Punkie

I see security footage like this, and think how alien and strange all this must be to a mind that cannot comprehend purpose at this level. Just think, you’re a bear, with rudimentary intelligence and curiosity which has led to good things over the eons of evolution. You can sniff out things, know how to manipulate objects, possibly even understand rudimentary “tools,” like pushing objects aside, standing on them, or how thing 1 can lead to thing 2. You have memory, adaptability, and power. A lot of leisure time, too, to think. Yet until a hundred years ago, and for some bears, they have no recollection or ancestral memory beyond what they are driven to do or seen another bear do, this building is suddenly in your expanding territory.

You have no idea what this is. You enter a flat area, maybe like a huge cave, with really odd smells. Powerful; fragrances of dried paper, ink, chemical cleaner of the carpet. Humans. There may be colors that only occur in small amounts in nature; if you can detect them at all! Most of this is by smell. You know you have smelled whiffs of this here and there, but this place is a sudden insanity of overwhelming oddities. It would be so alien because everything the woods has to give is foreign here. An alien landscape that you can only grasp small snippets of. Nothing makes sense, though.

My god, this would be a life-altering experience for a bear unused to this environment.

Same with Swedish, although depending on the accent, I can hear some clearer that others.

Oh wow, that sounds frustrating. Jesus Christ, you’re think the ground controller would know better with all the cutting in and out.

I get this with people who don’t understand “say it slower and more clearly.” Then they say it with the same volume and still mumble.

Same. But another thing I add when I don’t feel like being nice is “be nice out of spite.” Spite is against a universe trying to make me mean and bitter. “Oh the Universe is cold and uncaring,” yeah well, fuck the universe, then. I’m not doing for the universe, I am doing it for me.

Most of these posts assume that the goal for being nice and good is FOR the rewards. Like, “I donate to my homeless shelter all the time, and do I get any thanks? The HELL with them!” That is where it usually fails. The real trick is being strong enough to stay nice DESPITE the lack or rewards, or even inconvenience. You are nice and good because it’s a core of who you are, not just for flattery and incentives.

Yes, was SA’s by a priest when I was a kid (mid 1970s), along with a lot of other people over a 30-40 year span. In the late 1980s, there was a joint lawsuit against him, with about 130 cases, many willing to testify. But he was a “pillar of the community,” and had stronger support (and lawyers) on his side. It went back and forth for a few years, then he died of a heart attack. The case kind of died with him, except his widow went after some of us with ruthless cruelty and legal harassment.