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

pixies in the grunge section of a local record shop.

i have no idea at all why i give a shit about that but

totally 1st world problems but: my family ask for what I want for my birthday. I give them a list of stuff I want/need - CDs, baby equipment, whatever. They then tell me my presents are on their way, they'll give me something when I see them next, etc etc. So I hold off buying the CDs I want or equipment I need in case they're getting it for me. But this goes on for months and I don't even know which things they're getting! I'd really rather just buy this stuff myself but then they nag me about what I want, and if I don't tell them anything they buy me random stuff that I'd rather not fill the house up with.

Giftbuying should be restricted for kids only or maybe close romantic partners.
I have a whole other rant about aggressive gift-giving in my family but I will sound crazy.

Yes, yes, yes, you are not alone.

In fact, I feel like we may be kindered spirits.

Gosh yes. Well, the second part especially. I really don't see the need for friends to invest in gifts or cards on my birthday/Christmas but some insist on it and then I feel guilty if I don't do the same in return and it just escalates from there. I don't need a card from someone I see once a week - just get me a pint or something FFS.

Oh lord there are more of you

it's a circle of obligation and guilt and can't we just all have a pint and forget it all

Yeah, see Sunny? It's me and kinder and dog latin and possibly mh if he's not really taking the piss with that last post.

I would rather go out for a nice meal than get a present 99% of the time. Especially for my birthday. Really don't get it when people make their birthday into an extended celebration, but that's their prerogative.

fuck presents

I will take all of your presents. Problem solved.

My version of this is: 'Mom, you don't have much money and you want to get me a birthday present? Don't waste cash on stuff I neither want nor need.'

I don't want to give people merchandise and I don't want people giving me merchandise.

I agree despite the fact most of my human interactions are merchandise-based

it keeps us in line

it's a non-optional social convention </bigbangtheory>

Pints for everybody!

ty for pints carl

i got in a big fight with my friend in high school bcz she hated her birthday & got super pissed at me for giving her presents/cards every year when she would say she didnt want anything

we reached a detente

I feel like my mom struck a good balance the year she texted me "happy birthday" at 11pm one year, an hour before my birthday was over

I like presents but
1. I never really actually want anything specific so I just end up asking for books which I never read because I'm reading ILX instead
2. generic present from people other than family/partner = chocolates, which is great, I love chocolate buuuut I am supposed to be on a diet so I don't really want to receive more than one set of chocolates on any occasion (sigh)
3. certain people seem to do a weird present oneupmanship where they buy you ALL THE PRESENTS, and hey, just one or two would be great, that would be plenty thanks, buy me a drink or put some money towards dinner at the same time if you really feel like two books isn't enough of a present

tbh I am guilty of this myself too but it gets quite hard to de-escalate for fear of conspicuously buying someone less than they got you

in other news I just spent £35 on some new in-ear headphones in the hope that more money = superior sound isolation (the box promised sound isolation) = less getting IA at the guy behind me who sniffs all. day. but they sound way less good than my previous £12 headphones so I'm vaguely annoyed right now

(new: Sennheiser CX 1.00; old: some cheapo Maxell Metallics or sth, I dunno, think they're discontinued. new ones may just suck because none of the earbud sizes form the magical "seal" I am apparently supposed to be aiming for)

feeling you, VG

don't get me wrong, I love a thoughtful present. It's just in our family the whole thing is very transactional. I feel a bit awful because I 'owe' my brother about 4 bday/Christmas presents - he always says he doesn't want anything, but one year he was going to learn to drive so I said I'd get him some lessons, then that got put off and no idea if he still wants to, then he was going to go to the Grand Prix so I would chip in for that, but he didn't go, etc etc. He has no money whatsoever and his wife is the OTT gift giver which I won't even go into so I feel doubly bad. Maybe I'll just add it all up and buy him 100 scratch cards

but karma made it so that I have another friend who now gives birthday presents laden with meaning AND she keeps score so if you dont measure up she gets all pass/agg

they are always lovely presents & i love her to death but it can get a little exhausting

so yeah, i'm doing my penance now

I have a group of friends now that kind of gifts occasionally without it being a holiday. Hearing about or seeing something that you know your friend would like, or something that has come to you that you know they'd appreciate more.

That brand of casual and unplanned cross-gifting sans expectation is pretty much my platonic gift ideal.

Birthdays can suck.

I'm not sure if this is IA or justified, but curerntly its school holidays so my other half has been staying up way late cos his kids are as well. I'm the only one working right now, so I need to go to bed at 10-11pm. I just dont cope on reduced sleep.

He keeps coming to bed way later, like at midnight, turning the lamp on and reading. This is *after* Ive already drifeted off to sleep so it wakes me back up.

I tried to gently bring this up last night and he goes "well its my bed too!". Gah. >:(

Not IA. Reading can be done on the sofa iirc.

Yeah thats what I said and hes all "but then I'll just fall asleep on the couch". blerrrgh. I think I just hated that once again, I tried to speak up for myself and kind of got shot down for it. Anyway good to know I'm not being IA.

maybe you can buy him a book light with the money you have left over after paying the rent

The fact that people don't like to change their beloved routines is an excellent reason to never live together. I too love falling asleep while reading until the last moment I have to turn the light off. I also prefer not waking up with a 50-lb arm across my ribcage. My course is clear.

Definitely justified.

Those little book lights def a good idea, but w/o mookie's passive-aggressiveness attached.

DON: Well, yeah.

Get a Barnes & Noble Nook with a backlight. I got mine for £50 which is about half the price of a Kindle and better (IMO).

ffs if he falls asleep on the couch, who cares? he can wander in to bed later if he wakes up and realizes he fell asleep on the couch

Hate it when I do a reverse image search and Google suggests in its "similar images" THE EXACT SAME IMAGE it just showed me.

http://i.imgur.com/edZcdIb.png

"Would you like something similar? Well here we have an item that is identical to the one laying on the counter here."

When you're talking to someone on the phone and they shout a question to someone near them without taking the phone away from their mouth.

"Hm, I'm not sure if we have any; let me check. JERRY? DO WE HAVE ANY OF THOSE LEFT? NO? I DUNNO, SOME GUY. OK, I'LL TELL HIM. No, we don't."

xp
tbf, the FFO image is cropped differently, and you can't expect the bot to be sophisticated enough to tell that. Or even if it was, that you wouldn't want to see that too (if searching for a different res, for example).

It's the same one. Click on the top one or click on the bottom one, it's the same one.

(I mean, don't click on the imgur jpg I posted. Take my word for it.)

When you're talking to someone on the phone and they shout a question to someone near them without taking the phone away from their mouth.

"Hm, I'm not sure if we have any; let me check. JERRY? DO WE HAVE ANY OF THOSE LEFT? NO? I DUNNO, SOME GUY. OK, I'LL TELL HIM. No, we don't."

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 12:09 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This, especially when you answer a phone call and the caller is in the middle of shouting to some other person. A+ w/ the multi-tasking, you fucking self-centered prick. I have taken pleasure in hanging up on a person who did this after a couple Hello???s, then when then called, pretending I thought it was a pocket dial.

I'm starting to get IA about people at work who double down on the correctness of their mistakes. Like, mistakes are understandable, and everybody makes them, whatever. But when someone tries to point out a mistake that you've made and explain why it was a mistake, it's NAGL to be all, "Nawp, that's what I meant to say/do". OKAY THEN, GENIUS, I WILL WASTE MY TIME FOLLOWING YOUR INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER SO I CAN RE-DO MY OWN WORK AFTER YOU REALIZE THAT YOU FUCKED UP, SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD TIME.

On that phonecall front, similarly I hate it when someone I'm on the phone to decides to have a conversation with someone in the room with them as well as with me, at the same volume/tone, so I have no idea who the fuck they are talking to.

Re: my last post, I'm beginning to think I need to shift away from IA towards deep sympathy, as I fear that some of the people I work with are suffering from a variety of degenerative brain disorders. It's really the only logical explanation for some of this shit. The specific dude I was talking about just sent another doubling-down email explaining that the thing he was incorrectly requesting really was the thing he wanted and included an attachment that was intended to back up his claim but that actually directly contradicted what he was saying. My eyes are pouring blood right now, fyi.

Dear cyclist who did not even slow down or change course on approaching a pedestrian crossing in its pedestrian phase with me walking across it,

I guess you calculated that you would miss me by a few inches if we both kept going at the same pace, and perhaps you also calculated that the light would change from "stop" to "give way to pedestrians still on the crossing" exactly as you reached the line and I reached the kerb, or perhaps you just didn't care about the light.

But did you also calculate that despite looking youngish and approximately fit mobile I have a dodgy knee which gives way occasionally? Or did you stop to think that there were quite a few other possible unexpected events that might have made one or other of us change speed or direction suddenly, and while they were all quite unlikely, it would generally be nice to put the tiny bit of effort in to slow down slightly, miss me by more than 3 inches, and have a little more control in the event of one of them happening?

Just a thought. An irrationally angry thought. Have a nice day xxx

"Hm, I'm not sure if we have any; let me check. JERRY? DO WE HAVE ANY OF THOSE LEFT? NO? I DUNNO, SOME GUY. OK, I'LL TELL HIM. No, we don't."

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 6:09 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This reminds me of when I used to phone a childhood friend on the housephone, his mum would answer and you'd hear:

Mum: Hello?
Me: Hi is K1shon there?
Mum: One moment... K1SHON... K1SHON!
K1shon (from the other room): Yeah?
Mum: It's the phone for you.
K1shon: Huh?
Mum: The phone. It's the phone for you.
K1shon: What?
Mum: It's the phone for you K1shon
K1shon: Eh?
Mum: THE PHONE! SOMEONE ON THE PHONE!
K1shon: I can't hear you..
etc...