Day: October 15, 2020

BRUTAL HONESTY AND THE KINDNESS OF A LOVING LIE

There is a time for honesty and a time for kind, warm-hearted honest lying. For example, here are questions that absolutely require a “yes” as the answer, no matter what think:

“Do these jeans make me look fat?” If you say anything except NO, you’re too stupid to deserve a relationship.

“Were you cheating on me in … (a date more than 5 years previous) …?” Unless you are still in that relationship and intending to break up your marriage, the answer is NO. All you will do by telling the truth is hurt your partner and maybe (but probably not) relieve yourself of guilt. The odds are very good that you will also relieve yourself of your relationship. 

“Do you still find me attractive?” Any answer other than yes can cost your life.

On the other hand, failure to communicate critical information can ruin lives. I always think about Cathy and Heathcliff. He eavesdropped on half of her conversation and stalks off in a rage. He never considers asking her if what he partially heard was what she meant or what the context was. Of course, if he had, it wouldn’t have made a very dramatic story, but that’s a different issue. A ten minute conversation could have salvaged three lives.

In the movie “Fanny,” she never tells him she is pregnant, so he goes off to war (convinced she doesn’t love him) and gets killed. If she had told him, everyone — including the child — might have been happy. Every time I’m forced to watch one of these movies, I just get annoyed.

Brutal honesty is always more brutal than honest. If you are forced to say something you know will hurt, at least be gentle. Brutal honesty is not honesty. It’s a brutal agenda wrapped in fake honesty. Don’t eavesdrop. If it just happens, you are not allowed to use whatever information you think you’ve gained by eavesdropping in an emotional confrontation. No one ever hears anything good while eavesdropping.

Use your judgment. If you care about someone, don’t make them miserable because you feel guilty about something. Your guilt is your problem, not his or hers. Making yourself feel better by traumatizing someone else is not being honest. It’s narcissistic.

KIND OF A BIRDY DAY

Imagination Kindled: A Very Birdy Day

It finally rained! Not just a little drizzle, but the real deal. It rained pretty heavily for several hours and more lightly the rest of the day. I was thrilled to see it. We are supposed to get more rain on the weekend. Maybe our trees won’t die!

A very typical Nuthatch

The birds seemed to enjoy the rain too. There certainly were a lot of them although not as many as we had a month ago. The Goldfinch have gone north to breed. Gone north to breed? Do birds do that? Well, the Goldfinches do. They go to Canada to breed and come back here in December or January. They breed in the winter. I’m sure someone understands this, but i don’t. So today, we had “the regulars.”

Orange Cardinal and incoming Chickadee (I thinK, but It’s hard to tell when they are in flight)

A lot of orange Cardinals. We don’t seem to have red ones anymore. Only orange and they all look terribly angry. Lots — bunches and bunches — of Nuthatches, Tufted Titmouses, Chickadees and Mourning Doves.

You can still see that he’s not yet full grown

I took pictures and they didn’t all fly away the minute I took my camera out of the bag. Yay!

YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT, BUT SOMETIMES, YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED

If you didn’t believe before, believe now. I was waiting. I knew. It had to be. I’m surprised it took this long, but finally, we’re here. Is this another media hoax? If 45 should die, would that be a SUPER media hoax? The ultimate media hoax? I know I’m should be praying for the welfare of the ill, but I don’t have it in me to get that “angelic” look you see on statues in the cemetery. I wish I could. I’m sure that would make me a better person, but I never claimed I was perfect.This definitely proves my imperfection. No matter how I look at it, this man deserves this disease. As does Melania. As do the remainder of his wretched crew. Those helpers in his horrific destruction of our environment, courts, political, and legal systems. He has stolen our money, allowed — ENCOURAGED — more than 200,000 people to die of COVID-19.

It didn’t have to be this bad. Whatever it is, however it goes, this man earned it.

Because of his last “rally,” all his big contributors are also in quarantine. You think these donors might possibly be reconsidering if they still feel like giving him a ton of their money? Or — any? The GOP doesn’t even have a “back-up” candidate — and I don’t think Ivanka or Jared are getting anyone’s nod. So who? Pence? Really? Would anyone vote for him even if he ran? The Big Orangeman’s cult followers are not Pence followers. Orangeman isn’t the GOP. It’s just this guy and he is sick. Even if he recovers, how long will he be sick? So far it’s mild, but it’s always mild at the beginning, often for a couple of weeks. Then it gets worse and sometimes, even worse than that. Which of his crazed followers is going to want to stand maskless by his bedside now? How far does their worship really go?

No one begged for this illness more than Trump. He has literally ranted to the heavens to “bring it on.” Somehow, when you beg the universe to “sock it to me,” you generally get socked. I don’t know who, what, or why the universe is how it is, but if I had anything to say about it, I would feel that those who beg for trouble should be allowed to experience it.

Now, we all wait and see how it develops. He’s old. He’s obese. Rumors of heart problems abound. He has the worse diet in the world. He has done much evil to many people and these folks are not rooting for his welfare. How could they? So perhaps the heavens are speaking. We are listening. We hope for the best and in this case, “the best” is what?

What is the best for me, for us, for those poor locked up immigrant children? For the earth and the seas and the water we drink and the air we breathe. And incidentally, for “the man who would be king.”

I’m not sure what “best” is giving all the individuals involved, from the poorest to the wealthiest. You don’t know either. His death could be best. His illness and recuperation might be best. The fear of the disease itself might in itself be best. I am so very, very glad I am not in charge of the “what’s best.” I bet you are equally glad. If there is a God, do your thing, whatever it may be. I’m just thrilled to not be the one making the decisions. No matter how much you believe in whatever you believe, it can be a hard to figure what a guy like “the man who would be king” deserves. As long as I am not in charge of dispensing this piece of karmic dogmatic justice, go Karma and all that this implies!

As “the man who would be king” said, keep your finger on the trigger. Stay locked and loaded. Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it.

The Classic Editor Script Was Updated

GET THAT CLASSIC EDITOR BACK. I know it won’t last, but hey, it buys us a little more time!

Diary of Dennis

classic editor wordpress

Here is just a small hint that tPenguinLTG saved us once again as he updated the classic editor redirect script. This makes my guide about how to install it up to date again as well. Just a small tip, I had it installed and it didn’t uptate itself. So, it might be that you need to deinstall the script and install it freshly as explained in my guide. So, for now, life got easier again and all writing buttons will redirect us to the classic editor until they get rid of it entirely. But until that happens, I continue to keep you updated about the most recent workarounds here, where you will find the most recent ones at the top.

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THE BEST CAREER ADVICE

I was a music major for my first two years of college. I finished the major except for 1 credit of choir. I didn’t take that credit because by then, I knew I wasn’t a good enough pianist to play professionally. I didn’t seem to have any talent for writing music or orchestration and my voice was okay, but nothing special. Some of this was self-realization. Certainly my recognition that I wasn’t good enough on the piano to make it a profession and I didn’t want to be a piano teacher. Also, by then, schools were already cutting back on programs like music and art, so unless I went all the way to Ph.D. and hoped I could get a job at a college or university, I was going to wind up playing in a bar. And I couldn’t even sing well, so even that wasn’t a great prospect.

Around the second year of my musical studies, Dr. Herbert Deutsch, who I liked very much (he was the co-inventor of the Moog synthesizer, by the way) sat me down for an ex-parti chat.

He said: “You get good grades. Mostly As, a few Bs, but you master your assignments and obviously have no problem with them. You are doing fine. But you have a problem.” And he looked at me. “You aren’t INTO it. You heart isn’t there. You aren’t involved in music. You should get into it, or get out of it. Music is not for the half-hearted.”

Dr. Herbert A. Deutsch – Herbert A. Deutsch (born February, 1932) is an American composer, inventor, and educator. Currently professor emeritus of electronic music and composition at Hofstra University, he is best known for co-inventing the Moog Synthesizer with Bob Moog in 1964.

He was right. He was absolutely right. Knowing, as I already did, that piano was not going to be my instrument, why wasn’t I working at finding another instrument and working on it? Why wasn’t I taking voice lessons? I was far more engrossed in my psychology, sociology, and religion courses than with music. I was much more interested in those subjects, too. That should have been a clue, but until Dr. Deutsch sat me down for a chat, I didn’t think about it. I was getting good grades and having fun. I loved music. I went to lots of free concerts because music majors got free tickets to many concerts — and I lived in New York, so there was really good music and I got to hear it. I spent a lot of time in the rehearsal halls at Carnegie Hall. If you didn’t know, Carnegie has the main stage, but it also has smaller halls. Young performers frequently use these halls, so I got to see a lot of later-to-be-famous musicians before they were.

I didn’t take the credit of choir and did not graduate with a degree in music. In fact, it turned out that nothing I studied in college got me a job. I planned to be a writer and I started in advertising and book publishing, then moved into technical writing and there I stayed. My official degree was in Drama and Speech. I’m not a bad public speaker, but I never had any interest in speech. What I really wanted was to GET speech therapy. I had a couple of serious lisps which were fixed during two years of heavy duty speech therapy which was part of the degree. I never took a writing course. I took my required history courses for which I never had to open a book because I was miles ahead in history which was my hobby even back then. None of that mattered to me because I was going to be a writer.

I would have stayed in school for years more if they had let me. I wanted to take another B.A. so I could take a meaningful masters degree and Drama/Speech was not what I needed. They made me graduate anyway. I had completed my major, I had all the credits and I was a graduate, like it or not. I never understood that. I think today they would do it differently, but it was 1967 and a lot of things have changed since then, especially at colleges.

But that little pep talk from Herb Deutsch was the best advice I ever got. Because of it, I remembered that I had always intended to be a writer. I went back to writing and never wobbled off that path again. Music was fun, but writing was my way. Thank you Herb. You helped get me back to where I belonged.