I was never particularly a girlie-girl, despite my mother’s valiant attempts.
You know the drill, cute, bright dresses and outfits (my Mom sewed), sometimes sleeping with curlers or rags in my long chestnut hair, and of course, hair decorations and thingamabobs (bows, ribbons, and remember that yarn in our pigtails?).
It didn’t take.
I wasn’t exactly a tomboy either.
Just a girl, who grew, slowly, into a woman.
My favourite colour now is black (yes, I’m aware it’s not actually a colour; black objects absorb all the colours of the visible spectrum and reflect none of them to the eyes, but humour me). My hair is a sexy (sure, ok) bob, though enduring the awkward process of growing out decades of hair dye. Not a ribbon or bow in sight.
My friends were an intriguing mixture of girlie and not-so-girlie, but we all had one thing in common, we were obsessed with one thing: numbers. Bra size. When we got our first period. How long each period was. How many days between periods. Weight. Height. Phone numbers. How many boys you’d kissed, or wanted to kiss, or who wanted to kiss you. Oh yes, and occasionally grades in school slipped into that all important number cluster. It was all a numbers game.
From this angle, at this age, those numbers now seem adorable.
Reaching numbers in the 40s or 50s? You might as well have said I’d be driving a flying car, or getting my supper from a food replicator.
Those numbers were Sci-Fi.
Now they’re Non-Fiction.
For decades I’ve ridden the roller-coaster of confidence. High up, I throw my hands in the air, tasting the ripe plum of thrills; believing I’d made the right choice…knowing I could do anything I put my mind to.
Big bro was stylin’ too.
Then racing down, down, down to uncertain, overwhelmed, unsure. My brain screaming, even if it never reaches my lips. The sense that I could achieve being mercilessly pummeled by doubt. Fear whipping cruelly at my hair. Procrastination punching relentlessly at my gut. The bar that should be protecting me from falling instead holds me in. I chase challenges, but crash, tumble, fail to engage. The risks are too big. Too scary. What if I disappoint? What if I impress and can’t do it again?
Does everyone ride this roller-coaster, or do they ride the Ferris wheel, a perfect circle of confidence, around and around? Maybe they’re just better at faking it.
Groovy Christmas morning with Mrs. Beasley!
I don’t want to be the heroine or the victim in my story, just the writer. The writer who has snacks. Tasty snacks. Maybe a comfy chair or couch. And the ability to share her story.
A writer and her tasty snacks.
The internet has helped spread that story. I love the internet, it connects people in ways never, ever imagined. And if you don’t have anyone to argue with, just express an opinion then…wait. And watch some cat videos.
A feeling of lassitude, tedium, ennui grips me. The usual stuff isn’t doing it for me. I have battled the demons of depression and anxiety, unashamed; their claws rake at me, their teeth snap at me, bloody, but not broken, I go on.
This seems like something else, could it be boredom? I hope not. Not my best state. It’s destructive. Causing zoning out, not caring, not engaging, or looking for routes to relieve that boredom, usually with negative consequences.
Boredom doesn’t have to always be bad. It can cause ignition. Spark. My boredom doesn’t feel like a visit from apathy, or its twin, indifference.
I’m not feeling particularly restrained or confined, no more than usual.
I feel thoughts wandering to ways to ease this blanket of boredom. So could this be the searching type of boredom? Looking for something. Open to new possibilities, positive changes? Could anticipation, expectation be masquerading as boredom?
My Grandma would’ve said I should pull up my bootstraps. But what if those straps are so worn, so frayed…just about to snap? She’d probably tell me to dig deeper and pull harder. I’m trying, Grandma.
First and last time I looked like a bride.
Each person that crosses your path, friend or foe or otherwise, teaches you something. But what? That you should meet fewer people? Or the person that crossed your path, the person that taught you the most, should have been you. Maybe it was. Is. Should be.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality. Open your eyes, Look up to the skies and see… I’m just a poor girl, I need no sympathy, Because I’m easy come, easy go, Little high, little low, Anyway the wind blows, does kinda matter to me…
If you didn’t headbang to that (preferably in a car with friends), I got nothing…
I’m back, it’s been a rough week or so, including, unfortunately, me being back to my usual sleeping issues – I see why they use lack of sleep as a torture method. Life, you spin me round (like a record). On the bright side, no bail money needed, no visiting the hardware store for: lye, tarps, a shovel, and I discovered I can still discover stuff about myself and others.
I recently got new eyeglasses, progressive ones, a nice word for you’re old, deal with it. Getting old doesn’t bother me, it’s like watching time-lapse photos of myself decaying. Who doesn’t love arthritis, wrinkles, age spots, forgetfulness – what was I talking about? It could be an adjustment thing, but I find myself spending less time online, more in the real world…whatever that means.
Also channeling my inner Popeye, yup, I am what I am with a spinach binge (even spinach tea), which in turn caused St. Patrick’s Day to come early, if you know what I mean…and no one was after those lucky charms, no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. Enough said.
I see The Bacheloris back, can someone explain this twisted take on Dunbar’s Number? To me, the concept is flawed, if I wanted to date a guy who was dating like 25 other women I would have just stayed in the music scene. And yes, I had to use the Blake Shelton parody (Farm Hunk) from SNL…you’re welcome.
Speaking of reality shows, what’s with that new one, Pumpkin For Prez? Why do we want to watch a caustic, racist, sexist, grandiloquent pumpkin trying to become POTUS? Though funny, it’s on way too often.
I could have done without the white Bronco flashback, do we really have to relive the O.J. Simpson trial? Couldn’t we just assume the LAPD still have evidence impotence? Perhaps Disney and Pixar could cash in on this O.J. stuff to promote Finding Dory. I can picture the trailer now: “Knife? I saw a knife!”. Or the chance for Paul Hogan to revive the nostalgia of his Crocodile Dundee films: “That’s not a knife…this is a knife!”.
The older I get the more I feel like a charlatan, a flim-flam artist, fraud, poser, pretending to be an adult when all I really want is to run through a field with a kite, only stopping long enough to blow bubbles and count how long it takes them to burst. I’m sick of paperwork. Up to here with paying bills, errands, taxes, phone calls, being on hold, decisions, balancing budgets…I’m queasy from being bombarded, sold stuff, even during TV, movies, books, etc. Product placement I understand, but I watch TV/movies, and read books to be distracted, entertained, having actors ad-roofie me to push it, push it real good for: Segway, cereal, Coke (not the real anything), Apple, Microsoft, fast food, junk food, candy, a car that parallel parks itself (would love that car, by the way), well, takes me out of my enjoyment zone. Instead, I want to tear off my adult costume and spend hours watching tadpoles in a stream. Go barefoot. No matter our age, whether you’re online or not, Adam Lindsay Gordon got it right: “Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own”…I guess I’ll bravely, kindly continue adulting.
I think I have a slow learning curve, who knows, but I find I don’t mind, I actually like the learning part. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results isn’t insanity, it’s living. So life, take on me, take me on, I’ll be yours if…
Dear Readers, how are you today? Happy, I hope.
Lately I’ve been in a shall we say, reflective mood, thinking of the highs and lows, cons and pros of being human.
I know, like so many things, it’s complicated.
Let’s start with the Pros:
1. We’re amusing.
I never understand why people go to the zoo when they can watch people instead, such as, on public transit. In one ride I saw: a guy with a bag full of copper wires sucking down a giant blue slurpee who collected paper transfers from the bus floor, tore two apart, licked them, put them together then showed ‘it’ to the driver; another guy was reading a scientific magazine, upside down; a photoshopped woman talking loudly and graphically about her knotty/naughty love life via cellphone; an older gentleman wearing PJs, cool, I did that too, in high school, the top one day, bottoms another, but as I get older I just think, sure, that looks comfy, you could get off the bus and right into bed. Who needs The Oscars? Hop on a bus, be awarded.
2. We’re ingenious.
Really, we came up with all kinds of stuff, like: flying, fire, medicine, books, family, duct tape, technology, chocolate, the internet, music, blogging, swimming inside in the winter, batteries, politicians, money, cake, saunas, friendships, trains, Johnny Depp as a pirate, pool noodle under fitted sheet so a child doesn’t roll out of bed (wish I’d known this when my son was young), driving, driving with dogs on our laps, wait, someone needs to explain this one to me, does the dog think he’s driving, does he even comprehend what driving is, I doubt he passed a driving test, I mean, how did he fill out all the forms, reach the pedals with his paws, not bite the instructor?
3. We’re endlessly curious.
We ask questions such as, but not limited to: “How bad can it be?” (very bad); “Could it get any worse?” (yes); “How stupid can you be?” (have you heard some politicians?).
4. We’re brave.
We live on a planet where the earth shakes, volcanoes spew lava, mountains of snow grow, and storms make us remember there’s no place like home…and then invite tourists, cause it’s that awesome.
5. We fall in love and out of love.
Love can go from oh’s to ex’s…ex’s to oh’s or so I’ve heard…at least, in song. Our hearts can stay, stray, delay, relay, live to love another day. Don’t think my ex’s or oh’s haunt me, but I’d like to think someday my Prince Charming will ride in on his baggage cart and sweep me into his manly arms, yes, apparently in my flight of fancy I’m dainty and light as a feather, his bronzed flesh glowing, huh, glowing? Too much of the X-Files reboot? But I digress…he’ll have room on his baggage cart for my baggage too and we’ll be off, into the sunset (Risky Business-style sunglasses firmly in place), hopefully not ending up like Thelma and Louise, Romeo and Juliet, or Butch and Sundance…
6. We yearn.
For more, for other worlds and explore them through books, movies, TV…finally saw Star Wars The Force Awakens aka A-New-Hope-revisited when I took my son to a movie marathon for his birthday. It was great, but I have to wonder, what is it with people dropping children off on desert planets? Do they think it’s desert daycare? Do they think the children might go all Home Alone on the scum of these wretched hives of villainy? At what point should we just admit they’re bad parents?
7. We all want to be heroes or funny anti-heroes.
Yeah, I saw Deadpooland laughed so hard my sides hurt. I’m having a bit of a Ryan Reynolds week (how often can you say that?), saw Woman In Gold too, how does Helen Mirren do it? But we don’t have to wear a cape, or a mask, have mutant powers, or fancy gadgets…just be good to one another. But if you get a chance to be be Batman and drive the Batmobile, do that too. Kindness is true heroics.
The Cons? Maybe another time, or…all of the above? Anything you want to add?
Seeing is believing,
or is it believing is seeing?
Or not seeing is believing?
I’m confused.
There are things we can’t see that we believe in, and things we can’t see we don’t believe in. How do we choose? I can’t see atoms, air, sunshine, germs, Wi-Fi, magic, ghosts, hope, despair, Santa, love, hate, vampires, cancer, pain, mental illness, God, aliens, pain, good, evil, a cat’s purr, microwaves, pollution, carbon monoxide, autism, a baby’s breath…
Should we assume none of these are real?
I can feel the sunshine on my skin, hear a cat’s purr, use the internet, witness the horror of cancer…Geez, at this point, I’m held together with the duct tape of atoms and hope. If those things are real without being seen, why not the others? It’s not the same in blogging, we have to be seen. But how?
1. You know those little bubbles in carbonated drinks, all fizzy, tickling the nose, and expanding the stomach? That’s blogging. It can be effervescent, pleasing, irritating, confounding, overwhelming, addictive. And while most of us don’t want to expand our stomachs, we do want to expand our readership. If you’re just doing it for yourself, that’s great, but then why do it online, why not in a journal or diary?
2. Don’t fixate on number of views. Blog as often as you and your readers enjoy. Do it for the fun of it, for money (stupid question, money is a necessary evil), fame, a book deal, movie deal (I just had an image of who might portray me in the movie of my life, Helena Bonham Carter? No, probably Mindy Cohn).
3. The internet is a giant virtual haystack and yes, in this analogy, you are the needle, I am the needle, more specifically, our blogs are the needles. Shift around the haystack – you can’t expect to just ‘be found’, or find others.
Look for blog parties/linky parties/blog shares… Jason – https://aopinionatedman.com/ Janice – http://mostlyblogging.com/ Danny – http://dreambigdreamoften.co/ Elena – http://www.livingwithbatman.com/ Vicky – http://www.singlemotherahoy.com/ April – https://diapersandtutus.wordpress.com/ And more. Read, share, like, comment. And blog engagement groups/boards are rampant on Facebook and Pinterest. Twitter is overflowing with hashtag days (Suziehttps://suzie81speaks.com/ gets us trending every Sunday with #SundayBlogShare – the lovely ladies at http://honeyquill.com/ give us #LinkYourLife – there’s also #MondayBlogs #TuesdayShares#wwwblogs #BeWoW #bluskyfriday #ArchiveDay #WeekendBlogShare). Don’t just attend, participate.
5. Your readers won’t always ‘get’ what you’re blogging about or agree. Some will be disinterested, some downright rude…Keep wandering through the blogging desert (or dessert) and you’ll find the awesome ones, astounding ones, generous ones, hopeful ones, ones that inspire, ignite, and make you overjoyed you ever heard the term, blogging.
6. Blogging is about being part of something, otherwise you’d just sit alone typing…and we’ve seen the movies – that can either lead to a bestseller…or murder.
As a young child I believed many things, if I watched a movie again the ending might change, or the money I put in the bank would be the exact same money I’d get out…my Mom, who worked at the credit union at the time had the delightful task of teaching me this life lesson when I wanted my ‘lucky’ quarter from my account. Oops.
Now, older, wiser, I may not believe what I used to believe, or have to see to believe; I may not always know what to believe, but I still want to believe. What about you?
Hello
It’s me
I was
Wondering
if after all
this time
we could
virtually meet
To go over
what is
real
or
bloggerspeak
Hello, can you hear me? I’m in Canada dreamingabout who I’ll one day be Hello from the other side Feels like I’ve blogged a thousand times I sometimes forget, uphill can make you rest And at least I can say I tried
Not as much tears me up anymore So hello from the other side Feels like I’ve blogged a thousand times
Thanks Adele, like ‘Hello’is ever leaving my head.
Hello, I’m probably one of the most honest people ever – except I lie.
When I say I’m fine, sometimes, I lie.
Even if it’s mostly to myself.
I haven’t been well for a while now, even more so than usual, which is saying something. I’ve been pushing through with sheer force of will, but even that is wearing thin.
Apparently I need more ‘self-care’, which apparently, I’m very not ‘good’ at it.
So when an unlikely source, Groupon threw me a line – 50% off movies and popcorn (I brought the popcorn home for my son), I thought, why not? I wasn’t disappointed to watch The Hunger Games take its final bow on the big screen, except the title Mockingjay Part 2, really, that’s kind of boring, how about The Mockingjay Awakens, or Mockingjay Hurray! or an Australian version, Mockingjay G’day! I wasn’t thrilled by The Hunger Games books, but I did enjoy exploring our world, choices, freedoms and illusions of, through this world, onscreen more. When Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) keeps asking Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), ‘Real or Not Real’, I understood. Too often the world can feel violent and even surreal, but what is real…or not real? I suppose the best we can do is try to stand for something, or we’ll fall for anything.
Christmas music jingled away as I waited for the movie to begin, and I realized, blogging and Christmas have a lot more in common than I thought, like…
1. It’s better to give than receive. Even if you feel you don’t have enough, try to help others in some way. In blogging you can give by: ‘liking’, ‘sharing’, and/or ‘commenting’. You may not agree with every word, but appreciate that blogger took the time to post (as you wish to be appreciated).
2. Connection – you never know who you’re going to virtually meet and how they’ll change your life, or you theirs.
3. Fruitcake and posts – love, hate, like bits of, or given time, both could be used to prop open a door to…
4. Lots of surprises, awkward moments, comfort, joy, regifting, and more than a few ugly sweaters (still, it’s all in the eye of the beholder).
5. Plenty of glitz and fancy bits, yet sometimes, the substance and what really matters still shines through.
6. Gingerbread, yes, delightful, but sometimes hard to handle, especially without breaking.
9. Posts hung like stockings by the internet chimney with care, with hopes that readers soon will be there.
8. Cookies, meals out, eggnog, and other holiday treats, all awesome, but too many and you start to feel sluggish, tired, irritable, and overwhelmed. Blogging can be the same – know yourself, know your readers.
9. We can all be Santa’s Elves filling Santa’s shelves – bringing posts, perhaps comfort and joy…
10. Cookies, carrots, comments, posts, shares, maybe some milk (or in some cases, more adult libations) – all left for those we hope will show up.
11. Visions of sugar plums. Hoping to inspire and please, but sometimes, as hard as we try, our posts, our holidays, our days fall flat. There’s no time limit on getting up, or starting over. Dust off and try again!
12. Christmas trees, all different, just as all blogs are different. Don’t worry if you have the right niche, enough followers, comments, likes, etc. Don’t overthink. Send your creativity into the world, who knows what will come of it…anything, everything.
With blogging and Christmas and everything else, be brave, do what you feel, even if it goes wrong, you tried and that can’t really be wrong. Slow down, take the time to really enjoy and take it all in (including chocolate).
The occasional broken heart (some courtesy of good-for-nothing teen heart-throbs leering suggestively from glossy magazine covers), the enforced cleaning of my room, scrapped knees and elbows, the tedium of school, bullying, losses…still, I consider myself lucky to have grown up in a time where we knew little.
Sure, pesky facts sometimes showed up, but we were quick to scare them away and defiantly let our ‘ignorance is bliss’ flag fly!
Of course, I knew horrible things had happened and were happening, but for inexplicable reasons (I blame chocolate and kittens), I seemed to believe things would get better.
I don’t know, maybe it was growing up in a small town, but even with all my extensive sci-fi reading and viewing I could never have imagined this strange new world I would someday live in where Donald Trump could be President of the United States; someone would list their dog as a job reference; Kardashians are deities; people fawn and argue on social media over food while many don’t have any food at all; we would still believe governments and corporations who regularly and flagrantly lie to and cheat us…where fiction is fact and fantasy masquerades as reality.
The news, entertainment, internet, politics, business, sports, relationships – it’s like we’re watching The Tudors or The Borgias and the only thing that has changed are the outfits…and the quality of the acting. Lies, intrigues, shifting alliances, hypocrisy, machinations, double standards (like when someone does whatever they want, but when someone else does the same thing or less, they’re outraged, shocked, appalled – insert Fox Newsworthy propaganda rhetoric here).
Tired of the daily circus, I eagerly plopped down on my couch, green tea in hand, sore feet on the exercise ball (hey, it has to be good for something) to distract myself from the distractions and marvel at Colin Firth’s magnificence in Magic in the Moonlight.
But alas, I found the movie full of philosophical questions about the meaning of life. Sigh. Is nothing sacred? While enjoying the witty banter, I also had to think about whether this is all there is. This day-to-day, this cycle of life, the collective cultures, religions, the systems and wealth of knowledge obtained from human history and common experiences…Or is there more? A higher power, a divine plan, magic, a metaphysical world beyond the rational. Are there plans or is it all spontaneous and just happening as it’s happening? Perhaps I should have just revisited the pastoral peace of Pride and Prejudice, but then, I’d probably wonder again whether I would really like Mr. Darcy if I met him, or think he was a rich, pompous jerk.
My brain was awash with questions…and green tea. Do we need illusions or even delusions to survive and then more and more as stress levels build?
Is that why the world is looking more like the final days of an empire?
It might also explain why pop culture has become an avant-garde-Spanx-clad-Salvador-Dali-painting-on-Viagra.
Oh well, off to Outwit, Outlast and Outplay another day.
As a girl you grow up being taught so many things, but many girls aren’t taught how to be single, better yet, singular, or even better, singularly spectacular. I’m pretty sure this goes for boys as well.
One of the big things looming over a single person is dating. The mysteries of the ages look simple compared to dating. Dating is so complex there are times you don’t even know you’re on a date, in fact, you could be on a date right now. And actually getting a date, that’s more complicated than doing your taxes and most often, less fun.
Dating keeps getting weirder…texting, online dating (did they just match me up with my ex?), sexting, digital fantasies – are we dating or on a sci-fi reality show? And what’s with The Bachelor? If I wanted to date a guy who was dating lots of other women at the same time I would have stayed in the music scene. No, I don’t accept your rose, I don’t know where it’s been.
Be ready to let it go. Hypothetically let’s say you and another person manage to agree to see each other, at a specific time and place, not virtually, but the date isn’t going well. He endlessly checks his phone, explains how women who like chocolate are emotionally constipated, tells stories about his spawn-of-Satan-horns-and-all ex (still married, just a technicality, really, we’re waiting until after the baby is born to divorce), the time he was in prison (a complete misunderstanding), asks to see your toes, and then he says, “Hey, I missed you,” when you came back from the washroom. You start looking for exits and wondering why you didn’t take the money you spent on hair, clothes, and make-up for the date and buy lottery tickets; the odds are ever in your favour. In a desperate attempt to save the date, you try to find common ground, only to discover it’s more like quicksand.
Be the change you want to see in the date. Don’t think of a bad date as a disaster (that word is reserved for when your plane goes down, the volcano you’re climbing erupts, or you learn they’re discontinuing your favourite ice cream flavour), think of it as a learning opportunity. Do a forensic exam of the date. It might have gone better if you hadn’t talked about your extreme obsession with Daryl Dixon (not Norman Reedus, Daryl Dixon), or the hilarious time you put laxatives in your ex’s coffee, or enthused about the TV show, Say Yes to The Dress and how you can’t wait to be on it, or told your date his haircut makes him look like Charles Manson. But who can really pin down the exact moment where things went wrong?
Be the date. Visualize how you want the date to go. You want to charm your date. Be urbane and witty, your eyes should sparkle like diamonds, your hair should catch the light as your toss it casually over your shoulder (not too close to the candlelight or it will actually catch on fire).
Be who you want to date. Think about it, if you want your date to be interesting and fun, be that yourself. If you want your date to be a bad boy type who may run guns on the weekend and is wiping his fingerprints from all the silverware and glasses he uses on the date, be that yourself (oh, don’t forget to take your napkin, they can do wonders with DNA nowadays).
Be your own date. If dating is getting you down, take a break. Learn how to be a singularly spectacular person on your own. Take yourself out to dinner without reading or checking your cellphone, instead, watch the people (not in a creepy-the-management-has-to-ask-you-to-leave-and-puts-your-picture-up-so-you-can’t-come-back way); appreciate the meal and me time. Take yourself to the movie, but if you’re still on the lookout for Mr. Right even when spending time alone, I don’t recommend Magic Mike XXL, the gents in the audience will be more into Channing Tatum than you.
Being a singular person is about being you, in all situations, so get out there and be your own party.
I have always been me and despite many attempts to make me not me, I still seem to manage to be me.
That’s not always a good thing.
Read some of my stuff, comment, critique, praise, ignore, puzzle, or just do whatever you want.
That’s my blog bio…everything else you’ll learn in my posts or you don’t care.
Every time I think I understand, even vaguely, how the world works, it tilts on its axis, spinning me right round, baby right round, like a record. Turns out, the blogging world is no different. Like everyone else on the planet (that might be a slight exaggeration, overstatement was never my strong suit), I have a blog. If I had a cat it would have a blog about sleeping, eating, and occasionally chasing a mouse lurking around the property. The mouse would have a blog about his adventures trying to escape the cat that bothers him while he’s trying to lurk around the property. And so on.
August 2013, I started this blog to relax, to practice writing, and to be more concise, with varying degrees of success. My Very Me-ness doesn’t always translate well, but no need to worry (hear that brain, no need to worry…forget it, it’s not listening), I’ve been embraced by readers, bloggers, etc. and I feel snug as a bug in a virtual rug.
Blogging has been difficult in many ways, but has made me fall in love with writing again, which guided me to start a year-long project to add even more happiness (Or contentment? Peace of mind?) to my life.
This week’s goals: 1. Remove 15 minutes or more of screen time per day and play a game with my son (I want chess, he wants Pokémon, maybe we need a Pokémon chess set). 2. Remove 100 calories per day (No cheating, it can’t be veggies…Step away from the cookies). 3. Remove 15 minutes or more of screen time per day and just write, doesn’t matter what. 4. Remove 15 minutes or more per day of sitting time (replace with Yoga and Tai Chi). 5. Spend 15 minutes or more per day submitting articles and manuscripts, especially knowing they might be rejected.
6. Change 15 minutes of internet time to relaxation and rest. 7. Give away, use, or get rid of 1 or more items a day.
Blogging myths busted and wisdom learned:
1. Blogging is solitary. Wrong. Blogging, my friends, is social and addictive, like sugar, and as the song by Maroon 5 says (I’ve tried to get it out of my head, believe me), I need a little sweetness in my life, your sugar, yes, please!
2.You need to have something to say to have a blog. How snotty and daft was that assumption? Everyone has something to say.
3.Blogging is simple. Wrong again, complicated, yet worth it, despite the intricacies that sometimes make you feel like your head might explode. Mistakes have been made and more shall be made; it’s all part of learning.
4. Success! I thought I needed to be a world-famous writer, then I saw comments that said I’d made people laugh, smile, and think. Anything else that comes along would be the icing on this delicious, chocolatey cake of a blog experience thanks to you, dear readers.
5. Blogging is constant. Wrong. As with life, the only thing you can count on in blogging is change. For example, I believe the WordPress motto is: If it ain’t broke, fix it a few times a day. Twitter seems to have a midlife crisis every few weeks and I don’t know what happened to Facebook. There are: trolls, traffic, topics, taboos, privacy issues, time, concentration…what was I saying? Oh yes, so the question today is, to blog or not to blog? For now, the answer is…why not?
Connection is such a tenuous thing, physically or emotionally. You want to connect, to trust, but how do you know when the connection is toxic, or failing, or broken?
Each day, I try to tiptoe around the world for as long as I can, but the internet has made this challenging.
It’s a Catch-22, if I don’t connect to the internet I drift apart from the world, but if I connect to the internet, I’m bombarded with stuff : news, ads, studies, misery and success, and just, well, stuff.
Page after page, link after link of:
People with diseases and those pretending to have diseases, really? Pretending to have a disease? Stuns me every time.
Finding life on other planets – shouldn’t we concentrate on keeping what little intelligent life we have on Earth first?
What’s getting deflated? Definitely not the egos of athletes!
Governments lying to us again…still?
Bragging, boasting, whining, complaining, rudeness, trolls and trouble.
Turtles and snakes in toilets, transformed food, books, social media, movies, cats, TV, music, royalty, and endless things going viral we won’t remember next week.
Riots, wars, conflicts, comets, poverty, abuse, slavery, rape, murder, mutant ants, fires, biker wars, shootings, floods, terrorism, volcanic eruptions, killer bees, public shaming, teachers having sex with students (in the wise words of Pink Floyd, Hey! teachers! leave the kids alone!)…
Hoaxes, scams, and stunts, aarrgghhh, my head is spinning!
NSA, CIA, IRS, CSIS, OMG, ISIS, UFO, LOL, NASA, it might be fun to stay at the YMCA, if we weren’t drowning in abbreviations.
Studies explaining things they think I should know, like: food, drinking, sleeping, the environment, politics, parenting. I figured out parenting, at first you’re disoriented, exhausted, scared to say or do the wrong thing, a bit like being abducted by aliens, then you realize, they’re adorable aliens, like ET and then, they have you, you have X-Files Stockholm Syndrome and you can’t get enough…or wait, is that politics, not parenting?
Ads and commercials for things we don’t need, but apparently should want more than breathing.
And remember when we only knew a little about celebrities and their lives? I miss that.
Remember in Poltergeist, where the eldest daughter is standing in the street screaming, “What’s happening?!?”…sometimes, that’s me, inside my head.
Don’t get me wrong, despite my woes, I’m happy to wake up alive every morning, as opposed to waking up dead, which is most inconvenient and usually alters your plans, not only for the day, but the foreseeable future. Yet I’m struggling, dear readers, to find a balance between using technology and being consumed by it. I suppose it’s the same with any relationship, you need boundaries, compromise and…
1.Mutual respect. If you’re feeling bad when using the internet, take some time away, explore other interests.
2.Independence. If you depend on it for everything, it’s likely to let you down one way or another.
3. Dreams. Does it inspire you to write that novel you’ve always talked about writing, talk to an old friend, travel, try new things, explore, take a chance…dream?
Perhaps sometimes you have to drift to make connections; strong connections, not overpowering ones.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a blog, must be in want of readers.
For some, blogs take off faster than a Nascar driver chasing after sponsorship, for most others, like me, it’s a slow ride…
I know some of the reasons it’s been a slow ride, I’ve broken the first rule of The Blog Club, don’t talk about The Blog Club, no, that’s not it, oh yes, find a niche. Never have, probably never will. I figure if I get bored, you will too.
To me, giving blogging advice is like trying to explain to someone how to: dance, paint, drive, or make love in a canoe. Sometimes you just have to do it and make the mistakes, have the close calls, possibly tip over at the most inopportune moment.
…but with a rebel yell you cried more, more, more…so here goes:
1. Choose a name for your blog. I didn’t know this was important when I choose mine. Live and learn.
2. Size matters, but it’s more about how you use it, mind out of the gutter, I’m taking about post size. Remember, it doesn’t matter how much they love your posts, your readers have lives.
3. Try to use images that work with your post. Adding a random picture of an adorable kitten just to suck up to the cats who run the internet might be smart, but come on, who does that?
4. Don’t get too stressed about the numbers, like right now, most numbers seem down on WordPress, who knows why? First, I blamed the Royal baby, but Princess Charlie is just too awfully cute. Then Mayweather/Pacquiao fight, Mother’s Day, elections, weather, labour unrest, but in the end I had to admit the truth – it’s WordPress. They probably changed their algorithms, come on, they’re always changing something, so statistically (and they love stats), it has to be them.
5. Poofread, er, proofread or get someone else to (and you can always correct it afterwards). We all make mistakes.
6. I can’t make you love me, well, actually, my posts, but one of the best parts about blogging is connecting with your readers and other bloggers, without all of you, what’s the point? Like everything else, sometimes you have to take someone’s hand and other times, offer yours.
8. Blogging advice can be confusing, here’s the problem, what I think is terribly catchy and clever might not be to others. Obviously I think I’m writing something good, otherwise why would I publish it? Do what you want to do.
9. To be a shameless self-promoting bloghussy like me or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous rejection while promoting on social media….aye, there’s the rub. I like Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest, but Facebook just lays there like a mouldy, old ad-filled sock.
10. Don’t worry about if you’re going to offend someone, it’s the internet, someone is always, and I mean always, offended. Always.
Who am I kidding? I have no idea what works. I’ve poured my heart out and had the post sit there, alone, shivering like the last leaf on a tree before winter. Just do what you feel is right, in the famous words of those sage philosophers, Cheap Trick, “Surrender, Surrender, but don’t give yourself away”.
What about you, dear readers, what would be your best blogging advice?
You can’t always get what you want. The Rolling Stones and parents have been telling us this for years, but they’re not all leading by example. The Stones at least qualified by saying, if you try sometimes…you might get what you need.
I was in a store the other day where a teeny-weeny tornado of a child, innocuously dressed in pink, yet she may well have been the spawn of something evil that came from the bowels of a very toasty place, was screaming at the top of her lungs that she wanted something. I believe it was a doll of some kind, but it was hard to tell as her words flowed together in one raging howl. Spittle flew from her small bow lips and her Dora clasped pigtails bobbed wildly as her neck precariously thrashed her tiny head back and forth in classic Exorcist style as she raged against the injustice of not having this toy.
The mother seemed to be holding firm until the volume of the pink virago threatened to shatter glass and then she did something unbelievable, that mother smiled, patted her banshee’s little blonde head and handed her the package, saying they should go pay for it before they went to get lunch at McDonald’s.
I stood, wavering between a slow motion ‘No-o-o-o-o-o-o!’, a facepalm, or standing mouth agape, doing my best impression of a codfish, as I realized the happy silence from the smiling little blonde angel was more deafening than her wailing.
I guess if you scream loud enough and in just the right way, you can always get what you want.
Make no mistake, adults are not exempt from tantrums, we just have them in different ways. We still want what we want when we want it and we want it now!
Our wants often yell louder than our needs. It’s why we date the wrong people, elect the wrong leaders, buy too much, spend too much time on the internet, lie, steal, cheat, overeat, and even make some Shameless poor choices, ok, most aren’t up to the Gallagher family, but our wants are that little blonde girl and our better judgment is that mother.
It’s easy to be so focused on the moment and forget, you shouldn’t be frothing at the mouth to get something.
Is this willingness to give in, to give free rein to our angry little want tantrums why so many people, even biologically adult people say life is unfair and that they hate their life? Life isn’t fair. Who told you it was? You hate their life. How is that even possible? No, you hate something that is happening in, or to your life. There are things I hate about my life, but I don’t hate my life. See the difference?
Yes, the bubblegum raging harridan also hated her life, because she couldn’t have a toy. Wow, red flashing lights for a massive overstatement, please file this under First World Problems.
A child in a refugee camp shivering, scared, and hungry may think she hates her life, but she really hates the situation. A child in a war zone may think he hates his life, but he really hates the effects of war. People in Nepal may feel they hate their life as they reel from the effects of a devastating earthquake, but hating your life over a toy? What’s the name of the doll, Sindy Shallow?
We should think about how much we have, not just about how much we want to have.
What exactly are we wishing for here, a world where everyone has everything? Then what would you wish for?
Keep wishing, keep dreaming, sometimes it’s the best part of a bad day.
When you rise
you should
bring others with you;
when you descend,
invite no one else along.
Sometimes you will hate.
Choose love.
Sometimes you will be indifferent.
Choose compassion.
Sometimes you will despair.
Choose hope.
Was there always so much anger in the world or does the internet just give it a longer reach?
I guess there were always bullies, meanies, thugs, just generally, nasties.
Maybe there were cave people who told other cave people they were terrible at cave drawings.
But the vitriol online? Treating others as you would want to be treated hasn’t changed because of the anonymity of the internet.
The internet can bring people together, to help, to spread information, but it also has a sinister side where people abuse, use, and destroy others, sometimes for sport.
There are too many Human Tornados – charming and convincing, they cut a path of destruction wherever they go. They blow into people’s lives, wreak havoc, then move on, often pretending they’re the victim. Some of them sure are brilliant, at being cruel.
Do they’re know what they’re doing? How much they’re hurting others? The damage they do? Is it lashing out? Are they so dissociated from their feelings? Or so narcissistic that they can’t see past their own feelings? As you can see, I have more questions than answers.
Social media fights have become notorious – they’ve lead to lawsuits, divorces, estrangement, even death and yet, they rage on. Venom spewed toward the living, the deceased. Anyone and anything is fair game. Just because they can.
Strong, confident people don’t have to judge, or tear others down.
All that time and energy wasted, caring about who others love, what they wear, their weight, their income, what they drive or where they live, who they know, what race or religion they are, lifestyle choices, etc.
Instead of attacking – discuss, ignore, show compassion, or see things from another point of view.
Being wealthy, famous, powerful or on the internet are not character references. Character is what you do, not who you are. It’s what you do when no one can see what you’re doing. Or who you are. Or when you don’t get anything for doing it.
Each new day, no matter what it brings, I try to face with grace. I’m not always successful. Hopefully I’ll get another chance.
Things creep into your life or leap in, snarling and tearing, either way, they can beat you down so hard you wonder how you will ever get back up…then eventually, you’ll notice you’re standing again.
Those you love will hurt and you can’t always help, but you can always love them.
People, even good people get lost, if you can, help them find their way. Hopefully, someone will do the same for you.
There will be prejudice and you will think it unfair. It is. Have the courage to denounce it.
You will lose those you love, for many reasons, but you’ll never lose that you loved them.
Kindness can have costs, but you’ll be paid back over and over again.Love can hurt, but you’ll keep loving and will want to love again, despite the pain.
If you see someone fall, literally or figuratively, extending a hand feels better than pointing a finger.
There will be dark times, but find people and things that help you through the darkness, not descend into the darkness. When another day ends, remember the good, try to understand the bad, be grateful and know that, maybe, just maybe you can try again tomorrow.
On February 20, 2015, the internet is going to be filled with a different form of extremism, compassion. I hope you can join, with a post, a quote, a Tweet, status update, video, photo that means compassion to you…or visit. I’m not a fan of Slacktivism, but I think we need to remember that compassion, kindness, and hope are better than intolerance, hate, and fear. #1000Speak
So the January blahs have set in and you’re feeling blue…now what?
Is it the weather, Christmas excitement gone, holiday bills arriving, resolutions becoming less resolute by the hour, tired of shoveling?
Or because someone told you it’s Blue Monday?
We only heard about Blue Monday in songs or grumblings until it became an official thing 10 years ago.
But what’s so wrong with being blue anyway? Cookie monster is blue.
So are: Blue bonnets Blueberries Blue birds Dory Blue skies Blue oceans Blue Moons Grover Gonzo The Na’vi Blue eyes Blue crayons
For X-Files fans…
Blue popsicles The Blue Room The Blues Topaz Blue suede shoes…
Doesn’t blue symbolize loyalty, trust and confidence?
It can’t be because it’s the most depressing day of the year, surely there are other days in the running?
What about Valentine’s Day, that can be depressing for those without a Valentine. Tax Day…enough said. Black Friday, it highlights the rank consumerism of our society. Election Day…depending.
When your sports team loses. Birthdays, for some.
A day with bad news.
A day of a funeral.
The day you try on your swimsuit for the summer.
Come on, some of these days must be more depressing than Blue Monday, especially when Blue Monday coincides with Martin Luther King Jr Day. https://yadadarcyyada.com/2013/08/28/is-the-dream-still-alive/
Is Blue Monday just tapping into the epidemic of loneliness that shadows our modern world? Or a First World WhineFest?
If you’re blue, go out today and help someone else.
Take stock of your life, if you don’t like it, make changes.
Be aware. Be caring. Be committed. Be smart. Be kind. Be fun. Be loving. Be compassionate. Be you.
Look around, it’s just another day. 1440 minutes. 24 hours. And it’s not over yet.
And the weirdest part? It’s going to be another day tomorrow.
You ruined my life! My life is ruined! They’re ruining my life! People use the word ruin a lot, I do not think it means what they think it means. Your life can be altered, sometimes in extremely negative ways, perhaps even screwed up royally, but your life can’t be ruined… technically.
So what if you:
1. Shared a picture, tweet, post, status update etc. that has offended, disturbed, cost you a job, relationship, friendship, and/or caused massive backlash? Learn from it. People are complex, multidimensional, social media tends to be flat, a moment frozen in time which you have no idea how people are viewing or why, what their filter is, what their life experiences are, etc. It’s so easy to offend on social media, if I haven’t done so already, keep reading, odds are someone will be offended by this.
2. Stayed too long and put too much into trying to save a toxic relationship, whether with a partner, friend, family member? ‘Bad’ relationships can lead to low self-esteem, depression, resentment, fatigue – a waste of time and energy. You’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em, that isn’t just in poker.
3. Ate too much over the holidays? Spent too much over the holidays? Exercised too little? No use beating yourself up, accept responsibility and change.
4. Fell in love and fell hard…with stuff. It’s easy to do, shopping in stores, online, it’s exciting, it’s cool, it’s fun, everyone praises and envies your stuff; like any addiction you can choose what you feed it. Is the gratification worth the consequences?
5. Believed things you heard or read or watched. We’ve all done it, but there’s a lot of bad or just plain wrong information, especially on the internet. Take things with a hefty truckload of salt.
6. Been complacent. You hoped governments and corporations had your best interests at heart. They don’t. They should. But they don’t.
7. Forgot gratitude and took things for granted. I’m sure we’ve all done this, you get comfortable with people, things and you forget – they can all disappear. It’s so easy to accept, expect, and forget to be thankful. Broken record here, but learn from it.
8. Worried too much about what you say or do. Being yourself is so last year and what if you offend someone or they don’t like something you said or did? You can’t please everyone, so unless you’re hurting someone, this too shall pass. If they don’t like you when you’re really you, move on.
9. Gave up on dreams, decided to settle? It may not be too late, at least to have a modified version of those dreams. Keep trying.
10. You’ve fallen and you stayed there…There’s no time limit on getting back up. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, get up, dust off, you’re back!
Since then I’ve made a lot of mistakes, did I say a lot I meant a ton, or perhaps a tad more; probably said a lot of things people don’t agree with; and had some wanting-to-pull-my-hair-out moments, no worries, it’s still there, more or less.
I’ve learned a lot. Had some revelations about people I thought would be supportive, turns they weren’t, and still aren’t.
I’ll take it as a life lesson.
Plenty more people have been extremely supportive.
Thank you to family and friends, those who have pressed like, or shared, or reblogged, or followed, or subscribed, tweeted and retweeted, given me awards, or a combination. It means more than you’ll ever know, really.
I have ‘virtually’ met some awesome people who are kind, supportive, funny, helpful, generous, hopeful, caring, and have mind-blowing things to say and they share it. Thank you.
This year has opened up new portals for me.
I’m reading books I might never have read, learned things I didn’t know my brain could learn, but most of all it’s given me hope that maybe I can be more, it’s given me a glimpse of me, a me that I sometimes fear is gone forever.
So please join me for this virtual celebration of my 1st Blogaversary or Blogversary or maybe it’s a blogbirthday!
Drop by and say hi, read some of my older posts, apparently there are like 450 of them, hey, I did warn you with the tagline, Vague Meanderings of the Broke and Obscure.
Have a slice of virtual cake, wear a silly hat and join me for another year of who knows what!!!
Why so fascinated with bringing back dinosaurs?
Size? Curiosity? That they lived before the dawn of humans?
Or merely human nature, we want to do something, if we can.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is a big, stinky, carnivorous cautionary tale for abuse of technology and he makes no bones about it (yeah, I went for the cheap paleontology joke; sorry, it was the only thing I could dig up).
We need more cautionary tales.
We find we can manipulate genes, so as humans we think, then we should.
Clone…then we should.
Build bombs…we should.
Grow viruses…should.
Smartphones, Wi-Fi, internet…should, should, should!!!
Shouldn’t we find out the consequences first?
Everything has consequences.
Everything.
I’ve heard the argument that God gave us the ability to do these things so we should. a) that’s presuming there’s a God; b) we also have to ability to kill people, should we? c) justifying much?
In less than 25 years we’ve become internet junkies. We overshare worldwide. No worries about pulsating signals everywhere. More children plugged in like adorable little zombies. We’re more distracted, obsessed, exhausted, overwhelmed, and less connected than ever….
I began reading Jurassic Park and Philosophy (edited by Nicholas Michaud and Jessica Watkins) thinking I knew what they’re going to say. To some extent I did; philosophers examining JP in detail, scrutinizing all connotations and consequences as well as providing provocative insights regarding: genetic engineering, cloning, technology, human nature, ethics, religion, drama, humour, and even dinosaurs. Also gave me a creepy ah-ha moment – we’re the dinosaurs, a species striding boldly, masters of the planet, all the while becoming extinct.
Yes, another tremendous book in the Popular Culture and Philosophyseries from Open Court. I’m so hooked, I can’t wait for the next fix.
Hammond, essentially a snake oil salesman, only cared about money, power, and his legacy, he couldn’t see he put his real legacy in danger by bringing his grandchildren to the park to figure out if it was safe, after someone was killed by a cloned dinosaur. Humans are so proud we can do, we forget to show respect for the real power, nature.
John Hammond:All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked. Ian Malcolm:Yeah, but John, if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.
Any thoughts on the reboot of the Jurassic Park series?
Jurassic World is now a state-of-the-art dino theme park on Isla Nublar. 22 years after the events of the original Jurassic Park all is well; what a relief. But wait, frustrated with declining attendance, an exciting new attraction is opened, gee, I wonder what could go wrong?
The cast looks interesting, Chris Pratt, Jake Johnson, Vincent D’Onofrio, BD Wong, Irrfan Khan, Judy Greer, Bryce Dallas Howard, but I’ll miss Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern,andSam Neill.
Written by Colin Trevorrow (also directing) and Derek Connolly,both fromSafety Not Guaranteed https://yadadarcyyada.com/?s=safety+not+guaranteed, I’m hopeful this will be action-packed and funny. Also that it’ll continue to offer strong female characters, like Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Lex (Ariana Richards), and well, the dinosaurs were all female, right?
Ian Malcolm:God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Ellie Sattler:Dinosaurs eat man … woman inherits the earth.
The world has a short memory and an even shorter attention span.
June 6, 1944, 70 years ago the Allied Forces landed on the beaches of Normandy. It was supposed to be June 5, 1944, but weather delayed it.
Every year we remember those who fought for us. There’s pomp and ceremony and we say we care.
But what about the rest of the year?
Should veterans have to fight for food, shelter, care, and support?
Should we still keep fighting, in wars, in our own countries, among ourselves?
More than 40% don’t vote in North America. We’re so used to our freedoms we take them for granted. We will stay in line for a sale or tickets or waiting for a new product, but don’t take 5 minutes to vote. I know, I voted this morning, it took under 5 minutes; people wait in line at drive-thrus longer than that to get coffee or a burger. I really don’t get it.
Into The Jaws of Death, Robert F. Sargent
Many died that day and for the months after as they fought to take back German-occupied Western Europe and tried and succeeded in turning the tides of the war.
Many call them heroes, but I think most of them didn’t think of themselves that way, they were doing their duty, carrying out orders.
Like police officers and firefighters, soldiers serve their country and its citizens by putting their lives on the line. We see it as brave, they see it as a job, that someone must protect, serve, save, and defend.
Maybe that’s what makes them truly heroes, that they don’t do it to be heroes.
The Normandy landings, codenamed Operation Overlord(with the naval aspect codenamed Operation Neptune) is still the largest seaborne invasion in history. Many movies, books, TV shows, songs, etc. have come from that day. Obviously many aren’t factual, after all, history is written by the winners, but still interesting.
It wasn’t until 1997 that the undersea documentation of the D-Day assault were looked at in a historically significant way, sadly, by then, there was erosion and reclamation by the sea. First underwater archaeological study and surveys in 2000.
They found some interesting information and artefacts as well as some discrepancies.
To this day, small pieces of history haunt the shores and seas of Normandy, a bizarre reminder that history should be remembered, all those who fought, honoured.
I was thinking, if they tried to do something like this today social media would probably tell the German forces every move, how many troops, ships, planes…there would be pictures of parachutes and tweets and pix of where they were landing, people updating their Facebook status and Vine vids…Instagrammers would briefly interrupt posting pix of food to tell where and how many allied forces were and what they were wearing. And many, many memes.
We still don’t know the exact number that died during the Allied invasion. 14 years agoCarol Tuckwiller, a former librarian was assigned the significant mission of identifying every Allied soldier who died on June 6, 1944.
She spent over six years searching through records and evidence, contacting sources, etc., eventually giving up not because all soldiers were accounted for, but she ran out of credible information.
So 70 years later and out of more than 150,000 warriors who went in that day, no one knows for sure how many died. But her work brought many names of fallen soldiers into the historical records and onto plaques and made us realize there were more lives lost than we had understood.
Despite the glossy ceremonies under sun upon sand we must always remember the price of war and the higher price of oppression.
Lives lost, futures stolen, dignity torn asunder, money and power the tyrannical rulers…we could be talking about 70 years ago or any day in various parts of the world, sadly, too little has changed.
Politicians make hypocritical speeches about how much our veterans mean to us while many veterans struggle just to get by in their day-to-day lives.
Those who once stormed the beaches to fight the enemy and liberate oppressed people now have to storm their own governments for the care and attention they should receive with thanks for their valiant service.
Some of the best images of the D-Day invasion are from Canadian war artist, Orville Fisher (the 3 paintings pictured above, please check out his other work, truly, truly amazing).
I doubt the significance of the weathered faces and stiff bodies of the remaining veterans is lost on them or us; make no mistake, most will not be here to celebrate 75 years after D-Day.
We must then remember for them.
It was only a matter of time. Internet Service Providers (ISP) hate Net Neutrality. Why? Aren’t they happy people are addicted to the internet? Huge profits, ring a bell?
So what is Net Neutrality? Do we have it? Do we want it? Do we even know what it is? Is there an app for it? Is it a new series on Netflix? Does it give us cancer? Should I have a T-shirt slogan for it? Does it have something to do with kittens?
Here’s my understanding of Net Neutrality. All bits of the stuff head off into the great wide open of the internet, you know: ads, porn, blogs, movies, memes of Keanu Reeves looking incredulous, recipes, scams, spam, cat fishing, videos of John Oliver explaining climate change, video games, apps telling you to take your pills, pill-pushing, videos of babies dancing, pictures of food, pictu
res of kittens, pictures of kittens cooking food – is there no end to their talents? Even this post.
In a perfect world all this information would be treated equally by your Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and governments. No discrimination or any differences in charges by content, site, platform, app, user, modes of communication or attached equipment. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all bits and bytes on the internet are created equal.
It’s sort of what we think of as an open internet.
There are places in the world where the internet is effectively a closed net with severely restricted access, some services artificially degraded and throttled, and even filtering of information. We’re aware that governments keep an eye on happenings on the net, it’s the degrees of which that maybe not be so clear.
Will losing net neutrality limit internet freedoms?
Cause rates to skyrocket?
Cause streaming for video games, movies, etc. to slow down? Blocking? Massive monopolies?
Or is this all a lot of hot air that like some many other issues will blow over and be forgotten?
Tim Berners-Lee, who created the Worldwide Web25 years ago supports net neutrality.
As does Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol.
This is where things get freaky. Activists and corporations generally seem to agree on keeping Net Neutrality. How often does that happen?
But if they agree, why is it hotly debated around the world, especially in the United States? Telecom companies don’t agree and they have very deep pockets and lobbyists who have the ear of politicians.
Is this about telecom companies trying to provide better service or just make even more profits?
Is this the next stage in net dominance? Everyone’s nicely hooked now let’s sweat even more money out of them.
This isn’t a new debate, years ago it was telephone and before that telegraph neutrality.
You already have to be able to afford inflated internet access and there are price tiers.
So what would loss of Net Neutrality do besides widening the gap further?
More haves and have nots, even for businesses.
This isn’t in the distant future, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering two options: allow fast and slow broadband lanes which will compromise net neutrality or reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service which would preserve Net Neutrality.
You have approximately 4 months to contact the FCCand voice your opinion.
To paraphrase John Oliver’s rant on #NetNeutrality, Good evening monsters, This may be the moment you’ve spent your whole life training for, that badly spelled bile you usually reserve for unforgivable attacks on actresses you seem to think have gained weight, politicians you don’t agree with, photos of your ex-girlfriend getting on with her life, or non-white actors being cast as fictional characters…for once in your life it’s time to focus that indiscriminate rage in a useful direction. This is it trolls, seize the moment, Caps Locks on and fly my pretties fly! (Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, HBO).
Come to think of it, it would be more effective to send well-written and thoughtful points of view, because who takes trolls seriously?
Or maybe loss of Net Neutrality would make people spent less time online and we could fix some of the problems in the world instead of just endless Slacktivism.
Instead of spending millions to make the internet into a tiered system the governments and ISPs should look into laws or ways to try to crack down on those who use to internet to stalk, steal, scam, attack, cyberbully, and commit various illegal acts.
That would be a more effective use of time, energy, and money.
3. Today and all through April there will be more talk, more posts, more ads, more stuff sold, more people arguing about what caused Autism and still the numbers of children with Autism will rise.
4. For me everyday is Autism day. My son is brilliant, funny, clever, handsome, and amazing; he also happens to have Autism.
5. Children are being diagnosed with Autism in record numbers. Businesses, charities, celebrities, etc. are making record profits off the fears and vulnerabilities of parents.
6. Governments may say they’re aware and are doing a lot, but in truth, they just aren’t doing nearly enough.
7. Some parents hold mock funerals when their child is diagnosed with Autism. Is it just me or is that super creepy?
8. There are open doubters, closet doubters, haters, blamers, whiners, name-callers, bullies, accusers…the list goes on. None of that makes my child better.
9.The many voices for Autism, from whispers of hope to screams of anger to cries of despair can be heard throughout the world, not just today, but everyday.
10. There are plenty of theories and things people blame for Autism, yet to date, no single cause has been proven.
11. My child has Asperger’s Syndrome, he’s on the Autism Spectrum. He doesn’t need saving. He needs to be happy. Live up to his amazing potential. In that way, he’s the same as every other child.
12. Finding out my son had Autism didn’t change anything, I loved him just as much as ever.
13. Some people see my son as someone to be pitied, or mocked, or bullied, or judged, or labelled, or ignored. If some people took off their intolerance goggles they’d see who people really are.
14.Autism used to terrify me, now I see that’s it’s different, not bad or scary or less, just different. Who ever said different was awful? Neurodiversity Now!!!
15. When something or someone is hurting our children we could easily be angry, sad, frustrated, depressed, look for reasons, excuses or someone to blame. Instead we need to focus on helping our children and finding the real cause.
So on this day and others, remember, Autism is just a word, the real story is in each child and who they really are.
Embark on a unique voyage through the uncharted waters of thought and discovery with Treasures of the Elysian Fields. Unveiling treasures of epiphanies, this blog is a tapestry of eclectic musings, transcending the ordinary to offer a memorable journey into the realms of introspection and revelation.
Is this the real life?
Dear Readers, how are you today? Happy, I hope.
Seeing is believing,
Do they’re know what they’re doing?
Strong, confident people don’t have to judge, or tear others down.
August 8, 2013
‘virtually’ met some awesome people who are kind, supportive, funny, helpful, generous, hopeful, caring, and have mind-blowing things to say and they share it. Thank you.
g 
s now a state-of-the-art dino theme park on 
And many, many memes.
out of more than 150,000 warriors who went in that day, no one knows for sure how many died. But her work brought many names of fallen soldiers into the historical records and onto plaques and made us realize there were more lives lost than we had understood.
Is this about telecom companies trying to provide better service or just make even more profits?
en doubters, closet doubters, haters, blamers, whiners, name-callers, bullies, accusers…the list goes on. None of that makes my child better.
yadadarcyyada 