You know things are getting worse. What would have cost me $35-40 dollars two years ago cost $84.00 this afternoon. It will not get better. But I’m not here to tell you about prices. You know they’re worse. I know they’re worse. But could someone please tell me what the fuck this is?
Holy SHIT, Sephora!
If there’s anyone who can actually wear this, leave a comment, please. I won’t believe you, but I could use a good laugh right now.
Things are grim. There is no denying it. Especially if you check with Republicans because, that’s all they do when a Democrat is in the White House. If it were a Republican, things would be worse.
I don’t like to think about it.
So, from a few years back, here’s a Last Week Tonight episode that’s still very much relevant. It concerns the one biggest fear I have. Not a phobia. A terror.
If you’re thinking that I’m terrified of mountains, yes, I’m not going to go near one again. I was on the Appalachian Trail once. Once.
That was 1972, in Boy Scout Troop 632, which was in Maryland. It disappeared and the number was assigned to another troop.
I hated the scouts. Too fucking wholesome for me. I hated everything about it. An overnight hike and camp on the trail on a night when it got so cold that I couldn’t sleep, that’s all I needed to know that mountains are pretty from a distance, but climbing and hiking wasn’t for me. First of all, do you know how many people vanish annually from our national parks and hiking trails, and what happens to folks who try to traverse the Appalachian Trail from one end in Maine to the other end in Georgia? Neither do I. Nor anyone else. Oh, it’s been done, but some just vanish. It’s like that with Mount Everest as well, but for pity’s sake, worse. And you can’t avoid the question: why?
In the video above, look at that mass of idiots up there. And consider those who die up there, and can’t be recovered. Hauling a dead body down that far ain’t easy. Usually it’s impossible. But then also consider that while the Sherpa guides can die up there, it’s a true puzzle that more people don’t die than statistics show. In fact, I never trust statistics, especially when it comes to body counts or missing persons. They are always too conservative.
Climbing Everest is, to me, just plain stupid. “Because it is there” is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard, and besides, it’s no real accomplishment anymore. Why not tell yourself the truth and decide it’s stupid, deadly, expensive and there’s lots of other things to do for recreation? Safer things, like chumming for sharks and then going swimming, wrestling alligators or throwing yourself in front of a bull elephant and trying to kill it with a BB rifle.
You could go canoeing in the Congo basin. Without mosquito repellent or netting on your pith helmet. Or just maybe have your mother-in-law over for a month. You can also consider skydiving without a parachute.
You’re going to be a statistic, but with the exception of the Congo trip, at least everyone will be able to put your name in the “stupid ways to die” category. In some cases a medical examiner would not even need to be involved. Easier for you, easier for insurance, easier for everyone.
Getting back to the show, it isn’t really Everest that scares me so much.
One of my biggest fears is what John Oliver does to his audience completely at random and when you don’t expect it: being rickrolled.
If that ever happens to me, if I live through it, I swear to do something far worse to the culprit. Like one of those traps Batman and Robin went through every week before the cliffhanger: “Will the Dynamic Duo escape the giant clam? Tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”
Now, I must be very careful here. By “trap”, I simply refer to a seemingly inescapable physical threat. Like setting a mouse trap. I do not mean that ambiguous term referring to ambiguous-gender people who “trap” others into believing and acting on the assumption that they are another gender than the person thinks.
I have no wish to offend.
Except Bob Hope and Danny Kay used to do it in comedy sketches all the time. Nobody got bent out of shape, either. It was all in good fun. Couldn’t do it now. Be sure not to watch Tom Hanks in his old TV series Bosom Buddies. Holy shit.
Everyone takes everything so seriously now. Too seriously. Like they take offense at one word, just one, and now someone’s gonna get shot. What the hell is wrong with people?
Don’t they know that there are things that need clear minds to solve? You can’t be so intolerant that you miss the important things and stew over being called a name.
I spent too much time stewing over a name or a single act that I shouldn’t have noticed, and missed far too many good things I could have done for others. It was only recently that I decided to let that shit go.
Watching the wars going on in the world killing mass people including children needs to be stopped. Israel is going too far, running the risk of losing the support of the United States. You have to be especially barbaric to do that, seeing as how, many times, we’ve backed the wrong side. But Netanyahu is a barbaric son of a bitch. He’s sleeping while people die. And what about Ukraine? Why do conservatives want to abandon them and funnel money and resources to Israel when the ceasefire was doomed from the start, and what Israel is doing is just going to radicalize more Palestinians? Hamas are butchers, there’s no denying that. But it makes no sense, shelling and bombing Palestine because they refuse to release more hostages, invariably to kill some of them in the process.
And whose bright idea was it to appoint some oil baron as head of a summit on global warming? Didn’t they know what he would say? Because, sure enough, that’s what he did say: cutting back on fossil fuel production and consumption would not impact climate.
It’s exactly the same as global warming denial, only interpreted differently by journalists who don’t want to offend the idiot. Wait. Scratch that last. I meant greedy idiot. He argued that it would cause people to “live in caves” again. What’s he think we’re going to do when people start dying by the thousands from thirst, poisoned water, heatstroke and diseases that are suitable to warmer climates? Because yeah, you can pump oil. Sure. You can mine coal. But what are you gonna do when all the people who buy it die off? Your fortune becomes useless. You can live your entitled life now, but when the labor force dies and you can’t even have internet service, what then?
Wars will continue to grow and spread. Fat cats can’t stop it, either, nor will they. Wars make money. Tanks, aircraft…need fuel. Lots of it.
Okay. I’ve overstayed my welcome enough. But please, will someone tell me what that fucking shoe is for?
In your county ballot there are questions. Pay very close attention to them and look up the explanations of them, then decide. Today. Tomorrow you may not feel like it or you may not have the time. But some of these are shocking in regard to things ranging from appalling powers for your police to have gestapo power to hunt immigrants using unconstitutional methods, to marijuana legalization (up to a whole ounce! Good God, it’s the end of the world!).
Be careful. You don’t just have to vote. You have to vote responsibly. Your voting rights carry great power. Like Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, “with great power comes great responsibility.”.
Folks, when I quote comic book/movie characters, it means I’m pretty frightened and I’m looking for hope. I voted early. I needed help, because I’m going blind. I wasn’t too proud to have my healthcare worker help me. I’m looking to you for hope. We hate going to the polls but it’s the right thing to do. Anxiety, pain, standing in line with a cane or walker? I know. It’s scary. But for the sake of our friends and families, do it anyway. They will be here long after we’ve gone.
God bless. Have a good week, be safe, be nice to someone once or twice.
Ah, recessions and inflation, you gotta love em, right? We may go hungry, but the longest-running scams in human history do very well in such times as these.
Did you think Alex Jones was done for when he lost his right by way of a court ruling to keep saying that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged?
Think again. The man is a maniac and he’s psycho, but a lousy salesman, he is not.
And if you’re like me, you probably never recovered from the fact that he makes millions off his complete line of completelystupid products. There’s his chocolate chicken bone milkshakes that restore–hell, I forget what theydo. But on one segment of his show he demonstrated how delicious it was by drinking the shit. Well, I take that back. He sampled it, made the grimace of a sickened hemlock drinker–Socrates, minus the famous wisdom.
Actually he’s a lot like Dr. Oz. He sells shit to the public with false claims and pockets profits that would make Joel Osteen turn green with pure jealousy. Jones’s line of products have been determined to be everything from toxic to completely useless to nonsensical. And fraudulent.
He was lampooned twice by John Oliver and I have no doubt he still sells perineal wipes. Oh, come on. You didn’t know? Yes, Jones sells wet wipes (specifically) for the area between your genitals and your anus. During the COVID-19 lockdown he sold some shit he swore would prevent you from catching the virus. That is, he did, until the FDA told him to knock that shit off. Jones is but one scammer in a huge cesspool of flim-flammers, snake oil salesmen and whatever else you want to call these thieves who take money from the gullible and never miss a good night’s sleep.
It’s okay. These guys always get their comeuppance in the end. Jim and Tammy Bakker scammed millions from their followers on a retreat that was supposed to be a paradise in which to seek peace and restoration. It ended up being one 8-room shithole. Meanwhile, the Bakkers pissed the money away by weird shit like Jim’s pissy-ass, baby demands that whole baker’s racks of cinnamon rolls be placed in his bedroom every morning. He didn’t eat them, didn’t even like them. Just liked waking up to the smell of fresh cinnamon buns. One time he bought a Rolls Royce even though he and Tammy’s PTL ministry was edging very close to complete and total failure. The brat even once threw a hissy fit when either ketchup or mustard wasn’t on his hamburger. Remind you of anyone?
One Rolls Royce turned into two. A private jet. Another glamorous car. A retreat and theme park, the former of which he sold more than 100 percent capacity. And this was fucking timeshares!
Then it came out that Jim and a fellow preacher had raped his church secretary, and the empire crashed. He had paid Jessica Hahn hush money and screwed up his books. Well, it had gone so badly by then that if he did keep two ledgers as was suspected, neither one of them would have looked very good.
The revelation of the payout to Hahn drew scorn from atheists to liberal Christians who did not like the idea of raping young women and having hundred thousand dollar toilets.
I don’t know about you, but when I gotta shit, I could not possibly care less as to what the commode looks like. I don’t even care where it is. A latrine, a Johnny on the spot, a hole in the ground — it doesn’t matter. I don’t even care if that hole in the ground is occupied by some kind of animal, long as it doesn’t bite or sting my perineal area. It’d be humiliating to have to buy soothing perineal wipes from infowars.
Where was I? Oh, right. Jim Bakker. Well, he got this bright idea of resigning from PTL and handing the reigns over to Jerry Falwell. Who, it turned out, found incredible amounts of missing money and had no problem with saying it out loud. He took permanent control and barred the Bakkers from ever coming back. Then the IRS dropped the bomb.
Bakker and two associates were charged with conspiracy and fraud, Jim was sentenced to 45 years in prison, and wife and false eyelash model Tammy Faye divorced his ass before the damage spread to her.
While I watched all this between and after training, I burned with anger. Here, in one married couple, I thought, was every single thing wrong with false churches. Greed, money, fraud, graft, bribery, sexual perversion and predation, and yet — yet, people scammed out of thousands, tricked and deceived and used so badly, still loved this fucker. How?
Because I didn’t quite believe they understood what he’d done and they were forgiving him anyway! I believed then, as I do now, that to forgive is a Godly, honorable thing, but that’s not exactly what I was seeing either. They all worshipped this filth. Worshipped, and that was the first time I got just how evil the televangelists really were. And they began falling like dominoes.
Jimmy Swaggert had already been outed as a perv for getting caught with a hooker. In 1991, he was pulled over by police for three moving violations: no seatbelt, no vehicle registration, driving on the wrong side of the road. He was with a prostitute at the time. When are men gonna learn, huh? You need to wait until the room is rented before you get her to faceplant into your lap; that way you don’t drive over the line and piss off police officers. How dumb can you get? He should have read The Glitter Dome by Joseph Wambaugh.
I know you probably think I’m a conservative preacher-basher. Well, you’re right. I am.
Because on his release from prison, just as a dog returns to his own vomit, Bakker went right back to his old ways. He found a new eyeliner wife, kind of a Tammy Faye clone; a sugar daddy who gave him the funds to build new condos, and it’s sickening to me.
But one thing’s clearly changed.
He no longer does that seed gospel or “prosperity” gospel shit. Oh, no.
Now he’s a doomsday prepper, hawking buckets of diarrhea as food, and the buckets even double as flotation (!) devices. He wants you to know that the End Days are upon us. After listening to his melodramatic bullshit, I’m never going to write about that subject again. This dickhead went from perverted selfish man-baby and hustler to a convict, a hustler, and a doom-sayer who scares the shit out of people in order to sell bullshit products to gullible people who can’t afford it but swear he’s been reformed.
He’s far from it and here we have another scammer who tried to sell some shit on the claim that it prevented COVID-19. It didn’t, and the FDA threatened to knock his dick in the dirt unless he ceased the sale and renounced his claims. Snake oil.
Jim Bakker, like Alex Jones, is a swine. Not my judgment; it shows in everything they do. And both claim the faith. Both scare people to keep watching and listening and buying their bunk products.
That’s not okay.
Bonus scam: crystals
Yeah, I’m gonna talk bad about crystals. If you don’t want to read it, then please feel free to close this tab.
Spiritualism, talking to the dead, summoning spirits, praising Zeus and Artemis or other gods, contacting angels and demons. Some type of this is practiced by novices, witches, and a host of other people. And New Ageism is going strong.
One of the best-selling products out there is crystals. They come from everything from quartz to birthstones and sell big.
The reason is that they are believed to contain certain energies. This crystal is good for the 3rd eye Chakra, that one is better for genital Chakra. And so on, restoring balance to mind and body and whatever.
It’s a lot of crappola. What scares me most, though, is people using them to summon spirits to accompany them in astral projection. I’ve covered this before. Any spirit you manage to summon will not be a good one. God doesn’t lend his angels out for selfish or evil purposes. They obey his commands, and that’s it. We are not to worship angels. That’s an abomination. You’d fare better praying to a god that never existed, like Hera.
Because if you don’t summon anything good, and something does answer your call, it is the beginning of a nightmare. You won’t like it. And if that nightmare happens, it’s not likely to end without serious help. Forget reiki masters. Real life ain’t like television, folks. You’ll only make things worse. Stop with the seances and ouija boards. You’ll need God’s help and the clock is ticking.
One of several complaints about Ed and Lorraine Warren is that when a family was struggling with incidents they couldn’t understand and needed help, the Warrens would just show up unbidden. And Lorraine, with her seances, always made it worse. Because that shit calls demons to this plane.
More than one story depicted in movies turned out to have been falsified. The Conjuring 2 was a complete fabrication. Or prevarication. In other words, it was bullshit. The Warrens showed up unsolicited and were them promptly told to leave. That’s it. And adding the dramatic ending with that stupid Bee Gees song was plain drek.
The Annabelle stories are a riot, though. Unintentional black comedy is the best. I screamed with laughter.
And just in case you think I’m piling on, or engaging in overkill, let me tell you, more urban legends, at least say, a decade or two ago, were started or embellished and kept going by, you guessed it, religious fruitcakes.
Drilling To Hell
I really don’t know how this got started. I mean, humans do stupid things to the earth. One party drilled through the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay. Beneath it they found an ancient body of water with fierce salinity levels, and any leakage substantial enough could have killed just about every kind of life in the bay. It was a reckless endeavor but I’ve read nothing about it recently. I know that the sample did have ancient microbes, but that’s it. I’m not bothering to research it because I want to talk about a drilling project that took place, supposedly, in Soviet Russia.
I’ve never really understood what the bore was supposed to find, but it’s been said that they were using it to get to the earth’s core, which simply is not possible. At a certain depth, the “real” story goes, they hit rock that proved to be too much for the drill (maybe they were looking for chakra crystals? Scientific studies revealed that crystals have no power to heal or restore vigor or ill health beyond the placebo effect).
There was nothing to do but seal off the bore hole and truck the equipment back to its home.
As you’ll see in the following video, what happened next grew legs and turned the abandoned shaft into the tunnel to Hell.
Way back in the MySpace days someone posted a recording of the “souls” down in Hell and what sounded like a woman ordering others to do things. It’s different than the one in the following video, but just wait until you get to the part where he tells you who propelled this nothing into a still-repeated, godawful lie, then to an urban legend that pastors still use to scare the shit out of people so they’ll pay up at the offering plate in order to buy their way to Heaven.
Things are never what a good story says they are. Using manipulation and lies to convert new Christians is evil, disgusting, brazen.
The Insanity Has Spread
Russia has stated that “Donald Trump is our agent” and calls the FBI raid on his Florida estate (I won’t use the name anymore because it’s such a stupid fucking name) “persecution”.
Hell, we knew that from the beginning. Come on, Putin, hurry up before your STDs kill your psycho ass, and tell us something we don’t know. Oops. I did say STDs, didn’t I? Well that’s rather silly of me, innit?
I don’t know what’s eating him. But sure as Billy goats try to hump girls on bicycles, something’s got Putin. I shouldn’t have said STDs. That was very immature of me. But I enjoyed it.
See, it’s like this. I hate lies. I hate dishonesty in every form. Just tell the fucking truth. Don’t bother with philosophy or bullshit like “the truth will set you free” because sometimes telling the truth lands you in a prison cell.
I don’t know why. It’s beyond all my abilities to analyze as to the level of rabid commitment people have to Donald Trump. He is a boob and a douchebag. He’s a swine, yet people have breached this country’s Capitol building and gone to prison for it. Before that, several dumbasses went to jail then prison for various things done in his 2016 campaign. They all thought he would give them pardons, but Trump does not live to be loyal. He lives for others to be loyal to him, without question. During his term (and new tell-all books are being published like kernels in a carnival popcorn machine) he actually asked, “Why can’t people treat me like Hitler?”.
But some do. And a man got shot by FBI agents because the FBI raided Trump’s home so he declared all Feds should die and then quite astonishingly tried to enter a field office. The chase ended with him being shot to death. I’m of the mind that if you’re willing to die for a cause, the only legitimate one is protecting someone else in imminent danger. And I would do that which is why I carry a blade. Don’t judge me — it might be you I fight for. I’m too banged-up to fight, fuck or run a footrace, but never doubt that I would do the honorable thing should you be in danger.
And there are millions just like me.
But the Aryans, Nazis and other hate groups including the far-right churches, they’ll do the opposite. You don’t matter. But to them, Trump is the messiah and must be restored to his rightful throne. To this end they’ve already killed, and are calling for a civil war. That’s three things: terrifying, laughable and incredibly tragic.
As far as Russia claiming to own Trump, that’s a smoking gun. They know better than Trump does what’s in those files, because he’s too stupid to. He can barely read; remember that he asked for his briefings to include more maps and pictures? What a simpleton.
We will see where this goes, but I don’t think he’s getting off this time. He scared and beat this country down with bunk, but sometimes, nothing can stop the truth from being revealed.
And remember, the first step toward wisdom can only come from first admitting that you’re fool. Donald Trump will never know that simple, universal truth.
Til next time, stay safe, stay aware, and be well.
Sometime in the 1990s, a vessel in the Pacific must have hit a storm head-on. The deck was stacked with containers, which, when offloaded at their port of call, would be lifted by giant gantry cranes. Then a trucker would come to take the cargo inside to its destination. A chassis would be loaded and locked in place with it, making it a full tractor-trailer rig.
Something happened to one of those containers before the huge ship made port. Although these merchant ships have sturdy locking devices which enable them to carry containers stacked almost as tall as the bridge, accidents do happen. And this container fell overboard. I swear, it really happens.
However, it was to be some time before the world found out what was inside this particular container.
Once the strong and weak alike oceanic currents had taken over, rubber ducks were found on beaches or as floating flocks in weird places. Oceanic scientists actively looked for them; this was a perfect opportunity to study currents.
But some people thought it was spooky. At first, beachcombers and tourists knew nothing of the lost container. Therefore, yes. Spooky.
The mystery of the shoes, some with feet still in them, has still not been adequately explained even though articles exist which claim it has. They wash up on Canadian beaches and have caused horror, consternation and theories that range from a serial killer to gang violence and extraterrestrials being responsible.
But by far the creepiest discovery in recent years is the dolls and doll parts washing ashore in Texas on the southern coast between Padre and Matagorda islands. And the weirdest part is that the head of a sex doll, mouth round and wide open but filled with mud or sea creatures is among the baby dolls.
The stretch of coast in question is long, with Padre Island being the southernmost and Corpus Christi between. The area claims prime beaches but this is enough to scare people with a fear of dolls, like myself, into heading for the northern beaches.
Look. Let’s just face it: if you aren’t creeped out by dolls, you are in the minority here. Most people won’t admit to being scared of them, but it’s a real thing. There’s even a name for it: pediophobia.
Some dolls have barnacles and other things attached. All are creepy, having been in the water for some time, then coming ashore like something in a bad movie.
The Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve occasionally auctions the dolls off, but that’s truly a sick thing to do. Comedian John Oliver wants to buy them and burn them. I agree.
But I differ slightly on the method and the reason for it. I think they should be hauled up in a net and dropped into an active volcano by a C-130.
To appease whatever god Texas has offended because Ted Cruz is still in office.
In a special web-only episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver skipped politics, water treatment and Tucker Carlson to talk, or rant to be more specific, about how dull dry cereal is, to lament the absence of anything new on the market and call out the makers of Cheerios for having a twitter footprint more bland than the cereal itself. He challenged them to tweet “Fuck you” and tag any random Twitter user, and if they did, he would donate a large sum to the charity of the bland cereal maker’s choice. But when the Cheerios Twitter account attempted to shame Oliver by claiming a family brand made it impossible to rise to his challenge, they promptly fucked up by failing to give Oliver the respect he deserves, underestimating him in the process. What followed was almost predictable. Cheerios challenged Oliver: tweet “Family makes the good go round” and they would double their donation which, according to the tweet, it had just made.
Oh, no. No, no, no. You don’t fuck with John Oliver. You don’t call him out. The host really had been successfully challenged a time or two but he’s brilliant and everyone should have known, he would use the juggernaut of HBO’s legal resources to learn from it and be on more sure footing the next time.
His response to the wholesome counterchallenge is nothing short of genius and hilarious with a bunch of irreverent, sick humor smashed inside. Like candy with a bitter cream center: the joke’s on you, Cheerios. You take your bland baby food and claims of lowering cholesterol and your family image and stuff em. You’re corporate and will always, on the surface, deny it; raking in millions and acting charitable when called out while kids starve any other time. That’s the corporate mentality and working principle. Never cut into profits unless you have to; after all, this crisis with covid isn’t over. Nor is the fallout from it with millions unemployed but being able to find jobs they aren’t experienced enough to have and being shamed on top of that as being lazy and finding benefits preferable to work.
What if American food producers donated more? What if all of them did? What if they didn’t need cajoling from people like John Oliver?
General Mills, you fell for it. You did exactly what he wanted you to.
“…consisting of pulverized oats in the shape of a solid torus.”– description of Cheerios, source: Wikipedia
Warning: this post contains adult language and subject matter. Discretion is advised.
Do you remember John Wayne’s last film? My readers abroad, who I can’t thank enough for being here, may not. So, in short, the plot goes like this:
Aging gunfighter John Bernard Books rides into Carson City in January of 1901, seeking the opinion of Doc Hostettler (James Stewart). He is worn out, grizzled and his time has clearly passed as he sees when he arrives. A streetcar pulled by a horse goes past. The marshall (Harry Morgan) will inform him later that the following year, the streetcar will be electric-powered. Not something a man in his prime in the 1880s would be familiar with to any but a passing degree.
Books had seen a doctor in Creed, Colorado, but didn’t believe his diagnosis, so he rode out the next day to see Hostettler, who had once saved his life.
Books lived his life by simple rules: “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to others, and I require the same from them.” And so he’s killed over 30 men. In the territories that was how it very often went except 30 is a pretty high number. Today Books would be called a serial killer.
He sees Hostettler and gets the same news the doctor in Creed gave him: terminal cancer. But in one of the most remarkable scenes, Hostettler says, “There will be an increase in the severity of the pain. No drug will moderate it.” He says Books will lie in bed and scream and if he’s lucky he will lose consciousness. He then says something I found very profound: “I would not die a death like I just described. Not if I had your courage.”
Cancer is a horrible way to go. In the end, Books chooses as Hostettler suggests and goes out on his own terms in a shootout.
This week John Oliver did a show on assisted living facilities, which is the politically correct name for a human torture system which is defined as legal under every penal code there is, federal, state, municipal or county. It’s a fucking nightmare with four walls where people go to die.
I spent time in a nursing “facility” after having bypass surgery during which complications led the doctors to put me into a coma for two weeks. I lost 30 pounds and was weak enough to get sent to a place called Lorien Nursing Home and I spent a week there having physical therapy and being served food unfit for most animals.
In the room with me was an elderly Japanese man whose English vocabulary was “Pee pee!” And was a plea to be assisted to the toilet. Sometimes he was responded to quickly. Sometimes not. Sometimes not at all.
When they left him like that of course he’d urinate on himself and his bed. The nurse would give him hell, bitching at him as if he could understand her. He could not. Unable to help, I had to listen to this shit and there was, I knew very well, nobody I could complain to on his behalf.
If not for March Madness, I’d have gone mad myself. The doctor doing my follow up care was one of the cruelest, crudest, most foul physicians I can ever remember seeing, and that is saying something because in my life I’ve been to emergency rooms in Baltimore City and County, Anne Arundel County, Howard County and Carroll County. The full list of hospitals contained in my visits are more than you’d think. I may be a couple of years shy of being a senior, but you can take this to the bank: my odometer has turned about 4 times. And this twat was the worst of all the doctors who ever operated on me, stitched me up, set broken bones or treated smashed fingers, burns, or heart attacks. In a nursing home, this guy practiced medicine with the bedside manner of Joseph Mengele. I hated him. Forgiving him doesn’t even come into play.
The nurses were negligent. All of the ones I saw, at least. So that’s one week in the life of a patient who is never going back. Imagine living there for the rest of your life.
Hell has nothing on a nursing home.
Any “resident” who dies and goes to Hades would be getting a reprieve.
I’ve heard and read about nursing home abuse all my life. Its very nature makes the typical account fodder for a Stephen King novel.
Before my mother got married, she was a registered nurse. My controlling father would have no part of a working wife. He kept her pregnant from 1958 to 1970.
As we were gathering together to go to the police to give written statements, one younger sibling told me that one day, when my youngest brother, the last of us to be born, was still in a crib, she had seen mother bend over and fellate him.
You can’t get much sicker than that, and I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. But then, around that same time, I mean when we were preparing to go to the police, I learned that mother had entered the job market as a nurse once more.
At a Glen Burnie nursing home. A picture of her giving helpless old men fellatio immediately came to mind and made me sick. Sure she would do it. Of course she would. She was sick. So goddamn sick that she’s still a monster for the ages.
She was never unique, though.
Back when the trial was in session I still thought my family was different. That all eight children sexually abused, beaten and mentally abused was some kind of aberration rarely seen.
But that’s not true. It happens to families all over the world and it always has and it always will.
But I digress. Picturing her loose in a nursing home caused me to remember every horror story I knew about nursing homes. You want to see a real shit show? Go visit the inmates of one of those places after COVID-19. Which won’t be for some time.
What you’ll hear, smell and see will change you. Not for the better.
In the UK a particularly sickening nursing home homicide made these headlines. Once you click the link, a photo of a blonde woman will be the first thing you see.
You are looking at a monster.
That’s what I said, a monster.
Not some post-modern Prometheus born or sewn together in a laboratory or darkened castle. No, just an ordinary-looking young woman who happened to, without remorse, torture a woman to death in a nursing home. The abuse is documented; the case closed. Justice…has been served.
Except that justice doesn’t mean any more in the UK than it does in America. The defendant pled guilty. Guilty!
She won’t spend a day in prison. Know why? She pleaded her belly. She’s pregnant with a five-year-old at home. The judge had to consider this and let her go home. I understand it, but there is a problem with this solution.
First, any remorse she displayed was because she got arrested, not because the woman she tormented actually died. Second, she’s clearly abusive to an extraordinarily gruesome degree. Don’t you wonder what that means for her children? When she’s texting, and they misbehave, interrupting her, what will she do? Beat them? Scream that Hell is coming for them? Poke them in their eyes?
Because abusive behavior comes from several places, chief among them being frightening anger, uncontrollable and furious. It also comes from a lack of patience and a lack of control. Abusers, like rapists and serial killers, need to feel power and control over others. We know that much despite not really understanding it. Sometimes, if diagnosed and treated with talk and drug therapy, who knows how many were prevented from causing harm. And yes, once the right mix is “dialed in”, drug therapy is a miracle. Years ago, in other parts of the world, rapists were given complete castration, becoming less than eunuchs. Know what happened? They repeat offended and used objects for penetration. Rape was never sexual. Power, humiliation and control. That’s what it’s about. Just like my parents. They’re all different but all the same.
Abuse isn’t limited to sexual violations. In nursing homes, people die from infections which fester in bedsores and maybe that could have happened anyway, but in there, nurses just don’t bother to turn their patients. That’s another shitty, horrific way to die.
And don’t be defensive; no need for that. I know some facilities really do keep higher standards and provide better care, but most of those are expensive and beyond the means of the bigger part of the elderly and disabled population. And nurses are not as a rule monsters. Health care workers are usually entering a field they feel strongly about. They take jobs with the best of intentions and are motivated. A large portion burn out, leaving the field of healthcare forever because they’ve seen too much, put in too many hours for too little pay, and they just give up.
What replaces them are people attracted to the job not because of the pay, of course. They’re drawn to a job where they expect low standards to allow them to get by because prior experience tells them they aren’t very good at healthcare. I’ve seen workers come to the mental healthcare field because they themselves are having problems mentally and emotionally and they reason, wrongly, that they’ll “fit in”. They don’t. One ward I was on in my crisis had more adult thumb suckers in one place than any I’ve ever seen, and they were all employees.
I used to believe that American health care was cutting edge, the best in all the world. People from other countries came here for treatment, some right here in Maryland at Johns Hopkins or University Hospital. Now universities in other countries are warning their students abroad to leave the United States because of subpar health systems.
Here’s the reason, though, that I’m writing this post: when I can no longer care for myself, I will not go to a nursing home. With my fading strength, I go out my own way, on my own terms, with dignity and honor.
Terminal patients should have the right to choose to end their lives before the indignity and pain reduces them to nothing more than a screaming bunch of dying nerve endings. Before someone leaves them in a urine-soaked bed or punches them or screams “Fuck you!” At them.
Because that’s no way to be treated. It’s no way to live and certainly no way to die.
One more thing. It’s important.
I’m proud to have lived my life as an American citizen. To have served this country. To have overcome great trauma enough to have worked for 30 years. To have overcome a racist upbringing. I’m proud to have served under three presidents.
I am not proud of a lot more, though, than I am proud of. I failed so many things. I failed my children. My wife. My faith. I have tried to keep fighting, to be strong. To be honorable. When that is no longer possible I will not allow anyone to take away my dignity, my honor. I will never allow that. I close by saying to you, I don’t know much. I’m not a very smart man. But I do know that we are all on borrowed time. Not with our personal mortality; death is a natural part of life.
But we are not a civilized species. And all our technological advances and equations and theories can’t hide what savages we really are. When the Ever Giving was stranded in the Suez Canal, it caused a backup in shipping traffic that could take 9 months to correct. Prices and demand will again rise, because COVID-19 taught us nothing. We never changed to allow for extra supplies to be stocked. We didn’t learn. And should anything else compound the Suez aftermath, you’ll see global shortages for months on products essential and non-essential alike. We aren’t ready for that. It could be an epic disaster rivaling COVID.
And that’s only one thing. Climate change deniers have caused delays in an already hopeless battle. It is only early spring here in the States, and already the lawn mowers, leaf blowers and weed eaters are constantly running. That shouldn’t be happening. Temperature rise has given superfungi and other dangerous life the chance to mutate. Fungi once harmless to humans have adapted to survive body temperatures and can kill. Supplies of coffee, bananas and cocoa are already endangered. That’s just to name a few.
At the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, wildlife is already eating plastic. Yet most plastics still cannot be recycled. If every plastic item we’ve ever made is still in existence as some experts warn, and too many restrictions on recycling continue, we’re doomed.
Deforestation continues unabated, causing species extinction daily. Loss of habitat due to us building homes most people can’t afford is the height of stupidity and short sightedness and greed. But we’re not finished yet. When people wake up, it will be too late. That isn’t very far off, either.
As I was writing this I heard of another school shooting. We are savages. Mad, quite mad. Brutal. With crooked men defending the continued proliferation of guns everywhere.
But what do you expect? When we allow people who torture our elderly to death in nursing homes to go free, we’ve already proven just how brutal we are. That…will not change.
If you’re like me, you couldn’t keep up with it all. Or even process everything. What a week that was. I’ve never seen anything like it and nothing in my memory can compare to it. And yet, George Floyd was not unique in that horrible way he died. So people asked, “What’s so different now?”
I looked at the TV. I looked at videos and read articles. With a thrill of nausea and lots of dread, I saw the tear gas used on protesters, saw crowds running, saw the church burn on Sunday night, then, Monday, a debacle the likes of which I’ve never even imagined as Lafayette Square was gassed and crowds charged by cops with shields and riot sticks.
Which was followed by a bizarre speech by Trump with an open threat and a singularly bizarre walk by Trump and an unbelievably scary entourage to the burnt church. The fucker used a church and an upside-down bible as props for a photo op. No shit, and it’s still hard to believe.
Then, in a blinding speed, images and sounds like nothing that could be real, but was.
A 75-year-old man shoved. Lost his balance because he was shoved. Immediately bleeding from an ear and the posterior skull. Listed as serious but stable condition. But how serious? That’s a severe concussion and probable skull fracture you’re seeing. He could have died.
Surrealism: a reporter and his crew fired at as they try to retreat. Cannisters and rubber bullets. Two Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawks buzzing protesters, a maneuver someone called “dusting”, which is basically terrorism. The twin engines and the monster blades of the Blackhawks are weapons at low altitude. If you’re beneath them, you’re getting hit by particles of dust, small debris and anything they feel like dropping. You better tuck into a ball and cover your face. No shit. Whoever justifies this shit is stupid.
But there was no shortage of that. It didn’t begin or end with Trump’s bible modeling. He was asked if it was his bible, and he really answered, “It’s a bible.” Translation: “I don’t own a bible.”
While Reverend Al Sharpton gave a powerful and simply perfect eulogy for the family of George Floyd, others were beginning to fall away from supporting Trump. A number of former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs were vocal in their disapproval of his threat to use regular military personnel to police the streets of any state he chose, and Joe Biden failed to tell officers not to shoot at suspects. Instead he suggested that they aim for legs instead of center of mass. Joe wants to win, but waffling is not a good strategy. There’s no middle ground in a firefight and nobody aims for legs, but then again, that’s if someone else has a gun and can, or is shooting back. You aim center of mass unless you’re the highest tier in an elite sniper class. Then you can try for headshots, but even that’s mostly Hollywood and videogame bullshit. If you’re forced to shoot, you’re forced to kill. Fuck around, and you’ll be the casualty.
Besides, you know how easy it is to hit a major artery in the leg? If a shot goes astray and you score a leg shot, your high velocity round will be very likely to cut or sever the femoral artery. That’s still a kill.
Why all the stupidity? Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Diblasio are not handling things. The tear gas. The pepper balls. Vehicles running into a crowd.
The result: officers shot by anarchists or just plain dickheads using brute force against civilians as an excuse, which makes everything worse.
The police have been less than honorable in every city where protests took place save one, Newark. What are they doing different?
Hitting kids over the head with riot sticks has nothing to do with law and order. It has everything to do with wanting to crack his fucking skull open.
In my life, I’ve seen and been the victim of things nobody should ever see or endure. But though I’ve been bitter about it, there wasn’t enough evil in me to act on it. Oh, when I thought about shooting my parents, I was well and truly capable. I would have been convicted of first degree murder, too. But I’d have saved my nephew from things I knew he was already having done to him. Cops kneeling on a man because he had a rap sheet until the guy dies isn’t done to save anyone.
It’s done out of racist hatred and a disregard for civil rights and the sanctity of life that chills my blood. Watching George Floyd die is to watch a part of your own soul break off and die. Seeing that cop with a hand in his pocket, squeezing the life out of Floyd and smirking is to watch a cold-blooded, first degree homicide. That’s exactly what it was, straight murder. Other officers watched. And it doesn’t matter that one said something. It doesn’t matter because they all stood around and watched a bully cop with a bad record commit murder. Now they’ve been photographed in orange, and they should get used to that color. Other cops are pissed. They’re striking out at people because a “brother officer” is “guilty of doing his job”.
Meanwhile, honorable police officers are lumped together as assholes and murderers. That’s not cool, but what’s less so is when someone says, “If you get a bad hamburger it doesn’t mean McDonald’s is bad.” Speaking about police officers to a crowd. That’s not the way to handle this. It’s degrading, simplistic and grossly condescending.
Trump, on the other hand, notorious for not wearing a mask, toured a plant where swabs for covid-19 tests were made. In there, he alone wasn’t wearing a mask. The entire batch made that day are confirmed as contaminated and we already did not have enough.
Then he claimed based on flawed numbers that the economy was doing great, and that George Floyd was looking down on him and smiling. African American jobs were up, he said. Which confirmed, if anyone had any doubts remaining, that Donald Trump is a racist idiot who is so self-serving and egotistical that he would actually talk like that while the nation was caught up in protesting the man’s murder, his family was grieving, and he was standing there mocking them and perfectly happy to risk more unemployment when the coronavirus spreads.
Covid-19 is not over, is not slowing, and will continue to spread. There won’t be any second surge in the fall; we’re already into June and there’s no reason to believe next month will automatically be free of COVID-19. That’s unreasonable, unrealistic and too close to Trump’s lies and delusion than anyone should be.
Fortunately I have just the man to properly explain all of this. If a comedian can’t be funny right now, it’s not because he’s not willing to try. It’s because laughing at this shit is unthinkable. He gets in a couple of jibes, but this is the most serious episode he’s ever done.
Colin Powell and others are now openly calling Trump a liar. Why the fuck did it take three and a half years?
Memoirs of an American Christian 