Morv

If you have been open with your parents, you're doing better than most. Congrats on that.

Perhaps you're just focusing on it a bit more than the average person. It's been a while since I've read the books, but I remember some of what you're talking about. Part of Martin is that he's gritty. One could also say he's obsessed with cruelty and sadism. Or whores, or brothels, and prostitution. Or incest. Or blowjobs. I remember Tyrion, I believe, once saying that he wanted to die with his cock in a whore's mouth. Anyway, unless you've had to handle someone who is incontinent and bed-ridden, you have no idea how gross it can be in rather short order. And if you're not already doing or thinking about that stuff as much as we are, you're not desensitized. Even those of us here who aren't into messing can probably summon up a far more detailed and vivid image than a member of the general population at the mention of wetting or a soiled bed, etc. For Joe Shmoe on the street, without decent description it just never becomes as real... it is a detached foreign concept. I think Martin chooses these gritty situations to allow characters to act as foils for each other. Characters demonstrate their similarities and differences in the way that they handle similar situations, in comparison to their fellows. It's a standard literary technique for fairly elegant character building.

Honeywell6180, regarding not marketing toward those with disabilities... how do you draw that conclusion from the ad? Why shouldn't marketing with celebrities work for people with disabilities like it does for the rest of us? Put cool people in an ad for a product and people will apply cool to the product too. Basic association and attribution. And, other than incontinence, there are many customers/potential customers of depends who aren't disabled. Television ads are, I would guess, only part of the brand's marketing. I suspect that a large percentage of marketing to disabled individuals occurs more through a disabled individual's interactions with doctors, HMOs, insurance companies, care providers, hospitals who provide them services regarding the individual's disability. And that marketing, to other companies happens more behind the scenes. I personally find it annoying, but my experience as a care provider is that pretty much any incontince brief product, tabbed or pull-up, is referred to as a Depend, regardless of the product's actual brand. Now that's some serious name recognition. Just like Styrofoam -- a brand name. The product is polystyrene, but nobody calls it that. I mean, they must not have to put much into advertising to hospitals, group homes, product retailers. Besides, regardless of the demonstrations they did, these ads were clearly more about creating a warm-fuzzy positive feeling than actually proving they have a superior product to their competitors. They're trying to make their customers/potential customers feel good about themselves. They want their product associated with that positive emotions and people who are strong, healthy and attractive. Transference. (Try and tell me someone who is disabled doesn't want to feel strong, healthy and attractive at least as much as the rest of us want to...) If they wanted you to be thinking about the qualifications of the product itself they'd be demonstrating by pouring some blue liquid in it like those commercials for paper towels or maxi pads or sham-wow. They would have used phrases like "laboratory tested", "study", "scientifically tested", "scientifically proven", "space age", "cutting edge technology", and there'd be charts or graphs or using lab equipment like scales or beakers or flasks. They'd have real-looking people giving testimonials like that tan woman with dark hair in the Speedy-Cath commercials. There's a lot to how commercials and advertising work. It's kinda nifty.

drynot, I agree love is not the optimal term. But there is some level of concern that exists before a person opens their mouth--be it positive or negative. But, hey, I'm quite happy believing that I'm better than the average fuck, so if you are willing to suggest that anybody who comments on another's weight does so only in a negative light, it leaves me to feel better than the average joe. But, to be fair, it takes some pretty extreme measures to make me open my mouth in regard to this subject. But, tell me, which is worse: "Hey, I feel sorry for you, because you are so overweight." or "Hey, I am disgusted by you, because you don't know how to present yourself in public, and you are so overweight." Social stigmatization of commentary makes it nearly impossible to say anything to someone who is overweight without it being turned into an offensive comment by the recipient. Yes, many people are being rude, mean, and abusive. I get that. So, how do those of us who have been there and want to offer support do so? Just being quiet and hoping for the best is like looking at a person waddling toward a cliff and figuring that they'll notice something is wrong. Sometimes the truth hurts. We're not all perfect, and we're not all great. One can ignore it or accept it. Once acceptance occurs, then one can either ignore or accept further input, but nonetheless have a better realization of its validity.

Maybe I'm being a jerk here, but... if nobody pointed out to somebody that they were overweight, then there would be zero outside pressure to change it. There is a fine line between politely ignoring and enabling, just as there's a fine line between pointing things out and being a bully. As a kid I got teased about my weight, and it sucked -- but, I was a kid, and I didn't really have the intellectual resources to know how to change my weight successfully. Now I am an adult and I do have those mental faculties in place. The message (at least from me) is not that fat people suck and should hide. The message is that it may not be easy, but this is something you CAN change about yourself, and there are organizations and individuals who can and will help you if you take the time to find them and put in the effort to work with them. But, my bottom line is that I wouldn't volunteer to be representative of a community if I might cast a bad light on said community. Being morbidly obese is unhealthy, and sitting on the outside, there's not much other people can do. People don't comment on things like someone's weight if they don't care at all. I mean, if I saw someone with a gun to their head, I'd ask what was up with the gun. Heart attacks, hear disease, and diabetes are just as real as a bullet in a gun. You just have more time and opportunities to fix the problem than you do with a gun. And the sad reality is that some people won't ever pull the gun from their head, just as some people will never lose the weight. Doesn't mean either one desires the outcome that is headed their way... but sometimes a person just can't see another way out, they don't comprehend or accept a better solution. The real negative reinforcement that is unnecessary is every advertisement in the media with a size 0 model. Now that's an in-your-face statement which is geared toward making money and truly has NO care about your feelings or mental state if you aren't part of their target audience.

Where did your shrink go to school?

Thanks for the well wishes and prayers. My dad passed away last Wed. with his family at his side.

I'm going to recommend contacting the police, filing the police report and contacting insurance, filing a claim. But for a different reason. This neighbor is not bright. He burnt it on the property line -- without contacting you. He did something dangerous where it was likely to affect your property, in the violation of the law intended to protect people. Then he wants to be mad at you? This guy either doesn't realize other people exist and are important, or he doesn't care. He also seems to not get that this is a bad idea. He could be dangerous. Could turn out that he's harmless, too... but if not, and if this dipshit ends up say, starting a forest fire. And say, several people are killed in said fire... do you want to take the chance that a hefty fine and perhaps even a yelling at by a judge might have prevented his future behavior? What if that fine is enough to discourage him from being a fucking moron with fire again? Stupid people who act with the approval of their own consciences don't just stop without an outside force acting. That's how I'd go about it myself. Either way, good luck with it. How bad was the damage to the shed? I hope you can get it repaired or replaced soon. Good luck.

I can appreciate being afraid. I think this particular effort is misguided and an effective way of addressing a non-problem.n (Edit: you can block search engines from crawling pages fairly easily, including forum pages.) I think that people should know the name, know what the guy did in a synopsis such as you just gave, and it should be known that he's an outcast. Same goes for others. Helping people be vigilant does not occur by making the past harder to learn about -- especially when the past makes your point so well. Translating his name into something else... I personally feel it is a bit juvenile. (Ok, that made me stop and laugh a bit.) If people started talking about him or his site in a positive light... well, isn't that what mods are for? To remove inappropriate messages and shut down inappropriate discussions and move threads to the correct forums (such as a garbage can, in some cases)? And how much discussion of this guy is there really going to be besides the curious person like me who doesn't know, but heard someone else mention it (and more than likely get the facts WRONG making it even harder to let people learn from the situation)? I don't see it being a notable burden on mods, and I also think most members here would mention someone talking positively about a site like that rather fast. Eh, just my two cents. As a rule, I'm against censorship. I'm actually more interested in the answers to the other questions. Freta, I'm gonna beat up your analogy, because I'm feeling cerebral. You forgot the sulfuric acid. Nitrous acid and glycerine together without the sulfuric acid won't form nitroglycerine. The sulfuric acid has to pull electrons away from the nitric acid, creating protonated nitric acid species. This is necessary for the nucleophilic oxygens on the glycerine to attack it. Then ya better watch out.

If I may ask, how did DK from Quality Diapers know/have a business arrangement with ABU? Can you shed some more light on the relationship of those 3 entities (and I mean real light, not a sentence or two): DK, Quality Diapers, and ABU? And split a container? If you're opening a container of diapers, it strikes me that whoever you're splitting it with better be in the same town as you, or else you'd end up paying just as much to ship half a container of a product. And one container has a mixed set of products in it? I don't get it. Maybe I'm thinking of "container" as a different size unit than it actually is in this case. Also, just to clarify, are the products the same from youth to adult versions, other than size? I'm just wondering how it would be useful to advertise a youth product using a youth model to sell adult products to adults. Let's face it, the average ABDL does NOT fit into kids sizes. (Not saying some of you don't; just on average.) And would you mind pointing me to some information about this DE - E-ker fellow? I swear I've seen the name before, but I guess I don't know what everyone else seems to. And by the way, LAME fracking censor. Makes it VERY hard to have a conversation and know what people are talking about when a name that comes up in conversation is censored like that. LAME, LAME, LAME. We may like to pretend to be toddlers and babies, but we have to say we're 18 to come in, so WTF with censoring that? And BBB, the point of the original post was that ABU did not decide to use a child model. Someone else decided to use a child model for a child product, and ABU decided to use their pictures. Not a big difference, but it is a difference.

Did that a couple weeks ago. Thanks for the prayers. Now it is just exhaustion.

I hope your your sake you understood the words, just not their meaning in that particular order.

I'm currently tending to my dad, who probably has until the end of the weekend. Only found out that he was going to die like 4 weeks ago, and it was unexpected news. We're rotating shifts between my brother, me and my mom. It's a hell of an experience.

That's a beautiful instrument. I love the 12 string sound, but you have so much more versatility with the six string attached to it. Changing guitars quickly in a show can be a trick to do.

My college's computer science program, when I was there (2000-05 -- I don't know what its like now), started with about 70-85 freshman; might have been as high as 100, but memory of those first classes is kinda fuzzy. By junior year, most classes had less than 20, with many at 7-15. Grading was so harsh that the curve usually had an A starting somewhere between 50%-70% on most exams. The profs made the department program that way; it would take someone with intellect as high as Stephen Hawking to break their curves. In my 5 years, nobody ever did; no prof had seen someone do it either. Several classes I took I was up at the top, grade wise. But, some of us studied our asses off, and some of us, it just came more natural to. That was a hard program. I think only about half the people I knew who were consistently up at the top of the class seemed to really be buckle-down type studiers, though. Most everyone drank, something about the stress. But, many of us who were at the top also did the same type of work outside of the scope of our college programs, and more likely than not, the real world experience we were gaining was more valuable than time spent studying. But, time put in is time spent learning. It's worth it to put the time in at school. Just gotta balance your life.