Showing posts with label gratuitous advice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gratuitous advice. Show all posts

Friday, September 30, 2016

Bye-bye, ASSHOLE!





(Note: these videos were made last summer. Thus the shorts.)

This afternoon my husband and I went to one of our all-time-favourite places: Burnaby Lake, a sort of Shangri-La by the Shore that never fails to calm and thrill me at the same time.

Our favorite spot on Burnaby Lake is called Piper Spit. This is a large expanse of shallow water, a kind of wetlands on the margin of the lake, with a long dock for walking. At the end of it is a sort of round viewing area which gives you a great view of whoever happens to be making an appearance on that day.

We've seen sandhill cranes, dowitchers, wood ducks, Canada geese, blackbirds, cowbirds, mallards, some sort of diving bird we can't categorize, and probably a few dozen more species that move so fast or hide so well that we can't make them out.

The red-winged blackbirds, though - they are very special to me, ever since I realized that they will, when the mood strikes them, fly down and eat right out of your hand. As a little girl I would have fallen over with ecstasy at this, as I was always chasing after wild birds and never catching them. Someone had told me that if I put salt on their tail they would sit still for me, but somehow it never worked.




Today, the blackbirds were skittish and uncooperative. That was fine, because birds have a sort of group mood (like humans, who are also flock animals, though far less intelligent and perceptive). You see mostly juveniles who were born in the spring at this time of year, and they're wisely mistrustful of humans. The great gorgeous mature males seem to have no fear. More than once, I have had a blackbird in each hand, with other blackbirds trying to dislodge them. But for some reason, today the bold birds had taken off to parts unknown.

I had the seeds in my hand, I could HEAR the birds make that lovely "squinge" sound that just seems to open up Paradise, I could see them flitting about in the tree tops. I walked back and forth for a long time with my hand held out, and probably looked a bit foolish. But they weren't coming down. Only two weeks ago I'd had a juvenile male eating out of my hand. Oh well. I was about to give up on the whole thing, when.

Where.

Did.

This.

Guy.

Come.

From.

This was a "type", not a person. Big, husky, moustached. His belly seemed determined to take up more than its allotted amount of space. It was taking up a separate universe. He seemed "Important" in some obscure, overinflated way (in other words, FAT), like an unofficial Park Guide or Ranger Smith-type. I could almost see his Captain Marvel badge beneath his sagging sweats.

He walked up behind me and just stood there, freaking me out.

"No. No. No. They like black oil sunflower seeds." That was the first thing he said to me. This guy didn't say "hello" or tell me his name. Not even a friendly wave. Maybe his name was They Like Black Oil Sunflower Seeds, but it didn't seem very likely. It seemed more likely that his opening line was advice, based on the fact that I obviously didn't know what the hell I was doing and desperately needed him to set me straight.




"You gotta get some black oil sunflower seeds. You should get rid of that stuff you're trying to feed them, they won't take it." (They had "taken" it a dozen times, eagerly, in the past.) "Or you can maybe try picking some of the sunflower seeds out of that stuff you have. No, I mean right away, do it now! Try it!" Feeling hypnotized by his mediocrity, I actually made a feeble effort to pick out a few sunflower seeds before thinking, screw you.

"That guy is super-friendly" (pointing to one of the more shy birds in a treetop, one that was basically indistinguishable from all the others. In other words: if that bird is 'super-friendly', and I am not - unlike every other bird-lover on the planet - attracting him, I am either innately repellent to blackbirds or just so inept that any bird worth its salt would stay away from me and my wormy seeds.) The way he said it, "super-friendly", had a funny kind of imperative inflection: 'I told you not to do that!", like a weird sort of accusation.

His parting shot was, "Don't shake your hand" (I had always found that sifting the seeds a little made them more visible and brought them down more readily). "Don't make those noises either." Oh! So bird noises don't attract birds. That's why people ALWAYS whistle and make bird noises to birds.

They're wrong.




Do you know, never once did I ask for any sort of advice from this guy? He never even gave me his name. He just walked right up to me out of nowhere, Mr. Learned and Omniscient Outdoorsman Who Knows A Hell of a Lot More About Blackbirds Than I Do, and just merrily said, "you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong" - and, moreover, "I know how to do it right, and now I'm going to tell you how so you can stop making a complete fool of yourself."

I didn't fully realize I was a victim of mansplaining until I got in the car. On the way home I began to boil. "I wish that son-of-a-bitch could have SEEN me that day in August when I had a large male blackbird on EACH HAND, and then a female blackbird intercepted and knocked one of the males off. I wish that son-of-a-bitch knew that I've been attracting and feeding blackbirds out of my hand since the first day I came here! I wish that son-of-a-bitch knew he had the WRONG BLACKBIRD when he said 'that guy's super-friendly'. It could have been any blackbird. In fact, it WAS just any blackbird. He probably knew that and did it just to shame me and make me feel like a loser!"

Asshole!

I think he was a little bit surprised that I didn't thank him. I think he was a little bit surprised that I didn't clasp my hands beside my face and say, "Ohhhhhhhhh, Mr. Blackbird Expert! THANK you for saving my afternoon by pointing out all my mistakes to me and saving me from my own obvious helplessness and inadequacy.  And here I didn't even have to ask!"






My only consolation is that I know from the pit of my stomach that this creep has NEVER fed two, no, THREE blackbirds at the same time, has probably never even fed ONE. He has probably spent his life walking up to people just to point out how inept they are and setting them straight.

No! Not walking up to people. Walking up to women!

Because no guy would ever take the shit I took from this pompous idiot. Because  he does not even walk UP to men like that - just women - weak little, simpering little, non-blackbird-feeding women. He probably walked away swelling with self-importance and satisfaction and felt he'd done his fucking duty for the day.

I would say I hope I never see him again, but no. I hope I see him again. I hope I see him when I have two blackbirds on each hand, and one on my shoulder, looking like St. Francis of Fucking Assisi.
But by then he will have conveniently forgotten who I am - or, worse, he'll think to himself,: hmmmmmmmm! She must have taken my advice!

(Please note. All videos and gifs on this post are of ME with BLACKBIRDS. Super-friendly, aren't they?)




Wednesday, November 11, 2015

In pain? ANY kind of pain? Shut the fxxx up and TAKE THIS!




This spiel (below) was taken from a Facebook forum about fibromyalgia. Along with the stories from (mostly) women who had lived with this condition for years and tried everything to ease it, there was this block of advice, not asked for, and (I hope) not taken by anyone. It starts off on an "I used to be like you, I understand your pain" level, the usual insincere patronizing bullshit. (Yes, I used to be "like you" -  an unenlightened loser who was obviously the cause of her own distress.) But keep reading, and you'll see the deeper meaning of this thing. It's an ad, folks, and that's all it is.

There will always be someone holding out The Cure, but the way to test their sincerity is to figure out what's in it for them. And if you think they just want to share their good fortune with the world, think again. They're really after your bucks. Don't fall for it. And don't EVER dump your meds because one of these clueless people says you "should"! Meds can be a glorious gift from God, I'm here to tell you, and probably saved my life more times than I can count. "Use" is not "abuse", and it's time people stopped equating the two.




I have had Fibro for 20 years. I know what you are suffering with. I had gotten to the point that I only did what I had to to get thru the day. I turned down doing things with my family because I hurt too bad. I have tried several prescription meds like Lyrica, Neurontin, cymbalta just to name a few. I have tried supplements, physical therapy and chiropractic and nothing ever worked. I have tried diets as well to help with the inflammation in my body. My friend recently introduced me to a company called Plexus Worldwide. It is a health and wellness company that provides natural products that help with many medical issues including Fibromyalgia. I was very skeptical even coming from one of my good friends. Nothing else had worked so why would this product. After several months of my friend telling me about this product o decided to try it. The products that I started with is Triplex and it has 3 products in it. One is a Slim drink packet that you mix with water and taste like a cherry drink. The second is Probio5. It puts the good stuff back into your gut the third one is Biocleanse which detoxes your gut. 




Most diseases are started due to poor gut health. Plexus products regulates your sugar levels, decreases the inflammation in your body, lowers cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, decreases inflammation, gives you energy, decreases cravings for sugar and carbs, helps with sleep, and as an added bonus can promote weight loss. It is an amazing product. I have been taking Plexus for 2 months and I am feeling the best I have in years. My Fibro pain is gone, my inflammation is gone, I am sleeping so much better, I have lost my cravings for diet coke and junk, I have been able to stop taking Lyrica and Neurontin, I have ton of energy, I love to keep busy, enjoying my family again and my list could probably go on and on. The best part is that I have my life back. I have lost 22 lbs plus 5 1/4 inches off my waist and 3 inches off my hips. I feel great. I would love for you to check out Plexus because I know it could help you with your Fibro. Plexus has a 60 day money back guarantee which you can't beat. You have nothing to loose but you may just get your life back. Plexus is sold on my website at (xxxxx) and you can email me at (xxxxx). Please look over the information on my website and contact me if you have any questions.




OK, so you probably know by now that I get incensed by some of the stuff that appears on Facebook. Though I've never had fibromyalgia, I know a number of people who do, and one of the WORST things you can do to a person in that situation is give gratuitous advice, particularly about what they're doing wrong to bring on the condition and what they should be doing right to cure it.

Invariably, like this voluminous spiel (name left out, I don't know why I don't just leave these in and let these assholes twist in the wind), there's a link to a personal web site dedicated to selling The Product that will make all this pain and anguish just go away. Like the snake oil of old, it is "good for man or beast", as well as oiling machinery and defending the free world, and guaranteed to devastate anyone who just needs someone to listen to them for a change. I don't think people with chronic conditions are looking for the anodyne of the week, nor are they thirsting for that ONE true link that will take them to the magical (non-pharmaceutical, of course) substance that will make everything all right again.


Several times in the past year I've had emails from people I know - or thought I knew - and the sum total of the "message" is a link to some herbal weight-loss scheme that no doubt works as well as all the rest of them (i. e. if it works so well, why is there another one next month or next week?) What sort of mailing list am I on, anyway? How anonymous and random is it, or is it somehow "targeted" (that lovely marketing term, which is used all the time now - but think about it. What is a "target" anyway? Think of "target practice", bows and arrows, etc.)? I even flirted with the notion that "somebody" thought I needed a weight loss supplement. But I KNOW I don't need it now because I just lost a substantial amount of weight. But I'm not here to Share My Secret, sell you anything or hang out a shingle. I lost weight because I ate less.




Almost no one knows how to receive another's pain. But one way NOT to do it is, "Oh, yes, I used to be like you. I used to have what you have. But everything changed when I dumped all my prescription drugs, embraced a much healthier way of life (implying that the sufferers aren't really trying and their attitude is dragging them down) and started taking xxxxx. All my symptoms went away and now I have tons of energy and a wonderful life!" The defense for this sort of obnoxious attitude is a "huh? Hey, I was only trying to help!" No, you were not.  You were shoring up your insecurity by trumpeting your conversion (and these things really do have the flavour of a religious awakening) to a Whole New Way of Life, usually available for $39.99 (for a whole months' supply! Order now), which is, just coincidentally, for sale on YOUR web site. No doubt these mercenaries sift through health-related Facebook pages/posts trying to find vulnerable people/potential customers, and no doubt move on quickly when somebody bites back (which they hardly ever do: everyone is afraid to talk back to these types, it seems).




Real compassion isn't "hey, I used to be like you" or even (as I got once, from someone who really should have known better, "When I look at you, Margaret, I think: there but for the grace of God go I"). It's having the guts and the grace and the humanity to listen without judgement, to accept that person's reality, and the self-esteem NOT to have to strut your stuff and constantly prove how much better you are. This is the realm of the fragile, but it's also the province of the greedy and heartless. These products sell like mad and seem to garner all sorts of testimonials, but who knows who writes them. Meantime, if someone shares their pain with you, ANY kind of pain, feel honoured, and don't say "I used to be like you, but then I wised up. If you want to fix it, here's what you should do."
(If you'd like to see what this woman is hawking, just click on the pink link below.)

Home



And here, a sensible retort from a woman who has had enough of this B. S.:

Please!!!!! Stop posting crap here. Water????? Seriously? A ph balance is the cause? Gees someone give this moron the Nobel prize. There are a few too many quacks here giving advice like get rid of meds? Without mine you might as well bury me now.

A post to the post: I've done a bit of digging, and this woman's blurb for Plexus Worldwide, which has a frighteningly Brave New World-ish sound to it, appears all over the place on Facebook. . . verbatim. It never varies. Buried among all the authentic comments, it still sticks out like a sore thumb, except for that phony "I've been there" at the beginning, a fake attempt to "identify" and disguise the blatant pitch. I wouldn't be surprised if it appears with only the name of the disease changed. I left a couple of comments, to which she replied "???". I don't think she understands what I am talking about. Can the phony "I used to be like you until I saw the light" crap. I don't even care if you were. Just can it.





Post-post-to-the-post:
Now here is a REALLY interesting response, praising my piece on gratuitous advice/self-serving sales pitches. What really gets me is that these people seem oblivious to the fact that they are neatly proving my theory.

Hi Margaret, I'm Marianne with Personal Capital, and I really love how much of yourself you share with your readers. The fibro post was great by the way and I totally agree with you on how annoying those salespeople are!! :)

I was surprised to learn from a recent CNBC article that only 53% of us working-age women have started planning for retirement compared to 65% of our male peers!

I'd love for you to pick a female friend or family member to showcase in a post on your blog as a female financial role model. Maybe she writes a grocery list before shopping to fit her budget, or started walking to work to save money on gas.

Small decisions like these really add up over time and help people save for retirement. I think this would be inspirational for women reading your post who may not have a strong female role model, and haven't thought much about saving money for retirement.

Please let me know if you're interested and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. Through October and November, we will be sharing some of our favorite posts on Twitter and Facebook, where we have over 10,000 followers each. I hope to see yours :)

Best,
Marianne Ahlmann


You know, this really makes sense to me. Obviously she loves my blog, and loves the way I rat out scammers. So. . . I hereby nominate ME as a financial role model (or roll model - I make good rolls, try to roll with the punches, and have rolled the dice that this will expose the kind of obtuseness and greed that drives mega-corporations).




I have more to say about all this, as my good friend Matt Paust has exposed Plexus Worldwide for what it really is. You can guess from the name that it's worse than Scamway, and my suspicion of the "good for man and beast" nature of their products is correct. This includes the infamous Pink Drink which guarantees dramatic weight loss in only a few days, but is likely the same product that cures fibromyalgia (which the sales rep claims to have). No doubt she also used to weigh 300 pounds, but after a few chug-a-lugs of Pink Drink is now 112.




Meantime, here's lots more, including an entire blog on the subject! Just click on the"pink links" below.

http://pinkdrinkscamalert.blogspot.ca/p/my-pinkwashed-journey-introduction.html

http://www.realscam.com/f9/plexus-worldwide-plexus-scam-pink-drink-reviews-plexus-sliim-4171/

http://www.plexuspoint.com/plexus-slim-reviews/


"Just one more thing. . . " I'm starting to feel like Columbo today.

It's a boggy landscape in Plexusland. You have to be extremely careful what you believe. My third "pink link" (above)  seemed to be solely devoted to debunking the mysterious Plexus Pink Drink, the one that doesn't actually help anybody lose weight, but after scrolling through about 20 pages, the author's tone began to subtly change.

No longer was she ranting about Plexus and posting "REAL" (negative) reviews, which she may well have written herself. Now she seemed to be hinting that yes, indeed, there was a secret to permanent weight loss, but you had to keep reading to find out what it was.

And reading. and reading. This site had all sorts of gimmicky charts and pictures and things, the strangest being a person stuck to a wall. As you scrolled down and scrolled down, the "science" of this secret was laid out in agonizing detail, but at a certain point you began to feel the subtle tug-tug of a hook.

Yes, a hook. In the form of a book.




This "debunker" whose life mission it was to discredit the pink slime/scam was selling a book about the REAL secret of weight loss. The cover was a blatant ripoff of the ". . . For Dummies" series, but it was amateurish enough that it looked self-published. I didn't stick around long enough to see how much it cost.

She has the One True Religion, see. You don't need to drink anything. You don't need to DO anything. But you do need to buy something. And though this didn't quite look like the pyramid/Ponzi scheme pushed by Plexus, it had a feeling of "wait, there's more" - another little hook, ONE more thing you needed to do, to buy, to believe in, in order to help you achieve your lifetime goals of fitness, health and longevity.





Conclusion and Guidance

All in all, Plexus Slim MIGHT work for a minor few. We don't know who these 'few' people are. It might be you, yes, it might work for you. But do you really want to spend $115/month for the next 6 months to find out?
AND that's not even the bad part, the worst part is: Do you want to risk all the side effects mentioned here?

I am sure if you're sane, the answer's A BIG NO!

So a better alternative for the sane:

Update: June 22 !

You can now find out if Plexus Slim is specifically right for you.

Just choose the right answers for the 6 questions below & find out if Plexus is right for YOU...

1. What's your age?

20-30
30-40
40-50
50 or above

Note: If you are below 20, you shouldn't even be here!

Concluding…

You DO NOT need Plexus to get fit, healthy, lose fat or {insert-any-of-your-desire-here!}

Each one of us is different. You ARE truly unique.

Your body, your metabolism, literally everything is distinctive about you.

So the hope of "one-drink-cures-all" is one of the silliest myths, and these "recurring monthly billing" product companies make a fortune off it!
Yet…

What you actually need is…





Huh? What does that mean?

That image hides the best kept secret of the entire fitness industry... a secret these companies will protect more than anything, and prevent you from finding about it...

But wait a sec... what the he** does that Spiderman like guy got to do with your weight!?

I explain it in this next post…

READ WHAT THE IMAGE MEANS

(By the way, the "right answers" to the above quasi-quiz all take you to the same page saying Plexus is poison, and the only answer to your weight problems is to buy the book.)



  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Saturday, May 9, 2015

"Take my advice, I'm not using it"






Another journal entry. I get inspired in the morning and run off at the keyboard with my personal philosophy.

May 9/15

Saturday again; beautiful again. I don’t know. I keep telling myself I should be more unhappy, or not happy with what I have. All these people who continually exhort you to be happy with what you have: do they need to say it to you, or to themselves? And even if it’s to you, why are they so compelled to say it? What business is it of theirs what another person does? Are they so affronted by people who AREN’T happy with what they have? Do they have to be checked and corrected by someone with an obviously superior world view?





Why are we constantly being told how we should feel, how we should think? In the trivializing age of Facebook, etc., it’s even worse, with memes and other spiritual sound bites abounding, most of them patently untrue. It’s never “This is what I believe” or even “this is what I think you should do”, it’s “DO THIS”, as if the words are being passed down on high from Mount Olympus.

For God’s sake, don’t ask for anything beyond what you have already! At the same time, you can have absolutely anything you want in life if you try hard enough! (OK then, my order is in: 5 million dollars and a palomino pony.) And how about this one: never quit! Never quit! This is one of the most self-limiting things a person can practice, because sometimes quitting is the most liberating thing a person can do. It can release you from the shackles of trying, and trying, and trying, and feeling like a miserable failure because you “can’t succeed”, and what’s the matter with you anyway, shouldn’t you be able to have anything you want if you just try hard enough (and keep trying, and keep trying)?





I’ve known people who’ve gotten divorced, and when they tell their friends and relatives, it’s either “Oh NO!” (as in, a tornado just destroyed my house), or ‘Oh, nooooo. . . “ as in “my cat just got run over”, or – it’s harder to describe this “oh no”, but it’s a combination of grief, disappointment and bewildered judgement, as in “how in hell could YOU have let this happen?” These people, and that means most people, see it as a failure and even an unmitigated tragedy.

And there’s an even worse one, a sort of appalled, horrified silence, sort of like “my son was caught masturbating in class”. They just don’t know what to say.

So what of the people who have been in a miserable relationship for years and years, have felt alienated and alone, have fought bitterly and without hope of resolution, have endured infidelities and physical and emotional abuse from their partners? I’m afraid it’s still “nooooooo” from most people, because they have no idea what was going on, OR, they had full knowledge of what was going on and felt they should still stay together for the sake of the children. Or maybe they just weren’t trying hard enough.




Walking away from anything is a failure, even if, after walking away, you find the love of your life and are happy for the first time in your life. No, stay stuck, it’s more noble, and for God's sake keep your problems to yourself because talking about them, or even admitting you have them and couldn’t tolerate them any more, makes your friends and relatives deeply uncomfortable.

And that brings me to this point: gratuitous advice. Why are we supposed to be so grateful when someone throws buckets of unsolicited advice at us, when we either haven’t asked for it or have maybe asked them one small, simple question? This demonstrates several things. One, the advice-giver believes their view of things is far superior to yours, and by extension, you’re pretty incompetent at what you do and need to be set straight. Two, that you should be grateful for these stone tablets, even if you’re being  hit over the head with them. Three, that your obvious failure is an affront to them and, yes, makes them very uncomfortable. Buckets of advice douse this ineffectual, smoldering fire. Or so they think.





Advice-giving and homilies are a great way to shut someone up, usually someone suffering grief and pain. Here, have this, it’ll solve everything. You may go away now. Your grief and pain has just been corrected. I should know; I have never experienced anything like that! “Hmm, well, I'm glad that never happens to me. Here’s what you should do.”

It is the very rare person who can receive your pain, and do you know what? We usually have to pay them. Even then, real help is a dicey proposition because most therapists go by the book and say very trite things so they can congratulate THEMSELVES on what a great job they’re doing. And if your dismay and even anger persist, well then, you just have a lousy attitude and should correct yourself and adjust to the therapeutic environment. I'm giving you all this help, and you’re not “co-operating”, which means you're just innately self-destructive.  Sorry, I can’t treat you any more if you’re not willing to change.





I won’t get into such trite crap as “everything happens for a reason” (a baby dying of leukemia? School shootings? Al-Qaeda? The Third Reich? I could go on.) It’s almost as bad as "it's all part of God’s plan” (something someone said to me when my son’s roommate was murdered, his head kicked in in a parking lot by two "friends" after a bar fight). Or, worst of all, “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Oh yes? Have you ever heard of suicide, or are “those people” outside the human pale?  I knew a lady who liked to say, “Our prisons and psychiatric hospitals are full of people who had more than they could handle.”

But hey.  I never have more than I can handle, so I can inflict this philosophy on you with impugnity. In fact, having “helped” you this way, I can dust off my hands and carry on, free from having to stare into the grief-stricken eyes of a fellow human being in genuine human pain.





  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!