“Nobody listens any more.
I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me.
I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls.
I just want someone to hear what I have to say.
And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.“
-Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
I went out to breakfast by myself this morning. I normally try to avoid paying too much attention to what other people are talking about, because I prefer to pretend I am alone in the world after some sort of armageddon, but I do not always succeed in this fantasy.
A teenage boy and his father sat at the table right next to mine. The boy looked to be about 16, and something about the way he phrased things and his speech pattern reminded me a lot of the kid, so I began to half listen, because it was familiar and comforting. They were waiting for a couple of other people to join them, and making bits of smalltalk, mostly about what to order.
Then the father asked “How is [girl’s name]?” And the boy said, “Fine,” in that age old teenage way that could mean anything from she is totally amazing to she died 5 weeks ago, and I’ve already forgotten her.
Then there was a pause.
And the boy said, “I don’t know, Dad. Sometimes, it just seems like it is so hard to talk to her. It is like I have to PRY things out of her. I have to ask all these questions because the conversation just doesn’t happen easily and feel comfortable. I don’t really like it. I WANT it to be different. I can’t exactly say that to her. I can’t tell her that I wish our conversations felt more comfortable, because that will just upset her and I don’t want to do that.”
There was a longer pause and the boy was looking intently at his father.
Finally his father said, “Yeah, uh, conversations can be difficult. I’ll be right back.” He got up and went to the bathroom.
The boy sat for a few beats, and then pulled out his cell phone and started texting.
I wanted to cry into my coffee.
Things I like about the internet:
Things I hate about the internet:
I am overweight according to medical professionals, our government, the fashion industry, the media, and society in general. Sometimes more so, sometimes less so. I am curvy. I am soft. I have flesh covering all my bones. If you ever see me with a small ass or any bones poking out, assume that I am ill.
I am fat because of genetics, lifestyle, emotional issues, psychological issues, medical issues and personal history to varying degrees. These are my business. I do not need to justify or explain to you which one is the current primary factor.
Sometimes I am even fatter because of genetics, lifestyle, emotional issues, psychological issues, medical issues and personal history to varying degrees. These are my business. I do not need to justify or explain to you which one is the current primary factor.
Sometimes I lose a chunk of weight because of genetics, lifestyle, emotional issues, psychological issues, medical issues and personal history to varying degrees. These are my business. I do not need to justify or explain to you which one is the current primary factor.
I FUCKING HATE TO TALK ABOUT IT. There are a teeny tiny number of people on the planet I do not mind talking about it with, and chances are, you are not one of them.
I am not saying that I am embarrassed about being fat. I am fat. I am okay with that. I am just beyond mother fucking tired of the concept that there is some value placed on the number of pounds or the number of lumps or the amount of jiggle. If the only thing that interests a person about me is the way I look, I really wish they would Go. The. Fuck. Away. It just isn’t that fucking high up on the importance scale for me, and I would rather converse with somebody that I have more interests in common with.
The fact that acquaintances will stop to gush if I happen to be on a downward trend is to my ears unwanted, uncomplimentary and actually RUDE. I do not care if you think I look good. I do not care if you don’t understand that saying *that* is the same as saying that you used to think I looked bad. The fact that we live in a society that has it shoved up their ass that “you look like you’ve lost weight” is a compliment does not excuse you in my mind. I live in the same society and my brain can still think for its fucking self. Statistics show that whatever I drop I will most likely pick up again. What goes down, most likely will go up. If you only like me when I am less fat, you might as well go away now, because I AM FAT.
Let’s not even hide behind the concern for my health bullshit. The fact of the matter is that I am usually HEALTHIEST at a “sweet spot” in the middle of my (very large) low and high range. As in that is the spot where my blood tests and blood pressure are at their supposed medical best. When I am lower and getting all the compliments is when my blood pressure is at the worst and my cholesterol levels are highest, yes, higher than when I am my fattest. I don’t give a fuck whether or not you believe me. I have to get blood tests regularly, so I know.
I do not lose weight to impress you. I do not gain weight to disgust you. I do not care which side of your personal “acceptable weight” line I am hanging out on. “Oh, YOU’RE not fat!” is not a compliment to me, no matter what some stupid talk show taught you. You might be shocked at just how tiny a shit I give about your opinion of my looks and politically correct concerns about my “health”. It is so small, calling it a fart would still be an exaggeration.
I am not “fat and proud”. I am not “fat and embarrassed”. I am fat.
When you bump into a chair that has a person sitting in it, they feel it. It does not matter which part of your body you do this with. They feel it. When you rest your feet, or knees, or anything else, on a seat that has a person sitting in it, they feel every single little shift that you make. At that point you are taking up more than your allotted space and you are affecting the enjoyment of another human being.
If everyone could spread the word about this, that would be lovely. I’d like to be sure everybody knows.
I am greedy. I want what is mine. Quite honestly, I want more than what is mine. I want.
One of the things I want is zero traffic on the road with me. I want the way to be clear from where I am, to where I want to be. I do not want traffic jams, or cross traffic, or any sort of light or sign that is not in my favor. I want nothing at all to slow me down between here and there. I want that. I admit it.
Not only that, but I do pay my taxes, and I pay quite a lot. I also follow traffic laws. I vote too. On occasion even have a flash of feeling entitlement where traffic things are concerned.
However, when it comes right down to it, I know that this want is not something I can reasonable expect to have fulfilled. I completely understand that I need to share these public streets with the rest of the public. As such I do not cut people off, cause gridlock, go out of turn at intersections or lay upon my horn just because I am in a pissy mood. I get that it is a requirement that I SHARE.
What I am not nearly so understanding about sharing, is the bit of space on the road that I believe is mine for the using. The part that at any given time my vehicle is momentarily and predictably occupying. On most roads they have designated lanes. These are typically marked by painted lines, usually either white or yellow and some even have little bumpy reminders in case the paint wasn’t enough.
Main Entry: 1lane
Pronunciation: ‘lAn
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lanu; akin to Middle Dutch lane lane
1 : a narrow passageway between fences or hedges
2 : a relatively narrow way or track: as a : an ocean route used by or prescribed for ships b : a strip of roadway for a single line of vehicles
A strip of roadway for a SINGLE line of vehicles.
I consider the space that my car takes up, as well as small but important section of space in front of, and behind my car to be MINE while I am in it. MINE MINE MINE. Stay the fuck out of my space. Your inability to maintain lane control should not be my fucking problem. If you cannot drive a car as wide as you are driving, get a different car. If you are scared of the barrier wall and tend to shy away from it, plan ahead and don’t use that lane. If you cannot steer and talk on the phone at the same time, get off the damn phone. Get off the damn phone anyway. If you just can’t drive properly, stop doing it. I really do not care what it is that is causing you to drift into my lane. Stop it. Stop it, or someday it is really going to piss me off, and that is not going to go well.
Thanks.
As mentioned recently on The Leaky Cauldron and reiterated by J.K. Rowling.
As much as I hate (and I do) the individual spoiling dickheads of the world, of which there are many. I even further resent the media and their propensity for spoiling left and right. Plot points are not NEWS. They are not part of what you need to inform the public about. If you fucking must, then put it no earlier than paragraph two and always warn in paragraph one. The dumbfucks who put spoilers in headlines should be fired, and perhaps fired at, or set of fire, or something involving an F word.
They have no excuse. The internet has been around for a long time now. VCRs and other recording devices have been around for a long time now. Time shifting occurs. People do not all have access to shows at the same time. People do not all get a chance to watch something or read something the first minute it is available, much less before it is available to the general public. Some of us are fucking busy with long to do lists trying to be decent halfway productive members of society. We also try to read the news occasionally so we can make decisions about important topics, like, elections for instance. We should not all be forced to remain uninformed about world events just to avoid finding out {insert some spoiler that totally fucked you over here}.
I don’t really understand the way so many people seem so hung up on time.
I completely understand it as a tool to coordinate. It would be much more difficult to meet somebody for lunch if we had no common reference point for when.
I also grasp it to measure the passing of it. It is good to know how long something took to accomplish.
I just don’t understand the random value attached to certain times of the day.
Daylight Savings Time, for instance, to me is a big dumb piece of crap. People tell me how happy they are because “It stays light later.” What does that mean? The sun isn’t staying up an extra hour all of a sudden. It isn’t like the whole world changes, heck it isn’t even as if the whole country changes. Change the times at which things open and close, don’t change the time designation.
I also hate “banker’s hours”. We live as part of a global economy and it is dumb that we don’t have a 24 hour society. It would make more sense to me if we worked on shifted schedules and all service industries also worked on shifted schedules so that people could find a place that was open and take care of needed errands no matter what time they worked, without taking time off. For some reason the collective mind thinks we are supposed to wake up “early” and go to bed at a “decent hour” and that no good can come of being out and about at the wrong times. Our population would not be putting as much of a drain on space an resources if we were active around the clock. Traffic would be less of a problem. Companies wouldn’t need to build or acquire buildings as much or often in order to increase their total number of employees. Everybody would be safer because there would always be activity instead of those quiet times when they claim only criminals operate.
I pay my local and state taxes, but I cannot use the public parks most of the time I would actually want to, because they are “Closed at dusk” and don’t open again until morning. They close them because they claim it discourages crime and use of the parks for illegal activities, but making it common for law abiding citizens to use the park at all times would also do that.
The morally superior attitude of some so-called morning people, also baffles me. So what if the early bird gets the worm? I am not a bird. I don’t eat worms, and owls are not starving to death either. Back in college we were usually up until 4 AM, and it was not at all unusual to still be up working on something at 6 or 7 AM. If we didn’t have an early class, that might lead us to still be asleep at 10 AM. However if the husband’s mother happened to call at 10 AM and find us still home and in bed, she never apologized for waking us. To her, it was like she had caught us being naughty and lazy. She had been up since 6 AM and had four productive hours of the day behind her, so she found us lacking. Of course, she had gone to bed at 10 PM. If we had called her and woken her up at 2 AM , she would have been pissed off.
I used to consider myself a night owl, but I am no longer convinced it is that simple. Yes, I do tend to prefer the night for reasons such as, less sun, less crowds, less heat, and less distractions. The thing that made me think I was night owl, was because I typically had an extra boost of energy at night, and felt motivated and alert. I attributed this to me being a night person.
Then I went through a stretch of time when I lived alone and had no outside obligations, and I just did whatever I wanted sleep-wise most days. What tended to happen was I would wake up, but still feel rather fuzzy and unmotivated. I’d fumble about doing mundane tasks and laze about. Eventually I’d feel semi functional and I would start to assess the things I was planning to do for the day, look through things, maybe get in touch with people I needed to be in touch with to get things done. After 2-3 hours I would eat something and then get going. I would spend 8 or 9 hours doing whatever it was I needed to do. By then I had been up for 10-12 hours. Around then I would feel very energized and alert. This was when I was most likely to get involved in a new project, get a burst of energy to finish a project. I was at my most alert and productive and also as the most receptive to social interaction as long as it didn’t interfere with something I was driven to work on. This would last for 6 hours and then it would start to fade away. I still felt amped, but no longer alert. If I was driven to finish something I would keep working, if I had no time pressure I might start reading a book or something else to help me wind down. Assuming no pressure to stay up and finish something, I would go to sleep about 20-21 hours after I woke up, and then sleep for around 5 hours.
20 or 21 plus 5 does not equal 24, so I would not get up at the same time everyday. Instead I would chase myself around the clock. So some days I would be getting up in the morning, other days I was getting up at night. However my most alert time was typically after I had been up for about 10 hours, whether that was at night or in the morning. While I still liked running errands at night because of the things I mentioned about liking nighttime before, it became apparent that it wasn’t really that I “wasn’t a morning person” it was that I didn’t wake up alert and ready to start the day. Sleeping more did not help. Waking with an alarm versus waking on my own didn’t help. What helped was simply being awake for a while and having a chance to get moving.
I see other people who hop out of bed and are totally ready to go. Most of them don’t get that burst of energy later in the day though. They are alert early and then have a longer slower decline cycle.
Of course for most of my life there are external forces asking me to get up in the morning, at about the same time each day. This typically leaves me never getting enough sleep. I want to be up for 21 hours, but I want to sleep for (now that I’ve gotten older) around 6 hours. I either have to force myself to wind down while I still feel like I could really accomplish things allowing me to get the amount of sleep I’d like, or I can stay up until I feel like sleeping and then only get a few hours of sleep. I usually alternate between these two. If I do the not enough sleep option for too many days in a row I can induce insomnia. That is never good. I once had insomnia for a little over a year, and boy was I in a horrible mood.
So, I try not to be too annoyed by the people who wake up all energized and then are blobs by the time I am ready rock, as long as they don’t treat me like I have a character flaw because I am not constantly trying to eat worms.
I am ALWAYS annoyed by anything to do with DST. Spring ahead. Fall back. Fuck off.