Schnacky’s Corner

Little tidbits of wisdom from the very first blog fan I ever had, Mr. Gregory Schnacky:

*You’re right when you state, “(Reality TV) is not really reality.” Except for “Cops”, you can turn on each of the “reality” shows and immedialty see what is unrealistic about each of them. “Survivor” has people playing games on a deserted island or in the jungle. How many shipwrecked or lost people are so relaxed as to try to beat each other in some contrived competition? “The Bachelor” has a group of airheads competing for a chance of marrying some vain guy. How mny airheads actively pursue one narcissist in real life? “Wife Swap” has men giving up their women without objection or jealousy. Unless you’re one of the miority of swingers, you just don’t do that. I could go on, but I’m expected at the “Big Brother” house within’ the hour.

*Speaking from experience, online friendships are pretty shakey. First, you have people who’ll unexpectedly reveal that you really don’t matter to them as much as you thought. Second, you’ll have people like me, who have trouble finding time to get online on a regular basis. Third, you don’t have the benefit of facial expressions and verbal intonations to see what you’re online friend is trying to convey. Fourth, there’s only so much comfort that can be derived from the typewritten word. Fifth, an online friend can meet with a tragic end and there’s no way of telling why he or she disappeared from your life. I’m sure I can find other reasons why online friendships are shakey, but time does not permit me to continue.

*You likened the disposal of Christmas trees to the dumping of murder victims. Have you ever noticed that worn-out mattresses mett the same fate? Although more mattresses are properly hauled to the dump than Christmas trees, you’ll see quite a few mattresses just off the shoulder of many roads. I was once an accessory to the mattress dumping.  My parents and I tied a mattress to the top of the car. I’m not sure where they intended to take the used mattress. I don’t know the destination, because along a country road, the mattress came loose and flew off. My parents were relieved and kept on driving. I look back on that dark day and shudder at the thought on my complicity in that heinous act. It didn’t bother me then and it really hasn’t troubled my conscience over the years. It was only after reading your rant that this buried memory surface. I don’t know whether I should curse you or thank you. So what I’ll do is just wish you good night. :p

*In your rant, you described how a wife can withhold sex as a means of control. You also alluded to the propensity of wives to read something into perfectly harmless statements by their husbands. There are, however, other things wives can do to drive their husbands up the wall. One of the most maddening things wives, and even other women, do is refuse to say what is bothering them. They give their husbands and their male friends non-answers to the question, “What’s upsetting you?”. By non-answers I mean they reply “You wouldn’t understand” or “nothing is upsetting me”. The more guys try to get to the bottom of their obvious unhappiness the more irritated they get. Although I’ve never been married, I have experienced this behavior more than I can count.

*Now that I’m fading in, I finally got a chance to read your entry. I agree with you that the Internet affords anonymity. I also agree with you that you can type pretty much anything in a chat room, IM and weblog. However, the point that you make contradicts the paragraphs that precede it! The point that you make is that we should show consideration in the things we type to others or write about others. Whereas the paragraphs that precede it should build to the conclusion, “I will express myself however I please. If you don’t like the names I call you, good luck hunting me down.” I’m neither applauding bigotry nor am I saluting the point that you are making. I’m just dispassionately commenting that the opening paragraphs don’t support your point!  And who would be offended by this entry? You are championing the cause of tolerance. I can only see skinheads, klansmen, rednecks, and other bigots being offended by what you wrote.

*I used to go to Wal-Mart frequently. Maybe twice-a-week I’d visit the Wal-Mart nearest to where I live. Now, I’d have to look at my spending records, in Microsoft Money, to tell you the last time I was there. The Wal-Mart closest to Uptown Harrisburg is located several miles away in Hummelstown. It was once just a big box store, but it has been expanded to become a SuperCenter, where, if you had a folding cot and access to a shower, you could spend your entire life. I remember that, once I got to Wal-Mart, the greeters would “Welcome to Wal-Mart” with the enthusiasm of someone who was thinking, “God, my feet are killing me!” Many times the greeters would not look me in the eye when they yelled. I always tried to be gracious and say “Thank you”, but when I did that, I always felt like a politician stumping for votes. It seemed like they didn’t care if you acknowledged them or not. It was as though these greeters were robots, equipped with motion detectors that went off at the slightest movement coming through the door. Then, when inside I went to the electronics department to buy “low-priced” PC games. Looking at the titles, they all had the same $49.99 price stickers that I’d see at an Electronics Boutique not too far from where I live! I’d then think to myself, “If you’re not going to pay $49.99 for software you could get for the same price closer to home, you’ve got to buy SOMETHING to justify driving all the way out here!” I’d then end up buying six pairs of socks and/or six bottles of rubbing alcohol or three sticks of deodorant. Maybe the prices of those items were less-expernsive than at other stores, but I felt I HAD to get something just to justify wasting time and gas getting to Wal-Mart. The fact that they don’t have health insurance for their workers and that they stop union organizing has done a lot to reduce my visits to Wal-Mart. These “associates” should be treated like associates, rather than underpaid chattel.

*Since Ronald Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers’ union in the 1980s, strikes have become less effective. The American public moved to the right at about Reagan’s time and, consequently, they’ve stopped being sympathetic to the complaints of organized labor. After World War II, organized labor was loved by the American people and seen as the means of improving the quality of everyone’s life. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, unions became too demanding and companies started moving overseas, rather than give into strikes. The public began seeing unions as causing the decline of American Industry. The air traffic controllers’ strike in the 1980s was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now states have enacted “Right to Work” legislation which allows non-union workers to be hired into previously all union shops. I think that schools may be the only all union shops still around. Schools, after all, can’t close and mover overseas. It’s a sad time for American working men and women. Factories are almost all in foreign countries and the good paying secrure jobs are gone. Collectively speaking, we’ve been left to fend for ourselves and take whatever low-paying jobs we can find.

*I can’t follow the logic of this rant, but I agree with the point that you make. The teenage years were not the best years of my life either. I was a loner and an oddball in highschool. I, also, didn’t have any girlfriends. If I was in highschool today, I’d be definitely labeled a freak. There’s very little that happened during my teenage years that I’d want to relive.

*I won’t come to the defense of women, given that my interactions with them have also been frustrating. Even so, I won’t condemn them. There are exceptions to the rule and we shouldn’t give up on finding those rare women who appreciate considerate guys. Let me rephrase that,: YOU shouldn’t give up on finding such exceptional women. You have so much of life ahead of you. It appears that most women are attracted to abusive men. I’m not saying these guys are necessarily physically abusive, but they tend to be emotionally abusive and they take advantage of women. It must be these women have low self-esteem and feel they shouldn’t be treated with respect. I’d hate to think that their attraction to “badass men” is genetically hardwired and that those women who like Average Joes are deviating from Natural Selection.

*Viacom, like every corporation, is looking for revenues. Higher revenues entice investors to buy Viacom stock, the higher it goes in price and the greater the dividends it pays. Keeping this in mind, you can be sure that “Daria” will eventually be released on purchasable DVDs.

*”Violence makes society” is an interesting statement. Looking back at ancient civilization, there was the conquest of the Middle East by the Greeks followed by the conquest of the Mediterranean world by the Romans. Violence brought about the establishment of both empires. We don’t even have to look that far back to see that European colonization of the New World required the murder of Native Americans. So, yes, the argument can be made that “violence makes society”.

*It’s like you said–well, actually, wrote–”Drinking does make the pain just go away and that’s great…FOR A FEW HOURS. Now after that, the problem’s still there and you still need to deal with it…” The same can be said about drugs. And I’m talking about prescription drugs. Take, for example, the 50 milligrams of Seroquel I swallow before bedtime. The Seroquel puts me into dreamland for several hours. Yet, when I wake up in the morning, life isn’t any better than when I conked out the night before! The good thing about Seroquel–as opposed to benzodiazepines, such as Valium–you can’t get addicted to it. That also makes the sleep inducing properties of Seroquel far more preferable to the numbing and addictives properties of alcohol. I’m just sorry that Seroquel no longer makes you sleepy. By the way, don’t increase your dose of Seroquel. Enough of that medication can cause involuntary twitching and worse.

*Your rant about BOB inspired me to google for more information. Like you said, I couldn’t find the meaning of the acronym. But I did find was that Bob is, indeed, a hack resistant timer that plugs into an outlet on one end and into a television on the other end. I thought it amusing that the two inventors of BOB, Tom Gallop and Brian Baker, look, from their photo, to really be the kind of parents that would want to restrict their kid’s activities. Don’t get me wrong. They don’t look stern or prudish, they just look like midwestern hayseeds. I was also amused by the title of their company…Hopscotch Technology.

*George W. Bush is definitely the nation’s worst president. He enacted tax cuts for the wealthy, which he did not repeal after the terrorist attack of 9/11. As a consequence, spending increased to fight terrorism while revenues decreased. He eroded our civil liberties by signing into law the Patriot Act. He hoodwinked the American people into thinking that Saddam was buying uranium from Niger as one of several rationalizations for invading Iraq. He diverted precious military resources from the noble pursuit of Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Lastly, he is escalating the Iraq War rather than heeding the advice of the Baker-Hamilton commission to drawdown American forces. Having done all this, he has earned his place as America’s worst president. Restoring order to Baghdad, with WAY more troops, was something Bush should have done months ago. Twenty-thousand soldiers are too few to do the job of pacifying a city of six million people.

*I think that Prissy Patty is a composite of a lot those right-wing-neo-facist so called Christian housewives. There are thousands of these holier-than-thou modern day Pharisees in this country. It’s scary to think that they and their warped fundamentalist ministers (not all, but some fundamentalist ministers) are responsible for electing the bloodiest, most arrogant, president in history, GEORGE W. BUSH!! They criticize anyone or anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow concept of righteousness. It’s a crime that these housewives, and their equally narrow-minded husbands, are filling their children’s minds with intolerance. They’re creating clones of themselves who’ll perpetuate stupidity and hate for generations to come. The “Harry Potter” series is fantasy. Fantasy is the imagination set free. It’s a temporary escape from mundane reality. Fantasy is certainly a healthier escape for these kids than huffing! Fantasy has the added benefit of stimulating ideas that can eventually lead to new inventions. Where would we be today without the fantasy of science fiction? The achievement of very little science is where we’d be! This time, I got fired up about “Christians” condemning J.K. Rowling. A true Christian would not condemn her for writing magic-oriented fiction and revealing that HogWarts Headmaster is a homosexual. These Prissy Pattys, as you call them, are giving Christianity a bad name. What’s worse, these Prissy Pattys are making non-believers want nothing to do with Jesus. Prissy Pattys are the modern day equivalent of marauding crusaders and apathetic World War II Germans.

*Falling out of love isn’t that difficult to understand.   It isn’t difficult, when you take into the consideration that instinct and idealization make up most of what we understand as love.   When the instinct to mate disappears and when our partner is no longer as perfect as we thought, the feelings gradually disappear.   If it weren’t for the fact many men and many women come to the realization that love is an act of the will, no one would remain married. Ideally, a certain amount of attraction and feelings are present when true love exists.   But true love still boils down to a conscious effort to overlook faults and make painful sacrifices to keep a relationship going.  If both partners aren’t WILLING to make a relationship work, it’s going to deteriorate and eventually end.

MORE TO COME