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

“command-country” sounds like it should be an alt right group

Okay, here goes. This is an attempt at a phenomenon that has made me irrationally angry since I was a teenager.

When I was a teenager eating in casual restaurants with my family, I would become angry whenever a menu or a waiter would say something like "...And it's served with our signature sauce." Our. Ours. I can't really even articulate why it made/makes me mad. It seems, on some level, lazy and imprecise language usage (shouldn't it just be "signature sauce" if there is no question who is serving it or who produces it?) and on another level a kind of crass attempt at corporate bonhomie, forcing some poor person who is barely making enough to live on to act out the role of being a longterm representative of friendly family business, or trying to make that same claim to familiarity and innocuousness in writing on a menu. When I worked for chain restaurants and retail I used the term "the" not "our." There's no way I'm going to say "we" or "our" for a company in which I am essentially an interchangeable cash register operator.*

I was watching some cooking videos on YouTube the other day and someone said "Now let's preheat our oven" and got very triggered. IT'S YOUR OVEN. IT'S NOT OUR OVEN. I HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE AND I AM CERTAINLY NOT A CO-OWNER, EVEN IN SOME METAPHYSICAL SENSE, OF YOUR OVEN. "Now let's take half of our cheese and add it to the mixture." GET FUCKED!

*Note that I have already considered the parallel case of sports fans who refer metonymically to their team, club, and all its fans as "We." This is a little different since the affiliation is clearly established and there is some sort of common purpose attached. I'm aware that, on some level, being a fan of a sports team simply means you are a customer of that entertainment product in the same way that you are a customer of "our signature sauce" at Chili's or whatever, but the fact that egregious use of "our" is so hardcoded into the language of mediocre chain restaurants is so, so much more galling to me than a group of fans who get together to commonly hope for glory for a sports team...

the "we" "our" thing in sports fandom is terrible, but i do it fairly regularly :(

I don't actually mind those examples but watching Nigella call a dish 'my summer pavlova' or whatever makes me want to puke.

Maybe related, but I hate how my favourite (and excellent!) nearby sandwich shop has obviously encouraged staff to chat to customers while they're making up sandwiches, including the line, when conversation gets desperate, "How's your Friday going?", or "How's your Monday going?", bringing about IA feelings, to wit, this day is not MINE, firstly, and, secondly, I am struggling to evade thinking of my life as being divided into these compartments: "Wednesday, phew, halfway there!", "It's Friday, yaaasss!" And I'm completely irrational and completely angry still.

Oh jesus, this is all bad. Random thoughts:

1. I also refer to my preferred sports entertainment product as "We" and I'm perfectly fucking fine with that. Because we agreed to do it! It indicates a framework for the usage of "We."
2. Nigella's summer pavlova was really what that Serbian guy drank in the courtroom, so.
3. Sandwich shops—indeed other types of shop as well—which try to induce a false bonhomie between the corporation and the user that is primarily mediated by a low-paid worker doing enforced smalltalk is total BS. "Hey, how's your day going? Have you tried our jalapeno turkey yogurt bowl?" GET FUCKED.

My solution is largely to use local businesses and avoid business travel. I can happily say, in the 21st century, that I know most of the people I do business with personally. There's no "Hey can I get you all started off with our signature alfalfa rinse followed by our famous anal nachos? You betcha!"

I see game streamers use "we" a lot, I guess to refer to themselves and their audience. Definitely makes me IA every damn time.

"We shoulda gone for a first down there instead of punting."

"Oh yeah? WELL HOW COME YOU WEREN'T ON THE SIDELINES MAKING THAT DECISION THEN?"

I hear you loud and clear on the "our" thing though. However, give those cooking ladies on TV a pass. You're supposed to be making the cheese with them! You've got your cheese, she's got her cheese, and together, you have "our" cheese.

The restaurants only get by with using the possessive if they're some wild Taco Bell/truck stop place that uses all kinds of brands. "FIrst, we start with a Doritos taco shell. Then, we put our seasoned beef in there. Finally, it all gets slathered with Jack Daniels sour mash gravy.... etc."

I'm standing leanng agaiinst a rush hour train door when the door opens on my side so I lean in to let people out of the train. & some girl comes in and shoves herself between me and the door I'm leaning in from to stop myself from going out of. So I can't stand up straight between the next stations
I guess that's standard rush hour behaviour and at least there isn't a train employee employed to shove more and more people into a limited space but my back's been killing me for the last couple of days and last thing I need is a small blonde I don't know in the small of my back.

I can't stand it when individuals use email addresses that include their collective family or SOs. Like "bobandj✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧" or "thesmithhouseh✧✧✧@ya✧✧✧.c✧✧" or something like that, even though it's afaict just one person/friend using that address. Because even so, I never know for sure who is actually reading or receiving my messages.

or the name of their dog with some numbers after it

I see game streamers use "we" a lot, I guess to refer to themselves and their audience. Definitely makes me IA every damn time.

Yes, I see that a lot also! At a high level certainly just a way of panhandling—another thing that makes me both IA and baffled is Twitch, but that's a story for another time—but I play niche games only watched by mere dozens of people and I know some of the streamers in real life, so when they ask "should we attack this turn?" they are often legitimately asking for strategy consensus among an audience they mostly know personally. Maybe I'm more okay with this is in a strategy/card game format.... FPS games can GET FUCKED.

The restaurants only get by with using the possessive if they're some wild Taco Bell/truck stop place that uses all kinds of brands. "FIrst, we start with a Doritos taco shell. Then, we put our seasoned beef in there. Finally, it all gets slathered with Jack Daniels sour mash gravy.... etc."

Right, but that's a way of clarifying the origin of the component. Nothing wrong with that!

i get very IA when a tv show or movie synopsis does not include actors names. it’s frankly ridiculous.

I mean, it's easy to identify most actors facially anyway though, right? There are only so many of them and most of them are already famous. And then, all you have to do is Google the name of the show or movie and you will find out who's in it!

i know are trying to help but can i refer you to the title of thread ie IRRATIONAL

thumbails rarely give more than one or two faces and you cant always tell from looking who they are and you may know a face but you might also recognize a name

anyway i sell movies for a living and in my experience no one rents or buys a movie based on the story. tell me who’s in it, then tell me what’s it about. it’s all i ask.

sick to death of people who have never driven (or even sat in) our fucking shitbox of a car telling us we’re wrong about our own car. it’s not “real nice”, it’s not “pretty good”, it’s been a catastrophe for 10 years, and we’re the only ones who know that because we’re the only ones who drive it.

the other ia thing is when people keep asking us when we’re buying a new one. we can’t afford to buy a new one, fuck off.

people who mangle expressions of time to make things seem like a bigger deal:

"This problem has spanned two years now" meaning the problem started in Dec. 2017 and continues in Jan 2018

I have given up trying to figure out why nobody can find my apartment. I mean, it's not helped by the major design flaw that is having every unit in the community share the same physical address rather than having a different one for each building. But I mean, the day I moved in (when I'd never seen seen the place), I found my front entrance in 3 minutes.

However, we have a front entrance, and a back entrance. The front entrance is a stairwell, which has a well-lit sign which says A5-8. This stairwell is directly parallel to the road just outside it, which is the road I always tell people to take to get to my place. I even tell them when they turn in, they will see A1-4 in front of them, and if they walk to the right of that stairwell, up the stairs, A5-8 will be on the side.

Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY goes left instead, to the back entrance, because they for some reason see A1-4, and falsely assume there's nothing to the immediate right, even though there is quite obviously stairs leading to a doorway that is easily visible from the parking lot I've told them to park in.

So my guess is either that a) they are ignoring my written instructions, or b), there's no parking in those 6 spots, so they go to the next area and get confused, or c) they have tunnel vision. but they always go to the left, and then loudly complain that there's no visible numbers/letters (that's...because it's a back entrance).

I've tried every way I know how writing manual instructions that feel like they are a paragraph long, and I've tried it so many different ways. I've had maybe two people figure it out. I've gotten to the point where, if I have a delivery, I've started using a fake address that corresponds to a point a the entrance to my community, and i just meet them outside. But that's a royal pain in the ass, and I don't always know I have a delivery coming!

and the funniest bit is, they give ME attitude as if I designed the building!

so lately I just have shit sent to the main office and drive up to it

https://frinkiac.com/video/S07E02LUZ6qQMhJPP6QTY0J_8MAJZRc6U=.gif

https://frinkiac.com/video/S07E02/LUZ6qQMhJPP6QTY0J_8MAJZRc6U=.gif

feel like Jack Morris fans are guilty of that one

i’ve had a gutful of cashed-up bastard fuck advertisers aggressively jamming some shit song into the wallpaper of my life

i'm over 90% of my anxiety issues now, but when i'm at dinner and get stuck next to some guy who forces me into 45 minutes of small talk consisting mainly of "women eh?" i don't have a very good time

not to mention any women in attendance who were by default ensnared in the "women eh?" diatribe

choice quote of the evening: "do you have a wife? ... does she work? ... really? oh, women do that now, don't they?"

condolences

i feel like this IA is legitmate

a stripmall parking lot that is designed poorly: there is this stupid dead-end area that has maybe 10 spaces but you have to drive almost all the way into it to see if there are any free spaces ... and then try to turn around or reverse out when there are none.
it’s so dumb & i hate it

I tried to enter my bank's drive-thru without going back out into the street and got trapped in this netherworld. WHY, BANK, WHY?

https://i.imgur.com/DtV2C6o.gif

yeah these hellscapes should be outlawed

also:

businesses on the corner of four-lane streets where the only way you can enter is by being in the lane closest: you can’t go across lanes bcz of concrete lane dividers and there’s no early turn lane in the approach
like you basically have to go around an entire city block if you come from the wrong direction

stupid nonsensical planning

Well, now... Look I know this is the Irrational thread, but those dividers serve a purpose.

We've got a five-lane state highway that divides our neighborhood in half. Some time before my time, they added dividers and turn lanes into the middle lane to sort of tamper down the traffic. They've since added fancy street lights and everything. It feels much more like a boulevard than a state highway now.

But going back to before my time, there was a McDonald's, a KFC, maybe a Wendy's? They all closed shop and went down the hill to the neighborhood without the frou-frou streetlamps. Good riddance! said my neighborhood association.

Didn't learn all that until one day when I asked why the comic book store had a drive-thru window.

by four-lane I meant two lanes in each direction, not like a freeway or anything

lol that’s kinda funny xpost

"oh, you're not interested in talking about food? why?" <talks about food for 45 minutes>

This. But in my case replace "food" with "obscure 19th century operas"

^ just think how handy that conversation could be if you ever appear on Jeopardy!

I’m rationally angry at everything and it’s terrible.

"do you have a wife? ... does she work? ... really? oh, women do that now, don't they?"

How old was this person?

44

WTF. Were they being sarcastic? I dont understand anyone our age thinking in that manner.

this is the most irrational of A’s

i joined a fb group a while back for local fans of a podcast. i went to a couple of their bookclub events a few times but the convos were barely ever about the books so i stopped going. but i swear all they ever want to do is meet up. like ALL the time. for anything. drinks, movie, tour of a local tourist attraction, blah blah. it drives me batty.
i’m not obligated to go so it shouldnt annoy me but i am me so of course it does. ie quit being so social jeez louise enough already

lol that sounds like the FB group of the bf's podcast. I had to unfollow it because they dont talk much about true crime, they post loads of gross memes and swears instead ;/

this is the modern version of “my book club just drinks wine and half of them never opened the book”

WTF. Were they being sarcastic?

not even for a second, although apparently he’s still bitter from a protracted divorce

god i signed back up to fb last week (for reasons, shut up), no way am i getting involved in crazy shit like clubs for people who aspire to read books

that fucking smug superannuation ad with all the smug fuckwits doing that fucking smug hand thing with their fucking smug hands can fuck right the fuck off

I get IA about people who act like a bed frame is some essential piece of real adult furniture, and that not having one is a sign of immaturity or something.

For some reason this opinion seems to be held mainly by women, who lament that many men are content to sleep on mattresses on box springs, or on mattresses on the floor. I've done plenty of all three, and I have a bed frame now, with a headboard and everything. It makes hardly any difference at all. It just seems like pointless snobbery over a thoroughly non-essential household item. But people will express it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

I was reminded of this today when I ran across this twitter thread (I promise I don't go looking for things like this), in which the discussion extends to what are apparently the wrong kinds (and colors!) of blanket to have:

The biggest lie in rom coms is that men have bed frames??

— Batul Hassan (@BatulMH) January 19, 2018

I slept on a yo (Korean relative of a futon) most of my childhood, and a futon directly on the floor between college and marriage. Since getting married, I have been able to manage a futon on a platform. But almost all conventional beds are way too squishy for me.

headboard = you can lean pillows against it and sit up in bed to read without the pillows sliding between the bed and the wall