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Changing Opinions before/after Just a quickie, I gotta' go to class. I am popular lately. Lately, more so than ever, being a non-judgmental fuck is paying off tangibly. People buy me beer. Strangers, complete strangers, buy me alcohol at bars all the time. I think, as I look at it over the years, the fact that people want to drink with me had fueled my drinking to another extent. Another is that I have never needed a reason to imbibe, snort, smoke, chew...whatever. You get the idea.
(in fact, I reflected on this as I drove down a rural road in the middle of nowhere, plowing into a small town called 'Rose City', which, ironically, has nothing to do with roses, nor is it a city...blazed past blaring some stupid rap, resembling something to the citizenry, I'm not sure what, nor do I care...hmm gotten off topic...but really, is there ANY better reason to drink or do drugs other than no reason at all? At least its honest, rather than having fake holiday's or celebrations for people, and having people crowd around the alcohol source like fish after the food in a fish pond...do it because you dig it. But I digress.) And at the Hard Hat Bar, once again, more stories later, (where I was haunted by the ghost of the barmaid and her famous last words...), I was a minor hero to all when I found the hockey game which had my favorite sports team playing, my beloved R*d W*ings, and then listend to all voice their opinions, in fact all over, about the war. Having done the therapist gig, listening is what I do, and have always done. I dig listening to people. I nod, which means not so much as 'I agree' but more like 'yes your voice is making audible sound, and you are properly linking words into phrases'. So all around, I listen, people are buying me stuff for it, and I feel I have influenced some. You CANNOT change a person's opinion by arguing with them. It will not happen. However, if you politely listen, then state some facts and let them decide, especially if you structure your statements logically and with an overall arc and point to what you say, you really do have a chance to affect the citizenry that populate your environs. It sounds simple, but some people are aggressive. Case in point. big fat man at bar:"Man, fuck them French. They have big oil contracts with them Iraqis, and that's behind what they're doing." arg:(nodding)"They want a hand in the reconstruction of Iraq." bfmab"Yeah, they do." arg:"Meanwhile, Haliburton Corporation, you know, the company that Dick Cheney used to work for, just won all the contracts for rebuilding and modernizing Iraq's oil wells. Something's sketchy about that. Big fat (whoops--saying 'fat to the fat man') bfmab:"huh." He quieted down after that, and tried to buy me shots, then beers. Finally another old woman bought me another diet coke, and I settled back as the second period started. Ugh. Mish-mash entry. More later.
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