On Effing Morons

Important Note: My computer-savvy son agrees that I will likely never receive Twitter’s promised appeal. He advised me to change my password and try to receive Twitter’s confirmation code on a different cell phone. I did that; Twitter automatically deleted my “offensive” Trump tweet, and I’ve returned to Twitter. 

He and others agree the tweet did not constitute “hateful conduct.” His logical supposition is that because I retweeted my comments three times, the tweet triggered an algorithm that locked my Twitter account. All’s well that ends well, I suppose, even if (in my view) Twitter’s action infringes on freedom of speech - Nicole Parton 

What’s on my mind? On August 11, my Twitter account was locked for “hateful conduct.” 

Although I didn’t mention US President Donald Trump by name, Twitter assumed my comment was about him. When a respected journalist tweeted (factually) that Trump recently called for the football season to proceed despite the coronavirus’ spread among team players, I tweeted this response: 

This “very stable genius” is a fool; imbecile; moron; dolt; halfwit; cretin; nincompoop; dolt; dullard; ignoramus; blockhead; idiot; simpleton; dunce; and dope ... The sort of guy who puts the “pig” in pigskin: Just plain stoo-pid. 

(I twice referred to the unnamed person as “blockhead” and “simpleton,” but I’ve since deleted those redundancies.) Strong language, I admit, but “hateful conduct”? I don’t think so. I’ve launched an appeal.

Twitter’s definition of “hateful conduct” is that tweets “may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

That assessment is fair and reasonable. I agree with every word; don’t condone hate speech; would never cross that line; and don’t think in such terms. I applaud Twitter’s definition of hateful conduct. 

However, if Twitter upholds my lockout according to the above criteria, that will be an admission that an unnamed person has a “disability or serious disease” (the only criteria to come even close) and how can anyone say that of an unnamed person? 

Numerous psychiatrists and psychologists have, however, written that of Donald Trump - but I’m neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist.

For calling an unnamed person, “the sort of guy who puts the pig in pigskin,” I apologize. I was wrong to say that of an unnamed person.

I was wrong to have called him?/her? stoo-pid, as well as “a fool, imbecile, moron, dolt, halfwit, cretin, nincompoop, dullard, ignoramus, blockhead, idiot, dunce, dope, and simpleton, because how would I know? What I wrote didn’t name anyone.

Mea culpa. Maxima mea culpa. I was wrong. So very, very wrong. At least I didn’t call that unnamed person a “dunderhead” or a “dummy” - terms I reserve for effing morons, which I definitely, definitely didn’t say, but former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did, with direct reference to Donald Trump. Perhaps Tillerson was also locked out of Twitter. 

Dunno, but Trump (or some minion) definitely fired him, as in: “You’re fired!” I used to lo-o-ove watching The Celebrity Apprentice, Trump’s yuk-a-minit reality show. It was fun watching Trump stick a shiv between people’s ribs as he yelled: “You’re fired!” 

Trump would get all riled up, but when he said: “You’re fired!” you could see he felt kinda good, like they weren’t even people and didn’t even have feelings. 

Everybody watched that show! Some people say Trump was himself fired from The Celebrity Apprentice, but he says his ratings were through the roof, so ya gotta believe the guy. As everyone knows, Donald Trump’s word is his bond. 

Any-hoo, I was wrong not to have included the words “dunderhead” and “dummy,” so I could add them to a more fulsome apology. But you can’t accuse me of saying “effing.” At no time did I say: “Donald Trump is an effing moron” - and nor did I say it of an unnamed person. 

Tillerson will forever carry the can for that one. I don’t need to apologize that he said: “Donald Trump is an effing moron.” I’m embarrassed to even print the words  that: “Donald Trump is an effing moron.” For shame, Mr. Tillerson! For shame!

I may be off Twitter, but Trump is not. A couple of years ago, he tweeted: “My two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” Trump’s self-assessment is one of “a very stable genius.” 

Which most definitely puts the lie to Tillerson’s words that “Donald Trump is an effing moron.” Besides, I never trash-talk. Calling Trump “an effing moron” is beneath me - and the last thing I’d ever want would be having Donald Trump beneath me.

© Nicole Parton, 2020

I (Still) Believe the President, and in the President

Forgive me. I’m a little slow. So when this brilliant opinion piece appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post, I mistakenly thought George T. Conway III had lost his marbles - or been brainwashed. 

Conway is the respected Washington lawyer and husband of Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the President. He’s also no fan of Donald Trump, something he’s made clear as co-founder of The Lincoln Project, whose fact-based, anti-Trump ads have dented Trump’s support through the use of humor and sarcasm. 

In response, Trump has called Conway a “stone cold loser” - with no objection from Ms. Conway. Titled “I (Still) Believe the President, and in the President,” Conway’s column is too good not to share. The links throughout the piece are direct references to Trump’s statements and fact-based news stories. 

George T. Conway III Contributing columnist, August 10, 2020 at 3:39 p.m. PDT

I believe the president Made America Great Again. I believe we need him reelected to Make America Great Again Again.

I believe Joe Biden is “Sleepy” and “weak.” I believe Biden could “hurt God” and the Bible.

I believe that if Biden is elected, there will be “no religion, no anything,” and he would confiscate all guns, “immediately and without notice.” He would “abolish” “our great,” “beautiful suburbs,” not to mention “the American way of life.” There would be “no windows, no nothing” in buildings.

I believe the news media would have “no ratings” and “will go down along with our great USA!” if the president loses — and that this would be bad even though the media is fake.

I believe it’s normal for the president to say “Yo Semites” and “Yo Seminites,” “Thigh Land,” “Minne-a-napolis,” “toe-tally-taria-tism,” “Thomas Jeffers” and “Ulyss-eus S. Grant.” I believe it’s Biden who’s cognitively impaired.

I believe the president “aced” a “very hard” impairment test, and that his “very surprised” doctors found this “unbelievable.” I believe it was “amazing” he remembered five words, such as “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — in correct order. I believe he took the SAT himself.

I believe the president has “a natural ability,” like his “great, super-genius uncle” from MIT, which is why he understands “that whole world” of virology and epidemiology.

So I believed the president in January and February when he said covid-19 was “totally under control,” that it was Democrats’ “new hoax,” and that he was “not at all” worried about a pandemic. I believed him in March when he said he “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

I believe the president and the doctor who believes in demon sperm and the medical use of space alien DNA, and not Anthony S. Fauci, who’s an “alarmist” and “wrong.”

I believe the president’s suggestions that physicians should try injecting patients with household disinfectants, and shining ultraviolet light inside their bodies, make perfect sense.

I believe the “books” and “manuals,” if someone would just read them, say “you can test too much” for covid-19. I believe we now have 5 million cases because we test so much, and that the president was right to slow testing down, unless he was kidding — in which case he was right not to.

I believe that the president has done a tremendous job fighting the virus — and that he shouldn’t “take responsibility at all”— even though about 160,000 Americans have died. I believe the virus “is what it is.”

I believe it isn’t racist to call the coronavirus “kung flu” or “the China Virus.” It isn’t racially divisive to say Black Lives Matter is a “symbol of hate,” to celebrate Confederate generals as part of our “Great American Heritage,” or to share video of someone shouting “white power,” which, like displaying the Confederate flag, is “freedom of speech.”

I believe that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” and that the president was just stating a fact, not making a threat, when he said that. I believe it was fine for federal law enforcement to fire tear gas and rubber pellet grenades at protesters so that the president could pose with a Bible in front of a church.

I believe that a 75-year-old protester in Buffalo may have been “an ANTIFA provocateur” who intentionally cracked his own skull in a “set up.”

I believe Rep. John Lewis made a “big mistake” not attending the president’s inauguration. I believe the president has done more for Blacks than any other president — perhaps even Abraham Lincoln, who “did good” although the “end result” was “questionable,” and certainly more than Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which hasn’t “worked out” so well.

I believe the president has been treated worse than Lincoln, even though Lincoln was assassinated. I believe the president should be added to Mount Rushmore, pronto.

I believe it’s normal that the president wished his friend Ghislaine Maxwell “well” and good luck,” even though his administration charged her with sex trafficking teenage girls for another presidential friend, Jeffrey Epstein, whom the president says may have been killed in federal custody.

I believe the president rightly said of Maxwell, “Let them prove somebody was guilty.” I believe we don’t need evidence against former acting attorney general Sally Yates, because she was “part of the greatest political crime of the Century,” about which “ObamaBiden knew EVERYTHING!” And I believe it was fine for the president to baselessly suggest that a television host committed murder since the host said mean things about the president.

I believe that the reports Russia paid bounties to have U.S. soldiers killed, and that the president was briefed on it, are another “Fake News Media Hoax,” and that such intelligence never reached the president’s desk, even though his administration said otherwise.

I believe absentee voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is good, and that mail-in voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is totally different, and bad — and will result in “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election” in history. Except in Florida, where absentee and mail-in voting are the same and both good, “because Florida has got a great Republican governor.”

I believe we should “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote” — but that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”

I believe the president won the popular vote in 2016 “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” I believe he shouldn’t accept the election results if he loses in November.

PS from Nicole: In an interview this morning, Trump said: “George Washington would have had a hard time beating me before the plague came in, before the China plague.” Will this madness never end?

© George T. Conway III, The Washington Post, August 10, 2020

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

What’s on my mind? 

“It is what it is”: US President Donald J. Trump, Aug. 4, 2020, on the rapid increase in the number and rate of coronavirus deaths. 

• April 28: 1 million cases. Trump’s same-day response: “It will go down to zero, ultimately.”

• June 10: 2 million cases. Trump’s same-day response: “We may have some embers or some ashes or we may have some flames coming, but we’ll put them out. We’ll stomp them out.”

• July 7: 3 million cases. Trump’s same-day response: “I think we are in a good place.”

• July 23: 4 million cases. Trump’s same-day response: “The country is in very good shape …”

(On August 7, one day before the updated figures were announced,  Trump hosted a party for members of his exclusive Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. There was no social distancing. Almost no one wore masks. During that party, he stated: “The pandemic is disappearing. It’s going to disappear.”

(Calling in the media for a press conference, the event became a spectacle, with members of his golf club booing what they viewed as unfriendly questions and cheering those they liked. A good time was presumably had by all. 

(Trump also attended two fundrasing events in the Hamptons, bringing in $15-to-$20 million US. How much of this was taxpayer-funded, I don’t know.)

• August 8: The US hits 5 million coronavirus cases.

As I post this August 9, at 8:35 pm PST, the real-time Johns Hopkins COVID-19 cases in the US have increased to slightly less than 5.2 million. Not quite 12 hours later, the US has nearly 2,500 new cases. 

© Nicole Parton, 2020

Diane Cuts Her Husband’s Hair

What’s on my mind? 

I went to bed with Himself and woke up with Little Lord Fauntleroy. Two weeks later, I went to bed with Little Lord Fauntleroy and woke up with Einstein. Two weeks after that, I went to bed with Einstein and woke up with a man whose hair was so long, I mistook him for a landing strip. 

Does no one get their hair cut, anymore? No, they do not. Why? You already know why.

Many years ago, when Himself was young and innocent (something I have never been), I begged him to let me cut his hair, promising: “Think of all the money we’ll save!”

We’d been wasting money on such fripperies as groceries and the electric bill, so I persuaded Himself it might be nice to have some moolah to call our own. I cinched this persuasive argument with the words: “Diane cuts her husband’s hair, and he always looks great!” (It’s a piffle, but - having never met the guy - I couldn’t pick Diane’s husband out of a lineup of one.)

Himself, vaguely aware of the name “Diane,” assumed she was one of my top 100 friends, 97 of whom are creditors. In fact, Diane is my friend, but she’s also my hair stylist. I didn’t mention that little detail when I got out the electric clippers. 

“Just a little off the top,” he said. (“And the sides and the back,” I thought.)

BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!! BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!! BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!!

“Whazzat?” Himself is the suspicious type. As he should be. 

I immediately began laughing. I do that when I get nervous. After the clippers slipped, I was very, very nervous. 

Like magic, the giant hole the clippers ripped through his comb-over shone like a mirror. With no way to patch it, I tried to “even it out.” The hair curling softly above left his ear vanished. I had no choice but to do the same (BZZZZZT! BZZZZZT! BZZZZZT!) for the right. I was channeling Edward Scissorhands, now.

The slice at the back of his head (OMG, the ba-a-ack!!!) exposed bare skin as wavy hair and skin rose and fell, my nervous laughter creating a jagged Plimsoll line.

Trying to appear everything was routine, I yawned: “Wanna see it in the mirror?” Himself is the “No, thanks!” type. I figured this would buy me some time. 

“Damn well right, I want to see it!”

This was unexpected. I dropped the clippers and ran. Five years on, Himself still won’t let me cut his hair.

Our COVID lock-down means Diane and I haven’t seen one another in nearly six months.

You know in the movies, when a woman on the lam tries to disguise her appearance by cutting her own hair? Whether she uses cuticle scissors, pinking shears, a bread knife, or an electric hedge trimmer, the result always looks spectacular. Now that Diane’s AWOL, I’ve been using exactly those tools to cut my hair, and it always looks like ... (CENSORED! Children may be listening to you read-aloud types!)

I’ve quit trying to cut my hair. Long hair looks fine on me ... Fine! Okay ... Semi-fine. I’ve been wearing it in the bouncy ponytail the candles on my last birthday cake suggested I was too old to wear. Like 60 years, too old.

My hair’s almost always been short when I visit Diane. She goes snip-snip! and she’s done, so we chew the fat until her next client comes in: 

“Ya know, Diane, I’ve bin feelin’ kinda sluggish, lately ... D’ya think I could be ... irregular?”

“Ya know, Nicole, I take this stuff ever’ night, b’ fore bed, an’ I feel like a kid, again!”

I miss Diane. The next time we meet (2021? 2022?), that ponytail’s gonna be pretty long. When I ask Diane’s opinion, she’s either going to say: “Keep it!” or “Cut it!” according to what she guesses I really want to do. 

I look forward to that day. I’ll go away happy and Diane will be fondling a $50 bill and all will be right with the world.

© Nicole Parton, 2020

Home Invasion … Call 911!

What’s on my mind? My totally exciting life (yeah, right) includes the memory-go-round of déja vue. Which is why I’m returning to my topic of almost exactly a year ago, Dial M for Murder!

Opening a door - any door, pick one - leads to recriminations: 

“They got in through the garage! You left the door open!” 

“They came in because our house is dirty!” 

“The house wasn’t dirty until they arrived!”

Although every window in the house is screened, opening one prompts rightful concern. The youngest get past the screens by sneaking through the mesh. Once inside, they establish base camp. Their forces growing by the hour, they copulate at night. 

As you will by now have guessed: A battalion of flies has invaded our house. As I wrote a couple of days ago, my Delicate Feminine Instincts permit me to avoid the horrors of the battlefield. I can’t claim to be a conscientious objector on the fly front (“Kill ’im! Kill ’him! Kill ’im!”), but can truthfully say I find the job so distasteful (review Delicate Feminine Instincts) that if it weren’t for Himself, I’d have to hire professional assassins in hazmat suits.

I once saw the “flies in the attic/hazmat suit” technique of fly eradication (“We’re going in …!”). I couldn’t watch as flies were gassed by the thousands in the attic of a house my late husband and I once owned. ’Nuff said.

Earlier this week, I spied an unusual spot of sheen on the dining room table. Looking closer, I began to hyperventilate. Two small, still flies - one of whose iridescent wings fanned over the other’s body - appeared to have been in “the act” when they “passed.” 

(Passed what? Muster? Gas? Go? I hate that euphemism. Why can’t we say they died?) 

Naturally, I did what any mature, competent woman would do on finding two flies stuck together in flagrante delicto on the dining room table: Screamed bloody murder. Whereupon Himself ran into the room, tissue in hand, and “dealt” with the corpses. Translation: Ran outside to feed them to the fish. 

The eight other methods of killing flies are:

1. The “dish towel” technique (Himself: “Don’t use that towel for anything.” Me: “Do you think I’d actually use that towel???? I want to burn that towel!”)

2. The “electronic zapper” technique (“It’s 10,000 volts. Baby, you’re gonna fry …”) 

3. The “closed-door” technique (“He can’t escape! I’ve got him trapped …”) 

4. The “poisonous fly spray” technique (“I can’t! I can’t! The environment …”)  

5. The “drinking glass” technique (“He’ll suffocate and die!)

6. The “finger squeezing” technique (“I think I got the little bastard…” Gross. You don’t want to know about the “finger squeezing” technique.”)

7. The “emergency exit” technique (Himself: “Guess what? I opened the door and a fly flew out!” Me: “Guess what? You opened the door and three more flew in!”)

8. And, if all else fails, the “Bates Motel” technique. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY&t=72s

Flies are disgusting. They live on a diet of …

(Hey, boys and girls! It’s time for our Question of the Day! Do you know what this disguised four-letter word is? Hint: It has two “o’s” and two “p’s” and flies think it’s yummy!) 

© Nicole Parton, 2020

The Diet of Worms

What’s on my mind? This is the story of two goldfish, a thunderstorm, and the Diet of Worms - a 500-year-old double entendre that only nerds will get. Nonetheless, this really is about the (lower-case) diet of worms.

Two goldfish entered our lives in the Summer of 2019, thanks to three years of nagging dramatic sighing on my part. Goldfish need a home, and so my long-held dream of a garden pond came to fruition. I promised Himself the pond would cost next-to-nothing, but I’ve never been much good at calculus and abacus and stuff like that so I was off a couple of digits. 

A-ny-hoo, after two garden guys dug, graveled, leveled, lined, rocked, waterfalled, rocked some more, and planted, the pond came in at $3,100 and change. Maybe a couple of hundred dollars in change, but it’s only money, I cheerfully told someone who threatened to moi-duh someone else whose names I’ve repressed. These goldfish are now worth their weight in ... well, gold.

Garden pond goldfish are almost maintenance-free. The woman who ran the watering hole where I bought the fish said: “People who feed pond fish do it for themselves, not the fish. Throw them a Cheerio now and then if you feel like it, but you don’t need to.” So we didn’t. 

A brilliant example of smart marketing: Pets that don’t need feeding (in an outdoor pond, at least).

We named our goldfish Big Fish and Little Fish, mainly because they were. They thrived on mosquito larvae, slime, bacteria, and whatever other other gunk accumulated in the pond. That was last year. This year, everything changed. 

Not knowing the sex of our fish, I read a post on the Mating Habits of Goldfish, hoped for the best, and got it. This past Spring, gelatinous eggs glistened on the underside of the lily pads in our pond, exactly as the Mating Habits of Goldfish post said would happen if a fertile male and a fertile female goldfish became friends with benefits. 

Both fish paid special attention to these eggs, even assuming a vertical position in their eagerness to lap-lap-lap them. I hadn’t progressed far enough into the Mating Habits of Goldfish post to know Big Fish and Little Fish were happily eating their young - not kissing them, as I’d assumed. In the unlikely chance an infant survived egg-hood, its parents’ fishy instincts would again kick in, programming them to eat any fish younger than two weeks. 

After dabbling in cannibalism, the (presumably) remorseful and grieving Big Fish retired to her/his hiding place in the pond, while Little Fish circled the now-lonely waters on her/his own. I think the Mating Habits of Goldfish post had something in there about the Sexual Identification of boy goldfish, girl goldfish, and gefilte fish, but it was too racy for me and I ignored it. Watching Little Fish do the butterfly stroke, we saw she’d grown at least an inch since Winter, so we renamed her/him Semi-Big Fish.

Big Fish stayed in her/his hiding place two long weeks. I worried s/he might be depressed, or worse, might be holding out for another taste of car-r-rne! I also worried s/he might have lost her/his taste for pond gunk and Cheerios. 

Against my Delicate Feminine Instincts, I spaded the garden for a fat, juicy worm. Dropping it into the water, I watched it drift to the bottom of the pond. 

Having never seen such a thing before, Semi-Big Fish lazed toward the worm, upon which Big Fish rocketed from her/his hiding place to snatch the worm and race ’round the pond, the doomed worm trailing from her/his jaws like a streamer, with Semi-Big Fish in cold-blooded pursuit.

“Himself! Come! Come now!” I screamed. (Mrs. H, our neighbor across the way, dropped her dandelion puller and immediately snapped to attention. She, for sure, would have read the racy bits in the Sexual Identification of Fish post.) 

Pedal to the metal, Semi-Big Fish chased Big Fish ’round the pond, but the worm was almost gone. “Gimme a worm! More! More! More!” I  cried. 

(Head tossed back, a light sheen of sweat shone on the eavesdropping Mrs. H's smiling face).

Himself dropped four worms into the pond: Muscling Semi-Big Fish out of the way, Big Fish scored three. Over time, we denuded the garden of worms. “Not good for the soil,” Himself muttered.

“I don’t care about the soil! Our fish are starving!” (The post about the Mating Habits of Goldfish and the Sexual Identification of Fish also had a section on the Feeding Habits of Goldfish. It was there I learned goldfish are gluttons. They’d eat a schnitzel, if they could.)

Over time and a steady diet of worms, we noticed Semi-Big Fish had grown even longer over the past few weeks. Both s/he and Big Fish were becoming heavy weights in the Goldfish Dep’t. How big is big? Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to dunk my arm in that pond. We’ve now renamed them Very Big Fish #1 and Very Big Fish #2. 

Our frantic search for worms has left the garden looking like it’s been savaged by moles. We don’t care. Last night brought a thunderstorm, followed by heavy rain - a godsend! In an effort to escape drowning, about a million worms wriggled onto the driveway and the road. 

Himself scooped up as many as he could: They were about to meet their Waterloo. 

Pavlov, take a bow: Very Big Fish #1 and Very Big Fish #2 now circle at the precise moment Himself bends over the pond, a worm in his fingers. Even after they’re stuffed full of worms, they want more, more, more! (Which would definitely have interested Mrs. H, had she not gone to take a cold shower.)

We’re exhausted. Very Big Fish #1 and Very Big Fish #2 are still growing. They now control our lives. I vaguely wonder if they’d fancy a chunk of pot roast. It’s probably time to rename them, again. We’re leaning to Moby Dick.

© Nicole Parton, 2020