George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
There was a time just about when Burning Crusade came out that I played WoW. My god that game kept me out of trouble (albeit my soon-to-be wife despised that I played it.) I loved it. It's the only game I ever really got into, and I was well into my 30s at the time. I thought about doing the WoW Classic when it was released but I simply don't have the time now, as a husband/dad.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
People are assholes. Also I haven't heard / seen the word "Jewess" in a long time.
Don't.
Treat video games as you would sugary drinks, staying up past midnight, sleeping until mid morning. Delay the acceptance of these habits as long as possible, until the likelihood of them becoming habits dwindles and a certain ability to self-regulate has developed. The trade-off is simply not worth it.
I never played video games growing up (well we didn't have them, although I played Adventure and Pong on my friend's Atari), nor even was I allowed in principle to buy comic books, which were seen as brain rotting by my parents. By the time I could buy them on my own I just wasn't that interested.
Others may disagree. My sons now are fixed to their phones and often playing some game which, because of its design, not only pulls in their attention but cannot be, as in the old days, simply paused, without suffering some in-game loss. Predictable tension occasionally ensues.
In any case the toothpaste will make its way out of the tube, it's only a matter of time. In Japan I'd never homeschool as the socialization aspect of school is vital to functioning in society, but I am no longer very savvy how anything works in the US.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I'm going to push back on this posited scenario slightly, although your guess could be spot-on. My guess: Runaway teen 16 year old girl, dude is himself somewhat aggressively flirty with her. She, having been perhaps exposed to unwanted attention at home (or expelled because whatever authority figure in the house found her too promiscuous, or whatever) is nevertheless not used to attention from non family males, and is thus receptive to a degree. He portrays himself as earnest, helpful, promises she'll be fine, come on, it's a few nights. Perhaps gives her a drink. Or something else. In the course of the evening he asserts himself physically, and of course she is now helpless and once again at the mercy of a shitty adult. Sex occurs, and because she is 16 and not particularly confident to refuse she lets it happen. The dismissive way he treats her after this encounter then reinforces in her mind that she has been used and manipulated.
She goes to the authorities. They hear her case but realize the can of worms that would be opened, and, short of anything but circumstantial evidence, her word against his, and faced with a shitshow where race will be a factor, they quietly gull her into dropping the whole thing. Maybe her family gets wind of it all, wishes to have no scandal (a raped daughter is hardly a trophy to be put on the mantle) and drop it.
In the interest of justice.
Or sure, maybe she was just a roller who he caught and kicked out and she tried to have him arrested. We don't know.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I agree, for me it's just an example of frustrating wording, in a situation where a considerably more concrete reason seems appropriate.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I've been paying for Plus for about a year now. It is far better than it used to be, but really needs calibration. Talking to ScarJo was interesting while it lasted, but the voices now all annoy me and I never use them.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo 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
1mo ago
How can a person be both a- and trans-gender??
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I do not long for these days, but there were times when my dad would have my brother or I pee in glass Coke bottles, presumably to save the time and keep driving. These bottles we would have to then balance carefully until he did pull over, at which point the pee-filled bottles he would have us place gingerly on the roadside, for some hapless cleaner-of-highway-shoulders to dispose of, I guess.
Ah, the 70s.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Secrets of that magnitude are somewhat more difficult to keep these days.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
You might be surprised at the number of evangelicals (I am not suggesting that's where TheDag is coming from) who claim to see Trump as a godly man. I am unsure how, or if it's just because of the bible-holding charade of a few years ago.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Very interesting. I'd never do the cave thing, ai think, at least not unless I had to. Looking up that spider-eating thing confirms it.
Japanese war crimes were certainly brutal. And I remember having a moment of "Is this cool?" about 20 years ago reading about a local man (since dead) who was remembering his time in Unit 731--like, not from jail, from his kotatsu table in his living room, talking to a reporter. That did seem odd. But I've seen odder here. The guy did express remorse and confusion, and clearly lived with at least the Japanese version of guilt for his past. I suppose that for me, at the time at least, having grown up in the states, I didn't feel this was sufficient punishment.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo 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
1mo ago
My poor white grandparents ate chitterlings (god what a spelling) but my parents used to make fun of them (the chitlins, not the grandparents). Who's eating the pickled pig's feet? I think that's deep country, and maybe also to a degree black-coded. Ironically my Japanese wife, herself brought up in the Kyushu countryside, really likes them, called here tonsoku /豚足.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I was reading along fine until your critique of Japan, which I found rather superficial. You may be right that Japan is in decline, at least according to your own metrics. But I don't feel the ways you suggest can be felt when you're eating the egg sandwiches and milling through Shinjuku station. But then I'm in Kansai. Nothing feels wrong to me about the old men in Mah Jong parlors or the Komeda Coffee chains that actually spell coffee in kanji (珈琲), at which point you know you're not in Starbucks. To me, these places are amazing. Old men in old men coffee shops, grandma playing ground golf in the fenced in area beside the rice paddy -- these are people living their lives--and, crucially, living their lives socially--not rotting in front of a mobile phone. Or at least not yet.
I've spent less time in France, but when I was there, in particular when I was in Paris, I had less of a transcendent experience than you seem to have had in other areas. And when I return to the US I find myself typically in a constant state of wonder and affection for almost everyone I speak to--generally interaction is the key. I can easily despise randos I never talk to.
Just a few thoughts. I enjoy effort posts almost always even when I disagree with the vibe.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Your second and third paragraph here appear to restate your first paragraph without adding anything, unless I'm missing something.
Would those 4 years in Chinese med school have had any practical training? It's one thing to do four years and become a clinic doctor seeing patients and prescribing allergy meds. It's another entirely to be performing surgical removal of chest tumors. That just seems grossly inappropriate. Med school here (in Japan) consists of six years, where around 4 years are classroom general instruction (with some practical work, eg anatomy in cadavers, etc) and the last two are practical specialized training. But to become a surgeon would require anywhere from 5 to 8 additional years after the first 6. In addition to passing various national tests and board certifications.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
As a total aside it's interesting to me that you quote that Whittier poem, which I remember from an afternoon at my grandparents' house (probably 45 years ago at least) when I had hauled out my mother's high school poetry class textbook--meaning the book from the class she took in high school in 1958. I don't know if I've even seen that poem since then.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Were you just doing the running part? I can't imagine pull-ups help a crocked back. Sorry about the back, btw, I'm just obsessed with this idea of so many pull-ups.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I hope this is not some asinine tik tok thing. He must have recently been around a pool or watched someone around a pool? A cannonball might have been less painful. But possibly more damaging. The good thing is kids have less distance to fall. My youngest son, at very young age, after repeated warnings not to run on the slippery tiles surrounding the hotel pool, proceeded to do just that, fairly quickly losing his footing and falling backwards onto his back and head. But he was small and was right back up fairly quickly.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
Use of rhetorical styles (zeugma, etc.) unselfconsciously, purpose, poetry, alliteration, consonance, and, of course, smarts and clarity. Many in this forum amaze me routinely.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
This may be possible but it it's not as if these countries were just introduced to electricity last month.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I can't work out an angle where she might've been "suicided" as she had already spilled many sacks of beans. Possibly she was covering for her husband's abuse? There was a record there apparently of him beating on her. At the same time he was the one who took out a restraining order on her. None of it makes sense. I suppose nonsensical murders and suicides regularly occur, but I followed the Epstein story fairly closely, read her depositions, even tried to read her poorly written (but interesting) book online (most of it.)
She and Maria Farmer both seemed mildly unreliable. Farmer (also in terrible health) is a bit too loud on the wealthy Jewish angle and prone to bizarre accusations ("Ghislaine gave me cancer!") to get much airtime (unlike her perfectly respectable sister Annie) but Giuffre was more interesting as she had been, for all I could see, a very willing sex slave (if such a thing exists) or at least was aware she was living a much more glamorous life than the one she had left. Apparently Maxwell and Epstein even wanted her to have a kid for them? That's slave, yes, but it's Number One Slave. Millions all over the world have far worse fates.
I'm not saying any of it was wholesome, but it seemed like squalid amoral people doing squalid amoral things, just instead of a trailer park they were on private jets and private islands and a lot cleaner. There's a passage in Giuffre's book where she complains about how healthily Epstein ate and how she herself just wanted a burger most of the time. It's fascinating from a class divide perspective.
And then she saw an out, and eventually realized she could parlay all her terrible self-interested choices into a narrative of victimhood and heroism, and that's the card she played, to apparently grand results--on the surface.
What's sad about this--what's even sadder than all the other sad parts--is that Giuffre apparently never stopped making bad choices. But who knows.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
While this seems true, arguably this was from literary circles, who would also have panned amy number of popular novels for the masses.
I'm thinking specifically about the "sweet tang of rape" line. Don't get me wrong, I've read all the Bond books except The Spy Who Loved Me ( I couldn't handle the jarring perspective change). But that line sort of sticks in the head.
I don't know. My first reaction would be that it's because she's female, but I suppose girls and women do take to games. Just not her thing, I guess, and the vision of me sitting there gazing at a screen for hours was sufficiently far from the man I guess she thought she was involved with that she balked.
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