I did back to back marathon reading of the entire series too, and AFFC is an awful boring downer right after the awesomeness of ASOS. But, having re-read the books out of order a bunch of times since, there are cool parts to it that don't resonate at first. Unfortunately, you start thinking the only reason Feast sucks is because you want to get on with everyone else's story line, until book five comes along and oof. All your favorite characters you've been dying to catch up with are the worst suddenly.
My breakfast has been half a bottle of tums because I'm too old for Oscar drinking games. Been re-watching season one of GoT all last week, so so excited.
She eats like crazy, it just doesn't stay in her system longer than a few minutes ifyaknowwhatimean. (I mean so, so much pooping.) The docs gave me cans of, I'm assuming the equivalent of gruel for this week, just to help soothe the tummy long enough for antibiotics to absorb. After that, it's pretty much a balance of not letting her scarf until she gets sick while fostering a sense of food security so she calms down about it eventually. Thanks for the advice tho, and good on you for fostering!
They said it'll be three weeks before she'll even be well enough to start gaining weight or anything (she is severely malnourished and dehydrated- guess that was an adoption bonus!) It's the most tragic thing in the world. Anddd, here's another picture on this thread I've hijacked (my thoughts and prayers are with Will Smith and Gabe at this time).
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh96/wdburnettii/ellie.jpg
Ugh, I need a nap you guys. My dalmatian puppy is amazing and sweet and my child's bff already, but she is so sick! Took her to the vet first thing, with my six year old in tow, and it took three hours. Walked out with a pharmacy and a bunch of fancy food because she has every doggie infection on the books. Here's a reminder of her face (it's the best!)
http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/o726/5f_vg/dottie_zps92882df8.jpg
Sure ! Well, I don't know how to do pictures on here, or links for that matter, but if this works it's her petfinder page: http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/25227566
My six-year-old has already declared that we're renaming her from Dottie to Vanellope ala Wreck-It Ralph. We're very excited!
I was the singular weirdo who watched the first two seasons of Community before Parks and Rec, and I thought it was the best sitcom ever! And it sure is clever. But once you see the fleshed out relationships of P&R, or the brutal humanity of something like Louie, Community starts looking real sterile. They just circle around the same plot points! Jeff realizes he's an asshole every episode just to forget by the next, etc. it's a bummer.
Oh man, my life is like a ridiculous slapstick comedy, for real. In fifth grade, I projectile vomited on my bus and half my classmates. In sixth grade, I peed my pants, and had to walk through the entire school, sit in the office, and borrow a spare pair of pants from the kindergarten teacher who keeps some in reserve for the five year olds. In seventh grade, I was called out for period bleeding onto my chair, and wasn't excused from class to go to the bathroom until I cleaned it up. When I was eighteen, I dressed up for a Pimps and Hos party and won best Ho, someone posted a picture online, and my parents printed it and gave it to my boss to shame me. (My boss' brother was my date to the party, so they pinned it on the breakroom bulletin board for a month.) The first time I met one of my boyfriend's family, I had a sty and it burst in front of them, and then their dog peed on my leg. I do full pratfalls and fly face down stairs and walk into walls resulting in great injury at least three times a year. There's probably a million more examples from the last six years, but after high school I stopped counting.
Sincerely, thank you for being my favorite commenter, because this so much. Just yesterday I was making a muddled and ridiculous almost argument about children featured videos and blah, but between this and 'no homos gonna make it to heaven' or whatever, I take it back! The world is assholes down to infants.
I don't think I was long-winded enough up there, so I just wanted to clarify that when I called Gabe's post exploitive, I meant not this individual case which feels more touchy to people because politics and religion oh my, but the nature of the entire internet as a whole to look at dumb kid videos and laugh. I'm in on it like everybody else, but thinking too hard about the morality of the whole thing makes my head hurt.
I think this is a fair point to bring up, because bashing a child who is depressingly proud of quoting the talking points her parents espouse is pretty icky. I wouldn't even categorize this as her beliefs, because I don't think she's thought deeply enough about it for them to count.
I would say though, that there is a big argument right now that 'non-hateful' expression of 'opinions' needs to be held accountable for the same power it holds in crushing down a population of people. If someone calmly and rationally explains how they're racist, it still counts no matter the delivery.
For me, I'm not as much horrified by a teenager who is obviously devoted to the examples set around her because she hasn't gotten that far into individual personality development. Most likely, she will stick with what she knows and become a grown-up asshole, but she's really little more than a parrot here.
What ruins my day are the people that will hoist her up about it. Not only is it exploitive (not to say this post also isn't exploitive), but I think the former does more damage. The comments under the video praise her for agreeing with their desire to round up and banish aids victims. Is what she said great? No, I disagree with her and I think the tenements of basic humanitarian viewpoints contradict her. But that is some awful shit to be associated with, and she's not the one making those connections.
Gabe pointed out that what she's saying is nonsense and thus laughable, and that has the potential of getting her to consider her own position, even if it's just to seek a way to defend herself. She's already put herself out there, been taken advantage of by straight up monsters; someone pointing out the ludicrous of it all isn't the worst thing to do.
It's just sad all around.
He looks like a mini- Chris Pratt. In twenty years, there will be a real life Andy Dwyer running around, and that's the best news I could've heard today.
I would actually go to this if it wasn't a guaranteed nightmare of screeching teenagers. I drove four hours last year to take my sister to the Pokemon mall tour on her birthday. I like my publicity campaigns 1982 style.
I felt a little cheap even bringing up my personal anecdote because I don't want that used as some kind of validation for being dicks when the economy's booming. "Sure, we'll sympathize with you now, poor people, because it sucks for some of us too!" and blow the fundamental issues off the rest of the time.
Empathy is a really tricky thing for the human race, apparently, because there are huge swarths of the population like your parents (who I'm sure are lovely people) that just don't understand concepts they haven't personally experienced.
The bigger mind-fuck to me are those like the subjects interviewed for the article; they obviously are familiar with struggling and dependence, but through some psychological boggling conclude that they're special cases of hard luck and the rest of the world needs to suck it up.
Ugh, I get so angry at the assholes that have convinced these people to be self-hating failures who deserve their struggles because they didn't try hard enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I know I should be angry at the people who buy it, and I am, but not nearly as much as the perpetrators. And Newt? My dad is a middle-classed conservative white man who has done Everything Right (TM) his entire life persuing the model of the rat race, and he's been out of work five times in three years because the businesses keep closing. If an educated, priveleged, experienced, and stereotypically perfectly presented model of the American dream needs unemployment on a regular basis, I want you to go ahead and shut the fuck up about anyone without those advantages.
I went into the show assuming every single character was trying to pull some underhanded scam (counting horse cards! or whatever), so the twenty five percent of dialouge I managed to make out all translated as very ominous. I think I was mostly right, bar maybe the cocky jockey, but who knows, maybe he's playing a long con.
I hate about ninety-nine percent of kid's movies and shows these days, and thought I'd been doing a decent job of slipping in good stuff among the onslaught of hyperactive, mindless crap to my five year old. A few months back, I noticed Cartoon Network was airing an hour of classic Looney Tunes everyday at noon, and thought how great. My kid cried. "Why are the cartoons hitting each other?" So, that was a fun talk.
So, my extended family (white, middle-class) are huge Madea fans, complete with constant quoting of the movies. They've recently taught my five year old to say "Thank yer" and "Dinter". It's painful.
Wait, so she went above and beyond to have her roommate hog the bathroom, lack energy to clean, and never feel inspired to fill the fridge? Mine always did that without being poisoned.
A couple years ago, before the Tea Party emerged, I was big into Ron Paul and the concept of Libertarianism. I felt the two-party system was a joke, and really felt inspired by the idea of fucking it off and starting over. Which, actually, I still do, but I don't think Libertarian values are the way to do that. Socially liberal, economically conservative is a farce though. It sounds great on paper, because I want everyone treated fairly, but don't want control to be with some awful all-powerful centrist force. Unfortunately, human beings don't really work that way. The theory that the private market would step up and fill the needs of a central government is pretty much debunked. Resetting the majority of decision making to states would make the country extremely unbalanced, and states can't afford most programs Libertarians would prefer to see localized.
So yeah, the Tea Partiers busted out and made us all look like assholes, but even separate from that, I unfortunately don't see that system working ever. What we have isn't working either, and extreme socialism ala Communism didn't look great. Sweden seems to have figured some shit out, but they talk funny so who even knows what that's all about? Guess we're just stuck in the suck.
Yay Friday! Drinks on me.
Excuse the dramatic phrasing, but that's a pretty barbaric philosophy. Harsher punishments don't reduce crime; identifying common causes of criminal behavior (socio-economic, mental health) and making improvements to reduce or treat those causes reduces crime. Instead of focusing on 'eye for an eye', we could dedicate time and money on preventing crime, freeing up space in jail for true sociopathic criminals to sit for life (as the only beneficial argument I've ever heard for the death penalty talks about the cost of hosting life prisoners.) Advancement of humanity for the better is supposed to be one of the goals of a first world country, right?
I just tried to google and find out if he's wearing a West Point hat, and instead found the best cowboy hat shopping emporium on the web. Well played name for page views, guys.
But what I'm saying is the anonymity is not about hiding the addiction. It's just a privacy measure for group meetings (and kind of isn't even then? Between sponsors, and people that become friends or hook up). It's encouraged in the 12 Steps to admit to your problem, and then to go around to the people who have been affected and make amends. I think there's an acknowledgement of the personal nature of recovery, and the Steps are written vaguely enough to give breathing room to people that would rather have their struggles be secret in their outside lives, but otherwise, they are really big on owning up (Hi, my name is, right off the bat). Think of it more like the confidentiality agreement with a therapist.
I'm just pointing this out because it seems like there's kind of a mystery to anyone who hasn't been involved with recovery groups. The only heirloom I received from the paternal side of my family was a well-used, ancient copy of The Blue Book, and I went to NA meetings for a couple months. I wasn't trying to debate against your views, I'm just giving some of the background facts on the subject.
Well, the anonymity allowed people to attend in the early stages of the organization, because back then being caught as an admitted addict was a huge jeopardy to their jobs and social circles. If a person was functioning, everyone would just not talk about what abusive assholes they were, and if they spun out of control they were hospitalized. Nowadays, the anonymity serves as a guarantee of privacy. It's not about, lie to everyone because this is shameful, it's a code that guarantees that you can come and share your personal story without it being spread around.
And the meetings are relegated to church basements in most instances because it's a free place to gather and groups can be localized. The churches volunteer their meeting rooms a couple times a week, and that means that people that can't afford counseling or find a way to fewer and far between alternative groups, have access to a form of treatment.
I think the set-up is really serviceable, overall. And a totally separate discussion from whether terms of illness should be applied to addicts.
I'm usually the annoying "but it's hilarious campy fun!" defender person, but nope. This season is indefensible. Last night's episode was not 'bad in a good way'. It was the most terrible hour of television I've watched in months, and I watch Jersey Shore. So.
Comments