Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pmcd9]

my mother recently told me, "You need to watch more television so you know what it's like in the world."

She means she wants you to watch the 6 o'clock news or as someone on this board dubbed it "The Fear Show."

[jay-ell]

She also brought up some cases of women who have been abducted, which further exploration reveals were on some of the more popular crime shows. "But they could happen!"

[greenkoolayd]

maybe wear a fake mustache when you travel alone, so abductors wont know that youre a lady?

[wombat]

You are about ten thousand times more likely to die in a car crash, and she is worrying about you travelling because you might get abducted?

[jay-ell]

Yeah, see, this is why it's funny!

She is just worried about my safety, it's not really her fault she's been brainwashed by the mainstream news media. Regardless, I am more or less and adult and she is, contrary to popular opinion, not the boss of me.

[Nabubrush]

About a year ago, a co-worker of mine forwarded the email about the Bush cabinet's education/work experience vs. that of leading dem/lib celebrities. So I went through it and took some notes and read up about the specifics, and sort of refuted it point by point. He never really responded, but then again this is the guy who posted a note on FB this week about how he wanted to gun liberals down in the street with his shotgun. So that's pretty fun.

[theinevitable]

wombat-- I am pretty sure she has had jobs like this (I forget the specific list of crappy jobs she had in high school/after college) but she has explained to me that sometimes, being a pain in the ass is the only way to get your way.

in re: technical staff... for some reason I am extremely forgiving of men who are not-particularly-polite at the grocery store. If they do something like throw the money on the counter distractedly, or not answer when I ask how they are, I do not really take it personally. I actually do this for most people, but for some reason men get an extra "I don't know what I'm doing, I am bad at grocery shopping" allowance.

I'm hoping this job will help me take things less personally in general, but I'm not holding my breath.

[miles]

No, she was trying to explain to me how Dangerous things are, and why I should not travel alone.

Well she's right. Do you not watch Law & Order: SVU? It's a dangerous world out there for women/children/gay men.

[wombat]

wombat-- I am pretty sure she has had jobs like this (I forget the specific list of crappy jobs she had in high school/after college) but she has explained to me that sometimes, being a pain in the ass is the only way to get your way.

The problem with this argument is that many people conclude that being a pain in the ass is the ONLY way to get your way. Which is the opposite of true. Possibly the worst way to get your way is to start out being a pain in the ass before even finding out whether you're going to have a problem getting your way.

It is nice that you would give the Tech Staff a pass for being bad at grocery shopping. I was considerably less charitable after having to work all weekend and coming home to find no food in the house for the rest of the week. It did not even occur to him to take action on this. Apparently he thinks that the groceries appear by magic.

[theinevitable]

oh, that isn't being bad at grocery shopping, that is being a pain.

I'm talking more... if he went to the grocery store and bought really stupid combinations of things. or put all the food in the cart in such a way that the bread, eggs, etc. were all crushed.

The more I think about this, I think I just give men permission to be grumpy/unfriendly. I will try to extend similar forgiveness to women in the future.

[greenkoolayd]

[[sings]]
...everybody get together try to love one another right now

[pmcd9]

Thoughts about healthcare from Maxine care of my Uncle.

Let me get this straight.  We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president who also smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke.

What the hell could possibly go wrong?

The joke at the heart of all Maxine cartoons is that it didn't matter what crazy assed nonsense came out of her mouth it's (allegedly) funny because she's a cranky old lady, all cynical and jaded.  A lot of it has to do with the deliver, I think.  In this instance, and in several other Maxine missives I've seen in recent times she has been recast as the voice of reason against whatever the right wing is opposed to.  Of course, this being a forwarded email it likely as not has nothing to do with Maxine. 

[side_show]

Thanks to a comment Paul made several years back about responded to his mom with Snopes links, I now commonly respond to forwards of false information was such, usually explaining what Snopes is and how one might consider checking their site before forwarding false emails, and cutting and pasting a few lines from the Snopes post disproving what ever the false claim is into my response.

I once had a coworker forward the drinking cold water causes cancer/the right way to eat fruit to our entire office, which was full of new age ignoramuses who instantly started freaking out about the cold water thing, including one coworker who's husband has cancer.  I checked Snopes, it was fake and responded as such.  She sent out a friendly retraction email to all our coworkers, plus to her friend who had also forwarded it to his entire office as well as to her.  His response to her, which she forwarded to me, was pretty bizarre.  It was something along the lines of "why would you believe her over me?  Do you think she's smarter than ME?  Is she a doctor?  This email was written by a doctor!" The version forwarded had a fake doctor's name at the end, which when googled only brought up hits related to the hoax. Odd that he took it so personally since it's not like he wrote the thing himself.  Even worse was that he took the so-called doctor as an authority just because someone signed the email with a fake name with Dr. in front of it.  I responded as such, and he responded with the wonderful "some people have too much time on their hands" response, to which I responded "It took me less than 5 minutes to check the authenticity of the forwarded email.  Think of the amount of time and effort wasted for each person who believes they must eat fruit only at certain times and certain ways because of this message, and think of anyone who believe the information and no longer enjoys a nice cold drink of water out of fear."  He finally surrendered after that, but I was still astounded that he held so firmly to believing the email that he felt the need to defend it. 

[jay-ell]

Thoughts about healthcare from Maxine care of my Uncle. [snip]

My BFF's ten-year-old daughter's reading teacher used mandatory healthcare as an example of a "bad law" in class. BFF is horrified and is going to call the school on Monday to complain. WTF, teacher?

[Nabubrush]

Every time I have disabused someone of their wrongheaded notions through the use of Snopes (and this used to happen a lot, before I got tired of being attacked for it) I have been thoroughly flabbergasted by their need to defend whatever it is to the death. People invest a lot of themselves in this stuff, and if they've been taken in (especially if it feeds into their own confirmation bias) they get really shitty about it. I tried to explain to our very, very sweet and inoffensive Admin at the print shop in college that Mrs. Fields wasn't charging $250 for her recipe, and would probably not give it away for $25000, given it's how she makes her living. She would not give an inch, and got sort of heated about it. I ended up giving up.