EQ "You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means."

t is often thrown around as a truism, "People need more than IQ to succeed, EQ is more important at determining success."

However the "Emotional" in EQ gives the wrong idea. They think IQ and EQ are ends of a spectrum of heart and mind and that somehow a balance must be struck. The often cited marshmallow test which is foundational to the concept of EQseem to think that the children that could wait are better behaved in the sense that they are good boys and girls and therefore obedient. So high EQ must mean a good person. Right?

Wrong. The marshmallow test demonstrated delay of gratification. The children who succeeded in the test are better in the future not because their goodness is rewarded, they are better in the future because they have the strength to focus on a goal, at the expense of personal pleasure at the present. What high EQ means is a higher mastery of one's emotions.

It is a metacognitive ability to be aware of one's goals and one's emotional state and has the ability to function without interference from emotion. It is not to say the people who succeed the marshmallow tests are unfeeling, but they are aware that there is greater satisfaction to be had by focusing on the task at hand.

Those who were impatient were actually those who did what their heart desired. They did the honestly human thing to do. So actually EQ is also a head function as well not heart as most people think it is.

So that said. Are you living a "richer" human experience by mastering your emotions or being freely emotional?

Sexual Harassment Naivete Ticks Me Off

change of focus yes, abrogation of responsibility no.

First off if you forget anything you read here this is my bottomline. Rape is the fault of the rapist not the victim.

Now, that said, among the arguments i find most irritating is the naive one. "we should be safe from rapists no matter what we do. we should change society so there will be no more rape." Good luck with that.

As for any crime not just rape, the criminal is out there, that's the given. Taking measures to maintain your safety is not putting the burden on yourself, it is being practical.

While rapists are equal opportunity offenders they rape any body type and any sex rapists still take visual cues before they select their targets. I'm no longer talking about "dressing sexy means you're asking for it." I'm saying offenders profile their victims and weigh things like, perceived vulnerability, physical prowess, alertness plus whatever fetish they're into. As said earlier the criminal is already out there you cannot wish them away. What you wanna do is not be in their sights when they're scouting for a victim. If you give advice not to wear excessive jewelry when shopping in divisoria and think it's good. Why is "dress modestly in crowded places" shifting the blame on the victim?

Downgrade rape to groping and you will see the logic that when you feel up a person, bare flesh is a premium. Of course the girl in daisy dukes, is a better groping target than a nun. Well of course nuns get groped too but when there is a choice who would they logically rather?

Oh don't be naive and say clothes have nothing to do with it! Of course it does. We do it all the time. We do what's called preening moves to get the attention of the opposite sex or even colleagues consciously or not.We dress for effect.We dress to impress. We power dress for business to be taken seriously. We dress down to be more approachable. There's the little black dress for elegance and the high heels to lengthen the legs to make you look sexy. And guys wear muscle shirts to announce "I work out." Then all of a sudden how we dress isn't supposed to say anything? We judge people by the way they dress why shouldn't rapists?

I'm all for "down with rape and the objectifying of women." But somewhere down the line the would be victims should recognize the need for personal responsibility.

I Hate Filipino Pride for the Sake of Filipino Pride

Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? 
Sonny (The Android): Can you? 

I, Robot 2004 Interrogation Room Scene

August being National Heroes' Month for the Philippines, and our Department of Education promoting a, "Proud to be Filipino Campaign," I can imagine classrooms wherein the teachers list reasons for students to be proud of their nationality. Probably they will begin with virtues like, ingenuity, perseverance, and patience and give examples of famous personalities like Rizal or Pacquaio, or Jessica Sanchez. After the "Can a robot...?" mini-speech of Detective Spooner as portrayed by Will Smith the android simply asks, "Can you?" In the end, that's what it all boils down to. Can you? Can you do all the stuff that you say your kind, your species or your race can do. Or are you associating with their ability to compensate for your inability?




Just to make things clear, I am Filipino and proud to be Filipino. By that I mean I'm not ashamed of my nationality and heritage even if inept cops caused the death of the hostages in the Manila hostage crisis, even if our Air Force can mount no credible defense of our airspace if China decides to attack, even if our elected officials can't remember the rules of citing one's sources, even when one religous order sets our progress backwards because of the imposition of its morality for the rest of the countrythat does not belong to its fold. I do not renounce my connection  to my Nation just because someone gives the Philippines and the Filipinos a bad name.

Conversely my pride does not come from listing prominent Filipinos and bask in the glory of their acheivements. I'm not proud to be Filipino just because Manny Pacquiao is the holder of 7 or 8 World Titles in Boxing. I'm not not proud to be a Filipino because some Filipina who hits high notes becomes discovered by some American talkshow host and becomes a recording artist. I'm not proud to be a Filipino because Jessica Sanchez made it to second place of American Idol. I'm not proud to be Filipino because Jose Rizal is  a paragon and polyglot and sparked the Philippine Revolution or that a Filipina who shares my family name is a supermodel or that my grandfather is a National Artist for literature.

The above reasons like are what what make typical Filipinos say they are proud to be Filipinos. It's pride by association. I'm proud to be Filipino because this and that Filipino did this and that or can do this and that. To that I ask the android's question, "Can you"?

Can you box? Can you sing? Can you write? Can you even do anything productive? Can you do anything that you can be proud of, let alone your country? Or are you a drunk who gets wasted before the sun even hits noon and makes a nuisance of yourself in the neighborhood?

What is there for you to be proud of as a Filipino if there's no cause to be proud of you as a person? A graduate has cause to be proud of his diploma because he's earned it. An athlete has cause to be proud of his medals because he worked for it. A writer has cause to be proud of his byline because he got published. And now you're proud to be a Filipino just because you were born one? Proud to be Filipino even though you speak the language ineptly, know nothing of Philippine history, and know more about Hollywood than Filipino society?

Proud to be Filipino?

Are you someone that your family can be proud of or are you a freeloading son or daughter who does nothing but waits for the hard earned money of your parents?

Are you someone your school can be proud of or are you a student that gets by through cheating, asking your friends to write your paper for you and cutting classes and getting mediocre grades?

Are you someone who will get promoted at work, someone your colleagues can affirm and be proud of because of your outstanding performance or does your pay raise simply come because you are one of the employees who managed not to get fired and it just came on schedule?

In this global environment, there is no particular acheivement that can be monopolized by any nationality. Pacquiao is not a reason to declare that great boxers come from the Philippines. Nor Jessica the reason to declare that great singers come from the Philippines. Great boxers, singers, artists, scientists, athletes, inventors come from everywhere, and statistically more from other places than from the Philippines. For every "great something" that a Filipino can be proud of there are other great somethings that another nationality can be proud of.

This is what I fear thenew DepEd "Proud to Be Filipino" campaign is going to do. It will make being proud to be Filipino and end to itself. "I'm proud to be Filipino because this and that person has acheived these things. I'm proud to be Filipino because these places and animals can only be found in the Philippines."  That kind of delivery of instruction will make it a matter of memorization and inspire a very shallow sense of pride that does nothing to inspire better action.

In years past there were programs like "Proudly Philippine Made" and "Yes the Filipino Can." I believe that these campaigns were better because it focused on acheivement and example. It focused on inspiration that results in action. It tells us, "That's right I can do it to, Filipinos have the SAME amount of talent, the SAME opportunity and the SAME potential."

Like Japanese Technology, French Cuisine, German Craftsmanship, those who have the bragging rights to them are the Japanese inventors, French chefs, and German craftsmen and the people that patronize these products.

Proud to be Filipino...are you really? Do you patronize Filipino products that are not simply localized versions of a multinational brand? Shoes from Marikina? Coffee from Batangas? Dirty Ice Cream? Puto? Kutsinta? Komiks? Local brands of Sports and outdoor equiment? Clothes? In no way am I proposing support of mediocre products (whether Filipino or otherwise). But I'm proposing the purchase and use of Filipino products that value quality not simply patronizing it for the sake of wearing the Filipino label. But if you can't even do that, (i.e. patronize Filipino products) how dare you say you are proud to be Filipino?

I'm proud to be Filipino because a lot of what I am was nurtured from things Filipino.  Filipino movies and martial art has convinced me to take up Arnis and learn that it is a fighting art that can stand toe to toe with the best the world has to offer and I know unlike many Filipinos that it can be applied without a stick. My college teacher in Philippine history has made me appreciate that our history, with it's good and bad, is best used to understand our cultural identity and it is not meant to explain or make an apology for ourselves to the world. I'm proud to be Filipino because Filipinos trained in our own Universities are qualified to work and teach and compete in other countries. I'm proud to be Filipino because given the same amount of training and opportunities Filipinos can achieve what others can.

I'm proud to be a Filipino because I'm holding an executive post that used to be held by an American. It's not a job that only they can do. I'm not better (maybe I will be) but my point is I'm just as qualified. It's not "Filipinos are better at it or Filipinos are the best." To me it's, "Anything anyone can do, a Filipino can do just as well." If a Filipino does his job better it's because he's better at the job and not because he's a Filipino.

What's Filipino about you? What have you done that will make the word Filipino something to celebrate?

Science Has Spoiled My Supper

by Phillip Wylie

I am a fan for Science. My education is scientific and I have, in one field, contributed a monograph* to a scientific journal. Science, to my mind, is applied honesty, the one reliable means we have to find out truth. That is why, when error is committed in the name of Science, I feel the way a man would if his favorite uncle had taken to drink.

Over the years, I have come to feel that way about what science has done to food. I agree that America can set as good a table as any nation in the world. I agree that our food is nutritious and that the diet of most of us is well-balanced. What America eats is handsomely packaged; it is usually clean and pure; it is excellently preserved. The only trouble with it is this: year by year it grows less good to eat. It appeals increasingly to the eye. But who eats with his eyes? Almost everything used to taste better when I was a kid.

For quite a long time I thought that observation was merely another index of advancing age. But some years ago I married a girl whose mother is an expert cook of the kind called “old-fashioned.” This gifted woman’s daughter (my wife) was taught her mother’s venerable skills. The mother lives in the country and still plants an old-fashioned garden. She still buys dairy products from the neighbors and, in so far as possible, she uses the same materials her mother and grandmother did—to prepare meals that are superior. They are just as good, in this Year of Grace, as I recall them from my courtship. After eating for a while at the table of my mother-in-law, it is sad to go back to eating with my friends—even the alleged “good cooks” among them. And it is a gruesome experience to have meals at the best big-city restaurants.

Take cheese, for instance. Here and there, in big cities, small stores and delicatessens specialize in cheese. At such places, one can buy at least some of the first-rate cheeses that we used to eat—such as those we had with pie and in macaroni. The latter were sharp but not too sharp. They were a little crumbly. We called them American cheeses, or even rat cheese; actually they were Cheddars. Long ago, this cheese began to be supplanted by a material called “cheese foods.” Some cheese foods and “processed” cheese are fairly edible; but not one comes within miles of the old kinds—for flavor.

A grocer used to be very fussy about his cheese. Cheddar was made and sold by hundreds of little factories. Representatives of the factories had particular customers, and cheese was prepared by hand to suit the grocers, who knew precisely what their patrons wanted in rat cheese, pie cheese, American and other cheeses. Some liked them sharper; some liked them yellower; some liked anise seeds in cheese, or caraway.
What happened? Science—or what is called science—stepped in. The old-fashioned cheeses didn’t ship well enough. They crumbled, became moldy, dried out. “Scientific” tests disclosed that a great majority of the people will buy a less-good-tasting cheese if that’s all they can get. “Scientific marketing” then took effect. Its motto is “Give the people the least quality they’ll stand for.” In food, as in many other things, the “scientific marketers” regard quality as secondary so long as they can sell most persons anyhow; what they are after is “durability” or “shippability.”
‘
It is not possible to make the very best cheese in vast quantities at a low average cost. “Scientific sampling” got in its statistically nasty work. It was found that the largest number of people will buy something that is bland and rather tasteless. Those who prefer a product of a pronounced and individualistic flavor have a variety of preferences. Nobody is altogether pleased by bland foodstuff, in other words; but nobody is very violently put off. The result is that a “reason” has been found for turning out zillions of packages of something that will “do” for nearly all and isn’t even imagined to be superlatively good by a single soul!

Economics entered. It is possible to turn out in quantity a bland, impersonal, practically imperishable substance more or less resembling, say, cheese—at lower cost than cheese. Chain groceries shut out the independent stores and “standardization” became a principal means of cutting costs.

Imitations also came into the cheese business. There are American duplications of most of the celebrated European cheeses, mass-produced and cheaper by far than the imports. They would cause European food-lovers to gag or guffaw—but generally the imitations are all that’s available in the supermarkets. People buy them and eat them.

Perhaps you don’t like cheese—so the fact that decent cheese is hardly ever served in America any more, or used in cooking, doesn’t matter to you. Well, take bread. There has been (and still is) something of a hullabaloo about bread. In fact, in the last few years, a few big bakeries have taken to making a fairly good imitation of real bread. It costs much more than what is nowadays called bread, but it is edible. Most persons, however, now eat as “bread” a substance so full of chemicals and so barren of cereals that it approaches a synthetic.

Most bakers are interested mainly in how a loaf of bread looks. They are concerned with how little stuff they can put in it—to get how much money. They are deeply interested in using chemicals that will keep bread from molding, make it seem “fresh” for the longest possible time, and so render it marketable and shippable. They have been at this monkeyshine for a generation. Today a loaf of “bread” looks deceptively real; but it is made from heaven knows what and it resembles, as food, a solidified bubble bath. Some months ago I bought a loaf of the stuff and, experimentally, began pressing it together, like an accordion. With a little effort, I squeezed the whole loaf to a length of about one inch.

Yesterday, at the home of my mother-in-law, I ate with country-churned butter and home-canned wild strawberry jam several slices of actual bread, the same thing we used to have every day at home. People who have eaten actual bread will know what I mean. They will know that the material commonly called bread is not even related to real bread, except in name.

ii
For years, I couldn’t figure out what had happened to vegetables. I knew, of course, that most vegetables, to be enjoyed in their full deliciousness, must be picked fresh and cooked at once. I knew that vegetables cannot be overcooked and remain even edible, in the best sense. They cannot stand on the stove. That set of facts makes it impossible, of course, for any American restaurant—or, indeed, any city-dweller separated from supply by more than a few hours—to have decent fresh vegetables. The Parisians manage by getting their vegetables picked at dawn and rushed in farmers’ carts to market, where no middleman or marketman delays produce on its way to the pot.

Our vegetables, however, come to us through a long chain of command. There are merchants of several sorts—wholesalers before the retailers, commission men, and so on—with the result that what were once edible products become, in transit, mere wilted leaves and withered tubers.

Homes and restaurants do what they can with this stuff—which my mother-in-law would discard on the spot. I have long thought that the famed blindfold test for cigarettes should be applied to city vegetables. For I am sure that if you pureed them and ate them blindfolded, you couldn’t tell the beans from the peas, the turnips from the squash, the Brussels sprouts from the broccoli.

It is only lately that I have found how much science has to do with this reduction of noble victuals to pottage. Here the science of genetics is involved. Agronomists and the like have taken to breeding all sorts of vegetables and fruits—changing their original nature. This sounds wonderful and often is insane. For the scientists have not as a rule taken any interest whatsoever in the taste of the things they’ve tampered with!
What they’ve done is to develop “improved” strains of things for every purpose but eating. They work out, say, peas that will ripen all at once. The farmer can then harvest his peas and thresh them and be done with them. It is extremely profitable because it is efficient. What matter if such peas taste like boiled paper wads?

Geneticists have gone crazy over such “opportunities.” They’ve developed string beans that are straight instead of curved, and all one length. This makes them easier to pack in cans, even if, when eating them, you can’t tell them from tender string. Ripening time and identity of size and shape are, nowadays, more important in carrots than the fact that they taste like carrots. Personally, I don’t care if they hybridize onions till they are as big as your head and come up through the snow; but, in doing so, they are producing onions that only vaguely and feebly remind you of onions. We are getting some varieties, in fact, that have less flavor than the water off last week’s leeks. Yet, if people don’t eat onions because they taste like onions, what in the name of Luther Burbank do they eat them for?

The women’s magazines are about one third dedicated to clothes, one third to mild comment on sex, and the other third to recipes and pictures of handsome salads, desserts, and main courses. “Institutes” exist to experiment and tell housewives how to cook attractive meals and how to turn leftovers into works of art. The food thus pictured looks like famous paintings of still life. The only trouble is it’s tasteless. It leaves appetite unquenched and merely serves to stave off famine.

I wonder if this blandness of our diet doesn’t explain why so many of us are overweight and even dangerously so. When things had flavor, we knew what we were eating all the while—and it satisfied us. A teaspoonful of my mother-in-law’s wild strawberry jam will not just provide a gastronome’s ecstasy: it will entirely satisfy your jam desire. But, of the average tinned or glass-packed strawberry jam, you need half a cupful to get the idea of what you’re eating. A slice of my mother-in-law’s apple pie will satiate you far better than a whole bakery pie.

That thought is worthy of investigation—of genuine scientific investigation. It is merely a hypothesis, so far, and my own. But people-and their ancestors—have been eating according to flavor for upwards of a billion years. The need to satisfy the sense of taste may be innate and important. When food is merely a pretty cascade of viands, with the texture of boiled cardboard and the flavor of library paste, it may be the instinct of genus homo to go on eating in the unconscious hope of finally satisfying the ageless craving of the frustrated taste buds. In the days when good-tasting food was the rule in the American home, obesity wasn’t such a national curse.

How can you feel you’ve eaten if you haven’t tasted, and fully enjoyed tasting? Why (since science is ever so ready to answer the beck and call of mankind) don’t people who want to reduce merely give up eating and get the nourishment they must have in measured doses shot into their arms at hospitals? One ready answer to that question suggests that my theory of overeating is sound: people like to taste! In eating, they try to satisfy that like.

The scientific war against deliciousness has been stepped up enormously in the last decade. Some infernal genius found a way to make biscuit batter keep. Housewives began to buy this premixed stuff. It saved work, of course. But any normally intelligent person can learn, in a short period, how to prepare superb baking powder biscuits. I can make better biscuits, myself, than can be made from patent batters. Yet soon after this fiasco became an American staple, it was discovered that a half-baked substitute for all sorts of breads, pastries, rolls, and the like could be mass-manufactured, frozen—and sold for polishing off in the home oven. None of these two-stage creations is as good as even a fair sample of the thing it imitates. A man of taste, who had eaten one of my wife’s cinnamon buns, might use the premixed sort to throw at starlings—but not to eat! Cake mixes, too, come ready-prepared—like cement and not much better-tasting compared with true cake.

It is, however, “deep-freezing” that has really rung down the curtain on American cookery. Nothing is improved by the process. I have yet to taste a deep-frozen victual that measures up, in flavor, to the fresh, unfrosted original. And most foods, cooked or uncooked, are destroyed in the deep freeze for all people of sense and sensibility. Vegetables with crisp and crackling texture emerge as mush, slippery and stringy as hair nets simmered in Vaseline. The essential oils that make peas peas—and cabbage cabbage—must undergo fission and fusion in freezers. Anyhow, they vanish. Some meats turn to leather. Others to wood pulp. Everything, pretty much, tastes like the mosses of tundra, dug up in midwinter. Even the appearance changes, oftentimes. Handsome comestibles you put down in the summer come out looking very much like the corpses of woolly mammoths recovered from the last Ice Age.

Of course, all this scientific “food handling” tends to save money. It certainly preserves food longer. It reduces work at home. But these facts, and especially the last, imply that the first purpose of living is to avoid work—at home, anyhow.

Without thinking, we are making an important confession about ourselves as a nation. We are abandoning quality—even, to some extent, the quality of people. The “best” is becoming too good for us. We are suckling ourselves on machine-made mediocrity. It is bad for our souls, our minds, and our digestion. It is the way our wiser and calmer forebears fed, not people, but hogs: as much as possible and as fast as possible, with no standard of quality.

The Germans say, “Mann ist ivas er isst—Man is what he eats.” If this be true, the people of the U.S.A. are well on their way to becoming a faceless mob of mediocrities, of robots. And if we apply to other attributes the criteria we apply these days to appetite, that is what would happen! We would not want bright children any more; we’d merely want them to look bright—and get through school fast. We wouldn’t be interested in beautiful women—just a good paint job. And we’d be opposed to the most precious quality of man: his individuality, his differentness from the mob.

There are some people—sociologists and psychologists among them—who say that is exactly what we Americans are doing, are becoming. Mass man, they say, is on the increase. Conformity, standardization, similarity—all on a cheap and vulgar level—are replacing the great American ideas of colorful liberty and dignified individualism. If this is so, the process may well begin, like most human behavior, in the home—in those homes where a good meal has been replaced by something-to-eat-in-a-hurry. By something not very good to eat, prepared by a mother without very much to do, for a family that doesn’t feel it amounts to much anyhow.

I call, here, for rebellion.

 ______________________________________

definitely not my output the author's name is right on top, Phillip Wylie. I've seen this in my father's old college textbooks and it has stuck to me ever since. This one essay has gotten me thinking over the years. It has influenced me to say what I want to say and write what I want to write about passionaltely and I can do so in a very opinionated manner so as long as it is lucid and intelligent.

I Hate "People"

I hate people when they think as a mob. I hate people when they are led by hype, marketing, and popular opinion. That's when I hate people.

Agent K in Men in Black said, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” Which is why they can't be trusted with the truth.

In a world where Google has made information ubiquitous, people are still to lazy to look up information. One unfounded accusation becomes a rumor and a smear campaign and any defense by the person is judged as a cover up.

One person's inane comment is suddenly thought of as bigotry. Take Pacquiao's comment on same sex marriage (I didn't vote for the guy), he was naive or brave enough to speak his mind about same sex marriage as a sin. While that statement was of course offensive to the LGBT community and Christians applauded him, he was specifically addressing the marriage issue and he was not promoting LGBT hate as big a disconnect as that might seem.

Turns out the report was a bad piece of journalism, it was sensational tabloid reporting made to look credible because it was posted on the web and not some two bit paper. But the Old Testament quotes weren't uttered by Manny.

Risking the anger of the LGBT community, opposing same sex marriage is not equal to LGBT hate. Double standard might be a closer monicker but hate isn't. And besides isn't it true that there are members of the LGBT community NOT clamoring for same sex marriage and some even oppose it. Almost in the same vein as Catholics for RH.

Interpreting Manny's statements are best viewed through the lens of Hanlon's Razor (remember what I said about information and Google...). It does not have to be viewed as malicious.

The next day after Anti-Manny hate speech and clamor for his sponsors to drop him the news article explaining his side was of course received less than half as well. Comments range from, "Of course he'll say that," to, "Whatever, I still think he's a bigot." Who's close minded now?

Manny's case is just the latest example. But time and again when "people" unite in a nationwide/planetwide knee-jerk reaction considering the possibility that they could be wrong is such a hard pill to take.

That goes for Manny or Gaga or Rowling or Dan Brown or who ever dares get spotlighted. Haters will always find a way to get public consensus to legitimize their hate. Send a text brigade invoking God, National pride and primal fears and you've got the seed, ready to replace intelligent thought with a "cause for action", to be spread by "people" who let others do the thinking for them. No one dares be an individual in the face of such popularity.

But don't think that getting lost amongst "people" only applies to the majority, counter culture has it too. You find a people of somewhat like mind but you find that they too can be extreme. Strangely enough people do the same thing, they conform to the thought of the minority group. Hoping not to be seen as part of the majority the, unthinking masses, one becomes unthinking themselves to accommodate the cool minority ideology. In that set up it feels weird to counter the counter culture. But if you see yourself as a rebel, aren't you also free to rebel against the rebellion?

In a world where a concept can be searched and have 10,000,000 hits, why can't people take the effort to view at least five of those? All this information is available but ignorance still abounds. It used to be that people are ignorant because only the elite could access information. Today it's worse, people are stupid because they're too lazy to find the information. And worse still, people are ignorant because of the admission that they don't want to think.

That's why I hate "people" but I love persons.

I hate it when people say they have a secret and don't intend to tell you anyway.

I hate it when people tell you they have a secret that they never intend to tell you.

I don't only hate it I find it downright stupid. It's as stupid as a kid who wants to play silent treatment and says, "I'm not talking to you." If you mean to not talk to someone, then you don't talk to them. It's as moronic as saying, "I'm ignoring you."

Tip, if you wanna keep a secret you keep its existence a secret. You don't announce its presence. The best way to keep a secret is to keep your trap shut in the first place.

I Hate it When People Mutter and are Offended When You Ask Them to Repeat What They Said

I hate it when people don't talk clearly enough and then when you ask for a repetition they go, "It's nothing." It's irritating especially if they try to use a word different from what they said and insist it's what they said.

"It would be good if we had a ... here."

"A what?"

"Nothing."

"You said it would be good if we had a...?"

"A little cheer in here"

"That's not what you said. If we had a...?"

"Nothing."

"A what?!"

"I said it would be good if we had a beer in here."

"Yeah I agree I think we need 2 cold ones."


Was that so hard?

If it wasn't supposed to be heard don't mutter it at all. And if you want it heard, then for crying out loud speak up. And if by some circumstance like loud music, static on the phone line or wax in the ears prevent you from being heard properly, don't go on feeling hurt for not being heard in the first place.

If I wasn't paying attention I wouldn't be having this conversation with you. If I wasn't paying attention I'd answer you in a lame or off tangent manner like, "Uhuh that's nice." Instead of repeating your sentence word for word except the misheard one.