Tuesday, January 18, 2005
An odd marital moment
My husband is the sort of man who can take apart and repair complex mechanisms (and even get them put back together most of the time) withOUT the benefit of training or manuals; he just opens things up, takes a look, and figures it out. This exact same man, when faced with a bathroom counter, and the handful of doodads that customarily go there (soap dispenser, tissue holder, etc), is utterly incapable of coming up with ANY reasonable arrangement of the latter on the former, despite having seen such an arrangement 20 times a day for YEARS. He'll put the items down at random in the available space, and then claim that he thought he'd "done it right," despite the fact that the soap is so far away from the sink that no one wanting to wash their hands could reach it, the lotion dispenser's spout is turned into the wall so that no lotion can be extracted without moving it, or all of it is just sitting in a ragged clump in the middle of the bare space, as if attractive placement didn't exist on his planet. For the benefit of the unmarried women, allow me to add here that this is a standard male tactic to keep from having to do part of a task, and, if he's lucky, to be excused from doing ANY of said task in the future; I'm an old hand at dealing with this one, so I'm not fooled, but I was unable to overcome having to take MY time to help him finish up with the bathroom cleaning... until today.
Taking advantage of the bathroom being clean due to the recent visit of a friend, I told him to bring his digital camera in there tonight after dinner; while he fetched it, I meticulously arranged all the doodads in the exact positions and orientations they should ideally be in. Once he was in the room with me, I told him to take photos of every bit of the counter area, from every reasonable angle, so that, the next time he had to clean the bathroom, he'd be able to put everything back where it belongs... and have no further excuses to NOT do it right. Amused at being outmanuevered, he took the photos, and we discussed what sort of printouts he should make; I've gotta remember to get a photo of him in there cleaning with the doodad diagrams taped to the wall for him to refer to, hehehehehe.
Shortly thereafter, he was sitting on the throne, and I went in there to talk to him... yeah, I know, that's sort of gross, and I'd NEVER have thought in a million years that I'd be in the bathroom with someone who was, er, doing that, and I myself always have the bathroom door closed and locked when I'M in there, with barbed wire strung up and a guard dog stationed outside... no, not really, but I would if I could, as I'm NOT the sort of person who accepts company while performing bathroom functions... then again, neither was my husband before we met, lol... um, anyways, I was in there talking to him, and I noticed that the camera was still in there. While he was on the throne. And an idea came to me.
I asked if I could take some photos too, and of course he said yes, so I asked to be shown how to use the camera; once he fooled around with some controls (don't ask, I don't know), all he had to do was show me which of the dozen or so buttons was the right one to push, and explain how to get the autofocus to work. So, I'm holding the camera up to my eye, pointing it at random walls, and reporting on the green #'s, black circle, and red flash that I'm seeing, and he's trying to explain what all of it is... and meanwhile, I'm backing away from him. When I judged I was far enough back, I engaged the autofocus, swung the camera to point at HIM, and CLICK, captured him in all his glory on... well, it's not film, of course, but whatever that thing is in there that pics get recorded on.
I howled in laughter at his belated protest, and he was laughing too because of how I GOT HIM. He showed me the pic, and, figuring I could do better, I took back the camera, told him to smile, and took some more photos of him with a wide and toothy grin on his face. He joked about deleting them all, but ended up promising to print them out for me; since this is the same man who, after an innocent question from me years ago about whether the scanner he had then could be used to scan his butt, demonstrated that yes, it COULD, and printed THAT out, I'm reasonably sure he'll do it. What would be even funnier would be if I could get him to Photoshop in a Santa hat on his head, and presto, there'd be our Christmas card for 2005.
Many years ago, when the first of my friends to marry would tell me about stuff that had gone on with her and her husband, my reply would typically be, "That's GROSS!! Marriage is GROSS!! I'm NEVER getting married!!" As the saying goes, never say never, because now I'M the one with the stories to gross people out with... and I've discovered that it's just this sort of thing that makes marriage FUN. You won't see that in any of the relationship self-help books, but believe me, it's true; if you can be gross with a person, you're probably in synch enough to have a solid relationship. Or, you're both out of your minds; take your pick.
Taking advantage of the bathroom being clean due to the recent visit of a friend, I told him to bring his digital camera in there tonight after dinner; while he fetched it, I meticulously arranged all the doodads in the exact positions and orientations they should ideally be in. Once he was in the room with me, I told him to take photos of every bit of the counter area, from every reasonable angle, so that, the next time he had to clean the bathroom, he'd be able to put everything back where it belongs... and have no further excuses to NOT do it right. Amused at being outmanuevered, he took the photos, and we discussed what sort of printouts he should make; I've gotta remember to get a photo of him in there cleaning with the doodad diagrams taped to the wall for him to refer to, hehehehehe.
Shortly thereafter, he was sitting on the throne, and I went in there to talk to him... yeah, I know, that's sort of gross, and I'd NEVER have thought in a million years that I'd be in the bathroom with someone who was, er, doing that, and I myself always have the bathroom door closed and locked when I'M in there, with barbed wire strung up and a guard dog stationed outside... no, not really, but I would if I could, as I'm NOT the sort of person who accepts company while performing bathroom functions... then again, neither was my husband before we met, lol... um, anyways, I was in there talking to him, and I noticed that the camera was still in there. While he was on the throne. And an idea came to me.
I asked if I could take some photos too, and of course he said yes, so I asked to be shown how to use the camera; once he fooled around with some controls (don't ask, I don't know), all he had to do was show me which of the dozen or so buttons was the right one to push, and explain how to get the autofocus to work. So, I'm holding the camera up to my eye, pointing it at random walls, and reporting on the green #'s, black circle, and red flash that I'm seeing, and he's trying to explain what all of it is... and meanwhile, I'm backing away from him. When I judged I was far enough back, I engaged the autofocus, swung the camera to point at HIM, and CLICK, captured him in all his glory on... well, it's not film, of course, but whatever that thing is in there that pics get recorded on.
I howled in laughter at his belated protest, and he was laughing too because of how I GOT HIM. He showed me the pic, and, figuring I could do better, I took back the camera, told him to smile, and took some more photos of him with a wide and toothy grin on his face. He joked about deleting them all, but ended up promising to print them out for me; since this is the same man who, after an innocent question from me years ago about whether the scanner he had then could be used to scan his butt, demonstrated that yes, it COULD, and printed THAT out, I'm reasonably sure he'll do it. What would be even funnier would be if I could get him to Photoshop in a Santa hat on his head, and presto, there'd be our Christmas card for 2005.
Many years ago, when the first of my friends to marry would tell me about stuff that had gone on with her and her husband, my reply would typically be, "That's GROSS!! Marriage is GROSS!! I'm NEVER getting married!!" As the saying goes, never say never, because now I'M the one with the stories to gross people out with... and I've discovered that it's just this sort of thing that makes marriage FUN. You won't see that in any of the relationship self-help books, but believe me, it's true; if you can be gross with a person, you're probably in synch enough to have a solid relationship. Or, you're both out of your minds; take your pick.
Monday, January 17, 2005
The healing power of friendship
Do you remember Lifesaver "books," boxes of rolls of Lifesavers candy inexplicably designed to look like chunky little books? I remember the 1st time I got one as a gift, as the result of a gift exchange at school (I think it was 2nd grade); I was so happy and excited to have this little hoard of candy all for myself (I was only rarely allowed to have even a single piece of candy)... that is, until I got it home, and my father threw it out. ALL of it. I didn't get a single roll, I didn't get a single PIECE; it went right in the trash, still sealed in its plastic... yes, sadly, it hadn't occurred to me to open it up and have any, as I hadn't yet learned how to outwit my parents where treats were concerned. Come to think of it, if I HAD thought to open the candy instead of waiting until after dinner to have sweets, I'd probably have been unable to resist having several pieces, and who knows what sort of wrath would have descended on me for THAT hideous crime; I suppose that's the silver lining, although it wouldn't have seemed like much of one at the time.
I received Lifesavers books several other times; once, it was at my birthday party, and that one was in the trash before the last guest's mom had pulled away from the curb, but the other 2 were at other gift exchanges, and I swapped them for non-food gifts with kids with less psychotic parents. I can still see their faces, and the faces of the teachers, when I explained WHY I was trying to get someone to trade with me; the shock with which my father's cruelty was greeted provided me with proof that he really WAS acting in a way far different than a normal father, and this understanding, combined with others garnered from people's reactions to other sick behaviors of his, kept me from falling into the common trap of assuming that I, the child, was the "abnormal" one for seeing my parents as being bad people... and there's another silver lining.
Everyone who's ever heard this story has naturally reacted with disgust and outrage, but to one particular friend, whose terrific parents would never have even contemplated taking something harmless like a box of candy away from her, this theft became symbolic of everything that was taken away from me, or just never given to me, throughout my childhood, and she decided to make it her personal goal to make it up to me; at least once a year since she first heard this story over a decade ago, she has given me a Lifesavers book. I don't know where she finds them, because I've never seen them for sale anywhere since I was a kid, but she manages every year without fail... and she always makes the point that it's to make up for the candy that was taken from me.
THAT is what true friendship looks like... and yes, the fact that someone cares enough to make that sort of effort for me IS healing, even though it's in reference to an objectively minor thing like candy.
Now here's the part of the story that my friend doesn't know; although ANY candy was heaven on Earth to me as a kid, after a couple of decades of being able to have as much candy as I want, I find the basic-flavor Lifesavers that get put in those books to be vaguely icky, and certainly not worth wasting my carefully-rationed calories on... so, although I express heartfelt gratitude each time she presents me with the candy, I don't actually eat any of it-I pass it along to the kids and grandkids of my neighbors. My not being able to actually eat the candy in no way reduces my pleasure in receiving it, or my appreciation for her efforts or her kindness; this lady has taught me, in a way no one else will ever match, that it really IS the thought that counts.
I received Lifesavers books several other times; once, it was at my birthday party, and that one was in the trash before the last guest's mom had pulled away from the curb, but the other 2 were at other gift exchanges, and I swapped them for non-food gifts with kids with less psychotic parents. I can still see their faces, and the faces of the teachers, when I explained WHY I was trying to get someone to trade with me; the shock with which my father's cruelty was greeted provided me with proof that he really WAS acting in a way far different than a normal father, and this understanding, combined with others garnered from people's reactions to other sick behaviors of his, kept me from falling into the common trap of assuming that I, the child, was the "abnormal" one for seeing my parents as being bad people... and there's another silver lining.
Everyone who's ever heard this story has naturally reacted with disgust and outrage, but to one particular friend, whose terrific parents would never have even contemplated taking something harmless like a box of candy away from her, this theft became symbolic of everything that was taken away from me, or just never given to me, throughout my childhood, and she decided to make it her personal goal to make it up to me; at least once a year since she first heard this story over a decade ago, she has given me a Lifesavers book. I don't know where she finds them, because I've never seen them for sale anywhere since I was a kid, but she manages every year without fail... and she always makes the point that it's to make up for the candy that was taken from me.
THAT is what true friendship looks like... and yes, the fact that someone cares enough to make that sort of effort for me IS healing, even though it's in reference to an objectively minor thing like candy.
Now here's the part of the story that my friend doesn't know; although ANY candy was heaven on Earth to me as a kid, after a couple of decades of being able to have as much candy as I want, I find the basic-flavor Lifesavers that get put in those books to be vaguely icky, and certainly not worth wasting my carefully-rationed calories on... so, although I express heartfelt gratitude each time she presents me with the candy, I don't actually eat any of it-I pass it along to the kids and grandkids of my neighbors. My not being able to actually eat the candy in no way reduces my pleasure in receiving it, or my appreciation for her efforts or her kindness; this lady has taught me, in a way no one else will ever match, that it really IS the thought that counts.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
A sad lesson from TV
I missed alot of the sitcoms that ran while I was growing up, because my parents dictated what was on TV and they weren't interested for the most part; as a result, I never saw "Full House" until recently, when it started coming on late at night when I was on the computer in the family room. I'd heard about it, though, and it was always described as being so wholesome and clean-cut that it was almost sickening; having seen a fair chunk of episodes now, I have to agree for the most part... and that makes one element of the show particularly dismaying.
There's a girl in the show, Kimmy, who's always dressed a little oddly, and says some strange things, and is thus set up to be "weird"; despite this, she's the best friend of the oldest girl of the family, DJ. Since the latter is beautiful, the friendship is totally unrealistic, but that's not where the real problem is; the problem is that, in this family where everyone is supposed to be so sweet and sensitive and nice all the time:
1) The kids trash-talk Kimmy behind her back, and the adults not only don't correct them, they AGREE, and laugh along.
2) The kids trash-talk Kimmy TO HER FACE, and the adults not only don't correct them, they AGREE, and laugh along.
3) The ADULTS trash-talk Kimmy behind her back, even in front of the kids, for whom they SHOULD be setting a good example.
4) The adults trash-talk Kimmy TO HER FACE, as if part of being a paragon of virtue is picking on a CHILD.
I don't know what horrifies me more; that the writers for the show felt that it was perfectly fine to portray all the members of this idealized family as gleefully joining forces to mistreat Kimmy, or that, in all the many reviews and mentions I've seen of this show, not one person ever made reference to it, much less pointed out that it's just plain WRONG.
There's an echo of this attitude in an otherwise excellent show, "Everybody Loves Raymond"; the older brother, Robert, is always treated like dirt by the parents, because Raymond is the favored son by a WIDE margin... and this is always portrayed as something we're supposed to be AMUSED by, rather than something we should feel bad about. Robert is always shown as being VERY hurt, and looking miserable, from his parent's behavior, and he's a sweet and kind person, so, even though he's an adult who could choose to absent himself from the situation rather than a little girl who'd have to give up her best friend to escape being sniped at, it's STILL a grim commentary on our culture that people think this is FUNNY.
A kid looks and acts a little "off," so that makes it ok, and entertaining, for everyone around her to ridicule her? A man is unusually tall and a little shy and awkward, and thus his parents treat him like something the department of health found lurking behind a garbage pail, and THAT'S supposed to be ok and entertaining? What does it take to get it through people's heads that weirdo-baiting is NOT a sport, and that it's just as cruel to laugh at that as it would be to laugh if someone was teased or slighted for any other reason?
What lesson do kids learn from watching this sort of thing going on on TV... especially if their parents are laughing?
There's a girl in the show, Kimmy, who's always dressed a little oddly, and says some strange things, and is thus set up to be "weird"; despite this, she's the best friend of the oldest girl of the family, DJ. Since the latter is beautiful, the friendship is totally unrealistic, but that's not where the real problem is; the problem is that, in this family where everyone is supposed to be so sweet and sensitive and nice all the time:
1) The kids trash-talk Kimmy behind her back, and the adults not only don't correct them, they AGREE, and laugh along.
2) The kids trash-talk Kimmy TO HER FACE, and the adults not only don't correct them, they AGREE, and laugh along.
3) The ADULTS trash-talk Kimmy behind her back, even in front of the kids, for whom they SHOULD be setting a good example.
4) The adults trash-talk Kimmy TO HER FACE, as if part of being a paragon of virtue is picking on a CHILD.
I don't know what horrifies me more; that the writers for the show felt that it was perfectly fine to portray all the members of this idealized family as gleefully joining forces to mistreat Kimmy, or that, in all the many reviews and mentions I've seen of this show, not one person ever made reference to it, much less pointed out that it's just plain WRONG.
There's an echo of this attitude in an otherwise excellent show, "Everybody Loves Raymond"; the older brother, Robert, is always treated like dirt by the parents, because Raymond is the favored son by a WIDE margin... and this is always portrayed as something we're supposed to be AMUSED by, rather than something we should feel bad about. Robert is always shown as being VERY hurt, and looking miserable, from his parent's behavior, and he's a sweet and kind person, so, even though he's an adult who could choose to absent himself from the situation rather than a little girl who'd have to give up her best friend to escape being sniped at, it's STILL a grim commentary on our culture that people think this is FUNNY.
A kid looks and acts a little "off," so that makes it ok, and entertaining, for everyone around her to ridicule her? A man is unusually tall and a little shy and awkward, and thus his parents treat him like something the department of health found lurking behind a garbage pail, and THAT'S supposed to be ok and entertaining? What does it take to get it through people's heads that weirdo-baiting is NOT a sport, and that it's just as cruel to laugh at that as it would be to laugh if someone was teased or slighted for any other reason?
What lesson do kids learn from watching this sort of thing going on on TV... especially if their parents are laughing?
Saturday, January 15, 2005
The BWA
One of my oldest and dearest friends is African-American... except she rejects that term, and prefers "black," so that's what I'll use in this post about her, although usually I use the more PC term. Anyways, she's coined the term "BWA," which stands for "Black Women's Attitude," and she describes it with the following comparison:
A white couple is sitting on the couch. The man asks the woman to go get him a beer, and she says, "Sure, honey."
A black couple is sitting on the couch. The man asks the woman to go get him a beer, and she says, "What's the matter with you, is your leg broken? Get up and get it yourself, and while you're in there get me a soda."
The 2nd example, as you've guessed, is the BWA in action... cool, huh? :-)
My friend has nothing but contempt for what she sees as the wimpiness of many white women, and she considers it her duty to educate everyone about what the PROPER attitude for women is; it's her firm belief that most of the relationship problems of white couples are due to the women having too submissive and agreeable of an attitude, which leads to there NOT being equality. She stresses the importance of NOT being a man's servant or mommy, of making him fetch and carry for himself, and of making sure he's making some sort of effort to look after his woman... and yes, she's over 40 and has been single for years, lol, but she DOES make some good points.
I'm proud to say that *I* embody the BWA, at least to the extent that a non-black woman can; my friend has told me so, and also says that this is part of why we can be such close friends... and I think my being able to have a successful marriage despite not having a submissive bone in my body gives HER hope that this can work long-term other than in theory.
Women of all colors have come a long way in the last 20 years, but we have a long way still to go to be TRULY the equals of men, in their eyes as well as our own; since women work as hard outside the home as men do, it's time for men to work as hard INside the home as women do... and that extends to who should be fetching drinks, which should be whoever thinks of it first, just as is the case when it's 2 friends sitting on the couch.
If you're a woman, the next time a man asks you to do something he should be doing for himself, channel the BWA and get him to stop seeing you as his maid. If you're a man... be afraid, be very afraid. ;-)
A white couple is sitting on the couch. The man asks the woman to go get him a beer, and she says, "Sure, honey."
A black couple is sitting on the couch. The man asks the woman to go get him a beer, and she says, "What's the matter with you, is your leg broken? Get up and get it yourself, and while you're in there get me a soda."
The 2nd example, as you've guessed, is the BWA in action... cool, huh? :-)
My friend has nothing but contempt for what she sees as the wimpiness of many white women, and she considers it her duty to educate everyone about what the PROPER attitude for women is; it's her firm belief that most of the relationship problems of white couples are due to the women having too submissive and agreeable of an attitude, which leads to there NOT being equality. She stresses the importance of NOT being a man's servant or mommy, of making him fetch and carry for himself, and of making sure he's making some sort of effort to look after his woman... and yes, she's over 40 and has been single for years, lol, but she DOES make some good points.
I'm proud to say that *I* embody the BWA, at least to the extent that a non-black woman can; my friend has told me so, and also says that this is part of why we can be such close friends... and I think my being able to have a successful marriage despite not having a submissive bone in my body gives HER hope that this can work long-term other than in theory.
Women of all colors have come a long way in the last 20 years, but we have a long way still to go to be TRULY the equals of men, in their eyes as well as our own; since women work as hard outside the home as men do, it's time for men to work as hard INside the home as women do... and that extends to who should be fetching drinks, which should be whoever thinks of it first, just as is the case when it's 2 friends sitting on the couch.
If you're a woman, the next time a man asks you to do something he should be doing for himself, channel the BWA and get him to stop seeing you as his maid. If you're a man... be afraid, be very afraid. ;-)
Friday, January 14, 2005
The importance of feedback
How do you know what sort of behavior will be considered acceptable in any given situation? From the time you were a tiny child, you were given negative feedback when you behaved incorrectly; I don't mean just scoldings from adults, I mean being teased or laughed at by your peers if your behavior was immature or otherwise foolish... or just outside what your peer group expected of you. Even whether your behavior got smiles or frowns influenced you; frowns, shock, puzzlement, and a variety of other reactions showed you if you were acting improperly. Even more subtle things, body language cues that you didn't even notice consciously, told you whether you were acting "right" or "wrong"... and all of this together taught you how to automatically chose the correct actions, words, tones of voice, and even your own body language for every situation.
Unlike machines, we're not "programmed" forever, though; for example, if you visit another culture for even a week or 2, you may find that you're a little bit "off" when you come back, because you've absorbed different behavior patterns... you may even have picked up a little bit of an accent. Parents who stay home with the kids all day often report not being able to talk easily to adults anymore. People who go to prison have many problems readjusting to life "outside," one of which is having to re-learn how to handle normal social exchanges. Even worse than "reprogramming" from a different situation, though, is the absence of ANY input; people who don't interact significantly with others rapidly lose the ability to behave "properly."
This can lead to more than just not being able to surf along with the right body language; people can even forget what constitutes normal behavior in ANY area... and this can lead to the odd behaviors and attitudes of depressives, who are often very isolated, having little or no social contacts, and, in more severe cases, not working either, and so having NO interaction with human beings other than superficial things like dealing with grocery store clerks and waiters. Once they start being puzzled by why people act the way they do, and unsure of how to respond, they start avoiding social situations, and the problem escalates until they can't even carry on a normal conversation... and this can lead to them being isolated and lonely FOREVER.
Do you know anyone with no friends? Is there any confusion in your mind as to WHY they have no friends? They're probably perfectly nice, but they talk too loud, or don't know how to have social give and take, or they drone on in a monotone, or otherwise just put people off. If it's YOU with no friends, even though you're nice to everyone, this is probably what's happened to you; fear not, it CAN get better, if you're willing to make the effort... I know that, because *I* did it.
As a kid, I was so weird, and thus so socially isolated, that I got to college having no social clue whatsoever; I had to make a conscious effort to observe people and learn to imitate them, to learn social dynamics through sheer memory power and analysis... and I learned that much of it is ugly and unfair, and I've CHOSEN not to adopt some of it, but I AM able to socialize effortlessly in any situation, and people find my toughness and outspokenness entertaining (it doesn't hurt that I can do a fairly clever off-the-cuff standup routine under any circumstances-people will forgive you anything if you can make 'em laugh). Anyone can learn to do it the same way I did, as long as they don't sabotage themselves by believing that they CAN'T.
If an out-of-synch person can't bring themselves to make the effort, they'll end up like the one whose heartbreaking post that I read on a forum inspired this essay; they described their inability to understand what was going on in social situations, and to figure out what to say and how to act... and how desperately lonely they were as a result. Or, worse, they could end up like the "irritating emailer" that I've written about a couple of times recently, who's not only clueless but has convinced himself that it's the badness of everyone on Earth OTHER than him that's the reason he has no friends and can't get a date. Or, worst of all... they could end up like my parents, who, with no real friends, and very little interaction with the rest of the family, became more and more sick and twisted in their thinking, thus forcing me to live under conditions that were farther and farther from the norm, not to mention the acceptable; my mother's sister has told me several times that the greatest regret of her life is that she wasn't around when I was growing up, because it's clear through hindsight that my parents DESPERATELY needed another adult to be involved in their lives day to day, one who could have made an issue of it whenever they were being unfair or unreasonable, or just plain psycho.
If you think you're suffering from lack of feedback, there's no way around it; you have to force yourself to interact with people and learn consciously what's right and wrong by watching what they do and how they respond to you. If you know someone who's like this, find a way to tell them... and offer to help them learn, by being honest (but kind!!) with them about what's "off" about them, and even offering to roleplay with them to allow them to practice socializing. And, if you're a parent, and there aren't any adults who are around you and your kids, seeing how you're raising them, the sorts of rules and standards you impose, etc... no matter how great a job you THINK you're doing, or how high your kids' grades are, or how clean they keep their rooms... find some other parents to network with, just to be sure. AND, if your kids don't seem to be social successes, and they seem to be lonely rather than lonERS... you know what to do.
Unlike machines, we're not "programmed" forever, though; for example, if you visit another culture for even a week or 2, you may find that you're a little bit "off" when you come back, because you've absorbed different behavior patterns... you may even have picked up a little bit of an accent. Parents who stay home with the kids all day often report not being able to talk easily to adults anymore. People who go to prison have many problems readjusting to life "outside," one of which is having to re-learn how to handle normal social exchanges. Even worse than "reprogramming" from a different situation, though, is the absence of ANY input; people who don't interact significantly with others rapidly lose the ability to behave "properly."
This can lead to more than just not being able to surf along with the right body language; people can even forget what constitutes normal behavior in ANY area... and this can lead to the odd behaviors and attitudes of depressives, who are often very isolated, having little or no social contacts, and, in more severe cases, not working either, and so having NO interaction with human beings other than superficial things like dealing with grocery store clerks and waiters. Once they start being puzzled by why people act the way they do, and unsure of how to respond, they start avoiding social situations, and the problem escalates until they can't even carry on a normal conversation... and this can lead to them being isolated and lonely FOREVER.
Do you know anyone with no friends? Is there any confusion in your mind as to WHY they have no friends? They're probably perfectly nice, but they talk too loud, or don't know how to have social give and take, or they drone on in a monotone, or otherwise just put people off. If it's YOU with no friends, even though you're nice to everyone, this is probably what's happened to you; fear not, it CAN get better, if you're willing to make the effort... I know that, because *I* did it.
As a kid, I was so weird, and thus so socially isolated, that I got to college having no social clue whatsoever; I had to make a conscious effort to observe people and learn to imitate them, to learn social dynamics through sheer memory power and analysis... and I learned that much of it is ugly and unfair, and I've CHOSEN not to adopt some of it, but I AM able to socialize effortlessly in any situation, and people find my toughness and outspokenness entertaining (it doesn't hurt that I can do a fairly clever off-the-cuff standup routine under any circumstances-people will forgive you anything if you can make 'em laugh). Anyone can learn to do it the same way I did, as long as they don't sabotage themselves by believing that they CAN'T.
If an out-of-synch person can't bring themselves to make the effort, they'll end up like the one whose heartbreaking post that I read on a forum inspired this essay; they described their inability to understand what was going on in social situations, and to figure out what to say and how to act... and how desperately lonely they were as a result. Or, worse, they could end up like the "irritating emailer" that I've written about a couple of times recently, who's not only clueless but has convinced himself that it's the badness of everyone on Earth OTHER than him that's the reason he has no friends and can't get a date. Or, worst of all... they could end up like my parents, who, with no real friends, and very little interaction with the rest of the family, became more and more sick and twisted in their thinking, thus forcing me to live under conditions that were farther and farther from the norm, not to mention the acceptable; my mother's sister has told me several times that the greatest regret of her life is that she wasn't around when I was growing up, because it's clear through hindsight that my parents DESPERATELY needed another adult to be involved in their lives day to day, one who could have made an issue of it whenever they were being unfair or unreasonable, or just plain psycho.
If you think you're suffering from lack of feedback, there's no way around it; you have to force yourself to interact with people and learn consciously what's right and wrong by watching what they do and how they respond to you. If you know someone who's like this, find a way to tell them... and offer to help them learn, by being honest (but kind!!) with them about what's "off" about them, and even offering to roleplay with them to allow them to practice socializing. And, if you're a parent, and there aren't any adults who are around you and your kids, seeing how you're raising them, the sorts of rules and standards you impose, etc... no matter how great a job you THINK you're doing, or how high your kids' grades are, or how clean they keep their rooms... find some other parents to network with, just to be sure. AND, if your kids don't seem to be social successes, and they seem to be lonely rather than lonERS... you know what to do.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Doctors, GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
I called the friend I mentioned in yesterday's post, meaning to start prompting her about her health, only to find out, to my intense dismay, that her sweet elderly mother (who recently arrived there for a long visit) was suffering from a headache so bad that she could barely move... and it turns out that she's been having several such headaches a day on and off for MONTHS. Concerned, I asked what the doctor had said, and was disgusted to learn that, although they'd put her through all sorts of tests, including an MRI, they had no idea what the headaches were or what to do about them. Unwilling to accept that this was something unknowable and thus untreatable, I asked my friend to describe the headache episodes; she said that her mother would be fine one minute, and then suddenly be slammed back in her chair from a stabbing pain. I asked if her mother had reported this pain to be on one side of her face, particularly behind the eye; puzzled but playing along, my friend asked her mother and reported back that yes, that was where the pain came, and how had I guessed that? Fighting mounting rage at how the doctors had missed something so basic, I told my friend that what her mother had were cluster headaches... and of course, this possibility had never even been MENTIONED to her mother.
I brought up some info on WebMD about cluster headaches and read it to my friend, who translated for her mother (who understands very little English); any doubts that any of us might have had were eliminated as her mother confirmed that everything discussed applied to her. My friend kept breaking in to thank me over and over for pointing this out to her, so that her poor mother would FINALLY be able to get treated, and her mother expressed her relief also; she's very stoic, but she has been really miserable and hadn't had any hope of relief. I emailed my friend the URL's of the articles I'd found, and told her to print them out and take them to the doctor, so that they didn't get flustered and not communicate clearly; more than enough time has already gone by without the proper treatment being given, and I don't want there to be ANY chance of the doctor not seeing what was going on. My friend said she'd call around and find a doctor to take her mother to tomorrow, and that she'd keep me posted on how things go... let's hope that whoever they take her to knows how to treat the headaches without having to read the WebMD printouts, sigh.
Every time I talk to someone that has a "mystery ailment" that doctors have failed to diagnose that *I* can diagnose in a couple of minutes (and yes, I'm always proven right), it makes my blood boil. We put our trust in doctors, we literally put our lives in their hands, and you can hardly pick up a magazine or turn on the TV without hearing a story about how some poor sick person went through a dozen doctors without getting diagnosed or properly treated... and, when the person is a woman, there's usually going to be some prescriptions for tranquilizers in there from arrogant male doctors who like to save time by assuming that any female complaint that doesn't come along with an arm cut off or other glaring physical problem MUST be their favorite catchall ailment, "female hysteria."
I can see a doctor not being able to hold every rare ailment in their memory, and maybe not being able to read about EVERY new medication or treatment, but American doctors are consistently missing even the most basic diagnoses, and clinging to outdated treatments and less-effective, sometimes potentially dangerous drugs rather than taking the time to make sure that they're doing the best they can for their patients... and with every doctor having computer access, there's absolutely NO excuse for them to not be able to do at least as well at research as *I* do.
If you or someone you love has an illness that either hasn't been diagnosed, or whose diagnosis has led to a treatment that's ineffective, or to NO treatment, go to WebMD and do a search for the major symptoms; do NOT trust the medical community to be doing right by you.
I brought up some info on WebMD about cluster headaches and read it to my friend, who translated for her mother (who understands very little English); any doubts that any of us might have had were eliminated as her mother confirmed that everything discussed applied to her. My friend kept breaking in to thank me over and over for pointing this out to her, so that her poor mother would FINALLY be able to get treated, and her mother expressed her relief also; she's very stoic, but she has been really miserable and hadn't had any hope of relief. I emailed my friend the URL's of the articles I'd found, and told her to print them out and take them to the doctor, so that they didn't get flustered and not communicate clearly; more than enough time has already gone by without the proper treatment being given, and I don't want there to be ANY chance of the doctor not seeing what was going on. My friend said she'd call around and find a doctor to take her mother to tomorrow, and that she'd keep me posted on how things go... let's hope that whoever they take her to knows how to treat the headaches without having to read the WebMD printouts, sigh.
Every time I talk to someone that has a "mystery ailment" that doctors have failed to diagnose that *I* can diagnose in a couple of minutes (and yes, I'm always proven right), it makes my blood boil. We put our trust in doctors, we literally put our lives in their hands, and you can hardly pick up a magazine or turn on the TV without hearing a story about how some poor sick person went through a dozen doctors without getting diagnosed or properly treated... and, when the person is a woman, there's usually going to be some prescriptions for tranquilizers in there from arrogant male doctors who like to save time by assuming that any female complaint that doesn't come along with an arm cut off or other glaring physical problem MUST be their favorite catchall ailment, "female hysteria."
I can see a doctor not being able to hold every rare ailment in their memory, and maybe not being able to read about EVERY new medication or treatment, but American doctors are consistently missing even the most basic diagnoses, and clinging to outdated treatments and less-effective, sometimes potentially dangerous drugs rather than taking the time to make sure that they're doing the best they can for their patients... and with every doctor having computer access, there's absolutely NO excuse for them to not be able to do at least as well at research as *I* do.
If you or someone you love has an illness that either hasn't been diagnosed, or whose diagnosis has led to a treatment that's ineffective, or to NO treatment, go to WebMD and do a search for the major symptoms; do NOT trust the medical community to be doing right by you.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
A friend's birthday
A friend of mine has a birthday coming up soon, and, with the preparations starting to be made, it prompted me to take a look at her and her life... and it sorta scares me.
When I met her about 15 years ago, she was fairly slim; then, she married a moron, decided that she had to eat as much as he did even though he was a big man (don't ask me why, she just came up with that out of the blue), and, as you might expect, ballooned up to VERY overweight in the year they were together. She exercised and lost a decent amount of weight after he left her, and maintained that long enough to get a new man; then, she started gaining it back, in large part because she stopped exercising... and then they got married, and she started gaining faster... and then she started taking some of those diet pills that eventually got pulled for causing heart attacks, on which she lost weight only to regain it once she was off the pills because she wasn't exercising or eating right. THEN, she had a kid, and the woman who had a trim, lovely figure 15 years ago is now a virtual BALL, with no muscle tone and who knows what sorts of nutritional deficiencies from her poor eating habits and refusal to take vitamins; with a career and an active toddler to care for, she declares herself unable to exercise or eat right, EVER, with no end in sight. She's in her late 30's now, and already has to take medication for high blood pressure; she has diabetes, thyroid disease (which she's already had problems with) and heart trouble in her family... what's her health prognosis? How could she let herself turn into a health crisis looking for a place to happen? This is an intelligent, college-educated woman, who's read all the same articles on health and nutrition that I have throughout the years; what's made her so careless about her health?
I know, it's easy to be in denial about this sort of thing, until that first heart attack or whatever gives the wakeup call... but she's let herself go in the areas that women usually care about, too. She's the only woman past 30 I've ever met who uses NO moisturizer on her face; she airily informed me that yeah, her skin was dry, but she scrubbed off the FLAKES in the shower and that was good enough. Between this, and her utter contempt for sunscreen (which leaves her burning her face badly at least once per summer, despite all the warnings about skin cancer), her skin is rough and coarse, and deeply lined FAR in excess of her age; I'm afraid that she's going to take a good look one day, freak out, and the next thing I know she'll be getting lifted and peeled and who knows what, at great risk, to try to make up for years and years of neglect.
She's also prematurely graying, and has gotten more and more careless about touching it up; she used to care about that, about not looking like an old woman, and now it's as if she can't be bothered... as if she still sees the same young woman she used to be when she looks in the mirror, not the woman who looks a decade older than she is. Granted, how her hair (or face) looks is trivial compared to the risks she's taking with her health, but it seems to be part of an overall attitude of "so what?" about her physical self, as if, once she got married and it turned out to be "for real" (as opposed to the earlier one that was a thankfully short-lived mistake), she could treat her body any old way and it wouldn't matter.
And it gets even worse; her finances are a wreck, too. Although she and her husband make good $, because they bought a ridiculously large house with a gigantic mortgage, always have payments on 2 expensive cars because they give a car up for a newer model as soon as it's paid for, or even before, and they're always "treating themselves" to trips, they sometimes don't have $ for essentials; how can a couple that earns into the 6 figures between them run out of $ for FOOD, or to buy things for their child? Needless to say, they aren't saving one penny towards retirement, or their kid's college education, or even for emergencies, like if one of them loses their job; they're one missed paycheck away from hunger and homelessness. They have such a mountain of debt that, unless they win the lottery, they'll NEVER get out from under; they'll hit retirement with debt and social security checks.
The sad thing of it is, none of these problems are uncommon in America today; most Americans are careless with their health, are overweight, and have disastrous finances... it's just so freaky that someone close to me, who was a kid hanging out at heavy metal shows with me, and who KNOWS better, has become one of the sort of people that dismayed articles are written about, you know the type, "Americans Getting Fatter Every Year," "Americans Don't Exercise," "Americans Don't Get Proper Nutrition," "Americans Abuse Credit"... if I'd been a little less fanatical, a little less anal, about these sorts of things, once I got married, would *I* have gotten lazy and careless and ended up like her?
I've sat here staring at the screen, feeling bad, for half an hour, and I've decided that I'm going to give her an added gift for her birthday; I'm going to try to get her to change some little piece of this... her health is probably the safest one to go for. Her father died of heart disease, and I'm going to talk to her about how easily she could end up like him if she doesn't exercise and eat better; she'll resist, but as her friend I HAVE to be willing to face her with the hard truths. I don't want to be crying at her funeral in 10 years, wishing I'd tried to help while I had the chance; I'm going to try to help her NOW.
Is there anyone in YOUR life who sounds like my friend? If so, make it a belated new year's resolution to try to encourage them to start making things better; they may get cranky with you, but the good karma will make it worthwhile.
When I met her about 15 years ago, she was fairly slim; then, she married a moron, decided that she had to eat as much as he did even though he was a big man (don't ask me why, she just came up with that out of the blue), and, as you might expect, ballooned up to VERY overweight in the year they were together. She exercised and lost a decent amount of weight after he left her, and maintained that long enough to get a new man; then, she started gaining it back, in large part because she stopped exercising... and then they got married, and she started gaining faster... and then she started taking some of those diet pills that eventually got pulled for causing heart attacks, on which she lost weight only to regain it once she was off the pills because she wasn't exercising or eating right. THEN, she had a kid, and the woman who had a trim, lovely figure 15 years ago is now a virtual BALL, with no muscle tone and who knows what sorts of nutritional deficiencies from her poor eating habits and refusal to take vitamins; with a career and an active toddler to care for, she declares herself unable to exercise or eat right, EVER, with no end in sight. She's in her late 30's now, and already has to take medication for high blood pressure; she has diabetes, thyroid disease (which she's already had problems with) and heart trouble in her family... what's her health prognosis? How could she let herself turn into a health crisis looking for a place to happen? This is an intelligent, college-educated woman, who's read all the same articles on health and nutrition that I have throughout the years; what's made her so careless about her health?
I know, it's easy to be in denial about this sort of thing, until that first heart attack or whatever gives the wakeup call... but she's let herself go in the areas that women usually care about, too. She's the only woman past 30 I've ever met who uses NO moisturizer on her face; she airily informed me that yeah, her skin was dry, but she scrubbed off the FLAKES in the shower and that was good enough. Between this, and her utter contempt for sunscreen (which leaves her burning her face badly at least once per summer, despite all the warnings about skin cancer), her skin is rough and coarse, and deeply lined FAR in excess of her age; I'm afraid that she's going to take a good look one day, freak out, and the next thing I know she'll be getting lifted and peeled and who knows what, at great risk, to try to make up for years and years of neglect.
She's also prematurely graying, and has gotten more and more careless about touching it up; she used to care about that, about not looking like an old woman, and now it's as if she can't be bothered... as if she still sees the same young woman she used to be when she looks in the mirror, not the woman who looks a decade older than she is. Granted, how her hair (or face) looks is trivial compared to the risks she's taking with her health, but it seems to be part of an overall attitude of "so what?" about her physical self, as if, once she got married and it turned out to be "for real" (as opposed to the earlier one that was a thankfully short-lived mistake), she could treat her body any old way and it wouldn't matter.
And it gets even worse; her finances are a wreck, too. Although she and her husband make good $, because they bought a ridiculously large house with a gigantic mortgage, always have payments on 2 expensive cars because they give a car up for a newer model as soon as it's paid for, or even before, and they're always "treating themselves" to trips, they sometimes don't have $ for essentials; how can a couple that earns into the 6 figures between them run out of $ for FOOD, or to buy things for their child? Needless to say, they aren't saving one penny towards retirement, or their kid's college education, or even for emergencies, like if one of them loses their job; they're one missed paycheck away from hunger and homelessness. They have such a mountain of debt that, unless they win the lottery, they'll NEVER get out from under; they'll hit retirement with debt and social security checks.
The sad thing of it is, none of these problems are uncommon in America today; most Americans are careless with their health, are overweight, and have disastrous finances... it's just so freaky that someone close to me, who was a kid hanging out at heavy metal shows with me, and who KNOWS better, has become one of the sort of people that dismayed articles are written about, you know the type, "Americans Getting Fatter Every Year," "Americans Don't Exercise," "Americans Don't Get Proper Nutrition," "Americans Abuse Credit"... if I'd been a little less fanatical, a little less anal, about these sorts of things, once I got married, would *I* have gotten lazy and careless and ended up like her?
I've sat here staring at the screen, feeling bad, for half an hour, and I've decided that I'm going to give her an added gift for her birthday; I'm going to try to get her to change some little piece of this... her health is probably the safest one to go for. Her father died of heart disease, and I'm going to talk to her about how easily she could end up like him if she doesn't exercise and eat better; she'll resist, but as her friend I HAVE to be willing to face her with the hard truths. I don't want to be crying at her funeral in 10 years, wishing I'd tried to help while I had the chance; I'm going to try to help her NOW.
Is there anyone in YOUR life who sounds like my friend? If so, make it a belated new year's resolution to try to encourage them to start making things better; they may get cranky with you, but the good karma will make it worthwhile.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Bad behavior online
One of the people I contacted the first day of the year turned out to have bought into some pitiful conspiracy theories; as is usually the case with this sort of deluded person, he wanted to suck ME into his fantasy world, and the 1st thing he told me, as "proof" of his nonsense, was that a certain sort of journalism course was no longer being taught at ANY accredited college in this country, in order, supposedly, to keep people from learning how to do research... I did a search, and, as you might expect, in a few seconds I had proof that MANY colleges were offering that exact sort of class, including big ones like Harvard and Yale. I pointed this out to my friend, and his response was that he'd specified that no ACCREDITED college was offering these classes; MY response was that these colleges WERE accredited, and why had he ignored the reference to Yale and Harvard, which he knew perfectly well ARE accredited? This man, who had been writing me at least once a day and gushing about how happy he was to be talking to me again, has not written to me since; does he think that by not deigning to reply, that somehow negated the fact that I'd disproven the core of his conspiracy idea, or is he just too embarrassed to contact me again? I may never know; either way, it's pretty darned rude of him to just vanish like that.
Remember the "irritating emailer," who I ranted about on 12-3-04? He behaved badly enough on the forum we were both on that he had to leave; as too may clueless people do, he put up a bunch of weird, unpleasant posts to get attention, and then, when people responded in the normal human way, he pronounced himself the victim and all of them bad people... sigh. He made an issue to me about how people needed to BE friends to earn the friendship of others, and, with no further risk existing of him causing me problems on the forum, I told him that yes, it WAS important to BE a friend to earn friendship... and that HE needed to learn that more than anyone on that forum, because he'd been inundating me with endless emails full of paragraphs of details about his woodworking projects, although I'd made it clear that I know nothing about tools and such, with the rest being an endless wah-wah-wah about his self-created problems... and no hint of interest about ME, my thoughts, my feelings, my LIFE, and that this was the OPPOSITE of treating someone like a friend. I declared my unwillingness to continue being his wailing wall unless he started showing evidence of wanting to actually form a friendship with me... and HE hasn't written me ever again either, lol; I don't know if HE was too embarrassed, too, or if he's told himself that I'm another one of the terrible people in the world who won't engage in one-way emotional exchanges with him... at least I'm finally RID OF HIM, and of his UNfriendly emails!!
Then, on the forum we'd met on, a newbie engaged in classic troublemaker behavior; she churned out a bunch of posts, insulting people left and right, and then, when folks started responding, and FAR more politely than she deserved, she went crazy, posting all over the forum that she was being attacked, victimized and threatened, that she was being singled out and persecuted, and that, and these are 2 VERY clear signs of a troublemaker, (1) she had been made so ill by the horrible treatment she'd received that she'd had to start taking medication, and (2) she "knew the law" and would take legal action against the forum if people didn't stop disagreeing with her and protesting her many nasty comments. As always, people who'd SEEN the entire hooraw and SHOULD have known better started apologizing to her and trying to make her feel better... BUT, some people DID, miraculously, stick to their guns and keep reminding her that SHE had started it, that HER behavior had been insulting and offensive from her first post, and that SHE therefore was the one at fault and had nothing to complain about. WOOHOO!! After half a decade online, I see a glimmer of hope that people are catching a clue!! :-)
Remember the "irritating emailer," who I ranted about on 12-3-04? He behaved badly enough on the forum we were both on that he had to leave; as too may clueless people do, he put up a bunch of weird, unpleasant posts to get attention, and then, when people responded in the normal human way, he pronounced himself the victim and all of them bad people... sigh. He made an issue to me about how people needed to BE friends to earn the friendship of others, and, with no further risk existing of him causing me problems on the forum, I told him that yes, it WAS important to BE a friend to earn friendship... and that HE needed to learn that more than anyone on that forum, because he'd been inundating me with endless emails full of paragraphs of details about his woodworking projects, although I'd made it clear that I know nothing about tools and such, with the rest being an endless wah-wah-wah about his self-created problems... and no hint of interest about ME, my thoughts, my feelings, my LIFE, and that this was the OPPOSITE of treating someone like a friend. I declared my unwillingness to continue being his wailing wall unless he started showing evidence of wanting to actually form a friendship with me... and HE hasn't written me ever again either, lol; I don't know if HE was too embarrassed, too, or if he's told himself that I'm another one of the terrible people in the world who won't engage in one-way emotional exchanges with him... at least I'm finally RID OF HIM, and of his UNfriendly emails!!
Then, on the forum we'd met on, a newbie engaged in classic troublemaker behavior; she churned out a bunch of posts, insulting people left and right, and then, when folks started responding, and FAR more politely than she deserved, she went crazy, posting all over the forum that she was being attacked, victimized and threatened, that she was being singled out and persecuted, and that, and these are 2 VERY clear signs of a troublemaker, (1) she had been made so ill by the horrible treatment she'd received that she'd had to start taking medication, and (2) she "knew the law" and would take legal action against the forum if people didn't stop disagreeing with her and protesting her many nasty comments. As always, people who'd SEEN the entire hooraw and SHOULD have known better started apologizing to her and trying to make her feel better... BUT, some people DID, miraculously, stick to their guns and keep reminding her that SHE had started it, that HER behavior had been insulting and offensive from her first post, and that SHE therefore was the one at fault and had nothing to complain about. WOOHOO!! After half a decade online, I see a glimmer of hope that people are catching a clue!! :-)
Monday, January 10, 2005
The tragic misuse of " 's"
If you're writing about more than one cat, what word do you use? If you said "cat's".......... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!
When did we as Americans forget how to do a simple plural? Why have we collectively decided to add an " ' " before every "s" when we make a plural, as if adding that extra character somehow gave us added benefit? This is NOT an alternate spelling, it's WRONG, plain and simple, and it drives me CRAZY... especially since I've seen it so often now that I sometimes automatically pluralize with " 's" even though I know better-I HOPE I catch them all in the editing phase of posting, sigh.
In case I'm not being clear, when we're taking about more than one dog:
dogs = right
dog's = WRONG
The " 's" ending IS valid for its actual, proper usage; showing possession. Thus, if we're talking about a ball belonging to a dog, we'd say "the dog's ball." Where's the confusion here? Why is it so difficult to tell that from making a plural?
The passion for putting " 's" instead of "s" has gotten to the point of screwing up VERBS, too; I've seen many verbs corrupted to, for example, "want's" instead of the correct "wants," and, most horrifically of all, "go's" instead of "goes" and "no's" instead of "knows." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The one area where things are a little iffy is when pluralizing "initial words"; is it "DVDs" or "DVD's"? The highest authority on this is generally held to be the Chicago Manual of Style, and they said:
"And while it is true that, following paragraph 7.16, we would add an apostrophe to form the plurals of abbreviations having more than one period, resulting in G.I.'s, we prefer GI, the plural of which is written GIs, no apostrophe."
which I found here:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.Plurals.html
So, the plural is formed differently depending on whether or not you put the periods after each letter? This seems silly to me; I was taught to use " 's" with "initial words," which in those days we were ALWAYS supposed to use the periods with, and just because it's become common usage to NOT use the periods any more, I see no reason to alter that, especially as just about everyone does it too... it just looks WRONG to have initials with a lowercase "s" tacked on the end.
I know this isn't the biggest issue with online posting, as there are countless people who spell so badly that you're not even sure what they're saying half the time (you know it's gotten bad when you see perfect spelling and automatically assume the writer is a NON-native speaker of English), not to mention the "hip" way young people use creative spellings and abbreviations for everything such that you don't know what THEY'RE saying either, but... it's gotten so bad that I had to edit several words in this very post that *I* had blindly typed in wrong, and I do NOT want my subconscious confused about something this simple. If YOU'VE been using " 's" to pluralize, please, please, STOP!!
When did we as Americans forget how to do a simple plural? Why have we collectively decided to add an " ' " before every "s" when we make a plural, as if adding that extra character somehow gave us added benefit? This is NOT an alternate spelling, it's WRONG, plain and simple, and it drives me CRAZY... especially since I've seen it so often now that I sometimes automatically pluralize with " 's" even though I know better-I HOPE I catch them all in the editing phase of posting, sigh.
In case I'm not being clear, when we're taking about more than one dog:
dogs = right
dog's = WRONG
The " 's" ending IS valid for its actual, proper usage; showing possession. Thus, if we're talking about a ball belonging to a dog, we'd say "the dog's ball." Where's the confusion here? Why is it so difficult to tell that from making a plural?
The passion for putting " 's" instead of "s" has gotten to the point of screwing up VERBS, too; I've seen many verbs corrupted to, for example, "want's" instead of the correct "wants," and, most horrifically of all, "go's" instead of "goes" and "no's" instead of "knows." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The one area where things are a little iffy is when pluralizing "initial words"; is it "DVDs" or "DVD's"? The highest authority on this is generally held to be the Chicago Manual of Style, and they said:
"And while it is true that, following paragraph 7.16, we would add an apostrophe to form the plurals of abbreviations having more than one period, resulting in G.I.'s, we prefer GI, the plural of which is written GIs, no apostrophe."
which I found here:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.Plurals.html
So, the plural is formed differently depending on whether or not you put the periods after each letter? This seems silly to me; I was taught to use " 's" with "initial words," which in those days we were ALWAYS supposed to use the periods with, and just because it's become common usage to NOT use the periods any more, I see no reason to alter that, especially as just about everyone does it too... it just looks WRONG to have initials with a lowercase "s" tacked on the end.
I know this isn't the biggest issue with online posting, as there are countless people who spell so badly that you're not even sure what they're saying half the time (you know it's gotten bad when you see perfect spelling and automatically assume the writer is a NON-native speaker of English), not to mention the "hip" way young people use creative spellings and abbreviations for everything such that you don't know what THEY'RE saying either, but... it's gotten so bad that I had to edit several words in this very post that *I* had blindly typed in wrong, and I do NOT want my subconscious confused about something this simple. If YOU'VE been using " 's" to pluralize, please, please, STOP!!
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Becoming a mystic
There are a slew of things that are commonly done among the deeply spiritual folks of many faiths to achieve greater spiritual wisdom, and, since my ultimate goal is to reach the highest level of understanding, I figured I'd give this stuff some thought and see what I can work on:
1) Using mind-altering substances; this is standard among the so-called "primitive" peoples, and in some Native American "nations," but, as much as I respect their greater spiritual grasp, my guess is that these things bring on hallucinations rather than actual spiritual insights... either way, though, I'm not willing to try them-I won't even drink alcohol or coffee.
2) Fasting; I've been hungry to one degree or another for over 20 YEARS, I've been so hungry that I've been virtually paralyzed by it, and I've never achieved an altered state... which is a bummer, because I'm good at fasting.
3) Meditation; I'm pretty good at this one, too-2 minutes and I'm half asleep... which is great if you're meditating to relax, but useless if you're trying to achieve higher consciousness.
4) Celibacy; I'm married, so, er... ;-)
5) Prayer; I don't have anyone to pray TO.
6) Transcendence through intense suffering; I've seen this one so many times, and I always have a visceral reaction to it, to the way it truly does seem to send people to a different place, mentally and perhaps spiritually... I wish that I could do it, but I'm trapped by the pitiful fear of pain that permeates American culture. If I'd been born 10 years or so later, and to parents who saw me as a unique individual who should be allowed some self-expression rather than as a prisoner, I might have gotten into piercing and tattoos, and then been able to make the leap to, say, suspending from hooks, but I'm guessing that that sort of thing will forever be beyond me; at the rate my bursitis is worsening, I may end up testing this one out involuntarily, but that's about it.
7) Sleep deprivation; another one I'm good at... but it makes me psycho, not more spiritually insightful.
8) Giving up worldly possessions; on the one hand, I'm not as hooked on "stuff" as most people... I've had the same car for 2 decades even though I could have a new one at any time, I wear thrift store clothes even though I can afford designer versions, I only wear ONE pair of shoes, I don't own a cell phone, MP3 player, or any other gadgets; I sound practically un-American, huh, lol? However, I didn't have many toys as a kid, and what little I had was pretty crummy, so now I have a bunch of 'em (mostly collectable-type things, although I DO have some that I "play" with), and won't give 'em up no matter what.
9) Living in poverty; been there, done that.
10) Spending great amounts of time totally alone; ditto.
Sigh... it just doesn't seem like I'm cut out for this mystic thing, does it? Still, I'm stuck with it, so I'll just keep plodding along... and hope that karma will send me a way to accelerate the process.
1) Using mind-altering substances; this is standard among the so-called "primitive" peoples, and in some Native American "nations," but, as much as I respect their greater spiritual grasp, my guess is that these things bring on hallucinations rather than actual spiritual insights... either way, though, I'm not willing to try them-I won't even drink alcohol or coffee.
2) Fasting; I've been hungry to one degree or another for over 20 YEARS, I've been so hungry that I've been virtually paralyzed by it, and I've never achieved an altered state... which is a bummer, because I'm good at fasting.
3) Meditation; I'm pretty good at this one, too-2 minutes and I'm half asleep... which is great if you're meditating to relax, but useless if you're trying to achieve higher consciousness.
4) Celibacy; I'm married, so, er... ;-)
5) Prayer; I don't have anyone to pray TO.
6) Transcendence through intense suffering; I've seen this one so many times, and I always have a visceral reaction to it, to the way it truly does seem to send people to a different place, mentally and perhaps spiritually... I wish that I could do it, but I'm trapped by the pitiful fear of pain that permeates American culture. If I'd been born 10 years or so later, and to parents who saw me as a unique individual who should be allowed some self-expression rather than as a prisoner, I might have gotten into piercing and tattoos, and then been able to make the leap to, say, suspending from hooks, but I'm guessing that that sort of thing will forever be beyond me; at the rate my bursitis is worsening, I may end up testing this one out involuntarily, but that's about it.
7) Sleep deprivation; another one I'm good at... but it makes me psycho, not more spiritually insightful.
8) Giving up worldly possessions; on the one hand, I'm not as hooked on "stuff" as most people... I've had the same car for 2 decades even though I could have a new one at any time, I wear thrift store clothes even though I can afford designer versions, I only wear ONE pair of shoes, I don't own a cell phone, MP3 player, or any other gadgets; I sound practically un-American, huh, lol? However, I didn't have many toys as a kid, and what little I had was pretty crummy, so now I have a bunch of 'em (mostly collectable-type things, although I DO have some that I "play" with), and won't give 'em up no matter what.
9) Living in poverty; been there, done that.
10) Spending great amounts of time totally alone; ditto.
Sigh... it just doesn't seem like I'm cut out for this mystic thing, does it? Still, I'm stuck with it, so I'll just keep plodding along... and hope that karma will send me a way to accelerate the process.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Romance=insanity?
It's probably too soon to have an equal sign in a title again, but oh well. ;-)
Have you noticed that some people feel that first rush of romance and lose their MINDS? They don't even know each other's last names yet, and they're giving each other keys to their houses, the passwords to their email and voice mail accounts, and free access to everything they own. My HUSBAND doesn't have keys to my car, any of my passwords, or permission to touch any of my stuff, so when I hear how nuts some people get it just makes ME nuts.
No matter how much you think you "love" your new honey, and how well you consequently feel like you know them, they're in reality virtual strangers, and why would you let a stranger have keys to your HOUSE?!! They could copy the keys, and, after you break up (which you almost certainly will), they could rob you, sell the keys to someone else who'll then rob you (or worse), they could sneak in and hide drugs or stolen goods on your premises... why would ANYONE take that sort of risk?
And the idea of letting someone use your car, or borrow your laptop, or be alone in the house when they know where your valuables are, is nearly as bad; you wouldn't normally let someone you've known mere days have that sort of access, and just because you're hot for them shouldn't change that.
The one that freaks me out the most, though, is this business of handing out passwords as "proof of love and trust"; with the exception of those very few with hard-core morals, NO ONE should be trusted with passwords, because the temptation to use them becomes overwhelming, especially when the relationship gets rocky. Scarily, some people ALLOW their love interests to read their emails and listen to their voice messages, as further proof of... utter lunacy, as far as I'm concerned. It's insanely easy for them to find out something that, although harmless, is going to make them upset, or suspicious, or that'll come back to haunt you later, but people are inexplicably unable to internalize that normal friendships between members of the same gender contain elements that are dismaying to the opposite gender, and that that sort of thing should thus be kept private from one's romantic partner... and that the possible interactions between friends of OPPOSITE genders that might alarm a romantic partner are endless, and thus even more "dangerous." Furthermore, your friends generally assume that what they tell you is only being heard/seen by YOU, and not your partner, so it's bad form to give said partner a way to get to that stuff. And haven't we all heard horror stories of when relationships break up, and the breaker doesn't change all their passwords in time to prevent the breakee from wreaking havoc?
The relevant word here is: BOUNDARIES. I don't care how close you THINK you are to your love interest, there's no need to give up all of your privacy, not to mention SAFETY, to them... and no valid reason for them to want you to, no matter WHAT they try to tell you, so just say NO to giving out an all-access pass into your life. Oh, and keep the bathroom door closed, too; leave a little mystery, PLEASE.
Have you noticed that some people feel that first rush of romance and lose their MINDS? They don't even know each other's last names yet, and they're giving each other keys to their houses, the passwords to their email and voice mail accounts, and free access to everything they own. My HUSBAND doesn't have keys to my car, any of my passwords, or permission to touch any of my stuff, so when I hear how nuts some people get it just makes ME nuts.
No matter how much you think you "love" your new honey, and how well you consequently feel like you know them, they're in reality virtual strangers, and why would you let a stranger have keys to your HOUSE?!! They could copy the keys, and, after you break up (which you almost certainly will), they could rob you, sell the keys to someone else who'll then rob you (or worse), they could sneak in and hide drugs or stolen goods on your premises... why would ANYONE take that sort of risk?
And the idea of letting someone use your car, or borrow your laptop, or be alone in the house when they know where your valuables are, is nearly as bad; you wouldn't normally let someone you've known mere days have that sort of access, and just because you're hot for them shouldn't change that.
The one that freaks me out the most, though, is this business of handing out passwords as "proof of love and trust"; with the exception of those very few with hard-core morals, NO ONE should be trusted with passwords, because the temptation to use them becomes overwhelming, especially when the relationship gets rocky. Scarily, some people ALLOW their love interests to read their emails and listen to their voice messages, as further proof of... utter lunacy, as far as I'm concerned. It's insanely easy for them to find out something that, although harmless, is going to make them upset, or suspicious, or that'll come back to haunt you later, but people are inexplicably unable to internalize that normal friendships between members of the same gender contain elements that are dismaying to the opposite gender, and that that sort of thing should thus be kept private from one's romantic partner... and that the possible interactions between friends of OPPOSITE genders that might alarm a romantic partner are endless, and thus even more "dangerous." Furthermore, your friends generally assume that what they tell you is only being heard/seen by YOU, and not your partner, so it's bad form to give said partner a way to get to that stuff. And haven't we all heard horror stories of when relationships break up, and the breaker doesn't change all their passwords in time to prevent the breakee from wreaking havoc?
The relevant word here is: BOUNDARIES. I don't care how close you THINK you are to your love interest, there's no need to give up all of your privacy, not to mention SAFETY, to them... and no valid reason for them to want you to, no matter WHAT they try to tell you, so just say NO to giving out an all-access pass into your life. Oh, and keep the bathroom door closed, too; leave a little mystery, PLEASE.
Friday, January 07, 2005
Home archaeology
A few days ago, a friend of mine called and announced her intention to come over on Sunday so that we can do our belated Christmas gift exchange, go shopping and go to dinner; this is in general a wonderful thing, but there's a catch... we haven't had anyone over to our house in MONTHS. This wouldn't be an issue in a normal household, but my husband is the worst slob in the history of the world, and I long ago accepted that it's impossible to get him to clean anything up if no one's coming over, and that it's beyond my ability to pick up as fast as he can make messes, aside from my not being a slave and not having signed on to be his maid... so our house has, not just a mess, but layer upon layer of mess in every room and on every surface. Oscar Madison would cringe in envy, trust me.
Needless to say, I can't have anyone come over and not have a place to sit, a bare patch of carpet to walk on, or anywhere they can look without wincing in disgust, nor is there any chance of my adopting my husband's brilliant plan of trying to fast-talk people into meeting somewhere so that no one EVER comes into our home again, as if they'd never notice they weren't being invited to our house anymore, or that we could no longer sit and talk privately (he seriously thinks that's a valid option, what PLANET is he from?!!), so there's only one thing to do; we have to invest the 20 or so person-hours necessary to make the place habitable by people other than us, and I WISH that was a hyperbole.
For the first time in recorded history, my husband is willing to start this arduous process BEFORE the day before the intended visit, so our little archaeology project is well underway; layer after layer of my husband's periodicals, food containers, reeking clothes, tools, and anonymous hunks of equipment are being revealed. There's a limit to how much I can help, as he gets hysterical if I move his stuff, but I'll gather up the trash as long as it's not fungus-encrusted, and in a pinch I'll break out the hazmat gear and tongs and pick up some of his moldering laundry and toss it on the waist-high heap in the study; mostly, though, I have the unenviable task of monitoring a man with an attention span of 10 seconds, and the ultimate goal of sneaking back to his computer so he doesn't have to do anything until the last possible moment, and who, when he IS cleaning, leaves enough mess and dirt behind him that my friend would have to be here BLINDFOLDED to not see it all, and so has to be made to do everything at least twice... which means I have to catch all his lapses in time to get them corrected.
Most people have romantic fantasies about their partner; MY fantasy about my husband is that we could have a 2-part house, one of which would contain all his stuff, and the other part of which would have MY stuff and the "public rooms" that a guest expects to be able to see and use... with a big padlock on the connecting door. His area would be soundproof, so his noxious punk rock "music" wouldn't be audible, it would have a negative pressure system so that the SMELL couldn't get out, an intercom system that would blast my voice loud enough that he'd be able to hear it no matter what, electro-shock thingies on every surface so that I could zap him if necessary, or if I was just bored, and.................. sorry, got carried away there, lol.
Anyways, I hope we're not still cleaning, and screaming at each, other at 1AM, 2AM, 3AM, 4AM, and worse, Sunday morning, so that just ONCE I can have a friend over and have gotten more than a few hours of sleep. Wish me luck.
Needless to say, I can't have anyone come over and not have a place to sit, a bare patch of carpet to walk on, or anywhere they can look without wincing in disgust, nor is there any chance of my adopting my husband's brilliant plan of trying to fast-talk people into meeting somewhere so that no one EVER comes into our home again, as if they'd never notice they weren't being invited to our house anymore, or that we could no longer sit and talk privately (he seriously thinks that's a valid option, what PLANET is he from?!!), so there's only one thing to do; we have to invest the 20 or so person-hours necessary to make the place habitable by people other than us, and I WISH that was a hyperbole.
For the first time in recorded history, my husband is willing to start this arduous process BEFORE the day before the intended visit, so our little archaeology project is well underway; layer after layer of my husband's periodicals, food containers, reeking clothes, tools, and anonymous hunks of equipment are being revealed. There's a limit to how much I can help, as he gets hysterical if I move his stuff, but I'll gather up the trash as long as it's not fungus-encrusted, and in a pinch I'll break out the hazmat gear and tongs and pick up some of his moldering laundry and toss it on the waist-high heap in the study; mostly, though, I have the unenviable task of monitoring a man with an attention span of 10 seconds, and the ultimate goal of sneaking back to his computer so he doesn't have to do anything until the last possible moment, and who, when he IS cleaning, leaves enough mess and dirt behind him that my friend would have to be here BLINDFOLDED to not see it all, and so has to be made to do everything at least twice... which means I have to catch all his lapses in time to get them corrected.
Most people have romantic fantasies about their partner; MY fantasy about my husband is that we could have a 2-part house, one of which would contain all his stuff, and the other part of which would have MY stuff and the "public rooms" that a guest expects to be able to see and use... with a big padlock on the connecting door. His area would be soundproof, so his noxious punk rock "music" wouldn't be audible, it would have a negative pressure system so that the SMELL couldn't get out, an intercom system that would blast my voice loud enough that he'd be able to hear it no matter what, electro-shock thingies on every surface so that I could zap him if necessary, or if I was just bored, and.................. sorry, got carried away there, lol.
Anyways, I hope we're not still cleaning, and screaming at each, other at 1AM, 2AM, 3AM, 4AM, and worse, Sunday morning, so that just ONCE I can have a friend over and have gotten more than a few hours of sleep. Wish me luck.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
The fallout of racism
A disturbing memory has been on my mind today; my parents and I were in a rental car office in NYC about 25 years, standing by the counter, when I felt something thump against my leg. I looked down, and looking up at me, smiling proudly, was an African-American toddler, who, no doubt puzzled by the hideousness of my patterned polyester pants (my mother's warped idea of my being nicely dressed in those days, sigh), had taken a few faltering steps over to me to take a closer look, and saved her stumble until she was close enough to grab me. There should have been nothing memorable about this, but I glanced up to see where her family was, and I intercepted her parents looking at me... with FEAR. They took in my parents standing beyond me, exchanged a tense, anxious look, and I could read the thought that passed between them, "Oh no, she had to walk right into a white family!!"
They had no cause for worry, however; although my father is, to my everlasting disgust and dismay, a racist, even HE wouldn't object to any action by so tiny a child, and more to the point, *I* saw nothing wrong with her curiosity. I smiled down at her, at her open, trusting little face, and said, "Hello, sweetheart, did you walk all the way over here all by yourself?" I don't think she understood, but she was happy to be getting attention, and as my mother also made some comment to the child, I saw the fear drain out of the parents, and the situation became one of the millions of times a day that a child shows the social curiosity that used to be normal before we became "civilized."
This brief incident has haunted me all my life, because it hurts me to my very soul that those people were AFRAID, just because they were black and we were white; afraid that the harmless actions of their child might provoke some sort of belligerent response, perhaps even a threatening one. Where had they come from, that white faces seemed so scary to them? I cringe to contemplate what sort of treatment they'd endured from the racist dregs of humanity in their home town to react so strongly to a situation that objectively shouldn't have been a big deal.
I wonder about that little girl, with her beautiful face, lively dark eyes, and her hair in 3 tiny cornrows; did she grow up to see white people as dangerous, or were things less grim for black people in her town by the time she got old enough to form her attitudes? She'd be in her mid 20's now, a grown woman, perhaps with children of her own; if she bumped into me at a mall, and I turned around with a polite smile to make sure she was ok, would I see the same polite smile on her face, or would she look at me with suspicion, distrust... or hatred... or FEAR? I'd be willing to accept anything but fear, anything but the thought that that pretty child with the sunny smile has been so mistreated by white people that she's become a fearful woman like her mother was. I hope she's grown up strong and confident, able to achieve whatever she wants, no matter what racism (and sexism) she might encounter. I hope that if a child of hers should ever stumble into the midst of a family of ANY color, her only thought would be that everyone was going to tell her how beautiful her baby was... because that's how it SHOULD be.
They had no cause for worry, however; although my father is, to my everlasting disgust and dismay, a racist, even HE wouldn't object to any action by so tiny a child, and more to the point, *I* saw nothing wrong with her curiosity. I smiled down at her, at her open, trusting little face, and said, "Hello, sweetheart, did you walk all the way over here all by yourself?" I don't think she understood, but she was happy to be getting attention, and as my mother also made some comment to the child, I saw the fear drain out of the parents, and the situation became one of the millions of times a day that a child shows the social curiosity that used to be normal before we became "civilized."
This brief incident has haunted me all my life, because it hurts me to my very soul that those people were AFRAID, just because they were black and we were white; afraid that the harmless actions of their child might provoke some sort of belligerent response, perhaps even a threatening one. Where had they come from, that white faces seemed so scary to them? I cringe to contemplate what sort of treatment they'd endured from the racist dregs of humanity in their home town to react so strongly to a situation that objectively shouldn't have been a big deal.
I wonder about that little girl, with her beautiful face, lively dark eyes, and her hair in 3 tiny cornrows; did she grow up to see white people as dangerous, or were things less grim for black people in her town by the time she got old enough to form her attitudes? She'd be in her mid 20's now, a grown woman, perhaps with children of her own; if she bumped into me at a mall, and I turned around with a polite smile to make sure she was ok, would I see the same polite smile on her face, or would she look at me with suspicion, distrust... or hatred... or FEAR? I'd be willing to accept anything but fear, anything but the thought that that pretty child with the sunny smile has been so mistreated by white people that she's become a fearful woman like her mother was. I hope she's grown up strong and confident, able to achieve whatever she wants, no matter what racism (and sexism) she might encounter. I hope that if a child of hers should ever stumble into the midst of a family of ANY color, her only thought would be that everyone was going to tell her how beautiful her baby was... because that's how it SHOULD be.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Blame=shame
I chose that odd title because there are some people out there who should in fact be ashamed of how they apportion blame in certain situations:
1) A man goes out of his way to find someone to cheat on his woman with; when she finds out, she directs her rage at... the other woman, NOT at her man, who under any set of circumstances would have to deserve at least HALF of the blame, and in situations where the other woman didn't know he was part of a couple, deserves 100% of the blame.
2) In some cultures, if a woman is raped, SHE is seen as soiled for life, for the "crime" of being a victim, while no judgment is passed against the rapist; in America we used to have a similar mindset, that if a woman was raped she must have "asked for it," and thus that she was somehow the instigator and thus to blame.
3) The phenomenon of "shoot the messenger," wherein a person who bears no blame in a bad situation reports on it to people who are affected, and they direct their venom at the blameless one, as if merely delivering the news made them responsible for what happened. (This one is why you should REALLY hesitate before telling someone that they're being cheated on, because the person will forgive the cheater and hate YOU.)
4) A person gets mad at someone, and takes it out on a blameless friend or family member of the one they're mad at, as if blame could magically be transferred.
5) Someone is devastated by one of the so-called "mental" illnesses, and when their behaviors and attitudes become less socially acceptable as a result, ignorant people blame the person rather than the illness.
6) A man is at his bachelor party, and a stripper shows up; although he had nothing to do with her presence, the bride-to-be will still blame HIM, because he didn't cover his eyes and run from the room the moment the stripper walked in.
7) A parent makes a stupid mistake, and, if their child is within 100 yards at the time, they'll blame the child even if (s)he was doing nothing but standing silently by, as if their mere presence was so distracting as to overcome all adult competence, and that distraction was indicative of wrongdoing; my own parents were world champions at this one.
8) You try, with the best of intentions, to mediate between people who are squabbling, and they turn on a dime and are suddenly united against YOU, as if you were to blame for the fight; they forget what they were fighting about, and all they remember from then on is that YOU did some vague undefinable thing that upset them.
9) A bunch of kids have ganged up on one kid, and an adult shows up... and blames the victim. If the victim is lucky, the adult will blame ALL of the kids... but good luck ever having the blame placed exclusively on the attackers. I've seen the same thing over and over online, with flamewars, as if it were beyond the intellectual capacity of any forum administrator to read to the beginning of the fight and see who started it, or to grasp that when it's the many against the one, it's 99% certain that it was the many who attacked, NOT the one.
10) It was an example of this final one on an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" that started me thinking about this; some neighbors come to Ray's house to complain about his parents, and he's DEFENDING the parents as best he can, when the parents show up, find out what's going on, and blame... RAY. Worse, when he goes over to the parents' house the next day, they're laying out food for a get-together they've arranged with the complaining neighbors, with whom they've settled whatever differences they had... and are still mad at RAY. Leaping over the actual wrongdoers to heap blame on someone who was an innocent bystander, or was trying to fix things, because being family (or friend or partner) somehow means that just being there is supremely blameworthy... I'm sure if my parents saw that show, they'd be wishing for a time machine so that they could go back to my childhood and dump that one on ME, lol.
No matter what or how you feel when a bad thing occurs, it is never, EVER ok to fling blame around as if you didn't know better; take a moment to see who actually DESERVES blame, if anyone, and THEN lay blame... you don't want the bad karma that comes from blaming the innocent.
1) A man goes out of his way to find someone to cheat on his woman with; when she finds out, she directs her rage at... the other woman, NOT at her man, who under any set of circumstances would have to deserve at least HALF of the blame, and in situations where the other woman didn't know he was part of a couple, deserves 100% of the blame.
2) In some cultures, if a woman is raped, SHE is seen as soiled for life, for the "crime" of being a victim, while no judgment is passed against the rapist; in America we used to have a similar mindset, that if a woman was raped she must have "asked for it," and thus that she was somehow the instigator and thus to blame.
3) The phenomenon of "shoot the messenger," wherein a person who bears no blame in a bad situation reports on it to people who are affected, and they direct their venom at the blameless one, as if merely delivering the news made them responsible for what happened. (This one is why you should REALLY hesitate before telling someone that they're being cheated on, because the person will forgive the cheater and hate YOU.)
4) A person gets mad at someone, and takes it out on a blameless friend or family member of the one they're mad at, as if blame could magically be transferred.
5) Someone is devastated by one of the so-called "mental" illnesses, and when their behaviors and attitudes become less socially acceptable as a result, ignorant people blame the person rather than the illness.
6) A man is at his bachelor party, and a stripper shows up; although he had nothing to do with her presence, the bride-to-be will still blame HIM, because he didn't cover his eyes and run from the room the moment the stripper walked in.
7) A parent makes a stupid mistake, and, if their child is within 100 yards at the time, they'll blame the child even if (s)he was doing nothing but standing silently by, as if their mere presence was so distracting as to overcome all adult competence, and that distraction was indicative of wrongdoing; my own parents were world champions at this one.
8) You try, with the best of intentions, to mediate between people who are squabbling, and they turn on a dime and are suddenly united against YOU, as if you were to blame for the fight; they forget what they were fighting about, and all they remember from then on is that YOU did some vague undefinable thing that upset them.
9) A bunch of kids have ganged up on one kid, and an adult shows up... and blames the victim. If the victim is lucky, the adult will blame ALL of the kids... but good luck ever having the blame placed exclusively on the attackers. I've seen the same thing over and over online, with flamewars, as if it were beyond the intellectual capacity of any forum administrator to read to the beginning of the fight and see who started it, or to grasp that when it's the many against the one, it's 99% certain that it was the many who attacked, NOT the one.
10) It was an example of this final one on an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" that started me thinking about this; some neighbors come to Ray's house to complain about his parents, and he's DEFENDING the parents as best he can, when the parents show up, find out what's going on, and blame... RAY. Worse, when he goes over to the parents' house the next day, they're laying out food for a get-together they've arranged with the complaining neighbors, with whom they've settled whatever differences they had... and are still mad at RAY. Leaping over the actual wrongdoers to heap blame on someone who was an innocent bystander, or was trying to fix things, because being family (or friend or partner) somehow means that just being there is supremely blameworthy... I'm sure if my parents saw that show, they'd be wishing for a time machine so that they could go back to my childhood and dump that one on ME, lol.
No matter what or how you feel when a bad thing occurs, it is never, EVER ok to fling blame around as if you didn't know better; take a moment to see who actually DESERVES blame, if anyone, and THEN lay blame... you don't want the bad karma that comes from blaming the innocent.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Back to basics
If I'm going to make fresh spiritual progress this year, it might help if I took some time to ponder the foundations of my worldview; I figure, once one has found the meaning of life (which I posted on 12-29-04), one has gotten out to the farthest reaches, and that's when it's time to head back to the beginning. So:
1) Quantum physics shows us that the universe does NOT work the way we think it does:
a) Subatomic particles are constantly doing things that are simply impossible by the laws of nature as we understand them, such as popping into and out of existence, and staying connected somehow even when they're miles apart, such that changing the spin on one changes the spin of the other. These particles also act as if they can think; they behave like particles or waves depending on whether or not they're being observed (how do they KNOW?!!). These things show that some unknown force is at work, one that can't yet be detected.
b) Experiments in which effect comes BEFORE cause demonstrate that TIME doesn't work like we think it does, and in fact may not exist at all, at least not in any way we can currently understand; I see these experiments as proof that the future already exists, to some degree and in some form, although whether that's because there's no such thing as time and EVERYTHING that will ever happen already exists, or because the future is gradually created as we approach it, there's no way to tell... I choose to believe the latter, as the former would require the existence of a deity that has already created everything that will ever be, and is "playing" it like a DVD.
2) Theoretical physicists currently believe that there are multiple universes, existing parallel in an all-encompassing space, all of which is collectively called the omniverse, and that everything in the omniverse, matter and all forms of energy, is made of the same thing; this is called superstring theory aka string theory aka M theory (no, I don't know what the M stands for-I think they're keeping that a secret, lol).
3) Studies have shown that:
a) A mother can look at her sleeping infant and think "wake up," and it usually will.
b) You can have 2 people in a room such that they can't see, hear or touch each other, and if they cause the heart rate of one to spike, the brain waves of the other will spike at exactly the same time.
They have no idea why these things happen this way; this shows, again, that some sort of unknown force is at work.
4) I have seen and interacted with ghosts, seen them act on objects, and heard them pounding on walls for attention; this has happened many times when there were other witnesses present, when no ghost stories were being told and no mind-altering substances had been consumed, so I KNOW spirits exist, and the fact that science can't perceive the energy of which they're formed means that it's an unknown energy... are you as amazed as I am at how many unknowns there are?
5) I've had a wide variety of psychic experiences, so I know that psychic abilities DO exist; once again, the inability of science to perceive the energy involved points to an unknown force at work. The many instances of precognition I've experienced also demonstrate that the future DOES already exist, to some degree and in some form, just as quantum physics shows us.
6) The psychic experiences of other people are meaningful to me also (within reason, of course); after all, I can't be the ONLY one who can do this stuff, right?
a) The apparent ability of twins to transmit things to each other telepathically; all the twins I've known, including people whose word I trust, describe incidents of this, most commonly under circumstances when one of the twins was hurt or in danger.
b) The many people who report waking up and seeing a loved one who turns out to have died at that exact time, or seeing a being of some sort who told them that the loved one was dead, again at the exact time of death; people I trust have described this one, too.
c) I recently came across references to breastfeeding women having their milk drop when their baby cries, even when the baby is MILES away, even when the baby has no set feeding schedule; it makes perfect evolutionary sense, if nothing else.
7) Then, we come to the things that generally get brushed off as "coincidences," that I myself used to brush off as coincidences, until they started coming at me so hard and fast that it would have required a stubborn intellectual blindness to deny their true meaning:
a) Synchronicity, the concept that things that happen at the same time are related; when someone you haven't thought of in 5 years pops into your head, and the phone rings and it's them, is a common example. I get such astounding ones in my life that even my non-believing husband is sometimes creeped out.
b) Karma, which is traditionally defined as "what goes around comes around" or "what comes around goes around"; once I realized that the type of energy being sent out DID control what a person got back, with relentless consistency, I had to believe it.
c) Affirmations, the process of focusing on, and repeatedly writing out, a desired goal, even an outrageous one, in order to "make it happen," WORKS.
With all of these things, unknown energy must be at work.
From these things comes my worldview, which I use the term "karma" to describe for lack of a more accurate one, as the action of karma is the central concept; karma, in this broad sense, refers to the sum total of all of these unknown energies, and how they work together to shape our reality. Using Occam's Razor, that the simplest explanation is usually the right one, I've chosen to believe that there is only ONE energy behind all these unknowns, and that energy is also called "karma"; the energy, the structure, the cause, the effect, the engine... it's all karma.
The above doesn't represent every aspect of what I believe, but it is, as promised, the basics, the foundation upon which all my analyses are based; my hope is that the focus I've exerted on this topic will bring me some new revelations.
1) Quantum physics shows us that the universe does NOT work the way we think it does:
a) Subatomic particles are constantly doing things that are simply impossible by the laws of nature as we understand them, such as popping into and out of existence, and staying connected somehow even when they're miles apart, such that changing the spin on one changes the spin of the other. These particles also act as if they can think; they behave like particles or waves depending on whether or not they're being observed (how do they KNOW?!!). These things show that some unknown force is at work, one that can't yet be detected.
b) Experiments in which effect comes BEFORE cause demonstrate that TIME doesn't work like we think it does, and in fact may not exist at all, at least not in any way we can currently understand; I see these experiments as proof that the future already exists, to some degree and in some form, although whether that's because there's no such thing as time and EVERYTHING that will ever happen already exists, or because the future is gradually created as we approach it, there's no way to tell... I choose to believe the latter, as the former would require the existence of a deity that has already created everything that will ever be, and is "playing" it like a DVD.
2) Theoretical physicists currently believe that there are multiple universes, existing parallel in an all-encompassing space, all of which is collectively called the omniverse, and that everything in the omniverse, matter and all forms of energy, is made of the same thing; this is called superstring theory aka string theory aka M theory (no, I don't know what the M stands for-I think they're keeping that a secret, lol).
3) Studies have shown that:
a) A mother can look at her sleeping infant and think "wake up," and it usually will.
b) You can have 2 people in a room such that they can't see, hear or touch each other, and if they cause the heart rate of one to spike, the brain waves of the other will spike at exactly the same time.
They have no idea why these things happen this way; this shows, again, that some sort of unknown force is at work.
4) I have seen and interacted with ghosts, seen them act on objects, and heard them pounding on walls for attention; this has happened many times when there were other witnesses present, when no ghost stories were being told and no mind-altering substances had been consumed, so I KNOW spirits exist, and the fact that science can't perceive the energy of which they're formed means that it's an unknown energy... are you as amazed as I am at how many unknowns there are?
5) I've had a wide variety of psychic experiences, so I know that psychic abilities DO exist; once again, the inability of science to perceive the energy involved points to an unknown force at work. The many instances of precognition I've experienced also demonstrate that the future DOES already exist, to some degree and in some form, just as quantum physics shows us.
6) The psychic experiences of other people are meaningful to me also (within reason, of course); after all, I can't be the ONLY one who can do this stuff, right?
a) The apparent ability of twins to transmit things to each other telepathically; all the twins I've known, including people whose word I trust, describe incidents of this, most commonly under circumstances when one of the twins was hurt or in danger.
b) The many people who report waking up and seeing a loved one who turns out to have died at that exact time, or seeing a being of some sort who told them that the loved one was dead, again at the exact time of death; people I trust have described this one, too.
c) I recently came across references to breastfeeding women having their milk drop when their baby cries, even when the baby is MILES away, even when the baby has no set feeding schedule; it makes perfect evolutionary sense, if nothing else.
7) Then, we come to the things that generally get brushed off as "coincidences," that I myself used to brush off as coincidences, until they started coming at me so hard and fast that it would have required a stubborn intellectual blindness to deny their true meaning:
a) Synchronicity, the concept that things that happen at the same time are related; when someone you haven't thought of in 5 years pops into your head, and the phone rings and it's them, is a common example. I get such astounding ones in my life that even my non-believing husband is sometimes creeped out.
b) Karma, which is traditionally defined as "what goes around comes around" or "what comes around goes around"; once I realized that the type of energy being sent out DID control what a person got back, with relentless consistency, I had to believe it.
c) Affirmations, the process of focusing on, and repeatedly writing out, a desired goal, even an outrageous one, in order to "make it happen," WORKS.
With all of these things, unknown energy must be at work.
From these things comes my worldview, which I use the term "karma" to describe for lack of a more accurate one, as the action of karma is the central concept; karma, in this broad sense, refers to the sum total of all of these unknown energies, and how they work together to shape our reality. Using Occam's Razor, that the simplest explanation is usually the right one, I've chosen to believe that there is only ONE energy behind all these unknowns, and that energy is also called "karma"; the energy, the structure, the cause, the effect, the engine... it's all karma.
The above doesn't represent every aspect of what I believe, but it is, as promised, the basics, the foundation upon which all my analyses are based; my hope is that the focus I've exerted on this topic will bring me some new revelations.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Whatever happened to ICQ?
When I first got online 5 years ago, the first thing anyone would ask you when they met you, before they even asked what your name was, was "What's your ICQ#?" I didn't know what that meant at first, but with everyone I encountered telling me I had to have it, I started hounding my husband to get it for me; as always, he dragged his feet with finding and installing it, but it was worth it when I FINALLY was able to pass out that #, and when that IM icon flashed at me for the first time, and I was actually chatting with someone LIVE... it was like magic. Never one to do anything halfway, I soon had DOZENS of people on my buddy list, ICQ was set up to load automatically when I went online, and an ever-bigger chunk of each day was spent chatting... especially once we figured out how to do group chats, which often went on for HOURS.
Any forum you joined in those days had a spot in your profile to put your ICQ# in, every club system that had a section for contact info listed your ICQ# along with your email addy, and even though most club systems had built-in chatrooms, we usually used ICQ instead. One of the great things about it was that you could send messages to people even if they were offline, and the system would save them and send them as soon as they came online, which was great when you wanted to have a big chat, because you could leave messages for everyone telling them to join you if they logged on in time... and all these years later, AIM still hasn't managed that much.
The coolest feature of all was the ability to truly chat live; you weren't just sending lines of text, the others could actually see you typing in real time, and could read along rather than having to wait for you to hit "Send." This kept the chats really hopping in a way that no other system did, or has since... even on ICQ, as they discontinued that option some time ago.
In those days, I couldn't imagine a day without spending a big chunk of time talking on ICQ with people from my various online friendship groups; although I know better now, those relationships felt very real and powerful. We ALL took them seriously, and sometimes things really WERE serious; 3 different times, I kept someone who had taken a massive dose of pills chatting with me while working with a friend to track down where they lived and contact the local emergency services to go to their homes and take them to the hospital. The potential "dark side" of ICQ was demonstrated when a friend's husband got chatting with an online friend of hers and mine, and they ended up betraying her; he dumped his wife and married the other woman. However, I introduced my heartbroken friend via ICQ to a sweet man who was in a bad marriage and needed to talk as much as she did, and they hit it right off and chatted like mad... they've been married for several years now, and he's a wonderful father to her young boys.
Then one day there was someone I wanted to talk to who only had AIM, which was a shock, and later on someone else who only had the Yahoo IM, which was still sort of surprising... and suddenly we were all getting these other IM's to be able to talk with the non-ICQ people... and there was voice chat and webcam viewing and other fancy features on these other IM's... and somehow ICQ went from being IT to being something no one asked about any more, and thus an ever-smaller part of my online chat life, until I finally stopped using it at all. I remember when I asked my husband to stop having it come up automatically when I went online; it was the end of an era.
I went through phases of heavy chat on other systems, but it was NEVER to the extent it was in the old days on ICQ; folks from those days are STILL mentioning how wild those chats were, and how cool that real-time feature was. I rarely chat on any system these days, perhaps because the novelty is long gone but the time-wastage factor is still high, and I don't know if anyone I'd ever want to chat with again even HAS ICQ anymore... and I don't know my ICQ# now, although in the old days I probably recited it in my sleep... but someone I hadn't heard from in ages sent me his new ICQ# today, so I think I'll hold onto the program a little while longer. Just in case.
Any forum you joined in those days had a spot in your profile to put your ICQ# in, every club system that had a section for contact info listed your ICQ# along with your email addy, and even though most club systems had built-in chatrooms, we usually used ICQ instead. One of the great things about it was that you could send messages to people even if they were offline, and the system would save them and send them as soon as they came online, which was great when you wanted to have a big chat, because you could leave messages for everyone telling them to join you if they logged on in time... and all these years later, AIM still hasn't managed that much.
The coolest feature of all was the ability to truly chat live; you weren't just sending lines of text, the others could actually see you typing in real time, and could read along rather than having to wait for you to hit "Send." This kept the chats really hopping in a way that no other system did, or has since... even on ICQ, as they discontinued that option some time ago.
In those days, I couldn't imagine a day without spending a big chunk of time talking on ICQ with people from my various online friendship groups; although I know better now, those relationships felt very real and powerful. We ALL took them seriously, and sometimes things really WERE serious; 3 different times, I kept someone who had taken a massive dose of pills chatting with me while working with a friend to track down where they lived and contact the local emergency services to go to their homes and take them to the hospital. The potential "dark side" of ICQ was demonstrated when a friend's husband got chatting with an online friend of hers and mine, and they ended up betraying her; he dumped his wife and married the other woman. However, I introduced my heartbroken friend via ICQ to a sweet man who was in a bad marriage and needed to talk as much as she did, and they hit it right off and chatted like mad... they've been married for several years now, and he's a wonderful father to her young boys.
Then one day there was someone I wanted to talk to who only had AIM, which was a shock, and later on someone else who only had the Yahoo IM, which was still sort of surprising... and suddenly we were all getting these other IM's to be able to talk with the non-ICQ people... and there was voice chat and webcam viewing and other fancy features on these other IM's... and somehow ICQ went from being IT to being something no one asked about any more, and thus an ever-smaller part of my online chat life, until I finally stopped using it at all. I remember when I asked my husband to stop having it come up automatically when I went online; it was the end of an era.
I went through phases of heavy chat on other systems, but it was NEVER to the extent it was in the old days on ICQ; folks from those days are STILL mentioning how wild those chats were, and how cool that real-time feature was. I rarely chat on any system these days, perhaps because the novelty is long gone but the time-wastage factor is still high, and I don't know if anyone I'd ever want to chat with again even HAS ICQ anymore... and I don't know my ICQ# now, although in the old days I probably recited it in my sleep... but someone I hadn't heard from in ages sent me his new ICQ# today, so I think I'll hold onto the program a little while longer. Just in case.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
The annual email address purge
Email addies are like rabbits; when you're not watching, they breed and multiply, and suddenly you have hundreds of them clogging up your address book. In my case, it probably doesn't help that I'm fanatical, or some might say anal, about saving every email address for everyone I correspond with, as I've learned from experience that people shed email accounts like a snake sheds its skin, and if you don't have ALL their addies you can find yourself with no way to contact someone you want to keep in touch with. Just because I have an email address, or several, for a person doesn't mean I'll always want to interact with them, of course, so to keep it from becoming excessively difficult to find the addresses I DO still want, every year I do a purge of my address book. First, I go through the entire thing and delete everyone I'm not in touch with that I don't miss not talking to; this can get tricky, as it feels "mean" to delete someone on that basis, but I push myself to figure out if I have anything in common with that person that would make it beneficial for me to keep talking to them, and even whether I still remember enough about them to be ABLE to talk to them on a friendship level, and that leads to me being able to delete a dozen or so.
Next, to find out which addies I have that are no longer valid ones, I do a mass emailing to everyone else I haven't spoken to recently (using BCC so they don't know they're one of many), wishing them a happy new year and asking how they've been. An amazing flood of bounces always results from this; I can't imagine why anyone would EVER close out an email account that they corresponded with friends from, other than that small % that comes from people changing ISP's (usually getting away from AOHell), but every year I find that a bunch of them have in fact ceased to exist. In cases where I only had one email address for someone, this means that they're gone from my life unless and until they write to me from a new account some day; this DOES happen, but not often... which is why I try so hard to have multiple addies for everyone. For most people, I can use a backup addy, and most of them work; the truly eerie thing is when ALL of the addies for someone are no longer valid... what could motivate someone to close out as many as 5-6 email accounts in a year, without ever thinking to send out messages giving a new addy? Have these people just withdrawn from online life, or maybe taken on new online identities? Whatever the reason for their disappearing act, I get an extra pang of regret deleting someone that it seemed so unlikely that I'd ever not be able to contact.
Shortly after the delivery failure notices arrive come the first replies from folks who DID get my emails, and it's always heartening to see how many people are apparently thrilled to hear from me, and want to tell me everything they've done since last we spoke... often in excessive detail, granted, but it's still nice to hear back from them. It's interesting to see that in those instances where things were tense or awkward the last time we spoke, all has always been forgiven and forgotten; it works just like in real life, where even people you had a massive feud with will treat you like a long-lost best friend if you're just apart long enough (one of the biggest lessons I've ever learned about relationships is that just because things get heated enough for you to "break up" and stop talking does NOT mean that the relationship is over forever; it's counter-intuitive, but it's true).
I've got my address book down to a manageable list, I've said my symbolic goodbyes to all those that I can no longer contact, and I'm swimming in emails from folks I haven't spoken to in too long, including some from an old friend who's been researching the sorts of things about ancient civilizations that are of interest to me... not too shabby for the first day of the new year.
Next, to find out which addies I have that are no longer valid ones, I do a mass emailing to everyone else I haven't spoken to recently (using BCC so they don't know they're one of many), wishing them a happy new year and asking how they've been. An amazing flood of bounces always results from this; I can't imagine why anyone would EVER close out an email account that they corresponded with friends from, other than that small % that comes from people changing ISP's (usually getting away from AOHell), but every year I find that a bunch of them have in fact ceased to exist. In cases where I only had one email address for someone, this means that they're gone from my life unless and until they write to me from a new account some day; this DOES happen, but not often... which is why I try so hard to have multiple addies for everyone. For most people, I can use a backup addy, and most of them work; the truly eerie thing is when ALL of the addies for someone are no longer valid... what could motivate someone to close out as many as 5-6 email accounts in a year, without ever thinking to send out messages giving a new addy? Have these people just withdrawn from online life, or maybe taken on new online identities? Whatever the reason for their disappearing act, I get an extra pang of regret deleting someone that it seemed so unlikely that I'd ever not be able to contact.
Shortly after the delivery failure notices arrive come the first replies from folks who DID get my emails, and it's always heartening to see how many people are apparently thrilled to hear from me, and want to tell me everything they've done since last we spoke... often in excessive detail, granted, but it's still nice to hear back from them. It's interesting to see that in those instances where things were tense or awkward the last time we spoke, all has always been forgiven and forgotten; it works just like in real life, where even people you had a massive feud with will treat you like a long-lost best friend if you're just apart long enough (one of the biggest lessons I've ever learned about relationships is that just because things get heated enough for you to "break up" and stop talking does NOT mean that the relationship is over forever; it's counter-intuitive, but it's true).
I've got my address book down to a manageable list, I've said my symbolic goodbyes to all those that I can no longer contact, and I'm swimming in emails from folks I haven't spoken to in too long, including some from an old friend who's been researching the sorts of things about ancient civilizations that are of interest to me... not too shabby for the first day of the new year.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Happy Blog Anniversary to ME!! :-)
It's hard to believe that it was a whole year ago that I girded my metaphorical loins, gathered up my wits and my little bit of html, and started this blog. I kept it a secret from my husband for the first couple of months, so that I'd be sure and do all the technical work myself and have it well established before he saw it; it still IS a secret from everyone else in my life, and this has allowed me the freedom to express myself freely, while still offering to any who might want them the end results of my endless ponderings.
With the unfortunate exception of one night when I had no internet access, I've never missed a day of blogging; it's been hard sometimes, when it got late and I was exhausted and still had the essay to write, but I knew that if I gave myself permission to skip it when I was tired, in no time I'd be posting once in a blue moon, and then NEVER... and this process is too important for me to give up. I've made more spiritual progress in the past year than in the entire rest of my life put together; that I've apparently also been enlightening and/or entertaining people, to the tune of over 25,000 hits so far, is a wonderful bonus.
Another major bonus is the many terrific people I've met in the blogosphere; if you haven't already done so, do please visit the blogs on my links list, and I'm sure you'll agree that they're all written by intelligent, interesting people who are well worth a daily read.
I've greatly enjoyed my first year of blogging; thanks to everyone who's visited here for showing me that what I have to say really IS of value to people other than my friends. :-)
Since it's a new calendar year as well as a new blogging year, I'll make a few more comments before I go for my first snooze of 2005: 2004 was, with the exception of the death of a loved one, and the usual mountain of aggravation from my husband (lol), a really good year for me; I've been enriched by more new things in the past year than in any other, materially and experientially as well as spiritually, and I view this new year with more confidence than any previous year. I think I'm starting to get an idea of the strength and comfort that people get from religion, because, even though I don't believe in a paternal deity, just being hooked into the workings of karma has had that effect on me; in the same way that people believe that their deity will make things work out for them, I've seen how I can use things like affirmations and positive thinking to get karma to do good things for ME, and thus that things can usually be made to work out to my benefit. I never expected this particular side effect to my metaphysical spiritual quest, and it just goes to show you how life is often far more wonderful than we imagine, if we give it a chance.
Here's hoping that 2005 will be the best year ever for all of us in the blog world; Happy New Year!! :-)
With the unfortunate exception of one night when I had no internet access, I've never missed a day of blogging; it's been hard sometimes, when it got late and I was exhausted and still had the essay to write, but I knew that if I gave myself permission to skip it when I was tired, in no time I'd be posting once in a blue moon, and then NEVER... and this process is too important for me to give up. I've made more spiritual progress in the past year than in the entire rest of my life put together; that I've apparently also been enlightening and/or entertaining people, to the tune of over 25,000 hits so far, is a wonderful bonus.
Another major bonus is the many terrific people I've met in the blogosphere; if you haven't already done so, do please visit the blogs on my links list, and I'm sure you'll agree that they're all written by intelligent, interesting people who are well worth a daily read.
I've greatly enjoyed my first year of blogging; thanks to everyone who's visited here for showing me that what I have to say really IS of value to people other than my friends. :-)
Since it's a new calendar year as well as a new blogging year, I'll make a few more comments before I go for my first snooze of 2005: 2004 was, with the exception of the death of a loved one, and the usual mountain of aggravation from my husband (lol), a really good year for me; I've been enriched by more new things in the past year than in any other, materially and experientially as well as spiritually, and I view this new year with more confidence than any previous year. I think I'm starting to get an idea of the strength and comfort that people get from religion, because, even though I don't believe in a paternal deity, just being hooked into the workings of karma has had that effect on me; in the same way that people believe that their deity will make things work out for them, I've seen how I can use things like affirmations and positive thinking to get karma to do good things for ME, and thus that things can usually be made to work out to my benefit. I never expected this particular side effect to my metaphysical spiritual quest, and it just goes to show you how life is often far more wonderful than we imagine, if we give it a chance.
Here's hoping that 2005 will be the best year ever for all of us in the blog world; Happy New Year!! :-)
Friday, December 31, 2004
New Year's ANTI-resolutions
Most people make New Year's resolutions, which means that they resolve to do things that they don't do now but "should" be doing, or to stop doing "bad" things, or to do things better, or to improve things about themselves that aren't "good enough" (as if just making this decision on a specific day would substitute for making a consistent effort and showing some willpower). In MY case, though, since I coped with a lifetime of abuse at home and from my peer group by becoming "perfect," and thus beyond the reach of true criticism, I've never had anything to resolve; I don't have any vices or bad habits, everything I "should" be doing I've been doing all along, I'm the very soul of duty, responsibility, organization, and "doing the right thing," and I've always been fanatical about the #1 resolution, weight, so what CAN I resolve?
In honor of a dear friend who died tragically a few years ago, I've started making ANTI-resolutions; I've been resolving, in other words, to do the opposite of self-improve, which is to..... well, there's no word or phrase for it that doesn't sound negative, is there? Let's just say that I want to try to reduce my "excess perfection." Not perfectionISM (which is an attitude that leads to people thinking you're a pain in the behind, not "perfect"), but just to be less of a "perfect person," less of a "saint" (a word that gets applied to me all the time).
My friend motivated me to do this when, not long before she died, I was being "saintly" in my attempts to help a badly depressed person whose behavior was getting more and more unpleasant, and she said something amazing to me; "You don't have to do this. She's not worth it. You can walk away. You SHOULD walk away."
Say what?!! Falter in my mission to help those who are neediest? I was brought up to believe that being a worthwhile person means that you keep working at something until you've succeeded, that you dedicate yourself to a course of action and see it through no matter what.... and I still believe that in general, but my friend was right in that it WAS OK for me to walk away from that woman, and in general that it IS OK for me to walk away when the returns will be minuscule, or negative, in response to my efforts. I don't HAVE to be a saint every moment with everything, I don't HAVE to complete everything perfectly; I can walk away from some things, those that are a poor use of my time and effort, and still be someone who's worthy of respect and admiration, still be seen as being pretty terrific... heck, I could probably still be seen as being "perfect."
I vowed upon my friend's death that I would follow the path she showed me, and I have. I've expanded upon it, and applied it to things other than when someone I'm making alot of effort to help is behaving badly; I've been giving myself permission to NOT handle every task as if someone is going to be coming along after me looking for flaws in what I did... because, now that I no longer live with my mother, no one IS. There are many things that will look wonderful to the rest of the world if I "only" give 95% to them, as opposed to 100% (or 110%), and my ANTI-resolution again this year is to try to find more of those things and choose, CHOOSE, to not make the usually massive effort necessary to do that last, unnoticed, unappreciated, and therefore worthless 5%.
I don't have any specific ideas in mind about how to implement this in 2005, because I'm confident that karma will steer some opportunities my way, as it has the other years I've done this. I'll be working against the very fabric of my personality to expand the areas I apply this to, more this year than in the previous years because I've already done so much of it, but if it were easy I wouldn't need to ANTI-resolve to do it, right?
There may be some things that YOU validly believe that you need to improve in the coming year, but take a moment and ponder on whether there are also some things that you're making too much effort on, to the detriment of other areas in your life that could use that time and energy, and maybe you'll come up with some anti-resolutions of your own.
Have a safe and sane New Year's Eve!! :-)
In honor of a dear friend who died tragically a few years ago, I've started making ANTI-resolutions; I've been resolving, in other words, to do the opposite of self-improve, which is to..... well, there's no word or phrase for it that doesn't sound negative, is there? Let's just say that I want to try to reduce my "excess perfection." Not perfectionISM (which is an attitude that leads to people thinking you're a pain in the behind, not "perfect"), but just to be less of a "perfect person," less of a "saint" (a word that gets applied to me all the time).
My friend motivated me to do this when, not long before she died, I was being "saintly" in my attempts to help a badly depressed person whose behavior was getting more and more unpleasant, and she said something amazing to me; "You don't have to do this. She's not worth it. You can walk away. You SHOULD walk away."
Say what?!! Falter in my mission to help those who are neediest? I was brought up to believe that being a worthwhile person means that you keep working at something until you've succeeded, that you dedicate yourself to a course of action and see it through no matter what.... and I still believe that in general, but my friend was right in that it WAS OK for me to walk away from that woman, and in general that it IS OK for me to walk away when the returns will be minuscule, or negative, in response to my efforts. I don't HAVE to be a saint every moment with everything, I don't HAVE to complete everything perfectly; I can walk away from some things, those that are a poor use of my time and effort, and still be someone who's worthy of respect and admiration, still be seen as being pretty terrific... heck, I could probably still be seen as being "perfect."
I vowed upon my friend's death that I would follow the path she showed me, and I have. I've expanded upon it, and applied it to things other than when someone I'm making alot of effort to help is behaving badly; I've been giving myself permission to NOT handle every task as if someone is going to be coming along after me looking for flaws in what I did... because, now that I no longer live with my mother, no one IS. There are many things that will look wonderful to the rest of the world if I "only" give 95% to them, as opposed to 100% (or 110%), and my ANTI-resolution again this year is to try to find more of those things and choose, CHOOSE, to not make the usually massive effort necessary to do that last, unnoticed, unappreciated, and therefore worthless 5%.
I don't have any specific ideas in mind about how to implement this in 2005, because I'm confident that karma will steer some opportunities my way, as it has the other years I've done this. I'll be working against the very fabric of my personality to expand the areas I apply this to, more this year than in the previous years because I've already done so much of it, but if it were easy I wouldn't need to ANTI-resolve to do it, right?
There may be some things that YOU validly believe that you need to improve in the coming year, but take a moment and ponder on whether there are also some things that you're making too much effort on, to the detriment of other areas in your life that could use that time and energy, and maybe you'll come up with some anti-resolutions of your own.
Have a safe and sane New Year's Eve!! :-)
Thursday, December 30, 2004
What do you sleep in?
There's been a silent revolution in sleepwear in this country; we don't sleep in the same things our grandparents, and even parents, wore. If you're old enough, you'll recall when every man slept in pajamas, flannel in cold weather and smooth cotton in warm weather, and usually with stripes all year round; do you know ANY man under 50 who sleeps in pj's today? Every man I know who's weighed in on the subject sleeps in his underwear or in the nude, year-round, with the occasional foray into a t-shirt and/or sweatpants or "lounge pants" when it's chilly. Women used to sleep in long nightgowns, generally of light-colored cotton or nylon (my mother's favorite), with sleeve lengths that varied with the seasons; many women these days do the underwear or nude thing too, and some sleep in big t-shirts or, weirdly enough, the wide variety of cutsie pj's that have been marketed for women in recent years.
On a tangential note; remember how your elder relatives never got out of bed without putting on a robe and slippers, even in the warmest weather? A man's robe would be sober flannel or terrycloth, and a woman's would be quilted or chenille, pastel or floral; the man's slippers would be leather, and the woman's would be fluffy. When's the last time YOU wore a robe or slippers, other than when it was very chilly? Do you even OWN any? My husband doesn't. I DO, but the robe has only ever been used a couple of times when I had to jump out of the shower for some emergency, and the slippers are only used when I have to go outside for something in a hurry and the weather mitigates against bare feet.
Because comfort is key for me, I sleep in sweatpants and oversized t-shirts, as I have for many years; I remember when, several months before my wedding, my mother announced that I had to start buying nightgowns, because I "had to" wear them once I was married. I pointed out that, since no laws had been passed requiring this, and there was no Nightgown Police, I did NOT "have to." She insisted that my husband would "expect" me to wear nightgowns, and I replied that if he thought I'd EVER change or inconvenience myself to suit his whims, he had a BIG surprise in store for him. She continued to harangue me on the subject until I finally brought it up in front of him, and he laughed in her face and denied having any expectations, or even preferences, as to what I wore to sleep in; that finally shut her up.
True to my word, I've worn the t-shirt and sweatpants combo every night of my marriage... although I DID have a fancy white lingerie set for the wedding night (complete with musical panties that played "Here Comes the Bride")-a little tradition goes a long way.
On a tangential note; remember how your elder relatives never got out of bed without putting on a robe and slippers, even in the warmest weather? A man's robe would be sober flannel or terrycloth, and a woman's would be quilted or chenille, pastel or floral; the man's slippers would be leather, and the woman's would be fluffy. When's the last time YOU wore a robe or slippers, other than when it was very chilly? Do you even OWN any? My husband doesn't. I DO, but the robe has only ever been used a couple of times when I had to jump out of the shower for some emergency, and the slippers are only used when I have to go outside for something in a hurry and the weather mitigates against bare feet.
Because comfort is key for me, I sleep in sweatpants and oversized t-shirts, as I have for many years; I remember when, several months before my wedding, my mother announced that I had to start buying nightgowns, because I "had to" wear them once I was married. I pointed out that, since no laws had been passed requiring this, and there was no Nightgown Police, I did NOT "have to." She insisted that my husband would "expect" me to wear nightgowns, and I replied that if he thought I'd EVER change or inconvenience myself to suit his whims, he had a BIG surprise in store for him. She continued to harangue me on the subject until I finally brought it up in front of him, and he laughed in her face and denied having any expectations, or even preferences, as to what I wore to sleep in; that finally shut her up.
True to my word, I've worn the t-shirt and sweatpants combo every night of my marriage... although I DID have a fancy white lingerie set for the wedding night (complete with musical panties that played "Here Comes the Bride")-a little tradition goes a long way.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
What's the meaning of life?
This seems to be a question whose asking is virtually a requirement of being a human being; it's apparently natural and normal for us to wonder why we're here, what our purpose is, and where we're going to end up. Here's what I came up with on this subject today:
Everything in the omniverse (the collection of all the universes) is made up of energy, and it's all the SAME energy; the theoretical physicists are saying the same thing now, and they call it "superstring theory." They haven't explicitly included the energy of thought in their definition of "everything" as of yet, but *I* do; so, everything is at the finest level made of the same energy as our thoughts.
My concept of animism, which appears in the spiritual beliefs of many so-called "primitive" peoples, is that there's some element of thought in ALL things; quantum physicists have certainly conducted many experiments which seem to show that subatomic particles can "think" (at least enough to act differently based on whether or not they're being watched), although they haven't come right out and claimed that... YET. Thus, being made of the energy of thought grants to everything the ability to "think" to some (usually minuscule) degree, which might mean an awareness so faint as to be virtually nonexistent, in the case of something like a rock, rather than thinking as WE do it-it's all a matter of degree, like comparing a dewdrop to the ocean.
Through the process of evolution, creatures have come into being which have an increasing ability to think, to use that energy of which we're all made; I think that perhaps the reason evolution exists is that it's a property of the energy of thought/everything that it "wants" to come together in steadily more powerful forms... with "want" in quotes because I see this as a blind force of nature, NOT the actions of a being of any kind (although I keep open the possibility that there MIGHT be a guiding intelligence involved, as I can't prove otherwise). This would make the existence of humans a natural outcome of the existence of the omniverse... and the existence of other sentient beings would be as well, but that's a whole other essay.
So, I'd say the reason we exist is same the reason that if you plant an acorn in fertile soil and give it water and sunlight, an oak tree will exist; it's the inevitable outcome of the component parts. In the same way that an oak tree can contribute many things that "justify" its existence, such as shade, homes for birds and animals, and food for squirrels, WE can contribute many things too, the primary one of which is the creation of more energy of thought, which then becomes a part of karma, the fabric of the omniverse... the omniverse "created" us, and now we're creating IT, making it ever more complex and beautiful.
And when we've created as much complexity and beauty as can ever exist, when we've seen all the truths and understood them, what then? What's our ultimate purpose/goal/destination? We'll see that when we die, and our souls (which are made of the same energy as thought and everything else) merge directly with the energies of karma; I'd like to know now, if it's possible to and still be alive, but if not then I'm content to wait, and to struggle in the meantime with other truths.
Even if we can't see the "ultimate truth," we can still theorize that the meaning of life, our purpose, the reason we exist and are able to ponder the deep truths, is... to turn the raw materials of the omniverse, the cosmic version of paints and canvas, into a masterpiece, and become one with it.
Everything in the omniverse (the collection of all the universes) is made up of energy, and it's all the SAME energy; the theoretical physicists are saying the same thing now, and they call it "superstring theory." They haven't explicitly included the energy of thought in their definition of "everything" as of yet, but *I* do; so, everything is at the finest level made of the same energy as our thoughts.
My concept of animism, which appears in the spiritual beliefs of many so-called "primitive" peoples, is that there's some element of thought in ALL things; quantum physicists have certainly conducted many experiments which seem to show that subatomic particles can "think" (at least enough to act differently based on whether or not they're being watched), although they haven't come right out and claimed that... YET. Thus, being made of the energy of thought grants to everything the ability to "think" to some (usually minuscule) degree, which might mean an awareness so faint as to be virtually nonexistent, in the case of something like a rock, rather than thinking as WE do it-it's all a matter of degree, like comparing a dewdrop to the ocean.
Through the process of evolution, creatures have come into being which have an increasing ability to think, to use that energy of which we're all made; I think that perhaps the reason evolution exists is that it's a property of the energy of thought/everything that it "wants" to come together in steadily more powerful forms... with "want" in quotes because I see this as a blind force of nature, NOT the actions of a being of any kind (although I keep open the possibility that there MIGHT be a guiding intelligence involved, as I can't prove otherwise). This would make the existence of humans a natural outcome of the existence of the omniverse... and the existence of other sentient beings would be as well, but that's a whole other essay.
So, I'd say the reason we exist is same the reason that if you plant an acorn in fertile soil and give it water and sunlight, an oak tree will exist; it's the inevitable outcome of the component parts. In the same way that an oak tree can contribute many things that "justify" its existence, such as shade, homes for birds and animals, and food for squirrels, WE can contribute many things too, the primary one of which is the creation of more energy of thought, which then becomes a part of karma, the fabric of the omniverse... the omniverse "created" us, and now we're creating IT, making it ever more complex and beautiful.
And when we've created as much complexity and beauty as can ever exist, when we've seen all the truths and understood them, what then? What's our ultimate purpose/goal/destination? We'll see that when we die, and our souls (which are made of the same energy as thought and everything else) merge directly with the energies of karma; I'd like to know now, if it's possible to and still be alive, but if not then I'm content to wait, and to struggle in the meantime with other truths.
Even if we can't see the "ultimate truth," we can still theorize that the meaning of life, our purpose, the reason we exist and are able to ponder the deep truths, is... to turn the raw materials of the omniverse, the cosmic version of paints and canvas, into a masterpiece, and become one with it.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Relationship rights
Too often, we act, and even THINK, as if we had no rights once we've gotten into any sort of relationship with a person, and/or with members of our family; even the strongest-willed people can turn into doormats when their loved ones, or even LIKED ones, feel like pushing them around. If this sounds like you, one of your New Year's resolutions should be to decide what your "emotional rights" are within all your relationships, and to promise yourself to start demanding them. Here's a list of mine, in no particular order, which was written a few years ago (and yes, I DO insist upon them):
1) I have the right to expect the same effort, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, acceptance, fairness, compassion, consideration, support, assistance, sensitivity, caring, loyalty and good treatment from others that I give to them.
2) If someone accepts my friendship, and the benefits that gives them, I have the right to be treated AS a friend by them at ALL times, not just when they need help or a shoulder to cry on. This means that I have the right to expect them to talk to me when they have no crises brewing, ask about MY life and feelings, and honor my right as their friend to be who I am and say whatever's on my mind when I talk to them.
3) If someone hurts me, I will NOT allow them to victimize me a second time by making me swallow my feelings about that hurt.
If someone hurts me, I have the right to:
A) Be angry (furious, outraged, upset, etc).
B) Be angry to whatever degree is natural for me.
C) Express that anger in accurate terms.
D) Express what I think of the behavior that hurt me, and the person who did it, in accurate terms.
E) Be angry for however long I think is appropriate.
F) Remain the injured party even AFTER I have expressed my anger.
G) Expect sincere apologies and attempts to "make up for it," no matter how angry I am or how I've expressed that anger.
If anyone tries to prevent me from doing any of those things, I have the right to be angry about THAT.
4) I have the right to say NO and make it stick, regardless of who is asking, whether they phrase it as a request or a "command," no matter what sort of persuasion or manipulation they use, or how sure they are that I "should" do what they want.
5) I have the right to make the decisions for, and thus have full and exclusive control over, my life, body, home and property, and to NOT be influenced by the opinions and preferences of others if that's how I want to handle things.
6) I have the right to whatever degree of privacy makes me comfortable.
7) I have the right to make statements, both of facts and opinions, and stand by them, no matter who disagrees or how many times they argue.
8) I have the right to reap the rewards of my efforts, and to refuse to give up those rewards, or any portion thereof, to those who made NO effort themselves.
9) I have the right to cut from my life, at any time and without regret, anyone who mistreats me, especially anyone who receives help and affection from me and repays me with mistreatment.
10) I have the right to NOT always be a tower of strength and everyone's savior, and to NOT be denied help when I'm freaking out because I'm seen as the sort of person who gives help rather than needing it.
If you're thinking, "But I could NEVER ask people to give me those sorts of rights," let me assure you; yes, you CAN. People will only treat you as well as you ask them to; make 2005 the year you start asking for the sort of treatment you deserve.
1) I have the right to expect the same effort, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, acceptance, fairness, compassion, consideration, support, assistance, sensitivity, caring, loyalty and good treatment from others that I give to them.
2) If someone accepts my friendship, and the benefits that gives them, I have the right to be treated AS a friend by them at ALL times, not just when they need help or a shoulder to cry on. This means that I have the right to expect them to talk to me when they have no crises brewing, ask about MY life and feelings, and honor my right as their friend to be who I am and say whatever's on my mind when I talk to them.
3) If someone hurts me, I will NOT allow them to victimize me a second time by making me swallow my feelings about that hurt.
If someone hurts me, I have the right to:
A) Be angry (furious, outraged, upset, etc).
B) Be angry to whatever degree is natural for me.
C) Express that anger in accurate terms.
D) Express what I think of the behavior that hurt me, and the person who did it, in accurate terms.
E) Be angry for however long I think is appropriate.
F) Remain the injured party even AFTER I have expressed my anger.
G) Expect sincere apologies and attempts to "make up for it," no matter how angry I am or how I've expressed that anger.
If anyone tries to prevent me from doing any of those things, I have the right to be angry about THAT.
4) I have the right to say NO and make it stick, regardless of who is asking, whether they phrase it as a request or a "command," no matter what sort of persuasion or manipulation they use, or how sure they are that I "should" do what they want.
5) I have the right to make the decisions for, and thus have full and exclusive control over, my life, body, home and property, and to NOT be influenced by the opinions and preferences of others if that's how I want to handle things.
6) I have the right to whatever degree of privacy makes me comfortable.
7) I have the right to make statements, both of facts and opinions, and stand by them, no matter who disagrees or how many times they argue.
8) I have the right to reap the rewards of my efforts, and to refuse to give up those rewards, or any portion thereof, to those who made NO effort themselves.
9) I have the right to cut from my life, at any time and without regret, anyone who mistreats me, especially anyone who receives help and affection from me and repays me with mistreatment.
10) I have the right to NOT always be a tower of strength and everyone's savior, and to NOT be denied help when I'm freaking out because I'm seen as the sort of person who gives help rather than needing it.
If you're thinking, "But I could NEVER ask people to give me those sorts of rights," let me assure you; yes, you CAN. People will only treat you as well as you ask them to; make 2005 the year you start asking for the sort of treatment you deserve.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Would you rather love or be loved?
I seem to be at odds with much of the human race on this one; nearly everyone would apparently trample over someone who loves them to get to someone they're in love with... it happens all the time, in fact, when folks cheat on loving partners with new people they've fallen in love with, and even leave the innocent ones to go off with the moral midgets who helped them cheat. A case can be made that in many of these instances the new person loves them too, but as often as not the person who gets involved in an affair is just after sex, or a thrill, or some attention, and is NOT in love with the other person... but that person can become obsessed with the affair partner, and focus all their attention on trying to reel them in, while deceiving the official partner. WHY? Even if you've convinced yourself that you no longer love the person you're with, if they're still a good person, and still devoted to you, WHY would you pursue someone else, or even WANT to, no matter how you feel about them, especially if they don't love you back? Why leave an established loving situation for a wildly uncertain one?
And what about when someone single is loved by a perfectly wonderful person, but doesn't love THEM, and so won't give it a chance, because they're waiting to get infatuated with someone... as if that would give them a better chance at happiness, especially if that person didn't return the feelings? Wouldn't it be better to try things out with an objectively terrific person who already loves you than to stumble blindly into potential disaster with someone you're lusting over and can't objectively analyze, and so who might be utterly worthless?
And how about the situations when a relationship breaks up because one partner falls out of love with the other, and makes that perfectly clear, but the unloved partner tries desperately to get the unloving one back, even if they've got a new honey, because they "love" him/her? I've got love in quotes there because it looks more like psychosis than love... why would you want someone who doesn't love you anymore, whether you're foolish enough to still love them or not? Why not use that energy to get someone who WILL love you? Why the fanaticism towards someone who doesn't care about you just because you love them?
And finally, there's the case of those folks who believe themselves to be in love with all sorts of unlikely people that they either don't really know or have never even met, from singers and actors to the cute guy/gal in the next office; it's not uncommon to hear one of these people admit that they'd jump right into a relationship with that person if it were offered, and even leave their current partner in a heartbeat to be with them. They imagine that just the mere presence of the "love object" would be so wonderful that it would automatically surpass what they have with their partner, and the love they get from that person... but WOULD it?
Being in love is a nice feeling, yes... but so is BEING loved, and, more importantly, the latter gives you a better chance of a happy and contented life, as long as you're mature enough to play YOUR part, and return good treatment for good treatment. Despite that, I don't think I've encountered anyone else who'd pick the person who loves them over the person they love... which would YOU choose?
And what about when someone single is loved by a perfectly wonderful person, but doesn't love THEM, and so won't give it a chance, because they're waiting to get infatuated with someone... as if that would give them a better chance at happiness, especially if that person didn't return the feelings? Wouldn't it be better to try things out with an objectively terrific person who already loves you than to stumble blindly into potential disaster with someone you're lusting over and can't objectively analyze, and so who might be utterly worthless?
And how about the situations when a relationship breaks up because one partner falls out of love with the other, and makes that perfectly clear, but the unloved partner tries desperately to get the unloving one back, even if they've got a new honey, because they "love" him/her? I've got love in quotes there because it looks more like psychosis than love... why would you want someone who doesn't love you anymore, whether you're foolish enough to still love them or not? Why not use that energy to get someone who WILL love you? Why the fanaticism towards someone who doesn't care about you just because you love them?
And finally, there's the case of those folks who believe themselves to be in love with all sorts of unlikely people that they either don't really know or have never even met, from singers and actors to the cute guy/gal in the next office; it's not uncommon to hear one of these people admit that they'd jump right into a relationship with that person if it were offered, and even leave their current partner in a heartbeat to be with them. They imagine that just the mere presence of the "love object" would be so wonderful that it would automatically surpass what they have with their partner, and the love they get from that person... but WOULD it?
Being in love is a nice feeling, yes... but so is BEING loved, and, more importantly, the latter gives you a better chance of a happy and contented life, as long as you're mature enough to play YOUR part, and return good treatment for good treatment. Despite that, I don't think I've encountered anyone else who'd pick the person who loves them over the person they love... which would YOU choose?
Sunday, December 26, 2004
A pretty good Christmas
I was a little put off when I woke up, went to the computer, and discovered that my husband was updating the software; there's nothing more excruciating than doing that first eager lunge at the computer for the day only to be foiled, is there? Other than that, though, and a stubbornly plugged toilet, and a chunk of decorations that never did get put out (grrrrrrrrrrrr), the day went surprisingly well.
My husband and I aren't normally romantic types, but he presented me with an elaborate "To My Beautiful Wife" card, the envelope of which he'd painstakingly decorated. You won't understand the meaning of this, but he also got me a pink Sharpie pen; just trust me that someone who knew me really well would think of me if they saw that pen, which is why he got it for me. AND, when I wasn't looking, he did something VERY clever with the giant spider doll that was still sitting out from Halloween (because he'd put a Santa hat on it to make it a Christmas decoration, not because we didn't pack up the Halloween stuff, just FYI); he'd gotten a bottle of eggnog and some bendy straws and managed to set it up to look like "Santa spider" is drinking the eggnog, LOL!! This sort of thing is why, despite his MANY flaws and failings, I keep him around.
I gave him COAL, both in candy form and rubber "ball" form, and we sang a special Christmas song I wrote for him last year; like me, he already has every material thing he wants, so this made him happy.
We discovered that getting a much more expensive roast means that you have a much tastier Christmas dinner, in fact our best ever, and we watched a hilarious movie together (the remake of "The In-Laws") as we ate it.
I got emails from a couple of friends I hadn't heard from in a long while, beat a game I've been playing on Yahoo
http://games.yahoo.com/games/downloads/cl.html
and it actually SAYS you beat it if you manage to do so, which is pretty cool, especially since my husband has NOT been able to beat it, hehehe, and I found and downloaded a song I've been dying to have for ages.
No family, no other people at all, no real gifts, no seasonal music or movies, a small simple meal... not what most people would want, certainly, but it worked really well for US. :-)
My husband and I aren't normally romantic types, but he presented me with an elaborate "To My Beautiful Wife" card, the envelope of which he'd painstakingly decorated. You won't understand the meaning of this, but he also got me a pink Sharpie pen; just trust me that someone who knew me really well would think of me if they saw that pen, which is why he got it for me. AND, when I wasn't looking, he did something VERY clever with the giant spider doll that was still sitting out from Halloween (because he'd put a Santa hat on it to make it a Christmas decoration, not because we didn't pack up the Halloween stuff, just FYI); he'd gotten a bottle of eggnog and some bendy straws and managed to set it up to look like "Santa spider" is drinking the eggnog, LOL!! This sort of thing is why, despite his MANY flaws and failings, I keep him around.
I gave him COAL, both in candy form and rubber "ball" form, and we sang a special Christmas song I wrote for him last year; like me, he already has every material thing he wants, so this made him happy.
We discovered that getting a much more expensive roast means that you have a much tastier Christmas dinner, in fact our best ever, and we watched a hilarious movie together (the remake of "The In-Laws") as we ate it.
I got emails from a couple of friends I hadn't heard from in a long while, beat a game I've been playing on Yahoo
http://games.yahoo.com/games/downloads/cl.html
and it actually SAYS you beat it if you manage to do so, which is pretty cool, especially since my husband has NOT been able to beat it, hehehe, and I found and downloaded a song I've been dying to have for ages.
No family, no other people at all, no real gifts, no seasonal music or movies, a small simple meal... not what most people would want, certainly, but it worked really well for US. :-)
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Christmas cheer from me to you :-)
I wish the best to you and yours, today and every day; my gift to you is to post a little humor rather than a lengthy essay. MERRY CHRISTMAS!! :-)
************ MEMO FROM SANTA ************
I regret to inform you that, effective immediately, I will no longer serve the States of Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and Arkansas on Christmas Eve; due to the overwhelming current population of the Earth, my contract was renegotiated by North American Fairies and Elves Local 209 (and, as part of the new and better contract, I get longer breaks for milk and cookies, too).
However, I'm certain that your children will be in good hands with your local replacement, who happens to be my third cousin, Bubba Claus. His side of the family is from the South Pole. He shares my goal of delivering toys to all the good boys and girls; however, there are a few differences between us. Differences such as:
1. There is no danger of the Grinch stealing your presents from Bubba Claus. He has a gun rack on his sleigh, and a bumper sticker that reads: "These toys insured by Smith and Wesson."
2. Instead of milk and cookies, Bubba Claus prefers that children leave an RC Cola and pork rinds (or a moon pie) on the fireplace. And Bubba doesn't smoke a pipe. He dips a little snuff though, so please have an empty spit can handy.
3. Bubba Claus' sleigh is pulled by floppy-eared, flyin' coon dogs instead of reindeer (I made the mistake of loaning him one of my reindeer one time, and Blitzen's head now overlooks Bubba's fireplace).
4. You won't hear, "On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen..." when Bubba Claus arrives. Instead, you'll hear, "On Earnhardt, Andretti, on Elliott and Petty."
5. "Ho, Ho, Ho!" will be replaced by "Yee Haw!" And you also are likely to hear Bubba's elves respond, "I her'd dat!"
6. As required by Southern highway laws, Bubba Claus' sleigh does have a Yosemite Sam safety triangle on the back with the words "Back Off."
7. The usual Christmas movie classics such as "Miracle on 34th Street" and "It's a Wonderful Life" will not be shown in your negotiated viewing area. Instead, you'll see "Boss Hogg Saves Christmas" and "Smokey and the Bandit IV" featuring Burt Reynolds as Bubba Claus and dozens of state patrol cars crashing into each other.
And finally:
8. Bubba Claus doesn't wear a belt. If I were you, I'd make sure you, the wife, and the kids turn the other way when he bends over to put presents under the tree.
Sincerely Yours,
S. Claus
************ Wrapping Presents (With a Cat) ************
1. Clear large space on table for wrapping present.
2. Go to closet and collect bag in which present is contained, and close door.
3. Open door and remove cat from closet.
4. Go to cupboard and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.
5. Go back and remove cat from cupboard.
6. Go to drawer and collect transparent tape, ribbons, scissors, labels, etc.
7. Lay out present and wrapping materials on table, to enable wrapping strategy to be formed.
8. Go back to drawer to get string, remove cat that has been in the drawer since last visit, and collect string.
9. Remove present from bag.
10. Remove cat from bag.
11. Open box to check present, remove cat from box, replace present.
12. Lay out paper to enable cutting to size.
13. Cut the paper to size, trying to keep the cutting line straight.
14. Throw away first sheet because cat tried to chase the scissors and tore the paper.
15. Cut second sheet of paper to size by putting cat in the bag the present came out of.
16. Place present on cut-to-size paper.
17. Lift up edges of paper to seal in present, wonder why edges now don't reach, and find cat between present and paper. Remove cat and retry.
18. Place object on paper, to hold in place, while cutting transparent tape.
19. Spend next 20 minutes carefully trying to remove transparent tape from cat with pair of nail scissors.
20. Seal paper down with transparent tape, making corners as neat as possible.
21. Look for roll of ribbon; chase cat down hall and retrieve ribbon.
22. Try to wrap present with ribbon in a two-directional turn.
23. Re-roll up ribbon and remove paper that is now torn, due to cat's enthusiasm in chasing ribbon end.
24. Repeat steps 12-22 until down to last sheet of paper.
25. Decide to skip steps 12-16 in order to save time and reduce risk of losing last sheet of paper. Retrieve old cardboard box that you know is right size for sheet of paper.
26. Put present in box, and tie down with string.
27. Remove string, open box and remove cat.
28. Put all packing materials in bag with present and head for lockable room.
29. Once inside room, lock door and start to re-lay out packing materials.
30. Remove cat from box, unlock door, put cat outside door, close door and re-lock.
31. Lay out last sheet of paper. (Admittedly this is difficult in the small area of the toilet, but try your best!)
32. Seal box, wrap with paper and start repairs by very carefully sealing down tears with transparent tape. Now tie up with ribbon and decorate with bows to hide worst affected areas.
33. Label, then sit back and admire your handiwork, congratulating yourself on making good of a bad job.
34. Unlock door, and go to kitchen to make drink and feed cat.
35. Spend next 15 minutes looking for cat, before coming to obvious conclusion.
36. Unwrap present, untie box and remove cat.
37. Retrieve all discarded sheets of wrapping paper, feed cat and retire to lockable room for last attempt, making certain you are alone and the door is locked.
38. At time of handing over present, smile sweetly at receiver's face, as they try and hide their contempt at being handed such a badly wrapped present.
39. Swear to yourself that next year, you will get the store to wrap the darn thing for you!!
************ MEMO FROM SANTA ************
I regret to inform you that, effective immediately, I will no longer serve the States of Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and Arkansas on Christmas Eve; due to the overwhelming current population of the Earth, my contract was renegotiated by North American Fairies and Elves Local 209 (and, as part of the new and better contract, I get longer breaks for milk and cookies, too).
However, I'm certain that your children will be in good hands with your local replacement, who happens to be my third cousin, Bubba Claus. His side of the family is from the South Pole. He shares my goal of delivering toys to all the good boys and girls; however, there are a few differences between us. Differences such as:
1. There is no danger of the Grinch stealing your presents from Bubba Claus. He has a gun rack on his sleigh, and a bumper sticker that reads: "These toys insured by Smith and Wesson."
2. Instead of milk and cookies, Bubba Claus prefers that children leave an RC Cola and pork rinds (or a moon pie) on the fireplace. And Bubba doesn't smoke a pipe. He dips a little snuff though, so please have an empty spit can handy.
3. Bubba Claus' sleigh is pulled by floppy-eared, flyin' coon dogs instead of reindeer (I made the mistake of loaning him one of my reindeer one time, and Blitzen's head now overlooks Bubba's fireplace).
4. You won't hear, "On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen..." when Bubba Claus arrives. Instead, you'll hear, "On Earnhardt, Andretti, on Elliott and Petty."
5. "Ho, Ho, Ho!" will be replaced by "Yee Haw!" And you also are likely to hear Bubba's elves respond, "I her'd dat!"
6. As required by Southern highway laws, Bubba Claus' sleigh does have a Yosemite Sam safety triangle on the back with the words "Back Off."
7. The usual Christmas movie classics such as "Miracle on 34th Street" and "It's a Wonderful Life" will not be shown in your negotiated viewing area. Instead, you'll see "Boss Hogg Saves Christmas" and "Smokey and the Bandit IV" featuring Burt Reynolds as Bubba Claus and dozens of state patrol cars crashing into each other.
And finally:
8. Bubba Claus doesn't wear a belt. If I were you, I'd make sure you, the wife, and the kids turn the other way when he bends over to put presents under the tree.
Sincerely Yours,
S. Claus
************ Wrapping Presents (With a Cat) ************
1. Clear large space on table for wrapping present.
2. Go to closet and collect bag in which present is contained, and close door.
3. Open door and remove cat from closet.
4. Go to cupboard and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.
5. Go back and remove cat from cupboard.
6. Go to drawer and collect transparent tape, ribbons, scissors, labels, etc.
7. Lay out present and wrapping materials on table, to enable wrapping strategy to be formed.
8. Go back to drawer to get string, remove cat that has been in the drawer since last visit, and collect string.
9. Remove present from bag.
10. Remove cat from bag.
11. Open box to check present, remove cat from box, replace present.
12. Lay out paper to enable cutting to size.
13. Cut the paper to size, trying to keep the cutting line straight.
14. Throw away first sheet because cat tried to chase the scissors and tore the paper.
15. Cut second sheet of paper to size by putting cat in the bag the present came out of.
16. Place present on cut-to-size paper.
17. Lift up edges of paper to seal in present, wonder why edges now don't reach, and find cat between present and paper. Remove cat and retry.
18. Place object on paper, to hold in place, while cutting transparent tape.
19. Spend next 20 minutes carefully trying to remove transparent tape from cat with pair of nail scissors.
20. Seal paper down with transparent tape, making corners as neat as possible.
21. Look for roll of ribbon; chase cat down hall and retrieve ribbon.
22. Try to wrap present with ribbon in a two-directional turn.
23. Re-roll up ribbon and remove paper that is now torn, due to cat's enthusiasm in chasing ribbon end.
24. Repeat steps 12-22 until down to last sheet of paper.
25. Decide to skip steps 12-16 in order to save time and reduce risk of losing last sheet of paper. Retrieve old cardboard box that you know is right size for sheet of paper.
26. Put present in box, and tie down with string.
27. Remove string, open box and remove cat.
28. Put all packing materials in bag with present and head for lockable room.
29. Once inside room, lock door and start to re-lay out packing materials.
30. Remove cat from box, unlock door, put cat outside door, close door and re-lock.
31. Lay out last sheet of paper. (Admittedly this is difficult in the small area of the toilet, but try your best!)
32. Seal box, wrap with paper and start repairs by very carefully sealing down tears with transparent tape. Now tie up with ribbon and decorate with bows to hide worst affected areas.
33. Label, then sit back and admire your handiwork, congratulating yourself on making good of a bad job.
34. Unlock door, and go to kitchen to make drink and feed cat.
35. Spend next 15 minutes looking for cat, before coming to obvious conclusion.
36. Unwrap present, untie box and remove cat.
37. Retrieve all discarded sheets of wrapping paper, feed cat and retire to lockable room for last attempt, making certain you are alone and the door is locked.
38. At time of handing over present, smile sweetly at receiver's face, as they try and hide their contempt at being handed such a badly wrapped present.
39. Swear to yourself that next year, you will get the store to wrap the darn thing for you!!
Friday, December 24, 2004
Have we lost our ability to judge age?
There's a vaguely scary show on The Learning Channel now called "10 Years Younger," the premise of which is to use non-surgical means to help people who look older than their ages look the age they actually are. The grimmest aspect of this show is when they put the victim in a soundproof box out on the street and poll people as to how old she looks; not only is it cruel to pass this information along to the victim, but the age-guessers have shown amazing consistency at making guesses that are so far off that you're left wondering if they got PAID to add years to their actual guesses.
I've been dead-on in guessing the correct ages for these women, despite the fact that they all have things like sun damage that give the appearance of them being SLIGHTLY older than they are; it's not rocket science to look for lines and crepiness and sag and use that info to calculate age, or at least I didn't think it was. Even if people are fooled by premature undereye bags or whatever, that should only add a few years to their estimates, but I've sat and watched people guess these women to be as much as THIRTY-FIVE years older than they actually are!! Are they out of their MINDS? I saw one idiot look at a woman (who was 28) without a line on her face or a single gray hair and declare her to appear to be in her SIXTIES... based on WHAT, wouldn't you like to know? The age-guessers will say something like "Her glasses make her look sort of older," and then guess her age to be 20 years more than it is... even though glasses shouldn't add ANYTHING to our estimate of age (as they're NOT part of the face), much less 20 years.
I'll be blunt; they're showing these women with no makeup, and with their hair hanging limp or pulled back, and what they look like is HOMELY, not "old"... yes, their skin issues might add a little valid "aging" to them, but if *I* can guess their exact ages, there's no reason for all of these other people not to be able to, much less to be DECADES off, so the only thing they can be responding to, albeit stupidly, is unattractiveness, which they're misinterpreting as some of the women being DOUBLE their actual age. When did we become so dissociated from how a normal human being should look that if we see anything imperfect on a woman's face we see her as being her mother's age? Have we lost touch as a culture with what actual signs of aging ARE?
If a person has no lines on their face and no gray hair, it doesn't matter how bad their skin is, or if they wear glasses or not, or how their hair is styled, or how much they weigh, any reasonable estimate for their age should be under 30, and if their cheeks are still round and soft-looking you should guess under 25. As the faces start to lose the plumpness under the skin and start to get lines, you can safely guess 30's and then 40's. For the 50's, there should be major lines and some gray hair (unless it's dyed, of course), and if someone doesn't have true wrinkles and a full head of gray hair, you should under no circumstances be guessing 60's. It seems silly to have to be saying any of this, but the consistency with which people see a little bit of a belly and a pallid complexion and guess at least a decade wrong, and often more, has been driving me so nuts that I felt obligated to speak up.
What's the cause of the warped perceptions of these people? The only thing I an think of is; actresses. Folks, we need to stop seeing actresses as having ANY connection to reality; they're genetic freaks, with size 2 bodies that are rare because they're not well suited for pregnancy and childbirth, breast implants, and endless surgical procedures on their faces to banish any hint of aging... it is NOT normal to see women in their 50's and 60's, or even in their 30's and 40's, with perfectly smooth, tight faces, and we need to totally ignore these special cases when we contemplate what a given age looks like. We need to stop passing hideous judgment on every woman who isn't bone-thin and beautiful, who hasn't paid $500 to have her hair done, who wasn't dressed by a stylist, who isn't being made up, lit and photographed by pros being paid to make her look fabulous.
There's no harm in giving women facial peels and showing them how to put themselves together a little bit better, but to make them pay for this by publicly humiliating them by showing the most mean-spirited and moronic guesses about their age on national television is HORRIBLE. TLC usually has good programs, but I give this one, and all those people who've jumped in front of a camera to crush women's egos by wildly mis-guessing their ages, 2 thumbs WAY down.
I've been dead-on in guessing the correct ages for these women, despite the fact that they all have things like sun damage that give the appearance of them being SLIGHTLY older than they are; it's not rocket science to look for lines and crepiness and sag and use that info to calculate age, or at least I didn't think it was. Even if people are fooled by premature undereye bags or whatever, that should only add a few years to their estimates, but I've sat and watched people guess these women to be as much as THIRTY-FIVE years older than they actually are!! Are they out of their MINDS? I saw one idiot look at a woman (who was 28) without a line on her face or a single gray hair and declare her to appear to be in her SIXTIES... based on WHAT, wouldn't you like to know? The age-guessers will say something like "Her glasses make her look sort of older," and then guess her age to be 20 years more than it is... even though glasses shouldn't add ANYTHING to our estimate of age (as they're NOT part of the face), much less 20 years.
I'll be blunt; they're showing these women with no makeup, and with their hair hanging limp or pulled back, and what they look like is HOMELY, not "old"... yes, their skin issues might add a little valid "aging" to them, but if *I* can guess their exact ages, there's no reason for all of these other people not to be able to, much less to be DECADES off, so the only thing they can be responding to, albeit stupidly, is unattractiveness, which they're misinterpreting as some of the women being DOUBLE their actual age. When did we become so dissociated from how a normal human being should look that if we see anything imperfect on a woman's face we see her as being her mother's age? Have we lost touch as a culture with what actual signs of aging ARE?
If a person has no lines on their face and no gray hair, it doesn't matter how bad their skin is, or if they wear glasses or not, or how their hair is styled, or how much they weigh, any reasonable estimate for their age should be under 30, and if their cheeks are still round and soft-looking you should guess under 25. As the faces start to lose the plumpness under the skin and start to get lines, you can safely guess 30's and then 40's. For the 50's, there should be major lines and some gray hair (unless it's dyed, of course), and if someone doesn't have true wrinkles and a full head of gray hair, you should under no circumstances be guessing 60's. It seems silly to have to be saying any of this, but the consistency with which people see a little bit of a belly and a pallid complexion and guess at least a decade wrong, and often more, has been driving me so nuts that I felt obligated to speak up.
What's the cause of the warped perceptions of these people? The only thing I an think of is; actresses. Folks, we need to stop seeing actresses as having ANY connection to reality; they're genetic freaks, with size 2 bodies that are rare because they're not well suited for pregnancy and childbirth, breast implants, and endless surgical procedures on their faces to banish any hint of aging... it is NOT normal to see women in their 50's and 60's, or even in their 30's and 40's, with perfectly smooth, tight faces, and we need to totally ignore these special cases when we contemplate what a given age looks like. We need to stop passing hideous judgment on every woman who isn't bone-thin and beautiful, who hasn't paid $500 to have her hair done, who wasn't dressed by a stylist, who isn't being made up, lit and photographed by pros being paid to make her look fabulous.
There's no harm in giving women facial peels and showing them how to put themselves together a little bit better, but to make them pay for this by publicly humiliating them by showing the most mean-spirited and moronic guesses about their age on national television is HORRIBLE. TLC usually has good programs, but I give this one, and all those people who've jumped in front of a camera to crush women's egos by wildly mis-guessing their ages, 2 thumbs WAY down.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Some people give Christianity a bad name
If you've been reading here for a while, you know that I respect, and see wisdom in, ALL religions, and that I believe the vast majority of people of all religions to be basically good... but that a handful of badly-behaved people can tarnish the reputation of all followers of a faith.
I have many Christian friends, both in real life and online, and we've found it simple to show respect for each other, and for each other's beliefs, because it IS simple to do these things; furthermore, we're all the kind of people who'll step in if we see someone being bashed for what they believe, and I've been amazed to see how often Christians get attacked just for being Christian... they get attacked far more than people with odd metaphysical beliefs like mine ever do. Because prejudice is so far from my mode of thought, I've never understood where the urge to launch flamewars against people just because they mentioned being Christian comes from; sure, I can see why it happens if someone shows up and uses their Christianity to start judging and criticizing people, and I can see how those who act that way can make others a little edgy about Christians hanging around, but there just isn't enough of this going on to account for the rabid anti-Christian sentiment I've seen, so... what gives?
As best as I can determine (as people aren't usually willing to describe honestly why they act hatefully towards others), it's a backlash against that tiny % of Christians who treat non-Christians with condescension and thinly-veiled contempt... contrary to how JESUS is described as having treated people, which makes me wonder how those folks can call themselves Christians, but that's a whole other rant. You know the type I mean; people who think that if you don't believe EXACTLY what they do, you're so far inferior to them that you're essentially sub-human, and thus that they owe you no shred of courtesy or respect, even if you're supposed to be their friend. As you might imagine, this whole concept is on my mind because I was on the receiving end of this today:
A man I've known online, and corresponded with, for about 4 years sent me an email that directed me to a site dedicated to demonstrating that the founding fathers were Christian (which most of them certainly were), and how therefore every aspect of our country and government "should be" run according to Christian values. I replied to this email by saying that I appreciated him thinking of me but that, as a non-Christian, I don't support the idea of religion being part of our governmental structure, or being paid for with my tax dollars, and that I didn't want to receive anything further with religious content. His response... and my jaw is clenching just thinking about it... was that:
1) It was too bad that I was "ignorant" about American history... as if my not reaching the conclusions he did meant that I was IGNORANT rather than just approaching the analysis from a different perspective... as if only an ignorant person could disagree with a Christian interpretation of the facts on that website.
2) He'd KNOWN already that I wasn't a Christian... then what possible excuse did he have for sending me the URL to a hard-core Christian website?
3) He thought it was "alright" that I wasn't Christian... could he be any more condescending?
4) Well, he though it was alright as long as I didn't try to force any of MY ideas about things on HIM... right after he'd forced HIS ideas on ME, can you believe the hypocrisy?!!!!!!!
As you might imagine, this sort of commentary brings to my mind a 2-word response, and the 2nd word is "YOU." I restrained myself, however, and instead replied that it was NOT acceptable to suggest that someone who disagreed with him was "ignorant," or to send Christian emails to a non-Christian, or to push his ideas at someone while denying them the right to respond in kind... and that, as his actions showed me he was NOT my friend, it was time for us to stop writing to each other. {sigh}
I'm sure that no one reading this would behave the way this man did, but if you're Christian, and into forwarding religious-themed emails, ask yourself; are you SURE that everyone you forward to is Christian, and welcomes what you send them? If not, you could be unknowingly adding to the resentment that some people, who've been treated with contempt by someone like the man I've referred to, feel against Christians... and that's NOT your intention, right? Before you send out a flood of Christmas emails, take a moment to sort out who you should and should not be sending religious ones to; if you REALLY want to strike a blow against anti-Christian backlash, send an email to all your Christian friends and ask them if THEY might be sending religious emails to non-Christians, and if so, if they shouldn't re-think who they forward stuff to. Or... send them my URL, so they can read this for themselves; they'll get the picture, and you'll get some good karma for your elimination of sources of negative energy.
I have many Christian friends, both in real life and online, and we've found it simple to show respect for each other, and for each other's beliefs, because it IS simple to do these things; furthermore, we're all the kind of people who'll step in if we see someone being bashed for what they believe, and I've been amazed to see how often Christians get attacked just for being Christian... they get attacked far more than people with odd metaphysical beliefs like mine ever do. Because prejudice is so far from my mode of thought, I've never understood where the urge to launch flamewars against people just because they mentioned being Christian comes from; sure, I can see why it happens if someone shows up and uses their Christianity to start judging and criticizing people, and I can see how those who act that way can make others a little edgy about Christians hanging around, but there just isn't enough of this going on to account for the rabid anti-Christian sentiment I've seen, so... what gives?
As best as I can determine (as people aren't usually willing to describe honestly why they act hatefully towards others), it's a backlash against that tiny % of Christians who treat non-Christians with condescension and thinly-veiled contempt... contrary to how JESUS is described as having treated people, which makes me wonder how those folks can call themselves Christians, but that's a whole other rant. You know the type I mean; people who think that if you don't believe EXACTLY what they do, you're so far inferior to them that you're essentially sub-human, and thus that they owe you no shred of courtesy or respect, even if you're supposed to be their friend. As you might imagine, this whole concept is on my mind because I was on the receiving end of this today:
A man I've known online, and corresponded with, for about 4 years sent me an email that directed me to a site dedicated to demonstrating that the founding fathers were Christian (which most of them certainly were), and how therefore every aspect of our country and government "should be" run according to Christian values. I replied to this email by saying that I appreciated him thinking of me but that, as a non-Christian, I don't support the idea of religion being part of our governmental structure, or being paid for with my tax dollars, and that I didn't want to receive anything further with religious content. His response... and my jaw is clenching just thinking about it... was that:
1) It was too bad that I was "ignorant" about American history... as if my not reaching the conclusions he did meant that I was IGNORANT rather than just approaching the analysis from a different perspective... as if only an ignorant person could disagree with a Christian interpretation of the facts on that website.
2) He'd KNOWN already that I wasn't a Christian... then what possible excuse did he have for sending me the URL to a hard-core Christian website?
3) He thought it was "alright" that I wasn't Christian... could he be any more condescending?
4) Well, he though it was alright as long as I didn't try to force any of MY ideas about things on HIM... right after he'd forced HIS ideas on ME, can you believe the hypocrisy?!!!!!!!
As you might imagine, this sort of commentary brings to my mind a 2-word response, and the 2nd word is "YOU." I restrained myself, however, and instead replied that it was NOT acceptable to suggest that someone who disagreed with him was "ignorant," or to send Christian emails to a non-Christian, or to push his ideas at someone while denying them the right to respond in kind... and that, as his actions showed me he was NOT my friend, it was time for us to stop writing to each other. {sigh}
I'm sure that no one reading this would behave the way this man did, but if you're Christian, and into forwarding religious-themed emails, ask yourself; are you SURE that everyone you forward to is Christian, and welcomes what you send them? If not, you could be unknowingly adding to the resentment that some people, who've been treated with contempt by someone like the man I've referred to, feel against Christians... and that's NOT your intention, right? Before you send out a flood of Christmas emails, take a moment to sort out who you should and should not be sending religious ones to; if you REALLY want to strike a blow against anti-Christian backlash, send an email to all your Christian friends and ask them if THEY might be sending religious emails to non-Christians, and if so, if they shouldn't re-think who they forward stuff to. Or... send them my URL, so they can read this for themselves; they'll get the picture, and you'll get some good karma for your elimination of sources of negative energy.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
The drive to succeed
Can you imagine what it would take for a man to start out with nothing, father a child at 14, and then end up 25 years later, via his own efforts, worth over half a BILLION dollars? One of the contestants on "The Real Gilligan's Island" is the man I just described, and, although he isn't a physically studly man, and didn't give any overt evidence of being particularly intelligent or forceful, my first thought was that if he could achieve what they said he had, he'd be unbeatable in this competition, too... and I was RIGHT. He was thinking things out to the last detail from the moment he got to the island, scheming and planning, and facing each challenge with the sort of determination you'd expect him to have to possess... and, even though the others SHOULD have seen the danger he presented and gotten rid of him early on, he manipulated every vote, got into the final 3, and then pressed forward to win the final competition by a mile.
To keep things exciting, they didn't show much of his strategy sessions with his wife, or of the meetings he had with the others to gather info and exert control, but he MUST have an extraordinary grasp of human nature and psychology, and his powers of persuasion must also be pretty amazing, given how he kept getting people to do things his way; if they had footage of everything he did and said on that island, I'd love to see it, to see an obvious master in action... don't YOU wonder how certain people manage to triumph in EVERY situation they're in, and wouldn't you like to learn their secrets? Wouldn't that be WAY more interesting than seeing people eat live maggots?
What would make a man worth over $500 million go and starve on an island to win a prize he wouldn't be allowed to keep, and couldn't care about if he DID keep it? The challenge. The desire to take on something new and conquer. I think this is a better indicator of who might make the big, BIG $ than the desire for $ itself, or than any other desire, including the desire to win; the pure, primal desire to achieve, overcome, and outperform everyone else... the win, the prize, the rewards, are secondary. This is why so many self-made men barely seem to use or enjoy the $ they have, because they're so busy scaling new mountains, business-wise. Why climb a mountain? Because it's there. Why leave your mansion to live in a hut and participate in a TV competition? Because it's THERE. I can't begin to understand that mindset, but I admire it enormously, because it gets things done, and inspires others to get things done... and there's something appealing about success that comes from something other than being genetically gifted with beauty or athletic prowess.
Will we be seeing other wealthy men getting involved in these reality show competitions just to show they can win at ANYTHING? Count on it.
To keep things exciting, they didn't show much of his strategy sessions with his wife, or of the meetings he had with the others to gather info and exert control, but he MUST have an extraordinary grasp of human nature and psychology, and his powers of persuasion must also be pretty amazing, given how he kept getting people to do things his way; if they had footage of everything he did and said on that island, I'd love to see it, to see an obvious master in action... don't YOU wonder how certain people manage to triumph in EVERY situation they're in, and wouldn't you like to learn their secrets? Wouldn't that be WAY more interesting than seeing people eat live maggots?
What would make a man worth over $500 million go and starve on an island to win a prize he wouldn't be allowed to keep, and couldn't care about if he DID keep it? The challenge. The desire to take on something new and conquer. I think this is a better indicator of who might make the big, BIG $ than the desire for $ itself, or than any other desire, including the desire to win; the pure, primal desire to achieve, overcome, and outperform everyone else... the win, the prize, the rewards, are secondary. This is why so many self-made men barely seem to use or enjoy the $ they have, because they're so busy scaling new mountains, business-wise. Why climb a mountain? Because it's there. Why leave your mansion to live in a hut and participate in a TV competition? Because it's THERE. I can't begin to understand that mindset, but I admire it enormously, because it gets things done, and inspires others to get things done... and there's something appealing about success that comes from something other than being genetically gifted with beauty or athletic prowess.
Will we be seeing other wealthy men getting involved in these reality show competitions just to show they can win at ANYTHING? Count on it.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Updates
On 11-9, I posted about the nightmare we'd gotten into with renting DVD's via the online Blockbuster setup; the DVD's had just stopped coming, because their system showed they'd never gotten any of them back from us... and we were still PAYING for the service. On 11-19, I posted that 2 of the DVD's showed up in my husband's car, and we sent them in; we got a couple more DVD's, and then nothing again... because, as we've since found out, the Blockbuster system had wiped out our list of DVD's, and it took several weeks for my husband (whose account it is, grrrrr) to notice it. They credited us with 2 free weeks, which doesn't make up for what we lost out on but is better than nothing, we re-did the list, and today we got DVD's in the mail... THREE DVD's. No, we never found the 3rd "missing" one in our home, which means that either the post office took TWO MONTHS to send a returned DVD a distance that usually takes them 2 DAYS, or Blockbuster had the frigging thing all along and never credited us with it, leaving us without getting replacement DVD's for it for, I'll say it again because it ticks me off so much, TWO MONTHS... I know that the post office is a disaster, but given the other issues with Blockbuster online, I'm betting this is THEIR screwup. I'm trying to focus on the fact that we DON'T have any DVD's showing in their system as outstanding anymore, and so can cancel the service without having to pay full retail for a missing movie (if and when I can get it through my husband's thick head that we need to cut our losses while we can), but it's tough.
On 11-30, I posted about trying organic steak, and finding it gamey-tasting; it turns out that Whole Foods has another variety of beef that they call "natural," which also doesn't have the hormones and antibiotics, but wasn't fed organically... and these steaks were VERY good. I'm willing to try organic one more time, just to be sure, but if it's just not the flavor I eat beef to get, we'll go with "natural"; they only cost a little more than regular steaks, so I'd recommend trying them if you have a Whole Foods near you (and while you're there, try the Paisanitos plantain chips-YUM!!).
On 12-8, I posted about the importance of letting go, and how I did just that with a protracted feud I'd had with an eBay seller from whom I'd won a very unusual clothing item (that I ended up not having while she kept our $), and how, as a karmic result of that letting go, I'd won THREE similar items for stunningly low prices; the update is that, not only have I gotten them all and been very happy with them, but that I won a FOURTH one... an item that has been selling for $75-$80, which I got for $10 with a Buy It Now. I got it in the mail today, along with the equally miraculous 3 DVD's, and it's in mint condition; I don't know which of the 2 was more surreal.
Never a dull moment, lol.
On 11-30, I posted about trying organic steak, and finding it gamey-tasting; it turns out that Whole Foods has another variety of beef that they call "natural," which also doesn't have the hormones and antibiotics, but wasn't fed organically... and these steaks were VERY good. I'm willing to try organic one more time, just to be sure, but if it's just not the flavor I eat beef to get, we'll go with "natural"; they only cost a little more than regular steaks, so I'd recommend trying them if you have a Whole Foods near you (and while you're there, try the Paisanitos plantain chips-YUM!!).
On 12-8, I posted about the importance of letting go, and how I did just that with a protracted feud I'd had with an eBay seller from whom I'd won a very unusual clothing item (that I ended up not having while she kept our $), and how, as a karmic result of that letting go, I'd won THREE similar items for stunningly low prices; the update is that, not only have I gotten them all and been very happy with them, but that I won a FOURTH one... an item that has been selling for $75-$80, which I got for $10 with a Buy It Now. I got it in the mail today, along with the equally miraculous 3 DVD's, and it's in mint condition; I don't know which of the 2 was more surreal.
Never a dull moment, lol.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Why do women love a man in uniform?
Because a uniform is seen as an indication that a man:
1) Has enough physical prowess to have gone through training of some sort; military types have to get through boot camp, cops have the police academy, and firemen have a rigorous training program (sometimes with the exception of volunteer firefighters, but they're extra-heroic, which makes up for it)... and this bodes well both for sex and his potential to sire strong, healthy offspring.
2) Has at least some degree of courage, and very likely a great deal of courage; his willingness to risk death to serve his country, protect us from criminals, or fight fires means that he's likely to be an excellent protector of his loved ones.
3) Could quite possibly be a hero, if not now then at some point in the future; this makes him exciting and glamorous, and gives him high status that will impress a woman's friends and family.
4) Has gainful employment with good benefits; this makes him good husband and father material.
5) Can make a commitment to something, to a group of people as well as to an ideal; no explanation should be necessary for this one.
As a bonus, a uniform provides an important element of attraction that is direct rather than implied:
6) It looks sharp; most men's clothing, whether business, casual or formal, is baggy and either shapeless or blocky, and makes even the nicest male body look like a lump... but the trim fit of a uniform makes any halfway decent male body look tall and toned.
Most women haven't thought this stuff out, of course, but they're always unconsciously aware of what it means to see a uniform on a man... so much so that they even get worked up over the ugly "uniforms" that UPS guys wear, even though all THEY actually indicate is that those men have no job skills and so are stuck driving around all day delivering packages. The purpose of uniforms isn't to attract women, of course, but considering the sorts of services that men in uniform provide, it's certainly a well-deserved side effect.
1) Has enough physical prowess to have gone through training of some sort; military types have to get through boot camp, cops have the police academy, and firemen have a rigorous training program (sometimes with the exception of volunteer firefighters, but they're extra-heroic, which makes up for it)... and this bodes well both for sex and his potential to sire strong, healthy offspring.
2) Has at least some degree of courage, and very likely a great deal of courage; his willingness to risk death to serve his country, protect us from criminals, or fight fires means that he's likely to be an excellent protector of his loved ones.
3) Could quite possibly be a hero, if not now then at some point in the future; this makes him exciting and glamorous, and gives him high status that will impress a woman's friends and family.
4) Has gainful employment with good benefits; this makes him good husband and father material.
5) Can make a commitment to something, to a group of people as well as to an ideal; no explanation should be necessary for this one.
As a bonus, a uniform provides an important element of attraction that is direct rather than implied:
6) It looks sharp; most men's clothing, whether business, casual or formal, is baggy and either shapeless or blocky, and makes even the nicest male body look like a lump... but the trim fit of a uniform makes any halfway decent male body look tall and toned.
Most women haven't thought this stuff out, of course, but they're always unconsciously aware of what it means to see a uniform on a man... so much so that they even get worked up over the ugly "uniforms" that UPS guys wear, even though all THEY actually indicate is that those men have no job skills and so are stuck driving around all day delivering packages. The purpose of uniforms isn't to attract women, of course, but considering the sorts of services that men in uniform provide, it's certainly a well-deserved side effect.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Do some of us marry ourselves?
I don't have any interest in actors for the most part, so the picture in the November issue of Vogue of Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld is the first time I've ever seen her; my first reaction was, why would someone rich and famous enough to have his pick of the world's most beautiful women marry one who's barely any better looking than average? I then took a look at HIM, and my reaction was to wonder if it was a trick photo... because they look exactly alike. Same jawline, same chin, same cheekbones, even the same hairline; same skin, hair and eye color, both with similar biggish noses. They look more alike than most brothers and sisters do... and this is the woman he picked over all the beautiful supermodels and such that he could have easily chosen instead.
Can that be a coincidence?
While some folks are certainly attracted to the wildly different, some to the extreme that they won't even date people of their same race, it does seem that some of us are drawn to those who look like they could be members of our biological family. It's not uncommon, for example, for a woman to prefer men who remind her of her father, sometimes even including agewise; there's generally an overt idolization of "daddy" in these cases, and a search for a substitute father figure. In some people, there's more of a tendency to feel "right" with those who have a familiar "look" to them, which still makes sense when you think about it, as they probably feel most "right" around their family; they may not even be aware of it until someone points it out to them, though, so for them it's more of a subconscious thing. The real eye-popper, and the trickiest to explain, is of course cases like Seinfeld's, when people choose mates who are their virtual clones; this is easiest to see with gay couples, and my husband and I have noted every time we eat at a restaurant in the primarily gay part of our city that members of a couple often bear a striking resemblance to each other, right down to things like having the same goofy patch of hair in the middle of their identical bald spots, or having hair with the exact same style and pattern of streaks... they even tend to dress similarly, although this could have started after they got together, of course. I have a friend who married a man that everyone assumes is her brother (they're a perfect physical match right down to the gaps in their front teeth), and I've noticed less-dramatic resemblances any # of times... it's even been commented on more than once that my husband and I have a similar "look" due to our coloring and build.
But, WHY does this happen? Why do people make that sort of choice? Even those who truly love themselves wouldn't necessarily extend that to wanting to see what's essentially their own faces on their partners, and it's not like all of these folks are so beautiful that they think that the most beautiful possible partner is one who looks just like them, so... maybe it's something as simple as the idea that whoever resembles us the most on the outside might resemble us the most on the inside, or that if we look alike it must be fate for us to be together?
I've read that couples who have the same DEGREE of looks, in other words who are both the same on a scale of 1 to 10, are the happiest together; wouldn't it be interesting if people who looked alike were happier together too?
Can that be a coincidence?
While some folks are certainly attracted to the wildly different, some to the extreme that they won't even date people of their same race, it does seem that some of us are drawn to those who look like they could be members of our biological family. It's not uncommon, for example, for a woman to prefer men who remind her of her father, sometimes even including agewise; there's generally an overt idolization of "daddy" in these cases, and a search for a substitute father figure. In some people, there's more of a tendency to feel "right" with those who have a familiar "look" to them, which still makes sense when you think about it, as they probably feel most "right" around their family; they may not even be aware of it until someone points it out to them, though, so for them it's more of a subconscious thing. The real eye-popper, and the trickiest to explain, is of course cases like Seinfeld's, when people choose mates who are their virtual clones; this is easiest to see with gay couples, and my husband and I have noted every time we eat at a restaurant in the primarily gay part of our city that members of a couple often bear a striking resemblance to each other, right down to things like having the same goofy patch of hair in the middle of their identical bald spots, or having hair with the exact same style and pattern of streaks... they even tend to dress similarly, although this could have started after they got together, of course. I have a friend who married a man that everyone assumes is her brother (they're a perfect physical match right down to the gaps in their front teeth), and I've noticed less-dramatic resemblances any # of times... it's even been commented on more than once that my husband and I have a similar "look" due to our coloring and build.
But, WHY does this happen? Why do people make that sort of choice? Even those who truly love themselves wouldn't necessarily extend that to wanting to see what's essentially their own faces on their partners, and it's not like all of these folks are so beautiful that they think that the most beautiful possible partner is one who looks just like them, so... maybe it's something as simple as the idea that whoever resembles us the most on the outside might resemble us the most on the inside, or that if we look alike it must be fate for us to be together?
I've read that couples who have the same DEGREE of looks, in other words who are both the same on a scale of 1 to 10, are the happiest together; wouldn't it be interesting if people who looked alike were happier together too?
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