Gamophobia? No, it's not fear of games.

I have a nephew's wedding to attend later today. I hate crowds to begin with. I feel an intermittent anxiety in them. Any explanation I give is just a guess on why my unconscious mind pushes me toward anxiety. Everybody's speaking, but my attention deficit kicks in and I can't understand any of them.Music's playing, so conversation becomes impossible. It's paradoxical: the sound of silence. So, ironically, crowds are actually isolating for me. 

Weddings are the worst. I felt stressed out by this all week, and I'm not even in the wedding party. Some of it has to be my own solitary lifestyle. But there's the stress of knowing my body-shape has changed again (I gained a lot of weight this year, also a response to stress), getting my sizes right without the grief, buying the right clothes, and wondering if I could afford them. Then arriving and feeling like I've accomplished nothing since the last time I saw my extended family, and the more I think if that, the more I think I should be home writing.

Yet, my nephew has one of the best life-turnaround stories ever. He had trouble recovering from a family tragedy, but he hadn't finished high school and his greatest ambition seemed to be video games. Then, one day his heart stopped. Cardiac fibrillation. Through a miracle he survived with his mind intact, and there's about a one-in-ten thousand chance that that happens. The very week before, he met his bride-to-be. She visited him in the hospital, after he came out of an induced coma. That was their first date, I think. From there, he turned his life around, got a job, now they have a home, and have a son. He considered his dropping dead for no reason to be a sign that maybe he should do more with his life. He has.

If I miss every other wedding in my life, this seems to be one I should attend.       

UPDATE 11/4/16: I'm glad I went. The ceremony took about 3:35 seconds. That was either very practical, or a practical joke. It saved people from having to stand out in the cold for a long time. The reception inside was all fun and the food was actually good, a departure from most weddings.  . The brides Japanese family rented out The Magic House for the night. It's a wealthy family. I'm not even sure The Magic House, which is a kids' amusement, even offers weddings or wedding receptions.

Both the musicians and DJ were Japanese. I'm not sure if they were part of the family, or if they were hired to make the trip stateside. Apparently in Japan short ceremonies and long, nice celebrations are the thing.

The weather's everywhere

Outside, it feels like summer's over, nearly a month late. This cold snap started yesterday. Tomorrow it's supposed to end with high temperatures in the 70s for the foreseeable (not the forecastable) future.

I don't object to it; I love the warmer weather. At my age, ice and snow are a nuisance and a menace. Great weather is something to be enjoyed because it will change.

Judging by the rate the Earth is heating up, there will be nothing subtle about the changes from here on out. September was the hottest month on record worldwide. This was after fifteen straight hottest months or record. If you're skeptical that September could be hotter than July, remember there's also a Southern Hemisphere which has our seasons reversed. The hotter temperatures more than make up any cooler temperatures we feel. If your skeptical because September didn't feel hotter than July, remember the US is four percent of the world's landmass, and your particular city or town would be far less than one percent. Also, the heat isn't spread evenly. No, poles are seeing the greatest rise in temperatures. Such as the Inuits certainly notice global warming, and for them it's a catastrophe. 

Within five years Global Warming Denial will lose the last shred of its already tattered credibility. But for now I expect the weather in my neck of the woods to be nice. That will probably last only 2-3 years, so I intend to enjoy it.

Father care

Tonight I tried to help my father into bed and ended up needing assistance from my brother-in-law. Dad couldn't remember how to stand up, or how to use a walker. When we told him to lean on it, he'd step forward instead. Meanwhile, he stiffens up like a Parkinson's patient when he's afraid of falling, so instead do putting weight on his legs, they're frozen in place.

He checks his fingers regularly, because he thinks one or two are missing. That's hilarious when it's not your father. It's at the point where he's become a two hundred pound infant. Except taking care of a baby brings with it hope, and there's no comfort from cuteness about this. I'm putting up a GoFundMe for him pretty soon because it's apparent his care is going to get expensive. Soon it's going to go beyond the point where it's possible to take care of him at home, at least not without two good worker doing shifts with the family members. 

What accounts for Trump's popularity?

Cut me some slack, ladies! Look I have small hands. You know what that means.

I know this is my personal blog, not my political one, but there's not really much else going on besides the horrendous revelations about Donald Trump, not only what he said to Billy Bush, but the fact that he groped women's privates in exactly the way he described. They aren't really revelations, though. Personally,  I'm surprised they weren't brought out before. Two things that were obvious to me about Trump: he had no respect for women, and he had no restraint. Hey, you might have come out about the conversation before Trump became the GOP nominee.

We find out now that on Howard Stern, Trump kindly gave him permission to call his daughter a piece of ass. How generous! That's the closest thing to having a heart I've ever heard of from Trump. I would have thought someone of Trump's status would never grant anyone the right to spoil his daughter with such a title. I'm sure Howard was gratified. Maybe that's why he didn't say anything. Hey, Howard, couldn't you have given someone a call about this sooner in the process? Did you really want Trump as President?

News is that some of Trump's hot mic captures from The Apprentice are as lewd and aggressive as what he said to Billy Bush, but the producer has locked those away in a safe! Do you see the pattern here that I see? I think it's a fair, perhaps generous conclusion that the entire corporate, chain-owned media was complicit in Trump's scary rise. 

Never have I seen so many females so pissed off on the Internet. I'm convinced now this is not really an election at all. This is actually the best reality TV show ever. And who better to star in that than Donald Trump? The sixty-nine year old child-star of reality TV.

Seriously, though, three things account for Trump's rise. One is the corporate media, which did puff- pieces on Donald Trump for decades, while overlooking his shady business practices; the blight he was on all his contractors and investors; and his incredibly narcissistic/psychopathic personality. A personality so dysfunctional that if he were born into the middle class, he'd likely be in prison.
His treatment of women they presented as something whimsical. (In fact, Samantha Bee on Full Frontal, did a piece that showed this. It wasn't just Trump who verbally abused Alicia Machado. He led the news media in humiliating her.) He helped get them ratings and advertising bucks. Trump's rise is an indictment of corporate-dominated news media, chain ownership,  and a cautionary tale of the dangers in them. We really ought to correct them before this happens again, but with someone more savvy and more functional than Trump.  

The second is reality TV, which came about to break a Writers' Guild of America strike, and therefore gives me a double reason to despise RTV. It then gave Trump his own "reality" show which inadvertently promoted him and his foul self-centeredness as part of business genius. People saw his gnarly personality and associated it with success. Not only greed, but ruthlessness and rudeness was good.

The third has been the decline of education, especially higher education. There are other factors like a decline and aging of the white population, and their insecurity about losing privilege to minorities. That gave Trump a core of fans.

There are other, related things, such as the post-Reagan worship of wealth as proof of morality and intelligence. This caused Trump to get away with things for years, which as I said, would have landed him in prison.

That's likely where he'll end up. Running for President is the worst mistake he's made. After this election, when the stench of loss is on him, his followers we'll abandon him, and the next news we'll hear about him is he's arrested.