The Cure for Our National Sickness is an Eclipse

I’ve been working on all sorts of things while I had MSNBC live-streaming in the background.  MSNBC’s news coverage is certainly repetitive – but I have more issues with their advertisers and advertising sales department – and some of their so-called on-air “experts” – than their content, at the moment.

Just out of curiosity, I recorded the number of commercials I had to sit through during a 90 minute period.  The program was Headlines at the Half, with anchor Alex Witt.  The program ran from 8:30-10:00 am on Saturday morning, 19 August 2017.  I recorded 27 minutes of commercials during a 90 minute program.  Almost one-third of the program was spent bombarding viewers with repetitive and annoying commercials.

I sat through more medical issues than I ever thought possible.  Sleep apnea – OTC pain meds – Alzheimer’s – women’s hair loss – colon cancer – plaque psoriasis – rheumatoid arthritis – asthma - metastatic breast cancer – chemotherapy medication – anti-smoking – ulcerative colitis – diabetes – irritable bowel syndrome – shingles vaccine – catheters - therapist-texting app – opioid-induced constipation – Crohn’s Disease - insulin alternatives – Medicare Supplement plans – Osteo Bi-Flex – low-dose aspirin regiment – brain health OTC meds – bleeding gums – gum disease – and that was just in a couple of hours.

Either we are the sickest country on the planet, or MSNBC viewers have singlehandedly uncovered the reason that drug prices are so high:  they batter you relentlessly with depressing and expensive medical TV advertisements. 

Worse:  all of the medications sounded like they had worse side effects than anything they were being used for ... “Use our product for excessive nose hair!  Oh yeah, call your doctor if your nose falls off your face into your soup ... it may cause suicidal thoughts, flatulence, weird rashes on your genitals and boils.”

Last bottom line:  I defy anyone out there to insist that the one thing they want to hear about in the middle of the morning news is:  men discussing catheters!  I was so grossed out I had to turn the sound off.  I’m sure men feel the same way about women’s personal hygiene products.

Note to the DNC:  neeed a great fundraising idea?  Start a new cable company:  HHP –  “Hypochondriac’s Happy Place”.  Change the laws so that all pharmaceutical and drug companies have only one place – the HHP of course - they can air their commercials.  Air non-stop disgusting commercials, aimed just at sick people, or people who think they are.  We have so many hypochondriacs you’ll make an instant fortune – trust me – and you’ll leave the RNC in the dust.  And for the act of sparing the rest of us from needing to watch hours of really disgusting commercials?  The entire country will love you.  Think about it.

Whiplash Comment:  did it strike anyone else that the fake married couple hawking Sunsetter Retractable Awning is, like, WAY too excited about awning?  I mean, to the point of emotional dysfunction, and to the point where you want to slap both of them back to common sense?

Lastly, advertisers have definitely been obsessed lately with hiring women to simper in whispery little voices that they must fantasize that Lolita used:  Leesa Mattress, G.E.’s “Millie Dresselhaus” ad; Birch Box, Talk Space (where the spokesgirl for texting your therapist sounded like she had been recently lobotomized), Alzheimer’s fund raisers (who may be the same “little girl” who hawks Panera salads), Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine who dresses like a submissive and obedient sex slave and murmurs through pursed lips.  Has anyone in the law enforcement vice squad thought of looking into advertising and media industry execs as the most likely to be involved in illegal sexual deviance?

More Hypocrisy:  Had to block another liberal thread on Facebook before I lost my marbles:  a bunch of them were squealing with girlish delight (and that included a bunch of guys, too, don’t ask me why) at a photo of Martha Stewart giving trump her middle finger.  Ooooh!  Ahhhh!  Now, personally, I have no issues with anyone flipping trump the bird, but by the time they were enthusing, “Martha for pres!”, I completely lost my temper at them.

Imagine, if you will, that in 2020, Republicans announced they were backing a convicted felon, four-counts worth!, for president.  These same lunatic liberals would have gone freaking insane.  And yet, these were liberals, enthusiastically doing that.  Suddenly convicted felons were the GOOD guys?  You wanted to slap every single one of them, too, upside their idiotic heads.  And that’s a perfect example of what I meant by hypocrisy.  The left will never get anywhere if this level of stupidity represents their base.

Overwhelmed with the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, including the speech in the trump tower lobby, Bannon’s departure, the issue of confederate statues, Barcelona, neo-Nazi’s, the KKK, the works.  Overshadowed with MSNBC’s insistence that we send billions of dollars to their greedy advertisers, while pretending none of this ever happened.  Welcome to the USA, where I seem to spend a lot of time wanting to slap people.

Although I did love watching the reactions to the Great American Eclipse, as it traveled across the country.  How wonderfully strange:  the moon completely covering the sun finally united the entire country!  The moon should do that more often.

Bipartisan Hypocrisy and American Idiots

First is the hypocrisy ... I have a visceral reaction to people saying one thing and doing the exact opposite when it benefits them:  it makes my skin crawl, no matter who’s doing it.  If you think I’m directing that at conservatives alone, you’d be wrong; I have received a lot of rather hysterical backlash from people on the left when I’ve questioned their motives as well.  I’ve had to block a lot of liberals who have adopted the attitude that if I happen to disagree with something they’ve said, I must automatically be a “trump troll”.  And I’m not.  I just don’t like hypocrisy.  If you’re going to attack the other side for doing something heinous, make sure you haven’t done it yourself, first.

Second: the uneducated stupidity that runs the entire political spectrum.  A perfect example of this:  someone posted a brief video of a performance of Julius Caesar, performed as part of “Shakespeare in the Park”, in Central Park, New York City.  Change they made:  dressed the actors up in business suits instead of togas.  One of them vaguely resembled trump.  You expected the right to go freaking nuts, which they did:  “The New York Times put on a play showing the assassination of trump!” they yowled.

No, they didn’t.  They put on a Shakespearean play depicting the assassination of Julius Caesar, you boneheads.  But it’s doubtful that the right knows anything about Roman history, Julius Caesar or even who William Shakespeare was.  That level of idiocy you’ve come to expect from the right.  Not to mention that past versions of the character have resembled Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and they were all fine with that.  Hypocrisy again.

But the left?  You hoped the polls were accurate:  that the left in general were better educated than the right.  But that statistic didn’t hold up in the conversation that followed.  No matter how many times you told them, “Julius Caesar”, “Shakespeare” – whatever – their brains refused to kick in, either.  It was obvious that most of them just jumped online without bothering to read any of the previous explanatory comments:  “That’s terrible”, “I don’t like violence!” and (my favorite) “The playwright should be ashamed!”  Yes, from the left.  Funny, I don’t think William Shakespeare is experiencing a whole lotta shame over it.

To give you another example:

Tinkerbelle (“Tink”) posts a fake news post with the headline, “trump finally shoots pedestrian on Fifth Avenue and gets away with it!”  Without bothering to check any legitimate sources, Dolores Umbridge II (“Dot”) posts it again.  30 seconds later, there goes “Bossy”.  Anyone who stops and looks at the source realizes it was posted from Russia.

The very first comment on all 3 duplicate posts:  “Fake news out of Russia; don’t click on this link, it’s clickbait.”

And here’s what follows:

Poster #2:  Why hasn’t he been arrested?

Poster #3:  This country has sunk to the depths of depravity!

Poster #4:  Terrible!

Poster #5:  Unforgiveable!

Poster #6:  Despicable!

Poster #7:  He must be impeached – NOW!

Poster #8:  This is what happens when you give the mentally ill the right to buy guns!

Poster #9:  I'm not in support of this at all, it's absolutely wrong.

Poster #10:  Omg this is wrong in so many ways.

Poster #11:  Why did I get a virus when I clicked on this link?

Poster #12:  Folks, THIS IS FAKE NEWS!  Do not click on this link!!

Poster #13:  Why hasn’t he been arrested?

Poster #14:  This country has sunk to the depths of depravity!

Poster #15:  Terrible!

Poster #16:  Unforgiveable!

Poster #17:  Despicable!

Poster #18:  He must be impeached – NOW!

Poster #19:  This is what happens when you give the mentally ill the right to buy guns!

Poster #20:  I'm not in support of this at all, it's absolutely wrong.

Poster #21:  Omg this is wrong in so many ways.

Poster #22:  Why did I get a virus when I clicked on this link?

.... and it goes on, and on, and on, and on ... just to let you know:  some of these are actual responses to fake news stories previously debunked on the threads as fake news.

Anyone who thinks liberals are all much better educated than their counterparts on the other side of the aisle never signed on to Facebook.

Toto, I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore

[Subtitle:  Or Maybe We Are; Kansas Has Nothing to Brag About]

More entries have been written, erased, revised, re-written and erased again in the course of the last 7 months than I may have made the effort to, in the last 7 years.  Reason:  As soon as I wrote one sentence, another appalling outrage made it obsolete.

Could have gone either way:  either something appalling actually did happen, or appalling headlines made it seem like it did.  Whatever, most Americans on social media were punched in the face and sent reeling on a daily, if not hourly, basis.  It’s a miracle most of us aren’t curled up in a fetal position, sucking our thumbs. 

Only reason we’re not (yet) are the news stories in print or airing everywhere (except Fox News and Breitbart) of the rather dramatic implosion of the current ... whatever you would term this mindboggling assortment of embarrassingly clueless idiots ... to the point where they’re calling it a death rattle.  You get the impression you’re about to witness the second presidential disaster of your lifetime ... Nixon being the first.  At the moment, Robert Mueller is installed as Special Counsel and former FBI Director James Comey just testified in the Senate, in a hearing that boasted of more listeners and viewers than the imaginary inauguration crowd we keep hearing about.

I’m not going to go on for pages about our current political situation ... I don’t think I could say anything that millions of people haven’t already said ... instead, I’ll whine about social media.

You may have noticed that I’m not overly fond of other women.  (You:  “Nooooooo!  REALLY??”)  Lots of reasons, long before now.  The last 7 months seems to have exacerbated the dislike.

I had finally settled on one Facebook page that has about 40,000 members in it ... let’s call it, “Griping About Politics”.  Not their real name.  I settled on one mainly because almost every FB page on the same topic has the same posts, the same memes, the same blather.  Some worse than others.  Some, run by ridiculous wannabe twinkie cheerleaders who have never once read, “The Art of War” and demand that you toe the “When they go low, we go HIGH!” line, to the point where you want to slap them all silly – repeatedly.

Then there are the liberal dimwits who truly believe that, for the sake of argument, if the current president finds himself tossed out of the office on his keester, that means that Clinton would automatically be installed since, you know, she won the popular vote.  No matter how many times you remind them of a line of succession laid out in a document they may have heard of (anyone remember we have a Constitution?) ... you can’t get it through their thick heads that such a scenario isn’t even remotely possible.  “But that’s not faaaiiir!” they wail ... there’s only so far I can roll my eyeballs.  Yeah?  Life isn’t always fair, buttercups – suck it up.

Next are the discussions about choices for 2020.  That’s even more disheartening.  I swear liberals never even heard of the concept of “strategy”; they just want the warm, familiar fuzzies of legacy names.  First they want Michelle Obama.  We shoot that down.  Next they want a Kennedy.  Any Kennedy:  Joseph, Caroline ... not because either of them are qualified (and I doubt they even think they’re qualified), but because they’re Kennedy’s.  Then they want Bernie Sanders – a Socialist.  Then they want Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard or Kamala Harris ... the list goes on and on, absurd choice after absurd choice.  No wonder Democrats keep losing.  Here’s my idea – you just lost the entire south because they’re all racist boneheads who hate women and anybody who isn’t white, rabidly regressive and depravedly theocratic.  So, let’s nominate anybody who makes a southerner’s hair curl – sure, that should clinch the White House in 2020.  And yet Liberals keep coming up with these absurd suggestions.  You want to knock  their heads together until their brains kick in.

Proof positive that there are so many awesomely stupid people on both sides of the political spectrum, you are left wondering how this country manages to function at all.  Or maybe it doesn’t, which is why we ended up where we are.

Unfortunately, the FB page I selected had their own issues:  women, two or three in particular.  Let’s call them Tinkerbelle (“Tink”), “Bossy” and Dolores (“Dot”) Umbridge II.

Tink, Bossy and Dot decided that their main purpose in life was to post every single post they could find anywhere on the entire internet, on the “Griping” FB page, without bothering to check if (a) it was already there, (b) if it was relevant, or (c) if it was fake news or legitimate news – they didn’t care, they just uploaded everything they could find.

You’d sit there and watch post after post after post from Tink, Bossy and Dot get uploaded, literally one per second, to the point they drove you freaking nuts.  No matter what time of day ... I watched them go berserk with these posts at 3 in the morning when I was up getting a drink of water.  4 in the afternoon.  8 in the morning.  Noon.  Midnight.  I swear, that’s all they did.  God forbid you mention any of the above objections:  already been posted, fake news site, off topic, irrelevant, whatever ... and these drooling bobble-heads would go screaming menopausal-psychotic on you.

Other gripes:  Type “Yes” if you agree.  New Rule:  I will type “No”, and “Fuck You” whether I agree with it or not, I’m so sick of that. 

Another woman posted her idea of what was REALLY important:  “5/25/2017 5:55:50 AM:  Biggest mistake of the day - watching the Dirty Dancing remake instead of the Survivor finale.”

Women.  That’s why we’re in the hell we are now in.  Are you a woman and object?  Suck it up and admit you and your gender are idiots.

Zippers, More Crap from China, More Crap from the World of Politics and Asherah

Another zipper snapped off in my hand ... this one on my green Newport hoodie, made in (you guessed it!) China.  Only had it for a year, which should surprise exactly ... no one who has any familiarity with the absolute junk China foisters on us with the full support of every politician out there, may they all burn and rot in the bowels of ... so anyway, I found an Amazon entry for a replacement full zipper hoodie ... called Joe’s USA! ... except for the small print that whispered that  Joe USA's entire product line was, I then learned, made in Honduras.  “Joe’s USA”, my un-American ass.

It’s been a struggle, opening Facebook every morning and reading nothing but non-stop crap.  I don’t care what side people are on, I just keep reading more and more insane political crap that stopped making sense a year ago.  I finally found some “safe” Facebook pages to park on when I’m chatting with a friend, so as to ignore all of it.

Example:  I have learned more about space travel, post-modernism and “Aviation Technology” in the last six months than I had in the last 20 years – can actually give you the names of different airliners; discovered that the symbol of Egypt Air is actually Horus.  (I absolutely love it - Who knew?  Yay, Horus!!)  ANYTHING but American politics.

No, not even politics, it’s just non-stop juvenile, brain-dead insanity.  And now, I don’t care what side you’re on – nothing you say at any point will change anybody’s minds, so just GROW UP and SHUT UP!  Everything you post is either a deliberate or unintentional lie, so you are perpetuating this 3-ring circus that the 2016 election has turned into.  In fact, this entire country needs an intervention, at this point.  The days until this insane campaign is over can’t pass fast enough.  Thus ends my 2016 Election rant for the day.

And Fall has set in. Any hope we had for a warmer fall to make up for the chilly May and June has wrapped itself in hoodies, flannel sweatpants, woolen knee socks and left town.  I have this sullen determination not to turn the furnace on ... so, as I sit here with my teeth chattering, grumbling at my perverse stubbornness ...

I would have changed the title from “The Changing Heart” to the “Watchful Heart”, but that’s just me.  (Woke up to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents program; that’s what was airing at the time).

Have just begun Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, Saul M. Olyan, Society of Biblical Literature, Monograph Series,  (#34),  Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia,  1988.

What I like:  he doesn’t start out like a Judeo-Christian-Islamic defense lawyer (“Impossible!  Blasphemy!  There is no other god except ...!”), which is very refreshing.  Instead, he starts out with the various (and conflicting) interpretations of Asherah and her relation first to Baal and to El and to Yahweh.  What I’ve learned:  much like the christians swearing their Paulian version of their cult is the only correct one; the Torah went through much the same process of being politics-driven as opposed to anything spiritual.  Most christians have little or no knowledge of the numerous variations of christianity that existed until Rome took control and ruthlessly slaughtered adherents of the other versions.  Had nothing to do with whether there might have been any truth in those other beliefs – as always, it was a matter of who swung a meaner sword.  Since no one likes to look at the truth that their “correct” religious beliefs only came about by means of grotesque slaughtering of entire towns ... christians now believe their version is the only “correct” one for spiritual reasons.

Same was true of the Torah – Olyan makes a point of which schools of thought influenced which passages he quotes.  Christianity follows their political choice, the Paulian sword – and Judaism, for the most part, adopted the Deuteronomistic versions of the Torah, which were re-written after each tragedy (the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, etc.) to explain past history.  The exile, as an example – much of the blather about their one god being a “jealous” one came after they had been exiled, by way of explaining why such a horrible episode had happened to them.  You get together a bunch of pissed-off guys who had just been driven from their homeland, and who buy and sell women like cattle, and what else is their version of the Torah going to sound like?  The Queen of Heaven disappeared from early judeo-christian-islamic books.  They still don’t believe She ever actually existed in their belief system.  But She did.

This really isn’t contributing much to “C’era una volta”, and the origins of the Big Bad ... but for that I’m reading The Gnostic Gospels: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, The Origin of Satan by Elaine H. Pagels (New York : Vintage Books, 1989, c1988), but I was in the habit of reading that, unfortunately, when I was laying on the beach, relaxing to the sound of the waves against the shore.  Fall comes around ... I have to change my reading habits.

So how do you resolve the issue of fallen versus not fallen in the matter of heavenly beings? If you go by the edicts of the medieval church, the only angels who are to be considered legitimate and not fallen are those three archangels whose names appear specifically in the Bible: Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael.

Of course, conspicuously, these three also appear specifically by name within the sacred texts of another culture entirely. In the Sumerian tale of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld, Michael, Gabriel, and associates stand guard at each of the gates of hell. Those three beings who would later be adopted as archangels into Jewish myth appear as guardians who exact payment from the goddess before she may pass through the various levels of the underworld in her attempt to reach the throne of her sister, Ereshkigal.

The weird and wacky history of earth’s bizarre religious traditions continues ...