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

oh stop i'm not gonna hit anyone. but it's fine to express your irrational anger toward my irrational anger here. x-post

i think it takes a lot of faith in your fellow man to ride one of those things though. they are hard to see and people go out of their way to avoid them on the road. often going into another lane entirely to keep their distance from them. which is kinda dangerous. and it's harder for someone who is riding one to avoid people/cars than on a normal bike i would imagine. they just scare me a little when i have to pass one. like its gonna fall over into the road. which is also irrational. there aren't a lot of them though. so, not much of a problem.

nothing beats the moped fear when i lived on marthas vineyard though. so frightening. people weaving in and out of traffic. sometimes riding on the road and sometimes on the side. lots of people who had never been on one before too. even bikes on the vineyard could be scary to drive near/around. they have put more bike paths on the island though. those roads were just not made for that many cars/bikes/etc.

i'm very careful around bicycles. but, like with car drivers, not everyone knows how to ride safely. which is why i'm careful. i just think there are too many big fast vehicles out there now. and most of them see bikes as a nuisance. i don't even think riding a bike is fun anymore. maybe if i lived in iowa or someplace with no people.

recumbent bikes seem much less rapidly maneuverable than conventional bikes. just try imagining a peloton made up entirely of recumbents. it would be static as hell. I think it is that lack of maneuverability that inspires drivers with secret dread. as a frequent pedestrian, I'd hate to have to walk anywhere that a lot of recumbents were zipping around, too.

i also don't care if i have to go slow. which seems to make me the minority. people (cars AND bikes) have to go so fast and they do stupid stuff all the time. definitely makes me angry. especially now when people drive tanks.

and i haven't even talked about how i want to kill the people who don't use their blinkers yet. which is a LOT of people these days. so dangerous!

oh yeah, there seems to be a law I didn't know about that if you're driving in a residential area you needn't ever use turn signals

As a pedestrian the combination of state laws and a regional respect for crosswalks here is still shocking and great, at least compared to Michigan where it's basically fuck you if you're not in a car. I was back there this summer and behind a motorcycle with a Washington State plate and watched him instinctively stop to let some pedestrians cross and all the other cars couldn't understand and just blew by him.

But as a frequent driver around a university this mindset combined with entitled or oblivious students is terrifying as they frequently cross streets without even bothering to look around or signal their intentions, regardless of weather or darkness and completely ignoring the laws of physics required to stop a car going 30 miles an hour on snowy roads.

I think people are Michigan-esque here in that there are a bunch of drivers who think all streets are 55mph highways that occasionally go through small towns/commercial areas even when they are in a dense pedestrian district

A lawyer who specializes in head injuries once gave me the following rundown: imagine a $4 million dollar settlement for a disabling car accident. That's if you were crossing the street at a crosswalk when the walk light was in your favor. If you were crossing the street somewhere other than a crosswalk, cut it in half. If you were crossing when the walk light was not in your favor, cut it inn half again.

A car knocked me off my bike once. I got about $1600 for it.

A bike knocked me off of my horse once. Now I can't add numbers.

A horse and a recumbent bike walked into a bar once. The bartender said, why the long faces?

Rod Stewart walked into a bar once. The barkeep poured gasoline on him and light him on fire and everybody thanked him afterward .

rip he was sexy

LIDL repackaging fairtrade bananas so the package labeling is the same colour as the other varieties. Used to be distinct enough to spot so you could tell at a glance if they had them in. Now got to pick up packs to check.

I work in a corporate building which also provides ESL classes for children in the afternoon. I get IA when these kids run in and out of the bathrooms screaming, with little regard for keeping the bathroom clean. Maybe this belongs in the disgusting savages thread.

the spelling of 'reneges' is an absolute disgrace

People repaying you for basic decency. I helped out someone having a medical emergency the other day, and I come into the pub today (she's barstaff in my local) and I have 5 pints in the barrel for me. And it really bugs me - it feels like turning ordinary social interactions into a material transaction. Or something. I can't quite express why it annoys me so much - hence this thread.

I understand that completely. But hey, it doesn't completely sound like an "ordinary social interaction" or "basic" decency is what compelled her to comp the pints for you.

Meanwhile, I called the cops on a burglary in process at my neighbor's house last summer while he was out of town, and he promised us some home-baked cookies. Guess who hasn't gotten his cookies yet?

I think you're allowed to break in and take whatever cookies you find

It wasn't her for most of them - she bought me a pint, the rest was from others. But perhaps it's the same part of me that hates compliments? And I didn't do what I should have - I wanted to call an ambulance, and she told me not to. She was admitted to hospital later - I should have ignored her. But regardless of this case, it bothers me when people insist on repaying stuff: you help each other and that's it.

Obv. Cookie promises should be fulfilled.

sounds like they were just celebrating you being a good person with an unofficial toast

Yeah dowd I think you're off base here. Don't look at it as a transaction or repayment - I doubt they think of it that way! It's more like "here is a token of our gratitude - a physical symbol of the esteem we hold you in for what you did"

you did them a favor, by buying you a beer they had an excuse to order one for themselves

keep in mind this is the IRRATIONALly angry thread, Tim

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 1 February 2017 12:34 (one week ago)

:) indeed

You should have asked for all 5 pints at once and then poured them on the ground one by one in protest

Worst yet

My step-dad has this thing about restaurants offering something free - like desserts or comped drinks - to make up for inferior service (like a long wait.)

His point is that he doesn't want to be "bought off" for his inconvenience. I'm not sure how else a restaurant manager is supposed to make amends with a disgruntled customer, but I see where both sides are coming from.

This is a different situation from dowd's, but it got me thinkin'.

Agree with step-dad.

xp it doesn't fix the problem just masks the symptom

door to door marketing with horrible value propositions

i tend to avoid most people knocking on my front door unless it's a recognizable neighbor, or a car is broken down right outside or something and someone needs help.. or a girl scout with cookies..

talked to a couple people from the local phone/internet company who were letting people know they were now offering fiber internet in the area and were trying to sign people up. i use the cable/internet company and, while there are service interruptions on occasion, it's pretty much fine

i was listening to their spiel until i finally asked what speed their offering was and it was 12mbps and i was like GUYS LET'S NOT WASTE ANY MORE TIME THAT IS REALLY BAD. my irrational anger is strong when people are going door to door with horrible value propositions

Don't want to mellow mh's harsh, but want to say one thing about the popular notion of Girl Scouts going from door-to-door with cookies that they are selling. They may sell door-to-door, but usually not like that.

In actual practice, what they do is go around with an order form. Then they return (weeks later) to deliver the cookies you ordered. Payment is due when you get the cookies, not when you place the order.

We are going through this in my house just now, so I'm reflecting on how different those logistics are from the movie/TV idea of it, which is a Girl Scout showing up with cookies and asking if you want to buy them.

Carrion.

thanks for scoutsplaining

I have had both girl scouts showing up with cookies I previously ordered, and one family that did the trick where you order a bunch of boxes and then sell them later

also, I ate the cookies

"talked to a couple people from the local phone/internet company"

these can be scammers who don't actually work for verizon or whoever. they end up tacking big charges to people's phone bills. usually old people. and sometimes if you ask them for a card or i.d. they get nervous. and they will often have nothing in writing that they will give you. bad news.

the irrationally angry part for me was that they would come to my store and say they were verizon and they had no idea if i already had verizon service. because they don't actually work for them!

i've yelled at them in my store. for rational reasons.

i mean, i don't know if that was the case here. but phone/internet people from actual phone/internet companies don't usually go door to door. they were coming to my store almost once a month. they looked like hoodlums. very sketchy.

Someone was doing that in our neighborhood recently. A neighbor called Verizon and was told they don't do door-to-door sales. I don't answer the door for any salesmen/charities anyway. Had a canvasser for clean water action ring my bell at 8:30 pm a few weeks back. Can't imagine they do well with that tactic.

I have worked for hard-up charities/nonprofits in the past and still I cringe at the tactics. I wish I could communicate how much more I'd give them if I knew it would lead to them not bothering me ever again, in any way.

One of my idle fantasies is to be rich enough to make extremely conditional donations, like: "Okay, here's $50,000 for this year. Next year's contribution will be the same... except that I will decrease it by $1,000 for each piece of postal mail I receive, $5,000 for each e-mail, $10,000 for each phone call, and $49,000 for any door visit."

shit, there goes the verizon scam I was going to pull on scott

I figured they were likely a reseller or some sort of marketing group trying to sell product but sheesh, at least make it sound tantalizing

Today being snowy as fuck, I get ia at seeing drivers gun it when trying to get unstuck. I'll offer to help, with sand and/or a push, but ffs, if gunning it didn't work the first time, why would you insist on it as a long-term strategy?

(This ties into my ia at so few cars in the US being standard transmission; automatics are awful for getting unstuck.)

walkin the dog of the friend I'm housesitting for and was getting mad at the other people who had the audacity to be out with their dogs which got him all worked up and then realized how stupid it was to be mad at people for being outside at 5 pm (I blame having worked 8 straight hours on an aggravating assignment that I had to return to after said walk)

if I leave work at a normal time, not early or late, I sometimes get IA at all the people driving/walking/shopping immediately after work. you know, the most natural time to be doing those things

Mh, is that because you really just want to get home? Doesn't seem too IA to me.

Dfw made reference to that in a speech eh

Xp

when you are making an automated credit card transaction over the phone and after you type in your number they repeat the whole thing back at you. look i know why they do it but it makes me want to flip a table.