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

presenting as an adult is kewl guys

This isn't actually true though.

A dude in my neighborhood - a burb dad with a job and a mortgage and shit - commutes on one of them long skateboards.

But I've been working from home for years, and I just realized I look and dress p much like I did in 8th grade.

http://imgc-cn.artprintimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6062/4Q2D100Z/posters/danny-shanahan-the-first-jackass-of-spring-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg

Still breathlessly awaiting the day that I see a business dude yelling about the McGiveny account into his Bluetooth while gliding down the sidewalk on Heelys.

this always bums me out. feeling it right now wrt hoodies and sneakers of IT people we share the floor with. presenting as an adult is kewl guys, you should try it at some point!

― map, Wednesday, May 25, 2016 9:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fuck that bullshit. "Professional" dress is largely a way to police class distinctions. So long as your nads aren't hanging out, wear what you want.

Not being subliterate is also kewl.

You know you'd look great in some chinos and a cardigan hon

presenting as an adult a baboon is kewl guys

sorry phil. you're right that, generally, 'dress better' is indefensible. i was trying to relate a really specific instance of that and maybe generalizing too much about it so it was easy to misinterpret. there is one guy in particular i'm thinking of. it's not that he dresses poorly, he dresses quite well if your goal is to look like a next gen mark zuckerberg. so i guess my beef is more with a certain style than with quality. i do think there's a kernel of boyishness to that look in the sense that it tries to override / hack fashion as a thing one should have to concern oneself with. so it's less that i think certain people should dress better and more that 'styles that "just don't care" about clothes' when the people who are sporting them obviously have the means to care about clothes (ti can guarantee you these people make more than i do) are lame and off-putting. obviously this doesn't apply to the sixty year old couple who look like they've been junkies for half their lives who take the bus with me up to the university hospital, though even they look like they put themselves together with more dignity than the junior mark zuckerbergs of the world, i don't think 'glib' is in their vocabulary.

a thing one should not have to concern oneself with, i meant.

No worries, it's just one of those topics that I get really prickly about due to some personal history (not me, but my wife). Generally my feeling is shirts are shirts and pants are pants, and as long as people don't look slovenly or gross I find it hard to get worked up about what people are wearing. (Generally. My niece graduated from HS last weekend and in pictures I saw that everyone looked great except her brother, who wore shorts and a t-shirt to the commencement. Like, come on, make an effort for the occasion.)

Gotcha.

I hate the set up with my street door. I have no bell there or anything to communicate with my flat door 4 flights up. So I have to leave it open so I can be contacted. Also allows postman to drop oversize mail into postbox on back of door.
I've now got an annoying pre teen kid who keeps coming in and hanging around the landing that has my flat on. So I'm sitting watching tv and see this face looming over the wall to my balcony. I go out and tell her to leave for the 4th time this week. The only place in my stairwell is my flat.
I tell her it's a private area and she keeps coming back.
It's creeping me out massively.

Teach her how to be an assassin

I just wonder where she got the idea that was a good place to hang out. Also if anybody's been doing that before I noticed her cos I have heard what sounded like the street door being swung open but could have been the house below me. Also keep thinking I'm hearing people on stairs then assuming that it's from the house.
I have a stairwell leading up to my flat and an empty one next door. They're the sole places the stairs lead to. Flats are above house/maisonettes which are accessed directly from street.
So the only reason anybody should be coming up the stairs is to see one of the residents of the flats.
I had hoped that would be clear.
Mail situation of having open mailbox bothers me but landlord insisted on putting a fire door with no letterbox on my flat.
Could do with intercom from streetdoor. But landlord has been total absentee even anonymous for months.
&I thought most people respected closed but not locked street door.
Now got spoil ten year old who won't simply f off.

Two words: water balloon.

Yeah something along those lines has passed through my mind. But shouldn't need to.
Well could be worse, could have junkies shooting up down there or something.
But I don't want people thinking it is a great place to gather, girl had her friend with her when she came back yesterday. & wanted me to tell her why the access to my flat was a private space.

I just need to work out a way of making that interface with the outside world workable.
Intercom and buzzer, some way of dealing with large packages. So I don't have to walk miles out of my way to go to the sorting office that's miles out of town.

& just realising the summer holidays are just about to begin so there will be more kids around with more time on their hands.

daily workplace conversations about american idol

sick of seeing groomsmen photos where they're all lined up in their superbly ugly suits and sunglasses doing corny spy movie poses or whatever

There are many silly things about wedding culture, but putting your friends (male or female) in matchy-matchy outfits is probably the silliest. And plenty people who are otherwise smart/cool/nonsheeplike do it. Heck, we did, even while acknowledging the inanity of it.

Corny-ass staged photographs are the cherry on that particular yuckshake. Non-Crip bridesmaids awkwardly throwing fake gang signs, argh.

(ALTHOUGH I would totally support the right of actual gangsta bridesmaids to pose in photographs while throwing real gang signs.)

Re girl hiding in stair landing, of course be safe and keep your packages safe and all, but we have kids at school who hide in little-used stair ways too, and it's never because their lives are so great that they want to stay in a small, windowless place for a couple of hours while other kids do stuff. It usually means they have something to hide from. :(

im pissed off that when clearing out the room at my last flat, i gave a coffee table to someone i didnt even really like, just as i was in a hurry, and had a moment of weakness/kindness (i got it for free, and thought i would just do something in that spirit when getting rid of it). and then i actually passed him yesterday and he didnt even say anything. bastard.

When one book/dvd/etc. in a series is allowed to go out of print and speculators wildly overinflate the value of the thing. The thing whose price they've so wildly overinflated that they'll never get the money they want for it.

the london transport barriers close too quickly. bag got stuck twice today. infuriating. i've also been hit by them when walking without a bag.

think this is specific to using overground in new flat - is there any rhyme or reason to the time it takes barriers to close?

neighbours have lived in the next door flat for two weeks. and twice my door buzzer has buzzed after 9:30pm because they've ordered food and not given the delivery guy the exact flat number.

I don't know when "So, ______" became an acceptable opening syllable in response to a question, but that's when life on earth should have been exterminated.

I find it very useful. When I start a sentence with "So listen..." people who know me know I am about to deliver bad news.

Those little messages on reposted youtube videos that are like "I do not own the rights to this video, just a fan!" Oh cool, so did you ask the person who made the video/music if it was ok? And are you paying them any ad money you earn?

Hey, the copyright owner is welcome to contact him and ask for it to be taken down.

I have been told that Japanese has a concept called 'pillow words', which are not meant to convey information, but exist only to fill out an utterance with some extra sound. In English these might correspond to such non-words as 'um' or 'uh', but also to the sorts of pointless preambles we attach to sentences, such as 'so'.

if we stop having the right to use words like "so" at the start of sentences we may as well just communicate in 1s and 0s. rhythm is part of speech.

I've found starting with "So" awakens the listener to hear the meat of the question/statement. It's like jiggling the mouse on a PC that has gone into sleep mode.

Well.

exactly - or gives you a moment to think and compose what you're about to say. "right" or "so" or "okay" or whatever, just functional basic ways of creating space in a conversation.

xpost

I have been told that Japanese has a concept called 'pillow words', which are not meant to convey information, but exist only to fill out an utterance with some extra sound. In English these might correspond to such non-words as 'um' or 'uh', but also to the sorts of pointless preambles we attach to sentences, such as 'so'.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, June 7, 2016 10:54 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ええええ!

あの。。。

come to mind

I understand the function the function of "so" and other introductory words. I think they're used more often than they're needed, and that as placeholder syllables go, I'd rather hear "Well, ___" or even "umm."

Interviewer: What was the Sanders campaign's response?
Reporter: So, they were not pleased etc etc blah blah...
Interviewer: What's next for Sanders after tonight?
Reporter: So, he'll spend tomorrow in Vermont blerf blah...
Interviewer: Does Hilary Clinton have campaign events scheduled tomorrow?
Reporter: So, it turns out she will be in blah blah blah

It's become unconscious, ubiquitous and fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU I HATE IT SO MUCH.

LocalGarda and nickn, I think 'so' has come to be used very differently here in N America than back home in the UK. Maybe it happened just recently (is that right do you reckon, WilliamC?) Like an attempt to elevate everything that comes after it to a a level of insight it can't deliver on. La Lechera to thread.

over my last 48 hours on ilx i have been clicking the older threads i post on (not searching for old ones; i'm not a maniac) and ctrl+f my name and i found that i complained about two subjects twice on this and i have experienced no personal growth since the start of this thread

my neighborhood has two festivals a year. one really really sucks and one is ok. but i think it's really rude for people to come and park on my street for them especially when they invent their own parking spots like by fire hydrants. take one bus.

― computer champion (harbl), Saturday, September 19, 2015 7:59 PM

this is coming up again--the bad one is this weekend. last time the friday before i had a little bit of a meltdown thinking of all the out of neighborhood parkers coming to be jerks. i think i might have cried. but a lot was going on.

I don't know when "So, ______" became an acceptable opening syllable in response to a question, but that's when life on earth should have been exterminated.

― pleas to Nietzsche (WilliamC), Tuesday, June 7, 2016 5:13 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

applause

When I use "So" it's as an attention-getter, as noted earlier, and when I'm responding to a statement and am asking if I understand correctly - "So the white form is filed before the red form?" I try not to stick it in anywhere else.

As an opening "ahem" in a declarative statement, it's totally different and totally cool. My specific beef is with it as the first syllable in response to a question — ljubljana, I agree that it's generally come on within the last couple of years, but now it seems to be the most common thing. I don't know for sure but it seems to come out of people who are relatively young, so this is probably just grumpy old me yelling at the kids to get off my lawn. Fuck it — those goddamn kids need to get off my lawn.

Seamus Heaney's 'Beowulf' opens with 'So'.

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.

;_;

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/album_review/a5e4af3628f6c6c4ff640abe255f856d26e114b8.JPG

i love cheever. the yates story that prompted me to buy the book was called "no pain whatsoever" - a welsh writer called thomas morris recommended it in a newsletter he does.

i really really liked the amy hempel collection i mentioned upthread, reasons to live. it's v much in this vein also, though it has the brevity/edge of carver.

i came to it via her paris review interview, which i loved: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/227/the-art-of-fiction-no-176-amy-hempel🔗

I have been told that Japanese has a concept called 'pillow words', which are not meant to convey information, but exist only to fill out an utterance with some extra sound. In English these might correspond to such non-words as 'um' or 'uh', but also to the sorts of pointless preambles we attach to sentences, such as 'so'.

Posted in error, not in irrational anger. Sorry.

An impromptu Traveller parkup that is troubling the neighborhood. Actually probably deeply rational.
Vehicles are frequently driving at speed down what should be a primarily pedestrian path. People in the park are being bothered, even more so if they try to access the local woods the normal way since the place that vans and caravans are parked is right across the path in.
Toys and balls have been stolen from local gardens. The community garden that is next to where the park up is has had some features vandalised.
&there is refuse and human excrement being just dumped in random places. Plus there are rubbish fires at night set up to allow copper to be burnt out of various objects for resale so the air stinks.
Apparently it's a bunch of families 'summering' i.e. Off for a seasonal peregrination &fuck the settled locals.

When fb friends invite you to "like" their page for their band or product or whatever.