The Art of Living

In ad copy appearing on The Times of Israel website, a new luxury high-rise complex in Jerusalem "invites residents to participate in the art of living." That got me wondering -- am I participating in the art of living, or am I just living? And just what is the art of living anyway? It goes on to explain:

"For some, that includes enjoying the quiet of the residential Talbieh neighborhood. Or it might mean pampering oneself in the pool, gym, spa, or other amenities. Other adventures lie in the vast cultural and culinary experiences just steps away in the world’s holiest city."

I was in Jerusalem a year and a half ago and I never felt like I was pampering myself in any way. Of course I was staying in an Airbnb and couldn't even figure out how to use the washing machine. Maybe the fabulous hummus and salads could be considered "pampering," but when I wasn't eating I was counting the days until my return flight to America. 

Why? Because the whole place is so damn noisy! Just after the constant street traffic finally dies down and you fall asleep, some Arab religious leaders across the city start prayer-wailing at all hours of the morning, loud enough to wake the dead. And many of the residents are super-religious Jews who walk around in crazy outfits I found disturbing, even as a Jew myself. For example, I steered clear of the men wearing long black woolen coats in 70-degree weather and hats that looked like lampshades.

Anyway, at home in Maine I'm wondering how to participate in the art of living. Being an artist, I guess I'm halfway there. But this morning I have to go to the supermarket; could that be artful? How can I make it so? Yesterday my husband and I cleaned out the garage; that was not the art of living in my book. How can I rise above just "living"? Must I move to Jerusalem?

The search goes on.

The Worst Person In America, Part Two

I hope you don't think I am a racist because the last designated Worst Person was also black, but hey, it is what it is. And speaking of racists, today's winner of the WPIA award is Joy Reid, that creepy lady who has her own show on MSNBC, the station nobody watches.

Joy is even worse than Whoopie Goldberg, our last awardee. At least Whoopie wears dreadlocks, which is a black thing and a black thing only -- just ask Zac Efron, who was berated across the Internet when he posted a photo of himself on Instagram sporting his new hairstyle. 

Within seconds he was called out for "cultural appropriation." But Joy dyes her black hair bright blonde, definitely not a black thing, and thinks nothing of it!

That horrible witch has posted a maliciously mean Thanksgiving Day message in which she excoriates all Trump voters and says hateful things about the man himself, who by the way is her next president too. She has done the same for the past three years, insulting, denigrating and ranting about how terrible all Republicans are and in fact anyone who doesn't think as she does.

Today I will be truly thankful if Joy fatally chokes on a turkey bone and moves on from here to disgust and terrorize the poor devils in Hell. (As if it's not bad enough already down there.)

Do You Know Who This Guy Is?

Apparently this guy is a great guitarist.

If you can't trust what you read on the internet, what good is it? That's the question I'm grappling with after a recent exchange with a stranger made it perfectly clear that nothing is what it seems to be online.

I innocently queried, after seeing a photo of someone I did not recognize but whom many people were extolling, "Who are you?" OMG, you'd have thought it was a photo of Jesus Christ himself. The first answer I received was, "only the greatest guitarist who ever lived!" I responded (big mistake) with, "In your opinion," and then named some guitar greats I revered, including Alvin Lee, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. That opened a flood of nastiness aimed at me for not recognizing the guy. My favorite comment was, "Go sit down, Gen Z."

I had to look up the age range for Gen Z. What a riot! I told the commenter I had been at Woodstock, attended the Beatles' first US concert, went to the Fillmore East every weekend during college, etc., etc., and sorry but I didn't know the person pictured, maybe I was too stoned all those years. Turns out he was the lead guitarist from Pink Floyd whose name I already forgot.

Anyway, the rude commenter thought I was between the ages of whatever you are if born between 1997 and 2012. He/she was so wrong.

Whither Goest Kamala?

My favorite news story of the day is that Kamala Harris is considering a run for the presidency in 2028. This is interesting on so many levels. To begin, what part of "Nobody Likes You" does Harris not understand? 

She was the butt of jokes for her first three years as Vice-president, and became a bigger one in her last year while running for president. Is she hoping that everyone now alive will be dead by then and she will be presenting herself to voters who hadn't heard about her blowing her billion-dollar campaign chest on hair, makeup and Oprah?

Next, hasn't she heard that DEI is dead? The fact that she is a black(ish) female will count for nothing four years from now. And judging by the way things are going, in 2028 you'll probably have to be an AI-created robot to even run for office, let alone get elected to anything at all. 

Another possibility being floated for Harris is governor of California. That also seems unlikely since by 2028 the state will have been obliterated by forest fires, floods, mudslides and the Big One we've been hearing about for years. 

I hear McDonald's is hiring for all positions. And with her past employment, she's a shoo-in.

Uniting the United States

This country would be a lot better off without Whoopie Goldberg, Joy Behar -- in fact the whole damn lot of them on "The View," especially that horrible Anna Navarro. We also might live well and prosper minus The New York Times, CNN, Anderson Cooper, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and all the rest of the whining babies who still can't believe that more than half of their countrymen (and women) feel differently than they do!

Annoyingly, they persist in insisting that Trump "botched the pandemic," despite his fast-tracking a vaccine in record time. The real botcher of the pandemic was evil Dr. Anthony Fauci. The lefties love the guy for some reason that defies comprehension since he had a direct hand in the original creation of the virus. 

The tone-deaf Democrats are already looking two years ahead to the midterms instead of working towards uniting what we oddly call "The United States of America."

Big Fat Dummies

Big Mamma

 No, it's not your imagination and you don't need new glasses -- store mannequins really have been putting on weight. On a recent shopping expedition to LLBean's in Freeport, Maine, the fake dummies were giving the real dummies a run for their money girth-wise. The only thing distinguishing them from real people is their lack of a head. (See photo, left.) It makes sense, as marketers are tasked with making goods appealing to the widest range -- no pun intended -- of buyers.

Even more disturbing is that despite obesity rates being virtually the same for both genders -- 32% for men, 34% for women -- only the female dummies are getting fatter. The males are all very trim and in great shape, and despite being headless were more attractive than most of the people walking around the store. 

Today's "curvy" lady and her outdated counterpart.

The guys are ready for a strenuous hike.

Help Is On the Way!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., age 70, keeping in shape.

Three weeks ago my older sister died from obesity. Okay, she was about to turn 84 so Death was certainly lurking around her neighborhood. But weighing about 300 pounds and hardly moving every day, she was an easy mark. While many people live to be much older than that, none of them are overweight. Actors Clint Eastwood, 94, Joan Collins, 91, and Jane Fonda almost 87, are all in great shape, i.e. not fat. (Ditto a personal friend of mine, Ron Holley, who at 87 is stronger than many men half his age.)

Obesity kills in many ways, with heart disease, stroke and diabetes among the leading causes. Most often obesity is caused by taking in more calories than the body needs, which then are stored as fat. Put more simply, it's from stuffing your face with processed foods laden with tasty and addictive garbage that contain no nutritional value. Added to this is a lack of exercise, a.k.a sitting on your fat ass playing video games or watching Netflix.

The good news for those humans paying attention is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promises to be somewhat of a savior, having been tasked by President-elect Trump with making Americans healthier. This is a worthy goal and everyone who values living a long, healthy life should applaud his efforts and spur him on, instead of parroting that he's against vaccines, which by the way he is not -- he's just against vaccines for himself, you can do whatever you want. This is still a free country despite the past four years of government-sanctioned censorship and woke rulings by the misguided Democrats. 

So don't worry, be happy: Help is on the way! You don't have to shoot yourself up with costly chemicals every month to lose weight; all you have to do is eat well and get some exercise. 

Easy to Be Hard

So many strangers are so mean-spirited and nasty, it's getting tougher and tougher to "have a nice day" if you dare leave your home. Funny thing -- everyone is always telling you to have a nice day, despite not giving a damn about you. Most people couldn't care less if you are depressed, just found out you have cancer or have to put your dog down, they only say it so they won't be fired from their job as a supermarket checkout person, server, convenience store clerk or whatever.

Today I was actually having a nice day until I went to my local post office to mail some bills. I noticed just in time that I had put the payment slip into one envelope upside-down so that the address was not showing. Trying to open it carefully to remedy the situation, I still ripped the envelope and needed some Scotch tape to fix it. No big deal, right?

Wrong. The bitchy postmistress, who everyone in town hates because she is, well, bitchy, refused to give me some tape. "Get your own damn tape," she barked, adding, "I'm not even allowed to give you tape."  I asked if she could tape it herself. "That's not my job, you did it, you fix it!" (This is a woman who does very little work, since ours is a teeny, tiny post office with few customers, and thinks nothing of closing hours early to attend to personal business.)

I am not proud to say that I completely lost my mind, yelling vulgarities at her as I left while tossing all my collected junk mail on the floor of the facility. Then I drove home and wrote a formal complaint about her to the USPS, as if that will do anything. But it made me feel better, just like writing this is making me feel better. In fact, if I had written this post right away I might not have eaten all that peanut butter straight from the jar. (With a spoon of course, I'm not an animal.)

Peanut butter is so much nicer than most people.

Kudos to Kennedy

The human race is in big trouble. People are getting fatter and sicker from the poisons they ingest daily, often without their knowledge. At the same time they are getting dumber, dimming the likelihood of halting the damage being done to them by food purveyors profiting from the average American's outsized appetite. 

The biggest pushers of lies and propaganda are the advertising agencies that create happy stories concerning the foods we eat. Their very existence depends on us believing those woke commercials full of blacks, gays and mixed-race couples hired to distract us from whatever garbage they are hawking.

Weight-loss is a leading moneymaker, especially online. I recently saw a commercial for a company selling smoothies that would make pounds disappear miraculously just by drinking them. The ad showed a fat young woman who supposedly weighed 180 pounds, then showed her at 134 pounds after using their product. Oddly enough, she had a tattoo sleeve on her left arm when she was fat that was on her right arm when she was thinner. Plus she had a different face! I mean really, just how dumb do they think we are?

Who knows -- maybe we are that dumb. Democrats are melting down over Trump's appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, repeating the tired charge that he's an "anti-vaxxer." The real reason they hate RFK is because he promises to go after the manufacturers of those addictive, unhealthy foods that turn well-proportioned, healthy American kids into big fat diabetic blobs by the time they hit their teen years. Naturally they just keep getting fatter as adults, which is why Americans now have the lowest life expectancy of all other high-income countries. 

So drop the bag of Cheetos and do some research on RFK. He's not just against vaccines, he's against you dying young.

Democrats Gone Wild!

One of  the latest to fall ill from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is Laura Helmuth, former editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine, following her mental breakdown after the election. Her bratty rant about Donald Trump voters went viral on X, and even though she eventually deleted the posts it was too late -- she was canned anyway, so kudos to Scientific American. (Who wants to lose 50% of their readers?)

It is well-known in publishing circles that when Covid showed up in 2020, Helmuth developed a tip sheet for journalists covering the pandemic, saying that, "repetition makes misinformation feel more true." That's some tip!

Posting online, Helmuth called Trump voters "the meanest, dumbest, most bigoted” group, and “fascists.” After her comments went viral she backed down, obviously lacking the courage of her convictions. In fact, they aren't even her convictions -- she was just repeating things she heard until they felt true, just like she had instructed her journalists.

Helmuth has since apologized, calling her comments “offensive and inappropriate. I respect and value people across the political spectrum. These posts do not reflect my beliefs; they were a mistaken expression of shock and confusion about the election results.”

Hardy har har, Laura. Yup, you'll get a new job somewhere soon. You might try McDonald's, I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once  hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. I hear they once hired Kamala Harris. 

It's A Good Time to Be A Shrink

Let's recap: The Republicans won the White House, the Senate, the House and hold a majority in the Supreme Court. Trump won not only in the Electoral College but also won the popular vote. Clearly, more Americans today are in sync with the policies and proposals of the Republican Party than with those of the Democrats.

And yet the depressed, delusional and disdainful Democrats are out there, on TV and in print, shamelessly advocating that their followers are right to cut Republican friends and family members from their Christmas celebrations and exclude them from Thanksgiving dinners.

It's a sorry state of affairs when so many depressed people are in need of psychiatric help all at the same time. On the flip side, it's a great time to be a shrink! For the next four years -- possibly eight -- they can rake in big bucks helping the losers through the five stages of grief, all while the meter is running.