Long and meaty post there Republilbot! Good stuff. Conspiracy theories always undermine the message and give opponents reason to label ideas the stuff of loons. I’ve always agreed with the notion that it gives comfort and excuses to people as well. ‘My life doesn’t suck because I’ve made terrible decisions, they’re all in it against me!!’
If you want to drive a point home, you have to keep the focus on the message, spouting conspiracy theories gives your opponents the opportunity to change the focus to you. And unless you are Rufus or Floyd, you are a flawed mortal and your ideas, no matter how great they are, will be pushed aside.
Good points Republibot 3.0 and Mighty Skip. I think you dissect the phenomenon quite well. The Amazing Randy and Michael Schirmer have done some good writing on this topic, but my favorite book is by Carl Sagan (I know, Republibot 3.0; the irony!), “The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark.”
Scott…not Stephanie…Fritz here. I’ve seen it a couple of times, what do you want to know? Or were you just curious? I thought it was pretty good, actually, with a better than average bent towards the truth of the incidents.
I want that grill. Not sure where I would put it since the space at my Batcave is limited but I want it nonetheless.
My gripe for the day. I saw on the news this morning that the government is going after Bodybuilding.com saying they were pedaling “designer steroids”. This is simply another case of people who know nothing, the government, pretending they do. It all goes back to the steroid craze where the out of shape middle aged people of our guvment wanted to ban everything up to and including multi-vitamins to stop .0001% of the population from using steroids. As a bodbuilder (former now on account of being a bit older and eaten up with injuries) and frequent shopper of Bodybuilding.com they are not carrying steroids or designer steroids (whatever the hell that means). What they do carry are things referred to as “testosterone precursors” such as 1-AD these products are complete snake oil that claim to trigger processes in your body that will boost hormonal production but like most weightgainer shakes they do not work. The only other “controversial” product they carry are hemodialator products (products claiming to boost oxygen to the blood stream) but again they are whooey made to sucker in rookie lifters who are looking for quick gains.
I never bought any of those products and kept my purchases to protein, creatine, multi-vitamins, and ZMA to help me sleep. What I think is going to happen is these nitwits are going to go in there and claim creatine is a steroid because they heard Mark McGuire took it when creatine is a natural substance found in the human body and in red meat whose only purpose is to increase water retention in muscle fiber to prevent muscle cramping during strenuous exercise. Yes, I’m ranting.
I’m no history expert, but didn’t Germany and Italy have experience with electoral politics, of a sort, before WWII. Hitler & Il Duce didn’t ascend to their positions by being born into them. Whereas you do you a point concerning Japan.
I’ve seen Sophie Scholl. Pretty good movie, and chilling considering it was taken from the court transcripts. When in Munich I remember seeing the statue put up to her.
Glad to here that,Mr.Sid.The judge that sentenced her to be beheaded was a mad dog named Roland Freisler,who was later killed in an air raid on Berlin.The prisons there were full of men who had been sentenced to death for plotting the assasination of Hitler…the last consolation of their lives was to hear three words:”Freisler Is Dead!”
and about 1/2 way down the page you’ll see “HTML links”.
Copy paste the text in the box to the reply box. Then I delete the web address they put in and put mine in, making sure it’s between the quotation marks. Then I delete the words “This is a link” and put the word or words I want to use instead.
You can also try it first in by clicking the try it first button under HTML links.
I almost emailed the parents of one of my worst behaved kids today about their little homunculus and the highlights went something like this: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. __________, In just the short time since school started, your son has already become my Lex Luthor … he has driven me to drink, my Fortress of Solitude now comes in a bottle … those daggers from the movie The Omen might be found on eBay. Just sayin’ … ”
I did send a letter home about his behavior and got an email stating, ” … we had a family meeting and discussed this issue with him.” Family meeting? I’m thinking powerpoints, handouts, and bar graphs when I hear that tripe. The only meeting I want to hear about is the one between the father’s hand and the kid’s ass. But that ain’t happening. Here’s a surprise, the kid is still the same after that family meeting. Parents … the family meetings aren’t working. It’s time for family beatings.
Kit, I have a few things I can do, and a lot that I can’t do. The things I do are give them a silent lunch where they sit at a table that is designated for kids who were bad, in the cafeteria; take their chair away for 15 minutes so they have to stand at the window and use the sill as a desk (the sills are marble, but the appreciation is lost on them); Write 25 times, “I will not …. (whatever the offense was) and take it home to have it signed by a parent; Time Out, which means send them to another teacher’s room so that they can bother them instead of me; or the office if it escalates to that. I’ve made a pact with one of the kindergarten teachers at my school to take these problem children next week. I’ve been giving them empty threats that I’m going to send them back to K if they don’t behave and they’ll have to repeat K for the rest of the year until they can act like First Graders. So, I’m going to send these kids to the K teacher’s class Tuesday (we have Monday off) and tell them they’re going back to K. They’ve already freaked out when I mentioned this, so I’m hoping they freak out enough when they actually find themselves in the K classroom. Hopefully, this will have an impact. Oh yeah, one thing that settles them down for a while is a threat to call their parents on my classroom phone. But I’ve gone one further. I told them that the red button (hold) is a direct line to Santa Claus and if they’re really bad I’ll call him. You should see the loss of blood in their faces replaced with a cadaver shade of pale when I threaten them with that one.
I greatly admire teachers. You guys have a very, very difficult job. I’ve tried to figure out how to improve education and help more kids do better. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and, at the end of the day I think it comes down to parenting. There is the rare kid who can overcome awful parents and the rare kid who can be a delinquent despite good parents, but if the parents are douchebags there is not much a teacher can do. However, I greatly admire you for continuing to try, Matt. Even if you make a difference with 5% of them, that changes the lives of those kids forever. I only had a few decent teachers, and maybe two that were actually great, but those two had a tremendous impact on me, and what I’ve become. I am sure you will do the same.
Thanks Rufus. I get a lot of praise and thanks from parents, but in so many words, a lot of them tell me that the onus of their kid’s education and behavior is on me. We have a PTO (same as a PTA) and I love the fact that these parents show up at school and actually help out. I urge all of 3donia parents to volunteer at their kids’ schools whenever they can. Our PTO approached me to volunteer to make copies of worksheets, tests, etc., or change bulletin boards in the classroom … I told them that is all BS and that I would appreciate them working with the below level readers. I can make copies on my break, before and after school, but you never have enough time to spend with those kids who can’t read. Even you single or married people without kids can make a difference by volunteering to help these kid read.
My school is almost 100 years old. The window sills are all marble. I was just saying that the appreciation for this architectural detail is lost on these kids (since they don’t know shit). I’ve actually found old postcards on eBay of my school from the Great Depression.
Hilarious, Matt! But I’ve got a hunch the drive to drink wasn’t a very long sojourn at all. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet your taxi has been firmly parked at the corners of Johnnie Walker Street and Jack Daniels Drive for a long time.
Mrs. Firefly has a friend whose childhood is right out of a 50′s Television show. One night he was telling us about the weekly “family meetings” his mom and dad used to convene. I didn’t want to be impolite, but I could not stop laughing. He kept trying to explain them, and why they were beneficial, and the more he explained the more absurd it all seemed, and the more I laughed.
There’s a lot of ways to raise kids, and I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine Mrs. Firefly and me holding a “family meeting.” Mrs. Firefly and I are the Board of Directors, Co-CEOs and own 100% of the shares. The kids can get a vote when they figure out how to pay the mortgage.
A friend of mine wanted to know how to respond to her daughter saying it was her room to keep as she liked, and she like the verge of health department citation look. I said my children will keep their room the way they like when they pay the mortgage, until then, that’s MY room. They have sleeping privileges and some storage space in my room.
She didn’t like that answer. She also doesn’t like her kids very much.
Rufus, it wasn’t a long sojourn this week. As a rule (and they were meant to be broken) I don’t drink Sun.-Thurs. But I found myself giving the Indian guy my debit card to pay for some scotch on Thursday night. My taxi actually ended up in a much poorer neighborhood than those you mentioned. More like in an Edinburgh ghetto.
I have about five problem children this year. Because I’m really good with having one of them at a time and disciplining them, they backed up the truck and dumped all of them in my room. This is really a disservice to the good kids in the class, because I have to police the other kids every two minutes which interrupts instruction. It’s like a Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movie where they all come at you one at a time and you have to dispatch them.
It’s true that bad kids make the whole class pay — it’s not just the time you spend with the bullwhip, it’s the level of pissed-offedness you get, then the sinking-in of how much you hate what you do for a living, especially since you make such a shit living at it.
Not that I would know from experience. *coughs* College students are assholes! *coughs*
I love the look on my 9 year old’s face when he asks “Why?” and I say “Because I pay all the bills.” I’m getting emotional just typing it out. Ahhh! The weekend!
In all seriousness, I do think a lot of parents miss this aspect of parenting. One of our most important roles is to train our kids to be responsible, independent adults. When I was a kid the “adult world” was real cool. There were cigarettes, and fun looking drinks of all different colors in all variety of glasses. There were big, shiny cars. There were hats, and ties and bowling bags. There were card games and horse races. Grilling meat over open fires. It was so cool watching my parents get dressed to go out for the evening. Sometimes they’d go to a restaurant and my sister and I would get to eat the leftovers they’d bring home in a paper bag with a picture of a poodle on it. There were parties and loud music and dancing. It was a fascinating world and my sister and I wanted to be good enough to be an adult so I could live in it.
Now parents dress like kids, there are no ties or hats… (I still remember my mom asking me to zip her dresses when she couldn’t reach the back, wearing my dad’s hats when he wasn’t around…) Now parents apologize to their kids… I could go on and on, but we’ve done this before. It’s a true shame we have ruined our kids childhoods (childrenhoods?) by taking adulthood from them.
Hilarious Matt! Rufus…..family meetings? My Dad would just glower and we’d back down. And holy crappeth should Mom ever find out. She could make waterboarding look tame.
I am starting to believe that Libertarians are the insane spawn of leftists and anarchists. The Omen indeed. Long story. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr
At the end of the day, I think most Conservatives and Libertarians, and many Republicans and a few Democrats are “Constitutionalists.” I don’t much care what one calls oneself, or how one aligns oneself as long as a person reveres the U.S. Constitution and believes in the structure of a limited Federal Government that our founders designed.
If a candidate calls himself a Libertarian but takes a strict, limited Federal Government, Constitutional approach (like Ron Paul), I can back him. If a candidate calls himself a Republican or Democrat and does the same, I can back him or her. There are far too many Republicans who think the General Welfare and Interstate Commerce clauses mean the Federal Government is supposed to be our Nanny. Even if they call themselves Republican I will not vote for them.
Oh I know that the problem is some of the whack jobs and one is a really good friend of mine just spin me up. He starts going off about GITMO and then decides he holds the moral high ground no matter what. No logic, no stopping and no allowing for thinking about the points I was making. And then he is also very anti Military. And starts saying how feels sorry for the guys and calls them sheep. That was the trigger. I think I spit his larnyx out just now. The Tigress roared. I went full Gorgo on him.
I remember a guy from Dirty Harry’s Place who called himself a libertarian but was really an anarchist. He didn’t think there should be any police officers. Some people are just nuts, and they shouldn’t be held against normal people just because they adopt the same political label.
Well Kit the thing is there are many flavors of Libertarians. There are ones who actually would be Reaganites because they are not anti Military. Then there are the ones who are open borders and then well it spins around the drain of wierdness from there. And what I love is being called names or having my intelligence impunged because I would rather that American rights and Libertys be kept for people who are dunno ACTUALLY CITIZENS! But hows this one: This idiot doesn’t want Mexicans to come across the border and he thinks they shouldn’t be allowed any rights here at all and they should be removed. However he thinks that KSM and the rest of Bin Laden’s flying monkeys deserve the same rights as we do? How does one square that? HOW?
While we’re waiting for someone to start a Saturday open thread, I’ll venture this quote from Ray Bradbury:
“Life has always been lying to ourselves! As boys, young men, old men. As girls, maidens, women, to gently lie and prove the lie true. To weave dreams and put brains and ideas and flesh and the truely real beneath the dreams. Everything, finally, is a promise. What seems a lie is a ramshackle need, wishing to be born.”
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Oooh! I love the gun tractor!
You guys might like this http://www.republibot.com/content/how-not-look-idiot-lesson-3-%E2%80%9Cconspiracy-theories%E2%80%9D or you might hate it, I can’t tell.
Long and meaty post there Republilbot! Good stuff. Conspiracy theories always undermine the message and give opponents reason to label ideas the stuff of loons. I’ve always agreed with the notion that it gives comfort and excuses to people as well. ‘My life doesn’t suck because I’ve made terrible decisions, they’re all in it against me!!’
If you want to drive a point home, you have to keep the focus on the message, spouting conspiracy theories gives your opponents the opportunity to change the focus to you. And unless you are Rufus or Floyd, you are a flawed mortal and your ideas, no matter how great they are, will be pushed aside.
Good points Republibot 3.0 and Mighty Skip. I think you dissect the phenomenon quite well. The Amazing Randy and Michael Schirmer have done some good writing on this topic, but my favorite book is by Carl Sagan (I know, Republibot 3.0; the irony!), “The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark.”
Love that book too, Rufus.
Had a question for Stephanie per Germany…wanted to know is she had ever seen a movie called “Sophie Scholl”.
Scott…not Stephanie…Fritz here. I’ve seen it a couple of times, what do you want to know? Or were you just curious? I thought it was pretty good, actually, with a better than average bent towards the truth of the incidents.
I want that grill. Not sure where I would put it since the space at my Batcave is limited but I want it nonetheless.
My gripe for the day. I saw on the news this morning that the government is going after Bodybuilding.com saying they were pedaling “designer steroids”. This is simply another case of people who know nothing, the government, pretending they do. It all goes back to the steroid craze where the out of shape middle aged people of our guvment wanted to ban everything up to and including multi-vitamins to stop .0001% of the population from using steroids. As a bodbuilder (former now on account of being a bit older and eaten up with injuries) and frequent shopper of Bodybuilding.com they are not carrying steroids or designer steroids (whatever the hell that means). What they do carry are things referred to as “testosterone precursors” such as 1-AD these products are complete snake oil that claim to trigger processes in your body that will boost hormonal production but like most weightgainer shakes they do not work. The only other “controversial” product they carry are hemodialator products (products claiming to boost oxygen to the blood stream) but again they are whooey made to sucker in rookie lifters who are looking for quick gains.
I never bought any of those products and kept my purchases to protein, creatine, multi-vitamins, and ZMA to help me sleep. What I think is going to happen is these nitwits are going to go in there and claim creatine is a steroid because they heard Mark McGuire took it when creatine is a natural substance found in the human body and in red meat whose only purpose is to increase water retention in muscle fiber to prevent muscle cramping during strenuous exercise. Yes, I’m ranting.
By the way,visit Pajamas Media…our friend Christian Toto has a nice piece on Craig Ferguson.
Oh, it’s a grill. Wow, I thought it was a tractor. Is my face red! And yet my meat remains suspiciously undercooked…
“Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside.”-Barack Obama
Yeah,BO? I can think of three right off the top of my head:Germany,Japan,and Italy!
I’m no history expert, but didn’t Germany and Italy have experience with electoral politics, of a sort, before WWII. Hitler & Il Duce didn’t ascend to their positions by being born into them. Whereas you do you a point concerning Japan.
And,Dear Leader,I consider your choice of words revealing:do you really consider democracy to be an imposition? This clown is richer than rum cake…
Yeah,Fritz,I have the DVD.Not enough people know about her and the White Rose.She was a very brave young woman.
I’ve seen Sophie Scholl. Pretty good movie, and chilling considering it was taken from the court transcripts. When in Munich I remember seeing the statue put up to her.
Well, Scott…she didn’t let fear slow her down. That’s for sure.
Glad to here that,Mr.Sid.The judge that sentenced her to be beheaded was a mad dog named Roland Freisler,who was later killed in an air raid on Berlin.The prisons there were full of men who had been sentenced to death for plotting the assasination of Hitler…the last consolation of their lives was to hear three words:”Freisler Is Dead!”
Arguably, Democracy didn’t really take in Italy…
You can trade in Italy for Iraq.
Fivepeat
Kit on Breaking News – Iran
Kit on Breaking News – Iran
Kit on Breaking News – Iran
Kit on Breaking News – Iran
Kit on Breaking News – Iran
This is fun.
I need to go looking for Mike’s quote about not being alone…
Tracy,
You are chaotic evil.
Tracy, I’m going to take any attempt to use my own words against me as a vicious smear campaign.
That’s the correct usage of the word “smear,” right?
Hey Mike! Did you see that I actually did a link thing correctly yesterday?? Did ya see??
Chaotic evil and vicious. I’m getting a t-shirt made.
I think “Chaotic, vicious and evil” flows better.
You are so right.
Link thing? You mean where you link a word to a website?
How do ya do that?
I can’t show you. I’d love to show off how smart I am, but when I try to “show” it, it just shows up as what I meant to do, not how to do it.
Oh, wait, try this:
Gohere (I’m just showing off now)
and about 1/2 way down the page you’ll see “HTML links”.
Copy paste the text in the box to the reply box. Then I delete the web address they put in and put mine in, making sure it’s between the quotation marks. Then I delete the words “This is a link” and put the word or words I want to use instead.
You can also try it first in by clicking the try it first button under HTML links.
It’s a lot of work to look this cool.
“It’s a lot of work to look this cool.”
You make it look so effortless.
Hmmmm, can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not…
must be a compliment!
Sorry, Tracy, I thought you said it takes a lot of work to look like a tool. And I thought you were getting ready to pay me a compliment.
I’ve read all that HTML tutorial and it’s all jibberish to my mind.
Tracy, I must admit I didn’t notice. But I’m very proud. (Not of you, I’m just very proud in general.)
When I first learned how to do it—Wankette promised to teach me but didn’t—I didn’t think I’d ever memorize it, but it’s not that hard, really.
Use these symbols: < and > instead of parentheses in the following—
(a href=”[URL goes here]“)Visible text here(/a)
I shouldn’t have put in brackets. I’ll try again:
(a href=”URL here“)Text here.(/a)
You have to use the quotation marks—they’re needed there.
ok, give yourself an alfie, that was way way better than my tutorial.
You suck. You’re awesome.For the last time, Tracy. I cannot give myself an Alfie. That’s the kind of cheap gimmick Floyd pulls.
I am awarded an Alfie by an objective panel, over whom I have no control. They’ve been stingy lately, though.
Oh my goodness!
Speak of the devil!
My brain is awesome.
I almost emailed the parents of one of my worst behaved kids today about their little homunculus and the highlights went something like this: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. __________, In just the short time since school started, your son has already become my Lex Luthor … he has driven me to drink, my Fortress of Solitude now comes in a bottle … those daggers from the movie The Omen might be found on eBay. Just sayin’ … ”
I did send a letter home about his behavior and got an email stating, ” … we had a family meeting and discussed this issue with him.” Family meeting? I’m thinking powerpoints, handouts, and bar graphs when I hear that tripe. The only meeting I want to hear about is the one between the father’s hand and the kid’s ass. But that ain’t happening. Here’s a surprise, the kid is still the same after that family meeting. Parents … the family meetings aren’t working. It’s time for family beatings.
How do you deal with one of those monsters?
Kit, I have a few things I can do, and a lot that I can’t do. The things I do are give them a silent lunch where they sit at a table that is designated for kids who were bad, in the cafeteria; take their chair away for 15 minutes so they have to stand at the window and use the sill as a desk (the sills are marble, but the appreciation is lost on them); Write 25 times, “I will not …. (whatever the offense was) and take it home to have it signed by a parent; Time Out, which means send them to another teacher’s room so that they can bother them instead of me; or the office if it escalates to that. I’ve made a pact with one of the kindergarten teachers at my school to take these problem children next week. I’ve been giving them empty threats that I’m going to send them back to K if they don’t behave and they’ll have to repeat K for the rest of the year until they can act like First Graders. So, I’m going to send these kids to the K teacher’s class Tuesday (we have Monday off) and tell them they’re going back to K. They’ve already freaked out when I mentioned this, so I’m hoping they freak out enough when they actually find themselves in the K classroom. Hopefully, this will have an impact. Oh yeah, one thing that settles them down for a while is a threat to call their parents on my classroom phone. But I’ve gone one further. I told them that the red button (hold) is a direct line to Santa Claus and if they’re really bad I’ll call him. You should see the loss of blood in their faces replaced with a cadaver shade of pale when I threaten them with that one.
That is priceless, Matt!
I greatly admire teachers. You guys have a very, very difficult job. I’ve tried to figure out how to improve education and help more kids do better. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and, at the end of the day I think it comes down to parenting. There is the rare kid who can overcome awful parents and the rare kid who can be a delinquent despite good parents, but if the parents are douchebags there is not much a teacher can do. However, I greatly admire you for continuing to try, Matt. Even if you make a difference with 5% of them, that changes the lives of those kids forever. I only had a few decent teachers, and maybe two that were actually great, but those two had a tremendous impact on me, and what I’ve become. I am sure you will do the same.
Thanks Rufus. I get a lot of praise and thanks from parents, but in so many words, a lot of them tell me that the onus of their kid’s education and behavior is on me. We have a PTO (same as a PTA) and I love the fact that these parents show up at school and actually help out. I urge all of 3donia parents to volunteer at their kids’ schools whenever they can. Our PTO approached me to volunteer to make copies of worksheets, tests, etc., or change bulletin boards in the classroom … I told them that is all BS and that I would appreciate them working with the below level readers. I can make copies on my break, before and after school, but you never have enough time to spend with those kids who can’t read. Even you single or married people without kids can make a difference by volunteering to help these kid read.
Brilliant, can I give your methods to some people I know.
They might get ia kick.
And I don’t get the marble thing either.
Can you explain it?
My school is almost 100 years old. The window sills are all marble. I was just saying that the appreciation for this architectural detail is lost on these kids (since they don’t know shit). I’ve actually found old postcards on eBay of my school from the Great Depression.
Hilarious, Matt! But I’ve got a hunch the drive to drink wasn’t a very long sojourn at all. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet your taxi has been firmly parked at the corners of Johnnie Walker Street and Jack Daniels Drive for a long time.
Mrs. Firefly has a friend whose childhood is right out of a 50′s Television show. One night he was telling us about the weekly “family meetings” his mom and dad used to convene. I didn’t want to be impolite, but I could not stop laughing. He kept trying to explain them, and why they were beneficial, and the more he explained the more absurd it all seemed, and the more I laughed.
There’s a lot of ways to raise kids, and I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine Mrs. Firefly and me holding a “family meeting.” Mrs. Firefly and I are the Board of Directors, Co-CEOs and own 100% of the shares. The kids can get a vote when they figure out how to pay the mortgage.
I agree Rufus… that’s like Son of Sam blaming the dogs for making him crazy. Riiiight.
Amen.
A friend of mine wanted to know how to respond to her daughter saying it was her room to keep as she liked, and she like the verge of health department citation look. I said my children will keep their room the way they like when they pay the mortgage, until then, that’s MY room. They have sleeping privileges and some storage space in my room.
She didn’t like that answer. She also doesn’t like her kids very much.
Rufus, it wasn’t a long sojourn this week. As a rule (and they were meant to be broken) I don’t drink Sun.-Thurs. But I found myself giving the Indian guy my debit card to pay for some scotch on Thursday night. My taxi actually ended up in a much poorer neighborhood than those you mentioned. More like in an Edinburgh ghetto.
I have about five problem children this year. Because I’m really good with having one of them at a time and disciplining them, they backed up the truck and dumped all of them in my room. This is really a disservice to the good kids in the class, because I have to police the other kids every two minutes which interrupts instruction. It’s like a Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movie where they all come at you one at a time and you have to dispatch them.
It’s true that bad kids make the whole class pay — it’s not just the time you spend with the bullwhip, it’s the level of pissed-offedness you get, then the sinking-in of how much you hate what you do for a living, especially since you make such a shit living at it.
Not that I would know from experience. *coughs* College students are assholes! *coughs*
I love the look on my 9 year old’s face when he asks “Why?” and I say “Because I pay all the bills.” I’m getting emotional just typing it out. Ahhh! The weekend!
Tracy/Floyd,
You’ve brought huge smiles to my face!
In all seriousness, I do think a lot of parents miss this aspect of parenting. One of our most important roles is to train our kids to be responsible, independent adults. When I was a kid the “adult world” was real cool. There were cigarettes, and fun looking drinks of all different colors in all variety of glasses. There were big, shiny cars. There were hats, and ties and bowling bags. There were card games and horse races. Grilling meat over open fires. It was so cool watching my parents get dressed to go out for the evening. Sometimes they’d go to a restaurant and my sister and I would get to eat the leftovers they’d bring home in a paper bag with a picture of a poodle on it. There were parties and loud music and dancing. It was a fascinating world and my sister and I wanted to be good enough to be an adult so I could live in it.
Now parents dress like kids, there are no ties or hats… (I still remember my mom asking me to zip her dresses when she couldn’t reach the back, wearing my dad’s hats when he wasn’t around…) Now parents apologize to their kids… I could go on and on, but we’ve done this before. It’s a true shame we have ruined our kids childhoods (childrenhoods?) by taking adulthood from them.
I really like this album.
My favorites are “It’s Better Than That” about being grown-up, and “Daughters of Feminists”.
Trout Fishing In America does a version of “It’s Better Than That”. Hilarious.
Hilarious Matt! Rufus…..family meetings? My Dad would just glower and we’d back down. And holy crappeth should Mom ever find out. She could make waterboarding look tame.
I am starting to believe that Libertarians are the insane spawn of leftists and anarchists. The Omen indeed. Long story. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr
Stephanie,
At the end of the day, I think most Conservatives and Libertarians, and many Republicans and a few Democrats are “Constitutionalists.” I don’t much care what one calls oneself, or how one aligns oneself as long as a person reveres the U.S. Constitution and believes in the structure of a limited Federal Government that our founders designed.
If a candidate calls himself a Libertarian but takes a strict, limited Federal Government, Constitutional approach (like Ron Paul), I can back him. If a candidate calls himself a Republican or Democrat and does the same, I can back him or her. There are far too many Republicans who think the General Welfare and Interstate Commerce clauses mean the Federal Government is supposed to be our Nanny. Even if they call themselves Republican I will not vote for them.
Oh I know that the problem is some of the whack jobs and one is a really good friend of mine just spin me up. He starts going off about GITMO and then decides he holds the moral high ground no matter what. No logic, no stopping and no allowing for thinking about the points I was making. And then he is also very anti Military. And starts saying how feels sorry for the guys and calls them sheep. That was the trigger. I think I spit his larnyx out just now. The Tigress roared. I went full Gorgo on him.
I remember a guy from Dirty Harry’s Place who called himself a libertarian but was really an anarchist. He didn’t think there should be any police officers. Some people are just nuts, and they shouldn’t be held against normal people just because they adopt the same political label.
Mike,
Who was that guy?
I don’t remember his name, Kit.
Stephanie,
I agree with Mike.
You know, the South Park guys are self-proclaimed libertarians
Well Kit the thing is there are many flavors of Libertarians. There are ones who actually would be Reaganites because they are not anti Military. Then there are the ones who are open borders and then well it spins around the drain of wierdness from there. And what I love is being called names or having my intelligence impunged because I would rather that American rights and Libertys be kept for people who are dunno ACTUALLY CITIZENS! But hows this one: This idiot doesn’t want Mexicans to come across the border and he thinks they shouldn’t be allowed any rights here at all and they should be removed. However he thinks that KSM and the rest of Bin Laden’s flying monkeys deserve the same rights as we do? How does one square that? HOW?
Watching Monk (ep. MR. MONK AND THE VOODOO DOLLS). Meatloaf is the guest star. They just did an EXORCIST reference.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125383160812639013.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories
Here’s a different topic: Breaking News: Proof that they can manufacture an automobile that will run on hot air.
While we’re waiting for someone to start a Saturday open thread, I’ll venture this quote from Ray Bradbury:
“Life has always been lying to ourselves! As boys, young men, old men. As girls, maidens, women, to gently lie and prove the lie true. To weave dreams and put brains and ideas and flesh and the truely real beneath the dreams. Everything, finally, is a promise. What seems a lie is a ramshackle need, wishing to be born.”
(The Toynbee Convector, 1984)