Must-See TV

I watched two interesting series over the past couple of weeks (because what else is there to do when there's a pandemic going on).

1. LuLa Rich: Whoa, boy. This one was a doozy. An MLM (aka a Ponzi) scheme that relies on primarily white stay-at-home moms who sell ugly leggings? Oh, and the company behind this is a family of Mormons? Sounds crazy, right? It is! I had never heard of the company or its leggings before I read about the documentary and finally watched it on Prime. But the again, why would I have? I'm not a white, suburban, stay-at-home mom, which is the demographic recruited for this scheme and the group who bought these leggings. I was shocked at the sheer amount of money the company made and the crazy bonuses they were giving out in bonuses to the women who recruited even more women to sell leggings. Fronting more than $5,000 to start your own "business" selling leggings out of your house? Yeah...no. A lot of women got sucked into this though under the guise of working part-time and bringing in full-time pay while being able to set your own hours. I totally see how so many stay-at-home moms got sucked into this and it's sad. But what's even sadder is that so many people are so gullible. As I watched this series, I kept thinking, This is why we had four years of Donny T. 

2. White Lotus: I know I'm late to the White Lotus series but, as I've said before, I don't have HBO. I saw the first episode for free and just binge watched the rest of the episodes over the last two days since I've got free HBO this weekend. Armond: I enjoyed watching Murray Bartlett self-destruct in each episode. He was great. He finally got some ass and it blew up in his face (no pun intended). I also thought the dynamics between some of the people were interesting. Tonya/Belinda: Belinda should have known that Tonya wasn't going to be the great white hope she initially claimed to be. Stevie Wonder could see Tonya was a hot mess and not reliable to go into any kind of business venture with. Paula/Olivia: What a couple of assholes. Paula found out the hard way that she would always be the outsider and Olivia played her like a fiddle. And who ended up getting the short end of the stick with these two silly broads? Kai. Shane/Rachel: Did Rachel not realize who she had married? Shane didn't become a totally different person after the wedding. He was the same asshole she met, went out with, and got engaged to. If she had wanted to run, she should have done that before she let him put a ring on it. Mark/Nicole: I didn't care enough about their relationship to pay a lot of attention to it, but if Nicole was such a tech bigshot, she should have been able to afford an extra room at the resort for her kids.

Messy people makes for good TV!

Driving the Bus

I made the mistake of going to my local Walmart yesterday and when I go to big box stores like this, especially on the weekend, I try to park at the far end of the lot for two reasons. 1. I prefer parking away from the majority of folks and COVID has made me even more likely to do this. 2. I figure no one will park close to me if I park really far away. Well, when I came out of Walmart yesterday, there was a huge SUV parked beside me and it was parked crooked. The driver didn't even try to straighten up his/her vehicle. It was so crooked that I had trouble backing our of my space. I did manage to get out and avoid hitting anyone (although I was tempted to leave a note on the offender's windshield that said "Learn how to park, asshole!"). I didn't leave any notes, but I drove away thinking that some people who buy/lease these huge SUVs don't seem to be able to park them and there's a reason for that: they're too big! Many SUVs on the roads now are huge. They're like little buses. The DMV should require a CDL to drive one. These huge SUVs don't fit comfortably into regular parking spaces either and many of the drivers can't be bothered to try and make the tight fit required to stay within the parking line. I understand why some drivers park in the hinterlands of the parking lot so they can space out with their minibuses. Then again, some folks just can't drive and they can't park regardless of what kind of vehicle they're operating. A lot of kids don't seem to learn how to drive as teenagers anymore, so the instruction happens later in life and that leads to less time behind the wheel. Chicago has been having a lot of car jackings since COVID and many of the carjackers are kids...kids who can't drive. Driver's training isn't offered in the public schools anymore and you have to pay for this kind of instruction here and it shows. 

The Struggle Is Real!

It's been a year and a half since I've been working from home and my body is proof of that. I've certainly put on extra weight during the pandemic and I'm trying to get rid of some of it, but it's hard. The struggle is real! Once I was fully vaccinated, I started going back to the gym, but then the Delta variant hit and that has stopped me from going to the gym as frequently as planned. I still go, but only one or two times a week. I've got to either pick up the pace or supplement my non-gym days with some other kind of physical exercise. I used to be a member of my local YMCA, but I had to drop that place because there are too many kids hanging around the gym. I didn't want to take the chance of being around a bunch of kids who are not and/or can not be vaccinated right now. I hate to say it, but I look at kids under 12 and think of them as COVID super-spreaders. (Sorry, not sorry!)

Another thing I'm doing to try and drop some pounds is eating dinner via a meal delivery service: Freshly. So far, so good with that. The meals are generally around 400-600 calories and that's good for me. If I cooked dinner myself, it's highly unlikely that I'd stay under that calorie threshold. And the meals taste pretty good. There were a few I didn't care for, but I like the bulk of them. 

The older I get, the harder it is to lose weight and then you add COVID on top of that and you've got a recipe for disaster. One of the main reasons I got vaccinated was because I figured I'd be one of those people who ended up in the hospital on a ventilator if I got COVID and I wanted to try and avoid that. Some people look at the pandemic and figure they'll be okay if they get it. I don't feel that way, so I'll do what I can to try and protect myself from being hospitalized. I often think of the worst case scenario when it comes to my health. Am I paranoid? Probably, but like a guy told me once (during a job interview, of all things): the paranoid have enemies too!

Sugar

My new short story, Sugar, is coming out October 6. Here's the long blurb:

Fourteen years ago, while Caleb Thorn was a junior at the University of Michigan, he had a relationship with a thirty-eight-year-old wealthy (and closeted) auto executive named Alex Hale. When Alex contacts Caleb fourteen years later to meet, Caleb finds himself experiencing a flood of memories about Alex.

At the start of their relationship, Caleb was enamored with Alex and enjoyed having a secret relationship with a sexy older man who bought him expensive gifts, but the college junior soon came to realize that those gifts came with a price. Alex controlled every aspect of their relationship and Caleb often found himself on the receiving end of Alex’s insults and hurtful behavior. Caleb quickly realized that having a sugar daddy can be both sweet and sour.

Food Apartheid

I was reading a thread on Datalounge (as I often do because the site is largely hilarious) and came across a thread about picky eaters. Someone posted about his/her brother who was a picky eater as a kid and how their household was forced into a food "apartheid" because of this. (The picky eater would get different meals from the rest of the family.) I found this funny mainly because I also grew up in a household where I was catered to because of my picky eating habits as a child. Because I didn't (and still don't) eat mayonnaise or any kind mayo-like product (Miracle Whip, etc.), when my mother made potato salad, she'd make me a side of mashed potatoes to deal with my eating habits. 

As an adult, I do eat more things than I did as a child, but I still avoid many of the things I refused to eat growing up. For example, I don't like many condiments. Aside from mayo, mentioned earlier, I also don't eat ketchup or mustard. I also don't eat pickles or tomatoes (but I will eat salsa). I have to get plain burgers or burgers with barbeque sauce on them. I also don't like watermelon (or melons of any kind), cherries, strawberries, or peaches. Also on the no fly list are boiled eggs, corned beef, jelly in flavors other than grape or apple, Greek yogurt (it smells like spoiled milk: ugh), orange juice with pulp (the consistency is gross). 

I'm so grossed out by some foods that I don't even want to touch them or wash dishes that has remnants from them. If I got a burger with pickles on it, I couldn't just pick them off and keep eating (because the pickle juice would still be there). I could pick tomatoes off and keep eating, but not pickles. Also, the mere smell of mustard makes me gag. 

But there are many foods I do like also. I can go to a restaurant and order a meal that's not chicken tenders! I eat fish, beef, Mexican food, etc. (I was off Chinese food for many years but that was due to having a barfing episode after eating a bad batch of lo mein from my neighborhood place when I lived in Brooklyn, but I bounced back from that.)

Given my own food preferences, I can't really criticize anyone else's. I like what I like and I don't like what I don't like.