Poor Taylor Swift

The Golden Globe Awards.

If ever I saw a shit-show, last night was it. My, how the gowns have turned conservative! There was no cleavage for this dirty old man. The only one that wore something revealing was the one who had nothing to show off.

Mark you, this is not a complaint. Just unexpected, that’s all. It’s really a good thing because I had no distractions. I was free to concentrate on the jitters of the non-drugged and the fake laughter they forced on us all. Nothing funny was said or happened. The monologue was as funny as a case of salmonella. Morton Downey Jr. was there. Matt Damon, Mark Buffalo, and Ben Aflac of insurance fame were there. I didn’t recognize anyone else except DeNiro. And what the fuck was Kate Beckinsale wearing? She obviously regretted her wardrobe and made it worse by reminding everyone else that she had attended Oxford. You know, the place where they make those old-fashioned shoes? Yeah.

Oprah photoshopped her figure live or on a few seconds’ delay. Now she’s David Copperfield. Look at all the pretty people, rich, styled, yet still coveting more. And more will never be enough.

The award winners didn’t make me want to go back to theaters. On the contrary, this whole thing reinforced my decision to never attend one again. Not for stale popcorn, watery Cokes (what are they now, $25 bucks for a large?).

Look. I love movies. I am even into the odd series or two. Last night’s ceremony did make me put “Succession” on my watch list. But mostly, I hate the drek that is integral to any series. NCIS was a disgrace for always killing female lead and supporting actresses (their characters, not the actual women). These days, no one from the original cast is left. We lost David McCallum last year. That broke my heart. NCIS is shit now.

Hollywood is fickle. One day, you’re the talk of the town, and the next, you can’t even get voice work.

But last night did have one highlight for me.

In a new category that I suspect was created just for her, Taylor Swift lost to a plastic doll!

That’s right: the Eras Tour wasn’t the better when it came to the best box office smash. Barbie was. I almost want to see it now except, goddammit, I had 4 sisters, and a house full of Barbies. I took their heads off, I gave them nipples and pubic hair and I mutilated the fucking dolls. Especially Malibu Barbie. There was no excuse for making such a nightmarish toy.

So, miss “use ’em and leave ’em” got a taste of what’s headed her way sooner or later.

Today, my faith in justice is restored. Thank you, God.

Cry, witch! A plastic doll just kicked your ass!

Occam’s Razor: Dudleytown, Curses and Cryptids

I have no idea what’s going on in Europe, Asia, the Middle East (aside from war), South or Central America, Canada or the Islands. Cultures and religions different from my experience or teachings insure that I have not the time left to learn much.

Most people mean well, but being ignorant of customs and cultural taboos, invariably come off as offensive.That’s sad, especially when it causes angry reactions or pain.

It happens all the time. But one thing that I know we share, every one of us, is the inability to explain something another person might describe as a haunting, a UFO sighting, or seeing a werewolf. Among those and many other things, there are, for each, skeptics and believers.

And those caught in the middle.

How can I make a conclusion about that which I have not had experience with? Well, if there’s something I find little to no evidence of, something with no concrete evidence outside of paranormal websites, YouTube videos or television shows, then I should be a skeptic. And no matter where you are, so should you, right?

But no, we aren’t skeptical of certain things, even in the face of little to no evidence.

For example, almost every religion has dark, or evil spirits to resist and pray for protection from. Demons, to some, other names by other people. But it’s always there in some form. And they all do pretty much the same things.

But what about this? Can evil plague a town, and can cryptids surround it? And what about curses as opposed to bad luck?

At a time, in the early 1700s, someone decided to stake a particular piece of ground in the US state of Connecticut. It was a bad decision for potential farmers as the land would be in the shadow of a small mountain for part of the day. But a small town eventually formed there, and to this day, there are odd stories about it. See, Connecticut isn’t the most hospitable place. I had an ancestor who, with two sons, came here on the Mayflower, which is considered historically important for some fucking reason. But John Turner and his sons did not survive their first winter, spent in Connecticut. The reason the bloodline continues is his daughter, who came across the Atlantic later.

I’ve trucked up there in 18-wheelers, and in 1990, still found it to be a place I wouldn’t want to live. In certain places, I felt a heaviness, sometimes even felt that I wasn’t traveling alone. Oh, if you stick to I-95 up the coast, you’re fine. The only thing you’re going to encounter is traffic, and plenty of it, most of which is incredibly comedic, or would be except for idiots with steering wheels in one hand while the other is busy texting or masturbating. Most of my trips were without incident except for the one time I had to go into the interior of the state, almost to the Massachusetts line. I don’t remember what I was hauling or where I went. A half hour after leaving New York I had to take some highway west then another north.

Middle of winter, middle of the night. I was on a main route, but there was no traffic. It was nice for a night haul, roads clear, no foul weather. I crested a hill, and before me there was nothing. Woods and darkness. It’s all I can remember about that trip. It felt like I was seeing backward through time. It’s disorienting, going through one of the world’s most populous cities, only to end up out there in Ichabod Crane country. One feels as though the pages of time had been thumbed backward.

I wish I could do that. Because a town that was doomed to fail from the start was possibly nearby, but I wouldn’t know it, because I would not read about Dudleytown until years later. And though I wound up north of it, and most likely to the east, I guess those forests probably all have the same vibe. There’s history in there, not much of it the good kind.

The stories vary, and most lean towards the skeptical side, but any writer can turn the story into a scary one.

Founded by a descendant beheaded by Henry VII, one wonders if that’s not the best way to begin a thriving town. But as the homestead became a town, there was something going on. People died. Cholera, exposure, the stories differ. There were encounters at night with unknown and presumed dangerous creatures.

As the town emptied, the residents dying or moving away, by 1900 almost nothing remained. No one lived there and the buildings were ruins. Sometime later, a man named Clark bought the property and set up the Dark Entry preservation association. Meant to preserve the land as pristine, he and his wife lived on the land in or very close to Dudleytown. Probably closer to the town proper of Cornwall, where they kept a summer home. The association was to keep acres of woods protected from hunting and logging. Clark had to travel for business, but once, he came home to find his wife highly agitated. She said that there were creatures in the forest. They moved, but left the Dark Entry intact. It is still private land and has been said by some that even using Dark Entry Road will get you stopped by police.

I doubt that; the same thing is said about lots of abandoned places. Usually those roads lead to places which are described in lurid urban legends. Investigation almost always debunk those stories but leave some unexplained, and I believe Dudleytown is a bit of both. First of all, Dark Entry Road is mostly a road in name only. Its final meters end in a narrowed trail that eventually becomes nothing more than a foot path.

Sure, farming in the shadow of a mountain is a stupid idea, and crop failure in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was devastating, but common. It meant going hungry unless travel to buy food was possible, but with what money? No crops to sell (but they did mine iron ore and they did make charcoal).

A Connecticut winter is still a rough go. But that’s with heating, insulated homes, electricity and supermarkets.

It must be said, though, that plenty of other settlements failed. And that’s true everywhere. Bad stuff happens. Mistakes get made. Wars and wildfires and droughts, tsunamis and hurricanes, tornadoes, and more, have more power to destroy than we have to preserve.

One question that lingers, though, is exactly what the “creatures” were. I can’t find any accounts that describe them. “Ghosts” and “demons” are all that show up in records. That’s not exactly specific.

But accounts, from beginning to end, of Dudleytown differ. Clark becomes Clarke, and the Dudley family becomes a cursed family, and it was a Dudley who committed high treason against King Henry VIII.

It’s noteworthy that another difference is cited. The town, not really an incorporated one itself but part of Cornwall, was in the shadow of three mountains, not one. It’s said that madness and suicides and disappearances together with plagues ravaged the town. The “curse of the Dudleys” which began with a death sentence by the Crown followed them to the new world.

An entire family named Brophy was to die and vanish; a death while building a barn; suicides; lightning striking someone on a porch; all said to be on former Mohawk land, and the failure of two industries — logging and iron ore mining — all lend to the belief in a curse.

The Dark Entry Association really does own the land in and around Dudleytown, and it absolutely is private and protected, but not because of creatures or ghosts or demons. It’s the simple fact that a bunch of people have, since World War Two, trampled through, and though clearly marked as no trespassing land, it continues today. Most violators seem to be “ghost hunters”, in other words idiotic thrill seekers who have less respect for the law than urbexers who stack up misdemeanors like a squirrel stashes nuts, the dickheads. These ghost hunters claim to get bad vibes, get touched, or even scratched by unseen entities. I don’t believe that any more than I believe the Dudley Curse.

There’s a lot more to the story than most people are willing to say, because additional facts work less in the favor of sensation and much more in favor of serious scholars and historians. Can’t have that, now, can we?

The truths right there in front of us are simple: the village lay nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, where all sorts of things happen that can’t readily be explained. What you have to realize is, in the mountains of the United States, the ranges of the east, central and west, stories of wildlife that cannot be identified, disasters and deaths, and lots of missing persons, are constantly reported. Planes go down, and I’ve seen the wreckage of one myself. A low-wing, single engine private aircraft. Whoever landed that thing was good. It sat on its belly and still had paint on the exterior even though inside it was decked out with hives of hibernating bees and probably had some rattlers under it. Mountains eat planes. People get lost. They die of exposure, broken bones that put them in shock, and attacks by snakes, dogs, coyotes and bear. It happens. The Appalachian Mountains are constantly underestimated and at elevation, however slight, Dudleytown was a long shot from the start.

I don’t like it when mostly modern accounts alter the vague histories of centuries past. And from all the material I’ve read, I come now to Occam’s Razor. The answer that requires the fewest assumptions is probably the best theory….or conclusion.

I’ve had plenty of times in many places when I felt some kind of bad feeling. I can’t really prove what I think causes this, even though I have different ideas for different places. In the drive upstate in Connecticut, I believe the pitch-black surroundings when I was used to busy, populated routes, simply gave me the creeps. As for Dudleytown, I have no idea how far away it was. I don’t believe it made any difference.

Taking the least amount of assumptions to arrive at a reasonable conclusion about Dudleytown, I find myself on the skeptical side this time. Iron ore being so plentiful underground and having so much water that three mills operated at one time leads me to also conclude that feelings of “bad vibes” or negative emotions just ices the cake. That village was always doomed. Assuming that the place was cursed and surrounded by ghosts and cryptids takes too many jumps for me.

But I’m not quite finished yet. While researching, and believe me on this, you’ll find far more bullshit than you ever will facts, I came across a piece of flawless logic that I can’t get out of my head: i95 Rock, a very interesting radio station out of Danbury, Connecticut, had this to show us:

One DJ sent the town of Cornwall a request under the Freedom of Information Act. This allows US citizens or associations to obtain information from entities which are usually not particularly interested in talking to anyone. It’s been used effectively to obtain government documents and so-on.

The request seems well written and specific. What was sent as a response was even more to the point and is notable for its brevity. It says, basically, “Don’t come here. Your request for information is is denied.”

But the request did not ask for permission to enter the premises. The conclusion of the guest and the DJ is, hey, you stupid bastards, I didn’t ask for permission, I asked for records. What the hell are you boys playing at? What’s really in there? Why are you defensive?

I don’t know what became of this discussion, but it raises a glaringly unmistakable point: why would such a simple request be met by such a defensive and dismissive response? That is, if there’s nothing to see here? A conspiracy!

Suspicious at least, deceitful at most. But why?

If I have anything left to take consolation from, it this:

The linked article i95 posted on its sight is dated.

April 1, 2019.

April Fool’s Day.

Conclusion: not only should you not go to Dudleytown; you shouldn’t even research the fucking place.

Kill me.

Bullshit, Bullshit All Around, Bullshit, Bullshit the Truth Never Found

With Google’s AI search not doing well in beta, but being pushed to go live, it’s worth a look around to see how much of the truth is still found out there.

Corporate entities are responsible for cramming your search results with everything advertised from books to tin wall art to fake cures and more.

One of the biggest scams out there are “secret” ingredients for curing toenail fungus. Lots of people have it, and not one of them fails to loathe it. It grows right in the nail bed and no matter what’s advertised in a long video which, after watching it hopefully, you’ll be offered something for sale, usually at a premium price.

They come and go, and I’m positive that some hawkers of this bullshit have been sued, but sooner or later, the ads will be back with a different “doctor” endorsing and doing the narrative. There may even be a different “secret ingredient” this time.

The reason? People get desperate. They hate the fungus, and not being able to go barefoot on the beach without forcing them under the sand. They hate not being able to wear sandals or sliders or classic flops. It’s embarrassing, even though socks with sandals may get you even more adverse reactions.

Fungi-Nail, additives for soaking, advice from friends, all will fail and leave you progressively more angry and frustrated. Wrapping your toes with banana peels, soaking your feet in apple cider vinegar, Dr. Scholls and you name it. It all amounts to your friends punking you and companies scamming you.

There is a cure. It’s very expensive, usually not covered by insurance, and is a special fungicide in capsule form. But most people can’t take it because of anaphylaxis.

In 1998, I nearly died 3 times. Once was this medicine that caused serious anaphylaxis and a rash so severe that a doctor in the hospital thought it was syphilis.

The second near-death was when the anaphylaxis made me pass out and I was hit by a car that kept on going. The third time was a heart attack not long after.

Years would pass. I tried every quack’s remedies and nothing worked. Finally I found out that it’s a superfungus and it’s in your blood.

I’d asked a podiatrist to remove and cauterize my nails, and she explained that no, she couldn’t do that. Removing the nails is serious business and very painful, cauterization is dangerous and often ineffective, and patients died from infections they got because they dropped something on their foot, splitting the thin skin of the nail bed, and failing to grasp the severity of the wound. Besides, if the nail grew back, it wouldn’t likely do so with good results. It would be wavy, or curved, or something else you didn’t like.

Her suggestion? Use Vicks on it to thin each nail until the fungi-Nail could penetrate.

This, after she just got finished telling me no toenails were dangerous. What’s the real difference then between that and a thin nail?

I tried it anyway.

If you believe Vicks can thin an extra-thick fungal nail, go ahead and try it. I dare you.

Lies, fakery and scams, enough bullshit to drown in.

Like the click bait at the foot of a news article. “The Scene That Ended the Brady Bunch” with a picture of Marcia Brady on a bed? It’s bullshit.

The show had run its course. A guest appearance by Joe Namath didn’t help. I never forgave Joe for that.

People have often blamed brat cousin Oliver for it, but he didn’t arrive until it was too late. I don’t remember why he was there, but I remember how hated he was. He looked like John Denver’s kid, no shit.

No, there was never a single scene which got “The Brady Bunch”, “Gilligan’s Island”, or “I Dream of Jeannie” canceled. The click bait is always accompanied by a mildly suggestive photograph, probably doctored, certainly cropped. Voyeurs can’t help themselves. They click. This is followed by the words, “Start Slide Show”. Good luck with that shit. About 20 minutes of your life later, time you wasted and can’t get back, is followed by thoughts of what you could have been doing: foreplay, coitus, masturbation, sticking things up your ass, nose or in your ears. Or you could have done something constructive and positive and righteous.

Just saying.

The Fucking Problem With Construction Paper

Clive Stafford Smith wrote this op-ed in Aljazeera on 11 September. Read it, please, even if you don’t come back to finish this post. In case your searchable content is restricted I’d like to recommend a VPN. It hides your location from the sites you visit and if in Incognito mode, your ISP as well. You can view or download almost anything you want virtually undetected.

Now then. I’m glad a friend sent me this opinion piece. I was going to do it on the 11th, but was busy with other things and forgot about afterward.

Mr. Smith does one thing I have, since I have written blogs beginning in 2008, been unable to do: wrap all of the things we did wrong after September 11, 2001 up in a few paragraphs.

Sure, I expressed disgust at torture. Sure, I’ve also noted that of all the things Obama got right, he still kept up the charade that we were doing good things in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because we never should have been there at all.

I’ve written that we have engaged in violating human rights and stuck our middle finger at the world as if to say “We’re right no matter what so fuck you.”

And I’ve also been of the mind that the last war we righteously engaged in was World War Two, and that in so many words, every shot we’ve fired since was a big mistake, each and every one.

But what I have never been able to do is put all of these things together at one time. I got hung up specifically on torture: it is forbidden and it is a gross violation of everything that we the people thought our nation was dedicated to. Civility, keeping the law, not being the goddamn bad guys.

Although stories of torture did leak and cause outcry, we settled for “Okay, we won’t do it again,” when in fact we should have kept pressing for a full accounting of what had happened and what was going to be done to stop it. We sure are gullible.

I’ve written about why we should never have gone to war overseas against people instead of a country. How could any other country watch what we were doing and ever trust us again? How could any country not usually diplomatically engaged with us ever believe we were sincere with all the underhanded things we were doing in front of the whole world? We trashed any credibility we might have had in exchange for an open and arrogant display of unreasonable force and invasion. That’s not the United States I was taught about in school. Of course, our textbooks were printed in the 1950s, the height of the first chapter of the Cold War. Meaning the story of the first Thanksgiving, a complete lie in every sense, was fervently taught and we had to make “Pilgrim” hats with glue and black construction paper (and NO sharp scissors!)

The Age of the Big Crayon and Colored Construction Paper. Fuck, what a shit show.

I want to vomit. I may even manage it before I’m through here.

Some will not take kindly to my words. Had I said anything like this back then, and this is no joke, I would probably have been committed. I picture myself then, saying, “Fuck a pilgrim! You know the (native Americans) Indians hated us!” Man, how many girls would have drawn a breath in horror, how many guys would have cracked up because I said “fuck” out loud?

And how long would it have taken to expel me? Ah, with the stroke of the principal’s pen. Laugh if you must, but it’s true.

You know how many girls in my eighth grade class we lost to pregnancy? Parents wanted their kids taught straight arithmetic and fairy tales, no joke. Sex education? We had one visit in the assembly room during sixth grade. And that shit never happened again, I tell you. Never. In a place as big as Pasadena where there really wasn’t much else to do, kids fought, got hold of drugs, and fucked. In parks after dark, even in the woods, whatever. Parents were so shocked when their daughters got knocked up or their sons got caught smoking pot. Ignorant redneck motherfuckers, they were. Living a life of lies in a fairy tale world. We owe them so much.

Yes, Mr. Smith is correct. One hundred percent, baby. Everything we did following the attacks of September 11th was wrong. Just about as wrong as you can get. If they were teaching anything but bullshit in school, my generation would know this. To think that people my age still believe the first Thanksgiving was all warm and fuzzy white men hosting Indians for technicolor corn and turkey is enough to make me cringe.

But clearly, some do. Lots of people believe it. They also believe that planet Earth is flat. Rather like a sheet of construction paper. What a bunch of shitheads.

I think we have some sins to atone for. The question becomes whether there’s enough time. We’re still largely ignoring global warming. It and a nuclear holocaust inch closer with each tick of the clock.

Daddy-O, you got bigger problems than your 14-year-old getting preggers. Whether or not she actually keeps it is not my business. But let’s say she gives birth. What kind of world will that baby live in when it grows to be adult? My guess is an extremely hostile climate with a world war about to go nuclear.

And Mama, what of your son, whose drug use is limited to smoking grass, because your right-wing fringies and parents told you it was a gateway drug, and now you cry every night while praying for God to strike down his dealer?

You’re more blessed than you know and you’re pissing precious time with him away with your fucked-up rigidity. Grow the fuck up. God doesn’t do that shit and you’re the bigger sinner than anyone involved.

And political beliefs? We’re all guilty of wrong thinking. Everyone compared Biden to Trump. What about us? While Trump feigns wealth and wisdom in a show of grandiloquent shittiness, Biden never pretended to be anything but what he is. You want someone to blame, then fine: but add yourself to the fucking pile. What did you ever do to stop the wars or protest the Patriot Act or anything else but what you did, which was sit back and watch? Bullshit. We’re all dirty. Blood on our hands, each and every one.

And the clock is ticking.

I’ll play you out with the music and images of the end credits to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In the film, a probe of extraterrestrial origin begins causing serious damage to Earth’s atmosphere because its creator lost contact with humpback whales. Knowing they were gone, the civilization which sent the probe vaporizes sea water so the process of evolution can begin again. The idea is preposterous but the theme inescapably real; we’re killing every life on Earth.

https://youtu.be/SHbyILpmLXg

Why So Angry?

I guess it must show. Or I project it somehow even in a mask, a hat and dark prescription sunglasses. Is it my body English? Does the anger just invisibly register with people?

I can’t say. All I know is that most of the time, I’m unaware of it. I’ve learned to live peacefully and to aspire to altruism in the manner of Christ’s teachings. If I said in my last post that I don’t get disappointed or discouraged if I get no views or likes on my posts, it’s not because I don’t appreciate every visitor, every like, every comment. A few weeks ago a commenter left a lengthy response explaining their opposition to vaccines. I disagreed but respected their right to choose, to believe what they will, and act on their beliefs. I still appreciated the reader’s visit and the effort taken for conversation.

There’s something funny though.

I will never have a hundred followers like a sponsored blogger with a paid-for domain.

I won’t ever be able to stick a full page beauty shot of myself on my leading page. There’s no beauty to see, and I’m an asshole who doesn’t really like himself very much anyway.

Late yesterday I walked to the store. I bought a few things, then stopped on the way back for smokes. Finished with being indoors, I took my masks off (I double mask) on the way home. Groceries on my back, walking with a cane, I lit one and took my time on the way home.

It was hot, one site giving the temperature as 90°f (32.2°c) and another listing it as 92. I was irritated; Fucking same city, people! But two degrees difference? Fuck you, stupid weather apps.

The air was humid but pollution caused the AQI to climb to 55. Too bad for a man in my shape to be outside, much less lugging a bag of groceries. But you can’t tell me anything. I’d gone anyway. The only real reason I checked the weather first was to see if it was going to rain. It didn’t. The storm was far to the south.

Why was I so mad? It built up as I walked across the parking lot. I tried to decide if it was hazy or not. It felt like it should be. But my damned eyes.

In the store it was the same shit. Always, people looking at me as if I scare or disgust them. I’ve been accused of being paranoid, but it’s not like that. Nobody stares, it’s not dramatic. Just when they glance at me in passing. Even allowing for how vulnerable people feel if you’re wearing shades and they aren’t can’t account for it. I got the same looks before I saw the doctor.

And people weren’t wearing masks. Maryland has loosened its restrictions for Covid and idiots are inside every place you go, unmasked and uncaring.

Fuck. Why put others, who might not be vaccinated, at risk? I fear it’s too soon for no masks inside; if one person dies because of it, that’s fucking stupid. And more than one will surely die. We’re not out of this yet. We won’t be until the month when no cases are diagnosed, no one is hospitalized and nobody dies. We’ve gone through hell. All of us. Why fling caution to the wind now? We’re talking life and death. People tempting Death piss me off.

But who am I? These people want their pizzas, Italian ice and groceries and will never go back to wearing masks now.

They still give you dirty looks though if they need to close in on you to grab a jar of Nutella. And you’re in their way and they can’t wait. Morons.

Yet the foot stickers on the floor for distancing are still at the checkout lanes. No, it doesn’t make sense. Shit that makes no sense pisses me off.

I posted a comment on Google where you can rate places and I rated the shopping center one star for all the panhandlers. It got so bad that I heard one guy say into his phone that he was banned for a year by the shopping center but yet he continued his asking for money. He’d ask for a dollar. Nobody gives him one dollar. In a day he could have a hundred bucks in his pocket. He’s always clean, hair cut neatly and he still gets money from people who are intimidated by everyone asking for money.

Once upon a time, I’d have punched the fucker. Once, I pulled up to a convenience store. I parked near the bank of pay phones and a guy was standing to my right front slouched against the wall. He looked at me and spat on the ground.

Now you can beat me half to death, throw bricks at me, I don’t care. Looking at me and spitting will enrage me like nothing else. It’s a gesture of more than contempt and disrespect. It cannot truly be put into words. I got out of the car. The entrance was to my left, away from him. But I didn’t go there. I walked up to him and with every once of force I could impart, punched him in the groin. He immediately fell forward, doubling up, fell completely to the ground with both hands between his legs, and explosively threw up.

As if nothing had happened, I walked into the store and poured coffee and bought smokes. When I left he was still down, sobbing in gasps like he couldn’t breathe. The stink of vomit was everywhere. I’ll bet he never did that crap again. I didn’t give him the respect of a punch in the jaw. I gave him what he gave me: treatment like he was just a scummy sleaze.

I regret it. I did five minutes later, as adrenaline and anger bled off and left me feeling depleted.

And I won’t punch the scammer-begger, but I still want to. Why so angry?

It’s been there the whole time, dormant, contained. I had no idea.

It seems as if that level of anger should be long gone. Discovering how serious it is has left me shaken.

There’s nobody to talk to. I can’t afford a therapist on Medicare. What am I doing?

I go back. I know where it comes from.

Being terrorized, raped, beaten as a kid. From siblings who were always better than me. From my disgusting behavior toward them.

Her name was Heather. And I was in a bad spot, deeply depressed, fully PTSD symptomatic, lonely. And still a screwup with women.

I’d long since sworn myself to celibacy but on Facebook her picture was amazing. She knew my nephew and his wife. I don’t remember how it happened but I missed a signal somewhere and thought when we talked she might be able to get interested and I said something that she told to my nephew and his old lady. They in turn told me to back off. I could have died of embarrassment. I wanted to crawl under a rock.

Fast forward. It’s two years later. My older brother came to town, and we always got together with other family, whoever could make it.

This time the dinner would be too far away for me to travel. Pissed off, I wrote into the group text that I couldn’t go. Not even an hour later, my sister who had stopped going to the get-togethers years earlier replied that she’d be there. Worse, my nephew’s wife, who never went and who I suspected didn’t care much for me, texted that she was going.

I replied that I was offended; not until after I said I would miss the get-together did my sister and my nephew’s wife decide they could make it. I also added that it had been a couple of years since the Heather thing and I was still being judged on it.

I haven’t seen or spoken to any of them since except my older brother. And I don’t care. I never want to speak to them again. I love my older brother too much to hold a grudge. But I know what the others did, it was right there in the group text and they made no effort to hide what they were doing; they probably just thought that I had said I couldn’t go and had gone off. Didn’t think I’d see it.

But I was still getting notifications. They didn’t care. It never even occurred to them I might see the texts and be hurt.

Or angry.

And the anger is still there. They may as well have spat; coming from family, it hurt and offended and embarrassed me. How could they hate me so much, about as much as I hated myself?

Nah, nobody’s ever hated me as much as I hate myself.

The same brain that thinks I deserved better, thinks I deserved everything I got.

I just don’t know why I got so angry. I mean, I know where it comes from. I’ve lost everything I had and never had anything I was supposed to be given as soon as I took my first breath.

And that’s not all. Things piss me off. You know how I feel about the Republican party and their ongoing campaign to rid the United States of all Constitutional rights. That has me on edge anyway, but there are other things that gnaw at me until I’m sure I’d punch someone the fuck out. Which I can’t do because it’s evil, but also because it’d be contradictory.

Cruelty and abuse piss me off. Not just in humans. That guy whose horse won the Kentucky Derby. Doped the animal to cheat. I wonder how much he secretly bet on his own horse, the scumbag.

You know how many horses break their legs and have to be euthanized because of fucking horse racing? Check it out sometime.

Greyhound racing. Everyone who does that shit ought to be sent right to fucking jail because it’s no better than dog fighting. Those animals get retired and put down. They’re injured. Abused and “conditioned”. Fucking barbarians! You ever tried to “rescue” a greyhound? Ain’t nice to have to watch.

TV pisses me off. The goddamn commercials insult everyone’s intelligence. How can I even think of one to use as an example, when there have been, and are, so many of them? Actually the question mark is out of place; I wasn’t asking. It’s a sad, enraging, bullshit thing. It should be illegal to lie about products and services but it’s really not. Once the law services on Madison Avenue get into the fray, we’re screwed. The next commercials will not only be worse but will pointedly be far more insulting. Marketing studies, you know? And questionnaires, surveys, hell. We gave them our secrets. They use them to bilk us out of money we can’t afford to spend on their processed foods, their useless shit…

It makes me so mad, that level of “fuck ’em” attitude retailers and manufacturers have toward us. “They’re stupid,” goes the conversation in board meetings, “sales of widgets went up during the pandemic. Online purchases rose 45 percent!”

‘Nother thing that pisses me off…the Army, according to an Associated Press investigation, has been hemorrhaging assault weapons. Some wound up discovered in gang member’s homes. Some were used in crimes!

It’s inside work, to be sure, but it shouldn’t happen. Ever. Armories on Army bases are supposed to be secure, yet a couple of MPs without even having unrestricted access to them, got partway in and forced entry the rest of the way. Some were AK-74s, beasts with three-shot bursts of automatic fire that got sold for as little as two hundred dollars U.S..

How can this unthinkable, inexcusable shit happen?

Sexual harassment is so pervasive that even a colonel was recently caught up in a legal case because she apparently facilitated the cover-ups. A woman. A colonel.

Disgusting.

Keep in mind, this is news. Anyone in the world can read or hear about it. Doesn’t anyone in Washington care? Are there no honorable officials left?

Reality shows have disintegrated the part of our brains that use logic and reasoning. We eat this bullshit up until every cable entertainment and educational channel floods you with it and if one fails there a hundred more ready to go into production at a moment’s notice.

Subscriptions for streaming are a point of agony and rage to me. You pay for cable and internet. Then you pay for a subscription, but is what you want to see on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or CBS online, Discovery Plus? They crept up on us. Hulu was once free. If you subscribe it’s autopay. Every month. Lose track or forget, you overdraw your account. Fuck that.

I can’t afford Netflix or Amazon. Therefore I have no desire to see anything they have.

Climate change pisses me off. Nothing is being done in this country about it because people are lazy and entitled. They’ll play activist and drive their gas mowers, cars and they still refuse solar power. And they listened to Fox News and Donald Trump for too long: wind power kills thousands of birds, you can’t watch TV if there’s no wind, and so on.

Republicans who believe this shit should be ashamed. Well they will be if they ever listen to the truth. Donald Trump became Don Quixote in one sentence, a remarkable moment in U.S. political history.

I’m saying everyone is wrong sometime about something. But to intentionally take up some asinine stance on something because of people caught lying on a regular basis, no, I’m not going to give them a pass. Even I, eventually, despite conditioning and being highly suggestible at times, always fight for the truth. And if I can fight myself for whatever the truth is, so can others.

And another fucking thing: who the hell started this “It is what it is” bullshit, and why do otherwise intelligent people have to use the term 90 times a day?

I’m fucking sick of it. Do you even pay attention to the words? It’s an insult.

Sometimes you may admire someone. Express it and find they don’t return your esteem. You probe further as to exactly how receptive they are, you’ll eventually get a no that sounds like “I can’t” followed by “it is what it is”. See how you like it then.

And stop saying “tout” for hell’s sake. Its a stupid fucking word. Do you hear the stupid bleeding from it when an anchor person or reporter uses it in a sentence? “The White House touted the rollout of a new…”

Waitafuckinminute!

You really think people do that? That someone says, “I want you all to go out and tout this to the public”?

Stop it.

And what the hell was all that shit with VP Harris, not “visiting” the border but going to Guatemala and telling poor people who obviously have no access to news, “Dont come here (the U.S. Border)”?

What the hell?

Yeah, I’m pissed, you’re right. Because first, the gesture and the message were strangely out of place, and second, an insult to the Guatemalan government and guatemalans. They got singled out for a great big “fuck you” in front of the world.

It happens to be true that the Border Crisis never ended. It’s also true that it will never end because most central-and-south American countries are poor. The smuggling, gangs and drug lords are obvious but only a part of it. Each province, division, town or city has its unique position on the danger scale. The misery scale. The environmental health scale. Safe drinking water? For some people no. Boil lake or stream water if you live near enough. Too poor for bottled water? Too bad.

How about homicides? Wanna talk about Honduras?

People don’t come north to have a better life. From Mexico, Columbia and Venezuela they come in the hope of survival.

But I don’t get it. From Trump’s campaign slogan about rapists and his white elephant wall to Harris’s bizarrely timed and placed warning, it doesn’t make sense. We have the duty to protect human lives. Condemning them isn’t quite humanitarian.

You know what really boils my oysters? The United States is not one of the safest countries in the world. In 2019 the U.S. was ranked more dangerous than Uganda. And Uganda is a place that should appear on tourist lists like, never. You will be kidnapped, arrested, shot, bombed or tied to the machinegun stand in the bed of a pickup truck and dragged down the airport runway.

Since Trump campaigned the first time, I’ve seen articles on several occasions where other countries warned their citizens not to come here.

Until you dig into the subject you’ll never know that Canada, Vietnam, Ghana, Poland, Germany, Mozambique and Bangladesh are safer.

And you’d never know which countries have better opportunities for education and employment. It ain’t us. That pisses me off but not because I think those countries are inferior. But we followed World War Two as a superpower. We were supposed to have learned from Japanese internment camps and the Holocaust. All the guys who died and were buried overseas or at sea, all the empty chairs at the dinner table that never got used again…we’d learned from it. We went into an economic boom and people bought houses and refrigerators and cars.

Damn it, we’re better than this!

This is the end of my Fuck! post.

If I were Catholic, I’d be saying Hail Marys for the next 24 hours.

Surely God has pity on men like me; we may get mad. We may hold grudges. But we try to learn control. Today you could probably spit at my feet and it would be forgiven.

For all my vices and my mental health, you know what I think?

I think I should like myself just a little…and not be so angry over things I don’t know how to change.

Even if those things are fucking stupid.