complaints, narcissists, poor judgment, rants

“A man’s got to put in overtime to get me off…”

If you happened to notice the three book reviews I reposted this morning, you might have noticed a theme. This morning, I have sex on the brain. It might be because of a spam message I got on messenger yesterday.

This is just one of thirteen spam messages I got yesterday, but it’s by far the funniest of the lot.

Lately, I’ve been responding more to comments on newspaper sites. I think that has prompted spammers to send me messages like the one above. The vast majority of people write “Hallo” or “Hello” to me. I especially get tickled by the ones who think I’m German and attempt to write to me in Deutsch.

I usually just delete these messages without a second thought, but the one above cracked me up. I shared it with my friends. One even responded by inviting me to share her page with this guy. She’s kidding, of course. We shared a laugh. Laughter is a good thing right now.

Last week, I got two spams from the same guy– clearly someone from Ghana who had hijacked someone’s Facebook photo and location and was sending out these random invitations to chat. On that particular message, he referred to me as “Bud Queen” and congratulated me for looking “clean”. That one cracked me up the first time, but then he came back!

And the rest of the funny ones I’ve gotten over the past couple of weeks and shared for my friends’ amusement appear below…

As I was thinking about these “invitations” to chat with strange men, I remembered a funny scene in Eddie Murphy’s hilarious 1989 film, Coming to America. He and Arsenio Hall are in a bar meeting women, and they’re all very strange or annoying.

So much to love about this scene. I miss going out. And I relate to the woman who can’t be satisfied, starting at 35 seconds. So… I don’t think James Michael and I would be a love match.

I watched that clip again as I was writing this and it made me laugh. That’s a good thing, since I was getting pretty annoyed by the news last night. First off, I read a very pathetic article about a bunch of people who stormed the Capitol last month. In the article, it stated that many of the people who got in trouble are folks who have serious financial problems. Case in point, 50 year old Texas real estate broker and life coach Jenna Ryan, who projects an air of success and supposed sexuality is, in reality, broke. A couple of weeks ago, she was accepting donations for her legal defense fund. Then she wrote that she didn’t “need” the donations, but people would be “blessed” for helping her. Now, come to find out, she’s actually in pretty serious financial trouble and has been for awhile…

Now, y’all know me. I try to give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt. I’m not a big fan of prison. I try to realize that everyone makes mistakes. However, I am also not a big fan of narcissism and, frankly, Jenna kind of reeks narcissistic tendencies. I was about to share her Twitter, which until yesterday, was on full display. But I just went to her page and it looks like she’s deleted her account. I found my way to Jenna’s Twitter account (which should have been deleted weeks ago) after reading an article describing her as “gorgeous”.

A bunch of people were calling her out for her “attention seeking” behavior.

Most people, when they get called out like this, retreat into the shadows. But at least until yesterday, Jenna was still engaging the masses, who were not falling for her sob story. From the Washington Post:

Despite her outward signs of success, Ryan had struggled financially for years. She was still paying off a $37,000 lien for unpaid federal taxes when she was arrested. She’d nearly lost her home to foreclosure before that. She filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced another IRS tax lien in 2010.

And yet, just a couple of weeks ago, as she begged for donations for her legal fees, she tweeted this:

So… basically, besides being pathetic enough to fall for Trump’s bullshit and getting involved in criminal activity, Jenna is also a liar and a fraud. She’s not unlike those spammer scammers who try to engage middle-aged broads like me, thinking flattery and the promise of a sugar daddy is a “blessing”.

Jenna Ryan also recently whined about how she doesn’t think she deserves a prison sentence for doing what “her president” asked her to do. She hoped Trump would pardon her, but wasn’t smart enough to realize that Trump doesn’t reward failure. The attempt to “stop the steal” wasn’t successful and made Trump look even worse than he usually does, so he’s not going to reward anyone involved with that. Anyway… having read that story about how Ryan and her rioting pals are mostly people with no money and no hope, I was left feeling pity… for Jenna’s two mini goldendoodles, who will have to be rehomed if she winds up in prison. From the Post:

Ain’t she cute in her Trump hat?

“We just stormed the Capital,” Ryan tweeted that afternoon. “It was one of the best days of my life.”

She said she realized she was in trouble only after returning to Texas. Her phone was blowing up with messages. Her social media posts briefly made her the infamous face of the riots: the smiling real estate agent who flew in a private jet to an insurrection.

Nine days later, she turned herself in to the FBI. She was charged with two federal misdemeanors related to entering the Capitol building and disorderly conduct. Last week, federal authorities filed similar charges against two others on her flight: Jason L. Hyland, 37, of Frisco, who federal authorities said organized the trip, and Katherine S. Schwab, 32, of Colleyville, Texas.

Ryan remained defiant at first. She clashed with people who criticized her online. She told a Dallas TV station that she deserved a presidential pardon.

Then Trump left for Florida. President Biden took office. And Ryan, at home in Texas, was left to wonder what to do with her two mini-goldendoodle dogs if she goes to prison.

“Not one patriot is standing up for me,” Ryan said recently. “I’m a complete villain. I was down there based on what my president said. ‘Stop the steal.’ Now I see that it was all over nothing. He was just having us down there for an ego boost. I was there for him.”

Poor baby. My heart is breaking for her. Sounds to me like she and Trump are birds of a feather, only he’s a more charismatic and successful con man than she is.

After I was done reading about Jenna Ryan’s legal and financial woes, and those of her fellow insurrectionists, I moved on to a trio of articles that appeared in the Washington Post and The New York Times about the benefits of double masking. I’ve already vented my spleen on how I feel about being expected to “double mask” (wear two face masks at one time). I’m not going to do it again with this post. Instead, I’m going to offer an observation.

I read some of the comments for the double masking articles on The New York Times and The Washington Post. I am now left with the impression that there are a lot more obnoxious assholes per capita in the D.C. area than in New York City. Or, at least the readers of the two papers are different. The comments for the Washington Post were mostly of the virtue signaling, shaming variety, with people getting downright rude and nasty when someone dared to even joke about this subject. Or, if someone rightly pointed out the face masks don’t stop COVID-19 (and they DON’T), people would indignantly share pro mask articles.

To be clear– face masks help slow the spread of disease by preventing some of the droplets from getting into the atmosphere. They don’t actually stop the virus. Lots of people have gotten sick while wearing a mask, gloves, or anything else. What works best is physically staying the fuck away from others, which is very difficult for most people to do. Hence the need for masks.

And, as I have pointed out many times, wearing a mask does present legitimate problems for some people. Most people can wear the mask just fine, but there are some people who can’t. They have a right to be heard, too. But God forbid you dare write that in any comment section for the WaPo. You will quickly be labeled a “Trumper” or a “COVIDIOT” or something else by perfect strangers. People will immediately pile on to tell you that whatever your issues are with the masks are 100% bullshit– or they will ask you for your “qualifications”. I dare someone to ask me that. They’re usually very surprised when I tell them that I actually have a MPH from a real and accredited university, rather than the Google School of Public Health.

By contrast, on The New York Times‘ comment sections, I noticed people were much more tolerant of those making light of the suggestion to wear two masks (as opposed to simply wearing a better fitting or better quality mask). The comments were more even-handed and some were legitimately hilarious. There weren’t a lot of anti-maskers there. Instead, it was people who were a little bit more open to having a discussion without attacking. It was kind of refreshing. But then, I have spent some time in the D.C. area and I know for a fact there are a lot of self-absorbed and self-important assholes who live there. And I have visited New York a few times and I always come away with the impression that New Yorkers are a bit more cosmopolitan and sophisticated. It’s much more of a cultural melting pot than D.C. is. D.C. is a place where narcissistic people gather to get into power, and they often do it with dirty and dishonest tactics.

And finally, just before I went to sleep, I saw this photo… Many people love it. They think it’s cute and funny. Let me go on record to say that I don’t love it. If I saw this sign, even while properly donning a face mask, I would turn around and walk the other direction. Being rude and insulting is not a good business practice, in my view. Lecturing people and calling them childish or stupid is not going to change their minds.

I hate this sign. If I saw this sign, I would NOT give this person my business. It’s not because I’m “anti-mask”. I’m “anti asshole”. I don’t think this kind of confrontational and belligerent attitude is helpful. But anyway, I don’t live where this food truck is located, so I doubt this guy misses my business. My response to him would be a hearty “Fuck off.” But I would say it with my RBF.

Anyway… I apologize for the obvious tension in this post. I am a bit angsty for a lot of reasons. Germany will stay locked down until at least March 7. I’m bored and depressed and tired of all the stupid bullshit. I’m wondering what the point of living is. I think most people are assholes, mainly because I read too many comment sections and get yucky spam scams in my messenger. And I’m just tired of all the negativity, insults, and directives from perfect strangers who know about as much as what they’ve read on CNN… as well as clueless twits like Jenna Ryan, who thinks she should get a “pass” for doing incredibly stupid and self-destructive things in the name of “patriotism”.

I probably ought to go find myself a good video game or porn site and lose myself in fantasy for awhile. Maybe that will help me cope as I fantasize about my next journey out of my neighborhood. But, as I pointed out earlier, “a man’s got to put in overtime to get me off.” It’s probably a good thing my vibrator is German.

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silliness

When things mysteriously disappear…

I must be losing my mind. This morning, I stripped the bed so I could wash the sheets. I removed the pillows, the top and bottom sheets, the duvets, and their covers. I will admit that I was a little preoccupied this morning, thanks to the pain and numbness in my right hip and thigh. I remember pulling five of the six pillows on the bed to my side, leaving one on Bill’s side. I went to the other side to remove the sheets and the pillow… and sometime between taking the sheets off and removing the five other pillow cases, I misplaced the sixth pillow.

I’ve looked under the duvets, under the bed (where it couldn’t have fallen because the gap is too small), in the hallways, and along the route to the laundry room. The pillow is nowhere to be found. I’m sure it will turn up eventually, but it’s pretty creepy that I misplaced something that large and that random. I have no idea where it is or where it could have gone, even as I know it could not have walked off by itself.

This happens as a Facebook friend I met offline back in the early 00s shared a picture of me from 2004. I had red hair then, and I was short and stout, as I am now. However, I was a bit thinner at that time than I am now. Unfortunately, the person who took the picture elected to get a shot of my barrel sized butt, and the Facebook friend elected to tag me when she shared it. It’s not a good picture of me at all, although clearly I’m not the intended target of the photo. Why someone thought I’d want to see it and be tagged in it, I don’t know… although I realize we are our own worst critics. I mentioned my barrel butt and noticed later, this person shared a meme. It’s one I shared myself recently.

True, but that doesn’t mean I want to see a picture of it.

I suppose I could try to do something to make my barrel butt more like a keg, but if it looked like that fifteen years ago, the odds are it will look like that until I finally croak. I’ve been relatively good this week. Bill’s been out of town, so I’ve been on the wagon, despite the yucky weather. I think watching Intervention helps keep me drinking water instead of beer. Also, because it’s just me and I don’t feel like cooking a lot for just me, I’ve been eating somewhat less. But Bill comes home tomorrow, and the homecoming should be epic… if we don’t end up attending a mandatory fun Christmas party.

Maybe I should take heart. At least jerks like Tommy Callaway won’t be tempted to slap my ass on live TV. On the other hand, he’d have no excuse, since it would be impossible to miss it.

And finally, last night, I was trying to fall asleep because I made the mistake of napping yesterday morning (cold, dark, snowy weather does that to me). As I was lying there, wide awake, I posted a Facebook status update. “I need a girlfriend”. Now, when I posted that, I meant I need someone to hang out with locally… someone to go places with, drink wine with, gossip with, or whatever. But a guy I knew during my Peace Corps days posted an article from The Guardian entitled “Why it’s never too late to be a lesbian.” I was kind of amused by that, so I posted a gif from the 1989 film, Coming to America

A man’s got to put in overtime to get me off… Shit, it may be time to watch this again.

Ah well, these are minor problems in the grand scheme of things. I found out yesterday that yet another Epinions friend passed away. His name was Jeff, and I really didn’t know him apart from our writing pursuits. He was very well liked, as I’m now discovering by the many tributes left on his timeline. Jeff liked karaoke and doing stand up comedy. He was always nice, and very friendly, although I never got to know him very well. He’s the third Epinions friend who has died this year. All three succumbed to cancer, and at much younger ages than they should have. In Jeff’s case, it was brain tumors. He successfully had surgery to remove one tumor and an MRI picked up another tumor deeper in his brain that could not be removed. Because he was very weak, it was not possible to try radiation or chemotherapy. So, just a couple of days after his surgery, he journeyed to the great beyond.

I’m heartened to see what a positive impact Jeff has had on his vast array of friends. So many people are posting their condolences. I only hope he knew how much he meant to them before he passed. I think too many people withhold that positive regard until it’s too late. The well wishes are nice to read now, but they probably would have been even nicer a month ago. As far as I can tell, Jeff was still somewhat okay at that point. I see that he was posting on Facebook and doing stand up, anyway. It sounds like his death was a complete shock and totally unexpected.

On his journey to the Pearly Gates, Jeff joins Philip McKeon, who was Tommy Hyatt on the sitcom, Alice, Carroll Spinney, who played Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, Marie Frederikksson of Roxette, and a hapless raccoon who got drunk on Gluhwein at one of Germany’s many Christmas markets and wound up being shot. Actually, I could rant about the raccoon, but I need to see to my runaway bed linens. Maybe later, I’ll get to it.

Sure wish my fat ass would mysteriously disappear like that pillow did.

Edited to add: I just remembered where that pillow went. Bill took one with him on his business trip because German hotels usually have terrible pillows.

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