God, I hate time wasting people & processes!

Had a first interview yesterday.

Indian woman, who pushed my translation matrix to the max.

And to boot, setting up the interview, she couldn’t commit to an actual time she instead chose to act like a cable TV installer. Will call between 8AM and 3PM. Fanfuckingtastic!

When she did call she actually asked if I remembered that we had an appointment. DUH!

Then there’s a spiel about training and all kinds of other bullshit and Oh, this wasn’t an interview. She’s going to set me up with their HR department to have a “Mock” interview.

But the real kicker was that she didn’t have my resume in front of her and she didn’t have the ability to get my resume in front of her. So this was essentially a cold call.

What the actual fuck?!?

At least I got someone’s attention. So there’s that.

But for fucks sake, I’m supposed to appear or be available for an interview prepared. I’d at least expect that of the interviewer.

Ahhh, The end of Pride month…

Articles have been appearing about large sponsors pulling out of Pride events all over the country. Almost unilaterally these articles blame Trump and his war on DEI.

The Atlantic put a predictably negative spin on it.

To boil it down, most articles imply that corporations are afraid to sponsor Pride events due to Trump. They seem to want to paint Trump as the boogyman. 

I think this is disingenuous and wrong. Many of these companies supported Pride through multiple Presidencies. Regan, Bush I & II, Clinton, Obama, Trump, & Biden.

During the Regan years I don’t think these companies supported Pride out of DEI policies, they supported them because A) There was money to be made, and B) It was the right thing to do.

Back in the day Pride was about basic civil rights, and visibility of people who literally were treated as second class citizens because of who they peopled their beds with.

When HIV started killing gay men, these companies stayed in the Pride events because it was right to shine a light on the problem. HIV was being ignored, insurance companies refused to pay for HIV care. Some insurance companies specifically excluded HIV care or hospitalization from their policies Others would cancel an individual’s coverage entirely if they tested positive for HIV.

Back then, gay people of all walks of life were being denied fundamental rights or services. Housing, Medical care, Jobs, loans, and myriad other things that everyone else enjoyed, simply because they chose to sleep with members of their own sex.

That was fundamentally wrong and Anti-American. 

One could make a case that today’s trans people experience similar oppression. I can maybe see their point. But, generally speaking, the LGB community of old weren’t trying to “Gay everyone”, they were simply demanding equal representation and rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

Trans people cannot, under law, be discriminated against. They may face harsh words, or people who refuse to use arbitrary pronouns, but they have the same rights everyone else has. In other words, the very rights the old LGB movements fought for are granted without question to the Trans people of today.

The Atlantic says young people will lose rights. I’m not sure that I see their point or that what they’re printing is true. 

The Trans movement has gutted the LGB community. More and more “moderate” and even “liberal” gay people are walking away. The LGBTQIA+ whatever community is a confused and confusing mishmash of conflicting goals and seems to be mostly about rage & victimhood.

A Trans person these days will as quickly open up a screaming tirade on an LGB person as they will on anyone else who dares to question them.

They’ve become off-putting and simply too difficult to understand or deal with. It doesn’t help that so many Trans people have in recent years been mass shooters.

Sure, the LGB had Jeffery Dahmer but he was a rarity. He was a cannibal that also was gay, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, he was a very disturbed individual who was in desperate need of psychiatric help.

The point is, the trans movement has co-opted the LGB community to such an extent that normal gays are no longer interested. That means they’re not attending Pride, which means that the advertising benefit large corporations derived from being supportive, is diminishing too.

It always comes back to dollars.

Add to it, that most of America, including LGB people are sick and tired of the Trans activism, protests, & conflict, and it makes perfect sense that large corporations are pulling back.

What exactly can’t Trans people do? What rights don’t they have? Name something. Oh maybe you can make a case for a man who thinks he’s Trans to be in a women’s locker room.

The real question is should he be in that locker room waving his dick around at children?

If the answer is “yes” then all locker rooms and bathrooms should be co-ed and at that point who gives a shit?

Along that line of reasoning comes this reality. No-one man, woman, or “other,” can be offended if they’re in a bathroom, locker room, or designated changing area, and they see a dick, hairy chest, a pussy, or tits.

Everyone would be 100% equal and that’s the end of the story. A.K.A. the end of victimhood.

It also means that women will have to clean up after themselves in public restrooms. Because while men may piss on the floor around a urinal, women are traditionally much filthier in public restrooms. I know, I’ve cleaned bathrooms, and I’ll generally take cleaning a men’s room any day of the week.

Trans people have access to medical care, lots of insurance companies cover the hormone costs. The real problem seems to be that the Trans agenda is to transition people as early in life as they can.

That’s a problem.

In most states, someone under 21 can’t smoke, drink, get a tattoo, body piercing, or a host of other things they might like to do because they’re not old enough to make up their mind. They lack the maturity

By that logic, a child shouldn’t have the maturity to undergo gender re-assignment. Yet, the Trans activists push for it. So which is it? 

That’s not loss of rights, that’s something entirely different.

When a person is over 21, they’re welcome to start taking whatever hormone therapies, or undergo whatever surgeries they want. They’re adults, of age, and can make their own decisions.

Much of America seems to have concluded that the Trans issue is something else.

Not because of bigotry, although I’m sure it’s there.

When Trans activists are given copious ink bemoaning that straight men should sleep with them or they’re transphobic, something is wrong.

Most straight men want to have families. A trans person (M to F) isn’t capable of producing the necessary genetic components to satisfy a straight man’s desire for children. So straight men aren’t interested. I’d suggest that straight men aren’t so much transphobic as they are trans-disinterested.

They might go for a quick fuck, but they’re not likely to be interested in a long term relationship. Let’s face it a trans person generally has a lot more baggage than even the most spoiled gold digger woman, to boot.

At least with a gold digger, you know you’re likely to have some kids.

Then people will say, “Well, there are F to M Trans people.” Yep, but most straight men want a woman that looks like a woman, they’re not likely to get turned on by a woman who’s got more hair on their chest than a female gorilla. So that leaves the F to M Trans person sleeping with who?

I’ve seen a lot of them bemoaning that Gay men aren’t interested in them. Well, Duh! A gay man is interested in another man and that means a penis and a male mindset. F to M trans people in many cases don’t meet either requirement.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some straight men who are just gay enough, and some gay men who are just straight enough that F to M Trans people could find happiness.

In neither case, do the Trans people have less rights. They can get married, they might have issues with their ID or passports, but I think there’s existing legislation that allows for changing all ID documents.

I believe where the trouble occurs is when someone hasn’t done the precursor work going all the way back to their birth certificate. I don’t think I can renew my passport with a different gender and name without having the underlying paperwork in order first.

Is that an infringement on rights?

Or do these blocks exist to prevent creating false identities? If identity is no longer a stake in the ground, then why have documentation at all? Bank accounts? Mortgages? Rental Agreements? Retirement accounts? Jobs?

So demanding that you do the work, and alter all your ID to match your new gender isn’t a loss of rights, it’s about needing to work within a framework that ensures there are no complications in making sure an individual’s rights are preserved.

I think the overarching pull backs on the part of large corporations isn’t about DEI. It’s about dollars, and that the LGBT community has become the TRANS community. That’s a community that has become viewed very negatively by a large swath of America and indeed the world.

Even Gay bars had to reduce orders of Budweiser beer. Why? Because LGB people joined in the boycott. What does that say about the Trans?

I think corporations are pulling out of Pride because there’s no percentage in it. Pride has become synonymous with Trans activists.

We’re all tired of hearing Trans this and Trans that. Nobody cares anymore, and I for one look forward to Pride not being a cash cow for the HRC, Glaad, and all the other organizations who should have disbanded once their job was done.

Pride might need to go the way of the dinosaur.

I’m glad Pride month is over. I’d be fine with Pride month being cancelled entirely.

Maybe I’ll go out to Palm Springs in July to sample the prevailing opinion of gay men.

Off the rails…

I was going to write a long post about how the job search is going. 

The post went completely off the rails and now sits in the “Drafts” bin with other similar posts.

Every once in a while, I’ll go back and dust one of these off, clean it up and post it.

The interesting thing is that some of these posts are still relevant sometimes years after I initially started them.

What does that say about my opinions? Does it say more about the repetitive nature of human behavior, or the cyclic nature of the latest trends?

Maybe it’s me telling myself, don’t get spun up over shit that’s just going to repeat, and that my problem is being impatient with humanity not learning a damn thing no matter how many times the lesson is repeated.

I’m in a mood!

WHY? Wednesday evening my phone offered to suspend my alarm for Juneteenth.

Really? 

Why would my phone offer to disable my alarm for that? It’s never offered to suspend any other alarms for other holidays.

Martin Luther King’s birthday – Jan 20, 2025 was on a Monday
Presidents Day – February 17, 2025 another Monday
St Patrick’s Day – March 17th 2025 another Monday
Easter – April 20th 2025 a Sunday
Memorial Day – May 26, 2025 a Monday

But, I get a notification to modify my daily alarm about Juneteenth on a Thursday? What the hell?

I’ll be interested to see if a notification appears for Independence Day July 4th 2025, that’s on a Friday. How about Labor Day September 1st 2025? That’s a Monday

I like the idea of my phone offering to turn off the alarm on a Federal holiday to allow me to sleep in, but wonder if this is just pandering on the part of Apple.

This might be inconvenient

News report this morning says that Rite Aid is closing a ton more stores.

Looks like the local one to me is finally on the list. I’d been suspecting it was doomed for a while now. I feel sorry for the employees, they’ve been working so hard to keep the store viable.

I suppose that CVS or Walgreens might purchase the building. Both appear to be involved in some kind of negotiations regarding the liquidation of Rite Aid’s holdings.

The building itself is new, and they have a drive through pharmacy. That might make the facility and location appealing to one or the other. I’d hope for Walgreens over CVS. I don’t much like CVS and can’t really say why that is, other than their stores always seem dirty.

The Rite Aid location hasn’t had looting issues, it’s in an out of the way community that was mostly immune to the ravages of the “Summer of Love”. But they have been dealing with increased shoplifting over the past few years. This is evidenced by certain items being locked up behind plexiglass. Axe products for example seem to require security. Why, I’m not sure other than the target demographic for the Axe brand is teens and younger adults.

I’ll take a wait and see approach and hope the place isn’t closed entirely. That would mean the closest pharmacy would be 18 – 20 miles away.

Not a super big deal, but it would mean that I’d be picking up prescriptions and shopping for groceries elsewhere. I rarely make a trip for a single item.

For example, I’ll get a haircut while the dog is being groomed. If, God forbid I need something from Walmart, I’ll walk across the lot from the groomer to that store. I really hate Walmarts. If I recall correctly, there’s a Walgreens a few miles from the groomer and there’s also a Stater Brothers or Ralphs in the same plaza. 

It probably won’t inconvenience me much but I’m likely to put off picking up pharmacy items so that one trip serves all my needs instead of driving all over hells half acre to pick up one item at a time.

It also means that shopping lists will become more important than they are now. There are a lot of elderly folks in the local area that depend on the Rite Aid and they’re not that mobile. 

For that matter, I don’t want to have to deal with them being on the road (swerving on & off the pavement, is more likely,) while I’m trying to get from point a to b.

The town the groomer is located in, reportedly already has the worst drivers in California, adding elderly people to that mix will result in a greater number of accidents. I suspect at least part of the issue is that you can get a contact high sitting at a traffic light.

(Yes, I know. People aren’t supposed to be smoking pot while driving. Guess what? They do. We have open container laws in California but smoking dope is a-okay.)

I haven’t been in a Walgreens in ages, so I don’t know what their stores are like these days. I’ve considered them several times over the past 4 years. Because shopping there with an Apple Card used to get you 3% cash back. Trouble was, that the 3% ended up being 0% by the time I added the distance to and from the Walgreens. 

Now it looks like health insurance will have me paying nothing for my one prescription. So I wouldn’t get the 3% when I need the next refill in any case.

Story of my life! 

Come to think of it, I wonder if this new fangled medical insurance covers massage? I’ll have to check, I’m not holding my breath. But it might be on the list of things they cover once a month.