Elise Sereni Patkotak

Dear Olive Garden,

Came to see you again. Yep, I admit it. I’m addicted to your bread sticks and salad. What I’m not addicted to is your insistence on bringing your drinks out with a plastic straw already opened and stuck in them.

I can only think of two reasons a restaurant with any sense of anything remotely resembling civic responsibility would do this. One is that they are totally unaware of a Texas sized lump of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean that will be there long after our planet has flamed out. The other is that the owners Continue reading →

I thought what I wrote about Mike Bloomberg would get me a lot of heated responses defending the other candidates who have been campaigning since Christ was a child. But I didn’t. In fact, what I mostly got were people interested in the idea or willing to consider a new candidate because, like me, they could not get any enthusiasm for the current crop of candidates.

For me, at least, the current crop of candidates seems old and tired, offering the same arguments over and over, just changing the words a bit so we won’t notice they are ultimately saying Continue reading →

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Northeast. Maybe it’s because he defies all dearly held beliefs about billionaires. Maybe it’s because anyone who says he is willing to spend $1 billion of his own money to defeat Donald Trump has my attention. And maybe it’s because if he doesn’t take contributions, he isn’t beholden to anyone.

I can’t really put my finger on it. Sometimes I think I’m just being catty and want to see a real New York billionaire go up against a fake New York billionaire.

I know Bloomberg is to some extent just another old Continue reading →

I have heard all the pious commentary about how America has to unite from the divisions we are currently feeling and come together to heal our country. Good luck with that.

I think this is something I will happily pass down to the next generation. Or maybe the generation after that. Because, quite honestly, I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. I won’t do it.

Why? Because I have taken a look at the faces of Orange Peel’s supporters and they horrify. They are so filled with hate and rage at those less fortunate; they laugh at Continue reading →

I know I shouldn’t but I wanted a treat. I bought these two piece per packet fairly well respected frozen food company treats, brought them home, allowed one to thaw while I drooled, figured how much extra insulin I needed to cover it and finally bit down on it and thought, “Wait, was it always this sweet?” And by that I mean did each bite cause me to slow down and gag in the past? By the third bite, all hope was lost. The indigestion had already started. The burning spread northward like a southerner’s dream of winning the Civil Continue reading →

It’s hard in the world of Orange Peel to want to write on a daily basis about what’s going on in our country. It’s so sad and discouraging to see America with a president who doesn’t represent anything but the worst in us. This is a president who bombs someone in a country that isn’t ours or the country of the person being bombed but in a third country and enjoys the hysteria it causes.

Imagine someone doing that in America – sending a drone in to kill someone without our government’s knowledge or approval. Orange Peel would be on Continue reading →

Orange Peel has finally done it. It was bad enough we’ve been at war in the middle-East for almost twenty years. Now he has guaranteed we will be there for many years more. He wants a war. He wants to pretend he is some grand military leader with bone spurs. He wants to distract us from his impeachment and in doing so has made this world an extremely more dangerous place.

I look back at the past couple of years and can’t help but notice that the vast majority of mass terrorist attacks have been committed by homegrown terrorists who Continue reading →

So we had snow, then we had rain, now we have snow again. In a week, our temps have gone from below zero to almost 50 degrees and now back to the teens and single digits.

But not to worry. Climate change is but a myth perpetrated by every credible scientist in the world to just screw with you and Orange Peel.

Have a happy new year… and pray that we only wipe out a few thousand species this year so we leave at least a few for the kids to destroy. Continue reading →

Why I don’t own a cell phone… this seems to be an ongoing discussion among friends and family who feel I am somehow depriving myself of a life saving something or other. But honestly, it makes no sense to me so let me try again to help you understand why I hope to be the last person on earth to die without one.

First, I don’t travel very far alone anymore. I drive to the store and back and to the occasional midtown lunch. A cell phone is not needed to guide me there and if anything happened, I’m sure Continue reading →