Cite?
FTR, I don’t care much for dogs, either.
You’re confused because you don’t understand my mindset. It’s not that I hate cats and dogs; “hatred” has nothing to do with it. If it did, I would go out of my way to Bad Things[sup]TM[/sup] to these animals for the sole reason of doing Bad Things[sup]TM[/sup] to them. Alas, I do not. In fact, we have a couple cats. These cats have a good life… they have a heated cat house, are fed twice a day, and are never abused. And if I see one of our children being mean to one of our cats they will get punished.
But as I explained a long time ago on these forums, cats are tools to me. I have absolutely no feelings for them whatsoever. I am only capable of having feelings for humans (and only certain ones at that!).
Yeah, me too, and I think the distinction is very important. This thread is not just, “Hey, here’s something I disagree with”, it’s “here’s something I just really and truly don’t understand.”
An example: I believe that not only is sex before marriage ok, but that getting married without having had sex with the person you’re marrying is stupid. Nevertheless, I do understand the reasons that people have for believing that sex before marriage is wrong. I disagree with such people, but I understand (at least to some extent) why they believe what they believe.
People who believe that gays should not be allowed to get married (to each other), however, I just don’t understand. I can’t see any reason to be against it. I don’t understand how anyone could be against it. It’s just a total and complete mystery to me. In all the rhetoric in the media, I have yet to see any reason for being against it. I even started a thread wherein I specifically asked why people were against it. In four pages of posts, I never saw one actual reason that made any semblance of sense.
So being against pre-marital sex is a belief that “that differ[s] significantly from [my] own”, but I understand it. Being against gay marriage is also a belief “that differ[s] significantly from [my] own”, but I can’t even come close to understanding it.
I have no bleepin’ idea why The Empire Strikes Back is the wonderful perfect shining jewel of the Star Wars franchise and Return of the Jedi is a horrible catastrophic disaster. (Oh, yeah, the Ewoks. Uh, what the freak about the Ewoks?) Not one person I know who’s seen both movies shares anything close to this belief. If I told my sister this (an extraordinary bright, worldly woman with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure techy knowledge), she’d ask me to slowly back away from the computer and get some fresh air.
Don’t understand the rampant fanboyism about really, really minor characters like Chewbacca and Boba Fett. The former is a hired goon/manservant who looks like a walking rug, and the other is one of countless slightly competent bounty hunters in the galaxy. That’s it. Sheesh, why doesn’t Watto get any love?
ESPN. I mean, geez, poker? And World’s Strongest Man competitions? Both at saturation level these days, of course. Broken by the occasional 9-ball marathon, or maybe some preview for some draft. Sheesh. If you need completely random sports to fill 24 hours, why not at least give us some variety? Bring back Australian Rules Football and yacht racing, maybe drift competitions (I heard that’s pretty big now), beach volleyball, arm wrestling, you name it.
Video game culture. All of it. Guys, life is tough enough; there’s absolutely no point in injecting 50,000 made-up rules into a freakin’ HOBBY. Come down to Hawaiian Brian’s sometime and see how much real gamers care about honor or how the game was meant to be played or whatever crap.
Definitely second Paris Hilton. Let me reiterate: She got famous by doing something that’s about as shocking these days as walking down the friggin’ street. What, does she get a 1-hour news special if she accepts an offer from Playboy?
And why anyone would put in the time, money, and effort to put up a message board, see a bunch of sociopaths flame, troll, and in general do nothing but spread incredible amounts of filth, and not have any problem with this whatsoever. Good lord, this is YOUR PROPERTY they’re trashing, guys! I can’t imagine what their homes must be like…
And lastly…I don’t get why I don’t post more postiive things on these boards. I mean, I’d like to, but for some reason I keep coming across as angry about something… 
Maybe living in ‘the driest state in the driest continent in the world’ thing colours my vision here, but I think perfect green lawns border on the immoral. Such a waste of water, plus the chemicals involved, all for something that is purely superficial.
I honestly can’t go past a perfect green lawn (in my home state - I had no trouble in high rainfall places i’ve visited!) without a feeling of terrible disappointment in the people who would deliberately waste water to attain it.
I don’t get people who own bulldogs, slobbery critters with deformed jaws and cranium, who can hardly breathe, and whose appearance is less than handsome. I pity the poor beasts. (Pardon me if you own one).
You’re pardoned. And I have one. Yeah, the slobber is a bitch. But MAN are they cute as can be. When I have a bad day, and I come home to that squished up snorting face, life is just good. She’s a doll, and I love all those folds and rolls.
I learned something from this thread.
When I posted that I didn’t get natural childbirth, I thought people did it out of some weird (to me) desire to experience the pain of childbirth. Now I know that at least for some people, experiencing the pain is a tradeoff they make to help their baby. It’s almost certainly not a choice I would make for myself when the time comes, but I can understand why someone would make that choice.
Anne, I’ve had natural childbirth, and in my experience it was by no means an intolerable pain. I’ve had migraines that were far worse. I hope you’ll find that comforting! 
I think the Scion XB looks more like the feet of Voltron, the giant Japanese robot from the '80s that transformed into 15 small vehicles.
Indeed, it does. However, I think that is a good thing. Nowaday, I think all cars look like seed pods. I recall when I was a child, cars had actual angles to them.
You know, most people I meet think of lions when they think of Voltron, Defender of the Universe, but they forget there was another team.
Yes! I don’t see how I could ever communicate simply with e-mail and feel that I had any sense of the person.
For those of us who have trouble reading non-verbal signals, communicating simply with e-mail is great. We don’t have to worry that we’re sending nonverbal messages that we don’t intend to by tone of voice or body language, and we don’t have to worry that the other person expects us to pick up on those cues from them.
It’s good, too, because someone can get to know us at least a little without having to get over that barrier of no non-verbal communication. Then, if they’ve decided we’re decent people, they might be willing to overlook some of the awkwardness that comes from not getting non-verbal signals.
Doctors who think babies and small children don’t really feel pain.
Not just circumcisions, but thoracic and abdominal surgeries using nothing more than a muscle relaxant.
Try asking yourself why there is a need to promote the lack of belief in something, or why there is a need to assert that a fundamental belief by others is nothing more than a delusion or a purely sociological mechanism created from nothing more than a “need” to alleviate fear or desperation, if existence without this belief is truly so complete and satisfying. Then imagine someone free of that need.
What I don’t get is why moderators are allowed to edit their own posts to correct typos or grammatical mistakes, when the rest of us isn’t.
I totally agree–If they think about it there is no scientific reason to believe that. I think the misconceptions get started as a way to alleviate guilt or concern about causing a baby or child pain, and has been perpetuated without question.
Wow, cool thread. I can relate to so much stuff…here are some of mine not yet mentioned here:
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roller coasters. Pleeeezze… If someone wanted to find the ideal way to torture me, this would be it. And I’ve only been on little, kiddie-style roller coasters in my lifetime. I am just absolutely, totally stupefied how people enjoy roller coasters.
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road rage. I just don’t get it. People getting insanely upset over another person’s bad driving, and feeling the need to retaliate and thereby perhaps putting oneself in mortal danger for what you perceive is someone else’s stupidity…
– video games. Actually, I think someone else did mention this one. I’m convinced there’s a video game gene, and I just don’t have it. My husband and kids all have it. They play it constantly. They fight for it. Hubby will play for 8 hours straight to get to that next level because it’s that important. . I don’t get it.
If you’re walking down the sidewalk and you happen to bump into somebody by accident, you (usually) automatically give an “oops…sorry” look, thus preventing an altercation.
Inside a vehicle, the “oops…sorry” look cannot be easily seen by the offended party, thus rage can retaliate and escalate to a level far beyond the initial offense.
Modern art I can pretend to get. What makes me nuts are the people who write about it.
From here:
“his…sculptures defy the macho solidity of Minimalist form, while playfully expanding upon the seriality of the genre and the quotidian nature of its materials.”
Huh? How about:
“‘Untitled’ (Passport), a stack of blank white paper, suggests a world without arbitrary borders and assigned nationalities, offering dreams of unfettered space and boundless travel.”
Looks like a stack of blank, white paper to me, but I guess it’s one way an english major with a minor in art history can feed themselves…
Oh, yeah. And add Yankee fans to the list.
Piercings: Actually, I don’t really “get” jewelry in general, but particularly not the kind that you have to puncture yourself for.
Perfect Lawns: I can understand not letting it get overgrown (if only to keep from tracking bugs in), but the common obsession with tracking down every weed just seems silly. If I could get away with it, I’d put in Astroturf.