Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff condemns toxic masculinity

If you like this, then by all means, vote for it.
Just wanted to put out there that this is what's being touted by Democrats as your ideal male.
Emhoff was an "entertainment lawyer," so I'm sure he had to be cut-throat on many an occasion. Yet here he is, pretending to be meek and mild, decrying "toxic masculinity"---i.e., when men actually act like men instead of attempting to hide their aggression despite their white-collar jobs. (Here, Emhoff attempts to completely deny his entire career.)

This guy's phoniness and smarminess make me sick.

'White Dudes for Harris' Zoom Call Excerpts

AKA "Beta Males for Harris." (Where's Prince Harry?)

One white guy here says that when he thinks of white men getting together, 

he automatically thinks of "tiki torches and the Klan."
(Funny, I always think of football games and rock concerts.)

Another says that white men need to "recognize their privilege." 

(Kamala Harris's Jamaican dad and Indian mother were both academics; 

she had quite the privileged childhood. As an adult, she had quite the 

Willie Brown boyfriend to get her elected to San Francisco office.)

Another says he cried when he learned that Hillary lost the election in 2016. 

(Did he cry when she lost the Dem nomination to Obama in 2008?)

DONALD TRUMP : The Muppet Show Mashup

I'm sorry---this is one of those "so stupid it's funny" things that I'd never seen before!
Like the earlier "Sanford and Son" mashups!

I'm Losing You (John Lennon: Double Fantasy, 1980)

Cleanup Time (John Lennon: Double Fantasy, 1980)

The Rolling Stones: Neighbours (1981, "Tattoo You")

More actually punk than that year's punks.

The Rolling Stones: Little T & A (1981, "Tattoo You")

The Rolling Stones: Hang Fire (1981, "Tattoo You")

This 1981 video came out when I was 16---how weird and interesting! MTV had officially debuted that year, but my rural family didn't have cable, so I'm not quite sure where I first saw it, probably in a group video room after I got to college in 1983.

At the time, I'd been hearing about "punk" but lived out in rural Texas and had no actual access to any sort of "scene." When I first saw this video in college, I was utterly wow'd by its, to me, weird vibes---was it sexual? Was it Punk? What was it? What the hell was Jagger?

A side-note: Decades later, I was at my mom's house. I was in my 40s, she was in her 60s. We were watching something on PBS about music in the '60s, and a Stones performance was featured. We were both mesmerized by Mick Jagger, but saying nothing. My sedate, very-middle-class mother finally broke the ice (re her generation, not mine): "He's sexy, isn't he!"

Ha! Yes, he is! :)  Both in the '60s and here in 1981. There's a certain mystery here not promotable by the media (which promotes ANYTHING for a narrative, however false). Jagger is a subversive, slinky, sexy freak----his own self, as most have failed to report.

The best the Dems have to offer

FULL SPEECH: President Joe Biden dropping out of race 2024

"And shsoikjfjiojllj democracy lhihigohshioho nothing lljdifjooooueushhh pash the torsh... climate changeshshshslkjdfij...right to votshlkljdlkjflkjdllkj...schpeaking out...."

A nonsensical stand-for-nothing imbecile for his past 50 years in public service; going out the same way.

According to Joe and Kamala in Bizarro-World, the major challenges facing our country today:
Right to vote (Dear Black People: I would be insulted if someone insinuated that I could not figure out how to vote. The Dem party apparently thinks you're dumber than the rest of the American population.)
Right to choose (Trump Republican policy: No late-term abortions; rest of abortion rights up to states.)
Climate change (There's been "climate change" approx every 15,000 years, long before humans ever populated the planet. Texas used to be underwater; New York used to be under ice.)
Supreme Court reform (Last time court-packing was tried was under FDR, when the 9-member court would not pass his legislation---so he proposed adding more liberal justices. Failed.)

They're living in a communist fantasy-land.

For most of us, the actual major challenges are:
High inflation (rent/groceries/gas)
US jobs being shipped overseas, especially to China
High crime
8 million unvetted illegals allowed to cross our border

Cleanup Time

Years ago, I used to have a, to me, beautiful red SHAG rug in my living room.

 

By happenstance, I got 5 cats in 2019, and they soon made a hair-ridden mess of that once-attractive rug, the shag of which was VERY hard to vacuum! I soon gave up on the vacuuming, let the hairy mess sit there for a while, then finally bought a much-more-sensible very-low-pile rug.

Only problem: The old shag rug, though I was able to roll it up, was way too heavy for me to drag out to my apartment dumpster. I have a small dolly, which was too small to move this thing.

 

At one point, some homeless person had left a supermarket shopping cart in the apartment parking lot, and I actually wheeled that to my apartment door and tried to somehow balance the carpet in/on it---without success. 

I then asked the apartment management if they had a big dolly I could borrow to move this thing. (I'm pretty sure they do, but just didn't want to lend it to me.) 

I then got permission to put up signs in the apartment mail and laundry rooms: "Can you help me carry my carpet to the dumpster? $20!" Apparently, $20 doesn't go as far as it used to in the olden days. None of my young or money-desperate neighbors responded.

So the friggin' thing SAT there for over a year in my hallway! Not really physically in my way, but it sure as hell was psychologically in my way!

 
I FINALLY got on Craigslist today and e-mailed every junk hauler I could find. And while they were at it, take that equally nasty cat tower in my kitchen that the cats barely use now that they're grown, AND that cat-scratched/soiled chair in my library that I'd bought used 14 years ago (and never sat in then or now) back when I lived in my one-room apartment...

 

I mailed about 9 companies, with exact photos. Most local, a few national (like "College Hunks Hauling Junk"). The nationals all required an intrusive filling out of info and made you book an appointment for them to come over----without first giving you an actual price quote! Luckily, one local company responded right away, and their quoted price was the cheapest of all ($120), and the shit was out of my apartment within 4 hours of my first contacting them!

PHEW!!!!! It was a bunch of niggling "work" to try to figure out something! But once I got over the idea that it would take more than $20, and once I got utterly sick of my slobby surroundings and decided to buckle down and DO something about it... There were actual professional "junk hauler" answers to my simple problem!

I won't know how "lightened" I feel until I wake up tomorrow to the cleaner space. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel "much lightened." The chair in the spare room was the least bothersome (the cushions were still good, and I'd already bought a large Zodiac-patterned blanket to cover it); the cat tower was annoying because it took up kitchen space and the cats only used it maybe a couple of minutes every other day; but that rug constantly lying in the hallway---my psychological nemesis!

George Jones & Merle Haggard: No Show Jones (1982)

George Jones & Merle Haggard: C.C. Waterback (1982)

Merle Haggard: "What Am I Gonna Do With The Rest Of My Life" [Live from ATX, 1985]

Merle Haggard: "Mama Tried" [Live from ATX, 1985]

Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson: "Okie from Muskogee"

Merle Haggard: Okie From Muskogee (1969)

Thanks, Guys!

OK, look, I'm in my 50s, and I don't get approached by strangers in the street any more. I used to, though! :)  I think maybe 2011 or 2012 was the last time that I can remember a guy on the street coming on to me: I was waiting for a bus in downtown Austin on the way home from work, and a very heavy-set black man in tattered clothes struck up a conversation and complimented me on my eyes. 

Speaking of my eyes: Back in Joisey, somewhere around 2008, I still remember a teenaged Italian kid strutting along the sidewalk, seeing me in my Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt----the Cowboys were playing the Jets that Sunday, and, being from Texas, I had to represent----and then turning around and walking backward in front of me, saying: "Your eyes are so green, I know you're really for the Jets." How cute was that! :)  Such a flattering, charming little player---even to a then-40-something lady! :)

(I wear glasses now, so no one can ever see my eyes.)

Anyhow: I haven't had any sort of such random attention in years. Today, though, I was in the post office, and, as I was about to exit the building, a 50-something Austin-casual, middle-class white guy just entering caught me: "Is that your little red car out there?" I was kind of freaked out, as in, God, what, is it on fire or something?! And how did he know that was MY car?

As it turned out, he had a helpful hint for me: That dent in the back bumper of my car? If I heated up a kettle full of water and poured it over that part of the bumper, I could then take an ordinary toilet plunger and apply it to the dent and thus get rid of it!

Oh, really, could I now, Sir?  :)   (I'm actually going to try this---I HATE that dent in my car!)

Thus began a minutes-long conversation with me offering how I got the dent (rough tow), why I hadn't had it fixed (car very old, no more money going into it), and how actually grateful I was for the helpful hint (how did he ever learn about doing this?) because I'd always thought it looked ugly but didn't want to pay $900 to have it fixed at this stage in the car's life.

It was all very cute. (He'd only re-entered the PO to catch me---after we spoke outside, he went back to his own car in the lot.) We didn't exchange numbers or anything; like the kid in Joisey, I think he was maybe just practicing his conversational skills with a woman.

I only want to know so much.

I always thought that I was the type of person who wanted to know EVERYTHING. However, I just found out that I DON'T. I've been up all night, reading over various things, and I just came upon a 3-page screenplay treatment of Sandra's. Too much. Too much "Jim."  

Jim was a guy that Sandra's mother had met in AA in the '70s and slept with. During the same time period, Jim also slept with Sandra when she was a teen. Decades later, after Sandra had had her two daughters, they slept together again, for about 3 months. Until his death of old age in 2010, she continued to obsess over him. In years prior to his death, she'd often made the trek to his home, usually having the door slammed in her face.

I'd been through something of the sort myself, to a much lesser extent, and finally gotten over it. (Isn't everyone, at some point, somewhat obsessed with someone?) I tried to talk her down from this constant thing, to no avail.

Reading the screenplay tonight, and re-thinking about this part of Sandra's life (which I was constantly privy to for over 10 years), made me feel sick to my stomach yet again.

I loved her, but her inner thoughts were such an ugly mess. And for so many years, I was sitting there listening to all of them, and trying to bring some sanity to them----and I could not. They were her thoughts, and hers alone. She didn't want any sort of clarity, or a way out.

For my own sake, it's kind of a good thing that she's dead so I don't have to live with trying to figure her out and help her any more. (Oh, but wait---she's dead, and here I am still trying to figure her out!) 

Sylvia Plath (year unknown)

 

George Jones: Loving You Could Never Be Better (1972)

George Jones: We Can Make It (1972)

Extra Room

I live in a 2-bedroom apartment, where I've been since 2017. The extra room is my library, with all of my bookshelves and books.

Back in 2018, Sandra called me. She had nowhere to stay, could she stay with me? Of course! I immediately started cleaning, arranging. 

After a few days of hearing nothing from her, I e-mailed her. No response.

We'd been through quite a lot in the past 10 years. (Including numerous accounts of her saying she had nowhere else to stay.) After this proved to be yet another "cry wolf," this was pretty much the end of our relationship.

In 2020, she contacted me again, for the first time in 2 years, with the news that she'd had a stroke. I'd heard so much bullshit from her since 2008 that I didn't know how serious this was. She spoke haltingly; I tried to follow along. I was still mad at her for past emotional things, but she was incapable of understanding what I was still mad about. And I didn't understand that her stroke had turned her into someone that I should no longer be mad at...

Today, in 2024, I still go into the "extra room" and think of where exactly Sandra might have slept amid all of the books. (Although I'd offered her the main bedroom, with the private bathroom, because I usually slept on the living-room couch anyway.)

And whenever I take a shower, I almost always remember what she said to me back when I spent the night with her in 2015 at her relative's home: She'd for years, after losing the financial support of her former husband and former rich lover, not had a shower-head that reached the top of her back. (I was not suave enough to offer to wash her back for her.)

1992

I recently ordered the newly released book "The Occult Sylvia Plath." It was a bust. Nothing "occult" that everyone didn't already know (her and Ted's playing around with the Ouija board). Most of the book was rehashed bio stuff, along with info about "the times" and history of Plath's place: The Unitarian history in Boston, the current political happenings that informed her work. 

After reading the "Occult" book, though, I was in the mood for more Plath. Got out my 1989 "Bitter Fame" by Anne Stevenson to re-read. I was bemused to see my pink-signed name/date in the front: August 22, 1992.

Why "bemused": Back when I was young, I used to sign and date all of my books, with the thought that I would one day be an older person, sitting among my books in my library IN AN ACTUAL HOME, fondly remembering when and/or where I bought a particular book. 

As I opened "Bitter Fame" in 2024 and saw the 1992 inscription, I am still in a rented place, as I was back in 1992. In 1992, when I was 27 years old, and had the whole world before me: Where would I end up? Surely, in a house, a home of my own!

Nah! Not so. For the past 10 years or so, I haven't even bothered signing or dating any of the new books that I've bought. Because there's, honestly, no "home" to be had in the future! It's all been a series of apartments and temp places.

Other than the book stuff:
In 1992:
My first lover had broken up with me in 1991, and I was mentally miserable, but... I still moved forward with own goals.
In 1992, after having dropped out of college a couple of years before, I finally sat down and figured out how many credits I needed to get my BA degree. It would take 1 solid year---Fall/Spring/Summer semesters. I planned it out, and I did it, despite my ongoing emotional turmoil. After 10 years of goofing around in Austin, I finally graduated from UT in 1993.
Also during this time in 1992:
I had a very-psychologically-important-to-me writers' group that met bi-weekly, and that ultimately published 2 issues of a magazine ("Trash Soup"---named after a dish served at the cafe where we met regularly) that was distributed around Austin and touted in the local alternative press. I was miserable personally, but attending this group and putting out this mag were extremely satisfying. The group came together because of Brian Johnson---who shares my exact birthday! :)  (I've always liked, and gotten along very well with, all fellow Leos----all males.)

On this high, I eventually went to grad school at San Francisco State University in 1994. Got my MA degree in 1995, then came back to Austin and went through utter soul-killing nothingness for the next 5 years... (I survived that---the very darkest time in my life. Currently going through my second-darkest time.)

Oh, yeah, re "Bitter Fame" and Sylvia Plath: My god, what a highly condensed/harried life she led from a 7-year period from Cambridge thru age 30: BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. How many moves? How many sending-out of poems and publications of books (both her own and Ted's)? How many births and/or operations?

Just to mark the occasion:

Sandra died on 2/21/24. I found out about her death at the end of May 2024.

Immediately after I knew about her death, I tried only once to contact her spirit via the occult, specifically via a pendulum board. No results.

Last night, though, in a dream, I finally had my very first contact with her: I asked her if she wanted to take a walk with me, and she said yes.

PBS: Kid Rock performs at 2024 RNC

Kid's kind of passe, but this song is still great! (Love the "No Show Jones" mention!)
Cool that Trump invited him to perform.
And it's hilarious that the self-righteous PBS has this on their website
(and that the 60-something RNC delegates are attempting to jam!).

Oh, Trump... Sigh.

I watched Trump's RNC speech tonight, gearing up for it ahead of time by putting on my "Revenge" T-shirt that I was too scared to wear out in public today. (Sad---I live in Austin, Texas, where you're not allowed to express any other than far-left-wing ideas in public. Back in 2016, when I was first excited by Trump, I had a "The Donald 2016" sticker on my newly bought car---the sticker was almost immediately defaced with a black-markered "FUCK" written across it.)

His speech tonight was rambling and terrible. Not inspirational. When I think many in the nation were looking for a "changed Trump" after the assassination attempt on Saturday.

I agree with most of his policies:
Bring American jobs home (primarily why I voted for him in the first place), stop illegal immigration, make NATO countries pay their fair share of their own defense (pre-Trump and Ukraine invasion: Germany, for instance, was getting most of its natural gas from Russia), US energy self-reliance. 

And then, as the decrepit Biden administration wore on, I was shocked first by things like my rent/utilities/groceries/EVERYTHING going up by 20-25% percent in the past 4 years. And then by social-issue things like student-debt forgiveness (when I'd been paying off my own student loans for years, and then my mother paying the rest of it off), and being forced to get a Covid shot to keep my job, and the re-namings of US bases, and the rising crime rate as a result of liberal DAs letting recidivist criminals out of jail.

Also: I'm decidedly middle-class, making under $70K per year. Under Trump, I got hundreds of dollars back in my tax refund every year; under Biden, I first got a $2 check, then nothing, and this year had to pay over $200.

I've been watching Trump for nearly 10 years (including multiple C-SPAN full speeches). I kinda know how he is. He IS WHAT HE IS. He's not gonna "rise above" anything, y'all! :)  I'd hoped that he would tonight, but he did not. He was his usually rambling self when speaking. At Trump rallies, 80% of it is more like "An Evening with Donald Trump" than a rousing call to arms about all of the wrongs in current American society. He DOES ultimately hit the political points---but it's so dissipated by his other "rambling" stuff.

He surely MUST have a speech-writer at this point! Especially for this very important night!

At any rate: I wanted to be moved tonight; I was not. But I'm a hard-core Trump fan. I agree with his positions on issues, and then I also enjoy how funny and irreverent he is. But that's just me. I wanted him to be profound tonight (about his near-death experience), and I wanted him to be utterly focused on the issues facing the country---but he was neither profound nor focused. He had the chance to absolutely lock up the election tonight (especially given Biden's utter weakness), but I don't think he did that.

I still think Trump will win the election; despite his lack of communication skills, he believes in something (that I also believe in). And his potential opponents are extremely pitiful (assuming that the Dem Rats are abandoning their Biden ship):
Biden is a senile, decrepit ghost (and he was ALWAYS a non-entity, a career politician standing for absolutely nothing, ever);
Kamala Harris is a light-weight idiot, also standing for nothing but the current socialist trend;
Gavin Newsom is a self-serving, blowing-in-the-wind socialist clown who ruined California. 

Who else do the Dems have? Buttigieg and Klobuchar once looked smart and promising to me, but after I saw them posting their "pronouns" on social media, I realized they also were weak and far from serious---I will NEVER vote for any adult who ever "posted their pronouns."

Trump arrives at RNC

Sounds nuts to say: "His eyes look subdued."
But I've been watching political Trump for 9 years now on TV, and his eyes look subdued.
Yeah, a bullet grazing your skull might do that to you.
 

The last time I caught a glimpse of Trump's "soul":
In his speech to the nation in 2016 after the "Hollywood Access" tape was released.
At one point, he cocked his head and shrugged, and his eyes, just for a second, 

were liquid and real: "I'm sorry; I don't know what else to say."

"Daisy" Ad (1964): LBJ anti-Goldwater ad

AKA: If you vote for Goldwater, you'll die in a nuclear war.

What ended up happening:
LBJ won the 1964 election, and subsequently passed more socialist legislation
than any other President (aside from FDR) in US history.
(From which we're all still suffering today.)
LBJ also embedded the country much further in Vietnam.
LBJ stood down from the 1968 election, due to his unpopularity in his own party re Vietnam.

Barry Goldwater: 1964 RNC

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: RNC speech

Assassination Attempt

Joe Biden: "Trump is a threat to the nation."
Jake Tapper (CNN anchor) and dozens of other hosts/guests on both CNN and MSNBC: "Trump is an existential threat to democracy."
Numerous Dem congresspeople and numerous left-wing publications (like the Washington Post, New Republic, et al) have compared Trump to Hitler: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-democrats-relentlessly-dialed-up-violent-rhetoric-against-trump-before-assassination-attempt-comparing-him-to-hitler/ar-BB1pYb9T

Given all of the above rhetoric, why WOULDN'T someone on the left attempt to shoot him---since, according to their primary (allegedly mainstream) spokespeople, he's "Hitler" and such a "threat to the nation"?

They've been playing a rhetorical game for many years now, and it just had serious consequences.

It's one thing to call Joe Biden "corrupt" and "mediocre" and "senile." He is all of those unflattering things. It's quite another, though, to call Trump "evil" and "Hitler" and "a threat to democracy"---none of which he actually is. 

I think politics is interesting, and I like arguing about policies and ideas. But the mainstream media/politician rhetoric about Trump since 2016 has been radically disgusting.

The "disgusting rhetoric" went much further, though, to the point of the banning of Trump from Twitter and Facebook in 2020 (with the collusion of those CEOs). Followed by the multiple US judicial system charges brought by Dem operatives like Alvin Bragg post-2020, which are much more sinister. (Really? Stormy Daniels again? Are we really such a Third-World country, bringing federal legal charges against a political opponent? Trump may have chanted "Lock her up!" re Hillary Clinton back in 2016, but most of us knew he was being funny---and, of course, he did NOT, while President, have his DOJ bring any charges against her! Unlike what Biden's DOJ has been doing to Trump.)

That wasn't a regular bullet that just nicked Trump's ear. It was from a high-powered rifle. And if the bullet had been just 1/2 inch to the right, it would have blown off his skull.

I was lazing around on the couch Saturday afternoon, randomly channel-surfing. Found out that Trump was going to speak around 5pm Central, but didn't manage to stay awake that long. Woke up around 8pm Central to see the footage... An eerie, creepy feeling. Goosebumps. At what had just actually happened, and at what might have happened.

And then admiration and more goosebumps at the sight of this man with blood on his face, fist pumping, shouting "FIGHT!"

The Beatles - We Can Work It Out (1965)

Johnny Paycheck: Take This Job and Shove It (1977)

1965: George Jones (with Johnny Paycheck): Love Bug / Things Have Gone to Pieces

George Jones: "The Race Is On" (1964)

George Jones, et al, 1979

Weird and Spooky. Jones looks to be on his starved, cocaine, love-lost death-bed
(not even able to stand up---I don't think that Johnny Cash himself

was much more drug-free in 1979).
And then on the second take on the stage: 

Almost everyone suddenly has a woman with him!
Where did they come from? Are they trying to rub it in that there's no Tammy?!

Just Asking

Abraham Lincoln is often cited as one of the BEST American presidents (top 2, usually). But under his presidency, during the Civil War, between 752,000 and 857,000 Americans died (numbers from Encyclopedia Britannica).

(In the foreign war in Viet Nam, approx. 58,000 US soldiers died.)

Under what circumstances is 752K to 857K dead from YOUR OWN COUNTRY considered a POSITIVE aspect of your leadership of your country? Could/should this extreme number of your own people's deaths be indicative of very POOR leadership?

1:30 am July 6 (is it too soon to feel relief?)

As usual, for many years now, I've always been very tense around July 4 and New Year's Eve, knowing that fireworks will be going off in my neighborhood for hours and hours----not just putting me on edge and disrupting whatever I'm doing, but also scaring my pets.

This year, July 4th was on a Thursday. In the days and hours up 'til nighfall on July 4, I'd mentally prepared as much as I could: "OK, you know it's going to go on from about 9pm to 3am... Don't get mad or upset... etc." Surprisingly, there were only a few explosions; maybe 3 or 4 up until 1 am or so. Not, like in my earlier years at this apartment complex (starting in 2017), directly WITHIN the complex or anything! When the bursts started around 9, my cats disappeared, then slowly came out again after 1:30am... I initially felt bad for them, thinking that the booms would surely start again, but they didn't...

Today, Friday the 5th, I was again paranoid: "The 4th was on a Thursday; they're all going to be saving up their fireworks for the weekend, Friday and Saturday nights..." Well, as of now, 1:30 am Friday night, I've heard nothing all night (though I had again steeled myself for it). I hesitate to even write this, for fear that I'll curse my fragile peace! :)

Just wondering: What in the hell happened to make this year's July 4th much more peaceful than in years past? I doubt that there was a crackdown on fireworks sellers outside city limits. (Fireworks have usually been banned in Austin itself, but that has never stopped any teens/20-somethings/Mexicans celebrating Christmas from being obnoxious until 3 am.) 

Addendum: As of 5:10 am: Still no explosions! I'm so lucky!

The Dems' Post-Biden Plan

"I think it's very important...for us at every moment in time...

to see the moment in time in which we exist in our present..."

After this gibberish, who ya got?
Buttigieg and Klobuchar, with their publicly posted pronouns? 

(showing their inability to think for themselves and dismiss their party's idiocy)
Greasy Newsom?

Donald Trump: American Bad Ass (2016, Kid Rock)

I'm not quite as male-aggressive as this, but...
Given what this country has been through with its Marxism and
lack of merit in the past few years...

I'm all about retribution and hard-core course correction.