A long four years

As I mentioned yesterday, last week was very tough. In addition to being waylaid by the Influenza there was also the plane crash, the first commercial airliner involved in an accident for 16 years. The collision took the lives of 67 innocent Americans, including many young teens who aspired to a future in ice skating.

It might've occurred to a normal human being, particularly one who sits in the Oval Office, to offer some consolation and sympathy for the families of the passengers or the soldiers aboard the Black Hawk helicopter. 

In times of tragedy, that's what presidents do.

But it didn't occur to this one. Instead, he took the opportunity, when the nation still had its jaw dropped and the bodies were still buried deep in the icy cold Potomac, to, without any evidence, conclude that the accident was the fault of DEI candidates placed in positions that they had not earned or achieved.

The Tylenol I had been taking had successfully eliminated my flu-induced chills at that point but they came back with a fury! 

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I know I had sworn off Trump news in order to save my sanity, but this was a new low. A new low for a walking flesh bag of toxic narcissism and unchecked political avarice that has no precedent in American history. 

As you might have guessed I have still not processed his unabashed heartlessness. Nor his intellectual bankruptcy. When asked why he drew that accusatory conclusion, he relied, "Just common sense."

Oh, the same common sense that led you to believe President Obama was born in Kenya?

The same common sense that made you take out a full page newspaper ad calling for the Death Penalty of the now proven-innocent Central Park Five?

The same common sense that said you had won the 2020 election?

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Common sense is an anathema to Donald Trump. Let's not forget this silver spoon assclown thought you needed Salad ID before you could go into a store and purchase a head of iceberg lettuce.

And at this point in the investigation there is not one scintilla of evidence that DEI -- The Official GOP Boogeyman -- had any role the disaster. To the contrary, both pilots of the AA plane were white Americans. The air traffic controller was also a male. And one of the two pilots of the Black Hawk was a white male.

The army has wisely withheld the name of the other pilot, a female, most likely in fear of MAGA retaliation against the woman's family. 

That's the deplorable situation we find ourselves in America.

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And why? Because half the people in this country turned the levers of power over to a coldblooded, short fingered vulgarian/sexual abuser/felonious traitor who managed to correctly labeled three large animals on a Dementia test...

Where's my defibrillator?

The Magic Word is...

I am a Word Slut. That is I have an unusual fascination with words and their etymology. I think most people who call themselves "writers" do, and I do so hesitatingly. 

Being a Word Slut hasn't necessarily served me well. Apart from certain Jeopardy categories where it comes in handy. And on these blog pages, where I get to exercise a certain muscle for vocabulary that was often frowned upon in advertising copy.

I once kicked up quite a storm because I used the word panoply in a PayPal ad. I was unceremoniously raked over the coals for being too erudite. I look back on the days when I pissed off middle managers at PayPal with great fondness.

Ms. Muse also happens to be a Word Slut. 

Unlike me, she is a voracious reader. But we often attempt to dazzle each other with odd word choices. And sometimes, because she is smarter than me, I have found I'd being using a word incorrectly for so many (embarrassing) years. For instance, I always thought someone with a mercurial temperament meant they were excessively harsh or given to fits of temper, until I came to realize it meant being wishy washy.

You live and learn.

She is also fond of creating new words. For instance, there's "nagivate", which has an onomatopoeia-quality to it. It means to dish out unwanted driving directions while seated in the passenger seat.

While Ms. Muse has been sharing new words with me I've been schooling her in certain Yiddishisms, that even a woman who has worked in the entertainment industry has not heard. 

Recently, she and her friends performed a very good deed for someone in need. 

Living up in the foothills these days, that comes in handy. I told her she had done a Mitzvah. A Shiksa Mitzvah, if you will. Then, to prove she is not the only one who can manufacture new words, I suggested that Shiksa + Mitzvah = Shiksvah, a good deed for a fellow man/woman/child performed by a Gentile.

But it didn't stop there. 

I was recently explaining how I had called the police to look into a distressing situation with my last disruptive neighbors, an elderly woman living at home with her two functional/dysfunctional grown sons, who fight like angry cats and angrier cats. I just discovered they have hired a nurse to help with the mom's increasing dementia. If not for my phone call I doubt that would have happened.

Hence, a mitzvah for white trashy people = A Shitsvah.

What about telling a fellow altakocker in the sauna, "Getting a little furry back there, Murray, Maybe it's time to have that sweater sheered?" That would be a Shvitzvah.

You see where this is going. Well, I hope you do cause I don't, I just needed a bout of distraction while our country burns down on all sides. That would be a Shanda.