Kurokawa in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

March 4, 2019, 5:07 p.m.
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Super busy day. Likely won’t have much time to write: which is SUPER strange for me. Though, maybe for the best as I kicked my ass at the gym this weekend and need time for my body to recuperate. lol. I did some weights, some jump rope, and then ran 5.3 miles. Yeah. Ouchie.

It doesn’t help that winter decided to cram 6 months of weather into 3 months of time. Mild winter until January… slammed in February (our state’s longest stretch without snow in Feb? 4 days)… and still cold and windy and snowy in March. It’s complicated… when it is 110 degrees and 98% humidity in the summer… I’ll be friggin’ miserable… and I’m fully aware of that. But at the same time? Yeah. Pretty much done with snow and sub zero temperatures.

So.... why am I busy today on a Monday? I have a meeting with 2 little girls (under the age of 13) who were sexually molested. That takes a lot of prep for a number of reasons. In fact, my “emotional walls” were being built over the weekend to the point where I didn’t even cry when my Dad called to tell me that their Dog was dead. I loved that dog. That dog loved me. The excitement he’d show whenever he saw me made me feel good no matter what was going on in my life. They’d had that dog since before I was even engaged. But… in my position, you do certain things to keep yourself capable to handle the hard stuff. Then after this meeting, I have to cover for my Boss at court for the afternoon.

QUESTION;
If Normal A is $60 but missing some pieces, Complete A is $100 and has everything, and Super A is $300 and has everything plus impressive artwork.... is $300 worth it?
I’m a huge Mortal Kombat Fan. I used to get through Art Class by drawing ideas for new Mortal Kombat characters and stages. The new game costs $60 but does not come with a Season Pass or DLC pre-purchase. The new game has a “DLC/Season Pass version” that costs $100. BUT there is also a version that comes with all the digital goodies plus a 1:1 scale Scorpion Mask. And yes, before you ask… I do have the Master Chief Helmet for Halo so this would already have a place. It’s just… I’m honestly not sure I can justify spending $300 for it.
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Wow… I’m a bad person. No idea where this thought came from. Just… sitting, minding my own business, and this thought occurred to me:
I actually kind of want to cheat on my wife.
NOT a thought I’m proud of and honestly, not a thought based on issues between us. Things aren’t perfect, obviously, but we’re making a lot more progress towards better than we’ve had before. But at the same time? I mean… I’ve never had sex with anyone else. It’s been 14 years since I even kissed someone else in any meaningful way. And sure, I imagine that if I were actually getting all of my emotional and physical needs met on a regular basis… maybe I wouldn’t feel this way. AND (to make it clear) there isn’t someone I’m interested in pursuing or anything so this isn’t an “active thought.” Just a passing thought of, “I kind of want to make out with someone who isn’t my wife. I kind of want to know what it would be like to have sex with someone else.”
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And now… list-icles and news articles. But before you just skip ‘em… this first one from Cracked is important. Because it is a thing that, even when I was in High School… confused and upset me. WHY why was “romantic” synonymous with “The psychopath that stalks the girl and manipulates her.”

5 Ways We Train Teenage Girls To Love Psychopaths
5: We Don’t Teach Girls How To Express Their Anger, So They Need A Surrogate
“It’s not that girls are forbidden from doing those things, but culturally they’re definitely discouraged. (The video game community is famously a kind and accepting space for a blossoming young woman, right?) In any movie or song intended to be shocking and aggressive, women are almost always going to be the targets of the violence, not the perpetrators. Society winds up sending the message that when it comes to rage, men are the source, and women the receptacle. So some girls take their anger and filter it through a “dangerous” boy.”

4: We Tell Them Creepy Dudes Are Hot
“So, thanks at least partly to Lord Byron, we landed on qualities like sad, cynical, and violent – the dark and brooding type. Honestly, if I had to date a guy from an era when society had just decided women were more people than property, I can see where “hates people” and “leaves me alone” might be desirable qualities in a life partner.”

3: We’re Really Bad At Portraying Abusive Relationships
“It’s hard to make healthy relationships that are fun to watch on screen (there’s a reason TV shows almost always flounder after a “will they or won’t they” storyline gets resolved). It’s easy to make a bad relationship look exciting and cool, because that’s the fantasy – the partner who gives you permission to break society’s oppressive norms.”

2: They Can See Aggressive Men As A Shield
“A 2016 study found that women who perceive themselves to be at greater risk of victimization tend to prefer physically formidable and dominant men. This is regardless of whether they actually are at a higher risk of victimization – it’s only their perception that matters. Well, let me tell you that no one on Earth feels more at risk than a teenage girl.”

1: They’re Empathetic At The Expense Of Their Own Safety
“According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, one common reason people stay in abusive relationships is that they want to help their partner, or believe they’re the only one who can change them. They’re trying to save an asshole from himself at the expense of their own safety. This urge is so strong that it manifests itself in even weirder ways. The Menendez brothers, Ted Bundy, the Night Stalker, and both of the Hillside Stranglers got married in prison. The Parkland shooter has already received hundreds of letters offering friendship, sympathy, and suggestive photos.”

5 Unhelpful Ways We Respond To A Friend In Crisis
5: Giving Obvious Advice About What You’d Do Instead
“So if someone is upset that their boss keeps making them work unpaid overtime, don’t say, “Next time he pulls that, I’d tell him to go fuck himself!” Not only is this shunning actual advice in favor of making yourself look like an assertive badass, but it’s also implying that they had no good reason for not doing that the first time. It’s the same for the oh-so-common advice people offer as a response to harassment: “If that drunk guy was creeping on you, why didn’t you just kick him in the balls?”“

4: Assuring Them That You’re Not Part Of The Problem
“This is another one that often has a gender element. Upon hearing tales of a shitty man’s behavior, men tend to rush in to say that while they’re so ashamed to be a man right now, not all men are like that. They certainly aren’t. It’s another example of the human brain sneakily disguising a boast as friendly reassurance. It also contains zero useful information for the victim: Even if you think 99 percent of men (or police, or Uber drivers, or whatever) are righteous, it doesn’t help the victim, because it just means they happened to run into one of the 1 percent.”

3: Assuring Them That Something Similar – Or Worse – Happened To You
“It’s a strange impulse, because we’re usually fine admitting that we have no frame of reference in other circumstances. If your friend is a pilot and you’re an accountant, you’re not going to respond to an anecdote by trying to draw a tortured analogy between an Excel formula you whipped up and an emergency landing they had to make. But when it comes to grief and tragedy, we feel like failures for not having some equivalent story in our pocket.”

2: Offering “This Is An Opportunity In Disguise!” Inspiration
“It also puts pressure on them to be positive, when hey, sometimes being negative is the reasonable response. Not everything is a problem you can solve by slapping a smiley face Band-Aid on it. It’s OK to be sad that something objectively terrible happened, and it’s fine to let someone else be sad. Sometimes they need time to adjust to the fact that things are just worse than they used to be.”

1: Feeling Like You Have To Say Something
“Well, you’re being helpful just by being someone who cares enough to listen to a long rant from your friend about how their boss is an asshole, or how they don’t get enough respect in the dating world, or how some arrogant know-it-all on the internet is trying to police their conversations. And sometimes that’s as helpful as you can be, being there and listening without judgment. By groaning at all the right moments, by offering all the right affirmations. By agreeing that yes, a food truck that only served borscht was a great idea, despite the market’s stern rejection.”

The 5 Weirdest Schemes Real Countries Use To Pay The Bills

5: Thai Restaurants Are Secretly Funded By The Thai Government
“Time to remove the tinfoil from the takeaway boxes and put it on your head, because Thai restaurants are a massive conspiracy. But not a malicious one; merely a delicious one. Thailand depends greatly on tourism, and it is the government’s belief that yummy “authentic” Thai food plays a big factor in that. So for decades, they’ve been training chefs, offering cheap food exports, and funding Thai restaurants abroad – all in order to turn the cuisine into an international mainstay. They even prefabricated three stock restaurant types for expat entrepreneurs to choose from. So if you ever wondered why a lot of Thai restaurants look copy/pasted, well, they are.”

4: Pacific Islands Once Survived On Phone Sex Scams
“International phone calls are expensive, and international phone calls that reroute all the way around the world and back again are ridiculously expensive. So phone sex companies would string calls through Niue and its neighbors to wherever their husky-voiced women were, and horny callers didn’t realize what was up until they were hit with massive unexpected bills for thousands of dollars. None of this was overtly illegal, either, because all the advertisements technically said something about how “international rates apply” – they just didn’t mention that the nation in question could only be reached via seaplane.”

3: Bhutan Props Up Its Economy With Novelty Stamps
“While it is a very happy country, Bhutan isn’t a wealthy one. For a long time, over half of its budget was dependent on foreign aid, and they had virtually no exports. But then some Bhutanese genius discovered stamp collecting – the nerd hobby that gets you beaten up by other, cooler nerds. Philatelists pay good money for rare and exotic stamps, so the country (which has fewer people than Detroit) decided to get into the business, creating national stamps for the explicit purpose of making them collectibles. Which explains why Donald Duck has been deemed a Bhutanese cultural icon; it was just so they could stick his bill on a stamp.”

2: Tuvalu Rents Out Its Web Domain For Millions
“In 1998, Tuvalu managed to license its .tv domain rights to a Hollywood company for triple its yearly GDP, which finally allowed them to get electricity everywhere and pay the $100,000 entry fee to join the United Nations. (That might seem like a lot of money, but it includes membership to their gym.) And thanks to the current obsession with online video content, Tuvalu’s .tv stock is soaring higher and higher, with the 11,000-strong nation raking in about $2 million each year.”

1: Nauru Will Recognize Your Rogue State For Cash
“In July 2002, the island received $130 million from China to de-recognize Taiwan as an independent country … only to re-recognize it in 2005 after Taiwan gave them a better offer. In 2008, despite having zero diplomatic ties in the region, Nauru backed faraway Eastern European Kosovo as an independent state, against Russia’s wishes.”

4 Viral Science News Stories The Media Totally Screwed Up
4: Those “I Made A Bot Watch X” Stories Were Never Meant To Be “Scientific”
3: We Really Shouldn’t Have To Explain Why “Dimming The Sun” Is Not A Practical Proposal
2: There Were No Sonic Attacks On The Cuban Embassy
1: The GOP Didn’t Block The CDC From Using Certain Words In Its Reports

6 Miracle Cures That Are Way Worse Than The Disease Itself
6: Death Cap Mushrooms Are So Poisonous That They Even Kill Certain Cancers
5: Intestinal Parasites Can Treat Lupus
4: Arsenic Contamination Cuts Breast Cancer Rates By 50 Percent
3: If You Don’t Want Ulcerative Colitis, Smoke More Cigarettes
2: Meth Kills The Flu
1: Insect Stings Fight Cancer And Prevent Arthritis

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