Prima:
Allrighty then. Please show me where I said that handicapped people don’t deserve Vipers.
Scylla, did you perhaps think that it wasn’t the driver who was paralysed?
Count me with the “Fuck you, Scylla” faction.
If someone who owns a Viper comes develops lung cancer, emphysema, tuberculosis, heart disease, or any other ailment
that renders him or her unable to walk long distances, as opposed to being totally unable to walk any distance, that person still rates a handicapped parking sticker.
Why should this person sell a car at a loss in order to placate a jerk like you, Scylla?
Maybe, Scylla, if you’d have hung around long enough you could have asked them “what they were”.
Should you satiate your curiousity in this manner, however, I’d be prepared for the guy to assume all kinds of nasty things about you.
pan
Jeeze!
This thread makes me glad I don’t post every negative thought I ever have… people seem to be all to willing to asume the worst, and jump all over your shit (NB: I’m all too capable of doing this myself, so no need to point it out to me…). Lighten up, guys!
Scylla, me lad, cheer up! Soon as I can afford a Viper, I’ll let you ride in it! No driving, though! MINE! (don’t hold your breath though… not likely to happen anytime soon…)
Presumably, Astroboy, if you made the bad decision to post one of those negative thoughts, and you were called on it, you would have the class and dignity to apologize for the offense caused by your lapse in judgment. Scylla has not–in fact, he has explicitly refused to apologize for whatever weird-ass point he was attempting to make. So I wouldn’t feel too sorry for the guy getting raked over the coals here. After all, he did put the OP in the Pit, indicating that he was indeed flaming the disabled Viper driver, and that he expected strong responses from others.
Well now he’s got 'em.
Ah, is it ‘collective sense of humour failure’ day again already? How the time flies. Let’s celebrate with the traditional dance of the pile on.
My first reaction was in the “Scylla, you suck” camp and I’m still not feeling very charitable. Not about the OP, but the “Proud Bad-ass” post on page 2. Let me try to explain why.
My sister-in-law is in the very last stages of cancer but during the last year, when she was fighting it, there were times when she had to go to chemotherapy and radiation treatment every day. My brother leased(?) her a several-year old Corvette: she loves sports cars and this made her happy. (For our purposes, to the general public, a Corvette also equals a “F*ck you car”, possibly more so than the Viper, as less people know what a Viper is. Yes, you and I know the difference, but the population at large doesn’t. Besides, if he’d been able to lease/buy a Viper, he would have.)
She had a handicapped rear-view mirror hanging thing for a while when going through the chemotherapy (or radiation). It left her exhausted and she couldn’t walk very far without having to sit down and rest. But she still got up and got around as much as she could, in at least small part because she loved driving that car. But driving’s different from walking and she couldn’t have made it 200 yards without taking a break. She got quite a bit of the same sort of shit that you gave out in the “proud bad-ass” post where people assumed that since she was walking without aids and since she was in a Corvette, she was faking.
The “proud bad-ass” post really pissed me off. In it, you pretty much said that anyone who owns a fancy, expensive car and parks in the handicapped spot is either a faker or a wimp (opposite of a proud bad-ass). My sister in law is/was about as proud a bad-ass as you’d be able to imagine. And yet, she took the handicapped spot anyway. Not because she was faking, not because she was a wimp, but because her body wouldn’t do what you’d suggest she demand of it. The fact that she made it out of the house and to a mall shows she’s no wimp, and she has nothing to prove to anyone…
The other part of your post that completely baffles me is the idea that someone owns a car to “prove something”. Can’t one own a car for the joy of having a perfectly tuned instrument? The enjoyment of the speed and handling? Yeah, the Viper is expensive, but it’s apparently also awsomely well-made and it’s not the best/fastest/etc car out there. It’s not even the most "fck you" car (Lamborgini Diablo and Ferrari F-40 are both to the Viper what the Viper is to a Corvette). Had I the money to blow, I’d love to have a Viper (or an F40, or a Diablo), and I assure you from the bottom of my heart that what strangers thought about it would never cross my mind. Who gives a fck what strangers think about your car? They’re strangers for Chrissake. Anyone vapid enough to by a car for the sole purpose of impressing strangers has a competely incomprehensible worldview to me. If I’m buying anything, it’s to please and/or fulfill the needs of myself or my loved ones. The rest of the world is pretty much irrelevant.
Fenris
Are you saying that only abled-bodied people can be that arrogant asshole driving a Viper? Why?
I want a Viper.
I don’t want to be King of the World.
Is that wrong?
Yeah, what’s wrong with all you disabled Dopers. LAUGH, DAMMIT! LAUGH!
:rolleyes:
Diane:
No. But I think that “King of the World” comes as standard equipment on the Viper.
I have seen vehicles I would never imagine were for handicapped people in handicapped parking spots and thought somewhat similar things.
But a Viper? Heh. I do believe that takes the cake. Although Coldfire’s hypothetical would make me spin.
It doesn’t have the option that makes you want to stand in the prow of a big ship and yell that out, does it? I can’t see how that’d be very popular.
I didn’t want to be the only Doper to not post in this thread so…
- I want a Viper
- I’m not handicapped
- Hi Opal!
Why don’t we have a smiley for someone shoving a tent peg through one of rolleyes eyes? It’d be useful.
I read the OP, thought it was a pretty fucking witty way of congratulating a guy. A little subtle, perhaps, but surely not something too many people would be whooshed by.
I see I was mistaken.
Well, Scylla, just wanted to add that unkinder thoughts than expressed in your OP have crossed my mind (tho probably not related to handicap parking.) Glad I was able to resist any urge to post them.
I think most people experience similar unfair, even irrational thoughts at times. Even while they KNOW they are inappropriate.
I’m not quite sure why so many folk are so offended at Scylla’s post. At worst, it shows him for an asshole. Does it surprise you that there are assholes about? I am relatively able-bodied, tho. So I guess I don’t realize how my perception of how others perceived me might be so important. As it is, I’m not overly concerned over whether I gather the approval or disapproval of strangers.
And what should he apologise for? Being himself? Having “impure” thoughts?
IMO, stupid OP. But not the first to ever occur in the Pit.
Whatever you think about the looks, the new 1000ish HP Bugatti Veyron does it for me.
Scylla, I think you were complimenting the Viper and not claiming that being handicapped is wonderful because of the parking perk, right? RIGHT?! The only slightly legitimate serious argument you may have is the seeming impracticality of owning a Viper with a real disability. Ingress, egress or wheelchair storage issues and such. But, since you did not mention that, I must hope you were tongue-in-cheek. In addition, as others have represented, disability does not always entail a wheelchair.
Personally, I’ve seen wheelchair disabled persons attempt to navigate through parking lots. It can be like a normally abled person crawling through one. Aside from the obvious visibility and avoidance problems you have the disability. In my case, I observed someone with ALS slowly degenerate. Not fun.
As for the Viper itself, put me down for a Z06 Corvette for about 30 K less. Similar performance, much better mileage, more user friendly. Viper = driving a giant phallic symbol. Not all bad, I must say.
Fenris:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. But, I am still failing to see what the big deal is here.
Apparently it is quite all right to throw blanket characterizations at people like my wife who drive a Durango, so I assume it must also be ok to throw those blanket characterizations at people who drive wasteful and ostentatious sportscars.
Doubtless those who characterize my wife have selfless and socially worthy motives for doing so.
I on the other hand simply burn with mild jealousy over nice sportscars that I will never have.
Doubtless had I ommitted the handicapped sticker part, my rant would have been just fine.
So, if I can envy or disparage a driver of a Viper without a sticker, why can’t I envy and disparage one with a sticker?
Between all the fuck yous I hear the “It’s because you don’t know what it’s like to be handicapped.”
Which is true enough.
I also don’t know what it’s like to have a Viper or be able to park anywhere I want.
But, I was not ranting about actuality. I know my characterization isn’t valid. Knowing that doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.
These were not necessarily bad people that envied your sister-in-law and gave her questioning looks.
There is certainly a social dynamic though to a sportscar in a handicapped spot, and one that elicits stong feelings.
Knowing that those feelings aren’t necessarily valid doesn’t make them go away.
And, upon examining them, I see nothing execrable or inhuman about them.
If we see somebody with something that we’d like and don’t have we can still be jealous of those favorable aspects of what we see without wanting the whole.
To the members of the Scylla Re-Education Committee:
For cripe’s sake, people, let it go! Scylla expressed an uncharitable thought. It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was downright ugly, but if a single one of you can tell me honestly and sincerely that you have never once in your life had an uncharitable thought toward another human being, then move over Jesus, there’s a new Messiah in town!
I’m not defending his thought or his expressing of it, what I’m saying is that I think the uncomfortable truth no one here wants to face is that most of us have thought things remarkably like what he’s said, it’s just that most of us never say them out loud. The only difference is see between Scylla and the rest of us is that he’s just arrogant enough to speak those thoughts out loud.
Not that those thoughts are good to have, but we all think them. It would be nice if we could all be perfect and only think good things about other people, but the reality is that we don’t. When I think things like that, I recognize that it’s because of weaknesses in myself, and I actually think Scylla is doing the same thing, but so many of y’all are so determined to bash him that you’re missing it. And I think the bashing is making him more determined to stand his ground. Thus creating a three-page circus that seems to be going nowhere.
One of Angie’s friends was in a traffic accident quite a few years back and had a morphine pump implanted. Lynn can no longer afford a car but still has her handicapped placard, which she uses when Angie drives her around.
Maybe it’s not the driver who’s handicapped? Of course, if the driver isn’t handicapped and had no passenger that day then the person had no business parking in the handicapped spot.