Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

http://i.imgur.com/I9wuD.jpg

This monster sitting with her feet up, eating a motherfucking tuna sandwich on a rush hour train.

jeez that train and the bad dream drugs

carl, is you name IRL Jacob Singer?

that's p. rational tho

irrationally, i am angered by:
ppl who wear polo shirts buttoned all the way up
ppl who don't move their arms while walking

ppl who wear polo shirts buttoned all the way up

oh jeeze, yeah, this is such a bad look

golfers in particular seem to struggle w/this

I can actually see the reasoning there -- they spend so much time out in the sun, I'm sure they want to cover up as much as possible. A lot of senior tour players even turn their collars up. They're probably getting melanomas hacked off nonstop between events.

Golfers make me irrationally angry.

xp nah, they're just being weird. that last button isn't going to save them from skin cancer.

i'm aware of this due to the match play championship being on all day at work. hooray

golfers can't use sunscreen?

People looking over my shoulder when I am typing something online. Could be a reply to an email, ILX post, blog post etc...

Folders can't wear crew necks and sun hats? Gofers can't find something to do inside?

Leaving those two delightful autocorrect corrections.

As soon as Kayne starts buttoning the top button of his polo, you all will be doing it then.

ppl who don't move their arms while walking

Trying to remember--there was a sitcom episode about this. Seinfeld? The non-arm-swinger is made to cry about her 'condition' and she runs away with her arms held stiffly by her sides.

non-arm swinging is weird. always reminds me of charm-school girls balancing books on their heads.

There is/are some dumb dickchz/s on my floor who don't close the outer door of the gate elevator all the way, which makes the elevator stay on this floor until someone boards it and takes it down.

There is modern, automatic-door elevator on the other side of the building, but the point is that you have to be an oblivious asshole to not notice that leaving the door ajar makes the car stick!

Like jvc said - fucking be aware of your surroundings! Just look around you.

A few weeks ago the gate elevator was stuck and I rode the other one to my floor w/ a guy who was moaning about the gate elevator "never working." I said, "it's because people don't close the door all the way - whatta buncha jerks amirite?" but he didn't get it. He just whined about the building being ancient and management not replacing it with a real elevator.

Trying to remember--there was a sitcom episode about this. Seinfeld?

Yes, Seinfeld. Raquel Welch was the stiff-arm.

I was a non-arm-swinger as a kid. I had to force myself to learn how to do it so I wouldn't look like a dork.

There was a thread a few years ago where this 'behaviour' was ascribed to 'aspie rubes'

Never did work out what a 'rube' was...

Cyclist in the middle of the lane. Why? This street has a bike lane. He's blocking traffic.

My bus passed him, and he didn't yield an inch, which meant we practically brushed up against him.

Good for the cyclist to be honest. Often/usually safer to be in the motorist's lane than in the cycle lane (which will take them down the inside of motor traffic). Riding at the side of the lane is also dangerous, with traffic passing too close for evasive action to take place.

The cyclist is pretty much riding in the recommended primary position, safer for both cyclist and motorist.

Yeh, no.

Besides being a nuisance, he put himself at risk by making cars squeeze between him and oncoming traffic.

That's the cars' fault, then, Jesse. When a cyclist is "taking the lane," they're supposed to be treated like a motor vehicle. It's not enormously practical for more than short distances because it does hold up traffic, but that is the law.

I feel a bit bad about policing someone on their IA, but I see and get far far too much dangerous aggression from motorists, and see far too much dangerously vulnerable cycling to not want to pass comment!

It's not enormously practical for more than short distances: Exactly! I thought maybe he was going to make a left turn, but no, he was just taking up space and not yielding at all to other traffic.

It's as practical for as long as it is safe.

Fizzles would I be correct in guessing that you would also defend the behavior of cyclists (usu. bike messengers IME) who go the wrong way on one-way streets and play Frogger with auto traffic?

It's practical and safe for bikers to impede car traffic if we woke up and found we were living in The Netherlands, but sadly, that's not the case, hence it's neither.

Not in the slightest, no. That's dangerous, not safe. That said, a lot of poor cycling behaviour can be put down to poor cycling infrastructure!

I dislike like it when cyclists show the same lack of consideration to pedestrians as motorists do to cyclists.

All this said, I'm guessing that as both a cyclist and Londoner there are some considerable cultural differences at work here? Still fed up with drivers who think that perfectly legal cycling is an excuse to drive dangerously and aggressively (not saying this of you btw - but it's an attitude I encounter on a daily basis, pretty much).

xpost

Fizzles would I be correct in guessing that you would also defend the behavior of cyclists (usu. bike messengers IME) who go the wrong way on one-way streets and play Frogger with auto traffic?

C'mon, this is unfair. The cyclist-in-lane thing is a legal thing to do in certain circumstances; whether the guy you saw was following them is debatable, but traffic manuals and cycling guides do recommend it. The other two are acknowledged to be obnoxious and never legal.

ah, echo on that 'dislike' as well. xpost

Trying to remember--there was a sitcom episode about this. Seinfeld?

Yes, Seinfeld. Raquel Welch was the stiff-arm.

― nickn, Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:44 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was actually molly shannon but then i think at the end it was revealed that raquel welch did the same thing?

I don't want to speak for Jesse but I think his main beef is that there was a (safe - I know the road he takes to work and I would ride my bike in this bike lane) bike lane available, but this cyclist chose to take full use of the car lane for an extended period of time, putting himself at risk.

The conflict is probably mostly around what the cars chose to do, which go around the bike, putting the cyclist and all the motorists trying to pass each other in a lane and a half's worth of city street, at risk.

I can only say that it's probably tough to drive a bus at cycling speed without stopping and starting and flinging the passengers around, and I would probably wish that the cyclist would use the bike lane, too. But I get really motion sick.

Also I have terrible balance and if I get stuck having to hang onto a strap instead of a vertical pole, I'll end up in someone's lap.

I had to steady myself by putting my hand sharply on an elderly Indian lady's groin once, due to a sharp bus jolt. She got IA.

Is the bus, by any chance, once that makes stops every few blocks? If it is, they're incredibly difficult to bike alongside when they're pulling over and letting people off/on--a bus route can make a bike lane pretty much useless.

^^^ and from my experience with bike lanes in Cleveland, the drivers do NOT check the curbside mirror before pulling into the bike lane. I've been thisclose to being demolished by an RTA bus at least four times. Now if I see a bus I either ride in the lane, or hang way the hell back if it's approaching a stop.

I don't want to argue and I definitely don't want to seem anti-biker, it just seems like I'm getting some cycle'splaining wrt what I saw, which was a guy in the way of rush hour traffic without any apparent reason except that's where he felt like rising and fuck everyone else.

Xp
Yeh carl that's pretty much it

Laurel - yes. And yes, they are super hard to bike next to. And see my posts on other threads about the spate of bus-and-cyclist fatalities that led me to lock my bike up forever.

I can see both sides of this situation, definitely. I like iatee's "no cars, bikes forever" urban planning strategy, personally. Well, I would also want buses, but then buses could have their own lane over to the side and bikes could take the full traffic lane all the time.

Also, the hundreds of other bikers seem to do fine without biking like this guy, so what makes him special?

I wish I had bookmarked a great article or blog post I read last year about why bike lanes are basically a bunch of bullshit that makes both cyclists and drivers less sage and worse off. Time to go exercise some Google magic.

I read something similar. Did it include something about mayor in TX, I think, removing bike lanes?

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6027/5987943412_06fc309f2f.jpg

The first protected bike lane in Chicago. Would this help? That may actually get me back on a bike again, if there was one all the way down Diversey to the lakefront. Or a bike skyway.

Where is that?

Kinzie Street between Milwaukee Avenue and Wells Street.

"less sage" = "less safe" obvs. Although both might be true.

xp It might have . . . it was a really great piece.

I mean the gist is that it reinforces among drivers that bikes don't belong "on the road," so they should always just stay in the bike lane, then they encounter a cyclist making a left and get all IA and do something dangerous. Whereas cyclists grow to believe they can just be protected from traffic and don't learn the skills necessary to ride among cars.

This isn't the place for this maybe! (But sometimes cyclists' stuff is read by cyclists only and motorists' viewpoints not read by cyclists) This for the standard road lane cycle lane:

1. Take cyclists down the inside left of traffic, where drivers aren't necessarily expecting to see cyclists.

2. Often the worst road surfaces, with glass and grit and drains, plus potholes.

3. Make cyclists feel safe when in fact they're not, can cause some drivers to think that the cyclist should only be in the cycle lane, even if it's not safe to be there.

4. Lanes (especially in the UK?) peter out when they're most needed, ie when there's least road space.

5. Curbside riding leaves very little room for maneouvre in the case of a problem.

6. Taxis and buses frequently pull into cycle lanes. Parked cars often obstruct them - encourages weaving in and out of the main lane.

Those just off the top of my head. All this said, good cycling infrastructure can encourage not just the fit and physically courageous to cycle, keep everyone safer, reduce cars on the road (due to encouraging more people to cycle), which is better for both cyclist and motorist.

The arguments that the more cyclists that are on the road and use the road lanes hold true to a certain extent, but as I say, I think they often ignore the fact that a lot of people feel a great lack of confidence when cycling in any sort of traffic, so good infrastructure is to be encouraged. Bad infrastructure actively dangerous tho.

Sorry! Will shut up now.

It's only a little longer than a half mile, but it's the thought that counts. xpost