"I just don't get ___ " "I can explain that to you. But I just don't get ____"

In My Humble Opinion
21

There’s more than one way to approach this one.

The first is the retiree’s approach. As I was told by a retiree, “golf is a good way to kill 5 hours a day.” In other words, it distracts the person from boredom, gets them outdoors, involves some physical activity (but you don’t have to be “athletic” to play), you can play by yourself or meet new people (chance pairings or joining the mens’ or women’s club at the course you frequent).

Then there’s the approach of the hardcore golfer. They enjoy the challenge of the game, of improving and honing their game. It’s a game that you can play over and over and never have the same outcome twice. It can be frustrating as heck, but when you hit that one great shot, it just feels so right, it’s addictive, and that’s what keeps you coming back.

Now, what I just can’t fathom is computer games. I mean, I only play games as an excuse to visit with my friends, but to sit in front of a computer for hours…

22

You can do stuff that you couldn’t do in real life (fight monsters, conquer the world, et cetera). There are games that don’t require much physical ability, for those of us whose reflexes and hand-eye coordination are not very good. And the best part, at least for single-player games, is that most games allow saving and reloading. That way, if you do something, and you don’t like the way it turns out, you can undo it and not have to live with any of the consequences. Even if you don’t do that, the consequences of anything you do is limited to that game, and you can quit playing and play something else if things aren’t going the way you want.

23

Hmm, this and the other one that answered do make some sense. It’s one of those broad brush things where most people just don’t get why a person would choose not to have a car. The cost/benefit analysis just makes it not worth it for me and people don’t understand that. Ehh, good thing I don’t care what they think. :wink:

24

I think anything I could explain has probably been explained.

I don’t get tipping, especially at fast-food-style places like Starbucks. In a restaurant, a waiter or waitress always brings you food, but may or may not be polite, quick, or make a lot of mistakes, etc. and they get paid according to how well they do their job. This makes at least some sense. But tipping has become almost mandatory, so it’s not like you’re rewarding them, you’re just doing what society tells you to do. It would be more logical if no tip implied they did okay, but not great, and any tip at all implied an extra thank-you. Now, leaving no tip at all would be considered kind of rude, and leaving 15% or so is just “what you do.”

Also, if you have to walk up to the counter and order something, then pick it up when it’s ready, all they’re doing is exactly what they’re paid to do. You don’t tip the cashiers at Target, so why is there a tip jar at Starbucks?

I don’t get breasts. I mean, even though I’m gay, I can still distinguish good-looking women from rather ugly ones, but I don’t understand how breasts play a part in that, or why straight guys are so into them. I think both of these topics have come up before on the boards, so I’m sorry I’m not more original.

25

I pretty much knew all that. I just fail to understand the appeal of it, at least for anyone other than teenage boys.

26

Oooh. That’s a hard one. They are just plain fun, if you have the right kind. I love to play a good RPG, but perhaps you’d like something more like SimCity or Civilization? I’ll admit that I don’t get people who sit there for hours and hours, but games can be a fun way to spend some time.

Now…what I don’t get is the Ipod. What’s the big deal? It’s an mp3 player. There are many brands and while I’ll admit the Ipod looks cool, aren’t other brands cheaper?

And who needs 40 gigabytes of music? My wife has a small mp3 player, made cheaply in China, that is memory based and holds about 2 cds of songs. It’s fine…who could need more? When she wants to change what is on there, she changes it. It takes 5 minutes maybe to rip another cd and put it on there.

What is up with seeing Ipods everywhere?

27

That’s easy. Because the Starbucks employees are hoping you’ll give them money. I mean, here you are, paying $3.50 for a fancy coffee drink, you must have it pretty good, surely you can spare some change for the poor working-class stiff who made you that drink, I mean what are you, cheap? :stuck_out_tongue:

28

It’s something fun to do when you’re too tired to do anything else, and there’s nothing good on TV. “Nothing good on TV” is true a lot of the time for me, since I don’t like most reality shows or sitcoms. And even when I’ve got something good on the TiVo, I don’t always feel like watching TV- I want something less passive. I’m almost always waaay too tired to even think about going out anywhere. If I have a good book that I’m reading, I might do that instead, but most of the books I enjoy are too mentally involved to read when I’m tired.

29

I just don’t get the allure of Cape Cod. Let me rephrase that a little. I live in Massachusetts (although I am from the South) and work reasonably close to where Cape Cod begins. I have been there many times. I can understand the allure of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard pretty well because they are pretty and historical. I can see why people not from the area might find it interesting to travel to parts of Cape Cod for something different from home. However, much of Cape Cod is just a different section of Massachusetts that looks fairly similar to some Boston suburbs.

What I can’t understand is the culture of people, particularly from Boston’s Southern suburbs, that dictates people spend a thousand dollars a week or much more to rent another house than the one they already own to vacation 50 miles from home or less. Literally every other coworker answers “down to the Cape for a week” when asked where they are going on vacation. The water is just warm enough to swim in if you dare yourself without getting hypothermia but certainly not comfortable. It is extre3emley crowded during the peak season and many non-island parts are pretty tacky as well.

People in this area fall all over themselves to buy 2nd property, any property on the Cape for near Boston prices.

To sum it up, I don’t understand why Boston people have this fixation with the Cape to the exclusion of many other areas around the world that are probably cheaper, actually far away from home, and superior to the types of activities (beach-going) that the Cape offers. We have planes now for God sake. A bonus explanation is why people in this New England have this obsession with 2nd homes when both the 1st and 2nd homes aren’t that great and demand constant attention and money. Again, they invented hotels for a reason.

30

Oh, Shagnasty? You forgot to explain something. Bad, bad Shagnasty.

I just don’t get why people don’t ask moderators to correct the typos I make in my thread titles. Do they WANT me to look stupid? :smack:

31

MP3 players have certainly been around for a while. However, the earlier were generally very limited in capacity (as in holding 4 - 20 songs or so on flash memory and they were pretty expensive). Apple took an inevitable tech idea of putting the (then) newish micro hard drives in an MP3 player and greatly upping the capacity to hold someones entire favorite song collection (If Apple wasn’t the very first at this, they were the only player that mattered). Apple also has several killer strengths in this area: user friendliness, design, and great marketing. Most people didn’t even know what an MP3 player was until they heard of the IPod. They assumed Apple pretty much invented it and everything associated with it.

Apple established itself so effectively that it is mainly about branding these days. It was a fad that dug itself in for the long-haul.

Now, why someone would need 60GB worth of music in their pocket? I have no idea. With that much music, you might as well just flip radio stations because you can’t be selective. My entire selection is less that 2GB and I need to get rid of songs that I don’t like anymore. Maybe some killer video application can use some of the space soon.

32

Not everyone likes planes.

I am not from MA. I’m from Jersey, and we have a similar thing with the shore. Here in the bay area, you drive to Tahoe.

You drive. You bring your own bed linens, your own groceries. You bring your bike, your dog, your friends, and your grandma on an oxygen tank. It’s far enough from home you can get away from your day to day worries. It is so much less stressfull than regular travel. Many, many people do not want to run around and sightsee on their vacation. They want to lay on a beach or porch with a book, do jigsaw puzzles and spend all morning looking for shells with their kids. They want it to be familiar and comfortable, like home. They want to unwind, and frankly the beach in one’s own state is cheaper than the carribean.

Also, many people hate hotels. When you buy a second home, you can fill it with the things that will enhance your vacation. You can bring whomever, or whatever you want there. You won’t be sleeping in a bed hundreds or thousands of other people have slept in. You can keep all your vacation things (even clothes) at the house, for speedy packing. You can go any time you want, no reservations, no variant rates, no booking errors.

33

I don’t get why so many people would rather drive somewhere than fly. I mean, when you fly, once you get to the airport, you don’t really have to do anything. You can just sit back and read, or something. I know I relax a fair bit once I get to the airport and can put away my car keys for a week or so of vacation…

We would go from the DC area to visit my cousins in Wisconsin some summers when I was a kid. My parents insisted on driving there instead of flying. I tend to get motion sick, so those trips were awful for me. Nowadays, if I’m going to spend 13+ hours travelling to get somewhere, I’m going to Australia or some other fun place (I found out last year that the flight time to Sydney from where I live now isn’t much longer than the driving time from Maryland to Wisconsin was). It doesn’t hurt that I tend to get less motion sick on planes than in cars, unless there’s a lot of turbulence, either…

34

Fixed. But I only found one.

35

That’s not true. There have been high-capacity MP3 players (with hard drives) around for a long time. Long before ipods. And they weren’t any more expensive than the ipod. And now we’re stuck with this really STUPID term: “pod-cast.” (What in hell were they thinking?)

As to fancy recipes, it’s also physiological. Some people have a very high density of taste buds on their tongues. Others have low-density. I’ve done empirical research on this, and those with low-density typically don’t care for cuisines with lots of different flavors, while those with high-density tastes buds almost always liked those “fancy” cusines (the ones with many different flavors).

Now, someone explain to me what makes one brand of cigarettes different from another? (I don’t smoke.) I would think that tabacco is tabacco.

36

I think you are overstating the case. Hard-drive based MP3 players were invented before the IPod but the companies involved did a horrific job of spotting the demand and marketing it. That is why I qualified my statement with saying that Apple was the only one that mattered. Before the IPod, there weren’t any hard-drive MP3 players advertised or units on most store shelves. Apple did to them the same thing they did to Xerox with the first Mac OS in other words.

Form here: Audio - Tech - CNET

“Here comes the irony: In 1998, Compaq’s engineers made the first hard-drive-based MP3 player and licensed it to a Korean company (Hango) that didn’t do much with it. In 2001, the first iPod came out. In 2002, HP acquired Compaq. In 2004, HP made a deal with Apple to distribute HP-branded iPods. I know I’m reducing the situation, but it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assert that the entity now known as HP beat Apple in the race to make a high-capacity portable music player by three years–an eternity in the world of MP3 players–and still somehow lost.”

37

Can you understand any other solitary hobbies, like crossworld puzzles, cross-stitching, or stamp-collecting? If so, than you should be able to understand how someone past puberty can make a hobby out of building a virtual empire, playing a high-tech game of dollhouse, or immersing himself into a sim action-movie. Gaming serves the same purpose of any other hobby. A previous poster hit the nail on the head when he explained golf:

(just substitute “game” for whatever electronic game a gamer wants to play)

38

I’m not a smoker, but have socially smoked. Like wine, there are different flavors. A novice may not be able to tell the difference, but if you go between a Newport, a Marlboro, a Camel, or any menthol in between, they’re going to taste different.

I don’t get why some people buy new cars for the sole reason of saving money on gas, after their vehicle they love, is already paid for. Yeah, you’re saving $150 per month in gas, but you’re knew montly payment is $400. :confused:

39

Golf is my current obsession, so I can explain the allure.

It is a very strategic game. On the course, you have to decide which club to use on a shot, which way to have that club hit the ball, whether you want high risk-high reward shots or low risk-safe, position play that can lead to thinking two or three shots ahead on longer holes.

It’s good exercise. Golf clubs may not be very heavy, but the repetitive motion can help to tone. If you walk, you can expect about 3.5 to 4 miles on a full length 18 holes. With the heat of a pretty summer day, you can work up a solid sweat.

Golfing alone, it’s peaceful. You get the joy of nature (one of my recent rounds, I came within ten yards of a fox), but without that whole “wild” thing.

Golfing with others, it’s sociable. You chat and joke, whether it’s with friends or random pairings with strangers.

There is always room for improvement. For people that want a goal oriented hobby, there is always something you can work on. Try to get under two putts per hole. Drive straight and/or over 250 yards. Build a solid wedge game. Get a hole in one. Break 100, break 90, break 80, become a scratch golfer. There’s always something to do.

The cost isn’t anywhere near so bad as you make out if you “aren’t rich.” I can play at a number of local courses for under $30 per round. And gambling (especially at ten bucks per hole!) is definitely not required. I never do. Biggest I do is a buck or a beer per hole. By the time you get done a round with an evenly matched partner, you are maybe out $5 on a bad day.

Now somebody please explain to me why somebody would be proud to be a redneck. For popular cites, see Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” or Charlie Daniels “A Few More Rednecks.” You’re proud to be uncultured, uneducated, and unwilling to improve?

40

I am with you on that. No, I am not going to trade in my SUV for a hybrid thank you. The “savings” wouldn’t start for over 7 years. People are really bad at analyses that involve the whole system rather than a small part of it in general. They tend to focus on one aspect only and try to make that outcome more favorable. You sometimes hear people purposely minimize income or assets so that they can pay less in taxes. Companies often get into trouble when people focus too much on one little area like attracting new customers while ignoring the existing ones. Many dieters are guilty of this as well when they cut way down on something like carbs and ignore their total caloric intake. This stuff drives me insane because I seem to have a knack of looking at the parts as well as the whole but most people simply cannot do it. There is no good reason other than a failure of human nature.