Unhijackable

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Dawn's post in Things You Shouldn't Have to Tell People made me think of an article in today's paper--a very sad article.

A woman was seen running down the highway shoulder taking her clothes off. She then ran into traffic and was killed. Her family reports she had mental issues, and had been devastated by a loss earlier this year. The state patrol had received a report when she was taking her clothes off, and consider that a high-priority incident, but before they could get there, she was killed.

I feel immensely sorry for her family, for the driver who hit her, and for the state patrol officer who couldn't get there in time. But I can't help wondering and waiting for someone to suggest that her family sue someone. And that makes me feel even sadder.

Seaboe

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

I guess this is my thread these days.

My BFF's father died on Sunday. It's been about 3 years since he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and he was 91. My friend is doing as well as can be expected. She's a little lost, since caring for him was the focus of her day (he lived in a care home, and hospice was with him when he died at 7:02 am).

I'm trying to get a few extra days off before shutdown (which begins 12/24) so I can go to Spokane and be with her. This is the third of four parents (two for her, two for me) to die around the holidays. My mother: 1/6/2003; My father: 12/4/2010; Her father 12/1/2018. Her mother died in May, 2016.

Seaboe

[thorny locust]

Seaboe, I am sorry. And I hope you get your time off.

[Lainie]

I'm very sorry, Seaboe.

Last night I dreamed that I couldn't sleep. It happens to me occasionally, and is nearly as exhausting as actually not sleeping.

[GenYus234]

And when you woke up, you found the dream had come true!!!!

[smittykins]

I'm sorry about your friend's dad, Seaboe..

[Gutter Monkey]

A few weeks ago I just happened to be in the right thread on a FB group at the right time to make what seemed to be a dumb smartass comment which had A TWIST!




Lo and behold, the same thing just happened




I always wanted a super power but I never suspected that if I finally got one it would be this dumb and useless.

WEIRDLY SPECIFIC SHOP RECOMMENDATIONS MAN ----- AWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

[dfresh]

Hmm, those stores are pretty generalized. Do you have any that specialize in rustic NORTHERN RED OAK wood?

[GenYus234]

'Sesame Street' Muppet becomes first to experience homelessness

http://www.cnn.com/2018/12/12/health...less-muppet-bn

I guess Oscar the Grouch doesn't count?

[ASL]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

'Sesame Street' Muppet becomes first to experience homelessness

http://www.cnn.com/2018/12/12/health...less-muppet-bn

I guess Oscar the Grouch doesn't count?

Indeed. It's a very "middle class" portrayal of homelessness.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

I guess Oscar the Grouch doesn't count?

Oscar is not homeless; his garbage can is his home. Apparently, there's an extensive basement.

Seaboe

[Beachlife!]

Originally Posted by ASL

Indeed. It's a very "middle class" portrayal of homelessness.

Its a very honest portrayal of homelessness as something that often doesn't mean living on the street. This is what homelessness is more likely to look like for a child. Part of the point of showing it this way is to educate people who seem to think this isn't 'real' homelessness.

I don't even know how one can call a family with no place to live and not enough resources to feed themselves 'middle class' with or without the quotes.

[dfresh]

As they said in the article, this is an attempt to let kids know that a lot of the homeless are not sleeping out on the streets or in a shelter, but are staying with friends, or in a car, or someplace like that. i think it is great they are doing this, to let the homeless kids know that they still matter.

[ASL]

Originally Posted by Beachlife!

Its a very honest portrayal of homelessness as something that often doesn't mean living on the street. This is what homelessness is more likely to look like for a child. Part of the point of showing it this way is to educate people who seem to think this isn't 'real' homelessness.

What I meant was that suggesting Oscar, who lives in a trashcan, is somehow "not homeless" by comparison is a very middle class way to look at homelessness because it dehumanizes those who are literally living on street corners and digging through garbage for subsistence, like they don't count or something. As if they must surely be homeless because they want to be (and that mental illness must surely not be a factor, or at least not a factor worth addressing with public funds) and that we should focus on all these people who look like us instead as being a more "sympathetic" sort of homeless.

Maybe Sesame Street should have a psychologist or social worker visit Oscar and talk with him about a low-income housing program that the Street is developing to help people like him get treatment, find a place to live, and maybe job training too?

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by ASL

Maybe Sesame Street should have a psychologist or social worker visit Oscar and talk with him about a low-income housing program that the Street is developing to help people like him get treatment, find a place to live, and maybe job training too?

It's against Grouchland law to ask for help under any circumstances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe4T73DbFts

Also Oscar's trash can is just a portal into Sesame Street, there's an entire complex inside it with multiple rooms including a swimming pool and an ice rink.

[ASL]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

It's against Grouchland law to ask for help under any circumstances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe4T73DbFts

Sounds like something someone with schizotypal personality disorder would say.

Also Oscar's trash can is just a portal into Sesame Street, there's an entire complex inside it with multiple rooms including a swimming pool and an ice rink.

Which also sounds like the sort of delusional/fantastical thinking someone with STPD would be susceptible to engaging in. He might even believe it. That doesn’t mean we should.

Not that it makes him a bad person—I mean, it’s a medical condition and all—just that we shouldn’t treat these delusions as charming quirks or otherwise indulge them. Rather, we should encourage Oscar to seek professional help and to stop living in a garbage can.

How is this in any way a controversial or fringe position to take?

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by ASL

Sounds like something someone with schizotypal personality disorder would say.


Which also sounds like the sort of delusional/fantastical thinking someone with STPD would be susceptible to engaging in. He might even believe it. That doesn’t mean we should.

No that's Oscar's reality. Other Sesame Street people have been to Groucholand and seen it for themselves, as I showed in the video I posted. I'm not just making this stuff up, it's been in the actual show for decades. You, on the other hand, seem to have decided to stick to an uninformed opinion and ignore any inconvenient evidence that would disprove it. It looks like you decided to climb up onto your high horse over this issue and are finding it difficult to get back down, would you borrow my step ladder or something??

Originally Posted by ASL

How is this in any way a controversial or fringe position to take?

Because you're jumping to unsupported conclusions about the character and ignoring actual documented information about him? Because you're being irrational? Because your big old judgemental knee jerked way too hard over this news story you know nothing about? Pick whichever one suits you I guess.

If you have any actual evidence to back up your opinion about Oscar's life then feel free to share it. I'm pretty certain you don't actually know anything about what you're talking about but I'm willing to be proved wrong.

[Jusenkyo no Pikachu]

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Oscar%27s_trash_can

[ASL]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

No that's Oscar's reality. Other Sesame Street people have been to Groucholand and seen it for themselves, as I showed in the video I posted. I'm not just making this stuff up, it's been in the actual show for decades. You, on the other hand, seem to have decided to stick to an uninformed opinion and ignore any inconvenient evidence that would disprove it. It looks like you decided to climb up onto your high horse over this issue and are finding it difficult to get back down, would you borrow my step ladder or something??

Look at it like this. In Mary Poppins, did they really enter Rupert's (or whatever Dick Van Dyke's street performer was called) drawing, or did they merely play at make believe, with the camera adopting the children's fantastical point of view?

See, you say they went to grouchland and it’s all on camera. I, a realist, posit that what actually happened is that some other residents of the Street indulged Oscar in one of his fantasies in an effort to reach out to him, not realizing that they were doing more harm than good by validating his delusions and steering him further away from getting treatment from a mental health professional.

If you have any actual evidence to back up your opinion about Oscar's life then feel free to share it. I'm pretty certain you don't actually know anything about what you're talking about but I'm willing to be proved wrong.

Are you really asking me to prove that we share a reality, where garbage cans don’t lead to magical underground worlds of swimming pools, police officers, and prisons for those who dare to ask for help? You might as well ask me to prove that you’re not just some brain in a vat, with me a mere figment of your imagination, because, I’m sorry, but I refuse to engage in arguments based on solipsism.

I respect you as a poster, but I will persist in my belief that people who, like Oscar live in or around garbage cans on the street and engage in similar delusions, are people and they’re worthy of help, not isolation and ridicule, or even being patronized by well-meaning but very much mistaken do-gooders.

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by ASL

Look at it like this. In Mary Poppins, did they really enter Rupert's (or whatever Dick Van Dyke's street performer was called) drawing, or did they merely play at make believe, with the camera adopting the children's fantastical point of view?

It's fiction.

Is Bilbo really a hobbit?




-- if you want to make the argument that the portrayal of Oscar diminishes and/or pokes fun at the lives of people who genuinely have to live in dumps and/or find their food in trash cans: that may indeed be a fair argument. I haven't watched any significant amount of Sesame Street, at any point during its existence, and can't comment on this particular case very coherently; but certainly the underlying assumptions that get made, and/or get reinforced, by fiction can be a significant problem.

But claiming that the fictional Oscar can't, within that fiction, be living in a sort of Bag of Holding, doesn't seem to me a very good way to try to build that argument.