Category Archives: Opinions

Turn It Off

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I wish I could turn off the tv. Dad watches the news all damn day long. I’m all for staying informed, but I just can’t take a full diet of it. There’s so much hatred in the world. We are so divided as a nation. It sickens me that we have allowed this to happen to our country. The political divide will only deepen, especially if what happens is what I suspect will happen. I won’t get into that.

I wish all of us could put our phones down, turn off our TVs and just be kind and gentle humans. People are striking out at others over differences of opinion. Everyone thinks they’re right. We need to stop berating each other. Instead, we need to take care of each other and be aware of what is at stake. We can’t take on the ills of the world individually but we can sure as hell try as a nation.

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Books Banned In The US

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I’m in total disbelief regarding the banning of books in this country. I just don’t get it.

I understand that children shouldn’t be allowed to read explicit materials. But banning books that have been used as teaching materials for as long as I can remember from school libraries is ridiculous! Why not consider the importance of what can be learned from a book? When I was a kid, I had to read books like Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and To Kill A Mockingbird. Those books have been banned in many school libraries. Such a shame. There’s much to be learned from such books which also teach kids to THINK.

Books are under attack in this country. Why are we allowing our legislators, and school boards to control what our children read? Isn’t that our job as parents? If you don’t want your child to read To Kill A Mockingbird, then by all means, don’t let him read it. That’s no reason to ban it so that no one else’s child can read it. Many of the books being banned are written by authors of color or LGBTQ+ authors. Many of the banned books are about racism, gender, or history. Are these people afraid that kids are going to learn something, perhaps from another person’s perspective? …that they will learn reasoning and communication skills or increase their vocabulary? Holy cow. Some school libraries are completely void of anything with substance!

There’s a simple solution to this problem. We all most likely agree that a 2nd grader shouldn’t be reading sexually explicit materials, such as Lolita or The Handmaid’s Tale, so leave those books (and similar others) to the public libraries. In school libraries, why not mark each book according to grade level and content. This way, the librarian will know if a second grader is allowed to check that book out of the library. For example, The Diary of Anne Frank probably isn’t suitable for a 2nd grader but a 5th or 6th grader would likely be able to understand what she is reading.

Also, parents! Stop being pussies about what your kid is learning in school! More harm is done to your precious demons when they’re constantly watching horror films and playing violent video games. They’d be better off READING! Consider perhaps reading those banned books with your kids and having discussions about the contents. Trust me, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are not what’s going to turn your child into a mass murderer. And reading books about LGBTQ+ identities is not going to warp your child’s mind or turn them gay or anything else. If your child is gay, trans, bi, etc., then that’s who they are, regardless of what they read or what you say or do. Harry Potter is more likely to spark your child’s imagination than turn him against your religion.

I’m afraid this is going to get even worse. Eventually, books are going to be banned in public libraries and bookstores. My advice: Get all the books you can now. Read them. Encourage your kids to read them. Learn!

Below is a list of some books that have been challenged or banned in various schools across the country. It is not a complete list. Get them while you still can! Most of these can be found on Amazon.

To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Giver – Lois Lowry
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury 
1984 – George Orwell
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Twilight – Stephenie Meyer
Maus I and II – Art Speigelman
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt
Malcolm X – Malcolm X
Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen
Hop on Pop – Dr. Seuss  YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!
Fifty Shades of Grey – E. L. James
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
A Time To Kill – John Grisham
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
For Whom The Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Go Ask Alice – Anonymous
Different Seasons – Stephen King
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West – Gregory Maguire
The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urrea
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
13 Reasons Why – Jay Asher
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Black Hawk Down – Mark Bowden
The Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank
The Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Critical Race Theory – Kimberly Crenshaw
Walter the Farting Dog – William Kotzwinkle
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson
The Pentagon Papers – Neil Sheehan
The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Forever – Judy Blume
The Perks of Being A Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway 
Grendel – John Gardner
Call of the Wild – Jack London
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents America: The Book – John Stewart
Shooter – Walter Dean Myers

What’s Eating Aunt Debbie?

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Joe Biden is too old? Give me a break. We have a Vice President who can take over if anything should happen to him. That’s why we have a Vice President. Why is Biden too old and Donald Trump is not? There’s only 3 years difference! 

Some say we don’t have a gun problem. I call bullshit. No one wants to take away your damn guns, so give it a rest. I’m all for the right to own a gun to protect your home, family, and possessions. I get it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone in this country has the right to own a firearm BUT not everyone is responsible enough to own one. Lock your guns up. Keep them away from your children. Don’t allow anyone to have access to your guns. Be responsible. Don’t solve your problems with violence! We need to do something about the mass shootings we have nearly every day in this country. Do you know how many mass shootings there have been this month in the US? Do you know how many shootings there have been since January 1st? Take a look here! 

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of this Trump bullshit. Lock him up for God’s sake and throw away the key! If you don’t want to do the time then don’t do the crime! And yes, he DID do the crime(s)…we all know it. Why should he get away with it? You might be on the warpath now about Hunter Biden, blah blah blah. Well, if he broke the law then he should be held accountable, too. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW! Trump seems to think he can do anything he wants regardless of the Constitution, regardless of the LAW. Why the hell would you want him as President AGAIN?? Mark my words, if he’s elected again, we will never get rid of him. He wants to be a dictator! He will turn this country inside out and our lives as we know it, will never be the same.

Do you use Walmart’s curbside service? I do, because I’m disabled and it’s easier for me to have someone else do the shopping. The hard part is unloading it when I get home. My biggest complaint is that some of the shoppers don’t know how to shop. For example, last week I ordered a head of iceberg lettuce. What I got was a flimsy, airy head of lettuce that was so void of substance that I was lucky to get 2 single-serve salads out of it. One time I got a bell pepper with rotten spots all over it. Another time, when I went to unload my groceries, I found the bread crammed into the trunk organizer with a huge bag of canned goods. Grrr…. I just wish they’d take more care when shopping and loading. I know it’s just a job to them and not a career, but it’s important to many of us who can’t go inside the store. I need this service!

I was working on a jigsaw puzzle last week, and I was shocked to find that the outside pieces weren’t very distinguishable from the others. I mean, some I could tell were outside pieces without a doubt but there were too many that had flat edges that weren’t outside pieces! I love a hard puzzle but geez, I like to be able to tell the difference between the inside pieces and the outside pieces! Oh, and then when I finally got the outside put together, there were several pieces that didn’t interlock because they had flat sides so the border wouldn’t stay together! 

I finally got to meet my youngest grandbaby! He doesn’t travel well, not even the 15 miles to come visit us, so we stopped by to see him. I hadn’t done this before because my son’s house has steps, front and back. I really can’t do steps, but it was too hot to stay outside so I put my big girl panties on and hoisted my fat ass up the steps. They aren’t little steps either. They are deeeeep! If there hadn’t been something to hang onto, I’d have never attempted it. I suffered afterward for it, that’s for sure! Anyway, Elias was in a happy mood so I got him to smile. His big brother, Hudson, who turns 5 on September 1st, is very proud of his baby brother! He was also proud to have a broken arm – yep, not even 5 yet and he broke his arm doing flips or some shit in the house!! But it wasn’t a serious break I guess, because the cast came off after just a couple of weeks. 

Jack’s Pack, is now only a pack of 3. As you may know, we lost Honey Bear in July. It’s been extremely quiet around the house. Honey was very vocal and the others aren’t – except for BobCat when he’s playing with his toy snake. He walks around the house with it in his mouth, meowing as if he’s calling the others to come play. But it’s still quiet. If I were able-bodied and younger I’d consider getting a kitten. Kittens are so much fun to play with and to watch! When they get older they don’t play much. BobCat is still pretty young; around 3 years old I think. He was a stray and outside for a long time so he didn’t have toys nor did he know the joy of playing. He’s making up for lost time now! 

I’m still chugging along on my cookbook. I’m now trying to find some of the recipes I missed so I can include them and last week I was working on my Granny’s recipes. Oh boy, what a mess. One of her bread recipes is incomplete! There’s only a list of ingredients – and she left out how much flour to use! There’s no oven temp or instructions so I have to figure that out if I want to include it in my cookbook! Back in her younger days, she worked in a bar/restaurant and she made some salad dressings in large quantities; her recipes call for #10 cans, gallons, and such. These recipes I will have to break down because most of us don’t want gallons of dressings sitting in the fridge taking up room or going bad! Unless you have a super large crowd to serve, it would take a long time to use it all up! Anyway, I’m hoping to get organized to the point that I’ll be calling on my volunteers to test recipes! If you’d like to volunteer, be sure to let me know in the comments! 

Well, that’s what’s on my mind this morning.

What’s Eating Aunt Debbie?

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The other day, I responded to a photo of the most beautiful cat on Facebook. I said, “He/She is gorgeous!” What I got back was a lecture about how it is appropriate and grammatically correct to use ‘they’ when the sex is unknown. So, I was supposed to say, “They are gorgeous!” That just doesn’t sound right because it was ONE cat. And really, who cares? It’s a cat! The cat doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you call it he, she, or they. It’s not a human! The cat doesn’t care.

Don’t get me wrong about this pronoun business. I am very sensitive to the fact that many nonbinary people identify as they, or perhaps another pronoun altogether. I would never purposely say something insulting to a nonbinary person…however, I would like the same consideration in return. For example, if I use the incorrect pronoun, the nonbinary person should try and understand that a) perhaps I didn’t know or b) that it’s sometimes very confusing. The nonbinary person shouldn’t get their panties in a knot about it. If you don’t celebrate Christmas for whatever reason, do you get all pushed out of shape when someone wishes you a Merry Christmas? It would be stupid and insulting for someone to be a twat about it when they are just being given good wishes and it’s not obvious by looking at someone if they celebrate the holiday or not. The same goes for nonbinary people. You can’t look at someone and know what pronoun they identify as.

Anyway, it just drives me bonkers to be lectured or “educated” by some idiot who doesn’t know me from Adam. There are a lot of idiots on Facebook, let me tell you. It used to be a fun place to hang out and stay connected with friends and family but I’m about fed up with it. You don’t dare comment on a public page without some idiot (or asshole, take your pick of adjectives) responding in a hateful way.

People also fail to realize that when they read something, they may not read it the way the writer intended. What I mean is that text cannot accurately convey tone, emotion, expressions, etc., so it can be easily misinterpreted or misunderstood. It doesn’t help that punctuation is misunderstood or left out completely. It seems that I am always misunderstood. Sometimes I think I must be writing in a foreign language or something!

Well, that’s it for today. I hope you have a stress-free day with no useless conflicts.

aunt-debbie

Just. WHY?

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I have spent the last week getting my new laptop set up exactly the way I want it. I hate when they put all the extra fluff that is of no importance to me. I hate all the extra gadgets and programs that start when you first turn on the laptop, the Edge browser, the fact that every time I walk away I have to sign back in, etc. All those things I had to delete and/or change settings. I had to make Google my primary search engine and Chrome my primary browser. It took the entire week to find all the settings I was familiar with on my old laptop. Piece of cake, that one was…until it started to slow down like a dead woman.

So now I sit trying to think of something to write about. The only thing I can think of at the moment is the fact that Donald Trump has been indicted and he is still up to the same ol’ bullshit. When things don’t go his way and he points fingers and calls people names like a damn 10-year-old. He says he’s going to stay in the race. Yay. Lucky us. I can hardly wait to go through another freaking 4 years of his childish behavior and grandiose personality. I just want to scream! Why would anyone want this criminal to be POTUS again? He breaks the law and his supporters don’t give a shit. Yes, he broke the law! Those documents were classified and belonged to the US Government. He put the entire country at risk; who knows what he sold or gave to Russia or China.

So, what’s going to happen if he’s elected again? I hate to even think about it. He needs to be confined to a prison cell!! Hopefully, he won’t even get the nomination but if he does and he wins…. We are in deep shit. Our future; our children’s and grandchildren’s futures are all at risk, because of what Trump has done and will do.

PS To those of you from other countries who are reading this, please know we are not all idiots. Most of us did not vote for Trump before, and will not ever vote for that toad in the future.

See you on the flip side…

aunt-debbie