The Vent Thread

[BasharOfTheAges]

Allergies are absolutely killing my ability to function. I've had what feels like eyestrain for 3 days, random bouts of coughing and sneezing, and I'm constantly on the verge of nausea from all this post-nasal drip. My ear started to plug up today and it hurts so much it feels like jaw got punched in.

[dj_ultima_the_great]

Not sure that this is a vent, but a co-worker told me yesterday (sort of out of the blue, actually) that she thinks I'm sad all the time. She said that I ought to change my outlook on life and things would improve, to which I replied that my outlook didn't lose my house, nor did it make my mother crazy, and it definitely will not get me out of the current financial situation.

I realize that she's just being motherly and concerned, but saying that optimism will makes things better is like saying, "Hey, here's a Band-Aid for that bullet wound."

[Pwolf]

Last weekend my cat chewed through my headphones cable while I was listening to music... and i just noticed that my cat has chewed through my laptop's power adapter cable -_- Doesn't help that ASUS' store doesn't have replacements in stock :\ Bought a cheaper one online but didn't pay for fast shipping so I wont have it until, hopefully next week.

[Jadecavy]

Last weekend my cat chewed through my headphones cable while I was listening to music... and i just noticed that my cat has chewed through my laptop's power adapter cable -_- Doesn't help that ASUS' store doesn't have replacements in stock :\ Bought a cheaper one online but didn't pay for fast shipping so I wont have it until, hopefully next week.

They can be the best things ever and the most frustrating things ever. My cat has chewed through one set of cheap headphones and I'm always wary with my cables around her now.

[Otohiko]

Not really a vent, but over the last few weeks I had bumped into situations with a few of my friends where I kept bringing up my cultural identity, as an "old Russian", as something that colours my behaviour and makes me seem irrational and hard to tolerate sometimes. I came across a very good passage today, and along with other reading I've done before, I thought I'd put together some notes and leave them here. Those who are interested in sociology/social psychology/cultural studies might find them interesting too.

It's like a vent in the sense that it can be very cathartic to have other people - trustworthy sociologists and journalists, in this case - put eloquently into words what you often have trouble articulating to people close to you, and as a result conflicts arise.

Spoiler :

Psychologists have conditionally divided all Russians into two cultures – rational-achievement culture, the representatives of which typically live in city centers, and empathic culture – those who usually live on the periphery. They differ from each other like heaven and earth.
For example, the effectiveness of a Russian country dweller’s auditory channel is minimal. They hear what you’re saying, but don’t accept it. You can call them through a loudspeaker into a bright socialist future, or a bright capitalist future, but they won’t care either way. They instead have developed visual and kinesthetic perception.

-So they believe only what they can see and touch? Why?

These channels protect from illusions. Behind the shoulders of these people is a very difficult life, and they know that the most dangerous thing to them is introduced value systems and ideologies, which one cannot touch or check. Their life experience tells them one thing: if someone will help you at a difficult moment, that will be your neighbour and comrade. And nobody else.

-And this is why the opinion of those immediately around them is so important to them?

Yes. During our survey, we modeled situations where these Russian country-dwellers had to make a decision independently. They immediately refused to if it did not match the opinion of the majority. Their history has led them to not read books about psychology, but study people through the lens of their own emotional perception. […] They’re tuned [to this aspect of life] better than trained psychologists. And that’s completely understandable. When the inner emotional perception of a person is the basis of their survival, that channel develops.
This is why such people quickly get emotionally exhausted. Then comes a sense of emptiness and voidness, which they fear deeply, and with it- emotional overload. And that’s fist-fights, vodka, and all the rest. So they carefully protect their emotional integrity, and are scrupulous in communication.

-Scrupulous in communication? But you said they were open and sincere?

For Russian peasants, the most important thing is their microgroup, a very narrow circle of people among whom they can be completely open. Because they don’t simply open up their soul and feelings. They need to understand who others are in relation to them, what to expect from them. For the Russian country-dweller, the question of predictability, ability to forecast [others' behaviour], is not a whimsy or a scientific interest, but an objective requirement, which guarantees the very existence of oneself, one’s children, one’s family. Russian peasants know that the person who is next to them is the one thing that they can rely on at a difficult moment, and nothing else exists. And so, in communications, such a person uses up an immense amount of emotional energy. And outside their microgroup, the Russian country-dweller is scrupulous in making contacts.

(Denis Tulinov, from sociological study of Russian peasants commissioned by an agriculture investment company)

Spoiler :

“Precisely because their public lives are so supervised and because they cannot afford to be open and candid with most people, Russians invest their friendships with enormous importance. Many of them, in cities at least, are only-children whose closest friends come to take the place of missing brothers and sisters. They will visit with each other almost daily, like members of the family. Their social circles are usually narrower than those of Westerners, especially Americans who put such great stock in popularity, but relations between Russians are usually more intense, more demanding, more enduring and often more rewarding.” (144)

“There is an impulsive, reckless, almost sophomoric abandon in the way Russians hurl themselves into friendships” – “Russians also feel free to pour out their woes to one another – unburdened by the very American compulsion to appear forever young, healthy, beautiful and strong, and to disguise the reality of sorrow, disappointment or pain. To Russians, suffering is a natural part of life, and so they find it natural in their friendships to intrude on each other with their problems and to exult in that sharing.” – “Russians read skillfully the signs of grief” – “Do you want to feel the melancholy of loneliness, savor the sadness of life? They will drink with you thoughtfully, sorrowfully, respecting the need for weeping when there are no answers, and no way to change the reality of existence. Do you, on the other hand, suddenly feel an unexplained surge of hope, a communion with the stars, with nature, until the meaning of life and suffering are blindingly joyous? They will walk with you through the night along the river, forgetting that there is a tomorrow with appointed work and duties, joining in the triumphant discovery, singing, laughing, forgetting time. Is the loneliness so great that you feel yourself floating away ever farther from reality?... They know that there are some sorrows that will never be healed and sometimes no grounds for thinking that there will be a happy ending. And they also know how vital is simple, warm, human contact to give you strength to go on.” (144-145)

“Friendships are not only compensation for the cold impersonality of public life but also a vital source of personal identity” – under the Soviet regime, you did not get choice in your politics, religion, literature, work, but you got to choose your friends – “The choice, among intellectuals at least, is made with special care for one essential ingredient of Russian friendships is the political test of trust. This gives them special depth and commitment. Americans, spared the violence of Soviet political purges, repressions and constant pressures for ideological conformity, do not have to make the vital, acute judgments of sorting out true friend from devious informer. Soviets must make that judgment often, and always unerringly.” (146)

“For safety’s sake, Russians hold each other at bay. “We don’t want personal relations with that many other people,” one man said bluntly. They commit themselves to only a few, but cherish those. Within the trusted circle, there is an intensity in Russian relationships that Westerners find both exhilarating and exhausting. When they finally open up, Russians are looking for a soul-brother not a mere conversational partner. They want someone to whom they can pour out their hearts, share their miseries, tell about family problems or difficulties with a lover or mistress, to ease the pain of life or to indulge in endless philosophical windmill tilting. As a journalist I sometimes found it ticklish because Russians want a total commitment from a friend. They do not understand a journalist who regards it as his job to maintain open contacts with all and professes ideals of independence and nonpartisanship. Russians are not after decency or fail play; they want allies, partisans. This goes for officials, dissidents and people in between. Their friendship is tribal – inclusive and excluding, they judge each other by friends, cliques, groups, reckoning these ties […] to be far more meaningful than some abstract loyalty to the system” (147-148)

“Normally, Russians keep their emotions under lock and key and take them out to be shown only to relatives and close friends, or on special occasion. But I found that some little twist of fate – a genuine calamity, a joke, a gesture, the presence of a child, a personal liking – can open Russians up and then that sense of intimacy and involvement can envelop one even on the first meeting if the Russian feels he has found a soul-brother, and especially if there has been some vodka to tide the flow of friendship.” (148)

Dichotomy of coldness and warmth = deep duality of Russian soul
“Russians can be very sentimental but also cold and cruel. A Russian can weep at a piece of poetry at one minute and kill an enemy on that same spot a few minutes later.” (139)

Another Russian dichotomy: from childhood, Russians are acutely aware of authority, have acute sense of place and propriety, what they can and shouldn’t do. And they conform to roles given to them readily. But in private life, they are fiercely individualistic and temperamental. This creates a bizzare, “schizophrenic” dichotomy. “they adopt two very different codes for behaviour for their two lives – in one, they are taciturn, hypocritical, careful, cagey, passive; in the other, they are voluble, honest, direct, open, passionate.” (140) – in one life thoughts and feelings are held in check, in the other they flow openly and without moderation.

“Broadness of Soul” - “There is a public side to this trait – the maudlin sentimentality of Russians. For the great suffering which they have endured not only toughened them into a nation of stoics but also softened them into a nation of incurable romantics. The outside world knows the stoicism, the phlegmatic fatalism of the common man so aptly captured in the national catchword nichevo, which literally means “nothing” but comes across as never mind, don’t let it bother you, there’s nothing you can do about it” (148) – “But the opposite face of the Russian character is that a genuine calamity will sometimes ease or suspend rules because it arouses compassion” – “In its public face, this sentimentalism shows itself in the Russian love of the lush melancholy of Tchaikovsky and the fairytale world of romantic ballets” (149) – “In spirit, they are the most northern of the Latin peoples […] and it’s true – Quixote could be a Russian hero” (150)
-Hedrick Smith, “The Russians”

[Jadecavy]

THERE WAS A FUCKING HOUSE CENTIPEDE IN MY BED UNDER MY SHEETS

THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES.

[Sparkle-san@Unmotivation]

I saw the perfect clock for my video in another AMV but I can't for the life of me work out what anime it's from. Being Sparkles is suffering.

[Eake4]

I saw the perfect clock for my video in another AMV but I can't for the life of me work out what anime it's from. Being Sparkles is suffering.

Challenge Accepted, sent it over.

[Animated]

20 bucks it's Steins Gate.

[Radical_Yue]

20 bucks it's Steins Gate.

It's either Steins;Gate or Shakugan no Shana.

Those are basically the only clocks anyone ever uses.