Tag Archives: abuse

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Blog Theme Prompt – What Romance Means To Me

I envy those who marry for love – I really do, but despite the almost universal consensus of feel-good books and movies, I actually see it so seldom.  I only personally know of two couples who did it – and in one case, it was his fourth attempt, and her second – although, after more than ten years, it seems to be working.

My 35-year-old, divorced Mother returned to our home town.  Quite soon, friends and family introduced her to a 28-year-old bachelor from a nearby town – because they both needed to be married. There was some respect and admiration, but it was several years before they learned to live as a unit.  There were some sharp points that never got filed off.

Her younger, fail-to-launch brother lived at home until their parents both died, and he inherited the house.  Then, he needed someone to cook and clean.  The same group found him a war-widow from the same town as my Dad.  Their marriage lasted many years, but could best be described as an alcohol-soaked armed truce.

At least my 16-year-old sister waited until she married her hard-drinking, partier boyfriend, before she started popping out babies.  My brother quietly married his girlfriend shortly after they found that she was pregnant.  She waited till he went to work one Friday, and moved herself, their two high school-aged daughters, and almost all the furniture, out.

With my low-level autism/Aspergers, I didn’t (and don’t) catch social cues well.  In retrospect, I think there were a couple of females who made overtures, but I was not socially, emotionally, or financially ready for marriage.  If I’d got some girl pregnant, we’d have wound up living in a dead-end small town, with me working at a gas station, as my brother did for a while.

I absorbed as much education/training as I could, and got my first real, full-time job, before I married the first woman who seemed willing to put up with me.  This was the one who bragged to the neighbors that she married a smart man, because smart men made more money – enough to support her in the style that she wished to become accustomed to.  This was a socio-economic pact, similar to Middle Ages marriage contracts.  I do something for her, and our growing family, and she does something for me and the kids.

Her older siblings all seemed to have moved out and got married to escape an arrogant, overbearing, abusive, Catholic-crazy father.  Of the eight siblings, only one couple ever seemed to show true love and affection.  The rest were all the result of social expectation and financial support.  Romance did not seem to be in common supply.

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WOW #59

Here’s a soft, sweet piece of nostalgia for this week’s Word Of the Week

POTSY

Potsy means = hopscotch, and several dictionary websites have no idea why, except to say that it is an Americanism, first noted 1930 – 35.  The ‘scotch’ in hopscotch is a line – cut, or scored – made a mark.  This is why Macbeth said, “We have scotched the snake, not killed it.”  Sweet butterscotch is removed from a large, flat sheet by cutting or scoring it.  I thought that butterscotch was a gateway drug for teenage drinking.  You loved Butter Beer at Harry Potter’s, now try our single malt – Butter Scotch.

Potsy

In the popular TV series, Happy Days, Anson Williams played the character of Potsy (actually, Potsie) Weber, which matched the goofy, likable character of Skippy, in the Family Ties series.  Both nicknames may have been applied because of their nerdy, ADHD type of erratic behavior, bouncing and skipping from subject to subject.

Potsy (or Potsie) is obviously just a nickname, and not very common.  Other than the Happy Days reference, the only other ‘Potsy’ I could find was Thomas Clinton –Tom – ‘Potsy’ Jones (1909 – 1980), who played NFL football for eight years in the early 1930s, for four different teams.

Despite extensive research (alright, I Googled it and got no answer), I can’t find how/why/when he acquired it.  Now that Canada has legalized marijuana, I wonder if we’ll start hearing of more Canucks named Potsy, who are One Toke Over The Line.

It would be sweet if you’d hop back here on Monday, to see what verbal abuse I’ve inflicted on the English language, in the name of the letter F.  There’s no need for social distancing, so you won’t have to form a line.  😀

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Rylah Reblog

Extra Extra

This is not precisely a ‘reblog.’ I have decided to republish a Second Opinion newspaper column, submitted about 15 years ago, by my daughter, who now presents her opinions on her own Ryl’s Rostrum website.

Lady Ryl of Kitchener is a single mother learning about New and Old Age spiritual practices.

New Age religions also teach love and honor!

I found it disconcerting that, in her Second Opinion, Erika Kubassek could be so biased in her opinion concerning the New Age movement.

I am an apprentice of the Old Ways, and see more good in them than she would have people believe.

I know people who follow the new Earth-based beliefs and ideals, and see nothing destructive about their way of life. I have friends who are pagan in their belief, yet have raised their children to be kind and loving.  In fact, they have been a model to change abusive parenting habits, which my maternal relatives’ Christian family passed on, as “the way children should be raised.”

By whose standard does Kubassek feel that New Age ideas are counterfeit? Could it be that my maternal relatives’ negative and abusive past should be the ways to build my family’s future, just because they were “Good Christians?”

She says that the New Age quest is to replace Christianity, and asks what spirits we are replacing it with. We are not replacing Christianity, but are endeavoring to find our own self or ‘spirit’, not some preformed and unbending mould that we must fit into.

For those who follow a different path, conceivably it is because we have failed to find fulfilment in sturdy Christian values.

I accept that some will twist this to their own advantage, but haven’t some “Good Christians” taken over lives in the name of God? Paganism is not the slaughter of life to evil gods, nor the mass suicide of some cults.  For the people of the Heaven’s Gate, and Solar Temple cults, taking their own lives was a choice made of their own beliefs, sadly, taking their children along with them.

If Kubassek wishes to lay blame on New Age, and state that we are diametrically opposed, then perhaps she would like to meet a woman who would have given up on life, if it were not for the love of life that her ‘pagan’ enlightenment gave her.

We also teach to love and honor others, ourselves, and all life. All we seek is to find self-realization and fulfilment, and allow other people their own choice, without judgement or harassment.  The Romans, Greeks, Canaanites, Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Gaels, French, German, Dutch, Swedes, Finns, Native-Americans, Africans, Mexican, Japanese, and other nations in the world that originally started out with life-oriented ‘pagan’ beliefs, also gave birth to the ‘new’ religions.

The pagan creed has only one rule, but it is important. “Do what you will, only harm no-one!”  Perhaps Kubassek might be a little more ‘Christian’, and “Do unto others as she would have them do unto her.”  Now, doesn’t that sound familiar?

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Flat Earth – Flat Out Foolish

Flat Earth

Recently, a rapper with so much artistic creativity, that he named himself B.o.B., claimed that the Earth is flat, and went head to head with Neil DeGrasse Tyson about it. In a battle of wits, he was soon out of ammo.  It’s like bringing a knife to a – tank battle.

Tank

Soon after, I found a post titled ‘Flat Earth – the Truth. Why it doesn’t matter’ at this site.

Click on over if you enjoy incomplete thoughts, rambling construction, mis-spelling and –punctuation, reverse logic, no stated truth, conspiracy theories, or, just see below..

He had one (almost)good idea. He felt we shouldn’t worry about arguing whether the Earth is flat or not, because, “it’s not worth discussing until we sort the important stuff out such as not being ruled by psychopaths and switching to sustainable energy before we all die.”

Sadly though, short of revolution, there’s no way these can be accomplished without involving politicians, and discussing this stuff is how we judge which ones are capable. If the stand-up comedian from Nome female Governor of Alaska intentionally uses the non-word ‘squirmishes’ as a talking point, the word doesn’t matter, but the fact that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, does.  If not, here, on a small thing, where else, on a large scale, where it counts??

To elect a Flat-Earth believer, would be like electing Joey from ‘Friends’, who regularly said ‘supposably’, instead of ‘supposedly.’ George W. was ‘misunderestimated’ by voters, and elected, and then led around by his WMDs.

The ‘belief’ in a flat Earth is as strong as any religious tenet.  Like any religion, it is fractured into many sects, each one believing some theory more bizarre than the last.  Since they deny that Earth is a sphere, gravity can’t attract toward the center.  Somehow it just pulls ‘down.’

When interviewed, the leader of one group was asked why the Earth then doesn’t fall ‘down.’ He answered that the plate-shaped planet rests on the back of a giant tortoise.  “But then, the tortoise would fall ‘down’ also.”  Nope, he replied, it’s tortoises all the way down.

To explain gravity, another Flat-Earth group claims that the world is constantly rising, like an elevator, pushing things toward the surface. We’ve all felt that pressure as an elevator moves upward, but it doesn’t take long till it and we are moving at the same speed, and the pressure disappears.

For gravity to persist, the planet must not only be ‘rising,’ but constantly accelerating, moving faster and faster. It would take about three days before it reached the unreachable speed-of-light limit.  But if you don’t believe that Earth is ball-shaped, or that gravity exists, then you probably don’t believe in Newton’s, or Einstein’s daydreams either.  They do believe in some strange things though.

Warning – Here Be Dragons   😳

FLAT EARTH – the TRUTH. WHY IT DOESN’T MATTER

First – why I think it’s a psy-op. (but the psy-op is not the truth, that’s just my opinion.) The bottom line, on two angles, is “who does it benefit?” If the Earth really is flat, who did it benefit to lie about it? Nobody as far as I can tell, it’s a pointless lie. But if it’s the flat earth theory that’s a lie, who does it benefit? The government, cos now anyone that says, “I don’t trust the government” sounds like some nutcase who believes the Earth is flat. Next time we say “I think 911 was an inside job” some bell-end is gonna reply, “yeah, you probably think the Earth is flat as well. The other point is, give the theory the benefit of the doubt again – even if the Earth is flat – so what? That would be a massive lie, and have literally astronomical implications (yeah, I’m proud of that!) but it’s still just a harmless lie compared to hiding abusers in government positions and false flag attacks to justify amoral wars to install central banks and steal resources. So forger about it, it’s not worth discussing until we sort the important stuff out such as not being ruled by psychopaths and switching to sustainable energy before we all die.

The truth is – it doesn’t actually matter.

A few like this, and Trump could start looking good. And I didn’t even say a word about the shit that some Christians believe.