Tuesday, October 22, 2024

McDonald's and Melania Shoes


I stopped in to the nurse's office at school and signed up for a flu shot yesterday.They'll contact me with a time to go get it. I wish they could do a new Covid booster too, but that's not something they offer, and I don't think I'm entitled to one under the NHS. Dave has been asked to get one, though, because his Crohn's and its treatment makes him vulnerable in the eyes of the medical establishment.

While in the nurse's office I weighed myself and was shocked to find I'm 88 kilos -- or 194 pounds! I don't know why this shocked me because that's the same weight I was last summer, but I guess I forgot. Clearly I need fewer lazy days on the couch reading "Bleak House." (And probably less dessert.)

When I was young I weighed about 175, and when I worked out more in my 30s and 40s I was somewhere around 180-185. But this additional ten pounds is not muscle. Sigh. The weird thing is, I still have the same waist size I've always had -- so where is this weight gain going? I guess my trunk is thicker than it used to be.


I may have blogged this photo before -- I'm not sure. This is me as a 16-year-old, in the summer of 1983, wearing my uniform for my first-ever job at McDonald's. I don't recall the pants being so flared -- they're practically bell-bottoms! But I do remember that uniform was magical. You could spill literally anything on it, and then throw it in the washer and it would emerge clean. It was 100 percent polyester, obviously.

This photo came to mind yesterday as I read about Donald Trump's ridiculous assertion that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's, as she has said she did in the very same summer that I began working there. One wag called it "burgerism," a play on Trump's "birtherism" argument that Obama wasn't born in the United States. I'm surprised Harris's campaign doesn't just release a photo like the one above -- but then again, if you spent all your time keeping up with Trump's firehose of lies and accusations, you'd never be able to spread your own message. I suppose whether or not she worked at McDonald's for one summer is hardly the most relevant issue we're facing.

I keep wishing this campaign season would just end. But the minute it does, the next one begins, you know? The news media has always liked the horse-race atmosphere, with this or that candidate pulling ahead or falling behind, and it's much easier to cover politics that way than to actually analyze the issues (which readers and viewers don't have much patience for anyway). It doesn't really do anyone any good, though. It just makes us all tired.


I found this blingy pair of shoes while walking Olga yesterday morning. They're still out there, as far as I know, lying atop their carpet of leaves and soy sauce packets. They're very Melania, aren't they? Except that hers would be Gucci and would cost $10,000.

46 comments:

  1. Regarding Trump's photo shoot at the McDonalds outlet last weekend - the franchise had been temporarily closed to the general public for 24 hours and the other people you see in the footage are MAGA plants - a bit like actors. He was not serving the public at all and for hygiene purposes why wasn't he wearing a hairnet or McDonald's cap? It is quite ironic that he uses fakery to suggest that Kamala Harris was fibbing about working at McDonalds.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, I hadn't heard that, but I'm not at all surprised. He has to be insulated from the general populace in case someone publicly criticizes him, which he can't stand.

      Delete
  2. I enjoy your leaf pictures a lot. Keep them coming.
    There was a time in the mid 1970s when McDonalds arrived in Germany and we thought it was the best place on earth to hang out. Briefly. And anybody managing to get a job there was considered cool. Very briefly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was the coolest (and almost the only) place to work in my hometown, too!

      Delete
  3. Steve, I don't believe you worked at McDonald's either. Hah! Just kidding. I can't say I'm shocked about Trump lying about Harris' employment history. It is just becoming par for the course.

    What I am shocked about is a recent poll of battleground states and how dour it is looking for Harris. I was hoping for four years of peace starting in a couple weeks. Instead, four more years of complaining could be a possibility. I may pull a John Prine and just "blow up my tv and throw away my papers".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm with you. I am surprised at how close the race is and how the tide may be turning. It's a mystery to me.

      Delete
  4. You didn't fancy bringing home the sparkly shoes?
    In photos you don't look ten kilo more than me. Until I was say 25, I was 58kg, say 130lb. I'm glad I am not that weight now. Really skinny old men are not so attractive but I liked my skinny young self, and many other did too.
    Speaking of photos, I can pick a gay boy at ten paces.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You could just fake sign those Melania shoes and sell then on ebay. You could also Photoshop Harris’ head onto your historic McDonald’s photo. That usually works for the Drumpf campaign.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Polls near an election are paid propaganda, not worth worrying about. You're big! I could never hold my own on a seesaw with you!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I did a stint at Burger King in high school and I remember the plastic-y uniforms.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't remember them being uncomfortable despite the polyester. Of course the restaurant was air conditioned, so that helped!

      Delete
  8. I was hired to work at Wendy's while I was in high school, but I didn't even get a uniform before my father squashed that. He said that my school work was my job. Which didn't do me any favors later in life because my work ethic sucks. Ha!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had the same experience with Steak N' Shake as a freshman in college. The manager hired me and my dad nixed it, and somehow I failed to tell the manager -- I just didn't show up. It wasn't until he called, annoyed, that I thought, "Gee, I guess I should have said something!"

      Delete
  9. I cannot wait for this election to be over. I have so much angst with it, and it is tiring me out! Even if Harris does win, I am afraid we haven't heard the last of the MAGA cult.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right about that. They'll be around for good, if not actually running things!

      Delete
  10. I, too, worked at McDonald's but have absolutely no proof of that and no picture either. Trump is an idiot and his followers are blind.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, that's a good point. I don't know why I expect Harris to even have a photo of herself in her uniform. Why would she? I only have one because it was my first job and my mom wanted a picture!

      Delete
  11. I don't think trump can understand how normal people live, and the fact that normal people have to work to put themselves through school. He is so far removed from real life, it's ridiculous. I don't think he can reconcile the fact that someone who once worked at McDonald's, is now running for President of the US, despite the fact that the US is supposed to be a meritocracy, which would also explain why he always describes Kamala as less than.
    The irony is that everything he calls other people, is what he is, but he's too incompetent to understand that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He doesn't even understand what meritocracy means.

      Delete
  12. "You know who" is just WEIRD!
    My high school job was babysitting for 50 cents an hour! Ugh! No matter how many kids the family had or how long I had to be there! I would babysit for 8 hours and get $4! Of course, gas was 33 cents a gallon so I guess it is all relative. ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He IS weird! Tim Walz was right about that. I remember babysitters making about that much.

      Delete
  13. I have an appointment with my doctor on Thursday so I'll hear the bad news of the scale then. I am so ready for this election to be over. Just filling out my ballot made me nervous. I know the whole thing is stressing me out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm agree. And you have the awful spectre of Kari Lake hanging over you!

      Delete
  14. Trump's making a fool of himself (as usual) with this idiotic fixation about Kamala and McDonalds, no business keeps records of part time employees from 40 years ago!! Smartest thing to do is just what she's doing and let everyone else laugh at him. The memes of that idiot are priceless. His brain is too far gone to get it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I wouldn't expect any business to have records going that far back. I think Social Security might have a record, but in any case it's such a non-issue.

      Delete
  15. I've not watched our main TV news for a couple of nights, but I suppose that the bit about Trump claiming Harris never worked at McD's would not have featured anyway. It's ridiculous, and that is probably one reason for her not releasing a picture as proof - also, I imagine Trump would immediately say it was faked, made with AI or something like that (you could try it - use your photo and add Kamala's head...).
    My employer has organised flu and Covid jabs for anyone who wanted them. My flu jab was flawless, I didn't even have a sore arm the next day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, that's true too. Like Obama providing his birth certificate -- the naysayers simply insisted it was fake. It didn't sway them one bit.

      Delete
  16. DT rhetoric is lies, lies and more lies. He is like Teflon while the rest of us are getting exhausted by the day. Yes, let's get this over and done with.
    A bit of extra weight prepares us for a cold Winter. That's what I tell myself!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't understand WHY he is Teflon. Why does nothing stick to that guy?!

      Delete
  17. What Mr. Yorkshire Pudding said. Fakery to indict an accusation of fakery. So on brand.

    ReplyDelete
  18. It's making me nuts. She has to win.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I think we carry our weight differently as we age. I love your first photo with the leaves!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, the body redistributes, doesn't it? I can never get enough of autumn leaves.

      Delete
  20. Like everything else he says and does, Trump's McDonalds cosplay is nauseating and stupid.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Even more nauseating than McDonald's itself! (I liked it when I worked there, but I think it's gone downhill since.)

      Delete
  21. Replies
    1. A perpetual problem in our neighborhood -- litter and discarded refuse.

      Delete
  22. I berry picked and babysat for 50 cents an hour, unbelievable. Those shoes look horribly uncomfortable and (as you probably know) NOT my style at all. :) Trump is a lunatic. I can't believe this election is at all close.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Berry-picking for 50 cents an hour sounds illegal! I can't believe it either. I just can't imagine why anyone would support that man, much less 50 percent of the population.

      Delete
  23. You look younger than 16. I also wish the campaigning was over, the election too and Trump shuffling away to sit somewhere unnoticed and being forgotten. The shoes are ugly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The shoes were gone when I went past again this morning. I guess someone liked them!

      Delete