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On 6/7/2019 at 4:03 PM, Cheeseweasel said:

Well that narrows it down to .... everywhere.

Man, he's got some stories.  From a old dude in wheelchair that shot up his TV when Alabama lost (they went in full gear and choked a knot in his ass), to a Korean vet with a live pineapple grenade that somehow made it home with him. his grandson found, they a few feet away, and covered his ears like it was a firecracker (fuse had deteriorated, thank god!).  Dug a hole, wrapped in demo, and blew it right there in the middle of the trailer park.      

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Asking what someone does for a living is a very legitimate question when meeting someone for the first time. If either side drones on about work in a way that is not interesting, it's a problem. But a person's career is about half of their waking lives in most situations. It's relevant to an introductory conversation. The problem only arises if the person sucks at conversation in general. I'm happy to share that I'm a lawyer and discuss what I do, but if half the conversation is dumb questions about things that are boring or areas which I don't practice, I'll probably find a way to leave the conversation. Talking about careers usually turns quickly to people we both may know, and then often we start discussing other introductory things (what organizations are you involved with? What are your hobbies? How do you spend your weekends? etc.) 

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On 6/8/2019 at 3:02 PM, Walden Ponderer said:

I disagree with being interested in what people do. Most people don't like what they do. I'd rather ask what they are interested in. There will, of course, be the rare happy person who actually has a job they enjoy, and that's great, but the majority of your conversations will be much happier if you don't frame it that way.

Or, as the Buddhists would say, "Don't just do something, sit there!"

I don't give a fuck what people are interested in. That sounds like a recipe to listening to some dildo talk about Ireland or some shit for an hour. I'd much rather find out what they do. If they do something, and they don't like what they do, then you know everything you need to know about them, and don't have to hear about how the Blarney Stone is actually super hard to reach or whatever.

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10 hours ago, BHMCruiser said:

I don't give a fuck what people are interested in. That sounds like a recipe to listening to some dildo talk about Ireland or some shit for an hour. I'd much rather find out what they do. If they do something, and they don't like what they do, then you know everything you need to know about them, and don't have to hear about how the Blarney Stone is actually super hard to reach or whatever.

I could not disagree more. I'd much rather hear said dildo talk about Ireland than about the HEB renovation a general contractor is doing or the loan profile the mortgage underwriter is currently reviewing. I guess if your job is the only thing that defines you then you might not be super interested in hearing people talk  about non-job related topics. 

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I think people like to pretend they don't like talking with people, or hearing other people talk.  But life in public seems to suggest otherwise.  As a mandate of my dayjob and political engagement, I'm almost "required" to meet about 1000 people per month.  And the tricks I have to avoid that human interaction at almost every turn would make the CIA blush.  I'm quite proud of myself, with a handful of misdirection tricks, only about 5-10 people/month remember me out of 1000.  I'm getting pretty damn good at it.  

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33 minutes ago, Helobious said:

I could not disagree more. I'd much rather hear said dildo talk about Ireland than about the HEB renovation a general contractor is doing or the loan profile the mortgage underwriter is currently reviewing. I guess if your job is the only thing that defines you then you might not be super interested in hearing people talk  about non-job related topics. 

It's kind of funny, really. I'm a customer service manager, which means that the non-paperwork part of my job is evaluating and teaching people how to talk to other people. Convincing someone that you actually care about them as a human being typically comes down to one basic thing: actually caring about them as a human being. And the fastest road to that state of mind is eliciting the kind of fellow-feeling that can only be generated by people talking about the things they actually want to talk about, not the things they think they have to talk about.

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9 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

I’d rather just not talk to anyone period.

As I have gotten older, I have become more and more antisocial. I now realize why I like hiking, running and fly fishing. Because I do all of those activities alone. My circle of friends has shrunk over the years and I am perfectly fine spending a Friday night at home alone with my wife. I actually get stressed out about going to hang out with a group of friends. 

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9 hours ago, Newy25 said:

As I have gotten older, I have become more and more antisocial. I now realize why I like hiking, running and fly fishing. Because I do all of those activities alone. My circle of friends has shrunk over the years and I am perfectly fine spending a Friday night at home alone with my wife. I actually get stressed out about going to hang out with a group of friends. 

Most people suck. The key to life is recognizing this early and only giving a shit about the handful of them in your life who don't suck.

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13 hours ago, Helobious said:

I could not disagree more. I'd much rather hear said dildo talk about Ireland than about the HEB renovation a general contractor is doing or the loan profile the mortgage underwriter is currently reviewing. I guess if your job is the only thing that defines you then you might not be super interested in hearing people talk  about non-job related topics. 

You should meet more interesting people. 

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19 hours ago, Helobious said:

the loan profile the mortgage underwriter is currently reviewing.

what mortgage underwriter would ever respond to the question "what do you do?" by walking someone through the minutiae of a loan profile? unless it was like a bigamist or a weird cult applying, something interesting

I've never had anyone respond to an inquiry about what they do for a career with "let me tell you about my TPS reports". I suspect those of you who are getting that response are being bored intentionally by someone who is hoping to run you off. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Helobious said:

The US women’s soccer team winning the World Cup is about as impressive the Longhorns winning District 32-6A in football. They have absolutely no competition whatsoever, because hardly any other country cares about women playing sports. Alex Morgan’s hotness is the main reason they get any attention at all. Those factors are one thing, but the showboating & political grandstanding they participate in makes them just unlikeable in my eyes.

Popular opinion thread is that way. ==>

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10 hours ago, Helobious said:

The US women’s soccer team winning the World Cup is about as impressive the Longhorns winning District 32-6A in football. They have absolutely no competition whatsoever, because hardly any other country cares about women playing sports. Alex Morgan’s hotness is the main reason they get any attention at all. Those factors are one thing, but the showboating & political grandstanding they participate in makes them just unlikeable in my eyes.

If it hadn't been so politicized, no one outside of girls' youth soccer clubs and their parents would've paid attention, imo. 

I do love me some Alex Morgan, though.

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11 hours ago, Helobious said:

The US women’s soccer team winning the World Cup is about as impressive the Longhorns winning District 32-6A in football. They have absolutely no competition whatsoever, because hardly any other country cares about women playing sports. Alex Morgan’s hotness is the main reason they get any attention at all. Those factors are one thing, but the showboating & political grandstanding they participate in makes them just unlikeable in my eyes.

I don't really care about the politics of it, and honestly I feel like the 2015 team got way more pub than this one did without any of that...... what I hated this year was watching the refs gift-wrap the US's path to the title. It was so blatant it made me start rooting against them. 

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31 minutes ago, Asithappens said:

I ate at the Texas Chili Parlor for the first time recently. 

It was meh. I'm glad it's there and all, but the chili itself was average. Quite a bit better than the cleanliness of the restrooms, though.

 

Where do you think the chili comes from?

 

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 I’ll be unpopular. I watched the US women’s World Cup games and enjoyed them quite a bit. I heard there was some political grandstanding but I didn’t pay attention to it. Those are the headlines I skim right past. I really have no idea who said what.

I didn’t  really like the teacup gesture or the pose the chick with the purple hair made,  but I’ve certainly done worse in my youth. In my adulthood as well, now that I think about it.    And there’s definitely more grandstanding going on in every single major male dominated sport in America.   Had the women’s World Cup been played anytime during football season or during the playoffs of basketball or baseball nobody would have even known it was being played. It only made the news because this is a really slow time in sports. But I thought it was fun to watch. Hope they win again in four years. And yes Alex Morgan is hot.   But seriously, they had no more drama or showboating than any other male sports team in America. 

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The tea-sipping gesture was low class. That was an opponent-specific taunt. The Brits are our friends and you're mocking a cherished custom of theirs. Because you scored a goal against them in soccer, a game they've cared about a lot longer than we have. You're an asshole. 

Also, if women want to argue for equal pay, female athletes should be the last ones to wage that campaign. Imagine WNBA players arguing that they should get paid as much as NBA players. Women in every other profession have a good argument for equal pay. Not in sports. 

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3 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

The tea-sipping gesture was low class. That was an opponent-specific taunt. The Brits are our friends and you're mocking a cherished custom of theirs. Because you scored a goal against them in soccer, a game they've cared about a lot longer than we have. You're an asshole. 

Also, if women want to argue for equal pay, female athletes should be the last ones to wage that campaign. Imagine WNBA players arguing that they should get paid as much as NBA players. Women in every other profession have a good argument for equal pay. Not in sports. 

The equal pay argument is dumb, considering that the women's national team for decades spent more just on salaries (not including all the other expenses), than the revenue generated.  Pay back all the money you shouldn't have gotten in the first place when the men's team was subsidizing your sport (just like the big men sports do for every female sport at the college level), then maybe you can talk equal pay.

The USSF should dissolve and create separate organizations for men's and women's soccer.  Each can then eat what they kill.

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46 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

The tea-sipping gesture was low class. That was an opponent-specific taunt. The Brits are our friends and you're mocking a cherished custom of theirs. Because you scored a goal against them in soccer, a game they've cared about a lot longer than we have. You're an asshole. 

Also, if women want to argue for equal pay, female athletes should be the last ones to wage that campaign. Imagine WNBA players arguing that they should get paid as much as NBA players. Women in every other profession have a good argument for equal pay. Not in sports. 

Only addressing the equal pay issue, IMO, it makes at least some sense for equal pay in the major tennis tournaments.  I believe there is equal pay for ladies in those tournaments.  Those tournaments are run at the same time and the spectators attending those events usually attend both ladies' and men's matches on the same day.  Of course, if you only look at the TV ratings for the finals and maybe the semis, the men's matches will almost certainly blow away the ladies' matches.  Still, I think tennis folks were wise to equalize the pay in those tournaments.  For soccer?  No way do the women deserve equal pay.

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2 hours ago, HouTex said:

Only addressing the equal pay issue, IMO, it makes at least some sense for equal pay in the major tennis tournaments.  I believe there is equal pay for ladies in those tournaments.  Those tournaments are run at the same time and the spectators attending those events usually attend both ladies' and men's matches on the same day.  Of course, if you only look at the TV ratings for the finals and maybe the semis, the men's matches will almost certainly blow away the ladies' matches.  Still, I think tennis folks were wise to equalize the pay in those tournaments.  For soccer?  No way do the women deserve equal pay.

iirc, used to be that women's tennis was much better to watch because men's was just a bunch of aces, especially watching some early round nobody go up against a top seed. 

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Male soccer players have been celebrating and taunting their opponents forever. Morgan's tea sip was a taunt, fine be upset, but I hope you are also upset when the men do it. Rapinoe's celebration is not a taunt, just a grandiose celebration. No different than dunking a football over the goalpost or doing an electric slide. What the problem is?

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39 minutes ago, Hate said:

The problem is that soccer sucks.

I don't believe this can be emphasized enough. The fact that they have our country's name on their uniform does not, for me, change the fact that they are playing pretty much the last sport on Earth I have any interest in watching. The political stuff? I don't give a rat's ass. The equal pay question? Well, I suppose in a vacuum, I'd argue that they ought to be paid equivalent to the amount of revenue they bring in, which is probably more than the men in this sport.

But that just brings me full circle to "why the fuck is ANYBODY watching this sport?" It's a stupid game, and even the most dominant performances and subtle and nuanced philosophical approaches to it are still boring as fuck. And this comes from somebody who thinks a 1-0 baseball game is exciting. I don't care about men's soccer, why would anybody think I'd care about women's soccer?

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On 6/3/2019 at 3:51 PM, Al_4_ISU said:

My wife made me listen to the soundtrack once.  It was just pure dog shit to my ears.  I find the life of Alexander Hamilton fascinating and worth being aware of, but I don't want to sit through that shit.

 

 

Let me offer you some advice:

Talk less.

Smile more.

Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for.

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8 hours ago, smuggs said:

Somebody listen to Songbird and come back to tell me Stevie > Christy.

Stevie > Christine. (Who's Christy?) Songbird is probably second only to Oh Daddy for worst song on Rumours. 

If it weren't for the addition of Buckingham and Nicks, most of you never would've heard of Fleetwood Mac. 

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12 hours ago, Walden Ponderer said:

But that just brings me full circle to "why the fuck is ANYBODY watching this sport?" It's a stupid game, and even the most dominant performances and subtle and nuanced philosophical approaches to it are still boring as fuck. And this comes from somebody who thinks a 1-0 baseball game is exciting. I don't care about men's soccer, why would anybody think I'd care about women's soccer?

Pretty much shows how you know jack shit about soccer. 

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