Yes sibling is age’ed! She is growing ooooold, with many years and the greying of hair. She is 22.
She is also ignoring my text, so is probably having a good day. Either that or she slept in. *looks at time* A lot.
Well, blood and teeth. Meh.
So, bunny is ill. Well, not really ill – she’s just quiet and not eating. Last time she was like this I took her to the vets thinking she had gut stasis and everything, feeding her babyfood etc. She had x-rays – the whole shebang. The only slight abnormality was slightly overgrown molar teeth that shouldn’t have been stopping her eating. But we couldn’t find anything else, so we did a dental. Turns out she’s a softy who can’t cope when her teeth are even slightly overgrown and she was back to normal. Of course, last week when I was working at the vets she was fine.
To try and assist her eating until I can work out how to be at home with rabbit at vets whilst simultaneously being on Farm rotation I decided to process some food for her in my nifty Kenwood processor. All went to plan, and I washed up the processor bits. Now, the processor blades are deadly sharp and I didn’t fancy leaving them to drip dry like I do everything else in case a housemate cut themselves. So I dried them up. Yup, I sliced a piece of my index knuckle off. Didn’t hurt a bit and actually took a while for it to remember to bleed, but it soon got the hang of it.
Luckily the rabbit ate the processed food. My effort and near-limb loss was worth it.
Most people reading this won’t have experience of what I’m complaining about today, although you can apply “the changing face of today’s youth” if you wish to commiserate!
Ok, I know it is both hypocritcal and ironic to use sarcasm to have a go at rude people who use too much sarcasm, but I can because I’m a groan up. So there. Nyah.
I own a kids’ club – 13+ ideally but I suspect we have deviants of younger years in our midst. Oldest is around 50 probably, the average is probably about 18 if you let the young ‘uns balance out the old ‘uns. Actual 18 year olds are rare – too busy with life apparently.
Anyway, in recent months myself and others within the club have noticed a trend. A Rudeness Fad. Apparently it is considered acceptable, nay, “cool”, to approach life with the “I’m mean/rude/tactless because that’s who I am, and if you have a problem with that that’s your problem – it’s wrong for you to restrict my right to be who I am” attitude. Now, why I agree that everyone, including moody teenagers and people with social problems should be allowed to be themselves, if they could be themselves without making other people feel like shit it would be a hell of a lot nicer for all involved. It irks me that they think that tact, being polite and being civil or nice is a sign of weakness, when it’s blazingly obvious to me and many others that the skill of tact is just that, a skill you must learn, and if you become adept at it it makes you better able to deal with life, the universe and everything. Being tactless is not a get out of jail free card for people who are unprepared to put in the effort of learning civil behaviour. It’s just lazy.
We used to ban controversial subjects such as religion, politics, animal rights, docking, cropping and declawing (it’s a pets club 
) as we felt the younger more rebellious members couldn’t manage themselves in a civil manner. However, due to my “my club can be life-educational too” campaign, I decided to encourage such “lively debates” (AKA raging arguements); my mind is that if you can’t argue constructively you will learn how to or you will make many enemies. Learning to argue constructively and non-offensively is a vital life skill, and one that I think is especially important to individuals who lack social skills in general. Many members of the club have either professionally or self-diagnosed mental conditions, ranging from autism to aspergers to ADD etc. (said diagnoses ranging from true to pity-pleas, which in itself is a lack of social skills) and many more are simply confused young people growing up (most of us have been there).
So, to allow discussions of more touchy subjects I set up a 16+ forum within the forum, with strong caveats that it was suggested that people under 16 and people easily upset/offended don’t enter the forum. Me doing this was viewed with concern by my staff, worried I’d opened a can of worms, and some refuse to moderate it (being either under 16 or easily upset/offended themselves). However, someone pointed out today that the one place on the entire forum where you can be sure of NOT being harassed is this 16+ forum. Is this because the age limit is working and all the ill-feeling is due to under 16′s? Or is it due to somehow, the fact they are allowed free reign and therefore know that everyone else is likewise allowed free reign they have nothing to rebel against. I suspect it is in some part the latter, as some of the people being unnecessarily aggressive in the main forum are active posters in the 16+ forum.
The bitterness, the nasty comments, the unnecessary sarcasm, is all driving good, hardworking, quality members into becoming lurkers, leaving the noobs to be preyed upon by these… mean people as almost a form of sport.
We’ve tried deterents. First we used warnings – anyone behaving inapproproately recieved a warning by private message. Some people seemed to consider these brownie badges – something you collected for fun. Pushing the system was considered a skill worth earning. We’re currently running a Zero Tolerance scheme where anyone who posts something unacceptable gets the whole post locked and their post quoted with the simple phrase “Zero Tolerance”, in an attempt to embarass them into behaving. That too isn’t working, and people continue to aim their jibes just under what could reasonably be considered unnecessary. i.e. we know they are being mean, they know we know, but they also know we know they know we know we can’t prove it. And yes that wasn’t excessive, but was indeed accurate “knows”. What next? Suspend them? Close the forum? The punishment severity doesn’t seem to be the problem, more the general attitude. Their attitude shouldn’t be becoming more subtle to avoid the punishments, it should be improving, dammit!
I’m not innocent – if you know me you’ll know I’m not a people person, and I’m certainly not a children person. I can cope with people younger than me on the single condition – they act older than they are. Froggy and I became friends when she was by 13/14, so I have a low tolerance towards people of a similar age who are unable to be mature, civil, polite people I can have a conversation with. My tolerance can be stretched and rarely broken by especially irritating noobish folk (of any age) and I have zero tolerance to people who I have to tell the same thing twice too. Other than my mother telling me things at 7am when I’m asleep, I remember things, and if I don’t know things I look them up. I am easily irritated by people who can’t fish for themselves. That’s another life skill worth learning – resourcefulness. The entire world is full of resources. Failing that, Google it.
Sly jibers. Pah.
No! It’s Super Vet!
A date for your diaries:
Super Vets
8:30pm – 9:00pm BBC1
Starts 5th Jan (this Thursday)
Documentary series about vets. At the Royal Veterinary College, surgeon Dan Brockman tries to save a cat with a rare heart defect using pioneering surgery. Will the mystery of why Question Mark the race horse stopped dead mid-race be solved? At Whipsnade Wild Animal Park, Bruno the giraffe undergoes a risky anaesthetic procedure.
Apart from one case (during which I carried it from one end of the hospital to the other – that is all) none of my cases were followed. However, I may be lurking in the background, trying to look intelligent… I have a flourescent pink flower in my hair Worth watching it for Dan The Man actually – really nice bloke.
And if you are wondering why I haven’t mentioned the last 6 months of BBC filming at college it’s because I wasn’t sure if I was allowed (we all know how dodgy these bloggettes can be). Suffice to say, now it’s officially listed in the Rad-Io-Tim-Es I’m assuming I can talk about it.
Though to be honest, it’s all a bit passe now anyway, this telly lark… *superior aloof bored expression*
From last year:
Though I do aim to fulfill at least some of them this year, and I’ve started already!
To date, I have achieved… slight decluttering of online lives. Still, it is only day 3. I have left EVE, refused to buy Sims 2 (despite being addicted to my sister’s copy already), and I’m in the process of leaving Neopets for good (giving my neopoints away to prevent me coming back).
And the results are:
50% success rate, if I’m generous to myself.
And my New New Year Resolutions for 2006:
Consider giving up milk in coffee.