An almost normal life (short fiction)

A young woman sits in the waiting room of a psychiatrist’s office. She flips through old magazines full of celebrity diets and recipes for lavish desserts, uninterested.

“OK, Sandra, you can go in now.”

Into the throne room. The palace of no return. Or something like that. Since her bipolar diagnosis (and why is everyone suddenly bipolar? Wasn’t it multiple personality disorder a few years ago?), everything has been turned upside-down.

She is on five different medications, two of them to deal with side effects from the other three. These are (supposedly) working in tandem at relatively low levels which are (supposedly) easier on body and brain. Or at least that’s the theory, until the next one comes along.

“Sandra.”

“Dr. Turnstile.” (She has never quite gotten used to that name, which made her guffaw the first time she heard it.)

“So how are we doing these days.”

Not a question, but a statement, always in the plural.

“Oh, we’re. .  . just fine. But to tell you the truth, doctor, it could be better.”

“Feeling a touch of depression lately?” (He picks up his clipboard and begins to make notes.

“A touch. It’s been. . .I don’t know. Remember I told you about my brother?”

”The one who got married last year.”

“No, the other one. I mean. . .”

“Refresh my memory.”

“The one I’ve been talking about for the past five sessions.”

“I detect a note of irritability.” He makes another note.

“Yes, a note. He’s in jail now. Embezzlement. The guy is just too clever for his own good. He’s appealing, of course. I don’t mean that kind of appealing.”

“Explain.”

“Never mind, it’s just a lame joke.”

“So apart from your brother going to jail. . . “

“Oh, everything’s just hunky-dory.”

“I detect a note of sarcasm.”

“That’s because I’m lying. Everything isn’t hunky-dory. You remember my boy friend, Robert –“

“The accountant."

“Lawyer. We broke up. It was. . . I don’t know, pretty bad.”

“Are you taking your medication?

She blinks. “I wouldn’t dream of going off it.”

“Would you like me to raise the doseage on the Seroquel?”

"No.”

“The Lamotrigine?”

“No.”

“The lithium?”

“No.”

“Then let’s discuss non-medication-oriented strategies for managing the mild depression you seem to be experiencing right now.”

“Strategies.”

“Yes. You remember what I told you in our previous sessions. The principles of cognitive therapy indicate that feelings arise from thoughts. If thoughts are excessively negative, emotions will soon follow suit.”

“I always had a problem with that one.”

“Yes, I realize there has been some resistance to treatment. This must be overcome if you are to become truly well.”

“Can I be truly well if I’m bipolar?”

“Not in the usual sense. But in a relative sense, as opposed to experiencing severe episodes, then it’s possible for someone with bipolar disorder to live an almost normal life."

“Almost normal. I see. So nut cases can only get so much better before they hit a wall.”

"Sandra, that is a completely irresponsible statement.”

“But I’m just sayin’. There’s only so far a bipolar can go. The chain is pretty short.”

“That’s why it is so imperative for you to adhere strictly to the principles of cognitive therapy.”

“You see, there’s where I can’t follow you. I find it hard to believe that every emotion is just an offshoot of a thought, and that every thought can be controlled.”

“Maybe not every thought. But people have more control than they think.”

“Do they now. Then I wonder why we even need medication.”

“Sandra, you know why. You have inherited a chemical imbalance of the brain which tends to trigger extreme mood swings, which in turn skews your thoughts toward the negative.”

“But the thoughts lead to the mood swings, don't they? I'm confused."

“There is no need to twist my words around."

“OK then, cognitive therapy. That means I’m supposed to reframe negative events – “

"Now you’re on the right track.”

“. . . Reframe negative events so that they become positive. Let’s see. So breaking up with Robert was really a good thing.”

“Yes, yes – continue – “

“No matter how much I loved him, I – I don’t know. I can’t think of anything.”

“How about this for an alternate hypothesis. There is a possibility that this breakup will free you to explore other possibilities. You’re young. There are other fish in the sea.”

“Other fish.”

“Maybe even better fish. Have you thought of that? And how about your brother? Can we shed a more positive light on his situation, which is, after all, self-created?"

“Oh, maybe he’ll turn his life around in jail. Have a religious conversion, write a book, marry some woman on the outside who’s willing to wait fifteen years until he gets out.”

“Again, the note of sarcasm.”

“Yeah, but I just can’t do this. This cognitive therapy, it implies we can control just about every thought, and thus every feeling that we have. We can just decide.”

“Yes, more than most people realize.”

“Isn’t this creating your own reality? Isn’t that what crazy people do?”

“Sandra, you are deliberately poking holes in the therapeutic process.”

“Poking holes. Doctor, I wish it were as simple as deciding how to feel.”

“But to a large extent, Sandra, it is. Cognitive therapy is, after all, the primary mode of treatment in modern therapeutic practice.”

"Then why have they stopped saying that about being gay?”

He looks disconcerted, puts down his clipboard.

“You know. They used to say being gay was something you could change if you just decided to. You know, made up your mind.”

“That was many years ago.” He shifts in his chair.

“In other words: yes, you might be attracted to men, but that’s a choice. You can choose something else, a girl in other words, any time you want to.”

“That’s very simplistic.” He is turning a shade of pink.

“But according to the principles of cognitive therapy, it should work. You should be able to change your feelings of attraction to men just by changing your thoughts. Am I right?”

”The DSM specifically states – “

“Forget the DSM. Say you’re gay. You want to be straight, or your mother wants you to be straight. Hell, let’s face it, even with the progress we’ve made, it’s still easier to be straight than gay. You don’t have to explain yourself all the time.  So, just change your thoughts about the subject and you won’t have those feelings any more! Think about girls instead. Finito. Problem solved.”

“We aren’t discussing sexual orientation now, Sandra.”

“Yes we are. Haven’t you been listening?”

Dr. Turnstile has the look of a fish sliding down a chute and landing helplessly in the ocean. It is imperative that they change the subject before he loses any more ground.

Sandra fixes him with her incandescent blue eyes.

“It just comes down to a decision. Am I right? But the thing is, doctor – you haven’t made that decision yet. Have you?”

A young woman sits in the waiting room of a psychiatrist’s office. She flips through an old magazine with screaming headlines about Lindsay Lohan’s latest arrest on the cover, bored.

“OK, Sandra, you can go in now.”

She tosses the magazine on the table, gets up from her chair and walks into Dr. Turnstile’s office.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Does everything happen for a reason?

I did not write this, but I agree with every word of it. I only paste it here, along with a link to the original, because it's my experience that people don't click on links, or if they do they merely scan the piece. Pasted, it grabs more attention, or it might. The article is from a blog called The Adversity Within: Shining Light on Dark Places by Tim Lawrence. I plan to explore this blog to more depth because it speaks to me and my own personal load of pain and damage, and the ludicrous, hurtful things people continually say so that they can walk away saying, there, I did my bit. Again, I didn't write this, I merely reproduce it here because if you're like me, y'all have the attention span of a gnat and won't follow the link.

http://www.timjlawrence.com/blog/2015/10/19/everything-doesnt-happen-for-a-reason

Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason
OCTOBER 20, 2015

I emerge from this conversation dumbfounded. I've seen this a million times before, but it still gets me every time.

I’m listening to a man tell a story. A woman he knows was in a devastating car accident; her life shattered in an instant. She now lives in a state of near-permanent pain; a paraplegic; many of her hopes stolen.

He tells of how she had been a mess before the accident, but that the tragedy had engendered positive changes in her life. That she was, as a result of this devastation, living a wonderful life.

And then he utters the words. The words that are responsible for nothing less than emotional, spiritual and psychological violence:

Everything happens for a reason. That this was something that had to happen in order for her to grow.

That's the kind of bullshit that destroys lives. And it is categorically untrue.

It is amazing to me—after all these years working with people in pain—that so many of these myths persist. The myths that are nothing more than platitudes cloaked as sophistication. The myths that preclude us from doing the one and only thing we must do when our lives are turned upside down: grieve.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. You've heard these countless times. You've probably even uttered them a few times yourself. And every single one of them needs to be annihilated.

Let me be crystal clear: if you've faced a tragedy and someone tells you in any way, shape or form that your tragedy was meant to be, that it happened for a reason, that it will make you a better person, or that taking responsibility for it will fix it, you have every right to remove them from your life.

Grief is brutally painful. Grief does not only occur when someone dies. When relationships fall apart, you grieve. When opportunities are shattered, you grieve. When dreams die, you grieve. When illnesses wreck you, you grieve.

So I’m going to repeat a few words I’ve uttered countless times; words so powerful and honest they tear at the hubris of every jackass who participates in the debasing of the grieving:

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

These words come from my dear friend Megan Devine, one of the only writers in the field of loss and trauma I endorse. These words are so poignant because they aim right at the pathetic platitudes our culture has come to embody on a increasingly hopeless level. Losing a child cannot be fixed. Being diagnosed with a debilitating illness cannot be fixed. Facing the betrayal of your closest confidante cannot be fixed.

They can only be carried.

I hate to break it to you, but although devastation can lead to growth, it often doesn't. The reality is that it often destroys lives. And the real calamity is that this happens precisely because we've replaced grieving with advice. With platitudes. With our absence.

I now live an extraordinary life. I've been deeply blessed by the opportunities I've had and the radically unconventional life I've built for myself. Yet even with that said, I'm hardly being facetious when I say that loss has not in and of itself made me a better person. In fact, in many ways it's hardened me.

While so much loss has made me acutely aware and empathetic of the pains of others, it has made me more insular and predisposed to hide. I have a more cynical view of human nature, and a greater impatience with those who are unfamiliar with what loss does to people.

Above all, I've been left with a pervasive survivor’s guilt that has haunted me all my life. This guilt is really the genesis of my hiding, self-sabotage and brokenness.

In short, my pain has never been eradicated, I've just learned to channel it into my work with others. I consider it a great privilege to work with others in pain, but to say that my losses somehow had to happen in order for my gifts to grow would be to trample on the memories of all those I lost too young; all those who suffered needlessly, and all those who faced the same trials I did early in life, but who did not make it.

I'm simply not going to do that. I'm not going to construct some delusional narrative fallacy for myself so that I can feel better about being alive. I'm not going to assume that God ordained me for life instead of all the others so that I could do what I do now. And I'm certainly not going to pretend that I've made it through simply because I was strong enough; that I became "successful" because I "took responsibility."

There’s a lot of “take responsibility” platitudes in the personal development space, and they are largely nonsense. People tell others to take responsibility when they don’t want to understand.

Because understanding is harder than posturing. Telling someone to “take responsibility” for their loss is a form of benevolent masturbation. It’s the inverse of inspirational porn: it’s sanctimonious porn.

Personal responsibility implies that there’s something to take responsibility for. You don’t take responsibility for being raped or losing your child. You take responsibility for how you choose to live in the wake of the horrors that confront you, but you don't choose whether you grieve. We're not that smart or powerful. When hell visits us, we don't get to escape grieving.

This is why all the platitudes and fixes and posturing are so dangerous: in unleashing them upon those we claim to love, we deny them the right to grieve.

In so doing, we deny them the right to be human. We steal a bit of their freedom precisely when they're standing at the intersection of their greatest fragility and despair.

No one—and I mean no one—has that authority. Though we claim it all the time.

The irony is that the only thing that even can be "responsible" amidst loss is grieving.

So if anyone tells you some form of get over it, move on, or rise above, you can let them go.

If anyone avoids you amidst loss, or pretends like it didn’t happen, or disappears from your life, you can let them go.

If anyone tells you that all is not lost, that it happened for a reason, that you’ll become better as a result of your grief, you can let them go.

Let me reiterate: all of those platitudes are bullshit.

You are not responsible to those who try to shove them down your throat. You can let them go.

I’m not saying you should. That is up to you, and only up to you. It isn't an easy decision to make and should be made carefully. But I want you to understand that you can.

I've grieved many times in my life. I've been overwhelmed with shame and self-hatred so strong it’s nearly killed me.

The ones who helped—the only ones who helped—were those who were there. And said nothing.

In that nothingness, they did everything.

I am here—I have lived—because they chose to love me. They loved me in their silence, in their willingness to suffer with me, alongside me, and through me. They loved me in their desire to be as uncomfortable, as destroyed, as I was, if only for a week, an hour, even just a few minutes.

Most people have no idea how utterly powerful this is.

Are there ways to find "healing" amidst devastation? Yes. Can one be "transformed" by the hell life thrusts upon them? Absolutely. But it does not happen if one is not permitted to grieve. Because grief itself is not an obstacle.

The obstacles come later. The choices as to how to live; how to carry what we have lost; how to weave a new mosaic for ourselves? Those come in the wake of grief. It cannot be any other way.

Grief is woven into the fabric of the human experience. If it is not permitted to occur, its absence pillages everything that remains: the fragile, vulnerable shell you might become in the face of catastrophe.

Yet our culture has treated grief as a problem to be solved, an illness to be healed, or both. In the process, we've done everything we can to avoid, ignore, or transform grief. As a result, when you're faced with tragedy you usually find that you're no longer surrounded by people, you're surrounded by platitudes.

What to Offer Instead

When a person is devastated by grief, the last thing they need is advice. Their world has been shattered. This means that the act of inviting someone—anyone—into their world is an act of great risk. To try and fix or rationalize or wash away their pain only deepens their terror.

Instead, the most powerful thing you can do is acknowledge. Literally say the words:

I acknowledge your pain. I am here with you.

Note that I said with you, not for you. For implies that you're going to do something. That is not for you to enact. But to stand with your loved one, to suffer with them, to listen to them, to do everything but something is incredibly powerful.

There is no greater act than acknowledgment. And acknowledgment requires no training, no special skills, no expertise. It only requires the willingness to be present with a wounded soul, and to stay present, as long as is necessary.

Be there. Only be there. Do not leave when you feel uncomfortable or when you feel like you're not doing anything. In fact, it is when you feel uncomfortable and like you're not doing anything that you must stay.

Because it is in those places—in the shadows of horror we rarely allow ourselves to enter—where the beginnings of healing are found. This healing is found when we have others who are willing to enter that space alongside us. Every grieving person on earth needs these people.

Thus I beg you, I plead with you, to be one of these people.

You are more needed than you will ever know.

And when you find yourself in need of those people, find them. I guarantee they are there.

Everyone else can go.

The book of love is long and boring

Shall we be sentimental? Yes, we shall. Shall emotion well up and spill over, just a little? Yes, it will. And it has.

When I first saw this movie in a theatre years ago, I was taken aback by how profoundly I blubbered. I mean, it was real crying, not just the furtive splashing you do at the movies while you scramble around and realize you don't have a kleenex.  It got right inside me. A gusher. I know why. Try being married for a long, long time, and realizing you're nowhere near the finish line.

The few lines in this are in German, but trust me, they require no translation.

The book of love is long and boring

No one can lift the damn thing

It's full of charts and facts and figures

And instructions for dancing

But I

I love it when you read to me

And you

You can read me anything

The book of love has music in it

In fact that's where music comes from

Some of it's just transcendental

Some of it's just really dumb

But I

I love it when you sing to me

And you

You can sing me anything

The book of love is long and boring

And written very long ago

It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes

And things we're all too young to know

But I

I love it when you give me things

And you

You ought to give me wedding rings

And I

I love it when you give me things

And you

You ought to give me wedding rings

You ought to give me wedding rings

Psycho - The Shower Scene With And Without Music

This was a real surprise. I was sure before I even saw this that the infamous shower scene from Psycho would fall completely flat without that eeeek, eeeek, eeeek, eeeek music by Bernard Hermann that helped make it so famous.

Not so, in my books.

Hitchcock knew the power of sound. He knew we hear before we see (in the womb), so sound is much more primal, even though we live in a culture which is almost 100% visual. The soothing shhhhhh sound of the shower is broken by the sssssst of the curtain being scraped back, and then the most godawful movie sound ever: the tip of the knife repeatedly entering flesh with a ruthless chttt, chttt, chttt. Though it's hard to pick up in the original, Janet Leigh's screams become increasingly erotic-sounding, with gasps and sighs interspersed, as if she's just having a particularly lusty bout of sex (illicit sex being very big in this movie, with bad women like Marion Crane paying with their lives).

Hitchcock did nothing by accident. This scene stands just fine by itself, and is maybe even an improvement because it strips back any interference with the extremely disturbing sounds of the original. The ping-ping-ping of the shower curtain being pulled down is a nice touch (though as usual with YouTube, this was clumsily edited and left out the best shot of the scene: Janet Leigh's open-eyed, staring face lying flat on the cold bathroom floor).

Which see.

TITBIT (or tidbid): I was to learn this, after the fact:

Herrmann biographer Steven C. Smith writes that the music for the shower scene is "probably the most famous (and most imitated) cue in film music," but Hitchcock was originally opposed to having music in this scene. When Herrmann played the shower scene cue for Hitchcock, the director approved its use in the film. Herrmann reminded Hitchcock of his instructions not to score this scene, to which Hitchcock replied, "Improper suggestion, my boy, improper suggestion." This was one of two important disagreements Hitchcock had with Herrmann, in which Herrmann ignored Hitchcock's instructions. The second one, over the score for Torn Curtain (1966), resulted in the end of their professional collaboration. A survey conducted by PRS for Music in 2009, showed that the British public consider the score from 'the shower scene' to be the scariest theme from any film.

It's that time of year again: squicky gifs!

Nosferatu?. . . I don't know. Do you?

Skeletal squick: Halloween gifs!

Squicked out?

   

I just love this, though I haven't seen the original movie (from 1959, directed by the crazily brilliant William Castle who also brought us my all-time fave horror film, Mr. Sardonicus), nor the more recent one from which this came. Anthony Perkins isn't even in this, for God's sake, but it makes a great poster, doesn't it? Probably a lot better than the movie.

Just ordinary day of dashcam in Russia

Russian Dashcam Theatre: the mating of the cows

I heart Russian dash cam video. There's reams of it on YouTube, and so far it's more entertaining than the last words of pilots while the plane goes down. What amazes me most is how nobody seems to die, but maybe they wouldn't post those.

I have some good memories of Pierre

"Ne me quitte pas. . . " Pierre Trudeau sticks it to the Separatists. He argued passionately for a united Canada. And he won, too.

Wondercar: the 1948 Davis Divan

Davis Motorcar Company

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Davis Motorcar Company

Former type	Automobile Manufacturing
Industry	Automotive, Military
Genre	Three-wheeled cars
Fate	Defunct
Founded	1947
Founder	Glenn Gordon "Gary" Davis
Defunct	1948
Headquarters	Van Nuys, California, United States
Area served	United States
Products	Vehicles

The Davis Motorcar Company was an American automobile manufacturer based in Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California, which produced three-wheeled automobiles from 1947 to 1948. In total the company produced 15 to 17 vehicles.^[1]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 History
• 2 Demise
• 3 Delta Motor Car Company
• 4 Vehicles
• 5 References
• 6 Bibliography
• 7 External links

History[edit]

Founder Glenn Gordon "Gary" Davis (d. 1973) acquired a prototype called "The Californian" from designer Frank Kurtis, who built it for millionaire racecar driver Joel Thorne.^[1]

Davis operated in a 57,000 sq. ft. former aircraft assembly building in Van Nuys, where a prototype three-wheeler named "Baby" was built. Baby was powered by a 47 hp Hercules 4-cylinder engine coupled to a Borg-Warner 3-speed transmission and Spicer rear end. Baby was unique in that it featured four-across seating. It was planned that production, beginning in 1948, would start at a minimum of 50 cars a day later increasing to 1000. A second prototype called "Delta" was built, and a third prototype, the model 482, was completed later. The third model, the "Divan", established standards for the production Davis cars.

The company closed down in 1948, as workers and engineers were not being paid, and lawsuits were threatened by investors and dealers. Former employees then filed suit for back pay, and the company was investigated on allegations of fraud. Soon after the Davis plant was shut down, Gary Davis was convicted on 20 of 28 counts of theft (he was acquitted on four counts of theft and four of fraud) and was sentenced to 8 months to two years in jail.

Davis developed a variant for military use. The Model 494 was a Jeep-like version of the Divan with an open body. Arrangements were ongoing with the Pentagon to run tests at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. Ultimately three 494s were built in less than a week, two of which were shipped to the Army for testing.

Blogger's Observations. I'm going to ask Bill about this thing. I'm going to ask Bill about it because he knows everything about every kind of car - I mean, he scary-knows, he's never wrong, especially about dates. But will he know about this one, only 15 to 17 of which were ever manufactured, let alone sold?

There's a surprising amount on the internet and YouTube about the 1948 Davis Divan, making me suspicious that these are recreations based on existing blueprints or plans or whatever-it-is-they-call-those-things-you-use-to-make-a-car-with. Doesn't it make you suspicious that the number they say they manufactured is so imprecise? Well, what WAS it - 15, 16 or 17? I want to know!

And if so few were made, why did I find so many pictures and videos and stuff, including a whole half-hour YouTube video of Jay Leno driving one around in Van Nuys, wherever that is? I didn't watch it cuz it looked pretty boring, and I don't like Jay Leno and am glad he's gone. The little clip I found of the Davis at a car show (which I turned into a gif, the green one on the green grass) had an announcer claiming the idea of the car came from Howard Hughes. My ass it did. Howard Hughes was too smart to invest in a company that lasted barely a year, spat out 15 cars or so, and sank in a quagmire of lawsuits and jail sentences. 

The little bit at the end of the Wiki blurb says something about developing a prototype for the military, but I find that even harder to swallow, unless they wanted a car small enough to fold up and store in an officer's kit bag or whatever it is those guys cart around with them when there's a war on.

To me it looks a bit like Ollie of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a friendly dragon puppet with big nostrils. I always think it looks like cars have faces. They have faces coming, and they have faces going. This one is more strange than any I've seen.

POST-BLOG GLOB: As usual, I've found out some more about this subject. No doubt if I kept digging, I'd keep finding more. Books may have been written about it, but I'm almost afraid to find out: all I need is another obsession in my life. This Gary Davis guy was either a visionary with a brilliant plan to revolutionalize the automotive industry, or a crook out to bilk as many people as possible. (Bilk has nothing to do with Sergeant Bilko, played by Phil Silvers whom I hate.) He convinced a lot of people to back him big-time and came up with a big splashy ad campaign, probably pre-selling a lot of vehicles which never materialized. He even jumped into the infant medium of television, featuring his car-of-the-future on an early police show. An opportunist, either brilliant or sociopathically crooked, there were whispers he was merely the puppet of the insane Howard Hughes. Surely he took the dive, as they say in boxing, for the short-end money (and the jail sentence).

Gary Davis envisioned Davis Divan dealerships springing up all over the United States and perhaps Canada, which is pretty hard to pull off if you have no cars to sell. The fact that so many of them still exist is curious, but hey, these cars never sold, as far as I know, and were either warehoused or bought up by someone who loves to collect curiosa. The more I think about the 1948 Davis, the stranger it seems: FOUR adults could sit next to each other on the bench seat, including, I guess, the driver, and I don't see how that could happen in a car that small. (Of course people were a lot skinnier in those days.) Nowadays we'd want to know the gas mileage, and if it could maybe be converted to electric or at least a hybrid. I saw many three-wheeled vehicles in my long-ago trip to Italy, but there was nothing glamorous about them: they were grubby little trucks narrow enough to get through laneways so skinny you could reach out and touch them on either side. 

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Will it blend? Find out, NOW!

First Justin Trudeau Blingee!

   

First, let me say that I remember when this kid was born. It was Christmas Day 1971, I was 17 years old and my Dad was on the sauce, serenading us from The Messiah:

"For unto us a child is born. . . a son is given. . . and the government will be upon his shoulder. . . "

Well, kind of, yeah. It sort of DID work out that way, didn't it? 

At least now, I hope, people will stop yammering about Harper, fulminating and showing him with Hitler moustaches and giving Nazi salutes and wielding giant dildos. (Dildoes?). I got so royally sick of all this shit, along with all the ads that are being shoved down my throat, that I came near to bailing on social media altogether, and I still might. I've never seen such rancour, such sourness and mean-spiritedness all in one place, and I hope to never see it again.

But I now await the Justin Trudeau schmooze-fest, which should last just about until he actually starts to rule the country. At that point, the country will turn him into the same elitist asshole we thought his father was (only to give him a massive state funeral and declare he united the country as never before).

OK, this is as political as I will ever get. Good night.

Survival of the meanest

Margaret Gunning shared HOT 104.5's photo.

October 17 at 1:19pm · 

What I object to are very obscure statements that seem to come from the middle of a thought, that "only certain people" will "get". This is Facebook, folks, it's social media, not a private email, and you should have gotten over whispering secrets to "certain people" in the schoolyard so that everyone else will feel left out.

This was one of the things I got testy about (not that I ever get testy! Jeeeez.) The original from HOT 104.5 (radio, I assume) had half a million likes and comments, etc., and even my own "share" had many more than I usually get, although I was surprised. It was an admission of something that goes on as standard practice, though obviously a lot of people object to it.

It ties in to the snickering-on-the-playground nature of social media, and it really hurts young people and has even triggered suicides, but nobody tries to do anything about it. Humans are elitist by nature: we're in, you're out. If we're herd animals, some of us just don't make the cut.

I deleted a couple of recent posts because, to be honest, I didn't want to put out that kind of negative energy. This blog is for my own enjoyment, and though a very few times I've had a very large (for me) number of views, these are aberrations. The rest of the time, the process is all. But I salvaged this image, because I felt it was worth keeping and thinking about.

So you can make up your own mind about this. Most people say, oh yes, isn't that awful, I just hate it, then go right back to doing it. Survival of the meanest, I guess.