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The Word I’m Not Making Up

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Department Of Words You Wish You’d Never Heard

Sub Department Of I So So So So Wish I Were Making This Up

incel

aka “involuntarily celibate,” a man who has a horrible personality and treats women like sexual objects and thinks his lack of a sex life comes from being “ugly” when it’s really due to his blatant sexism and terrible attitude. Incels have little to no self-awareness; when they see other “ugly” men with girlfriends  [1] they consider those men to be tricksters who have somehow beat the system and can get women despite being cursed with unattractiveness. Incels believe that women owe men sex, and that women torture men by “denying” them sex, as if sex is something people “deserve” and not a privilege given by potential sexual partners that should be respected.
Many extreme incels spend time in incel communities on the internet, scheming ways to make women have sex with them, discussing genocide of people of color and of “Chads” (men who have sex) and taking rights away from women and/or raping them and having sex with women’s dead bodies…which is PRECISELY why women want nothing to do with them.

(definition adapted from urbandictionary)

 

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Department of
WHAT A SURPRISE; WOW HOW UNEXPECTED; ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
NEVER SAW THAT ONE COMING; ALERT THE MEDIA;
WHO WOULD EVER HAVE GUESSED

…while most mass shooters in the past 35 years have not been found to have a serious mental illness, nearly all of them do have one thing in common: their sex…
Men don’t just constitute almost all mass shooters in recent history; they are also responsible for the vast majority of gun-associated deaths in the country. Men own guns at triple the rate of women in the U.S., at 62 percent compared to 22 percent—and also commit suicide at nearly triple the rate of women. Eighty-nine percent of murder-suicides are committed by men, and most often include an unwitting female partner or ex-partner. (excerpt from “Don’t Blame Mental Illness
for Mass Shootings; Blame Men. 
If you want to cut down on gun violence, first target toxic masculinity.”  Politico, Law and Order, 1-17-18)

 

 

gunman

Less of this, please.

 

 

 

The man accused of mowing down pedestrians in a bloody rampage in Toronto on Monday expressed his support moments before the attack for a mass murderer who became a hero of the fringe men’s rights movement.
“The Incel Rebellion has already begun!…. All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” Alek Minassian wrote on Facebook shortly before he allegedly used a van to kill 10 people and wound another 14.
( Elliot Rodger killed six people during a 2014 shooting spree in Isla Vista, California. The 22-year-old called himself an “incel,” or an involuntary celibate, a phrase invoked by men’s rights activists who feel rejected by women. Before killing himself, Rodger left behind a 137-page manifesto that described how he felt shunned by women and sought revenge.)
(excerpt from “Accused Toronto Killer Praised Woman-Hating Mass Murderer Moments Before Attack,” Daily Beast 4-24-18)

 

After claiming that he was “fighting feminism” and calling the women “a bunch of feminists,” (the mass shooter) shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. Overall, he killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under 20 minutes before turning the gun on himself. His suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life.
(Wikipedia, The École Polytechnique massacre)

 

 

More of this, please.

 

 

 

 

 

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Department Of Which Came First – Chicken Attitude Or Egg Behavior

 

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me,
but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

You may be the biggest, whiniest, most self-righteous misogynist on the planet, who believes that your god Jehovah Allah Marduk [2]  (or whatever you call your invisible friend) made the genders to be separate and yours superior; you may come from a country wherein no matter how low class/under-educated/ignorant a person you otherwise are you are also male, and thus there is always someone (female) below you in value and status, as decreed and enforced by religious and cultural norms and legal directives….

Then, you move to, say, Norway…

 

 

No, please…you can go somewhere else.

 

 

 

…or another country where gender inequality is not the dominant view. You may be able to continue to structure your private and home life according to your primitive, bigoted attitudes, but in the public sphere, the laws are no longer on your side. You are forced to interact with women who are unrelated to you and over whom you have no dominance. You’ll have women clerks and baristas who will assist you with your purchases and orders; you’ll have women as co-workers and co-public transit riders and bus drivers, you’ll have women who are teachers and health care workers and who will interact with your children, and you are legally prohibited from forcing women to cover their bodies in ways you deem appropriate…and in order to navigate this society you have to interact with women (ick; girl cooties!) and aren’t allowed to fire them from a job or segregate them in a restaurant or public settings due to their gender…

And slowly…something happens. When the laws of your society change not only will many of your behaviors be forced to change, but (research shows that) your attitudes are likely going to change, as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it comes to changing our beliefs and behaviors, most of us have it backwards. We’ve long been told that first you must change how you think and/or feel, and then that will change your behavior (e.g., educate a racist to like or at least grudgingly admire Hebrew culture and he will stop spraying painting a swastika on his Jewish neighbor’s garage door).  [3]

 

 

 

 

 

Instead, whether through compulsion or persuasion, change a person’s behavior first, and their beliefs and attitudes will eventually adapt.

 

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to marry as a fundamental liberty for both straight and gay couples….
(a social scientist researcher)  followed ordinary Americans at the time to see if the court decision changed their own views. Again, people’s personal beliefs didn’t change, but their behavior did….
What moved everyone in the same direction was this perception of whether other Americans support same-sex marriage and whether it would become more accepted in the future….
The Supreme Court ruling in effect told people the United States now believes same-sex marriage is OK. You could still think otherwise, but if you acted in ways that showed you didn’t agree with the consensus, you risked being left behind.
( from Romeo & Juliet In Kigali: How A Soap Opera
Sought To Change Behavior In Rwanda, 
Hidden Brain podcast 4-16-18)

 

The opening quote I used from Dr. King came from King’s reaction to a proposition – one that was both ongoing in society at large the time of King’s crusade and made to King personally – about how advocating for civil rights laws was ultimately futile unless there was a change in white people’s hearts and minds. When challenged by those who claimed you can’t legislate acceptance – or even tolerance – Dr. King and others noted that that wasn’t the point. The law may not force you to love me, but it could “force” you to leave me alone and/or not bash me upside the head for occupying the “wrong” seat on the bus.

One of the biggest boons to gay rights was when gay rights leaders advocated for across-the-board “coming out of the closet,” on the premise (later proven to be true) that the gaining of civil rights – and personal acceptance of gays as friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members – for gay people, by straight people, was correlated to whether or not they (straight people) actually knew a gay person. A 2009 Gallup Poll noted that, while “views of gay marriage are strongly related to ideology…when controlling for ideology, those who know someone who is gay or lesbian are significantly more supportive of gay marriage than are those of the same political persuasion who do not personally know someone who is gay or lesbian.”

 

 

 

 

 

That poll, and many surveys since, similarly found that  “…those with personal experience with gay or lesbian individuals more accepting of same-sex relations in general,” and that when people are no longer free by law to discriminate, they may at first maintain their personal beliefs and attitudes which cause them to discriminate, but that these attitudes gradually change, or at least soften.

 

 

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Department Of And Don’t Even Get Me Started On Us Happy Heathens

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May your attitudes change your behaviors for the better;
May your better behaviors change your attitudes;
May you put your Science Mind ® to work and come up with a vaccination for incel-ism;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] These “ugly” men with girlfriends are respectful to women and women are attracted to their personalities, but incels can’t comprehend such a phenomenon.

[2] Marduk was one of the big cheese deities of Mesopotamia/Babylon. Y’all are probably familiar with the names Allah and Jehovah.

[3] Actually, legislating and enforcing laws against such hate crimes will be more likely to keep the guy’s garage door graffiti-free, independent of what his neighbor really thinks about him.

The Privacy I’m Not Assuming

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Department Of Weighing In On The Privacy Thing

Re the Facebook data scandal, and the reality – apparently astonishing, to some people – that social media and other websites are compromising and/or selling the data they collect on their users and visitors.  Some of these astonished some people are throwing fits of indignation, demanding that Congress “do something.” When it comes to the idea of doing something, others of the some people have been expressing their sense of futility by employing that old English proverb, trotting it out before, during and after FB co-founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress:

It’s like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

Gee, ya think?

Not only has the horse bolted, that high-spirited steed done high tailed it to Louisville where it placed in the Kentucky Derby and was last seen headed for Lubbock to join the Professional Rodeo circuit.

*   *   *

I have no solutions for the problem and even less hope for its abatement, based in part on the existence of Amazon and Netflix recommendations. Y’all may know what I mean.

 

 

 

 

 

My recent purchases from Amazon include spatulas, two Kindle books (one on Buddhist meditation, the other a rock star’s memoir), and a tava. [1]  Thus, in the coming weeks I will see ads for such items not only on Amazon[2]  but on other sites I visit, along with “recommendations” for future purchases, such as books on the “uncensored oral history of punk” and “Vodka is Vegan,” and cinnamon-flavored dental floss, and a ten pound sack of chickpea flour, and….

We are living in a world wherein seemingly/otherwise intelligent people do not  apply their time and (presumably) hard-earned  mathematics/computer skills in ways which might be used to, say, reverse global warming or otherwise improve The Human Condition. ®  Instead, those with coding and other such skills are rewarded for devising algorithms to enable Netflix to offer me “Top Picks for Robyn” and “Because you watched….” categories. Based on the fact that in the past month I have watched episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and The Great British Baking Show, a documentary on endangered snow leopards, and a Ricky Gervais standup comedy special, the great minds in charge of such things have used their highly sophisticated calculations to try to convince me that I’d love to watch….50 First Dates?  [3]

There is little hope, in such a world.

 

 

 

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

 

 

 

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I remember listening to an interview with a “computer/Internet/privacy expert” – a hacker who got caught, and as penance/punishment was hired by the corporation he’d hacked, to try to make their systems as un-hackable as possible. Former Hacker Guy went on to do independent consulting work for various corporations in areas related to internet privacy. I can’t remember all the details of the interview,   [4]  but what got seared into my brain were the two pieces of incongruous advice Former Hacker Guy gave, when asked by the interviewer to tell The Average Citizen ® what they can do to protect their information:

(1) When it comes to data about yourself – personal, employment, financial, recreational, you name it – fiercely guard your privacy and fight for laws to protect such information.

(2) There is *no* privacy, not anymore. Get used to it.

 

 

 

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Department Of It’s Not Working

After finishing   [5]   the (afore-mentioned) book on the efficacy of Buddhist-style meditation – about seeing life for how it really is, detaching your illusions and gaining perspective – why did I then, while standing in a concert entry line with MH, note the faces of the young, attractive females standing in front of and behind me, and think petty comments to myself (along the lines of, I wonder how long it’ll be before she looks like…well, like me.)?

 

Not a verbatim quotation.

 

 

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Privacy, Schrivacy – Department Of The Last Word On The Subject

Some of us realized long ago – or at least after we adopted our first feline – that there can be no privacy where a cat is involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Department Of The Word After The Last Word

I was wondering: Can a Buddhist monk feel it is appropriate to use email?

My guess:  Sure, as long as there are no attachments.

 

 

 

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May you realize that when you shut the bathroom door your cat thinks you’re doing something incredible enthralling;
May your barn doors  [6]  stay open so horses can come and go as they please;
May you share your squirrel-and-buddha jokes with an appreciative audience;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] A large flat frying pan used for cooking chapattis and a variety of Indian and south Asian flatbreads.

[2] I don’t get it – continuing to advertise, say, the spatula to me when their records would clearly show that I have already purchased it.

[3] They are so, so wrong, to recommend to moiself any movie with Adam Sandler in it.

[4] Nor even what show ran the interview…I’m thinking something NPR-ish.

[5] Isn’t it time for another footnote?

[6] Not that one.

The Magazine Future I’m Not Imagining

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Department Of Giving One’s Imagination An Exhaustive Workout

Monday morning, in my New York Times app’s “Top Stories,” I spy with my little eye an article with the following headline:

Imagining Vogue Without Anna Wintour

Done.

Next challenge, please.

 

 

How many years has it been – have I had fun yet?

 

 

 

 

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Department Of The Wild Wacky ® Streets Of Hillsboro, Oregon

I think it’s so touching that someone in My fair City ® decided to turn a portion of their front yard into a tribute to musician Herb Albert.   [1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Department Of Things That Make Them Look Across The Table At Me And Say,
“Stop. Just Stop.”

Dateline: a week ago Friday, dinner time. I told MH and son K that I was considering ending my fiction writing sabbatical – I had an idea for a series of historical novels! The protagonists will be a poor but loving and close-knit, 19th century pioneer family, struggling to carve out a life as fruit farmers in the Oregon wilderness as they confront a recurring plague of small, parasitic insects which threaten to decimate their currant crop. I’m going to call it, “Little Louse on the Berry.”

 

 

 

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Department Of The Argument For Acquiring A Basic Scientific Literacy

You may be saying to yourself, I didn’t know there was an argument *against* having a basic scientific literacy.  [2]   Aside from the mission statements and curriculum listings I’ve encountered on the websites of fundamentalist religious “educational” institutions, I’m not sure that there is such an overt argument.  Nevertheless,  [3]  all you have to do is wade through a few Facebook shares (sadly, often from people who Should Know Better ® ) to realize that an appreciation for scientific thinking – that is, a basic understanding and application of critical inquiry and “factual claims” analysis – is sorely lacking in our culture.

 

 

 

 

 

There are soooooooooooo many reasons why we should all be on a lifelong quest to “think like a scientist” – but you really need just one: thinking like a scientist will give you a lifelong, reliable ca-ca detector.

It’s not that having a basic knowledge of science and/or the scientific method will give you all the answers  [4]   – it’s that if you have the former, you don’t need the latter.  You don’t need to know all the answers when you know the kind of questions to ask of those who allege to have The Answers.

All claims, from supernatural (“The stories in the Christian scriptures are true but those in the Muslim scriptures are false”) to economic (“Anarchocommunism is the most efficient political/economic form of socialism“) to medical (“The Chiropractic theory of subluxation is a valid diagnostic tool for identifying and treating human diseas “) to historical (“The moon landings were staged on a movie backlot by NASA”), can be understood and/or evaluated if you have a basic grasp of scientific thinking.  Doesn’t even matter if it’s the first time you’ve heard of the “healing crystals” your friend is touting – you don’t (and shouldn’t) have to take your friend’s enthusiasm at face value.

That ambassador of science literacy himself, American astrophysicist and author, Neil deGrasse Tyson, puts it this way (my emphases):

To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know
when someone else is full of shit…

You have an understanding of the properties of the laws of physics, so when someone comes up to you to sell you crystals and they say, “Rub these together and you’ll be healed,” you say, “Well, what are they made out of? And how many people have they healed? And what aliments do they heal? And what’s the mechanism? How much do they cost? And where are they from? And what’s their molecular structure?…and the person runs away in tears.

Science literacy is not knowing the answer – you might know the answer, but that’s not what’s fundamental. What’s fundamental is the capacity to inquire about what is true and what is not in this world. And that is the empowerment. The power of inquiry.

( Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Nerdist Podcast)

 

 

 

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Department Of But It Might Have Made The Checkout Clerk’s Day

Entering the grocery store, I counted my freshly-laundered, reusable produce sacks, which I’d grabbed fresh from the dryer before leaving for the store. Fortunately, I found the “hitchhiker” before I absent-mindedly used it to bag the kiwi….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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       May you always check for hitchhikers;
May you realize why knowing some of the questions
is better than thinking you have all of the answers;
May you, at least once in your life, place something in your front yard to make your neighbors smile;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] Get it?  Huh huh huh…get it?

[2] Maybe you should stop talking to yourself.

[3] Why does no one ever say, Neverthemore….

[4] And, of course, there is no All The Answers.

The Prank I’m Not Playing

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Department Of Good Sports

Dateline: Monday, April 2; a local yoga studio. My fellow yogis were gracious participants in my idea to play a belated April Fools’ Day prank on our equally gracious instructor.

If you’ve attended a yoga class and/or have a home practice, you may be familiar with the variety of props that may be used to attain and/or enhance certain asanas[1]

 

 

 

 

Some people and classes use several props (e.g., blocks, straps and bolsters) while others use little to none. The classes I attend typically use a strap for a couple of poses, the blocks for maybe one or two, and bolsters for sitting and/or final relaxation. But it has always seemed to me that there was a prop missing. During poses targeting head and neck flexibility and strengthening or those concerned with posture or spinal alignment, when I hear the suggestion to lengthen the crown of your head, I think to moiself, “There ought to be a prop for that.”

April 1 fell on a Sunday. For Monday’s class, I was prepared. I’d purchased 24 paper crowns (Did you bring enough for everyone in the class, young lady?) and passed them out to my fellow yogis before class. The rest is history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Department Of, Who, Moiself – Foodie Trend-follower?

I love me some avocadoes. I consume at least half of one avocado per day, included in my breakfast or lunch, or sometimes dinner.  [2]   But it never occurred to me to use an avocado to construct that most trendy of foods items. Until now.

Oh, look, I made some avocado toast.  To strive for authenticity, I’m thinking of charging moiself  $15 for it.

 

 

 

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Department Of Things You Don’t Expect (Or Want) To See In Trader Joe’s Parking Lot

It was just another shopper, pushing another red Trader Joe’s  shopping cart. Her cart was filled with groceries and there was a child  [3]  sitting in the kid seat portion of the cart. The other TJ Shopper ® and I were headed in the same direction; she was in front of me, and as I got closer to her I noticed something odd about the child. Its body size and movements (and the fact that it was sitting up unsupported) made me guess the kid was just under a year old, and its torso and limbs were in standard/chubby baby proportions…but the kid’s head was massively outsized, and blocky.

I quickened my pace and got a look at the child’s face.  Yikes, to say the least. It was as if someone had gotten hold of a 3 D printer and superimposed the head of Ricky Gervais onto an eleven-month’s old body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I happen to admire much about that comic provocateur, Ricky Gervais. I’d love to espy his big head, say, one day when I glance through my office window and say, Isn’t that the multi-talented, stand-up comic/writer/actor/director/producer Ricky Gervais standing on my front porch?, and then I’d invite him in for a cup of tea and we can have a jolly good time poking fun at politics and religion and Caitlyn Jenner and other people who take themselves way too seriously.  But to see that enormous mug of his on top of a baby’s neck….

For the briefest of moments I considered returning to TJ’s, buying up all the Two Buck Chuck  in the store and drinking it in the backseat of my car.

I was going to try to find a couple of pictures online,  [4]  do some photo-shopping, and come up with something similar (to what I saw) to share with my readers. But it’s so kind of y’all to be reading this – I’ve no desire to ruin the rest of your day.  Instead, here’s a more pleasant occupant-of-a-shopping-cart image for you to ponder.

 

 

 

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Department Of Do You Recognize Padding When You See It?

 

As you may have noticed, I’ve not much profound to say/report on this week.

 

 

 

 

Correction: actually, there is (too) much to say, much of it involving subjects that have been weighing on my mind recently. One of them is so bleak…think along the lines of articles by people even more thoughtful and articulate than moiself   [5]  who are willing to tackle such feel-good topics as

Robots taking human jobs causing hellish dystopia

Kurt Vonnegut’s Dystopian Future Has Come To Pass

Artificial Intelligence Will Best Humans At Everything By 2060, Experts Say

The US opioid addiction is an omen of a ‘hellish dystopian’ future, scientist claims, as AI takes over billions of jobs, leaving people to lead meaningless and miserable lives….

Not to be a downer or anything.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

May you already be working on next year’s April Fool’s Day shenanigans;
May you be pleasantly surprised by the next thing you see at a Trader Joe’s parking lot;
May you never pay $15  [6]  for anything on toast;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

 

[1] Yoga poses or postures.

[2] Does anyone else remember when (to non-Californians) avocados were considered by some folk to be “exotic”?

[3] Presumably hers…although I noticed absolutely no familial resemblance.

[4] Of Mr. Gervais and random male babies.

[5] Make that, 100 times more….

[6]  Not even if it’s platinum-plated caviar (and why you’d want to eat fish eggs – with or without plating – is beyond moiself).