Q: Why do boomers continuously try to talk to people who are wearing
headphones? Do they actually think I can actually hear anything through
them? Have they never worn headphones before?
A: We use noise-cancelling headphones at the range. It is totally foreign to us that anybody would willingly forgo situational awareness in such a dangerous world. We just assume that you aren't stupidly naive. Let me extend my generation's apology for overestimating you.
Q: Why do boomers have like 40 credit cards you literally only need like 1?
A: I accept this observation as a valid criticism. Some boomers are OCD. Others have two cards and one is frozen in between a bunch of salmon filets and marked "For EMERGENCIES Only".
Q: Why do boomers pay for concert tickets then just stand there with their arms crossed?
A: Why do you judge? Is there only one-right-way to experience music? Maybe they are just living in the moment and are not producing a video to post on social media.
Q: Why do boomers make unholy grunting sounds when they go to the bathroom?
A: The demographic with the highest rates of Emergency Room visits for constipation are 25-to-34 year old women. Lack of fiber. Lack of physcial movement. Inadequate water intake. Are you SURE it is the boomers grunting?
Q: Why do boomers scream when they yawn?
A: News to me.
Q: Why do boomers love giving verbal driving directions so much?
A: Your eyes are supposed to be on the road, bozo. How else are we going to communicate with you? Draw on the inside of the windshield with a wax pencil?
Q: Why do boomers think that every single millennial who has ever lived has
bought a $5 coffee every day since the day they were born?
A: Because we think you gave up. You accepted the myth that you will never own your own house or save enough to retire, so you pay other people obscene amounts of money to fetch you crappy food and you drink over-priced coffee, whether it is $5 a cup or $3 a cup or $12 a cup. By the way, who only drinks ONE cup of coffee a day?
Q: Why do boomers always have to say “dot com”? Karen, I know you meant dot com?
A: Dot gov, dot net, dot mil, dot edu...there is a lot more to the digital universe than dot com, Princess.
Q: Why do Boomers make memes that are just Charlie Brown saying something racist?
A: I cannot comment because I have never seen one of those.
Q: Why do boomers own a 800k house but keep rotted ketchup in a drawer?
A: This is a question that is worth unpacking.
Those boomers do not own that house. The bank does.
In most cases, the rotted (past sell-by date) ketchup is slap-dash, scatter-brained housekeeping.
Sometimes it is gross incompetence and criminal lack of preparedness. YOUR generation did not invent eating three meals a day outside the house. I heard stories of daughters going to babysit and the only food in the house was a jar of pickles, mustard and ketchup. The kids are crying because they are hungry. The parents are at a fancy restaurant. The babysitter is supposed to pull a miracle out of her nether regions.
Don't be like those boomers. Ever.
Q: Why do boomers not use headphones when watching internet videos in public?A: In my case, it would be my unwillingness to give up my situational awareness.
In the case of others, most boomers grew up in families with a multitude of siblings. We just assume that functional human beings can filter out side-conversations that are not directed at them.
I apologize for assuming your adequacies.
Q: Why do boomers always yell into the phone when they pick up like “HI STACY THIS IS JEFF”?A: "...always..." is a bit of an overstatement.
Some of us are hard-of-hearing but mostly it is joy at having somebody we love reach out to us.
One of the cruelties of getting older is that your circle of friends shrinks. We get a metric shit-ton of calls from people we don't want to interact with while the people who we were closest to drift away, battling their own dragons, ghouls, goblins, hain'ts, demons and waiths.
Q: Why do boomers sign everything off with "...just my personal opinion...?"A: Damned if we do and damned if we don't. It is a futile attempt to find a neutral jumping-off-point for an intelligent conversation.
Much of what you accept as FACT is recycled opinion.
For example, many of your generation would completely agree with the statement "Conservatives are heartless, low-IQ, sub-human primates." But if that is a FACT, then how do you reconcile the data that Conservatives consistently contribute larger percentages of their income to charities even when they cannot "write the donations off"?
When a boomer leads with "JMHO" he is about to stress you with something that will cause dissonance because it contradicts what that TA told you when you wer back in college. And, if you were perfectly honest, that TA was younger when she told you that than you are now and her pontificating should be subjected to the same critical review you give the new office intern.
And about that TA, not only are you now older than she was, you have interacted with a much wider range of humanity at more levels than she ever did. You met people who are evil to the bone. You met saints. You encountered people who were mentally ill. Stupid people. Geniuses. Shallow, two-dimensional theories must bow to observation and reality.
"By the way, who only drinks ONE cup of coffee a day?". This alone is heresy and should be stamped out.
ReplyDeleteYea, though I wander through the valley of nod I shall fear no slumber. Thou Keurig and blonde-roast Columbian, they comfort me.
DeleteAnd everybody said Amen.
DeleteDoes tea count too ? Hot coffee for perking me up in early morning but for my money, cold sweetened tea is my preference for the long haul. Does give me leg cramps though so I space with cups of plain water as well.
DeleteAnd get off my lawn!
ReplyDeleteRegarding multiple credit cards: I have a backup card for the same reason I have a backup gun and a fire extinguisher and, um, other things. Duh.
I yell into the phone trying to make the caller sorry I answered.
Seems Robert had already seen the youth of today when he wrote about the "Crazy Years" we seem to be living through.
ReplyDeleteA snip :
One prediction that was remarkably prescient, however, was the advent of “The Crazy Years” described as “Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation, and social institutions, terminating in mass psychoses in the sixth decade, and the interregnum.”
He optimistically predicts a recovery from the Crazy Years, the opening of a new frontier in space, and a return to nineteenth-century economy.
Sound like today's news friends?
Robert would not be confused about "Cancel Culture"
“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Nor puzzled about seemingly adult folks wandering around with their faces in cellphones and actively avoiding employment.
“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Nor would Robert be surprised that the masses would seek the lowest common denominator instead of excellence.
“Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel
Almost like Robert saw Feces book before it was born, eh?
“Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
“Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
That the unproven nor even questioned "Authority" of opinions of others be blathered as WOKE Truth.
“But there seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously — after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important … so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be both ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. (Most of his fans were just as ignorant and unlettered; the disease was spreading.)”
― Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset
“The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but -- " is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Soon enough Robert, soon enough.
“Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday
He was a great author and a man of common sense.
DeleteVery good, ERJ!
ReplyDeleteVery good, Michael!
Spot on, ERJ. I’m guilty of some of these. I’m a hermit of sorts, so I don’t interact with others much.
ReplyDeleteSouthern NH
RAH's wisdom has resonated with me for the last 55 years or so.
ReplyDeleteI thank God he sent that seer to us.
Now if we could just do what it takes to fight back against the buffoonery he predicted.
Laughing. Gave up reading VOXDAY and buying his books over his incessant boomer rants. Circled back just to sample. That guy needs to say hi to Alice and the rabbit while he is at it. That generation really does hate us. Bingo on the situational awareness. It is an outward manifestation of cluelessness. Get called every day attempting to sell me a medicare suppliment. I wonder if you can block so many numbers that your phone will begin to smoke. Roger
ReplyDeleteOddly Vox is a daily read for me. I can understand his viewpoint and find useful insight in his writings.
DeleteThe Test of a First-Rate Intelligence Is the Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas in the Mind at the Same Time
F. Scott Fitzgerald
They did not mind stating apparently opposed truths; they knew that they could give to men a higher truth, in which the contradictories became two sides of the same truth.
Like the scripture Proverbs 26: 4Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be like him. 5Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he become wise in his own eyes.
It doesn't give an answer but gives you reason to think about it.
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
Ernest Hemingway
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk.
Doug Larson
Listening is an art form that many do not employ.
I never learned from a man who agreed with me.
Robert A. Heinlein
Told a highschool age employee who tried to tell a retired Macys employee how to do her job at my store that God gave her two ears and one mouth so she could listen twice as often as she speaks. The one I liked was by S. Covey. It ran something like "Seek to understand and then be understood." Ideas are one thing, insults another. Roger
DeleteMostly neutral on Q&A, but I must respectfully disagree on not using headphones when enjoying your electronic entertainment in public spaces. Imagine spending time in library or public transportation with the general culture being 'everyone else is entitled to my taste in music'. Also, IMHO the effect of headphones on everyday situational awareness is less than the distraction provided by the entertainment itself, and the headphones serve as a social 'do not bother me' signal. I remember reading about some lady who was wondering why women were wearing bulky headphones instead of earbuds in gym, until she realized that headphone wearers got interrupted fewer times by randos initiating discussions.
ReplyDeleteI am NOT going to disagree with you.
DeleteBut if I was going to pick one demographic who over-share their entertainment it would not be boomers, it would be the people driving lowered "rice-burners" and who play rap.
I have been at stop-lights two or three vehicles in front of that demographic and had my images in my inside, rear-view mirror blur due to the vibration.
ERJ: And that demographic will be the ones needing hearing aids like the boomers before them who incurred hearing damage working for Uncle Sam under less-than-ideal conditions.
DeleteI rode to lunch once with a new-hire who liked his techno music LOUD. He claimed the low frequencies weren't harmful to his hearing and was amused at stop lights when other drivers were obviously trying to locate the source of the THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. After a few months, his inside rear-view mirror fell off. As did the trunk lid. Vibrations, y'know.
Why do "Boomers" yell into the phone? Well, for one, it's not only Boomers. It's EVERYONE who uses cell phones, the predominant phone now. Remember in the old days, you talked into your hardline phone and you could hear yourself speak in the earpiece? That was called "sidetone." It was ENGINEERED into the phone. Why was it engineered into the phone? TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM YELLING INTO THE PHONE. This was done away with in cell phones, with predictable results...
ReplyDeleteWhy do boomers own a $800k house but keep rotted ketchup in a drawer? Well, when they bought the house it was probably worth around $60K. Now the PROPERTY TAX payments on that paid-off "$800K" house exceed the MORTGAGE PAYMENTS for the house before it was paid off. ...Next...
ReplyDelete