communication, condescending twatbags, first world problems, social media, stupid people

“You better tell that girl to shut up…”

Back in the early 1990s, I was a college student who worked at the campus radio station. In the beginning, I loved being a deejay. I was pretty good at it, as I have a voice that sounds good over a microphone. I used to make commercials for my parents’ business and announce at horse shows, so it was only natural that I would enjoy being a disc jockey at the campus radio station. Another reason I liked being a deejay was that I would get exposed to music I wouldn’t ordinarily hear on my own. One band I was introduced to in those days was called Transvision Vamp.

The alternative band, which hailed from Merry Olde England in the 1980s, is now defunct. But they had one funny number that I still enjoy listening to called “Tell That Girl to Shut Up”. The song was a hit in 1988, when I was in high school, but I became familiar with it when I was a Longwood (College) University student in the early 90s. And I’m thinking of that song this morning as I think about something that happened last night. Some of you who read this are going to think it’s ridiculous that I’m writing about this topic today, but it’s Friday, and I’m not quite ready to review Jill Duggar Dillard’s new book. So here goes…

Yeah, you tell her… STFU.

Below are the lyrics to “Tell That Girl to Shut Up”:

Well you got that girl and she lives with you
And she does just want you want her to
And when I call you on the phone, she says you’re not there
But I know you’re home-

You better tell that girl to shut up
You better tell that girl I’m gonna beat her up
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl

Well we used to be the best of friends
Now all that’s gonna have to end
But there’s just one thing that I can’t see
How she’s got got you hanging up on me

You better tell that girl to shut up
You better tell that girl I’m gonna beat her up
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl

Well I guess you’re like that all of the time
But it takes more than that for me to lose my mind
Don’t you know that I don’t care?
Maybe if I hit her, maybe if I pulled her hair
Oh oh hey yey yeah

Well, she likes to seem intellectual
And to be a musician she goes to school
And the way she acts is so uncool
I just can’t stand her

You better tell that girl to shut up
You better tell that girl I’m gonna beat her up
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl

Ooh you better tell, yeah you better tell, oh
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl

Girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, girl

You better tell that girl to shut up
You better tell that girl I’m gonna beat her up
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl
You better tell that girl to shut up!

This is a really catchy song written by Holly Vincent, and it captures the mood sometimes. Mind you, I don’t condone violence, nor would I ever beat someone up, unless they somehow provoked me into physically defending myself. But sometimes the urge is there to just slap the taste out of someone’s mouth, because they are deliberately being an asshole, and trying to stir up shit, when all you want to do is just be in the world.

Such was the case last night, as Bill was having an online session with his Jungian therapist. I was sitting alone at the kitchen table looking at Facebook. I had meant to be reading Jill Duggar’s book, but just never got around to it. I happened across a post by Bitchy Waiter.

Granted, no question has been asked, as there is no question mark.

I don’t often post comments on Bitchy Waiter’s page, or any other page, for that matter. Far too often, I’ve run into rude cretins who just want to start trouble with strangers. But last night, I did choose to comment. This is what I wrote.

I preferred food service because it paid better. Also, I had better bosses.

Nothing wrong with that comment, right? It’s actually pretty boring. I wouldn’t have expected it to attract a rude comment, but hey– it’s Facebook– and confrontational jerks abound there. Someone named Pattie tagged me and wrote something along the lines of “That wasn’t the question.”

I gave Pattie an orange anger emoji and wrote, “Shut up!”

Maybe I should have just posted this video.

I had a feeling she’d come back, even though I think I was clear that I wasn’t interested in engaging with her. Sure enough, she didn’t disappoint. She came back and wrote something along the lines of, “Shut up? How old are you?”

I blocked her, because there were just too many answers I could have given that would have turned our conversation into a huge spectacle. For instance, I could have told Pattie to “go fry herself.” Or maybe she should “go flame broil herself.” Or maybe she should go be an all beef pattie somewhere else, with someone who has a grill big enough to accommodate her. I wasn’t in the mood to flame her ground up standard cuts into taco filling.

Pattie just wanted to pick a fight with someone, and she’d decided to try it with me. It takes two people to fight, though, and I wasn’t interested in giving her narcissistic fuel supply or wasting energy on an online confrontation with her, especially since I’d been drinking. So I hit the block button and ended the pain. But I was left wondering if this was really what she wanted. Was it Pattie’s goal to be blocked by me?

Then I was left with more questions. Does Pattie work as a server? Did she ever? Is being confrontational how she interacts with her tables? With people she meets on the street? With her friends and family? They say something innocuous, and she comes back with a confrontation or an insult? Why do people feel the need to be so rude and hostile to people they don’t even know? Pattie and I have at least one thing in common, and that is the fact that we both follow Bitchy Waiter. Why is that an invitation to be rude to me? There was nothing about my comment that called for her to address me in the way she did. She very quickly showed me that I don’t want to talk to her, hence why I advised her to shut up.

I’ve actually been thinking about unfollowing Bitchy Waiter, though, because I feel like I’ve outgrown the bitterness I’ve had after the experience of waiting tables. I also get tired of reading constant demands for people to tip their servers ever increasing amounts. I think restaurant owners should pay their staff appropriately, since they are the people who ultimately hire the servers. Customers who wish to tip should certainly do so… or not… since tips usually aren’t mandatory.

If the owners were paying their staff, it would mean that the staff is definitely compensated for their hard work, instead of relying on the kindness and generosity/guilt complexes of strangers. And maybe people could enjoy an evening out without constantly being pressured to order more than they want or need. Dining out in America is a stressful experience, mainly because servers are pressured to get people in and out as quickly as possible, with a bill that is as high as possible, so the tip is as high as possible. I like how it’s done in Europe, where people get paid appropriately regardless, have adequate time off, and are grateful when someone tips them.

That’s just my opinion about tipping, even though I’ve worked in the industry and completely understand why the system is the way it is. It doesn’t mean I need someone to explain why I must tip, nor do I need a primer on how things work, or a hostile lecture about why I’m “wrong” about the practice of tipping. This is just my view, and it’s not been formed in ignorance, nor is it up for debate. Opinions aren’t facts, so they have to be taken with a grain of salt. I know my view isn’t popular, but it’s how I feel.

That being said, of course I tip properly and generously, especially when I’m in the United States. I know that most servers don’t really get paid anything but tips. But I still think the system sucks. I don’t want to argue about it, because I’ve thought about it long enough to know how I feel and why I feel that way. If someday, I get new and compelling information about why tipping is better than employers actually paying their staff, I may change my mind.

Because I don’t want to argue about subjects like the importance of tipping, I don’t often comment on Bitchy Waiter’s page. I find him entertaining, and I think he’s got multiple talents. He’s worth paying attention to sometimes. That’s why I follow him. But I don’t agree with constantly pressuring people to tip more and more, so I don’t engage too often with him. When I do comment, I try to keep my comments banal.

Last night’s comment was pretty boring; so why did it attract Pattie? I don’t know. When I saw Pattie’s confrontation, my actual first instinct was to tell her to “shut the fuck up”. But, instead of posting that the f-bomb, I simply wrote the marginally more polite “shut up”. Most people know what that means, but I guess Pattie didn’t. It’s basically an invitation to go away, because I don’t owe her a conversation or a defense of my comments. She didn’t accept my invitation to leave me alone, and came back with negativity. So now we won’t be interacting at all. It’s probably no big loss to her. I know it’s no big loss to me.

I do wonder what the hell happened to Pattie to make her think it’s okay to approach people in such a way. Maybe that makes me a late 80s relic. I don’t think today’s people even think about this stuff. Younger people have apparently skipped the part of home training that includes basic manners and engaging people with respect and dignity. However, I also realize that I’m becoming a crotchety old hag with no patience. I’ll own that, as I tell that girl to shut up…

The older I get, the less patience I have for people like Pattie… total strangers on social media who, for whatever reason, feel the need to be egregiously aggressive and rude to people they don’t know. I wouldn’t tolerate it offline; so I don’t tolerate it online.

I’ll bet Pattie is pretty cheesy, too…

May deformed all beef Pattie be turned into Wendy’s chili meat.

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condescending twatbags, law, Police, stupid people, true crime, YouTube

Women being unlovable and insufferable in public and on camera…

Yesterday afternoon, I came across a couple of epic bodycam videos on YouTube. Both situations involved US citizens who were incredibly rude and disrespectful to other people. Whenever I see these kinds of things on YouTube, I’m left wondering what led to these folks behaving the way they do.

I understand that people usually start off life as total innocents. Then, as they get older, shit starts to happen. The shit can turn into something that makes them evolve into shitty people… or just people who act out in very inappropriate ways. Then I start wondering what it’s like for the people who are regularly in their lives.

This morning, I got a comment from a new visitor to my blog. This person had found a review I had written for a true crime book about Frederick “West” Greene and Michael Jervey, two men from Franklin, Virginia who murdered a classmate over an insult back in 1990. I only know about the case myself because a college friend is from Franklin and knew the people involved in the case. In fact, she brought West to our college once. I met him. Then, not long after that, it came out that he and his high school friend had brutally murdered another student at their high school. They kept the crime a secret for a couple of years.

The person who wrote to me today claimed to have had a relationship with West after he was paroled. In their comment, they requested that fellow readers “spare judgments” about the relationship. I have no problem doing that. I have pointed out many times in this blog that pretty much everyone has someone in their lives who loves them, in spite of what they’ve done. Even Josh Duggar has family who care about his well-being. So, it stands to reason that even people who have committed murders also have people who love them, for whatever reason. Many parents love their kids, for instance… no matter what evil they do.

Anyway, this post isn’t meant to be about Josh Duggar or West Greene. This post is about two bodycam videos I saw yesterday. Neither case involved murder or sex crimes, but they did involve people who didn’t appear to be very lovable at all. And yet, both women in these videos did have people who cared enough about them to help when they got arrested and acted like totally out of control worst nightmares.

I’ll start with the shorter video.

Meet Dena Craig. She’s a married mother and grandmother from Ohio who hurls hamburgers at hapless fast food workers. Then, when she rightly gets arrested, Dena justifies the behavior as her grandchildren look on and scream in terror.

The comments about Dena Craig are pretty vicious. Lots of people write that they would never want Dena around the grandchildren again. As I watch her rant and rave about fast food, complaining that the fast food worker was “crying” about being hit with a hamburger, I can’t help but marvel at the massive sense of entitlement. It’s true that the worker wasn’t hurt when she got hit with the burger. But Dena’s conduct, as well as her husband, Marlon’s actions, are just unacceptable. If she acts like this in public, what must she be like at home? And what led up to this behavior?

In my experience, a lot of people who do crazy things like hurl hamburgers at strangers have a history of abuse. Some of them also have character disorders. There must have been a time when Dena was calm and charming enough to be attractive to another person. That’s why she’s a wife, mother, and grandmother, whose kids care enough to come down to the Wendy’s to deal with her. But I also have a feeling that this behavior isn’t unusual for her… and many innocent people have had to be on the receiving end of her tirades and bullying.

I would like to offer hearty congratulations and praise to the Wendy’s workers who called the police. There’s no telling how many people Dena has victimized with her over-the-top reactions to minor issues. I wouldn’t expect Dena to go to jail for a long time for throwing a burger at someone, but she does need some consequences for acting like this. I suspect she also has some very real mental health issues that need to be addressed.

I thought Dena’s case was pretty egregious. I mean, on one level, it’s a little funny… and a bit tragic. She got put in handcuffs for throwing fast food at someone who is paid very little to take her abuse. But I hadn’t seen anything yet. The next video I saw made Dena Craig and her husband look like devoted members of the church choir.

Behold…

The bodycam video of Jaime Granger’s traffic stop was like a movie of the week… the kind that inspire nightmares!

I don’t usually have the patience to sit through super long bodycam videos. However, Jaime Granger’s case was one rare traffic stop video that captured my attention for almost two hours. I’m serious, folks. This was about two solid hours jam packed with jaw dropping action. It had everything from a dramatic bust, to an ambulance ride, to kicking and screaming and totally defiant behavior. Jaime cursed, lied, bit, spit, kicked, threatened, barked, manipulated, cried, and demanded… and yet, somehow, she never ended up in a restraint chair.

I don’t usually like the way many American cops behave, but I have to tip my hat to the state police officers in New Mexico for not knocking the hell out of Jaime. It’s not that I would condone them beating her up, but I think I could understand feeling the urge to smack her a few times… There are instances in the above video when the cops are actually kind and compassionate toward Jaime, who goes from being distraught and pathetic, to overbearing and demanding, at the simple drop of a hat.

When Jaime is first apprehended, she’s in a bathroom stall. She had been in there peeing, I guess. A cop busted the stall door down and arrested her, at first using language that I didn’t find professional or appropriate. But then, it quickly becomes apparent that Jaime pretty much deserves being sworn at, at the very least.

The most disgusting part of the video, for me, at least, is when Jaime falsely accuses the cops of raping her. It’s not that I don’t think a woman like Jaime can be raped. Rape, for the most part, isn’t a crime about sexual gratification as it is about power, intimidation, and humiliation. A lot of people were commenting that Jaime is too unattractive to be sexually violated. That’s not true. Physical attraction has little to do with that particular crime.

However, Jaime wasn’t assaulted by the police. She may have felt threatened, and it’s my guess that in the past, someone probably did victimize her in some way. She doesn’t appear to be someone with much self respect, and a lot of times, people with no self respect lash out at others.

Again, it appears that Jaime has someone in her life who cares about her. She mentions her boyfriend, David, over and over again. Later, when she’s at the jail, one of the officers tells her that David has already called them about her. I only wonder what David has to deal with behind closed doors, especially when Jaime drinks.

Later in the video, when the cops decide to have Jaime medically evaluated due to her high blood pressure, the paramedics come to take her to the hospital. She is combative and uncooperative to them, to the point at which they kick her out of the ambulance and she’s forced to ride to the hospital in the back of a cop car. The whole time, she’s yelling and screaming, denying that she did anything wrong, and being totally repulsive. And yet, in spite of her atrocious behavior, the police are mostly respectful and professional, and they somehow manage to avoid clocking her in the face during her super long, non-stop temper tantrum. You can see that this case must have taken over half a shift for the cop who arrested her, as the sun goes down while she’s being processed.

In the end, Jaime took a plea deal…

What a nightmare for everyone involved…

I don’t know what Jaime’s ultimate punishment was in the wake of the incident from December 2021. I noticed that a lot of commenters on YouTube had very little compassion for her. I can certainly understand why they feel that way. However, I bet there are reasons why Jaime behaves the way she does… reasons that are just terrible. That doesn’t excuse her atrocious conduct, of course, but maybe it could offer an explanation.

I notice that I never see videos like these in Germany. It might be because Germans are much more private than most Americans are, and there are strict privacy laws here, at least involving crime. Even people who have committed horrific crimes have the right to have their faces hidden and names obscured. This is supposedly so they can recover from infamy. But I also don’t think most Germans act this way. Here, it seems like people are more passive aggressive than overtly hostile and crazy.

Anyway… I just felt like writing about this today… because these videos definitely blew my mind. It’s kind of embarrassing and depressing to observe how Americans act on bodycam footage. The longer I live outside of the United States, they more I can see why so many non-Americans think our culture is so completely fucked up on so many levels.

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complaints, condescending twatbags, nostalgia

The home of the Whopper…

This morning, I woke up at about 3:45am. For once, it wasn’t because of Arran. I think my body has simply gotten used to being up in the wee hours of the morning. Also, I ran out of Advil PM. It’s probably good that I don’t have any Advil PM, since my body could probably use a break from it. Once I started moving around, it was time to drop my morning deuce, which totally woke me up. So here I sit, at about 5:30am on a day when my biggest plans involve vacuuming the house (a chore I HATE). I could be sleeping, but I can’t sleep. I’m all bright eyed and bushy tailed. By noon, I’ll need a nap. That’s my usual mode these days.

I spent last night watching movies from around 1980– specifically, Little Darlings, Meatballs (from 1979), and Private Benjamin. I couldn’t help thinking that those movies are now about 41 years old. I remember when they were in the theaters. Yeah, I was a little kid at the time, but I have a long memory and I had cable TV. I downloaded so many movies yesterday, which I tend to do when I’m super bored. Boy, was life in the early 80s blissful, even if we did constantly worry about nuclear war with the former Soviet Union.

I’ve been bored as hell since Bill has been away. And now it looks like he’ll be back tomorrow, as originally planned. So I have one more night to watch shitty movies and have potato chips for dinner. Yesterday, I had a burger for lunch, but I was forced to use a German hamburger brioche (and seriously, they can and DO do better than this…)

Where’s the beef?

You have to be a certain age to get the above joke. In the mid 80s, the Wendy’s fast food chain had a very popular ad campaign and their slogan was “Where’s the beef?” The commercials starred Clara Pellar, who went on to appear in the film, Moving Violations, a movie I thought was funny when I was 12. It was so funny to me, I saw it twice in the theater with the neighborhood pervert, who used to show me porn and told me his groin was “The home of the Whopper”. “Home of the Whopper” was the slogan for Burger King when I was a kid. It was on the facade of every restaurant. But when I think of it, I’m reminded of our neighbor, who had stacks of men’s magazines that he didn’t mind sharing with the little blonde girls who lived next door (I wasn’t the only one, or even the first).

My burger yesterday brought back memories of this ad in sharp relief. The burger was kind of small, but the main issue was the humongous bun. Like I said, this isn’t necessarily typical of German hamburger buns. Our local Rewe has another kind that is much better– better than the American buns and Bubba Burgers at the commissary that our German neighbor covets.

I had the burger for lunch because there’s not much else in the house and I can’t be bothered to go to the grocery store. I wasn’t in the mood to eat the leftover chili I made over the weekend. Bill is more of a chili fan than I am, though I’m better at making it than he is. I made it over the weekend because we had all the stuff for it and it’s easy. I put it on the stove and let it cook for a few hours. No muss, no fuss. I’ll probably have more of it today.

I woke up this morning and started reading the daily news. I stumbled across a couple of news articles that aggravated me. The comments were even more annoying. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that people get on my nerves for a lot of reasons. One thing that really irritates me are people who are free with their opinions, but their opinions are only based on headlines and not actual content. So many people react to headlines without reading first. And then I waste time reading their outrage about something that was covered in the article and it would have spared them (and us) the irritation if they had simply taken a minute to read– even if all they read were comments by people who did take the time to read the article before popping off with uninformed opinions.

Another thing that vexes me are people who feel the need to opine with eloquence, yet haven’t taken the time to learn proper vocabulary. I can’t tell you how many times someone has reacted with outrage that someone’s “flaunting” the COVID-19 rules. The word they should be using is “flout”. And, you know, I get it… a year ago, when COVID-19 was a new nightmare for us all, most people had little reason to use a word like “flout”. We didn’t have rules like wearing face masks and social distancing and all of the rest of the shit we’ve had to deal with over the past twelve months. And truthfully, the words flaunt and flout are fairly similar, both in spelling and meaning.

BUT– it’s been a year… and one would think that anyone with a computer and Internet access could take a moment to consult an online dictionary. Here’s an interesting discussion of the difference between “flaunt” and “flout” according to Merriam-Webster. While you will probably find that flaunt and flout are similar in meaning and the dictionaries will even say so, there is a difference in the meanings of these two words. When you’re “flaunting” something, you’re showing off without any regard for what others think. Whenever I think of the word “flaunt”, I’m reminded, of all things, of an episode of the 80s era sitcom Gimme a Break, when the nerdy character Julie Kaminsky gets all dolled up in an effort to join her prettier sister’s sorority. She takes off her glasses, puts on a sexy dress, makes up her face, and prances around… and says, “I’ve got it, and I’m going to flaunt it.” (11:00 in the below video)

If you’ve got it, flaunt it, Julie. Atta girl.

To “flout”, means to ignore convention, disdain the rules, and show contempt for regulations. From the above article I linked:

“…if you decide that you just don’t care what people think, and that you are going to use flaunt to mean “treat with disdain for convention” you are flouting that prescribed usage; if you do care to observe the distinction, and make sure that everyone knows that you know what it is by using flaunt and flout all the time, then you would be flaunting your knowledge of a usage prescription.”

And while most native English speakers will understand you if you say, “That idiot on the plane who refused to wear a mask was flaunting the rules,” many educated people will silently disdain you for incorrect usage. If they’re already on edge and really cranky and irritable, like I am, they might even write a derisive blog post. Merriam-Webster’s excellent article adds,

“…although we include the recent sense of flaunt, this does not mean that we are suggesting you use it in such a fashion, and most copy editors, usage guides, and grammatically inclined pickers of nits would judge you for doing so. Some of them might even snigger. We never would do such a thing. But we might raise our eyebrows, make a quick note on a citation slip, and record your usage as evidence.”

They would never do such a thing, but I certainly would. That’s because all of the virtue signaling busybodies are annoying the fuck out of me, and I don’t even meet them in real life. I stay home most of the time, and rarely encounter other humans, so no one gets the chance to chastise, confront, or challenge me for my habits. Instead, I just run into them online in the comment sections, where people suggest jailing anti-maskers for LIFE on attempted murder charges. I think that’s taking things a bit far, don’t you? I mean, what’s next? Bringing back drawing and quartering? Shooting rule breakers in the head? Exiling them to Siberia or some penal colony in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

It’s nonsense, and I’d really like for these people to just fuck off. I mean, I get that people are frustrated and angry. It sucks when you do your part to follow the rules and other people “flout” them. I will also agree that freaking out on an airplane is bad behavior that needs to be addressed. But I am also tired of people who have tunnel vision when it comes to other people’s opinions and can’t have a reasonable discussion without folding their arms, thug like, and suggesting that people who resist, or even just state that they hate, wearing face masks ought to be beheaded or something.

In my neighborhood, no one wears a face mask unless they’re about to get on the bus or go into a shop. People are mostly belligerently cooperative here. I mean, many people do hate the fucking face masks and they don’t pretend not to. I suspect that as soon as someone in charge says we don’t have to wear them anymore, the Germans will be discarding them with much gusto. In fact, I regularly see them discarded on the ground when I take my walks. There are rule breakers in hyper-anal-retentive Germany, too (hyper-anal, except when it comes to the nude spas… which I really miss. 😉 ) But they do cooperate, and wear the fucking things when they are required, for the most part.

I actually like that attitude. Germans get that there are rules and they understand why the rules exist. But they don’t have to like them, and they (with some exceptions) don’t try to shove them down other people’s throats. Here, there is a spirit of community, and people do things more for the common good– for the most part, anyway (unless they are my ex landlady). But you don’t see too many chirpy people preaching about how the masks work or showing off their Google School of Public Health knowledge while they berate the anti-mask “flaunters”. Here, cops will write tickets for the rule “flouters”. Or, at least that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t go into public unless I’m forced. I don’t hear or read too many speeches about how face masks work, even online. It helps not to speak German.

I keep getting ads from the airlines and cruise lines, trying to entice me back on board for a trip somewhere exotic. Sure, they want butts in seats or in staterooms, paying fares and revving up the economy. But you know what? I hate wearing face masks. Flying was a big enough pain in the ass before the face masks were ever a thing. Now we have people saying we ought to wear two masks, and so many folks are bragging about how they’ve been doing that all along. And I just think that as long as the face mask rule is in effect, I won’t fly (or cruise) unless I must. Like, if we have to move back to the States or elsewhere and flying or sailing is our only option, okay. I’ll put on a mask and get through it. But I am lucky enough to live in a place where we can drive to a lot of interesting locales. We also have a nice new Volvo that can get us there. That’s what we’ll do, because frankly, I don’t want to pay money to have to deal with the rule “flouters”, anal retentive law enforcement, travel officials, or other overbearing folks who think rule breakers should be disemboweled or something, and masks on planes are here to stay forever.

You may think it’s just fine if I don’t travel on public transportation. I would even agree with you. But I guarantee you that if enough people feel the way I do, something will have to be done to make flying safe without forcing people to wear masks. Otherwise, business will suffer, and we can’t have that. I don’t want to spend money to sit on a plane with flight attendants and other passengers acting like hall monitors, watching everything everybody else is doing with Gestapo like attention to detail. I’d rather stay home, and out of any altercations.

I keep reading about how many people won’t fly unless the masks are vigorously enforced. But it also goes the other way. There are also many people out there who won’t fly as long as the masks are required. In my case, I figure that if the masks are necessary, it’s probably not that safe to use public transportation anyway, at least for non-essential travel. If I’m in my own car, not only do I not have to deal with other people’s bullshit, but I also am the master of my domain. And I don’t have to share arm rests, endure dirty looks (except from other drivers), smell other people’s farts, or have some busybody scrutinize how well my face mask is fitted or the quality of it, like people scrutinize other people’s kids in their car seats.

Let me just add, as I close this post, that I don’t tend to post these thoughts on social media. Why? Because invariably, someone who thinks they’re smarter and more evolved than I am will try to tell me how life is. They won’t actually read or listen to my thoughts on this issue. Instead, they’ll cross their arms, close their minds, and call me “childish” or “foolish” or explain how masks protect everyone else from my cooties (Yes, I KNOW!) I don’t need to read or hear that shit again!

I’m thinking about the future, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing to do. Otherwise, I might consider how much I’m hating the present and decide it’s really no longer worth the effort of hanging around here. I have to have hope that this situation will improve sometime… and to me, that means not having to wear a fucking face mask or having some twerp getting in my face about what I should or should NOT be doing or wearing in public, when being maskless was just fine only thirteen months ago and had been fine for my entire life up until March 2020.

For the time being, I will simply do my best to stay out of the way… and perhaps find other things to read. And it may take a long time until I come out of exile, since Germany’s Astra Zeneca vaccine roll out is like a really bad case of constipation and I am at the bottom of the priority list on the Army posts for a Moderna vaccine. At this rate, maybe I’ll get the shot by Christmas.

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