Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll takes note of the RELENTLESS PROPAGANDA. She writes:

So I sit down at my computer, avoiding checking my favorite sites and hoping to stay in a good mood in order to crank out something moderately funny. Which is my dang job. And my screen saver – whose sole job is to cover my screen with lovely nature pictures – willy-nilly asks me if I would like to “learn how to be more of an ally in the fight for equity and inclusion.”

Why, no, I would not. I’ve been “inclusive” my whole life, not that the racial hucksters and grifters give me any credit for it. YOU try to prove you aren’t a racist when just SAYING that you are not a racist is proof that you are! I would have stood a better chance of proving that I wasn’t a witch in Salem. All I would have had to do there is hold my breath under water for ten or fifteen minutes.

And, furthermore, Screensaver Busybodies, there is no such thing as “equity.” I am a short, elderly woman who will never be in the NBA, and there are willful illiterates who will never be astrophysicists no matter how many fewer points they need on their SATs to get into MIT. I freely stipulate that, even though I did pretty well on the college-bound tests I took with my quill and inkwell about 150 years ago, I’m no astrophysicist either. But you don’t hear me demanding that the Astrophysics Academy just certify that I AM one to be “equitable.”

Haha. I kid the SATs. Everybody knows that ANY testing is racist so the Edumacation Complex has done away with testing altogether. Who needs to be smart to go to college? Who needs regular old garden-variety intelligence at all? Let’s hear it for “Emotional Intelligence,” which I am assured – mostly by women for some reason –is a “thing.” Emotional Intelligence is a lot easier to test for: just observe how MANY different emotions – rage, grief, anger, jealousy, fury, hysteria, envy – the average college-edumacated TikTok Lib can run through in three minutes. That must constitute a HEAP of Emotional Intelligence, compared to the smarts of the average stoic, disciplined Marine.

Not too long ago, whenever I wanted to listen to the Pandora system which Joe had set up with our favorite stations, every few minutes an insufferably self-righteous voice would inform me for the 3,000th time that day that “Black. Lives. Matter.” It got to the point that I preferred to play dusty old CDs on my dusty old boombox to having to put up with being hectored every 10 minutes about “amplifying EVERY black voice.” Seriously? EVERY voice merits amplification? Whoopie? Kanye? Joy Reid? I think those tedious repetitive, yet well compensated voices are plenty amplified enough already. I know tons of white people, possibly some relatives, whose voices could go on “Mute” for the rest of my natural life and I would not be at all upset.

There is no aspect of our lives that is safe from Big Karen.

I kind of fell in love with a brand of jeans that fit me perfectly AND were Made In The U.S.A. The label had a little American flag to indicate that. They were not inexpensive, though not crazy either. I was happy to pay the price and I own probably fifteen pairs of them in sizes ranging from 4 to Somewhat Bigger, Yet Bigger and Pretty Big. All of a sudden I noticed that the little flag wasn’t there anymore. What the heck? Of course, they were now being made in China. Shockingly, although they were now being made by slave laboring political prisoners, children, and future involuntary organ donors, the price did not drop a penny. As a regular online customer, I had foolishly agreed they could email me. Luckily, they never abused that privilege, sending no more than twenty or thirty emails a day. Sigh.

But now I see that they have some in a new fabric they proudly announce as “sustainable.” Please stop. What the heck is more “sustainable” than denim? I have some jeans that are well over twenty years old and some souvenir Twins cotton t-shirts from both World Series that are 35 and 31 years old. That’s pretty darned sustainable, although the ’87 one does have a slight armpit tear. I nevertheless still wear it. What IS the mysterious new magic fabric for these sustainable jeans? Some hybrid combo of polyester and crickets? Hard pass.

Decades ago, Sears had a brand of little boys’ jeans called Toughskins™ that were hard – but never impossible! – for an active outdoorsy boy to wear out. They had reinforced knees. Now they would have to come out with reinforced butts for the inert little tykes to sit all day on their phones, iPads, or video games. But back in the day it was still legal to run and jump and fall on your knees and even chew your slice of Oscar Meyer bologna into the shape of a gun.

Mothers wanted jeans that could either be passed along to their siblings’ kids or even (prepare to be shocked!) to be worn by multiple other children in their own large families! Oh, Gaia, how we abused ye being fruitful and multiplying. In 100 years, the earth could be one centigrade warmer, or colder, or whatever. How dare we?

A brief parenthetical digression: I am a Mega Free Speech Defender, but if anything could legitimately qualify as “Hate Speech,” it would be the label in my bestie’s clothing when we were little girls. When we were age 7 or 8, searching through the Clearance racks in Herbergers, she would look for a dress labeled “Chubbettes.” And she was merely “stocky,” not like the sad little Weebles you see wobbling through Walmart today. Oh, well. She survived and became a successful doctor anyway. And now back to my screed about Relentless Propaganda.

If I had any choice about Recycling, I wouldn’t. Our garbage pickup here in Arizona is just once a week and includes both Icky Smelly Garbage and Recycling. I would vote in a heartbeat for twice-weekly Icky Garbage pickup instead. Then I wouldn’t have to hold my breath unloading groceries from my trunk in the 115-degree summer. We found out a couple years ago, that one major Recycling provider was simply driving the gas-guzzling trucks from Arizona to California where they got more money for the aluminum cans. Isn’t that a riot? People were horrified, but I thought it was very entrepreneurial.

I care not a whit whether my checks are made out of recycled paper. My enjoyment of television commercials is not particularly enhanced just because the advertisers use ONLY couples of different races now along with same-sex couples. It is a form of relentless propaganda and I resent it.

At least I THINK I do…but first, I must find out how Bette Midler and Rob Reiner feel about it. I never form an opinion without making sure that geriatric influencers Bette and Rob and Cher are on board. And now I have another influencer heroine — Alyssa Milano, she of the genius move to trade in her icky hate-speech-enabling Elon-Mobile for the NaziWagon. Honey, I think that is known in the corporate world as a “lateral” move.

Not that for a minute do I suggest Mr. Musk is a fascist. I think he could very well turn out to be the least likely African-American, with the exception of Clarence Thomas, to save the First Amendment. Godspeed, Mr. Musk. And welcome back to Twitter, brilliant and witty James Woods.