the BisonBlog

How awesome for you, Dave. We have CableOne too, and I don't think I could ever go back to dial-up now. It's the same with heated seats in a car.. I never thought I needed a warm tush, but I did.

As for your response to my topic/question thingie, I guess my only argument stems from the same situation that caused the question- the friend of mine that I decided to stop talking to was probably getting into things in her life that I didn't accept. Let's just say lifestyle differences where she'd possibly end up hanging out with the "wrong crowd." Now, I am not extremely religious, but I do know that I don't need that kind of friend in my posse, in my circle. I love her for who she is, but I don't accept these things she does (sort of how I feel about our government).. and I can't continue to be the person she comes to to feel better about these things. It happened on Halloween.. she'd gotten caught doing something dumb and I think she wanted me to laugh with her about it. I just can't hang around people like that.

It's kind of like wanting to have people around you that are positive.. when someone you care about suddenly gets negative, you try to help, but you can't change them for them.

I think I am still up in the air about this. All I know is that my life is more calm without her.

All the pretty girls shout "Daves got the Internet, Daves got the Internet!"

Ah it is so incredibly nice to have the entire net at my finger tips again, if it wasn't for the IACC I don't think I would've made it. I probably would've gone crazy and attempted to create the entire internet on my computer with just notepad and html. Thank you Lord for Cable One, whoo hooo!

To celebrate I think I'll introduce you guys to my favorite online comic some of you may already know it and if you don't well then what's stopping you go check it. Oh yeah the link, hehe, here it is Penny-Arcade.

Regarding Sybils conversation starter for an intimate relationship I don't know, but for a friendship I really don't think there ever is a time to throw it out the window. If your friend is trying to get you to do things you don't want to do or is pestering you, then you just have to tell them. This might seem a tad bit extreme yet I still feel that even if a friend were actively trying to kill me and if trying to work it out had failed that the right thing to do for that friend would be to tell the police. I know that sounds ridiculous but to intentionally dissolve a relationship requires you to judge the other person as lower than you. As a Christian the many quotations from the New Testament which tell us not to judge others continually ring in my head. For an intimate relationship you have to come to the conclusion that the other person is not right for you and that it would not be pleasant for you to spend the rest of your life with them. But with a friendship you only need acknowledge that the other person is a friend. For me friends are merely people that I hang out with and talk to on a regular basis. I can't imagine any reason why I would say to someone I don't want to be friends anymore. It just seems like such a horrible thing to say to someone "I don't want to be your friend". Heck, I'd probably be friends with Hitler although I would have totally disagreed with his entire idea of genocide and taking over Europe. It would be far more usefull for me to continue to be his friend because I would be able to talk to him. I might have even been able to convice him that the Nazi thing was a bad idea. I'm sure he would've had me killed for trying but I wouldn't be surprised if Deitrich Bonhoeffer didn't hate Hitler only his regime. On the other hand if somebody didn't want to be friends with me anymore I would just accept the fact and if they ever want to be friends with me again I would have no problem with it.

Mathew 6:44 "But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,"

Oh yeah the bone head who said "Do unto other as you would have done unto you" is Jesus Christ.

I was thinking about getting a site counter once but then I realized that if I got one all it would do is burst the wonderful bubble in my head that hundreds of people visit my site everyday.

God Bless

~Discrete Dave<><

I do agree with you Jenn, however, it is human nature to also question and choose different paths. Even when we want to itch the scratch (go after the "thrill of the hunt"), we sometimes choose not to because we've been burned before. So I suppose it's human of us to "go along" or not to, but I think the more experience we have, the more likely we are to catch ourselves doing something and change our reaction to it.

There is some quote "out there" that I have seen lately that states something to the effect of 'a dumb person will do the same things thinking that a different result will occur whereas the wise person will try something different to get a different result'.. I probably bashed the meaning of the quote, but that's what it was getting at.

More fabulous entries. I am in heaven.
Plus, I just had a great, talkative 8am class... today is going so well. *knock on wood*

Okay. Here's my next question/topic: How do you know when a friendship or relationship should just be thrown out the window? A really good friend once told me (similar to Chelsea's idea: "You should do something good for yourself.") that unless you are benefiting from the relationship/friendship, it's not worth it. The "too nice" person in me disagrees with that sometimes... what do you all think? Is it "okay" to put effort into something that isn't coming back to you at 100%? Isn't this how some relationships work, kind of? Maybe I function like this because of being a teacher.. I won't always "see" the benefits that my teaching inspires. Can you love someone not knowing if they'll always love you the same way back?

Is it a "bad" thing that I relate topics to my life? Don't we all go through similar stuff? Why do I use quotation marks so much? Sheesh.

{Neurotic blogger #2 signing off.}

P.S. Carrie's (a.k.a. Oakie over there ---->) grandmother died recently (Feb 2 entry). She has the Bison Blog hostess's condolences.

Whoa. You all are FULL of surprises!
The teacher in me read all of your entries, and I kept nodding and agreeing with certain aspects of each of your posts. Here's the situation I had in mind while writing up that topic.. maybe if we all look at one situation (and you all can bring up occasions too), we'll be able to pinpoint an "answer"...

[Long story short] She was my best friend. From our junior year of h.s. until I moved back here to go to Grad. School. We had a falling out for many reasons. She said hurtful things, and I wrote a letter of hurtful things to her afterward (she's a shouter, I am a thinker). We didn't talk for a long while. Then, we reunited just this last summer.. after about three yrs of not talking, etc. We had a huge talk, she seemed to have matured and changed and grown, and she even apologized for certain things she said, etc. It's not that I think I am in the "right" about the issues her and I have faced, I just know that I am the one that has kept her grounded in the past. I am stable; she's not. I thought her habits, though, that drove me nuts had changed. They hadn't, which I discovered on Halloween night. We haven't talked since.

So, I gave her a second chance, and I got smacked in the face... I still wonder if I could have seen this coming.

As for dealing with cheaters in relationships. I don't think I could take 'em back. Is the saying "Once a cheater, always a cheater" true? In my mind, yes. I keep thinking of Frankie on The Real World right now..

any other thoughts... what topic/question should be Thursday's???

Tuesday's Topic O' The Day:
{"What's the Soup du Jour?" "The Soup of the Day." "Oh, that's sounds good." -Dumb and Dumber}
In jumping back to what Jeremiah and Charles were talking about sorta, my question or, rather topic, goes like this:

How many chances should a person give another person to redeem themselves? Or, like Charles stated, will the past just come back to haunt us if we allow people back in our lives that "claim" they've changed?

I ask this because lately, I've been wondering about a past friend of mine. She "seemed" to have changed, but then when I let her back in my life, she hadn't. Was this my fault since I should have seen the past about to smack me upside the head, or was it fair of me to give her a second chance? Is all this situational?

Thanks for the feedback Cindy.. those remarks are the imagined retorts that I'd like to say sometimes. I don't know if it's better to not say anything (out of frustration) or to say things that don't make sense.. my quick replies to racist comments are usually: "Man, you are more close-minded than I thought." This usually gets me nowhere and quickly.

A friend of mine ticked off my sister the other night using the word "spic." He's the guy that has friends who've had bad situations with Hispanics. Anyhow, I made the comment to my sister that many, MANY of us have horrible situations will all sorts of people.. in fact, I bet I have arguments and fights and problems with more whites (my family members, my students, my boyfriend) than I have with my friends that are from a different ethnic group than I... that's why it's hard for me to understand how you can take one problem with one person and generalize it to mean you'll have that same problem with the entire group. If one student angers me, I don't automatically assume all students are evil.

It may be tough to have really in depth race conversations in a very white community, but I believe talking is better than doing nothing... or being frustrated.

Jenn, I wouldn't want to kill Beethoven, just so you know. Those are interesting emails... sadly, I am glad I didn't get 'em because my inbox is always overloaded with STUFF.

Went to the comedy club last night with friends. It was interesting to hear some racist comments, etc especially after having posted the entry I did yesterday. However, the racists comments and jokes came from a black comedian (two of 'em actually)... does that matter? Can minorities tell those jokes and it's "okay"? It just seems like no matter what, the stereotypes still get reinforced... no matter who hears them or who tells them.

Just another observation.

*GO PANTHERS!