Sinners and Church-goers

I saw the movie Sinners over the weekend and found it very entertaining. I purposely didn't read much about the movie so I didn't know a lot about it. I knew the twin brothers in the movie were opening a juke joint and that vampires were involved: that's it. What surprised me about the movie was how downright bizarre some parts of the film were. The Irish tunes and dancing took me by surprise. I certainly wasn't expecting to see a Riverdance performance in the middle of a film about Black folks in the American South in the 1930s, yet there it was! 

There are a lot of religious themes in the film and, over the past Easter holiday, I'd been thinking a lot about my own religious upbringing as a Lutheran. During holidays like Easter and Christmas, I think a lot about going to church as a child and how much I enjoyed the songs and the services. During the Easter season, we often sang a song called "Christ Arose" and it's always been a favorite of mine. I was fortunate enough to not have a traumatic, negative experience going to church as a child, but I was still brainwashed in some ways by certain religious norms that my parents and our church home followed that I wouldn't follow now as an adult. For example, it took me many years (like into my 30s) to wear a pair of pants to church (when I was still a church-goer). I'd been brainwashed to believe I had to wear dresses or skirts to church. Then, one day, I just wore pants. I'd seen other women wearing pants and I finally broke down and wore a pair too. If you weren't raised like I was, you're probably wonder what the big deal was to wear pants to church, but it was a big deal for me. I recall one time years ago when my father refused to go to church with my stepmother unless she changed her clothes. She wasn't wearing pants (God, forbid!) but she was wearing a denim jumper. It was a plain dress, but my father felt it wasn't good enough for her to wear to church and sit beside him in the pew while he was wearing a suit. So, what did my stepmother do? Did she say, "I'll wear what I want and don't sit beside me if you don't like it?" Of course not! She went and changed her clothes.  Brainwashing, folks!

Decade of Fun

In the "By the Book" feature in the NY Times, they sometimes ask authors what book have they read that they consider as "guilty pleasures." My feeling is that no one should feel guilty about reading a book, but if I had to specify certain books as guilty pleasures, I'd have to go with books by Bret Easton Ellis. As someone who was a teenager in the 1980s, I read Less Than Zero like a lot of folks my age along with Ellis's other books. His work was so different from what I'd been reading at the time and I enjoyed it. I'm reading his latest novel, The Shards, now and it's entertaining. I saw Bret years ago at the Barnes and Noble in New York around Union Square. He was doing a talk and Andrew McCarthy was there also. They were discussing the movie version of Less Than Zero (that Andrew starred in). Bret talked about seeing the movie and realizing as he watched it that none of the text from his book actually showed up in the film. (I think they did use that "people are afraid to merge" line in it, but I digress.) What surprised me was how perfectly calm and likeable Bret seemed during that chat. I was expecting him to be a jerk, but he wasn't! He was funny and entertaining. I was also surprised to see so many younger people at that reading. I was expecting the crowd to be filled with people who were my age (Gen X folks), but we were outnumbered by the Millennials. 

I told my sister Bret must feel like he lived his best life during the 1980s because he sure writes about that decade a lot. I just don't understand writing about a specific time period over and over. But, to each his own, I guess. I loved the 1970s because I was a kid during that decade and didn't have the pressures that come with age back then. The 1970s were tacky and ridiculous, but I loved that decade. However, I don't want to relive that time. I don't want to relive the 1980s or 90s either, although the 70s, 80s, and 90s are all looking better and better compared to what's going on today!  

Visit (While You Still Can)!

Back in 2017 BC (Before Covid), my sister and I went to Washington, DC and visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture (AAHC). We had a great time, enjoyed a great lunch there, and checked that visit off of our respective bucket lists. Back then, Donny T was in office, but too busy causing chaos elsewhere to bother with worrying about local museums. Well, the tide has turned now with Donny's second term. Now he's grumbling that museums like the Museum of AAHC cause further divisions in society and he wants JD to look into them (i.e. cut their funding). Give me a break. My suggestion for anyone interested in seeing the Museum of AAHC (or any other of the Washington museums that focus on minorities) is that you do it ASAP before Donny/DOGE/JD/Whoever shuts them down.

I, personally, would like to visit Alaska and I'm hoping to do so before Donny decides to give it to his Russian BFF, Vlad. Am I being paranoid? Maybe, but like a guy told me at a job interview once, "The paranoid have enemies too!"

$5.97

Eggs were going for $5.97 a dozen at my local Aldi today. That's about .50 cents per egg. Thankfully, I didn't need any, but my grocery bill from Aldi and Mariano's combined was over $100...for one person. And it wasn't like I was buying lobster and pricey cheeses (no gouda for me today). Grocery prices are still out of control, yet our POTUS was at the White House earlier this week begging folks to buy Teslas to help his buddy Elon out. Poor Elon. His ugly, janky vehicles aren't selling so, according to Donny T,  Americans should pitch in to help the world's richest man out by purchasing his Swasticars or truck. How tone-deaf can you be? Extemely tone-deaf, apparently. People are losing jobs (including many people Elon fired from the government), grocery prices are off the chain, and housing costs are increasing (on top of everything else), yet Dumb Donny wants us to buy a new car from his rich friend? Yeah, right. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I wouldn't give a dime to that dude. Let him go back to his home country of South Africa and beg for money. Let his fellow Afrikaners help him out by buying his cars and Mad Max trucks. 

Just when I think things can't get any worse, they do! This country is going right into the shitter and it pains me to say that. It's hard to try and find some positivity in the world these days. I can only take comfort in the fact that I didn't vote for Donny. Yeah, he's hell-bent on destruction, but my response to that is, "Don't blame me!" It wasn't like he didn't warn folks that this was coming. I didn't choose chaos but, for those who did, you're certainly getting it now, aren't you? 

You Know What It's Like

I was sad to hear that Roberta Flack passed away earlier this week. I've always enjoyed her music. I was just listening to her song "You Know What It's Like" recently. It's such a great song and terribly underrated. RIP, Roberta! And even more celebrity deaths happened this week: Gene Hackman, Angie Stone, David Johansen. I remember when Johansen had a big hit in the 1980s with a song called "Hot Hot Hot" when he was going by the name Buster Poindexter. That song drove me crazy back in the day because it was over-played on the radio. "How you feeling? Hot hot hot!" Oy vey! 

I did my part to not shop or buy anything yesterday for the blackout protest. It kills me that some folks dismissed the one day protest claiming one day of refraining from buying stuff won't make a difference, but what about Black Friday? One day of shopping puts a lot of retailers in the black, but one day of staying home won't make a difference? Whatever. I'm also trying to curb my Amazon shopping habit and I canceled my subscription to the Washington Post (that ends this month anyway). Bezos needs to sell the paper to someone who will run it right. If that happens, I'll consider resubscribing, but as long as Bezos is at the helm, forget about it. I'd like to find another news source to replace WaPo. During the BC times (before Covid), my old boss used to get the Wall Street Journal delivered to the office and I'd read those (when he wasn't there). The paper had interesting articles. It's not something I'd pay to subscribe to because I don't want to help fund the Murdoch media machine, but I enjoyed being able to read the WSJ for free. 

Let's all consider ourselves lucky for surviving yet another week of Donny T and the Funky Bunch and their never-ending bag of bullshit. Every day it's something else. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does! All I can do is try not to lose my mind with this nonsense and focus on the positive things in life. 

A Vacation? Ha!

Someone I used to work with asked me last week if I was taking any vacations this year. I told her probably not! This time last year, I was gearing up to go to Portugal in May. This year, nothing. My family is trying to arrange a reunion in Florida later this year, but I don't know if that's really going to happen and I also don't know if I'll go if it does. I'd like to take a trip, but I just don't see it happening this year. If it does, I certainly won't be leaving the country. When I was in Portugal last year, the British folks in my tour group kept asking me how I felt about Biden and Trump. They were really interested in US politics and the last thing I wanted to talk about on vacation was US politics. I can't even imagine what it would be like for an American overseas this year. Oy vey and no thank you.

Lately, I've been thinking about trips in the US, like to one of the national parks or to Alaska, places I've never been before. But with Donny and Elon's government cuts, will the national parks even have enough personnel to run them? As usual, the people in power making decisions about personnel cuts don't care or don't understand what their employees do to keep things up and running. All they're concerned with is doing more with less people. 

Tomorrow is the Presidents' Day holiday. I sure won't be celebrating our current POTUS, but I'm glad I have the day off from my day job to relax. I can remember Portugal even if I'm not taking any big vacations this year!

Serenity Now!

Serenity now, insanity later! Rarely do I quote Seinfeld, but with the nonsense going on in the US right now, I feel I have to. Trying to maintain serenity now is very hard. As if Donny T's second term as POTUS wasn't bad enough, now we have to deal with Co-POTUS, Elon. Ugh. He's not even qualified to be POTUS since he wasn't even born here, yet he's certainly acting like he has the authority to run the government. Why doesn't he go back to his home country of South Africa and run that government? (They probably don't want him back.) I never thought I'd see the day where a private citizen, and one who's not even from the United States, would be in position to oversee the country's financial systems. How is this not a coup? Why is this being allowed to happen? Our government has really gone into the shitter with a swiftness. It hasn't even been a month since Donny's return, but the country has already descended in chaos. DEI is being blamed for airline crashes, a dude with drinking and anger problems is running the military, a foreigner (who also seems to have some substance abuse issues) is taking over the government's financial systems, some nut job wants to run Health and Human Services, and POTUS is talking about making Canada the 51st state and turning Gaza into a vacation destination. Oh, and eggs are $8+ a dozen around here. Every day, it's more insanity in the United States. Don't blame me. I didn't vote for Donny, but now I'm forced to deal with him and every stupid decision he and his sychophants come up with. Another kick in the crotch. 

I can't figure out what this administration thinks will happen if the majority of our federal employees are gone. Where are these people supposed to work now? It's not like the job market is on fire right now. And what about the economy? If people don't have jobs and aren't making money, they can't buy things like homes and goods and keep the economy going. But no one wants to talk about that. Members of Congress and the Senate just sit on their hands, close their eyes, and let Donny do whatever he wants to do. Useless.