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[Scandanavian War Machine]

there is:

clowns are scary!

[sean]

It's because the concept of clowns is just fucking scary.



THIS GUY IS FUCKING CREEPY AND SCARY OKAY?

[Lines]

The only clowns that are not creepy are the more classic looking clowns. Like the ones that look more like jesters or Harley Quinn. The others are pretty scary.

[RedLion]

Clowns are just damned unsettling and disturbing. They don't really induce terror like waking up to see a psychopath with a butcher knife standing over you would.

Unless they're dressed like a clown. I'd just shit myself and die from horror.

ALSO.

Clifford The Big Red Dog was the bane of my existence as a kid.



The message these books always gave me as a child was " HAHAHAHAH, you're going to be eaten by horrifically mutated giant fucking red dog.

[Cam]

Well, also, there was this guy:

[Barmymoo]

I've honestly never understood clown phobias, to be honest. I can see why someone with a heavily painted face can be disturbing, and films like that one certainly help to make people terrified of them, but there are far scarier things, IMO. Human statues always make me jump because I don't expect them to move, but it's not because they're all painted up.

[karl gambolputty...]

Those are some... lovely pictures.  So... uh... how 'bout them important signifiers of age-level huh guys?  I think 2 is a good one.  Learning to not poop on yourself is important.  That happens at two right?

[Patrick]

21 is a retarded age to serve as the limit for drinkin' b00z. Seriously? I'm 19. I've been allowed to drink for three years, because, well, Luxembourg aren't prudish jackasses about everything. Do you see me drinking and driving? Do you see me even getting horribly smashed once a week? No. Because I learned relatively young to respect the destructive power alcohol has on your ability to move.

tl;dr lower the drinking age, home country of America.

[Amaroq]

Wow, interesting tommy - being American, I'd always thought as Patrick did, that we really ought to flip-flop our drinking age (21) and our driving age (16). Give 'em five years to get the drinking out of their systems before we hand them the keys!

But if that's a cause of the problem you outline, it bears re-thinking.

Dagnabbit, I thought this thread was just gonna be all casual party fun, and there you go making me think! 

[Boro_Bandito]

I really don't think the number of teenagers drinking in the US would change all that much if the drinking age was changed from 21 to 16. Hell, I started drinking illegally when I was 15, and at college the amount of underage drinking is just incredible anyway. Make it legal and sure, for a few months there's gonna be panic in the streets. But then you'll have half of our youth hunover so bad they'll never want to drink again.

[Patrick]

@ Tommy: I'd disagree there. Your world view changes a lot from 16 to 18, and a lot more from 18 to 21. It also has a lot to do with the fact that drinking is a rite of passage into adulthood. You can vote at 18, you can drink at 18, you can drive at 18, and many other different age-dictated rights and privileges. And so when all of those things come at once, I am of the belief that you will inevitably want to try ONE of them just for the hell of it.

The thing is, I'm not even worried about alcoholism. I'm already at risk because alcoholism is rampant on both sides of my family. But I also learned early on what my limits are, and I have only pushed them once in three years, and the horrible embarrassment that came the next morning (and months later, when I met somebody from that night who reminded me how drunk I truly was) has served as a pretty excellent reminder as to why we don't do these things.

Maybe mine is just a special case, but I definitely think that when the age to drink is that young and that isolated from the point where you learn to be responsible with other things, it serves you better in the long run. You know how when your schedule at school is so cramped that you can't remember a damn thing you did all day? Similar concept.

[Gemmwah]

I really don't think the number of teenagers drinking in the US would change all that much if the drinking age was changed from 21 to 16. Hell, I started drinking illegally when I was 15, and at college the amount of underage drinking is just incredible anyway. Make it legal and sure, for a few months there's gonna be panic in the streets. But then you'll have half of our youth hunover so bad they'll never want to drink again.

You say that, but a hangover never stopped me or my friends from drinking, be it underage or of age. Definitely a flawed theory.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

flawed, yes. but it seems to hold more water, for me, than tommy's does. i think lowering the drinking age in america wouldn't change much of anything except maybe boost the economy alittle.

[Boro_Bandito]

Actually, if I had gotten a hangover the first time I drank I would have probably been turned off to it. Take my younger brother. He has one hangover/blackout at senior week and now he won't touch alchohol.

[Cam]

Well, the initial drive to change the age to 21 was prompted by the founder of MADD.  It was pushed through simply because it was a very hard issue to oppose.  I am for raising the drinking age because it will save lives!  but but States Rights!... oh shit, it is an election year.  Save the drunken teenagers!

Supposedly, statistically, it has made some slight difference, but I didn't dig up any thing to support that.  I still think there is something wrong when you can get join the Army or get drafted, but you can't drink a draft.

[Patrick]

Bonus: at Bitburg Air Force Base in Germany, you can buy alcohol on post at the age of 18. My sister still has the ration card to prove it.

Is it just me or does something smell really goddamn fishy there.

[Lines]

The only thing I see happening by lowering the drinking age is to give teenagers a reason to be more stupid. Really. Think about it. The general populous of your average teenager is stupid enough, especially in the US. Getting everything (license, voting, drinking, legally adult, etc.) at 18 would make sense, but allowing alcohol at 16 is not a good idea IMO. (No offense to the teens on this forum, I just don't like the teens in my area. Most of you on here are cool, but ones I've met, particularly ones I went to school with, I would not trust with a lower drinking age.)

Also, I had my first hangover when I was...19? (Meaning the 3rd time I'd ever drank.) It didn't turn me off alcohol, it just made me realize the importance of drinking lots of water before bed.

[Gemmwah]

I sat here writing a big essay-type post about teenage drinking and the like, but realised it made me sound like my mother, and feel twice as old.

Basically, the limits shouldn't be moved because they're not wrong.

[Cam]

Well, yeah, I think 16 would be premature.  It just doesn't seem to add up that you can do every thing aside from drink at eighteen.  Supposedly, people are claiming that it has saved lives.  I think it is very likely true.  Apparently, people on the opposite side of the debate are saying it is a result of the cars being better constructed and better safety regulation.

For me, put in the context of logic other responsibilities and rights gained at eighteen, it just doesn't make sense to have the drinking age at twenty-one, even though, it might technically be saving lives. 

I think I am going to go home and enjoy a beer and contemplate how much of a bastard that makes me.

[Alex C]

You guys have no idea how disappointed I am that this isn't tangentially related to Paul Gilbert's last studio album.

I love making fun of shredders.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

basically if drive drunk, you are a fucking idiot no matter how old you are and lowering the drinking age would weed out these obviously inferior genetic specimens before they can reproduce. obviously, there will be collateral damage in accidents (my grandpa was killed by a drunk driver, unfortunately) but that's a risk i'm willing to take for the betterment of mankind.

if you're not prepared to take that risk, you are a freedom-hating commie.

[Patrick]

I don't think that society (and the law) saying teenagers are stupid is really constructive. If anything that's going to make more of them just say "Fuck you" and drink illegally.

The thing is, why do you think there's such a problem with underage people drinking? Because the law is there, they're of the age where rebellion is the only way they know how to express themselves, and even though excess ain't rebellion, it's excess when you're not allowed to even have a smidge that makes it rebellion. If you take away something to rebel against, such as drinking laws, young'uns will be less likely to rebel against it.

Seriously, how many people in here who've consumed alcohol underage would've ever done it if it didn't mean hiding something from The Man? That is the only reason I drank in Alaska this summer at all.

[Lines]

I drank out of curiosity, not because of rebellion. I was all like, "huh, why do people like this stuff? *sip* No really, why do people like this stuff?"

I am a freedom-hating commie.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

damn! she saw through my cleverly veiled admission of communist tendencies!

[jhocking]

The first time I drank alcohol, I remember my motivation was largely because of the lame-ness of the other people at the party. Specifically, I wasn't planning to drink at first, but then I noticed that other people weren't actually finishing their beers and so there was a table of quarter full beers. This annoyed me so much that I was compelled to finish off all the beers; by the time I was done I was quite sick and ended up puking.

Incidentally, prior to this night I had a crush on the older sister of the girl who's house this party was at. The next day the older sister was actually impressed because I drank so much that I threw up. After that, I didn't have a crush on her anymore. Ironic huh? If she thought what I'd done was disgusting and stupid, I'd still have a crush on her, but I was turned off because she was impressed by something I was embarrassed about.

[jill the ripper]

I call my teachers by their first names, for example.

Um, what?
No.
When you get a college degree, or at least are a good ways out of high school, you may call an ex-teacher by their first name. Teachers demand respect, even if they personally do not call for it. They are their to school you, not to be your best buddy, and deserve recognition thus. They are either Mr., Miss, Mrs., Ma'am, or Sir. Behind their back, maybe, just their last name.
That's not a generation thing. That's just a you thing. And stop doing it, you're going to run into trouble one day.

I'm obviously touchy about this, sorry.


One of the most obvious differences in generation, which I only notices in my mother recently, is skirt length. Evidentially, four inches above the knee is too short, even with leggings. Another is the sense of responsibility. I've found that people in older generations got jobs younger, and did their work in school more than children do now. This might have something to do with the sense of morality in society becoming lax.
It also might have something to do with not hitting kids.
Er, never mind that.

[Liz]

Most of my professors request that we call them by their first name, so I'm going to.

[Boro_Bandito]

Linds, for most its not the way it tastes, especially not at first, its the way it makes you feel after severl shots/beers. People like to drink because people love to get drunk.

[jill the ripper]

Oh God.
That's...
I couldn't do that.
I just couldn't.
I'd fall over twitching if I tried. I mean, there are reasons I can't learn from tutors.

But, I guess if it's there request. Blows my mind, though.

[jhocking]

I had one student who called me "Teach" for a month because she couldn't remember my name. *shrug*

[Boro_Bandito]

I'm horrible about learning professors names, especially in a large class, because I never have to address them directly so it hardly matters.

[jill the ripper]

I usually call my teachers Ma'am, or Miss if they're young to mid-life and might be touchy, and Sir.
My English professor teases me about it every time, but I can't help it.
Respect was pounded into my brain by midcentury British authours.

[RedLion]

The thing is, people who are going to drink are going to drink, whether it's illegal or not. 16 is too young, but 21 makes no sense. The law says that at 18, an individual becomes responsible for himself/herself and is fully in control of their life and has to deal with the consequences of their actions. They're an "adult" in the view of the law in almost every way  --but apparently not to drink. It's just contradictory. A person is old enough to be forced to go fight and die in a foreign land, mature enough to be thrown into a maelstrom of death and chaos, to watch their friends die, but they're not mature enough to drink? 

A lot of people are never mature enough to drink. There are plenty of 50 year olds who can't hold their liquor. I've never been much of a drinker. Again, with that sort of thing, I'm a bit lame. The only hard stuff I like is vodka. Can't stand things like tequila, brandy, etc. Mostly I'm a wino. Champagne and wine are generally the only alcoholic thing I drink on a regular basis. When I'm with a large group of friends and there's beer, I'll have enough to loosen up, but I've never gotten plastered. I've seen plenty of 17 year old girls so drunk that they're passed out for an hour until they wake up to projective vomit on the wall and then pass out again.

As far as teacher names go, it really depends on the teacher and your relationship with them.

[Lines]

In high school, I never called my teachers by their first names. If they had a nickname, like my calc teacher was G.Faul (his last name was Faulhaber and he didn't care if we used a nickname) and a history teacher was Ms. G, but it would have been so weird to call them by their first names. Now, as most of my profs prefer being called by their first name, I use their first name OR whatever title they specify. If I forget their names, I don't bother with titles, but usually these are the professors that teach lectures or whatever.

Linds, for most its not the way it tastes, especially not at first, its the way it makes you feel after severl shots/beers. People like to drink because people love to get drunk.

Well that was when I was 17, when I had my first drink. It was vodka and Mt. Dew, which was what the people I was with were drinking. Seriously one of the worst combinations on the planet. But then again, most high schoolers don't know shit about mixing drinks properly or knew what types of alcohol went in what. Other than doing shots or drinking cheap (read: awful) beer, typically the people I knew favored vodka and either Mt. Dew or Red Bull, the other worst combo ever. I have actually discovered what I do and don't like now and none of the above are appealing. But there was one good underage combination that worked out: frozen berries, Propel (flavored water, for those who don't know what that is), and vodka thrown in a blender. It's like a slushie with a kick.

Also, I don't like to drink to get drunk. I like to drink because I found a drink that actually tastes good.

[Johnny C]

His books are all pretty terrible, why highlight one specifically?

There are at least five Stephen King books I will actually stand behind, a number of his short stories and a few of his novellas.

[Jooooosh]

As a highschooler, i think the drinking age of 21 is pretty ridiculous, but it doesn't affect me that much. The only time I drink is at parties, and its fairly easy to get some bottles of vodka and some beer, along with punch and orange juice for mixing.

The reason for drinking, at my school atleast, is because of the social effects of alcohol. It does make relatively lame parties fun, especially when there are just a few people. Peer pressure isn't that big of an issue, more than a few people dont drink at the parties and no one really cares, though this could be different with different people.

As well, we have a German exchange student, and apparently you can buy beer at 15 there. Hes 16 and is probably one of the more responsible drinkers at the parties. Don't know if that means that a younger drinking age instills a sense of respect for alcohol(a theory I subscribe to), instead of the more common american teenage attitude of 'lets just get fucked up', which i will admit is also fun.

[A Wet Helmet]

I returned to the continental US when I was 26.  Prior to that, I moved a lot and spent quite a bit of my youth in Europe.  One of my stints back in the US came when I was 17 after having just come back from Germany.   It was, I tell you, damn odd to be legal to drink one day, and illegal the next.  (Of course, it was nice to be able to drive again)

Though I'm not sure I would say that the younger drinking age made me significantly more responsible a drinker (I still got shit faced and acted like an idiot regardless of what continent I was on) there was certainly less pressure to binge in Germany than there was in the U.S.   

I believe I probably drank more often --ok, let's admit it, daily-- in Germany, but because there wasn't any concept of "we might not be able to do this tomorrow" there wasn't any incentive to drink as much as I possibly could.  There were certainly nights I drank like a pledging frat boy over there, but it was generally a more relaxed attitude.  Have a beer or two after school, have a beer at dinner, and maybe three or four drinks in the evening.   As soon as I got back to the states the concept was "Let's get two cases of beer and get out the beer bong".   Because even though I quickly made friends with a guy who was 21, there was still this culture that we were doing something we weren't supposed to, so we better do it to excess... Tomorrow may never come.

So where does that put me on the concept of drinking age?  Honestly, I don't know.  I would agree with the general concept that if you can vote and serve in the military, you should be able to buy a beer.  So is the drinking age in the US too high or the voting/service age too low? 

[Amaroq]

I drank out of curiosity, not because of rebellion. I was all like, "huh, why do people like this stuff? *sip* No really, why do people like this stuff?"

Ha! My parents did that to me on purpose. They had, sitting in the fridge, some boxed wine that had probably gone bad, and a couple cans of the cheapest nastiest beer. I remember, maybe age 12 or 13, stealing one of the cans of beer with a friend of mine. We each took like two sips, and couldn't stand it - we poured the rest down the toilet! The worst part about it was worrying about getting in trouble for something we'd really hated!

Talked to my dad about it years later, having thought that we'd gotten away with it, and he confessed that, no, they knew we'd done it, and had gotten a good laugh imagining what our faces must have looked like.


Edit, to avoid double-posting, and in reply to A Wet Helmet:

The "pressure to binge-drink" bit is what's hardest about lowering the drinking age now that its high: I'd worry about, at least for a time, that pressure leading to a wave of binge drinking amongst those for whom it was illegal.

"Duuuude! We're legal now! Let's get wasted to celebrate!"

I'd expect that to taper off in time, but the initial wave of it .. *shudder*

[A Wet Helmet]

I celebrated my 21st birthday in Germany.  It was a Sunday, and I don't think I drank anything.    Had I been in the states, there is no doubt (based on the number 21st birthday parties I attended) I would have drank myself nearly comatose.

[calenlass]

My great-great-something uncle used to keep a still. I do not remember when I had my first alcohol. (Sometime after I was 10-ish, I guess.)

I can remember when I started drinking socially, though, and it wasn't so much social drinking as curiosity about why everyone else was, and if the stuff they were drinking (rum, I think, was my first proper drink) was as good as whisky. Some of it was, some of it wasn't. I made myself sick enough the morning after at one weekend party when I was 13 on rum and cheap beer that I decided I wouldn't do that again. 7 years later, I have pretty much held to it.

I don't really have any opinion on the drinking laws, except that if people thought more like I do they wouldn't need to be as harsh, but since they don't, whatever. One thing I do question is how in the States you cannot take your kid into a restaurant and buy them a beer or a glass of wine with their dinner, even though you as their parent sanction such reasonable, measured consumption.

Also, losing my beloved Integra to a drunken shit ass bastard who tried to fucking drive away doesn't change my opinion on the drinking age laws, but it makes me want harsher punishments for driving under the influence of anything. Fucking shitcock.

[idiolect]

I guess it doesn't make that much sense legally speaking not to have the drinking age be 18 in the U.S., just because at that point you are no longer a minor.  Is there any justification for it beyond that legislators just like it better that way?

Also, I really hope the driving age here stays as low as it is.  This is a giant country with lots of wide open spaces and, for the most part, terrible transportation even if you do live in or near a city -- if you raised the driving age to 18, it would really suck for a lot of kids just on a personal level, you'd probably be removing or at least seriously limiting part of the workforce (no 17 year olds driving to after school or summer jobs), and it would put a number of unnecessary strains on their parents.

I can't help but wonder if for both driving and drinking the case isn't just that newbies to these things tend to suck much more often than experienced people.  Surely youth are more prone to risky behavior than middle-aged people, but I'm not sure, on balance, that there's that much difference between how risky people are willing to be at 18 and at 21 (-- surely it does change for individual people, I mean the entire demographic on the whole).

Also, losing my beloved Integra to a drunken shit ass bastard who tried to fucking drive away doesn't change my opinion on the drinking age laws, but it makes me want harsher punishments for driving under the influence of anything. Fucking shitcock.

Yeah, definitely with you on that.

[Elizzybeth]

When I was eleven, one rainy evening during Thanksgiving weekend, my mother put my brother and I through a terrifying twenty-minute ride (on the wrong side of the road, sometimes) before running a red light, crashing into another car, then spinning around and hitting a stoplight so hard it fell over.  I had known, when we got into the car, that she was too drunk to drive, and I felt awful knowing that I had almost asked my dad not to let her drive us but didn't have the balls to follow through.

Thankfully, no one got seriously injured, and spending a couple of hours in jail and losing her license actually allowed my mom to realize that she'd been an alcoholic for seven or eight years and needed to stop drinking, but at that point, I promised myself that I'd never drink.  At about the same time, because my parents both smoke pot, I vowed never to smoke.  It's hard to rebel against a couple of hippies, really.

I've managed to politely decline the now-almost-weekly invitations that I get to smoke pot with my increasingly drug-minded friends (one close friend and one acquaintance have started dealing in the past year), and I've kept my drinking so far to very occasional, very light social drinking.  Will I continue to be such a prude?  I don't know.  But for now, that's how I'm different from my parents.

[E. Spaceman]

I call my teachers by their first names, for example.

Um, what?
No.
When you get a college degree, or at least are a good ways out of high school, you may call an ex-teacher by their first name. Teachers demand respect, even if they personally do not call for it. They are their to school you, not to be your best buddy, and deserve recognition thus. They are either Mr., Miss, Mrs., Ma'am, or Sir. Behind their back, maybe, just their last name.
That's not a generation thing. That's just a you thing. And stop doing it, you're going to run into trouble one day.

I'm obviously touchy about this, sorry.

I call people by their first name, or the name i find more appropiate for them. This is obviously due to a fundamental difference in how we look at life, I don't think I should give respect to anyone by their mere position, how we interact swill determine whether or not i give you respect.
Teachers were paid to teach me, the tuition i paid provided for their wages. They were given a payment for their services, expecting a special treatment above that seems ludicrous to me.
In any case, my teachers would be more concerned about me learning to use "their/there" correctly than how I address them.

[calenlass]

You guys are weird. I only address my professors as "Professor". I used to address the ones I knew outside of class as "Coach" instead, because they were generally coaches of intramural stuff. The only people who get addressed as some equivalent of "sir" or "ma'am" are my spanish professors, who become "señor" or "señora", which is actually like saying "mister" or "misses" (sir would be "don" and ma'am would be "dama", and that is antiquated and weird).

[idiolect]

I call people by their first name, or the name I find more appropiate for them. (emphasis added)

Whoa whoa whoa!  Call people by whatever name that they ask you to call them by, not whatever you decide on.  Jeez.

This is obviously due to a fundamental difference in how we look at life, I don't think I should give respect to anyone by their mere position, how we interact swill determine whether or not i give you respect.
Teachers were paid to teach me, the tuition i paid provided for their wages. They were given a payment for their services, expecting a special treatment above that seems ludicrous to me.
In any case, my teachers would be more concerned about me learning to use "their/there" correctly than how I address them.

And if you don't like dealing with certain things like being asked to call people by their last names, you can leave and take your money with you and give it to whatever crazy hippie school is letting you call people by their first names only.  Also, you're totally wrong on the "respect" issue too -- other human beings in general but especially your ostensible superiors should start out with some amount of respect from you in whatever way is relevant.  From that point forward, they can gain a special amount of respect from you if they do something especially excellent, or they can lose respect if they treat you badly.  I always worry about people who seem to think everyone walks around having no respect for each other from the get-go.  (Alternately, I don't like it when such people say things like that to me directly, because of the implied demand that I start thinking about how to impress them and gain their respect.  Ew).

Also, if your idea of what teachers have to offer is still in the realm of there/their/they're stuff, then... wow.  Well, keep plugging away and maybe some day they'll let you read a whole book.

[Hat]

God, who cares

Call people by whatever they want to be called by! Most of my lecturers prefer to be called by their first names. Why the fuck wouldn't you do that. One of them likes to be called "Professor _________". Why the fuck wouldn't you do that either? I want to be called Carl Weathers, why the hell won't an admin change my name to Carl Weathers, is what I am trying to get at with this.

It's common fucking courtesy to address a fellow human being the way they would like to be addressed, theres no need to be formal if they don't want it, and there's no need to be informal if they do.

What the fuck are we even arguing about anymore, we sound like a bunch of fucking old people.

(I'm not agreeing with you either, idiolect. You are an insufferable prick! If you asked me to refer to you as Mr _______ I would probably refuse to do so out of sheer spite)

[idiolect]

What the fuck are we even arguing about anymore, we sound like a bunch of fucking old people.

So the answer to the OP is none whatsoever, then.

[E. Spaceman]

Whoa whoa whoa!  Call people by whatever name that they ask you to call them by, not whatever you decide on.  Jeez.

why?

And if you don't like dealing with certain things like being asked to call people by their last names, you can leave and take your money with you and give it to whatever crazy hippie school is letting you call people by their first names only.  Also, you're totally wrong on the "respect" issue too -- other human beings in general but especially your ostensible superiors should start out with some amount of respect from you in whatever way is relevant.  From that point forward, they can gain a special amount of respect from you if they do something especially excellent, or they can lose respect if they treat you badly.  I always worry about people who seem to think everyone walks around having no respect for each other from the get-go.  (Alternately, I don't like it when such people say things like that to me directly, because of the implied demand that I start thinking about how to impress them and gain their respect.  Ew).

I did, there I learned that people are idiots and that questioning is an essential thing if you don't want to be an utter sheep.

As for respect, everyone gets some by default, this is intrinsic to their status as human beings. A sad fact is that most of my ostensible superiors have never been more than ostensible. Politician or McDonalds server, I don't think differently about you because of the position, I won't give you any more respect for it, only through your actions or inactions. On a slightly more lighthearted note, I must say that never have I met someone who demanded respect who was actually deserving. All the people I respect, and there are a lot, are humble about it.

[BrittanyMarie]

I'm with Hat. Though there are probably class issues between ideolect's and emilio's differing views on authority figures and respect. Schools in lower-income areas tend to be much more formal, and higher-income schools tend to be much more relaxed.

I also loved drinking more when I was 14 than when I hit 21.

[E. Spaceman]

I don't have money to afford things like "university", if that is what you mean.