Tag Archives: stepford wives

school is coming back and so are the stepford wives for totalitarianism starting at 8/22/22 tesd school board meeting.

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You know these people are just incredible. I don’t mean that in a positive sense. The Stepford Wives for Totalitarianism just seem to keep ramping it up. And for what? So they can now make every school year going forward as unpleasant as possible?

What I would like to know is when are school districts going to start counter suing them for the money they are wasting with all their crap at public meetings and their unfounded litigation?

The video snippet above was on MSNBC. And it just sort of boggles my mind that they consider if you have an alternative lifestyle choice or are exploring that that you are in the equivalent of special needs and should be segregated from the rest of the population. It appears they think kids who might be exploring different things including their identity and sexuality should be in the equivalent of an educational leper colony. I will be amused to see how this theory works out when they discover some of their kids are those kids. And there’s nothing wrong with kids exploring who they want to be and who they are since that’s what every kid does growing up right?

Closer to home they are starting with the Tredyffrin Easttown School Board Meeting which is going on this evening. I am going to post all the screenshots I received and their email address in case you want to contact them. And remember people, that Scary Sarah Marvin running for State Representative in the PA 157th is among these people.

The TESD school board meeting is this evening August 22 at 7:30 PM at Conestoga High School at 200 Irish Road Berwyn, PA 19312.

So these are the people who are basically against everything and vaccines. They want all vaccines to be optional. You know, polio anyone? Yet they want to be in the public schools? Why don’t they just homeschool their kids?

With these people, the only rights that matter are theirs. The only opinions that matter are theirs. It’s time to stand up to these bullies and send them packing so I hope people pack the meetings. They are not more important than us. And wowza am I glad I have no kids in any school district , although all of us taxpayers are paying for their collective bullshit and I have a problem with that.

These people or a big bowl of wrong.

and just like that…even our t.v. characters age…and all of our lives change as we age and that’s o.k.

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This morning I had a giggle. Sex & The City started on HBO in June, 1998. Cable was ridiculously expensive and I remember hunting the various COMCAST “special deals” just so I could have HBO. Nope, no Manolo budget here. I was single, watching the ultimate single girl television show.

Ok yes, I have talked about this show before, but come on? The original was a big part of all of our lives. Kind of like Star Trek for some of the guys I know.

I loved the cast, part of which was New York City. The clothes and the shoes I could never afford unless they were dumped at Loehmann’s or Daffy’s or Century21. And I could never walk in the shoes. The shoes I left and still leave to my sister (and her fabulous shoe closet/racks.)

This morning I had a giggle because I realized that way back when I used to watch Sex & The City in bed like my big single girl not so secret, sometimes with a glass of wine. Now I watch And Just Like That on Thursday mornings in bed with a cup of coffee.

Yup the 50s. Struck me as so funny. I don’t know why. Well maybe because I watch the new show drinking my coffee and then I go and clean up the rest of the kitchen and sort the laundry. Back then, in the Sex & The City Days, yes I did laundry and cleaned up the kitchen. Just didn’t admit it out loud.

So now I am a few episodes into the new show. I like it. It’s getting a lot of flak like the actresses were supposed to have been cryovaced and opened as their 1990s selves once again. Well gee, that would be a neat trick. They have aged, pretty damn well if you ask me and you can see a little “work” but at least they don’t have frozen face syndrome. I have seen a lot less of that frozen face syndrome since COVID started, but still, it’s out there.

Probably I am an anomaly. I don’t do fillers or injectables. No plastic surgery, still on my original body parts. If liposuction didn’t look incredibly painful, maybe that would be an option (I am actually joking) but I think I will just try to exercise more and eat less? I am not a perfect 10 now, wasn’t back then. After breast cancer surgery, people kept telling me about their favorite plastic surgeons. Well once you have had a couple non-elective surgeries that kind of hurt and if you hate needles, that is not really an option. Besides, ask your radiology technician sometime what they have to do to get a mammogram on ladies with glorious fake breasts. One word: contortion. Two words: no thanks.

Things about the show that still crack me up is they all still breathe the rarified air. They are mixing in more everyday kind of available clothes, but still the wardrobes and where they live. Pretty fun and fantastical. But those are ladies in menopause and I envy them their lack of hot flashes. Or they could just be like my mother was back then and simply not acknowledge their existence.

The conversations have shifted some with them. The hair coloring vs. not coloring crack me up. Oh I have had those because once I started breast cancer treatment I stopped experimenting with color. It was never much to begin with, just the occasional semi permanent color job. Now a decade plus later, my hair still has a lot of my original dark. I will admit some days I freak myself out because when I look in the mirror I see my paternal grandmother Beatrice, but for me I made the right choice. And my hair actually looks and feels better.

I am aging. I will admit to taking collagen supplements, but with age comes dry skin. But when I look in the mirror, except for the occasional glimpse of Beatrice and wondering how almost 60 years of life seem gone in a blink, it’s ok.

Now these television characters and the actors which portray them have all aged. I kind of like that they have aged right along with me. I think I would have been upset if the re-boot occurred with a new young cast.

I often wonder what women think as they age. We all know quite a few who aren’t doing it quite gracefully. The still too short skirts, tight pants, and short shorts. Overly carefully lit selfies and professionally taken social media photos. Some of these ladies have amazing figures, others do not. It’s just about aging gracefully, perhaps with humor. I mean we do have options other than mom jeans, right? I will admit to missing my leather and sued pants, however, and being able to wear strapless gowns.

Back then when the original show aired, I was wondering what this current part of my life would be like. I had a bunch of friends who married young, and I couldn’t see myself in their lives then. I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t about sowing the proverbial wild oats, never did so much of that, it was just about growing into myself I think. I wasn’t there yet. (However, I will tell you that back then, I still did cook, go antique and vintage treasure hunting, and garden.)

One of the best things for women about these shows is showing the relationships between the women and their partners, and the dating then and now. I was never much of a dater although I did it. I always found recreational dating much like the job interviews for the jobs I didn’t want.

But the characters the women’s characters dated in the original series? Cracked me up. I could see them in so many people my friends had dated and even I dated. Like Mr. Big. We all had one of those, I think. But we didn’t marry them, so it’s kind of no wonder they made her a widow. But I do know some young widows, so on the other hand I actually get that (and wish it on no one.)

And the Samanthas. We all had them, even if their clothes weren’t as good. But they grew up too, and not all friendships transcend the test of time. So no matter why that character is gone, I get it. I have a lot of my core friends, but I am exceptionally lucky. Some of the other friendships didn’t make it but it kind of falls into that saying about friendships being reason, season, or lifetime.

Truthfully I am glad to be me now, and that I am not dating in my 50s. I am grateful for my life and marriage. I know who I am, I know who he is. We aren’t ever perfect, but I know what it is to love and be loved, and there comes a point where that is just right and very lovely. Now granted, I know I am a very lucky woman, and I never take that for granted (or try not to.) However, I will completely admit it’s a little annoying that he can still imitate my high school self walking down the halls at Shipley carrying my book bag. So no, I do not get away with much, ladies.

Another thing I admire about the new series are the people they have around them. It’s not just bars and cosmopolitans. It’s the bitchy women’s committees and PTA savages. It’s the reinventing yourself when you thought you were all set, including sometimes starting over.

We can all relate. After all, I still remember the first time I did a car rider line, didn’t know where to go, and got in the wrong part of the line. I was literally surrounded by mini vans and had moms and dads who got out of their vehicles to SCREAM at me. Oh and the teachers and school personnel watched from the sidelines like it was a spectator sport.

And then there were the moms who wanted their high school kids to slow dance at their dances like “the holy spirit was in between them.” Had to bite my tongue with that one because did they actually know what their teenagers were up to and it certainly didn’t involve the holy spirit. But hey, whatever gets you through the day.

And now today add to the average and annoying PTA moms we have the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, conservative beacons of light who will save all of us from ourselves while searching for that perfect hair color shade. The new Stepford Wives.

And then you have the not Stepford Wives who are just amusing. Self-described social media experts because they have a few Facebook group pages. And they still copy their material from everyone else and don’t have an original bone in their bodies. And they still want you to think certain communities adjacent to the Main Line are the Main Line, and why? Is the Main Line all that and a bag of chips? No sadly, and hasn’t been in years, just like there is no real “society” left to photograph.

Thanks but no, I will take me, lumps and all. It’s ok to age. We have much better shoes to choose from these days, and you only have to have a rocking chair on your front porch if you want one.

Thanks for stopping by.

hooey

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From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh they are a bunch of mean girl bobble headed Stepford wives.

Let’s start with their website image. The American flag is supposed to a symbol of our history and our values as a nation. While it is fine to have clothing or hats with the flag ON IT, to WEAR an actual flag is a sign of DISRESPECT for Old Glory.

This group is born out of the Trumpublican movement which has destroyed the Republican party. Were they born out of the Tea Party? Maybe in part, and while old GOP politicians Tom DeLay may have been skunks, he and others kept these faux Republicans out of the RNC 2000. I know because I was there, and I listened to conversations perhaps I shouldn’t have listened to, but that is what happens when big wigs think volunteers are invisible like their help at home.

Anyway, did you know on yesterday’s date In 1776, Thomas Paine anonymously published his influential pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which argued for American independence from British rule? Do the purported Pennsylvania Conservative Women even know that or have they read it or are they busy studying acrylic nails and big hair and brassy color shades not found in nature?

This mission statement and this group are FULL of hooey. They are all about banding together like a bunch of sheeple and to say they are God fearing and take responsibility for nurturing and protecting the traditions that America was founded on, is in a word, OFFENSIVE. All of these people actually FORGET what this country was founded on and why.

They claim the advocate for freedom, yet their definition of freedom is subject solely to their interpretation of the word. And again, they forget if our forefathers hadn’t quite literally bled and died for us centuries ago, they would not have their freedom to espouse their bullshit and hooey. Well I can’t title a post bullshit so I chose hooey. But I digress.

I find it endlessly amusing that the crap they spout is in part what our forefathers fought against, yet they also fought for the rights for people to have freedom of thought no matter how ridiculous their thoughts were. Hence why I asked if these students of self-focusedness actually remember their American history? Do they actually know what it is to be an American?

Thomas Paine wrote how he thought it was in essence stupid that Americans should be loyal to a mother country that he considered similar to an unfit parent. “Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families,” he wrote. He said our real connection as newly minted Americans was to people everywhere who yearned to escape oppression. “This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe,” Paine proclaimed. “Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.”

Thomas Paine wrote about a new country with a strong government than protected the rights of the people. And can it be hypothesized that Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” influenced the Declaration of Independence and all that followed? I think so.

But back to these women who are the nouveau champions of our proverbial values and home fires burning. Of course home fires burning implies these women keep house and cook and clean. Ummm ok, they are why take out and delivery were invented, weren’t they?

“As God-fearing women, we take responsibility for nurturing and protecting the traditions that America was founded upon.”

~ From “Mission Statement” of Pennsylvania Conservative Women (PACW) formerly known as Conservative Women of the Mainline.

Traditions America was founded on as interpreted by them? That’s actually funny.

From The Motion Picture

They also claim they are “women modernizing traditional values.”

That doesn’t even make sense. Traditional values don’t require modernizing, they are based in traditions. When you “modernize” them, they stop being “traditions.”

Who decided they were the bosses of women, men and children anywhere? They are more like religious fanatics or cult leaders aren’t they? (Purple Kool aid and a doily anyone?)

Then there are the boobs at Moms for Liberty. Note the amusing mistake in their “About” section of “Moms for Liberty, Chester, PA” . They wouldn’t survive 5 minutes in Chester, PA which is in Delaware County. Now they are a national Stepford Wives consortium. That group has people tied to a group called Patriot Voices which is a 501(c)(4) which means donations aren’t tax deductible. Oh and Moms for Liberty is also a 501(c)(4) meaning donations to THEM are also not tax deductible. And upon looking at CONservative Women of the Main Line now rebranding to whatever, I noticed their donation button is not a donation button it is a “pay now” button which means they aren’t non-profit either are they?

I wonder how many people donating to these organizations which are not registered as tax deductible non-profit organizations think what they are donating is tax deductible? Makes you wonder where they money goes right?

Then there are the other groups and these groups all discussing anti-vaxxing, anti-masking and what works (in their little minds) against COVID (this is supposedly from Moms for Liberty group):

And I find myself circling back to their use of the word freedom. So they have freedom to choose? Ok, so do I, but when did freedom become subjective? When did their freedoms become more important than everyone else’s?

Let’s talk COVID for example. If they were less concerned about the hooey that getting a shot impinges on their freedoms would we have so much COVID on the rise again? Because let’s get real, the COVID cases in the hospitals taking most of the beds are the UNvaccinated. They exercised their freedoms but are now infecting us? How are their freedoms more important than ours? What if they had been around when this country was battling things like TB, leprosy, polio?

Is freedom subjective? Or did our forefathers fight for us to equally have freedom?

And if these women are modernizing traditional values does that mean they are updating tuna noodle casserole recipes? Inquiring minds want to know what the hooey is really all about because to this inquiring mind, they are Stepford Wives Sheeple and they better check their kool aid. And at the end of the day, I do know actual real conservatives and Christians and what is predominantly roaming around self describing as that? Not any of them, nor do they actually get it by a country mile.

Bless their hearts, I am finished thinking about insanity for the day.

Political Stepford Wives | chestercountyramblings

a meander

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Different things matter to different people. I can be a little introspective at times. But I also often think things happen for a reason.

Last week was another week of my past and present being together. It was a weekend of family and friends. Still small and careful gatherings in our COVID19 world. And masks where asked without complaint.

I am really lucky to have amazing friends in my life, including from grade school and high school. I saw some more at a brunch yesterday. And my family, I just love.

One of my friends did something yesterday which was so touching. He told me how much it meant to him that my husband and I were the way we were in high school, and that he was grateful that we were always just his friend.

You see, back in the late 70s and early 80s, Main Line private schools were integrating yes, but it doesn’t mean that there weren’t huge invisible dividing lines inside the schools. There were. Maybe not all of the time, but they existed. My friend spoke of being a black boy from West Philadelphia at a Main Line private school – in this case, my alma mater, Shipley. I never really thought of it until yesterday, but him coming to school with us at first must’ve been literally like putting him on a different planet.

Maybe I was just that naïve back then, or maybe it was just a different time but I didn’t think of a lot of this then. He was just another one of my high school friends. And he was a nice guy who grew up to be a nice man. I did recognize that the truly not so invisible dividing lines often existed, but I often didn’t necessarily pay attention to them like I didn’t pay attention to cliques back then. My friends were simply my friends.

There’s that phrase hindsight is 20/20, except when I’m looking back now I’m looking back with the eyes of an adult. Back then I was just a kid. But no matter what our race, creed, color I think we all have to live through the past to reach today, right?

I guess this is why today, I often have issues with what I see going on around me. And part of what I see going on around me is a general dumbing down of life, even after all that we have gone through in this country over the past few years.

A lot of that dumbing down occurs on social media. I actually had a conversation with someone yesterday afternoon where they were talking about how are you bridge that gap between what’s actually going on in your life and what people want to see on social media? I guess the short answer is you have to live your own truth. Nobody’s lives are perfect.

Things I’ve seen lately on social media that drives me crazy include the responses people have to those discussing some of the particularly bad school board candidates who have cropped up. I’ve written about them.

A lot of these candidates are just absurd. And they’re not absurd in a good way that they are just good theater and amusing to see go by, they are absurd because they are such bad candidates that they could cause real damage to local public education systems.

But here in the fluffy white clouds of social media you can’t call a spade a shovel or a shovel a spade or even a trowel. You can’t actually have your opinion the way you wish to articulate it. And I’m not saying cursing up a storm, just telling people how you feel and why about a candidate in a school board race. Apparently a lot of us, myself included, did not get the memo with the requirement of pink fluffy bunnies and bubbles. And they have new champions like the couple of blogs which have cropped up for the election season.

I’m being called ageist and mean because I simply don’t understand how a candidate who has been invisible the entire campaign season for the school board races in Great Valley School District who is a teenager and college student will have time between classes and keggers to be on a school board? That is not ageist, that’s accurate. It’s common sense. If she was Alex P. Keaton with boobs, we would have seen a lot of her around, not just her Cher/Madonna campaign signs all of a sudden a couple of weeks before the election.

I think it’s that whole theory of everybody gets a gold star today, instead of actually earning the gold star.

But the thing about this weekend, is it was yet another weekend after such a long time, where I actually spent time with people who matter to me, including family, and reveled in the ability to have normal conversations with people. There wasn’t that built in censorship of overly paranoid political correctness, there was just good conversation. And even if we didn’t agree 100% with the other person’s opinion, there were no Facebook-like meltdowns. We talked, we laughed, we shared.

This matters to me. It matters to me to be able to have realistic and real conversations with people. They don’t necessarily have to be super deep all the time, they can be light social setting chit chat.

Being real matters. And part of being real is not sitting your entire life on Facebook telling people an alternate view of reality. Maybe your life on your planet is grand, I don’t ask people to move there and elect you supervisor of a real place, or to a school board.

And then there are the people who hide in the shadows and send all the nasty messages about what you write and say.

While we are speaking Facebook, let’s talk about the people whom you don’t know who just want to message you whenever the spirit moves them. Sometimes that spirit is moving them in the middle of the night, or other times it’s just when you’re not available. And when you tell them you’re not available, they don’t respect those boundaries they don’t take those social cues, they just keep going. These are the people that demand respect, but they don’t give respect. If you were to contact any of them, their response would be “why are you contacting me?“ yet conversely, you are supposed to just drop everything when they private message you?

It’s like society is becoming a caricature of itself. It’s kind of fascinating to watch, but it’s also equal parts scary and pathetic. In the 18th and 19th century there were scores of political and social commentators who wrote these fabulous plays and drew these damn funny cartoons and lampoons of life in that time.

Take Richard Brinsley Sheridan who wrote the play “School for Scandal” in 1777. It was a comedy of manners. It’s still a hysterical play. Most of you have no idea who he was or this play, which of course is an entirely another conversation on what I think is lacking in today’s world and in education . But think if we had a time machine and we took Sheridan from the 18th century London to 21st Century today and put him on Facebook. What would he have to say?

I can tell you at the end of the day my friends and family are what matter to me. Having a home we love, husband and child I love, pets I love. What matters to me also is being able to do things like garden because it brings me joy. Or to decorate for Christmas.

What doesn’t matter at the end of the day is the minutia. And there are people who definitely count within that minutia because that’s where they should be, in the category of minutia.

Liberals of convenience running for supervisor don’t impress me, and don’t tell people to vote for them because they are your political party, anymore than anyone who has a brain should vote for a good percentage of these newly minted politicians running for school board. Remove the political parties, and look at the people as individuals and listen to what they are saying and not saying.

This seems to be the season of a lot of social media candidates. You don’t see them around, but you see them on social media. A couple you don’t even see on social media, and you don’t see them around. These are not anyone’s candidates. These are jokes.

And while I would love it if people adored my opinions 24/7, in truth it would actually be a little creepy. Life is made up of variety, not Stepford Wives named Karen. Stupid doesn’t live here.

The lack of behavior modification, the ability to take social cues, and respect boundaries is something that bothers me regarding social media. Sadly it has spilled over into the real world. Hopefully it will eventually correct itself.

Thanks for stopping by.

(A brief post script on the photos- I took them but they don’t have any real connection to this post. I just like the variety of architecture that you find in places. And the graffiti was in a place I had never noticed it before.)

life in the fast lane

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🎼Life in the fast lane
Surely make you lose your mind
Life in the fast lane🎼 ~ The Eagles

Woke up with that song in my head. And it made me laugh because it seemed like the perfect theme music to the absurdity of dealing with women in local social media groups.

2020 left the calendar wall dealing with the bless your heart church ladies. You were only ok if you thought their church’s proposed 12’ LED sign was a great idea. If you are against this plan, you are a bad person, discriminating against Christians everywhere and going to burn in hell apparently.

Here comes 2021 and we are here but a minute and already, and it’s a case of but wait there’s more….life in the land of women….

First come the fake news posting devoted social media handmaidens of Trump. Eternally hypocrites especially if you remember them way back when. They have been in a fever pitch of posting things daily, almost hourly some days. They post all the garbage that amounts to suborning anarchy and domestic terrorism, except it’s so ludicrous. So I wonder, after today will their plastic southern housing development secede from the Union? (It makes you wonder 😂)

Flash forward to yesterday when Nurse Ratched had to post in a gifting group her unasked for opinion on something and most people are still trying to figure out why she bothered and what was her point? A real ankle biter, she didn’t like it when a group admin (not me) shut her nastiness down in a place that is supposed to be nice. She spent the balance of the day spewing angry bull twaddle including telling us we were practicing “censorship.” It’s a closed, private group but she thinks she can just be out of control nasty? Alrighty then. So what does this mature enlightened being do? Copied and co-opted what is literally my intellectual property. Mazel tov my darling. Often imitated, never replicated and you are literally one flew over the cuckoo’s nest . And she’s “coming for me”? Over what? We (as in not just me) told her no? Oy vey.

Then when we thought the day couldn’t get any crazier comes Bunny Honey the Stepford development dweller. A local school district posted a COVID19 update. I shared their publicly posted update with no comment, just literally shared their release. Up rolls Bunny Honey full of righteous indignation and demanding my “rationale”. Ummm really? Sharing public information posted without comment, merely for the update it was intended to be by the originator (i.e. school district) requires rationale? Oh honey, stick to one dish casseroles. It’s safer .

And then there is the whopper. Someone contacted my blog. They were concerned what they saw posted in a “mom’s group” which was a woman looking for a venue to hold 100 people inside for a baby shower. Ironically, I was in the group but rarely went into it because of what was posted which swerved between abject drivel and complete lunacy presented as “medical advice”. The person did not know I was in the group. I posted a screenshot that completely masked the group, the poster, and any potential personal identifiers. I posted because I think this qualifies as a COVID idiot and if we as a community, country, and world are going to get past this pandemic, we have to be smarter as a collective than we often are. Pretty simple, right?

Wrong. The comments came fast and furious. How dare I say anything? Easy. How many of us now know someone who has had COVID? How many people have been forced to watch from afar as family members have died of COVID because they aren’t allowed to be with the, for fear of others contracting this highly contagious virus which has infected families all around the world as in entire families? I am sorry not sorry but I think it is nuts to plan a huge event and potentially expose a pregnant woman and her unborn child to COVID. With all the how dare I comments came the over 100 comments from people affected by COVID or who know people affected by COVID, or who lost people to COVID.

One of the people who criticized is one who also criticized my posting the school district update. Her right but gave me pause because sadly I guess I was only an ok human being when I was posting about saving homes from eminent domain and a traffic circle? And then of course came one of the like 20 admins the group has actually identifying the group it came from. So yo’ “boo”? I don’t want to be in a group where bleach baths and is that husband cheating on her and worse is a thing, so keep your righteous indignation because oh hell yes I was indeed judging….but remember I did it without naming the group or letting poster identity get out, that was ummm in part YOU.

Which brings me to the continuing and overwhelming projection of selfish behavior and narcissism that has become the norm on social media. This is now the perfect segue to an article I read. Here is an excerpt:

The Elephant Journal: December 19, 2020
How COVID exposed New Age Narcissism.

📌During this global pandemic that has disrupted life as we know it, many people have attempted to find the silver lining in the chaos.

For some, it has brought people closer to their friends and families. For others, it has slowed them down and got them to reevaluate their lives and careers. Some picked up healthy habits, while others gave in to unhealthy ones.

In the end, it has brought many things inside of us to the surface. It has left many of us exposed to a layer of truth about ourselves and society that we were unaware of before.📌

This is an interesting read.

I will admit quite freely that COVID19 has not worked positively on my patience or occasional bouts of sarcasm. I am more impatient than I was at times with these keyboard tigers who dwell on social media and especially in community Facebook groups. Quite simply, I am increasingly intolerant of these people not only attempting to dumb everything down, but their narcissistic or merely selfish approach to the me first of it all 24/7/365. I will never be among their adoring public but I thank them for their many gifts of assholishness which provides giggles.

How I end up coping with these people is finding the humor in what can only be described as their online idiocy and assholishness and bitchfests. We are all discovering these people. Humor helps make it better. So does dumping wasted energy out our lives. At the end of the day, we don’t have to like them, and they don’t have to like us. After all, who are they in the grand, even cosmic sphere of things? Not important. (But damn amusing to occasionally poke fun at since they are but a spin on Stepford Wives, anyway.)

Happy hump day Wednesday folks! It’s a brand new year of silliness!

playing politics with the deliberately uninformed

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Until the last U.S. Presidential Election I was a life-long registered Republican.  I even took my corporate vacation during the RNC 2000 in Philadelphia so I could be a media relations volunteer the entire duration of the convention. I loved that experience. I met so many interesting people, and even lent a Congressman who was a platform speaker of some level cab fare so he could get to the Philadelphia Convention Center when he came to Philadelphia on Amtrak but forgot his wallet.

But the Republican party changed.  And maybe I have changed too, but if I am honest with myself and you my readers, the majority of my life I have always been a ticket-splitter.

You see, I do not subscribe to the quackery that if a candidate is of a particular party they are a bad candidate and I can’t vote for them.  I look at the candidates themselves NOT the political party to make my decision.  I have no misplaced sense of obligation to either political party, which is probably WHY I became an Independent.

But politics, including in Chester County, has continued to disintegrate since he who shall not be named took the Oval. Sorry, not sorry, it is the unfortunate truth.  And my opinion. This country is now like a daily episode of the now defunct ABC series Scandal.

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No longer does political civility exist.  Republicans think Democrats are evil and Democrats think Republicans are evil.  It is the theatre of the absurd. You can’t discuss the merits or lack thereof of ANY candidate.

And heaven forbid you not act like a perfect little political Stepford wife and share an article you find interesting. Like this one:

Philly-Area Media Chain Tells Readers: Don’t Vote for a Single Republican
“There are some Republicans that do a good job and should be taken seriously,” says the editor. “But they are sort of sacrificial lambs, unfortunately.”

by VICTOR FIORILLO· 10/31/2018, 9:12 a.m.

With the most contentious midterm elections in memory coming up in a matter of days, news publications across the country are publishing their endorsements of their chosen candidates. But one group of media outlets outside of Philadelphia has taken a much different approach.

West Chester–based Brandywine New Media, which owns the Times of Chester County, the Unionville Times, the Kennett Times, the Coatesville Times, and the Downingtown Times, has run a staff editorial telling readers that they should “not vote for any Republican candidate on the ballot.”

Here is the Times of Chester County original editorial:

Editorial: An electoral shock to the system needed to save GOP
Oct 28th, 2018

As has been the case since the earliest days of The Times, we had planned to make endorsements in all of the 2018 elections….

But 2018 is a unique time in the history of American politics.

While some would try to paint a false equivalency that both of our major parties are bad, lacking ethics and are slaves to electoral expediency, we find ourselves unable to agree.

One party has been gripped by a mania, a cancer, and seems unwilling or unable to return to its roots, and instead panders to fear, anger and the worst instincts of a minority of its members: the Republican Party…..America needs two functioning parties to provide political balance and steady leadership. America needs a healthy Republican Party, as a counter balance to the occasional excesses of the Democratic Party — something sorely lacking now. If the current path continues unabated, we will see the end of the Republican Party as we know it.

….we suggest that you do not vote for any Republican candidate on the ballot. We know this is a difficult ask for many, but these times and our democracy cry out for a reset and only staggering losses will get the attention of elected officials and the party’s voter base in a meaningful way.

I have provided but an excerpt of BOTH the article and  editorial, but I strongly suggest no matter what your political persuasion you should take the time to read BOTH pieces in FULL.

I wasn’t going to write a pre-midterm election post, but when I shared the Philadelphia Magazine article by Victor Fiorello on Facebook a woman piped up and said because I shared the article and suggested it was an interesting read that I was making a political endorsement.  Allow me to quote her directly:  ““Well worth taking the time to read” is a political endorsement. Your message is not sharing information but suggesting endorsement of a political view that many in Chester County find reprehensible.”

Can I say WTF now? I mean WTF?  I am NOT suggesting endorsement. IF I was suggesting endorsement of candidates, I would say so. Suggesting an article about the current state of politics is an interesting read or a good read is NOT an endorsement of anything other than the actual article!

I actually would like to say thank you to Victor Fiorello for writing about an editorial I saw but did not take the time to read until he pointed it out. And I would like to say thank you to Publisher and Editor of Brandywine News Media Mike McGann. Mr. McGann that editorial is nothing short of honest and spot on.  And a little bit sad.

I am truly sorry that so many lack intellectual curiosity about the political times in which we live, or are afraid to check things out lest they turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife (Genesis 19).

I am so sorry so many choose to be deliberately uniformed. It seems to me life is more interesting when you don’t behave like a veritable ostrich and bury your head in the sand, but what do I know, right?

I also realize some love to hate me because I speak my mind and am a blogger and am just different from them, but lordy. I fully accept although I find it fantastical at times some people (even other women) cannot handle women who do not conform to some pre-conceived set of notions that remind me of 1950’s housewives wearing kitchen aprons. These people should keep their own side of the street clean and do not presume to tell me or anyone else what to do. Because in fact, THAT is what is reprehensible here.

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Being American means freedom of choice when you vote. It means being your own man or woman and voting your conscience.  Being American also means you have the freedom to read a couple of local articles without fear of being put in the stocks like some renegade 17th century New England Puritan. (calling Hester Prynne and all that)

Grow up and remember your collective pride in what it is to be an American and to enjoy the freedoms our forefathers fought and bled and died for.  We have the right, actually a duty to question the political status quo as Americans.  Right now the status quo has some major suckitude going on.  The political process is at present so incredibly contorted that our country is to be succinct, MESSED UP.

And to other women out there:  it took until 1920 and when 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, stating, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Oh and another fun fact? Women in the state of Georgia could not vote until 1970.

Read up and vote next week people.  Vote for who you choose, not who some political party bobblehead from either party tells you to vote for.

Thanks for allowing the rant and Happy Halloween.

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dear ryan homes….

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Dear Ryan Homes,

Please pardon me while I barf all over your saccharine sweet ridiculous glossy postcard you mailed me today. My apologies, truly, part of it is because I am sick and part of it is because, well, I simply can’t stomach anymore developer drivel.

Who are you to judge the living I “deserve”?  I live quite nicely in Chester County.  I have an actual home that isn’t made of plastic and plywood.  

Why on earth would you think I wanted the urban Stepford plasticness of a non-organic fake neighborhood next to a highway?  Especially  because I live in a real neighborhood with real people?

I know, I know you want to sell everyone on the plastic houses that would be so lovely next to the elite blue lagoon of the old  quarry lake.  You know the one that no one has sufficiently fenced around yet?

The East Whiteland supervisors and staff like the director of building and planning are salivating and counting the ratables before they are hatched completely ….I get that. But it doesn’t necessarily mean build it and they will come. Of course they might all come and then it’s going to be like part of Chester County has turned into King of Prussia West. Or Bensalem, pick your  development.

Your “lake views” are as fake as the architecture you are touting here. That isn’t an actual lake it’s a toxic body of water left over from the days of quarries. If you were smart you would have fenced that in properly by now, but I predict it will take something awful happening before you actually do – presuming you guys own that since I don’t know who actually owns it. 

As far as I’m concerned everything being built over at Atwater is just developer blight on the horizon and density that we aren’t going to be able to handle in a few years.  And the schools certainly will bear the brunt of this and municipal and other services as well. And the roads are already groaning. 

But hey like everyone else’s development plans, it’s like all of yours exist in a tiny bubble with a green Elysian field surrounding it…. And in this case also bordering an unnaturally blue, toxic “lake”.

I’m sure by now you’re sorry I am on your mailing list. Trust me the feeling is mutual.

Signed ,

Just me, mocking  bad developments proudly for decades.