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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 10, 2020 13:12:15 GMT -5
So, the shite-head known as my Sister’s 20 year-old Grandson has been taking showers in my Mom’s bathroom for 2 months now because their shower broke and he’s too big of a sissy to take a bath. Well, I found out yesterday he contracted the virus (just like I knew he would) about 2 weeks ago. He’s over it now but for his loss of taste and smell and Thank God he didn’t infect my Mom who’s almost 87.
When I was staying there I kept complaining about what that “@!*~%!!!” was doing and all everyone would say is “Oh, he doesn’t have it so shut up”. I told them anyone can be a carrier and not have symptoms but they wouldn’t listen. Matter of fact that was one of the last conversations I had with Mom before I left there, me knowing more about this virus because I’ve been in science for 32 years and how he shouldn’t be coming over so often.
Guess I should be thankful she didn’t get it but I think maybe the next time I see him I just might come up behind him and smack him upside his head...then spray him down with Clorox and alcohol! 🤬😡
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Post by vaporvac on Aug 10, 2020 13:44:29 GMT -5
I put my comments on the other site. I'm still ranting over here myself!
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 10, 2020 16:02:11 GMT -5
😃👍
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Post by nana on Aug 10, 2020 20:37:07 GMT -5
I put my comments on the other site. I'm still ranting over here myself! Same here
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Post by chipperhiker on Aug 10, 2020 21:45:08 GMT -5
Absolutely unbelievable. I'm really glad your mom is OK.
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Post by pooka on Aug 11, 2020 3:26:01 GMT -5
All I can do anymore is shake my head in disbelief. My rage is wearing thin.
Let me go to sleep & wake me up next year sometime. Maybe villainous aliens will land & enforce world peace on us. Wouldn't that be a horror.
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 11, 2020 8:08:30 GMT -5
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Post by pooka on Aug 12, 2020 2:16:44 GMT -5
Remember Klaatu's Speech at the end of the 1951 feature film, The Day The Earth Stood Still. Also, Recall the Emerson, Lake & Palmer lyrics from the album Brain Salad Surgery, “Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends We’re so glad you could attend Come inside! Come inside! There behind a glass is a real blade of grass be careful as you pass. Move along! Move along!
Come inside, the show’s about to start guaranteed to blow your head apart Rest assured you’ll get your money’s worth The greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth. You’ve got to see the show, it’s a dynamo. You’ve got to see the show, it’s rock and roll” What used to be the odd absurd story or event, the kind of thing that used to make you sit up & say WHAT? Now hardly a day doesn't go by without another report of something more shocking than the day before. A while back some comic or entertainer or news commentator, I can't recall who. Anyway they said before you could refer to "THE" scandal, & everyone knew what you were talking about. Now you have to ask which one. Scandals are falling from the sky like rain. Some are real. Some made out of whole cloth. Many discount the truth & believe the most crazy, bats in the belfry nonsense. I saw a piece about the guy (Mark Hoglan) on the one plane from 9/11 that crashed in Pennsylvania. The one that called his mother to say goodbye, then said "Let's roll" as the fought the hijackers. Anyway, his mother recalled meeting conspiracy theorists who think the whole thing is a secret plot by shadow groups. She said they're just deluded, & no amount of talking will dissuade them. She said you just have to treat them as if they're crazy. You can not teach those who refuse to see.
I keep thinking back to one of Abraham Lincoln's earliest published speech, Lyceum Address. It was prompted by Burning of Francis McIntosh. It was the lynching of a mulatto boatman in St. Louis, Missouri on April 28, 1836. The detail are almost too horrific to contemplate, even in that era. In it he says we could never be defeated from abroad. But? At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
I fear these times will scare us for generation to come. I don't know. I've seen things come to pass I never could imagine though. That pendulum of history swings back & forth. Three steps forward. Two steps back. We drunkenly stagger our way toward tomorrow.
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Post by nana on Aug 12, 2020 6:41:47 GMT -5
Sometimes I feel so outraged and angry and saddened by all the craziness and then I hate feeling like that, so I just pull back into my little world of grandkids, gardens and birdwatching. The best thing for my mental health recently was our tv satellite box stopped working a few weeks ago, and since we were getting new internet soon (Just got it the other day and it is SOOOO much better!) that would allow us to stream things like hulu, we didn’t replace it and cancelled the service. So for a few weeks we had no tv, no 24 hour cable news, no movies, nothing. We sat out every night and watched the sun set and the stars come out. It was lovely. A good reminder that in spite of how awful things seem, there is always beauty and peace if you look for it!
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 12, 2020 11:25:02 GMT -5
Nana, so many of us (me included) feel that way, just tune out the craziness in the world. But unfortunately we must stay abreast of things in order to make an educated decision about everything. But, who is one to believe with all this hatred in the media and on the political scene? Maybe that’s my problem, if all is going well in my world then I just stick my head in the sand and ignore the injustice being done around me.
In all my travels I’ve picked up maybe 10 people who needed help along the roadside, of which only two were white. If someone needs help, they need help! But, if that person simply needs a ride and they are dressed like some gang-banger....I’m not stopping. I guess if I posted that on Facebook I’d be called a racist and a profiler. So be it. I’m willing to help but this Southern boy ain’t no fool!
Pooka, thank you for posting the speech from Abe Lincoln. That one I DO plan to post on Facebook. So many people have said that same thing, even Khrushchev . We as a country will destroy ourselves from within without any outside assistance. May the Good Lord help keep us safe and whole.
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Post by nana on Aug 12, 2020 20:44:33 GMT -5
It’s good to be careful, but every now and then it pays to remember you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Last year there was a little girl here in first grade. She was smart, but a little high strung and difficult sometimes. So they had an event in the classroom where the kids were going to sing a song and recite some poems they had learned and parents were invited. Her dad came, and he was a big biker dude, tough guy, long hair, beard, tattoos, earring, leather jacket...a little intimidating. I thought, well that explains her attitude. And he turned out to be the nicest, most soft-spoken and pleasant man. He visibly enjoyed the kids recital. He offered to stay and help move all the desks and chairs back after the performance. He looked like the kind of guy who would bash a beer bottle over your head as soon as look at you, but he was a teddy bear, really. It was good for me to have a little refresher course in not jumping to conclusions based on appearances!
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 12, 2020 21:46:24 GMT -5
That’s true. My friend never paid for a haircut. Twice a year in solstice his wife would cut it off to where he looked like a Skinhead Nazi. He said he would show up to middle school to grab the girls with his long hair and the teachers would chat and were very friendly. The next week after his haircut those same teachers stared at him and did all they could to avoid him, until they realized who he was.
I’ve actually met several biker dudes and I’ve always found them to be pretty cool....but they ain’t got their pants pulled down showing off their undies either. 😳 “DANGER! Will Robinson....DANGER!” 😝
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Post by nana on Aug 13, 2020 7:39:12 GMT -5
I don’t know what’s worse, the boys with their pants falling down or the girls with their low riders and thongs, although thankfully THAT is a fashion trend that has run its course! They guys are slower to switch gears, I think. I still was seeing boys walking down the halls in school hitching up their pants every few steps even right before the pandemic shut everything down.
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 13, 2020 10:43:18 GMT -5
If only those fools knew what that “style” means in prison, maybe they would think twice about letting their pants hang down like that.
The thing in the 70’s was having your upper shirt unbuttoned to show off your chest hair. To this day I still forget to button up like I should, though I’ve never had that much fur to show off. 😐
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Post by mach12 on Aug 13, 2020 10:57:02 GMT -5
Those loose pants were originally about looking "gangsta" and having clothes loose enough that you could carry a gun without it showing. Personally, I don't want to risk having my pants fall down. My work jeans have buttons for suspenders and I generally wear both a belt AND suspenders. Probably some kind of psychosis that's a result of working for the government.
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 13, 2020 14:30:05 GMT -5
I know where your going with that. I TOO work for the government.
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Post by nana on Aug 15, 2020 17:46:41 GMT -5
Oh gosh, the 70’s with the chest hair, the gold chains and the big glasses...we don’t need that to come back either!
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Post by pooka on Aug 17, 2020 1:44:04 GMT -5
Some people wear the costume that suits the image they want. Just like many wear a mask. They have a public face & a private face, & maybe a few different in between. Remember the line from the Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby, Eleanor Rigby Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for?Pink Floyd's whole song Paranoid Eyes is about hiding behind a mask. Button your lip and don't let the shield slip Seek a fresh grip on your bullet proof mask And if they try to break down your disguise with their questions You can hide hide hide Behind paranoid eyes
You put on your brave face and slip over the road for a jar Fixing your grin as you casually lean on the bar Laughing too loud at the rest of the world With the boys in the crowd You can hide hide hide Behind petrified eyes
You believed in their stories of fame fortune and glory Now you're lost in a haze of alcohol soft middle age The pie in the sky turned out to be miles too high And you hide hide hide Behind brown and mild eyesWe live in a world of "Images". Often, manufacture ones. With reality shows, & "Influencers", we're surrounded by false faces, & scripted encounters. Sometime it's easy to forget that people are people where ever you go. They may wear different threads & faces, but a discerning eye can suss out what's real, & what's a smoke screen. Often we're more alike than different. I try to take people as they are, & watch to see who they are. Sometimes their looks tells volumes. Other times, it means nothing. Some of us are better at judging character than others.
I guess it doesn't hurt to a bit cautious, as long as we don't let our imaginations get away from us, & see things that aren't there. Those that looks for devils everywhere will invariably find them whether they're there or not. Paranoia can be contagious if we don't arm ourselves with reason & good sense.
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Post by nana on Aug 18, 2020 8:24:53 GMT -5
Wise words, Pooka. People are people. The differences are literally only skin deep. I think Obama said that as a country, what unites us is greater than what divides us. I sure hope he was right, though, because lately the dividers seem to have the upper hand.
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Post by pooka on Aug 18, 2020 11:19:31 GMT -5
There have always been those who want to hoist themselves up in the social order by putting a boot on someone else's neck. In the past, down south, a poor white share cropper could always say, at least I'm white, so the black share cropper was bellow him. My mom used to say innocently, I'm free, white & over twenty one. A kind of declaration of being a free citizen under no ones thumb. Again we run across that old human pecking order. Are you at the top, bottom or that jostling middle. Some are content in their station in life. Others are social climbers for good or ill. Then there are the mad, power hungry lot who will stoop to anything to get ahead. That last one is villain that spoils it for the rest of us. They thrive on dividing us in their crusade to put everyone under their boot heel. We are such suckers as attested to Barnum's comment of one being born every minute. We're easy to herd into desperate tribes. Divide & conquer is one of the oldest tricks in the book. We all have our weakness's. Greed, vanity, false duty, faith are but a few. Weak leaders muscle their way to the top. At least for a time.
It tough to bring people together. There are extremes among us that will never be assuaged, but there has to be a middle ground, common to us all where we can live in some semblance of passive respect.
There's a line from the play & movie "Torch Song Trilogy". Arnold is speaking to his mother.
I have taught myself to sew, cook, fix plumbing.
I can even pat myself on the back when necessary
So I don't have to ask anyone for anything.
There's nothing I need from anyone
Except for love and respect.
Anyone who can't give me those two things
Has no place in my life.
Can we just start there. Love and respect one another, & go from there. We don't have to go to the same churchs, or belong to the same clubs, or even be the same color. Just love and respect your fellow human. That shouldn't be that much to ask. After hearing & seeing that piece on the building of the Bahá'í Temple of South America, maybe there is a glimmer of hope. Their philosophy of all equal without qualifiers. Those of faith or not. We are a oneness of diversity. Many things & one at the same time. We are many facets of the same gem.
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 18, 2020 11:46:40 GMT -5
All good ideas.
Not a few years ago I was driving I-40 thru MS at night when I saw a car on the side of the road. A mile later I saw an African American woman walking with a flashlight, still 5-6 miles from nowhere. So I drove until I could cross over, went back past the car, crossed over again and met up with her. She was SO happy I stopped and almost broke the door handle off trying to get in. I had to move my junk from the front seat before she could get in but we did it. Just as I was about to drive off a MS State Trooper pulled up behind me and asked what was going on. He then offered to follow me to the next town and THAT was so I wasn’t some weirdo who was going to try something. Now I’ve heard bad things about MS and all the divisions between blacks and whites but this was a white officer protecting a black lady from harm. Stories like that NEVER make headlines, sad.
I only bring this up because I found out today that the Austin City Council voted to defund the police depts. One of the officers there posted his reply on Facebook that maybe I can repost here. What a bunch of idiots!
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 18, 2020 11:51:42 GMT -5
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 18, 2020 11:53:13 GMT -5
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Post by voodoochikin04 on Aug 18, 2020 22:56:22 GMT -5
seems like that officers words would be common thought to anyone... its crazy how theyve managed to defund them and gained support doing it. absolutely crazy.
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 19, 2020 5:07:56 GMT -5
Like the officer said, no one came to their aid, complained or protested....at least not enough. That’s the issue with conservatives like me. We bitch and get angry but making the effort to go and protest isn’t in our nature I guess. We wait until voting day to voice our opinion and that’s often too late. Maybe those council members might be looking for a new job soon.
Texas A&M Univ is a very conservative school and has the same problems. For years they would raise the tuition almost twice a year but no one stopped them. The students are young and don’t care because Mom and Dad are paying the bills and Mom & Dad are too busy working to go protest. All it would take is 50-100 parents picketing on the Univ Presidents lawn and that crap would have stopped. The Univ hates being embarrassed in public.
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Post by nana on Aug 19, 2020 8:46:11 GMT -5
It seems to be an agonized plea from someone who apparently feels like he’s been told to not let the door hit him on the way out, but if you look at it a little closer, he says there is barely enough to pay salaries, medical care, and retirement. So they have not been fired, they still are working, still have their benefits. Why would this person be claiming they can no longer show up to do the job they are still being paid to do?
What has been defunded is what the Austin city council considers to be money that is better spent on other social services and initiatives. Now certainly one could argue about the wisdom of the decision, or the amount of money to be spent and what it should be spent on, but these are the elected officials Austin has, and I’m sure the people of Austin will decide if they approve or disapprove of what they’ve done come election time.(https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/13/austin-city-council-cut-police-budget-defund/—I did a quick look up and here is the first link I saw that was from a local Texas newspaper and not an national or internet site.)
I have seen a lot of posts like this on facebook, some from the “right” and some from the “ left”. They appeal to the emotions and usually are anonymous or are shared and re-shared by people and no one knows who actually wrote it. If the person is not known to me or the post is not a quote from a reputable news agency(and even then, I’m wary!) I take it with an enormous heaping of salt. Like they say, consider the source. In today’s world, social media is a fraught place to get the news upon which you will form your opinions!
Defund the police has to be the worst slogan ever in the history of the world. Off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen catch phrases that would have been more effective and more accurate. Re-imagine the police. Reform the police. Take the burden of having to respond to mental health crises and drug addict overdoses off the police and give it to the psychologists and the medical professionals. OK, admittedly that last one needs a little work. But I hope you get what I’m trying to say. If we only do things the way we’ve always done them, then we can expect to get the same results, and what has always been done has led us to where we are today, not a very good place! Obviously, some of our fellow citizens have felt for a very, very, long time that the police and justice systems in this country are against them, and their frustration and fear and anger has reached the boiling point. Now we’re all cooks here. Think: when a pot is boiling over, do you try to clamp the lid on it and hold everything down, or do you turn off the burner, let it cool down and then try to fix the mistake you made that led to the boil-over?
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Post by nana on Aug 19, 2020 8:49:01 GMT -5
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 19, 2020 9:16:57 GMT -5
Thanks for posting that Nana.
Your right about questioning the origins of the letter, I did too. But regardless of that, he brings out many good points we need to think about. He mentioned nothing of the questionable shootings there and that disturbs me, I didn’t know. But once again, the masses have to pay for the actions of a few bad people.
I see all these Mayors and Council members across the country out protesting with the masses but my question is...where were they when all these corrupt activities were going on? Like Austin, if it was so darn bad then why in the H-3-L-L didn’t they do something earlier?
And...sounds like a great plan to take that money from the police and increase abortion facilities...not! What the heck does that have to do with making the communities safer???
And there’s a group called “Undoing White Supremacy Austin”? Just lovely. I guess since I’m white I’ll need to start carrying my gun on my trips to Austin. But, those trips will be far and few now, how sad.
Im sorry if this offends anyone but if we don’t vent, we will erupt.
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Post by nana on Aug 20, 2020 12:05:24 GMT -5
No worries! I hope we all feel this is a safe place to vent!
There is so much nastiness on the internet, and I imagine it will only get worse if we all keep getting sucked in to it. Two women, both of whom I consider friends, who work at my school got into a tiff on facebook. Opposite sides of the political divide, one posted something the other took offense to, there was some unpleasant back and forth. The one lady ended up taking down the original post in question. I’m hoping that she did it because she realized it really was in poor taste when she had a moment to reconsider her actions. But then she posted something aa little bit snarky (I’ll clean it up for general audiences): Getting offended by something you see on the internet is like choosing to step in dog doo instead of just walking around it. Or words to that effect. I got involved when the second lady, who felt this was aimed at her, asked me for my opinion on the whole thing. So I gave it to her: I think there is a lot of truth to that pithy comment, but we should always be mindful of the fact that the things we see on the internet that strike a positive chord with us may just as easily be dog doo as well. We should step around that, too. And maybe clean up after our dogs!
There is a bible verse that goes something like before you point out the speck in your brother’s eye, remove the beam from your own, or something like that. I joined facebook only recently, because my daughter had a serious illness and it was the easiest way to keep everyone informed and coordinate things without having to make a million phone calls. She is (hopefully) going to be all better now, and now that my facebook world isn’t taken up with all the fuss that surrounded that, I find I do not much like what I see. It seems like the perfect tool for someone to use if their goal was to divide the whole world into warring camps, strange because it was supposed to be a way to connect with people, wasn’t it? I rarely look at what they call the “feed” anymore. I don’t even like that terminology. It makes me think of the fois gras geese. I just use the messenger to be able to text people when a phone call would not be possible or convenient. Call me old fashioned, I accept the label gladly!
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Post by dwayner2 on Aug 20, 2020 20:37:48 GMT -5
Well put! Facebook has sure helped me and others out with these Chambers stoves but MAN there is so much BS out there. Still, some thugs are really funny and brighten my day while all this crazy is going on. Here’s my favorite from a couple days ago....
“You can never offend me. I used to hold the flashlight for my Dad when I was little!”
Yep, I sure got cursed at if I moved that light. 😃
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