I am waiting for her Halloween Trick-or-Treater thread…
Okay, I shouldn’t have said nobody remembers being an annoying kid, I should have the kind of people who are always bitching about kids don’t remember being kids. For the curlcoats and Starving Artists of the world, they grew up in an ill-defined golden age when children were seen and not heard and parents tightly controlled their kids all the time and were never tired or distracted or indulgent. Strangely this golden age seems to remain constantly about 30-50 years behind us, no matter what year it is.
Oddly, my parents and I went to Las Vegas several times as a child. I say oddly because neither parent drinks alcohol and my parents and especially my father is somewhat of a skinflint. This was back about 35 years ago when Nevada was the only state to have legalized gambling, so as a kid it was cool to go. It was like going to another planet of weirdness.
I used to go to Circus Circus back in the 1970’s. They had (maybe have now, clue me in) a decent and huge arcade there with all the circus acts and crap upstairs. I did not understand the table games, so I think as a child it would bore me. The upstairs gave me the atmosphere of Vegas, and it was cool that at least Circus did have a casino for us juvenile delinquents. (Circus Circus food, especially the buffet was complete vomit. Once my parents visited and wanted to go to Excalibur for breakfast with me begging them not to go there to no avail. Circus Circus property. Tasted like vomit. But it was all the vomit you can eat for $2.99, so there.)
Once my father and I had a picture in front of Binions Horseshoe’s Million dollar display, which was a tall glass case of vintage $1000 (thousand) dollar bills, which in actuality is worth much more than the million dollars of face value. Ironically about 22 year later I would be an employee of the company in Mississippi. Even rode on the elevator with Jack Binion himself. (which made me feel like a lowly prole next to Kim Il Sung, and he let me out of the elevator first.)
Now Vegas has a lot of roller coasters, several water parks and lots of interesting scenery just outside the city limits. Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, Red Rocks, etc. One can go out there and not really set foot in a casino and have a good time. Most of the shows are open to kids of all ages. There was a time where Vegas was trying to be more “family friendly” and although they have backed up from that, the “family friendly” crap is still out there.
After college, I lived in Las Vegas for 20 months of my life between November of 1991 (19 years today as a matter of fact) to June of 1993. Even though I had a college degree, I found the job market difficult to break into except for service work, and even that was hard to find. I found housing to be expensive. I never understood why since the city is literally in the middle of nowhere with a decent water suppily nearby. One could build a gigantic city there.
I just did not like the city. People were from everywhere else. At the time, there was an exodus of people from depressed parts of the country who flocked to Las Vegas looking for new starts. Vegas also attracts nutty people. It is very easy to fall into a lifestyle of drinking, gambling, drugs, sex and other delights. The libertarian aspect of the place was tempered by a strict police force. City government seemed like a joke with a small group of powerful people running the whole show like a Third World Banana Republic. Now the mayor is a former mob lawyer.
I would not want to raise children there. I would not want to live there. There was a girl that I was dating, who if I was more straight of mind (developed a drug addiction there, my fault, not Vegas) and had a better job, I could of married. She was from a large family who seemed to like the city, but if I did ask her to marry me is that once my job could relocate me, I would be gone in a heartbeat. I did not want to live there, nor did I want to raise kids there, even in Henderson or some other bedroom community. I hated the cheesyness, the in your face gambling, vagrants, refugees from other places, the heat, price of housing and lack of decent work. I also hated that dead ass ugly desert.
There is also the good things about living there…
1.) No state income tax.
2.) No tax on groceries or medicine.
3.) The food deals in the casinos were awesome. We ate at the Maxim Hotel which cooked great steaks and prime rib for something like 5 bucks.
4.) If you can afford it, World Class entertainment. I once looked at seeing George Carlin and tickets were like $75 (in 1992). One could get free tickets called a “comp” if they gambled enough money away, but I was just a minimum wage monkey and could not afford either.
5.) 24 hour bars and alcohol, that is if you do not have a problem with alcohol. It was nice to be able to buy alcohol whenever, without the stupid opening and closing laws that are arbitrarily given by the other 49 states. Titty bars, no problem, go nuts. It is a libertarian society, whose government has allowed its people more choices over individual life. (except hard drugs, and running into a room with a couple of thugs and a gun demanding your own shit back, for example.)
6.) Sunny California is only a couple of hours drive. The best fried chicken in the World is at the Primmadonna Hotel at the California stateline on I-15.
7.) Lake Mead, Mt. Charleston, Red Rocks and if you like dead ass ugly desert, there it is.
Housing in Vegas is now insanely cheap- at least compared to California. I have a friend who lives there in a gorgeous, large, two bedroom apartment with granite counters, stainless steel appliances, and high end wood floors— the whole place is gated, with security and several pools. He pays $650 a month. That’s insanity to me. You couldn’t even get a studio in the hood for that much here in Bakersfield.
Not to mention, if you’ve got the cash right now, you can buy a house for about $3.50 and a firm hand shake. 
Which of course, I didn’t say or even hint at.
I have no idea how children were 2000 years ago since I wasn’t alive then, and I tend to have more faith in my own experiences and observations than in something written that long ago by long dead white guys.
And, I disagree. As do quite a few people. I’m sure there were kids that were not held accountable for destruction of others’ property, or swearing at teachers, or any of the others things that were considered sins when I was a kid, but back then there wasn’t the widespread acceptance of things like this as there is today. Spray paint wasn’t kept in locked cabinets at stores, metal detectors weren’t needed in schools. And if kids needed to blow off steam by screaming and running, they weren’t doing it in restaurants and hotel hallways.
Look at it this way. When I was younger I didn’t have any problem with children - I ended up raising two myself. But over the years, the lack of even basic manners coupled with parents who insist on inserting their kids into everything and everywhere has caused me to slowly build up resentment and irritation to the point that I don’t want any kids around me, no matter how well behaved they might be by some miracle.
I am also tired of being expected to pay for them, expected to consider them a “miracle” and a more valid choice than any other and I’m sick to death of people wanting me to “do it for the children”. It seems to be the one subject where a vast majority cannot think in anything approaching a rational manner. Even you, who claims to not care all that much for them seems to have this burning need to jump on me every time I mention children in any negative way, as if not wanting to have other people’s choices forced into my life is an unreasonable expectation.
Again, I don’t believe that anyone has said anything like that. It’s almost impossible to take you seriously when you insist on exaggerating or putting words into other folks’ mouths.
Pay attention. I don’t start Pit threads.
Yeah, it was pretty amazing driving past McMansions last weekend that were being advertised for “the mid 150’s”. :eek:
I’d like to see you try to live life without other people’s choices being forced up you!
It’s not that I hate skinny jeans, but the skinny jeans these days are just so bad. They give me an instant headache when I see them. I can’t figure out how people just walk around with them, expecting me to deal with seeing their skinny jeans. Now it’s everywhere- in the subway, at restaurants…places where you would think I could get some respite form societies weird obsession with skinny jeans. I can respect your choice to have skinny jeans, but I think society has taken it too far and really people need to take responsibility for themselves and stop subjecting me to their bad fashion choices.
Honestly, curlcoat, I hope your house is invaded by trick-or-treaters and you get invited to a dozen baby showers. I can understand “not liking children,” but if you are not a troll then you sure are one damaged, ugly-hearted, surly old bitch and I get joy at the thought of you being exposed to kids until you have some Christmas Carol type transformation, except I know that transformation will never happen so you’ll just be miserable because of your own bizarre selfish obsession.
Why did you assume they were white?
Complaining about spray paint locked up in stores and metal detectors in schools? OK, I think I see the problem now. curlcoat is actually stuck in a 1985-era news broadcast. Hold on, curlcoat, we’re going to try to send help to get you out of there! Don’t worry, gangs of Satan-worshiping D&D-playing teens with loud “boom boxes” aren’t swarming the streets. You’re going to love 2010! Now, where did I leave that deLorean…
Perhaps she can go back a bit further and take a streetcar to the soda fountain for a cherry phosphate with Starving Artist.
Alright, so you think you’re smarter than Socrates, and you have no interest in learning anything from history. Got it.
See, I told you that you’d defend it to the death. I’m sure you were a perfect angel when you were a kid and never did anything like, say, stealing from the local fast food restaurant.
In any case, spray paint is not locked up in stores in many places and metal detectors only exist in a small subset of American schools. Besides which, spray paint was only introduced on the market in the 1950s, so the fact that it wasn’t controlled was probably more of a reflection on the fact that people hadn’t realized its potential for vandalism yet than that the youth thought using it was a ‘sin’. Also, these things vary by area, so if you lived in a smaller town or rural area when you were young and then moved to a more populous are (ie. Orange County), then it is no surprise that your perception is that things got more dangerous and people more violent. But personal perceptions are notoriously unreliable, although I don’t expect you to understand that.
I don’t jump on you nearly every time - it’s just that you do very little here other than bitch about children. And I agree with Even Sven that there is no such thing as a life uninfluenced by other people’s decisions. You’re forcing your decisions onto other people all the time - you decided to retire early, forcing social security to pay for you, you decided to own dogs, forcing your neighbours to listen to them bark (and don’t tell me they *never *bark) you choose to drive everywhere, forcing the rest of us to accept your car emissions. I’m sure there are other things too. I think you should just lock the door and never leave the house so your dirty decisions don’t affect the rest of us.
No one is forcing you to pay for skinny jeans. I wish I could say that about other peoples’ decision to have children. Skinny jeans are also not near as common as children
Wanna try again?
And that makes you an asshole. Just because I don’t like children you wish bad times upon me? Sheesh.
My not wanting to listen to children scream for six or seven straight hours makes me damaged, ugly-hearted, surly and a bitch?
I am far from miserable. Indeed, because I had the brains and intestinal fortitude to not follow the expected Life Plan, I am quite happy with my life.
Most authors that have had their writing survive from that time period were white men. However, what I meant was a rip on the Bible.
Once again your bias makes it impossible to see what I actually said. And, if nothing else, why should I assume that Socrates was reporting fact and not opinion?
What you say here has essentially zero to do with what you quoted.
I don’t know about the metal detectors since all I know about them is the questionable news media. However, there is no place near me where I can just take a can of spray paint off the shelf and buy it, and I live in an area where tagging is pretty much not done.
I have no idea how old you are, but I didn’t see any tagging until I was well into adulthood, and I didn’t live in the best neighborhoods until my mid 30’s.
You wouldn’t know that because it appears you never post in the the threads that are not about children, at least not the ones that I have posted in.
I didn’t say that I resented that I was influenced by other folks’ decisions, I said I am tired of paying for them and being expected to change the way I live for them. Funny you bring up the dogs - there are laws specifically about barking dogs in my area, yet nothing about screaming children except as it might apply to the general noise law. How likely do you think it would be that the police would come out here on a complaint of noisy kids as opposed to barking dogs? Yet everyone here is good about bringing their dogs in at night and most are good about not letting them bark for long periods of time - certainly not for hours. But for some reason it’s OK when kids make that amount of noise?
And don’t think that I don’t notice that you ignore large parts of my posts in order to cherry pick. Doing that, taking what I say out of context and radically probably purposefully misinterpreting what I’ve posted just makes you look foolish.
Man you are stupid. The whole point is that it was his opinion and not a fact, just like your opinions are not facts. The cherry picking I do is because much of what you say is exceptionally dumb and I, unlike you, have better things to do with my time. But I will note that you ignored the point that you are making people pay for your useless ass by drawing social security because you chose not to work and you don’t need the money. How come that is okay, but children benefiting from taxpayer money isn’t?
Dude, I’m not the one who looks foolish here. But you can keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.
And yet you are the one that made the effort to respond to my post in here and you are the one that doesn’t understand the difference between a board having a search function and having software that tells you when a particular person has posted. Which one of us is the stupid one?
Showing how stupid you are again, since this has been gone over into the ground. Once again, the fact that I worked for decades means I had social security retirement taken from me all that time and so I now get it not because I choose not to work, but because I cannot. (You should really check into things before you flap your gums.) I don’t know where you get the idea that we don’t need the money. As for “making people pay” I am not responsible for the fact that the government has taken the money they took from me and done whatever with it - blown something up?. It was my money and I am entitled to get it back. I did nothing to create my current situation and I am not asking for a free handout even tho I’m apparently eligible for some.
Which is a BIG difference between all of the tax money that goes to people who cannot be bothered to work, and/or cannot be bothered to plan ahead, and/or live well beyond their means, and/or feel they have the right to have as many kids as they want whether they can afford them or not, ala Octomom. Apparently, you would rather starve out the disabled and the retired rather than even attempt to teach people personal responsibility.
Well, I’m not a dude either. I am also not the one that makes sweeping statements and then cannot be bothered to back them up when called on them. Apparently your only goal here is exactly what I said it was back at the beginning of this latest go around.
But your contempt for children, curlcoat, goes way beyond those who are ill-behaved or born to parents on welfare. You have a deep and seething hatred for the very concept of little people who live on this planet with us, growing and being nurtured to be fully capable big people one day.
At first I was taken a little aback by your misanthropic views. Then I was mildly amused, and later again felt sorry for you because your personal experiences must have been so difficult as to make you so embittered.
Now I’m over you. You know what? You disgust me. You are the dog shit beneath my feet curlcoat. You are a worthless weed on the face of this planet. You’ve contributed nothing to the commonwealth, but scream blue murder that others are doing the same.
Your hypocrisy is laughable, and your bile is venemous. May your disability be re-evaluated as non-disabling, and I wish you a lifetime of standing in queues at the Employment Office…and after 5 yrs of that, a job comes up at the local Child Care Centre, full time, in the Babies Room.
Suck it up, you fucking bitch. 
I still say Curlcoat is just a “last word” troll who delights in getting the reactions she does.
How does it feel to be a cliche? This is the reaction most people get who dare to say anything against children, and when it is someone like me who has no patience for bratty children and no interest in the rest, well I must have that deep and seething hatred, eh? No, I’d have to care about the object of the hatred in order for it to exist and I just don’t. But you all go right ahead and read anything you want into what I post.
Once again, speaking out regarding the, er, dog shit that so many children have become these days doesn’t mean that I am bitter. Despite my physical limitations, I have a good life, many friends and a loving husband.
Huh. When you retire after having worked for decades, shall we also say that you have contributed nothing? And gosh I only do volunteer work these days so I guess that isn’t contributing anything either. But again, you go ahead and make all of the negative assumptions you want to, based on your lack of tolerance.
Wow. All that just because I have a problem with children screaming for hours. Which one of us is it that is bitter and venomous again? You seem to have an awful lot of bile there for someone who merely doesn’t share your ability to ignore the noise and destruction that is being excused as “kids being kids”.
Aaaand, we have the other one that follows me around, spewing this boring, proven wrong crap again. Did you ever go back to that thread where you kept posting to make sure you were the last one, even tho I’d quit on it at least a page earlier?
This is not a problem limited to Vegas. I saw the following at the entrance to a reservation casino in WI:
Parents with a small child (maybe 10?) attempt to enter, but a security guard tells them that no one under 18 can come in. They don’t turn and leave – they hand the car keys to the kid and tell him to wait in the car, and the parents go in without the kid.