Without a doubt, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, and the old Jonny Quest.
Everything I know about opera on Jeopardy, I learned from Bugs. I like all of the Looney Tunes, especially when they break the new lines of political correctness. Road Runner/Coyote, Pepe’ Le Pew, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, all were better than anything on today. Who could forget Michigan J. Frog, a classic.
As for Tom and Jerry, the Tex Avery ones are clearly the best. Cat Fishin’, Touche’ Pussy Cat, Pecos Pest, and Spike and Tike are some of the better ones.
Only the original Jonny Quest shows were good. They were far ahead of their time and very creative. The Invisible Monster and the Robot Spy were two of my favorite episodes. After that, the series wasn’t very good. Later in life, I found them on Sunday morning. I’d do a wake and bake and enjoy my childhood all over.
A point of interest is that Tim Matheson is the original voice of Jonny. You may know him better as Otter in Animal House.
I even named one of my dogs Bandit after the cartoon. She was a boxer and is still in my blog, way back in the early years
Phillies Karen’s war against a young boy celebrating his birthday at a Phillies-Marlins baseball game on Friday night immediately hit SportsCenter that same night, with hosts Nicole Briscoe and Michael Eaves shaming the woman.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, a woman at the Phillies game lost her mind after a father in left field grabbed a home run ball and gave the souvenir to his young son. She then approached the family and forced the birthday boy to hand his ball over.
The viral incident set the internet ablaze and crowned the woman “Phillies Karen.”
Not only did the woman face shame from millions who saw the clip, but the boy also got a happy ending when both teams honored him with gifts. The Phillies even got him a meeting with Gold Glove-winning outfielder Harrison Bader, who hit the homer in question, and a signed bat.
During a segment of SportsCenter’s “So This Happened,” Briscoe and Eaves broke down the incident.
“Oh, she went after him!” Briscoe said. “She is big mad… Watch the reaction of everyone around her. I hate to call her a Karen, but…”
Eaves was incredulous, saying, “That’s not how that works, though… Really, lady?” When hearing that a Marlins representative apologized to the kid and gave him a swag bag, Eaves added, “Awesome. Make her feel terrible.”
In summation, Briscoe commented, “That is how you treat kids. I don’t care lady who you are. You didn’t have a kid with you; he did, and it’s about them. What the hell?” She added, “What is wrong with people?”
Right now, something in your home may be talking to your child about sex, self-harm, and suicide. That something isn’t a person—it’s an artificial intelligence companion chatbot.
These AI chatbots can be indistinguishable from online human relationships. They retain past conversations, initiate personalized messages, share photos, and even make voice calls. They are designed to forge deep emotional bonds—and they’re extraordinarily good at it.
Researchers are sounding the alarm on these bots, warning that they don’t ease loneliness, they worsen it. By replacing genuine, embodied human relationships with hollow, disembodied artificial ones, they distort a child’s understanding of intimacy, empathy, and trust.
Bugs is my favorite. I liked Jonny Quest also, but they didn’t make enough episodes and it kind of was the same episode every week. Every Jeopardy answer I get on Opera is from Bugs. He was the most anti-PC character before Beavis and Butthead
Not Bugs.
(LMPC via Getty Images)
Hans von Spakovsky is the manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
I know, I know. We have been in the midst of a blizzard of important domestic and world events this summer, from the final week of the Supreme Court’s term with a slew of important decisions to the fight over the “Big, Beautiful Bill” to the war in the Middle East and the Russian/Ukrainian conflict. We also just celebrated the 249th birthday of the United States.
But in the midst of all this, we should not forget the 85th birthday of that beloved all-American trickster and practical joker, Bugs Bunny. A look back at the original cartoon series shows just how much that rabbit reflected the culture, the politics, and the patriotism of the times and how some of his antics wouldn’t play well for the woke generation of today.
On July 27, 1940, the wisecracking, mouthy bunny with a Brooklyn accent got his official start in the Looney Tunes classic “A Wild Hare,” in which he bamboozles and confuses the most unsuccessful and hapless hunter in American history, Elmer Fudd, for the first of many times.
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For the past 85 years, in addition to Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny has been trouncing, defeating, and outtalking a host of surly but memorable characters, including Yosemite Sam, the roughest, toughest hombre east of the Pecos; Porky “Th-Th-Th-That’s all, folks” Pig; and Daffy Duck. Elmer Fudd never managed to catch that wascally wabbit, and the same goes for Daffy Duck, who was never able to outsmart Bugs or get the better of him.
Trouncing, defeating, and outtalking a host of surly characters? Gosh, who does that remind you of in today’s political world?
There are even two cartoons, “Operation: Rabbit” (1952) and “To Hare is Human” (1956), in which Wile E. Coyote is up against Bugs Bunny instead of his usual opponent, the Road Runner, who is on vacation, with the same disastrous results. Wile E. Coyote actually speaks in that second cartoon, something he does not do in any other appearance, except by holding up a sign, usually about something stupid that he just did.
Don’t you wish there really was a company like ACME, Wile E. Coyote’s go-to company for equipment? I know Amazon comes close, but it just doesn’t have the same expansive inventory as ACME of bombs, cannons, TNT, anvils, missiles, rocket sleds, and every other kind of fiendish device our fevered imaginations can imagine.
While kids have always liked these cartoons, they were really designed by adults for adults, since they were shown in movie theaters before the feature films. The original cartoons contain many politically incorrect scenes that these days would get them instantly criticized by the “woke police,” another reason they remain so timeless.
While Bugs Bunny was the main star, he had a host of other colleagues who appeared in other cartoons, including Pepe le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn, and Sylvester the cat, to name just a few. Besides Bugs Bunny, I have to admit that Foghorn Leghorn, the loud, blustering, overbearing rooster, is one of my other favorites characters, in large part because he resembles so many of the politicians one encounters here in the nation’s capital.
Speaking of politicians, you shouldn’t miss “Ballot Box Bunny” (1951), where Bugs runs against Yosemite Sam for mayor of a small town. They play every trick you can imagine on each other to try to win—not too different from the tricks we see in real campaigns today—and Yosemite Sam’s campaign promises alone are worth watching. Bugs and Sam spend so much time attacking each other that, in the end, they are both beaten by a dark horse—in this case, literally a dark horse. Fortunately, neither of them is prosecuted by an overzealous U.S. Justice Department.
While Daffy Duck may have never gotten the better of Bugs Bunny, he was the first American duck to go into space to battle aliens in 1953, long before Harrison Ford in “Star Wars,” when he fought Marvin the Martian in “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century,” a takeoff on the “Buck Rogers” serial that premiered in movie houses in 1939. One of the cleverest of the Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny confrontations also premiered in 1953. In “Duck Amuck,” an unidentified animator keeps changing Daffy’s shape, location, and even his voice. Of course, it turns out in the end that the animator is Bugs Bunny.
But getting back to the woke police, there was actually criticism of Pepe le Pew as supposedly glorifying a sexual harasser and of Elmer Fudd for carrying a gun. In fact, the idiots at HBO Max decreed that Fudd had to be gun-free in their reboot of Looney Tunes in 2020. Just more proof that liberals really have no sense of humor, something the Babylon Bee proves every day.
Bugs Bunny was a star for Warner Bros., the Hollywood studio started in 1923 by the four Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack. The animators at Warner Bros. created 167 brilliant and memorable Bugs Bunny cartoons during the golden age of American animation. I don’t count more recently produced Bugs Bunny cartoons, all of which lack the comedy, wit, and cleverness of the originals. These were cartoons created by adults for adults with a mischievous sense of humor.
While Bugs Bunny always came out on top, he was not infallible. There were actually three cartoons that were takeoffs on the Aesop fairy tale about the race between the tortoise and the hare: “Tortoise Beats Hare” (1941), “Tortoise Wins by a Hare” (1943), and “Rabbit Transit” (1947). In each one, the tortoise gets the better of Bugs Bunny, including “Rabbit Transit,” in which Bugs Bunny actually wins the race but then is arrested by the police for speeding.
Whenever he went on vacation, Bugs Bunny always took a wrong turn in Albuquerque. Having been to “Albukoykee,” as Bugs Bunny pronounces it, I can understand why. Those wrong turns led him to some dangerous places, including the middle of a bull ring in Mexico in “Bully for Bugs” (1953) or Nazi Germany in “Herr Meets Hare” (1945), where he confronted Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göering, and Bugs imitates Joseph Stalin.
Speaking of Nazi Germany, Bugs did go to war like a lot of Hollywood during World War II. He became an honorary master sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps after he appeared in a Marine Corps dress blue uniform in “Super-Rabbit” (1943). Some of these wartime cartoons like “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” (1944) have been “banned” by oversensitive cartoon channels because of the racial or ethnic stereotypes used at the time. Bugs Bunny even got drafted during the Korean War in “Forward March Hare” (1952) when he got his neighbor’s draft notice by mistake. And no, he did not abscond to Canada to avoid service.
If you love opera, you can’t beat the Bugs Bunny versions. Turns out that the directors and animators were all big opera fans. So, we have “The Rabbit of Seville” (1950) and “What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957), where Bugs and Elmer Fudd give us their versions of great Rossini and Wagner operas. You have to be an opera fan to get the joke at the end of “The Rabbit of Seville,” which was a takeoff of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” At the end, Bugs drops Elmer Fudd into a huge cake that is labeled “The Marriage of Figaro,” which was Mozart’s version of “The Barber of Seville.”
And what better way is there to learn about English or American history than watching the story of Robin Hood in “Rabbit Hood” (1945) or the American Revolution in “Bunker Hill Bunny” (1950). Or if you love the great American pastime, don’t miss “Baseball Bugs” (1946). Bugs Bunny takes on the Gas-House Gorillas in the Polo Grounds in New York City, the original home of both the Mets and the Yankees, playing all of the positions. He wins the game when he makes the ultimate play—catching a flyball at the top of the “Umpire” State Building, which he reaches by taking a cab from the baseball field to the skyscraper.
There are many well-known lines from famous movies that have entered our culture, including from great classics like “Casablanca”: “I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here,” or “Round up the usual suspects,” and the Bugs Bunny cartoons have those, too.
All of the voices in the original cartoons were voiced by the brilliant Mel Blanc, probably the most talented and versatile voice that ever came out of Hollywood. One of his most repeated lines as Bugs Bunny besides “What’s up, Doc?” is “Of course, you realize, this means war.” Or “He don’t know me very well.”
And one of Bugs Bunny’s commonly uttered derisions, “What a maroon,” comes to mind fairly often as I watch a slew of liberal politicians and left-wing activists at work in Washington each day.
So, happy birthday, Bugs Bunny. You may be 85 years old, but you will always remain young in our hearts and a hare-raiser on the screen.
Authorities said Thursday they caught a teenager who identifies as transgender allegedly discussing plans for a school shooting on the same social media platform used by extremists in similar cases.
Police arrested 18-year-old Trinity Shockley and charged her with plotting to attack Mooresville High School in Indiana after a tip from the FBI, court records show. A police report details how others allegedly encouraged her plans on the online chat service Discord in a familiar tale of online radicalization.
Shockley’s arrest comes after a fatal shooting at Antioch High School in Tennessee in January, weeks apart from another at Wisconsin’s Abundant Life Christian School in December. Both were carried out by teenagers who expressed violent thoughts in Discord communities ahead of their attacks, including neo-Nazi sentiments. The shooters each took their own lives just after killing and injuring several others at the schools.
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Fortunately, they stopped this one before it happened, but this group has a lot of problems and they blame it on their gender issues. Cutting off a dick or your tits isn’t going to fix your life.
I couldn’t agree with this writing more. It’s happening to me and I even crave it now. For example, I celebrate every time I miss another high school reunion. The 50th is next year for me and there is nothing or nobody that could drag me back to see people that I left behind decades ago. (see the last section).
I’ve got family within driving distance and I don’t text or call for fear that there might be a get-together that I’d have to suffer through. There just isn’t enough there for me to want to suffer through that anymore.
We all become more introverted as we get older, even the most extroverted among us.
I’m a classic introvert, but in my teens and twenties, it was normal for me to spend almost every weekend with friends. Now, in my thirties, the perfect weekend is one with zero social plans.
And I’m not the only one socializing less these days. My extroverted friend, for example, used to run through her entire contact list, calling friends whenever she was alone in the car. She told me she hated the quiet, the emptiness, because being alone felt boring.
You know, for the whole 10–15 minutes it took to drive to the grocery store. Oh, the horror.
These days, I can rarely get her out for brunch or coffee. She’s content spending most nights at home with her husband and two kids. And I haven’t gotten one of her infamous calls in years.
So, what gives? Do we get more introverted as we get older?
In a post on Quiet Revolution, Susan Cain confirmed my suspicions: We tend to act more introverted as we get older. Psychologists call this “intrinsic maturation.” It means our personalities become more balanced, “like a kind of fine wine that mellows with age,” writes Cain.
Research also shows that our personalities do indeed change over time — and usually for the better. For instance, we become more emotionally stable, agreeable, and conscientious as we grow, with the largest change in agreeableness happening during our thirties and continuing to improve into our sixties. “Agreeableness” is one of the traits measured by the Big Five personality scale, and people high in this trait are warm, friendly, and optimistic.
We also become quieter and more self-contained, needing less “people time” and excitement to feel a sense of happiness.
Psychologists have observed intrinsic maturation in people worldwide, from Germany to the UK, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Turkey. And it’s not just humans; they’ve observed it in chimps and monkeys, too.
This shift is why we slow down as we get older and begin enjoying a quieter, calmer life — and yes, it happens to both introverts and extroverts.
Becoming More Introverted Is a Good Thing
From an evolutionary standpoint, becoming more introverted as we age makes sense — and it’s probably a good thing.
“High levels of extroversion probably help with mating, which is why most of us are at our most sociable during our teenage and young adult years,” writes Susan Cain.
In other words, being more extroverted when you’re young might help you form important social connections and, ultimately, find a life partner. (Cue the flashbacks to awkward high school dances and “welcome week” in college.)
Then, at least in theory, by the time we reach our 30s, we’ve committed to a life path and a long-term relationship. We may have kids, a job, a spouse, and a mortgage — our lives are stable. So it becomes less important to constantly branch out in new directions and meet new people.
(Note that I said “in theory.” In my 30s, I still don’t have kids, a mortgage, or a wedding ring. These days, we have the luxury of not following evolution’s “script.”)
“If the task of the first half of life is to put yourself out there, the task of the second half is to make sense of where you’ve been,” explains Cain.
During the married-with-children years, think of how difficult it would be to raise a family and nurture close relationships if you were constantly popping into the next party. Even if you don’t marry or have kids, it would be hard to focus on your career, health, and life goals if you were always hanging out with friends like you did in your teens and twenties.
Once an Introvert, Always an Introvert
But there’s a catch: Our personalities only change so much.
In my book, The Secret Lives of Introverts, I like to say that our personalities may evolve, but our temperaments remain constant.
This means that if you’re an introvert, you’ll always be an introvert, even at 90. And if you’re an extrovert — though you may slow down with age — you’ll always be an extrovert.
I’m talking big-picture here: who you are at your core.
Research supports this idea. In 2004, Harvard psychologists Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman studied individuals from infancy into adulthood. In one study, they exposed babies to unfamiliar stimuli and recorded their reactions. Some babies got upset, crying and flailing their arms and legs; these were labeled “highly reactive” to their environment.
Other babies remained calm around the new stimuli; they were the “low-reactive” ones.
When Kagan and Snidman checked in with these individuals later, they found that the “highly reactive” babies often grew up to be more cautious and reserved, while the “low-reactive” babies tended to stay sociable and daring as adults.
The bottom line? Our core temperament — whether cautious or sociable, introverted or extroverted — doesn’t change dramatically with age.
An Example: Your High School Reunion
Consider, for instance, your high school reunion.
Let’s say you were very introverted in high school — perhaps the third-most introverted person in your graduating class. Over the years, you’ve grown more confident, agreeable, and comfortable in your own skin, but you’ve also become a bit more introverted. If you enjoyed hanging out with friends once a week in high school, maybe now in your thirties, you’re content with seeing them only once a month.
At your ten-year high school reunion, you notice everyone has slowed down a bit, enjoying a calmer, more stable life. But those who were very extroverted in high school are still much more extroverted than you.
You’re still approximately the third-most introverted person in your class — but now the whole group has shifted slightly toward the introverted side.
And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it might be exactly what we need to flourish as adults. If there’s one thing we introverts understand, it’s the deep satisfaction of a quiet life.
Have you found yourself becoming more introverted as you’ve gotten older? Let me know in the comments below.
I was the youngest in every class due to my birthday. In reality, I should have started school a year later than I did, but I was able to keep up academically so no one did anything.
As a result, I was a year behind everyone in maturity. I was always small and learned a lot of social things after the others already knew. It made for a tough time. It was particularly awkward in the whole girl/boy life dance as the girls were a year older, but years older in maturity and size for many of them. Most of them stopped maturing at the end of high school as I discovered in conversations with them later. I was just beginning to catch up the end of high school. Kids are cruel though so it was tough.
I caught and passed almost all of them because it drove me to succeed after banging my head against the wall of life up until that time.
I got no help from my sibling who was 2 years older, but only one grade ahead due to the birthday timing. When She could have helped, she jumped on the side of the other kids to make my life a lot more difficult than it needed to be.
It made me tougher in the long run. I had to figure out how to be street smart without any directions. Like the song Night Moves, I was searching for answers without any clues.
Although I am a trained musician with years of theory, the absence of music affects me like a lot of people. It is a part of much of my time, both physically and mentally.
I have it going anytime I exercise, which is nearly every day. I have biking playlists (3 hours) and gym playlists. Hell, this morning, I was listening to soft music at the driving range. While it doesn’t seem logical, I have a waterproof iPod that I use when swimming. I do miles at a time so it’s not your basic up and back and be done. That would be a lot more tedious once you go over 100 laps.
Where it gets me though is when I’m listening to a song (usually while driving) and it brings back a memory of a relationship or a time in my life. I relive it in my head and likely write pages in my diary about it. It is usually about growing up because the best music was from the 70’s.
I’m sure everyone does it, but I doubt they explore it in writing to flush out everything that happened when that song was on the radio.
Lately, I’ve forced myself to listen to songs that remind me of my cheating girlfriend who was a traveling whore (stewardess). I try to make myself see if I have any feelings and there is nothing left. I’ve emptied that tank other than the fact that it happened. I’m mostly grateful I didn’t wind up with her ass, being miserable.
Mostly, I’m very happy to feel the time in my life when my responsibilities were few and life was carefree and deadline free.
I hate my birthday because the only real birthday happened a long time ago.
Christmas starts in September now and I’m fatigued by the time it comes. I don’t think most people believe in the real reason for Christmas anyway. They just want to decorate and get gifts. I question their sincerity when they are all nice in the season, yet give me the finger while driving.
As usual, because I’m an introvert, I have a hard time processing the attention and wish that it would just be over.
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.
(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.
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.
I’m almost always happy being by myself. I like others and I’m even married. Still, if I have the chance to be alone, I make that choice almost every time.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I suppose everyone says this. I can’t change anything so I’m not going to try to. I’m just trying to enjoy these times. If I’d told myself what to do/not do, it would have turned out different. It might have changed the whole space/time continuum, and I don’t want to tempt God or the Sci Fi world.
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and the present is gone in an instant.
What does tomorrow mean to us? I thought about that today. It occurred to me that I don’t have as many tomorrows left. As endless as they used to be, I’d grab at a new handful of them. For now, I’m glad to have the next one. They grow fewer every day (sorry, I had to put that in)
Young
When I was young, I never thought about tomorrow. It always came. Some took forever like when I cared about my birthday, and others flew by.
When something has an endless supply, the value is less. It’s economics. I never considered that I’d be working, or retired, or would have kids, a mortgage or any responsibility. Live for today. It was all about today. I had no real yesterday’s to learn from yet.
If I did think about tomorrow, it was the kid dream about being an astronaut or pilot (what I thought about).
That was so long ago and the days between now and then are so numerous that it seems, like another life for me. I’ve lived many different lives within the one I chronologically am still in.
School
I recall sitting in the classroom watching the clock ticking away. Tick, tick, tick towards when I’d be able to go home. Time was endless on those days, and this was just between 2 and 2:15 in elementary school. The only good tomorrow started on Friday.
By the time I got to college, I was aware that life was right around the corner. Still, I enjoyed the day without a care. I ignored that inevitable tomorrow. When it came, it was in the form of an exam, or a girlfriend or another event in life. It was finite and had little consequence as to what my next day held. Still, I had no real cares and a lot of what tomorrow brought was a new experience.
Letdowns started to happen, but the ocean of tomorrows never crossed my mind as I did stupid stuff. I think I lost a few tomorrows by taking too many risks. Somehow I survived and was able to live to the next day, always another tomorrow. It was expected.
Responsibility Years
Life marched on and I grew up, bought a home and started a family. Tomorrows always came, but now they came with other’s problems also. It wasn’t the carefree days when your kid is sick or in trouble. I didn’t have time to think about tomorrow as today brought 10 tons of manure in a 5 ton truck.
So much is happening in your life you take tomorrow for granted or you are too busy to think about anything but today. If you do, those thoughts are invaded with things you have to get done or do for others.
I did notice one thing. I was starting to have a lot of yesterday’s. Some of them happy and some sad. There were lessons learned on both.
The ocean of tomorrows was still seemingly full as it (now) quickly drained away.
Deaths
The first reminders of fewer tomorrows happened here. Those you used to know have run out of tomorrows.
When you are young, say at a grandparents funeral, you can’t comprehend time not being endless for you. By middle age, you know it is closer, but most choose to ignore the reality of time slipping away.
Growing Older
Rarely, do tomorrows bring something new to me. Occasionally, I get a different version of something I’ve been through. I have many more yesterdays now than the number of tomorrows remaining.
The kids are grown. The mortgage is paid off. I no longer work. I’m among the oldest of my relatives now. It brought me to how many tomorrows there will be. Among those, how many will be good or bad? Will there be tough times?
I try to enjoy the days, even if the tasks are mundane. I have less patience for things that don’t seem meaningful to me. My meaningful scale has changed dramatically over life.
From time to time (becoming far too common), people I know run out of their tomorrows. As I sit at the funerals, life comes into perspective for me, at least the part on Earth.
Tomorrows aren’t endless. You only come with so many. Some have more than others and some enjoy them more than others.
Most of life’s struggles are over, except what happens when the tomorrow’s are running out.
Here’s hoping for another tomorrow, and that it doesn’t suck for me.
The biggest effect on me is that Jeopardy is in re-runs, but I can live with that.
They’ll do the usual dance about pay and resolve it somehow, but in the meantime we won’t be subjected to the woke crap like what Disney has been putting out recently.
It amuses me that the Sound of Freedom is doing well, despite no support from the media or Hollywood. They don’t want decent or honest films going out.
We’ll also have a start up period where nothing is getting made as they have to start writing again and re-opening the movie sets. Then the woke crap will be back on the screens.
I don’t bother with that anymore and barely watch much, only what I can stomach.
Go outside and enjoy the day. Actually do things rather than sit in front of the screen. It’s a lost art. There was nothing on for kids when I was young. We entertained ourselves, played sports or made up stuff to do.
I was watching a video of girls talking about would they date an incel (involuntary celibate guy). They said get your head out of the computer if you want your dick wet. Otherwise they didn’t want anything to do with them.
Maybe the writers will stay on strike so everyone wins.
It’s hard to imagine that people can’t figure out that males and females are different. They are supposed to be. Just because you don’t like yourself, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to make your life any better by trying to be something you are not. If you can’t accept yourself as who you are, don’t think we’re going to accept the fake version of you.
We’ve already found out that men don’t make good women. They can kick ass in girls sports, but can’t sell beer very well as girls. They’ll never be able to have a baby either, kind of the big male/female differentiator.
I see Ryan Mulvanney like all real men do. He was the pussy in school who got his ass kicked. After the butt light commercial, a lot of guys would administer that just out of duty to other men. Instead of bucking up and trying harder, he decided to try and be a girl and was marketing poison.
HERE IS THE REAL STORY, WHY A GIRL CAN’T BE A GUY
Now, we have this girl that is crying because she found out that men are competitive, loners and don’t need other men to cry with in the bathroom.
So speaking of pussies, here is the girl who has pretended to be a guy, crying because she can’t share her feelings with other guys in the bathroom. I’ve got a clue for you girl, guys don’t share their feelings. We never give away any competitive advantage.
This is really sad. Trans man realizes how hard it is to be a man when you’re really a woman.
Males and females are different and no matter what you do to your body, you can’t be the opposite sex. pic.twitter.com/Ib2in2vJrb
Men are in competition with each other. Men vie to express dominance, to establish their place in the pecking order.
If a man steps out of line, and assumes a place in the pecking order that is not agreed upon – this place being based upon established social agreements that no one can see, nor express in words – he is summarily dismissed.
If he still believes the territory, he has assumed, is rightfully his, he will endure all manner of insults and attacks, up to, and including, physical attacks
This begins for boys some time just after the toddler stage, and intensifies throug the teen years, and early adulthood.
Men find this competition exhilarating, though it is also challenging, and often ends in shocking defeats.
We pick ourselves up, nurse our wounds, and go back to do battle on this invisible turf.
This is a fact of manhood that a woman can not know, because, as I said, this pecking order is based upon ESTABLISHED social agreements that no one can see, nor express in words.
I would imagine this must be a shocking fact of life for a Trans “man”, to find that he has no place, because he never fought for it, and is completely unaware of the competition which is raging all around him.
It must be profoundly disorienting.
And it is because these Trans “men” have never fought for their territory – and enter into this competition completely unaware, blind to that which is clear as day to man = that they can never be more than a cheap imitation of man; a mockery of a notion of manhood, perceived from the outside.
Here’s our life, fighting for everything and every inch of ground we gain in life.
You may change your appearance, but you can’t change your gender or ever know what the other gender is like. It’s why men don’t have a clue what girls are thinking. At some point in all of our lives, we give up trying and just live our life. It’s much better that way.
It was a good TV show when I was a kid. My Mom dreaded that I watched such nonsense and that it would certainly ruin me. I didn’t get any smarter by watching the show. It provided me with clean entertainment as compared to the woke TV the kids get now.
There were some things that didn’t make sense.
The professor could charge batteries for their radio by stirring coconuts, but couldn’t fix the Minnow?
Finally, my answer. It was Ginger, My how things have changed…
As I wrote my way through my youth in a journal, I went to school with some people for up to 17 years. When I had the chance to be included, something I thought would finally endear me into their group, I wouldn’t do it. I realized who they were and knew they were poison and I couldn’t move ahead in life with them as an anchor.
It was the same for almost every group I’ve been in. The thought of being stuck with the same people because of duty was emotionally too great of a burden. I wasn’t there for the right reason. I couldn’t stay anymore.
A college girlfriend reached out to me recently, but I couldn’t talk to her. It was a relationship that ended badly. I don’t have the desire to relive it again even though we’ve moved on. That is the point though, I moved on.
You can’t take a shit and then try to put it back in you butt.
Oh yes, I could say it with a straight face, depending on the other person. I just texted my friend George that there were a lot of balls to juggle, instead balls in the air.
I still call them wiener’s if there is a chance the other person will feel uncomfortable.
Hat tip to wirecutter on this one. It was too good to not share.
I grew up in Florida. It’s pretty much the mosquito capital given all the water and year round climate. Other places can be more intense, but for being bit all year long, it’s hard to beat the Sunshine State.
I got bit as a kid as much as others. Heck, we vacationed in a place that has a section of the city called Mosquito Lagoon. It’s some of the best Red Fishing outside of Louisiana.
We didn’t have air conditioning at first when I was young so the window were open. Ever been kept away by the whine of a buzzing biter in your ear. Yes, just like the dentist drill we all know the noise.
I began to notice in my 20’s though that others were getting bit more than me. There were also biting gnats (no see’ums) that were almost worse. You couldn’t see them. You could at least kill some mosquitos if you saw them in time.
I thought that maybe I got anti-bite serum from being bit so much. Then I remembered that as kids, we used to follow the mosquito truck on our bikes in the smoke breathing in what has to be DDT or worse. I figured I had natural immunity.
My dad didn’t get bit much either. As a joke, he said it was the meanness in him that kept them away.
It turns out that some people just get bit more and I’m not one of them.
SOME PEOPLE ARE MOSQUITO MAGNETS
As you may have noticed, mosquitoes don’t attack everyone equally. Scientists have known that the pests are drawn to people at varying rates, but they have struggled to explain what makes certain people “mosquito magnets” while others get off bite-free.
In a new paper published on October 18 in the journal Cell, researchers suggest that certain body odors are the deciding factor. Every person has a unique scent profile made up of different chemical compounds, and the researchers found that mosquitoes were most drawn to people whose skin produces high levels of carboxylic acids. Additionally, the researchers found that peoples’ attractiveness to mosquitoes remained steady over time, regardless of changes in diet or grooming habits.
“The question of why some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others—that’s the question that everybody asks you,” says study co-author Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist and mosquito expert at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rockefeller University. “My mother, my sister, people in the street, my colleagues—everybody wants to know.” That public interest is what drove Vosshall and her colleagues to design this study, she says.
Scientists have put forth some theories to explain why mosquitoes swarm to some of us more than others, including one idea that differences in blood type must be to blame. Evidence is weak for this link, however, Vosshall says. Over time, researchers began to coalesce around the theory that body odor must be a primary culprit in mosquito attraction. But scientists have been unable to confirm which specific odors mosquitoes prefer.
To answer this question, Vosshall and her colleagues gathered 64 participants and had them wear nylon stockings on their arms. After six hours, the nylons were imbued with each person’s unique smell. “Those nylons would not have a smell to me or, I think, to anyone really,” says Maria Elena De Obaldia, a senior scientist at the biotech company Kingdom Supercultures and lead author of this new study, which she conducted while at Rockefeller. Still, the stockings were certainly odorous enough to entice mosquitoes.
The researchers cut the nylons into pieces and placed two (from different participants) into a closed container housing female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Did they migrate to subject number one’s sample en masse or prefer the scent of subject number two’s? Or were both equally appealing? The researchers continued these head-to-head battles over several months, Vosshall says, collecting new samples from the participants as needed. When the tournament was over, the team had clear proof that some people were more attractive than others. Subject 33 had the dubious honor of being the biggest mosquito magnet; they had an attractiveness score “over 100 times greater” than that of the least attractive subjects, 19 and 28, the study authors wrote.
The researchers analyzed the subjects’ scent profiles to see what might account for this vast difference. They found a pattern: the most attractive subjects tended to produce greater levels of carboxylic acids from their skin while the least attractive subjects produced much less.
Carboxylic acids are commonplace organic compounds. Humans produce them in our sebum, which is the oily layer that coats our skin; there, the acids help to keep our skin moisturized and protected, Vosshall says. Humans release carboxylic acids at much higher levels than most animals, De Obaldia adds, though the amount varies from person to person. The new study had too few participants to say what personal characteristics make someone more likely to produce high levels of carboxylic acids—and there’s no easy way to test your own skin’s carboxylic acid levels outside of the laboratory, Vosshall says. (She muses, however, that sending people skin swabs in the mail could make for an interesting citizen science project in the future.)
“This property of being a mosquito magnet sticks with you for your whole life—which is either good news or bad news, depending on who you are,” Vosshall says.
“This study confirms, in a very careful way, that it is true that some people are more attractive [to mosquitoes] than others,” says Omar Akbari, a cell and molecular biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved with the study but whose recent work focuses on mosquitoes. He adds that the study’s identification of specific carboxylic acids as a key determinant of mosquito attraction is a new contribution to biologists’ understanding of the insects’ behavior. Akbari suspects that the results of this study—which focused on A. aegypti mosquitoes—are probably generalizable to other species of mosquitoes that also primarily prey on humans.
But, I remembered I am stuck on Band-Aids because…..
Hat tip to 90 miles from tyranny
However, I forgot why I was in a room twice yesterday.
Short shorts was a Godsend for a young hormonal man. Of course, childishness set in on sometimes you feel like a nut, which should have been next to number 8
After reaching both puberty and achieving my drivers license, we drove around and made up games. It was sort of like video games in real life.
Everyone has been in a car and someone scores a target based on how many points you get if you open the door by driving and hit them, or just hit them with the car. Before you gasp, this was teenage boys showing off without ever following through. It garnered a good laugh and we always did the same. We drove past the target and counted the score based on who called it first. No lives were lost that I know of.
But here were the rules…..
Old People or disabled – no score as they moved slow and are too easy to hit
Mooning old people – extra points if they grab their heart and gasp (ok, we really did this one)
Young couples or families – a double score, but still low as the kids are like old people, slow and easy
Regular pedestrians – multiple score if you get more than one
All of these are walkers, and aren’t much of a challenge. For higher scores, move on to….
Bikers – A fairly high score as they are a moving target and satisfying if they are holding up traffic. This can only be scored with an open door as hitting with a car wouldn’t be a challenge. The faster the biker, the higher the points. Multiple bikers garners a multiple score, like a 7-10 split.
Motorcycles – A very high score as they are fast. A lower but more satisfying score if you open the door while stopped in traffic and catch one cutting between cars.
Animals -no score as you should lose points if you hurt one. They don’t know you are playing a game.
Practice – revving your car while stopped before someone crosses the sidewalk, then waving them to cross as you keep revving. The smart ones will just say no and not cross.
An acquaintance’s father passed away a few years ago. He was an adjunct to a Five Star General in WWII and a press officer for IBM. He wrote his obituary and his funeral notice. It was spectacular. Not because it touted all that he had done, but that it was clear and concise. When my uncle died, I got that he was a pilot, but not much else and he did a lot of other things that would have been nice to hear.
It’s because someone else wrote his obituary. And there you have the key.
Write your own eulogy and find out what you want the world to know or not know about you. It’s harder than you think because you only have a short space to get in what are the highlights.
A BIGGER PROJECT
For me, it went to exploring the rest of my life and before I knew it, I’m writing about kindergarten or my 3rd job. No one will ever read it, but I finally found out that things like me being an introvert were there all along. My life would have been a lot easier if I’d have known the things I wrote. Sure, it’s hindsight, but the pattern was there. I wonder why it took me so long to see some things.
I remembered teachers (back to kindergarten), classmates, situations, jobs, life and so much that I couldn’t type fast enough. I knew I’d have to edit and re-edit for details and accuracy, but if I could remember it, I wrote it down. I forget a lot of stuff now anyway.
It fell out on the pages who was loyal or a back stabber to me. What was it that I expected or deliverd to friendships. Who I could count on and who I could count on to try to cause me difficulty or harm (mentally or physically).
I realized who was actually a friend and why, and who was passing through that time of my life, but didn’t remain. As I have said, there are a lot of characters in my autobiography who don’t make it to the end.
MY EULOGY
Guess what I haven’t finished yet. That’s right, the original project. I got so enthralled with trying to recall memories that sometimes would flood my mind, or that one deep memory that I hadn’t thought about in decades.
I’m going back to it as I need a break. It wasn’t just the writing, but having to re-experience feelings and situations that I’d buried were mentally taxing. I haven’t been blogging much as it has been overwhelming.
DO IT
Why? You will find out more about yourself than you could imagine. You think you know who you are until you write about your warts and missteps, the awkward things you said that you wish you could take back. Why you react the way you do instead of being more effective, especially when you are protecting your inner self.
I found out who I was and why I act the way I have. I got to re-visit a lot of times in my life. While writing, I put myself back into the 6 or 12 year old to feel those times again the way they were, instead of how my mind changed them over the years. Then, I thought if that moment affected my life later. Most times the answer was yes.
There were times I couldn’t type fast enough and had to keep a separate list of all the things I needed to write about. Conversely, I didn’t want to go back after vomiting up memories, joys and pain, success and failures in my life. I didn’t want to write the pain, but it felt better after having said it.
I’ll keep the eulogy, but delete the life story, no one cares anyway other than me. I won’t care soon either.
I guess I’d better get around to that Eulogy now so the kids don’t screw it up.
I loved lawn darts. It’s like eating a tootsie roll pop. You always bite it. With lawn darts, you take maybe 2 throws at the circle and then you are aiming at the other kids. Now, micro aggression’s need safe spaces in case I hurt you with an incorrect pronoun or say a forbidden word. How sad it is that you can become so shallow that words thrown childishly and generally out of context hurt you.
Now for dodgeball. They don’t let kids play it because the unwritten rules are kill the fat kids and girls first as they are the slowest and easiest to hit. It’s why lions kill the slowest in the heard. They are the ones that got a good game banned because they couldn’t win. Note: This game is a good lesson in life, survival, awareness and loyalty.
Loyalty in dodgeball? Yes. When it’s down to a couple of kids, you don’t throw at your friends first. It spilled over into class and life.
Did we aim for the body? If it was available, otherwise a head shot was good for stories 2 days later that everyone enjoyed until Karen’s came along.
If they would stop banning the good games (also red rover), maybe kids would go outside more.
I’ve been reminiscing about when I was young. I’d flit from one thing to the next, never worrying about what was around the next corner. I didn’t plan for tomorrow unless it included fun or something for me to do that wouldn’t affect my retirement.
Now, I can’t take a dump without working out what I’m going to do next and plan my time around it.
My kids are grown now, but I told them to not grow up too fast. They all have mortgages, plus pets and kids that rely on them, like they did on me.
I hurt a lot more now. I’m sore from my first round of golf of the year yesterday, and I didn’t even go at it that hard.
We played war in the streets, along with baseball, football and I drove those cars thousands of miles in the sandbox. We actually learned things rather than looking it up on a phone. Common sense was far more available to us than it is to the snowflakes.
The cars today are driving computers, but you can’t work on them yourself, you need to plug it in to tell you what is wrong. I miss the smooth sound of a V-12, or the deep throated sound of a V-8 in a pony car.
I’ll leave the girls alone other than it was a more genuine look, but our music was way better that what you hear today.
This morning, William Shatner will ride aboard Blue Origin at 90 years of age to be the oldest person ever in space. He missed being the first actor in space by a week as the Russians did that to shoot a movie.
Anyone who knows Star Trek fully gets that the red shirts are the ones who get it on away missions.
He isn’t the first Star Trek Alumni to go to space, just the first one that is alive. Some ashes of Scottie and Gene Roddenbery were sent up a few years back.
There is always the Who is the best Star Trek captain or best series. I am in the TOS camp. The rest use the TOS playbook, but with less daring, panache, creativeness and conquest. For Picard, Sisko, Janeway and Archer fans, they wouldn’t be Captains in the running if there wasn’t a Kirk, end of story.
Even in the movies, the best one is always the Wrath of Khan. It has the best villain, ironic ending and mano a mano story.
I have been a huge Trekkie all of my life. I was alive and watched it during it’s actual first run. When Chekov discovered the Botany Bay on Ceti-Alpha 5, I had goose bumps in the Theater.
The only thing that bothers me about this is that the Enterprise NCC-1701 was a cool ship. Blue Origin looks like a flying dick.
I loved all the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Marvin the Martian was his foil in a couple. That was when we didn’t have a cancel culture and weren’t afraid of making fun of things without being castrated on Social Media.
I saw every one of them as a kid. I saw every one of them as an adult and appreciated them even more. My kids know every time I reference an episode. It’s even better when they reference one to me.
Here is the illudiam Q-36 explosive space modulator, to blow up the Earth.
I had a bunch of these as a kid. When I didn’t have a gun, we used to hit the caps with a hammer. We got brave and hit the whole roll at once for a bigger bang.
I am not sorry they didn’t have video games when I was a kid. I can smell the gunpowder as I type this. I discovered a lot of things because of boredom and curiosity in life.
Some kids pranked a school board in Virginia with oldies like Wayne Kerr (Wanker), Don Kideck (donkey dick) and so forth. It’s going around but here it is. This guy had no idea he was being used like toilet paper, classic.
Some kids pranked a school board meeting on some Bart Simpson shit and I am crying!! 😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/c9fX3GbejA
In one of my auditorium classes (that held 250) students, we had a test and then were having the lecture. Back then it was 35 mm slides. My cousin was taking a photography class and I had her make me a whole roll of nudes.
While people were turning in their tests, I had my friends block the view between the teacher and me. There were slots open starting at the 7th slide. We anxiously waited that slide and he kept teaching because the screen was behind him. It was a shot of Marilyn Monroe from Playboy to start out. He took it well.
This was in the Animal House days. By the time the movie came out, we’d already done everything in the movie except the horse. We weren’t on double secret probation because we never got caught. We also stole the right test and got A’s in the class.
Now, here are the names you can use that weren’t called out in the prank. Some below were used in the prank above.
It’s almost as good as Euphemisms for Stupid, one of my top 2 posts ever. Someone reads that every day from around the world still. Hats off to the Bob and Tom Show (Paging Richard Smoker) and SNL for these. The clips are out there somewhere still.
Seymour Butts
Dick Beater
Richard Smoker (big dick smoker)
Jack N Off
Harry Balls(ack) – 2 for 1 here
Harry Beaver
Peter Stroker
Mr. Baiter
Haywood U Blowme
BJ Hunter
Peter Wanker
Woody Spanker
Sharon Peter
Stu Pedaso
Iwana Wiener
haid d’salaami hous bin pharteen
Ive bin pharteen
jenna t’alia
jack izdikov (off)
justin detoush
suq madiq
usuqa m’diq
i’lik madiq
liqa madiq
yuliqa m’diq
u’wana m’diq
munchma quchi (coochie)
grabbir boubi
i-sheet m’drurz
shaif herboush
mustaf herod apyur poupr (up your pooper)
awan afuqya
yul strokheet al-wautch
apul madeek-aou
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And, who can make a list and not include:
Mike Hunt
One of the tech support guys called the receptionist and had her page Mike at least twice over the loudspeaker to an entire warehouse. It was childish, but then so am I and I laughed as loud as everyone.
I look at the time out generation and think what a bunch of pussies they are. In reality, it is the parents fault.
I remember getting caught on a coral cliff at the beach and yelling for my Mom. She told me you got up there, you get yourself down. I got down and didn’t try that again.
These are the same complainers and cancel culture morons ruining our lives. They never had to grow up.
They complain on social media now and think someone cares.
I saw my life flashing before my eyes as I’ve been winnowing relationships somewhat based on this formula, just on my terms. When I felt someone wasn’t loyal to our relationship, it starts going downhill until I draw the Maginot line and it’s over. I treat others like they treat me.
I didn’t realize how much of a drag on your mental health these relationships are. It has been for me, but I’d made a conscious decision to end them whenever possible when they got toxic for me.
Sometimes it’s Mauerbauertraurigheit, but that is a last resort for me and I have no control over leaving people when that happens. Mostly, I reach a moment of truth and fade away. I don’t ghost people, but I actively avoid them and decline as much as possible until they get the hint. Most of the time, I just get forgotten.
Here are some excerpts, but I’m highlighting only parts of it, what was the blinking light to me. Here goes….
Then there is a category of people which sits right in between. You might call them “frenemies,” though the “enemy” part of that compound can feel like too strong a descriptor. Social scientists have a better term for these kinds of ties: “ambivalent relationships.”
Both positive and negative elements exist in every relationship. In a good, supportive relationship, the positive significantly outweighs the negative. In a bad, aversive relationship, the negative significantly outweighs the positive. In an ambivalent relationship, neither the positive nor the negative predominates; your feelings about the person are decidedly mixed. Sometimes this person is encouraging, and sometimes they’re critical. Sometimes they’re fun, and sometimes they’re a drag. Sometimes they’re there for you, and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes you really like and even love them, and sometimes they bug the ever-living tar out of you.
We can have ambivalent relationships with co-workers, friends, family, and even our spouses. And while we don’t tend to think about our ambivalent relationships as much as we do those on the more polarized ends of the affection spectrum, they actually make up about half of our social networks.
Here’s how it is for me in their words:
Sometimes the connection you feel with someone is very strong when you first meet, but over the subsequent years and decades, you change, and they change, so that your lifestyles, outlooks, and personalities end up more and more disparate. You still think of yourselves as friends, and still have a bond built on a shared history, but your connection is more conflicted than it once was. (Social media really sucks on this one).
Sometimes you’re friends with someone because your spouse is friends with their spouse. They’re not someone you would have actively chosen to be friends with, but because you spend time together as couples, you end up in a relationship, albeit an ambivalent one. (Me, I hate this one. I’ve yet to connect with any of them as they weren’t my friends, they were her friend’s spouse that I was forced to hang with, but we never would otherwise.)
Sometimes you’re just thrown together with people. There are office colleagues and fellow church congregants and roommates who you neither strongly like nor strongly dislike, but that you come to feel quite familiar with because of how much time you spend together. Sometimes this familiarity rises to the level of affection, and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes the relationship just kind of is what it is. (Still, I’ve never really made a close friend from this group. They are people I have to put up with for a period of time. I know how much time that is and it is a countdown until whatever social engagement I’m forced into is over).
It goes on to say:
And, of course, there’s the whole dynamic of family. You may have grown up around certain blood relations, but you otherwise share little in common, and the fact you still get together is based more on biological bonds, and the expectations around filial piety and familial obligation, than genuine desire and enjoyment. You’re in fact more likely to have ambivalent relationships with family members than friends, which makes sense; while relationships with friends are a matter of voluntary choice, you end up connected to family members by chance.
Me:
I have little in common with any biological family anymore outside of my wife and kids. I wonder about them sometimes. Most are gone, but for the ones that are left, if we weren’t related, we’d never talk (and with most, we don’t). The ones that are left seemed to agree with me to keep each other at arms length. I avoid funerals and weddings if at all possible as I don’t need to catch up. I don’t want to talk about my life to people who are strangers other than the biological relationship.
As I recall growing up, my siblings weren’t my friends. Most of the time they would rather try to get me into trouble starting with telling on me to parents on stuff I didn’t do, progressing to talking shit about me to mutual acquaintances at school just to tear me down publicly or socially. We were forced together as a group. We don’t do anything other than the perfunctory requirements and no one really says anything. Even on vacation when young, I was off on my own on any downtime.
I know I never looked forward to any overnight trip to visit any relatives, even as a kid. I thought most of them were a bit creepy. As an introvert, I pulled away from the social gatherings that usually happened around a big meal. It was dreadful. I didn’t even know I was introverted, it naturally happened.
Now, I just try not to initiate any conversation with them to avoid them even thinking about me. If I can turn down a family gathering that involves siblings, count on it.
As far as other relatives, I’m fortunate to have my wife’s relatives living in another country. I’ve done stuff with them, but they for the most part revert to bashing either the USA, or want to try to make America a socialist country like theirs. They consistently trash what is morally right and it’s tiring to listen to. I’ve been fed up with it since 9/11 when they told me America overreacted, and this was before Iraq. If there is a position that is wrong, I can count on them to take it they are such a group of socialists. I can only take so much USA bashing and am now done with them. I just won’t go anymore.
I couldn’t figure these relationships out because I wasn’t born socially gifted like others. Being an introvert, I do have powers of observation and body language skills I’ve had to develop to determine friend or foe. It also helps me determine who is going to waste my time or try to get me to do shit I don’t want to do anymore. Now, I say no.
Why Ambivalent Relationships Are So Terrible for You
Supportive relationships have been shown to buffer stress, boost resilience, and improve physical and mental health.
Aversive relationships have been shown to amplify stress, diminish resilience, and damage physical and mental health.
You might think that because ambivalent relationships feel middle-of-the-road, their impact on your life would be similarly neutral. But in fact, multiple studies have shown that their effect is significantly and uniformly negative, and that “ambivalent relationships not only are less effective at helping individuals cope with stress but also may be sources of stress themselves.”
Studies have found that your blood pressure goes up more when you interact with someone with whom you have an ambivalent relationship, than it does when you interact with someone with whom you have a supportive relationship. Even just anticipating interacting with an ambivalent tie triggers a greater increase in heart rate and blood pressure. Researchers speculate that this heightened stress response is due to the unpredictability of an ambivalent relationship: Are you going to enjoy your time with this person or are you going to get in a fight? Are you going to have fun or just feel annoyed? Are they going to be supportive or critical?
We might hypothesize a couple other reasons that cardiovascular reactivity increases when interacting with ambivalent ties.
One is the greater exercise of self-control you have to muster during one of these interactions; you have to check yourself from rolling your eyes, showing signs of your boredom or frustration, offering an overly harsh rebuttal to an opinion you strongly disagree with — and this takes effort. The heightened stress response experienced around ambivalent ties may also be due to the psychic split you feel over whether you even want to be hanging out with this person at all. You don’t dread seeing them the way you might the dentist, but you don’t really look forward to seeing them, either. The interaction feels more compulsory than voluntary, more obligatory than willful, and we feel a measure of frustration when we don’t experience ourselves as fully autonomous and have to do things that are contrary to our personal desires. (This is how I almost always feel anymore. I have to work up to want to go out with someone and want to know when it will end so I know when I can leave. There are very few I look forward to seeing anymore. Most people who think we are friends don’t know that we aren’t).
Here’s the really surprising thing: blood pressure not only rises more when you’re interacting with an ambivalent tie versus a supportive one, it also rises more when you’re interacting with an ambivalent tie than it does when you’re interacting with an aversive one. In other words, you feel more stressed when interacting with someone you like/dislike, than you do when interacting with someone you entirely dislike.
Me:
I end it by saying not for me. The trouble is in the interaction with people. When I just don’t, my blood pressure is better and any stress over socializing is avoided.
I’d rather not talk to them, especially the majority of those I’m related to. I like the pets though.
Two nights ago, LeBron laid on the floor after being breathed on too hard to fake a foul. It’s a well known NBA joke about him laying down on the job like this.
While the following is sarcasm, I’ve seen soccer (Futball) players lay down and no one got near either them or the part they were clutching.
I’ve been beaned by fastballs, decked by a football hit, fought against Blackbelts in Karate, Judo and Ju-Jitsu. You get hurt and get up. Win the right way, not by faking or lying.
These guys are better actors than the Hollywood celebtards who aren’t working very hard either. When we were growing up (listen to the old person here talking like an old person), We got back up after being hit and said nothing. These guys are p*****s.
Delusions of Adequacy 