Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Sorry for using a Dad joke as my title.

But I'm being driven distracted by all the girls on the Internet fussing with their $^&$^*$@ hair!!

Don't get me wrong; I love hair, especially long,  long hair.  I loved it, and I used to wear mine pretty long when I had decent hair.  (The 'Rents loved long hair.)  But preening, fussing with the hair, doing something stupid with the hair for every occasion, and with any excuse: that drives me batty!

Obviously, young guys like long hair, esp. foreign, arty guys, some of whom are girl wannabes!  (Sorry; that's kinda harsh.)  So obviously they would draw girls with ultra-long hair.  Ok, sometimes they get it right, and the girl actually looks nice.  Most of the time, though, the hair just looks fussy and out of control.  Even goddesses with long hair have it teased so intensely, you wonder: can't they just do some magic so that their own hair looks nice?

Now, they're creating even guy images with long hair.  Please.  I don't lust after guys of any description, but these long-haired guys just look pouty and pathetic. 

And you know what?

Some of these people have ambitions of being writers.  But what they want to write about is: a guy who takes a fellow boyfriend, and gives him some medication that turns him into a girl!  Some people are just crazy with stories with this basis.  Sometimes the victim is really unhappy; sometimes the victim sees himself (herself) in a mirror, and is super pleased. 

I wonder whether these are wish-fulfillment fantasies of guys who are borderline gay.  This storyline is so common that there is a name for it—which I forget—and also an abbreviation, like HEA.

Kay

Too Much Going On

I used to report here a sort of summary of all the stupid nonsense that took place every couple of days, but no longer.   There's too much lying and rhetoric coming out of the government for me to distill it for your consumption.

The big story is that they pushed a bill through congress to (1) reduce funding for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and FEMA; (2) they are making a fuss about Biden not revealing how sick he was before the elections.  (3) They're deporting immigrants to countries those immigrants aren't even from.  And, of course, (4) they accepted as immigrants a score of white South Africans, fleeing what they declare is a black South African government bent on 'genocide', that is, that those governments want to exterminate the small remaining white minority. 

Some of pres 47's supporters are sure to support any government action that helps whites in any way.  In the past, our INS (immigration service) has viewed applicants who have potential to be helpful here.

Get what you can out of this small report!

Kay

What to Do?

Dear Friends,

Many of you, like me, are wondering whether you ought to be doing something, engaging in some activity, getting involved in some movement.  I have been thinking about this same problem. 

Honestly, all my political heroes—those that are alive, anyway—are old, Baby Boomers.  I avoid talking politics with them, but at gatherings (not exactly parties, but just informal get-togethers) I listen.  Well, they are out of steam.  Their wells have run dry.   They want to wait and see whether the courts make any headway putting the brakes on Mr. Trump's wild spree of executive orders, and the Congress' wild spree of not doing anything. 

Actually, you know what?  'Wait and see' sounds like a good plan for me, too.  I'm not a high- energy person; you won't catch me starting a major movement all by myself.  But waiting and seeing only makes sense if we've got our ears to the ground.  That's what my plan is: wait and see, but keep close tabs on what's going on.  Any time I hear of somebody outlining some sort of action plan, I study it quickly.  If it looks silly, like something hastily put together by AI, I discard it, and start listening again. 

As we wind up to next year's elections, things will begin to heat up.  Maga will have to decide whether they're going to play by the rules, or invent a rule that only tall people can vote, or something silly like that.

So this is not exactly an action plan.  But as soon as I had made the decision to listen selectively to see what others are doing, I found myself stressing out a lot less.  Stressed-out me is a menace to all.

Kay

Supermajority!

Guess what?

Thereʹs a new group in town.  Itʹs called Supermajority.  Itʹs been created by and for women, who—as they point out—already are a majority, and they want to encourage the Democrat, or the sector of women that oppose Trump, to be an actual political supermajority.

There was a meeting in town today, which I did not attend; I should have paid more attention to some notices (which I thought were the usual hysterical announcements about Saturday protests, but they weren՛t.  I found that leading the meeting were a former Democrat congressman, and Democrat county commissioners from two neighboring counties, and the chairwoman of the town՛s Democrat committee.

I hadn՛t thought about the role that women would play in an election.  But it՚s becoming clear that, very possibly, women are going to be a huge factor in the next election. 

To begin with, pres 47 has gypped ripped off women in the worst possible way.  The Magas seem to believe that the thing to do is to deprive women of all political power.  Keep them at home; don՚t let them vote.  They՚re in deathly fear that if women vote, the magats will lose.  (Of course; what do they expect?  After taking abortion rights away, and other women՚s rights—I՚m not up on the entire list—they'll just have to keep women away from the ballot boxes if they want to win.  Though GOP men pretend to despise Kamala Harris, they're afraid of her. 

One of the objectives of the leadership of the Maga is to turn the world upside down.  This would make the world so unfamiliar, that people will lose all their instincts.  (Hopefully.)  But the younger generation has to become more flexible.  They've got to learn to keep their balance in this stupid magat world they've put together.  But the joke's on them, because the older conservatives, who are such a big majority and the spine of the magat party, are even more off-balance in 47's world. 

Kay

Somewhere

One thing the new pope has done is to kick me firmly back into thinking about Christian values.

I got started thinking about these values, and I got distracted.  I started thinking about An American Tail, (Steven Spielberg's legendary animated feature,) in which Linda Ronstadt sang that lovely song: Somewhere out there, in which this little Russian mouse, coming to live in America, gets separated from his family, and finds himself all alone in New York City, being bullied by gangsters.  And his song expresses that, his family is thinking about him, and praying for him, and hoping to find him again!

I was very young when this movie came out, and my thoughts of what the movie was about are probably based on the song.  The feelings I remember about the movie seemed all about immigrants to America, some of whom helped to keep the little mouse safe, and hopeful, others of which were bent on exploiting him, and making him work for them.  At one time, most kids would have identified with the mouse and his friends; nowadays, there are many who would side with the oppressors, and view the weaker characters as losers, weak, and unworthy of compassion. 

At this point, the pope reminds us that Jesus urged us to side with the underdog.  What will the Christian establishment make of this call of the pope's, as opposed to what many preachers are teaching?

Kay

Everyday

The word 'everyday' is hardly ever used correctly.  Some of the few people who do use it in the appropriate way, are those who wear special clothes for particular purposes.

When I was growing up, my mom would insist that I wear 'Church clothes' to church, 'school clothes' to school, etc.  There were Play clothes to play in, party clothes, shopping clothes, and so on.  So now, if you visited a friend, and discovered that their mother was celebrating a special birthday, you're in a fix.   You did wear visiting clothes, but not special party clothes.  "I'm sorry; I just have everyday clothes on!  I didn't know it was a celebration!"

Here everyday means non-special.  Everyday clothes are those you wear every day, so non-special.  You wouldn't wear those to a party, or celebration.  Of course, your friend's mother would take you by the arm, and say: "Oh, you look perfectly fine.  This isn't a serious party, Kay, it was just an impromptu thing the kids decided to do."

In this instance, you just can't use every day for everyday; the meanings of the two expressions have grown apart for too long.  Nor can you use everyday for every day.  If you want to describe the coffee you drink every single day, it had to be every day.

There are other words like that, which started off being phrases:

Hereafter. 

Anymore.  Anyway.  Anyhow.

Undergone, underdone, undertone.  Underweight.

Overwrought.  Overeat.  Overweight.  Overcome.  Overdo. Overheard.  Overhead.

Pickup.  Dropout.

Pocketbook.

Look them up in a dictionary.  They're difficult to explain!

Kay

P.S. Hey, what's with using apostrophes to denote plural's?  Just stop it, ok?  :)

Alternation

There are two words that are easily confused.  One is alternatively, and the other is alternately.

If you have an arrangement where you meet in one location one week, a different location the next week, and back again to the first location the next week, and so on, you would describe it as meeting in those two locations alternately.  That's a clumsy example, but I guess it works. 

On the other hand, if you choose to do something one way, but have a different idea of how to do it, that's an alternative.  To do something alternatively is to do it in a different way.

Both words involve two ways of doing things, or more.  But—it seems to me, anyway—if you say alternately, it implies doing something repeatedly; one time one way, the next time, the other way.  This is called strict alternation.  The use of the word alternative simply indicates different available choices.

Kay