"Curmudgeon Emeritus"
Relationship Philosophy:
Happily married since the Reagan Administration.
lurkerhasarisen
When I do the ban/mute two-step I routinely remove all their comments. If you leave the comments up they can go back and edit what they wrote, but if the comments are gone then nobody can see them except the mods. Of course sometimes they don’t realize the comments are hidden from view because they can still see them, which is occasionally hilarious.
Sidewalk rule
Funny story from my distant past that’s tangentially related.
I was dating a girl and as we walking near a pier on Long Island we came across a goose. We didn’t have wild geese where I came from so I had no experience with them: I figured it was just a bird.
Anyway, the goose was really pissed off about our presence (in retrospect, her goslings must have been nearby), but that didn’t occur to me and I thought it was just a big, noisy, cute bird.
My date seemed alarmed and told me that they can be very aggressive, which was certainly news to me. Without any conscious thought I instinctively shoved her behind me and stepped between her and the goose.
Major turn-on, that. Who knew?
@lurkerhasarisen I always loved it when they'd impotently edit a removed comment to whine about their ban
Holy cow… that was wild. I watched it, too. I was surprised that the moderators weren’t all-in on Joe, but they were surprisingly neutral. I switched off the moment the chick announced that they were immediately going to start post-debate analysis; figuring that they would rely on spin to cover for his obviously unhinged performance. When I woke up this morning I saw that I was wrong: even lefty media outlets like CNN ripped into him, and even prominent Democrats are openly calling for Joe to step aside or be removed at the convention.
That’s significant: CNN never strays very far from what the Democrats want them to say, so the fact that the moderators played it straight means that they expected Joe to crash so they could immediately pivot to talking about replacing him. It’s also interesting that they anticipated that all they needed to do to showcase Joe’s obvious lack of fitness was to not prop him up.
The only questions are whether he’ll bow out voluntarily and who’s going to replace him.
Read More@lurkerhasarisen I was traveling last night and missed it and was shocked at what I heard on CNBC this morning. Checked WSJ and NY Times and same thing. It must have been really bad for those 3 outlets to characterize it the way they did.
If voting mattered (much) they wouldn’t let us do it. Note that Trump is the only major party candidate that TPTB have tried to keep off the ballot or otherwise tied up. We’re now at the point where the ruling party has arrested the leader of the opposition party and convicted him of a non-crime in a kangaroo court wherein the judge has donated money to the president’s reelection fund.
The fact that whoever is in charge is willing to 1) prop up a grifter with dementia, and 2) drop the facade and go full-on banana republic to prevent DJT from winning should tell us something. They really don’t want us to vote for him. One has to ask why that is. It sure as hell isn’t to “save democracy.”
Having FU money is pretty sweet. My life trajectory didn’t go exactly as I expected, but it ended up being close enough to put me in the position I’m in now.
Obviously we’re all products of things we can’t control, so I don’t deny that I’m blessed, but to the extent that I could influence the outcome I made some pretty good decisions and put in a lot of effort.
My wife and I are not “rich,” but I rarely think about what things cost. Every six or eight weeks I calculate our net worth out of curiosity. The last time I did that was the first time we topped a half-million dollars. That may not sound like FU money to some people, but 1) everything we have is paid for, including the house, so our outgo is far less than our income, and 2) it would take several million dollars in investments to generate the amount of passive income I get just by drawing breath.
If you drove through my neighborhood you wouldn’t think that you were among the wealthy. If you saw my house with the cars parked in front you wouldn’t think that the occupants stand out financially above the neighbors. It’s not about having what you want: it’s about wanting what you have, and we’re more than content with what we have. What isn’t apparent when you drive down my street is that everything we have is paid for. Are there houses that are bigger and newer? Yes. Are the cars parked in those driveways nicer than the ones parked in mine? Certainly. Do banks hold the titles to most of those houses and cars? Absolutely.
My wife and I both work, but 1) we don’t work very hard, and 2) we don’t have to work at all. I like my job and the guys on my crew are great dudes, but I’ve said many times that if it stops being fun I’ll stop doing it. We get paid below the industry standard, but we also have lots of time off, so there’s a degree of balance there. But one of the benefits of my situation is that I’m not wearing “golden handcuffs”… my company has to tolerate my non-monetary preferences if they want to keep me (and I would be very hard to replace unless they’re willing to go waaaaaay down-market in expertise). We had a corporate meeting where we flew in from all over the country and I laid into the project manager in front of everyone about something the company was doing. He had to stand there and take it. Mind you , this guy is my boss’s boss. Repercussions? None at all.
I would not have dared to do that if I didn’t have FU money. After the meeting he sought me out to assure me that the issue would be addressed.
We’ve been hella busy so far this year, but I’m only scheduled to work for 12 days in July, and then I’m off until the last half of October. I will draw full pay during that time, and I’m taking a class at my local community college just because it interests me.
Read MoreThat’s a great metaphor: the dance. It’s not just how you position yourself when you’re walking together, either (as I’m sure you know). Every interaction with a woman is part of the dance, and that’s okay, because dancing with your girl is supposed to be fun. As I and others have often stated with regard to relationships with women: if it’s not fun you’re doing it wrong (or you’re with the wrong woman).
Unless a girl is irredeemably feminist, a guy who “gets it” in the dance is a turn on. It should be effortless - spergishly following some social rule book won’t have the desired effect. There’s no universal checklist, and learning how to “read and lead” a woman on the fly is the adjustable wrench in the RP toolbox.
The “goose girl” I mentioned earlier wasn’t used to being treated like a lady. I treated her as one - not because she was a lady (she was far from it) - but because I’m a gentleman. When I held doors open for her she was taken aback… pleasantly so, and she let me know it, IYKWIM. If I hadn’t been voluntarily celibate she would have demonstrated just how much she liked that sort of thing.
Mind you, this woman eventually proposed marriage. I politely declined.
But those cases are different. When we were just out-and-about I could guide her with subtle cues: a hand on her lower back or a held-open door. When I thought she was in danger I shoved her behind me like I would do to a child. The context matters: sometimes the metaphorical dance floor is polished marble and other times it’s a mosh pit. The key to being a good “dancer” is knowing how to lead her wherever you are.
Read MoreI’m a “live below your means” kind of guy, although I don’t mind spending a bit on things that make life easier. My wife is even more frugal than I am.
For example, she’s really into British murder mysteries, and after she watched everything she could get from free sources I suggested that she just get a BritBox subscription. Even though it’s only a few bucks a month she wasn’t going to get it. I got it for her and showed her how to access it.
Mind you, if we wanted to we could get our hands on $100K in cash within a couple of days, and it wouldn’t impact our daily lives at all… it would just change a couple of numbers on a spreadsheet that I mainly maintain out of curiosity.
I think I screwed up. My TradWife was trying out some new recipes and realized that she didn’t have any onions. I was just screwing around so I told her I would go to the store to get one (I had to get a couple of items anyway). We decided that a yellow onion was the right choice for the dish.
As I was leaving, she said she also wanted green onions. Mind you, she was in the kitchen, but she wasn’t barefoot (she’s wearing purple slippers), and she’s definitely not pregnant.
Obviously that set off my Sigma sense because we all know how important onions are in establishing frame with women. What could this mean?
Anyway, I went to the store and got the stuff I needed, including a big yellow onion and a packet of green ones. When I came back she handed me a jalapeño popper she had made as an experiment (it was delicious), and started chopping up the big yellow onion. So far, so good, right?
After a minute or two I saw that she was crying… with a big knife in her hand!
Oh, snap. Just like Bravely Bold Sir Robin, I bravely ran away.
Was that some sort of test that I failed? Did I give her too many onions?
I’m so confused.
Read More24 Followers
Happily married since the Reagan Administration.