If you need to B*tch about something... this is the place — Page 59

I am in full possession (HA!) of the facts, and there are no secret disagreements or anything like that.  I think it is like what bingowings suggested, it's a medical issue with her.  As I said, she also immediately cut ties with her parents, her siblings, her friends (except her new friends), and even me.  I get what you guys are saying, and I do understand their right to fall out of love, but the way she is shunning him is unacceptable.  And it's not just him, it's her whole entire family.  She won't take to any of them, which is a pretty strong indicator that the problem was not with my dad, or she would be complaining about it to her parents, or at least talking to them in SOME way, considering she was very close to them until a little while ago when she abruptly cut ties with them at the same time as us, which to me signifies the problem is with her and not us.

Also, bingo said there may be more to the disconnection with my father than I know about, but as I said, it's not just my father, it's her entire family, and all at the same time, which to me screams out that it is some kind of problem within her that we just happen to be unlucky to be a part of.

So, the wife and I are chaperoning a field trip of my toddlers and their class going to the market. I introduce myself to another parent, 

• Me: Hi, I'm Morgan
• Her: Oh... I know.
  
  

? So I must know this chick, but I'm drawing a blank. I know a lot of people. After I spend a few moments with a blank smile racking the old memory banks, she says

• Her: You never called. 
  
  

A few more seconds pass, and it hits me. She's not a hippy chick with long dirty blonde hair and hemp jewelry anymore, but I am able to place her as I girl I met when I was part of the local music scene about eleven years ago. We were friendly, and she was kind enough to engage in the physical act of love with me a few times before I guess I got distracted and I guess I never called.

So maybe I was a bit of a cad at 22... but it's been over a decade, and we're both parents now. Does she still harbor a grudge? Was that still so close to the top of her mind it was the first thing she said?!? Seriously?! 

And in my defense, she changed a lot so I didn't recognize her, and I still wear the same unfashionably long sideburns and jorts I've always worn. 

We didn't exchange any other words, and I'm fine with that... but really? Really!?

If you travel in time and space you get a lot of that.

Morgan.  Huh.

Bingowings said:

For the last week I've been preparing an application to what would seem to be my dream job only to have the position removed last night over a week before the end of application date.

I wouldn't be surprised to find the job was only being advertised to cover it being handed to someone's child.

It's really annoying.

I sent them my CV anyway so hopefully I will be eating humble pie when they prove me wrong but I did give a couple of quality swears.

 So after sending them a letter asking to be considered for other similar posts and my CV I got my letter sent back to me with a small sheet of paper with a box ticked saying that I didn't get the job because I had sent a CV and hadn't applied online via their form. Clearly they hadn't even read the letter. This is my own local council too. I had a few special words to say.

If they are that stupid, maybe you don't want to work there.

The job was really cool though. It was organising events and exhibitions in Callendar House.

It's a really nice place to visit so it would be rather exciting to work there.

I have a couple of other applications in both Edinburgh and Glasgow universities but that was the job that interested me the most.

Obama is many things but a lefty he is not, he makes Tony Blair look left wing and that's saying something.

Bingowings said:

Obama is many things but a lefty he is not, he makes Tony Blair look left wing and that's saying something.

 We have a very odd definition of 'liberal' in the US. 

Bingowings said:

Obama is many things but a lefty he is not, he makes Tony Blair look left wing and that's saying something.

 Obama not a lefty?!?!?!?!    Please prove this.

TheBoost said:

Bingowings said:

Obama is many things but a lefty he is not, he makes Tony Blair look left wing and that's saying something.

 We have a very odd definition of 'liberal' in the US. 

 please prove that it is odd.  I do admit that is different than how many Europeans define it, but odd?

Left wing means liberal, socialist, radical.

Leftie is a pejorative extreme of the concept.

He may be left wing from an American perspective (the Democrats would be the right wing of many European and Scandinavian countries) but he is far too dilute to be called a leftie. Dig?

Bingowings said:

Left wing means liberal, socialist, radical.

I have heard Obama being called this again and again and again.

Bingowings said:

Leftie is a pejorative extreme of the concept.

I don't this leftie must equal extreme.

Bingowings said:

He may be left wing from an American perspective (the Democrats would be the right wing of many European and Scandinavian countries) but he is far too dilute to be called a leftie. Dig?

 nope. 

If Dems would be the right wing of many European and Scandinavian counties, just what is the left wing there like? 

You may hear Obama called those things in America but rarely if ever outside America.

Leftie is a pejorative so the rules of caricature apply. In our country Neil Kinnock was left-wing, Derek Hatton was a leftie.

Yep.

Again,  I don't know that leftie has to equal extreme.  I believe I have heard leftie used as another word for left-wing. 

Is there any way to be a leftie, in your and in the European and Scandinavian definition of the word, without being a Socialist/Trotskyist/Marxist/Communist? 

I'm guessing that it is a European or British thing to use leftie that way. As far as I am aware, leftie and left wing are synonymous where I live.

Leftie tends to be used to describe the far left usually with some kind of "political correctness gone mad" scare story angle, along the lines of the Baa Baa Black Sheep ban story or Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin.

The tabloids of the time (mid-eighties) would refer to alternative comedians as loony lefties, contrasted against traditional comedians like Benny Hill, Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson (still making jokes about race, sexual preference, religion, gender in a pejorative ..today's word.. way).

It's a tabloid shorthand for anything beyond the Western European socialist model (something that hasn't existed as a political choice in the UK since 1994).

Left-Wing is subjective as more Right-wing countries have a righter-left. The USA is in a general sense more Right-wing than Denmark (not that the Danes are without a fringe far Right movement of their own).

For example, the ideas of private gun-ownership and capital punishment are seen as a sort of a oddity to much of Western Europe (our Right-wings might have a fringe that are interested in restoring such things but even then they are generally seen as fruit-loops along the lines of the UKIP guy claiming gays cause storms).

In the USA these are topics of genuine controversy even within the Left-wing.

^and the link doth fail for added bathos

Indeedy doody :-D

I caught a cold twice already, once in September and then again in October. Now I'm coming down with a cold again.

Goddamn the bus. Goddammit it straight to Hell.

Quit complainin'! This is the first year in ages that I haven't come down with the flu during Christmas. And it's the first winter that I've gotten fewer than three colds during December-January in I don't know how long.