<shiver/>
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Thatās my absolute favorite effin bird. I think Iām going to get a shirt.
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I am also traveling for work.
I have had no issues with transportation, thankfully.
However, the tests that weāve scheduled for this week are running way behind. Theyāve been scrapped for the day already and it isnāt even noon. So, thatās one day Iāve been out here and have nothing to show for it.
Hopefully we can resolve this before I have to go back on Friday.
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I have historically stayed out of these threads because I donāt get that angry at anything. Mild annoyance is the highest level I typically reach. Disappointment is how I usually feel if itās something particularly bad. Itās part privilege and part autism that causes me to not get angry, but Iāll take it. I am allergic to conflict and anger and itās utterly bizarre to me that some people seem to thrive on it.
A couple days ago, though, I got genuinely angry at something and it really took me by surprise. At first glance this should have been a disappointment-level event. It was therapeutic to think through why I reacted how I did.
The one thing in my life I do anything approaching religiously is recycling. On a good week thereās practically nothing in my trash bin, and the recycling bin is regularly overflowing. I hold on to recyclable items when Iām out until I find a recycling bin (within reason - some places donāt have robust recycling infrastructure).
Iāll admit that Iām not always very diligent with thoroughly washing out food containers and the like, but I live in an area with modern recycling facilities. I also read the NY Times piece about how a lot of recycle-binned materials end up in landfills, in part because China stopped buying recycled materials but also because of contamination (from food but also other things).
There are climate-denier-type conspiracy theories that a lot of people believe that cover a variety of recycling topics, including the idea that it takes more energy to recycle than it does to just make new materials, which of course misses the point whether true or not. Itās not an economic or energy issue, itās a fundamental limited-resources issue. The amount of the earthās resources that have been wasted is utterly absurd, and we continue at a mind-boggling pace. One could argue that in the past, nearly using up a resource was the price of human progress, a rung on the ladder required a precious limited resource to climb and we had it in our bag of holding. At some point in the last century I think we passed the point where that argument still holds, and now weāre just wasteful - which is not to say that we havenāt climbed several rungs of progress since then.
When you think about this, inevitably you come up with a cyberpunk future - mountains of Wall-E style compacted trash that the survivors of the future Trash War scavenge from.
So what can we do on an individual level now? Really, not much. Even if you live carefully you will end up consuming a ton of single-use packaging and other things, but, the one thing you can really do as an individual is to diligently recycle all of that.
It was with that background that I received the slap on the face that sent me into an uncharacteristic rage. I filled my recycling bin to the top - and as this is California we have the large bins, 3-4x bigger in volume than the trash bin - mostly with cardboard as I just moved and have a lot of excess cardboard boxes and the like. There were also (empty) drink bottles and cans, and empty takeout food containers - styrofoam isnāt allowed here and every allowable takeout container we get is recyclable (or commercially-compostable in areas that do that; the city where I live doesnāt but the university campus where I work does).
I came back to a large notice stuck to the still-full bin that it wasnāt collected for the reason checked on a list, which was āfood wasteā. I looked to see what it could possibly have been - there was a recyclable food container at the top that did have a couple of crumbs in it, but thatās well within the limits of reason in a place with modern recycling capability. There was a sealed drink bottle with obviously-non-water liquid in it also at the top, but they didnāt check the box for liquids, they checked the box for food.
So they decided not to collect my recycling because of a few crumbs in a container at the top of a bin that was visibly full of primarily cardboard boxes. This is the week they choose to teach me a lesson - when I have a house full of cardboard that will take weeks worth of full bins to get rid of. It made me absurdly angry. So angry I called the number on the notice immediately, ready to tell them to go f- themselves on their way to coming back and picking it up.
Luckily, other people were presumably also calling to complain and I was put on hold. I hung up after a couple of minutes when I remembered that I hate talking on the phone and will do almost anything to avoid it, and that I hate conflict and arguing. And itās not the phone operatorās fault anyway.
Obviously, it is my own fault. I am a classic hypocritical pseudo-enviornmentalist. I do things primarily to make me feel better about myself and my impact on the world, things that ultimately have little impact and in some cases like trying to recycle contaminated food containers cause even more harm, since food contamination can spoil entire large batches of recyclables. When I got called on it I got defensive. Iām dumb. Iām so dumb Iām even still considering just rearranging the contents of the bin so the cardboard boxes are on top, out of spite, instead of actually addressing the issue, which is me being more diligent with cleaning recyclable food containers.
I guess I didnāt get to the therapeutic part where I considered why I actually got so angry; I already wrote enough so suffice to say despite coming off of a nearly-unprecedented high point of joy this was a dramatic rebound into the stew of negativity I had been in before that and it was a straw on the camelās back situation, where this recycling fiasco was a big enough disappointment to break it.
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I hope you can return to pleasant feelings soon.
I can sure sympathize with you. Used to be, when I got angry, I got extremely depressed for weeks. Seems pretty obvious it was due to my years of suppressing anger over chronic illness as a kid. Of course my wife had to deal with it, but sheās a gem and still with me so Iām incredibly fortunate. Iāve mostly dealt with it and donāt get nearly to that level anymore.
But things still sometimes grate, like current political events. Anger is after all a natural human emotion, but it can be dealt with. And I think expressing it calmly and rationally, like you did so exquisitely above, is the best way to deal with it.
As to recycling ā well, we do the best we can, and try to elect officials who will work on the problem more and more efficiently. Maybe some future technology will be able to dig up landfills and separate materials into their constituent elements. Thatās what Iām hoping for.
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That reminds me that actually the last time I felt similar was election night 2016, lol.
I was actually an incredibly angry teenager, come to think of it, but I didnāt realize it at the time. I struggle with basic recognition of my own emotions, and Iām reserved and quiet and donāt outwardly emote much so almost nobody else realized it either.
Except, probably, my teacher for AP Language class in high school, where I wrote what I realize now was really angry, whiny stuff. I was angry at the world for ill-defined reasons and the only place I let it loose was in those weekly essays.
Of course, later in life I figured out what the reasons were, but by that time the anger had mellowed into depression, which thankfully Iām out of now. I do still have some anger stewing beneath the surface to address but within a few hours of the recycling incident I was back to feeling good about an unrelated thing that happened last week that was important to me (also a rare emotional experience).
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I wonder if this common? One reason I was angry was due to lack of control over my Crohnās disease, but it has occurred to me that, for teenagers, they often have little control over their lives but are old enough to recognize and desire it.
Glad youāre back to feeling good.
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One time, I must have been 12 or 13 - it was the late 90ās and I didnāt have my own e-mail address, I guess it was a couple of years before e-mail addresses beyond the one your ISP supplied were as easy to get as they are now, at least for a kid. I didnāt have all that much use for an e-mail address anyway, but for anything I needed I had one from one of the forwarding services popular then (koala@mindspring.net I believe), forwarded to my parentsā ISP e-mail address.
I had started watching old movies on Turner Classic Movies at least a couple of years before that, and getting stacks of them on VHS from the local library. I checked the TCM schedule on their website because I had been hearing about this classic movie I wanted to watch - and it was going to be on but not for a few months, and I guess the library didnāt have it. TCM had a feature where theyād e-mail you a day before the movie you wanted to see was on, so I put in koala@mindspring.net and forgot about it.
So a few months passed, and at some point in-between I had gotten my own e-mail address (hotmail IIRC). My mom asked one day if I had signed up for this movie reminder. For whatever bizarre reason I took it as an accusation and got really angry and defensive. Of course it was obvious that I had done it because it was addressed to koala@mindspring.net, and she knew that I watched old movies, but it can be hard to interpret her tone sometimes (to this day) and she regularly forgets that people who are younger than her may not know all of the culture that came out when she was younger (āI canāt believe you havenāt seen/heard ____ā).
Anyway, I couldnāt watch the movie or Iād be admitting that I had signed up for the reminder, and then I just never ended up seeing it until just a few years ago (a few years after Iād visited an iconic location from the movie, in part because it was in the movie that I hadnāt even seen).
The movie? Rebel Without a Cause - canāt make this stuff up.
(the point of the story is reinforcing your notion of lack of control)
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Interesting story!
I think itās one of the worst feelings (and maybe among the most common) in the world. Bosses, parents, teachers, spouses, doctors, they can all make a person feel that way. One way to combat is to take control of whatever you can in life, even if itās a little thing. And thereās more than one might think. After years of having rotten (to one extent or another) doctors, I was finally able (and fortunate enough) to make sure I was completely satisfied with them. Itās amazing how that helped my feelings.
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To quote David Byrne, "Years ago, I was an Angry, Young Man"
But then I grew up and realized, Iām still angry.
But as I said in a previous thread, Better Living through Chemistry helps.
Lack of Control over _________________________ seems to be the root of it. (Fill in the blank, everything has a potential to piss me off.)
I think Iām doing better most days, but < shrug >
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Good movie. And good point about lack of control. Especially as teens, we have some control, but not enough and I think that makes us do wacky stuff sometimes.
But now I have to know, what iconic location was it?
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Oh yeah, well of course it was the Griffith Observatory.
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Taken individually, this should be in Gear Grindingā¦ But since it all hit over the last 24 hours, we have hit Fuck Today territoryā¦
Last Night
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Two people hit up my partner and myself yesterday with āWhat are you doing for the holiday? I want to do something.ā Now I had had plans, but I could see my dear partner was weakening and was going to go do something with them. I wasnāt going to let her go down on that ship alone, so I said I would go as well.
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Somehow, I became the default tour arranger. Now I had a few ideas, but most of them were precluded by the fact one member of this party canāt walk excessively due to still getting over a cold\asthma\etc. And the rest were precluded by Itās a holiday and places are closed. So I looked for 30 minutes, threw out some ideas and said someone else needed to finalize it.
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Oh, Somehow now I need to book the shit. Fine. Give me your damn card cuz I aināt paying for it.
Today
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No one bothered to text the person who doesnāt live under the roof of the plans, so weāll be getting a late start.
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The weather is shit. The dogs are going crazy from the storm.
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I opened up the bag I picked up from the pharmacy yesterday and donāt see the script I was expecting. I call the pharmacy (Closed) but the helpful AVR let me know the script I wanted was still stuck with the insurance company, where it has been for ten day. I call the Insurance company and the human tells me they have seen nothing from the pharmacy on this drug since the end of July. Great.
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And in addition, a family my wife has been trying to help out and get on their feet and get their daughter going in the right directionā¦is basically imploding. I would have cut them off months ago, but it is now gone past (IMHO) any chance of redemption and my dearest is trying to still figure out what she can do for them and my āsuggestionsā arenāt helpful.
So, to sum it all up. Today is at best going to be mediocre and I wonāt get to work on the project Iād been looking forward to.
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And fuck Verizon . . . so what else is new.
Recently I managed somehow to renegotiate our FIOS plan from internet, landline, and cable to internet and landline only. So I had to return the set top box (which we hadnāt used since we got FIOS to begin with) to a Verizon dealer. Finally got it boxed up with all the cords and whatnot. Clicked on the link from the reminder email from Verizon, but it took forever to load, so I did a Google search for āverizon return equipmentā for our area. It showed a place right next to the grocery store I was planning to go to afterwards. Great!
Got there, carried the box in, and was told āOh, we donāt accept FIOS equipment here.ā WTF? I said Iād done a search because the email link didnāt load, and his store popped up. So he did a search, but for āFIOS return equipment.ā Devil in the details. Sure enough it came up with a list that did not include his store. He told me that a store not too far away would take it back. But when I looked at the monitor, the list clearly showed that the only store that would accept FIOS stuff was clear across the county, a good 30-45 minutes away. I pointed that out, and he said he always directed people to the nearer store. So, right in front of the guy, I called them, and they assured me they did accept such things. I guess theyāre a secret black site where only the cognoscenti can return stuff. I turned on my heel, and left without a further word. I went to the second store and returned the box. AND got a receipt emailed to me, which I just saved on my hard disk.
I havenāt been that pissed in a while. If Iād looked at that list myself first, I would have been directed to the place across town. So it was good that I went to that store first, where I was told where to go (Verizonās typical attitude of course). But just one more example of corporate fucking with customers.
Oh well, I should be happy I got what I wanted (tentatively; letās see what the next bill says!).
Pissed Off Rating: 
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Kicked two kids out of the store today.
For playing porn.
In a business store.
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If it makes you feel any better (er, or not)ā¦
When I was teaching multimedia design to both adult ed and later teenage students, getting people to not make porn as a side assignment was a major challenge (and PITA). And yes, we spent a considerable chunk of the first day going over allowable content, plus I put a notice in the syllabus.
But these yahoos always figured theyād be able to get it off their screens fast enough for me not to see.
Then once they got caught, it was always, āoh, if you find it offensiveā¦ā
Argh.
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Butā¦office scenarios.
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Guess who has a deviated septum, polyps in their schnoz, and will need surgery soon?
What a way to start a weekend!
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Good luck!
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Wonāt be until december (after the semester is over)ā¦ I mean, itās a pretty regularly done procedure, but any surgery is nerve wrackingā¦ He assured me he does this quite regularly.
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