The Doom That Came to Cowtown

Bree nominated me to post three things I hate. I originally did it on Facebook, but decided that it really deserved to be here since it meets my LJ guidelines. i.e. One sentence: Twitter. One paragraph: Facebook. One essay: Livejournal.

I hate lots of stuff. As long as the stuff I love outnumbers it, I should be good though, right? Anyway, here's three things with a bonus:

1) Thoughtless, inconsiderate drivers. This can have many manifestations: dangerous driving, cutting people off, passing in the douchebag lane, etc. I think it's the simplest is simply not signalling. When you consider the physical effort required to use your signals, this tells you they're the sort of person who will literally not lift a finger to help others.

2) Irrational arguments on the internet. It's like chewing on tinfoil to me. Examples include "I left my gun on the porch all day and it didn't kill anyone" or "here's a picture of a pit bull with a toddler and they're both perfectly fine". Counter arguments are so ridiculously easy that it makes me weep that a person would post the original argument in the first place.

2.5) Of a similar nature, chain posts like "repost this if you love mom and apple pie; if you don't repost you must hate motherhood" poke that same but that's illogical button in me. I do occasionally participate if it's something I'm particularly passionate about (anti-bullying campaigns for example), but I make it clear that I don't expect anyone else to participate.

3) The teachers I had in elementary school. The kids were just cruel in that kid way, but the grown-ups who stood by and watched as my self-esteem got systematically destroyed and I begged for their help... yeah. My only consolation is they're probably dead now. Good riddance.

I'm not too fussed about nominating people to participate. Do it if you'd like.

There's a picture meme running around Facebook right now that I've included below:



A friend conveyed the same sentiment in his status update in a much more erudite manner without the picture. He was not alone.

Does anyone other than me think this is actually somewhat disrespectful of veterans? We'll leave aside the fact that Remembrance Day is actually meant for remembering armed forces members who have died in the line of duty. One could easily reword the picture to reflect that.

Now I'm someone who has great respect for what our veterans have done. We ask them to do a difficult, sometimes life-threatening job and they don't often get thanks for it. Sometimes they do things I'd rather they didn't do, but that's not really their fault so much as it is the government that gives them their assignments. I can disagree with our military being in Afghanistan, and I can think that they're not accomplishing much while there, but that doesn't mean they're not trying and they're not in danger.

So yes, I respect our soldiers and our veterans.

My big objection is using veterans for emotional blackmail. Don't do X because Veterans! It's like the very similar argument of Think of the Children. It's not something you say if you are interested in debating something on its merits; You say it when you want to stifle debate. After all, you couldn't possibly support X, that means you hate our troops!

Completely unrelated to this, I agree that retailers get into Christmas-mode way too early (I know the meme says decorations, but it's really retailers who are guilty of this 99% of the time). If I had my druthers, it wouldn't begin until much later than November 12 - I'd put it at the American Thanksgiving weekend. This gives everyone time to prepare for Black Friday. A month-long span that begins and ends with holiday weekends should be plenty.

In short, there might be damn good reasons why we would want to limit Christmas. Or not, I suspect most people just find it a little exhausting rather than an affront. I say live-and-let-live. If a retailer wants to go all Christmas-y starting in July, it's no skin off my nose. I might decide not to shop there because it's irritating, but in the end I'll probably base my purchasing decisions on other criteria, like price or convenience. If too-early Christmas means that much to you, don't shop there. That means some personal inconvenience as you search for alternatives though and I bet most of the people who've posted this meme aren't going to put any more effort into this than clicking on "like". And that puts memes like this firmly into the realm of slacktivism - important enough to share, not important enough to take any real action. It's a little like prayer that way. As for supporting veterans by not doing something - I can claim I'm patriotic by not putting up decorations. It's so much easier than actually doing something, like attending Remembrance Day ceremonies. I support Canada's Justice system by not pissing on the courthouse steps! Easy!

I suppose one could simply actually ask a veteran their opinion in the matter - whether they think we should control behaviour prior to November 12th. I suspect they don't think that. However "veterans" is not some platonic ideal of a class of people who all share the same opinion. My dad served in the Canadian Forces (albeit not during wartime) and he couldn't get enough of Christmas - it was his favourite holiday. Other veterans might not celebrate Christmas at all.

On the subject of using veterans as your club to shame people? I'm guessing they like that even less than early Christmas decorations.

Apparently I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid.

Rules: Bold all of the following TV shows which you've ever seen 3 or more episodes of in your lifetime. Underline a show if you're positive you've seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order), but you must delete one show for each one that you add.

( The shows themselves... )

Some weird oddities in my list. First, since the rules are to bold if you've seen at least three episode, I've got a lot of shows that my folks watched (Golden Girls, Roseanne) that I wouldn't have otherwise paid any attention to). Also, you can see I was a kid during the 70's. If it was a more subjective "bold shows you were/are a fan of", my list would be at least half this size.

Shows I've seen every episode boil down to the ones I own (Firefly), or ones that have been in syndication forever (Star Trek TOS). One exception is my Dad's favourite show - M*A*S*H, which I had little choice in seeing all of. Thank heavens it's actually a good show!

Doctor Who is on the list, even though I've never been a big fan of it. I did try back in the 80's, I really did, but just couldn't get into it. Supernatural is on the list largely due to simply being at minyata's house when she and cat_cetera where watching it obsessively.

Lots of shows that I probably should have watched, but just never got around to For example, I've still only watched one episode of South Park and two episodes of Lost. At this point in my life I find it hard to devote the time to the latest big thing. I find I'm picking up weird shows with elements that appeal to me (Leverage is an action comedy caper, No Ordinary Family is superheros in the real world).

So that was a weird month.

I feel tense, stressed and emotionally exhausted. A lot of it was from the amount of introspection that the meme required. I'm not used to that level of it. I had to dig around in some of the more musty parts of my psyche.

Aside: The feelings aren't entirely because of that meme. I've been reading this thread on Making Light, and work has been stressful the last week or so.

I think this has triggered my yearly birthday-to-valentines depression a month ahead of schedule. Hopefully my trip to Victoria in 9 days will improve my mood.

So what have I accomplished? Well I've put way too much information about my past, my mental issues and my sex life out onto the net. Even the positive posts had traces of emo whining in them. I'm not happy about that - I really need to bury that shit so that I don't inadvertently push people away.

Hopefully there was enough of the positive for people to read and be informed without me seeming like a basket-case. I really can function rather well day-to-day.

And the next few big posts won't have much to do with me, because damn, I want to write about something else.