Jump to content
gdf

Life

Recommended Posts

I grew up in Texas. I understand Republicans fine. It still doesn't make that video anything other than a painful, embarrassing experience for me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sounds like a raving zealot to me. Irrational and a bit hateful.

And the chicken on my pizza tastes like dirt.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just got back from a first date with a really great gal. Went really well. Really hyped for our second date.

Related, Wreck-it-Ralph was everything I expected it to be. It had the one element I've always wanted in a Video game movie: A character walking into a wall and his walk cycle continuing to run as he slides awkwardly along the wall. Unfortunately it lacked invisible barriers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's the bit were you explain to us how we can now understand angry/unreasonable Republicans.

I just read that paragraph again and I'm still flabbergasted.

I've never believed that people on the other end of the political spectrum to me, *especially* emotional ones, are motivated by anything other than desire to do good...?

Again, with 'you' I meant myself. We get a lot of burn-in-hell-sinners, scream-at-women-going-to-Planned-Parenthood, racist sexist homophobic conservatives around here, and it is very difficult, FOR ME, to remember that they are not in fact always fueled by hatred of minorities. I have not until now been able to see them as anything but a bundle of irrational prejudices and anger. I have not understood them. I know and am friends with people who favor conservative economic policies and perhaps a couple of social ones but are in favor of everyone having equal rights and all that, and they are not the people I'm talking about. I'm talking about people specifically like this lady right here. Before listening to the entire thing I would've just thought 'oh it's just another crazy hateful lady and I'm glad she lost', whereas now I actually feel bad for her, even if I'm not at all sad about the outcome of the election.

Shit, is this a language thing? I was using 'you' as interchangeable with 'one' as in 'oneself'. As when writing a review. Anyway if you already knew that "I don't care if you're offended by me saying you will burn in hell" meant "I'm not trying to offend you, I just genuinely believe this is the most correct and effective way to do an ideological battle that will ideally end with you and I on the same side", which I, Sal Limones, knew kind of but not really, then good on you and I'm sorry this video did nothing for you. I don't think it should be being shared the way it is, and I disapprove of Hoatzin posting it, but since it was I wanted to point out the aspects of it that made me appreciate it as a piece of art and maybe someone who hadn't considered it that way would and might like it too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So much of the right wing bullshit is completely over-the-top insane and disingenuous, and this lady seems a lot more earnest and rational than a lot of the partisans on the right.

Paired with the beginning of the video, that sentence is terrifying.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Shit, is this a language thing? I was using 'you' as interchangeable with 'one' as in 'oneself'. As when writing a review. Anyway if you already knew that "I don't care if you're offended by me saying you will burn in hell" meant "I'm not trying to offend you, I just genuinely believe this is the most correct and effective way to do an ideological battle that will ideally end with you and I on the same side", which I, Sal Limones, knew kind of but not really, then good on you and I'm sorry this video did nothing for you. I don't think it should be being shared the way it is, and I disapprove of Hoatzin posting it, but since it was I wanted to point out the aspects of it that made me appreciate it as a piece of art and maybe someone who hadn't considered it that way would and might like it too.

Here's I how I see things:

The far right are often fueled by a desire to save the world, to do good. The problem is that their reasoning is usually based on bad information and fear mongering. The reason for this (I believe) is the shockingly piss poor hideousness of US TV news. And I don't just mean Fox News. I mean ALL the US TV news (that I've ever seen, at least). Just watching a few minutes of the news in the US makes me angry, because it's not "news". It's entertainment dressed up as being news. Hell, most of the time it plays like "Here's the best bits of YouTube for the week".

It's atrocious.

(I consider it the evil sibling to the our print news.)

In my experience, it's the ones that get dubbed at being "crazy" are the ones most driven by fear: And they often can't let go of their beliefs for fear that they're right, and you're wrong. Or because they're tied to other deep-seated fears (like racism).

Noam Chomsky made a smart series of statements about the Tea Party, pointing out that their creation indicates the apparent feeling that some people aren't being represented. Rather than deride them, we should figure out what they're really after, what they're really saying, where their feelings really come from, and listen to that. (I feel the same way about Religion, incidentally.)

Of course, there are the other members of the right: Those who are particularly wealthy, and don't feel as though they should be paying a butt load of taxes to people they don't think have worked as hard as they have (and often rich people have really worked their off asses off to get where they are). Or, the most sane of all, those who are smart, even natured, and just genuinely believe that a free market is the best system we have for sorting out humanity's problems. But that's all a different kettle of fish.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Here's one of my favorite examples to illustrate my point: America's healthcare system is obviously a highly contentious issue. What astonishes me is that someone on a news show, say a politician or pundit, will say something like, "America has the best healthcare system in the world!", and it goes completely unchallenged. And you finish watching it thinking, "Why does he think that? What's it based on? Maybe there's some truth to what they said?".

Well, I still don't know why certain talking heads make claims like that, but using Infant Mortality Rate as an indicator (which is the generally accepted measure of a country's healthcare system, especially among third world countries) it turns out that America has the worst rate in the entire First World.

Source: http://bit.ly/FirstW...InfantMortality

But how many news programs take their guests to task with their claims? To delve deeper into what's being said? They don't (at least 99% of the time). They just let anyone who's slightly contentious have their say, and then move on to the next segment. It's maddening to watch.

When someone who's not even from the country in question knows more about what's being discussed on US TV news, or at least has several obvious questions that should to be asked, but aren't, then something is terribly wrong.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I grew up in Texas. I understand Republicans fine.

Not sure if those two directly correlate. I've always lived in Texas. Houston is where I grew up. My dad is selfish, angry, ill informed, staunchly Republican, and sometimes racist (or does that mean all the time?). I don't get him at all. He thinks all of his black and Mexican neighbors are welfare queens that are taking his hard earned money through taxes even though he lives comfortably enough.

Maybe where I grew up in Houston had too many minorities for me to understand while my Dad moved here from Canadian Michigan, I don't know. My highschool was very strangely divided between lower middle class to upper middle class based on the districting going over a large separating road which made for some very strange differences. My elementary and middle school was mostly students with Mexican parents or of Mexican descent. By the time my sister made it to high school, she and everyone else on the other side of this road didn't make it to mine because I think they did not want the poorer (but not poor, just lower middle class) students making the school underperform, so she was redistricted to a high school with very easy and wacky projects compared to mine. While I was writing report after report on Huckleberry Finn, she made a board game.

But I feel very different in Austin where I seem to be exposed to a bunch of apathetic hippies and people where their politics stop at whether weed is illegal or not. OH AND THE REPTILIANS. Apparently reptiles from space control our government according to some I've talked to or worked with. No joke.

Maybe the reptiles come from underground though... Maybe it's more likely they are a super race that evolved from the Kimodo Dragon?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not sure if those two directly correlate. I've always lived in Texas. Houston is where I grew up. My dad is selfish, angry, ill informed, staunchly Republican, and sometimes racist (or does that mean all the time?). I don't get him at all. He thinks all of his black and Mexican neighbors are welfare queens that are taking his hard earned money through taxes even though he lives comfortably enough.

I meant more that I spent my formative years around people with beliefs different from and hostile to mine. If I wanted to live like a normal person, I had to make my peace with them, and I did. They aren't some abstract "other" to me, so I don't need a drunk psycho on the internet to give me a peek into their psyche.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not sure if those two directly correlate. I've always lived in Texas. Houston is where I grew up. My dad is selfish, angry, ill informed, staunchly Republican, and sometimes racist (or does that mean all the time?). I don't get him at all. He thinks all of his black and Mexican neighbors are welfare queens that are taking his hard earned money through taxes even though he lives comfortably enough.

Maybe where I grew up in Houston had too many minorities for me to understand while my Dad moved here from Canadian Michigan, I don't know. My highschool was very strangely divided between lower middle class to upper middle class based on the districting going over a large separating road which made for some very strange differences. My elementary and middle school was mostly students with Mexican parents or of Mexican descent. By the time my sister made it to high school, she and everyone else on the other side of this road didn't make it to mine because I think they did not want the poorer (but not poor, just lower middle class) students making the school underperform, so she was redistricted to a high school with very easy and wacky projects compared to mine. While I was writing report after report on Huckleberry Finn, she made a board game.

Wow. Did you happen to grow up in The Woodlands / Spring area? Because that story sounds a little TOO familiar.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wow. Did you happen to grow up in The Woodlands / Spring area? Because that story sounds a little TOO familiar.

Nah, it was South of the Cypress area. Apparently it's the Satsuma area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satsuma,_Texas) but I think that was only on my dad's driver's license in 1980 when the area was barely developed.

But it would mirror the Woodlands and Spring I would guess.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Nah, it was South of the Cypress area. Apparently it's the Satsuma area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satsuma,_Texas) but I think that was only on my dad's driver's license in 1980 when the area was barely developed.

But it would mirror the Woodlands and Spring I would guess.

Yea, sounds like it. I started noticing discrepancies in resources when I was in high school. Schools on The Woodlands side of I-45 got a lot more than we did (Pentium 2's for CS classes vs. 386's). I still live in the area and now that my kids are in school, it seems like the gap continues to widen. :-/

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have a question: is it possible be in love with two people at once?

I ask because...well, remember the girl I told you about a while ago? She's my ex-girlfriend. We never broke-up over anything like a fight - we never even argued. It was an exceptionally happy relationship, a flash-in-the-pan.

But she's pretty stressed all the time, due to her grueling 12 hour uni day and then all of her work, projects, etc, and, one day, decided she needed a little bit of pressure off. After her and I talked about it, we mutually agreed to go "on break" for a while - no pressure to see the boyfriend.

I have a rule: I wait for two months. I waited for six. I met someone. We went out. We're in a relationship.

That's been going on for a few months now.

Yet whenever I hang-out with the ex, all these feelings - desire, love, want, need, of all things - bubble to the surface. And today she admitted to me that she on Halloween night she started having a fling with some guy.

I never get jealous. Never. It is a foreign concept to me. But today, I got jealous.

I can't leave her, since she has no-one else. I can't be with her, since I have someone else.

I shouldn't have ever dated after her. I should have waited, either for closure or for re-uniting now.

I'm kind of confused. What do I do here? Tough it out and get over it?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm generally not really in the giving advice game, because it's hard to do sensibly while knowing only a sliver of someone's life and most people aren't necessarily looking for it to begin with. That said, I think something impartial outsiders can be useful for is asking questions with clear eyes.

So the first question that occurs to me is; is she even interested in you anymore? You said you waited six months, and she didn't get back together with you. Now she's started something with another guy. You seem to be coming at this from the perspective that you need to decide whether to end your current relationship to re-pursue the first girl, but has she actually given you any reason to believe that's what she wants? It takes two to tango, and while your feelings for her might be absolutely real, that doesn't mean she feels the same - and you didn't mention anything about her perspective.

If there is some possibility for a rekindling of the relationship, then yes I guess you have to try to figure out which risk to take. Stick with your girlfriend and risk that these feelings never go away and you always feel kind of unresolved (and I think we as people often carry around a lot of unresolved feelings, so this is not an entirely nuts idea), or try again with the first girl and risk that it doesn't work out, or that you realise that you were actually happier with what you've given up. That question is damn hard, but without the first question it's also pretty meaningless.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I know for a fact she'd want to get back with me - she told me so herself, two weeks ago. This new thing is a fling, just a way to satisfy some physical urges.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Tough it out. Maybe tell her talking about flings isn't cool because you used to date. That she did have a fling could mean she's getting over you and you probably should work at getting over her. Feeling jealous would be a very bad reason to restart that relationship and drop the other. At least from my experience that's just your dick being angry at you.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, toughing it out seems the right way to go. I do not understand things anymore, and clearly need to work on untying some emotional knots.

I wish I'd never gotten into dating and stuck to my books instead.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I find it helps to rationalize romantiq whatnot down to the basics: it's chemicals. You've got a chemical addiction - when you see her, you get a rush of oxytocin (and whatever else is in that mix - probably PEA and some neurotransmitters too), and it's a high. Cutting yourself off from that high and going cold-turkey (as in a breakup) or weaning yourself off it (as in the "let's just be friends" version) is difficult, and it plays merry hell with the brain.

Once that has been straightened out you can deal with the emotional meanings, but I find knowing that there's chemical and biological reasons for your reactions helps me feel less like a special unique snowflake going through pain no-one else has ever felt and that can never be dealt with.

Hang in there, Kroms. You are going to be OK.

(Even if just because I say so. If needs be I'll march out there.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I wish I'd never gotten into dating and stuck to my books instead.

Man, I am so with you on that.

Good luck.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Man, I am so with you on that.

Good luck.

It aint all it's cracked up to be. Some high-and-a-low is better than never having a high at all, especially with a ticking body-clock. as @Subbles, said the root cause it's chemicals and we can't control that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×