All that glitters

No, thank ye, Lychee.

     Today I opened the refrigerator and spotted on the shelf, front and center, a restaurant-sized jelly container. I know it's recent because there's not much in the refrigerator. I don't remember putting it there, but someone obviously did, guess it could have been me.
    I decided to spread it on my toast, but it was not very malleable, so I decided to read the label. What if it was jelly not to eat but for some other purpose? Yuck. The label read Jin Jin Lychee Jelly, with Chinese lettering. That seemed all right, but then I read, in English, the message, "Please take separate bite and chew before swallowing."
     I threw the Lychee in the garbage.  Why would there be instruction as to how to eat jelly. I'm not even sure what a Lychee is, but it sounds rather dangerous. Back to the Orange Marmalade for me.

From Bad to Worse

  If you're ever in the hospital and think you might not be getting the care you deserve, here's what not to do:   do not try to call 9-1-1 from your hospital room and say you think you are having a heart attack. The call will not go through, but what will happen is that the Crash Cart will show up in your room. I think they call it the Emergency Response Team, and they will show up in your room within seconds of your call,even in the dead of night, with about 11 team members and all the equipment needed to try to save your life. They will spend a considerable amount of time with you, checking your vitals and running tests.
  The next morning a doctor and an assistant (think good cop/ bad cop) will enter your room and tell you that you're going home today. The doctor will be no-nonsense stern: the assistant, trying for the human touch,  will let you know you're acting on wrong information. Never mind about the heart attack; evidently there is a blood test that can pretty much definitively rule that out, regardless of your description of classic heart attack symptoms.   Don't bother crying: they're not moved by that. Forget threatening to inform your sure-to-be-irate family members: they're totally unimpressed by that. Tell them you live miles away, in the rural mountains, and you don't have any transportation;  they will arrange for you to go by MediCab, reimbursable by your insurance, they say. Tell them you feel sick, live alone,  and are unable to care for yourself, and they will suggest you look into getting home health aides. To put it bluntly, you can't fight the system.     
    Remember the last song played  by the band at closing time in the old nightclub days. "We don't care where you go, but you can't stay here." 

American Idol Begone

    I used to watch American Idol faithfully, back when it was new and different and followed the contestants for about 3 months. When the show and I were both much younger than now, I looked forward to viewing it and watching the contestants, even before Adam Lambert made his debut.
    This season I didn't care to watch it, but a week or so ago I caught the episode where the final 14 were all performing so I made a point of watching. I think they  disposed of 4 performers that night alone. Tonight the show came on and they were down to 7, and each performed twice, with the announcement that 2 would be eliminated at the end of the night.
    Ordinarily, as in the past, I would have a favorite or two, and would feel sorry for the loss of the youthful contestants, who were living their dreams. Tonight, not only was I not rooting for a favorite, I wanted them all to go home: the nerdy girl who forgot her lyrics, the pretty girl who has a pleasant enough voice, but her tongue and nose piercings steal attention away from her singing, a pair of blonde girls who sing okay, but nothing special, a blonde boy billed as a teenage heart throb who reminds me of a character in a long-ago comic strip who I believe was called Lard (maybe it was Gasoline Alley?) a long-haired rocker who Katie Perry simulates a deep attraction for, but who to my mind resembles a piece of furniture (maybe an armoire or a vintage sideboard,) and a forcibly contrived charismatically labeled young performer, whose only drawback is that, in my admittedly non-professional opinion, is a remarkably poor singer, almost pitifully so.  And not a single one of them is particularly appealing in the looks department. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
    So the show is down to the final 5, though these last 7 will go on the american Idol tour. Anyway, so they are told, but one may wonder how the ticket sales will go. Could be a lot of cancellations booking that tour.
  The nerdy girl and the pierced girl got booted off tonight.  That leaves 3 boys, the sideboard, Lard and the non-singer,  and the 2 blonde girls who I can't tell apart right now. It's hard to believe that one of them will be the next America Idol.
   (I'm trying to recall that long ago season finale when Marilyn was driving Dorothy and me out to Cape Cod, where the boys (Dave and Joe) already were. I can't remember how that came about, but I know there was a monstrously heavy rainstorm and it was dark and when we got there, Joe had left a message on the door about the 2 finalists that he called Mo'Ice and Scary Underwear. Or something like that. Back in the good old days.

Milkshake Duck and Jumping the Shark

  So Roseanne Barr is back promoting her show from over 30 years ago, as if it's an icon of American culture that just happened to disappear for a while. She claims that the love among the cast members is so strong that the interval since the show last aired feels like only a week.
    She says that the original set had been destroyed but has been painstakingly replicated, even down to the wallpaper. I used to watch the show pretty much every week, along with a number of other half-hour sitcoms typical of the time. I do recall the set, doodads, and tackiness and all, meant to represent grassroots working-class  American households.
    But am I the only one who remembers what happened in that kitchen with its iconic wallpaper. The show jumped the shark in the form of a Beverly Hills transformation when  the family fell into tremendous wealth.  With the show's fading ratings, I'd stopped watching regularly by then so I don't remember exactly what transformed their lifestyle---maybe a winning lottery ticket.  But they moved--bigtime--and left their old digs behind. Only today's TV audience  members are lured into the nostalgia of what is a fake image of the past.
   Neither do I remember what became of Roseanne when the show soon after ran its course.  But in contrast to the virginal, compassionate image she now presents on the talk shows, I do recall some bitter happenings. Such as undergoing some psycho-babble encounters where she was regressed to her early childhood, and publicly proclaimed that her own father had sexually abused her when she was a child. She'd had no memory of such until she underwent the psychotherapy sessions. Her father was dismayed at the charges, and vehemently denied them. I can't remember (and don't feel like looking up) whether he died as an accused man or, as I may correctly recall, that Roseanne subsequently retracted the charges.
    Cut to the present. I intended to watch the show in its entirety last week, with as open a mind as I'm capable of. Let's see what the show is about. Roseanne and her husband and sister spent the opening minutes of the show bitterly attacking her mother, who was staying with the Connors family due to her adverse circumstances. The mother's money was gone, so no one wanted her, the sister admitted hating her, and they ended up choosing lots to see who would take her first, in what was to be a weekly exchange.  Now this may be a problem facing a lot of families today, but it's never amusing or entertaining or educational to spew hatred and vitriol against an elderly parent, is it?
    (I suspect the show is soon to go down in TV history as the epitome of the Milkshake Duck. But I could of course be wrong.)
 

P.U.

   Every once in a while, I read doctors' reviews, where patients or ex-patients feel free to say what they think of their physicians. The reviews  are probably mostly unreliable as indicators of medical competency or expertise, because, face it, most of us do not go onsite to critique our doctors. Still, where there is a large number of comments left for a particular doctor, you could gain some insight. In any case, the comments can make for some interesting reading.
    As I scrolled through a list of local specialists, I noted one review gave the lowest possible rating, and that person left a comment. Naturally, I looked and read this:   Patient says the doctor asked him if he worked with animals. The patient said no. Then the doctor asked him if he bathed.  The patient was mortified, advised all would-be patients to avoid this doctor with the sensitive nose. 

Flowers and DWTS

   I was gone for 6 days and almost missed the flowers. And that's all there is.  Except for the Japanese Butterbur in the last picture, an early-flowering and spectacular plant which I would give away except people are afraid it will invade their homes and strangle them in their beds.
   As for DWTS:   Johnny, we hardly knew ye.  (I always said you never should have cut your hair.)