As the Pendulum Swings

Not a fun topic, but something I've been thinking about:

We’ve been asked repeatedly, angrily and condescendingly: What is it about No Means No that you don’t understand?!

What I’d like to know is when did No Means No turn into Only Yes Means Yes (my words, no one else’s) as seems to be the new normal, particularly on college campuses?

I remember seeing an informal poll once where women were asked if they would prefer to be asked before someone kisses them for the first time. Having just recently (recent to that poll, not to today!) been interested in a very hard-to-get woman of whom I asked that very question (she said Yes!), I was sure the majority opinion would be that they prefer to be asked.

In fact, it was overwhelmingly the other way, like almost unanimous (though I have a feeling the women were thinking only of guys they would actually want to have kiss them, not some random street miscreant). I could give an actual timeline and list of all the conflicting messages I’ve been given, starting with my dad as a young teen (me, not my dad) over the last, uh, 5 decades regarding how to be around women, how to treat them, how to respect them, how to be differential, how not to be, how to say nice things about how they look, why not to. And most confusing, here's the pendulum part, it has gone from one extreme to the other and back.

And what makes it all tougher is that this is one case where the Golden Rule certainly doesn’t apply. When men treat women the way they (men) would like to be treated is when they get in the most trouble. Ok, that’s an exaggeration. I’d like to be able to amend that to “…except where a crime is being committed” except that’s the point – more and more, simple innocent advances can be borderline crimes (and actual crimes according to some campus policies) under current law and definition.

But mostly I'm referring to the situations where a woman either gives something resembling consent or doesn’t say No and then waits a day or week or several months and then after being convinced by their friends, comes forward to accuse the young man of assault or rape. Certainly everyone, male and female, has been in a situation where their sexual partner started by saying no, but eventually changed their minds, usually without ever even saying yes, just over the course of continued interest, desires and advances.

Oh grr. Yet another reason I'm glad the dating scene is far in my past.

Addendum: This will be one of the few times I do some editing to a post after I first published it. I wrote this last night just before I left work and as I drove home, I realized I was uneasy with what I'd written, not so much because of anything I did write, but because it finished without a satisfactory conclusion. I tried to read it through Trev's eyes when he inevitably reads this and wonders what to think and I realized that the summary, the lesson, is this:

Sex from a legal standpoint, which is what I'm generally describing above is not much different from sex from a physical standpoint and since it seems incredibly obvious, I'm hesitant to admit this. What pleases or annoys one woman (or guy) does not necessarily please the next one. And what is "legal" to one is not necessarily seen the same way with the next. So, when you're with a girl and you do something that really gets her going, really turns her on and you think Wow - I know how to do it now! I've discovered the secret (that all guys claim to seek, though arguably, we don't try as hard as we should) on how to turn on women, and then you're with someone new and you do the same thing and she basically says "Are you done yet?!", you realize "Oh, dang - I thought I had it!" and you realize you have to start all over again finding out what works for her. (I could obviously go into a lot more detail here on specific cases, one I remember in particular from many years ago, involving a certain area that generally excites most women, that was of no interest to her whatsoever...but I shan't). :-)

I got a little off the rails there, but getting back to the legalities...or even arguably, the morals of a particular situation, it's just as confusing. What is testing (feeling them out by feeling them up?) or innocent play or experimentation or just sexual pleasure to one person can be, and has been, assault to another.

So, in the end, the lesson is this: Just get them to sign a waiver or consent form and have it notarized and witnessed by 2-3 people before hugging anyone and have a different form handy for each stage you get to.

This agreement, made December 31, 2014, by and between me, _______ McVickar, 407 Black Horse Road, 19425 and you ___________, currently residing at _________________, constitutes consent to allow me to remove your panties and it is hereby understood that such action does not suggest ongoing consent to touch you further without express, written consent.

And now, addendumizing once more, after reading the above to write a conclusion for Emma's benefit (and you too, Evie and Liss, though I'm wondering if you are maybe less likely to ever read this, or more likely have figured all this out way before you actually do read it): Be clear, be strong, be definitive. If you want No to mean No, and not mean anything less, look the guy right in the eye, grab him by the chin if you need to, like you were talking to a dog (because, well, c'mon), and say Stop It! And then remove yourself from the situation in any way possible, as you feel the need.

I love this guy, even if he is a grump...which helps explain why some people claim to love me too, I guess.

From a recent interview with Bill Murray in Rolling Stone:

Doing a Q&A at a Toronto movie theater, Murray is asked, "How does it feel to be Bill Murray?" – and he takes the extremely meta query seriously, asking the audience to consider the sensation of self-awareness. "There's a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate . . . up and down your spine," Murray says. "And you feel something that makes you almost want to smile.

So what's it like to be me? Ask yourself, ‘What's it like to be me?' The only way we'll ever know what it's like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself that's where home is."

I love this, though too often, when I am being me is when I like me least of all…and it most frequently occurs when I open my mouth.

Christmas Magic

This morning on Facebook, I posted a reference to one of my 2 favorite Christmas songs coming on the radio and wrote:

 

I know I'm totally in the Christmas Spirit when I'm driving to work down rte 52 after a wonderful Penns Table breakfast with Michael Rellahan, and I hear the opening chords to my favorite Christmas song...and as now seems to be a Christmas tradition, by the end, I have tears streaming down my face. Dang song gets to me every single year at least once. ‪#‎sucharomantic

And my sister Laurie asked why I like it so much and then mentioned how she has a fave song that she hasn’t heard yet but had rules about how she needed to hear it, which, not surprisingly, are my rules exactly, as she wrote:

 

“I own the song, but it has to happen organically - no cheats allowed! Guess I better stream Christmas music on my laptop as I wrap today, coz time is running out, and as the singer says, "It's Christmas time!" and...."Santa Claus is Coming to Town"!”

 

So I started to write her two good Christmas stories about the Bruce song, but decided to put them here instead:

 

1 - About 17 years ago, just before Cheryl and I got together, I was living alone at my Decatur Court house and was driving over on Christmas late morning to Mom and Dad's . Dad was really sick - temp well over 100 and was totally out of it. I was driving east on the rte 30 bypass, going up the exit ramp to rte 113, feeling melancholy and actually kind of depressed, wondering what it would be like when Mom and Dad were gone and feeling bad for their age and ill health, and thinking what a lousy Christmas it was and heck, here it was Christmas and I hadn't even heard the magical Bruce song. So I'm driving up the ramp, listening to WMMR and just in the midst of my self-pity, what do they start their noon Christmas rock block with? You guessed it! Totally made my day. And I started blubbering like an idiot with the biggest of smiles on my face.

 

And in the end, that may have been my favorite Christmas ever. In my memory of it, with Dad in the next room snoozing virtually all day, Mom and I spent hours just sitting at the dining room table, just talking. And I don’t know if we opened a single present the whole time.

 

2 – Then probably just a year or two later, the week before Christmas, and I’m driving my two awesome stepdaughters-to-be, Elissa and Evelyn, to the Exton Mall so they could do their Christmas shopping while Cheryl got some alone time back at the (same Decatur Court) house. We were just passing Whitford Road on rte 30 when, again, the song I hadn’t heard yet, but HAD to! Bruuuuce! I again got a little teary and told Liss and Evie about its importance to me and told them story #1 above, getting even tearier, and when I finished and there was a pause, when little 5 or 6 year old Evie blurted out “It’s a magical Christmas moment!!!”

 

And so it was.

Deliverance from Evil

Sitting in Quaker Meeting yesterday I had a rare (religion-related) insight. I say “rare” because I’m fairly certain that there are so many people in Meeting on any given First Day who are focusing so much more directly and concentratedly on communicating with God than I am, when I am more likely to be thinking about things like this (an oldey but favey of mine from 5+ years ago on my old blog).

It struck me that while we spend so many hours and so much of our life in Meeting trying to learn important messages from God, some of the most important lessons, like compassion and tolerance and loving unconditionally, can be best learned, not from God, but only from our interactions, and often the most painful interactions, with other human beings.

And those challenges, not just experiencing those tough interactions with people, but learning how to address the pain and anger with compassion, tolerance and love, come no more easily to us than picking up a banjo and playing an intricate melody. It takes a lot of practice.

And even then, speaking...ok, writing...as someone who has been taking banjo lessons for almost 2 years and is barely much better than when I started, practicing sure doesn't make us perfect...it only makes us better.

But then, maybe it was God who sent me that message.

Now, some would say, all I need to do is take my own damn advice!

I had intended to make this a far longer post, but in retrospect, even though it meant a lot to me at the time, and seemed like it would take a lot to explain, in retrospect, it was not very earth-shattering and will probably be fairly simple to summarize.

A month or so ago, with prodding from my friend Mike Rellahan, I requested a meeting with Republican Congressman-elect, Ryan Costello. And somewhat to my surprise, within a few days, I received a response from his aide, accepting my request and suggesting a time and date to meet.

So a few weeks ago, after a great deal of thought, and not a little angst, I went to his office in downtown West Chester and met. I can't say I was entirely surprised, but I was certainly encouraged, that I not only liked him but more importantly, liked his approach, and there were very few things on which we disagreed. On the other hand, I made a point of keeping my 3 topics, the 3rd of which we agreed to keep off-the-record, which I understand means that I can eventually include it when I write my book, but not before, fairly non-partisan.

My first issue was to ask for his support in taking up one of Jim Gerlach's top issues, which is to make the Conservation Easement enhanced tax incentive permanent. (Scares me to think that might make me a lobbyist!). Gerlach is the person he is replacing in Congress and from what I understand, he holds him in high regard. Costello seemed very open to listening and understanding the issue and seemed to say that he was generally in favor of it.

My second issue was to give him some advice. When I told him I had some for advice him I immediately started off apologetic for thinking he would be interested in what I had to say but he quickly made it clear he wanted to hear whatever I had to say. And my advice was this: Give the other side some credit once in while and it will only make people want to listen to his arguments more clearly. Sadly, I can't think of a single politician who does this.

More specifically, I suggested a way that he could make his own point of view seem stronger without the standard vitriolic lambasting of his opponent. If, say, he was speaking about Universal Healthcare, he might say: "I know this is an issue that is very important to President Obama. And we both have the same goal to improve on an already great healthcare system, maybe the best in the world. He has his approach to it, and it has some merit, but I have some other ideas that I think can even improve on his approach." And then, hard as it might be, find a few things Obama has supported in his proposal that he agrees with, surely there is something, and then say, but to make the overall bill really strong, here's what I think should be a component or should be replaced: _________.

Maybe I'm naïve, but I think way more people will listen to his plan after he starts that way than if he starts out by saying that Obama just wants to socialize healthcare and impose his Kenyan Marxist racist hate on this great country and do all he can to tear it down. Sadly, I'm sure that even though I'm exaggerating the point, one doesn't have to look hard to see how many people think that is exactly what Obama wants to do, which of course only proves what a terrible President he is, because all he keeps doing is rescuing this country from the disaster he inherited from the previous administration, instead of destroying it, which is his only clear goal.

As I say, Costello was very open to my thoughts and as far as I could tell, already felt the same way, wanting to use that very approach when possible. He even pulled out a copy of an article he had recently cut out from the Wall Street Journal, titled: Persuasion as the Cure for Incivility.

My favorite excerpt: "Civility is sometimes derided in the modern world, where bluntness and even coarseness have somehow come to be celebrated in many quarters. But civility is not a minor virtue. It is not an attempt to impose someone's notion of courtesy, and it is certainly not an attempt to suppress speech. Civility is what allows speech to be heard. It is an appeal to citizens never to express or incite hatred, which is more dangerous to the country than any external enemy."

As I say, the third issue was confidential, but had to do with some very local politics. And he was somewhat helpful and open-minded with that as well.

So, thanks, Congressman-elect. I'll take it easy on you as long as I can.

Presidential Prognosticatin'

This week's McLatchy-Marist poll has Romney and Bush leading a Republican field of 15 potential candidates when GOP voters were asked who they would support:

Mitt Romney: 19%
Jeb Bush: 14%
Chris Christie: 9%
Mike Huckabee: 9%
Ben Carson: 8%
Rand Paul: 5%
Ted Cruz: 4%
Rick Perry: 4%
Paul Ryan: 3%
Rick Santorum: 3%
Marco Rubio: 3%
Scott Walker: 3%
John Kasich: 2%
Bobby Jindal: 1%
Carly Fiorina: 1%

Unless Rs vote in Iowa the way the Iowan Ds did in 2004, choosing Kerry based on his electability, over Howard Dean, who I'm sure they liked more, I don't see the Rs nominating any of the top candidates above.

I think there are only a handful of serious possibilities of getting nominated above, but foremost is Paul Ryan. I see him as the favorite and I also think he can beat Hilary.

Other serious possible R nominees:

Romney - maybe, but not exciting enough as a candidate, not to mention as a person
Bush and Christie - their unfavorables are too high among R voters
Rand Paul - maybe, but too far outside the mainstream with some of his comments. And unless he can skirt Kentucky law that doesn't allow anyone to run for President and Senate at the same time, I don't even think he'll run for 4 more years.

And the dark horse of those not even listed here: Mike Pence from Indiana. Also, a good VP candidate.

My biggest concern is Hilary's health over the next 23 months. If she has an episode of any sort, I don't see a single D who would come within 15 points of the R nominee unless Elizabeth Warren changes her mind.

Just a tweet, tweet post

I can't resist posting these tweets:

"Of course Republicans respect Putin. He tanked an economy, started an illegal war, and hates gays."

— @SkepticPugilist

So, this whole 'lame duck' thing is really slowing Obama down eh ?
— @amyewalter

Do you see what I see?

One of my favorite riddles, if it even is one, is: Can you see farther in the daytime or the night time?

 

Spoiler alert, or, what we used to call the answer to the question, is that even though the obvious answer is daytime, you know it can’t be daytime or the question wouldn’t be worth asking. But then the quandary becomes Why or How can it be nighttime, when it’s dark out and we obviously can’t see as far? And so the riddle is best answered with a question: Can you see stars in the daytime? J

Sitting in (Quaker) Meeting this past Sunday, I decided to do something that I rarely ever do in Meeting, which is to close my eyes. (The reason is because I am almost certain to do what a certain someone had done right next to me this past First Day – fall asleep!)

And when I did close them, I decided to just watch the inside of my eyelids. Well, actually I don’t know if that’s what I really see when I shut my eyes. What I do see seems to fall into at least two categories.

The first, if I concentrate hard enough, is completely unpredictable –a living, swirling, motion-filled abstract painting.  I see all kinds of amazing shapes and colors. Dazzling, really! Yet, subtle too. Coming and going, shifting, sliding, hanging, staying still. Sparkles, jagged lines, swirls. And layers – lots of layers of colors and shades, though mostly just shades of dark and light. And so much depth. Squeezing my eyes together creates more variety, and rolling my eyes around brings even more dynamic changes.

And if I so choose, I can also see specific things! On Sunday, I chose to look at the Mojave Desert in Southeastern California and the drifting sand dunes I once bicycled over and around, blowing across the road. I could see them so clearly!

 

(Here's a shot from afar - not quite how I pictured it from my bike view, but the best I could muster online):

 

 

Then I thought of other things to see – my brother, Gary. My mom and dad and my close friend, Dennis, all of whom were probably looking back at me, maybe even through that same eyelid subsurface. (I think I feel a Stephen King novel coming on…though it seems almost more Edgar Allen Poe-ish.)

And soon, I was seeing all kinds of things that were, at least as we understand time and space, not otherwise visible to me. Which led me to wonder:

Can we see farther with our eyes open...or closed?

 

Hopefully I write one of these in less time than it takes me to write some of the blog posts i've been wanted to post

When I grow up…ok…retire…there are three books I want to write:

1 – On Fame

·        I want to interview famous people to ask them what it means to be famous

o   Is it what they always wanted?

o   Was it worth it?

o   What do they wish they had done differently?

o   What advice would they give to someone they see whose fame is continuing to grow, maybe too fast?

o   Do they miss anonymity?

o   Does the idea of their fame decreasing scare them?

o   How has it impacted the people they knew before they got famous?

·        And I want to interview:

o   the uber-famous, from ex-Presidents to Taylor Swift (!) to Michael Jordan

o   the medium famous – the D-listers

o   the once famous who are no more

o   the 15 minutes of famesters,

…for all of whom there’d be different kinds of questions.

2 – Aphorisms/Truisms

·        What are the basic things we should all know – from:

o    the best known – the key to real estate is locationlocationlocation to

o   that calculation on how to invest as you age – the % in stocks vs bonds vs cash based on your age to

o   cooking basics to

o   sports (oddly, I can’t think of any right now!) to

o   gardening (the corn should be high as an elephants eye by sometimeorother)

·        The simpler the better

·        I think I’d call it How to think like a Middle Aged Man at any age…or…What ya wanna do is!

3 – Your kid knows more than you ever will: What kids know and are trying to tell us when we don’t want to listen

·        I was talking after a memorial service this past weekend with a married couple I have known and been close to for nearly 20 years about a message in the service about that “thin line” between the physical world and the spiritual one and we got around to talking about the gifts children seem to have crossing back and forth over that line, which more likely isn't even a line at all. They told me a very personal story about something their son said to them when he was just 2 or 3 years old. The boy’s mom described how many years ago, she had suffered a miscarriage at a very, very early point in her pregnancy and although there was absolutely no way their young son could have known about it, in a car ride a day or two later, their son started talking matter-of-factly about his sister who had just died.

·        Similarly, how Trev named Emma the day Cheryl found out she was pregnant by pointing at Cheryl’s belly and saying Emma in there!

·        And there are so many similar stories I’ve heard that indicate that our children are trying to tell us about things they see and know that we cannot fathom how they see or know them.

·      And in Meeting yesterday, someone else stood and gave another example of all this…without his knowing what I had been thinking about

Of course, I see these as books, but by the time I seriously consider actually writing/researching them, books may have been completely replaced by websites collecting this info, if in fact they either haven’t already been written or the websites already created.

And the bigger challenge might be that Cheryl’s dream is to travel cross country sampling all kinds of local foods at various little restaurants and writing about them. Hopefully she wants me to come along...if only to eat the foods she has no interest in eating, the sweeter and greasier the better!

And then there’s the whole procrastination thing…

 

Letter II

...and as promised, here is the letter that was in the Daily Local on 12/9/14:

http://www.dailylocal.com/opinion/20141209/obamas-economy-strategy-remains-healthy-and-stable

It is such a reflection of the conservative-leaning mainstream media that so few of these facts are ever publicized. There was a conference of conservatives in Washington DC many years ago where a Frank Luntz-type announced a new strategy to the eager participants - that heretofore, they should never refer to the media without emphasizing that it was a left-wing mainstream media or a liberal press - yeegods! It's been a remarkably effective campaign, even though there is easily shown evidence that if anything, it is the exact opposite.

And the letters and calls published in the Local are so incredibly one-sided, I really want to try to at least present some facts to the readers who so easily gloss over the almost daily drumbeat of positive news buried in the business section, adding in what is virtually never reported, particularly in terms of the corporate profits in comparison to how little they actually pay - a fraction of the tax rate they are "supposed" to pay.

DLN Letter of 11/20/14

I had a letter to the Daily Local published yesterday, but before I post a link to that one here, I should go back a few weeks to the one that was published around 11/20/14 that the Daily Local never posted to their website. People who don't get the Local have asked me to let them know when they get in so they can read them, and so here it is:

Along with the appointed experts on the election last week, I thought I might add my non-expert observations of last week’s elections. It seems that except in the case of our wonderful new Governor, voters rejected the Democratic party almost across the board. That is, we rejected the party responsible for 65 straight months of economic growth, a record 56 months of consecutive private sector job growth, unemployment falling from 10.1% to 5.8%, (after losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month when Bush left office, the country is now adding a minimum of 200,000 jobs per month) the budget deficit reduced by two-thirds, and almost daily records in the stock market. Corporate profits are at record highs and the U.S. gross national product growth is now among the best in the world.

The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, gasoline prices are falling, there’s no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, and the wealthy, as opposed to most of the rest of us, are still making astonishing amounts of money.

So, in summary, Americans voted for the party that got us into the mess that Obama just dug us out of. And we, the people, rewarded the party who, last time they held the White House, gave us an almost total world economic collapse, the worst terrorist attack in history, the two longest wars in US history, the worst record of job creation since Herbert Hoover, a complete collapse of the stock market and a budget SURPLUS that they turned into a trillion dollar annual deficit.  

And in the absence of any actual reasons that republicans have to explain these incredible accomplishments by President Obama, the best they can do is hope that it is a bubble, so somehow, someway, their economic theories of trickle-down economics that have thus far only had disastrous results, will finally prove to help us. I also hear some people think Ryan Howard is going to turn it around next year. Well actually, their economic theories do benefit one group - the upper 1% who bankroll their favorite republican politicians through dark money, to the surprise of no one, as the Daily Local exposed last week.

And if we had any doubt as to the continuing lurch to the extreme right, it was confirmed by the ouster of a “moderate” (by republican standards anyway) Dom Pileggi from his Senate leadership. Elections have consequences, indeed. I was encouraged at least to see in Michael Rellahan’s excellent interview with Ryan Costello this past week that he pledges to be non-partisan and listen carefully to his constituents to hear all our concerns regardless of party affiliation. I hope this is a promise he can keep despite the pressures he will be under from his far-right party leaders these next two years.

I wake up every morning grateful that Barack Obama is in the White House so that the extreme right doesn’t continue to try to eviscerate our environment, ruin our economy and get us back into multiple wars. And I am also grateful that so many thousands of moderate Chester County voters have switched to the Democratic Party and gave a majority of their votes to Tom Wolf, whom Corbett has left with a $2 billion deficit and our ability to borrow completely maxed out. This after Corbett, according to the state 2011 fiscal year financial statement, entered office with a $1 billion surplus, There is still a long way to go to get more competitive balance in the more local elections, but at a state level, we are clearly headed in the right direction with Tom Wolf, and for that, I am most thankful of all.

Jamie McVickar

West Vincent Township

Troll self-revealed! And his query answered.

Following up on my post below about the RW troll, that also referred to my having been impressed by Mr. Oleck's lack of hesitation in identifying himself in previous posts, as it turns out, they are one and the same. Thank you, sir, and I understand your confusion over how to avoid the anonymous tag. Blogger.com makes it harder than necessary to avoid that.

So, to reply to your question regarding the President's impact on the price of oil, I am at a disadvantage for a few reasons. I do very little online between 5pm Friday and Monday morning, and further, since the Local is so bad at posting letters to the editor, or, thankfully, Sound-Off, for that matter, I don't remember what I wrote exactly, but that said, here is my reply regarding your questions.

From this link, you can see an excellent summary of Obama's involvement, but highlighting here:

Here are some of the other measures recently taken by the administration to boost domestic oil production:

* An increase in the sales of leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.  In 2013, the Bureau of Land Management held 30 such sales -- the most in a decade -- offering 5.7 million acres for lease by industry.

* An increase in the speed with which permits are being issued for actual drilling on federal lands.  What’s called “processing time” has, the White House boasts, been cut from 228 days in 2012 to 194 days in 2013.

* The opening up of an additional 59 million acres for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a disastrous BP oil spill in April 2010.

In other words, global warming be damned!

Now, as to your other claims, you are putting words in my mouth. I did not denigrate the voters. Rather, I merely gave all the evidence voters used to make the decision to vote so heavily for republicans. If you infer from that that voters are stupid, that is your choice. I did not call them that.

Furthermore, it is lost on no one that I made a substantial list of Obama's incredible accomplishments and you have so little you can pick out of that to find fault or disagreement with, falling only on the hope that quantitative easing (which was slowed considerably and has now ended) will bring on a Bush-like economic collapse.

Also not lost on me is that you have nothing positive to say about the Republican agenda, to the extent you can identify one, or any refutation for Bush's disaster of a Presidency. Instead your constant fascination is to attack Democrats and this President instead of trying to find something/anything nice to say about anything the republicans have done...may I add...with easily understood reasons.

Gotta problem with me?! Let's have coffee and we'll tawk.

Unfortunate that I even need to write this, but there is an anonymous right wing troll on my site who posts occasionally literate comments, so I feel a need to state that my policy, heretofore not posted, is that unless I know the commenter personally, as I usually do, or unless the person identifies themself instead of hiding behind a cowardly nickname, I won’t reply to their comments.

And I want this site vitriol-free, so if your post is respectful, I will generally enjoy engaging in any discussion you’d like to have. And that includes you, Mr. Oleck, whom I have complimented in the past for your courage in identifying yourself without hesitation.

But I don’t want to get into a lot of back and forth because I’ve found that there is rarely any point in trying to convince each other of something that we are so strongly in opposition to.

I don't even know why they make any other kind of cookies besides chocolate chip cookies.

If you want to know what I think of Oatmeal Raisin cookies, and I'm sure you woke up this morning wondering exactly that, watch this video, and substitute the words "eating oatmeal raisin cookies" for the words "drinking merlot" and you'll get the drift.

As someone wiser and funnier than me once said: "Oatmeal raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies are the main reason I have trust issues."

OK, I'll just cut and paste it here, but the video link at the top is funnier:

Jack: If they want to drink Merlot, we're drinking Merlot.
Miles Raymond: No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any fu**ing Merlot!

And now I feel a need to apologize to merlot, which is one of the few wines I actually occasionally like.