"I don’t have enough FAITH to be an atheist.
Because, why should we have to get all riled up and back in the face of someone like this.
I have had this happen to me also. What the hell IS it with these idiots? You’re having a perfectly good time when this moron suddenly attacks you. Why should we have to get all verbally abusive right back and ruin our evening?
Most of us try to diffuse the situation so as to preserve our fun time. Besides, you have no way of knowing how some drunken stranger is going to react to a direct confrontation like that. You might find yourself on the ground with a black eye and split lip before the words are hardly out of your mouth.
One argument that is NOT stupid and that is, “you don’t argue with a drunk”.
How about when someone is complaining about a particularly bad or obnoxious commercial, and someone always feels the need to pop in and sneer about how even if you hate it, the ad has done its job, because you remember it and you’re talking about it. Bullshit! If I don’t buy the product, or, worse, if I decide to avoid that company as much as possible from now on, the ad has FAILED! Even if I’m talking about it!
I agree! The scary thing is, I actually know several people in marketing who actually believe this.
I still never buy and do not bother naming the “ring around the collar” laundry soap, just because I found their commercials so irritating for so many years. (It helps that there are so many other soaps from which to choose, of course.)
My sister, who is in advertising, for one.
:rolleyes:
How about “do you want peace or do you want to be right?”
I hate that one–I want both, dammit! Why is obtaining peace at MY expense? Why can’t the other guy back down, for once?
Grrr.
The one that gets me is when during price negotiations the other side wants me to concede the point by saying “It’s only money.” Yes, and if it means that little to you than you can concede to me and pay me my price.
“You always have to be right!” Flung at me when I’m embroiled in an argument.
You’re exactly right. I’m arguing purely in order to feed my ego. That’s why I didn’t just accept whatever bullshit proposition you came up with.
Or else: “You always think you’re right, don’t you?”
Well, of course I think I’m right about anything I happen to believe. That’s what to believe a proposition means: to think it’s true. If I didn’t think that proposition were true, I would believe differently.
Nearly as annoying as “Don’t be so defensive!”
Said by anyone who has provoked an angry response with a blatantly incorrect or insulting sreies of comments: “Ah-hah! You’re reacting strongly to what I said, so that proves you know I’m right!” :rolleyes:
Whoa ho ho hooo, there matt! That’s page three paragraph four of Mrs. Call’s “How to Argue with your Spouse” handbook.
Amongst the other items in the Book:
“You say I did X, well 23 years ago, on a Sunday, you did Y, so how dare you talk about me?”
“You’re just twisting my words!” (said in response to pointing out a logical flaw in her argument - when will I learn?)
“Oh! Oh! You rolled your eyes. Discussion OVER!”
(I love Mrs. Call dearly - if you’re lurking, dear, I’m just kidding. Heh heh heh!)
“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”
My dad uses this one on me all the time when he’s berating me for doing something, and ohmigosh, it annoys me. It defies all logic. How many basic assumptions are necessary for day-to-day survival? Maybe I don’t understand the nature of assumption, but I would be completely wrong in saying that, for instance, I go to work everyday because I assume that the building is not going to blow up? I’m making an assumption based on previous experience, an understanding of the likelihood of explosion, etc. Right? So what is the point of this phrase? Would he prefer that no one ever assume anything, ever? I don’t understand.
Man I hate it.
This drives me crazy – and naturally, makes me even more irritated, therefore compounding my “guilt.” In a similar vein, an acquaintance once said to me (after she made a false accusation that I’d calmly said wasn’t true), “Oh, you’re denying it, so it must be true!” So… you can just say whatever you want and you must be right?
“I don’t like to fly…besides what is there to really see in Europe?” just go to disney like the rest of the lemmings, m’kay?
'I don’t like to fly because I can’t go that long without a smoke." Pardon me while I :rolleyes:
“My husband has time to take the car into the shop…the check engine light has been on for weeks now.” Ummmmmmmm, is there a physical reason keeping you from taking the car into the shop and talking to the mechanic? Or are you just a moron?
There really can be a good reason for this. Auto shop personnel sometimes assume that a woman can’t really know anything at all about cars, or economics, or for that matter much of anything except bakin’ cookies and pushin’ out babies. It’s often just easier to let a person with a penis talk with them; he won’t have to first prove that he knows what he’s talking about.
Although I don’t know that I’d wait 2 weeks to have a check engine light looked at.
“We weren’t the world’s greatest parents, but we did the best we could.”
Not to slam parents, and my parents in particular, but it’s not quite accurate to say you did the best you could. Maybe if you added, “…given that we were more interested in pursuing our love lives than in being good parents,” or “…given that our parents were no prizes, themselves, and we just did what we had seen them do.”
But to say you did the best you could implies that you really put a lot of effort into being the best parents possible, and you just didn’t.
If you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of.
If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.
And others of that ilk.
Yep, that’s a great one.
“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
Wrong. If you (the person wanting me to give up whatever privacy or rights I have left) have done nothing wrong, have no history of abusing authority, irresponsible negligence, incompetence or petty vindictiveness, and can prove to me that you never will, then and only then do I have nothing to worry about.
Anyway, my own contribution:
“It’s the internet(movies, rock & roll, gangsta rap, video games, society)'s fault that I’m a criminal fuck-up.”
Normally, I’d think this would be too obviously lame to include in the list, if I hadn’t come across the following excuse while reading the paper:
Man nabbed for groping 10-year-old says Internet sparked crime: “I looked at the Internet and became interested in molestation.”
Granted, it’s a translation, but the original is every bit as stupid.
I generally agree with your assertion, with this observation: one’s best may not necessarily be the maximum one is capable of under ideal circumstances. Pursuing love lives takes energy and is an essential part of parenting - as well as other pursuits that leave one feeling too tapped at times to make the recital, or what have you.
Said another way: “…but we did the best we could” may well be accurate for many parents (I would like to think Mrs. Call & I included) even though I’ve blown it on more than one occasion.
I certainly agree, though, that it is easy for any parent to say and cannot be used as an excuse or argument against mistreatment or neglect.
“Those scoundrels in the other political party! They’re engaging in cheap partisan politics!”
“You are either with us or against us.”