Crepuscular

So we learned a new word today.  I think that's how you spell it
We were watching a show about animals that had the R in backward in the title.  And thanks to closed captioning, the word came up and it made for good conversation.

The first place we went to- couldn't even talk to one another.  Apparently if you're in the hospital for a body thing they don't think about your mind and if you're in for a mind thing they don't think about your body.  I'm wondering if there is or ever has been a mind without a body?  I can't think of one example.  So you would think that a big hospital in a county full of old people, that happens to be named for a president and is next to where the 9/11 pilots trained... would know how to deal with both.

After 10 hours in the emergency room with a manic loved one, the patient was taken away.  Someone came out to tell how things were and lied, saying the patient was okay and that they had talked to her- but actually that staff member had not eve seen the patient.

The patient was taken to the 5th floor and had a blast until she fell off a chair in a crowded public room and was sent to the 2nd floor because he blood pressure was extremely low.  Waking up talkative, the patient was given all kinds of tests to see what injuries had happened on the 5th floor and thankfully there seem to be none.  But since the issue was now seen as medical the psych medicines were withheld.  This resulted in the patient speaking nonsensically for an hour and slipping into a state in which which she did not move, speak or respond for 4 days.  Huddled into the side of the bed, gripping one bed rail with her neck crooked to the side, barely blinking; nurse after nurse showed great compassion for her but seemed surprised when we asked if maybe they could do something to wake her up.  It wasn't until the 4 days had gone by that someone thought to check her psych meds and fixed them.

Nurses still said things like "Oh, she can speak?" and "I didn't know she had been mobile."  She's in the hospital to stop talking so much and 4 days of unesponsiveness- with staff screaming at he and she's unable to respond- doesn't strike anyone as odd? 

Muscles so cramped that she now has to go to rehab to learn to walk.  This is what they did to her.


Today in a new place, the patient is receiving more help than the week spent in the other place- and no harmful things as yet.  The food is better too.

We actually waited a whole day and a half for a room to open up in the 5th floor again when unknown to the 2nd floor, unresponsive people can't be up there.  Then we waited 4 days for rehab and she received no physical therapy.  The first morning at the other, new place- she's up and walking the very first day... not walking fat and with no confidence, but the other hospital did not even try.  They did not even think of trying to work with her to get her up and walking- because they're not a rehab.  No, they are not a rehab.  They put people in worse health than when they arrive.

If I had not demanded, they would never have taken the patient out of the bed.  I made them put her in a chair.

It's amazing I am not more angry.  But I've done what needed to be done and not wasted any energy on that.... yet.

Conversations with Monday

Have you ever spoken with someone who required you to provide audible consent every two seconds or else they would accuse you of hanging up on them?

But an actual word, rather than an ummm or uh-huh would be conceived as interrupting?

A question would demand an immediate answer- one particular unknown answer seemed to be required because any other would be met with opposition- but an answer over five words would also be seen as bogarting?

Lay's Southern Biscuits & Gravy Potato Chips

They're good.  They taste like they are dipped in something... not quite sausage gravy, but close.

They're pretty salty, of course... and that reminds me of unsalted chips, which I've only had once.  Those were good too.

Conversations with DAVE

So somebody tells me that the movie theaters (not theatres, mind you) don't make any money unless they sell concessions.

Maybe that's why there aren't any dollar movies anymore.

Maybe I could open a dollar movie with really good food, or maybe really good expensive food.  I wonder how that would go.  Personally, I would love to walk into a movie theater at any time and find myself watching "The Misfits," say, at the point she's screaming in the desert, stay through the end, get up and get a snack and come back to find "Some Like It Hot" and watch the whole thing, sit through a newsreel from the year that film came out, and decide whether or not to watch the cartoons and/or stay for "River of No Return."  But I always have ideas about what I'd want as a consumer.  What would work as a business and what wouldn't, I am not sure about.

The same person told me that there is so much CGI in movies these days but that hasn't affected the price of making films or the price of going to the movies.  Hey!  This is ridiculous.  I had never thought of it.  But obviously blowing up a building is much more expensive than inserting a picture of a blowing up building.

This gentlemen also said he takes his sweetie to the library for date night.

Aww....

It's cheaper than the movies.

Mr. Slaughter Says

Today I talked with Mr. Slaughter about credit card technology, the cashless society and crooks.

I've been noticing the cartels of "homeless" who are dropped off for their shift at the usual corners and picked up again; splitting the cash.  Do they have middle men, and CEOs?  They share the same signs, (folded cardboard, "God Bless") and one told me he made $300 on a good day.  Now why was I the one to buy him an ice cream cone?  Of course, many people could make $4987 dollars in a day and still not have the wherewithall to pay their rent the next week..

One guy was wearing long sleeves soaked through on a day it was Florida humid hot so painful it hurt to walk from the air conditioning in a building to the air conditioning in the car.  I gave him some water and two dollars.  I considered it not a handout but life insurance.

I was talking to someone else about this yesterday, and she and another Good Samaritan gave a man some change but lit into him, telling him he needed to get a job.  I've done that twice.  Usually I ignore or give a buck.

Today Mr. Slaughter said that one tactic is to ask at gas pumps, work in teams, and while your car is unlocked and you're talking to one person, they can grab things from your car.  I've never seen that.  But there is one gas station in one part of town, and another in another, that often has people asking me for bus fare.  I guess bus fare is a way to keep people from handing them food when it's money they want.  I always wonder what they think is waiting for them at the other end of that bus route.  Here in Orlando, a popular bus begging destination is Daytona.  Why would anybody bus over one or two towns without having the resources to bus back?  It's not like they moved across country for a new life- they bus back and forth to the next county over?  Why?  This isn't Tijuana.

The other day, for three days in a row, there was a man dressed in a suit with a sign saying he needed to have gas money to get to a funeral out of state.  That was a new one.  

One time a young kid asked me for money for cigarettes.  I asked him if he had a job.  He said no, but he had tried.  I asked him how many times he tried and he said twice.  I think sometimes people need to talk.  They think it's money that they need but that's just part of it.  He didn't get money from me.

Mr. Slaughter said that he doesn't keep cash.  He was surprised I knew that the new credit card chip, new here in Am; was keeping track of our location.  He said most people don't want to know that.  I didn't say it, but along with helping to cut down crime on the crooks within the system, it probably won't do anything but help the crooks outside the system- you know, kingpins and politicians.  I managed to say Dallas was brought to us by Bank of America and Pulse by Dunkin Donuts.  I wonder if he knew what I was talking about.  He said he just buys McD gift cards and gives those to people who ask for money.  That's a nice idea, but I still needed cash to give to the acupuncturist and that's why I was talking to him in the first place.  It takes someone off the grid to want actual bills, I guess.  Wouldn't I rather pay virtual dollars for a less effective doctor to poison me?  Wouldn't I rather add to the metadata so corporations can figure out how to market to me better?

The chip in a credit card will tell where I am, but wouldn't a database check of the ZIP codes of recent charges do the same thing?  You know, if a charge came from Kalamazoo and then one from Texas- an alert could pop up- what's the chip really doing?

What I think about is that the Nazis were pretty efficient and they didn't have computers.  But I suppose if you think every regime is kinder and gentler than the one before you aren't bothered by that.

This post brought to you by the letter 'M'

I've been thinking about 'M' lately.

In James Bond, that character never meant much to me; not like Q and Moneypenny. or is it Moneypenney?  I'm not sure, because she didn't mean that much to me either; but more than that character M.  But the letter itself has been springing to mind.

We use letters every day and they are everywhere; or is that every where?  Just kidding; it's everywhere.

I've been thinking about the letter M for a long time.  (Not longtime- as in meloveyou...)

M is in the middle of the alphabet so it comes to mind when you're trying to plan how much drawer space you need for filing.  And there are a lot of M's- a lot of words that start with M, that is.  So it tends to be thought of as the middle of the alphabet, but actually the midpoint comes between M and N.  So that midpoint thing isn't exactly why it sticks out to me; since it's not quite true.  Of course maybe the impression that it is the midpoint is more important than the truth; since I'm writing about its impression on me.

There are many S's in filing as well, so that would lean things over to the end of the alphabet if it weren't for the underrepresented X, Y and Z.  So even though M isn't the very middle, it is special to me more than N and more than most and I wonder why.

There is the thought of whether one needs to file the Mc's and the Mac's separately or if they belong in the M's.  I've never lived somewhere where the Mc's and Mac's where so plentiful one might actually consider bringing them out of the M's. 

That's one thing.  Do people even consider putting the vans or Vans or the de's or the von's or the bin's or the ben's or beth's apart?

It's more than filing that is getting to me about M.

When I think of Marilyn Monroe in high school trying to speak but murmuring due to the peer pressure; trying to smile, which she hadn't perfected yet- and being called Mmm Mmmm because she couldn't talk- I think there was actually something M like about her.  It wasn't just a name chosen for her after adulthood had commenced and the marketing needed to begin.  She had some Mness.

McDonald's has some Mness these days.

And I love McDonald's.  Or is it McDonalds?  I've noticed some corporations have taken out the apostrophes.  If you own it, you can do that I suppose.  But what about all the Marilyns and Mc and MacDonalds you aren't associated with the famous brands who have their names?

Just the other day it hit me that Donald (the name) is inside McDonald's and chip is inside Chipotle.  These are two giants whose marketing has really worked on me yet I didn't see the obvious; and me- someone who thinks about individual words- how can this be?

With all this talk of Trump- the last name is used so much more than the first- I finally realized he and McDonald's share something huge- a name.  I had already recently realized the Donald connection in my own family to that company- and that's here at age 48.  Clearly there are word connections I think about and word connections that fly right under the radar but must have some marketing power in there.

But they call Hillary Hillary; much more than they call Trump Donald.  This is interesting to me and can't be happenstance.  The name Clinton is the only reason we're talking about Hillary; in spite of her accomplishments after she had the name.  She wouldn't have been Senator Clinton or Secretary Clinton if she hadn't become a Clinton.

But when she wins, it's going to be a Clitown or better, a Cliton for the first time in Washington.

She's going to climb up on Bill's back and a hundred years from now he's going to be famous for being the only president who was also married to a president.  He's going to slip down so far lower than her notableness that many people will remember her as the first woman president the way we think of O'Bama and Washington- without knowing that Obama's mom is white and Washington married a widow.  She will suddenly be assured a place in history and every year people will forget more and more about Bill.  Well, I don't think it will be every year.  The muckraking will include Bill but after she's out of office her star will start to rise and his will fade.

They both look really sick by the way; I wonder if he can hang on until she's in office- or maybe he'll pull a Jackson.

So we missed the cross (Cruz) and got the capital name change- Clitown unless someone else can sneakily win the game (Trump), but he is just a gameplayer not even a politician, while our country continued avoiding the name of socialism, seeing it as a gradual wearing down (of sanding, like Sanders whose time like the Colonel of KFC is riding high temporarily but not really in the game for the long hall) and not really considering our legacy of industrialism, that being a nod to Ford or Lincoln, not choosing the son of cars and other cities and industries not just Detroit (Carson) and putting the emphasis on international military might (Clinton means a high place- city on a hill again but this time we mean it) instead of rebuilding infrastructure or making America great again.  Clinton is going to be set up high to see- Oh say, can you? and we're not choosing another to hide under, or to hide the light under (not a Busch this time or a bushel).  The Bushes are hiding to re-emerge with the first Hispanic president later. 



Back to M- Madison, Monroe, Millard, Mrs and Madame President-

For some reason I've been wanting McDonald's.  What does this have to do with the fact that all over the world I can find an M heralding a cheap, fast, clean air-conditioned place to sit?  They have different interiors but the same menu.  They have a little different pricing but I guess there's a comfort there.  There is a comfort there.  The only other M I can think of with this affinity for me is Marilyn and both McDonald's and Marilyn have the nostalgia American thing going on.  And they both have slipped to meaning mediocre in some way.  Marilyn was revolutionary and now she's quaint.  McDonald's was the Ford of fast food and now Ford and McDonald's are quaint.  The assembly line is assumed but not valued.  People don't care who did that first.  It's time the 44 (Obama) gives way to the 45.  Instead of DD- Dunkin' Donuts which is riding high right now, it's time for DE- but what can that mean?  It surely can't be Denmark more than just a little.  Is it Deutschland?  Do we, who are so Deutsch it's unbelievable, even know that we're that?  We've used English for so long we've forgotten we're cousins.

G-D

Gad, the troop, the tribe and the man; I don't know much about you.

But the Gadarenes didn't like it when their pigs flew over the cliffs and the gadfly stings and bites me today keeping me swatting at nothing I care about.

The gad flies and the pigs fly and the GAD flies in the face of everything I want to do today.

G-d was written on the paper I was grading and I instinctively marked it in red.  Is that what we've done to you?  We want the pigs; they're cute and we understand them.  They're food and we understand them.  They root and we stand under them with our own sense of "better."

Pearls before swine you said, and silk purse out of sow's ears I do every day.  Everyday I do this I'm less valued and more valuable; less like Gad, one of the troop- and more like G-d.  But living in the pigpen as a child of the King gave me something.  Is the something here more desirable than the something there?  Is the offal awful enough to at least sit up and take my head out of it?

There's a banquet waiting, and it's not with mashed potato mush frozen on the edges or peas & carrots, a brownie//black cornbread corner or any cellophane in sight.

The Power of 12

I'm reading again that book about what numbers are and the patterns of numbers in the universe, (which is the big One, the one-verse Itself.)  I'm also trying to separate that- what a One actually is; what a Two actually is (a dichotomy), from numerology or Gematria, which to my understanding, is just turning numbers into letters or into a code- A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, etc... which is not math, but more an alphabet, but a hidden one.  Speaking of that, DD equals 44, which is Obama if you're Amerocentric- and that's why Dunkin' Donuts is the symbol for police brutality under this administration, which is not worse than its been; but placed front and center by the media.  Dunkin' was hugely featured in the Orlando Pulse incident when a 4 x 4 truck was used to take people past the active shooter on their way to the hospital since all the police cars were busy blocking the road from both north and south, and all the ambulances had other things to do than play with the minds of America.

Coming across 12 in Fulton Oursler's The Greatest Book Ever Written, I'm reminded of a lecture I once was privileged to hear that included some three sentences about the importance of the number 12.  Twelve months, 12 tribes, 12 disciple/apostles (Judas replaced by Paul), and the 12 gods on Olympus that also had to switch out because the number was seen as more important than the god they represented.  Then of course there is a dozen, and other measurements.  Is that it?  There must be more, but I think maybe 10 has 12 beat in this idea.

Anyway, Mr. Oursler, on pp. 88-9 translates the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel as:

1. Reuben meaning "Son of Vision" Did the name changes stop here?  There must be some in between Jacob/Israel and  Saul/Paul but they don't come to mind.

Let's see- Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah, Isaac stayed the same?  I think so.  Peter has a few names...

So I take step one as "You have to see before you can hear" but I don't know if the word "vision" concerning Reuben refers to sight, or foresight or something mystical.  In English we have the seer who can see visions but we also have the main of the five senses, and I don't know if they are related in the Hebrew.

2.  Simeon "Hearing"   Wouldn't it be a great study to see how Reuben saw and Simeon heard?  Of course each is the name of an entire tribe and also the particular individual.

3.  Levi "Joined"  This is a great example of why I would prefer a Bible that talks about the "Joined Tribe" instead of the Tribe of Levi.  I do think of jeans, and America, and the gold rush, but more importantly, I think of the priestly tribe that didn't have its own land and the people who served in the Temple; perhaps more common than the Zadoks or Cohens.  I think of Hello Dolly and Walter Mattheau and when my professor Corrine Patton suggested the Levites were a warrior class before they were musicians or servers or whatever they were between Exodus and Hollywood.

4.  Judah means "Praise."  I had no idea.  This must be the David connection, but how does relate to Jesus?  Hmmm.  I have been learning from "mistakes" lately and I heard a couple pastors mistake the name "Judah" for "Judas" and vice-versa.  Of course, it is the same name.  One like Joshua reflects the pronunciation in some Anglicized way before Hellenization, and the other, like the name Jesus, is the Greek NT version of the Hebrew Bible's name for the same thing.

You know: Carl, Karl, Charles, Carlos, Karel.... and me, Charlemagne, the Big Carl.

I also heard one of the pastors mistake "Egyptians" for "Europeans" and wow, it hit me like a ton of bricks that according to our poorly taught history, she is absolutely absolutely on to a truth.  I remember a museum book extolling the virtues of an African art piece because it was "almost Greek."  Wow.

She was also right when she said "unloavened" instead of "unleavened."  Of course that's where the word comes from but if she was more pronunciation savvy, I would never have caught that in my life.

And how does Judah relate to Judas, and also the word "Jew?"  I can understand why people are scared of that, but what's the difference between an Israelite and a Jew today?  Nevermind "Israeli," we'll think about that another day.

5.  Dan - "Judging"  How many Judges are from that tribe?  Don't you just love the book of Judges?  I can't wait to find out.  Alright, I'll stick with one subject for five minutes. 

I WILL wait to find out.

6.  Naphtali means "My Wrestling"  So what's the Bethel connection where Jacob wrestled?  And are they back and forth for some reason I never thought of?  (I love when I switch into informal writing, but it does bother some.)

7.  Gad means "A Troop" so is that martial?  Or just a bunch?

8.  Asher means happy?  I almost dropped the book.

9.  Issachar means "A Hire" or "Wages."  Aren't they the musicians, and I have such problem accepting money.

10.  Zebulun - Now why would a tribe be named "Dwelling" when all the tribes seem to be geographical designations?  Don't they all dwell- except Levi who is "Joined" to all the rest in terms of physical space, but not responsibility or genealogy?

11.  Joseph is "Adding?"  How can I not know this?  There is so much on Joseph- the first novella, or the first biography, and a great Sunday School lesson mine with a sexually virtuous man who doesn't complain, gets a happy ending (the lasting kind) and has a dream storyline and a Jesus connection with the sacrifice imagery- blood on the coat, etc and the name of His father, too.

12.  Benjamin means "Son of the Right Hand" and in what way could this be manifested later for the tribe?  There's the "young child" goes to the head of the class" idea, but there's got to be more to it.  Is that where Saul came from?


So, there are 12 disciples and there has to be a connection between each of them and each of the 12 eponymous ancestors of the tribes.  But with those names getting in the way of their meanings, I don't know these connections which are probably obvious in some instances.

Orlando hoax / crisis acting companies

Church and Chipotle Again

Have you tried the tofu?  The flavor is awesome.  Mix it with the slow-cooked shredded beef or the chicken and it's great.

Today I went to the particular Chipotle where I first tasted it.  I had been a fan of an other similar place and someone told me that the meat at Chipotle was a better quality.  So I went and liked everything but the meat.  The chicken seemed over grilled; with burnt edges.  Now, I like that flavor better than I did then; and it took me a few more times to like Chipotle better than that other place.

Now I'm sold.

They put some interesting marketing verbage (doesn't actually rhyme with garbage) on my cup and chip bag, and I think for the first time a fact that might have been obvious to me but just wasn't - hit me.  Well, it's kind of simple but I don't remember noticing, that Chipotle starts with the word "chip."  I guess the Summer promotion of Chiptopia brought that thought home.  Similarly this week I was wondering why, apart from its affiliation with Microsoft, Word pre-dominates to such a crazy extent.  It may be because of its simple, all-encompassing, important to Western tradition, title.

Speaking of The Word made flesh, I went to church today and saw some Word and some flesh.  It was a great service but I'll tell you, I am not used to three hours.  A backrow Baptist I may always be, wherever I'm sitting, I suppose.

The Best Shirt Ever

This guy comes into work today and he's wearing a shirt that made me look twice.  It's one of those shirts cut like a Hawaiian shirt, with a color and short sleeve button down and it's probably going to be worn un-tucked.  But it didn't have flowers on it.  It was a very dark color and it had a stripper dancing on a pole.  It wasn't a cute print, but a big tall stripper on a pole, taking up the front of his shirt.  This guy was sixty and his wife was with him and I couldn't help wondering if she bought it for him or what.

Fabulous First Paragraph - John Michell

Geometry and the Quest for Reality by John Michell

The essay on page xiii of Michael S. Schneider's A Beginning Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science; A Voyage from 1 to 10

Sooner or later there comes a time in life when you start thinking about Reality and where to find it.  Some people tell you there is no such thing, that the world has nothing permanent in it, and, as far as you are concerned, consists merely of your fleeting experiences.  Its framework, they say, is the random product of a natural process, meaningless and undirected.



Boy I hate when people do that.  No one lives like that, but they sure do tell other people to think that way.  Nobody ever orders a Dr. Pepper, receives a Coke and then thinks "maybe this is just a Coke here in my mind."  They either drink it, knowing full well it's not what they ordered, or they return it and get what they ordered in the first place.  They don't think, "maybe I said the words 'Dr. Pepper' in my mind but the other person heard it differently, and in their perception they were correct, but in mine.... blah, blah blah."  Nobody does that.  But when we talk about philosophy or religion or science, suddenly people get all squishy in their thinking.

Come on.  Nobody falls off a broken chair and blames their own butt or looks inside their mind.  They sit on a different chair.  People don't actually make the ridiculous circumventing of knowledge that they recommend other people make; ever.  Nobody is that stupid, but they sure do recommend that the other guy should try things just as dumb.

"Perception is reality," an idiot once said to me.  Now to be truthful, I would not have liked any phrase that ever came out of his mouth.  So I guess it's not fair for me to blame him for repeating that silly idea.  It's not like he invented it; or anything else.  But of course perception isn't reality.  They are two different words.  And just because we don't teach definitions in English anymore, and we just rattle off synonyms, is no reason to think that these two things are the same.

I guess I know what the idiot meant.  He probably meant that if you think you're drinking a Dr. Pepper, you might as well be- but is that true?  What if you're drinking poison and you don't think you're drinking poison.  Does your imminently in danger nervous system care what you think it is that you're drinking?  And if you are that particular idiot, would anyone care?

Whenever people don't agree with somebody else, they try to act like they have a good reason.

"Oh, well, what you're saying can't be proven, so I can pretend like it doesn't exist in my reality but of course it exists in yours if you think it does."  Really, let's be real here.  There either was a man named George Washington or there wasn't.  I don't think many people disagree about that.  Either he was, or he wasn't.  And I don't know for sure, but everybody seems to think there was, and I have no reason to disagree.  Well, if we change that name to some other name; suddenly people get all stupid.  Either there was a Jesus or there wasn't.  Either there is a Jesus or there isn't.  Either there is a Moses or their isn't.  It's not like my belief or lack of it can go back in time and change anything.

The essay I quoted at the beginning goes on to say that people who are comfortable in a faith tradition don't have a need or desire to go further into looking for patterns in the universe.  This is incredibly insulting to me, but I like the first paragraph that I quoted above and I can't wait to get back into this book.  I think almost all the first geneticists, astronomers, healers, botanists, zoologists and physics guys were very invested in their fields because they wanted to figure out how the universe was made.  They thought it was made, by Somebody or some bodies and they wanted to figure that out.

We all want to figure it out.  We're just looking at different 'its' and we have different opinions about the parts of the 'it' we see that we're interested in.  That doesn't mean there isn't objective Truth.  But even as I prepare to peer behind the curtain, I know I won't see all of it.

Matthew 11

28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

The Message (MSG)

Neanderthal Jeans

Reading that there are Neanderthal genes among us, I smile.  Nobody's been able to accomplish a genocide, maybe.  Maybe there's not one group that's ever been totally eliminated.  Sure there are horrible examples of trying to get rid of people for no reason but maybe that's never happened completely.  I wonder if I have any of those genes.  Once someone told me that the concept of a gene is subjective; deciding where it ends and where it begins, at least.  So do you ever look in the mirror and see something older than people?

They did it to us again.

Nobody's talking about Congress up for re-election again.  Why do we think an eight year max assignment is more important than a lifetime seat?

I'm Excited About August

I just got my violin back and it's looking better than ever.  It's actually kind of cute on the front now.  And it sounds great.

It's a new month, and not just any month, but a consecrated and venerable one.

We go back to a four day a week schedule.

Just think... every day is getting less summery than the one before.

If Obama stays in office a third term, it won't happen until November, but maybe he's taking his cue from the first Caesar; for whom this month is named.  The presidential thing is so ridiculous.  I heard a preacher say last week that Trump is a setup for Hillary to win.  I think I've thought that all along.  Not only has he given money to her campaign, but his name and his personality are so associated with games and competition.  She's trying to be all serious and he's barging around like a baboon.  Pocketsofthefuture says that they're both evil, and I know we all are, but Trump has the devilish ogre thing down.  It's like he's seeing how far he can go.  It's actually absurd and no one is even mentioning anyone else up for election.  So many people will be on the ballot, and every voter says they want change, and they all just think about the one office that is going to be someone different anyway.

I don't recall every hearing people actually say that the sitting President might try to stay in for a third term.  And I can't think of anyone who is probably more eager to leave the White House, but that's what people are saying.  I guess some people are determined to think there was something different about this man than all his predecessors and they can't come up with anything...Surprise; people are people, and he's just a people.

Why do we call Hillary by her first name?  The two candidates look alike.  They act alike in so much that one seems to try to be everything the other isn't and they're the same age and will it be the first time a President has ever had that hair color?  Mrs. Clinton, who should be called Secretary Clinton, I believe, is called Hillary because of sexism.  That's the female part of her name.  A man can have a rod or a ham and when we say her last name we think of cigars in ovals.  But it's the Clinton that got her where she is and no one is considering that she could have gotten here without him.  But isn't she smarter?  Or maybe the first name is meant to humanize the most establishment candidate of the last century.  Haven't we known she was going to run for President for a long time?  Before I ever heard of O'Bama or Chris Christie or thought about McCain running or knew how close Russia is to Alaska, I knew she was going to run.  There are so many candidates that have come and gone while she's known all along where she was headed.  And up against her we have him, who's just like her in every way except they are playing opposite roles.  It's like I'm watching an actor trying real hard to play each half of the twins role differently.