Yeah, the mean streets of the Royal Oak ghetto surely are horrendous. :rolleyes:
I don’t do much smoking while walking around here in royal oak. I-75 from 12 to Warren and all over WSU are fair game though. Granted, everybody does it down there. I know it’s not much, but I’m just glad I can contribute in my own small way.
The people getting their panties in a twist about some guy throwing cigarette butts out the window are probably the same people who go crimson with rage when I tell them that I’m not voting, and that it doesn’t fucking matter whether I do.
And while I rarely smoke, when I do, and I’m driving or there’s no ashtray within reasonable distance, I throw it on the ground. Much like 5-HT, it’s because I just don’t care that much - that probably pisses you off. That’s fine, too, and for the same reason.
I couldn’t care less if you don’t vote. It’s sad and pathetic that you have no interest in having your voice heard by exercising your legal right, but it’s no skin off my nose if you choose to deny yourself something you’re entitled to.
Your selfish, filthy, disgusting habit of contaminating my water, my fish, my soil, and literally endangering other peope’s lives, on the other hand, makes you a piece of slime so low that you’re unworthy of anything but contempt and disdain.
Thais are notorious litterers. They’ll throw any sort of trash you can imagine onto the ground, out the bus or car window, anywhere. There’s a law in Bangkok specifying a 2000-baht fine (about US$58 at today’s exchange rate) for throwing even a cigarette butt on the ground, but only foreigners are ever popped. I remember when the law was enacted maybe 10 years ago. Thais kept throwing stuff on the ground with impunity – still do – but police started setting up in tourist areas watching for foreigners to throw down even a cigarette butt. Then they would “negotiate” with the foreigner a reduced fine (guess where the fine went). There were even reports of some police hanging around city bus stops popping foreigners getting off the bus for throwing their little stub of a bus ticket on the ground – those things are small and easy to losse even while riding in the bus – and they’d always look disappointed when you could show them no, here it is, I still have it; that got cracked down on pretty quickly, though.
One time, a friend of mine got popped for throwing a cigarette butt on the ground on Sukhumvit Road. Problem was, he doesn’t smoke! The police were adamant, though, and wanted the fine paid. He could speak a little Thai and just happened to be a sportswriter for a local rag. The police got a little nervous once they understood he was local media, so they finally agreed to him buying each of them (there were four cops) a small bottle of iced tea from a nearby 7-Eleven. True story!
Then the city does not often make it easy to find a trash can. It’s next to impossible to find one in the Siam Square area. After a series of bomb blasts on New Year’s Eve 2006 (suspected to have been caused by people connected ot the recently ousted Thaksin), public trash cans were removed. They were finally replaced a few months later with transparent receptacles.
And the street cleaners do a fantastic job of keeping the trash swept up. I don’t envy these unsung heroes.
Perhaps he simply doesn’t believe any of the candidates are worthy of his support. There are legitimate reasons for not voting.
I’m utterly tired of choosing the lesser of two fucktards, and the archaic political system means that my vote is meaningless on a national level. For local and state-level elections, I’ll vote if I bother to educate myself on the matters at hand. Overall I’m apathetic about the political system in general and it’s bewildering to me why people like you find it so “sad and pathetic” that I choose to abstain. If it makes you feel better by checking your little box, that’s fine. Hey - I won’t even ridicule you for it!
As to my “disgusting, filthy habit,” :rolleyes: it’s similarly bewildering the depth of pure vitriol you have for a few grams of charred cellulose filter. Ever throw away a cleaning product in the garbage? Or buy individually wrapped anything? Do you wash your car in your driveway? Do you really think it’s cigarette butts that cause algae blooms, starve and strangle fish, and poison water? Give me a break - you probably pollute as much as everybody else.
Endangering people’s lives? Flicking a butt out an urban interstate doesn’t do anything but froth the mouth of thinskinned, superficial hypocrites like you. Throwing a cigarette on the ground is like pissing in an ocean of piss, and, honestly, you and your lynch mob can kiss my ass.
Well, that’s not a legitimate reason. If you want your preferences reflected, you choose the least-worst candidate. This isn’t a prize that’s being awarded, it’s a job that has to be filled.
I dunno, dropping half a pack of cigarette butts on the ground per day seems to me to have a nontrivial impact. Admittedly, much of it is aesthetic, but let’s not forget that the things last ~15 years – unless of course somebody else picks up after you.
Shayna already mentioned this, but contrary to what you think, your tossed cigarette butts can roll into the grass and start fires. Hell, here in Texas it’s not unusual to see a patch or two of charred grass along the highway during dry periods on your drive to work.
I mean, these fires cause traffic jams, flight delays, deaths, injuries, property damage, and leave really unsightly patches of burnt nastiness on the side of the road. So you can stop being so maliciously negligent, pretending that it doesn’t matter and you can stop right now.
Meh.
My state uses fireproof cigarettes. They go out extremely quickly (within a minute, easily) if you don’t actively drag on them. Seems like if cigarette-induced fires were a real problem they’d just use those.
Hilariously, this leads to me throwing a lot more cigarettes out the window because they go out and I don’t feel like lighting another.
I declined to mention that, Constanze because it would be a waste of effort to debate with a shithead. He either believes he is being all rebellious and stuff by littering on purpose, (which makes him an asshole) or he’s just posturing on the boards about it because it entertains him (which makes him a troll).
I don’t get it. Was that the plot of a movie or something?
I believe that you, and 5-HT, and others like you don’t care. But, and this may be a semantic nitpick, I don’t think you throw the butts down because you don’t care.
I think you throw them down because it’s easy. Not caring isn’t your reason, it’s your rationalization.
Sailboat
I wouldn’t say it’s a rationalization, but rather the reason why I don’t feel the need to rationalize it. As far as the real reason being “because it’s easy”, yes, I think that’s probably true.
I knew a guy who use to smoke cigars in his car and throw the butts out the driver’s window. One day the butt came back in through the back window and set the car and driver on fire. He died of the burns.
Ironic, poetic justice in that–guy didn’t care if he burned the whole city down.
that seems pretty unlikely unless he was covered in gasoline or his car was just filled with paper-based garbage. I’ve had cigarette butts fly back into the car plenty of times, one time it burnt a small hole in my shirt but usually it just lands on a seat or the floor and burns itself out.
Even if the butt did start burning something, one would think you’d smell that and pull over. The materials in a car just don’t burst into flames, it takes a while.
Well, yeah, that’s exactly right. If it were just as simple to dispose of them properly, I’d do that. Throwing them out is easy and I don’t care enough to stash them in my pockets or my car’s plastic cointray.
I think what we’ve learned here, Hyperelastic, is that there is a small minority* that indeed DO think that the world is their personal trashcan. They are primarily lazy, do not give a shit what others may think, and basically believe that it is up to everyone else to clean up after them. They seem to be selfish, think only of themselves, and really could not give a rat’s ass about clearly documented consequences to anyone else in this world.
*small minority here on SDMB, but there are more of them than you might care to think out there in the world…