Want to buy or sell something? Check the classifieds
  • The Fedora Lounge is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Search results

  1. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    There’s a couple-three online vendors who apparently got their hands on stacks of dead-stock, never-been-used genuine Office of Civil Defense Fallout Shelter signs. At least that’s what they claim, and I have little reason to doubt it. (I’d still prefer one that had been hanging on the outside...
  2. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    A friend of the aforementioned stepfather, a career schoolteacher (he’s still among the living, by the way, although long retired, and recently widowed), told me when I was in my teens that if a higher education taught me anything of lasting value, it would be the knowledge of how little I would...
  3. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Too many of us confuse the invoking of a name (or a date or a statistic or a pithy quotation or ...) with actual understanding. There’s nothing new in this, although ready access to “information” does appear to be making those unfortunate tendencies more prevalent.
  4. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    I was raised under the tutelage (such as it was) of a fellow who behaved as though a little bit of knowledge was as good as real expertise. Of a piece with that was his habit of opining forcefully and at length on matters of which he knew very little. (And often what little bit he “knew” was...
  5. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    And then what you have is gridlock. It becomes like any form of corruption — if you don’t fight it, if you tolerate cheating, you just get more of it, to the point that you feel like a chump for playing the game straight.
  7. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    I’ve looked into getting a fallout shelter sign myself. As one who was born and passed most of his early years during the hottest parts of the Cold War, those signs really take me back. Cool design, too, those triangles in a circle. I’d prefer mine to show that it had actually been out in the...
  8. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    I wish I could say the same for (too many of) the drivers here in greater Denver. You’re up on Vancouver, right? My wholly anecdotal observation is that drivers in greater Cascadia (Northwesterners know what that means) are more observant of the rules of the road.
  9. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    I hesitate to take seriously traffic studies generated by people who drive on the wrong side of the road. :) But yeah, hard data, rigorously obtained and studied, can only verify what we already know — DON’T ENTER AN INTERSECTION IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CLEAR PATH ALL THE WAY THROUGH IT! It’s...
  10. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    What clearly impedes the flow of traffic are drivers who enter intersections they can’t get all the way through. So they’re stopped in the intersection when the light turns red in their direction and green for the drivers in the perpendicular direction who can’t proceed because of the rudenik...
  11. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    I’ve heard the same. But I don’t accept that those who move over early are impeding the flow. They aren’t preventing others from using the other lane (the one closing up ahead) and “zippering in.”
  13. tonyb

    The Era -- Day By Day

    I suspect that in most cases it’s a combination of jealousy of youth and selective memory at work. I know for a dead certainty that neither I nor the Old Man (nor the Old Man’s Old Man) would these days get away with the ill-mannered things we said and did back when I was a young fellow. I...
  14. tonyb

    The Era -- Day By Day

    ^^^^^ Looks like someone got, um, stiffed.
  15. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    I’m of the same view — you can see well ahead that a traffic lane (or two or ... ) is closed and that everyone will have to move over, and the polite among us do exactly that, well before we absolutely have to. But now I’m being told, nope, just go ahead and use the lane(s) about to close and...
  16. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    As long as we’re on bad driving habits ... For-hire drivers (and their customers) who are apparently of the view that their convenience trumps the traffic laws and everyone else’s right to unimpeded passage. You know, all that stopping in traffic lanes or blocking crosswalks so the passengers...
  17. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Several times in any given day I wish I was a traffic cop. It’s not that I’ve never violated traffic laws, but any driver who doesn’t know where pedestrians have the right-of-way is begging for a refresher course in the form of a stiff fine. A human out there on his or her own, enveloped in...
  19. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    And some people project more than they know. And assume more than they possibly can know. And rarely miss an opportunity to blow their own horns.
  20. tonyb

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    I recall saying ”well, keep your powder dry” to a woman some 10 years or so my junior. She initially took it as a sexist remark (she was generally one looking to take offense, so that wasn’t surprising) and said something to the effect of “what’s THAT supposed to mean.” I explained that the...
  21. tonyb

    The Era -- Day By Day

    Grandpa was about to return the Vibratherm after the risk-free 30-day trial, but Grandma insisted otherwise.
  22. tonyb

    "Has Johnny really nothing to satorially rebel against?", or "Is 'the look' dead?"

    Let us remember that the culture of the U.S.A. (and Australia, and ... ) is much more European than Europe is American. In the Upper Midwest of my earliest years, teachers and others with authority over us little buzzards often spoke of our various “nationalities.” The clear majority of us in...
  23. tonyb

    "Has Johnny really nothing to satorially rebel against?", or "Is 'the look' dead?"

    There’s only so much on the menu, so it isn’t that choices are ever unlimited. Still, a truer indication of human desire is found where we put our discretionary resources, whatever words to the contrary might escape our mouths. No need to force the run of Europeans to drink Coca-Cola. Or to...

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 2,901 (members: 46, guests: 2,855)

Forum statistics

Threads
109,288
Messages
3,077,959
Members
54,238
Latest member
LeonardasDream
Top