Dying Retailers

Retail trade is changing fast. The old mall system, for example, is near in ICU in the United States and in Europe.  Most of the reasons for the way shoppers buy changing is because they now buy on line and with those "apps" that enchant them. Marketers see the consumer is more likely to buy on line with his or her technology, of they can be convinced the item is sold at a good price.

By the end of 2017, 20 retail chains, including Radio Shack, Toys R Us, and HH Gregg  filed for bankruptcy. Some still operate and others were liquidated and are gone forever,  and some were reorganized and are gasping for life and some were liquidated. When I think of Toy's R Us disappearing it is somewhat of a shock. When my daughter was small I practically showered that store with money, buying the endless Barbie dolls and other little girl toys that all little girls pressure their parents to supply.

So which big retail American companies might be next to fall by the wayside? Here are a few:
Sears- The one time giants of American department stores and catalogue sales is broke. Sears has survived  the last few years, barely so, only by selling off assets and borrowing money. But now even vendors are refusing to supply to Sears, customers are beginning to complain that the merchandise for sale is "cheap" and Sears is in no position to  do anything to stop the bleeding.

J.C. Penny- Started by James Cash Penny in Minnesota more than 100 years ago, J.C. Penny was the Wal mart of household goods for generations. You could buy anything at Penny's. Though Penny's has tried to get into the on line sales platform as it loses money faster than it can count it , it appears too late and too little for customers who are mostly younger and unaware of the glorious past of J.C. Penny.

Claire's- Claire's, a mall staple, was the first choice of little girls until about 8 years ago. I remember taking my daughter there to have her ear pierced and coming home with lots of cute kid jewelry. But kids were turned off of Claire's and onto their technology years ago. Today's little tech kids girls just don't want the things that Claire's sells.

Charlotte Russe- Charlotte Russe has struggled because it is a mall based store in an age of lower foot traffic. Also the clothes it sells can be had on line from on line clothing retailers. clothing sales have moved online, meaning mall stalwarts for kids like J. Crew and Charlotte Russe just don't have a large enough customer case anymore.

Payless, Nine West and many other shoe sellers- For whatever reason, many consumers aren't buying shoes as often from brick and mortar stores. Too, the show market has been flooded with competitors and the market pie now is too small.

GNC and Vitamin World- The failure of these nutritional stores is due to cheap on line competitors. Consumers have not been scared away from on line sellers products because they are much less expensive to buy.

Barnes and Noble- The world's biggest bookseller is losing to on line, book pads and the simple fact that fewer people read anything these days, well, anything more than Tweets and smarmy social media web sites.

In almost all cases the consuming influence of technology is as much the result of the change in retail as anything else. And that's not likely to abate in the future.

It's The Most Wonderful Reflection Time of the Year

Excuse the variation in my subject head, 'It's The Most Wonderful Reflection Time of the Year', to the classic Christmas song with the nearly identical title. I couldn't resist, because during and after Christmas my thoughts go to, not what just happened this Christmas, but to random memories of Christmas past. Most of those memories are of the routine and what seemed at the time they were created to be trivial. Why is it so? Why do humans need those past memories, especially when they are making more current ones of the holiday?

Do we need to reflect during emotional times in order to cope with the mad world in which we live? I think so. I am surprised at the variety of old Christmas memories I get each Christmas. And the variety of them varies year to year. I suppose these memories are a defense mechanism against the frustrations we feel at Christmas. This year, for instance, I was sick with a terrible virus. Being locked in the house in misery I had a kaleidoscope of past Christmas memories that seemed to come from nowhere.

A memory of my childhood pet dog's 'Dumbo' (that dog must have been named after me) Christmas sweater; my dad every year placing under the tree the "extra present" , a box of Russell Stover dark chocolate caramels; my mother's baking of so many cheesecakes for friends and her making a few mini ones for me; little me sitting on Santa's knee at D.H. Holmes and asking for a the tape recorder I was to receive that  next Christmas morning.

On the surface there is noting significant about those memories.....or is there? They must be like our dreams, coded messages of importance that we may or may not figure out consciously, but which our subconscious decodes and uses to keep us sane. I think that I remembered I my dad giving me my favorite candy and my mom baking as a reminder of their love for me and the stability of our family. But I also suspect that our "bad memories" serve us in much the same way. They remind us to create no more bad ones,, to enjoy what we have and to find meaning it whatever it is. Though I am lucky to have few bad memories, the one that never fails to arrive each Christmas is that of the death of my brother on Christmas Day, my finding his lifeless body on the floor of his home..

The odd thing about all of those post Christmas Day memories is how short lived they are. They come at holiday time, retreat and disappear and there is rarely a need for most of us to create any new ones as a replacement. Next year we will be gifted with new memories on which to reflect. I suspect they are the medicine that soothes or even cures our affliction and then is placed away into a drawer until the next need for them.

Yes, Christmas memories can be the most wonderful reflections of the year. I hope you had and made many this year.

Boxing Day

I bet you think that the next holiday after Christmas is New Year's Day? Forget it. You turned tour head and missed one. December 26 is Boxing Day every year, an official holiday in Britain and now an unofficial shopping lure by retailers everywhere. It's another commercial kidnapping of a one time tradition, now excuse, for you to part with your money in shopping sprees. This strangely named holiday, has nothing to do with boxing gloves or any form of fisticuffs. But then, if you ever shopped at a mall at an after Christmas sale, you've probably seen a few fist fights over the reduced sock pile or 75% off microwave display.

Boxing Day's name comes from the tradition of "Christmas boxes," gifts of money or goods given to 17th century trades people and servants on the day after Christmas. It was the leftover and doggie box for the people who slaved for the wealthy. Boxing Day arose because servants, who would have to wait on their masters on Christmas Day, were allowed to visit their families the next day. Thus, their employers would give them boxes containing gifts, bonuses and, sometimes, leftover food to share with family. That's sort of like the Obama Presidential practice of handing out entitlements in exchange for votes from the welfare dependent.

But alas! In the tradition of our age with few real traditions, Boxing Day has turned into a major shopping event in several countries. In England,  the day attracts a record number of shoppers, some of them returning gifts but most attracted by "door buster" post holiday sales. Some of the more frugal Brits actually do their Christmas shopping on Boxing Day....last year's Christmas shopping that it. They simply give Christmas gifts a Day or two late and save big money by purchasing then. Boxing Day is the second biggest shopping day in Britain. Those who prefer tradition to shopping, or who hate shopping eschew Box Day as Shopping Day by instead going fox hunting and or drinking at the local pub on Boxing Day.

So the British tradition of Boxing Day is dying a bit there, and being conscripted by retailers who occasionally announce their day after Christmas sales as "Boxing Day Sales", tradition changing into crass shopping sales. Sigh...it's enough to make one want to fight.

A Christmas Gift Not To Give

Forget worrying about that ugly neck tie or Obama chia pet that you give as gifts at the office! The world's least appropriate Christmas gift this year is neither. Instead, it's the brain child of an elderly couple from California. Patrick Jiron, 83, and his wife Barbara Jiron, 80 must have overdosed on egg nog this year because they were caught with more than $300,000 worth of marijuana during a cross country road trip. Dude! Aster they were caught they told police they wanted to give the pot out as Christmas gifts.  I wonder if they  also gave the little ones mini bags of pot? After al, little children often want to fly like Santa.

Both of the geriatric weed Santa's were both cited for marijuana possession during a Tuesday traffic stop in York County, Nebraska. York County deputies pulled the couple over after spotting their 2016 Toyota Tacoma driving over the center line and failing to signal on Interstate 80. The deputies noticed the odor of raw marijuana coming from the car.  Grandpa Patrick then admitted there was "contraband" in the car, the sheriff's department said, and allowed the deputies to search the truck.

In the truck were 60 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of more than $300,000. Santa may get high in California, but he is also generous. Police also found concentrated THC inside the car, presumably for the more discretionary druggies on the Jiron gift tour. After questioning the couple protested the arrest, saying that they were merely they were coming from California to give the weed as Christmas presents to friends and family in Boston and Vermont, where pot is an illegal substance.

Most 80 year olds are not put in jails. But in keeping with the long standing U.S. police arrest policies of discrimination against males, Santa Patrick Jiron was booked into the York County Jail, while Ms. Claus, Barbara Jiron, was not taken to jail, allegedly because of a "medical issue". I think they both have medical issues. They're nuts.

Odd Christmas Songs

We still have a a way to go before Christmas day, and amazingly, I am still listening to Christmas music and smiling the whole while. Christmas music is escapism at its best, an unreal sentimentality that uplifts those of us who like to pretend that life could be as idealistic as in the tunes of the season. Most of Christmas music soothes me, but when I begin to get weary of the sugar world of Christmas it's usually because of a few Christmas songs that I wished were banished to the North Pole.  They are the odd tunes of Christmas. Some are intentionally silly, others unintentionally awful, but when they sneak onto my favorite Christmas music station play list I almost declare that I have had enough of Christmas music.

Here are a few of my oddest Christmas songs, along with my caustic comments about them, beginning with disgusting Christmas tunes. The first is called 'Santa Claus Has Got The Aids,'  recorded in 1980, but not released until 1990, leaves the listener with visions of sugar plums and  of Santa with AIDS. How inspiring! In. " Don't Shot Me Santa" a  murderous boy pleads with Santa to not shoot him. I would love it if Santa shoot the composer of that song instead. 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus' was written as a cute song, but when a then five year old Michael Jackson recorded it, that brought the song to an odd level. There's nothing that says Christmas quite like the thought of a voyeuristic child watching his mom have sex with a fat man in a red suit in the family your house in the middle of the night., all the while dad is fast asleep upstairs.

And the final disgusting one is called 'Christmas Tree'. In her rendition, Lady Gaga, who can be disgusting even without music, tones that  her vagina is "a delicious Christmas tree". Even fruit cake is more appetizing than that.

Another category of odd Christmas music the 'Sappy Tune' selection. These are just too sweet to be tolerated and the first to come to my mind is a tune from my a composer from old hometown, New Orleans, 'All I Want for Christmas is You'.  In this one a love-sick woman swears to her love that he is all she wants for Christmas is him. Forget that recipe and buy her the expensive gift this year.

That's what she really wants. 'The Little Drummer Boy' is so sickeningly sweet that I have an urge to strangle the Little Drummer Boy before he concludes this tune about the impoverished boy offering his  drum rolls to the king instead of the taxes required the king really needs. Band Aids 'Do They Know It's Christmas' is another one of those celebrities pretending they car about the poor causes, put to annoying lyrics at its loudest. Not everybody starving in Africa is Christian. They don't need to know it's Christmas. They need more than band aids. And the 50's hit, 'All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth'  has creepy lyrics sung by a grown man trying to sound like a child. When I hear this one I want to knock out all the teeth of the singer.

I only mention some of the odd Christmas songs here. The lists of odd Christmas tunes could go on forever, but one more category to mention is the oddest named Christmas songs. I'll just give ten titles and you can use your imagination if you haven't heard the lyrics. In the case of these songs, your imagination will be more pleasing to you than listening to the actual songs. How about, 1)  'Please Daddy, Don't Get Drunk this Christmas 2) 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' 3) 'I Farted on Santa's Lap' 4)'I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas' 5)'I Pooped on Santa's Lap' 6) 'Santa Hates Poor Kids' 7) Santa's a Fat Bitch'  7) 'Santa Claus is a Black Man' 8) 'Murder City Xmas' 9) 'Santa Claus and his Old Lady' and 10) 'The Night Santa Went Crazy'

You probably can find all of these songs on line. You Tube is a good place to search for them. But if you search for them and listen it will only prove that you are also odd. Ho Ho Ho!

Mindless Protest

Me think they doth protest too much. Is there ever an occurrence today that someone does not "protest"? Most are  nothing more than idiotic and self aggrandizing tantrums of misinformation.  I was reminded the other day of last spring's classic example of  the Lower Merion High School (Pennsylvania) boys basketball team and its protest.

 Everyone seems to want to protest when they don't get their way. We are a nation and world of whiners, the "No Fair. No Fair, we lost the election" mentality of the Donald Trump hating Democrats donned different warm-up shirts for their recent basketball game at the high school. The shirts read, "I am a Muslim. I am a refugee. I am an immigrant. I am an American. I am an Ace." It's a political statement by a teenage basketball team inflicted on spectators who came to see basketball, not politics or protests.

Shamefully, the school allowed that P.C. protest at a school sponsored event. Never mind that fans who don't agree that Muslim refugees should be dumped into America who to see a political protest at a high school sports event. What next for, a foreign policy debate at a homecoming dance? School events should be free of political nonsense because partisan politics of any type is inappropriate at school events. But children see adults, particularly air g headed, out of touch Hollywood celebrities protesting everything not in the P.C. agenda where ever those "stars" appear. Inappropriate examples beget inappropriate examples among kids.

The school system in this case is cowardly for not stopping such things before they start. A simple reminder to the coach that protests at sporting events are against school rules and that serve penalties (I suggest shutting down  the season for that team right now. The players will learn that protests are serious things to be acted at at appropriate venues at appropriate times, not trendy "look at me" events). The so called protest is against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States from countries that are so chaotic that checking on the identify of the refugees is impossible.  Isis and other terror groups regularly infiltrate the "refugees" with operatives as away of entering western nations to enable more terrorism there.

Besides the cowardice of adults for allowing this, the saddest aspect is the players ignorance of what they protest. Their complete indoctrination into political correctness and the "look at me I am special because I protest" ritual reflects the dumbing down of humans in this country by the leftist agenda. I hope the players social studies teacher assigns a complete examination of the matter about what they protest. Literature about the refugees and about immigration from all views should be required reading for the players. But then, any teacher today who requires a serious study and understanding of a P. C. issue would probably be fired before the next sunrise.

Trading Kids For Drugs

In this country it is said that most new trends, good or bad, start in California. It's la la land, where reality and fantasy are so often blurred one never can tell the difference. Here's an example of a "Is he serious about that California behavior". Los Angeles County authorities say two California parents have been arrested on suspicion of trying to sell their two sons for drugs. Yep! Every parent fantasy to ship junior off to some other unfortunate adult was acted out by those two. "They must be crazy or on drugs", you might have thought.

You got it. At least they didn't offer to trade the kids for a new edition of the latest cell phone. Sheriff's officials in Lancaster, California said that deputies responded last week to a home Lancaster following reports of possible child abuse by  38-year-old dad Vincente Calogero and 32-year-old mom Sarah Nilson after the two attempted to exchange their two sons for money or drugs.Vincent and Sarah could face charges including felony child endangerment, child neglect, and being under the influence of a controlled substance.  I think sterilization might be the best penalty if  the two are convicted.

It wasn't immediately known if they have attorneys because they seem too stoned to know whether they have. The two boys, whose ages were not disclosed, are in the custody of the county's Department of Children and Family Services. One must remember that in the state of California, and every other U.S. state, no license is required to breed and raise children. Yet, there are stiff penalties for anyone who fails to secure a dog license to own Fido. Kinda says something about society preferences.

Dollar Store Christmas

I am just back from a trip to 'The Dollar Store' (or 'Dollar Tree' in some places) to buy Christmas gift bags, boxes and tissue for covering the gifts. Every American knows when it is time for purchasing Christmas supplies at a fraction of the cost of other retail stores, the Dollar Tree can not be beat. Often the identical items sold in Dollar Tree Stores are found at expensive retail stores, at much higher prices. But the economic model of the Dollar Tree stores is mass purchase of those supplies from Asian factories (often western owned) that produce the items at low cost, given the low costs of labor where the merchandise is manufactured. Maybe God is Asian?

As I strolled inside the store and saw every imaginable item that could be sold for a single dollar, I thought how miraculous was  the economy of scale and the influence of the computer chip (so many sound, color and motion objects for a dollar) at that store. At Christmas, The Dollar Store becomes the stereotype of a commercialized Christmas experience. And customers love it. Why not purchase the Christmas ornament that plays "We Wish You Merry Christmas" when a person's motion or light change activates the recording? Where else can we buy Christmas wrapping, stockings, gadgets and every Christmas decoration imaginable, for a single dollar?

Christmas at the Dollar Store is almost entirely a secular one. When one walks among the endless line of Christmas related dollar treats he or she finds little or nothing related to actual Christmas, you know....the religious thing. At the Dollar Store Jesus is secular, not the Jesus Christ the holiday is supposed to honor. You'll find no direct mention of Christ at the Dollar Store, but a multitude of objects to buy that worship commercial, secular "Christmas". This in itself is neither good nor bad in my view. As long as humans are celebrating a good cause, it matters no whether it is tied to religion. Still, one can learn a lot about a society, even it's religious orientation, by surveying the Dollar Store when a religious holiday is on going.

This season I bought the parchment paper used to back Christmas cookies, peppermint sticks, the wrapping paper and gift bags I mentioned above, a wind up walking Santa and walking penguin, batteries for the toys that are gifts, Christmas tins as the receptacle for the cookies, ornaments for the tiny live tree that rests on my kitchen counter, and more.  Hmmm no  Jesus icons in that lot. I realize none of those purchases are necessary, that I am a part of commercialized Christmas. It is said that we Americans buy too much "junk". It is true, but I suspect every nation, every culture, buys its own version of "too much junk". Ours sings Christmas carols, lights up and uplifts our spirits during the holidays. It's ot so bad in that it distracts us from real world problems and heartbreaks.

Oh my! I just realized I forgot to buy that Christmas tic tac toe game and the Christmas jiz saw puzzle while at the Dollar Tree. I can't get through the holidays without that. I better go back to the Dollar Store and buy it now!

On Being Wealthy

This is the age of greed and envy, one in which the have nots are so jealous of the haves that they think they are entitled to a chunk of the millionaires money because....well.... jealousy breeds greed and envy. Here President Obama used to center many of his campaigns on the false narrative that the "rich" are stealing money from the poor. It's bad news for those who work hard and earn large sums of money.  And where are most of those millionaires located?

In the United States, they are in New York City.  If you were to chuck everybody who wasn't a millionaire out of New York City, the city would still have a higher population than my former home of New Orleans. That is according to a study by Spear's magazine  that says that 4.63% of NYC's population have assets of $1 million or more when the total excludes their homes. That adds up to 389,100 millionaires, slightly more people than New Orleans (which lost a huge chunk of it's population after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the city).

But even so, New York has the fourth highest proportion of millionaire residents in the world.  You can barely move around Monaco without tripping over millionaires, who make up 29% of the population, while Zurich is at 27% and Geneva 18%.  Given their smaller populations though they have far fewer millionaires than NYC. New York  has the second largest millionaire and largest billionaire population of any city in the world.  But according to total numbers of millionaires, not percentage of the population, jealous millionaire haters can complain more about Tokyo first. It has the largest total number of millionaires in the world. London has the third most.

Many of the jealous "poor" crowd envies and hates the well today and sees them as the stereotype of the fat cat Obama and other demagogue politicians portray.  But of course, the wealth put on their pants the same way as the poor. They each wear only one pair and each are far more similar than different. In fact, unlike the have nots, the haves think about money far less than their jealous wanna be poorer humans.. According to financial advisory groups, American millionaires with a net worth up to $25 million rank their spouse's health as their number one concern. It is those who are not yet but have a chance to be millionaires, the merely affluent, with $100,000 to $1 million in net worth, that are most concerned about keeping up their current financial position.  

Strange that in America you are allowed be rich, but not too rich. Once you pass that imaginary rich line you become a four letter word.  I guess in this age one can succeed in life but not too much.

Kids Not Welcome

Forget the phony 'War on Women' that left wing nuts cry about. There is a real war going on in some restaurants in the U.S. It might be called a 'War on Kids' because in some restaurants they are unwelcome. Two examples of the War on Kids can illustrate why some like the war and others are not enthused. In the first case it is a "no kids allowed" policy that has heads turned.

An upscale Italian restaurant in Mooresville, N.C. is receiving plenty of criticism and even more praise on social media after banning children under the age of five. Yoshi Nunez, the manager of Caruso’s restaurant, decided to implement the policy after a little girl was reportedly using an iPad with the volume on high in the dining room. Her parents refused to turn it down after wait staff requested them to lower the volume on the device. Hmmmm That may be a case of spoiled, clue less parents, not bad kids.

The restaurant finally asked the parents to leave (with their brat), to the pleasure of the other diners in the restaurant. That motivated the place to start the no kids under the age of five allowed policy, and since implementing the ban, the restaurant says they have seen a dramatic increase in reservations, and a spike in diners from about 50 to 80 per day. Many diners have thanked the owners and said there were many others who wanted a place that was kid free. The restaurant has no children's menu available and that proper attire is required of all guests in the dining. Wow! Maybe public civility is trying to make a comeback. Restaurants in Houston, Pennsylvania and California have all implemented similar bans and there is a new trend that started in Italy is of rewarding the parents of kids who behave well at restaurant dining tables with meal discounts on their kid's meals.

Another example of restaurant "kids must behave" policies is that of  giving parents dining at the eatery with kids a rule card about proper table manners when they get seated. Cuchara, a Mexican restaurant located in the suburbs of Houston, has been handing out illustrated cards to families that come in to dine. The colorful card shows a happy family eating with text below that reads: "Children at Cuchara don't run or wander around the restaurant. They stay seated and ask their parents to take them to the rest room. They don't scream, throw tantrums or touch the walls, murals, windows or other patrons. They are respectful!" The restaurant  said "enough with unsupervised kids" after it suffered $1500 in damage when a child scratched one of its walls which feature hand painted murals by Mexico City artist Cecilia Beaven.

So far, the restaurant says the reaction to the cards has been overwhelmingly positive. The owner estimates that only 3 of more than 200 diner responses to the card policy have been negative. The other 197 applauded and said it was way overdue. I suspect kids behave so badly in public these days because of poor parenting or lack of attention by parents to guiding their children's' behavior. It used to be that parents took pride when their children behaved well. Now many seem not to care how they behave as long as it doesn't bring inconvenience to the parents themselves.

Donating To Charity At Christmas Time

Since it's the Christmas season, it's also the giving season, as in donate money to that Santa ringing his bell in front of  what seems to be every mall or store in town. So why do so many of us dodge the ringers and other solicitors each holiday season by entering a store through a door where there isn't a pot to donate? I give to charity often and Americans are supposed to have, according to research comparing charity donations per nation, the most  generous people of all nations.

A growing body of research shows the lengths to which people will go to avoid being asked for donations at holiday time is large. Maybe we avoid because we gave elsewhere or because we don't have the money to give at that particular time. It may feel good to escape that Santa with the money pot by evading a situation that we find embarrassing or awkward, but it also may be counterproductive to our happiness. That's because research says that most of us would lead happier lives if we could find ways to commit ourselves to being more generous.

In one give at Christmas study economists and the Salvation Army, known for having the greatest Santa bell ringing solicitors. Here's what was discovered. to explore how bell ringers might bring out the more generous side of holiday shoppers. The Santa's stood at one or both main entrances to a Boston area store at Christmastime. They instructed the Santa's to follow one of two scripts: They would either ring their bells silently, avoiding eye contact, or try to make eye contact with each passerby, along with a greeting: “Hi, how are you? Merry Christmas. Please give today.”

In the end the friendly, chatty Santa bell ringers were more effective at persuading shoppers to donate. Donations went up by 50% or more if bell ringers at both entrances engaged shoppers rather than just standing by silently.  When an engaged bell ringer stood at just one of the store's two main entrances: Traffic at the other door increased by 7%.  Yep! people went in the door without the Santa's to avoid being solicited.

Further, the study said that when bell ringers asked for donations at both doors, the combined foot traffic for the doors fell by a whopping 20%. It turned out that, unbeknown to the researchers, there was a third entrance to the store, labeled only as “recycling area.” Rather than deal with the Santa's, many shoppers were sneaking around to the side entrance.

Sneaking to the un-Santa (I made up that word) entrance shows what you and I both already know. That is, we feel more obligated to give to charity when asked, because we want to avoid looking like a cheapskate. It also explains why, after we first we donate to a charity, the charity never stops asking for more money, via phone or mail. Also, the study shows that those who avoid the Santa bell ringers may be generous people who just find those Santa's annoying or who think donating in public is not appropriate.

Oh, before I leave you here, I already donated at the mall. Put down your bell and find someone else for your next donation.

He Did What?

One of the big problems for many workers today in this age of automation is conditions where work is repetitive and boring. Working on an assembly line can be maddening. There is no chance for the worker to show ingenuity, creativity or to show leadership. It's understandable.  But one would think that condition would be limited to repetitive jobs. Well, it's not.  A British surgeon has admitted assaulting two patients by burning his initials into their livers during transplant operations.

Simon Bramhall pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of assault, in a case a prosecutor called “without legal precedent in criminal law.” Simple Simon the surgeon used an argon beam coagulator, which seals bleeding blood vessels with an electric beam, to mark his initials on the organs. Hmmm It's not likely the patient would have a look at the initials or even know about it. Maybe Simon was bored? He won't be bored anymore, at least for awhile. The 53-year-old surgeon resigned from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham when after another doctor discovered of what he'd done.

The odd thing is that Simon is a renowned surgeon, highly regarded in the profession for his skills in the operating room. But he has initialized patients before, being suspended one other time for. I am not a physician, but I think that scorching the surface if the liver damages it to some degree. It is not only a vital organ, but a delicate one.

Simon is free on bail but will be sentenced Jan. 12 at Birmingham Crown Court in central England.
Let's hope the judge isn't bored that day and burns into Simon's flesh the court's decision.

The Crazed Leftist Impeachment Movement

Despite one's feelings about President Trump, any rationale person would have to admit the reaction to his election is more bizarre than was Trump's election. In particular, the "we need to impeach Trump for any reason" movement that the left implemented from the day Trump was elected is not only irrational, but a blight on democracy in this country. Who can forget the unparalleled unqualified, dishonest California Congresswomen Maxine Waters, holding a press conference immediately after the election to say 'We have to 'impeat' (Maxine seems to have a loose grip on English vocabulary, but she has learned since then that the word is "impeach") Donald Trump before he takes office"? Huh?

Maxine's battle cry to ignore the democratic election process when her party candidate loses  an election was a rallying cry to many other politicians and, of course the empty headed leftists celebrities who live in their own bubble. Maxine is a cartoon character who is ignored by most, but more responsible leftists decided to try to remove Trump by falsely claiming he colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton. Congress demanded a special prosecutor (one who hates Trump and who is happy to dig up dirt on Trump, given Trump "insulted" the special prosecutor's friend (the corrupt James Comey).

The problem is, after a year of investigation there is no evidence that Trump had any dealings with Russia during the election. But alas! There is a pre ponderous amount of evidence through private and public testimony under oath that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats did. That investigation seems to have no end, despite the fact that the premise of Trump's Russian collusion was simply lies by the left.  The left is now flailing in every direction to "impeach" Trump for any policy he pursues. When he attempts to restrict the out of hand immigration in the U.S. some leftists say Trump is "racist" ("racists" and "misogynist" are the first two words leftist infants learn) and must be impeached because of it. When the failed Obama care is the Trump target the left screams to impeach Trump because "He hates the poor". The litany of unimpeachable charges that the left throws at Trump is long and idiotic. But the latest is even more insane.

Now a group of left wing Democrats wants to impeach Trump because...get this..because he Tweets mean things. After a year of personal, false attacks by a congresswoman, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand,  President Trump's launched one of his crude Twitter attacks on Gillibrand (a close associate of Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama).  She called them a “sexist smear,”  and Democrats are now calling for congressional hearings on the president's own alleged past sexual misconduct. Democrats in the House and Senate said the tweet underscores the need for the president to be held to account and want him impeached or to resign.

All of this histrionic impeachment talk is foolish. President's can not be impeached because the opposing party doesn't like them. Too, to cheapen the impeachment process the way the left is doing is to cheapen the democratic electoral system. Those leftists who want Trump out at any cost threaten to destroy democracy in their crazy quest. In stead of crying and lying, pandering to their leftist base, the left should clean it's own house of crazies like Waters and Gillibrand, and accept that they lost the last election. Hmmm Maybe we should "impeach" them if they don't!

Quieting The Greening

The Green at all cost rhetoric is dimming, thank goodness. With the exit of perhaps the single worst ever U.S. President there are fewer and fewer of those mandatory tax subsidized inefficient "green energy projects". The current President just wants cheap, abundant, environmentally neutral fuels that competes with consumers in a free marketplace. No more taxpayer money spent to subsidize those alternative energy failures. It's nice to live in a world where the government doesn't designate energy sources as "good" or "bad".

Don't the green people understand that those turbines and solar farms in rural or wilderness settings require access roads and transmission lines that impact the environment. Perhaps not. They are too focused on the much smaller environmental degradation from drilling for fossil fuels in Alaska or fracking for clean natural gas in North Dakota. Zealots never reason because they are too busy following the trendy narrative they have been propagandized to believe to be true. Someone should tell them that the 52,000  green U.S. wind turbines that hardly work at all grind up protected and unprotected birds and bats and produce low frequency sounds and light flicker that disturb wildlife.

It saddens me to see my nation's small children propagandized, no brainwashed, by teachers who pass on  the silly green energy lies they themselves do not understand, but hold to dearly.  Oh well, that routine is producing a new generation of mindless robots that will  be pliable to every leftist green lie propagated. The sheer volume of talk about energy, energy prices, and energy policy on both sides of the green verses non green aisle suggests that we must know something about these subjects. But the things we think we know are mostly myths, especially the alternative energy myths.

 A better understanding of energy would change views and policies on a number of very controversial issues. Yet, it will be hard. The current wind is blowing a little more rationally now that the left is out of power and occupied with other more personal political problems. The truth is that the more efficient our technology, the more energy we consume and despite the often odd behavior of the current president we should thank him for drilling more and greening less.

Our fossil fuels are not running out.  America's relentless pursuit of high grade energy does not add chaos to the global environment but rather restores its order, now that the green foolishness has started to run out of gas. When better alternative energy sources that the sketchy ones now touted are found, we will use them and replace fossil fuels because consumers will want them, not because the government tells them they have to use them. That day is a long way from here.

Ugly Christmas Sweaters

The ugly Christmas sweater trend is flying high now. Those of us who love or hate the ugly sweater fashion of December should be prepared for a lot of ugly holiday sweaters if flying Alaska Airlines on Dec. 15. Alaska Air  has declared December 15 to be its National Ugly Holiday Sweater Day celebration. On that day its offering early boarding to customers wearing “festive holiday sweaters.” It's a one day chance to show your lack of good taste for Christmas as the one day promotion will be offered on the entire Alaska Air network, including flights operated by Virgin America and Horizon Air.

Alaska announced the promotion as, “This fun promotion not only allows guests to board early on that day, but gives people another opportunity to dust off that ugly holiday sweater hanging in the back of their closet.” I have some ugly Christmas T shirts but no sweaters, given that I am not a sweater wearer. I wear my ugly Christmas T shirts selectively as they engender a broad response, including threats of bodily harm for the wearer.

If you wonder who wore the ugliest Christmas sweater on an Alaska Air flight you can see posts from the wearers on Face book. Alaska is posting them there. But Alaska s not the only airline that loves ugly Christmas sweaters. The craze has spread to Europe as well. Dutch airline KLM has a web site that sells its own version of the ugly Christmas sweater. (https://shop.klm.com/nl_nl/klm-christmas-jumper-l.htmlad ) Believe it or not, those uglies appear to have been so popular that the carrier is now out of stock in all sizes.

I am not sure when the ugly Christmas sweater mania started, but it was in response to some brave souls, often as a joke, wearing them at parties or cookie exchanges. Now department stores are filled with them, Wal mart sells them and thrift stores this time of the year have many for those who want to recycle the ugly side of Christmas. Be brave, get one, put it on and run for your life when an angry mob tries to assault you for your brazenness!

Male Buns

What's all the bun fashion for men these days. I am seeing more and more men wearing their hair in a bun and it seems weird to me. Unless you are a Samurai warrior always view a man bun  as looking effeminate. Some dermatologists also say when a male puts his hair in a bun he stresses the front of the scalp that leads to baldness. I wonder if women like male buns? They are quiet on the subject most of the time. Anyway, I was curious about the male bun and decided to research when they first appeared in society. Here's what I found.

Records show we can blame the Maori, indigenous Polynesian people, of New Zealand. for the bun. I have meet a few Maori people and always enjoyed their company. They are nice people, but they do have to wear a bun badge of shame for starting the male bun thing. It seems that around 1300 AD  Maori men of a certain high status would wear a tikitiki, or what's equivalent to a modern day topknot.

Shortly later Korea got bun fever. During the Joseon Dynasty in Korea around 1400 AD, married men in Korea put their hair in a sangtu, a knot at the top of their heads. The idea was not fashion, but to keep their hair from falling. Hats were specifically made with space for their buns. I wonder if that crazy North Korean Dictator, Kim Jong Il, will adopt a bun to further demonstrate his odd behavior. He's the nut that keeps threatening countries with nuclear holocaust. Gee, is there anything worse than being nuked by a guy who wears a bun?

Beginning in the 1600's the Samurai buns appeared. In Japan, during the Edo Period, the traditional haircut was called the chonmage, which meant the top of the head was nearly all shaven except for a cluster of hair tied up in a knot. Originally, Samurai used this hairstyle to keep their helmet in place. In my view guys with swords that they use to decapitate other guys can wear a bun any time they want. I'm going to keep my head and not make any  smart aleck remarks about their buns. But most of the male bun wearers I see today look weird, not menacing.

Fast forward to that irritating Leonardo DiCapario fellow, the actor who thinks he is an authority on all the idiotic P.C. issues only imbeciles worry about. DiCapario wore that style in a movie, and then adopted it personally. That lead to other actors and celebs copying his style, and today we have non celebrity buns in restaurants, grocery stores and just about anywhere civilized people gather. What we need today is to resurrect a few Samurai bun guys so they can thin out that population....

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

If you think the global warming hysteria is a bit of a stretch, hold on to your seat when I inform you of the latest leftist environmental fear. It's glitter. You know, the glitter kids like to color with. Glitter,  commonly used in arts and crafts, is comprised of small plastic particles.  Now some scientists argue the particles get into the ocean and the environment where animals eat it. But then, most scientists are not yet on board of the "Glitter will kill us all" train. One English professor, Richard Thompson, did a study and discovered a third of fish caught in the United Kingdom contained plastic particles. Dr. Trisia Farrelly, a scientist at New Zealand’s Massey University, said glitter should be banned because it was a microplastic.

I think banning glitter would be a pretty easy thing to do. It's not like fossil fuels, something that is essential for man's survival but I wonder if the glitter is evil scenario has been created to shift attention away from the fossil fuel is evil nonsense. Erring on the side of caution and banning glitter would not cause any harm to humans. Too, when an extremist, unproved idea is empty ("It's global warming and we're all going to die"!) it is often easier to jettison or downplay it by shifting to a new subject .

The scientists who fear glitter say that micro beads, a tiny piece of plastic that were common in beauty products, were the biggest culprit for polluting the environment. The  particles easily get into water filtration systems where they wind up in oceans and lakes. Fish and other marine life consume them and pass it on to us when we consume them. And as we know when the climate nuts scream for their cause and start accusing non believers of being "climate deniers" there is a PC reaction to the claims.

Some British nurseries have banned using glitter in its establishments due to the “terrible damage” the arts supplies does to the environment, and seven states in the U.S. have banned using micro beads in beauty and health products. Wow! Don't tell Taylor Swift. It might ruin her whole act.

Christmas In New Orleans

I was reminded by reading online my former hometown New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper why Christmas here in Portland seems to be a little less active place. The traditions of an old city with a unique demographics and a diverse background produce many interesting variations. It's why most New Orleans not only do not consider their city to be a "southern city", but not even a city in the United States. The culture, though mostly typically American, there is too different not to notice those differences. They make New Orleans the most singular of American cities.

Having written that, there are quite a few Christmas time differences about New Orleans. First, in South Louisiana,  on Christmas Eve they set stacks of wood on fire along the levees of the Mississippi River to light the way for Papa Noel (Santa Claus).  Cajun traditions at Christmas include a Christmas bonfire, huge stacks of lumber set fire along the banks of the Mississippi River so Santa can see where to deposit those presents. There are few New Orleanians who haven't participated in or watched on of those.

Then there is the famous 'Night Before Christmas' poem we all know... but New Orleanians tell it in a different way, in Louisiana Cajun French style. Alligator Gaston is Rudoph and the dialogue is typically Louisianian. Ah, it's too hard to explain. Listen to it yourself at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1RqHHbpx1A That's the Cajun twist to New Orleans Christmas, but there are more differences between Christmas anywhere else in the U.S. and Christmas in New Orleans.

Then there is the Christmas parade. New Orleans has many and they fit anyone's idea of what parade should be. In New Orleans, they throw beads, food and toys and other things at their parades, Mardi Gras or not. So if Santa doesn't make it to your house you can get a few gifts from the costumed parade goes on the Christmas parade floats. Those parades range from Disney innocent to the typical French Quarter adult raunchy or satirical version.  You might see Ms. Claus dressed in  less than red and white. I suspect if Santa ever came across a New Orleans Christmas parade he would never finish his toy deliveries for the holiday. They are too much fun to leave.

Other cities don't seem to know how to dispose or recycle their Christmas trees after the holiday is over and they are placed on curbs in front of houses in neighborhoods in the city. New Orleans is very specific in recycling their trees. Every year, to battle coastal erosion, the residents strip their trees of all decorations and on designated pick up days set our trees out on the curb for pickup to be delivered to special Santa's helpers who dump them in the marshes and swamps.  Placing bundled trees in swamps, marsh and other coastal waterways has been an incredible benefit in stopping the loss of land to water, given water surrounds everything in Lousiana. Many miles of coastline have been rebuilt because of the sediment the trees catch and hold where they are placed.

Food is the heartbeat of New Orleans and Se. Louisiana. There may not be better food anywhere in the United States than what is there, all year round there. So, leave it to the locals to have come up with the Christmas Day dinner entree calls Turducken. It's caught on so that turducken shows up in a lot of places across the U.S.  What is a turducken. It's stuffing a chicken into a duck into a turkey, with layers of various stuffing in between....rice stuffing bread stuffing, seafood stuffing, spicy and mild stuffing. As they say in Louisiana, it tastes so good it will make you slap your momma!  I could go on to write about all the Christmas food inventions of New Orleans, but doing so will only make me miss eating them too much.

But the best part of New Orleans Christmas food tradition  is dished out each December, as some of the city's most renowned restaurants roll out Reveillon menus inspired by the 19th-century Creole Christmas tradition. In the city's past Creole families would start celebrating Christmas Day in the early morning hours with lavish feasts to break what was a traditional day of fasting on Christmas eve. Instead of feasting just on Christmas morning. They still do it. If you are curious about what kinds of food those restaurants serve in December  Reveillon dinners check this site for details  http://www.frenchquarter.com/reveillon-dinners/

New Orleans is know for its endless supply of alcohol. Since Papa Noel gets a snootfull himself from time to time imbibing Christmas themed alcoholic drunks is the norm. Two examples is the eggnog daiquiri and bourbon milk punch. Who needs eggnog when you have that.  Nothing says Christmas like eggnog you can get from a daiquiri drive through windows, that is. Yep! New Orleans vendors legally sells daiquiri's to people operating their automobile via drive through daiquiri stores. I've never ahd the frozen Bourbon Punch, so you can try it for me if ever in that city.

Maybe I should just let Louis Armstrong tell you about Christmas time in New Orleans. He'll sing it to you in his great tune 'Christmas in New Orleans'. Listen and you'll understand what it means to be in New Orleans at  Christmas time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ-xfh75cMM

December Babies Are Special

Wow! I just read in the Internet (ergo, it must be true) that because I was a December baby I am special. It said that December babies are the special ones and even stated that "science" says so. Hmmm Science also has given us some sketchy theories, the Global Warming one is probably the best example. Nonetheless, I am hereby certifying myself as special, and will cite the reasons the article says so, in case you have doubts. You probably have some doubts, and I am not sure what they mean by "special". Special can be either good or bad.

Don't ask me for any sources for this declaration of December specialty. I have none. The Internet is supposed to be a source onto itself as long as you believe whatever is being shoveled there. Since I am special the December birthday theory is one I like. If the article said December birthday people were serial killers or Hillary Clinton supporters I would deny the whole theory. Anyway, the first reason I am special because of my December birth is because December births are more rare and December births on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day are the rarest of all. Rare equals special in this case.

Secondly, December babies (and hence, December grownups) are supposed to be less irritable. Heaven knows I never get irritated and rant here. That itself is proof of number two.  But a study presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology asked 366 university students about their temperaments. The findings were that those born in summer tended to be moody. But the winter born, were steady. In particular,  throughout their life spans December born people were found to have far fewer temper tantrums. If you don't believe this I will slap you!
 
Another reason I am....err...December babies are special is that they have a much lower incidence of major diseases than you horrible non Decembers! (a small tantrum I confess, but my tantrum does not nullify reason two above). Researchers at the Columbia University Department of Medicine looked at records for 1.75 million patients born between 1900 and 2000 who were treated at the medical center. They looked at 1,668 diseases and birth months and other factors, such as exercise and diet and found we superior December babies are not sickly like you!

Reason five is bad news for you who read my clap trap. Babies born the last month of the year are more likely to live the longest o all. The Journal of Aging Research said a German study found that December born have a “significantly higher risk of surviving up to age 105 plus compared to the June born.” Just think how lucky you are. I could be ranting here until I am 105 years old.

Finally, the mystery article saying I am better than you because I am a December baby (I am expanding the horizon of the article's message) says that December babies start school earlier and they achieve more in it because of it (luckily my school reports cards are not available for a verification of that idea). The idea is that because the December baby is usually the youngest one in the class in schools in the U.S. , that the December baby is more motivated to try harder to make up for the age difference between itself and the older kids.

There you have it! I suspect you will try to refute this idea of December specialty, maybe remind me that mass murderer Richard Speck, crazy Roman Emperor Nero, and Joseph Stalin were all also December babies. But I have consulted Nostradamus, another December baby, and his predictions claim those three had phony/invalid birth certificates. It's great to be special!

Tis The Season For Rituals

In the United States that period from Thanksgiving until the new year is what I call the ritual season. In a world of constant and rapid change, we settle into a period where we reconnect with the culture's past and our own family or personal traditions. In short, we seek and relish rituals, things that we deride much of the rest of the year. That's why, for example, most Americans crave the over the top Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Turkey is a food that Americans mostly avoid the rest of the year. Yet at Thanksgiving we would feel empty, almost traitorous to out cultural heritage if we ate something else instead.

This phenomenon of a ritual season is not unique to this country. Every country has its own ritual seasons. Is there any bigger one that the Asian New Year ritual season each winter? It seems to be a human need to escape the maddening throw away world in which we now live, and instead seek comfort in tradition and stability. Yet few people reflect on what they are doing when escaping.

Ideally, we should reflect and evaluate whether our cell phone, high tech, informal, sterile world is the best one for us. For some it may be. The young have less of a cultural past and feel more comfort in the new. But those of us caught in the modern world, against our internal clock, at ritual season have the opportunity to escape permanently if we wish. When out of the absorption of modernity we can more clearly see the past and evaluate it unabated, without interference. That's one of the lessons of ritual seasons.

Humans can never live only in the past, but is living only in the cell world also possible? Do those who let technology direct their lives benefit or suffer from their choice. The old person who shakes his or her head at the "modern way" is no different from the younger one who shakes his or her head at tradition. The ritual season should be the time to put one foot in the past and one in the present and future. If or until we do we have grounds to determine what kind of environment is best for our own lives. May all your seasons be the ones most suitable to you

Put that Dog Down!

You may "bite" me for writing abut this news from your country.....These days it's getting harder and harder to find a good dog burger in some parts of Asia. Taiwan has banned the sale and consumption of cat and dog meat, a departure from most Asian country. Hmmmm Maybe Western culture is contaminating Asia to much. There are more than a few people barking at the new Taiwanese pooch policy.

But Taiwan's legislature lifted its leg on those people and amended the Animal Protection Act to stop the eating of Fido. The new amendment imposes steeper fines and lengthier punishments for acts related to animal cruelty. These include a fine of  $1,600 to $8,000 for anyone caught selling or consuming cat and dog meat, or any other products that contain parts of the animals. The Taiwanese government will practice public shaming too by publicize the names and pictures of offenders.

Taiwan's president, Tsai Ing-wen, adopted three retired guide dogs in October  and also has two cats. But dog meat is still popular in places like China, Laos, South Korea, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines and even in parts of India. China has a dog eating festival in the Yulin where thousands of dogs are slaughtered annually. But anyone who has been to Shanghai and seen the parade of small dogs, cutely groomed and pampered, knows that China has many dog lovers now. In recent years the Yulin festival has been bombarded with petitions and online campaigns against dog eating as being cruel.
In 2016, Chinese and international animal rights activists presented a petition with 11 million signatures to protest the dog meat festival. Protesters say many of the dogs were either stolen or found astray, crammed in small cages and beaten to death in slaughterhouses. Estimates are that China killed more than 10 million of the roughly 30 million dogs slaughtered every year worldwide, that according to Humane Society International. Four million cats are killed every year in the country. In South Korea, where dogs are farmed for human consumption, about 2 million are kept in about 17,000 facilities, and many are killed by electrocution, according to the organization. The government's attempts to put an end to it have been halfhearted.

But as western culture continues to be popular in Asia using dogs as food  has become  controversial and frowned on there. Dogs as pets are becoming the norm for many middle and upper class Chinese. There's other good news in Asia for Fido.  Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos struck a deal to stop the trafficking of dogs for their meat. Killing and selling dogs for meat has been banned in the capital, Manila, for more than 30 years.  In the Philippines a nationwide ban on eating dog meat was enacted in 1998. 

Perhaps the ban in Taiwan will be the impetus to make Fido less tasty and more pet friendly. We in the west make distinctions from the chicken, beef, pork and lamb we munch on conscience free, and our pets. Dogs and cats are seen as more human like than as farm food.  That Asia is moving to that same perception shows the power of western culture to "consume" all others these days.

A Different Kind Of Mall Sale

The death spiral for malls in the U.S. continues. Ever since online buying took root it was inevitable that expensive to inhabit, own  and run shopping malls would fall out of fashion. Very few malls are built in the U.S. now, and m any of them are sparsely attended by shoppers, who prefer the click and buy procedure of online purchases. With more retail sellers having trouble making profit  and shuttering their stores across the U.S., some mall property owners and managers are trying to unload weak malls at a faster pace.
Irony of irony! The quickest and easiest way to do that, it turns out, is to sell their malls online.
The Wall Street Journal has reported on this phenomenon and one sale example is typical. In July, Midway Mall in Elyria, Ohio, was sold for $4.5 million by an online auction hosted by online real estate transaction marketplace. A privately owned real estate investment and management firm named Namdar Realty Group purchased the single story, 585,606-square-foot mall for $8 a square foot, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. The mall, built in 1965, was foreclosed on last year. It's a great price for a building of that size. No doubt some corporation will scoop up the mall and use it as a head quarter for their business.

Online auctions for properties like malls have evolved over the past five years. They have become more mainstream. In 2015 a total of 38 malls were closed and sold online. In 2016 it was a total of 68 malls were sold. What happens to the malls when sold? The answer is just about everything. Some become corporate offices, others change shopping areas into something that are based on a specific purpose, food for example. Where previously a mall was for shopping and food was to support customers' ability to stay in the mall longer, by turning that idea on its head, food selling is all those malls do now.

Others change their physical attractiveness, making stores inside face outward to the street with doors. That's supposed to make the former mall more fuzzy and attractive to shoppers in order to attract ore of them. The most radical mall makeover is to tear the down and build a city like environment that includes streets, stores and apartments. The shopping is built around the residents apartments who live there. In the end, the internet is killing another cultural habit, shopping at a mall. For we male anti shoppers, it's not a tragic death.

The Old Age Traansgender Life

I happened upon and watched part of a documentary on TV last night about a transgender beauty pageant in Thailand, I think it was called the Miss International Queen contest. It was interesting to see so many men who transition into beautiful women. Their stories told in the documentary were sometimes heart wrenching and at others hard to figure. But in every case there seemed to be an anxiety and insecurity, well deserved in a world that is mostly hostile to sex changes. To show the world is right the winner was from Thailand.

What I wondered when watching is what would life be like for those transgender contestants when they were old and did not have their beauty as a defense for their uncomfortable position in life as humans who were so uncomfortable as males that they felt the need to become women. As an old man I know life is not so easy when one ages. It must be far more difficult for the transgender person. When physical beauty gone, is the transgender person is disarmed somewhat against an often hostile world of non transgender persons?

I think one problem for old transgenders is that the society in which they life often do not provide the kind of old age programs that straight elderly people have. Too, I wonder if there is an understanding about how their body ages differently than non transgender people. I suspect they face discrimination from providers who are available to help them, making them a second in line person for social services for the aged. Do medical insurance companies and government programs exclude transgender services from their coverage? If so, then the transgender will probably not seek treatments for the common old age afflictions that, left untreated, can lead to an earlier death.

Also, what about the isolation effect? In the documentary many of the transgender contestants had boy friends or husbands who were enamored with them. But later in life when the beauty is gone, will there be more separations and divorces than in the straight old age population? Too, will they have family support? Pretty young transgenders are more equipped to handle adversity than old ones. With many family members turning against the transgender family member, there will undoubtedly be more isolation of the transgender from family than occurs in the old age population at large.

The transgender beauty pageant documentary was interesting, but I wonder if an even more interesting one would be the less sexy one on the fate of old aged transgenders. It's a subject that I have not seen addressed in the media.

From English To Spanlish

I'm having a harder time understanding English these days. I am not sure if it is my own fault, given my advancing age and unwillingness to pay even the slightest attention to what is new trendy or part of the popular culture. I know a language always changes, but isn't it supposed to be a slow and natural change?  When I hear some people speak or read what they write I have "duh" moments. New vocabulary, weird usage and context, slang and more confuse me.

There has always been a youth culture that is crime in changing vocabulary of a language, but now we have establishment types, particularly liberals who change language that doesn't fit their agenda. Also, business and technology have created a kind of language all its own. The mediums also produce rapid changes in language with their blending of technology with established communication mediums. All languages change, but the speed of the change varies greatly due to uniformity of political control. We seem to have little political control today. 

The English language today is changing faster today also because of those cell phones and because of social media. Both give people a chance to communicate away from the rest of society, to ignore the rules and vocabulary of it, and to create their own language on those platforms. I can't keep up with it because old people like me learn some of that new English, the language transforms more and leaves me more in the dark.  Twitter is a bizarre world for me.

Strangest of all is the new "picture" English, those emoticons defined by the smiley face, that so many have decided is better than the spoken or written word. How does one interpret a smiley face without the context of a sentence or the c voice to give contextual cues? Didn't cave men communicate with pictures like that?  Oh well, I supposed it's for the best.  I might retreat to a cave if this new English confounds me more in the future.

Old Things Are Better

I like old things and have many antiques (not counting me) in my home that I have never had a desire to change for modern furnishings. When those young brats snicker about their parents having a house filled with family furnishing that "looks like granny's" I simply smile and comment on their IKEA fashion style and am amused at the thought that their furniture ( IKEA style of cheap plastic and particle broad origin) will be worth little 250 or a hundred years from now, if it even exists then.  There is a reason people treasure old things when they are older. Not only is it that they like the familiarity, but they see from experience it is better quality and more interesting than mass produced furnishings.

I like furnishings that have an aesthetic appeal that is unrelated to time, to what is fashionable today.  Today's mass produced furniture is often like the Nehru jacket or leisure suit of my youth-- laughable. Some people believe that an object’s aesthetic value is a matter of personal taste. They are wrong. It must have universal appeal separate from time. Some pieces of art and furniture have almost universal aesthetic appeal.  You know right away that they have the "it" factor. Just go to a museum an look for awhile and you'll understand that.

Another thing that I like about older things is the rarity factor. If fewer were made (which is likely before machine made mass production made things more affordable, if also more ugly) and fewer still exist, I am likely to be attracted to it. Also, if it is of uncommon style or shape and has not been copied so much that it has been cheapened by imitation, I'll probably like it.

But really, for me it is the craftsmanship that appeals to me. When I see a well formed old furnishing my imagination takes me to that time, to the person I imagine made it and to those who I imagine loved it in their own home. It connects me to the past in this current age in which the past is seen as annoying or irrelevant. It lets me thumb my nose at the IKEA generation and all the crassness that it represents. It assures me that humans are capable of better than cell phones and other electronic time wasting garbage that so many find dear

Brain Writing

The latest proposed improvement in communication seems almost like an episode from a futuristic science fiction film. Face book is exploring a silent speech system with a team of more than 60 scientists that would let people type 100 words per minute with their brain. Yep! They want the brain to type instead of the hands or voice. Good luck to them in getting my brain to even wake up. It's asleep most of the time.

Supposedly, the technology is almost ready and in a  few years could be tested on those who are paralyzed and can not speak or move their hands. This is legit. Face book is working with scientists, engineers and system integrators from UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who specialize in machine learning methods for decoding speech and language.

Already Face book knows too much about us. I am not sure if many people want them to read our brains and types what we are thinking. Face book is not alone in trying to merge the brain with its technology to do...whatever it is they want.  Just think if we could read what a person is thinking. I propose that all politicians be hooked up to those machines so we can finally know how much they are lying to us. But I am not sure I want Hillary Clinton hooked up. The number of lies coming from her might destroy what little brain matter she  has left. And Donald Trump's brain would confuse any truth verification system because it would change its mind every few minutes.

The bigger and more serious question is why we would want to do this? Is it not better to leave technology out of such things? Is the benefit for most of us less than the cost? I wonder if we are a technologically mad. Has technology become God to some? Sometimes human limitation is better than human excess. Not being able to do something is better than being able to do miraculous things that hurt others. What's next? Maybe a machine that wipes our butts and laughs and smiles for us?

Bath Time

I read  a story (odd one that must have been a slow news day and it was used as a filler) in my newspaper about bathing, more specifically what would happen to a person who did not bathe or shower for one year. In past times bathing was rare, particularly in the west. Most bathing was public and very infrequent. But today were are "enlightened" and cleaner. What if a person today stopped bathing regularly, or even for a solid year?  Dermatologists were consulted about this no baths for a year thing, and they gave a typical scenario for not bathing.  Actually, it's more obvious what would happen to the uncleaned one than the more perplexing question of , "Why would anyone not bathe for a year"? According the the experts, here's what would happen.

First you would smell from both the bacteria and the dead skins that sits on your carcass. After a year you'd have a build-up of that "skin stratum corneum" (that's the dead skin on top of your skin. Next your skin would become oily or dry and become infected with fungus or yeast and then bacteria. The dirt on the skin could then cause warty growths, particularly on your underarms, behind the ears, on the neck and under a woman's breasts. The body's dead skin normally rises to the surface and is flaked off through normal washing, When that stops, the dead skin clumps together with your body's oils. The clumps would grow in patches and take on a brown hue once they collect dirt and other pollutants.

Ugh.... let me be less specific with some of the other non bathing effects, because this is disgusting enough. Next, you'd get infections and become very itchy (like from the dandruff we fight from time to time) and you would get acne and puss bumps on your body. The experts also say your "groin area' would be impacted greatly, getting itchy and red to burning and painful. No Saturday night dates for you! Among the other things that would happen is to develop scum between your toes (toe cheese, personified) and after all this when you would finally be motivated to take a bat, it would take weeks for you to return to normal hygiene.

Wow! It's pretty grim but no psychologically stable person would not bathe for a year.  What about mom saying that if you don't bathe every day you'll turn into pigpen from Peanuts?  The dermatologists say that showering every day is unnecessary. Mom lied to us! Every two, three or even four days is supposedly acceptable as long as you don't stink up the place. Generally, the organisms naturally found on her skin protect us from picking up harmful germs for a couple of days......Unless you are a person with fragile immune systems( newborns, the elderly and people suffering from cancer etc.) you better turn on your bath water tonight.

Favorite Christmas Movies

Christmas is about overkill. Everything tied to the holiday is overdone, but I love it. What a catharsis Christmas can be. We do benefit when we step out of what is normal and pretend a bit. At Christmas there is a great way to escape the humdrum of life. Its the Christmas movie. There are more Christmas movies than one can imagine. Many are sappy, most are formula, but some are enthralling to watch. There is even a TV channel in the U.S. that runs Christmas movies non stop, 24 hours a day every day in November and December.

Forget the bad ones, the too predictable or familiar ones. Today I will give you a few recommendations for best Christmas movies to watch this holiday season. Most of them are older films, made in a more innocent age. Innocent ages produce good innocent films, as in the Christmas genre. One of the best is the showcase of Irving Berlin songs called, Holiday Inn.  It's a classic 1942 film that is not dated. Those who love music will love the songs and elaborate dance numbers of Holiday Inn. On of the greatest Christmas crooners of all time, Bing Crosby is one of the stars of Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn was so good that 12 years later another Christmas movie based on Irving Berlin songs, 'White Christmas,' was made. That one is also a classic Christmas musical.

Who can forget James Stewart's portrayal of George Bailey in 'It's A Wonderful Life'? The movie was a low budget flop at the box office, but its themes of caring, thoughtfulness and sacrifice, along with the George's silly guardian angel, touches the heart and soul of everyone. Most critics consider It's A Wonderful Life the best Christmas movie of all time But 'Miracle on 34th Street' (1947) is another classic, a cute story of a small child who learns that there is a Santa Claus and that the real Santa is far better than the abstraction we hear about every Christmas season.
The Charles Dickens classic Christmas story, Scrooge has been made into a movie countless times, but the best adaptation of Charles Dickens' legendary tale is the black and white 1951 feature about nasty miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Alastair Sim  is the perfect Scrooge who's visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future and learns it's never too late to stop behaving like Hillary Clinton and to stop Bah Humbugging life.

If you hate Christmas and all the traditions with it, especially that fat guy in the Santa suit, there is also a Christmas film for you. It's Billy Bob Thornton's drunken Santa Claus, a thieving department store Santa he is with a crazy elf sidekick.  It's Nasty deviancy into the Yuletide season for Christmas haters and everybody who likes to laugh.

Then there are the animated Christmas cartoons. Try the 1965 'It's a Charlie Brown Christmas', which brings to life the great Charles Schultz 'Peanuts' comic strip characters, the 1965 island of misfit toys in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer' with Burl Ives singing badly off key but in an enchanting way. But my favorite Christmas animated cartoon is the Boris Karloff narrated (Yes, the Frankenstein guy) animated special 'The Grinch That Stole Christmas'. It's a great adaptation of the Dr. Seuss fable about a cave dwelling sourpuss grinch trying to ruin the holidays for all the Who people who live down the mountain in Whoville.

There are so many more great Christmas films, but I leave you with the campiest and most amusing of all, the 1964 'Santa Claus Captues the Martians'. Here's the premise....Martian children complain about not celebrating Christmas. So their parents do what any self-respecting extraterrestrials would. They kidnap the jolly old elf. This is so bad it's great. I suspect it is the Christmas season's campiest classic. As they say on Mars, Ho Ho Ho to all the Christmas movie favorites..

The Punching Parent

My local newspaper has a story about my nominee for worst dad of the year. One Juan Lopez-Alvarado was booked into where he belongs, a jail cell, with second degree cruelty to a juvenile, after police say he punched his 14-year-old daughter in the face, knocking her unconscious, because she was being disrespectful, according to authorities.

Lopez-Alvarado was arguing with his daughter around 11 p.m. Sunday at home about chores he said he assigned her when he got angry and began punching her in the face. The girl lost consciousness and when deputies arrived, they found her hysterically crying on the sidewalk outside the residence. She was bleeding from both her nose and mouth. Deputies at first suspected the girl's jaw and nose might be broken because she couldn't close her mouth and her nose looked disfigured. Doctors later determined she had a concussion, bruising and cuts to her face but no broken bones. Bully dad admitted hitting his daughter, telling investigators he did so because she would not listen. Wow! I thought it was the job of teens to sometimes not listen to their parents. Isn't that the normal learning curve for kids?

Well, at least the punching dad didn't shoot her, but then there is still time for that, I suppose. Obviously, the judge in this case needs to have Lopez evaluated for psychological problems and be given an IQ test to determine if either of those factors explains his bizarre behavior. I wonder too what less the girl learned from this. Will she have learned to also use the knockout punch for her own future children? What does this and the many other examples of parenting dysfunction that we see say about the future of society?

A child is spoiled by lack of genuine parental involvement.  Nothing gets spoiled by love.  Lack of consequences for any behavior whatsoever is not love. But violence is not discipline. Good behavior is most often learned from what the parent shows the child through the parent's behavior. Unfortunately, Lopez-Alvarado has already shown his daughter several lessons that tell her he is a bully, is ignorant, and that he is unworthy to be around any child, much less parent one. The punching parent is in jail but I doubt if he will punch anyone there. The inmates are not 14 year old girls.

Black Friday

Friday, November 24th is Black Friday. That's the day after Thanksgiving Day, the day that retailers have historically set to attract consumers to their stores to sell them the junk they think they need themselves, but really hate to buy in order to give to Uncle Claude and Aunt Anettte. Because they would like to keep the purchase themselves instead of giving them as Christmas presents and would like to keep the money they are spending on other people, Black Friday shoppers can be an unpleasant lot. Black Friday is somewhat like the Catholic 'Holy Day of Obligation'. You hate being there but you are afraid of some punishment (as in no more of those trendy presents available to give if you wait until after Black Friday to buy your gifts)  if you get a hold of your reason and stay home on that maniacal shopping spree day.

But alas! To get those great shopping day sales the day after Thanksgiving on Black Friday one need not go any longer to the mall. The consumer can now buy on line, and some Black Friday sales start as much as a week or two before Black Friday itself. Yep! The greed of the sellers for profits and those computers that consumers can use to avoid fist fights with crazed shoppers wrestling over the child toy their kid says he has to have to sustain life, are perhaps denting the Black Friday tradition by making it a more than one day event.

In truth, the sales on Black Friday are attractive for some loss leader sale items. But overall, the days before Christmas that are closer to Christmas than is Black Friday itself have always offered the best sales for buyers. Still, some shoppers love the mall experience of Black Friday. It's a sport for them, one in which they are winners or losers based on how much of their money they spend on presents fro people they often dislike. Too, apparently just thinking you are getting a great deal is actually better for the soul than really waiting to buy Christmas gifts later when prices are lower and conditions for shopping are much more comfortable.

The biggest malls all across the U.S. are digging deep into their pockets to attract customers for Black Friday sale day, rolling out everything from winter castles and Santa sightings to gingerbread making classes and temporary skating rinks to turkey at the food court instead of at grandma's house. But Black Friday is one day for a little more traffic and more interest awakening in those shoppers. It may encourage them to re visit the mall another time. In the end the reality is that most consumers nowadays intend to do at least some portion of their holiday shopping online, many malls will be happy if the Black Friday shoppers  just make a few extra impulse purchases on Black Friday. May all your Black Friday gifts not be ugly Christmas sweaters

Sex Bots Coming Soon

Technology is about to bring to market the usable Sex Bot. Experts say that the Sex Bot, Robots that are mostly female in appearance that are made to react sexually with humans, will be the next common thing in society. As they become more life-like mans best friend may not be a dog or a woman, but rather a sexy compliant robot. Of course there will also be male Robots made for the ladies, but women are the more sensible and emotional of the sexes. That may much farther down the line. Sigh (I am sighing because I am too old and will likely never see the Sex Bot).

Designers are already creating moving robotic sex dolls powered by speech recognition and chat "bot conversations". (Let's hope none will be programmed to see a male to turn off the football game and take Robot for some mall shopping). The biggest doubt is not the morality of sex with dolls. It's whether intimacy with robots, for example, lead to social isolation? It might be that a sexy and life-like Sex Bot who fulfills every male fantasy is preferable to a real live woman who badgers her husband to take out the garbage.

Could a too ideal fantasy Sex Bot make men more attracted to Sex Bots than to real women? And the same eventually could be in the cards as the dilemma for women who might prefer a sexy male Sex Bot to a smelly, beer swilling real live male partner. We  already see how humans of both sexes today are already too often in love with their cell phones. Just imagine a cell phone that looks like a run way model and complies to every wish and demand of the owner of it. We might become a society that is isolated from humans and addicted to robots for even emotional sustenance.

That is a recipe for psychological problems for individuals and the society as a whole. Further, it may be that allowing people to live out their darkest fantasies with sex robots could have a pathological effect on society and societal norms and create more danger for the vulnerable. Would it actually increase the desire to sexually assault live humans or reduce that threat? Who knows. (Maybe Harvey Weinstein might know the answer?)

On a more serious note, Sex Bots might become a kind of sexual therapy for people who are isolated sexually, have emotional problems preventing real  sexual relationships with humans, or physical disabilities that confine them. To be or not to be a Sex Bot user may be become the next question. I'm glad I won't be alive to see it asked.

Is It Christmas Yet?

I now have my Christmas music station playing on my computer. That means it is officially Christmas season for me.  The songs are often sappy, but sometimes we need sap, plenty of it. Humans endure so much reality all year long they have invented a Christmas season way over the top, from over decorated department stores in October to the materialism that seems to define the holiday season. But there is much to like about Christmas. maybe that's why even the atheists and cultures unrelated to Christ share in some form of celebration this time of the year. After all, as the song says, "We need a little Christmas".

Now in my aged years one aspect of the Christmas season I most appreciate is the nostalgia, the memories of past Christmas times, those years when we were young and stupid but happier and more optimistic about the future. The human mind seems to create the memories that are needed for stability. As we age we have many memories of Christmas that come forth. The irony is when those memories were made we never had any idea they would be so important to us in our last years of life. Growing old is easier for those who can remember the exuberance of our youth. It does seem that at Christmas more of our memories are good than bad ones.

It is often said that we are all young, all children at Christmas. I am not sure that is true, but I feel sorry for those of us who won't at least try that prescription. As another song says, "Toy Land, Toy Land....once you have been there you will never want to return again". How many of our Christmas memories are those of our childhood, the toys, the family,  decorations, Santa Claus, all those Christmas traditions we thought would never die but have because time eventually kills everything. We even fondly remember cantankerous old Uncle Claude. Maybe that itself is one of those Christmas miracles.

I suspect that when we lose those memories or at least our desire to retrieve them at Christmas time, that it is a sign we are ready to end out life. When we don't have memories we fail to create any new ones.  Without Christmas memories I think the point of my life would be hard to understand. May all your Christmas memories this year, both old and new ones, be treasures.

Liberal Arts Back In Fashion

Mark Cuban, a billionaire investor recently said something I have thought for some time was true. That is, the future for young students may not be in studying technological courses, but instead, majoring in liberal arts. He said that in the next 10 years  there will be more demand for liberal arts graduates than will be for programming majors and maybe even engineering, because when the data that is everywhere today  is being spit out, options are also being spit out that need a different perspective in order to have a different view of the data. And so having someone who can write and express him or herself beyond Twitter language mode and who is more of a freer thinker is going to be the greatest need.

Cuban is referencing the so called "soft skills' that today are looked upon with derision by those who think their latest cell phone app or whatever new technology they lust over is the core of humanity. Soft skills like adaptability and communication, will have the advantage in an automated workforce. Cuban said English literature, philosophy, and foreign language majors as just some of the majors that will do well in the future job market. "The nature of jobs is changing," Cuban said. Yes, but will humans who are addicted to time wasting, silly technology change fast enough to meet the coming demands?

So creativity and the ability to communicate clearly (that means none of the idiotic nerd language we are force fed  and rarely are able to understand when we use technology today) will return to style. Thank God for that! Linguistic and cultural literature today is abysmal. The liberal arts curriculum teaches one how to think, not what to think. Is that not what the deepest learning is about? Already, throughout the major U.S. tech hubs, whether Silicon Valley or Seattle, Boston or Austin, Tex., software companies are using more and more liberal art grads to create the ideas that male all that technology seem  usable and desirable.

Gee, now I think I am glad that I am a Luddite in a technological world.

Turkey Times

Given that in the United States November is when the Thanksgiving mandate to eat turkey on the last Thursday of the month is an American law (well, it seems to be so), I thought I would make some more of my typically stupid remarks, this time about about cooking turkeys. Cooked turkeys are a mystery because they are mostly dry but sometimes are a moist tasting meat. Turkeys were first domesticated in Mexico and Central America, and  remain common as a food source here in the U.S.

But not every consumer is convinced that eating turkey is not like chewing on rubber.  The fact that the turkey is ubiquitous and inexpensive keeps the turkey available for meals all year round. We see in our supermarkets ground turkey, turkey legs, turkey sausage, turkey TV dinners (the first TV dinner every sold features sliced turkey as the attraction) and on and on. The problem with turkey as a human food source is it is a dry meat. There is just too little fat on the turkey to make it easy to cook without turning it into rubber.

The traditional roast in an oven approach is often unimpressive. The result is an endless array of cooking methods for cooking turkey. My personal favorite is the time consuming, messy, charcoal smoking of a turkey for 8 hours  But who wants to work that hard for sliced turkey? My native Louisiana Cajuns are the inventors of the deep fried turkey craze that produces a mediocre bird if not done with expertise. I never eat fried turkeys. Forget all the turkey cooking methods! That ideal turkey does not exist, or at least is not approachable without a food stylist, Photo shop, and glossy magazine article that shows a fake turkey that looks delicious.

Cooking a turkey is such an impossible task that entire industries have come into existence to trick the cook into thinking otherwise. Grocery and specialty cooking stores break out shelves of specialty equipment every fall when frozen turkeys hit grocery stores priced so low that we all become one of those "suckers born every minute" and purchase them. Phone numbers that are turkey hot lines for the beleaguered turkey cook are manned throughout the holiday to provide instant help. Cooks ask. Should I brine it? Do I stuff it? Maybe I cook it upside down? Can I use a rub? How often should I baste?  What if we deep fry our turkey? (I can answer that one... you'll be sorry  if you do!)

I have found the solution to the turkey cooking/eating problem. It's quite simple. Don't be a turkey at Thanksgiving time. Forget the turkey this Thanksgiving and instead make your self a bologna sandwich.  Even I couldn't mess that up.

Pop Music Fizzles For Me

I know I am out of touch with pop culture. My age insists it is so, and I am glad. I find most of it not only confusing and uninteresting  but crass, crude and lacking in substance. The worst of it for me is popular music. I left the pop music audience many years ago. If I am assaulted by pop music on the street, in an elevator or anywhere outside my home, since I won't play it there, my reaction is usually "that is awful noise". Gee, I wish they would bring back the Beatles.

A good example of a reason for my flight from modern music is the headline I saw at an online newspaper today. It said "Drake to headline....." The guy must be a singer because he had a microphone in his hand in the accompanying photo and it looked like he was crooning (we oldies call singing crooning because they used to do that in ancient times). Anyway, I am unfamiliar with Drake and a multitude of other pop singers today. The only thing that interests me about Drake is that he seems to have lost or forgotten his last name. Maybe he is one of those one name performers or maybe his mom told him to stop embarrassing her with his singing. "Don't use the family name, Drake"...or something.

There are a lot of one name singers I only know by their name because I don't listen to them sing. Maybe I would like them if I did, but I am uninterested in listening to anyone with less than to word in their name. Some of the one namers I have never heard sing, but know of the media swooning over them and speaking their one name are: Bork, 50 Cent (Huh?),  Beck, Mario, Coolio (maybe his parents were drunk when they name him), Flea (I'd rather scratch than listen to him), Xzbit (how do you pronounce that one?) Nelly, Shakia and on and on.

There are some one names I know because they have been persistent in their careers. Beyonce' is a good example. I don't want to hear her sing after listening to a filth monologue that declared her hate for police, whites and anything not related to the "black experience'. It's odd how she and other black performers express so much hatred for other races and yet are popular with young people who are members of the races they hate. I once saw an interview with Beyonce' and was startled at how inarticulate and uneducated she sounded. yet she is a beacon of modern culture, someone who leads.

Music is supposed to reflect the culture and civilization from which it comes. God help us if that is so. No wonder it is often said that music should be listened to and not analyzed. Anyone my age trying to analyze modern pop music has my best wishes, but when they take rest breaks I recommend they spin a few Beatle records to bring back their sanity.

Molesting Us With Too Much Molestation News

Have you been accused of sexual assault lately? Well, if not don't worry. There's still plenty of time for it to happen. It seems that the entire front page of my daily newspaper is a sex assault reports. Women and some men....and some of those "other sexes' are all coming out of the closet to announce that they were victims, usually at the hands of some Hollywood type or politician. Since we think so little of Hollywood and of politicians it's not entirely painful to see. But when Sulu of the original Star Trek TV show was accused of pulling down the pants of a young male model 25 years ago I was ready to aim a phaser gun at the accuser. Captain Kirk! Please bring some order to this strange new world called earth (but only if you didn't also molest).

It is a tragedy when one person sexually assaults another or when one falsely accuses the same. But I get the idea! Do I have to read of another assault? It's starting to assault me and make me think I am in danger of a Sulu attack myself. I also wonder what constitutes a sexual assault. At the moment the term is quite broadly defined. Some accusers state they were raped or groped, clearly real assault, but others complain that another person "touched me" or said "unkind words to me that had sexual references". I suspect the later is best left off the front page. Also, I prefer not to read of those incidents and instead let the district attorney of the locale where they were alleged to have happened, do the investigation and file charges when appropriate.

When news mediums become infatuated with the latest sexual assault charge they tend to forget more important news, that is news that personally impacts us all. My own standard for what is newsworthy is that which is 1) something I need to know and 2) something that affects me. The feeding frenzy on sexual abuse allegations most often fails that standard. But we are living in the excess information age, the fake news and saturated news platform era. Whatever is shocking is newsworthy now. Thanks, Internet! (note that I sighed at this point).

I do hope soon that the molestation news obsession will fade and be replaced by real news. Hey! I have an idea. Just to make the transition smooth, perhaps President Trump can claim that while in Asia for a meeting, that he was patted on the butt by the Chinese premier. Ugh...no pictures are need of that.