Posts made by Aria

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

What seems to happen way more in interpersonal relationships is simply that people can hurt each other in small ways that then spirals into actions of increasingly greater magnitude until both parties are hurt enough to make a move that changes the relationship. Most of the issues I've witnessed where relationships come to a head have been like this. No sole responsibility but instead a shared mess of poorly handled failures to communicate and mutual wounding of emotions and/or ego.

This is so spectacularly put and so profoundly true.

That's all!

My boss just handed me 26 pages of content and a (proverbial) red pen.

You want to make the English major turned communications consultant happy after a shitty, shitty day? You unleash them with a red pen.

My only question was "Chicago style or AP?"

@tinuviel A reaction. This is also fitting, but is not of James McAvoy and therefore less entertaining.

JAMES MCAVOY WISHED ME A HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

IN PERSON.

TO MY ACTUAL FACE.

@misadventure said in Critters!:

@aria What's that big … thing in your post?

That would be said cat, plunked down on my lap.

Unless you mean the stuff behind him. I had to move the laptop and the laptop desk out of the way because he will literally scream at me like he's being tortured if I do not make my lap available on demand.

In early March, we took one of our old man cats to the vet for a check up and he came home with a clean bill of health.

Somehow, since then, he's lost over a pound -- which is a lot, considering the fact that he only weighed about 10 pounds to begin with.

Bless our wonderful, wonderful vet, who absolutely 100% listened to me when I called and said that yes, he had just been checked out, but I wanted a CBC on him right away. They squeezed me in between my own medical appointments on my day off and the time from blood draw to results was less than 24 hours. He has hyperthyroidism, which is not great, but treatable with twice a day ear goop rubbing.

Considering the last time we had an old man cat lose weight suddenly, we were told "pancreatic cancer" and he was gone within a month of diagnosis? I may have ugly-snot-cried (and then paid half again the cost of the prescription to get it shipped faster).

@jennkryst said in Good or New Movies Review:

Everything Everywhere All At Once is amazing, and I am livid that the one local theatre that had it playing only had it playing for a single week.

@insomniac7809 and I just saw it and it was so ridiculous(ly good).

@mietze said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

feeling very down on myself in many ways

Had to share this with a coworker today, so I might as well share it here, too.

ETA: Holy shit, this image is huge and I have no idea how to make it not-huge. Sorry?

I have multiple herniated discs in my neck.

The treatment my doctor is recommending is not covered by my (normally very good) insurance and costs several thousand dollars.

Cool, cool, cool.

Ugh. This one is a gut punch. I love Taylor Hawkins - his style as a drummer (both for the musicianship and also because I swear he was Animal made human), his sense of humor, his honesty, and his absolute wild love of rock and roll.

I was supposed to see them in July and was very much looking forward to it. I saw them a few years before the pandemic -- the summer Dave Grohl fell off stage and horrifically fucked up his leg, actually -- and Grohl went off on this two minute tangent about how you might think that all the fans blowing on stage were because of the summer heat. But really, it was all for the sake of "Taylor and his fucking Beyonce hair" and Hawkins, grinning like a madman, got up behind his drumkit and started doing a terrible approximation of the Single Ladies dance in front of 25,000 screaming fans. It was priceless and perfect and made me love the Foo Fighters that much more.

It was very clear that the band loves what they do, loves being on tour, and love doing it together, which always makes the show that much better. He's going to be missed.

@wretched

I AM IN THIS PICTURE AND I DON'T LIKE IT.

Seriously, if you have ever interacted with me and I came off as any one of the above, I can promise you that 99% of the time, it was actually exactly this.

EXACTLY THIS.
(ohgodimsorry)

I watched Turning Red last night and also enjoyed it. And that's while being neither Chinese nor Canadian, so I'm preeeeeeeeeeeeetty sure these people bitching that it's "totally unrelatable" are just, y'know, fucking racist.

@misadventure said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I do recall an article, I believe about Indonesia, where the divorce rate was up and the birthrate was down, and the cause was the couples couldn't figure out how to have sex.

At one point, I had to explain to one of my college roommates that no, he would not be able to tell if his girlfriend cheated on him based on how her vagina would feel and no, would not fit him differently. Apparently he was under the impression that they work like some sort of reverse jello molds and hold the shape of whatever was in them last.

Yes, I am entirely serious.

@ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@too-old-for-this said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

So! Yes, being in the Bible Belt doesn't help (hi, raised in Iowa), but that's not the only part of it. I moved away from the BB when I was 18 and quickly found that it doesn't really matter where you go, poor understanding of how the female body works (even to the degree of the similarities between men and women, like shaving) is still rampant.

Based on my experiences, men from all backgrounds really suck at understanding how the female body works.

Man, I wish I could find it now but....

Just last week, I saw a reposted Tweet from some dude who admitted that it wasn't until he was in his late thirties that he learned "women have a second hole for peeing".

Considering that this was shared in a group composed almost entirely of women, the responses were savage. And also hilarious.

I saw his stand up routine once. As a little kid -- Full House had just ended, so I think I was barely 11? -- who definitely should not have been seeing his comedy routine at that age.

My best friend's mom bought tickets to this tiny little comedy club in New Jersey where he was performing. We only knew him from Full House and AFHV, so had no idea how absolutely raunchy his routine was. We were the only children there and about fifteen minutes in, her mom made us go sit out in the hallway for the rest of the night, where the bartender kept bringing us Shirley Temples until the show was over.

So I sort of saw his stand up routine and most of my memories of the evening center around finally learning what "the C word!!" was and being left unattended in a bar. Lil' bit of a tone shift from Danny Tanner.

This is one I refuse to be sad about. Refuse.

And it's not because I don't love Betty White. I do. I grew up watching Golden Girls when it was new and reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Nick at Nite when I was visiting my grandparents, because they were the only ones in the family who had cable until about 1998. She's always been hilarious and frankly, I think she got funnier and funnier the older she got.

I refuse to be sad because Betty White lived to be almost 100 years old, had a glorious career that she thoroughly enjoyed and which spanned decades in an industry that was notoriously hard to crack, had several deeply profound friendships, found meaning in philanthropic causes she held dear, and was told regularly and consistently how entirely beloved she was by many, many, many people.

That is not something to be sad about. That is a life extraordinarily well-lived.

@arkandel said in The Work Thread:

@aria If 699 people had fun, felt included, participated and appreciated the celebration but one person did not, that's still a 99.85% success rate.

Ohh, I know. And I don't expect everyone to be happy. We don't have the full survey results and there's a few folks that have already said they wished we had more entertainment and less raffles, which is totally fair (but hard to do online where we wanted our budget spent on employees, not vendors).

I'm just angry because I can only imagine, with the timing of when his comments came in, that this guy spent the whole 90 minutes sitting there with his polemic all ready to go, just waiting for the survey to open so that he could shit all over two months of work pulled off by four (primarily two) people on behalf 1096 others. Neither I nor my teammates deserve that, especially after we spent so much time deliberately working to make sure that no one felt left off.

Obviously, this man holds the true spirit of Christmas in his angry little heart.

........
...........................
........................................................

I am going to scream.

One of my teammates and I, with support from an additional teammate and our boss, just pulled off a (virtual) year-end celebration for the 700 or so employees in our subdivision and the 400 or so partners we have in IT.

We had two rounds of trivia, three contests, pulled in four live performers, compiled a greetings video where we managed to wrangle all but one team in the entire subdivision, gave out over $40,000 in year-end gifts, and almost $10,000 in raffle prizes. Because our subdivision is extremely diverse, we had our leaders talking about how they celebrate Christmas -- and Hanukkah, and Diwali, and New Year's, and Thanksgiving and included, like, four or five other holidays into our decorations, too.

It was a huge hit. Leadership was over the moon. When we opened the comments form, excitement (and a few questions) came pouring in.

After the second comment.

The first comment, the very first one, was an employee who felt the need to lambast us for making the celebration "secular and superficial" instead of "creating a safe space dedicated to the real meaning behind the holiday."

I suppose it was inappropriate of us to only play two (instrumental, so no lyrics) religious Christmas carols and only have half a dozen leaders share how their families celebrate Christmas, specifically.

Clearly, we should've held a full Advent Mass for a division where a solid 20% of the employees are Hindu and regardless of the fact that we had several members of our leadership team excitedly talking about their Hanukkah traditions, what they did for Diwali this year, what Bodhi Day is, or they amazing multi-ethnic season they have in their household that has three different faiths in just two generations.

It was unfair, even selfish, of us to have year-end celebration for 1100 people and try to include everyone, instead of making it very clearly and very specifically a celebration of Jesus, because obviously the workplace is the optimal place for that.

@ganymede Just a random FYI because I think those who contribute regularly to this thread would probably like to know these things:

Most of the things you recommend, I end up watching at some point. Sometimes entirely because of your analysis.

@sunny said in RL Sads:

I'm TRYING to moderate myself but my brain isn't 100% functional.

It's not supposed to be in the middle of something like this. Go take care of yourself. The rest of it doesn't matter right now.