Rolling on a River [SOCS]

Roll does make me think of “rolling on a river” from “Proud Mary,” a song I love. But I also think of rolls, like the kind you eat warm with butter, not that I do much of that. I hardly eat any bread these days, just some boringly healthy whole wheat for the occasional snadwich, not that I’m doing paleo gawd no, but I try to avoid it because eh. Bread. So high in cals & carbs. I love the group Bread though… didn’t I mention that already recently? Those songs break my heart. “If the world should stop revolving…” Kills me. Dead. And there was that line in Young Frankenstein about rolling in the hay, which was hilarious… and I said I was going to rewatch YF at Halloween but I didn’t. I just haven’t been into movies lately. I do want to see Bohemian Rhapsody though. And Mary Poppins. I thought I might talk about role play, but it would just be talk, IYKWIMAITYD.

Yeah, I didn’t do troll and droll and proletariat. Whatever dudes. I’m tired. 😜

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Sunny & Share

A Guy Called Bloke nominated me for another Sunshine Award! I can only assume that I’m getting all these awards lately because I’m just so gosh-darned cheerful and upbeat all the fricken time. The hills are alive with the sound of meeezick! 🎶

Okay, so here’s the dealio. I’m busy. I work all day and then have a part-time gig and also NaNo. I don’t wanna schlep around tagging peeps, copying links, poasting rules, and coming up with new questions. If you wanna play, just have at it. But if the blog police come around, we don’t know each otter, capice? 😂

That said, I like Rory’s weirdass questions, so I’m gonna answer them.

1. What’s the most fun you have ever had without being under the influence of something or someone?

– Probably when my daughter and I took a quick trip to Seattle and serendipitously found a Chihouly glass garden near the Space Needle and also had incredible sushi (back when I was still eating it).

2. What’s the most fun you have ever had without the obvious, naked?

– Professional massage (almost naked). Love love love them.

3. What’s the most fun you have ever had whilst under the influence of something or someone?

– That one time when a lying liar apologized for being a narcissistic asshole and I got confused or took too many meds or something, so everything was sublime for a very short time, until I had to face reality once again. The end.

4. What’s the stupidist question l have ever asked of you?

– You packed the parachutes, right?

5. What’s the question you want to answer but no one yet, even me has not yet asked you?

– Will you please take this cursed $100M fortune off my hands?! 💰

6. What’s your suggestion for the Christmas Challenge?

– Everyone send gifts to me. I will choose my favorite and write a poem about it.

7. What is the craziest blog you have ever read, and l don’t mean mine?

– That mime guy’s. Couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

8. What is the theory of what is?

– Que sera sera.

9. What is the colour red when mixed with Tripping the Light Fantastic?

– Pistols at dawn.

10. What is the answer to the Dodo, like seriously why?

– Mimi tutu.

11. And finally, what is the answer to this riddle?

– Base two.

Boneheads [SOCS]

Bone didn’t make me think of boner until Fandango alluded to it, which is why we should probably write our stream (stream!) of consciousness poast before reading others, but I don’t like doing shoulds. I saw the prompt last night and naturally thought of skeletons and broken bones and choking (choking!) on chicken bones like a normal person, but then I fell asleep and when I woke up I began reading my blogfeed, as you do, which seems to be semi-fixed, by the way, if you call getting all the poasts and then coming (coming!) to a complete stop at the six-hour mark fixed. But like I said, I saw boner in my mind and then that’s all I could think about and jabbering away about my broken collarbone or some metaphorical thing about wishbones wasn’t the least bit appealing anymore. Forgot to say, I did check the news too and saw our Veep insisting that the bonehead POTUS had nothing to do with inspiring the #magabomber… talking about dicks, so to speak. There’s three in one sentence and I challenge you to beat (beat!) that! 😀

Wherein she offends everyone and their little dog too…

I might not poast this. We’ll see. Sometimes I write a dating story (yes, about you) and trash it because nobody needs to see all that whiny dreckage. But lately I’ve been giving less of a fuck, the way I used to in that nice space during 2012 when I wasn’t dating before I began again (big mistake) and worried what potentials might think of my rants. Who cares?!

Anyway. I’m disgusted and disturbed by so many aspects of the Kavanaugh mess. In general, I keep my political opinions on twitter twatter, and even there am pretty low key, but when I “like” someone else’s tweet, it doesn’t fully explain my POV and sometimes I feel like expressing it in my own words.

1. In 1982, I was date-raped by a drunken Irish guy in Chicago. I call it date-rape not to minimize other women’s experiences but because we were literally on a date and I (foolishly) believed him when he said, afterward, that he’d call me for another one. At that point, despite what had just occurred, I still liked him. I decided his aggressive behavior was because of drinking and could be forgiven. I was 20 years old; he was 24. But days passed, he didn’t call, and I found out he had a fiancée. We worked in different areas of a large insurance company and when we next saw each other in the hall, he completely ignored me.

Since time had passed, I didn’t tell anyone about this, not for years anyway. Right then, I was most concerned for my job because this had happened at work. He had asked me for drinks and left his briefcase in my office because it could be locked. I didn’t even have a clue he was plotting something. We walked to a bar, had a few beers (2 for me; 4-5 for him), and returned to the building, where we had to sign in. I was a low level employee and he wasn’t. For weeks, I worried that some manager reviewed those after hours sheets and I would be called into HR to explain why I’d signed in past 8pm on a Friday night. But that never happened.

About a year and a half later, right before I moved to California, I was working at a new company and I saw him in the food court. He stopped and chatted with me like we were old friends. It was so strange! I have to admit though that the date-rape incident itself was not traumatizing. His lying was an issue however, plus the fact that he’d been cheating on his fiancée. This was the beginning of the mountain of lies and broken promises I’ve experienced from men either first or second hand throughout my life.

2. The Kavanaugh circus brought this back to mind. I’m reminded of the fact that most assaults against women are done by men they know, not strangers in alleys. You don’t expect men you know to betray your trust, whether they’re a school friend or a coworker or even some new man you’ve chatted with for a while on a dating site. Why do they have to be such assholes?!? And it’s true we don’t know for sure that Kavanaugh is guilty of assaulting anyone, but he sure acted like an asshole. To clear his good name? Give me a fucking break. I think worse of him now. He acted guilty. Belligerently guilty. Exactly the way our horrible POTUS acts when anyone criticizes him, which is why I tend to believe every accusation against him, except for the super looney tunes ones.

3. I’m sick of the huge number of people in this country who have been brainwashed into believing that only Ivy League law school grads can be federal judges. And Yale and Harvard at that? There are a lot of law schools, peeps! But this myth is self-perpetuating with the judges from those schools choosing interns from the same schools and these are the ones who climb the system. It’s so ironic coming from the “drain the swamp” people, the very same people who sneered at “coastal elites” during Trump’s whole campaign ~ what the holy fuck do they think prep school fratboy Kavanaugh is?!? No, they luv him cuz POTUS said to.

4. Okay fine, everyone’s a hypocrite. I get that. The whole “coastal elite” sneering was just a defense against the uncalled for diss of “flyover country.” It’s all shitty. Huge swaths of our country shouldn’t be labeled and dismissed as somehow unworthy or lesser than. That’s why we’re in the terrible divided place we’re at now. I feel it when people in Los Angeles label everyone in Orange County as a rightwinger. Wrong! There are plenty of Democrats here.

5. Speaking of Democrats, they really need to get their act together. Toughen up! I’m tired of your whining and tantrums. Stop yelling at Republicans in restaurants and focus on getting your goddamn lazy friends to vote blue. That’s the way out of this. Not with stupid hats and signs and boycotts. Quit thinking some “moderate” Republican will save us, for FUCKSAKE. There are no moderate Republicans ~ they are all gonna do what Trump says. How much more proof do you need?

6. Do not blame the confirmation on Susan Collins. Yes, she held out till the last minute, so she ended up with a bunch of attention, but she’s a Republican and voted with her peeps. She didn’t betray anyone. Who did? That fucker Joe Manchin. Don’t let him off the hook and blame a woman! He’s a damn Democrat!

7. The supplemental investigation was a farce and should not have been tolerated unless it was allowed to be open ended. But the Dems should have been much more on top of Kav’s shady financial issues way before this high school stuff even came up. How did he pay for his house? His country club membership? Why did his credit card debt suddenly and mysteriously disappear? The Dems just let this shit slide. I am so very disappointed in them.

8. There should be term limits for all Congress critters imo. Why do we have so many doddering old folks in there? It’s ridonkulous.

9. For the record, since I see a bunch of liberal-haters carrying on about it: yes, I think Bill Clinton is or was a disgusting creep toward women in his personal life and it’s a shame we didn’t believe women back then when they accused men of assault and harassment. (It’s a shame we didn’t believe Anita Hill; I wish Thomas was not on the Court.) And yes, for the record, I believe Keith Ellison’s ex when she says that he assaulted her.

Note how nothing has changed! Our terrible POTUS actually mocks survivors of assault and his awful supporters laugh. Cuz victims are funny! Sexual assault never happens to a female Republican, nope. What isn’t funny to them? The possibility of a wealthy privileged white conservative man being denied a promotion. That’s fucking intolerable!

10. Finally, I will not now or ever publicly name my date-rapist, nor will I contact him privately for some BS “closure.” I don’t need that. I did google him the otter week. He’s a divorced real estate broker in the Chicago area with a current pic available. He has aged well ~ maybe he quit drinking. No danger he’ll be named to the Supreme Court, so I don’t need to save America from his rapeyness. Besides, he’s a Democrat.

Oops forgot a title omgawd!

Look 👀 I’m sharing again! 😱

Questions from Sparks:

Last week I asked a question about favorite beverages and the overwhelming favorite was coffee.   If you drink coffee, how do you like it best?  Hot, cold, iced, with cream, with sugar or black as black?

– Well, I answered tea, I think, but who can remember last week really? It seems forever ago with all the insanity that’s happened since. I’ve got to quit reading so much news (she says every time she checks the news). I like coffee with cream, or all fancied up with ice and caramel and whipped cream for a bajillion calories and then I tell myself I’ve “skipped dinner.”

If you don’t drink coffee, how has that beverage impacted YOUR world?

– You mean like all the stupid Starbucks meets I went on when I was still on dating sites thinking I’d meet a nice guy and we’d fall in love so I’d have fun and company and sex and cuddles in my sunset years and not have to DIE ALONE WITH THE CAT as I choke on a c00kie in my kitchen while no one calls for help? Um… no, coffee hasn’t impacted my world at all. Weird question.

In your opinion, what’s the greatest invention of our age?

– C00kies 🍪🍪🍪

Global warming?  Reality or myth?

– I’m going with NASA’s research on this. The great thing about referring to the minds at NASA ~ you know, the rocket scientists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, etc. who got us to the freaking moon ~ is that you can totes dismiss the goofballs in MAGA hats who scream about conspiracy theories. Poof! All gone.

Are you an explorer or more a home body?

– I’m definitely a homebody. I generally hate going out, especially if I have to drive anywhere far. My favorite kind of day is one where I don’t leave my apartment at all. I consider that a big win.

and last:

What were you grateful for this week?

– Paradoxically, that I got to spend Saturday with my daughter, son-in-law, and gbaby, who live 40 miles away… and yes I drove to them. Some things are worth it.

Tipsy

Is it the wine making her tipsy,
Or the way he holds her gaze,
How he leans close and listens?
Even when she speaks in whispers,
He hears what she has to say.

The calypso music swirls her dizzy,
Or is it the wine making her tipsy?
They dance on the cold night sand,
Kiss in the blush of dawn,
A thousand lifetimes in one day.

His depth of darkness drives her on,
His mania whirls her crazy–
Or is it the wine making her tipsy?
Maybe she was sent to save him;
Maybe they’re both past damned.

Promises broken, promises made:
She grows giddy with his fusillade
Of excuses, but she understands.
Is it the wine making her tipsy?
Maybe just the clock’s soft ticking.

She drinks alone in her kitchen,
Windows misty, grey rain dripping;
Her mind circles ’round his mischief–
The walls go crooked, dipping, slipping…
It’s just the wine making her tipsy.

*

I’d like to thank Kiwinana for sharing her lovely poem yesterday and introducing me to a new poetic form Anapeat, which in turn inspired this poem.

Communication Breakdown [rantish]

[Continuing my Led Zeppelin theme in honor of my friend Joe the Troll, who is the only one who notices these things.]

Today’s prompt contact took me back to my dating site days aka the Valium years. It was always tricky to decide about first contact. Some men like it when a woman approaches them (just like in “real life,” for those who pretend the internet isn’t real). These men say it takes the guesswork out of deciding who to approach and how, along with eliminating the fear of rejection. I was rejected many times, but I didn’t care.

This is something I fail to understand about men (along with every otter thing). Why is it bad to be rejected upfront? Then you can easily move on without having invested anything but a few seconds. Sure, being rejected later hurts, but that’s not what I’m talking about now. I’m talking about the constant complaining about getting told no (or silence) after one hello.

Okay. After making initial contact and establishing some minimal threshold of mutual interest, most reasonable people would chitchat a bit in the site’s message program. But here’s the tricky part: “a bit” can mean different things. Some men think 30 seconds is enough chatting; if you don’t cough up your phone number after that they accuse you of being a phony. Other men will chat a line or two for days or weeks and never want to move to the phone. I have a term for them: “married.”

Alrighty. Say two people have successfully navigated first contact, initial chats, the phone convo, and even a first meet (gawd forbid we call that coffee thingie a “date” because this is utterly terrifying to some dudes)… now what? Well, I’ll tell you! It gets even trickier.

You have to decide how often to contact your person and how to respond to any contact from them. Say they text you one afternoon a few days after Coffee Thingie: “Hey, how’s it going?” What should you do now? So many options!

1. You don’t like them and never want to see them again, so you:

a. ignore them totally (ghost).
b. say “hey” like 3 days later hoping they’ll get the hint.
c. explain in methodical detail how much they suck, attaching a spreadsheet.
d. say “hi, nice to have met you, but we’re not a match… have a great life, bye!”

2. You really like them and want to have their baby, so you:

a. immediately reply with a long gushing text about how that was the best coffee you ever had and put lots of emojis; then before they reply again send 17 more texts about various things including photos of your pets and grandparents.
b. say “hey” like 3 days later with a smiley.
c. say “hey” immediately without a smiley.
d. wait a couple hours and suggest a plan to get together again.

What if you’re unsure? Like maybe Coffee Thingie wasn’t enough time to determine whether you really liked the dude or not? Back in the Dayz of Olde, this would have been fine because dating was all about getting together repeatedly to determine compatibility. But that’s not what people expect now. When a woman tells a man that she wants to see him again after Coffee Thingie, most men from dating sites take this as a de facto admission that she’s wildly attracted to him and proceed accordingly.

This is a major reason why I am done with dating sites. Besides having to filter out all the liars and idiots and Nazis, etc. Some circles overlap obviously.

Barbara Double D [dating story]

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I met a man named Ozzy. We’re calling him this because he’s originally from Australia, or so he said. You never know with guys from dating sites, since they tend to lie about everything. He lived in NorCal and was working here, in SoCal, and was (allegedly) separated from his wife. I didn’t care at the time that he wasn’t divorced yet because I wasn’t either. He was very sympathetic regarding the recent death of my mom, which drew me to him.

For our first meeting/date, he took me to a very nice Japanese restarant, where we had a long, leisurely sushi and sake lunch. (Back then, I loved sushi and also drank alcohol.) It sure beat the boring Starbucks meets favored by the majority of men on dating sites. We kissed afterward and it was very fireworky. He also enjoyed writing and sent me a sexy story starring us and included a special pasta dish similar to spaghetti carbonara but named for me.

Ozzy and I began dating/sleeping together. He was fun and cute and had a nice place provided by his employer (I had a child at home and didn’t bring dates over). We had agreed at the start to be monogamous and deactivate our dating profiles, but for whatever reason I didn’t trust him. And I wasn’t even that cynical yet, but I simply didn’t.

So, I reurned to the same site where we met, but instead of reactivating my profile to spy on Ozzy (which he would see and then deny doing anything, except accuse me of still being active too… stalemate), I created a new, spoof profile. I named her BarbaraDD and stole a photo of a blurry blonde off the web. I made her profile very different from mine: outgoing saleswoman with implants, loves to travel, likes watching football, wants to keep things casual. I made deliberate spelling errors, though that was difficult. Barbara viewed Ozzy’s profile and said “hey how are u” ~ something I’d never do in a million years. Of course he responded because he hadn’t deactivated.

Naturally, Barbara also received 90 kajillion messages from other men, pretty much every man on the site. She ignored all of them and focused only on chatting with Ozzy. She said outrageous things, like she wanted to come to him right after she had unprotected sex with another man, and he said that would be great. Ughhh. Then he sent Barbara the sexy story, changing the names, including the recipe to Pasta Barbara.

I was so mad! Obviously Ozzy sent that stupid story to all his women.

Barbara told him the story was incredible and made her want to meet him right away, but she’d lost her phone. Could he just meet her tonight at this bar in Newport Beach at 8:00? Of course he agreed.

At 8:00, BarbaraDD deleted her account. I blocked Ozzy and never spoke to him again. Dunno if he figured it out.

Diamonds, Daisies, Snowflakes…

… That Girl!

I can’t believe no one guessed the correct answer. Some of you got close with MTM, etc. ~ shows about single brunettes navigating big city life. But alas, nobody got That Girl. I’ve been enjoying reruns on Prime and am just starting the second season. A good friend bought S5 for me as a gift and watching some of those motivated me to start over at the beginning. Okay, let’s discuss…

First, we’ll address the theme song (music only until S5 when lyrics are introduced), which I see via google is not super popular. I guess people hate happy, sappy lists. Does this mean “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music is hated now too? Bye cream-colored ponies, off you go. We’re tossing the crisp apple strudel right in the trash. What the hell is wrong with lists of nice things? Does every piece of music have to be dark and dystopian with singularity death robots clawing out our livers? Eff that. We can haz nice lists.

Second, That Girl is a nice show about nice people, who mostly do nice things and end up getting into mild predicaments. So, you’re thinking omgawwwd boring. No. You know what I’m bored with? Criminals, jerks, liars, druggies, drunks, narcissists, wackos, and psychopaths. But enough about men from dating sites already, eh? Pffft.

Sometimes it’s just darned good fun to watch a show about normal people negotiating the quotidian. Kind of like Seinfeld, in a way… many of TG’s eps are also about “nothing” or nothing more than the minutiae of daily life gone awry via misunderstandings or miscommunications. This was prior to texting and email, so people have to talk to each other face to face to work things out. This generally resolves an issue quickly rather than our current method of trying to “text it out,” which further mires us in the muck of miscomm. Yes, I realize it’s fictional. 😛

Third, there’s a refreshing absence of sex, drugs, and violence. I’m no prude, but I’m just tired of the emphasis on those three things in entertainment. Once they’re introduced, they tend to dominate the script. Ann and Don are steadily dating, but we haven’t seen them in bed. Good. I don’t want to; it’s uninteresting to me. In one of these early eps, they wade in a stream while picnicking and she remarks that it’s the first time she’s seen his ankles. Why? Because they haven’t slept together or cuz he has sex in his socks or what? The questions crossed my mind, briefly, and I’m happy not to know. There’s a mafia ep where the bad guys end up in a food fight then a fist fight but not a gun fight and it’s hilarious. Etc.

Fourth, surprisingly, these old TG eps offer many situations that are still currently relevant. How to maintain a close relationship with your parents when you move away and choose a different lifestyle. Can you conduct a professional relationship in the same office with someone with whom you’re romantically involved? The struggle of pursuing your low-paying dream while juggling two or more side gigs to make the rent. Etc.

Plus Marlo Thomas is funny. So are Ted Bessell, who plays her boyfriend, and Lew Parker, who plays her father. But many actors could have done these roles, imo, including Marlo’s. This is not to disparage the actors, who are certainly fine, but the writers should get the credit for the show. Always credit the writers! Check out that link… interesting.

K, I’m off for more teevee! 🙂

Corncobs & Donuts: A Friday Morning Rant

I was curious today about why some Twitter users had donuts in their profile descriptions, so I began googling up the meaning. I mean, of course donuts are delicious, especially coconut ones and the kind that have little cimmanom crunchy whatsit coatings (never know what you call these donuts ~ I just point at them like a grunty caveperson), but I had a feeling Twitter donuts meant more than this and I was right. Back in my day, when all we thought about was sex, the meaning of a donut would have been sexual, but now everything is political, so naturally donuts are too. I’m not even going to attempt to paraphrase the ridiculousness of the political donut, but simply link to the article I found which essplains the whole insanity. Scroll down, donuts are in there, after the roses and corncobs.

Also, back in the day, roses and corncobs had sexual meanings too. “Roses” stood in for dollars as payment for sex on certain personal ad websites, some of which, notably Craigslist personals, have had to shut down since the passage of FOSTA on March 25th, the anti sex-trafficking bill. Oh, you probably didn’t notice that bill with everything else going on people rage about 24/7, but it will probably end up changing the internet as we know it, making service providers actually liable for content, starting with subjecting websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties misuse personals unlawfully. I agree with this btw, even though probably most of you do not. The liberal media (see previous link) has been crying about how closeted gay & trans peeps, adulterers, and others are losing an important venue to find anon hook-ups. How sad. If only websites had followed their own damn TOS in the first place, including Facebook, these “free speech” catastrophes might have been mitigated somewhat sans gobblement involvement. But they were all too greedy. I digress. You can find the sexual corncob meanings here, after the otter ones.

Why is everything so stupid? Rhetorical. Don’t personsplain at me! It’s part of the reason I left Facebook ~ I keep finding new reasons. Privacy breach/data scraping, too addicting, too political, too irritating, too many memes, people constantly reposting headlines, BORING, and just… stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. RAWR! Sure, all that same stuff is on Twitter, but I can block it all there. I’ve blocked an entire family from my Twitter feed, every one of their names, and it’s marvelous. I do not see any of them. How awesome is that? And I’ve also blocked most of the other SOS politicians and keywords to keep the crap that people obsess over out of my face. When a new story comes up that everyone goes nuts over, I block that too. I occasionally see some politics, a joke, or something that doesn’t mention a person by name ~ what’s funny is that generally those tweets are usually much more interesting than the normal political garbage because someone is expressing an honest opinion, not reposting a link. So, I don’t mind them. But, as I’ve said, I am mainly there for the poetry, which is fab.

I find it amusing that every day the Facebook horror seems to be getting worse. The only thing I regret is not dumping it sooner.

Okay, time for a donut ~ and that is not a euphemism!