Trumhillaty: Meme what you slay.

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It’s so special that my left eyeball is threatening to disown my right eyeball if it votes for the other candidate. 

Yep.  We in the USA are eyeball deep in politics.  If scathing memes were swords, both sides would be microscopic pieces of bullc#@p by now.  

I’ve seen so many different Trump and Hillary memes, if they were on baseball cards they’d fill my entire bedroom.  

I’d rather fill my bedroom with other things.

Hey you!  Perv!  Get your D@#&%D mind out of the gutter!!! Who do you think you are…Bill Clinton?  

Here are the other things I’d rather fill my bedroom with:

Not that I’m as frigid as Yellow Knife in January.  In fact, I did find one way in which I’ve out trumped Trump!!!

I believe in traditional marriage, too.  I like it so much, I’ve said “I do” 5 times.  Unfortunately, I’ve also said “I don’t” 3 times, and had to bury one of them.

But wait!  I think Clinton has us all beat — Bill that is.

Hillary heard Bill say the word “intern” and she just couldn’t take it anymore.  Good thing she found a way to keep Bill out of the White House and blame Trump for it.

Which one do you believe is true?

Are there more Hillary memes than Trump memes?  

or…

Here’s my opinion (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?)

The real king and queen of meme are…..

……(drumroll):

My Baid (My But Alas I Digress), It’s all just the same-old-same-old.  These political parties are  trying to steal get your vote even after you’re dead.

To steal part of a line from a 1960’s song: I’ve looked at life politics from both sides now….

Maybe they’re twins that get along as well as my eyeballs?

Then there are the “informational” memes.

Trump made billions in business while Hillary made millions in politics.

If they were saints, they wouldn’t be running for office.

Hell would freeze over.

No worries. That’s about as likely as catching my cat smoking a cigarette.

I’ll end my foray into meme-what-you-slay politics with two more:

If nothing else, United States politics is electrifying.

Here’s a meme only a smarmy, slick-talking politician can convince you to believe:

 Any questions?

Despite Increasing Denial, Woman’s Eyesight Continues to Decline

 

Recently, Maine’s resident grump, 45-year-old Marla*, had a startling realization: her vision may actually be failing.

I sat down to interview Marla last week.

“Well, I was driving down the road when it hit me,” she said, adjusting the J. Lo reading glasses she bought for $11.99 at Target.

“That you couldn’t see anymore?” I nodded.

“No, the moose standing in the road. I thought it was a pile of leaves.”

Apparently, Marla had been suffering for years with poor eyesight but continued to live her life as if everything else was to blame for her affliction.

“Oh, I convinced myself it wasn’t that I couldn’t actually see the instructions on the Ex-Lax bottle,” Marla said.  “Obviously, it was because every company in America suddenly conspired to start making products with tiny blurry font just to frustrate the shit out of me.”

Not soon after the moose incident, things reached a breaking point when Marla suffered an embarrassing incident at the local Grab & Get Out. She was talking to her husband for a good ten minutes, when she slowly realized it wasn’t him.

“I was telling him not to buy the unscented deodorant, but the extra-strength key lime pie one, when I noticed something strange,” she recalled. “He wasn’t responding with his usual, ‘Yes, dear. Whatever you say, dear. Just please stop talking for the love of god, dear.’ Turns out it wasn’t my husband I was talking to at all. It wasn’t even a man. It was a stack of paper towels in aisle three.”

Marla went on to admit her blurry vision probably was to blame for the unfortunate Chili Catastrophe of 2014. “I had spent all morning making a big batch for my family reunion,” she tearfully recalled. After serving everyone, she was about two bites in her own bowl of chili when she realized she had unwittingly mistaken teaspoon for tablespoon. And cayenne pepper for chili powder. And a lit candle for a glass of water. Her comments about that fateful day? “Let’s just say now I have to draw my eyebrows on with a Sharpie.”

Sadly, Marla also suffers from the little-understood disorder, BDP or Bad Depth Perception.

People with BDP have a difficult time accurately judging distances. Simply pulling up to a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru without completely taking out the speaker post is nearly impossible. Marla faces the shame of struggling with everyday tasks such as inserting a key into a lock, parking a car, and paying for a box of Thin Mints.

“I was handing a ten dollar bill to a Girl Scout when I noticed she wasn’t taking it,” Marla cried softly. “Because I was a good three feet away from her outstretched hand! I kept shoving the money closer and waving it around, still just out of her reach. I shouted at her to ‘just take the damn money’ but it was of no use because at that point she was crying. I was arrested for ‘cruel and persistent taunting’ and faced possible jail time. On the day I reported to the courthouse, I spent 45 minutes waiting for my case to be called before I realized I was actually standing in line at a Starbucks.”

After ordering a java chip frappuccino and attempting to pay with an old gift card from Taco Bell, Marla eventually made her way to the courthouse and was sentenced to 200 hours of community service. Unfortunately, she was ordered to pick up trash on the side of the road, a task unbelievably frustrating for someone suffering from hellacious depth perception.

“After eight straight hours toiling in the blazing sun, I managed to collect no trash at all, none!” Marla said.  “And in the process stabbed myself in the foot several times.” But even the subsequent tetanus shot didn’t break her resolve to remain in denial about her poor eyesight. When asked if jail time would finally prompt her to seek treatment, such as a stronger prescription or LASIK surgery, Marla responded with the scoffiest of scoffs, “What? No! My eyes are fine! Just fine, dammit!” And then she scoffed some more.

Although her story is tragic, there is hope that someday she’ll buy better glasses, or at least ones that don’t come in a tacky pink leopard print. How many more Girl Scouts will needlessly suffer in the meantime? One can only guess, and my guess is a crapload.

Please, if you or someone you know suffers from either piss-poor vision or BDP, help them get help to help you help them before it’s too late. The moose and that guy that works at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru thank you.

*not her real name (but it’s pretty damn close if you catch my drift, and I think you do. OK, I’ll shut up now. But first, can you read me the back of this pill bottle?)

Air Pits, Free Editing, and Freezing

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TRAVEL EDITION

It’s so special, I’m staying near my toilet in case my stomach turns parenthesis green.

1. Why I hate airports (aka airpits)

Here is the nutshell ho-hum version:  At 6:30am Pacific time on January 13,  I left my sister’s home for the hour drive to the airport in Ontario, California.  I’m a TSA Pre✓^® , so I breezed through the line (I highly recommend this system, unless you’re a terrorist.).  The 3 flights home were on time.  EVERY Delta staff person and sky cap was exceptional, and I was on the tarmac in Florida at 11:38pm.

When I flew TO Ontario California on December 23, it was an hour drive to the airport and the same 3 flights backwards.  When you’re poor, your choices are “buy this cheap ticket or hitchhike.”

The FloridaBorne version:  Imagine you’ve just died and gone to hell. (Hey!  I know you’re not going to hell.  Just humor me.) You’re strapped into a roller coaster seat, there’s an e-book bolted to a bar in front of your eyes and you’re told that you have to read a page of it before you can get off.  

Easy, right?

I’m not done yet.

The roller coaster starts…and that’s when the carnie shines into your eyes the brightest spotlight you’ve ever endured.  You try to look away, glancing at the e-book.  The letters have faded into a light gray and the backlighting is now as bright as the spotlight. You close your eyes, hoping the light will go away, but your head wants to explode.  

I’m not monkeying around!

You’re going up, down, around the track as spotlights of every color flow past your war torn eyes. The headache has intensified, threatening to blast out of your temples.  Finally, you reach the exit.

You can’t tell up from down and the world looks a lot like this, only swimmier:

What the airport looks like as people zoom past you from the opposite direction and you’re being pushed at 20mph in a wheelchair inside the giant chamber of light-torture called “The Airport.”

You hold onto the sides just to ensure that you are, indeed, sitting upright and not spinning into a black hole.  

The pain is over

…or is it?

“What’d the book page say?”  The carnie asks.

“Book? What book?” 

“Are you blind?”

“I am now.”

“Hold on tight,”  The carnie says. “You gotta take 2 more rides.” 

You’ve just experienced the twilight zone I call “FloridaBorne at the airpit.”

2.What is the point of this lousy analogy?

This is what the inside lighting of a typical home tends to look like:

From:Neonebu.com

This is the lighting inside a typical airport:

From: skyscrapercity.com.  All that’s missing are the disco balls.

This is what the inside of my home looks like when the camera flash doesn’t work:

It’s true…it’s ALL true!

Can you imagine having everything so bright you have to keep your eyes closed?  Did I mention the blinding headaches even with 2 pairs of dark glasses and a hat?

This, dear readers, is the reason I’m wheeled from one gate to the other; not because I’m totally blind (I’m only 1/2 blind), but to prevent “Bowling for Passengers.”  For some reason, people don’t like to be used as bowling pins.

From:  Zazzle.com of course.

3. Why was I in 4 airports for 1/2 a day, and why did I agree to take 3 flights?:

!!!!Free Editing!!!!

Well, it wasn’t quite free.  I still had to tip the skycaps and get a plane ticket.

4.Was it worth it?

You tell me.  I’ll give you a quick tour of my sister’s home.

This is my sister’s 90 pound dog.  She runs the place along with her sidekick, Sunny:

The desk where my sister edited for 3 weeks is in the background.

Here, I’m trying to make the bed in the guest room.  It was such hard work!

First, I had to go to the kitchen, throw a few pieces of meat in the dog bowl and then quickly run back to the room.

Once the dog was otherwise occupied in the kitchen, I had to lift up the bed.  Please ignore the date, it’s off by almost 7 years.  Why did I have to get the camera that has Alzheimer’s?

This was the view of the guest room window  from the back yard as editing progressed:

Notice the edge of the 10-person hot tub I never used, and the edge of the pool that no one wants to swim in when it’s 50F.

Now for a picture of the outside world from inside the guest room:

Yes. That’s snow on the mountains.  Yes, that cloud was preparing to dump rain on us.  Yes, that’s supposed to be a pool.  Any other questions?

Did I hear someone ask what the hot tub looks like during the worst part of their yearly 3-day rainy season?

During the 21 days of hell I put my sister through, she complained to all her friends that I’d chained her to her desk.

With this view out your window, would you care if you were chained to your desk?

5.Getting away from it none:  From the refrigerator to the freezer.

I did take one day for sightseeing.  My sister’s friend, Bob, bought a cozy little place in Arrowhead. It’s 5,700 feet up and his backyard is about 50 feet of mountain slope that stops where the road winds upward to make a curve toward his front yard. 

This is the front of his house from the road, You can barely see the loft through the trees, and the window is for 1 of the 2 first floor bedrooms.

 

Just in case you’re wondering if this is a remote hide-a-way, there are houses 30 feet to the left and right for about the next 20 miles.  Sort of like wooden sardines packed upright in the ice. 

This is the view from their living room porch (aka, backyard).  The bottom half of these trees are firmly adhered to the sloping edge of the mountainside.

This is a picture of Bob and his housemate, Shane, standing in the living room, the loft and its window showing above them.  What isn’t pictured is the windowless family room below them, accessible by a spiral staircase.

If you took the same house and moved it near my home in North Florida, it’d be 10 times cheaper.

This picture was taken in back of a McDonald’s on Lake Arrowhead.

I considered buying something to drink at this upscale fast food establishment, but after finding out what Bob’s house costs, I was afraid to look at the menu.

If you’re wondering why…

…at home, this is what my car looks like when the family is preparing to go for a ride:

This is what Bob’s car looks like in the snow (notice that his tires actually have tread):

Shane is showing you the depth of the snow and providing a comparison for the size of Bob’s car.

You’d think of a trip to California as fun, sun and frolicking.  But if it wasn’t the cold stares from my sister, who hates editing, it was the cold wind, rain and snow. 

Wish I could say it was great to get back to Florida, but as I write this, it’s 30 degrees, the heater is begging for a break, and the dogs are begging for more warmth:  

They’re so cold their eyes have turned to ice.  That’s what happens when the temperature plunges under 70F in Florida.

I gave them a choice: Get under the covers or be grateful they weren’t outside dogs. Fat White Dog and Errrrr Dog chose the former shortly after turning into Zombies, but Dingo Mutt chose the ladder.