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[wombat]

"Christians" like this just baffle me.  Jesus was all about loving everybody, nnn-kay.  These folks are about as loving as a barbed wire hand grenade.

It seems like there are a lot of Christians who would think Jesus was a wimp and a hippie, if they really met him.

[pmcd9]

I don't think I would like that stuff much were I trapped there. I might chew off up to two of my appendages to escape, now that I think on it.

I certainly get that. The thing is, I really enjoy that type of music and nobody else is doing it. And they won't even be doing it for much longer actually. My parents are pushing 80 and most of the audience was their age or older. There were very few people as young as me. And I was enjoying it very much until he stopped singing and started talking.

I suppose I could get into barbershop quartets. When I was a kid we used to go to barbershop quartet concerts. A business associate of my dad's was in the Houston Tidelanders. He was even a member of SPEBESQSA (Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America). Two problems. First, I love the singing on it's own, but it's infinitely better when it's done with instrumental accompaniment. Second, and this is the bigger problem, is that Barbershop music is driven by contest. This means that music has taken a backseat and every single goddamn Barbershop Quartet performance in America is designed to impress the judges. Hey, look how high we can sing this note. Or how low. Or how long we can hold it. It's madness.

The Gospel music crowd sings for the sake of the song, and they have music accompaniment. Although, at this performance the music was on tape which is a whole other problem for me. To me having pre-recorded music makes it glorified karaoke. Fuck, there's just not a lot of outs. But I love the music so much I was willing to forgive these problems and potential pitfalls.

Thing is, when it's done right, it's absolutely magical.

[pmcd9]

Man, I used to be Nugent's biggest fan. fortunately, I suppose in retrospect, his music got stupid silly long before he became the biggest douche on the planet and I had long abandoned him by that time.

[wombat]

Sometimes it's sad when you're a fan of someone whose career seems to end prematurely. And sometimes it's just as sad when it goes on for too long.

[theinevitable]

Yes, I'll be your job reference if you promise never to write "alright" again.

Oh no, I've been alwrong this whole time :-o !

Meanwhile, personally annoyed that coworkers all consistently write "healthy food" so I guess we all have our own pedantic cross to bear.

[theinevitable]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[theinevitable]

I feel like I have learned weird things about society based on who calls me "sir" depending on which clothes I am wearing. Frankly, nobody should ever call me sir.

(top moment though: very old black man called me "sir," I squirmed, with a glint in his eye he said "you don't like when I call you sir, do you? Have a nice day sir.")

[wombat]

I have to admit that at the time I did think it proved that Americans believe that any man, no matter his other undesirable qualities, is more qualified to be president than a woman.

[pmcd9]

It's like a cruel joke that our first real opportunity to vote for a woman president the candidate is so odorous that most people can't stand her.

[theinevitable]

I think what's annoying about the thing Ash shared is that it sees privilege/oppression/whatever you want to call it as linear. One person must be more or less oppressed than the other, like you can simply do the math and solve the equation. But the whole POINT of that kind of analysis, at least as far as I've always understood it, is that these forms of power and privilege are variable. There can be one situation where the white woman has it worse, another where the black man has it worse. You don't even need to get into weird hypothetical situations to demonstrate this-- black men legally got the right to vote before any women did, while also facing Jim Crow etc.

I also think there's something to the idea that some of the things people don't like about HRC are things she has done due to the pressures of being a female politician. Men can get away with seeming more angry and disheveled, people would judge HRC if she just showed up in baggy-ass suits like Bernie, etc. Maybe that also explains her hawkish foreign policy, having a history of being "tough on crime," other things that she has done to seem powerful and not "girly".
But IMO, there's a difference between understanding why someone has turned out a certain way, and supporting it. Some people are not-great because of the pressures of our fucked up society... but other people survive those pressures in other ways. I know far too many strong, intelligent women to believe that HRC is the best a woman can do, that all of her flaws are the inevitable result of surviving decades as a woman in politics. I know that if I had to pick someone I know personally to be president it would almost certainly be a woman... maybe guys in my generation just suck. That said, HRC is clearly going to be the next president. And I'll vote for her 100 times before I see Trump in the White House.

[pmcd9]

I also think there's something to the idea that some of the things people don't like about HRC are things she has done due to the pressures of being a female politician. Men can get away with seeming more angry and disheveled, people would judge HRC if she just showed up in baggy-ass suits like Bernie, etc. Maybe that also explains her hawkish foreign policy, having a history of being "tough on crime," other things that she has done to seem powerful and not "girly".

But IMO, there's a difference between understanding why someone has turned out a certain way, and supporting it. Some people are not-great because of the pressures of our fucked up society... but other people survive those pressures in other ways. I know far too many strong, intelligent women to believe that HRC is the best a woman can do, that all of her flaws are the inevitable result of surviving decades as a woman in politics. I know that if I had to pick someone I know personally to be president it would almost certainly be a woman... maybe guys in my generation just suck. That said, HRC is clearly going to be the next president. And I'll vote for her 100 times before I see Trump in the White House.

I don't take any responsibility for whatever crucible that has shaped HRC as a politician. I just know that it has shaped her into a politician that I can't stand for reasons that has nothing to do with her gender. I may in fact vote for a woman, Jill Stein. I voted 3 times to elect an openly gay woman as mayor of Houston. But I'm through voting for the lesser of two evils.

[theinevitable]

I keep typing out a complaint about petty classwork shit that should have been done a week ago. But I'll just say, it seems like some classmates got through all of high school, college, and graduate school without learning how to write a research paper with citations.

This is the class where I didn't finish my assigned shit, though, so I am fixing the citations without complaining (to them) and hoping everyone forgets that I didn't ever do most of that stuff.

[wombat]

I am concerned that there may be a problem with your strategy. If they don't know their citations are wrong and you don't complain that you are fixing them, will they even notice you did it? Because if not how are you going to get credit for at least doing that instead of the stuff you should have done?

[pmcd9]

My Christian sister posted this video on her Facebook. To me it doesn't paint Christians in a very favorable light. I can't decide if the comedian is trying to do to Christians what Stephen Colbert does to Republicans.

[pmcd9]

A friend asked me to like her new page Intuitive Consulting by LOIS. I don't really have anything to say about this really except this is a new term for psychic. There seems to be some disconnect here. She must think the term psychic has a bad name, but the term psychic has always had a bad name. Living in the Trump era it's plainly evident that gullibility is at an all time high so why change the name now?