fine, I'd be killed first...

It's been pointed out in great detail, in a clear and concise way to me, exactly how and why I'm never going to make a good hostage.

BY ALL OF YOU!

Some of you going the extra mile to illustrate exactly why I would not only NOT live, but why I'd be the very first shot. I was even forced to agree tonight.

Points taken.

uh...and I appreciate the suggestions on how I'd have to be to avoid said issue...

Fine.
I'll pick some other hobby.
Sheesh

But let me just say this... if I ever DO become a hostage and LIVE, I'm so writing the longest post about it in contradiction and there will probably be pie charts involved too! You've been warned!

surprises

I dislike secrets.
Truly.
I don't handle them well either.
I hate surprises too.

I really do hate surprises unless they are REAL surprises. Like, blind-siding surprises. Ones that I have ZERO knowledge of. Because if there's any hint of anything and you're just not telling me, I'm going to think you're being a jerk - and I'm not going to like that.

It's not advisable to torture me.
I know how to torture people right back.

This scenario is usually how it goes when people want to surprise me with something:

Someone that doesn't know me well at all: "I have a surprise for you and I'm not telling you what it is either!"

fuck me... apparently saying this is MANDATORY to the script because it goes down like this 99 out of 100 times...

Me: "I don't like surprises"
Someone that doesn't know me well at all: "I know"
...silence...
Me: "So, tell me"
Someone that doesn't know me well at all: "Then it won't be a surprise"
...it's not a surprise now!...
Me: "Tell me!"
followed by me wearing said person down until they tell me...

I really hate that...

rethinking...

Even the real surprise comment comes with a few rules and regulations - DO NOT HORRIFY ME EITHER. I like being prepared for things. I function MUCH better that way. If it's going to be a total surprise, it's best that it's done privately.

Like those guys that think it's a good idea to propose to their girlfriend in front of 50,000 people at a NY Jet's football game... and she has no clue. And suddenly the cameras are zooming in on her. Waiting. The look on her face leaves you unsure if she'd say yes if the ENTIRE UNIVERSE wasn't focusing on her. Now she's stuck, cornered - the pressure is on!

Oh.
My.
God.

The camera would catch me uttering something about killing said guy when we got home. And really, how fucking good do you look going to a fucking football game. There's a good chance that you're freezing your ass off, your face is all blotchy from the cold, your eyes are sort of glazed over, you hate the people that are clearly too close to your inner personal space and you're wondering where the fuck your boyfriend ran off to leaving you with a bunch of unstable strangers half naked with the team's colors painted all over their faces.

And now you're on camera!
Up close and personal!
Oh My God!

Seriously, this is a free ticket to torture your future husband for a good five years - and every single time you think of it.

Or every time you see the clip on YouTube or fucking CNN as the high-lights of that week in sports.

hyperventilates...

Sort of like it's not okay to announce to some guy that you're pregnant when he's in the middle of a poker game with his friends. I'm just saying you might want to hold off for better timing.

A good compromise, since most people would like to share that sort of news with people that care about them, would be - telling him Christmas Eve by handing him the small square without a word that has the + sign on it. ALONE. If there's a good reaction, you can share with the group - if there's a bad reaction, at least you're the only two witnessing it. You can kill him later.

Same with her. If you ask while you're out in public somewhere or at some family gathering, and the reaction is good - by all means, it's your joy to share. If the reaction isn't good, no one loses face. And you can kill her later.

All men should get down on one knee to propose too.

That's tradition. I don't know who started it - and I don't really care. I like it. I've never had it done - and I've been proposed to a ridiculous amount of times and I'll be proposed to a few more times before I'm dead, I'm sure.

Knights kneel when being awarded honors from Kings and Queens. Offering or accepting a marriage proposal is just as much an honor as any medal or award. Even Kings and Queens kneel to genuflect when entering a church. Proposing on bended knee is a sign of respect and spiritualism.

That's how I see it. That is what's proper and that's what I like.

You can't do that when you're standing on a pitcher's mound and your other half is in a crowd of strangers 50 feet away with a bunch of men in spandex between you. Am I the only one that sees the logic here?

twitching...

Surprises are fundamentally... bad.
Be very, very careful.

I always want to think I'd make a good hostage, but...

I know that's a long title.
You know how my biggest fear is being misunderstood though, so...

So, yeah.

I always want to think I'd make a good hostage, but...
...there are some doubts that keep creeping in.

Come on, it's not like you haven't thought about it before!
You've been in a bank!

I once lived two buildings away from a corner bank. It literally got robbed every day, for a WEEK before they finally put in bullet proof glass from floor to ceiling. It was like clock work.

Anyone remember Marine Midland Bank?

Broad daylight.
Lots of traffic.
Lots of people walking around.
Not a deterrent.
daily... alarms, alarms, alarms... hello, officer... again...

This was also the building I lived in where I shared a roof with a crack house. I was clearly living with someone that didn't belong in the City too - ever in their life. He use to flip out and worry that our stuff was going to get stolen.

blahblahblah

One day after hearing the same speech for the thousandth time, I said, "Oh my God, stop worrying about it! If our stuff gets stolen, I'll just open the window, walk across the roof and steal it back!"

And I would.
And I told the crack dealers that.
And I never had a problem.
And they never had a problem from me.
BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT GOOD NEIGHBORS DO!

because really, if any of us had anything worth stealing at the time - we wouldn't be living in the City in the first place! Go rob people who actually have something worth robbing.

Good Lord, who cares - I can't even be moved to think about it for more than 5 seconds. Why? Because I already thought about it and came to a conclusion, so now unless some other factor gets introduced, I never need to think about that again.

See how that works?

Which is why I'm still working out the whole hostage thing - because I don't have a working conclusion on that issue yet...

So anyway...
Back to being a hostage.

enough about bank robberies and crack houses for now...

There are still a few delusional brain cells that keep telling me that, yes, I would indeed make a good hostage.

Let's brainstorm.
Where are you likely to be a potential hostage?

- Banks, clearly.
- Airlines.
- McDonald's.
- Possibly the Post Office.
- Train/Subway

I'm iffy on the Train/Subway possibility though. That would be poor planning on the hostage takers part, I think. It's not exactly a scenario where the hostage takers can go, "MAKE A LEFT UP THERE!" to avoid capture or anything.

Oh my God... okay, THERE I would not make a good hostage. There is no way I wouldn't be able to say something like, "You really didn't think this out very well, did you, amateur..."

You're more likely to be blown up on a train or subway anyway, I imagine. In which case, you're just fucked and who cares and it's not worth thinking about. The odds are not in your favor.

It's like if my plane is about to crash.
I assume that I'm just going to wind up dead.

I can't even be bothered to devote any time to calculate who I'm going to eat first. Don't care.

Oh, sure, I'll probably spent the last 20 seconds I have before we all plunge to our deaths to make some kind of rude comment, but in the end, we'll all just resemble a bunch of pancakes and that's that.

And even if I say something in my last 20 seconds left like, "I'M EATING YOU FIRST!" to you - ignore me, I don't mean it. I just want something to laugh about before my guts are raining down over the Atlantic Ocean.

As a side note: if I was on that plane with the soccer team over the Andes, I'd be among the first to die because I don't care about survival enough to eat anyone's thigh - or WORSE have to deal with living in snow for weeks on end with a bunch of strangers that I probably didn't even want to take the 15 hour plane ride with in the first place...

Really, your best case scenario is being involved in a bank robbery.
Fine, forget what I said earlier - we're infusing bank robbery back into the equation...

Would I make a good hostage.

Of course I would!
And why wouldn't I!

I'm fucking charming!
No, seriously, I am...laughs
I'm cute. No paper bag required.
I'm quick witted. I look fairly harmless.
I'm little!

little = you'd look like a big wuss to pick on someone much smaller than you and then you'd lose street cred and all the surviving hostages will make fun of you on TV for being such a coward motherfucker and killing the short girl...in which case, I STILL WIN...

Really.
Anyway.
Could I side up with the people who have the guns?
I think I could.

And I totally talk myself right into that theory!
If Patty Hearst can do it, why can't I?!

Then I think about all the stupid things that could be said to me that would set me off and make me indignant and this quickly degrades into:

Okay, fine - I'd at least make a half way decent hostage.
I'd just avoid eye contact and look bored.

Then I think about how mad I'd get that someone was wasting my fucking time and holding me up and annoying the fuck out of my day. This turns into:

Okay, fine - I'd at the very least not be THE FIRST ONE KILLED.

Because then it would be full on eye contact and I WOULD be bored and that's never good for anyone.

By the end of the debate in my head it's devolved into:

I'm the first one with a chalk outline being drawn around my half dead body while the paramedics are standing over me trying to sop up blood from the head wound I'm bound to receive while the hostage takers are still shooting at me even though they're all surrounded by the SWAT team - because I'm insulting their entire lineage.

I would be SO PISSED...

Well, at least everyone else would be safe.

but there's still a part of me that thinks I could make a good hostage!
I just haven't worked out the details yet...

And just for the record, this line of thinking, makes doing laundry less boring.

if you love something...

"If you love something, set it free"
This was a passing comment between Grant and myself this morning in the Florida room.

I had to walk into the living room to collect myself. It offended most of my senses and now it's stuck in my head and I find it increasingly irritating. So, you know, the proper protocol is to inflict it on all of you...

This is right up there with the "is the glass half full or half empty" thing to me - which you all know I fucking hate.

And again, it's just simply HALF - no more, no less. It's MATH.

I came back out to the Florida room and said, "What the hell does that even mean?!" - because I don't get it.

He repeated the whole thing - which helped me understand it, not at all.

"If you love something, set it free; if it comes back to you, it's yours - if it doesn't, it never was."
-Richard Bach
Earth sign alert! Earth sign alert!
Terra Firma!
Foundation! Roots!
Structure! Cultivating! Building!
Red alert! Red alert!
All senses fully offended!

If you love something, you don't set it free!

If you love something - you nurture it, you care for it, you love it, you make it feel safe and secure, you make sure it's at least content, you cherish it, you give it a wide range to grow, you protect it with everything you're worth, you don't sell it, you don't trade it, you don't give it away, you're loyal to it, you're devoted to it, you live for it, you're willing to die for it and you don't treat it cheaply.

Oh my God... and if you can set it free, you didn't love it enough in the first fucking place!

My head may explode.

I admit it, I called Richard Bach an idiot.
Sorry, Richard - I'm sure you're a lovely person, on the inside...

Now this quote...

"Love is a fire. Whether it's going to warm your heart or burn down your house though, you can never tell.
- Joan Crawford
...I can at least understand.

male bathroom etiquette

I made the mistake of writing the words "Urinal Cake" on this site and not following it up. Since I've been called on it, I've been sitting here trying to figure out the most delicate way of addressing the subject.

I've come to the conclusion that there is no subtle way.
So with that conclusion fairly easily drawn, it pretty much leaves me free reign.

Then I moved on to trying to figure out how to make it all coherent.
That was a little tougher.
I gave up altogether on trying to be tactful about it all.

Not one to slack on my research, I found this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnOaMC8KHA4
The words "critical mass" are clearly defined.

"Speech is your enemy; never, ever under any circumstance say a single word in a men's room...not even to Jesus himself" is a motto that is essential for all parties involved to adhere to otherwise it could lead to dire consequences.

...and forget everything you may have ever read about spotting sociopaths. It is defined for you, definitively, in that video.

I was unaware that a pyramid breakdown was part of the critical thinking involved in the male etiquette restroom scenario - I stand educated.

On to Urinal Cakes, which was the main focus, I just got side-tracked.

I ran across this:

Talking urinal cakes warn against drunk driving. Apparently the State of New Mexico is trying out a new program to try to stop drunk driving. They have purchased 500 urinal cakes ($21 apiece) and placed them in the restrooms of various bars.

According to SiliconValley.com the cakes say things like "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."

The females among us are probably going, "What is this mystifying item called the urinal cake?"

It appears, that urinal cakes (sometimes referred to as Urinal Mints for some bizarre reason) are small disinfectant blocks found in male bathrooms. The purpose of these blocks is to disinfect and deodorize washroom urinals.


They are air-activated and slowly evaporate when in contact with the air. Water does not dissolve them. It is rumored that some of them are designed to look like bulls-eyes.

In my quest for the Holy Grail of the Men's room, I ran across this little gem:
The Interactive Urinal Communicator

...to once again reassure us that advertising agencies have no shame and are willing to corner you when you least expect it.

and just so you know, Grant is still watching the video from above and saying things like, "that's just so true"...

There.
Now everyone is on the same page.

Additional Information as of 6:18pm - the urinals that go to the floor? They're for KIDS. As ridiculous as it is, Grant and I just had this conversation because I thought it may have been counterproductive to have to pee a good 3-4' straight down and how in fuck do you keep it from splashing all over your shoes that way. KIDS. I have no idea why that never occurred to me. Kids. Of course. Kids. Sheesh. And then I got the added bonus of a mental picture of how many times Grant has seen dad's holding their kids up to the mid-wall level ones. And then all I could do was laugh. So, there's your update.

Fear Less

I am a fan of the author Gavin De Becker. Who, in my rarely humble opinion (what's the point of being humble about some conclusion you've come to as long as you're not following someone around trying to shove your opinion down their throat 24/7?) - is a downright genius.

He wrote the book, The Gift of Fear - which again, in my rarely humble opinion, every female alive should read.

Actually, any male that even remotely cares about a female should read it as well just so you can understand how we have to live in a world of potential violence against us. You'd probably be horrified to learn all of the things we have to simultaneously consider just walking out our front door.

If you're female, the information in the book could very well one day literally save your life.

After 9/11, Gavin came out with the book I'm reading right now - aptly called, Fear Less.

It stresses our natural survival system, like his other book. I'm about to totally plagiarize him and write an excerpt from one of his chapters right now because I think he had some really good points when it comes to breaking down emotions, animal instincts and being able to identify and compartmentalize them.

Come to think of it, it's not so much plagiarizing as it is copy right infringement. Don't tell him! I'm going to pawn it off as free advertisement for his books. Buy them!

To give you some background on his credentials: Gavin De Becker is widely considered America's leading expert on predicting and managing violent behavior. He advises such clients as the CIA and the U.S. Supreme Court, and his 70 member firm has protected clients from terrorism in Isreal, southern Africa, Europe, and South America. This three-time presidential appointee designed the assessment systems used to screen threats to all federal judges and the governors of 11 states, and his work has changed the way the U.S. government protects its highest officials. He is also a senior fellow at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research.

Yes, I even violated the copy rights by taking that from the back jacket of the book. Consider me his new personal PR chick.

---
Beginning of Theft

Intuition has many messengers, but the clearest and most urgent is fear. Nothing in life gets attention as reliably as fear -- and that's the way the system is designed to work. Fear does some miraculous things when we perceive that we are in the presence of danger. First, it gets our bodies ready for action with a dose of adrenaline. It heats up the lactic acid in our muscles for running or fighting, and it even gives us a chemical called cortisol that makes our blood clot more quickly in case we're cut in a fight.

It's an amazing system designed to be a brief signal that gets you to listen, address the risk, and move on. The problem is that these chemicals are toxic, and in America, even more so since the tragic events of 9/11, lots of people are living in fear.

Our imaginations can be the fertile soil in which worry about anxiety grow from seeds to weeds, but when we assume an imagined outcome is a sure thing, we are in conflict with what Proust called an inexorable law: "Only that which is absent can be imagined." In other words, what you imagine cannot be happening in your presence right now, for if it were, you would perceive it. Similarly, the very fact that you fear something is solid evidence that it is not happening in your presence right now.

Fear summons powerful predictive resources that tell us what might come next. It is that which might come next that we fear -- what might happen, not what is happening now. A literal example helps demonstrate this: As you stand near the edge of a high cliff, you might fear getting too close. If you stand right at the edge, you no longer fear getting too close, you now fear falling. To carry this all the way, if you fall, you no longer fear falling -- you now fear landing. When compared with landing, falling isn't so bad.

This reminds me of a friend who used to be afraid of flying because of turbulence. After the four simultaneous hijackings, he told me, "Turnulence now makes me grateful. It reminds me that there are much worse things."

People use the word fear to describe so many feelings that are not fear, so I'll define our terms.

FEAR

• True fear is a signal in the presence of danger. It is always based upon something we perceive, something in our environment or our circumstance.

• Unwarranted fear is always based upon our memory or our imagination.

Imagine, for example, that you are about to board a flight when you are suddenly overtaken with dread and uncertainty about the pilot's ability to fly the plane. If the dread is based on a news story you saw three weeks ago about airlines hiring inexperienced pilots, it is unwarranted fear. If the fear is based upon seeing the pilot stumble out of the airport bar, it's the real thing. True fear is the messenger that intuition sends when the situation is urgent, and it's not easily quieted. If you want it to leave you alone, whatever questions it poses must be answered fully and credibly.

The challenge in dealing with anxiety caused by terrorist acts is that answers are hard to come by. Uncertainly is a key component of terrorism; we are left to wonder what might happen next, to what degree, and where. The lack of predictability predictably causes anxiety, which, unlike true fear, is always caused by uncertainty.

ANXIETY

Anxiety is caused, ultimately, by predictions in which you have little confidence. Image that you are anxious about being fired. You might have anxiety about the things you can't predict with certainty, such as the ramifications of losing the job.

Prediction in which you have high confidence free you to respond, prepare, adjust, accept, feel sadness, or do whatever is needed. Accordingly, anxiety is reduced by improving the quality of your predictions. Higher quality predictions increase certainty, and certainty is the antidote to anxiety. It's worth doing, because the word anxiety, like the word worry, stems from a root that means "to choke," and that is just what it does to us.

WORRY

Worry is the fear we manufacture -- it is not authentic, and it is not part of our defense systerm. If you look out the window and see lava from the local volcano slowly making its way toward your house, you don't worry, you run.

Unlike true fear, worry is a choice. Most often, people worry because it provides some secondary reward. There are many variations, but here are a few of the most popular reasons people worry:

• Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don't do anything about the matter.
• Excessive worry helps some people deal with matters they cannot influence. Powerlessness is one of the hardest things to admit, and there comes a point with risk where we have to do just that. Worry helps fight off that dreadful feeling that there's nothing we can do, because worrying feels like we are doing something.
• You've likely known someone who worried so much that people stopped telling that people anything. "Don't worry your mother" or "I'm worried half to death" are phrases that serve worriers by offering protection from too much reality.
• Worry can be a cloying way to have connection with others, the idea being that to worry about someone shows love. As many worried-about people will tell you, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.

• Worry is a way to rehearse dreaded outcomes so that if they occur, the worrier believes he will be more prepared. Of course, it doesn't work. Worry simply gives people some of the very same consequences they'd get if the dreaded outcome occurred -- while doing nothing constructive to prevent anything bad from happening. Worrying is not the same as planning; it is not an effective security precaution.
  

Worry is a choice, but true fear is involuntary; it will come and get your attention if necessary. But if a person feels fear constantly, there is no signal left for when it's really needed. Thus, the person who chooses to worry all the time or to persistently chew on unwarranted fears is actually making himself less safe. Worry is not a precaution; it is the opposite because it delays and discourages constructive action, and action is the antidote to worry.

In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman concludes that worrying is a sort of "Magical amulet" that some people feel wards off danger. They believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening. He also correctly notes that most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predicator that it isn't likely to happen.

When you worry yourself into an artificial fear about terrorism, you distract yourself from what is actually happening in favor of what you imagine might happen. Since the human imagination is powerful, you can conjure quite a litany of possibilities. Any time you ask yourself the question "Could this happen?" the answer will be yes -- because anything could happen, but there are better questions, such as "Will this happen?" or "Is this happening?"

Is worry an intuitive signal? In a roundabout way, it can be. That's because what we choose to worry about, however bad, is usually easier to look at than some other, less palatable issue. For this reason, a good exercise when worrying is to ask yourself, "What am I choosing not to see right now?" Worry may well be distracting you from something important. For example, someone might worry about unseen terrorists (What will they do next? Do operatives live nearby? Are they engaged in something dastardly right now?), whiles at the same time choosing not to register that she's seen someone videotaping the nuclear power plant several days in a row.

Worry, wariness, anxiety, and concern all have a purpose, but they are not fear. So any time a feeling isn't a signal in the presence of danger, then it really shouldn't be confused with fear. It may well be something worth trying to understand and manage, but it is not likely to be directly relevant to your present safety.

End of theft
---

I love that breakdown! It's clear and to the point. I love when people accurately call things for what they really are. Love it.

I know the overall theme is on terrorism in his book, but the same formula can be applied to other situations in life. That's why I felt the need to share.

Man...

Ever have a week go by and every one of those days you stare at your keyboard and think, "I have a million things to write about and not one of them should ever be put into print, let alone be said out loud or in public!"

I can't even say that anything really out of the ordinary has happened either. The mind has just been in over-drive lately - maybe, rampaging is a better word for it.

Rampage is certainly a better word for it than, "certifiable" or "needs sedation"...I'm just saying...

I'm filled with social problems and their solutions, long term outcomes of social issues, screw ups in history, personal crossroads, reanalyzing theories, etc, etc.

As if that wasn't enough, this morning Grant and I had a lengthy discussion about quantum physics that easily could have resulted in a mental fist fight.

Grant called me over to watch this on his monitor:


Let me just say this...

Sometimes literal people shouldn't talk to outside of the box thinking people that love to deal with space and time and stuff you can't see or hold.

There is a natural tendency for those of us that are too literal for our own good, perhaps - to want to find some practical application to whatever bizarre shit you just came out with that you're taking as gospel.

Me: "If "A" is true, then it could conceivably be a factor in examples "B, C and D" this way (I'll spare you the details.)"
Grant: "No, you're not thinking big enough."
stare
Me: "Okay, then it matters... why?"
Grant: "You're not getting it..."
Me: "I understood everything you just said."
Grant: "Yeah, but you want to use it literally."
Me: "Yes, I do... of course, I do!"

Good Lord...
I don't see what the hell good a theory is if I can't apply it literally. We BOTH know this about me - why on earth would you ever expect anything different.
Did I become someone ELSE over-night when you weren't looking?

Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL for theories.
Give me your theory!
I'll listen!

I might not take it as Gospel, but who cares if I do or not. It's something else to think about and I'm good with that. I'll even throw out whatever practical application I can think of going on the basis that said theory could be etched in stone as fact.

I'm there!

The above, I'm okay with. Got it. My issue is, it goes on the assumption that there are some kind of holes/spaces/openings that exist in our dimension versus the possibility that all these particles are just trapped in a giant box like container.

That's all I was saying!

Grant: "Everything is made up of particles and this new revelation fucks E=mc² and gravity."
Me: "Okay, that's great - except you can count on your particles plummeting out of a tree to the ground if you go up that ladder and then fall. You don't have to see the particles with the naked eye to know what the outcome is going to be - so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it."

Then this came up:



I said, "That could conceivably explain why twins can be raised separately and in other countries by other families and still have the same idiosyncrasies and know when something is happening to their siblings thousands of miles away" - which I thought was a valid point.

To further that line of thinking, it would explain why we still maintain a sense of tribal togetherness when a world wide crisis takes place.

Building on the surprise that I felt when people all over the world who live in far more horrendous conditions than Americans do, on a regular basis, felt such sorrow over 9/11... I've been trying to reason that out for ages...

Me: "Then you have to allow for figuring out if any of the particles have been diffused over time versus remaining the same or evolving to become stronger."
Grant: "You're not thinking big enough. You're contemplating the little things and not the universe as a whole."

I'm sure I visibly twitched...

Me: "Well, I can SEE people! I can SEE my surroundings! Of course, that's going to be my first thought... have we just MET? It's not like you haven't known me for the last 25 years! And you want me to IGNORE the fact that the universe is made up of ALL THESE TINY LITTLE PARTICLES IN FRONT OF ALL OF US because I'm not thinking BIG enough? There wouldn't even BE a BIGGER PICTURE without those little details."

This is what divides the big thinkers and the people that actually CARE about the details. He is one and I am clearly the other. It really doesn't have to be an argument. You need BOTH sides to figure stuff out.

Throw all the pieces of the puzzle on my desk in any order you want and I'll eventually make a picture out of it. While I'm working on that though, throwing another 6 sets of 10,000 puzzles pieces in the mix is only going to result in me having to sort out what pieces go to which set first.

Then this came up AGAIN. It's brilliant and the series is the easiest way to comprehend the concept. I own the book and I love it. The whole show is worth viewing if you have the time.

That led to us going over what *I* think the limitation is, and that's with our eye-sight. Our eye-sight is our handicap. If we could see with the naked eye these particles, it would change our perception. These particles exist and we know it because we can see them with certain microscopes and were able to track their patterns. The pattern ceased to exist when viewed with the naked eye.

Okay!
Granted!
Then that's our handicap.

And quite frankly, there's no real reason why we can't create contact lenses that allow us to see better than 20/20 if we can make lens for microscopes that can amplify vision down to the kind of level that allows us to SEE tiny particles...please...

Me: "Just like monitors. You see images on the monitor in 72 dpi (dots per inch). We are capable of SEEING more colors than that, but the monitor can't handle it (which is more due to how big the image file would be for downloads too). That makes the handicap the monitor, not your eye-sight.

When you design something print-worthy, you'd use a 600-1200 dpi creation. If you print out something that's 72 dpi, on paper, it will look like a bunch of fully formed dots and a lot of space not filled in. If you print out something that's 1200 dpi, it might look the same as the 72 dpi image on the monitor - but when you print it on paper, it will look as smooth as a photograph (depending, of course, on the paper as well as the printer)."

I thought that was a good comparison!
Which leads back to our eye-sight being the flawed piece.

Grant: "Why do I talk to you..."
Me: "I have no conceivable idea."

We decided we were better off just moving on to a different subject.
laughs

That is, until we were standing in an aisle at the grocery store and he looked at me and said, "The only reason I'm here is because you see me."

That made me laugh.

I want credit for biting the inside of my cheek and not saying, "WTF?! I'D STILL BE HERE WHETHER YOU SAW ME OR NOT!"

inspired

Since I got out my frustration over the stupid half question in my last post, I was laying in bed trying to sleep (to no avail, obviously) and one thought lead to another in my mind and next thing I know - I was up to another example of calling things exactly how they are, and how that's a GOOD thing.

That may very well be the longest, most convoluted sentence ever written. Read it a few times if it didn't make sense the first time around, because I assure you that it will eventually.

You were forced to do sentence breakdowns with charts and lines in school.

I know you were!
You can do it!
I have faith!

Here's a Cliff Note example of how my mind works:

"Man, I feel so much better after writing that bitch about that stupid, moronic, half full/half empty question on my journal. I've been meaning to say that to the general public for a long ass time.

I should tell Brian that when he comes over tomorrow too; he'd appreciate my little theory on that. He's all about calling things out for what they really are. I suppose that's why he was a kick ass Cop.

Being a Cop would be a pretty cool job. They have to see things in terms that are very black and white. Their job is to take the law and arrest someone that breaks it and then turn it all over to the D.A., Judge and/or Jury for them to interpret the law as they see fit.

If I could take orders, I would have loved to be a Cop!

Wait a minute, who in the hell am I kidding - I could NEVER be a Cop. I've made that declaration a few dozen times. I know it's true. I'd make it on the streets for about 5.5 hours before I took the law into my own hands and shot some jackass who was doing something so fundamentally wrong that it violated my senses.

I could never do that job. I know my limits. Oh, you want to be a rapist - well, it just so happens that I have a few bullets in this gun - and look at that! One of them has your name on it! Today is your lucky day! Sort of...

"Okay, motherfucker!
Time to die!
Make your peace with God while you can!"

Speaking of which, I should watch that movie, "Black and White" again with Gina Gershon. I love that movie. My favorite part is when she's got the guy in her target and she just SNAPS and she's all like, "Go ahead! You shoot him, I'll shoot you - it'll be FUN!"

Erm... and that's the basics of why I could never do that job, because I would be JUST LIKE HER in that scenario.

Yeah, I could see it now - Internal Affairs would have my number and the number of an Arraignment Judge on speed dial. Then I'd have to figure out how to convince a jury of my peers that the guy actually fell on the bullets six times because he's a klutz.

"How is that MY fault, your Honor?!"

Even I'm not sure I could sell that one. Wow though, if I could - what kind of freakin' win would THAT be. Come to think of it, I bet I might be able to sell that story! If someone can actually get away with a "Twinkies" defense... oh my God, what the hell am I going on about... sheesh... next...

I think one of the best compliments I've ever gotten from Brian is him saying that if we were in the Army together and in War, he would trust me to have his back. That's a huge compliment.

Not that I could ever be in the military either - with my whole lack of, taking orders, thing. It was still a good thing to say.

He's right though, oh my God, if someone took a shot at him I'd go insane and that person would have to pay. I told him that I'm the only one allowed to kill him. NO ONE GETS TO TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!

I'd give that guy part of my liver if he needed it.

I'm never going to get any sleep this way. I should just get up and get some coffee and write or read or plot. Whatever. Something.

...it goes on and on and on like that.

That's not even scratching the surface, but it should be enough of an example to give you a little insight.

Anyway, in the midst of my silent tirade in my head while laying there, things somehow worked its way around to measuring people with their own measuring sticks.

Not mine.
Theirs.

I'm fairly cool with a large, large number of things. You want to be a polygamist, more power to you. You want to marry your own sex, knock yourself out. You want to tell me flat out that you're a womanizing asshole - okay.

I could, and ironically, have had the following conversation:

Womanizing Dickhead: "I think it would be good to tell you that I'm a bottom of the barrel, womanizing dickhead - all in the name of fair play. Oh, and by the way, I'm 100% against animal cruelty. People that hurt animals should be shot and then subsequently dragged behind a bus doing 45 down a dirt road."

Me: "Okay. Noted. Thanks!"

I'm actually happy for you that you know yourself well enough to understand that about yourself and your sense of honesty made you say that to me. We're cool. I will NOT be surprised when I see you doing your thing. I won't get all moral on you. I won't lecture you. Good for you for doing some soul searching and coming to some kind of conclusion about yourself.

I don't really care.
I've been warned.
Fair enough.

Granted, I won't be dating you. I won't introduce you to any female that I even remotely know and if you look sideways at my sister - I may gouge your eyes out with a fork.

In the vein of keeping even, I feel that that's necessary to say to you so we're both on the same page.

Noted as well?
Good.
We're cool then.

I value direct honesty and I have a huge fear of being misunderstood and there's no point in mincing words.

This in no way precludes us from being friends.
I'm sure you must have some good qualities too.
Even if you don't, you still get credit for being honest with me.

Really, we're cool.

Now, you can try to lay every female with a pulse around me and I'll ignore you and you're totally safe as long as you don't try to involve me. Have at it. I'll even try very hard not to laugh and roll my eyes. It effects us, not at all. Don't worry your pretty little head over it for one second.

If you try to involve me or get me to vouch for you being a good, caring, one-woman man sort - I will totally blow you in in no uncertain terms and then go back to whatever it was that I was doing. So, you know, you probably don't want to involve me.

But we're OKAY!

You be the best bottom of the barrel, scumbag, dickhead womanizer you can be, honey!

You can tell me all about it later when you're done doing what you're doing.
We'll have coffee or something.

This is where the problem comes in...

If I see the same guy outside kicking a dog - that's a BIG NO!

From that point on, you will forever be known as the jackass dog kicker and I don't even want to know your name now. You have violated your own honesty and now you're nothing but a real asshole that I want nothing to do with.

Me: Hey, you - LYING lowlife animal kicker, there's a bus outside waiting for your ass! I hear he's taking the back roads to his next stop! He's got a gun in his glove compartment too. Hurry!"

You broke your OWN rule.
I have no use for you.

No one else put that rule on you, that's something you came up with on your own. If you didn't want to be held to it, you never should have said it to me!

No sympathy.
None.

If you were a dog kicker, you could have just said, "Oh, yeah - and in my spare time, I like to kick animals."

Sure, I would sit there and stare at you to see if you were serious or not. I'll probably suggest a new hobby, like, watching paint dry or sniffing glue - but I'll take you at your word.

I won't be shocked if I see you do it then either. I'll stare again, and possibly throw a rock at you - but I will be forced to say to myself, "well, he DID tell me... I can hardly say I wasn't warned..."

I don't personally know any dog kickers, but my point remains the same...

Say what you mean, mean what you say - and expect that I'll hold you to it.
Otherwise, really, what's the fucking point.

half full or half empty?

Am I the only person willing to say out loud how much I abhor that question?

Is the glass half full or half empty?
It's neither and both... and more specifically, it's simply AT HALF.

At...half...
does the sign language to indicate HALF... just HALF...

50%
1/2
.50
HALF

No more, no less.

As you can tell, I have an unnatural hatred for that question (to add along side of the word, "tushie" that I'm so freakin' fond of as well). It's not an outlook question to me. You won't find me to be an optimist or a pessimist over it. It's MATH.

What does it make you when your answer is always, "IT'S JUST HALF! STOP ASKING ME THAT STUPID QUESTION ALREADY!"

The best label I could come up with is... annoyed and potentially violent.

À tout seigneur tout honneur

In order to go to the store by my house, I have to walk past the middle school my kids went to. Tonight a story from my daughter's last year there made me laugh to myself, so I thought I'd share it. Fortunately, I wrote about it the day after it happened (three years ago) so I had notes to refer to.

-----------------------
I got a letter in the mail from my daughter's school telling me she had an award ceremony to attend. When I asked the girl what she was getting an award for, do you think she had a clue why? No, of course not.

Me: "Any idea?"
Her: "None."
Me: "Way to stay informed.."

In sitting wayyyyy the hell in the back of the auditorium (see the "go to hell" post if that needs to be explained), my daughter and I rediscovered two things:

1) We really should sit as far away from other people as humanly possible so they don't hear us.
2) We have a lot of fun together.

Since we had no clue what kind of award she was going to get - every time they would announce something like, "this student is always a pleasure to have in class" or some other such kiss ass speech... we'd look at each other and one of us would go, "Well, that's obviously not going to you"...

We tried to keep our comments VERY low and limited to whispering into each others ear while everyone else was clapping for something or other.

We joke.
It's what we do.
She and I are NEVER bored together.

Of course, when it got to be closing in on the end of the second hour of this ceremony, we would have made fun of ANYTHING. It really did drag on.

This is how bad it got...

We made jokes about the Perfect Attendance awards - and how we were certain one of them wasn't going to be there to receive it and somehow that was one of the funniest visions. Perfect attendance, except to receive your Perfect Attendance Award!

.......and it DID happen!
We laughed our asses off in the parking lot walking to the car over that at the end of the night.

Then I leaned over and whispered to her...

Me: "Those are a prime example of kids who are hated by their parents..... What? You have Ebola? I DON'T CARE! GET YOUR ASS UP, YOU'RE GOING TO SCHOOL!"

Of course this is not true (er, most likely not true anyway), but it kept us from setting anything on fire. So...

Speaker: "This student always has a sunny disposition"..
Me: "Ah... so, you're not winning that award either, huh?"

We never got bored of this.

Me: "GYM! I bet your award is for GYM!"

My daughter hates gym.
She looked at me like I just sprouted a second head.
It was hilarious.

I was rummaging through her purse for some lip gloss and opened one of the compartments where I discovered 26 PAT certificates for chorus. She's in an All Girls Chorus that consists of a hundred and fifty 6-8th graders. They give out PAT certificates when you do something good in class.

Me: "Uh... think MAYBE you're getting the award in Chorus?"
Her: "I hope not!"

We thought it might have been in art because a pot she made was featured in an Art Magazine and on the local network access channel back in December of that year. No dice. Which worked out fine since she was hoping it wasn't going to be in Art either.

It turned out to be an award for Academic Diligence in French.

So, I have one kid that speaks Spanish.
I can fake my way through a conversation with him.

Normally his report cards garnish him a C in ENGLISH...all the while getting A's in Spanish.........
/stare...

The other kid speaks French.
I can't fake my way through anything with her.
There are times she will say something and I'll go, "DID YOU JUST SWEAR AT ME LITTLE GIRL?!"

Yet another child that does better in a foreign language than ENGLISH...

The only thing I really picked up from her is, "J'ai soif"...(which means I'm thirsty, fyi).

In any event...
My little french speaking lunatic and I had a great time.
She did a good job.

À tout seigneur tout honneur - Honor to whom honor is due.
À coeur vaillant rien d'impossible - Nothing is impossible for a willing heart.

laws and morality

I love the law.

Well, to be more accurate, I love the law as it applies to other people - but again, that's a whole other post...

For four years I studied profiling.

I'm completely fascinated by anyone that can look at a crime scene and determine, sight unseen of the perpetrator, what type of person committed the act.

That's nothing short of brilliant to me.

If you want a perfect example of what I'm talking about, go rent the movie, "Citizen X". It's a true story about a Russian serial killer. It's done accurately and brilliantly. It doesn't glorify serial killers or candy-coat any aspect of trying to find one.

For logical, practical and mom reasons, I was unable to join the FBI to pursue it as a career before the age cut off date.

That lead to studying the law.

I've completed 6 of my 10 sections on getting my paralegal certificate. The more I thought about that, the more I disliked the idea. Why would I spend all my time doing the grunt work without ever being eligible to try a case in court? It also binds my freedom of being able to advise anyone legally as well. That, coupled with it not even being a necessary certificate in this state equated to wasting time to me.

...and we all know how I feel about that.
So I took other law related courses in college instead.

Now, about court. There is NO bigger high to me than when I'm in a court setting. To actually be able to try a case so important that it could save someones life, well, that's the pinnacle to me.

Sign me up.

I've never tried crack, but I can't conceive of even crack producing a better high than me being in court.

Not to imply that I'm against the death penalty. I do think that's warranted at times, just not as often as it's handed out. I'll get to that though.

It bothers me when extra laws are added to the books. Extra laws are added to the book every single solitary DAY.

Do we need a law that prohibits people using their phone while driving? No. We already have existing laws that say if you're acting reckless driving, for WHATEVER REASON - you will be pulled over and can be either fined or jailed.

For those that know how to walk and chew gum at the same time, this is just unnecessary. There are people that can do two things at once and there are those that can't. You know who you are. If you can't, you should know better than to be on the phone while you drive.

Does it lower your defenses?
Yes.

We haven't outlawed singing to the radio or having conversations in your car with people. What's the difference? There isn't one.

We don't need a law that says, "it's against the law to drive recklessly" and a separate law that states, "it's against the law to drive recklessly because your dumb ass was on the phone and you can't do two things at once."

Really.
It's not necessary.
Simply enforcing the laws that already exist is enough.

Laws should also not be based on morality.
since I'm on a morality kick this week...
Laws should be based on the betterment of society.

Did you know that until 1984 it wasn't against the law for a man to rape his wife?
1984.
In America.
A m e r i c a.

That's pathetic.

A stranger on the street was afforded more consideration that you were, as a woman, in your own home.

There's something wrong with that picture.

A marriage certificate is a legal and binding contract with the state. At no time should a contract between parties result in ones loss of basic human rights - and it be deemed legal and binding.

What the fuck is that shit?

If some stranger is raping you and trying to beat you to death in your own house, you have a right to defend yourself. You even have the right to defend someone else. It's called, aptly, "Defense of others."

Sure as I'm sitting here though, if you killed your husband for raping and beating you in your own home before 1984 - you had very little recourse. Those women are probably still sitting in prison.

Again, what the fuck is that.
I end that with a period because it's not really a question.

There was no real reason for me bringing that point up, it's just something I learned recently and it still pisses me off every time I think about it.

Going back to morals, laws and the betterment of society.

In my never very humble opinion because I think that concept is over-rated, laws should not be based on morals. Morals change. Constantly.

Instead, I propose that laws should be based on what is better for society.

Is it better for society that we have a bunch of pedophiles running around getting 6 month sentences for raping a child? No. We are well aware of the studies that show that violence and molestation literally changes a persons DNA.

It changes their DNA.
Forever.

It gives the propensity to serve as a trigger for: repeated violent behavior, antisocial personality disorders, it can lead to a lifetime of physical trauma, difficulty with academic performance, self-control issues, self-image issues, a decline in social relationships, anger, anxiety, poorer cognitive and language skills, self-destructive behavior, hyperactivity, truancy, inability to express feeling, dissociative tendencies, depression, drug and/or alcohol abuse, a predisposition to emotional disturbance, difficulty trusting others and mental illness - to name a few things off the top of my head.

That's just what it can do to an individual.
ONE TIME.
One incident can lead to all of that.

The financial costs are many as well.
The mental and physical ramifications are astounding.

Think about it: therapist co-pays, psychiatric evaluations, medications, hospital visits, police pay, EMT wages, physician premiums, physical therapy costs, welfare and social service costs - to name a few off the top of my head.

I am not saying that people that have been abused are in any way, shape or form - lesser.

They are not.
Nor is it their fault.
Child abuse is not a child's fault.
Never has been, never will be.

This, however, allowed to continue - goes against the betterment of society. And for what? So someone can feel a moment of empowerment? So that ONE individual can temporarily have some self-serving euphoria?

The bad outweighs that person's fleeting sense of entitlement.

All the things that can result from someone abusing a child flies right in the face of something being better for society.

Therefore, it IS and SHOULD be against the law.

The second part to that conclusion of mine is: law sentencing. Does it make any sense to have someone who causes that much damage get as little as 3 months or 5 years of probation? No. That does not serve society.

I haven't worked out my stance on this entirely, but so far I think that sentencing should be based on damage inflicted because when someone has been victimized - everyone suffers for it in some way; not just that individual.

Society as a whole suffers.

The notion that the death penalty is there to serve as a deterrent is just non-sense to me. I've heard that theory time and time again over the years - the whole, "why do we kill people to demonstrate that killing people is wrong?"

We don't.

It's not about that. It's not about bringing closure to anyone either. That's just a side benefit.

Criminal court is about crime and punishment.
Period.

It's not about what you might do in the future.
It's about what you've already done.

If you get the death penalty, it should be solely because after careful consideration - it is deemed that what you did violated our society so badly that there's no turning back. This should also be done on a case by case basis.

This is why it's always the state vs the accused.
It's not the victim vs the accused.

This takes the pressure off the victim as well. The victim is not a part of the deciding verdict. It's out of their hands.

The victim is a witness for the state.

You don't take someone that has been the victim of a crime and then hold them solely responsible for the criminal's loss of freedom. You also don't take the families of a wrongful death and have them walk around with the idea that they are also responsible for sending someone to their death - even if they feel its deserved.

You can't do that to people, they've been through enough.
They don't need that on their conscious.

There has been talk of giving people that rape children the death sentence. At present, the death sentence is reserved solely for 1st degree murderers.

The death penalty is designed for the worst of the worst - and right now, that's only 1st degree murderers. Not all murderers. Not second degree murderers. Not manslaughter; vehicular or otherwise - only 1st degree murderers.

I'm unsure if we should add other crimes to that list.
There is such a thing as a slippery slope.

If it was my child - I would want that person dead.
That's why I shouldn't even be considered.
It would be a conclusion based on my emotions.

and should said person ever see the light of day - he should change his name and move to another country because the courts would be far kinder and more lenient than I would EVER be... and he should still spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder... he'd be safer in prison... YEAH, I SAID IT!

This is why we have laws against vigilantism, for people like me.

Anyway, some people believe that keeping people alive and letting them think about what they've done for the rest of their life is a better option and more cruel.

This theory is flawed if you're dealing with someone without a conscious. Do you really think that serial killer has any issue sitting around glorifying what they've done in their heads?

One would have to actually be sorry for their crime for that to even be remotely effective. But again, it's not about that - it's not about cruelty. It's about what is best for society.

Passing morals aside, it's not better for society for someone to run around killing people. It's not better for society to have people running around molesting children. The ramifications are far reaching and too high.

The punishments should reflect the damage to all of us.

Immorality - inspired by Leebo1010

I wrote a post on morals, ethics and integrity the other day and got some great responses. I was the happiest little person pouring over and contemplating everything that everyone took the time to write. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I live for that sort of thing.

I love accuracy.

No, I don't just love accuracy.
I'm utterly and completely in-love with accuracy.

I try not to be entirely retentive about it when it comes to other people because I do make mistakes all the time. Those mistakes are simply things I haven't approached/learned/concluded yet.

I'll get to it eventually.

Side note: My 'I try not to be entirely retentive about it when it comes to other people' should be quantified with: to no avail if one were to interview Grant because that poor guy gets hit with, "explain" and, "What do you mean by that?" and, "where on earth did you come up with that from?!" on a regular basis - but that's sort of the price of being in a relationship with me. I always want to know where the person I'm with stands on things.

That aside, when I learn something and I'm satisfied with the results, I can then bank that conclusion and move onto the next item.

The sticky part is that words change and evolve over time. So, it's a matter of defining what it means and then, what it means to you.

I...love...that...

Then again, that may be because while most people question the core reasoning for life - I've settled on that reasoning being learning. To me, life is all about learning.

To take that one step even further, I think life is all about learning yourself.

I have that all broken down into finite points as well. I also believe that we're all here to learn different things about ourselves and everything around us and the worst thing anyone can do to another person is get in the way of what that other person is suppose to be here to learn.

Some people learn those things through religion (which is why I would never say a religion is wrong for anyone else, only myself). Some may learn it through teaching others (in order to be effective, you have to really know yourself to be able to teach anyone anything other than a proven concept). Some may learn it from the blood, sweat and tears they put into something of value to them (passion should never be discounted, it can move mountains).

That's a post for later.
One thing at a time.

The beauty of this concept is; you can literally learn something from every single solitary thing that exists in this world. Plants, animals, people, situations - it's all there for the taking.

Freely and consistently.

Examples: You want to understand evolution? Consider a plant for more than five seconds before you mow it down with the law mower. You want to know about basic primal instincts? Observe an animal and its habits. You want to understand patterns? Watch human beings when they're acting naturally and without thought going about their every day lives. You want to know yourself? Go back over in your head your own deep seeded reactions after a crisis.

When you think of life like I do, the world is a candy store.

A candy store and you have a sweet tooth, superhuman teeth that will never decay, no body image issues and unlimited funds at your disposal.

What inspired me to write today's post is a comment that Leebo1010 made to my morals, ethics and integrity post.

She said something about, "is it immoral of me to even think about something that I deem immoral" - *I* being *her*. The contemplation was over having another husband(s) or wife(wives).

She could not have picked a better example!

If, for the last 100 years, it was commonplace for women to have two husbands - and most of us had two husbands and society was totally cool with it; encouraged it even, no one would blink an eye.

The majority of shows on TV would depict two husband households all with smiling, happy faces. The concept would be showcased in everything we see. TV ads, movies, sitcoms - everything.

Your sister, your mom, your grandmother: If all they've talked about all your life is you growing up and finding yourself two good husbands to take care of you and your off-spring, would you consider it in any shape or form immortal?

If your dad screened every guy you walked through the door (while doing the manly thing by cleaning his shotgun in front of said guys) by going, "your intentions, both of you, had better be nothing less than honorable towards my daughter..." - would that then still be immoral?

Hell, it's even practical.

You'd sit around with your girlfriends and go over hours worth of analysis about what kind of guys you wanted in your life.

"So and so is a great provider. He's wicked smart and reliable and has a great work ethic. He'd work three jobs before he'd see our family living in a cardboard box! He's dependable. You can always go to him with any problem you have and he'll know how to make it better."

Random Girlfriend: "What about the second guy?"

"I think it would be best if it was someone good with their hands. Someone that can fix practically anything. Someone good with kids and has a truckload of patience. One who is street smart and understands the value of the little things. He's thoughtful and kind."

Second girlfriend: "Really? I think I want someone who's artistic and loves nature. He's interested in saving the world. The other one would be someone that builds empires and wants to take the family out to see every country out there so we can all value what we have even more."

Third girlfriend: "I want two guys who will stay home while I go out and realize my dream. I want kids, but I don't want to be responsible for the day to day stuff. They can handle the house and keep the property up and be great stay-at-home dads! I'll provide everything.

Forth girlfriend: "I want to stay at home, raise my kids and both of them to go out in the world and work so we all have the finer things in life. Two incomes will afford us that. We can even have in-law quarters built onto the house so they have a place all to themselves to unwind after work. It can be filled with all the top-of-the-line electronics they could possibly want. It'll be great! We'll have a maid and I'll always look good and not be tired because I won't have to handle everything domestic myself on top of the kids."

The Quiet Girl in the corner: "I want all three of us to start a company together. I want us all to think along the same lines and create something that will make a real difference in the world. Kids are over-rated and I'm glad we're not pigeon-holed into believing that that's the only important thing in life. That concept is so 1986!"

The combinations are endless.

Society and religion rule our morality.

It throws down and dictates what we're suppose to value. That's why I don't give much, if any, credence to morals. If we all grew up where the above was a commonplace and acceptable way of life - that's exactly how it would be.

Commonplace and acceptable.

At some point in life, it could turn out to be exactly that way. Our economy could very well make it that way. Instead of requiring two incomes to survive, it may turn into requiring three incomes to survive. It may come about from pure necessity.

Would that make it immoral?
Not if everyone was doing it.

You (and all of us) have just been brought up to not think like that because it's not what is portrayed as the norm.

I'm not just saying 'two guys' either. I don't know anyone that wouldn't want some version of a 1950s housewife either. The above was just an example of how it could be - and how it could be that way without it being immoral.

That's all.
I'm not actually advocating anything either way.

The theory could be applied to a myriad of things; including our sexuality. If you were brought up to think that being with the same sex up until the age of consent of marriage was totally acceptable and preferred - and even promoted as practical because it cuts down on unwanted pregnancy; then we'd all be bi-sexual without any kind of stigma attached to it too.

That's the power of societal thinking - and why I don't really trust it or etch it in stone in my mind.

morals, ethics and integrity

I have basically no use for morals.

I see morals as being summaries of stories (a nice way of giving a message, "the moral of this story...") and something that changes with society on a regular basis which can't be counted on from decade to decade, sometimes as little as from year to year. To take that even further, sometimes it changes from situation to situation with some people.

Morals seems, to me, to be things that other people judge you on.

Which, is just another reason why I summarily dislike the concept. You only truly have to answer to yourself in the end. Who really cares what anyone else thinks of you or what you do?

And if you're doing something just because of what someone else might think of it, does it really count for anything anyway?

Ethics, to me, are the things you hold dear and true to yourself - even when no one else is looking. Actually, especially when no one else is looking and holding you accountable for your actions.

That's when it really counts.

You have determined a set of rules for yourself and they're so set in stone that you would rather slit your own throat than break your own rules.

I have ethics coming out of my eyeballs.

Integrity and ethics, from what I've sorted out so far, seem to be interchangeable. The jury is still out on that stance, however. I'm more than willing to listen to anyone elses definitions though in order to better figure out my own. So if you have any input, feel free to express it.

I'm hoping to learn something.

sometimes it's necessary!

While I'm at it, just for the fucking RECORD - sometimes it's NECESSARY to turn your keyboard over and smash it against the desk to clean it.

IT IS!

It's the fastest, most efficient way of doing things.
Canned air is over-rated!
That could take minutes.
My method takes about three seconds.

Oh, and by the way, it's perfectly ACCEPTABLE to get a butter knife and pry your keys OFF just to see what's underneath it too.

I live with a bunch of keyboard nazis.

no one ever lets you forget...

If you smash in the center of your keyboard with your mouse, no one ever lets you forget it.

Come on! It's like FREE THERAPY too!

One time.
Just ONE TIME.

Then suddenly, "You're not allowed to own a keyboard worth more than $14.00."

Fine.

shed, garage, neighbors and lead paint

All week Grant has been busting his ass.

I have a shed in the backyard and I've always hated its baby blue trim. It was like that when I got here. For four years I've been staring at it and saying, "I really hate that blue" - it was my ritual.

I have a deep large cement porch in the front of the house.

On the side of my house under the canopy section of the driveway is where buggies use to pull up and pick people up from a platform. This way, since the platform was an even height with the buggy floor, people could just step right into them. The door to the platform is one of two in my living room.

There are eight doors that lead into the main part of this house; including a second floor entry.

My house is 99 years old.
It will be 100 years old later this year.

The platform has since had a brick wall covered in stucco added to it. The steps are concrete as well.

I'm a fan of concrete.
It's solid and dependable.

The concrete of the front steps, front porch and the side steps are a deep garnet red. A lot like the color of semi-dried blood and I love it.

You can see how the ugly baby blue trim on the shed in the backyard just mocks the ruby redness of the concrete on the rest of the house and violates every sense I own.

Hence my, "I really hate that blue" sentiment.

Grant and my daughter were out there scraping the shed at the beginning of the week and two days later - a newly painted white shed with dark red trim that matches perfectly was in play.

It looks great.
They did a wonderful job.

There are two features of my house that are, what I consider, an eyesore. The masonry around the bottom of the house where the stucco is cracking away from the brick - and the garage.

The garage was added twenty years after the house was built, so it's only a mere 80 years old to the 100 year old home.

Grant has been out there for the last three days blasting the hell out of it with a pressure washer. Come to find out, it use to be painted dark red and then before that a deep forest green, which I also really like.

There are 80 years worth of paint chips all over my yard, the flower beds, the drive way, Grant, the girl child and the trees.

...and I couldn't care less.
The neighbors will just have to deal.

These days, Grant is sporting a mask more often than not. I'm not even going to get into how much lead he would be inhaling if he didn't.

Brain damage isn't attractive.

People have been stopping by all week to stop and say something about all the improvements.

We live in the Historical Village of a town and believe it or not, my house is the baby in the area. Some of the houses are from 1840.

Four neighbors have already been over today. If there was ever an area that could still be considered to resemble a Norman Rockwell place - this is it.

Every neighbor that stopped by said the same thing, "If you need anything, just yell - we've got more tools than Chase Pitkins" - this is said because everyone around here knows that dealing with an old house from another century is far different than making improvements on a house from 1970+.

It's nice.

They're all friendly people without getting all in your business.
It's a delicate balance.

Since there's no way in hell that I'm going to be working with pressure washers and power sanders and re-injure my spine, I've been taking care of everything inside.

Except the kitchen floor.

Every day until today, I've been down on my hands and knees cleaning that God forsaken fucking floor. It's a stately looking floor when it's done. It's the black and white squares like below.



Let me say this...

Don't install that shit. I don't care how it looks, it's a giant pain in the ass to stay clean. Beautiful when it's done, but unless you're going to shoot everyone in the Florida room before they walk on it - it's NEVER going to stay clean.

When I first moved in here, I use to have to clean it three times a day.

WHO THE HELL WANTS TO MAKE A PART-TIME CAREER OUT OF CLEANING A FUCKING FLOOR?

Not... me...

And since no one in this house has figured out that they can't track all sorts of crap across it 875 times a day from outside and it remain clean - I'm not doing it.

Really, WHY do I have a mud room again?

Trust me on this one, even if you're one of those easy going pacifists - if someone makes a mess of a floor like that that you cleaned, you will consider choking them or using some kind of violence.

At the very least, poisoning someones coffee WILL cross your mind.
It's not worth the felony charge.

I'm not saying a felony charge is never worth it.
I'm just saying it should never be over a kitchen floor.
That's all.

Can you see how stupid you'd look to the other inmates?
"What are you in for?"
"I killed 27 people at McDonald's back in the 80's. What are you here for?"
"Nice to meet you. Aren't you the ambitious one? I killed someone for tracking paint chips and mud on my kitchen floor."
"O-kay! You know what, I don't even want to know you. Freak."

It would not be a confidence building exercise.

That was probably all very wrong to write.
You get the picture though.

Saturday...

I wrote, "Saturday" because for the life of me, I haven't figured out how to make the dates work with this template...yet.

My daughter is out with Grant scraping the garage and shed to get it prepared for the big paint job they have planned for it.

That's not quite accurate.

It's the big paint job that Grant has been talking about for two weeks now. I just taught him to be an opportunist since he's never had kids. When you have kids, it's ALL about being an opportunist.

She wants to go to her best friends house and spend the night tonight. He needs help with the garage and I'm not doing it.

Hello?
Do you hear opportunity knocking?

I'm a mom, so I don't need opportunities. With me, it's simply, "you're not going anywhere until I can see the floor of your room again. I KNOW there's a rug under there somewhere, I vaguely remember the color."

This stance is non-negotiable.
Then again, I don't care if she likes me or not.

which is probably why we're so close...
and we're ridiculously close...

Grant, on the other hand, sometimes takes her hormonal teenage girl moody ways - personal.
Which is a fatal error on his part.

The funny part about it is - for a teenage girl, she's a piece of cake.
I've been around her friends, trust me, it could be a whole lot worse.

She's a pretty, pretty girl - but doesn't really get it yet. She knows she's not ugly, but she doesn't really care one way or another either.

I drilled into both of my kid's head that looks are not something you can bank on. Everyone is one good car accident from whatever looks they have being taken away from them.

It's the luck of the draw.
So you HAVE to have something to back up your existence.
to quote Judge Judy, "Beauty fades, stupid is forever"...

She couldn't be less concerned about her weight either.
Thank God.

My son tried his best to die on me when he was 27 months old. I lived in a hospital with him for five weeks, literally. I slept in what can, at best, be considered a critical care unit's parental closet. It consisted of a cot and the door was off of the visitor's lounge.

I mention this because the Critical Care Unit for his age didn't have any room for him. So they put him in the adolescent ward portion. Being there so long, you get to learn who the other patients are and their families because you're all in this horrendous situation together - where your kid is fighting for their life.

What I remember from the experience of being on that ward is that 90% of the kids on that floor were there because they were either anorexic or bulimic - and they were DYING because of it.

The age range was from 9-18.
Kids.
Little kids.

Nine year old's that thought themselves too fat and were literally starving themselves to DEATH over it.

Girls AND boys.

Let me say again that causing insecurities in the other sex does NOT make us even - it makes it equally WRONG.

To this day, I can recall how I felt when I heard that time and time again there.

That sealed in stone exactly how I was going to deal with my kids and weight and beauty. My daughter was only 5 weeks old at the time and I swore to God that there was no way in hell that either of my kids were going to grow up capitalizing on their looks to the point that it could turn into that.

The fact that they both turned out to be okay with how they are as people and don't place so much concentration on vanity is half me and half dumb luck.

I'm sure no parent wants that for their kid. So that's not a judgment call from me, that was just an awareness that I hadn't had before slapping me in the face while being in that ward.

You would be SHOCKED at how cruel kids are to other kids.

Even at the age of 11/12/13 - a lot of my daughter's girl friends were on diets. They're all rail thin too. It makes me cringe.

The sick part is it's usually over some comment that some boy has made to them.

That's another reason why I've drilled into my son's head that he's not to say a cruel word to a girl growing up - because we remember things like that. It sticks with us, forever...and at some point, you might want to date her later in life and you'll be cutting off your nose despite your face.

That and I will kill you.

I have to tell this story...

A boy tried to get my daughter to be self-conscious about her weight once. She's never been heavy. She's actually very petite. Tiny. He saw her with a purse full of assorted snacks though and said something about her weight.

She has a purse of assorted snacks because she's been diabetic since she was 18 months old.

It totally backfired.
By the time she got home, she was livid.
LIVID.

She informed said boy that he didn't have an ounce of authority over her, she didn't care what he thought and then proceeded to dedicate every forkful of food to him during lunch...and the whole following day.

I've never been so secretly thankful in my entire life.

Then I got pissed though and I thought, this little 12 year old boy knows exactly what to say to a girl to get under her skin normally. If he had said that to any of her friend's, they wouldn't eat again for a week and I could easily see them winding up on that wing in the hospital.

Yes, I did go to my son and tell him that story to reiterate that he can't do things like that.
Ever.
It's rude and damaging.

I have no idea why I told that story. It's just one of those things that still bothers me about society.

If you have a son, point that out to him!

If you have a daughter, make her feel like she never has to follow some media created ideal of beauty.

Here's the real kicker too, I polled my male friends and guess what? They're more attracted to someone with a shape versus someone that resembles a sheet of paper.

How's that for irony.

Even bigger than that though, it will ALWAYS be better to actually have a personality.

Be smart, be witty, be strong, be funny, be creative, be interesting, be honest, be dependable, be responsible, be a decent human being - be something lasting and worth-while.

That goes for both sexes.

Present yourself the best way you know how, definitely, but for the love of God - let there be something more to you than vanity.

The most angry I ever get at Grant is when he makes comments like, "You're beautiful, that's why you can do what you do."

I...fucking...hate...that...statement.
I hate it with a passion that you don't want to see.

Do not reduce me to how I look - like that's all there is and that's all that counts.

My looks didn't have dick to do with being trusted with tens of thousands of dollars running an International charity. It didn't have a thing to do with being able to run my own company of some sort since I was 18 years old. It didn't have a thing to do with having a 4.0 G.P.A. in college.

It didn't have a thing to do with being able to raise two kids that I would want to know if they weren't even mine. And it damn sure doesn't have a thing to do with being able to maintain friendships that I've had since I was 5 years old.

Infuriating.

I know he does this when we're fighting and he's just trying his best to piss me right off, but it sticks with me and it makes me hostile. I know he doesn't mean it because of the other 50,000 comments he makes to the contrary when he's not trying to get under my skin. It's still a stupid route to take with me.

Oh my God, what is this, purge day?

See, this is exactly the sort of thing that I never want my kids to go through. I couldn't be more happy that my daughter can have something like that said to her and it would just roll off her back like you didn't even open your mouth to speak.

More people should be made up of what she's made up of.
Hell, I wish I was more like her.
I adore that kid.

All that said, I'm not her friend and not interested in ever being her friend, really. I'm her mother and there is a food chain and I'm on the top of it.

I like her, she can always come to me with anything and that would be okay.

To this she always replies that I'm her BFF - because she knows that makes me insane. For those of you that don't read teenage magazines, BFF means Best Friends Forever.

She's constantly fucking with me about one thing or another.

She can't even help herself, it brings her too much joy to watch me roll my eyes and tell her that I'm not even going to give her the P.O. Box number of where I move to when she's finally out of the house.

Going back to being an opportunist, Grant wanted her to go to Lowe's with him to pick up painting supplies. She asked if she could be the one that drove them there...opportunistic move #1 on her part.

He said if it was okay with me, she could, but if she did, then she had to help him with the shed too...Good job, opportunistic move #1 on Grant's part, he's learning.

Once they got back, they negotiated that if she did one wall of the garage and the bottom of the shed (she's short, he's tall) - can she go to her best friend's house?

They're both playing the game like a pro now.

Then I looked at her and said, "your room..." and she said, "Oh, I know. That goes without saying."

And it does, because like I said...
...there is a food chain.
and it's good to be on the top of it

Is it just me?

My whole right side hurts like hell, so I didn't get much of any sleep to speak of last night. So, here I am.

I just got done making coffee and sat down to do something with my life here and then I read it...

Study: Abuse, provocative images increase Internet risks for girls
There is a problem with the way we portray things in this country.
Our perspective is skewed.

Instead of constantly making it out that girls/women are the weaker, more susceptible, it's-all-up-to-us-we're-the-issue, let's start calling it what it is.

That headline should realistically and far more accurately read:
Men should stop hitting on minors.

The study was on girls age 14-17.

Newsflash: I don't care what kind of avatar the girl has, you should know better than to hit on or make sexual advances on a CHILD.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

Instead of saying, "the girls have probably been abused..."
blahblahblah...

How about saying something like, "SOME men on the Internet, and in life in general, have yet to learn BOUNDARIES and should seek help because this is clearly unacceptable."

How about that shit instead.

Really, even the LAW did away with the whole, "She was wearing that outfit, so clearly she was asking for it" bullshit.

Which party is the ADULT?

Teens are stupid. You have to love them, but they are. There's a reason why we don't give them enough credit to even enter into a legal binding contract. Even the smartest of the bunch is still too stupid to own a house, have credit, buy a car or act on their own behalf in any way other than states where abortion is still legal. The law doesn't even allow this age group to get married or join the Military without parental consent. What does that say?

They don't have the presence of mind to do so.
They're not smart enough.
They're not responsible enough.

By the time a few decades have passed though and you've been walking around with your eyes open and provided you don't live in a cave after being raised by wild wolves - YOU SHOULD HAVE A CLUE.

The points in the study are valid. You do have to monitor your child. The Internet isn't safe. The world isn't safe.

Yes.

However, I really resent that it all falls on that point.
wtf?

Not one mention of, "The guys involved must have been abused or from broken homes" or some other non-sense that we'd like to pawn this off on.

How about simply saying, "HEY, ASSHOLE! THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! YOU'RE THE ONE DOING IT. I WANT YOU TO FUCKING STOP IT RIGHT NOW. GOT IT?"

Because again - who's the adult in the situation and who is suppose to know better?

It's called...
wait for it...
P e r s o n a l... R e s p o n s i b i l i t y.

Its other common name is...
S e l f... C o n t r o l.

Its twin's name is...
A c c o u n t a b i l i t y.

People do because they can.
However, just because you can - doesn't mean you should.

I don't care if a 14 year old girl is full on, coming on to you like no tomorrow.
DON'T DO IT!

Do I REALLY have to point this shit out to ANYONE?!
Well, obviously I do.

They should save all the money they put into these studies and just give me the situation and I'll issue a valid warning.

Look at that, I didn't even need a staff to write this.
I could save the tax payers millions of dollars every year.

Making people responsible for their own actions is long over-due.

Everyone acting however the hell they want like it's their God given rite, regardless of who they trample on - has to stop. Now.

And believe me when I say that you do NOT want to be an adult hitting on my 16 year old daughter. If you do, then I will meticulously come to the conclusion that all the words are totally lost on your dumb ass after all these years and that you need to be taught the old-fashioned way.

Which will require my shed, a portion of land and a shovel.
Knock it off.