I prefer Dear Leader for mk. I guess that makes me the cousin who he can kill at his whim.
I for one welcome our new robot overlords. I had to keep myself in check on IRC last night, by the way. I wanted to spout memes like anybody's business. Does the hubski IRC still have to be thoughtful? I actually thought to myself, "man, they're going to think I'm a lot dumber/less thoughtful/more reiterative if I don't check myself."
Yeah, true. It's hard to keep stuff going when it's going so quick. On hubski, there's a lot more time to make something interesting or to expand on stuff. This gets me wondering though. A long time ago, some people would correspond by letters, sometimes for years and years before meeting the other person, if ever. Just imagine, two people who fall in love through correspondence, but then once they meet, they just can't keep a conversation going. How crushing would that be? Or what if they had a really annoying voice, or they smelled bad or had dead teeth? I guess the present-day predilection for nit-picking in regard to dating or even making friends doesn't come out of a vacuum . . .
Well, as for the letter thing - depending on how you use online dating, you can have the equivalent happen. I think it is much less common as I think nowadays most people aren't okay with falling in love with someone they've never met, for perhaps exactly those reasons. Maybe it was more accepted then, when communication (and the world as a whole) moved more slowly. I have used online dating on-and-off and in the first iteration I would send long, long messages to boys who would send me longer messages back, and so on. So I could see it happening. There was some guy in NY who was quite taken with me but also way older and to be honest kind of creepy and potentially homeless or something. His housing situation was not stable. He wanted me to drive up to NYC so we could fuck in the woods or something. I'm glad past-me nixed that. Very glad. However - I can't say that our long overnight conversations didn't help me deal with some things at the time, either. My question is, can you fall in love just through correspondence? I am doubtful. Perhaps you can but I would be one of those people that would choose not to. Why go for someone so inherently distanced from you when you have plenty of options right in front of you at the local bar? The counter-argument: 'What if they are perfect for you?' Well, frankly, someone I can't hang out with in person, touch, look at eye-to-eye - that's not my perfect person. Plus I am a terrible pen pal. When people exist only on the other side of the internet/world, I often don't form emotional attachments to them. You're on the internet; you're not real. This was one reason why Hubski, and the Hubski DC meet-up, was revelatory for me. Not only did many Hubskiers become real, but I realized I generally cared about the people on Hubski as a whole, at least those I'd gotten to know, in a real way. If it had been an online dating meetup or a reddit thing, sure I might have said I was coming, but I wouldn't have. (I wrote this up in a big long post but then a dead link ate it at the time.) Hubski made internet people real for me. Hi, internet people! You're real! And I care about you! See. You have to get to know someone in person to find out if it's going to work. They could have a terrible habit of talking with their mouth full or I don't know, something else very repulsive. If you sound great on paper but I'm embarrassed to be seen with you in public, I'm not going out with you. (An unforgiveable sin in my date book: Do not embarrass me. I learned that lesson once and once was way more than enough. A date was unbearably pretentious at my regular sushi bar, I was mortified. He acted like a know-it-all because he'd been to Japan with the Navy once. Mortified. )Or what if they had a really annoying voice, or they smelled bad or had dead teeth?
My question is, can you fall in love just through correspondence? I am doubtful. Perhaps you can but I would be one of those people that would choose not to.
I wouldn't be here if not for correspondence. But - my parents first met briefly at a wedding - then corresponded almost every day for at least a year and fell in love in their letters. It cost about 3 cents to mail a letter in 1946, but a penny was worth something.
Correspondence is great. I used to send a lot of letters, especially hand-made holiday cards. Support the post office! Did they get to see each other in between their initial meeting and - I guess - I don't know, the marriage? Perhaps an in-person engagement or something? I believe you can get to know a person through correspondence, for sure. If your connection continues to work in person then that's great. I was absolutely mad for a boy for years - he wrote the most beautiful poetry. I loved his brain. But we had terrible conversations, unless we were talking about poetry we didn't seem able to get the ball really rolling on the conversation. My massive, obvious crush - idoltry - may have been a factor here. Or maybe for whatever reason we just didn't jive conversationally; I know he was somewhat interested in me, over the years. But it was one of those situations where neither of you offers up or feels like you have much to offer up about your day-to-day life. Different circles. Ah, ha, I don't know. I shall endeavor not to idolize someone just for his poems, his brain and his bad relationship with his father going forward though. Well and his beauty. ;)
Yeah, I think that's true for so many things. In a way, I think this is why I don't trust people who say they never drink and that they never have. To me, it says, "I am scared to relinquish any amount of control over any social interaction or how people perceive me, ever."You have to get to know someone in person to find out if it's going to work.
I am one of those "try everything once!" or at least "try to try things once!" kind of people. So someone who categorically refuses to try something which isn't guaranteed to harm them as long as they exercise caution would probably bother me. Like "I won't have sex because I'm afraid I'll get pregnant." Well, practice safe sex and use birth control and you mitigate those risks. Have one drink of alcohol, or two and wait until you drive, and you mitigate those risks. I don't enjoy people who allow their fears to run their lives. I historically attempt to confront mine - the ones that should be gotten over, at any rate. (How else do you overcome your fears? If you allow them to dictate your actions, you've lost. -If I seem opinionated, I have a friend who is very fear-run and it wears on me.) There are probably some foods I'm pretty unwilling to try though. Testicles, I think. That Asian delicacy where the bird has developed inside of the egg and you spoon into it and eat the whole wet-feathery, soft-boned-and-beaked thing. No thanks on that one. Of course, if push came to shove, it's survival first, taste second.
People who live in fear get my goat too. Fear is the great inhibitor and while it often modifies our behaviors in a positive way, I think that for a lot of people, fear is much more present in their lives than is healthy. Ah, you're talking about balut. That used to be one of family's businesses. It takes a practiced eye to know when balut is ready. I think the benchmark is around 13 days. You want to get it before the beak calcifies and the feathers get too . . . feathery. I don't care for eggs in general, so I'm not at all keen on balut. As for testicles, (I think) I've only had goat testicles and they were boiled. They might be ok fried, but boiled meat of any kind is pretty low on my list of "stuff I like to eat". I think another factor in my assessment of the goat testicles was that I had them at what was supposed to be a conciliatory dinner with my old boss, while we discussed the raise I had requested. I don't work there anymore, so there's that . . .That Asian delicacy where the bird has developed inside of the egg and you spoon into it and eat the whole wet-feathery, soft-boned-and-beaked thing.
That's just saddening. Or, to use the dictionary of obscure sorrows: kuebiko n. a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence, which force you to revise your image of what can happen in this world—mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out all unwelcome and invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface, and propping yourself up like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.
You may have noticed in the past for every iteration of the bookclub I have suggested a book titled The River of Doubt by Candace Millard. It chronicles Teddy Roosevelt's journey into the Amazon to forge new maps. It's an awesome read and one of my favorite parts is when Teddy Roosevelt's son, Kermit writes a letter to his girlfriend and proposes to her. It takes several months for her response to his proposal to reach him. Can you imagine?