The More Things Change in 50 Years...

The election is a week away.  Vote for the 93% and send a message to the President.

Call Me?

Call you what?

Oh, what is this, a curse on me?

Tonight, Cookie was getting ready to check in and I took a look at the comments on the Vildya Chaya post.  And what should I find by an "Anonymous" commenter?

"May you die an interesting death"

Look, eleven innocent people were gunned down in a temple in Pittsburgh today, and you have the nerve to place a Yiddish death curse on me?   

My response?  I deleted your bullshit.  Guy kokken effon yam.  And may you live to be 100.  

Cookie, Out

Vildya Chaya

Well, my self-proclaimed year of respect for the dead stepmother has ended.  I made it, but I only did it for the sake of her children. 

May her memory be a blessing to them.  

But yesterday, Cookie was sitting here pondering what I could write about my stepmother, Vildya Chaya*.  And I was struggling.  Do I lay it all out, or do I drop her and her crimes like a hot brick?

Thinking that I would just like to lay it all out there, and enumerate the sins, the torture, and the malevolence.  I put together a post and, and then pulled it all down. 

Frankly, it made me feel like she made me feel whenever she was around.  And that wasn't worth it.

Look, the bottom line is that she was a cruel, malevolent, petty and crude being.  But me pouring out the stories about how she dicked over my father, and our family isn't going to undo what she did.  It isn't going to teach her any lessons and it's not going to settle the score or retrieve any real property.

On the other hand, God knows what she did, our family remembers what she did as well.

Because of this, I can lay a curse out there on whoever inherited her money:  May the money, property, bonds, stocks and real estate she stole out from underneath us bring the heirs nothing meaningful.  She tainted the money, so it should never bring them real happiness or good fortune, unless they donate it to a charity, because its the right thing to do. 

I have visited the cemetery, however, because I needed to settle the score and close the book.  I spat on the grave and said: "You threw me out of the house I grew up in and now I am going to do something you will never do, leave this cemetery."  I got in my car and drove out.  I have no reason for driving back in.

For the record going forward, I will call her what we in the family called her: Shark.  Should I feel the need to tell a Shark story, you'll know who I am talking about.



* "Not Her Real Name" but accurate.  In Yiddish, Vildya Chaya literally means "Wild Beast, Malevolent, Unredeemable."

If you can't say anything...

I am sure that no expense was spared. 

Next week will mark one year since my father's last wife passed away.

In the Jewish tradition, the eldest child of the deceased will read the final Kadish, a prayer that they are supposed to read every morning for the date of death until the anniversary of their passing.  This is done in their mother's name.  In hardcore Judaic terms, the gravestone is unveiled, a life remembered, and life for the living goes on.

The woman, who was his final marriage, meant so many things to all of us.  Because she did so much, that we cannot forget her.  And her actions left an indelible mark on all of us.

Despite our history, I vowed that I would respect her passing for that year, not so much as mourning, but as the polite convention that my parents would expect of me.  I am, after all, their child.

In other words, I would refrain from saying anything.  That's right, anything. 

And for the most part, it looks like I am going to get a gold star on this one, folks.

Read that as you will, there is as much in what is written as there is in what is unwritten.

For now.

On the anniversary of my father's wife's death, I am released from that vow. 

I will be in Baltimore, observing that day with an exhale of gratitude that one has when you out swim a man-eating shark.  Perhaps I will treat the husband and myself to a good restaurant.

Send me your good energy.

You all have been warmed, Cookie is getting a mother fucking cold

Well, the husband came down with a cold two days ago cold, and it stands to reason that my cold is beginning. 

Today has been spent with watery eyes, sneezes and my body temperature has had a few spikes, tonight the snot is running.  My body is letting me know that I am about ready to become a miserable burden to mankind.

When a man gets a cold, we all turn into our version of Camille.  Misery loves company, but when we are sick we want ALL the attention.

I have been called for jury duty on Tuesday, and there is nothing I would love more than to show up in the jury pool, eyes red and weepy, hacking a lung up, harvesting lung butter into a tissue.  That to me is an automatic "Challenge!" from serving the system.

Be forewarned, if this a cold coming on, it ain't going to be pretty.

And now a word from Melania, FLOTUS

I am not posing, the photographers make me look like I am being insouciant to mock me.

As I return to the country I love best, I Melania Trump do so as a woman who is the most bullied woman in the United States. 

Even, perhaps as the most bullied in the history of the nation.

I have been the target of shaming during my husband, your Maximum Leader's ascension into the office that the Founding Fathers had the foresight to create for a national savior like Donald Trump.

And yet, even with his powers growing as the mutant Super Hero that he is, I and persecuted unlike any other wife of a leader in the history of the world.  And here is my proof:

1) I have been mocked for my "Best Best" campaign's name and mission.  People ask me not about how to stop bullying, which is not the point, but how to Best Best at being bullied. 

2) People have laughed at my accent as if I am Zsa Zsa Gabor playing someone named Eva Gabor playing someone called Lisa Douglas on some sill American TV show called "Green Achings".

3) Unlike Eva Peron, who doesn't return my calls,  I speak eight languages and am taking a Berlitz course on "Mastering Conversational English."

4) I have been taunted for stealing Michelle Obama's speeches, and yet when she took the words from a dictionary to write those speeches, no one criticized her in the Fake Media for using words from the books of Webster's or Mr. Funkinwagnalls.

5) And I am attacked every time people say that my husband, a very smart man and with a godlike body modeled after Zeus himself married me for my looks and beauty.  Do not hate me because I am beautiful.  Hate yourselves by being best.

6) Following my most recent trip to Africa, I did not model or posed for the picture takers like you see here on this image.  This is the look that I have on my face, all of the time.

7) Like Vladimir Putin, my next husband, says "It is harder to govern when you have to watch your back," so the Donald will eliminate all resistance so he can maintain leading his nation.

And yet for everything I have been through, Anna Wintour has never had the courtesy to pay a call on me at the White House, or the Trump Tower building to beg me to return to my modeling to appear on the cover of Vogue.  Mrs. Wintour is a hateful, malevolent woman for not paying me the respect I am owed.

Let me reminds you that I was named "Muse" by the Secret Service for a reason.

In closing, I plan on being best First Lady of the Land, all of the land.  And once we catch and imprison people for not showing me the respect owed to me, my naturally pouty lips, flawless skin, and my MENSAesque great brain power, I can promise that America will make Melania Again.

In The Donald We Trust,

M.

Postcards from the Edge of Allentown

Margery would live here

Well, we have returned from prosaic Allentown.  So much better than Perth Amboy, but the same love of Jersey Barriers.

What Can I say but the Allentown Book and Paper Show lived up to its promise.  The Agricultural building was everything that we were promised, and more.

First, we stopped by a booth staffed by my friend "Squid" mother.  Squid and I go way back. 

Way, way back. 

Way back to January 1983 when we met one and other in the Journalism Semester program at American University.  That's how she got the name "Squid".  We were all sent out to do a story on something happening in D.C. (and who would ever imagine that Reagan era could be called the good old days) and she covered an exhibit opening at the Smithsonian on the Giant Squid.  The name stuck. 

I last saw Mrs. Squid at Squid's wedding 34 years ago in Allentown, so it was a warm reunion.

Then we were off to find fun stuff.

If you have never gone to a book and paper show they can either be fabulous experiences when you find something good for cheap (Original copies of "Drummer magazine from the 70's for THREE dollars apiece), or they can quickly turn into vicious elbow fights, where collectors of postcards jostle for position. 

I collect my 2nd hometown and/or the "Millionaire's Row" era of mega-mansions along Cleveland's famed stretch of Euclid Avenue that once had a higher per capita tax base than Fifth Avenue in New York.  The husband collects postcards of his hometown. Like me, he is "Bi-Collectible".  Unlike me who loves collecting period era gay porn, he is into stereopticon's from the Victoria Era. 

All was going really well until we came upon Mrs. Topogrosso and her motorized wheelchair which was lugging her up and down the aisles with her metal shopping cart in tow.  In the metal shopping cart were all of her postcard binders, and crumpled paper bags.  Because if you need assistance getting around, then you need to haul an additional 300 pounds of paper, too, right?

We encountered her on row one where she hogged the middle of aisles calling out to other shoppers to "hand me the second box on the right," which some unwitting idiot, me in this case, who was trying to be polite would do only to be told "This is too heavy for me to balance, hand me the third box from the left."  Doing so, because again, I was trying to be a good sport, she wheezed "No, I wanted the third box on the left of the second shelf." 

I returned the box and started to leave when Mrs. Topogrosso ordered an elderly woman. who was about to take the chair I was sitting in so she could look through the Alabama cards in their box, to vacate said chair.  "You know, I am disabled and if you sit there I can't see whats in that box in the rear row..."

Two rows later the husband and I were burrowing into some really good boxes when again we heard the whine of an electric chair and a rattle of a cart when Mrs. Topogrosso met up with us again. 

"EXCUSE ME!  I'm DISABLED and I can't reach for boxes, so I need someone to hand me the Kewpie Doll postcards."  This time I didn't even flinch, because the cards were nowhere near me (I was in "states and cities", her's were in "topicals and artists" when she wheezed loudly  "I NEED THE MAN IN THE GREEN SHIRT TO MOVE BECAUSE I AM DISABLED AND I NEED TO SIT AT THE TABLE."

I didn't even look up because my shirt was chartreuse, not green.

A woman got up to leave, finding her sense of smell offended by the rank of unbathed flesh, and she offered the woman her place.

"I CAN'T SIT THERE BECAUSE I AM DISABLED AND I NEED TO HAVE EXTRA SPACE FOR MY CART."

The woman left and again, she barked an order for me to move and again, I ignored her.

"I NEED YOU TO MOVE BECAUSE I AM DISABLED..." two more men got up and left, leaving her plenty of room for her and her cart, "...and the man in the green shirt needs to move."  Now the dealer entered the fray. 

"I can move these chairs and..."

"NO!  I need to sit where that man is seated because that's where I always sit when I come to your booth."

Ah, finally, the real reason. 

It's not so much that she was disabled and pulling something akin to what Ricky and Lucy lugged around in the Long, Long Trailer.  It was because she wanted her way.  Like some drunk who claims the same bar stool every afternoon at the same bar while they get soused, she just wanted to sit where she always sat.

I picked up my ten cards - a steal at $24, as some rare enough that I could sell them for more - and got out her way. 

Three booths later the Husband leans in and says "she's creeping on you."

This time it wasn't the booth we were at, but the one behind us and off went the foghorn of "EXCUSE ME!  I'm DISABLED and I need....and I need the woman in the black top to move so I can get my wheelchair up and ..."

A woman cleared her throat and said clearly "Margery, you know my name.  And for all that I am concerned, you can wait your turn like everyone else.  Every show it's the same thing and..."  The gist of the verbal smackdown was that Margery evidently does this at every paper show, the woman said that pouting doesn't work for a three-year-old and it's going to work for her, here or at any show on the east coast.  Also, Margery could shit in her Depends for all this woman cared.

We heard the whirl of an electric motor as Margery continued down the row.

Later on, I encountered the woman, who was neatly dressed, had a Louis Brooks bobbed head of silver hair peppered with a few strands of black, and her reading glasses hanging from her neck in a wonderful beaded chain, who took on Margery and I asked what the deal was.

"It's not you." She put on her glasses and grabbed for another chunk of cards from the box. "It really is her. When I first started coming to these shows," she said while looking over the top of her reading glasses while flipping through postcards of 1939 World's Fair, "I used to bend over backward to try and be helpful, I felt bad for her.  But after six or seven years of her wanting that box and no, this box, and no, and never looking through them, I just had enough.  She uses people and her disability for attention.  All of us here, and at the New York City Clubs have had enough." 

What about New York?  "I mean it takes a lot to get banned in New York, right?"

"She always has that damned cart in tow and she keeps food in it.  The vendors don't like you eating Marshmallow Fluff from a jar while you finger the merchandise - I'll take these three.  Can you do ten instead of fifteen?  Twelve?  Sold - and it's unsanitary.  They would like to sell cards to pay for the booth rent. and not have her sticky sausage fingers all over their goods." 

She told me her name was Nell and she paid the vendor who bagged her cards in a vintage unused popcorn bag. 

"Are you going to York," Nell asked. "Margery goes on Saturday, so you'll want to go on Friday to avoid her."

She asked what I collected in postcards and I told her.  "I collect World's Fair, 1933 and 1939.  My sister is around here and she collects Oberlin, Ohio because that's where she went to school."

What does Margery collect, I wondered?

"Pure Misery: postcards with cats.  Anything with a cat.  Real photo, offset, linen, chrome, and 3D." Nell smiled and chuckled.  She went on to tell me that Margery really threw a fit a couple years ago at Brimfield according to one of the dealers because another person had his box that had 3D cat postcards and was going through them.  She barked out that she might want ones the man had taken out of the box. "I think he was doing it to vex her."

"She asked for Kewpie Doll cards at one booth."

"Then she's already been at the booth and knows that there are no cat cards that she wants. It's her second pass, and Rose O'Neill is her back up category."

How does she get around?

"Her husband.  He' sitting outside chain smoking.  His name is Darl and I'm amazed he hasn't left her behind at one of these shows and run off to Baja to get away from her.  He used to come in the show halls with her, but he stopped years ago because of her behavior."

For a moment, I envision that Margery and Darl Topogrosso have a relationship almost like Mr. Joyboy and his mother, Mrs. Joyboy, but instead of mother and son, its husband and wife.  I get a bit queasy.

"OH! There's a booth on the third row, and I think he has Ohio.  My sister Sally always has good luck with him.  Hopefully, we'll see one and other in York next month."  I thanked her and we went our seperate ways.

I found said booth, and while I didn't anything I didn't already have, I did find a category named "MISERY" and great fun going through that. Two-headed calf's, horses caught in floods, caskets that had floated to the top of the shores of reservoirs built over cemeteries.  Then I found the most brilliant card ever.  One to memorialize my encounters with Margery Topogrosso.  Not from Ohio, but of the "Home For The Friendless."  Bought it.

Evidently the York, Pennsylvania, show is even bigger than Allentown.  Forward and forewarned, I am going on that Friday, not Saturday. 

After all, I would HATE IT if Margery had to order me from the chair I was sitting in because it was in her "spot".

Angry Young Computer

Read more About THIS Angry Young Computer, HERE

In the midst of the horrible national upheaval, Cookie has decided that now would be a good time for a computer.

Who am I kidding.

There is NEVER a good time for a NEW computer, right?

And being at my age, I find comfort in the lack of convenience that a desktop gives you.  But for an introvert, such as myself, a desktop, in your own home office, it gives you a chance to get some much needed "Me" time, and some peace and solitude that I require to recharge.

But this has not been an easy time.  No. It should be.  How hard is it to go to a store, drop a lot of money on a computer, come home and set it up.  Right?

It should work that way, but it didn't:

1) Cookie goes to the store that he trusts and buys a computer that he has been watching because the computer will be phased out because the new processors are coming out.  Cookie wants a deal.  There is the computer, there is the price and a dear, dear, long-suffering man named "Duke" has been patiently waiting for Cookie to buy the computer.   The months tick by and Cookie pulled the trigger and bought the computer, realizing a $900 savings that if I would have bought it in February.

2) Cookie gets the computer home, where it sits for a week because Cookie really doesn't want the trouble that comes with a new computer.  However a week later, the box is opened and...

3) ...it is not the computer model that Cookie and Duke have been working towards.  Not only that, it is not the computer that matches the model on the box!

4) Cookie takes the wrong computer back, Duke checks stock and they are out.  The store outside DC has the computer but Cookie is not into DC traffic.   Duke offers Cookie a deal:  Cookie can but a returned, reconditioned model of the computer in the back, at a substantial discount.  Duke promises that the computer, which has a 256 SSD for the operating system and a 1Tb for everything that is Cookie's to store on it is warrantied exactly as if it is new.   Cookie accepts Duke's proposition, happy that he has been able to get an additional $300 off because it offsets the feeling of owning a cast off.

4) Cookie brings the new computer how, loads the AV onto the system, begins a week of setting up the main programs.  BUT Cookie is confused as to why the SSD is labeled drive "D" and the SATA drive is labeled "C".  So Cookie calls COMPUTER COMPANY TECH SUPPORT PRO, which cost Cookie and additional $300 so he is not shoved into a long queue in a Bangalore.  So the technician in Barbados looks at the computer, and in his wonderful accent says: "I believe that your computer has a significant issue."

Quelle horreur!

What indignity will be cast my way?

Technician says that the previous windows installation didn't happen completely, so apparently, someone who wasn't doing their job didn't reformat the SSD "C" drive.  INSTEAD there swapped the drive names and installed the system on the SATA drive - but here is where it gets scary, peeps: they left all of the previous owner's information on the computer.  This is why I can see all of "MrMatt" and his docs.

"If it were me?  I would take it back," says the support person.

5) Bother.

6) With our chest tightening, our blood pressure climbing and two steps from the ER, we return the computer - nay, we return the BAD computer and this time, Duke brings his manager in, Hottie.  Now Duke is adorageek, but the manager is ripped, young, melt in your mouth adorbs.  Manager has conferred with Duke, and he would like to get this fixed for me...uh huh...and we'll find something equal or better...uh huh...and the angels sing.  I ask Duke, who by this point the Husband and I are planning to adopt if he's cool and he is.  But I made sure that management knows that Duke has been a prince, and my issue isn't with Duke, my issue is with the employee who screwed the pooch on the computer reinstallation.

7) Manager find a terrific machine, but alas it is not a business machine, but a consumer machine, which means it is loaded with all types of crapola. He gives me $750 discount on this machine meaning that I am getting a $2,100 dollars machine, for what I paid for the first machine.  AND it has the latest processor.

I could drone on, but suffice it to say, said the new computer is up, and its running and we seem to be on the way towards some sense of normalcy.

As my husband said, "Your personal Mars is retrograde this week."

This morning I awoke to find that "Angry Young Computer" has transferred over a terabyte of my work and imagining files.  So it's feeling more familiar.  We'll get through this, eventually, and then we'll forget the pain and angst.  We have to install a third hard drive and we are home free.

Mr. Husband and I have a full weekend of events which involve sharp elbows, lots of ephemera, some old friends and fine dining.  AND some of it involves travel to the Toledo, Ohio, of Pennsylvania, in a madcap escapade.   And let me tell you, Allentown did not disappoint us.

Will touch base when I rest and recover.

Cookie

Quickie Post

Warren Beatty, 1968.  He was a god.

I threw Warren up because it has been a week since I last posted, and tomorrow I shall tell you why.  So just look at his perfection and thank God for creating someone so perfect.  Jesus, I almost want to have children with this Warren.  Not the Annette Benning Warren. This one. Toned body, nice biceps, strong hands, and that face!  Those eyes, and those lips.  Can lips on a man, aside from Englebert Humperdink, get any better??????

BACK IN REALITY, the Blue Angels are roaring over our house, an indicator that Baltimore's Fleet Week has started.

Adventure and madcap escapades await!  Sailors are in town and Cookie must go.  The racket is terrific.