Rant #3,004: Sad But True

Today is Halloween.
 
Boo!
 
And don’t make me laugh.
 
The Halloween of today is a far cry from what Halloween was when I was a kid.
 
I think it is quite obvious that the Halloweens that Baby Boomers like me experienced were really the “classic” Halloweens, a real kids’ holiday, never ever to be experienced again.
 
And that is sad, but what we have today is really Halloween-lite.
 
It is not a day that kids can be kids, but a day that adults can be kids, and kids are just along for the ride.
 
Things really changed in the 1980s and 1990s, and quite honestly, Halloween has never been the same.
 
Adults took over the holiday for a variety of reasons—including safety—and what was once a true kids’ holiday is really nothing but a shell of itself.
 
Here is what I wrote about Halloween in Rant #606, way back on October 28, 2011, and unfortunately, it still holds true these 11 years later:
 
“Halloween just isn't what it used to be.
 
I remember Halloween as a kids' day, but the holiday has been co-opted by what we used to call "The Establishment." It is now a holiday for adults, and not really for kids anymore.
 
Adults dress up, have Halloween parties, and act like the kids they were decades before.
 
Children dress up, have parties, and barely go trick or treating anymore.
 
What a shame.
 
My childhood, as I have said many times, was spent in a wonderful--and equally frustrating--place called Rochdale Village, in South Jamaica, Queens, New York.
 
The place had five sections, a total of 20 buildings, each building with three sections (A, B, C), 13 stories apiece, and about seven apartments on every floor.
 
Thousands of families lived there, so Halloween was simply the greatest holiday that there was.
 
We would go from building to building, section to section, apartment to apartment, and get our candy, money, and whatever else people threw in our bags.
 
We used to get bags and bags and bags of stuff.
 
It was simply incredible how those bags filled up like they did.
 
The bags had to be checked, of course, and my mother used to sit down with my sister and myself to go through the contents.
 
I remember one year, my sister got an apple with pins in it. We knew exactly where the apple came from--an elderly woman in our building--but in those days, you really didn't do much about it. You just knew not to visit that apartment again the next year.
 
And since I have never really been a candy eater, I gave all my candy to my sister. My sister has a sweet tooth, and believe me, between the Halloween candy I gave her, and the baseball card gum I gave her, is it any wonder that she has had problems with her teeth as an adult?
 
But Halloween was simply heaven to kids living in my development.
 
Heck, with all the pennies I got, if I could have kept them all, I could probably buy a slice of pizza today.
 
But all kidding aside, how can a Halloween like this compare with Halloween today?
 
It can't. It simply can't.
 
And that is why Halloween today is a far cry from what I--and probably many of you--celebrated way back when.
 
I wish it could be the same way today, but it can't.
 
Today, I basically look at Halloween as a nuisance.
 
We decorate our home, and put out candy for the kids, but hardly anybody visits.
 
And since Halloween is on a school night this year, I expect even fewer kids to be out.
 
So happy Halloween, but don't tell me that the holiday today is the same as it was in 1967.
 
It isn't the same thing, no matter where you grew up.
 
It just isn't.”
 
And this year, we will again put out candy, but we will get no trick or theaters coming to our door.
 
We used to dress up the house for the holiday, but quite frankly, why bother?
 
It is just another day on the calendar for our family, nothing more.
 
And I say “BOO!” to that, but that is simply the way it is.

Rant #3,003: Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go!

Today is a significant day for me in this warped world we live in.
 
Today, October 28, is my half birthday, meaning that today, I am 65 and six months years old.
 
This year, that really isn’t worth the paper—or the computer screen—that it is written on, but next year, it will potentially mean a lot to me.
 
Next year, when I am 66 and six months years of age, I reach what the government claims is my full retirement age, and thus, I can make as much money as I want to without surrendering any of my Social Security payments.
 
As you know if you are a regular reader of this blog, I had to surrender a whopping $124 this year from my September Social Security payment because I had the audacity to make more than the cutoff salary outside of my Social Security earnings during calendar year 2021, and they hit me up for 50 cents on the dollar that I made over the limit, and I had to pay it back.
 
I guess they thought that the whopping amount that I was making from Social Security could completely help me exist in this inflationary time, but obviously it couldn’t, but since when you take early retirement, you do get penalized for doing so—even if it was out of your control, as mine was—and you get hit with a penalty for every dollar you make over the minimum.
 
I still have my little freelance job, I still make money from it, but for 2022, I should not be over the amount, I should be under it this time around, so I won’t owe the government anything.
 
This penalty is so ridiculous that it just happens to go up each and every year, and the minimum goes up again this year and goes up next year, too.
 
If this pattern continues, it will go up to a point that if you made this amount of money, why are you retiring so early anyway?
 
That being said, I got hit for the $248 that I had the nerve to make over the limit in 2021, and this increasing limit won’t ever affect me again, and on October 28, 2023, I can finally make whatever amount I can make and still collect my full Social Security check each and every month.
 
That is all fine and good, but of course, there is one problem here, which is this:
 
Who is gong to hire a 66 and a half year old worker in his field of aptitude?
 
As I have found out the hard way as a 65 and a half year old, probably no one will.
 
There is age bias out there, I have been a victim of it even though I cannot prove it—this goes back to when I lost my job at age 62—and the chances of me ever working full time again, or making the salary that I should be making from whatever employer might decide to sign me up—is pretty much nil.
 
And after being out of the full-time workforce for a couple of years now, it would probably be tough to get back into it—although with the right opportunity, and the right paycheck, I think I could manage.
 
I applied for more than 1,000 jobs from the time I lost my job to the time right before I was going to lose my unemployment insurance, and there appeared to be no interest in my services whether I was applying in my industry of expertise—publishing—or any of the other industries I applied for a job in—supermarkets, entertainment, etc.
 
Heck, the one job that I did get, as a foodservice worker with the Long Island Ducks minor league baseball team, was obliterated by COVID, so I had absolutely no luck in finding any job during that horrible period of time.
 
And that is not counting the dozens of resumes I sent out prior to losing my job, when I knew my place of business was doomed, when I got a few nibbles, but ultimately, absolutely nothing.
 
I have sent out a few resumes for jobs since being semi-retired, and again, I fit these jobs perfectly like a tight glove, but I cannot get hired because of my age.
 
Go prove it though!
 
So here I sit, with a possible pot of gold at the end of my rainbow in just a year’s time, and I am as far away from seeing that pot of gold as I am at winning the lottery.
 
It is like the carrot is there, but it is just going to keep hanging there, dangling there for the taking but still so far out of my reach.
 
I still have my updated resume on my computer, and if I sea something that is viable for me, I will apply for the job, but I have doubts whether I will ever work again on a full time basis.
 
And I also have to think that it is the potential employer’s loss if they don’t hire me, which is a thought that kept me going during my lowest times after I lost my job.
 
I have to think that ... because what is the alternative?
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday. 

Rant #3,002: Electric Stories

Good morning.
 
It is October 27, and the living is easy (I wish).
 
This is already the 300th day of the interminable year of 2022, and are you looking forward to this year ending as much as I am?
 
It has been a rough year, but somehow, my computer keeps on ticking.
 
You might remember that a few months ago, I reported that my iMac computer was on its last legs.
 
It would not boot up in the morning without constant retries—like six or seven at a time—and it was frustrating as all heck watching this thing try to get itself ready in the morning.
 
I really thought it was a goner during the summer, but somehow it has survived, and it has actually, somehow, improved its performance.
 
Out of every 10-day span, it actually starts up like it should on about seven of those days, and on the other three days, it usually takes one restart to get it going … much like it did today.
 
I cannot put my finger on  exactly why it is performing this way, but I do have my theory.
 
I think that this computer simply doesn’t perform well in the very hot weather, and as the weather has become cooler, it is more apt to working correctly than when the weather outside is 90 degrees or above.
 
I am thinking about getting one of those portable air coolers in the coming months, and using it overnight during the summer to cool the room that the computer is in, which would also cool down the computer and everything else in the room.
 
It would be a more cost-effective way to keep things going smoothly than sending the computer out for repair or dumping it entirely.
 
Funny, I had this same problem last summer, but after that season ended, the c0mputer basically went back to normal.
 
This summer, it happened again, and it still gives me some problems here and there, so yes, I realize that there will come a time when this computer will not be able to boot itself up at all, and I will have to get a replacement.
 
I do have another desktop computer—my old computer from work—but while it boots up without problem, it is also long in years and probably wouldn’t last very long as my main computer if I needed it to be just that, but it is an option for the future.
 
But right now, I cannot purchase another computer, so I try to baby this thing as much as I possibly can, and so far, everything is pretty much A-OK.
 
And yes, I back up everything, so all my files—my work files, my digitized music files, my other pertinent files—are all backed up on either thumb drives and/or a main exterior drive.
 
And yes, I have all my Rants backed up on my two computers—the rough drafts of what you eventually see—and, of course, those Rants find their way onto my blog site and onto Facebook, so I have plenty or resources to get what I wrote at the blog.
 
Computers have become like cars, at least for me.
 
I drive them and I drive them hard, and I drive them into the ground, but I don’t get rid of them until they simply do not work anymore, and I am forced to replace them.
 
That is just the way I am with these things.
 
This computer has got to be 13 or 14 years old, and my car is currently eight years old.
 
Sure, both don’t have the bells and whistles that are commonplace in newer models, but they both do exactly what I want them to do, so why get rid of them before their time is really due?
 
Believe me, if I had the money, I would have gotten the newest iMac on the market, but I really cannot afford that amount of money right now.
 
Perhaps in the future I will have to do that ... maybe on a payment plan or something like that.
 
But for now, my iMac remains as is, and as the computer improved its performance when the weather got cooler, I felt that it saved me all that money, at least for right now.
 
And the last thing that I want to do is upset the apple cart here any further than it has already been upset during this wonderful year.
 
I just hope that by writing this blog entry, I didn’t give my computer the whammy, meaning that it doesn’t start up at all tomorrow.
 
I know my iMac is almost on intravenous right now, but as long as I can get it going, I am going to say that the patient is doing just fine.

Rant #3,001: Open Sesame

Good morning!
 
Get up from bed!
 
It is time to move!
 
And I darn well know that after reading today’s blog entry, that you are going right to your Yahoo Home Page News Feed for the latest news.
 
At the blog, we haven’t taken a gander at the home page in a while, but to start our next thousand posts here, let’s look at the exciting, breaking news that millions of people use as their top, and only, news source during the day.
 
First off, we have the striking revelation—“Female Bodybuilders Describe Widespread Sexual Exploitation.”
 
So now we know that bodybuilding isn’t that much different from professional wrestling, where female participants are tweaked for the way they look and perform, and are looked at as the freaks of nature many of them are due to over-exercise and the use of body “enhancements” to make them look better.
 
Ho hum, nothing that Norah O’Donnell wouldn’t put at the top of her “CBS Evening News” daily story agenda.
 
And talk about exploitation, we now have the return of porn starlet/supposed Trump bed buddy Stormy Daniels in the breaking news story “Stormy Daniels Sets the Record Straight On Trump, Plastic Surgery and Misinformation: ‘There’s Just So Much That People Didn’t Know.’"

In this fascinating story, Daniels, among other things, describes her life beyond the bed, telling us that she is not just an actress but a director and writer evidently of high renown, and she also tells the world that she has names for her breast implants just as any lady would: “Thunder” and “Lightening” [sic}.
 
Let’s see … we move down the feed for the day, and we find “What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Canned Tuna,” “Woman Doesn’t Give Up First Class Plane Seat For a Family, and Most Side With Her,” and “Child Found Locked In Dog Kennel Said He ‘Lived Outside’ Since April, Warrants Show.”
 
Norah O’Donnell, are you paying attention?
 
But it gets even better than that—
 
“’World’s Dirtiest Man’ Dead at 94 ‘Not Long After’ Taking Bath For First Time In Decades.”
 
Quite amazingly, I cannot find a single bikini photo from an actress who doesn’t want you to look or exploit her in my entire feed for today, which might be a first, so no, guys and gals, there is not a single Elizabeth Hurley photo showing “how good she looks” at the decrepit age of 50-something.
 
Yes, we do have some real news stories mixed into this mess, one about Kanye West and the termination of his contract with Adidas for his continu8ed anti-Semitic rants—they took their time canning him, didn’t they, but fools that spend millions on his sportswear line evidently speak louder than his feelings about Jews—so Adidas -which has Nazi roots to begin with—took their sweet time in dumping him.
 
But generally, you really have to continue to shake your head at what Yahoo considers to be “news,” and the “responsibility” it takes in being the only news source that millions of people will ever rely on to keep them up to date.
 
But Yahoo pretty much absolves itself from that responsibility by providing a separate news feed, which you can get from a simple click of your mouse.
 
I mean, the lead story there, “This ‘Powerful’ Mini Chainsaw Has Hundreds of 5-Star Reviews on Amazon—And It’s On Sale” certainly is as newsworthy a story as I have ever seen, so that is all taken care of.
 
But still no Elizabeth Hurley sighting?
 
I am completely disappointed.
 
Whenever I do an entry like this one, she is invariably there to comfort me and add to the newsworthiness of my Yahoo Home Page feed.
 
And when I look her up in my Yahoo search engine—
 
I find that a mere two days ago, here was a major news headline:
 
“Elizabeth Hurley, 57, Looks Amazing In Bikini.”
 
The world is not lost. Everything is normal.
 
We actually have an Elizabeth Hurley sighting, but it wasn’t today, it was two days ago!
 
I wonder if her body has gotten more decrepitly than it actually is since I last saw her in the news feed.
 
Let me check this out.
 
Well, I see a few more stretch marks, but yes, I guess she really does look amazing, in particular when she has absolutely nothing else to offer.
 
And two days ago must have been an Elizabeth Hurley bonanza, as I see another story from that day entitled, “Elizabeth Hurley Says She’s ‘Very Comfortable’ Sharing Bikini Pecs at 57.”
 
Good for her!
 
Now my Yahoo Home Page News Feed is really, truly, living up to its newsworthiness!
 
Norah O’Donnell, please take note.