My apologies, k.os. I thought you had repeated an observation that I had posted earlier in this thread:
“<snip>Another real gem that I see smokers doing - dumping the contents of their car ashtrays out on the pavement of parking lots. <snip>”
I see on re-reading that you were talking about dumping ashtrays out at red lights, not in the parking lot. My mistake.
(But for the record, it does still piss me off when people repeat things in threads for lack of having read the whole thread. Which you were not guilty of.:))
I haven’t read this whole thread, so if someone’s already told this story, sorry.
There was a woman in Brisbane (Australia) who was incensed by a fuckwit in a car in front who dumped the content of his ashtray out onto the road, at a red light. So she got out of her car, picked up all the butts etc (at least one of which was still burning) and dumped it all in the guys lap. He went to the police, he was given a minor fine for littering and she was given a much more serious penalty for assault or something.
Needless to say she was a bit of a hero at the time.
A hero? Because, in response to an annoying but essentially nonviolent and small-scale behavior, she deliberately and without warning dumped something that was ON FIRE into someone’s lap, potentially causing him physical harm? This is heroic behavior? Heroic?
Well, that settles it. My neighbor hasn’t had his car inspected. It could be dangerous. Tomorrow, I’m going beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat. From behind. 'Cause I want to be a hero.
They do a beach cleanup every year in Chicago. One year not too long ago, they separated the garbage. The amount of cigarette butts was a huge percentage of the total garbage collected. I guess a beach looks like a giant ashtray.
Don’t find fault with cigarette smokers.
Just point out that:
R.J. Reynolds died of lung cancer
R.J. Reynolds II died of lung cancer
R.J. Reynolds III died of lung cancer
The people who have been supplying you with cigarettes have been lying to you for years and have been gouging you on prices that make the 7/11 stores look like pikers.
Nope, not a smoker, do not toss my gum wrappers on the ground, and have gotten into arguments with friends who do so.
I’m just firmly opposed to the idea of physically hurting someone, causing them pain and possible injury, as a response to a transgression as small as this one is. There are any number of things that irritate me, and that are against the law, and yet I don’t feel compelled to or justified in beating the hell out of those who do them, throwing rocks at those people, or setting them on fire.
Just throwing my support behind the idea of proportional response, and definitely rejecting the idea that someone who goes out of their way to commit physical violence in response to littering is a “hero.”
Firstly, the guy who had the trash thrown through his window was not hurt. Secondly, I agree with the principle of what you are saying. Perhaps it would have been a little wiser to stamp out the burning butt before throwing the stuff through the guy’s window.
But thirdly, aren’t you creating a bit of a straw man at which to throw your burning butts? The woman threw one smouldering cigarette butt at a guy in a car who has clothes on and is stationary, stopped at a traffic light. He was unhurt, as there was a 99% chance he would be. She did not (to use your rather extreme examples) “beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat” nor “beat the hell out of him” nor “set him on fire” nor “throw rocks at him”. If she had done those things, I don’t think any of us would be suggesting that her response was proportionate. Frankly, you are only able to imply her response was particularly disproportionate by exaggerating what she did.
It verges on the offensive to suggest that the woman did what she did to be a hero, as you imply above. Neither you nor I know precisely what motivated her, but I think almost certainly she did it because she was incensed by the behaviour of the litterbug. She would not have known that he would press charges and turn the whole thing into a cause celebre in which she was the “hero”.
Finally, even if she was a bit over the top in her actions (particularly as regards the smouldering butt) I have been far too close to being burned by careless smokers waving their fag around with wild abandon in bars and so on to give a shit, frankly.
