Why Me?

I’m not famous. I have no special talents. I can’t cook, sing, ski, play bridge, or figure out my television. I’m not filthy rich or terribly beautiful. I’m well informed but my information is usually wrong. My relationship with emotional stability is strained, to say the least. And most of the time I’m the most boring person I know.

These are not the credentials of someone who has created a captivating blog.

But it has been my experience that most blogs are the highly personal observations of fairly irrelevant people who think their ideas might have universal appeal. By that criterion I am perfectly qualified to start one of my own.

My blog will be as insignificant as most others, but it will have a decidedly caustic edge. That’s because many things make me angry. Actually, almost everything makes me angry. This is my chance to seethe and growl about all of them without interference or reprimand.

After a lifetime of doing so, I don’t want to behave any more.

I am 69 years old and have been civilized for at least 60 of them. I know which fork to use when four are lined up on the left side of my plate. I know I before E except after C. I have season tickets to the opera. I read all of The Faerie Queene and lived to tell about it. I was in the Junior League and a sorority. I always say, “Excuse me,” even when I bump into a mannequin.

But the most tiresome form of my civility is the way I speak with other people.

For my whole life I have been trapped in conversations from which I have neither the courage nor the tact to escape. I smile with feigned interest, nod enthusiastically, ask encouraging questions, gush frequently, and agree wholeheartedly with almost everyone who talks to me. I never reveal what I really think. Which is that I am usually disgusted by what I hear, detest the person who is speaking, and am so bored or enraged by the insipid chatter that I want to scream obscenities that cause permanent ear damage.

This seems like the perfect age and format to do just that.

I will not write book reviews, share recipes I cherish, comment on high fashion, or describe in detail every disease, bodily decay, surgery, chronic discomfort, or medical indignity I have recently endured. I will, however, discuss with spurts of eloquent venom every person who has ever been mean to me, loathsome public officials, the Kardashians, the general depravity of exercise, women who believe their children are brilliant and never stop saying so, wretched places I have lived, and almost every religion on earth.

My blog will be a marginally intelligent discourse on my essential beliefs, some of which are that

It is immoral to make anyone read The Canterbury Tales in Old English.

Global warming is not an opinion.

I don’t really have low self-esteem. It’s just that I would prefer to be someone else.

Instead of enduring it in furious silence, I should have driven over to the Junior High, dragged that bitch out of class by her hair, smacked her so hard her braces fell off, and told her that if she EVER does that to my daughter again I will tell her parents she gives blow jobs to the math teacher during lunch.

I am a Type C Minus personality.

Parenthood is the only job that has no performance reviews, no paid vacation, and if you are really successful, you get fired after 18 years.

The Religious Right is wrong.      

I used to live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is Gary, Indiana made of adobe.

Donald Trump is the Anti-Christ.

No man on earth has the right to voice an opinion about, enact laws regarding, impose his will upon, make judicial decisions concerning, or promote policies that influence, abortion. I will not change my mind until I meet a man with a uterus.

Not every blog will be a tirade of wrath and accusations. Occasionally, I will write a few kind words, a genial observation, or a sentimental story. Upbeat posts will not appear very often, however. I have a limited supply of cheerfulness.

I hope to post a new blog about every ten days. But if past habits and general laziness are any indication, it will probably be once a month and then never again. So if you have any interest in the random rumbles of an irritated, whining, and gloomy person, you might like my blog. If you are much too nice for all that, I probably have nothing to say to you.