Re: Suicide stuff totally bumming me out
 

I believe you may have overwhelmed all or nearly all of the prior sources of my crushing insecurity.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

I've been reading Terry Prachett's Discworld books and just came across this line:

“ He only drinks when he’s depressed,” said Carrot.
“Why does he get depressed?”
“Sometimes it’s because he hasn’t had a drink. ”

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

This sucks, RT. I'm sorry.

Re: Suicide stuff totally bumming me out
 

who you voting for for "most helpful 2013?"

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

I'm calling bullshit. (Not to what you Coltrane said, but to the whole chain.) Suicide is that person's choice. It may suck for their friends and family, but it does not, per se, suck. It's that person's life and they may not enjoy it, whether it is depression or Muscular Dystrophy. Sometimes suicide rocks. I will go the HST route before I am a quad with a feeding tube. Beyond that, I will go that route when I am done and bored with y'all. You don't own me.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

It certainly sucks for RT and those people who were friends with this person.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

There's a big difference between a terminally ill cancer patient killing themselves and someone in the prime of life, but I reserve the right to mourn for both and to feel deeply the tragic choice made by a young suicide.

Someone I knew drowned while awaiting trial for helping their terminally ill father commit suicide; we suspect the son followed the father. The persecution was attrocious, but I suspect the father never would have gone that route, despite his pain, if he suspected his son would follow. Even in that, entirely understandable, end-of-life suicide, there was real tragedy.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

This is your right, and I don't claim to own you. Nonetheless, I reserve the right to feel sad if and when you make this choice.

I'm not saying that I will.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

I'm with you 100%. Should I suffer terminal illness, or degrade to a level where life is not enjoyable, I have every intention of taking myself out. And not only to avoid the pain of disease, but to have left with the satisfaction that I, rather than some force beyond my control, brought the curtain down that last final inch.*

But there's a Grand Canyon of difference between the suicide of a successful person with a long, vibrant life ahead of him and an aging person left with a calendar of painful, darkening tomorrows. One is a tragic loss. The other is an elegantly rational, laudable decision.
____
* In a world where one is pushed, pulled, cajoled, and insulted daily by so many annoyances and irritants, and is forced to fight to retain some small level of dignity and freedom (in what is increasingly becoming a staggering Idiocracy), the last goddamn thing I'm going to do is exit in a manner where someone would say "God," or "disease" was the final decider. ...And "By Own Hand" seems the proper final reminder to those who'd argue otherwise, There is nobody, and no force, "tending the light at the of the tunnel."

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

Tell ya what, if he does, I'll stand you a scotch to toast him goodbye, so something good will come of it.

Is it the crack of the pool balls? The neon buzzin?
 

Apropos of the re line, Shawn Colvin's "Cover Girl" -- buy it, download it, steal it from those friends of yours who kind of remind you of grown up versions of the characters played by Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder in "Reality Bites," etc.

Anyway, I have decided that the criticism of "All The Pretty Girls" misses the point - it is a frothy piece of pop fun (npi), filled with empty calories, I'm sure, but so what? Since I heard and liked the song before I found out that the band is made up a bunch of pretentious dimwits, I can look past their apparent toolishness.

It reminds me (the FB sneering, not the song) of the attacks here on mass market beer. And, well, anything else that is too popular among the great unwashed. I am unashamed to admit that I like beer that tastes like beer (Bud! Rolling Rock!). At the risk of sounding like The World's Most Interesting Man, I don't drink beer all the time, but when I do, I don't want to have something that requires a discussion of hoppiness that makes wine snobs seem like Guy Fieri. Make it cold and Midwestern* for me.

In short, I would argue that the above song fits squarely in the "What I Like About You" and/or "Good Girls Don't" camp.

*Yes, Rolling Rock is from Pennsylvania and Bud is brewed all over. You know what I mean.

Carry on.

It's a comfort to know his intensions are good.
 

Less is wearing his Angry Young Man/Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away hat again.

We are social animals and what we do impacts others. Maybe people in Less's hypothetical think that the reasons for their decision trumps the pain such a decision will cause others, but that doesn't change the fact that (almost all of the time) there will be pain.

Re: Suicide stuff totally bumming me out
 

Actually, Gentle Reader, I was pointing out that both she and Muggs were correct. But kudos for leaping to Le Fringe's defense, however premature.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

We were commiserating with a friend, not debating the morality or propriety of committing suicide. There is a proper time and place for both. Guess which this is a proper time and place for.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

We can do the old Irish tradition for Less --- pour a bottle of fine whiskey on his grave, and show how much we care by filtering it thru our own kidneys first.