Polarizing Sarcasm

Elephants never forget

rilliebear:

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in   Kenya after graduating from   Northwestern   University .
On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. 
The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully. 
He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. 
As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, 
after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. 

The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, 
stared at him for several tense moments. 
Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. 
Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.
Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.


Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenage son. 
As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and 
walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. 

The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. 
The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant. 
Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. 
He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.

The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs …

and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn’t the same fucking elephant.

This is for everyone who sends me those heart-warming bullshit stories.

Best received email EVAR.

Honeydew

Haven’t had much time for Twitter & the like lately. If you’re wondering why, here is a summary of my last couple of weeks. If you’re a newish follower, you probably won’t be terribly interested in this…

Done/Ongoing:

• Replaced/weatherproofed new front door
• Replaced broken toilet seat
• Installed warranty-replacement PSU in computer
• Sharpened chainsaw “blades”
• Cut logs on our driveway into smaller pieces & split firewood
• Patched leaky roof
• Helped prep/plan/make Hallowe’en costumes
• Hallowe’en party/pumpkin carving on 30th - makeup for son
• Hallowe’en trick-or-treating + makeup for son
• Shortened stove pipe/moved wood stove
• Daily fires in wood stove to keep us warm
• Trip to city 90 mins away for homeschool supplies
• 2 Trips to city 40 mins away for repair parts/groceries/building supplies
• Read Ep.1 & 2 of Ulysses (probably ill-advised & ill fated)

On top of that, I still need to do the following before winter:

• Paint new front door
• Replace bathroom window with smaller one that doesn’t leak
• Swap large window on back of house for door
• Swap door on side of house for window
• Install 2 new doors on workshop (1 for porch, 1 for main building)
• Seal old door opening in workshop
• Install large garage/barn doors on workshop porch
• Patch/seal hole in house from old propane fireplace
• Seal up numerous air leaks in our bedroom
• Cut rest of logs on driveway - chop, split, & store
• Build fires to warm house daily

I get very frustrated with things because with ME/CFS I get so little done before I get completely exhausted and have to stop. We struggled so much last winter to keep from freezing that we NEED to get these changes made to the house, but it’s been really tough to afford to get materials for the jobs. Right now, we are scavenging almost everything (except we had no choice but to buy the new front door - at least it was on sale).

With the events from a few weeks back, Twitter has REALLY become un-fun. The douchebaggery of certain individuals certainly hasn’t made me very interested in spending what little time I have not spent working on various projects, heating the house, or sleeping being particularly sociable or trying to make people smile.

Sorry if I’m slow to respond or seem to be ignoring you. It isn’t personal, it’s about priorities. Trying to maintain my sanity while struggling with health issues and financial woes is difficult enough… being vilified for calling someone on their bad behaviour when they are acting like a petty dickweed isn’t the kind of thing that makes me interested in participating on Twitter/Tumblr.

To those who continue to follow and show their appreciation with stars & retweets, etc, thank you. Maybe when our last-minute pre-winter tasks are done, I’ll have time (and motivation) to go back and read all the tweets like I used to on a daily basis. Assuming I haven’t died of exhaustion before then…

I Will Not Share

I will not share with people who would question the integrity of someone who has NEVER given any reason for it to be questioned.

I will not share with those who ask for compassion and understanding for their own feelings, but would then mock & minimize those of others.

I will not share with those who would believe the words of someone who would impugn another’s reputation to hide their own mistakes.

I will not share with people who would call having ethics “being crazy” while revelling in their own hypocrisy.

I will not share with those who portray themselves as victims to garner pity from others rather than make a simple apology.

I will not share with those who maliciously attack others without cause, or those that would endorse such attacks.

98% of you are not like this, but sadly the other 2% are  working hard to make up for that. Misunderstandings happen all the time, but wilful ignorance is a choice. Claiming to be righteous while deliberately deceiving others, or deliberately allowing yourself to be deceived by refusing to consider all evidence, are equal failings.

If in any way you feel guilt or outrage at something I have said here maybe you should look within yourself and ask why. You, and you alone control your feelings and your actions. No one can make you feel anything if you do not allow it. Either there is something you need to correct within yourself, or you are giving far too much control of yourself to external forces.

Think about it. Just think.

I Use Twitter 2 Ways...

First and foremost, it is my microblog. I have 3 sizes of blogs… Micro, Medium, and Maximum (see the end of this post for explanation of the others). Twitter is where I write extremely short-form stuff out. I try to keep it amusing and/or informative. I DO make an effort to make it worth reading, and some days I fret over every tweet. Most of the time, I’m trying to make you smile, or even actually laugh. But, in this way it is an outlet for when I have something to say and I just want to blurt it out. I wing it, it’s all off the top of my head. On rare occasions I think of several tweets at once and choose to save one for later, but this is not often. Most of it was thought up on the spot, punched into my BB or rattled out on the keyboard and sent. 90% of what appears here I thought about for less than a few minutes (I do fact-check some things before I tweet them).

Second - I use it as a social network and a source of entertainment for myself. That’s what my incoming stream is for. Over the last few hours, I have been making major adjustments to improve this, and I have a few more to make. I follow my real-life friends on Twitter to see what they’re up to. I follow funny people to get some laughs. Some of those funny people have become twitter friends, in spite of the fact I really suck at being a friend. I’m fiercely loyal, but really forgetful due to brain fog. I am also extremely blunt: if you do something I think is stupid I’m probably just going to come out and say so. Of course, the same goes if you do something laudable. I won’t give false praise, I won’t say I agree when I don’t… I’m as real on here as I am in real life with the people I know (once I am over the terror of being in the same room with actual people).

So, here’s the thing: if you’re following ME, I expect it is because you are interested in something I have to say. Either you are a friend or you just enjoy my tweets. If YOU are following ME for any other reason, yer doin’ it wrong, because I tweet a LOT sometimes and I’m going to get on your nerves. If you are following me, I’m not going to feel obligated to follow you back “just cause”, I’m not going to “pay you back” if you favourite my tweets, and I am not going to become friends with you just because you followed me. I need to have some interest in following you: you’re funny (to me), or you’re sharing info I enjoy reading, or you have nice boobs (OK, maybe not the boob part). I’m not being a jerk here: I’m only human, I can only read so much, and friendships don’t appear magically because you read and starred my tweets. They develop over time when people have things in common and talk about shared ideas and experiences. I know, you read some self-proclaimed twitter-expert marketing guy’s web site that insisted it was rude for people to NOT follow back when followed, right? If that’s the case, re-read the first 12 words of the last sentence to put that concept into context.

If I follow you, the same goes: you’re either someone I consider a friend, or I am interested in what YOU have to say or what you’ve said in the past. If we rarely talk and never exchange DMs, it probably means I’m interested in what you have to say. If for some reason I can’t continue to read what you tweet (and the reasons could be MANY, including that I just need to cut back) I might unfollow you at some point. If your reaction to this is to immediately unfollow me, I have to wonder why the heck you were following me in the first place. When I stopped following you did that somehow make my tweets immediately less interesting? Hmmm.

I’m saying this because I don’t want you thinking that I am something that I am not. I try to read every tweet (although lately I’ve missed a lot). I speak up when I see someone do something I feel is wrong. I won’t play political games. I’m going to say things that might offend you. And I reserve the right to follow as many (or as few) people as I can keep up with. I follow people I like, but the reverse is NOT true - if I don’t follow you it doesn’t mean I DON’T like you (or even that I don’t sometimes read your tweets), it just means I’m just a regular guy who only has so much room in his house. The way to get me to follow and keep following is to be fun and interesting and engage me: make me smile and I’ll invite you to my little house party.

***About My Other Blogs***

• Maximum: Using our own domains - One “big” Wordpress blog is for my huge rants, which is sorely neglected because I don’t often have the energy to write there - usually because I take a long time to write those posts. Also, I have my Picture of the Day blog in Wordpress and another one that talks about photography that I have never really put much into. See links on my Tumblr pages to find them (the links don’t show on your dashboard, but the RSS feeds from them are pulled in here).
• Medium: Tumblr is my central clearing station for pretty much everything because it integrates well with Twitter -I only joined Tumblr AFTER seeing how people used it in conjunction with Twitter when they had more to say than what fits in 140 characters - that was mostly influenced by @joeschmitt and @abigvictory. Tumblr lets me rattle off those little single-draft off-the-top-of-my-head rants,as well as make stupid comments on reblogs and share some pictures. MOST things I post on Tumblr have taken less than 30 minutes to compose.

Favrd or Favstar or Whatever

bakemyfish:

I star a lot of tweets.  Because of the limitations of Twitter sometimes the people starred don’t get the credit.  My Avatar doesn’t show up on their tweet on Favrd or Favstar or whatever.  I’m concerned they will not get their due and may not move up the list and they will be hurt and think I don’t like them.  This insane competition of starring and being starred creates ill-will in some cases.

So, what I am doing here is giving you the link to my favorites and you can look through it for any star you felt was not given.  But, if it’s not here, it wasn’t starred.  http://twitter.com/bakemyfish/favorites Now stop pouting and go tweet something funny.

BMF

But you see, that’s where you’re wrong.

If you follow @Favstar on Twitter, he will use his crawler to deep-crawl the last 1000 favourites you marked. THAT’S why Favstar is ahead of the game in a technical sense. He’s trying to solve these issues.

Also, he doesn’t block tweets from showing up on his site that contain the word Favrd… unlike textism, who blocks tweets with favstar in them.