Only one year? 
Oops, I should read the boards more often.
I just think wanting a certain gender and honking on about it is pointless and stupid, since you get what you get unless you do IVF and test pre-implantation. You are welcome to want what you want in your heart of petty little hearts, but when you go on and on about it to me, I am going to judge you in my own heart of petty little hearts.
And what’s wrong with it? Well, in the people I’ve talked with, it seems they’re already planning to jam their poor kid into some awfully outdated gender roles and they haven’t even met them yet.
You didn’t answer my question, although since you got what you wanted I suppose you’re not fit to–should I offer consolations to the person who’s made a big fucking deal over having wanted a certain gender when they find out that’s not what they’re getting? It seems unnecessary, after all, they usually seem to love the baby just the same and get over the disappointment pretty quickly, which is another reason I think they’re stupid for going on about wanting whatever in the first place. The “we’re trying for a boy again!” announcement of a subsequent pregnancy irks me though.
Those are my options? Guess I’ll take statistical outlier then. Your reading comprehension isn’t too great, but I didn’t spell it out in big glittery letters so I guess I can see why you couldn’t figure it out. My problem is with people who go on and on about wanting a boy (or very rarely, a girl), not all pregnant women. Your assertion that “most” people want a certain gender might be true, although it isn’t true for me (hell, I’d be happy with a whippet puppy as long as it was healthy although I’m sure our insurance company would call shenanigans), and if “most” people want a certain gender, most of the people we know keep that to themselves.
It is perhaps a coincidence that those who voice the desire are also just idiots in the rest of their lives. And it really does seem that the best way to have a baby of the opposite gender to that wished for is to tell me the wish. NEVER have they got what they wanted. If I was inclined toward schizophrenia or solipsism I would think I had something to do with it, but as it is, I’ll just chalk it up to more perversity in the absurd panoply of human experience.
I think you are projecting, but you are welcome to feel insulted on the behalf of someone I’ve never met. Your defensive hissiness reinforces my generally poor opinion of people who care about the gender of the baby. Nowhere did I say that they love the unwanted gender any less, as stupid as these people are, I don’t think they are so stupid as to voice such a thing to me were it true. And I don’t presume to know what’s in their hearts, I am glad to suppose they love the children they’re stuck with despite having wanted a different gender. As I said, I just think it’s a slap in the face when people honk on about “trying for a boy!” especially when they have more than a couple children, and some old enough to hold on to the significance of such a statement and pass it along to the others.
In fairness though, I get that there isn’t much to talk about in pregnancy that doesn’t stray into the realm of medical issues and is potentially unsuitable for dinner table conversation. I generally content myself with asking them how they feel and playing the Inappropriate Baby Name game.
I am curious as to why exactly people want a certain gender so badly. Certainly there are developmental differences in general between genders, but given the wide variety of personalities and differences within individuals that aren’t split across gender lines, I really do not see the point in focusing on it and getting as worked up as some of these people I know–thankfully no one I’ve met has been as bad as the stories I’ve heard (the worst of the top of my head is the father who after finding out it was a girl refused any further involvement or acknowledgment of the pregnancy, but he did come around after she was born) but still, I just find it odd.
I guess a lot of people become parents to live their childhoods over again, which I can understand well enough, within reason. I think I’m uncomfortable with the idea of people having such a rigid plan and idea of their kid’s future and activities and those being so intertwined with their idea of what girls or boys can or cannot do. So I came into the mini-rants to bitch about my discomfort. This is way more energy than I thought I’d waste on a problem that isn’t really mine. Hooray for the internet.
Maybe not so much a problem, as there’s nothing to solve, but an annoyance. Stupid people raising kids and perpetuating idiotic gender stereotypes irritate me. That may be a separate, much wider spread issue than wanting a certain gender, but it does seem indicated by the behavior of said stupid people.
Guess you’ve never heard of Henry VIII, have you? 
At least his mania for a son was as an heir to a throne in a world where women had few rights and were viewed as weak, not just so he could have a boy to put into the local Little League.
Interestingly enough, gender isn’t just a 50/50 thing. More like 51/49. 
But weirdly, amidst my own friends, there is definitely a trend. A few years ago, it seemed like everyone was having girls. I think it was something like six girls to one boy. Now it seems the trend has turned toward boys, with so far one lone girl to six boys. Strange also that my friends seem to breed in seven pair waves. I will feel badly when I remember any others I forgot, but you get my anecdotal point, I think. Anyone else notice this?
Anyway, another odd thing about birth and gender is that fewer boys are being born in industrial nations now. The differences are small percentage-wise but add up to the thousands over the whole. More boys are born than girls (the previous 51/49 ratio) but fewer boys live to adulthood. I guess girls should be grateful for the gender stereotypes that keep them safe but bored and not participants in the risk-taking behaviors boys are often enrolled in.
And for the people who care about the gender of their baby when trying to conceive there is purportedly a way to “try for” a boy or a girl as male sperm cells move faster but die more quickly, so timing sex with ovulation can have some small influence. With the numbers involved though, it’s a slot game with long odds, pardon the puns.
I don’t see it - are you the girl who threw the puppies in the river?
I love you most of the time and all that, but I can’t find smaller sizes. Oh, yes, there are bollos individuales. Sold by the six-pack at the baker’s and by the dozen at supermarkets. Baking one fist-sized bread every morning sounds like too much effort even for sunny-side-ups.
I just want a bit of bread to soak in my sunny-side-ups, I don’t need a freaking kilo bag, but nobody will sell me less.
OMG!! Teh Salmonellas!!!
Just kidding - someone had to say it!
I *registered *back in 2004, but I’ve only really been active since maybe April or May of 2009.
Fuck no! I committed the cardinal sin of flushing my tampons unless I’m specifically requested not to do so. (Horrors!)
Move to Japan. I was excited to find a loaf at the supermarket that had eight whole slices (!!!).
And it’s all the same to me if you want to eat gross freezer bread. Fact remains that it’s not gonna taste as good.
No shit. Speaking as another front desk clerk who is overqualified for her job but accepted it due to economic meltdown, at least fake it 'til you make it. And speaking as the morning person, I’m very nice to the regular night auditor (which I assume you are, Lacunae.) The relief auditor I’m not nice to, but everyone hates her and she doesn’t do her damn job, which brings me to my first rant:
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Relief Auditor, do your damn job! I don’t care if you pull out the forms for me to fill out in the morning, saving me all of six seconds of pulling them out of the drawer myself. I still have to redo your room assignments almost every time you do them. There is a comment box that gives preferences and special requests. Read it. Follow it. See my mood improve. Also, please stay on your side of the desk when we work together. Do not hang over me to see what I’m doing. Worry about yourself rather than everyone else.
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Housekeepers, will you please at least find out if we’re hiring before you send all your friends and relatives here to apply for jobs? Or will you at least tell them to call before they spend all morning getting dressed up and money on bus fare to get down here? I’m tired of dealing with your angry friends when I have to tell them we’re not hiring.
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Managers, will you please come up with a better system to let me know if we’re hiring than “note magically appears taped to the counter”? Announce it at the morning meeting or pull me aside and tell me or something. I have having to guess half the time.
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Random people coming in off the street to ask for jobs, will you at least dress decently? Looking like you just rolled out of the dumpster is not going to get you an application.
You’d *rather *have to waste your time reading their application or interviewing them to figure out that they’d be terrible? I’d think you’d be *happy *they effectively walked in with a sign saying “Don’t even bother.”
I need the George Carlin version of that sign: Don’t Tell Me Your Troubles, Lady!
Go fuck yourselves bus drivers:
http://news12.com/articleDetail.jsp?articleId=260316&position=1&news_type=news
:rolleyes:
In this economy be grateful you even have a job, you morons. Thanks for forcing my husband into an unwanted day off assholes. I’m normally sympathetic to labor but frankly some of these drivers are simply the nastiest people I’ve ever met. They’re frequently late and often quite rude to passengers. They don’t always stop at the designated bus stops.
I hope you all get fired.
Just FYI, when I clicked on the link, all I got was a page asking if I was a Cablevision customer with access to News 12, and if I wasn’t, then I could subscribe for the low, low price of $4.95/month!
My rant of the week:
Hey local Sprint store…how about you get with the fucking program and have the phones you’re supposed to have when you are supposed to have them? I am trying to give you business by enrolling as a new customer because you have the gorgeous, shiny, and sexy Epic 4G as your exclusive version of the Galaxy S, and you have a cheaper plan, AND I can get a 23% discount on the already cheaper plan because my employer has some sort of deal with you. So money savings and cool phones all around!
You were supposed to have the phone on Aug 30th…it is now Sep 1st, and no phone.
I stopped in on the 30th and the nice girl said “oh no, not till 10:30 tomorrow.” I knew the official release date was Aug 30th, but ok, whatever. Getting an actual time that they will have them is usually a good sign. I reserved one since they might not get a lot, and I couldn’t get there till 5.
I came back to pick it up on the 31st…and no. The guy said that UPS didn’t have them today, and they don’t know where they are, but should have them tomorrow.
So today, rather than drive my car (with no AC) all the way out there after work, I tried to call…but that’s a no go. The phone number listed when I google the store location doesn’t work. I check yellowpages.com, and it has the same number.
sigh
So I head out there again, and once again, no Epic 4G phones. The girl says they don’t know what UPS or FedEx is doing (so now FedEx is getting involved too?) But hopes they get here tomorrow. Yeah, you and me both. And I asked about the non-functioning phone number and she says,
“Oh yeah, that one’s wrong…we don’t know why they list the wrong one, here’s the right one…” so at least now I can actually call and not have to blindly drive over there.
But seriously, WTF?! I thought that when they do big phone rollouts like this the stores usually have the phones a few days before the date, so they are all set, ready to go the day of. If I was manager of that location I would have been calling Sprint HQ if they hadn’t arrived by the end of last week. And if UPS (or FedEx?) is four days later delivering a package I’d be bitching up a storm to them, too! That is un-fucking-acceptable!
The only other good news is that apparently Sprint takes other carriers phone for trade ins, so my pretty beat-up, slow-as-Hell, and two-generation-behind iPhone 3G is worth $85 off the price of the new phone. That’s probably pretty close to what I might have been able to sell it for, and it will be easier.
Sorry about that. This one should work:
I have no fucking sympathy for them. They’re low skilled workers in a lousy economy who frankly don’t do their jobs very well. A few years ago one slack jawed jackass ranted at me for breastfeeding my baby discretely because a fellow passenger whined about it. I hope the bus company fires all of them. They’re making my husband’s difficult commute even harder and for that they can drop dead.
Dear brother:
Our parents were married for 50 years today. The party for them is Saturday. You haven’t done a fucking thing about it-- not the newspaper announcement you volunteered to do – not even TELL YOUR OWN WIFE when it was. Mom had to put her own announcement in the paper and I filled in SIL.
There are people driving in from three states away to honor our parents, who richly deserve it. They do not deserve you. If don’t even SHOW UP to this thing, I wash my hands of you. I do not believe that you cannot get one hour off from work for your PARENT’S 50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY. You will call in sick to catch a ball game. You could work this out if you even halfway tried.
And I will have no guilt whatsoever for continuing to use the phrase, “My mother may have raised a fool, but it wasn’t me.”
Dearest Coworkers,
Please consider IM to be very much like any other communication. Which means tell the other person when you are signing off, have ended your end of the conversation, etc. Don’t make me sit there waiting for an answer from you, or any kind of reply, because you went off to do something else in the middle of our talk. You wouldn’t do that on the phone, so don’t do it in IM. Courtesy, people. Courtesy!
Boggette, that reminded me of having wings last Wednesday with a younger person (mid-twenties, I think). The conversation went like this; “That sounds interesting. So, how did you guys like…{checks iPhone, types a little bit}…your trip to the Northwest Territories?” “Really? It was like a maritime town?..{checks iPhone, types a little bit}…” repeat throughout the entire evening. She’s a nice girl, and I think she is probably representative of her whole generation, but it was driving me batty - put the freaking iPhone/blackberry away for two whole freaking hours. I swear to God, your world won’t end if you pay attention to the people you’re actually with.
In other irritations, I keep finding the perfect job except for one deal-breaker. Wah. And then when I do find the perfect job and apply for it, I don’t hear back from them. Double wah.
Goddamn mother *fucking *Microsoft! I just figured out a work-around to a stupid, stupid thing Power Point does. Open up a second Power Point doc, and it won’t do it! IT JUST DID IT IN THE PREVIOUS DOCUMENT and now it won’t do it under the exact same circumstances!
FUCK YOU, YOU STUPID FUCKERS!
Oh yeah, that reminds me of my other irritation - the stupid AirPort Express base station in our house has to be replaced. Now instead of just the laptop losing the wifi internet, the desktops have started losing it, too. “Your computer is not connected to the internet.” Bah.
Sigh. Ellipses have three dots. Three dots! Not five, not four, not six. Three! This would go a lot faster if I didn’t have to correct this over and over.
Also Stop With the random Capitalizing. It takes me twice as long as it should to do your presentations because I end up fixing all this stupid crap.
Had a woodpecker putting holes in my house. Borrowed a very long ladder, climbed up, patche the hole, covered it with flashing, and waited.
He didn’t return, so I thought everything was fine. A couple weeks later, I returned the ladder. The NEXT DAY I notice the woodpecker found a different spot, and has made another hole.
@#$%!!!
Two parts - the first part is people who plant shrubs in stupid places, and the second part is, "GAH! SPIDERS ON ME! GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!
I’ve got the rose bushes moved now, and I hope they survive the move, but at least they aren’t in the middle of my planned development any longer. Well, they were never in the middle of it; just off to the side, getting in the way.