Jane left one of the funniest comments I have ever read on the post below. Well, it made me laugh. However her newest post ain’t funny at all but necessary reading.
IM Dedd always makes me laugh. He even mentions one of my very favorite subjects in this weeks cartoon. He’s BIO’s resident cartoonist and is putting in a cartoon inspired by something I wrote. I’m honored and flattered.
Watched a video on 9/11 at BIO this morning. It made me think about freedom. There are several questions that I want to ask, and frankly, I’m not sure if I’m going to ask them all this week or spread them out of several weeks. Reserve the right to change my mind and only ask the following:
WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO YOU? Not looking for essays, though they’re always acceptable. Just a few words. Doesn’t even have to be freedom in the traditional sense, but freedom from late cold winters for one quick example.
I might summarize the answers here or in BIO; haven’t decided yet.
If anybody has any particular favorite Courting archived stories please let me know. Have the late winter blahs, a sore throat and bronchitis. Other than that I’m fine.
Just not feeling very creative or able to write anything interesting. My weekend: Friday night, ordered Chinese food, slept, wrote strange things, Saturday, slept, wrote even stranger things; Sunday, repeat of the same.
Spent most of the weekend, when awake and not writing very strange things, feeling guilty about everything possible. If you need somebody to feel guilty for you, please let me know. I do guilt so well when sick; actually that’s how I can gauge how sick I am since I don’t get fevers. And I spend a lot of time seeing if words make sense.
Normal words that I use everyday in concert with one another suddenly sound wrong, very wrong, like peanut butter with lard, yick, everything sounds like that. I lose any ability to make rational decisions or I think I do.
My brain slows down; I can actually focus on things like putting pictures in flickr. I look for simple chores like that because I become too depressed to actually stay in bed and read or watch TV. Though I spend much of my non-sick time wishing that I were sick and could stay in bed and watch TV or read.
Gawd, I hate the guilt gene; double since I’m half Irish Catholic and half Russian Jewish. And come from the our name is anxiety with some guilt family but we gave most of the guilt to Pia though she sleeps better at night, and is that fair?
Now I have to go to bed and think about how I sleep better than my dead parents did, and my sister does.
Other things I might ponder: if I go into Gmail through Google, why does it often say:
“sorry, no url…”
Why doesn’t the Google tool bar spell check have words like blogger?
Why does D–ce ask for donations on her blog? Not ones for charities but for her? She’s number 15 Technorati, has no blogroll but will of course love it if you put her on your blogroll. Yes I’m big on bloggers making money off it, if they can, but something about donations to pay for a persons European vacation is totally gross–or her kids college fund. Especially when she is making money off blogging as she obviously is.
It could be argued that she helped establish personal blogging, it could also be argued that she has done nothing to further blogging as a community, something I believe very strongly in.
If you shouted me out this week or something and I didn’t respond, I was feeling very very weird all week as many other bloggers can tell you, and shouldn’t have been allowed near a computer.
Blogshares? Why? What relation does it have to the real world stock market? Zilch. No way could a private company owner wake up one morning to see in Google that her company has gone public. Yet that’s how you find out in Blog Shares. Keep on getting emails saying that I was forced to sell 0 out of 2 shares in some really absurdly named blog; does that make sense? Especially since I have sent several emails asking if Courting could be taken private?
Just because I don’t like the game, Courting is grossly undervalued, and I’m a bit paternal or maternal about that, and I don’t want the emails I get every day. Get over 200 spam emails a day–soon I will add blog shares so I never have to see them since they don’t answer mine.
I think about blogging way too much, but it acts as a substitute for guilt, and right now there are about twenty things I feel guilty about none of which I want to share.
I’m very tired but feel like I spent the day messing up which is very strange because aside from putting photos in flickr did nothing. Feel guilty about that and am willing to share it.
These are the things that should cause sleepless nights but I’m good at sleep once I actually get into bed
Oh yes, believe that the Johari test rated its own page. Believe it’s flawed because you have to kind of know me and therefore the results are skewed, but hey you might know me better than I know me. Would like to mix this one the positive test with the negative test for a more accurate reading. Something to ponder before going to sleep.
Freedom is the new name for French fries.
So many things to comment on . So little time.
Let me just say I am half Finnish and half Cornish and my guilt can beat your guilt any day.
If you are still looking for something to do please go to my daughter’s blog at
http://grephead.com/~plinna/wordpress/
She is sick but has to go to work. She is feeling guilt because a man she counseled commited suicide. A word from you might help her.
Thank you very much for taking the time to do my Johari Window. Your assessment of my character is beyond kind and generous – of course, I expect nothing less from someone as compassionate and caring as you. I’m sorry I’ve been MIA lately. My comments have just seemed dumb and excessively dull in my head, so I’ve opted not to share. I plan to catch up on your most recent entries later today and I promise decent commentage by then! *Hugs*
Freedom means never having to say your sorry.
Opps, wrong word.
Freedom is just something made up by human beings. To me, true so-called freedom does not exist.
(Does that mean we are all oppressed? Maybe)
Freedom?
Sweetheart, as long as they can’t get inside my head, I’m free.
Freedom is the essential spark of human spirit and expression. It is the defiance of repression and oppression. It is our natural right, to say or do whatever we wish provided that none are harmed by our actions
Freedom is a myth. A nice idea that everyone strives to uphold in public yet in private they secretly attempt to dismantle the core.
Freedom [esp. protecting freedom] is used to prepare us for massive oppression.
I was going to say what I thought freedom was, except that there’s no improving on Ignatius Dedd’s definition. Its why a person can live in the most evil, dangerous, oppressive regime– under Hussein, Milosivec– and still feel free… if that person can keep “them” outside his/her head.
If freedom is in the head– and I agree– then it is something that, in theory, no one can take away from us. Or at least, something we can safeguard.
Only… only… only what if they’re attacking you on your home turf? What if they’re stealing your freedom with mind games? What if “they” (whoever “they” are; presumably the evildoers who would oppose freedom) are just plain messing with your head? (What if it’s all just the Matrix, to be overly dramatic but also obvious.) Are you going to be strong enough to resist? Could it be, you’re NOT really free at all– you just think you are?
Because that’s how I think most of us here in the US have been slowly losing our freedom. We’re told that everything the government does is in the name of freedom. Yet each year we have fewer freedoms than the year before. (And I’m not just crying in my beer about the Patriot Act. Try smoking a cigar in public lately?)
I guess my definition of freedom has to be, I like to think I’ll know it when I see it.
To steal a phrase…”Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Meaning to me that freedom is a state of being, both physically and mentally. But even a loss of physical freedom can not negate mental freedom without the consent of the mind.
As IM Dedd so graciuosly put it.
I love what this Ken Grandlund wrote!
And as far as the troll issue, I have made the decision many times to leave troll comments, because I do not think I have to respond to everything left and neither do the ‘guests’. It becomes very difficult, because what is a troll? Threatening is different, I don;t condone that. But I have been asked many times to delete people simply because they have a different opinion, or are republicans. (we still spit at them though) Seriously, it has beena tough issue to resolve and some ladies have left because they claim I should protect them from the men as a feminist woman. But is there something contradictory there? To ask to be defended? I dunno. I guess we each have our ways, I just try not to censor because it is a slippery slope…
Bronchitis? Yuk–hope you’re feeling better soon.
Right now, freedom is time away from work, and the fantasy of controlling all my time. Time is everything, and being able to decide what to do with it would be the greatest personal freedom.
Freedom is something that in America, we all take for granted.
On a lighter note, it’s also the title of not one, but TWO great songs by both Wham AND George Michael, did you know that?:)
Freedom requires decisions. Decisions cannot be made if you are held hostage by sound bites and misleading data
I’ve never known anything else so to define it , for me, is hard. I am certain that should I lose it it would be easier to define.
this is a bit queston Pia, and I dont even know how to BEGIN to answer it!!
freedom is guaranteed by the state right? so what does that mean? I don’t know, its’ too early in the mornning.
to me, personally, freedom is speaking my honest truth, even if i offend some people.
Picking up shells on a stretch of deserted shoreline in the middle of the night and knowing that there’s nobody to see you.
Hitting the open road on the back of a friends motorbike with no destination in mind.
Running at dawn.
Banoffe pie and custard.
Cliche,but for me at least, true.
this is a great website of freedom. I think that freedom means free and dom and i hope that it means good and bad things will every day happen to you no matter what you do. It is a great concept of the elemeration that you may think of what is going to you is the right thing to happen to you.