George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
I noticed that. Suing the tri-Delts. Was she actually in that sorority? Suing her own sorority is going to cut into her fan base. Or maybe they'll all rally around her; it isn't as if logical consistency is always required in such matters. (I mean by this that certain subgroups of progressive white people will profess to despise everything that characterizes their own lives, e.g. "whiteness," wealth, capitalism, and so on.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
23hr ago
They do, thanks. Guy Raz, I knew a Guy Raz once, wonder if it is this same dude.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
23hr ago
Very true. I was never better behaved than when I was sitting at home playing WoW for hours into the evening. Then when I quit I would go out drinking into the great constant party that is Osaka, and...well that wasn't ideal either.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
Congratulations to you and your missus. I was entering the portal of BC as a druid when it first dropped, slightly older then than you are now. It was a fun game, and I played mainly because I had a group of similar dudes I knew in real life who played. Quit at Pandaria, never looked back, but it was a great time while it lasted. My wife did not find my gaming particularly attractive.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
That link is dead for me, just fyi.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
Indeed. I've known many who share your views, though would not have been able to state them so succinctly.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
I think largely it's his self-satisfied voice, and my sense that he imagines his own glistening bubble of experience generalizes. He's at his best I think when he doesn't simplify or draw satisfactory conclusions. That shows intellectual rigor, and I expect intellectual rigor is why many people read him to begin with.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
Scott's writing sometimes annoys the shit out of me.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
I wouldn't suggest I have a handle on modern Christianity, though your use of the word passionless is brutal and poetic. I would however suggest that hating evil and hating people are quite different. But I am not personally interested in having a meta or even base-level discussion on Christianity as a phenomenon in the world. Nothing against you as an interlocutor, just not my thing.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
That is one of the premises--but Lamb is not incompetent. He is just a slob and has been eroded into a slob of a man. Even Taverner recognizes his worth. I think I was hoping Cartwright would develop somehow. Otherwise it's just Keystone Cops, the MI:5 version.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Ah, so that is what you meant by synthetic. Yes. Soapy in its way--or like the drum of a washer, as you say (I never got that). I guess we'll have to just disagree on this one, but again I think it's interesting how smells hit people differently.
Another 13, if you will forgive the synethesia, is like a bright, light blue sky, but with white clouds, some thick, some less opaque, floating in wisps and tufts. Polo cologne was like its bottle--deep murky green with dark brown highlights, leading to a dark well. Some scents are like bright purple and orange mixed together, and those are the ones that I can't abide. A lot of perfumes marketed to women hit me this way--busy, clashing, neon but dark. I have trouble describing them in marketing terms like woody, amber, citrus, base notes and sillage, but I can see the scents in my head.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
It was Kierkegaard who said in Works of Love (1847) (I did a paper on him in undergrad for some reason):
I wonder if a man handing another man an extremely sharp, polished, two-edged instrument would hand it over with the air, gestures, and expression of one delivering a bouquet of flowers? Would not this be madness? What does one do, then? Convinced of the excellence of the dangerous instrument, one recommends it unreservedly, to be sure, but in such a way that in a certain sense one warns against it. So it is with Christianity. If what is needed is to be done, we should not hesitate, aware of the highest responsibility, to preach in Christian sermons—yes, precisely in Christian sermons—AGAINST Christianity.
I didn't take this to mean Christianity was dangerous in the sense of violence, but in the sense that it will upend one's life. If I were to start noticing motes in eyes, I'd say I have met precious few I'd say lived up to my idea of Christianity. Maybe one or two of them in a church. And none of them were particularly into proselytizing. And all of them held a kind of charitable goodwill and patience toward others--that always took the form of actual behavior and proactive doing.
I've also met a lot of people who claim Christianity as their guiding principle and are full of a seething anger (I'd characterize the stereotype of the Westboro Baptist members here. Mind you just before I attended Catholic churches for a few years I had been attending Baptist churches.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
I suppose I resent as a viewer the notion that I should invest time on plots involving someone who is an irredeemable idiot.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Ambroxan, synthetic ambergris. Interesting, thanks. A pheromone and is-it-bullshit deep dive may be in order.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
It's interesting, my read on you (and I try to keep Mottizens sorted in my head) is a Christian who takes his faith seriously. I associate that (perhaps wrongly) with goodwill toward one's fellow human, love one another, if he hath all this yet hath not charity, etc. So... that, but you also have this other, angry, intolerant, legalistic, pessimistic side. I don't think you're as old as I am but maybe you've personally had many negative experiences? None of ny business. We all contain multitudes, to misquote Whitman.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Now that's a car part I've not seen for a long time.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Interesting. Wifey also poo-poos the A13? My own wife is blasé about scents in general (and at one point in our relationship I realized she actually likes certain odors I may have after exertion that I would characterize as stink) but she didn't have anything negative to say about Another 13.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
I feel River should have grown a bit. It annoyed me in season 4 (where I stopped) that the writers were keeping him in a kind of development stasis. In particular after some of the wild shit that had gone down in the previous season.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
I got through season 1 because I like Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, though the same issues bothering you bothered me. It was jarring how blatantly Bizzarro world that was. The setup in general of the Slough House is a little reminiscent of something LeCarré might have written as a novel, without some of the vulgarities. And I liked LeCarré.
To respond, season 2 I remember as better, season 3 has more action but really goes off the rails plotwise (not necessarilyin a culture war way). I had to stop at season 4 because it seemed to me one of the leads (Jack Lowden's character) seemed to have been written by someone who only read the first pages of season 1's script, decided they didn't like River at all or men generally, and dropped any other possible character development. But maybe it got better. I think there are 5 or 6 seasons now.
I often wonder whether these shows are bound by diversity riders but also characterization clauses (e.g. the female black character must be smarter than the white male) or similar. Or maybe the writers are pandering. Or, of course, true believers.
In season 1 episode one I was thinking "Wait she said Asian male, that guy looks Indian." Then I realized.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
America is one long humiliation ritual
Care to elaborate?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Got it, thanks for the clarification. I still carry the banner for face-to-face interactions but I'm perhaps in a country where that is more a pleasurable experience than many others.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Damn. Reading that blog I am reminded of Christopher Hitchens' bon mot: "I believe everyone does have a novel inside them. In most cases that's where it should stay." At least she know (or says she knows) she's neurotic.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Yes, I saw the Simpsons episode years and years ago. Thank god people don't use sonder uninronically here (different origin, I know.)
I don't doubt the other terms are genuine words and not simply inventions, I'm just suggesting that I only see them used online.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I won't say no to the accusation that I only spend time with oldies, at least as far as English speakers, but I find many terms often used online are almost never spoken (except by people who are, perhaps, very often online). Overton Window, Dunbar number, etc. In particular in these virtual pages I regularly encounter terms that seem shibolleth-like. Every culture (even an online culture) develops its own sociolect, I suppose.
Thats an extreme simplification of Napoloen Chagnon's research.
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