Chewing the fat

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Michael

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood. ~ George Santayana

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[Liz]

Sometimes I don't want to be serious, sometimes it's through hunour I communicate more seriously than at other times.
Sometimes when I think others take themselves too seriously, I want to break the tension.
Sometimes the world is too damn serious and I want to see the funny side to keep a sense of proportion.

Sometimes I just want to kick the shit around with my mates.

Should anyone feel similarly inclined, here's the very place to do it. failing that I'll turn into helen and talk to myself

Liz

[Bob D.]

Liz,

I'm feeling neither serious nor silly today--just sick as a dog.  But I will chew the fat with you a bit because 1)You're one of my favorite forum posters of all time and 2)I really don't want you to turn into Helen.  Nothing against Helen mind you, but the world only has room for one.

It'll be interesting to see where this "new" forum wanders.  My interest waxes and wanes as my life unfolds in ways I can harldly anticipate.  But I don't want to get all serious here, so I'll just post some random goofy emoticons: 

Wishing you the best in the New Year,

--Bob

[marianthi]

Yeah,

Sorry you?re feeling sick Bob (excessive celebrating?). 

Glad to see this thread up Liz.  When I read the tittle I thought it had to do with post Christmas recipees/diets.    Part of a thing I do in translating literally English expressions.  The expression?drop dead gorgeous? was a distressing one at first : sudden death after excessive beautifying?  Knifed in the streets after attracting too much attention?

And everyone: a happy new you!  My daughter used to sing it as such when she was little.
 

Marianthi.

[Michael]

Happy New You to all you fatchewers!  Thanks for hanging in here.  May 2007 be the best year yet for all of us Hopeless Romantics, Cynical Optimists, and Pronoiac Apprehensors.

And I hope you get feeling better Bob... 

-Michael 

[stilltraveler]

Liz - I like the idea - I too like to break the seriousness in me, break the tension, break the ice, break the cycle, break the mold when I dare.

Sometimes I write things and put things together that seem like such a mixture of emotional and ideational tones that the humor that I feel in writing certain phrases, which has me chuckling to myself, likely gets missed. Maybe if I put it in this "Chewing the fat - humorously" thread someone else might be as tickled as me at my wit. Take my last photo story of the Flimsy Family, for example. If I had posted it here, perhaps I wouldn't be the only person smiling loud. Well, to tell the real truth, I felt a great bubbling of deep visceral and heart laughter barely beneath the surface much of the day, at my own idiosyncratic and at life's ironic wit. Hell, I really still feel it, despite the absence of audible laughter and I'm smiling with some secret restraint.

Yes, part of this inner delight is the creating of a very custom mirror for oneself, for one's own narcissism, not automatically in a bad way. Another part has to do with disclosing, revealing, flashing one's odd inner terrain, with risk. And part of it is the dryness of the irony and parody to one's own sensibilities. I'm sure there is more.

I don't know why, when I place plenty of serious and semi-dismal content into a post, perhaps turgidly and convolutedly formed, along with some small delightful-to-me humor or irony or slick turn of phrase or image, what mostly stays with me these days is the smile. Occassionally I feel a hint of the ostentateous laughter that I saw from Allan Watts in video, and judged was milked and stroked to abnormal proportion, gurgling beneath the surface in me. And it feels yummy to hold it there, without the sticky after-taste of drugs, alcohol or peanutbutter.

In "Chewing the fat", we can break dance, or shuffle our feet, whichever fits the situation - if it feels good or funny and don't hurt noone too much, do it.

I don't suppose it would have to be funny release, either; maybe you will tell us as we go.

Still smiling.

[jimtzu]

i didn't know where else to put this..  it doesn't need a thread of it's own.  a fun little iq test... i found out i'm only half stupid 

chew on this:
http://www.richstevens.com/flash/iq.swf

[Liz]

Oh good, I am not Norma no mates then, sometimes I think we all need a place to play.
Michael, I haven't seen you dance with words in that way for a wee while-good to see.
Marianthi, sorry, sometimes I forget English isn't natural for you, heaven alone knows how expressive you must be in your mother tongue.
Stilltraveller, that needs a response I don't have time for right now, but I'll be back, and one of my resolutions this year is to get a name for you, even if I have to make it up! Think I'll start with Fred...............
Will do the test later Jim, thanks
Bob, sorry you are ill, take care.

Liz

[Nickeson]

Gym Sioux,
Yuh sher pood uhp uh gud liddel tehst, uh phur sirtin pohst mawdurn eyetum...
Eye skord 10 wiff muh seekurt wehpuhn:

                          DECONSTRUCTION

Ess Ehn

p.s. Michael, the new emoticons are so way cool. Thanks. Maybe someday I will remember to use them. I was wondering if we could also get the alternative typeface selection. While the san serif style of this face looks clean and slick, tests show letter and word recognition is faster and easier with a typeface that has serifs (the little finials at the end of each line) like "Georgia". Anyway that was the case the last time I checked into this utterly compelling and critical issue...uh...38 years ago. Oh yes... Is Spell Check working?
No rush.

[stilltraveler]

Liz - I've come to like the name Still, as a real-world name, and if I had to choose my own for some legal reason, that would be it. You can also call me Mac, if you strongly don't like my nome d plume. Mac is a name that I've gone by. I would not choose Fred (Sorry, any of you great Freds out there.) but if you want to punish me for my anonymity decision, that would be as good as any  .

I want to tell you that I do feel your discomfort with my relative anonymity. As you write this again, I do feel what is probably empathy and a little sadness at your frustration and my part in it. I certainly have been able to understand your reasonable thinking on it. I actually appreciate your wanting to know "who I am". I feel comfortable and safe around you and would be pleased to count you as a friend and to have a cuppa with you. I really am a plain and somewhat quirky person with a plain life - and on good days, I almost evolve to "ordinary".

I want to acknowledge that I enjoy a bit more freedom in cyber-relating (though sometimes it's still more monologue than dialogue), and particularly with the buffer of anonymity. If I want to try on radically new behavior, the accretive history that is almost inevitably created inside others is not permanent. So, in a way, that aspect is like wanting to remain as a child without responsibility for really being me, fixed and set - though "what is me" is always a worthwhile philosophical playing-ball to toss around. I'm sure there is plenty other psychological meaning for why I maintain a veil, at this forum, at this time in my life; so, yes, it is dubious. Some of that meaning may be as regressively basic as playing peek-a-boo. So, there you have it - a fellow who does not stand firmly in an adult self. But you knew that anyway. 

My practical reason, also questionable but not so dubious, is my wanting to protect myself. I work in an occupation that is carefully regulated by the state and the agency has adopted an ethical code. The ethical code has provisions for punishment, I'll say, for violation of provisions. Some of the provisions are a bit vague and extend, I'll say intrude with political self-interest, into one's personal life and how members present themselves to the public. Does a member who has been forced to agree to these standards in order to work in that economic arena reflect badly on the profession by what they say and do? I could and do frequently say critical things of my profession and they could be judged as problematic and I could be censored and hastled in various ways. If someone wanted to construe as such, if I in some way identify myself as a member of this body and if I act with anger or sarcasm or like a fool or goof-ball or immature bloke that I am, I could be forced to answer for it. Identifying myself isn't worth the hastle for me. Anonymity is a neat and simple solution.

If I wanted to don my armour and lance and charge at the scurrilous lot, I would keep my face-plate up for all to know. I have done plenty of crticism of all sorts of groups and individuals in the past and proud at my "fearsome" and self-rrrighteous stance. Now I realize that I are one. I choose my battles, and mostly work on choosing not to battle. Though my hackles still work, and my flying wraith-like appartatus is in the closet waiting for the call of superheroes, I am more wanting to enjoy a good laugh, a cuppa, a friggin fine and self-indulgent riff of narcissistic grandiosity, a moment of empathy when called for. I was reading some Rollo May again yesterday and the word "eros" is fresh on my tongue - yeah, more of that stuff.

So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'm wanting to come out of many of the nested closets in which I keep myself, and name is one. But, I don't know that it has to be be that big a deal (other than the extent that I have made it so). Could you call me still? "Hi. My name is Still. What's yours?"  or Mac, or Freddie, or Gertie. I'm open to more dialogue with you, and I don't feel frozen in anonymity, but it feels right to me for the nonce.


I wanted to mention that my inner laughter at my own cleverness has sobered a little, and I see how it may mostly be that narcissistic grandiosity thing. It's probably much related to the need and hunger for positive attention. Well, it's a big inner story, I'm sure. HM seems like a good place to explore those types of inner dynamics and, inevitably, the social realities. Much as a child faces them in moving through her world.

Interestingly, I still feel, or feel again, a large smile and a latent laughter - the sweet ride of mood and emotion and other inner admixtures - and I don't mistake it for rationality.  Thanks, Tiki and all.  (as mostly recovered from my stomach flu, Tiki, I'm thinking tea, not beer.) Warm regards, Still - or Mac or Freddie

[Liz]

Still,
I was being a bit naughty, just for the hell of it. Sorry.
Thank you for your explanation, but you didn't actually need to do that and now I regret raising it. I guess I'm just basically nosey and slightly intrigued.
It's the photo stories, wonderfully entertaining and observant, yet the last person we get to see is you, hidden behind the camera. You are becoming a bit of a tease, my dear, and I'm just playing along.
I am, in all honesty, happy to call you whatever you want and really would not want to push you into behaving other than you really want to. I can also understand the attraction of a level of anonymity, it leaves lots of space for openness as you are not predefined by other people's expectations.
I won't call you Fred or anything else you don't like, and Mac sounds like a dirty old man in a trench coat and not much else, so Still it is.

Liz

[stilltraveler]

Mac sounds like a dirty old man in a trench coat and not much else

Well, Liz, Mac it is. You are insightful. But in southern climes we don't do trench coats so much - it's bathrobes. With the bathrobe, they just pat you on the head, scold you a little and inquire as to the board and care home that you've waundered off from.

I am a bit of a tease, aren't I. It can make an ordinary value seem kinda special. This is a first for me. Hey, I'm becoming a first-class tease. It's fun. You should try it. I can do soft shoe, too.

All seriousness aside, you are a naughty girl aren't you, behind that mature woman pose, and you may need to be punished. Still may have a few suggestions about that.

[stilltraveler]

Is this chewing the fat?

Sounds like it to me. Some momentary bitchng and moaning and blaming seems legitimate release and like chewing the fat to me, but maybe Liz will narrow down her parameters.

Your event sounds painful and as you alluded, a poor mix of people.

This event in your life reminded me of Michael's thread on Personal Sovereignty, becoming more one's own authority. I suppose that gradually for many of us, by experiencing beautifully painful misunderstandings and miscalculations like yours, we discover more of who we deeply are and with what we will more surround ourselves and what we will more leave apart. Yes? Isn't this a lot of how we learn (I ask to the person who already knows this but is smarting from the latest misperception)? Like the archer who misses the target and thereby knows how to adjust her sights. Michael's analogy of being thrown off the boat or sensitively urge or invited may apply here - maybe you were knocked off the boat and are learning to swim in real water, maybe learning that though sharks are marvelous creatures and you're glad they're on planet, you're going to keep a respectful distance from them. Or maybe you are now being gently invited into new waters, new learning.

I too am finding my way along. Still

[stilltraveler]

Jimtzu - that iq test was funny. I'm not telling you my score, but I will say that I'm not very good looking either. 

[Liz]

THis is why I hardly ever start threads-I get all excited at the replies and want to have a whole conversation with every single person who posts anything.

I also did the IQ test, only got 8 against Steven's 10, but I did kick myself as another couple hit home just too late-my grandfather loved puzzles, even as quite small kids he'd set us lateral thinkers.....I'm sure the how many months have 28 days was one of his.

Dan, your friends, however wonderful and smart they may think themselves, chose to spend the day with your family. Either that means they really like you, however much they pretend their life is better maybe they are a wee bit jealous?Or they really are rude and so yours was the only invitation they had? In which case they can't be as wonderful as they are telling you. I do think Still is right, we get more choosy about how we spend our time and the situations we are prepared to tolerate. Maybe we need a Summer camp for grown ups where we can choose all the other participants. Oh and your earlier one about shifting the weight? Well, move it lardass...........(I take this liberty in full knowledge I can match you pound for pond and you have the height advantage)

OK Still, you seem to have come out of your shell...feel free to ponder cruel and unusual punishments, I have the advantage of a rapier missile tongue and several thousand miles distance-bring it on!

Liz

[henry]

flunked the iq test. twice. not nearly as bad as flunking tiki's gender test ...henry