Reality Culture

This is not something I recall hearing, but I don't get out that much. My favorite phrase when someone is taking leave is, "Be good. If you can't be good, don't get caught." 

I know it is polite for people to ask, "How are you?" when greeting each other. But I find it a bit overdone, unless it is asked by a friend or family member who has not spoken with you for some time. Perhaps a regular customer as well. The guy on the telephone at Spectrum technical assistance really doesn't care how I am doing, nor do I care how he is doing. To such inquiries I generally reply, "Still alive." 

I doubt that it's a matter of not getting out. It's likely a matter of living in Texas, not Libtardville. Pat says that whenever he gets this superficial nostrum from some nitwit he returns it with "No, stay free."



I see two elements: social lubrication (good) vs. marketing expropriating normal social functioning. It's not at all bad to say, "How are you?" to someone. But if you get that over the phone via a telemarketer (or politician), good god, it's astonishing that people can't make this distinction and instead fall for the sometimes very clever and well-researched marketing. No, sorry, they don't care about you.

That's the kind of cancel culture I can get behind. Now...let's start building some prisons for the COVID bullies.

And this comment shows that a lot of people have been thinking what I've (we've) been saying:

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/too_funny_resolution_would_inform_the_federals_that_the_people_have_lost_all_their_guns_in_a_boating_accident.html

It has long been known that Texans have a strange sense of humor. 

The proposal would inform the federal government that his constituents have lost all their guns and ammunition in an unfortunate and regrettable "series of alleged boating accidents."

That's how I have heard it. It is, among other things, a term of derision.  I did not see the movie, but I believe this is something the women in "Steel Magnolias" would have said. 

I was reading about a retro computer oriented site that recently (apparently) shut down. I found a couple comments to the article that announced this to be interesting. The owner's reasons for shutting down seem to be a combination of "Bwahh, whaaa...no one is reading me" and "I got a nasty letter." My first thought was "Man up." But here's the first comment:



Besides "Man up," I would have told this website author that if you are doing something that interests you, who cares if one or a thousand is reading? Or are you really in this for your ego?"

Yes, we all like rewards and positive feedback for jobs well done. But we here at Reviews-and-Things are not babes in the woods. We know that you don't go to a brothel to find love no more than you go to the internet to find much more than superficial "Likes" from people you don't know and will likely never meet and who you would barely tolerate even in the best of circumstances.

That doesn't mean these are bad or superficial people. But the nature of the internet is indeed superficial. So those who start a web site should not go looking for love in all the wrong places.

That said, I've (we've) sort of "Been there, done that." I got tired of the superficiality of StubbornThings. What never bothered me is if one or a million people were reading us. The only thing that mattered is, "Did he or she write something true, interesting, and worthy of reading?" Most people were writing drivel.

I'm with this next commenter who could be summed up as "So what if you're not a famous 'influencer' with a million vacuous sycophants drooling over every stupid thought you utter? Fight the good fight because it's the right thing to do."

As disdainful as I am of "intellectuals," and mindful not to be a look-down-my-nose one of those, there is no doubt of the fact that "success" online is inversely proportional to having something useful, decent, or good to say. There are some exceptions (Jordan Peterson) but they are few.



Face it: We are part of the underground culture. As much as libtards, various flower-children holdovers, yuppies, guppies, puppies, and stupidies think they are "daring" and "with it" and "doing their own thing" (in exactly the same way as everyone else, of course) and part of a vibrant and important "counter culture," they are little but (ironically) the very parents that they supposedly all warned us about in the 60's: dull, uninspired, robotic, chasing a materialistic life, and slaves to convention, etc.

Truth? Beauty? Goodness? Or just thinking outside the box? There is little market for that these days in a culture that has truly become crass and vulgar. I wear it as a badge of honor that we don't have a million participants. If we did, I wouldn't be here.

I have my faults. It would make quite a list. But I do think something happened to those born between about 1948 and 1956. They are corrupted, self-centered, and emotionally vapid. I saw two examples of that in the last two days from men of about the same age (70 or so).

One of them is my older brother. Aha! He finally got up with fleas after having lain down with that alcoholic dog who is (and perhaps now was) the keyboard player in his band.

Long story short, this "Jimmy Fingers" (real name or stage name, I don't know) got drunk one night and wrote my brother a chain of highly volatile text messages. Every fourth or fifth word was an f-bomb along with observations about how he was a narcissist, treated his wife badly, and a few other things. This guy is a little drunken bitch but...well...even in the midst of a tirade some truths can be told.

So now he is out of the band although he apologized profusely the next day. (My brother read the entire text message chain to us today.) The subtext of this is: One, Alcoholics are problematic in terms of having any kind of relationship with them; Two, my brother can be a real asshole and he doesn't notice it.

The other episode was a client of mine who was crying and complaining about all the work he had to do on his boat he has at the yacht club. I mean, this generation is a bunch of self-centered ninnies. I'm tired of them.

I did not mention to my idiot brother that six months ago I warned him about lying down with dogs. He then, of course, went on to relate a story about this "Jimmy Fingers" that I had heard already twice before, and I told him so before he bored us a third time.

He is (if you will pardon the French) one fucked up individual. I urged him to go talk to a counselor just to get a perspective on things. His life plan is to outlive his wife. I reminded him that actuary tables were not in his favor so he'd better come up with a better plan than living in misery and playing a waiting game.

He's a flake. I mean, he is a full-out flake. And there is no helping him because he listens to no one else. Lesson to be learned: There is more to life than trying to live the sixties lifestyle of non-stop self-satisfaction. Never has the adage "A little suffering is good for the soul" made more sense than when you look at the Boomer generation. This is where Snowflakes were born.

I won't argue the point. Of course, you are right.



Maybe things are different in Texas. But around these parts, if you are over 65, you are dedicated to "recapturing your youth." Oh...and speaking of alcoholics, I love how "wine tasting tours" have become a way to sanitize it. I shall not mention the people this pertains to since I do not have FU money. But I would not be surprised if this is yet another widespread and unreported aspect of the corruption of the 60's generation.

One thing to remember (as I'm sure you all do) is the thorough PR job done by Leftists and liberals to undermine existing authority and morals. "Don't trust anyone over 30" was just the tip of the iceberg. The entire project was basically to romanticize the Yute Generation and delegitimize the Adult Generations. The former were cool, hip, "nice," forward-looking, and "open" while the latter were "squares," unhip, and repressed.

Music was a yuge part of forwarding this message. Why else would songs such as "Sympathy for the Devil" be written? Rock 'n' Roll is thoroughly about the Yute Trinity: sex, drugs, and counter-culture.

Well, let's look and see what it has gotten us. Even my younger brother notices the "ghost" effect that he sees in many people these days. Like I said, maybe things are different in Texas. But there is a "Nothingness" spreading and you see it in people's eyes and behavior.



I don't disagree, although I would frame it as the attempt (largely successful) to promote the supremacy of the child aspect over the adult aspect. The true goal was to remain forever-children, to be taken care of and to be free from the harsh realities of living. Everything would be free and easy. Thus those harsh realities that get in the way of these naive Utopian notions are blamed on someone else. This is what "systemic racism" means. It means the fault is someone else's, some almost invisible "thing" that no one can find but it has to be there to explain things.

We are arguably no longer able to govern yourselves. We are set to be ruled.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them. One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.