Every time I turn around lately I see Stephen Hawking in the news. In the last week I read a story that he said Pope John Paul II asked him not to look into the Big Bang, that he’s talking to Chinese schoolchildren about global warming, and that he’s posted a question to Yahoo Answers. I wonder what he’s getting ready to sell.
Here’s an excerpt of a message I sent to someone today where I tried to distill my thoughts on “It’s just the internet.”
It may be just the internet, but there are real people behind every keyboard, and many of them are friends of mine in real life as well. I wouldn’t expect my friends to act like assholes in meat space, and if they do, it bugs me there, too.
The “It’s just the internet” argument seems to me to be a blanket excuse for bad behavior, although I know you feel totally differently about it. Good manners are so hard to come by these days, and the anonymizing properties of the internet make and schmo with a computer think he can bust out with behavior that would embarrass him, were he to do it in real life. Since it’s “just the internet,” it makes it ok for him – and it sends the message to everyone else around that, “Hey, it’s just the internet – let’s be dicks!” What if we were to say, “Hey, it’s just a sport event. Let’s go nuts!”? Soccer hooligans do that. They kill people. People at concerts bumrush the doors. They trample others. Those might be a bit extreme, but I hope you can see where I’m going. Mob mentality sucks. Dehumanization serves no purpose other than to make life less civilized.
To me, there is no excuse for churlish behavior no matter what medium. And to my friends who choose to act in a matter other than they would in real life because “it’s just the internet,” they’ll lose my respect, because it runs contrary to my personal beliefs as to how life, manners, and society need to run in order to remain civilized.
This story was posted over on AR15.com and I really enjoyed it. I’ve found it on a couple of sites so I’m guessing it’s in the public domain, but if you know the author, please let me know so I can give proper credit.
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So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.
He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had
great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a
big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell
phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family,
his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few
friends had no idea he was out here.
He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now
that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way
was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go
about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in
last.
(more…)
**Update!** Wanna see my grades? 😀
It’s official: I have 219 points out of a possible 220 for my A-COMM 3301 course, Foundations of Organizational Communication. That’s a good, solid A, eh?
I went to see a very nice urologist on Friday (Dr. Jeffrey Kocurek, for those searching for a urologist in Austin; I do not recommend Dr. Elizabeth Houser for reasons listed in a previous post) and I have a tentative appointment on Thursday for a ureteroscopy, assuming I’m still uncomfortable and haven’t passed the stone on my own by then. Apparently it’s still right above the bladder. The lithotripsy that the other doctor scheduled me for only has a 65% success rate for stones in this area.
The ureteroscopy is similar to the horrible procedure the other doctor did on Monday, but I’ll be unconscious for it. Big difference. I’m still in pain from the first one. 🙁
Anyway, he gave me some Flomax, which is apparently a drug given to men with prostrate problems(!), and I took one yesterday and passed right out for about 5 hours. I think I’ll wait until bedtime tonight to take it.
Apparently I’ve also got another stone in my right kidney which is poised to cause serious problems as well, so I might end up doing the lithotripsy for that one. I’ve been reading some disturbing stuff about long-term consequences though, so I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that.
I called around this morning to get an appointment with a urologist. This afternoon hubby dropped me off at my appointment and he took Caroline to go shopping. I walked in to a waiting room full of elderly people, feeling like a fish out of water. They called me back, took my weight, and I mentioned that I had gained 9 lbs over the last couple of days and thought I was retaining water. The nurse said to be sure to tell the doctor that. I also mentioned that I’d been running a fever last night, so the nurse came to check my temperature under my arm (!) and said that it was 98.5 so I was fine.
The doctor arrived and had very little to say. She was peeved that I didn’t bring the actual CT scan with me, just the interpretation. She said I would need to go get an X-ray down the road. I said I didn’t have a car with me and I’d have to call my husband back to get me, and she started with an attitude: “Look, I’m just trying to save you time here so we can get this taken care of today.”
Yeah, ok, fine, whatever. I called my husband back who took me over for the X-ray. Got the films, came back to the urologist’s office, and while I’m still in the waiting room with my films, a nurse comes out and says they have penciled me in for a lithotripsy. Without the doctor even having glanced at the X-ray? Neat. It’s for just-in-case, don’t you know.
Yeah, ok, fine, whatever. I get called back, the doctor looks at the films, sees a stone in my bladder, and says she wants to ram a camera up my pee-hole to take a look-see. Sounds like fun, right? So I strip down and climb into the stirrups. The nurse came to put some numbing stuff on me, shoved a consent form at me without bothering to tell me what it says (I manage to read, from my awkward position, that it’s for a cystoscopy) and said, “The doctor will be right in!” and left the room. With my hoo-ha hanging out in the wind, and me staring at the ceiling.
20 minutes later, the doctor comes in. She uncovers me and says, “I’m going to need help with this. I’ll be right back with a nurse.” With my hoo-ha now exposed and hanging out in the wind, and me staring at the ceiling.
10 minutes after THAT, they come in together. Nobody warned me that a cystoscopy involved incredible, ripping, searing, hellish pain. I’m choked with sobs on the table from the agony. It hurt so badly I am still tearing up about it, 2 hours later. The doctor said that it was worth it, that it gave her some important information about the stone, that 1) it was triangular and 2) it’s in the bladder. No matter that *I* could have told her both those things after looking at the X-ray of the triangular stone in my bladder. I wonder how much she gets from the insurance company for that kind and gentle procedure.
So she tosses a pamphlet about lithotripsy at me and starts to walk out the room, saying she’ll be right back but that for me to expect to show up for surgery tomorrow morning. Wait, I said, isn’t this stone small enough to pass on its own? She said that tomorrow was the day she had set aside for the O.R. and that if we pushed it off, that would eat into her long weekend. She told me to read my lithotripsy pamphlet and left the room, promising to return shortly. Besides, triangular stones never come out on their own, says she. Hm, there’s a maxipad on top of my clothes. I guess I’m supposed to use it? Who knows? Nobody told me a damned thing.
I call hubby, sobbing, asking him to start heading back to get me.
I wait another half an hour. While I am waiting, I get a phone call from the surgery center asking if I’m going to have surgery tomorrow. I tell her, “Hell if I know.”
I open my door and look around. Nurses stare at me quizzically. I say, “Well, I assume I’m done here.” The nurse says that the doctor has gone into room five and that she’d be out, you guessed it, shortly. Coup de grace. I gather my things and leave, saying this has gone on long enough and is totally ridiculous. One of the doctor’s partners watches me leave and doesn’t say a word.
I called the other urologist’s office, the one that the E.R. doc had originally referred me to, and they can’t see me until Friday now. After the amount of pain that woman put me through this afternoon, I do not want to subject myself to her tender mercies again. In the meantime, I’ll just drink a bunch of water.
Kidney stones suck. Hospitals suck. Needles suck.
Morphine’s pretty much ok, though.
Dear Anonymous Gift Giver:
Thank you for the Complete Monty Python DVD set! I shall watch it with pleasure. It came in the mail today with no note, so I don’t know who to thank.
Yours in comfy chair,
Addlepated
Me: *gnawing on a pork chop bone*
Hub: Are you eating a bone?
Me: *nods*
Hub: What happened to that debutante I married?
Me: *burps*
Hub: Oh.
