Elon, here is your list!

Dear you, or should I say, dear child Elon Musk:

You demand a list of our accomplishments this week. I may not be a civil servant, but I am a citizen, a citizen from the blue side of the aisle.  Therefore, I must justify to your DOGE-ness how I have earned my right to exist under your regime.  Fine. Here we go:

Accomplishments as a blue citizen in your newly twisted world:

1. I stood strong during the entrapment and debasement of Ukraine in my oval office last Friday. The hillbilly VP and our spray-tan president berated a leader fighting for his nation's lives, freedom. I will not abandon them. I stood/stand with Ukraine.

2. I resisted the urge to slap the faces of the Trump voters in my zip code who are (still) complaining about the high cost of groceries while advocating tariffs and worker firings.

3. I quickly deleted emails sent by my senator Rick Scott praising the glorious carnage caused by his beloved Lord Donald.

4. I consumed multiple cocktails mixed with NOT Russian vodka.

5. I renewed by membership with the ACLU.

6. I continued to attempt to sell my condo on THE GULF OF MEXICO, tragically entertaining and rejecting offers from your like-minded "fuck these old people" friends.

7. I rose above all your noise and remained healthy as hell.

8. I took my aging car for repairs to a "non-dealership" entity who fixed him up for a reasonable, non-Musky price. I resisted the pressure to buy a Tesla.

9. I enjoyed the informative and entertaining programming on NPR, every day, every hour, as if it was the last airing.

10. I kept my head while all around me were losing theirs.

11. I loved and pampered my feline pet, who is (undebatable fact) superior to most humans checking into my condo complex during this early spring break.

12. I walked past the condo building to the north of me that is openly hosting a crowd of underage teenage boys and smiled, saying to the MAGA-capped child screaming on the balcony of unit 12D "I have the county sheriff on speed dial". (He ran.)

13.I resisted everything irrational and anti-democratic.

14. I watched the Oscars and loved the show, notably its reminders that culture unifies and trash, in the end, will be washed away.

15. I read several fabulous books you would find subversive. And they were from the public library. (Something else you intend to kill.)

There is your list, darling Elon.

Yes, I know history. I know democracies fall. And I also know it is your intention to take ours down.  However, I also want you to understand that millions and millions and millions of Americans (the brightest, the sexiest, the smartest, the sweetest) resist your efforts.  Take your best shot. We will #resist.

That is my list! Hope it meets your expectations.

Love,

Joyce 

Old Age Is No Place for Sissies.

Dear you,

Amen to that, Ms. Davis. Try these actions as a sassy senior in our flailing America:

Fly without fear - Today, another crash landing, this time in Toronto; surviving these all too frequent events is hard enough for a youngish CrossFit type; try to crawl out of that wreckage with blurry eyes, stiff joints, and a cat-carrier strapped across your chest.

Talk to the average Joe or Joanne in your neighborhood - come on, I dare you, have an informative chat with someone who gets their news from YouTube videos, the massive and expanding population who have never read The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or, hell, even The New York Post cover to cover.

Sell a condo in Florida - The blistering HOA fees and assessments make you a target for every twenty-something dreaming of building an Airbnb empire, "she's dying anyway, she'll take what she can get".

Buy a home in Florida - Good luck with that, no matter what your age is; the above mentioned Airbnb blood-suckers got there first.

Be an American citizen - Even Canada is booing us at hockey games.

Buy a tasteful swimsuit - Nothing exists unless you want to wear something designed by and for teenage internet influencers.

Study geography - Wait, what do you mean the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America and Greenland is now Red, White, and Blue land?

Seek classic French perfume in my zip code - Salesperson at the local ULTA beauty doesn't know what Shalimar is, but she recommends a bottle of something called "Juicy Lap-dance" that her boyfriend loves.

Celebrate Presidents' Day with sincerity - Really, after all these decades of sane (relatively) leaders, you want me to celebrate the reign of Trump?

All that? I got it. We got it.

We ain't sissies.

Bring it on.

Love,

Joyce

The War on Acronyms and Life as We Knew It

 

Dear you,

The first month of 2025 ends, a wild ride already. Our reinstated president wields power, but some pushback has stalled some of his worst efforts.  However, note I write "some". While we do what we can to resist, the strange just rolls and rolls. Weather: see shot above of snowfall covering my pool in Seagrove Beach. Yes, global warming causes extremes like this. Snow in the Panhandle of Florida. Crimes: mass roundups of undocumented peoples, many, many we know to have no criminal records. Perhaps a shoplifting charge. This, in America.  Woes: recent air disaster at the DC airport and lost souls. Yes, the leader of what was once a free world took a few minutes to act sad (while sporting the white eye rings of the recently spray-tanned or bed-tanned) before he launched into an attack on democrats, blaming DEI for the disaster.

DEI. Diversity, equity and inclusion agendas not only shredded but now absurdly blamed for accidents. And there are other acronyms the right is all fired up about. They passionately act to erase FEMA, FDA, FDIC, CRT, etc. The list goes on.  All they need to do is drop an "enemy" acronym on the plates of their hungry supporters and oh, how they eat it up. Truth matters not, neither do beauty or poetic longings for what was good as well as what is possible. The change we are living is, no matter how much we gird ourselves with stoic acceptance, feeling quite unacceptable. Something feels very, very wrong.

Contemporary novelist, story-teller, professional nurse, Jeanne Ray's narrator/protagonist of Eat Cake reflects on ruptures and rumbles in her life, shifting tides of the not-expected, and counsels herself about wishing for "previous perfection".  She realizes: "Life was not a static experience.  We should not expect things to remain the same." 

Absolutely.  But it is hard when what leaves us, that sometimes precious sameness, is so good, so sweet, and perhaps so forever gone. Gone, a decent and dignified chief executive. Gone, a rational and humane conservative class. Gone, a fairly predictable climate. Gone, debates about sane policy decisions; instead we have a war on acronyms.

What letter clusters will they come for next? TGIF (thank god it's Friday), YOLO (you only live once), STFU (shut the fuck up), or WWJD (what would Jesus do?)? Even the latter irks them, considering all his lessons of mercy, forgiveness, his stands against greed and lies.

Here we are, in the worst kind of non-static situation. But we can still hope. And never give up (NGU). 

I end with that acronym, NGU. 

Ever present and woke, Joyce

PS - don't let the bastards grind you down.