Oh FFS, Brits, Ya Silly Copycats: Regarding Your New Trump-Fried Political Prostitute

... for all your superiority-to-America complexes, your excessive pride in tradition, and how fond of yourselves you are in general ... in the end, you now copy everything we do - to your own detriment! LOL

So ... you liked Trump so much you had to go out and find your own silly, slovenly, bumbling, populist-pandering and propagandized-panic-button-pushing, Trump-fried, spoiled-brat baby?

I mean ... THIS picture of outside of 10 Downing Street looks very proper British, not at all Americanized  ;)

Economic conservative/social liberal my arse, the man will say anything to get elected -  by the people you're the least proud of, in your country - just like Trump. 

FFS, what a transparent political prostitute - you must be so proud :)

*snickers*

And then of course there's THIS ... 

Whether the backstory is true or not doesn't matter, just look at him - in fact, I hope it is, for his sake - at least they give SOME explanation for why he looked like this?


Otherwise, I swear, he looks just like the creepy guy that sits by himself at Starbucks with his laptop all day, never looking up, until they kick him out at closing time. 

Wow, that's some attention to detail he has-  eh?

Hehehe - Sorry, I can't stop laughing.

One of these days, you're going to be sorry you've grown to copy our culture so much, UK, mark my words. 


Until then, perhaps come up with a fresh, new, original idea of your own, once in a while, GB?

I mean, it's been several hundred years, after all.

And just a word of caution on your rise in Nationalism and your Brexit over-fervor?

Do you really think holding on so tightly to your glory days is a good idea, and that doing so will help you find a stronger voice, more relevance, and an actual purpose, in today's modern world?

In fact, isn't your doing so precisely the reason for your stagnation and steady decline in global relevance, for the past century or so?

And to top it off, you've essentially just branded yourselves with the mark of America's biggest historical blunder to date.

Well, good luck with that ... RIP Great Bygone.


Oh, you poor sods - one can't help but feel even more sorry for you as we do for ourselves ;)

Haha! Feedback On My Mitch McConnell Impression (Video, Two Posts Down)

... Mark showed the video to some friends at work today, who apparently laughed their tookuses off.

His friends:  "I know Chrystal wrote it, but who's doing Mitch's voice, it's pretty close?"

Mark was like, "No, that's Chrystal, too!" 

Mark's friends: "That's Chrystal?!? What?  Nuh uh ... no way!  LOL.  It doesn't sound anything like her!"

Haha!  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen - and I assure you, that is me! 

Yep, took out and dusted off my old childhood voice impression skills - glad you dug it :) 

Possible Mitch McConnell for Senate 2020 Ad? ;)

So, in the car today, I did my Mitch McConnell impersonation for my husband - who loved it :) 

(Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, is one of two senators from my state, the other is Rand Paul.  I know, I try not to kill myself daily over it.)

Thus, I came home and made this video (did it in one take, so not perfect, but you get the idea).

I kinda lost the "McConnell" voice about midway through, trying not to laugh, but here it is - "Cocaine" Mitch McConnell for Senate in 2020.

"Hey, Ho, What's This World Comin' To" ... Mini-Laugh for the Day ...

Upon texting a friend, I updated her on something, then ended it with, "In other news, we have blatant racist in the White House.  That is all.  What's going on there?"

lol.

Then I turned to my husband and said, "Hey, ho ... what's the world comin' to ..."

This reference to my great-great grandfather, who apparently said that regularly in the 1920s and 1930s under different circumstances,  always makes him laugh.

Apparently, my great-grandmother, known to many simply as "Mama Mann," (as their last name was "Mann") used to feed people in soup lines off her back porch during the depression, as well as host her Baptist Women's Circle meetings in her home, serving finger sandwiches. 

Every week, my great-great grandfather - who was disabled in the civil war (and generally a PIA for my great-grandmother to care for), would dress up in his Confederate Army uniform (sigh, I know), and come down the stairs so the ladies would fuss over him, much to the dismay of my great-grandmother, who was pro-Union Army.

And yet she still cared for his ignorant, racist butt anyway because he was disabled and she felt it her Christian and wifely duty to care for her father-in-law.

That was Kentucky - you had a choice to fight for Union or Confederate, you see - sometimes brother against brother.  

Most of my family fought Union, but there were some straggler Confederate idiots in my family, too - and my grandmother said my great-great grandfather Mann was Confederate, but we're not sure - that's still being researched.  What is certain is that he was sometimes difficult with Mama Mann.

My great-great grandfather would promptly eat all the finger sandwiches for himself, then proclaim loudly throughout the Christian Women's Group, "Hey, ho ... what's the world coming to, when a man can't get a sandwich in a room full of women?" ... Several times, disturbing the meeting until somebody paid attention to him again.

After about the 5th loud exclamation, Mama Mann paid attention to him, all right. 

Mama Mann was the most compassionate soul in the world, but she could get tough when she needed to.

Her daughter, my grandmother was also very compassionate, but wouldn't say "Boo" to a fly.  

Apparently, I take more after my great grandmother, lol.

Because Mama don't play ...

(No, this is not an actual pic of my great-grandmother and great-great grandfather.)

"Now, Mr. Mann, you know you very well you already ate nearly all those finger sandwiches that were for my Ladies' Circle meeting yourself, and you oughn't have, because of your sugar diabetes. So you just sit over there quietly and behave yourself until my circle meeting is over, and then if you're still hungry, I'll fix you something else."

"And if you CAN'T behave yourself, you may go sit out on the porch swing all by yourself. Hush up, now, it's our lady guests' turn to eat and speak. "

Amen!

lol

And sometimes, he found himself out on the porch swing, let me just tell you THAT, right now.  

Still exclaiming "Hey, hohhhhhh..."...  until she shut the front door on him lol.

In other words, though just 1 hour a week, when my homemaker great-grandmother had her women's church meeting, that was apparently "taboo" according to Confederate white men, who wanted women to be waiting on them every hour of every day, dang everybody else.

It's interesting that the world has changed - and yet Confederate-style white men haven't changed a bit, isn't it? 

Now there's something I bet Trump men haven't thought about - just who do you think is going to take care of you, when you get old? 

Women will, that's who - whether at home or in retirement or private-pay healthcare facilities (which are predominantly staff by women) :)

That's if you're lucky and behave yourselves - lest you might find someone has dumped your ignorant, belligerent, racist, misogynistic butts in the state nursing home ;)

Baby Boom, Revisited - 32 Years Later ...

This movie was on the Roku Channel, and I haven't seen it in years.  I was interested in how things had changed for women in the workplace since, and the answer is - not much.  Don't judge from the poster - it isn't exactly what it looks like.

JC Wiatt is a mid-to-late 30s marketing account executive in NYC.  She has lived her life exactly according to plan, graduating summa cum laude from Harvard with an MBA, making six figures, living with her boyfriend, an investment banker, Stephen (Harold Ramis).

They call her the "Tiger Lady."

She works 60 to 90 hours a week and takes no vacations - work is her life.  She claims she has no biological clock and children make her uncomfortable - they don't even have a pet or houseplants to care for - live is all about them.

Soon, the CEO asks JC about becoming a partner, but wants to be assured that she still had no plans for children in the future (which of course is highly illegal and would never be asked of a man, but is still asked anyway and never enforced).

 He tells her his wife handles the house and the kids and grandkids (and later reveals he doesn't even know their names) and decorates and "Hell, I don't even know what else she does" because he's never home - his wife is essentially hired help.

JC reassures him she has no biological clock, she's about work - period.

Then she receives a call in the middle of the night, telling her she has an inheritance coming from a long-lost cousin who died in a tragic accident.   Being that both her parents and his are dead, and neither had any brothers and sisters, his estate went to her.  The connection is bad, and she can't hear what the estate attorney is saying, but she accepts the inheritance and agrees to meet the attorney's rep at the airport to sign the papers.

A woman appears off the plane, holding a 14-month-old little girl, and asks her to sign for the inheritance.  JC asks if they can move this along, she has a business lunch to attend, and signs the papers without reading or asking what the inheritance is until after she's signed it, trying to rush this meeting along.

It is then that she finds out that - the 14-month-old little girl, Elizabeth - IS her inheritance.

Of course, this freaks her out, and the woman has to catch another flight.  JC agrees to take her temporarily until she can find suitable parents to adopt.

She proves she has no idea of how to carry a child, appearing almost disgusted with her, and you begin to worry because there are some women who truly aren't cut out to be parents.

She takes the child to the business lunch with an important account exec and pawns him off on the coat-check girl, eventually offering her use of her entire credit card, if she will just care for this baby for an hour.

Eventually, the baby cries so loudly the entire restaurant can hear, and the coat-check girl brings her to JC, informing her that she just threw up all over her and she needed to take her back now.

She signs Elizabeth up to an adoption-agency list, but is told that it will take several days. She assures her boyfriend they can handle, they are two summa cum laude graduates from Harvard and this is the simplest form of a human being, they can figure it out and handle it.

Famous last words.

Over the next few days, after attempting to feed her linguine carbonara (which of course ends up all over the house and she and her boyfriend), duck-taping her diaper on, bringing her to work with her in the frantic search to find a good nanny quickly, she believes that she definitely isn't cut out to be a parent.

Worse, her boyfriend assumes that because she's a woman, this will come naturally to her. Erm, no - not with zero experience.

However, Elizabeth likes her and is affectionate and playful with her, and she can't help but grow attached to her, no matter how hard she tries to be "business-like" with her.

After an unfortunate meeting with a shareholder, in which Elizabeth sprays her milk bottle on the chairman of the board, she realizes she has to do something and fast, or work is going to suffer.

It is then that she laments how women can even work at all with this going on?

It is then that she's just a little bit nicer to her secretary ;)

A call comes from the adoption agency that parents have been found and she breathers a sigh of relief - but with a surprising twinge of sadness and uncertainty.

Being that this was an open adoption, she insisted on meeting the parents before handing Elizabeth over.

Unfortunately, they are rural-America evangelicals, who make it clear right away that they wanted a white male child, but would take her because no others were available, but they'd raise her strong, just like a farm boy.

He asks his wife if "she'll do," and she answers, "Yes, sir.  Fern's gonna be a great farm hand to help our family."

"Oh,  hell no," says JC - and she walks out of the office with Elizabeth, undoing the agreement with the adoption agency and agrees to keep her permanently.

"Fern?  And she called her husband, 'Sir,' it just gave me the chills."

And how could you give up this face? :)

When her boyfriend finds out that she's keeping her - their relationship is over and he moves out.

After going through several irresponsible and scary nannies, JC decides that if she's going to do this, do it right, do most of her herself - read all the baby-care books she can get her hands on, research the best educational toys, and after hearing mothers lament their toddler babies not getting into the right preschool program at the park, she panics and decides to enroll Elizabeth in flash educational classes for her, after the mothers tell her it's too late for her to enroll Elizabeth into the right preschool unless she does this, and if she doesn't get into the right preschool, she won't get into the right prep, college, and so on.

I laugh because privileged white American moms are still like this today, actually worse - the pressures other women put on each other and their children to succeed, they go to ridiculous levels to over-schedule and over-educate their children - all work and no play.

Actually, I really wish it focused on other women more in the office, too, instead of just the men - because often women are worse on other working women than men, more competitive (see yesterday's posts). 

So she's now flexing her time.  Still working crazy hours, but also taking Elizabeth to classes.

 (LOL at the sign on the wall that says "College Begins at Birth.")


Soon, she discovers that her protege (played by James Spader, who is always good at playing a weasel) has essentially undermined her and assumed her office and all her accounts are given to him except one.

Humiliated, JC leaves, and decides to take all her savings and retirement money to Vermont to buy rural weekend farmhouse that she's had her eye on for a couple of years - sight unseen.

This is unusual for JC to take uncalculated risks, but that's why she's doing it - she felt that her calculations never paid off anyway. 

She moves with Elizabeth into the farmhouse, and discovers why she should've seen it first - the well for water has dried up, the roof caves in, and any number of other calamities that begin to eat through her savings.

Out of money and exhausted, she essentially had a momentary nervous breakdown in front of her plumber and passes out ...

... only to wake up in the office of Sam Shepard, whom she thinks is a medical doctor, revealing that she has no idea who she is anymore, nothing has gone as planned, and she hasn't had sex in almost a year or even seen another human being during the long winter.

It is then that Sam Shepard reveals - that he's actually a veterinarian lol.

Humiliated again, she storms off in a huff, and though he greets her in town, obviously interested in her, she avoids him or becomes very nervous, which leads to her often acting like the "Tiger Lady" routine, and him telling her she reminded him of a bull terrier, wound too tight, and then kisses her :)

Having no idea what she's going to do from Vermont, and with no money to move back to NYC, she decides to sell her homemade, organic applesauce (that she spent all winter making) at the local corner store - which people are buying up like candy.

It is then that she remembers the other side of herself - the brilliant marketing strategist.


With no money, and the surrounding stores refusing to sell baby foods, she begins a grass-roots level marketing campaign, buy one, get five free, in front of schools, grocery stores, parks, and street corners, and Vermont tourist attractions, and she publishes ads in all of the local papers, with testimonials (that was what you did, back then, before social media) :)

After doing so, requests come in to not only her booths, but local grocery stores are asked if they carry it - and begin to call her to ask for it.

At the time, distributing organic baby food to supermarkets was unheard of, it was an untapped market - so the story of her home-grown business marketing plan's success takes off and is mentioned in business magazines, is sold regionally at every grocery store, and she employs the whole town as her labor force.

It isn't long before her old company calls her and asks to begin negotiations for an acquisition, with her as a brand manager.

She says to herself, "I'm back" and goes to New York, and is offered a $3 million buyout, they create a better distribution center, $6-figure salary plus bonuses, access to the company jet.

Can you guess what she does?

If you want to watch the movie, stop here ;)

The Tiger Lady realizes - she's not the Tiger Lady anymore - and doesn't really want to be.

Now, she is 50% brilliant marketer and 50% mom, loves both and is great at both - and she shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other.

Companies should allow you to do both by flexing time, providing childcare, and sick time for sick children without penalizing you - because those things help you perform your job better :)

She decides she's made enough money thus far to build her own distribution center and knows how to negotiate contracts - and she's going to do it herself, branching out into other organic products as she went.

And she happily returns home to Vermont with her new, loving family :)

The End :)

The point is, You COULD have it all and wouldn't HAVE to choose - if the both men AND women in the workforce could give women a little more, they'd get back double  :)

Can you tell me 32 years later why things aren't like that?

And why even though this isn't Oscar-worthy material, why we don't just make pleasant movies that make you smile anymore?

I mean, I love complex stories, I wanted to be a screenwriter.

But sometimes you just want to smile :)

The Milgram Authority Obedience/Compliance Experiment Explains Much About What We're Seeing in Society Today

So, my husband is watching Tracy Morgan's "Scare Tactics" today, in which friends pull scary pranks on their friends and film it (some of which are questionably ethical themselves lol).  One of the pranks reminded me of Milgram's Authority Obedience Experiment - and it dawned on me of how relevant Milgram's experiment is today.

For those who don't know, in 1963, Stanley Milgram, and Social Psychologist at Yale, performed a study, seeking to understand how the Nazis justified to themselves objectifying, torturing, and murdering 6 million people - and additionally, raised ethical questions as to experiments performed on other humans and animals (not only by the Nazis, but by Milgram himself).

Essentially, his theory was that if a person(s) seemingly in  power or with authority simply told a group with less power that someone deserved punishment, and ordered them to display aggression towards that person/group, people automatically believed them and obeyed - even if the order was to physically harm to other human beings.

Though people balked that people aren't that stupid, to prove the theory, he set up a fake experiment, where the the subject of the experiment was told he was helping with a psychology experiment regarding how people learn.

The subject enters the room with another person who is presented as another "study helper," but is actually an actor.  The two draw lots as to who will be the "teacher" and who will be the "learner" - except of course the cards are rigged to always have the subject be the "teacher."

The "learner" (actor) is led to another room and the "teacher" witnesses him being strapped to electrodes.

The teacher then returns to the other room to conduct the experiment.

He is told by a man in a gray lab coat, who is the presented as the scientist, that the subject, as the teacher, will be asking questions to the "learner" in the next room, and for every wrong answer, the "teacher" will administer an electric shock - and increase the electric shock with each wrong answer.

The shocks ranged for 30V (labeled "mild") to 450V labeled "very severe."

He was given audio, so that he could hear the "learners" painful outbursts.

The setup looked something like this ...

If they struggled with continuing to administer the shocks, they were given a series of prods to continue from the white-coated scientist:

Prod 1: Please continue.
Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue.

Of course, the actor was told to give purposeful wrong answers to receive electric shocks and cry out in pain.

The study was performed 18 times, a total of 636 participants - all white males, ages 20 to 50, skilled laborers to professionals.

The results were 65% of the participants continued to administer to the full 450V of electricity to the "learner" (supposedly rendering them nonresponsive) - and 100% continued to 300V of electricity to the "learner" (enough to permanently injure them.)

There was some correlation between how physically close in proximity the "authority" was to the "teacher."

(I found this interesting, considering social media and aggression studies currently being done).
Milgram had this to say about his conclusion: 

"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations.

I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.

Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.

The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.'

Milgram himself only performed the experiment once, but it was performed 18 times on 636 people.  This is not the "magic" random sample standard of 1200 people - but it made a lasting impression.

It could not be performed again today because of public awareness of the experiment, which would bias the results - however, it WOULD be interesting to perform this study on women.

Essentially, it at least gave some credence to his theory that at least part of the reason the Nazis were able to objectify and murder so many Jews was that a person or person in an authority position that they respected told them to.

Of course, that's not the only piece of that puzzle - scapegoating - is another big piece.

But it's interesting how we can see that on display today - mainly with Trump.

However, see if you've ever seen this in other situations in society, which has you scratching your head about why groups of people went along with things they knew were harmful to others.

And that is Social Psychology 101.

So We're Midway Through ST-3 (Stranger Things, Season Three)...

(Updated) Still AWEsommme! How to explain the mass appeal of Netflix's Stranger Things to people who haven't seen it?  OK, imagine if The X-Files, Alien(s), ET, Goonies, Stand By Me, It, The Wonder Years, Freaks and Geeks, and any Coen Brothers' movie you've ever seen, all had a group baby, to an 80s soundtrack (that's also a hint to the plot this season) - tack on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, especially this season ;)  Part horror sci-fi, part soap opera, part comedy.

Except my husband, Mark, just said, "Exactly - except how is it like ET? The interdimensional beings (Demodogs) are monsters?"

Me: "Well, if you think of "Eleven" as ET, even though she's not an interdimensional being or extraterrestrial herself - that we know yet - but what explains her superpowers? The way the kids find her and hide her, at first, even dress her in a wig to disguise her - it's exactly like ET. I suspect she's sort of an interdimensional/extraterrestrial (lineaged) anti-demodog, she just doesn't know it yet. But they may never say."

"Because remember, just like Eight, the government didn't give her those powers, they discovered and used them, trying to train her from childhood to be a weapon and killer. Eight was older when they discovered her ability, then stole her from her parents. However, with Eleven, her mother showed signs of psychokinetic ability already on testing, but was too old to train, so they stole her daughter, Eleven, at birth, told her mother she died, lobotomized/electroshocked her mom to discredit her as crazy to shut her up, and hoped to raise Eleven, using her gifts to train her into a weapon/killer, too, but failed - because not only does Eleven has more power than they bargained for, but more empathy and conscience."

"Eight, though older when discovered, trained better, and went 'fallen angel.' She escaped, but is full of hate for what they did to her and is obsessed with revenge and can kill without conscience or remorse. However, Eleven refuses to hate, she's too sensitive, empathetic, and incorruptible - which is a good thing, because she was also the most powerful lol."

"She's capable of snapping necks like twigs, with a simple toss of her head, or psychically spy on anyone to answer normal teenage-angst dilemmas, but she won't - she doesn't want to spy on or hurt anyone, she just wants to forget, be a normal teenager, learn to fully speak and communicate, love and be loved, enjoy the world she was never allowed to experience. But she will, if anything tries to hurt her or others, and only if an immediate threat. Even then, if you notice, she won't kill unless absolutely necessary, she'll at first find ways to just physically deter them, unless they try to take her back or whatever it is just keeps coming at her/them."

"So, IMO, the "gifted ones" are essentially like angels to combat the demons, except they have free will - they can turn fallen angel anytime, like Eight did - it's a free-will choice. The demodog-infected or killed don't have a choice, but the uninfected and anti-demodogs, do."

"Like the Aliens movies, it's the intersection of science and spiritual - science and spiritual don't have to be mutually exclusive, one explains the other and is dependent on the other, they're interdependent. But the Duffer brothers may never say, leave you to draw your own conclusions."

Mark: "Oh, yeeaaahh - it IS like ET!?! Like Stephen-Spielberg's-childhood-imagination movies in general - Super 8, too. Also Stephen-King's-Childhood-Imagination books and movies, too." 

Me:  "Yes! It's a 'Best of the 80s' tribute with a new spin."

Clever dialogue, superbly acted, wicked special effects, characters you care about, no loopholes in the plot, appropriate jumps and scares - so suspenseful you can never watch just one - as we all know, I'm a tough critic, previously wanting to be a screenwriter.  

Bravo x3, Duffer Brothers, still rocking it for Netflix for Season 3!

PS - Hahaha!  We just watched the episode where Mike asks El(even):  "Does your species like M&Ms?"

That's a direct reference to ET (and the fact that she's a girl because they had a prior argument, he got caught lying to her), except it was Reese's Pieces debut, which sent sales skyrocketing.  Movie branding works (as long as it's not overdone, which Stranger Things is pushing it ;)

God, I wish I could make money at being a library for movie metaphors , but alas, no lol


PPS - Episode 7, one more to go - Oooh, but El can be infected, like everyone else (but can remove it herself?  Or can she?  Completely?  What will happen to her superpowers?

Loving the shift from our government being responsible for opening the portal in season 1, to some members of our government doing the right thing in season 2, to Russians re-opening it in season 3 (with politicians being paid off to let them in) - perfect for the Red Dawn 80s, and perfect for today - brilliant!