The Wild Winds of Fortune

I fear.

I fear because I hope too much.

I fear because what I feel now feels like the hope I had in the September and October of 2016.  And we all remember — are reminded every waking moment of every day — what happened next.

I fear so much that sometimes my stomach ties itself in knots when I think of the state of the country, and where we are heading.

I don’t want to think of the Democrats winning the House. It is less threatening to believe in the status quo. Work to change it, yes, but don’t expect those efforts will bear fruit.

Too much gerrymandering. Too much voter suppression.

I hope. I despair. I am paralyzed by both.  Does this mean the bastards have won? Does this make me a “Good German”?

I honestly don’t know.

There are species or breeds of animals that you know exist because you watch them on television. Yet they seem mythical, because you never see them in real life.

This is especially true of some of the stranger breeds of dogs. I am a fanatical viewer of televised dog shows, so I know that breeds like the Brussels Griffon and the Borzoi are out there somewhere. I see such breeds in the movies (for example, Hooch in Turner and Hooch was a Dogue de Bordeaux) but I never even heard of them until I saw The National Dog Show for the first time.  I live in a relatively diverse dog neighborhood (leaning towards big dogs like Briards, Bernese Mountain Dogs and Saint Bernards, although I have also seen a wide variety of terriers and toys — chihuahas seem popular) but there are still many breeds that might as well be chimeras. (I want a Novia Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, although I have never seen them in the flesh. I do doubt if I have the energy for one, though.)

Last week, while returning from a trip to San Diego, for the first time,  I saw two Neapolitan Mastiffs.

Oh, my God. They are impressive… downright scary.  Forget pitbulls — if I wanted a guard dog I would get one of these. Even if they are well-trained and gentle, just their appearance would make the staunchest burglar think twice about trying to get past them.

They are huge. According to the AKC, males weigh 150 pounds, which pretty much matches what I thought when I saw them. Each of the pair easily outweighed the young woman who was walking them, or more accurately, held on to the leash while they deigned to walk in the direction she led, up until an athletic  young man walked up and relieved her of her charge.

They are also beautiful. Their face is weird, granted, but they are a stunning steel blue-gray color that reminded me of Pandora (our Russian Blue cat).

I could never own a dog like this. They would take up too much room in a small house — besides, I have heard they both snore and drool.

But I’m glad someone does. The world is a more interesting place for animals like that.

This is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.

A friend of mine linked to a Facebook page called “Fake Outrage,” and an entry where they showed a “self-stirring cup.” She found it funny.  I do, as well.

The tag line for the short clip was “We all have one friend that is that lazy…” I find this considerably less funny.

I could really use this cup. There are days when I have to use two hands to hold my mug,  and I spill my coffee when I stir it, unless I have put whipped cream on top. I use whipped cream not (or at least not simply) because it tastes good (as one person at my workplace put it, “who doesn’t need whipped cream in their coffee?”) but because it damps out sloshing, making it possible to carry my coffee to the table from the counter without leaving a trail of brown puddles behind me. (Jameson’s helps too, but is not alway practical.)

There are many people with worse disabilities affecting their motor skills than I have, for whom having a cup like this might mean the difference between having coffee or not, or at least not independently. Before I discovered the whipped cream trick, I was having to ask people to take my coffee to the table for me, which depends upon having other people available, and is frankly frustrating and embarassing.

I suspect that many of the people who view this clip laugh at the poor slobs who can’t even be bothered to stir their coffee. All the people in the clip are able-bodied (and young, but that’s a different issue). It doesn’t show anyone with tremors, or Parkinson’s, or any other disability that makes it difficult to control the movements of your hands.

A few years ago, before my tremors got so bad, I too would have laughed at people using a self-stirring cup. It isn’t that I lack empathy, but I lacked understanding. (My friend, who is a thoughtful and caring person, understood when I explained why this cup might be a good idea, and thanked me for enlightening her.)

This ties in with the current straw bans going in place like Seattle and San Francisco. (The worst that I can see is Santa Barbara: it provides for JAIL TIME for repeat offenders, and individuals who need straws have to apply for a permit from the city to get a straw for “medical necessity.” Although they have postponed implementation of the straw ban, rest assured I will be giving Santa Barbara a wide berth when I drive to Southern California in a few weeks.)

According to Julie Andersen of the Plastic Oceans Foundation, “the straw, it’s a small change in our habit. To force a behavioral change to where it actually impacts what you want is going to be harder to adopt.” In other words, forcing everyone — including the able-bodied — to change is too difficult, so lets go for something that is a simple convenience for most but a necessity for some.

Go to hell, lady.

It’s not just the bans themselves, as bad as they are. It is the support they give to a certain brand of self-righteous ideology that ignores the needs of real humans. It’s just a matter of time before servers refuse to wait on people who need straws.

I know, because it nearly happened to me.

My husband were at a restaurant that we USED to go to occasionally. We had gone for their tremendous biscuits and bacon onion jam. We were brought our drinks with no straws. When I asked for a straw, the waitress told me that they didn’t carry straws. When I insisted, she went to talk to the manager, who told her it was because of the sea turtles. (He didn’t come to talk to ME about it.)

At this point I was feeling completely humiliated. I explained that I would not be able to drink my ginger beer unless I had a straw, or else I would spill it all over myself. After some hemming and hawing, she went to the bar, where the bartender had straws. I was nearly in tears. We finished our dinner and got out as fast as we could. Guess where we’re never eating again?

Note: This was in a city that did NOT have a plastic straw ban. How it would have been in San Francisco or Seattle I can only imagine.

It is hard for me not to hate people over this issue. It is hard for me to say, “they’re not bad people, they’re just ignorant. They just don’t understand why this matters.”

Except I know a lot of them wouldn’t care.

This will probably be a boring post.

It seems that too many of my posts in the past eighteen months are of the “random bits” variety, but I am having serious trouble adapting to the Trump presidency. I will not question his legitimacy (although given Russian interference that might well be warranted) but I do question his integrity, his honor, and his simple humanity. I do not call him a madman — I do not really see him as pathological, and doing so reinforces the stigma against the mentally ill — but, sadly, I do not hesitate to call him evil. And that is a word I rarely use about anyone.

Then there is the straw ban. Having just gotten into an … not an argument but an increasingly heated discussion with a friend before we broke it off, I don’t want to re-open that can of worms. He referred to the turtle video, and how do you counter that? He said I should simply buy the plastic disposal straws on Amazon, which to me defeats the purpose of the ban.   Perhaps there should be a video of someone struggling to drink without a straw. I might well be willing to do one myself.

The whole issue goes beyond straws, of course. It is representative of the continuing marginalization of the disabled in American society. I am not in a wheelchair, but I am acutely aware every time I go into a building without a ramp. And the law was recently changed so that building owners have six months once someone threatens to sue to fix their buildings. What incentive do they have to change?

Sigh…

On a more cheerful note, on the past four times I went to Trivia, I won twice. As in, came in first. As in, great, now I have two more certificates for large pitchers of beer that I won’t use. Although on a couple of occasions my offspring and I have gone and had a pitcher and talked, which was quite enjoyable. Any opportunity to spend time with my grown-up kids is time well spent.

I didn’t win the game tonight, but I did win the Sex round. Heh.

Comic-Con — yet another event I will never go to. Although I do have a better chance of going there than to the Tonys, Oscars, or Met Gala.

I finally saw the Christmas special that featured Peter Capaldi’s regeneration into the Thirteenth (or is it Fourteenth? Where does John Hurt’s marvelous War Doctor fit in?) Doctor. I’m in love. Brilliant.

I also re-viewed the “Hell Bent,” the Best. Doctor Who. Episode. Ever. Even better than “Blink,” and I used to think “Blink” head and shoulders above all other Who episodes.

Doctor Who. Star Wars. MCU. Battlebots. (Battlebots?!?) I really am a geek, albeit one who came to geekhood late in life.

I love Battlebots because a) it is arguably a sport, b) it involves serious violence, and c) there is no possibility of living beings being injured. That last puts it above football, basketball, and even horse-racing. (I love dog shows for similar reasons, except I am not sure dog shows are “sports,” the AKC notwithstanding.)

Speaking of football, I am no longer going to watch professional football. This is hard for a life-long football fan. I was close to stopping before because the concussion issue, but it was the kneeling ban that pushed me over the edge. I fully recognized that I have that backwards.

Losing pro football feels like I am losing a connection to my father. He died in 1996, but watching football was always something we had in common. Not to mention my two sisters, who are also football fans, and who are probably wholeheartedly in favor of the kneeling ban.

Currently, I find my television viewing switching between Turner Classic Movies, The Science Channel, and (at least until the end of the racing season) “Saratoga Live” on FS1,  with occasional detours into the Cooking Channel, the Game Show Network, and, when I can cope with the news, msnbc. However, in the fall, I have to add BBCAmerica to that mix.

I love TCM so much I joined their fan club. They sent me a really cool black t-shirt. Win.

I wrote my first fan letter to a radio show. If you like wordplay, and are not listening to “Says You!”, you are missing something. I love puns, so it really works for me.  They sent me back a lovely reply, not a form “thank you for contacting us” email.

Sadly, I do have an obsession that takes up far too much of my time: Word Wipe, a game on the Washington Post website. “I recognize I am powerless…”

Now it’s time to go catch up on all the back Jeopardy! episodes I have on DVR.

See you later.

I have started using the WordPress app, which displays comments in a different way, so I have missed many of your comments and failed to respond. I am sorry, and am going back through several months of posts now.

It’s summer.

Summer is hard… hard as winter is for some of my friends. The long, long days bear down and the blocks of sunshine crush me.

Work and school have carried  me through thus far, but work is ending this week and I just handed in the final project for one of my classes. (I have the final exam for the other one on Thursday.)

The world does not seem to be going to hell in a handbasket; it’s already there. Ripping sobbing children away from the arms of their parents sounds like something from Ceaușescu’s Romania, not the “home of the brave and the land of the free.”

Australia and Canada both had histories of tearing native children away from their homes and having them be fostered in white families. They came to see the error of their ways — I had thought we were beyond that.

And so on… life is getting worse for the people who can least afford it. And in a coversation with a family member yesterday, I learned that other family members were boycotting Disney because “they have gay days and things like that.” I can’t figure out if I am more sad (not suprised, given the family members involved) or furious.

And I can’t help feeling like I spent twenty-five years of my life in a job, only to be downsized. Or turfed out due to mandatory retirement.

And then, today.

Killing time between when I dropped Railfan off for his exam and when I had to drop off my project (we go to different schools) I saw the trees. I saw the crape myrtles: white and pale lavender, the very first crape myrtles blossoms of the year.

These were early.  Crape myrtles usually don’t start blooming until the end of July. They’re late summer blossoms, signalling with hope the changing of the seasons. I love them because they are beautiful, all lacy gentility, but I also love them because they whisper to me.

Their message?

“Hold on…. Hold on…. Hold on…. Change is coming.”

Maybe I should listen to them more closely.

I’ve not been here much, lately. That’s because work and school are keeping me busy. Also, working for an elections office where we are strongly encouraged to keep our politics to ourselves becomes easier when I am not sitting mentally writing my next post about why Judge Aaron Persky should not be recalled.

Black and white is a good color for a catskin rug, right? I’m asking for an, uh, friend, whose bed got bombed last night.

I just came back from Avengers: Infinity War.

I am not happy.

Not. Happy. At. ALL.

Eh.

At some point in my life, I became a Marvel superhero geek. Not the comics, but the movies. In the last year I have had extensive discussions (with people other than my children) about the Black Panther, and Dr. Strange, and how the events in Captain America: Civil War will lead into what’s going to happen in The Avengers: Infinity War (including who’s likely to die), and why Marvel movies are so much better than DC movies, with the exception of Wonder Woman (short answer: they’re better written), and so on. I have also discussed how relieved I was that Wonder Woman didn’t suck (a very low bar indeed, which it greatly exceeded), and that Black Panther was as exceptional as it was, and that the person who did the visual design for Black Panther needs to win an Oscar. (I also discussed who was hotter, Chadwick Boseman or Michael B. Jordan, although really the answer is Danai Gurira Okoye.)

I even saw several of the movies before my kids did — Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, and Spiderman: Homecoming, for example. I would say that I felt not the least bit smug about this, but I’d be lying. For once, not spoiling movies became kind of difficult. I usually see Disney movies before they do, but they generally don’t care.

So, just a few observations:

The Black Panther is as phenomenal as it is not because it is a great superhero movie, but because it is a great movie, period. You can watch it having not seen any other Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie, and be totally engrossed.  In fact, you’re better off if you haven’t seen Captain America: Civil War, because it contains the one major logical and chronological inconsistency that I have seen in the movies.

Possibly the best thing about Black Panther is the amazing women of Wakanda. Forget settling for passing the Bechdel test, they steal every scene they’re in. Given that the male leads are Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan, that’s pretty impressive.

As much as I love Black Panther, and I do, my favorite of the MCU movies has to be Dr. Strange, for three reasons: 1) Benedict Cumberbatch; 2) street origami! and 3) one of the major heroic characters is … the librarian. I feel I should be more troubled about the whitewashing of the source material, though. There are a large number of Asian actors who could play The Ancient One — they didn’t need to hire Tilda Swinton. The director’s argument that there was a lot of Asian stereotyping in the comics (which was what they were trying to avoid by casting Swinton) rings hollow — is he saying they could not have rewritten the part so it wasn’t objectionable?

Having just rewatched Iron Man 2 and Captain America: Civil War, I remembered exactly why I started watching the movies in the first place. I was talked into going to see the first Iron Man movie because I love Robert Downey, Jr. What I love about him is simple: he is a very attractive man who nonetheless does not try to appear younger than he is. Downey is proof that people can still stay sexy after they pass their 30th birthday. After that, I was hooked.

Having suffered through three different Spidermen (Andrew Garfield, Tobey McGuire, and the guy who played him in the television show in the 70s), I am both relieved and happy that somebody  finally got it right. Tom Holland looks like a teenager, and moves like one, and swings through the air with grace and power. Of course, I am sure that Holland was one of the leads in the West End production of Billy Elliot doesn’t hurt.

Speaking of that, Holland falls into the “actors we never realized were British (or Welsh, or Aussie) until we saw them at the Oscars” category.

Speaking of the Oscars, or awards in general, at the Independent Spirit awards I heard actress make a cutting comment about “action movies starring guys named Chris.” Which I guess covers Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth, (Thor), Chris Pratt (Star Lord in the Guardians of the Galaxy) and Chris Pine (James T. Kirk). If you stretched your definitions, that would also include Christian Bale (Batman). The next MCU movies has three Chrises in it: Evans, Pine, and Pratt.  I am looking forward to it, nonetheless.

Only six weeks to go.