#59, is that pseudopod-ophiles or pseudo-podophiles?
I have the same misgivings as #75 too--if the child-bots look enough like real kids, it might be easier for someone to hide a real kid among them, or something. And then claim to not know how said kid landed among their robots...well, I haven't really got the old imagination warmed up, but I suspect only part of the pedophile sector will find these robots useful, the rest will just find sneakier ways to hurt real kids. Not saying it shouldn't be done, just put some thought into it... For what it's worth, such of those dolls as I have seen creep me out.
If the husbands are ground fine enough, they won't care.
Various papers and artwork of mine that I'm in the process of backing up on my jump-drive that I wear all the time.
My staff, a length of oak 2 x 2 with a metal spike [that I made ] on top. Which I have treasured in various "incarnations" since I was 10 and used it to test the depth of swamps. Well, I could replace that, I just wouldn't want to be without one just like it. So I will say the 2nd one would be the music I have backed up on minidiscs [and now will probably have to put on a spare hard drive]. I could replace much of that, I guess, but not all--including an ancient recording of a Purcell march for trumpet and orchestra that was the first music that ever showed me how wonderful music is.
My little trebuchet, also made by me, first of its particular subspecies in the world. I could build another, but it would be real hard, especially without a machine shop to do it in [any shop out there want a seasoned but only partially/informally trained machinist/QA inspector??]
The book that I wouldn't rescue but which will be cremated with me is a too-marked-up-to-resell copy of Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker from Dover Books, that I got when I was 15, and was awestruck by--even in the midst of a 200 mph windstorm.
But under all this is the knowledge, gained slowly but surely by me, that I will never again let anyone make me feel bad about being more interested/attached to things/ideas than people.
Don't start that time machine until I build my railgun. And I'll bring my quarterstaff, the one with the spike on the end, just for a bonus. The trebuchet is a little small...
It might be a little late to throw in my story, but it has some facets worth noting. Me, only child; bio-parent; shadowy other bio-parent; step-parent who replaced other bio-parent when I was 8; wastrel step-sibling 8 years older than me.
Bio-parent enjoyed gouging up my face and back because convinced that there were things growing out of my skin, and would not stop even when begged. As I got older, step-parent never stopped this but endured same treatment without complaint. Step-parent also sometimes went into tantrums and slapped me around, and bio-parent was right there but didn't lift a finger to stop this, ever. They got along perfectly with each other, and never quarreled, except one time about wastrel step-sibling who was in and out of trouble since 'Nam. Oh, and the time that step-parent--who liked horseplay--put a hand where it didn't belong--that was creeeeepy to the max--bio-parent, when told, went and extracted a promise to not do that again, but I felt this was more done from jealousy than any concern for my safety, and it got swept under the rug. Bio-parent did send me to a shrinko, who was totally useless--knowledge went in but none came out.
Besides this, I got yapped at for not living up to someone's invented fantasy that I was unusually smart--the trouble I had in school was always my fault, and the abuse I suffered from other kids was simply not discussed let alone stopped. I also once got viciously slammed by bio-parent for being more interested in things/ideas than in people. As if I hadn't known since day one that there was something different about me.
They encouraged me to say a placating verse at dinnertime and bedtime to the stern daddy-figure in the sky, but never told me why we didn't go to church after the arrival of step-parent. I was 12 when I kicked the sky daddy to the curb, and my announcement thereof was met with indifference. Much later I figured out they didn't believe in him themselves. When I called them on the lie, stepparent apologized and said there weren't any books on how to raise atheist kids, and bio-parent got all evasive--often does, I feel like trying to nail jello to a tree.
The hitting and gouging went on till late teens, when the parents were just too stoned. They never drank, and I guess I had the idea that if they were sober, it must be my fault or something. The pot mellowed them out (they started when I was 15) and so did the presence of company (they were the unofficial unpaid village innkeepers in the remote town they dragged me off to.) But it wasn't enough to protect me. I didn't even have good grades to wave in their faces. Sometimes we would have long talks about politics and history and so on and they would tell me how lucky I was to have parents who could have long talks like this.
I had hardly any friends and no adult mentors. I finally got a GED and lived on my own. I began to see how wrong the things done to me were--and how half the damage is in not what they tell you but what they leave out--and came this close to cutting all ties. But I didn't have the nerve.
Years later, it began to come out--I confronted one then the other, never both at once, about this or that. But it has taken bio-parent longer than it should take anyone that smart, to realize that some things were extremely damaging. As for step-parent, courageous apologies were given to me, but recent delusion that my weight is the cause of my career problems (a bit fat but not huge) persists and despite promises, step-parent brings it up occasionally--and bio-parent has taken 20 years to realize this isn't useful or right. I feel unable to properly put a stop to this because my financial situation is so iffy I might need their or someone's help.
Now both parents live a couple hours away, and bio-parent says that their will is split 50-50 tween me and wastrel stepsibling, whom-bio-parent despises and who has already cost them oodles of money. I just hope step-parent croaks first.
It still hurts to recall how I wasn't able to fight back, or make them understand they better keep their damn hands to themselves. They know it now, but still. One therapist said I have PTSD. I thought that only happened to combat veterans--like step-sibling--but that party at least got to shoot back.
Our family is very small, and dying out--fortunately. But at gatherings, they all know better than to touch me.
Rich Cousin tells me, if I ever mention the bad things done to me, "Just let it go," and I have to keep telling her that IT won't let ME go, and I am allergic to that soppy forgiveness goo anyway. She has never had to worry about money in her life, and she has never had to get therapy even though her dad disappeared down the mouth of a whiskey bottle.
There is a differance between pretending everything is all right when it isn't, and Cutting Some People A Little Slack In Some Circumstances And I Do Mean Some. Most of the stuff done to me wasn't slackworthy. The situation is complicated by how one parent is senile, the other is staying for the senile one's money, too much of which has already been blown on a wastrel stepbrother, and I myself have various disablities that have not been properly helped and can't seem to hold on to a job even though I am clean/sober [and still in better shape than the stepbrother.] I am afraid of having to put up with who knows what or getting cut out of the will, when my future is so uncertain anyway.
I don't have a support network of friends, either; I always seem to wind up with the ones that are either in worse shape than me or just don't have time for me. There is a dedicated person helping me on the employment issue, anyway.
mpe #180 got it right. I don't know if I'll live long enough.
I celebrate this equinox for other reasons anyway, but I salute y'all for coming up with the idea and I extend sympathy to all those who were abused worse than I, or abused, period.
I think there should be a day for survivors of dysfunctional families, and also a day for single folks--I mean, if you are going to have "days" in the first place, which have some danger of being Hallmarked but good and then the cause forgotten for the rest of the year. I sometimes feel that the whole concept of dedicated days for this and that group of people, came about because someone wanted to sell some cards. I don't do cards.
I too survived horrors. The parties responsible have been called to account and made to understand that what they did was wrong... but deep down inside I can never trust them 100%, you just don't get over some of that stuff. It is worse when you can't hold onto friends for some reason. (I try to be considerate and polite and so on but I keep getting the ones that just fade away.) Sometimes it seems like the only intelligent conversation I have is online.
Anyway thanks for the reprint of the poem about how mum and dad fuck you up, and I hope somoene will do some nice ones about the equinox like they did for the winter solstice.
Stuff I've made: Sets of shelves, beautiful wooden staff with sharp spike on the end, quake-proof table [made out of 4 x 4's, carriage bolts and 2 X 8's], little steel trebuchets, sheet-metal music stand, fringed leather tabard that I need to get cleaned, flannel pendant-roll for jewelry, and other stuff I don't recall.
In the kitchen: Blood brownies.
Stuff I want to make: Backup unit for when CPAP machine gives out, manometer for same. Anyone ever build their own?
124th-ing the best wishes, and relief. [gets off chair, onto bike]
--No, I'm more into Martial. And I do not like shag carpets either! 1 time I kept tripping over a treacherously hidden phone cord at my coudin's place--there was a hole in the floor that you had to watch out for too. Another time I stepped on a needle (you guessed it, point first) and this after diligent and constant efforts to keep all needles corralled.
Thing is, I didn't have any choice on what sort of carpet this place had when I moved in 21 years back. Better than one place I lived in though--a mixture of small squares of every kind of carpet you could imagine. Somehow I didn't have any accidents there.
My problem in emergencies is as much with sound as sight. I have twice heard a man screaming out of control and both times it rattled me. I've got sensitive ears anyway. Maybe I should start carrying earplugs...
At a shop I worked in once, someone brought in a copy of a pic showing why machinists don't wear rings at work. Think partial one-digit degloving. Was I ever glad that image was in black and white!
As to reactions by this spectator, it varies. I haven't had shock-type reactions of any sort to the various accidents I've witnessed, but these weren't real serious ones--though they easily could have been. When I pass out is usually when the sharp instruments have been used on *me* for a while and I'm conscious (and possibly hyperventilating.)
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