Screaming During Storms

Second night in a row of howling winds.  Spent all day enduring Riley which then went into its second night.  Second so-called “bombogenesis” storm in a ridiculously short period of time.  Couldn’t sleep in all that noise, so got up, flipped on the TV and (you knew this was coming) got hit by the women peeing on themselves, women complaining about constipation, women battling depression, women battling heavy periods, women complaining about “wide-spread pain” that no one else could see, the hideously annoying Panera Catering Lolita-voice, the hideously annoying Wrigley’s Extra Gum simpering singing voice, and that grotesquely creepy Fiji Water voice (OMG! - shudder)  ... all of which was just as annoying as the non-stop howling winds.  And on and on.  First time in my life I actually prayed for a power outage in the middle of the night.

Oh Liberals ... you are just so pathetically sad.  And I am a Liberal, so no, I’m not a trumpapalooza either.  I grew up in NYC ... trust me, I can’t stand the guy and haven’t for decades.

Picture it.  An Anti-GOP Facebook group.  A closed group.  Two incidents.

Someone linked to a 28 Feb CNN story.  Here’s the headline:  “Republican Rep. Tom Rooney is calling for an end to the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into possible collusion in Russia's 2016 election meddling, arguing that its only purpose is to drive the media narrative for Democrats.”

This was followed by hours of liberals screaming in the comments section about protecting Bob Mueller’s investigation from all of these insane Republicans.  Which proves that not a single one of them actually read (a) the headline or (b) the story.  No matter how many times I commented, “Hey, he’s talking about the House Intelligence Committee, not Bob Mueller’s investigation”, they just kept going ... and going ... and going.  Finally, I just started twitching.  And data suggests that liberals tended to be better educated than Republicans?  Not this bunch – they obviously flunked reading comprehension dramatically.

Nor do they have a sense of humor.  Later, same group:  a clever, witty guy posts a comment.  Paraphrased:  “We must all pray for this administration!  Pray with me, brothers and sisters, let us repeat Psalm 109 together!”

Given the type of group he posted in (anti GOP, remember), your first reaction should have been “Huh?”  Indeed, mine was “Huh?” as well, but I also stopped and looked up Psalm 109.  Took me all of a second.  When I read it, I burst out laughing.

‘Let his days be few; and let another take his office.’ is one of the nicer lines in the Psalm, which is basically a curse.  It was howlingly, screamingly funny.

And yet, except for 2 or 3 other people, not a single Liberal got the joke.  None of them stopped and looked it up.  Instead, they erupted in cursing, nastiness, rabid ugliness.  A few people tried to stop the howling which followed by posting the entire Psalm in the comments section.  They might as well have been shouting into a hurricane-force wind.  None of the liberals noticed.  They kept going ... and going ... and going ... calling the original poster all manner of ugly names.  They called for him to be banished from the group for being a Trump troll AND a Russian bot.  It was the most appalling reaction I’d ever read.  I went from twitching to full blown rage.  I finally had to agree with Conservatives:  Liberals ARE rabid knee-jerk idiots.  (Don’t get me wrong, I think most Conservatives are rabid knee-jerk idiots, too so it’s not like I’m taking sides.  But Liberals have nothing to feel smug and self-righteous about.)

As a result, I stayed off Facebook and cable news most of the week – which was very nice ... it finally got warm enough that all the dangerous snow and ice melted (briefly), so I was able to visit the grocery store, which was also nice.  Generally speaking, having food is nice, and I was running very, very low:  thanks to the ice, I had been trapped indoors for days.

Before the second nor’easter hit started, I had spent the morning riding a bucking bronco ... you’da thunk I was in some sleazy Texas roadhouse somewhere.  And by “bucking bronco”, I am of course referring to that New England specialty:  “frost heaves”.  Holy crap.  For those in the area – try Route 88, between the two Republican enclaves of Hampton Falls and Exeter.  (PS:  Don’t try it after a full meal).  Yes, Republicans gave me the heaves.  And after that, I gave myself the heaves by driving the bucking bronco all the way to Exeter, only to discover that my appointment was for the following day ... so I then had to do the same thing in reverse.  By the end of the day, I was trapped by 18 inches of snow.  Back to the TV out of boredom.

And later the same day, got hit with the news of the Broward high school shooting.  The full and gruesome coverage of which was regularly interrupted by ... commercials.

Back to screaming.  The horrible commercials about texting your therapist.  (“STFU, you demented lobotomized lunatic!” If these retarded women can’t exist without texting their therapist from the middle of Times Square, they need to check themselves into Bellevue!!!!) The equally horrible commercials for Panera Catering (“Who the **** hired that pedophile-bait spokescreep?”)  The pedophile-bait Leeza mattress spokes-Lolita was back again; the head-clutching Wrigley’s Extra gum pedophile-bait theme-warbler, the 5 year old kid intoning condescendingly about Maxwell House coffee (which let’s hope his parents don’t give him to drink) and “knowing the value of a hard day’s work”, when every parent on the planet knows that 5-year old kids know NOTHING about “the value of a hard day’s work”... punctuated with the usual disgusting commercials waxing poetic about “bloody or black stools”.  Or the same actress singing “Pan, pan, pan, pan!” while touting pizza, then  goes on and on in the next commercial about acne.  Hey, dumbass!  Try eating less pizza!  Oh, it just never ends.

Did You Just Sneeze?

Ask your doctor about our new medication, "Kill-a-Cold!"

(Side effects include:  projectile vomiting, dizziness so extreme you'll fall down and break all of your bones, bizarre sexual fantasies involving toasters, heart palpitations, possible strokes, violent urges to murder your entire family and possibly your neighbors, suicidal tendencies, horrible infections, constipation requiring feces to be extracted from your ass with dental picks, loss of bladder control, bloody urine, genital yeast infections, uncontrollable discharges of intestinal gas, loss of hair resulting in total baldness, skin rashes, boils and pus-filled oozing acne ...)”

Moral of the story:  there is a reason why we’re one of only 3 countries who allow medical commercials to air on TV – they’re NAUSEATINGLY DISGUSTING!  Yet another nightmare we could get rid of, if only we’d overthrow Citizens v. United:  No, pharmaceutical companies should never have “Freedom of Speech” to fill our eyes and ears with any disgusting image they want to.

So I decided to listen to a few hours of “Supernatural” re-runs on TNT instead.  An effort to spare myself the hellish barrage of MSNBC commercials.  No sooner had I walked away for a sec to make lunch, I hear the gawd-awful Wrigley’s Extra commercial before I could mute it and started screaming, “STFU, you evil bitch!!” from the kitchen  Then the evil “Save the Elephants” commercial, and switched to, “STFU, Sarandon, you decrepit hag!”  Then the hellish Uncle Ben’s commercial.  (More screaming).  Same crap that generated my rant earlier, different channel.  5 solid minutes of The Soundtrack From Hell before I could get back to the study to mute the horror.  Every single commercial break, the same horror.  It never - ever – ever - ends.  There has to be some level of Hell reserved especially for ad agencies and media buyers.  There just has to be.

Why I Stopped Posting in Liberal Facebook Groups

The main reason?  They are so disheartening and sad.  Whoever said people with lower IQ’s veered off in a deeply entrenched conservative mindset (which is probably true – they are pretty stupid) obviously never read the fools on the liberal side.

I have.

Listen, there are plenty of things to be pissed at Republicans for, right now – and if you can’t figure out what those are, you’ve been watching WAY too much Fox “Entertainment” for your own good.  No one’s asking you to deep dive into CNN or MSNBC or jack off watching the latest pathetic bleach-bottled two-bit brainless whore (they’re all interchangeable) spouting their fear of anyone but themselves or whatever your current gripe is, but hell, just watch global news, national news, local news, until it hits you that Fox is all by itself out in “Propaganda Right Field”.  (And then ask yourself why that might be).  Answer:  because 99.9% of their stories are blatant and laughable b.s. (which is why they can’t call themselves “News” – they’re not – they’re legally called “Entertainment”) and everyone but you seems to know it.

That’s not even the issue.  I even liked a few aspects of the old Republican party, platform before they lost their minds – fiscal conservatism, for example, and keeping the national debt under control.  They lost me the minute they hooked up with the religious right.  I mean, let’s face it, the behavior of evangelicals NOW is mind-boggling.  The issue, Conservatives, is that Liberals can be equally as stupid as you are, and for many of the same reasons.  Both sides seem spectacularly lacking in a simple skill that used to be known as “applying logic”.

Many liberals, for example, seem to think that if they take back control of Congress in 2018, they can just toss all the Republicans out on their ears.  Really?  And how do you propose to accomplish that?  A whole mess of libs crazily decided that Joe Kennedy III should be the next President even though (a) he isn’t running, (b) he has no platform BECAUSE he isn’t running, and (c) they’re waxing nostalgic over the Kennedy Family (JFK and RFK in particular) even though no one else is.  Hey, there’s a good reason for you.

These are the same libs who basically went gaga over Oprah, although if you replace “waxing nostalgic ...” with (c) gee, they really liked her on TV!, despite her having an utter lack of knowledge, experience and political know-how.  They still thought she should run for President.  I ended up clutching my head and screaming.  Same liberals who swooned over Michelle Obama’s non-candidacy – she definitely isn’t running, but they all wanted to vote for her anyway.  None of them stopped and gave it any thought – they were just willing to push levers over totally irresponsible choices.  How do these people have the intelligence to pick a legitimate president???  They don’t.  And neither do the Republican voters.  We are so doomed.

The final straw was a ridiculous video (unsourced and undated).  Basic premise:  some girl went around asking kids a few basic questions, among them:  who won the Civil War, who was the Vice President, and what show was Snookie on?  The only answer they all got right was the Snookie question – they had no clue about the other two. 

Well!  Liberals went on and on and on ad nauseum about the stupidity of the American people and how all of those kids had to be future Republicans!!!  Really? Not one of them asked, “Hey, how many people answered the questions correctly?”  For all we know, 500 people knew all the answers except the Snookie one, and only the five who showed up on the video were the idiots!  No date, no source – they all just bought into the entire premise, hook, line and sinker, and pontificated condescendingly for days without applying even a second of logic.

I told them that they were twice as stupid as the kids on the video and why, and naturally a gaggle of hysterical women got all offended at being insulted.  After telling them all to go to hell, I signed off.  So much for liberals – liberal women in particular - being intelligent.

Utterly sick of that, I ended up on something else:  listening to “Destination America”:  Season 1, Episode 5, “When Ghosts Attack:  “Ghost Stalker”, and I end up howling with laughter.  Premise:  Some idiot kid is speaking with a ghost (supposedly).  He tells his parents about the conversation, they immediately disbelieve him and then lecture him on their god’s opinion on lying.

He argues, “But God is a woman”.  They back up from their own child, horror on their faces.  GOD IS A WOMAN?  He must have been taken over by a demon!”.  I fall over laughing.  They HAVE to be Southern Baptists, because only a Southern Baptist would assume the male is so superior that only that gender could be godlike ... which is either pretty sad or pretty funny, and probably both.  (See previous comment on evangelicals).

Back to the same complaint.  Same commercials, same insanity, if you include me screaming, “I don’t give a fuck if you have Type 2 diabetes, you fat cow!” over and over again.

But back to the ghosts.  I don’t know how you feel, but my attitude is pretty straight-forward:  I’ve never encountered anything “supernatural” or “ghostly”.  Does that mean such things don’t exist, just because I’ve never witnessed it?  Of course not; I’m not that self-centered and arrogant – “ONLY MY PERCEPTION MATTERS!!!”.  It just means I’ve never encountered one ... period.  But I do put some credence in the basic (although disputed) scientific evidence (via quantum physics) that suggests matter follows the expectations of the viewer.

Most of the “Paranormal Investigation” shows make me laugh anyway.  For people who are in their third, fourth, fifth or sixth seasons of doing it, they sure are easily spooked by weird noises.  Hell, I have never done a paranormal investigation, and I’d be less spooked than they are.

But it does make you wonder why there are so many programs covering the concept of ghosts, demons and the like.  Because they’re actually out there?.  Or because Americans need to let go of their idiocy when it comes to ghosts, demons, and the like?

Another question”  how did I escape joining the Manson family?  Besides being on the wrong coast, I mean.  None of the sycophants joined “The Family” with the expectation of murdering people, did they?  They ended up that way, sure ... but did they start out that way?

The Dearth of Ism’s

Dear Depraved Capitalist Pigs (by which I mean Advertisers and Media Buyers:)

In the unlikely event that no one has ever told you this before:  not only are you hopelessly lazy and grotesquely lacking in imagination and creativity, but you’re also nauseating and creepy.  And I say this not only as someone who used to work in the media buying arm of an advertising agency many years ago, but as someone who is now retired and has cable TV streaming while she works on more important stuff.  It’s not that I watch it all that much, but I do listen to it ... until I can’t stand it anymore, start screaming in agony and switch to music or blissful silence.

And why, you may ask, do I reach the point where I can’t stand it anymore?  YOU’RE the reason!

I’m sure some mindless study put you up to this.  “People remember due to repetition,” they pontificated, and your bosses jumped up and down, squealed like little girls and yelled “Repetition!  Repetition!  Repetition!” at you ... proving the point of the study because you remembered it, lest you lose the cool job with all the cool perks from syndicators and networks and the NATPE conventions.  So – given your marching orders, and your inherent laziness, you all bought TV ad time in chunks ... sometimes 4 to 6 times during one hour-long program – for your advertisers and patted yourselves on the back.  But what your idiot bosses never knew (and therefore never told you) was the other side of that coin.

Here it is.  Memorize it:  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat:

Relentless repetition DRIVES HUMAN BEINGS INSANE!

Yup.  That unholy study that your stupid bosses crammed down your throats never once studied the impact of commercials on viewers who were subjected to your mindless crap for weeks on end – over and over and over, over and over and over ...

By “driving human beings insane” I mean:   people clutching their heads and screaming, “I can’t take it anymore!”  viewers screaming, “Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” ... wanting to take your evil, vicious product and throw it across the store and then jump up and down on it.  Definitely does not inspire them to buy it.  If anything, running across your product now throws them into instantaneous PTSD.  No joking.  Don’t believe me?  You should hunt down the 2018 “Will & Grace” episode where Karen and Jack were driven (even more) stark raving bonkers than they were already, by getting a commercial jingle stuck in their heads.  Your next goal:  creating a new generation of serial killers who were all driven insane by never ending commercials?  I’m sure they’ll call it the “NATPE Disease”.  (The National Association of Television Program Executives, in case anyone was mildly curious).

Examples from the last hour:

Ø  Uncle Ben’s butchering of Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way”... added to every single commercial break in a one-hour program.  Repetitions:  at least 6, if not more.  Makes you wanna send ol’ Ben to the bottom of the nearest rice paddy.

Ø  Wayfair’s butchering of their own theme song.  Makes you want to take an axe to their furniture and toss all the bland, boring other stuff on a bonfire.

Ø  Toyota “Camry”s butchering of “What A Wonderful World” (which was bad enough to begin with), touting their larger than life braking system with the caveat, “By the way, our larger than life braking system isn’t a replacement for you having the brains to hit the brake pedal yourself.  We’re just short-circuiting your brains with this awful song.”  I now have an urge to back up and take a running charge at the first Camry I spot, and pray I’m somewhere near a steep cliff when I spot it.

Ø  Wrigley’s awful, awful, simply AWFUL, twitch-inducing song for their Extra Spearmint gum ... added to every single commercial break in a one-hour program.  Repetitions:  at least 6, if not usually more per hour.  That makes at least 48 repetitions a day, if not 96.  Once the twitching dies away, I solemnly swear off of gum for life.  And then concoct evil plans to torch all the stores that sell it.  Happy now, Wrigley?  The most you have accomplished is getting me to scream, “STFU, YOU STUPID BITCH!” every few minutes ... that voice gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Ø  Speaking of voices that give me the heebie-jeebies, the creepy pedophile-bait simpering little girl voice from the mattress commercials is now used in the Panera Catering commercials.  OMG, PLEASE SHUT HER UP!!  (And then do some serious investigations into the men who hired her.  They can’t be normal.)

Ø  Has it occurred to any animal-lovers anywhere that every dollar the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) people spend on commercials protecting tigers and elephants is money they’re NOT spending protecting tigers and elephants?  And they run their commercials every hour, every day, every week ... how many millions of dollars are THEY wasting on TV ad time?

Ø  GlaxoSmithKline’s “Anoro” butchering of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” ... which is stupid as well as annoying since they tell you to “ask your doctor” immediately after torturing you with the song about “going your own way”.  Which one is it, GlaxoSmithKline?  Your own way or the doctor’s?  Lucky for you I don’t have COPD, because I would rather die than take your crap now.

Ø  The retarded Liferoom mantra:  “Outdoor living.  Perfected.”  Bullshit, you stupid spokescow – it’s a cheaper (and louder, being motorized) version of a screened porch, which people have enjoyed for generations!  Try to keep up.

Ø  The ridiculousness from “Deal Dash.Com” – oh my god.  “These aren’t actors, they’re real people.”  Actors aren’t real people?  Has anyone told any actors that weird tidbit of philosophy?  Not even the worst of it – “fair and honest bidding site”, while the small print at the bottom of the screen announces:  “THESE RESULTS AREN’T TYPICAL!”  No kidding – one of the so-called “real people” proudly announced she won a computer for something ridiculous like $1.50, while pointing at a monitor.  And then, when someone obviously pointed out that mega-error, they brought her back a second time (and by now, she technically IS an actor, if you go by SAG rules) to point at bunch more random crap she “won” – which now makes her look like a brand new “actor” (and no longer a real person) whose pathetic life consists of hoarding.  But hey – “fair and honest”.  Uh-huh.

Ø  The slimy, vomit-inducing, gooey, pus-filled, medical commercials that make everyone sick even if they didn’t start out that way.  Which makes you wonder:  who wakes up every morning exclaiming, “Golly gee, I can’t wait to hear all about “nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea”, brain infections, women having messy, dripping menstrual cycles or peeing all over themselves, men sticking catheters up themselves, chronic constipation, suicidal thoughts, sleep apnea, grotesque close-ups of pimply teenagers squeezing pus out of their faces, people spitting wads of toothpaste into sinks, men craving testosterone and women craving estrogen combined with probiotics and layers of goopy face cream because they all want to keep their aging, wrinkled flesh copulating until they’re 150 years old !”  Nobody, that’s who.  Do you know why?  BECAUSE ALL OF THAT MAKES EVERYONE SICK!  And yet we’re all subjected to this horror show every 10 minutes, while the cost of everything skyrockets because Big Pharma is throwing billions of dollars down the drain buying all this TV ad time just to bash people over the heads with disgusting imagery .  OMG, make it stop!

Hence the serious downside of capitalism.  That combined with unbridled greed.  But then, unbridled greed has destroyed capitalism, communism, socialism and every other “ism” out there.  I think the planet is running out of isms.

Welcome to 2018 already.

Polar Opposites: Hurricanes and Commercials

You know you’ve been watching way too much hurricane coverage when you set something down on a shelf and think, “Could this become a projectile?”  Answer:  highly unlikely since you live in the northeast and no hurricane is coming anywhere near you, dumbass!  But the thought went through my head anyway.  Yes indeedy:  definitely watching too much hurricane coverage.

I had fallen asleep with the television going ... and slowly came awake around 4 am this  morning to the words of an announcer:  “Beware:  this is the sound of women lying”.  I thought that was so odd I came awake entirely, and found myself in the middle of one of those infomercials, this one for yet another skin care product claiming to make gullible women look 20 years younger or something.  Which it won’t, of course, but try telling a bunch of dumb women that.

I realized that the “announcer” had actually been my own subconscious addition to the television soundtrack, conjured up somewhere between sleep and consciousness, but the warning from myself still struck me as so unusual, I lay there for a moment listening not so much to what was being said, but more to the sound and cadence of their voices as they were speaking.

It must be that we’re all so used to “ad-speak” that it doesn’t register most of the time, but it did this morning.  I tried to envision my reaction if any woman in my “real world” came up to me and started speaking in the cadence of “ad-speak”:  unnaturally shrill, perky and enthusiastic, her speech peppered with hyperbole and overall silliness from a wholly invented medical “clinical studies” perspective – which is to say:  there ARE no legitimate ‘clinical studies’ backing up their snake oil.  I’m pretty sure I would be immediately wary, back up, make a protective gesture of the “evil eye”, and suggest she try speaking like a human being, or get the f*ck away from me, out of fear that whatever disease she had was contagious.

My favorite is an infomercial created by a once well known (now not so much) model ... with the ad-speak voice-over crowing, “She looks 20 years younger!  The whole world is whispering about her!”  Riiiight.  Actually the whole world is more likely chortling with amusement – or they would be, if they had any brains - as said model is now so heavily airbrushed, she hardly looks human.  Not a line, not a wrinkle, not a dimple – just plastic-looking, blurry skin on an over 60-year old woman that gives you the willies when you look at her.

When I finally woke up entirely:  I watched the approach of Hurricane Irma juxtaposed with the aftermath of the historic flooding in Houston and surrounding areas caused by Harvey  ... juxtaposed with the equally astonishing amount of ... er, bos taurus excrement with which the so-called president simultaneously smeared the country:  Arpaio pardoned, Bannon and Gorka departures (followed by nonsense from the both of them from afar), transgender soldiers not allowed in the military and relentless bragging, as though the tragedies in Texas and Florida were merely an inconvenient distraction from any focus on his self-defined greatness.  He did some of the above on the same Friday night that Texas was being hit with a Category 4 hurricane, explaining that the weather news made for higher ratings.  It was sickening.

But really ... Florida in the crosshairs.  Rush Limbaugh announcing Irma was nothing more than a liberal conspiracy – before he took off running in fear. Texas still under water.  Nutball Christians announcing it was all their deity’s revenge for gay marriage – without explaining why it was only hitting the red states, while the states who have no issues with gay marriage watched from a safe distance.  Hmmm.  Perhaps their deity doesn’t own a map.  A huge earthquake off of Mexico. All happening at once.

Meanwhile, I suspect I need to cut back on the live-streaming.  I rarely am watching the video, but I am listening to it, almost as a variation of white noise.  Except, in this case, it’s far more annoying than calming.  The number of advertisers hiring Lolitas to hawk their products is getting on my nerves:  the Leesa Mattress nymphet whose voice literally makes my skin crawl, the Alzheimer’s nymphet (ditto).  Who hires these simpering twits?  Never mind, I don’t want to know, they’re all probably creepy as hell.

Then there are the sickening, gag-inducing horrors.  People squeezing pus out of their pores, spitting blood into their sinks, really unpleasant people dancing really unpleasantly in those Wayfair commercials ... what exactly is the message?  Buy our furniture and you will become a person as pathetic as this group of klutzos?

Rare smart realization in advertising:  Progressive Insurance finally realizing their smarmy talking box was really annoying.  They finally wised up and brought back Flo (her ads with Susan Lucci are a hoot).

The Alfa Romeo Stelvio (SUV) ... when that commercial first aired, all I could do was sit there and mutter, “You have GOT to be kidding me.” Some woman who probably moonlights as a phone sex worker coos,  “And when you dream... you dream of me, infused with passion ... I am the end of your search ... your dream ...”  (as a naked woman arises out of water ...)  do men really fall for that crap?  Somebody must think they’re that stupid.  Who knows, maybe they are.  It’s a CAR, guys.

Back to our nation's natural disasters ...