George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11mo ago
Agreed. It was absolutely horrible. Part of the sloppiness was maybe because it was pissing down rain and they weren't expecting that. But the bizarre non-binary TV clips and essentially Greatest Showman vibes from everything else made me feel like I really am just out of touch with anything related to entertainment now. And what's with a black French female pop star named Aya Nakamura who is in no way Japanese? I guess I'm glad there's no outcry of Cultural Appropriation, but I can't help imagine if a white guy with dreadlocks and calling himself Abdou Njie had jumped up and started rapping the heavens would have fallen. The Japanese TV announcers even pointed out awkwardly "Her name is Aya Nakamura but she has no connection with Japan."
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
May I offer a reply that is neither a suggested location nor anything else you will probably want to read, and may in fact be advice you do not want to hear and did not ask for?
Yes? Great.
You mention having children. Wherever you go, if you go anywhere, should be chosen with their childhood, upbringing, and environment in mind. I say this as a parent who has made very specific choices, some of them possibly wrong (living extremely far from one set of grandparents who would have loved to regularly see grandchildren and who are both now dead) but also some probably right. I include language in this (if you don't understand the language it's still a very safe bet that your child or children will outpace your fluency within five years or less. Which is fine, but means also you'll have difficulties dealing with their school--teachers, other parents, their friends, their friends' parents, etc.) Also schooling, and if you homeschool or whatever there is the notion of isolating your child in a possibly unhelpful way from potential peers.
Basically if you're going to have kids --and do, certainly, if you feel you want to--they ought to be arguably a main factor contributing to your other life choices. I cannot stress this enough. Also you will find many who disagree with me (even here, no doubt), but I'm right and they're wrong.
My train is here, but I think I said what I wanted. Good luck.
Low effort post really wants to be incoming. Instead I'm going to wax nostalgic and write another scrollpast.
Many years ago I got high for the first time with my good friend, R. Let's just call him R. It happens to be his real first initial, but whatever. I loved him dearly. Past tense not because my love has ended, but because he is dead now; I'll get to that.
R was the son of a very interesting father who probably once worked for the CIA in some capacity in the 70s. R's family, due to his father's interesting career, in R's childhood at least, traveled all over the world, in particular the middle east, and he had the tchotchkes and prints and flotsam of such trips all over his high school downstairs room (he was from a wealthy family and his "room" consisted of the entire downstairs.) R's dad--who treated him shamefully post-divorce until he decided he wanted to bond with his only son--had similar decor in his own home: Original folk-type paintings of sheiks, large brass platters on the wall, various brass tea urns and pitchers, حُقَّة, etc.
R told many evocative stories about his childhood travels, mingling these with reflection on the pain of his parents' divorce ("like getting shot with a shotgun in the gut"), his sadness at the inevitable loss of the childhood idyll, and his suspicion that he would, if he ever became a father, fuck up his own children (He never did. Either.) One memory of his that sticks, oddly, with me, I who may be the only one who has any memory of it now: He, his father, his mother, his sister, on some beach in Greece, happened upon an American woman sunbathing topless. They--his family, the woman--happened to be once-removed through some friend back in Alabama, and ended up cooking an octopus in the sand.
My own childhood memories were of sitting in a screened-in deck at a rented cabin in Gulf Shores staring at jigsaw puzzles and giving myself third degree burns upturning an electric pitcher of hot coffee. Less romantic.
Anyway the first time I enjoyed the intimate ministrations of Mary Jane I was probably 17 or so years old. This would have been circa 1985. Rocky had reached IV. Brazil had just come out. It was the year of The Breakfast Club. Don't you. Forget about me. The first time I got high, possibly smoking whatever parts, possibly the female sex organs but I doubt it seriously: I felt nothing. I sat there over our board game of trivial pursuit ("Who killed Jabba the Hutt?" So easy as to be laughable, but these were the days before you could look anything up in five seconds) and, after smoking at least one shared joint and taking several hits off a water bong, asked: "What am I supposed to be feeling?"
I have since learned that this is not unusual the first time. One expects the drunk, the alcohol buzz. It's different. I would get high many times after this, though always only with R. This was as much about naïveté as trust: I didn't know anyone else well enough to know whether they got high, or when, or how often. I knew R well enough to know all of the above, and also to be invited along. I remember he would sometimes share a joint with me and then have to be somewhere else--his social life was always very active. He eventually became some sort of crystal meth dealer, which, contrary to my own understanding of how the world should work, altered his social circle such that he did not have to hang around with the likes of me, but was often surrounded by extremely confident and well-dressed people: leggy women, beautiful female French exchange students, sardonic boys with what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of witty comments and, ever ready, subtle putdowns. In other words, The Rich.
I remember sitting on a rock in a creekbed, midnight. My parents were long asleep, not knowing where the hell I was but trusting that I wasn't doing what it was I was, in fact, doing: Getting high with my feet dangling in the water. Everything was funny, or extremely important, or beautiful. R had a cassette deck with batteries and he took it out and made a recording of us talking on that creekbed, sitting on that rock, and I still have this recording--it is, alas, on the same cassette that he made it, in a pile of cassettes my wife periodically urges me to toss: For we have no cassette player. When I read reddit comments or any ripostes of the young, I sometimes remind myself of this: Someday they, too, will have memories they cannot access simply because they don't have whatever the future equivalent is of a fucking cassette player.
R and I stayed friends for many years. Have I mentioned he was fat? He was. I remember walking through supermarkets with him and his picking out the Snackwells and counting the grams of fat (not, in those tender years, concerned with the sugar). He lost the weight, then gained it back, then lost it again, then gained much of it back. It kept going like that. Fast forward through time, through his great lake parties, his girlfriends, both true and not, his studying to be a chef in Italy, his eventual marriage to the woman I think, in my worst moments, may have been the instrument of his death. His last email to me of his health problems--liver failure. Or maybe it was kidney failure. Or both.
When I flew home to see him in his hospital bed the doctor assured me his brain was already so full of ammonia that he would have no idea of what was going on. And yet when I had entered the room no more than twenty minutes earlier, R had grasped my hand, sat up, and looked at me with what I can only describe as anger. That he was being kept alive. That he had been reduced to this bloated mass surviving only because of machines. Or maybe he was still pissed at me for something I had done 20 years ago.
He died, had a funeral, I delivered the eulogy, the mic didn't work, then probably three years later his dad was reduced to a bedridden shadow of his former robust self. I remember holding his hand at his makeshift bed in his house while his home nurse gave us a moment. "I commune daily with R," he said, speaking of his son, my friend, the guy I had many times gotten high with. "He speaks to me," he said. I had my doubts. I, who in the years since R had died had tried all manner of ways to get in touch with him--astral projection, lucid dreaming, everything but paying a village shaman to do us a seance. Because I loved him, and he was gone too soon, and to this day getting high I remember him--though of course to get high in Japan will land you in all sorts of hot water. And so I don't. And this isn't some opsec bullshit. I truly don't. Not that it matters to any of you.
But if I did, and when I someday surely again will, I'll ask whoever it is I get it from for the female sex organ of the cannabis. So thanks for the tip, is what I'm saying.
Edit: Leia. Princess Leia killed Jabba the Hutt. Of course she did.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2mo ago
Yes. I clicked on the court documents and that's all the reason given: "In the interest of justice." No subject, no verb, just that phrase, which could mean anything.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2mo ago
I'm always stunned when I read that people say Japan ignores its war crimes. Like in what sense? Who are we imagining when we write this? There have been multiple official apologies, there's even a Wikipedia page dedicated to this. It's true there isn't the state mandated self-flagellation and officially mandated distancing (from Nazism) of the type you see in Germany, and it's also true that some deniers and apologists get airtime. But they're not the majority. And anyway what would be preferable? National self-hatred?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7mo ago
My condolences. You surely know this already, but if you are blessed enough to live long, you will see a similar tableau many times over--relatives, your own parents, acquaintances, and friends. I could quote a poem to you, and almost did just that as a reply, but it seems dull to do so.
Delete if you want but I think this site needs a bit more personal raw honesty about concrete matters and your post certainly qualifies.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11mo ago
Unwellness, then Wellness Wednesday
I know the Sell-By date has long since passed for this kind of write-up, and I also realize that for most everyone here the type of experience that I am about to relate in this comment may be all-too-familiar, and therefore reading the account of another person's experience boring as hell. So, with those two important criteria fulfilled, let me launch into another tale of physical woe.
I finally got COVID.
I had successfully dodged it a number of times. Co-workers were felled by it. Too many students to count. Friends' aunts and cousins back home died from it. My wife and two sons all had it--twice--and during those times I was the caretaker, launderer, cook, and general nursemaid. But seemingly immune. I did wear a mask when in the room with them at those times, washed my hands a lot, kept opening up windows for ventilation, and I was vaccinated with the Moderna 3 or maybe even 4 times, though the last of those was over a year ago.
My resistance to the virus--impressive, I thought --apparently crumbled when my 13 year-old last week contracted a fever and a cough, and I, like the Irish consigliere Tom Hagen in letting Sonny drive off wildly, was overconfident, when I should have redoubled my precautions. I guess. Anyway, I got it. Or it got me. Bam. They got him on the causeway.
It's not what I expected. Back in 2021 when she had it, my wife, who had also been vaccinated, was down for a day or so. She'd sleep downstairs in the tatami room, occasionally moaning. I brought her okayu on a tray. My sons, also a few years ago, as expected were really only feverish for one night and coughed a few times and spent the rest of their required (by their school) quarantine contentedly watching YouTube in their bedrooms and eating curry on makeshift tv trays. (If anyone here has any idea what a tv tray is.)
The second wave through our household was similar, only their illness the second time seemed even more brief. Everyone seemed to be getting it in that era; my sons' classes would regularly shut down for days at a time due to clusters. You were always hearing so-and-so has COVID. My father, who never got it, was nevertheless killed by it, as the protocols in place in my hometown in the US kept him isolated in his late 80s, alone with only my less-than-winsome brother, whose lack of initiative, coupled with everyone staying away, slowly broke my father's mind. That's a whole other story that I'd rather not tell. But I have my own, personal, reasons to hate COVID as well as the resultant policies surrounding it. I only mention this to say this is not a political post or a comment on greater policy issues in Japan or the US.
So my famille had it a few times. I'd go to work after the all-clear and the hospital staff had me wait in a big ET tent. I took many home covid tests, and a few in said tent, where the doctor, who apparently knew me, would speak to me half in English, half in Japanese, meanwhile ramming the elongated nasopharyngeal swab so far in I expected it to pop out my throat like some David Blaine routine. These tests were all always negative. And then, last Saturday, a positive.
COVID-19, five years late, put me down for a good three days. Even with paracetamol every 4 hours, I had a temperature hovering at 100 F/38C for about 72 hours. Body aches, fatigue, blurred hallucinogenic thoughts, etc. All the best things. Luckily I have had no real respiratory issues besides an occasional cough. My image of serious Coronavirus complications were always of someone lying intubated and unconscious in some racked up hospital bed, breath coming out like Darth Vader--not the deep, resonant , fearful Vader but more like at the end of ROTJ when he's just had his arm chopped off and been force-shocked halfway to oblivion. Thankfully that doesn't seem to be my destiny. So far. But I could have done without that fever. Very little consistent sleep is possible. And what sleep does come is nightmarish. The mind really unhinges, and I've never enjoyed that sensation--if sensation is what I can call it, and it probably isn't.
I am now sitting here with a mild headache and very little energy, but even this is absolute bliss when juxtaposed with the twisty turn-y Sweat Hell of that fever. It's quite something just to not be sick. I suppose that's the reminder.
So. Be smart, contrary, snarky, and argue about shit that probably only tangentially affects any of us, I'm all for it. Carry on. But stay well, fellow travelers.
Upvotes don't necessarily mean "Agree with everything stated in the post", especially, possibly, with posts by Kulak, who can be relied upon to post passionately held, longform, brave, and often objectionable posts on a periodic basis. I could be wrong and there are several people who buy into the Indian hate, but that's not my experience here.
Edit: People are free to hate whoever the hell they want. Not trying to suggest there's a Motte consensus.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2yr ago
This strikes me as unnecessarily pessimistic, though I myself do not live in Korea and have only passed through there and therefore I cannot with complete confidence say that you are far from the mark. I do, however, live in Japan, which has--to some degree--similar cultural mores.
In Japan (and be warned: Incoming personal viewpoint not based on hard data and dancing perilously close to the most shameful generalizations of nihonjinron), as perhaps everywhere, it takes all types. You do have what used to be called kyoiku mama who were obsessive about education for their children and putting them through the grinder of cram schools to get into "top schools" (scare quotes because such schools are only "top" due to their bafflingly rigorous entrance examinations--once students are enrolled, the so-called 人生の夏休み or "summer vacation of life" begins, when the pressures and strictures surrounding high school and prepping for the Big Exam are behind them, and they are essentially guaranteed to both graduate and receive a job of similar clout as their school, regardless of academic performance.)
But not all mothers are kyoiku mama and not all students are obsessive about the status of their universities. The ruling class and future bureaucrats all have a school they typically attend (a public university, in particular Tokyo University), but your average joe (or joanne) who wants to work at a car dealership or electronics store needn't worry about shooting for that goal. From not quite birth, but probably from at least high school onward, the trajectory is set--and it's not all the doom and gloom of what you are characterizing as a "miserable wagecuck." Nor is "the prole life" seen as such a horrible fate.
I do not suggest here that everyone is happy--no more than they are perhaps in Hungary, or Australia, or the United States. But I would suggest that to the degree people outside Japan wring their hands or shake their heads about karoshi (death from overwork) or the punishing workweek of the salaryman, they probably make the mistake of imposing their own cultural norms and expectations on a context where they probably should not.
To get back to Korea, I imagine, as in Japan (and more and more in the US), fame is the magic fairy dust that creates an aura of wonder around even the most humble and banal personality. To be famous is to be notable (regardless of why), and in a society that to some degree perhaps values conformity (as in Japan and Korea) ironically this is an acceptable way to be a nail that sticks up. Thus: A certain percentage of families will shepherd their children toward this (for that vicarious fame-by-proxy) and a certain number of teens with any sort of performing talent will naturally be drawn to this particular candle flame simply because of the promise of glamour.
In other words, the pull needn't be a draw away from the workaday of the office society (which not everyone is a part of anyway) or some horrible anonymity in a suburb (in fact this is to some degree a goal to shoot for--a similarity to everyone else, a "joining society" [shakai sanka is the term in Japan]). The draw is that youthful aspiration, Fame, I'm gonna live foreevah, I'm gonna learn how to fly, etc. Not everyone has it; but a lot do.
Finally, the cutthroat aspect: Everything seems cutthroat. In Japan even getting a driver's license is an unimaginable hassle of paying thousands of dollars to go to driving school then take a test where the most infinitesimal missteps will cost you enough points that you fail--and are not told why. The typical Japanese professor at my university will administer an exam, mark it, release the scores, but not tell students which questions they missed. This is for you to go sort out in fear and trembling. Being on a cheerleading squad is cutthroat. Being in any sort of anything is cutthroat. It makes sense then that being in an idol group (which will have a cultural capital regardless of the fame of the group) is also going to be cutthroat. And all the other contestants are also vying not just against you but with you, you're all in the same boat, etc. etc. This imbues a great sense of group and belonging, to, at least Japanese, and I imagine to Koreans as well. I noted that in that blogpost many, if not all, of the informants of the author were not themselves Asian. They happened to "make it" in the groups for whatever reason, but the cultural expectations and norms of the process were not part of their own emotional disposition, for lack of a better term, and in the end they balked at experiences that someone more imbued in the culture would not.
It's the 5th here but enjoy the 4th.
We usually do barbecue or mashed potatoes or black-eyed peas or something close to my roots, and hang the US flag out. This year the boys were going to be at sports clubs and wifey was going to be late, so I detoured through Osaka and headed in instead of out, and went alone and caught the Mission Impossible film before it leaves theaters.
It's always odd going to a movie alone. For me at least. Sitting through previews I am reminded of the banality of Japanese films. I think some Japanese actors and actresses are actually capable of amazing range, but most Japanese directors are hamfisted hacks.
Cruise had recorded a message for the Japanese audience in preview. He has a massively loyal following here, though obviously he's not as young and current as he used to be (I can relate).I came up watching his movies (he is only a few years older than I) and he's always reminded me of my best friend back home.
Watching the film I was, as usual, floored by his stunt skills. I've enjoyed the whole franchise (except MI:2, which remains for me unwatchable) and felt this ended it well. The plot itself took what had been caricature-like of AI in the immediate prequel and dialed the absurdity up to 11. But I didn't mind turning off my brain for that. It was a welcome relief to not have to ask myself how realistic the plot might be (answer: not) in our current AI-ubiquitous age.
I finished and walked out into the crowds in Shinsaibashi, mostly Chinese or Korean or other Asians, a few European couples or families, maybe some Americans with tattoos and blue hair. No one seemed to take any notice of me whatsoever. I took the elevator down with a dozen Chinese and on 1F wended my way through short shorts and miniskirts out into a warm wave of humid air and trees done up in purple LED lights lining Midosiji boulevard. I walked. Stayed on the surface and street briefly, then descended again into the underground, walked past more Chinese pulling roller bags, past Starbucks where inside the lonely hearts read at individual tables their little paperback books with plain paper slip covers to keep the title anonymous. Walked the walking escalator through to the Yotsubashi line. So many people staring at phones, or holding out their phones to selfie themselves, or live stream--I imagine I will be digitally removed as a background figure from many photos.
Walk more, walk through the subway turnstile that doesn't turn, down another escalator, wait, wait, the slightly overweight American girls in very tight clothing drag their luggage past. Soon I'm on a subway. There's a pretty blonde Japanese girl showing her midriff wearing these striped socks pulled to her knees She taps the pads of her fingers on her phone, long green fingernails on her index, middle and ring fingers. On her bag is a plastic tab with the black and white face of what's probably a boyfriend --he looks like he belongs on a wanted poster. Across from her through the thick of other riders is a beautiful young woman stepped out of a different movie, wearing a very nice dress you'd expect Audrey Hepburn would have approved of. But then we're near Kitashinchi.
An hour later and the surface train has thinned of people and it's just me and an old man who seems quite asleep. I disembark, take the up then down escalator, passing a high school couple who appear to be breaking up--he's looking at her, she's looking straight ahead. They're both very pretty.
The night is still warm and I forego the bus, which will not arrive for another ten minutes anyway, and walk the 20 minutes and 2225 steps home, where my family is finished eating and watching a music show where they all know this music that I've never heard sung by these groups I don't know. I eat some leftovers of steak rice I made the day before--no barbecue or peas, and I had forgotten to hang the flag in the morning -- and it's not nearly as good as I had felt it was when making it.
I'm asleep by 11. And now it's tomorrow. Hope your 4th there in your timeline and other dimension is more festive, but as equally peaceful as mine.
Edit: A fortuneteller predicted a massive earthquake today. So, hope that doesn't happen.
Edit 2: It didn't happen.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
26d ago
Perhaps it's Pollyannaish
You called it, right there. Not to say I don't sympathize. I've been called--online at least--a Pollyanna, a goody two shoes, and, once, a Candide. So it goes.
But this eventuality of "Aella's" should surprise exactly no one. The internet is the very definition of the mob. What's more surprising to me than that she unwisely pulled back the veil of Isis is her Captain Renault-like "shocked, shocked" reaction, which would seem performative if it weren't so pathetic. This was always going to happen and unless she does some serious scouring this isn't the end of it and it's only going to get worse.
I'm prone to quoting movies but that John Huston line comes to mind: "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." Unfortunately for this young woman it's far easier for a politician or building to last the requisite number of years. Easier for geiko I imagine, in that they are not technically prostitutes and do not base their charm in physical attributes alone (or even primarily), and create an exclusivity that the gangbanging harlot courtesan of many admirers doesn't.
That said, I'm with you in that I don't wish her ill. At the same time it's difficult not to feel some schadenfreude when I've long wished she would just stop her bullshit. Human nature suggests a doubledown and reversion to activism rather than the self reflection and life change I might prefer (but then I'm a judgmental Pollyanna).
Anyway what's for breakfast?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Advice, but not what you asked for: If you have essentially cut ties, don't worry about drama. You have just written that you hate the guy, and have called him a "scamming motherfucker."
Tell your 20-year-old friend exactly what you think and what he should (or shouldn't) do.
If you don't want to do this, just let fate take its course; it's none of your business at this point.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10mo ago
In Japan these are the things I have seen on people's phones, keeping in mind that it's rude to observe other people's phone screens, that there are little sheets you can put on your phone to prevent anyone viewing it at an angle, and that I prefer when possible to avoid being rude. These are in no particular order of frequency.
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Inane games. Battle games with little armies. Dragonball games where you wail on a computer opponent and then it wails on you. Candy Crush. That watermelon game that is similar to Tetris, probably. Other assorted time-sink mind-killing games.
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LINE. That's like Whatsapp ot whatever it is you use wherever country you are. Females tend to have hundreds of unread message indicators. The most I have seen is 127 unread messages. Reading and texting, often with long nails in a way I think I could not do.
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News sites with printed text.
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Either Instagram or whatever shows little reels (TikTok and YouTube now also do this so I don't know.) Lots of swiping, smiling, expressionless gazing, swiping, swiping, swiping.
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Twitter/X. It's still pretty big here I think. There was a recent kerfuffle about an Olympian (an athlete, not a god), I think an archer but maybe not, who suffered a bit of online bullying. Online bullying is a touchy subject here since the high profile suicide a few years ago of a television actress/talent who was sub tweeted relentlessly due to her performance on a reality show. You may know more about this than I do.
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Music Spotify maybe People gaze blankly with earbuds in in a way that must keep Ray Bradbury spinning perpetually in his grave. They pause occasionally to adjust volume or fast fwd. Or whatever.
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Cooking/recipe stuff. This may be specialized reels (see above). I do see lots of how-to cooking vids being viewed.
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Rarely, sports. The people who do this are usually older, probably retired men who don't GAF and sometimes watch with the volume on. This is annoying. It's almost always baseball. If it's a young guy it will be soccer and through earbuds. I have never seen anyone watching sumo on their phone.
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Dramas of some type. These days Korean dramas are big. In the old days Hollywood movies were much-beloved. Tom Cruise and maybe Tom Hiddleston (called Tomuhi here) may still stir the loins of some Japanese women, but these days the Koreans have definitely gained ascension in the movie/drama category.
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Delivery Health sites. Translation, Call Girls. They will be laid out in a grid for you to choose which girl you want. Admittedly I have only seen two guys on their phones doing this, perhaps on their way to some paid assignation.
I did ten but I could probably write more. Anyway that's Japan. And as I say I don't look very often, truly. I make it a point not to. But sometimes the trains are congested to an improbable degree and one sees.
And yes all very anecdotal.
Edit: All of this on public trains/buses fwiw
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
I did not watch my parents die. Well, I did watch my father die, or I got real close to watching it--he died in the night around 3 am, and I got the call in my hotel room at the airport where I was supposed to be flying out that day (I did.) But I had slept in his room and kept vigil when we knew death was very near. We (me, whoever else who also knew but wasn't there, certainly the hospice nurses, probably my brother) knew, we just didn't know exactly when. At the end (not the very end because as I say I did not see the very end) he had been found clutching his shirt (it was only a shirt front, it was for appearances for possible visitors--easier to maneuver him for being washed etc, explained the nurse, or caretaker, or whatever she was by training. A kind woman, or very good at faking kindness.) He had been found, anyway, clutching his shirt up almost above his chest, as if trying to tear it off, with--I was told with merciless accuracy--tears streaming down his face.
My dad had been robust. He had been neither soft nor weak as a man. He had never made a sound that suggested he was owed anything, or that the world was treating him poorly. Never uttered any complaint about anything, at least to my memory And this was a man who had nursed his wife (my mother) through the most degrading stages of cancer. When she died, finally, he once confided in me, he was grateful. He had prayed that God take her. He had said he was grateful that I had never had to see her in her final state (my mother had been an exceptionally beautiful woman in her youth). Age does its thing, though.
I write this to commend you for taking in your husband's parents in this way, for not every wife would. I also write it to hint at what no doubt you already expect, the thought that bleeds through each of your sentences here: It's going to get worse.
This isn't a warning. I am not giving advice. And true enough, I was (and am) 4,500 nautical miles from my home country's coastline, then if you just flew like a crow another 1900 miles. Then I'd be, or would have been, right there in the thick of it, scrubbing carpets out, making dinners and taking them in then taking out plates with food still on them. And the in-between time just stretches of Seinfeld reruns, or watching the frail old man who had once struck fear and respect in your heart fill books of sudoku puzzles, books you'll eventually collect in a Glad bag with every other bit of everyday flotsam and toss in the big green barrel that you'll wheel to the curb for trash pickup and burning. I don't have any high ground here. I was gone. And had I not been gone many, many things might have gone considerably better for my family (my American family, the one who had me the first part of my life.)
So what's my fucking point? You say you don't know how much of her inertia is her body's weakness, and how much depression. At risk of taking a monist stance, I'd say probably both. How can we know the dancer from the dance (apologies to Yeats).
It is what it is. In an upbeat film, she'd remember something or someone from Europe, or a dream she once had of seeing Sagrada Familia, she'd take the trip, there would be many comedic scenes of family frustration bound by love, and then the film would end, or she'd die in her sleep peacefully in the hotel bed. I like movies, too. I should write one. And who knows how close your reality will be to something less dark, more optimistic. I don't, certainly.
Do you have anyone you can lay all this out to besides your husband? (It's possible you can to him, but because it's his mom the dynamic of that conversation may not be ideal.) Mind you I come from a tribe that never talked anything out, and did its best to avoid any talking of any sort that would be in line with the American therapeutic chat up. But for some that helps.
My train is here. Sorry to end abruptly. I wish you good luck.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2yr ago
To be frank, my dad and I never had many overlapping interests, either. He was a big football fan, played it in high school. He had been a scoutmaster in his youth. I neither played football nor did he push me toward scouts. I liked watching movies. By the time I began watching them without him he had lost interest and thought movies were mostly silly. I liked reading books. He saw me reading a John Updike book once-- Brazil I believe, and this was the cover of the paperback edition I had. He scoffed and asked me if I really read novels. books like that (he was a type to judge a book by its cover.) My mom was an avid reader of romance novels so I guess he thought that's what it was. I don't know because I put it down out of shame and to this day still have never read it.
My point is I don't think I particularly was close to my dad, even in adulthood when I made efforts to be closer. Friends would come over and he would be garrulous, but once they left he'd sit with me in silence, seemingly completely uninterested. The main question he would ask when I'd come home to visit was "What's the price of gas in Japan?" Once he asked this twice on the ride from the airport. But that was years ago. He did seem to love his grandchildren--my boys. Though the fact that I married a Japanese woman I think always sat wrong with him. He at some point put me in a box that he felt he understood enough that he didn't need to think about it any more, and he closed up the box and that was that. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe that's what I did to him.
He died almost a year ago exactly (off by a few weeks as I write this.) I don't mean to get maudlin or personal, but anyway the way you were brought up doesn't have to be the way you bring up your own brood, should you have any later in life. At least, that's my thinking. My boys are still in the oven; not quite done yet, not quite grown. We'll see.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2yr ago
I live here (Japan) and this is only one aspect of Japanese law that makes me uneasy. I even pause when leaving online restaurant reviews for this reason.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Reddit is to my gears as a big bag of unshelled peanuts and gravel would be if thrown, bag and all, into a fine clockwork. There is only grinding. Short extremely niche subs, I can't stand visiting the site.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4mo ago
I found several parts of the article weirdly at odds with common sense interpretation.
This sentence, of Karl Popper:
Popper, in his sweepingly influential 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, denounced the idea of national community entirely, labeling it as disastrous “anti-humanitarian propaganda” and smearing anyone who dared cherish as special his own homeland and history as a dangerous “racialist.”
...is frankly bizarre. Popper did not denounce national community entirely, and didn't imagine any sort of patriotism as "racialist." He did argue against tribalism and extreme nationalism, but that's hardly the same thing. He opposed totalitarianism, yes, and national ideologies when they justified xenophobia or authoritarianism. He did question when national pride became linked to racial superiority or exclusion, but the book referred to was published in 1945!
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9mo ago
I agree with the other posters here suggesting shorter texts (even one sentence or less) are far better at maintaining a degree of mystery (and thus: interest). While laying all your cards face-up on the baize may seem straightforward, honest, reasonable, and even the Behavior That Was Asked For, that's only ever a strategy when teaching someone a new game--and usually what not to do.
Reworking the above:
Friday Evening
Me: … [local rock] concert. Let's do it.
Her: Ok!
or: .....
Either response is fine. As it is it took you several texts and a lot of hope to get to .....
Shorter sentences. Online dating isn't Motte effortposting. No emojis ever, for any reason. No exclamation marks. Suggest something fun. If she doesn't want to do that thing, be polite and move on. She will never refuse your advances directly, it's hard enough to do that in person--online she can just ghost you. Then if she gets bored or lonely she can reinitiate the interaction (Your self-respect should not allow that to occur.)
But again, always be courteous. Be courteous to a fault. Becoming the angry FuckYou guy just reinforces all popular modern stereotypes re: men. Not that you need to give a shit, but courtesy is a good thing.
People are saying church is lame. Why? It was her idea, though you brought it up. I agree church-as-date seems very unromantic and unexciting. It reminds me of that Life in Hell cartoon of biggest turnoffs before intimacy ("Dear father please forgive us for this vile sin we are about to commit.")
Anyway that's a You thing. We don't all run in the fast lane. I guess. The fact that she was responding with such relative vigor suggests she is either keen or mildly neurotic. Safe money on door #2 (see: I can't eat food around humans.)
Cut your loss, which is minimal. Next adventure begins any day now.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11mo ago
Surely you're not arguing that the alternative is to simply believe what we feel like believing? I don't consider myself a rationalist or an internet atheist but I regularly ask "where's the evidence?" and do not think I'm being particularly (overly) skeptical to do so. The comment by /u/Magusoflight was clearly an attempt at baiting, and I'd suggest we need far less of that regardless.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
And our children all above average.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
This is the kind of statement my father might have said, and clearly it's true. (of course he also grew up in Alabama in the 50s and 60s). Were the issue something different (were she taking a stance with which I had no sympathy) I might even find this slippery slope aspect worrying. I can't remember the MLK quote but the gist of it is that to be moral one has to break unjust laws. Or perhaps more aptly, to be a hero, currently, is to behave like a merely decent human being. (That's May Sarton via LeCarré).
I've always been admiring of Rowling and bewildered at how she has become the focus of such hatred for what seems to me to be an uncomplicated, straightforwardly moral stance. She's even said that in other contexts she would march for trans people's rights to not suffer bullying or violence.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
I have never known anyone to join the military because of pay. If anything, the military for many when I was younger was a way to receive training in some of the blue collar trades they would later join on discharge. Then of course some just joined to kick ass in Iraq (I was 21 when the Gulf War occurred.)
I was born and raised in the South fwiw, and though my own family also had its share of military service going back generations, I was, in my youth, much more a pacifist. I still did Peace Corps because you didn't just age up without serving your country in some way, or that was the thinking (and PC was in some way "serving" albeit that may have been my rationalization.)
Of course, times may have changed.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
Agreed, and I find the whole notion/question incredibly tawdry and symptomatic of cultural rot, even as a thought experiment. I'm sure that sounds condescendingly naive--and perhaps moralistic in a lowclass, statistically illiterate sorta way, apparently. So be it; I wouldn't have to think too much about this to type No.
Just as an editorial comment, one of your sentences contains 274 words, including 5 parenthetical comments nested within. That's a lot.
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