It wasn't one of those jobs were everyone was just like everyone else. People from a lot of different backgrounds and skillsets worked in that place and the work was stimulating. I made a lot of friends there and if (as was the case) regional management hadn't been so reluctant to raise wages from time to time, I could have stayed.
OH MY SWEET SAINTS AND MAIDEN AUNTS' HEARTS!! HE SAID I'M A TOE RAG!!!
Well it's nice to know you know that expression. Also it's nice to know you accept things you read without too much analysis. Tell me, seriously, are you zealously defending authority because you've been a victim of authority or because you think you benefit from authority?
Although as a teenager I despised her music and as an adult I couldn't have been more indifferent to her if I was paid to be, I heard the news of Whitney Houston's death and I felt appalled and and a little upset as well.
I'd always thought that someone like her would just live on for another 40 years in grace and splendour (remotely, from my life anyway).
She was obviously talented and successful and very beautiful, and it's a tragedy she died so young and so pointlessly.
I'd always thought that someone like her would just live on for another 40 years in grace and splendour (remotely, from my life anyway).
She was obviously talented and successful and very beautiful, and it's a tragedy she died so young and so pointlessly.
RIP Whitney Houston. I never bought your music and I've never been a fan but you deserved a happier life.
Yup. Táim in mo chonaí in Eireann. Are you still an idiot, by the way?
Fuck you. I have excellent English grammar and I speak Irish and German, both of which have weird grammar (compared to English). Random non-sequitors? That's the subversive humour in my personality. You're not even remotely close to anything else in that statement.
Wooohoo! Freedom! Freedom by approval!!
You also sound like a shill. Just saying.
I'm going to Canada from Ireland later this year and I'm looking around for the best travel plan that'll let me get to Canada without even sniffing American airspace. I know that if I had to go through an American airport and some poxy jobsworth (with restraints, pepperspray and a gun) wanted to strip me or irradiate me in the name of religiously fighting an invisible non-threat, there'd be a fight. And America stops being libertarian when you become a client of their privatised prison industry.
Um.... as an Irishman I can honestly relate to anyone who'se showed up late (Mondays, worst day ever), went for a long long lunch and came back at 3.50pm with Guinness dribbling down their face.
But we got stuff done! I worked in a media related company in the 90's that was 98% Irish staffed. There was a German, and some Americans. Everyone else showed up 5 minutes late for everything and talked about how drunk they were.
There was so much team morale in that company! We'd work all day (sometimes until 10pm, without pay) and then we'd hit the pub and half the time, end up going home and fucking like hairy animals.
Everyone shared skills ands information, we knew to help those of us who were new or struggling or having personal problems, but anyway at the end of the month we always made our quotas - with surplus.
The company was doing really well for a few years until shareholders sold it out. Then one day an American corporate assizer arrived and declared things like: employees must pay for vending machine coffee and music and radios are banned on the workfloor.
We already paid for the vending machine coffee. We'd bought it ourselves. It was a canteen Gaggia. Tell me I can't have my Walkman???
Soon afterwards, we went back to drinking heavily and taking bets on who could slip an E in the boss's coffee. Productivity crashed and there were mass desertions. The office runner started selling drugs with the companies in the rest of the building. The company failed 9 months later.
Well, that's my story. Hope you enjoyed it.
You're still being stupid.
Ever heard the phrase: 'You expect of others what you know about yourself.'?
I'll give you a few minutes to think about that.
OK, back to why you're stupid. If you say my perspective is based entirely on my situation and my place, that'd imply that you KNOW my situation and place. I doubt that very much.
When you blame the victim of a crime you really truly lose all credibility. Let us imagine, for the sake of hypothesising, that you're an ardent muslim who adheres to your local town's arbitrary muslim laws. For example: everyone must eat beef on Fridays and on Saturdays the devout shall work in factories, for the common good.
One fine Friday, on your way to work, you're attacked by an angry gang of catholics and jews. Because you live a life with different rules to theirs. Who deserves to be locked up now?
I didn't at any point in my post imply that Hamza Kashgari was arrogant. I said he was thinking and emoting. He was simply 'being'. You're the one who's assuming someone was being arrogant. I also never said he was resisting tyranny. That's your inference. Read the post again, carefully and without the level of shitheadedness you're applying to this argument.
Here's a few truths.
I can't have a need for martydom (as you say) because I don't believe in gods. Fuck it. I don't believe anything. Show me the evidence or get lost.
History's best stories are about the men and women who stood up against the evil controlling liars. They fought the good fight. Even when they lost, we still remember them. Almost no-one bothers to remember the names of those who attempted to defend slave prisons in the American South, or the names of the officers who fought to keep people in the gulags.
Those people? History's losers.
But listen, now that you've declared your willingness to run, not fight, even when you could make a difference, why don't I reach a hand out and tell you that you're not alone. The world is full of people managing their mediocrity who dream of greatness, and damn everyone around them for not being great.
Don't be so sure. Saudi Arabia is wealthy, with dangerous friends.
And for the record; Ireland made blasphemy a crime in 2009. That was the previous, currently reviled government but I don't think the law has been revoked.
And for the record; Ireland made blasphemy a crime in 2009. That was the previous, currently reviled government but I don't think the law has been revoked.
Can't agree with you there. Firstly you're close to blaming the victim and secondly, you're arguing that his best course in life was to keep his head down, comply and conform.
Fuck that.
The reactionary, violent, conformity policing, superstitious thugs who wanted to kill this guy because he expressed alternative thought, they're the fools. This young man (he's 23) was only thinking and emoting and that's just what you did, right there.
Would you run if the mob came for you or would you take a vicious beating, spend a couple of nights starving in a jail before you got your time in court and then denounce the hysteria and the murder frenzy before a court of law and your god?
I'm not going to answer for you. Personally (I'm an atheist) I think anyone who prays and ritualises is as stupid as a rock. But say your words and do your dances. I won't kill you for it. I might kill someone who thinks that because you do it, you deserve to die though.
Maybe it's the legacy of all that post-Nazi deploring but I've known Germans to be very accomodating (and skeptical) people. You could be the only non-German speaking person in a room of Germans and they'd all switch to English so as to not exclude you. But they'd encourage you to try German, if you really want to fit in.
Politically, that expresses in the way they easily compromise in order to achieve consensus. The point is that if something is worth arguing over, then both sides must want a resolution.
I never see that in American politics. Always it's Red vs Blue.
Actually I rarely see it in French, Russian or British politics either so I assume that it's just a cultural thing. Posturing for the electorate, etc.
Let's start a game! I submit "NOOOOOBBBB!!" as my caption.
Agreed.
Compromise works in better political contexts.
See: Germany.
See: Germany.
Of course the US system of government has been insane ever since the day they made a national holiday out of the time they first began to exterminate the native population.
They call it 'Giving Thanks', or something like that.
What the heck do you call an act like that? Who's the wife and who's the daughter? And which one gets to be the dad?
:)
On the point of Laffer being an idiot: I see a pathology with people like him. They're always (only always) liars, idiots, or idiot liars. The liars prey on the idiots and the idiot liars attempt to recruit the idiots to serve them as their mindless slaves.
In a way, it's like studying ants.
Heartclick for you.
I watched that. It's depressing how there were so many warnings and yet no-one wanted to pay attention at the time.
I watched that. It's depressing how there were so many warnings and yet no-one wanted to pay attention at the time.
High-wire trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, bareback horse riders, lion tamers, knife throwers (and their assistants), fire-eaters and sword swallowers. It's sad how much awesomeness got lost in the rush to the safety culture (and it's best friend forever, the litigation lawyer).
I like clowns though. Clowns are the misunderstood genius subculture of the Big Top. Second only to the Ringmaster or possibly the magician's swimsuited assistant.
