Morphine is weird stuff, because it affects different people in different ways. Which is to say that for me, and not necessarily for anybody else, it's an extremely effective painkiller (I had the stuff on an IV pump after open heart surgery and felt almost no pain) BUT it doesn't do a damn thing for any kind of headache, Acetominophen is more effective for those, fwiw.
Maybe you're the same. Strange wiring.
hm. maybe I better take another panadol. I usually use that+aspirin+caffeine combo, better bust it out. sometimes simple is good. it's not as though the morphine is no good whatsoever, I was just hoping for more total absence of pain. let's see...where's that aspirin to nom on...?
Had morphine myself last week after my ab surgery. Seemed to work somewhat for the pain, although tbh I think the ibuprofen I took later was more effective. And yeah, I had a headache once the anaesthetic wore off and the morphine didn't do much for that.
Paracetamol, caffeine and aspirin together tends to work best for me, if I have a headache.
can't find my delicious, nommable aspirin. [pouts]
5: For a moment I read that as "hand", and was all "Dude, too much morphine.".
Morphine caused me all kinds of burning pain going in and then didn't even get rid of my pain, just sort of swaddled me and made me feel vaguely out of my body. Bah.
I'm so sorry you haven't found a migraine-killer yet. I hate that situation.
I don't have any migraine experience, but massage works for other headaches -- is it worth a try?
One of the cats got a tooth pulled and we were given a bag of (needle-less) syringes of buprenor, some opiate popular with vets these days. He dislikes taking it so much (squirt in his mouth) that a couple of days in we're just going to quit. Hopefully it wasn't doing all that much for him at this point.
That Wellbutrin-Unwellbutrin joke reminds me of my horrible, horrible joke that the solution to Haiti's problems was to change its name to Lovey.
A few weeks ago I had a terrible migraine for more than a day, and then I also had heartburn, and Pepcid can cause headaches, so I took a couple of Tums. And within half an hour the headache was gone.
Now, I'm not suggesting this is actually going to work, but I'm definitely going to try it next time. It's just chalk and sugar, what harm could it do (except to your teeth)?
Why doesn't anybody's Higher Power ever tell them to shine their shoes or invent a new Hostess gingerbread-and-lemon-cream snack cake? I may be revealing my biases.
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Apparently AVN (the porn version of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) gives out a Clever Title of the Year award. However, their idea of clever is, well, suspect. Even among the very lame list of nominees, Beggin' for a Peggin' is hardly the cream of that crop.
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"Midnight in Paris," "Moneyball," and "Tree of Life" would all be better porn titles.
Perhaps it's the CSI:NY that's getting to you, OP. I've always thought it was headache-inducing to watch Gary Sinise wasting his talents. Could be that's just me, though.
13: "Sweaty College Girl Butt Stinky Panties" has a certain Steinian charm.
13: wow that list really puts the lie to the idea that there are all these good mainstream movie title porn puns out there (is this the sinister shadow of copyright chilling spontaneous creativitiy yet again?).
But I kind of liked "His Booty is My Duty". "Sweaty College Girl Butt Stinky Panties" is awful in one sense but has a twisted marketing genius too.
"Puns are as vital to the porn industry as they are to the pet shop industry and the child hair salon industry."
There's something to "It Ain't Going To Suck Itself!"
Nothing I want to get near, but something, regardless.
Nothing can top "Shaving Ryan's Privates."
21: "Top"? Really? I thought you were better than that.
Eh, I should have factored in my wicked strong tolerance
How's your liver doing these days? I have some vague idea that pelting your system repeatedly and in an ongoing fashion with mega-doses of everything off the pharmaceutical shelf is eventually going to limit the effectiveness of, well, everything.
I'm fairly certain that (a) tolerance for opiates doesn't have anything to do with liver damage, and (b) opiates (rather than the acetaminophen they're often combined with) don't do significant liver damage.
Acetaminophen is certainly a very big liver damaging medical thing.
I Want You to Make My Mouth Pregnant reminded me that while eye babies are bad enough, an ectopic eye-baby pregnancy would be all kinds of inconvenient.
Last night I spent an hour curled up on my couch in the dark, compulsively squeezing my head. Previous to the last month my migraines were fairly infrequent.. .once or twice a month. . but the last week or so they've been twice a day. Plus side---maybe I will lose some weight with all this nausea?
The thing I always end up thinking I want is some sort of helmet made of gel filled muscle fabric a la the batcape in the Nolan movies.
24: Right, I was thinking of the nerve blockers (I don't really know what those are) and the Wellbutrin (an anti-depressant?), with then morphine and maybe aspirin on top. After a time of that, I wouldn't be surprised if nothing provided a magic bullet, and my own thought would be to wean myself off everything but the essentials, and drink a lot of water, and sleep if possible in the hope that clarity might be achieved.
This is not meant as medical advice, of course: just goes toward the thought that after a certain point, more is not better. It's more instinct on my part.
Worrying about drug interactions is a very good idea, and something that everyone on multiple medications should be concerned out. Just trying not to take medications on general principle, on the other hand, is something that I think works best when there's nothing actually wrong with you. I mean, I avoid taking medication where it's at all practical, but the only reason that works is that I'm not sick.
29: Indeed, I'm not suggesting a purity routine; on the contrary, I take a regular, necessary medication, and am as a result aware that my system is constantly working with/on that. I try not to pile too much else on (which doesn't stop me from taking ibuprofen for a migraine, or from drinking coffee).
Anyway, it's not so much about the drug interactions, as the piling on.
There seems to be no reason not to classify coffee as a necessary food. It apparently protects against the ill effects of alcohol and tobacco (specifically cirrhosis and pancreatic cancer).
True, true; a lot of these things are about inflammation, and I think caffeine is an anti-inflammatory.
Worrying about drug interactions is a very good idea, because it absorbs time when you would otherwise be worrying about the economy, or climate change or Afghanistan.
I mean, I'm all in favour of not being unduly stupid with these things, but if it's got your number on it, it's going to get you. Probably I think like that because I am sick.
It's rich in antioxidants. For people who subsist on processed food and don't get fresh fruit, it's basically a dietary supplement. This would presumably include many heavy drinkers, so I wouldn't extrapolate from a sample that includes that population to people with reasonable diets.
Since it can be stored indefinitely and is more easily available, coffee should be thought of as the staple, and fresh fruit classified as a permissible substitute.
There seems to be no reason not to classify coffee as a necessary food.
Preach it brother. Lw is free to drink less coffee as I will be more than happy to take up the slack.
Since it can be stored indefinitely...
It does taste better if you don't store it for quite so long.
If you store it unground it degrades very slowly. But the comparison is with fruit anyway, which requires you to grab it as it whizzes past during its transition from greenness to rottenness.
True. However, I'd rather not have stale coffee.
29: I avoid taking medication where it's at all practical, but the only reason that works is that I'm not sick.
Point of order here, by the way: I'm not "sick" either. (People can take medications for preventative purposes.) This is just a general point about how the language of "sick" and not-sick (healthy?) is used: "sick" connotes damage, which is not necessarily appropriate to the case, and you'd generally want to reserve the use of that term to those who are actually, you know, ill.
I'm not putting this clearly, but the point is to take care about characterizing yourself as not sick, and others as sick. We know all too well that people who avail themselves of the medical system tend to be viewed as wanting (defective, sick).
Just a general alert.
I'm now taking a daily baby aspirin because my doctor said my lipids are wrong.
Sick people are just, you know sick. the hell with 'em.
But I don't mean Alameida, because she's too scary to badmouth. She's got that friend.
32: Yes, and so is testosterone. Healthy living consists mainly of staying up late drinking lots of coffee while watching porn.
40: I will endeavor to phrase my comments in a way that will avoid unintentionally hurting or offending those who read them.
I used to think I had two bad habits, coffee and alcohol. But it turns out that one of them diminished the bad effects of the other, giving me something like 0.7 bad habits net.
I scored 50/100 on the quiz. I think that means I am certifiably white.
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Healthy living consists mainly of staying up late drinking lots of coffee while watching porn.
I'm going to live forever.
Aaand food and medicine over sex or fashion again.
Apparently, this is a look now.
49 - Jesus Christ! The pants falling off thing was bad enough.
51: Could we have an address? No P.O. Box because we're mailing a rake and a sign about your lawn.
47: Between two and four points -- I've got two points solid, having hitchhiked and seen Iron Man 2, and two more possible (I don't know if I've watched Big Bang Theory enough to count as watching it regularly, but I've certainly seen a number of episodes, and I can't remember if I've hung around with smokers in the last month.) Come whatever revolution Charles Murray is selling, I'm first up against the wall after the revolutionaries get through with whatever racial agenda they're planning to pursue.
53: You didn't recognize Branson, MO? There's a Simpsons about it.
47, 53: The exclusion of Chipotle from the restaurant questions continues to crack me up. ("I'm concerned that UMC white liberals don't eat at popular chain restaurants, except the one they eat at!") Also, I'm pretty sure that Jimmy Johnson is more famous than Jimmie Johnson, but I've never watched more than 90 consecutive seconds of NASCAR, so what do I know?
I got 49/100. The test is an amazing inflation of David Brooks culture wars cliches. He could have been a little more alert for ironic hipster appropriation, though.
And you should see True Grit, LB! It was really good.
49 is hilarious. Maybe he's trying to do Johnny Depp one up? If so, I think he totally didn't get it.
Oh, wait, maybe I get a point for a job that caused physical pain. Sweat and chalkdust make the skin on my fingers crack -- my hands hurt for the two years I taught.
53/59: Don't you also qualify for points for family's principal breadwinner being in a non-prestigious job?
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It's so weird to see somebody widely mocked/loathed within your little subculture finally hit the big time.
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60: Dad's an architect, and always outearned Mom.
61: Said subculture's idea of "the big time" being arrest and extradition?
I got 47, but a lot of my points came from living with/near other people rather from a lack of snobbiness myself.
It's not about white at all, it's about Southern, rural, and blue collar v. urban, Eastern, and middle class. Not even blue collar, more like "not liberal arts school".
61: Speaking of those types, do you know of any english transcripts of CCC podcasts?
64: well, no. That happens often enough. But the mainstream press is finally catching on to what an insane (and, it should be said, horrible) weirdo he is, when previously the details of his self-aggrandizing, lying, narcissistic wannabe supervillainy were mostly only discussed at hacker cons.
I got 58 out of 100, although I saw most of those movies ("on DVD," it counts) for job-related purposes defending Hollywood studios, so fuck you Charles Murray. What a bullshit test. I guess we could all compare SWPL percentage with white, non-SWPL percentage, and figure out something.
I got nine points. Yay for living abroad (lower percentages of college degrees) and intercity buses.
You're just bitter because I'm more SWPL than you.
re: 49
He appears to be dressed as Dappy, from N-Dubz.
Oh, I probably got the neighborhood with less than 50% college degrees, too. Clinton Hill in the mid-nineties was not-yet-gentrified. What was that, two points? So that bumps me up to four to six.
I'm embarrassed about never having been on a factory floor -- it'd seem like the sort of thing that would have happened somehow, but I can't place a memory of it.
Under the guise of "factory farming," maybe I can count my hog confinement work as having been on a factory floor. I've worked in warehouses, but never a factory.
So I went back and checked and I'm 68% SWPL but also, as noted above, 58% Real American. Since those things are polar opposites, who am I? Where do I belong?
I think that means you are David Brooks.
You don't have to have worked on the factory floor, just visiting one gets you sometime ever gets you 2 points.
78: Does the Cheesecake Factory count?
Gah, don't have time to work it out. Glancing over the questions, I'd guess I'm pretty fucking un-SWPL. Even if I translate some of the things into what I assume are their nearest UK equivalents.
I wouldn't have guessed I was this far from the Unfogged average. What color is the sky in Real America. Is it pretty out there?
23. I'd have gotten 25 if Longhorn Steakhouse counted as one of the restaurants.
He excluded debate team and chess club, but forgot about quiz bowl and math team?
Which would also explain why I've been in a parade, oddly enough.
I can't believe I haven't been in a parade. What the fuck is wrong with this world?
George Bush lettered in cheerleading. Paradox!
It's true that much of my relatively high 58/100 score derives from the shitty way in which the questions are phrased, and may not reflect actual hardcore Real Americaness on my part.
For example, I did well on the neighborhood question (didn't exclude gentrifiers!) the "C student" question (didn't exclude rich legacy kids at elite high schools!) and the fishing question (didn't exclude fly fishing!)
I've been in a parade. I didn't notice that in the questions.
However, I'd rather not have stale coffee.
When I arrived in London a few weeks ago, my cousin made me coffee from the stovetop thingie that she keeps around for me. The coffee was left over from my last visit two years ago. Ground coffee sitting in an open bag in a cabinet is undrinkable crap. Just in case anyone was wondering.
My parents have dragged me to a Logan's Steakhouse within the last year, but that wasn't among the options.
That quiz is way too hard to score. I'm probably in the just over 50% range; there's a distinct discrepancy between upbringing-related questions and questions to do with now adult life.
I got a 35. I've been in a parade. I live in a small town. I wear a (soccer) uniform! And it's even associated with my job sometimes. I eat at those restaurants. But I never watch movies.
I scored 50/100 on the quiz.
38, although I feel the test failed to take full measure of either my whiteness or my trashiness.
(didn't exclude fly fishing!)
There's a whole bunch of people just kidding themselves on that one.
I scored 24. Also, Google thinks I am "male, 65+ years." So, right on both counts.
I did think about Richard Branson first, puzzled over it for several seconds, and then remembered the existence of Branson, MO.
The chronologies are funny. I'd have scored on fishing if it was 10 years, and not on jobs that hurt if it was 25 years or less. Would have picked up some TV points if it was the prior year.
Actually, I got all three of "parade," "factory floor," and "union hall" from working on Democratic political campaigns. Yet again, fuck you Charles Murray.
90: Um, Halford?
Zero points if you are thinking of a gentrifying neighbor-hood in which you were one of the gentriļ¬ers.
I think we both lose those points.
Although, I dunno -- that was the year before law school for me, when I was working as a temp receptionist with no benefits. I still probably count as a gentrifier, but less so than at any other time in my life. (And actually, I'm not sure Clinton Hill was gentrifying yet in 95-96.)
(Some of my points feel dishonestly come by. I've taken the bus because I have a stupidhead fear of flying and I know about Branson because my grandmother is an old Jewish lady in the south and they go on trips to places like that with the Aged Jewish People Center or whatever it's called.)
I've been in a couple of parades, oddly. Most memorably in a Halloween parade for which my parents made me wear a tinfoil-covered box contraption -- was it my idea to be a robot? maybe -- and I wept and stumbled. Turns out it's impossible to walk in a tinfoil-covered cardboard box when you're 7 or 8 years old, sweating to death. Maybe I had insisted on the project at the time, I dunno, but a lesson was learned.
Oh, duh, I've got union hall. Not just from campaigns, but honestly -- I went down to support the UFT when they were going to have layoffs last year. So back up to 4-6 points.
"A ļ¬rst-generation upper-middle-class person with middle-class parents" is not an inaccurate diagnosis, I guess, assuming that being overeducated qualifies me as UMC.
I was totally leaving points on the board. 29! Thanks, CompUSA and National Amusements, I couldn't have done it without your shitty uniforms.
103: I love knowing exactly who wrote an unsigned comment.
102: I decided I wasn't a gentrifier, even though I was living in a house full of suburban white kids in a poor black neighborhood, because 1. we trashed the place, and 2. if it was gentrifying, it didn't stick.
101. By "walked on a factory floor" did he actually mean "Stand on the floor as a visitor, getting under the feet of the workers" or "punch the clock and get stuck in"? Surely most people would answer yes to the former, even if their motives weren't as pure as yours.
I just thought of two more points. 37.
102 -- I feel that is bullshit, also my neighborhood isn't truly "gentrifying," (but I sure hope it will do so, soon) it's just been racially and income mixed for about 20 years. I'm counting the points. His statistical point was "In the 2000 census, 92 percent of Americans lived in zip codes in which the majority of adults ages 25 and older did not have col-lege degrees. Seventy-seven percent lived in zip codes where fewer than a third of those adults had degrees." I'm sure that's true for almost all zip codes in Los Angeles, and probably most for New York.
107: I worked for CompUSA, I think. I was in the warehouse packing orders.
110 -- It's clearly the former. I get the points, but the last time I was on a factory floor, it was considered noteworthy enough that my picture doing so was in the next company newsletter. Murray isn't measuring how SWPL you are, though, but how isolated you are from regular people.
Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?
Does the soul count?
Whoops, 98 and 103 are me.
Browser change problems.
113: I'd get the neighborhood points from my zipcode, but fifty closest neighbors are all in my building, and that doesn't qualify. I think if your neighborhood has been stably mixed for a while, though, you can keep your points -- I'd keep mine if I lived a block east of where I do.
112 -- at the SWPL website. I counted everything that I like as 1 point, and then took the percentage of the total.
Also, Google Ads STILL thinks that I am an Indian Woman. Do I want a new Salmar Kameez? Maybe!
If Halford lives in the neighborhood I think he lives in, I am unconvinced that it's not gentrifying (slowly, and maybe it's stalled, but I know far too many gay dudes who fixed up houses around there for it not to be gentrifying on some level).
110: That was what I was embarrassed about -- I think I've literally never been in a functioning factory.
how isolated you are from regular people
Are you less isolated from people (by any measurement other than physical proximity) if they're swearing at you for being in their way than if you're somewhere else entirely?
My point being that the test is so full of middle class assumptions that it doesn't even make sense on its own terms.
I got a 48. Growing up in a small town, having a single parent that was poor for a brief period, being in band, and living in a not-great neighborhood account for most of it. I scored very low on the culture section (for all that I've bought an avon product - skin so soft before).
122.last: it's by Charles fucking Murray. It would be profoundly shocking if it made sense.
It is true that there are a lot of gay dudes who have fixed up houses. So gentrifying slowly and at some level is fair. Thank you gay dudes! But we've been waiting 20 years for a coffee shop.
I don't think I've ever been in a factory. There's a Tyson Chicken Factory next door to Heebie U, and occasionally feathers really do drift across campus, and you really do see semis carrying hundreds of chickens stacked in individual little crates entering and leaving. And yet I've never been curious to check it out.
I love the lecture about "you need to rethink your notion of a close friend" if you dared answer that you are close friends with totally stupid people who couldn't even get Cs in high school if they tried.
So google knows I am a 70-year-old man and facebook knows I'm a cub-malgre-lui, though actually I haven't gotten laser hair removal ads in a while. I guess lately I get ads for some upscale brand of pants with a picture of some guy's ass. So facebook thinks I am vain or have a nice ass or I don't know.
What is that quiz supposed to prove? He identifies a lot of things that are individually popular (Oprah, Nascar), and then wants you to think that you are more of a real American if you like all of them. But there's no reason to think that any of these are particularly correlated. Does the Oprah demographic overlap the Nascar demographic? What would it prove if you are in both of those? Who exactly is out there that likes Oprah, Nascar, and movies based on Marvel Comics characters?
127: You mean a meat packing plant or a hatchery?
I'm having a hard time picturing a kid without a particular disability who couldn't get Cs in high school if they tried. Kids who had a long history of not trying, sure. But someone who actually wanted to put serious effort into getting Cs but they were just out of reach?
I have no idea what facebook thinks I am. A person with an ad-blocker, I guess.
And why is there one question that lets you choose either something coded male (Nascar) or something coded female (Avon)? Plenty of other questions only ask about things that are coded male.
It's BS designed to make people buy the shitty book based on class guilt. Manufacturing and transport together are only 20% of the economy, and there are plenty of economically tenuous suburban neighborhoods.
He's an OK quiz writer, but I'd expect better questions to the same purpose out of the people here. Plus sexist, I think skews male, I bet he's not expecting to sell to women. Or nonwhite rural people.
Don't I remember that there were significant class anxiety issues between him and the coauthor of the even shittier IQ book? Cage fight between him and Thomas Friedman, loser to be personal servant on live TV to an imbecile starlet famous for nothing.
Do magazines still run quizzes?
132 -- I counted an amusing, wealthy, drunk dumbass. Real America!
132: it's hard to imagine somebody who couldn't do better than Cs really being terribly interested in putting serious effort into it.
Most of my high school friends who got Cs were actually very smart (I ran with the underachievers, I may have mentioned) but there was one guy who sweated the ASVAB, so I took the points.
Hm. Factory floor: yeah, worked in the office of a small darkroom equipment manufacturing place for about a year and half, and the floor was right there, all mixed company. Uniform: only for like 2 weeks, working the morning shift at a diner, which involved hair net and all. I quit because I got fired. Hauled wood for a summer, which hurt all over, but it was just for that summer, and was quite enjoyable. Grew up in a working town of about 30,000, over 50% of whom did not have college degrees. Certainly took the Greyhound bus to see my boyfriend 100 miles away throughout college.
I fail terribly in the anti-SWPL areas having to do with knowing evangelical Christians, or people with whom I disagree strongly on political matters, or buying beer, or having any interest in football, much less Nascar, or watching American Idol (though I did watch Lost).
Murray takes an uneducated poor rural white Southern blue-collar worker as his standard. The characteristic white American is educated (HS, some college), non-blue collar, moderately prosperous, non-Southern, and urban, suburban or exurban. It's pure winger pop sociology.
And there's this: "You may ļ¬nd it surprising, as I did, that 21 percent of Americans still lived in rural areas as of the 2000 census andanother 10 percent lived in towns of fewer than 10,000 people--intotal, almost a third of the population."
Are rural areas and towns of less than 10,000 exclusive categories, or did Murray count a bunch of people twice in order to make his preferred demographic seem more important.
I'm having a hard time picturing a kid without a particular disability who couldn't get Cs in high school if they tried. Kids who had a long history of not trying, sure. But someone who actually wanted to put serious effort into getting Cs but they were just out of reach?
I'll again recommend The Last Shot by Darcy Frey. Granted, in that case, the problem was standardized test scores more than grades, but it's a fantastic book so worth the recommendation anyway.
You mean a meat packing plant or a hatchery?
Usually people ask "kill or processing"? The answer is "kill" and then they say "that's good."
122 -- Murray's point on this has some validity: you do see an element essential to UMC life you don't normally think about, even with a short visit. Had a nice tour of a LaZBoy factory while the appropriate large men were loading up the semi I'd driven there. Went to a tire plant in Illinois for a case once. More recently, the pres of the company was pretty proud to show me the Polartec facility a few years ago. I had to promise not to reveal the configuration of the knitting machines: as if I could possibly understand enough about it to be meaningful to anyone. I'd recommend any of these.
I don't think it's a hatchery, though, based on the truckloads of chickens that arrive at the factory.
137: I had to google "ASVAB". I lose 10 points.
there was one guy who sweated the ASVAB
Buck's niece was just preening about having done nicely on that -- she and her husband are both joining up (oddly, in different services. I don't know how that's going to work for them, but they seem to have a plan) once he gets the tattoo on his neck removed.
Does Murray announce his own score on this quiz?
I am close friends with some evangelicals, and with some people with horrible politics.
146: LB gets 10 points added to her score!
OT: A friend is making noises about (i) estate planning and (ii) endowing a chair and/or student scholarship at his college or graduate school and has asked me about gift terms/description (i.e., how specifically can he describe the research focus of the chair holder or the subject of the scholarship winner). If any of you academic reprobates is familiar with the pains of university development, I'd much appreciate a quick note about what can and cannot be obtained by a donor.
Also, he promised to leave me a gun. Wahoo.
Granted, in that case, the problem was standardized test scores more than grades
That, I've seen. I don't get it, but I know perfectly ordinary people who function just fine who can't do tests at all.
(My "I am so ashamed to be a snotty elitist" story -- working class guy I sailed with in the summers in high school who was clever and fun and I had a crush on mentioned that his SAT scores had just come in, and he'd gotten a 720. And I said "Wow, awesome! Math or verbal?" When he said "No, combined," I considered diving off the boat and swimming home, but it would have taken too long.)
Also we keep Coors Light on hand.
Bless my heart, we are so authentic.
149: Some video-game character. I'm remembering both Zelda and something from Final Fantasy, and they can't both be right. I've never actually looked at it -- there's just an edge sticking out from under a shirt collar.
You really didn't get the military insignia, LB?
151: The Koch brothers endowed a chair at Florida State that had detailed prescriptions as to exactly what views the person holding the chair should have.
So anyway I'm now imagining a legit test for the mean and modal, non-mythical, white majority exurban-urban-suburban person with 13.4 years of education living in a pretty nice house and making OK money. I expect them to be really boring, because I'm a Communist.
156: You had to get all of them, which I didn't. I got colonel, some-kind-of-general but I can't remember which word goes with how many stars, corporal, but didn't know master sergeant, and I can't remember if I got the last one right or wrong.
Would Murray plotz if informed that only 10.5% of whites work in manufacturing, and 81.2% live in MSAs or microSAs of 100,000 people or more? No, but it's nice to imagine.
It says 1 point if you got at least one of them.
I got them all but the general because I'm a man of the people.
156: Did anyone? I'm a military brat, for heaven's sake, and my eyes glazed over in unrecognition. (Well, Master Sergeant looked familiar.)
Which way does not knowing what "plotz" means affect my score?
Oh, whoops. I'm up to 5-7, then.
I have (or had) an evangelical friend who was also a creationist (old-earth, for those hip to the nuances of these things). Relatives are fans of Sarah Palin. I score pretty white on the stuff which basically tests for blue collar experience and purple or whatever on most of the cultural stuff. I can't be bothered to calculate the exact number because fuck that shit. I can pass in Tea Party company if need be.
158: That's the thing I dont' get. What is Murray trying to prove by showing that his reader does or does not belong to this particular demographic. I mean, even if it is a coherent social block, what does he show by showing that some people aren't in it. That he is more real than the rest of us?
And it what universe can Charles Fucking Murry lecture other people on being in touch with real America? Does Real America include trolls who've spent their lives on the payroll of liberatarian think tanks?
Murray really is an idiot. I wonder how many points you get for living in a zip code with 51 people in it.
Does Real America include trolls who've spent their lives on the payroll of liberatarian think tanks?
Nothing but.
what does he show by showing that some people aren't in it
That my political opinions and those of my ilk are based on a profound ignorance about the interests of the real American people, and should be discounted. You had to ask?
(Yes, I know he clarifies, but basically, he has no data and is just trying to substitute one measure for another and then say don't do that.)
And why the fuck have I wasted the last 45 minutes reading and thinking about Charles Fucking Murry and his groundless, inconsistent stereotypes of white people?
Didn't David Brooks write something years ago about how liberals disappointed and angered by the many offenses and stupidities of George W. Bush all ought to visit a megachurch and a NASCAR race? Man, what a jackass.
Let's go back to wild boars and their cute, tatsy piglets. And coffee.
I could probably eat a wild boar piglet made of toffee. I'd give it my best, anyway.
168: Charles Fucking Murray can go to hell generally, but I suppose there's some value in making some people aware of the fact that they have never stepped foot on a factory floor, say. Another prescription for this ill is for people to read Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed.
And why the fuck have I wasted the last 45 minutes...
I don't know about you, but in my case it's because I have a list of things that I absolutely must finish by tomorrow morning and they all look really tedious, so I'll regret it later.
173: Probably time better spent than thinking about his stereotypes of non-white people.
Looking through his answers, I wouldn't be surprised if most of his aggregate statistics include the stuff that he says shouldn't count, there's just no way of knowing how many in 1979 or whatever were in "doesn't count" situations.
And I know that if I tried to procrastinate with the cryptic crossword thread instead, I'd lose even more hours.
what does he show by showing that some people aren't in it
Not just some people. The overwhelming majority of people.
Some of my points feel dishonestly come by.
Hey, you're talking to the guy who awarded himself four points for walking around a factory floor in a suit, figuring out how to eliminate the jobs of the workers ("4 points if you have ever had a job that entailed routine visits")
-How much does a big Mac cost?
-Long nails are sexy, yes or no?
-Scented or unscented?
The point about factories is a really good one-- I still feel a special personal connection to screen printed plastic bottles because I printed them for a while. But lots of people who are struggling are just as disconnected from farms and factories as people who are comfortable.
177: We are all very fond of toffee.
-How much does a big Mac cost?
I think the Mac Pro starts at about $2500, depending on the number of cores... Oh.
The point about factories is a really good one
Nah. Why would you privilege manufacturing jobs over retail and maintenance? And if you wouldn't why do you hate all the people who spend their lives stacking shelves and waiting tables just because they've never strayed into a factory. Bullshit. Bollox. Relax.
I have both a doctorate and plans to buy a pickup truck for my summer home in Montana to placate my spouse. I win.
Big Mac is to McDonalds
as
________ is to Burger King.
If you don't get that right, you are a member of Al Qaeda.
I do give Murray bonus points for the his/hers aspect of question 12.
I had a professor ask the "visit a factory" question back in the late 90s. In a class of 700, almost nobody raised their hands. Mostly freshmen and sophomores, outside of visits on tours the chances of our going to a factory for work were somewhat small given child labor laws.
The professor was conservative (I later learned), but the lecture was about the growth of the labor movement and socialism in the 19th century so it actually made sense as a getting students to think about stuff question.
We already have a pick-up truck.
191 -- Our recent house guest, a 17 year old from Uri, told me that it rhymes with Cooper.
I should read the earlier comments in this thread.
152: When my sister said she'd gotten a 1580, I said, "Cool, me too!", and then realized that there were 800 more points available when she took it...
189. By "the point" about factories I meant but didn't say what Carp and others mentioned, which applies to farms also. Which is that being disconnected from the physical world makes it easier to think of reality as a stage set that can be manipulated arbitrarily. Rightwingers suffer from this also, imagining easy environmental solutions after all the large fish have been eaten and the groundwater poisoned.
I don't think this is Murray's point, and I don't think there's any moral virtue that comes from doing factory work, which is M's subtext. The thing that he's missing, which Ehrenreich or lefties who write about poor people usually stress, is just how wearing it is to have only bad and worse for choices.
Real America is defined by how closely it resembles Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty. There's a reason why the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution there.
There should have been a question on there like "Are you completely uninformed about politics?" Isn't that a majority held position?
The thing is, no matter how high I could score on a test like this, people seem to smell the liberal elite on me a mile away. It's really staggering how identifiable I am when I think I'm blending in.
201: people seem to smell the liberal elite on me a mile away
Take a shower, hippie.
What kind of jewelry are you wearing? Any face piercings? How much synthetic fabric? Shoes?
Ok, now that I've read the scoring, I think the point of the quiz is that when talking about class in America, you do not talk about money as you move up the scale. Only mention numbers at the lower end.
And I don't know why he doesn't take points off for associating "secondary school" with high school. I can't think of anyone ever using "secondary school" outside of academic or policy contexts. But I've probably spent too many years in tertiary and quaternary education.
People seem to smell the liberal elite on me a mile away
What kind of jewelry are you wearing? Any face piercings? How much synthetic fabric? Shoes?
The awesome kind. (a slightly thick many-strand chain necklace, a flower lucite-ish bracelet, wedding ring, watch)
A lip ring.
Jeans and a sweater
Leather loafer shoes
Have you ever been naked on the job? And not gotten in trouble for it?
Are there non-human animals in your workplace?
Powder or crack?
Have you ever been naked on the job?
So nineties.
I got the Branson question miserably, miserably wrong, seeing as how I got it all mixed up with Charles Brosnon. And I didn't count as a gentrifier. And I'd forgotten that on that last trip two years ago with my family, I didn't even hold one of the fishing rods. Crap, I have failed.
Do you have a close friend born in a foreign country?
Have you ever eaten an entire box of Frosted Flakes right out of the box?
Have you ever watched an entire season of one of those CSI things?
If beer had tits, would you marry it?
I got the Branson question miserably, miserably wrong, seeing as how I got it all mixed up with Charles Brosnon.
Another Simpsons reference.
The Real American test is stymying me with some of its early questions. We lived in an unambiguously working class neighborhood until I was 10, and my parents had pink-collar jobs, but what the hell do I know of their actual income or the college-degree-having-ness of our fifty closest neighbors?
Huh. I seem to have come in at 53 in both SWPL-test and Bell Curve Asshole-test. Weird.
Then I realized the scoring was complicated and I lost interest. Now what am I supposed to do instead of writing more of this wretched paper?
119 112 -- at the SWPL website. I counted everything that I like as 1 point, and then took the percentage of the total.
I don't know how to count. What does it mean to like something? Do I have to like it in the manner satirized, or can I just think 'yeah, that's not bad sometimes', or what? I can muster enthusiasm for very few things in that list.
213:
a) I did for three years, best friend German
b) no, does cheerios count
c) never watched a single episode of a csi, nor even part of an episode
Overall at Lemieux, foreigner who likes hockey, there is evidence that many minorities would score high on Murray's test. +5 points if you are a minority
-10 points if you give a flying fuck about Charles Murray, -20 if you think Murray is so important you have to mock or refute him, but only +2 if you have never heard of Charles Murray.
What Real American quiz are people talking about? I took an abbreviated version, I think, which I got through a link at fb, and came up as a new member of the SWPL class (or whatever they're calling it), though still in touch with my authentic American roots (through contact with my beer-drinking, deer-hunting relatives in Canadia, I guess).
222: Via the link to LGM at 47, there's a link to the Charles Murray version. It took a while to load.
MC: it's embarrassing crap and you really can't do it if you've not lived most of your in the USA, because of the way the questions are phrased. Download some CSI instead.
Alternatively:
* Have you ever lived for more than a year in a town where you can't buy an Eid-ul-Fitr greeting card? Yes: +20 for being insanely white; No: nothing for being normal.
* Have you ever had a friend beaten up on the street for being black? No: +10 for middle classitude; Yes: -1 for your mate being shit out of luck.
* Have you ever had a truck driver try to run you down on a picket line? No: nothing for being normal; Yes: -5 as compensation for a really scary experience.
I haven't gone to the trouble of taking the test, but skimming through the questions, I would score pretty high on it, despite being a full-bore commie elitist. I liked this bit from Roy Edroso:
professor fate wants to know why Murray didn't ask about porn. Well, you must consider his audience, which is not actual lower-middle-class people but joy-popping nerdcons who want to hear about a cleaned-up Real America -- "Leave It to Beaver," not Wisconsin Death Trip, or even Winter's Bone. Imagine though if he'd taken the thing more seriously:
- Have you ever done meth? Maximum of 7 points. 3 points if you've ever done it, and 1 point for each tooth lost as a consequence up to 4. (No points if you took it at a gay orgy and called it Tina.)
- Have you ever had your credit card refused by the Home Shopping Network? 5 points.
- Are you still paying interest on a rear-projection TV you dumped in the woods last year? 3 points.
Etc.
I got the Branson question miserably, miserably wrong, seeing as how I got it all mixed up with Charles Brosnon.
Me too!
Do you read a blog which relishes making fun of the author of this quiz? -20.
All those "Have you had a friend who ..." questions killed my score. What, shut-ins can't be real Americans now?
Waaaah. I haven't been exercising at all since I stopped bike-commuting last fall. And it occurred to me that I should do something exercise-related so as not to be in terrible shape when it got light enough in the evenings to start again.
Two and a half miles on a treadmill took me half an hour yesterday, and today I'm sore as anything. I hate being sore.
I'm allegedly training for a 1/2 marathon.
Being sore from exercise feels so great! It's the most virtuous feeling in the world.
I love muscular soreness. This doesn't seem to encourage me to exercise, though.
Experimenting with running and my stride, I managed to change it from an activity that hurt my knees to an activity that hurts my ankles. Progress?
I've been running sort of regularly since summer 2010 and it is only now that my calves are starting to develop some muscle.
Come on LB, at this point there's gotta be a crossfit near you. Don't just be able to ride the bike, be able to throw it into the face of your enemies.
Come on LB, at this point there's gotta be a crossfit near you. Don't just be able to ride the bike, be able to throw it into the face of your enemies.
I have a middle-aged friend who used to get achy knees from running, tried IT band stretches, problem solved after a few months.
235: The problem with CrossFit is that it's classes on a schedule (and that it's inconveniently located, but not impossibly so). It's not that I work too hard to exercise (you guys know that if anyone does), but counting on being able to make a, say, 6:30 class reliably isn't going to happen. It really does sound like an attractive idea, but the logistics are too much effort for me.
235: The problem with CrossFit is that it's classes on a schedule (and that it's inconveniently located, but not impossibly so). It's not that I work too hard to exercise (you guys know that if anyone does), but counting on being able to make a, say, 6:30 class reliably isn't going to happen. It really does sound like an attractive idea, but the logistics are too much effort for me.
Easy on the reps, LB. You want to focus on explosive power.
237: I don't get sore knees, just muscles. I shouldn't brag about it too much, because everything breaks down eventually, but I, and my dad's family generally, are massively overdesigned -- literally big boned. I don't twist ankles or strain tendons -- athletic injuries are all either muscle soreness or bruising from clumsiness. (I did hurt my foot running in those barefoot shoes last year, which was weird. But it's better now.)
241: I'm hoping to move the pain down to my toes which I could then amputate.
Actually, I'm remembering the real problem with the CrossFit thing -- it's not so much logistics as money. I don't want to give up the bike commute, but I did work out that I could bike in Monday morning, Crossfit Monday night (and on looking at the schedule they really are quite flexible on time), bike back Tuesday night, bike in on Wednesday and Crossfit that night, and so on, hauling the bike home Friday somehow. That could work.
But to bike, I need my gym membership near work, because I can't work after an hour bike ride in the summer without a shower. So Crossfit would mean paying for two gym memberships, one expensive, and one very expensive. Too much.
I'm only getting maybe 300 miles on a pair of shoes before my feet start to go numb when I run more than three miles. People tell me I just need to buy shoes more frequently, but I get annoyed at replacing a pair of shoes that seem perfectly good.
I think that's right, though. You're supposed to replace shoes really frequently.
233: You know, that actually does sound like progress. I don't really know what I'm talking about, but sore knees sounds like too much impact, and you're hurting yourself. Sore ankles sounds like weak stabilizing muscles, and you're getting stronger.
246: It just seems so wasteful. I replace my other shoes when I get a hole in the sole and it can't be resoled.
You could try those barefoot shoes. Aside from hurting my foot, I liked them quite a lot. No cushioning, so there's nothing to wear out short of holes.
LizardBreath, what I do to keep myself up for fieldwork and polkas is a (surprisingly short) bout of bodyweight exercise, about every other day; Lifehacker does their usual over-obsessive job of laying one out.
I would be lovelier if I also did something Pilates-ish, and I have to do stretches most nights because I'm always stiff, but 10minutes plus cooldown every other day -- free! in my jammies! -- increases the number of pushups I can do with agreeable regularity.
I think that's right, though. You're supposed to replace shoes really frequently.
Replacing shoes frequently seems at odds with the barefoot movement. Wouldn't crappy, limp old shoes be a good approximation to running barefoot?
Aside from hurting my foot, I liked them quite a lot.
Everybody (my cousin, this one woman at work, my sister) tells me that I shouldn't try the barefoot shoes this close to the half marathon.
Also, I think Coates had a piece on how long it took to adjust to the barefoot running.
252: Oh, yeah, I'd start with a mile or two in them and work up, not plan to run thirteen miles in the near future. But maybe buy a new pair of ordinary shoes and a new pair of barefoot shoes, and try them out when you're doing a short run?
