I decided to sit down and bang out a few thoughts before I start my day - I have a doctor appointment in a couple hours.  But as soon as I sat down, up comes Cleo, who is my 'pooter partner.  She is my most docile kitty that stays in the background, lets the other two "have their way" when it comes to hangin' with me.  Until it comes to the computer.  If I sit down here, she jumps right up usually turns into one of those legless muffs and watches my screen.  But today she flopped on her side and wanted attention.  The only problem is that she's a real hellion with her brother and doesn't seem to know how to relate on a loving level and ends up getting a little bitey with me.  She and her brother have been the play hard types from the beginning, and I think because she's a little smaller, she took on a "first strike" attitude with him to keep him from thinking he's king.  But he's still an ornery turd much of the time, sneaking up on either Cleo or poor old Pearl, who never fights back.  Such different personalities!

I finally have some new growth on a Hoya that has me enthusiastic.  Well, maybe that's a bit strong... I noticed it, so that's SOMEthing!  I'm hoping with an explosion of spring growth, my enthusiasm will come back.  Anyway, it's on the one we used to call 'Dee's Big One' and now call skinneriana...

This is a species that I always thought was very likely a large form of carnosa, but that's just my own observation.  It's growing in the sunroom so it's a little safer from my lack of interest.  I've managed to keep the stuff in the house watered well enough to get by.

They were talking about marriage on a talk show recently, which took me back to a time when we had the business and I was "doing finals" with a bride.  That means it was the day I would sit down with a bride and get every minute detail of what she wanted and expected, from picking out menu, times, decorations, numbers, etc.  We always did this about 2 weeks before the wedding date and most of the time, it included the mother of the bride.  The groom was there maybe 50% of the time.  But on this day, it was the father of the bride that was there instead of the mother - it wasn't very often that it was just the father, though they would sometimes come along with the mother.  If Mom was there, she would always give the dad a ribbing and say, "and this must be the father, the guy with the checkbook!"

Anyway, so this dad was the kind of guy that had a lot of questions, which I always liked because that would mean there would be no surprises.  And he was obviously a bit of a philosophical type too because at some point, he asked me, "So, do you believe in marriage?"  Yikes, that was direct!!  Simple answers are always the best - "Of course!  I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't!"

The long answer is more complicated.  Being in the business, and having been married twice myself, and I consider myself to be a master of observation, my answer is still "yes" but with a lot of caveats.  You don't have a choice but to believe in something that exists, of course, but if you throw in something like "Do you believe happy marriage is possible?", well that is a completely different question.  You can't use the statistics for this purpose.  Overall (1st, 2nd, 3rd marriages), 50% end in divorce.  But are the 50% who make it "happy"?  I've read a statistic that says that 74% of married people say they are happily married.  I think the key word here is SAY.  I'd be willing to bet it's way, WAY less than that.  I think if they posed the question differently, they would get a more realistic response.  Instead of "are you happily married", the question should be something like "on a scale of 1 to 100, how happy are you with your marriage?" Then give some qualifiers, like...

90-100 Blissfully happy pretty much all the time

80-90   Happy most of the time, we enjoy each other's company

70-80   We hardly ever fight and we have a lot in common

60-70   We have an issue or two, but we're good most of the time

50-60   We're mostly compatible, but we fight too much 

40-50   We've become complacent and could use some help

30-40   We don't like each other much anymore

20-30   We stay together for children/money/?? and live separate lives

10-20   I can't stand him/her anymore, but splitting is too expensive/hard

>10      I cancelled my life insurance in fear of him/her killing me!

 

You get the gist! Another caveat would be marriages over a certain length because most new marriages would (or at least should) fall in the 90+ range.  I would probably say marriages over 10 years. With that in mind, I think almost all marriages would fall in the under 60 ranges.  I think the above 90 is fantasy, though I would concede that there are a few marriages that could fall in that range.  I can think of a couple marriages that seem(ed) to fall in that range, but looking in from the outside can be deceiving.

Of course, the other thing to consider is that marriage is a fluid condition and always changing.  So while today, one might give an answer of 75, a few months later the answer might be 37.  I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not as simple as saying "good" marriage or "bad" marriage.  A better question might be, "If you had it to do over again, would you marry your current partner?"  But even that would need some "nudging" of things to consider because one's momentary response may not take into consideration things like...

...good parent?

...good provider/steady work?

...goals/aspirations?

...similar values?

...loyal/faithful?

...chemistry?

...participates (or not) in running the household?

********

And that's where I left off with that train of thought.  Now it's about 10 days later and I and to jot down my impressions of a 4-episode series I watched on Netflix called "Adolescence".  It's set in England and about a 13-year-old boy who kills a girl the same age.  It had some very thought provoking scenes that highlight how different society is today compared to when we were that age.  

I wasn't sure at first if I liked how this series was conducted because it was as if it was mostly a single-shot scene with each episode.  But by the time it was over, I understood the point of this way of doing it.  In the first episode, it followed the the two police detectives who were assigned to the case, starting from the point where a S.W.A.T. team executes a no-knock warrant, busts down the family's door and locates the teenage boy at 6:15 am, still in bed.  As they bust in, Dad is screaming that they have the wrong house.  Mom is fixing breakfast and is ordered to the floor on her stomach.  Upstairs, the daughter hears the commotion and opens the bathroom door and is ordered to the floor and they find the boy sitting on the bed, obviously fearful of what he's hearing.  The officer in charge reads the boy (Jamie) his rights and arrests him.  This episode launches into following the officer and events that happen at the police station on that first day.  Parents and daughter are placed in a room, Jamie is processed which includes finger printing, photos, assigning of an attorney, and because he's a child, he gets an adult representative to be included in all meetings - he chooses his dad, Eddie.

It illustrates Jamie's fear as he spends the first few hours crying and asking what this is about, reiterating over and over that he's done nothing. After he gets through some of these processes, he calms down a bit, but his fear is still evident.  It shows the meeting with his lawyer and, eventually, the first interview with the two police detectives in charge.  At the end of this first episode, after much questioning and little progress (because of the advice of his council not to reveal anything), they show Jamie, his dad and the attorney CCV footing following Jamie's movements until he meets up with this girl and the actual killing.  It closes with his Dad inconsolable, as you can imagine.

Episode two was about the information gathering process, following the two detectives as they spoke to friends of both Jamie and the victim at school.  The senior detective had a son at this school, a bit older than Jamie though he really didn't know him.  They didn't seem to be getting very far - these middle-schoolers were not very forthcoming and they seemed to loathe the police. Toward the end of this episode, the detective's son asks to speak to him alone.  When they're alone, his dad says, "I thought you didn't know Jamie?"  His son confirms that he didn't know Jamie, but he felt his dad was "spinning his wheels" and kind of making a fool of himself because he didn't seem to understand what this was really about.  He said it was about "insta" (social media, Instagram specifically I assume) and "incel" - his dad (me too!) looked confused.  "What's incel?" Son rolled his eyes and explained, it's about 80% of the girls being attracted to 20% of the boys, and how the girls taunt the majority of the boys about how they will be celibate until they die. (At this point, I paused the show and looked up "incel" and this is what the dictionary says:  a member of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile toward women and men who are sexually active.

After this enlightening conversation, he joined back up with his co-detective and when asked what his son wanted, he said, "He thinks this has to do with something he called incels and the majority of girls making fun of the less attractive boys."  Her response was, "Oh, not that Andrew Tate bullshit!"  And that's pretty much where that episode ended.  So I wanted to know more about this Andrew Tate dude and, wow, did I learn a lot.  This is a lot of information, but I condensed it as best I could. (* indicates an explanation at the end...)

Andrew Tate gained notoriety for promoting various positions in the "manosphere"* community. His controversial commentary has resulted in his expulsion from various social media platforms and concern that he promotes misogynist views to his audience. A diverse influencer, Tate has amasse 9.9 million followers on Twitter as of August 2024 and was the third most Googled person in 2023, with most British adults aware of who he is. He has been dubbed the king of toxic masculinity, has called himself a misogynist, and is politically described as both right-wing and for right. As of March 2025, Tate is facing six legal investigations - four criminal and two civil - in Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In 2016 he appeared on the British reality series Big Brother, but was removed, as he was the suspect in an open rape investigation in the United Kingdom. The investigation was later dropped, but Tate was subject to an extradition request for the rape charges in 2024. After his kickboxing career, Tate and his brother Tristan began operating a webcam model business, then sold online courses. With his audience from the courses, he became prominent as an internet celebrity promoting a hyper-macho view of masculinity. Tate's courses include Hustlers University, which gained 100,000 subscribers and was later relaunched as The Real World, and the secretive group named the War Room, which the BBC has accused of coercing women into sex work and teaching violence against women. In August 2023, it was estimated that Tate's online ventures generated $5 million in revenue monthly.

Tate and his brother were arrested in Romania in December 2022 along with two women. In June 2023, all four were charged with rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group to sexually exploit women. In July, two of their accusers reportedly went into hiding after a campaign of online harassment, and the Tate brothers filed a defamation lawsuit, claiming $5 million dollars in damages against one of the accusers. March 2024, British police obtained an arrest warrant for the Tate brothers as part of an investigation into rape and human trafficking. In July 2024, they began a civil case against the brothers and the third person for alleged tax evasion. In August, Romanian police raided four properties Tate owns and expanded its investigation to include trafficking minors, sex with a minor, money laundering and attempting to influence Witnesses

The Real World primarily targets male teenagers. Former Real World students have described the program as having a cult-like atmosphere. The Real Rorld has been described by a lawyer for former members as the male version of the Tate Brothers digital grooming. Members refer to each other as G with Tate being the Top G. The group is centered on Tate's 41 tenants for men. Some of Tates views include depression isn't real; women belong in the home and can't drive; women are given to the man and belong to the man as property; men prefer dating 18 and 19-year-olds because they are likely to have had sex with fewer men, in order to make an imprint on teenagers; women who do not stay home are hoes; he questions whether Nazis were really the bad guy in World War ii;

Beginning in 2022, Tates views and their influence on teenage boys and young men have become of particular concern of parents, teachers and mental health experts in much of the world, including North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The New York Times has described his views as brainwashing a generation, due to his influence in British schools, and the Anti-Defamation League considers Tate's misogyny mainstream. The ADL reported that Tate teaches his acolytes that women are inferior and morally deficient beings who deserve to be physically, sexually and emotionally abused, equating his philosophy to that of pickup artists.

*The manosphere is a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists, incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way, Pick-Up Artists , and father's rights groups. While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry (hatred of men). Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill", a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix.

And wow, that brought to light (for me) a whole new element of evil in this world.  But at the same time, I have to admit that I can see where it came from.  When feminism was taking hold, in the late 60's/early 70's, most of the men of my dad's generation were somewhat aghast at the idea of women working "because they wanted to."  I've seen a lot of ads from the 1950's and a lot of them are geared toward "how to make your man's life easier" or how to "please your man."  A woman's role was well defined as wife, housekeeper, mother, man pleaser.  And when women started to go to work, I think most men decided it was ok - after all, that extra money took some of the pressure off of them, and life did get a bit easier for them.  Some of their being "ok" with it was the fact that women were making FAR less than men... thus proving that a) the men were more valuable, and b) they still relied on the man financially.

But I won't get into the unfairness this shift in society created - that's a bitch-fest for another day!  😏 Where I wanted to go with this is that the whole "push" against the status quo started a chasm between men and women.  Men resisted and women, for the first time in history, collectively pushed back.  Oh, I think there were plenty of defiant women in the past who pushed against the system, but those were few and far between.  This was a movement and as it grew, men resisted which gave women reason to push harder and yes, to become hateful at times.  Just as I might rage and spew terrible things at my jailer, women said and wrote terrible things about men as a whole.  And much of it was true, but it was also due to the shift from old ways to new ways, which is always hard. I don't think MOST men sat around thinking about "how to keep women down."  It was just the life everyone lived and that big shift was like a bomb to them.  Even a PT job gave women just a little bit of power, something they had never really had before.

The extreme feminists, though they got the job done faster (perhaps), caused a lot of divisiveness among men and women.  Men, over the next couple generations, came to accept and even expect women to work, and things improved, but a lot of that mentality of "men just want a slave and sex partner" was passed to girls, even without the expression of the words.  It often came as simply the way their mom treated their dad.  And dad putting up with it for the sake of peace.  And I think we smooshed them down, kicking every bit of masculinity out of them.  We expect men to be sensitive... to understand our "feelings" and mirror them. To cry at what we deem to be appropriate times.  To listen without trying to "fix".  No one wants to admit it, but we (and I use the "we" as women in general) want them to be a girl with a penis!  Can we not admit that what we want goes against what men are wired to be?  And do we really want that?  My point is, though, that I think this attitude of wanting men feminized is what has led to these kinds of groups that push back.  They are doing exactly what we did in the feminist movement!!  

I'm not saying the hatefulness is justified.  Just as I didn't like some of the BS that came out of the women's movement, like this expectation of men being more "girly" emotionally, I abhor these characterizations of women that are coming out of this "masculine movement".  Can't we just let everyone BE who they are.  My friend may like those effeminate men who wear man-buns and cries at the drop of a hat, but I like manly-men who have chest hair, who do not wax, and I'm ok if he listens to me but doesn't understand - as long as he listens and gives me a hug if I need it.  Yes, men could often use a little "nudging" when it comes to how to pretend to be sensitive, and I think a few naturally are, but let's just accept that they are different from us.  Can we not see that it's just as frustrating for them to not understand our temperaments, our emotionality, our (sometimes) crazy moods?  Women like romance... men would rather just "get to it".  Surely we are advanced enough that we can figure out how to be accommodating and respectful of each others' needs.  No one needs to change everything about who they are to be in a relationship.  If a woman needs a girly-guy, GO GET A GIRL!  LOL.  And I would tell a man who hates women as they are to GO GET A MAN!  Maybe it's just me, but it's the differences that create the attraction!  

Anyway, I think we could all benefit from respecting and embracing our differences rather than bitching about them or trying to change them.  And I'm not talking about (learned) bad behaviors. Like boys of Mark's generation who grew up into men who learned from their dads that housework, cleaning, cooking was all "women's work" and refused to change with the times.  I'm saying we need to choose a partner by looking for what we want, not by finding someone and then trying to make them fit the mold of what we want.  

This series was certainly enlightening.  It also had a much more realistic feel of the processes that occur when there's an arrest.  We only see the "interesting" parts on TV dramas or even real crime shows.  They leave out a lot of the stuff that creates turmoil and fear.  The third episode was about a clinical psychologist who talks to Jamie to determine whether he's mature enough to understand the charges and assist in his own defense.  This is one of multiple psychologists who have talked to him and it's not clear why so many, but I would assume either they weren't getting the result they wanted (either defense or prosecution) or there was inconclusiveness about the first few.  This psychologist is seeing him for the 6th time, I believe, and the whole episode was about that meeting.  

The final episode followed a day in the family 13 months later (while still awaiting trial).  They're at home one morning, Dad's birthday.  Mom is fixing breakfast and the daughter comes in from outside asking if Dad had seen his van.  It had been tagged the night before with a word I had to look up (I can't remember it off hand) and it was a slang word used in Britain that means "sex offender" or "pedophile".  So the rest of the episode is about how Dad deals with it (or doesn't so well...) and how Mom and sister are affected by Dad's explosive behavior.  It has an incredibly sad ending with a call from the son saying he's going to give up and plead guilty, and a hard but long overdue conversation between Mom and Dad about how this happened.  One where they question their parenting and how this seemingly normal boy could have done this.  You never see stories from the point of view of the killer and their family, so it was a very compelling viewpoint...

Off to the lady-cave!