MOONLIGHT ON THE RIVER : MAC DEMARCO

SOMEDAY WE'LL GET BY : AZTECA

THIS PARODY SONG WRITER - MUSICIAN DOES EX-PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HIS DUE : WEIRD AL YANKOVIC WATCH OUT! LOL!

PATRICK FITZGERALD

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA  ( Original song was by Charlie Daniel's Band)

In this STOP THE WORLD I WANT TO GET OFF MOMENT (war in Israel, Ukraine, Genocide....) only the war has the ex-President's fiasco number two in the headlines) I take a moment to have my funny bone tickled. 

MY GOD : BOY GEORGE

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET ATWOOD by CAROLYN KELLOGG OF THE LA TIMES

PRESS READER : LA TIMES : NAUGHTY BY NATURE : MARGARET ATWOOD 

She has 2 million followers on Twitter and is in trouble with some for her defense of free speech.  In this article she talks about the future...

PARANOIA and TRUE TERROR : TALKING TO STRANGERS

A woman who came to the U.S. from a country that experienced Communism said, "No way am I going to take the vaccine. The government chips people."

She pantomimed a vaccination being performed that inserted a chip.

"Just like they know where you are all the time because you take your cell phone with you wherever you go," she said.

"If you're a criminal,  a drug dealer, a sex trafficker, I could believe that the government might find a way to chip you and track you. Believe me, they don't care about people like us," I said.

"I'm not changing my mind.'

"I understand."

I couldn't help but think this woman is still effected by living under Communism.

I'm still exhausted and in withdrawal from four years of Trump administration chaos. 

Though the reportage is that Californians are getting vaccinated enthusiastically, other people are telling me that they've had no luck getting local appointments, and those who do not drive and cannot drive to the big vaccination sites are trying to get in on websites to make appointments in the middle of the night. Some are going by to see if there are vaccinations left at the end if the day due to no shows. Locally is Ralphs, Walgreens, Vons, CVS, and Rite Aid.

In a few days it will be more competitive. 

June 15 is the target date for everything open but frankly I don't think a feeling of normalcy will be immediate or soon after that. The stress of a year of fear has damaged our collective psyche. Not socializing in person has turned us into a nation of loners reevaluating our friendships. So much has been put on hold. As the schools open there may be rather empty classrooms - at least until mothers find new jobs and go back to work. I think there will be some sense of relief but mask wearing, social distancing, and hand sanitizing will go on and remind us we are not safe.

Smiles unseen.

Hugs withheld.

Inner conflict about hating to go back to work and having to.

The traffic being one of the worst experiences you didn't have to deal with.

More craziness.

There are people to be afraid of. People infected with evil. 

I was surprised when a person I know who is highly involved at her Christian Church told me there is no Satan, no Devil, that evil exists in people.

Another person also involved in his Christian Church told me there was no reward or punishment. 

I asked him why someone worships a God who just doesn't care (enough to reward or punish.)

All of this was a bit concerning but not upsetting. Maybe they're right. 

What kept me up was hearing a report on YouTube by a well known Christian who talks End Times.

He talked about China and the way Christians were being persecuted.

He said the backed up container ships (i.e heading to American ports such as Port of Los Angeles) included Christian stowaways escaping Communism. "They've gone insane and are screaming."

I imagined the total darkness. Maybe you and a couple other people with flashlights, food, water, and a poop bucket, think you can deal with the dark for three weeks. Questionable air. Movement of the heavy ship. Metallic sounds or dense quiet. Knowing that on all sides, top and bottom, you're surrounded by containers. You don't know if it's day or night. You might have kept a calendar or a watch but you're not going to have a cell phone or radio that can get signals. Then, for whatever reason, the ship doesn't dock. No-one can tell you why. You wait, more trapped.

I think human cargo is a reality. As are people in the know. Paid to load the people. Unload people. There has to be. This isn't hobos finding an empty boxcar. It's not Jews shoved into trains headed for camps. It's weeks on the ocean.

It's illegal immigration.

It's refugees but also spies.

Try finding what you need and can afford Made in the U.S.A.

My friend decides not to buy China, searching a box of tinned cat food and finding no "made in" notification at all!

C 2021 Christine Trzyna

TUNES IN MY HEAD AS I PREPARE FOR HOLIDAYS DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS and CRAZY LADIES AROUND

I was somewhat Grinchy about Thanksgiving a couple years ago. This year, not so. An Auntie of mine used to say the later holiday was really just for children. It feels that way to me.  But why the hell is the song "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas" coming into my head as I wash dishes? It is just so cheery!

And here we are in this increasingly worrisome Covid-19 Crisis; It's 2020 and we are going into 2021.  Restaurants can no longer serve people inside or out. Friends have lost their jobs. I know of a few people who are facing eviction. The tent city closest to me must have elected a mayor as the tents were artfully arranged from large to small the other day.

People are going out of their minds with worry, fear, restlessness, anxiety, lack of hope, boredom, and sleep irregularities and sleeplessness.  I'm not immune to any of this. 

So is this why for three strait days two lines from "Along Comes Mary," by the Association, kept running through my head? "When we met I was sure out to lunch.  Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch. Sweet As the Punch."

It's not that I can't fill my time, making slow progress on a research project, or start reading that stack of books other people wanted me to read. But yesterday I felt a little wigged out as the theme song from Sesame Street, Sunny Days, started playing in my head  I once babysat kids who would cry if I took the TV off and so they had Sesame Street on for hours every day.

I walk my dog and around the corner are some children who I suspect are not getting anything for Christmas.  But they have proud parents.  So I've been discouraged from leaving gifts on the porch steps.

I just had another crazy lady in the street start yelling at me re Trump.  And just like last time, I stopped and talked to her, sure she had actually gone insane in the Trump Cult and that something I might say could help her through the Transition.

"I'm a Mexican.  I used to be a Democrat!  I'm ASHAMED that I was a Democrat!" she wailed.  "Do you know what you people DID to that POOR MAN!?  (What, is he the latest to be nailed to a cross?) He has done more for Black People than any President!" And on it went.  I backed away as her finger swang in the air and pointed towards me. "You'll see!  You'll see!  Biden will DIE. Kamala will come in and she'll have those woman with a TOWEL on their head come in.  We'll be SOCIALISTS!" 

I told her not to fear.  I suspected she had not been raised in the United States and probably knew very little about The House, The Senate, The Congress, and our "checks and balances."  I said, "We are electing a President, not a King!"

Sweet As The Punch.

I went home and pulled out stacks of children's books that I intend to give as Christmas presents. I wrapped them all in festive papers. Then I pulled out the recipe for buttery rolls flavored with leaves of bay that I intend to bake and take to a Thanksgiving dinner. I pulled the recipe from the newspaper a while back and it needs yeast.  I went to a couple stores looking for yeast.  Wondering if my search for yeast would end me up in the hospital.

The plan is that everyone will go single file into the house to serve ourselves at the table and then sit outdoors in a backyard ten feet apart to eat.  I'm looking forward to this, but I would also be OK with staying home and watching The Crown. 

I'm in the mood to cheer you up.

Christine Trzyna

C2020

HE DIED BUT VISITED ME LAST NIGHT - A MEMBER OF MY OLD WRITING GROUP

The strange dreams continue.  Is it the season?  Or the ongoing threat of Covid-19?

I woke up around 4 am.  My dog had walked through my sewing kit and I could hear buttons and spools - but I woke thinking "needles." She needed to go out.  So did I.

But I managed to fall back asleep.  I remembered three strange dreams. This one was a visit with a member of my short fiction writing group.

This man was a bit of a mystery.  I first met him at a writing class focused on short fiction at a community college night class. He wrote the shortest of short stories.  One pagers.  If you're wondering how a one pager can qualify as a short story, well, if there is the slightest change in a character's viewpoint, that would qualify.

If I knew him today, I would suggest that each short was actually a chapter.  He wrote scenarios that seemed to focus on people with mental illness.

He never stayed to chat or get personal after we had critiqued each other's stories.

He would stand up, bid us a hearty fare-well, and walk out in an almost military fashion, with his notebooks in one hand. 

Then one day I was telling a friend about this man and his work when he said, "Wait a minute.  I think my dad knows this man!"  And not only did his dad know the man, but they had worked together, and his dad had introduced him to his wife.  Who, it turned out, became seriously mentally ill.

I felt that this man did not want our group to know this.

So one day I encountered him and I spit it out. "I know so and so.  I'm friends with his son.  I know."

To which he said nothing in response.

But I felt maybe I had relieved him some.

In my dream I was wearing my reading glasses.  My reading glasses are really ugly.  I made a mistake choosing them. The first thing I saw was that he came up to me wearing the same reading glasses.  He was smiling.  I said "I thought you were dead!"

In waking life I have been thinking this for some time - years.  One day I happened upon a newspaper I don't normally read and there was a one liner.  It said So and So was dead, as if it was the least someone could do.  There was absolutely no mention of a wife, family, friend, or children. Somehow I assumed it was him.

In the dream he was sitting with a woman I didn't recognize at all but knew to be his wife.  They were together, well, and happy.  They had two young people with them - perhaps grandchildren?  What was most important to me was that they were happy.  I looked over this woman, who I had never seen in waking life, thoroughly.  Now if I ever see a photo of her and I learn it is her, I'll probably get one of those shocks up my spine.

C 2020 Christine Trzyna

All Rights Reseved

BEST SELLING LITERARY AUTHOR STEPHEN KING QUITS FACEBOOK

BBC NEWS TECHNOLOGY : STEPHEN KING QUITS FACEBOOK by Jane Wakefield

Excerpt: Novelist Stephen King has quit Facebook, saying he was uncomfortable with the "flood of false information allowed in its political advertising."  He also said he was not confident the social network was protecting "user's privacy."  He made the announcement on Twitter, where he as 6.5 million followers.

SCREENWRITER NOT

I've been plagued with naysayers at times in my life. One time in a coffee house where I worked writing on my laptop every afternoon, I was in a sea of screenwriters - all male. They were coming and going all day, moving from one coffee house to another to be out of their apartments, active, busy, but also in a clique. They rarely if ever talked to me. One day one of them actually walked to my table. He didn't introduce himself or ask my name or make any small talk at all. All he wanted to know was "Are You A Member of the Screenwriters Union?" I guess all those hours of hearing me type away had gotten to them. I wonder if the other guys put him up to adventuring on over to me. I'm not a screenwriter. But in Los Angeles it often feels like that's the only writing anyone understands or thinks is worth a writers time. As they say, just about everyone has one screenplay in their drawer at their "real job." - And when the time comes I wouldn't be surprised I too adapt a fiction or nonfiction book I've worked on into a screenplay. I can't say it actually infuriated me since, sadly I have grown accustomed to naysayers, but I overheard this same guy talking one of his pals and calling me "THE GIRL WHO TYPES!" It was beyond these sexist men to imagine that I am NOT a GIRL, but a woman, that I am not just TYPING, but creating content or creating a world of imagination. Nasty comments like this are consciously or not, aimed at reducing a hard working, educated, talented, and skillful writer, into a secretary. I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR!