I'm an ass, and full of crap

[sailaway21]

Portagee,
You are really going to regret that last one. That thread was finally gone. I can only hope that, when the authorities in Brussels find out your boat is unseaworthy, due to insufficient boom design and shoddy French workmanship (i never thought i'd use french and work in the same sentence) that you will have to go hat in hand to ask Fred for the use of his Opti. And I hope Fred tells you he's all booked up for crew this summer and, besides, you're too heavy and will slow his boat down. There.

[sailingdog]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

Portagee,
You are really going to regret that last one. That thread was finally gone. I can only hope that, when the authorities in Brussels find out your boat is unseaworthy, due to insufficient boom design and shoddy French workmanship (i never thought i'd use french and work in the same sentence) that you will have to go hat in hand to ask Fred for the use of his Opti. And I hope Fred tells you he's all booked up for crew this summer and, besides, you're too heavy and will slow his boat down. There.

I thought it was pretty funny that Giu posted in that thread just for you.

[sailaway21]

You would.(G)

[sailingdog]

Hey Sailaway... it's the thought that counts... and Giu was thinking of you...

[sailaway21]

Well, it appears the visit by Surf was a drive-by. I'd imagine that, sans project boat, it's tough to get the same joy out of sailnet.

[sailingdog]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

Well, it appears the visit by Surf was a drive-by. I'd imagine that, sans project boat, it's tough to get the same joy out of sailnet.

Probably has a lot more to do with the nature of his "promotion".

I doubt many institutions have high speed internet... or even have internet access available internally, outside of the staff.

[sailaway21]

Cam, otherwise known as "RV Cowboy", got me thinking about my generation, the baby boomers. The thoughts were not pretty. I am afraid that the boomers are the least serious generation to walk American soil and, I know, that's saying a lot.

I am coming to the conclusion that my generation, and I'm at the tail end of it, is incurably selfish. We seem to be obsessed with our personal happiness. If it is threatened, even by existing laws, our response is that change, even of laws, is necessary. Our obsession with self esteem is legendary. For all of the grandeloquent ideals that ushered out the sixties very few seem to have had a lasting impact on their proponents.

Self sacrifice is a term we are unfamiliar with. We, as a nation, are involved in a war on terror. Whether or not Iraq is the proper field for that battle is not germaine to this diatribe. No serious thinker is unaware of the consequences of the war on terror and yet what aspects of it are we debating? We obsess over the Patriot Act which fails to affect 99.9% of us, we deplore any loss of life, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, as if loss of life can be avoided in any war, and even our President asks little of us in this war. A certain percentage of us feels like it's Berkely all over again, without the LSD, and even seems to have saved their Ban the Bomb placards. "Stop War" is something you put on your VW beetle when you were 18-we've got sixty year olds espousing the same puerile nonsense. Our parents and grandparents knew what sacrifice was about. They endured gas rationing, not just high gas prices. they were acustomed to picking up the paper and reading of more casualties in one day than we have in four years of war. Without going off on the war too much, I'd say it is the most egregious example of our pampered and whiny generation.

My Dutch great aunt, when told of a woman who'd been in therapy for twenty years, responded that she must need a job. Our self obsessed generation is either in therapy or on medication, or seeking to become so. Our parents were concerned with staying alive in a world conflagration and maybe owning a house someday. We're seriously worried that someone will actually means test social security, and some of us with pensions or large nest eggs might not get ours. We talk of our concern for the planet and then act as if that is our government's problem alone. You know the drill. It's ok to drive a big SUV to commute down the interstate as long as you have your Nature Conservancy decal in the window. And God forbid that someone actually mine gravel, for that interstate, anywhere near your house. And the trash, where does that go? We truck the stuff all over the country, adding to air pollution and depleting oil resources while doing so, because we won't bury our own waste in our own sandbox. We refuse to allow oil drilling off our pristine shores while ignoring the fact that billions of barrels of oil transit the ecologically sensitive waters of the Persian Gulf daily to serve our needs and, those waters, for the most part remain clean even absent responsible political leadership. We see little countries, like Taiwan, powering their economies with nuclear power and we gratuitously commend our little yellow brothers for making something out of nothing. We're not against nuclear power, we just haven't found a safe spot for the plant. Our grandfathers knew that the oil refinery would blow up every twenty years or so, but it provided work and what are you gonna do?

We're the generation that really put education on the map. Remember when the news hour used to be an hour? If it can't be communicated in seconds, we're not interested because we don't have time. I don't know what we're doing, but we sure don't have time. We ushered in the concept of pass/fail testing and the subjugation of fact learning to the elevation of self esteem. We've proceeded to raise a gaggle of kids with excellent self-esteem and no concept of how to achieve the goods they obviously deserve by virtue of their existence. We took the concept of playtime and elevated it to a lifestyle. My grandfather practised medecine into his seventies, today's docs are opting out in their fifties to go discover themselves. If you asked my grandfather what he was about he'd just say he was an MD. He didn't complain about the lung scarring he'd gotten in North Africa and how he'd had to live with it the rest of his life. After all, he had patients to see with present day problems. Maybe it was a sense of duty they grew up with. How can one generation fight a world war and spend the rest of their lives not talking about it, and another generation fight a regional conflict in SE Asia and spend the rest of their lives talking of little else?

Chesterton said, "When men believe in nothing, they'll believe anything." How's that relavent to our cosseted generation? We're the ones who say that everyone is entitled to his opinion and that one is no better than another because they are all just choices. We adopt the same attitudes towards culture. So we give people like the est movement, the eco-nazis, PETA, Al Sharpton, our legal system, and Al Sharpton a free pass. When's the last time, or any time, you've heard somebody stand up and say something like, "Mr. Sharpton, you are a race-baiting bomb thrower." We don't because we're not serious, he's not affecting us personally, and the degradation it foments on American culture is not our problem. Who's problem is it? Oh yeah, the government's. And that's another thing. Our neighbor, whom we barely know to speak to, plays his music too loud late at night. We call the cops. Even at that level, government is the solution. the only community we have are wack-jobs like ourselves and that may not include the guy next door. Communities used to involve the guy next door with the loud music, we let a gentle hint drop when we both showed up to mow old Mrs Bate's lawn at the same time.

It used to be considered de-classe to take off sailing around the world with a woman young enough to be your daughter. At least one should marry the girl to put at least the imprint of propriety on it. But they are off exploring their world and their inner selves, and who are we to judge? And that is probably fine, in and of itself, just don't ask me to take them seriously. the entire importance of their trip is not the new discoveries they are going to make, they aren't, it's the fact that it will be 'their' discoveries and, "hey world" look at us. Obsession with self. I'm afraid it's reached disease status. Oh well, what to expect of a generation who thinks John Lennon was a serious poet?

Here's the good news. I don't think it's incurable and possibly not even transmittable. The generations behind us, while exhibiting many of the symptoms, seem to be convinced that we're going to spend all the social security money on ourselves, and so, better get to work and be serious. I sure hope so because it's looking like last call at the Fifty Year Party Saloon.

[sailingdog]

Well said Sailaway.. well said...

[sailaway21]

While I got your attention, Dog. That was a good response to the "primer" and I'm sure it will be received in the way you intended. Guesser is obviously a very sensitive individual and feels he is required to protect the possibly delicate sensibilities of all those around, including small animals. While I am sure he could blend mauve and magenta to perfection, he was certainly playing the ass.

[cardiacpaul]

Sailaway,
You got my vote, run for sumpin, school board, town elder, mayor, dog catcher anything! willya?