One of the things about BaD is that it gives the blogger of the said BaD a chance to let a little of their personality out. Though it doesn’t have to be about video games in general, it’s usually a good chance to let other reads find out a little more about the person behind the screen name. Though I won’t exactly do a big reveal of the dramatic persona who is the “Virtual Reality Sociopath”, I thought instead I’d share a bit more about what makes me tick. And by “what makes me tick” I mean by what I despise in life. Don’t worry I’ll explain why I call myself the “Virtual Reality Sociopath” but in the meantime I thought I’d touch on a few topics that some readers have asked me in the past.
If you’re a frequent reading of my blogs you’ll notice a general theme of what I like and dislike in life. Be it game related or life in general I do speak of these issues from time to time. So I thought this week I’d try to explain myself in why I feel like I do with these given subjects. With this first entry of “Why I despise” I thought I’d tackle one of the most frequently asked questions: Why DO I despise New England/The East Coast area? But before I answer let me clear a few things up.
1) There is no reasoning or balance to why I despise.
This is just my own PERSONAL experiences when I lived in the New England area for 5 years. I’m sure others didn’t have the same issues that I had and for some it probably was an enjoyable experience living there. For me that was different.
2) I’m aware of culture shock
Though this is the United States of America, there was some factor of culture shock that was involved when someone from one region of the US moves to another. Though I’m aware of some of them, I feel that certain situations/actions can’t be explained away as “part of the culture”.
3) I’m sure not everyone is bad out there.
Though I may seem to demonize everyone out there I know that’s not true for all the people living out there. In fact I had the privilege in meeting some decent folk in New England. It’s just too bad they were in the small minority when it came to the majority of people I met, be it strangers or people I got to know.
4) This doesn’t include ALL of the New England/East Coast area.
Though my travels took me too many places in that area, I didn’t actually visit all the places that would be considered New England. Mostly it was the coastal states I visiting along the I-95 corridor. I didn’t visit the upstate areas often or the border areas around Canada. But with that said I did meet people from those areas and honestly they didn’t impress me much.
5) 5 years is not a lifetime/things changed.
I don’t want to see comments or messages from people saying “things were different back then” or “you didn’t give it enough time” statements. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. I could care less what they were long ago to what they’ll be 5 years from now. My experience happened then and that’s where it happened.
Okay with that out of the way lettuce begin!
People lacked common sense out there.
One of the main problems I had with deal with people in New England/East Coast was their lack of common sense. I’m not sure if this is because of the general liberalized thinking of the area or that East Coast mentality where they think they are the only “civilized” individuals when compared to people from the Midwest. Though I had many examples of this there are only a few that stand out with me to this day. (You may find this will be a recurring trend in this blog so I’ll try from beating a dead horse.) one of the being a lawsuit filed by someone in one of the small towns in the area where the individual was suing a local church for violating his religious rights by playing Christmas music outside of their church. He, being a devote atheist, said he was offended by it every time he drove by that church with his car window down on his way to work and back. Now instead of the courts wondering why this guy had his car window down in the middle of the winter, the courts actually PROCEEDED with the case. I’m not sure which one made me shake my head in disgust more. The fact that the man was offended and felt he had to take this to a court of law or the court of law itself decided to hear the case.
Another example would be of an experience where a man tried to get my insurance company to pay for his scratched rims on his car because he had the gall to try to pass me at an intersection, when the light was red, because he had to squeeze his car between me and the curb he was jumping. Even worse was when the officer on the scene almost entertained the notion that I taking up two lanes of traffic when I informed the officer that there IS no two lanes.
Another example dealt with a landlord that tried to get me to pay for the light bill of the people living on the second floor of a house because “I had to walk along the hallway of the second floor” to get to my stairs leading to my floor. I’m not sure what made less common sense. That they thought I should play for the lights or that they couldn’t tell the people on the second floor to pay their light bill.
People were just generally unpleasant.
When I had to interact with individuals out there they tended to be self-absorbed and full of themselves as if they mattered more than you did. I had one too many people of any racial divide try to convince me that they were somehow superior to me or others because of “insert X reason” here. And if you didn’t agree I was either too stupid to realize it or were basically a racists. Even costumer service out there was very bad. Never had I had experiences where I had to gather my nerve to go shopping or do anything, only run into people who knew very little of what their job offered and were just there to get a paycheck. And if you dared to asked them for help or assistance, they acted as if you were asking too much of them. Is it too much to expect decent customer service over there?
Another behavior trait I didn’t care for out there was the general unhelpfulness people had for their fellow man. You don’t know how many times I saw someone in need of help in any small capacity and receiving none. From someone need a tire changed, to help carrying items to their care, no one wanted to lend a helping hand. I saw a man crash his bike in the middle of a crosswalk and instead of anyone approaching him to see if he was okay, they just walked by him as if he didn’t exist! This man wasn’t even a homeless guy, he was just your average guy riding a bike. This leads to another issue.
Everything is against the law
This was the one thing that was really annoying. There seemed to be law against EVERYTHING out there. Even things that you wouldn’t think are against the law but are or things you thought would be against the law are. It was even more annoying when bike riders and pedestrians had more rights on the roads than the driver’s do! I’m sorry but if you’re stupid enough to walk in the middle of busy intersection, and expect drivers to stop for YOU when it’s not your turn to cross the street, then you deserve to get run over. I also don’t like the fact that you are expected to give bikes the same use of the roads as if they were cars. Just because you can drive a bike anywhere doesn’t mean you can.
It’s very confusing. I got a ticket for having my car running in my driveway one winter because apparently you can’t have an unattended car running in your driveway. How on earth are you able to warm up your car in the morning? If this was the case then how can you justify using a remote car starter if you can’t even use it? Another example was when I tried to get my car registered over there; I happened to fill out one wrong form and was almost arrested for falsifying public records! I was just trying to fill out the right paper work to ensure I got my registration transferred over, to file under a different name! And don’t’ get me started in trying to do the right thing. From trying to get unemployment to filing the right forms with any governmental department, it seemed you needed to have the cliff notes or a lawyer to help you navigate the red tape involved. And if you got one thing wrong and wasted a government official’s time, be prepared to pay the consequences!
Finding people’s lack of faith disturbing.
This might sound like an odd one. Though there were places of worship and respect for other people’s religions, it didn’t seem that religion in general was welcomed. The populous gave the impression that Sunday was for religion but the rest of the day it was supposed to be hidden. The only exception being certain religious holidays THAT ALL HAD TO BE recognized be it a mainstream religion or fringe group. And Lord help you if you answered someone if you were a Christian, they tended to view you with suspicions as if you were a right-wing zealot that was preparing to bring back the puritan age.
People were just too busy
It seemed I was the only one that followed the speed limit out there. It didn’t matter if the speed was posted at 55 or 65, everyone went 80 and if you didn’t YOU were seen as the troublemaker. Everyone just seemed to need to be somewhere else 10 minutes before they were supposed to be there. This issue seemed to be pandemic with not just in the major cities but in the small towns as well. No one seemed to be relaxed or calm. It had to be RUSH RUSH RUSH or I’ll run over you.
Road conditions are in constant flux
Never have I known a road or street to have SIX different names to it. One road in question was called six different names because the city, county, state, township, historical society and US government recognized it differently. Also a section of the parkway I drove on had to be shut down so the state could study why a tree branch fell on a car on the parkway. You didn’t need a study to find out why. It’s because YOU WON’T CUT DOWN THE TREES ON THE PARKWARY EVEN WHEN THEY LOOK LIKE THEY ARE DEAD/DYING. I’m no tree expert but given my experience with trees out in the Midwest, if it looks hollow inside there is a good chance it’s going to go. Also for some reason you expect to be able to handle huge volumes of traffic in the area, yet you won’t see to widening the roads even though they are still as narrow as they were back when horse drawn wagons road them. How do you expect drivers to share the roads with other drivers when the roads will hardly accommodate them? It’s even worse when you involved bike riders into the mix.
Infrastructure falling apart.
That’s one of the things I found very annoying in the East Coast though now it’s being recognized all over the US in part. Our aging roads, bridges, power lines, trains, subways are in bad need of repair or replacing. It’s the one thing I noticed that wasn’t getting enough attention. Roads that needed replacing were just getting either blacktop to cover the holes or areas of road were being shut down for long periods. I saw power lines practically MATING with nearby trees given how so close they were to them because they didn’t want to cut down the precious trees thanks in part to environmentalists. All the time I was out there I was expecting to hear news of train derailments or power outages due to overtaxed transformers. Good thing I left in 2009 when those events actually happened. But what really annoyed me the most was that I saw certain areas actually getting replaced when they were actually replaced a year ago. I saw one major highway get repaved again and again every year for no good reason. The first repaving was just fine! Why did they have to tear up the road and do it again. And again. And again. And AGAIN!
I could go on and on about what makes me despise the New England/East Coast Area and honestly what I’ve said doesn’t scratch the surface of why I despise the area so. But if I had to choose on what exactly drives me up the wall about the area. It would have to be these two news items that helped me realize I had to get out of there. They are as followed:
The Cheshire Connecticut Home Invasion Murders
Never have I known such a horrible crime to happen in all my years. It was bad enough that the two people bludgeoned the husband but strangled the wife, raped her then their two daughters, then later tied them down to their beds alive, poured gasoline on them and set the whole house on fire.
The Boston “bomb scare”
I normally don’t speak of this often anymore because of the actual Boston bombing that did happen. But back in 2007 this was the pivotal moment that made me realize I had to get out of their before I got infected with this brand of stupidity. For those not in the know, the Cartoon Network launched a guerrilla marketing campaign that targeted major cities in the US about their Adult Swim lineup. One of the advertising methods involved a character from one of the shows on Cartoon Network being hung up with magnets in various places in these cities. My problem with all of this was that someone in Boston saw the picture above and immediately assumed “bomb”, which caused so much trouble that homeland security was called on along with other law enforcement agency.
I could go on and on but this blog has gone on much longer than I wanted.
In short this explains why I despise the New England/East Coast Area. If you still have any questions feel free to ask them and I’ll get back to them as soon as I can. I know much of what I wrote may not make sense but this is the best I could do without having to resort to writing a book about all I experienced out there.
BaD thought of the day:
Windows 8.1 is more awesome when you install the classic shell. Now I just need to find the right size of windows 7 start button icon…
Ta-ta
“N”
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