I Just Want to Cuddle…
From the editor
Some ten years or so back in time, when Kelley’s Pub was open, an independent construction crew was in town remodelling some government housing. These four guys stopped in every evening after work to eat and decompress before they went back to their motel rooms. They were great customers, and were a lot of fun to chat with.
One evening, while I was working, they met a local guy who’d come in for a refreshing adult beverage, and, like guys do, they all began to swap stories and do that male bonding thing. I was busy with other customers, but my ears pricked up when their conversation turned to: Lie….I mean lines they have used to get la…er I mean lucky.
What was this? A chance to get an inside look at the mysterious machinations of the mazes we know as male minds?
Sorry….I just had a little attack of alliteration. I won’t do it again.
Well, they were pretty funny, each striving to outdo the others with the very best lines and arguments by which to persuade the ladies. I’d even heard some of them myself over the years, but this conversation at the bar was still quite educational!
And then, one of the guys tapped his glass to get everyone’s attention and, with a cat that got the canary kind of expression on his face said “I’ve got it! The very best line ever!”
There was an expectant hush as we all waited to hear this treasure, and then he said:
“I just want to cuddle.”
Well now. The guys all just about fell off their stools because they were laughing so hard, and if I’d been on a stool myself I’d’ve had trouble keeping my seat as well. It is a great line, and let this be a warning to the ladies!
Remembering that evening always makes me chuckle, but it also brings up the issue that lots of people, not just men, lie to get what they want.
And, the more that they want, the bigger the lie.
And, “I just want to cuddle” is a perfect example of a gentle, kind of innocuous lie. Like, they don’t really want much but once you’re cuddling….well, all bets are off. Prepare to be screwed.
You see this kind of prevarication with the government all the time so it definitely is time for everyone to start thinking for themselves and to start looking at what is really going to happen if down the road.
We are living, in fact, in a world that has been built on lies disguised as promises and truths constructed by liars!
Starting in grade school, people are conditioned to sit down shut up and obey if you want to succeed. Original thought and creativity is pretty much squashed.
Look at multiple choice tests. These condition kids to perceive that their choices are limited to those on the test. When they grow up, they still see limited choices.
John D. Rockefeller, one of the original robber baron psychopaths who hijacked the North American economy famously said “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers”.
Right now, in New Brunswick, we have a battle raging over the issue of shale gas extraction. It is interesting that other options to create jobs or energy are not being explored. It is being presented as if we only have two choices: Allow fracking so we can get rich (ha ha) because if we don’t, our kids won’t have jobs and the economy will crash and New Brunswick will go broke.
Pretty scary stuff. But why are these the only options? Why does government forge on with reducing or eliminating local industries while at the same time it sells our natural resources to foreign corporations?
Our greatest natural resources are the richness of our lands and the purity of our water. Jeopardizing these irreplaceable resources is the utter height of folly.
We need to see the land and its resources as a living community, not a commodity to be exploited and trashed.
Several people have, amazingly enough, actually moved to the Perth area recently to live, work and raise their families. They’ve told me that many local people are baffled that anyone would want to deliberately move here…I myself was asked by a number of people why on earth I moved here way back in 1996. The implication was that I was slightly witless for actually moving here on purpose!!
There’s an undercurrent of “we’re not good enough, we have to leave the province to succeed, and the only good, steady jobs are with corporations or in the public sector”.
It’s high time to change that debilitating and disempowering mindset.
Think about what you really want for our future, and start working for it… not what some corporate agenda says we have to have…just because they say so! We are personally responsible for our own futures, and only by diligently and deliberately investing our own time, money and energy into that vision will we actually live the life of our collective dreams.
Stephanie Kelley
