posted
When I was 11, I was speaking in a crowded loud room to a friend of mine, and he and I were talking about how all of our friends' parents were divorced. I jokingly threw in that one would find it impossible to find a family in which the parents had stayed together, and all the children were born of just those two parents. His mother pounced on me with a ferocity, that in, retrospect, really pisses me off.
"Yeah sure you might find some crazy people like that, but they're the most miserable people on the planet."
And here I return, many years hence, to tell her BAH. BAH ON YOU. I POO POO ON YOUR WHINY BULLSHIT.
There is not an inherent evil in staying married to the same person through thick and thin. In fact, there are some insane people that might argue that not being a 'fairweather spouse' could almost be indicative of a certain amount of character. Something like...oh waht is that called...faithfulness, that's right. These hopeful people are, of course, complete loons who need to be watched carefully and avoided like the plague for this crime. But still, these antiques do still exist, so I am told.
Yes, I posted this because i read OSC's column, but I was about two sentences into the family part when this memory popped into my head and my blood pressure rose. Ive never given a second thought about that day until now. And ive decided that she's utterly full of poopie doo doo ca ca.
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:And ive decided that she's utterly full of poopie doo doo ca ca.
Well dear, I'm glad that you're being an adult about it.
Good thoughts...I believe that divorce can be a good thing in some cases. Everyone's different. But I hope idealistically that I can marry someone who's willing to fight as hard as possible to stay married to me through all the garbage. I know that even this isn't always enough, but I can hope really hard.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote: There is not an inherent evil in staying married to the same person through thick and thin.
I agree completely.
quote: In fact, there are some insane people that might argue that not being a 'fairweather spouse' could almost be indicative of a certain amount of character.
True. And it is also true that going through a divorce is not inherently a sign of a lack of character or of being a "fairweather spouse".
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I hate it when I find out I've been lied to by well-meaning people. That makes me sad for her, that she thinks that, but then furious that she's spreading it around.
I like your current opinion, though. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
We have a couple at church that just celebrated their 76th anniversary. They don't seem particularly miserable.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
KarlEd, i wholeheartedly agree with you. There are many good reasons to get divorced, and not all of them include beatings and/or drunkenness. Divorce is not inherently wrong either. Very very few things should be considered inherently wrong. Except the teletubbies. Pure evil.
But getting fashionably divorced should be punishable by beatings with wet noodles.
posted
My parents aren't the most miserable people on the planet... I agree, she's a bitter ol' doodie head.
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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1) First, your use of explatives like kaka and doodoo is an unforgiveable sin on this board. Be prepeared to be kicked out and loose any chance of being on a popular list.
2) Just because I can. And, yes, I am feeling a bit cranky today.
3) Finally, a good marriage is obviously a sign of an immature codependent personality, or pair of personalities. This dangerous and unstable behaviour may afford stability, happiness, and love to all involved, the couple, and family, may support each other and be self sustaining.
But its wrong. Just plain wrong.
See, if you come from a family that is not any of the above, then such behaviour is "different"
We all know that anything "different", especially anything "different" from our own experiences is obviously dangerous and should be rooted out, removed to a safe location, chopped into 1,476 different parts, doused in various petrochemicals, burned so the flames can be seen by orbiting sattelites, then the ashes buried in a deep salt mine never to see the light of day again.
We only do this to save the world as it is, since, according to Voltaire:
God is perfect God made the world as it is. Since Perfection can only lead to perfection-- The world as it is, is perfect.
Hence, we are living in the best of all possible worlds and anything Different must be the devil.
And I must say along with Candide came some other of voltaire's works in my copy, including the one about the fakir who preached naked and stuck nails in his ass. Sounds like a '...walked into a bar...' joke.
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
You ever find one of your own threads from long ago and suddenly get whisked back to what your life was like when you wrote the thing? Or even better, suddenly remember past that thread all the way to the beginning of your hatrackdom and just get nostalgic and wanna bump the thread? Ever?
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Not me. However, you come up with better stuff than I do. Most of my topics get looked at with a blank stare and then a "Why is this even here?"
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
What's the policy (for lack of a better term) for deleting old threads? Is it automatic?
And to answer your question odouls, I can probably count the number of threads I've started on one hand, so no. at least not yet.
Posts: 1056 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
There is no misguided "let's minimalize the archives to keep things simple" automatic deletion policy. Excluding thread deletion by thread originators, self-deletion by posters, and maybe a couple or three (literally) deletions by the moderators for absurdly intemperate language, all deletions have been for the purpose of fixing MAJOR forum crashes.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Well, and if I recall correctly, after a certain period of time, they just disappear off into the wilderness, no?
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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There was an archive loss when the forum made the switchover from the ?LionGate?program over to the UBBprogram.
Then someone who took the Worry, me Worry thread -- which became the template for the LastPost threads -- a mite too seriously broke the forum program. And all but a couple of handfuls of threads backwards from that date were deleted / made inaccessable for the (not so) quick-fix to remove the hack.
Then someone else broke the program a year or so later with a hack/prank thread meant to mock the LastPost threads. And the archives lost another year or so of archives for another {not-so) quick-fix.
So basicly there were only a couple of double handfuls of threads left from before August2003. And when UBB made their last major forum program overhaul last year, the threads which hadn't been active since August2003 were deleted / made inaccessable (probably for simplicity).
Dobie's June 27, 2001 Word of the Day thread contains the earliest* of my postings still left, December 28, 2001. So I don't think there has ever been any policy of an automatic expiration date or of deliberate deletion to save disc space.
quote:Originally posted by Shan: Well, and if I recall correctly, after a certain period of time, they just disappear off into the wilderness, no?
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Not as far as I am aware.
There was an archive loss when the forum made the switchover from the ?LionGate?program over to the UBBprogram.
I'm pretty sure there was a stickied note from the administration (Kathryn the Janitor? OSC?) that threads would eventually be deleted to preserve forum space, but that this would be done after 6 months or so of inactivity, although this might just be done periodically (i.e., it might be a long time between forum clean-ups). And this was on the UBB version, but several years into the running of it.
Actually, I think whoever it was (and I'm thinking OSC) that wrote the note specified that they had never wanted this community to become fossilized by past writing, but to remain vibrant and ongoing in engagement. This was, I think, in response to the common reply to newbies back then of "oh, we've already talked about that -- go do a search and read up on everything before you bring it back up." That happens less now, and it's of a more productive tone when it does happen, in my opinion.
I call on PapaJanitor to clarify! *wink
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I think a good historical sociology text could be written on the origins and development of the hatrack community. the original board, members, the rise of memes, the coining of jatraqueros, the first hatrack picture threads eventually becoming foobonic, all the newbie cycles and the inherent threads that come with them, the drama, the arguments and apologies, the hatrack debates that never die ... could be good stuff. interesting... to me anyway.
im sure this has been suggested before.
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Actually odouls, we've talked that one to death. You should go back and...oh.
CT's got the right of it, by the way. I remember there being a bit of furor about it when the deletions first started happening. I fall on the other side of the question from CT--there's a lot of good stuff that got lost, and it doesn't seem to me like a lot was gained, community-wise, by the deletions. How interesting would it be, for example, to go back and look at the Hatrack community's reaction to 9/11 as the events were unfolding? That's something that can't be done now, and while I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, when I do think about it it's with a certain amount of regret.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Originally, the plan was that the forum would be pruned about every six months, then that extended to a year (unofficially, I believe), and obviously at this point has gone well beyond a year.
To my knowledge, the official policy is still pruning all non-archived threads more than six months old (if it was changed it was some time since the landmark archive was created, and I'd think some time before I became Janitor). However, since space hasn't been an issue for a while, it's been let slide a bit. If it does happen, I just hope people won't get upset. But the longer it goes, the worse the search function gets, so you gotta take the bad with the good, I guess.
quote:Originally posted by odouls268: I think a good historical sociology text could be written on the origins and development of the hatrack community. the original board
By which you mean when it was on Prodigy, neh?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Sorry to ruin a good conversation, but I had something to say about the original topic.
When I was 13, we had a neighbor with children my age. I would spend most every afternoon over there because there really weren't other kids in the neighborhood and I wasn't allowed to have friends over while my parents were at work. As such, I spent a lot of time speaking with my friends mother.
One day I was telling her something about my older sister, who had been married for 2 years at that point, when she told me that my sister and her husband would soon get divorced because nobody stayed married anymore. This made me incredibly angry then, and it makes me angry now. She must have been a miserable person to tell a kid a thing like that. I take my family, in particular my sister, pretty seriously. Perhaps I overreacted as a 13 year old, but I never spoke to her again.
If I could, I would go back and tell her just how wrong she was. I would tell her that my sister and her husband are still happily married, 11 years later, and have two children. I would tell her that this marriage and others like it are still going strong despite any difficulties and tribulations that have been placed in their paths.
People like that make me angry and sad at the same time.
posted
Thanks, PapaJanitor. You are an attentive and thoughtful supervisor.
Noemon, now you've done it. Now they'll know we are different people.
Rats. Secret's out.
-----------------
Edited to add: I suspect I could be swayed by reasons such as Noemon presented. I can see some value in it, after all. It's just that I've been on a quest to grasp and deal with the impermanence of things lately (actually, since the time my mother's death became relatively imminent), and I'm sure this colors my thinking pretty strongly.
I'm currently puzzling through my thoughts about my childhood home, attachments to objects, and fidelity of self. It's quite lot to think through.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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