Tag Archives: amy klobuchar

03.08.20
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Hysteria

OMG, THE CORONA VIRUS!

OMG, THERE ISN’T GONNA BE TOILET PAPER!

OMG, DO YOU KNOW THAT AMAZON IS OUT OF PURELL?

OMG, JOE BIDEN IS SENILE!  AND WE’RE GONNA LOSE!

OMG, BERNIE SANDERS IS A LUNATIC!  HOW CAN WE WIN? 

OMG, TRUMP IS SENILE AND A LUNATIC!  SOMEBODY STOP HIM BEFORE HE WINS!!

…And how was your week?

AGHHHHH

It’s reassuring that in stressful times like these citizens across the country are overrunning Costco to buy toilet paper, hand sanitizer and water and not rioting in the streets.  Or is it?

Well, at least no one seems transfixed anymore that the stock market fell over 12% overall in the last month and economists say we’re headed towards a worldwide recession.

No, what’s foremost in people’s minds are dirty butts, starvation while quarantined, and the inevitability of death by a thousand handshakes.

These days we’re all Trudeau #notthankyouplease

Though fun fact:

Do you know what the consumer research company Nielsen lists as the single item with the biggest increase in food and beverage sales for the week ending Feb. 29th?

gotta be booze?

It’s……..

OAT MILK!!!!!!

Oh for the love of…

Yes, seriously.  Sales were up 322%  (Note:  Yes, 3 HUNDRED 22) in a one-week period and 348% in the last month.  Its closest competitor is powdered milk products at 84% and dried beans at 39.6%

Water, in case you were wondering, was waaaay back, pulling up the rear at 11.8%.

What this tells me is that we’ve all gone nuts, especially since several weeks ago I actually tried oat milk for the first time in coffee and literally had to spit the entire mouthful out in the sink.

I’ll stick to my regular latte please

For the non-dairy variety I much prefer soy, thank you very much.   Despite the fact that four months ago someone warned me that if men consume too much soy they will inevitably grow breasts.

This is the least of my problems at the moment and at my age.

I don’t do well with hysteria and have spent a lifetime of therapy fighting against it.  And yet these days it’s all around us.  People are either panicked about not having a 401K or panicked about losing 20-30% of their 401Ks in the last month.

Debbie Downer’s return to SNL this week says it all

It’s true.  I’ve heard people talking about either or both

  1. on line at a Starbucks
  2. at the car wash on a cell phone and
  3. while walking in a mall parking lot

If only I’d known at the time that two of the only stocks to go shooting straight up in that time period was Target and Walmart.

I could’ve saved them and myself a lot of needless aggravation.

And beat the crowds at Target since I wouldn’t give one penny to the ultra right wing, homophobic Trump supporting Walton family that owns Walmart.

Except, wait a minute……

I’m wrong.

It seems that in the 2016 election 60% of the members of the family foundation gave to Democratic causes with many of the younger members actually supporting…. …Hillary Clinton?

WHAT

This seems to get more to the root of the answer of what will kill us.

I’m as guilty as the next person in perpetuating a certain kind of hysteria that will finally get us all in the end   And that would be the knee jerk distrust of the next guy or gal who disagrees with us, offends us or just plain disgusts us.

I don’t know about you but I can’t tolerate one more ……… that ……………….s or ………….s for …………………… or for a…………… No one gets a free pass anymore from me and EVERYONE has to pay the piper.

This kind of thinking will destroy us.

Certainly, I loathe people who disagree with me on big things (Note: Or anything!)  as much as you do but, well, where is it leaving me, or us, in the long run?

Be that as it may…

Let’s take the election.  If you’re a Dem and you really want Trump out of the White House don’t assume your fellow Dem who doesn’t support your candidate is misguided, stupid or too liberal or conservative to know any better.

I mean, you can think it but certainly don’t post it or say it out loud.  It won’t win you any friends and it certainly won’t influence any people.

In fact, it will have the exact OPPOSITE result that you are looking for.

Though it does seem like it’s time to admit, I’m really OVER AMY. #sorrynotsorry

It will only cause your perceived “enemy” to dig in further and foster needless hysteria.  And it will cost you a lot more than an empty-handed toilet paper run at Costco.  It will cost you… well, let’s not even think about that, shall we?

But if you’re a Dem speaking to a roomful of Trump supporters…..you can tell them to take their ____________ hats and ________________ it where the….

Well, I’m working on that.  Though not at Walmart.  Never at Walmart.

At least, yet.

Def Leppard – “Hysteria”

12.22.19
by

The Purity Test

Nothing’s clean Howard.  But we do our best, right? 

 – Ava Gardner to Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004)

This is all I could think of during and after the latest Democratic presidential debate this week.

That in speaking this one truth, the fictionalized Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) managed to coax a fictionalized and very seriously obsessive-compulsive Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) out of  the prison of his own room and his own twisted thoughts and virtually back to real life in the superb Hughes/Hollywood biopic The Aviator.

Side note: Has Kate Beckinsale ever looked so glamorous??

Would that we had our own Ava Gardner-like figure – living or dead – to shock us all, the American electorate, back into the filth and messiness of our present reality in time to face the upcoming 2020 election cycle.

Someone who could remind us that because this world is so dirty to some degree we, every last one of us, also are unclean.

But someone who might simultaneously assure us that true cleanliness, i.e. purity, is merely an intellectual construct, one especially ill-advised when our very world is about to be engulfed and devoured by a snarling, larger than life orange Cookie Monster of our own creation.

We may need to seek alternative measures #CAROLANN

Yes, I’m talking about Trump and which mud-stained gladiator on that stage will lead us through the mess of human blood and excrement he’s gonna spew everywhere as we try and pry his cold, wet hands off  the levels of OUR power.

And sure, this is all a tad too purple prose metaphorical.

Yet what are we to make of all that supposedly serious talk on that debate stage.  All that posturing about wine caves, no big money donors, grit to stay the course, I’m safe because you know me, I’m a revolutionary because I’ve always been (Note: Just what year WAS that revolution, other than 1776?) and I’m a billionaire/millionaire who’s an innovator simply because I got rich?

Or the I’m gay, female, a person of color or am/have actively always supported the struggles of ALL of the former (and any of those not mentioned), many of whom are also my friends?

Remember my BEST FRIEND?

Not much when I drive around town and see Orangetheory Fitness Centers spreading like wildfire in my neighborhood, and not merely in a non-metaphorical way. If this doesn’t stop we might all soon be turning orange, and not in a good or fit way.

Again, too many metaphors, I know.  But desperate times call for…well, you know… anything that could possibly convince you.

It is worth noting that all the above bold-faced phrases on that debate stage were uttered by our much-ballyhooed gladiators the day after our Orange One was finally impeached by OUR U.S. House of Representatives.

He is known to be pro-coal

As the always fictional Elliot Ness was advised in the 1987 film, The Untouchables:

You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

Yeah, another movie reference can’t hurt.  Unless it’s one where I get to confess I’m so exhausted from listening to our gladiators get so stuck in the fly paper of fine print that I may have to hate watch Cats (2019) simply as a palette cleanser.

The reviews are in!

On second thought no, not even on a screener – which, by the way, has not yet come in the mail.

All of this is to proclaim that even though yes, we need to fix health care, end global warming, get out of endless wars, address racism and the lack of opportunities for minority and poor populations, get money out of politics and………. nothing is more urgent than getting a quite literally unhinged, corrupt, crazy person out of OUR White House.

*except Mike Pence

His mental state is not metaphorical but pretty much accepted fact, even among many of his congressional supporters privately.  What is metaphorical but no less true is that the 2019 color of that House he lives in is no longer White but….well, take a guess.  (Hint:  The first letter rhymes with NO).

Talk about unclean, filthy and unsafe.

So here’s the deal.  You and I have each have our favorites, my fellow gladiator followers.  But let’s try to get beyond the Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Yang, Klobuchar, Yang, Booker, Castro, et. al of it all.

I’ll always love you Kamala

The future of the country and democracy is at stake and we don’t live in a perfect one, and certainly not a perfect world.  So rally behind those you feel the most passionate about but do not, repeat, DO NOT spend 2020 in your own personal dreamland when YOUR House is being engulfed by non-metaphorical orange flames.

Evergreen meme

If Biden is not your first choice but he gets the nom, find a way to get REALLY PASSIONATE about him.  Like you did about the guy or gal you dated when the dysfunctional choice you really wanted didn’t show up or merely screwed you over.

Ditto Bernie

Ditto Elizabeth Warren

Ditto Mayor Pete

And in the so far less-likely second tier:

Ditto Amy Klobuchar

Ditto Andrew Yang

Ditto the billionaires Bloomberg and Steyer

Ditto Julian Castro

Ditto Corey Booker

Except Tulsi. Move to Canada for Tulsi. #present

This also goes for all of the above or unmentioned  as possible vice-presidential candidates.

You and I and anyone else we can find on our dirtiest or, well, very less than unclean street corners, need to do this because if we don’t we will be losing A LOT more than the election.

Which is a lot LESS than has been lost already.

Elvis Presley – “Clean Up Your Own Backyard”