how the hell did i end up here?

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HOUSE OF HORRORS

Well, do you know what I discovered this week after getting first-hand reports back from the Republican Convention in Cleveland? I have been driven to drink, and I’m throwing all caution to the wind because the world is coming to an end. (Why the hell should I watch what I eat when Armageddon is at hand?) Even now as I write this blog, I am downing copious glasses of Merlot, a giant bowl of popcorn, and just as soon as the Hubbie comes home, I’m going to order the biggest gluten-free pizza I can find BECAUSE WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

At least that’s what Donald Trump said last night in his 75 minute speech at the GOP Convention in about 100 different ways. Despite statistics that show otherwise (why care about the truth—who needs facts when an egomaniacal, despot wants you to think that the world is coming to an end?), we’re descending into lawlessness and disorder, a race war is going to start tomorrow from coast to coast by Black people who have forgotten their place and don’t like being shot by cops just for the hell of it. (The GOP thinks that this is the sole fault of President Obama (thanks a-hole, Giuliani). Our kids are going to be starving in the streets by morning, Mexican rapists will attack our daughters, ISIS is going to invade (simultaneously) from every corner of the United States, immigrants are going to take over all our jobs from snake handlers to corporate CEOs, and the aliens from outer space, who will be invading any day now, are the sole fault of that Jezebel, Hillary Clinton, who is responsible for “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness” in America and should be “locked up” and the key thrown away.

But The Donald is going to save us all! Trump and only Trump, can save us from this apocalypse. How do I know? He told us so at the Republican Convention. He kept saying, “I am your voice—I love you—we will never, ever make bad deals—believe me—nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it!”

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

I was flabbergasted and highly agitated when I watched the GOP Convention! How did America 2016 descend into Germany 1933? And then there was the speech debacle of Melania Trump ripping off Michelle Obama’s convention speech of 2008. Isn’t she the wife of the man that Der Fuhrer Trump despises? I was really confused and truly afraid. What the hell was going on? Was it really as bad as it seemed? Last night I contacted my alter-ego, The Dalai Mama, who attended the convention because she is a glutton for punishment and asked her to try and get an interview with Melania. I had heard a rumor that they used to be friends when The Dalai Mama lived in Slovenia. Maybe Melania via The Dalai Mama could assuage my fears—maybe Donald Trump wasn’t as bad as he seemed during his acceptance speech. (Besides, I really wanted to know if Melania plagiarized her speech and made the lowly speech writer take the fall.) So I sent The Dalai Mama a note requesting she interview Melania, and I heard back from my alter ego this morning, which was rather convenient since my blog was due today.

******

ME: Hey, Dalai. How’s everything? I’ve been watching the convention. Was it as bad as it looked?

DALAI MAMA: Girl, this convention was one giant cluster-fuck. From Melania’s plagiarized speech to the people yelling “lock her up” about Hill, to Ted Cruz givin’ The Donald the finger, to Trump’s 75-minute speech of demon terror. As a sane, rational, Black woman, I don’t know whether to move to Africa or go into hidin’ in the Caribbean. Right now, I’m just prayin’ that Jesus will come back and rapture us all except for The Donald and all the people who plan to vote for him. (Are you listenin’ to me, Jesus?)

ME: That bad, huh? Hey, I know that you and Melania used to be friends way back in the day. Did she tell you if she slipped that plagiarism into her speech? She did say she wrote it all by herself in the beginning. Did she give you some insight into The Donald’s mentality? Maybe her husband isn’t as awful as he seems. You know how TV adds ten pounds on you, maybe it adds fifty pounds of bigotry and stupidity onto a person as well. I need some type of reassurance here because this mini-me Fuhrer just may end up being President of the United States if we’re not careful—especially if he successfully scares the shit out of everybody, and they vote for him because they believe he is the only one who can bring back law and order.

DALAI MAMA: Yeah, I spoke wit’ her, but I don’t think our conver will help you much—she sounded a little “turnt,” if you know what I mean. She seemed to be a little “off”—like she wasn’t herself. But you can hear for yo’self. I taped the entire conversation. In the meantime, I wonder if they have gluten-free pizza in Botswana.

Cartoon used by permission: Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons

******

DALAI MAMA’S PHONE INTERVIEW WITH MELANIA TRUMP

OPERATOR: Hello, this is the Trump Tower receptionist. How may I help you?

DALAI MAMA: This is The Dalai Mama calling to speak to Melania on behalf of Eleanor T, the Blogger. She’s expectin’ me.

OPERATOR: One moment, please . . .

DALAI MAMA: Hello, Melania Baby?

MELANIA: Hello, is it me you’re looking for? ‘Cause I wonder who you are . . . and I . . .

DALAI MAMA: Yo, Melania, it’s me, The Dalai Mama. Long time no talk, huh?

MELANIA: My cherie amour, lovely as a summer day . . . distant as the milky way . . . pretty little one that I adore . . .

DALAI MAMA: Aw, that’s so sweet, Girlfriend. How’s it goin’? Listen, I heard ‘bout the plagiarism thing. I felt real bad fo’ you. I told everybody I knew that there is no way that girl did this fucked-up deed, ‘cause she loves her some Black people, and she would never, ever steal their shit, ‘cause her word is her bond.

MELANIA: Dalai Mama, it’s been awful. How could people think I stole parts of Michelle Obama’s speech? I mean I admire her so much (don’t tell The Donald)—he would not be pleased. I would never plagiarize her work. It’s been awful. I’ve been crying (ooh, ooh), ‘Cause I’m lonely (for a friend to tell the truth to), Smiles have all turned (to tears), but tears won’t wash away (the fears) . . . that everyone is laughing at me.

Cartoon used by permission: John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri

DALAI MAMA: Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . have you been drowning your sorrows in Motown? Did you just quote Lionel Ritchie, Stevie Wonder, AND The Supremes to me?

MELANIA: No, dez are heartfelt Slovenian thoughts. Things said to me by me “mati in oče.” They always told me, “don’t stop ‘til you get enough” . . . hope, dat is.

DALAI MAMA: Are you trying to tell me that your “mati in oče”—your mother and father—are Michael Jackson and Diana Ross? Ha! Girl, you in worse shape than I thought. Maybe, I should come by and check on you in person. You don’t sound like you’re doin’ okay.

If this is any consolation to you, you looked fantastic the first night of the convention! That dress was on “fleck,” girl. That was a Roksanda “Margot” dress, right? Girlfriend, do you know that thing sold out within one hour after yo’ plagiarized speech! I hope you owned stock in that designer. At $3,000 a pop, that ain’t no chump change. Anyway, I’ve missed you, Girl. Remember our time hangin’ out at the Karaoke clubs in Slovenia befo’ you hooked up with The Donald?

MELANIA: Uh, huh. Do You Remember, how we used to talk (ya know), we’d stay on the phone at night till dawn . . . hee, hee . . .

DALAI MAMA: Oh, hell to the no . . . you are definitely channeling Michael Jackson right now. Oh, wait a minute! I think I see the problem here. Some wires must of gotten crossed in that fembot head of yours after you married The Donald. You know I love you, Baby, but that model head of yours has always had a few screws loose—no offense. You may be able to speak several languages but your common sense was always three sheets to the wind. After all, you did marry The Donald—just sayin’.

MELANIA: Here’s a little song I wrote, You might want to sing it note for note, Don’t worry, be happy . . .

DALAI MAMA: Chil’ you gots to stop this. I don’t think Bobby McFerrin is gonna like you stealing his shit any more than Michelle Obama did. Let’s concentrate here. Your husband said last night (and I quote):

“I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country. Believe me. Believe me.”

DALAI MAMA: The entire convention hall cheered (even the 2-3 Uncle Tom Black people that was set-dressing put in place by yo’ husband), but it gave me chills. I swear I hear at least three different racist dog whistles in that paragraph. If you Black and you protest the Po-Po that will be considered “threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police,” therefore, you can kiss your sorry-ass good-bye. Melania, is that what yo’ husband meant?

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

DALAI MAMA: Melania, I need you to concentrate, Chil’! What about the press conference today when your husband said:

“And when they talk about unity, I want to tell you, that was unity. That was unity. Right? I saw you last night. That was unity. That was amazing.”

DALAI MAMA: What unity? Girl that was the whitest political convention I have ever seen in my life. The only thing whiter than that convention is a KKK rally. Am I right? And what about that slogan he kept sayin’ over and over again ‘bout “Putting America First.” CNN says that that slogan was used during WW2, and it meant “the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.” What do you think ‘bout that, Chica?

What ‘bout when The Donald bragged ‘bout how the Evangelicals loved him and are in full support of him? I’m an Evangelical, and I know scores of Evangelicals, and we all think yo’ man is the Anti-Christ!!! I’m not the only Christian that thinks that. Only a select amount of American Christians have lost their minds . . . talkin’ crap about how they loves The Donald and will vote to make him President because his chil’ren are so poised, courteous, articulate, and professional, so he can’t be that bad. WTF?! He didn’t raise those chil’ren—they mamas raised them. You know the two wives befo’ you? Maybe we ought to elect Ivanka and Marla as President and Vice President. What do you think about that idea, my Slovenia Fembot?

MELANIA: STOP! In the name of love, Dalai Mama, before you break my heart . . . think it ov-o-ver!

DALAI MAMA: Oh for the love of God (and the Supremes). . . I am so out of here! You have lost yo’ ever-lovin’ mind.

Cartoon used by permission: Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

******

ELEANOR’S “SELAH” (AHA MOMENT)

I am discovering that the nomination of Donald Trump has indeed instilled great fear in me, but not about the state of our nation which I think is better than it has ever been (does anybody remember the Jim Crow era—Black people lynched on every third tree in the South just “because”, the riots in the mid to late 60s in most of our inner cities, or the gas shortage lines in the 70s?). After watching the Republican Convention and rereading Trump’s speech of hatred, lies, lies, lies, and demagoguery that he used to gin up fear, I am very afraid that if we are not careful, he just might win. So listen to me America, if you’ve got any rational, spiritual, or humanitarian bones in your body, then get to the polls (drag your grown children, relatives, neighbors, and friends) and vote for Hillary. I get it that Hillary is a flawed candidate—I’m certainly not in the tank for her and will hold my nose when I vote—but at least she is a human being, the most experienced person to ever run for the presidency, and no matter what Trump and the GOP try to say about her, we won’t be marching in goosestep, with right arm raised screaming, “Heil Trump” while I try to keep me and my peeps out of the camps. (I told you this a-hole scares me to death!)

P.S. Save your hate emails and comments about voting for the Libertarian candidates or writing someone’s name on the ballot. This is not a rehearsal, people! Every vote cast for anyone but Hillary is a vote for Trump. Remember Ralph Nader? If not, look him up and see how many elections got skewered by voting for him, and I really liked the dude, but he had no electoral power—he just sucked off the vote for the candidate who should have won.

P.P.S. I just finished an entire gluten-free pizza, three glasses of wine, and my blood sugar is off the Richter scale. At the rate I’m going, just the thought of Trump as President may kill me before November. Vote Hillary in November just to save my health. Oy vez mir!

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES TO FIGHT FEAR

“Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.”—Thich Nhat Hanh

“This is all you have. This is not a dry run. This is your life. If you want to fritter it away with your fears, then you will fritter it away, but you won’t get it back later.”—Laura Schlessinger (DISCLAIMER: I absolutely abhor the author of this quote—she is a racist and a didactic bitch, but sometimes even snakes can serve a purpose if the truth of their bite gets rid of the rats in the garden.)

“So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear, and to fearlessly do right.”—Friedrich Durrenmatt

“Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.”—Cyril Connolly

“This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”—Dwight D. Eisenhower

ALL QUOTES ARE COURTESY OF http://www.brainyquotes.com

Cartoon used by permission: Nate Beeler ,The Columbus Dispatch

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (Paperback and Kindle).

REFERENCES

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/21/bill-maher-on-ted-cruz-s-trump-diss-there-s-nothing-lower-than-that.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/22/fact-checking-donald-trumps-acceptance-speech-at-the-2016-rnc/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_trumpweb-blurb-desktop-only%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/us/politics/rnc-convention-delegates.html?smid=tw-share

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/opinion/the-gops-surreal-diversity-show.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/07/19/your_word_is_your_bond_history_and_origins_from_matthew_to_hip_hop.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/21/ted-cruz-was-out-for-revenge-on-wednesday-he-just-admitted-it/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_daily202-1115a-top%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/22/we-just-watched-the-republican-party-kill-itself.html

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

10 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on July 22, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Donald Trump, GOP Convention, Hillary Clinton, Melania Trump, Political Humor, Rudy Giuliani, satire

DEAR WORLD: THIS IS A TEST!

26 Jun

Do you know what I discovered in the past couple weeks? The Universe just gave several countries and individuals on the Earth a “pop quiz” and they flunked. They were supposed to be studying all along about what it takes to make a great Earth habitat for all concerned, but it appears they’ve been skipping study hall, partying way too much, and using a truncated version of CliftNotes—what I call “DumpAssNotes”—to get the knowledge they need to pass the final exam of life. The God of the Universe is on to us, I suspect, and sends us a pop quiz every once and awhile just to reveal to us what we don’t know, and how much we need to learn before the final exam called death.

Brexit was England’s pop quiz and apparently more than half of them failed the pop quiz because they didn’t know what Brexit really meant! The most searched words on Google after the vote to leave the EU was “what does Brexit and EU mean?” WTF?!

Used by permission || Cartoonist, Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star Tribune/Cagle Cartoons

Now the UK has learned a new test word called “regrexit,” which they should have known the definition of before taking the test on Brexit. More than 3 million people have signed a petition to have a do-over because many of them say that they had no idea that their vote would tank the global economy, drop the UK’s economic standing from 5^th highest to 6^th highest in a single day, bring about the plummeting of the British pound, encourage Scotland’s break with England, cause Ireland to follow Scotland’s lead and reestablish borders between Northern and Southern Ireland, necessitate the reissuance of passports, and eradicate much needed EU currency for various towns in England that depend upon that revenue stream for prosperity—and that’s just the beginning of the disasters. The DumbAssNotes just told them they could get their country back and kick out and keep out all the immigrants (people who weren’t pure-born British) who were forcing them to share their shit. (Much of the anti-immigrant hatred in England is against the Polish. You know life has turned upside down when White people start hatin’ on other White people.) Yikes!

Used by permission || Cartoonist Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune/Cagle Cartoons

The TARDIS; Time And Relative Dimension In Space is a fictional time machine and spacecraft in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who . . .—Wikipedia

***

I don’t want to get arrogant about how the Brits failed their pop quiz on whether to stay or leave the EU because we Americans didn’t do well on our recent pop quizzes either. We had yet another pop quiz on gun control after the Orlando massacre, and we flunked it big time. I think this is the umpteenth pop quiz we’ve had this year on guns. Every time there is a shooting God gives us a test. Our DumbAssNotes said “in case of another mass shooting, you should pause for another moment of silence, do nothing, and then ramp up gun sales” (TRUE OR FALSE). Our House of Representatives, coached by the NRA, chose “True” as their answer.) Oy vez mir!!

Used by permission || Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune/Cagle Cartoons

Another question on the American pop quiz from God was “What IS Donald Trump and why should people who call themselves by My Name vote for him to become President of the United States?” Some weird old fart, Dr. James Dobson (Founder of Focus on the Family), went to the head of the class and wrote in his answer on the blackboard that The Donald was a Born-again Christian (albeit a baby one), and that he knew the person who had “led The Donald to the Lord”—therefore, Trump was God’s man for the hour. This caused most of the 1,000 evangelical pastors in the room, who had chosen to study the DumbAssNotes for the Final instead of the Bible, to swarm around Donald Trump, “lay hands on him in prayer,” and submit their pop quiz answers with the chant: “Trumpee, Trumpee, he’s our man—if he can’t save us, no one can!” (Soooo, embarrassing!)

conana

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ELEANOR’S “SELAH” (AHA MOMENT)

Do you know what I’m discovering? The human race has been getting pop quizzes for as long as we’ve been on the planet, but we keep trying to shortchange our journey by learning from the truncated study books. When Germany was given a pop quiz in the 1930’s as to how they should handle their lack of prosperity and place on the world stage, their pop quiz answers were to come up with a Final Solution to eliminate 1% of their population and start another World War. When the United States was given several pop quizzes on how to integrate its once enslaved peoples, many of the test takers decided that the correct answers were to thwart their fellow citizens from voting, receiving a proper education, being able to live in decent housing, and having the ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

America has had many pop quizzes during its development. Sometimes we got the answers correct (entering WWII to save the Jews, passing the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Act Law, forcing desegregation, and passing the same-sex marriage law). But more often than not, we’ve not done our homework, and we get the answers all wrong. Case in point: Donald Trump. The question is will we be trying to do a “regrexit” petition on November 5^th because we were studying the “DumbAssNotes” on Donald Trump instead of drilling down deep into the actual textbook on character, leadership, and integrity? Will we look up the definition of xenophobia, racism, misogyny, narcissism, and arrogance or just keep getting our answers from the short-cut books of life and keep flunking the pop quizzes until The Donald has run our country off the rails?

Used by permission || Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle/Cagle Cartoons

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MEDITATIVE QUOTES

“In the course of the event [Evangelical coronation of Trump as the candidate deserving their votes], Trump promised to nominate judges whom evangelicals would favor; to change laws that restrict church involvement in partisan politics; and to foster a cultural ethos that allows the unapologetic usage of ‘Merry Christmas.’ ‘You get racism, misogyny, torture and an authoritarian as commander in chief,’ one evangelical leader wrote me, ‘but you’ll get to hear ‘Merry Christmas’ in stores. Now that’s the art of the deal.’” [1]

For the sake of the church’s future, I hope that evangelicals go all-in for Trump and he loses so decisively that their voting bloc is shattered forever. [2]

“For those of us who cry out for gun control, our fears cannot be eliminated as long as the country remains an armed camp in which the most troubled among us can find ways to appropriate one of the easily available weapons in all our communities.”—Robert Dallek

REGARDING BREXIT: “Today is a victory for the far right across Europe, for tribalism, divisive politics, irredentism, and an incredible rejection of evidence-based policy. This was not a courageous day. Common sense did not prevail. This will be remembered as a foolish, overzealous, Icarus moment.” [3]

Brexit Voter dailymail co uk

Tweet from UK Voter Regarding Brexit

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (Paperback and Kindle).

Used by permission || Bob Englehart, CagleCartoons.com

REFERENCES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evangelical-christians-are-selling-out-faith-for-politics/2016/06/23/f03368de-3964-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html?tid=a_inl [1]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mercynotsacrifice/2016/06/25/two-pivots-trump-needs-to-make/ [2]

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/24/as_a_british_citizen_i_am_oscillating_between_sadness_and_rage_brexit_is_the_worst_of_times/ [3]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschaeffer/2016/06/according-to-james-dobson-trump-has-just-come-to-accept-a-relationship-with-christ-and-is-now-a-baby-christian-no-kidding/?ref_widget=trending&ref_blog=mercynotsacrifice&ref_post=two-pivots-trump-needs-to-make

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-new-poll-support-for-trump-plunges-giving-clinton-a-double-digit-lead/2016/06/25/0565bef6-3a31-11e6-a254-2b336e293a3c_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-high_poll-0904am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/globalopinions/stopping-dark-forces-in-our-post-brexit-world/2016/06/24/6d62541e-3a2d-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/25/politics/george-will-donald-trump-leaving-republican-party-election/index.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/donald-trump-james-dobson-evangelicals-224799

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-markets-roil-from-brexit-trump-holds-a-ribbon-cutting-at-his-golf-resort/2016/06/24/060a9ad8-3a23-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_trumpscotland-735pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-and-the-cia-christians-in-action/2016/06/24/0a22d440-3989-11e6-9ccd-d6005beac8b3_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

3 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on June 26, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Brexit, Donald Trump, Gun Control, Political Humor, storytelling

IT WAS HATE!

15 Jun

I don’t have to ask you this week the rhetorical question I ask at the beginning of every post about what I discovered recently, because we’ve all discovered the same thing—hatred is lethal.

As a humorist, I purposely waited to post anything about the Orlando slaughter of 49 people and the wounding of at least 53 others—five of them critically. I waited because I didn’t want to be glib in the midst of this carnage, and I was at a loss for words. I still am. I waited a bit because I was too sad to say anything of value. So I posted an obligatory note on my Facebook pages (“our thoughts and prayers are with you, Orlando”), which at this point in our history sounds as inept and powerless as Trump’s disgusting self-promotion of xenophobia and hatred (reinvigorated from his faux outrage over the deaths of our LGBT and Latino sisters and brothers) sound crazy and scary as hell. (I am sure the LGBT and Latino communities are just thrilled that Trump wants to engage in hateful acts on their behalf—not!)

Cartoon used by permission: Marian Kemensky, Slovakia/Cagle Cartoons

My thoughts are anguished and fragmented, and my prayers are feverish over what happened in Orlando:

This was not Islam murdering those precious souls in the Pulse nightclub, this was something much, much deeper. But what? (Our President was right not to be goaded into calling this murderous incident as one done by a “radical Islamist,” thus painting an entire religion with one broad paint brush and ginning up even more hatred against a people group. Besides, from all news accounts, the perpetrator might have been a closeted gay who hated being so, was definitely mentally ill, and was home grown in New Hyde Park, NY.)

I prayed and asked God, “What is this darkness I see in Orlando?” and before he could answer, I remembered:

I’d seen this evil spirit before on the American landscape via the San Bernardino Massacre, the Aurora Theater Massacre, the Charleston Massacre, the Boston Marathon Massacre, the Sandy Hook Massacre, the Va. Tech Massacre, the Columbine Massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others (including three pregnant women, ranging in age from 3 months to 73 years), and years and years of KKK bombings (including the infamous Alabama Church bombing which killed four little girls), lynchings (3,446 blacks lynched at the hands of whites for simply being in the “wrong place” at the “wrong time”), and random murders of Blacks in the south just for being Black.

MASSACRES IN RED = American citizens whose religion was Islam or of Islamic descent.

MASSACRES IN BLUE = White Americans (except for Va. Tech murderer) whose religion was Christianity (including the Va. Tech murderer—go figure!) or of Christian descent.

All of the killers were two-ton cisterns of unmitigated hate in our country no matter what the weapon used to kill their victims. Hatred against gays and lesbians, hatred against African-Americans, hatred against children, hatred against fellow college students and colleagues, hatred against freedom . . .

Cartoon used by permission: Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com/Cagle Cartoons

So, I asked the Lord: “What should I do to keep myself and my family safe in America? Do you think The Donald is right and maybe I should use his litmus test to ban all future White Christians from entering the United States, gin up hatred throughout the country against all White Christians, and make sure all White Christians living in America are put under surveillance and register as potential terrorists along with their children? That would surely erase my fears, strengthen my resolve, and ‘make America great again.’ (Of course, it would mean I’d have to put my husband on that list and half of each of my bi-racial children on the list, as well.) What do you think, God?”

And then God did speak to me in my heart: “Remember me, Eleanor—my name is love, and I will win the day. Just have faith, have courage, and do the right thing. Trust me—love wins, love wins, love wins . . . in the end.”

And so, before I fight for the ban on all assault weapons (petition already signed), address the hate that is trying to win the day in America, or work to get Donald Trump sent back to the hole in Hell that he crawled out from,

I WILL REMEMBER . . .

Cartoon used by permission: John Cole, The Scranton-Times Tribune

***

IN LOVING MEMORY

Sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, mothers, fathers, and friends who were Gay, Latino, Black, and White artists, lawyers, activists, musicians, cooks, students, construction workers, teachers, good citizens, and more who lost their lives dancing . . .

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old, Amanda Alvear, 25 years old,

Oscar A Aracena-Montero, 26 years old, Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 years old,

Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old, Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old,

Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 years old, Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old . . .

Cartoon used by permission: Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons com

Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old, Cory James Connell, 21 years old, Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old, Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 years old

Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old, Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old, Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old

Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old, Frank Hernandez, 27 years old . . .

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star/Cagle Cartoons

Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old, Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old

Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old, Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old

Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old, Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old

Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old, Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old

Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old, Kimberly Morris, 37 years old

Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old, Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old

Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25 years old, Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old

Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old, Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old

Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old . . .

Homophobia Bill Day Cagle Cartoons

Cartoon used by permission: Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons

Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27 years old, Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old

Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old, Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24 years old

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old, Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old

Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old, Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 years old

Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old

Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old

Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old.

***

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

“Hate of other people is really displaced hate of oneself.”—Social psychologist Arie Kruglanski, a professor at the University of Maryland

“People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody to hate. They look for somebody to blame. And a real leader speaks to anxiety and to fear and allays those fears, assuages anxiety.”—Henry Louis Gates

“This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”—Dwight D. Eisenhower

“If the House of Representatives had a solitary moral fiber, even a wisp of human empathy, we would spend moments not in silence, but screaming at painful volume the names of the 49 whose bodies were ripped apart in Orlando, and the previous victims and the ones before them. We’d invite parents and partners and siblings up from Orlando, and ask them to speak, openly, rawly, honestly about their pain. We’d listen. And maybe, just maybe, we’d hear.”—Jim Himes, a Democrat, represents Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House [1]

Cartoon used by permission: Rayma Suprani, CagleCartoons.com

REFERENCES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/orlando-shooting/victims/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_victims-graphic-410pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-assault-on-our-values/2016/06/13/a0eadc98-31ae-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html?tid=pm_pop_b

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/assault-weapons-must-be-banned/2016/06/13/0d6a58f4-3195-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/14/obama-lashes-out-on-loose-talk-on-terrorism-islam/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_obama-115pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/14/why-i-walked-out-of-the-houses-moment-of-silence-for-orlando/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory [1]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/health/orlando-shooting-acts-of-kindness-trnd/index.html

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/american_crime_maybe_omar_mateen_used_radical_islam_as_an_excuse_but_his_heinous_actions_are_all_too_familiar/

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/14/watch_morning_joe_panel_declares_trumps_treasonous_remarks_about_obama_should_disqualify_him_for_presidency/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/13/trump_obama_might_be_isis_sympathizer.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/14/inside-the-hate-filled-mind-of-a-mass-murderer/?hpid=hp_no-name_flahate-645pm_1%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

6 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on June 15, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Donald Trump, LGBT, Love will win, Orlando Memoriam, Pulse

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDERING . . .

04 Jun

Do you know what I discovered last week? Tis the season for graduations and their illustrious speakers. Everyone from President Obama to Lin-Manuel Maranda (Alexander Hamilton), from Spike Lee to Steven Spielberg, from Condoleezza Rice to Seth Myers answered the call—all urging our graduates to become their best selves for the future, knowing full well that none of them has a clue what the future holds.

Cartoon used by permission: Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune/Cagle Cartoons

It got me to thinking about graduation speeches I would like to hear—especially during these unhinged political times. So many of us who are old now look back on the times we graduated from high school and college, and we wished someone had told us the truth about what was so come. Some of us would go to a war we didn’t believe in and die way to soon, some would get hooked on drugs, some would marry, divorce, and marry again—looking for love in all the wrong places—and most of us would live “lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” (Thank you Thoreau!)

Which is why, if I could choose a graduation speaker, I would choose Lucifer. Wait. Hear me out. What better entity—the Hoover vacuum of men’s souls—to bring a huge dose of reality to the graduation circuit of 2016 amidst all the Oprahesque “You can do anything you put your minds to—just believe.” Can you imagine . . .

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons The Arizona Star/Cagle Cartoons

***

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDERING ONE’S CHARACTER

BY LUCIFER B. ABADDON

To the presidents of high schools and colleges here there and everywhere, the boards of trustees of these illustrious, rather ill-informed institutions, faculty and staff, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, family and friends who sacrificed their hard-earned money, time, and attention for 2016’s glut of graduates across our great nation—as well as the illustrious graduates themselves—I want to thank you for allowing me to speak to you and thus set the record straight on behalf of reality.

Before I proceed, let me introduce myself. My name is Lucifer. Some of you might know me by different nomenclature: Satan, Beelzebub, Old Mr. Grim, Sneaky Snake, Abaddon, Father of Lies, The Deceiver, The Lawless One, and my favorite—King of the Bottomless Pit. Many of you have no idea who I am, although I’ve been stalking you since you were born, but there are a few of you who started walking on the wild side in high school who are well acquainted with me. (Hey, whatz up, Joel, Nadine, LeShaun, Kimmy Huang, and Ricardo? Party at my place tonight? Excellent!)

I wasn’t invited by anyone to speak today, but as is my wont, I decided to just take over and force my opinion on you all because your graduation speakers—for the most part—don’t know what the hell they are talking about. They have failed—as they do every year—to let you know that life is kick-ass hard! You’ve just spent the last four years in Paradise, and you’ve learned nothing that will help you withstand the many onslaughts I plan to throw your way during your journey. These were the best years of your life, and it is pretty much all downhill after this because adulthood sucks—bigtime.

Graduation Meme

Google Meme

Oh, I grant you that there were a couple of inspiring commencement messages if you are into that sort of thing, but you weren’t listening—the young rarely do. President Obama’s speech at Howard University was one I have to begrudgingly give a shout-out to when he said:

“We cannot sleepwalk through life. We cannot be ignorant of history. We can’t meet the world with a sense of entitlement. We can’t walk by a homeless man without asking why a society as wealthy as ours allows that state of affairs to occur. . . We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust.”

Blah, blah, blah, blah . . .

Of course, Steven Spielberg should probably be given credit for his commencement speech at Harvard that some people might say threw shade on me:

“Love, support, courage, intuition. All of these things are in your hero’s quiver, but still, a hero needs one more thing: A hero needs a villain to vanquish. And you’re all in luck. This world is full of monsters. And there’s racism, homophobia, ethnic hatred, class hatred, there’s political hatred, and there’s religious hatred.”

“A hero needs a villain to vanquish . . .” Okay, Mr. Spielberg, I see how it is. What did I ever do to you? (Oh, yeah, there was that Holocaust thing and the anti-Semitism that’s on the rise again . . . Sheesh, some people are so touchy.) Well, students of 2016, I know something about vanquishing villains because I am the consummate villain—the great character assassinator. If you’re going to defeat me you’re going to need two things: empathy (“the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”) and critical thinking (“the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment”).

Cartoon used by permission: Parker, Florida Today/Cagle Cartoons

But “thinking” ain’t never gonna happen for most of you. Your education did not teach you to think. You were taught how to take tests—make the grades. In fact, according to the latest statistics from a confidential poll, 74% of you cheated in high school to make the grades you got to get you into these fine universities that many of you cheated in at some point in your tenure (at least once or twice) in order to graduate in excellent standing to get the great, well-paying jobs you now covet. And as to empathy, you’re the “selfie” generation, remember? Kim Kardashian was your favorite professor. [A few boos can be heard in the audience.]

Don’t believe me? Okay, case in point. Your first act of official grown-up business will be to vote in November. You have a Republican nominee (Donald Trump), who says that he can be all things to all men just so long as they are not Mexicans, Arabs, ugly women, and people who challenge him or contradict something he has said. (Talk about a man with no empathy.) He has promised to “make America great again”—translation: when “White was might and always right.” He, himself, is being exposed as a cheater and a liar due to his duplicitous dealings with something that he dubbed “Trump University.”

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star/Cagle Cartoons

Now “The Donald” is one of my best students, by the way—he can lie like no other. Passed “Lying 101” with flying colors. The Huffington Post assigned five reporters to comb through Donald’s presidential debate answers and they found “71 separate instances in which Trump made a claim that was inaccurate, misleading or deeply questionable.” “. . . basically one falsehood every 169 words, or 1.16 falsehoods every minute,” the reporters said.

What makes you think you won’t fall for my disciple’s crap? I was at the graduation ceremony of your 54^th Speaker of the House when he graduated from Miami University of Ohio in 1992. Smart, squeaky clean, good upstanding Christian who wanted to be President of the United States someday. I thought he was incorruptible. He slipped right under my radar in 1992 as someone who would eventually be working for me, but I just got a report in from my peeps that he sold his soul to me the other day in exchange for a measly conservative agenda even though he swore he’d never capitulate and “accept ugliness as the norm.” Sweet! Only a remnant of the GOP has refused to affix their lips to The Donald’s ass, but the majority (even John McCain—the war hero who The Donald besmirched) have surrendered their souls because staying in power means more to them than good character.

Cartoon used by permission: Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch/Cagle Cartoons

And don’t get me started on your religious leaders who claim to be the “keepers of the American way.” For instance, did you know that on June 21^st my man, Donald, will meet with 500 of your most prominent evangelical leaders? According to the Daily Beast, they will include such illustrious folks as “Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, radio host James Dobson and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Ronnie Floyd.” They say the meeting is about getting more comfortable with Donald Trump as their standard bearer, I say it will be a meeting where they murder what little character they have left in exchange for power—power to pick the next several Supreme Court Justices (and to ensure they are conservative), power to thwart the equality advancements for the LGBT community, and power to overthrow women’s rights. They want assurance that they will have a candidate to beat the Democrat. The uber-Christians want to win so badly that they don’t even know they are being played.

Did you know that according to Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast, the “Donald J. Trump Foundation contributed $100,000 in 2012 to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and in 2013 gave $10,000 each to the Family Leader, an influential Iowa evangelical group, and to Samaritan’s Purse,”—setting the stage years ago for The Donald’s (or should I say, my) manipulation and purchase of the souls of your prominent Conservative Evangelicals. Well played Donald, my disciple—well played!

Can you hear me? Do you get the gist of what I’m saying? You have the power to vanquish a villain as soon as November 2016 if you look up from your cell phones. Of course, the best way to ensure evil’s inevitable victory through Donald Trump is to simply do nothing.

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune/Cagle Cartoons

That said, thank you all for your time. This is the last piece of “free advice” I give you. Everything costs, so don’t expect me to do this again. I must run now. I need to get back to roaming the Earth and seeking whom I may devour. I’m sure I’ll be seeing many of you again throughout your lifetimes and especially at the end of your days which will be a lot sooner than you think. (I know that’s hard for you to imagine because you’re young, and you think you’ll never die.) In any case, the fastest way to get in touch with me is to murder your character and hit 666 on the speed dial of your phone after you do so. I’ll come running . . .

***

ELEANOR’S “SELAH” (“AHA” MOMENTS) ABOUT DOING THE RIGHT THING

I am discovering that I agree with Founding Father Thomas Paine that “these are the times that try men’s souls.” He was saying it about the late 1700s, but it has been true since the birth of man, and it is true today. There hasn’t been a time in the history of man when humans didn’t have to pay a steep price in order to choose to do the right thing. We, the Baby Boomers, sacrificed ourselves to figure out the science to put men on the moon, gave our lives to bring about civil rights and women’s rights, declared war on poverty, defused the cold war, bought a fruitless land war in East Asia to an end, gave the world personal computers and cell phones, and of course, turned music inside out by giving the Universe the Beatles, the Bee Gees, Bob Dylan, and Motown. But we are getting old, and sometimes old people sell their souls for a little peace and quiet and the assurance that they will be given nostalgic tickets to the “good ol’ days.” We need the next generation to shake up our world just as we did our parent’s generation. Let us hope that our children and grandchildren will “rise up” and do the right things to make our world a better place. If they do, we will have taught them well.

Cartoon used by permission: Bob Englehart, CagleCartoons.com

QUOTES

“. . . all of us as leaders can hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity and decency . . . we shouldn’t accept ugliness as the norm.”—Paul Ryan in March before he sold his soul to the Devil

“I think this is a different election; this is a different time in American history. You can’t have it both ways. … I just can’t believe there isn’t another candidate, at this point, that they would say, ‘You know what, I’d rather go down behind the right person than sell out America, my principles and everything I’ve worked for all my life to get behind somebody who I don’t believe in.’”—Mika Brzezinski’s reaction to Paul Ryan’s endorsement of Donald Trump

“At Liberty [University] last week, Trump, who identifies as a Presbyterian, drew laughter when he called the Bible’s Second Corinthians ‘Two Corinthians.’ Many evangelical leaders have criticized his admitted extramarital affairs and failure to ever ask for God’s forgiveness, but Falwell today called him ‘a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again.”—J.C. Derrick, World

“Today, you start down the path of becoming the generation on which the next generation stands. And I’ve imagined many possible futures in my films, but you will determine the actual future. And I hope it’s filled with justice and peace.” —Filmmaker Steven Spielberg/Commencement address to Harvard’s Class of 2016.

***

SPEAKING OF ONE OF MY GENERATION’S PROFILES IN COURAGE AND CHARACTER . . .

RIP, MY BROTHER—YOU WILL BE MISSED

Cartoon used by permission: Bob Englehart, CagleCartoons.com

***

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (Paperback and Kindle).

REFERENCES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-ryan-capitulates-to-ugliness/2016/06/02/a497fe4c-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evangelicals-may-carry-the-mark-of-trump/2016/06/02/dc0f59b4-28eb-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-official-the-gop-is-now-the-party-of-trump/2016/06/03/5f449ba8-2984-11e6-a3c4-0724e8e24f3f_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conservative-christians-share-communion-with-trump/2016/06/01/a4ced936-280d-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/02/politics/donald-trump-2016-election/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/01/opinions/donald-trump-tantrum-media-role-louis/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-sherr/lord-of-the-lies_b_10245120.html

7 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on June 4, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Donald Trump, Graduation, Graduation Speakers, HUMOR, Paul Ryan, satire

IN REMEMBRANCE OF . . .

26 May

Do you know what I discovered recently? On at least four occasions I almost started a war over the course of the past three months.

See, what had happened was . . . I was going along and minding my own business—horrified like all good, sane people in the world that the self-proclaimed Emperor who is strutting around naked trying to become our President was rapidly being perceived as fully clothed and an acceptable POTUS—when I ran into some situations that pissed me off as much as he does.

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star Tribune/Cagle Cartoons

In the interest of full disclosure, people piss me off all the time! IMHO, I am just one step from becoming a misanthrope. The Universe just better be glad that I am not a witch or a Being entrusted with super powers, because there would be a whole lot of toads hopping around here who had formerly been humans before they encountered my wrath because of something stupid they did that got on my every last nerve on any given day.

A month or two ago, I saw a White woman who was waiting in her car at the entrance of my housing community. As I passed her in my car, I innocently caught her attention, so I smiled as any normal human being would. (I didn’t have any reason not to smile: my bowels were not stopped up as is my normal state of being, and the sun was shining.) I didn’t know her from Adam and she didn’t know me from Eve, but as I came eye to eye with her, instead of a smile, she gave me the finger—just because she apparently had nothing better to do that day but to piss off the Black woman. WTF?

A couple weeks ago, I passed by the biggest Confederate flag draped over a major highway in Virginia—one that leads to the airport and to Washington, DC. This flag of hate is on private property and it is clearly there to cause provocation as its ginormous size and position are obviously intended to be noticed on Mars. I don’t remember that flag being there before the massacre of Black church members in Charleston, SC by the White supremacist who they befriended, and then he repaid their hospitality by gunning them down in their own church. Consequently, the good people of South Carolina led by their governor pulled down the Confederate flag from the State Capitol grounds because it had become a symbol of hate to so many. The fact that the Confederate flag is purposely being flaunted in my face in the state of Virginia on a road that I travel all the time . . . well, pissed I am!

Several days ago, George Zimmerman shamelessly auctioned off the gun he used to kill an unarmed Black child (Trayvon Martin) for $250,000 while he taunted Trayvon’s parents, trolled President Obama, and said he was selling the gun to keep Senator Clinton from becoming President—all the while puffing on a cigar and looking like Jabba the Hut. Why, I oughta . . .

What wouldn’t I personally love to do in order to bring justice to all these situations—from the personal slight to the demonic?

But . . . because I’ve been saved, sanctified, and baptized in the Holy Ghost (plus, God purposely didn’t give me super powers because I couldn’t be trusted), those people did not join the land of the frogs. I just found myself fanaticizing in the middle of the night one evening, when I couldn’t sleep from too much coffee, about what I’d do if I could become a super-hero vigilante. All my imaginations boiled down to waging . . .

this-means-war

Google Meme

For the luddite who returned an FU salute in response to my beatific smile, I imagined that I zapped her arm so that it froze in position with the offending finger on full display and stayed that way for a month (no, six months)—in front of her kids, at church, in the grocery store, at her work, and while she had sex with her husband or whomever. Maybe next time she’d think twice before she shot that finger into the air at a total stranger that hadn’t done anything to her.

Of the Neanderthal Confederate flag in-your-face-rebel, I imagined creating my own drone that would firebomb that flag every night—never missing a night—until he or she ran out of money to replace it or just got tired of being terrorized by me and replaced it with a massive sign that said: “We surrender! The war of Northern aggression is over, and the South got its ass kicked!”

Of the heartless, disgusting excuse for a human being that is George Zimmerman, I luxuriated in the revenge fantasy of . . . oh, never mind. I’ll keep that one to myself because ignoramus George is such a litigious little stupid fellow he would not be able to tell that what I write is satire/fantasy and he would come after me with one of his many guns claiming he was “standing his ground.” But let’s just say my vigilante fantasy about George Zimmerman involved a river in the Amazon Basin filled with flesh-eating piranhas and Georgie-Porgie going for an afternoon swim.

This means War

But in the midst of my 3 a.m. revelry, an old Negro spiritual popped into my head:

“I’m gonna lay down my burdens,

Down by the river side,

I’m gonna lay down my burdens,

Down by the riverside,

And study war no more!”

As that old song floated through my brain and down into my heart, I suddenly realized that I was “studying war” to fight the hurtful, unjust, and spiteful burdens of my tormentors. I know that more often than not, humans are called upon to lay down their burdens of hurt and let go of the right to “study war” in retaliation to wrongs committed or there would never be any peace in any corner of the Earth because somebody is always actin’ the fool. If the truth be told, warring is hell, and it takes the better woman or man to forgive and let go than it does to strike out in anger and retaliation. I remembered the verse that Peter, Paul, and Mary added to this spiritual when they co-opted it to be used as an anti-war protest song during the Vietnam War:

“I’m gonna lay down that atom bomb

Down by the riverside . . .

And study war no more.”

But I am also not a fool, and I know that the Book of Ecclesiastes is right about the human condition when it says: “There is a time for peace and a time for war,” because if brave men and women didn’t fight against tyranny and monsters, who will always be with us, peace would never have a chance to reign and people would never be able to prosper. I just think that the human heart chooses to “study war” more often than it needs to for reasons that are less than righteous, and in the end thousands of young men and women needlessly go to their graves.

Fallen Heroes Dave Granlund Politicalcartoons com

Cartoon used by permission: Dave Granlund Politicalcartoons.com

This Memorial Day, I’d like to encourage us all to forget about the cartoon of an election that is giving sane people everywhere massive heartburn issues and take the time to remember those people who have given their lives, their limbs, and sometimes their sanity when our country declared that there was “a time for war” to keep us safe. I do not judge their sacrifice or their call to duty. I owe them a deep debt of gratitude. But I would also like to remember those ideologies that we need to cling to that makes us great as a country when we decide to courageously “study war no more”: love of peace, quest for stiff gun controls, equality for all races, religions, and genders, and grace and tolerance for our fellowman.

May God bless us all this Memorial Day, and may God bless these United States of America.

Cartoon used by permission: Dave Granlund Politicalcartoons.com/Cagle Cartoons

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.”—Herbert Hoover

“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.”—John F. Kennedy

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”—John Lennon

“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”—William Tecumseh Sherman

ALL QUOTES BY www.brainyquotes.com

Cartoon used by permission: John Cole, The Scranton Times Tribune/Cagle Cartoons

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (Paperback and Kindle).

Cartoon used by permission: Mike Lane, Cagle Cartoons

REFERENCES

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/24/opinions/us-needs-a-new-nuclear-policy-helfand-thurlow/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/26/the-things-america-hasnt-apologized-for/?hpid=hp_rhp-moretopstories2_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

6 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on May 26, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Donald Trump, George Zimmerman, HUMOR, Memorial Day, storytelling, War

TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL

14 May

Do you know what I discovered after returning home from visiting my grandson this weekend? The Donald waltzed up to Capitol Hill and the Speaker of the House tucked his tail between his legs, bowed down and affixed his lily-white lips firmly against The Donald’s orange ass. America, we are so screwed!

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune||Cagle Cartoons

Everyone keeps telling me (a Born-again Christian but not “that kind of Christian”) there is no way in Heaven or Hell The Donald can occupy the White House in November—I just need to have faith. They tell me we Americans will come to our senses and stop this xenophobe, racist, serial adulterer, misogynist, liar, Ayn Rand disciple, and mammon-worshiper who sits at the right hand of Satan before he gets too close to the throne because the Holy Rolling Christian Evangelicals will never throw their weight behind Donald Trump’s candidacy. Well, the Barbarian is at the White House gate and he’s being carried in on a gilded perch shouldered by Christian Televangelists (Jerry Falwell, Jr., Pat Roberson, Jan Couch of TBN, Paula White, Gloria and Kenneth Copeland, Clarence McClendon—a Black preacher who should know better—and the slick-haired Joel Osteen just to name a few). The raised royal sedan chair is being led by The Donald’s lead house Negro, Dr. Ben Carson (a.k.a., another “Born-again Christian” who is trying to ram his form of religion down the throats of everyone who doesn’t think like him). (Insert picture of “The Scream” by Expressionist artist Edvard Munch.)

Cartoon used by permission: John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune||Cagle Cartoons

When I read about the meeting between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump which should have been titled: “The Day Paul Ryan Sold His Soul to the Devil,” I was so upset that I fell into somewhat of a depression (Mr. Ryan considers himself to be a fine, upstanding Christian as most of the GOP does, claiming to be the standard bearer of family values and all). While in my comatose state, I dreamt that I was in a Judge Judy-style courtroom where my alter ego was the judge (The Dalai Mama), a conglomerate of Trump’s ex-wives, pissed-off feminists, ripped-off Trump University students, the poor, assorted Mexicans, a bunch of Muslims, and decent human beings in general were the Plaintiff, and the GOP was the Defendant. As with all my dreams and fantasies, I won the battle for truth. (If only life were that easy…)

Cartoon used by permission: RJ Matson Roll Call||Cagle Cartoons

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JUDGE DALAI MAMA’S NO-NONSENSE COURT

ANNOUNCER: [Disembodied voice heard offstage] “Entering through the door on the left of Judge Dalai Mama’s Court is the Plaintiff ‘Truth’ who is suing the Defendant ‘GOP’ for breach of contract. Entering through the door on the right is the Defendant, the GOP.”

BAILIFF: [Big burly Black guy in police uniform] “ALL RISE for the trial of Truth vs. the GOP!! The Court of the No-nonsense Judicial Circuit is now in session. The Honorable Judge Dalai Mama is presiding.”

BAILIFF: [Swearing in the Plaintiff and the Defendant] “Do you promise the testimony you are about to give will faithfully and truthfully conform to the facts of this trial? Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

PLAINTIFF AND DEFENDANT: “I do!”

BAILIFF: “You may proceed.”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “Befo’ I call on either one of y’all to testify, you both better know that I don’t take no crap—you hear me? My court ain’t called the “no-nonsense” court for nothin’. You mess with me, and I won’t hesitate to knock you upside yo’ head. Capisce?”

PLAINTIFF AND DEFENDANT: “Yes, Your Honor.”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “All right—now that we all on the same page—why don’t we start with the Plaintiff. Ms. Truth, it says here that you are suin’ the GOP for breach of contract. Why? It says here in my court brief that you two used to be lovers.”

PLAINTIFF: “’Used to be’ are the operative words, your honor. This jerk has played me for the last time. I’ve put up with his xenophobia, I’ve put up with his stinginess, I’ve put up with his lyin’, and I’ve put up with his duplicity, but I’m drawin’ the line with his latest punk-ass stunt.”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “Ms. Truth, the term ‘punk ass’ is not a legal term. I would caution you to stick to courtroom language, Girlfriend.”

PLAINTIFF: “Sorry, Your Honor. He’s just got me so upset, I can barely breathe. I just found out that he has urged the Republicans in Congress to support that pig Donald Trump in spite of all the disparaging ways The Donald has treated me. I’ve tried to reason with the Defendant in the past, but yesterday was the final straw.”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “What happened yesterday?”

PLAINTIFF: “The Defendant rolled over and took it up the ass from The Donald when Paul Ryan and Donald Trump had that sham meeting on Capitol Hill after Paul Ryan intimated that he’d never support that jerk.”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: [Judge’s gavel thunders throughout the courtroom as the judge pounds in rapid-fire succession against her desk.) “Hey, hey, hey—courtroom decorum Ms. Truth, or you’ll be fined for bein’ in contempt. Get it together, Baby!”

Cartoon used by permission: Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com||Cagle Cartoons

PLAINTIFF: “Yes, Your Honor . . . sorry. What I’m sayin’ is that yesterday was bad, but today was the pièce de résistance. I woke up to the news that the Secret Service (and rightfully so) is investigating Trump’s long-time butler of 30 years/Mar-a-Lago tour guide ‘historian’ (Anthony Senecal) because he has recently published quite a few Facebook screeds about wanting President Obama (and his wife) to be executed. Referring to the President as ‘our pus headed president’ and ‘kenyan (sic) fraud’–saying he should be ‘hung for treason,’ as well as stating, that the President ‘should have been taken out by our military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term.’ He went on to say that Muslims should be ‘shot at the shore’ instead of being allowed to come into our country and for added security, our President ‘should be hung from the portico of the White Mosque.’ And you know what? The Defendant—the GOP—hasn’t said a mumbling word of chastisement to a man who may soon be a finger-click away from our nuclear bombs about the fact that he has tolerated such an asshole in his employment for over thirty years. (You can’t convince me that someone who has worked that intimately with The Donald hasn’t shared his horrid views with ‘The King,’ as Mr. Senecal affectionately refers to him.) This butler’s apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and just undergirds what a bastard Donald Trump is underneath all that Republican smooshing—you can bet your sweet ass on that truth! Why in God’s name doesn’t the Defendant distance himself from this Neanderthal?”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: [Furious banging of the gavel is heard] “Order . . . order in the court! Ms. Truth, this is your last warning about court decorum. Don’t make me come down there and smack you upside your head. I think you need to stand down and check yo’self. (Sweet Jesus, I’m gonna need myself a stiff drink befo’ this trial is over.) Now, will the Defendant, Mr. GOP, please state your rebuttal?

DEFENDANT: “Absolutely, Your Honor! I have a prepared statement to read in my defense which should put this case to bed in my favor. May I proceed?”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “As you wish, Mr. GOP, but hear this: My mama didn’t raise no fools. Tread carefully, ‘cause if I catch you lyin’, you’re toast.”

DEFENDANT: “No problem, Your Honor. My Republican brand stands for Truth (with a capital ‘T’): family values, Christian virtues, intelligent leadership, and compassionate conservatism. After all, my party is the one that freed the slaves. Why would I jeopardize my reputation supporting a candidate who didn’t represent those values? And to prove my point, I would like to point out to the Court that our Republican nominee for the Presidency is supported by prominent Christian televangelists and Christian University presidents (Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, Jr. for example) and prosperity preachers who think God wants us all to be rich, just like Mr. Trump. In fact, these ‘Name-it-and-claim-it’ preachers deem to call The Donald their friend. They simply adore him. All that gold that surrounds him, the private planes that transport him, and the beauty queens that have adorned his arms through the years are just what the prosperity preachers believe to be the righteous man’s due. Not only do these pillars of our Christian churches support Mr. Trump but many of them have gone on record to proclaim his ‘Born-again status.’”

Cartoon used by permission: John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune||Cagle Cartoons

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “Is that so, Mr. GOP?”

DEFENDANT: “Yes, indeed, Your Honor. Why one of the top female prosperity-doctrine preachers, Ms. Paula White, has preached to a crowd of thousands that Mr. Trump is ‘saved’ and should be our next president. Ms. White has gone on record to say that she gave him a Bible signed by none other than the great Rev. Billy Graham. She says that the Bible even included a note with a ‘prophetic word’ over Mr. Trump—although, I’ve never seen it, so I’ll just have to take her word for it. On top of all this glowing support, Ms. Paula White is a leader of a predominantly Black congregation. Your Honor, don’t you think if Mr. Trump were such a racist xenophobe as Ms. Truth suggests, that a multi-cultural congregation would not so readily pay for Ms. White to own a condo in Trump Tower as well as support her shopping and plastic surgery addiction?”

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “Well, like my mama used to say: ‘a fool and his money is easily parted.’ But go on.”

PLAINTIFF: “Seriously?! Your Honor, are you listening to him? These Christian televangelists are cut from the same cloth as Trump—they are like two peas in a pod. What about his failed Trump University that is being sued by ex-students—poor people—who went into credit-card debt as much as $35,000 because Trump allegedly promised he could ‘turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you. . ?’ It was a scam—a bunch of real estate workshops in hotel ballrooms! Oh my God, doesn’t any other Christian besides me see this subterranean creature for what he truly is? Oh, and what about his crude chats with shock-jock Howard Stern in the late 90s when the two of them would critique women’s looks (and I quote), “…Her boob job is terrible. They look like two light posts coming out of a body.” And this: “A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10.” He has boasted for years about all the women chasing him and his stud-like sex life, not to mention his love ‘em and dump ‘em thrice married sorry behind.

The man is crude, rude, and should be stewed! But instead, he’s being justified and heralded by leading Christian Evangelists. And what about the $85,000 Trump paid for four full-page, explosive ads in NYC newspapers to demand the death penalty against five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully convicted for the brutal assault, rape, and sodomy of a White twenty-eight year old investment banker? The Huffington Post said he called them “rapists, thugs, killers, wild criminals, muggers, murderers, crazed misfits?” The only problem was: THE 14-16 YEAR OLDS TURNED OUT TO BE NOT QUILTY AND THEIR CONFESSIONS HAD BEEN COERSED!! Many years later, another man who was a serial rapist and murderer serving a life sentence in prison fully confessed to committing the crime all by himself. He knew details about the horrid event that only the investigators could have known, and his DNA matched the crime scene DNA, whereas it never matched the accused teens. Marry that confession with a record of rampant investigative negligence and you have reasonable doubt, as you well know Your Honor. The teens were exonerated after spending five to thirteen years in prison and given millions in a settlement from NYC a decade after their false imprisonment which The Donald hysterically railed against. If Trump had had his racist, hot-headed way in 1989, five teenagers—children (angels by no means and hooligans for sure, but still children)—would have been turned into a line in the Billie Holiday song, ‘Strange Fruit’: ‘Blood on the leaves and blood at the root… strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.’ And here’s the rub: Trump never, ever apologized, and still publicly questions the Central Park Five’s proven innocence, because the man is incapable of admitting he is wrong. [1] [2] [3]

If Donald Trump had the power and the money in the late 80s to call for the annihilation of the lives of five Black and Latino children who were falsely accused of a crime, what does the GOP think he’ll do in a hot-headed moment against any number of American minorities, an Arab nation, Mexico, or China?”

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune||Cagle Cartoons

JUDGE DALAI MAMA: “Hum, hum . . . I think I’ve heard enough to make a rulin’. Will the Plaintiff and the Defendant please stand? It is clear to me that the Defendant, Mr. GOP, has turned his back on Truth and pretty much sold his soul to the Devil as it pertains to the justification of that dog, Donald Trump. Mr. GOP has swallowed the wormwood, sorry-ass nature of Mr. Trump—hook, line, and sinker—for the supposed sake of unity to try and ‘unblacken’ the White House in November (as Larry Wilmore would say). Win at all cost seems to be the GOP’s motto. Well, Mr. GOP, I’m here to tell you that God don’t like ugly, and I’ve got a feelin’ that your ass is gonna be grass come November, ‘cause the Lawd will not be mocked—you hear me? Therefore, I, Judge Dalai Mama, rules in favor of the Plaintiff—Truth! After all this slime, Girlfriend needs a hot bath and a drink. This court is hereby dismissed!”

Cartoon used by permission: John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune||Cagle Cartoons

***

ELEANOR’S “SELAH” (“AHA” MOMENT) ABOUT THE GOP AND DONALD TRUMP

I am discovering that I am trying not to panic, but Lord have mercy, this shit just got real with Trump and Paul Ryan’s sham meeting with all but four or five members of the Republicans in Congress throwing their support behind The Donald. The Speaker of the House who looked like a deer caught in the glare of headlights must have used the word “encouraging” at least half a dozen times when referencing his meeting with Trump, which is like saying, “My lunch with Beelzebub was very ‘encouraging’ as he yanked me down into Hell!”

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not in the tank for Hillary. I will vote for her, but I will be holding my nose the entire time just on the premise that we don’t need another Bush/Clinton in the White House—two families have held the presidency for twenty years! (How is it that in a country of 323,814,755 people as of May 16th the best we could find to run for the highest office in the land were a clown car of jabronis on the Republican side, one grumpy old man on the Democrat side promising free shit to kids with no way to pay for it (no kid wants to ever grow up and pay for anything), and two qualified candidates (Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton) from two washed-out presidential dynasties? If we manage to get through November without the unholy, racist, pig Donald Trump becoming president (ARE YOU LISTENING, GOD; IT’S ME, ELEANOR?), then we need to start beating the bushes to find men and women of integrity who will come out of hiding by 2020 and lead our great nation in a manner which it deserves because my heart can’t take much more of this. Moving to Canada won’t be far enough to get away from the madness that will ensue. I might just have to exit stage left of this planet and go hang out with my God. Just sayin’.

Cartoon used by permission: John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune||Cagle Cartoons

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SOBERING QUOTES ABOUT TRUTH, THE GOP, AND DONALD TRUMP

“And I can teach you, kinsman, how to shame the devil—by telling the truth! ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil,’ as the old saying goes. If you do have the power to call him up, then bring him here. And I’ll swear I have the power to shame him into leaving. Oh, for goodness sake, tell the truth and shame the devil!”—Character of Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy from Henry IV by Shakespeare

“In the 1990s, when another Clinton was president, conservatives became fond of the phrase “character counts.” This was a way of scoring points against Bill Clinton for his sexual predations and rhetorical misdirections, as well as a statement that Americans expected honor and dignity in the Oval Office. I’ll never forget the family friend, circa 1998, who wondered how she was supposed to explain the meaning of a euphemism for oral sex to her then 10-year-old daughter. . . Endorsing Mr. Trump means permanently laying to rest any claim conservatives might ever again make on the character issue.”—Brett Stevens, the Wall Street Journal from article: “Hillary the Conservative Hope”

Cartoon used by permission Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle||Cagle Cartoons

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WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (Paperback and Kindle).

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REFERENCES

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/10/the_christian_rights_trump_ageddon_how_donald_trump_is_tearing_religious_conservatives_apart/

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/hillary-the-conservative-hope-1462833870-lMyQjAxMTI2NjE0MDYxNzA5Wj

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/2016/05/the-crucifixion-and-nevertrump-what-the-cross-teaches-us-about-politics/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Patheos%20050716%20(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=51321189&spUserID=MTIzNjQ2MzAzOTI4S0&spJobID=920767889&spReportId=OTIwNzY3ODg5S0

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/trump-butler-anthony-senecal-facebook-kill-obama

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/donald-trump-white-nationalist-afp-delegate-california

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ryan-and-trumps-painful-sham/2016/05/12/7e6bccfa-1876-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/13/why_donald_trumps_racist_butler_actually_matters/

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/15/3760287/donald-trump-prosperity-preaching/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/was-donald-trumps-education-venture-trump-university-a-scam/2015/09/13/299ed9c8-52c0-11e5-933e-7d06c647a395_story.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-central-park-five_us_56c78713e4b041136f16fd4e [1]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/19/decoding-the-crime-of-the-century-the-real-story-of-the-central-park-five.html [2]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/donald-trump-and-the-central-park-five [3]

6 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on May 14, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Donald Trump, GOP, Paul Ryan, Political Humor, Republican Congress

LOSING MY MIND—FINDING IT AGAIN!

24 Apr

Do you know what I discovered today? I am back home, which may come as a surprise to my readers because you thought I was home all along during my much-announced spring break. Well . . . you see, what had happened was . . .

I started off the week with great intentions: to commune with nature while I pulled together my garden for the season. What could be better? But if you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, you will know that in my new retirement abode, I am at war with the moles, the voles, and the deer. Everyone told me when I moved here that I would lose that war with these creatures (my home backs up to a nature preserve), but I refused to believe them. And then the pollen swirled and landed—like an apocalyptic yellow blanket causing me to sneeze my head off every time I poked my Allegra-saturated noggin out of the house to spray some animal-go-away spray at a pesky creature. Everything was covered in yellow dust, making me want to personally ring Mother Nature’s neck. So several days after I announced in my blog that I was going to spend my entire spring break working outside in my yard, I threw away the garden shovel, the Mole-b-gone, the allergy meds, and the Deer FU spray and surrendered my land to its original inhabitants and their allergy dust. (Have you ever noticed that squirrels, birds, moles, voles, and deer don’t sneeze even when they are knee deep in pollen as they devour your newly planted mole and deer resistant shrubs which have cost you hundreds of dollars? What’s up with that?)

Cartoon Used by Permission: Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com

I came indoors and tried to work on my third book, but I soon lost interest because I couldn’t see through the film of allergy tears streaming down my cheeks, puffy frog-eyes, and allergy snot dripping from my nose like a broken faucet. (Apparently, pollen can still get into a hermetically sealed house—who knew?) Blowing my nose every third word became a chore, so I figured that maybe I needed a rest from both my garden and my writing and turned to that great intellectual stimulation: Facebook.

Let me make one thing clear: I hate Facebook. So you know that I have to be pretty desperate if I start trolling that colossal waste of time. Since FB changed its format by adding “like” options, I have to confess that I don’t have a clue how to use them or even if I want to use them, but I thought I’d give them that good ol’ college try and figure the system out. After fiddling around with a few of Facebook’s “like” options on some of my friends’ pages, I got bored as hell and wanted to kill myself. (How do people spend day in and day out cruising FB pages without going insane?) I swear I left 30% of my brain cells on the Altar of Zuckerman as I tried to “connect” with “friends” and saw an eternity’s worth of pictures of “the most delicious meal I’ve eaten—ever,” the greatest vacation, the most adorable babies crawling, walking, pooping, or gurgling like every other baby in the world who has done so since the beginning of time. AUUUGH!

Facebook Likes Nate Beeler The Columbus Dispatch

Cartoon used by permission: Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch

And don’t even get me started on the news. When my news feed began to alternate between that demon Trump’s Neanderthal antics . . .

. . . or whether my vagina was going to be a matter of inspection by the toilet police the next time I walked into a North Carolina restroom, I almost lost it.

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

This was supposed to be a time of rest for me but I was so restless—so fucking bored and agitated that I was beginning to get on even Jesus’ nerves! I mean I realized the problem was me. My equilibrium was off. The politics, the madness, and the chaos had sucked out my sense of well-being, and I didn’t know how to get it back until my sweet man (WW—“White and Wonderful”) came to the rescue. (WW always comes to the rescue when I’m like this—frazzled, overwrought, and not much good to myself or anybody else.)

WW: Hey Cutie, I know what you need—a change of scenery to foster a different mindset without any access to news or moles.

ME: I’m intrigued. Tell me more.

WW: What has seven islands, monkeys, lizards, diamonds, and lots of sea and sand? Is your passport up-to-date? Can you say rum punch three times fast without tripping up your tongue?

ME: Okay, I give up. What?

WW: A 12-day cruise to Aruba, Curacao, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Maarten.

ME: SHUT UP!?! When do we leave?

WW: As soon as you can pack. BUT . . . you have to promise me one thing: you cannot watch any news for twelve days, and you must swear that you will retool your mind to live more in the moment.

ME: Really, Yoda, How do I do that?

WW: I have no idea, but we’re not getting any younger and life as we know it is slip-sliding away at a depressingly fast rate. How about focusing on being mindful in the moment instead of stressing out about what is going to happen tomorrow or worrying about things you can’t control? In fact, I bought you a few thousand books to consider as traveling/reading companions: Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the Present Moment and Your Life, Mindfulness in Plain English, Little Book of Mindfulness: 10 minutes a day to less stress, more peace, Mindfulness: Mindfulness For Anxiety Relief—How To Use Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Meditation Exercises…, Mindfulness in Everyday Life: How to Stop Worries and Stress and Enjoy Peace and Happiness with Mindfulness and…, Wherever You Go, There You Are…

ME: Okay, okay, I get your point. I’ll go away with you and try and get my sanity back. IN THE MEANTIME I’M GOING ON A CRUISE!

CELEBRITY ECLIPSE, Photo Credit by E. Tomczyk

Along with my bathing suit, my Gucci shades, my sea-sickness bands, and the latest Adele album, I packed Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go There You Are, and I began to forget all about Trump and Cruz, moles and voles, ISIS and chaos, and a Republican Party gone completely mad. I became one with my surroundings and the world became my oyster.

Iggy the Iguana

IGGY THE IGUANA: Photo Credit by E. Tomczyk

It didn’t take me long to get into my new state of mindfulness, and boy did my world open up when I started paying attention to what was in front of me and not what I feared would happen tomorrow or mourn over what had happened yesterday. I met a little dude called Iggy the Iguana in Curacao. He told me how much he loved a mosquito-rum cocktail and how much he hated owls and snakes. How the world would be a much better place without either of those predators, thank you very much. I tended to agree with him about the snakes.

Willemstads Harbour Curacao By Mtmelendez at the English language Wikipedia

Willemstads Harbour Curacao: Photo Credit by Mtmelendez at the English language, Wikipedia

Curacao took my breath away, and I considered moving there for a nano-second because they have no moles and voles. I swear it looked like what I had imagined heaven to be, but WW said he liked his mole/vole retirement space back in Virginia, and maybe I was taking this mindfulness thing a little too seriously.

WATER BOARD BUSINESSMAN: Photo Credit by E. Tomczyk

I became friends with a camera-shy, water-board businessman who tried to sell me two turtles for $20 (“han crafted by me own hans, darlin’, right out of volcanic rock”), which I later discovered were made in China, sold on all seven islands, and were probably worth seventy-five cents apiece. But in my new “zen state” I thought his scam was hysterical as I exclaimed to my husband: “I’m being cheated by one of the locals—isn’t life simply delightful” (said no one ever!).

GROS AND PETIT PITONS IN ST. LUCIA: Photo Credit by E. Tomczyk

I sailed past the Gros and Petit Pitons in a sailboat in total silence, and I was humbled by the realization of the power of what a volcanic eruption can do. According to Wikipedia, “at least 148 plant species have been recorded on Gros Piton, 97 on Petit Piton and the intervening ridge, among them eight rare tree species. The Gros Piton is home to some 27 bird species . . . three indigenous rodents, one opossum, three bats, eight reptiles and three amphibians.”

CATAMARAN #5: Photo Credit by E. Tomczyk

I lost count of the catamarans I went on—chillin’ with my rum punch while WW went snorkeling. IMP. NOTE: I don’t do water—anyone who knows me knows this is one diva who does not immerse herself in wet stuff. In fact, one of the captains of one of the myriad catamarans I sailed on “playfully” threatened to throw me overboard to join my husband, whether I wanted to snorkel or not. Without missing a beat, I emerged from my “mindfulness” mindset and announced to all who had ears to hear (including the angels in heaven and the fishes in the sea): “Young man, if you toss me overboard, the next thing you will be doing is singing with Jesus because I will personally kill you.” He bowed in homage to me, gave me two more rum punches, and I returned to my zen-like state of “being in tune with where I was.”

ST. MAARTEN: Photo Credit by E. Tomczyk

The Diva took a tempting stroll down diamond row in St. Maartens and almost got hooked on a cute little bracelet that was simply “to die for,” but at the last moment remembered that she had enough bling to last a lifetime, and that greed was unbecoming to her new spiritual state of just “being.”

MARVIN GAY, THE VERVENT MONKEY AND WW: Photo by E. Tomczyk

Ran into Marvin Gay in St. Kitts. He told me that he was a Vervent monkey, and he and his peeps rule that island. He said his ancestors came to St. Kitts on the slave ships from Africa in the 1600s as pets to the French. Says his great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather helped lead a Vervent monkey revolt against their owners during the local wars in 1666 between the British and the French, and that his ancestors escaped their cages and roamed the island in gangs raiding crops and causing horrendous mischief. He said if I didn’t believe him, I should check out the diary of one Father Labat, a French Priest. I told him I would do as he instructed if he promised not to shit on my husband’s head (he looked like he was contemplating just such an action). When I got back to the ship, I checked out the following essay from the library which sported the following quote about Marvin Gay’s relatives:

“Their [Vervent] frolics are mischievous, their thefts dexterous. They are subtle enemies and false friends. When pursued, they fly to the mountain and laugh at their pursuers, as they are little ashamed of a defeat as a French admiral or general. In short, they are the torment of planters; they destroy whole cane pieces in a few hours and come in troops from the mountain, whose trees afford them shelter. No methods to get the better of them has yet been found out.”—Professor Frank Ervin or a member of his team at the Behavioral Science Foundation located at Estridge Estate on St. Kitts in response to a request from the St. Christopher Heritage Society

MARVIN, THE VERVENT MONKEY: Photo by E. Tomczyk

Marvin kept his word, and I maintained my mindfulness—amazed what one can learn when one is mindful. (Who knew that iguanas and monkeys could communicate in English?)

Photo Credit: E. Tomczyk, My Man and Me doin’ the “Mindful” thing

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ELEANOR’S SELAH (“AHA MOMENT”) ABOUT MINDFULNESS

I am discovering that according to Jon Kabat-Zinn the lack of mindfulness “…scavenges to fill time, conspires with my mind to keep me unconscious and lulled in a fog of numbness to a certain extent. It has me unavailable to others, missing the play of the light on the table, the smells in the room, the energies of the moment. Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.”

All joking aside, I am trying to turn over a new leaf. I think this mindfulness thing is what I need at this stage. If at almost 68, I can’t settle down and smell the island flowers then I don’t know when I’m going to do so because at this point of my journey, this life is as good as it gets for me. Of course, maybe mindfulness is just learning how to pay attention—period.

***

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES ABOUT MINDFULNESS

“Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.”— Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Mindfulness helps us freeze the frame so that we can become aware of our sensations and experiences as they are, without the distorting coloration of socially conditioned responses or habitual reactions.”—Henepola Gunaratana

“When you have children, you realize how easy it is to not see them fully, and perhaps miss all those early years. If you are not careful, you can be too absorbed in work, and they will be only too happy to tell you about it later. Being a parent is one of greatest mindfulness practices of all.”—Jon Kabat-Zinn

“I’m pretty much done with mindfulness. I’m just going to start paying attention.”—Gina Barreca

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES: www.brainyquotes.com

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (hardcopy and Kindle).

12 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on April 24, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: HUMOR, Mindfulness, satire, storytelling, travel

RIP GOP

17 Mar

Do you know what I discovered about famous people dying and their subsequent media coverage? Just recently Harper Lee, Pat Conroy, Nancy Reagan, and Angela “Big Ang” Raiola (breakout star of Mob Wives) died, and within hours—sometimes minutes—everything from multi-paragraphs to multi-pages of obituaries were published. It was freaky. I learned that obituaries of famous people are written long before their deaths if they are terminally ill, old, or habitually self-destructive. That way, when they do kick the bucket, the Media can be Johnny-on-the-spot and publish their obits in a timely manner.

When I awoke this morning and read the news about Donald Trump’s significant wins on Super Tuesday, I could hear the death knell for the GOP, and I knew what I had to do: write an obit for the Republican Party whose inevitable demise is on its way, if it hasn’t happened already. I thought it would be rather entertaining to “very loosely” base the GOP’s obituary on bits and pieces of the actual one that was used for Abraham Lincoln as taken from page 1 of The New York Times, April 16, 1865. (I couldn’t resist the irony.)

Cartoon used by permission: Daryl Cagle, CagleCartoons.com

***

GOP—ONCE KNOWN AS “THE GRAND OLD PARTY”—IS OFFICIALLY DEAD!

Reality Show Actor Donald Trump Believed to be the Assassin

By Blogger, Eleanor L. Tomczyk

***

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

It is now ascertained with reasonable certainty that multiple assassins (led by a gang leader) were engaged in this horrible crime against the Grand Old Party. The leader—an actor named Donald Trump—was the one who engaged in the final kill shot against the GOP, and the other companions of his (Republican Congress, Tea Party, Birthers, Mitch McConnell, Citizens United, Koch Brothers, Fox News, Right-Wing Radio), are being hunted down for their complicity in the Elephant’s demise even as this obit goes to press. Vivid descriptions of Trump’s accomplices (racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, greed, and violence) have been posted all over the nation’s media outlets so that they can hardly escape unnoticed. It appears from intelligence collected from the GOP’s murder scene that the assassination has been a long time coming, but it previously stalled out because it was believed that the Republican Party had an adult—Jeb Bush—who they thought would carry the day, and thus extend its life a little longer. But Mr. Trump slaughtered Bush in a high profile shoot-out earlier in the year, and then rode on to Florida to commit the dastardly deed against the Grand Old Party itself.

Cartoon used by permission: Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

The official notice of the death of the GOP was given by the Media this morning to the American public, and the memorial arrangements were announced:

First—the arrangements for the funeral of the late GOP were referred to the Republican Establishment which is in a state of disbelief and is trying to broker a convention in Cleveland to resurrect the Elephant from the dead. All the Bible-believing Evangelicals have been called upon to fast and pray for this miracle.

Second—The Great Latino Hope (Marco Rubio) went into hiding with his tail between his legs after being mortally wounded by a stray bullet from The Donald in his assassination attempt against the GOP. Rubio was last seen sobbing his heart out in the Florida Everglades as he lamented:

“My whole life I’ve been told being humble is a virtue, and now being humble is a weakness and being vain and self-absorbed is somehow a virtue. My whole life I’ve been told no matter how you feel about someone, you respect everyone because we are all children of the same God—and now being respectful to one another is considered political correctness.”

AT WHICH POINT THE ALLIGATORS WERE HEARD RESPONDING IN UNISON: “AND WHY WASN’T THAT SAME COURTESY EXTENDED FROM YOU TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE? KARMA IS A BITCH ‘LITTLE RUBIO.’”

Cartoon used by permission: Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com

In the meantime, Nancy Reagan, the wife of the “god” the GOP worships, was high-fiving her fortune teller in the Great Beyond for escaping the Earth just in time to be with her man before she had to witness the assassination of the Republican Party by Donald Trump and the Duck Dynasty set.

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

The assassin left behind at the crime scene a brilliant display of the rancor and violence he would use to pull the Party together now that he had accomplished his goal of obliterating the GOP. When asked by CNN host Chris Cuomo what Mr. Trump would do if he ended up in Cleveland a few delegates shy of 1,237 and the party leaders demand a contested GOP convention, he gave a bone-chilling answer:

“I think you’d have riots.”

“[I’m] representing many millions of people: If you disenfranchise those people, and you say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re 100 votes short’…I think you’d have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.”

Cartoon used by permission: Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

The GOP’s body was removed from Florida and has been embalmed. The Grand Old Party of Lincoln was wrapped in the American flag, and it has continued across the country for proper viewing by the American people at various primaries and will arrive in Cleveland in July where it will be put to rest. It will be America’s last chance to see the remains of a once proud political group who helped Abraham Lincoln free the slaves.

Flags over the Republican Establishment hearts are at half-mast. Scarcely any business is being transacted anywhere either on private or public account.

The bells are tolling mournfully. All the Republicans are in the deepest gloom and sadness. Strong men weep in the streets. China is using Donald Trump’s antics and vulgarity as a warning to its citizens about the dangers of democracy. The grief is wide-spread and deep—in strange contrast to the joy that was so greatly manifested around the world when Barack Hussein Obama won the Presidential election—not once—but twice.

This is indeed a day of gloom. RIP GOP!

Cartoon used by permission: John Cole, The Scranton-Times Tribune

***

ELEANOR’S “SELAH” (“AHA”) MOMENT ABOUT THE GOP’S ASSASINATION

I am discovering that as I meditate on the very real aspect that Donald Trump may be our Republican nominee for the President of the United States, I understand that this will probably destroy the GOP as we’ve come to know it—shatter it into a million pieces. Maybe that will be a good thing. I don’t rejoice over this. I used to be a Republican, and I think our country needs a two (or more) party system to keep us in balance. But I don’t feel very sorry for my Republican friends because they brought this on themselves. When Trump spearheaded the birther movement against President Obama (knowing full well, that every charge was a lie), the Republican Establishment “winked” and thought it was a hoot. When Mitch McConnell declared that he would lead the Republican Congress in a charge to make Obama a one-term President and obstruct him at every turn, the rest of the GOP cheered and rushed in to help. When the jerk, Joe Wilson, screamed at President Obama in the midst of a State of the Union address, “You lie!” the rest of the Republicans applauded the consummate disrespect of a sitting president. In the midst of all this, they got into bed with big business, big money, and special interests—leaving the middle class behind to slide into poverty, and the poor to slide into Hell. Now they wonder why so many people are so pissed at them. So angry that 67% of Republicans are willing to lend their support to an assassin.

To all my dear sisters and brothers in the Republican Party who refused to speak up against the sins of the GOP all those years ago, up to today’s obstructionism by Congress against the President’s pick for the next Supreme Court Judge—I give you Donald Trump. Karma is truly a bitch!

Cartoon used by permission: Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com

***

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out http://www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (Paperback and Kindle).

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

REFERENCES

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-skeldon/this-is-not-my-republican-party_b_9477064.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/13/how-the-republican-party-became-a-failed-state.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-cruz-kasich-convention-220846

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/14/joe_scarborough_surrenders_msnbc_host_admits_party_has_shattered_its_brand_but_wont_confront_whats_driving_the_gops_crisis/

8 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on March 17, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Donald Trump, GOP, Marco Rubio, Political Humor, President Obama, Presidential Race, Republican Establishment

APPARENTLY, AMERICA LOVES A BULLY

21 Feb

Do you know what I discovered today, Sunday, February 21, 2016? It is a day after the Republican Primary in South Carolina where Trump had a resounding victory over the rest of the Republican candidates, and I can’t find a soul who witnessed this debacle to return my call. I’m specifically trying to connect with the White “Evangelical Christians” who gave Trump such a huge win (no self-respecting Black person would ever vote for this clown), but no one will allow me to interview them. It’s like they did their dastardly deed and then went into hiding.

Cartoon used by permission: Randall Enos, Cagle Cartoons

I finally caught up with my alter ego, The Dalai Mama, who sent us the report from New Hampshire last week, but she seemed to be in a state of shock. (DM looks like me but takes no prisoners, and she has no filter. She says the things I wish I could say on any given day). As I connected with her on her cell phone, I immediately noticed how disheartened and exhausted she sounded.

ME: Hey, DM . . . I’m been trying to reach you since the polls closed last night in South Carolina. Where have you been? I need some intel about the SC Primary so that I can write my blog. I hear that Trump won every single congressional district. How in the hell did that happen? Wasn’t there at least one hold out? Tell me it isn’t so.

DM: Oh, you bet yo’ chubby-little-ol’-ass, it’s so.

ME: But what happened?

DM: Best I can tell, the White Christians down here done gone crazy. They put him over the top. Nasty-ass Ted Cruz is in a state of shock ‘cause he just knew he had the White Christian vote. Only thing good about Trump winnin’ is that he beat Cruz’s ass. You ain’t gonna hear this on “Mornin’ Joe,” Baby, but South Carolina White Christians done lost they ever-lovin’ minds! Jesus is weepin’ this mornin’, chil’—sobbin’ in his communion cups. Now you know I ain’t no racist, but I has to emphasize what race done this, ‘cause no self-respectin’ Black folk would ever put this man in office.

ME: Well, you don’t know that it was all White people who voted for Trump. I’m sure there were some Black folks who voted for this maniac—we are not a monolithic group.

DM: Um, um . . . I was there. Didn’t see nary a Black person. These White folks think Trump sit at the right hand of Jesus, and that he is the Great White Christian Hope. Besides, they finally get to participate in what Larry Wilmore calls the “unblackening of the White House.” No Black folk in they right mind would join in on that—we know a bigot when we sees one, even if he is a billionaire. He just a rich bigot. Lawd, have mercy! Jesus is banging his head against his throne today—I just know he is.

ME: Did you ask the people—especially the White Christians—why they voted for Trump?

DM: Sho’ I did. They say it ‘cause he tell it like it is. Say he most like them of all the candidates, and he gonna make America great again. I’m still tryin’ to figure out what that means. I didn’t see none of them with any private planes or a super model wife. I asked a couple of them if they had mansions, maids, and chauffeurs, but not one of them could say they did. You know what I think it is—they been holdin’ they breath about the Black man in the White House for eight years, and now they gots themselves a leader that say, it’s okay to hate him and to throw in the Mexicans and the Muslims in the pot since they now stirrin’ up themselves some hate stew.

ME: I’m still flummoxed over the fact that so many Christians voted for this Neanderthal. These are my brothers and sisters in Christ. Did they not hear what the Pope said about him? Basically, saying that if the dude was a Christian we would know it by his actions.

DM: Oh that just made the Trumpets more riled up. It was like feedin’ steak to a bunch of hungry pit bulls. “How dare the Pope question our savior Trump’s Christianity? Who does he think he is—God?” (Of course, they love it when Trump questions President Obama’s standin’ in Christ, ‘cause they just know the Prez is a Muslim who they hate.) As to the Pope, suddenly that ol’ hatred for Catholics just bubbled right up to the Southern Baptist surface. I thought that was long gone—haven’t seen that since John F. Kennedy was President. The Popey better be glad he made his visit to America befo’ Trump become president, because if he had come afterwards, I’d be worrin’ ‘bout the Pope’s safety. If this Trump character gets into the Oval Office, all races, creeds, and colors—except white Protestant males—will be fair game for ridicule, shame, and bullyin’.

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

ME: Oh, Dalai. What are we going to do? I feel as if we’re being yanked back in time to a nightmare that will never end.

DM: Can you say, “help me, Jesus—help, help me, Jesus?” ‘Cause that divine power mixed with every eligible voter who ain’t lost their minds better get out and vote like they lives depend on it come November. That’s where I’m off to next. I’m startin’ the “anti-Trump” campaign coupled with the “anti-Cruz” campaign as I go from state to state (might as well bring down the devil’s spawn along with the devil). I’m gonna shout the truth from the rooftops: “Wake up you silly-ass Americans—especially you Christians. This is not what our Lawd Jesus would do! We done been had! This clown ain’t like you—he ain’t like Jesus, and you ain’t gonna get no riches, no three wives, no billions, no mansions, no airplanes! Also, get over yo’selves cause Mexicans, Muslims, Gays, and Black folks are here to stay!”

Cartoon used by permission: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

***

ELEANOR’S “SELAH” (AHA) MOMENT ABOUT CHRISTIANS AND TRUMP

I am discovering that the Christianity I hold so dear has been sold to the highest bidder, and we’ve seen this movie before. When Hitler rose to power, he did so on the votes of the Lutheran and Catholic churches. There were a remnant who fought against his election (there will always be a remnant of courageous people who speak out against madness), but for the most part people chanted: “Hitler, Hitler, he’s our man—if he can’t save us, no one can.” We have people who call themselves Christians who are pretty pissed that they have been losing what they consider the cultural wars since the 60s (women’s rights, racial equality, and globalization), and they are willing to sacrifice their beliefs in order to get back the world that they have been mourning ever since the 50s. Not only do I agree with the Pope and question Trump’s character as a so-called “Christian,” but I question the Christian character of the people who overwhelmingly delivered South Carolina into Trump’s hands. The only thing good about his win is that he beat nasty-ass Cruz who is so mean and heartless that he makes Trump look like Jesus’ sidekick.

Before I turned off the news to post this blog, I heard this quote from Trump:

“We’re going to win so much, you’re going to get tired of winning . . . You’re going to say, ‘Please, Mr. President. I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ ”

On that note, I screamed bloody murder and asked my husband if he had the heart to pick up and move again so that we could retire to a land where Trump was not the nightmare President I know he will become if given half the chance. My husband asked me if I had any prospects in mind, and I told him I had just seen an ad on the Internet from a travel bureau in Canada. . . can you say, “Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, here we come!”

Cape Breton

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

***

QUOTES: WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A “TRUE” CHRISTIAN

“A Christian reveals true humility by showing the gentleness of Christ, by being always ready to help others, by speaking kind words and performing unselfish acts, which elevate and ennoble the most sacred message that has come to our world.”—Ellen G. White

“I feel like if I live the Christian life, then the people should be able to see it in my everyday actions.”—Quinton Aaron

“The point is that there is tremendous hypocrisy among the Christian right. And I think that Christian voters should start looking at global warming and extreme poverty as a religious issue that speaks to the culture of life.”—Al Franken

“I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.”—Maya Angelou

“A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic – all of them are the same. The thinking that, ‘If you don’t think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;’ this is something to condemn.”—Marjane Satrapi

“I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.”—Jimmy Carter

ALL QUOTES FROM http://www.brainyquotes.com

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (hardcopy and Kindle).

10 Comments

Posted by etomczyk on February 21, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Christians, Donald Trump, Political Humor, South Carolina, Ted Cruz, The Pope

#2016InOneWord: MORTIFIED!

10 Feb

Do you know what I discovered this week? Every media outlet (on and offline) has gotten on my every last nerve, as my mother used to say. It’s been wall to wall politics—all day—every day. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that nothing else was happening on the Earth except for the 2016 Presidential campaigns. But then the media cut me a break and let me watch the Super Bowl in peace. Yes! Finally, I got a break. Go Panthers! You da man, Cam!

Cartoon used by permission: Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch

Oh well . . . and then there was that—the Broncos won. Sigh! Although I must say, I was more than a little secretly pleased to have Peyton Manning go out for the last time on the wings of a Super Bowl win into retirement. But no sooner had I gone into mourning over my team losing the Super Bowl (Cam Newton: “what happened Buddy?”), and tried to wash the very disturbing puppy/monkey/baby Mountain Dew/juice/caffeine commercial from my psyche, the political coverage by the media came back in a deluge.

Cartoon used by permission: Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch

We’ve only just begun the race for the White House, and I am so sick of these crazy people that I could just scream. It seems that others are as well. On CNN, a columnist noted a new hashtag for millennials to describe their feelings in one word about how the election makes them feel—#2016InOneWord. They responded accordingly:

Scared

Anxious

Disappointed

Frightened

Petrified

Worried

Horrified

Meh!

I added my own word: mortified! And can you imagine what it must have been like in New Hampshire these last few days? CNN reported seeing New Hampshire yard signs that flat-out demanded, “NO SOLICITING OF ANY KIND” to the horde of campaigners with detailed inscriptions that read:

“We are too broke to buy anything. We know who we are voting for. We have found Jesus.”

AND

“Seriously, unless you are giving away beer, PLEASE GO AWAY!”

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

I almost wish I could have been there to see what all the obsession was about, but I’m working on my third book and couldn’t get away. Which is why I sent my alter ego, The Dalai Mama, to scout out the scene in New Hampshire and give me the what-what on the something-something especially if there was anything happening on the down-low.

If anyone could get the straight poop, then it would be The Dalai Mama. She is my inner, fierce self. The Dalai is what I would be in another time and another place—unafraid, full of spunk, suffering no fools, and having no problem letting them know it. The presidential campaign trail is like watching a Monty Python movie but with verbal guns and knives—replete with popcorn. Dalai’s assessment of the New Hampshire scene was priceless. Check out the transcript of our conversation this morning.

Cartoon used by permission: Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

DM: Hey Girl. What’s happenin’?

ME: Hey Babe. I think the question is what’s happenin’ with you? From all the news reports, the primaries in New Hampshire were a wild ride. How did you fare? I’m pretty much caught up on the news everyone else knows: GOP establishment in shambles and New Hampshire was their worst nightmare (Trump won), Hillary got creamed—women under sixty abandoned her for Sanders, Rubio’s campaign collapsed, and Trump and Sanders emerged as champions. But I’d love to have your perspective. What were your three biggest takeaways?

DM: Girl, I wish you could have been here. New Hampshire was a major bitch slap. Tempers was flarin’, candidates was actin’ like fools, and most of them forgot everythang they mama’s done taught them.

ME: How so?

DM: First off: Christie went all Jersey on Rubio’s ass during the debate. He had been telegraphin’ all week that he was goin’ beat the shit out of Rubio down by the playground—jest like some schoolyard bully—but even though Rubio’s Hispanic, he ain’t got a lick of street smarts in him. You could tell when it hit him that he didn’t see it comin’! I thought cutie-pie Rubio was gonna burst into tears right then and there on the stage, but when he kept doing exactly what Christie was bullyin’ him about (bein’ a robot stuck in a loop), I almost jumped up on stage and knocked some sense into his head. On the other hand, I think Christie thought he take out Rubio the way a bull takes out a distracted matador, then he would move on up the GOP food chain to eventually win the GOP establishment’s vote. Well, surprise, surprise, surprise—Christie went down in flames and took “Fury-ina” with him. They both withdrew their candidacies today. He probably never heard the sayin’ in Jersey that “God don’t like ugly.”

February 9, 2016

Cartoon used by permission: Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News

ME: I think Rubio thought if he picked an unfair fight with someone who couldn’t answer back on the stage—someone bigger and more powerful than him—the rest of the Repubs would thank him for it and leave him alone. But he miscalculated the Prez and trusted in his scoundrel fellow Republicans too much. Obama is at the point where he doesn’t give a shit what anyone says, and the Republican candidates only have your back until you get in their way. After all, this bunch are politicians of the lowest common denominator. What else did you observe?

DM: The lowlifiest thing that happened is that Trump called Cruz a female kitty cat. You should have seen Cruz’s reaction. His head almost exploded. Chil’ that dude’s got anger issues to beat the band. I couldn’t believe that Trump’s bullin’ just made his peeps love him even more, so I guess he and Trump don’t have a bromance anymore. Can you imagine that sorry-ass Trump as president?

ME: Yep, I can see the headlines now: “WWIII started after President Trump called Putin a pussy. Putin called President Trump the “C” word, and now we’re dealing with nothing but scorched Earth ad infinitum.”

Cartoon used by permission: Bob Englehart, CagleCartoons,com

ME: What was your impression of Hillary?

DM: Mo’ like what was my impression of her ol’ man. Did you see Bubba’s face when Hill conceded to Bernie? I ain’t made up my mind yet ‘bout Hill, but I gots to tell you that the main thing holdin’ me back from Hillary is Bill. I knows everybody calls him the “first Black president” ‘cause Black folks helped put him in office, and he like jazz and all, but I thinks he be takin’ us fo’ granted. Everybody tellin’ me that his sorry-ass philanderin’ ain’t got nothin’ to do with Hillary bein’ Prez. That may be so if he wasn’t gonna be first man. But I knows me some Jesus, and that kind of crap don’t sit right with me or the Good Lawd. If Bill cheat all day long, up one aisle and down the other on his wife, what the hell he gonna do to me—the voter he never met and don’t know—I’m gonna get screwed to the wall via his influence on his wife. It tell me he only keep his word when it convenient.

Some of that ol’ Bill popped up this week. He called my sweet Bernie “hermetically sealed from reality.” That just brought back some real bad memories when Obama was gainin’ on Hillary in ‘08, and “he-who-can’t-keep-his-one-eyed-monster in his pants” went all racist on Obama. Remember that? When Ted Kennedy threw the Kennedy influence and weight behind Obama’s candidacy, do you know what racist thing Bubba said?

ME: No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.

DM: Clinton said ’bout takin’ Obama’s candidacy seriously: “A few years ago, this guy (Obama) would have been carrying our bags.” I was like, “Oh, hell to the no! You goin’ down, Mofo.” I just don’t trust the son-of-bitch . . . and now he and Hill tryin’ to do that to my Bernie.

ME: So I gather you’re in the tank for Bernie? You know he’s offered a lot of stuff that he can’t possible pay for—not to mention that he’ll never get anything done with that rabid Republican Congress. If you think things are gridlocked now, the entire country will freeze in motion like a scene out of Frozen. Dalai Mama, are you being seduced by Bernie Sanders “heavenly promises”?

Cartoon used by permission: Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

DM: No. I’m just keepin’ my options open. All I know is Hillary better watch her step. I am a woman and I am Black, but it don’t mean I’m in the tank for her ’cause she be the first woman president. Just ’cause I voted for her randy-ass husband doesn’t mean I’ll automatically vote for her. She better woo me and move Bubba out of my sight line, or it is gonna be déjà vu Obama-time. YOU BETTER NOT TAKE ME FOR GRANTED, HILLARY!

ME: Okay! Looks like you heard and saw a lot in New Hampshire. Aren’t you exhausted? Why don’t you come on home?

DM: What do you think, Baby? Of course I’m exhausted, but I can’t stop now. South Carolina and Nevada here I come, along with the rest of the media hordes. I can’t get enough of this shit. Best reality show on the planet. See you later, alligator.

ME: Sigh! After ‘while crocodile . . .

Cartoon used by permission: Daryl Cagle, CagleCartoons com

***

I am discovering that it is going to be a long, long spring, summer and fall until the Presidential election. The more each politician talks, the more I wish they’d shut up because all of them are over-promising, or lying, and most of them have no freakin’ idea how hard this job is going to be. The lack of integrity, humanity, good manners, and integrity oozes from most of their pores, but the more it does the less the voters seem to mind. Yikes!

In the meantime, the media act like stoned groupies at a rock concert—screaming and fainting in adulation for his or her favorite politician—as if these men and women were messiahs. The media pretty much ignore everything else going on in the world—including the pain and suffering of the most vulnerable and disenfranched in our country caused by hard-hearted, greedy politicians. We are at their mercy—unfortunately.

Cartoon used by permission: Daryl Cagle CagleCartoons com

***

THOUGHT-PROVOKING QUOTES ABOUT POLITICIANS

“Many of the traits of character and leadership that Obama possesses, and that maybe we have taken too much for granted, have suddenly gone missing or are in short supply . . . Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him.”—David Brooks [uber-Conservative Republican], The New York Times

“One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are.”—Cal Thomas

“If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”—H. L. Mencken

“Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.”—Charles de Gaulle

***

ALL QUOTES FROM www.brainyquotes.com except where otherwise noted

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR? Check out http://www.eleanortomczyk.com

WANT TO READ THE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOKS? Monsters’ Throwdown and Fleeing Oz are both on sale at Amazon (hardcopy and Kindle).

REFERENCE

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-sanders-projected-to-win-new-hampshire-primary/ar-BBpibN5?ocid=spartandhp

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/new-hampshire-trump-repeats-insult-from-crowd-member-calling-cruz-a-p/ar-BBphoep?ocid=spartandhp

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/us/politics/new-hampshire-voters.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/opinion/i-miss-barack-obama.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/02/09/trumps-insult-against-cruz-isnt-as-vulgar-as-trump-himself/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

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Posted by etomczyk on February 10, 2016 in Uncategorized

Tags: Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire Primary, Political Humor, satire, storytelling, Ted Cruz

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how the hell did i end up here?

HOUSE OF HORRORS

DEAR WORLD: THIS IS A TEST!

IT WAS HATE!

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDERING . . .

IN REMEMBRANCE OF . . .

TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL

LOSING MY MIND—FINDING IT AGAIN!

RIP GOP

APPARENTLY, AMERICA LOVES A BULLY

#2016InOneWord: MORTIFIED!

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