I think I'd probably just do what I do now, but without having to worry about money. Which would be nice.
I'd buy a boat, and ride my unicorn on it.
My answer remains the same, but I'll bet this post gets more comments.
That right, people. There was a time when a post could get only one comment.
The thread should go ahead and go nuts on the topic, but honestly, I'd pay off debt, hire people to take care of outstanding legal and accounting things on my behalf which drive me nuts, and retire to a gorgeous place beside a lake. With forest. With a shitload of books. There should be a boat as well. (Also a personal trainer or something; yeah, an actual exercise room, maybe.)
I can't think past what's annoyingly beyond my reach now, to actual unicorns. If all the troubling things that could be fixed with money were erased, what would I do? Wow.
There was a time when I would have said "found a university," but I think that time has passed.
I would subsidize political journalism. And buy a European soccer team and do all kinds of weird things.
Deal with debts, get real furniture in a nicer apartment, then rent a nice place in a good ski area and turn ski bum for a season. Also, go to all the nice restaurants and not worry about how much a book or an ingredient is.
Though I should probably note this addendum from January 2007: "Also, if I had as much money as John Edwards, I'd have a swank-ass rapper's mansion and would brush my teeth with 1997 Gaja Barolos, because they're just now becoming ready to drink. And to be perfectly honest, I probably wouldn't found the UNC Center on Poverty or volunteer for Habitat for Humanity."
I'd buy my mother a big house. Which is a bit tacky of me, I know, but that is what I'd do.
I would subsidize political journalism.
I endorse this.
Stanley doesn't say in his post whether we have enough money to change the face of the media today. "Super rich" probably isn't enough.
I'd do two chicks at the same time, man.
I wonder how Jackmormon's board-mounted bathroom grout mosaic worked out.
Pieds-à-terre in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Florence, Santa Barbara. First-class flights. More scotch?
It's great to see you, Mary Catherine. The question is: what would you do after the big house made a tiny dent in your fortune?
I'd be the best rich person. Seriously. I'd be the perfect combination of frivolous and sensible.
You wouldn't have to be super-rich, or even rich at all, to bike across the country, Stanley. Could you take a leave from your job?
Anyway, if I were super-rich, I'd go across the country in a palanquin.
I wonder how Jackmormon's board-mounted bathroom grout mosaic worked out.
Shut up, that's how.
$5000 would satisfy all my personal wants.
$50,000 would handle needs and security, not counting healthcare, I suppose.
Anymore than that would feel like work. I'd rather read Balzac and Zola than sit in a plane for the trip to Paris. I dom'y want to pack up my books for a new house. Can't see that it would be worth it. After learning about Wyoming etc, the house by the lake feels like a really selfish and destructive fantasy.
With really big money, after giving to family and friends, I don't trust my judgment, assume unintended consequences and would be ashamed of egotrips, so would let other people decide. That would mean the usual NGO's, ACLU, Doctors without Borders, etc.
Anyway, if I were super-rich, I'd go across the country in a palanquin.
With the Decemberists walking ahead to announce your arrival in song?
19: You are correct. I could go at any time. I'm sort of tied up in recording right now, speaking of which: whoever's next on the Unfogged Recording Project, go already.
God. I might feel so creeped out about the whole thing that I'd give a lot of it away. I really need to know how rich I am here.
I could possibly have anxiety attacks about what to do with it. People are starving in Africa, for fuck's sake! This is really embarrassing! No way you can just breed dogs that crap pot and be happy with that.
If I were completely free I'd roam alot, both geographically and spiritually, I think. Always wanted to have enough time.
I'd be drinking in Tuscany RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
No way you can just breed dogs that crap pot and be happy with that.
I would be a hero to millions, parsimon. That's nothing to sneeze at.
23 I don't think that's quite the way it was - horses, not palanquins; and if they were singing as they walked across the country, I doubt it was announcing the arrival of their guards.
26 wrong season. I think you either find a beach or snowresort type place suiting your taste or a nice city.
23: Why not have the Decemberists actually bear my palanquin? That'll teach you to become associated with all those highfalutin words, Mr. Meloy.
Healthcare is a real horror, isn't it? House is nearly paid off, got working cars, retirement IRA's and SS etc.
But how much healthcare money, even including Medicare, but not assuming it will be there, will I need to make 90? I have seen out-of-pocket hit 5 figures fast in a medical catastrophe.
2-3 million?
It feels so selfish and desperate I have pretty much decided I don't want to care.
I'd be drinking in Tuscany RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
Even at this hour? Good god, you do hate sleeping
Buy ludicrously expensive organic hemp linen sheets.
But probably not until after I'd funneled some strategic cash to the best activists I know.
(I'd probably also sponsor a mural.)
32: Gaja Barolo for breakfast! My God, just the thought of it.
Like teo, I had long thought that it would be fun to found a university -- in my case, a Black Mountain-style freeversity, but maybe with a couple of city branches. Recently, however, I've been thinking it would be fun, after taking care of family, friends and important non-profits, to found a series of Radical Culture Festivals, that would bring together political organizers, permaculturalists, radical artists, actors, dancers, musicians, etc, plus zinesters and weirdoes of all descriptions. I know there are a few things like this already, here and there, but this would be well-funded and sustainable. I'd start out with one, here in town, and then building off of that do maybe 4 city ones across the country, plus a couple of rural ones too. The idea would be to jumpstart a real culture of resistance that could operate independent of stupid mainstream culture.
This could dovetail neatly with my idea to become a Freemason, start a secret, Hellfire Club-type clandestine libertine organization within Masonry, and then start a secret organization inside that, which had as its goal the disruption of capitalist society. Pull the strings!
Oh, I left Boston off my list. Thinking like a rich person is difficult.
32,34 are the reasons I don't want Tuscany. Too many people want Tuscany, which means Tuscany is crowded and being destroyed.
How can people do that? Be the ten thousandth daily tourist at the Louvre or get the acreage in Jackson Hole or hike in Sikkim?
Boston over, say, London? Craziness.
(Uh, I actually really really like Boston, I'm just wondering about the US-centricness of essear's list.)
It's probably not very hard to become a Freemason these days. They're not getting a whole lot of new members.
Tuscany is crowded and being destroyed
But that's where the wine is, Bob.
If you're rich enough, the wine is wherever you are.
37 s/b "Nobody goes to Tuscany anymore. It's too crowded."
27: I would be a hero to millions, parsimon. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Well, true. You'd solve all kinds of drug kingpin problems in one fell swoop (I assume you'd have the processing of the dog shit taken care of, something people can do in their own homes, not more complicated than growing their own pot.) I think there's an opium problem as well. Huh. It just never ends.
37 I want to live in a place with tourists, they're the price of being in a place worth visiting.
I assume you'd have the processing of the dog shit taken care of
It's just a matter of drying it out. Then grating it and sprinkling it on the pastries.
Natilo's totally got it goin' on, man.
46: Of course, having won the lottery, I would have my Indian manservant do all the drying, grating, and sprinkling.
One thing I have learned from this thread is that comments that have disappeared forever down the Hoohole can still be found using bing.com. This discovery is unsettling.
I'd pay someone to steal apo's dog.
I want to live in a place with tourists, they're the price of being in a place worth visiting.
I regularly deliver out-of-town guests to Jefferson's Monticello. I feel mildly bad the guests pay. But hey, free tour for me, being a resident of the city, and all the tour guides have different stories.
48: I'm not sure you're thinking this through.
London is nice too. I'm sure I'm missing plenty of other nice places to keep pieds-à-terre. Most of the places on my list are motivated by people and/or physics departments I like to visit, which helps explain the US-centric-ness and idiosyncracies.
Maybe I'm not properly thinking like a rich person. I suppose the thought should be that I get a place in a beautiful city, like, say, Budapest, and then pay people to visit me.
What else I just learned:
Above Hoo Hole lies Bell House, on the edge of Erringden Moor. Here the infamous 'King' David Hartley ruled the notorious Cragg Coiners gang, some of whom were destined to be hung in chains from the Gibbets above Halifax. You should know that the area around Cragg is designated as being of outstanding natural beauty, the contrast between lush valley and heather clad but otherwise barren moorland is often spectacular.
I think there's also a binghole. At least, bing wasn't finding something I was looking for the other day.
If I were super-rich, I think I'd complain more.
I think there's also a binghole
New mouseover.
Maybe. But the thing I complain most about is not having money. And the amount of noise my kids make. But maybe that would be less oppressive in my swank-ass rapper's mansion.
In Tuscany.
Byatch.
Quit my job that I like, because I like sleeping 'til ten more than I like doing things I like at nine.
Solid gold rims for my Escalade.... none of this gold-plated crap.
I'd by legit copies of all the albums I've pirated.
Yellow gold, with white gold plate.
I assume gold is too soft a metal to make good rims.
64: I'll bet that isn't even possible.
I'll bet that isn't even possible.
Where possible, then.
Plus I bet I could manage to get laid.
Yellow gold. I'd don't want anyone thinking my gold rims are silver.
I'll sleep with you if you win the lottery.
If I had money, I think it would be harder to get laid, but I'd have a nicer apartment to get laid in.
So, in attempting to think like a rich person, leaving aside the thought that you would inevitably be crazy, insofar as your motivations and concerns would be significantly further removed from those of the rest of humankind,
Whoa. I realize that this isn't a new thought, but is this is why Americans are sort of crazy? We're so much better off than the majority of the planet; our moral calculus is entirely different. Not counting western Europe and a few other places. I'm not sure why western Europe doesn't seem as crazy.
Well. Okay. I digressed.
72 to 73. And everybody else. Scratch-off tickets, even.
I also want a gold toilet seat, but that has to be gold-plated, because real gold is too heavy for a toilet seat.
Solid gold rims for my Escalade
Now we're talking.
I'm not sure why western Europe doesn't seem as crazy.
Because they stopped trying to maintain their military empires decades ago.
I'm not sure why western Europe doesn't seem as crazy.
They had centuries of crazy, but it got finally got bombed out of them in the War.
78, 79: Yeah. Damn, I've depressed myself and the discussion.
Apologies! I hear Neb's going to get laid, and commit typos. That's cool.
Most of the places on my list are motivated by people and/or physics departments I like to visit
That makes perfect sense.
I think I'd like to live for a year or two in various places around the world, if I were really wealthy. And I'd love to have the money to buy all the books I want - and have a place to actually put them. And, and, and. I'm really terribly materialist, I fear.
(Also, it would be really great to be able to ensure that my entire family didn't have anything to worry about, monetarily.)
I think I'd buy one of those yachts with a swimming pool.
The question is: what would you do after the big house made a tiny dent in your fortune?
Honestly, I think mcmanus is onto something way upthread. I can imagine wanting enough (or maybe 'enough, plus a little extra') to ensure financial security for myself and my family and maybe also for some close friends. But beyond that, it's too much to imagine, and I suspect it might be more an unwanted burden than a fabulous opportunity.
Lifelong financial security I would not turn down, though. I'm not virtuous, just unimaginative.
A lot of people have mentioned travel, and that's certainly an obvious choice, but the more I think about it the more sure I am that that wouldn't be a priority for me even if I had the money for it. I'd rather find a place I liked to live, which would be easier if money weren't a concern, and just stay there. I don't really want any more stuff, either; I have more than I really need already.
I guess what I've come to realize lately is that I'm really happy with my life right now, for the first time in a long time, and if I were super-rich I would just want to maintain a lifestyle like this indefinitely. Unfortunately, to maintain this lifestyle indefinitely I would actually have to be super-rich, so at some point I'll have to, like, get a job and stuff. Hopefully I'll still be able to hold onto as much of what I have now as possible.
RE: Helping out your family if you won the lottery. So what do you do about the people for whom more money (even in a very restrictive trust) would essentially enable their pathologies and hasten their demise? I can think of a couple of people in my extended family who would be totally ruined by a big sum of cash getting dropped in their lap. In fact, I've already seen it happen a couple of times with inheritances. Would you want the money if it meant you were going to have to either snub somebody you liked/were related to, or instead you would have to take control of their life? It sounds like this is the kind of thing that does ruin a lot of lottery winners -- they get to be the big patron of the family, and neither they nor the family members can handle it. Depressing.
I would earn a ton of interest pretty much by accident while thinking about what to do with the money.
I'd accumulate terrible habits and hangers-on who were no good for me.
I'd get confused and unhappy when I thought about the money problems of my close friends and relatives.
I'd buy several more bicycles, and maybe a neat car.
I'd sit at my giant, mahogany desk, in my tailored linen clothes, and stare darkly at the massive painting I'd commissioned from mcmc, cursing myself darkly for my lack of imagination.
Then, I'd find a University. One that's never been found before, in the deep jungle
85: I guess I'm just really lucky - or perhaps it is simply because my family is pretty small - as I can't think of anyone that would qualify as a problem like those you mention. Well, maybe two of my uncles, on either side, but they've both already died, sadly.
Darkly darkly darkly. I'd pay to have more synonyms for "darkly" coined.
I would spend it all on a fruitless quest to find my childhood sled.
It sounds like this is the kind of thing that does ruin a lot of lottery winners -- they get to be the big patron of the family, and neither they nor the family members can handle it. Depressing.
Yeah, it's a big problem with all sorts of financial windfalls.
There was a This American Life piece which, geez, of course I'm too lazy to google, about a guy who worked for a company setting up annuities for lottery winners, so they wouldn't basically ruin their lives (although it usually happened anyhow). Then there are these ads that run on daytime TV for shady operations that let you borrow against your annuities.
So with that said, let me take back 86: if I were super rich, I would spend my time running the massive, successful, and rewarding enterprise I'd built that helped me get that way, because I don't really want to contemplate the alternative.
86 is well writ.
Honestly, though, I like to hang on to Stanley's thought experiment for the question it raises of what you might do if you were free. Never mind the money aspect, and the responsibilities therefrom. Just the question of being free as a child. This is a nice thing to keep in mind from time to time. Dreams 'n' all that. Maybe they wind up in the jungle rain forest.
If I was free as a child, the available evidence tells me I'd spend all day fucking around with computers.
I don't really want any more stuff, either; I have more than I really need already.
Yeah, I sympathize with that. Multiple people upthread mentioned books, but I already have more books than I have time to read. Lately I've been trying to avoid buying more; if I need to read something I don't already own, I go to the library.
I can currently afford a somewhat more expensive lifestyle than I now lead, so I don't think having even more money would change my spending habits that much. I spend basically the same amount now that I spent in grad school, except that my rent has gone up. On the other hand, if my salary doubled, all else being equal, I would rent an apartment in New York. Thus, the best I can come up with if I became rich would be many such apartments. I'm not very imaginative.
93: Go for it. I'd probably spend a lot of time near the water, whether lakes, streams or oceanside. And a lot of time with books.
It all really comes down to not having to have a job, doesn't it?
If I were rich, I'd finally shell out for a solid state hard drive.
See, I like my job. If I could keep it indefinitely, I would, because my job amounts to having a nice office surrounded by smart people and talking to them all the time and occasionally writing a paper. It's would be the best job in the world, if not for the whole "short timeframe in which to prove myself worthy of getting another job which carries a bunch of extra unwanted responsibilities" aspect of it.
If I was free as a child, the available evidence tells me I'd spend all day fucking around with computers.
Similarly, I'd spend all my days kicking it in the cafes of large cities and reading novels, and all my nights cooking stuff and reading the internet and linguistics books. Every once in a while I'd write something. I'd buy lots of expensive clothes that didn't make me look especially chic, despite the expense, and have a cleaning person come every week! Presumably once I have a child, I'd also play with it. I'd subsidize Snark's reading, dining, fucking around with computers, New York rent, first-class airfare, and child-playing-with too.
Just the question of being free as a child.
Which is not so much about money, I suspect, as it is about time (which, as adults, we experience as an increasingly scarce commodity which, alas, we can probably only hope to "purchase" with more money, at least until the clock stops ticking altogether ... ). Could I really ever buy that childhood sense of day-dreamy open-endedness, of vast unexplored possibilities, of so many uncharted universes in so many blades of grass and so on, if only I had loads and loads of money? Probably (or almost certainly) not, but I guess I could purchase some approximations, along with a few interesting subsitutes?
92:AFAIK, Sean-Paul Kelley of the Agonist is still backpacking the world on money earned from freelance writing. #100 a week maybe. He's in his mid-30s, I think.
but I guess I could purchase some approximations
Yes. Or rather, could buy your way out of the closed circle most of us know. Which would be as close to day-dreamy open-endedness, of unexplored possibilities, as we could get, given that our bodies do begin to give out. But there are still those blades of grass out there, and we give up seeing them.
28: Just to clear things up, they meant the Decemberists, the band (who have a song prominently featuring a palanquin) not the Russian exiles.
Apologies! I hear Neb's going to get laid, and commit typos. That's cool.
I deny that I misspelled anything in this thread, but I'm too tired to trust myself, which may be contributing to my not getting laid—honestly, invitations to three parties and I'm back at home after an hour at the first (and, admittedly, lamest)?
I would get an amaaaaaazing mattress.
With my infinite money, I'd buy several quainte bed-and-breakfast type places in different beautiful locales and rotate between them, hosting my friends.
I'd burn a chunk of my money by finding out whether my tastes really are charming enough to keep a cafe full.
I'd train all the time, and have bi-weekly massages.
Eventually, I think you'd have to pick an obscure mission in a beautiful place and spend a decade on it.
This sorta reminds me of splurging on a fancy-dancy hotel in Thailand at the end of a trip that was mostly roughing it. It was relatively high-end, which I thought just about approximated the comfort of my own living room at home. Mostly, I've got it good.
108: Yes, you'd have more money.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.
I'm up early with a coughing son, and we're watching the Meccano episode of James May's Toy Stories om iPlayer. He gets to do fun stuff AND get paid for it(*). If I were fuck-off rich I would come up with crazy wonderful projects like that (or pay someone to come up with ideas for me to choose from) and do one of them each year or so.
I'd have to give loads of it away though.
And I'd buy a big house near my parents (I'm assuming I have enough that C can stop working, though I'm sure he'd find himself something to do eventually) and probably carry on life pretty much as I do already - the main constraints on my life are my children, and I guess I'd still have them. But we get to do a fair amount of what we please, and would just do more of that, but with lunch in restaurants rather than packed lunches.
Once they've fucked off though, well ...
* - we're now watching Top Gear, and he's in a caravan attached to an airship. I rest my case.
I can't believe nobody is going to build themselves a rocket to Mars, or at least a giant zeppelin.
I'm going to buy an entire state, one of the sparse mountainy ones, through shell companies. Then I evict all the residents and appoint a few senators.
I'm going to commission a short film on an obscure subject, and play it during the commercial breaks of the super bowl.
Hmm... Stuff for myself?
Definitely the multiple homes thing, but they'd all be urban condos. Too much shit to break or that needs maintenance/use in a house. Sydney, Shanghai, NYC, and probably some other cities like London and Paris. Plus the expensive-as-hell tickets to fly to each of those places.
The thing I've always wanted to do though, is throw my own music festival with no cost concerns whatsoever. I choose the artist line-up, offer however much money it takes to make them all play, host the entire thing in fairly small venues (I think it would be two-part, with a traditional rock venue through the afternoon/evening and a club for DJ sets in the night), and make it super-affordable. I'd also institute measures to make sure no tickets can ever be resold, but allow people to cancel and get a full refund, so tickets would only be bought by people there for the line-up.
I've shuffled the line-up in my mind several times. There would be rough sorting by genre to make it easier for people who don't share my particular mix of tastes. The one major constant for the past several years is that I'd get Daft Punk to squeeze their amazing pyramid on to the stage of the modestly-sized Metro, and they would merely be listed as "Special Guests" on the final night to make it a surprise for everyone who comes.
I'm going to commission a short film on an obscure subject, and play it during the commercial breaks of the super bowl.
Oooo, that's a damn good one too.
If I were rich enough to have time for this each morning, I'd have one of these every day, like I am today. Photos in the photo pool.
I'd visit the Himalaya and stay until I saw a damned snow leopard in the wild with my own eyes.
I'd visit Iowa and stay until I saw a damned snow leopard in the wild with my own eyes. Or got hit by a combine.
How rich am I? If just moderately rich; anything I personally would like-scale, big sailboat and start bumming around the world from port to port. (Preceded by a certain amount of time learning to sail again (it's been a long time) navigation and such.) And then if I got bored maybe grad school - academia as a career always seemed implausible, but as entertainment sounds great.
If I'm seriously largescale rich, I want to be Scaife on the left. Thinktanks, research grants, programs that support young activists...
FIRST THING: I'd get my shirts made for me. The kind of shirts I like, nothing fancy - long sleeved cotton, dark block colours, NO buttons on the collar - come round about every 10 years and the rest of the time I'm forced to wear stuff I hate.
And... pieds a terre in Dublin and Barcelona (would have said New York but I'm not sure I can be arsed dealing with the TSA every time I just want to catch a gig.) An income roughly what we have now, maybe a bit more to travel with, invest in extended family (not just give them money, or it'd all go in taxes) and large sums to Amnesty, MSF etc. I think you'd need to be Soros to do the media thing right.
I'd buy up appalachian mountaintops and put windmills on them.
I want to be Scaife on the left
If that happens, don't forget that the Scaife family (I'm not sure which ones) has given a great deal of money to a certain medical school and that this medical school has need an endowed chair in internet commenting.
119: My theory is that the snow leopards aren't actually endangered. They just moved.
The one major constant for the past several years is that I'd get Daft Punk to squeeze their amazing pyramid on to the stage of the modestly-sized Metro, and they would merely be listed as "Special Guests" on the final night to make it a surprise for everyone who comes.
It was very weird to wake up and read this, because I in fact just woke up from a dream where I was at the Metro.
I've long intended to fund a water fountain at the U of C with the inscription:
Ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ χˈρυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦρ
ἅτε διαπˈρέπει νυκτὶ μεγάνορος ἔξοχα πλούτου·
I'd skip the think tanks, etc., and just start buying politicians. Seems quicker. Then I'd stick a piece of dynamite up a lion's butt.
Then I'd stick a piece of dynamite up a lion's butt.
I suppose it makes more sense than trying to ride a balloon around the world.
Molly and I piked from Seattle to Chicago, and I didn't even have a tenure track job. Its not very expensive if you camp the whole time (which we didn't.) All you need is flexibility in your job. Full blown unemployment works, too.
Actually, we biked from Seattle to Chicago. I'm not sure how much it would cost to pike the same distance.
rob, are you just trying to make the dynamite/lion butt idea seem smarter?
I'd secretively hoard all my money and stage an elaborate masquerade that I'm a math profesor for my gullible internet friends.
Like how I've managed to avoid anybody realizing that I'm John Stamos.
131: See here, around 1:35 in. Or watch from the beginning for a little context.
I would probably build a small cabin in western Montana or upper Idaho and try and through hike the National Scenic Trails.
I would travel round and give papers at universities and stuff like I do now. Except instead of giving the papers I would say 'Ha! I have written no paper! And I bought this university and you are all fired!'. But i wouldn't really fire them - just make them feel bad for a while and then reveal that I am Santa Claus for the whole world and they can have their jobs for EVER! And I mean EVER! That'll show them.
No, I don't need psychiatric help, why do you ask?
There's a shelter for homeless children in Elyria OH that I've been meaning to do something for. In real life, I keep thinking about sending some of my ethics students there to volunteer and write about the experience, but setting that sort of arrangement up is very labor intensive.
If I got control of a large chunk of money all of a sudden, I would probably set up a foundation to support the shelter or set up one like it. I like the channel from effort to outcome to be short, direct, and visible. This isn't entirely hypothetical. There is money in my family, but it will be 20-30 years before I have any control over it, if I ever do.
On the other hand, I might just attract a large body of women who look like models and dress like nerds who tell me how smart and kind I am. Eventually, this will break up my marriage and family, leading to despair and possible suicide, unless I wind up being one of those old rich guys who puts all the awful things he's done behind him by setting up a second family with a young attractive wife and children that I only really have to be a grandfather figure to.
1. Quit my job.
1a. Spill all my boss' deep dark secrets he never should have shared with me.
2. Hit the sperm bank and have myself another baby or two.
3. Study psychology.
S. Learn a couple more languages.
5. Learn to play an instrumen.
6. Write.
139. I can play an instrumen, but I don't because I'm a feminist.
Point S rings a bell though, because I always feel like I should know more languages, even though the ones I 'know' I don't know nearly well enough.
134: Rebecca? You told me you didn't even have an computer.
To the OP:
Become a real estate developer and build funky, small, green housing on urban brownfields.
Oh, and hire someone else to finish painting the outside of my house.
142: Sommerset at Frick Park? Sort of.
With proper spousal consent, and/or participation, how about some more fun sex romps? A bit of group sex, maybe bi-sex testing? For both marriage partners. Nothing too extreme, sort of T Woods style without the sneaking around and hiding from spouse (assuming spouse was ignorant and un-approving in the T Woods case). Spitzer type stuff, with the spouse giving an ok. Not sure this takes lots of money, but probably does not hurt to have a bunch of surplus cash (so spouse knows she ends up with 20-75 million if, worst case scenario, the marriage ends) .
Get the MJ laws changed and grow and use medicinal MJ (to supplement decent beer, wine, spirits). Not much need for extra cash, but could help.
Go back to dabble a bit in what was dreamed of pre-spouse and kids - checking out the old photos and memory banks for ideas. Re-do the simple fun stuff - shell collecting on the beaches, motor boating, sailing charters, camping (like the boy scouts did), hiking Appalachain Trail segments. Honor the old folks in the family (vicariously and, on occasions, in person).
Spend some bucks on the alma maters, visit them and makes suggestions for improvements (which they will of course ignore). Visit and enjoy top restaurants, clubs, shows and live music events.
Get good medical and dental care and contribute to medical service providers for the needy. Contribute generally to support providers for the needy (have competitions to sort out who should get the "CFW Prizes" for best support given effectively for the needy each year - like Nobel prizes).
Set up CFW Prizes (like Nobel Prizes) for social sciences outside economics - sociology, psychology, cogsci.
Also set up CFW Prizes for sci-fi, engineering, computer science, criminal law reform, international law, immigration law reform.
Set up fund (including large fund for paying politicians) for reforming US Constitution or reorganizing the US - to a parlimentary system or systems (no more Senate, elect Pres from popular vote, etc.).
Set up job creating (and population reducing, and global warming stopping) programs in US and world wide. Set up CFW Prizes for best ideas in job creation programs (and population reducing, and global warming stopping), world wide. Set up huge funds for paying politicians for job creation (and population reduction, and global warming stopping). Seek to have world population reduced to 4 billion in 60 years, through voluntary family planning.
Might try persistence hunting in Africa (see the Attenborough video) for fitness, geo-cach orienteering, visit all the continents, all the states (maybe in an RV part of the time). Get rail passes for travel in all places with good rail systems. Do bike tours, esp. in France.
Set up Prize Funds and huge funds to pay politicians to transition into solar energy, lots of trains and buses and bike-ways, nuke power as a transition step, changing US tax laws to stop promoting house ownership as opposed to renting.
Study how to be a philanthropist and be a good one (like Carnegie and libraries, Gates (Mrs.), Buffett [still needs to prove himself as an effective philanthropist]).
Set up huge fund for politicians and Prize Funds to transition US away from $500 billion each year for "defense" budget and too much reliance on offensive war as a policy option.
Play good golf in fun spots with great instructors. Do some yoga/running/golf retreats. Travel often to places with lots of history and decent to good food. Run the Medoc marathon.
Avoid collecting too many things or too much real estate - focus on spending on services, creating jobs or gigs for people who want them, can do them well, and will be thrilled to have had the job or gig.
Concentrate always on one of the top three problem areas in my field of expertise or endeavor, and encourage similar focus by those in my family or hangers on. Be prepared to support all positive efforts that are going after achieving top three problem resolution. Be prepared to go broke and risk it all if that is what it takes to get the job done. Always keep in mind is like is short and the balance sheet for all of us shows zero assets at the end of life. Set up a Prize and large fund for paying politicians for treating atheism as intellectually, morally, legally and ethically equal (or superior) to various religions.
Build a workable transition plan, modeled on the Buffet plan, for when death takes me.
Build a workable transition plan, modeled on the Buffet plan, for when death takes me.
Wasting away in Margaritaville is no way to go. You should try to help people.
To the OP
Sorry, I just assumed that we'd be off-topic by now.
143: Very sort of.
Actually, if I have as much money as others are suggesting, I'd set up a Homestead Act for Braddock (that's funny for locals, btw) in which I will fund the renovation of properties in Braddock for anyone who wants to live there; all they need to do is farm the landlive there and pay taxes for X number of years, and they get the house free and clear. I'd have to work out some details, but something like that.
Can't you already get a house in Braddock for like $18.50?
149: Yeah, but you can't fix it up for free. Not to mention that most of those houses actually have outstanding lines in the 5 figures. I'd probably budget over $100k per house for clearing title, purchase price, and gut rehab.
Actually, now that I think of it, there is (or was) a great old builder's supply company in Braddock (or possibly just across the muni boundary). I'd buy/invest in that and turn it into a green building supply house, so that the Homesteaders could buy all their rehab products there, guaranteeing green, high-quality rehabs without me having to oversee the work. Hmm....
OK, so each homebuyer gets:
Title, free and clear of all liens.
~$50k in credit at Braddock Green Building Supply
~$25k in reimbursable expenses for services (Dumpsters, contractors, etc.)
Maybe there's 2 tracks, one for sweat equity and another for people who can't do work on their houses (and so need more $$ for contractors). Not sure how to do that, but anyway. Part of my goal is for these things to be done well, not for people to encase nice old wood-sided houses in vinyl. But that's for my VP for Braddock to work out.
I'd also pay to stabilize whatever historic commercial structures remain (not many, alas), but my goal for the main drag would be for revival to come from the influx of residents (and tax base), not from direct intervention.
I'd do that in Swissvale or something. Braddock is too far gone.
Why Braddock? Why not a town that is truly isolated, like New Castle or Aliquippa?
Realistically (heh), depending on how big the pile was, I'd probably spend 45% or so trying to fight climate change (foundations, aforementioned buying of politicians, targeted assassinations (what?), &c. The next 45% would go to mitigation of global warming (funding cheap green energy research, desalinization research, local food networks, &c.) and global capitalism (as above for fighting climate change, plus funding unionization efforts, etc.).
I'd drop 5% or so ensuring the safety and security of me and mine when it all goes in the shitter, and the last 5% pursuing hobbies like travel, cooking, eating, building the perfect blowjob machine, and so on.
154: I think the last point on your list would be better served by employment programs to train some of our demobilized workforce than by designing more machines and robots.
So, am I the only one who wouldn't dedicate my super wealth to saving the world?
Why Braddock? Why not a town that is truly isolated, like New Castle or Aliquippa?
Why a town that is truly isolated? What's better about that?
156: I think you were just visualizing less money than the world-savers are. You could pay for everything on your list for a lot less than it would take to do any significant amount of world-saving.
156: One motivation for me is that I know efforts to spend vast sums selfishly tend to end badly. See Sifu's 86 and my scenario 138.2, as well as the famous studies of lottery winners.
Actually, I think the only thing I really want is a graduate student. Someone to help me with grading and record keeping and writing when I'm blocked. I could actually offer graduate credit, but I could pay more than schools with graduate programs. Also, I have vast stores of wisdom I want to impose on impart to someone.
I'd set about creating a 21st century Alamut, from which I'd send my minions out to wreak terrible damage. And indulge in a life of sybartic luxury while I was being Hasan-i Sabbah.
Oh yeah, and I'd spend a lot of time getting REALLY good as musician/photographer/whatever.
There are less laborious ways to smoke a lot of hash.
re: 162
Not really the interesting bit, for me. I was thinking more of the cadre of elite assassins doing my sinister [but ultimately benevolent] bidding.
There are less laborious ways to smoke a lot of hash.
That's the thing. The barriers to effective hedonism typically aren't financial. The promiscuity in 144 doesn't really need a whole lot of money, for instance. Neither does a cross country bike trip or a moderate drug habit.
Well, there's a base level of "not needing to hold down a job," before you can devote your time to doing what you'd like, which is actually quite a bit of money, depending on your standards. I'd have to be really quite wealthy before I felt that I could sufficiently take care of myself and the people I'm responsible for without having to work. Someone with no kids or other responsibilities, it might not be nearly that much.
153, 157: My objection to Braddock wasn't on the grounds that you could find somewhere more worthy of help. Just that it is too far gone. Even at $75k of subsidy per household, I'm guessing that you couldn't find enough takers who could pay the property taxes needed. Braddock would, even cleared of debts, probably need $200/month from each household. Figure the in county and school districts taxes, we're talking $400 a month from each household and that's if you flip every house. And that is after the great effort of renovating. I don't think that is enough of a discount over nearby housing in places where your mother won't assume you're going to get shot.
I forgot that Braddock still has its mill, so maybe the taxes wouldn't need to be quite so high. But I'd still start somewhere else. Maybe Wilkinsburg. I'm guessing that $200 million spent the right way would turn that around, especially if gas keeps going up.
After the mundane stuff, like buying a house and setting up my parents for a comfortable retirement, I'd allot a slice of money to funding my brother's crazy schemes, which are much more interesting than my own. Then I'd go take a bunch of classes and dick around with some tech-heavy corner of science, like plasma physics and MEMS microfluidics, with a ridiculous goal like developing hand-held fusion energy sources, which would inevitably end with spending all of the money or blowing myself and the only close-to-working prototype up.
Also, have a good barber on retainer, and/or invest in some laser hair removal.
169: Never having seen a picture of you, I'm now picturing a werewolf.
You know what is totally a fun thing to do with a ton of money? Give lots of it in order to be on the board of various scientific institutions so you get to hang out with august scientists and have them explain things to you.
I know people who do this, and it seems like terrific fun.
I think (?) Nathan was at UnfoggeDCon II, and if that was him, I recall that he was the only male person there with long hair. I don't know how this translates to his wishing for a barber on retainer.
Maybe that wasn't him, though. I blame name-tags.
Maybe the mere fact of his having long hair doesn't so translate.
Other people have such high-minded uses for lots of money. I feel selfish for wanting to gold-leaf my entire house, inside and out.
Not one vote for converting your wealth into gold coins and swimming around in it like Scrooge McDuck? That's always my first thought.
blowing myself
You can possibly accomplish the latter by a rigorous regime of stretching and/or maybe getting a few lower ribs removed. Probably wouldn't take that much money.
174: Mm? Hard to say why Nathan wants a barber for his long hair. He finds it difficult to manage?
172: Do you know the incredibly rich guys who get together with scientists every few months, ask them a bunch of open-ended questions, and then patent everything they say? Because those guys worry me.
I actually work for a dude who is ridiculously wealthy; he took some of his riches to found the company that I work at. He pays for shit and is cheap as the day is long. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he flouts all sorts of governmental regs because, well, he can afford lawyers, if he needed them.* He and his wife are not the happiest people at my company.
If I had his money, I'd fund a nap room at my old grad school. I'd have to figure out a way to prevent it from being the sex room, but I'd have people for that.
*Working for him has really made me believe in the positive aspects of a strong regulatory state.
If I had his money, I'd fund a nap room at my old grad school. I'd have to figure out a way to prevent it from being the sex room, but I'd have people for that.
Fund a sex room as well?
Totally OT, but I just realized that all the books I ordered for my spring course at Super-Religious U have paintings of naked dudes on the covers. FML.
183: And put it on the internet! Profit!
My solution for Wilkinsburg is to pay to have it annexed to the City. That would (more or less) resolve the terrible schools issue and the absurdly high, which is the main drag on that town. I'll even pay a stipend to the Board of Ed to ease the transition.
I'm not convinced the taxes in Braddock would be as onerous as you suggest, but if they are, I'll arrange for a ten year abatement. After 10 years, a couple thousand a year to live in a free house in a community full of interesting urban pioneer types* shouldn't be too onerous.
* I'm not sure we should worry about gentrification in one of the worst communities in America, but I would keep an eye on making sure that existing residents have access to the program.
Situations like 184 are why graduate schools need sex rooms.
That would (more or less) resolve the terrible schools issue and the absurdly high, which is the main drag on that town.
There's no way that the absurdly high could be a big enough demographic group to be the main drag on the town.
BTW, I should note that this isn't exactly "saving the world" stuff - I mean, this stuff is what I care about and work towards (however obliquely) irl. My fantasy is designing urban housing for poor people without being stymied by 1. close-minded, conventional gatekeepers and 2. budget. But 1 is by far the greater barrier to designing the way I'd prefer.
I should add that I'd definitely buy the country property that AB & I have talked about for years and build a kick-ass underground house there, plus do assorted other obvious smallish luxuries, like annual trips to see AB's family in Germany and Austria (and I'd totally rent a bad-ass Mercedes to drive from the one to the other at 250 km/hr).
183/87: Isn't this what the stacks are for?
The stacks are really more for undergrads.
188: The absurdly high are the primary population responsible for drags in the community.
I meant to say "taxes". I also should have made subject/verb agreement; such are the wages of adding at the last moment without rereading.
a kick-ass underground house
Why underground? For energy efficiency, or simply because having a Batcave would be wicked sweet?
I would buy a baseball team and make it so bad that they'd be willing to hire me to actually play for them. I suppose I'd hire trainers and such to improve my play, but I'm mostly envisioning a demand-side solution.
I would buy a baseball team and make it so bad that they'd be willing to hire me to actually play for them.
Don't you already have one like that where you live?
LB, you have seen pictures of Nathan (I think). Search the flickr group for "Nathan". You probably met him too. Long hair but not a werewolf.
Oh wait, I know, I'd found a cult!
Well funded cults are far more likely to wind up like the Unification Church or Scientology than the Branch Dravidians or Jim Jones. And it is clear that a cult is a great way to leverage money into sex, drugs, and power.
re: 197
If you don't mind the cult despatching elite assassins, you are welcome to piggy-back on mine. See 160 above.
I read the whole Wikipedia entry on Hassan-i Sabbah and could not figure out who his assassins were actually assassinating, or why. Were they like the Taliban's elite corps that went around beating people to death for owning cassette tapes?
I was thinking about this crossly on the bus this morning: about how many of my friends are trapped in jobs that don't let them do the stuff they'd like to, so that even when they have a bit of time, they're too stressed to enjoy it and etc. So I guess I'd buy them all time and space away from stress.
Also: a hat made of rubies.
The barber's not so much about the long hair - and being wealthy would just be one more reason to maintain a relatively idiosyncratic hairstyle - as it is about the beard. Shaving sucks, and the faster I can eliminate or outsource it, the better.
195: They're not quite there yet. But I'mthey're working on it.
The Pirates and Braddock are both beyond help.
My $200 million for Wilkinsburg was basically what I figured it would cost to pay-off Pittsburgh.
In both cases, it would be kinder to pay the people stuck there to move somewhere else. PNC Park could get a minor league team with no drop in quality of play or attendance after June. Braddock would make a world-first combination coke works/nature preserve.
205: Wasn't someone seriously suggesting converting swaths of depopulated Detroit into nature preserve? I can't remember the source.
155: You perhaps miss the necessary field research needed to define optimum characteristics for such a machine. You'd need a huge statistical universe to really quantify appropriate specs for prototyping.
206: This guy has proposed something like that.
206, 208: They are trying to deal with depopulation in much of Pittsburgh, but it won't be as bad as Detroit. Pittsburgh is much more compact and some of the houses were built in places where you kind of wonder why anybody put a house there in the first place (i.e. the side of a very steep hill). There are many neighborhoods where the city will push down an abandoned house and give it to the neighbor (for a yard) for nearly free. But, we've lost 1/2 of our population, which is why I don't think Braddock will be revived any time soon. You can find plenty of cheap houses in safer neighborhoods with better schools that are much closer to large employers and stores.
re: 199
Primarily people who were a threat to his particular brand of Ismailism, I think. But they took commissions for money, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismaili#Alamut
I salute 201. Especially this:
a hat made of rubies
Amin Maalouf's The Crusades through Arab Eyes is good on the whole collapsing caliphate/competing petty states/band of fanatics thing.
These ideas are too unremittingly positive. We need some mean-spirited joy. I'd buy that new mega grotesque 6000 person cruise boat and sink it offshore the artifical islands in Dubai.
If I got super-rich - I'd worry, worry seriously. A very good friend of ours made himself US$20 million a few years back - quite legitimately. It probably was the worst thing that could have happened to him, given all the problems that then beset him as a direct result of making so much money. (Think investments made with all kinds of altruistic intentions, all manner of crooks and con artists emerging out of the woodwork etc)
You read about the lottery winners who blow the lot away - they exist in an almost fictional manner to most of us - but when you see it happening for real, despite friends trying to intervene with good advice, you realise with utter clarity, how damaging sudden fortunes can be.
I WOULD BUY THIS PLACE AND FIRE YOU IMMEDIATELY.
I like the cult/Hashishim/P2 train of thought. I'd most certainly build a Zeppelin, something about twice the size of the Hindenburg, but made with fancy space age materials and unblowupable things. The other major investment would be an Institute for the Frustration of Assholes and the Advancement of Nice People. I suspect that a cadre of fanatically loyal Ninja assassins would be handy on that front. Poisoned blowdart to the neck for assholes, pot crapping dog for nice people, and the mushy middle gets a slanket.
something about twice the size of the Hindenburg, but made with fancy space age materials and unblowupable things
I'm picturing togolosh taking off for the first time, monocle firmly in place, exclaiming, "This dirigible's too big to fail!"
The whole Tiger Woods thing is puzzling-- he really was rich as Croesus, chose to have a family, and instead of a carefully-chosen partner on the side, waffle-house waitresses and strangers who evidently didn't like him much? Has this been kicked around here, or is it beneath contempt?
Money would free up some constraints for me, but the real balance is between freedom and responsibility, too much of either is not good.
I'm fairly pessimistic about altruistic spending-- Gates and Soros seem to be doing OK, but they're definitely the exception to the rule.
I'd buy that new mega grotesque 6000 person cruise boat and sink it offshore the artifical islands in Dubai.
No. Ram it into the artificial islands in Dubai.
No, invite thousands of Somali pirates on board your ship, dock it at one of the artificial islands and welcome the Somalis to their new home.
Why would Somali pirates want to move to Dubai?
Well, they'd have the option of the yacht taking them wherever they wanted if they got tired of Dubai.
Why would Somali pirates want to move to Dubai?
All pirates like the Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrab Emirates.
The whole Tiger Woods thing is puzzling
It's a standard pro athlete slash rock star story, innit? Doesn't seem at all puzzling to me. These have been my two favorite quotes on the matter:
wwtdd.com: "I think it's safe to say he didn't think this all the way through. He's maybe the most famous person on earth. Of course he got caught. The Statue of Liberty could go buy some weed and have a better chance at getting away with it than he did."
An friend's (female, L.A.) Facebook assessment: "I am FAR less offended by Tiger Woods' outrageous pussyhound behavior than I am by his belly laughable taste in vagine. You'd think with all his simolians that he'd only go in for top shelf cooter. Those broads he's bangin' look like Tuesday night at Jumbo's Clown Room."
Poor Jumbo's Clown Room gets no respect. I could point you towards some way nastier establishments in LA!
It's a standard pro athlete slash rock star story, innit?
It's way more sordid than any other possible story! I can't think of a more elite athlete with more invested in a squeaky clean image. And then to have lady, after lady, after lady emerge from Tuesday Night at Jumbo's Clown Room...
I could point you towards some way nastier establishments in LA!
Um, no thanks.
Sifu Tweety: World's Worst Tour Guide
Not quite-- the choice to start a family seemed pretty deliberate, not an accident or a pre-wealth relationship. If it turns out that the new Mrs Woods has a temper or is otherwise not such great company, surely he can find someone who actually likes him rather than picking strangers who subsequently sell his voicemail?
I mean, maybe this is par for the course-- famous people imagine that everyone does just really love them, blinded by their own wealth and aura and having everything covered in money-scented pleasantness all the time. It just seemed that since he was reticent and chose to marry and have kids, so shallow a failing was out of character. Reading too much into silence, I guess.
You guys are being really unkind. They seem like typical young women, slightly venal and slightly stupid; the idea that people should be ranked for glitz or exclusivity is an ugly one, even if pervasive. Scorn them and him for selling out so enthusiastically(them) or shallowly(him), not for having bad hair or clothes.
Jumbo's is (1) super famous, (2) in the middle of Hollywood, and (3) doesn't have nude dancers. Totally too classy for Tiger. Just look at those reviews!
not for having bad hair or clothes or implants.
I haven't been following the story, but wouldn't it make sense as just impulsivity -- he's not auditioning mistresses through any organized process, he's hitting on the woman he finds most attractive in his field of vision at the moment he feels like it?
more invested in a squeaky clean image
I guess, but stories about Tiger's assbanditry have floated around ever since he joined the Tour.
There's a real strip club called Jumbo's Clown Room? Jesus. I'm going to stop picturing naked women in full clown makeup with big shoes and red yarn wigs, doing pratfalls and piling out of VW bugs now.
You guys are being really unkind.
True. I feel slightly bad.
If it turns out that the new Mrs Woods has a temper or is otherwise not such great company, surely he can find someone who actually likes him rather than picking strangers who subsequently sell his voicemail?
This is all wrong, though. He's spent all his energy cultivating the most upscale image possible, and so (of course!) nothing turns him on more than the most down and dirty opposite end of the spectrum.
231: wasn't he also hiring hookers by the handful?
232:Sure, but name someone with a more posh self-brand. Maybe Martha Stewart.
he's hitting on the woman he finds most attractive in his field of vision at the moment he feels like it?
I suspect if you're Tiger Woods, you don't have to hit on anybody. You just have to say yes. Starfucking is a sport with a long and storied history.
217: I'm serious about the Zeppelin. I fell in love with the idea after reading Nevil Shute's Slide Rule, about his experience working on the dirigible R-100. There's a great scene in which he describes drifting over the St. Lawrence Seaway, standing on top of the airship and watching riggers repair the wires stabilizing the tail fins. I want to float over the Amazon basin 100 ft above the treetops, engines off, just drifting and watching the forest. I think it would be very calming. Y'all are welcome to join me of course.
Well, 'hitting on', 'accepting advances', whatever. The point is that he doesn't seem to be looking for the most beautiful woman in the state, by whatever his standards are, he's looking for the most appealing woman available in the next fifteen minutes.
240: or possibly the top five or six.
239: I suppose. Boy I love it when those guys bite the dust.
He's not really the same type of posh, though. (Imposhter.)
240: I think you're giving him a little too much credit. This is more like Hugh Grant with the tranny prostitute. Tiger gets off on playing against type.
I'm confused as to whether or not I was pwned.
237, 240, etc.: The way the rumor goes, one of these women wasn't so much his mistress as his procurer. She flew around to tournaments with him and made sure the women were available (sometimes these women were paid, sometimes not). Apparently this is SOP for top athletes, etc. Wacky!
Also, the timing of the story is delicious. Just a car crash? No big deal. Wife breaking you out of your car with a golf club? Sure, why not.
Police asking questions? Demurely denied.
Then one after another girl comes forward, and they just don't stop...Clown car really is the right image.
246: I'm trying to come up with a job title for that role that's not hugely offensive. Personal Madam?
Isn't the story really that the press was covering for Tiger for a long time? Didn't lots of people have to have known that he was a serial philanderer?
I'm trying to come up with a job title for that role that's not hugely offensive.
Why?
You know who set the absolute gold standard for crisis-management on this kind of thing? Eddie Murphy.
Eh, what's the line between 'covering for' and 'it's not newsworthy until you drive your car into a tree and your wife is hitting things with golf clubs'. Who cares if he's a philanderer, beyond his family?
252: That's right -- he had a transgender prostitute issue that hit and then disappeared, never turned into a big thing at all that I remember.
248/50: Apparently her real job title, for the less racy parts of her business, is "executive concierge"!
cultivating the most upscale image possible,
I had figured that between the damage to the house and car and his person, he was basically an abused spouse. It's bad to beat your partner, even if they cheat.
I hate golf, just surprised by the depth of schadenfreude, given how many celebrities have lives that are train wrecks, and indeed, how many of them are briefly famous for doing nothing and squander even that opportunity and the money that comes with it.
Who cares if he's a philanderer, beyond his family?
Ha, ha, ha! Only every single person in the world!
251: well, I don't want to get in trouble.
She did the lay groundwork?
I had figured that between the damage to the house and car and his person, he was basically an abused spouse. It's bad to beat your partner, even if they cheat
I haven't been categorizing him as an abused spouse.
254: he had a whole history of picking up transvestite hookers on Santa Monica Ave. and taking them home, and the whole thing got buried under "GOOD OL' FAMILY FRIENDLY EDDIE MURPHY YOU SEE NOTHING".
253: No, it really was "covering for." Charlie Pierce wrote a profile of Tiger in the 90s, when he was poised for superstar status, that included his skirt-chasing, racist and sexist jokes, etc. and was roundly vilified for it by the rest of the press. Like, denounced on Charlie Rose, etc.
Here's a link to Pierce's update piece, which contains a link to the original.
Only every single person in the world!
I just realized that was an ambiguous statement.
I meant every individual in the world, not just the unattached individuals. This is a case where genuinely no one cares.
259: I haven't been following the story closely enough to have a belief, but if his injuries were from his wife hitting him rather than from a car accident, that's abuse even though he's sleazy and she's justifiably angry.
263: I assumed he had the power in the relationship, and picked her because she fit his lifestyle brand image. There's a difference between the nondominant person finally snapping and lashing out physically, vs the dominant person flipping out on a regular basis and using their rage to be controlling. I'd assumed she was the former.
267: Well, I'm not particularly worried about his ability to get help, or get away from her, or protect himself physically. But still, if your spouse is causing you physical injury in anything other than self-defense, that's abuse.
267: if she hit him without him hitting her first (ever), I don't get that distinction at all.
Robert Wright on Tiger Woods:
http://www.slate.com/id/86898/
This seemed really stupid at the time, but I think it may now have achieved classic status in the idiocy genre.
I guess. I hadn't really thought out these specifics.
Here's where I'm coming from: I was the youngest, and my brothers would tease me until I flipped out and tried to hit them, at which point they would do something like that thing where you hold the kid an armswidth away by their forehead, and they swing uselessly at you. It's really enraging to be held by your forehead while you swing uselessly at someone.
There is a way in which the person without the power can go ballistic, physically, without it being abusive. I have no idea if that's what is going on here.
269: I might get it for very low values of 'hit' -- much weaker person smacking much stronger person after significant provocation, whatever, whatever, there are circumstances where I'd think it would be silly to call it 'abuse'. But when we're talking about actual injuries, as we are here if that's how he got hurt, yeah. The person injuring the other person is abusing them, regardless of the interpersonal dynamics underlying it.
Man I just can't get there with 271 at all. Little kids teasing each other and having fights is one thing. A member of a couple in a relationship physically injuring their partner is entirely different.
270: But this sentence is pretty awesome in today's light: "Though thinking is vital to hole-by-hole strategizing and the year-round honing of your swing, when the moment comes to actually execute your swing, conscious thought is the enemy of success."
272: sure, right. A woman slapping a cheating cad in the face is a time-honored tradition. Ain't trying to take that away from anybody. But, you know, he had "facial lacerations", in the term of art.
Oh and she went after him with a golf club. That, too.
in which the person without the power can go ballistic, physically, without it being abusive
I think there's at least a possibility she was swinging a golf club at his head, right?
Which, you know, you wouldn't have to be terribly strong to kill someone with a golf club.
(I really don't know -- is this pure speculation, or is it pretty clear that she did injure him, rather than it being from the car accident?)
Okay. But I'm still hesistant to put him in the category of "battered spouse". Maybe because I've got gender biases that I need to reconsider.
278.2: eh, I'm going off of gossip sites. But still, he hit the tree at like four MPH, there are no bloodstains on the steering wheel, the airbag didn't deploy, he apparently told somebody on the phone that she scratched the shit out of him, she was definitely beating on the car with a golf club: that's some reasonably well-sourced gossipy innuendo right there.
(I can, of course, totally sympathize with 271. I was half my sister's size and strength at the age when we were fighting a lot, and I was in precisely the position you describe a lot. Then she'd toss me across the room, and I'd lie there muttering imprecations at her under my breath.)
I'm still hesistant to put him in the category of "battered spouse"
As well you should, since none of us have any idea what actually happened. I can't get much excited about this story, since "pro athlete likes whoring around, wife enraged" sounds like an Onion.com "Area Man Does Ordinary Thing" headline.
280: Well, there's a whole 'battered spouse' dynamic that probably doesn't apply, largely because he's got all the resources in the world to get away. But (again, assuming everything we're assuming is true), whether or not he's a 'battered spouse' in the full psychological term of art sense, she's certainly an abuser.
280.2: seems that way to me. He's now quit his job (!) and moved with her back to her home country, where he doesn't speak the language and will be fully under her control, basically. If the genders were reversed and we weren't talking about famous people, I imagine [girl Tiger]'s friends and family would be freaking out.
285: Has he really? I knew he was taking a break and that there was some new weird pre-nup to convince her to stay. Boy, who knows what the hell is going on in that gory household.
He's now quit his job (!) and moved with her back to her home country, where he doesn't speak the language and will be fully under her control, basically.
Really? Huh. I would be worrying about him. Again, not all that much, given that if he wants to get away, all he's got to do is decide to -- there are no practical obstacles at all. But I would worry about him, if he were someone I cared about at all.
I do endorse 283 and 284. But still, the power dynamics in famous-person relationships can be rather opaque.
Phil Hartman was such a great comedian.
229: I used to live right around the corner from there. Also: Jumbo's has long been woman-operated; Courtney Love made her performance debut there.
There a big difference between hitting him and hitting his Escalade with the golf club.
He's now quit his job (!) and moved with her back to her home country, where he doesn't speak the language and will be fully under her control, basically. I
Oh please, Sifu. Like ninety percent of Swedes don't speak English? And also it's not like a woman moving to Saudi Arabia--I believe Swedish law is pretty reasonable about marriage and divorce, abuse, etc.
291: Eh. Sweden or no, everyone speaks English or no, it's still socially isolating, being in a different country. Anyplace on earth, of course, he's got the practical capacity to just leave whenever he wants to, but if they've got an abusive dynamic going on, moving to another country could be part of it.
And he's got injuries -- if it wasn't from the car accident, someone hit him.
Like I said, I'm really not worried about it. But, y'know, it's hardly outside the realm of possibility that his wife tried to kill him (or at least assaulted him with a deadly weapon, like the kids say), that he covered it up because he thinks he deserved it and didn't want her to get in trouble, and that basically the entire world is now conspiring to convince him that (1) he did deserve it and (2) he should patch things up with her, regardless of the cost, and he's therefore reacting by giving her total power over his life (at least for now). The fact that he's, by all accounts, a world-class sleaze doesn't really enter into it.
288.last: Man, I'd forgotten all about that*, especially the part where she killed herself. Jeez.
* or, rather, forgotten the awfulness of it. Every time I watch the Simpsons or hear the Monorail Song I get a little sad for Phil Hartmann.
I bet Sweden has some great Christmas desserts.
There's some cake that's a cone shaped stack of rings of dough that I've always sort of wanted to try making. I think it's Swedish.
I assumed he had the power in the relationship, and picked her because she fit his lifestyle brand image. There's a difference between the nondominant person finally snapping and lashing out physically, vs the dominant person flipping out on a regular basis and using their rage to be controlling. I'd assumed she was the former.
She comes from a quite wealthy and powerful family, you know. Not a cocktail waitress.
282 - You shouldn't have provoked your older sister, LB. She knows what's best for you.
There appears to be a Pyramid Cake (spettekaka, hilariously enough), which seems remarkably similar to Baumkuchen (which, according to the New Yorker, is almost impossible to make without a speciality oven).
Darn it, I had a link for the Baumkuchen. Lost it now.
301: That's not a pyramid, it's just like any other edible tower.
I bet Sweden has some great Christmas desserts.
Come for the penance, stay for the spettekaka!
If only she'd taken out her anger on Joe Lieberman, we'd all be better off.
There's some cake that's a cone shaped stack of rings of dough that I've always sort of wanted to try making. I think it's Swedish.
And he's got injuries -- if it wasn't from the car accident, someone hit him.
He has scratches, as far as I know. Is there some suggestion that she actually hit him with the golf club? I would take that more seriously.
Of course it's not impossible that their relationship is abusive, but it seems quite unlikely to me. No doubt I'll feel really bad when the tell-all memoir is published.
306: That's what I was thinking of.
307: I've really only been following this by osmosis, but I thought he was taken to a hospital to be treated for something -- I had the impression that he was noticeably banged up. But I really don't know. Everything I've said about abuse is working from the assumption that he did have reasonably significant injuries, and that she caused them -- if that's not true, and I don't know that it is, then I don't have any reason to call her an abuser.
(Well, actually, even beating on someone's car with a golf club while they're in it seems to me to be a threat of serious violence. Denting the car/breaking the windows while the owner isn't there is one thing, and might be threatening or might just be vandalism. But if I were in a car and an angry person was breaking windows with a golf club, I'd be terrified of them hurting me, and I think legitimately so.)
305: God, me too. Just the sight of his face makes my fists clench.
The insurance companies have a special underground facility where Joe Lieberman's clones are kept in a vat. If he doesn't vote their way, well, next time he needs a new heart....Joe Lieberman is functionally immortal but only as long as he serves his dark masters.
Can't Connecticut's voters impeach him or something? How else can he be stopped?
Can't Connecticut's voters impeach him or something?
Sadly, no.
Harry Goddamnit Reid could take away his committee assignments and reassign him to office space in the basement next to the water heater. But that would be mean, and Democrats are nice.
Denting the car/breaking the windows while the owner isn't there is one thing, and might be threatening or might just be vandalism.
WarningWarning: following link is to Carrie Underwood song.
This is apparently a culturally validated method of registering annoyance over infidelity.
313, 314: Does Lieberman have a car he's fond of?
314: No, no. We ought to let Mercedes handle it.
He has scratches, as far as I know. Is there some suggestion that she actually hit him with the golf club? I would take that more seriously.
He was drifting in and out of consciousness when the cops showed up, right? And wwtdd is all over it.
That's all I got. Oh, that and a baby seal joke a friend of mine heard from a bartender. But that probably doesn't rise to the level of evidence.
317: Although the alternate claim here on the unconsciousness and the serious hospital treatment is that he was treated for an overdose.
Overdose seems to have some plausibility problems. It's not impossible, but the timing is a little tight, isn't it? He'd have had to go from together enough to get in the car and get it started to passing out from the overdose in a minute or so.
Escalades almost drive themselves.
Seriously I can completely buy that; people do funny thing under the influence of CNS depressants.
Especially if things were heated or whatever, he could have had a surge of adrenaline when the fight was happening/he was getting in the car/he was in the accident, and then when that went away he passed out.
And I've got very little direct experience here, I'm working off what drunks are like. I'd expect a drunk to either fall asleep without getting the car started or get further, but if the analogy doesn't work, then I'm wrong about the plausibility.
323: Well, the drugs reportedly Ambien and vicodin. People do get in their cars and drive on Ambien and then pass out. And Sifu's 322 rings true for me: He could have taken his drugs to go to bed post-fighting, when his wife woke him up for more fighting.
Yeah, something like (say) Ambien or K (like our wobbly beer-buying gentleman from the video heebie posted a few weeks back) or Oxycontin is going to be very different. But even alcohol can do weird things: I watched an episode of Cops from Las Vegas once, and one of the people they dealt with was sound asleep at the wheel of his car (which was stopped) in the middle of traffic. I still haven't figured out how that worked.
324: or he could have taken the drugs and the fight started before they kicked in.
Really, taking Ambien and then failing to go to sleep leads to very, very strange things.
On the other hand, nobody seems to be inclined to charge him with DUI, which presumably would be on the table if they found drugs in his system. Maybe the toxicology reports are still out or maybe he's rich and famous and doesn't get in trouble for that sort of thing or maybe they feel bad for him because hey, they cheat all the time, too. Who knows.
Yeah, I have a friend whose Ambien weirdness included getting up in the middle of the night, pulling all kinds of food out of the refrigerator as if he was preparing for a dinner party. Then he'd crash in a heap to the kitchen floor where his wife would find him sound asleep with the fridge open and all the food out on the counters.
Do committee assignments really work like that? The majority leader assigns, and that's it, no voice for anyone else? Wow if so, but I thought that there was more to it than that.
Have majority leaders ever been busted for bribetaking linked to committee assignments?
Sweden? Jesus. Nice people and all, but he must really love those kids. Poor guy.
Jazmine SUllivan had a grating urban contemporary hit this last year,
I bust the windows out your car
After I saw you laying next to her
I didn't wanna but I took my turn
I'm glad I did it cuz you had to learn
The metonymy of destroying a beloved possession may be appropriate sometimes, but I'm pretty leery of a strong impulse to hurt your partner, either directly or by proxy. If things are that bad, separate with amiable custody arrangements.
separate with amiable custody arrangements
That's what normal people do, but there are impossibly large piles of money and lawyers in the equation here and it's hard to overestimate the impact of those.
330: I'd actually think the impossibly large piles of money should smooth things out. That is, I don't actually expect it to, but I don't understand why it doesn't. I'd think that being able to throw a king's ransom with a hat made of rubies on top at your ex without ever noticing the loss would make extricating yourself from a marriage you don't want to be in much easier, and with less in the way of bad feelings.
Well, grubby peasants like us think that half of a kajillion dollars is a lot to live on. But if you're used to the thought of having a whole kajillion, maybe half feels like an excutiating loss.
Maybe fewer party girls come on you with less enthusiasm if you are only a half-kajillionaire.
But if fewer come on you with less enthusiasm, that means that more come on you with more enthusiasm—right?
332: that would hurt, LB. A king's ransom is heavy!
The thing is, Woods has, unfortunately, only a possibly large pile of money.
That wasn't what I meant, although I can see how it confused you, darlin.
I think commas would help you understand, sugar. It is a list of complaints about the relative quality of sexual advances when one has only half a kajillion dollars.
...fewer party girls, showing less enthusiasm, if you...
Thanks for helping me clarify that, sweetpea.
There's more to endearment than terms of endearment, you foul harridan.
If I had large piles of money, I would have a bathroom mosaic, yes, but I would also have an AWESOMELY RIDICULOUS WARDROBE. God, that shit must be fun. (I'd have the leotards cut lower so as to avoid bikini-waxes: why put yourself through that when you're a kijillionaire?)
If you were a kajillionaire, you could just get electrolysis on your bikini line and be done with it.
I could, theoretically, but I suspect I'd still be too much of a cheapskate (or at least, that's the excuse I would use).
306: That's what I was thinking of.
Around here it is called Norwegian Wedding Cake and is often made in cookie form where the rings are about 1.25 to 1.5 inches in diameter. Making it that way might be an easier start than trying for the full tower.
If I were a kajillionaire, I bet I could do a lot to make Joe Lieberman's life shittier.
famous people imagine that everyone does just really love them, blinded by their own wealth and aura
This is a blindspot not unique to the rich and famous.
I'd still be too much of a cheapskate (or at least, that's the excuse I would use)
You might need a more convincing excuse.
If things are that bad, separate with amiable custody arrangements.
If things are that bad, "amiable" anything is pretty unlikely. At least that's what people tell me...
If I had a kajillion dollars, I'd produce a reality show about hyper-rich philanderers who have been beaten in the face, starring Woods and Berlusconi.
re: 343
I could lend you some of my elite hashashim, trained in my mountain fastness...
302: If you were looking for the New Yorker article, it's here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/23/091123fa_fact_sheraton
I wonder why they kept appending "related to obesity" when his describing his health problems.
Also, don't cry, Megan. He had it coming: he was fat.
I noticed that too. So we can blame his appetite for all his problems, I guess. That one sentence is in all the captions; they may only have made a choice to mention his obesity once, then repeated the same text throughout.
But his neighbor, Ruthy. She's obviously distraught, and she doesn't deserve anything bad. She's thin!
If I had large piles of money, I would have a bathroom mosaic, yes, but I would also have an AWESOMELY RIDICULOUS WARDROBE.
Boy I love her. #34 on that list is particularly great.
I missed this thread, but if I got rich I would buy myself a Senate seat. That would be fun.
357: Yeah, but then what would you do?
Beat Joe Lieberman with a stick!
Also, pontificate to the public, have my worshipful staff carry me around in a sedan chair, and just for the hell of it, shut down the U.S. government every so often. Senators have all of the fun of governing and none of the responsibility.
I guess that is kind of a boring fantasy.
The words "senator" and "senile" come from the same root.
Beat Joe Lieberman with a stick!
I'd vote for any candidate that ran on this platform.
It's probably not very hard to become a Freemason these days. They're not getting a whole lot of new members.
Locally, this is true. They are trying to make themselves known and actively soliciting applications. I find them slightly weird.
1.) Pay off my student loans.
2.) Get a will written
3.) put some money in a charitable gift fund so that it wasn't all taxed right away--assuming that I got this money through the lottery.
3.) Make sure that my parents are taken care of. I think that nice care for my Mom could cost $150k/ per year.
4.) Buy a house or an apartment in the city.
5.) Hire a housekeeper/assistant/cook --full time.
BUT the big thing I'd do is make sure that I could get a tropical vacation in every November and February or March. I might even be decadent enough to go away on a plane for long weekends to soak up sun during the winter.
I'd also get massages, manicures and pedicures every other week and a personal trainer.
The person I met with like 150 million has several kids, a large house in Boston plus a summer place on the North Shore. Her husband is now semi-retired and is active in foundations pushing charter schools (he's tried to run for office, but he lacks any charisma). She's pretty active in politics.
Their live-in housekeeper/nanny did win a big lottery and then quit her job.
I'd get all my clothes custom-made in the far east, and I might even buy a couple of honest-to-god couture pieces.
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Connecticut for Lieberman is slagging Holy Joe.
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I'd work when I goddamn felt like it. This trundle off to the office every day because you have to pay the mortgage bullshit is bullshit.