Some day

Didn’t watch

ANOTHER THING I HATE ABOUT THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD

The hills. It is a 15 minute walk to the nearest train station and it's part uphill and downhill, like a roller coaster. So by the time I get to the train station I'm exhausted. And if I take Uber Pool Express, even though it's supposed to be no more than two blocks from the drop off or pick up point it's sometimes three or four. Up a hill. This is especially fun if it's very hot, very cold or I'm carrying a lot of stuff.

And the closest store/restaurant is a 7-11. Big deal. Which now sometimes closes in the middle of the night. On the bright side there IS  a Starbucks nearby. Even though it's part of a huge, soulless corporation it's like part of my old neighbourhood.

HAPPY PRESIDENT'S DAY

I really don't care if you call it Presidents, President's or Presidents' Day. Or if you celebrate it or not. This isn't North Korea.

urbanexile@mail.com

Remembering my father and his twin sister who would have been 95 years old today.

Not feeling too great today.

THE GRATEFUL UNDEAD

I read that you can "rewire" your brain by recalling three things you're grateful for for 21 days. It can't hurt to try.

urbanexile@mail.com

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Seriously one of my favourite images Look at Psyche's face: 

"Psyche Being Revived by Cupid's Kiss" by Antonio Canova

An image I don't share too often because some might consider it too risque. 

A long time ago I felt like that. 

INSTANT KARMA?

Our sister station is being sold. Of course I feel horrible for most of the people there although our boss assures things will be even better for us. And maybe personally this could turn into something better for me.

But some of the people at our sister station weren't always so nice to me.

urbanexile@mail.com

SPENT MOST OF THE DAY AT HOME.

Not that that's anything new.

HOW I'M FEELING

janedoe@seductive.com

MY RELIEF GUY CALLED IN SICK AT THE LAST MINUTE.

THESE ARE THE KIND OF GUYS WHO ASK ME OUT:

If you look like this you should be able to spell.

We have compiled pictures recreating Adam Levine's #California stomach tattoo from his #SuperBowl #HalftimeShow for all 50 states 😂

Check out your state's homage to #AdamLevine's Inkhttps://t.co/QYLU2NVILx pic.twitter.com/sCjkTGt1Y4

— Inked (@Inkedmag) February 7, 2019

Click here for the original source: https://www.inkedmag.com/original-news/adam-levines-stomach-tattoo-recreated-in-all-50-states 

STRAIGHT OUTTA FUCKS

From "The Angry Bartender" 

From earlier Facebook posts: 

(Happy little fucks! )

SUPERBORE

The game was definitely a yawner and the spots not much better. There did not seem to be as many preachy spots this year, but also very few that gave me the feels, made me laugh out loud or want to  rush out to buy their products.

Finally here is an alphabetical list (from Business Insider) that I liked the most and the least--the ones that left me cold were left out:

Audi: tasteless

Avocados from Mexico: stupid. And are Mexicans not offended by that little tag at the end?

Budweiser: mildly funny, Michelob unconvincing.

Bumble--Can't Serena Williams get her own dates?

Burger King--Why?

Expensify: The third eye is kinda cool.

Google--Tries to play on our emotions but at least throws a bone to the military.

Hyundai--probably the best but I still wouldn't buy one.

Kia--gets my emotions aroused then I remind myself, "what are they selling? Korean cars."

M&M's. Stupid. I never liked the M&M guys.

Microsoft--Starts out with kids with noticeable facial deformities. I thought it was an ad for Shriner's Hospital. I guess their message is "Microsoft cares about people with disabilities."

NFL: Pretty funny even if you're not a football fan but you have to realize the NFL's 100th anniversary is next year. I thought it was either supposed to be some kind of futuristic thing or that we'd be seeing hundred-year old players.

Olay: Teasers were pretty good but how is the LGBT community going to feel about the gay-sounding villain?

Pepsi: Are you really gonna deliver free Pepsi to my car? And Cardi B looks like a drag queen. But I would like the diamond can.

Planters: A-Rod and Charlie Sheen are pretty funny.

Pringles: same but without A-Rod or Charlie.

SimpliSafe: probably even better than Hyundai "my son bought a snake on the Dark Web."

Sketchers: pleasant enough.

Sprint: pretty funny but their teasers were getting annoying. As is their spokesguy.

T-Mobile: among the best right up there with Hyundai and Simplisafe but I hear their service sucks.

Toyota: boring, tries to play on my emotions like Google and Kia. Not working.

Turbotax: borders on annoying.

Turkish Airlines:  piqued my interest but I don't plan on flying soon so why?

Verizon: more tearjerkers. This is getting old, but better than the others.

Weathertech: don't think they make bowls for pigs, why the hype for their other food bowls?

Wix: Karlie Kloss is easier on the eyes than the hipster geeks, made me actually consider them. For about a minute.

To see ALL of them, click here: https://www.ispot.tv/events/2019-super-bowl-commercials


urbanexile@mail.com

"NEWS IS SOMETHING THE PUBLIC HAS NOT HEARD BEFORE"

That's what they teach you in journalism school. Of course to some people it's news that the sun rises in the East.

A music professor taught me "it's deviations from the norm that sell tickets. You see a pig with two front legs you don't look at it twice, you see a pig with three front legs, you can't take your eyes off it."  My landlady and I were talking about a guy we know who treats Facebook as his diary "I had my favourite breakfast of prune Danish and Oolong tea." And a woman whose posts are worse "I'm on the #42 bus" or "I made meatloaf for dinner." I want to say to both of them "can't either of you eat something more interesting?" Really we should fix them up together. This woman also has a childcare business and posts about the kids she takes care of: "little Johnny burped" or "little Suzy drooled." I wouldn't care if these kids were somehow related to her or even the kids of a close friend but jeez. And she talks about my "negative Nancy" posts. When my father was dying my blog was full of four-letter words. She asked "do you have to use such vulgarity?" My answer was "yes."

I would rather hear about what people hate, what drives them nuts, what scares the bejeezus out of them. I don't care which bus/train/trolley you're on unless an Inuit woman with seven bratty little kids gets on and they're all singing Inuit folk songs. Another woman told me how draining it was to read my posts. I felt like saying "do you have any idea how draining it is to experience it?"

urbanexile@mail.com

OZZY OSBOURNE HAS BEEN HOSPITALIZED WITH THE FLU.

And he's not the only one. Ten people have died in the state I'm living in, at least five in one neighbouring state and possibly eight in another. And I feel as though I haven't got over it.

ONE OF MY COUSINS DIED IN A FIRE.

Actually she wasn't a cousin except by marriage. I remember her wedding and now I probably won't go to her funeral. She could be hurtful. My mom says "I never liked___." She suspects this cousin had schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Someone found her dead in her apartment, apparently she was smoking and probably had been drinking. There's nothing about her on Facebook--I don't see her on any other family members' friends list. And the most remarkable thing a web search turns up is arrests in two states but no obituary.

She didn't have the best life--both parents are dead, one brother dead of AIDS, a violently failed marriage and all the rest of the stuff that goes with our family. Mom tells me she didn't have life insurance but she's got three living brothers. May she rest in peace.

urbanexile@mail.com 

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

This is the Chinese year of the (earth) pig. Some people say boar. I have two boars now, had four before that, loved 'em all. 

I DREAMT I WAS AT HOHENZOLLERNPLATZ.

One of my exes lived in that neighbourhood when we were in graduate school. I made a half hearted attempt at Googling him but didn't find him.

urbanexile@mail.com

THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS ARE THE WINNER OF SUPER BOWL LIII.

I didn't get invited to any parties. Really the entire city was pretty dead but I ended up having a pleasant enough evening. I thought it was an incredibly boring game but it turned out everyone else did, too. People are referring to the LA Rams as the "Lambs" and  there are lots of hash tags like #Superbore, #Superbored and #Superboredom.

Apparently I'm not completely over this bug--I didn't finish the drink in front of me and went home as soon as the game was over. Unfortunately Uber fares tripled and possibly quadrupled or quintupled as soon as the game was over--no one wanted to hang out the rest of the night. I ended up taking a train, then taking a cab home from the train station. It was nice telling the driver EXACTLY how I wanted to go home.

TODAY IS GROUNDHOG DAY

Also the birthday of my best friend's late mother. They buried her on my birthday.

WE'RE ONE MONTH INTO THE YEAR.

I had meant to restart this blog in January after being off track for about a year. This was supposed to be about the foreclosure, my "exile" and either my triumphant return to the city or serene acceptance of life in suburbia. Neither has happened. I hate it here and can't wait to move back  to the city.

One of my co-workers died during the move, another died about seven months later, leaving me with more work. And I went back to school in an attempt to increase my income so I won't have to live in a basement the rest of my life. Instead I ended up working literally seven days a week and was too tired to even LOOK at job placement ads. My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer on December 6, 2017 and got through the radiation well but has been hospitalized numerous times with other things. I am one of few people who's happy  to get a  robocall because isn't from Life Alert, a doctor or Mom's neighbour whom I hate dealing with. Then I ended up getting sick partly as a result of the stress, partly just from burning my candle at both ends for years. 

Now I spend most of the money from the extra work I'm doing on transportation from one job to the other or going to school and on fast food because you don't crave salads when you're stressed and depressed and they don't give you the energy you need to get through a 15 to 19 hour day. 

Kind of like what the late Gilda Radner wrote in her book It's Always Something: "I started out to write a book called A Portrait of the Artist as a Housewife. I wanted to write a collection of stories, poems and vignettes about things like my toaster oven and my relationships with plumbers, mailmen and delivery people. But life dealt me a much more complicated story..."

urbanexile@mail.com

TOOK A KIND OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE TEST TODAY.

In the German version it's "Berufsberater vom Arteibsamt."

MY DAY OFF

Spent most of it at home in bed as it's freezing outside and in my room.

urbanexile@mail.com

AT TWO PM TODAY IT WAS ABOUT 43 DEGREES AND RAINING.

Stuff was already closing down.

I HEARD THE BANK WITH WHICH I HAD MY MORTGAGE HAS ANOTHER GRANT PROGRAM.

Wouldn't hurt to look into it I guess.

urbanexile@mail.com

IT'S A BAD YEAR FOR THE FLU.

People are actually dying.

"SWEET" CHARITY

"I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food."

Betty Smith

In this case"charity" can apply to faith-based (or other) charities, government  programs or corporate grants. It seems job fairs, job training programs and "home saving" programs basically refer people to other programs but don't do much to address some of the root causes of poverty--mental and physical health and substance abuse. Sure, they supposedly help people find jobs but what kind? Answering phones? Handing out cheese samples? Folding sweaters? The Census Bureau tempts people with temp jobs but I haven't heard of any of them actually leading to full time employment with the Federal government or any contract agencies.

And what about holding people accountable? Saying "you've been in this program for six years, why haven't you found a job yet? Or quit drinking, doing other drugs, getting out of whatever situation is holding you back?" A former professor told me about people who have taken every course in the college catalogue so they can retain their student status and keep getting benefits. Not sure who's to blame.

THE BEST A MAN CAN GET? REALLY?

I wondered what all the hoo-hah was about with the latest Gillette TV spot so I finally watched it:


 

 Their slogan is "the best a man can get" but it could have been better.


A response:


   

Some well-deserved parodies:


 








Fortunately I have never been sexually assaulted but I have been sexually harassed.

And I am a violent crime victim. Like the #metoo movement, Gillette took a good thing but ran with it the wrong way. You might say it threw out the baby with the bathwater. It equates being catcalled and leered at with being raped or even murdered. That's like equating spraining your ankle with having a leg amputated or having your car door dinged to having the whole car totaled. It's insulting to women who are actual victims and men who aren't even mentioned.  A transgender character in Matthew Weiner's The Romanoffs puts it well when he says "we want to be delicate, we want to wear make up and pretty dresses and have someone catch us when we faint but that's not what women are. That's what men say they are. Think of the woman you want to become. We all have one. And she's tougher than a hundred hooligans."

In short, I won't be buying any Gillette products and won't encourage anyone else to either.

urbanexile@mail.com 

WENT TO SEE A NEW DOCTOR AT THE CLINIC I'VE BEEN GOING TO FOR AT LEAST SIX YEARS.

He asked if there had been any trauma in my life so I had to tell him about the robber ALL OVER AGAIN. I wanted to say "dude, it's in my chart."

At about 5:01 AM on October 20, 2012 I was beaten and robbed several hundred yards from my home. A man grabbed me from behind and said "gimme that shit, bitch." The two men with me were hurt physically worse than I was but it took years to "get over it." Over a year later a neighbour said he could remember me screaming.

WHERE'S MY FREE STUFF?

The city's oldest charitable organization is giving free food to furloughed government workers. So is a local burger joint. And they're collecting cash and gift cards for them in Las Vegas. 

Boo hoo. Welcome to the world of freelancing and part-timing. If I got a free burger for every job that was cancelled or postponed, every time I got paid late, every time a job ended early or I didn't get paid as much as I was supposed to I'd be up to my ass in free food. People tell me "you chose that line of work" or "you chose to live in that neighbourhood." Well, didn't these people choose to work for the federal government? I posted on a couple of these "philanthropic" organizations' Facebook and Twitter pages asking "where's my free stuff?" So far no answer. 

urbanexile@mail.com 

IT'S 13 DEGREES OUTSIDE.

Some schools are supposed to open late today. My bedroom was 60 degrees yesterday and my toilet seat was like ice. I need to move.

TODAY IS MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY.

He had a dream. I stayed in bed the way I do every year--no volunteer work, didn't go to church, etc. However, I was curious about one thing.

I read that Coretta Scott King, his widow, was a supporter of gay rights. This prompted me to wonder what her late husband had ever said about the matter. From what I read online LGBT and anti-LGBT (and lots of other groups) use Dr. King's words to their own advantage just as they would use the bible or any other written work. Web searches show one of his daughters as a proponent of gay rights, like her mother, while another one spoke out against same sex marriage, saying that was not what her father took a bullet for. 

According to PinkNews. in 1958 a teenage boy wrote to Dr. King saying he felt the way about boys the way he "ought to feel" about girls. King's response was that these feelings were common and were the result of environment, not heredity. He told the boy to find a good psychiatrist who could help him find out what "[led] to that" and would essentially "cure" him. Years later in elementary school they were still teaching that homosexuality was a disease--it was not removed from the DSM until 1973. 

urbanexile@mail.com 

LITERALLY ARCTIC TEMPERATURES ACROSS OUR PART OF THE COUNTRY

At least my relief guy showed up on time. Didn't go to the waterfront or my old neighbourhood as planned.

My supervisor has pneumonia.

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR THE WINTER.

Officially. We had our graduation last night. We are supposed to be eligible for a job training program. As Yogi Berra said, I'll believe it when I believe it. I am still way behind due to being so tired.

urbanexile@mail.com 

SAW MY DOCTOR

I am down about 15 pounds since my last weigh-in partly due to the flu. She told me it's not too late to get a flu shot but I told her the last one I had was as bad as the flu itself--crushing headache and sleeping at least 13 hours. And I got sick anyway. She agreed it's not such a good idea and says next time come in as soon as the symptoms start.

TALKED TO MY MOM.

It was the first time I've talked to her in over a week--I hated to call her just to say "hey, I'm sick and your sister in law died." Also, we have 13 inches of snow. 

urbanexile@mail.com

MY FATHER'S TWIN SISTER DIED TONIGHT.

She would have been 95 years old next month. Of the four sisters in that family there is only one left.