So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[LizzieMaine]

Pants under a kilt? MacWuss.

 

[3fingers]

I am now at a point, for the first time in my life, where I could actually afford such an extravagance, but I got to this point by NOT doing such extravagant things.

That same conversation has been had with all of our boys. The reception has been staticky sometimes, but the signal seems to be getting clearer as they get older (and have to pay their own bills).

 

[GHT]

Would you smile dressed like that in front of a camera? The poor lad can't even take a leak by himself, he's got no hands.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Haha, all you need from CK are the wonderful original boxer briefs!

But don't let your wife see them, they are fine build quality, so 30°C fine-wash only.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

$1200 will get you this from Calvin Klein.

Does that price include the clothes ?

 

[HudsonHawk]

That’s just absurd. It is one thing to spend extra money for quality materials and workmanship, but paying big bucks for ratty, worn-out looking clothing makes no sense to me at all. I guess if you’re never going to do any strenuous activity to put honest wear on your clothes, you pay extra to look like you do?

My favorite pair of jeans have a big tear around the knee from when I got them caught taking the tractor off of the trailer. I still wear them. Mrs. Hawk hates them. I tell her that people pay hundreds of dollars for jeans that look like these off the rack, and that mine are “authentic”. She says I still look like a hobo.

 

[Harp]

Dyin' for Bears coverage, and this dawn at Starbucks only The New York Times had arrived by 05:00;
Cohen's triple got all the play with another indictment over campaign finance violation vis a Playboy playmate
known to the incumbent. The Times is agog over these but inchoate nondisclosure pending financial resolve
ancillary to campaign fails criminal qualification. From my Chicago vantage, where even the dead can vote,
jazzing an investigation is standard procedure.

 

[scottyrocks]

I achieve great satisfaction in distressing my own clothing through normal wear and tear. Buying it off the rack that way is just wrong (for me).

 

[Trenchfriend]

Middle-aged, bored (single?) ladies in "my" smalltown railcar:

Me, thinking after dozen times of hearing it:

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Middle-aged, bored (single?) ladies in "my" smalltown railcar:

I can't imagine anyone in Germany not being bored.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Dyin' for Bears coverage, and this dawn at Starbucks only The New York Times had arrived by 05:00;
Cohen's triple got all the play with another indictment over campaign finance violation vis a Playboy playmate
known to the incumbent. The Times is agog over these but inchoate nondisclosure pending financial resolve
ancillary to campaign fails criminal qualification. From my Chicago vantage, where even the dead can vote,
jazzing an investigation is standard procedure.

I didn't realize Chicago had it's own language.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Whatever happened to basic problem-solving ability? I don't mean algebra, I mean simple stuff like looking at something and figuring out how it works. We have toilet paper dispensers in our restrooms that hold two big industrial size rolls, but when one runs out, you need to move a lever to access the backup, and then you might need to find the end of the new roll to start using it. I'm so very tired of people accosting me and saying YOU'RE OUT OF PAPER when all they have to do is push the lever and pull out the end of the new roll.

And it's not cossetted millennials who do this. It's people older than me, who would rather hunt me down and complain rather than look at the thing and exercise basic cognitive abilities for a couple of seconds. If human evolution depended on such specimens, we'd still be sitting around anthills waiting for someone to come along and poke a stick in for us.

 

[Zombie_61]

Whatever happened to basic problem-solving ability? I don't mean algebra, I mean simple stuff like looking at something and figuring out how it works. We have toilet paper dispensers in our restrooms that hold two big industrial size rolls, but when one runs out, you need to move a lever to access the backup, and then you might need to find the end of the new roll to start using it. I'm so very tired of people accosting me and saying YOU'RE OUT OF PAPER when all they have to do is push the lever and pull out the end of the new roll.

And it's not cossetted millennials who do this. It's people older than me, who would rather hunt me down and complain rather than look at the thing and exercise basic cognitive abilities for a couple of seconds. If human evolution depended on such specimens, we'd still be sitting around anthills waiting for someone to come along and poke a stick in for us.

There are a lot of people in this world who would rather play dumb and have all of their "problems" great and small dealt with for them, but I'm convinced there are also more than a few who simply don't have the mental aptitude to figure out something like this for themselves.

 

[3fingers]

I've had this conversation many times with different people and I have decided that there are a lot of things that have contributed to the common helplessness.
I think the farther we collectively get from descendants who actually built and repaired things with their hands rather than throwing it away or hiring it done, the ability to see what seems so obvious is being lost.
I think that too many people believe that bothering with figuring something out is below them and their perceived place in the world. That is a service provided by others.
I think that too many people are not at all curious about how anything works and won't even attempt to figure it out.
I think that there are a few who are simply too dense to see how anything works even if it seems self explanatory.
I think that all of this is only going to get worse.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^

People are born not knowing much besides hunger and satiation.

You know that old saw? The one that says the only stupid question is the one you should have asked?

Yes, of course, we all encounter people saying or doing some plainly ill-informed or abjectly unimaginative thing and think to ourselves, how the hell could he NOT know that? How can a person survive as long as he has and be so lacking in such fundamental knowledge?

So it appears there’s plenty of evidence that such knowledge ISN’T so fundamental anymore. We’re more specialized now. We don’t know what Grandpa knew because we don’t have to.

I like to think that if all this time taking up space on this planet has taught me anything it is that I really don’t know much at all. I know a few things about a few things, but only a few. But I remain curious. I wish to know a thing or two about what the HVAC guy or the electrician or the plumber is doing, but I respect their investment in their occupations, the time and trouble they’ve gone to in acquiring their knowledge. And I’d rather have the job done right.

I have a water heater technician coming by next week. The unit here works, but while the hot water starts out almost hot enough to scald you if you let it, it seems to go only tolerably warm a little prematurely. It’s been speculated that sediment has accumulated in the bottom of the tank (it’s only five years old) and that flushing it out might be in order. I’ve read that it’s a DIY-able job. But I’m calling in a pro. There’s plumbing involved, and natural gas.

 

[GHT]

I think that too many people are not at all curious about how anything works and won't even attempt to figure it out.
I think that there are a few who are simply too dense to see how anything works even if it seems self explanatory.
I think that all of this is only going to get worse.

Not only too stupid to work something out, but too stupid to correct or learn from mistakes. Many years ago, we lived next door to one such sort. He wanted a serving hatch between his kitchen and dining room. No tape measure, no nothing actually, apart from a seven pound hammer. He pointed his finger on the wall where the hatch was to be, then jammed his elbow into his ribs in order to keep his arm straight. He then went down three steps into his kitchen. Touching the wall where his extended digit reached, he marked it with a pencil. Then he smashed his hammer straight through the wall. Returning to the dining room to inspect his new hatch, he saw the biggest mouse hole in the skirting board of his dining room wall.

It stayed like that for six months until his missus paid a professional to come and repair it.

 

[tonyb]

Not only too stupid to work something out, but too stupid to correct or learn from mistakes. Many years ago, we lived next door to one such sort. He wanted a serving hatch between his kitchen and dining room. No tape measure, no nothing actually, apart from a seven pound hammer. He pointed his finger on the wall where the hatch was to be, then jammed his elbow into his ribs in order to keep his arm straight. He then went down three steps into his kitchen. Touching the wall where his extended digit reached, he marked it with a pencil. Then he smashed his hammer straight through the wall. Returning to the dining room to inspect his new hatch, he saw the biggest mouse hole in the skirting board of his dining room wall.

It stayed like that for six months until his missus paid a professional to come and repair it.

DIY "improvements" such as the one you describe are an affront not only to common sense but also to tradespeople who have invested much of their lives to doing such things properly.

I believe I've mentioned before that the previous owners of the house my missus and I now occupy were avid DIYers. Their enthusiasm for same was rivaled only by their ineptitude. We've gone through considerable trouble and expense to undo the worst of their efforts. It's taken us three years to get to this point.

Shoddy workmanship is a waste of good materials. And not-so-good materials — what is often called “builder grade” or “contractor grade” — is often a waste of good workmanship. Shoddy workmanship in combination with cheap materials is what I fear keeps the big box home improvement warehouses in business. They sell the crap now only to have a subsequent homeowner tear it out and replace it a few years down the road, with some other crap, which will itself get torn out a few more years down the road.

 

[Edward]

Among the many symptoms of decrepitude afflicting me in recent years are foot problems. I see a podiatrist every now and then to whittle away on the soles of my feet. I no longer take for granted pain-free walking.

It might be just coincidental that such difficulties have been much diminished since I stopped wearing shoes from Payless. And it might not be.

I first heard from some of the TFL ladies about a product called 'Footner' - life changing. Seriously. I get hard skin build up on parts of my feet; this stuff takes seven to ten days, then it all peels off like a snake shedding. It's fantastic. Took over a week for it to work on me - I was about to give up when it kicked in, and how did it!

Quality shoes help enormously. I consider myself and expert - I would guess I've owned in the region of 140 pairs or so over the last twenty-five years, and what I learned (apart from that I've had an ebay/ hoarding problem...) is that shoes are well worth spending more on. I'm now cutting down from eighty odd pairs, many cheap crap, towards three dozen good pairs.

These are the expensive trainers.
View attachment 147859

Not even in the morgue.

That's been going on for quite a while. Do you not read the work-wear threads here on the Lounge?

I rather suspect that was Ms Maine's point.

Everything silly in its time. I am still astounded by the prices people pay for chemically worn out pants full of holes.
Many years ago now I was employed in the bovine chasing business.
I was tipped off that there was a fellow who would buy your worn out Wrangler jeans for a premium if they were stained with cows#@t, the greener the better.
After I quit laughing I gladly sold him a few choice pairs that I would no longer have worn aywhere. I don't know what he was selling them for, but at the time 1 pair sold would buy me 3 new pairs with enough left to eat supper in town.

I remember back in 1989 when basic 501s were an uncommon sight in Northern Ireland, and very much a status symbol. In those days, they were GBP50.00 (GBP103.68 in 2018 money) new, but the local army surplus place used to buy them in in bulk from US prisons that used them as uniform and replaced them every year or so. Blown out knees and all, the full, awful 'Bros' look, but they were selling them hand over fist for GBP35.00 a pair (about GBP70.00 now). This when a pair of basic Lees (then made in a local factory, which only closed in the mid-late 90s) were available for less than £20.00....

Pants under a kilt? MacWuss.

The equivalent of wearing two ties at once....

Underpants, on the other hand.... (What? I'm a Celt. Not a barbarian.)

My favorite pair of jeans have a big tear around the knee from when I got them caught taking the tractor off of the trailer. I still wear them. Mrs. Hawk hates them. I tell her that people pay hundreds of dollars for jeans that look like these off the rack, and that mine are “authentic”. She says I still look like a hobo.

Ha. Funny thing, even when I was a kid - like ten - I hated the torn-knee look. Never liked it.

You know that old saw? The one that says the only stupid question is the one you should have asked?

Twenty years of teaching graduate students have taught me just how wrong that is....

 

[scottyrocks]

I've had this conversation many times with different people and I have decided that there are a lot of things that have contributed to the common helplessness.
I think the farther we collectively get from descendants who actually built and repaired things with their hands rather than throwing it away or hiring it done, the ability to see what seems so obvious is being lost.
I think that too many people believe that bothering with figuring something out is below them and their perceived place in the world. That is a service provided by others.
I think that too many people are not at all curious about how anything works and won't even attempt to figure it out.
I think that there are a few who are simply too dense to see how anything works even if it seems self explanatory.
I think that all of this is only going to get worse.

I completely agree with this.

Just this afternoon I sort of re-engineered part of the ignition in my Bug.

Condensers today are made like crap. I've had two of them fail in less than a few hundred miles. Many other acVW owners have attested to the inferior state of aftermarket parts, as well as stuff currently made by Bosch, the original supplier for these cars.

In doing some research I discovered that an automotive condenser is actually a capacitor. I found a link to a unit, made for a printed circuit board, that would not fit where the original unit would, so I built a custom mount, and then soldered and crimped wires, and attached everything so that the car would start and run, which it did, and on the first attempt, I might add, which is unusual for me. haha

The unit I installed will not crap out, and should last forever.

I am actually proud of myself when I do stuff like this.

 

[3fingers]

I am actually proud of myself when I do stuff like this.

And that is the greatest and most valuable thing being lost.