Opinions, Assholes, and Whatever Floats Your Boat

July 1, 2015Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I can’t help it. But if the cars/owners involved were Camaros or Corvettes, that would be even funnier.

I don’t think that I will ever be shocked again. It’s been awhile since anything really shocked me. There aren’t too many things that really rattle me. The problem is that the things that do rattle me really rattle me.

With the exception of rare genetic or congenital anomalies, gender is male or female.

Pick one. Preferably the one that matches your plumbing.

I can’t say that I am celebrating in the streets or bathing my profile pic in a rainbow colored filter on Facebook. Nor am I shouting doom and gloom and proclaiming the end of the world because now Adam and Steve (or Annie and Eve) can get “married.” Personally I believe that same sex relations are wrong in any context (and to me, positively vile)- but so are opposite sex relations out of their proper context (but I’ve been there with the heterosexual fornication and done that, hypocrite that I can be.) I am not the Judge, nor do I want to be. I’m guilty of “doing it wrong” too, just in a different way.

Two dudes. Wonder who will clean up the piss splatters around the john?

However, I don’t make a hobby of rubbing my straightness in everyone’s face and Making Them Like It. I even use the term straightness almost lightly, as “asexual” is probably closer to what I am now. I really don’t have any desire for physical contact with anyone. I don’t like strange people touching me, and it’s been more years than I’d like to admit since I did anything other than sleep (or watch TV) in bed. The older I get the more averse to such things I become.

Even so, if you have found your “soulmate,” and you want to have at it like rabbits in heat, whether it be male, female, mechanical, inflatable, or gerbil, I don’t care. Maybe I am a bitter, old, frustrated bitty, but I just don’t want to hear about it. That’s in the same category as wondering whether or not your grandparents still have sex. Some things should remain a mystery.

I don’t care if you have the hots for a ’93 Ford Escort. I really don’t care how people get their jollies for the most part, or who they choose to land in bed with, or why.

It only bothers me when you expect me to call it normal.

You celebrate your holidays, I’ll celebrate mine.

I do have to wonder about the World Rabies Day thing. Is this observation a call to inform people about rabies and to prevent the spread of rabies? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to celebrate Rabies, but there are some real freaks out there.

In all seriousness, I don’t believe anything good or healthy is going to come out of legalizing same-sex marriage. I don’t think it’s healthy to teach children that this an acceptable lifestyle. I don’t want my grandchild witnessing gay groping and make-out fests in public. Celebrating same-sex attraction to me is sort of like celebrating heart disease or cancer- or getting excited about rabies. We know things like heart disease or cancer or some things that some people do in the bedroom (gay OR straight) are not good for you, and eventually any of those things can kill you- but then human beings can be destroyed by things that society has traditionally condoned.

For instance, overwork can kill you- (been really close to that one) but nobody has ever gone to great lengths to morally condemn those who live to work even though that can be just as much idolatry- and positively poison to your physical, spiritual and mental health as anything else. Nobody really puts up an argument to exclude or demonize the addicted-to-work. Especially when that work-addicted person is doing your work for you.

Overeating can kill you- and gluttony is a sin- but do we actively seek to exclude and shame the fat? If fat shaming really worked, we would be a nation of Calista Flockharts, and I don’t see that happening.

Fanny is allowed to experience the feline lifestyle. Fat and lazy is OK- for cats.

Perhaps the silver lining in the gay marriage movement is maybe the whole gay pride in-your-face attitude will become passé and less “trendy” now that it’s legal. Nothing serves so much as a buzz kill than making something once forbidden legitimate.

Maybe that’s why I pretty much gave up binge drinking by age 23.

Sometimes Mom does not realize the absolutely horrendous double entendre she brings up.

Fascinatingly Horrible, a Painful and Awe-Inspiring Truth, and a Silent Witness

May 21, 2015Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I’ve often wondered when it comes to abandoned cars- why this particular dying place?

I find entropy fascinatingly horrible. Part of me doesn’t want to watch the process of death, decomposition and/or decay, but at times I am almost compelled to do so, because there’s also a strange and captivating beauty in it.

Perhaps my fascination with old and decomposing things lies in the knowledge that somewhere, in a better time, those things were once new and whole.

I could get lost in a place like this. Intentionally.

I don’t like what this world has turned into, at least culturally, and the turning began years-decades, actually- before I was born. Not all change is bad of course, but the moral and cultural disintegration of society is definitely a negative change as far as I’m concerned. I’ve said it before: Orwell’s 1984 was meant to serve as a warning, not an instruction manual. I think Orwell would be spinning in his grave if he could see just how eerily true his observations have become.

All the freaking time. Just look up at all the traffic cameras.

I do appreciate many technological advancements- in fact I would probably been long dead without a fair number of mid-20th century medical advances. Most likely I’d never lived beyond infancy, for good or for ill. And being the third (unwanted female to boot) of three, they’d probably never even bothered spending the scratch on the post mortem pic.

Once you’ve had three kids, don’t they all sort of look alike?

Anyone old enough to have ever had to mess with a broken cassette tape or who has been stranded miles away from a phone gets what I’m saying about technology. If we could have the technology without the dumb shit, and without the social and moral atrophy that seems to come along with it, perhaps utopia could be achieved!

I am not nearly that naïve. (Back to Orwell and Animal Farm and the time honored truth that some pigs are more equal than others.)

Of course, we all know that there is no such thing as a perfect world. In fact, I honestly believe in the devolution of humanity.

If only people knew… the VW “Thing” was a thinly disguised Kübelwagen.

And the whole Volkswagen concept was brewed up by Adolf Hitler.

I’ve commented many times on the strange beauty of abandoned machinery, and also of the concept that there might really be literal deus ex machina or real “gods in the machines.”

I can only imagine the silent witness written in cold, dead steel, and what does it have to say?

Sort of like a post mortem for an old, old VW Transporter.

The reality of the Transporters was (and is) that these are pretty much only meant to be owned and operated by technicians capable of repairing them.

Orwell Was Right, (1984 Was Not Supposed to Be an Instruction Manual) and Adventures of the Inane

April 6, 2015Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

Every day, all the time.

When I got rear-ended in my 2008 Yaris, back in 2010, I had every single ambulance-chasing lawyer in Franklin County sending me all sorts of crap- in the postal mail, via e-mail and yes, even by calling and leaving obnoxious messages on my cell phone about how I need to contact their particular legal emporiums to get compensation for my non-existent “injuries.” All I wanted was to get my car fixed. Had I actually been injured, that would have been one thing, but I think had I been injured I’d been wise enough to seek out appropriate legal counsel without relying on ambulance chasers who solicit business by trolling the police reports.

That really sucked, but the car did what it was designed to do. I was unscathed.

Of course it never seems like the Entities that Be know anything important about you if they really need to, as evidenced by the “How’s Your Diarrhea, Mildred” Incident of 2012. I won’t claim that even at that time I looked “well preserved” for 43, but to be mistaken for a ninety-something named Mildred, well, that was both disarming and morbidly funny at the same time. I guess it was a good thing I was lucid and verbal. But if the health care industry (and business is what it’s all about, folks, it’s all about the MONEY,) really gave two farts in a high wind about something other than dollar signs, they might actually be more concerned with caring for people rather than being sure to collect beaucoup on every warm (or cold, for that matter) carcass that darkens their doors.

I have a great deal of cynicism toward the health care industry. In large part the government is behind the incredibly inefficient and expensive health care fiasco in the United States. It was bad before Obamacare, but with Obamacare it has become even more outrageously expensive, while the quality of care grows abysmally worse. The problem is that the government butted into health care to begin with- and that there are way too many special interests who have wormed their way into the government so they can line their own pockets- at the taxpayers’ expense. Nobody dares to address tort reform, which would lower health care costs by drastically restricting payouts to ambulance-chasing lawyers and their clients. Nobody dares to embrace the free market and encourage competition in health care- instead- it is a governmentally driven oligarchy hell bent on feeding itself while providing lackluster, substandard care at grossly inflated prices.

If any other industry treated their clients as piss-poorly as the health care industry does, they would be out of business- but since health care providers are pretty much equally over priced and equally abysmal in their standards of care, where else can one go, because they will all suck equally bad? You just have to put up with it, and keep writing those grossly inflated checks.

You would also think with all those bloody forms one has to fill out every freaking time one encounters a health care provider, that they might actually keep some of that crap on file. If you can access my social security number and birthdate and location of my first-born to be sure to avail every possible opportunity to bill me and/or the insurance company, then why can’t you find my history with the same information?

Better yet, with all the technology out there, why has no one figured out a way to keep people from having to sit in a crowded, hot hole crammed in next to Typhoid Mary, Bad Body Odor Larry, and Gonorrhea Shaniqua- a crowded, hot hole with nothing to read besides last year’s Hemorrhoid Monthlys and Urology Digests, where there’s nothing on TV but the “who’s my baby daddy” tabloid type shows, while waiting for hours to get maybe three minutes of face time with some guy who (if you’re lucky) is simply going to write you a script and send you home? If that’s all there is to the medical biz, and you’re going to rape me financially anyway, as long as nothing’s bleeding or broken, why can’t we just do it online and save my time?

I am not a big fan of surveillance cameras. Their indiscriminate use seems to violate the 4th Amendment as far as I’m concerned.

To the state of Ohio’s credit, they have ruled the red-light cameras unconstitutional, but any form of random surveillance (without probable cause) in the public sphere violates the 4th Amendment whether they’re trying to entrap criminals or not.

Since very few people bother to actually read the Constitution, here’s the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I do consider constant surveillance to be a violation because who really has the right (or should have the right) to watch your comings and goings? There are “traffic flow” cameras all over the intersection not even a block from my house. Where is there probable cause for anyone other than me to know where my particular black Corolla is at any particular time? Maybe I could see it if the cops knew I was out committing crimes, or if I had a history of crime, but what makes random surveillance any better? Just because they’re watching everyone it makes watching one person OK? Is random search a condition of using public roadways paid for in part by my taxes? That doesn’t seem quite right.

Better yet, I must say to the various and sundry government entities with the cameras: “Why are you randomly searching me?”

I bet this bumper sticker would arouse the attention of law enforcement.

Yes I Am Female, Shopping for Funky Shoes, and Men in the Women’s Locker Room

March 18, 2015Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

Big meaty man hands, but what can I do?

I am not a typical female, but I never claimed to be typical. I generally get along better with men than I do with women, because I tend not to be weepy and emotional like most women. I also get into “manly” things like cars and heavy metal/hard rock music. I’m more like one of the guys in a lot of ways- but I’m far from butch. (Yes, I am very much a biological and a straight female, should anyone even think to wonder.)

In spite of my mostly logical and practical self, I do have a weakness that is well known among women. I love shoes. I have over 100 pairs of shoes (that probably shouldn’t be considered a bragging point) and I have some pretty funky ones. Sunday I was out with Steve-o as he had pretty much trashed his one regular pair of shoes, a rather distressed pair of DCs. He had decided he just had to have a pair of the new Nike Airmax shoes but he wanted them in sort of a (ha-ha) conservative color. He does not like bright colors and bold patterns the way that I do.

So dragging me into a shoe store is generally not a good idea, because I will find the one over-the-top shoe style, and they will inevitably have it in a size 7. Even if they don’t, I will find a way to order it in a size 7 if I want it bad enough.

While Steve-o is mulling over the various black shoes in his size (and really having a hard time finding an Airmax shoe in his size that wasn’t neon green and/or pink or rainbow colored) I spied the ultimate pair of Nike Shox.

Wanna get ’em. Gotta have ’em. They are on the way.

As Steve-o decided he wanted the shoes he tried on at the other store, I thought I would behave myself and not buy anything. I didn’t- then. I ordered them yesterday online.

He ended up with black and orange Airmax shoes.

Similar to these- fairly dude friendly.

I saw a protest on Facebook (and when isn’t there a protest on Facebook) against some health club called Planet Fitness. Apparently men are allowed in the women’s locker room if they “identify” as women- even if they have a sausage and two meatballs. Okay… and if I “identify” as Marilyn Monroe- or Marilyn Manson should I want to be catty- does that make it so? If my black cat Jezebel “identifies” as a dog, does that make her one?

Planet Fitness is committed to creating a non-intimidating, welcoming environment for our members. Our gender identity non-discrimination policy states that members and guests may use all gym facilities based on their sincere self-reported gender identity.

WTF- piece of politically correct drivel?!

As a woman who is really not into strange people getting off on staring at me in varying states of undress, and I am certainly not into unauthorized people touching me- male or female, this joint sounds like a place for women to avoid.

Unless of course, I want to pretend I “identify as a man,” so I can go on in the men’s locker room and enjoy the sausage show.

I bet the boys would really enjoy my old cougar ass checking out the buff young studs. I bet that policy would change with the quickness.

As far as locker rooms go I am all about the modesty factor. I don’t want anyone gazing at my train wreck of a body- especially women because to me that’s ultra mega creepy- so I get dressed in the cubby behind the curtain. That way it really doesn’t matter who “identifies” as what. They can “identify” as a 1993 Ford Escort for all I care as long as I’m left out of it. I “identify” as a woman who doesn’t want strange people -male or female- looking at my nakedness, and is against strange people-male or female- touching me. See how easy that is?

Here’s my latest cross stitch work in progress. Yes, it is relevant!

Blessed Be the Automotive Technicians, and More Unconventional Prayers

March 3, 2015Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

Shame on me for what was running through my mind last night when Pastor was talking about how being an automotive technician must really be a calling from God. I was giggling to myself. Yes, it is, when you stop and really think about it, but my mind is a bit jaded from being around these guys for so many years.

I guess I never really thought of technicians as having a calling, or a sacred trust, even though I have read some of what Martin Luther wrote on vocation. I grew up in and around automotive shops, and let’s just say the experience didn’t feel exceptionally holy. When the name of God was mentioned, it was usually followed by the word “damn.” Dad isn’t a particularly salty dog with language- he did try to clean it up around women, anyway, but all of his friends were. One of them (and yes, being the geeky little creature I was, I counted) managed to use a certain four letter word that starts with the letter “f” an amazing thirteen times in one sentence.

Dad had a good friend who was into really primo vintage VW restorations. The man’s body work was absolutely pristine- but his private shop where he did the restoration work was completely wallpapered on the inside with nudie pictures. They weren’t tasteful nudies, either. These were porn-star nudies in filthy poses. Worse yet, at least for me, all the nudies were women, and therefore not particularly aesthetically pleasing to me. But it was his shop, and boys will be boys. I’ve supervised technicians before, so I get it. It’s like running a day care, only not nearly as cute. Many of these “boys,” in spite of their knowledge, training, and areas of technical prowess, have an emotional maturity age of right around 12.

Until the mid 1990s or so it was common practice for parts stores and automotive suppliers to sponsor and give out promotional calendars with either completely naked women or very scantily clad ones. Those sort of things don’t really offend me as such- what else would Dad’s buddy use to wallpaper his shop walls-but the promotional nudie calendar fell out of favor probably as a casualty to political correctness. Sometimes women do venture back into the nether regions of an automotive shop, and we wouldn’t want to offend their virgin eyeballs, I guess.

I don’t believe in political correctness. I’m more of the type to say, “If you don’t like it, don’t look at it,” even when it applies to tasteless nudie calendars.

If you don’t like my Ronald Reagan calendar (and yes, I really do have a calendar from the Reagan Ranch) nobody said you had to look at it. I am more tolerant than maybe I should be in some ways, but there are some battles worth fighting, and some battles that I’ll gladly concede to avoid the conflict.

Protect your chili dog.

I knew of one techie who would grab a big bag of chow (or two) from Burger King every day. He was a tiny, wiry red-headed dude (somewhat reminiscent of a 5’1″, 90# version of the Burger King, interestingly enough) who would pack down about 5,000 calories or so worth of Whoppers, fries and other delectables every lunch hour. The pisser was that he was the transmission guy (a very busy guy, back in the days of the 700R4s and their constant meltdowns) and he never bothered to wash the ATF and/or CV grease and/or U joint lube off his hands before stuffing those Whoppers down his throat.

Greasy burger with a side of Dexron III. Yum. Maybe it was the Dexron III that kept him from gaining weight. Or maybe he’s just one of those enviable individuals who can eat like it’s the end of the world and never gain an ounce. Bastard.

I wonder if he’s still alive. That was back in 1993.

I have to wonder if his wife’s still alive too. She was every bit of 6’5″ and 450#. She wore the Suburban she drove on those days when she brought her man his Whoppers. They would sit together and snarf Whoppers. It would have been romantic if…nah…you can’t read anything remotely amorous in to that.

In all seriousness though, the message is that life and work are supposed to mean something and to have a purpose in this world. Even if I don’t get what that something is.

When Being Right Isn’t Popular, and The Truth is Hard

January 7, 2015Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I would have loved to have met President Reagan. I would also have loved to have met General George S. Patton.

I have a love of historical non-fiction that I’ve not been able to indulge nearly as much as I would like to. However, I just finished reading Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General, and have been intrigued by not only Patton the man, but also by the bureaucracy and dare I say it, ineptitude, that surrounded him.

Granted, Patton wasn’t a man known for diplomacy. His famous address to the Third Army on the eve of D-Day (according to today’s effete cultural standards) would have to be considered quite politically incorrect and would get at least an MA rating for the language he used. All the more reason for me to really admire the man.

The truth can be hard. The truth can be ugly. The truth can be as graphic and cold as the image of greasing the treads of tanks with our enemies’ guts. The truth is the truth even when people don’t like you when you point it out. The truth is the truth even when it runs afoul to the personal wheelings and dealings and schemes of those in high places.

We need a man like General Patton today. Someone (unlike me) who doesn’t have a 24-7 view of the lead dog’s hind end. I can’t (for a moment) imply that I am the fearless voice of anything. I’m doing good to not freak out just getting up and getting through my day.

I can only hope and pray that someone with conviction and guts and the audacity to stay on the truth track even if he’s the only one on the truth track will (somehow) land in a position of leadership. The only problem with finding people of conviction is, that even in his day, Patton was seen as brash and over the top. There are some who believe that his death in 1945 as a result of a car accident was actually an assassination, and that Patton was conveniently eliminated by the powers above him because he didn’t fit into the Allies’ post war plans. It is well known that Patton didn’t trust the Soviets (a distrust that was well-founded) and he had a greater disdain for Communism than he did for the Nazis. But history has proven him correct in many ways. Perhaps if the right people had listened to what Patton had to say, much of the strife of the Cold War could have been avoided, and Stalin wouldn’t have gained so much power following World War II.

Another hard truth is that history is often told by the winners.

I have much admiration for Winston Churchill, but I always thought the Brits sort of got the short end of the stick.

What would have transpired in the post-war world had General Patton not met with such an unfortunate end? Would he have been able to change the course of the latter half of the 20th century, even in some small way, and if so, would it have been better or worse?

Would confronting Stalin have led to a hot war with the Soviet Union that would have promised to have been as bloody and drawn out as the conquests of Germany and Japan? Or would it have led to a very different post-war landscape in which Eastern Europe would not have suffered under Communist oppression for forty years? Would the Brits have gotten a better deal when all was said and done?

What if (as some historians pose) FDR had passed before the fated Yalta Conference in which he conceded so much of post-war Europe to Stalin? Would Truman have been a better negotiator in that place, given that he was in better health and was a sort of plain, no-nonsense kind of person?

I know that I can’t change the past, but I think it’s important to learn from it. There’s way too much repeating the past and appeasing going on in this world (I need not mention the abomination that is the Obama administration, but I just did…) even though history has proven that feeding alligators only makes them bigger and hungrier.

Sometimes, as Patton said, (referring to the Germans and Japanese,)”The quickest way to get it (war) over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo.”

There is no negotiating with despots. The only way out of a bad situation is through it.

Too bad no one seemed to listen to Patton when he said, “I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood.”

We know Obama won’t listen to the hard facts and the truth of history, and his pandering to the despots and terrorists and thugs of this world will cost how many gallons of blood?

Simply Unpredictable, and It’s Not Nice…

November 7, 2014Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Frequently I am accused of either changing the subject or coming up with weird stuff out of the clear blue sky. Of course the connections make sense to me, but my particular road map doesn’t have the freeways routed in the same places as yours. I can get to the same places- some faster, some slower, depending upon what freeways I have available to ride.

Oh, cool, there is an I-69! But, why, oh why, is it in Indiana? In the middle of the flat cornfields? Wonder how many of those signs have been stolen? Then again, truckers are probably the only ones on that road, and those boys ain’t stoppin’. Judging from the number of trucker bombs I see along I-270 (this is the Columbus outerbelt, where there are all kinds of exits and usable bathrooms) I can imagine the truckers out in BFE aren’t stopping for anything.

This is not apple juice, Mountain Dew, or lemonade. It’s PISS.

I am trying to curb the temptation to engage in a sort of mental victory dance regarding the Republican sweep of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Obama is now muzzled to a degree, which is definitely a plus, but my worry is whether or not the newly elected Republicans will stand their ground and do what the American people want them to do, which is to stop Obama’s insanity. Republicans should not in any way “cooperate” with the moonbats who are actively destroying this country with overregulation and over taxation. They should close the borders immediately to illegal immigration, and end taxpayer funded payouts to illegals, as well as to terrorist harboring countries and the perennially lazy. They must revitalize and strengthen our military, and put an end to insane political correctness. We who voted for them have to hold their feet to the fire. These affronts to the Constitution and to American people need to be addressed, rooted out, and corrected NOW. Even so, as much as I loathe Obama and what he stands for, and much as I would love to see him rode out on a rail, now he sits as the ultimate poster child for “Why Not to Vote for Democrats.” At this point it would be better to let Obama ride out his term pretty much impotent and toothless and completely bonkers than to impeach him. Hopefully the rancid taste Obama has left in this country’s mouth will extend to Hillary and Obama’s other moonbat crazy cronies in 2016. I have a very strong hope that it will.

I know I engage in sarcasm. All the time. It’s one of the things that keeps me somewhat sane. I am not politically correct. I would not even consider myself to be particularly “nice.” Most of the time, if I’m being overly nice, it’s because I hear my mother (sort of like a Jiminy Cricket) telling me I’m being rude, or that I’m staring again.

I know I’m not nice. Neither is anyone else, should we all be honest about it. That age-old human conflict of good vs. evil is always there, even when I pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done.” “Thy will,” is very seldom “my will,” save for divine intervention.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…

I know it was mean to let him keep on shoveling in the cat food, but it was funny. And he wouldn’t have listened to me anyway.

I haven’t been trolling in the postmortem pics a whole lot lately, but I know how wildly popular old pictures of dead people are, as creepy as that is. I had one sitting in my personal archives that I am still sort of wondering about:

Let’s play “Spot the Dead Dude.”

I think they’re both dead, which makes this pic extra creepy. Dude on the right is most certainly dead, or else he’s really, really stoned. As you can see, he’s being propped up on one of those Keith Richards guitar stand type frames. The dude on the left is a bit harder to determine. If he’s not dead, he seems to be way too pleasant for standing that close to a dead dude. Either that or he’s being held up by a broom handle stuck up his ass. You decide.

Trolling for Meaningful Discourse, but Finding Off-Color Cartoons Instead

October 16, 2014Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

Shame on me for indulging my more banal impulses- in a way.

Have I mentioned that I’m no paragon of virtue?

I should be more worried about any number of more important things, including various and sundry deadly contagious diseases. I’ve never had any respect, love, admiration or anything but animosity toward the current Squatter-in-Chief aka: Obama the Ebola King, (all Hail to the Thief, heh-heh) but now I’m convinced that Obama really does have nothing but malice toward the American people. Why in the flying hell have we been allowing flights to come in from Ebola-harboring locales? Why in the flying hell haven’t our borders been secured a LONG time ago? If B.O. thinks he can executive-order his way through governance, one would think that creating a no-fly list would be a no brainer. Then again, B.O. doesn’t have much of a brain- or his aim is to destroy this country.

If his aim is to trash this country, he’s doing a damned fine job of it. The sad thing is that he’s not alone in his efforts.

The more I stew and steam about Obama’s extreme ineptitude (malice?!) and those in collaboration with him the more I realize that there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. I can wish in one hand and shit in the other and we all know which one will fill up first. All I can do is vote the right way and hope that the lame-ass Secretary of State and Attorney General of Ohio (both supposedly Republicans) have done something to prevent the rampant voter fraud (that I witnessed with my own two eyeballs, but that they both swear up and down didn’t happen in 2012) from happening again.

Now that rant’s over, so I can start on the trivialities.

Such as my current favorite cartoon, Brickleberry. This is classic.

It’s probably not a good thing that I find the concept of farts that smell like Christmas funny, but it could be worse.

Rage, Rage, at the Dying of the Light, and Please Let Me Go Suddenly…

August 11, 2014Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

I wonder- sleeping? dead? doll?

There is something just not right, something incomplete and unfair, in an untimely death.

A good friend of ours, who claimed at one point to be an atheist, died Saturday night. It was not a pretty death (if there is such a thing) nor was it a quick or painless death. The poor man had dealt with cancer for the past four years- a bout of colon cancer that almost killed him back in 2010, and the stage 4 lung cancer he was diagnosed with back in April that finally spread throughout his body and slowly, painfully and agonizingly did him in. To greatly summarize the gory story, this guy spent the past month jacked up on every narcotic known to man, and was almost always straight out of his mind due to the cancer spreading to his brain. Nothing could quiet the unimaginable pain associated with cancer spreading like wildfire, not even the Tramadol and morphine and whatever other heavy duty drugs that the hospice people have at their disposal. Cancer is a pretty shitty way to die by all accounts. I don’t say that to trivialize his pain or the pain that his widow is still going through and reliving all those horrors, but words just can’t paint an accurate enough picture. I pray to God that I don’t die that way, and that I would be spared the awful reality of being a primary caretaker of a loved one dying that way, because I don’t have that kind of courage or strength.

Since everyone has to die, I could only ask to go the way my maternal grandmother did- suddenly, via a massive stroke that took her from walking, talking and being completely normal to being pretty much dead as a doornail in an instant. It really sucked for the rest of the family, but it actually gives me some peace knowing that she didn’t linger around and suffer for months or years, slowly and painfully deteriorating until she was unrecognizable.

Stephen King said it in his book Pet Sematary: Sometimes dead is better.

I am not in any hurry to take the Dirt Nap- nor am I in any hurry for anyone else I care about to bite the big one either- but I still have a really hard time with suffering, and watching people sort of fade and melt away before my eyes.

Maybe that’s what that whole “mid-life crisis” thing is- understanding that personal mortality is about more than just the Dirt Nap- it’s the little bites of decay and loss and downhill slide of entropy that we endure every day. Things like the realization that my eyes don’t adjust to close vision when I have my glasses on, or that the people I went to high school with look like my Dad’s friends- and that a good number of my Dad’s friends are dead.

The places are either gone or drastically changed, and that’s not even been from the distant past. I usually don’t have too many reasons to go downtown- save for the paper nightie appointment once a year- because I go to a different primary care Dr. and his office isn’t downtown. Yesterday I decided to take my granddaughter to the art museum (which I must recommend, as they have lots of fun stuff for kids) and I was amazed on the way down High St. to take her back home at observing the OSU campus. At least temporarily, campus has been de-skankified and yuppiefied almost beyond recognition. I think they’re trying to overcome their reputation of being the Midwest’s #1 school to get robbed and raped. Good luck with that. Especially on the night of the Michigan game. Leave your car- and yourself- at home. Watch the game, if you must, on TV.

Of course, campus gets a makeover about once every 20 years. It will take about a year or so for the current renovations to get trashed, and when you think it can’t get any nastier, some builders come in with bulldozers, raze most of it, and start again.

Maybe that’s what’s going on with me. I could use a renovation.

Home improvement is nowhere to be found in my box of talents. Believe that.

I would like to expand my education- not necessarily in a formal way, because, sadly, most so-called institutions of learning are all about the almighty dollar and/or all about filling young people’s heads with socialist/globalist garbage. Even poor Steve-o had to take two courses that I believed were total politically correct garbage- one course in “cultural sensitivity” and another on “our global economy.” The first course mostly informed him that as a white male he is/was responsible for all of the evils in the world today, from inequality in the workplace to global warming (both concepts are crocks of crap, IMO.) The second was supposed to be on economics but it ended up being a formalized diatribe on how industrialized nations are victimizing tribal peoples in third world holes, and how we should bury our cars and wipe with reusable cloths. That would have been sort of funny, except that his major was automotive science.

I think I will embark upon a self-directed expansion of knowledge, even though I know that my biases will play into that. It’s no worse than a tech school requiring my son to take courses in BS to graduate.

Nuts! No Nuts, No Clue, and Screw You Too

August 8, 2014Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Naturally good nuts. That’s good, because we wouldn’t want artificial nuts.

Unless you’re the owner of a neutered male dog, and you take his loss of sexual potency way too personally. There are, believe it or not, artificial nuts for neutered dogs.

I’ve never owned a male dog. I’m of the opinion that female dogs generally are smarter, live longer and have fewer overall health problems- even though spaying a female is a lot more expensive and involved than neutering a male. I have encountered more than a few male dogs that would make me hesitate to consider a male dog, but in fairness I’ve also encountered a few that I really liked. I find it really hard to dislike any dog, with the exception of my cousins’ psycho Chihuahua, Andy- but Andy’s been dead for nearly 40 years. If anything, poor Andy was an argument against incessant inbreeding.

You didn’t need them anyway.

I may end up with a male dog someday, but I wouldn’t consider having an intact male, even though neutering doesn’t guarantee placid behavior. Uno, the one-brown, one-blue-eyed, twisted little Shih-Tsu, who used to belong to my mother-in-law, positively tormented poor Isabel (who was a five pound, spayed, elderly, black cat) by chasing her all over the house and attempting to hump her constantly. He was neutered, but that didn’t seem to matter to Uno and his Red Rocket. I was glad when we found that guy a good permanent home- away from Isabel. He was a sweet dog, but humping the cat (aside from being counterproductive) is just plain creepy.

I’ve had three male cats, and they weren’t at all bothered about being nutless. Other than reduced longevity, (and males are bigger) I really don’t see much difference between spayed female cats and neutered male cats. I think the male cats I had were secretly relieved of being culled from the gene pool and therefore set free of the obligation to -well- screw like tomcats.

Thought I was going to post a gratuitous pic of feline copulation, eh?

Since I’m on the subject of nuts, (for what reason I have no idea) I have to comment on the illustrious, nutless wonder who is squatting in the White House. Normally, I can’t stand to listen to Obama speak, and if I feel I must find out what kind of garbage he’s spewing, I just read the transcript later. Unfortunately I was subjected to the Wanna-be-Imperial One’s press conference regarding the Ebola epidemic and his African summit while I was waiting on my car to get serviced at the Toyota dealership. Hindsight being 20/20, I wish that I had remembered my headphones, or that I had decided to wait outside.

Since I sat through every infuriating minute of it, I thought I would offer the rational person’s Cliff’s Notes on this particular address:

Let’s send billions more dollars in “aid” to Africa that will not be (and never is) used to do anything to ameliorate squalor, disease and poverty, but will be squandered on funding terrorists, supporting regional warlords, and empowering garden-variety thugs. While we’re at it, we’re just going to open our borders to every terrorist, scumbag and non-English speaking, uneducated indigent who can manage to traipse on in. Because terrorists need love too? Then the Naked Emperor cries and whines and wonders out loud why American corporations are clamoring to incorporate in foreign countries to avoid the evil IRS and its labyrinthine and oppressive tax system.

Oh, and we can’t send the Ebola medicine to Africa because it’s experimental…and they might die from it. Even though they are almost certainly going to die from the Ebola, why should we try giving a drug that might help? Someone might sue us or something.

Really?

I almost threw up all over the customer lounge. Thankfully by that time, my tire rotation and car wash were done and the service advisor had come to retrieve me. I just hope they torqued my lug nuts to 76 ft lbs. like the owner’s manual suggests.

On the way home I had a few insights on B.O.’s asinine rhetoric.

1. Why are we spending a red dime to support any terrorist harboring country? I don’t give a flying fart in a high wind what’s going on there. It’s not our problem. In fact, as cruel as it sounds, perhaps some of these third world holes could use some thinning of the herd. Especially when foreign aid never seems to get where it’s supposed to go, and the poverty and desolation persists no matter how many billions of dollars are thrown at it.

2. Why do veterans go without medical treatment, and American citizens are taxed so heavily they can’t afford their own healthcare (even though they work for a living) while our government pisses away our tax dollars to support terrorists and others who only want to kill us and send the world back to the Dark Ages? Americans’ money could be better spent on our own infrastructure and military, and to secure our borders against the terrorists and thugs, but what do I know?

3. Why is this illegitimate president still squatting in our White House?

ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL:

Because comedy is the flipside of tragedy

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