Can I get a custom user title of that phrase? 
Yeah, I can see if there’s a railing, and I wouldn’t fault anybody for that (as long as they don’t literally sit right next to me, as you pointed out. Those are the good seats indeed, and there aren’t many of them to go around.
I’m thinking more of a couple of our local theaters, which are huge. The seats are arranged in shallow semicircle curves–the only aisle seats are on each end of a very long row. So if you sit near the middle of the theater in the middle of the row, then anyone sitting one row in front or behind (or even two or three) is going to get pretty much exactly the same view as I do, and identical amenities (no more leg room, no rail, etc.). In this case, and again assuming that the theater is nearly empty, I do consider it a bit rude to sit down next to me with one buffer seat. Nothing I’m going to say anything about, of course (I’d do that if you sat next to me, but I’d probably just make a Marge Simpson noise and pointedly move over) but it still is a bit irksome.
Essentially it’s a philosophical thing–I don’t have an issue with people doing whatever they want to do if that’s their preference. What I don’t like is “herd mentality”: “Ooh, the place is almost empty but there are other people there! I must be near them!” Um, no. Thanks, but no. Go sit over there. Or I will.
For only $8 it can be yours for a year!
It is rude to interrupt someone to tell them that they look like someone else.
The person interrupted didn’t ask for your opinion. The interrupted person doesn’t get a prize for looking like someone else.
Would you interrupt someone to tell them they are skinny or fat?
Control the impulse to blurt our everything that comes to mind.
So sorry, I didn’t know it had ever been discussed before. I didn’t realize it had such a huge message board history. Don’t know how I have missed it in the past, just lucky I guess.
Sorry to have reopened an old wound, but I honestly had no idea.
My bad.
Yea elbows, we shouldn’t have to tell you that it’s a sore subject and has been discussed ad nausea. 
If you’re too cheap to cough up for a membership and custom title subscription :p, you can always add it to your sig. Well, that, and you don’t mind being one of at least a half dozen people who quote me in their sigs.
Back to the OP:
If no one laughs at your jokes, maybe it’s time to stop telling them.
If you’re a student, please put your name on assignments you turn in, and if you don’t, please don’t tell me you didn’t realize you had to put your name on your paper because it wasn’t on the rubric.
Aaarrgghh.
Just didn’t show up, Really Not All That Bright. I was… Surprised. I mean, after I’d finished shaking hands with and kissing and being congratulated by fifty thousand people, and dancing and smiling and eating hummus and having a honeymoon and all that, I was surprised.
I thought about it quite a bit – I am ninety-nine point nine percent sure that I hadn’t done anything to offend these people (and if I had, I don’t think that was the time or the method for them to passively-aggressively declare it). They were all old school friends. We’d hung out pleasantly, on and off, over the years, and I thought a wedding would be a good chance to catch up properly. They agreed. Enthusiastically! And then… Nothing.
It was a low-drama wedding, too, because I’ve considered how it could have been my fault from every conceivable angle. Local, convenient, “come and hang out in a nice bar and we’ll have a drink and some hummus”, sort of thing. No pressure. No Bridezilla demands, I swear to you!
Funny business, that. Hurtful, too, if think about it. But I’m too busy being happy to be wed to think about it, so meh. Their loss. The hummus was superb.
I’m not sure if this is intended to be serious, sarcastic or in humour. I did not know this was a hot button issue, I am sorry to have picked the scab, and I have apologized. I don’t see what else I can do. Do you mean I should search every topic before responding? Know better, just because?
My apology is sincere, I was unaware this was a hot topic, and I’m sorry for the hijack. I will certainly be more careful in future.
wolf-alice, I think it’s simply that people don’t always know how to behave civilized. I invited family and friends to Jim’s birthday dinner on Sunday, and requested that they RSVP so I can make the reservation - I’ll give you a guess how many have responded at this point, and I can almost guarantee you that there will be at least one couple who won’t respond at all, yes or no. I’ll hound them tonight or tomorrow, but I shouldn’t have to - you shouldn’t have to tell people to RSVP when requested, just like you shouldn’t have to tell them to actually show up when they say they will. It turns a nice social thing into something awkward for everyone.
Just so you know, the smiley at the end of the sentence you quoted (:P) is the equivalent of :D. Except giving a raspberry. It means the sentence preceding it is intended in a lighthearted way. <Please insert joke about the fact that I shouldn’t have to tell you that here>.
For people who’ve use a computer every single day, at work, all day - going clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick on a program that is opening slowly or seems to be stuck will not make it open faster. In fact, it will probably slow it down.
At which, they call me and ask why their computer is running so slowly, and when I get there they are still going clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick on the program, which is freezing because it’s trying to open itself 95 times.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart 'cause it’s my turn in May, and I’m trying to figure out whether to overbook. We have space for 120 guests but there are like 350 people I’d like to invite.
They might be harvesting their crops in Farmville, you know.
I think they do realize it. They are selfish people who don’t want anyone sitting next to them.
Well, as far as weddings go, I’ve been “invited” to two by word of mouth, but received no written invitation. Am I the only one who was told that wedding invitations were supposed to be in writing? (I didn’t go to those ones.)
Another thing people shouldn’t have to be told … Please, please, please turn off your cell phone during a movie, people! The woman next to me was texting throughout a film in a full movie theater. She acted really put out when I asked her to turn it off, and made no move to do so.
You can’t determine that someone is “perfectly capable” by looking at them. Arthritis, pulmonary conditions, heart problems, equilibrium problems, all invisible, all could cause someone to have to stop and wait until their body is able to continue on. They might be talking on a cell phone at the time. No, you can’t always tell the difference. Stop assuming.
No, this is not an excuse. If your nose is running in a restaurant, you get up, and you go and you blow your nose in the foyer or the restroom. If spicy food affects you in that fashion, then don’t eat it in public. Do not ever, ever, ever inflict the sound of your mucous on other people in a restaurant, ever. I don’t care why your nose is running when you’re in the booth behind me, I don’t want to be put off of my food, whether you have a cold, sinusitis or it’s because you just had to get the kung pao. Get the food to go and do your unsanitary mid-meal nose-blowing in the privacy of your own home.
Did you mean to say, “They are selfish people who want their bags chucked down the length of the bus?”
Dragoncat, wedding invitations is one of the last bastions of rigourous etiquette - yes, everyone who is invited should get a written invitation. I would be very leery of a spoken invitation - you could be getting in the middle of a wedding power struggle between families and the happy couple (mom and dad want 500 people there, the couple want 50, etc.).
tumbleddown, you would have hated my experience in a restaurant last night. A couple seated themselves so the man was about two feet away from me (at a four person table - he could have taken the far seat, but no, he did not), then proceeded to blow his nose and hawk his snot throughout my entire dinner. It was…irritating.
Hmm let me think…
No.