About depreciation: I think the point is that a 1 year-old used car is not really any worse ‘objectively speaking’ than a brand new car, but that by buying a 1 yearold car you can let some other sucker pay the depreciation costs.
It’s not a case of ‘on paper’ value … it’s a case of paying £8000 instead of £12000 for a virtually identical product.
Cheers,
Luke
I’m not normally a violent person, but there’s something about cute little toy dogs that makes me want to find some football style uprights, set the widdle doggy up on one of those tee things, put my steel caps on and kick the thing for a goal.
Personally I just don’t get it as to why they invoke such strong feelings of cruelty and violence in me.
I’m also confused by this- all these people in the US complaining that a 1995 car is “Old”. Cars in the US- including the Japanese made ones- must be complete junk if you have to get a new car every three years or so. Either that or they’re incredibly, incredibly cheap. Either way, it seems very strange.
A decent medium-sized car here in Australia will cost you AUD$20,000 new. I don’t know ANYONE with that sort of cash just lying around, and so a brand new car is generally a luxury to most people here, I’d say.
I’ve never had a car newer than 10 years old. What’s the point in buying a new car? It loses 15-20% of it’s value the instant you drive it away from the car dealer’s yard, you’ve got to spend $400 every time you need a service and an oil change to keep the warranty, and you’ve got to worry about some idiot backing into it at the supermarket. Not worth the hassle and stress, IMO.
“hatched” animals don’t always fend for themselves totally (baby birds are fed by the parents), but there comes a point when they fly away.
The “born” is a play from words; “born” comes both from “birth” and from “bear”. Children should be birthed, yes… but not “put up with” nor forced to carry Mom hanging from their neck like some sort of invert kangaroo.
Or, as St. Paul put it: “parents, don’t be a pain in the ass for your children” or words to that effect.
People who think two wrongs make a right. Like it’s okay for women to disparage men, or cheat on their SOs, because there are so many men who disparage women and cheat on their SOs. Or it’s okay to be prejudiced against other demographics because some people are prejudiced against your demographic.
Conspiracy theorists. Suppose, for one crazy moment, that everything they say adds up, and we really didn’t send people to the moon, or there really was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK. Then…what of it? Is anyone still alive to be charged with these conspiracies? Should NASA issue an apology for “faking” the moon landing? Was there anything to be gained from covering up activities at Area 51, and if so, what are we, the citizenry, owed? They never have a reason for expending all this energy; they just keep eyeballing photos of autopsies and saying, “See? Right there!”
Whedonites. Sorry, I know I’m going to get flamed for that. It’s not the appreciation I don’t get; I understand that. It’s the martyrdom. Yes, Firefly was cancelled before its time. So were a lot of shows I like. Deal with it.
Similar to that, people who watch Lost but continually gripe about not getting any answers. Dude, we are getting answers. Just last week, we found out three/four, depending on how you break it down, things that we didn’t already know. And yeah, more questions were raised, but that’s the nature of the show. And quit saying you’re going to stop watching; I know you’re still watching.
The Yay!Jesus phenomenon. I don’t believe god cares who wins American Idol/the Super Bowl/Miss America, or that he personally fertilized the egg and planted it in your or your wife’s uterus. He wants us to help each other and ourselves. How about thanking your parents, your teachers, the medical personnel, and so forth, before giving credit to the Big Guy.
Girl Scout cookies. Again, I’m sorry, and I’m not saying they’re intrinsically bad, just that I, personally, don’t like them. If they’re your own personal caramel-covered crack, okay, but I find they actually suck taste out of my mouth. (What I also don’t like, although I can’t say I don’t “get” it, is the policy of dumping a metric buttload of cookies on a troop and demanding that they sell them by any means necessary. When I was a Girl Sprout, we had order forms, and you never got stuck with cookies you couldn’t unload.)
What others have already posted:
Soaps. Reality TV. The Weakest Link. Cooking programs*. . . hours – make that whole days – of unwatchable manipulative dreck on television.
A new one. Clothes shopping for fun. I’d rather go to the dentist. I really don’t understand how there are so many clothes shops. In the MK Centre (mall) there are two major music/video outlets, three supermarkets, two and a half bookshops, about a dozen shoe shops** and a hundred thousand clothes shops.
*Nigella Lawson is af course watchable, but that’s got nothing to do with her cooking.
**Heading for the event horizon.
Hear, hear! Americans take note 
Sometimes it’s worth it, to be able to eat in the hotel and not have to go driving around looking for a restaurant. That can be especially nice if you’re travelling by car and feel like you’re pretty much done driving for the day.
It will be worth it if it means we get an Artistically Correct statue- built to a scale dwarfing mountain ranges and out natural features of the planet- entitled Arthur Dent Throwing The Nutri-Matic Cup, as well as an army of Lintillas. 
Smokers
Reality TV
Oh, I get smoking, if you started ten or more years ago. What I don’t get is why anyone would start smoking in the past few years, now that it costs a fortune, and you can’t do it anywhere.
I get America’s Next Top Model/Surreal Life/Amazing Race type reality TV. I *don’t * get Flavor of Love/The Bachelor/The Swan type reality TV.
I don’t get why people can’t figure out that walking is just like driving. You do it on the right. The slower you’re moving, the farther to the right you should be. The left lane is for passing, and if you stop in an inappropriate place, someone *is * going to slam into you. It’ll probably be me. And if it hurts, rest assured that was on purpose.
I don’t get any of it. I don’t believe that anything that gets on the air is not scripted and/or edited in so many ways as to be completly removed from reality.
Oh, I also believe it’s all completely removed from reality. I guess for me the difference is that the shows I prefer don’t tend toward *utter * humiliation and abdication of dignity.
Yeah, I guess some are better than others, but it’s just the thought that some producer somewhere thinks he is getting something over on me that turns me off. But then again, I guess that also includes the evening news.
Now I remember what was going to be number three on my list:
Ironing – I can think of no more higher hubris than sucking energy out of the wall in order to press some wrinkles out of some clothes. Clothes that in many cases are already overpriced and wasteful in the first place.
Except, apparently, snobbishness about big SUVs, or little dogs, or spikey high heels, or soap operas, or sports fans, huh?
Hey – I’m not being snarky, here. I’ve seen things on this thread that I recognise from both sides – things that I ‘get,’ but understand other people not getting, and things I don’t get, but can understand other people enjoying. I was just amused that, in a thread that’s all about snobbishness, one of the first things that was called out is… snobbishness!
Low profile tires and wheels on trucks and 4x4s. It’s a 4x. Ground clearance is important. The vehicles engine and transmission was designed to run with a certain diameter wheel and tire. It ain’t an Indy race car and never will be. A truck is designed to be a truck.
I was young and stupid once. Well, I’m not young anymore, but really. A CJ7 with small wheels and wide extra low profile street tires in an area that gets LOTS of snow just makes me wonder how often these guys skipped physics class.
That’s a good point, but kawaiitentaclebeast has said nothing about the car’s age at purchase: his entire argument is (or at least, seems to be) about keeping the same car for 10+ years.
And I would disagree that a 1-year-old used car is basically the same as a brand new one: sure, in terms of pure age it can still be considered “new,” but how a car is treated during its first year/12,000 miles is important. I don’t have any more first-hand knowledge about the history of that car than I would any other used car.
I have to add this, because a guilty person just drove past my house: if the music in your car rattles the windows in my house when you drive by, your music is too damn loud. You are likely doing permanent damage to your hearing, and will go around saying “huh? whatdasay?” for the rest of your life.
Not strange at all, when you consider the conditions under which they are driven–specifically, winters.
Of course, this only holds true for colder areas of the US, and for Canada, but winters are hell on a car. Cold starts (from well under 0 degrees C) and the resultant rapid expansion through heat of the engine parts, salt and sand and grit to help with traction (which scratch and eat and rust the car’s body), and the rapid contraction of the engine parts when you shut the car off, are some examples of winter’s effect. Special fluids (lower viscosity oil, winter gasolines, coolants good to minus 40C, rustproofing compounds), help somewhat, but cannot stop the inevitable.
In Australia, your cars last much longer because you’re not putting up with this stuff. My sister, who lived in Perth for many years, bought a used 1984 Holden Commodore in 1994, and happily drove it for the next ten years, pretty much trouble-free. That was a twenty-year car! But now that she is back in Canada, her bought-used 2000 Plymouth sedan is already having body and drive train trouble, and it is only six years old.
The cars aren’t junk. They’re just driven in horrendous conditions and can’t be expected to last as long as cars that never see winter. Now, it is also true that here in North America, we have our share of people who have to have a brand-new car every two to three years, just for the sake of having a late-model car. I don’t necessarily get that myself, though I have to say “to each their own.” But at this point, yes, a 1995 car in much of North America is old and worn out. Heck, some of the 2000 models are getting that way.
As for me, what I don’t get is reality TV of the American Idol or Survivor type. Well, maybe I can get the idea of such a game, but maybe I don’t understand the fanaticism of some of the audience. I don’t usually get that excited about the outcome of a game unless I have money riding on it. But that’s just me.
I know very little about buying cars. I’m not really interested in learning, either. To me, a car is a way to get between points A and B (point A usually being home and point B being work- I drive as little as I can). I’m not at all mechanically inclined, so it should do this while requiring the least possible amount of time and money spent on fixing stuff on the car.
Car shopping is stressful for me. It’s the only time I ever haggle over price on a purchase, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not very good at that. I certainly don’t enjoy doing it.
I don’t know anything about how to find out if the seller is lying about a car’s history. If I buy a new car, I don’t have to deal with any of that.
Some of us don’t enjoy having to measure portions or figure out which stuff from a restaurant is best for your diet. Things that appear to be a healthy choice sometimes turn out to have more calories than something that doesn’t. If you’re just eating prepackaged food, it has nutrition information on the package and the portions are set up for you, so you don’t have to deal with those issues.
No, she’s at least the second.
And while we’re at it, not all women enjoy planning their weddings, or enjoy the wedding itself. I had a traditional wedding because I thought it would make both families unhappy if we didn’t (and, starting out, I thought it would be a lot less work and hassle than it was). I still have nightmares about having to go through another wedding (had one Saturday night, in fact), and it’s three years later.
Engineering and the sciences attract people who are good at the kind of subjects you learn in school but not so good at social skills. So does government work (because, for at least some government jobs, things like how well you did in your classes are more important than things like making a good impression at the interview or dressing well at work). We smart but socially inept people need jobs, too- money doesn’t grow on trees for us, either.
Now, people who do this because the alternative is the local homeless shelter, I can understand. People who do this because the alternative is a crappy apartment, not so much.
Those of us who have them don’t really understand why we do, either. It’s one of the things that’s really frustrating about phobias. Rationally, you know that needles (in my case) or whatever you’re afraid of isn’t bad enough to justify the fear you’re feeling, but knowing that makes absolutely no difference to how you’re feeling- you can’t talk yourself out of it.