I used the "un-follow" feature for the first time today. I didn't like it because it seemed like the equivalent of "shut up".
I have people in my life right now who would prefer I shut up, or prefer I accept their disinterest in accepting or understanding me. I see little point in "friends" who don't care to hear from one another, virtually or otherwise. Rather than say "shut up", I'd prefer to end the shallow FB "friendship" altogether. In real life, people who say "shut up", verbally or otherwise, will be traded in for friends of higher quality; friends who may at times disagree passionately with me, but also do so honestly and respectfully, with the goal of mutual understanding in mind.
Mutual. Not just me understanding them.
The gay marriage issue is NOT just about the religious beliefs many people hold. Some do cite religious beliefs in their opinions, but many more are concerned with deeper social aspects. Their differing viewpoints and concerns are not typically met with the tolerance so often demanded and self-ascribed by others, but with accusations of bigotry and various forms of "shut up" instead.
In the past few days, several friends have posted sentiments to the effect of "We can disagree and be nice to one another." This is laudable and a worthwhile goal. Most friends actually practice it. A few demonstrate that tolerance is a one-way street to them, something to be expected but not exercised. If I "friended" someone, it was because I cared about them on a personal level or had something in common with them. When a "friend" shows no interest in hearing the reasons for my beliefs and viewpoints and instead denigrates what he assumes to be my motivations, there was no friendship, pantomime or otherwise.
I demand the favor of honesty. If my opinions are deemed to be of no value, if I am thought to be a racist or too simple-minded to engage in a debate, don't take the half-measure of un-following me. Un-friend me. I shall take the same measure with those who assume the worst motives are mine.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Monday, April 6, 2015
Catfishing: Almond James
I have a Skype account I use to speak with several family members, friends and business contacts. I've adjusted my settings such that only people in my contact list are supposed to be able to contact me. However, three or four times per month I get contact requests from people I don't know. I usually just block these, but have decided to document some of them.
My latest catfishing attempt is from a persona named “Almond James”. His profile photo shows a caucasian male, kneeling on a floor in what looks like a small kitchen, smiling as he holds a dog upright on its hind legs. He's an English-speaking caucasian male from the US, according to his bio. This is the contact request message as written:
"Hello nice lady, I'm Almond James am looking for a life partner,kind loving lady who accept me the way i am, I am nice well cultured gentleman,nice attitude and simple personality.Most people say am fun to be with.i just went through your profile,i like things about you.i see your very beautiful and i have interest in knowing more about you,sorry but am new on dating site, i will be glad to send my pictures via email if you give me yours, you can contact me with my email (jamesalmond805@yahoo.com) i look forward to a new beginning with you.. with lots of respect. thanks Almond James"
Well, that's sweet.
Dear Almond,
You are a nut! I am impressed by the way you boldly and blindly grope about in the dark recesses of the internet for a life partner. Unfortunately, you have mistakenly assumed that I could accept you the way you are. You have introduced yourself to me in a paragraph of shattered English, implying sad frustration awaiting me (and you) every time I received your cards and love notes. I am afraid of what my constant corrections might do to your simple personality over time.
You say you "went through my profile" and "like things about (me)". I guess the part about being female gets a lot of positive attention! Thanks, I didn't have to work on that at all!!
I will have to reject your contact request for many reasons, the least of which is because of your on-again, off-again affair with articles. But... I do like your tendency towards the e.e.cummings lowercase "i". That is, when you choose to do it. Maybe your Shift key works only intermittently. I have burning questions about you that will not be answered, such as "Why do you tie up your cupboard doors?" and "Is this contact request written on the dog's behalf?" Now it will all be left to conjecture.
Thank you,for writing me. i regret i cannot accept you're kind offer this time.or anytime.i have no interest for new beginning with you.but my husband and i are interested in adopting a dog, we will send pictures of are back yard. If the dog is interested... with lots of kind loving pats on his head. thanks, Trace
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Centering
Last Saturday my husband Alan and I had an appointment to attend a surprise activity I'd set up for us. The activity was an hour of target shooting at a local archery range. Alan was pleasantly surprised. I used to shoot informally many years ago, usually out in fields and occasionally at targets while at camp. Alan had shot with a bow years ago too, but usually had to make-do with someone's right-handed bow, and so he never became very good at archery either. I thought it would be fun for both of us to go to a range together, and since it had a well-stocked pro shop and the bow rental was included in the price, I assumed they'd have left-handed bows available.
Alan knew I had done a fair amount of shooting here and there. "This is something you'll be better at than me," he said.
"I'm not sure," I answered. "It's been a really long time since I shot."
We were ushered to a shooting line in a basement range. There were about eighteen lanes, all full, mostly with teenagers. Alan was given a left-handed bow with about a 25-pound draw. Mine was the same strength. After brief instructions, we began shooting groups of three arrows at targets placed 10 yards downrange.
I've always been an instinctive shooter; my aim was mostly a trial-and-error process since I had never received formal instruction in something so basic as how to aim properly. I held the bow at what I felt was the proper height for the target distance and kept both eyes open and fixed on the target. I drew back with two fingers, one on either side of the arrow nock, and loosed when I felt my aim was right.
I hit my target about as often as I didn't. It was true in the past, and it was true this afternoon.
After several groups, Alan tried offering me pointers. His arrows were finding a spot on the target more often than mine were. Mine tended to go high, occasionally low, and sometimes got within the circle. Alan was shooting a little more consistently.
"Pull back with three fingers, " he said. "Put your fingers just below the arrow. That's what I'm doing."
"I don't do that" I countered. "I've never shot that way. It's not comfortable for me."
I kept shooting my same old way, and getting the same results for the next two rounds. Finally I questioned why I wasn't open to trying something different. Maybe it would be better. Alan was certainly doing better than I was, and he had shot less often than I had. I changed my draw. I asked him how he was aiming.
He showed me how he was looking down the arrow shaft with his left eye, down past the tip, held on the bow in his right hand. When he was lined up, he released the arrow. "I have a good amount of side-to-side control, but not a lot of vertical control." His groupings were not especially tight, and they tended to land on the right half of the target circle, but he was getting closer to the center more regularly.
I tried his method. I looked down the shaft when I drew back and lined the arrow tip up with the center of the target. I tried always to pull back to an anchor point to keep my draw distance the same. Consistency was important. Almost immediately, I saw an improvement in how often I hit the target within the circle. He and I began to be more competitive. After many rounds, I noticed that I was hitting the upper left quadrant more frequently, and tried to adjust my point-of-aim accordingly. I got closer to the center. My groups became tighter.
By the end of an hour, both of us were pleasantly surprised by how well we'd done. We agreed that we would come back. I was happy that Alan had done so well by virtue of having a left-handed bow to use, and that I'd done so much better by virtue of taking some pointers from him.
We took the targets home. They're lying on the dining room table. I've briefly thought of tallying up the scores, but the higher score doesn't seem to matter enough to determine whose it is. Sometimes when we help other people to improve it is reflected back to us, so that we are improved also, and that seemed like an end result and the real success of the hour spent together at the range.
Alan knew I had done a fair amount of shooting here and there. "This is something you'll be better at than me," he said.
"I'm not sure," I answered. "It's been a really long time since I shot."
We were ushered to a shooting line in a basement range. There were about eighteen lanes, all full, mostly with teenagers. Alan was given a left-handed bow with about a 25-pound draw. Mine was the same strength. After brief instructions, we began shooting groups of three arrows at targets placed 10 yards downrange.
I've always been an instinctive shooter; my aim was mostly a trial-and-error process since I had never received formal instruction in something so basic as how to aim properly. I held the bow at what I felt was the proper height for the target distance and kept both eyes open and fixed on the target. I drew back with two fingers, one on either side of the arrow nock, and loosed when I felt my aim was right.
I hit my target about as often as I didn't. It was true in the past, and it was true this afternoon.
After several groups, Alan tried offering me pointers. His arrows were finding a spot on the target more often than mine were. Mine tended to go high, occasionally low, and sometimes got within the circle. Alan was shooting a little more consistently.
"Pull back with three fingers, " he said. "Put your fingers just below the arrow. That's what I'm doing."
"I don't do that" I countered. "I've never shot that way. It's not comfortable for me."
I kept shooting my same old way, and getting the same results for the next two rounds. Finally I questioned why I wasn't open to trying something different. Maybe it would be better. Alan was certainly doing better than I was, and he had shot less often than I had. I changed my draw. I asked him how he was aiming.
He showed me how he was looking down the arrow shaft with his left eye, down past the tip, held on the bow in his right hand. When he was lined up, he released the arrow. "I have a good amount of side-to-side control, but not a lot of vertical control." His groupings were not especially tight, and they tended to land on the right half of the target circle, but he was getting closer to the center more regularly.
I tried his method. I looked down the shaft when I drew back and lined the arrow tip up with the center of the target. I tried always to pull back to an anchor point to keep my draw distance the same. Consistency was important. Almost immediately, I saw an improvement in how often I hit the target within the circle. He and I began to be more competitive. After many rounds, I noticed that I was hitting the upper left quadrant more frequently, and tried to adjust my point-of-aim accordingly. I got closer to the center. My groups became tighter.
By the end of an hour, both of us were pleasantly surprised by how well we'd done. We agreed that we would come back. I was happy that Alan had done so well by virtue of having a left-handed bow to use, and that I'd done so much better by virtue of taking some pointers from him.
We took the targets home. They're lying on the dining room table. I've briefly thought of tallying up the scores, but the higher score doesn't seem to matter enough to determine whose it is. Sometimes when we help other people to improve it is reflected back to us, so that we are improved also, and that seemed like an end result and the real success of the hour spent together at the range.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Pistachios
I am in my living room chair, binge eating a small bowl of pistachios. I grab one, shell it, pop the nut in my mouth and toss the shells and paper into a second "graveyard" bowl. Then I grab another.
Another.
Another, another, another.
Alan says "Don't eat too many," while he eats them too. I respond with "How many is too many?"
After several minutes there's a lull in my frenzy and I pause to glance down at myself.
I look like the inside of a birdcage, my surfaces covered with bits of nut-paper and empty shells.
Another.
Another, another, another.
Alan says "Don't eat too many," while he eats them too. I respond with "How many is too many?"
After several minutes there's a lull in my frenzy and I pause to glance down at myself.
I look like the inside of a birdcage, my surfaces covered with bits of nut-paper and empty shells.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Real Feminism VS Bullshit Feminism
My day began on a gritty note when the morning news chose to fill air-time with this video:
I advise to not bother watching unless you're missing examples of the Left's obsession with corrupting everything they can, dragging people and things through the muck and bringing them down until everything is equally dirty, equally degraded, equally impoverished. Little girls in princess outfits? Let's ruin that! And they do, purportedly for the greater good, which in this case is..
..oh, who cares? As with the Islamic terrorist, any excuse for destruction will do.
The Left believes that little girls who are taught to use filthy language (after being told it's okay by a lousy parent) and do so at the top of their lungs are empowered. The Left believes that the Whore is the epitome of strong women, independent and the maker of her own destiny.
What the Left doesn't take into account is that the Whore doesn't eat unless the Man pays her. So let's talk about sexism, Leftists. Let's talk about female grade-school teachers who have sex with their male students, and who are not faced with the same outrage or punished with the same sentences as their male counterparts are. Let's talk about women who bitch about unequal pay yet can't seem to negotiate pay that they're satisfied with when they agree to take a job. Let's talk about those same women who demand crushing, punitive alimony payments upon divorce, once they tire of their husbands or have a harpy's ire when he gets tired of the alienations of affection and leaves for warmer climes. Empowered, are you? Not unless you're standing on your own.
Let me tell you about real power. I have frequently had the privilege and honor of being admitted into a man's inner emotional life. He has bared his deepest vulnerabilities with me, scared afterwards that I would become repulsed by his weakness and thereafter reject him as unworthy.
I have the power to get inside of a man's citadel, roam about, and either make the place my own, or burn the tapestries and loot the armory. That's power.
A Whore can't do that. Whores aren't admitted into the keep, no matter how loud they scream their blue streaks or how fast they take their clothes off. Any man worth his armor and sword wouldn't trust a woman who didn't value herself, because if she doesn't value herself, she cannot value others. The way a woman comports herself is an indication of how well she will guard a man's secrets, and maybe even how well she will turn progeny into men and women of merit.
Little girls whose mothers teach them to have contempt for innocence and cleanliness will rue those mothers one day, when ill-considered social media photos dog them into adulthood, when the boys can't be enticed by more backseat amusements, when STDs contaminate intimacy and real love is a dim idea too seemingly impossible to even want to attain. How would one start looking for it? There was no role model to show the way. The father was only a commodity, cast aside once he had paid the Whore with himself before he could teach the daughter how she should expect a man to honor her.
Or more tragically, perhaps the Man had accepted finally, after all of the shrill haranguing and accusations, that he truly was an oppressor and should move on from female to female so as not to over-burden any woman with himself. Maybe he became all-too-happy to take advantage of the lack of accountability. An abundance of free women and no responsibilities keeps a man a child.
A nation of man-children and whores. Thank you, American Left. You call this "Progress" and the people are too cowed even to ask "Progress unto where, exactly?"
UPDATE:
I don't have the time or resources to rebut garbage like the above video, but I'm glad other people do. Thanks, Julie Borowski!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgNV3FbottE&list=UUzIjg5vIfBGcdyLWu6lhXxw
I advise to not bother watching unless you're missing examples of the Left's obsession with corrupting everything they can, dragging people and things through the muck and bringing them down until everything is equally dirty, equally degraded, equally impoverished. Little girls in princess outfits? Let's ruin that! And they do, purportedly for the greater good, which in this case is..
..oh, who cares? As with the Islamic terrorist, any excuse for destruction will do.
The Left believes that little girls who are taught to use filthy language (after being told it's okay by a lousy parent) and do so at the top of their lungs are empowered. The Left believes that the Whore is the epitome of strong women, independent and the maker of her own destiny.
What the Left doesn't take into account is that the Whore doesn't eat unless the Man pays her. So let's talk about sexism, Leftists. Let's talk about female grade-school teachers who have sex with their male students, and who are not faced with the same outrage or punished with the same sentences as their male counterparts are. Let's talk about women who bitch about unequal pay yet can't seem to negotiate pay that they're satisfied with when they agree to take a job. Let's talk about those same women who demand crushing, punitive alimony payments upon divorce, once they tire of their husbands or have a harpy's ire when he gets tired of the alienations of affection and leaves for warmer climes. Empowered, are you? Not unless you're standing on your own.
Let me tell you about real power. I have frequently had the privilege and honor of being admitted into a man's inner emotional life. He has bared his deepest vulnerabilities with me, scared afterwards that I would become repulsed by his weakness and thereafter reject him as unworthy.
I have the power to get inside of a man's citadel, roam about, and either make the place my own, or burn the tapestries and loot the armory. That's power.
A Whore can't do that. Whores aren't admitted into the keep, no matter how loud they scream their blue streaks or how fast they take their clothes off. Any man worth his armor and sword wouldn't trust a woman who didn't value herself, because if she doesn't value herself, she cannot value others. The way a woman comports herself is an indication of how well she will guard a man's secrets, and maybe even how well she will turn progeny into men and women of merit.
Little girls whose mothers teach them to have contempt for innocence and cleanliness will rue those mothers one day, when ill-considered social media photos dog them into adulthood, when the boys can't be enticed by more backseat amusements, when STDs contaminate intimacy and real love is a dim idea too seemingly impossible to even want to attain. How would one start looking for it? There was no role model to show the way. The father was only a commodity, cast aside once he had paid the Whore with himself before he could teach the daughter how she should expect a man to honor her.
Or more tragically, perhaps the Man had accepted finally, after all of the shrill haranguing and accusations, that he truly was an oppressor and should move on from female to female so as not to over-burden any woman with himself. Maybe he became all-too-happy to take advantage of the lack of accountability. An abundance of free women and no responsibilities keeps a man a child.
A nation of man-children and whores. Thank you, American Left. You call this "Progress" and the people are too cowed even to ask "Progress unto where, exactly?"
UPDATE:
I don't have the time or resources to rebut garbage like the above video, but I'm glad other people do. Thanks, Julie Borowski!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgNV3FbottE&list=UUzIjg5vIfBGcdyLWu6lhXxw
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Friday, October 17, 2014
Six Reasons to Panic | The Weekly Standard
Six Reasons to Panic | The Weekly Standard
And if you haven't already, now might be a nice time to read Max Brooks' World War Z just to begin familiarizing yourself with the dance of denial, panic and cold calculations necessary to stop the spread of plague.
And if you haven't already, now might be a nice time to read Max Brooks' World War Z just to begin familiarizing yourself with the dance of denial, panic and cold calculations necessary to stop the spread of plague.
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