Friday, November 6, 2020

Long time gone

Gee. Time doesn't pass quickly when one is having fun, nor does it pass quickly when one is miserable.

So, having been miserable for weeks, I'm anxiously awaiting the end of my trauma, for the world to know that it can be set right again, and for my family and friends to speak to one another again.

I fear it is going to be difficult. Too many things have been said or avoided to be easily forgotten and mended.

And when the only thing making me the least bit happy is watching Aquaman several times, well, what does that tell you? The world has been too much with me, late and soon, Mr. Wordsworth.

But, no matter what happens in the next few days or weeks, I remain hopeful. And we should all feel that way. There are too many bad days, too many pains and illnesses, too many broken people for us to completely give up on doing what is right and healing our hearts and minds.

If this is not my normal post, I have to tell you that I have my late autumn pain in my side. I cannot regulate my body temperature, going from hot to cold to hot to sweating. Every year for the past 11 years, I have felt this. Every year I hiccup when I turn. I lose my balance. I get that dark line on my right thumb, and I think, well, it is back and this time, I won't make it through.

But I will never give up. I have dealt with phantom pains and feelings for a decade.

 This time is no different and this time, I will be okay.





Two of the people who attended this remission party have passed away. I miss them terribly. They were not as fortunate as I have been. Take care of them, God.

Monday, October 5, 2020

Tomorrow I get the braces off

It has been since February 8, 2019 since I've been wired. The reason I had my teeth straightened, again, was because my teeth had gone back to the original condition, as in when they first came through the gums when I was about 8.

Crooked and horrible.

I wore braces from the end of 5th grade until I finally


 had them taken off between freshman and sophomore year in college.

A long time. When they came off, I remember smiling all day because there was nothing for my lips to catch on to. I felt human and grown up and pretty. So I kept smiling.

I took photos of my teeth before the braces went on this time, and intend to take them tomorrow, but no one will see the befores. It is quite ugly and an embarrassment.

 

Saturday, October 3, 2020

We were raised on violence

Saturday morning again. 

Ancient 50s-60s cowboy shows on tv.

It was okay to kill the bad guys. It was perfectly acceptable for Lucas McCain to shoot 3 guys before the midway interruption for advertisements.

Paladin shot anybody who disagreed with him, but he usually got paid for it, so that was okay.

Nobody ever had regrets.

I'm older than most of the gun toting good old boys who show up at protests with their weapons de jour

Perhaps they've been watching these old cowboy shows on television, or maybe they've been watching movies about Iraq or WWII or Korea. Maybe they've not been watching MASH but instead old John Wayne flicks. Like the one where he kills off Japs or Nazis or Commies somewhere.

Not the ones where John Wayne dies, there were only a few of them. And not the ones where the lesser Army guys or Marines or Sailors get blasted. 

Face to face killing.

Who can tell.

I saw these shows and movies when I was a kid. The bad guys had to die.

The honest to goodness (or badness) bad guys had to be eliminated.

Is this the current mentality?

Or is it unused testosterone? Dormant urge to kill manifested by protests and candidates for office.

I don't know. This may be a question for the wisest among us, for i can't answer it.

Sunday, September 20, 2020

When you can't sleep

 Have you ever wondered if the people who caused you to rehash their slights when you can't sleep ever think about what they did?

Do their consciences bring up those nasty words, those deliberate snubs, or worse yet, their lies to other people about you--do they ever rethink their motives and--regret them?





Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Everything old is new again

Some deep thoughts.

For me, male movie stars had to be slick and smooth and handsome. 

Cary Grant. John Boles, my other's favorite. Dick Powell. Gene Reynolds. Gene Kelly. Johnny Weismuller. Warren Williams who played in so many 30s movies. I remembered the name later.

What did I like about them?

They were handsome. They had a way of moving that was intriguing. Most could sing and dance or just have that WAY about them that was sexy and not dirty and could make me fall in love with them. 

Even Shirley Temple wasn't immune to Cary Grant. She sang "You Made Me Love You" to his photo. I'll never forget it.

And Gene Kelly. The dancer and athlete had some pretty elegant, yet masterful moves. Fred had nothing on him, though he was slick with Ginger Rodgers.

Long period of mediocre male stars. Cowboys. Eh. Roy and Gene were totally sexless to me. They meant adventure and shooting the bad guys. Oh, take the Lone Ranger! Totally sexless but intriguing and all male behind that mask. But he didn't let on.

They're all gone now. There are plenty of others I could have named, but these were the ones who came to mind first. 

But, I regret, there are no movie stars that thrill me the way these guys did. Oh, Guy Madison was one...but he came along later. These guys were primarily pre-war.

So, I got to thinking that the women of today don't have such a good choice of men to fantasize over. There are three guys with the name Chris. There are the superhero guys with their padded muscle suits. There are the sensitive, ultra sexy crazed guys. There are romance novel cover models.

But no one like Cary...he was even hot in To Catch a Thief. He'd been starring on the silver screen for 30 years by then. Gene Kelly only performed in retrospectives. The cowboy men were relegated to reruns. If they made appearances in public, they looked old and long past the get along little dogie rustlers bad guys.

There just aren't any good "men" hanging around. In my opinion.

Look at George  Clooney. He's small and a good actor, but he's not Cary Grant. The super heroes, well, there's Chris Hemsworth, who is definitely worthy of plenty of looks, muscles and Thor and all, but, well, I don't dream about him, though there are some I know who do.

Even Hugh Jackman is getting less beautiful to me.

Perhaps it is the roles these guys play that make them unattractive. Druggies. Drunks. Washed out something or others who give up trying to be good guys and are content with stopping even trying to be desirable. 

Now, I don't want to say negative things about the current actors. They make tons more money than the guys I thought were so handsome. They play super heroes well and are endearing, then they play washed up drunks or prisoners or mediocre individuals that I just can't care for.

It's me.

I want heroic, warm-hearted, lovers who only let a kiss last 8 seconds. I want the looks and the hot bodies that never get shown, except if they are Tarzan. 

Zac Efron shows his bod every chance he gets. He's a baby! I'd feel icky mentally getting into him. Like he was my son or something.

That's kind of perverted, for an old lady to even consider falling in love with a youngster, someone young enough to have sprung from my very loins. Sick, right?

So, while I bemoan the fact that today's movie stars don't excite me or thrill me or make me want to go home with them, I feel more sympathy for the women who are stuck with them.

Yes. There are undoubtedly those who deck the screens who are just as worthy of adulation to today's crop of ladies as there were for me and mine.

They just don't do it for me at all.

But then, I am old as dirt. And all the good guys are long dead.


Sunday, September 6, 2020

Johnny Angel

https://youtu.be/wwIYSofgpY0

If you can listen to Shelley Fabares sing this song without vomitting, you're fortunate.

Oh, how times have changed from 1962 when this sweet teen queen sang her heart out on the Donna Reed Show!

Johnny Angel...evidently the boy of her dreams. He doesn't even know she exists, yet she is willing to forego dates with other fellas as she sits and waits for this Johnny guy to call her up. But, she's already said that he doesn't know she's alive.

Here's Mary Reed, off to college, popular as all get out with perfect teen hair of the time, terrific slim body, sparkling light eyes and soft voice, potentially wasting her life waiting for this Angel character. Totally unbelievable, but at the time, AT THE TIME, we fell for it.

And probably many impressionable young ladies thought it was a great idea.

Listen to the song. Note the look on her face, as this was taken directly from the Donna Reed Show. She's besotted.

But, here's the kicker: back in the 60s, Shelley was one of many teenaged actors who had recording contracts. The thinking must have been, if the kid actors are alive, they must have good voices and we, the studios, can make money off them in yet another way, as if fan clubs and teen magazines weren't enough.

The handsome guys like Fabian and Tab Hunter and Frankie Avalon got movies to go with their voices. I have to blame Elvis for that, but when you look at the crap movies they were in, well, it just screams exploitation to me. 

I wonder if they made money for themselves from these flicks and songs.

And who went to these movies to see these young studs in bathing suits? Teenage girls, of course.

Now, here's Shelley. She's no Annette who actually could act and dance and sing and had a long run on the big and small screen. But she was pretty and popular and looked great giving beauty advice in teen magazines. Her career wasn't as flash as Annette's, but she did go on to star in Coach, years later, so she had staying power of a sort.

These young singer/actors were exploited to the max. Their childhoods were strange and they probably never saw 1/10 of the money they earned. Contracts and greedy managers and parents.

Now, in a very odd thing, the young actor who played her brother on the Donna Reed Show, Paul Petersen, founded a group of child actors that went after the legal rights these kids had. From the youngest ones to the teens. He must have gotten screwed royally as a kid. He, too, had a limited singing career, but he didn't have the longevity of most of the teen heart throb types.

I will try to look into this further. I saw that Shelley did indeed address the Johnny Angel song lyrics later in life. Gives me something to pursue later today.

"I'm in heaven, I get carried away...." Sometimes.


Friday, September 4, 2020

The Two Loves of Emiko

 If you look at  Godzilla as a strange love story, which I suddenly now do, I find the character Emiko to be wonderfully intense and pathetically 1954 female, simultaneously.

Emmi is the daughter of the noted paleontologist who gives Gojira its name. We say Godzilla because it rolls over the tongue easier than Gojira, but the Japanese have trouble pronouncing Ls. So, Godzilla it is.

Her father wants Godzilla to be studied. The rest of Japan wants the monster destroyed.

Emiko is certainly upset over the monster destroying her country and people. She is in love with Ogata, but engaged since youth to the imminent one-eyed Dr. Serizawa. The good doctor is older, rather good looking, but she views him as an older brother, not a lover. She has one she found herself. Gotta look up his name, too.

Anyway, when Emiko goes to visit Serizawa to tell him that she loves another, she doesn't get to tell him that because he decides to share with her his horrible secret experiment. He shows her tanks of living fish which he then kills by dropping in some chemical that destroys the oxygen in the fish tank and kills the fish. Their flesh disintegrates. They die.

He forces her to promise not to tell anyone about this. She cries at the sight of the dissolving fish flesh, but agrees to keep the secret.

Meanwhile, the boyfriend is busy trying to figure out a way to kill off the monster, even if it pisses off Emmi's dad.

Godzilla rampages through Tokyo. People die. The army comes up with some lameass way to kill it by running all the electricity through the above ground grid. Surely the gigantic monster will die from electrocution when it touches the wires.

It doesn't.

The giant lizard continues to rampage and destroy  Tokyo. The losses are tragic.

So Emmi decides she has to tell her boyfriend about her fiance's discovery. The boyfriend Ogata immediately goes to see Serizawa and begs him to unleash the weapon to save mankind. They fight then apologize for hurting each other.



Reluctantly, the doctor agrees, but says he must take the device containing the oxygen destroyer to the bottom of Tokyo Bay. The boyfriend says he has to go with him as Serizawa is inexperienced at diving. I didn't know the boyfriend was, either, but evidently that was lost in the translation.

So, Emmi and her father and reporters and naval people set out to the bay with the destroyer device. The two men get suited up in old diving suits and down they go. Emmi actually holds Serizawa's air hose and feeds it down as he goes under while her brother holds the boyfriend's air hose. The paleontologist sulks and worries while the reporters...report.

Underwater shots.

They get to see Godzilla moving around. Godzilla sort of looks in their direction. Serizawa tugs on the boyfriend's rope and he gets pulled up to the waiting ship while Serizawa unleashes the weapon and the water foams and bubbles and Godzilla struggles a little.

Serizawa, doing his best to remain calm, wishes the two lovers all the best and cuts his air supply.

Emiko calls out to him. Everybody wants him to surface, but he is gone.

Emmi cries. The boyfriend tells her Serizawa's last words, wishing them happiness.

All in all, the boyfriend is okay, he tries to prevent Serizawa from offing himself. He loves Emmi.

The father is okay. He wants to further knowledge of the monster to prevent more from coming to destroy the world. 

Serizawa is a bloody hero. He deserves to live, but, well, without his fiancee, his life will pretty much suck.

So then we have poor heartbroken Emiko. Brave, promise breaking Emiko who saves Japan. She cries. In the end, she is forgotten, while the name Serizawa lives on to the latest Godzilla, King of Monsters movie where his  nephew follows in his uncle's footsteps and commits suicide to save the world, or in this case, save Godzilla.

Odd turn about of events, but works for me.

Thanks for the heroes who exist in movies!

Sunday, August 30, 2020

New Computer

 I am not good with change.

Now, I have a new computer which husband has labored over for far too many hours.

Lovely. Transferred all my stuff over, well, except WORD, which is the only effing thing I use the computer for other than oddball searches, You Tube and mail.

Now I have to use a effing password and log in number to get anywhere.


I do not do change well.

Not at all.

It will take me forever to get used to these changes.

I almost wish I had kept my mouth shut about having the oldest computer in the house, purchased in 2009.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

Saturday, August 22, 2020

The Cruel War

 Back when the war meant the one in  Vietnam, folk songs were sung throughout the land...some using those very same words, in fact.

They dealt with, rather obliquely, the war, the hardships of those left at home, the terrible things our boys were going through in the jungles and lots of longing for peace.

One of those songs and the lyrics has been going through my head all day.

It do believe it was a remnant of the Civil War here in the US. It is sung by a woman who doesn't want her soldier husband to go off to fight, for whatever reason. She calls it a cruel war and begs him to let her go with him!

Well, back in those days, men often took their wives along with them to cook and wash and snuggle in the camps. Other men often took comfort in the whores who hung around the camps, offering what comfort a man away from his loved ones or one who had never been with a woman could get. Many of these fighting men got venereal diseases that left them withered and eventually dead. Whole towns on each side were full of pros. These parts of towns lasted well into the 20th century.

I digress.

This young woman of the song, with her plaintive cries, eventually gets the guy to agree to let her go with him.

Now, in this time, there are women in the military.

They are strong women, stronger than the WACs of old, who were military but not allowed on the front. These soldiers know how to kill and protect themselves and their countrymen, and fight for the oppressed.

But I keep thinking of that poor woman begging her loved one to let her go with him to the war zone.

At the first major battle of that war at Bull Run or later referred to as Manassas, people, civilian men and women, took picnics with them to enjoy in their carriages to watch the fight, thinking it would be one small skirmish and the war would be over.

Well, it lasted four more bloody years. American blood spilled on those battlefields. No one really thought it was a picnic any more.

The war ended with the dissidents losing.

The reasons for the war were supposedly satisfied...they lost their rights to keep people in bondage and servitude. Their properties were ruined and they had to start all over again to run their farms and feed their people, without the help of the "cattle" they had once depended on for so long.

They lost.

But, it seems that war is still being fought.

That cruel war is still raging.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Childhood trauma!!!

https://youtu.be/UoL-3rJXsf0

This song came out when I was six years old and still believed in you know who.
No, not Valdemort.

The thought of some kid not getting anything for Christmas terrified me. Not the little brat who sang it, but that any other kid might not get anything...!
I was too young to think about poor kids.
Or kids in Africa or China who didn't celebrate Christmas. As far as I knew, these places didn't exist and since Santa went around the world on Christmas Eve, surely he'd stuff things in their stockings.

Now, if you listen to the song, the child singing it is a shit. But, not a real juvenile delinquent. That was a big term going around back in the 50s. Bad kids went to detention after school or a home for bad kids and they were always boys. Granted. Only boys were that rotten as to do anything that would get them into real trouble.

But then the little shit has the temerity to blame somebody for snitching on him!

As it so happens, Shirley Temple originated the song, back in the 30s. Now, you know she never did anything bad in her life!

Yet, I worried.
This was one of many songs sung by youngsters, like the ridiculous idea of wanting a hippo for the holiday, or not being able to sing carols because of a missing tooth. The 50s were full of songs extolling the virtues of being good at Christmas.
Gene Autry sang about Santy Claus coming down the lane to bring toys to good little girls and boys.
Rudolf had that nose that saved Christmas.

We were inundated with stories of the goodness involved in Christmas and each house had a little creche with a baby Jesus in a manger. Every one.

I still get a little pain in my stomach when I think of this silly song.

It might have been me! 
No?
Well, you never know what will piss off Mommy and Daddy.

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Splashdown!

The astronauts have landed.
Bob and Doug are back on Earth.

Since I was in 6th grade, I have followed the space program avidly.

I am crying with joy for them.

Yay!

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Do they still exist?

Another historical reminiscence.

Back in the day when the earth was young, my mother felt that since my older brother was getting Boys' Life magazine, I should also get a magazine, delivered to our house, wow, something to look forward to.

So, she signed me up for Jack and Jill magazine.
I LOVED it.
Every month, a magazine no one else in the family would get and read! Stories. Articles of great interest to someone who read voraciously every book she could get her hands on.

Baba Yaga. The Russian witch!
That's the only recurring story I remember off hand, but I loved it.
A witch who lived in a house with chicken legs on the bottom so it could move wherever she wanted to go.
Wow.

There was so much in those pages.

When I got into Girl Scouts for the several years I could, I also got American Girl magazine, which was explicitly for scouts. Good stuff in there, too, but either I grew out of it by 6th grade or it folded. Jack and Jill was discarded as childish. Too bad.

Now, there came a time, when my brother moved from Boys' Life to  Field and Stream. I don't think he got much out of it, and there wasn't the back page of jokes, but he got it. Maybe he liked the thought of hunting and fishing. Dunno. He liked knives, though.
Maybe it had something to do with the IDEA of hunting and fishing. He likes to surf fish now. Might be a  hangover from those long forgotten days.

But, when I hit middle school, and 12 or so, I got switched to TEEN magazine.
Oh, did that make me special or what?
Or what.
It had tips on make up and dresses and American Bandstand folks and movie stars. I remember it telling me that with my coloring, I ought to wear coral colored lipstick. Yes, that's what I got out of it.
But I did watch Bandstand after school...which is why I'm writing this today.

Whatever happened to  Arlene and Kenny? The two beautiful teens from Bandstand that EVERYBODY thought would get married and live happily ever after in Philadelphia?
Does anybody in this world know what happened to them?

I thought they were perfect. They danced together so well.
Ahhh. It had to be true love.

So...anybody?

Jack and Jill is still published online. Teen, also. I didn't bother looking up the guy magazines, but if anybody knows what happened to them, let me know.

Saturday, July 25, 2020

Summing up

I am sitting in quarantine.
We had to go to North Carolina for the annual family beach house thing. Even though we knew that when we came back to New Jersey, we'd have to spend 14 days in house, waiting for the plague to manifest itself in one or the other of us or both.
But we went.

We did not leave the beach house.
We did nothing. Herb didn't even go in the pool because it was 90 degrees or more every day.
So, actually, we paid about $2000 for nothing.

Not really true.
His mother managed to make it there, despite having had her kidneys reamed out the previous week.
She looked so pale and fragile, though her mind is sharp and she's voting Democrat. He kept telling her she had to live until November.

Amazing how many arseholes there are in North Carolina.
So many Trump signs.
Made me sick.

And, no Biden signs.
I have a feeling people were afraid if they posted their support for Mr. Biden, the trumpers would damage their cars or burn their houses.

And that, my friends, is THAT.

Friday, June 26, 2020

Worse? Who said it couldn't get worse?

The daughter, returning to her apt. via the NJ Parkway, just had her car rear-ended.
The whole back is smashed to the point where she can't open the rear hatch.

She claims to be okay.
She won't be tomorrow.

I have been in a terrible collision. I ended up in the hospital. My head connected with the windshield. My hands broke the steering wheel while trying to keep myself  from going completely through the windshield. My knee got bunged up.
Every bone in my body hurt, but my arms were the worst.

Keeping my body from sailing through the windshield caused enough adrenaline to course through me to keep me alive. Yes, this was years before seat-belts, folks. The '64 Dodge I was driving did not have seat-belts.

It was totaled by some guy pulling off the main highway to get into a bar.

The next day, I couldn't move. Anything.

I had a split in my scalp, but nothing on my face. Had I had ONE stitch in my face, I would have made millions.
My parents did NOTHING to pursue the driver.
NOTHING.

I was without a vehicle right after graduation from college. I had interviews for jobs to go to. 
All in all, I got $1200 for a car that was in perfect condition.

Crippled for years. No car. 

I still have trouble holding anything of weight.


This was the only photo of the exact color and year of my Dodge 440. Of course, mine was not set up for racing like this one, but that was a lot of steel and engine.
Once again, Irene lost.


Friday, May 29, 2020

All wrong

This bullshit has got to stop.
A true humanitarian would declare, not that he isn't getting popular agreement on Twitter, but that these overreactions to violence and the blatant harassment by police, is wrong and has to end.

Judging people by their race is wrong.
Judging people by where they might be, as we all have a right to be wherever we want to be, is wrong.
Judging people by their language, their proximity, their hairstyle, is wrong.

Judging people by doing the jobs they were given, if they are doing them correctly...you have to make sure they're doing what they have sworn to do, on bibles or their mother's lives or those of their children.

This isn't 1868 or 1968. The time, the year is 2020. We should have learned some important lessons by now.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Hometown memory

Just saw an ad on TV for some kind of heating pad that is weighted and safe to last all night long.
This, of course, reminded me of something from when I was maybe 10 or so.

My grandmother had a friend who lived on the outskirts of my hometown, right on the edge, on a dead end street. It was paved, but lonely. Okay, for the longest time, this woman, Dodka I will try to phoneticize her name, lived in a shack with no toilet or running water, though I do believe electricity was forced upon her later in time.

What made me think of this poor old lady who did not speak English in my vicinity, was the horrible way she died.

It was a fierce winter. Snow was piled high in drifts. I doubt anybody even knew someone lived in this shack, not even the town. 
The old lady, in an effort to be warm, plugged in three heating pads and slept her last sleep.

When she was found, many days later, she was burned to a crisp, inside and out.

My grandmother found out about her passing weeks later. I do not know whether she would have done anything to alleviate the woman's situation while she still breathed because most people didn't give a rat's ass about Dodka. She had no family.

The killer thing is, when the town was tearing down the shack, a great deal of money was found in the walls and that part of the dirt floor that had boards over it.

Is there a lesson in this? 
Either: Spend it while you have it  or
be careful using heating pads. 

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Weather or not

The sun is beaming brilliantly into the windows. Birds are bathing atop the pool cover. The lilacs are in full glorious bloom, the day lilies will soon shoot up with their brazen orange flowers, the azaleas are doing their utmost to cheer the world.

Unfortunately, these lovely things cannot cure this Corona virus plague.

Pity, that.

For if they could, everyone would be out, gazing and sniffing and allowing the sun to warm their late spring bodies.

There is no cure yet.
People somewhere are working diligently to find one, but it takes time. In the meantime, people are dying.

This is a cruel purge on us.
A flood would have been much more effective. Just saying.

Of all the various things I have thought about writing here, this is what came out.
No humor. No innuendo. Nothing but a furrowed brow.

Yet, there is still hope.
I can never lose hope that this epidemic will be resolved...weeks, months...years?

How long can you tread water?

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Gee

All the azaleas are blooming.
There are lots of green leaves on all the trees.
The sky is blue. The clouds are puffs of white.

It is freakin' cold outside.

But, nevertheless, I went for a little ride with husband to the place where you can dump yard waste. It is about three miles away from our house. He trimmed some forsythia bushes that were scratching against the RV, I think, but he bundled lots of branches and leaves into two recycling cans and two huge paper bags.

Off we went.

Last time I was out of the house was 4 MAR 20. It was a scarier world and nature wasn't being very cooperative. I did see some tulips that day, but nothing like the lilacs and dogwood of today.

And it was grey everywhere that day.

But not today.

I even stepped outside and took a photo of myself to prove to my buddy that I had gone outside to sit in sunshine. Of course, I chased away the birds at our feeder and the sun disappeared just at that moment, but I was outside.

No biggie.

As I have been meditating while inside the house, I came up with all sorts of grievances I wanted to write about.
Luckily for you, if anybody is reading this, I have conveniently forgotten all these topics until the next time I suffer a grievance.

Even my desk chair has jerked down. No matter how I try, I can't get it to stay up.


Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Warning!

There ought to be a law somewhere about looking at oneself in the mirror after the age of 50.

Here in my seclusion, I have had the opportunity to gaze at my eyebrows, tweezers in hand, and try to undo the damage. Most of the hairs on my left side are white. I find this appalling because the brow on the other side of my face isn't white. Well, not completely.

So, as I am gazing with contempt for those errant brows, I realize that they aren't the problem.

Underneath my eyes, not where bags are, but on my cheekbones, I'm in trouble.

Whoa! Where did those weird puffy parts come from? 
They disturb me to no end.
I slather on moisturizer every single day and yet, they persist.

Okay. I have to admit that I am old now.
I held on to being not old for a long time. People in bars or those I met for the first time often were amazed that I was as old as I said I was.
I have even had to produce my driver's license to prove my age...although not recently. But I don't get out that much, and certainly not to bars.

Anyway, I look old.
I feel old.
I am old.

Word of caution to all those lovely young chickies out there: You'd better enjoy your bodies and faces now because, in all too few years, you will be subject to what I face now.

No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you're going to get old.

And wrinkled. 
And spotted.
And warty,
God Forbid!

So please enjoy your youthful appearance now, while you have it.

I could burst into song right about here, but I won't.

Getting old sucks, but it sure beats the alternative.

Good luck. 

Friday, April 17, 2020

Ah hah!

Perhaps you have wondered about the picture on this blog. The Victorian inn with the pink background. It was created by my artist in residence, Karyn, to hint at the story I was working on...The Mermaid Arms.

That may have been as much as 8 years ago.

I wrote much of it, all including the end, which is spectacular even if I say so myself.

But, I did a bad thing.
I wrote out of sequence.
I had several people wanting me to write, so I wrote. Chapters, scenes, anything that moved me. 
All out of order but the first six chapters.

Yes, I am grievously ashamed of myself for doing this because when I tried to put it all together, I couldn't.

I made a timeline.
I read and reread. I figured out most of it, even the last eight chapters that were as well formed as the beginning six. So, what remained was the middle.

Oh, it did not lack for happenings and excitement, but it was rather jumbled.

So, one week while in North Carolina on vacation, I put it all together. Every chapter and scene and it made sense, with the exception of one chapter.

It needed to be included as it showed tremendous character development. But it hung out there like an extra foot or entire limb. Freakishly just there.
Alone and abandoned.

So I quit working on the World War II story.

Herb stated that I would never finish it. Such a sweetheart, but deep down inside, I guess he may have been right.

Until yesterday when in a flash of mental lightning, I figured out how to make it work.

I have to change the POV and it will slide right in where it belongs.

And, in case I would forget it, I actually wrote down a note and the first sentence so I would remember.

Now...all that remains is for me to salvage the chapter's meaning and rewrite just a bit in the POV of the protagonist.

To quote Peter Pan--Oh, the cleverness of ME!!!

Monday, April 6, 2020

Seeing the light

There is a scene in the Man from Snowy River where the heroine is lost in the outback of Australia, somehow having run away from her father's tyranny. She is stuck on a cliff and, naturally, the hero finds her in a terrible rain storm and rescues her.

He has had the hots for her all along, but she is a rich girl and he is a lowly nothing who works for her father on the ranch, or station I believe it is called.

She has had an epiphany whilst up on the cliff in the rain.
She sees what's going on clearly, possibly as one is supposed to do when one faces imminent death.
She says to him, as he has rescued her, "I see it all clearly now."
He doesn't believe her, perhaps because it is truly what is in his humble heart, or because the story doesn't quite end there.

I don't exactly remember what more is said, but I do remember her saying the bit about seeing things clearly now. It's been years since I last saw the movie.

But that one line has stuck in my head.
I'm 71 years old. I like to watch Godzilla movies, I like to watch UFO and alien stuff on television. I love my family. I have many wonderful and dear friends.  I love my country.

What I see happening here is appalling. I see horror. I see pain. I see death and disease and people working their hands off to fight something so unbelievable...something more horrific than war...or a movie monster.
And I see rampant stupidity with people who fail to see what I see.

I'm not the one on the cliff.
They are, and the cliff is getting really crowded.


Friday, March 27, 2020

Of course it is about the pandemic

Since my older brother introduced me to Stranger in a Strange Land, I have been an avid reader of science fiction.
It sorta goes along with my fascination with cryptids and UFOs and fantasy. Anything that wasn't quite real, but could be, interests me.

Recently, I had the privilege of editing a book by a new author. You can find it on Amazon under Antigenesis, by D.S. Whitaker.


I highly recommend this book. The author might have been reading the minds of the people in charge. And, it has a wonderful science fiction twist that will make you smile.

Please give it a chance.

Monday, March 9, 2020

A great loss

The Greatest Left-Handed Banjo Player this side of the Mississippi passed away this weekend.

He was my good friend.


He had a good heart, a fierce love of music and taught and wrote books and was a Boy Scout.

My heart is so heavy! 

Why do such gifts to the world pass in such pain?

Unfair. Totally unfair.

He leaves behind a lovely, loving wife and two strapping sons.
And lots of friends.

And I'm one of them.


Thursday, February 27, 2020

Name game

Things that keep me awake at night.

In high school, there were various pairings that later became permanent. I don't know why this came to me. I had been sleeping.

Anyway, there were two kids who were actually very beautiful. Small in stature, but very nice to look at.

The young lady had a last name an arm long. I won't write it out, but let's say, combined with her short first name, she boasted 10 letters,  maybe more, as I do not recall the exact spelling of her names. Add an e, take out a c, can't remember and am too lazy to look it up. This is a blog, not a scientific paper.

Anyway, the guy's name, with a shortened version of his first name, contained 10 letters, also. 
Wonder how he filled in the blanks on those college board exams. Not enough spaces, for sure.

So, they did marry. If they hyphenated their surnames, wow.

Why did I think of this?
God only knows.

I know that if my husband had to fill in his whole first name and surname on a test blank, it would not fit, either. FIFTEEN LETTERS




Friday, February 14, 2020

Facts and theories

To those folks who think voting against Joe Biden is a great idea...well, you are being manipulated by the Russians,

This is bizarre, of course.
Suddenly, Joe is too old, out of step, can't speak (he stutters) and somebody is scared shitless he'll get elected president of the United States. 
How does one handle this situation?
One puts an old geezer who talks like a cable TV character in the fore. In addition, one puts a totally inexperienced, but brilliant, young man right behind him. A man who has proven himself in other ways, but won't sell to the masses in the south and midwest where they take their religion seriously.

I feel the need to insert this here.

Let me take this moment to include the definition of a word bandied about lately that very few people actually understand. 
        Here goes: Oligarchy--ol·i·gar·chy
                       /ˈäləˌɡärkÄ“/
        noun: a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.
  1. ("the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president")

Clear now? Get it?
Allow me to go on.

For all you gun handlers and avid Christians, here are some facts about the folks in Russia who are yanking your chains.

Russia had the highest number of abortions per woman of child-bearing age in the world according to UN data as of 2010.
Does that bother you a little?

Oh, wait, there's this thing about the right to bear arms. Hang on. Russia recently announced even tighter restrictions on just who can own guns...and has threatened to confiscate privately owned weapons. After all, the more people who have guns, the more people who can shoot the authoritarian leadership that still exists. Here's a little factiod for you: Recently, Putin has announced the creation of a National Guard...super cops that aren't called KGB but he does not forget where he came from. Their prime objective would be the confiscation of guns from Russians. There are numbers of illegal guns flooding into Russia...what do they know...but these are considered threats.

Still thinking the Russians love you, kiddies?

If the Russians get the US president they want, again, this is their government's way of thinking. Abortions? Fine. The Christian far right is against a woman's right to decide what goes on in her own body.  There. The Russians have a rocky record regarding that, but currently, well, they use abortion instead of birth control. Chew on that.

And as for guns...if you love your right to keep and bear arms, and you are afraid the liberals in America are going to take them away from you, so you can't obliterate wildlife with your automatic weapons, think what a Russian inspired government would have here.

This is odd, I know, for me to go so political on my own blog. These thoughts came to me while I was thinking of the sudden rise of these two men while Mr. Biden has dropped in the polls. If it is because of the Russians and their ability to step in and out of our politics with such ease, these ideas popped into my head.
I cannot express my fears as eloquently as I would like. I have held back, but put forth these insights because this is what I do and where I do it.

I want to know if anyone actually reads my words, and if there is any value in my conclusions. While this is still America, I wanted to go on record.

Free speech. Free thoughts. No KGB, no Secret Police. But plenty of scary people with more power than they deserve are lingering in the background and, if we are not careful, the country could be led down the garden path away from democracy into chaos.


Monday, January 27, 2020

Words

Somewhere between 4 and 5 am today, yes--I know there should be periods after the A and M, but I'm not going to bother, I had several thoughts that disturbed my sleep to the point where I couldn't.

One I can't mention as it was not pleasant.
The other, far more pleasant.
I remembered a word used in my house that was silly and probably made up out of nowhere.

Snickelfritz. Or something like that. My mother took German in high school so it might have derived from that somehow. Or it could have been something from a 1930s song that I have never heard before.
Like Ishcabibble. Or Ishkabibble. Turns out that was the name of a character from an old band...a joke character, usually blamed for doing something stupid. I actually caught the character in an old movie...a lovable dork.
Anyway, Snickelfritz was a term of endearment, I hope.

Another word: Googiewommer. This is a noun, for sure. Usually replacement word for the actual thing one can't remember the name of. Hand me that googiewommer, will ya?

There are others. I will write them when they come back into my brain.

Question now is, do you have any funny words that aren't curses, that you remember from your past?
If so, please let me know.

I love increasing my vocabulary.


Monday, January 20, 2020

Martin Luther King, Jr.

He had the right idea.
Too bad, he had to die for it.

Now...let's think of some other people who have had right ideas and died for them.

Jesus.
Kennedy, John and Robert.
Ghandi
King
Tupac

That was the side I agree with.
There is another side. I can't agree with these people, either.

Saddam Hussein
Qaddafi
Hitler
Mussolini
Mao


Now,wait. I observed something about both these lists.
They're all men.


Monday, January 13, 2020

Fire

Last night, a fire raged in the town next to where I grew up. It was the downtown we shopped in. It was where my parents grew up. I spent the first year and a half of my life living there.

It was a huge 7 alarm fire. Firetrucks from neighboring towns came to help put it out, some from pretty far away, to use their ladder trucks because the structures that were burning were multi-story apartment buildings under construction.

Bound Brook, NJ has had its share of disasters. The main street was flooded in 1999 by hurricane Floyd. Twelve foot high water marks wiped out stores and businesses. They rebuilt and the gov't put up water barriers to keep the nearby Raritan River out of the town.

In order to erect these new apartment buildings, several old useless buildings were knocked down.

When I was a child, this area of the downtown had an active business section, a continuation of the main street. There was a fishmonger, a butcher, a bicycle chop, a shoe shop.  People used these stores. Before the supermarkets and chain stores arrived, many years later, this area was viable.

But, things always change.

The houses for the most part remained, along with the people, usually somewhat new to the country, as were  so many families in the 40s-50s.

And it remains that way as the big old houses were converted to apartments.

It had a heart beat.

It is alive and, until last night's fire, it was a safe place to live and raise ones' children.

Now, there are ashes. The new buildings are in ruins. The people who lost their homes wouldn't have been able to live in those luxury high rises....

But, luckily, not too much damage was done to the old neighborhoods. 
The stores and families of my youth are long gone, but there are people, nice, hardworking people still living in that end of town.

Bound Brook will once again rise from the ashes, or flood waters, to shine again.

Thank you to all the first responders who saved so much with their unceasing efforts.

Thursday, January 9, 2020

On Being a Luddite

Those poor Luddites. They existed for a very short time awhile ago, like in the previous two centuries. 
They were famous for eschewing technology...like steel plows, store bought cloth, prepared meals in a box that came to your door...that kind of stuff.

They died out rapidly, though remnants of that kind of thought still exist in limited ways among certain German type religious orders--Amish, Mennonites (not so much) and Hudderites. They are a minority, though, and I think they are maintaining their traditions with breaks when horses and buggies are rather inconvenient in 2020 USA.

Anyway, yesterday I finally got my second child to delete all these files of other peoples' writing from my WORD. I know nothing about where this stuff goes, how it is kept and brought up with a stroke of a few keys and all, but I knew I had a shitload of words that were not my own stored somewhere in the magic box.

I got the feeling these words that were not my own were clogging up my computer so I wanted them out. Of course, I couldn't do it on my own, but the kid stepped in after four months of begging on my part and within 20 minutes max, deleted all those thousands of words. Books worth! Several times over.

That done, to my relief, I decided to do some registering for the writers' conference in April. In the past, although the preferred method of payment was cyber, which I do not trust even though I do have an account but I don't know why, I have paid by check. Yes, paper. Yes, it may have been a royal pain in the ass, but I was allowed on account of everybody loves my wit and general vivacity.

It didn't work.
I had to go through that thing I do not trust and entrust it with my credit card numbers  because I can't remember passwords or even really how to use that thing...though it would allow me to pay by credit card through them. Cost me an additional $3!!!

I am pissed off.
Yes, being a Luddite is difficult and I can hear those little rat bastard millennials shouting OKAY BOOMER, but know what I say to them?

F*ck off, babies.