Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@ThanosReXXX Pretty sure he mentioned the island with one bridge, so I'm pretty sure we know where he is and that it's close to the city Fine, we'll ship back the rest to Ned except for his little island in the sun....

@KrateLuigi Fun fact here: I've discovered there's no such thing as an inside voice. EVERYBODY JUST TALKS LIKE THIS ON A REGULAR BASIS ALL DAY EVERY DAY AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW LIBRARIES ARE EVEN A THING.

@NEStalgia On the other hand, he IS the proverbial "now get off my lawn" guy, so your New Yorkers all hate each other theory might still stick. Sure makes living over here a lot friendlier, regardless of the minimal social interaction and mutual courtesies...

@ThanosReXXX I mean the "NEC" makes the French seem friendly and hospitable....

@bimmy-lee Yep. It’s the lifestyle for me that’s the real kicker. Or as I call them, smoke times. I’m always doing something else at the time (like right now), so the association is the issue.
I quit drinking after 10 years (6th sober year this month), so cigarettes are my next cut out.

@NEStalgia Well, they actually are. Not the city people, but in the villages? Utterly polite and charming.
I have a feeling that this difference is probably quite often the same wherever you go. Cities do things to people, unnatural things. Small wonder that there's far more cases of stress and burnouts in cities than in villages or small towns.

@ThanosReXXX It's true...everything about cities destroys everything human about an area. At least the good parts of human. Unfortunately where I am...it was never "rural" it wasn't quite the urban "suburbia" either...it was a nice area.....lots of space between things, lots of woods, not too crowded, a nice perfect "middle America' livable place.

Over the past 10 years, and especially for the past 4 years it's been moving at warp speed, it's all being annihilated. As of the past 3 years virtually everything I knew has been ripped out, and bulldozed. Half the roads have turned into 6 lane highways, and the rest are bottlnecked all the time. And they're not done building! Every piece of woodland is either a bulldozed "coming soon" site or a "parcel 12 acres - prime lot!" ready to be sold. All the places I used to go either just to enjoy or do things - gone. Pretty much everything. They're building a city right on top of my head. What's going up in place if nice little places, family places, places to just go and enjoy? 6+ floor 300+ luxury apartments (when I say luxury we're talking solid oak walls, marble veneer pillars with in-wall waterfalls. These people pay more in monthly rent than you and I make in 5 months total. And I'm of course supposed to match their spending to live in their world.) There's now 6 of those going up. They look like hotels. Gargantuan single-solid-wall towering behemoths that blot the sky and dwarf anything else. If it's not that it's 800+ luxury townhomes, carriage homes, 55+ community, etc. if it's not that it's 5+ floor glass & concrete office buildings, endless medical complexes, whole complexes of them. Most "normal" retail has collapsed. But that's the thing...it's not even normal city where there's public spaces and things to do or things for everyone to use. It's 100% all the public space being torn down and replaced with private upscale living, upscale corporate headquarters (with transplated or imported workers staffing them), and, since all the upscale folks come from NY (and overseas) to fill these upscale jobs and live in upscale housing, they bring their upscale cars, upscale habits, upscale taxes, and upscale ways of life with them.....so when they tear down the nice store or family eatery, place to just go, sit, and appreciate, it gets "offset" by more upscale dining, or upscale corporate chain food for people that drop $15+/day for lunch like it's a vending machine. Then everyone else gets priced out, and even more closes. And meanwhile for miles and miles around there's absolutely NOTHING usable for normal folks. Just expensive private lots for living, expensive private lots for coprorations, and expensive dining. Nothing else at all, in any direction. So your 4 walls of your living space and your workplaces are all you ever see. There's nothing else TO see. 8 walls until you're dead, looking at 4 more walls. Plus food shopping in between. 4 more walls.

And there's the endless stream of NY plates replacing the population with their own grotesque invasion force. I look around, my entire culture is gone...I'm a foreigner...an alien....there is no "home" - I'm just plopped in a foreign civilization I'm absolutely not a part of in any way like a big "your kind isn't welcome here" sign...hung by new arrivals. And it will only continue to get worse, forever. Probably after the uber rich burn out the economy then it becomes crime ridden gangland slums. Just as it always does, and the hotel-esque monoliths of wealth become projects and crack houses.

So yep, the whole "NEC" exists in a state of perpetual misery and hating everyone else around you. In my case I see them as an army of foreign invaders like a legion of Roman centurions conquering and converting my homeland.

But I still become increasingly convinced the Dutch are responsible for that culture, albeit 200 years ago, the more you describe it.

Interesting thing about living in the rural deep south is that it sort of feels like you're inhabiting a place that was frozen in time forty years ago.

Large cities feel like futuristic otherworlds in comparison.

I tried the coffee coke thing and I'm not sure if the idea of liquid coffee caramels in my mouth is that appealing.

Ain’t that the truth. On my 15-18 minute drive between home and work I see restaurants, a shopping center, a huge fancy college; then a peanut silo and sifter facility, 6 cotton fields, and two horse ranches. Even a few run down spooky historical houses.

Nestalgia should just move southeast. That’ll give him another good 50 years of spacious land.

@NEStalgia Shoulda known that I was going to trigger a text wall with that specific comment of mine...

And spacing please, my friend, spacing. The amount of text alone is already vast enough to lose thread.
But your point about the Dutch is moot, because I wasn't describing them anymore. That point was already dropped on my side, when I mentioned our resident New Yorker several comments ago. I was talking about cities ALL OVER THE WORLD, not just here. Cities in general are becoming/have become conglomerates of unnatural behavior, one of the reasons why I also often state that we as organic/biological beings, are no part of the natural world/natural cycle anymore, regardless of the fact that it is our origin.

We've created this steel and concrete facsimile and expanded upon that by replacing all but the most basic natural processes by industrial ones. And we're still destroying natural areas, to populate them with even more farms and factories to produce more and more of these unnatural products, so it's not really looking too good for the generations coming after us.

P.S.

NEC? New Earth Citizen?

@ThanosReXXX - Thanks my friend. I can’t really imagine you as a smoker, but I realize how silly it is to think that as I only know you as a purple Titan, and probably shouldn’t assume anything about anyone here. I would guess that you didn’t enjoy the lack of control over a compulsory habit though. I’m glad the topic came up earlier, as I’m also using accountability as a quitting method this time. Trying to tell everyone I know that I’m quitting. I know that nobody here will ever know, and it’ll never come up again, but the shame I’ll feel in myself if I relapse is all I need.

@KarateLuigi - No worries! I did see you mention you are laying off the site to avoid Sw/Sh spoilers, but I’m not the type to hold a non reply against anyone. I’m sure I’ve lost track and done it myself. Though smoke doesn’t bother me, I have a sensitive nose as well. Cologne and perfume are the biggest offenders to me. Those can be so overpowering that it makes my ears ring. It’s strange to hear a smell, but it can happen.

@HobbitGamer - Yep, those quiet little smoke breaks are what I’ll miss. Maybe I’ll still go outside, gnaw on a carrot, and watch my dog run. Congratulations on giving up alcohol. Proud of ya. That’s no easy task. I’ve seen a family member struggle with it. Easily accessible vices are tough ones, and cigs and booze go hand in hand. I’ll have to take an alcohol break initially because a single beer crushes my will power at first. It’s all livestock, corn, and soybean fields around here once I exit the city.

@StableInvadeel - Ooh, I heard about that a while back, but didn’t know it was out. I have to try it, even if it’s a morbid curiosity. So it’s overly sweet then? Maybe someone should send one to Thanos if they aren’t available in his part of the world so he can try it on ice with a dash of Bacardi.

@bimmy-lee well, the one they sell here in Mexico is sugar-free, but it is rather sweet. As soda tends to be.

It's weird in that it tastes exactly as you'd imagine it to.

@StableInvadeel - I’ve actually mixed iced coffee and coke on my own before, but I added a few other choice ingredients as well and didn’t have a pure experience. Mexican Coke (capital C!) is a desirable thing here, or at least it was for a while. I think the sweetener used there makes it closer to the original formula. I remember older people saying it tastes like Coke used to taste before all the HFCS.

@bimmy-lee yeah I've heard about that. I guess it's because the one we have here is made here, so the recipe is probably not experimented with as much. Maybe.

I just played Kirby's Dream Course for the first time, multiplayer, and it was... weird but more entertaining than expected. Had some good laughs because neither of us knew what he was doing and failure ensued. Final result was a draw.

@bimmy-lee Thank you. And yeah, it's partly avoiding the main site but the biggest "issue" is that I struggle with being consistently active outside of messengers. I do see notifications and read them but it can take me a long time to actually write back since I don't always feel like doing a public social. So, do know that I see replies and appreciate them at least.

My condolences for having a sensitive nose btw (goes out to @Tyranexx as well). Smell doesn't make my ears ring but thanks to said physical impact stimuli have on me I can imagine the connection. Somehow this reminds me of a friend who has full-blown synaesthesia. For her (some) words have flavours, numbers are associated with colours, and materials make a sound and sometimes have a taste. For starters she cannot stand anything clay as it makes her hear a piercing, high-pitched sound and makes her taste blood. She doesn't take any substances and is of fine mental health for the record.

It was a fun conversation when I found out about how she perceives the world and she, in turn, found out that this is not normal. Nothing like a mutual "Wait, what?".

@bimmy-lee Well... you see, there's this thing in Amsterdam, about there being copious amounts of certain shops, so it wasn't just cigarettes...

I've been smoking over 10 years, and if my memory isn't failing me yet, then I've quit around 14 years ago. It was pretty damn hard in the beginning, though. Especially when going out and drinking with friends.
I definitely recognize the not knowing what to do with the leftover hand that you guys discussed earlier, so at some point, I just started drinking more slowly, so that when it was time for the next round, I could hold a glass in each hand instead...

And I'm by no means a control freak (mind you: not that you explicitly said so), but yeah, lack of constraint over substances can certainly be annoying. It feels like losing.

I can understand you trying to involve other people, but I've found that, weird as it sounds, the best remedy to stopping any addiction, is actually WANTING it and wanting to succeed in it, because just understanding that it's bad, or that you're hurting and/or disappointing friends and loved ones isn't enough.

I've experienced this myself, because I also quit drinking at one point, due to me having such a massive, probably triple hangover from New Year's Eve once, that I was still sick of it days later, and I managed to lay off the beer for almost 7 months, but then summer came, and me and my friends and colleagues hung out, someone put a beer in front of me, and I just drank it automatically.

Directly afterwards, I was kinda disappointed in myself, but also found that I enjoyed the beer, and I've always been able to keep it to an acceptable level ever since then, becoming more of a quiet enjoyer instead of a binge drinker, like I used to be when I was younger. So, in short: I never really wanted to stop drinking, I just needed some time off because I went too far, but smoking, yeah... that HAD to go.

And besides: as you know, I only drink on weekends, and never more than 4 glasses of something mixed, and if it's beer, then I'll drink 6 to 8 at most. (when I'm at a party or birthday from someone else, I drink beer, because I don't want to be an inconvenience or that one guy that they'd have to buy Bacardi for)

Oh, and as for that coffee Coke: I think I'll pass, but thanks for the offer.

@HobbitGamer that sounds So tempting. Words really can't convey the experience of having everything you've ever known, and everything with memories attached simply bulldozed right before your eyes and the entire way of life replaced wholesale within a few short years with an alien one you neither understand nor could dream of affording, and certainly aren't welcome within. "Despair" and "hatred" are far too mild terms to describe the resulting sentiments. There's no "out with the old in with the new" to move on to.... There literally nothing that replaces it but private residence.

I am currently Mr. Voorhees, I am the law at camp crystal lake since everybody keeps littering >: O WHERE DO THESE BEER CANS KEEP COMING FROM!?!

Looking for a good, out of left field movie to watch tonight thats good for Halloween. Any suggestions fellow chit chatters? I have Hulu prime and netflix

@NintendoByNature As in horror/suspense? And does it have to be Halloween-themed?
If not, then check out Crimson Peak, if you haven't seen it already. Horror in a Victorian setting. Pretty cool and creepy.