DavidB and Diane: Go pound sand, I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You’ll have to pry this keyboard from my cold, dead fingers. So bite me.
Ah, I’m sorry. It’s the people who disagree with you who should all leave, right? Gosh, how could I get so mixed up and think that it went both ways. Silly me. I apologize profusely for making you look in a mirror.
You know, I just hate it when people disagree. That’s why I come here. Everybody has exactly the same opinion about everything. Nobody ever criticizes anybody over the things they say. It’s happy fun land!
PUH LEEZE!
Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.
“Do not stare at Happy fun land.”
Without reading the rest of the thread yet…applause Well said, Cess.
Hmm…
What to say, what to say. (Like Cess, I am not as pissed off as I was last night.)
I’ll leave it to say I agree with DavidB, Cess, and phouka. Opal, I loved the TM homepage. But to react like you did last night was overkill. And I am NOT just talking about taking it down, I am talking about the actions that ocurred in the chatroom immediately afterward. I do NOT appreciate being spied on while I am talking.
And I will NOT grovel to get it back. We offered to help you a while ago, Opal. AFAIK, those people were never contacted. So I have a dim view of your complaining that it was “too much work.”
Just my opinion. And one I’m sure I’ll be flamed for. shrug
Having read and participated in Opal’s thread Special Note for PunditLisa, I think it’s fair to say that Opal’s reaction is not childish or immature. It is a symptom of her depression and other illnesses. That puts it, at least in my mind, outside the normal arena of cricism and interaction.
I, and quite a few others, have urged her to get some help. Whether she does so is up to her, but at this point, criticism isn’t going to help her. I’d like to suggest that we drop the topic and put our kid gloves on if it comes up again.
You know what? I thought the whole “board elections” idea was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. When someone else said so as well, I spoke up and registered my opinion, but also clearly said that if other people thought it was fun, they should go crazy. How can that be translated into flaming Opal, or her homepage, or the work she does on it? I’m entitled to my opinion, too, and the fact that it’s not the same as other people’s doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to hold it and to state it if I want to.
If I don’t like the cliques, the attitude, or anything else, I’ll excercise my right to say so if I feel like it. If you don’t like that, the you get the fuck out.
I am really, really sorry for Opal’s current difficulties; she seems like a very nice person and I sincerely hope she gets the help she needs to get healthy again. But I refuse to take responsibility for her harming herself simply because I thought and think the elections thing was dumb. Would I have spoken up if I had known how fragile she was? No, I wouldn’t have. But the fact that, in my ignorance I did speak up, doesn’t make me (or anyone else here) responsible for her depression or her self-mutilation. Not me; not PunditLisa, not Spiritus Mundi; not anyone. A kill-joy I might sometimes be, but I’ll be damned if I’ll leave the Board just because it’s not all sweetness and light for every single poster all the time. That said, I would never intentionally contribute to anyone’s depression, and if my remarks in anyway made things more difficult for Opal, then I apologize for them. I hope she gets better soon.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
What Jodih said.
And another thing – I am in no way minimizing Opal’s current difficulties, which I recognize are very serious indeed, but I have no intention of moderating my comments (which I hope are generally respectful and not insulting in any event) because some poster may be emotionally fragile, or having a bad day, or just suffered the loss of a loved one or pet. Assuming again that I am being generally respectful and not insulting, I cannot be responsible for how every other poster will respond to my comments, especially when their responses are predicated on difficulties I have no way of knowing about.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
I had no idea Opal was having problems with depression. It’s not possible to read every thread, so I must have missed it if it was discussed.
I know what it’s like to be chronically depressed. She has my sympathies.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
I’m crossposting this from another thread, so it’ll probably get yanked but after seeing this one, it needed to be repeated.
Just got off the phone with Opal. The docs have upped her medication, she’s exhausted and droopy, but I DID manage to get a few weak giggles out of her. I call that progress. She’s going to take a nice long nap now.
UDD is still home taking care of her, Nicky is glued to the TV and happy once again.
They switched her meds a while back to try to fight off some of the side-effects she’d been dealing with. They’re still trying to find the perfect balance to take care of her and keep everything in check.
In the meantime, for all the ghouls out there that just HAVE to keep going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and (do I REALLY need to keep helping you beat your horse?) about Opal, the voting, the site, her moods, temper, colour of her hair and what have you …
Come on, people. Find something more constructive to do with your time. Do you REALLY just HAVE to keep on posting and bitching about her? Will your world just fall apart if you don’t make one more post about her? Is it such an incredible moral imperative that you have to keep on posting?
Drop it, m’kay?
I just haven’t been the same since that house fell on my sister.
Great. She’s all doped up and the kid’s got the TV. Happy Fucking American Family.
You want privacy? Keep your life private.
Hell is Other People.
Thank you for clarifying your position as “malicious asshole.”
I will third what jodih said. How can we know, when we log on, what the mental states are of the people we are writing to? I thought my comment was funny when I posted it. I thought it would lighten things up a bit. I was mistaken. Had I known that a woman would have mutilated herself in front of her child, taken pictures of it, and posted it on a thread addressed to me…over what I thought was a flip little comment…well, needless to say, I wouldn’t have posted it.
BTW, what do you think the term “rag on” refers to? Careful!
Flamesuit, on! Okay, now that I’m shielded, I’m posting for Opal right now. Hear that? <bold>POSTING FOR OPAL,</bold> so there’s no confusion here.
<bold>Falcon…</bold> "I wasn’t spying on her, I could not see what was being said in the room, I merely didn’t appreciate being made fun of in the topic line of the room, which one doesn’t need to be in the room to see… "
“My medication does not “dope me up” nor does it make me in a haze, a daze, or anything else. It does not “make me feel better” or change my emotions or feelings in ANY WAY, it simply adjusts my brain chemicals so that I don’t slide all over the road in my emotions .”
“I didn’t do it in front of my child, he came over afterward and asked me why I was crying. And why my arm was scratched. He didn’t see me do it though. At this point he thinks Sparky (Suze note: the dog)scratched me. And I didn’t “take a picture of it” I just put my arm on the scanner, which is right next to me here and didn’t even require me to move my chair.”
~Opal
Opal, it was still a pretty extreme reaction; I hope you realize that. If you find yourself getting all worked up again over this message board, I hope you do yourself a favor and turn off the computer. As others have said, if it is a source of pain, why put yourself through it?
BTW, I’m glad you’re feeling better.
Im going to try this again, just for the sake of clarification and the fact that the poor horse hasn’t had quite all of his dead flesh knocked around yet.
Point 1: Extreme reaction? Extreme? It’s rather like comparing Niagara Falls to the trickle dripping from your gutters once the ice melts – misses the boat completely. I’ve been friends with Opal for years, and I’ve NEVER seen a reaction this bad. Ever. Ever ever.
Opal knows this was extreme, her husband knows this, those that know her well know this. It really scared the crap out of those of us that are familiar with her. This was not “normal,” it was flat out dangerous. There was nothing common about the event, it was Bad in a way that you can only have nightmares about.
Point 2: Opal is not just going this on her own, pretending she’s all right. She’s been on medications since she was a small child, and has the benefits of professional assistance. They had recently changed her medications, and they haven’t quite found the perfect balance yet. It happens. There is no one magic pill that will immediately make it better, it takes time and work. Don’t ever think she wants it to be like this.
Point 3: I’m only trying one more time with this one, because people are going to think what they want to despite what they’ve been told. I will, however, do it a little louder, just in case it was missed somewhere. THE BOARD AND THE SITE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM!
Opal could have been told the sky was blue and wigged out because it wasn’t snowing appropriately. Someone could have pointed out a typo and it could have set her off. The television could have fubared programming and not shown something she was wanting to watch. Hell, I could have not wanted to look at a URL she sent and it could have started it.
When the meds are off, and she’s already spiraled into the hole, ANYTHING could start the chain reaction, m’kay?
Point 4: Opal takes a lot of pleasure and fun from the site and the interactions, despite how things might seem. She likes webwork, she definitely likes people more than I do.
To tell her that she should just stay away is like taking away a favorite pet because a neighbor you’ve never met is allergic and just MIGHT come over at some point in the next million years. It’s not the pet’s fault at all, but it has to go just because of a really obscure chance that it might be a problem.
I was going to try to just let all this go, but all of the misconceptions aren’t going to be helping her any. Opal is my concern, and not how someone might be offended that I’m daring to speak for her. She knows I’m posting this, in fact was upset and frustrated enough that she asked me to say something.
Lisa, don’t feel that I’m singling you out since you’re the only one that’s posted in this thread since my last post for Opal. This goes site-wide. There are just too many people that don’t seem to Get It. I’m really hoping that that’s it, and not that people just don’t care.
Now dammit, why won’t this horse get up and go?
I just haven’t been the same since that house fell on my sister.
If you know someone is on medication for depression and you see their posts are erratic, showing obvious signs of peaks and valleys, wouldn’t it make sense that person was having a problem? Why heap insults on that person when you know they’re sick? The reason they are overreacting is a symptom of their problem DUH!
Most of you know what you’re dealing with and you either show patience or just tune it out.
To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart. unknown