What?

I was chatting with a man on the fatty app and he told me that he is looking for a woman who would be okay with never seeing him because he works a lot and is trying super hard to get rich🫤 Who would be okay with that?! It has become more socially acceptable to say how you really feel, but it feels like people are doing this despite how looney they sound. I mean, is no one listening to their inner voices anymore before they speak?? As I have gotten older, my ear has gotten sharper, and of late I have been hearing a lot of open delusions, contradictions, tall tales, misrepresentations, misunderstandings, miseducations, and falsehoods. They all sound loco and they are leaving me in a constant state of bewilderment and confusion. Does anyone know what they are talking about?? I cannot go a full day without hearing some eye-crossing gibberish. I am a naturally talkative person, but the state of things has caused me to silence myself and really listen. What I have concluded is that there is a lot of talking but next to no thinking on even the simplest of matters. I'd say this is a new normal, but I don't think that's the case. I think it has only gotten worse and we will continue to speed towards a decline until we are only communicating in animal grunts. I don't know. Maybe that will be better. 

The Cray-Cray of Today

Pix told me that a woman at his job walked up to him and called him a bi&%h right to his face over a pretty benign disagreement. He had to get management involved, not just because that was crazy, but I think to also prevent him from saying or doing something that would have gotten him canned. Believe it or not, she is not going to be reprimanded for this. Her job is secure because she witnessed the manager choke the assistant manager!  

The other day, my brother came home from work and told me that while he was waiting on the train that morning, a woman got off the elevator, dropped her shorts, had no undies on, and began to run up and down the train platform while occasionally stopping to open her behind to the crowd. It was so gross that two men chased her and attempted to tackle her, but she evaded their capture until she eventually ran onto a train, pantless. 

Yesterday, I went to the doctor, and I swear to you, the waiting room was the Wild West! There was a family in the waiting room (a mom, dad, and teenage son who was the patient to be seen). The mom had some smart remark to make when anyone was called to be seen before her. Apparently, her son had been overlooked for hours. I felt annoyed with her until she went to the front desk to get an unnecessary attitude with the receptionist. It was then revealed that her son was a walk-in patient. Everyone knows that walk-ins have to wait to be seen until the doctor can see them! You always have to wait to be seen when you are a walk-in, even at the hair salon! I swear, every time Mom opened her mouth to complain, it felt like she was adding 30 minutes to everyone's wait time. On top of that, Mom continuously coughed without covering her mouth! Then there was a woman we will call TooTight. She had on the most ill-fitting, tight short set I had ever seen in my life! She had to be told twice to listen to the Spanish sitcom she was watching on her phone at full volume with her earphones in. She had this huge Stanley tumbler and went to the wall fountain to fill it up. Before doing so, she dumped some old strawberries out of the tumbler. I guess she'd had some infused water. However, after filling her cup, she left her old strawberries in the drain of the fountain instead of throwing them in the trash. 

I say all these seemingly unrelated things to ask this: have we all just given up? Have even the most minute standards of decorum and decency just gone out the window? Are we collectively not caring or going crazy? Is being out of order the new order? Is rude the new polite? How long before we are all running around our theoretical train stations with no pants on? Is it just me, or does it feel like everyone is becoming more aggressively and openly unglued? You remember how they used to say that everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten? If this is true, then the people of today must have gone to a kindergarten run by wolves! Leaving trash in the water fountain. Gross! 

A L.A. State of Mind

Having someone crack jokes in a whisper about me on the plane was my first thumbs up as to how things work in this town.
Living in Atlanta, I never thought that I was "country" until I went downstairs for breakfast in my hotel and realized that they had no grits. Of course, I asked for some and the chef looked at me like I just arrived from the nearest hoedown. He directed me instead to some colorful packs of oatmeal that had interesting heart health facts on the back.
Then I went downtown to my movie event for the L.A. Film Festival. People were nice to me there, but I feel like they were because I had the credentials that said I was supposed to be there. In other places, I said "hello" to people, and they looked at me funny. The people that did speak, I figured, were not from there.
Everyone dresses nice, just like on The Hills. But I had to wonder if anyone knew, especially the women walking around in colorful short dresses and Ugg boots, that there were replicas of their outfits at Target for like ten dollars. For the most part, they have made an art out of wearing expensive brands just to look like they rolled out of bed.
I saw so many women yesterday with such extensive plastic surgery that they looked like humanized cats with loud makeup. There was one older woman with such a high nose that I could not believe that no one every couple of blocks was telling her she looked horrible.
Oh, and the people here are rude by the way. It's like they take extra steps not to talk to you or touch you on the street or look at you. I found myself wondering how people here make friends. Girls in similar outfits would walk in packs, not saying anything, with tall Starbuck's cups and huge shades. It goes without saying that they are unusually thin and shapeless or thin with these huge exaggerated breasts. I mean HUGE! It was nothing like San Francisco which I visited to see a friend of mine. There, hippies would come up and hug you. Here, I just wanted to attempt to hug someone to watch them run from me.
One thing I am impressed with here is the effort the city is making to live Green.  On my way to the festival, bus passed super expensive homes that had light paneling and other tools to heat and cool the home through solar energy. That you do not see at all in Atlanta, and we run through our resources like water.
Besides the rude people and weird surgery, I kind of like it here. They have a lot of green space and there is a different protest every day. However, I do not see myself moving here anytime soon, especially not before dropping 100lbs and finding a grocery store that carries grits.