I can say for a fact that I am not much better than anyone else. I'm lazy and selfish (and piggy even) a lot of the time. It takes a lot to get me off my duff and doing good works, especially now that I am retired. It's fun to have money and leisure and live in a beautiful place and have nice family and friends and many joys in life. And I'm not fishing for compliments, either, when I say this, of the oh really you are a good person variety. I'm not an especially good person, just average good. (See vid below)
Stingy, too, often enough. I sneer at the peasants. Ignorance really annoys me and causes me to poke fun at those with silly ideas. Unlike Kant, I can't say that I should strive in my behavior to be the model by which everyone else should live. That would be the purest egotism. And way too much work, of course.
Comfortable folks who insist on seeing themselves as embattled outsiders get on my nerves. They have it both ways: playing the victim card plus making a nice living in peace and prosperity. Nobody's known the trouble they've seen! Why, they were almost turned into bacon!
I prefer this kind of frontal attack on the selfish rich, as in this great Beatles song. I own that I have my piggy side, too. Not going to deny that. So a New Years' resolution will be to live with the ambivalence and stop trying to rationalize everything. MMMM. Bacon!
And here is something for your boo-boos!
OK. Tomorrow I'll be nice again and post a pretty pic or something. If the damn vog (volcanic smog that we get from time to time, especially bad right now) goes away. It had me recliner bound all yesterday afternoon. I can't exercise or even move when it's this bad. But I sure got a lot of reading done!
BTW: I hope everyone understands that the person I'm criticizing here most is myself.
Pigs get picked on too much...that is all I have to say.
Posted by: Tabor | December 02, 2012 at 03:34 PM
My hand is up too, sistah!
I have the odd bout of philanthropy and am very much aware of living in First World Privilege but I have crawly days of sloth and indolence.
Roll on the bon-bons please, and wipe your feet on the way in...
Yes, love that piggies song.
And bacon bandages, yum...
XO
WWW
Posted by: wisewebwoman | December 02, 2012 at 03:36 PM
Tabor: Too bad for them that they are so darn tasty!
Wisewebwoman:Y'know, it's a kind of melancholia, and I wonder if it does not have to do with Irishness, of which I am 50%/ (Irishness? My writing is slipping pretty badly). The rest of me is people with lighter spirits, French and Spanish, but I got a real dose of contact depression from my mother. It isn't really innate but more a behavior I picked up from her.
I just started cooking and working on my holiday mailing list, and I feel fine now. Oh, you remind me that I have some home-made truffles a friend brought by. I guess I DO have friends (sob). But this hits me hardest when Terry goes on a business trip, as he did today. Sometimes I go along, but usually it's to Phoenix, and who wants to go to Phoenix?
Posted by: Hattie | December 02, 2012 at 05:02 PM
1) We had a lot of Vog over here in Honolulu on the Island of Oahu yesterday. It was very visible.
2) My mother had a partially Irish background (many people in America are "partials.") She also has some German--Zipser, which could be worse. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Her name was Butler which looks English but is Irish, and it doesn't mean "Dinner is served" kind of Butler, but Bottler--keeper of the wine bottles. I've been to two Butler Reunions in Kilkenny, Ireland. Bob Dye of Honolulu, who lived in Ireland half the year, told me once, "Oh, Kilkenny? The Butlers own that town don't they?" Anyway, Mom was prone to serious depression and she drank too much. I can get pretty darn serious, but I don't think I'm depressed, by pure luck actually. I was getting some therapy while going through caregiving for my wife and I asked the therapist if I appeared to be depressed. He told me NO. BUT inertia has set in, and I am taking too long to take care of business and also to tidy up my house to reflect the new realities. Basically, I think I'm doing just fine, however.
Posted by: Henry Kilkenny Chapin | December 03, 2012 at 09:58 AM
Hank: No wonder we are a lot alike. That Irish thing, but tempered with a good deal of other input.
I read somewhere that the majority of U.S. white people are of German-Irish descent. And a lot of "locals" around here, too. My late mother in law's caregiver is Chinese, Filipino, Irish and German! And she has a very Irish name, too but looks like a Polynesian woman in a Gaughan painting.
Posted by: Hattie | December 03, 2012 at 10:55 AM
And I'm of Hawaiian, German, and Polish descent.
==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_American
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_American
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States
Posted by: Brandon | December 03, 2012 at 11:28 AM
Brandon--This is a joke, okay? A wise man who had lived many years and had many experiences in many lands was on his death bed. Someone asked him, "Do you have any final words for us, o wise man?" "Yes," he croaked, "I have learned that ALL THE STEREOTYPES ARE TRUE."
Hilo is a hotbed of ethnic analysis of people. But then so is the rest of the world as well.
There's another death bed joke while I'm on a roll. Gertrude Stein was a guru on art, literature and life with many followers. As she lay dying, someone asked her in a pleading voice, "Gertrude, please tell me, what's the answer? I must know what is the answer?" Gertrude summoned up her strength and said, "So, what's the question?"
Posted by: Henry Kilkenny Chapin | December 03, 2012 at 01:30 PM
Oh yeah, and the racial and ethnic stereotyping can be annoying, but it is not usually vicious around here.
Posted by: Hattie | December 03, 2012 at 01:40 PM