Eccentric Flower talk:201006/Back Away
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:201006/Back Away
I posted pictures of Duff Beer this morning!
Seriously, I have to be very careful these days about what I am reading online and looking at in photos/video, because I get very angry, frustrated and depressed by things like giant unstoppable oil spills and selfish greed and so forth. Sometimes I can't read the comments on your entries because someone has irritated me so much (not you, usually). That doesn't mean I'm not aware of these things, that I don't try to help financially or otherwise, but that I need a LOT of distractions.
I tend not to write controversial things anymore because I don't want to waste energy on fights that seem to have no productive use.
-- 17:38, 29 June 2010 (BST)
As a former idealist, I spent many painful years struggling trying to reconcile how I was taught the world should be with how it actually was, trying to build logical structures to explain how the principles that were embedded in me as I grew up led to observable reality.
I wouldn't go back to those days of meaning and belief in right and wrong for anything, but I fought tooth and nail to try to hold on to them, and watching you go through those struggles is hard.
It's worse because there are people who aren't "smart" enough to try to reconcile those things, who do allow for big gaps and manage to blissfully stay with their notions of ethics and morals (and religion and what-have-you). Back when I was a believer, I envied them immensely.
And, yes, that nihilism can flow from existentialism is scary as hell; it's damned hard to let go of meaning because it means we have to make our own. That ain't always easy.
So, no, no ridicule here. That stuff hurts, hard. I've been there. Just a gentle observation that somewhere and somehow (with a little help, although I don't often talk about that bit publicly, I will if asked directly and privately) I found my way through the meaning to a existentialism that's been way more fulfilling.
-- 17:46, 29 June 2010 (BST)
Oh honey, you're so not alone. I know it may feel you're alone, but you're definitely not (tho not everyone may be broadcasting their presence to you). Lots of us are frustrated with the state of the world - the crap political bullshit, the torn up environment, Rush Limbaugh...and all of the other things that are easily awful enough to make me question that God is anything other than a device of man to get you to eat your peas and tithe to *somebody* on a regular basis.
If "ranting" or just doing a typed spew on your blog helps you cope, then keep doing it. Who the fuck cares what other people think about it? Oh sure, you can say that YOU do because you want to be loved (and who wouldn't want to be loved?) but the interwebs isn't exactly a place where you'll find consistent adoration.
I remember seeing on the Babycenter boards - where preggos were supposed to support each other - that women would just as quickly tear each other down as build each other up, mostly because there was a lot of that black/white millenial-style thinking w/r/t stuff that just seems so silly to fight over (like whether you breast or bottle feed, or whether you cloth or disposable diaper). Srsly, I think maybe it was a bad idea to put so many hormonal women together.
For whatever it's worth, remember that you always have a centrally air-conditioned place - with powerful wireless! - to escape to, if you just want to be around kids and noise and mess. ;-) We love you. And that's not just me being all lovey-dovey-we're-family...I just want to remind you that there are butterflies and dogs with their tongues hanging out the side of their mouths, and good beer, and kielbasa fresh off the grill, and double chocolate brownies and all kinds of other things that make the world happy.
And, when all else fails, let me know you need to run away and I'll make you a lasagna. That should help, right?
-- 17:57, 29 June 2010 (BST)
I confess, I don't read the puzzle posts nor the computer wizardry posts (either games or programming). Other than that, I've been reading the things you write for over ten years, and I will keep right on reading whenever you post. Looking forward to the next one.
-- 18:15, 29 June 2010 (BST)
I just don't understand why it's so difficult for some people to hear the difference between "I disagree" and "You're wrong." F'rinstance, when assessing somebody's hair style, I'll hear "Her hair looks awful," not "I THINK her hair looks awful." The former leaves no room for any other opinion. Period. It must be nice to be so secure in one's beliefs and opinions that no one else's assessment could possibly matter. Kinda puts a damper on any further discussion. So I tend to just walk away.
Okay, I tried to send you a Doonesbury cartoon and my transmission failed--said a field had been flagged as spam. Eh?
-- 20:22, 29 June 2010 (BST)
Mel:
Right now being depressed/angry with the state of the world is the correct attitude.
Unfortunately I agree with this completely.
-- 22:22, 29 June 2010 (BST)
I know that I value reading your opinions even when I disagree strongly, and I'm not sure whether I've always been good about expressing disagreement instead of contradiction. And the recent cocktail posts, while totally over my head, make me wish I had a well-stocked liquor cabinet. In a decade or two I want to put you in charge of my minor children's education in drinking properly.
Take all the break you need. Several years ago I made a promise to myself -- inconsistently kept, natch -- that I would stop reading journals or public opinion blogs authored by anyone I didn't have at least a brushing face-to-face acquaintance with. That's my filter, and it keeps up pretty well.
Astute readers with too much time on their hands might notice that you're one of the exceptions that slipped through.
-- 06:41, 30 June 2010 (BST)
Yeah, it occurred to me the other day that we'd never met face-to-face and we probably should!
-- 15:41, 30 June 2010 (BST)
Bunny: Some code I have never had time to dig for thinks that trying to include an image in one of these comments is spammy behavior. Since hotlinking images is almost always a bad idea anyway, I haven't cared much about defeating it. Can you put in a link instead?
-- 15:44, 30 June 2010 (BST)
That's the problem, it WAS a link. And my HTML code was correct. I dunno what went wrong. I'll try to find it from a different source and give it another shot. Maybe the fact that I ganked it second-hand from the newspaper source I read made it look like an ad or something.
Here, let's try <a/href="http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2010/06/26/">this one.</a>
Now mind, this is sent in the spirit of gentle teasing, nothing more nefarious. I feel your pain, but see the writing on the wall. Our local rags are so poorly edited and biased, I've taken to only getting the Sunday edition, for the two major crossword puzzles.
-- 16:53, 30 June 2010 (BST)
Oh, and the comments under the strip were interesting. You are not alone. I personally had not thought about carrying the laptop to the john.
-- 16:56, 30 June 2010 (BST)
I know and read the non-cheerful publication you read, and more's the better for it. How about another one sort-of from England? I think you might enjoy New Scientist. Really, it's got sciency stuff and often quite funny stuff, and it cheers me up a lot since I got a subscription instead of picking it up on the newsstand (when I often forgot or missed it). Buy a copy and see if it pokes you the right way.
-- 21:30, 9 July 2010 (BST)
Thomas:
"Fortunately, most of you will have concluded about two paragraphs in that it's about me and what I think of the world, and so will not actually have read it. I've determined that those are the ones people don't read. If I rant about some definite issue in the real world, such as the firing of a general, people read it so they can tell me I'm wrong, but if it's just me talking about the inside of my head again, I'm pretty sure everyone has been trained to skip it by now."
Silly, this you talking about the inside of your head is exactly the thing I cannot get anywhere else. Of course I read it (also, I skim even the entries that sometimes are about topics that may be alien to me just in case a nugget of you talking about the inside of your head has been hidden among the data or opinion that may be of no interest to me).
I understand being embarrassed (as it is very uncomfortable not to live up to the expectations one has about oneself), but I believe it is safe to bet there will be no upcoming ridicule due to you for writing or feeling this.
-- 17:35, 29 June 2010 (BST)