Thought for the Day

[fred41]

Any American over 40 should know who Menudo was. it’s where Ricky Martin came from for Christ’s sake...lol.

[broncofan]

Any American over 40 should know who Menudo was. it’s where Ricky Martin came from for Christ’s sake...lol.

All these elitist cultural judgments. You ask me who Mozart is and I can definitely tell you he had a funny laugh and the guy who played him should have won an oscar. Maybe.

I know who Ricky Martin is. But I didn't know anything about him until that horrible song La Vida Loca came out. Then he was around for a couple of years, and I just didn't pay any attention because the music is not good. Am I on safe ground here? It's not good right? I wasn't supposed to have heard that song and thought, this genius, where did he come from? BTW, I've been doing some running for about 6 months and my knees have held up (I saw your comment in the other thread). I had a weird ankle injury, but it passed and I'm on the trail, waiting to play tennis once I'm vaccinated.

I'll be with you shortly Nick. The Menudo story is sounding vaguely plausible now that I know everyone knows them.

[broncofan]

No, nobody called me on anything, you were merely discussing whether or not I was a racist among yourselves as if I wasn't even in the thread. I'm pretty sure my black friend can beat up your black friend. Hell, that's the main reason I hang out with him - that and the looks we get when we walk into a casino together.

Your vague insinuations that I'm full of shit are quite tired BTW, Bronco. This is the internet. You are more than welcome to believe or disbelieve anything you read. But I'm pretty sure that what bothers you the most about me is that you know deep down inside that I'm telling you the truth.

Yes dude. It's been troubling me much more than the fact that I'm someone who's been hospitalized for pneumonia a bunch of times, living in a hot spot country for a respiratory pathogen during a pandemic.

I wish you well. I was trying to set you up at Mar a Lago with the heavy hitters. I thought maybe you could go there and give covid to a foreign premier who's paying a courtesy visit. It was a diabolical plan, but then I saw filghy's article about Trump cheating at golf and I scrapped it. If you're reporting a handicap you shouldn't be raking putts and I didn't want you to have to see that.

I suppose I just don't understand why it's so important to your political arguments that you're doing well. It reminds me of when Bill O'Reilly was telling everyone how nobody had it harder than him coming up and they found out he went to private school or was middle class. There's actual data on economic and social mobility in this country. If you've done something it doesn't mean anyone can. These anecdotes always end up favoring your argument too which is easy to happen. I've thought of things that have happened to me and it's easy to finagle a version that makes poor people seem lazy or sick people seem weak or negligent. Or the opposite. It's also easy for the anecdotes to relate to real events but what if you're in the foreground or the background or it's kind of hazy because alcohol does that. You remember James Frey?

[Nick Danger]

You remember James Frey?

I don't but I paid you the courtesy of googling him. Wrote a book of bullshit, went on Oprah and made a fool out of her. You don't want to be the Oprah of the HungAngels containment board. Don't worry, Bronco, if you ever make a fool of yourself on here it won't be because of anything I said.

I'm going back to my thread now. AGAIN, if somebody here has some special feelings for this thread, like, you love this thread and want to marry it, or you actually believe a political thread can consist of each special snowflake posting his own special thought for the day and no one arguing with it, JUST DON'T REPLY TO ME HERE. I have no special feelings for this thread at all, I will fuck it and stop returning its calls without thinking twice.

[filghy2]

Any American over 40 should know who Menudo was. it’s where Ricky Martin came from for Christ’s sake...lol.

I'm not American but American music is an international thing and I'd never heard of them until I image-searched that picture. I gather they sang mostly in Spanish, so it's a bit of a niche market even though they sold lots of records.

[filghy2]

What I'd really like to express to you though, Flighty, about me, is that I am "firmly committed" to believing absolutely nothing whatsoever.

I'd say the one thing you are most committed to believing is your own sense of superiority.

The thing that fascinates me most about your posts is not their substance, but what they indicate as a sort of psychological case study. Why would a person invest so much time in making spurious arguments that are never likely to convince any reasonable person? You've never made a convert here and I doubt you've done it anywhere else. The answer must be that you are doing it mainly for yourself - your posts are to bolster your own sense of superiority.

[Nick Danger]

I'd say the one thing you are most committed to believing is your own sense of superiority.

The thing that fascinates me most about your posts is not their substance, but what they indicate as a sort of psychological case study. Why would a person invest so much time in making spurious arguments that are never likely to convince any reasonable person? You've never made a convert here and I doubt you've done it anywhere else. The answer must be that you are doing it mainly for yourself - your posts are to bolster your own sense of superiority.

You disappoint me, Flighty. First the racist card, now this. Here I am, perfectly comfortable with my sense of superiority and you try to make it out as a negative quality.

I give it all up to you, Flighty, the pretty parts and the ugly parts. I spend a reasonable amount of time here advising you. When the spirit moves me. I'll tell you one thing I don't invest my time in, though, and that's re-reading your old posts. But you do read mine. I can't help but feel that at some point, maybe in the far, far future, you're going to be in a situation where conservative politics is the obvious answer to your big question. And you're going to think back to all my rambling posts that you've read and re-read, all that insouciant rhetoric and obtuse antagonism, and you're gonna say to yourself - and ONLY to yourself - "Goddamit that asshole was RIGHT!"

You know a little about black holes Flighty? Maybe you're aware that the prevailing theory among physicists is that no information in the universe is ever lost. Even when it gets sucked into a black hole, it finds its way back out again in the form of Hawking Radiation. You can burn a book and it will turn to ash and smoke, but if you had the proper tools, you could turn that ash and smoke right back into a book again.

So you can write me off as some raving megalomaniac if you want. But I'm in your head now, Flighty, and I will ALWAYS be there.

[filghy2]

I give it all up to you, Flighty, the pretty parts and the ugly parts.

And the made-up parts? Rather than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly you seem to have taken your inspiration from the famous line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Most of your stories seem designed to embellish the legend of Nick Danger, the self-made man who learns important lessons, overcomes challenges, succeeds through his own efforts and sees the truth where others cannot. The question is, have your political views been chosen to fit the self-image, or is it the other way around?

[Nick Danger]

And the made-up parts? Rather than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly you seem to have taken your inspiration from the famous line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Most of your stories seem designed to embellish the legend of Nick Danger, the self-made man who learns important lessons, overcomes challenges, succeeds through his own efforts and sees the truth where others cannot. The question is, have your political views been chosen to fit the self-image, or is it the other way around?

You must live in a dark world, Flighty. If you're not the hero of your own story then who is?

I mean here we are, and I've posted on this site - wait, let me check - 301 times now. Long, detailed posts most of them. Some people have found them entertaining and I'm glad for that, but you, Flighty - you have actually STUDIED my posts, looking for any little contradiction, even from YEARS ago, that you can throw up in my face and say, "See, you're a goddamn liar, Nick, and here's the proof!"

You've found no such thing. Still you belabor the point.

I'll tell you all about my stories, Flighty, and you can take this or leave it - they're ALL 100% true. And while it is also true that I always end up the hero, there's a very good reason for that. The reason is that I don't tell stories in which I DON'T end up the hero. But there are plenty of them.

Now I said I shared the ugly with you, but that's a pretty borderline statement, I certainly haven't shared all the ugly aspects of my life. So to make up for it, I AM going to share the ugly with you, right here and now.

I'm terrible at relationships, Flighty. I'd love to be able to say that every failed relationship I've had has been the result of me getting tired of some girl's bullshit, but in at least half of them it was her getting tired of mine. I've been told that I have no capacity for intimacy. I've been told I'm controlling, and I've also been told I'm not controlling enough. I've been told that a REAL man would NEVER do...whatever the hell I did.

I'm highly intelligent but I'm also a huge fuck-up. I barely graduated high school. As a young man I was quite impulsive and also lacked integrity, got myself in a good deal of trouble with the law. In the Air Force I had a LOT of letters of reprimand and letters of counseling, a dozen at least. Even got myself an Article 15 once for going AWOL.

I can be quite lazy. Example, I'm currently still in Tennessee visiting family, been here several weeks while my employees run my business. I've lied to them twice about why I haven't made it back to Utah. The real reason is, I'm enjoying doing nothing.

I can be a compulsive gambler. The kind who loses all the money he designated for gambling then hits the ATM for more. I've kinda got that under control, but not really, I'll still occasionally drop a grand just because I happened to be driving by a casino and got the urge.

I have a strong tendency toward binge drinking that I constantly have to keep in check. Sometimes...hell, OFTEN times, I fail to do so.

I have a terrible relationship with my mother, she doesn't like me and I don't like her, we barely tolerate each other and that only for my father's sake.

So you see, Flighty, I'm pretty goddamn human. But the story of my many faults is not the one I'm here to tell.

[Laphroaig]

I mean here we are, and I've posted on this site - wait, let me check - 301 times now. Long, detailed posts most of them. Some people have found them entertaining and I'm glad for that, but you, Flighty - you have actually STUDIED my posts, looking for any little contradiction, even from YEARS ago, that you can throw up in my face and say, "See, you're a goddamn liar, Nick, and here's the proof!"

You've found no such thing. Still you belabor the point.

I'll tell you all about my stories, Flighty, and you can take this or leave it - they're ALL 100% true. And while it is also true that I always end up the hero, there's a very good reason for that. The reason is that I don't tell stories in which I DON'T end up the hero. But there are plenty of them.

You've backed yourself into this corner. You said yourself you were a liar. Now, why should anyone believe anything from someone who admits to being a trained liar, or was that a lie in itself?

Not only was I in the Air Force, I was actually the civilian press liaison at a large stateside SAC base. I know for a fact that the public is fed a constant stream of misinformation and disinformation, because I used to feed it to them. I was quite literally trained in the fine art of the cover-up, and participated in more than one. Here's a hint: Military cover-ups don't involve MUCH lying; they are more about stonewalling the press or insisting on a certain level of coverage ("Well Below Saturation" and "Single Touch" are two terms that will probably be part of a handshake agreement between a millitary commander and a newspaper editor during an exchange of sensistive information) from behind closed doors. But they certainly will lie if it becomes necessary - they will have a meeting, they will decide which lie is best, they will brainstorm all the various ways the lie might be discovered, and then they will pick up the phone and lie, lie, lie.