The Thread Of Complete Randomness

    Quote from foxfeeder

    The Man U player who's being investigated for rape and threats to kill too

    It was nauseating to see the comments on social media in support of him and, worse, going all out to attack his accuser. Innocent until proven guilty, of course. But the whole culture of instant vilification of the woman is sickening.

    Quote

    Plus, who's dumb enough to abuse an animal AND film it?

    I wondered that too, and it plays into an interesting thing generally about this mindset of "I need to photograph or video everything I do". Obviously in the days of exclusively film photography we'd quite selectively take photos as records of trips and special events and with the limitations of your 24 or 36 roll you'd choose quite carefully. (Though of course it wasn't as clear-cut as that, plenty would snap their way through a roll taking lame wasted shots). But with pretty much limitless photo/video-taking scope now, it seems everything has to be documented. Including, apparently, animal abuse. It was bad enough when photographing plates of food became widespread, but this?! Are there people who feel their lives only have validity if it's on a phone screen?

    Abandon all reason

    I have a new car (sort of). My mother is 84 & can no longer drive so I have taken over her 2012 Ford Fiesta and sent my battered old 2002 Renault Clio for scrap. In addition my mother has been diagnosed with dementia & it has been a somewhat stressful few months. I just felt like mentioning it.

    Quote from FeelItComing

    I have a new car (sort of). My mother is 84 & can no longer drive so I have taken over her 2012 Ford Fiesta and sent my battered old 2002 Renault Clio for scrap. In addition my mother has been diagnosed with dementia & it has been a somewhat stressful few months. I just felt like mentioning it.

    Wishing you and your mother well.

    Quote from FeelItComing

    I have a new car (sort of). My mother is 84 & can no longer drive so I have taken over her 2012 Ford Fiesta and sent my battered old 2002 Renault Clio for scrap. In addition my mother has been diagnosed with dementia & it has been a somewhat stressful few months. I just felt like mentioning it.

    That's very difficult, sorry to hear it. Best wishes to you both. My granny had bad dementia in her last couple of years, sometimes the pleasantly confused kind but unfortunately sometimes the paranoid lashing out kind. It's a horrible affliction.


    Sounds like the clio didn't owe you a thing...

    Quote from FeelItComing

    I have a new car (sort of). My mother is 84 & can no longer drive so I have taken over her 2012 Ford Fiesta and sent my battered old 2002 Renault Clio for scrap. In addition my mother has been diagnosed with dementia & it has been a somewhat stressful few months. I just felt like mentioning it.

    Sorry to hear that. Hope that you are both able to cope with the current new situation. It must be hard

    “Without music, life would be a mistake”

    Quote from FeelItComing

    I have a new car (sort of). My mother is 84 & can no longer drive so I have taken over her 2012 Ford Fiesta and sent my battered old 2002 Renault Clio for scrap. In addition my mother has been diagnosed with dementia & it has been a somewhat stressful few months. I just felt like mentioning it.

    I'm sorry to hear this. A difficult time for you and your mum. Sending best wishes and kind thoughts. Take care.

    Quote from FeelItComing

    In addition my mother has been diagnosed with dementia & it has been a somewhat stressful few months. I just felt like mentioning it.

    That's rough, I'm very sorry learn that.


    Not that this is something you'd necessarily feel like diving into right now but I just read a fascinating interview with a woman who has dementia - Wendy Mitchell who has written 2 books about her experiences, Somebody I Used To Know and Things I Wish People Knew About Dementia.


    Meanwhile, it's a difficult time - it's hard when a close family member is unwell, especially a parent and particularly when it can affect their memory, behaviour etc. Completely understandable to feel the need to mention it.

    Abandon all reason

    Thanks all. It's a 'one day at a time' thing because she's different every day. Not so much behaviour (although I suppose that may start to change) but memory loss & repetition of what she's alreayd said because she can't remember what she said after five minutes.


    But I do have some good news - my daughter will be starting her first job fairly soon (she is 23 but she did a degree and two post graduate degrees which got her through the pandemic). She will be doing transcription work. It's a start because she'd really like to get into publishing & editing. We only got confirmation that they can work ou the mutally agreed starting date last night after I wrote the previous post!

    I was alerted via Twitter of a young politician running for office in Pennsylvania I believe. Alexandra Hunt. She's a public health researcher of some sort and appears to be a good apple. Some scrote from New York post wrote an article on her leading with a headline about how she was a stripper. One of her t-shirts had the funny (to me) political message "elect hoes" on it. I went to buy one (partly to support her, and partly to add to my "make America rake again" funny/political t-shirt I have from when that stupid shit trump and his cadre of stupid sycophants tried to have a press conference at the four seasons and ended up outside the four seasons landscaping instead) only to realize I shouldn't/couldn't. I'm not a citizen and don't have a green card, and there was a list of conditions I should meet to buy the T-shirt and those were on it. I was on the verge of buying it anyway but stopped. I'm about to renew my visa and what if this fucked it up?


    Which led me to many random thoughts. I didn't land here last week. I moved here 8 years ago and two of my kids are American. At what point should a person be allowed to have a say in the kind of place they live? And this would be politician stripped in college to get by, why do we make it so hard for young people to make their way? It's not like they're scrabbling for shelter or food on a barren African plain thirty thousand years ago, but we make them feel like that as if they'll learn from the experience. Maybe these are all American problems, maybe not.

    Quote from thewatcher

    I was alerted via Twitter of a young politician running for office in Pennsylvania I believe. Alexandra Hunt. She's a public health researcher of some sort and appears to be a good apple. Some scrote from New York post wrote an article on her leading with a headline about how she was a stripper. One of her t-shirts had the funny (to me) political message "elect hoes" on it. I went to buy one (partly to support her, and partly to add to my "make America rake again" funny/political t-shirt I have from when that stupid shit trump and his cadre of stupid sycophants tried to have a press conference at the four seasons and ended up outside the four seasons landscaping instead) only to realize I shouldn't/couldn't. I'm not a citizen and don't have a green card, and there was a list of conditions I should meet to buy the T-shirt and those were on it. I was on the verge of buying it anyway but stopped. I'm about to renew my visa and what if this fucked it up?


    Which led me to many random thoughts. I didn't land here last week. I moved here 8 years ago and two of my kids are American. At what point should a person be allowed to have a say in the kind of place they live? And this would be politician stripped in college to get by, why do we make it so hard for young people to make their way? It's not like they're scrabbling for shelter or food on a barren African plain thirty thousand years ago, but we make them feel like that as if they'll learn from the experience. Maybe these are all American problems, maybe not.

    Having been in your boat watcher, I would strongly encourage you to get on the "citizenship path" if you truly want to make a difference in this country. I also started on a work visa (not for 8 years though), got a green card and eventually US citizenship. A visa is a really "tentative" status (though I admittedly don't know what class of visa you have). I also reached a point many years ago (I've been a US citizen since 1999) where I wanted to have a greater voice in the ins and outs of the US, hence my move towards acquiring citizenship. And yes, the US is extremely polarized right now. I've actually taken the "humane" opposite approach and tried to listen to all sides of a debate, even though I may vehemently disagree with one argument. That's how people used to be before social media turned 75% of the planet into a bunch of louts and "experts" (on all ends of the political spectrum). Peace.

    Quote from BassAnd12Man

    That's how people used to be before social media turned 75% of the planet into a bunch of louts and "experts" (on all ends of the political spectrum). Peace.

    I wouldn't pin the blame on social media for making people like that. Plenty of people were already pretty unsavoury and/or self-appointed experts, and social media gave them a much broader publicly accessible platform on which to flaunt their ghastliness.

    Abandon all reason

    Quote from BassAnd12Man

    Having been in your boat watcher, I would strongly encourage you to get on the "citizenship path" if you truly want to make a difference in this country.

    Thanks for the advice and sharing your own experience. It's definitely something I'm working on although the hurdles are insane. I need something called a Conrad waiver, of which there are 30 per year for my state. Of those, 20 are for workers in underserved areas, for which I don't qualify. So I need to get one of these ten waivers, after which I can switch to a different visa for three years, after which I can apply for a green card and then work on citizenship.


    Or I could just go home!

    Quote from Backdrifter

    I wouldn't pin the blame on social media for making people like that. Plenty of people were already pretty unsavoury and/or self-appointed experts, and social media gave them a much broader publicly accessible platform on which to flaunt their ghastliness.


    Quote from thewatcher

    Thanks for the advice and sharing your own experience. It's definitely something I'm working on although the hurdles are insane. I need something called a Conrad waiver, of which there are 30 per year for my state. Of those, 20 are for workers in underserved areas, for which I don't qualify. So I need to get one of these ten waivers, after which I can switch to a different visa for three years, after which I can apply for a green card and then work on citizenship.


    Or I could just go home!I

    I feel your pain watcher.... I was lucky to do all of this pre-9/11. I know that it's a lot harder now.. Hang in there and just take one small step at a time wherever you can. I know immigration is a pain in the butt. I wish the US had a points based system like the country I came from (Canada). Take care.

    OMG!.... Here in Ontario, my weekly shopping has gone up by around $10. I generally spend around $50 a week. 8|=O


    Could this war in Ukraine effect our prices we're spending in our shops?...:/

    Quote from Noni

    OMG!.... Here in Ontario, my weekly shopping has gone up by around $10. I generally spend around $50 a week. 8|=O


    Could this war in Ukraine effect our prices we're spending in our shops?...:/

    Gas/oil/petrol has gone INSANE. It cost me a thousand dollars to fill my tank at home last week. Not joking.