Saturday, November 26, 2005
More brilliance from Scott Adams
There was a particularly insightful Dilbert comic on November 21
http://www.comics.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20051121.html
in which the boss tells Dilbert, "I hired an abusive, lying, back-stabbing control freak. But don't worry, because I'm sending you to a class on how to deal with difficult coworkers." This is funny because it has the ring of truth; American culture is very much dedicated to catering to rotten people. We seem to have lost total sight of the fact that the proper way to deal with a bad person is to reject them, get away from them, be openly critical and condemning of them, and, if you're in a position of power, kick their butts over and over until they either get lost or get squared away; instead, we fall all over ourselves to coddle and appease these turds, which is of course done at the expense of the virtuous, and particularly of the victims... and that goes x10 online, where once the 1st nasty comment is made everyone either heads for the hills or rolls over and lets the turd get away with murder.
You know what comes next, right? Someone who behaves in an ugly way is a bad person, and the reaction of a good person to a bad person should be adversarial; don't be their friend, don't treat them nicely, don't turn a blind eye, speak up against them and encourage others to do so... that's the only way we'll ever make the internet a less attractive arena for them to spew in.
Scott Adams is clearly also aware of online turds; he has a blog now, which gives him the chance to demonstrate his brilliance in essay form, and one of his recent posts covers perhaps the most common form of turd-ism, twisting what a person has said and/or coming up with ridiculous reasons for not accepting facts as facts in order to argue belligerently with a chosen victim. The post, which is here
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/11/results_of_why_.html
describes how this style of "debating" is done:
"If you are new to the Internet, allow me to explain how to debate in this medium. When one person makes any kind of statement, all you need to do is apply one of these methods to make it sound stupid. Then go on the offensive.
1. Turn someone's generality into an absolute. For example, if someone makes a general statement that Americans celebrate Christmas, point out that some people are Jewish and so anyone who thinks that ALL Americans celebrate Christmas is stupid. (Bonus points for accusing the person of being anti-Semitic.)
2. Turn someone's factual statements into implied preferences. For example, if someone mentions that not all Catholic priests are pedophiles, accuse the person who said it of siding with pedophiles.
3. Turn factual statements into implied equivalents. For example, if someone says that Ghandi didn't eat cows, accuse the person of stupidly implying that cows deserve equal billing with Gandhi.
4. Omit key words. For example, if someone says that people can't eat rocks, accuse the person of being stupid for suggesting that people can't eat. Bonus points for arguing that some people CAN eat pebbles if they try hard enough.
5. Assume the dumbest interpretation. For example, if someone says that he can run a mile in 12 minutes, assume he means it happens underwater and argue that no one can hold his breath that long.
6. Hallucinate entirely different points. For example, if someone says apples grow on trees, accuse him of saying snakes have arms and then point out how stupid that is.
7. Use the intellectual laziness card. For example, if someone says that ice is cold, recommend that he take graduate courses in chemistry and meteorology before jumping to stupid conclusions that display a complete ignorance of the complexity of ice."
What's even scarier than people using these methods on a regular basis is that when they do it, no one contradicts them or points out the insanity of their comments... and this is why I try to avoid getting into "discussions" with people who don't have to look me in the eye after they've had their say.
Anyways, visit The Dilbert Blog and show Adams some love; he's the MAN.
http://www.comics.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20051121.html
in which the boss tells Dilbert, "I hired an abusive, lying, back-stabbing control freak. But don't worry, because I'm sending you to a class on how to deal with difficult coworkers." This is funny because it has the ring of truth; American culture is very much dedicated to catering to rotten people. We seem to have lost total sight of the fact that the proper way to deal with a bad person is to reject them, get away from them, be openly critical and condemning of them, and, if you're in a position of power, kick their butts over and over until they either get lost or get squared away; instead, we fall all over ourselves to coddle and appease these turds, which is of course done at the expense of the virtuous, and particularly of the victims... and that goes x10 online, where once the 1st nasty comment is made everyone either heads for the hills or rolls over and lets the turd get away with murder.
You know what comes next, right? Someone who behaves in an ugly way is a bad person, and the reaction of a good person to a bad person should be adversarial; don't be their friend, don't treat them nicely, don't turn a blind eye, speak up against them and encourage others to do so... that's the only way we'll ever make the internet a less attractive arena for them to spew in.
Scott Adams is clearly also aware of online turds; he has a blog now, which gives him the chance to demonstrate his brilliance in essay form, and one of his recent posts covers perhaps the most common form of turd-ism, twisting what a person has said and/or coming up with ridiculous reasons for not accepting facts as facts in order to argue belligerently with a chosen victim. The post, which is here
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/11/results_of_why_.html
describes how this style of "debating" is done:
"If you are new to the Internet, allow me to explain how to debate in this medium. When one person makes any kind of statement, all you need to do is apply one of these methods to make it sound stupid. Then go on the offensive.
1. Turn someone's generality into an absolute. For example, if someone makes a general statement that Americans celebrate Christmas, point out that some people are Jewish and so anyone who thinks that ALL Americans celebrate Christmas is stupid. (Bonus points for accusing the person of being anti-Semitic.)
2. Turn someone's factual statements into implied preferences. For example, if someone mentions that not all Catholic priests are pedophiles, accuse the person who said it of siding with pedophiles.
3. Turn factual statements into implied equivalents. For example, if someone says that Ghandi didn't eat cows, accuse the person of stupidly implying that cows deserve equal billing with Gandhi.
4. Omit key words. For example, if someone says that people can't eat rocks, accuse the person of being stupid for suggesting that people can't eat. Bonus points for arguing that some people CAN eat pebbles if they try hard enough.
5. Assume the dumbest interpretation. For example, if someone says that he can run a mile in 12 minutes, assume he means it happens underwater and argue that no one can hold his breath that long.
6. Hallucinate entirely different points. For example, if someone says apples grow on trees, accuse him of saying snakes have arms and then point out how stupid that is.
7. Use the intellectual laziness card. For example, if someone says that ice is cold, recommend that he take graduate courses in chemistry and meteorology before jumping to stupid conclusions that display a complete ignorance of the complexity of ice."
What's even scarier than people using these methods on a regular basis is that when they do it, no one contradicts them or points out the insanity of their comments... and this is why I try to avoid getting into "discussions" with people who don't have to look me in the eye after they've had their say.
Anyways, visit The Dilbert Blog and show Adams some love; he's the MAN.
Friday, November 25, 2005
A typical geek Thanksgiving
Just my husband and I. Not a single phone call all day. Small, simple but festive meal. I know it sounds un-American, but it's what we always do (barring the occasional phone call from a friend), and we both love it that way.
He spent the day wasting time in forums in his study, while I was in the bedroom playing air guitar along with Van Halen's "The Best of Both Worlds" CD; aside from dinner, and later dessert, we spent most of the evening in different rooms, typing away. No, we don't have the urge to be in each other's faces just because it's a holiday, but we connected well at the end of the meal, fear not; my husband brandished the wishbone at me, and we went through several rounds of "Stay on your own half," "Move your fingers, "Quite cheating!!" etc before breaking it. I won, and closed my eyes for a moment to make my wish; he started going "Ow ow ow!!", and I was alarmed for a few seconds... until I realized that he was pretending to "grant my wish," and we both howled with laughter.
After dinner, I updated the software on my desktop, and it messed up my network connection so that my laptop was getting screwed up... and when he fixed it the adaptor to my keyboard died. He had to put in a different keyboard that doesn't work perfectly until he can replace the adaptor; he got one on eBay, stupidly paying FAR more than he should have with a Buy It Now without consulting me because he decided that *I* thought it was such an emergency that $ was no object... AND there's a keyboard as part of the auction, meaning that he'll pay quintuple the shipping as well, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
He promised to do several tasks by the end of the day; he did one of them at 3AM, and that's it.
Basically, therefore, it was a standard day off for us (aside from the poultry being roasted in the oven instead of being part of a frozen meal zapped in the microwave)... with one exception; we took a couple of minutes early in the day to comment on how unbelievably lucky we are to have our comfortable life rather than any of the thousand types of miserable ones that too many people have to endure. I hope you took time today to think about how lucky YOU are, to have been given enough education to read, to know how to use a computer, to have the resources to purchase one, to have the free time to read blogs, and for the many other good things in your life... and that you had people you care about to share the day with.
He spent the day wasting time in forums in his study, while I was in the bedroom playing air guitar along with Van Halen's "The Best of Both Worlds" CD; aside from dinner, and later dessert, we spent most of the evening in different rooms, typing away. No, we don't have the urge to be in each other's faces just because it's a holiday, but we connected well at the end of the meal, fear not; my husband brandished the wishbone at me, and we went through several rounds of "Stay on your own half," "Move your fingers, "Quite cheating!!" etc before breaking it. I won, and closed my eyes for a moment to make my wish; he started going "Ow ow ow!!", and I was alarmed for a few seconds... until I realized that he was pretending to "grant my wish," and we both howled with laughter.
After dinner, I updated the software on my desktop, and it messed up my network connection so that my laptop was getting screwed up... and when he fixed it the adaptor to my keyboard died. He had to put in a different keyboard that doesn't work perfectly until he can replace the adaptor; he got one on eBay, stupidly paying FAR more than he should have with a Buy It Now without consulting me because he decided that *I* thought it was such an emergency that $ was no object... AND there's a keyboard as part of the auction, meaning that he'll pay quintuple the shipping as well, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
He promised to do several tasks by the end of the day; he did one of them at 3AM, and that's it.
Basically, therefore, it was a standard day off for us (aside from the poultry being roasted in the oven instead of being part of a frozen meal zapped in the microwave)... with one exception; we took a couple of minutes early in the day to comment on how unbelievably lucky we are to have our comfortable life rather than any of the thousand types of miserable ones that too many people have to endure. I hope you took time today to think about how lucky YOU are, to have been given enough education to read, to know how to use a computer, to have the resources to purchase one, to have the free time to read blogs, and for the many other good things in your life... and that you had people you care about to share the day with.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
I'm thankful for...
... all the usual stuff everyone says.
... salt.
... ibuprofen.
... Godiva coconut truffles.
... helium.
.... plantains.
... eBay.
... cinnamon.
... digital cable.
... you.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
... salt.
... ibuprofen.
... Godiva coconut truffles.
... helium.
.... plantains.
... eBay.
... cinnamon.
... digital cable.
... you.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Marital moments
If you're dismayed by references to bodily functions, you'll want to skip this post.
Many years ago, before I met my husband, a married friend used to share the sorts of stories with me that men cringe when they realize are being told about them; to many of them, my reply would be "That's GROSS!! Marriage is GROSS!!"... little did I know that she was toning it down, lol.
When you've been together for ages like my husband and I have, there's pretty much no mystery left; you become as aware of the other person's excretory functions as you are of your own... and yes I know how objectively icky that is, but it's mostly unavoidable and sort of amusing at times (plus it makes for good stories with which to bond with my married friends and gross out my single ones). Today was a banner day in the Omni household in that respect:
My husband had gone off to his study to take a nap; about 20 minutes later, I realized there was something I needed to do on his computer, so I carefully opened the door so as not to wake him... only to discover that he was, um, not sleeping. Due to my many years of dealing with this particular thing, I was of course able to, er, handle it in a calm and mature fashion; "EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! Ew-ew-ew!! Gross!! Gross!! You were supposed to be SLEEPING, you disgusting person!! Yuck, YUCK, don't you know how to lock a door?!!" My husband was mortified despite the many times this has happened before (I guess some things you never get used to), and rapid detumescence occurred as he tried to conceal his inspirational photo... not that he had any cause for embarrassment, as he has the tamest porn on the planet, while I'VE got stuff that'd make Larry Flynt blush. After I finished gagging and squawking, I did what I needed to on his computer and left; too rattled to pick up where he left off, he took his nap.
A couple of hours later, he was back up, and in the bathroom; I needed something in there, so I tapped on the door and went in. He gave me a pained look, which is silly as he usually leaves the door OPEN, and we have conversations every day while he's on the throne, but I think he was feeling shy after the earlier fiasco. He made a querulous comment about how he was on the toilet (in case I'd gone blind while he was napping, maybe, although if there was anyone who might've gone blind it would've been HIM, given his earlier activities), and how there's no privacy in marriage; yanking open the cabinet, I pointed out that nothing was actually showing, and even if it was it's not like he had anything I hadn't seen before. As I rummaged around, he said, "Do you mind?", and when I asked him what his problem was he replied that I was too near his butt; that was a new one, and the reason apparently was that he couldn't proceed with business with me that close... which is probably just as well, as the fan wasn't on. Having found what I was looking for, I told him he could go back to what he'd been doing; he demanded that I close the door on my way out, lol.
Everyone has their own definition of marital bliss; for my husband, I think it'd be "remembering to lock the study and bathroom doors."
Many years ago, before I met my husband, a married friend used to share the sorts of stories with me that men cringe when they realize are being told about them; to many of them, my reply would be "That's GROSS!! Marriage is GROSS!!"... little did I know that she was toning it down, lol.
When you've been together for ages like my husband and I have, there's pretty much no mystery left; you become as aware of the other person's excretory functions as you are of your own... and yes I know how objectively icky that is, but it's mostly unavoidable and sort of amusing at times (plus it makes for good stories with which to bond with my married friends and gross out my single ones). Today was a banner day in the Omni household in that respect:
My husband had gone off to his study to take a nap; about 20 minutes later, I realized there was something I needed to do on his computer, so I carefully opened the door so as not to wake him... only to discover that he was, um, not sleeping. Due to my many years of dealing with this particular thing, I was of course able to, er, handle it in a calm and mature fashion; "EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! Ew-ew-ew!! Gross!! Gross!! You were supposed to be SLEEPING, you disgusting person!! Yuck, YUCK, don't you know how to lock a door?!!" My husband was mortified despite the many times this has happened before (I guess some things you never get used to), and rapid detumescence occurred as he tried to conceal his inspirational photo... not that he had any cause for embarrassment, as he has the tamest porn on the planet, while I'VE got stuff that'd make Larry Flynt blush. After I finished gagging and squawking, I did what I needed to on his computer and left; too rattled to pick up where he left off, he took his nap.
A couple of hours later, he was back up, and in the bathroom; I needed something in there, so I tapped on the door and went in. He gave me a pained look, which is silly as he usually leaves the door OPEN, and we have conversations every day while he's on the throne, but I think he was feeling shy after the earlier fiasco. He made a querulous comment about how he was on the toilet (in case I'd gone blind while he was napping, maybe, although if there was anyone who might've gone blind it would've been HIM, given his earlier activities), and how there's no privacy in marriage; yanking open the cabinet, I pointed out that nothing was actually showing, and even if it was it's not like he had anything I hadn't seen before. As I rummaged around, he said, "Do you mind?", and when I asked him what his problem was he replied that I was too near his butt; that was a new one, and the reason apparently was that he couldn't proceed with business with me that close... which is probably just as well, as the fan wasn't on. Having found what I was looking for, I told him he could go back to what he'd been doing; he demanded that I close the door on my way out, lol.
Everyone has their own definition of marital bliss; for my husband, I think it'd be "remembering to lock the study and bathroom doors."
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
How people learn to be liars
A parent sees a broken vase in the living room, and asks their child "Did you break it?"... and what does the child, who obviously must be the perpetrator unless a monkey escaped from the zoo and is running around the house, say in response? Even the tiniest child will say "No," because they know that the truth is sure to bring punishment. To combat this, some parents will say "I won't punish you if you tell the truth," which, if they actually handle it that way AND don't take it out on the kid indirectly because they're mad, allows the kid to do any wrong they want, knowing that they can say the magic words, "Yes, I did it," afterwards, and get away with it; since even the most "progressive" parents don't see that as a valid outcome, this leaves no choices other than giving the kid the chance to lie or just punishing them automatically for everything that goes wrong... which means, in practice, that kids get asked all the time and lie all the time.
If they got punished every time they lied, if it was always as clear as in the example above who was at fault, they'd probably stop lying, because they'd see that it never helped them; the reality is that when there are no adult witnesses to something being broken, or the last slice of cake being eaten, or whatever, there's often an element of doubt, the thought that maybe a sibling or friend of the kid did it, or a pet, or in some cases another adult, and this means that the kid can get away with wrongdoing some of the time by lying... and since not one parent in a million adds extra punishment for lies, there's no downside to the kid of trying a lie.
From the moment kids are old enough to play with others, they discover that they can improve their status with their friends by lying; "My mommy lets me eat all the candy I want/stay up until midnight/jump off the roof" type lies are common among the youngest, and the lies of older kids are usually just as transparent, at least to adults, but within the peer group they're inexplicably accepted as facts... so it's almost stupid for a kid to NOT lie, with there being, again, no drawbacks to doing so (as long as the lies aren't so ridiculous that they get the liar laughed at). Sadly, any kid who's honest about having rules, loving their family or disliking whatever music the other kids listen to learns that the truth can get them looked down on by their peers in a way that lying never does, and the parental lesson of "truth leads to unhappiness" gets reinforced.
When the kids start school, with one adult in charge of a bunch of them, lying works even better, because there are rarely adult witnesses and nearly always other kids who could have been behind any given wrongdoing... and the children's moronic code of "don't be a tattletale" means that when they're witnesses they usually won't speak up, leaving the teacher up the proverbial creek, and the liars victorious.
When they begin dating, kids learn that if you tell a bunch of lies, making out like you're better than you are or have more in common with someone than you actually do, it can make a person like you more, whereas the plain truth usually scares romantic prospects away... and when sex enters the picture, the lies escalate beyond belief, because, again, they often work, and the truth usually doesn't.
When adult relationships start happening, they bring on a whole new level of lies, as the participants try to combine doing whatever selfish things they want and keeping their partner in the dark to avoid arguments; this most often takes the form of the woman playing a mommy role, questioning the man and ragging him for his lapses from proper action, and the man ducking and dodging and trying to prevent her from knowing the full truth... and since the woman can withhold sex if she gets mad enough, it's clearly to his benefit to try to lie his way out of trouble.
And finally, there's the workplace. It's often said that it's necessary to lie on your resume, lie as much as you can, because the more qualified you seem the better your chances of getting hired; I've even read articles explaining how to lie most effectively on resumes and job interviews... and this clearly works even though employers MUST be aware of it, as almost everyone has a story about the wild lies they told that got them a job. Once hired, the employee's career path can be greatly smoothed and accelerated by lying; denying responsibility when things go wrong, claiming credit for the work of others, badmouthing those they're competing for a raise or promotion with to turn the higher-ups against them... all of these things are common, because they produce better results than honesty.
The truly amazing thing, really, is that anyone ever tells the TRUTH; it's not as if we LIKE virtuous people, after all, so what does a person gain by being truthful? Trust? If only that were true; the sad reality is that for all but the most atrocious lies, the liar gets forgiven and fully trusted again, as if they'd always been honest, so the person who really IS honest doesn't get anything extra... and, worse, tends to be disliked for being a goody-goody and suspected of secret wrongdoings.
In American culture, the focus is on doing whatever it takes to reach a goal, and, while that's produced wonderful medical and technological advances, and our position as the richest and most powerful nation in the world, the dark side of it's that our willingness to accept, and reward, dishonesty makes us seem childish and callous to people from other nations... and rightfully so.
And if you're one of those who complains about the dishonesty of our politicians... where do you think they come from, Mars? Why would you expect them to be honest when nobody else is, especially amongst the ranks of the successful? They're the products of American culture, that produces few citizens who can be called really honest, that rewards the least honest, and that doesn't see honesty as something laudatory (although we loudly proclaim the contrary)... and seeing how they, and their no more honest buddies at the big corporations, get to skim off the cream gives the final encouragement to anyone who needs it to say what works rather than what's true.
Grim, isn't it?
If they got punished every time they lied, if it was always as clear as in the example above who was at fault, they'd probably stop lying, because they'd see that it never helped them; the reality is that when there are no adult witnesses to something being broken, or the last slice of cake being eaten, or whatever, there's often an element of doubt, the thought that maybe a sibling or friend of the kid did it, or a pet, or in some cases another adult, and this means that the kid can get away with wrongdoing some of the time by lying... and since not one parent in a million adds extra punishment for lies, there's no downside to the kid of trying a lie.
From the moment kids are old enough to play with others, they discover that they can improve their status with their friends by lying; "My mommy lets me eat all the candy I want/stay up until midnight/jump off the roof" type lies are common among the youngest, and the lies of older kids are usually just as transparent, at least to adults, but within the peer group they're inexplicably accepted as facts... so it's almost stupid for a kid to NOT lie, with there being, again, no drawbacks to doing so (as long as the lies aren't so ridiculous that they get the liar laughed at). Sadly, any kid who's honest about having rules, loving their family or disliking whatever music the other kids listen to learns that the truth can get them looked down on by their peers in a way that lying never does, and the parental lesson of "truth leads to unhappiness" gets reinforced.
When the kids start school, with one adult in charge of a bunch of them, lying works even better, because there are rarely adult witnesses and nearly always other kids who could have been behind any given wrongdoing... and the children's moronic code of "don't be a tattletale" means that when they're witnesses they usually won't speak up, leaving the teacher up the proverbial creek, and the liars victorious.
When they begin dating, kids learn that if you tell a bunch of lies, making out like you're better than you are or have more in common with someone than you actually do, it can make a person like you more, whereas the plain truth usually scares romantic prospects away... and when sex enters the picture, the lies escalate beyond belief, because, again, they often work, and the truth usually doesn't.
When adult relationships start happening, they bring on a whole new level of lies, as the participants try to combine doing whatever selfish things they want and keeping their partner in the dark to avoid arguments; this most often takes the form of the woman playing a mommy role, questioning the man and ragging him for his lapses from proper action, and the man ducking and dodging and trying to prevent her from knowing the full truth... and since the woman can withhold sex if she gets mad enough, it's clearly to his benefit to try to lie his way out of trouble.
And finally, there's the workplace. It's often said that it's necessary to lie on your resume, lie as much as you can, because the more qualified you seem the better your chances of getting hired; I've even read articles explaining how to lie most effectively on resumes and job interviews... and this clearly works even though employers MUST be aware of it, as almost everyone has a story about the wild lies they told that got them a job. Once hired, the employee's career path can be greatly smoothed and accelerated by lying; denying responsibility when things go wrong, claiming credit for the work of others, badmouthing those they're competing for a raise or promotion with to turn the higher-ups against them... all of these things are common, because they produce better results than honesty.
The truly amazing thing, really, is that anyone ever tells the TRUTH; it's not as if we LIKE virtuous people, after all, so what does a person gain by being truthful? Trust? If only that were true; the sad reality is that for all but the most atrocious lies, the liar gets forgiven and fully trusted again, as if they'd always been honest, so the person who really IS honest doesn't get anything extra... and, worse, tends to be disliked for being a goody-goody and suspected of secret wrongdoings.
In American culture, the focus is on doing whatever it takes to reach a goal, and, while that's produced wonderful medical and technological advances, and our position as the richest and most powerful nation in the world, the dark side of it's that our willingness to accept, and reward, dishonesty makes us seem childish and callous to people from other nations... and rightfully so.
And if you're one of those who complains about the dishonesty of our politicians... where do you think they come from, Mars? Why would you expect them to be honest when nobody else is, especially amongst the ranks of the successful? They're the products of American culture, that produces few citizens who can be called really honest, that rewards the least honest, and that doesn't see honesty as something laudatory (although we loudly proclaim the contrary)... and seeing how they, and their no more honest buddies at the big corporations, get to skim off the cream gives the final encouragement to anyone who needs it to say what works rather than what's true.
Grim, isn't it?
Monday, November 21, 2005
So, a friend called...
... or, rather, an ex-friend... or, rather, someone who used to be a really good friend, is periodically not a friend due to her bad behavior, and for a while now has sort of been just an acquaintance, because although we parted on pleasant terms the last time we spoke, we haven't spoken for a long time.
Her tendency when we're in touch is to want to call 20 times a day to talk about nothing, and I don't have the time or patience for that, so MY tendency is to keep her at enough of a distance that she doesn't think she has a green light to suck up all my time; since most of HER time is taken up with whatever drugs she's doing (she claims it's just pot, but I doubt it), our sporadic contact seems to satisfy her.
She called this morning for the 1st time in ages, and by "morning" I mean 1AM; I heard her lighter clicking, so she was obviously smoking something, and her thoughts were so disjointed that I couldn't follow them. Quickly getting tired of listening to her ramble, especially so late at night, I patiently tried to make her understand that she wasn't communicating clearly, and she switched to her favorite tactic, making melodramatic claims of having mysterious illnesses, having been in another car accident and broken every bone in her body, having all these secrets about famous people... and I'd suddenly just had enough. I told her that I didn't believe any of her stories, and that she had to stop telling me that sort of thing and stick to the truth; this enraged her, and she hung up on me.
I hadn't been able to make myself cut her out of my life, despite there being no benefit to me anymore of having her in it, because she meant alot to me once, when she still had some shred of ownership of her own mind, but that was the last straw; unless and until she can convince me that she's cleaned up (again), I'm not going to interact with her anymore... starting when she calls in a few days to apologize for calling me while stoned and for anything she might have said or done that she didn't mean and allegedly can't remember.
One of the hardest things to do is to make a decision with your head that hurts your heart... and it doesn't get easier as you get older, sigh...
Her tendency when we're in touch is to want to call 20 times a day to talk about nothing, and I don't have the time or patience for that, so MY tendency is to keep her at enough of a distance that she doesn't think she has a green light to suck up all my time; since most of HER time is taken up with whatever drugs she's doing (she claims it's just pot, but I doubt it), our sporadic contact seems to satisfy her.
She called this morning for the 1st time in ages, and by "morning" I mean 1AM; I heard her lighter clicking, so she was obviously smoking something, and her thoughts were so disjointed that I couldn't follow them. Quickly getting tired of listening to her ramble, especially so late at night, I patiently tried to make her understand that she wasn't communicating clearly, and she switched to her favorite tactic, making melodramatic claims of having mysterious illnesses, having been in another car accident and broken every bone in her body, having all these secrets about famous people... and I'd suddenly just had enough. I told her that I didn't believe any of her stories, and that she had to stop telling me that sort of thing and stick to the truth; this enraged her, and she hung up on me.
I hadn't been able to make myself cut her out of my life, despite there being no benefit to me anymore of having her in it, because she meant alot to me once, when she still had some shred of ownership of her own mind, but that was the last straw; unless and until she can convince me that she's cleaned up (again), I'm not going to interact with her anymore... starting when she calls in a few days to apologize for calling me while stoned and for anything she might have said or done that she didn't mean and allegedly can't remember.
One of the hardest things to do is to make a decision with your head that hurts your heart... and it doesn't get easier as you get older, sigh...
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Going postal
Take a moment and imagine the absolutely most remote spot on the planet; would it be on top of a mountain, in the middle of a desert, or a place so deep in the rain forest that no white person has ever seen it? Whatever location you envisioned, I could have gotten a letter to it in less time than it just took me to get a payment to an eBay seller in a neighboring state.
You think I exaggerate? Check out the surreal tale of what it took to pay for a 99¢ item: 1st, the auction inexplicably showed up in the PayPal account even though the seller doesn't accept PayPal, so we paid for it and then had to cancel that payment when I spotted the pending symbol in the "Items I've Won" list (heaven forbid she could have CONTACTED us when she got notification of the payment and saved us all some time, grrrrrrrrrrr). Then, we had to pay for a $ order and send it to her; she never got it, nor, meaningfully, did she get a payment from another buyer sent around the same time. Miraculously, my husband found the receipt for the $ order (this is the man who goes to a store 5 minutes away and loses the receipt before he gets home), and took it to the post office; instead of getting a refund, he had to file a claim, which they won't act on for 60 days, after which we might find out that some thief cashed it, and then a whole new hooraw will ensue. Then, and here's where it gets REALLY insane, we had to send her a THIRD payment for this little knickknack; this time, we sent it certified mail, which means it can allegedly be tracked through to wherever they finally dump it. Money order #2 + the certified deal cost us $2.67, which means that we've now laid out nearly TRIPLE the cost of the item + shipping (we MIGHT eventually get the original payment back, but for now it's lost), but we figure it's worth it to put a swift and definitive end to this fiasco.
WRONG!!
I was using the tracking # for our letter on the USPS website to see when she got the payment... but all it was showing was that it had been sent out. We have relatives in her state, and we can usually get cards to them in about 3 days; it took them a WEEK, 7 frigging days, to get that certified letter to her city. Worse, we got a weird message that it was being forwarded, which made no sense until the seller, who had been snippily asking about the payment even though I'd given her the tracking # and she KNEW it was in the hands of the post office, revealed that she'd left forwarding instructions to a new PO box because she thought her mail had been stolen due to the missing payments. Fair enough; how long could it take them to walk her letter over to the room of the post office building that had the PO boxes, right?
They did NOT deliver the payment that day. They did NOT deliver the payment the NEXT day, either. It took those morons TWO DAYS to get that letter into her PO box, for a total of NINE DAYS delivery time instead of the usual 3. Mail between here and Australia or Asia usually takes 5-6 days, and they took NINE days to transport a letter to an adjacent state.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
There's some GOOD news today too, though... well, it's a little bittersweet, actually. On 9-29-05 I posted about how I'd spent more hours than you'd ever believe working on the code for, and researching countries and time zones for, a little digital clock thingie that allowed you to see the time in a bunch of different places, which had been in my sidebar under the Flash clock; it was with a pang of regret that I took it out today, because I found something better here
http://www.onyoursite.com/wwc/
You can see it in my sidebar; it's called "World Wide Clock," and allows you to find the time nearly anywhere in the world... seriously, check the menu, you won't believe how long it is. This doodad presented a totally new problem; it was only available as PHP and ASP (server-side languages), which Blogger doesn't allow. Luckily, this presented no challenge for Jayson the Tech God
http://blog.hypercubed.com/
because when asked about it he quickly produced an astonishingly simple bit of code that uses an "iframe" command to, he explained, embed a page within the page... voodoo again, basically, but I don't need to understand it for it to work, luckily.
Maybe we could get Jayson to run the postal service?
You think I exaggerate? Check out the surreal tale of what it took to pay for a 99¢ item: 1st, the auction inexplicably showed up in the PayPal account even though the seller doesn't accept PayPal, so we paid for it and then had to cancel that payment when I spotted the pending symbol in the "Items I've Won" list (heaven forbid she could have CONTACTED us when she got notification of the payment and saved us all some time, grrrrrrrrrrr). Then, we had to pay for a $ order and send it to her; she never got it, nor, meaningfully, did she get a payment from another buyer sent around the same time. Miraculously, my husband found the receipt for the $ order (this is the man who goes to a store 5 minutes away and loses the receipt before he gets home), and took it to the post office; instead of getting a refund, he had to file a claim, which they won't act on for 60 days, after which we might find out that some thief cashed it, and then a whole new hooraw will ensue. Then, and here's where it gets REALLY insane, we had to send her a THIRD payment for this little knickknack; this time, we sent it certified mail, which means it can allegedly be tracked through to wherever they finally dump it. Money order #2 + the certified deal cost us $2.67, which means that we've now laid out nearly TRIPLE the cost of the item + shipping (we MIGHT eventually get the original payment back, but for now it's lost), but we figure it's worth it to put a swift and definitive end to this fiasco.
WRONG!!
I was using the tracking # for our letter on the USPS website to see when she got the payment... but all it was showing was that it had been sent out. We have relatives in her state, and we can usually get cards to them in about 3 days; it took them a WEEK, 7 frigging days, to get that certified letter to her city. Worse, we got a weird message that it was being forwarded, which made no sense until the seller, who had been snippily asking about the payment even though I'd given her the tracking # and she KNEW it was in the hands of the post office, revealed that she'd left forwarding instructions to a new PO box because she thought her mail had been stolen due to the missing payments. Fair enough; how long could it take them to walk her letter over to the room of the post office building that had the PO boxes, right?
They did NOT deliver the payment that day. They did NOT deliver the payment the NEXT day, either. It took those morons TWO DAYS to get that letter into her PO box, for a total of NINE DAYS delivery time instead of the usual 3. Mail between here and Australia or Asia usually takes 5-6 days, and they took NINE days to transport a letter to an adjacent state.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
There's some GOOD news today too, though... well, it's a little bittersweet, actually. On 9-29-05 I posted about how I'd spent more hours than you'd ever believe working on the code for, and researching countries and time zones for, a little digital clock thingie that allowed you to see the time in a bunch of different places, which had been in my sidebar under the Flash clock; it was with a pang of regret that I took it out today, because I found something better here
http://www.onyoursite.com/wwc/
You can see it in my sidebar; it's called "World Wide Clock," and allows you to find the time nearly anywhere in the world... seriously, check the menu, you won't believe how long it is. This doodad presented a totally new problem; it was only available as PHP and ASP (server-side languages), which Blogger doesn't allow. Luckily, this presented no challenge for Jayson the Tech God
http://blog.hypercubed.com/
because when asked about it he quickly produced an astonishingly simple bit of code that uses an "iframe" command to, he explained, embed a page within the page... voodoo again, basically, but I don't need to understand it for it to work, luckily.
Maybe we could get Jayson to run the postal service?
