Shoot the Wall (A.K.A. The Rant Thread)

[Fantasy Lover]

I blame the perfect fairy tale weddings on TV, before the invention of TV nobody cared that much about marriage. Somehow these bridezilla's held up the same standard to their wedding, leading to unrealistic expectations and then throwing tantrums when things don't go their way. As for the parents founding the wedding, weddings can be extremely expensive so it became tradition for the parents to pay for the young couple. But nowadays the cost is split between the couple, the parents and the parents in law.

[Artemis]

Speaking of wedding, I always want to ask Americans. Well, blame it on stuffs I saw on TV.

Is it right that wedding is funded by parents? Well it is in Friends, and other shows I can't remember. I remember making face about Monica and Ross expecting their parents to pay for their wedding (which Ross did, on his second wedding, and he is well to do ffs)

 

We don't have specific culture, but mostly responsible independent adults would try to pay the wedding ourselves, we did although many people I know rely on their parent's wealth and effort. Don't throw party you can't afford. Don't bask in glam and show off that is not yours. But again, I probably just have unpopular view.

 

And rehearsal, is that really a thing? But why on earth do you need to rehearse? It's not performance. Yes, it's probably limited invitations for close friends and family. But those people are expected to attend twice, wearing two outfits and listen to the same speech and joke? Isn't one torturing enough?

 

And bridezilla.

I had fun reading about bridezille, although why one wants to be bridezilla's bridesmaids is beyond me.

Bridezilla is the term for demanding bride to be who acts like a diva and force her bridemaids to comply, some includes demands for the bridemaids to lose weight. I probably would smear cake on the bride's face and walk off. Why some bridemaids are receptive to those treatments?

 

 

Regarding the wedding being funded by parents: That is the tradition, and I still see it presented in film, but it's not expected anymore.  Almost everyone I know pays entirely for their own wedding, or almost entirely.  In 'olden' days, the parents would pay for and  plan the wedding.  For families who had weddings, it wasn't just this "celebration of love", it was mostly a display of your wealth and putting your best foot forward.  It was an opportunity to ingratiate yourself to "high society".  (A bad or cheap wedding could hurt your status and reputation, along with prospects of future spouses for your other children.)  That's actually how the white dress tradition started as well.  Queen Victoria wore a white dress for her wedding, and everyone wanted to emulate royalty.  Aside from that, wearing a pure white dress showed that you could afford a dress that you'd wear for only one day, because it would get so dirty.  The virginity aspect of it didn't come into it until sometime around the 1950s.  Before white dresses, people used to wear their Sunday best (if they were poor) or have a fancy dress made in whatever color they liked best (if they were rich).  Before that, wedding dresses were blue; partly because the color blue symbolized faithfulness (that's where the "something blue" tradition comes in), but mostly because blue was the most expensive dye aside from purple (which was reserved for royalty).  And before even that, when any kind of dye was expensive, people used to just get the most colorful dress they could possibly afford.

 

Regarding the rehearsal: It is a real thing, but you don't rehearse the entire wedding (speeches and all).  That would be a nightmare, lol.  I've seen rehearsal dinner speeches on film, but never actually heard of it being done at a real rehearsal dinner (although I'm sure some families do it).  A rehearsal is believed necessary because it's typical for the bridal party to walk down the aisle to music.  So they have to know when to start, when to stop, what pace to walk at, and where to walk and stand once they get to the altar.  Without a rehearsal, the bridal party could get flustered and the walk down the aisle could potentially be a disaster, or at least very awkward.  That's the thought, anyway.

 

Regarding bridezillas: I think some people probably put up with the behavior because they realize weddings are very stressful, and can turn even the nicest person.  Others just really want to be in the wedding party, so they tolerate whatever to stay there.

 

 

Weddings are a complex tradition, with a long history, which I personally find fascinating.  Many still view it as an important rite of passage; but for a lot of other people, I think it's just an expression of self and an opportunity for them to showcase their personality.  That's why they don't let their parents plan it and choose for them anymore.

 

[Artemis]

When I was a kid, I used to plan my own wedding.  I don't know where I got the idea, I don't recall seeing a lot of wedding stuff on TV or attending many weddings.  I just liked picking different colors and themes and ideas, and arranging them into something cohesive.  But I liked the planning more than I did the idea of actually having a wedding, because I'm attention-averse, and you know, people.

When I was planning my actual wedding to my now ex-fiancé, I had a dilemma in that there was hardly anyone to invite, lol.  I only had my immediate family, and he had even less than that.  He's the romantic type and couldn't stomach the idea of a courthouse wedding, and I'm not sure it was to my taste either.  But planning a non-sterile wedding for a handful of people is not the easiest task, lol.  I wasn't willing to spend much money on a party that no one was coming to.  Some bed-and-breakfasts have elopement packages, so I was considering one of those.  Ultimately I think I had settled on just having it at the house with our favorite foods and a bonfire.  Some traditional elements I would have kept and spent a little extra on though, like the cake.  (Tip: If you want or need to buy a professional custom cake, say it's for a Sweet 16 rather than a wedding and your cost could be cut by 75%.  It's the "wedding" word that makes it expensive.)

We would have been married this coming October.  Sadness...

 

 

[T.o.b.y]

That does sound sad! How are you holding up?

 

I was romantic enough about our wedding to want as little professional involvement as possible. That was my "theme" if you will. My mother made my dress and baked a cake, my mother-in-law took the photos, my friend did my hair, etc. I didn't know that it's unusual to show up at city hall in a wedding gown and even though mine was very simple, it made the clerk stare. :-D

[Artemis]

I think that sounds very nice.  :smile:  If you have the kinds of people in your life who will do those things for you so you don't have  to seek professional involvement, that's the best kind of wedding to have, in my opinion.  Much more intimate.

 

 

[Artemis]

That does sound sad! How are you holding up?

 

About as well as one would expect, I suppose.  Not sure what to say without throwing myself a pity party, lol.  The pain isn't gone, I'll just put it that way, I guess.

 

 

[Boton]

We are getting an ice storm.

 

Our weathermen have completely  given up.  I actually saw one just now that said that we could get anywhere between 0 inches and 2 feet of snow.  

[Pseudonym]

Huh, yea, sounds like they've just decided to cover all bases. There might be snow. There might not. How the hell should we know?

[Carol the Dabbler]

The vacuum cleaner one doesn't surprise me. Men being what they are. Though I do wonder if anyone really does it.

 

I'm willing to believe it.  I mean, that nice tubular nozzle seems just custom made for that sort of thing (assuming of course that you're out of your ever-lovin' gourd).  After all, some guys apparently semi-asphyxiate themselves in order to heighten their experience -- I'm pretty sure that one's true, because I read that some well-known person had apparently overdone the "semi" part and ended up truly dead.

 

I blame the perfect fairy tale weddings on TV, before the invention of TV nobody cared that much about marriage.

 

TV probably has had some influence, just as it seems to with everything else.  That doesn't mean that pre-TV weddings were nice simple, sensible affairs, though.  Mom used to have a book written by Emily Post (the etiquette lady), which included an entire chapter on weddings, including such details as the proper way to spell "honour" on the invitations (as in "the honour of your presence"), even though this was an American book.  I suppose it was aimed mostly at people who actually paid attention to that sort of thing, and had all the right forks, etc., but as has already been said about the fashions of the upper crust oozing their way downward, I suspect that Ms. Post's influence has spread much further than her original audience, and is still influencing the weddings of the overly pretentious.

 

I was romantic enough about our wedding to want as little professional involvement as possible. That was my "theme" if you will. My mother made my dress and baked a cake, my mother-in-law took the photos, my friend did my hair, etc. I didn't know that it's unusual to show up at city hall in a wedding gown and even though mine was very simple, it made the clerk stare. :-D

 

That sounds lovely!  For our wedding, I had a dress made that I could also wear for dress-up.  The cake and hors d’oeuvres were made by a local health-food bakery, but we picked them up and did our own "catering."  I did my own hair (basically, I did some braids on the side, pretty much my usual "dress up" style back when I had long hair).  We checked into hiring a photographer (a fellow that I worked with did beautiful wedding photos on the side), but quickly realized that for less money we could buy a very nice camera and enough film to take pictures at our wedding *and* on our honeymoon, and get them developed -- and we'd still have the camera!  One friend of ours was kind enough to take the pictures, and her husband (a nice tall fellow) handled the video camera that we had borrowed from my parents.  We had the whole thing at home, and got my lawyer (who is also a Justice of the Peace) to officiate.  It tuned out very nicely, we think.

 

We are getting an ice storm.

 

Our weathermen have completely  given up.  I actually saw one just now that said that we could get anywhere between 0 inches and 2 feet of snow.  

 

How has it turned out for you?  At our house there was rain followed by freezing rain followed by slushy snow, totaling maybe three inches.  At Mom's house (about 40 miles away) there was just regular rain followed by regular snow, likewise maybe three inches.  Mercifully, nowhere near as bad as predicted, especially at Mom's.

[Boton]

It hasn't been too bad, Carol.  We got a couple of inches Friday night and then a couple more last night.  The roads have been intermittently slick, but not as bad as they could be.  Yeah, luckily not as bad as it coule have been.

[Van Buren Supernova]

Keep yourself warm with layers and layers guys, make a fat snow angel.

I read that Australia is frigging hot. What a contrast.

 

 

Anyway,

This is obviously grumpy rant from grumpy person that is growing old, fast.

 

I hate the way they make us keeping up with trend and tech. Nowadays mostly, updating apps is no longer an option, but a must. I am talking about useful apps like Whataps (that I rely on for all, esp, long distance communications and works), Uber. Update is a must or it becomes unusable. And everytime they would add tons of things and features I don't need that take up more and more space in my phone. I have 16G built in memory and 128G external memories and even after moving the apps around, there is only so much to do to ease the built-in memory. Now I have to start deleting things to make space for these apps that used to fit just fine.

And previously I also had to change my phones not because it's broken, but because it no longer able to fit the apps that I couldn't delete. There are tons of prebuilts that I don't need. Grmbl..

 

I know manufacturers find ways to keep the market fresh with this, slowing down phone or making it incompatible with new stuffs to keep the industry going, and I hate that. Long gone the days where my phone can last for yearsss and there are so much garbages by this consumptive behaviors.

 

Another related rant, I also hate that they require everything to be connected, finding ways to trap you and clawing on your privacy. I just want good old practical thing to use! I'm not broadcasting my life and leave traces of whatever I do on my device. Gah!

 

Anyway, funny 'old girl' story. One day my camera phone didn't work, it kept showing this flesh colored blank screen and I couldn't snap any pictures. It was urgent as I needed to snap important things for work. I restarted, configured the setting, everything! Still.. flesh colored blank screen. Eventually, not sure how, it went back to normal. It happened another time and again, I gave up. Until one time, instead of flesh colored, it's white colored blank screen this time. And... I realized there was no problem on my phone or camera, it's just accidentally switched to selfie mode (front camera) and since I had never used that, it stumped me. Why flesh or white colored?

 

You see, being a privacy paranoid person I am, I always cover my front camera while leave my back camera because I use it all the time for work, scenery and dogs. :p At first, I covered it with cute animal stickers, but they fell off whithin minutes, so I use bandages...Ehm..which is normally flesh colored, or masking tape. That is why I saw those screens when in selfie mode, behind those there was my furious cursing face because 'my camera is broken'.

[Pseudonym]

Yep, I'm pretty sick of my phone being filled with crap too. The only reason I changed my old phone for my current one was because my music wouldn't fit on it. This one isn't too bad, but it's mostly full and I transfer off any photos I take pretty sharpish. I hate all the inbuilt stuff. I'm never going to have needs for a stocks app, but can I delete it? Noooo. 

 

I keep the camera on my laptop covered, don't bother with my phone though. 

[Arcadia]

Okay, you lot just convinced me I'm not getting a smart phone any time soon. Every time I think I'll look into it, someone gives me an excellent reason to stay far, far away from them.

 

I'll be forced to, one day, I bet, or do without a phone altogether. Hope they're cheaper by then....

[Pseudonym]

I do like my phone and use it a lot, though not really AS a phone. 

[Arcadia]

I'm so old-fashioned, I have a separate device for every task. :d

[J.P.]

Honestly, it I wouldn't have needed a navigation for my Poland trip last summer, I would probably still use my old phone run by Symbian OS, but it sadly stopped loading new maps (the system died years ago, so it was predicable). Bought another outdated Nokia with Windows for 75 EUR, and it might happen soon that for the everyday use (vacation or trips are a different matter) I'll go back to old sturdy Nokia 1100. There is no real gain for me so far. I don't surf with the phone (too small for my eyes and there is an alternative around most of the time), so I don't even need the 250 MB of the flat I use with a prepaid card.

 

The only thing that s**ks on old cellphones is typing SMS and not being able to receive messages longer than the old SMS limit.

[Van Buren Supernova]

I can't live without one though, especially in city during daily life. At holiday though, especially people who I want to keep in contact are with me, I can ditch it easily.

Forget about IOS, I wish Android, someone out there, realize the potential of making the phone free of built-in apps. They are hardly used anyway. And make a great sustainable model with big capacity and lasting battery. I don't care about the look and the trend, I think the security of having potential lasting one like that would make me more willing to spend on accesories. Anyway, except really narcissistic people with thick pocket, who actually change phone for every new models?

 

Okay, you lot just convinced me I'm not getting a smart phone any time soon. Every time I think I'll look into it, someone gives me an excellent reason to stay far, far away from them.

 

Chicken.

[Arcadia]

Not really, just hate spending money on something I have to replace every 2-3 years. You don't even want to know how old most of my electronics are. :d

[Van Buren Supernova]

Yes I do miss older hardy electronic. I still have working Super Nitendo and handheld Tetris. My dad used to have multiple typewriters and setup for remote radio communication. And I never threw away my used phone, they are actually still working but just can't handle tasks. Although it used to last at least 5 years, my current one is 2 years plus and counting, everything still okay except I need to start reducing stuffs, or do major clean up with my files.

 

You don't even want to know how old most of my electronics are. :d

Well, if you got them during your teenager year, they would be around 83 years old... and if you got it from your parents it would 100 + how many years they got it before you were born.

[Arcadia]

Yes, it's actually quite amazing what you can still do with stone knives and bear skins.

[Artemis]

Anyway, except really narcissistic people with thick pocket, who actually change phone for every new models?

My brother, lol. (Hmmmm...)

 

In his defence though, I think it’s part of his plan that he gets a free upgrade every 6 months, so he probably figures “why not”.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Tech geeks and anyone else who do tech product testing are likely to try the latest and greatest before the general public so that the commonwealth knows what to expect if they're on the fence about purchasing.

[Artemis]

True. There are some people though (like my brother) who aren’t either of those and just like to have the latest and greatest of everything.

[Pseudonym]

I'd love an iPad, but I can't really justify spending that much money. :(

 

Nearly murdered my cat last night. I don't sleep very well, it takes me ages to drop off, and every time I finally started to dose she stood outside the door and yowled at the top of the lungs. Went on for hours. Then I fell asleep and woke up choking. Then the storm we were having would get really loud and start blowing stuff about loud enough to wake me up. Then cat yowling again.  :angry:

[Artemis]

I got the iPad Air 2 during a Black Friday sale when it was much cheaper than normal.  It was well worth the cost, I use it all the time.  Way more than I use my laptop.

 

When I was a kid, I used to have a lot of trouble getting to sleep.  It would take me two or three hours to fall asleep sometimes.  Finally solved the problem (for the most part) in my late teens when I figured out that I needed to sleep with a fan on.  If I try to sleep in silence, my mind just runs and runs.  Nothing else works, not TV or a white noise machine.  It has to be a fan.  If it's on high enough, it drowns out other noises that might wake me too, like the dogs barking.