Behind the Meds Cabinet Looking Glass

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Irresponsibly and excessively monetized video streams have prompted my following response…

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If nothing else, manufactured demand will incite & invite suppliers.
That’s Rule No. 1 to webmasters, whose wretched plot is to platform
fearmongering psychotics (prone to bark end-of-the-world dogma);
whose Job No. 1 is to carve deep facial worry lines, whiten all of our
hair follicles, grind all of our pearly whites down to their roots and,
last but not least, liberate the libido from each adult within earshot!
Then, webmasters platform snake oil peddlers hellbent on hawking
their poison pills, potions and poultices; fake pharmaceuticals, ALL,
that, symtom-wise, cure absolutely NONE of those disorders, above;
that wallet-wise, can only fatten the fat-cats’ and flatten the patsies’!

`

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Be humans Vaxxed OR Unvaxxed, We
can still shed and spread the batcrap
crazy contagious coronavirus which,
in turn, spawns new variants; which,
in turn, could, eventually, render the
available vaccines worthless; which,
in turn, will drag out the pandemic’s
needless suffering, illness and death!

HENCE… this easy as pie, cover your
nose and pie-hole/hole-up heads-up:

Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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Who’s Up For a Boycott?

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Here’s the contemptible, regrettable, repulsive, rundown on the state of the blah, run of the mill, run down into the ground, insufferable, white elephant Republican Party; be these Anti-American party animals throwbacks; backdating to the era of their great, great, great grand daddies; be these corporate monsters akin to the U.S. Supreme / Extreme Court midwife righties, who birthed the grotesque notion that “corporations are people”; be these asshats the present day MAGA maggots / domestic terrorists / insurrectionists.

Clarification: Not that any of these out of touch with actual, average American socioeconomic realities Republicans are great, but I could’ve easily tossed in a few more “greats”; just to emphasize how these anachronisms are addle-minded, aged and ancient! But I digress…

We are speaking, by and large… of a haunting, cancerous, political movement / plot, which incorporates the power hungry, money grubbing, know-nothing, know-it-alls; who want absolutely nothing to do with actual, representative government; i.e., unless the people they represent are their own, selfish, racist, misogynist, science denying selves.

In essence… ricocheting within the vacuum of their devoid of all humane values / feelings, utterly mucked up crania, they believe that they are the bosses of the low and middle class masses; when, IN REALITY, the intent of the U.S.. Constitution’s authors had been the diametric opposite; namely, ALL eligible voters are the bosses of whomever we wind up electing.

The sad truth is… there are sticking points in morphing the Republican agenda to conform to the urgent needs of humankind; e.g,, enacting (STAT) legislation to address…

• Global Warming… Truth be told, tackling this problem is already too effing late. At best, for a limited time only, we can only mitigate climate change; no longer prevent it.
• Common Sense Gun Control… So far, America has witnessed more mass shooting days than 2023 calendar days. Instead of MAGA freaks’ “thoughts and prayers” platitudes, they must unconditionally surrender; cancel their odious, anything goes, bullets flying, wild, wild west culture of death.
• Medicare for All… why cant the masses receive the identical, cushy health care benefits that congresspersons receive?
• Curbing Inflation… instead of bogusly blaming average folks for high prices; punishing us with job loss and usurious loan / credit card interest rates, why not penalize the actual culprits; namely, the greedy, wallowing in wealth, price gouging corporate bastards?
• Defending Democracy… We must severely punish malignant narcissists / sore losers who, sans even one shred of evidence, claim they’ve won elections; when, in actuality, it was we, the astute voters who loathed them enough to promptly cast our “Go to Hell” / “Go F yourself” ballots.

Granted… it’s highly likely unrealistic to ever count on even one high and mighty, drunk on power, white elephant Republican to ever possess much more than an astoundingly rudimentary attention span. HOWEVER, this true blue American believes there just might be an economic angle to scare the crap out the most hardcore MAGA maniac / moron / minion /malcontent; hmm. (perhaps) for a fleeting moment or two?

Long blog short… that’d involve a grass roots level boycott; words to the effect…

Until “The Day” that MAGA / Trumper Republicans start representing the values; respecting the wishes of the average, every day masses, we should start (metaphorically) hitting them in their already bulging (with obscene wealth) wallets!

In other words… let’s start to flatten their already fat wallets by FLAT-OUT refusing to allocate one red cent beyond what it takes to pay for life’s bare necessities; e.g., to…

• Stock our shelves / fridges with supermarket level provisions.
• Pay our utility bills to keep our electrical current, water and natural gas flowing.
• Pay our Interwebs / cell phone bills to stay connected.

The unnerving “hmm moment” lingering question…

• So, when might the reclamation of our representative government “Day” finally arrive?
• Sorry to say, that’ll likely coincide with “meteorological reports” of Hell freezing over!

Even so… let’s all give it the ol’ college try!

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`

Be humans Vaxxed OR Unvaxxed, We
can still shed and spread the batcrap
crazy contagious coronavirus which,
in turn, spawns new variants; which,
in turn, could, eventually, render the
available vaccines worthless; which,
in turn, will drag out the pandemic’s
needless suffering, illness and death!

HENCE… this easy as pie, cover your
nose and pie-hole/hole-up heads-up:

Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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Hey Ogres, Subsidize Yer Own Gluttony!

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As I type and you read these very words, we’re being bowled over by runaway inflation. Worse yet, nearly every attempt to combat this debilitating, detrimental disease almost always, intentionally abuses workers barely / rarely making ends meet, as well as retirees narrowly existing on fixed incomes. Many of us, the already impoverished, are in relentless belt tightening mode; too damned many drowning in credit card debt; some even facing down hunger and homelessness.

Must the only end in sight be “The End”?

Maybe not. Were the self-proclaimed economic wizards able to, magically, dig themselves out of their prob solving rut they might be able to (sooner or later) extricate the masses from this economic, mucked up mess (please, make that sooner). But, what should they do, instead?

For starters, abandon the present-day, economic curative that seems to be far worse than the disease, itself. We are speaking of the following, tired, worn out, oppressive, heartless mindset…

“As the theory goes, if it’s more expensive to borrow money or carry a balance on a credit card, consumers will spend less. When spending declines, demand will fall and, eventually, so will the price of everyday goods.”

Google Search
10 April 2023
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Let’s further flesh out the method to that hike the interest rates madness…

Matters, almost invariably, go from bad to worse when, net effect, the consequences of folks spending less will be employers scuttling their previous plans to hire more workers; or worse yet, when the suits opt to go the workforce layoffs route. Now, factor in this “hmm moment” / reality check…

Seeing how it’s frequently CEO denizens’ unrestrained avarice that’s been driving inflation thru the roof, the far more honest, fair minded governmental response must involve reining in the very money grubbers, who are giddily, greedily, willfully, sadistically price gouging everybody to death.

Honest national leaders must hang tough; i.e., promptly inform arrogant corporate monsters that if they don’t cease and desist in habitually screwing over / victimizing the consumers / commoners, there will be formidable consequences; namely a significantly higher corporate income tax rate; a percentage hike that’d be commensurate to the severity of the price gouging incident(s).

Such amassed revenue would then be promptly, properly transferred from the Treasury Departments’ vaults to the suffering masses; e.g. in the form of monthly paychecks.

Can everyone sense the sweet taste of economic revenge? Yep, that’d be the long overdue payback, where the corporate ogres would actually wind up subsidizing their own gluttony!

Granted, the typical reaction of these snotty, snooty uppercrusters would be retaliatory; in essence, the combatants’ whiny tone going along these lines…

“Oh yeah? Don’t you dare raise my taxes! Not by even one penny! If you do, I’ll throw a hissy fit and move my massive corporation overseas. So there!”

(Visualize, too, that childish harangue’s ending “punctuation” being the sticking out of the collective corporate tongue).
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The Generic CEO
‘

At that juncture, each resolute leader’s retort must be…

“Oh yeah? If you do ship out, overseas, there you WILL remain until Hell freezes over. Oh, btw, if you also intend to export your products, our way, you can count on our levying stiff tariffs against you AND distributing this revenue to our citizen consumers.”

The Generic Governmental Leader
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So, there you have it, folks! Both literally and figuratively speaking, corporate, economic payback. I don’t know about you, but, the very notion of such justice (at least for a fleeting moment) has got me all smiles.

And my facial expression could easily evolve into something even more enduring; my ear to ear grin… if only…

President Joe Biden would be amenable to a similar, common sense, common folks approach to fighting corporate greed / inflation. Why, he’d not only wind up winning over genuine Americans’ heads and hearts but also (come Election Day, November 2024), the winning of his second term.

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Be humans Vaxxed OR Unvaxxed, We
can still shed and spread the batcrap
crazy contagious coronavirus which,
in turn, spawns new variants; which,
in turn, could, eventually, render the
available vaccines worthless; which,
in turn, will drag out the pandemic’s
needless suffering, illness and death!

HENCE… this easy as pie, cover your
nose and pie-hole/hole-up heads-up:

Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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A Blogging Milestone? Tombstone?

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7 Year Anniversary Achievement

Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!

You registered on WordPress.com 7 years ago.

Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.

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My WP 7th anniversary came and went on 01/21/23. I’m only acknowledging that non-event belatedly; i.e., as the means for facilitating a discussion regarding both society’s and my own site’s “future”.

It’s (dis)courtesy of the pandemic perspective, that I’ve become witness to the hideous side of human-un-kind. You see, I had naïvely expected that, whenever nearly eight billion souls have no choice but to face down a common, debilitating, deadly microbial enemy, we would also, miraculously, undergo a humbling, unifying change of heart.

Not so.

Consider how even the best of our world’s leaders have hit brick walls; whenever trying to persuade the pandemic denier masses to implement even the simplest life saving protocols (such as masking up and social distancing). But what the hell else could anyone ever expect from a society that’s also rife with global warming / climate change / science deniers?

So, what we did wind up with, instead, is the grotesque, business as usual ‘tude; i.e., too damned many malcontents chomping at the bit to break out of pandemic quarantine; their butt ugly goal being to engage and upstage that godforsaken microbe; to ignorantly add to an already needlessly high death toll. Beyond that…

Our daily news cycles, once again, are being dominated by bigotry fueled police brutality, armed to the teeth gun nuts hellbent on infiltrating / violating school houses, houses of worship, supermarkets, movie theatres, concert halls / arenas, etc. Even Vladimir Putin could not resist challenging the Grim Reaper on their chosen, international theatre of war (Ukraine).

Bad enough, there’s been little shortage of the rest of our societal scourges, too. Rearing their ugly heads, once again, we’re witness to “ism” dominated class warfare, greed driven price gouging and mindless, meaningless culture wars, etc.

Worse yet, here within my Stateside homeland, the likely, guilty as hell Donald J. Trump still remains the at large, still unpunished, existential threat to Democracy; his Anti-American M.O. serving as a paradigm for his worldwide autocratic a-hole allies to unleash against their own beleaguered, oppressed populaces.

Even Little Donny winding up indicted in New York, just yesterday, re the hush money check he had paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels (allegedly in violation of campaign finance laws) won’t do much to ever fully rein him in. After all, even IF convicted, it’s unlikely that he’ll ever serve even one nanosecond within any brig, cage, can, cooler, clink, hoosegow, jail, jug, lockup, penitentiary, pokey, prison, slammer or stockade. And in this blogger’s opinion (once again) he’ll wind up evading the type of punishment which he actually deserves. And even that hollow victory can only embolden him.

Worst of all that would mean that Little Donny cannot be stopped from running for a second term come 2024; where win or lose, he will likely attempt another January 6th magnitude, violent, destructive and deathly coup designed to burn down Democracy.

So, as you have probably already surmised, under such trying, dismal circumstances, I’ve been having a rough time seeing exactly how a significant segment of humanity will ever wind up enjoying any meaningful future.

So, as for my own blog’s “future”? Well, my having written and posted, so far, only five times in 2023 (inclusive of this one), it should come as no shocker that what little traffic I had ever mustered, these past seven years, has almost completely vanished deep into the cyberspace “woods”. Essentially, this very essay is destined to be akin to a published, read only by me, word document.

While I possess little in-depth knowledge of how this platform’s algorithms function, I do know that my self-inflicted, site stagnation will, ultimately, prove stubborn to counteract.

Suffice to say, be you a WP head honcho or a former reader, nearly everybody else will have, long ago, already written me off.

Oh well, at the very least, I can still blow off steam whenever I “smash” that publish button.

At the very most, since nothing ever actually dies on the www, in a sense I will have achieved a modicum of interwebs immortality.

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Be humans Vaxxed OR Unvaxxed, We
can still shed and spread the batcrap
crazy contagious coronavirus which,
in turn, spawns new variants; which,
in turn, could, eventually, render the
available vaccines worthless; which,
in turn, will drag out the pandemic’s
needless suffering, illness and death!

HENCE… this easy as pie, cover your
nose and pie-hole/hole-up heads-up:

Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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Passive Resistance v. Active Arrogance

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Inflation, has been mercilessly skyrocketing our grocery store register receipts and hemorrhaging our bank balances. Assessing this succinctly, alliteratively and non-profanely…

It’s ALL distressing and downright depressing!

However, not all hope is lost. When it comes down to getting prices down (reining in corporate greed), I just might be onto something. Best of all, I cannot, possibly, be the first and only person to roll out a strategy where, via passive resistance, we can capitalize on this time-tested interrelationship…

Low demand leads to supply gluts, which necessitate price drops.

From the Check Out Lane, check out what appears to be working for me.

Let’s suppose that my shopping trip’s goal is to pick up only a couple loaves of bread.

• Upon arrival I’ll pass up the handheld baskets and smaller shopping carts; instead, roll out the biggest cart available.
• Next, with fake shopping list and real pen in hand, while rolling up and down the aisles, I’ll make frequent stops and scrutinize the shelves’ labels to discover my select items’ prices.
• Shake my head glumly / horizontally, while jotting down all of the outrageous amounts.
• MOST IMPORTANTLY, I’ll refrain from tossing any of those items into my cart.

OR… just to vary it up, a bit (especially if I’m in the mood to hone my acting skills)…

• I’ll place a few of these items in my cart, start to roll away; only to double back, moments later, to neatly “restock” their shelves.

WITH THE FINAL ACT to my slice of life, performance art nearing, I will wind up buying those two loaves of bread; making sure to select the lowest priced brands.

CONCLUSIONS… you gotta know that…

• Store Management would be inclined to peg me as some sorta Yelp Business Review poster.
• Store Security, monitoring their facility’s hidden cameras, will not only be on the lookout for shoplifters, but also be eagle-eying honest customers’ buying habits (inclusive of mine).
• Cashiers will be paying attention to the nearly empty carts (again, inclusive of mine).
• Patrons’ efforts to raise awareness of our dwindling funds, will be paying for small purchases with ONLY $1 Bills (occasionally subbing in some of the paper currency with the equivalent pocket change).

RESULTS (so far)… this past, late August, my flipping off their $14.99 sale price (for my favorite coffee brand) paid off, decidedly; by mid-September, resulted in a new, $9.99 price tag. Seeing how that’s been this brew’s rock bottom price (backdating to the aughts decade), I actually won this battle! Also wound up buying two canisters.

AS TO BE EXPECTED… there will be some occasions, where I’ll wind up so utterly bummed out by their greedy price gouging that I’ll spend $0.00; i.e., promptly roll my totally empty cart back towards the exit signs and leave; while, for the benefit of the security team, rolling my eyes / gesturing both hands off to my sides and upward.

While it’d certainly be tempting to exit while also whipping my dual, single finger salutes that’d be both inordinately nasty and inconsistent to my passive resistance stance (in other words, I wouldn’t want to sink down to their corporation’s level).

AT THAT JUNCTURE… the new game plan would involve driving off to my new destination; buying my daily bread at a far more reasonably priced, out-of-town grocery store.

GRANTED… it’d also be tempting to open up a Yelp Account and post this blog on that platform, too; to name by name, this price gouging grocery store…

HOWEVER… that potentially risks negatively impacting their corporate bottom line; resulting in layoffs of their entry level cashiers / service clerks; the Pandemic’s very front line heroes who’ve been risking their very lives while slaving away within our dirty, diseased world (Covid-19, Monkey Pox, Polio, et al).

BESIDES… their price gouging ways predate, by multiple decades, the pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, and psychopath Putin’s war. Beyond that, were the corporate small “g” gods to ever shutter this business, that’d leave my hometown sans a supermarket.

ANYWAY… there’s little need for any blogger / reviewer to take down their greedy SOB CEO. Considering his inflated ego and prices, his ouster could easily wind up a DIY event. Yep, both the resultant board of directors’ dismay and consumers’ backlash should suffice.

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Be humans Vaxxed OR Unvaxxed, We
can still shed and spread the batcrap
crazy contagious coronavirus which,
in turn, spawns new variants; which,
in turn, could, eventually, render the
available vaccines worthless; which,
in turn, will drag out the pandemic’s
needless suffering, illness and death!

HENCE… this easy as pie, cover your
nose and pie-hole/hole-up heads-up:

Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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No-Bread Bane / Bain-Marie Boon

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I dunno how conditions are in your neck of the woods, BUT, the mere sight of the Stateside, broken supply chain’s emptied store shelves is depressing; so much so, that I’ve not been psyching up sufficiently to haul my heinie off to the supermarket. Consequently, since my last store visit (nearly one full month ago), I’ve observed my supply of cracked wheat bread dwindling; from loaves… to slices… to breadcrumbs…

Alas, this early a.m., that presented a problem; seeing how my oatmeal and coffee main menu frequently features a bain-marie (double boiler) warmed over peanut butter and jam sandwich for dessert.

ASIDE #1: If you’ve yet to consume peanuts / peanut based products, DO be cautious. Check this out…

“A peanut allergy is one of the most common food allergies. About 1 in 50 children in the US have a peanut allergy. It is a food allergy that commonly causes anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening symptom of an allergic reaction. There’s no cure for peanut allergies, although many children outgrow them.”

(Ohio’s) Cleveland Clinic • Read Full Article Here

ASIDE #2: The de-linking of our supply chain has also cleared the shelves of creamy peanut butter (especially the stir the oil back in variety); all of which has necessitated my becoming more “adventurous”; i.e, opting to check out the chunky variety (which rarely sells out). In this case, my message to the non-allergic masses: DO be adventurous; in this man’s opinion, there are few culinary pleasures that can top munching into a PB & J sandwich’s delish, warm goobers.

So, with all asides now set aside… here’s how I compensated for my down to bread crumbs, crummy plight.

I began by upping my usual oatmeal serving size from 1 to 1½ cups. While everything cooked up, I located my smallest loaf pan; the actual L x W x D:

• Centimeters = 11½ x 6½ x 4
• Inches = 4½ x 2½ x 1½

Once the oatmeal was ready, into the loaf pan I spooned / spread out, evenly, the following ingredients:

• a bottom 2 cm / ½ in thick oatmeal layer
• 1 tbsp peanut butter
• 1 tbsp strawberry jam
• a top 2 cm / ½ in thick oatmeal layer

I placed the goodies loaded loaf pan into the now rinsed clean, reheating bain-marie. In the approximately 15 – 20 minutes it took for me to savor my bowl of oatmeal, the mock PB & J’s peanut butter oil was re-separating and the jam was liquefying; thereby imbuing the surrounding oatmeal.

Obviously there’s also plenty of room for future, ingredient experimentation; e.g.

• adding a crumbled crackers top layer
• replacing the jam with pancake syrup
• including raisins, dates and figs
• subbing in seasonal fresh fruit
• sprinkling on spices (e.g. cinnamon)

Who’d have thought it possible that a bain-marie could transform into a stove top bakery?

As for the two cereal layers’ ability to replace the bread slices, the oaty flavor proved vastly superior; so yummy that I’m no longer in any particular hurry to haul my heinie off to the grocery store.

My reinvented PB & J sandwich, summed up more succinctly:

Confection Perfection!

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Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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Eggs-istential Enigma (Part 1)

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This past Wednesday, I Ventured forth into the looming, zombie apocalypse for a much oVerdue grocery shopping “adVenture”. Like my waistline, my larder was thinning out, alarmingly so, and that’s ill-adVised, especially against the preVailing backdrop of massiVe ciVil unrest and societal upheaVal.

To keep it all real, who the hell eVen knows where one’s next meal might be coming from; e.g., [1] with Vicious, Venomous, Vacuous Vlad Violating Ukraine AND on the Verge of Vaporizing the entire planet Via the launch of his nukes, [2] Vexing Corona-V Variants Vehemently challenging the Vaccines and [3] aVaricious, maleVolent human/Viper hybird corporate VIPs deVastating the global supply chain (for fun and profit).

Hmm, waddaya think of my aboVe paragraphs’ “V” alliteration?

Anyway… all wordplay aside…

My primary shopping options were to EITHER frequent an in-town supermarket where the shameless CEO’s ongoing business model has been price gouging; predating, by multiple decades, our current sorry state of inflation OR head for an out of town, more reasonably priced store.

FYI, I’ve been limiting my trips to the latter to avoid the 89kph / 55mph highways; the far lower local speed limits saving wear and tear on my 23-year-old vehicle.

As expected, I wound up finding thinned / emptied shelves, storewide. Even so, I did manage to load up the grocery cart, so much so, that the checkout lane cashier’s total came to $282.

Well, something just wasn’t adding up. You see, with pen in hand, I’d been keeping a running tally while shopping, ergo, I suspected this amount to be an overcharge; in the neighborhood of $15.

However, factoring in how I hadn’t had enough sleep the previous night, this gave me reasonable doubt that I’d done all my math correctly. Additionally, seeing how too damned many customers / Karens have been needlessly stressing out our frontline retail workers, I opted to give her the benefit of the doubt; i.e., defer registering any on-the-spot gripe.

Ergo, once back within the confines of my own home, I unpacked the shopping bags and carefully organized my haul atop the dining room table, kitchen countertops and (re the perishables) within the refrigerator.

With the register receipt as my guide, my audit began. With pencil in hand, I began checking off all that appeared to be OK.

Conclusion: while my math had been spot on, what I hadn’t taken into account was getting charged for 98 items when, IN REALITY, I had only placed 93 on the conveyor.

BOTTOM LINE: The cashier had charged me for 5 cartons of eggs.

The Eggs-istential Enigma, here, is that I had not purchased even 1 carton; which begs the key question:

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How the hell did, not 1, but 5 NON-EXISTENT egg cartons’ bar codes get scanned?

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My being a 30-year retail veteran (now retired) sales clerk, cashier and manager, I’ve heard and seen just about everything, ergo, I do have several working theories (not all of them involving innocent, human error if you catch my drift).

However, prior to my going into any details (to be revealed within my planned Part 2 to this post), I’d like to, first, run this by you, my readers; discover what you may be reading into this Eggs-istential Enigma.

I mean, this all sounds so bizarre that when I report this incident… and I do intend to report this… to that store’s complaint department manager…

Will (s)he even believe me?

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Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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Supersized US

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As far as food product marketing scams go, this one may sound innocuous, yet…

The practice of supersizing portions (“just” to speed up repeat business / fatten the corporate bottom line) can also (literally) fatten the consumer’s bottom line.

In addition to bigger servings leading to bigger butts (depending on the product), the accompanying, alarmingly unhealthy tonnage of sodium, sugars and saturated fats can lead to hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoarthritis, etc.

Let’s flesh this issue out… oh… say… by talking peanut butter (preferably the healthier variety that requires our stirring the separated peanut oil back in).

CAUTION: No discussion would be complete sans a warning of potentially debilitating and deadly Peanut Allergies. Best advice to first time, potential, goober eaters is to always exercise caution; i.e., seek advice from your primary care physician!

So, here’s where we’re at. We’ll start by factoring in the peanut butter industry-wide suggested excessive, serving size; as well as crunch the other sandwich ingredients’ numbers…

• 190 calories [2 tbsp (32g) peanut butter]
• 160 calories [2 slices of bread]
• +50 calories [1 tbsp (20g) jelly or jam]
• 400 calories [Grand Total]

400 calories for JUST 1 sandwich? Geesh, that’s 20% of the typical adult’s daily, 2,000 calorie intake; which can easily stymie our best intentions (New Year’s Resolutions?) to stick to a nutritionally well-balanced diet.

Additional Stats: Each jar of my favorite peanut butter brand promises 23 sandwiches, total, however, by my spreading it just a tad more sparingly, I’ve been able to net 8 additional sandwiches (31 total). This also drops the calorie count from 190 down to 141. Doing the math:

190 calories X 23 sandwiches = 4370 calories
4370 calories ÷ 31 sandwiches = 141 calories

• 141 [PB]
• 160 [Bread]
• +50 [Jelly / Jam]
• 351 [New Total]

This sandwich total can be further reduced by
buying lower calorie breads and fruit spreads;
or, even better yet, slicing up some fresh fruit.

Beyond That: These 8 extra sandwiches mean that, for every 3 jars of peanut butter (8 X 3 = 24), I’m netting 1 more sandwich than each jar’s peddled 23. Yep, that’s like getting 1 FREE PB JAR for every 3 purchased. Even better, I’m easily maintaining my old college day’s “fighting weight”; and, all the while not sacrificing one iota of PB&J sandwich flavor.

Beyond Beyond That: By not using up the PB so rapidly, this helps compensate for supply chain woes, which, way too frequently, render our supermarkets’ PB and J aisles barren.

Beyond Beyond Beyond That: Staying fit and trim just might, someday, save my life in yet another way. You see, this liberty loving, liberal can envision literally fleeing for my freedom; namely, outrunning fascistic freak Trump’s Inauguration Day 2025 “parade”; one overrun by his marauding QAnon zombies; menacing, MAGA maniacs; psycho Proud Boys; deployed goosestepping goons and rolled out tank commandos.

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Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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Y a www XSive Xistence is UnYs

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Here’s why an online excessive existence is unwise:

Let’s say that we’re overly dependent on:

• Streamed reportage to stay abreast of current events
• Streamed music, movies and TV to amuse / entertain
• Social networks to act as our digital photo repositories
• E-commerce to purchase goods and peddle our wares
• E-banking / E-bill paying to manage all of our finances

Now, let’s say that, someday, some devil-may-care electorate permits a cultist to rise to power; perhaps some narcissistic, fascistic, morbidly obese, bleach blonde, tousled hairdo’d dude with troweled on orange, clown make-up?

To keep it all real, what would stop that asshat from staging a coup d’état? Hey, it’s been tried before!

The top priority of any till-death-do-us-part type tyrant would be to sever all communication. And what could be easier than his throwing the Internet Kill Switch

The net effects of a net-less nation / world being:

• Molded-over fake news; molded to flatter that Fascist bastard
• A dispirited, disconsolate, alienated from loved ones populace
• Consumers unable to secure life’s essential products/services
• Entrepreneurs discovering their E-businesses shuttered tight
• Frozen assets and the consequent inability to pay off creditors

There you have it folks. The unfed minds and bodies; unpaid mortgage/rent and energy bills would, quite literally, leave the huddled, miserable masses out in the cold.

In other words…

To abandon our in-print books, periodicals, newspapers, cardboard covered photo albums, in person theatrical performances / concerts, as well as brick and mortar businesses, could quite easily herald the demise of any robust, full-bodied healthy and happy society.

Exactly how far beyond that it could go, would depend, for the most part, upon the degree of the mercurial tyrant’s zealousness / doggedness.

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Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

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Live Like There’s No Tomorrow?

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The (so far) understatement of this (or, perhaps, any past) millennium, is how the pandemic has laid bare the fragility of economies, worldwide; so much so that we’re now witnessing corporations’ desperate attempts to fire up consumerism.

Case in point, are the home improvement / home furnishing industries’ advertising campaigns, which can only come across as tone deaf and off-putting; well, at least to those of us who are unemployed / underemployed or living on fixed incomes; in particular, to mortgagors and renters who are struggling to make their monthly payments.

I mean, why would anyone even remotely consider rushing off to the store to purchase… oh… say… a dining room table, today, when there might NEITHER be a roof over NOR food to serve upon that table, tomorrow?

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Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!

-30-

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