Tag Archives: Bea Arthur

complaints, condescending twatbags, News, rants

“If someone is going to be examining your junk, you have the right to exact high standards…”

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I woke up to pee, probably because Bill got up to pee. He was on the potty when I went into the bathroom. After our encounter, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I started reading the news. There was an article about how hospitals in Ukraine are dealing with shortages of oxygen, thanks to the Russian invasion and the high number of COVID patients. I was kind of awestruck by the picture of the hospital interior. I was reminded that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, because the photo reminded me of the inside of an Armenian hospital I once visited in 1996. I was surprised that the Ukrainian facility still looked like a 90s era post Soviet hospital.

Then I went to the comment section, where some guy was complaining about the paywall. It always irks me when people bitch about having to pay for newspapers, as if they would be willing to work for free or give away their valuables. The complainer maintained that all coverage about COVID should be free of charge, in the interest of health promotion. For many months, The New York Times provided plenty of free coverage on COVID. Moreover, there are lots of news sources out there. The New York Times isn’t a free publication. It never has been. One doesn’t go into a store and read a print edition, as if one would at a library. Why should it be any different online? And how do people expect journalists to do their jobs if there’s no income stream with which to pay them for their work?

I’ve complained about that phenomenon more than once in this rag of a blog of mine. I’m not wanting to do it again today. I’m just building up to my point, which I’ll get to in due time. Suffice to say that people who whine about having to pay for quality journalism really get on my nerves. I didn’t leave a comment for the whiny bastard. Someone else kindly did it for me, and in good style. However, one thing I did notice, was that the whiny bastard left an entitled response when someone recommended that he block The New York Times from his feed and/or find another, free or cost-effective, news source. This is what he wrote:

1. I will not block them from my feed. Even the headlines are of some value. 2. I certainly didn’t need you to tell me there are other sources of information. I’ve examined dozens just today. 3. If they could publish free articles about COVID, then they certainly could do it in this case, for the same reason – to preserve human life. (Profit took a backseat to doing the right thing then, and so it should now!)

Then, when the person who engaged him advised him to stop complaining, he wrote:

The NYT seems to have a purpose behind this article. To provoke empathy for the suffering people. And, knowing the long reach of their newsfeed, it will get the notice of people who could help. So why put a speed bump in the way, an impediment to humanitarian aid. It doesn’t make sense. (And to remind you, I have a right to express myself – remember America is a land of Freedom of Expression. So I’ll complain all I want, for as long as I want! Many times in my past my complaints have produced real change, sometimes they’ve just changed people’s minds. Either way, Not Going Anywhere !)

I still don’t understand why his points about the shortage of oxygen in Ukrainian hospitals entitle him to read the paper for free. It sounds to me like he’s just cheap. He even admitted that “even the headlines are of some value.” So he admits that the paper is valuable. He just doesn’t want to support it by subscribing. Either way, I guarantee that complaining about paywalls in a comment section on Facebook won’t make a happy damn to the bean counters. They offer a valuable product for which many people, myself included, are willing to pay. I use The New York Times every day. It’s worth the money to me.

I was still somewhat exasperated after reading that exchange. That guy is an example of a person I can do without, although he’s probably a nice enough fellow when he isn’t bitching about paywalls. As Bill and I were enjoying breakfast, I somehow got on a tangent about other people who get on my nerves. I was suddenly reminded of a woman I used to regularly rant about years ago. She was just one of those people who irritated the ever living hell out of me. I think that guy’s comment reminded me of that woman, whom I used to call “Ms. Overly Helpful”.

In the years before social media, I used to hang out on a messageboard for second wives and stepmothers. I ran into some really great ladies. I also ran into a few assholes, although in fairness, I’m sure some of them thought of me as an asshole, too. In any case, Ms. OH was just one of those people with whom I can’t mesh. I know she has many friends, fans, and loved ones. I’m just not among them.

There’s no shame in that, by the way. Even the most likable people in the world have some people in their lives who can’t stand them. Bea Arthur, for example, famously disliked Betty White, of all people! I don’t know why, but it was widely reported that Bea didn’t like Betty at all. Even Betty, herself, admitted it. I read that Bea found Betty’s unflappable optimism annoying. To be honest, I think that would annoy me, too. I remember on The Golden Girls, there was even an episode about how Rose Nylund annoys a work colleague by incessantly trying to be his friend, when he didn’t want to be friends with her. Below is an exchange from that episode.

Roger doesn’t want to be friends with Rose. I can relate.

Ms. OH was a little like that sometimes. She fancied herself an “Earth Mother” type, and would offer me unsolicited advice and opinions. Every time I made a comment, she would contradict me in the most patronizing and infuriating ways. And I would try to hold back on the urge to be rude to her, because her comments would almost always rub me the wrong way. Like, for instance, she would question things like whether or not I should buy a new car (used is sooo much cheaper), or a new computer (have I done everything I can to make the old one last)… or whether or not I should be concerned about a strange man loitering by my mailbox (maybe he’s perfectly harmless– stop being so suspicious!). See what I mean?

I remember one time, we had a row that got quite contentious. I commented to her, quite frankly, but as politely as I could, that whether or not it was her intention to be offensive, I found her contrary responses to be disrespectful and condescending. I really tried hard not to be as nasty as I felt like being, while still making it clear that she was pissing me off, and asking her to cease and desist. I didn’t tell her to “fuck off”, though. I just clearly informed her that her comments were offending me. Ms. OH’s response was to send me a private message angrily berating me for “insulting her”. All I really wanted was for her to just leave me the fuck alone! I couldn’t block her on the message board, because we were both “admins”.

So anyway, once we all migrated to Facebook, one day I quietly dropped her from my friends list. For awhile, it was fine. I didn’t have so many encounters with her, and that made my life better. But then I got added to a Facebook group for second wives and stepmothers. It was 2012, so I had just turned 40. I got a message from the local Army clinic that it was time to schedule my first mammogram (which I still haven’t done, and I’m now 49). The clinic had also assigned a primary care manager to me; someone I hadn’t chosen and had never met before. I knew that if I went in to see the physician’s assistant assigned to me, she’d probably want to do other stuff, and quite frankly, that was very scary to me. I have a real “phobia” of medical providers, particularly the ones who want to examine my junk. It’s because I had a traumatic first experience with an OB-GYN.

I looked up the P.A. online, and found some public photos of her that made me think she wouldn’t be mature enough to deal with my issues. She was quite young and inexperienced. So I casually mentioned to my friends in the group that I thought I would be changing my primary healthcare provider, because the one the Army had assigned to me was a poor fit. Ms. OH, and a few others, were offended by my decision. In Ms. OH’s case, it was because her daughter is/was a young healthcare provider who likes to party. She was sure to tell me that her daughter would give me “excellent” care if I went to her, even though she has a “personal life” and likes to party sometimes.

Of course, I had to sigh at that response… because my situation with the Army P.A. I’d never met didn’t have a fucking thing to do with Ms. OH’s daughter. However, I also knew that I would never voluntarily choose to see Ms. OH’s daughter for healthcare, simply because she is Ms. OH’s daughter. I would rather see someone who doesn’t have such an intimate connection to someone who gets on my last nerve. And that choice should be okay, since there are plenty of people in the world who would happily see her daughter for healthcare, just as the P.A. who was assigned to me had a whole shitload of people on her list who would have no issues whatsoever seeing her.

I was just a name on a piece of paper to the P.A., so it’s not like my choice not to see her was even a personal affront. She wouldn’t be losing any money or prestige by my decision. In fact, she wouldn’t even be the wiser about it. I just wanted someone older and more experienced. What the hell is wrong with that? Like I said… if you’re going to examine my junk, I have the right to exact high standards. I honestly couldn’t see why this was such a big deal, and I never expected the controversy to arise the way it did in that group.

Well, the whole controversy was finally blowing over, until Ms. OH chimed in again, and then the issue blew up anew, with new people berating me for having my standards. They were more concerned about my not offending the healthcare provider by being “prejudicial” due to her public social media posts, than my own comfort and sense of trust. I was pretty flabbergasted, since I didn’t realize my choices regarding healthcare providers was up for debate. I mean, wouldn’t “friends” want me to be comfortable with and confident regarding my healthcare providers? But it soon got very ugly… so I quietly removed myself from the group. Ms. OH noticed, and sent me an email, which was, for once, not totally offensive. She wrote that she was glad I was “okay”. Fine.

Incidentally, Bill did end up seeing that P.A. and it turned out my instincts about her were correct. Bill has hypertension, but his case is unusual because he also has congenital hyponatremia (chronically low blood sodium). The P.A. gave him the usual spiel about avoiding stress, exercising, eating right, and not salting his food. However, because of Bill’s unusual and unique blood chemistry, actually he has been told by physicians that he should use salt. In his case, not salting his food is bad advice, in spite of his having high blood pressure. I’m sure the P.A. has plenty of textbook knowledge, and by now, she’s probably very experienced. But my instincts to avoid her were good, because in 2012, she was still pretty “green”.

A couple of years later, I ran into Ms. OH again on social media, and she made another passive aggressive dig to me regarding alcoholism, which is a sensitive topic for me. Having interacted with me for years, I think she was very aware that it was a delicate topic for me. I didn’t think her snarky comment, along with winkie smilies, was innocent, nor did I appreciate it at all. She also had a laugh at my expense, which angered me.

This time, I decided enough was enough, and I blocked her. Then I told Bill, “You wait. As soon as she sees that I blocked her, Ms. OH will send me an email.” Sure enough, I was right. Within a couple of hours, she’d sent an irate email DEMANDING to know why I blocked her. It was as if she felt I had no right to disassociate with her. My decision to block her was a personal affront, kind of like Rose Nylund trying to force her co-worker to be friends with her, when he didn’t want to be friends.

I was still really pissed off, and frankly, very surprised by her nerve. Usually, when people block you on social media, it means they DON’T want to talk to you. If you’re a basically decent person, you understand that the person doesn’t want to talk to you and respect that. And yet, here was Ms. OH, feeling quite entitled to bother me with an angry and demanding email. Part of me felt like ripping her a new one. But I thought better of it, and simply ignored her. Several years later, I unblocked her on Facebook. She took the first available opportunity to apologize to me, which was nice enough, although still kind of controlling– kind of like Hoovering. It was her way of getting the last word, I guess. I was gracious about it, and thankfully, that was that.

Anyway, I guess that commenter on The New York Times reminded me of Ms. OH, with his complaints about paywalls. How dare The New York Times expect payment for services rendered? And how dare a fellow reader take him to task for his whining, which he mistakenly believes will amount to anything more than laughing reactions and irritated comments from other Facebook users? And how dare I have standards for people who have intimate contact with my medical history and my body? How dare I make decisions about with whom I will communicate? People like the guy on The New York Times thread and Ms. OH are entitled twits. I don’t know the commenter at all, but I have to say that expecting to read newspaper content for free makes him appear to be pretty narcissistic, if not a bit deluded. But, since I don’t know the guy, and I feel that people should get the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, I’ll just assume he simply hasn’t thought very much about how journalists make a living.

Well, the dogs are demanding a walk, so I better wrap this up. Have a nice Monday, y’all.

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ethics, healthcare, law, TV

Some men just don’t get it, do they? Women aren’t incubators!

Darn it… I’m writing yet another post about abortion. I’m writing this post, even though Roe v. Wade was settled in the early 1970s. People are still trying to deprive American women of their right to bodily autonomy. And men… even men who claim to be “pro choice”, are still trying to force women to incubate developing fetuses for them.

I just so happened to download the first season of the hit 70s era sitcom, Maude, yesterday. Maude was a spin off of the great Norman Lear show, All in the Family. The show starred the wonderful actress, Beatrice Arthur, as a caricature of an extremely liberal woman of the 70s. The character, Maude Findlay, was the cousin of Edith Bunker, from All in the Family. Edith, as many people know, was the dimwitted wife of extremely conservative and racist Archie Bunker. If Archie was obnoxiously conservative, Maude was ridiculously liberal.

As a 70s era TV buff, I was sitting there in awe yesterday, as I realized just how many great sitcoms spun off of All in the Family or its spinoffs. There’s a total of seven shows– Maude, Gloria, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Checking In, 704 Hauser, and Archie Bunker’s Place. Granted, some of those shows weren’t very good and didn’t last long at all. But some of the spin off sitcoms were truly groundbreaking… and as I watched Maude yesterday, I realized just how timely and relevant that show still is, almost fifty years in the future. Maude premiered when I was about three months old. I’ll be 50 in 2022. And yet, we’re still fighting about racism and abortion. In fact, I think we’re even less reasonable about both of those subjects today than people were in the early 70s!

In any case, I happened to catch a double episode of Maude yesterday, called “Maude’s Dilemma”. It originally aired in November 1972 and was on the subject of abortion. Roe v. Wade would be a landmark Supreme Court decision the following year.

In “Maude’s Dilemma”, the character, Maude, had just turned up pregnant at age 47! Over the two part episode, Maude agonizes over whether or not she should try to have the baby, even though she was ancient for a pregnant person. Her grown daughter, Carol, who has a son of her own, encourages Maude to have an abortion. In the end, Maude decides to have an abortion, although that’s done off screen. Even still, CBS got many letters of protest. Some network affiliates never aired those episodes again after the initial airing. A couple of affiliates never aired them at all.

I was sitting there with my mouth agape as the characters on the show tried to talk Maude into having an abortion, since it wasn’t “wrong” anymore. And her fourth husband, Walter, even said he would have a vasectomy, although in the end, he chickens out.

Interesting discussion with Norman Lear… Rue McClanahan was on that episode. Years later, on The Golden Girls, Rue’s character, Blanche, would think she was pregnant, but it would turn out to be menopause.

Who would have thought, back in 1972, that people would still be arguing about abortion in 2021? Who would have thought that so many people– men, in particular– think that it’s right to force a woman to be pregnant when she doesn’t want to be?

Yesterday, my first cousin once removed, Liz, shared the below image.

I thought this was pretty awesome.

Liz is one of the few liberals in my family. Her dad is my cousin, and he is very conservative. Her mom is very liberal. They had three kids, two of whom are more like their liberal mom than their conservative dad. I’m sure it must be rough for Liz, especially, since most of the rest of her dad’s family is dyed in the wool Republican. I used to think my dad was conservative, but actually, he was probably one of the more liberal of my grandparents’ brood of nine children.

Anyway, I liked the image Liz shared, so I shared it myself. I noticed a lot of my liberal friends liked it. I decided to go to the original post, just to see what people had to say. I was quite amused to run across this thread…

Eileen said, “…there are many reasons for abortions. Maybe men should take responsibility for a change.”

Mike responded, “…men do take responsibility just as much as women do lol; it takes two people to make that pregnancy happen. I’m all for pro -choice, but the one thing that I think sucks sometimes is that, let’s say my fiancé gets pregnant and wants an abortion and I don’t want one, it’s ultimately her decision on whether to get one or not regardless of what I want.”

Um… I have to interject here. He’s all for “pro-choice”, but only if it involves some other woman besides the woman with whom he’s in a relationship. He thinks he should be able to force her to stay pregnant if he gets her pregnant. I wonder if he’s willing to pay her medical bills. I wonder if he’s going to get up with her in the middle of the night when she can’t sleep because she’s uncomfortable. I wonder if he’s going to go through all of the physical inconveniences and outright dangers pregnant people go through. My guess is that he hasn’t thought about it that much.

A woman tries to educate Mike, writing, “…because she’s the one who has to carry the useless parasite. Not you.”

Mike says, “…and that’s where the pro-choice reasoning gets absurd, that it’s ultimately the woman’s decision whether to terminate a pregnancy regardless about what the father would want. Again, I’m all for abortions and such, but if one person wants the potential baby and the other does not then have the baby for that one person and sign over your rights. Just because biology says a woman has to carry the baby does not mean the man is utterly useless and has no say about the potential baby.”

DUDE! Mike just doesn’t get it, does he? He’s “all for abortions and such”, but he doesn’t see that the burden of pregnancy and childbirth is unequal. He’s involved in the fun part of having a baby. His role is pretty much done until she gives birth. No one should be forced to have a baby. No one should be forced to be pregnant, for ANY reason. I get that some men think it’s unfair that biological women can bear children and men can’t, but that’s just life. I’m sure a lot of women would love it if men could have babies. But that’s not how we’re made.

Yet another woman peevishly writes, “…we aren’t incubators, waiting for men to plant their seed, find a person who wants children with you instead of trying to force someone to carry the child for you.”

Seems to me this point is pretty obvious. But Captain Clueless then says, “…the fuck are you talking about?“

How is it that Mike still doesn’t get that men aren’t impacted by pregnancy in the same way women are? Where did he get the idea that it’s okay for him to force a woman to bear his child? Sounds to me like he needs a simple business fable to get the point across. I wonder if Mike has ever heard the story of the chicken and the pig.

A Pig and a Chicken are walking down the road.

The Chicken says: “Hey Pig, I was thinking we should open a restaurant!”

Pig replies: “Hmm, maybe, what would we call it?”

The Chicken responds: “How about ‘ham-n-eggs’?”

The Pig thinks for a moment and says: “No thanks. I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”

In other words, men are “involved” in making babies. Women are “committed”. A man deposits his sperm during a few moments of passion, then waits nine months for the fun to begin. His body won’t change, and for the most part, he won’t be experiencing any health repercussions. A woman experiences those nine months completely differently and, at the end, will be going through significant pain and potential risks to bring that particular project to fruition.

Even on Maude, though, the pregnant character was talking about having the baby at age 47, not because she wanted to have a baby, but because she wanted her husband to have a say. I do think that is an admirable attitude, as long as Maude can love a baby she didn’t actually want to have. On the other hand, trust me. As someone who was born in 1972 (the year before Roe v. Wade) and heard many times how unwelcome the news was of my impending arrival, it’s probably kinder to terminate unwanted pregnancies. My parents did love me, I guess… but if my mom had had an abortion, I would not have been any the wiser. Maybe my mom would have been happier. I doubt she would have considered having an abortion, though, even though it was clear she wasn’t actually up for having me. Fortunately, I managed to grow up okay, anyway. Or, at least some people think so.

As someone who is 49, I have a feeling that pregnancy would probably be very difficult, even if I can technically still get pregnant. The risks of having a baby with extreme special needs would also be high. But even if I had a healthy baby, I can’t even imagine being a woman in my 60s as my kid started high school. I’m sure there are kids out there who face that reality, since medical science has advanced since the 70s. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I don’t think that’s an ideal situation. Life is tough enough.

I don’t think anyone should be forced to be pregnant, particularly since few people want to help when the baby comes. I don’t think adoption should be presented as the best alternative option, either. Realistically speaking, carrying a baby for another couple (or person) to raise is still a lot to ask, and it remains potentially dangerous. Fewer people die from abortions than full term pregnancies. It’s also not right to expect people who are unexpectedly pregnant to solve other people’s fertility issues.

I am still really sickened by the new anti-abortion law in Texas, which deputizes private citizens, encourages them to use the legal system to police women’s bodies, and inspires people to act like it’s East Germany in the 1970s. I ran across another argument yesterday in which a man all-knowingly wrote that the law in Texas includes a proviso for women whose lives are endangered by pregnancy. All I could think of was a case in Texas that came up during the year Bill and I were living there. See the video below:

This poor woman was forced to stay on life support at John Peter Smith Hospital for many weeks, simply because she was pregnant. But she was already pretty much already dead, and her family was forced to watch her rot, against her will and theirs.

In the end, Marlise Munoz was taken off life support. Her developing fetus would not have survived, in spite of the over eight weeks Marlise Munoz spent on a ventilator. The fetus had catastrophic birth defects. And the family, no doubt, were presented with huge medical bills after this debacle. They also had to watch their beloved family member’s body degrade to the point at which she was just a living corpse. Imagine how traumatic that was!

What a horrifying ordeal this woman and her family endured!

Given what happened to Marlise Munoz, I have no confidence that doctors in Texas will respect a mother’s life over that of a developing fetus’s. And quite frankly, it’s just not right to force people to give birth, or be living incubators. It’s a violation of privacy and civil rights.

So count me among those who pray this law is overturned quickly. And really, we as a country need to settle this issue, once and for all. I’m sorry for the men who are truly devastated that they have no say in a woman’s decision to have an abortion… but my guess is that the vast majority of them just want to control people.

When the shit comes down, as it always does when there’s a baby around, I highly doubt most of the men will be interested in doing the heavy lifting of parenting, just as they physically can’t do the heavy lifting of gestation. The reality of parenthood is probably more than a lot of them can bear, anyway… certainly people who are as immature and unreasonable as “Mike” is, anyway. I mean, if Mike really thinks that making babies is a 50/50 proposition, he’s probably not someone who ought to be breeding. Maybe Mike should watch Maude for some perspective.

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musings

Funky residues of strange dreams…

This morning, I was looking through my Facebook memories, and I came across a rather bizarre one. On this day in 2012, I have a very strange dream that I decided to go back to graduate school and earn a third master’s degree. But to get to the town where the school was, we had to drive through an abandoned town that had a bunch of kitschy stuff in it. It looked like it was something out of a horror film.

A former Facebook friend, who was still friends in 2012, wrote that he, too, had a strange dream that night. It involved the late Beatrice Arthur, you know– Dorothy Zbornak on The Golden Girls. This dude dreamt that he’d had sex with her, and she had smeared blue eyeshadow all over her nipples!

I asked him if she was living or dead when they had their encounter. He said she was still living, at which I expressed relief, since sex with a dead Bea Arthur would have been truly odd. I don’t think it occurred to me to ask him if Bea was young or old during their tryst. My guess is that he had sex with the Golden Girls version of Bea, since that was the character he related her to when he’d described his dream to me.

Sexy…

A few years ago, this guy– not someone I knew personally, but someone I “met” on the Recovery from Mormonism messageboard, decided to unfriend a lot of people. He said it was mostly because of his ex wife stalking him and invading his privacy. Apparently, one of his “friends” was a mole, passing along his postings to his ex wife, who then tried to use them in their custody dispute. Because of this violation of trust from a “friend” who turned out to be a stool pigeon, my former friend decided that he could no longer trust most of his social media contacts.

I was one of the people he unfriended, which to be honest, wasn’t that much of a hardship for me. I didn’t know the guy very well, aside from a few conversations we had on social media. He had seemed like a nice person… a proud father of a couple of young boys. Though he was American, he lived in Norway, which was where he’d done a Mormon mission in the 1990s. He’s fluent in Norwegian and was once married to a local, but they later divorced. According to my former Facebook friend, his ex wife is a jealous, petty, vindictive bitch who won’t leave him alone. So that forced him to go “underground” and unfriend people he doesn’t know personally.

I can relate to my old friend’s need to “hide”. I’ve felt that way myself over the past year or so. There are people out there invading my privacy and violating my trust, too, although my situation doesn’t involve minor children or ex spouses, nor do I think I’m in any actual danger. In my case, it’s more of an annoyance than anything else. At the time this guy disassociated with me, I couldn’t relate to his situation. I can, now. I definitely have some empathy.

I haven’t really missed this guy’s presence on my social media… although I think if we were friends today, I would ask him to tell me more about his thoughts regarding Bea Arthur and the blue eye shadow he dreamt was all over her nipples. I love a good discussion about weird dreams. Today’s featured photo even kind of looks like an areola, too.

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