Category: childhood

What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?

What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?

My first thought was the usual red flags for dating girls. There are the usuals like too many tats, piercings, hair dyed an unnatural color, and feminist attire.

Then it occurred to me that those are for the dating crowd. For me, it is chatty females. When they start in on nothing just because they can’t handle silence, I’m out of there. I can’t take small talk. I will talk for hours on something deep, but yapping just for the sake of talking is a red flag. That is the introvert in me coming out

When thinking deeper about the question and including the population of the world, the clear answer was disloyalty. That is the end of a relationship for me. Once that line is crossed, I can’t go back. Once you stab me in the back, that’s it.

Shout out to my college girlfriend who slept around I found out afterwards. This blog is for you.

Why Is It Always The Trannies

Transexual violence Hall Of Horrors

Georgia School Shooter Weighed in on the Transgenderism Debate and Was Reportedly Bullied by Students Who Claimed He was Gay

3 Important Things to Know About the Introverts in Your Life

Here are some excerpts. The link to the full article is below. If you are an introvert, you already know this. If you are an extrovert, it’s really for you. They are the cause of a lot of our anxiety and problems trying to drags us along to a bunch of stuff we’re uncomfortable doing.

1. They need time to mentally prepare for socializing.

An introvert socializes very differently from an extrovert. Many of us “quiet ones” can socialize with people in small or large crowds, but it comes at a cost to our mental and physical energy. Instead, we prefer smaller, more intimate settings, or better yet, quiet evenings at home with just one other person as opposed to those spent out.

Even though I’m an introvert, I can “play the extrovert” when needed. I can put on the perfect smile, don my best dress, and be the perfect lady on your arm. I’ll be charming, witty, and entertaining. I can host a family feast during the holidays or attend that lavish event you’ve been looking forward to all year……

2. Alone time is how introverts recharge.

Speaking of parties, can an introvert go out and party? Sure! But we will probably be the first ones to leave and go home. The crowd of people and the noise — while energizing to extroverts — is utterly exhausting to us introverts.

After The Event is when an introvert needs their alone time the most. I want nothing more than to go home, possibly take a long bubble bath, and spend a day in my pajamas. Downtime is how introverts recharge their energy, both mental and physical. (Here’s the science behind why introverts love — and need — alone time.)….

3. Introverts need their world a little quieter and less crowded.

Even though we love spending time alone, you have to understand that introverts still want to be included. We want to be asked. If we turn down your invitation to dinner or a night out, we might tell you that we’re busy or have other plans. Those plans could very well involve spending the day reading, writing, or binge-watching TV……

Click to read more, especially if you know an introvert. You need to know this

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

I grew up in the 60’s before they took off the good TV because it was wholesome, albeit not something that challenged our intelligence.

So it was Batman (Adam West), Gilligans Island (My Mom hated us watching that), The Beverly Hillbilies, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie (Even then I knew Barbara Eden was hot), The Wild Wild West, Green Acres and some others of this ilk.

They wiped all of those out for the next round, but we still had WKRP, Taxi, Barney Miller and some of those that were good.

Dad Catches Record Fish On Daughter’s $9.99 Pink Pole

One West Virginia dad etched his name in fishing history by making an impressive catch on the most unassuming gear imaginable.

On July 21, Tyler Rutherford and his relatives spontaneously decided to fish a family farm pond.

They took worms and a few poles, and Rutherford soon cast a line from his 3-year-old daughter’s pink fishing pole out into the 1.5-acre pond.

The young girl is only able to reel the line in, so Rutherford casts it for her.

“We all just grabbed a thing of nightcrawlers,” Rutherford told the West Virginia Outdoors podcast. “I’d got my daughter a little pink $9.99 Zebco from Academy Sports and I’d got my little boy one for Easter.

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Why Some Introverts Hate Their Birthdays

I know I hate mine and it’s coming up, mostly the attention thing. No extrovert will understand this, but you should.

Anyway, here it is and boy is it right. Again, courtesy of Introvert Dear, link at the end

I’ve never really liked my birthday. In fact, it’s one of the days I dread the most. I hate all the extra attention and the pressure to make it a special day, usually with a party. It’s insufferable.

When I was a teenager, I used to have long, exhausting fights with my mother in the weeks leading up to my birthday. She always wanted me to celebrate with a huge party filled with family and friends. But to me, a huge birthday party is synonymous with torture, not celebration. Instead, I wanted something small, like going to the movies or the bowling alley with a few close friends.

No Birthday Party For Me, Thank You

More often than not, I used to win these fights and ended up doing what I wanted for my birthday. But all these arguments took a toll on my mental health and self-esteem. Whenever I refused to have a party or make a big deal out of my birthday, people called me a party pooper, a killjoy, and a downer. I didn’t have the words to defend myself (I was still a kid), so I internalized all those insults and convinced myself that there was something “wrong” with me. It took me years to realize and accept that there was nothing wrong with me — I am an introvert.

I am now a proud introvert who can defend the reasons behind my actions and behaviors. In case you’re curious, my relationship with my mother has improved, but I still hate my birthday. I believe a lot of the reasons stem from the fact that I’m an introvert.

Obviously, not all introverts hate their birthdays, but over the years I have noticed that a significant portion of the online introvert community feels aversion or indifference toward their birthdays. Here are a few reasons I believe some introverts (like myself) don’t like their birthdays.

Why Some Introverts Hate Their Birthdays

1. Too much attention

This one’s a no-brainer. Most introverts don’t like being the center of attention, so having an entire day dedicated to them can be quite uncomfortable. It’s especially tough when they are put on display in front of a lot of people, anxiously waiting to see their reactions while opening gifts or making a wish and blowing out the candles to the tune of “Happy Birthday.”

In my case, I especially hate all the attention I receive for something as trivial as turning one year older. I feel like I haven’t earned it, and I don’t know what to do with it. Being the center of attention makes me anxious, uncomfortable, and insecure. I always try to avoid it and redirect that attention to something or someone else. But when it’s my birthday, that is almost impossible to do because it’s “my day.”

2. The social exhaustion of a party

Birthdays and parties practically go hand in hand. When your birthday is coming up, everyone expects you to throw a big party to celebrate. Introverts tend to dislike parties because we don’t like big crowds, loud noises, and shallow socializing. This aversion to parties doesn’t change when the party is ours. If anything, it makes it worse.

When we throw a party, we might end up feeling anxious and worrying if everyone is having fun. It’s our party, so we feel the pressure and responsibility to be a good host and ensure everyone is enjoying themselves. But in the process, we sometimes forget to have a good time ourselves.

And don’t even get me started on surprise parties. It’s undoubtedly a nice gesture for someone to throw you a surprise party because it shows they care enough to go through all the trouble of organizing it. But a surprise party is practically a living nightmare for an introvert. If there’s anything worse than having a party, it’s not having knowledge or control over your own party.

3. The pressure to make it a “special” day

This is one of the things that bother me the most about my birthday. Sometimes, I just want to do something small to celebrate, like going to the movies or taking a long walk around the city. But the pressure from others to make it a “special” day can be too much. I get it, I was born on that day, but why does it have to be the most special day of my year? Why do I have to have the time of my life specifically on that day? That’s just setting myself up for failure because the expectations are always way too high. (And we introverts don’t like pressure anyway!)

Plus, when your birthday is coming up, it seems like everyone has their own opinion about how you should celebrate it. Instead of asking you what you want to do, some people tell you exactly what you should do. Whether it’s a party or going dancing at a club, your birthday might end up being about what other people want to do instead of what you want.

And God forbid you suggest you don’t want to do anything for your birthday — people might look at you as if you’re crazy. They will try to convince you that you’re wrong and that you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t do something special on that day.

4. All the phone calls and “happy birthday” messages

This one might come off as ungrateful because it’s undoubtedly nice to have people who care enough to wish you a happy birthday. But to an introvert, all that attention can be overwhelming.

Phone calls, in general, make some introverts uncomfortable. When the sole purpose of a call is to wish us a happy birthday, it’s even worse because all the attention is on us. After the “Happy Birthday”s and “Thank you”s, the inevitable small talk follows, making us even more uncomfortable. It doesn’t help that the people who usually call are relatives or friends you only talk to two or three times a year.

The same goes for the Facebook messages and texts you receive throughout the day. After the pleasantries and birthday greetings, you have to make small talk (again, in a different form) with all the people who wished you a happy birthday. This can be a bit too much, which is why I think some introverts hide their birthdays from their social media pages.

Want to feel more at ease in social situations?

Discover the secrets to enjoying fun, meaningful conversations. Know exactly what to say, even if you’re introverted, shy, or anxious. Feel less drained and have more energy while socializing. Click here to secure your spot in Jenn Granneman’s upcoming course, Easy Conversation.

5. The singing

Few situations are worse for an introvert than being in front of a cake while friends and family sing what feels like a three-hour rendition of “Happy Birthday.” I never know what to do or where to look when that melody starts, and suddenly I have a cake in front of me and dozens of eyes on me.

There is no appropriate reaction to that situation. Do I smile the whole time? No, that would look fake, and my cheeks would probably start to hurt after the third “Happy birthday to you…” Do I put on a poker face? No, that would probably come off as bratty and ungrateful. Do I sing with them? No, that would look awkward. Do I run away and hide in the bathroom? No, that would probably lead to a lot of questions. Whoever came up with this particular birthday tradition obviously hated introverts and wanted to see them suffer.

I Don’t Hate All Birthdays, Just Mine

I love celebrating my friends and family’s birthdays. I enjoy seeing them happy and buying them presents to celebrate another year of their lives. But when the spotlight is on me and it’s my birthday, I hate it. I hate the pressure, the attention, and the Happy Birthday song.

However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t enjoyed my birthdays before. The birthdays I have enjoyed the most are the ones when I did what I wanted to do, like going to the movies or the bowling alley with my best friends, not when I succumbed to the pressure from others and ended up doing what they wanted me to do.

So if you have an introvert in your life and you want to make their birthday special, just ask them what they want to do and respect it. Don’t assume everyone wants to celebrate with a huge party and be the center of attention.

And if you’re an introvert who hates their birthday like I do, there are ways to enjoy this “special day.” Set realistic expectations, put your foot down, and do what you want to do, whether that’s having dinner with your family, going dancing with your friends, or staying home with a good book and a Netflix marathon. I can’t promise you’ll start loving your birthday, but at least you’ll enjoy it more. And the good thing about birthdays is they only happen once a year.

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Happy Middle Child Day

History:

Middle children have a reputation for being ignored by their family, consequently growing up resentful, withdrawn, and disaffected. Although research shows little correlation between birth order and personality, the stereotype has persisted in pop culture characters like Jan Brady, who epitomizes the embittered middle child.

In fact, middle children might have some distinct advantages in adult life. The skills they develop as the “forgotten” sibling often translate into important qualities like empathy, diplomacy, and flexibility. In fact, over half of U.S. presidents were middle children, along with many other successful leaders.

Resourceful and independent but also cooperative and patient, middle children often grow up to be good leaders and helpful teammates. They can negotiate a variety of personalities but also do well on their own, and are known as risk-takers and independent thinkers. Because they’re frequently left to their own devices, middle children develop a self-sufficiency less common in their older and younger siblings.

Until the 1970s, American families had an average of 2.5 children. Today, due to modernization and economic and environmental pressures, fewer and fewer families have middle children, with the average American family having just under two kids.

National Middle Child Day began in 1986 as a way to celebrate the siblings who feel left out or unseen and give them a special day of their own. Until now, it’s been celebrated on August 12.

source

It was no party for me. I got shit on growing up and my youngest sibling has been gone for 12 years. I hope it was better for some of you out there. Whenever mine had a chance to help, she took the choice to screw me over instead of be a friend.

Perhaps it made me tougher and I had to try harder.

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Maybe You’re Just Not Smart

You’ve probably met or heard of someone who claimed to be ‘bad at tests,’ to be ‘anxious about test-taking,’ or some other euphemism for ‘I score poorly.’ The typical explanation for poor scoring is self-serving and naturally has less to do with the person being unintelligent and more to do with anxiety interfering with their ability to show their skills or with tests being unfair.

The anxious tend to do worse on tests not because anxiety interferes with test performance, but because they tend to have lower levels of ability. A possible explanation for the association is, therefore, that living the life of someone with low ability gives people a life of learning experiences that rightly promote anxiety about test performance, even if that anxiety doesn’t play a role in how well people test.

Now there are some gaps in the literature, but thanks to the size of the stereotype threat literature, I think it’s safe to argue those gaps are small.

The biggest gap has to do with the representativeness of sampling and the presence of anxiety as an interfering versus deficit-representing variable in high-stakes settings. Since high-stakes setting tend to see reduced stereotype threat—an anxiety-based hypothesis—I’m going to say ‘anxiety probably has reduced impacts in testing environments that matter.’ One down.

Since we see invariance most of the time in representatively sampled comparisons of demographic groups proposed to be differentially impacted by stereotype threat, I’m going to argue even further that the deficit account is probably right if there’s any truth whatever to groups varying in their anxiety levels. Since invariance generally applies to male-female comparisons and women definitely tend to be more anxious, I’ll wager the support is strong.

Or in other words, it’s not that you’re bad at taking tests5, it’s that you’re just not that smart.

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Friday Dick Humor With Meme’s To Steal And Share

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So That’s Why The Gen Alphabet’s Are Idiots

(STUDY) Excessive Internet usage impacts key parts of the teenage brain

A 2023 Statista survey found that U.S. teenagers spent an average of 4.8 hours on social media platforms every day, with girls spending an average of 5.3 hours compared to 4.4 hours for boys.

“Being as excessive and addictive screen use is routinely listed as one of parents’ biggest concerns for children, I think it’s overdue that we start educating children as early as possible about the dangers of unhealthy and mindless screen use,” Anthony Anzalone, a clinical psychologist at Stony Brook Medicine, told The Epoch Times.

A systematic review from the University College London, published in June in PLOS Mental Health, looked at 12 studies involving 237 youths aged 10 to 19 who had a formal diagnosis of internet addiction between 2013 and 2023. All the studies were conducted in Asian countries.

Researchers defined internet addiction as an inability to resist the urge to use the internet, which negatively affects mental well-being, as well as aspects of social, educational, and work life.

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Mid Week Meme Dump

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And for my Danish relatives who brag that they are always the happiest country, It’s easy to be happy when you have such low expectations. I never bought it.

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Why Some Introverts Hate Their Birthdays

I’ve never really liked my birthday. In fact, it’s one of the days I dread the most. I hate all the extra attention and the pressure to make it a special day, usually with a party. It’s insufferable.

Introvert Dear has a great article today. Here goes.

When I was a teenager, I used to have long, exhausting fights with my mother in the weeks leading up to my birthday. She always wanted me to celebrate with a huge party filled with family and friends. But to me, a huge birthday party is synonymous with torture, not celebration. Instead, I wanted something small, like going to the movies or the bowling alley with a few close friends.

No Birthday Party For Me, Thank You

More often than not, I used to win these fights and ended up doing what I wanted for my birthday. But all these arguments took a toll on my mental health and self-esteem. Whenever I refused to have a party or make a big deal out of my birthday, people called me a party pooper, a killjoy, and a downer. I didn’t have the words to defend myself (I was still a kid), so I internalized all those insults and convinced myself that there was something “wrong” with me. It took me years to realize and accept that there was nothing wrong with me — I am an introvert.

I am now a proud introvert who can defend the reasons behind my actions and behaviors. In case you’re curious, my relationship with my mother has improved, but I still hate my birthday. I believe a lot of the reasons stem from the fact that I’m an introvert.

Obviously, not all introverts hate their birthdays, but over the years I have noticed that a significant portion of the online introvert community feels aversion or indifference toward their birthdays. Here are a few reasons I believe some introverts (like myself) don’t like their birthdays.

story plus way more including the list of things that suck about birthdays for Introverts.

I hate it as it’s just another day for me. Now that I’m (much) older, it reminds me of how little time I might have left.

What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?

What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?

Making my kids eat everything on their plate.

I had to finish everything when I was young. My Dad would sit at the table while I chewed tough meat like I was chewing gum forever. This was after the others left.

Or my personal worst, choking down boiled okra. That slimy shit made me gag and I suffered through it until it was done. I think after a while my Mom had either mercy on me or tried to serve something I could finish.

I made sure my kids had enough to eat and that there was healthy food on their plate. When they were full and I believed it, I ended the pain for both of us. They grew up and survived, but then I guess I did also.

I always tried to learn from what they did right and wrong. There are lessons in both.

The Best Of Dick Humor

If it says dick humor, it’s a bunch of memes to laugh at and steal. Otherwise, it is double-entendre stories or some word play on the word dick.

childhood pranks

gonna start my week off like a champion, dick champion

somewhere there is a teenager naming his johnson this

how hard is the wood?

Billy Glasscock – coach

best jersey swap of all time, they knew what they were doing

sounding, sticking things in your dick

translation, we shot him in the dick

dick jokes if told by a girl

dick strong

because lawyers are dicks

dick humor real estate style

dick humor low hanging style

liberal men suffer more ED

dick humor

dick humor or dad humor

dick humor

dick humor

Break your dick to make it bigger

dick humor

Because guys like girls without dicks

Saturday dick humor

dick humor

dick humor at the Trump trial

dick humor

Latin for ungrateful dickhead

dick humor

dick humor

Which Activities Make You Lose Track Of Time?

Which activities make you lose track of time?

Writing. Note, I want to hear from my reader nicknamed bocopro who has great comments every time. It turns out that he’s a better writer than me and his stuff is funny to read. He has a lifetime of experience to draw upon and I like hearing from the readers.

While I do a lot of physical activities, I’m able to stay in the present about what is going on around me or in life. When I start writing, especially in a personal journal where I pour out my heart on my feelings or memories, I can get lost for a long time.

Occasionally, if I go back to read those words, I can relive that time of the actual occurrence and the time when I wrote it. I feel those feelings deeply and once in a while I am proud of what I wrote.

I’ve Seen More Star Trek Than William Shatner

I, like a lot of Trekkies, have seen almost all of the episodes of the good series. I don’t include Discovery in that and I’m struggling to finish Picard. That includes seeing some episodes double-digit times. I saw The Original Series when it was first aired in the 60’s. Heck, I’ve met him and talked about it.

I maintain that The Wrath of Khan and First Contact are the best movies. They stayed true to the TV series and brought in characters like Khan Noonian Singh.

Well, it turns out that Captain Kirk doesn’t watch it much. Read and weep.

At 93 years old, William Shatner continues to surprise us.

In a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, the 93-year-old actor — who portrayed Capt. James T. Kirk on the original “Star Trek” TV series from 1966 to 1969, and reprised the role in various films — revealed he’s actually only seen a “few” episodes of his work and has “never seen” any of the spinoffs. 

“I’m gonna tell you something that nobody knows. I’ve never seen another ‘Star Trek’ and I’ve seen as few ‘Star Treks’ of the show I was on, I’ve seen as few as possible,” he said. “I don’t like to look at myself, and I’ve never seen any other. I love it, I think it’s great. I just don’t, you know, I don’t watch television, per se.”

“I’m watching documentaries, I’m watching the news, I’m watching sports, I’m watching things that were, documentaries that were made, but I don’t watch television for some reason,” he added. “I’ve been urged to watch certain shows by my family, ‘You’ll love this,’ and I just never get around to it.”

In May, while promoting his documentary “You Can Call Me Bill,” Shatner told The Canadian Press it’d be “an intriguing idea” to reprise Captain Kirk today. 

“It’s almost impossible, but it was a great role and so well written and if there were a reason to be there, not just to make a cameo appearance, but if there were a genuine reason for the character appearing, I might consider it,” he said.

The rest of the story.

Live long and prosper

#BWBB Black Women Behaving Badly – Teachers Union Head Mocked For ‘Totally Unhinged’ Speech

The president of the country’s largest teachers union was mocked for a “totally unhinged” speech in which she shouted about winning “all the things.”

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA), banged on the podium, waved her arms, and laughed out loud as she shouted about social justice last week at the union’s Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly in Philadelphia.

“With determination and defiance, we will protect public education,” she said. “We will fight privatization. We will fight vouchers. We will fight any and all schemes to drain resources from our beloved public schools!”

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For the record, private schools and vouchers for kids to get them to a better school have proven to provide a better education. Public schools teach to the lowest level.

This is about money, power and control. She even says so without realizing it.

What Is Your Most Memorable Vacation?

Describe your most memorable vacation.

I’ve been on vacations as a kid, with that family growing up. I was kind of a tag along and did what my parents decided mostly. We went to the beach a lot growing up in Florida. That meant I grew up next to Disney World. Heck, we didn’t even have Disney until 8th grade for me. My memories there are of playing alone next to the ocean in my own world.

Then came vacations with a different family, my wife and kids. We traveled around the world. They were good times that I’ll remember while taking one kid fishing everywhere and the other doing anything to keep her from being bored. There was no time to recover or recharge my social battery.

Later in life I did stuff like sailfishing in Costa Rica or going to F1 in Italy and again they were good, but stressful trying to catch planes and waiting in huge crowds. I still had to rush to catch planes and was a mule hauling luggage around the world.

As always though, my introvert self comes out. Vacations where you are always on the run and trying to make everyone happy wore my social battery out to the point that I’d need a vacation to recover from vacation.

Now, I just go to the mountains where there aren’t many people and I can relax without having people acting like tourists or waiting in line. I have my stuff in my place and I can do gardening and tree trimming out in field with no one telling me what to do.

Not having the next deadline or trying to catch the next plane is my favorite.

Nathan’s Hot Dog Contest, Badlands Booker Let’s Out Booger Burp After Setting World Record

Right out of Revenge of the Nerds

Here’s the original

How To Override A Hotel Thermostat

modern hotel thermostats are, in a word, a pain. Well over a decade ago, we noticed the kind of thermostat where you were supposed to put your room key into a slot to keep the air conditioning (and sometimes the electricity!) running, which meant when you were out of the room, your A/C wouldn’t run and when you got back, the room would be uncomfortable. That one was easy to override because just about ANY card worked in the slot ;-).

As modern technology got more advanced, they started building motion sensors into hotel thermostats, which meant that not only did you have to be in the room for the A/C to work, you had to be moving around…so if you were sleeping and woke up in the middle of the night, the room could be uncomfortable because unless they were sleepwalking, no one had moved around in several hours.

And then there are the thermostats with upper or lower limits that you can’t bypass so the room won’t get warmer or colder than the hotel wants. Oh great, that way we can be uncomfortable in our room while we’re wide awake, too!

Fortunately, electronic-savvy travelers have made it their business to figure out how to override these nuisance thermostats so we can be in our hotel rooms more comfortably. Here are some hacks we’ve found (only found; we haven’t “invented” any) for some of the most popular brands at some of the more popular hotels:

NOTE #1: Of course, the hotels don’t want you to mess with their thermostats. Besides potentially using up more energy than the hotel intended, you run the risk of breaking their thermostat, like these people did – and frankly, the hotel may or may not hold you responsible for the repair bill. Your Mileage May Vary as to whether it’s a good idea or not to try to bypass the controls set by the hotel – but if you think it’s OK, here are some ways to do it.

rest of the instructions by a/c type

My Favorite Season Of The Year?

What is your favorite season of year? Why?

Look, I grew up in Central Florida without air conditioning. It was summer 51 of the 52 weeks of the year.

One of the best things in life for me was getting out of that state. It may have a great political climate, growth, no state taxes and other positives, but dreading to go outside because it’s so hot isn’t worth it.

Any of the other three seasons is great for me.

The Introvert Hangover And The Signs You May Have One

My go to page for this stuff is Introvert Dear. They nailed it on this one. Link below

An introvert hangover can leave you feeling physically and mentally exhausted, making you just want to be alone in a quiet place.

Does this sound familiar?

You’ve spent the whole day with your friends or family. You’ve had a great time eating, playing games, and catching up. But now, you’re so exhausted you can barely see straight, while everyone else seems as energetic as ever. In fact, they’re already setting up the next game as you’re wondering how you can slip out the door.

The next day, after the event is over, is no better. You might have a headache, and your body may feel sore and drained, almost like the onset of the flu. You’re tired — so very tired.

If this resonates with you, you might be experiencing something we call an “introvert hangover.”

What Is the Introvert Hangover?

Introvert, Dear writer Shawna Courter coined the term “introvert hangover” in this article to describe the exhaustion she felt after celebrating Christmas with her in-laws. She writes:

“An introvert hangover is a pretty terrible thing to experience. It starts with an actual physical reaction to overstimulation. Your ears might ring, your eyes start to blur, and you feel like you’re going to hyperventilate. Maybe your palms sweat. And then your mind feels like it kind of shuts down, building barriers around itself as if you had been driving on a wide open road, and now you’re suddenly driving in a narrow tunnel. All you want is to be at home, alone, where it’s quiet.”

Yes, the introvert hangover is real. It’s a funny term that describes the serious social burnout many introverts experience, marked by significant mental and physical fatigue.

Here are 12 signs that you might have an introvert hangover, which I discuss in more detail in my book, The Secret Lives of Introverts. You don’t need to experience all these symptoms to have one, and your symptoms might vary.

Here are the 12 Signs You have an Introvert Hangover

I never understood this for the first more than 5 decades. I did know that I’d instinctively look for a place to be away from the group once the event was over. I connected better with pets than strangers. I get it now and protect myself with time alone, sometimes before the event to make sure my battery is full

The Baby Names That Are Dying

They’ll be no singing “Happy Birthday” to little Myrtle any time soon. 

The once-buzzy baby name — along with Al, Bess, Cathy, Vern, Wally and more — is in the top 23 newborn names on the verge of virtual extinction. 

A foul fall from grace, the run-of-the-mill monikers were the bees knees during the Baby Boomer generation, between 1946 and 1964, per a 2024 report via baby-naming experts at Namesberry. 

A June 2024 analysis from online parenting hub, BabyCenter found that ultramodern mommies and daddies are crowning their kiddies with names from hit feature films and streaming series such as “Dune: Part Two,” and “Bridgerton.”  

Classic titles like Liam and Olivia have, too, maintained their high-rank in the baby name realm. In 2023, both topped the list of most popular boy and girl tags in the U.S. for the fifth year in a row, per recent data from the Social Security Administration. 

However, names facing annihilation were nowhere near the number one spots. 

Here’s the list

In an alternate world, it would be James T Kirk or Steve Rogers

If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?

Since I’m in the real world, I’m happy with who I am.

But since the question was asked when I could be the guy that saves the world or the universe, there you go. If you can be a superhero at it, that’s just icing on the cake.

How Bob Iger, DEI, and Wokism Broke Disney’s Trust with America

I grew up in Orlando, before Disney and while they built it. My friends in high school all worked there. It used to be for the family and wholesome fun. It’s now for woke, racists, feminists, trannies, homosexuals, pagans….so pretty much everything except straight white people.

Putting ideology ahead of entertainment has decimated an American institution. Walt Disney has been spinning in his grave ever since Bob Iger first became CEO back in 2005 during his first term. It continued during the short reign of Bob Chapek from 2020 to 2021, then accelerated at warp speed after Iger returned to the CEO role in 2022, post-COVID. The Walt Disney Company is broken, and until it gets new leadership at the top and refocuses on its core mission, to entertain, it is headed in only one direction: down. And that’s a shame for baby boomers like me who grew up with Walt Disney when our parents could trust the company to deliver wholesome entertainment not tainted by an agenda or ideology.

There is something of a subculture on YouTube of armchair analysts and commentators, WDW Pro, Valliant Renegade, and ClownfishTV, to name just three (beyond traditional financial websites like CNBC and Seeking Alpha), who track every cultural, corporate, programming, and financial move of The Walt Disney Company, previously one of America’s most iconic and trusted companies. Note: I used the past tense in describing The Walt Disney Company. It is no longer one of America’s most trusted brands, and it’s about to lose its iconic status.

How did this happen?

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Some Dark Lessons In The Area Of Love

· The person who cares less has the most power in a relationship.

· No one will ever be able to make you feel loved unless you love yourself.

· You can’t change others.

· No matter how hot you find someone, you’ll get used to their appearance faster than you like.

· The cute little quirks of today can be the soul-crushing flaws of tomorrow.

· We will all eventually become old and unattractive in the eyes of society.

· Often, the less you care about a particular woman, the easier it is to end up with her.

· Both sexes are easy to manipulate with the same principles that marketers use to sell us crap – scarcity, commitment, reciprocity, authority, social proof, and liking.

· Men will never know how it feels to be a woman and vice versa.

· You can love your partner till death and still want to sleep with others.

· You can’t always get what (who) you want.

· Love, dating, and relationship can’t be “figured out” logically. They require empathy, vulnerability, and honesty.

· Emotions change all the time. It’s possible to think you love someone with all your heart, but then one day you sober up and find out you truly don’t.

· When in love, everyone becomes an idiot.

· “Show me any beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of sleeping with her.”

· The higher you set the expectations from the beginning, the harder it will be to maintain the relationship. E.g., Send your girlfriend flowers every day and it will be cute for the first three days, cheesy after that, then awkward, and finally unbearable.

· The opposite of well is well-meaning.

Latin For Ungrateful Dickhead


It is from the species Adelotypa annulifera or latin for ungrateful dickhead.

I have no idea if this is right or not. I’m not even going to put it through the Latin translator. It’s because my level of humor lets me get the joke that there really could be a Latin name, especially because I know so many in this species.

Actually, this came from some old writings of mine and I was talking about one of my wife’s relatives. I have many that are in this species. It’s why I avoid family stuff as much as I can.

The Real Reason Introverts Hate Small Talk

Now, if you’re an introvert like me, you might hate the small talk ritual. Jon Baker, a business coach for introverts, found that 74 percent of introverts said they dislike small talk, as opposed to only 23 percent of extroverts who said they dislike it.

Why do the majority of introverts hate small talk?

By definition, introverts are people who feel drained by socializing and recharge their energy by spending time alone. Because small talk is neither emotionally nor intellectually stimulating, it can feel like an inefficient use of their limited social energy. In other words, if introverts are going to use up their energy, they want to spend it in ways that really count.

(Not sure if you’re an introvert? Here are 21 signs that confirm you’re an introvert.)

Also introverts tend to enjoy delving deep into topics and exploring ideas on a meaningful level. It’s more energizing to talk about things that feel important and relevant to them. Small talk, by its very nature, remains at a surface level.

But those aren’t the real reasons introverts might hate small talk.

Why Introverts Hate Small Talk

It’s not that introverts hate socializing or people. Even though we’re introverts, we still need close, healthy relationships to thrive.

As my friend Dr. Laurie Helgoe points out in her fascinating book, Introvert Power, “Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”

Small talk doesn’t bring people closer. Quite the opposite — it can create a barrier that prevents the kind of genuine, intimate connections we all crave.

Think about it. When two people get stuck in small-talk mode, discussing only “safe” and polite topics like the weather, they don’t really learn anything new about each other. They don’t get to know the other person or understand who they are. They miss discovering that their conversation partner, for example, wakes up early to go birdwatching, hates the color yellow, or grew up on a family farm.

As a result, the relationship doesn’t grow in a satisfying way. In general, introverts are interested in understanding people’s thoughts, feelings, life lessons, and experiences, which isn’t usually achieved through small talk.

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The quality I value most in a friend? Loyalty, maybe above everything else.

What quality do you value most in a friend?

I don’t mean the Batman and Robin type of a friend and loyalty. I just want somebody that I know I can trust, and not betray me. It’s like your girlfriend or wife not sleeping around behind your back.

What I ask is not too much and I don’t think it’s that hard to do. I know I give that to those that are really my friends. Being an introvert, I only let a very few people to the innermost part of my life. That’s a lot for a person like me to do so respecting that isn’t too much to ask in return.

The Ultimate Book List

I don’t know if you are a reader like me, but love books and am always looking for another source of recommendations.

Granted, my tastes don’t always go with the crowd, but here’s the crowd’s pick for a good book list.

Do I have any collections?

Do you have any collections?

Yes, memories lots of them. I write down as much as I can remember about my life and then if something pops up, I’ll insert where appropriate.

Sure, I have stuff on the wall, pictures on the phone and even photo albums that remind me of times that I’ve spent. It’s the words that I write down though which create the more vivid image in my mind, and experience the emotion of when it happened.

27 Ways To Tell If You Are A Toxic Person

I’m was related to one. She fit a lot of these but is fortunately now gone. I lived though a lot of this and it’s not pretty.

“Am I toxic?”

Toxic is a word that’s thrown about a lot these days.

But how do you know if you are a toxic person?

What are some things that you might do that cause you to be a toxic influence in the lives of others?

That’s what we’re going to explore.

Speak to an accredited and experienced therapist to help with any negative personality traits you might have. You may want to try speaking to one via BetterHelp.com for quality care at its most convenient.

What Does It Mean To Be Toxic?

In the general sense of the word, something that is toxic is harmful to a person upon exposure.

A toxic person is one who causes harm to others through their words and actions.

There are varying levels of toxicity.

Some may just be bad behaviors, others can stem from personality disorders, and some may be rooted in a mental health disorder that can be physically damaging as well.

Toxic people leave others worse off than before they met or interacted with them.

Sometimes this harm is felt instantly. Other times, it builds slowly with time and repeated exposure.

With this in mind, how can you tell if you are the toxic person in your life?

Here are some of the signs you can look out for.

27 Signs You Are A Toxic Person

1. You are emotionally manipulative and controlling.

You seek to make others your pawns and have them do as you wish.

You boss people around, micromanage situations, and use various forms of emotional blackmail to ensure you get your own way.

Subtlety is not your forte. You can be very blunt and rude to the point where it shocks other people.

Alternatively, you may feign upset and use tears as a way to guilt people into doing what you want.

When other people realize this about you, they may experience anxiety whenever you are around for fear of being targeted.

If this is something you do to one individual a lot, it can even result in depression and the destruction of their self-confidence.

Click here for rest of the list. It is a bit too long for me to put it all here but I bet everyone that reads it has someone that fits this.

Woke Jedi? The Star Wars Geeks Are Not Going To Go For This

You’d think that Disney would learn from their mistakes (or at least Bud Light) but no…this.

Disney+ is taking more flak for crowbarring a them/them character into its latest Star Wars series.

The animated show Tales of the Empire, is made up of six shorts, with one of the episodes featuring a non-binary Jedi.

In a scene below, the they/them agrees to surrender to an Inquisitor, a character that hunts Jedi, just as another Inquisitor sneaks up from behind and attempts to kill the they/them.

You’d be forgiven for having missed it, given that there are so many crapped out Star Wars things now, that only someone with no social life at all can keep up with them.

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They can only shit on the story and the audience for so long before they kill it.

Job For Just One Day? Be A Super Hero

What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?

It would be cool to be Captain America or Superman for a day.

Having to wake up and save the world all the time would be too much responsibility, but it would be cool to be a bad ass and protect others.

Either that or be Captain Kirk.

Any time I Can Be Alone Is My Favorite Day

What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?

I’ve always had a problem with attention on me or the hustle and bustle of holidays.

It’s counterintuitive to me that people act one way because someone said a day is different and then revert back when it was over.

I learned that it’s because of my introverted nature that causes me to process things differently than others.

It’s why days alone to recharge are better for me. They are my vacation and holidays.

I never got birthdays either. It’s just another day for me. I prefer not being the center of attention.

I’m glad others get excited about it but it’s not for me.

Where Was This Teacher When I Was Growing Up?

Michelle Solis, 46, pled no contest after being accused of raping a 14-year-old student on the child’s eighth grade graduation day in 2021.

A press release from District Attorney Mike Ramsey indicated that Solis, who was a 20-year veteran educator, raped the 14-year-old inside a locked classroom on graduation day, Daily Mail reported. Solis also allegedly sent explicit photos to the boy which “made their way back to local parents,” facilitating the investigation by police.

Solis, who was the boy’s teacher at the middle school, “friended” him on Instagram a few weeks prior to his graduation. Records indicate that was the start of her inappropriate relationship in which she allegedly sent him four inappropriate images. Then, on the day of his graduation from Sycamore Junior High School in northern California, she raped him.”

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Not once did a teacher ever try this in any school that I knew of. Hell, I had a crush on my German teacher. Why didn’t she try it? She was about 25 at the time. I wouldn’t have fought back

Anything deep, I’m an introvert and avoid small talk.

What topics do you like to discuss?

I’m not afraid to discuss anything that’s interesting. I can cover a large range of topics and do when prompted.

What is difficult for me is small talk. The banality of it is a painful exercise that I have to go through.

So my talking skills are good with deep conversations and any distraction to end small talk and my having to suffer through it.

The Two Types Of People In An Introvert World

Most people are temporary because it takes a long time to get to know someone and it’s hard to find the traits that are important. Loyalty is usually the final demarcation line for me. If they cross it and are disloyal, it’s over for me.

Take my college girlfriend who turned out to be a traveling slut (stewardess). Even though I didn’t find out until afterwards that she was sharing herself with others, that eliminated her from the permanent people pool. I didn’t have to feel the hurt and pain during the relationship, but the dishonesty got me out the door early.

I had acquaintances all throughout my life, but it’s hard to call them friends. The extroverts in my life meet and talk to someone for more than 5 minutes and it’s their new friend. Those are just temporary people for me. It takes a long time and a lot of things in common before they make permanent status. Very few make it.

You have to build a relationship and that is hard enough for me (and I’m guessing other introverts). We’d have to share something in common long enough to see if there is anything there. It still takes a long time for the walls to come down. Then there is the trust tests. I don’t dream them up, but they present themselves in life. I’m usually forced into a situation, but you can tell if a person is going to stick with you or stick it to you.

Even my siblings were temporary. They are around, but don’t count for me as permanent people for the loyalty reason. One can only take so much screwing over growing up and then the walls come up.

There’s your thought for the day.

A much deeper dive can be found here. It is by Introvert Dear who I’ve linked to on the home page describing why introverts don’t consider everyone their friend. It is a special to us and this article tells you why a lot better than I do.

The times I didn’t say no

Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

It’s more than one time, but it’s the same thing. I got asked to do something, go somewhere or be with some people that I shouldn’t have.

It was about setting boundaries. I remember the feeling or not wanting to be there, we’re doing whatever we were doing, saying the things I said or being with the people I was with.

If I had learned to say no, instead of going with the crowd, a lot of things would’ve turned out differently. I would have gotten in a lot less trouble, not done as many stupid things and would have not been in situations I didn’t want to be in.

I learned the hard way to protect myself from these instances and people, and as a result of gotten in to a lot less trouble.

Admitting Failure

What makes you nervous?

I reached a point in life where I have learned enough that I shouldn’t make bad mistakes or faux pas, yet I do.

It’s difficult enough to express your real feelings, compounded by knowing you’ve let somebody else down is soul crushing sometimes.

I can make it worse by rehashing it in my mind over and over until the point I have to admit it or ask forgiveness.

Question For The Day – Describe a Decision You Made In The Past That Helped You Learn Or Grow

Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.

When I stopped caring what people thought of me. It was incredibly freeing when you don’t have to worry about your image in other people’s minds.

I heard of saying that went like this, “you’ll stop caring what other people think about you when you realize how little they do “.

Describe a positive thing of family member is done for you

Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.

This is counterintuitive, but a sibling leaving was the most positive thing for me. Growing up, I had a sister that fought with my parents and caused all kinds of consternation in the house.

Fortunately, she got married early and when she left the house got quieter and all of our lives got better.

Describe some thing you learned in high school

Describe something you learned in high school.

The leaving it would be my favorite thing. I instinctively knew that my best days were ahead and that those who were stellar in high school had reached their peak. They were the Al Bundy’s who would re-live high school the rest of their lives.

I’d been stuck with these losers since kindergarten and getting away from them and the town was my introvert dream.

One of my favorite things in life is closing a chapter and never going back. It started with high school.

Describe one positive change you have made in your life

Describe one positive change you have made in your life.

When starting out in the business world I learned to see opportunities and I decided to walk through the right door.

I also ended a bad relationship from college freeing me up to get ahead. After finding out that she was cheating afterwards it confirmed that I was making the right decisions

Attachment Anxiety – A New Psychosis For Shit Happened To You In Life That You Want To Blame On Others

This is a common reflex in modern life—convincing ourselves that we are sick instead of reacting to something. It’s not your diet or lack of exercise; it’s depression. It’s not trauma from sexual assault; it’s BPD. It’s not the insane intensity of modern life; it’s ADHD. Honestly it’s bizarre how many of these are you anxiously attached?

I’ll post an excerpt from the rest of the story, but this is the same stuff the rest of us went through in life and we learned to deal with it. Stop blaming others and realize that not everything works out. You should feel lucky that it doesn’t. Thank God I’m not stuck with the list of people that turned out to be losers in my past. I’m grateful I don’t have to put up with their crap.

Grow up and learn to live your life instead of the last 5 seconds.

They need to stop giving these girls another thing to obsess over and let them live normal lives. Here’s my advice, stay off of social media and watch how fast you get better.

Here’s the rest, if you dare/care.

This is the relevant quote: That attachment theory can sometimes mask real problems and, like much else in modern life, encourage women to go inwards too much and obsessively self-scrutinise.

Lately it feels as if everything depends on me figuring out my attachment style. If I want professional success I need to recognise my childhood patterns and reparent myself. If I want to maintain friendships I first have to heal my inner child. And for any chance of a successful relationship I need to prioritise processing my trauma and assessing our attachment styles.

Attachment theory is very popular among Gen Z. The theory dates back to the 1950s, based on research by psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Ainsworth identified three main attachment styles: secure, anxious and avoidant, after assessing children’s responses to separation and reunion with their caregivers. Generally, those with anxious attachment tend to be needy and seek reassurance, avoidants are more distant and independent, while secures are confident and comfortable.

Since then it’s become popular to apply attachment theory to adult relationships—especially online. There’s the #attachmenttheory TikToks with over 300 million views. There’s every kind of attachment quiz you could conceive of (“Your Attachment Style Is Based On Harry Potter Characters”!) As well as attachment therapists, attachment podcasts, dating apps based on attachment styles, even Little Miss Anxious Attachment T-shirts. But most concerning to me are the online forums. Forums filling up with what seems like mostly young women ruminating about their relationships and analysing how anxious they are.

The more popular this gets, the more I’m starting to see problems with it. My main worry is that we might be deceiving ourselves.

Happy National Sibling Day

I know mine made my life a lot harder than it needed to be growing up. When we could have bonded, I got someone who was actively against me doing well, instead of being supportive. It must have been insecurity, but trying to bring someone down to build yourself up is no way to live.

My other sibling has been gone for 12 years. We didn’t grow up together and there was no bonding because she was pathological. It’s a good thing I found out how to be alone in life and not worry about others.

See Eating Alone as an Introvert a couple of posts down and you’ll know why.

How Often Do You Say “No” To Things That Would Interfere With Your Goals? Not Enough

How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

I’ve only learned later in life to prioritize myself for my mental sanity. A lot of my life growing up was not saying no enough it was a price I paid while growing up.

The goal I think of here is trying to set boundaries. If I’d have done it earlier in life, a lot of crap I deal with now wouldn’t be still bothering me.

‘Gender Science’ Was Merely Ideology All Along

Did you hear the news? England’s National Health Service (NHS) has decided that children diagnosed with gender dysphoria will no longer receive puberty blockers because “there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness … to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”

Childrens books on gender in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 7, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

The premier of Alberta, Canada, is planning legislation to restrict “gender-affirming” surgeries such as mastectomies for minors and puberty blockers for youth aged 15 and under. Other socially liberal nations have also hit the brakes on “gender affirmation,” in children, including Norway, Finland, France, Denmark, Sweden, and New Zealand. So have a score of American states.

Why did it take so long for common sense to return to this contentious issue? Blame the cultural imperialism of gender ideologues who, while most of us were not paying attention, successfully instituted “treatment guidelines” that focused almost exclusively on “affirming” a child’s gender confusion as medically necessary, while branding the more cautious approach of deeply exploring the mental health issues that could have contributed to the patient’s confusion as “transphobic,” and, even, likely to drive gender-confused children to suicide.

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Kids can’t decide what they want to eat. It’s the grown ups who are forcing this on them

General Mills Poisoning Kids

A new report is raising concerns over General Mills’ new cereal line after testing revealed that Trix LOADED cereal is literally loaded with high levels of heavy metals and agrochemicals.

General Mills, Inc. on Feb. 1 launched “LOADED,” a new cereal line with “puffed-up larger-than-life squares” of General Mills’ Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, and Cocoa Puffs cereals filled with artificially flavored vanilla creme. Trix LOADED boasts 17 grams of whole grain per serving and 12 vitamins and minerals. Yet testing by Moms Across America (MAA), an organization dedicated to educating and empowering others to create healthy communities, found the artificially flavored creme-filled breakfast food also contains measurable levels of aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead, mercury, glyphosate, and pesticides shown to be harmful to humans.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, MAA director Zen Honeycutt said her organization tested two samples of General Mills’ Trix LOADED cereal because they were alarmed that the company, which had previously seemed very committed to supporting regenerative organic agriculture, launched a cereal “loaded with creme, food dyes, and highly-processed foods.”

Pesticides Found in General Mills’ Trix LOADED Cereal

In test results obtained by MAA, scientists found residues from eight different pesticides in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal.

The following six pesticide residues were found in trace amounts:

  • Imazalil-1
  • Metconazole-1
  • Pyraclostrobin-1
  • Pyrimethanil-1
  • Pyriproxyfen-1
  • Tebuconazole-1

Two pesticides, piperonyl butoxide-1 (PBO) and fluopyram-1, were detected in higher amounts. Fluopyram-1 is a broad-spectrum fungicide that can cause liver problems, endocrine disruption, and thyroid cancer.

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What’s your secret skill?

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

I have spatial awareness and can see how things fit together. Also, as an introvert, I can read people through their body language I’ve had these all my life, but became cutely aware of them as I grew older.

What Activities Do You Lose Yourself In?

What activities do you lose yourself in?

Let’s see, over the years it’s been fishing, hunting, karate, racing, tennis, Biking, and then there was kids and Life, and other stuff, and the next thing I knew I’ve lived in seven decades. I mostly do introvert stuff now so I get lost in my mind a lot.

My Youth: Church League Softball Fistfight, Nickle Beer And Denny’s Grand Slam

After graduating from high school, a group of us decided to play in an organized softball league. Our choice at that time was down to church league softball. While we played and did OK, which I’ll talk about later, the extracurricular activities were more interesting. It’s later on in the post.

Our team was part of of the same group who lost almost every game in church league basketball, mostly because we were a bunch of white guys thinking we could play. There were some people who resembled athletes on this team. My roommate George and I both played tennis for our colleges, but that didn’t qualify us as good softball players. We had a couple of players who were little league stars, but as a group we weren’t that good.

Before I get started, this is a good lead in to the story.

We didn’t have a fistfight, at least on our team, but it did happen, between two other teams, both of which we played. A lot of other growing up stuff did happen though.

We were in that stage of just being out of high school, but growing up late and were starting to experiment with life. We also weren’t the star players on the baseball team either.

I guess we started out serious. We had just enough people for a team, All Saints Episcopal (we would be anything but Saints). I don’t remember if we had a team name, but it wouldn’t have been the Yankees. Misfit’s would have been more accurate. If anyone bailed, we’d have to forfeit. It was close some days whether enough guys would show up, but we managed to play the season. Of the nine guys, I think we had 4 that who actually played organized baseball. They put up with the lack of skills by the rest of us.

We picked positions and somehow I got 3rd base, far too close to home and a position I’d never played before. I’m pretty sure I was the kid in right field in my one year foray in little league at 7 years old. After a few practices, we thought we were ready to play and tear up the league. I think we believed the same thing in the basketball failure a few years earlier when we won 1 game all season.

In the first game, damn near the first batter of the year, a hard grounder was hit right to me. I was as shocked as anyone when I fielded it. I turned and fired a throw to the first baseman about 5 feet above his head. Since this was over 40 years ago now, I can’t remember whether we won or not. I’m pretty sure we lost as we did a lot of that.

In a subsequent game, another batter hit a line shot and I stuck my glove up and actually caught it. I was as surprised as anyone on the field, but had the sense of awareness to look like I meant to do it.

What saved us in a lot of games was enough singles by us to get batters on, but count on our big sticks, Pat and Mark Greene, Chris Patterson and an occasional lucky hit by others to score enough runs to overcome the errors in the field. Occasionally, we’d actually pull off a great play like a throw from deep left to home to get the runner out. Since the catcher never played before, it was a crap shoot whether he’d catch it or not and that we got the out surprised everyone on the field. He was a Dad who was a good sport to put up with us. He had no idea what we did off the field and was as (in)capable as the rest of us on the field (barely).

We’d go on to be about a .500 team. Being a church league, we were fortunate to face groups of people without any little league players who were actually worse than us, or a forfeit.

In the last game of the season against St Margaret Mary, my parents finally came to see me play. They had Ryan Sanderson on the other side, who was a starter at the University of Florida. Ryan also starred at our high school and it would be like playing pick up basketball with Michael Jordan on the other team. Ever at bat went over the fence.

I hit my only homer of the season in that game, in front of my Dad. It was a perfect ending to my only year of somewhat organized softball. Our team went on to hit 16 homers in that game and lost. The other team hit over 20. I’m sure Ryan had at least 5, or how ever many times he got up to bat. Hitting one out in front of my parents overshadowed the loss. Plus, the following made us forget everything.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

On the field, we’d try stupid stuff like our first foray’s into chewing tobacco thinking we would be like the big leagues. I remember putting a wad of Red Man into my mouth and heading out to third. By mid inning, I was spitting everything I could and dying for the inning to end so that I could get that shit out of my mouth without embarrassing myself in front of my friends. We routinely had macho contests to prove our masculinity and I couldn’t fail at this in public.

Here’s Robert Earl Keen on dipping snuff, funny song

Fortunately, it was a quick inning and I escaped embarrassment as well as losing my dinner.

After it became clear that we weren’t going to the world series, our other adventures in life crept in. We decided that it would be a good idea to get high before the games and see if we could play. Mark Imhoof who was a regular user provided the goods and the bong. He was the kid who got high in High School, had long hair and a van. He was a good player and the friend of someone else on the team, but he never went to our church. Come to think of it, most of the rest of us had stopped going to church by then also. Since I was high, I’m sure we didn’t play our best, but by then we didn’t really care as much. We came out of that van like Cheech and Chong, trailing smoke.

My roommate George and I lived in his parents house. It was my first home away from home. His parents were missionaries in Guatemala at the time. When the cat’s away, we were the mice. It was the place our friends from the team came to to do stuff they couldn’t do when they were in town and at their parents, meaning drinking and getting high. Many of us lost our virginity there, to the same girl on different nights in different rooms in the house.

AFTER THE GAME

Being a church league team, we celebrated after the game spiritually by going to wherever the pitchers of beer were the cheapest. I recall one dive called the Copper Top. We also went to the Steak Out where you got free Sangria with an order of a steak tough enough to wear as a desert boot. I’m sure they lost money on us given what we drank and we’d go out afterwards for more. We finally got kicked out and got banned from coming back.

There was always beat the clock at Big Daddy’s. If you know the game, the price goes up after a certain time, so you drink as fast as you can at first to keep the price down. We were in college working for minimum wage at the time ($2.00). The beginning price was a nickel a beer and it doubled every half hour. I was hammered by the first tick of the clock as were the rest of the team.

On the off chance that we played on Wednesday, it was also nickle beer night at Rosie O’Grady’s in downtown Orlando.

Nevertheless, a healthy activity sponsored by a religious organization turned into a night of us getting fucked up. I don’t think I had early classes, but I missed them if I did.

That of course led to…

LATE NIGHT GREASE TO SOAK UP THE ALCOHOL

We hit a number of places. Back then, the Grand Slam was $1.99, affordable and enough food to soak up some of the beer before bed.

The other place was Krystal’s. I think the burgers were a nickle there also. It became a dick measuring contest to see how many you could eat. I topped out at 11, but Marc Greene regularly at 25 and went over 30 on some nights. I was in awe of him being an eating machine.

In the end, we only lasted that one season. We were kind of done when we started getting high before the games.

I lost track of most of the players. George and I wound up being best men at each other’s weddings and today are still friends. He transferred out of state to another college and I moved on campus at mine. We never went back to that church again, except for my parents funerals.

Growing up comes in many flavors. This was just the start of my fucking up in life. I had many adventures to come that made this tame.

Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead

I for one am glad. I’m old enough that most of my fucking up in life was before the internet and only I really know the story of my misdeeds and untoward activity.

A lot of people say stupid shit online, or brag about stuff they shouldn’t to show off or get likes. Until now, the internet was forever. It may still be if you search hard enough, but Google is evil and presents the worst of behavior easily. Now, the idiots may be protected.

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Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet. Google Search’s “cached” links have long been an alternative way to load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is killing them off. Google “Search Liaison” Danny Sullivan confirmed the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature “was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”

The feature has been appearing and disappearing for some people since December, and currently, we don’t see any cache links in Google Search. For now, you can still build your own cache links even without the button, just by going to “https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:” plus a website URL, or by typing “cache:” plus a URL into Google Search. For now, the cached version of Ars Technica seems to still work. All of Google’s support pages about cached sites have been taken down.

Cached links used to live under the drop-down menu next to every search result on Google’s page. As the Google web crawler scoured the Internet for new and updated webpages, it would also save a copy of whatever it was seeing. That quickly led to Google having a backup of basically the entire Internet, using what was probably an uncountable number of petabytes of data. Google is in the era of cost savings now, so assuming Google can just start deleting cache data, it can probably free up a lot of resources.

Cached links were great if the website was down or quickly changed, but they also gave some insight over the years about how the “Google Bot” web crawler views the web. The pages aren’t necessarily rendered like how you would expect. In the past, pages were text-only, but slowly the Google Bot learned about media and other rich data like javascript (there are a ton of specialized Google Bots now). A lot of Google Bot details are shrouded in secrecy to hide from SEO spammers, but you could learn a lot by investigating what cached pages look like. In 2020, Google switched to mobile-by-default, so for instance, if you visit that cached Ars link from earlier, you get the mobile site. If you run a website and want to learn more about what a site looks like to a Google Bot, you can still do that, though only for your own site, from the Search Console.

click above for more, but I think you get the drift

Pop Tarts Inventor Died

William “Bill” Post — the man who created the beloved toaster treat Pop-Tarts — died on Saturday, his family announced. He was 96.

Post, a Michigan native and son of immigrants who worked his way up from a truck washer to a senior vice president, brightened millions of Americans’ mornings with the sweet pastry that hit the shelves in 1964.

The great-grandfather is often credited with inventing the breakfast treat, though he would always say it was a team effort, according to his obituary.

Post was raised in Grand Rapids as one of seven children of Dutch immigrants. He married his high school sweetheart, Florence Schut, and served in the Army Air Corps in occupied Japan.

Story

I ate them, but it wasn’t the staple it was for my kids. Knowing what I know now about diets, I’d have never given them to the kids, but when you are working on a couple of hours of sleep and you’ll do anything to get food in your kids before school…..pop tarts.

Who Remembers These?

In grade school, we made bags for all the kids to put in a Valentines card for everybody in class. It was before we were old enough to have gf/bf and before the woke ruined everything it touched because some kid didn’t get one.

We’d get a pack of 30 of these at the five and dime and then sign your name on them and put one in the bags.

As I look back on this, I have no idea if I got one from every kid or not. I never checked. I bet every girl made sure they got one though. The girls understood social stuff way before the guys did.

I recall it being a tedious task because just like now, I didn’t really care that much about others socially. I knew they weren’t really all my friends, and this would prove to be true in life as I went to school with these kids as much as 21 year for some (kindergarten through college). 

Puberty hadn’t set in and we (they) hadn’t started imposing the caste system of have’s and have not’s on kids based on looks, sports ability or general group hate. Kids are mean.

Fortunately, I kept to myself and stayed on the sidelines on this, but I knew then what I know now. That is the life of an introvert. As soon as the bags were opened and you looked at the cards, no one cared anymore. I saw this in advance. It’s why I had no clue whether to see if I got one from everyone, or even to check.

It’s why now if I give a gift, I meant it. Conversely, if you didn’t get one, I meant that also. I could never really deny my feelings to fit in. I just didn’t want to and knew it wasn’t worth it.

As soon as we didn’t make the bags, I didn’t give the card.

As I grew older though, my girlfriends all got good gifts from me while they were around. On the other hand, I don’t recall ever getting a good VD gift. Not even VD on VD.

images from Mike Miles

The Peel Me An Orange And Ketchup Challenge, It’s Just Another Shit Test By Girls To Ruin Relationships – Oh, Happy Valentines Day Also

Since the beginning of time, girls invent childish shit tests to see what they can make you do to prove your love. Once you are not willing to do stupid stuff and are confident in yourself, you can have an actually good relationship. It happens when you kick these types of girls to the curb immediately. It will save you a lot of time, trouble and social media BS. Once you realize that they can’t hold their nookie over your head, you can then be adults about it as girls have no other leverage. As I told one ex when kicking her out, there is no golden pussy.

These are invented by assholes on Tik Tok to poison girls into thinking this is love. It is much deeper than this type of relationship control, but nevertheless…….

Here goes:

Would You Dump Someone If They Didn’t Peel An Orange

Like one of those secretly mordant fairy tales about mermaids sacrificing their fins or maidens poisoned and sleeping forever, there is apparently a new test to tell if love is true: fetch and denude me an orange.

The gist: If your partner strips the rind off the citrus and serves it to you with kindness, then their love is for real. If your partner refuses, then this love is hollow and false, and you must now make a deal with a sea witch or reenter the dating pool. This deeply unscientific experiment, known colloquially as the orange peel theory/test/trend, is usually administered by heterosexual women on their male partners. And because of its simplicity and clarity, and social media’s penchant for anything that creates a reaction, the test has gone viral on TikTok.

Some videos of men peeling or not peeling oranges for their partners have millions of views. Millions!

Does separating citrus from its skin really indicate true love? What happened to building the Taj Mahal or, you know, buying some diamonds? Should women carry a mandarin around at all times just to be sure?

“An entire intimate relationship can’t be boiled down to what a partner does or doesn’t do with an orange,” says Alexandra Solomon, a psychologist and author who teaches at Northwestern University and specializes in relationships. As Solomon explains, one does not need to throw a romantic partner away like an orange rind because they did not peel a fruit in a pleasant way.

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What TikTok’s ‘Ketchup Challenge’ Actually Says About Your Relationship

At first glance, the viral social media trend known as the “ketchup challenge” may sound like TikTok’s latest household hack, involving cleaning with the common condiment. And while cleaning is (kind of) part of it, the actual aim appears to be secretly testing a romantic partner.

Similar to the “orange peel theory,” the ketchup challenge is being used as a relationship test of sorts, in which one person (usually a woman) intentionally squirts some ketchup on the kitchen counter or a table, then asks their partner (usually a man) to clean it up. Naturally, the whole thing is captured on video and posted to TikTok or Instagram, where commenters are able to weigh in on the man’s ability—or lack thereof—to effectively clean a simple mess, rather than smearing it around, making it worse.

Clearly, this is about much more than ketchup, but out of all the relationship “challenges” floating around online, what about this one has struck a nerve? Two clinical psychologists specializing in relationships explain.

source

Oh, and by the way, Happy Valentines Day tomorrow. Don’t fall for these and if you get this from your girl, you’re better off dumping her rather than suffering a minute longer with a child who resorts to this low level of immaturity. She reads too much social media online, another red flag for you

It’s just another indication that social media ruins a lot of what it touches and the most vulnerable fall for it first.