein, is off-limits. Years ago, when he was first running for office, his opponent John McCain was asked by a reporter if it was ever appropriate to use the Senator's middle name. McCain said, "No, it is not. Any comment that is disparaging of Senator Obama is totally inappropriate." So just saying his middle name is disparaging him. Huh?

10. I'm pretty sure he's a radical Muslim terrorist.

Dumb Laws

Have you noticed that every single legal prescription drug advertised comes with a long list of negative side effects, including a warning that it "may cause suicidal thoughts or actions," while smoking marijuana causes one to be mellow and relaxed and yet it remains illegal? With 40,000 suicides annually, translating into one every thirteen minutes or so, we can only surmise that our government is using prescription drugs --there are currently more than 6,600 on the market -- as a form of population control. (Oops, there goes another one.)

A Look on the Bright Side

All those pundits are quick to find fault with politicians. Well I for one am sick of all the negativity. For a change, instead of tearing them all down I will say something positive about every one of the candidates currently in the running. After all, one of them will surely be our next president, so we'd better start liking them now.

Hillary Clinton owns four multi-million dollar mansions, and one 0f them is in Chappaqua, NY. That's a lovely town, I spent a bit of time there back when I was married to my first husband whose father often missed the train in Armonk and so then we would race to Chappaqua for him to catch it there. He was such a great guy.

Donald Trump has made a lot of money, and many people talk like that's a bad thing. But money is great; you can buy anything with it, like all those mansions Hillary Clinton has.

Chris Christie is not as fat as he once was, and I am envious. I have been trying to lose five pounds all year and here it is December already and instead I'm up two. Christie's got it all over me!

Ted Cruz is Cuban and my parents went to Cuba on their honeymoon. They had a great time, and I loved them both dearly.

Marco Rubio is also Cuban, and Cuban food is the best. There was this Cuban restaurant in Washington, D.C. called The Omega, and this one dish, called "morsels of pork," was to die for.

Jeb Bush looks, acts and sounds just like his mother, Barbara Bush, and who doesn't love her? There is the Barbara Bush Pediatric Center at our local hospital here in Maine, and she drops in from time to time to visit the kids. What a great lady.

John Kasich is governor of Ohio, a key swing state. I love swings; they were always my favorite on the playground as a kid. Much safer than the monkey bars or the seesaw, which is also known as a teeter-totter.

Bernie Sanders is a Jew. Oy, finally! Need I say more?

Carly Fiorina looks damn good for 61, or any age, really. There's all this talk about her face not being right, but admit it -- she certainly has a rockin' bod.

Mike Huckabee used to have his own TV show on Fox News, and I like Fox News. Say what you will, but I think all the media is slanted in one direction or another. For example, have you seen Rachel Maddow? Now she is ridiculously slanted.

Rand Paul once gave a speech to Congress for almost eleven hours. Presidents need to do a lot of talking, so he's obviously up to the job.

Good thing this list doesn't include Obama, because I can't think of anything good to say about him.

Who's Buying Baby Parts?

There's been a lot of commotion over videos allegedly showing employees of Planned Parenthood "selling baby parts for profit." The whole topic has become a political football, with one side claiming the practice is barbaric and reprehensible, calling for the organization to be shut down, while the other side ignores it and instead focuses on all the good the organization does for women's health. But as often happens when journalists slant the news to fit their own agendas, many pertinent questions remain unanswered. Here are two I am dying to know, and I'm sure I'm not alone:
1. Just who is buying these baby parts?
2. Exactly what are they doing with them?

My suspicion is that they are being used for research purposes to help find cures for diseases that plague our society, but nobody ever says this. Someone should get on that right away and calm everyone down. Inquiring minds want to know.

No News Is Good News

Our home-delivered newspaper awaits at the end of the driveway. 

Every morning I go out there and get it. That two-minute walk is usually the best part of my day, before I open the paper and read the news.

  Usually the front page shows something horrific; dead people or a 
war somewhere. But here in Maine where all is peaceful, 
knowledge of distant horrors helps nobody, least of all me.

I'd like a newspaper with pretty pictures on the front page. 

Maybe then I wouldn't need three kinds of medication for high blood pressure.

Silly, Sappy, Lovey & Dovey

Much better photo than you and your sweetie pie hugging.

Facebook profile pictures of couples hugging make me nauseous.

Okay, so you have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend, or a whatever-it-is. How nice for you both. We're all so pleased. Not really, many of us couldn't give a damn since we're busy fighting cancer or trying to pay the mortgage or dealing with a bad boss. But there you are, a-huggin' and a-kissin' on Facebook, for all the world to see. Why is that? Have you no sense of dignity? And besides, are you no longer an individual?

What compels people to post those sappy photos, or to write things like, "I love my sweetie with all my heart and just want to say to the whole world that I wish him/her a happy birthday and could not live without him/her." It's embarrassing and it's got to stop. You look like a couple of fools, especially after you break up.

What's So Funny?

Yesterday when I picked up my mail at the post office, the current issue of The New Yorker topped the pile of unwanted magazines. This is where I toss my copy of Wine Spectator when it arrives each month despite my begging their head of circulation to stop sending it. Anyway, I grabbed The New Yorker since A, I am a New Yorker and B, I used to enjoy it back in the days before it became a liberal rag with an agenda and the cartoons were almost always funny. Turns out the cartoons are no longer even a little funny, the movie reviews are even more obtuse than I remember, and the one column labeled "humor" did not solicit so much as a grin.

This made me wonder if comedy is no longer funny because the world is in such a mess or because I am older and actively aging and what's funny about that? (FYI, nothing.) Added to that, political correctness has robbed us of some of the best material. This explains why new superstar comic Amy Schumer has risen to the top talking about anal sex, oral sex, in fact any old sex at all, stringing together dirty punchlines with words like shit, cunt, fuck, ass and pussy, ha ha ha. Give me Henny Youngman, the "King of the One-Liners" any day. Here are some of his old jokes:

A man calls a lawyer's office. The phone is answered, "Schwartz, Schwartz, Schwartz and Schwartz." The man says, "Let me talk to Mr. Schwartz." 
"I'm sorry, he's on vacation." 
"Then let me talk to Mr. Schwartz." 
"He's on a big case, not available for a week." 
"Then let me talk to Mr. Schwartz." 
"He's playing golf today." 
"Okay, then, let me talk to Mr. Schwartz." 
"Speaking." 

My wife got a mudpack and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off. 

The doctor says to the patient, "Take your clothes off and stick your tongue out the window."
"What good will that do?" asks the patient. 
The doctor says, "Nothing. I'm mad at my neighbor!" 

People ask me the secret of my long marriage. It's simple, I say. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week: a little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.

My wife will buy anything marked down. Last year she bought an escalator. 

A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor tells him, "You're crazy." 
The man says, "I want a second opinion!" 
"Okay, you're ugly too!" 

Recently I read about the evils of drinking, so I gave up reading.

A bum on the street approached me and said, "Give me $10 till payday." 
I asked, "When's payday?" 
He said, "How should I know, you're the one who's working."

Those two are a fastidious couple -- she’s fast and he’s hideous.
 
My wife and I went back to the hotel where we spent our wedding night, only this time I was the one who stayed in the bathroom and cried.

My doctor told me I'd live to be 60. 
I told him, "I already am 60!" 
"See," he said, "I was right."
  
I told my doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.

Customer Disservice Wednesday

The world is truly going to Hell in a handbasket. (I have no idea what a handbasket is, or how it can hold so much stuff, but my husband uses that expression all the time and I like it.) The point is, besides wars, terror attacks, fleeing refugees, homelessness, drug addiction and disease, civility and basic decency are in the toilet, and I don't just mean Donald Trump.

Wanting to participate in Small Business Saturday since we had blown off Turkey Thursday and Black Friday, and seeking new carpeting for our bedroom since what we've got now is twenty years old, vomit-stained from three cats, and ugly besides (it came with the house), my husband and I went to a local flooring place instead of a big box store like Home Depot. We spent almost an hour there and finally chose two contenders, leaving with carpet samples and a promise that someone would call us Monday morning to arrange a meeting with an estimator in our home and get the ball rolling.

Monday morning nobody called, so I phoned the store around noon. The woman who answered said nobody was there to help me but could she have my name, address and phone number and someone would call me later that day. Nobody did. So I called back on Tuesday. A different lady answered, put me on hold, then came back and requested my name and phone number, assuring me someone would call later that day to set up an appointment. Nobody did.

A sucker for punishment, I called again this morning and was put on hold for about ten minutes while the receptionist went to "find" the person who could help me, which I didn't quite understand since the store is about the size of my garage so how hard is it to find someone? Finally she returned and said someone would call me back but could she have my contact information since she couldn't find any record of me in their system. I said that was alarming since I had given it three times already. I then said goodbye.

Ten minutes later a man from the carpet store called and said they were very busy, had all the work they needed, and suggested that if I was "already upset going out of the gate," maybe I should go elsewhere.

Second Opinion

A specialist in tooth and gum problems who I like a lot has declared that I am in need of a tooth-pulling, to the tune of $3,000. It seems the tooth is fine but the surrounding gums have a problem. The plan is to get rid of the tooth, then fill the resulting hole with bone from someone else (God knows who), allowing my own bone to regenerate and eventually support a screw which will, many months from now, be the base for a new, albeit fake, tooth. This all sounds horrible to me. But hey, I'm no expert, and so I agreed to embark upon this nightmare scenario scheduled to begin in three days.

The sad part is that right now I have no pain at all and starting Friday I will have plenty, requiring massive doses of painkilling drugs and ice packs and sedatives and whatever else it takes. Sounds bad, doesn't it?

Unlike my standard procedure with everyone else who tells me anything at all, when it comes to doctors I just accept their word as gospel and go with their plan, despite the fact that my personal history has repeatedly proven that "plan" to be desperately wrong. Then yesterday, a wise friend of mine pointed out that just because the doctor involved is a great guy with a sterling personality doesn't necessarily mean he's right. So for the first time in my life, I'm getting a second opinion. (I hope I like it better.)