Stop making sense, will you! Next you’ll be telling us Single Payer Health Care doesn’t lead directly to Stalin’s gulags! 
13 Likes
Yes it surely can and does. Also, try growing up in a serious military family for a similar set of indoctrinations but with a different prime mover.
I believe the thing being taught is, frankly, patriarchy and external locus of control.
2 Likes
Fuck today.
I’ve ended up on the wrong campus today for a meeting, and have only figured this out too late to rectify the situation.
6 Likes
That sucks.
Are you at least wearing pants?
Maybe you can make the most of it? Anything cool to see there while you catch your breath?
3 Likes
Has Jerry Harrison been visiting the same tanning salon as Smithers?
4 Likes
Speaking of neighbours, ours lost her husband last week and her mother earlier this week. She had been caring for them both at home, but they both went downhill pretty fast over the past few months. We would look after the mother when she had to go out, but she had no idea where she was or who we were and she was terrified a lot of the time whatever we did look after her. The husband refused for anyone else to look after him until he was too weak to object. Our neighbour’s landlord has lowered the rent to allow her to stay, and honestly it’s probably a good thing that she has her life back again. Still, it’s an end to a really terrible last few months for her.
7 Likes
Pants are in-tact.
The meeting is a job interview for a new position (I am on the hiring committee, I’m not the applicant). Despite the fact that the job is based on the campus I’m at (and the entire department in question is based here), the interview is elsewhere. No idea why.
So now I’m stuck video conferencing into the meeting- wherein I’m basically useless. It’s nice.
11 Likes
That must have been tough, having to care for both her husband and mother at the same time. My heart goes out to her.
Also –
Holy Jesus, that would never happen here… In AMURICA, they’d be kicked out…
9 Likes
Harper Lee just died.
5 Likes
God damn it.
That’s sad. And makes me worry what sort of dreck will come creeping out of her estate by the sycophants that have (apparently) surrounded her.
2 Likes
I paid $190 for 5 grams of eye drops. Aka $38,000 a kilo.
4 Likes
You are right.
I have not yet watched it, but just seeing Mr. Rogers has reminded me that people can be better than I am currently admitting.
Got that second book out just in time, eh?
2 Likes
I think one thing that has an effect is when there are a lot of interactions between people from all sectors of society. It helps to reduce prejudice and increase empathy between different groups. I like this article about a town planning theory in Germany; it is an exaggeration, but it’s something I noticed myself without realising that it was intentional:
In Germany, one of the goals of social policies is to mix the rich and poor populations. There are to be no gated communities, no areas where only rich people live - this is taken as the mark of a successful social state, where all classes mingle and are tolerant towards each other and none is unaware how the others live.
The idea was first proposed by James Hobrecht, a member of the Berlin city construction council, around the end of the 19th century. According to his plans, the bourgeois might live on the ground floor while poor people might live under the roof or in the basement of the same building. Or the poor might live in the back and the richer people in the front.
One of the good and bad things about cars and the internet is that they allow you to form a community based on your interests or needs rather than having to mix with everyone. I prefer communities with fewer cars, as you have more face to face interactions and there’s a version of the ‘good man with a gun’ idea that actually has some truth to it: most people are willing to help, so if you end up with one of the others or just have some bad luck, you have support from those around you. If they have their needs provided for by society and a more socialist government, they are more likely to be able to help, and less likely to object to the government looking after you.
7 Likes
I posted a new thread about this… but you beat me by like three hours. Sorry to have posted without mentioning that you’d said she died, but I only just saw your comment, more than an hour after I started that thread
3 Likes
Today I decided I should see about moving forward with a friend who has been letting me know I should. It’s no small thing, complicated but happy. At any rate, I get to her place for dinner and she is decidedly not going to tell me what kept her up late lastnight, but it was “to save our friendship”. Sigh. And I was finally interested. Actually felt a solid green light. Never explicit, and she knows she has been rought on me. I think I’ll go home momentarily.
But, in the moment while she is away putting the little ones to bed, I am making a date with someone else. Someone I put off a bit to see where this might be going. Wish me luck, she might work for the President.
Oh well, fuck today. Timing is everything, and it seems it might not be where I’d want it to be.
ETA: She is operating with an extremely broken heart, a widow. After this though, I’ll not be entertaining notions again. Even if encouraged. She did nothing wrong, but also that just wasn’t right. One red flag is all it takes. Back to the friendzone, where she had been all year.
Also, got some positive response from possible date. And that made the rest of it just fine.
12 Likes
I haven’t had a Fuck Today in… Days. Every since I kinda fell apart a few weeks ago. I like my new psychologist and his staff quite a bit. He switched me over to an kind of experimental , which feels wonderful. Unlike other drugs that basically flatline you emotionally, I can still be happy, still cry, but I’m beating myself up at about 10% the rate I used to.
Drugs obviously aren’t the whole answer, but I now feel like I won’t fly off the handle.
I feel like… Me.
(Neurontin if you are curious. It is an… Odd drug, but holy hell it is helping)
17 Likes
You don’t post here so much any more though. Were we a bad influence?
3 Likes
no, i’ve been working my assssssssss off. trust me, i will get back soon, but it’s been a steady series of medical emergencies, work emergencies, and cookie emergencies.
8 Likes
Well, that’s good to hear.
Personally, I don’t much like taking brain medicine. But apparently I have to do that forever. Seems pointless to me, at a rate of one epileptic fit/20 years, and I don’t think it’s affecting me (or at least, not the stuff I’m on now, I think). The last shit didn’t seem to do anything either, but my exam grades dropped 20% on it.
I don’t know if I should be worried that I’ve been able to work for ~20 years without ever feeling that I’ve had to work very hard, or if I should apply myself a bit. I’m probably just a lazy bastard with a low boredom threshold.
8 Likes
