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

I'm looking forward to the days when (on quietish roads) lights are green for pedestrians by default and change when a car or bike is picked up by the sensors on the traffic light.

In my (American) experience pedestrian crossing buttons are useless things you push repeatedly to work out frustration over never getting a walk signal and finally having to sprint across the street between cars.

The UK is magical place.

https://i.imgur.com/cM9Q4vn.png

more like
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article3610011.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Road-signs.jpg

For our American readers, you don't have to press anything to make drivers stop at zebra crossings, you just need to have one foot on the crossing and they HAVE to stop. Which is why it annoys me when pedestrians thank drivers for stopping when all they're thanking them for is not breaking the law.

... and not leaving them on the road in a mangled heap of flesh, bones, brains aet al as a result. Of course.

Ah, there's nothing wrong with being nice. Enough drivers just keep going across zebras, after all.

I don't expect to be thanked for not breaking into someone's house or stabbing them in the face so I don't see why I should thank drivers for the achievement of not breaking the law.

You can tell this is a longstanding bee in my bonnet. So, perfect thread for it.

In Mexico, I was told the "thank you" gesture to be given to drivers letting you cross on the crosswalk was halfway curling your hand and bobbing the back of your fingers to them – which seemed to me like a patronizing thing to do, but ok.

near my house there's a crosswalk with blinking lights and a sign that reads "Cars Must Stop For Pedestrians in Crosswalk" but literally every time I've walked across it someone comes driving along and starts honking at me to get out of their way.

There's a pedestrian crossing that I cross almost daily while bringing my kids to daycare and school and I definitely make it a point to thank the drivers that stop because most of them don't.

Linked to this, the streets round here are a constant logjam and drivers seem to think this is a reason to stop their cars halfway across pedestrian crossings (or 'keep clear' boxes) - then the lights change and they expect pedestrians to squeeze round their car to get across the road. If I had my way the police would crush their car into a cube and force them to walk to work for the rest of their lives.

Last month I was driving to work and was in a queue behind a traffic light, left the 'keep clear' box in front of me empty, the car behind me drove around my car into the space! I was livid to the point of considering beeping my horn.

the streets round here are a constant logjam and drivers seem to think this is a reason to stop their cars halfway across pedestrian crossings

Yeah, whenever there's stop-start traffic drivers seem to pay attention only to the back of the car in front and forget about things like pedestrian crossings or red lights.

The junction near my flat now has a sign saying "do not block crossing" but it doesn't help (tbf the first time I saw it I wasn't sure if it meant the pedestrian crossing or the junction). And you can't even point at the sign as you squeeze past because by the time they're on the crossing they've already gone past it.

pplains' picture makes me anxious (and perhaps this was the point), making traffic stop on the roundabout for crossings immediately on the exits just seems wrong

I should start updating this thread while I'm cycling to work.

No wait, I shouldn't.

Opposite to wtev's post and entirely irrational because it would require mindreading, but as a pedestrian coming up to a crossing it's annoying when the person ahead of me goes across without pushing the button, when if they pushed it it would go green just in time for me to get there.

(the aforementioned crossing near my flat in particular I always seem to reach a second or two too late and have to wait through a whole cycle of traffic phases, which is sometimes 2 minutes long, which is a long time when you're 98% of the way home from work and looking forward very much to sitting on the sofa with a drink)

(ha, yes, I often compose about 16 imaginary updates to this thread as I walk or bus to work or back home, and then usually forget by the time I'm actually at a PC. you're getting some of them now I guess - must stop before it's all of them)

Last month I was driving to work and was in a queue behind a traffic light, left the 'keep clear' box in front of me empty, the car behind me drove around my car into the space! I was livid to the point of considering beeping my horn.

making traffic stop on the roundabout for crossings immediately on the exits just seems wrong

for no legal reason, Seattle drivers tend toward unnecessarily courteous, stopping for pedestrians on sight when no crossing is marked, they have the right of way, and it would be faster for both parties if they had carried on. I've become accustomed to waving politely whether they are stopping for law-abiding or for genial reasons. It's pleasant, if unsettling.

luke mcgregor

Luke is funny and nice.

I drive pretty early in the morning, and am constantly behind people who have clearly started driving before they are ready to drive. Like rolling through the neighborhood at 7 MPH, running Stop Signs or stopping at Stop Signs for ten full seconds, abruptly slamming on the brakes as they nearly weave into parked cars. Finish texting before you leave the driveway dum dums!

One guy in front of me just slowed down to a crawl and stopped in the middle of the road for no reason, making us both miss the green light right in front of us. I flashed my lights to signal I was going to drive around him and did so after the light changed. He started honking and tailgating me and when I pulled into a turn lane he screamed something at me. Probably about how nice I looked that day.

people who try to help

― seedy ron (Autumn Almanac), 2019年3月4日 星期一 下午 9:16 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doubly so when i say “you’re not helping” and they keep trying

― seedy ron (Autumn Almanac), 2019年3月4日 星期一 下午 9:16 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

probably gauche to resurrect old ia but there are legitimately major life problems i’m having which i straight up refuse to talk about to anyone at all, because people’s tendency to try to help by essentially reminding me of all the solutions i’ve already tried and failed at makes already bad problems significantly worse. when you have an insoluble problem, nothing, NOTHING, helps less than people firing all your past solutions at you like you’re too fucking stupid to have tried them all in the preceding months/years.

Agreed on that but also.

When at the cash machine / atm, I choose "cash / don't display balance" and it asks me again if I'm sure I don't want to see my balance, do they not understand why people don't want to be reminded of their bank balance?

People at work chuckling about how "You can't trust the weather forecast" like this is in some way an original or insightful thought, must we constantly play this game where we recite things we are expected to say? Fucking England.

The headphone jack on my good headphones doesn't slot perfectly into the hole on my good new phone, and disconnects every 2 minutes or so, so I cannot walk and listen to music now without constant faffing around.

My go-to weather truism is always ‘if you don’t like the current weather, check again in 30 minutes’ and that seems to stop tedious weather conversations.

I have mentally prepared a lecture about the impossibility of predicting whether it will be raining or not in one specific location, two days in advance, but so far I have thankfully managed to resist saying it out loud.

nothing, NOTHING, helps less than people firing all your past solutions at you like you’re too fucking stupid to have tried them all i

But seriously, did you look under the couch cushions?

My go-to weather truism is always ‘if you don’t like the current weather, check again in 30 minutes’ and that seems to stop tedious weather conversations.

Fighting fire with fire, good one.

London weather can be THAT changeable, plus I get Londoner bonus points making that observation in an American accent.

Someone posted this at work

"No matter in which direction you throw a rock, it always finds its way to the bottom of the river. Keep your goals in mind and no matter what direction you take, you will reach them."

Uh.....that falls apart on so many levels

That sounds like great advice! I"ve always wanted to be a scuba diver!

Of course I live on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, so I guess those dreams are shattered now.

Someone posted this at work

"No matter in which direction you throw a rock, it always finds its way to the bottom of the river. Keep your goals in mind and no matter what direction you take, you will reach them."

Uh.....that falls apart on so many levels

dumb analogies are the worst thing ever

apart from all the things are worse

wow it’s like i threw a rock without thinking and it missed the river

Hi folks, I just feel like unloading about a couple of things here, one of them which may not fit the overall theme of the thread.

The first one (which does fit the theme) is how some of my high school classmates who I'm friends with on FB will repost these religion-oriented image macros that make it so that you almost feel like they don't see any other solution to any problems other than religious ones, e.g. (to paraphrase one) "Don't be troubled by the shit you're going through, just pray to God!" Like, I honestly have no problem at all with people who have faith in a higher power, but I do struggle a lot with biting my tongue and not coming across like a stereotypical Militant Atheist, which is something I would never hope to be. It's also interesting to note the people who post that kind of stuff are also the ones most likely to love drama. IDK, maybe I should just hide them from my news feed or something.

The second (which may or may not fit the theme) is the reckoning I've had to come to with myself about the fact that my mom had the tendency to be a really judgmental bitch and how she passed those tendencies down to me. I came to this realization about a year and a half ago in therapy when my therapist was engaging me in a thought exercise and I realized that all I knew about the people who inhabited the same world as my mom and I were the judgements she passed down to them, and how much that has colored my relationships with other people. I have tried very hard to overcome this since then, but I get angry at the thought of how much of my life was wasted on this twisted perspective of the world and how many friendship opportunities I lost from being the way I was. IDK how "irrational" that is but it feels kinda a mixture of both that and perfectly rational.

I feel comfortable saying that "people who double-park should suffer torments" is one of my core values. Every time traffic gets backed up for blocks because an SUV just STOPPED in a driving lane instead of pulling up another 15 feet and actually **parking**, I have this whole harangue in my head that involves using public resources for your convenience in a way that disenfranchises EVERYONE ELSE, and how criminally selfish and morally abominable this is.

Driving makes me angry just in general.

I get super annoyed when I see people wearing hunting gear as a fashion statement. I have one friend that hunts and the only time I've ever seen him in deer-can't-see-me camo is in pictures. So to the dude rocking civilian camo gear at IKEA yesterday ... come on.

this is like half of my costco, i'm cool with it

deer don't say hi to me

Ok, I see the first thread series said INNOCUOUS things, so my bad. Let me start over. These are the INNOCUOUS things that irritate me to an irrational degree:

1. How quickly nail polish peels off on my nails. Like, the only way I can actually have nails is if I keep them painted and they're too thin to bother with the whole "filing the edges" trick, so I have to keep on applying nail polish every single day if I ever actually want nails that go beyond my nail bed. And yes, I have attempted to take all kinds of supplements to build up my nail strength.
2. Passing mothers of babies while running errands (e.g. grocery shopping) and noticing how young they look. Like, ffs, thanks for reminding me of my impending decrepitude!
3. YouTube taking down the "Hezakya Newz and Music" channel. There were so many awesome archival news clips on that thing, including five hours of nothing but early news coverage about HIV/AIDS! I don't give a fuck about multiple copyright notifications, that channel was awesome!

BTW, it took me until my early thirties to develop a zen attitude toward driving so almost nothing about driving bothers me, though I do have the good fortune of driving in Texas where the drivers aren't infuriating. Not even driving through Houston traffic rankles me. It's not like how the drivers are in the Akron/Canton area of NE Ohio, where my BFF lives and I had the chance to visit in the summer of 2016; there they take the lane markers as more of a suggestion than anything and it appears very few people knew about the marvelous invention that is the turn signal. After that visit I realized I had absolutely nothing to complain about with regards to Texan drivers.

That's funny, I live in Texas and I think people drive terribly here, although perhaps that is an Austin-centric quality.

Ha, I live in S.A. and have driven through Austin many times before! Houston's probably worse, though honestly if you ever get the chance to visit NE Ohio DO SO because you will THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS you live in Texas instead. The only thing we're bad at is following speed limits, though I'm a slower-than-average driver and even I'm not bothered by the lead feet surrounding me. As long as I've got some good music playing on the stereo and some water to sip on along the way, I don't currrrr. At least we live where people generally stick to their own lanes and don't drive like they're blind.

People in Austin drive like they are taking a nap and have nowhere important to go

Ha, you need to move about 85 miles south; by my saying I drive "slower-than-average" I mean I drive the speed limit. Only the grandparent-aged and Sunday drivers drive that way; everyone else drives at least 5 MPH above the speed limit around these parts. Meh, I'm perfectly happy to stick to the slow lanes, keep up with traffic, and arrive whenever I do. Though it honestly took me almost fifteen years of driving to get to this level of chill.

I'm in Dallas and everyone thinks people here drive "crazy", which just means fast, and fast is good ime

^^ Same! Anyway, thought of something else that's been pissing me off lately (and this is something ALL us Texans can understand): goddamned POLLEN! Especially at this time of year, I might as well own stock in the Kimberley-Clarke company, such as my usage of facial tissues (in spite of taking antihistamines every morning like a good girl).

when people announce the suicide hotline number in response to someone committing suicide.

That’s part of reporting guidelines in the UK, for sure. /journalist

xp oh God, yes

(I think that got reignited by rapper Logic and his performance at the VMAs, which was well meaning but it's a terrible trend nonetheless)

when people announce the suicide hotline number in response to someone committing suicide.

I confess to doing that on FB, but only because I truly believe in it. It has talked me down from a few crisis moments and I'm eternally grateful for its existence.

3. YouTube taking down the "Hezakya Newz and Music" channel. There were so many awesome archival news clips on that thing, including five hours of nothing but early news coverage about HIV/AIDS! I don't give a fuck about multiple copyright notifications, that channel was awesome!

Oh no! I've been doing a "Sixties day-by-day" project for a bit now and that was an invaluable source for full news broadcasts-I remember finding lengthy coverage of the MLK assassination, for instance, or hour long specials looking at campus disorder. I knew I should have downloaded them instead of bookmarking...