Originally posted by kpaske
See? You just aren't listening. If you read my response it didn't say that I don't listen, just that I realize it's often a waste of my time.
Sorry - guess I'm not much for parsing casual conversation and was paying more attention to what I perceived to be the spirit of your message than the semantics.

Originally posted by kpaske
I've wasted countless hours talking to closed-minded people who never seriously considered anything I had to say. It comes to a point where what little you may learn isn't worth the effort.
I know what you mean. I spend a lot of time listening to my neighbor ramble on. Most people walk the other way when they see him coming because they think he's crazy. He's a WW2 vet, a Marine infantryman. On this very day 61 years ago he was fighting for his life, and our freedom on Bougainville Island in the South Pacific. I guess it's stressful having 75mm of exploding ordnance lobbed at you all day and he came back from that place a little wacky.

Actually in his case I think what bothered him more than people trying to kill him was the people he saw die as he looked through his sights and pulled the trigger. He said he stopped counting at 100. That was the first, and worst day of the invasion. He's not a "natural-born killer" or an "army of one" or any of that crap. Far from it. He's a very humble, passive, softspoken man - not someone you would think has ever killed another human. He wonders how he made it out of that place alive. He says God has blessed him his entire life.

He gets on my nerves sometimes with all his God talk and the tracts he leaves on my windshield and telling me I shouldn't be shacking up (as he calls it) but you know what? Every once in a while that man says something I need to hear.

But yeah - I know what you mean about wasting time. I always make sure I've got a paintbrush or wrench or something in my hand when I seem him walking my way. That way I can at least do something constructive while I wait for that gold nugget to drop out of his mouth...