Shallow, Pedantic Complaints People Make That Drive You Insane

What types of ridiculous complaints do people make that either defy the laws of logic, are greatly overstating what is truly a minor annoyance, or are just repeated ad nauseum to where you don't want to hear them again?

My personal favorite is "Gee, giving me a ticket, with all the rapists and murderers out there, why are you messing with me?".

As if the only laws that need to be enforced are ones involving violent crime, and rape, and that you weren't actually going 30 miles an hour over the speed limit which ya know can endanger lives.

"I want those two hours of my life back!"

"Can't the Dow stop all this up-down-up-down... Jeez!"

^^^^^^^^

"Why don't we get off on Jewish holidays if they get off on our holidays?"

"I pay taxes, but what the hell do I get in return?"

"Why don't you carry more items in plus sizes? Haven't you heard the statistics about obesity in America? I guess discriminating against fat people is more important to you than making money!"

^^ i get this sort of thing pretty often

I don't think that's particularly pedantic or shallow. Sure, it's probably not anything you can do much about, but it's a valid complaint.

at this place i worked once upon a time they accomodated Muslims by giving them prayer space for Ramadan. guy complained and said "where's the prayer rooms for Christians"? they also devoted a day to promote diversity by describing Muslim religious practice on the bulletin board. same guy compained "where's the info about Christianity"?

OH YOU'RE SO EFFING PERSECUTED YOU ONLY RUN THE WORLD

"Why don't we get off on Jewish holidays if they get off on our holidays?"

Ha, my office actually gets Yom Kippur off every year. I'm not sure why.

"they don't allow Bibles in the schools anymore".

used to hear this a lot in the South. what they really mean is "they don't force you to read it anymore", cuz like about 1 in every 4 people I wnt to school with in this area BROUGHT BIBLES WITH THEM TO SCHOOL

Similarly "why isn't there a WHITE history month?" (xpost)

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE THAT ONE

I used to work at a Jewish-run company, it was awesome, we got to go home at 2pm on Fridays all through the winter and got all the Jewish holidays off.

honestly if I ever went anywhere that held a White History Month, I'd fill it all with pictures of people like the Unabomber, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, et al

karen, we actually offer over 40 styles in sizes up to 6XL, some up to 8XL so

any larger you'd be selling tents

They're finding clothes somewhere.

You may have your own prejudices against fat people for whatever reason, but that does not invalidate their perfectly reasonable request to be able to choose clothes they actually like that fit them.

But hey, Friday afternoon is probably not the best time to get into the simmering cauldron of classism and thinly veiled sexism that lurks behind issues of weight and fat acceptance.

Having spontaneous wild sex with someone from your office after nothing more than a brief but intense stare.

hahaha, wrong thread!

"I think you mean 'it is to be hoped that.'"

"If they can put a man on the moon, you'd think they'd have found a way to (fix x massively complicated problem) by now"

ROFL @ Hurting

yea for a moment i thought Hurting 2 was just getting so much play he was complaining about being worn out

karen the complaint that we are unable to offer every design in every size (due to production and warehousing constraints) is pretty shallow! and wielding obesity statistics as some measure of entitlement is pretty pedantic! i don't get where you're coming from here

Calling "fat" people "obese" is probably offensive. I don't understand why a customer would refer to herself as "obese".

A lot of medical literature and many doctors refer to women of average height who weigh more than 170 pounds as "obese". I am not kidding. I actually know people who were 5'6" ish, weighed 180 pounds or so and were told they were "obese". Obesity is supposed to be a disabling life-shortening condition. One can be medium tall, weigh 200 pounds and be healthy and even athletic.

My sister was very athletic but a little on the chubby side in junior high but was told by her doctor that she was "obese". I always think these people, when they are white, are probably racist.

obese literally just means "judged by the medical community to be obese" so yeah, it's just based on BMI calculations which are...not useful.

it might sound like "horrifically fat" in your head but a lot of people who don't meet subjective standards of "horrifically fat" are obese because again, all it means is you have a BMI of 28 or above

or maybe 30 and above, i can't remember because fuck BMI

The technically-but-not-really-obese people are not the ones having trouble finding clothes that fit and pedantically complaining about it.

i don't really want to get into it but i can't see how wanting clothes that cover your body is a shallow complaint

Wow, Kerm, I'm really super impressed that you're omniscient enough to know who, exactly, has trouble finding clothes that fit them and whether they have a medical condition or not.

I think the shallowness of the complaint is more in the line of "Why does this particular store not have exactly what I want right NOW?"

of course it is.

And then the added pseudo-politicization of not-having-what-I-want-right-now as a cover for entitlement.

i don't really want to get into it but i can't see how wanting clothes that cover your body is a shallow complaint

http://www.hyscience.com/burka.jpg

Deciding that you can't find clothes you like because of DISCRIMINATION is pretty ridiculous.

These are all camo cargo shorts! Have you seen the statistics about how many not on assignment for National Geographic men there are?!

to steer the convo elsewhere, I introduce...

"These experts don't know nothin, they said <food that is good for you> was bad for you 20 years ago, now they say it's good..."

like i said, i don't really want to get into it, and it sounds like elmo's store does a good job of offering plus sizes which is awesome, so it's not directed at him, but. it is incredibly difficult to find clothing past a certain size, especially if you care about what you wear and contrary to many cultural myths, many people cannot change their body size, so. i understand where those people might be coming from; they might have had the experience of not being able to find clothing again and again and again at store after store after store. it's a pressure straight-sized people don't face.

Horseshoe OTM.

It's quite a complicated issue that is quite difficult for, you know, the kind of people who like to make jokes about "fatties wearing tents" to actually understand.

But I do understand that this is more a thread for making jokes about tents instead of complex analysis of what does or doesn't constitute discrimination you've never faced.

wow karen i'm super glad u are so proud of yr fat rights riff that u wld call elmo prejudiced in order to shoehorn it into the thread.

wtf

she didn't call elmo prejudiced

Wow zvookster I'm so glad you like making cheap zings more than actually understanding that, you know, complex issue might actually be complex?

for the record, i'm not prejudiced against fat people, i made an ill-advised joke and i apologize.

although I still don't find the offense in elmo's original post because it was more focused on the inventory/stock rather than debating whether stores 'should' carry such clothing.

You may have your own prejudices against fat people for whatever reason, but that does not invalidate their perfectly reasonable request to be able to choose clothes they actually like that fit them.

vs. "consumers" having a tendency to act like entitled dicks, which is what elmo was talking abt.

fatties are stupid and hilarious

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boy

working towards 1000 posts by tonight

btw horseshoe if u say she wasn't calling elmo prejudiced there i won't believe u

vs. "consumers" having a tendency to act like entitled dicks, which is what elmo was talking abt.

― k'naamean (zvookster), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:00 PM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i see what you're saying now zvookster, and i'm sure elmo has to deal with that constantly and i agree that it sucks, i just felt dutybound to assert that wanting clothes that cover your body is not entitled.

xxpost http://i.123g.us/c/thank_love/card/101109.gif

Well, except he limited his observation to "fat" consumers. Do the thin people never complain about an item not being in stock RIGHT NOW?

btw horseshoe if u say she wasn't calling elmo prejudiced there i won't believe u

― k'naamean (zvookster), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:02 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really didn't read that comment as directed at elmo i guess i shouldn't have spoken for someone else. your earlier post struck a nerve becaue you seemed dismissive of the "fat rights" you mentioned.

struck a nerve with me, i mean

(desperate attempt to shift focus)

uh uhm err WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN THAT THEY HAVE TO PAY FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S KIDS TO GO TO SCHOOL?

i'm sure elmo has to deal with that constantly and i agree that it sucks, i just felt dutybound to assert that wanting clothes that cover your body is not entitled.

OTM.

I mean, if he had just been complaining about the entitlement issues of annoying customers, yeah, sure fine, you have my total sympathy.

But I was disputing the fact that he kind of singled out a group who are themselves frequently the targets of some pretty offensive behaviour - followed by some "ha ha hilarious" examples of exactly the kind of stuff that makes said group defensive in the first place.

But, basically, Horseshoe is saying all this stuff better than I can, so I'm going to leave this to her.

"ASK OBAMA WHY I DON'T HAVE A JOB"

If your immutable body-type is so goddamn rare that it makes no economic sense for stores to try to stock clothing to fit you, you order online or hire a seamstress.

Now it *is* pretty fucked up that most NBA players have to get shoe companies to custom-design their own line of sneakers. That's just racist. At least you don't hear them moaning about it, though.

xpost people who seem to think the economy dive DIDN'T START IN MOTHERF***ING 2007

Kerm i guess i'll just say i strongly disagree with you and leave it at that. for real i am not going to comment on this further, i promise.

Do the thin people never complain about an item not being in stock RIGHT NOW?

they do! but fwiw, those customers don't attempt to educate me with statistics or imply that i'm prejudiced against them

also offering plus-size merch is probably the biggest decision that has kept the biz afloat during this recession, so i am indebted to the plus sized consumer for my continued paycheck. fat money is still green!

i'm quite average sized and I get annoyed when i get to shops and either: a) they've run out of regular clothes and it's all smalls or XXL, or b) things that are supposedly "normal" size are either tiny or massively baggy for some reason.

If your immutable body-type is so goddamn rare that it makes no economic sense for stores to try to stock clothing to fit you, you order online or hire a seamstress.

If you shop at Target -- e.g. -- that body type is "anything over size 18 unless you want to look like Maude."

also offering plus-size merch is probably the biggest decision that has kept the biz afloat during this recession, so i am indebted to the plus sized consumer for my continued paycheck. fat money is still green!

― tangelo amour (elmo argonaut), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:11 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3 elmo i just want to reiterate none of what i said was directed at you. yay for your store!

next -- when people do volunteer work of any type and then say they don't care to do what they're told cuz "they're not getting paid".

uhm...you knew that when you agreed to do the volunteer work, so do what you came to do.

i would guess the assumption underlying what Kerm said is that anyone bigger than a size 18 can and should lose weight but i question that assumption and even if it were true they still have to get their ass covered before they leave the house tomorrow, you know?

horseshoe <3

glad to have done my part for this week's edition of Clusterfuck Friday. if anyone needs a 6XL wolf shirt -- u know who to call.

I think the point of quoting said statistics is to prove that that body type isn't really "so goddamned rare" to be honest.

Also "thin people don't quote statistics" is a bit "but white people never complain about racism" - but in order to make that comparison you'd have to actually accept the points about the prejudice people face on account of size that horseshoe has been gently and most sensibly making, which I don't think many people in this thread are really prepared to do.

lol remember when i said i would shut up? sorry!

horseshoe I <3 you so much and I'm quite glad you didn't because you are 100x more diplomatic than I'm capable of being.

which I don't think many people in this thread are really prepared to do.

think that's presuming a bit, who besides Kerm is arguing it? I support everyone's right to get their clothing, also think that fat people being charged for two seats on planes is ridic considering how small the seats are (even to someone moderately sized like me), etc, etc, etc

<3 kate; undiplomatic people rule afaic in a lot of contexts

But going into a store and assuming the fact that they don't have your size because society is prejudiced against you rather than just that maybe they're out of your size or not that many customers of your size shop at the particular store IS really fucking annoying. I mean if there's nowhere convenient to buy clothing in your size I can understand being upset. But expecting any store you walk into to have your size in stock is shallow and entitled. The fact is that stores like to make money and they are more than happy to sell larger sizes when there are people to buy it. They also have limited floor space and can't perfectly guess the number of customers of a given size on a given day. Why does this even need to be explained?

There is this thing called "demographic research." Companies sometimes do it.

*Prejudiced* companies!

If you're unhappy with the demographic research success of a particular store, punish them for it by shopping elsewhere.

The fact is that stores like to make money and they are more than happy to sell larger sizes when there are people to buy it.

this weirdly turns out not to be true, and i can't honestly explain it. the number of retailers who carry plus sizes for women and have actual bricks and mortar stores i can count on one hand, tbh. in the age of online shopping people who don't fit into straight sizes have more options but they really face a lot of bullshit on that front.

If you're unhappy with the demographic research success of a particular store, punish them for it by shopping elsewhere.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:29 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is excellent advice and people already do it and, like i said, i think the situation is sloooowly getting better but if you fit into straight sizes i submit that you don't really know what it's like for people who don't.

Seriously how big do you have to be for there to be nothing in your size? I'm constantly digging through STACKS of huge jeans and i'm not even in the Big & Tall section ugh such a burden..

This seems appropriate: Size 14 is average American woman's size, but not the average shopper's

Seriously how big do you have to be for there to be nothing in your size? I'm constantly digging through STACKS of huge jeans and i'm not even in the Big & Tall section ugh such a burden..

― Kerm, Friday, August 27, 2010 12:31 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you have to be bigger than a size 14 if you're a woman. i get that you're thin but not everyone is!

which I don't think many people in this thread are really prepared to do

maybe if u stopped pulling stuff out of yr ass in order to make judgments on others, things wld go better. speaking for myself i totally accept the points horseshoe has been making, and thank her for making them. and if ur stupid-ass knee-jerk more-righteous-than-thou routine played a part in drawing those comments, thanks to u 2.

The fact is that stores like to make money and they are more than happy to sell larger sizes when there are people to buy it.

Yeah, you would think this would be true but it totally isn't! Also it's kinda related to like when libertarians say, "The market will pressure people into serving a larger customer base/act to prevent discrimination" -- it totally doesn't because people will always act in ways that actually aren't in their rational self-interest.

Exacerbated even more by the fact that companies think it PATENTLY ISN'T in their self-interest to be seen as a supplier of ugly tents to Teh Fatties.

None of which has anything to do with elmo or the orig topic of this thread, I'm just sayin.

*sigh*. well, the thread started out well!

(xpost)

Laurel otm. i said i didn't understand why upthread, but i do have a theory. with women's fashion i think a lot of stores sell an aspiration along with actual clothing and there's a perception that plus sizes cheapen the chic. so yeah, i think some stores are willing to work against their economic interests to preserve the sense that their fashions are exclusive.

sorry San Te we probably should have started a new thread but...

the fact is i have work to do today so i need to procrastinate

When I was my most out-of-shape, it was pretty damn hard to find jeans in my size and I was just a 42. So like, I was noticably fat, but I wasn't freaking huge. I'm not saying I support people being out-of-shape ("oooooof" - amirite?), but it I can imagine it just becomes more difficult.

sorry, I was trying to make a joke in that last post and I think it was ill-advised and insensitive.

But there are entire plus size mall stores now like Lane Bryant, e.g. -- is it possible that some consumers don't want to shop in stores like that because of what it would mean for their self-image?

Ugh.

so yeah, i think some stores are willing to work against their economic interests to preserve the sense that their fashions are exclusive.

1000x yes. And the more exclusive they're perceived to be, the more their window of options narrows.

Otoh elmo's company sells wolf shirts and tie-dye so clearly this is not their issue.

Oh Hurting, shut up. Do you have any idea what those places sell? People ott be talking out of turn imo.

the fact is i have work to do today so i need to procrastinate

lol it's no biggie, like what you've brought to the discussion tbh

But there are entire plus size mall stores now like Lane Bryant, e.g. -- is it possible that some consumers don't want to shop in stores like that because of what it would mean for their self-image?

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:38 PM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cite them for me. there's one i'm aware of in the southern cal area. by the way, entire mall means 5 stores. someone who wears plus sizes would be better able to recount them than i am, but off the top of my head i can cite lane bryant, torrid (more aimed at teen girls than adult women by the way), ashley stewart...and that's it. someone help me with the other two.

i don't think plus sized malls are everywhere, but i would be happy to be wrong.

Some stores only seem willing to sell clothes that are WAAAY more expensive than what I can afford. IMO this is bullshit class discrimination and must be stopped. What do you mean there's no clearance rack?!

Dude, I'm looking at the Lane Bryant site right now and it looks like cheap maternity wear.

I don't like people who complain about you not holding the elevator for them when there's 4 others and they were nowhere near it when the doors were closing

they instituted a thing here in Toronto where you had to pay 5¢ if you wanted a plastic bag from the store (money would go to the store not the gov't). all these cry babies hit the roof and for about a month i couldn't be in a grocery store line without hearing bitching and moaning about it. unless i was hungover i would tell them to shut up.

oh i see what you meant. "mall store." can you see the difference between having one store you can shop at and many? i could be wrong about this, but i believe Lane Bryant sizes stop at a 28? so women above that should learn how to sew, i guess?

yeah, the other thing to say is a lot of lane bryant stuff is crappy

So again, it's a matter of "Why can't I find exactly what I want exactly when and where I want it?"

I have extremely wide feet -- EEE. I know what it's like to have trouble finding something that fits. But I can either get wider cut shoes a half-size bigger and have them not fit perfectly or buy wide widths on the internet. The commercial world is not obligated to cater to my oddly shaped feet, and I can't even do anything to change the width of my feet.

Hurting you seem like a really smart dude but i think you're talking crazy in this thread. can you really not believe that there is a group of people who have to deal with a lot more bullshit than you do when they go shopping?

It's not like Lane Bryant is the only thing going, I was just giving an example:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=plus+size+stores&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=plus+size+stores&gs_rfai=CM7iFbOt3TLzSJZSEygTruKXYDwAAAKoEBU_Qh2U9&pbx=1&fp=93c3c78db929eee0

The commercial world is not obligated to cater to my oddly shaped feet, and I can't even do anything to change the width of my feet.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:43 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this changes a little when you point out that the commercial world would profit off of adding plus sizes to their inventory and just don't because we're all so grossed out by fat people.

I'm tall as fuck and finding off the rack pants that cover my ankles and shirts that cover my wrists is nigh on goddamn impossible.

Lane Bryant isn't the only thing going, but it's one of, like, three as i said upthread. and in a lot of places, i'm sure Lane Bryant is the only thing.

just gonna throw this out there--its "weird" that the only people who are all "if u are fat just shop at lane bryant or order from tailors, the market will work itself out" are men (note: not actually weird)

I hate it when people say things are "weird"

when they aren't

http://www.bfdblog.com/wp-content/uploads/1330520151.jpg

Oh HEL-lo, my new desktop wallpaper! Come to Momma....

dan i don't get if you're saying people who wear plus sizes have a point or that they should suck it up? ftr, it also sucks that tall people have a hard time finding clothing. but i don't think people make hateful comments about how tall people don't deserve clothes that fit them and they should just get shorter. (NOT SAYING ANYONE IN THIS THREAD SAID THIS, but i do think that it's a prevalent attitude in our culture and it sucks)

I have a reverse problem, or used to before I gained weight -- I used to be so thin I'd have trouble finding suitcoats in a size small enough for me. they'd always carry a smaller size and much larger sizes. Once I filled out a bit that problem got solved, but sadly it wasn't weight I wanted to gain!

though I freely admit that was nowhere near as big a difficulty in finding plus sized clothes, just throwing it out....

really not looking forward to the first mention of this thread in the "clusterfuck" thread :/

just gonna throw this out there--its "weird" that the only people who are all "if u are fat just shop at lane bryant or order from tailors, the market will work itself out" are men (note: not actually weird)

Like I said, it's not just about "OMG, I am entitled consumer" there's a whole host of other issues (classism and sexism being top of the list) that are clustered around this disgust and the justification with which people treat this weird prejudice dressed up as concern trolling over health.

Like this really is one of the last remaining prejudices that it is *totally acceptable*, even in supposedly liberal circles, to take out for a walk and air like it's completely justified, and you're somehow "more-righteous-than-thou" for even mentioning that it exists. I don't get that.

xp not saying anything besides it sucks

yeah, for sure retail options kind of suck for everyone and i wish we could all afford to get all our stuff tailored or had the time and skill to make our own clothes, but we don't.

xp to San Te

okay dan, sorry if i seem jumpy itt

even *I* know that lane bryant is Not An Option for a young woman! wtf

ok here's another one, people who whine about how they don't trust computers and how computers screw everything up without realizing that ya know computers are programmed by people so more than half the time it's because of something they programmed incorrectly. unless Skynet is real.

i was so glad when torrid happened even though it kind of has a similar monopoly on the youth market that lane bryant does on the adult market, because it might be overpriced and some of the clothes might be wack, but it was like, finally, fat teen girls can wear SOMETHING cute.

xp np, I am basically a linebacker body type and that means that tall stuff is too skinny and stuff that's long enough is way tenty IF it can even be found

or something. it just sucks.

it does suck. i am short but at least i can get stuff hemmed.

i also just want to take the opportunity to point out that many of these complaints arent really 'pedantic'

Well, the ones about taxes and White History Month are.

haha yeah, just to be pedantic for a moment, don't know if "pedantic" was the best word choice for this thread title

if this thread had stayed on topic that would be a good point

That was a pedantic post

lol it's true

^^ shallow complaints

fat, shallow, pedantic, complaints

Talbot's has a plus-size section but their clothes are hella expensive for women on a budget.

Is there some already existing shitty thread about fat discrimination and/or obesity so we can take all this outside?

Talbot's has a plus-size section but their clothes are hella expensive for women on a budget.

― a mix of music (Lionel Ritchie) and kicks (my tongue) (Phil D.), Friday, August 27, 2010 1:01 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, that's a good point. never even set foot in a talbot's and their styles seem really stuffy to me, but bigger women i know who can afford it say they have good plus-size options. but they are pricey and kind of staid stylewise.

fat women are some of the most stylish women i know btw, which kind of boggles my mind considering the odds against them

I like Talbots but you gotta pick and choose and then style it up. It's still kinda pricey for off the rack, though.

i'm gonna be completely honest, the thread title may have been inspired in part by an episode of Family Guy...........:/

fat women are some of the most stylish women i know btw, which kind of boggles my mind considering the odds against them

one of my exes was considered 'obese' by BMI standards (although she was one of the prettiest women I'd ever met), but she was always being stopped by people to compliment her on her wardrobe, which she was a master at putting together.

she was really fashion inclined

ok ok ok before anybody shouts i'm not saying 'obese' people generally aren't pretty, I was just mostly pointing out that my ex was really pretty ok ok ok

i think sometimes people just really hone their skills when they have so few options they're like fashion wizards. nb this is not an argument for the status quo to go on.

she was a wizard of finding things in thrift stores and mixing and matching items. I used to feel pretty pathetic considering how bad of a dresser I am

So she was literally a viking of shopping?

So what you're saying is fat girls can dress well if they try hard enough and you'll date them if they're pretty enough and dress like viking wizards.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/darth_vader_nooo_7675.jpeg

jeses y u h8 me? :(((((((((((((

usually when I'm shopping I have the opposite problem and everything is too big/bulky for me and I'm like jesus christ America you are FUCKING FAT

that's nice and totally unsurprising, Shakey, well done

I think the range of clothing sizing offered to men & women is vastly different FWIW, Shakey...Most of the places I shop, the waistlines top out at 32" and you're lucky if you can find anything bigger than that. Whereas 30" or 32" seems to be around the starting, smallest waistline for mens' pants.

@Shakey well is walmart really obligated to carry chainmail and studded codpieces in yr size?

America IS fucking fat AND it wears clothes 2 sizes too large AND there are still fat people who can't never find clothes and have to shop on the internet in california king togas it is bullshit amirite?!

"1-3-5" in Mean Girls was so funny because it felt so true to life.

abbbs do you really think girls should just wear men's clothes? is that the answer?

i sb'ed myself for this thread

Was there not a jr girls' clothing store called 5-7-9?!??!??!?!

THERE SO WAS. I remember it.

yeah, that's what 1-3-5 was spoofing

god, fuck you, 5-7-9, that shit was the worst

I didn't know if 1-3-5 was the store name or just like a quote or something. Yeah, man.

I think the range of clothing sizing offered to men & women is vastly different FWIW, Shakey

oh yeah totally. women's sizes are all aimed at like tiny teenage asian girls. for men it's more like, "we know you're a big fat slob, here's 50 XXXXXL t-shirts and one medium for the rack"

it's from mean girls, Laurel!

stores are conspiring to make women Asian -- news at 8

I know it's from the movie but if it was a fictional store name or just a salesperson's quote. Never mind!

oh sorry

like women are supposed to feel shame fore shopping for anything with a waistline over 32" ("maybe you should try the Big and Tall down the street") but it's just taken as a given that all men have wide asses, stooped shoulders, and three beer bellies

abbbs do you really think girls should just wear men's clothes? is that the answer?

hahaha noooo I am just saying if you are basing a vision of how fucked-up clothing sizing is on the big-ass clothing you are seeing in the men's section...that it is not the same in the women's section. Though I do have some friends who have given up on even trying to buy pants in the women's section and do shop in the men's section. If you are bigger than a 12 or 14, but smaller than a "1x," (you will note none of these numbers really correlate to anything) there is this huge range of sizes where it's just 95% impossible to find pants.

or XP what Shakey said

i can still wear straight sizes, but i gave up on pants long ago largely because of this

so you're pantsless these days

skirts more comfortable, less time in the dressing room

woe woe is the plight of the skinny american

usually when I'm shopping I have the opposite problem and everything is too big/bulky for me and I'm like jesus christ America you are FUCKING FAT

― I drink your milksteak (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, August 27, 2010 1:15 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's nice and totally unsurprising, Shakey, well done

― horseshoe, Friday, August 27, 2010 1:16 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dyyyyyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiingggggggggggggggggg

usually when I'm shopping I have the opposite problem and everything is too big/bulky for me and I'm like jesus christ America you are FUCKING FAT

― I drink your milksteak (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, August 27, 2010 1:15 PM Bookmark

Yes, but this makes me resent our nation of fat slob men more than the stores that cater to them. And by the way the cost problems described above are exactly what I experience - properly fitting clothes for what was once a 'normal'-sized man are much more expensive and can scarcely be found at cheaper stores. Even the "slim fit" dress shirts at macy's are baggy, and I'm 5'9 and 170 pounds.

The flipside of it being more ok for men than women to be fat seems to be also that it's more ok to criticize men for being fat, btw. Just an observation.

why do you resent fat men?

not to justify the status quo but one thing i think needs to be said is that skinny ppl are generally of a similar (skeletal) shape while fat ppl are fat in a billion different ways and shapes! i imagine it's much more difficult to standardize larger sizes to fit well, as opposed to smaller.

it sucks that you can't find clothes that fit, don't get me wrong, i'm totally in favor of expanding size ranges in both directions

one thing that would be interesting is if it turned out that wal-mart and other stores sold bigger, baggier clothes because that was what most men preferred

I think we need Marty McFly Jr's shrink-to-fit jacket from Back to the Futre II.

Yes, because they are slobs (xpost)

...

Also skinny people clothes legitimately use less fabric but the thing is that fashion companies charge the same price for a size 0 as for whatever the largest "standard" size is -- in some stores, it's a 10, a 12, or a 14, depending...so obv they're willing to live with the difference in THAT range of unit costs.

I can imagine arguments for both sides of "14-28 is a whole different range and it's fair to price it accordingly" and "people shouldn't be financially penalized for their size esp when clothing companies only pay 20 cents to the crippled children who sew that shit anyway".

(singing) who's trolling who, and who's being true....

I can imagine arguments for both sides of "14-28 is a whole different range and it's fair to price it accordingly" and "people shouldn't be financially penalized for their size esp when clothing companies only pay 20 cents to the crippled children who sew that shit anyway".

― Jesus doesn't want me for a thundercloud (Laurel), Friday, August 27, 2010 1:47 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, but it's worth saying that many people who wear plus sizes already pay more for an inferior product; there's evidence that even if retailers charged more for extra fabric for plus sizes, people would buy them if there were plus sizes available to buy.

i mean, i don't think they should have to, i would assume the extra cost ends up being covered by the markup or whatever, but i don't know a ton about the economics of retail

I think it's less about amount of fabric than economies of scale, for the reasons cited by elmo and others. I.e. it's a lot more expensive to produce a bunch of different shapes of the same garment, which becomes more necessary in higher sizes. Much like it's not economical to produce and/or stock a small number of 10.5 EEE shoes, especially when those customers will just buy the 11 in the shoe that's cut a little wide to begin with if forced to.

Right, which is why most lower end companies don't make petite sizes, either. Duh.

So what I have learned from this thread is that really, our beef is common, and not with each other, but with capitalism itself! Unite, comrades, and let us arise against our size-insensitive oppressors!

wow this thread is a clusterfuck. I'm really tall and skinny (CAN'T HELP IT IT'S GENETIC) (also I'm broke right now so I eat about 1.5 meals/day which doesn't help), I often see things (esp. pants) that I like at stores but that are not carried in my far-end-of-the-bell-curve size, and if I ever wanted to get mad about this I would probably blame the system of capitalist commodity production and distribution

oh I see we've already arrived at blaming capitalism, fuck yeah

i'm in the same boat as you, bernard. the only time i find cloths that fit my boney ass they're way too expensive for me.

anyways.

"skinny people are soooo oppressed" is the new "why is there no WHITE history month?"

call the waaaahmbulance.

Sorry, but I think "fat people are so oppressed" is a bit "call the waaaahmbulance" too. Or, if you prefer, first world problem.

let's be clear, it's just skinny MEN

if you're a five foot tall skinny woman, the fashion industry LOVES YOU

i pity the poor ectomorph

if you're a five foot tall skinny woman, the fashion industry LOVES YOU

― I drink your milksteak (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, August 27, 2010 2:36 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this isnt true either

hey guys if everyone had their clothing made for them by tailors -- or, better still, made it themselves -- no one would ever have to complain about not finding clothes that fit off-the-rack at one of the large department stores in one of the two or three closest shopping malls!

Sorry, but I think "fat people are so oppressed" is a bit "call the waaaahmbulance" too. Or, if you prefer, first world problem.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 2:36 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you have weird ideas about fat people. there are fat people in third world countries.

horseshoe you are blowing my mind right now

do the department stores there also refuse to stock their sizes???

i used to think that gay people had it bad in this country, but then i realized, shit, its america. first world problem.

i know, right? i'm about to bust out some shocking anecdotal evidence from my own family that resides in a third world country

xxp

i was pretty sad about that muslim cab driver who got stabbed, but i thought for a little bit and it was like--uh, hell, it happened in new york! first world problem!

shopping for clothes, or indeed, shopping for any object at all, is a truly miserable experience, always

oh i see you're mocking me, bernard snowy. look, i know this is a problem with capitalism, but we live under capitalism, so i don't care if it's "first world" of me to bitch about this shit

it doesn't stop me from caring about "third world" problems, btw

hey does anyone know if the problems of undocumented immigrants residing w/in the first world technically count as 'first world problems'? it's very important that I find this out

actually not sure who you're mocking now

horseshoe I am not really mocking 'you' or anyone so much as I am the entire conceptual framework within which this debate is happening

because it's pretty retarded

whatever

like i said upthread, regardless of whether capitalism get smashed in the longterm, fat people still need to cover their asses tomorrow

I left a gatorade in the freezer for too long and now I have to wait for it to melt before I can drink it. if that ain't a first-world problem I will gladly renounce my american citizenship on the spot

fat people could go naked as a form of 'creative protest'

Maybe it's the third world. Maybe it's his first time around.

finally this thread is getting interesting.

getting yourself clothed is a little higher stakes than that

xp i know you're taking a lolsy line on this but they actually can't due to public decency laws

public decency laws, another first world problem. *yawns*

dude it's called 'civil disobedience' for a reason ;)

what is this thread even about anymore.

me taking the bait :/

troll tactics that drive you insane because you have no self control

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

dunno if it's really a 'first world' problem, since this doesn't have any non-first-world countries on it.

looks to be more a 'eating lots of shitty food' problem

obvs it would be great if healthy food were more widely available but imo fat people would still exist and could still be healthy

shallow, dismissive comments people make that drive you insane

Yes "I can't find some clothing in my size because I am fat" is really equivalent to "I can't visit the bed of my dying loved one because I am gay" or "I got stabbed in the neck because I am moslem" (xpost)

fuck you no one said it was equivalent

what's really important is that people who are not fat, gay or Muslim pit those experiences against each other and evaluate which one is most difficult

internet idiots are an all-world problem

oh man, my life is full of first world problems, guess i need to get some perspective

I have been fat before (xpost).

xxxpost yeah this has gotten pretty silly, and I apologize for contributing to it. there's nothing productive that comes out of these kinds of debates, about whose first-world existence is less comfortable than whose.

it's productive to point out that companies could make more money by making plus sized options available and then more people could get clothed with less effort and money spent

the only thing my stubborn trolling was trying to get at was that these are clearly problems which arise structurally, outside of any conscious choice by a moral agent of some sort; consequently, getting angry/indignant/butthurt about it is sorta point-missy

xpost but like... no, it's not, or it would already be happening! I don't give companies a lot of credit, but one thing they tend to be good at is making money

t/f: clothing companies tend to be run by ppl with an obsessive mercilessness about their "brand", right?

we actually already covered this upthread

xp

fat gay muslims unable to find affordable clothes at the mall is the first-worldest problem imaginable

Blergh. horshoe, Karen D., Laurel and maybe one or two others are generally quite OTM in here. I just came to post something related and interesting. (I've seen this pointed about in advertising of companies besides Fredrick's)

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/27/catalogs-clothes-and-representation-plus-size-at-fredericks/

we actually already covered this upthread

xp

― horseshoe, Friday, August 27, 2010 7:00 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

But going into a store and assuming the fact that they don't have your size because society is prejudiced against you rather than just that maybe they're out of your size or not that many customers of your size shop at the particular store IS really fucking annoying. I mean if there's nowhere convenient to buy clothing in your size I can understand being upset. But expecting any store you walk into to have your size in stock is shallow and entitled. The fact is that stores like to make money and they are more than happy to sell larger sizes when there are people to buy it. They also have limited floor space and can't perfectly guess the number of customers of a given size on a given day. Why does this even need to be explained?

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The fact is that stores like to make money and they are more than happy to sell larger sizes when there are people to buy it.

this weirdly turns out not to be true, and i can't honestly explain it. the number of retailers who carry plus sizes for women and have actual bricks and mortar stores i can count on one hand, tbh. in the age of online shopping people who don't fit into straight sizes have more options but they really face a lot of bullshit on that front.

― horseshoe, Friday, August 27, 2010 12:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The fact is that stores like to make money and they are more than happy to sell larger sizes when there are people to buy it.

Yeah, you would think this would be true but it totally isn't! Also it's kinda related to like when libertarians say, "The market will pressure people into serving a larger customer base/act to prevent discrimination" -- it totally doesn't because people will always act in ways that actually aren't in their rational self-interest.

Exacerbated even more by the fact that companies think it PATENTLY ISN'T in their self-interest to be seen as a supplier of ugly tents to Teh Fatties.

None of which has anything to do with elmo or the orig topic of this thread, I'm just sayin.

― Jesus doesn't want me for a thundercloud (Laurel), Friday, August 27, 2010 12:33 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Laurel otm. i said i didn't understand why upthread, but i do have a theory. with women's fashion i think a lot of stores sell an aspiration along with actual clothing and there's a perception that plus sizes cheapen the chic. so yeah, i think some stores are willing to work against their economic interests to preserve the sense that their fashions are exclusive.

― horseshoe, Friday, August 27, 2010 12:35 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

xp on the companies would do if it were profitable front

outside of any conscious choice by a moral agent of some sort; consequently, getting angry/indignant/butthurt about it is sorta point-missy

i agree with the first point but your conclusion is str8 bullshit imo

otm

what i'm saying is that the leadership in these retail outfits believe (know? have convinced themselves?) that the brand, or "aspiration" as you've put it, is something more valuable in $$ terms than the added sales to people outside the single-digit size realm. clearly a lot of people in the management class believe it's something concrete, and worth more than what you'd make in 'diluting' it. whether it is or not, i kind of doubt.

we just saw a story, made fun of by everyone, where high-end clothing firms were sending their competitors' shit to snooki as a kiss of death. i mean, that's the mentality. the high-end a tiny slice of the whole clothing market tho. i don't really know how the whole industry works and seems really corrupt and insane to me in general.

ie to them it's not an intangible vs tangible thing, the brand integrity IS tangible

t/f: clothing companies tend to be run by ppl with an obsessive mercilessness about their "brand", right?

― goole, Friday, August 27, 2010 6:59 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

that all seems true, goole, but you're too reasonable for me to scream at itt

xpost to goole: yeah well, when all you *have* is a brand ("Nike", "Wal-Mart"), it sort of makes sense

But wanting easy, quick access to like 500 different kinds of tops, and wanting to have a huge, varied wardrobe is ALSO a symptom of capitalism and a brand-based economy.

k can we either LOCK THIS THREAD and resume the 'fat' debate in another thread, or just continue the thread here and i'll create a new one, cuz i was having fun for like 9-10 posts until this turned into boring trolling from 2-3 people (not incl horseshoe, laurel, abbott, karen, etc et al who have contributed actual quality posts)

(btw if i didn't list yer name doesn't mean i think you are a troll just means i lost track of who posted itt)

i guess that's fair, bernard, and i know i've been arguing for expanding the options within an industry that's exploitative and harmful rather than somehow destroying that industry and making the revolution happen. i guess i don't know how to make that happen. i'm not saying mine isn't a privileged perspective but it's kind of rich for people who don't face nasty bullshit for being fat to dismiss the frustration fat people feel as "point-missy."

xxp

high-end fashion retail is nuts

But wanting easy, quick access to like 500 different kinds of tops, and wanting to have a huge, varied wardrobe is ALSO a symptom of capitalism and a brand-based economy.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 7:13 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i spent like a hundred bucks on a shirt the other day

I miss havin' money 2 spend on clothes :(

I made myself some cutoffs to paint in the other day; that was fun, cuz it was like getting a new pair of shorts for $0.00!

i found a really nice down jacket at salvation army for $10, take that, capitalism

xpost ... and I already knew they'd fit me perfectly!

speaking of shallow, pedantic complains people make that drive me insane:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3728

high-end clothiers: "we don't have enough gov't protected means to make shitloads of money, senator schumer, please help"

I have it on good authority that bernard snowy is white

i realize it might seem like i'm taking a lot of cheap shots itt but i don't know, it does seem crazy to me for people to in the same breath indicate that they resent fat people and then act like fat people have nothing to be pissed off about. bernard wasn't one of the people who seemed like he resented fat people, to be fair.

you guys are pure friday fun!

last two posts are both accurate
xpost: make that three!

Not at all related to fat people...

I heard this one on facebook the other day, "dear president o: why don't you send me some government money for faithfully paying my mortgage since 2006?"

Yeah I kind of think copyright for fashion design is some bullshit. I guess the best quasi-lefty counterarguments are (1) this would actually protect SMALL designers from BIG companies stealing their ideas, and (2) somehow the lack of copyright protection for fashion equates to some kind of lack of respect for fashion which in turn has an implicit gender bias or something. In fact there are a lot of good reasons for not copyright-protecting fashion design.

president obama is a secret muslim

also a secret atheist

secret fashion muslim

secret gay fashion pedantic muslim

secret fattie

fashion, that's where president obama is a muslim

also likes to give money and health insurances to people who don't deserve it while dancing around in highly fashionable suits that fit perfectly

he's actually *two* secret muslims

sorry to spoil the ending for y'all

"fashion muslim" is something my eight year old cousin might call himself and it's making me lol

fashion, that's where president obama is a muslim

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, August 27, 2010 3:29 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

A+

If I got health insurance and didn't deserve it I'd be dancing around in highly fashionable suits too.

there are a lot of good reasons to not copyright-protect anything. not to get all lessig on you.

he's actually *two* secret muslims

sorry to spoil the ending for y'all

― I.C.P. Freely (bernard snowy), Friday, August 27, 2010 3:29 PM Bookmark

He's my daughter / my sister / my daughter / my sister

Lessig is not really anti-copyright.

It bums me out that obama's favorite show is probably entourage.

oh here's another one from facebook:

"if i have to work hard and piss in a cup to keep my shitty job that i hate, poor people should have to take drugs tests to receive government money"

there's no better way to keep an eye on the pedantic shallow cretins than facebook

wait, what?

xp

i feel like i recall from one of those endless 2008 primary threads that Obama dug the Wire

I don't know how I really feel about anything, does anyone

80% of all muslims love entourage

oh are you making joeks about all the secrets Obama has? nm

lol max

you guys are pure friday fun!

"FUN"? WHAT IS THIS SUPPOSED TO MEAN? THAT I'M FAT?!

park 51 was originally called 'entourage: the interfaith community center'

how can anyone take anything seriously when we are all going to die

okay sorry i got all yelly glad i could contribute to the friday fun

Secret muslim transvestite president has trouble finding sequined burqas in plus sizes at local mall.

burqas are huge ime i think we have a solution

comma awards free health insurance to all drug addicts

one of the characters from entourage is supposedly based on rahm's brother, and i just get the feeling rahm and obama sit around high-fiving whenever he's on the screen.

dress barn

my fan fiction version of obama is not like that at all fwiw

xp

the death panel guy?

uh xps

more shameful Obama secrets:
- once put underwear on backwards, then wore them that way through an entire meeting with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu before realizing
- "didn't really care for" Scott Pilgrim, but told Rahm to keep it quiet because he "[doesn't] want to seem out-of-touch"
- nose-picking w/eating

in my obama fan fiction we are living together in an apartment in cobble hill and our hilarious pakistani landlord lives underneath us and in order to move in we promised him we were muslims so we are always caught in hilarious situations where we have to pretend to be muslim starring lizzy caplan as the love interest

but obama is actually an atheist

its called 'barack the house'

my fan fiction

well in my fan-fictionverse, obama watches season 6 of LOST with growing concern, consults with Romer, weighs his options, then declares a moratorium on multi-season story-arcs until people can get their shit together.

As a fat woman, I have really enjoyed sb-ing some ignorant fuckers in this thread! Thanks for the good times!

in my fan-fiction obama is actually three-quarters black, one-quarter spanish

and 100% beefcake

As a fat woman, I have really enjoyed sb-ing some ignorant fuckers in this thread! Thanks for the good times!

― Jenny, Friday, August 27, 2010 3:50 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3 <3 <3

(I'm glad I wasn't the only person doing that all through the thread)

p.s. would totally read max's fan fiction.

I mean, fan fiction by max. Or, fan fiction about max, whichever would do, really. ;-)

"Why doesn't your store carry any clothes for vindictive people?!?"

the answer would be "we totally do"

Oh, in the intended spirit of the thread, a former classmate of mine complained about having to represent pro-bono indigent individuals who face the termination of their parental rights because those people "ALL manage to afford cigarettes and cell phones with ring tones and answer tones."

wd read max/obama slash

'obamax,' if u will

Well perhaps I'm projecting some personal feelings here, admittedly. I listen to all kinds of excuses from my brother and my dad about being very overweight, and they are both causing themselves health problems, and the fact is, I was overweight too, and it did suck and I believed all the same things about "slow metabolism" and "bad genes" and then one day I realized I had to eat less and exercise more. It was not easy at all, it was very hard. It is hard to wake up at 6am to go to the gym before work. It is hard not to order food that you really like, on a regular basis. I'm sure some people have a genetically rawer deal than my family. Yes some people have large bone structures. Yes some people are higher-percent muscle. None of this accounts for the huge increase in medically-defined obesity, however flawed that definition. Yes, I know I'm being insensitive, and I think sensitivity on this issue is highly overrated. Suggest ban away. I'm done.

^^^^^^^^^^

eh Hurting i am really unmoved by that sentiment and have heard it many times before. it's none of my business what your family's health problems are, but if they result from bad diet and lack of exercise, your father and brother could likely address them without actually losing weight

No, the health problems associated with obesity result in part from the extra weight itself. This is true of heart problems, of back problems, joint problems, etc.

I'm pretty sure I already SBed you and Kerm, but I kind of lost track so I'll do it again just to be safe.

You should try eating more and relaxing a little and maybe you won't be such a judgmental grump about other people's bodies.

Millions of doctors are just talkin crazy talk with their "lose weight"! It's all just a fashion industry ploy!

No, I just think you're a dick.

He worked his way up the ankles to Jim's knees, and then his thighs. As Edwards's hands continued up Obama's body to his torso, they traveled lightly over Obama's full rear end. Edwards's blood quickened at his first touch of such an interesting area of flesh.

He lathered up Obama's stomach and carefully rubbed the soap over the other man's front. "I am pleased that your chest is once again free of hair," Edwards remarked. Then he ran his foamy hands over Obama's pecs, grazing both nipples at once.

"Mm," Obama grunted in answer. More of his penis went turgid. Edwards continued to clean him as if he hadn't noticed, moving soap all around Obama's back without missing an inch of skin.

Edwards returned to the floor and gathered more soap into his hand. Now he ran his curious, searching fingers against Obama's inner thighs, exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.

― max, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 6:04 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

whoa what if.... overweight... and fat.... were two different things

No, the health problems associated with obesity result in part from the extra weight itself. This is true of heart problems, of back problems, joint problems, etc.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 4:01 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the research on this is a lot less clear-cut than that. (also sometimes funded by the diet industry!)

there is a store right next to my work that specializes in producing the most hideous clothing for plus size women... its called Christopher & Bank. Ugh. It's like Quacker Factory levels almost. Bedazzled shapeless sweaters and elastic-waisted pants. I have to wear plus sized pants and I pretty much exclusively have to shop at either Old Navy or order online. It stinks.

You should try eating more and relaxing a little

way to be insensitive to all the stress eaters out there!

SB'ing is great exercise. gets me all worked up!

I'm not so big on judging people's bodies but i'm MORBIDLY OBESE on judging people's bullshit rationalizations for why their lives are the way they are.

And the food industry lobbies against obesity-related public health campaigns.

xp Sensitivity is totally wack!

That actually is my thread-themed one, people who assume others are fat because they live some life of leisure. Maybe they're working 70 hrs a week and are stressed so they eat garbage as a quick pleasure, right?

there are all kinds of reasons why people are fat for real

no

moral failing

thats the one

not really being tongue-in-cheek here, my family members are in the middle of some epic moving/taking care of grandpa/switching jobs shit and it's dovetailing with my sister's cupcake addiction

thank god I broke both my wrists and opiates are an appetite suppressant

sure, also, spoiled, entitled first-worldism, my fat Kashmiri peasant aunts be damned!

xp

and heres the crazy part: it doesnt even matter what you do if you unconditionally elected you will always be skinny forever

mmmmm, opiates and cupcakes. heaven much?

I love people with their stories about how weight loss changed their life when they learned to put the fork down and exercise more. I used to be one.

I love asking those people if they've kept that weight off, not for 1 or 2 years, but to come back in 5 years, and let me know if they've kept the weight off, or if their bodies' set point rose and they slowly put the weight back on, and actually found that they had gained even more weight than they lost on their fabulous "never gonna be fat again" weight reduction programs. Cause I'm one of those, too.

And yeah, medical evidence about the terrifying health effects of mild obesity are vastly overstated, usually by people with something to sell - and in fact, many studies show that mild obesity can even have a protective effect. Not to mention that the overwhelming vast majority of the LOSE WEIGHT NOW FATTIES pressure has NOTHING to do with health, and everything to do with looks (and we won't even begin to get into the idea of how it is used to control women's behaviour.)

But yeah, mmmmm this bait is most delicious. I'm gonna put the thread down, fatty, and go re-read "Health At Every Size" and try not to internalise all the moral judgements that get dished out around this issue.

I'm fat because it upsets people like Hurting who are grumpy from never getting to eat what they want. I also like taking up extra room on the train.

kashmir is some kind of paradise is it not, i mean, i've heard the song

it's v beautiful there, except for the fighting, yes

great sweaters, if nothing else

and the gross fat people

xp

poor fat people who fight
bleccch

More MaxFic, please!

i know. need i add they're muslim

http://www.galen-frysinger.com/graphics/kashmir1.jpg

this guy is thinking if only i had first world problems, like being fat

fat enough to weigh down his end of that canoe amirite

you guys know what I hate? young people. that's why I bought a house, so I can keep them off my lawn.

I may be in the minority on this, but would like to see more alternative policy scenarios, less groping in obamafiction.

*Fat Boyz BBQ* opening up down the street from my store. can'twaitcan'twaitcan'twaitcan'twait!

So what were second world problems?

soviet russia iirc

in soviet russia fat hates you?

max can i get some fic with fat obama getting chubby-chased by gay muslims

http://www.artware.qc.ca/~fil/banned/the_Dilbert_Hole/16.gif

hopefully this "dilbert hole" comic offends all equally

They worked their way up the ankles to fat Obama's knees, and then his thighs. As gay Muslims' hands continued up fat Obama's body to his torso, they traveled lightly over fat Obama's full rear end. Gay Muslims' blood quickened at their first touch of such an interesting area of flesh.

They lathered up fat Obama's stomach and carefully rubbed the soap over the other man's front. "I am pleased that your chest is once again free of hair," gay Muslims remarked. Then they ran their foamy hands over fat Obama's pecs, grazing both nipples at once.

"Mm," fat Obama grunted in answer. More of his penis went turgid. Gay Muslims continued to clean him as if he hadn't noticed, moving soap all around fat Obama's back without missing an inch of skin.

Gay Muslims returned to the floor and gathered more soap into their hands. Now they ran their curious, searching fingers against fat Obama's inner thighs, exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely fat Obama's.

― max, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 6:04 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― max, Friday, August 27, 2010 4:02 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahahaha i don't know if you guys remember this btw but during the presidential campaign some right wing tv pundit said something about how most Americans wouldn't vote for Obama because his thinness would be viewed as elitist or some crazy bullshit

xp If that doesn't make you lose your appetite, nothing will.

I certainly do remember that.

that's america, buying a bunch of diet garbage and then hating anyone who has the gall to be in shape or famous

okay so i didn't make it up! so much projection and crazy and fat hate and thin hate and contempt for "most Americans" and contempt for Barack Obama rolled into one.

xp

right wingers are insane

dying

I think it had to do with his not seeming manly enough. He wasn't "burly," as a man should be. Whether that means muscley or fat.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CoN-0dL6_hY/SQzHApdgESI/AAAAAAAAJps/XsuchaHARYY/s400/barack-obama-fat919.jpg

ohhh okay that makes a lot more sense. also i remember those shirtless Obama pics and he is muscly imo./perv

xp

How's fat america supposed to overcome their thin-hate and vote for Obama if they can't leave the house nekkid???

If Obama=muscly is your attempt at body-image trolling me back I am not taking the bait!

i mean, he has muscles amirite?

i think we need to recognize that there is nothing obama does that is not in fact dangerously MUSLIM or offensively SLENDER or insultingly THOUGHTFUL or condescendingly INTELLIGENT.

that photo

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/archive/236/images/photo2/4598/original/original.jpg

is obama more of a vince or a turtle

stealthily MUSCULAR

now what in the i say what

bearish obama is cute :-)

i don't care if he's thin, fat or photoshopped, barack obama is a babe

http://eater.com/uploads/fat-furious-michelle-obama.jpg

let's not forget the lesson of SHARIF ABDUR RAHIM, former basketball player and MUSLIM, a man who played a game which OBAMA has been photographed HIMSELF PARTAKING IN

i suppose if the internet has the energy to photoshop jessica biel with a dong or whatever, fat obama shouldn't surprise me so much.

but its big government that needs a diet

http://eater.com/uploads/fat-furious-michelle-obama.jpg

scary black woman michelle obama looking all "sassy" there with her pointed finger and pursed lips

still looking fine there tbh

how can TELEPROMPTER Q. HUSSEIN ask REAL AMERICANS to stop MAKING DINNER OUT OF SODA when its HIS COMMUNISM thats made OUR GOVERNMENT into LITERAL FAT OOZING THROUGHOUT THE CAPITOL BUILDING

and that kid is a str8 chubbler, ME-chelle otm

how can TELEPROMPTER Q. HUSSEIN ask REAL AMERICANS to stop MAKING DINNER OUT OF SODA when its HIS COMMUNISM thats made OUR GOVERNMENT into LITERAL FAT OOZING THROUGHOUT THE CAPITOL BUILDING

― max, Friday, August 27, 2010 4:34 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

amazing

that kid is apple-shaped, which means he is going to die young and go straight to hell

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/Obama%20hot%20dog%20July%204%202008%20Butte%20MT%20-%20AP.jpg

http://www.yelp.com/loves/barack-obama-slash-fiction

"Telepromter Q. Hussein"

that is so great.

http://www.passion-4-pizza.com/images/web_obama_pizza.jpg

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/438461/80515349.jpg

honestly a little concerned that max writes glenn beck's material for him; that was a little too good

barack obama is allowed to eat whatever he wants because he's thin; fat people have to stop eating until they are thin/die which ever comes first

until they get thin/die they don't get to wear clothes btw

obama only eats those when he's trying to look normal and american, he eats quinoa or muslim chow at home

yeah, obama is a bro cuz he eats real food (on camera, to turn the public narrative away from his arugula addiction)

totes he eats halal-butchered meet and christian babies

uh, meat

maybe if barack KENYA DIG IT obama were HONEST about his BACKGROUND we wouldn't be in the trouble we're in as a country. you hear that noise? it's not a mooing from COWS, but rather the sound of a MOOSLIM president LAUGHING his way to the TERROR BANK.

but i bet he ate hella loco mocos when he was a pothead back in hawaii!

xposts

KENYA DIG IT

http://wp.appadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/obama1.jpg

why do his teeth disappear in the last photo? is his face made of lead?

i don't get that last photo at all, apart from people like to disfigure Obama on the internet

http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/bill_cosby1.jpg

looks to be from little-seen "Bill Cosby, Secret Service Agent" pilot

jello pudding pedant

he's anti-witchcraft too. the hell with him.

PHILADELPHIA _ Amid allegations of witchcraft, Hollywood star Bill Cosby has evicted a longtime friend, the ex-wife of basketball legend Guy Rodgers, from his Elkins Park, Pa., estate, which she had overseen for 19 years.

Gladys Rodgers said Cosby and his spiritual adviser accused her of using blood, sparkles and other items in bizarre witch rituals to gain control over the Philadelphia-bred comedian. Rodgers says she is a Methodist.

After a three-day standoff, Gladys Rodgers left the perfectly groomed, wooded 5-acre estate just north of here on Saturday afternoon under the watchful eye of private security men.

An attempt to evict Rodgers on Thursday failed when Cheltenham Township police intervened and found "the paperwork was not legally binding," according to police.

Rodgers, 62, whose late ex-husband was two years ahead of Cosby at Temple University and is in the Big 5 Hall of Fame, oversaw the estate, its maintenance and its staff. She had lived there since the Cosbys purchased it in 1983 from Eugene F. "Fitz" Dixon, then-owner of the Philadelphia …

sparkles, eh?

Without (hopefully) raising the tone again, I would like to point out one thing:

This site, by way of example
http://www.obesitymyths.com/index.cfm

is owned by this group:
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/about.cfm

which is run by this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman

who I think we can all agree does not really have your best interests at heart

and also, who, oddly, is the father of this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Berman_%28musician%29

who I think we can all agree has your best interests at heart

that was such a big deal in philadelphia. he promised that she could live at his mansion forever, but cosby's psychic sidekick - who travels with him everywhere - was threatened by her for some reason and told the cos that she was a witch.

just to be clear, Hurting, i was not defending the food industry or HFCS upthread.

he has a psychic sidekick?

yeah.

Oh I know horseshoe, it's just that someone raised that obesity research is "funded by the drug industry" or something and I think it's kind of ironic that those claims are themselves being directly funded by the food lobby.

also worst billionare dad ever:

"It's the little things that count when you're a daddy. Like taking your little girl for ice cream. First, you have to teach her about the concept of gravity. I can't tell you how many ice creams I've had to pick up off the floor, rinse off and stick back on my kid's cone. Now that may sound strange, but have you bought ice cream lately? Good gosh, it's up to 75 cents a scoop. A scoop! What's in it, gold?"

blood & sparkles

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51V27A-xFeL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Capitalism winning again! Capitalism pitting capitalism against capitalism!

i raised the fact that obesity kills research, especially the stuff that gets reported on by the mainstream media, is sometimes funded by the diet industry. i don't work for Big Food btw.

"It's the little things that count when you're a daddy. Like taking your little girl for ice cream. First, you have to teach her about the concept of gravity. I can't tell you how many ice creams I've had to pick up off the floor, rinse off and stick back on my kid's cone. Now that may sound strange, but have you bought ice cream lately? Good gosh, it's up to 75 cents a scoop. A scoop! What's in it, gold?"

― scott seward, Friday, August 27, 2010 5:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg waht

so much to dissect there!

Unless you can prove to me that Linda Bacon and the entire HAES movement are directly funded by corporate interests, I will continue to trust them a little more than research funded by either Big Food or the diet / fashion / cosmetic surgery industry.

this might be the strangest thread I've tried to follow on ilx

hurting is on some fat-hate protocols of the elders of zion shit itt; he's really serious!

I don't know a lot about HAES, but I thought it was more of an anti-diet, self-acceptance, reach a healthy weight naturally and slowly kind of thing, and I didn't realize it included claims that the health risks of obesity are myths.

protocols of the elders of ziti!

I don't know a lot about HAES, but I thought it was more of an anti-diet, self-acceptance, reach a healthy weight naturally and slowly kind of thing, and I didn't realize it included claims that the health risks of obesity are myths.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 5:36 PM (10 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it doesn't say they're myths, it says the research is complicated and self-contradictory and that it is possible to meet the medical definition of obese and still be healthy, i.e. good blood pressure, disease-free, etc. not that people who are not healthy are undeserving of respect or can be shamed or judged into being healthy for that matter.

It's more a "the health risks of obesity are OVERSTATED IN ORDER TO MAKE MONEY OFF YOU & MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE SHIT ABOUT YOURSELF IN ORDER TO MAKE EVEN MORE MONEY OFF YOU" but I think that these things are all involved in the self acceptance, reach a healthy weight naturally kind of thing.

It focuses much much more on learning how exercise will reduce your health risks no matter what your weight is than that OBESITY WILL KILL YOU scaremongering. that is really not helpful.

Doesn't Obama have something better to do than ___________? (making ncaa bracket, going on vacation). however going on The View was sort of 0_o

yeah Obama sure is a lazy, time-wasting president, especially compared to the previous dude.

"protocols of the elders of ziti!"

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JWRaqDnEIzk/R-CF99p7vZI/AAAAAAAAAGw/FFn3VsC0-lI/s320/twilight_zone_to_serve_man.jpg
IT'S A COOKBOOK!

"the health risks of obesity are OVERSTATED IN ORDER TO MAKE MONEY OFF YOU & MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE SHIT ABOUT YOURSELF IN ORDER TO MAKE EVEN MORE MONEY OFF YOU"

granted, but the health risks are there, nonetheless. and it varies from person to person, but when your weight begins to interfere with your ability to accomplish basic physical tasks, it becomes a legitimate problem. not for world at large so much, but for you. i suspect that for most people, the problem-making aspects of excess weight will begin to occur before they hit the medically-defined "obesity" point.

yeah, you're just pulling that out of your ass. if we're all doing that, let me just say that i think different people's bodies work really differently when it comes to this stuff.

You can be overweight, or even medically "obese" and still be healthy. HAES is about finding that point. That, I find useful. Anything else, not so much.

honestly this seems like a question of manners

it's not really clear what the "question" is anymore, but i would agree that even if you are a health zealot it's not really you're place to be insensitive to fat people so they get thin, as if that would even work.

the thing is we're talking about human beings - and while a person can embody a pathology (or multiple pathologies) - they are still human and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect

for MOTHERFUCK'S SAKE

fat chicks 4eva

How much do the "healthy people who are overweight" and "fat people who can't find clothes that fit" venn circles overlap?

Kerm, i am sure there are plenty of existing threads on the problems w/the fashion/clothing industry especially with regards to women.

this thread is kind of "about" that to the extent that it's about anything

i think there was actually some pretty solid links posted on the subject when we were discussing this on the semiotics thread - as well as contributions by clothing industry dude Steve Shasta

but also, the middle part of this thread that's hidden is about plus size clothing and stuff

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it's almost like you don't even care for how your thread turned out

this is like wiping your ass with the Mona LIsa if the Mona Lisa was an unimportant internet thread

susan hated literature!

yea that's why i had to kill her by making her lick those toxic stamps

you got to let go, man. forget it jake it's chinatown, etc

I've forgotten Paris

best thread ever. thanks. made me hungry though.

that was your fault iirc with the obama eating delicious food pictures!

stay away from the carbs

xxxpost i've already had three thoughts that are going directly to the "posts you had second thoughts about" thread lol

Methodists don't use sparkles?

i had kung bo chicken, an egg roll, fried rice, and fried shrimp for dinner. and then some rocky road ice cream.

I kind of agree with elmo's original point. I hear the "why don't you you carry sizes for real women" line a million times a day. Lady, I don't design it or do the buying, so what do you want me to do exactly?

And I am a fattie.

the phrase "real women" is totally rong and irritating tbf

Let's change the subject to something less "political"....like people who HAVE to park as close to the front of a store / building as possible!

People complaining about a restaurant meal that didn't cost that much anyway. If it's not food poisoning or poorly cooked, GET OVER IT.

crappy food is crappy food, dude. I SHALL CONTINUE TO COMPLAIN

I hear the "why don't you you carry sizes for real women" line a million times a day. Lady, I don't design it or do the buying, so what do you want me to do exactly?

Here's an idea that may be entirely obvious to the point of patronising (as I don't work in retail and haven't done in, I dunno, 20 years) BUT...

If you take the value judgements off it, it's a question of marketing. If you heard "Why don't you sell short sleeved shirts?" a million times a day, don't you think your shop would realise they're missing an opportunity and eventually start selling short sleeved shirts?

Yeah, sure, you're not the buyer. But if you work in a small shop, you probably know who the buyer is, and if you work in a large shop, you might be able to find out in a couple of phone calls.

If it happens multiple times a *day*, why don't you start keeping a notebook? Every time someone asks you, say "funnily enough, I'm trying to get some information on that..." and ask them some basic information like, what size were they looking for, what kind of items (shirts? trousers? dresses?) how much money were they looking to spend?

This will serve two puposes:
1) annoying customer will feel like they have been *listened* to, and might be defused a bit (and also have a positive impression of your shop)
2) I don't work in retail, but I *have* worked in marketing, and this kind of information is GOLD DUST. If they are missing out on a "dozens of people a day" market, they'd like to know about it. And if you collect this information, and email it to your buyer with the head office CC:d in - you can TOTALLY work that into a big promotion to a cushy job in marketing.

If you're pestered about it that much, maybe you are overqualified. If management is deaf to your suggestions, based on customer complaints, they are unprofessional. Perhaps you ought to bide your time and think about going into the business yourself.

However I think the customer is off-base taking their concerns to a cashier or anyone less than management. It is rude to take your complaint to what is essentially a clerk. If they really want certain things in their size, they can use a telephone or better yet take their concerns to corporate hq.

Suit yourself, electrolytes, but it is embarrassing when I go out to an inexpensive (under 40 USD per person) restaurant and my dinner mate makes sour faces the entire time. It's fair if the food is screwed up, but if it merely isn't the best meal ever, it ruins my evening!

I think part of the original annoyance is that it's like taking out aggression on bus drivers because your city's transit commission raised fares...

which is something that typically inspires a lot of shallow, pedantic complaints.

u s steel otm. I've worked in retail, and I can safely say if the first person you're going to is someone who has no power to make changes, you're already adding a middle man you didn't need to add.

Yes, one can always make suggestions to management, but the problem is that approach suffers from selection bias, ie, the employee has to have the free time to approach management with the suggestions, and on busier days may very well forget. Or some of the employees flat out don't give a shit and never report it.

If the customers go directly to management, whether it be via a web form, in person, or phone call, management gets a more accurate representation of the number of people who are calling to report an issue and can track trends better.

I mean ffs, I used to get repeated grief from customers about things I couldn't change not because they were company policy, but because they were FEDERAL GOVERNMENT policy, but I wasn't exactly in power to call up Congress and go "hay can we change this plz"

why don't you start keeping a notebook

ugh you know, this is a nice thought but depending on what the management is like, this is basically advising someone to do market research without pay! and doing that work may not be viewed favorably by management, especially in the context of a larger company that may already do their own market research. don't get me wrong, being an advocate for your customer is a good thing, but unless you know that the information you collect will be acknowledged, this is pure futility.

agreed. nice in a perfect world but a bit unrealistic.

extreme example but god save you if try that shit at american apparel, you'd be sacked before you could put pen to paper.

I've been more than once criticized for taking initiative like the above, although in my current job initiative is actually valued (ie, it's not a retail job, lol).

the retail job I worked was Best Buy, whose marketing practices are a bit...scary

If you heard "Why don't you sell short sleeved shirts?" a million times a day, don't you think your shop would realise they're missing an opportunity and eventually start selling short sleeved shirts?

Knowing my company, no. For a variety of reasons.

And knowing my customers, the day we do start selling short sleeved shirts is the day they start asking for long sleeved ones.

Like I said the most intelligent thing is to go to corporate HQ. Even store managers don't make that much money and sometimes they are instructed to buy x y and z .... or else. Store manager is not a respected job either, they are dogs and many of them started out at the bottom.

And I also wanted to point out that in some businesses you can order the thing online and request to pick it up in store when it is ready. Might teach someone a lesson.

if they don't have what i want i just set the store on fire. lesson taught.

Kerm in using hyperbolic example to miss overall point of thread SHOCKAH

"My internet thread discussion isn't going the way I wanted."

You're about 8 hours behind, do keep up.

btw you're one of the people who derailed it so

http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/fuck_you.gif

and to think you wanted to lock this thread. its gold!

I was trying to get back on topic!

yea scott I retroactively don't regret this anymore. :)

Kerm I'm only really being half-serious this morning plus when am I ever gonna get another chance to post the pic of that old bag

our secret plan is working! ;)

Re complaining about food:

My college boyfriend and I took in a douche who was between apartments, letting him stay with us for free for a couple months. We also fed him for free, and one night we went to a regional version of Chilis or TGIFridays. He looked over the menu and declared: "Oh my. It all looks awful, awful and overpriced."

It made matters worse that he had a very likely fake English accent.

Did he talk about his mom a lot?

No, why?

Haha WmC. (it is a ref to someone who doesn't post here anymore jesse)

old-ish ilx in-joke (xp!)

I can't stand people who complain about teh speed of waitstaff when they can clearly see they're assisting other people. (another reason I left that industry for good).

like I remember this smelly redneck doofus getting sat, at the same time as two other tables in my section, I dropped them chips and stuff within a minute, helped the other people who sat down beforeh im, and got to his table within 5 minutes, asked him how he was, only to get a "STARTING TO GET A LITTLE UPSET".

Oh gee I'm SO SORRY that I prevented you from getting our unhealthy stomach into your loins for 4 extra minutes FUCK YOU

You served stomach and he was still that impatient? For stomach, I can wait.

"For stomach, I can wait."

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2008/05/mason_243x301.jpg

holy fuck lol I have no idea why I typed "stomach", i meant "food". but surely you can understand, given how similar the words....wait, no. heh. no way to defend this Freudian slip!

I love asking those people if they've kept that weight off, not for 1 or 2 years, but to come back in 5 years, and let me know if they've kept the weight off, or if their bodies' set point rose and they slowly put the weight back on, and actually found that they had gained even more weight than they lost on their fabulous "never gonna be fat again" weight reduction programs. Cause I'm one of those, too.

karen, this is more m braggin fwiw b/c i agree with u and horseshoe on most of your points itt, but ive kept off the weight i lost for about 8 years. partly b/c (a) i was at my heaviest at age 16 and probably had that youngsta metabolism going in my favor and (b) i changed my diet in a permanent way (went from being a regular consumer of hot pockets to veg). i still keep a gut on me tho, not the fittest of dudes, but my cholesterol/blood pressure/etc is super dope. and my wife is p much the same way (and also she is 6' tall so finding pants is like a THING).

this is not particularly fair and not a rigorous study obvs, just a personal observation, but i feel like there are two main stances formerly fat people take in the world. one retains all the self-hatred they used to feel and projects it onto other fat people and the other takes a generous and empathetic stance on the crap fat people have to put up with because after all, the formerly fat person used to be fat and knows how it feels. second way is just a better way to be imo.

all of this is to say, <3 m bison

i still keep a gut on me tho, not the fittest of dudes, but my cholesterol/blood pressure/etc is super dope.

i'm a big girl but i just took a bunch of tests and my blood pressure/cholesterol/glucose are normal! the HAES thing is real; you can be plus-size and still be healthy.

no doubt, i think hurting is right 2 b worried about the negative public health impacts of obesity on the population at large but i think looking at the personal shortcomings of ppl instead of the greater socio-environmental factors that are connected with morbidity (long commutes, sedentary lifestyles at home and work and often at play, nutrient-sparse food supply, food deserts, ill-conceived urban policy, hot pockets) is probably the rong approach (perhaps an appropriate analog is blaming poor ppl 4 being poor rather than looking at the environment, i mean is this sociology 101 or am i oversimplifying it? why should our approach be any different 4 obesity as a legit public health question?)

just ban it like smoking. "If you're gonna be fat take it outside."

I think farting should be illegal

that's a natural bodily function you judgmental prick

Nope my diet prevents public farts so if yer farting a lot in public its cuz you eat bad and imo jail is what's needed to set you straight

i dunno, show it causes cancer, we'll see what we can do.

h8 u guys sometimes

we can't help it, it's our socioeconomic environment..

i blame...society

let's get sushi and not pay

I blame Robert Guillame

complaints about there being "too many hipsters" in obviously young/hip neighborhoods, and/or "too many tourists" in massively touristy areas. it is somehow not at all the same thing when i complain about there being too many drunk yuppie assholes in my drunk yuppie mating ground neighborhood. me = otm, other people = rmde

complaints about there being "too many hipsters" in obviously young/hip neighborhoods, and/or "too many tourists" in massively touristy areas.

totally otm

Otm seconded

still kinda feel the need to complain about the affluent stroller people in my neighborhood that i undoubtedly helped gentrify - but i totally realize that it is a shallow, pedantic complaint

realizing it is half the battle. i complain about every cyclist who is either more or lest serious than i am taking up valuable me space in the bike lanes, but at least i know i'm being a dick about it.

haha - that's an entirely different thread - Asshole Comments you Regularly Make That You Know Are Dickish But What-the-fuck-ever

"Stop rubbernecking and drive!"

traffic bottlenecks don't work that way and your stop-and-go tailgating does. not. help.

talking about how people in [city x] don't know how to drive, and then comparing it to NY or chicago or some other place where it is absolutely horrible to drive

a place like Boston?

i am constantly complaining about old men things that i never would have cared about ten years ago. why don't people use the crosswalk! i totally say that out loud every week.

i dunno, i've rarely driven in boston. problem i had there wasn't traffic related, it was that where i wanted to be was always across some body of water. like portland.

crosswalks is totally a sucker's game

i do get all crotchety about kids making too much noise on the bus tho

damn kids

[shakes withered fist]

"you'd feel better if you quit smoking"

haha - that's an entirely different thread - Asshole Comments you Regularly Make That You Know Are Dickish But What-the-fuck-ever

Which would contain every post I've ever made to ILX.

people that go to retail stores or whatever and when told they can't do something or something isn't stocked, insist they've done it before or that a friend of theirs did (and are obviously lying)

people that go to retail stores and pee in a back corner and then pretend that like someone else did it

i.e., escalation

and the one I hated the most...in a call center environment, customer's spouse calls up to say their spouse (the customer) called the other day to do something, and it awsn't done. and when told that isn't the case, argue up and down that it is true, and that the Service Rep is a liar, when they weren't present at the time of the call and didn't hear any of it.

it's always funny in those cases when you listen to the calls and then call them back to say they're mistaken. and then sometimes they still say you're a liar.

@contenderizer -- a friend of mine told me she worked in a clothing store and caught a women helping her young son piss in the corner (and not the bathroom, which was 500 feet away). She angrily told the customer and her son to leave, and told her she was "disgusting", and the customer got angry, apparently believing her child had a right to piss on the floor.

lolz for real, cuz i just made that up as a gross thing that no one would actually do

i have to admit i'd never heard of anybody doing it prior to my friend telling me that story. worst I dealt with when I worked in retail was people putting cds/games down their pants

Yeah you should try reading some sucky customers forums. People not only pee in stores, they #2 in changerooms :/ On the regular, it seems.

"sir, you're going to need to pay for those khakis"
"what the fuck? why should I have to pay for khakis I don't want?"
"because they were white pants before you went into the changing room"

no doubt, i think hurting is right 2 b worried about the negative public health impacts of obesity on the population at large but i think looking at the personal shortcomings of ppl instead of the greater socio-environmental factors that are connected with morbidity (long commutes, sedentary lifestyles at home and work and often at play, nutrient-sparse food supply, food deserts, ill-conceived urban policy, hot pockets) is probably the rong approach (perhaps an appropriate analog is blaming poor ppl 4 being poor rather than looking at the environment, i mean is this sociology 101 or am i oversimplifying it? why should our approach be any different 4 obesity as a legit public health question?)

― lunch card dudes get swiped out, totally (m bison), Sunday, 29 August 2010 01:59 (18 hours ago)

Well I think you can get away from the "personal shortcomings" approach and just look at what is effective. And while I no doubt recognize huge societal factors playing major roles in both obesity and poverty, I think when you're talking about a single individual and looking at how that individual can overcome some societally-encouraged condition, part of the answer has to be individual action to counteract those forces. I mean if you were charged with helping to get someone into college who came from a poor single parent family where no one went to college and lived in a drug-infested neighborhood, you would try to find ways to make them study even harder than someone in a privileged family would, because that would be the only way to counteract the larger social forces at play. So if we're born into sedentary lifestyles where junk food is everywhere, we have to try harder to counteract those things as well.

To be clear, I am not endorsing the idea that anyone who is "medically" overweight is necessarily unhealthy and must lose weight (or even that people who are unhealthy 'must' lose weight), but by and large there is a very strong correlation between increased weight and health problems. If you're in the category of people who are healthy at that "overweight" level (and you don't think the weight is going to result in excess strain on your back, joints, etc.), fine, but you are not representative of the majority of obese people.

I'm also not advocating "dieting" rather than healthy diet, or crazy fitness programs as opposed to an active lifestyle, but even just eating a truly healthy diet and having an active lifestyle takes genuine effort and at least some self-denial. My brother's idea of an active lifestyle is taking a walk once in a while, and his idea of a healthy attitude toward food is washing down a burger with a large milkshake is ok because he didn't get the fries. I mean it would be, if you did it like once every few months as your big indulgence. Etc.

"there's nothing to see on television"

xpost

i guess to me that's a by-your-bootstraps way to combat obesity (like, fuck, why didn't i think of exercising and eating less terribly before??) in the meantime, i wouldn't go so far as to put larger people in the column of 'oppressed minority' but nor would i waste my energy scolding ppl 4 not getting with the program or getting hot when they want non-canopy looking duds or w/e.

I'm guessing that most everyone here has a significantly large/largish music collection and if so is there anyone here who hasn't received the "sheesh, are you opening up a record store" comment?

no but i get a lot of the "sheesh are you opening up an opium den" thing

and are you?

scott seward to thread
xpost

haha what is this thread about for 547 posts?!

fatness

personal shortcomings

shallow, pedantic complaints bicyclists make: "why should i need to watch where i'm going and follow the rules of the road? if i'm in an accident, it's the driver's fault for having a 2-ton piece of metal."

i'm actually not creating a strawman here; i've heard bike activists say that.

"why should i avoid walking into a burning building? if i die of third-degree burns and carbon monoxide poisoning, it's the fire's fault, not mine."

i just hate these guys. why do they always have white beards?

http://velo-city.org/recumbents/bikefriday.com-WEB-SATRDAY06-larry-varney2_0.jpg

would slam. with my car.

http://www.rtrmag.com/images/BarcroftcolumbiaRecumbent.jpg

mmm recumbent

too many damned cars on the road for this nonsense. they're a menace. find a non-car bike path and stay on it, grandpa!

http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/7/recumbent-bicycle_31.jpg

grandpas on recumbent bikes: MENACE 2 SOCIETY

http://www.cyclingnorthwales.co.uk/images/derek_cla2.jpg

there, redbeard has the right idea. stay in a field!

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/greenspeed/800/scb-greenspeed.jpg

was wondering when this thread would evolve into disgusting savages

CAREFUL, IDIOT!

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/54/141404651_ddcef85059.jpg

this guy i kinda like.

http://www.bike-europe-ultralite.com/ls60.jpg

http://www.thecoolist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/artikcar-bike-ben-wilson_1.jpg

okay now i'm stoned and my hatred has turned into fascination.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3052/2581699913_8506a2bcfa.jpg

i am pretty sure that ilx's own pashmina rides, or used to ride a recumbent and even sold them for a time!

it is really always this guy though:

http://www.bicycletouringpro.com/photos/various/susanreed-recumbent1.jpg

it is never this guy:

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/recumbent%20bike%20-%201.jpg

impressive though:

http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2009/01/06/recumbent-bicycle-1_aUcSM_17621.jpg

thank you gis

http://www.velokraft.com/templates/velokraft/img/mod/pix/nocom1.jpg

^would ride this

I know a recumbenteer and he's about as dotty as all the pics Skot posted. What is it with crazy old bike guys.

they are done with the whole upright thing. upright is for suckers.

http://bp2.blogger.com/_LCVZWFAEodk/Ro4cizXzZhI/AAAAAAAAFn8/1WtrpeRNl4k/s400/drais.jpg

recumbent bicycles staying upright seems distressingly opposed to the laws of physics to me. But then I'm shit at riding even normal bikes so this is an area in which I know nothing.

want this motorcycle!

http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2008/01/10/honda_cub_motorcycle_6648.jpg

Ive seen recumbents in traffic and it freaks me out. They're so low-profile, how can cars even see them?

wow

http://image.hotbikeweb.com/f/9060208/0709_hbkp_04_z+off_the_line+b120_wraith.jpg

lol

http://www.automopedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/uno-cycle.jpg

http://blog.gadgetlite.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/uno-motorcycle.jpg

this is crazy, man. now i've seen everything. love the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVYYBKO6FD0

everyone just needs to drive a nonobject nucleus. the world would be a better place.

http://www.brianstoys.com/store/images/products/images1/d_18809.jpg

Photos suggest a significant overlap in the venn diagram of recumbent bicyclists and people who fancy themselves modern day walt whitmans.

the last 25 posts have almost singlehandedly revived this thread

A Nonobject Neucleus sounds like something Brian Eno would ride.

this is a thread not to be underestimated

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U9BZ_ZHmbwY/ScPhk2R_1tI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/4rtXt9pbFPM/s320/AgainstDarkBack.jpg

"I didn't know a single kid with a peanut allergy growing up."

Oh my GOD, yes. The notion that people used to be healthier before all this PROCESSED!! food and whatnot came along and took us farther from the Garden.

Oh, also: "We never wore helmets while riding bikes when we were kids, and we are FINE."

Or: "I can't believe you weren't wearing a helmet! You're lucky your head is ok!"

well yeah, I just have two broken wrists ffs

Yes, but you can't get traumatic brain injury in your wrists.

This isn't a complaint, I guess, just a logical fallacy but when people refuse to wear seat belts because of somebody they know's cousin who was in an accident and died because he was trapped by his seat belt. Ditto helmets (and yes, somebody I know's cousin refuses to wear a helmet while riding ATVs because he swears up and down that somebody he know's cousin died because of the helmet somehow).

"I didn't know a single kid with a peanut allergy growing up."

"Did you know any healthy kids that died suddenly from an unknown ailment? You did? Well, there you go."

Safety: the silent killer

Although I'm a little guilty of similar thinking in that I often mentally refer to the woman who caught her high heel in the stairs on the Quincy El train platform and fell to her death as an excuse to avoid high heels.

People refuse to wear helmets because they're being willfully dumb, imo

^^

Good thoughts on safety culture versus awareness culture here, though:
http://bygonebureau.com/2008/08/25/the-problem-with-biking/

Really, I think in ideal conditions helmets are kind of a nice-to-have. I was in an accident because I was being a dipshit and didn't have both hands on the handlebars, no safety equipment is going to stop you from being distracted and making bonehead moves, even if they mitigate the risk.

Yes, but you can't get traumatic brain injury in your wrists.
this is the kind of pedantry the thread is about imo

Yeah, I had a (super awesome) friend who died riding a bike because he was drunk (dipshit move), but it was a head injury he would have survived if he wore a helmet.

Really, I think in ideal conditions helmets are kind of a nice-to-have.

"Ideal conditions" = The Planet of No Cars and Also the Roads are Better Paved

oh god we're goning to have this coversation aren't we

BICYCLES ARE DANGEROUS AS ARE MOTOR VEHICLES, AND OCCASIONALLY EVEN WALKING

kind of fitting that this conversation would resurface on this thread as both sides of it drive me insane

except when you're in a motor vehicle you're restrained by a seat belt, as well as inside an enclosed vehicle, with airbags.

when you're walking you're moving at a much slower speed and your ability to dive out of the way of oncoming objects is much greater since you can move laterally.

yup, x-post to dan

(xxpost)

except when I'm in a motor vehicle and get distracted I am a much larger danger to others than myself, imo.

i bet if all cars were manufactured without brakes people would drive much more cautiously

biking is dangerous because you are driving a vehicle that you don't need to take a licensing test for

BEAT THAT ONE

stfu, pyfho

I advocate wearing a helmet at all times, including while walking, bathing, and eating outdoors.

driving is dangerous because you are maneuvering a massive amount of machinery at VERY high speeds

IN YOUR FACE

my bro married a girl who wears a life preserver around pools that are 3 ft deep that she doesn't intend to swim in. at parties with lots of people around.

haha, I like her style

walking is dangerous because my friend was out walking down the street one day and from out of nowhere a ten-ton weight fell out of the sky and flattened him

SERVED

What is the argument against helmets? mh?

That article says they are not the answer to problems with biking in the U.S., but a symptom of it, but that has nothing to do with whether they are the solution to protecting your head (hint: your BRAIN lives there!) in the event of an accident.

but omar does your SiL wear a helmet, too?

the argument against helmets is "I just did my hair!"

I might start wearing a life preserver with my helmet, since Lake Michigan is right over there and you never know.

i think she wears a helmet when people are blowing bubbles nearby or when she's eating cotton candy

when I go out during the day I'm so afraid of being mugged by a thug on the street that I throw sticks of dynamite every 2 miles or so to make to kill everyone in a specified radius so they can't rob on me

The argument against helmets is: why should I have to wear safety equipment for a device that is relatively safe if I'm going to travel at reasonable speeds on safe territory? I've also read a study that they contribute to the perception that bicycles are more unsafe than they actually are, etc etc

Converse argument is obv. about most territory unsafe, etc.

It's such a crapshoot of an argument, let's stop derail.

that isn't so much an argument "against" helmets so much as it is an argument that you don't want to

the only argument to make is against mandatory helmet laws, right?

Seat belts and air bags make cars seem dangerous.

Regulation of meat products makes them seem at risk for being tainted.

Underwriters Laboratories makes all electricity seems somehow potentially dangerous.

And so forth.

underwear makes farting seem dangerous

Oh my GOD, yes. The notion that people used to be healthier before all this PROCESSED!! food and whatnot came along and took us farther from the Garden.

― next person tries to teach me about JOY IN LIFE gets a tubgirl in return (Jesse), Tuesday, August 31, 2010 9:22 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Are you just dismissing this straight off cause it seems like some hippydippy, not-backed-by-research hypothesis that's spouted as fact, or...?

Yeah, I kind of like fresh ingredients. Call me a nazi.