Things you just don't get.

In My Humble Opinion
101

Funerals.

Spend money (that you need) on a $6000 box (that nobody needs) to bury the decaying shell of a loved one in the ground.

Then stand around and cry. (Okay, I can understand the crying about the cost of a funeral … )

My wife and family have VERY explicit instructions:
Put me in a very cheap pine box.
Then a very hot furnace.
Scatter the elements of my remains to the four winds to help replenish the earth that supported me.
This is the way that nature intended.

Then go out and have a party.
Play music that I loved.
Dance, and remember that I loved to dance.
Celebrate my life, as I will celebrate yours if you should go before me …

If you bury my remains in a box in the ground to keep my remains from returning to the earth – and then cry over my grave while making some mortician a little richer – I will find a way to come back and haunt you.

And your decendents.

102

Obsessive interest in sports. OK, so you like watching a bunch of sweaty guys running around playing kids’ games. Fine, no skin off my rosy nose, whatever floats your boat. But what’s with the obsession? What’s with the dumbfoundedness when I say I don’t care about sports?

Emotional attachment to music, well, to anything that doesn’t matter, really. I listen to what I listen to, you listen to what you listen to. Why is this a big deal to you? Why are you compelled to trash my music and elevate yours to the skies? Why do you connect your self-esteem to your taste in music to this ridiculous, harmful degree?

Dressing in a certain way because you have a certain political viewpoint, taste in music and so forth. I dress as comfortably as possible while still retaining the bare minimum of social acceptance. If some people prefer to dress for appearance, OK, different strokes and all that. But covering yourself in black, dying your hair, getting pierced and getting tattooed because you like black metal… isn’t that kind of pathetic? Aren’t you a pretty obvious poser when you do that? Or is it just a coincidence that people who like black metal just happen to think piercings and black clothes are really beautiful?

Some of the pubescent boys on a message board I’m moderating. Since I’m the most active moderator there, and a by-the-book kind of moderator, I have a reputation among the not-so-bright bulbs (teenage rebels, you know the kind) to be a ban-first-and-ask-questions-later dictator. They complain about my reign of terror and apparently live in fear of being banned out of the blue. Then, why are they so unpleasant towards me, why do they keep mouthing off after they’ve been told to stop, and why do they keep breaking the rules? Shouldn’t the fear of my banhammer make them act better rather than worse?

Gender, or, more specifically, people who care about it. I couldn’t care less about an attribute I consider to be entirely physical. Women are generally speaking more physically attractive than men, that’s it, move on.

Monosexuality. Linked to the one above. Why anyone would ever say “I’m 100% gay/straight, not interested in the other/same sex, noway, nohow” is beyond me. I understand sentiments like “I’ve never met a man I was attracted to and I doubt I ever will, but if it happens, we’ll see”, but not the categorical denial of any possibility of a relationship with a member of half the world’s population. I don’t get it intellectually and I don’t get it emotionally.

Religion. Believing in a deity is so beyond me that I cannot help believing that the vast majority of those who say they believe are fibbing it because they think everyone else believes and they don’t want to be ostracized.

103

Whoa! Viagra was first developed as a cardiovascular drug that just happened to have the side-effect of helping create erections. It is actually prescribed on some cases for it’s cardiovascular effects. And buying viagra funds research on a whole mess of stuff by Eli Lilly, not just Viagra II. Every drug you buy is supporting a few in development and a bunch that didn’t pan out.

As for stuff I don’t get:
J-lo’s booty.
People who don’t get religion and then exclusively use Christianity or God as examples.
Bananas. :eek:
Why anyone would want the government to take more of their money to give to those who don’t work as hard.
How malware is legal.

104

Celebrity worship. I don’t get people who idolize anyone because s/he appears in movies or on TV. I especially don’t get people who idolize a creep like Michael Jackson, who, even if he never molested a child (I believe he did) has separated himself from human kind as much as possible both in deed and in appearance. Why would you want to get close to such a thing? It might be contagious!

I don’t get people like a fortyish woman I worked with once who besotted herself with everything Elvis - years after Elvis had died. What a sad, lonely little person.

I don’t get people who will go up to a celebrity who is having dinner and talk to him/her, as if the celeb had no life of his/her own, and demand an autograph. Gawd, people, you wouldn’t want to be disturbed by strangers in public. Why do you do that to someone else?

I don’t get sports, unless you are actually participating. Spectator sports make no sense to me at all. Well, I enjoyed Little League baseball when my nephew was playing. Other than that, ho hum.

Jewelry. The only thing I wear that is remotely like jewelry is a $20 watch. When I was married I wore a wedding ring. I was glad to while I was glad to be married. But since then, you can keep the bling.

Tattos/piercing. I don’t despise people who do it. I just don’t get it. Something that comes off, maybe, but *permanent * designs on the skin? My dad had a couple of tattoos, the first one being his Social Security number (because when he got it he couldn’t think of anything else). In later life he wished he had never done it. When he was hospitalized late in life nurses thought he was a holocaust survivor with a serial number. I had an uncle who got several tattos when he was in the Navy during the Korean Conflict (it was a war, but, you know). When he grew up he wished he could get rid of them. Removal is both painful and not complete, so he died with them. He was a very intelligent man. He just looked stupid with his shirt off.

Rap. Poetry? Come on. It’s no more poetry than the sing-song rhymes little girls used to do to skipping rope, and often less intelligent.

There’s a lot more that I don’t get, but I’m already coming off as a cranky old man. And I can’t remember any more. :slight_smile:

105

I don’t get why I want to defend everything on here that I like that you all don’t get. :smiley: Others laugh it off, I want to google every great rap song I’ve ever heard and post the lyrics, show you tattoo haters pictures of my friends and their beautiful art, etc., etc. I can’t imagine being so closed off to that kind of stuff. But then I love the exotic nuances of art and music and just about everything.

I hate that I take everything personally. I know it’s not meant like that all the time. It’s just that people have to be so freaking mean about their dislikes, and that drives me nuts!

106

I think your skin could use some thickening. This is about what we don’t get. I don’t get piercings (I do get tattoos… a bit), but I don’t go around actively disliking them, I don’t verbally attack pierced people, I don’t picket to get piercings outlawed and quite frankly I don’t care much either way. I just don’t get it.

107

I also don’t get people who try to open a dialogue about whether or not god exists by calling said deity a “Pink Fairy” or likening him/her/it to a leprechaun (sp?). If you start out hostile and derrogatory, you’re not going to get a debate, you’ll get a conversation that quickly degenerates into a flame war. I’m on the fence about god myself, but I think it’s rude for either side to a) in the case of the religious side, tell the other that they’re going to hell for not having a specific belief or b) deride the other’s beliefs.

I also don’t get how people can get so heated about bare feet. I know this was mentioned earlier, but there was another thread regarding bare feet in public that had a slightly different spin. Apparently a guy was on a bus when a woman he knew from work put her bare feet on the side of his seat. He asked her not to saying that it was unsanitary (personally I agree, given what I’ve seen people leave on the floor of our city buses, but that’s just me). A lot of people told this guy he was an asshole and completely rude for saying so, said the floor of the bus was no more unsanitary than anywhere else, and indeed was probably cleaner than his hands. Even more people talked about how they walked around barefoot at the office all the time, etc. I didn’t understand the vitriol - the girl did something the guy didn’t like, he asked her to stop. Could have been slightly more diplomatic, yes, but it just wasn’t that big a deal.

108

People who aren’t curious enough. They’re not interested in anything outside of their immediate field of expertise.

109

I agree with lots of those that have already been posted. A few of my own pet ones…

  • I’ve met at least two people who never have anything to do with music. Never listen to music radio, never buy any music, never play music at home. This I just don’t get at all.

  • that perfectly intelligent people will willingly allow their own minds to be infected by mind-germs like a given, fixed religious or political point of view, that becomes a filter through which all right/wrong, yes/no ‘understanding’ is forced. As opposed to deciding that they have a mind, and they can assess each case, point or proposition on its merits, whatever the source, and whether or not the conclusion happens to be the one you would like.

  • people who never laugh, never see the funny or daft side of anything. Come on! At least 50% of life is deliciously and richly absurd when you think about it!

  • gangster rap and so-called ‘culture’, and the fact that those who control our mass media ever given them free airtime. Yep, when I turn on the TV, I really want to see a mal-educated, uncouth, poorly-dressed loudmouth, with evident disregard for things like original composition, melody or song structure, shouting aggressively into a microphone and going through exactly the same motions and gestures as everyone else operating in the same genre.

  • expensive funerals. Deal with my remains as simply and cheaply as possible, and have one helluva party in my honour.

  • that anyone bothers to interview politicians on TV. We know what tedious drivel they’re going to sit there spouting even before we start, so why bother? The easy questions get easy answers, and the ‘tough’ questions they just weasel around, evade or just plain lie about. And have you noticed how around 99% of political interviews don’t have anything to do with actual facts that can be checked or verified either way?

  • the bastardised form of so-called democracy that we all seem so content to go along with, when it’s such a far cry from what it should be. We’ve just has a ‘general election’ here in the UK, and it was a complete mockery of democracy on every criterion.

  • People who don’t love travelling.

110

I’ll have to disagree:

111

I agree with many many here (especially funerals). I’ll add Tolkien. I liked the movies okay, couldn’t make it through the novels at all, and just cannot get why so many people are just rabidly fanatical about them. (It’s not a value judgment on their taste or intelligence, I just don’t get it.)

And college football fanaticism from people who have never attended or even lived near the college. There are so many people in Alabama who have no personal connection whatever to Auburn or U of AL [in fact they may be from a family where nobody’s ever attended college] but they’re fanatically pro-Auburn or [more likely] pro-Bama- same thing with GA Tech and UGA in Georgia. Just don’t get it.

112

Animal rights. Sure you shouldn’t kick a dog for the hell of it or not feed or water pets or livestock. But viewing traditional, cultural, religous, or practical stuff like trapping, feedlots, rodeo, Halal slaugter, pincing ears, docking tails, etc. as truly cruel is just beyond bizzare to me. And wanting to use the Government to stop such practices seems totally unconscionable to me.

113

I can understand seeing some of those practises as unneccessarily cruel, because in a lot of cases the ear/tail cropping on dogs (for example) is done without anaesthesia.

And involving the government in trying to prevent these things is the best way to do it, if you really feel strongly, because people who do it aren’t going to stop just because some whackjob asked nice are more likely to stop if there’s a fine or jail sentence involved.

114

Coffe kiosks and the whole “Starbuck” subculture in general.

115

:smack: Aka “Starbucks”

116

Things I Don’t Get:
-The ROLLING STONES: why do people want to pay $500 to watch some aging rock “stars” lip-synch some songs they did 30 years ago?
-The NHL: why do highly-paidm hockey playesr want to commit economic suicide?
-The Federal Dept. of Education: what does it do?
-the AL Gore Intenet “Connectivity” Tax: don’t school kids get enough on-line time at home?
-the letters “X”, “y” and “z”-why do we have them?
-frozen pizza: everyone I’ve tried tasted horrible!

117

Fake fingernails They seem like an expensive waste of money every couple of weeks. The cashiers at the grocery store can’t pick up coins or bills well with them on. I’ve heard one has to have their real nails filed down to apply them, making the real nails very thin and weak. I think the meta-message of fake nails is “I don’t have to work with my hands for a living, so I can turn them into ornaments” except that’s not really true. Plus somethimes they are so long and colorful, the remind me of claws.

118

I am ama_ed that _ou _ould ask h those letters exist. :smiley:

119

Thank you! That took me about four reads to understand that, but at least I know now! :cool:

120

I must admit, I’m confused by that one. (Though I don’t understand the letter “c”, I can’t think of any place where it could not be replaced by either “k” or “s”).

And everyone knows we have those letters to enable us to do algebra!

I don’t understand why anyone would wear jeans without pockets in the back. They’re useless and unattractive.