The Sheer Folly of Being Human

Ted Bundy was not very nice, but cute.

If you put a gun to my head I still could not explain why Kim Kardashian is famous. I get that she's rich: her birth father was a successful lawyer and self-made businessman born into an affluent family and her stepfather was a former Olympic gold medalist followed by a career in television, film, writing, auto racing, business and as a Playgirl cover model (before going crazy and turning into a "woman"). But Kim has done little herself besides getting a very big butt and huge breasts from injections of chemicals.

Her sisters are all famous as well, even more so after their stepfather lost his mind, grew his hair and fingernails long and started wearing tight dresses and high heels and became the famous-for-no-reason Caitlyn Jenner. 

So what is fame anyway? Is it simply kudos from strangers for being outrageous and different? Standing out from the crowd? Does society need famous people in order to thrive? Is it to give the masses something to think about because they lack the intelligence to read works by great writers and philosophers and make something of their own lives? 

Here are some famous people who lack innate talent, yet they pop up in the news (unless they are dead) and on TV talk shows.

Monica Lewinsky: Had sex with a sitting United States President, then started making handbags.

Ted Bundy: Murdered at least 30 women in four years (1974-78). Was handsome.

Jeffrey Dahmer: Killed and dismembered 17 males, eating some of their body parts.

Paris Hilton: Born into a rich family that owns a lot of hotels; has done nothing of note personally.

Chastity Chaz Bono: Had very famous and talented parents and changed her gender.

Cool It, Nikki!

I don't shock easily; most New Yorkers don't. Probably the last time was when the Twin Towers were felled by a group of Muslim scumbags, and that was 22 years ago. 

The preceding sentence uses the word "scumbag" appropriately, meaning "low, vile or worthless person or group of people." You call someone "scum" when their behavior is utterly reprehensible, like President Bill Clinton having sex with an intern in the Oval Office, or pundit/lawyer Jeffrey Toobin masturbating during a live Zoom call with his colleagues at The New Yorker. 

During last night's Republican Debate, demure ex-Governor, ex-U.N. Ambassador and current candidate for the presidency Nikki Haley hurled the word at fellow debater Vivek Ramaswamy when he mentioned her daughter. I was truly shocked.

It's not as if he called her daughter a slut or accused her of selling drugs to toddlers. He simply said that she uses TikTok, which was at the moment under discussion for being a dangerous Chinese surveillance tool. And for that Nikki spat out, "Leave my daughter out of your voice. You're just scum!" That's what I call a short fuse, maybe a bit too short for a president.

Film Review: DOWNSIZING

Matt Damon, still big, and his pal Jason Sudekis,
post-downsizing, discuss the pros and cons of getting small.

If you are a fan of bad cinema, this one should be on your list, maybe even at the top. Downsizing was released in 2017 and nobody saw it, or those who did likely forgot it, or tried, the minute they left the theater. Back before Covid people went to places called "movie theaters." They had to either walk out or sit through a dog film to the end. Luckily I watched it on my big-screen television at home, so I could fast forward when necessary. And trust me, it was necessary quite often.

Starring Matt Damon, who looks sick about it during the whole thing -- you could tell he was thinking, "Find new agent immediately" -- and Kristen Wiig for about the first 20 minutes then she's gone, it starts out with some promise along the lines of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids but without the humor. They play married couple Paul and Audrey Safranek who decide to undergo a new medical procedure that miniaturizes people, invented to save the planet from the coming ravages of overpopulation. 

At five inches tall, people exhaust fewer natural resources and create much less waste, etc. But the real perk, as explained  by their already-small friend (Jason Sudekis), is that their money goes a lot further. Like a lot further. In the upscale small community where they will live, they can afford a huge mansion instead of the tiny dump they now inhabit in Normal-land.

The first part is fun, as is watching the details of the procedure one undergoes to get small. After that, all is lost. It's a big mish-mash, brightened briefly by the charm and considerable acting skills of Christophe Waltz, and God only knows who and how they talked him into doing this film.

Spoiler alert: Audrey chickens out at the last minute and stays big, leaving Paul a lonely, unhappy teeny-tiny divorced man. We follow him to Small World (called something else) where he is awkward and seemingly suicidal (and who could blame him), until he meets a one-legged Vietnamese cleaning lady who introduces him to the incredibly slummy side of life beyond the walls of his fabulous gated community, where the service people live. 

Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward, went to the bathroom, got a snack, thank you God for letting me fast forward, finally came back to find that Paul, who was an occupational therapist in Normal-land, has become a doctor and now dedicates himself to caring for the sick and dying tiny slum people. Oh yes, and he has fallen in love with the Vietnamese lady and makes her a new prosthetic leg.

I'm leaving out all the stuff about the members of the cult in Sweden who go to live underground for 8,000 years until the Earth stabilizes after the horrible things that will happen. (I was in the kitchen.)

See what I mean?

Feeding Campus Anti-Semitism

A Jewish student at Carnegie Mellon University discovered swastikas and anti-Semitic comments written inside a campus library book.

Many American colleges and universities have accepted billions of dollars in donations from undisclosed foreign countries, among them China, Qatar and Russia. Coincidentally, anti-Semitic threats and actions on those particular campuses taking the most money have risen 400% from a year ago.The number one school taking foreign donations is Carnegie-Mellon University, my husband's alma mater and the recipient of thousands of dollars from our bank account over the 37 years of our marriage. 

Because my husband received so much scholarship money to attend that school, he has long insisted that we continue our charitable support because "he owes them," despite my insistence that spoiled rich kids at elite schools are much less needy than actual needy people who lack food, shelter, clothing and access to medical treatments.

Now it has been learned that Mitch's hard-earned cash has gone towards fueling anti-Semitism at his beloved CMU. Excuse me while I pull my hair out. (I'd pull out his but he doesn't have any.)

The Bright Side of World War III

Long ago I realized that my husband and I are polar opposites in just about every area of life. Describing him as a "glass is half-full" person while I'm more of a "glass is half-empty" type doesn't come remotely close. More accurate would be that his glass is overflowing and dripping down the table leg and onto the floor while I'm wondering how come I didn't get any at all. 

However, recent world events have further highlighted the stark differences in our temperament to an alarming degree. Like many Jews, naturally we are greatly concerned with the war raging in Israel that threatens to overtake the entire globe, as well as the growing antisemitism gripping college campuses and major cities here at home. But our views of the future have nothing in common. 

While I often worry aloud about a possible nuclear World War III, or that "any day now we'll be forced to wear yellow armbands, and the next thing you know it's a gas shower for us," Mitch says to look at the bright side. "Nobody who ever lived before us until this very minute got to witness the End of the World, so it would be pretty wild if we were here for it. And really, if you think about it, gas showers are a time-honored tradition for the Jews."

I am not making this up.

Rashida Tlaib Has A Big Mouth (and she's ugly too)

The world is falling apart, young men and women are dying in several horrific wars, hostages are sick and starving, protesters are calling for the death of all Jews, and yet some random woman I don't know and will never know is picking a fight with me on Facebook after I wrote that Governor Glenn Youngkin is right to ban abortions after 15 weeks. Am I not entitled to my opinion?

The need to be right has overtaken every last brain cell of every last person who engages in arguments with strangers online. If you dare to say something someone disagrees with, they never respond, "Gee, I feel differently about that." No, they have to prove that you are wrong and they are right, even if it's all just opinions and thus there can be no proof. And so they go on and on and on, digging in even harder like a pit bull on an ankle bone. 

If you don't believe that a blatant racist like Michigan's Muslim Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib should be kicked out of office for chanting that Israel must be wiped off the map, I detest you. But I won't fight you about it since you are simply parroting what you hear other Democrats saying, and you want to be woke just like them. 

I had a couple of friends like that once, but I dumped them for being too stupid. One of them believes that plastic drinking straws will bring about the end of the planet, and the other one gave $3,000 over the phone to a stranger who called her and claimed she had outstanding parking tickets. This is the intelligence level of the people currently chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." 

There's simply no arguing with idiots.

A Harsh Reality

The photo above is of a fetus at 15 weeks. Looks like a human being to me, not just a "collection of cells." There's a head, ears, eyes, a nose, a mouth, shoulders, a chest, a rib cage, arms, hands and legs, all covered with skin. Inside there is a skeleton.

Yet in today's New York Times, in an article about Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin offering voters an "alternative to MAGA," it reports that his agenda still contains "plenty of harsh conservative elements," like "his call for a 15-week ban on most abortions." That's harsh? 

In 1973 I went for an abortion at Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C. and was literally kicked out the door when the doctor who was about to perform the procedure examined me and determined that the fetus was about 12 weeks old. Outraged, he literally yelled, "You've got a baby in there!" 

My, how times have changed.

Kamala Is No "Mamala"

Our idiot veep Kamala Harris is married to a Jew, in case you hadn't heard. Yet she just came out with a video saying that this is a really bad time in America because of the increase in Islamaphobia. WTF? Where has she been? (Certainly not at our southern border.) Has she not heard about the latest craze sweeping the nation: Antisemitism?

Talking about her "national plan" to help the poor 😢 Palestinians, she said, "This strategy will be a comprehensive and detailed plan to protect Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim from hate, bigotry and violence and ... blah fucking blah.

On her Facebook page Harris describes herself as, "Wife. Mamala. Auntie. She/her." I beg to differ. First of all, "mamala" is a Yiddish word for mother. Maybe she ate a bagel once, but that's about as Jewish as she is. Anyway, I think she's a tranny, so "she" cannot be a mother in any language. 

Nine Democrats: The Tip of the Iceberg?

Rashida makes a fashion statement: Her scarf, called a keffiyeh, is a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. The black-and-white keffiyeh is popular among activists supporting Palestine in the conflict with Israel and is an icon of Palestinian solidarity.

Led by the loud-mouthed "Squad" member Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, eight other Democrats voted against condemning Hamas for its murderous terror attack on October 7 at a peaceful music festival in Israel, killing 1,400.

Yet they all remain our elected lawmakers. How many more remain silent? 

I'll Never Eat Chinese Food Again

Patrick Dai, a Chinese-American student at Cornell, faces five years in jail for his hateful antisemitic scrawls all over the Internet. His parents, in his defense, claim he has been, "in a deep depressive state since 2021."

Me too, but now I feel even worse. And to think I once wanted to go to Cornell.

I'm pissed. Maybe I'll call a lot of Chinese restaurants and place extensive orders and never pick them up. (That's about the worst I can imagine doing.)

The Fraud of Fame

Judy Garland's fabulous talent led to a miserable existence.

Based on the behavior of most celebrities, there are two roads to fame: The first is having innate talent and showing it to the world, and the second is engaging in outrageous behavior that gets tongues wagging. (There's another way, which is how Kamala Harris is now our VP, but I won't go into that here.) What I wonder is why anyone in their right mind would seek fame. And therein lies the answer: in their right mind.

Actor Matthew Perry, whose recent death caused a worldwide outpouring of grief among an entire generation of Friends-devotees, said repeatedly, in print and in interviews, that he wanted to be famous. He even admitted to praying to God, "make me famous." Well, his prayer was answered and famous he was, although it did nothing to alleviate his pain and suffering, ending in his dying alone in a hot tub at his $6 million California mansion at the age of 54.

Yet many young people still worship fame and waste their fleeting youth trying to achieve it, only to find out too late that it's a worthless commodity having very little to do with happiness, security and a fulfilling life.