start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

I'm with you on that, I cringe too

I think the typical argument (without endorsing said argument) against people without children judging people with children is simply that they "don't understand what it's like to try to get a rev'd up little ball of pure id through the cookie aisle of a supermarket without violent conflict,"

yes, but on the other hand, i made a decision, a well-informed and careful one, not to put myself into a situation where i would have to get a revved-up ball of id through a cookie aisle. if you're the parent of this ball of id, that's the decision you made, and you're stuck with it for the next few years, and if i'm judging it's because you're expecting a store full of strangers to be patient and understanding when their own lives are stressful enough already. that's a lot of charity to ask for.

Well I see that side of it and I fully respect people who choose not to have kids. I don't think there's anything more or less "selfish" about having vs not having kids. But I also think it's unreasonable to expect to live in a child-free world, as though the people who are "stuck with" their decision should just avoid buying groceries for a few years. I try to do my part to avoid creating greater inconvenience by only shopping in already-noisy madhouses like Costco rather than quiet, boutique organic groceries, and by removing K from any indoor space as quickly as possible (if possible) when she starts screaming, best I can do.

i mean you don't fucking have to have kids. you don't. not unless someone is threatening your life and saying "bear my child or i'll fucking kill you." it's a decision what you bring into the world and it's not other people's problem.

sorry, it's other people's problem. People are all other people's problem.

i have empathy for a lot of people and consider myself one of those dreaded SJWs but i get real tired of people not taking accountability for things that they can realistically do something about.

All I'm saying is how long is this going to go on for? I probably can't hope they'll just break the lease and move out, so that leaves...when he goes to pre-school?

regarding small kids, i got in an almost-argument with my friend for "not knowing" about how it is, instigated by me commenting that his in-home communication wasn't optimal. he'd showed me how hard it was to go out, and it was this bizarrely passive-aggressive half-jokey text exchange with his wife, which was beyond the point.

here's the thing -- I have a lot of friends with children. small children. it's not foreign! if you say "i may be free saturday afternoon" and i have yet to make plans, i will hold it open. if you tell me on saturday afternoon that the kids won't nap and you have to stay home, then that's fine! if you want me to come over and bring a pizza and chill with your kid for a bit, that's cool most of the time, too. but if you let a couple of us know you're down for going to X restaurant and a couple people are en route and you can't be bothered to text all of us to say it's not gonna happen, then wtf! if you are not amazing at communication, you need to get a lot better if you have small kids and want to keep doing stuff with friends,

i mean, your kid was shooting the angry birds in the wrong direction until i told him how that shit works, i deserve some credit, here

Oh flaky parent friends suck for sure, we have those even as parents -- couple who lives half a block away and like barely communicates, cancels out of everything for any possible child-related excuse with no notice whatsoever.

Skips friends' bdays because mom has a headache, they have to be back in their home like 2 hours before bedtime without exception, etc.

bleh, some people live their lives really rubbery, constantly trying to reach out but getting slapped back into that home

Parents with kids are terrible but even worse are the old people who don't commit suicide when they turn 55! Get out of my way with your slowass walker, gramps! Go wander into the desert without water.

we have another thread for that

When you are out with someone and they run into someone they know and start talking and don't introduce you...

I do that sometimes, usually because i can't actually remember the name of the person, and am hoping desperately that it'll somehow come up in the conversation

I commend anyone who doesn't breed in this anthropocene era of unsustainable plenty as opposed to the happy fucking biological fly tippers and their ever increasing broods of yet more shitting arseholes in cars.

My kid was quite a public menace in his younger days (autism,ADHD and tourettes) and my response has not always been considered and calm towards rude, disapproving voices. I think sometimes it was justifiable counter-aggression and at other times I was going into precious, sanctimonious parent-arsehole territory myself.

xp I have a good arrangement with one of my friends that if she starts talking to someone and doesn't introduce me, I know it's because she's forgotten their name. So I wait for a lull and introduce myself and then they tell me their name! It works great. She can give a pleasant little apology, like, "Oh, sorry, yes, this is my friend In Orbit! Did you meet at the--no? Oh well, anyway, Susan, you make the best lasagna, In Orbit, you have to try the recipe...." and it's all smoothed out. Genius. You do need a partner for that one though.

i mean you don't fucking have to have kids. you don't. not unless someone is threatening your life and saying "bear my child or i'll fucking kill you." it's a decision what you bring into the world and it's not other people's problem.

I know a couple of people who have kids but only because they fought to get custody instead of leaving them with drug addict siblings who can't be bothered to do things like "purchase food instead of meth" or "have a place to live" or "bring the child to school". Not super common obviously but not unheard of.

I mean, your kid was shooting the angry birds in the wrong direction until i told him how that shit works, i deserve some credit, here ― mh , Tuesday, 3 February 2015 03:17 (2 hours ago) Bookmark

lol

I commend anyone who doesn't breed in this anthropocene era of unsustainable plenty as opposed to the happy fucking biological fly tippers and their ever increasing broods of yet more shitting arseholes in cars.

ah, this is why i love ilx.

Have you tried sidling up to the child and screaming along in the same pitch? It's bound to put the little bastard off his or her stride.

― Aimless, Monday, February 2, 2015 9:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When I was a teenager, a friend did this to a toddler in a stroller and the kid yelled back (in the same pitch) "SHUUUUUUUT UUUUUP!"

Woman wheeling crying 2-ish year old in a car through Target...

Woman leans over to kid and says in a pleading voice: You are being so loud!
Kid, wailing at the top of her lungs: I KNOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!

I felt bad for both of them but couldn't help but LOL.

― carl agatha, Monday, September 16, 2013 8:42 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still think about that and LOL sometimes.

xp I have a good arrangement with one of my friends that if she starts talking to someone and doesn't introduce me, I know it's because she's forgotten their name. So I wait for a lull and introduce myself and then they tell me their name! It works great. She can give a pleasant little apology, like, "Oh, sorry, yes, this is my friend In Orbit! Did you meet at the--no? Oh well, anyway, Susan, you make the best lasagna, In Orbit, you have to try the recipe...." and it's all smoothed out. Genius. You do need a partner for that one though.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Tuesday, February 3, 2015 4:15 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've tried this with people I didn't have a pre-arrangement with, assuming that the people who pick up what I was putting down by I don't know, sensing the waves of embarrassed desperation I was thought-beaming to them, and it didn't work and it was all just so terrible.

As for people with children who sometimes shriek loudly in public and people without children who reasonably want to avoid being subjected to another human's high-pitched shrieking, we all have to live together. All you can do is try to be compassionate and barring that, remove yourself (and the shrieking person in your care, if applicable) from the situation to the best of your ability and post about how annoyed it makes you on a message board.

An old friend has kids who are basically Planet Earth = Deadly Allergen and her life has become very complicated and nervous as a result. It must suck for all of them, so families not sending kids to school with little peanutty pieces of death that could kill is just basic courtesy. I pretty much never bake stuff for kids that has nuts in it, because it's just easier not to.

As to shrieking kids, sometimes shit just happens and the kid is entitled to cry. Last month, my cousin's kid (newly 4) hit his head on a grip rail on a London bus and started wailing. It was one of those horrible windy, rainy afternoons and everyone on the bus was equally pissed off at the awful weather as they were grateful to have caught ANY bus. Cousin (who was 5 months pregnant) whisked toddlercousin upstairs to the less-crowded top deck and had just started calming him down when the mean old man in the seat opposite started tutting and muttering. My cousin rounded on the man (Hell hath no fury like a pregnoid scorned), telling him 'sometimes kids have accidents, welcome to my day, have you forgotten what it's like to be a child?' (while shushing toddlercousin) whereupon she was told off for not being sufficiently ladylike by this nasty old shite. At which point angry feminist Cousin just sighed and said, 'well, I can't be the first lady who's ever told you to FUCK OFF AND DIE, you stupid, miserable prick, and I sure as fuck will not be the last.'

awesome.

This belongs here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acWdh0a_92A

Foobar deciding out of the blue for some reason that it needs to play things back randomly or in jumbled order. Not sure why but the order I had things set up in was just totally changed to mix everything up so a set that I was waiting to hear wasn't coming through.
I don't remember even being near the player since it stopped playing things in an ordered sequence. Maybe there was a long track or something.
& maybe I'd tried to check what was playing and somehow the interface had just been such that I could accidentally move things to random by moving a cursor to the wrong place. But that in itself is annoying.
I just copped on that it sounded like the end of an lp I was listening to didn't lead into the next thing I was expecting to hear. Then look at the thing and the tracks were in random order.
Gets to be a pain when I have a number of lps or live sets lined up and can't remember what they were.

high-five by proxy to suzy's friend

My cousin! Who seems to be doing right by her toddler *and* other people in most public settings without resorting to sentences containing the words MY CHILD. That was the day of a thousand toddlercousin meltdowns, triggered by things like very blustery weather, falling over, being in a strange city - you name it. We'd only managed to calm him down from driving-rain distress a few minutes before getting on the bus in question, so when he hit his head there was this moment where Cousin and I exchanged glances in that horrible endless moment of doom when you know what's about to happen is going to be a giant pain in the arse, then toddlercousin just let it rip.

PROTIP: repeated interventions using the no no no-cat video seem to head off wilful-toddler displays of NO and I DON'T WANT TO by turning the behaviour into a really funny joke.

Oh, that's a good tip.

The only thing I did not like about my toddlercousin was: fussy eater. Only into milk, cheese, chocolate buttons, buttered rolls and toast. NOT EVEN PIZZA. I know when I was that age, I was already into Italian and Chinese food, wanted to try anything the adults were having, and ate any vegetable placed before me.

Ohhhh that one kills me. My partner has a 7 yo who has celiac so out of the gate he's a very nervous and fussy eater for very understandable reasons (eating made him scream in pain for a long time til it was diagnosed). We were trying to convince him the other day to have something other than yet another bowl of grated cheese to eat, like hey how about some carrot? (he usually loves carrot and hummus) and he bellowed I DONT EAT VEGETABLES YOU KNOW THAT. This kid is vegetarian. T'fuck is he gonna eat then? My poor bf :/

Ah, the next day he'll forget about not eating veg - kid rage is never logical. When I was seven, I was trying to get promoted off the children's menu (but I wound up having a couple of things I never ate because having chemo at 5/6 made me hate them too much to ever want).

I make pesto with pecorino for a friend who is both celiac and lactose-intolerant; you can make it with basil or with roasted red peppers and a shitload of garlic, then use it with vegetables and meat rather than pasta (or use the gluten-free stuff that's out there). It goes really well with chicken and fish.

Update: my new jumper with too short sleeves is still pissing me off, and my best friend pointed out that the coloured stripe across the lower third is a powerful accentuator of my oversized gut, but I stubbornly wore it today anyway in a fit of "perhaps this comment just shows that SOME PEOPLE are a little too obsessed with my gut which other people will not be looking at at all in this perfectly normal jumper!" and now I keep adjusting how it lies and feeling like I would just like to sit under a cardboard box all day.

Hello does anyone have a large cardboard box? A very, very large cardboard box. (OK, that part may be one for the embarrassed thread but I am angry at the jumper and myself and the shop because I can't take it back now and other people's well-intentioned advice and possibly imaginary thoughts too.)

People who drive down the middle of the lane to minimize the impact of a speed bump, then continue driving down the middle after going over it, ignoring the oncoming traffic that y'know, needs their lane

People who write in the margins of library books. You are bad citizens. I'm thinking of one right now. No one cares what you think about various figures in Alex Ross's "The Rest is Noise". Use a notebook you self-centered cretin.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/7/18/1405709750524/Joe-Orton-012.jpg

soz Vic

xp - my condolences, spacecadet, that sounds like the absolute worst >:[

People who drink soda for breakfast and/or while eating donuts.

You deserve the unpleasantness of your anger on that one IMO. Diet Coke is a very fine alternative to coffee.

Then he carved his thoughts on the tree for everybody to see.

Wait that's Joe Orton! Nice move, but I'd differentiate between spirited vandalism and pedantic margin splodge.

Coke is a great breakfast beverage, although I'd pair it with something salty

People who drink soda for breakfast and/or while eating donuts.

I think this is fabulously in the spirit of this thread.

otm

(RFI: where on ILX is the best to-have-or-not-to-have-kids discussion?)

let me know so i can spew my hatred of children all over this piece