Get Yer Shinebox, Mooch

The ongoing freak show that is Donny T.'s administration has one less freak today. The Mooch is out before he really even got in. (He wasn't scheduled to even officially start his job until next month and today he's out of that job.) Out of all of the clowns in this circus, I have to say I found the Mooch the most amusing. Watching this guy flex and bullshit on a daily basis during his short tenure was hilarious. I also enjoyed watching the wonderfully talented Mario Cantone do his Mooch imitation on Comedy Central's "The President Show." Comedy gold! I was really hoping to see more of Cantone's shtick but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. And where will this dismissal leave our beloved Anthony? Better get your shinebox ready, Mooch.

Tennessee

I'm back from a long weekend in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I have to say, the trip turned out a lot better than I thought it would.  There was a little family drama, but the trip overall was a good one. The Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg areas of Tennessee are lovely. We didn't make it to Dollywood due to bad weather the day we were scheduled to go, but I wasn't exactly crying any tears over that loss. (No offense, Dolly! I love your music!) I did get a chance to see the Smoky Mountains and the Smoky Mountains National Park. I also got to do some go-cart racing while I was there. Great fun and a good time, but I'm glad to be back home. As nice as everyone was in that area, it's not a place I could ever see myself living in. There's a weird vibe there that I can't exactly put into words.

Service Denied

So Donny "Bone Spurs" T. doesn't want "T" people in the armed services. The guy who managed to defer himself out of the armed services now wants to deny others who voluntarily serve their country the right to serve. Unbelievable. Every day it's just more shenanigans with this guy. Do as I say and not as I do is this guy's motto. When will the national joke/nightmare be over? Not soon enough, unfortunately. I dream of the day he and his band of grifters (family members included) are hauled out of the White House in handcuffs. (That day may never come, but I still dream about it.)

The Wasp, My Sister, and My Coleus

I'm currently sharing a place with my sister and, after living alone for many years, it's been a struggle living with someone else. (I really have to evaluate this situation in the next year.) Anyway, this morning, a wasp got into our apartment and my sister went crazy. After breaking out a can of Raid in an effort to disable the insect, some of the spray got on my coleus plant that's placed on the ledge of the kitchen window. (Why she didn't just grab a catalog or magazine from our bag of newspapers, etc. for recycling, I don't know.) Now my coleus plant is in trouble. I've already clipped some of the leaves that had wilted, no doubt, from having Raid sprayed on them. I suspect more leaves will fail also as the days pass. I don't know exactly how much of the plant was sprayed during my sister's freak out (I didn't witness the actual wasp incident) and my sister did try to wash the plant. While I appreciate her attempts to save the plant (and I hope it can be saved), I'm angry over the whole thing and I just would have handled the situation differently. The sad thing is my sister is the one who picked the coleus out for me a few weeks ago and now she'll probably be the person who killed it. Sad. Accidents happen, but when things like this happen, I'm just convinced more and more that I need to live alone again. That way, if I destroy one of my plants (or anything else in my place), then I'll be the only one to blame for it.

Babs

I realized this weekend that I didn't have some of my favorite Barbra Streisand songs on CD so I had to rectify that situation. I could've sworn I had the CD with "Guilty" and "What Kind of Fool" but I didn't so I had to download them. Streisand, in my opinion, is really in peak form on "Guilty." There's so much to love in her voice on that song. I'm preparing for a short trip (one that I'm not at all enthusiastic about taking, by the way) later this week and I'm trying to get my music together for it. I decided to download some soothing Barbra Streisand tunes to get me through four days of what can only be described as a forced family vacation. I'm hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

One More for the Clown Car!

So, Spicey is out of Donny T.'s funky bunch and now we've got the Mooch. (Didn't I see him in Jersey Boys years ago? Great show!) Whatever. One clown out, one clown in. So does this mean no more Melissa McCarthy Spicey skits on SNL? That has me more bummed than anything. I don't feel sorry for Spicey at all. He can go pound sand with the other followers of Don the Con. As I've said before, when you dance with the devil, expect to have your feet stepped on.

$12 a Year? What a Bargain!

So Donny T. told the "failing" NY Times that health insurance can be purchased for as low as $12 per year for a healthy 20-something-year-old. In what country can this fabulous rate be had, Donny, because it sure isn't available the US of A. I'm sure many 20-somethings would love to have a healthcare plan that cost $1 a month. Clearly, Donny's been watching too many life insurance commercials that tout plans that cost less than $1 a day. (That's what happens when you watch too much TV and you don't know what the hell you're talking about.) A basic understanding of health insurance doesn't seem like something that's complicated to understand but clearly it's beyond Donny's comprehension. Does he ever read up on anything? And, if he doesn't, isn't there someone at the White House who can explain these things to him?

As anyone with half a brain knows, health insurance in this country is not cheap. I'm grateful to have a plan through my employer, but I've been without insurance also and trying to get medical care when you don't have insurance is difficult and expensive. And, as I get older, I worry more and more about being uninsured. Maybe you can skate by with no plan when you're young and healthy, but even the young and healthy could have an accident and end up owing thousands in medical bills without a decent healthcare plan. Hell, I have health insurance and still ended up paying thousands of dollars for an outpatient procedure earlier this year. But that amount would have been substantially worse if I hadn't had insurance.

Mars Cheese Castle

During our drive back from Wisconsin over the weekend, my sister suggested that we stop at the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha and we did. What a great place! Aside from the wide assortment of cheeses there, you can also buy beer and wine, snacks, and other assorted goods. I spent nearly $50 there and was amazed at how the low the taxes were on my purchases. No crazy liquor taxes and taxes for nearly every freaking thing like we have here in Illinois. I'll definitely stop by the Cheese Castle the next time I go to Wisconsin.

Dollar Deal - July 17

My book Fluidity will be on sale for $1 on July 17 via the JMS website for their Dollar Deal promotion. Click on the book link in the sidebar on July 17 to take advantage of this deal!

Kenny Loggins/Michael McDonald

I went to see Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald in concert in Wisconsin last night. I had just seen Michael McDonald a few weeks ago here in Illinois, but I'd never seen Kenny Loggins before so I was glad to have the opportunity to see them both. The shows were good, but the crowd got more and more inebriated as the evening went on, so my sister and I bailed early ended to avoid having to drive out of the venue with a bunch of drunkards. Seriously, some folks just can't handle their liquor.

Hotel for the Win!

I read a story recently about a woman who was staying at an Airbnb location in Amsterdam and she ended up getting tossed down a flight of stairs because she didn't get out at the agreed upon time. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'd never stay at an Airbnb. I don't want to stay in some stranger's house. I'd rather pay more money and stay in a hotel that actually caters to guests. If you overstay your checkout time at a hotel, they'll just charge you for that. No assault necessary! I don't understand how people can go and stay in a stranger's house, sleep in that stranger's bed, and live with that stranger's things. You could be staying in a serial killer's home and end up drugged and in the basement of that home being told to put lotion on your skin (or you'll get the hose again). At least at a hotel, you expect some levels of cleanliness. Hotels have standards. Sometimes they fail at these standards, but they generally want guests to be happy so they'll come back and stay again. I have never understood the appeal of Airbnb. I also don't understand the appeal of youth hostels. (Shared bathrooms? Bunk beds? No thank you.)

Hire a Clown, Expect a Circus

More fallout from Donny T. and the Funky Bunch, this time courtesy of Little Donny. What amazes me is that Donny T et al. feel they're above the law. They can do what they want and explain their way out of it. They've done nothing wrong and the rules don't apply to them. Rules are for other people. Yeah, right. When you hire a clown, expect a circus!

In other non-Donny-related news, I listened to an interesting podcast with Bret Easton Ellis and Andrew McCarthy last night. (It wasn't new, but it was new to me!) Hearing the backstory behind the film version of Ellis's book Less Than Zero was fascinating to me. I read the book and saw the movie way back when. It was also interesting to hear Ellis talk about meeting McCarthy for the first time at a reading at the Barnes and Noble store in Union Square back in 2010. I was actually in the audience during that meeting. I had no idea Andrew McCarthy had been an alcoholic. Ellis is a very good interviewer and I appreciated that he actually let his guest talk without interrupting him every few minutes. Ellis also talked quite a bit himself, but it's his podcast, so that's to be expected. Besides, he had some interesting things to say about book publishing in the 1980s and the movie industry. I'll have to check out his podcasts more often.

No Wonder

I was out and about yesterday doing the boring things I tend to do on the weekend (buying groceries and other stuff), I realized why so many people prefer to shop online. Shopping at stores is a hassle. First, during a stop for groceries, the kid who was bagging my items couldn't do the job right and I ended up with a bag full of baked chicken grease because the container had come off partially. The bagger, for some reason, either hadn't noticed this or didn't care and just stuffed the half-open container into my bag (because in Evanston, BYOB [bring your own bag] is encouraged). So then I spent about ten minutes cleaning chicken grease off of everything in my reusable bag (that had to be washed after this) and repacking my groceries. People don't know how to bag groceries anymore. They just throw everything in. There's an art to grocery packing. I used to be a cashier at A&P when I was in college. I know how to pack groceries. I need to just insist on packing my own stuff from now on. Thanks for nothing, Jewel-Osco bag boy.

After the grocery store/chicken mishap, I went to a store to buy shorts and ended up stuck in line behind a guy who wrote a check for $1.09. Who writes a check for anything other than bills anymore??? Uh, no one...but this guy. If you don't have $1.09 in your pocket in cash, you shouldn't be leaving the house. No wonder so many retail stores (including the one I was in yesterday) are failing and people are shopping online. At least when you're at home buying stuff, you don't have to wait in line behind some jackal writing a check for $1.09. Before the guy wrote his check, he argued with the cashier about some "points" he had and how he thought he had enough to cover the cost of his purchase ($1.09) but the cashier told him he didn't and, after that, the check came out. Frustrating! I should have just offered to pay the $1.09 myself since I actually had cash on me. Cash is still accepted in exchanged for goods and services, folks.

Did Someone Phone the Guv'nor?

So it seems that finally, after three years, the State of Illinois will have a budget again. The governor, who vetoed the budget, has been overruled so now I think it's full speed ahead. Hopefully the social service agencies in dire need of funding will receive those funds. Also, I'm looking forward to the return of the Mega Millions and Powerball lottery games. If I won either, my first course of action after getting my loot would be to buy some property anywhere BUT Illinois.

While I'm glad to see a deal is being put in place, that doesn't negate the fact that it's a shitty deal that doesn't solve the lack of funds needed to cover the pension deficit. Illinois will never get true reform until the cronies from both parties who run things around here are tossed out and some new people who don't live and die by the political machine are allowed to make some substantial changes. I'm sure that won't happen in my lifetime.

Independence Day

I certainly hope everyone who has the day off this 4th of July is enjoying that time off. I certainly am. My day job also gave us the third of July off, so it's been nice having a four-day weekend. The weather has also been decent here in the Chicago area, so I've been able to get outside. Unfortunately, tomorrow I'll be back on the grind, but I'm trying not to dwell on that right now.

This Independence Day has me thinking a lot about what the holiday means, especially when I think about the current local and federal governments. Oy! I love my country even though sometimes it doesn't love me back. Still, I'd rather live here, faults and all, than somewhere else where the freedoms and liberties we often take for granted aren't available to most or some people.

Ill-inois

So, for the third year running, Illinois legislators have failed to pass a budget and, as a result, the state has lost both the Powerball and Mega Millions lottery games. (You have to be in it to win it and since we can't pay our bills due to the lack of a budget, we're out of it!) More important than the loss of two popular lottery games are the lack of funds needed for construction projects, social services, and educational programs. The government legislators across both parties and the governor are both pathetic and ridiculous. They'd rather jeopardize the financial status of the state and its citizens rather than work together to find a way to deal with the mess before them. Now I know decades of corruption and foolishness have led to the current problems, but the only path moving forward is to make some hard decisions and try to get this state back on track. I believe the state is headed for "junk" status per the financial ratings systems. That's sad, but the truth hurts. Perhaps Illinois needs to hit rock bottom before it can start to climb out of the hole.

In other news, I visited Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and the campus of the University of Chicago yesterday. Great architecture.