Lemmings

I'd rather be outside in the rain than inside with the lemmings.

An informed opinion is wholly different than an opinion by itself. An informed opinion is constructed by research and inquiry, while an opinion is more often than not a doppelganger of someone else's opinion, or a single source opinion.

A knee-jerk reaction does not constitute an informed opinion.

It does not.

Do not pass blame, for it doesn't flush.

If the psychological umbilical cord of blame continues to strangle you, you will never be able to call yourself a true adult. You will remain instead emotionally and mentally a child locked in a dark closet of the past.

A bit of poetry for today

Poetry time.
---
Dear shitbox,
Dear shitbox,
How you have sat there
Patiently awaiting my needs.

You sat there,
Oh how you sat there,
A little dusty, perhaps
but clean.
You waited,
And waited,
For years for my need.

You turned on most gracefully,
Purring into a waking motion.
No need to oil you, it seems.
That's when you gurgled,
Like you were drowning in the ocean.
And shat heavily upon my dreams.

Dear shitbox,
Oh shitbox,
How I needed you today.
A scanner should work when you need it,
Not purr and then die away.

Oh shitbox!
How could you!
I wish I could bury you at sea.

Some life rules

Most of my life lessons these past few years have concerned money in some form or another. It is sad that money has to play such a powerful role in our lives, but that is just how it is.


1. Never a lender or borrower be.
2. Never borrow for someone else, or for a business.
3. Business has no loyalty. Bosses are bosses, not friends.
4. Trust no one in business, for business is business.
5. If it is not in writing it does not exist.
6. If you can't help yourself, you can't help others.
7. Don't follow up bad money with good money.
8. Get paid from the start. Don't wait for later.

#3 is important to remember even if you and the boss start out as friends and as equals. It does not remain that way. If your wealth and position does not closely follow, you will not remain on equal standing friendship-wise.

Basically, never borrow or lend money. That is not to say that you should not keep a credit card for emergency car repairs or vacations. But using a card to upgrade your standard of living is foolish. In the end you lose more than you gain.

Lending money is a fools game. It causes friction in day to day life. It can put you behind, it can put you at risk. Some say limit that to never lending more than you can afford (meaning that it will not break you to lose it), but I say don't lend at all. Give it away instead of lending it. You'll be better served emotionally if you do that.

That goes in directly with "if you can't help yourself, you can't help others." If you put yourself at risk by lending money, find yourself in a bad situation, you can no longer help others in need -Those in real need, not just temporarily in need because they blew their money going out on the weekend. There are those who always need help. Always. Those folks will never be able to help you when you are down because they are always down, never up. If they are ever up, they spend it on themselves first. I've noticed that. They try to justify it to you by saying that they've been down for so long that they deserve to enjoy themselves with their money.

---

The new debtors' prison is called a "credit bureau." The sentence is usually 7 to 10 years. Do not serve time for other people's expenses if you can manage it. Do your own time, at your own expense, and for your own expense.

Random Thought

Remember when someone said "They are in the family way" meant that the person was pregnant? These days what it means is that the person is in therapy.

;)

A sip here, a slip there.

Drunken memory is never 100% proof.

"Look," she said with a voice full of drink. "Mark said that he believes..."

And that thing I am supposed to believe is not the thing I believe at all, or ever said I did, not even close. The memory of drink (and of drugs) is often a memory that has been diluted, distilled, and has been cleared of any of the microbes of truth. The bottle remains the same, in the same shape, but the content no longer has the intended taste.

It is hard to fix a drunken memory, because to that person the memory is their memory of whatever it is they think they remember. If it isn't on video they will fight you tooth and nail over that memory, even if you have 10 other people who remember it as it really happened.

Live and let live, I like to say, and live and let die. To each his or her own. Let them have their memories, their faulted opinions, their murky recollections. What harm to let them live in their own besotted world! But there is harm, much harm, to be done to you and to others, because those alcohol churned memories seldom go unspoken and unexpressed.

It is a truth that those with the least to say of their own speak volumes on the lives of others.

One hopes and prays that the memory spoken has not been fermented.

Friend, Lover, and Foe.

People change. When you spark a fire, be that spark a friendship or a romantic relationship, you have to fan it to keep it alive, and add new substance to it to keep it alive, and build on it to make it into a fire. A fire, no matter how big it becomes, still needs constant tending. A fire will die in the stale air of sameness, even if that sameness was once what formed the original ember. People and things change because life does not comfortably abide stagnation.