LaosLover

You quoted me above for my so-so hippie joke, remember? Are we being trolled here? Is Ozmoron actually the grooming challenged guy in the tik tok? Because you're furious defense of people who forget you when you leave the room def is the same as that guy's.

I had no idea that hippie was a rightwing epithet. Where I live, they def have right wing hippies. Who knew that cammo gear came in tie dye? If you see some saddo actually hugging a tree, what is the preferred term for that person? Does tree-embracer someone lend an air of dignity?

To be fair, I have seen hippies hugging trees. I always tell them to get a room.

Staten Island, Hollywood, Uppah East Side of Manhattan, Haiti, East Village Manhattan, Suffolk UK, Kyoto, Chiang Mai, Guaranajuarto Mexico, Appalachia.

He just sounds ponderous and belaboring the obvious in a very dullsville manner. I feel for the nice person who wishes he lived in Udon Thani. If I encountered this bore, I'd be running into an Udon Thani rice paddy to get away from him.

Google tells me that the term African American became popular in the early 90's, popularized by noted and frequent baby daddy, Jesse Jackson. Black people in America are very tribal (no racism intended). American blacks do not listen to reggae. There's a big north/south divide. AA was a unifier and also a demand for respect. I grew up in a very Italian American neighborhood. Those nice people knew nothing of Renaissance painters, opera, or sauce that didn't have a head of garlic in it. You would have to poll approximately ten million Italian Americans to find one who could name the current prime minister of Italy. Funny story, in the film GoodFella's there's a scene in where they're cooking in prison and one guy says you can't put garlic and onions in the same sauce. Many Italian Americans have repeated this back to me. But the director made it up. He's an Italian American. Most so-called culture is made up. Partic in America. The term hillbilly was invented by a New York Jewish show biz agent. People where I live proudly call themselves hillbillies. Being American means being joyously ignorant of the entire world, without singling anyone out specifically for ignoring. I recall a NY Post headline: Cinder Block Falls On Model's Head. And then a sub-headline, 50,000 die in Earthquake. We don't know where in the world those people died. We only know for sure that they weren't that good looking.

if people of Italian descent are Italian-American, then people who originate from Africa are likewise African-American. It just seems like a no-brainer. I'm currently cooling my heels in Appalachia, trying to get to Bangkok. These people know nothing of BlueGrass music or Doc Watson. I live within a half hour of Doc Watson's old house, which you get to by driving down the Doc Watson highway. The number of people here who could identify Doc Watson from a picture or name a single song of his is zero. And yet, these people are very Appalachian. You don't need to pass a multiple choice cultural test to assume a cultural identity. You practically never see black people in any numbers at a blues show. In New York, you see more Japanese. And yet, blues music is definitely black culture. By the way, S-Mike, I have 16,000 African Music songs on my iTunes. Please start a thread on this great topic.

Gotta admit, it's sort of the young'uns job to make fun of me. OK Boomer was a masterful put-down. More, please, more. They STILL have to listen to Hotel California a half century after the fact. Can you imagine being forced to listen to The Big Band Era forever when you were young?

This is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest that nobody hears. If you're angry, old, and white, nobody cares. Go to the Fox News comments section. They're just ranting into space. Even old, white, angry men don't want to hear from old white angry men. Actually, you even bothering to sternly rebuke them (why?) is a downer. What motivates you? Your day has come and gone. Go away. And that goes double for myself. But at least I know it.

No, the opposite. As a privileged white male, I'm saying I get it, I get it why these groups would prefer to see an empty bar stool instead of me sitting in it. And as a privileged white male (and let's not forget over-educated and American too), it's fair that if I get all the good stuff, that somebody else should get all the sympathy. These various groups want to be mostly among themselves, far away from me. It's a rare party in the African-American community where they're bummed out because they couldn't get enough old white guys to show up. From me, they'd -at best- like me to send a check to their cause and then shut up. No wait, I mean send a check, shut up, and then go away.

So many people who he's angry on behalf of have zero interest in the support of an old white guy. Gays, Black people, women -could they care less about me? Trans-people, I'm more likely to encounter Elvis in a UFO. Maybe a refugee staggering to shore, draped in seaweed, might take momentary interest in me, like if I had a towel with me.

I'm an old white man who caught the clue that no one wants to hear what I'm angry about. Ever. Cheery blokey bloke is the best I can aspire to. And even that, small doses at best.

GammaGlobulual did this kind of why am I here?-post better. As to moderating contretemps, you can usually see the worm turning and know when your day has come and gone. This is my last forum. If I get bounced, I'll go and read a book. Just to see what it's like.

Broadly true, and I will resist the typical Boomer urge to lecture you about higher interest rates and being threatened with getting drafted to go to stupid Vietnam. On the other hand, I would have happily fought in Vietnam if I'd had stuff like internet dating, cell phones, and every exotic porn urge scratched for free to fight for. They just kept telling me to dodge bullets for vague and abstract freedom (which I already had, thanks anyway). If I could trade my advantages for the disadvantages younger people have today, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, I personally apologize for being part of the cohort that will bankrupt every pension scheme in the west by the time you get to it. Oh, and I am 69.5.

I'm from Staten Island, one of the most rightfully ridiculed places on earth. Check out the Pete Davidson film for confirmation. Now re-famous for giving Guiliani a playful thump on the back in a supermarket. But it was Staten Island that got him elected mayor in the first place. A white riot uprising against the former black mayor who had the nerve to play tennis and be otherwise "out of touch". Due to residency requirements, many, many police live there, which is a mixed blessing indeed (hence, the Guiliani victory). John Gotti, super-mobster, had a palatial estate on SI too, so a pretty cheerful place if you liked the film, GoodFella's. Note to mob film fans: avoid the Travolta/Gotti film at all costs. Certainly the best pizza and garlic-laden red sauce-Italian food in the world, but worth the ferry ride? No. If I meet a person from another you know what-hole like Blackpool, I just tell them to relax.

I think this board skews older. I remember my father going on about how he remembered when a hot dog cost a dime. I vowed never to turn into him.

Altho I am left of center, living in NYC, I have seen the distorting effects of rent control. If you live in an apartment for 10 years and have been getting low, regulated increases, you can no longer afford to move to another place at market rates. And then next door, someone else is paying 50% more for the same apartment. I don't see any new communities adding rent control protections in my lifetime. Housing vouchers pay a third of the rent on average. If rents have gone up 50% and the voucher amount hasn't gone up, a poor person with a voucher is out of luck, assuming he can get anyone who wants a HUD voucher tenant at all. The only solution is higher density apartments and more lax zoning laws. These solutions are not doable in this current NIMBY era. We have mortgage interest deductions that benefits the middle class and above, we have less and less interest in subsidizing the poor. The solution for Thai expats on the hoof is Cambodia. Or lower end Latin America.

Means testing of SS is already here. If you make more income, you get more deducted from your SS check for Medicare.

A lot of rural parts of America are now zoned against trailers. Old trailers are grandfathered in, but the old wreck by the side of the road providing low cost housing is something I see less of every year. A trailer has a life span of about 20 years. These rural parts of America typically pride themselves on their libertarianism, but that fierce love of freedom goes out the window when threats to property value of brick ranch houses are perceived.

It's a center right country, and if anything, the center has moved more to the right. That's also true in Europe. My left of center side doesn't need stronger arguments, it needs more votes. And it needs them swimming against the tide of the rural/conservative biased electoral college. And I don't see where it gets them from. If anything, the anti-abortion climate will have democrats drifting away from republican areas where they might have eventually made a difference. I'm down to waiting for the young to save us, but the young increased their voting share from 60.1% in 2016 to a very mere 61.7% in the life and death contest of Biden/Trump in 2020. I do think the repubs will overreach and go after gay marriage. Gay people in America are among the richest and most left-leaning groups in America. So that shootout will be entertaining. Not so easy as beating up poor women in Alabama.

Thank you for worrying about whether or not what you write is what I want to hear. That's a very unique stance to take. I can see someone teeing up a "You tink too much" in response.

I live in the extreme Bible Belt of America. My town of 70 people has 3 churches. The diff with Thailand is that their temples will be fairly full and my 3 churches will have 6 people in them -all with very white hair.

Walking meditation is the hardest one to do. In a Western retreat, most people try to skip it and do more sittings and then the teacher has remind them that bringing the whole body into a meditative focus is part of the retreat too.

Like the guy earlier in the thread getting gouged for his nice counter tops, anything that's not off the shelf at DIY store is way marked up because they know that a profitable segment of people will always moan, but can't resist house upgrades. We like having a better grade of outdoor furniture on our porch. It very improbably costs more for a simple outdoor sofa than a complicated indoor sofa. But we like to sit out on our porch, so we paid.

When your toilet is backed up, it's an emergency. If you're a little depressed or neurotic, it can wait.