Tag Archives: failure

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Fibbing Friday #262

Last week’s words from Pensitivty101, were put forward by Susan of The Abject Muse.  Thanks Susan!
Your definitions please!

These are all Syns Of The Fathers.  Apparently, Mothers never Syn.

1. Synergy

Wasn’t this that ‘Too Big To Fail’ gas and oil company that went down like the Titanic in 2001??!

2. Synonym

This is the name of the local Friendly Girl.  Often found on washroom partitions, under For A Good Time Call XXX-XXXX.

3. Synchronicity

I have finally learned how to be exactly as late as my doctor.  On my initial visit, he had me arrive at 6:30 AM to fill out forms, for a 7:00 o’clock appointment.  He wandered in at 7:05, disappeared, perhaps for a coffee, and at last saw me at 7:20.  😮

4. Syncopate

This is when the wife and I completely agree on any given subject.  It happens once 0.732 in a blue moon.

5. Synopsis

My parents had to keep a close eye on my female sibling.  Her Purity Pledge ring was beginning to show serious corrosion.

6. Synaesthesia

This is AI-produced, artificial pleasure and enjoyment.  It won’t be long before we shed our bodies, and live inside computer simulations.  We will voluntarily let The Matrix win.

7. Synaptosome

This is what Donald Trump, et al, lack.  A doctor examined The Donald, and declared him sane and fit to be President.  Now, I want the doctor examined, to see if he is sane, and fit to practice medicine – although I have some sympathy for him.  If he had given any other ruling, he might have been run over by a car…. in his living room, or fallen to his death from a ground-floor window.

8. Synanthropes

These are cynical ‘Good Christians’ who are loudly judgmental of other people’s failings, but sow their own wild oats from Monday to Saturday, and then go to church on Sunday, to pray for crop failure.

9. Synagogal

It is no wonder that the best lawyers are Jewish.  They’ve spent 5000 years arguing and negotiating with God.

10 Synaptid

That’s the sound of me opening my first cold one of the day.  Yum, yum, Waterloo Dark Lager, almost as good as Newcastle Brown Ale.

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Familiar Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 had some familiar things last week perhaps, but how would you define these?

1. What is a belly laugh?

What should you never do in bed??
Point and snicker.

2. What is a belly flop?

The (failed) result of my latest attempt at weight loss.

3.   What is a jelly belly?

One of the main reasons that number 2 is a failure.  I can’t ignore the siren song of home-made crab-apple jelly.  At least I didn’t commit a heathen American epicure assault, and combine it with peanut butter, for a PB & J – although the son admits that he did so once by cleaning out a jar of mint jelly intended for lamb chops.

4.   What is a yellowbelly?

It’s the type of wasp or hornet that Sting was named after.

5.   What is a liger?

Kellogg’s™ decided to branch out into ‘Adult Beverages.’  Liger is their Frosted Flakes-flavoured tiger lager, sorta named after the product’s mascot, and it’s Grreeaaattt.  They tried Snap, Crackle and Pop ale first, but it was all foam.

6.   What is a hoatzin?

It’s a large pie, stuffed with four-and-twenty blackbirds, and a thumbhole in the middle.

7.   What is a kinkajou?

He’s the Israeli with strange sexual tastes, who wrote Fifty Shades Of Matzo.

8.   What is a puggle?

It’s an entire litter of crossbreed puppies that look like they’re too dumb to stop before they run into a wall.

9.   What is a chimichanga?

I really shouldn’t make fun of seniors, ‘cause I is one, but – a chimichanga is a little, old, white-haired lady, who wants to hold up the checkout line, to pay for £57 worth of groceries with coins and BOGO coupons.

10. What is a snollygoster?

It’s what is known in many pubs as a closing-time-ten – only in Dundee, where men are men, and sheep are nervous.  Scotsmen wear kilts, so they don’t hear the zippers.

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Good Without God

A (relatively) new Atheist at seekinghistruthblog.wordpress.com had some things to say about

BEING A CHRISTIAN VS BEING AN ATHEIST
(MY EXPERIENCE)

Someone asked this in one of my groups:
What does an Atheist claim to see when holding a mirror to their mindset?

This made me think about how I used to feel and think and how I feel and think now.

What I used to see when I was Christian was a broken, sick, failing, struggling, worthless, unworthy, imperfect, felt-like-I-didn’t-belong anywhere, fearful, trapped, did not think I was judgmental but I was, person who was awaiting death to find freedom. The only beauty I saw was in something I was taught was there, but I could never see. I had moments I felt loved, but only when I felt I had asked for forgiveness for being me enough, or tried to be someone I wasn’t enough, which almost destroyed me many times.

What I see as an Atheist is a courageous, beautiful, caring, compassionate, loving, kind, strong, worthy, patient, understanding, nonjudgmental (my judgment resides in a space for when people cause harm to other people and animals for unjust immoral reasons), healing, desire to experience being human, mentally and emotionally free me. I struggle, but my struggles don’t carry so much weight. I fail, but I keep trying and see that each failure is one step closer to success. I’m imperfect but now realize that perfection doesn’t exist, as we are all so beautifully unique. I see beauty in this world I never saw before. I see me!

When all you have is God, you lose so much of your own humanity chasing a nonexistent deity and suppressing yourself. You lose more in a lifetime than you could ever imagine. Those spaces in my life when I was a Christian were stolen from me, as I was indoctrinated as a small child. It was time I could have experienced being human and not living in constant fear, inner turmoil, guilt-ridden, pain, and suffering, all coated in “God loves me and wants me to be this way or that, or I’ll burn in hell forever.” While I was singing, My chains have been loosed; I was carrying the heaviest of them on my shoulders. A burden I should’ve never had to bear.

This cat is no longer a Republican kitten, because their eyes are opened.  I think that they’ve come a long way, in a short time.  What do you think?  😀

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O No – O Not

 

Once upon a time, in olden Greece, there lived two little vowels, almost identical twins.

Recently, I was watching videos…. Perhaps on a site I shouldn’t have been at.  😳

Attention!  Your computer has notified us that it has been infected by a very contagious virus.  You have been locked out so that we can contain it.  Please call the toll-free number listed below so that we can erase it and prevent further infection.  Failure to do so can result in a permanent shutdown, and loss of files and data.

Not that I’ve ever received such a notice.  😉

I watched a young man talking about realizing something about these two Greek vowels.  In English, there is only one letter ‘O,’ but it is pronounced in two ways.  There is the long O, like in the word No, and the short O, like in the word Not.

In Greek, there are two Os – Omega, and Omicron.  He had just become conscious of the fact that – the long O, the big O – was O–mega, and the short O, the small O – was O–micron.  It’s so blindingly obvious…. after someone points it out to you.

He looked so familiar.  Who was this young man taking so much delight to explain such a minuscule linguistic detail about a foreign language, with such fervor?  My old eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I’m pretty sure it was me.

My next post, on the rapid increase of initialisms, will all be in English, despite the fact that there really is no such language.  FYI, LOL, LMAO, ROFL, FWIW, IDK, LY, TTYL.

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Walk This Way

We all do it, to some extent.  Christians do it more than Atheists.  What is IT??!

“IT” is to assume that other people think, feel, and act just like you do.

It is like comparing British English to American English.  The words are the same, but the conclusions they reach and the information they convey, are vastly different.  I think that I felt it, but I had it clearly pointed out to me by a young, Atheist YouTuber.

He had been raised as a fervent, evangelical Catholic.  In his teens, he began to question!!  By twenty, he admitted that he had become an Atheist.  His Bible-thumper Mother was appalled, and tried to lure/force him back.

First, she accused him of “Just blindly believing what those Atheist books say.” – because she blindly believed in a book.  He explained that he had not read most of the books she was worried about, and the couple that he had, he had not read until after he had declared himself an Atheist.

While he had not read the evil Atheist books, and had arrived at his position through years of careful study and research, she then accused him of just unquestioningly accepting the non-religious claims of Atheists who establish themselves in authority – because she unquestioningly accepts the self-declared authority of The Catholic Church.

I recently listened to a Christian apologist try to wiggle out from under an Atheist complaint about the Christian concept of infinite punishment in Hell, for the finite crime of not believing.  His justification was that, the infinite punishment was not for merely not believing, but that Atheists die, and go to be judged, and are cast into Hell, and the infinite punishment is because, even in Hell, they continue to ‘deny God.’

I find this apologist scenario preposterous.  Any Atheist who dies, expecting to just fade out, who finds his spirit, his soul, his consciousness, his personality, still coherent and miraculously transported to Heaven, faces God, is condemned to Hell, and who is suffering horrible tortures – would admit to observed reality and accepted truth – not petulantly continue to ‘deny God,’ whatever that means.  But the Christian apologist believes that the Atheist would – because he would!

Frank Turek, a Christian debater, whose slick, used-car-salesman face beams down from the top of this post, was asked if there was any information or argument that might make him change his mind.  He responded with a Bible verse which orders the loyal to reject anything which might cause them to doubt.  No matter how reliable, proven, or convincing the facts and evidence are, Turek and his ilk will simply deny it!  😳

To even try for a non-believer to have a discussion with a Christian about morals/morality, seems doomed to failure.  It will not become a debate or a conversation.  It is like two solitudes, shouting past each other.

The Christian will allege that there are Objective Morals, things which are good or evil, whether or not people exist.  Without any evidence that either of them exists, they claim that God defines and enforces morals, despite the fact that great swathes of Good Christians disregard and disobey them, filling prisons, divorce courts and rehab facilities.

The very words morals, and morality have been hijacked by Christian debaters.  Like sin, they are something that their God wants mankind to do, or not do.  Atheists have ethics, and evolution-induced empathy.  If Atheists can get Christians to agree that reduction of harm and increase in happiness and wellbeing is an acceptable subjective basis, then we have Objective Atheist Morals, and all without God.

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What If??  What If?? What If??

Oh goody!  We’re going to play a game of What If.  I have not been amused or entertained by one of those for years.

Let’s say you were in a naval battle in the middle of the ocean and your ship was destroyed so you are in very cold water. You know that you need to act now to get on a ship or you will die. Now there are 4 ships that you can swim to. But it looks like all the ships are very badly damaged and unlikely to be seaworthy enough to save you. It’s hard to tell from your position but as best you can tell one ship has a 5% chance but the others have less than a 2% chance of being seaworthy enough to save you. 

What do you do? Do you think well no one has “proven” or “verified” that any of these ships will save me so I might as well die in the water? Or do you start swimming to the ship that gives you a five percent chance (the best shot)? I think that is the obvious choice. You are not in a position to demand “proofs” or “verification.” You just have to make do with the information you have. 

I think this is analogous to the situation we are in when it comes to how we should live. We can’t pause our life until someone can prove how we are supposed to live. We choose to act or not act all the time. And we can’t insist on verification or proof beyond what we have. We just have to take our best shot. 

For me I think following Christ’s teachings is the “best shot.” I may wish I had better evidence or proofs but reality does not bend to my wishes. The rational person bends his beliefs and actions to reality.

People often believe that they are thinking, when all they’re really doing is rearranging their prejudices.  So, you’re going to dream up a scenario that is so outlandish and restrictive, that it makes your already-decided-on choice look good barely acceptable.

I am disturbed that you would advocate a selection with a 95% chance of failure, but, as you inferred, It’s (barely) better than nothing.  Desperation is not considered a good method of choice.  It usually results in wrong decisions.  Even choice is a bad method.  You can attend a Christian church, and repeat all the magic words, but it won’t produce the honest, true-hearted Belief that the unwritten rules call for.

I’d like to ask what mechanism you used to determine what percentage of success your choice, both in real life and in your specious analogy, had.  I see none, other than desperation and gullibility – only an unproven claim.

Unlike your fantasy-novel format, in real life it is both possible and advisable to do some research, so that you don’t end up in these religious shipwreck scenarios.

What if that water isn’t as cold and deep as you believe?  What if you were just told that, by the guy who runs the life-preserver franchise?  What if, no matter which ship you swam to, it sank and drowned you?  What if the ship you chose was an enemy vessel, and the agents of Allah tortured you to death?  What if you stopped panicking, and used your strength and determination to swim toward the big orange rubber raft that the rescue helicopter just dropped, labelled Reason/Reality?  What if you’re not Captain James T. Kirk, and there just is no right answer?

What if you summarily dismiss all of my What Ifs, because you think that they sound almost as silly as your What Ifs??!

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Flash Fiction #240

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

IMPRISONED INTELLIGENCE

In 1960s America, civil rights was still just a dream for many.  What should have been an inalienable right – Voting – sometimes had conditions.  Negroes had to Prove they were educated, Prove that they were intelligent enough to vote.

A Negro in Alabama approached a polling station.  A redneck Cracker handed him a copy of the Hebrew Times to read.  When he couldn’t, he was given a sheet of waxed paper and a ballpoint pen, and told to write his name.

When he failed that several times, he said, “I just don’t understand it.  I could read and write this morning.”   😯

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Join the fun.  Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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Error 404

Error 404

It was cute the first time.  This is just pathetic.  😛

The management regrets that the regularly scheduled blogpost is not available at this time, because of non-production problems.  A nap stretched into a coma, and my Muse was not amused.

Any of you who came here expecting humor, wit, interesting trivia, or even another numb-minded and mind-numbing rant, please click on the link another day. All of the aforementioned, and even more, will be provided.   😀

Normal programming will resume on Monday, Jan. 27/20, with a cascade of comedy.  Anyone who wishes to do so may stop at the box office on the way out, and a full refund will be issued.

Confused Emoji

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Flash Fiction #193

box-office-ted-strutz

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

ETAIL/RETAIL

The world, she is a-changin’. Nothing is sure but death and taxes, and a photo with two adjacent signs which say ‘Pine’ ‘BOX’, make that evident. Did Amazon become successful because retail chains failed, or are retail chains failing because Amazon successfully serves the market?

Where does Amazon get all its boxes? Where stores were once required to compress and dispose of cardboard packaging, now my garage is full of little boxes. Amazon could come around and pick up a bunch of ‘em.

I bought a cross-cut shredder to protect from identity theft, but I won’t buy a damned compactor.

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Friday Fictioneers

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Smitty’s Loose Change #10

Smitty's Loose Change

A screenwriter was paid $25,000 for two days work, to produce an outline for a successful movie. A story reported that he was given 25,000 “Big Ones”.   Now, twenty-five thousand dollars can be described, in slang, as 25 Thou, 25 Grand, 25 Gs, or even as 25 Big Ones, but, if there are 25,000 of them, they’re not Big Ones, they’re all little ones. I’ve read writers like this described as knowing the difference between wet and dry, but feeling that it’s a fine distinction.

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I recently discovered something even worse than helicopter parents. These are lawn-mower parents, who precede their children, and mow down every possible problem, obstacle and hindrance to their life. They conceal the realities of life for their unfortunate children and allow them no chance to mature and grow, to become self-sufficient, and to learn from experience and failure, and how to adapt.

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The Universe of Politically-Correct speech continues to expand and grow. I recently read an account of a small-plane crash which killed three people, described as a shatter landing. No George Carlin bathroom tissue was involved.

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The Grammar Check needs a slap as badly as the Spell Check. I typed I wonder what Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin tasted like into a one-liner comedy post, and got back, ‘I wonder what Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin is.’ 😯

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Bag man, and bag lady, mean completely different things.

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I recently bought myself a box of Wheat Thins crackers, as an occasional snack…. because I like Wheat Thins, and they were on sale. I opened the box, took a small handful, and sat down with a book. I popped one into my mouth and crunched it, and – What in Hell is this petrified wallpaper paste??!

My weak eyes and weak mind must have made me pick up the wrong thing. No. The box clearly says “Wheat Thins,” – but, as I look closer – under that, it says ‘Multigrain.” You assholes do know that oats, barley, quinoa and chia don’t make “WHEAT Thins”, right??! I would have been better off just cutting the cardboard box into small squares, and eating it. Now I know why they were on sale.  😯

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I also recently astounded my chiropractor. The clinic where he practices also has two massage therapists. I took the wife in for massage, and sat out front waiting and reading a newspaper. When he stepped out of his office, his eyes went wide.

“In all the time I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen anybody read a newspaper here. They all have their noses stuck into the blue glow of their smart phones or tablets. They bring a book, or they leaf through one of our magazines, but I’ve never seen a newspaper in this waiting room.”

I told him that I never have to worry if the ISP is down, I don’t have to ask for the Wi-Fi password, and my batteries are never low – although occasionally I have to remember to sharpen the pencil that I do crosswords and word jumbles with.

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