The Beatles: Two of Us (1970)

 

The Beatles in Munich (1966)

 

BTS Reunion in Seoul

Wow... Is this some sort of a joke? I'd been hearing in the US media for weeks now about the "BTS reunion in Seoul." I hadn't heard of the South Korean group BTS before, but I was wondering what all the fuss was about, and so was looking forward to seeing a sample... 

THIS very sad Asian version of rap is what the media was telling us all to look forward to?? Based on the US publicity, I thought BTS was once a very original Asian band, who had to go on hiatus while some members did their required military service. And so this was their much-awaited comeback. 

What I saw here in the big "comeback" concert was just Asians ridiculously pretending to be black rappers ("Watch dis...we acting de fool again"). 

And then the ninja group dancers?? Was THAT supposed to be the "Asian pride" part of it? 

This was really, really embarrassing to watch.

Nick Drake: Saturday Sun (1969)

 

George Jones: I'd Rather Have What We Had (1983)

"We used to drink Blue Nun there in Room 321" is one of my favorite song lyrics EVER.
(For those uninformed, "Blue Nun" is a pretty cheap wine, yet a couple of steps/dollars above what a wino might drink. So it would be considered "classy" for the low-income couple in this song. But the main point is: My god, things were better when we were sneaking around!)

We used to drink Blue Nun there in room 321
Over the river where we weren't well known
Now it's two coffees then off to the office
Then back in the driveway and sitting at home

Sneaking around with me
Being tied down with me
Which one would you rather have?
(Be honest)

Dying to be with me, watching TV with me
Is this what we wanted so bad?
Well, I'd rather have what we had

We carefully planned it, what our hearts demanded
No more motel rooms, no more cheating lies
Now we're looking at it a neatly wrapped package
But open it up and there's no surprise

Sneaking around with me
Being tied down with me
Which one would you rather have?
(Be honest)

Dying to be with me, watching TV with me
Is this what we wanted so bad?
Well, I'd rather have what we had
Darling, I'd rather have what we had

Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936): The Nonsense Song

 

Last year I bought the Warner Bros' massive "Charlie Chaplin Collection" parts 1 and 2 on DVD, ranging from his First National years (1918-1922) thru the end of his career. And also last year, I began subscribing to the Criterion Collection app, which carries pretty much the same material as the DVDs I own (nothing earlier than that). 

Which I've been obediently going through. I was about to say "slogging through," but that's a bit too harsh. I think Chaplin is a very entertaining physical vaudevillian, and I understand how/why his "Little Tramp" character became a world-wide smash-hit in silent films. Not just the expressiveness of his physicality or face, but also his child-like, charming "Everyman Loser" character who may suffer temporary setbacks when encountering various authoritarian figures (be they shopkeepers, or women, or policemen, or factory owners), but who ultimately triumphs over them via/despite his own diffidence.

Yes, I get all that. (What "regular person" watching wouldn't root for "The Little Tramp"?) But: After watching him from First National up through 1936's "Modern Times" (United Artists, the company he founded in 1919 with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith), I find moments of brilliance, but I don't think that any whole work of his is actually "brilliant," as was proclaimed then and is still being proclaimed today.

In 1936's "Modern Times," for instance (which I watched a few nights ago for the first time): 
There's no cohesive narrative here. Rather, it's still a series of vignettes, a la Chaplin's earlier one-reel days of film-making: The factory. The jail. The girl. The department store. The factory again. The waiter. 

 

There are classic bits in each (most famously, The Little Tramp getting literally caught up in the cogs of production, and in a Communist riot, and then the famous "Nonsense Song" scene near the end, plus the final shot of Tramp + Gamine walking off into the sunset), but 90% of it is schticky schtuff like him skating too close to a precipice (already done both with and without skates years earlier), etc.

 
And his real-life paramour/leading lady Paulette Goddard just doesn't fit in. She's overtly cutesy, very "1936-trying-to-be-old-fashioned," while Chaplin is still doing his genuine gentleman-tramp bit of 20 years earlier. While long-time previous co-star Purviance, and even one-time co-star Cherrill, were not GREAT actresses by any means, they at least fit into the proceedings. 

 

And so, for the most part, I was rather exasperated by "Modern Times" when I watched it for the first time. (Primarily all of the Goddard scenes: I didn't care when her kid-sisters were hauled off. I disliked her blatant "emoting." I thought the "home scenes" were tedious. And I wanted her to put some shoes on, especially after she and The Tramp invaded the department store---didn't they have a shoe department there?)

But then came the payoff! 

Sound had been introduced to movies 9 years earlier, but Chaplin refused to partake. Most of this 1936 film was still done in pantomime, except for a few brief intrusions, and then... the final brilliant near-denouement, in which we all hear Chaplin's real voice on film for the first time ever!

And he's singing a bunch of lyrics that are utter nonsense, a hodge-podge of various languages that don't translate to anything at all... Yet the sailors in his cafe audience, and all of us out here, know EXACTLY what he's conveying! 

 

Once this number came on, I woke the hell up, sat the hell up, and dropped my jaw in admiration of the utter cleverness of everything about it! Chaplin's "Little Tramp" won't appear again, and Chaplin won't make any more silent films---but in this send-off, he's making a very brilliant point about how we communicate meaning without actual language to ostensibly guide us! 

The Vapors: Spring Collection (1980)

The line "in your parachute suit that you bought in Portobello" has remained with me ever since I first heard it in 1980 on this great Vapors album! 

I didn't even know what/where "Portobello" was as a 15-year-old kid in Azle, Texas. At the time, I thought the girl in the song had bought something fancy in Italy, and the boy singer thought she was too ritzy for him... (As I've since learned, it's referring to the Portobello Road Market in London's fashionable Notting Hill, where hipsters go to pick up fashionable second-hand clothing. So I now think the boy singer is singing about a pretentious teen who comes to see the band----not quite a "groupie," since he's angry because he can't get her!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Vapors: Spring Collection 

[Verse 1]
Wide eyes and corkscrew hair
Tied with lace you found somewhere
Hard gloss-on lipstick smile
Wound up tight to spin for a while
Black jeans with tortured seams
Don't mean that much to me
Cool shades and Day-Glo tears
All hide your sixteen years
But I don't like to say my thoughts out loud
But I'm not liking too much what I see
You flirt with every little boy in town
You dress to kill, and now you're killing me

[Chorus]
In your spring collection
You're just another little girl with stars in your eyes
I could have been there and back
But I don't want to go home with you

[Verse 2]
Don't like your plastic shoes
Don't like your hair dyed blue
Don't like your damned new rose
Don't like your casual pose
I don't wanna go out tonight
But I don't wanna sit here 'cause there's nothing on the radio
You're coming round tonight
In your parachute suit that you bought in Portobello
I often call your name out loud
And try to tell ya what I'm going through
You'd sooner hang around with all your crowd
'Cause they all pose and think and dress like you

In your spring collection
You're just another little girl with stars in your eyes
I could have been there and back
But I don't want to go home with you

Spring collection, spring collection

One early Sunday morning in Weehawken, New Jersey...

I'd spilled my soul to Sandra the night before, and she'd not responded. I had been drinking beforehand, and her rejection was still inspiring me at around 8am the next day----I was still awake and drunk and had just run out of beer, and even though it was 8am, I still desperately wanted to drink more--
I walked over a mile inland, toward Union City, in my flip-flops. (Why I didn't put on shoes before I left the house, I don't know---to feel more pitiful?!) After traipsing miles in my flip-flops, I found a store that would sell me beer at 8-something on a Sunday morning. Thank you, Union City!! :)

p.s. This pitiful shuffling about was not really like the 1969 Kristofferson "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" song, which I suppose is THE famous hippie song about waking up on a Sunday with a hangover and feeling blue. Given that I hadn't been to bed yet, and so didn't have a hangover, and was still feeling some steadfast Mean Reds!

Says Kristofferson in 1969:

On the Sunday morning sidewalks wishing, Lord, that I was stoned 
'Cause there's something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone 
And there's nothin' short of dyin' half as lonesome as the sound 
On the sleepin' city sidewalks Sunday mornin' comin' down... 

-------------------------------------------

I was certainly emotionally miserable this Sunday morn, yet also simultaneously hyped up and steeled with a mighty sub-purpose (and one that I could do something about): FIND A STORE SELLING BEER THIS EARLY!

The Blues would come later, of course, when I finally woke up around 4pm. But on this particular morning, Sandra's rejection of me was subsumed by my ability to accomplish some seemingly impossible task.

Oscar-Nominated/Winning Pictures: When's the last time most of us saw them?

 https://oscarwinners.net/oscars-best-picture-winners-list/

I'm guessing 2010.

Is the problem with "we, the audience" or with Hollywood and its left-wing academic DEI influence? (Communism and quotas and their themes have never made for great art.)

Flamingos in Diapers

Sorry for sharing this dream (I usually hate it when random people share their dreams), but... I've been dreaming NOTHING for quite a long time now, and to dream about flamingos made me feel relatively re-invigorated! (THOUGH: This whole flamingo-thing was in an office setting---GAWD!)

The Dream: I worked in an office, flamingos were running loose in the office, and in a lecture hall. I was an intern, and I was put in charge of the flamingos. One of the flamingos made its way to my lap, and acted like a kitten. I petted it and named it (but can't remember the name now). Very affectionate and fine, except that then there was a problem about who would take care of the flamingos when I wasn't there. An "officer" of some sort came and said that the flamingos must be fed at "1200 and 2400 hours." (Which is Noon and Midnight in military time, and who would be there at midnight?) And then there was the issue of the flamingos running loose in the lecture hall and going to the bathroom----since I was in charge of them, I was then supposed to DIAPER them... And I couldn't figure out how to do it!  

I woke up then, thank god! :)

From the Internet, here is some alleged "symbolism" RE flamingos:
https://wisdomofthespirit.com/spiritual-meaning-of-flamingos/
https://worldbirds.com/flamingo-symbolism/

Dead Lady Walking

Back when I went to work for a job (prior to Covid in 2020), there was always some mild walking involved. For instance, at my job prior to my current at-home job, I initially did not have a car, so I had to walk A LOT every day: The bus-stops were not always so close to my destinations. And then, for lunch: There was an on-campus cafeteria about a half-mile away, or I could walk to a McDonald's, another half-mail away. I did both, usually to the cafeteria. (Which served up HUGE meals---chicken-fried steak and such. When I left that job in late 2019, I weighed 20 pounds more than I do today. Since then, I have gone on no weight-loss regimen, but I've dropped 20 pounds, just by not eating so much cafeteria food!)

Since 2020, though, I have not been moving AT ALL!
 
I didn't recognize how decrepit my body/lungs had become until a couple of years ago, when I went for a walk with my mother around the picturesque pond adjoining her housing division. 
Back in 2010 when I had first returned from NYC and had to live with Mom because I had nowhere else to go, we used to take daily walks around the same area. I was only 45 then, and my lungs seemed perfectly fine. I could do the 1 to 1-1/2 mile without any overt huffing and puffing. 

But when I went on the very same route with Mom in 2023 or so (when I was 58), I actually had to stop halfway through because I was overheated and couldn't breathe so well! While at the same time my 82-year-old mother was not having any problem breathing or walking whatsoever!

It didn't click at that moment, but this year (2026), it's clicking. No, I haven't stopped smoking. Which is a problem. But I realized for certain that I have to MOVE MY BODY. I simply cannot sleep on my couch, then get up to go only 6 feet away to my computer for my work-from-home job, then go back and lie on my couch and watch TV at the end of my day! I'm gonna fuckin' die of a heart attack or stroke if I keep living like this! SERIOUSLY! YIKES!! GET OFF YOUR ASS, SELF!!

I took a 2-day trip to San Francisco last Spring, during which I had to walk a lot. And I also had to PAUSE and REST a lot. I handled it, but I was still embarrassed by my own physical decrepitude!

Minor change in lifestyle that I've just been doing this past week: I found a route around my neighborhood that feels good for me to walk---and I'm walking fast, and I get home 15 minutes later, so I'm walking about a mile each time. 

I really, really do NOT want to go out with a heart attack or a stroke while in my 60s. (Yeah, like Sandra did; though I still think her stroke was mainly due to the numerous psychotropic medications she was taking----me, only nicotine and beer.)

"Livin' on Easy Street": George and Tammy (1971)

 

"Livin' on Easy Street with a dog and a Persian cat..."

(Side-note RE their "welfare checks" in the song: Tammy's background was relatively well-off: Her grandparents, who raised her, were wealthy for the Mississippi area---they OWNED the spread where she had to help pick cotton. Back in East Texas, George's father was a drunk and only did odd jobs, so his own family was often reliant on Government housing and other welfare programs.)

These people are the story of America.

George Jones: A Good Year for the Roses (1969)

I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick
On the cigarettes there in the ashtray
Lying cold the way you left them
But at least your lips caressed them while you packed
And a lip print on a half-filled cup of coffee
That you poured and didn't drink
But at least you thought you wanted it
And that's so much more than I can say for me

[Chorus]
It's been a good year for the roses
Many blooms still linger there
The lawn could stand another mowing
It's funny, I don't even care
When you turned and walked away
And as the door behind you closes
The only thing I know to say
It's been a good year for the roses

[Verse 2]
After three full years of marriage
It's the first time that you haven't made the bed
I guess the reason we're not talking
There's so little left to say, we haven't said
While a million thoughts go racing through my mind
I find I haven't spoke a word
And from the bedroom the familiar sound
Of our one baby's cryin' goes unheard...

John Lennon: 1980 demo for "Help Me to Help Myself"

Well, I tried so hard to stay alive
But the angel of destruction keeps on houndin' me all around
But I know in my heart
That we never really parted, oh no

They say the Lord helps those who help themselves
So I'm asking this question in the hope that you'll be kind
'Cause I know deep inside I was never satisfied, oh no

Lord, help me, Lord
Please, help me, Lord, yeah yeah yeah
Help me to help myself
Help me to help myself

---------------------------------------------------

Song for Yoko, but what John really needed was the juice of Paul McCartney.
Look at photos of John from 1980: A drained, anorexic 40-year-old, looking like 60. 

Trying to conform to Yoko's diet and life prescriptions/proscriptions.
And he hadn't made an album since 1974---

and the "Walls and Bridges" album was only interesting because it was confessional, 

not because it was musically interesting.

When the Last Curtain Falls (George Jones, 1999)

Back in my younger years, I remember saying, 
when Jackie Kennedy died in 1994 at age 64, 
that "that's fair---she got to live her life." 
Now that I'm 60, perhaps I was too cavalier! :)

Here's George, at age 67, looking back.

Even though I still sting from the words that you threw at me
There's no pleasure at all from watching you fall to your knees
'Cause the tables have turned
And I'm finally learning to live and forgive and let go
There's no sweet revenge at love's angry end and we all need to know

When the last curtain falls with a final goodbye
And the bitter cold darkness of night floods the days of our lives
With the silence so loud we can't feel at all
There's no reason or cause to cheer or applaud
When the last curtain falls

The irony is that you're wearing the look I once wore
And in truth I've longed for this moment to settle the score
But it's not all that clear now that I'm hearin' you echo
The thoughts of my soul; the justice of time
Is not really mine and I want you to know

When the last curtain falls with a final goodbye
And the bitter cold darkness of night floods the days of our lives
With the silence so loud we can't feel at all
There's no reason or cause to cheer or applaud
When the last curtain falls...

Have lived here longer than I've ever lived anywhere.

I just re-upped my lease, at an apartment that I first moved into in 2017, back when it was $1275 a month. (It's now, 9 years later, $1725.)

The good things about it:

It's still cheap for a 2-bedroom, 1200-ft apt in Austin.
Lots of closet space, lots of space in general.
No loud neighbors.
A small backyard (I hardly go out there, but it's nice to have, just in case. I have a few plants out there.)
The pool is 20 steps away (and there's a whole building in between my building and the pool, so I don't have to hear the loud music played by the pool in summer months).
Though I'd prefer to have my own washer/dryer (which I've never had), the apt laundry room is only about 15 steps away.
Staying here means I don't have to try to wrangle 5 cats into cages and freak them, and me, out! I acquired all of them in 2019, and they don't know any other place, and have never been transported anywhere (aside from the first 4 of 5 when they were very young and manageable, and their only trip---to be fixed).
This location in Austin is actually very good. I've worked from home since Covid struck in 2020, and I hardly ever go anywhere, but---I'm located right next to anywhere I want to go (grocery store, shops on Burnet, etc.).

The bad things about it:

There's no LIGHT or much AIR! Well, there's some, but I miss being in a house or on a 2nd floor of any apt, where there's some sort of view and/or fresh air! From either the back or front of my apt, there's another apt unit within 20 feet of me. 

Can't really go in my small backyard because, currently, in the building overlooking my yard, a fat white chick in a sweater and her skinny black cohort are constantly sitting out there smoking and looking at their phones. (Either separately or together. When both happen to be out there at the same time, they never look at each other or speak----they're both just tapping away at their phones.) Prior to these Section 8 stereotypes, there used to be one guy downstairs at this same building who would sit on a low wall and smoke multiple times a day while directly facing my apartment yard---so again, I never felt comfortable going out into my yard, with that guy sitting right there!

I'd actually like to be a real adult who has a washer/dryer set in her own home!

I live next door to the maintenance room. Which doesn't seem to have any insulation in our shared wall. I can hear their voices and even hear the "dudes" clearing their throats. And they usually spend at least 2 out of the 8-hr workday hanging out in that room. Since I've worked from home since Covid, it's annoying as hell listening to them. But at least it ends after 5:30pm.

-----------------------

Ah, well... Look, I'm 60, and I haven't managed at this point to earn a house for myself. So this is the best I'm going to get. It's not terrible at all. Each year, after renewing this lease, I keep hoping that something will change in the next year... What---that I'll meet someone and move into a house with them?? :)
As is, this place is perfectly livable, and has not been unhappy.

Though---I really WOULD like to live in a more private place, with much more sun, and a better view, before I die! :)

And, interestingly only to me, this is the longest I've lived anywhere in my life.
Currently 9 years here.
Previously:
8 years in Azle, Texas, from 1976 to 1983 (from 6th grade to high-school graduation)
7 years in Austin, from 2000 to 2007 (Poquito St, at $825 a month for an 800-sq-ft house)

Paul McCartney is so joyous!

Daddy Issues

Just watched the very moving "Resynator" (2024) on Criterion, a documentary about a young woman's search for her father. He'd died in 1988, a few weeks after the filmmaker was born---only a few years after inventing a synthesizer that musicians like Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney had both expressed interest in, in the early '80s.

After hearing while growing up that her father had "invented" the synthesizer (then learning that that was false), the daughter's search started in her grandmother's attic, with the discovery of the original "Resynator"....

The film goes on to explore both the "Resynator" and her father's attempts to sell it, as well as her family roots, and her father's violence toward her own mother---which led to a restraining order and her father's death in a car crash (accident, suicide?) 10 weeks after the filmmaker's birth.

I was very moved, overall, except for the part when the filmmaker basically said that her father went mentally wrong because his mother and father were too "proper" and didn't show enough love. (Hmmm. If your parents were too structured, they're bad; and if they're UN-structured or absent, they're bad. That is utterly ridiculous.)

Aside from being moved by the above film, I had to then reflect on my own relations with my father (up until my parents divorced, when I was 12). Here are 2 things I especially remember as a kid:

(1) My father takes me swimming! This should be a nice thing! Nah. On the way to the Air Force Base pool during the summer, my father suggests that we roll up the windows of the car and turn the AC off and have a "sweat contest"----meaning that the first person who feels too hot should give up and ask to have the AC turned back on. I was about 8 at this time. But don't you KNOW ME, Dad? So, HELL no, I did not give in. I sweated it out up until we arrived at the pool. And then, Dumbass Dad, the pool was closed. Whoops! By this time, I had turned bright red and was going into heat stroke. "Daddy" then "kindly" stopped on the way home and bought me a Coke or Slurpee or something. (I was still bright red once we arrived home. My mom appeared concerned, but I didn't hear her say anything to him, like: "What in the HELL were you thinking?")

(2) My father takes me to a football game! This should be a nice, special thing! Nah. My father drives me to a pre-season game between the Cowboys and the Steelers in Dallas. All was fine during the game. His work buddies all remarked on how cute and enthusiastic I was. On the way home, though, in the dark, my dad is too drunk to drive, and I have to literally steer the car home as he's nodding out. I was 12 years old.

Yeah, these were the "highlights" of being with my dad while growing up! There weren't that many "special" things, but any time there was, something always went wrong. What a fuck-up.

Down since 2024...

I've been in a dark place since 2024. Sandra's death one very big part of it. A reality check: Things don't always work out for the best. (I, in my naivete, had assumed in 2008: "Sandra will be OK. She'll get over her divorce battle, get over her obsession with Jim. She's an intelligent, talented woman, she'll find a job and be able to support herself.")

What happened instead: Once she stopped getting child support in 2008, Sandra never found work. She lost her paid-for apartment, then lived in an apartment paid for by a Sugar Daddy (until he got cancer and was put away by his children) and then subsequently couch-surfed at friends' apartments. She never got over her obsession with Jim, though he died in 2010. She had a stroke in 2018, and was in hospice care until her death in 2024, at age 66.

Sandra's horrible fate. After an ostensibly privileged childhood, but then sexual abuse and both of her parents' deaths while she was a teen. I first met her in a poetry class in the 1980s, right before she was about to be married... I thought that was the end of the story: She'd be married and happy...

She found me online in 2008, after I'd posted something on this blog about my memories of the 1980s poetry class with David Wevill that we'd shared. I suppose I thought it was fate. I had been in love with her back during our poetry class (she'd even driven me to a party at Wevill's house), and I was immediately in love with her again in 2008. Why? Dunno. Her way of phrasing things? And whenever I'd get an e-mail from her, I'd get that physical twinge----just seeing her name in the mail. We talked on the phone and e-mailed constantly from 2008 to 2015... And then sporadically, and then she had her stroke in 2018.

My god: The last e-mail she sent me was a photo of her scraggly attempt to write her name after her stroke. This was in a 2021 e-mail she sent to me. I never heard from her after this. Until I did an Internet search in 2024, and found out she'd died months before. 

I wasn't wise enough to understand when she really needed me. 

Years earlier, she'd told me "get a life" during my numerous attempts to find her appropriate work so she could support herself. She actually did drive me away.

But even when someone drives you away----how do you see something like the below and not help? I didn't help her in her last days.

2026: According to my calculations...

 ...This year is about time for a life-change for me (according to what I've figured out from my 6-7-yr scheme going back from the beginning of my life)!

The difference this time is that I'm not horribly dissatisfied with my current situation. 
I mean, my apartment is fine: Ground floor and not that much light. But it's 1200-sq-ft, with a second bedroom for all of my books (and bins of my crystals for sale online). And there's not anyone above or below me to make noise---just the loud maintenance "dudes" next door during the day, but at least they're gone after 5:30pm.
Job-wise: I got hired for this job back in 2020, right after COVID struck. Just a month previously, this job and all these people were in the office (which happened to be only 10 minutes from where I lived). Since 2020, the job remains remote, and the contract has been sold to other employers 2 times! Back in 2020, I didn't expect it to last. Now, in 2026, I still don't expect it to last!
Given that, according to my previous calculations, I'm due to make a big change this year: I dunno about that! I've been miserable for so many years and am finally solid---not "happy" or anything, just "OK." But that's a lot better than "utterly miserable"! In whatever case (good or bad), I'm prepared for a/the change.  Something's coming. In the 7-year-increments before, I made a drastic change out of utter boredom. And I'm pretty much bored now---but my current boredom comes with a much higher level of income. So I can buy things to temporarily assuage whatever boredom. Which was not the case in past years. So I need to really respect that money and not dismiss it so handily. My life was a LOT worse without money. Which was why I often up and left things in past years--because I was only leaving a place, not any good job. 

This year, if something happens, which I think it might: I've got money to tide me over if it's just the loss of my job. And if it's the loss of either of my 80-something-year-old parents (which I think it will probably be): There's a LOT of emotional baggage there. I'm pretty clear with my father: He was usually mean when I was a kid, and scary after the divorce (driving to our house at 2am, making phone-calls threatening suicide), but after I was in college, we had a shallow, friendly long-distance relationship until a couple of years ago. So I'm actually fine emotionally if he dies.

My mother, though, is more complex: She also did not particularly like me when I was growing up, but she's also been supportive financially when I needed it. Not EMOTIONALLY, mind you! But when I was in desperate straits---needing a car repair or needing money to move out of a crazy roommate's apt in NYC, she was kind enough to lend/give me money. So I am grateful for that. But then there's this: When I was in NYC and on the phone to my Mom about how my roommate in NYC kept coming in my room, how she cut off my Internet... My mother hung up on me. She sent me a check to get out of that situation, but...she hung up on me. I've been self-reliant 98% of the time since I've gone to college. The few times I was REALLY in desperate straits as an adult, my mom did the basics---gave money. But no emotional support or kindness or understanding, no anything. Just a minor sense of duty, I suppose. 

That's cool with me. I'd have preferred it if I had been utterly self-reliant after 18. Sometimes I wasn't, though. Compare, though, to my younger brother: God knows how much money she's given to him and his family, just in passing. Helping him pay for his house. And for a house-warming gift, Mom gave him an $800 grandfather clock. (Compare: After I'd come home from NYC in disgrace, I had to live in a 400-sq-ft apartment because it was all I could afford---and after my mother refused to co-sign the lease. Once I got the apartment anyway, her gift to me upon moving in was a silicone pot-holder.)

My mother's Will legacy to my brother is another post unto itself. 
In brief: She was sado-masochistic enough to tell me about the details of her Will back in 2017, leading to years of emotional disturbance. She's still alive, but I am, as of 2026, just about done with being upset about her bullshit. I have seriously been messed-up about this since 2017! I've just got to stop caring about it, and her. She didn't care about me as a kid, so what made me think that she'd care about me as an adult, or care about me after her death? Buck up, Self!

An Example of "FAFO"

For the past 47 years (since Iran took our hostages in 1979), the US has been dealing with this group of terrorist punks. Carter and Obama/Biden tried to make deals with them. Trump finally said: "Enough of your shit." And the entire world is a better place for it.