"Actually, these conditions don't look very good at all, do they?"

BLOGGER'S NOTE: It's not too reassuring when the pilot of the plane comes on and tells the passengers: "I still can't see very much at the moment. Keep you informed soon as I see something that gives me a clue as to where we are. We're going down in altitude now and it won't be long before we get quite a good view." Little did they know that "quite a good view" meant crashing into the side of Mt. Erebus.

November 28, 1979
Mt. Erebus, Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Air New Zealand, Flight 901
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30
ZK-NZP

The aircraft crashed into the slopes of Mt. Erebus while on sightseeing flight to Antarctica.
An incorrect computer-stored flight plan resulted in a navigational error directing the flight
towards Mt. Erebus. Because of overcast, the crew descended below authorized altitude.
Contributing to the accident was the crew's inexperience with flying the Antarctic route.
All 257 aboard killed.

MC = McMurdo Station
CA = Captain
F/O = First Officer
F/E = Flight Engineer
MU = Mulgrew (guide)

12:18 MC We have a low overcast in the area at about 2,000ft and right now we're having some snow, but visibility is still about 40 miles and if you like I can give you an update on where the cloud areas are around the local area.

F/O Yes 901, that would be handy. We'd like to descend and maintain flight level one six zero.

MC Kiwi 901, Mac Center descend and maintain flight level one six zero.

MC 901, this is the forecaster again. It looks like the clear areas around McMurdo area are at approximately between 75 and 100 miles to the northwest of us but right now over McMurdo we have a pretty extensive low overcast. Over.

12:19 F/O Roger, New Zealand 901, thanks.

F/E That'll be round about Cape Bird, wouldn't it?

F/O Right, right.

F/E Got a low overcast over McMurdo.

CA Doesn't sound very promising, does it?

MC Within range of 40 miles of McMurdo we have radar that will, if you desire, let you down to 1,500ft on radar vectors. Over.

F/O Roger, New Zealand 901, that's acceptable.

12:20 CA That's what we want to hear.

12:31 CA I'll have to do an orbit here, I think.

CA Well actually it's clear out here if we get down.

F/E It's not clear on the right-hand side here.

F/O No.

CA If you can get HF contact tell him that we'd like further descent. We have contact with the ground and we could, if necessary, descend doing an orbit.

12:32 F/O We'd like further descent and we could orbit in our present position which is approximately 43 miles north, descending in VMC.

MC Roger Kiwi New Zealand 901, VMC descent is approved and keep Mac Center advised of your altitude.

F/O Roger, New Zealand 901, we're vacating one eight zero. We'll advise level.

12:34 CA Ladies and gentlemen. We're carrying out an orbit and circling our present position and we'll be descending to an altitude below cloud so that we can proceed to McMurdo Sound.
F/E There's Wilson.

12:35 F/O Transponder is now responding.

F/E Still no good on that frequency though?

F/O No.

F/O Roger 901, you are now loud and clear also. We are presently descending through flight level one three zero, VMC, and the intention at the moment is to descend to one zero thousand.
12:36 F/O We've lost him again.

F/O I'll go back to HF, Jim.

CA I've got to stay VMC here so I'll be doing another orbit.

12:38 F/O 901, we briefly had contact on one three four one. We've now lost contact. We're maintaining 10,000ft, presently 34 miles to the north of McMurdo.

CA Tell him we can make a visual descent on a grid of one eight zero and make a visual approach to McMurdo.

12:42 F/O 901, still negative contact on VHF. We are VMC and we'd like to let down on a grid of one eight zero and proceed visually to McMurdo.

MC New Zealand 901, maintain VMC. Keep you advised of your altitude as you approach McMurdo..

CA We're VMC around this way so I'm going to do another turn in.

CA Sorry, haven't got time to talk, but ..

.
MU Ah well, you can't talk if you can't see anything.

12:43 MU There you go. There's some land ahead.

CA I'll arm the nav again.

CA ALT, NAV CAP, IAS hold.

12:44 FO Roger, New Zealand 901, 50 miles north the base was one zero thousand. We are now at 6,000 descending to 2,000 and we're VMC.

12:45 CA We had a message from the Wright Valley and they are clear over there.

MU Oh, good.

CA So if you can get us out over that way...?

MU No trouble.

MU Taylor on the right now.

MU This is Peter Mulgrew speaking again folks. I still can't see very much at the moment. Keep you informed soon as I see something that gives me a clue as to where we are. We're going down in altitude now and it won't be long before we get quite a good view.

12:46 F/E Where's Erebus in relation to us a the moment.

MU Left, about 20 or 25 miles.

F/O Yep, yep.

F/E I'm just thinking of any high ground in the area, that's all.

MU I think it'll be left.

F/E Yes, I reckon about here.

MU Yes ... no, no, I don't really know.

12:47 MU That's the edge.

CA Yes, OK. Probably see further anyway.

F/O It's not too bad.

MU I reckon Bird's through here and Ross Island there. Erebus should be there.

CA Actually, these conditions don't look very good at all, do they?

MU No they don't

.
12:49 MU That looks like the edge of Ross Island there.

F/E I don't like this.

CA Have you got anything from him?

F/O No

CA We're 26 miles north. We'll have to climb out of this.

MU You can see Ross Island? Fine.

F/O You're clear to turn right. There's no high ground if you do a one eighty.

CA No ... negative.

GPWS [Whoop whoop pull up. Whoop whoop]

F/E Five hundred feet.

GPWS [Pull up]

F/E Four hundred feet.

GPWS [Whoop, whoop pull up. Whoop whoop pull up]

CA Go-around power please.

GPWS [Whoop whoop pull -]

[Sound of impact]

Maybe some people DIDN'T evolve: The Vintage News discusses evolution

Nothing is more entertaining than an evening of perusing the Facebook page for The Vintage News. The Vintage News has nothing whatsoever to do with ANY kind of news, vintage or not. It's a chopped-up mixture of Weekly World News/Believe It or Not-type article, with some random quasi-historical/scientific stuff culled from other Facebook pages and just sort of glommed in.

Usually the articles are boring and kind of pointless, except for the fact that most of them are written with atrocious grammar and spelling and seem to be bad translations from some other language (which I love dearly). But the comments! The comments are something else again, and are often highly entertaining because of the mentality of the readers - or lack of same.

I didn't even include the article, which was about Charles Darwin marrying his cousin, but oh MY - what a "discussion" it sparked about how the theory of evolution is "just a theory", there is no evidence for it, it has never been proven, so therefore IT CAN'T BE TRUE. There's also lots of indignation about how we don't "come from monkeys", which reminds me of Spencer Tracy thumping the Bible in that old 1950s movie Inherit the Wind. Things haven't come  so very far since then - I don't mean the 1950s, but 1925 when the Scopes Monkey Trial took place:

The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant.

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1395 in 2017), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion,[4] against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether "modern science" should be taught in schools. (Wikipedia)

I've taken a few university-level anthropology courses, though I'm aware the field has exploded since then. The fossil record, which becomes more rich and complex with each new find, is slowly but surely illuminating the mystery of human origins, tracing them back to a COMMON ANCESTOR (not a monkey, you dummies!) which split into two groups before they even looked like monkeys. We looked sort of like lemurs back then, and before that, we were tree shrews. 

We had to start somewhere.

But the point is, connection led to connection in a multi-branched, incredibly complex pattern with many dead ends. The fact that people still blather on about "the missing link" just infuriates me, because that idea was completely invalidated in about 1918. It's just a "thing people say" because they know nothing whatsoever about anthropology or the evolutionary process. To rant against Darwin by thundering that "we didn't come from monkeys" is so simple-minded and the idea still so apparently prevalent that I honestly wonder if Trump will ever run out of supporters.

Ron Waid Lizzie Campbell - It's still just a theory, not proven fact. If natural selection were true, Eskimos would have fur to keep warm, but they don't. They are just as hairless as everyone else. Also, if natural selection were true, humans in the tropics would have silvery, reflective skin to help them keep cool, but they don't. They have black skin, just the opposite of what the theory of natural selection would predict.

Keith Blackwell Lizzie Campbell so if you have a baby with a deformed hand or no legs... is that evolution?age

Ronald Redman Maybe you did fall out of a tree and landed on your head,their is no factual evidence man derived from a flipping monkey you twit

Rastko S. Ilić  His empty heretical theory had only one purpose: to separate humanity from Holy Christianity. As always

Nancy McIlrath Ok Vintage here you go again. How many times are you going to post this? I have seen 4 so far. I am a fan of Darwin but I suspect something else is going on here.

Ronald Redman Imagine you're a monkey playing in a tree, now you're a homosapian, wow...you can believe what ever floats your boat but sorry mam didn't come from a monkey.you have no proof whatsoever, to observe the truth look at his sponsors and channels of funds for his work and all will be clear.

Ronald Redman But still no evidence of evolution

Robinson Yost No, because science is not about proving things with absolute certainty, that’s not what science is about. So saying the theory of evolution means it’s unproven shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the word theory and the scientific process itself.

Nancy McIlrath troll

To an unfriended asshole

This was one of those tiresome Facebook situations where someone (a "friend", i. e. someone you know next-to-nothing about) jumps all over you for a fairly innocent and likely misunderstood comment. Somebody posted something about the whole All Lives Matter issue by some "rich white guy" (known to be a rich white guy) claiming to know more about it than most people by dint of the fact that he was a rich white guy. My comment was something like "who IS this guy?" I honestly didn't know who he was, but the poster, and I'm damned if I remember his name because I am trying so hard to forget it, took it really literally and even personally and sent me one of those long, long, twist-and-turny replies bristling with sniping hostility that I did not even read, I was so eager to get to "unfriend"! Then later on, somewhere, under some post of MINE, he made another snarky comment about my unfriending him. Gee, why did I do THAT, I wonder? Such a swell fellow! He was ripping into me for not wanting to be his "friend" any more. 

Not for him but for me, I began to gather my thoughts about all this and write, then thought they might be worth posting here because they sum up a lot of "where I am at" (as they used to say) right now. By the way, the reply would not post because he is no longer my friend, so he will never find out what I thought about the whole thing! But the guy was an asshole anyway, who needs him? I have even had to cut loose from some long-time friends who had wandered off into a mental wilderness that was very dark, too dark for me to enter into. And social media can be a jungle.

Is it sad? I suppose it is, but it's also a lesson in what really matters. Anyway, here is my comment/"reply" to the unfriended asshole, which he will never read because he is no longer my "friend". 

My FB policy now is if I feel ANY stress at all from ANY interaction, I just have to get away from it. I don't even think about it for too long - it's a reflex. My mental health is too valuable to subject it to any unnecessary stress. I'm pretty much on the verge of bailing from the whole FB thing. It's not too enjoyable, and I have to ask myself, often, what am I gaining, and/ or what is the other person gaining from all this? 

I mean, what is the real benefit, if any? Was I all withered up mentally before social media, was I starving or lacking or was I "not myself"? It seems to me that life was richer and that personal interaction was richer and more considered when you had to go find a stamp and carry the message to the mail box. If this is to have any meaning whatsoever, I need to be able to say what I think or feel, but it's starting to seem like I get jumped on if anything too "real" comes out. Then the feeling is: can't you stand up and defend yourself, then? Why? I honestly did not KNOW who this guy was - still don't, and felt tired by another stream of commentary, tired of the whole thing, of people killed and blown up, of endless comments, comments, COMMENTS when it leads to exactly nothing!

I was never meant for this, only got into it to promote my book (ha!) because that's what you do, and fell down a rabbit hole which has been mostly unpleasant. I unfriend now without giving it much of a thought. Why? These aren't my friends! No, they aren't, my friends are my friends and most of these people are just something else. I was naive and really blundered into it in a wrongheaded way, having no idea how to do it, thinking that amassing a lot of writing/publishing associates was what I was supposed to do. Jesus. What I am supposed to do is write from the heart, put it out there and forget about it, then, the next day, do the same thing over again. This process du jour is what gives me joy and is never boring, no matter what anyone says about it.

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Don't understand TED talks? Just watch this!

Sister wives: badder catfish to fry

It's been a while since I've written about the polygamous soap opera Sister Wives, which is undoubtedly the most poisonous reality program ever to air on TLC (often called The Loser Channel, though once long ago it was devoted to "learning"). And I should never write about Sister Wives again, because not only has the youngest/most recent wife Robyn popped out a couple more pups, the first/oldest wife Meri was recently CATFISHED by a sociopathic middle-aged woman (who lives in her mother's basement, no kidding) named Jackie Overton. This Jackie posed as a handsome, wealthy man called Sam Cooper for months and months, while poor Meri, jilted by the family and feeling oh-so-barren after her one-and-only kid flew the coop, ate up all his flattery with a spoon like an entire container of Cool Whip non-dairy topping.

Still with me? I'm not, but I'll go on. Sister Wives has become a sort of addictive agony for me now, and so far this season they've run TWO episodes that were two hours long. That's a mind-numbing four hours of dysfunctional polygamy. The whole thing has become so staged that you can see these folks looking around for their cue cards, and several times per episode the director speaks to them (captioned, yet) from off-camera. Breaking the fourth wall, or breaking the barrier of indifference in the family?

Kody, the clueless patriarch with the very unconvincing surfer-dude hairdo, always sits there talking, usually about himself, as if he doesn't even know WHO or WHAT or WHERE his wives are. Unless he's in the bedroom impregnating one of them (that would be Robyn), that's probably true. Three of the four wives, too old to have any more kids, have been pretty much shelved. Meri was even required to divorce Kody (as if they were ever really married!) so Kody could then marry Robyn (who used to be married to someone else, explaining how she had three kids - but now had to marry Kody, so her kids could be - oh, who gives a fuck).

So Meri, left alone in a giant house without her one grown-up child (a daughter who seems to hate her - we'll get to see the catfight next episode!)has been shunted aside as useless while Robyn just keeps poppin' 'em out. They obviously need some more kids, and soon the tally will be somewhere around 20. Squicks me out that they all look alike, but they're all half-Kody, aren't they? Squick. Anyway, Meri started itchin' for action of some sort. SOMEhow she ended up "chatting" with someone on the internet, and ended up with This Guy who turns out to be a woman. The woman is an especially poisonous sort who is now out to ruin Meri by posting all her intimate voicemails on YouTube, not to mention embarrassing photos showing her suggestively eating a banana.

But that's not what I'm writing about today! 

One of the many sons - well, who knows who the mother is, but we can assume Kody is the Dad - is named Garrison, and guess what. He wants to join the army! Here is where the show's credibility is stretched so far it's close to the snapping point. Why not call him Beetle Bailey or Sad Sack? But anyway, Garrison wants to join a garrison somewhere, and there is the inevitable feverish discussion amongst family members, when the decision was probably made months ago. One of the other brothers - "a brother from another mother", Kody calls him (and the rest of them, when he forgets their names) is training to be an Officer, whereas it looks as if Garrison won't rise any higher than digging latrines.

Wait for it: here comes my point!

"I want to join the army," Garrison (Beetle Bailey) says, his muffled words spelled out in captions. "I think it will test my mettle."

I am sure, nearly certain, that most of the viewers said, "My God, LOOK at that spelling mistake."

Now, Garrison didn't make the "mistake". I'm amazed he knew the word "mettle" at all. And using it did not mean he knew how to spell it.

How many people DO know how to spell "mettle"? The producers of the show must have looked it up. It's one of those words where if you spell it correctly, someone will look at you with irritated contempt and say, "It's M-E-T-A-L," then wait for you to thank them for setting you straight.

Imagine: thinking "mettle" is a word!

This led me to remember a few others, similar misspellings or word-switcheroos (some of them bordering on the malaprop-ish). I wish I could think of more, but I am sure they will come to me because they are jammed in my face daily.

Someone on Facebook, a teenage girl probably, posts, "I looked out the window, and LOW AND BEHOLD, there was my kitten eating the neighbor's pet grasshopper."

Well - ?? Low and behold has to be right, because low is spelled . . .  low. That's just how you do it. You can't take off the w, for God's sake - it makes no sense!

Low, how the mighty have fallen.

OK, here's another: "I was in the THROWS of the flu at the time." (This is a misuse within a misuse, because flu is often spelled flue - and that, too is a real word, but - ). That IS how you spell throws, if you are talking about multiple tosses. I even looked it up, and if one has the flue, one often throes up. (Sorry, that was a mistake. Or two.)

One of the most irritating for me - and it's becoming almost universal - is loose instead of lose. Thus, "even after following the 600-lb.-a-week Chris Powell torture plan, I just couldn't loose weight." I have this image of someone loosing great chunks of weight on civilization, and once that weight is loosed, it wreaks havoc (never mind) on all and sundry (no, wait a minute! That's Sunday.)

Something else happened, and it peaked my interest. People have completely forgotten how to spell piqued. It just doesn't look right! It couldn't have a Q in it, could it? To confuse matters still more, peaked can mean something quite apart from pointy: it can mean pale or sickly, though it's pronounced PEAK-id. I don't think anyone under 40 has heard of this word, or believes that it even exists. Like quinsy and lumbago, it has just fallen into disuse and (thus) obsolescence.

Now getting into pronunciations - a hair product ad for Tousle Me Softly kept insisting the word was towssel (almost like tassel) rather than tousle. I always thought the s had a z sound, not a sibilant sssss. The ad gave me the awful squeamish feeling that most young women aren't familiar with the word tousle, have never seen it or used it, or can't spell it, and surely can't pronounce it to save their lives.

Since it was pointed out to me, I've started to notice "vocal fry", a tendency for mostly-young women to drop the pitch of their voices on the last syllable of a word or phrase with a sort of darkly grating, almost grinding sound that's hard to describe (but you'd know it to hear it). If you're a Kardashian, forget about it, your voice is just one big CROAK. I also hear final words opened out with an elongated short-a sound: "That's not really trewwwaaAAHH" (or, with the requisite "uptalk", "trewwwaaAAHH?") 

Then there's what I call the Say Yass to the Drass syndrome: "It's badder to go there for lunch when it's not so crowded?"  "She saadd she had her nails done in raadd but it wasn't trewwwwwaaAAHH?" And so on. I would ask what language they were speaking - I can't even think of appropriate phrases for it because it isn't really English. I guess it's a form of Valley Speak, but updated in the most bizarre way possible.

One thing it does is convey privilege, even entitlement. This isn't just uptalk (and even older people are upspeaking more and more now, no longer outgrowing it at age 14), it's la-di-da-speak, the drawly cigarette-holding speech of a post-millennial Tallulah Bankhead. Poor folk don't vocal fry because they have other fish to fry. Adding an extraneous "aah" to the end of words like the little fillip on the top of a Dairy Queen soft-serve cone (and PLEASE do not tell me it's spelled Phillip!) strikes them as silly, or maybe they just don't have time for it.

Want a great example? or a horrible one? I've just discovered a real estate-flipping show called Flip or Flop on the home-whatever channel, and the woman on it is a living Barbie, I swear. She has every vocal mannerism ever invented. I don't know where it all comes from. I marvel at this, and at her appearance, her unblinking Barbie eyes and pound of makeup. Nearly every sentence is either upticked, fried, "oh-ahhh"-ed, "badder"-ed, or all of the above.

I don't know how she keeps track of it all.

Oh. Oh. Oh! When I actually listened to this snippet of the Flip or Flop couple on a talk show (you'll see what I mean after only a couple of sentences: the woman is a blonde Kardashian), I heard another affectation: at the end, she said, "thank yeeaaaoooowwwwwwwhhhhhh" instead of "thank you". There's a sort of diphthong-y thing going on, a whole series of vowel sounds strung together. A simple sequence of ee and oo becomes a sort of cascading waterslide of vowel sounds that seems to encompass all of them. Instead of spreading out slushily in a crescendoed short-a sound, it sort of goes "YAOWWWH!" and is hauled back in again. 

Doesn't anyone realize how bizarre they sound? Why are they doing this? Was it a decision on their part? Who started it?

More to the point: when will it stop?

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I was Bigfoot's love slave (no, I really mean it)

Satire is dying because the internet is killing it

Facebook’s [satire] tag may prevent people believing Kim Jong-un was voted the sexiest man alive, but the damage is done                        
                                

o Arwa Mahdawi
                                                      
o theguardian.com, Tuesday 19 August 2014 12.52 BST

‘The problem with satire in an age of finite attention and infinite content is that it makes you stop and think.’ Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian


Forget self-driving cars or virtual reality nano-technology algorithms, the newest innovation to emerge from Silicon Valley is square brackets. Facebook is testing a “satire tag” that will clearly label fake news stories from well-known satire sites like the Onion as [satire]. No longer will you need to rely on outdated technology such as common sense to realise that content like Area Facebook User Incredibly Stupid is [satire], the square brackets will do it for you.


It should perhaps be noted that Facebook isn’t introducing the satire tag because it thinks we’re all morons, but rather because it knows we’re all morons. In a statement, the social network explained that it had “received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others”.

Some of those people may well be journalists who have had embarrassing lapses of satire-blindness in the past. The Washington Post, for example, was once fooled into reporting that Sarah Palin was, in a somewhat unlikely career move, taking a job at al-Jazeera. And the English-language arm of China’s People’s Daily fell for an Onion article proclaiming the North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-un, the sexiest man alive, even using the accolade as an opportunity to run a 55-image slideshow of him, complete with quotes from the Onion spoof. Although, it’s possible this may itself have been satire – I’m unsure.


And that’s the problem. The internet has become so weird, so saturated with cats and lists and Buzzfeed quizzes that it’s difficult to know what’s serious and what’s a spoof any more. I challenge you, for example, to identify the Onion piece from these headlines:

• US adults are dumber than the average human

• Hazelnut prices soar, fuelling fears of Nutella shortage

• Tips For Being An Unarmed Black Teen

• Serial chicken smuggler caught in Norway

• Definitive Proof Kale Is The Marilyn Of Foods

The point of this carefully curated list is that you often can’t tell the difference between satire and real news online. There are several reasons for this. The first is the underlying business model of the internet. We don’t like to pay for stuff online so the internet is funded by advertising; advertising executives demand eyeballs for their dollars; content providers resort to clickbait headlines and shareable content to secure eyeballs and ad dollars; users get addicted to an endless stream of clickbait.


The manner in which we’ve monetised digital media means we often reward reaction over reflection and eschew meaning for meme-ing. News can’t just be news; it has to be entertainment. Indeed, the third law of modern media states that for every moderately important news item published, there will be an obligatory roundup of the funniest Twitter reactions to said news story, generally in slideshow format to maximise clicks.


The second big contributor to satire-blindness is our diminishing attention span. The average American attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds; in 2013, it was eight seconds. This is less than the average attention span of a goldfish (nine seconds).

As Vladimir Nabokov once said, “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.” But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the internet, it’s that everyone prefers games to lessons. The problem with satire in an age of finite attention and infinite content is that it makes you stop and think. It interrupts the speed and simplicity of the discover-click-share cycle that makes platforms like Facebook lots of money. By introducing satire tagging, Facebook has helpfully gone some way in eliminating the unhelpful friction of thought and, in doing so, made life easier for us all.


Should the satire tags prove to be a success, I’m hoping Facebook will extend the square bracketing and provide clear labelling for every post on my newsfeed. Here’s to a future filled with [millennial metafiction], [brunch-based panegyrics] and [aggravated alliteration].

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

The sugar daddy ambush

Do you know what I shit-hate these days?

Stupid people. Or maybe I always have.

We had a nice time at the Canada Day celebrations yesterday at Coquitlam Town Centre Park. Yes, a very nice time looking at displays, sampling food, listening to multicultural music, watching kids on climbing walls, and all those Canada-day-type things.

Then as we were walking along, just walking along in complete innocence, a woman, low to the ground and of indeterminate age, literally ran at us and pressed a booklet into my hands.

“This is a book that’s very helpful for seniors with issues,” she chirped.

I stopped in my tracks.

“Give it to him,” I said, pointing to my very grey, very-much-older husband.

“Oh, that’s what they all say,” she twittered. “I won’t admit to my age either, sweetie.”

My mouth opened and Bill tugged me onwards, sensing a coming storm. “Thanks a LOT,” I yelled back at her as we walked away. “Oh, don’t mention it,” the woman tweeted, obviously delighted she had snagged another victim.

I mean, Jesus!

She RUNS up to people whom she has decided are “old”. Old enough to qualify as “seniors”. This includes women. Last time I checked, most women are not thrilled and delighted to state their age if they’re, say, over 50. Not that it’s a bad thing, but let’s not jump the gun.

We all sort of hope we look at least a few years younger than our chronological age. I thought this was nearly universal. Isn’t it? If not, when did it change? (If you think this is the first time seniors' propaganda has been pressed on me, guess again.)

And to have someone RUN at you because you look like a suitable pigeon for a book on “seniors' issues” is atrocious. “Oh, look, some fossils walking along! I’d better catch them before they fall over.”

My husband thought I was overreacting and said (as I dumped the goddamned ripped-up booklet into the garbage: I glanced at it and it said, among other things, “Where to meet seniors”, so it was probably publicity for a disguised escort service), “It was because of me.”

Well, maybe it WAS because of him. He’s greyer than me, mostly because I color my hair. But please, no running after prey, especially not older prey! They might not be too thrilled to be recruited for the ranks of the over-65, particularly if they are a good many years younger.

And don’t tell me, as I am always condescendingly told, “Oh, don't feel bad. 'Senior' begins at 40”. That’s a load of bullshit and you know it. Would a 40-year-old woman, still deluding herself that she can have another baby like all those Hollywood stars, welcome a booklet on how to pick up a doddering old sugar daddy?

Oh, and. This is even worse. It’s those people who miss irony, and think YOU’RE dumb.

I had a recent attack of this on Facebook. Somebody named a scientific principle, one often quoted on The Big Bang Theory (which is my religion), and I riffed on it in an ironic manner.  The person posted a “now, now, now, that’s not what it means at all” sort of reply, telling me exactly what the principle was and why I had gone so wrong in misinterpreting it.

Why are people so thick? Why do they always turn it around so that ***I*** am the stupid and/or ignorant one, and that I need to be immediately set straight? Whoever these people are, and most of them wear penises to work every day, they do not “get” irony, have perhaps never heard of it, and take absolutely everything literally.

In other words. . . they are men.

It’s not too nice when a joke falls flat, but when the other person has no idea it IS a joke and corrects you for your misinformation, it’s worse than annoying and leaves you with an insulted, put-down, even pitied feeling. Meantime you know you are skating rings around this dullard in wordplay skills and subtlety, not to mention basic intelligence.

But who wins in the ignoramus sweepstakes? Who comes out looking far more clever and erudite?  Could it be me? Are you out of your freaking MIND? Never mind that I’m invariably right, because being right has nothing to do with it. It's all about power and putting so-called "ignorant" people (usually women, assumed to be about as smart as Kha Kha Kardashian - oops, her name is Khloe - I'm so sorry - I got it wrong!) in their place.

Do I think I am smarter than other people (a sin worse than murder)? I don’t just think it, I KNOW it, and Facebook proves it to me every blessed, persecuted day of my life. (Oh, and. This deserves a post of its own, but I will mention it here. Someone will refer to something atrocious, destructive, and categorically WRONG. Then someone else will say, "Oh, it's always been like that." Some people, fancying themselves to be historians because they watch the History Channel, will say, "People have done that since the Etruscans in the year 14 billion B. C." The fact that "we've been doing this for a long time" is supposed to end the discussion. Suddenly, now the most heinous behaviour is OK and acceptable because we've been doing it forever! Make sense? 

Add to this one another ludicrous fallacy. I call it "men do this too!". Anything men do automatically justifies whatever negative, weak or shameful thing women are doing. It renders their sins more acceptable, though only a small percentage of this filters through to women. But at least they aren't seen as the snivelling bitches they were before. . . because after all, "men cry at the movies too".)

(I have to confess something really awful. I think that picture is really Khim Kardashian - or is that Kim - oh, will someone please set me straight here? And my much smarter boy friend just told me that the Etruscans didn't really live in 14 billion B. C. because the theme song of The Big Bang Theory says that that was when the universe was created. Why do I bother keeping a blog at all? I'm just a silly little girl.)

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