Blackfish64

A horse has no udder, a cow can't whinny, up is down, and sideways is straight ahead.

Do you realize you're wearing a pink bunny suit?

“a necessary evil and in its worst state an intolerable one” -- Thomas Paine Never heard that before, eh? You had to use that force, that evil, to "draw down" on a guy on the job. Oh! You don't think that's evil. You better think again. But, in another sense, you are right, it don't got to be done. We don't got to do a damn thing. It's your choice. You can reject my claims so long as I am not your boss and we are not at work. You can reject my claims so long as you are wasting your own time and not any of mine. It's not that I think myself incapable of error, it's that I wonder often if I can ever do anything without making a truckload of errors.

I was quite pleased to discover that happiness is not a pursuit, but that happiness ensues. Willing, yes, quite willing, but only when it becomes absolutely necessary. Force is sometimes a necessary evil, as the saying goes. Not always. But sometimes it just is. Sometimes what's got to be done has got to be done.

I think it's both. Dad hated me when he realized I was nothing like him and didn't want to be. I can't remember ever once liking him even for a minute. I have always despised him and never wanted anything to do with him. We are as opposite as night and day. There is no need to apologize for anything. My dad is the same way. He is a collectivist through and through. He ran away from home when he was fourteen to live with rich people who spoiled him, then ran away from them at age sixteen, lied about his age and joined the Marine Corps. He's been in unions all his life. Drunk as a skunk, woman-beating maniac for the first forty five years of his life. It's all about the collective, socialism, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. Typical of Baby Boomers. It's all for them and it's all about them. The most narcissistic generation of people ever born. It's easy for me to draw on the energy because I like it. I cheat. When you like doing something, it's not really work. I'm just built that way. It comes naturally. Courage has to be worked at. Displaying vulnerability comes from just being honest with myself. I mean, we're just human beings. We're here for only a very short time. We're made of soft mushy stuff stuck to a brittle frame. We're not much of anything at all. And it's just plain luck of the draw for the most part that we are even here. Looking for God, the meaning of life, the Fountain of Youth and other nonsense like that is useless because none of it exists in the first place. No one ever finds it because it isn't there, there is nothing to find. It's a trick and a trick question. Life has no meaning save the meaning we put to it. Outside of ourselves, there is no meaning. Dad, the narcissist, is an empty vessel, a fake tough guy. Covered with fake-tough-guy Marine tattoos, drunk, sloppy, lazy and stupid, he would often pick fights with much better men than he and always got his ass handed to him. I never understood until later on in life that he was just a coward in tough guy clothing. I never understood why, if he wanted to fight so much, he never took the time to learn how, never worked at it, never worked out, was lazy and sat on his ass all the time. If you want to go out and go around and get into some adventures, like I do, you gotta have your wits about you. It's just common sense. But I realized very early on in life that Dad had no common sense. He is a fucking idiot of the first order. Most of my narcissism is centered around women, too. I love them, squeeze them, hug them, laugh a lot with them. I don't make anyone do anything they don't want to do, and I always make sure they know exactly what is going on. This is why I love whores, professionals. I can always get what I want. And when I'm done I can just leave them where I found them. I love these kinds of relationships. I love all kinds of girls. But with a normal woman in a normal relationship, it's all about how the world will see them and what the world is saying about them. They want stability and a warm house to crawl into at the end of a boring work day. They want the world to see them a certain way. They need to be surrounded, safe, secure, with family and friends and the like. It's all about the face and how the world looks at them. I simply do not care in the least about anything like that. The world can take what it thinks about me and shove it. I'm too busy getting on with another adventure, learning, growing, being. The many women in my life enhance all of this and make it more joyful, more playful. That's all I want to do with them, just play with them for a while, and move on.

I do in fact exhibit the qualities of a narcissist. We all do, some more than others. That is not even arguable. The question is, are you a narcissist? In other words, do you seek to invade the boundaries of others, take whatever they have for your narcissistic supply, and treat others like disposable trash? That is the question. We're all narcissists. But there is a healthy narcissism and a not-so-healthy narcissism. I wouldn't venture to guess whether or not you can be open and honest, genuine and vulnerable. I know I can however. It's not that I don't want your sympathies, it's that I have to wonder what people hope to accomplish by spreading them around. I prefer to do the emotional work and get on with it. I fail to see what good sympathy does, for the most part. There are times when it is appropriate and helpful. There are times when it is a waste of time and is superfluous. I appreciate what you said about confronting the narcissists in my life. What you need to understand is that I am fifty years old. This stuff is either been done already and/or I just don't care anymore. I simply fail to see what is the objective you have in mind in doing a thing like that. What will it accomplish? All too often, "confronting" people like these looks like trying to get revenge, or putting someone in their place, or something like that. I have no wish to hurt anyone. No, not even those who have hurt me. Those who hurt me did so because they were hurt themselves to begin with. Doing more of what doesn't work still doesn't work. I think that if revenge and putting someone in their place is what one has in mind, then I would say the best way to accomplish that is to live one's life and be happy in spite of them. The narcissist can't stand to see us happy and having a good life and a good time. The narcissist wants us to be low, miserable, and in their service, feeding their narcissistic supply. Take that away from him and you've got something there. You want to make a narcissist miserable? Live your life and let him see that he means nothing to you, has no advantage whatsoever over you, and you are happy, healthy, and whole. Your past may well be broken and fucked up and you may have failures he may try to use and to hold over your head and bring you down to his level. Keeping fit and healthy in a world full of narcissists and just plain assholes is the challenge. That never ends. We don't get a day off from that. Having been abused as children does not grant us the privilege of never having to feel pain again. No. Rather we get to carry that pain along with us and add it to our list of burdens as we travel through life. When someone calls me crazy, I consider the source and take it as a compliment. Our backgrounds are very different. I didn't stay awake nights waiting for dad to come home so I could talk to him. I could not stand the sight of my father and ran and hid when he came home. I hated his guts from the day I was born and wished only that he was dead or gone away and not in my way any longer. When I became a teen and could leave the home, I did so at my earliest convenience. I never wanted anything to do with him. To this very day, he is someone I do not know and do not care to know. Your father said he failed in raising you. There, you see? The words came out of his own mouth. It was the same with my father. Fail. Failure. They are failures. The End But now we are big boys and girls and we are free to make up our lives any way we wish. Free to choose the intellectual and emotional worlds we wish to live in and be a part of. Yes, I'm a pretty tough guy. And it shows. I come from a tough place, we did tough things, we were rough and tough kids who played noisily, rode horses and bulls, rode motorcycles, fought, adventured, swore like truck drivers at age two, and did a lot of other tough things. I am still a big kid and do many of those things to this day. I'm rugged and I like it that way. Always looking for new ways to make me even more rugged.

Chickens rule.

The only way I take physical delivery of oil is in the form of gasoline, in my tank. Other than that, I don't expect to take delivery of any oil. I don't buy paper. I don't trust them. I don't trust anyone.

I don't buy paper. I don't invest in the stock market. When I buy silver, I take delivery, or there's nothing doing.

I know from talking to people and from watching how they behave. Now, I don't claim to be any kind of behavioral expert, but some things aren't too hard to spot and explain. It is my understanding you do some kind of security work. Do you or do you not draw conclusions about people based on their behavior? Of course you do. If you did not, you would not know when to "draw down", as you say, on a suspect, would you? You would be at a loss on what to do if you did not observe and draw judgement and conclusion on them. In fact, you would not be very good at your job at all. Perhaps you would only be "projecting". Perhaps that is why "law enforcement" is such a brutal ordeal in America these days. What with all the officers only "projecting" and drawing conclusions from... what? Hard to say. All that being said, it has been my experience, judging from talking and observing the behavior of others, that most people are stupid and don't want to help themselves at all. They want to whine and get freebies and sob all over others. The "feelings" game is not always genuine. For some people, for many people I have met, it is nothing more than their attempt to draw a blank check on my time, my patience, and my resources. And to such people, I say, well, they can go to hell. Again, it's all about context. If I am the boss, and we are at work, for example, you bet I get to tell you what what we do and what we don't talk about. If your talking is disrupting the schedule and the workplace, if you're upsetting people with your chatter about your feelings, we're going to have a talk, not about your feelings, but about how you now need to stop talking about your feelings and get back to work. And if there is anything you need, I will surely point out to you whatever benefits you might be entitled to as an employee that can help you get the help you need and be a better, happier, healthier individual, who does not disrupt the work, but enhances it, and makes it a better place to work. As for what you do on your own time, well, that is none of my concern, unless and until, once again, context, you are in my house at a party, you are drunk, and start talking about some feelings or event nobody much approves of, then, again, you will be asked to control yourself or you will be asked to leave. And once more, if you want to talk about some feelings or event I do not want to talk about, I will ask you to change the subject, and if you don't, I might get up and leave you sitting there all by yourself, talking to yourself about your feelings and events. And if it is a family member, a loved one, a good friend, or even a stranger, who has a legitimate conflict and needs my help, or just needs an ear to listen, I'm all in. And if it's nothing but bawling about this and that and how there's nothing they can do, I will make suggestions as to what they can do. If they don't like my suggestions, they can take some other suggestions. Whatever it takes. But the goal is always to solve the problem, whatever it might be, and get well, get better, and move on. I am interested in the problems and understanding them, yes, but after that it's time to get well. After that, I am interested in solutions. Context. That time and place for everything under the sun.

I make no determination on whether or not someone is allowed to feel something or not. That is absurd. What I mean to say is that there is a time and a place for talking about it, bringing it up, etc. I am describing no such thing, however I would scorn someone who brings up his precious feelings out of time and place. For example, if we are at work, that is not the time or the place to talk about your feelings and/or your therapy. And, yes, I do have a sharp aversion to that kind of behavior. On the other hand, if we are in therapy, I don't want to talk about work, unless of course it has something to do with the therapy. Most people don't really want to get better. Most people only want to have someone to whine to. I put those kinds of people aside and stick with those who want to try and get better.

I just burned a Tahr Pup 6.0 CD last night and booted it up! I love it! Smokes on this new computer! It was the last distro I ever thought I would even try, but I tried it and I like it! I like it!

Absolutely positutely. This is why we own metals in the first place. So we can easily hide them when the going gets rough. As for them never confiscating our goods again.... um, no. They will confiscate everything and anything they can get their hands on. I never put anything past them. I think of nothing but all manner of their evil. They are good for nothing and will stop at nothing. Anyone who trusts anything they say is a fool. We know P.I.G.s (people in government) are lying because their mouths are moving and sound is coming out. Zero trust for any of them, ever. Never ever trust any of them under any circumstances. These are people who advocate torture for crying out loud. What gave you the first clue?

Now, this lecture verifies what I have thought for a long time about psychology. It's not an exact science. When people consider what is good and bad psychology, we have to consider where the person(s) in question have come from. North, South, East, West, all have quite different manners of behavior and what is and is not acceptable. While it may be favorable to adopt an "objective" manner of psychology and philosophy, and in theory it could appear to have been done, we must remember that we are dealing with the human psyche and the human framework in general, which is far from being perfect, far from being even reasonably workable in most cases. In other words, most people are stupid and don't know what psychology and/or philosophy is in the first place, let alone what good psychology and philosophy might be. Makes me want to run off and try to find, "Galt's Gulch." Who knows? It might actually exist! Basically, for one example, what we might call "narcissistic" in one part of the world, might well be considered a perfectly normal and acceptable social norm in another part of the world. Where in the western parts of the world, the narcissist is seen as and empty-headed, unempathic, unsympathetic, destructive ghost walking the landscape; in another part of the world however the entire landscape might be filled with the same type of person, all walking among each other, all practicing the same norms and customs, which, to a western observation, is narcissistic, but to them is quite normal, quite expected in fact. To them, behaving in any other way would be unacceptable.

Listen to the words Vaknin reads from a cerebral narcissist on his non-attraction to women. I can't imagine life being like this. This has got to be the most miserable, empty, cold existence one can have. I would have to end it. I don't think I could take it. I could not imagine life without the society of women. Hot, hard bodies to squeeze, a beautiful face to laugh and cry with, the ultimate companions. But, then again, as the narcissist says, he could care less. He is simply not interested. Bizarre. 100% alien. I think this talk on arrested empathy is crucial to understanding narcissists and their behavior as well. This is part of what I was talking about when I talked about my wife torturing me when I was sick and I could not understand her lack of empathy, lack of sympathy. The narcissist simply does not have these abilities.

Those aren't ski poles. Those are Nordic Walking Poles, designed specifically for Nordic Walking. I don't have any of the fancy stuff either. My sticks are merely sticks of bamboo I found lying out in the yard. That's one reason I called this thread, Stick Walking, not Nordic Walking, as it is popularly known. I am not embarrassed at all hiking daily with my sticks. I have them decorated, too. Though I have to say, living here in the Thai village, I get a lot of stares. These simple people have never seen anybody do anything like this around here. In fact they've hardly seen anybody do much of anything at all around here, save the same old thing for fifteen hundred years. I keep my sticks only the height of my armpit. Anything shorter is too short and useless, and anything longer is a cumbersome pain in the arse. I use both sticks at all times, climbing, descending, walking, running, skipping, and with several different steps. Not a full body workout, but plenty close enough. 90% is awesome, powerful, and you can't find that with most kinds of workouts. I don't wear headphones. I prefer the sound of the sticks and whatever is going on around me.

They already did the gold confiscation in the United States. Under FDR. You are allowed to own gold right now, but that could change once again real soon. There's really no tellin' what they might be up to next. But they haven't taken the pensions yet. So that's a good sign for gold owners at the moment. When they take the pensions, either through taxation or outright confiscation, then they'll see about the rest of the private property, how much they are going to allow you to have, if any. Maybe they'll take both at the same time? Hard to tell what those crazy Statists might be up to next.

Wikipedia, Mayo Clinic, and the good old Greek mythology all have excellent discussions on what is narcissism. These are all good places to start. And again, I have to hand it to Sam Vaknin and his book, "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" for explanation. Now, one thing that is often missed and misunderstood about the narcissist that he most definitely has a personality disorder. That is to say, there is something wrong with them. Don't forget the narcissist is a victim, too. That's how he got where he is in the first place. All too often the information you read about narcissism comes from those who have been victimized by narcissists and you hear only one side of the story: their victimization. There's a great deal more to it than that. I'm not trying to excuse the narcissist and his or her behavior, but often they don't really understand themselves what they are doing. It's up to healthy people, people who may care about him or her, to make them see it. Sticking with one particular definition might not be as good an idea as studying the problem a bit. The narcissist comes from abuse. And so, like the good empaths and scientists we all strive to be, I would highly recommend taking the Hippocratic oath and applying it generously here first before drawing any conclusions. And of course if you are with a narcissist yourself, protect yourself first. There isn't always something that can be done to help the narcissist, but we must first help ourselves to understanding the problem.

Whiner. I still don't get why he even went in the first place and why he sat there and took it. I mean, it's like the old native American story where the old woman takes an injured rattlesnake home and nurses him back to health. Then he bites her. Afterward, she asks why, after all she's done for him, he treats her this way. The snake says, "Dumb old bitch, you knew I was a snake." Sam Vaknin is highly intelligent. The real thing. This guy's an amateur. From him I get a real sense of revenge and attention seeking, like he's secretly hoping his mommy dearest is watching the videos. Creepy. I see the hurt little boy in his eyes, speech, and actions, like he's not quite over it yet. I prefer a more factual, scientific, and problem-solving approach and method.

Absolutely right on. It does exactly that. Works the muscles in the legs, not grinds the joints. 90% of all muscle in the body goes to work. The next best thing is swimming. Initially, it is hard on the breathing. Take it slow and get used to it gradually.

I mean to download Mint 17.1 "Rebecca" w/ Cinnamon, but haven't gotten to replace my burner yet. Maybe tonight.

I don't know when, but I'm looking forward to it.

Agreed. The pity party is a sham and is bullying and attention seeking. I can be every bit as "vulnerable" as anyone, even more so, but there's a time and a place for it. Narcissism Survivor once did a presentation on an experience with a family gathering. He talked the whole time describing the narcissist's ruling of the gathering and getting supply from it. He did nothing to change the situation, up and leave it, for one example, and then comes on YouTube, behind everyone's back, and whines about it. Furthermore, why did he bother going in the first place? He knew only too well that would be the case. He knew his narcissist was a snake and stuck his hand out to get bit again. What for? To get his own narcissistic supply and YouTube presentation? As for me, sometimes I am a little bit macho. I mean, I do understand and respect feelings, mine and others, but sometimes the feelings are held in too high regard. Feelings aren't everything. Again, time and a place for it. Sometimes it's time to put aside the feelings, take the proverbial bull by the horns and get going.

Narcissism Survivor has got some good items, but he's a bit of a whiner and a narcissist and gets a lot of mileage out of claiming victimhood. He's at the botton of my list. I like Ollie Mathews, too. Sam Vaknin is not suspect. He is very educated and is a full blown narcissist. He's even done time. His book: "Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited" is absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend it. He knows he's a narcissist and a narcissist survivor and often talks about it.

You do what you train. Enjoy your training. I do indeed enjoy mine. I train to win and nothing else. I train for violence and nothing else. Always works for me. Yes, people do use State and government interchangeably. They are not the same thing however. When we understand the difference (though I suspect we never will) the world will be quite a different place. You are one of the few I have ever read who is even capable of making the distinction. Cheers.