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beccaelizabethToday had some serious drawbacks.
So, it was AS women's social group, and I decided to go. Got up, got dressed, went and caught the bus, no problems.
At the group there were first only the three of us and the other two were talking about their friend who is in an abusive relationship and the friend group that fails to support them. Which is heavy stuff, but clearly the kind of thing people support each other about via social group; I just had nothing to add cause I knew none of them. Then there were two more people and they did lots of complain about the other social group that I used to go to which has apparently gone downhill and become a lot of no fun. So again, not much to say. But lots of listening to ungood things.
The Forum library was good though. I talked to librarians twice to find the books I wanted, though I am aware I sounded pretty silly both times. One time I didn't know where history books were at and wanted 'history with castles, so I can add dragons to it'. 942 apparently. I have three English history books to read now. By next time I'll have a better and more precise idea of which bits I want to read about. The other time I couldn't find books that were as it turns out exactly where they were supposed to be and clearly labelled. I don't know how that happened, it was just my turn to be daft today.
Also the Dragons trail is excellent. I saw Tuppence the dragon in the special enclosure, they made scales out of coins and now Tuppence has guards. Also saw a bunch more dragons on the way to the Forum and after that to the pub. I have a bunch of pictures on my phone, if they're any good I'll probably post some later.
SF group at the pub was three blokes. We talked. I think I annoyed one guy at least as much as he annoyed me, and there were many things I tried not to say. His initial position though was that Ghostbusters has too many women. Needs less women is never a position I'm going to agree with. And then he kept going through SF that has strong women, when I was talking about numbers of women. But okay. SF with women in, yaays. But how we got from that to talking about Thatcher and how you can understand why she didn't positively discriminate in favour of women given how hard she had to work to get where she got... defending Thatcher. I feel I was very polite and restrained and yet some things were said. He reckoned he was not talking about her policies, I reckon that how you treat women is always political, and then I tried to move the subject on to actual science fiction. Which failed repeatedly. So mixed in with talking about SF there was quite a lot about nazis and Auschwitz. This was not the pub conversation I was after.
Also when I said I stopped watching Agents of SHIELD because I didn't want to see them kill the black guys again he basically rejected my facts? Like he insisted it didn't count and the one surviving black guy is strong and of course there's no problem with the numbers and no they don't kill ethnic minority characters and... however precise I get with that guy, he wants a degree of precision more. I just meant, I've seen enough dead black guys, I don't want to watch a show that seems to consider it a fun spectacle. That seemed like a complete statement to me. But no, it was apparently an offensive argument.
So then it was 10.30pm and the taxi arrived and I thought yaay, escape now!
... the taxi driver asked what I'd been doing, I mentioned SF club, he asked if I was into space science and started rattling off a list of space exploration we've been doing lately. Yaay! Conversation about shiny things! I mentioned Pluto and all seemed well.
He followed up by saying that of course they'll be disclosing the presence of alien life in the next ten years.
And then he mentioned Ancient Aliens and things went rapidly downhill.
The problem is not his theories. Though I haven't followed that shit since the 90s and I'm still better informed than him. The problem isn't even that he didn't seem to be doing a joy of sharing thing, since he seldom acknowledged when I added a detail, and wasn't keen on me being able to answer his direct questions since he would then repeat back to me what I said only more emphatically. The problem was he talks with his hands.
Both hands.
While doing 50 in a 40 zone. And then again on the motorway.
Now call me strange, but I feel the driver should hold the fucking wheel on occasion, and indeed further feel that those occasions should be all times the vehicle is in motion.
He on the other hand felt that it was substantially more important to illustrate the angle of the secret stairs in the Mayan pyramids that lead to the stone sarcophagus that shows a dude in a space suit, doing more than the speed limit in a built up area, or to illustrate the exact principles of warp drive and what it does to spacetime, while doing 70 on the A47.
I was sitting there with all my fingers crossed praying not to die an ironic death. I only wrote for Fortean Times that one time. My X-Files phase, while devout at the time, is long over. And if I crashed FT wouldn't even know it was one for the Strange Deaths files, unless someone could report the conversation.
So while I understand the joy of finding an audience and could in other circumstances have a happy conversation about this stuff - and possibly lend him some of my reference library because dude really needed to polish some of those topics, and seriously, the pyramids thing isn't that hard, no you don't need to be in space to align buildings correctly especially when there's so many fucking stars you could line any three points up with something in the sky, and really finding it surprising that ancient people knew shit is not fortean but simply racist - in other circumstances I could have a fruitful discussion on this stuff, but not while he's driving.
After the gestures for emphasis over the whole 'all religion is sky dudes' thing, where mentioning that Buddha was pretty much just a dude did not go down well, I decided contradicting the driver was clearly not of the good.
So then we arrived at my house pretty rapidly. And I think my shoulders are still up around my ears.
Wow do I prefer the time I got a taxi driver who talked Doctor Who actors he'd picked up. Or even the silent ones. Silence is fine.
I've been trying to figure out if I should tell the taxi company? Not about the aliens, dude wants to believe, but the speeding and the hands.
Not tonight though, tonight I'm going to hide under a blanket until my eyes stop doing OO
So, it was AS women's social group, and I decided to go. Got up, got dressed, went and caught the bus, no problems.
At the group there were first only the three of us and the other two were talking about their friend who is in an abusive relationship and the friend group that fails to support them. Which is heavy stuff, but clearly the kind of thing people support each other about via social group; I just had nothing to add cause I knew none of them. Then there were two more people and they did lots of complain about the other social group that I used to go to which has apparently gone downhill and become a lot of no fun. So again, not much to say. But lots of listening to ungood things.
The Forum library was good though. I talked to librarians twice to find the books I wanted, though I am aware I sounded pretty silly both times. One time I didn't know where history books were at and wanted 'history with castles, so I can add dragons to it'. 942 apparently. I have three English history books to read now. By next time I'll have a better and more precise idea of which bits I want to read about. The other time I couldn't find books that were as it turns out exactly where they were supposed to be and clearly labelled. I don't know how that happened, it was just my turn to be daft today.
Also the Dragons trail is excellent. I saw Tuppence the dragon in the special enclosure, they made scales out of coins and now Tuppence has guards. Also saw a bunch more dragons on the way to the Forum and after that to the pub. I have a bunch of pictures on my phone, if they're any good I'll probably post some later.
SF group at the pub was three blokes. We talked. I think I annoyed one guy at least as much as he annoyed me, and there were many things I tried not to say. His initial position though was that Ghostbusters has too many women. Needs less women is never a position I'm going to agree with. And then he kept going through SF that has strong women, when I was talking about numbers of women. But okay. SF with women in, yaays. But how we got from that to talking about Thatcher and how you can understand why she didn't positively discriminate in favour of women given how hard she had to work to get where she got... defending Thatcher. I feel I was very polite and restrained and yet some things were said. He reckoned he was not talking about her policies, I reckon that how you treat women is always political, and then I tried to move the subject on to actual science fiction. Which failed repeatedly. So mixed in with talking about SF there was quite a lot about nazis and Auschwitz. This was not the pub conversation I was after.
Also when I said I stopped watching Agents of SHIELD because I didn't want to see them kill the black guys again he basically rejected my facts? Like he insisted it didn't count and the one surviving black guy is strong and of course there's no problem with the numbers and no they don't kill ethnic minority characters and... however precise I get with that guy, he wants a degree of precision more. I just meant, I've seen enough dead black guys, I don't want to watch a show that seems to consider it a fun spectacle. That seemed like a complete statement to me. But no, it was apparently an offensive argument.
So then it was 10.30pm and the taxi arrived and I thought yaay, escape now!
... the taxi driver asked what I'd been doing, I mentioned SF club, he asked if I was into space science and started rattling off a list of space exploration we've been doing lately. Yaay! Conversation about shiny things! I mentioned Pluto and all seemed well.
He followed up by saying that of course they'll be disclosing the presence of alien life in the next ten years.
And then he mentioned Ancient Aliens and things went rapidly downhill.
The problem is not his theories. Though I haven't followed that shit since the 90s and I'm still better informed than him. The problem isn't even that he didn't seem to be doing a joy of sharing thing, since he seldom acknowledged when I added a detail, and wasn't keen on me being able to answer his direct questions since he would then repeat back to me what I said only more emphatically. The problem was he talks with his hands.
Both hands.
While doing 50 in a 40 zone. And then again on the motorway.
Now call me strange, but I feel the driver should hold the fucking wheel on occasion, and indeed further feel that those occasions should be all times the vehicle is in motion.
He on the other hand felt that it was substantially more important to illustrate the angle of the secret stairs in the Mayan pyramids that lead to the stone sarcophagus that shows a dude in a space suit, doing more than the speed limit in a built up area, or to illustrate the exact principles of warp drive and what it does to spacetime, while doing 70 on the A47.
I was sitting there with all my fingers crossed praying not to die an ironic death. I only wrote for Fortean Times that one time. My X-Files phase, while devout at the time, is long over. And if I crashed FT wouldn't even know it was one for the Strange Deaths files, unless someone could report the conversation.
So while I understand the joy of finding an audience and could in other circumstances have a happy conversation about this stuff - and possibly lend him some of my reference library because dude really needed to polish some of those topics, and seriously, the pyramids thing isn't that hard, no you don't need to be in space to align buildings correctly especially when there's so many fucking stars you could line any three points up with something in the sky, and really finding it surprising that ancient people knew shit is not fortean but simply racist - in other circumstances I could have a fruitful discussion on this stuff, but not while he's driving.
After the gestures for emphasis over the whole 'all religion is sky dudes' thing, where mentioning that Buddha was pretty much just a dude did not go down well, I decided contradicting the driver was clearly not of the good.
So then we arrived at my house pretty rapidly. And I think my shoulders are still up around my ears.
Wow do I prefer the time I got a taxi driver who talked Doctor Who actors he'd picked up. Or even the silent ones. Silence is fine.
I've been trying to figure out if I should tell the taxi company? Not about the aliens, dude wants to believe, but the speeding and the hands.
Not tonight though, tonight I'm going to hide under a blanket until my eyes stop doing OO
no subject
Date: 2015-07-16 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-16 07:44 pm (UTC)see, that was the worst
;-)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-16 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-16 02:27 am (UTC)