More Awesome Than You!

And in other news, I seem to have been banned from Rentech.com as of right now. The reasons for this are completely unknown. Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war.

Hmmm ... I think I know the site you mean, but there actually is a site rentech.com.  Can't see any reason to ban anybody from that, looks very boring to me.

See, some people don't know about the rule "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer".
Not that I see any reason to call Pescado an enemy (grumpy jerks are a lot of fun).

I prefer the version which goes "keep your friends at a suitable distance to avoid a clusterfuck, and your enemies in a blender". Because when Charlie dances the foxtrot, you don't wanna be the one caught wearing a dress.

Well, I wasn't the one who started the entire enemy thing. *I* wanted to get along, but, alas, things weren't to be. Oh, well.

last time i saw a group of modders from mts2 followed u to join the "v" site, then the second later u got banned from there and made your own site.
come on, tell us whats going on!
its probably none of my business but i know im not the only curious one here.

Well, to be honest, damned if I know. The entire MTS2 debacle never went this far. They never actually banned me from the site itself, only the chat channel. The Rentech thing completely baffles me. If you see anything, you tell me. As far as I can tell, Rentech is insane, and maybe MTS2 was right after all.

What on earth have you done to offend a website that belongs to a Solar Energy company?   Bought a Windmill?

Oh, a comedian, eh? :)

Thought that was obvious!

War! WAR! *prepares newly dried out flame-thrower* Mwahahahahaha!!!!

Burninate Renech!!!! *trips over flame-thrower and almost burns down the neighborhood daycare, almost unleashing mass hysteria* Lol!!  ;D

I thought they'd just deleted your account... (although that was founded on expectant speculation and that alone).

You're still famous over there though - people are still scared of you ripping their lips off, even though you're not there.

Maybe you got too many anti-reps from the *millions* of bbs-crossover brats with a grudge.

Poor Pescado is simply misundersood.

Huh.

It seems like people ban you because of the dumbest things.  Perhaps an aversion to fish?

In light of this, maybe we should change the Daily Idiot from dealing with this site (http://www.thesims2.com), to instead deal with the various idiocies of this site (http://www.variousimmers.net), this site (http://www.modthesims2.com), and maybe this new offshoot of MTS2 (http://www.sims2community.com).

I'll bet the folks who banned you still rely on your hacks, though! 

Fine with me.  I'm game.

I'm still trying to sort this out. Not quite sure what's going on, but it looks to me like a classic case of "smart people who have no social skills and thus inadvertantly tick each other off and have no clue how to deal with it." If it is, then I am no longer the world master of this phenomenae. I once quit my roleplaying group and didn't see my four best friends ever for six months, for reasons that are still somewhat unclear to me. I figured them out well enough to be able to resolve the bulk of the problems, however, and am now happily roleplaying with them again. Or I would be, if we were actually roleplaying. Been spending the last two months trying to get a Star Wars campaign started. Not my first choice for a setting, but I'm working on it.

Anyhow . . . it sounds like Rentech was annoyed by Pescado's intention to move (if it is true that he was planning to move before this started) and Pescado took it as a personal insult. That's probably farther from what actually happened than Jupiter is from Cygnus 5, but it is the impression I get, so if it's erroneous I'd appreciate someone correcting me.

And since when are we only allowed to have one Daily Idiot? Maybe we should have a Daily Idiot: BBS and a Daily Idiot: Variousimmers and a Daily Idiot: MTS2. You know, sort of like how Survivor names its various seasons.

It doesn't say Pescado is banned on his messages and he still has a green reputation.

Well, sure, if you want to ignore the jarring inconsistencies of A: Not being able to see any of the creator forums, B: Not being able to look at my own user profile, and C: Having now logged out (which fixes A), not being able to log back in. The disposable login I bounced off of Vietnam worked fine, though. Whazzat tell you? It says that not only has Rentech banned me, but Rentech is obviously not proud enough of the act to fess up to it.

Are you kidding? I don't take very much as a personal insult. Rentech has started the entire mess. *I* was willing to continue getting along with Rentech, but Rentech appears to be completely unwilling to even consider that. She's obviously willing to cut off her own nose out of spite.

The only sin in the MTS2 chat was making the newbies cry.. and I'm not really sure that was a bad thing.

Rennie makes me nervous on many levels. She's playing the "I'm a banned victim" when, in truth, she isn't banned. But I guess stretching the truth is part of playing the martyr.

I really haven't enjoyed watching all these site wars go on. I don't see why it matters who goes where and associates with who. I thought I had left that behind when i entered jr. high. And i don't see why it ever mattered where we got our answers from as long as we got them. Maybe we need a "no childish outbursts hack" for the users, not the characters.

I am pleased to report that in our ongoing war, I have managed to slam both Delphy (remember him??) and rentechd at our little...BBS party (at today's Idiot thread).  Join the fun!

I was gone for 3 weeks and suddenly Pescado's gone! Can't I have a darned vacation without a Drama Queen stumping his/her toe on her golden vanity and tossing the baby out with the bath water? Seriously; J.M. is a free agent. I see all the Creators PAINFULLY doing all the modding for FREE! Now why would it bother Rentech or MTS2's Delphy where he went or why he left? Why do they care? Where is the GRATITUDE? Do you think its going to bother Rentech when they find out Eric has a site of his own now? I wonder if they will ban him next. The INSiminator site? And just how much control are ALL these people who run the forums and pay NOTHING, WANT from the contributing Modders? Well, the view I have says they want more than they have a right to have!

Sorry for blowing some steam but everytime I went into chat on MTS2 the only peron who treated me like last year's yard waste was Delphy. Well, I may not want to climb inside the Sims like Delphy does but I don't treat people like objects that I can download or delete either.

                                                            If you woke up breathing, congratulations!
                                                                     You get another chance.
                                                                               SimMoon

Technically, at last check, I'm still banned from the MTS2 chat for expressing my concern of the suspiciously large number of people being banned. Delphy mysteriously took offense at this and, wonder of wonders, barged into the #grah channel to close it down and ban me from the chat, thus sort of illustrating my point.

He then proceeded to later go ahead and establish the Hall of Shame, which was my idea in the first place, thus lending clarity to why people were being banned. Strangely, I seemed to stumble across fewer people being banned after that....

Why do I get the feeling that this is a case of not-so-professional jelousy? Apparently those less awsome than you don't like being less awsome. It is easier for them  to ban you  and pretend to be awesome than it is to improve themselves into actually being awsome.

Personally, I like the way it is now. I really liked MTS2 when I first found it. After a while all things I actually wanted to dl were links to various. OK. No big deal. Switched forums. Was happier anyway.
Then <poof>!
All the stuff I like moved again. No big deal. I followed it. Like this move even better.

This is now my forum of choice, easily more awesome than them. It has great potential. Should be harder for Pescado to piss off the management, and he has the ability to ban any idiots that wander in, if he chooses to burninate.

I've been mostly a lurker, but a regular and faithful one. Pescado, you keep my game from imploding. I'll follow you anywhere, even if you go insane and kick yourself out of here.

Feel free to ridicule my simpering mushy sentimentality.

From my personal experience banning somebody is a bad idea, going with the whole free speech idea (speech is free and you generally get what you pay for). If idiots and morons enjoy posting inane comments, they shouldn't be banned, they should be made fun of ... they will go away eventually. If intelligent people want to make valid points and criticise something, that is their right, let them do so, it only reflects badly on your own maturity for censoring intelligent criticism/complaints/suggestions etc.

You can tell its all going south when you get something like "Well if you don't like the way its run, then go somewhere else!"

But after all that ...fighting is fun though, but its frustrating to have a battle of wits with unarmed people :)

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, Rentechd and Pescado have completely different concepts of how a site should be run and should never have become co-admins.  Never.

I think it's sad that it happened, that it went wrong, and there's no point in anyone openly taking sides and keeping the wounds open; just like with a divorce, the involved parties have to adjust to it in their own ways.

Yes, yes, your Ingelogical viewpoint is that everyone should have their own seperate site, we know. To some extent, you may have a point, but I think it's more a question of the site you end up than anything else.

Aww, but what would be the fun in that? Besides, divorces are a green memory when the parties involved hate each other. If you make sure they hate each other first, the divorce is a nice happy green memory and there's much less crying and whining about it.

Besides, have you heard the latest blurb? Apparently, I have it on good authority that "conveniently" around this time, a number of unidentified parties apparently attempted to "hack" the site. Mind you, this is conveniently after the *FIRST* "hacker scare", which we all could tell was obviously a dig at my possession of a database backup. Frankly, this new one is simply insulting. "Unsuccessful hack attack"? Pssh. Do I look like somebody who FAILS?!? I assure you, if I were going to make a hack attempt, it would be SUCCESSFUL!

However, I didn't say *no one* should be co-admins; I said *you two* should never have been co-admins.  There's more than a subtle difference between those two statements.

My preference for many small sites rather than one or two huge ones does not go as far as saying each site should only have one creator associated with it!  Groups of two or three are great, as are the occasional large site as long as they don't approach monopoly status.  I use and support large sites such as TSR and MTS2, as well as mid-sized sites such as VS

Well, that is sort of the conclusion I came to. Rentech wasn't exactly pleased about this decision, for no particularly sane reason, and has now taken to blaming me for every real or imagined thing that is wrong with her site.

Although I am glad that you finally have your own site, it's sad that you and Rentech's relationship has deteriorated like this. I did see it coming though, quite a while before it happened and downloaded the director's cut, just in case it would take you longer to set up shop elsewhere than it actually did. I am hoping that you and TJ can get together and align you mods, so to speak. I like you both and I would hate to see that your mods suddenly became incompatible.

Both, you and Rentech,  had a widely different opinion on how a site should be run, that was a dead give-away.
As I pointed out, I have an intense dislike of censorship, but I do like civilized discussion about issues at hand. Being told to take it or leave it will usually result in my "leaving it".

I dislike moderators who think they are the extended arm of whatever God they believe in, and treat people as if they are "dreck" (that's the german word for dirt, I wouldn't want to be chastised for using a foreign word, heaven forbid, I just like the german word better it has more force :)) That is one of the major reasons I have never posted in MTS2's "social" forums, and I most likely never will. The moderators whose opinion I respect at this site are no more than a handful, the others seem to have delusions of grandeur.

The fact that someone gets so stuck on their own opinion and decision without even considering any alternative is sad. Digging in one's heels and not listening to reason is not a good thing, and letting oneself be influenced by a few to the detriment of the many is something that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Although I don't pay attention to post-counts and such, I do read everything, and the much lower count I have on VS now certainly caught my eye. It seems that all the posts I did in JM's forum got subtracted, and that was a sign of worse things to come to pass. You know the ancient egyptian custom of wiping out all memory of a person by wiping out all things that this person ever did, along with their name. A harsh punishment in those days, since it barred the way to heaven forever.

I have to agree with garyalex, although a battle of wits is fun, but it is not fun to battle with an unarmed person.

G.

I suspect that this is the reason why Rentech has now banned me from the site: To prevent my consulting with him and participating in his forums. Since that would just mean the site becomes the "Twojeffs Forums", instead of the "Pecado Forums" (sic). Unfortunately, as a result, our original plans to compile a single definitive "Critical Fix Patch" are currently on hold until the fallout settles. Since I have it on good authority that Rentech holds even completely pointless and irrational grudges forever, that would mean that Jeffy would probably have to defect to someplace not run by Rentech.

By "this site", you mean MTS2, or here? Because if you're talking about here, so far, I'm the only moderator, not that I ever really do any moderation, it's really more like filing, and I don't have DELUSIONS of grandeur, I really *AM* that awesome! Everyone who isn't Rentech knows THAT. Right? :)

Well, I'm pretty fond of my own decisions and opinions also. I also happen to be fond of arguments. If you can convince me you have a better solution, well, then, why, that's an excellent idea! I'm glad I thought of it!

As much as I'd like to approve of some anti-Rentech sentiment, I must clarify that Rentech is not responsible for the total annihilation of the Pescado forums. That was my doing. They had to be deleted somehow, after all, and I certainly wasn't going to leave an important task like that to Rentech.

Rentech, of course, has gone a step further, by banning me the forum entirely, apparently under the guise of "unsuccessful hacking attempts". Frankly, I'm insulted. UNSUCCESSFUL? I assure you if I had MADE a hacking attempt, Rentech's site would be a pile of smoking rubble.

Of course I meant MTS2. I am fully aware of your awesomeness, and I completely agree on the last point. My respect in your abilities is such that the word "attempt" does not even get associated with your name, at least not in my mind :)

However, when the thing with Sophie's avatar started and then kept on deteriorating, including the sudden eruption of jealousy, I knew we would soon see JM with his own site.

G.

Exactly my feeling. The modders are great. Being able to download things is fantastic. BUT, it's the community that makes or breaks a site. If people bring up a valid concern, and do it in a mature and civilized manner, it's not good business sense to tell your customers they can like it or not, that you don't care either way. That comment *really* rubbed me the wrong way. In my real life I often talk like a sailor when in close company, but I am mature enough to understand the concept of decorum. And if the avatar truly had been "adult content", I would have said, fair enough. But the fact that it wasn't and then rentech wouldn't even give a reasonable explanation as to why she removed it, well, I just can't stomach that sort of heavy handedness or that attitude.

Ooh, ooh, I know just the place!  :o

Exactly, I agree with you and with Motoki on that point. If you want a site for downloads only, don't put forums up. If a thread deteriorates into name-calling and other idiotic actions, by all means, lock it, but don't shrug of people with valid points, issues,and concerns. The thing with the avatar disturbed me very much the minute it started, especially since it had nothing even remotely obscene in it. It left things to the imagination, and unfortunately those very few with the "dirtiest" imagination beat RenTech into submission. (I put dirty in quotation marks because I don't find sensuality or sexuality dirty in the least)

So now I'm doing what you are doing. I posted a few times, mainly to ask other posters some questions, but I mainly just browse through TJ's and Carrigon's forums and then leave. You are right, that is after all what RenTech wanted, no?

G.

Speaking of Motoki, where is Motoki, anyway? He might like it here, you know, with the lack of hysterically histrionic people in the chain of command, combined with the glaring lack of Rentechs, which I know he doesn't like very much. And I haven't kicked him in awhile.

Well, you're welcome to make the suggestion. I certainly can't, I seem to be banned at the moment, and rerouting through Vietnam = 5 minute lags.

I like this forum better than variousimmers, mostly because I like it when the administrator(s) of the site are very involved with the community. It might have been because of the threads I read, but I never got that impression on VS. Same thing with MTS2, although the main reason there is that it's just too big. Here, JMPescado is a visible presence everywhere on the site. Which I think is a good thing, although that may just be because I'm crazy.

Twojeffs needs to come over here, or something. He and JMPescado seem to work well togethor, and there's no point in them duplicating each others work. I'm drifting into incoherency here.

Last time I saw Motoki was in the "f***ing MTS2" (or however Rentech edited the subject) thread. He got the "if you don't like it here go someplace else" response and that's exactly what he did. Hopefully the peeing nanny will mysteriously appear on this site someday.   

Yeah, that's the last time I heard of him too. Poor Motoki, he can't seem to catch a break, or a reasonable person, whichever comes first. I'm hoping that he'll catch on to this forum sooner or later (hopefully sooner). Discussions are so much more fun when he is involved, he has a tendency to keep things hopping :)

Mike, if you can read that, post something. No E's or K's here, nor R's or D's (you know what I mean, I'm not spelling it out :))

G.

Shall I just say you request a communication and direct him here?

I don't want to give any silly advice, but TJ is on the member list here; I hope that will not get him into trouble (I know there is quite likely more than one Jeff, I'm using the singular out of habit).

G.

He's here, yes. Dunno how frequent of a visitor, though.

I am sure Jeff, like most responsible Sims modders, will continue to try wherever possible to make his hacks fit in with whatever else there is out there in the community, regardless of what site they are hosted on.  However, it's not always practical to make a mod that is compatible, and I would rather the incompatible mods were occasionally made in order to allow players a choice rather than that there should be some sort of syndicate to suppress those which might clash - or only make those which will not.   Again, responsible modders will always be happy to advise on compatibility and help players sort out conflicts.

If it's the same question or problem that needs fixing and you have several fixes to choose from, then non-compatibility is not an issue. Nor is it an issue when you want to install items that ease gameplay or enhance it. But if you have two problems and two fixes that clash, you are forced to choose which problem you want to remain and which one you want to fix.

The reason I only have four modders that I trust, is that they usually work together, or help the users along if issues arise (and one of them happens to be you, Inge). As a person who is completely dependent on others when it comes to game fixes, I certainly hope that the communication stays intact.

G.

Anyone who is unwise enough to make a mod that conflicts with one of Pescado's isn't wise enough to make a mod I'll allow on my computer.  And as far as "syndicates" go, the various Standards Agencies exist for a damned good reason.

Considering Pescaso is the most prolific writer of useful mods, if I had to get rid of his mods or someone else's, guess which ones would go to the bit bucket?  Hint:  it wouldn't be Pescado's mods.

Anyone out there is free to write anything they choose.  Just as I'm free to ignore their stuff.  If I were to suddenly start writing mods, I'd make damned sure they were compatible with the premier mod writer's stuff.  And if he produced a mod that wan't compatible with one of mine, I'd change mine.  Right now, and for the forseeable future, that premier mod writer is Pescado.  Other modders may do as they wish.

Hook

That says it much more concisely than my post. If it is a question of choice, anyone who values their game will prefer the outstanding over the merely great. Why else would I be following JM around since the early days of MTS2? If everybody else disappeared tomorrow and only JM remained, I would not panic, and the majority of sim-players who use fixes feel the same. That is appearantly the premier (or is it prime?)  reason for the conflicts that seem to arise everywhere JM goes.

I didn't see it coming on MTS2, but I saw it coming on VS. Let me put it into another view: I am great at my job, but my mentor is outstanding. I neither begrudge her this position, nor do I envy her. I hope I can emulate her to a comparable point, but I know who is the student and who is the master(I know master is a male designation, but mistress doesn't sound right). That is the way it should be in all areas, including software and software enhancement.

However, as I said before, if I have two problems and one fix each for each problem, and the fixes clash, I would be in the unenvyable position to choose which problem would be the least one, and which one to fix. That was a general reply to a general statement. If JM's was one of the two fixes, it wouldn't be a question of choice, and that is a specific relpy to a specific statement.

Aside from all that, I would really like to see a conjoined 'director's cut' from JM and TJ. It's bound to be a gem, I like TJ, and I like many of his mods.

G.

Yep, I'm a member here and plan to continue to be. There's no reason that I shouldn't be able to go/post/chat where ever I feel like. I do plan to keep my work posted at VS for now, but I hope that JM & I can continue to work together. I've always tried to keep my mods compatible with everyone else's work whenever I can. My feeling (and my hope) is that this will all blow over eventually instead of blowing up worse than it is, but that's up to the people involved, not me.

I have to agree with Inge, it was probably not a good idea for Rentech and Pescado to co-admin a site. They have completely different styles of admin and are both bull-headed and don't give up on their position easily (if ever). This is not a bad thing, I can be pretty stubborn myself, but it was bound to eventually cause a split. I personally have never had a problem with either one of them so I'm not taking sides on this at all. I really don't have all the facts and don't know everything that's been said and done to do so.

Well, I'm willing to talk anytime Rentech is, but according to Delphy, Rentech tends to hold irrational grudges forever and ever. Now, I was perfectly willing to continue participating there, just as I've continued to maintain a presence on MTS2, but Rentech, obviously, considers this unacceptable, a level of extremism even MTS2 never went to.

Well, I was willing to part company peacefully once this became inevitable, but Rentech is hellbent on being the martyr. You'll note the apparent rise in "hacker attacks" ever since I left. Most of these, like "Tearing A Page", apparently were entirely made up by Rentech.

Well, I came in on the tail end of all this, and really have very little idea of what was going on, but it seems to me that if some of the participants (naming no names, but I don't see any of them posting here!) were able to laugh a little at themselves occasionally, things might not have got so bad!  Humour generally takes the sting out of things, I find, and people who can laugh at themselves generally are not people who take a high hand with everyone who disagrees with them!

Yeah, well, you know how it is. Some people have no sense of humor.

You need one if you're going to be any part of this game!  If you haven't got one, go play Tombraider or something!

I'm kind of new to all this modding and hacking,  I just needed some patches for the EP,  and had no idea where to go,  but Pescaro's name was mentioned everywhere I looked.  And TwoJeffs was running close second -- and I finally found both on the same site.  Next day I went back to finish downloading what I needed and you was gone, without a trace -- nothing to even show you were there -- which I think is rude to newbies who NEED your patches to play the game.    At least Mod the Sims was nice enough to have a post about where you were.

So basically in the view of someone who just got here -- it looks like jelousy.  And to me it looks kind of stupid,  because on the Sims2 site all the patches linked on the bug thread is you or TwoJeffs.   And I know that your stuff works,  been using it for a week now with no problem.    Since it seems that mentioning your name on VS is a sin how would I ever know who's stuff is compatable with yours.     I predict a drop of traffic for that site.

That's my two cents.

Jude

PS -- Thanks for the patches.  Wish AE would pay you for fixing there mess.

Pescado, I think it's gone one step further now. I think your account over at VS has been deleted. Check out this  VS thread (http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=1570). There's a quote from you, but no post. And if you look at the memberlist (http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/memberlist.php?ltr=J&pp=30&sort=username&order=asc) you aren't on it anymore.

My goodness, some people are so pettyminded!  Anyone would think there had been something close to murder being done for someone to act in such a way!  Have you retaliated by fixing her with the NPC zapper so if she comes over here she gets zapped?

I will continue to visit VS as long as you are there, Jeff. Your Final Exam Fix was the very first hack I ever downloaded and literally saved my game. You, Pescado, and Inge have your own folders in my hack directory. I can count on one hand the mods I have from anyone/everyone else.

I just checked that out, and I noticed there were several other people there also checking this out (hi, Judecat! :D). I also noticed yesterday that any thread mentioning JMP and his whereabouts has been locked. That's a real disservice to vs members, if you ask me.

Have to say, does any of this matter now as the hacks are again available and Pescado is placed at the top of the food chain?
Just wondered who really gives a flying ****...

At least one of the threads at VS asking for Pescado had a working url in it.  Why leave it unlocked??  So there can be gossip and whining and rumor monging?   They want to find him, they can come here.  If the front pages scares some away, oh well, but that's Pescado's choice, and fully in his control.

There is enough room in cyberspace for many sim sites and many modders.  Absolutely we have our favorites, those we trust, and such.  Heck, my sims homes seem to have most of the 'new' furnishings from 3 people.  Almost all my hacks are JM, TwoJeffs and Inge.  Ugly blowups periodically happen, and periodically people do the shuffle ;)

I'm glad that I can have more awesomeness in my game.  I'm also grateful for help I've gotten from others simmers in pursuing the ways in which I want to add/change things for the game.

Well, one thing is that those who need JM can not find him from Various' site anymore, they would have to go to MTS2 for that. I just went through the site and found that all the posts he made have been deleted. It's actually quite comical sometimes, people seem to answer themselves or respond to something that is not there. Even the individual posts that had a link to this site have been altered in some way or other.

Interpersonal difficulties should not be carried this far as to deny those in need of help access to it. It is the hypocrisy of this that is very annoying. To proclaim that a site has been set up solely for helping fellow simmers, but providing forums as well is one thing, to deny information or direct access to the most talented modder in the community is quite another.

If you want to implement rules, be consistent. The avatar in question did not bother me in the least, but they have at least one member there who delights in calling people "crackhead", makes constant references to 'crack' and has in his/her signature under location the following: "Where do you think, CrackHead?"
I find this far more bothering than everything else I have come across since the break-up.

Censorship and hypocracy are the two things I deplore the most. Having been involved in the former discussion about the issue (and receiving a very defensive non-answer), and witnessing the latter now in more than one way is rather disturbing.

G.

IMO, trying to erase the imprint of JM's work is futile, unless you ban everyone who has knowledge of this site.  People's questions about what hack they can get to fix a problem, will continue to be answered with a helpful link, because oddly enough that is the most effective way to get them to what they need.  The internet was designed so that if information could not get through one way, it could find another way, and in some ways the communities it fosters have that same ability.

Or in other words, you can shoot the messenger, but you can't kill the message.

That, and JM has a tank. It's hard to make someone disappear if they have a tank.

Can someone fill me in and describe to me what was this so-called questionable avatar? I love a fantabulously ridiculous heated controversy and juicy delightfully delicious gossip!  ;D  Please enlighten me! As I missed all of the wonderfully exciting drama! This sounds almost better than Desperate Housewives, and that's nearly impossible to top right now.  :D

Ste

Also, anyone who is a member of any other forums can post a link to here.  If, every time we come across someone with a problem that can be solved by using one of JM's hacks, we give them the URL, then what is going on at VS will make no real difference!  I've noticed that a lot of people with a problem do post at more than one site, so even if one site they choose is VS, thre's a good chance that wherever else they post, someone will be able to help them find their way here!

That is most fortunately true, especially since MTS2 also has a link to JM's new site. It does however, not take away from the fact that VS was the most recent site where JM had his residence, and many forums still have VS's address listed as the place to find JM. It takes a little time for everyone to catch up, meanwhile people have to search around. To act like this is immature and petty. I will continue to visit, mostly to check TJ and Carrigon's forums, but I am done posting in the discussion forums. I tried it and the result was awful. 

Envy is not a pretty thing at all, and people would be wise to realize that JM is the premier modder, and that he has helped many people. My game would reside on a shelf gathering dust if it wasn't for his talent.. I've been following him around since the early days of MTS2 (heck, Ahob was still a 'player' then, so its been a while :D) and I will continue to do so until I get sick and tired of the sims.



Although things had already started to deteriorate before this, the avatar thing brought it out into the open for all to see. Since it is a public forum and still available for reading, here's were the gist of it all is: The VariousSimmers web-site, Vampires forum under F**king Mod the Sims2, page 2, around post # 40. That's around about where it starts and it goes steadily downhill from there.

Freoninferno's original, cute avatar is still viewable on the MTS2 site. I guess you were lucky that the watchdogs never caught on to your avatar :D

G.

I posted this explanation in another thread: (Note it mentions you :))

It was the shot in the game where one Sim is about to jump onto the Sim on the couch during the make-out session. All you could see of the 'jumpee' was lower legs/feet and the jumper was completely clothed. I still don't get it. Syberspunk's avatar (which I think is hot, btw..lol) is a picture of two guys in bed kissing, not Sims, people. No problem with that one, though. Since R**tech never did explain her 'reasoning', I suppose we'll never know. Supposedly 7 people (out of about 600 registered users at the time) complained.

Hi Reg.

To briefly hi-jack this thread, I found your story and it cracks me up. "Do I know you? Do you live here?" Priceless.
Reminds of JM's mantra: "Who are you? Do I know you? Do I like you?" Great houses and now funny stories. Your repertoire seems never ending.

Back to avatars and bans. How come you changed yours? Did the 'mascot protection league' get on your case. Not that there is anything wrong with the new one, its a very nice looking dog. ;D

G.

The best way I ever heard this put is, "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." 

(For those who don't know, the Internet was designed as a communications system that would survive a nuclear war.  You can destroy any part of it and the messages will still get through, by routing a different way.)

Hook

Yes, one of the few times the military came up with something actually useful for the civilians (sorry Hook...not dissing tanks or the military, honest; I''m really talking out of the side of my mouth here :P)

But this is very well put, I shall write it down and use it.

G.

Actually, I think it was the Rand Corporation. :)

I first heard the quote when someone published on the Internet the Chruch of Scientology's "Operating Thetan" material.  That's the highest level in the church, and some of L. Ron Hubbard's worst science fiction.  The Scientologists tried very hard to suppress it, but for every site they closed down, several more opened up.

As for the military, I think it's intended for other things besides coming up with useful stuff for civilians. :)  I think the higher level of competence in Germany is in part because of universal military service.  I assume they still have that. 

Hook

Posted by: Hook

Far be it from me to argue with an expert about his/her field of expertise ;D.

I guess I'm just hung up on the greek philosophy that state and individual are equal, when in actuality it's the roman one that prevails (state and individual are not equal). The exclusive scientific clubs and circles are very scary indeed, especially when these people toss ethics aside as if it was just so much rubbish.

And yes, military duty is still mandatory in Germany. They had a little problem with my son; he (and my daughter as well) have dual citizenship (my ex-husband is a US citizen) and the german military wanted their half :D. Luckily it all worked out.

G.

If you choose to play the sims, surely you have to accept that it is a game with a sexual element!  In the US it's rated Teen, which surely tells you before you buy it that there is an adult element to the game!  (Unfortunately here in the UK they've slipped up, and it's rated 7+, but they've amended that for University, which is 12+)

If you accept that the game has adult content, it's surely hypocritical to complain about someone using a shot from the game as an avatar!  Naked sims in hot tubs with life-like additions and a no-censor patch installed just about to woohoo I could understand - but getting into a clinch on the sofa!  How narrow-minded can you get?

I'm glad you liked the story. The "Who are you" line is definitely homage to Pescado.

As for the avatar, I just wanted a new one for the shiny and awesome new site. That's Bailey, aka Psycho-Neurotic Dog, aka Buckethead, my personal APO Security System. Bailey has issues. When we adopted him, his name was Tyson and his former owners had given him up because they couldn't housebreak him. It turned out that not only did he have a severe bladder infection, but was nearly deaf due to untreated chronic ear infections. Fortunately, after about 6 months of treatment, he did regain his hearing and there was no permanent damage. He aslo housetrained immediately once the bladder infection cleared up. As to "Tyson", well, no dog of mine was going to be named for a rapist.

Guess I'll have to read that thread. I'll go find it. But I've seen freoninferno's avatar before and I didn't see anything wrong with it. It looked a bit kinky, but it wasn't like super racy or anything. I mean, what's the big deal? God, people are such lame-ass whiners. I mean, if this was a pic of an in-game event, why should they complain since it's something that is typical and possible in the game? Do these people play their Sims 2 game so fucking totally sterile and in such a boring manner that they refrain from using WooHoo at all? These are the type of people who are so fucking frigid and uptight about sex, I bet they barely enjoy it. They think of it as some awful, uncomfortable, unemotional and unpassionate event that must only be done in the missionary position with their eyes closed while they are praying at the same time trying to cleanse themselves of dirty, impure, and unholy thoughts. :p I mean seriously, get a grip, as much as it claims to be a "life-simulator" it is still a game! The same thing goes for Jack Thompson (or whatever his name is). Don't these peopl have better things to do with their lives?


I'll have to find this thread too. As I said, I saw that avatar and didn't think anything was controversial about it. You're right about mine though, I mean if anything, I imagined that would have been cause for alarm. Admittedly, I do like attention, the attention whore that I am ;) and do like to attempt to push boundaries sometimes, but really, what's wrong with two boys kissing? It is hot and it is sexy and that's life. Nothing wrong with boys expressing love or just pure, flat-out, plain passion for each other. Especially when one of them is me.  ;D That just seems really crazy and out of hand. But I guess, on the other hand, it is someone else's site and they can run it however they hell they want. But I also agree that it seems uneven. I guess I am lucky. *shrugs*

Oh well, whatever the case, it seems a shame how that turned out. But I'm kinda glad Pescado has his own site. As much as I like VS, it's getting a bit waaaaaaaaayyy too crowded there as it is. And although I really really loved having twojeffs finally come over there and have a place where I could get both his and Pescado's hacks together was very convenient, it's not that big of a deal really. Just gives me yet another site to log onto and browse around and read and post. More drugs to feed my addiction. :p

Ste

PS. Where are these reggikko authored stories? I think I'd like to read them.  ;D

Hey, love it or leave it, right? That was Rentech's reasoning, too, but Rentech is difficult like that: She's never happy even when she gets what she wants.

So far, it's just one chapter of my Legacy challenge family.

http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/mysimpage.php

Hope you like it!

This site rocks. Way more than VS, which is good, but it's just way too big. This site, it's small enough for JMPescado to effectively scare away all the idiots, and for us to basically police our selves on offensive opinion wars and what not. There are (to use politics as an example, although this principle applies to just about anything you can fight over) both liberals and conservatives on this site, but if someone is put off by something someone else says, they just say so, explain why they don't like it, the person responsible for the comment usually apologizes and/or explains, and no one is seriously miffed by it. For a site run by a guy who takes pride in artfully insulting people, it's remarkably civil. Perhaps because we have the BBS to vent?

I think it has to do with the fact that idiots can't afford our subscription fee.

I wonder how many go to the main page and then make a hasty retreat. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

The irony of this is that people then whine to Rentech "WAAAH! Pescado's site is a paysite!". Apparently, this annoys Rentech greatly. Rentech has been reported as saying that my "plan" is "backfiring" as a result....sounds like it's working perfectly to me.

I saw a post by R**tech that said, "Lips are no longer ripped on this site." <snicker>

Wow. Now that's hatred. Rentech REALLY must loathe everything even remotely connected to me and everything I stand for. :P Just the mere mention of lip-ripping is enough to send Rentech on the warpath now.

Okay, you sneak! Which one are you? Left or right? ;)

Or should that be top or bottom?

(Okay, I'm bad. I'm shameless. I simply cannot resist being set up so perfectly.)

((I'm sure syberspunk will take that in the spirit it was written. I hope.))

Heheh, which one do you think I am?


Psst... I'm on the right.


 :D Hehe, one doesn't usually find that out until after we've been out on a few dates.

Ok, who am I kidding, it's after the first date really.


And... I might have a preference, but whether I am on top or on the bottom depends on my mood. ;)


So... first of all, I just wanna say that what I am really lovin' about this site so far is that the people that I've liked from VS are here too. At least, IMHO, the ones that seemed the most vocal and the most intelligent or at least the most fun and entertaining. ;D And I am definately happy to see that. Plus, I really love the attitude that Pescado just seems to bring out in everyone. As far as I'm concerned, the best people there were the ones the supposedly high IQ ones. :p

And when I say this, I mean it as a compliment. I mean, I read that thread you guys were talking about, and I'm not sure exactly who those people were complaining about, but I really liked the sort of condescending, sarcastic camaraderie that was sort of nurtured and encouraged here. I mean, it's all in good fun and anyone who takes it so personally and seriously deserves to be made fun of.  ::) I mean really, it ain't so bad to develop a thickened skin, right? It's the fucking internet! It's a fucking message board! Go  :'( me a river while I play the saddest song in the world on the tiniest violin in the world for god's sake.

But meh, maybe that's just my own embittered, jaded attitude? It's not that bad really. Just laugh at yourself while you're laughing at others too. I don't see what the big fuss was all about and I don't see why that thread had to be closed. It's kind of odd though, because it does seem a bit uneven to, on the one hand be fine with the complaining of MTS2 and yet still censor an avatar that really is only suggestive if you, yourself read something into it. Hell, I'm as dirty-minded as they come, and I really didn't think much of it myself. Except, well no offense, but I thought the outfit was a bit tacky or just wayyy too busy with the colors. Heh, but other than that, I didn't see anything explicitly sexual about it that could potentially corrupt any underaged kids by things they couldn't normally see in the game anyways.

Oh yeah, and I totally love the new front page with its bold logos, fonts, and graphics. When I first came here, I was almost deterred by the pay site thing. That gag was absolutely brilliant! AND, I even tried to log in via the membership link, so if Pescado has a thing to capture login information, he definately has mine. lol. Boy am I ever so not clever.  ::)

I wonder how many other nimrods made it past that page thinking that they could login as well. It would be really funny if you made an authentic looking subscribe page too.

Anyways, off to get some grub and read some of reg's stories.  :)

Actually, that's how you're supposed to get in. You just enter your customer login and password, and push OK, and you're in. No problem, right?

It's broken again? We'll have to fix that soon.

Actually, I meant this page (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/discuss.html). That isn't a real login, right? It just brings you to here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf). And that is the real login, right? Well, At smf page, I have it now so that I am logged in forever. Because I am lazy that way. :p

At the discuss.html page, the First time I saw that, I was confused since it didn't have a register option. So, the first few times I came to the main page, I was looking around for a way to register. I was about to give up, and then I went back to the discuss.html page and thought I would take a chance and see if you possibly kept all the usernames and login info from VS and just transferred it over to your site. So... I took the chance and tried to login, which brought me here to the forums, but I then had to register. :p At least, if I am remembering that all correctly and I am not on crack and making this all up.  ::) I'm pretty sure I'm not on crack.

Anyhew, I read reg's story, and it was great! I love those "Do I know you? Do you live here?" bits. That totally cracked me up! Ok, maybe I am on crack.  ;D

Ste

You can't register from the customer login page, silly. You have to subscribe to the site for the $29.95/month before you get your customer login. Then you enter that customer login and your password. But for a limited time only, we have a special deal: Buy one month for the price of two, and get one free!

Actually, I thought it was about the least difficult site of any I've been to to register at!  Some I find really confusing but this definitely isn't one of them!

Oh, yeah! Hey, syberspunk, your avatar is sideways!




Hmmmmm...a little voice tells me you're on the right.
 


TMI! TMI! TMI!  ;)

Ohh, you are a bad, bad girl.... I like you :D.

Pass over the... whatever it is you guys drink down there in NO. Prosit.


You are in fine form as well tonight. The sad part is, that there possibly could be people who would fall for that gimmick, and genuinely believe that they found a bargain.


Well then, the direct link on her forum link page should bring you directly to the registration site, and not to the "if you want to join, you must pay" page, no? Methinks she wants to hurt your traffic, but after reading this, she is actually dancing to the puppet-master's (JM's) tune.

I must admit, when I saw the site first, I was momentarily surprised, but as soon as I saw the little man's head pop off, I knew I was on the right track. I found you farily quickly after realising that. I've been toddling around after you far too long to be stopped quite that easily :D

G.

Well, I was wondering where you were. I'm glad to see you're still around. I rarely visit VS, unless I need too. And I go to MTS2 even less because I dont like it there. Okay, I hate that freaking site worth a passion. (Cant stand Delphy) But I will keep my opinions to myself.

That is hysterical! I did the same thing. First, I did a double-take at the subscription fee, had a split-second of confusion followed by a moment of suspicion, then I saw the head blow off the cartoon guy. I had to kick myself for almost falling for the joke, even for that fraction of a second.

So, wait, lemme get this straight...

You're banned from www.rentech.com (http://www.rentech.com)??  Is it really that bad?  I mean, sure, I'd be upset if I couldn't buy solar modules, too, but come on, man!  I'm sure Renergy Techologies, Ltd. had its reasons.  Not the least of which is due to renewable energies, which your underground bunker probably consumes at a rate of 1,000 kilograms per decaliter!

That joke stopped being funny the first time, Laurenke. Actually, it wasn't really funny the first time, either.

It was posted before?  I guess that's what I get for not actually reading this thread.

I only joined various simmers because I was stalking you - now I have another membership to a site which will remain unused!  :D
Oh well. *returns to lurking*

Hehe, I had the same reaction, but after seeing that the samples were actually EVERYTHING I understood the point. Such a beautifully cruel work of art.  ;)

Until now I had not actually seen the home page for this site!  I linked to this page just a couple of days in and registered right off.  Wow!  I think I'd have flipped out if I thought I had to pay that kind of money to use JM's mods, but I would have given it serious consideration.  Oops, maybe we shouldn't give him any ideas.

That reminds me, I need go to tell Bippy to make a page for our special offer, "Limited Time Offer: Buy One Month For The Price Two, Get One Free!".

Yah I can make that page.  If you want something in particular let me know.

I thought it was funny. But I guess I missed the first time it was posted.




Throw in a bridge in Brooklyn and I'm sold.

People often don't read my comments!

Got it! My apologies!

ZephyrZodiac, I did see it the first time (and thought it was hilarious). ;D

Suck-up. ;) Oh, yeahhhhhhh? Well I thought it was more hilarious than you did!

I about fell out of my chair laughing...I can't remember the last time (or if there ever even was a time) I was called a "suck up". LOL

Thank you KellyQ!  Actually, I guess Montana is probably a good place for windmills!

Got to say, I saw evidence of this myself. One minute she was nice and friendly and the next the teeth were in my throat I was stopped from 'starting any new threads' for I have no idea why. Like I start a lot of threads! I think I went to the V maybe a dozen times in all and when I saw I was stopped from new thread making--even tho I didn't want to make any it woulda been nice to know what the hell I'd done to piss her or whomever off- I just stopped going there, period.
I did make a post over there a few days ago tho to twojeffs whom I felt I I owed homage as I had not given proper credit to in a thread at MTS2.

Altho I missed your twisted humor Pescado. Glad to know I can dose up on you again. :)

Well, I went there today to check on two notifications!  Even though my "reputation" is on green, I too "May not start new threads"!  Is there anyone left who can, apart from Rentech herself? 

I would have thought the whole point of joining (and subscribing to in many cases) a forum which purports to deal with game problems was to be able to ask for help, and if you cannot start a new thread, and nothing suitable exists to post to, what the hell is the use of the forum?

Well, either you're attempting to post in a section of the rentech.com forums which do not permit the starting of user threads(in which case you're stupid and deserve to have your lips ripped off), Rentech has broken the forums, or Rentech has decided to punish people who have defected to here. As it's likely you're not dumb enough to make the first mistake, given that More Awesome Than You has a similar board structure, it's probably one of the other two. Who knows? If the second, Rentech is probably busily trying to blame me for it already. If the last option, well, I don't put it above Rentech. She *REAAAAALLY* hates me. And probably anyone remotely associated with me.

Well, I for one have no interest now in going back!  Can't tolerate pettiness!  (I'm glad to know that even though I've had my lips ripped, you don't think me completely stupid! Oh, and I didn't actually try to start a new thread, it was enough to be informed that I couldn't!)

I also do not have the abilty to post anything new at VS. And I don't believe I have ever posted anything to offend anyone, other than Pescado.
However has anyone seen this located near the bottom of the page?

"Due to several unsuccessful attempts by people to 'hack' into this site we are forced to change our policy and require that anyone who wants to post on this site have a verifiable email address. These attempts were very unsuccessful since we have automated security in place that reduces the access of any user attempting to hack the forums to read only.

We are sorry that a few have ruined it for the many but that is how life goes, one or two unhappy, immature individuals ruin things for others. Read access - ability to read the forums and download attachments remains available to unregistered members. If you currently have a membership it is suggested that you make sure your email access is accurate but you will not be asked to verify it at this time. This will affect only those attempting to open new memberships.

Please note: Many sites that host rmail accounts (i.e.: yahoo, aol, hotmail) and many email programs have spam blockers that will reject any mail from any site that is not listed in your personal address book. If you have not gotten a verification mail to have your account promoted to full access this would most likely be your problem. You will need to add 'variousimmers.net' to your addressbook in your email program to resolve this issue. You can then go to your profile and ask the forum to resend your verification email."

So it actually appears that Rentech has made it so no one post anything, unless if you see this posting and comply to her requests.

Yeah, that would be another one of Rentech's "evil hacker scares" aimed at me. Of course, she goes and states it won't affect existing accounts, but hey, Rentech never made much sense.

Maybe she didn't have lips in the first place?  ;)

Yeah, but you gotta love the utter ridiculousness of the story: "Evil hackers *UNSUCCESSFULLY* attacked our site (meaning the security system works fine!), but we're going to be fascists anyway!". It is clear that the story makes absolutely no logical sense and is just like that "ONOZ! Everyone has to change their password!" scare from a few days before that one.

I don't quite understand the whole "ban" and "hack" thing. If a particular user is banned, what is preventing said user from using another screen-name and e-mail address and thus re-join?

Why would anyone need to hack into a public site? Or did she mean the admin pages? Or what? And how good would you have to be at hacking to get into a public sites admin pages, I wonder.

How could that have been aimed at you JM? As I said before, I have extreme difficulties associating the words "unsuccessful attempt to hack" with you. With me, most definitely, but with you?

G.

The logic of this rather escapes me also. However, the real motivation is to get rid of me. Rentech has gone through these steps because Rentech knows I loathe email and won't touch it. Thus the new email-registration.

Beats me. Like I said, there's no actual logic behind the visible statement, it's just an thinly veiled excuse.

Note the previous "hacker alert" as well. Let's just say that Rentech believes I happen to be in possession of things that are of that nature, and now that I've parted company, Rentech now thinks this represents a threat. Of course, this is complete nonsense, but Rentech obviously wants a witch hunt anyway.

G.

There's nothing abnormal in expecting people registering to post on a forum to have registered with valid email addresses?  Most forums require it.   MTS2 certainly do.   I mean it's not like you need to register at all if you only want to read or download.

If you don't want to give your real email address, then don't.  It just means you can't post messages.  Is that really such a loss?  You still get access to the downloads.

I really cannot believe this thread is still churning on and on.   Anyone would think you have to choose your favorite forum and only use files from that one site, all the debate going on over it.

There's nothing inherently ABNORMAL, other than the fact that it represents an abrupt policy reversal and the timing of the move is awfully fascinating, especially given the curious rationalization of it.

I have had problems downloading / seeing photos when not registering.

I thought this thread was about MAKING FUN of illogical behaviour, considering that Rentech will probably NOT change her opinion?
Fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger, and anger leads to suffering. Paranoid is bad! (Insert 'mkay here!  ;D)

It is. Inge is just missing the point. I thought the entire "HUZZAH!" part gave it away.

Well, my email address is valid, respectable, contains mny full real name, is accepted at a large number of sites including MTS2 , and SimFreaks, where I have been a moderator for some time (can't remember now how long), VS emails are not considered SPAM by my email program, yet I (A) received no notification of any revisions, and (B) still receive notifications of threads I've subscribed to.

If you want to ban people, fine, if you want to limit their activities, again fine, but at least have the good manners to inform them of this, and to let them know what they have done to deserve it!  If you can't do this, you shouldn't be running a market-stall, let alone an internet forum.

Well, hey, join the club. Welcome to the "Banned from Rentech.com" club.

How about a special forum with that name?  (Or so people would realise it didn't refer to solar energy:  Banned from VS)?

ZephyrZodiac, have you emailed the Admin of VS to let them know the problem?  I don't think she has intended for people to be blocked other than perhaps Pesacdo,  it could be an error in the configuration

No, I must admit I haven't, I just saw that I was not allowed to start a thread, and beat a hasty retreat - feathers ruffled a bit, I guess.  Be interesting to know where everyone is in the same boat!

Well I am going to let her know that at least one person seems to be having genuine problems posting, and see if she knows what's wrong.

Well, as I said, I didn't actually attempt to start a thread, I just saw that I wasn't allowed to!

Ok, well if you find out you have problems after all, and you have any trouble contacting Rentechd, post again in this thread and I'll let her know.

is the site down?

Appears to be!  What are you up to, Pescado? ::)ROFL

Didn't do it. Just a routine router outage, seeing the same problems out on the #grah channel, which is still on the same server.

Bet you wish you had!

No, not really. If I really wished I had, I'd have done it by now.

She'd probably like to do it to you, though!

Why do you want to kick Inge?

That is the kind of dumb question you'd only ask if you've never been to the chat. Kicking Inge is an ancient and traditional ritual.

Well, I've never been to "the chat" - I have enough chatting at SF, so I can't see why it's a dumb question!  If you came to SF and asked about something that was traditional there, nobody would say you were dumb to ask!  And why kick anyone!

It's dumb because you're asking me why I would kick and abuse people. You should know better than to ask this by now.

Well, I'd hoped I was wrong about you!

Okay, not to stir the pot (oh who am I kidding, let's stir the pot) here is a quote from Rentench's official post regarding bans:
 
"I have recently had numerous PM's requesting that this site post a banning list of who we have banned and why a person was banned. There are a few reasons we don't do this, but the main reason is that we do not ban people from this site, so a list would just be a waste of resources - a database search that returned nothing. If this site did ban it would not require a list for you to view - you can go look at any users profile and see their status."
She further states how banning is against policy and no one is ever banned, some people just cannot post:

 "So if anyone has complained to you that they are ‘banned' from this site, and in turn asked you to question that ‘banning' for them, you can give them a very simple answer: Variousimmers does not place people on banned status from the site. Many people prefer to claim ‘banned' since it tends to make people angry and feel they are unfairly treating a user or are not willing to admit what they have done wrong to warrant being on moderated or read-only status. We make very sure that users always have access to read the forums and to download, no matter what they may have done that lost them the right to post."

So you see JM, you must not be "banned", you just want to "make people angry" ;D

As usual, Rentech lies: Observe:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/banned.jpg)
Notice from the address bar that I am not attempting to post or do anything. In fact, I'm banned outright from the front page. Read-only? Pssh. You decide: Banned or not?

So yes, a search would return something: Me! You can only imagine the absolutely awful publicity THAT would be, to have my name as the sole name on the list for no apparent reason.

Oooooh! Careful what you say! <sarcasm>You might be disrespecting some people.</sarcasm> Ugh. I got yelled at about that when I posted like that. I have never used my login to go back to that site since.

No, it was forum wide. I see that that is gone now tho as mysteriously as it was applied....see: She is nuts.

"She further states how banning is against policy and no one is ever banned, some people just cannot post"

If this is what she claims, than why is it that it is stated "the administrator may have disabled your account"

Is it not, that disabling and banning go hand in hand?
 ???

One would have thought so!

She has a screenshot that refutes yours, Pescado...but of course there's no way to know *when* her screenshot was taken. Could have been 30 seconds before she banned you.

Jen

Well, if Pescado is truly not banned, then she should do the decent thing and tell him so!  Since she hasn't done so...............

Well I was in the chat at VS, and now it appears that I can not rejoin it. My IP addy has been blocked. Go figure that one. I never even said a word the whole time I was in there.  I was only in there for mer curiousity, and found some rather interesting conversations going on, I was lurking in the corner, as I usually do.
 Now that I left I have been banned from it.
SO what the freak! I think they are all paranoid over there or something.

Ah so I was right.  I said after you left that you were probably just trying to get banned so you could come over here and complain about it :)   There wasn't any other logical reason for the way you were carrying on.  And I mean let's face it, being deliberately unpleasant and rude to chatroom moderators does often result in some sort of exclusion, it's not rocket science.

What NO I was not that stupid kid that was being a pain in the ass. I never said anything. I was not banned while I was in there. I have been blocked since I left.


Should not have even said anything, I do not like confrontation. I should have just stayed in my corner, and left it. I do better when I do not speak.

Well, the image is amusing, but proves nothing. The fact remains that I still can't access anything. Whether you call that a "special usergroup" that's entirely seperate from "banned" is completely irrelevant to the material facts. Whether or not they've bothered to call it a ban, it's still a de-facto ban.

I, of course, will make no such statement here: I *DO* ban people. I usually don't, because it's not terribly effective, but if you're enough of a prat and demonstrate enough of a susceptibility to being banned, I'll do it. Of course, by that point, everyone else will be petitioning for your ban.

So, hey, what did he say, anyway?

And Inge needs to show up on #grah more. I haven't kicked an Inge for awhile.

Pescado, can't you still download and stuff?

No, not really. Didn't you see the screenshot?

You mean the #grah at vampirenet?  I was there about a day ago nattering away and you never said a word!

I was busy jacking a treasure galleon. By the time I looked back, you had ran off. Stop running before I can kick you! In fact, we're there right now...

This is a public apology to Glaukos as I accused him of chatroom abuse - he had been banned in error and was not the kid who was being a prat.  The error has been corrected.

Erm - if anyone seems to be banned off and on for a while it's cos they're running some experiments there to see what went wrong

Hmm how many posts do I need to stop being an asinine airhead?

As I do appreciate the apology, however see my profile. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?action=profile
I am a female, not a he. Why would a he have a fairy as their avator?
I really hate it when people decide for you what sex you should be.
But as I said before I do appreciate the effort.

Have you tried deleting your temp files and/or cookies?

Why shouldn't a man have a fairy as their avatar?  I thought gender stereotypes were rather 20th Century.

Yes. Amazingly enough, I thought of that idea first. It doesn't help.

I don't even think it's so much the avatar as it is the name. Glaukos sounds pretty plausibly male.

I don't even think it's so much the avatar as it is the name. Glaukos sounds pretty plausibly male.

I actually thought that glaukos would sound more of a neutral, guess I was wrong about that one.
In more depth detail, it is the actual meaning of the word as apposed to the word it self.

Glaukos, often named in Greek mythology and history, means shiny, bright and
bluish-green. (which is the color of my eyes, so the name is in relation to something that refers to me.)

Also in Greek mythology Glaukos was a SEA-GOD (true he was a male, but He was a GOD &  I just found that interesting.)

In other words, you've picked a male name, and then you wonder why everyone gets that idea on first impression. GEE, I WONDER WHY?!?

 
Once again I should not have said anything. as I was just pointing out the fact that sure Inge can make an apology for one thing, but yet set themself up for yet something else that would needs an apology.
And no I don't really wonder why, like I had said earlier, I just hate it when others decide what sex you are going to be. They are the ones that are assuming, and being narrowminded with first impressions.
As that is rude, it should have been a he/she rather than gender specific. That is all I was trying to get across.

oh forget it, it really is not worth trying to explain to those that do not want to listen. Glaukos is not a male name, it is term of bluish/green, and that is all that matters.

ok I am retreating now, back to my corner.

Oh I see. I guess that's what you were anticipating, thus your answer in the other thread. My, my, whenever I think I've seen it all, something always manages to surprise me anew.

G.

Sure, sure. Because observing the "you are banned" screen happens to count as activity. Don't you know anything?

What are you doing on the members-only forum, anyway? I don't see your name in the customer database. Did you hack into the site? How did you get here, anyway?

You can't be serious. Either you're trying to apply for Retardo Land, or this is a joke.

So why doesn't he have a profile then in the members list. I have spyware check always running in the back ground and never got any from this site and never any warning about it either.  So you are full of S**t.

Who'd have thought? A mud-slinger. If it is an application for Retardo Land, I'd say approve it. This poster has most certainly earned a spot. What am I saying, a spot and a half.

By the way Katze, my computer has spyware detectors running in the background too along with other security devices and you are right, same here.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

This reflects really poorly on VS. I certainly hope this was not done with Rentech's blessing, it would drain every last ounce of respect I had left after the avatar debacle.

G.

What are you doing on the members-only forum, anyway? I don't see your name in the customer database. Did you hack into the site? How did you get here, anyway?

It shows he was the last member registering here and there isn't much info on his/her profile.

That wasn't what I was talking about. I was talking about his customer ID, not his forum ID. You know, the one you got when you subscribed to the site. He doesn't have one, he just has a forum ID, indicating he is not actually a member and has apparently hacked into the database.

It appears that this person has sent out messages. did they send out messages to everone, or just who was online?

Oh, now we are deteriorating into leet-speak. I have to brush up on that, I don't see it very often. Neither here nor at VS. Mostly on the official boards. Poor Rentech, one could almost feel sorry for her. What has become of her site?

G.

Hello all. I got a pm, too, and I just came on.

Durrrrrrr,

You seriously don't know how to spell do you? Or maybe you haven't gotten to that in school yet? Seeing as you seem to be about 6, I would rather expect you to know how to spell "do" and "you" but you know, kids these days. . . .

Man, that is so not leet speak.

T1-1i5 i5 7337 5p34k. d373c71\/3, j0 5uX0r5!

Well you'll have to sing for that I'm afraid.  People are always referring to me as "he" or spelling my name wrong or something, and as far as I am concerned as long as it's clear what and who they mean it's all a perfectly functional use of language.   If you have a fragile gender identity and it can be damaged by someone getting a pronoun wrong, then you have to find a way to sort that out.

Maybe we should get a spelling and grammer class forum going around here?  ::)

My spyware program has also not gotten clogged up with crap from hanging around here either. *looks around* Who let the mud-slinging monkeys in, anyway? *chuckles*

Beats me. I don't think he's actually a representative of rentech.com, however. He's too stupid. They can't possibly have fallen that low that fast.

I believe he's related to what's known as a "script kiddy." He doesn't actually care about what obnoxious nonsense he's spouting, as long as he's spouting obnoxious nonsense.

Rentech may not ban anyone but she put me on "moderated" status for posting a link.  I guess she didn't like the link.

By the way Katze, my computer has spyware detectors running in the background too along with other security devices and you are right, same here.

Same here and there is nothing wrong with my computer. Hey isn't spamming against the law?





G.

What did you post a link to?

I got the PM from that little idiot as well. Has he pm'd every member here? I wasn't on line when I received this little gem. Bet he loves the attention, though, as I'm sure that was his motivation.   

I feel so unloved... I was online at the time and I didn't get a PM  *sniff*

Ness

I know. Isn't the neatly bubbled, coloured in script so adorable?  :D

Don't worry your not the only one. I would have liked to get one, just for a laugh.

Great spelling there and everyones got to love his email address fake@fake.com.

"durrrrrrrrr"?

I'm new here. Is there a translator?

BTW, I got such a deal on my membership, at eBay.

The current waiting list for the English-Moron translator is now over 45 years.. don't you love the internet :)

I didn't get one either.   :'(

Chris

Alas.  I still have 0 messages out of 0.  SO apparently I am not worthy of this doofus's attention.   I'll go into a corner and suck my thumb in desolation.    :'(

I got this today:

"A new topic, 'TEST', has been made on a board you are watching.

You can see it at
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=211.new#new

More topics may be posted, but you won't receive more email notifications until you return to the board and read some of them."

When I clicked on the link, I was told that I am off to see it, or it doesn't exist.

Is this the PM you talk about?

No, that was a test of the emergency broadcast system. It was just a test. Had it been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been warned.

Perhaps only people who were also members of VS got the PMs...? I wasn't online and I got one. What a jerk.

That would require an impressive amount of effort on his part to mass-spam people. As far as I can tell, though, he is not apparently one of the older Rentech.com members. He must be one of those new annoying prats that joined after I departed. I also sincerely doubt his actions are in any way officially endorsed by Rentech. They can't possibly have sunk that low that fast.

That's what I first thought (mass spamming=mucho effort) Someone obviously had too much time on his hands...

Trouble is, a thread like this is occasionally going to overexcite the more unstable personality.  They start wanting to do daring feats in support of the "side" they've taken.

I would just like to point out - and I have to risk this looking like I am taking sides - that at VS there is no statement naming Pescado as the person who is suspected of trying to hack the system.   If people have drawn that conclusion it is far more likely to be as a result of reading *this* thread on MATY than anything they might have read at VS.

As far as I am aware there was initially no attempt to block threads pointing people to this new site.  If any threads were closed or deleted over there it was more likely to be because after reading *this* thread, the less mature people went over there and used those threads to make unpleasant comments in.   Links to this site remain on VS in places AFAIAA, with the full knowledge and blessing of Rentechd.

It's hardly difficult to reach this conclusion when you observe the previous patterns: The first "hacker scare" began shortly after I left: Front page news, "Hackers may have stolen your password! Everyone must change their password if they joined prior to 07/10!" Conveniently, the date the hacker scare began coincides precisely with when I left, and the date given as the "compromised" date conveniently happens to be the day of the security lockdown when my server access was sacked. The obvious implication was the fact that I was in possession of a DB backup from that time (despite the fact that passwords cannot be extracted from a DB backup by any means short of brute-force cracking). I wasn't the first to reach this conclusion: In fact, I was only made aware of it when somebody pointed it out, after which I immediately drew the same conclusion.

The second "hacker scare" began, coincidentally after I had been quietly banned from the site for no particularly obvious reason. At that point, of course, I created a quickie account routing through another proxy server instead of my usual one, and sent out a few quiet PMs to individuals not including Rentech. Unsurprisingly, the next day, that account had been deleted, the practice of mandatory email verification was instituted, and the "hacker scare" message was posted as front page news.

Coincidence or cover-up? I'll let you decide.

I'm not saying your conclusion was necessarily wrong, but I'm not sure of your motives in trying to make sure everyone else knew about it?   Wouldn't it have been good style, and better for the community, to simply go about setting up your new (and very nice) site in dignified peace?

Well, that was sort of the original plan. Then Rentech went and banned me for no apparently good reason. That's always fun. But hey, like I said, I'm willing to go back to getting along anytime she's willing to stop with the nonsense. After all, I haven't actually done anything in response, like, oh, say, blowing up the site in a big fiery ball that is visible from space or anything.

I think the "durrrrr" was probably supposed to come across as "duh."  How literate do you have to be to spell "duh?" sheesh.

Feh. Petty politics.

I got the PM too, and I've been off-line for hours and hours!

Who is this Detective moron!  If he/she/it wants to inform us of something, surely the open forum is enough!

Flashback: one week ago: Well, what do you know...I leave on vacations and the best modder for TS2 goes AWOL! At least so I thought. So after a brief search I find out that he's set up his own shop...and it's a pay site?!?! No wait, something's fishy here! I don't quite know what, but something is just out of the picture...anyway, I'm at a netcafe and time's running out so no further investigation is possible...
Today: here I am again, at a netcafe. The JM issue must be clarified. But wait a minute...where's the link that was available a week ago? Gone?! Damn! Anyway, off to MTS2. There, one of his mods. "Click", "register". Fair enough, I do that.  No pay site after all! My intuition didn't fail me then. But wait...he's been BANNED from the previous site?! A quick glance at the posts, and the conlusion is solid: their loss. Not only did they lose the best modder available, they've lost all my respect as well.
The moral of the story: I don't give a rat's fuck what kind of person JM is (finally, free speech!). I DO know that he's the best damn modder for TS2, and I'll follow him wherever he goes! Period!
I also get the feeling that when this whole vacation charade is over (sure enough, the beaches and sea of Greece are wonderful, but I HATE THE SEA!), I'll extensively use the forum too. You'll see more of me in the future, that's for certain.

I have no idea who he is but he sent me the PM. I read it and gave it all the respect it deserved... I deleted it. As to this person I'd like to say:

Greece is so very lovely too (as long as I don't have to participate in the olive harvest :D). I seem to have a mediteranian tilt, Italy, Greece etc. I'm trying to build the Parthenon; thanks to Inge at Simlogical I can now use columns with reckless abandon. Too bad the only statue in the game is Venus... as if the ancient world didn't have more strong and powerful goddesses to choose from.

(I will now return this briefly hijacked thread to its regular scheduled program)

G.

Strange, the links were there the last time I checked but I rarely go to MTS2 daily.

All I can say is that there must be some exceptionally immature people out in the simming community. As for my own experience, I have noticed that there are a few on MTS2 forums that are quite disturbed and have a knack for not taking any responsibility for what they say. Worrying...

Censorship has its place, but hypocrisy does not. I have a personal issue with the mods that are available for guns, as I am, and I'm proud to admit it, fully in favour of having every weapon destroyed. (Yes, I'm a bleeding heart, tree-hugging hippy.) This worries me as it takes the game one step too far in my opinion. Cartoon violence is ok (Tom & Jerry anyone?) but bringing reality into something that's essentially marketed for kids? Kinda makes my skin crawl...

As for the "disturbing" avatar...I've seen far worse than a gay couple snogging. (Having been round the blocks more than once - a fairly slow stroll - and (jokingly) known as a "fag-hag".) Sexuality merely is. And, provided everyone is enjoying it and there is no coercion then I fail to see what the problem is. Both of my children have gay men as role models and it hasn't done them any harm, and it has done no harm to those young people adopted by gay couples of either gender.

My, how, I have gone on. Please be aware that these comments are the opinion only of the writer and bear no relevance to anyone else.

Anyone thinking that links to this site have been purged from VS, here is the pointer to the MATY thread in the Site Links section at VS, where I too have a link to my site in common with several other sites.  It seems fairly standard in the community to allow one link per other person's site?   MATY on the other hand, has *nowhere* for other sites to post their links.   One "censorship" battle point to VS, I think.

http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=1570

The link to MATY has been on VS, yes; it's hardly comparable to the other site-owner links, but that is beside the point.

Censorship is one of the issues that can't be compared with not having a place to post a link to your site. There are several things this site does not have yet, a donation button is one of those things that come to mind. It's only about a month old, although the ever increasing membership, despite JM's detour via the paysite main page, could be misleading.

Censorship would be if JM absolutely forbade any mention or link on his site to any other site, and that just simply is not the case. On the contrary, he keeps telling people to check simlogical (although he calls it Ingelogical, but there are not many here that don't know what that means), MTS2, and VS for fixes and hacks they ask for and that are not his. Censorship would also be if JM would start telling people what they were allowed to say, or telling them to get rid of their avatars. Sure, he's quick to tell you that your avatar stinks, or that your post is the epitome of silliness, but he does not stop you from using the 'stinky' avatar, or stop you from keeping on dwelling on your 'silliness'. That would be censorship. (Note: the 'you' is meant universally and is not implying any particular person).

We all know that JM is not a mesher or web-page designer, he is a premier modder and game-fixer, and he is first one to tell you that. Give him time, like I said, this site is only about one month old.

Personally, I love your stuff, Inge. I woudn't enjoy playing without the teleport shrub, your hiders, your school-tables, your apartment-stuff....your goodies are to many to list. I also love TJ's mods and hacks, and I enjoy playing with Carrigon's mods and hacks. There are also modders and meshers over at MTS2 that I like very much, and I check their contributions regularly, and if I want some easily understandable (for non-modders or non-meshers) advise, I do a quick search for Daysies contributions. There are more then I can list here, but these are the people that immediately come to mind. Even the official board has some good sides to it with contributions from good people, Reg and Kmlough come to mind there. There are direct links to many places on this site, they are just not organized, but JM has not deleted them, nor has he told anyone to stop doing that.

G.

I totally agree with that, veilchen, and would add that links are in any case of most use when included in the thread which deals with your problem - far more convenient than "go to the links page for the link"!  I think for sites which are primarily for downloading objects and skins etc., then a page of links is a courtesy to ones' visitors, but in a forum which deals primarily with game-play problems, the visitor will look first for a thread which addresses the issue he/she is having with their game, and if the answer appears to be a fix available at another site then a link in the same post is all you really need.

Well that's a great speech, all of it perfectly true about this site - but what about my actual point?   Has Rentechd censored her forums so that people can't see links to this site on there, or has she not?   I don't mind who it is, which side it is, if I see an untrue statement or misleading comment I am going to chime in.   I doubt if she left the link there by mistake, which means she has taken the decision to allow people to find this site in the same forum they find all the other sites - the very place they'd think of looking for a link to a site in fact.

I appreciate your kind comments about my objects, but this is not about who makes the best hacks, it's about fair representation of facts.

Can you tell me why Pescado has five red squares for his Reputations - other people appear to have green squares.

Do you mean on his account at VS?   It could be an unavoidable software side-effect of being on moderated status, or could be the side-taking phenomenon.  I don't think either Pescado or Rentechd are that petty minded, but some younger or less well-grounded people might have started playing pranks on "the other side" as they see it.

Even as a kid I knew that hitting someone over the head with a frying pan would do more than produce the doingoingoing! sound.  ;)


I'm far from being a "tree-hugging hippy", but I am also (jokingly) a "fag hag". Two good friends of mine are a gay couple, and they have adopted a son (he was 11 at the time of adoption, and is now in high-school), whom they "suspect" is also gay (and also why their home was seen as a perfect fit for the child). My son is friends with their son and didn't blink an eye when we went over to their house for dinner one evening and the son was dressed in a long velvet gown and full makeup! And my son adores the two men. Although at first I didn't know how to answer my son's "Why does so-and-so have two daddies?" question, I answered with the truth, which my son accepted and went back to his crayons. That's reality, and I've come to the conclusion that shielding my son from what some deem "socially unacceptable" would be the best recipe for creating a mind which considers such things "socially unacceptable". There are things that deserve that label, but this was not one of them, in my mind.

Wow, five red squares??? Someone got a little trigger-happy with the anti-rep button, it seems. This is getting sillier by the day...

Well, unless they're hacking into the site to do it, they must have some official standing, surely?  At SimFreaks, I can do certain things as a mod, like move posts, post warnings, etc. but I think only Heather could actually make those kind of changes (and maybe one or two other mods with a similar understanding of how things work).

I'm thinking that a lot of this silliness has much more to do with the new, younger posters over there than it has to do with either Rentechd or Pescado. Stirring the proverbial pot. Makes life fun, doesn't it?

Thank you Inge, I was always good at making sensible points and speeches. Maybe I should try for the Diplomatic Corps, they certainly get paid better than I do :D


I might have mis-read this, but to me it seems the point was censorship. Which does not exist here. As for the missing links (no pun intended), that is also pretty well explained in my speech :D.



I completely agree. I'm assuming (I know, don't assume) that this is the pool our little flamer crawled out of. Things like this most certainly keep this thread alive and breathing. And let me re-state JM's view on the flamer. He does not believe that this was done with either Rennie's knowledge, much less with her blessing. The red squares also add fuel to the fire that is trying to die down. I read Rennie's sticky on the 'reputation' thing. It seems to me that she does have the means to either re-set it or turn it off. That would take the wind out of the little ones' sails, more or less (hopefully more). I'm assuming this (again with the assuming, sheesh) because she states that "Not only can users reposrt a poster for begging for rep which will ear them an immedate -1000 other sit members can give them what they want" --this is a direct quote from the sticky. It does make it seem that she can manipulate this on her admin end.

G.

Edit: And please, I'm not at all claiming that Rentech even knew (or knows) about the reputation issue. After all, she has been very busy with all her new outdoor stuff meshes. Love the Gazebo by the way.

I'm not really all that keen on ranks and reputation points and all that.  It seems to encourage people to focus on the wrong things.  I got rid of the posting ranks, and everyone is just "registered" from 0 upwards.   On my forums the ideology is I'm boss and everyone else is equal under me lol.  :P

Well, "he (she) who pays the piper calls the tune"!  (Or should do!)

I don't really do reputation points, either, unless I were to rewrite the entire system for my negative-points-only system, and there are no real "posting ranks". You just get different insulting titles.

My ideology is that you all suck, and that I will insult you, rip your lips off and make fun of you.

You love us and you know it.

Too true, they don't pay the rent do they? :D


I'm glad to hear that, seeing as I was pondering going into the prosthetic-lip business. My first sale was going to be: "Buy one set for the price of two and get a second set free!"

G.

Alliterative insulting titles, in alphabetical order. I wonder if they go all the way up to Z . . .

I suspect the alliteration is a (possibly mocking) homage to the Maxis-flavored titles.

Regarding the whole avatar issue:

I can't see the big deal about the person avatar seeing that that my avatar a VS was and still is a pic of a pair of old sim men making out.

The whole time I was commenting in the F**king MTS2 thread I was waiting for my PM. :D

Either way it's all bullshit.

If the Maxis reference thing is true, I wonder if any of them will be as good as "No Account Nickel Monkey?" That title alone is half the reason I play fortune sims. The other half is "Penniless Peon."

I think the reason both you and Syberspunk get away with that easily is because anyone who tries to complain runs the risk of coming across as homophobic, which tends to get the complaint ignored.

Those are pretty good, but no, the titles are not a reference to any particular Maxian behavior. They're actually derived from a random comment on the now-defunct rentech.com boards.

In other news, it has now been brought to my attention that Rentech has been writing board posts in my name on rentech.com (http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=1820) now.

This post was not written by me. It is not officially or unofficially endorsed or approved by me, and does not represent the opinions of either myself or More Awesome Than You. Note that I'm still banned, although Rentech has taken to being much less subtle about it by force-setting my rep to 5 red. Amusing. And Rentech is now posting her own posts under my name, presumably to then complain that I've written something inappropriate.

No, J.M. was saying that he didn't post his post in the thread, as far as I understand it.

post deleted, cause i was completely and utterly up the creek when writing it.

(told ya I read it like the devil does the bible.. There were no juicy parts here...)

What?!?  Rennie's posting under your name?   No I think what she probably did was edit down the comments and just left your reply there.   She does delete comments in those threads to keep them as news or announcements only.  I think you did post that but it was not the first message in the thread before.

Surely if you don't want comments in a thread, it's possible to prevent them being made in the first place?

Well yes but it's a bizarre idea to think that she might be posting site ads to his site in her name.  She barely has time to post the stuff she's meant to let alone post for other people  ???

I think the whole situation is bizarre!  Whoever heard of two grown people fighting over something as trivial as an avatar!  (Alright, JMP, I hear you, it's not you that's fighting, you're just reacting or whatever!)

The post in question is a link to this site. This business grows tiresome. Move on.

At least it was pretty much benign, but I can imagine how frustrating it must be to see your name show up on something that someone else posted, even if it's trivial.  That would annoy the frijoles outta me.

The silliest part is that I don't see the point of listing your name as the author of the post.  I'm sure it must have seemed like a good idea to someone (presumably Rentech) at the time, but why bother?

It was written by Pescado.  I remember seeing that thread before the thread was moved, and at the time it was originally posted it was in reply to someone asking where Pescado was going.   He replied to it himself as he still had posting rights.

In recent days, Rennie must have split the message from the thread so that it could go in the site links forum, where it had a better chance of people finding it when they searched.   That would have given it a new datestamp.   It's just good housekeeping to put messages in the forum people would most expect to find them in.

At SimFreaks when we move a post, the original place it was put is still shown, mainly so the poster can see what's happened to their post and find it again.  In that case, the original posting date is still obvious!

In fact I just checked with Rentechd and she says he still had posting rights there and posted it himself on the date as displayed.

Honestly Pescado I do wish you'd stop playing with human beings and their feelings as if they were your Sims.   It's one thing messing about and playing a joke, but you're going too far now and Rennie is genuinely upset by the things you've been saying.   Please just leave it out now.

well i agree with inge, people have feelings pescado, honestly i wish is thing will stop!!!!
rewind to june 20, 2005, day before i left for london, the start of my 3 week trip to europe. i saw over at MTS2 that pescados hacks moved to you know what.net then i saw pescados name in a creators fourm, fast forward to july 20 2005 pescados name was missing at you know what.net then ff to now well yes.... ps o is a power in south africa

Well, it does seem a little hatchet burying and pipe-smoking is called for here!

I most certainly did not. The post-date is listed as "Yesterday, 8:18 AM". At which time I was busily playing with SimCity and barely posted *HERE*, let alone on rentech.com. Therefore, I have no idea who wrote that, but it wasn't me, since I most certainly have never started a thread in the site links section at all. As for this claim that I supposedly still have posting rights, that was hardly true at last check. I suppose I shall check again now, to see if Rentech has lied about this, which will register as an activity stamp.

Doing so.

Oh, cute. Not unsurprisingly, my password has been wiped out. Undoubtedly so Rentech could login as me and post that. More Rentechoid lies.

There is no "joke". If Rentech is claiming to be upset, this is lies and propaganda, because Rentech started this.

Helpfully note that Rentech has graffitied my board reputation. I care little about such things, but getting 4 red squares ain't something that happens naturally. Besides, it's not even really my login anymore, since the password has been changed.

I will consider the matter closed only when Rentech has agreed to resolve the matter. It is entirely in her hands, as this is hardly my doing.

Not in my part of South Africa it isn't... which leads me to ask: Huh?

well it says in a button on the bottom of the page, proudly south african

Oh god, having red quares is about as important as having rude rank titles!

Yes, yes. My point is that it is not naturally occurring, it's something Rentech did, probably in hopes it would cause me distress and consternation, or at least be entertaining in some way. It also happens to graphically symbolize my banned state, including the fact that I can't actually login at all anymore, let alone simply login and not be able to do anything including read the posts. Yep, very banned. No lies or joking here. If anyone's lying to you, it's Rentech.

Most of that is just the forum software behaving unpredictably.  Maybe people who are banned from posting do get their green squares stripped automatically.  And there's recently been a spate of people shut out accidentally, as some people in this thread found out.  You have to have eyes at the bottom of your feet to control these forum apps properly :0

You're both getting into a real state over this, you should both just enjoy the individually very good sites you each have now and let the whole thing go.  I've said much the same to her, that it's not worth getting wound up about.   There's just a whole load of misunderstandings and paranoia taking over and the whole thing is setting an appalling example to any easily influenced people reading it.

yea couldnt say it better myself inge

Doesn't seem very automatic or consistent: Rentech claims my posting privileges were revoked awhile ago. Now she's claiming I *DO* have posting privileges, and that I actually posted that post, which I didn't. Furthermore, the timestamp of "my" last login coincides fairly exactly with aforementioned last message. Except that I can't login, because my password has been reset as of the above attempt to verify previous statement.

Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that Rentech had to un-block me from using anything on the forums in order to post that as me, but as I no longer have access to the account anyway, this is kind of a moot point. Furthermore, I actually retained my green squares during the early ban, when I could still login, but not do anything.

And even assuming board-reps were, in fact, wiped out, that does not explain why mine and mine alone has been replaced entirely with red squares, presumably as many as are allowed to be displayed. This would appear to be the manual effort of Rentech. What is its purpose? I do not know.

There's a difference between being accidentally shut out, as previously reported and explained, and being specifically locked out in relatively standard ways, particularly as coincides with the systematic vandalization process observed.

That'd be fine by me, and *WAS* the *ORIGINAL* plan, until with no particularly good reason or explanation, Rentech suddenly banned me, and then has proceeded to lie and waffle about the entire matter. These aren't even consistent lies!

Misunderstandings? Maybe. But I doubt it. Paranoia? It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. Rentech's actions have made that much rather clear. *I* haven't actually done anything at all to Rentech other than call her on the lies and BS. It is simply not politically expedient at this time to take or authorize direct action against rentech.com.

what are you gonna do with that power companys site?

Do you have Prince Albert in a can?  Better let him out before he suffocates!!

I don't quite understand what Queen Victoria's husband has to do with this thread!

Oh Now! That IS funny!  ROFL!

It was the Hackers..... right?  :)

I would certainly have thought, if this was happening against her knowledge or wishes, she would have made some effort to contact JM personally to explain the situation.

That would certainly be the logical approach, assuming this were true, and not exactly a difficult one, as the #grah channel is still on the same server as the old #rentech channel, and Rentech could easily thus fire a PM off. But since this is not actually what is happening, Rentech obviously has no reason to do any such thing, as she clearly preferred me to be banned. Honestly, Rentech makes no sense. She complains about my abuse, so I ignore her, then she complains that I don't show any appreciation until I abuse her again, then she complains that I abuse her. She tells me to leave, and when I go and DO that, she becomes all pissy and upset about it. She then expects me to say how horrible she is when I leave, and when I fail to consistently denounce her horribleness, she decides to annoy me until I decide to do so. Then complains about it to Inge. It makes no sense.

Except it stirs up bad feeling between Inge and you!

Whoever is responsible for this is pissing me off, too.  >:(

I wouldn't really say THAT, Inge is always like this.

Well, don't at me, I'm banned from rentech.com.

personally, i want this to stop

Don't we all!  But you can always unsubscribe from this thread and pretend it has!

Excellent advice, Zephyr! It's like the TV, just change the channel.

Aha!  I see it!  It's the Pescado Code!  The Red Squares are a clue to the real answer to the whole riddle: "In Soviet Union, Forum uses YOU!"






Or, maybe not.  :)

Or even AB-uses!

Or again, maybe not!

Red Squares....Soviet Union...LOL.

This is just getting demented. In a few years, I'd be able to give definitive advice, because then I'll know whether the strategy of "unilateral disengagement" works. (I'm a middle-east watcher. I will never, ever understand exactly why they're fighting, but it's a useful excersize for a game master and writer.) However, that might be something to try: tell Rentech that if she can drop it or continue, whatever she wants, but that you don't really care. And then make an effort to be civil to her.

Mind you, that last bit is a good idea no matter what. It's a tried and true method of driving people crazy: being friendly and helpful nomatter what they do. It even works in high school, the world's greatest stage for pointless politics.

What strange people we meet on the internet.
I prefer friends you can actually kick in the balsl or club over the head when they wrong you ;) meaning real life.
Who needs whit if you have fists?

On the internet, on the other hand... I only know how to insult and point and laugh. It works, but I need more creativity.
Maybe I can learn something here :)

Yes.  You can learn how to more creatively insult, point and laugh. :D

Or you could take Odyssey's advice and be sooooooo polite and helpful!

Technically, I'm not DOING anything at all, seeing as I'm banned from Rentech.com and we're basically incommunicado.

Sorry, JM, I was actually replying to Noukie!  I fully appreciate that you are banned and cannot post at VS, and therefore cannot either insult Rentech or be unbearably polite!

Ow that is a very very mean trick, you evil people!

Thanks  ;D

At some point you have to ask yourself a few questions…

Is there anything I can do to resolve this issue? If yes, do it. If no - Does this have any significant impact on my life currently? If yes, Is there anything I can do to resolve this issue? If no - Is it worth expending any more energy on? If no, get over it, if yes, will it matter in a couple of years? (or months) If no, get over it. If yes, - Is there anything I can do to resolve this issue? If yes, do it. If no - Does this have any significant impact on my life currently? If yes, Is there anything I can do to resolve this issue? If no - Is it worth expending any more energy on? If no, get over it, if yes, will it matter in a couple of years? (or months) If yes….see a pattern? :-X

Nectere, you left out the most important question:

Am I enjoying this?  If yes - Go for it!

Gah, too true I forget that many people actually do enjoy engaging in passive aggressive behavior and unnecessary drama. And since the Sims don't engage our antics...Silly me!  ;)

Exactly Nectere! I won't even presume to know the whole situation but one thing I do know about personal conflicts, this will only be resolved if and when BOTH individuals agree to resolve it. They have to both be willing to at least say, "We don't get on very well at all but I'm committed to peacefully coexist since we're involved in the same hobby." People don't get along in many areas of life for numerous reasons. Part of being a grown up is behaving in an adult, cordial way to that person even if you don't like them personally very much. "Freezing them out" by refusing any sort of contact unless the person is downright continuously verbally abusive is pretty immature and will never resolve anything. And the people who willingly or not get stuck in the middle will likely feel frustrated and stressed attempting to push for a resolution. Inge, I really hope you won't be offended when I say you might be a lot happier just stepping away from the situation. If you're feeling like neither person will listen to you then your attempts at resolution will probably feel like an exercise in futility. Why take on a problem that isn't your's? You've told them how you feel about the situation, listened to their position, now it's time to "step away from the train wreck" (my mom's favorite saying) and let them work it out on their own. I hope you understand I mean this in the best possible way, I've had relatives & friends who get into similar conflicts and would talk to me instead of the other person. I would tear my hair out until I learned to say, "I can understand how you feel but we've talked about this before. There is nothing I can do about this problem except to tell you that you need to talk to X for it to be resolved." Bottom line, Pescado and Rentech have got to work this out themselves. That's just my .02 for what it's worth.

I'm not exactly inclined to subject anyone to the unpleasant task of being the messenger, but really, Rentech is the one with the issues. I haven't banned anyone, and I'm perfectly willing to go back to a cooperative relationship. Rentech, however, loathes me. Oh, well.

Quite.

And I'll say it again, what the hell does it matter? Pescado's in his heaven, all's right with the world...
Meh, politics are dull.

And this site is definitely the liveliest around at present!

I've never seen anyone I know who didn't laugh at "In Soviet Russia..."


And free of idiots, if I may add.  ;)

Despite our titles!

People love having someone far more AWESOME than them.  ;)

Piffle... despite the titles, I KNOW no-one is more awesome than me... heheheheh

Her name is RentechD and JM is being joyfully sarcastic about the site's name and current disposition.  Anyway, as I mentioned on the other thread here about this, all references to him have more or less been sanitized.  The only thing I could find that explained his sudden obscurity, was a single line in his own post giving the link to this site.  Those that have come after and the number of members is close to 9,000 now, probably have never heard of JMP, nor will they ever.

I think if you'd read the whole of this thread, you would have found the parts where JM emphatically denies having posted that link.

How many of those members are still actively posting?

Yep, thought I smelled the unmistakable odor of avoidance. It's a shame, like I'd mentioned in my response above this would be resolved if both parties were committed to peaceful coexistance. But note, it takes both to behave as adults and agree. JM could continue to be agreeable to work things out with Rentech until the end of time but as long as she continues with the 6th grade antics nothing will be resolved and things will remain at an impasse. It's a shame because she'd learn a valuable life lesson. You don't get along with eveyone you meet in life.

Cabelle, it's very true what you say.  I'd also add that, for most of us here at MATY, this issue had become dormant, since we mostly agree about it, and it takes someone new to the forum to stir things up again!  I wonder why?

That prediction seems just a tad bit extreme.  I'd guess you meant to say that folks won't hear about JM's work from Variousimmers; but Variousimmers is only one of 3,963 active sims sites on the net.  ( Ref: http://www.ultimatesims.com/stats.php )  But hey, if Rennie is paying the bills than it's up to her how her site should operate.

I'm surprised at the 9,000 number; not because it's so high but because it's so low.  If that's a count of the number of validated accounts that people have created, then the comparable number for SimsHost is 120,044 as of this moment.  (Now, don't anybody get greedy; only a microscopic fraction of those have ever helped pay the bills.)  Even some of the big Yahoo groups are showing more than 10,000 members these days.

"Those that have come after and the number of members is close to 9,000 now, probably have never heard of JMP, nor will they ever." (Bane)

------------------------------------------------

For your information, Bane, I am subscribed too at MTS2, Inge's, Variousimmers, SimHost, and "thousands" other fan sites. Since JM openned his own site, I visit them only once a week. So without me, the number of the members gets down to 8,999...:).
...And without 693 members subscribed here (for now), the number is reduced to 8,307...:).

And "probably never heared of JMP" is your *personal definition* only. JMP has a bunch of fans, who pass his name and records among all the sites they visit - I even wrote about him at Rentech forum, and my thread wasn't deleted; so, the 9000 members already *heared* about JMP...:).

Just look at the BBS, and see the demands of the members there for Night Life: they want first the approval of JMP, and the fixes of JMP - and only then they will buy or play the game.

I am sorry only for one thing: at Variousimmers suddenly I found all my favorite modders grouped in one place. Since JMP left, I have to jump to and from, but never will give up JMP...:) - he is the first, and I am sure he will be the last reliable modder (together with TJ, Carrigon, Inge, and Merola).

Very well said, Gali!

Anyway, this sit is fine small. Don't want it to get clogged up with useless posts. Cozier, too. In a "hmm, am I sitting on a flamethrower?" sort of way.

Well, those of us who post fairly frequently do get to know each other's little idiosyncrasies!

I, for one, am extremely happy that this site isn't crowded with people that are demanding and can't spell. Example:

I NEED HELP U HLP ME NOW OR U SUXXORZ!

grrr.

People like that, even if they are only thirteen years old, make me angry too!  In fact, being only thirteen should make them polite to adults, only these days it doesn't!  I would say they're probably the worst-mannered generataion since we came down from the trees!   (Of course, there are exceptions to every rule....)

I find spelling like that extremely rude. My command of the english language is not all too bad, but there are people out there who are not that good at it yet. I have difficulties reading things written in that kind of manner; imagine how much harder it is for people not yet well versed in english.

We are trying to accomodate english-speakers-only, but if we run up against people who don't believe in grammar, punctuation, and spelling, we are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

I have a 12-year old niece, and she only has been learning english for one year. My sister has to forbid her to access international forums, because a) she wouldn't understand, b) she would most likely misunderstand, and c) the danger of learning it wrong is far too great.
Pity, really.

It is a pity, and the greatest pity is that it's only the English speaking world which seems to have such disrespect for their own language!

You should see Italian boards, then...

Especially the Sims 2 official site - barely moderated, full of teenagers flaming each other (coarsely) in our brand of Internettese.

I dunno. I think that seeing those forums with the right supervision can be beneficial to learning English. Sorta like how on the Yummy channel, something always goes wrong: It teaches you what NOT to do.

Depends on the supervision, though!  Trouble is, there are so many "street corner" teens whose parents actually don't want them to be that way so don't let them out to hang around on street corners, so they use the Internet as a sort of substitute!

You know, this is sooo one of my pet hates. I even spell things properly on my mobile as I can't stand the goddamn 'speak' that passes for language these days. I'm such a pedant that misspelt words on signs make me want to bite chunks out of a wall, and apostrophes... well, if I see any more in the wrong place I won't be held responsible for my actions.

I know - I am happily 12 right now and the number of people my age and slightly older/younger that tlk lik dis  is amazing!

Some people have the nerve to critisize me for typing properly!

End of Rant. I hope you enjoyed it. ;D

Ah, the old misplaced apostrophe. It is the bane of my existence. The thing that gets me is that it isn't even one of the crazy rules of English. Plural? Yes? No apostrophe! Easy, right? It's bad enough when it's used on a sign that was handwritten for someone's garage sale. At the Palace Theater near my house, the sign on the custodian's door says "Janitor's Only". Doesn't someone check these things?

I think what confuses people is that the 's can be both possessive and a contraction of the word "is."

Confusing if you don't know, or bother to use, the rules!  Now, the French language also uses apostrophes, but do you see those in the wrong place?

What really annoys me too is reading a book, which one assumes has been proof-read, and finding spelling errors and grammar errors all over the place!  James Joyce may have intended them, but with most authors it's laxness or ignorance!  And since most books these days are written on PCs or word processors, the spelling errors are totally uncalled for!  Haven't these people ever heard of a Spell Checker?

And database, it's nice to meet someone of your age who cares about these things!

Maybe the janitor is a little possesive of his door? "Janitor's only! Not yours, too!"

I'm a spelling/grammar nut, myself.  I used to win spelling bees when I was in middle school, which did wonders for my popularity. :P Lately, though, and perhaps it's just my 35-year-old brain getting a little senile before it's time, I find myself going a tad nuts with the commas. All of a sudden, every few words sounds like they're comma-worthy. And, believe it or not (because I hardly can), I have caught myself typing "there" when I mean "they're". What is going on with my head??? I used to write good. Real, real good. The confusement of it all!

On the vs toopic (okay, new laptop, small keyboard. Left typo in to illustrate what I'm dealing with all the freaking time, now. Takes me forever to type a message.),... ahem. On the vs "topic", I always check to see who else is on the site when I'm over there. Remember the days when there would be about 2-3 lines of names? Jeez, it takes up half my screen, now! And it started with the MTS2 contest-thread-removal fiasco. When I saw the surge in "hlllep!!1" posts, I knew we were in trouble. I like this site being so small. And secretive. Shhhhhh!

Lends a certain air of exclusivity, doesn't it!

Sure does! I feel special.

I'm in medical transcription training, which involves a lot of proofreading, so misspellings and misplaced punctuation drives me nuts too :D But when I'm typing on the net I do have a tendency to not use capital letters. LOL

Well, there's a big difference between ephemeral stuff on the net and something that's going to go into print and people are going to be paying for.  I do feel that, whre people are shelling out there hard-earned cash they have as much right to expect the book they buy to be produced with care as they do the pizza!  (And the pizza seller can be in trouble if it isn't!)

It just makes it so hard to read and understand when it is misspelled, and the leetspeak is even worse than the netspeak. I sympathize with Brynne though, I also have the tendency to make long sentences. When I re-read them, I suddenly find all kinds of places that seem to scream out for a comma, so I tend to go a little over-board with them.

My daughter is a grammar and spelling enthusiast too, and that in two languages. I once showed her a post in netspeak (not from me) and I could've sworn I saw steam comming out of her ears.

JM, the supervision idea is not bad, but my sister is not all that well versed in english either. That would only result in two people scratching their heads :D. Dutch is more her speed; I can read it (barely) but I couldn't write it, or speak it.

Database, I agree with ZZ. It is actually a good thing to be able to write properly, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Funny you should say that about Dutch, V.  I once met a Dutch girl who spoke no English ( we were on a French course in Brittany, and speaking French all the time was a bit tiring for both of us) and we managed to understand each other -she spoke in Dutch and I spoke in German!  I could also understand my German friend's first husband, who was a Berliner, and her parents, who were from Bavaria, better than they could understand each other!

On the other hand, I have great difficulty understanding Geordies (from the Newcastle-on-Tyne area of England)!  I think sometimes it's easier to make allowances for vowel-shifts in a foreign language than it is in your own - it's the consonants you are listening for!

my mother's family is dutch, and even though I only speak english, listening to dutch I can often catch the general gist of what is being said...  I may be about to be shouted at here, but I've been told that dutch is kind of a stepping stone between german and english - enough similarities between dutch and the other languages to figure it out, even though german to english is much harder...

Ness

Did you intentionally capitalize LOL?  :D

I think the German that is spoken in the North near the border with Holland is very similar in sound to Dutch, it's the spelling which differs and makes the two languages appear more different than they actually are.  The majority of words are the same, it's just the slight differences in vowel sounds make them seem different.  Since I would have said that German vowel sounds have greater similarity with English ones than do Dutch vowels, I find it hard to understand the logic of the idea that Dutch is a "stepping-stone" to English. 

I completely understand you there! I'm a Scouser (from Liverpool, England), and moved up near Newcastle-upon-Tyne just under three years ago. I'm better at understanding Geordies now, but when I first moved up I had to ask my boyfriend to translate! I don't have much of an accent, something that I used to get bullied for in school.

I don't have too much trouble with Geordie any more (I'm a southerner who moved to the North East 15 years ago). I find the Scots accent the hardest to understand especially when they talk fast. 

After 15 years, I'm not surprised you no longer have problems with Geordie!  It's probably more familiar to you now than broad cockney!  But I'll bet you this, local people immediately recognise you for a southerner, but whn you visit friends or family down south, they laugh at your Geordie accent!

 I picked up what has been desribed by local friends as the worst Geordie accent they have ever heard. But when I go home the accent disappears in about a day and I return to the faint Wiltshire accent I used to have interspered with some Geordie expressions.

Edit. Yes my family do laugh and yes I get recognised as a southerner although no one is very good at guessing which part.

perhaps that was a slightly dodgy way of putting it...

my mother (dutch) always told me that dutch was similar to both english and german, but english and german are not really similar at all...   I can get the meaning of more dutch than I can german - despite the fact that my mother and her family have not spoken dutch since she was 6 and I spent two years at school learning german...  I knew it wouldn't make sense when I originally posted, and I'm still not sure that it makes a lot of sense now.

Ness

I think I follow you.  Now, since the original language of the Saxons was of Germanic origin, and the original language in Holland was also of Germanic origin (hence the English name for Hollandisch is Dutch, whereas the German name for German is Deutsch!) all three languages are very much bound up together, but obviously different influences came to bear on them and they changed, English probably the most, due to the influence of first the Scandinavian languages and then Norman French.  In a sense, English is the most advanced in that the original inflexions, cases, genders etc. have been largely lost due to the continuing evolution of the language (and possibly the linguistic laziness of it's speakers!), whereas both German and dutch represent a purer form of the language.

When one considers how many languages have gone to make up what is present-day English, it's strange how difficult most English children find learning a foreign language as closely akin to their own as French or German, yet Chinese or Japanese children, whose language could hardly be more different from ours, seem to learn to speak English well.  At a school where I used to teach, we had a couple of sisters from Hong Kong who arrived speaking no English at all.   the elder one was conversing with other children by the time she had spent 3 months in the school, the younger one, who was more reserved, hardly spoke at all for two years, then not only did she speak English nearly perfectly (apart from her accent, as some sounds she did find difficult) but did so well at learning German that she was awarded the German Prize!

Isn't it amazing how far we digress from the original thread!  Anothr English characteristic, digression......

Is that a characteristic of english people (from england), or just english speakers...   ;)

Ness

LOL to me is a short, burst of laughter.  lol is just a giggle ;)  what i mean is i usually type in all lower case, not capitalizing the beginning of sentences, or names, or i's. hehe

I generally intend to type them but often I hit the ctrl key instead of the shift!  Bugs me, though, so I usually go back and put it right if I spot it!

I was amused by your little discussion of what part of England you were from and accents, since I moved to the southeastern part of the US from the midwest.  Midwesterners are notorious for having little or no accent.  However, where I moved to, the Southern dialect is so strong I had a hard time getting an "ear" for the accent.  I can remember going to a Hardees drive-up window and having a hard time understanding what the person taking my order was saying. 

It took me months to catch on to what some of the people at work were saying.  And, not to be sterotyping or anything, some of the black people here have a terrible slur added to the accent.  I remember walking past a room at work where a meeting was going on, and heard a black woman talk and I couldn't understand a word she said!  And I had been here about three or four years and was not having any trouble understanding most people.

Those of us who moved here from the midwest have made an extra effort NOT to pick up the accent.  But there are expressions here which amuse us, like "next Tuesday week"  which means a week from next Tuesday.  Or "cut on" the lights.  Cut off, maybe, but how do you cut something on?

So I sympathize with anyone trying to learn American English.  Learn it correctly, first and foremost.  Unfortunately, too many Americans don't. 

One thing that's big in this area is "boiled peanuts".  Disgusting stuff, but I suppose if you grew up with it...  Anyway, I see signs at roadside stands advertising "boled" peanuts, or "bowled", "bold", you get the idea.  That's how they pronounce it, so they think that's how it's spelled.  "Oil" is "ole" (like old without the d, not o-lay!), four is foe.  And I actually saw a commercial on TV for a "Wharhouse Sale" (warehouse).  Pathetic.  We have a game at work of finding bad spellings or grammer and reporting them to each other.

Just my 2 cents worth.

My in-laws are Midwesterners and they have some speech "idiosyncracies". They pronounce Missouri Missour-uh, and an ice cream sundae is a sun-duh. They're from Illinois, just across from St Louis. Trust me, you have as much of an accent to those Southerners as they have to you.  ;)

Midwesterners do have an accent, you just don't hear it if you are from there. That is how accents work.

Oh, and where I am it's not so much 'bold' peanuts as 'boyld' (phonetically). You have to put the twang in. By the way, I agree. They are disgusting.


Reggikko - Did you have a problem with the previous post too?

well im form CA so yeah

Actually, we say, "next Tuesday week" here in the UK, so it wouldn't sound odd to us!  What I find interesting is that a lot of expressions in current use in parts of the US were current in 18thC english but have died out here.  One that comes to mind is "I have been here these three weeks", which I believe is still used in some US regions.   

The English you hear on TV is "midwestern" and is considered unaccented.  I have no idea how people in the midwest actually talk. :)  For those who think midwestern is an "accent," do network newscasters have such a thick accent you can't understand them? :D  At least they don't have to have subtitles like some of the people in the stories they report on.

There's nothing wrong with ElviraGoth's post.  My mother and I moved to Texas from Pennsylvania when I was 7 and I had all the same problems.  And I *never* wanted to pick up that "horrible" accent!  Yeah, yeah.... eventually I did.

I married a Texas girl.  I was in the US Army stationed in Germany at the time.  When she flew to join me, she knew she'd have language problems in Germany, but when she had a layover at the airport in New York, she couldn't understand a thing people there said. 

After being away from Texas for a couple of years, I lost most of the accent.  The only time I had the accent was when I was very tired.  It was really interesting because when I was tired I could *hear* myself talking with an accent.

We've both lost our Texas accents over the years from living in other places, even though we've been back in Texas for over 20 years.  It was amusing to play an audio tape my wife had sent me before we were married, and compare her thick drawl then with her current speech (that was about 5 years after she left Texas).

Hook

Mostly those that have no idea about possession or contraction, I think.

Interesting about the accents. I'm from the Midlands (UK) and have very little accent, according to the people I work/live with, but as someone pointed out, the minute you remove yourself from the local area someone will immediately point a finger and go "oooh, you're from Brum, aren't ya". Brummie accents are considered to be the most unattractive in the UK, even more so than Black Country (Dudley/Walsall, so called because of the industrialisation of the area, mining etc). I can, however do a very good West Country and Manc accent which confuses people.  :)

Well, Brummie may be considered unattractive, but at least most people can understand it!  And I've found that Brummies themselves are among the friendliest people in the UK, as goes for the Midlands generally.  Stand in a bus queue for an hour in London, and you're lucky if anyone talks to you, stand in one for five minutes in the Midlands and you can be chatting to a perfect stranger as if you've known them all your life!

First off, I'll admit I've been in a pissy mood lately.  :D

Secondly, as a Southerner, my hackles get raised sometimes when I feel like people are equating a southern accent with stupidity. I'm not saying that was Elvira's intent, but my pissyness took it that way. I guess it comes from years of Yankees coming down here and telling us what to do. We can be prideful and stubborn and sometimes we may lay the accent on even thicker just to flummox you. <wink>

I've never heard Tom Brokaw say "warsh" or drop the 'to be' as in 'do you need spanked?', but I've heard it from my midwestern in-laws. Anchorpeople learn to speak free of any accent, and in standard English.

Don't make me haf' ta sic my dawg on y'all.  ;)

Very good point, Zephyr. I just recently learned that Cajun French differs so much from standard French because the Cajuns still speak a 17th century version. It's natural, if you think about it, that the language would evolve differently. A lot of the unique expressions/dialects in southern Louisiana have their roots in archaic French.

Down here, if someone says 'next Tuesday', they mean next Tuesday week, not necessarily the literal next Tuesday. That would be this Tuesday. :)

I don't know what part of the south you guys are from, but where I'm from it's "bald peanuts". They're an acquired taste, and I have acquired.  ;)
I moved to Atlanta back in 1980 at age 10, with a heavy New Jersey accent. I don't really have much of an accent at all now, but if I do, it's more southern in flavor. Atlanta doesn't really have a thick accent, anyway, because for the most part it's a melting pot. My dad's family is "quite" southern, and my mom's family is all from Chicago. And I can say that, yes, midwesterners have an accent. I can spot it right away.
I feel your frustration, Reg, of people equating southern-ness with stupidity. Every area of the world has its own form of redneck. Why pick on ours? 

My sister once visited friends in Ohio, back in the 70's, and she found it full of rednecks!  My niece now lives in New York (Brooklyn) and loves it!  I think a lot of what you find in a place depends on what you expect to find!

This phenomenon works also with immigrants.

Years ago, when Italian-Americans returned to visit relatives, they discovered that they not only had learned their parents' dialect instead of the proper Italian they had thought - their dialect was also conservative, often difficult to understand at first.

LOL I was just going to mention this...my grandma and grandpa always used to say "warsh" ... warsh the clothes, warsh the car....hehe

Ah, I see my last post was taken quite differently from the way I intended it to be.

No, I do not think southerners are stupid.  I do not equate a southern accent with stupidity in any way, shape or form.  And I grew up saying "warsh", but have since dropped that.

All I meant was that I had a problem understanding people, because I hadn't developed the "ear" I needed to understand the twang.  It's just this area has a little different accent.  I have no problem understanding the southern dialect as a whole.  And I did not have any problem understanding 99% of the people from this area.  I felt stupid, myself, when I had to ask someone to repeat what they said because my brain was not processing what they were saying into comprehensible words. 

I guy I met here once told me that yankees live up north, but damn yankees move to the south and stay!

I actually love the south, and most of the people here are great.  But I should also say that's true of where I'm from.  You have bad apples and stupidity everywhere!  Us midwesterners are not making fun of the people here any more or less than we did the people back home.  I should have also said that in my previous post.  We make fun of the idiots no matter where they're from.

And, believe me, we were made fun of by the locals when we moved down here, mostly because we did have a hard time understanding some of the people here.

And btw, we also say "crick" instead of "creek".  That's one of the things we make fun of about ourselves.  We do also point out our own idiot-syncracies.  We believe that if you can't take it, don't dish it out!  We jab each other about misspellings, using the wrong word or verb tense, all of it.

But the midwestern accent, as hook stated, is what anchor people on the news try to speak, because it has the least difficulty in being understood by the public as a whole.  I'm not saying my speech is perfect, by any means!

Have never heard "do you need spanked?", must be a regional thing like "warsh" and "crick".

I do, however, think that everyone needs to learn the correct way to spell the word they intend to use.  That's how I was brought up.  If you don't know how to spell it, LOOK IT UP!  Imagine trying to look up a word in the dictionary when you don't know how to spell it.  Makes a lot of sense, huh?  I heard that all the time I was growing up.

I apologize to you southerners if I offended you.  That was not my intention.  If it makes you feel better, one of the things I hear around here a lot is that Iowa stands for Idiots Out Walking Around.  When that's where you're from, it's real hard not to take offense at hearing that over and over. 

So rip off my lips if you must!  I can take it.

That's exactly how my mother talked.  She was born and raised in Pennsylvania.  Maybe we need to redefine "midwest." :)

Hook

I love that Boston accent!  Boarston; Dr Digoroarlami;  that "oar" sound for the 'o's.  That's my favourite American accent :)   I fell in love with it during the Louise Woodward trial.

I've noticed that myself. I grew up in Maine...Downeast Maine, to be specific, and anyone who's heard about Bert & I knows what I mean.  Though, having a mother from Sheffield and a father who spent a lot of time in different places and countries, I never had much of a regional accent.

However, the minute I get really tired, I and my husband can immediately hear where I came from.

Actually, I love all accents.  Used to try my best to imitate them as a child.  In fact, in high school, I was in the play "Mouse on the Moon" and got to play the character Terry Thomas played in the movie.  (Except that I was Miss Spender instead of Mr.)  I got the part because I could do the British accent!

I have to correct something I said earlier.  We didn't say "warsh", we said "woish".  Yes "oy", like oil.  My mom and I talked about that awhile back, and laughed about how that was how everyone talked around there!  (She now lives in Missouri, which, where I'm from, ends in the "ee" sound, not "uh".)

And it's funny, but since I grew up in Iowa, I never considered Pennsylvania or Ohio to be part of the Midwest.  They were always part of the eastern US to us.

And, no, Iowa is not the same as Ohio.  I hear that a lot, too.  (Mostly from the military people around here.  They seem to think it's funny every time, like they're the first person who's ever said it.)

As for spelling, one thing I have noticed on this board is that a lot of people have trouble with "there" (that place), "their" (belonging to them) and "they're" (contraction for "they are".)  And we expect people from other countries to get it right?  This is confusing to a lot of people in our own country!  I'm not critisizing, just pointing out how hard it is for people who grew up here and were taught this in school from an early age to get it right.  I know a lot of people who have a hard time with these, as well as other homophones.

I think you'd find those people from other countries who learned English in school will probably understand the difference between there, their and they're as they will have been taught the underlying grammar and syntax.  People who will have problems will be those who are mainly self-taught, and as such do not deserve to be criticised as they have at least tried....so many people today expect the host country to bend over backwards to accommodate them, but make no effort in return!

I'm sorry, ZZ, but I never, EVER studied English at school, yet I would never do such a mistake.

Then you must have taught yourself well!  Congratulations for being someone who did make an effort!

Well, it's not that difficult, really. IF, and only IF, you learn English from books, the difference just stands out. This may sound paradoxical, but one can confuse those things much more easily if his/her knowledge of English stems mainly from conversation.

A textbook example for people learning English is three/tree/free - this will give you an idea of how deceptive spoken English can be...

EDIT: at least for an Italian, that is.

I think any language learned mainly from conversation would leave the speaker at a disadvantage when trying to write, since most languages have synonyms and homonyms to confuse you.  A lot of people learning from conversation, watching TV etc., don't even always really know where one word ends and another begins!

Generally it's true, yet English is very conservative in its written form. Comparatively Italian, while a grammar-heavy, difficult language, is easy to write for those who can speak it - and know how thigs are transliterated.

Pratical example: the English "e" can be an Italian "e" [bEtter] or vary, depending on, I guess, historical reasons [sEE]; our grammarians derermined, ad back as the Reinassance, that the written form has to follow the spoken form, so that an "e" is never ambiguous.

EDIT: there is an open "e" and a closed "e", phonetically, but the meaning is unchanged.

I think that the effort depends on the person.  If they really want to be a part of the country they have moved to, they make the effort to learn the language and customs.  If I moved to another country I would like to think I would make every effort to learn the language.  If I moved to France, for example, I would want to speak as much French as I could, even though it might be with an American accent.  In Britain, though the language is basically the same, I would hope I could remember to ask for the loo instead of the restroom, more to avoid confusion than anything!

And I have made the effort in this part of the country to "fit in"; however, keeping my Midwestern accent is mostly an effort to keep my roots.  I think if I started to pick up the accent I would be criticized (I can't believe I spelled that wrong before - I LOOKED IT UP!) as trying to be a "fake" or making fun of the people here.  I don't want to offend anyone, therefore I feel being true to my roots shows I respect the people who have lived here all their lives.  But there are just some expressions I can't pick up, mostly because they don't make sense to me.  I'm afraid that if I tried to use them, I would be laughed at because I used them incorrectly!

And rednecks?  I grew up on a farm in the middle of no-f'ing-where.  My brothers made the unfortunate mistake of trying to skin a skunk they had caught in a trap.  My mother grabbed a rifle to keep trespassers off our property.  I lived in the heart of Redneckville!  Doesn't mean I had to stay that way!  I was taught to always try to better yourself.  My parents are bigots because that was what they were taught.  I grew up in the 60's and decided that I wasn't going to be that way.  So I'm an EOI - Equal Opportunity Insulter!  I slam everyone!  lol!

Yes, I'd agree that any language which is written phonetically is easier to learn to write as there are basic rules to follow which, once learned, make things relatively simple.  Also, if you understand those rules, even if you don't understand a word of the language, you can read it aloud and make it sound as though you do understand what you are reading!  (At least to others who also don't know the language!)  The trouble with language teaching in the UK is that, in order to make learning a language accessible to every child, no matter how much they are already struggling with their own, we have stopped teaching the rules, and just teach convenient phrase, questions and answers, till it's more like training a  Pavlov's dog to salivate at the sound of a bell than it is like teaching any comprehension of the language!  One reason why I stopped teaching French and just taught basic subjects!

Oh my!

Then you know. I once read a monograph on Beckett, and he said he switched to French because it's more precise, more, so to speak, geometrical than English. Indeed, English is very flexible, and many things are suitable to be expressed in simpler terms - I mean, whenever I get lost with English constructions I just tone it down, and get a less elegant, yet similar result.

Latin languages, instead, are structured so that often concepts have to be expressed in a single way, lest sense changes. Convenient phrases may get you through Paris, Madrid or Rome, but, if I understood you well, there's no chance you'll read a novel with them.

It's the same here in the states.  When I was little, my sister, who is 2 years older than I am, was in the last class at our school to be taught phonetics.  Her class was allowed to keep the phonetics books, and I remember at 4 years old (before there was preschool) she and I would play "school" and she taught me phonetics.  It gave me a head start on my classmates, most of whom couldn't even read yet.

I think my kids had some phonetics in the lower grades at school, as it seems I remember it was decided to bring it back.  But I also remember that they had to learn anywhere from 25 to 100 spelling words a week in second grade.  Not the meanings, just the words.  And if they spelled a word wrong on the test, there was no retesting, they just went on to the next week learning the next batch of words to spell.  At 7 years old, they were spelling words I learned in Junior High (13 years old)!  But we also had to learn the meaning of the words back then.

Somewhere between the two there's a middle ground which would work!  Someone just has to find it!

I guess finding the correct way to educate the youth in any country is as much a learning process as a teaching one!

I think it's more a matter of profit!  There's no profit in schools using last year's text books!

I recall me and my buddy in England...

He came to me and explained a most formal way to ask for things, "Do you think you could please..."

Then he want into a bookstore (Waterstones) and put it in use. He told me, the clerk almost panicked faced with such a thing and retrieved the book he wanted in a frenzy of activity.

I guess it's some kind of rare phrasing, the sort of things you get with proper school training. My friend has always learned English in school.

That's funny, because I was brought up to politely ask for things in a similar manner!


That probably has more truth to it than we'd all like to think, ZZ.  Unfortunately, the "no child left behind" thing has caused some teachers in this area to give their students the answers to the SAT tests so they get more federal funds from having more students in the high test score range.  A shame that those few would rather take the easy road than teach the skills those kids would have benefited from more than the false test score.

Then he WAS right!

But our English teachers - in Eastbourme, if you want to know - also told us things like, the verb "may" is becoming old fashioned. [But, I'm sticking to it. I have the "there's no two things" mentality.]

Since the difference in sense between "may" and "can" is quite distinct, the teacher concerned seems to need educating!  I always remember when I was teaching, if a child put up their hand and asked  "Please Miss, can I go to the toilet"  I would reply, "Oh, yes, I should think so!"  Then when they got up to leave the room,  I'd ask, "And just where do you think you're going?"

I won't finish the conversation, as I'm sure you can all work out the ending!

Zephyr,

I'll keep it in mind forever. And ready for any teacher I should meet!  ;)

I seem to remember a similar circumstance in school when I was young...a good example of the difference between "can" and "may"!

So we need both words, right?  If the word "may" is becoming obsolete, I'd suggest it was due to laziness and bad teaching!  There are occasions when the distinction could be important , especially when attempting to translate into a foreign language which still distinguishes between the two.

Very, very true.

And now, as another buffoon said before I was born:

Good night, sweet ladies... good night sweet ladies... good night sweet ladies...

I have to agree with you.  Unfortunately, I hear more people using "can I..." than "may I.." as the years go by.  It may be that those who didn't want to learn the correct usage 40 years ago have continued to use "can" to the point that their children have grown up with it, passed it along to their children, etc.

Can you imagine using "it can be" instead in that last sentence?  Wouldn't make sense, would it?

No, it wouldn't!  And how about "May you swim?" instead of "Can you swim?"  I mean, the first implies that one is asking if something is permitted, the second is simply asking about someone's ability!  Two totally different concepts!

I was akways told at school, in the similar confusion between shall and will, to remember these two sentences:

"I shall drown and nobody will save me!" 

"I will drown and nobody shall save me!"

I have to admit I have always been confused by those two, myself.  And "shall" is not used much here.  So..which one is correct?
 ???

Both are correct, just have different meanings.

The first is a prediction - I am going to drown, and there is nobody to save me!

The second is and intention - I am going to drown, and I will not let anyone save me!

Well, I looked up "shall" in my dictionary, this edition is from 1998.

It says, "Its function is to indicate, now chiefly in formal discourse."  Past tense is "should".  One of the definitions is "Inevitability", one is "Command".

So the first one is: it is inevitable (beyond my control) that I am going to drown, and no one is willing to save me.
The second one: I am going to drown, and it is my command that no one save me.

Does that sound like I understood what you just said?

Edit: And I also must say good night.  Will check back tomorrow!

ZZ I thought that it was just me showing my age!  I've been obsessed with teaching 'Mother May I?' as in 'Please may I?' to kiddies asking 'Can I...?'

Please don't let me get started on the 'I need' generation that's emerged this millenium:  You will find that children cannot distinguish between 'I need' and 'Please may I have?'.  They mean totally different things to me, but not to them.  With me, their need continues until the brain kicks in and a polite request rather than a blunt statement is made.  

I actually asked a class of mine to try out 'Please may I?' on their relatives for homework, and quite a few of them came back the next day and said that they'd earned rewards for being polite.  Only goes to show how language and expectations change over time.

Heh, well, in my line of work, things get even shorter. To express a need, one simply indicates the lack of the needed object: For example, "NO BULLETS!". This can be further abbreviated to simply "BULLETS!" if it is apparent that you don't have any.

Do "we"? I've never heard that before in my life! "Next Tuesday" - the next time a Tuesday occurs. "Tuesday week" - the second Tuesday that is to occur. "Next Tuesday week" - wtf? The next time a second Tuesday occurs?! On a related note, a strange thing in English is the word "bimonthly". It means both twice a month and every 2 months. If you're thinking about having a bimonthly meeting, do make sure the rest of your committee has agreed on what this means, as one meaning is 4 times more frequent than the other :).

Things that bother me immensely when spelled incorrectly: "Their", "They're" and "There"; "To", "Too" and "Two"; "Its" and "It's". I was taught the difference between these constructions at the age of 6 or 7 in primary school, and then had this reinforced throughout my learning of English. Clearly I am old ::). The only one I can make an exception for is possessive its, because apostrophes are used to show possession in the rest of English (the genitive case), so it's rather strange that possessive its doesn't have one. I remember it because there's a usenet newsgroup called alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe - I used to post there, back when I did usenet.

Still, you have to add the intonation of the Command, or Question...:). It make things longer...:).

Just so you know, I didn't take offense at your post. I was just making a generalization based on what reggiko said. No worries!

By George she's got it!


Just goes to show we all learn different aspects of English!   To me, next Tuesday week and next Tuesday week mean the same, but I hear both, and probably use both.



You don't write hi's or her's so why would you write it's?  The genetive is a case, not a contraction.

Why, thank you kind sir...  :)

With regard to spoken English, the thing that bugs the hell out of me most is the over use of the word "what" as in "like what she did the other day..." Grrr. The combination of those two small words "like what" make my teeth grind together.

Hate to disillusion you, but I'm actually female!

I do agree about "like what"!  what on earth is wrong with "as"?  My sister once had a boyfriend (he didn't last long) and every second word was "like"!  As in,

"Like I said, like, I was like goin' like dahn the road like and like I saw......."  get the drift?

Heh... sorry, but is also my way of saying ta to either gender.  :P

How about when "right" is interjected at every opportunity within a sentence and has the effect of making the listener feel patronised? "If you take this turn, right, you'll come to some lights, right, then take a left, right..." and on and on ad nauseum.

I am not sure it is entirely trouble with understanding the differences as much as trying to type as fast as your thought process.  Sometimes it seems the opposite is more true, your fingers get ahead of your thoughts.  However, I feel that the spirit of the content is understood and so I don't get upset at others' grammatical blunders as much as I do my own.  It doesn't matter how many times I read through my reply before I hit the post button.  I will always see something like new/knew or to/too/two, but more often than not I am most likely to leave out entire words.

I have typed "there", meaning "their", etc, and it's just like you said, Bane~Child. My fingers are just doing there  ;) own thing. I have also typed completely random words at times. Don't know what that's about pizza.

Oh, I frequently type the wrong there/their/they're!  As you say, your fingers type faster than your thoughts are processed, and of course, spell-checkers are useless for this type of error!  At least we know when we've got the wrong one - a spell-checker doesn't!

lol!  I guess my typing is so pathetic that I tend to edit every word as I type it!

Got another example of difficulty with the English language... saw a post where someone had used the word 'wound'.  I read it as in "I wound the clock" when the context should have been "JM shot me and I had a bullet wound".  ;)

Then I have to back up in the sentence so it makes sense when I read the word with the correct pronunciation in my head.

Sound-alikes are bad enough, but a single word that is pronounced more than one way to get different meanings is probably worse.

My husband thinks it's funny when I mis-read "misled" as "mizzled".

Well, if I thought you were a poor reader I wouldn't, but since I don't think so, ROFL!

You wait; every time you see that word from now on you'll think of how mizzled I am.

 ;D

I'm with ZZ. I like the word, heck, I might even use it :D

It actually exists as a slang word, with various meanings! 

It's da shizzle!

shizzle shmizzle!

Uncle, Uncle...
Can't you gals at least wait until I pick myself off the floor. :D

Uncle Shmizzle?

She has no mercy :D

Moi?

Crying uncle to me or ZZ? Because I truly have no mercy. Mwahahahahahaha.

Hmmm... simply "BULLETS" might be miscontrued as "INCOMING!"  Try "NEED AMMO!" instead.

Oh, I think incoming bullets might be abbreviated to "DUCK!!!!!!!"

And, whilst we are peeving, (according to Strunk & White, but not according to mind-bogglingly illiterate New York Times Manual of Style), you should always use the apostrophe when forming the plural of numerals, letters, initializations, and capitalized acroynms.

Wrong: 747s; As, Bs, and Cs
Right: 747's A's, B's, and C's; or even a's, b's, and c's.

So mind your p's and q's and apostrophes, too!

That explains a lot of wrongly-used apostrophes, then!

Ouch!  Ouch!  Ouch!  You just hit my biggest peeve with illiteracy in The Sims 2.  I can almost forgive Maxis for abuse of words like "mooch" and "parquet" and even "lobster thermidor," chalking it up to leading sheltered lives surrounded by bits and bytes; but their abuse of the word "gender" is beyond the pale.

People have sex; words have gender.

Your "gender preference" would refer to whether you like to use, or be addressed by, the masculine or feminine forms of pronouns.  

You "sexual preference" would indicate whether you like romantic interactions with males or females.

So you would say "...also my way of saying ta to either sex."  That is, of course, unless you talk to words; in which case we have more serious problems to deal with than Maxian illiteracy.

Yup!  I thought of "747's" because there was a time long ago when the editor of the Boeing News was in a tizzy because we were working on a derivative called the 747S, and she didn't know how to make a plural of it.  She showed me a copy of the accursed New York Times Manual of Style.

Suppressing my mirth as best I could, I gritted my teeth and gave her a copy of Strunk & White.

It didn't help.  You can lead a horse to water, but it really helps if you're talking to the right end of the horse!

So how did you make a plural of 747S?  747Ss?

747S's.

Sorry, but you don't use an apostrophe for plurals!

See my note dated today at 05:36:18 PM.

Sorry, but I disagree with your interpretation!  An apostrophe shows either possession or missing letters.  In the word books, for example, meaning more than one book, this indicates neither possession or a missing letter.

My first major was Journalism, and the text book for one class was Strunk & White. I'd already read it in high school. For pleasure! I'm a dork.

I remember that I was taught in my English lessons that you put the apostrophe for single before the s - 747's seats (for instance), and for plural - after the s:  747s' seats.
Parent's favorite food (single) - my mom or dad
Parents' favorite food (plural) - my both parents

Was I taught right?

That seems correct to me!

I was an avid reader as a child, and so I learned a lot of words but not the pronunciation of them.  So I was at grade school, and we were going to the gym for some kind of awards ceremony, and we were told to each take our chairs with us.  My teacher told some of us to leave a space between the chairs, and noticing the pattern with the other chairs in front of us, I asked my teacher, "Oh, is this going to be the Aye-zul?"  She cracked up laughing and I couldn't understand why until she told me that aisle was pronounced "I-uhl".  I was so embarrassed!

I had a similar problem, I was reading books like Lorna Doone and The Mill on the Floss by the time I was 9, and obviously came across hundreds of words I'd never heard used (too many to remember even one example)!  In most languages a child of that age would know enough phonetics to pronounce the word correctly, but quite often an English speaking child will use their phonetic knowledge correctly, but if the word is not pronounced phonetically, it doesn't help!  However, the very same word that you can't pronounce, you often work out the meaning for, as you obviously did with "aisle"!

I was most put out when my mother tactfully corrected my prononciation of "bargain".  I had been thinking it was "barjain" and it used to put my teeth on edge using the hard g in that word.  I was only about 8 or 9

Sounds like you used to like reading labels and adverts, things like that!

Well it keeps me quiet - look, I only lost one pair of lips up till now :)

Well,I've lost three!  JM must have a freezer full by now!  Hope the FBI doesn't get wind of it!!!!!

My mom is fond of the word "discombobulate" (I didn't check to see if the spelling is correct there, but phonetically, that's how it sounds), only she thought it was discomBOOBulate. She passed that on to me, and I got laughed at by my friends in college for a.)using an unnecessarily big word and b.) pronouncing it wrong.

Was this in the heading of the article?  I think with a word this awkward, the author/jounalist should have used an alternative like the 747S prototype or model, or something of this nature.

My eldest daughter has a degree in Journalism and they were not taught using the NY Times style, I think they used the AP style.  I remember she too cringed at mention of the accursed NYT style.   In the AP style, they don't allow the use of dashes in between words like, well-to-do.  Does this make it a phrase then and not a word?  They only use them to separate syllables at the end of a line or with a number sequence, as in the strictest sense of a dash.  This naturally causes conflicts on a professional level, as the older guys, usually the editors, have a difference of opinion based on their old school methods.  Even if this is warranted in professional copy, personally I prefer the use of dashes when grouping words into familiar phrases.

Then there is the comma.  When I was learning grammar it was used to separate independent thoughts, natural pauses in a sentence or where you wanted a pause to appear for emphasis within a sentence.  It was used before and after dates, proper names and place names.  Now this all seems wrong, too.  In this method you can end up with easily, 5 or 6 commas in just a short sentence.  When I write this way, without the extra commas, some how it just feels wrong and it can lead to an entirely different interpretation. 

I don't think someone yelling "Bullets" would be misconstrued like this unless they were non-military personnel.  Ninnies would likely yell this during an attack because of their relative inexperience with being under fire and not knowing from which side the 'hurty' things were coming.  Yelling "Bullets" to another soldier in the field would be entirely appropriate as meaning, "Someone pass me some, like right now!".  Yelling "Ammo" would be interpreted as meaning "Now is everyone well-equipped with Ammo?...If not you will Need Ammo out there."

 

Hmmm, interesting, but I was taught that "gender" is preferred when speaking to people as their sex is merely a biological issue. Perhaps my head is too full of political correctness and I need a slap to get rid of the shite?

Anyway, a friend has just had her book rejected by an American publisher, and one of the reasons they gave (feedback very unusual has to be said) was that she needs to use American punctuation. What? Could someone enlighten me as to what the difference is between American and British punctuation as obviously we are divided by more than a stretch of water.  ???

I read on a British-American dictionary website that the British do not put a period after titles such as Mr. and Mrs. as Americans do.  I was reading a book that was British once, and I thought it was a misprint because there were no periods after those titles.  Perhaps there are other things as well.

Sortakinda. Gender is a cultural construction of social rules of how one should act based on one's sex; it definitely does apply to people, even though it is not fixed and the expectations change from culture to culture. There are many people now who have chosen a gender that does not match the biological sex, and those who have rejected it outright. </anthropology lesson> :)

We do place a full stop after titles as they are a contraction, so still not clear what's going on there. Enlightenment is really needed, please.

Thanks, Renatus, for lesson in Anthropology (which I will be pleased to listen to at any time, by the by), as it does kinda make why I was taught "gender" as opposed to "sex" clear/er... Thank all that's good I don't need to write an essay on it again.  ::)

I think in modern business English, it's now normal practice to miss out the full stop, also the commas at the end of lines of an address, and this is what is now taught in school.  However, since we don't have the equivalent of the Academie Francaise which can change grammar and spelling rules and has the full backing of the French government, these changes are always arbitrary and very much a matter of personal taste.

I would think therefore that it is gender that should be considered in social speech, not sex.  If someone with a biological sex of male considers themselves to be of female gender, then it would be appropriate to refer to them as "she" - so that's gender, not sex.

According to Dr. Bruce Kind, a biopsychologist, the concept of gender was adopted to distinguish culturally specific characteristics associated with masculinity and femininity from biological features, and thus was used to repudiate biological determinism. Meaning, that gender is not a natural category, but instead is the social construction of femininity and masculinity (King, 2002).

Gender  = from latin genus and the Old French gendre, meaning "kind" or "sort".

There is no direct relationship between sex and gender. There are individuals with ambiguous genitalia, and there are individuals with unambiguous genitalia but whose gender identity dos not match their anatomy. 

Consider: A person goes to a gynecologist because of health concerns. The doctor discovers that this person - whose outward appearance (including no penis) and sense of self are both female- has no uterus or ovaries, but instead has male (XY) chromosomes. Is this person male or female?

Apparently it's a legal requirement to assign a sex to a baby soon after birth.  It can be *changed* but cannot be blank.   I was reading a few sites about ambiguous birth sex babies and there were so many werid combinations of chromosome and genitalia etc etc that often it just comes down to throwing a dice.  Having made the decision, they are then forced to grow up with it unless a big fuss is gone through later to get it changed.

And apparently many of us so-called "normal" men and women are going through life never knowing that we have chromosomes different to our apparent sex!   Influences in the womb can set about the entire sex differentiation process in a direction other than that suggested by the chromosomes!   That was really new to me.

Yes, and that is, in my opinion, just not right.

The dichotomy in biological determinism identifies people by their genitals. However, there are cases in which the birth assignment went haywire (by western standards of dichotomy). For example, in the Dominican Republic in 1974, they found 38 boys who displayed a type of androgen insensitivity. The chromosome combination was male (XY), and the internal structure was also male. Because of the inherited syndrome deficiency, the testosterone was not converted into dihydrotestosterone (necessary for the proper function of the external genitalia). Their genitalia looked like the female genitalia, the testicles did not descend, and they had a short, closed vaginal cavity.

Eighteen of these children were raised as girls, but at puberty everything changed. Suddenly the organs started secreting large amounts of testosterone, the voices deepened, muscles developed, and the testicles descended. What was thought of as being the female genitalia (labia), suddenly grew into the male genitalia (penis). Sperm production began. Luckily for those children, their culture recognises all three sexes; in the western culture they would have been freaks, or worse, their parents might have tried to "set things right" by sexual re-assignment at birth; surgery in the name of cultural bias.

During the first few weeks of pregnancy, embryos can't even be distinguished anatomically as 'male' or 'female'. During the 5th and 6th week, the embryo develops two duct systems, the male and the female ones. If both were removed at this stage, the sex would always default to female, even with the XY combination. Unless there are high levels of the male hormones at a critical stage of fetal development, nature has programmed everyone for female development.

There is some excellent literature out about all this. The APA (American Psychological Association) web-site has some great articles about this as well

It would be interesting to know how many people now undergoing surgery to "change sex" were originally assigned the wrong sex when they were born, due to this need of the parents to have either a boy or a girl, and the state's inability to recognise that some babies do not fall naturally into either category, but will sometimes do so at puberty?  All the difficulties such people incur during their lives, from pure discrimination to legal absurdities, could be prevented if the law was not"such an ass".

Bravo ZZ, well put.

It is frightening that the medical profession still thinks of these 'assignment proceedures' as corrective surgery, implying that there is an abnormality. I should also be pointed out that when transsexuals change (correct) their condition, they change their body, not their gender. The medical profession and society at large defends those surgical proceedures by stating that they only want to make the individual more comfortable. The only question I would like to ask is "who made them uncomfortable in the first place?"

Thank goodness there are organizations now that will help intersexed and transsexual individuals accept themselves, such as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association and the Intersexual Society of North America.

I am among friends.  ;D

I'd also like to add that the natural progression of this thread has been most enjoyable. Very non-linear. Glad to see that allowed to happen.

We seem to do that a lot here!

It's true, but someone needs to get back on the bandwagon again!

How about the censorship of sex in the Sims as being corny, and that young people are less likely to engage in sexual activity if they are well informed? C'mon, surely someone'll bite...?

I think there is too much focus on how to stop young people having babies and not enough on how to enable them to have babies while they are young and healthy and their DNA telomeres have not started breaking down, and how to actually enable them to continue to enjoy their youth  after having given birth.   Ie too much nuclear family going on nowadays.   A baby should be a child of society, not just the responsibility of the mum (and/or dad if he's around).

Next time you see a baby whose mother is dependant on state benefit think:
1) where is the rest of that baby's family?
2) this is a small price to pay for the kid who might become the doctor who saves my life.

There are more problems with teenage pregnancies than you might think.  Late teens, early twenties, are probably the best time, and more should be done, I think, to enable young mothers to cope with babies and college, i.e. creches and pre-school should be available on campus and free.  Student accommodation should include mother and baby flatlets where the young mums would have the support of each other instead of being stuck somewhere in a lonely bedsit.

However, in my opinion, the best support most young mums could have would be from the child's own father, and not enough is done to educate young males in their responsibilities.  Children are generally happiest when raised by two loving parents (I mean that both parents love the child, even if they no longer love each other) who put the child's needs very high on their list of priorities - and I mean the child's needs, not their own!  All too often children become the parents' battleground, which is a sign of immature parents who should have grown up before having kids!

And, at the end of the day, it's really down to that - the maturity of the parents!  Some youngsters are mature and sensible at 15, others reach 45 and still haven't grown up!

Well it shouldn't depend on the maturity of the biological parents.  That only becomes an issue in an isolated nuclear family (mother, father, baby for those who aren't familiar with the term "nuclear family")   With a decent extended family, the tiny children can inherit the vigorous genes of their young parents, the energy of the young parents to play with them, yet benefit from the maturity of the elders for discipline and financial stability.

Let's face it, our society has become so complex and demanding that people are often well into their late 30s before they have got themselves sorted out well enough to feel they can be good parents.   That's sadly often too late for a healthy and successful procreation.   Instead we could have 30-something *grandparents* doing the child-rearing of their grandchildren.  The same workload would befall the same people at the same age, but the gene pool would be healthier.

30-something grandparents? That's a little insane! I'm kind of confused as to how this would make the gene pool healthier. I know that a woman's ability to conceive a healthy fetus goes down after she reaches a certain point in her 30s, but I don't see how this would make the healthy fetuses better. I certainly can't see recommending teenagers having children, regardless of who raises them, as they aren't even physically fully grown and a pregnancy can have a negative impact on a teenaged girl's health.

And the mental issues... oi.

Well I think the "mental issues" associated with teens getting pregnant are *caused* by society's attitude towards it.   Now I am NOT condoning paedophilia, sex with girls or boys who are not physically mature is not healthy or natural.

Let's make it clear I am talking about fully developed young ladies who are old enough to know they want sex and like the idea of a baby.   And this puts them from about 15/16 upwards.  16 is the legal age of consent in this country, and if any girl of that age feels she is ready to begin having children, then society should get behind her and enable her to do so in comfort and happiness.

I disagree. Society is not responsible for making somebody comfortable in spite of their poorly thought out decisions. It is highly unlikely that somebody of that age is financially stable and can afford such a thing, and it is not society's responsibility to provide for such foolishness. They rightly DESERVE to be ostracized and left to die on the streets, an exercise in Darwinism at work.

*g* JM the misanthrope to the rescue once again.

15/16 is not a fully developed young lady. It is a young lady who is still growing and whose hormones are still stabilising. I can't imagine myself or any of the girls I knew at that age having a child; I still had another growth spurt to go through, and a lot of my friends had menstruation issues that could have just been their bodies sorting things out... or could have been signs that their reproductive organs were NOT suited for bearing children without seriously harming or killing them and the fetus. It's difficult to tell, in many cases, until a female reaches her mid-twenties.

And yeah, society's attitude towards things doesn't help matters, but I don't see it changing any time soon, especially with childhood seemingly being prolonged the longer life expectancy is. Again, myself and most of the girls I knew were still playing with dolls at 15 years old. Society's beliefs changing would also have to go against some extremely deep-seated prejudices and lack of infrastructure. In the US, any 15/16 year old girl thinking that it is a good idea to have a baby right then is setting herself up for a hell of a lot of trouble unless she is independantly wealthy or her parents will cheerfully fund everything and provide childcare whenever needed.

With the world being as complex as it is and difficult to figure out, how is it really smarter for someone young enough that they are very unlikely to have figured out what they want and how to get it to make the decision to bring yet another life into existance? It's a nice dream to think that girls should be able to have and realistically (knowing every single damned thing involved in the process of having and raising a child) making the decision to have a child, but the way things stand it would do far more harm than good. I'd much rather teen girls now be encouraged from not having babies until they know they can support them, even if this leads to some cases of less-than-perfect DNA. It's not going to bring the human race crashing down, not with nearly 7 billion of us in the gene pool.

No, it'll take a giant meteor and the ensuing ice age to do that.

I totally agree with what you are saying, Renatus!  And as I said before, a child needs two parents  - not grandparents, aexcet in unts and uncles as substitutes, but the actual biological father!  You only have to know the agonies that some adopted children go through because, although they can often track down their mother, their father is often impossible to find, and if found, will have nothing to do with them!  That just goes to show that the father had no right to bring a child into the world in the first place, and maybe with better sex and moral education while a teenager, he would not have done it!  As I said, it takes two to make a baby, and it should take the same two people to raise it!  The child is their responsibility, not the grandparents' and not society's, except in those cases where things have obviously gone wrong, and then it should be for the sake of the blameless child, not the irresponsible parents!

Well I really don't give two hoots in hell what society thinks about it but I'll tell you that if my 15/16 yr old daughter or son came home and announced she/he is "fully developed", "wants to have sex"and "likes" the idea of having children, the last thing I would do is make sure she or he could do so "in comfort and happiness". The idea that since I'm in my 30s  I should be ready to *grandparent* and  help with a teenager "child-rearing" her children, is more then laughable! I work for a living, like most people in their 30s do. As does my mother, who is in her early 60s and certainly didn't and still doesn't, have time to help with "child-rearing"; she already raised her children! Does she love and see her grandchildren? Of course she does! Do I expect that because I made a decision to have children she should have a hand in raising them or financially taking care of them? Of course I don't! A teenager might "like" the idea of a baby but I don't get a puppy everytime my daughter "likes" the idea of one of those either.

Most teenagers "like" the idea of babies - they're cuddly and apparently all they need is feeding, bathing and nappy-changing and a cot to sleep in!  They are too young to realise the implications of babies growing into toddlers, then children who need help with schoolwork etc. - all this while young mum wants to go out and party with her friends!  Babies are embryo children/teenagers/adults, and teenagers are really not ready to take on that kind of responsibility - they aren't even old enough to be responsible for themselves, let alone another human being!

You've been conditioned to thinking a home means Mummy, Daddy and Baby.  In that case, no, a 16 year old cannot make a home for a child and support it financially unless they are an exceptional 16 year old.   But if you'll pardon the pun, this is pretty much throwing the baby out with the bathwater :)

What exactly is wrong with playing with dolls after having a baby?  Has anyone here managed to fool themselves into thinking they're *not* playing with dolls when they load up The Sims?

The basis of your argument, Inge, was that teenagers have better genes than older women.  However, the very teenage girls who tend to have babies very young tend to be from backgrounds which are unstable, and threfore cannot provide the necessary support, and often those girls have inherited low intelligence etc., which is hardly what you are recommending passing on.

If, and only if, the human race was on the verge of extinction, could I see any argument, however unethical, which could justify turning young girls into milch cows as a matter of public policy!

:o
I've been reading this thread with my mouth hanging open.

I think you are being niave if you think teenagers are actually ready to be parents. They may think so, but most do not understand what parenthood really entails.
I have known teenage parents (and yes I realize they would not fit your scenario because they are from a society that did not encourage this), and have yet to see it turn out well. My (28 yr old) friend is still struggling to put her life with her (12 yr old) daughter  in order. She loves her daughter, but feels that both of them would have been better off if she had been older when she got pregnant.
I was 21 when my first child was born. I feel that I was too young. I was not emotionally or financially prepared for the reality of being a mother (and I was married). It is 10 years later. I am the mother of three. I love my kids. I had them too young.
I think encouraging teenagers to have children (not that they really need encouragement) would be irresponsible and lead to disastrous results. Sure, having children while younger Can be healthier, but mid-twenties is quite young enough. Teenagers often have more complications during childbirth than adults in their early to mid twenties.

This is getting frustrating because some people are not bothering to read *all* of what I am saying.  You're seeing "teenagers should not be discouraged from having babies" and stopping reading at that point.   I already said I agree that most teenagers would be unable to raise a kid and run a home in the way parents are expected to in western society in 2005.   I agree with you there - have you read this now?

I am saying that I don't agree that the person who runs the home and makes decisions for the child should necessarily be only the biological or legal parents.   I am saying that yes, the parents should be around while the child is growing up, but no they don't need to be the people paying the bills, doing the cooking, driving the child to football club, or having the final say on house rules.   The people doing those things could be older family members who share the house.   Lots of cultures do it that way.   If the eldest woman continues to set the rules, then it doesn't matter if a teenager has a baby she was too mentally immature to parent - she will be taught how to do it and someone will be there to step in if she isn't getting it right, or if she deserves a night out clubbing.

I'm. sorry, Inge, but I too have my mouth hanging open!  First, this older woman (why a woman, I ask!) who is going to take responsibility for the child - what if the older woman already has a life, feels she's already done her share of raising kids, etc.  Are you going to legislate to FORCE her to do it?  come on, move into the 21st century - I'm a lot older than I think you are, and I've managed to do it!  Stop living somewhere in the dark ages when all women were considered good for was having babies and minding the home!  My generation fought a long and uphill battle to change these kinds of views, you are trying to undo everything we worked for just to satisfy some crazy geneticist idea, and remember which political system was for creating the "genetically perfect race"?

I partially agree with you on the family thing, Inge, but not totally. The 'traditional' nuclear family is a fairly recent invention, and it does both parents and children good to have the extended family involved. The parents have someone readily around to ask for advice or fall back on if everything goes pancake shaped; the children know that they have lots of people who very directly care for them which helps to give them a strong feeling of being connected. This is very important.

However, I do object to the idea that the grandparents are obligated to contribute a large amount towards the parenting of a child that their kid has while teenaged. If the teenager is old enough to make that sort of decision, they certainly should be old enough to take responsibility for the consequences. I do not think it is right for the grandparents to throw the teenager out or refuse to help period - that helps no one and makes it far less likely that the teenager will be able to take proper care of the child, and it is especially brutal when adults cut their pregnant teens loose when the teen is still a minor herself, as they ARE still obligated to care for the teen until she reaches age of majority. But it doesn't follow that in continuing to take care of their child that they are then obligated to take up large amounts of responsibility for their child's child. It is the right thing to do to support her in this responsibility, but expecting them to pick enough of it up so that the teen can resume being a teen - no. If a teen gets to make adult decisions, s/he gets to take on the adult responsibility that goes with it.

Inge, I have read every word of your posts on this topic and to imply that I and others haven't read your posts simply  because we don't agree with you, is insulting.
I think the situation you are speaking of sounds very idealistic and unrealistic in today's world. It sounds an awful lot like the Legacy Challenge, actually  ;D!
I know that the family you described is traditional in some parts of the world but in most countries that kind of culture no longer exists. I have had friends who had children while still in their teens while I had my children while I was in my 20s and I see absolutely no difference for better or worse, genetically, (which is what this debate started over) because they had their children earlier and I had mine later. The only difference I see is that it made my friends miss out on fun things that teenagers should be enjoying because they were responsible for another human being. Most of them dropped out of school, struggled financially and didn't get to go out for a night of "clubbing" because their parents felt that the baby was their responsbility, not the grandparents. That is a view a lot of parents have in regards to their teenagers becoming pregnant, don't expect them to raise your child because you are still a kid and want to have kid type of fun. You negated that when you became pregnant, especially if it was a choice made on purpose.

To look more closely at the genetic argument - let's consider what happens in a family which hasppens to carry the gene for some severely disabling illness.  An adult considering having children would no doubt seek genetic counseling and medical assessment of the risks first, would a teenager be that responsible?  I doubt it.  And the young man fathering this child, probably purely because he "doesn't like condoms", how likely is he to consider the risk of passing on this inherited condition?

There are quite a lot of mouths hanging open at this point, including mine.

We are saying that we don't agree that the PEOPLE who run the home and make the decisions for the child should necessarily be the grandparents.  We are saying that yes, the grandparents should be round while the child is growing up, but no they don't need to be the people paying the bills, doing the cooking, or driving the child to football club.  The grandparents should have the final say on house rules;  after all, they do not simply *share* the house, it's *their* house, bought paid for by by their toil and sweat, and many many missed nights of clubbing, among many other things they had to give up when they had kids.

And where's the mention of the baby's father in all this?  Or his parents?  Are her parents going to support him too?  It sounds like the night out clubbing that she "deserves" was what led to her getting pregnant in the first place.  I emphasized the word PEOPLE in the above paragraph because the grandparents usually include a grandmother *and* a grandfather, unless unwed pregnancy runs in the family.

The position Inge is putting forward is that of the teenage mother.  I mean, who wouldn't like to have all the fun and none of the responsibility?  But there's also a certain pathology involved:  if the young mommy didn't get to raise her own child, will she try to take over raising her grandchildren, even over the objections of her children?

I'm all in favor of extended families.  But I'm not in favor of the grandparents shouldering all of the responsibility while the young mommy goes out clubbing.  The grandparents are there to *help*, not just there to do all the work while young mommy has all the fun... paid for by the grandparents.

My sister-in-law got pregnant at age 13.  On purpose.  She wanted a baby.  Her parents would have taken responsibililty;  after all, they had 8 kids of their own, what's one more mouth to feed?  But she was intelligent, headstrong and irresponsible.  There would have been fights if she hadn't lost the baby.  And with that many people in the family, there wouldn't have been any money for clubbing.  Since she was number 7 of 8 kids, she didn't have her mom's babies to cuddle.

As for the genetic argument, it makes no sense.  Women at age 16 do not have healthier babies than women at age 30.  But someone who is 16 (or younger) might try to make that argument.

Hook

Obviously, they haven't played TS2, then. Once they start complaining about toddler hell, they'll probably lose that thought.

Ah, but the point is, in my scheme those grandparents would have had the same opportunities when they were young parents.   Obviously it's not going to be fair if I raise my daughter without any help (which I did) and then she has a baby at 16 which I also raise without any help while she is out clubbing - and then presumably I get old and frail without help too...  No I was thinking of the scenario where it is always the people aged 35-55 who take responsibility for both very old and very young, and outside those ages do their own thing apart from dropping a baby or two between 16-20, for its grandparents to bring up :)

The concept of that extended family, where one or two adults take on the role of care-giver while the rest of the household takes on other supporting roles is not in itself a bad idea. However, that would never work in the real world. The burn-out rate of those care-givers would be astronomical, not to mention the role-strain of trying to accomodate the wishes, needs, whims, and support needs of everyone around them. A child is the parents' responsibility, not the grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Personally, I would've taken exception if my mother, or then mother-in-law, or anyone else in either family had started telling me how to raise my children.

I had my son when I was 25, and my daughter when I was 30. Both are beautiful, intelligent, and healthy children; not a genetic defect in sight. My children are well balanced and strong minded (not to confuse with head-strong or stubborn), and I believe that was because they had a strong bond with both their parents and knew that they could and can always count on us. My ex-husband was a lousy husband, but was and is a good father. The bond with my children is strong, I could've never just popped them out and then hand them over to relatives to raise. They are living, breathing parts of me, I have created them with their father, so it is our duty to take care of them.

I am 46 years old, and I consider myself in the prime of my life. If someone would give me the choice of either staying my age or go back to my late teens/early twenties, I would politely decline the offer. I have grown intellectually, emotionally, and mentally. There would be no way that I would take on my son/daughter's responsibilities. I would most certainly help in any way I can, but in the end, it is their child, their responsibility.

Teenager are not physically ready for children; everything is still growing and developing. The risks of complications in teenage pregnancy is very high. Prematur birth is just one of them. 34 % of pemature birth is in the 15 - 19 year old range, as opposed to 9% in the 30 - 34 year old range. Aside from premature labor, teenagers ages 15 - 19 have increased risks of anemia and high blood pressure as well. Teenagers in that age group also are at greater risk to deliver babies with low birth weight. Those babies can suffer anything from lung and respiratory distress, vision loss, serious intestinal deficiencies, to bleeding in the brain.

An added risk is the risky behavior that teenagers are prone to engage in. They are more likely not to be mature enough to take proper care of themselves while carrying a child. The initial risk is therby increased in significant proportion.

Genetically speaking, an older mother and father are really not genetically defective parents. True, sperm and the oocyte have been manufactured/stored for a longer period of time, but it is generally surmised that if they are rendered defective, it is due to environmental forces, and not the age of the mother/father. Parents over 35 are ususally advised to consider anmiosynthesis to test for Downs syndrome, but the majority of Downs syndrome children are born to women in their twenties.

Veilchen, your arguments have the one thing lacking in all of Inge's - LOGIC!  and with that logic comes truth and common sense.

In particular, what you have said about the risks of teenage pregnancy I , for one, am totally in agreement with.  The risk of premature birth is something which should definitely be taken into account since at long last the medical prefession is catching up with the teaching profession in admitting that a large number of premature babies are never able to perform normally in school.  And if they can't perform normally in school, what chance do they have in adult life?  They are condemned to low pay, low prospects, poor housing, they may need support from social services to help with thir children.  There is also a greater risk of premature babies developing serious health problems later on in life. 

It is one thing to support those teenage girls who get pregnant, often because they are gullible and believe a young man (often several years older than them) who tells them that "they can't get pregnant if it's the first time", "the withdrawal method is safe", and worst of the lot, the definitely older man who tells them "you won't get pregnant, I've had a vasectomy!"

It is an entirely different matter to condone the behaviour of the young, and not so young, men who often take cruel advantage of a young and inexperienced girl. If grandparents take over all responsibility for the child, that leaves the child's father thinking, more fool them, I've got away with it again!

In a genuine love affair between two young people, the young man will care about his girlfriend, and if they are unfortunate and the girl gets pregnant, maybe because like many youngsters she forgets to take her pill one morning, then he will want to be there for her and the baby and take his share of the responsibility.  This may mean, if his parents are the ones with the bigger house, more money, etc., that it is his family and not hers who provide the roof over their heads until they are old enough to support themselves and their child, but it should not mean that either set of grandparents are expected to also take on the job of raising the child!

You're assuming a responsible teenage girl who is not intentionally trying to get pregnant.  It works both ways.  The girl tells the guy she can't get pregnant 1) for medical reasons, 2) because she's on the pill, 3) because she's too young, and doesn't want the guy to use a condom (if he's responsible enough to insist) because 1) Neither of them have any diseases, 2) because she doesn't like condoms, and if these don't work, 3) because she is allergic to condoms.  I've seen it happen.  More than once.

I still have to ask, where is the father of the baby in all this?

Hook

Apologies, Hook, I hadn't intentionally left out the teenager who actually wants to get pregnant and doesn't care who she hurts in order to succeed!  And obviously, a young man who has no wish to become a father just yet, and probably only with someone he's in love with, is very much the victim in those circumstances!  He can be taken to court for child support, and that is both unjust and unkind!

The point I was trying to make is that in a genuine caring partnership between two young people, babies are generally an accident rather than a deliberate choice, but most young men do not run a mile at the thought of becoming a dad - lots of them make a really good job of being supportive and helping with everything.

Although most people are in disagreement with me, it's heartwarming to see that it's possible to have a controversial discussion politely, and what's interesting is that it is taking place on one of the few forum sites that don't censor threads for flaming etc.   Just goes to show if you treat people like adults they'll behave like adults! :)

I don't think I've blinked since I started reading this thread. And I hit the "reply" button and just stared at my screen for a few minutes without typing. I'm not a doctor, and I don't play one on TV, so all I can contribute to this is personal experience. The two points that jumped out at me were the "A baby should be a child of society" idea which is not my way of thinking at all, and the "healthy gene pool" thing, which makes me think of of the people that go to specialized sperm-donor clinics so they can have their problem-free genius child and not an "imperfect" child like mine.

As for the child of society, here are my thoughts: I had my son at age 24 and was clueless as to how much was involved! It was not a planned pregnancy, but it was a nice surprise for my husband and me. My husband was in the military and was not making much income and had to take a second job. Both my parents and my in-laws helped us out financially from time to time, I hated asking them for money. I also had to go on WIC in order to buy formula for my son (he just had to have the soy, oy!), and, although I'm extremely grateful for programs like those, my husband and I were very happy to go off it when he got out of the military and started earning more money. And then, as I've said many times in this forum, we found out Jamie had asperger's (shutup, JM  ;)) and would require many doctor's visits,  speech pathologists, and other assorted experts. Georgia has a great early-intervention program to help children like Jamie, so, again, outside support. And again, very very thankful. But I was not brought up in the Hillary Rodham Clinton "It Takes a Village" camp. Or is it "It Takes a Camp" village? (Pardon my silliness. It's late and I've been up for 36 hours straight.) I am raising my son. I had help from some wonderful programs, and my parents do the occasional babysitting, but I deal with the day to day. And I think that's perfectly all right. It would drive me nuts to have relatives taking over my childcare duties, but that's a matter of personal opinion. My mom has just started her artistic design business(I don't remember what she calls it. She does high-end faux-finishes and murals) , and it's really taking off. She's flying to Denver to work for clients out there and she has many clients here. Extremely busy person. My 89 year old Grandma does volunteer work at both her church and the hospital and has a social life I envy. Those are my role models.

On the second point, (which I understand was about age-related gene health and not sperm clinics) that's stilll getting a little too selective for my taste, and would result in a very robotic, sterilized world if we all focused on that aspect. One thing I now know at age 35 that I never gave much thought to back in my baby-sitting years was, when you take on the responsibility of having a child, you must be ready to accept that this child may very well not be the child you imagined your little dolls being and, unfortunately, the older you are, the greater the risk and you have to take that into account. I think it's a hard thing to accept at any age and I don't think there is any way teenagers can be prepared for this, transitioning from perfect baby-powder scented dolls to real flawed tiny messy humans. And who here can say that they don't have flaws? Ok, JM probably would jump up at this, but the rest of us mere mortals are imperfect and were not exactly what our parents dreamt of when they were younger. I'm pretty sure my mom didn't play with a "collicky Val" doll as a youngster. And the dream-baby scenario for the child she already had named while daydreaming in Chemistry class probably was not "Toddler Val eats an entire box of chocolate ex-lax thinking it's candy. Or practices her big girl potty training in full view on a display toilet at Sears." I certainly didn't expect to have an autistic child. But I have one, and he's perfect.
 
I know you weren't taking things to that extreme, Inge, I just got off on a general rant, there.

I cannot think of a 15 or 16 year old as someone emotionally ready to have a child. Sure, there are very responsible 15/16 year-olds, but that's relatively speaking. They still have no real world experience. And if they do, it's probably not a good real world experience, in which case they were "forced to grow up fast". For the most well-adjusted teens at that age it is, at least in my mind, still not unlike TS2 with babies giving off false advertising by being cute and cuddly and provoking budding maternal (or paternal) feelings. Teenagers may think they need to go there, but they don't. Not yet.

I remember a friend of mine from when I was a teenager.  Thi girl got pregnant while still 15, married the father on her 16th birthday and they got a small flat.  she had the baby, then two more in quick succession, so by the time she was 21 she was more like a middle-aged woman than most middle-aged women are!  She'd had no teenage fun, never had a job, she was stuck in the house all day with three kids.  Her father died quite suddenly just after she got married, her mother had already gone off with someone else, his parents were as supportive as they could be, but in the end, she was left alone to look after these kids all day while her husband was at work.  This all happened before the pill was readily available to teenagers, and certainly not available to under 16s.  With the current easy access to birth control, this kind of scenario should never happen, but unfortunately it still does!

That is a whole other arena of potentially serious problems when a baby is not the perfect little dolly that can be put away in the toy-box when they are finished playing with it. Children born with health problems need their mother/father/caregiver even more than a regular, just colicky, fussy, or lively baby does.
I was extremely lucky, but I know many who weren't. They never-the-less do love the child with all their heart; most are emotionally able to care for the child, some are not. I takes someone with great maturity, vast amounts of patience, and a willingness to sacrifice to care for a child with problems, so that the child has at least a decent chance to function later on in life. I applaud Georgia for their far-sightedness, the health care situation in the US boggles the mind. There are developing countries out there with a better health care system; I guess when they speak of one of "the richest countries" in the world, they meant the individual super-rich, not the population as a whole (I'm going off the band-wagon now).

Hook, even though I know for a fact that some young women/teenagers do deceive their sexual partner because they want a pregnancy, the majority of cases is about young women/teenager who become pregnant due to inexperience, lack of birth control devices, and pressure to yield to sexual intercourse. Society at large expects the woman to take care of the birth control, and is ready to blame her when she becomes pregnant anyway. Many men don't even want to wear condoms, the one device, in conjunction with spermicides, that prevents pregnancy and STD's. This reminds me of a friend of mine who told her partner "If you don't wear the glove, you're not coming up to bat."

The majority of cases of a pregnancy that was achieved by deceiving the male partner is by women older than that, and usually is done with financial or emotional extortion in mind (or both).

The 'village' thing is not a bad idea either, but you can't force a society to take on that attitude. It is still prevalent in the smaller towns and villages in Europe, at least in mine. We have a grand total of 356 souls in that village, and you can bet that everyone knows everyone else, their ancestors, their ancestoral history, their bed-time, in short, if you want to keep a secret, you better be wily. Everyone keeps an eye out for everyone else, including watching all the village children. It can be suffocating, but its really easy to adjust once you mature; you might even appreciate it. As a teenager, I hated it. If I messed up, my parents usually knew about it before I got home. Believe it or not, but I even know most of the villagers cats and dogs by name.

The village thing is great, it still exists in some remote parts of the UK too, but where is the village at 3.00 am when the young mum is distraught from sleepless nights and ready to do anything - and I mean that advisedly - to silence the little wailer?  Whereas post-natal depression is often quickly recognised in older women, often because they or their partners have some pre-knowledge of the condition and go for help quickly, the condition is often missed in teenagers, and it's just put down to general teenage moodiness!

Good Lord, with the hormonal surges teens go through anyway, I can't even imagine adding the baby blues to it.
Veilchen, I agree with you. I shouldn't have made a blanket statement towards all teenagers. My best friend in high school was a teen mom and handled it much better than I ever could at that age. She had a husband (quickie marriage) who was fresh off the highschool football team and couldn't handle it. He was a real piece of work, I'm telling you. But she went to school until 1:00 and then worked from 3:00-11:00 (I remember those hours because I often watched her daughter- a little bit of "village" mentality, I suppose), earning her nursing degree. Today her kids are the most well-adjusted kids I know. I think those cases are probably in the extreme minority, though. My friend did have a rebellious period in her 20's, though. She told me at the time she was getting out of her system what most people get out when they're younger.

Your friend did very well, and as you so rightly say, is in the minority of teenagers who are mature and well-adjusted enough to cope.  My sister had a friend who was equally good at parenting , and the only family help she got was from her mother, who charged her for her time!  And the father?  His wealthy family whisked him out of the country and back home in double quick time!

I don't blame your friend for rebelling in her 20's!  Sounds par for the course, to me, and she waited until the kid was out of nappies!

Meh, Darwinism at work.

I did read all that you said. I still disagree with you however. Your scenario sounds great on paper, but I (and apparently quite a few other people here) think it is not a practical or realistic solution. Of course it is great when the older generations in a family help with the upbringing of a child. That is the way it should be. It is not fair though to encourage people who aren't ready to be parents to have kids and then expect others to take up their slack. If my child got pregnant young and needed my help, I would be there to help. If, however, I discovered that s/he intentionally had a child taking it for granted that I would assume the responsibility, I would be very angry. It takes a village to raise a child. Fine. But, the parent should have primary responsibility, and people should not seek to start families until they are ready for that. Just my opinion.

It seems to be the general opinion of nearly everyone here!  I'd be interested to know how many teenagers also agree......

In my case, the village is down the street or around the corner at 3am (both my parents-in-law and grandparents-in-law are willing to help out at any time if I feel I cannot cope :P) but I am extremely lucky in living in a village where nearly half of it consists of relatives or close friends of my partner who are willing to help however they can :)

I was diagnosed with post-natal depression at 17, go figure :P

I don't agree that the grandparents should have responsibility for their grandchild. The situation I'm in with my daughter and parents-in-law is ideal for us, as I have primary care for my daughter (along with my partner), but we have family backup if we need it, and we get a few hours off a month to enjoy ourselves and be young as there's always a willing babysitter :)

I still get the occasional sleepless night, and it's hard work, and it does mean I've probably missed out on the whole teenager era (I'm 19 now, was between 13 - 16 when I had to look after my siblings, and 17 when I gave birth to my daughter), but although I think it would have probably been better to wait longer, I can look after my daughter most of the time, and I know it's mine (and my partner's - it's his child too!) responsibility.

I don't think teenagers should have children- from a teenage mother :P

Well, first off, congratulations Danni, to you and your partner, for being strong and overcoming your problems yourselves.  I wish you and your child well in the future, and I hope once your child is older you will be able to have a little more time for fun.

ZZ, that brought back memories. My son had a very hard time while teething, and we frequently walked the floor with him at night. Inevitably, during the next day I was asked whether my son's teeth broke through yet, and free advise from everyone around. They were very aware that we once again spend the night pacing with him. Big ears, big eyes :D

I did have a lot of help; my family was all around me, parents, siblings, aunts, unlces, cousins, the works. But I never demanded it, they volunteered. I did the same for them, we always help each other out, and that goes for the villagers too. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for the majority of the population, the village mentality is only alive and breathing in, well, villages now-a-days.

Danni, it is refreshing to hear a success story, I wish there were more of them. Post-partum depression is real and dangerous to the health of the mother, thankfully it has gained some wider acceptance lateley. That was another area where women were told to "just get over it". I swear, I am getting so sick and tired of these words.

Veilchen, I so agree with your last paragraph!  And the other thing, if you're female and go to the doctor complaining of feeling ill, they automatically put you on anti-depressants.  If a man goes with the same symptoms, they do a thorough check to find out what's wrong!

Pah. Depression is just another excuse. If you're depressed, IGNORE IT, and IT WILL GO AWAY. Honestly, what is it with people and dredging up anything they can to justify their lack of impulse control?

Wait till you get it!

I have been diagnosed as bipolar. I also have been told (at different points of my life) that I am both clinically depressed and chronically depressed. I live without medication (and frankly my life ought to depress anyone, but nevermind). My days are often bumpy but I navigate them just fine. I understand that there are varying degrees. Having known a taste of how bad life can feel, I sympathize with anyone who has the real deal, but that doesn't mean I understand giving up.
 Depression is chemical. You can fight your way out, but it's never easy. I respect anyone who has been diagnosed and is Still Here.

Exactly the point!  Anyone can get Depression (just as anyone and everyone occasionally gets depressed) and there are some people who fight and some who give up.  From my own personal experience, it's the ones who accept the doctor's medication who often give up, as the very pills that they say will help leave you feeling too tired to even try to fight your way back up.

Ten years ago I went to the doctor  because I felt ill.  I have an underactive thyroid (caused by medical treatment!) and my previous doctor had lowered my dosage, which was really why I felt ill.  The doctor asked, do you think you might be depressed?  to which I replied, yes, I'm depressed because I feel so ill.   So I was told to go and take anti-depressants, (which don't go well with a thyroid condition!) and in no time at all I was so bad I had to give up work.  All I'd actually needed was an increased thyroxine dose and a little time for it to start working!  But that isn't in the medical textbooks - time is not a medicine!

JM, your misanthropy is taking over your intelligence.  :P First an amazing lack of understanding of Darwinism, and now an amazing lack of understanding about how human brains actually work. Unless of course you can actually willfully control each and every chemical your brain produces, in which case I suggest you start teaching others this amazing skill so you have one less thing to be misanthropic about.

Oh, wait... then you'd have less to complain about.  :D

Oh, yes, JM is right - if you WANT to get out of depression, you CAN! You have to FIGHT it, by different decisions you make, like not rubbing in it too much, and search to be always in company of supporting friends. You can overcome it for sure - no matter what the shrinks say...:). Think positive...:).

Oh, I'm not saying that if one is depressed or has some other sort of issue of that sort, one is basically helpless in the face of it and screwed. Taking charge of oneself, doing research to find options, and then implementing these options is how one gets on the road to recovery. I should know - clinical depression runs in my family and I've dealt with it in myself for 13 years.

However, one cannot simply wish away or just 'get over' something caused by the production, or lack thereof, of chemicals in the brain. People do not choose for this to happen, and cannot simply decide one morning, "Oh, I think I'm tired of being depressive/bipolar/schizophrenic, so I think I'll just stop." I would have cheerfully chosen to simply 'shut off' all of the horrible, crushing feelings I had to deal with, but it isn't a switch, any more than any bodily illness can be shut off like a switch.

Renatus, you are quite right, there is an enormous difference between clinical depression and "feeling depressed".  The first is as much an illness as cancer, the second is merely a state of mind which it is quite possible to get out of by thinking positive thoughts.

It is therefore extremely wrong and misguided of doctors to diagnose clinical depression when it is simply that the patient feels depressed - the very treatment they give you then causes a misbalance of chemicals in the brain!!!  Unfortunately doctors here in the UK seem to think anti-depressants are the magic cure-all and don't realize, despite all the warnings from the valium era, just how much harm they can do to some patients.

I've been fighting depression and mania most of my life, and didn't even know about bipolar disorder until I was diagnosed with it in late 1989. I've since become "rapid cycling," which means my moods swing more often, anywhere from several times per hour (worst) or several times per month.

I no longer take medication. Mainly because it never worked, or when it did, it made me feel "flat," and then stopped working after a few months. You might say I gave up...or you could say I learned to live within my limitations. I'm still here.  ;) I've tried a couple of times not to be here...but both of those times were while I was on medication what was supposed to prevent such desperation. I finally caught on!

I think anyone who benefits from antidepressants and/or mood stabilizers should take them. But if you've taken every type there is like I have, and have never had real relief, it's time to reconsider, and possibly adjust your life to accomodate your unique needs. If you ignore it, it won't go away. However, I think that sometimes fighting it is the worst thing you can do.

(Note that I'm in an extremely LUCKY situation: I don't have to support myself financially, as I'm married to a most exceptional man. I feel great sympathy for anyone who lives with depression or bipolar disorder who must fend for themselves. I don't know how they manage to do it...)

Unless they have family nearby who are supportive, a good doctor and good social welfare services, I don't think they do "get by".  In this country we hace so-called "care in the community" which basically means you have to try to commit HK about 3 times before they'll admit you to a hospital, and unless they think you are a risk of it, you get no back up whatsoever!

Absolutely. Many moons ago it was de rigour to grab your wife while she was a mere babe, and this happens still in some developing countries, somewhere around the age of 13. Consequently, many babies were stillborn and/or their mother died also as a complication of the pregnancy. Nubility does not mean a teen is developed enough to bear children. The other injuries that a young female of this age may receive such as fistulas between vagina and bladder don't bear thinking about.

As for genetics, well, while it is true that older women are more likely to have a child with Down's there is no other evidence to suppose that the younger you are when you breed the less likely there are to be any defects. I remain, therefore, unconvinced.

I fully advocate an education that spells out the responsibilities of bringing a life into this world. NO holds barred, as too often teens see a child as a lovely toy that can be played with then put away somewhere in a cupboard. Sex education needs extending as merely having the mechanics does not necessarily go with responsibility/understanding of the issues. What about love? Indeed, what about it?

Clinical depression is an illness and a very serious one to boot!

Don't wanna hear that it's all about being lazy and disinclined to try harder, not unless that someone wants a nice hard slap...

Exactly right!  And as for the people who say, It's all in your head! Too darned right it's all in your head, but that doesn't mean you're imagining it!!!!

I never had depression but I had massive anxiety issues caused by hyperthyroid problems. Before my surgery I had to take so many things to "fix" my thyroid levels and I was all messed up. I was on Ativan then. After the surgery I was even more messed up. They kept trying to force me (told me if I wouldn't medicate they couldn't help me) to take something like Paxil. Eventually they wore me down and I've been taking Buspar for the last 4? years. It did not "cure" my anxiety entirely but I think that eventually my body became used to the new thyroid levels and that did help. Plus turned out my para-thyroid had been damaged and I've got to take two big assed Citrical every day for the rest of my life. That fixed a lot of physical weirdness that they all assumed I was imagining (hell half the time I thought so too. I was convinced I was going insane.) before a specialist caught it.
Problem is every time I want to quit taking the Buspar I get cold feet. I did quit once for 3 days but it made me all emotional and my mom started having health problems (her thyroid was doing nothing and she was on the verge of psychosis but once she got a thyroid replacement perscription (and gave it time to work) she got all better) so I went back on it which made me feel all whacked out for 3 months. So now here I am on an anti-anxiety med I may not even need (might even be better off wthout it) but I'm too afraid of feeling like I did before to go off of it. For two years I've been thinking about going off it and always think "now is not a good time."
My point is doctors will use that crap to fix just about anything even when the real problem is staring them straight in the face and then the patient is stuck dealing with the problems the "quick fix" caused.
Although I medicate I am a strong believer in dealing with your problems the old fashioned way. Whip it's ass one day at a time.

I have had to deal with thyroid problems since I was ateenager, so I can understand what you've been through.  Trouble is, treatment was sort of worked out donkeys' years ago, and doctors just assume that there's no better solution!  And anti-dpressants are positively dangerous, in my opinion, if your thyroid levels are below what they should be!

So your chemical imbalance makes you feel depressed. Fine. You know why this happens, so you know this is simply a wiring problem. Ignore it. Simple enough. It's not fatal, it's merely a nuisance. You can overcome it. Unless the problem will actually kill you, as opposed to make you feel unpleasant, then IT CAN BE IGNORED. I, for one, am tired of people using their "feelings" as an excuse to justify their poor impulse control. If I simply indulged every single random pointless urge that I had, I'd probably be in prison.

Why on earth didn't I think of that astoundingly wonderful idea before? I'll just ignore all of my problems and they'll go away!

Unfortunately, JM, it doesn't work that way. Like most problems with a physical cause - even if you are talking mechanical objects and not living things - ignoring a mental problem does not make it easier to deal with, as the problem will continue to worsen, and the person often ends up self-medicating with substances or behaviours that compound the problem still further. Furthermore, some mental issues (schizophrenia comes immediately to mind) when left untreated can lead to irreversable brain damage.

If you have some data by some actual scientists, JM, then I'd be happy to read it and see if it refutes what I've been saying, and if it has, I'll adjust my opinions accordingly. Otherwise, I'm going to to stick with my opinion based on scientific data by scientists and continue to find opinions based on how you want the world to be completely unfounded.

No doubt Pescado finds it amusing what happens when schizophrenics who haven't been diagnosed or who refuse their medication go out and kill innocent children in a primary school before blowing themselves away!

I suspect that what's missing from JM's analysis is that wetware can be misconfigured and damaged just like any other system.    It's the most complex system in the human body, with more failure modes and effects than any other system.

By its nature, wetware is open to software damage through its sensory channels.  There doesn't seem to be any virus scanners on the input channels, either.  (Though it might help to disable the buttons for CNN and HBO on your television remote.)

Quite often, the core software is not adequate to deal with damaging influences at the rate they happen.  That leads to the phenomena that pshrinkologists attempt to categorize as mental diseases.  The damage can reprogram the core software so mental problems usually take longer to heal than physical ones, often as not enduring longer than the physical system itself.  (That is, quite often the person can't be completely healed before the body dies.)

Even worse, the core software seems to have been produced by a team of the worst of the Microsoft and Electronic Arts programmers working overtime on a Sunday morning after an all-night party that involved enough ethanol to float a battleship!

JM:
I'm sorry, but this really did make me laugh!  When I was growing up, mental illnesses were a middle class indulgence - poor/working class people couldn't afford to be ill; people just had to get on with it. Of course, many were ill, but were not given the opportunity to break down fully.  Family support propped up those that were not coping well. Some might argue that doing this only helps the symptoms without trying to find a cure.  But I would argue that medication does exactly the same thing.

In today's climate where families are much more spread out and the vulnerable are less likely to get family support, more and more people are being diagnosed and medicated.  Sometimes it feels like what were once considered idiosyncrasies are now getting formal labels so that drug companies can make money.  

The classic middle class 'made up' disorder for me was given to toddlers that wouldn't sleep through the night.  I remember my jaw hitting the floor when a work colleague told me that she was taking her three year old for treatment because she and her husband had not had a full night's sleep since he was born.   I have always been a full time working mother - I  have no idea as to whether my children ever had this disorder because I was too tired to find out - I slept through the night!  Sometimes people do seem to have too much time....

Yeah, what Sandilou said.  The other side of the coin is the number of doctors who profit from people's problems and the number of professionals who now provide the services that used to come from families.

The move toward reliance on drugs to alter normal human behavior really worries me, especially the tendency toward prescribing Ritalin for school children.

Ritalin is not good!  And hyperactivity in children is in my opinion excessive energy that needs to be directed, not suppressed!

However, I disagree with the notion that mental illness is a middle class disease!  Bethlehem Hospital in London (Bedlam) was full of people from all walks of life who were considered mad, or in our terms, they were mentally ill!)

Mental illness as a whole isn't a middle-class problem, for certain; many working class or poorer folks end up having alcohol or drug addictions, abuse problems, or simply end up wandering the streets, homeless, because they can no longer function with day to day life at all. In the states at least, many of the homeless are quite mad, as due to a lack of funding people are turned out of mental institutions if the doctors think they won't be a danger to themselves or others.

However, sometimes people do go too far and try to make every behaviour that isn't complacent and compliant seen as pathological, usually in children. That makes me sick. It's not scientific or logical, it is selfish, and it may well cause future problems in the child if it is medicated unnecessarily. Furthermore, not every mental issue needs to be treated with drugs - oftentimes patience and behavioural therapy is what does the best job.

BTW ZZ, untreated schizophrenics can be very scary but are not necessarily dangerous. I had an apartment next to a woman in her 50's who was in the advanced stages... she did really bizarre things and would go off on scary tirades, but she never actually did anything threatening.

I agree not all schizophrenics are dangerous, but unfortunately there are some who definitely are.  We have had at least three massacres in the UK where the inquest on the perpetrator reached the conclusion that they were in the delusional stage of schizophrenia.  We have the same problem over here, that mental institutions have been closed and people moved into the community - to save money, and to sell the valuable building land the hospitals were built on! - and unfortunately "care in the community" does not always work, there is no compulsion on a mentally ill person to stay in a community home or to take there meds.  It's a lot easier too to look after people who are in one place than scattered throughout a city. 

Another thing to consider is that the siting of most older mental hospitals was in suburban, quieter areas, they had huge grounds which were a source of peaceful relaxation to people who were stressed and ill.  Living in a modern city with 24 hours a day traffic is not the best place for people to recover their hold on sanity!

That is a very succinct and eloquent expression of my fears about Ritalin.  It's one of my pet peeves, probably because it affected me personally.  My son's school administrators demanded that we have him evaluated and get him a prescription for Ritalin, otherwise they would throw him out of school. 

So, we had him evaluated.  In this case, the doctors concluded that he was a perfectly normal 10-year-old boy.  Personable, articulate, affable; no behavior indicating hyperactivity or any other sydrome like it.  His only problem was that happened to perform so well on IQ tests that his teachers were afraid of him. 

Our solution was to take him out of that madhouse and home-school him until he's ready for college.  Let him learn at his own rate and try to teach him to cope with the boredom of sitting through classes. That was a skill I learned early in life, but I really don't know how to teach it to someone else.  Darn.

In retrospect, we could have spared him all those visits with doctors and pshrinks; but he seemed to enjoy it so overall it was probably a positive experience for him.

They say seeing is believing; I had my eyes opened wide when I saw just how much Ritalin can alter a child's behaviour;

We had a 6 year old kiddie who literally came into school at 9.00 and by 9.05 was throwing chairs at anyone who walked through the hall, then tried to climb up the pipework onto a low level roof.  His eyes were moving around wildly and he was incapable of speaking to us because he couldn't focus.  He was moving around constantly and had to be talked down by his parents and taken home.

After the subsequent exclusion from school, his parents felt they had no choice but to give him his prescribed Ritalin.  They were worried about side effects so wouldn't give it on non-school days. (As it takes a few hours to kick in, Monday mornings were always potentially eventful).  Later in the week, we were amazed to watch the same child, eyes heavily glazed from medication, take the lead in organising and playing a circle game with most of the members of his class.  It truly was a camera moment!

Off medication, that child returned to his usual persona.  He was hyperactive; I honestly believed that if he changed his diet, it would have helped considerably. because he consumed a high number of additives in his daily diet, which seemed to be made up predominantly of fast, snack foods.  Bit ironic when you consider the parents concerns regarding the long term effects of Ritalin.

You'd be surprised how well this works. Humans are equipped with boundless capacity for repression and denial for a reason.

If at first it doesn't work, force it. If it breaks, it needed to be replaced anyway. More importantly, "self-medicating" is not IGNORING the issue. Didn't I mention to *IGNORE* it? Pretend that it does not exist. Ignore. Deny. Repress. Got it?

Sensory channels frequently malfunction. I myself hallucinate on a regular basis. But do you know how I deal with this? Simple. I ignore it! They're hallucinations, they're not real. There is no hair-haired toothy monster that is chewing my leg off. The room is not on fire and there are no strobing lights. It's just an equipment malfunction. It's not really there. Nothing is wrong. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Why's this such a hard concept to grasp?

Most kids thrive on attention, so what was positive for him may well still have been negative for you!  I have a neighbour whose son was permanently excluded during his final year (15-16) which meant he couldn't take his GCSE's, all because the teachers found him too challenging!  When I was teaching, if I had a kid like that in my class, who had ideas about things, I would think, great, this is a kid with a brain!  But nowadays, teachers have to be concerned with getting the greatest number through their exams as possible, which means they no longer have time to deal with individual questions which will derail the lesson plan!  This is Victorian training, not the creative, whole child approach which I learned at college!

You son is lucky that you are an educated person and have the ability to home-school him.  In this country it's not easy for anyone unless they have a degree and/or teaching qualification to do this, but for some kids it's the only answer. and a darn sight more positive than putting them on drugs.

This sounds like a kid who isn't beaten enough and is given too much sugar. Kids are like this when they don't receive proper discipline and are fed too much energy. Cut his food intake and paddle him.

*nods* I don't know a huge amount about Ritalin, but cases like your son's, SimsHost, is why is really bothers me. When I was in my teens I only knew of one kid - friend of mine - on it. He did definitely have some problems as he was born with a mild case of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and was diagnosed with ADD as well, and his father claimed he would go into violent tantrums without it.

At one point when our families were on a camping trip, and when we were preparing to go home he was getting out of hand I was told not to talk to him or he would get violent - but I talked him out of a tantrum anyhow, because I spoke to him like an intelligent human being who I respected, and he responded accordingly. I was shocked that me, at the time a 16 year old kid, could 'control' a supposedly violent 13 year old boy.

I'm sure there was more to it than that, but from the time I was in contact with that family it seemed that the single father was a milksop of a guy and didn't do much in the way of discipline. This had unfortunate results later, I'm sad to say...

After living with someone with a classic case of ADHD for five years, I really doubted how much the kid's problems were due to ADD and how much due to never learning much impulse control.

At any rate, I'm glad your son got something positive out of the whole experience. It sounds like he may have learned more about the inner workings of his mind, which is never wasted knowledge.

ZZ, you bring up some very good points and of course you are right. I think there might be some differences between schizophrenics that do get violent when they are delusional and those that don't, but I don't have any data on it so I can't really say. A delusional schizophrenic is rather frightening regardless, and the rush rush rush of cities certainly doesn't help.

Ah, so you don't have any data, JM. I'm not at all surprised.  ;)

Sandilou, I hear you loud and clear. I am amazed at the junk people feed their children and then wonder why they short-circuit. I firmly believe that diet has a massive influence on behavior, especially in children.

My son was also very active; he challenged his teachers constantly, and the worst part was, he was right 98% of the time. I was told to have him evaluated and medicated (all of my son's education took place in the US, my daughter is educated in Europe and the US). I politely declined. We had reached a deadlock with the school authorities, I would medicate my child over my dead body. He was lively, intelligent, and strong minded, in other words, perfectly normal.

Luckily his 8th grade teacher was a woman that took pedagogy at its pure form. She suggested we enroll him in the technical/vocational program. We did, and everything came up roses. He got a head-start on his career in electrical engineering, he was hired by the US coast guard as a civilian employee, and they are paying his way through college to achieve his goal (both my children have dual citizenship).

My daughter, after coming back to the US, so I can finish up my own education, was enrolled in my son's old high school. She is the same as he is; intelligent, outspoken, etc. I had to laugh though; I received a call from the teacher who had such a big hand in my son's rescue from the system. She said that my daughter's behavior is never questioned. The teachers just nod their heads, saying: "Oh, it's Ben's sister!"

JM, after what feels like centuries of teaching sometimes, I have to say you are so right!  However, Renatus also points in the right direction:  Most children need firm and consistent boundaries - hence JM's demand that they get a good paddling.  All children need to be treated with respect so that they repeat that behaviour.  That particular 6 year old's parents were at their wits end with him.  They had tried a good paddle - but he was so hyper he could easily outrun them!  Plus, just like ZZ and others have pointed out, there was a chemical imbalance which was not his own fault.  His parents needed as much help as he did.

I am far from being  a perfect parent and I'm not one of those teachers who constantly blame parents for the shortcomings of their children, however, I do recognise that many of the conditions that children 'develop' in their teenaged years had their seeds sown in earlier childhood, be it down to poor diet or lack of firm boundaries.  I have an overcompensated for, overindulged 15 year old of my own that backs up my theory. ::)

Ah, to medicate or not to? A lot of the kids I see are heavily medicated and not just with good old speed (Ritalin), but heavy duty psychotropic drugs such as Haloperidol, Risperdol among others. Many anti-epileptics are good at sedation too, and see those used regularly. To be fair, Methylphenidate is not a regular drug of choice as it is controlled and the diagnosis has to be just right. It's effects on an immature body are astounding, and I have seen totally uncontrollable behaviour brought to manageable with its use. There does, however, remain the sicko parent who wants the child drugged so they can have a life, and because they're so inadequate they can't cope with what is within "normal" range (I hate the word "normal", cos I know I'm bloody well not!).

Stop feeding kids junk! Couldn't agree more. What's happened to good homely skills like giving a kid a decent meal instead of some crap from a poison manufacturer like McDee's?

Regarding diet, I work with this lad who is autistic, hyperactive (I mean, hanging off the ceiling by his toes stuff and wall of death!),learning disability and also on a restrictive diet: no gluten, no dairy (casein intolerant). Some bright spark let him have a bag of doughnuts...I swear to all that's holy if I find out who I will put their organs in a vice.

J.M. I've spent a lifetime ignoring and repressing, and still the f**ckers bite me on the arse every now and again. Perhaps I need drugs?

It's scary that they're giving kids medication just for being normal high spirited kids (something I prefer to see than a child who sits still all day personally... and I have hyperactive siblings!) I know how psychotropic drugs can change your whole personality - Haloperidol made me paranoid, anxious, and I used to wake up in the middle of the night with my heart beating twice it's normal speed and that was on 1mg a day. Venlafaxine (antidepressant) made me violent, and Prozac sedated me to the point I could barely get out of bed, and I was always on very low doses, and physically mature.

I agree diet plays a huge part in how children act - my daughter eats a lot of fruit (as well as veg at mealtimes), and I try to limit the amount of additives and sugar she takes in (I know fruit has sugar in it, but it doesn't seem to affect her). Most of the time she's a well behaved toddler, who will play for hours by herself if she wants to. Give her a pack of additive laden sweets and she's bouncing off the walls.

Same with my sisters - give them sweets (especially those with E102 in it) and they wouldn't sit down for the next few hours.

Children must have boundaries, and they need to feel secure. Loving them is not enough. So many well meaning parents have demon spawn as children because they can't bring themselves to give discipline. I'm not an advocate of the good thrashing but I do believe that an occasional slap when a child is very young and places itself in a DANGEROUS situation is useful, as is shouting their name crisply. It attracts attention, shocks, and stops them from proceeding with whatever they are about to do. Then you can intervene. Always reward good behaviour with attention and bad by withdrawing it. As a society we are too keen to give outrageous behaviour attention when all it needs is a child to be placed in a room for a few minutes, be IGNORED then have an explanation given as to why they should not behave that way. How many of us hold memories of being lavished with affection for something we did that was good, or of our parents joining us when we were well behaved, but recall the shouting, screaming and rows following a misdemenour?

This sounds a lot like training your dog, but it does work and is a very powerful tool.

Celiac disease?  Nasty.  Mum has that and keeps trying to convince me I also have it (even though I've been checked, and wasn't that an uncomfortable experience).  Of course, if she eats anything with gluten, she's in one sort of agony or another within an hour, though I understand the more immediate effects differ from person to person.

Mind you, if that is why the guy is gluten-restricted, whoever fed him doughnuts really ought to be smacked.  CD can kill you if you don't adhere to the restriction.

I was put on beta blockers once as a preventative measure for migraines--what a mistake.  They turned me into the meanest bitch within a couple of weeks, so I stopped taking them and went back to stuff like Fiorocet (now Imatrex).  I've also noticed some of the drugs to help you sleep (prescription) can really change a person's personality for the worse as well.

I was thinking more of situations where the inputs from the sensory channels are real.  Even a low-level threat, such as an abusive parent (or self-inflicted abuse such as watching CNN or trying to get the quotes to come out right when replying to a SMF message), can permanently damage a human brain if the abuse is repeated daily for several years.

In the case of ignoring false inputs, you're assuming that the person has a fully functional reasoning capacity backed up by an IQ sufficient to overcome the impulses being fed to the cerebrum from that little lizard brain stem we all have.  Based on the number of people who actually seek to watch CNN and figure out how to get quotes to work in a Simple Machines Forum, I would conclude that this is not a valid assumption for the general case.  ;D

Well, seriously, I know folks who suffer from all sorts of strange psychological phenomena such as agoraphobia and panic attacks.  (And, oddly, I've met most of them through the Sims community.  There's probably a master's thesis in pshrinkology in that fact alone, for someone who cares to pursue it.)  A few years ago I wouldn't have known what people were talking about when they brought up these things, but I can't deny the first-hand experience that demonstrated to me that these syndromes are very real.

These problems can be overcome, but in every case I know of, only with external help.  The brain is too damaged to deal with the problems on its own.

If people are having trouble sleeping, they should do what I do. Don't!

Now, if somebody you really *WANT* to go to sleep isn't sleeping, I suggest the classic approach involving a sock, sand, and some metal pellets, like shot or BBs. Fill the sock with the sand and pellets. Apply to back of head liberally. Repeat until unconciousness results. Problem solved.

Well JM, most of us don't have your cast-iron stomach to ingest caffeine in its raw form; so the only alternative for us is to try and get some sleep, preferably without application of physical force :D.

But as far as dietary concerns go, I agree. All these food items with high chemical content can't possibly be good for a child. And I'm not even speaking of the bad habit of junk food ingestion, and the seemingly ever-present soda. Doesn't anyone ever read what goes into that stuff?  My friends (and my kids) hate going grocery shopping with me - before it goes in the cart, I read the label very carefully, while my daughter stands around with a stance and an expression that only 16 year olds can somehow obtain. That is, until I had her read the ingredients in some of the stuff. Now she is just as careful as I am. We prefer fresh, and if we can't get it fresh, we buy frozen.

Oh how I miss my mother's huge garden and the fruit trees. I swear, everything she plants grows, even tomatoes, and that is quite a feat in our climate.

Nonono.  I don't like violence unless it involves shooting intruders.  Now if only I knew where hubby stored his guns...

Actually, he was prescribed Valium once for vertigo.  I found it kind of odd that a tranquilizer could also have such negative effects.

As far as sleep goes, Insomnia is my middle name. I just live with it.

I like sleep, and the ingestion of caffeine makes me twitch. A lot. So much so that I look like I'm performing some sort of dance and being poked by a cattle prod. Not to mention what it does to my bladder and the accumulation of cellulite that I'm storing for a crisis. However, J.M. does make a good point about assisting other people to sleep, though I would try to use more subtle methods.

Ingest? I snort it.

Surely not, oh godlike one. Wouldn't a drip on continuous feed be better?

I didn't know you could snort caffeine too.  I thought coke was the only drug that was snorted.

Nope. Speed too as it's a faster hit

Oh ok.  See, I didn't know that. ;)  Very educational!

Bah... I live in too small of a village - speed is very hard to come by (unless it's cars going down School Lane). Caffiene makes me ill... so what am I left with? ;)

It doesn't change the personality, only releases what was already lurking there.



That's exactly what I do and I don't know why everyone keeps bugging me about it either.

You could try Sudafed (pseudoephedrine). Not if you have any heart ailments, though, as it does increase heart rate, just like its cousin ephedrine.

I gave up on the idea of regular sleep a long time ago. In fact...that was about the time I was able to go off psychotropic meds entirely. Well, except caffeine and nicotine.  ;) "Go with the flow" has worked well for the past few years, longer than any prescribed medication has ever worked, so I'm sticking with it.

JMP, you're such a funny guy! Every time you talk about how medication is so bad and unnecessary, and then in the next virtual breath write about snorting caffeine... Oh, thank you so much for the genuine laughter! I sure can use it lately!!

Well, think about it. That crap don't do squat, but caffeine, now caffeine is good. It keeps you from passing out. Caffeine is life. Eventually I'll have to start receiving it from a neck tube like those StarTrek alien soldiers do.

Sudofed has no effect on me at all...unlike some kids I've seen after a couple of 5mls! Mind you, is it the psuedoephidrine or all that sucrose and colouring doing the job? Maybe in conjunction the three are just simply potent.


Heh... Nice to know I can make a difference.  ;D

Hey, you'll get no argument from me about that! But it is a drug. I used to take 5mg. of Dexedrine twice a day for ADD, but have since found a few cups of drip dark-roast equally effective, and it doesn't require a triplicate prescription and registration with the DEA. I go through a lot of non-dairy creamer, though. And toilet paper.

And Poise pads.


I've found that one potholder-sized caffeine patch on each ass-cheek works nicely. Especially if they're the quilted kind.

lol...  ;D

Clears my sinuses, but that's about it. It's not a true stimulant, but a vasodilator, which I avoid. I hate ambulance rides. Some people do think it's mentally stimulating, but that's an illusion...unless they suffer from some restriction of blood flow to the brain, which is NOT the kind of thing that responds well to self-medication!  :o

Yes, and no.  I prefer to interpret that statement as the drugs persuading the superego to go tale a very long vacation.

My suggestion is to stop drinking so much water. That coffee crap is so watery. Did you know it's over 90% water? My blood has better caffeine than that. I could sell my blood as a caffeinated beverage of greater strength than your coffee. If I drank your coffee, I would pass out. Purified caffeine is the way to go. Less water (okay, no water), more caffeine!

Hmmm, so all that stuff about water being necessary for life is junk? Or is it as we all suspect, and J.M. really is an alien sent to spy upon us????

Tell you what, though, he's damn right about caffeine and water being a bad mix. You would never get your arse off the bog if you had a system like his.

On the other hand, all that water means you get up to stretch regularly and get the circulation going as you trundle toward the loo.

Not a bad point, medear, and one I shall keep in mind.

Unless you have an accident. Then at least you can practice the leg-shake.

And the walk... don't forget the "oh, jeez, I've pissed myself" walk with a soggy gusset.

 ;D

I'd take dexies if I could get them legally, but amphetamines have been banned here since the 60's!

Damn government ruin all the fun!

A little bird told me that speed hangovers are quite awful, especially when you take into consideration that it's not just the whiz but the impact of about 18 pints and 40 fags as well.  ;)

Well, I was prescribed them when I was 19 for weight loss, and although I was prescribed 3 a day, I only ever took one.  I had so much energy, I couldn't believe it (I'd recently undergone surgery for hyperthyroid, which meant I'd spent most of my teenage year in a state of utter exhaustion rotating with spells of hyperactivity) and I was able to manage a part-time job while studying for my A levels.  I never got addicted, I lost the weight and stopped taking them, and when I heard they were banned I couldn't believe it!

In any case, if they banned every medication that someone abuses, then they'd have no medication left at all!  I suffer from arthritis, and some days it's quite bad, but since I can't take aspirin or ibuprofen because of a stomach problem, I'm left with paracetomol or paracodeine.  The high-dose Co-Proxamol which is about the only thing that has any effect has now been taken off the market, and paracodeine make me depressed!  So now I mainly just put up with the aches and pains.

Arthritis is a bitch. It's rife in my family, so I'm looking forward to the day when I can't move. I already think that I'm getting twinges in my ankles.

Have you tried anything from alternative sources? I have read that a sulpher compound "MSM" has had some positive results relieving pain which is backed up by some research. I have to admit that I don't know what size the group was that was tested, but hopefully it was decently designed experiment with proper controls.

Well, the best thing I've found is acupuncture, but I just can't afford it on a regular (weekly) basis, which is what I think I'd need.  But I know it works, and it's also been discovered why it works!

Tramadol is fantastic... especially the highs ;) Got a few left from when I had gallstones (they didn't do much for the pain, but it meant I wasn't in A+E every day... just twice a week ;)) They make me feel like life is actually worth living :P

Ugh, gallstones... Had those and they were the worst pain I've ever had to endure. I had dihydocodeine, which is a lovely, spacey drug that sends you off into la-la-land. Unfortunately, when I had mine out they didn't use keyhole surgery and even now I look like the surgeons used a wood chisel and hammer to get in there and do the removal.  ;D

Z.Z. - acupuncture is good, no doubt about that. I know that some G.P.'s refer their patients and it can be available on the NHS in some areas. I take it you don't live in one of those though?

Completely agree with you on the pain... and it seems my GP likes Tramadol, as two family members (with the same GP) also got it :P

Dihydrocodeine never did anything for me in the past, but that might have been because I was on a low dose :P

I don't know, I've never actually asked my GP, but I just might do that.

I agree that dihydracodeine is good for pain.  After I had an operation a couple of months ago for a trapped nerve in my elbow, I was given them, and they definitely deaden the pain, but then I read the insert in the packet which warned against them if you have a thyroid problem (which I do) and it seemed to explain why when I take them I just want to sleep all the time.  I've still got a few Co-proxamols left, and I take them when the pain is really bad, but once they've gone it'll be ordinary paracetemol or nothing - and ordinary paracetemol are useless!  Oh well, no doubt they'll soon come up with a replacement.......

ordinary paracetamol...  bleh...

I'm another arthritis sufferer - I absolutely detest taking prednisone, on high doses it makes me high (can't stand feeling like that!), on low dosed it makes me cranky and aggressive...  I live on panadeine - a combination of paracetamol and codeine phosphate - I've got all the different brands sussed out and I know exactly how much codeine is in each!

the current drug of choice is mersyndol (tension headaches for over a month) - parecetamol, codeine phosphate and doxylamine succinate...  leaves me very happily dozy and actually ensures that I get a good night's sleep!  and it's available without a prescription - some days I worry that I could become seriously addicted to sedatives! 

Ness

Z.Z. - Dihydrocodeine sends you off anyway. It is an opiate and addictive. In fact, in this country it has only just been licensed for sale over the counter but I can't recall what it retails as. Might be worth checking with the quack about any counterindications with current meds you're taking and also if there are any real issues for folk with thyroidal probs.

My poor mum has to have paracetamol for her arthritis as she takes Warferin, but has a thyroid problem too. I believe she was on something stronger before the DVT set in so I'll ask and see if she remembers the name of the drugs.

Had gallstones too, in fact they are probably still lurking about. When diagnosed I was about 6 weeks pregnant (3 1/2  years ago). I had to have dietary treatment only. Since then, nothing else has been done. I have no insurance (can't afford it) but can't get gov't insurance (apparently we make too much for medicaid, though I don't see how). I still sometimes have bouts of extreme pain and nausea. When they come about I take a few tylenol and a couple of OTC sleeping pills and hope that when I wake up the pain will have reduced to tolerable. Most of the time it does.

Thanks laeshanin, I know that codeine is an opiate - back in the 60's it was banned because kids were putting it in Coca Cola (I think) and for a long time I don't think you could get it on presecripton either.  I think they've had to allow it back becaue of the issues with Aspirin and Ibuprofen, and also the higher doses of paracetomol (which I understand is why Co-proxamol is not longer available) and quite frankly why people who really need a powerful pain-killer should be unable to get it because of people who don't bother to read the instructionson the packet is beyond me!

Again, Anti-inflammatories like Voltarol Retard work wonders for me, but my doctors will only prescribe them in short bursts, not all the time, because they too have issues for people with stomach problems!

Half the problem anyway is that my GP's don't really believe I have arthritis, they say aches and pains are common with people with thyroid problems and don't mean anything!  In fact, the hospital x-rayed my neck when they were trying to find out what was wrong with my hand, and found arthritis there - and that is one of the places I get a lot of pain!  But what can you expect from GP's who, when you visit them because you feel ill, inform you that you are depressed!  It's the easy way out, she's a woman, she's in a stressful job (which I was) therefore she's depressed! And once they've made their wonderful, insightful diagnosis, they can't be shifted from it!  Every time I go, I'm asked to try some new anti-depressant as if I'm some kind of guinea-pig - they don't even know how much harm anti-depressants actually do to thyroid patients!

Kitiara, you can actually sleep through a gallstone attack? Wow! Good for you!

I found lying in a bath as hot as I could tolerate helped a little with the pain, but there were a few times I went to A&E soaking wet because I'd tried to deal with it myself and failed. Tramadol is also an opiate, which is why it makes me feel high (oh, and I sometimes get visual hallucinations from it, but am that high I don't care... as for aural hallucinations, I get to live with them without medication... what fun!). Morphine was great, though it did send me straight to sleep.

I have a few 60mg (I think) codiene tablets, and was allowed to take them with two paracetamol after my gallstone op. Codiene also never did anything to me, but helped a little with the post-op pain.

Co-proxamol is being withdrawn because the combination of paracetamol and the other thingie that's in it is so dangerous in overdose, more so than paracetamol alone, and can be fatal if taken with alcohol. Paracetamol requires normally at least 30-32 tablets to be especially harmful (though it can cause liver damage from around 10) whereas co-proxamol is fatal with just 8-10. I've got to stop looking up toxicology sites :P

The first one, no. Hell no. I had to be taken to the ER. I have never felt such pain in my life (and the nausea...). But, then I was put on a VERY strict diet, and given 5 hydrocodon for "last resorts". The five pills lasted 6 months due to careful stretching. I still have occasional attacks, but are minor compared to what it was like in the beginning. And, since I am so very familiar with the symptoms, I can usually see the bad part coming far enough in advance to zonk myself out early.

By the way, I never understood why bananas were on my list of foods not to eat. ???

bananas are high in potassium.....could it be that?  ???

My very first gallstone attack my mother told me to shut up (I was screaming in pain) and that it was just trapped wind. I was vomiting and it lasted about 3 hours. She was living in MY house, and has had her gallbladder out so she should have recognised the symptoms. I didn't see a doctor for months because I thought nothing could be done for trapped wind! When I did see my GP he sent me straight to hospital and I was in for a few days, and I was given strict instructions to go back if I was nauseaous, had a high temperature, or if the pain was unbearable after taking tramadol (normally all three at the same time :P). So began my to-ing and fro-ing from A&E...

My diet was already low fat, and what I ate made absolutely no difference to the amount of attacks I was having, so they just told me to continue doing what I was doing.

My mom had her gallbladder out and since then, anytime someone gets a bad stomachache, it's gotta be their gallbladder. Happened to me, and my mom dragged me out of the house and to the emergency room, with me protesting the entire way that it was not my gallbladder and please take me home. Turns out I was right. It was my appendix. :P

Have to comment on the conversation earlier in the thread. I can't listen to (or read) debates on depression or ritalin use without jumping in. And JM, I'm ignoring you again,  ;D. First off, I've mentioned before on this forum that I have been diagnosed with depression. Dysthymia (did I spell that right, Veilchen?) with recurring major depression. When I first was diagnosed, I'd never heard of depression as a mental illness before. Depression was just "being sad" about a break-up or something. In fact, I hate that the illness is called "depression", because that's what puts the idea in peoples' heads that it is something that can be cured by just "getting over it". It doesn't help that now everybody and his brother are now diagnosed with some form of depression or other psychological disorder. That, of course, leads to the over-prescribing of medications, which leads to those "diagnosed" believing that the drugs do more harm than good because of side effects, or effects caused because they never needed the medication in the first place. Add to that the drug companies pushing their pills, and you have the recipe for a whole lot of cynical people. But for the people who really are suffering, the drugs can be, quite literally, a life saver. I had to go through many cocktails of prescriptions before finally hitting the right combination. I feel pretty good these days. I do not feel "high". I feel normal. That's all I wanted. I've been on antidepressants that caused me to become hypomanic, and obviously those weren't the right ones for me. And JM, I was well aware of the fact that I had a chemical imbalance, but there's no logic to your belief that since you know what it is you can ignore it. That makes as much sense as telling someone who has appendicitis that since they know what it is they can just ignore it. Or diabetes. Or a broken leg. You can't ignore it. Maybe some people with a less severe version can get through their days okay and function pretty much normally, but in severe cases they can't. And, unless you've actually experienced severe, major depression, there really is no way to describe what it's like. Same with panic attacks. Panic attacks can have symptoms others can see, yet there still is a lot of skepticism about that, too. People can get so judgemental about psychiatric disorders.
Now for the drugging of children. It's ridiculously widespread and unnecessary. Even dangerous. My mom has a friend who is a teacher, and she (my mother) could not believe it when her friend told her that she hadactually  suggested to parents to look into medicating their child for hyperactivity. That's medicating the child for the teacher's convenience. Sick, sick, sick. I've talked about my son with asperger's syndrome before, and he is on medication. He's on Risperdal, Luvox and Clonidine. It was a last resort for me to go that route, but I'm glad I did. We tried diet modification, therapy, special schools, but his hyperactivity was out of control. When he got hyperactive, it wasn't a playful hyperactive. He had violent rages. I was in the grocery store and he took off while I was in line at the register. I finally tracked him down with the help of store managers, and it was all I could do to hold onto him. I literally dragged him to the car with his teeth imbedded in my wrist. I still have a pretty deep scar. He tore my sweater, pulled my hair out, and I had people running across the parking lot to me with cellphones. One lady offered to call the police. Another lady followed me home to make sure I got there okay. He tried to stab me with scissors when we got home, and he tried to strangle my husband during another episode. We have holes in our walls, doors, screens from him kicking them. He ran away from home and was gone for two hours. We had the police on the scene who were getting the search and rescue team ready, my neighbor was on the phone to FOX news and we were scanning pictures in for broadcast. A lady found him asleep in a ditch on the side of the road 3 miles from our house at 9:45 that night. He was seriously in danger of hurting not just others, but himself. When he'd rage like that, he had no awareness of pain. And he had unbelievable strength. Discipline? Yes, we disciplined. My husband and I spanked him on occasion, took away various privileges, the normal disciplinary actions. It would always end up with the two of us straddling Jamie on the floor to keep him from hurting someone or himself. After the grocery store incident, we admitted him to a rehab/mental health hospital for observation. He was put on medication, and since then, except for when he hits a growth spurt and needs to adjust the dosage to his new weight, he's been relatively melt-down free. The weird thing is that when he was not in a rage, he was the sweetest, nicest kid. You would never have guessed he had this Jekyll/Hyde thing. Poor child still has OCD, and it distresses him. He has bad ticks, obsessive thoughts, and he'll develop other symptoms like having to touch everything and everyone around him as he walks. For a while, he had a problem with screaming. He'd just let out one scream, at random, and it was keeping him awake at night. He would cry over his frustration with that. He was afraid to go anywhere for fear of screaming in public.
Anyway, I just wanted to give my opinions on those matters. It's hurts to bite my tongue.

Sorry Zeph, don't mean to sound like a smartarse, and I just do that, go off on describing drugs etc as I work with so many of the damn things.  :P

As for doctors, I've come to the conclusion that the "General" part of their title means exactly that and that most of 'em know jack. I base this observation on a number of misdiagnoses I am aware off, not least my brother who was told he had a slipped disc. The slipped disc turned out to be advanced secondaries of the spine and liver and he lived for a fortnight. So go rattle some damn cages cos the bleeders never listen unless you're shouting in their faces.

Brynne: Your son sounds like so many of the kids I work with. ASD is a nightmare to live with, and those extremes of violent behaviour are really common. A young man I had as a service user attacked and injured 17 times in the space of 3 months, causing such issues as difficulty to place in any care setting. He is a danger to the public also and has to have 4 staff in attendance at all times. Even the drugs don't seem to be working as he's a big lad and the dose he needs is massive. He is, off course, on a psychotropic drug with a sedative "to calm him down" when he's in a frenzy. Trouble is you can't get close enough to medicate him when he's off on one.

As for gallbladders, I'm just glad mine was whipped out.  :D

Kitiara: I know it must be near impossible with no insurance, but can I kindly suggest that you get that gall bladder of yours removed as soon as possible? I left mine for over ten years... Became a strict vegan in the process and the dietary restrictions helped immensely for quite a while. Then, my body just decided enough was enough and suddenly turned on me. By the end, a mere glass of water would send me into a full blown - and most excruciating - attack. Apparently because I left it for so damn long, the surgery also took me FOREVER to recover from and came damn near to killing me too - Whereas my friends and family that had it done in a more "timely fashion" just bounced back like nothing. Again, I know the lack of insurance is making it more than difficult at the moment but I'm hoping you'll get something by the time you start approaching the ten year mark. I just couldn't stand the thought of anyone else having to endure what I did.

Well, I am currently nearing the 4 year mark (around Thanksgiving). I am currently seeking employment (was not possible, or rather practical, previously) and hope that insurance, and doctor's visits will follow soon after. I have a few other ailments that should be checked regularly as well. I do realize I am a ticking time bomb. I will take care of it as soon as I can.
Thank you for your concern and much appreciated advice.