Skype Blackmail

A friend of mine called me to tell me a story of his friend, whom I'll call "Tony". We'll call my friend "John". John and Tony go a long ways back and one day John got a Facebook friend request from Tony. John didn't think much of it: Sometimes people will open a second FB account for various reasons. He friended this new supposed Tony and was suddenly shown a series of ...shall we say... compromising photos of Tony, naked, in front of his lit computer screen.

Immediately John unfriended this new account, reported and blocked it. Then he called Tony. "Yeah, I know," Tony answered resignedly, instead of his usual simple "hello."

Tony had been getting hot and heavy with a girl he'd met online, and during a mutual...encounter... on Skype, the girl had been secretly recording Tony. She later took screenshots and attempted to blackmail him. When Tony refused to pay the blackmail, she set out to "friend" everyone on his friends list in order to send them the photos.

"Yeah," said John. "So he was pretty resigned to it. I mean, what can you do? He's got a good sense of humor about it. I did post on his Facebook page that I'd seen a lot more of him lately. A WHOLE lot more."

Obama in Cuba

So Obama says, congenially, to Cuban president Castro that America and Cuba have much in common because both were built by slave traders. I suppose he has forgotten his American history lessons by now. Also, he adds that Miami was built by Cubans, another major gaffe. Talk about rewriting history through straight-up lies. I've never seen anything like this in my life time. He is doing such incredible damage right now, with our international allies and enemies alike

Gone But Not Forgotten

I just saw an ad for customizable tees that say "You're gone but not forgotten" and then you can add your loved one's name and death date. We also see similar memorials on cars, etc. It got me thinking: How important IS it to not be forgotten? Why should it matter?

If you believe in an afterlife as I do, chances are that person is now very busy and they've moved on: They would be sad to think you haven't. And if there isn't such a thing as an afterlife, they simply blinked out of existence: Again, they simply don't care since they've ceased to exist.

And yet while we're alive, we DO care what impact we have. *I* care. While I don't want anyone going around sporting a tribute to me on their back, I do hope that I have affected others to the point that I have enriched lives. I hope that, perhaps, I have created permanent alterations for the good in them.

I think of those in my life who did that for me. The family members, friends, and college professors who helped me reshape my thinking to make me a better person. There are times I do something instinctually now that once took practice to develop, all because of the prompting of someone in my life who influenced me to be a better person.

May I be that person to someone else.

Teen Angst

Listening to the latest rebellious teen angst heavy metal song, and reflecting upon how we all were, at one time, a generation that thought we were unique in our rebellion. We also had songs almost identical to these, screaming defiance at people that we thought were the authority figures keeping us down. Then we grew up, and found out that there really is no such establishment. What we all were, and are, rebelling against is life itself and there is no cure for that.

Intellectual

An acquaintance who's a body builder called me to chat.

"Hey you know what," I said, "I have a friend who might be the perfect girl for you. She's a power lifter and beautiful but there is one thing that she can't compromise on, and I don't know enough about you to tell... so let me ask you: She's very intellectual. Would you consider yourself intellectual?"

"What's that?" he asked.

Question answered.

Phonetics

The girl's name is spelled Janyi on her form. "Nice to meet you, 'Jan-yee', I say.

"It's 'Juh-NIE,' just pronounce it the way it's spelled," says her grandma.

Guess they don't teach phonetics in Georgia.

Interviewing Tip

It is of supreme arrogance to not show up for an interview with me and then text me to TELL me you are going to show up for an interview with me the following day at a time of your choosing. Think again.

I'm a Conservative Feminist

I just saw a headline "Meet the Cute Blond who Hates Feminists" on a major conservative news source. This is wrong on so many levels. 

I am a conservative female and I am a feminist. 

I was speaking on the radio recently and when I mentioned I was a feminist, the host was confused. A conservative? Who's feminist? How can that be? He asked me to explain myself.

This shows how much feminism has been rebranded and conscripted by the left. The original feminists merely expected and demanded equal rights, such as the right to vote and the right to work. They wanted to be truly seen as equal whenever possible. How many people know that there were many women in the 1800s who couldn't even read, because some men felt that reading would give a woman "brain fever"? Many fathers forbid their daughters to read. Reading was for men: Women were keepers of the home and hearth.

If you take a few moments to research the suffragettes, you learn of their true sufferings and struggle to merely get women the right to vote. Women were constantly persecuted with immunity by their husbands because they were seen as property. If you beat your wife, it was entirely your right to do so, unless it got out of hand. It wasn't until 1962 that spousal rape was defined. Until then, if a husband came home drunk and in a rage and decided to rape his wife, it was perfectly fine: She had asked for it by signing up for marriage in the first place. It wasn't until 1965 that it was made illegal to discriminate against women.

And yet, when Hillary ran for President in 2008, there were some conservative men who thought it was terribly funny to wear t-shirts that read "Hillary: Get into the kitchen and make me a sandwich." I greatly disliked Hillary, but I was terribly offended that these morons didn't try to take on her policies. They felt a simple "putting her in her place" was all that was needed. As I pointed out then, no one dared to produce tees that said "Obama: Get into those fields and pick me some cotton" but overt sexism was acceptable to many conservative men.

So back to the headline: Obviously it was written by a conservative male who likes "keeping the little woman in her place." It is simply oozing with patronization and sexism. And the "cute little blond" is the fool who is perpetuating this. 

Does she realize that if she lived in the 1800s she might never have been educated at all? Does she realize that until 1919 her views on politics would have been seen as ludicrous? These rights were not naturally given to us. They were not even handed to us by men. They were fought for, women were brutalized and died for these rights. They are not rights to be taken lightly.

I am proud to be be a feminist. I will take on that "cute little blond" any day.

With Candidates, Size DOES Matter

Last night was the first Presidential debate in our history where penis size became the measure of a man. After Rubio recently descended to new depths to allege Trump has a small one, Trump proudly proclaimed on stage in the final debate that he is well endowed. We can all rest easier, now. But...

It's interesting to see the Republican establishment has grown so nervous that they've even taken Romney out, dusted him off, and fed him lines in the mistaken belief that anyone voted for him because of his charisma. At the same time, they're pouring their resources into another establishment candidate: Rubio, who is guaranteed to be more of the same.

What they should have done then, and still refuse to do now, is acknowledge that the American voter is tired of electing politicians who promise to make changes, and then sit around doing nothing except make things worse.

The electorate is enchanted with the idea of change, or Obama would never have been elected. Even the Democratic party has forgotten that, as they trot out their old, tired warhorse of a candidate. This is why Bernie has generated interest.

The only way the Republican Establishment will win is to understand that things will never be the same again and it's time to let go of their cronyism, their stale ideas, and those deep pockets they have their fists thrust into.

I wanted Rand Paul. But if they decide to thrust aside everyone in favor of Cruz now, not even in a week from now, they might have a candidate who will be able to withstand an intelligent Democrat such as Bernie or Hillary. They have no more time to waste with pathetic manipulations or a candidate with little-to-no experience.

So does size matter? Absolutely.

Last night both Rubio and Trump showed themselves to be small minded men, incapable of adult discussions on stage in front of an entire nation. We need someone who can see the big picture: Someone who worries about American jobs being lost, who worries about our place in this world, who worries about the size of the debt and not the size of his penis.

We Have Become a Nation of Blind Shut-Ins

When I was young, we used to walk uphill to school, both ways, in the snow, and...

Wait. Wrong story.

We all laugh about the "when I was young" rants, don't we? Each generation has wanted better for their young and done their best to provide it, so those stories were told to remind the young how good they have it.

Home improvements that allowed us to work less and have more leisure time, such as microwaves, dishwashers, and the internet have eased the burdens. In fact, the internet has now become so prevalent that it has replaced the television in many homes, including mine.

We embraced the time saving gadgets: Almost every home has them. We incorporated them into our lives to a point that a home without a clothes washer and dryer set is considered incomplete. Laundromats are for the impoverished or the apartment dwellers. Unlike our grandparents and great grandparents, we have lots of time. Glorious time.

But what did our ancestors think we'd do with that time? They thought we'd be filling those additional hours with learning, education, self improvement. They assumed this was common sense. Very few of them thought they were working to create a nation of barely educated, self indulgent shut-ins.

For all the planning that has gone into labor saving devices, there was no planning for our leisure time.  No one said "For every hour you save doing the dishes, you need to study philosophy. While you're washing that load of laundry, you need to read the news." There has never been a standard.

Human nature being what it is, we gravitate toward the fun stuff. Exhibit A: As a nation, we're more obese than ever. Given a choice between a celery stalk and a potato chip, how many have the self-will to choose the piece of celery?

Additionally, since we have cars to get everywhere, how many of us walk to the corner store, even if it's literally on the corner? Now we have treadmills, if we can be bothered to use them. Thank heavens for my treadmill, may I add. But I don't have to use my treadmill and without the need to walk to the corner store or to work, I don't walk every day. My bad.

So what do most of us do with the extra leisure time? You already know, of course. According to the New York Daily News, we are watching 5 hours of TV a day. Five hours.

Is it any wonder we've become a nation of idiots who repeatedly elect the wrong people to office? Who don't know what's going in our nation, let alone in our world? Who know more about the latest contestant on The Voice than who the governor of our state is?

These actors have replaced friends, family, and education. We get our socialization needs met through these pseudo individuals. We no longer go to the neighbors to visit, because our "neighbors" are on HBO. Just as saccharine is a poor substitute for sugar, television is our artificial substitute for friendships.

And to take that one step further, porn has become a substitute for relationships. Porn is free on the internet, only one click away, and most of it is easily erased from our history and no longer comes with viruses attached. It's a cheap, easy thrill. Many experts are extremely worried about the newest generation, sometimes nicknamed The Porn Generation (I've written about this elsewhere).

Our grandparents and great grandparents stayed in marriages that weren't always ideal because they knew that there was no such thing as an ideal relationship. What made them stay together? Religion and societal pressure. Because sex was supposed to only happen in marriage, they got married. Because divorce was seen as evil, they stayed married. What do you do when you find yourself married to someone you think is less than ideal? You stick it out, you make it work, unless the circumstances are really dire.

But as religion began to be seen as passe, society threw away those ideals. Divorce became easy, so marriage became worthless. Commitments also became worthless. But still, if someone wanted to have sex, it was safest and easiest to settle down with just one person. Now porn has made it possible to even cut out the other person. For the Porn Generation, it's just you and that glowing computer screen.

Isaac Asimov once wrote of a society of shut-ins that had grown so phobic of other humans that they had to arrange artificial insemination in order for the society to survive. When I first read The Naked Sun I felt it was skillfully written, as all of Asimov's works are, but also highly improbable. And yet, I have come to see its inception.