" This is bullshit! There should be wheelchair paths here."

Comment made by an American tourist to our guide upon learning that his electric scooter could not traverse the rugged terrain of Easter Island.



Everyone registering for the tour was advised that it would be a strenuous hike to remote areas. Apparently scooter guy's wife booked the tour, and according to him did not tell him about the strenuous hike part.

After more than 1/2 hour of discussion, he and his wife were left at the tender dock still ranting about his right to be accommodated regardless of circumstances.

Meh. Leave him there.

JETMAN!!

They expect the word to bow down to them. These are the same folks who will be at the purser's desk bitching about the quality of food, the entertainment, the weather etc... They are happier being mad for some reason.

Last January we took a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. Throughout the week we enjoyed upper-80 to mid-90 degree temperatures. On the final day, a sea day back to Miami, it got considerably cloudy and cooler. I went down to the pursers desk that evening to take care of my bill and the passenger in front of us was complaining about how his last day was ruined because the temperature fell to the low 70's and wanted compensation.

I am amazed at how much money they spend to complain the entire time they're gone. I wouldn't be a purser on a cruise ship to save my life :D

Travels half-way around the world, and expects everyone to speak American.

it was mussing up they-er hay-er. (their group was from arkansas, the ladies were southern belles who broke most one syllable words into two syllables and called everyone "luv" and "hon".)


we were leaving for a trip to the jaguar preserve, they were going to the mayan ruins and the jungle hike. we shared the boat ride from the peninsula to the mainland. the ladies didn't want to wear the rubber boots supplied by the tour, "these aren't very nice. ya'll got anything better". then complained because the boat was open air, blowing their perfectly coiffed hair. as we got dropped off one of them said to the guide, "this humidity is messing my hair and makeup. i wish ya'll would've warned me ahead of time."

i don't know what they expected from a jungle hike, maybe airconditioned jungles or something.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

stupid southern states :hide:

:popcorn:

:D

dumbfucks.

:D

he got married you know. :D

but no one in Boston would do it.

they would have thrown the barber who did it in the Charles

:rofl:

because i remember how irritating and condescending they were. not just to the locals, but to everyone. walking around calling everyone "Hon", like they were princesses of the sorority cotillion or something. hard to exclude that accent from my memory when i heard about their hay-er at least 5 times in a 20 minute boat ride or the negotiations at the dock about what kind of boots would've been acceptable to them. (while we were already waiting on the dock for them to fix their makeup)

it's called being descriptive. i was telling a little story trying to establish what kind of people these were: spoiled, coddled, little, southern belles who hadn't put enough thought into their vacation and chose to announce to everyone around them how unpleasant it was.

if you don't like my description, oh well.

It has nothing to do with being condescending, it is a term of endearment to many in the south, and your reference to it being something otherwise is utter bullshit.

Are they spoiled because they say hay-er? No. It means they grew up in the south. And being a southern belle is not something to be ridiculed for either.

Spoiled and coddled is one thing (about the boots, hair, and makeup) but implying that being southern had something to do with being irritating and condescending is quite another.

:cry:

Darlin'

:loveya:

They might have been from the South, and they might have been female/women, but they were neither belles nor ladies, and they might have even had some pretenses.

And though I will never be a female of any category (except, maybe, the "accidental dismemberment" kind), I can tell you as the son and grandson of the last of the true Southern Belles, the people you were with were just plain tacky. A real Southern Belle would have put on an artifical grin and beared the discomfort, and never complained about the bad hair or smudged make-up, and certainly not have been tacky. It would have been impolite to complain, after all.

And while I appreciate the description (I have known so many of those people!), it sounded to me, and at least one other DUer, that you were making fun of the dialect just as much as you were the behavior.

Dialect is a cultural thing. After all, would it be in good taste to make fun of an Indian's accent or an African-American's accent or a New Yorker's accent?

she was in any way discomfited.

They were just downright tacky, as you said.

plain old trash.

you probably talk funny yourself

ones who care about their hair?

:sarcasm:

Kick ass Bob! Ah know ah pay-ed fifteen dollahs fer dis heah bee hive do!

Lawd have mercy!

I coulda carried you down the road a-piece and gotten it for only ten!

Bless your heart!

:P

:think:

your hair in place in the humidity. Please apply liberally before you head into the jungle. :evilgrin:

to be eaten by jaguars. Though the rest of the group might have been tempted to cheer the jaguars on.

air conditioned jungles. Being from the south, I can say that we know humidity down here. And the way someone talks has nothing to do with their attitude. Being a southern lady doesn't make one a spoiled brat. These woman sound like they didn't know what they were getting into. But it has nothing to do with how they talk or where they are from.

Where there need to be wheelchair paths are in the supermarkets who no longer think the ADA applies to them. There need to be penalties for street preachers who block the only curb cut for 6 blocks, telling you to take your chair out into traffic because their bible rants outweigh your right to be safe.

I want to be able to get around and do the things that people on 2 legs are able to do, that's all. I'd be one of the first ones horrified by anyone who'd ruin the environment of some place like Easter Island in order to allow a HEAVY, slow, motorized vehicle to carry me close up to the items that make the place unique in the first place. (My scooter weighs 250 lbs. without me in it)

I might regret some of the places that will now be off limits to me because I have to use either the scooter or a chair but I sure don't want to be the cause of losing those places forever in order to allow me to see them.

That's what I have the internet for.

If we want to enjoy the outdoors, we just find a place that has handicapped accessible entrances and enjoy the view from further away where they don't. You are right too about the places that DO need to comply with the ADA not wanting to do it.

Bitched constantly about the unreasonable cost of making curb cuts in our city, the unreasonable cost to builders, etc.

Until she had a baby, and had to get him around in a stroller. All of a sudden, she admits today that those curb cuts look pretty damned good, and the ramps she had to include in the office building she built came in pretty handy.

Oxes being gored and all that....

their buildings/towns in a wheelchair for a WEEK before they're even allowed an opinion on what is necessary and what isn't.

Just as an aside, have you ever tried to use one of those 'handicapped accessible' stalls in a rest room IN A WHEELCHAIR? For the most part, you can get a chair through the door but you can't turn it in either direction so you can't even get to the toilet. If you do manage to angle so that you can get to the facility, you can't turn your chair around and you can't reach the door to open it to try to back out. The people who design them only see the numbers, not the reality

As Bill Clinton said when he broke his foot -- he'd never know what it was like to be a woman or a minority, but every one of us could find ourselves disabled at any moment, and is likely to face that situation at some point in our lives.

:eyes: We Americans can be so arrogant.

The Professor

that rather than allowing him to live in a wheelchair, the inhabitants of Easter Island probably would have tossed him over a cliff into the ocean.

But I have to sympathize a bit, because with ADA we give the impression that everyone can be accommodated at all times and in all places.

Recently we were told to lower (at my place of work) our braille room signs so they could be read by blind people in wheelchairs.


BLIND PEOPLE IN WHEELCHAIRS?

:wtf:

installed in walk-up or drive-up ATMs. That's why the drive-ups have 'em, they're all made the same.

but the braille still looks out of place at the drive up ones.

I've occasionally pulled up to ATMs so that someone in the back seat can make a transaction.

It's at the mall near Diamondhead - I think it's the Kahala mall, but I can't remember - anyway, it has one long-ass hallway with nothing in it, solid walls for about 80 feet and then ends with some doors out to the parking lot. No stores in that hall, nothing.

All the way at the end of the hallway, to the right of the multiple glass doors about five feet high and five or so feet from the doors, is a small braille sign that says "exit".

Now, there's no braille sign at the other end of the hallway, the one that is connected to the mall area proper.

I really want to know what blind person is gonna walk the entire length of that hallway, and actually be able to find that braille sign.

:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:



:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

:D





:hide:

"Ahm so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Bob Jimmy Bill, but little Bobby Joe Jim is, sadly, smart. Now, Ah know this is embarassing, but there's nothing that can be done about it. He might even go to college. I'm so sorry."

I've heard so goddamn much complaining on trips about shit that doesn't matter or because stuff in foreign lands is - god fucking forbid - foreign.

I can't fucking stand it.

"Their food here is funny! Why can't I just get a baked potato? What's with all the rice?"

"Because it's fucking JAPAN you Alabama asswipe FUCKTARD!"




"Why do we have to walk so much? My feet are tired!"

"Because it's fucking NEW YORK CITY you goddamn useless corn-fed bovine FUCK! It's FOUR FUCKING BLOCKS! Old ladies here walk that far every day without pissing and moaning about it you Jenga-playing Bud-swilling gyro-mispronouncing ignoramus!"

And do I play it?

http://www.hasbro.com/jenga/



It's actually quite fun, so I'm not really sure why I singled it out for an insult, other than that it's humorous pronunciation lends to the hilarity of my insult stream.

I don't see any way to bet or anything

Maybe ESPN will come up with "Extreme Jenga" someday.

And betting would be easy - just place bets on how many pieces will be removed before it falls, and one could even take bets on each piece as it is removed.

or get the satisfaction of gloating that your friends have to pick up the scattered pieces.

It's a good family game. Unfortunately, I suck at it because I lack manual dexterity.

:hide:

:sheesh:

:P (as said by the Canadian Coast Guard on the Simpsons) :P

Travelling around Europe, one would hope you're exposed to something outside of the realm of 'normal' and 'comfortable'... otherwise, what's the point?! Rant on, dude.

Are yankees in the South!

The original remarks are true, the replies are my wishful responses:

"Why is it so wet all the time? It's messing up my hair!"
"It's a swamp, ma'am. Swamps are generally wet. You knew it was a swamp when you booked the flight, right?"

"But why can't we get a taxi?"
"Because you're in the middle of the woods, 150 miles from the nearest urban center."
"But at home we have taxis everywhere."
"You're not at home. We don't want taxis, and we don't need them. We prefer trees."

"Why does everyone keep wasting my time with saying 'thank you' and 'have a nice day' and 'excuse me' all the time?"
"Because courtesy is still a part of Southern culture." At least when we're not sleeping with our siblings or burning churches."

"I thought you people got rid of all the Mexicans and niggers!"
I still haven't managed to come up with a reply to that. I'm not a drunken good ol' boy; I'm polite company, and polite company doesn't even think that way, much less speak that way.

In Juarez, a border town in Texas, a woman from Oregon I was with on a day trip said in all seriousness, "All I see is Mexican places, and I'm tired of eating ethnic. Where can we get some Chinese?"

"I"m tired of eating ethnic, where can we get some chinese" - sheesh.

I wish I had started recorded years ago the whiny, dumbass shit I hear from people when I'm traveling, always about "Why is this place so ______" or "Why doesn't it have _______" or "This place is inconvenient".

And I always wonder, why are those pieces of shit even traveling? I travel to learn about and experience new places, and I'm actually *excited* when they're different, BECAUSE THAT'S WHY I WENT THERE!

I especially love the assholes who not only bitch about it on a personal level, but then have the courtesy to wonder "Why do they have to do everything so differently? Why can't they just do it normal?" BECAUSE YOUR EXPERIENCE ISN'T NORMATIVE YOU FUCKBAG!!!!!! BECAUSE TO THEM, YOU'RE WAYS ARE EQUALLY LUDICROUS!!

the Cheechako's become on July 4th when they find out we don't have a fireworks display..........

'course, it's daylight most of the night, but hey! We're not REALLY part of the Newnitud Stayts, are we?

Don't even ask me about the cruise ship passengers - at over 80 degrees farenheit - and the igloos! Can you come cuss 'em for me? :loveya:

:rofl:

Assholes expecting fireworks in Alaska on July 4? Yeah, when it doesn't get dark til mid-August.

Bwuhahahhaahahaha!!!

That;'s just the kind of fucking stupidity that pisses me off.

Yeah, and everyone knows that the igloos start in Ketchikan, and usually get built in June at the beginning of winter.



Stupid fucks.

Makes me embarrassed to be an American.

And God knows that, if you decided to have some fireworks for the fucknobs after they bitched and complained that you didn't have them, then they'd bitch and complain that you didn't make it dark out so that they could fucking see the fireworks.


Ignorant people should be euthanized.

please note that "corn-fed" means "midwesterner", not southerner, since the south isn't exactly known for it's rolling thousand mile cornfields, is it? No, it isn't.

Same Republican voting, inbred, ignorant, bible-thumping, small-minded hicks in all fifty states. And yes, I did assume you were referring to Southerners. I've heard cornfed applied to them as well, not so much for the miles of cornfields, but for the implication of "rural" or "small-town."

Perhaps the phrase "you Alabama asswipe FUCKTARD" colored my opinion of the rest of your post. :D :D :D

I was trying to give equal time my insulting the south and the midwest. I would have gone on and insulted the rest of the country, but I didn't feel like coming up with that many more examples.

:-)

"What do you MEAN this hotel breakfast buffet doesn't have grits OR biscuits and gravy?'. I DID NOT come all the way down here for scrambled eggs - I can have scrambled eggs at HOME, but no one up north makes decent gravy!!!"

ERRRGGGG!!!!

get some sweet tea.

:D

Because all the New Yorkers I know say "JY-ro" which certainly isn't right, considering that there isn't even a "j" sound in Greek.

Gyros (which is singular) is pronounced "YEE-ros," not "HEE-ros" or"JY-ros."

:7

nowhere did i say "all southerners" or "anyone with a southern accent is stupid" or "i met some stupid, arrogant american southerners in belize. therefore, anyone with a southern accent must be stupid".

i described a set of people i met. they weren't an imaginary stereotype. they were real, they talked like that, they were annoying, they were obnoxious, they were stupid. they spoke loudly, in very distinct voices, and made themselves the center of attention wherever they were.

how come none of you commented that the original poster called a partially handicapped guy "scooter boy"? maybe ya'll are too sensitive about your accents? don't worry i know you're not all stupid.

(edit_just realized i gave up their state in my first post. i must be dumb, sitting here with an indistinct accent acting so smart)

most of this is tongue in cheek. we are trying to start old flame wars (cause those of us in the North are cool like that) :D

No. I'm not. Why would an educated liberal elitist from CT like me be on the side of a North Carolinian for God's sake?

i can't even FATHOM that possibility! :scared:

say "Thank God. It could be worse, I could live in North Carolina".

:scared:

and they all live in churches! (or in the hills)

No sex threads.

and they are so slow. I wanna run them over with my car.

they were all too drunk to get out of the way. make a real mess on the windshield and their innards smell like Skoal

Marlboros and moonshine.

:eyes:

:shrug:

Fucking elitists...

:grr:

you be FROM North Carolina.

:scared::scared::scared:

or even worse.... Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia!

:scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared:

You're just the best.

So bright.

Couldn't you tell we were playing with Kick-Ass-Bob?

:eyes:

i just get irritated with knee jerk offense to descriptive remarks. so it's not like i'm sitting here acting superior. i said nothing that covered all southeners, or anyone with an accent except those obnoxious women in belize.


especially since i have an undetectable south florida drawl that reemerges when i spend time with accented southerners.

Though I do realize that you weren't trying to be offensive. It's just not appropriate to make fun of someone's dialect, and making fun of a dialect suggests that one person's dialect (and culture) is superior to another's.

Sorry if I took it a little too seriously -- I don't like gettin' picked on, and I got my dander up from bein' in GD earlier.

Also, South Florida isn't the South -- it's been uncalimed by either side since approximately 1927.

The whole southern dialect is usually parrotted around here as part of the RW enemy...

You've heard it: Amurica, terra...whatever.

So some of us are sensitive about being painted with a broad brush, because if anyone came on here and made fun of black dialect or even Arab accents they would be flamed immediately.

But we have to put up with it and smile. It gets old.

What agency did you use? I'd love to plan a(n imaginary) trip there!

and the South Pacific.

A person can dream.... :-)

I mean what's the point of being treated like sheep. What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they overdid it on the first day.

And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.

And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't it?" - and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres.

And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realise they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'.Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris - and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door - and you're plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane...

GREAT POST!!! :rofl:

The genius of Monty Python is responsible.

Still funny though! :rofl:

Too damn funny!!!!!

Watney's Red Barrel gets me every time :-) *wipes tears from eyes*

impromptu learning experience. Find some logs and stuff, tie some ropes to the complainer, and roll him to the site on his back - then dig a hole and upend him into it, thigh deep - then fill the hole in and cram something over his head.

But this is asinine. What will this guy want next--wheelchair lifts on Mt. Everest? :eyes:

:D

"this is bullshit, there should be accomodations for me to use an elevator to the top of Mt. Everest! i gots a trick knee!"
:crazy: