This, boys and girls, is how a wordsmith comes back at you with the now classic "OMG WHO HURT YOU" retort. Thanks for the chuckle. Everybody's life sucks. Everybody has a life of loss and pain. Working on the Perot campaign a million years ago my eyes were opened to the reality that even the rich kid's lives had troubles and pressures and pain points. Some of us put up with it till we are dropped in a hole in the ground. Some of us suck on a shotgun. some of us take a long drive into a bridge pylon so it looks like an accident. Some of us WAKE THE FUCK UP and decide to not play the game anymore because life is too short to beat your skull against a wall for people that don't really care if you live or die.There's a whole lot of loss in your life. That's clear. There's a whole lot of loss in your experience.
And some of us are less worried about "OMG WHO HURT YOU" and more focused on not letting them hurt us anymore. There's a very simple choice here, and I don't care how many exchanges it'll take to get you to see it: You can live your life based on what was or you can live your life based on what is. You wanna talk old farts? Let's talk old farts. I like these old farts because they arrange speakers that match my interests, they attract collectors and vendors who have cool stuff and they have a wealth of knowledge that I can't easily get anywhere else. And right now, Seattle has two chapters: NAWCC 50 and NAWCC 135. Why? Ask the guy running it now and it's because "some people didn't like meeting on Sundays." Ask the last charter member of NAWCC 135 (1981) and it's because "people didn't want to drive all the way to Seattle." So I ask this guy where exactly 135 is. It's out on the Kitsap Peninsula. How many guys left? Like 8 or so. And this is why they really wish we could have "our" meetings where we were because they were walking distance from the ferry dock which meant it saved them $40 and 2 hours of driving. "Our" is in quotes because are those meetings 135 or 50? Well nobody really knows, and we haven't collected dues for two years because COVID and the simple fact that nobody knows which organization should actually collect them. So on the one hand, we got old farts with beef from 1981 keeping the organization from growing. On the other hand we started doing shit on Zoom anyway so two of our most worthwhile participants are from Oregon and San Diego. The only way this gets resolved well is if me, youngest guy in the club by 30 years, says "hey I'ma take this on and arrange it so that it works for everybody." And the only way I'm going to do that is if I'm not going to get a bunch of blowback for messing with tradition. Because some people can't let go of 40 year old beefs.