I was ranting about Mitch Albom on Facebook — I’m already bored by it, but if you are in my network, you can read it there — when I started thinking about tropes.
Tropes as in, the expected motifs, even clichés, that we find in certain genres of writing. I was comparing Albom’s Sunday column about Mike Tyson (phoned-in, sketchy, error-strewn — the floor of a boxing ring is canvas with one S, not two) to Pete Dexter’s far superior one from 1996. That column, which I can’t link to because I can’t find one, described watching Tyson in training as he demolished a sparring partner. It describes the gym he was training in, in upstate New York, “on the third story of an old building, over the firehouse and the city hall.” It talks about the trainer who discovered him, Cus D’Amato, and the one who took over after D’Amato died, Kevin Rooney.
It reminded me that boxing gyms are rarely if ever luxurious, and are always on the third floor of an old building, or perhaps in a converted garage in a bad part of town. Men who take up this dangerous sport are often from lower-status ethnic groups, which in the 20th century were Irish (Rooney), Italian (D’Amato) or people of color. It reminded me of the studio executive yelling at the title character in “Barton Fink” about why his star writer, a playwright of the common man, can’t get his arms around a script about one:
What do you think this is? HAMLET?
GONE WITH THE WIND? RUGGLES OF RED
GAP? It’s a goddamn B picture! Big
men in tights! You know the drill!
Judy Davis, as Audrey in that same film, explains it deftly:
Well, usually, they’re… simply
morality tales. There’s a good
wrestler, and a bad wrestler whom he
confronts at the end. In between,
the good wrestler has a love interest
or a child he has to protect. Bill
would usually make the good wrestler
a backwoods type, or a convict. And
sometimes, instead of a waif, he’d
have the wrestler protecting an idiot
manchild. The studio always hated
that. Oh, some of the scripts were
so… spirited!
And yet? It’s all in how you put it together. Dexter’s Tyson column is trope-filled, but still manages to break your heart a little:
The first time I ever saw (Holyfield) was in Atlantic City, where he was standing otherwise unnoticed in a crowded hallway outside one of the casino auditoriums, wearing a suit. He wasn’t on the card that night, he was just there to watch.
It’s hard for me to understand how that person came to beat the fighter I first saw 11 years ago.
I did see it, though, in what most people thought was a beautiful fight.
There was a moment, though, near the end, as Holyfield went hunting and a tired, half-conscious Tyson stumbled and nearly turned his back, that was not beautiful at all. A right hand exploded, sweat flew up into the lights, a halo, and Tyson pitched dangerously sideways, and then staggered away, toward the far rope, and before he gathered himself and turned back into the onslaught to meet what was waiting for him there, in that moment, I think, confusion and exhaustion took him home, to the place he comes from, where there is no protection, and there is no one who cares.
A story I’d like to see written? How boxing, a sport that’s pretty much dead now, is being kept alive by Arab kids in metro Detroit. I don’t think there’s a boxing culture back home, but in any Detroit gym, there are always a few Mohammeds and Husseins. Most of them are Yemeni, which is the lowest echelon of Arab-Americans in Detroit. Come to think of it, when we saw Claressa Shields fight in Detroit, the undercard featured a couple of bouts with Russian fighters from Chechnya, the Yemen of Russian republics. So the trope holds. How desperate do you have to be to risk your life in a boxing ring? When you see it as a chance to improve your lot in life.
Albom’s Sunday column was typically dumb — his grand conclusion was that the crowd backed Tyson because he was old, and we wanted Gen X to triumph over Gen Z. He barely talked about Jake Paul, who won the fight, beyond describing him as “a 27-year-old YouTube sensation turned professional boxer.” YouTube sensation? Hmm, OK. Paul and his brother Logan got famous the way young people with no particular talent get famous these days: By acting like assholes on YouTube. That seems to be the quickest way to fame and fortune online — be an asshole. The Paul brothers explored a Japanese forest where people go to kill themselves, found a hanging corpse, and made fun of the dead man. They also traveled to Italy and treated the canals of Venice like a water park, jumping from bridges while onlookers gaped. If you want to read about the perfect example of this type, google Johnny Somali. That’s why I was rooting for Tyson. I wanted him to murder this shithead. Full Duk-koo Kim. I wanted Paul to be a grease spot on the canvas. It had zero to do with age.
I didn’t watch the fight. I figured Tyson would lose, and didn’t want another disappointment.
One more interesting angle Detroit’s most famous best-selling author could have explored: Tyson distinguished himself for terrible behavior in the early part of his life, and has been rehabilitated into something cuddlier in his late middle age. He has a one-man show that he tours with. He’s a cannabis entrepreneur. Like Snoop Dogg, he’s one of those black men who used to be scary, and is now someone you wouldn’t mind sitting next to at dinner. That’s an idea it would have been interesting to pick apart. A task for a much better writer.
OK, it’s Sunday, my cold has relented somewhat, and this coming week has to be pedal to the metal. First, a birthday dinner for the birthday twins. (In a fancy restaurant. I have lost some cooking mojo in recent days.)
David C said on November 17, 2024 at 2:57 pm
It’s creepy to know there’s enough spillover in media that I vaguely know who some of these assholes are. I don’t try. That’s for certain.
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Jeff Gill said on November 17, 2024 at 7:24 pm
Tyson represents another example of what people get wrong about the old phrase, if not a trope, that “there are no second acts in American lives.” It was said by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it didn’t mean no second chances, as it gets used too often.
Tyson, and Snoop, and Trump are all exemplars of what Fitzgerald was really getting at. In the three or five act model of dramatic arcs, in books or on stage or in film, it was expected the protagonist would have a rapid rise, and then a fall, all in the first act. The second act was more oriented to exposition, with some education, and encompassed a journey to redemption, even one of transformation.
“No second acts in American lives” has to do with our tendency to cheap grace, and easier paths back for certain sorts of class status or celebrity roles. In reality, versus quality melodrama, those who are intent on scrabbling their way back to fame or notoriety (it helps to be indifferent as to which) often can jump directly back into the fray with a minimal nod to the missing “second act,” and move on to a triumphant third.
I’d say Rudy Giuliani shows that, while fast track redemption is far too often how people go from self-beclowning back to some measure of boldface attention, there’s usually a coda playing out in a minor key, even with sad trombones. Foolishness will out. No idea what Tyson’s epilogue will read like, but I’m skeptical it will be a happy ending. Snoop may have just enough self-control to get himself a contented twilight fade out.
Trump seems to have done the classic Fitzgeraldian move from real estate to branding to reality TV fame to politics, each transition without a true “second act” process of “this is what I’ve learned, and how I will apply it.” His finale feels like it’s heading for Xanadu, a few treasures slipping from his hands at the end, with Rosebud in the flames, but that’s probably just my love of good dramatic structure overriding my knowledge of actual history.
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Jeff Borden said on November 18, 2024 at 9:05 am
Mitch Albom is so awful I’m surprised tRump hasn’t found a cabinet position for him.
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Suzanne said on November 18, 2024 at 9:56 am
Long and depressing but full of pertinent information. I have been reading Kendzior for years and she has rarely been wrong.
https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/just-answering-many-questions
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Jeff Borden said on November 18, 2024 at 3:45 pm
Oh, my, the dependable bloc of tRump voters who farm are starting to realize the implications of his anti-immigration and tariff plans.
“The idea of mass deportations is frightening and scary, just on a humane level,” dairy farmer Jennifer Tilton Flood reportedly said. “With regards to our community, mass deportations could affect our entire dairy industry throughout the U.S.”
About 950,000, or nearly 45 percent, out of an estimated 2.2 million farm laborers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants, Newsweek reported.
Flood argued businesses and churches should expect a “catastrophic nightmare” to come as U.S. Customs and Border Protection came under Trump’s control.
Oh, my. Oh, my. When I voted for the Leopards Eating My Face Party, it wasn’t MY face they’re supposed to eat.
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Sherri said on November 18, 2024 at 4:20 pm
Saturday evening, I went to a small event for the Who We Are Project (https://www.thewhoweareproject.org/).
I know I’ve talked about Jeffery Robinson and the documentary he did, “Who We Are”, before, about the hidden history of racism built into this country. Jeff is a former deputy legal director at the ACLU, and I fell in love with him years ago when I heard him eloquently argue a death penalty case before the WA state Supreme Court. In 2011, he suddenly became a father when his nephew was orphaned, and he was now raising a young black teenager, and he needed to teach this young black man about his history. That was the genesis of the documentary.
Tom Hanks saw the documentary, contacted Jeff, and asked, how can I help? They’re trying to build off the documentary, with the idea that we can’t address institutional racism in this country if we don’t even know our own history.
So, long story short, I met Tom Hanks Saturday. As he said, “I’m rich and famous, and I can attract people and money to the project.” Honestly, I would have been there just for Jeff, but Tom Hanks was a completely charming man, funny and nice, and even happily did the Woody voice for our hosts’ children. He was happy to geek out about the space program with my husband and I, as well. He’s also going to do a podcast with Jeff.
The Who We Are documentary will be returning to Netflix soon, but right now you can rent it for about $4.
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Sherri said on November 18, 2024 at 4:32 pm
From our Seattle equivalent of The Onion, The Needling:
https://theneedling.com/2024/09/22/tribal-leaders-intrigued-by-talk-of-immigrant-mass-deportations/
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alex said on November 18, 2024 at 4:56 pm
You’d think Trump would have learned his lesson after having to bail out the farmers the last time his tariffs drew China’s ire and China purchased its agricultural goods elsewhere. Of course, you’d think the farmers would have learned a lesson too. Fuck them all.
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Deborah said on November 18, 2024 at 5:03 pm
Suzanne, whenever I read what Sarah Kedzior is writing currently, I always think she’s way out of bounds, and then damn it as time goes by, I realize she was right because what she predicted would happen is happening and it’s been happening for a while.
Sherri, how cool, I’ll be looking for that documentary when it is back on Netflix, I got rid of Amazon Prime so can’t get it that way. Also I got an email from the ACLU today and I realize it’s time to donate again, we are in critical need of them.
Everything is so much in flux now, nobody knows whats going to happen, when. How can life keep going on with this much uncertainty. Who can we trust? When will it all come crashing down? It’s terrifying.
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Jeff Borden said on November 18, 2024 at 5:35 pm
Alex,
I’m anticipating a significant hit to the U.S. economy. It’s virtually guaranteed. The combination of gutting the agricultural workforce, high tariffs including 60% on Chinese goods (Walmart shoppers will love that) and the general ignorance and incompetence of tRump and his ignorant sycophants will overcome our thriving economy.
Meanwhile, I’m stocking up on single malt Scotch and German beers before the douchenozzle takes office. Those tariffs will sting.
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Julie Robinson said on November 18, 2024 at 6:03 pm
Meanwhile, here in the crunchy granola liberal part of Florida, our banned book library got the attention of some “good church people” (not our church) who were renting our fellowship hall for a baby shower. Apparently, they are also “pastors”, and they were so offended they started loading up books to take out and burn. We only knew because another group renting a different part of the building* ran into them and called Sarah.
Police were called and arrived, nasty things were said to our daughter, and eventually they left. I am hoping and praying it ends there, but spent most of the night worrying about what might be next.
*The other group was rehearsing a play based on the playwright’s experiences growing up gay in yet another church, and being shunned when she wanted to be part of youth leadership. They were okay with her being gay as long as she didn’t talk about it, but the second she was out of the closet, she was out of the church. I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.
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Dave said on November 18, 2024 at 7:09 pm
Rather brazen churchfolk, Julie, to think that they can eliminate books they take exception to in a church that generously let them use their facilities.
Meanwhile, Nazi admirers march through a Columbus neighborhood and flyers distributed by the KKK are found in Fishers, IN. With the Orange return, it’s going to be ugly, ugly, ugly.
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Jason T. said on November 18, 2024 at 7:16 pm
I was a teen-ager when everyone was wearing “Doggystyle” T-shirts and Tipper Gore was doing her best Mrs. Lovejoy “won’t anyone please think of the children?!?!” act on Capitol Hill.
I couldn’t have envisioned Snoop Dogg’s transformation into America’s coolest uncle, but I love it.
And I also hope Mike Tyson is finding some peace, with the exception of being in the ring with that toe-rag, Jake Paul.
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Dave said on November 18, 2024 at 7:16 pm
Too late to catch the edit window, I see this.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientific-american-editor-resigns-saying-012735684.html
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David C said on November 18, 2024 at 7:43 pm
If they’re going to burn books, they might as well start with their bibles. They don’t seem to pay much attention to it. Maybe they can keep the cover. To be seen with it is all they care about. Living it is too hard.
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Dorothy said on November 18, 2024 at 8:27 pm
I’ve been doing community theater for about 25 years now and over those years I have had several dreams that I have a chance to audition for a part in a Tom Hanks movie. I’m crazy about him as an actor – I think nearly everything he’s in is just tremendously good. This dream thing has now become a daytime dream; I’d be out of my mind if I got a chance to meet him. I’m so envious, Sherri!!
Also Jeff Borden thx for the laugh @comment #3. Really enjoyed that!
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alex said on November 18, 2024 at 9:20 pm
I’d rather not have to take Sarah Kendzior any more seriously than I do Ann Selzer or Nostradamus. While I’m sure the Russian Mafia has some serious shit going on and Trump has probably been helping them launder money (because no one else would risk giving him a loan, save for Deutsche Bank, inexplicably) it just seems to me that this information would be or would have been much more out there than it is. Reading her newsletter, it sounded like a conspiracy theory in which Merrick Garland is complicit in protecting the interests of oligarchs and assisting them in overthrowing democracy and that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are in on it too. While it’s not as patently ridiculous as Pizzagate, it still rings hollow to me.
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Sherri said on November 18, 2024 at 9:33 pm
Delaware elected Sarah McBride, a transgender woman, to Congress in this election. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is already concerned about potentially having to share a bathroom with her.
Never mind that Mace shares a caucus with plenty of sexual predators, including Matt Gaetz until just a few days ago. I guess she felt safe from him because she was of age.
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brian stouder said on November 18, 2024 at 10:01 pm
Sherri elicited a darkly muffled chuckle from me!
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Mark P said on November 18, 2024 at 11:19 pm
A little over seven years ago my brother called me and told me that his doctor had discovered tumors in his liver and lower lungs, but that he did not think the tumors originated there. He ordered some additional imaging to find out. At that point, my brother was fucked, and he knew it. We were just waiting to learn the exact details of how he was fucked.
That’s how I feel right now. I believe we are fucked, but we are in a phony war waiting to learn the details. I honestly believe that Trump intends to destroy the government, or at least its ability to govern, and I don’t think that’s hyperbole. His nominations for his cabinet are a great, bug fuck-you to the government and to us. I think when he lost in 2016, he got pissed at everyone, including his supporters, kind of like Hitler in the bunker, who thought Germany deserved to be left in ruins because the Germans failed him. He obviously holds his supporters in contempt. And I think he knows that virtually everyone in the rest of the world holds him in contempt. I think his goal is to bring the US and the rest of the world down in flames. His gang of billionaires is cackling with glee at the prospect because they think they will benefit from the chaos.
I am afraid it won’t be just another bad president. I’m afraid it will be much, much worse than we expect.
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Deborah said on November 19, 2024 at 10:23 am
The zone is being flooded with shit, which was Steve Bannon’s advice to Trump. If he keeps doing it, we will eventually be intimidated, back down and kiss the ring. I keep getting petrified and then my husband talks me down and reminds me of all of the things out there that aren’t going to let the worst happen. But right now we have absolutely no idea what is really going to happen which is an unsustainable way to feel all the time. I keep telling myself to live each day at a time; I ask myself if I’m ok today. Plan for the worst but live your life as best you can each day.
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Deborah said on November 19, 2024 at 10:39 am
Question: how are these bathroom bills going to be enforced? How will anyone know which gender you are once you enter a stall? Are they going to have cameras in toilets? If you are accused of being in the wrong restroom how will they check? Pull your pants down? Take blood samples? Where and how will this be carried out? Obviously these bills are performative, only to humiliate people. Has anyone actually been sexually assaulted in a restroom by a trans person?
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Deborah said on November 19, 2024 at 10:42 am
Ok, I googled it and just the opposite is the problem, the ones being assaulted are the trans people https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/transgender-teens-restricted-bathroom-access-sexual-assault/
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Dexter Friend said on November 19, 2024 at 12:36 pm
Philadelphia is where Joe Frazier’s gym is. It’s shown on Google Images. Just as nance described one.
Coincidentally, I just last night played my dvd of Barton Fink.
I worry…Putin has dropped his threshold regarding using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Jesus, Biden? What did you think Putin was going to do when you told war criminal Netanyahu to attack Russia proper with USA long range missiles?
We always seemed to disregard nuclear attack rumors. Now Biden has stirred the big shitpot.
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Icarus said on November 19, 2024 at 1:20 pm
Sherri’s comment at 18 reminds me of a double standard:
If we restrict guns, only the criminals will have guns.
On the other hand, rapists will respect the gender sign on a bathroom!
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Jeff Borden said on November 19, 2024 at 1:54 pm
Dexter,
Putin is one of the wealthiest men in the world thanks to his graft and corruption. He lives like a king. He has power and influence. A nuclear war would produce no winners, which is why mutually assured destruction worked for decades. In short, he’s a murderous thug dictator, but he’s not crazy. The biggest threat to trigger a nuclear war, in my opinion, remains the religious fanatic who despises the corporal world and wants to destroy it in the name of their deity. Again, just my opinion.
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Suzanne said on November 19, 2024 at 2:15 pm
I agree Mark P @ 20. Look at what Orban did in Hungary. He got his people in the legislature and the courts and they changed the laws to benefit him and his cronies. It’s what Trump will do. He has control of Congress come Jan and there will be no stopping him because all the GOP members are already unwilling to buck him. SCOTUS will rubber stand anything Congress passes, Constitutional or not.
I think it will be much worse than expected because too many still believe our institutions will save the day. I don’t believe they will.
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DavidC said on November 19, 2024 at 2:19 pm
Women have already been harassed and had the police called because someone didn’t think they looked feminine enough to use the women’s room. I can only imagine the hell that would come from having a cop demanding a woman prove she’s a woman.
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Sherri said on November 19, 2024 at 2:37 pm
Nancy Mace says she’s a rape survivor and someone with a penis in the women’s locker room is wrong and she’s always going to protect women and girls. Except when it comes to putting a rapist in the White House.
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Jeff Borden said on November 19, 2024 at 4:25 pm
Lumpy just put Dr. Oz in charge of Medicare/Medicaid. He really is choosing TV people for his cabinet.
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Sherri said on November 19, 2024 at 4:52 pm
Maybe he’ll put Captain Kangaroo in charge of the Navy.
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Dexter Friend said on November 19, 2024 at 5:02 pm
Yabbott, where will Captain Jinks end up in the cabinet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU6R6JCegM0
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Mark P said on November 19, 2024 at 6:51 pm
I just got a scam text supposedly from an unpaid toll. I almost fell for it because I recently drove on the Kansas Turnpike, and they don’t collect tolls on site any more. But when I looked closer, they claimed to be in Florida, and the blurry photo was of a white van, not a red pickup with a trailer. A link went to a .cc domain, where they started asking for information like my phone number. Then it occurred to me that they already have my phone number and how could they have that from my tag? Anyway, a scam that some people might fall for.
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Sherri said on November 19, 2024 at 6:54 pm
I know it’s conventional wisdom that we, the Dems, the Harris voters, the liberals, whatever version of we you want to plug in there, are elites who ignore working class people, or worse sneer at them. But I can’t get out of my head a headline from a Bari Weiss article: “Peter Thiel and the Rise of the Counter-Elites”.
I don’t understand in what world Peter Thiel is considered anything but an elite, or would ever be considered in touch with the working class. Thiel is an oligarch, and that’s what a Trump administration is explicitly bringing in: an oligarchy.
I get really tired of being told I’m an elite by a bunch of people with Ivy League degrees, when I went to state school, have parents who didn’t graduate from college, and of my grandparents, only one graduated from high school. Evidently being a counter-elite means not giving a shit about anybody else.
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Sherri said on November 19, 2024 at 10:17 pm
As Trump names his Cabinet, we understand why he wants to get rid of the Department of Education. It’s because so many of them shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a public school.
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alex said on November 19, 2024 at 11:37 pm
I think “woke” is just code for empowered women and people of color and “elite” is code for the places you find them, like academia. Toxic masculinity/machsimo is the common ground shared by swaggering proles and self-important billionaires. And Tucker Carlson is telling the proles to tan their balls so they can be hard-asses too.
Weird stuff going on tonight next door. I was told an ambulance showed up this afternoon by a neighbor who texted to ask me what was going on. Then multiple police cruisers were there for the next 5-6 hours. Toward the end a dark minivan backed into the driveway, and later it sped away, but I missed out on seeing whether a body was being loaded into it. I’m suspecting a suicide, either the 84-year-old family matriarch or her 57-year-old son, neither of whom I ever found sympathetic and both of whom had serious medical issues.
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Brandon said on November 20, 2024 at 12:23 am
Linda McMahon named as choice for Secretary of Education.
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Deborah said on November 20, 2024 at 4:40 am
Yesterday I got one of those texts telling me a package for me was being detained in customs because it contained something thought to be something or other. I immediately deleted it didn’t finish reading it. I’m getting more of those things lately. Scamming going on all over the place.
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