Tag: Misrepresentation

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Changed the header photo

I thought it was time for a change, I’d been looking for something to represent all four seasons, but hadn’t settled on anything beside Winter Snow and Autumn leaves. Now I have a Spring / Summer photo with some of the local flowers blooming.

The photo was taken on a nice day walking the dog. He ended up on the cutting room floor because he managed to have only his tail in the photo.

Here is another photo of him from that day. I was a good walk and a good day for both of us. We hadn’t been walking around this particular area for a while. Part of it burned a couple of years ago. I’d stopped doing our walks down there, because I didn’t want to think about a mostly white dog running around in a mostly black charred mess. I’d have gone broke in groomer fees. (OMG! I just used a term that’s banned on some platforms!)

This is the problem with redefinition of words and subsequent censorship of those words.

I digress…

I like this photo for its contrast and it also provides commentary on the county’s efforts to rehabilitate what they did to the wash behind the house.

This is the wash after the county spent 10 years working on it. The gash is 20 to 30 feet deep. Straight as an arrow and looks a lot more like a log flume than a flood control project. It was supposed to prevent erosion and manage occasional floods. In the distance you can see a bridge. For Years, the county resisted putting that bridge in. Building the bridge was the county admitting they were wrong.

There had been a bridge built over this wash in the 1930’s or ‘40s. It had washed out in a particularly nasty spring thaw/rain event. The county, instead of putting the bridge back, decided to dig a log flume. Then they decided to simply have the road surface drive through the wash bed.

In an effort to slow the water down they built a series of concrete and rock steps into the wash and subjected the residential area along the wash to 2 years of living in a construction zone.

The subsequent 10 years the neighborhood was a heavy equipment / construction zone for 3 to 5 months out of the year. An added bonus was that the roadway washed out pretty reliably, closing the road to town.

After a decade, the county redid the math and figured out if they put a bridge across the wash it would save them money. DUH!

The residents had been telling the county this from the beginning and because we were a bunch of rubes who knew nothing, the county ignored us entirely!

This is what the wash looked like before the county started messing about. There was water in it much of the year. The dogs and I would hike up the wash about 3/4 of a mile and play in the pools of cold clear water. We’d be dry by the time we’d walked back home but we’d all be happy. In late Summer there were wild blackberries to eat along the wash bank. It was rugged, natural, beautiful and ever changing.

Yes, rocks moved around through the years but usually not very far. This was due to natural erosion. That being said, the erosion was minimal and honestly seemed to be flattening the wash bed out, so the water was slowing down naturally. The wash bed was also meandering more so the water wasn’t rushing quite as much.

There was also a lot of wildlife that used the wash as a highway, water hole, and hunting ground. One of the reasons I liked this neighborhood and specifically this house was the proximity of the forest and the wildlife.

For years before the county’s destruction of the wash and its surrounding habitat there was a coyote that I could set my watch by. We called her the 6 am coyote and If I saw her, I was running late for work.

The lone California Poppy growing on what looks like the surface of the moon is my reminder to never trust a government agency.

San Bernardino County Flood Control promised that they were going to restore the wash to its natural state.

Originally the wash was lined with trees. There were some pine, some mountain oak, there were even a few aspen like trees. There was also a really nice trail that meandered through the trees. All of this was literally 1000 ft from the back of my home. I loved it, the dogs loved it, and hearing the owls hooting at night was comforting. My home was an oasis from the insanity of LA

All of that was destroyed by people who did not live in the area, who KNEW better than everyone actually living here. People who didn’t ask questions, and who didn’t consult history.

People who used the phrase, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.”

They gave us more heat, more dust, a scar in the ground that looks like the surface of the moon, and a single California poppy.

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Well the bitch still succeeded didn’t she?

Rick & Morty, an adult animated show is in the process of recasting one of the show’s creators voice roles.

Justin Roiland was accused earlier this year of felony domestic abuse. Mind you he had not been convicted, but that didn’t stop Adult Swim from pulling him from the show.

Here’s the really shitty part. All the charges were dropped Roiland said at the time the charges were filed, that he believed that a disgruntled Ex-girlfriend was attempting to get revenge by having him cancelled. Well that may be true but the bitch still won.

An Article from UPROXX is located here

This is one of the reasons that I don’t really want to return to work with corporate America. Women have demonstrated time and again that there are completely willing to destroy someone’s career for nothing more than petty vengeance. I’ve witnessed it at the last place I worked.

I’ve also witnessed Male persons of color getting away with sexual harassment of white women. And because the white women weren’t believed when they reported something, they became targets for more and more abuse. So much so that they left the company. It’s in effect sanctioned racism and sexism but no corporation will ever admit this happens. In fact they’d accuse me and the other people who made statements to HR of lying. Corporate America will say, “It doesn’t happen and has never happened!”

But it does and did.

It’s another example of double standards. Roiland is white, and Male. All it takes for him to lose his job is an accusation from a person he once dated.

Males of Color on the other hand are credibly accused by multiple witnesses of groping white women’s breasts and feeling those women’s asses and HR says, “It’s their culture. They meant nothing by it. You just don’t understand.” Then later, officially nothing happened and nothing was done. So much for that vaunted Zero Tolerance policy.

I’d like to have a job. I’d take 2/3 of what I was being paid if I could work from home and not have to deal with corporate politics. I’d join the video conferences and such but I probably wouldn’t speak.

I literally have become suspicious of the motivations of practically anyone in corporate America. There have been way too many times when something I said was misquoted, or taken out of context, or misunderstood and some jackass from some other department decided something had to be done.

There once was a Director of my department who found themselves on a plane at 37,000 feet flying from Florida to California when they discovered that they only had half of a story. Then when they got the rest of the story, realized that I was probably loaded for bear and had my attorney on speed dial.

They were entirely correct!

The problem was a female boss who couldn’t stand that I was dragged into a lot of meetings. She had a real problem that I didn’t answer her instant messages instantly.

I should point out that more often than not her instant messages were, “How’s your day going?” If I answered, “Very Busy.” It led to a third degree, 25 minutes of instant messaging and a 30 minute phone call. God I hate passive aggressive shit! This particular bitch couldn’t count butts in chairs to validate she was in control so she resorted to inane questions that she shouldn’t have been asking if she actually knew what she was doing

I only had a desktop computer. Since the meetings I was attending were not at my desk, but were instead in conference rooms throughout the building, obviously I wasn’t going to be able to answer her silly instant messages instantly. For that matter, most of the conference rooms didn’t have Wifi so a laptop wouldn’t have helped all that much either.

Not to mention that it’s rude to be in a meeting with a Vice President and carrying on a conversation with someone else via instant messaging.

After costing the company 5 to 10 thousand dollars in travel expenses for the director and herself, she was only demoted. She should have lost her job. She didn’t because she was a girl and I was an evil testosterone poisoned male. I still should have sued the shit out of the company because that bitch lied and slandered my name throughout the company.

It’s stuff like this that make men like me super cautious about working for women. I’ve had way too many female bosses.

I guess now the bitches don’t even have to work at the same company you do. All that has to have happened is that you fucked them and broke up with them. How could you decide their so called “golden hole” wasn’t worth the pain or expense necessary to use it?

I hope Rick & Morty survives but if it doesn’t we’ll be able to thank another lying bitch for taking something else enjoyable away from the rest of us.

Amber Heard – I’m looking at your abusive lying ass!

I hope Roiland sues the living shit out of the woman that falsely accused him.

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I think it’s only me…

I keep catching articles or snippets of news, and thinking that I’m losing what’s left of my mind.

What’s weird and making me think I’m losing my mind is that, apparently nobody else thinks anything is amiss. Meanwhile my head is exploding and all I can think to do is run screaming into the wilderness.

For example:

There was a shooting in Louisville KY at a bank. An NPR report says, it appears that the shooting started in a conference room. There’s a lot of the other usual “guns bad” rhetoric and there there’s the obligatory doctors comment. In other words, the report was really “Boilerplate”.

What caught my attention was that the reporter speaks of psychological issues and how perhaps red flag laws are necessary everywhere. Then the reporter introduces the Doctor to make comments as an Osteopathic physician.

That’s when my brain said, “WAIT Just A DANG MINUTE!!!”

What the hell?

My first thought based on the word Osteopathic was, “A bone specialist”. My second thought was, “Why is a bone specialist commenting on a clearly psychological issue?” My next thought was, “Clearly I’ve misremembered the definition, I should look it up.”

For context, here’s the way stuff like this is stored in my head.

For clarity, I’ll use a common word. We know that osteoporosis is degeneration of the bones often attributed to aging.

Osteo – Greek for bone.

Porosis –  a condition (as of a bone) characterized by porosity

So osteoporosis literally means porous bones.

The word Pathic – perceiving, suffering, or affected in a (specified) way.

(As an aside this one is odd because there was one dictionary that said this word was either a homosexual bottom, or a catamite. These are not the definitions I was taught and means that I must carefully evaluate context if I see this word in the “wild” so to speak.)

Therefore you would expect for an Osteopath to study bones and the conditions or diseases that affect them.

OR I suppose you could use the odd dictionary (American Heritage online, by the way) and you’d come up with someone who has sex with bones????

If that’s not weird enough… Hang on, because this is where things get really weird.

The American Osteopathic Association website says something a bit different when defining what a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine is. The definition isn’t simple, it’s actually kind of a word salad and takes a whole lot more linguistic processing power to process than it should. A word that is a Title should be very clear in my opinion.

Here is the answer to What is a DO?

Short answer, these guys probably started out as Chiropractors and / or Massage Therapists. Both of which, have their place but neither of which I want doing a psychological assessment on me.

In either case, if the Osteopathic Doctor actually studied and was licensed to treat diseases of bones, OR if they’re Chiropractors & Massage Therapists, they’re not qualified to speak on issues of psychology.

Personally, I like the clarity of Cardiologist, Psychologist, Ophthalmologist, Endocrinologist, etc. See the pattern? You’re looking at compound words. The Ologist says study of, and the word preceding it, says what’s being studied.

I’m sorry it took such a long way to get around to the point.

The problem is that when you have some knowledge of what words mean, or worse yet, that so many of our common words have roots in ancient languages and their root meanings, prefixes, and suffixes, are rattling around in your head, it’s maddening.

If you’re at all like me, you find your brain being rebooted all the time because you take the word apart and know what something is. Or at least what it’s supposed to be.

Except NOW the word may, or may not, mean what you thought it did regardless of the common root word, or even the long accepted definition.

Which is why I keep thinking I’m losing my mind.

I have a fairly decent vocabulary, so when I’m listening to, or reading something, I’m getting meaning transferred to me by the specific words being used, and apply a certain level of precision based on the definitions stored in my head.

When those words suddenly lead me off into the weeds, off the rails, or down the rabbit hole, because contextually they don’t appear to have the meaning stored in my brain I start to ask questions.

One of those questions is; “Did I just have a stroke?”

Then I realize that in the case of the NPR piece, they wanted the gravitas of a “medical professional” making comments.

The best they could come up with was a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.

Either the reporter didn’t know what that meant or didn’t care, and assumed that the majority of the American public wouldn’t know or care that the “Doctor” speaking was completely outside their lane.

One of my very best friends is a real “Doctor”. He legitimately holds a Phd. while he is very intelligent, and can speak eloquently on 18th century English Literature, I wouldn’t want him performing heart surgery on me or anyone else.

However, my friend could as legitimately spoken about the shooter in Louisville as the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine on NPR.

With my friend, at least you wouldn’t have to process through a word salad that Kamala Harris couldn’t get through, to find out he’s not really qualified to speak on matters of Psychology.

The problem is that when words don’t have precise meaning then the point, or message those words were trying to convey is muddy at best.

I suppose what caused me to write this insane rabbit hole is that I frequently wonder why it is that I don’t understand what people are saying. I hear or read the words but the meaning is unclear.

Right now, on my desk is a form that says, “In addition to completing form XXX-YYY, please also supply the following documents if the following box is checked.”

Okay, none of the boxes are checked. So I shouldn’t have to supply those documents.

Except that’s not the case. It turns out they do want one of the documents, and according to the person I spoke with, they always want that particular document.

The organization could save themselves a lot of phone calls and unnecessary mail by simply being clear. Either always check the box next to that document, OR reword the instructions.

When I spoke with the representative after submitting the form, and the organization bouncing it back twice, they treated me like a moron because I’d followed their instructions precisely.

I first started noticing this lack of clarity many years ago. I thought it was the world that was the problem. It was little things at first and I was convinced I was right…

Now I question my rightness because the rest of the world seems to be getting along just fine with blurry meaning, poorly written instructions, and misleading reports about the news of the day.

If the rest of the world sees no problem, then the problem must be mine alone.

I wonder, should I see a psychologist, psychiatrist, or would an osteopathic doctor due just as well. I’ve been described by some as bone headed…

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TX Gov. Abbott busses 130 Migrants to VPs house on Christmas Eve… Democrats Mad

Twits

Another MSNBC report had someone clutching their pearls about the fact that Washington DC temperature was 18° – 22° F when the illegals were dropped off. Apparently, some of these illegals were dressed only in T-Shirts, shorts, and sandals, wrapped in blankets.

These people then almost immediately boarded another bus and were taken to a local church.

The Horror! The inhumanity!

It should be noted that the busses transporting these folks had heaters, and that they were at little risk of frostbite or death by exposure.

The same unfortunately cannot be said for the thousands of illegal immigrants sleeping on the streets of El Paso in 22° F weather.

In comparison, I’d bet these people Abbott bused to Washington DC feel pretty lucky. 

What’s not being said is that El Paso and almost all of the border towns and states no longer have the capacity to house the flood of illegals the Biden Administration policies have encouraged to come to the United States.

What is more cruel? An administration that allows this, or a Governor sending illegals to places that have the capacity to take care of them?

It should also be pointed out that it is far warmer south of the border. It’s even springtime in the Southern Hemisphere.

Just Sayin!

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The so called Student Debt Forgiveness isn’t forgiveness.

On the one hand I have to say that some of the lending practices are predatory.

How can they not have been? You’ve got kids graduating from High School, without much in the way of financial knowledge. I’ve known kids who couldn’t balance their checkbook. In some cases they don’t understand how credit cards can suck you down the tube if you’re not paying attentions to interest rates.

For a High School graduate to show up on a college campus, someplace they’ve been told all their lives they have to attend, and seeing how much it’s going to cost, then being offered a loan that pays for it all. This is perhaps predatory by its nature.

Maybe the 101 classes for a new college student should be basic money management and understanding how compound interest works. Those classes should be attended before they’ve committed to anything.

Then with the student armed with real world useful information they can make an informed decision about taking out the loan and perhaps this would inform the student’s choice of major.

All that being said, this Federal Loan Forgiveness isn’t forgiveness.

Loan forgiveness would be the lender says “We’re reducing your existing loan by 10,000” and the lender would take the loss.

This situation our Government is going to pay 10,000 to the lenders. Where does that money come from, from the American Taxpayers.

What this means is that folks who’ve paid their loans off, and folks that went to trade schools, and folks who just went to work out of High School will in fact, be paying for college. Not for themselves, but for other people that made poor or uninformed decisions.

At its core, this is indentured servitude.

Taxpayers are being forced to work for someone else.

I was reminded of the quote from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

– Ayn Rand

This one also sprung to mind;

“The moral justification of capitalism is man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.”

– Ayn Rand

This is not to imply that I’m heartless. Although, I can be.

The question that springs to my mind is; “Would people respond well to a stranger walking into their home and simply taking one of their possessions?”

I’d suggest that most people would react poorly. I believe that most people would get angry even if the person “Needed” the item.

Yet we’re expected to accept precisely this proposition via our taxation process. As if the taxation process somehow changes the basic wrongness of theft. Taxation like this is just theft with extra steps.

I’ve always been skeptical of those who’ve expressed the concept that Taxation is theft. But in light of this loan forgiveness plan coming out of the Biden Administration, I’m rethinking my former skepticism.