I Tremble Before Women

I’ve read about people describing their memories as a steel trap. God bless them. While it sounds like an altogether positive thing to have, the truth is that there are quite a few things that come up each year that I am happy to forget. Of course, I can’t tell you what they are because … you know …. I forgot.

My own memory power at this time of life I would describe as more of an aluminum colander. The sort that has large holes just big enough to contain something the size of a blueberry being washed. If I have a good idea, let’s say, when I am brushing my teeth, it has usually vanished by the time I can get to a computer to write it down. When I was eight years old and went off to summer camp, Mom would write my name inside my clothing. It is no trouble at all to imagine a future where when I am asked my name I turn my head to the side, stretch out the neck of my tee shirt to read the label, and answer “Fruit of the Loom.”

The other day at the gym I saw an attractive tattoo on the arm of a woman. It was of a flight of swallows soaring up one of her arms. I think I may have mentioned this in a previous post. If I were to get a personal tattoo today, it would be much more useful to get some identifier inked on my forearm, perhaps the username and password to my nytimes.com account, making it easier to look myself up and return myself to the right place.

Interesting that people have termed our mobile phones as “smart” phones. I am now codependent with mine because it allows me to access important data that I used to be able to recall, like my daily schedule, my phone number and address, the names of my children … stuff like that. In recovery meetings, much is made of one’s sobriety date, which is the day you took your last drink. If you were to torture me you could not get that information, because I recurrently forget it. What I do remember is that it was on the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall. Soooo … look up Katrina and I’ve got it!

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MORE REASONS NOT TO COMPLETELY DESPAIR ABOUT THE DEPLORABLE STATE OF COUNTRY MUSIC

Brandi Carlile doesn’t sweat the small stuff, I guess. She came out as gay in 2002 at the age of 15 with a no-nonsense statement that it was no big deal, others had already paved the way for her.

She started out her career backed up by the Hanseroth twins, and they are still the nucleus of her band. No dumping old friends when you make the grade, not for Brandi. I am suspicious that she may be a genuine person.

Here’s a music video of hers where you only see silhouettes of Carlile and her band. Cleverly done, that. The music is allowed to speak for itself.

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Why fear women? It may have escaped your notice, bro, but they are poised to take over completely any day now, and when the patriarchy goes away, amigo, it ain’t a-comin’ back. Check out those college entry and graduation stats, those life expectancies, those supernatural skills at networking … can you not feel the rumble of a steamroller coming your way?

And their skillset completely trumps our puny male counterpart … for one thing, they have a “killer app” … they can make new human beings. And they don’t need very many of us males to do a good job of this, thank you very much. The dustups in a couple of fertility clinics in the last couple of years where a seriously disturbed doctor used only his own sperm to produce scads of children illustrate this point quite clearly.

A small stud farm maintained in a nice warm state could make the rest of the male population as useful as a pile of carpet remnants. Those selected for this chore would gambol about the farm as fat, oblivious, and happy as clams, perhaps occasionally wondering what happened to the rest of the guys.

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My preferred way of traveling, which I admit has it practical limits, is to get in my car and drive. The present state of airline travel is so fraught, perhaps terminally fraught, that it’s like playing a lottery rather than dealing with a coherent operation. Cancellations, computer meltdowns, blown tires, short-staffing, tiny seats without room for regular inhalations … all are regular features today.

In addition, any flight may contain someone who goes ballistic for any reason and endangers the rest of the passengers. It was better in the good old hijack days of 1970. You might end up in Cuba, but at least the actions of the hijacker were predictable. Today’s bozos who won’t observe the airline’s rules which the rest of us accept with something like grudging good grace … what can I say? They are the loose ends of humanity.

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Perhaps Dianne Feinstein should have retired a year ago. Perhaps two years. It’s no longer important. Eventually those criticisms left over from last week’s news will fade away, and what will be remembered is the legacy of a woman who managed to do something amazing in today’s world. In most of her actions in public life, she was on the right side. Consistent, honest, untainted by today’s rampant corruption.

One of those right places to be was her part in laying out the use of torture by our government, principally by the CIA. That American leaders were not only ordering “enhanced methods” of interrogation, but defending their use. At that point I realized that perhaps I had already lived too long … seen one too many bad things. At least in this instance, America was no better than the “bad guys” of the world.

She was also on the side of women’s reproductive rights, children’s welfare, marriage equality, sane gun regulation – if you spend thirty years in Congress you can pile up quite a list of achievements. There are always too few of her sort in politics, people of principle. People that one can trust. We can ill afford to lose even one of them.

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Appalling Numbers Department

Firearms are now the No. 1 killer of children and teens in America, having surpassed motor vehicles, which had been the leading cause of death among America’s youth until 2020.

CNN

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