Westboro porn???!!!!

Yep, a punk band filmed a (very short) bit of porn on the front lawn of the "church" we love to hate.

http://gawker.com/punk-band-shoots-porn-film-on-front-lawn-of-westboro-ba-1440680143

I don't entirely approve, but then again, the odds of *that* ground actually being hallowed are slim.

Do I have to tell you this is Not Safe For Work?

Self-sabotage and other issues

fayanora posted a link to about procrastination.

While reading it, I was reminded of other issues with similar causes.

Especially this paragraph

You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.

Growing up with "high expectations" and a parent who didn't believe in praise except for *exceeding* her expectations led to that sort of thing.

To use a sports analogy, it was like being criticized for every stumble and missed step, but at the same time being expected to turn in exceptional times on the track. *Before* you have gotten any experience at running, nor worked up your "wind", stamina and other skills and abilities that require practice or training (training in the sense of exercising an ability to improve it, not in the sense of being shown how to do it).

So you turn in a time of 15 for the hundred yard dash and get criticized for not being faster, totally ignoring the fact that your previous time was 17.

Improvement didn't matter because you weren't "good enough".

This is a recipe for getting someone to *hate* whatever it is that they are supposed to be "good at".

Being "smart" doesn't apply equally to all subjects. Nor will it help if the problems haven't been explained properly.


Mom got that basic arithmetic required drills (because it was mostly rote memorization). But any other math "should" have been "read the text", or "hear the technique explained" and then you should be perfect.

Yeah right.

Add in a large dose of "because *I* understand [unspoken rule] then it doesn't need to be explained to the kid. And if he gets it wrong, he's "not trying" or "lazy".

The logic there escapes me. You make getting things wrong *very* painful (often *literally* with liberal applications of the switch) yet failures must be from lack of effort, they can't *possibly* be from poor teaching that lead to lack of information or lack of understanding of some crucial detail.

In my later teens I actually had the guts to actually say that I wished I had a father so that there'd be somebody to appeal mom's irrational decisions to.

Oh yeah, hit someone with "not trying" and "lazy" often enough, combined with their best efforts getting "you can do better" and eventually they *will* quit putting forth any effort they aren't forced to. Why should they? They'll get punished anyway (and don't try to claim that "not trying", "lazy" and "you can do better" *aren't* punishment regardless of any physical "discipline" applied)

Yeah, I've never raised any kids. Hell, given what *my* childhood was like, and the "sterling example" I had, I decided a *long* time ago that it was best if I didn't ever have any. Not that I've had the chance.

But that doesn't mean that what I have to say can be casually tossed aside. I've got *lots* of experience (that unlike too many adults, I actually *remember) at what sort of treatment will be seen as grossly unfair by any child with an ounce of brains.

Sure, kids don't have the best judgment on many things. But there's that famous quote about a ruler not only having to be fair & just nut must be *seen* as fair and just.

Lots of necessary stuff is going to be resented by kids. But there's lot of stuff that *isn't* fair or just, merely "parents always have [and always will] gotten away with" that just maybe needs a second look. Or a third.

At the very least folks, try to rein in your expectations. Take a look and see if the kid has done better than last time. Even if you think the kid can do better (and you just might be wrong about that) they *did* do better. That doesn't merit a "you can do better". That merits a "you did better. Good" Then, *after* they've gotten that little bit of carrot, *maybe* it will be appropriate to start discussing how they can do better next time.

And don't *assume* things. Maybe they got that wrong because what they heard/read given what they know (which is *not* what YOU know) is wrong or lacking in some critical detail.

Sad and painful example.

I got confronted with some "math" problems where letters had been substitued for digits. And you were supposed to be able to work out the answer. Which involved figuring out what digit (0-9) had been substituted for which letter.

Not easy, but doable. But when it was explained to me, all I was told was that you substituted numbers for letters. Mom thought that was sufficient. But she *assumed* a crucial detail was "obvious". Namely that in a given problem, you *always* substituted the *same* digit* for the same letter.

Lacking that little bit of info, I quickly came to the (*correct* given the info I had) conclusion that there weren't any unique solutions, so the problems couldn't be solved.

Guess who got in trouble for not doing the problems?

I've heard of a kid who got into trouble for similar reasons on some problems. Only unlike my mom, someone wondered why he got such wrong answers and worked the problems thru with him.

In his case, there'd been an example problem at the start of the section to explain how to do the (simple algebra) problems.

When the person working with him started working the firsat real problem the kid exploded. "You aren't using the same numbers!!"

After a bit of back and forth the adult realized that the kid had been trying to use the X and y values *form the example* in the rest of the problems. Because nowhere was it stated that they'd be different in each problem. Because "everyone knew" that.

Once that was cleared up the kid did very well n the problems.

But without someone willing to dig into *why* he'd gotten wrong answers, he'd have flunked. All because it was *assumed* that students would know something that was never explicitly stated.

Little kids are *notorious for behavior that if you look at it *objectively* is *not" "stupid" or "silly". It's them quite logically applying the e rules they have been given and getting tripped up because the *adults* had not given them necessary information or rules, they'd just *assumed* that it was "obvious".

Classic example is the joke about the little girl who told her mother that she'd made a bunch of money off the little boys betting her that she couldn't do a handstand. Mother tells her that the boys were trying to see her panties, and she shouldn't let them.

Next day she's boasting about how much more money she'd made betting with the boys. Mother reminds her that they were trying to see her panties and that she shouldn't have let them. At which point the girl pipes up "Yeah, I fooled them by not wearing any!"

Perfectly logical from the girl's point of view, and *horribly* inappropriate from the mother's point of view. But it's ythe mother's fault for *assuming* that she only had to tell her daughter not to let boys see her panties.

Adults do this with other adults as well. Bosses or trainers who don't think to explain crucial details about a job because they are "obvious". Or politicians who use the principle with malice aforethought to mislead people by leaving out info so that folks will *assume* the "obvious" (but *wrong*) fats as background and conclude that something awful is being done.