Messages

My husband and I stopped banking entirely about seven years ago, and it's GREAT. We have no credit cards, debit cards, or checking account. Just a little savings at a community credit union, and everything gets paid in CASH MONEY, baby!

No fees, no overdrafts, no late-payment crapola, nothing.

Makes it so easy to manage our budget.

Sorry to be a grumpy old prude, but:

a) A montage of someone saying "f*ck" several hundred times is only "work-safe" if you work in a dive-bar or porn store.

b) Anyone who finds it entertaining to watch a video of a living person being thrown out of a high-speed wreck and run over on the freeway needs therapy. It's ghoulish and sociopathic.

I won't even bother talking about how this is indicative of the Rome-just-before-the-fall depths to which our jaded culture has fallen. If you understand, I don't need to say it. If you don't, you're already beyond help.

Did I miss something? Is this a joke so subtle that it went over my head and I'm overreacting?

I think it's pretty obvious that it doesn't matter which job this kid decides to pursue, or whether or not he lies to anyone -- He is unlikely to do well at either of them. People who lack self-awareness to this degree usually blame others for their failings, cannot grow or improve, and lurch from one situation to the next with no reflection on how their own choices may have caused their dissatisfaction.

But surely someone as witty and articulate as Mick will be making that $225k in commissions any time now.

Let us know when that happens, okay, Slugger?

A blown-out match.
Constant Comment tea with milk and sugar.
Engine grease and Boraxo hand soap, together.
The smell of hot damp pavement after an unexpected summer rainfall.
Freshly mowed lawn.
The tangy smell of metal.
The top of a baby's fuzzy head.
Popcorn.
Band-Aids.
Overheated slot-car track.

mick wrote:
[span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"] I will get a higher commission[/span]

The... mm, shall we say, "ethically-challenged" are ideally suited to commission sales. Slam dunk!

Go for it, Champ! Lie yer ass off, as long as it's to get something you want. It's clever! I mean, really... integrity is so five-minutes-ago.

Why do people ask others to validate the crappy choices they're going to make anyway? If Mick chooses NOT to lie to his "nice" boss, it will be because he's afraid of getting caught, not because he decides that it's wrong. Why the whole sham of having a conscience?

P.C. wrote:
[span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]you need to at least establish if it's psychological or chemical[/span]

Absolutely. I'm not a run-for-the-pharmacy kind of gal, but if medication helps keep a person's head out of the oven long enough for them to implement real change, it's a good plan!

Try everything that might work.

Go, team!

Sportsdude wrote:
[span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"] The problem is that was before my problem's started to snowball and now I'm to ashamed to go. [/span]

Never feel ashamed of needing help. You are a good person and have so much to offer. Keep fighting!
 

P.C. wrote:
 [span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]a person with depression has to somehow get to that level before they can implement those ideas.[/span]

I agree, and would never suggest that someone just Shake It Off unless they were just being a whiner. I believe that it is important to do SOMETHING, to act, to force yourself to take any small step in any direction other than down. One must at least try, or else the downward spiral simply continues unarrested.

Anything that breaks the pattern may open the door enough of a crack to see some light. And because helping one's self is very difficult with depression, because of the feelings of apathy, worthlessness, and self-loathing, often the act of helping others, even if it feels forced or fake, can take you out of that place for brief enough periods to offer hope.

So often people who have given up will still rally to help a fallen stranger. Many a person who has decided, during some sort of catastrophe, to lie down and die, will see another who is not going to make it and put in a last push to save them, thus saving themselves...

I love it! Gorgeous!

That's it, I'm buying food colouring tomorrow.

Sportsdude wrote:
[span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]I have no emotions anymore except for my breakdowns. I don't cry, don't care if someone dies, don't care, period.[/span]

I am not being flip when I say that one thing which might help enormously would be spending some time working to make life better for people whose lives are far worse than yours. Seriously. You may say you don't have the energy. Or that you don't care. But your posts (in all subjects) tell a different story.

You are not apathetic. You DO care, very passionately, about a lot of things. But your caring could be redirected to subjects which would give immediate results to both you and those you help.

And when I say "working to make life better for people whose lives are far worse than yours," I don't mean from a distance. Not collecting signatures for ballot measures, or canvassing for a cause, or sponsoring a Romanian orphan. I mean up close and personal, in your community.

Walk away from an hour tutoring a kid in the ghetto with his homework, and instead of bemoaning the state of the public school system, you're doing something about it. And making a friend. And changing a life.

Two lives. Yours too. Just think about it.

TehBorken wrote:
[span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]They aren't even allowed to point their fingers like a gun, or it's an automatic suspension if they're caught.[/span]

This seems off the subject, but somehow related to the "weird new sensitivity rules" stuff going on: I have a freind who works in a day-care, and they are not allowed to say "no" to a child. They HAVE to say, "No, thank you" in place of no.

In ALL situations. As in, if the child is beating the stuffing out of another child, or running toward the street, you must shout "No thank you! No thank you!"

Ridiculous. It doesn't scar a child for life to hear "No."

Mine was "President Acorn Short of an Oak Tree."

Tee hee!

kitten wrote:
[span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"] the sound of coffee perking[/span]

When I was a kid, we had a glass coffee percolator, and one of my favorite visual comfort memories is watching the little blurps of coffee splat over the top of the percolator tube and spread into the water like brown mermaid hair.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.
-- Whitman

The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.
-- Pascal

A problem worthy of attack proves its worth by fighting back.
-- [well-known old mathematics saying, unattributed]

The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again
but less and less and less.
-- Piet Hein

Eh, I've got nothing to whine about, really.  If they hadn't poured Gentamicin into both arms for a month solid, I'd be dead. I'll take a little ear damage any day.

The cool thing about having almost croaked when I was a teenager is that even now, twenty years later, I wake up almost every morning going, "Yay! Bonus day!"

It's good for perspective.