Random Ideas, Comments & Thoughts, Sometimes Political, Sometimes Adult… Hope you don't choke.
I was changing the subscription settings on the blog this morning.
I really shouldn’t do things like that before my second cup of coffee.
Anyhooo I thrashed the subscriptions database.
I’m sorry!
For those of you that took the time to subscribe I am really sorry and invite you to subscribe again.
Or I could have called this… When Twitter is a weapon.
On Sunday 3/17/2013 a lady attending PyCon in Santa Clara overheard a couple of developers engaging in some sophomoric joking where they were trading sexual innuendos about poorly named devices.
Instead of doing the simple thing like turning around and letting these guys know they were out of line she photographed & tweeted their picture out into the twitterverse.
Her action caused the two developers to be removed from the convention, one of the guys lost his job and ultimately so did she. This Article is pretty brutal about how they report it.
There is so much that is wrong in this scenario.
This woman had options:
She could have done the human thing and asked the guys to cool it, explaining that they were being offensive.
She could have moved, thereby taking responsibility for her own feelings. (I’m not saying that she should have been required to move, but she could have removed herself from the annoyance.)
She chose to be passive aggressive, snap a photo of the guys (without their knowledge / consent or modeling release) then broadcast that photo to a presumably wide public audience captioned with something identifying them as pigs. Saying essentially HELP ME THEY’RE SEXUALLY HARASSING ME!
We’ve all sat through sexual harassment training. As I’ve sat through those classes I’ve often thought that the Harassment brush was just a little too broad and biased against men. Women have far greater latitude in what they can say to men and we men have to take it.
I’ve been asked in the workplace if I was circumcised, and how big my dick was by crude Women. I’ve also listened to endless gay jokes and disparaging remarks, from men.
Hell, I’ve been present in rooms where the evil of the WHITE man was being discussed and the suggested solution was that all the white people should be punished. Yeah racism isn’t solely the domain of white people. Racists come in all colors shapes and sizes.
So WHAT?
Next! I simply exited the area when the conversation turned to stuff I didn’t want or need to hear.
I’ve watched woman after woman end good mens careers with the corporate Nuclear weapon of “Harassment” it’s not a new phenomena. I’ve also seen men laughed out of an HR department when they decided to report a woman that was harassing them.
I remember laughing my ass off several years ago when after considerable publicity a female sports reporter was allowed in the locker rooms of male professional teams.
She was then offended by naked men walking around in the locker room. I thought it was a joke, but quickly it escalated into something more. After gaining access to the male locker rooms, she decided that the men should be clothed when she was there. The insanity came to a halt when the teams simply stopped talking to her.
I remember thinking, “Lady that’s why we built locker rooms. Guys would be just as happy changing clothes and showering outside. We created the space so that women and children wouldn’t be offended.”
At the time a number of male sports reported speculated about gaining access to female locker rooms but that was considered creepy.
This situation is also about our collective thin skin, and our psychotic enforcement of Politically Correct standards on steroids.
You can reasonably expect to be offended by something anytime you’re out in public.
For that matter you can expect to be offended by the crap that passes for entertainment on TV, not to mention the commercials. KIAs booming hip hop commercials come to mind. The Kardashians, uhh hello???
It’s the kid with his pants hanging down his butt.
Or the morbidly obese guy sweating like Niagara Falls in front of you at a fast food joint ordering 2 mega cheese burgers super size fries and a gallon cup of diet coke.
It’s the plumber proudly showing off a hairy plumbers crack.
The gang member flashing signs at an opposing gang in front of a crowd of kids, daring someone in the opposing gang to shoot him, thoughtless of the collateral damage.
It’s the past middle aged woman whose been around the block once too often, braless dressed like a teenage slut.
And it’s the teenager dressed like a slut being upset because people treat her badly.
It’s the Middle Eastern guy screaming and shaking his fist at a veiled woman in a mall, as she shrinks away.
It’s the profane, the obscene, the morally ambiguous.
It’s the self centered dumbasses more interested in texting while they’re driving or walking expecting you to move out of their way because they can’t be bothered to pay attention to someone as lowly as you.
It’s signs with messages you find offensive. Do I need to see salacious advertising for the latest “Falling Star” from Hollywood?
How about booming music with lyrics talking about killing whitie or slappin dat ho ’cause she don’t suck you right.
It’s the gas pump TVs screaming at you while you’re just trying to put gas in your car. while you’re thinking, “why am I paying 4.80 a gallon to be forced to hear this shit?”
In short it’s all the things that we each find offensive, yet put up with and ignore.
These things we take no action about because after all it’s about freedom of expression. Well, freedom… and the undercurrent of fear of getting involved.
But two men, having a laugh at bawdy innuendo at a convention in public who happen to be in earshot of a woman… and the shit hits the fan.
I think that SendGrid did the right thing firing this woman, I also think they should apologize to the developers who were removed from the conference and they should pay the developers companies for the lost conference fees.
Moreover, I think this should serve as a call to arms.
The time for draconian Politically Correct enforcement is past. it’s time for some of us to grow thicker skins, and stop trying to see offense in every situation.
It’s also time to stop denigrating being Male.
Face it men are different. Aside from our cocks and balls. We think differently and look at the world differently. As a result our jokes and what we find funny will be reflective of those differences.
It’s time to let men be men.
Ladies, believe it or not, if you simply ask us to play nice… We will.
I went on a walking tour of old Downtown Ontario yesterday. The tour was interesting and I was honestly surprised at how many of the buildings from the 1800s were still standing.
Granted many of those buildings look a lot different today from when they were built. However, according to the tour leader in many cases the original architectural details of these buildings were simply covered by updated “more modern” facades.
The cool part of this tour was the “field guides” these were booklets that had photos of the buildings we were looking at through the years.
Two things were obvious from these guides, first and foremost, these buildings were and are really interesting and in some cases grand. Secondarily, the tour guide who’d put these field guides together had love and passion for the subject.
I was impressed by his knowledge and that he was involved in helping the city preserve and renovate many of these historic buildings.
It was also a beautiful spring day in Ontario and just walking around the old section of town was very nice despite the morons driving up & down Euclid who thought it appropriate to scream obscenities as they drove by.
No-one in my group noticed the gang member with his pants down below his butt flashing gang signs as he approached a group of similarly attired people.
I’ll admit that until it was obvious these people were part of the same gang, I did scope out the nearest cover.
During the tour I was unconsciously keeping track of distance to the nearest object of substance, (walls, stone monuments, culverts, etc). That’s not to say that Ontario is a crime ridden city, but a certain gang element was obvious and the best way to survive a gun fight is not to get shot…
My brother would call it “situational awareness”, my über liberal friends would call it paranoia. I call it common sense. The trick to being situationally aware is to let it be a sub process in your mind but not to let the need to be aware overwhelm enjoyment of the moment.
As we wandered around the buildings many of which were being preserved and earthquake retrofitted with public money I was thinking of the simpler times in which these buildings had been constructed. Some of the structures were WPA projects.
Characteristic of many of the WPA era buildings are the somewhat ornate touches. Things like tile inlays in the entryways. Little details in the woodworking inside public buildings like courthouses and city/county public buildings. Since the WPA ran from 1935 to 1943 these buildings reflect the style and sensibilities of the 30s.
As the tour guide pointed out these buildings wouldn’t be built today.
The tour ended at a building that was undergoing renovations. This particular building was constructed in the early 1900s. Typical of the era it had high ceilings and ornate tin / copper ceiling coverings. During the renovation workers had uncovered some of the tilework that marked the original entranceways.
The person that had laid the tile was working on a border pattern and honestly, I think it didn’t work out quite as he’d envisioned it would.
As you can see in the first picture the pattern is a repeating pattern that’s somewhat reminescent of Greek / Roman patterns that appear on buildings throughout America.
The problem is what do you do when you get to the corners?
The unknown artisan in question chose a pretty straightforward approach, with mixed results.
The corner details are what caught my attention.
No, those are not Nazi swastikas in the corners. The legs go the other direction for the Nazi version.
Nazi or not, it doesn’t matter because in the 1900s when this building was built there was no such thing as Nazism.
There were Eastern religions where this symbol and it’s mirror had significance, usually in the context of peace and contemplation.
The point is, without context, if you didn’t know that this building predated the rise of the Nazi party by almost 40 years you could easily think something really bad about the owners of the building, or the people that did business in the building.
Here’s a link to people that really try much too hard to find evil where none intentionally existed.
Thankfully the tour group I was with yesterday said very little. It was interesting since the closest thing to comment was “What year was this building built?”
The tour guide answered “early 1900s” and that was the end of the matter.
The sad thing about the age we live in is that people are always looking for insult where none exists.
I won’t be terribly surprised if when the building opens again there isn’t some news coverage describing the “Racist” symbols that were preserved with taxpayers money.
I’d recommend waking tours of your towns if offered, you’ll learn things about your home that will surprise you.