Psyching Up for New Year's Eve

It's sad, I suppose: I have nowhere to go to celebrate New Year's Eve with anyone else, but I DO have to sit here alone and listen to the fireworks from dusk until 3 or 4am (often within my own apartment complex).

I don't mind so much being alone---that's fine, and I'm used to it. I can read or watch movies or work on my website or watch coverage on TV. 

And on New Year's Eve and July 4th, I fully expect to listen to fireworks for several hours. It's just: Why can't the fireworks on New Year's be from maybe midnight until 2 am? Why do they have to start at dusk and end at 4am? It's stressful to have to listen to this for 6 hours. Not just for me, but for my pets--I know what's going on and can brace myself somewhat, but the babes have no concept of why the loud noises.

Why Pictures of My Fridge?

I remember back when I lived in a 400-sq-ft apartment (2010-2014), sharing pictures here of my fridge contents. Why? I'd been very poor, but not "starving" or anything. I guess it felt good when I was able to buy the food I wanted to buy, and to present that to the public as part of a small personal triumph.

Today (12/30/23), I made sure I cleaned out my fridge from saggy leftovers and then went to the grocery store before the New Year. Wanted to start 2024 fresh, with everything I liked to eat. The bill was over $300. The most I've ever spent on one grocery trip EVER in my entire life. Which is INSANE. I didn't buy more than usual, but the price had suddenly shot up much more than usual.

The most expensive thing I bought was 1 lb of salmon---$11, to be split into 4 different meals. Those 5 cats of mine got 2 bins of $15 Temptations treats. And then there was a $20 bottle of champagne for New Year's Eve. Other than that, I don't see where $300 came from!

At any rate: It's nice to be able to start the New Year with a fresh fridge full of food!

Save Me the Waltz (Zelda Fitzgerald, 1932)

What was it like, being Scott and Zelda in their heyday---or rather, what was it like being an adjunct to the uber-famous "F. Scott Fitzgerald"? Scott's "Tender is the Night" (1934) was his 4th and final complete novel before his death in 1940. Zelda's "Save Me the Waltz," published in 1932, originally covered some of the same material---the breakdown of both a marriage and a woman. Scott forbade Zelda from including any mental-institution material in her book (despite this being Zelda's personal experience), since he was planning on including the same in "Tender"---so large chunks of the original "Waltz" were deleted.

What's left is... A LOT! The first 40 or so pages alone would make a great movie, with the salty but also warm and funny emotional goings-on of the Beggs family in Alabama. (Zelda Sayre's nom de plume in "Waltz" is "Alabama Beggs.") That last conversation of her parents on their porch after Alabama has departed for NYC is great and funny, as are the teenaged Alabama's relations/conversations with her sisters and their beaus.

Once the scenes cut to Alabama's married life with David (aka "Scott Fitzgerald"), things take a turn for the worse. After a few short happy interludes of warmth and intimate conversations, the couple are quickly subsumed into the decadent Paris lifestyle (entree gained because of David's fame as a painter), with its random outre personalities and constant attempts at wit and glamour. There's no "there" there, as Zelda reveals with her multiple pages of supposed bon mots by her companions that actually make no sense at all. I'm grateful to Zelda for being able to capture the constant meaningless atmosphere and chatter of this time period, because nothing else I've ever read has been able to---certainly not Scott Fitzgerald, who never managed to encapsulate what it actually felt like to be there among this crowd, as Zelda does in "Waltz." (Fitzgerald glamorizes it, barely touching on the utter decadence and creepiness, as Zelda does.)

After Zelda's Alabama rejects the party scene, she then concentrates on trying to learn something serious---the Russian ballet. A good portion of the novel concentrates on the relations among the aspiring dancers in the Paris dance studio run by a post-War Russian emigre, a former star of Diaghilev's ballet.  In the studio, things are utterly profound and structured, unlike the life Alabama has been living with David; but there are also the individual, troubled lives of her fellow dancers away from the studio, which Zelda explores in scenes like paying for a fellow dancer's sea-food soup at lunch, and the poor colleague excitedly thinking she's found pearls and is about to be rich (when the lumps in the soup were only lobster's eyeballs).

Zelda's writing is, yes, a bit lush. Lots of metaphors and similes (though none commonplace or boring---some must just be interpreted). But the story she tells in "Save Me the Waltz" is one of traveling from a place of unity and sense to a place of profound discord, and her attempts to find a unifying principle amid all of the chaos. It's a hard, bizarre journey to describe---only a handful of humans ever had this post-WWI experience. And only this writer was able to tell it just like it was---from an utterly unmoored American woman's viewpoint, as an adjunct to her famous husband (who was more interested in making himself look important and attractive rather than exploring the actual dynamics of the actual interactions).

Hopes for the New Year

My work is going OK. And I think that "love" is just a matter of hormones when you're young. Therefore, I have no personal wishes for the New Year. But what I do truly wish:

(1) That Trump is elected in November (and deports every single illegal who came in under Biden).

(2) That the Israelis absolutely crush Hamas in Gaza and everywhere else.

(3) That the blacks I see in ads on US TV are reduced to approximately 13%---per their actual percent of the population---rather than the current 60% or 70%, making me think that I live in Nigeria or some other African country. (Imagine if you lived in Nigeria and all you saw was white people in every ad.)

Dean Martin: Baby, It's Cold Outside (1959)

At a Christmas party over 15 years ago when this song was playing, a radical Irish guy informed me for the first time that this was a "date rape" song.
At the time, I chuckled. Little did I know at the time that his insane Marxist view would later come to be the standard among mainstream media and the #MeToo movement.

There's quite the difference between "rape" and "seduction."

Dean Martin: I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (1959)

Kay Starr: The Man With The Bag (1950)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I've spent the past 3 months reading and re-reading all of Fitzgerald's novels and stories and all of the Scott/Zelda bios. Conclusion: He is absolutely OVER-rated.

Four Novels:
This Side of Paradise (1920) --- Very interesting young man's first novel. Well-worth the publicity at the time.
The Beautiful and Damned (1922) --- Awful, basically boring.
The Great Gatsby (1925) --- Beautifully tight and well written. A classic.
Tender Is the Night (1934) --- Good premise (neophyte observes a couple and lifestyle only to discover the actual truth behind the fiction) but overall horribly organized and sloppily written.
The Last Tycoon (unfinished at 1940 death) --- Good premise re Hollywood and one man's battle with both old-school tycoons and upcoming Communist labor struggles, but all available text is mostly sloppy writing (who cares about "Kathleen" and their awkward sex in the supposed grand scheme of things).

Of the over 100 stories I've read, most didn't particularly move me either emotionally or psychologically, though I found many basically clever. ("Crazy Sunday"---often cited as one of his best---is not very good at all. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is great.)

Biographically and psychologically: An uninsightful snob, incapable of actual insight into individuals (though with an overall grasp of brief historical movements---such as the ONE he was a part of: World War I and its aftermath). Allegedly more attuned to women (but not actually---no insight into his mother, his wife Zelda, or his daughter; nor of Sheilah Graham, his last lover). Perhaps much more atuned to his early gay mentor, Father Sigourney Fay, and to his Princeton buddies.

What I think happened: He was caught in an important moment in time, when mores were shifting. And he was initially bold about writing about such societal shifts, and then acted them out. As an Ivy Leaguer (Princeton), many of his similar early collegians (Edmund Wilson and Harold Ober) went on to important jobs in publishing and continued to support him as a representative of both their times and themselves.

Fitzgerald basically had nothing to say after "Gatsby" in 1925. "Tender Is the Night" and "The Last Tycoon" DID have something to say thematically, but he was in no intellectual and/or physical shape to say it.

Christmas Eve Doings

This year I had absolutely nothing going on. Sorry to say, I'm estranged from just about everyone (except for one friend that I've been sending Christmas videos to/from). This whole "Christmas season" wasn't that "festive." Though, I always do enjoy the fall and the holiday season, even if just for the stores' festive-ness and Christmas music, and the fact that there are interesting and fun football games to watch during this time.

So today on Christmas Eve, my only plan was to watch the Cowboys at 3:25pm. Before then, I'd planned to either go grocery shopping or get a sandwich. The strenuousness of the former was too much for me, so I just attempted the sandwich. Alas, the shop was closed for the day. I mildly cursed, then drove to another, fancier (more-expensive) sandwich shop that I'd never been to before. Almost completely empty inside except for a table of four old people and a grandson. And two different sets of old/middle-aged mother/daughters.

Stood outside while waiting for the fancy sandwich to be made. Air very mild, beautiful clouds; reminded myself that I was absolutely free of any Christmas plans (and yet mentally pretended that I was a middle-aged woman just stopping for an afternoon sandwich before the night's festivities began), and that I needed to spend more time outdoors.

Getting this damn sandwich from a different place actually made me feel relatively good for the rest of the afternoon. Around 9pm, though, some idiot started setting off fireworks within my apartment complex. On Christmas Eve. Reminding me of the horror to come on December 31, when both me and my cats will be terrorized for hours from sunset to 3 or 4am. (And for those of you with plans for New Year's Eve and who will be away from your home: It's a nightmare having to listen to people set off fireworks outside your home. Tonight on Christmas Eve, for instance: After the 9pm explosions, there was nothing else, but I've been on edge ever since, just waiting for the next thing.)

A post-script: After the 9pm fireworks, there was another big burst of activity after midnight. Having had several beers (liquid courage), I walked to hunt down where the hell this was coming from: The next building over in my apartment complex. A group of about 10 Hispanic partiers. I asked them politely if they could stop---it was Christmas Eve, not yet New Year's Eve. One guy speaking Spanish led me to believe that fireworks on Christmas Eve were a tradition "in his culture." Like hell. I stood there like a Righteous Karen until they all dissolved into a nearby apartment---then I went and blatantly got the apartment number. And staggered on home and e-mailed the manager about the fireworks on Christmas Eve.

Was I wrong? Or is it incredibly obnoxious to set off fireworks within an apartment complex on Christmas Eve? As it will be on New Year's Eve---I KNOW that I'm not the only person disturbed by the fireworks, nor the only pets disturbed. I've steeled myself to putting up with this shit on two occasions during the year: July 4th and New Year's. But I'll be damned if I'll not complain on Christmas Eve, of all eves---when people should be peaceful!

KARENS OF THE WORLD UNITE. And if they don't, your world is going to be a lot shittier.

John Travolta 2023 Santa Fever Ad

How clever and cool! And how Manero still struts his stuff!
And Donna Pescow shows up, which is super-clever!

Only critique: Ditch both the disco-ball shop-girl and the obligatory DEI black kids---or else, in funny anti-DEI protest, have one of them reach for his Santa mane, and then: "Watch the hair!" 

(Though the new "Frosty as evah" is almost as good.)

The Snow Miser Song: The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)

The Heat Miser Song: The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)

Andy Gibb: "Shadow Dancing" (1978)

God, how I disliked Andy Gibb and his brothers in 1978! 

BeeGees and Andy Gibb were all that were on the local radio when I was an early teen, shoved down my throat, and none of it meant anything to me. Absolutely ZERO mind-engagement with this fluff. In 1978, the Bay City Rollers (actual song-writers and good performers) were still important to me, and I liked KISS, and I was about to discover New Wave (though not punk).

 

Today though... "Shadow Dancing" is actually a good song and pleasant to listen to (despite Andy's robotic gyrations in the video)!

Andy Gibb died of a drug overdose in 1988 at age 30. A few good pop songs to his name. (Not because "the media" told me so.)
 

Merry Christmas from Jill Biden!

The "Hunger Games aesthetic" was at least kind of cool in its early days. This, though, is only stupid and clunky---by a bunch of dancers who can't really dance, but were selected for this Marxist troupe (see its political website) based purely on DEI criteria. It's trying sooooo hard to be edgy, but it's primarily embarrassing---for Jill and Joe Biden, and for anyone thinking this might actually represent America.

p.s. Is that Gavin Newsom in the purple-flower hat?

F. Scott Fitzgerald Letter to His Daughter (Sept. 1939)

In September of '39, F. Scott Fitzgerald's daughter was a student at Vassar. He wrote her of the dangers of Communism and of her left-wing classmates [Communism was then in vogue in the '30s, as it is today]:

The important thing is this: they had best be treated, not as people holding a certain set of liberal or conservative opinions, but rather as you might treat a set of intensely fanatical Roman Catholics among whom you might find yourself. It is not that you should not disagree with them --- the important thing is that you should not argue with them. The point is that Communism has become an intensely dogmatic and almost mystical religion, and whatever you say, they have ways of twisting it into shapes which put you in some lower category of mankind ("Fascist," "Liberal," Trotskyist"), and disparage you both intellectually and personally in the process. They are amazingly well organized...

You can neither cut through, nor challenge nor beat the fact that there is an organized movement over the world before which you and I as individuals are less than the dust...

Although Fitzgerald is exactly right in naming the intellectual threat of Communism and the tactics of Communism, I also disagree with him, a weak man constantly seeking popularity, in his passive advice to his daughter. ALWAYS FIGHT against the insanity.

George Jones: "The Race Is On" (1965)

A post-er on YouTube thought that George looked rather demented here. 

(Huh? I've rarely seen him any calmer.)

I had to point out that a few decades ago, being intense was a good thing. I've always been of the opinion that "mellow" sucks, except in very small doses. 

(Oh, whoops, unless you want to stay married to someone for a very long time---in that case, please be very mellow at all times! Although, in reality, neither of you can help it: You either ARE calm or you're not.)

George Jones: When the Grass Grows Over Me (1968)

Both Tammy Wynette and her husband right before George, Don Chapel, claim to have written this song.

Clown Show at Harvard and MIT

I hadn't been paying attention recently. When exactly did the supposed intellectual leaders of the supposedly best universities in America get replaced with sub-par Marxist female mouthpieces with funny clown glasses who don't understand what "genocide" means? For shame. If women can't be intellectually serious, then they shouldn't be presidents of anything. Thanks to the Jewish students and commentators post-October 7 for finally calling these Marxist clowns out.

Sadly interesting that Marxists in America have been claiming for years that local yokels in small-town America are the dangerous anti-Semites. When, in fact, it was/is the left-wing leaders among Academia and its media cohorts who whole-heartedly are against Israel's right to exist and who, as exhibited recently, present the greatest threat to Jews in America. As I said earlier: FIGHT BACK! Don't let the present-day Marxists attempt to stamp you out.

Americans: Do you really want party-line-spouting people like this running your institutions? Given the recent evidence, I'd much prefer an old white male who, based on scholarship, prefers democracy and doesn't feel guilty about so-called "colonialism" (in Judea? you Marxists are saying Jews did not originally have this land?)---and who has enough self-respect to not wear stupid-looking glasses.

What's Happened to Libraries?

I grew up frequently visiting small-town libraries with my mother. I guess it was the poor intellectual kid's equivalent to the home having adult friends over for conversation, or for visiting museums or traveling.

My family wasn't at all "intellectual" (no friends over, no conversation, no museums, no traveling except to Germany---where my mother was from---to get away from my abusive father) but we were all relatively smart. We read the daily paper and got our weekly "Time" magazine (I read them both as a kid, after age 10 or so, which made me smarter than my local cohorts; once I got to college, though, I was told by snobs that these sources of info were utterly bourgeois and inadequate), and we had books in the house, though they were mainly best-sellers and not any classics. 

I loved going to any library as a kid. Though all I can remember now is a series of "Alfred Hitchcock" mystery books checked out every week. Often I would end up reading my mother's checked-out books, like "Roots" or "Rosemary's Baby." Or once, a Time-Life "History of the Old West" book whose picture of a dead female outlaw freaked both me and my mother out to the point that she put the book in the garage rather than keeping it in the house! (That was an exception---Usually, we did not have such untoward reactions!)

Whatever the actual books checked out, I remember the pleasant quietness of each library. The atmosphere was hushed, and I'd enter with my mother, but then we'd break apart to explore quietly on our own. This experience was duplicated years later when I first went off to college in 1983, and my first job was as a shelver in a major University library, where I was again free to quietly explore anything that happened to strike my fancy.

So I've always held libraries as being special places of knowledge, maybe "church like" in atmosphere in the absence of any actual church in my life.

I haven't been to any library very often recently. Just went to one today for the first time in years. I walked in to a screaming kid (mother not making any attempt to quiet him). And to a loudly yakking "yarn group" (middle-aged/old women knitting) who had taken over a table. And one young patron had a dog with her that was running around. It was all fucking CHAOS. In a library.

Where do you go if you want to be in an atmosphere of peace and learning?

A Girl Named Elijah

I got hired at my current job during Covid, and since that time, my co-workers and I have continued to work remotely, only getting together in person maybe four times since 2020, and only sharing a few brief personal comments during our daily Teams meetings.

At one of the in-person meet-ups, in the summer of 2021, at the home of a boss since departed, it was a very hot July day, and I was sweating profusely, to the point where my hair was almost completely sopping wet. (Despite the heat, I was of course NOT going to participate in his swimming pool in front of co-workers with my 50-year-old body!) I retreated under the patio awning, which was still very hot but at least shaded, to eat my BBQ alone. I was still new then and didn't really know any of my co-workers and fellow party-goers very well, and no one joined me for a while. Until a heavy-set teenaged girl came and sat down next to me. She was sweating just as much as I was (though she was maybe 75 lbs heavier), and we commiserated for a minute about the heat, then started talking about various types of smart-phones and how I'd just gotten mine, and about how her parents both suffered from sleep apnea and had had a hard time during Covid and during power outages earlier that year. I remember that at one point, I'd scarfed down all of my brisket and she voluntarily got up and went to fetch me some more---completely unasked! At which I remember thinking, "What a gent!" I appreciated both her politeness and her company, since none of the adults made any effort to come over and sit with me!

I can't remember the name of this girl, then about 16. I knew that she was the daughter of our group's trainer, a very patient and kind and knowledgeable man. During our Teams meetings, he would often mention her high-school accomplishments in Band, which he was a chaperone of during weekly football-game trips or to UIL competitions in the fall.

In the beginning, her father would mention his "daughter" and "she." Then a few months ago, he started saying "they" in reference to his daughter. Then last week, he bragged with fatherly pride about "Elijah" gaining two Associates Degrees from a junior college before even graduating from high school. At first, I was puzzled: I'd only heard him mentioning his daughter before; I didn't know he had a son... Then it hit me: His girl was no longer a girl. She'd apparently recently declared herself a boy named "Elijah."

The insane Marxist propaganda of "no genders" had gotten to both her and her father. Both intelligent but apparently too-trusting people. "Gender" is a distinct biological thing. You really ARE born as a distinct gender. You may later grow up to be attracted to the same gender---which makes you gay or bisexual. But it does not change the biological gender that you were born as. It makes me sick (in a melancholy way) that today's young people are being encouraged by media-supported propaganda to falsely deny their very genetics. And even sicker (in an angrier way) that their liberal parents are going along with this rather than inserting some sense of reality into their children's "feelings."

As a bisexual person, it's disturbing. Is the idea of being "gay" so traumatic to young people today that they would rather claim falsely to be of a different sex than to admit that they're attracted to someone of the same sex?

I have a theory that the Internet and all of its various avatars and identities that young people (and all of us) have been encouraged to create has somehow led to young people now thinking that if they SAY they're one thing online, then that must somehow also translate to being true in real life. Which is, of course, not at all the case. Except that left-wing academics and the left-wing media and their too-easily-led liberal parents are then encouraging them in their fantasies. More dangerously, doctors and pharmaceutical companies are jumping on the Marxist bandwagon and encouraging drugs and surgeries. Doctors, especially, should know much better.

Texas Longhorns Fight Song

Corn Plant Breaks Out!

I purchased this plant from Walmart over a year ago. Used to be about 3 ft high, now about 5 ft high. When I woke up this morning, it had this sassy bloom for the first time!

 

Cat Trouble Resolved (I Guess)

After a week-and-a-half of real cat drama (which sounds silly, but was actually mildly traumatic having to live with this aggressive shit within my apartment), Pete and Mama Hennessy have finally apparently resolved their antipathy.

About 3 days ago, Pete stopped hiding. He still didn't come out to the group feeding area, but he hovered outside of it---which was better than him not showing up at all. He and Mama Hennessy stared at each other, but didn't make any aggressive moves toward each other.

As of December 2, he started hanging out and eating with and sleeping with the group again. He and Mama have come very close to each other without any violent reactions. PHEW!

What the hell happened last week?!

One thing I noticed: When Pete was banished by Mama and hiding away---when I could only pet him in a back room a couple of times a day---I really missed seeing him in the living room and missed waking up with him. His pretty, expressive eyes, and his fun, aggressive spirit (chasing, but not being mean, like Mama just was to him). As the only boy in the group, he really added something and was missed when he was gone.