Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@NEStalgia "wow, it really WAS the Dutch the effed up NY centuries ago!"

No, not really. It was just me explaining the ways of a big city, which nowadays almost all seem to be filled with mostly self-absorbed and solitary beings, whereas in our grandparents' days, people would all still greet each other on the street, and even when I was still young, we had a good relationship with our neighbors, with them sometimes even babysitting me and my sister, and later on bringing us to swimming classes. But nowadays, that kind of behavior has all but disappeared from big cities, and has moved to the country side.

My father lives in a small village, and over there, it's still like in the old days. You wave hello to people walking past your window, you great each other when you pass each other in your car, and you chat when you're standing on the street. In the apartment I live in, it's the bare minimum, so only chats when absolutely necessary, and other than that, it's just the aforementioned polite greetings when coming or going.

As for America: if it weren't for the Dutch, you never even would have had, and/or regained, New York and Brooklyn, so you should be thanking them instead of making fun of them.

@Heavyarms55 I think I forgot a smiley when mentioning the size of your apartment, but even so, I'd imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find an apartment of the size that I'm living in on your end of the globe, and in the bigger cities. Let alone for an affordable rent.

@HobbitGamer I'll keep it in mind, and whenever I'm in the mood and have the opportunity, I might just try a bit of carrot cake, to see what all the fuss is about. Chances are, it's made differently over here, though. Or probably in every shop and/or home, so ultimately, I may never experienced the kind of carrot cake that you all have in mind.

All I could think of when I saw two X's with a lot of space in between them, is Xenoblade Chronicles X, but that's probably not it...

@bimmy-lee Good luck quitting smoking. I know it's hard, because I've had to do it myself once. Never went back, though, so luckily, I managed to get rid of that foul habit once and for all.

@ThanosReXXX Well I don't know how big your place is, so I can't say, but take what you read online with a grain of salt. The super tiny apartments you can see online do exist, but they are the bottom end of things. And Japan is much more than big city. It still has a lot of countryside and plenty of small towns. And I actually live in the second smallest town in one of the most rural prefectures of Japan.

@Tyranexx @Heavyarms55 I thought everyone lived for the weekends. Who lives for the misery of the weekday? Monday through Friday afternoon exist just to get to Friday evening.

@ThanosReXXX Please, please, please take back NY and every last POS in it or recently spawned from it. PLEASE!! Saves me a lot of nukes to buy..... I may have to declare war on the Dutch simply for enabling NY to exist.

@bimmy-lee Thanks! I should get a little time to myself - at least for a couple of evenings - and hope to devote myself to some unwind time. I'll be taking my work laptop though, so it's very possible that I'll end up working on an emergency. I seriously hope not lol.

But yeah, I don't do most powerful smells. Perfumes, colognes, some livestock smells (hogs, ugh), and some of our haunted house's own smells bother me. I don't get sick, it's more like taking a proverbial fist to the nose. Thankfully i can "shut off" my nose to an extent without pinching it.

@Heavyarms55 It's not as bad as it used to be for the most part, but my schedule lately has made weekends an absolute must. Things should slow down a little in November, then the holidays will hit. XD

@ThanosReXXX It's a mixed reference to a Treehouse of Horror Episode from The Simpsons that's a parody of The Shining (called The Shinning). The original phrase used is "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", and the episode uses "No TV and no beer makes Homer go crazy".

Unless you DID understand the reference and my reading comprehension/context meter is way off at the end of a bonkers week....

@NEStalgia It depends on the week for me lol. Before I changed jobs, I almost literally did live for the weekends. Some weeknights aren't bad these days though. October is normally one of my busiest months, along with July, March, and December.

@Heavyarms55 Well, besides the obvious sources, I also did some assuming, based on you telling about your room, also in the Ring Fit Adventure comments section, so either you have a smaller living room than mine, or you've got a LOT of stuff in there, making moving around with a fitness device nigh on impossible.

Either way, the total square surface of my apartment is 68m², so that's roughly 223,1ft², which is well above average for an apartment in any city worldwide.

For clarity's sake: I didn't mean to imply that I believe that ALL of Japan is living in box-apartments, I may not be all that well-versed in the ways of Japanese living, but at the same time, I'm not that oblivious...

I actually did want to add that you'd probably have an easier time finding affordable and spacious living room in the outskirts and upstate parts of cities in my previous comment, but I kinda figured that was stating the obvious, so I left it out.

@NEStalgia I think you're forgetting all about our resident New Yorker rjejr. He may be living upstate NY, but he'd probably still not appreciate people bashing the general area regardless...

@Tyranexx Ah, yes, of course. How the heck could I have forgotten about that one? Pfff... I'm getting too old for these kinds of things...

#TGIF

@ThanosReXXX I don't think he's upstate, I think he's nearish the radioactive glowing crater to be city. Still, I don't think he'd disagree much. He wouldn't be much of a New Yorker if he didn't hate everyone else around him....

If he's really upstate though he'll definitely agree. The rest of NY hates NYC, it's really a Jersey city the state have to pay for, and has nothing otherwise in common with NY state culture.

@NEStalgia Well, I do remember him mentioning it a couple of times. He definitely doesn't live in the city, that's for sure. And he has a house with a garden and a swimming pool, so there's got to be plenty of space where he lives.

Late replies will be my legacy over here. Token random babble, I decided to clear my Poké backlog before Swish comes out but then saw a few DS games I was still missing when I was out shopping. Promptly increased my Poké backlog by three titles and am now busy playing Pearl. Whoops.

@bimmy-lee "Just want you to know I wasn’t ignoring you, and I appreciate the discussion." - Well, I can pretty much return this considering how belated my reply is. Thank you very much for the nice chat and likewise! Also, wishing you best of success with quitting. You can do it!

@Tyranexx I shall join that club, both the non-smoking as well as having a sensitive nose. I'm suffering from sensory overload mainly affecting my sense of smell, hearing, and temperature (heat) which does not make life particularly pleasant considering how many people are either loud and/or assault their surroundings with strong smells (perfume, smoke, after-shave, sunscreen, spray deodorant...). It just makes my everything burn all the way down to my lungs, instantly, and it sticks for a long time (or in the case of hearing makes me feel like someone's punching or stabbing my brain with every "bad" sound and, again, sticks around). Burning wood is another thing which I cannot quite handle which is a bad combination during holiday season as my parents have a woodburner and mother's prone to freezing. Though it's not nearly as bad as cosmetics and smoke.

On that note, nice to hear I'm not alone.

@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.