When XY was little, I had to take him grocery shopping with me. A couple of times, I was hungry and we dropped in at HyVee’s little restaurant. While I was wrangling him, I noticed a large group of old men sitting around shootin’ the breeze.
I eavesdropped on them, because of course I did, and here are some snippets:
- I tell him anybody’s goin’ to hell for money like that (re preacher making 120k/year)
- “How do you afford stuff like that?” He said, “I deserved it.”
- Church is nonprofit so they don’t have to pay taxes.
Now, what you all probably know is that men never gossip. They shoot the breeze. Between that and memories of my grandfather and father standing around with their buddies gossiping shootin’ the breeze in languid tones, and the little café my FIL frequented when he lived in a small Missouri town, it occurred to me that this was the internet before there was internet. Social media, if you will.
“I gotta go home and get my perq.”
“You gonna make her make you a sammich?”
“I know better than that.”
“All these years you ain’t got her trained?”
“I don’t think any of us have ours trained.”
“I told my wife to make me a sammich. She got up and did it. She was on her way out the door and said, ‘You may not want to eat that.’”
My old man still does this. A home-shop gunsmithing business provides ample opportunities for shootin’ the breeze (no pun intended.) Not to mention the gliderport…
Not quite speaking of it, but I got of my ass and joined a range: https://fourcornersgunclub.com/index.html
It is nice, in that I don’t have to drive two hours into the woods, but only go 1/2 hour north of me, and I get all the perks of rain protection and target frames.
Looks nice. It’s good to see you can still own a gun in some parts of Oregon.
My friends and I would bullshit, no lying as much as gossipy tales.
Growing up on the Iowa/South Dakota/Nebraska border in the 50’s and 60’s, it always struck me that the men were much bigger gossips than the women. Judgemental and meddlesome, petty, clique-ish. The women certainly gossiped, but the focus of said gossip always seemed smaller scale. Maybe it was widespread, maybe it was just my hugely dysfunctional family and the people they mingled with. Shrug.
I’ve encountered that exact thing as well, as I touched on downthread. I think it was more just shitty people than anything endemic to the male sex or the culture, but it’s tiresome.
Reminds me of accompanying my Dad to the weekly old farts meet up at McDonalds about 10 years back. My Dad, in his late 50’s at the time was the youngest of the bunch by a generation. Most of them were Korean War vets and one WW2 vet. Great stories, onions were affixed to belts, clouds were yelled at.
In all seriousness it was great fun (other than being at McDonalds).
Belly Laugh at the end.
Yup, the end of the story really made it.
Every Sat morning you will find me along with several others at the local diner “shooting the breeze” over toast, coffee, eggs, and bacon.
The tradition was started by my now deceased friend who was the second father for many. He was the guy who told you stories your dad wouldn’t, teach you how to tune and synchronize your carbs, and give you tips about firearms.
I started going 20+ years ago and listened to stories crazier than mine about people who died well before I got in the group.
Now I and my friend group do the same with a new generation of young men like ourselves. We talk about those who are gone and still bust thier stones even though they left us years earlier.
The young men, like us seem to be getting something the are missing elsewhere in their lives.
We mentor, help, and learn from them as well. We encourage them to take a new job, teach them how to build credit, talk to women, and how to tune and synchronize carburetors.
We hope someday they will do the same and talk about us when we are gone.
“What are these “carburetors” you speak of?”
I just wish I could change the headlights on my car and not have to take it to the dealer to do it.
It’s not something that is needed much these days. I have only one vehicle that still has one.
I dont really like this guy,
But Goldtein nails it here.
https://jeffgoldstein.substack.com/p/theres-nothing-to-be-gained-by-arguing
Don’t know who he is, but he’s right.
When you realize and accept that they hate you and want you dead, you come around to the idea that debating them is not only futile but infact, ludicrous.
+ 1 final solution
It’s a level of brainwashing that an isolated individual could maybe be brought out. But in a group, no way.
No.
You aren’t just talking or arguing with said leftist, you are presenting the alternative to any and all who are around. Of course that person is not going to listen to you, especially when surrounded by his “friends” but everyone of them gets to listen too you, everyone of them gets to contemplate what you said, that you were the one standing up, sometimes casually and sometimes like Tank Man, to their tireless and tiring barrage of bullshit.
And if no one does that, we have lost another opportunity.
As an aficionado of being an asshole online, I can tell you with absolute certainty that arguing always has a purpose even if it’s just to shut the other guy up so there is a moment of peace and quiet before he comes back with something even dumber.
Some times, the more effective your argument, the more hostility will be directed at you. You will be attacked, insulted etc. But there is an audience keeping score and people tend to know deep down inside who won an argument even if they don’t want to admit it.
So Socrates was wrong in his actions.
Granted I’m not a IRL veteran of the culture wars but if Twitter and TikTok videos are to be believed, I’ve never seen a single one that involved ‘listening.’ I’ve seen some brave (if somewhat foolish or naive) people try to reason with them, argue with them, persuade them. In every case they are shouted down at a minimum (or often assaulted). No discourse happens, no opportunity for reflection. Like Drake says above, you might get one alone to question their belief system but there is no reasoning with a mob.
Looks like one of them is having a change of heart…
https://www.foxnews.com/media/democratic-lawmaker-ties-defund-police-movement-calls-crackdown-crime-following-assault
Zwak, that works for me.
Zwak gets it.
Hoist the black flag and form freikorps, and remember that treason never prospers.
Been a few times in the new neighborhood in the deep south where I’ve found myself shootin’ the breeze and drinking beer in somebody’s driveway. Realized a cartoon rendering of us would look exactly like the King of the Hill intro.
One of the most surreal experiences I had in the south was camping in East Tennessee. Woke up and realized nobody had thought to pack coffee. I hopped in my truck and drove to the “corner store” (picture a little old-timey clap board gas station sitting at a fork in the road in the middle of the woods). There were four old men with belly length beards sitting around a pot bellied stove whittlin’ and smoking pipes. I felt like I’d stepped back in time 100 years.
lol
You visited Sneed’s Feed and Seed (Formerly Chuck’s)?
He really hit the East TX look of the neighborhoods. The wooden fences around everyone’s yards, the flat terrain, and the beer drinking in the back away from the wife and kids.
It took me a long time to realize they were drinking in some back alley – we don’t have those where I grew up or live now.
I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate that I remain completely undefeated in First-Offs in my life. I would have won each and every single one here on Glibertarians, as well, if anyone were brave enough to accept the challenge. I’m so good, so First, they’re scared to First with me.
I’ll pay $10 to charity of your choice for a long form essay on any subject they publish.
I have seen some wonderful words from you, and i would like to see more.
You can be so much better.
I’ll double robodruid’s offer. Do it, Bro.
So, do you eat the cookie or does the loser?
Ewwwwww
I eavesdropped on them, because of course I did
You’re a woman, you’re a writer…
You get the juiciest convos when you just shut up and listen to the people around you, who think they don’t have an audience.
That sammich convo? Actually happened.
I believe it.
I didn’t remember that bit of the movie.
Other bits were seared into my adolescent brain for, uh, reasons.
I had no idea you enjoyed snuff films.
That croc was asking for it.
Sure, but it’s still weird you fap to it.
No kink shaming!
Sorry. Go be happy.
A few weeks ago, I went shooting with two of my neighbors and my son. Afterwards we grabbed lunch and shot the shit. My son loved it, and my neighbors were impressed how the boy held his own.
I think men’s clubs need to come back into vogue.
They do. Along with women’s clubs too. There is nothing wrong with engaging with your own sex and interests
Our younger generations know better and discourage this because equity or some shit.
Could this be what our Air Force keeps shooting at over Alaska?
https://mobile.twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1625850490482466819?cxt=HHwWhoDR8YWal5AtAAAA
Certainly possible.
And the silence strengthens this possibility
It looks like a version of a commercial radar reflector sailboats hoist to give a radar image to larger vessels. Very popular since slow moving fiberglass objects don’t reflect well. I have used them myself in foggy areas or at night near traffic lanes.
ChatGPT is an excellent recipe generator
oo that didn’t occur to me as a use. very cool.
I don’t get it. How is it any different from asking a search engine for a recipe?
Pretty sure why it’s being tested with Bing. As information retrieving, it is good. I don’t need to scour multiple sites and I can ask a specific regional style and I get it.
plus, it doesn’t have to bury the recipe in 2000 words about how the recipe came to the writer in a dream from her dead grandma in the old country and it reminds her of weekends by the lake and the scent of going in a Sears in 1977.
Yep. I can ask and demand why it is in a certain style or region too. Want northen Italian meat sauce? Given. Want Argentine reginonal cuisine? Got that also.
I gave it the ingredients I had on hand and got a pretty good three-course meal. Can I search that? I could but would go page to page to page on what I want. I can say what I am wanting and I get it otherwise.
LOL touché
“Men never gossip”
Glibertarians is a figment of our imaginations…
Men are huge gossips
God help us, Moj… Mojeux… Mojo… God help us, um, whatever.
Been listening to these gossipy gals for a couple months now. Interesting folks. One of them had a civil lawsuit brought on account of an arrest involving undue use of force or whatever. Not the sort of thing you’d think libertarians would rally behind, and yet these are real people.
IN AN unrelated note, you know The Mote in God’s Eye has like a bunch of sequels? and prequels. So is The Gripping Hand a proper denouement to the fate of the moties?
The gripping hand was a good return to the world of the motties and had a good conclusion.
It’s the book on my kindle right now. Mote is one of my favorite novels.
Yo, Scroat.
Every rural town has those men’s groups, if there is 3 early restaurants there are, at least, 3 groups, sometimes more. I walked into one where I knew 4 of the 6 at the table. They introduced the other 2 newbies (old guys but newer in town). 1 new guy joked he been in the group for 3 months and still couldn’t participate in the conversation. The other new guy said, “Hell, I’ve been here 4 years”. One of old guys said, “You’re not local so you just have to wait awhile”. They, we all laughed, but a lot of truth in that. I wouldn’t begin to sit down with a group if I didn’t know some of them or wasn’t directly invited.
In the days of long ago (pre-covid) 2 of my classmates and I would have coffee a couple times a week. 2 of us had been gone for 30 or so years while the third had stayed in the area his whole life. The conversation was something like this.
“You guys remember Jack O’Brien?” Second Guy “Yep, he was class ahead of us, he was in the Guards when I there, good guy”. Third Guy, “He had a younger sister, cute gal, married a guy from….” First Guy “I saw him yesterday, didn’t look well, said he had cancer surgery but was recovering”. Third Guy, “I’m gonna meet Dave later, he and Jack were good buddies, I’ll tell him”.
Conversation was always filled with historical data, which the friend that had stayed knew everything, the who, what and why the Dodge dealership became a laundromat, then a coffee shop and finally empty before a Thrift Shop opened and closed the same year and now is a vacant lot. Every town has the local historians but when this crop dies out the history will be lost forever. The townspeople of today are new, in the last twenty years, work for the school district, the hospital or a big box store on the edge of town.
The local small town theaters are mostly gone. A lot of good memories gone with them. Those old guys at the coffee shop went from sitting up close for Saturday matinees to sitting in the back on their first real date. Even the kid from Hibbing knew that “Times were changin’ “
My grandfather had his group that met once a week at a local diner.
As much as I enjoy Glibs and even the zoom when I get to it there was something special about those get togethers.
Yup. I’ve witnessed this at multiple Stewarts.
Deadthread made mention of The Breakfast Club opening in theaters OTD in 1985. Damn, but I can still quote that film chapter and verse.
But I didn’t realize until a few minutes ago that another influential (to me, anyway) cult classic made its debut on the same date.
As much as I like the film, I may love the novel it was based on even more.
I was really expecting this.
It’s a much better song.
I find myself heading into this realm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dario_Penne
Well shit. RIP.
I hope DenverJ is doing well in MI or wherever he ended up in.
Hah! Bite my shiny metal ass. Just the Italian dubber. Never mind. Carry on.
I didn’t get the DenverJ reference at first but your link sure helped.
Rural alternative to Yahoo! emerges.
Being self employed and working week and holidays I would hang out with a group of old guys and BS at the Bux. Two got raging Parkinson’s, one died from it and another had a massive heart attack and died after he spent a year helping his wife through a bout of cancer. I run into the fifth guy from time to time at the grocery store, he was the most kindred sprit to me anyway. Hippy in his youth, Reaganite in the 80s and a total Glibertarian now.
He was me?
When my brother moved to southern Colorado he started going to the local diner every morning for coffee and breakfast with all of the old ranchers from the area. He called it “Ranching 101”. A little while back I asked him if he was still doing that. “Nope”, he said, “They all died.”
“I don’t think any of us have ours trained.”
That’s a fact.
Uh…I need help. ChatGPT is an introvert dream
Just don’t marry it.
Eh, the extent of my gossip is how much my old group is in shambles under the new management. Nobody is handling incoming tickets and the users are getting upset. Don’t know what else isn’t getting done.
Tbh, I hate face to face gossip just as strenuously and for mostly the same reasons as modern online social media. And, betraying a certain amount of sexism, I find it more distasteful coming from men. Despite the stereotype that women are the blabbermouth sex, it’s been my experience that men are just as petty, vindictive and gossipy. Again, with due apologies for my sexism, many’s a time I’ve employed the phrase “Stop acting like a bitch” in conversation with male peers when they take that turn.
There’s a group of older men who hang out in the mornings at a coffee place I go to. They’re all either retired fishermen or dockworkers, but what I enjoy about them as I eavesdrop while I wait for my stuff, isn’t just that they gossip about people they know, but they do so half in Italian.
Unsurprisingly we had that at our local Starbucks. Old dues not caring about quarantine or staying at home…drinking coffee even if brought from home recounting their war stroies.
*wildly gestures* What are you talking about!?
I’ve realized I’ve become the “old man” at work. Not anywhere close to the giants who roamed the hallways when I was a pup. And I miss too many of the departed colleagues. I hope I’m not repeating too many of my tired out stories, but I probably am.
I know I’m repeating occasionally. I need new stories.
Maybe Sugarfree can write me some.
Is Lia Thomas on the way to becoming Buffalo Bill?
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2023/02/15/daily-wire-hosts-thread-takes-deep-disturbing-dive-into-lia-thomas-social-media-circle/
I get a strong NXIVM vibe off that “polycule”. The trans stuff is enough of a cult on its own, but these fragile, often drug/hormone/etc- addled people are prey waiting for the right predator to snap them up. I fear we’re going to see some horrific killings/suicides from it, and nobody will do shit because helping them will be a “hate crime”.
As a society, we’re celebrating mental illness. By any measure, Thomas and friends are seriously screwed up people.
It is not going to end up anywhere good.
Mornin. 😃
https://www.stripes.com/living/lifestyle/2023-02-14/valentines,-teens,-lifestyle,-cards,-washington,-d.c.,-web,-schools,-maryland,-virginia,-kids-9137471.html
Kid organizes sending 16,000 Valentine’s cards to nursing homes, hospitals, etc.
https://www.stripes.com/living/lifestyle/2023-02-14/valentines,-teens,-lifestyle,-cards,-washington,-d.c.,-web,-schools,-maryland,-virginia,-kids-9137471.html
Grrrrr.
https://patch.com/maryland/bethesda-chevychase/teen-inspires-fellow-students-make-valentines-seriously-ill
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EDKwCvD56kw
🎶🎶
https://www.nj.com/news/2023/02/jersey-shore-boardwalk-games-were-rigged-ag-says-so-maybe-it-wasnt-your-jump-shot-after-all.html
I’m shocked. 😐
I don’t believe it.
How to win a boardwalk game.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NB1qppAPxk4
Bueno.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2023/02/damar-hamlin-interview-fuels-covid-19-vaccine-conspiracies-heres-what-had-to-say.html
*adjusts tin foil hat*
“Don’t believe your lying eyes.”
Free poison!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/moderna-promises-free-covid-19-vaccines-after-us-public-health-emergency-ends/ar-AA17xnZ6
By free we mean you already paid for it through other means.
https://news.yahoo.com/alabama-man-froze-death-jail-195517939.html
That’s terrible.
That is terrible, why put a person in a fucking freezer? And improper training my ass, it’s murder…any damn fool knows not to lock a naked human being in a very cold space-probably an off the books punishment that leaves no marks that they’d been using for some time.
Exactly. I guarantee it’s not the first time they’ve used it.
https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/lehighvalley/allentown-couple-discuss-forgiveness-love-decades-after-wife-hired-hitmen-to-kill-husband/article_d34e2b14-acb7-11ed-a858-c75834f56b65.html
😮😳
“ What happened next is like something out of a movie. Hollywood thought so, too, turning the Totos’ troubles into a feature film called “I Love You to Death.””
Actually a funny movie.
Mornin’ Sean.
And Rat
Morning, Shirley.
Morning, UCS. Likewise to Scruffy.
Morning
I’m spending my morning enjoying my interactions with the TSA and overtired airline staff.
Good morning, Shirley, U, Ssccrruuffyy, Roat, and Sean!
Work should be fairly straightforward today, though I WILL probably have to work some more on writing up the tedious minutes of the meeting I sat through and scribbled notes on…two weeks ago. But afterward I get to go to water aerobics and then it’s BATTLE BOTS NIGHT!!! 😃
Hey all
When I was growing up, the local geezer place was Pop’s Diner. The old fogies would gather every Saturday morning and solve all of society’s ills while also bemoaning the lousy performance of the Redskins.
I woke up at midnight. Around 4:30 I realized I should probably get some more sleep. But I’m back because I have work starting at 7. 🙁
Have you tried melatonin?
Methaqualone is best. Unfortunately it is Schedule 1.
Oooh ludes, can you still get those anywhere at all in the world anymore?
Doctor, doctor, gimme some ‘ludes.
I gotta bad case of drug abuse…
Hey hey hey!
South Africa.
I’m not going anywhere near that place.
Ugh! 😕 How much sleep did you get before you woke up at midnight?
~6 hrs.
That’s not too hateful…but I suspect you’d still prefer to get your sleep schedule back to one more compatible with a day job.
It’s a non-smoking flight? Since when?
Since you started hot-boxing the entire passenger cabin.
Only line remembered from Airplane II, at the Transcendental Airlines ticket counter: “Will that be chanting or non-chanting?”
A very underrated movie, Shatner talking them down in the end was great.
Mornin’, reprobates. Feellin’ a bit ornery this morning.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TUGOKB-JOT8
Good morning, ‘patzie! 🙂
you guy are all a bunch of socialists!!!
It’s true, you got me.
What could possibly go wrong ??? 🧐
If someone tries feeding a shark with their Toddler
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1625970299387740179
Thanks, Mojeaux, I need laughs today.
“I told my wife to make me a sammich. She got up and did it. She was on her way out the door and said, ‘You may not want to eat that.’”
Solid gold.
I might just be able to getting behind a War on Hate Birds.
the plural of goose should be gooses. stupid English.
OR – and hear me out – the plural of “moose” should be “meese.”
Nonsense, the plural of Goose should be Meeses, the plural of Moose should be Goat.
That’s going to reduce the appeal of goat’s milk cheese.
Or will it? Hmmmm…
I doubt it will.
Throatwarbler Mangrove is clearly correct.
The plural of “box” should be “boxen.”
Wait – are you contending that it isn’t?
Obviously the dogs are trained never harmed the geese
That makes no sense.
All the hate birds at my local lake moved across the shore. I’m happy, because they harassed everyone in the park. Wish I knew how that was managed.
So much for getting an early start today. Left door badge at home. Do I try to cram my change ticket or bump it to tomorrow?