How bullys ruin Internet forums

The danger of a forum bully is two-fold. In one respect, the forum bully makes the other respected members of the forum appear hypocritical to an outsider. When the forum bully spouts her own brand of nonsense, when the forum bully tears apart other forum members for no reason other than because she can, it makes other members of the forum look bad - simply because the very behavior a troll is ostracized for, is the exact same behavior permitted to the forum bully. The double standard so created reeks of hypocrisy and undermines the legitimacy of everyone who does not call the forum bully out for her repugnant behavior.

The forum bully is not stupid. The bully will never attack other respected members of the forum. She will also mix her attacks between those who genuinely deserve being attacked, and those she attacks for fun. After all, the only way a forum bully stays in business is with the consent of the other members of the forum. And she knows the fine line between being labeled a troll and being called blunt or to the point.

The other danger of a forum bully is that she creates an atmosphere of fear within the forum - not fear among the established members, but rather fear among those outsiders who want to participate in the forum. It is this fear that enables the forum bully to operate. A forum operates on the classic in-group/out-group dynamic. The bully's behavior is tolerated because of an understanding of this dynamic. You don't attack those within the inner circle, only those outside it.

If one of the respected members of the forum were to call the bully what she is, a petty, repugnant fraction of a human being, this member risks losing position within the forum. The resulting forum is a place in which comments are guarded. Politics are played. And the free flow of information is stifled. This is the true danger of allowing a forum bully to continue her activities. By not calling her out, the forum loses part of the dynamic it was created to foster. The forum bully also undermines the legitimacy of everyone else in the forum.

Online Forum Etiquette: How to Deal with a Forum Bully

Celebrating The End Of The World

According to such reputable publications as the National Enquirer, the world is going to end when the Mayan Calendar runs out on Friday, Dec. 21^st. This doesn’t have to be bad news. Sure, we might not be able to survive…but our websites can.

Active Failover – an advanced feature of DynECT Managed DNS – will keep your site up and running, even if data centers go down. It is the ultimate insurance plan.

Maybe the Mayans were wrong. But if they were right, don’t you want to be prepared?

The end of the world doesn’t have to be depressing, especially if you know your website is fully protected. In that spirit, we’re holding a countdown to the apocalypse discount.

We’re offering 21% - the date of the end of the world - off a variety of select new DNS & Email Delivery products. From DYN

Romney zombie apocalypse

Whedon On Romney

Still undecided? Vote for the future.

Sarah Silverman on election fraud

Sarah Silverman | Election 2012 - Voter Fraud

RepubliCons are destroying peoples constitutional rights to vote in some states. They pulled this crap on my elderly mother a week ago in Michigan. I bought the wrath of God down on her city clerk (state bureau of elections), he still can't sit down.

Mexican soft porn TV

I sometimes run into the soft porn on the movie channel Golden Edge and the SKY Network.   Usually it's when I've fallen asleep and awake to the moaning and groaning .... or if a good movie ends around midnight.   Most of it is terrible with either no story line or a really bad one.   I even ran into Burt Reynolds as a very over the hill sleazy porn director. It was not Boogie Nights or Tempted as they got either good or semi-good reviews and this was terrible.  Can't find it so maybe I dreamt it.

The only reason I even brought this up was I awoke the other night to Caligula in the midst of the no holds barred orgy scene.   I looked up the movie the next morning on IMDb and found that there were several versions.   I somehow doubt this is a trend but makes me wonder if there are rules.

"There are various versions of the film, ranging from the heavily- truncated 90-minute version to the legendary 160-minute hardcore version which leaves nothing to the imagination (though the hardcore scenes were inserted later and do not involve the main cast members). "

You won't find clips on YouTube but if you Google 'Caligula Orgy' you will find them

Jimmy Carter: Money ruining elections

Former President Jimmy Carter issued a blistering indictment of the U.S. electoral process Tuesday, saying it is shot through with “financial corruption” that threatens American democracy.

Speaking in Atlanta at the international human rights center that bears his name, Carter said “we have one of the worst election processes in the world right in the United States of America, and it’s almost entirely because of the excessive influx of money.”

The 39th president lamented a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited contributions to third-party groups that don’t have to disclose their donors.

The dynamic is fed, Carter said, by an income tax code that exacerbates the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the electorate, allowing the rich even greater influence over public discourse and electioneering.

He added that he hopes the “Supreme Court will reverse that stupid ruling,” referring to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81087.html#ixzz26O6uD3uj

Health Reform Quiz

The health reform law promises to deliver big changes in the U.S. health care system. But, as with other sweeping pieces of legislation, it can be hard to get the real facts about what it does. And it is all too easy for misinformation about the law to spread.

Take our short, 10-question quiz to test your knowledge of the law, and then find out how you compare to the rest of the country, as represented by the findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation's monthly Health Tracking Poll.

Take the 10 question Quiz here ...

The Romney-Ryan Economic Plan

The Romney-Ryan Economic Plan ... a disaster for America

Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower?

Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?

It’s enough to make even the most ardent Obama cynic scratch his head in confusion.

Amidst all the cries of Barack Obama being the most prolific big government spender the nation has ever suffered, Marketwatch is reporting that our president has actually been tighter with a buck than any United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Who knew?

Check out the chart –

Forbes article

Barry Goldwater was watching

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” ~ Barry Goldwater, November 1994, as quoted in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience (2006)

Back before the Internet was Fidonet

Every now an then I run into something that reminds me of the old Fidonet and Bulletin Board days and what really got me into computers. If you don't remember Bulletin Boards they were similar to a web site but over dial up lines, you needed to dial their number with a DOS based program like Telix. Bulletin Boards or BBS's had downloads, games and message boards. My board was the Helix named after the first alternative/hippie newspaper in Seattle.

Fidonet was a network to connect BBS's for maintenance, email and to upload new message to message boards. Fidonet was truly International.  Eventually I became the Internet Gateway for New York Transfer News (ANEWS) (which may have closed it doors) and for Dharma Net. I was also the repository for Home Power magazine issues that came out every month.   Looking around the Internet today I find nothing current on Fidonet so I assume they gave up in favor of the Internet.

A BBS console waiting for a call

--

+ 212-675-9690 NY TRANSFER NEWS COLLECTIVE 212-675-9663 +

+ Since 1985: Information for the Rest of Us +

+ GET INFO from ftpmail%transfr@blythe.org +

+ e-mail: nyt@blythe.org info: info@blythe.org +

--- GEcho 1.00 * Origin: helix.uucp =FidoNet/DharmaNet= Seattle (206)783-6368 (1:343/70.0)

An Internet Gateway uses a UUCP dialer like GEcho and receives/sends news groups and email but then they have to be conveted to Fidonet format.  The conversion was done with a program by Jason Fesler called GIGO or Garbage In Garbage Out.  I had to write a small program that would correct the header info that was reversed by either GEcho or my Internet feed.

DharmaNet International      revised: 6/8/94

 BBS-Name: The Helix
      Location: Seattle, WA
      Line-1: 1-206-783-6368
      Line-2: n/a
      Sysop: Scott Parks
      Buddhist: no
      Networks: DharmaNet, FidoNet, UseNet/Internet, PODS
      Access: Free
      Files: Yes
  UL/DL Ratios: 20:1
 Allow handles: Yes
      Chat: No
      Games: No
      Doors: No
  Offline Mail: BlueWave, QWK, Silver Express
      BBS: RA
      Speed: 14400
      Hours: 23
      OS: DOS/DV
      Comments: 300+ echos on alternative lifstyles and alternative politics.
      Internet Email and Newsgroups.  Many interesting info files.
      Email: sparks@helix.eskimo.com

One great story was when a rumor quietly started circulating about the authors of Remote Access, RA (my software and many others) put in a "back door" so you could access a PC at the DOS level.   I announced this over our Seattle network after testing on a woman's Remote Access BBS.   She was the first one to jump all over me and deny the rumor.   The only way  could convince her was to change the name of a text file on her C: drive and tell her to check.   The access method was something like CTL-F4 with no restrictions.

The Story of Fidonet

Undocumented students get a reprieve

President Obama will announce a new immigration policy today that will allow some undocumented youths to avoid deportation and receive work permits to remain in the United States. Students in the U.S. who are in deportation proceedings or those who would have qualified for the DREAM Act and have yet to come forward to Department of Homeland Security officials will not be deported and will be allowed to work in the United States.

Though exact details of the plan are still unclear, it could benefit as many as one million undocumented students living in the country, and it will almost certainly have tangible benefits for the long-term health of the American economy.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the DREAM Act — which Republicans blocked in 2010 — would increase federal revenues by $1.7 billion over the next 10 years, reducing federal deficits by $2.2 billion over that time. DREAM-eligible students would generate between $1.4 and $3.6 trillion in taxable income over the course of their working lives, according to a study by UCLA’s North American Integration and Development Center.

Why Obama’s Decision To Stop Deporting DREAM-Eligible Youth Is Good For The Economy

Lift Retirement Age To 70

Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who is the world’s richest manwith a fortune of $65 billion, believes that struggling countries need to raise their retirement age to 70 in order to help fix their finances:

Countries should have people work until they are older to reflect longer life expectancy rates, Slim reportedly said…Slim added the current retirement age was established “when jobs were more physical and people died at 60, but now we live until 85 or 90.”

Ray Bradbury dies at 91

One of my favorite authors that also turned me on to the world of science fiction

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and other beloved science fiction novels, died Tuesday night at the age of 91, according to the AP.

"His legacy lives on in his monumental body of books, film, television and theater, but more importantly, in the minds and hearts of anyone who read him, because to read him was to know him. He was the biggest kid I know," his grandson told the i09 science fiction blog.

Bradbury sold eight million copies of his books in 36 languages, according to The New York Times' obit.

He attributed his success as a writer to never having gone to college--instead, he read and wrote voraciously. "When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week," he said in an interview with The Paris Review. "I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school."

Ray Bradbury, beloved science fiction author, dies

Ignore Global Warming Science

Carolina GOP legislators want to stop the use of science to plan for the future. They are circulating a bill that would force coastal counties to ignore actual observations and the best science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise. These lawmakers want to mandate a formula that projects a sea level rise of at most 12 inches this century, far below what the science now projects.

A state-appointed science panel reviewed the recent literature and reported that a 1-meter (39 inch) rise is likely by 2100. Many coastal studies experts think a level of 5 to 7 feet should be used, since you typically plan for the plausible worst-case scenario, especially with expensive, long-lived infrastructure.

The 2011 report by the National Academy of Science for the U.S. Navy on the national security implications of climate change concluded:

Based on recent peer-reviewed scientific literature, the Department of the Navy should expect roughly 0.4 to 2 meters global average sealevel rise by 2100, with a most likely value of about 0.8 meter. Projections of local sea-level rise could be much larger and should be taken into account for naval planning purposes,

Ignore Global Warming Science

Sanity on the War on Drugs

Charles Bowden is an author and journalist whose work has largely focused on the US/Mexico Border region. His writing has especially centered on the Mexican Drug War and Ciudad Juárez, the border city known as the epicenter of Mexican drug violence. His critically acclaimed book, Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, was published in 2010 by Nation Books. His latest work, edited along with Molly Molloy, is El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin and was just released, also by Nation Books.

How to be alone

Brilliant

Thank You Virtual I/O -1995

Thank you Virtual I/O for not accepting my application sometime in 1995. I answered an ad for a Novell Network Admin because my part time job was coming to an end. I had taken a class for Novell Netware and had worked with it for nearly a year at the Community College. Even upgraded the system from 3 something to 4.11 I think were the versions. (Is Netware still alive?).

This was the beginning of the "Internet thing" and so many things sounded exciting. There weren't that many people around with lots of hands on experience with servers or the latest interface. Internet Browsers were primitive then and Windows was probably 4.11 or '95

Luckily for me I followed one of my instructors advise when asked about my previous 10 years of work experience and proudly told the interviewer (CEO at this point) that I'd been an auto mechanic and completed a 2 year course in CNC machines.

Never heard from them again ... but my part time job suddenly opened up again to full time and that's where I spent the next 10 years

Virtual I/O closed it's doors within two years of my application because the cost of their product was above what the public could afford.  I also doubt the home user or Internet technology was up to the task.  We were still using modems then and DSL was almost unheard of.

Virtual I/O 1000 Lenora Street, Suite 600, Seattle, WA 98121 206.382.7410

Virtual I/O manufactures and sells a line of personal display systems, including the lightweight i-glasses. These head-mounted video systems use see-through optical technology and provide high-quality video and computer images.

I only got thinking about this because Google just won a patent on glasses

Google was awarded design patents on Tuesday for its Project Glass browser glasses. Project Glass is the company’s first venture into wearable computing.

Google Wins Patent for Project Glass

Romney Economics

Kansas City's GST Steel had been making steel rods for 105 years when Romney and his partners took control in 1993. They cut corners and extracted profit from the business at every turn, placing it deeply in debt. When the company eventually declared bankruptcy, workers not only lost their jobs but were denied their full pensions and health insurance, and the government was forced to step in and provide a bailout.

Google hurricane notices

Sometime last year I must have signed up for Google notices on hurricane activity and got my first of this season yesterday.  I hope they only come about Eastern Pacific or I could be swamped and I have no idea how to turn off or adjust Google notices.   Anyway here's on I got this morning from some Florida paper.

The Eastern Pacific hurricane season kicks off Tuesday and forecasters said chances were good that it could coincide with the first tropical depression.

The National Hurricane Center said there was an 80 percent chance that the system, designated 90E and located 623 miles south of Acapulco, Mexico, would spin up into the first tropical cyclone of 2012. If it becomes a tropical storm, it would be named Aletta. Most models have it moving toward the northwest or west-northwest.

Florida article

$hit My Dad Says

From another conversation with Dad about Internet comments

"Jesus H.  You're a bright kid but you sure like to wear an asshole's costume every once in a while.  It means that the future leaders of your country, I say your 'cause I'll have long decomposed, are gonna be people that have absolutely no experience with actual confrontation.  Thirty years from now the President of the most powerful country in the world is going to be some little shit who sat at his computer and hurled insults three feet away from his mommy's tit like it was no big deal.  I don't condone fighting, but when a human being understands that his or her actions might result in a giant fist up his or her ass, he or she learns a thing or two about acting before they speak.  All I'm saying is, I'm glad I'm going to be dead.  Also, happy birthday.  That's why I called."

Pretty crude but funny.  I'm sure there are Dad's like that

Why Internet Commenter's Will Eventually End The World

Making nasty remarks when you haven't a clue ... should get you in trouble!

'Mistake' To Let Women Vote?

Via The Raw Story: "Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a tea party activist that's appeared several times on Fox News, and founder of an organization where Sean Hannity serves as an advisory board member, said in a sermon recently published to YouTube that America's greatest mistake was allowing women the right to vote, adding that back in "the good old days, men knew that women are crazy and they knew how to deal with them" ... Peterson, founder of the conservative religious group Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND), appeared on the Fox News Channel on May 1, more than a month after giving his controversial sermon. Fox News host Kirsten Powers even confronted Peterson about his "mysogynistic" speech and challenged Hannity to repudiate it...".* Ana Kasparian and Brett Erlich break it down on The Young Turks.

Where do people like Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson come from ... unbelievable 

Rosemary Clooney

I was ready to go on about what Rosemary Clooney brought into this world along with my feelings about her music in the '50's.   It turns out that Rosemary was the sister of Nick Clooney who was George's father.   All the family in show business in one form or the other.

Rosemary's music was competing with Elvis and Rock n Roll in the '50's but I do remember a few of her songs.  A few because they were popular and also appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.   She must have done better with my parents generation.

Anyway back to George.   Not many people or actors give me a good feeling like he does.  Liked all of his movies tho I've probably only seen half of them.  Always seems to be involved in the right causes including being a United Nations Messengers of Peace.  The man has a good mix of humor, intelligence and a sense for what is right.   Gives me a little more faith in the human race ... and we could use more like him.

Travel in my future?

I've thought about it and still do on occasion. Especially with my Blogging buddy Steve that lives near me in Mexico but seems to be constantly on a tour to somewhere. Right now he's on a sea cruise across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean. Seems like they are lucky to get a day in each port they visit. If I were to travel I'd just get off the plane and start to wander with some kind of plan prepared. A boat full of retired people is not my style altho it's been a long time since I've been out on an ocean.

No ... for some reason the rest of the world does not seem as interesting to me as it once used to. Any place I think I might want to see is either too expensive, too cold or too politically unstable. My age seems to be contributing to a lack of patience with the types of things traveling entails.  I also don't need a vacation ... that's what retirement and Mexico are all about. My yearly trips up north are enough airports for me.

I just ran across this article called "4 reasons traveling is a waste of time" and while I don't agree with all of it ... it makes a lot of sense. Part of the article and link below.

4 reasons traveling is a waste of time

I’m growing sour on travel. I have always disliked it. When I was a kid my parents took us all over Europe and the Caribbean, and it really exhausted me. Now that I’m a grown up, I am better able to articulate why I think travel is a waste of time. Here are four reasons why I think the benefits of travel are largely delusional:

1. There are more effective ways to try new things.

While it’s true that learning and broadening your experience is important, doing that one time is quite different from consistently integrating something new into your life. It’s low risk to try something for a week. Which will make more impact on your life: going to Africa for a week and seeing wildlife and living in the jungle, or retooling your weekly schedule so that you take a walk through your local forest preserve once a week? You will have a stronger connection to the forest preserve than the jungle, and you will have a deeper sense of how it grows and changes and how you respond. So if you hope that travel will change how you see the world, doing something each week to see the world differently will have more impact than doing it one time, seven days in a row.

4 reasons traveling is a waste of time

Barack Obama Supports Gay Marriage - Finally!

Obama declares support for gay marriage
.
President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

In an interview with ABC News' Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an "evolution" that led him to this place, based on conversations with his own staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and conversations with his wife and own daughters.

Steve Mulligan - Bull-shit artist

This sad sack of BS came to the College Campus I was the IT manager of in 2002-2003.   He bull shitted his way in with some grand plan for an IT educational department.  Problem is our campus had NO tech savvy and was starving for programs that could bring students in.

I challenged his bullshit ideas at one point and he threatened me with physical harm if I exposed him.   Gladly someone figured something out because he was only there for a little over a year and he accomplished nothing except a paycheck for himself.

Steve's BS BIO - A salesman and nothing more

He was also aided by a misfit named Michael Baker who scammed his way into teaching a computer tech class ... and Mike was only interested in his job.   I'll get back to Michael Baker on a later post.   I just hope these two have found used car salesman jobs somewhere because they don't seem to be able to do anything else.

The long time President of our small technical campus has now retired and I sure hope there is someone that knows something technical ... and/or the Seattle Community College District is overseeing our/my campus

Michael Baker

To a certain someone in Melaque Mexico

Your everlasting summer
You can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something
That you think is gonna last
You wouldn't know a diamond
If you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious
I can't understand


CHORUS:
Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine

You been tellin' me you're a genius
Since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you
I still don't know what you mean
The weekend at the college
Didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand

CHORUS

I spend a lot of money
And I spent a lot of time
The trip we made in Hollywood
Is etched upon my mind
After all the things we've done and seen
You find another man
The things you think are useless
I can't understand

CHORUS

Remember LSD?

Just another faze in my life from a long time back but definitely a memorable one. I left it behind for basically the same reasons as marijuana ... in that it became somewhere between boring and simply too confusing to be meaningful. Eventually in your 20's you need to ask what am I doing with my life. At least I did.

Not any serious bad trips but some strange experiences. Like driving in downtown San Francisco and the city had the depth appearance of a blackboard, my best friend jumping off our 2nd floor balcony because of something his girl friend said (landed in flower bed) and taking a machete away for a friend who heard his girl was sleeping with someone else. Crazy times. We would buy toys every week for the weekend parties, make strobe lights, collages, fluorescent anything ... just like kids!!

Marijuana just became boring with little more than laying on the floor listening to music. LSD not so simple and left me very confused. I eventually tried to commit myself to the Santa Clara mental health department. I walked in and presented my case to a very nice nurse ... and as sympathetic as she was she just pointed to a guy sitting on the floor, nodding and mumbling to himself. That's the kind of people we admit here; she said. Next thing I knew I found myself in Eugene Oregon going to college.

Another Gringos don't get it story

A little over a year ago when my friend Shoe died he wanted everything he had in Mexico to go to his long time Mexican girlfriend Silvia.   One problem is he made no will leaving the disposal of his belongings up to whomever was "in charge".   The person in charge happened to be his ex-wife who flew down from the US with the primary duty of determining what to do with his body.    He wanted to be cremated and was but the bill between the hospital and the funeral parlor came to 25,000 pesos (or $2200 dollars).

Both ex-wife and friends just decided to sell his truck and woodworking tools for whatever they could get to pay the bill.  I guess because wife only had a week to 10 days and had to get back north. People were lining up to buy the truck below value and a couple thousand dollars worth of tools were barely considered except by people wanting a 'deal'.

About this time a friend and Silvia's family came to me about what was happening.  I said that I'll pay the bill and Silvia can pay me back however she and the family can manage.   Turns out that the family came together, paid me in full within weeks and brought a truck down from the Chapala area for everything.

The "gringos don't get it" part was that the truck and equipment meant a lot to Silvia and family for both sentimental and financial reasons.  The gringo attitude of just sell it all and get it over with irritated Silvia's family and they had a very disagreeable conversation over it.  Gringos with lots of money or only a week in Mexico just could care less about the big picture.   I don't blame the wife so much because she was not familiar with Mexico or the language.  I do begrudge other "friends" that were involved for not seeing the importance of doing well by Silvia and her family.

Lot's of reasons to come to Mexico and be separated from the real Mexico .... and this is just another.

Osteoarthritis - is that what I have?

Well it's some form of arthritis or bursitis dating back to a serious lower back injury in the early 1990's. I'm usually good during the day but almost 50% of my nights I wake early from pain. Ever since that injury I've had to change sleeping position frequently. Guess I'm surprised I still have the problem but at almost 70 years of age I'll probably have to live with it.

Anti inflammatories like Ibuprofen or Naproxen are the standards for pain relief but they are only a partial help. Mixed with a good shot or three before bed I get a good start on the night. There are also magic pillows, miracle creams, exercises and acupuncture. Actually I may try the acupuncture and maybe a little marijuana in case it's tension related. Anyway, time to try a few things.

Dealing with angry insecure people

I was looking around the Internet about dealing with insecure people and I think with hopes that this would not be so much of a woman thing .... but I'm afraid it's gonna be.  The reason is the viciousness displayed in public and with a person that you actually know.  In this case we are talking about Internet message boards where sometimes anonymous people think they can get away with anything.   Here no one is anonymous so it becomes very personal.

There are two crazy guys that act up, pick on people or just act like jackasses ... but only a very insecure person (in this case a woman) would choose to defend these two misfits and then would get joy out of making their critics look the evil ones - publicly.  Very simply she wanted to win in the eyes of others.   That is a very big order with the number of opinions and minds in this Internet world.

For awhile now she has been (or tries to be) the information source of the community searching the Internet for new info that no one else has found, announces community activities as tho she was appointed, always talks about progress on their fancy house and mentions that they drove the "Lexus" everywhere they go.

Since I know this woman I know her friends ... and most are the most dysfunctional people in the community.  The difficulty came when her dysfunctional friends acted up (continuously) on the message board and she, unable to see what was happening, chose to defend them in a very ungraceful manner.

She actually admitted she has lost message board friends because of who she sided with but I think it's more her general attitude about trying to be the Queen of some-thing-or-other.   The difference between friends and acquaintances

Three tips:

Don't bring your money to Mexico and think you are something special

Men tend to attack under the table ... or should I say more discreetly unless they want a physical confrontation.  Women (some) just don't seem to get that.

Pay attention to what is being said ... and don't jump in the middle of a conversation that you don't come close to understanding.   Defending your dysfunctional friends will only end up badly later on.

Gonna go make some ice cubes now ...

Gaining freedom of my dreams

About 25 years ago I had interesting mental problems.  Interesting that they only seemed to affect me in dreams or half-sleep and interesting that they were very much like the endless squirrel cage circle that R D Laing wrote about in his book Knots.   Not sure how that book was referred to me but I read a lot back then because there was no Internet.  I read also because I couldn't sleep much because of these dreams.   Being sleep deprived for over a year is not a fun experience. 

I think the reason these dreams were so disturbing was they were guilt ridden but I was never given a reason to feel guilty or a solution to the problem.   No definded offence to feel guilty for and no hints at a solution led me to appreciate what I read in Laing's book Knots.   Continued reading and combined with the 'teachings' of J. Krishnamurti who I read endlessly and met years before ... I somehow decided I was playing a game with myself and didn't need to do it.  Within a very short period of time it was over

I have conflict in my personal real life but my dreams are only somewhere betwen sweet and interesting

About Laing

Laing never denied the existence of mental illness, but viewed it in a radically different light from his contemporaries. For Laing, mental illness could be a transformative episode whereby the process of undergoing mental distress was compared to a shamanic journey. The traveler could return from the journey with (supposedly) important insights, and may have become (in the views of Laing and his followers) a wiser and more grounded person as a result.

Two of his excerpts from Knots
They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are,
I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing  I see the game.

I am doing it
the it I am doing is
the I that is doing it
the I that is doing it is
the it I am doing
it is doing the I that am doing it
I am being done by the it I am doing
it is doing it
One is afraid of
the self that is afraid of
the self that is afraid of
the self that is afraid
One may perhaps speak of reflections