BellGab.com Archive

Quote from: SredniVashtar on July 19, 2019, 12:55:57 PM
I'd have thought you would have had a special affinity for George Eliot, as you both like pretending to be men.

Weeeee!  I missed you!  I've nearly spawned a whole 'nother sonnet for you.

I read Proust way too young and all I remember was him jacking off in the shrubbery.

Quote from: AZRAA on July 19, 2019, 12:50:53 PM

wither a book so interactive it had these magical powers?
... the late fees --- your very soul...

Oh you poor thing!  They're all over, usually going by the officious-sounding title "Registration Page" or something to that effect.

Quote from: albrecht on July 19, 2019, 12:01:20 PM
You could be the next Karl Ove KnausgÃ¥rd. (I have not attempted to read his long ramblings but, apparently, the critics love them, despite cribbing from Adolph for his first book title.)  I seem to recall a Murder, She Wrote episode in which a person wrote a fiction book that too closely identified real people in town and family- airing all the dirty laundry. Apparently he got criticism for this.

Yeah I haven't read it either, but it's on the list.  That whole thing where you novelize ordinary people just sounds too much like Silas Marner, which I hated.

See, no one will explain it except for dear, sweet Azz.  I have to imagine it is an inside joke from the iron-fist-in-the-velvet-glove era of the Falkie thread that people somehow forgot was a joke.

Quote from: AZRAA on July 19, 2019, 12:00:26 PM
The proper term is voyeurism - she uses their videos to vicariously live through them, then swiftly discards them for fresh "talent".

Think Epstein with a coterie aging 15 year olds.

Brig's skill is not in florid exposition, rather it is in psychological strip searching.

Edgy comparison!  Except for where they are mature adults and very willing exhibitionists. 

Prying the mask loose is the internet's game.  If the worst happens, you scrap it and start over.  People who don't understand this should have their computers taken away.

Quote from: albrecht on July 19, 2019, 11:49:56 AM
See? This could start chapter 2 of your bildungsroman in which you try to reconcile the avoidance of fat women wanting to hug and possess you and the actions of your grandparents pinching you and calling you fat. And the incongruity of a non-fat person, who seeks also to avoid the clutches of fat chicks, that bakes so much, and seems to enjoy it, needs to be addressed in chapter 3. As baking will attract fat women and, more often than not, also causes the baker to gain weight while sampling their wares.

Haha I would be loath to offer such transparent psychology as novel fodder but God knows much as been built on far less.

Quote from: Roswells, Art on July 19, 2019, 11:25:41 AM
K_Dubb! RUN! You don't have to be very quick though, it's like being chased by a zombie. Just don't trip!

I really wish someone would explain what brig does that is so horrible.  The worst I've seen her do is make the same pointed observations everyone else is thinking, which I've come to regard as a virtue at least in Bellgabian terms.

Maybe because neither of my grandmas was they hugs-and-cookies kind (both would pinch you and tell you you were getting fat) I do not have the jarring image discordance some people seem to remark.  And she can be sweet, in her way.

Quote from: AZRAA on July 19, 2019, 09:15:00 AM
You couldn't just have baked up a storm?



feh...there is a subscription model waiting for you and your comestibles in north america....

try harder....Brig needs coffee cake...

Oh if only a batch of cookies could balance out a hand-made fountain pen, or a bowl of satiny maple some guy turned in his garage, so thin you can see light through it!  Painted rocks must not have been a thing yet because I didn't get any of those.

Quote from: brig on July 18, 2019, 11:02:15 AM
I, for one, would be sure to support you, should you decide to embark onna YouTube adventure of your own. 

Would you believe I've already done it?  Years ago, before ads.  The gifting shocked me, and finally did me in -- to decently reciprocate the collective generosity of several hundred people is impossible for one man to do.

Quote from: AZRAA on July 18, 2019, 11:03:41 AM
The lack of consensus seems to be more of a thing than your prior comestibles driven reveries would have indicated....

But hominid predation is largely group-driven.

I have made some bold and vigorous, barely supportable assertions in the baking thread hoping to inspire a good, old-fashioned donnybrook -- which country makes the best almond tarts was but the latest example -- but the Sunday-morning calm of Bellgab remained unbroken.

Quote from: albrecht on July 18, 2019, 10:09:12 AM
You should be an author. What a perfect sentence in which to introduce the reader into the tribulations of your autobiography, or even just a novel written in the first person. Bravo!

Haha thanks but I've learned here that a youtube channel for sharing every mundane detail of your autobiography is sure to be successful and rewarding.

Quote from: AZRAA on July 18, 2019, 09:32:52 AM

But is this not a comparative harm rationalization?

If so, bring on the bus!

It depends on what motive you ascribe to people like Erinn.  Do they post as pure self-expression, which is a natural right ("Every man has the right to talk about himself, so long as he is amusing." -- Baudelaire), in which case the decent response to all the awkwardness is to hurry past and pretend not to notice, or do they want attention and response?

If the latter (which I strongly suspect -- she wouldn't post a thing without a chat or comment section), seeing only supportive responses would be an unnatural distortion and, if she's trying out a new persona, a real disservice.

Besides, videoing yourself is inherently narcissistic -- what's the first thing people usually record themselves doing? -- and anything that jerks you out of that endless mirror-gazing and forces you to confront society is ultimately helpful.

So, yeah, I appreciate the point you're making, particularly as it is unpopular and you are the only one making it, but I disagree.

Quote from: albrecht on July 18, 2019, 09:02:51 AM
There is wisdom here because it is true. Everyone laughs, even if they are polite enough to only do so on the 'inside' or just roll eyes to others around.  I recently was on United Flight and there was a spectacularly large gal, who was also loud, and had lots of problems getting down the walkway (one of those terminals where the walkway was temporary and long,) and then the plane's aisle, and getting her suitcases into the overhead bin.

She yelled and her skinny, pale boyfriend comes up and puts her suitcases up there. It looked like a Herculean effort on his part to lift the bags. And then she directed him to the middle-seat, after he took his assigned aisle seat. I laughed. The large woman also brought on food and proceeded to wolf down some kind of "wrap" before we even took off! He didn't have any food. The girl next to me snickered. And others, including the stewardess, rolled her eyes.

See, you know it's true!  Wherever I go, I leave a trail of broken, prediabetic hearts in my wake.  You have no idea how many padded embraces I have dodged, or how they look at me with the same proprietary gleam with which they regard the last Cinnabon on the cart.

Quote from: albrecht on July 18, 2019, 08:11:07 AM
Where does K_Dubb stand on the "lazy eye" situation? In his defense, Akwilly is in a very cold environment and a box of burning poo and that little pup isn't going to keep one as warm as a drunk, fat girl; lazy eye or not.

Lazy eye would be ok; I'd deal with it.  It's the fat that is the no-go -- I refuse to be the skinny guy with the fat chick everyone laughs at.  I don't care how cold it is.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on July 17, 2019, 11:10:30 PM
So I've got a second hand Id?   Don't much like the sounds of that.

Oh I think the id is yours, but you have a designer superego.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on July 17, 2019, 10:44:52 PM
At the end you almost appeal to my inner engineer.  I would put it as "She should unass herself and move on with her life.  Next problem, please."

Haha there is something mechanical about it, like becoming a cog in society's machine.  I suppose a psychiatrist practicing it would be more like your high school guidance counselor.

If I remember right, the task of creating new personae is left to a statistical handful of truly exceptional people while the vast multitudes just follow in their innumerable wakes.

Quote from: WOTR on July 17, 2019, 10:11:07 PM
I honestly cannot argue with the main point... People absolutely try on identities and adopt them wholesale, piecemeal, or reject them. I had never considered that Youtube could actually be useful for that.

Assuming that you are correct- are you suggesting that people try on identities and then put them out for comment and base their acceptance of various traits on how others (their "followers") react rather than how well it truly fits them? If so, that is a rather sad commentary on the state of how well some people know themselves, and how pliable they must be willing to be for acceptance.

Yes; happiness comes from accepting (with, one hopes, full awareness of what one is doing, and a little spackle and putty) one of society's near-infinite number of predefined personae, already smoothed by usage with all the sharp edges worn down, and filling it as best as one can.  The idea of a true self, in this view, comes from 19th-century romanticism and the particularly American myth of the rugged individual, the pursuit of which leads to ostracism and hermitry, contrasted with the earlier age's emphasis on keeping one's station.

We forget that "To thine own self be true" was spoken by the glib and tedious Polonius, who Hamlet later stabs.

To expand, I think her dress-up and girlish prattle is an attempt to pull off an identity more appropriate to a teenager and that the sooner she learns how ill it fits a mature woman, the happier she'll be.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on July 17, 2019, 09:57:10 PM
*Sigh*   Cue the buzzer sound.  The correct answer was:

"Or someone will end up pregnant and I will end up shitting in a box and burning it out back."

If you haven't learned that yet...............  You may want to seek more life advice here on Bellgab.  I'd hate to see that happen to the poet  laureate.

Oh shit is that how that started?  I never knew.

Though out of the ashes of that conflagration came my first, and still best, sonnet:

The ships of ancient chiefs became their pyres
When thralls consigned their bodies to their arks;
Our hero's bowels kindle mighty fires,
And turds ascend at night in show'rs of sparks...

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on July 17, 2019, 09:49:35 PM
Or?    C'mon now.

Or, don't shelter obese women?  That seems unnecessarily cruel.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on July 17, 2019, 09:43:25 PM
Well at least you booted her after one too many cheese wedges were defiled. Safe to assume you learned from the experience?
I'd hate you to end up with some sort of Akwilly situation.

Yes:  when sheltering obese women, don't buy cheese.

Quote from: brig on July 17, 2019, 09:39:35 PM
You could always try setting up a page on BumbleDate, and sending Erinn a note.

#ImJustTryingToHelp

I think Jacky should try it.  I've cast my net on the other side of the boat.  There's a lot more fish, just as the Lord said there would be.

Quote from: WOTR on July 17, 2019, 09:11:38 PM
"Damn it Jack, I'm a poet, not a statistician!"

I suppose you could be correct about her using youtube as a diary- but I would suggest that once you post your diary online you distort who you are, self-censor, and try to present yourself in a way for other people rather than for yourself.

I maintain my stance that even if it feels therapeutic, it does more harm to somebody already unstable than it does good.*

*Senda, of course, being the exception to the rule.

See here I will resort to masking again which maintains that there is no true self but only a succession of identities we assume until we find one (or many, really, depending on circumstances) that is comfortable, and suggest that youtube is a good vehicle for test-driving.  She might be nothing like we see in real life.

I wish I could remember the book -- it was just required reading for my friend's psychology degree that he let me borrow, so I think it was pretty mainstream.

Quote from: Jackstar on July 17, 2019, 08:59:38 PM
I stand by my assessment. Way more crazy than hot. What kind of guy looks past crazy? Fuckin' losers, that's what kind. She might be a lunatic, but she's not pure stupid.

She's also lonely and sad.  But I've always been the kind to take in strays, including an obese woman with a cockamamie story about her husband abusing her at home and having nowhere to go.  She ate the points off all my cheese wedges, which are the best part.

When I kicked her out, he helped her move.  He was scrawnier than I am.

Quote from: brig on July 17, 2019, 08:40:49 PM
Erinn likes pretending to be a unicorn, if that helps.  She even has a unicorn shower cap from Wish, that she had on during one of her videos.  She did try on the cupcake shower cap, but quickly changed back into the unicorn shower cap.

Now this is strictly speculation, but I suppose the reason she wears shower caps in bed, is to protect her hair from leaks in the ceiling.

#ICouldBeWrong

I would suspect some sort of leave-in treatment to keep her hair from falling out, or even just to prevent the pulling and breakage that results from sleeping on long hair.

Quote from: Jackstar on July 17, 2019, 07:28:35 PM
Look, look, there it is, there it is--the romance.

I am a fucking poet.  You are the guy who brought out the charts.

Quote from: Jackstar on July 17, 2019, 06:20:22 PM

It's time for a refresher course.

Well I was only plotting x-axis.  But if you want to talk y, how many kids (who'd usually be teenagers by now) and the resulting divided loyalties would it take to beat her crazy score in an otherwise-sane woman?  Not even one.

Quote from: Jackstar on July 17, 2019, 05:43:19 PM
To be fair, anyone finding her attractive is likely insane.

Is that true?  I'm no great judge of horseflesh but, to a mid-forties suburban or rural guy looking for age parity (admittedly a rarity), I would think being thin and having long hair and no kids might put her in the top 20% maybe, kind of like Heather -- not bad, really, if her personality was decent.  Outside the big cities, it's a wasteland.

Quote from: WOTR on July 17, 2019, 05:10:49 PM
All that I'm going to point out is that I am the PRO-BONO official self-appointed life coach of Bellgab (in case your insurance sucks.) Anyhow, it's good to hear that she went to the next best thing (her priest) and it sounds like maybe he gave her some good advice. I'm just curious if he offered her the advice to take a break from social media? (Of course it distorts everything.)

It sounds like keeping a diary might be a healthier alternative for a month...

Isn't there a possibility that treating videos as a diary that sometimes talks back might be therapeutic to these people?  Sort of a hey world what do you think of this? 

I'm sorry I have not kept up with everything but if I could condense Bellgab's contributions to her inner dialogue they might be something like 1) she has a negative, destructive reaction to the men who find her attractive, 2) she's not as pretty as she thinks she is, 3) she needs to fix her house and get away from her codependent mother, 4) her relations with the opposite sex are mercenary, etc. -- all critiques that feel accurate to me, if not always helpful.  They're the kind of observations to which a healthy person might devote some consideration, even gratitude.

That's why, as much as I respect Azz's insistence that we view these people as fellow humans worthy of compassion, I think that, as long as they insist on oversharing, they are harmed far more by "fans" who reinforce aberrant behavior than by brig's acid tongue.

Quote from: Roswells, Art on July 17, 2019, 02:33:43 PM
He's been absent for awhile. Did your poetry finally do him in?

The Vogons would approve.

RIP Sredni

Haha I have goaded him mercilessly, which I fancy was a new sensation for him.  I am not sorry; some of his sorties have been mean, not in the Mean Girls sense as much as low and cheap.

I am sorry if he's gone, though -- his education is far superior to my humble pretense to it (or anyone I know, really) and the chance to talk to him was the main reason I joined up.  Nor am I foolish enough to claim victory, as the minute my back is turned he will charge out of nowhere and gore me in a vulnerable spot.  I will content myself with observing that the matador is generally held to be smarter than the bull.

Damn, these britches are fancy.

Quote from: albrecht on July 17, 2019, 12:33:45 PM
Yeah, there are several sedevacantist churches ("Traditional Catholic," "Old Catholic," etc, who are anti-Vatican II or, as term implies, "the seat is empty," and the current Pope/s are not legitimate) and usually they are more "hardcore" than the current Roman Catholic Church. This guy though seemed even at odds with the current, often liberal (at least in terms of tradition,) Catholic Church with his "no hell," "people are all born good," and seemed to be more inline with the new-agey stuff- not Catholic or even other Christian churches in terms of his ideas, doctrine, helping spirits crossing to the light, etc. But got a degree from legit Catholic schools, got ordained, and apparently a Dominican. Who knows? 

Ha! But I love "Red Dawn" and what a great example of the zeitgeist at the time.

ps: I want Kathleen Keating back on again to address her prophecies that, apparently, didn't happen and predict what will happen soon.....

I don't know; Wordsworth, who was no religious rebel, wrote:

Quote
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
          Hath had elsewhere its setting
               And cometh from afar;
          Not in entire forgetfulness,
          And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
               From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
               Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
               He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
     Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
          And by the vision splendid
          Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Most of that whole original sin vs. image of God thing is just dumb people whose minds can't contain both sides of the question.