Happy Birthday Brigitte!

Hope you find prada shoes and a coach purse in your dryer today.

July 14 - - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRIGITTE! ! !
Party! Party! Party!
Fiesta! Fiesta! Fiesta!

Brigitte, I think you do right to stop saying just-saying and I'll try to explain why; I think it's important.

Just-saying is an attempt by the speaker to distance themself from their words. It's like a shorthand for "don't shoot the messenger". For instance, in this example: "We're out of onions, darling, jus' sayin'", the speaker wants to draw attention to the fact that there are no onions without incurring any strife for being the barer of that news. This is obviously a desirable thing to want to do nobody wants to take the flak for being the barer of bad news and it's not fair anyway.

Just-saying achieves this remarkable feat by implying that the speaker, whilst wishing to draw attention to whatever they last said, is not eager to draw attention to the repercussions of it. So, in our example the speaker draws attention to the lack of onions whilst asserting a desire not to draw attention to the fact that this is problem that might need to be solved (someone's going to have to go to the store and by some more onions).

Interestingly, people only use just-saying when problematic repercussions of a statement are obvious. When the speaker of our first example says there aren't any onions, everybody knows what this means. At the least there will need to be a discussion about how much of a problem the lack of onions is but it's likely that somebody is going to have to do something about it. And guess who's going to do something about the problem? Not the speaker. The speaker has already deftly distanced themselves from the problem and people will rarely interrogate them to find out the reason for that distancing, preferring instead to suggest alternatives or just go down the store and buy some damn onions.

At its worst I think just-saying implies something a lot less fair than "don't shoot the messenger", I think it implies "I'm not taking responsibility for this", the fairness of which probably shouldn't go without some examination (if you like fairness).

Speaking for men, I think many prefer people to be straight with us. I honestly think that "I think we might need more onions", will always go down better than "we're out of onions, darling, jus' sayin'", when addressed to a man. Tell me if I'm wrong here Brigitte, but women sometimes like to conceal their intentions using phrases such as just-saying to do that. Sharper men will see through these attempts and feel as though they are being manipulated.

I think part of the reason women feel that need to resort to sleight of word in this way is because they don't feel like that have enough power otherwise. It sounds clichéd, but not everybody can handle the truth. A lot of people have problems with controlling temper. So it's understandable that women like to package bad news up in pretty boxes with bows on or indirect it. The concern for me is that some women develop a habit of working this way even towards men who can handle the truth (the good men) and then risk making those men feel unnecessarily manipulated as a result.

In an ideal world men would have the maturity to respond well to bad news and women wouldn't need to resort to sleight of word.

Final note: I've made this about men and women quite a bit because I think there is a significant gender different when it comes to this stuff. It rarely occur to men to go about do this sort of stuff. But these are generalisations. These things certainly happen between women and I'm sure there are exceptional men out there who do this stuff.

Wow, if you pause it on that article that you get a glimpse of at 29 seconds, it reads that one shelter in Sacremento is turning away 200 women and children a day... That is so sad...In the most liberal state in the country, during a liberal administration, that this is happening is outrageous...Does Pres. obama know about this???

heh, I know the same-song-on-repeat all too well. It usually an album though, and it's on repeat more like months in the car, hah

I've been living alone for three years now. I don't think I could go back to having a roommate. This is not good.