SL "Ask a Bitter Old Man" Thread

[LKJ]

Two pet peeves at the grocery store.
1. Checker, I do not want to talk to you about whatever it is I'm buying. I don't care that you like the same bread as me. I don't even want you looking at what you're ringing through, except to scan the barcode on it. My entire role in our brief relationship is for me to greet you with a smile, wait patiently for a total, tender that amount, take my receipt and walk out with groceries in hand. Ask me to do anything beyond this and I will resent you. To be clear, I'm not one of those pieces of **** who treats checkers badly...service people always like me really well because I'm pleasant and above all efficient enough to work my way through their station really quickly. I just have no interest in engaging in mundane small talk with them.

2. Self-checkout. This is my preferred method of course, as I'd rather not have to deal with people. The concept is a great one. Unfortunately, it gets ruined at times by those people who are insanely slow and have zero self-awareness. If it's going to take you a ****ing minute per item to find the stupid barcode, go to a checker's line and let a professional do it for you. You're not just slowing me down, you're slowing yourself down. Fantastic; you have achieved minimum utility for all involved parties. Of course, these are the same stupid ****ers who crawl across crosswalks and basically never feel compelled to hurry or be even remotely efficient when others are waiting for them to do anything. Sometimes I wish I could be as lacking in self-awareness as these people are.

[LKJ]

Me: "I'll be there."
Random idiot: "You promise?"

**** no, I don't promise.

Isn't making a promise to someone a concession that your word by itself just isn't that good?

"I'll be there."
"I promise I'll be there."

If you aren't a total piece of ****, shouldn't those two sentences be absolutely synonymous with zero difference between them? What the **** kind of a concept is making a "promise," anyway? If people had more integrity, that word would be entirely useless and we could collectively let it age away like a lot of other antiquated words that sit in the dictionary but are no longer used by anyone.

[furyshade]

Originally Posted by zoltan

You need to refer to some style guides ldo. When an acronym is brand spankin' new, capitalize. As the acronym, it becomes more accepted into the language and frequently incorporates lower-case letters.

yeah, when was the last time anyone capitalized radar, laser or scuba?

[LKJ]

Originally Posted by furyshade

yeah, when was the last time anyone capitalized radar, laser or scuba?

These are pretty good examples, and it had really kind of slipped my mind that these were acronyms at all. I suppose that I stand partially corrected, though I'd suggest that those words you named work as lowercase because they're very easy words to just sound out and say. "LDO"...not so much. "LOL," also not great, considering that you're then just saying a word that means something else in favor of sounding out something that isn't yet a part of our language's dictionary.

[LKJ]

"You think you're always right."

WHAT THE **** KIND OF A CRITICISM IS THAT? Seriously, what does that even mean?

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines opinion as, "a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter." You have made a judgment or appraisal. That becomes your opinion. By definition, the fact that you hold an opinion means that you have JUDGED your view to be the RIGHT way of looking at whatever matter is at hand.

In other words, it's a meaningless, inane, and stupid way to criticize someone.

I realize that what people are likely saying, in their usual inarticulate way, is, "You're stubborn and you never even consider changing your mind." This isn't true of me at all, but the likelihood is that since I'm loud and brash when I state an opinion that they're automatically drawing a false inference that I never change my mind. Look, dumbasses: I'm not going to give you a backrub and sing you a ****ing lullaby when I tell you why I think that my view is better than yours. Tell me I'm an ******* if you want, but don't disguise it with some kind of false or meaningless charge.

What I really like are the people who try to bring rights into it. "I have the right to my own opinion." Yes, and I have the right to tell you how stupid it is. And you have the right to tell me that I'm a jerk for that. NOBODY IS INFRINGING ON ANYONE'S RIGHTS. No actual censorship is taking place. How do rights even get brought up in situations like that? The very act of stating your opinion is putting it forth for either agreement or criticism. If you can't accept both, then don't put yourself in a position to deal with either.

[furyshade]

Originally Posted by LKJ

These are pretty good examples, and it had really kind of slipped my mind that these were acronyms at all. I suppose that I stand partially corrected, though I'd suggest that those words you named work as lowercase because they're very easy words to just sound out and say. "LDO"...not so much. "LOL," also not great, considering that you're then just saying a word that means something else in favor of sounding out something that isn't yet a part of our language's dictionary.

i think you're right as far as general speech (saying lawl is face-palm worthy) but i feel like after a certain amount of use acronyms become universal enough within a group that capitalization is unnecessary. in my opinion the capitalization is to signal to others "this is an acronym and not a word", so once the acronym is ubiquitous the capitalization is extraneous.

[LKJ]

New mothers: your child is not as cute as you think he or she is. Believe me.

In the first place, "cute" is pretty much the standard for kids, right? 95% of them are "cute" (this is never a word that I say in an "aww, how cute" way, that's why I keep putting it in quotes)...so essentially the kid just looks normal. They're not a standout; you just didn't get unlucky and get one of the ugly ones.

Women will coo and say, "Aww, he's so cute!"
A more honest compliment would be, "Congratulations, you didn't hit an outlier. Wouldn't that have sucked?"

Occasionally I find myself having to put up with new mothers as Facebook friends, and 100% of them are insufferable. Every ****ing status update is about their kids, not to mention the flood of pictures they post that aren't nearly as great as they think they are. I'm pretty sure that any and all young mothers on my friends list are now hidden from my feed...they give me no choice in the matter. Now, if I see one of them do something ****ing stupid like have a picture of their kid instead of themselves (not with, but instead of) as their profile picture, that's pretty much an auto-hide.

Last week, I got a friend request from an old high school friend. Her picture was a baby. I had to assume it was her baby. I then had to press "ignore" on the friend request even though she was pretty cool when I last knew her. I'm quite sure that I did well to spare myself the annoyance.

[B.T.overdrive]

Thoughts on the Steroid era in MLB and asterisks next to the leaders in most of the well known records?

[Flyingbanana]

Originally Posted by LKJ

Last week, I got a friend request from an old high school friend. Her picture was a baby. I had to assume it was her baby. I then had to press "ignore" on the friend request even though she was pretty cool when I last knew her. I'm quite sure that I did well to spare myself the annoyance.

I'm sympathetic to all that baby rubbish, but ignoring someone's friend request just because they have a baby as their profile picture seems just really judgemental and harsh, especially if you got on well with her a few years ago and they probably just wanted to see how you were doing. If she does turn out to be annoying its just a simple click of the hide button.

[thebigeasy59]

Originally Posted by B.T.overdrive

Thoughts on the Steroid era in MLB and asterisks next to the leaders in most of the well known records?

ready and willing to field this one in the case of a pass by LKJ. jumping off points itt.

[LKJ]

Originally Posted by B.T.overdrive

Thoughts on the Steroid era in MLB and asterisks next to the leaders in most of the well known records?

This is another one of those things that others get riled about when I don't. I mean, I do think that it's a shame that so many records got broken in this era that won't be re-broken by clean players for a long time, but it's difficult to quantify just how tough it was to break those records even with performance enhancers. After all, the pitchers were juicing too...as a Mariner fan, I was rather shocked when Ryan Franklin, a little runt who looked like Doogie Howser, got caught testing positive. It was at that point that I realized that no player I cheered for during the era was likely to be clean. Perhaps Ken Griffey Jr. was, because it seems that there would have been a witchhunt to bring him down if he was on roids too, but who really knows.

I just don't get all high and mighty toward the steroid thing. Institutionally, Bud Selig and MLB were all but encouraging this behavior. It was helping their product, and they didn't want to clean up the game. If I was a talented enough baseball player to make it to the majors during this time, and all that stood between me and my dreams (not to mention millions of dollars) was performance enhancers that everyone was taking...I'd take the health risks and take steroids too.

I hate cheating. Hate it. But I guess at some point the steroid thing stopped feeling like cheating to me, since the playing field was almost entirely juiced and thus equal.

I will say that I still take issue with Rafael Palmeiro for the way that he so vigorously denied steroid use under oath, to the point that he was admonishing everyone for the fact that he would even have to be asked about such a thing. I watched at the time, bought his story completely, and actually felt sorry for him. I don't much like feeling like a fool, so when I found out later that I got 100% duped...**** him.

If you want to get me to hate on players for cheating, I'll gladly hate on the likes of Sammy Sosa and Albert Belle for corking their bats. That's something most players were never doing, and I think that getting caught with a corked bat should be a much longer suspension than just a week or whatever they got.

[LKJ]

Originally Posted by Flyingbanana

I'm sympathetic to all that baby rubbish, but ignoring someone's friend request just because they have a baby as their profile picture seems just really judgemental and harsh, especially if you got on well with her a few years ago and they probably just wanted to see how you were doing. If she does turn out to be annoying its just a simple click of the hide button.

Me being judgmental and harsh is the entire basis for this thread. Guilty as charged.

Anyway, it was pretty clear from me seeing a bunch of other people becoming friends with her in my feed, and the small number of friends she had when she first sent me the request, that she was simply populating her friend list. As such, I find it doubtful that she ever even realized that the friend request was denied, since I was clearly one out of a bunch of people who she friended at the same time. Slight x-factor to the fact that she was in love with me at one time and I wasn't into it, but seeing as she's now married with a kid, I doubt she cares about that anymore either.

[Karak]

Originally Posted by LKJ

New mothers: your child is not as cute as you think he or she is. Believe me.

In the first place, "cute" is pretty much the standard for kids, right? 95% of them are "cute" (this is never a word that I say in an "aww, how cute" way, that's why I keep putting it in quotes)...so essentially the kid just looks normal. They're not a standout; you just didn't get unlucky and get one of the ugly ones.

Women will coo and say, "Aww, he's so cute!"
A more honest compliment would be, "Congratulations, you didn't hit an outlier. Wouldn't that have sucked?"

Occasionally I find myself having to put up with new mothers as Facebook friends, and 100% of them are insufferable. Every ****ing status update is about their kids, not to mention the flood of pictures they post that aren't nearly as great as they think they are. I'm pretty sure that any and all young mothers on my friends list are now hidden from my feed...they give me no choice in the matter. Now, if I see one of them do something ****ing stupid like have a picture of their kid instead of themselves (not with, but instead of) as their profile picture, that's pretty much an auto-hide.

Last week, I got a friend request from an old high school friend. Her picture was a baby. I had to assume it was her baby. I then had to press "ignore" on the friend request even though she was pretty cool when I last knew her. I'm quite sure that I did well to spare myself the annoyance.

are you leveling here or for real? if for real, wow. lighten up dude and learn to not hate happy things in life. babies are some of the most joyous things in many people's lives, and parents are very proud. also, other people do genuinely care quite a bit about them as they are a huge deal.

and the last paragraph is LOL. i surely hope that's a joke.

[LKJ]

I'm never leveling, save for really standard and obvious sarcasm.

[LKJ]

You know what I also don't like to see on Facebook? "Happy birthday Tom!!" Okay, aside from the obvious sin of multiple consecutive exclamation marks, that wall post is just a waste of time. If this person matters to you, formulate a clever or at least personalized sentence to support your happy birthday rather than being lazy and saying something so generic.

If I see people's birthdays show up on my home page, it's a quick decision as to whether or not I actually give enough of a damn spending the next minute thinking about something good to say to them. If I think of something clever or at least personalized, I post it. If I can't think of something, then they clearly don't matter enough to me to justify a happy birthday wall post.