Did it occur to you that maybe you are just plain insufferable either way?

It's kind of an insidious word -- especially in relation to the arts, where overreaching oneself is often necessary toward making truly interesting work. I've stopped using it altogether, because it's pretty much impossible to find a reliable standard on which to use it. For example: over the last couple of years I've gotten to know some New York City-based writers, and most of them had come from backgrounds unlike my own (wealthy, "intellectual class," etc). I got irked by some of the ways they acted and communicated, and my first thought was "pretentious," but, then, if they grew up in environments where that sort of thing was commonplace, then they're not really pretentious at all. The word basically means that there's a disparity between what you actually are and what you present yourself to be. And, really, who's in the position to judge that sort of thing? Sometimes you "know" that someone is being pretentious, but most of the time you just think you know, and then you look like a dismissive asshole.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/thea...thbeingpretent

I don't mind looking like a dismissive asshole.

Basically, I have a pretty good radar for insincerity (on an instinctive level), and the woman reeked of it. I despise insincerity.

There's a difference between thinking that someone is sort of pretentious and having an inner klaxon alarm go off whenever they open their mouths. Brandon may have a point in that we can be a bit quick to judge someone as pretentious, like I was when I wrote my rant about the hippies at the convention. (For the record I had PMS and I was being somewhat facetious anyway.) However, the fact still remains that a lot of people in this world need to be told off, like the fucking stoner hippies that I knew my first year of college who thought they were "deeper" than everyone else because they dropped a lot of acid and looked down on me because I didn't. >:

For the record, I was just trying to make a general point about the term. Wasn't stepping in to defend the honor of "breakfasting" or pushy undergraduate hippies.

I mean ... "breakfasting"? I guess it's technically in the dictionary, but that kind of usage is positively extraterrestrial.

i think your usage of the word extraterrestrial was pretentious >:

and kind of racist/presumptious

xenophobic

i guess that would be a more appropriate word but i was just thinking of those poor extraterrestrials who in his mind glorify breakfasting.

it's a n interstellar tradition!

Go back to Mars >:

I'm no longer an illegal alien, I know my rights. You can't make me go.

get your ass to mars :(

i'm vegan. :(

That's ok, I only want you to suck on my meat stick, not eat it.

i, um, ew.

looking at tadao ensures that i will never be a homosexual.

Tadao is probably like a lesbian factory too.

Rock