word of the day challenge

The Empty Barrel

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Word of the Day Challenge: NURSE

Remember the saying: Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel?

It was sound advice at one time, but it isn’t anymore and this is why:

I stopped watching  the news when it became painfully obvious that the industry had gotten down on  their knees and said to Convicted Felon, Donald Trump ” If you get elected PLEASE  don’t hurt me Daddy ”

The media also aided Democratic Leadership in stripping away the votes that were cast for President Biden in the Primary. They gave a big inky platform to Jon Stewart and George Clooney in ” leadership’s ” effort to get Biden to drop out of the race and boy did it work.

The media also put it out there that maybe Taylor Swift could show up at a new nominating convention to – God, I don’t know. Tell the Delegates who to Vote for I guess because as you know all Democrats listen to pop stars when we are lost in the woods.

After VP Harris stepped up and ran, the media demanded she answer questions concerning her positions when they never, not once asked Convicted Felon Trump to give detailed answers. All he had to say was that he had beautiful ideas and Joe Biden was old and nobody in the media questioned why Convicted Felon Trump thought at this point he was running against Bidenwho had already dropped out of the race.

One time Convicted Felon Trump even danced at a rally instead of answering questions because he said nobody cared about him answering questions- which turned out to be absolutely true.

Felon Trump’s VP pick claimed immigrants were eating pets and the media went with that story – a lie Vance a fessed up to, but he said he lied for a good reason ( to save the Country ) and he’d do it again.

Apparently a VP candidate saying outright he intended to lie to the American public if he thought he needed to and THAT wasn’t a story.

Journalists and tv news media outlets are now begging for readers and an audience and to that I say- to effing bad. What GOOD are you?

After all that ass kissing you did for Felon Trump my dear Media and Print Journalists, he’s booting some of you out of the White House Press Pool, he’s threatening to sue ( because that is all he does)  you if say mean things about him or his sugar Daddy Elon Musk and he now has the American taxpayers to foot his legal bills for him. It won’t cost him a cent he’s gotten from selling Bibles and golden sneakers.

There are other  sources I go to for the news now BBC, CBC , BLUESKY has some people I like to follow  because I like their analysis. There is George Conway @gtconway.bsky.social, Adam Kinzinger @adamkinzinger.bsky.social‬ and the coolest Opposition Group in the world Alt National Park Service: @altnps.bsky.social and Medias Touch @altnps.bsky.social

It seems to me that the United States main stream media or legacy media are nursing their wounds and trying to figure out how to grow and audience, but I am OVER them.

That big barrel of ink is empty and at this stage, it’s probably best it stays that way until some real reporters and journalists show up.

  

Words

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Artists Unknown

I try to sit in different cars when I ride the train to and from work.

I read once that it’s a good idea to change up your routines because it keeps your brain healthy. I don’t know if that is really true, but when I change my seat up I see and hear new people going about their day and all of that is food for thought and those thoughts go into my writing.

On Friday I sat with a lady that I see every once and awhile- she is has this big personality and big presence and beautiful melodic accent.

We were discussing the current state fo affairs here in the States and towards the end of conversation I realized that she and I were trading survival tips with each other because, as the saying goes this isn’t our first trip to the rodeo and both of us have dealt with racism, being the victims of hate crimes and all of the crappy things that come in between.

When her stop came up she sort of swept her way down the aisle and she tossed me a victory sign as she went out the door and I tossed one back.

Who would have thought that having a conversation like that would make me feel like I CAN take the world on. It had been a gloomy day and then it wasn’t.

Holy Smokes. Who would have thought that sharing survival stories could make you feel better when the words themselves are so grim.

 

Word of the Day Challenge: Holy Smoke

Flossing and Popcorn

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Word Of The Day Challenge: POP CORN

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

I’m one of those adults that got hooked on the kid’s TV show Bluey.

My Granddaughter Jemma  introduced me to Bluey on my last trip out to visit her and there were  two things I saw that I l loved.

First were two characters that Bluey and here sister play- they’re two Grannies named Rita and Janet.

The second was this dance that Bluey and Bingo do called ” Floss ” I’ll have to admit I didn’t know ” Floss” was a real thing.

The reason I liked ithat skit from Bluey  so much was that it reminded me of this crazy dance to a crazy song that my Dad liked.

For the most part I loved my parent’s taste in music- but this one was a bridge to far for me. It was called ” Popcorn ”

One of these days I might show Jemma that old video of ” Pop Corn “, but right now she thinks I’m cool and I’d like to keep it that way.

To Be Taken With A Full Glass of Water

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Word of the Day Challenge: DRINK

During the Victorian Era, when Consumption or Tuberculosis had infect 70-90% of the Urban populations of North America and  Europe and it  had killed 80% of those infected with the ” White Death ”  a morbid  fashion trend began to take place.

By morbid fashion trend,  I don’t mean the  kind of trend where French women and men wore red ribbons tied around their necks, resembling chokers, to stand in silent solidarity for those who had lost  their heads to the guillotine.

I mean that there was a trend to look like somebody who had been infected and was in all likelihood going to die from Tuberculosis

“The Common Lot,” lithograph by J. Bouvier. Wellcome Collection

To achieve this new standard of beauty- pale skin, dilated pupils, red cheeks and red lips and most important of all a skeletal frame ( yeah, anime and avatars on FB have adopted these looks ) it became necessary to ingest and bath in poison- to paint a picture, the same things that were being used to kill rodents were now ‘beauty aides’.

People drank and bathed in arsenic to achieve that  pale ‘ one foot and most of your body in the grave look ‘.  They created eyedrops out of nightshade in order to dilate their pupils. They even created face masks made out of lettuce leaves and dusted with Opium that they washed off  their faces with a splash of water mixed with a  enough arsenic to choke a horse ( I’m guessing )  in the morning.

A sickly young woman sits covered up on a balcony; death (a ghostly skeleton clutching a scythe and an hourglass) is standing next to her; representing tuberculosis. Watercolour by R. Cooper, ca. 1912. Credit: Wellcome Collection

In order to complete this transformation- the most important part of all- was to be thin.

Before I go on, the people who used these ‘potions’ knew they were poison and they did not care. So it should come as no surprise that in order to attain the perfect body- which until this point happened before death or a week later- people were willing to take The Tapeworm Diet.

Despite the skin crawling thought  of purposely ingesting a parasite into your body that would stop most of us from trying this, there  were reported cases or stories that had tried it and that  they had died  trying to swallow the worms live- which is the only way this stomach turning plan would work.

With that being said, those two red flags did  nothing to stop those trying to perfect their bodies who lived ( if they survived their other ‘beauty treatments ) in hope that the tape worm method would work.

I have read that the entire Tape Worm treatment was a myth. Nobody was swallowing live Tape Worms or even trying too.

But the story was out there at the time, it created a demand for the treatment, so someone began manufacturing pills said to contain the worm that were easy to swallow. Of course a dead worm wasn’t going to ‘help’ you so I guess people were being dosed with something that ate  away at their bodies in the same fashion as a tape worm.

Cropped from:
A sickly young woman sits covered up on a balcony; death (a ghostly skeleton clutching a scythe and an hourglass) is standing next to her; representing tuberculosis. Watercolour by R. Cooper, ca. 1912. Credit: Wellcome Collection

Before we close, I want to put it out there that the Victorian Era men and women who poisoned themselves and horribly damaged their bodies or died from their ‘beauty treatments’ didn’t do these things because they were ignorant, that they didn’t understand that arsenic was bad for them.
I want to remind you about a little fad called ” Heroin Chic”
Heroin chic is a style popularized in early-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, emaciated features, androgyny and stringy hair—all traits associated with abuse of heroin or other drugs.
Healthy people starved themselves using various methods to acheive that look.
I remember it well because I was young woman in my early twenties when Heroin Chic was a thing and you BET I would look at those images and think, ” I could never be that beautiful. ” The scary thing is, I tried. But at the time I was lifting weights and I didn’t want to  loose my muscle tone. I had to work hard for it. That’s the only reason I didn’t go for it. Plus I liked food- A LOT.
After Heroin Chic passed, I thought nobody would EVER try to do that again. It was stupid and ugly.
But guess what: like a moldering corpse of a Victorian Era TB inspired Fashion Victim returned from the grave to haunt our nightmares, Heroin Chic is back.
I’m not even going to ask why. It’s pointless to ask why.

A model walks the runway during the Annakiki Ready to Wear Spring/Summer 2023 fashion show as part of the Milan Fashion Week