pinback wrote:You are talking to me about meat you buy and spoil, and introducing MATH, and turning them into WORD PROBLEMS, in a thread about a horrendous, absolutely inconceivable tragedy, which everyone around you is trying to just find a way to deal with, because none of us have ever touched anything remotely as horrific as this. And you are clueless about any and all of it.
Uh, let me get this straight, here, Ben. Which of us, you or me, was the first to mention any form of meat?
As for tragedy, I know tragedy. I've experienced quite a bit in my life.
(1) When I was 12, I could overhear my mother on the phone, and from context and delivery I figured it out: my father had died. I didn't know him that well but I did like him and I was sad about it.
(2) I lost my ability to walk, I'm probably very likely going to be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. My fault and no one else's.
(3) My best friend of 14 years up and died about 9 months ago. I never got to meet her and because I got evicted from the place I was living at because the bastard I hired to warn me about what was happening basically betrayed me, I lost the only picture I had of her. I still haven't come to terms with that part and it's been two years.
(4) I got called over to my sister's place last year; l took a cab because it was an emergency. My brother was helping wash their dog Bows and dropped her; she landed on her head and he saw the light go out of her eyes. I was there for the better part of a week helping my brother overcome the grief. (I knew Bows, she was over at our place for at least 5 years.)
(5) I had a cat I loved, her name was Princess. One day she went out and stayed out. So I went after her, searching the neighborhood. By luck I found her; she had crawled under a car in a neighbor's driveway; she'd been in some sort of accident but lived. As it turned out, the vet examined her and said she'd dislocated a hip but would be okay, she just had to stay in for a month until she healed. About 2 years later she got hit by a car and this time was killed. I'd had her since she was born; she was about 16 when she died. The incident was so horrifying that my mother went catatonic; I had to slap her to bring her out of it.
(6) I was in a 7-11 getting something to eat for breakfast one Tuesday while on the way to work; the place was a block from my office. I had to leave my house before I heard the whole story on the news, but it turned out (at the time), and I told the clerk that a plane had crashed into a building in New York, no big deal, these sort of things happen, pilot error or other thing, tragedies like this do happen. I might have been thinking of a prior plane crash into the Empire State Building.
I get to my office and I discover that (as you can guess) a second plane had crashed into the other tower of the World Trade Center. All of us in the office watched on TV as the two buildings collapsed into rubble, and for me it was a body blow. I was numb. Then I discover that the Pentagon, which is located only 4 miles from my house, in my home town in Arlington, had also been struck.
The office closed down, nobody was in any condition to work that day. As it turned out the system administrator sent out a system-wide message asking everyone what the machine name of their computer was. I mistakenly did "reply all" instead of reply. My message read like this:
My computer's name is Licorice.
----
"If we find out what country did this, I say, bomb the sons-a-bitches back into the stone age. Turn them into crater glass and nuclear waste." - Paul Robinson, September 11, 2001.
My boss said he understood but I would have to change the tag line on my messages.
(7) I got a call once at my office; my sister called me to inform me that my mother had died. I had a horrid bit of grief for a day or so, then went with my sister so we could say goodbye to her and allow the two dogs, Buttons, and Bows, to know she was dead.
I've had real tragedy where close friends (both human and other) and family members have died or where a national tragedy affected me personally because it happened in my home town, same as the people in New York City and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. So don't try to act high and mighty because you think your suffering is somehow more important and more serious than mine.
pinback wrote:Instead, you're rattling off grocery lists.
Which one of us brought up the subject of food, Ben? Who spoke on the subject first, my friend?
pinback wrote:Never post here again.
Again, my dear friend, with all due respect, go fuck yourself sideways. You don't run this place. I actually once decided I was going to leave but you talked me out of it.
I've had a sociopath on Usenet News named Gordon Roy Parker, alias Ray Gordon, threaten first to sue me, then later claim he called the Pennsylvania State Police where he lives and my local police here in University Park, Maryland to try and have me prosecuted because he didn't like what I had to say, specifically including what I said about him.
He didn't scare me off, and you won't either.
Given the general rise in expenses and fall in the typical standard of living, the future ain't what it used to be.
