Home ›
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
Depending on how blasphemous you feel today, you may also randomize across editions and across verses, and then create mash-up verses out of two chosen at random.
61 versions
Old testament: 39
New testament: 27
total: 66
Anyways I don't think any of this even slightly matters
so just start your danged threaoh you started it.I guess the only solution is to reread posts and respond accordingly.
I think one of those posts was about how I wasn't posting as often, so here it is.
Yep, he's an American. (Although I cannot say if Floridian.)
He also has a butt-ugly website.
(If you were curious, there's something in that "Randian/curious about Buddhism/writer of self-help books" triad that just screams "an American!" to me.)
(Curiously enough, I've also come to expect butt-ugly websites from Americans. I dunno why, but I feel like our own wackos, conspiracy theorists, and fringe science providers tend to have better-looking websites on average.)
(Edit: this is not to mean an average American has a butt-ugly website, but that segment of demographic certainly seems to.)
Man when Ayn Rand comes up I'm always slightly floored with the new ways people can plop her ideas into other things.
I'm actually just floored when Ayn Rand comes up at all.
I wonder if I should consciously avoid her stuff for the good of this place because there's a 50/50 chance that if I do moments like this will become "Akshually...!!"
Ever since Francesco Gabbani's Eurovision entry I associate it more with like, this.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/acer-aspire-r7-switches-up-keyboard-and-trackpad-blows-minds
I did not buy this, for better or worse. (I don't think it's available anymore.)
Hmmm... I have a lot of worrying work/money stuff to talk about but it's very on the personal side, so... whoever wants to listen, PM thread?
I'd like to thank you (including most of those who no longer visit here) for sharing your weird internet findings with me and seeing what weird internet findings I had to share with you, for making me having something to look up for after a long day elsewhere, for being there during many hardships in my life, especially those times I wrote a lengthy comment draft to let out what troubled me and when I finished I'd feel better and delete it, for giving me an extra drive to overcome hardships and challenges, so that I'd often mentally say "look IJBM, I did it!".
I'm feeling emotional today.
https://cindykeepsup.com/the-new-rules-of-late-night-email/
My personal standard is that e-mails are or at least ought to be fine to send anytime as they are asynchronous communication, though I can appreciate that some people might be "you're still working on that at this time?" or "why did my phone just beep again at this ungodly hour of night?".
I think that's it for Christmas greetings, now on to another post about IJBM. As you may have noticed, the forums' activity has dropped these past weeks (something I haven't helped much with), I figure it's not long until the place becomes completely inactive, so I thought it'd be good idea to bid a pre-emptive farewell (although I still intend to be around for however long it lasts).
I've always wanted IJBM to last forever, but of course that's not a realistic outcome, the time will come to move on. Still I'd like to be able to be able to keep some way to connect with you guys, most likely also including whichever former regular is reading this in the future.
As for how to contact me, I'll probably be using Discord more often from now on (for unrelated reasons) so the IJBM server is one way I can be reached. I rarely check TV Tropes nowadays so unless you're okay with waiting months for a reply, that's not a good way to contact me, and I stopped using Twitter and Steam ages ago so those won't do. There's more ways to get to me but I'll keep these to PMs so as to maintain compartmentalization.
(It's occurred to me that although I understand how to keep internet lives separated, I don't know how to go about linking them when necessary, like now.)
Like I said, I don't intend to leave just yet, so I'll keep on reading what you guys still have to say.
As a hush-hush update, it seems my work situation will remain as such for at least one more month, which I suppose is good.
^ I'm kinda curious how my phone figures out that I don't want to be disturbed with notifications, but it's pretty good at it. Either that or I don't wake up/remember when it plays sounds while I'm sleeping.
Fireworks were noticeable last night, IIRC comparable to last year and more numerous than earlier years. I expect New Year's to be kind of loud.
On unrelated stuff, some time ago I had frequent toothaches (and the associated pain on the side of my face), not bad enough to be concerned AFAIK but still annoying, but for the past weeks I've had almost no such aches. AFAIK it's not something that heals on its own so I can't assure it's fine but something I'm doing is having a positive effect on that.
I have a feeling stuff came and went but I'd still like to know what happened.
I turn my phone off at night because I'm super concerned about blue light.
As a hush-hush update, it seems my work situation will remain as such for at least one more month, which I suppose is good.
I should start with the positive stuff:
Merry Christmas, guys!
In movies and stuff, people always wonder why Christmas is such a big deal to the overly huffy mother type character and this is always treated as the normal way for stuff to be.
However, the overly huffy type actually has a reason to be so insane; it's because Christmas is danged hard work. Preparations, gifting, the whole shebang is a nightmare and teenage cousins just discovering the arts of 'sarcasm' and 'poking fun at things' are really, really not helping.
As for me, considering the circles I follow now, I thought a lot about what Christmas meant to me.
Before, when I dropped the war on Christianity and started celebrating Christmas again, I just really liked doing all the stuff. Christmas traditions are great.
This year, I was kind of faced with the point I'd shied away from, in that Christmas is the celebration of the creation myth that led to the fundamental transformation of Western culture into what it was in the golden age of individualism and ridiculously pompous capitalism. As you know, I don't think that's now anymore, but I know one day things can be like that again. Plus, it's still pretty good anyways.
This wasn't something that happened overnight. It's something I've been mulling for a few months in varying degrees of seriousness. I don't want to discuss the reasons at length, because I suddenly don't feel like holding on to resentments. There are several things I think I should have addressed when they happened, but like... the timing's off now.
On my part, I admit that a bit of it had to do with realizing you can't just change people's opinions with your facts, which is one of those scary things nobody really tells you about socializing and politics.
I'd been used my entire life to everybody going along with my side of stuff, being on the opposite fence of that is mighty weird.
So well specifically I guess this is about me and GMH like anybody with two brain-cells could put together but even though I spent a lot of time thinking about it I acted hastily anyways.
In addition, I've been hanging around here for 8-10 years now, and like... it's 2020 and now it's time for decade*. I'm 25 now, too, so it feels like a time of transition somehow. Like I should make a change.
It was probably immature of me to leave without saying anything, but I knew trying to navigate a full break-up would be harder.
Frankly, I really, really could have picked a better time than Christmas, but I was able to avoid this place in part because I was danged busy this week and to some degree I still am.
Now that's out of the way; I came back because I've been gone, and I came back because GMH reached out to me on MAL to wish me a Merry Christmas.
I was thinking a few hours ago about how you guys (the extended IJBM enclave, which includes #ijbm) are my only real friends, and so my brilliant plan was to just dump most of you and make new friends elsewhere. If you care to know, I did somehow manage to get into a political fight immediately (about JKR, natch). Like, I was going to just leave my best friends in the lurch like a maniac.
I don't want to say my return will be permanent yet (though this sounds ominous, the only other option is a cheerful lie), because like... I did have a bunch of resolve before today (the resolve of a jerk, obviously), but I'll stay as long as you have me.
I don't want to see this place die, which is something that's super-easy to forget when I'm pumping out 1,000 word posts about whatever and assuming if I stop somebody else will take over. I do genuinely love you guys, and I even said I'd like to visit each of you somehow eventually (something that surely triggered the current global travel crisis). I still want to do that.
I still want to just post whatever nonsense I have in mind at the least opportune times. I've had a few things my mind I couldn't discuss with many people lately.
Can we try to push this old maid through 2021 and possibly 2022 and so on?
>is back two seconds
>two mega-posts
*I decided this would be a good place to put fripSide lyrics
I promise I'll make lots of inflammatory posts in the politics thread if you do.
I'd say something about how it'd be good idea to (at least when it's not Glenn who starts it), before you hit "Post Comment", reconsider whether you'd like to get into an internet argument that'll consume several hours of your time for several days.
Regardless, no doubt Glenn would prefer if the place he goes to when he wants to post about what he ate, what anime he last watched and what funny pictures he found weren't also the same place with political arguments addressed to him, that he can't ignore or get out of, it wouldn't be surprising if he starts resenting you for it.
So, perhaps argue more with random internet strangers instead? I was intending to do reach out to you too, as soon as the timer expired for e-stalking to not seem too awkward.
Regardless, I'm glad to have you guys around for longer.
The logistical preparations to host stuff really is hard work that people take for granted so often.
As a sidenote, I think modernity has the problem of advertising the good life, and suggesting that everyone can achieve it, while forgetting about the hard work that would go into supporting that, and basically passing them off to whoever is most unlucky.
Wait, you actually espoused the "war on Christmas" stuff at some point? I didn't know there were people who actually did that -- well, not seriously, at least.
I mean, I'm not a Christian and yet I celebrate Christmas anyway. And I even do it with genuine tears in my eyes while listening to the homily at midnight mass!
Anyhow, I was expecting you to just berate me on MAL by saying something like "you can't just up and casually say Merry Christmas after all the interpersonal drama" except lol I did and I am quite bad at being a soap opera character heh. Well, there was that possibility, and the other possibility that you'd simply not want to deal with me and you'd just stay gone. (Remind me one day to write the worst soap opera ever. Or not. lol.)
Honestly, I don't think anyone really plans any of this stuff out, and it's probably more fun that way anyway. More planning = more headaches.
Anyhow, merry Christmas to you and hopefully a better new year ahead.
I thought about this before, but then I just resolved to have giant political conflagration one thread over while in the next one I'm casually discussing whatever.
The reason I did it here was because we could be civil, and we were. In addition, I wanted to discuss things with people with stakes in the matter who wouldn't just fob off when they felt like losing. I was grinding my ideological stone, seeing if I truly believed what I thought held up.
What I didn't expect, and what nobody tells you, is that this process is not fun at all. You read letters by Machiavelli or whoever and you think "Wow this was so fun and intellectual" but actually this is not a fun process at all and everything sucks.
Well I actively didn't celebrate it because I thought (as New Atheism "helpfully" teaches) there was no need for Christianity. I mean, I didn't go out and say things about it to people and chide others for celebrating, it was more just a personal thing. I'd get presents for others, but wouldn't really put feelers out there for myself or participate outside of what was necessary. Probably why nobody figured it out.
It'd make a good comedy skit.
yeah uh no you're super good at it
I mean short of calling the camera crew beforehand it was a total reality show move.
That would be rude.
And I mean, nothing is your fault, it's our collective fault, and so I have no high horse to stand on in that type of situation.
I think I said once a few years ago that "freaking goodness who the danged actually cares about politics let's be friends maaaan" and as callous as that is, I think young me has good instincts about some stuff. Though he was also a giant hypocrite considering I did talk about politics back then.
I'm going to be explicit here in saying that whilst the arguing with GMH really got on my nerves, I'm used to his personality and stuff.
What did drive me more nuts than usual is gacek's insistence on putting me on the spot and expecting me to act as a proxy for all conservatives across the globe. As culturally and economically conservative as I am, I can't be a catch-all, especially with Polish politics I know nothing about.
gacek; I also don't really take kindly to the snide comments (like the fake news thing yesterday), or the times you try to push me (like that thing with calling 44 the N-word, which really didn't contribute to what was going on and genuinely 70% of the reason I didn't chide or chastise you is because you're my friend, and 30% was the free speech thing).
I frequently found myself on the back-foot, trying to just not seem insane, and that's not a feeling I appreciated.
Honestly, yesterday I felt basically all of the feelings I had leaving this place about twofold.
As an atheist I guess this counts as my Festivus Airing of Grievances.
Overall, I want to say something like we should keep politics out of here, but that doesn't seem realistic even if I were to personally try my hardest.
Honestly, maybe I was too hasty making a re-entrance based on all the good memories and feelings I could drum up, especially with how bad my timing was and also leaving without saying anything.
In addition, I do have a real feeling about giving up relying on the pseudonymous life and do more in real life (or even online under my real name). I'm not young enough to coast through IRL anymore, and spending time here frequently takes hours no matter what I'm doing.
In my case specifically, one day I'll be old (in 50-60 years) and I need to figure out soonish how I'll pull off a network of trustworthy, lasting relationships then without having children. I need to seriously consider migration, no matter how daunting it is (I mean, jobs and living arrangements and migration status and etc) and no matter how much I feel negatively towards it. I mean, I have a great IRL life as is so why try to cross borders and put a strain on another country just because I don't want to be pseudo-celibate?
It occurs to me that you'd do well in embracing smug neutrality, the position that you're not going to defend whichever left-right positions there are because you're too superior for that. It gets you all the political street cred with none of the effort.
But more srsly, at some point you have to look at some of that stuff and ask yourself if whatever is being attacked is worth defending, and if not, just tell yourself/others a plain short "lol Polish conservatives so silly" (or whatever fits the context) and just brush it off and not waste MP on something that's only tangentially related to you.
I think it applies to me too, an example would be the cultural Marxism thing, if I had to get into arguments with gaceck so as to distance anti-socialism from the nasty parts of internet right-wing circles, life would suck.
Also, what's the 44 gamer-word thing?nvm I had to Google it but I found it. Yeah, that was probably a good opportunity to call that out.Now I just need to spend less time replying to said infinite chucklefucks on Steam.
I think something that people often don't realize -- and I say this because I didn't realize this until well into adulthood myself -- is that political arguments aren't just about facts, but rather they are about norms, experiences, and expectations. The same facts can happen, but people disagree heavily about the norms, because based on different experiences they expect different things from the same actions. Add in some hyperbole, and you have fuel for a conflagration.
I think I just end up compartmentalizing my interactions. Like, I pretty much only talk anime on MAL, despite the fact that I could talk politics on some of its other boards.