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I use this when I’m really not sure what else to do with a post.

And …winner!

26 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Bullies, Chicago, Homeless, Humor, Mockery, Street Corner, Streets, Unexpected, Wit

Right on this corner, I believe

For a brief period of my life (in the early 90s), I lived on the south side of Chicago. It was an interesting experience, to say the least.

I remember one day seeing a couple young men laughing at one of the local homeless guys. This particular individual was always stoned or drunk, or both. Often, when he approached me, he couldn’t even put the words together to ask for change; he just held his hand out. He was often in bad shape. At least once, I found him passed out on the street, with his own piss flowing out over the curb. This time at least he was up and moving with some purpose as he walked by the young men, both of whom were well dressed.

Laughing, one of the young men shouted back at him; “Hey do you remember me?”

“Yeah.”

“Really? Who am I?’

“You!”

I’m not sure this particular individual knew he won that exchange, but the two men mocking him sure did.

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Flirt-Spammers on TikTok

31 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Advertizing, Bots, Flitation, Internet, Pornography, Social Media, spam, TikTok, Videos

This is just a short videoshowing what an influx of spammers on Tiktok looks like. (I swear, I’m not converting this blog into a TikTok support page; really I’m not!)

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TikTok II

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Animals, Donald Trump, History, Humor, Politics, religion, RPGs, Social Media, TikTok

So, I am still on TikTok. It’s actually kinda fun. In the native language, I guess I am mostly on ‘political TikTok, but I pretty much talk about whatever I feel like at the moment, just like I do here. I don’t dance though; that does not happen.

It’s an interesting challenge, trying to make a point in 1 minute or less.

Ironically, I am experiencing this constraint as a sense that the format is too long. See, I’ve never prepared my speeches or classroom lessons on a word-for-word basis. Some technical points, sure, I spell them out precisely and read them off a note, but most of my public speaking is off the top of my head. I have a general script in mind and improvise my way through the details. If I feel like I flubbed a point, I just take a minute to restate it. That’s what I normally do. With only 1 minute per video, however, that just isn’t an option. So, every word counts. The trouble is that I can’t seem to speak for 1 whole minute without screwing something up. So, the fact that I have only 1 minute means I have to make it through a whole minute. Oh the paradox!

So, Moni comes up wondering what I’m mad about. It’s my own fumbling tongue.

Yes, I know, you can record a TikTok in segments. I still think the better vids are all-in-one takes, and anyhow, I like the challenge. …except when I flubbed it for the umpteenth time in a row.

Anyway, one thing I do not like about TikTok is the lack of any useful curating features. I might be missing something, but at the moment, I don’t see any means of organizing vids and bundling them up into themes, etc. So, I am going to do that here, at least with a few selected vids. Yes, Isome of these may appear in more than one category. I plan add to this page from time to time, unless I wake up one day and say to Hell with all of it.

I am mostly doing this for myself, just to keep track of what’s what, but I sorta hope, someone finds a few of my vids amusing at least. If anyone is curious, I hope you enjoy the content.

Anyway…

Falls under the category of “Well, I thought it was funny” – My Girlfriend Fails at magnets, A Man from Nantucket, Quotidian, Confirmation Bias, Meow Wolf, Covid Hair, Unprovoked Attack on generation X, Euphemisms and Dysphemisms, I Try Not to Do This, Grass is Fluffier, I’m Negative, Trump 2020, Dunning and Kruger, My Last Wish, My Recipe for Scrambled Eggs, Lost in translation, My Hubris,

Alaska Themed Posts – The Beach at 4:30am, Susitna River, Matanuska Glacier, Whittier, Bubble-Net feeding, Sitka Sea Otter, Barter Island Bears, The Duck-In, Ward Lake, So Blue, Polar Midnight, Frozen Ocean,

Animals – The Story of Hippie Cat, Chet, A Birthday Kitten, Intruder, Bubble-Net Feeding, Sitka Sea Otter, Barter Island Bears, Christmas,

Misquotes: A Government Big Enough, A Free People, Trump Didn’t, In matters of Style, The democracy shall cease to exist,

Critical Thinking – Whataboutism, Stupid Questions, Emotions, Authority of the Dictionary, Fixing Trump, Facts and Feelings, Conspiracy Porn, The Race-Card Card,

Education – Cold Reading the Textbook, Study Questions for Winter, Keywords, Debunkitation Failure, Intimidation Check,

RPG Gaming – A Holy Sword, Witchcraft, Witchcraft II, An Evil Paladin, The Story of Bob, A Double Crit, Old School Gamer,

History Happens – Confederate Statues, Study Questions for Winter, Debunkitation Failure, Custer’s Critics, Treaty Rights, The Duck-In, Ward Lake, United Fruit, Unsolicited History Lessons, Religious Freedoms,

Fricking Donald Trump – Trump’s Wall, Euphemisms and Dysphemisms, Whataboutism, Trump’s Lies, Independence Malice, Right Wing Patriotism, Who Told Me to hate Trump, Trump and Truth, Trump Versus the Handicapped, Deplorables on Obama, Trump’s Accomplices, About Megyn Kelly, Trump Didn’t, Trump 2020, Fixing Trump, Socialist Healthcare, Trump’s Healthcare Plan. Damnit Obama, Character Matters (Sometimes), Trump Loves Him Some Stats, The Boy Who Cried Fake News, Until the Fat Man Takes his Hands off the Nuclear Codes, Couch Potato With a Phone, Nathan Poe’s Election, Election Fraud, An Illegitimate President, When Trump Realized He Lost, Jill Biden’s Doctorate,

Other Politics – Flip Wilson, Healthcare Elasticity, Church State Superman, Confederate Statues, Mort’s Cigaerette, A Morbid Thought on Climate Change, Climate Change and Externalities, All Lives Matter, Goddammit Soros, republic versus democracy, Priming for War, Still Your president, Political Christians, Citizenship and Rights, Alibi Buddies, Facts and Feelings, Weaponization of the First Amendment, Rosa Parks and Guns, The Electoral College, Electoral College II, Negligence as Principle, White Privilege Edition, The Race-Card Card, Gun Control Curious, Religious Freedoms,

Religion and the lack thereof – Flip Wilson, Church State Superman, Hating God, Prayer Meme, Belief as a Choice, “atheism”, Political Christians, Prayer of an Atheist, Weaponization of the First Amendment, Happy Holidays, The True Spirit of Christmas, Cartoon Bible,

People seemed to like these ones – Independence Malice, Who Told Me to Hate Trump*, Trump Versus the Handicapped, Deplorables on Obama, Trump’s Accomplices, Trump’s Healthcare Plan,

* This is my most popular video to date.

(Last Updated – 12/29/20)

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Holiday Hard!

24 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Ambition, Christmas, December, Decorations, Effort, Holiday Season, Holidays, Overdoing It, Work

I like our tree this year

One of the worst things about Christmas is watching people work too hard at Christmas. People do it in different ways, but they do it all the time.

Normally a moderate man, my father once Christmased up a big decoration for our rooftop. It was pretty cool, and as we lived just off Highway 18, people all around Victor-Valley, California certainly noticed it. So, of course he tried to top himself the next year, and again the year after that. I don’t recall when it got to be too much (though it might have been when we moved to a colder place). I do remember at least one year when the whole thing was more trouble than it was worth, …to him, I mean. The stress was apparent. Afterwards, we settled for a few strings of light.

And it was good!

Of course, Christmas lights can be a whole other kind of Hell. They could be a really special Hell back in the 70s. Hell, it was Hell just being my dad’s assistant in the annual battle of the Christmas lights. One bad bulb could ruin a whole string, and some of those could hide really well. I swear some would work only when you tested them, but when you moved on, they just conked right out. The struggle to find the one bad bulb was just the battle you fought after the one to untangle the strings in the first place. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen some amazing Christmas displays. Really wonderful stuff! I only hope the people who made them actually enjoyed working on the project.

…and I suspect there have been a few who didn’t.

Moni is a sweetie!

And then of course there is the competitive gifting. As they say, it’s the thought that counts. Yes, but money too expresses a thought of its own, a thought that doesn’t go away just because we sometimes talk like we don’t care about it. So, we dollar up our Christmas love and double down on the price of our holiday thoughts whenever possible. It isn’t just the individual presents though; the spectacle around that tree can be a project in itself. That project got out of hand more than a few times when I was a kid. I noticed the beauty of the result, and I enjoyed playing with more than a few of those gifts. If I noticed the crankyness of the tall people around me, I didn’t always make the connection.

Some people just try way too hard to fill the space under the tree with as many gifts as they can. It really doesn’t have to be a mountain of packages that will take all day just to get through Well, for some people it does, which is precisely when Christmasing up the gift-giving gets to be a bit too much yule-tide cheer.

…and more than a few folks end up paying the cost of the holidays off well into the new year, the interest paid on credit cards being just one more holiday gift.

Hell, if a corporation can be a person, I suppose, it can receive a holiday gift just like the rest of us!

And then there the tree itself! It can always be bigger, can’t it? At least it could if it weren’t for the ceiling, but then there are ways to flesh out the total tree display. You can Christmas up a tree a little more each year, making it bigger, brighter, full of more tinsel, decked out in brighter ornaments with each passing holiday happening.

A well decorated Christmas tree can be a beautiful thing.

Getting it there can be more trouble than it is worth.

Did I mention that special ornaments have a special way of falling from a tree branch? Seriously, the chance of breaking an ornament is directly proportional to its cost multiplied by its sentimental value.

…and the cost of the carpet.

And then of course there is the baking! A few Christmas cookies can be a lovely way to celebrate the holidays. But of course you don’t just need the sugar cookies (though you need lots of those). You also have to have the cinnamon stars, and those powdery white cookies too. Don’t forget the chocolate candies, and the hard candies! Maybe, some…

Give it a rest!

You’ll be too tired to eat them!

***

The stockings are grinchy this year

It’s funny, the way this holiday with all its themes of family and sharing can bring out the worst in people. At least Black Friday doesn’t seem to produce a body count anymore, at least I hope not, but the holidays can still deposit a whole butt-load of stress under the tree. Between the fake war on Christmas, obnoxious relatives at the dinner table, and the usual holiday loneliness some folks experience this time of year, the holiday season can sure produce a lot of strife and misery.

I suppose that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Make a point of any virtue and you create a special room for a little vice to grow. What makes Christmas especially troublesome is just how earnest people can be about it.

We really do work at this damned holiday!

At least some do.

Christmas can really be too much!

Among all the other hazards of Holiday Hell, the ones we all know, there is also the hazard of those trying too hard at this Holiday. We don’t talk about this holiday hazard too much, I don’t think, possibly because it doesn’t give us anything to fight about. The fake war on Christmas gives us that, at least. Holiday depression shapes up a good story to tell a therapist, a bartender, or at least a divorce lawyer, but being up till 6am putting the holiday cheer in proper order just seems too natural to some of us. Obnoxious relatives give us gripes to last the whole year. Those we will tell our friends, perhaps even the friends we will gripe about with our relatives over Christmas dinner. Hell, Holiday hell, gives us a lot to gripe about, and a good gripe is a gift well given. But working too hard at the cookies? There is nothing to complain about there.

Is there?

Perhaps not, but there ought to be a little cautionary tale in the matter.

For those who may be in the midst of trying to put together that bicycle before you go to bed tonight, still struggling with a troublesome string of lights or just working at another pan of cookies, don’t forget to save a little time to enjoy it all.

Fuck that!

Save a lot of time to enjoy it.

***

That said,

Someone I love is downstairs working a little too hard to clean up an already clean house so that we can enjoy it tomorrow. I better go see if I can help her.

***

Happy Holidays everyone!

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Television: A Loathe-Like Relationship

02 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Cable, Entertainment, Free Time, Friends, Lost, Myboys, Supernatural, Television, TV

My old cable company (back when I used to live in Flagstaff, AZ) sucked all kinds of rot-water. I lost track of the number of times I would come home on a Friday night to find my service had been cut off for no reason, or the connection just didn’t work, and because the cable company was closed for the weekend, I could not get things fixed until Monday, just before heading back out to the Navajo Nation for the week. Pay-per-view never worked, and of course there is the usual problem of umpteen channels of nothing worth watching.

Hated it!

I also remember watching about the 5th or 6th episode of MTV’s Real World in a row one night, and mumbling to myself; “What could possibly be more stupid than this show?”

I was alone, of course, but a little voice in the back of my head spoke loud and clear; “You watching it.”

One day, I moved across town, and at a certain point I realized this little mini-migration, along the fees for changing various services over to the new location, was going to cost a little more than I could afford on my next paycheck. So, I asked my cable company if I could delay one payment for two-weeks. I could have started with any number of other companies, but for some reason I called these guys first. They said, ‘yes’, and that was enough to solve my problem.

…or at least it would have been, had the person who actually said ‘yes’ to my request been authorized to do so, or even if that had been possible under their actual policies. Apparently, this was not the case. My service was cut off. Nobody cared that I had been told explicitly that I could do this, but they were happy to take my payment along with a couple extra fees and schedule a time to reconnect me.

I told them ‘nevermind.’

My initial plan was to save up and get a satellite dish. I figured it would take about a month to save up the money. What I didn’t plan on was kicking the television habit altogether. By the end of that month, I no longer needed, or wanted television. I had somehow just gotten used to life without it. I watched plenty of movies, and the internet enabled me to catch many great scenes without submitting myself to a whole show (or a whole series), but I no longer wanted continuous access to television.

That was that!

***

Letting go of television was one of the best decisions I ever in made in my life. I listened to a lot of great music, and I watched some great movies, and I dabbled at writing some things myself, to no avail of course, but I did find the experience a lot more satisfying than your average television show.

When asked about my seemingly freakish existence without functioning connection to a television service, I used to tell people it wasn’t that I wouldn’t want to watch TV, but rather, that I would sometimes watch it all day whether there was anything on it worth watching or not. (That Real-world-binge late on a Friday night comes to mind!) Ever since I was a kid, I recall, getting into a certain kind of mood, one that just made sitting in front of the idiot box seem like the perfect way to spend an hour, or a whole weekend. If that mood hit, I was watching something, even if that something disgusted me. Saying ‘no’ to television service was a way of saying ;no’ to that mood and the wasted time that went with it.

People usually responded to this explanation by telling me how to set up an antenna or steal my cable service.

Seriously, it’s almost as though some folks just can’t imagine a life without television. Life without TV must be an unfortunate existence, they seem to suppose, and so they respond to clear statements of preference for life without it as if it is a clear cry for help in getting television after all.

Ah well!

***

Things I noticed during my time without service: Some things about television got more interesting when I didn’t watch it regularly, and some got less interesting, a lot less interesting. I mostly remember the latter.

Laugh Tracks: They annoy the hell out of me now. I’m not used to them anymore, and when I hear one I feel personally insulted. All to often, a show runs with a joke that isn’t even remotely funny and uses the laugh track to try and convince us that it’s worth laughing anyway. This didn’t bother me when I was younger, but it sure does now. Those of us who grew up watching television have been trained to go along with this. My laugh-track training now has a glitch and so a laugh track is often enough to take me right out of a show altogether.

I hate them so much!

Made-for-Television Documentaries: the average television documentary crams about 5 minutes of information into a half-hour show. How they manage it, I will never know. The information these shows reveal is consistently lame, because just like so much television fiction, their stories are shaped by people who don’t trust an audience to handle anything but common television tropes. Add to that, the necessity of re-introducing the audience to the whole story at the end of every commercial break, and you have a whole bunch of fluff. If you are watching one of these documentaries for 8 minutes or so, half of that is reiteration of whatcame before and half is telling you something that won’t introduce anything new into the world of your present understanding. It really isn’t worth the time it takes to watch it

Or even to fast forward through it.

There are some amazing documentaries out there. They are not made for television.

News: I never noticed this pattern until I left off of television for awhile, but once I went without for a few years, it jumped out at me plain as day. If you were to measure the amount of time most news programs tease a story over the course of a day and then measure the amount of time they spend on the actual story, you would find that the former often dwarfs the latter.

All day, some of these stations just keep telling you about what’s coming up on a certain news segment that evening. The show starts, and they remind you about the story t the beginning and the end of the first segment. They do a commercial break and then they tell you the story is coming up soon, then remind you its coming after covering something else. This happens again, because they saved the big story for last. Finally, the story comes up and in the 5 or so minutes that follow, they add 1 or 2 new pieces of information to the stuff you already knew and the story is over before you even begin to get into it.

If these guys spent half as much time covering a story as they do selling it, they might be worth watching, but that’s a damned big if.

Drives me nuts!

Good: What I like: There are certain things I enjoy more once you stay away from television for awhile. I just can’t find many patterns to them. I do think it’s mostly in the area of humor. Because I am not constantly exposed to some clichés, they seem less cliché to me. So, a show that is actually just recycling that one great inspiration from the first season may get a bigger laugh out of me than they would if I had been watching it all along. Others in the room may wonder why I am laughing at all, but for me, the joke is new. Their delivery is polished, and it’s perfect. I’m laughing my ass off at a joke everyone else already finds tiresome.

Random Television Sets: The first thing most people do when they walk into a hotel room is turn on the television set. I still did this for years after letting go of TV in my own home. Somewhere along the line I stopped doing that. Nowadays, I will stay for several days in a hotel room without even looking for the remote, much less hitting the ‘on’ button. It’s the same when I visit other people’s homes. If television viewing is the activity of the day, I used to plop down and enjoy it with them. Nowadays, if someone is doing something else in another part of the house, I am a little more likely to seek them out than to sit down with the television viewers.

***

My significant other, Moni, has very different ideas about television.

She likes it!

After some pretty serious battles over the matter, I finally surrendered, and we ended up with cable service connections after all. It’s a big house, I can usually escape the television if I want to. I do find that a couple of decades without the box have left me much better prepared to just walk away fro the television set than my younger self could manage. I can look at a television without feeling the overwhelming urge to sacrifice my day to its mind-altering effects.

This is a relief.

When that cable guy first showed up, I had visions of a hours spent grumbling in front of reality television or some such atrocity. I felt like an addict teased with my former drug of choice.

Happily the temptation has proven less than tempting.

For the most part.

***

One of the unexpected benefits of life with my own personal ambassador for television is that she has introduced me to a number of shows I missed during my years away from the box. The experience is hit or miss for me, but the hits have been worth the time.

Arrested Development: This was truly a brilliant show. I am sorry I missed it the first time around, and ever so grateful to have been introduced to it after the fact. I could watch the whole thing again, to be honest, and some day I probably will.

I gushes because it’s good.

Becker: Amusing, but not enough to keep me watching.

Gilmore Girls: This is also amusing, but somehow, I doubt that I’m in the target audience for this show.

Friends: I remember really enjoying this show when it first came out (back when i still had television service. I particularly enjoyed a lot of the Chandler humor, specifically, the way his tone of voice often failed to match the content of his words. He could concede a point with all the conviction of a man declaring absolute victory. (That still makes me laugh.) And of course, the girls were crush-worthy. None of that mattered by the end of the first season though. The show was already old, and frankly the Ross character was so far under my skin, the very thought of watching another episode made me a little queasy. I mean, well done to David Shwimmer! A lesser actor could not have made me hate his character so much, but I do think I was supposed to like him. I just don’t.

Moni watches friends all the time now. I have several episodes memorized, just from chance moments passing through the living room while it plays for the umpteenth time. …Grumble! I still laugh at some of the jokes, and I still cringe at others. Ross still makes me want to gouge my eyes and ears out with a broken ink pen.

Monk: This was really clever. The cleverness got old though. I enjoyed a season or so, and that was enough.

Myboys: One of my old college buddies plays “Kenny” in this show. I knew it was a good run for him, and I was happy to see him have it, but I had no idea how cool the show was. When Moni met Mike at a New Year’s Party, I finally got some notion of just great that gig must have been for him. (She totally freaked!) Moni made me watch the entire series of course, and I enjoyed every episode of it.

Now if only Superstore would make more use of Mike!

Lost: We watched a season or two of lost, and I just wasn’t down to keep at it. I get tired of story lines that keep pulling the rug out from under reality, and this was clearly a worst offender. (I had heard complaints about this feature of the show before, and I must say, I was surprised to see just how bad it was.) Why invest yourself in plot point if the writers feel free to take it away in the next episode and just tell you the whole thing was an illusion, only to rip up the new reality once again at the start of the next season.

The Mindi Project: This is fun.

Community: I had no idea Chevy Chase was on television back when this was showing, and I can’t believe I missed it. Also, I think I was 2 or 3 seasons in before I realized Donald Glover was Childish Gambino. Moni was playing the America video, and I think my response went something like this;

“Hey Donald Glover is doing a parody of the America video, but why would he make fun of that… You know, he’s sticking pretty close to the original here, he.. oh!”

Ah well, I’m old and I’m white. I’m really not supposed to know about rappers anyway, am I? Anyway, “Community” was fantastic. The paint-ball episodes are especially brilliant. Hell, they are absolute genius. I don’t mean ‘genius’ for television. I mean genius! I would watch the whole series all over again, just to see one of them one more time.

Walking Dead: I tried binge-watching this. The zombie scenes get old when you watch them back to back. My internal monologue usually goes something like this; “Hit him in the head! No, now, hit that one in the head! Be careful, somebody is going to slip or something and one will almost get you, then someone will fix it (usually), and then you guys can just hit the rest of them in the head….” Suffice to say, there wasn’t enough good stuff happening outside that theme to sustain my interest. I quit a few seasons in.

Downton Abby: This was interesting. It was also irritating. I may try to explain both feelings in a post some day.

Supernatural: This is the best and worst of television for me. There are times when this show reminds me of those days sitting in front of the television because that’s what I wanted to do at that moment and the story line just wasn’t quite bad enough to change my mind. Seriously, the endless plot twists with angels and demons and various powerful entities grow tiresome. A bit like all the warp-drive talk on Star Trek, the world-building narratives in this show just get old for me. That said, I am actually amazed that they somehow landed on a final story-line in which the heroes of the show actively plot to kill God himself.

..and the fan base is right behind him.

(Chuck is such a dick!)

And seriously, that is brilliant! Getting to this point has occasionally been a little tedious, but the shear audacity of this final plot line is just amazing.

When Supernatural is at its best though, it is when they are doing one of their satirical episodes. Super natural has done some absolutely amazing stories commending on aspects of popular culture or various television tropes. The trickster episodes are good for this. Whether Sam and Dean find themselves in a completely different kind of of show, or suddenly deprived of their role as protagonists in the series, I know damned well I am going to enjoy what follows. Those episodes are right on par with the paintball episodes in Community.

****

Ah well! I’m not entirely sure what all this adds up to. I haven’t even talked about what television meant to me as a kid. Like so many children, that box was my main baby-sitter, and it had an awful lot of time to influence my ways of looking at the world. That said, this post has already gone on for far too long.

I am mostly talking about a medium that is rapidly evolving into new things. Many of the patterns I grumble about here have already changed. Others are changing now. Whether that is for the better or for the worse, I do not know. One thing that strikes me as I look up at the post above is just how much I have to say about television for somebody who has actively tried to avoid it for much of my life.I still say ‘no’ to television a lot, but as the rambling words above demonstrate, it is still a large part of my life.

Television is a big part of modern life.

Big enough to reach even its nay-sayers.

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If a Crotchety Old Man Posted on TikTok and Not A Millennial Noticed….

15 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Generation X, Internet, Microblogging, Online, Phone, Quarantinelife, Social Media, TikTok, Videos

Just me and my Covid beard doing the grumpy old guy thing. Still haven’t decided what I think of the place.

My Gal has probably got in the spirit of things down a little better than I do. Her stuff is actually kinda fun.

Ah well!

https://www.tiktok.com/@northierthanthou?lang=en

@northierthanthou

just wrong! #beer #disaster #fixed

♬ original sound – northierthanthou

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Alpha Schmalpha!

20 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Assertiveness, Bias, Gender, Gender Roles, Judgement, Leadership, Men, Perception, Women

DSCN0687It’s become a commonplace observation that women often get called a ‘bitch’ for doing exactly the same things that earn men a reputation for strong leadership. It’s a good observation. Whatever the mental twists and turns that explain this tendency, there is something about gender that seems to skew perception of assertive behavior, making roughly the same conduct objectionable in women and laudable in men.

The problem is ubiquitous. If you think you are an exception, then you probably aren’t. It isn’t necessarily a function of conscious bigotry and political commitments to support feminism don’t in and of themselves resolve the matter. I expect many well-woke folks have caught themselves grumbling at that bitch over there even as they admired this man over here for behaving in roughly comparable ways. (I expect many more never caught themselves doing this at all.) It’s a latent bias hard-wired into the social patterns of our daily lives and reinforced by countless layers of stereotyping and gender-based norms, many of which don’t come with obvious red flags telling us, “this way lies misogyny!” You have to think your way out of this kind of bias.

And then you probably have to do it again.

…and again!

…and (you get the idea.)

One thing that does bother me about the observation in question though, is that it’s practical significance is usually taken as obvious. When this observation is made, it is usually made in the service of getting us to reconsider harsh evaluations directed at assertive women.

“Okay, fair enough,” I usually find myself thinking. But I think there is at least one other implication here that doesn’t get near enough attention. If perhaps a lot of us should rethink our condemnation of misbehaving women, I think it’s at least as important to consider that maybe a lot of us are far too easily impressed by obnoxious behavior from men. Perhaps, we need to get a lot better at telling the difference between a man showing great leadership potential and one who is simply acting like an asshole.

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A Late Night Conversation

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

#Hypotheticals, Couple, Devotion, Funny, Humor, Love, Questions, Revenge, Violence

Elaborate ScenelMoni: honey if a man shot at me and I died, would you avenge me.

Me: mmmm …maybe.

(Whack!)

Moni: you wouldn’t avenge me?

Me: I’d step in front of the bullet.

Moni: Awe!

…

Moni: But suppose you don’t get there in time, would you avenge me?

Me: What did you do to this guy anyway?

(WHACK!)

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A Joke from a Bygone Era

06 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Boot Camp, D-Day, Dad Jokes, Humor, Jokes, Military, Normandy, Training, War

My father served in three wars. He didn’t see action until Korea and Vietnam, but like so many young men from his generation, on graduating from high school, Dad signed up for service in World War II. He  spent the balance of that war as as an airplane mechanic working on Corsairs.

Dad had plenty of war stories to share at the dinner table. He had more stories from boot camp, then anything else, which is saying something, because his actual war stories were pretty amazing. Of course, Dad spared us the worst of it. Being the youngest, I was probably spared more detail than my siblings (though I did know what every one of the weapons in my green soldier pack could do by the age of five).

Sometimes, Dad would just tell jokes. Jokes he and his buddies had swapped over the years. I remember one of them. It seems so corny now, but I used to laugh and laugh. It was definitely my favorite. I’m sure, a lot will be lost in translation here, but I’ll try to convey it as best I can.

***

A young recruit shows up to boot camp late. He goes to get his gun and the man in charge tells him, he’s too late. They are all out. Not knowing what else to do, the man breaks off the end of a broom stick and says; “See here kid, whenever they tell you to shoot, you just point this stick at the target and yell “Bangity-bang-bang!”

Kid says ‘okay’, but what about a bayonet?

Guy takes one straw from the end and ties it to the end of the stick and says; “Okay, so whenever they tell you to stab something, you just point the stick like so and yell “stabbity-stab-stab!”

So the kid goes all the way through boot camp that way. He thinks he might have the idea, but he’s really hoping he’ll get the real thing soon.

Only he doesn’t. The kid’s unit gets rushed out for the invasion, and he gets all the way to Normandy and he’s still got his broom-stick in place of a gun. The kid tries to tell somebody, but they just push him into the landing craft. He actually storms the beach with a broomstick in his hand.

And then he sees a German (Dad, might have used a different word), and he doesn’t know what to do. the German is shooting at him. So, in desperation, the kid points the stick and says; “bangity-bang-bang!”

And the German dies.

Kid can’t believe it! But he’s surrounded by Germans, so he tries it again; “bangity-bang-bang!”

The next one goes right down.

So, the kid just keeps doing it; “bangity-bang-bang! bangity-bang-bang! bangity-bang-bang! bangity-bang-bang!”

…and the German soldiers go down every time.

He storms a German machine gun nest and kills a bunch of them saying “bangity-bang-bang!” Then one charges at him. He doesn’t know what else to do so he points the end of the broom-stick at him and yells; “stabbity-stab-stab!” The guy falls right down.

So the kid just keeps going, all through D-Day; “bangity-bang-bang! bangity-bang-bang! bangity-bang-bang! bangity-bang-bang!”

And the Germans just keep right on falling down.

Except this one big guy.

That one German just keeps coming.

The kid points his stick and shouts; “bangity-bang-bang!”

The German keeps coming.

The kid points the stick at him up close and yells; “stabbity-stab-stab!”

And the German just walks right over him.

And as he does, the kid hears “tankity-tank-tank!”

 

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Self-Awareness and Internet Dating Profiles

03 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Dating, eharmony, Internet Dating, Match.com, OKCupid, Plentyoffish.com, Self, Self Awareness, Self Perception

I can’t really remember when I created my first profile on a dating website. It’s been a very long time since I was active on any them. What I do remember was how conflicted I was about doing it, and how that made every step of the sign-up process really irritating. When my chosen username kept coming up as already used, and adding digits didn’t seem to help, the result was a username that reflected my irritation. (No, I’m not posting it here.) I told myself I would change the name later, but I forgot. Soon, the first question I received from any women I contacted was about the name. For a time, I entertained the notion of changing it, but I soon realized something. The women I actually connected with found the name humorous. Those who didn’t like the name weren’t going to stick around long anyway. So, if my sarcastic username was a deal-breaker, it was probably just as well that the deal was broken anyway. It was a useful lesson, one that served me well, I think.

Another lesson, I don’t think I really got at the time was just why I found the whole thing so irritating to begin with. Oh, there can be lots of reasons to be nervous about dating sites (or dating in any context), but at least one of them would be this, it’s hard to tell people about yourself. Really hard! Of course, doing so for the purpose of making a personal connection ups the stress level considerably. So, in retrospect I really think a good deal of my discomfort was probably normal. Internet dating begins with a whole bunch of writing, writing about yourself, and that is bound to make people uncomfortable.

It’s been a long time since I’ve scanned the pages of any dating sites, and even longer since I did so for reasons other than idle (possibly morbid) curiosity, but a few of those thoughts that formed in those odd days of trying to find a match are still with me. I could tell a few horror stories. Hell, I’m probably featured in a few horror stories myself! More to the point, I keep reflecting on all those profiles from back in the day. They were an education of sorts. I may or may not have gotten the lesson right, but whatever it’s worth, I thought I’d share a few observations on those profiles.

Note: Just about all of my observations would relate to the early 2000s, which is when I was on these sites. If things on the net-dating scene are now different, well then get off my lawn anyhow! (Age happens.) Hell, I don’t even know if people are still doing this. I think so. Anyway…

First and foremost, it’s hard to escape the notion that most dating profiles aren’t all that accurate. Most seem to see this as a reflection of dishonesty, and I can certainly think of a few women who may have deliberately misrepresented a thing or two on their profiles. Mostly , I think the problem is a bit deeper than that. The vast majority of us (both men and women) aren’t all that sure how to describe ourselves. We may have a notion or two in mind, but these rarely stand up to scrutiny. If someone describes themselves as ‘outgoing’, they probably have a vision of a certain kind of context in which they really will be outgoing. What they don’t think about is the many contexts which will find them sitting in the corner quietly. That’s not even all that much of a problem for most people, not until they meet someone who thinks they are outgoing because they specifically said they were on a profile designed to help you figure out whether or not you want to meet them in the first place. Thus, ordinary human frailty comes to look like outright deception. Now multiply this by countless other descriptive themes and you have plenty of cause for suspicion, frustration, and general noncallbackalation.

The pattern that always stood out for me was pretty simple; time and again, I found that women had not described themselves in their profiles so much as an idealized version of the person they wanted to be. I really don’t know if men do that same thing on these sites (or if we have some completely different and possibly more irritating quirk), but I certainly saw this self-idealization in a good number of the women I met. In particular, I remember someone who had one of the most positive profiles I’d ever read. I’m not normally a sucker for warm and fuzzy sentiments, but I couldn’t help smiling when I read this woman’s profile, and it wasn’t just the ten-year old photo. She really seemed to capture a sense of what it meant to wake-up with hope and carry that hope with her all day. A few weeks after we began making phone calls, I found myself thinking this person complains more than anyone I know. Hell, she complained more than I do! (…and that IS saying something.) She wasn’t the sunny positive person in her own profile. If anything, she was chronically depressed, and probably had been all of her life. None of the positive themes in her profile made it into any of her communications with me. So, had she lied? I don’t think so. I think that bright and happy source of positive energy she put in her profile was what she truly wanted to be. That she wasn’t that happy person was sad, and I found the difference rather jarring, but I could never really hold it against her. Like so many others, she had imagined herself in terms of aspiration.

The gap between our own character and that we hope to have can be a problem, but how much of a problem it is varies. Some people have a constructive relationship with their ideals. It shapes their actions in meaningful ways, and they seem at least to move toward those ideas over the course of their lives. Others have long since relegated their idealized self to a kind of fantasy life. They don’t even hope to achieve that version of themselves, and they cannot even begin to think about what it would take to become a little more of what they would like to be. Here, I’m thinking of a woman who billed herself as a writer in her profile. She was working on her life story. When she shared the first page of that story, it contained more grammatical errors than I could count, to say nothing of poor stylistic choices, vague word choice, and a generally incoherent narrative line. Hell, I make plenty of mistakes in my own writing. So, I try not to cast too many stones, but this was just way too much. Her response to polite suggestions told me everything I needed to know about her project. She couldn’t even begin to grasp questions about how to tell her story. Spelling and grammar were beneath consideration, and she didn’t get any questions about stylistic choices. In her mind, that story was so compelling that she didn’t need to worry about the craft of telling it. Anyone who might bother her with such things clearly didn’t get it.

…and I didn’t.

…really, I didn’t!

Yes, the world is full of wanna-be writers (guilty as charged), but this one wasn’t even on the case, so to speak. Her idealized self wasn’t even an ambition. It was an indulgence. Like the depressive woman with a sunny profile, I could hardly blame this lady, though I did think for awhile about what it said about her approach to life. Being a writer for her was about getting away from the daily struggles of life, a chance to imagine herself as someone else for awhile, someone with more to show for all her struggles than she had at that time. To actually take seriously the task of writing her life story would make that too into a struggle. As much as she needed to be writing a book, she needed that writing to be free of hard labor. And thus, the appearance of a lifelong ambition within her profile turned out to be a lot closer to naming her favorite television show. Sometimes profiles are like that; information just shows up in the wrong places under the wrong labels.

One thing that came to jump out at me more and more over time was the number of pointless descriptions that never seemed worth reading. So many lay claim to being open minded, down to earth, and intelligent in these profiles. Almost everyone tells you they have a good sense of humor, even a great one. It gets frustrating to read such things, especially when the rest of the profile contains absolutely no hint of any of these qualities. When you see counter-indications, the whole thing just gets sad.

Somewhere along the line, I recall going through my own profile and taking out any direct descriptions of my own character. I don’t think I included many of these claims to begin with, but I do remember making a conscious effort to get rid of any that I might have been boring enough to write in the first place. I figured the old writing idiom that you should show people instead of telling them also made a good rule of thumb for dating profiles. If you want someone to know you have a good sense of humor crack a joke. To show that you can appreciate humor, explain what you like about your favorite comedy. Want someone to think you’re intelligent. Tell them what you think about something important to you. As to down to earth and open minded? …I got no suggestion for these cliches, other than simply dropping them. The point, is that people will decide for themselves whether or not you are smart, good looking, humorous, or anything else. It just doesn’t work to tell them these things.  So, just like you put your best picture in a profile in the hopes someone will find you attractive enough to want to chat, I reckon you do the same for character. You put things in the profile to display the character you hope you really do have. Whether or not that works will be a judgement your prospects make for themselves.

…which of course brings us back to the first problem, knowing yourself. It really is the tricky part to these profiles. I don’t say this in order to set up internet dating as a voyage of self-discovery. (Blech!) Really, I think the lesson here is a lot closer to a kind of humility. Most (probably all) of us don’t really know ourselves all that well. This is another reason to be a little restrained about your own self-descriptions. It’s also a reason to be a little compassionate when you discover the difference between the profile and the person you are actually meeting. That difference is going to be there. So, I figure we should try to be a bit generous whenever we notice it in a dating profile.

…or anywhere else for that matter.

***

It should go without saying that none of my comments here should be taken in the spirit of authority. Like many I found internet dating to be a rather frustrating experience (which, I suppose, makes it an awful lot like ‘regular’ dating’). I met a few women this way whose presence in my life was a genuinely positive experience, but the majority of contacts were disappointing to at least one of us. So, these aren’t the pro-tips of a champion internet dater, not by any means. They are just the observations of a rather awkward fellow who happened to do this for awhile.

***

A couple random observations:

  • When speaking to women about their profile pics, I found an awful lot of them favored one of their least attractive pictures. If there was a pic that I particularly liked, it was often one she was thinking about deleting. There is probably an interesting lesson in there about self-perception and physical beauty, but I wouldn’t be too quick to suggest it applies to women only. In my case, the pic I liked the best (or hated the least) was the one that almost cost me a few replies. Some pic I hardly thought twice about was usually the one they liked. Guess maybe it’s hard to tell what others really find attractive about yourself.
  • It’s easy enough to see that people may not want to meet too quickly. Lots of reasons to take it easy! In time, I realized that meeting up too late could be an issue as well. Actually, the process of meeting seemed to involve a few stages; a transition to email, another transition to phone conversations, and finally a meeting (with perhaps a second one and so on). I think the transition to phone and then to actually meeting can come too late in the dialogue. The issue here is imagination. You just can’t read too many messages without imagining all the rest. You fill in your sense of the other person with a voice, a sense of body language, intonation patterns, etc. In the context of dating, this too gets filled with hope. You imagine their voice a certain way, their gestures, the way they look at you when they speak, and countless other things. So, if you’re not careful, the person you meet won’t be able to compete with the one you’ve imagined while messaging back and forth. …and of course, visa versa.
  • Kids are fine, but they don’t belong on the first date. …and you will probably regret making an exception. (At least I did.)
  • People often make multiple contacts on dating sites, partly because most contacts come to nothing. If someone stops responding, there is a good chance that they have begun seeing someone in real life. That may sting, but it probably shouldn’t. More to the point, the transition to actual dating is full of hazards. So, if you wait a week or two, there is a good chance that things will have already gone south and she may be free again. She may even be wondering how to re-initiate. Whether or not that is a prospect worth following depends on a lot of variables, but sometimes it’s worth considering.
  • Lots of people put way too much stock in personality tests.
  • Shirt off and/or posing with guns or weights may work on some women, but the ones I met sure did spend a lot of time griping (and laughing) about men with that in their profile.
  • I figured it was always best to meet in public for an event planned to take an hour (lunch, dinner, or drinks work just fine). Optimism regarding a first meeting should take the form of leaving time open afterwards, NOT committing yourself to spend hours together at some event from which neither of you can easily escape.
  • I once said to one date; “I can be nice to anyone for an hour.” The next woman I met put that claim to an awful test. …speaking of self-awareness!
  • I met a couple women who circumvented many of the problems mentioned above by letting someone else write their profiles for them. This might have injected a little more objectivity into the narratives, but in the long run, I don’t think it was helpful, because their descriptions didn’t carry their own voice. I just had to get that much further into an exchange with them before I gained a sense of their approach to things. …which may be an important lesson in itself. People don’t really learn about each other by collecting a set of facts about them; they do it by interacting, by seeing and hearing the other person in action. What you communicate about yourself, or what others may say about you, will never be quite as important as how you say it, and that only works if you yourself are willing to be the one saying it.

 

 

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