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How to really get a Masshole mad
By adamg on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 7:27pm
Don't respond to their middle finger with one of your own - it's just what they'd expect. Instead, learn from Brian McPherson's experience with a couple of Massholes irate at his daring to cross Columbia Road in Dorchester in front of them:
... They started screaming at me in Spanish and giving me the finger. I stopped in front of their vehicle and gave them a genuine smile and wave. This really got them angry. They then whipped past me and I continued to smile and wave. They then stopped in the middle of Columbia road and continued to yell at me while I continued to, you guessed it, smile and wave. ahhh. Now if they were really in such a hurry why would they have time to stop?
Its so gratifying being so happy and friendly and it seriously pisses people off. ...
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Comments
Who's the Masshole here?
His post said he "saw an opportunity and went for it." In other words, it doesn't seem that he was crossing at a crosswalk on the walk signal, nor at an uncontrolled crosswalk where car traffic must yield. If you're crossing the street without a walk signal or uncontrolled crosswalk, you're being a Masshole, and I'd honk at you too. I wouldn't flip you off, because I'm not unnecessarily rude, but I'm going to succinctly signal to you that you don't have the right of way.
While people all over this area seem to misunderstand crosswalks, this seems to be a particular problem in Dorchester. People meander out in the road without looking into traffic, figuring cars will just stop. I mean, yes, I'm going to stop, but I'm also going to tap my horn to get your attention, and then I'm going to open my window and politely tell you that the crosswalk is down the street a bit (or explain to you that the big red hand means that you can't cross, as the case may be).
People with baby carriages or toddlers walking alongside them are the most frustrating. If you have a freaking child with you and you can't bother to use the crosswalk and/or wait until you have a walk signal, I think you should be charged with endangering said child (in addition to jaywalking, despite how Boston gives out zero jaywalking tickets most years).
Really people, it isn't rocket surgery.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Screaming in Spanish?
Did these gentlemen forget what country they're in? Better question? Are they American, or are they foreigners causing trouble?
Will....
That really isn't your last name is it? "LaTulippe"? If it is, we are going to have to change it to "tulip" right away!
Maybe you should go back to Quebec, then?
Read carefully
I'm going to explain this one more time, so commit it to memory.
I am a lifelong resident of the United States. I was born here.
Some people in the United States were not born here. They are foreigners, and while most of them come into our country and contribute positively, some of them are criminals and nuisances.
I don't want people from other countries coming into my country and making Americans uncomfortable in their own country. I wouldn't go to somebody else's country and cause trouble, and I expect for the same respect to be extended to me and our citizens.
I don't know where these people were born that yelled at an American citizen in America in Spanish. If they were not born in the United States, I would insist that they leave.
My name is Will LaTulippe, and I stand by the above statements, because I care about the safety and security of my community.
That's Funny
As a Northwest Native, it has been my experience that anyone raised in the Northeast has no farking clue how to cross the street.
The vast majority of these jaywalking fools are US born people with family in the country several generations back.
Don't get me started on "inability to find an ashtray" or "throw garbage around like the servants will pick it up" and the ever popular "can't use a cart corral to save own life".
As for safety and security, these same idiots travel to the west where they get jaywalking tickets, start fires with their ciggies tossed willynilly, and jam up parking lots with carts. They have also been known to cause international problems when they take their shitty ways with them and get ticketed in places like Calgary (and like they will in Vancouver next year) during the Olympic Games, because nobody there gives a shit that someone is an NBC executive when they step of the curb in an unsafe way.
If anything,m these "foreigners" simply seem to have learned all the local ways of stupid, perhaps with a latino flair - if they are at all foreign. Last I checked, people from Puerto Rico aren't foreigners anyway - they are from the US, too. If the immigrant drivers around here seem to be as obtuse about basic driving skills and rules as the natives, that's because they learned to drive around here, not because they come from elsewhere. You can't fault their ethnicity when it all has to do with not having had do demonstrate any real comprehensive grasp of the subject to get their licenses. Manny didn't get his tail in a bind in Seattle because he was Dominican by birth, but because he has bad habits from years of living in NYC and Boston.
Gather Round, Kids
It's another installment of "West Coasters Are Our Moral and Social Betters", or "Why I Left Utopia To Surround Myself With Drooling Cretins."
Translated for Michael
It ain't the ethnicity, its the regional behavior.
They aren't acting differently than anyone else around here. They get singled out because they are perceived as foreigners.
When "Americans" and "foreigners" from this area go to other regions or to Canada, everybody thinks they are "stupid New Yorkers".
Montreal / Quebec
In my experience when visiting Montreal and Quebec, I get received rather well when upon inquiry, I respond that I'm from Boston. Furthermore, I've never heard it said that in general, New Yorkers are seen as stupid by Canadians. How odd that you have such negative experiences with Canadians. It's been pretty much nothing but positive when I visit North of the border.
Quebec isn't Representative of Canada
It is part of Canada, but things change massively as you head over that Ontario border - and stay that way as you head west. Try Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, or Vancouver. Toronto has its share of pushy people, enough to make it annoying to people in to its west in Canada as in "Everybody Hates Toronto", but Montreal is more like east coast US than anglophone Canada. (Quebec sending the northeast more than one half of its population in the late 1800s has something to do with that, no doubt).
My soon-to-be SIL from Calgary can't tell the difference between "New Yorkers" and anybody from the rest of the Northeast US. To her, all sound the same, act rude, and can't drive. Unfair? Possibly. Like the Manny incident, it underscores the point that it isn't one "America" here.
Canadian hospitality:
That's very true, o_brien. I've visited Montreal, but not Quebec, and I've also visited Nova Scotia on at least a couple of occasions and found that was the case. When I visited my sister, who was going to McGill University many years ago, I found Montreal a very warm, hospitable place, and, when I've gone on bicycling trips in Nova Scotia, for example, the people were not only very warm, friendly, accepting and welcoming, but when we as a group would be crossing an intersection, drivers would wait until we'd all gotten across before proceeding, and, if and when they did honk their horns at us, especially during rush-hour, they would lightly tap on their horns just to let us know that they were coming. The Canadians did not have this sort of "get out of my way or I'll run you over" attitude that's all too prevalent here in the Bay State and many other parts of the United States.
I'm guessing you didn't drive much in Montreal
I didn't find driving in la ville to be all that different from driving here - why, they even use the same charming one-fingered wave we do to say hello to fellow motorists.
That's probably true in the cities, including Montreal.
I admit to not having driven in Montreal, but when I've visited Montreal, the one thing that I've observed is that while they do tend to drive a lot faster than they do here in the United States, and that I don't doubt that they're aggressive and rude, that they at least know how to drive....and are alert.
over the top
"The vast majority of these jaywalking fools are US born people with family in the country several generations back."
That's over-generalizing a bit, don't you think?
would that be Vancouver, land of the druggies?
get ticketed in places like Calgary (and like they will in Vancouver next year)
Maybe Vancouver police should spend more time working on the city's rampant drug problems instead of ticketing jaywalkers.
From what I understand, everything within a 3 hour drive is like a big free Walmart to all the crackheads in Vancouver, stealing shit because they're desperate for money for a fix.
Im kidding
but many people that were born in this country speak Spanish as a primary language.
I don't know where these
I don't know where these people were born that yelled at an American citizen in America in Spanish.
---
Jetblue has cheap tickets to puerto rico. You should check it out, youll be in for a giant shock.
Hint: The government schools teach in spanish.
You might be even more shocked to find that the american virgin islands drive on the left.
You can be American citizen and speak Spanish too
Will, people from Puerto Rico are US citizens, too. Now, I've never been there myself, but I hear they speak Spanish.
Using a language other than English doesn't make you a non-citizen or even a non-native. Plus some languages are better for cussing people out. Just as English works really well for rock lyrics.
Speaking of Massholes
Will apparently thinks it's a smart idea to make bigoted anti-just-about-everyone comments with an account that reveals his actual name and his place of employment.
Just sayin'.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
So when you travel to
So when you travel to another country and you rent a vehicle and some jerk runs in front of your car, you have the presence of mind to swear at said jerk in the language of whatever country you're in?
If I did that
I wouldn't swear at the guy while I was a guest in his country.
Ahhh, could it be because
Ahhh, could it be because you're a pretentious asshole?
Love the xenophobic, bigoted generalizations above. You also apparently don't like getting called out on it.
A quick look into your family history and you might take a different tun and find yourself on the other side of the argument with a name like LaTulippe.
First it was the Irish, then the Italians, followed by the Japanese, and the western Europeans. Now it's the Spanish and South Americans.
Glad to see you're keeping the tradition of hating an entire subset alive.
Are you illiterate?
Please show me the post where I indicated that I hate an entire subset.
well...
"Did these gentlemen forget what country they're in? Better question? Are they American, or are they foreigners causing trouble?"
This indicates a strong tendency towards xenophobia as well as completely missing the point of the post and most of this thread. Besides the fact that, if you'd read the original post, you'd know they weren't gentlemen (or any kind of men), why do you assume they aren't U.S.-born Americans? Even if they're not, what does that have to do with the fact that walking out in front of a moving vehicle that has the right-of-way is just not a smart thing to do in any language?
Your posts suggest that the subset with which you have a problem is "people who don't speak English while they're in English-speaking countries" with the implication that the specific population referred to is "immigrants."
When did your ancestors arrive in the United States, and how fluent was their English when they arrived?
The whole set
Sounds like he dislikes the whole set of foreigners, not just a subset.
Here we go again...
I have ancestors that came to this country on the Mayflower, so I assume their English was fine.
I don't necessarily have a problem with people not speaking English here. I have a problem with TROUBLEMAKERS. I really don't see how I can make this any clearer.
Will, you'd know about troublemakers
You state that anyone making trouble should go back to where they came from (or presumably where their parents, or their grandparents, or their Mayflower-boarding ancestors came from).
All you ever do on this site is post hateful assholish comments. I'm sure I haven't read all of your posts, but I've not seen anything compassionate or constuctive or really anything that adds to the site in any way. So wouldn't this indicate that you should go back across the Atlantic?
Again
I was born in the United States, and am a legitimate law-abiding citizen of this country.
If not wanting people to come in here from somewhere else and yell at motorists is hateful and assholish, then I'm a hateful asshole.
credit for cojones
I must say I don't know if I'd try to stick it to the obviously pissed off drivers with a second and third round of smiles.
The Masshole driver magnet for my neighborhood is the intersection of Boylston and Lamartine in J.P., at the Stony Brook T stop. Thank God for the sake of public safety it's a stoplight and not merely a stop sign. At the risk of engaging in some profiling here, two of the most prevalent types are guys with the music blaring out of their cars or women yammering away with cell phones glued to their ears. The former I'd be wary of re the reaction to smile & wave; the latter would be too preoccupied with their dumbass conversations to notice.
To put it another way,
These two types of drivers, whoever they may be:
are the most dangerous risks on the road, so to speak.
Yet, as other posters on here have succinctly pointed out, pedestrians are often just as stupid as many drivers, if not stupider.
Whose right of way?
I always thought vehicles are always supposed to yield to pedestrians. Searching state laws, I find two mentions:
1. "When traffic control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be so to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk marked in accordance with standards established by the department of highways if the pedestrian is on that half of the traveled part of the way on which the vehicle is traveling or if the pedestrian approaches from the opposite half of the traveled part of the way to within 10 feet of that half of the traveled part of the way on which said vehicle is traveling." (Section 89-11) This appears to limit a pedestrian's right of way to crosswalks.
2. "Upon approaching a pedestrian who is upon the traveled part of any way and not upon a sidewalk, every person operating a motor vehicle shall slow down." (Section 90-14) This seems broader, and in my view implies that the driver yields to the pedestrian for safety's sake, though I suppose the legal right of way is not specified.
Right...
The second one pretty much means that you aren't allowed to plow people down and then say "but he wasn't in a crosswalk!" The pedestrian is still wrong though, and the law doesn't say the driver shall not honk, glare, explain how crosswalks work, etc.
I know that the City of Boston law department won't pay out any claims to people who are injured in the road (either by tripping on road defects or being hit by city vehicles) unless they're in a crosswalk (with the light in their favor, if it's a controlled crosswalk) or they're in an area where there isn't a crosswalk within something like 300 feet. This is because pedestrians aren't supposed to be in the freakin road.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Oh, come on
He is awfully proud of himself for basically acting like just as much of a jerk as anyone in the car. He's actually even worse, for walking in front of a car, where from his description, he didn't seem to have a pedestrian light or be in a crosswalk.
Riiiiiiight!!
This:
is a big part of the rub.
Massholes
I moved here a couple years and am trying to leave (house for sale-no buyers) because the MASSHOLES are more than I can take. I wonder what I did wrong in my life to deserve the abuse these people in the hole of Mass give. I've never met a ruder bunch. I've live in Germany, midwest, west rockies and west coast and keep thinking that all these jerks stick in their own neighborhoods because they wouldn't survive in the rest of the world. It would be interesting to do a study on how many of the Massholes don't live to make it back to the house a block away from where they grew up.