Today’s (disappointing) realization.
Damn, but I am average.
(I’m turning comments off, I really am not fishing for compliments or arguments to the contrary… but seriously, do you know how many amazing people there are out there? (and this from me… the one who doesn’t like people.) Damn.)
Permalink Comments Off
This is interesting…
I think I’m going to start linking these interesting comments to their fact basis…hold tight, it might take me a little while.
(Please feel free to post links to the relevant parts in the comments.)
THE BEAST 50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008
(click link to read the full list)
Read the rest of this entry »
Oh Fred you are such a cynic.
No, honey, I’m a realist.
One thing I hate about people is the act of building something/someone up to ridiculous heights, expect miracles and then, when reality happens they act all hurt and angry that promises were broken.
This is what I am afraid of with Obama.
Granted, he hasn’t promised miracles (no really, he hasn’t-look at his speeches.), and yet, people look at him and weep in gratitude that he is in the Oval Office.
(Well, I ‘m relieved that Bush is out, but I’m also trepidatious because the people who put the shrub in the office FOR A SECOND TERM (Seriously people, what the hell were you thinking?) after it was proven he has no skill at managing and destroyed a country based on a bad bit of info and still refuses to admit it was a bad idea… are the same booger-pickin’ morons that Obama has to deal with now.)
But, we have a crap economy which has its nasty little roots based in Reaganomics, a war debt that is absurd and problems with the future that won’t just go away (and promises to get worse and worse as my grandparents and parents age and use up the money set aside for all of us (also, if you think you are going to see a penny of that social security that you are paying a good chunk of your yearly salary into, you are seriously delusional. My ‘retirement’ choices are based on it being my primary support system as I will probably need to have a part time job until I die or can’t work anymore to pay for insurance and day to day doodles.)) Not only does Obama have to deal with the current mess we are in, the mess we have coming… he also doesn’t have absolute power.
Think back to junior high social studies, kiddies. There is a bi-cameral legislature and the president.
A system of checks and balances.
So, anything that Obama wants to do pretty much has to be approved by the other guys.
..and this is a good thing.
I remember watching the overwhelming YES vote to the patriot act (with a small, small incident of dissent asking for a discussion of some of the stickier bits) based on scare tactics that hearkened back to the McCarthy era.
Gah.
Our government caved and fell to cheap scare tactics (If you aren’t for us you are against us! If you questions me you aren’t patriotic! and all that bully crap.)… which lead to years of our basic rights, as listed in the constitution, eroded slowly and surely away… and the smug, arrogant looks on Bush & Cheney’s faces as they said it was “for our own good” disgusted me.
I WANT our congress folk and senators to have cojones (and brains while we are wishing for things).
I WANT them to say “Hang on a minute…” and look at what they are signing.
Hopefully, Obama has a bit more honor than the shrub. I don’t know the man, I have heard speeches, but other than that, he’s a politician and that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a good person.
It just means he’s a successful politician and a handsome, convincing speaker.
(Case in point, Kennedy… good lookin’, died early, left a pretty corpse and everyone loves a martyr…but great leader? Maybe not so much.)
I just know that 1. there will be missteps 2. that Obama doesn’t have absolute power (and even if he did, I don’t know that he could clean up this mess that quickly) and 3. he has to get the right legislation/decisions approved by the selfsame fussy, bitchy pile of politicians that is in D.C. and that he might not be able to get this working very quickly; the U.S. is a great lumbering beast, it isn’t known for cunning shifts in direction.
So, no, I am not weeping in gratitude that Obama is in the Whitehouse.
I am more pleased that McCain ISN’T in there (because if you thought the shrub was bad, McCain would have been worse. And even though Palin could have charmed the foreign dignitaries, any socialite wife can, but they would have dismissed her as a moron and asked to sit at the grown-up table…). So I’ll reserve my happiness and stay cautious for now.
We’ve got a shitload of hard choices and heavy lifting for the next 10 years.
Gird your loins, girlies.
(oh, and fair warning bloggers/tweeters: if I catch wind of you weepers doing a 180 when something gets wonky, I will shred you. I know who you are.)
hmmm
still doesn’t feel like the holidays yet.
Yule now, but still not feeling it.
Ah well, at least I’m getting some stuff done.
me, too
“Case in point: On a recent evening, Columbia University held a well-attended workshop for young academics who feel like frauds.
These were duly vetted, highly successful scholars who nonetheless live in creeping fear of being found out. Exposed. Sent packing.
If that sounds familiar, you may have the impostor syndrome. In psychological terms, that’s a cognitive distortion that prevents a person from internalizing any sense of accomplishment.
“It’s like we have this trick scale,” says Valerie Young, a traveling expert on the syndrome who gave the workshop at Columbia. Here’s how that scale works: Self-doubt and negative feedback weigh heavily on the mind, but praise barely registers. You attribute your failures to a stable, inner core of ineptness. Meanwhile, you discount your successes as accidental or, worse, as just so many confidence jobs. Every positive is a false positive.”
Nagging self-doubt is what I’ve always called it.
sounds familiar
“I received a grade of “Unsatisfactory” in Social Development from the Mansfield Public Schools that year. I did not work to the best of my ability, did not show neatness and care in assignments, did not coöperate with the group, and did not exercise self-control. About the only positive assessment was that I worked well independently. Of course: then as now, it was all that I could do.”
“Oddly, the book that helped pull me into the human race was Emily Post’s “Etiquette,” which I had picked up in a moment of early-teen hippie scorn, fully intending to mock what I was sure would be an “uncool” justification of bourgeois rules and regulations. Instead, the book offered clearly stated reasons for courtesy, gentility, and scrupulousness—reasons that I could respect, understand, and implement. It suggested ways to inaugurate conversations without launching into a lecture, reminded me of the importance of listening as well as speaking, and convinced me that manners, properly understood, existed to make other people feel comfortable, rather than (as I had suspected) to demonstrate the practitioner’s social superiority. I revelled in Post’s guidance and absorbed her lessons. And, typically, I took them too far: even today, I would never dream of addressing a teen-age busboy in a small-town diner as anything other than “sir.””
“I suffer little stage fright when it comes to public speaking or appearances on radio or television, but I continue to find unstructured participation in small social gatherings agonizing.”
[NYT article (blissfully unregistered)]
Your attention please.
To whomever googled and found my site with the phrase “can you put baby lotion on chihuahuas”… I wouldn’t recommend it.
Try feeding your puppy brewer’s yeast.
I’m sure the ingredients in baby lotion is not good for a dog to lick….but thanks for asking!
duh
“Moore launched into an 11-minute rant on CNN’s “The Situation Room” after host Wolf Blitzer and chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta highlighted alleged false information in his documentary.
After the director vowed to CNN to “become your worst nightmare,” the network released a statement, answering his accusations and admitting to making two mistakes.
During Gupta’s on-air report, he said Moore had inaccurately claimed Cuba spends $25 per person on health care. However, they have now admitted that his movie estimates Cuba’s spending at $251 per person. CNN said a transcription error had lead to this mistake.
In CNN’s statement, a spokesman said, “It’s ironic that someone who has made a career out of holding powerful interests accountable is so sensitive to having his own work held up to the light by impartial journalists, as we did in our examination of ‘Sicko.’”“
impartial journalists? maybe. But, using erroneous facts and still calling yourself impartial? I don’t think so.
And also that they are effectively calling him a liar on national television because their own fact checkers couldn’t be bothered to extract their heads from their arses… and they wonder why he got all bent out of shape.
I don’t blame him.
Someone once told me that I reminded them
of Myra Langtry in The Grifters.
