opinions, when expressed, make you want to leave the conversation

- 9/11 was an inside job
- The "morning after pill" is the same thing as "an abortion pill"
- vaccines cause autism
- voting for a democrat or republican is going to cause the same result because there's no real difference

-those poor people in AZ, having to deal with all those Mexicans and their drugs

generally some challop like: "i don't believe in watching television," or "sports are boring / stupid," or any variation where the person is putting down something enjoyed by many people in order to bolster their own cultural claim. (also file under: "i hate hip-hop," "i like everything but country music," etc.) even when i may agree that the particular thing isn't up my alley, the opinion expressed is always annoying and it makes me want to leave the conversation asap.

- any variant on there being too much immigration in the uk

- why should i have to pay to see my friend's band play?

mordy OTM

argh, the no TV people! Yes yes, we're all very impressed with your ability to cut yourself off from society and popular culture, now go watch your DVDS of 30 Rock and the Wire.

Completely otm. xp

- "But it's time to take our country back!" (always spoken by middle-class white folks)

-"we had so many keystones, it was insane"

do you feel like they're criticizing you, personally (presumably without knowing it)?

re: the no tv people

there seem to be a lot of these threads abt the retard groupmind at the moment

i think it's pretty obvious that these opinions are challenging and likely detrimental to their proponents' standing in polite company, but ppl express them anyway

maybe more interesting wd be why you converse with such ppl, or are unable to convince them 'not to go there'

pretty sure the "no TV" ppl being complained about know that they're criticizing everyone around them

i dunno - i just assume it's their personal decision - like vegans - and they're well aware that they're in the minority, and only the most obnoxious ones are gonna judge you negatively for not living your life exactly the way they do.

sooo many of these, but off the top:

- positive evaluations of the grateful dead
- aspersions on bisexuality / bisexuals
- "this country was founded on christian principles"
- anyone identifying modern wicca / paganism as an "ancient tradition"
- criticism of israel is anti-semitism

maybe more interesting wd be why you converse with such ppl, or are unable to convince them 'not to go there'

imo, the ability to be polite about politics or controversy is
1. In a debate or discussion, make a genuine attempt to see the other person's point of view, and understand why they feel the way they do, and attempt to engage with them on that level.
2. Failing that, if the position is poorly- or emotionally-justified or just plain stupid, then either change the topic or walk away

this thread is about the walking away, because you'd want to yell. or shit where it's an aesthetic/emotional thing to begin with, and you don't relate and therefore don't want to engage.

i'm a no TV person, but not cuz i think TV sucks or that other people are stupid or whatever. i will watch the shit out of some TV. but i am super cheap, and paying $15 for internet and $0 for cable sounds good to me. if there was still free TV floating around inside the air molecules, i'd be watching three men and a baby reruns.

if there was still free TV floating around inside the air molecules, i'd be watching three men and a baby reruns.

there is! and the hd over-the-air channels usually have better broadcast quality than those carried by satellite or cable providers.

conversation killers:

evaluations of this or that race, in general
wheat allergies
the time for revolution is now
bitch/bastard ex
"behold a pale horse"

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/

i don't watch tv, but it's not a judgment on anyone around me! it's mostly because i never know what the time is/the only things i really want to watch are series, but i find it difficult keeping up and if i miss an episode that's basically it, i can't get back into it

yeah, this is the weirdest thing about the no-tv thing, but whenever someone tells me they don't want to pay for tv and i tell them that i don't (watch everything on free network stations where the majority of shows still are or on hulu), they always seem kinda surprised that tv is still free.

bitch/bastard ex

sorry about that, dude

there is! and the hd over-the-air channels usually have better broadcast quality than those carried by satellite or cable providers.

haven't investigated this. i only know my old TV now picks up only static, and that I need to get myself a digital converter box if I want to "keep up with the times."

- anyone identifying modern wicca / paganism as an "ancient tradition"

yeah i can buy this

ppl will honestly think that, and be unaware of their challop, but they are surely idiots

sorry about that, dude

no way. you always been cool about it. everything in moderation.

i am lately incommunicado only because i am terribly depressed.

(belongs in some other thread, i'm sure)

xx-post

Yeah, there was a program for like... two years.. to get a coupon for converter boxes in the US. You connect it up, maybe attach an antenna, and blammo... back in business, possibly with more channels than you previously had

- that thing white people do when they disparage "white people"

You know what, I wish I could leave the conversation whenever it turned to CELL PHONES
cell phone plans
features of cell phone
what you are doing on foursquare
how your parents are still paying your cell phone bill even though you're 29 (wtf)
But then I would never get to have a conversation with anyone...sometimes listening to shit you don't give a fuck about is part of being a friend.

bitch/bastard ex

that begs the question 'why did you think so differently before', yet they if they don't acknowledge that (and it's impolite to ask), there is an awkward void in which yr asked to join in complaining abt some terrible person who is little more than fiction to you

sometimes listening to shit you don't give a fuck about is part of being a friend.

man this lesson has been so hard for me to learn, i am pro at ~tuning out~ and wandering away from conversations that bore / annoy

aspersions on bisexuality / bisexuals

Thank you for this elmo...I was stuck on the bus the other night with a very loud and very unpleasant woman who was telling her chucklehead friend how:

1. Every girl is "10 drinks away from bisexual"
2. Bisexuals "aren't real," esp. male ones
3. Lindsay Lohan could never be a "real bi"

Like #2 seemed to cancel out whatever points she was trying to make with 1 and 3, but she kept kind of juggling all of them equally. I was so happy to be off that bus after a half hour of listening to this.

I JUST ARGUED ABOUT BISEXUALS LAST WEEKEND.

ARRGH.

Arguing About Bisexuals sounds like an album title

"Bi-sexuals aren't real, they're just people who are immature and don't know what they want. I know this is true because I asked a lot of gay men and they said so."

tbf all the self-professed bi people I've known have been pretty annoying

altho that's a bit different from saying they "don't exist"

do people still say that? xp

- criticism of israel is anti-semitism

- "I'm just talking about Zionists right?"

don't know or 'get' these anti-TV people you all seem to know

there was that study from a few years back re: bisexuals
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/05sex.html
xpost

yeah I don't know anyone like that.

I am, however, the resident anti-sports guy lol. basically if you express an opinion about pro-sports my mind leaves my body and goes off to do something more interesting

evaluations of this or that race, in general

reminds me of a time i was with my boyfriend's misanthropic aunt, harmlessly chatting about "bad drivers" which i thought was a safe topic until she interjected, "you know who the worst drivers are? asians, because they have no peripheral vision."

i had no response ready; i wanted to die.

*gasps*

omg

I'm technically a no-TV person too and I'm deeply apologetic about it because I fucking love telly. I guess I d/l or box set everything so I'm still watching it.

lol xp

ur grandma's said some shit, i feel

sorry ur bf's aunt haha

I will try that.

my uncle bob ( a taxi driver) has this very cool telescopic steel spring loaded truncheon/sap. he loves detailing all the times he's gotten to use it.

is that an illegal weapon yes

i dunno!

Yeah, i think those life preserver type things are illegal. Swordsticks the like. Wasn't it Anthony Burgess who would wave his swordstick at would-be assailants shouting 'I've got cancer you know!'? I think it was.

i doubt it- he doesn't break laws, as such, he just gets a kick out of legitimate force at his own discretion i'd reckon

eh it seems dubious now i check, i'll ask him has he still got it when i see him again

a junkie's syringe is a legal weapon, under the "ah drugs, for jaysus sake" amendment of 1986

that would be a hydrothermical matter

recently got a taxi to the club where i dj, manchester 9pm on a friday night. the driver was muslim and started talking about all the drunk people wandering around, saying he would never consume alcohol as it was quite common for men to go home after a night's drinking and have sex with their children.

couldn't even begin to dispute it, all i could do was lol.

it's great to get that form another perspective tho- shows that no matter the background of the taxi driver, they're all just fucking cracked in the head

I was getting a taxi to San Francisco airport once, and the taxi driver asked where I was going. When I said "Ireland", he said "Oh, I hear you guys pay a lot of taxes over there", and I thought I was heading for some rant about socialism, and then he followed it up with "Course, you get a lot more in the way of social services. They should really do more of that over here".

i bet he pulled that nonchalant swereve gotcha there shit on people all the time"

also our taxes are low! kinda, relatively. apart from the stealth ones. pay public servants more is what i'm getting at

dirty vicar, that's classic!

An Ethiopian cabbie once took me out to dinner after I paid my fare.
Another cabbie performed reiki on my hands.

socially conscious cabbie is awesome!

"They won't take dogs in their cabs, or handle pork at the supermarket checkout!" - my mother on Minneapolis' Somali community SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

What do they do when someone wants to buy pork?

yeah, all those times i want to take a dog into a cab...

weirdly enough, i usually get the opposite of LG's racist taxi driver: another friday night, this time going home from the club to the other side of mcr city centre, about 4am. really chirpy indian cabbie. i was tired but he couldn't hold back from telling me about the wonders of delhi and how over here the police don't care about stopping criminals. he painted a nice picture of how delhi's streets are full and bustling at 4am but without a single drunk. all about food and shisha apparently. i think he was being a bit rosetinty but it was late and i was in no mood to burst his bubble with nitpickery

it WAS rosetints too, he admitted he'd left india when he was 5 and had only made the odd visit back!

closest i've been to the stereotypical cabbie is the odd one who comments on the gay village in a weary uncle "those pesky kids *chuckle*" kinda way. reflects pretty well on manchester, i guess

one night i was coming home in dublin, it was bucketing down rain as i recall, and i jumped in a taxi and the driver, old married bloke with no kids in his 60s, was like... genuinely interesting, intelligent, unbelievably well informed about technology and things you wouldn't expect someone of his age to know about, and just overall a great guy. it wasn't just that he was genial, he genuinely took as read so many things that myself or people here would do about music, books, etc, the world in general, and was a great laugh as well. we were chatting in the car outside my house for about 20 mins...bizarre. i call him "the interesting taxi driver".

forgot to mention i had done about 4/5 ecstasys...

only joking i hadn't...

hahaha. yeah i got a taxi in coventry a few months ago. guy starts asking about what i do. normally a reluctant conversation for me. anyway i started telling him and within a few minutes we are discussing with hi-tech stock portfolio. amazing guy

xpost haha thats ace! there's another cab that goes around here known as the Party Cab. only ever got it once when i was hammered but pretty much everyone knows of it and loves it. the outside looks like yr standard black cab but the inside is decked out with flashing lights & lasers and a massive soundsystem. the driver is clearly an old Hacienda pillhead, it's brilliant to see just how *proud* of his cab he is, i just remember him beaming with delight at how blown away we all were when we stepped inside

(this probably deserves to go on a dedicated taxi tales thread)

another time...got a taxi from dublin city uni to my parents house, and the driver charged me a fiver, not twenty five quid, cos he felt bad about "ripping off students".

x-post yeah possibly, or a late night transit tales thread? i have a wealth of nightbus stories! the nightbus in dublin used to go till 0430 and it was a beautiful time, joints being passed, party invites handed out to every man, woman and child. now it goes way less frequently and everyone is either aggressive on booze or silent and passed out, or eating weird fast food from the two places that are open late, like a sausage roll in a breadroll covered in nachos or something.

have done the '20 mins conversation outside stop' with taxi drivers too, it's always a good buzz

once played a round of pitch n putt with a taxi driver on a quiet day, out of nowhere (never met him before)

might as well just continue the derail...

one time about...and this'll make me feel old, 7 years ago i guess, me and my friends had this huge meticulously planned drug session going to see stuart price dj, my parents were away at the time and we had decks etc in mine for after. anyway we were in the taxi home and, as can happen sometimes, the taxi driver was real old school and as soon as he realises everyone's on drugs, has a really narky attitude and is a bit scary.

so we got back almost to my house when my friend decides to go into his, around the corner, to get a bottle of whiskey. the taxi driver of course is raging at having to stop and wait and starts swearing and moaning and stuff.

there's this horrible atmosphere in the car as my friend gets back in with the whiskey, and the taxi driver is like "no more fucking stops then, RIGHT?", timing his "RIGHT" with him pressing his foot on the accelerator hard....

and reversing at serious force into a tree...halfway knocking the tree down, and fucking up his car.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

it would be too corny for last of the summer wine but irl that shit's so golden

lol! did you have to talk to the cops in your state after that??

no not at all, he just dropped us off (not outside my house, as we got a bit afraid of him calling the police) and we walked to mine. it was funny as there was a total silence when he hit the tree first, then one of my friends did that short stifled laughter snigger type mocking noise and everyone just exploded...

golden

also our taxes are low! kinda, relatively. apart from the stealth ones.

sure... but relative to American ones they are quite high. I think.

pay public servants more is what i'm getting at

this is something all right thinking people can get behind.

It's funny - I really hate taking taxis, to the extent that I will often walk for two hours rather than get in a cab, basically because of not liking to have to interact with people I don't know. But there do seem like there are loads of quite interesting and pleasant taxi-drivers out there these days.

have done the '20 mins conversation outside stop' with taxi drivers too, it's always a good buzz

hope you tipped well for all the work you cost him

think i did, actually, but he wasn't going anywhere anyways

I find taxis drivers are happy to shoot the shit on a quiet Tuesday night but can't wait to get rid on a Saturday night at chucking out time.

Got a taxi once, the driver looked like George Formby. He said "Do you mind if I put on the radio? There's this programme on that I always listen to.". I said OK no problem. He switches on the radio and it's Tim Westwood, and he's singing along and nodding his head.

forgot to mention i had done about 4/5 ecstasys...

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Thursday, October 7, 2010 8:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I usually get absolutely lovely and chatty taxi drivers when I'm a bit muntered, don't know if there's a causal connection...

Mini-cab drivers in North and East London tend to be Turkish or African, so you don't get rants about immigrants at least.

snoball's story is great, BTW.

Mini-cab drivers in North and East London tend to be Turkish or African, so you don't get rants about immigrants at least.

It would be great if they said something like "I am no racist, but as God is my witness, the people of England are all lazy drunken degenerates".

there's a story upthread pretty much like that!

oh yeah. Which reminds me of the time I was in a kebab shop, and some drunk wandered in to get a kebab, and the kebab shop worker said something like "This drinking the people in this country do is terrible. There is none of that in my country". I wondered if they had late night kebab shops in his country either.

late night kebab vendor complaining about drunk people shd probably pause for thought

There are probably late night kebab joints where he's from, next to the juice bars, coffee shops and shisha cafés...

Biting the hand that, ummmm, they , uh, feed