Random Musings

We survived Irma, especially since she took a hard left at Georgia, but we did get some heavy rains and some scary winds; the rain I’m good with, but having a house surrounded by a few hundred trees in a windstorm? Not so much.

Still, she’s gone ... and even though Jose is lingering out there, he’s expected to stay away; for now.

James Woods is a has-been actor whose days are spent trolling the internet blasting people with his conservative ideology ... er, idiot-ology.

Case in point: Woods went after Armie Hammer’s new movie, Call Me By Your Name, which features Hammer as a 24-year old American scholar who kinda sorta falls in love with a 17-year-old boy played by Timothee Chalamet. Woods, in a Tweet, accused the film of “quietly chip[ping] away the last barriers of decency” and then, for extra added oomph, he hashtagged the Tweet with #NAMBLA [North American Man Boy Love Association].

But Armie Hammer—who is oooooh soooo hot—wasn’t having James Woods at all and Tweeted back:

“Didn’t you date a 19-year-old when you were 60……?”

And it’s true, except Woods replaced his 19-year-old girlfriend with a 20-year-old-girlfriend, when he was 66.

And then actress Amber Tamblyn Tweeted that James Woods once came on to her and asked her to go to Vegas with him; when she told him she was sixteen he replied, “Even better.”

Oh, Woods, you old pervert; sit down, you’re no longer needed here.

For all those deplorables out there who think there’s nothing to RussiaGate, hear this:

Robert Mueller is expected to question six White House aides in the investigation, including adviser Hope Hicks, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, who, along with White House Counsel Donald McGahn, have hired Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP partner William Burck to advise them in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Lawyering up, eh?

On the other side of the coin ... I’m glad Hillary Clinton wrote a book to detail What Happened regarding the last presidential election, but I do wish she’s quit laying blame all over the place. Sure, she takes some herself, but between Bernie and Comey and _____it’s all a bit too much.

You lost, dear, and I for one am sorry, but we need to move on and not wallow in the past.

Back to Irma ... I am so annoyed the weatherpeople, and newspeople, editorializing about a storm rather than just giving me the facts.

It’ll be devastating.

People will die,

You can’t get out.

Look, you’re ‘news’ people, so give me the news and save your opinions and hyperbole for someone else, m’kay?

So, while we awaited Irma’s arrival,. We caught up on some movies that I really had no desire to see in the theater, but now that I saw them on TV, I found that I liked them.

First up, The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio; I was worried it was gonna be a little like Castaway in the cold North, especially when DiCaprio’s character got a canteen with a design on it. I thought he’d name it Wilson and start talking to it—Spoiler Alert: he did not—and it was a really good movie, though part of the reason was Domhnall Gleeson, top left, a hot bearded ginger in the wild.

We also watched The 33 about the Chilean miners who were trapped when their mine collapsed; I thought I knew the whole story but it was far more than I had thought, especially given that it also starred Rodrigo Santoro, top right, as a smoking hot government official. I have had a not –so –soft spot for Rodrigo for years and he never disappoints.

And lastly, Outlander started up again this weekend with another Hot Ginger, San Heughan, bottom left, who often wears a kilt and sometimes wears nothing at all. Also in the show is Tobias Menzies, bottom right,  who just sparks my engine for reasons I can’t qoite grasp, but I don’t mind.

So, those are the weeks Hotties, with one last look at the fine Rodrigo Santoro.

GOP Congressman Tim Murphy has publicly admitted to having an extramarital affair with a personal friend, coming clean hours after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette prevailed in a court motion to unseal a divorce action and reveal the news themselves.

Murphy is not a party to the divorce, but last July the husband in the case, Jesse Sally, sought to depose Murphy as part of his divorce from Shannon Edwards.

No big deal, except ... hypocrisy. Murphy voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

He never wanted equality for The Gays because married is so scared, but he has no problem screwing another man’s wife.

Oh, and in more GOP anti-LGBT news ... the _____ administration has sided with Colorado bigot baker Jack Phillips who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple. And so _____ had the Department of Justice file an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The DOJ has already made its hostility to the rights of LGBT people crystal clear, and now _____ is advocating for a constitutional right to discriminate.

I wonder how he’d feel if a baker refused to bake a cake for a bigot president ... or a sexual groper president ... or a lying piece of shi ... president?

Oops. Josh “The Sister Diddler” Duggar is headed for a jury trial in the Ashley Madison lawsuit brought against him by DJ and model, Matthew McCarthy, who is seeking damages after Duggar allegedly used his image on the adult website. McCarthy says Duggar stole his image for use on Ashley Madison and OkCupid to solicit sex.

Plus, Josh Duggar is some pasty-looking pervert and Matthew McCarthy is kinda hot. I mean, imagine you’re the woman who saw Matthew McCarthy’s photo on some married man dating/hook-up site and you thought, ‘Wow, he’s hot,’ and so you make the call to meet and when you arrive at some seedy motel on some backwoods highway, you find pudgy, pasty, pervy Duggar?

Oy. Scrub me with bleach!

Milo Yiannopoulous, the poster boy for Self-Loathing, the anti-gay gay man, the Alt-right wingnut, has once again put his foot in his mouth ... when, really, it belongs in his ass, has revealed that he lost his home to Hurricane Irma.

It all began after he mocked the storm on Facebook, writing:

“In more positive Irma news, Richard Branson’s Necker Island has been devastated.”

... and ...

“Irma is about to finish what Hillary started: leaving Haiti in ruins.”

But then Irma came for this internet troll who attacks minorities, encourages his follower—yes, follower—to attack minorities, which lead to him being permanently banned from Twitter, and, as Miss Milo told us earlier this week:

 “MY HOUSE IS GONE”.

Oh, so sad, but Karma is a bitch names Irma, asshat.

I have a vivid, sometimes borderline frightful imagination.

Last week Carlos spotted a hole in the ground while mowing the lawn. He told me that maybe it was a sinkhole starting up. I said it looked more like a gopher hole. But, that night, as I drifted off to sleep in the master bedroom, very near the sink/gopher hole, I began to wonder if it might open up and swallow the house with me in it.

And, since I have this irrational feel of being unable to move or unable to breath—do not ­bury me alive—I thought maybe I ought to get a knife and sleep with it so when the sinkhole swallowed me up I could end it all before the full-on panic set it and scared me to death.

I told this story to a friend who said:

“Why not just sleep with a shovel and you can dig your way out?”

Imagine Carlos’ face when I brought a shovel to bed that night.

It Really Was Just Twenty Minutes

I really love my Dad, and somewhat more importantly, I really like my Dad, so I was very happy to be able to head out west to help him before and after his knee replacement surgery.

That said, I did go all Seinfeld with Carlos about how long I’d be gone ...

“Look, subtract the travel time to and from, the sleeping time, the time he’s in the hospital, the driving time around Toledo, Oregon, and I’ll be gone, what, about twenty minutes or so.”

I don’t like being away from home—I’m a nester—for too long and I really don’t like being without Carlos because I’m a very needy queen or, and this is more likely, I truly love that man and need to see him every day, always.

Still, I left; usually we fly into Portland and then drive the three-plus hours south and to the west to my Dad’s house, but this time I checked into flying into Eugene, which cuts the drive time to Dad’s to about ninety minutes. The price seemed comparable so I thought I’d go the Eugene route, except ...

Columbia is not a major airport—there are literally twelve gates—and Eugene is even smaller, so any kind of direct flight is out. I flew from Columbia to DC, and then from DC to San Francisco, and from San Francisco to Eugene. It would be a long travel day—about twelve hours with plane changes and such—but it still seemed like less of a hassle than heading to Portland until ...

The flight to DC was smooth; I had a row to myself so I didn’t have that stupid airplane chatter—Where you going—to contend with; then came DC. The airport there, we landed at Dulles, is a nightmare. I headed up two escalators to a third level and then down an escalator to a second level, across a bridge into a tunnel onto a train just to get to my gate; that seemed longer than the flight ... I am that impatient.

At the gate there was a huge crowd and I thought, “Crowded Plane.” I hate crowded planes ... airplane chatter. God! And then the pilot appeared and introduced himself and told us we would have  a smooth ride cross country ... why did he say that?

Onboard the plane we sat and sat and sat until Friendly Pilot announced that we couldn’t leave because one of the Non Smoking lights was on and they needed to figure out why; that took an hour. No, I understand you don’t want mechanical problems when you’re 35,000 feet up but, because we stayed in DC an extra hour, you guessed it, I missed my flight from San Francisco to Eugene.

I was calm, but ready to rage at the United official I spoke to, but she was so nice and so calming, telling me that the next flight to Eugene would be at 7:30 ... AM ... the next day! But they put me up in a hotel and gave me meal vouchers to use to get something to eat, gave me a seat upgrade and told me I would forever and ever be Pre-Approved at the TSA; yup, no more shoes off, or toiletries out, or removing rings and wallets and belts and such for me.

So it was kind of a win. Plus, since we left in the morning, and it was one of those rare San Francisco fog-free mornings, I had the most spectacularly views of my old stomping grounds ... The City. The wide swath of green that is Golden Gate Park, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, the Bay Bridge, Giant’s stadium ... if only I’d taken my phone or camera from my bag ...

We arrived safely in Eugene and then it was short drive to Toledo and my Dad’s house. He was ready for surgery, had everything planned and all my instructions and we chatted and joked and then went to sleep because we had to be at the hospital at 6:30 AM where we were told his surgery would be about 2-3 hours and an hour in recovery. That seemed short to me; I mean, cutting open the leg, snapping out the old knee, putting in the Belgian upgrade and attaching it and then closing everything up in two or three hours?

Nope; it was about eight hours and me, with my overactive imagination instantly began fearing the worst. At the three hour mark I checked the board in the waiting room—patients are assigned numbers and you can track their progress by their number on the board—and Dad was still in surgery. Four hours, still in surgery; six hours ... seven hours .... eight hours.

My Dad was dead and they were afraid to come tell me; yes, that’s where my mind went. Luckily, the man at the desk in the waiting room was a calming influence, or else that slap he gave me settled me down, but finally my Dad was out of surgery and in recovery and then into his room.

At a little after 5 PM I was able to go in and see him and he was woozy, of course, but awake and alert and seemingly fine. Then he threw up; luckily a nurse’s assistant was in the room with a handy barf bag and I was able to suppress my own urge to vomit ... I am a Sympathy Puker.

Dad seemed to get better and then he started vomiting again but this time I was in the room alone ...

Side story: years back I had moved into a new apartment ... I was probably twenty ... and had a Housewarming Party. One of my friends had too much to drink and was very clearly about to hurl. Someone said, “Bob, Stacie’s going to hurl, you better do something,” so I did. I took her to the front door and put her outside. I cannot be near the vomit.

... so I went to the nurse’s station and told them my Dad was getting sick again and they all looked at me like I was a loon and one said she’d be right in ... except she sat there. So, I went all Shirley MacLaine Term’s of Endearment Debra Winger is dying on their asses ... or at least a more subdued version ... and said, again, “My Dad’s throwing up, can someone please come help him.”

And they did, and he was fine, and he was doing very very well. That same night he was able to bend the New Knee and the next day he was able to take fifteen steps with it, using a walker; his doctor was very impressed, his physical therapist, too.

Still, he stayed in the hospital for  four days and was released on Saturday. He came home and his German Shepherd, Foxy, was thrilled to see him—she’d been giving me the Who-Are-You-Stink-Eye for four days—and that was my Dad’s best medicine.

He saw a physical therapist for a home visit on Monday and was again doing much better than people expected, and we planned out all his trips to the doctor’s and therapy and things he needed for the next couple of weeks.

My brother arrived Monday night to take over as Home Health Aide and the next day my twenty minute stay at my Dad’s was over and I was back in Eugene and ready to head home.

Eugene to San Francisco; short flight, row to myself, no airplane chatter. San Francesco to DC, long flight, row to myself, sleeping to avoid any airplane chatter. Then came Dulles ...

As I said yesterday, I got off the plane Wednesday morning and was hoping to see Madam President signs everywhere and instead saw President-elect_____. I was sickened ... see that post HERE.

I went up three escalators and down two, across a bridge and through a tunnel and onto a train and up three escalators and down four until I came to my gate where I could hear _____ speaking on TV. I fled to a cafe for some yogurt and granola and orange juice and then boarded my last flight ....

It was one of those tiny planes; the ones where a person over five-feet-eleven cannot stand up in the aisle, so being six-foot-two, I was a stoop-shouldered ogre headed to my seat in a full to the rafters flight. Narrow aisles, narrow seats, no leg room and then ... the pilot tells us the navigation system isn’t working so they shut off all the power to the plane for a few moments and see if they can reboot it; they did use an outside power source to keep the cabin lights on but it as a full plane, small plane, no air ... I had my very first, and hope, very last, panic attack. It was hot and crowed and there was no air and I couldn’t breathe and ____ was elected president; I was about ten seconds from getting out of my seat and running to the front of the plane and screaming to be let off and then the plane backed up ... oh, not to leave, mind you, but to see if maybe the navigational system issues could be fixed away from the gate .. so we sat on the tarmac with no air and me screaming on the inside until I heard my Dad’s voice saying Count it down.

So I counted  1...2...3...4...5...4...3...2...1.. and so on.

Seriously, that calmed me down because it kept my mind from racing toward the front of the cabin, throwing open the door and hurling myself out of the plane.

Then we moved back to the gate and were told to go inside and wait until, they could get another plane, which they did, and it was fine, though still small and crowded. But this one worked and we flew home, albeit it three hours later than scheduled.

Like I Seinfeld’d it at the beginning, it really was just a twenty minute trip out to Oregon and back, though the flights seemed to drag on for twelve days.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it ... thanks for listening.

Imagine a World Without Hate

Imagine a World Without Hate™

In honor of our Centennial Year in 2013, the Anti-Defamation League launched the “Imagine a World Without Hate” video and action campaign, and we invite you to participate.

Take just 80 seconds of your time to watch this powerful video, which imagines a world without racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism — a world in which the hate violence that took the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Anne Frank, Daniel Pearl, Matthew Shepard and others did not happen. Imagine what these individuals could have continued to contribute to society if bigotry, hate and extremism had not cut their lives tragically short.

After 100 years of fighting bigotry and fostering respect, we are celebrating our successes, while at the same time recognizing that we still have a long way to go to achieve the reality of a world without hate. Join us by watching, sharing and taking steps every day to create a world without hate. Thank you for stepping up to create a world without hate as an individual, community, school or corporation.

ADL is most grateful to the families of those featured in the video, whose commitment and participation made this campaign possible, and to the Estate of John Lennon for granting us the rights to use his beautiful and iconic song.

Imagine a World Without Hate™. We do. Join us.

On April 4, 1968, while standing on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, Dr. King was struck by a sniper’s bullet. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where, at age 39, he was pronounced dead later that evening.

Imagine. What if .........

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929, before the Frank family moved to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the Nazis gained control over Germany. As persecutions of Jews increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in secret rooms in Anne's father's office building when she was 13 years old. After two years of hiding, the family was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in March 1945. 

Imagine. What if .........

Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He served less than a year in office before he was brutally assassinated by another city supervisor. His life profoundly changed a city, state, nation, a global community and me. 

Imagine. What if .........

James Byrd Jr. was an African American, graduate from the last segregated class at Jasper’s Rowe High School. Byrd went on to marry and have three children. In the pre-dawn hours of June 7, 1998, Byrd was walking home when he was stopped by three white men who offered him a ride. Byrd got in the bed of their pick-up truck, but the men did not take him home. Instead, they drove him to a desolate, wooded road east of town, beat him severely, chained him to the back of the truck by his ankles and dragged him for more than three miles. The murderers drove on for another mile before dumping his torso in front of an African-American cemetery.

Imagine. What if .........

In October of 2000, Daniel Pearl and his wife moved to Bombay, India where he became the South Asia Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal. Pearl covered many issues, including the "war on terrorism," occasionally venturing to Pakistan. He was retracing the steps of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid when he was abducted in Karachi on January 23, 2002. Millions of people around the world rallied for his release until a video, posted on the internet, showed his captors beheading him. In his final words, Pearl declared "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish." His tragic murder was confirmed on February 21, 2002.

Imagine. What if .........

Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming where he studied political science, foreign relations and languages. On October 7, 1998, a few hours after he had attended a planning meeting for Gay Awareness Week events on campus, Shepard was tortured and left tied to a fence by two men. After being discovered, he was taken to a hospital in Fort Collins; he died on October 12, 1998.

Imagine. What if .........

On November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin appeared at a large peace rally in Tel Aviv, joining the singing of "Shir L'Shalom" (Song for Peace). Minutes later, as he was leaving the rally, an Israeli Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir, jumped out of the crowd and shot Rabin. Less than an hour later, Rabin was pronounced dead at a Tel Aviv-area hospital.

Imagine. What if .........

Imagine a World Without Hate