It might work this year, while the happy-fun-time community is still off balance.
While it has some of the trappings of the Irish holiday, for most it's just an excuse to get drunk and party.
Or as PSU students call it, "a weekend".
Or as PSU students call it, "a weekend day ending in Y".
So, uh, dating my boss's niece is a bad idea, right?
(Sort of on-topic since it relates to my plans for this weekend.)
Depends. Planning anything that'll get either of you arrested?
I think that'd depend on the boss and the niece. But I doubt going on one date is a bad idea. You'd then have a better read on the niece and generally whether its something where you're running a serious risk or not.
So, uh, dating my boss's niece is a bad idea, right?
Not necessarily. Depends on the boss. Also depends on the niece.
The plans for this weekend aren't quite at "real date" level yet. Just checking out an event with some other friends. We'll see how things go from there, though.
Thinking back over previous women you've dated, for what percentage of them are you grateful, in retrospect, that you weren't working for anyone that cared about them?
However necessary to include plans with the boss-niece.
10: Zero, I think. At least for narrow definitions of "dated" as per 11. On the other hand, a definition that narrow leaves me with a very small n.
The Boss Niece rules the extended family scene with an iron fist.
10
Thinking back over previous women you've dated, for what percentage of them are you grateful, in retrospect, that you weren't working for anyone that cared about them?
More to the point would be previous women you have broken up with.
That's true, teo. Also consider women you've broken up with, but haven't dated.
15, 16: Noted. Neither changes my answer, though.
but haven't dated.
Define "haven't dated."
There are like 18 people in Alaska. Sooner of later, you'll fuck someone related to someone you know.
Not that 19 answers the specific question, but it provides necessary context.
"Don't shit where you eat" isn't just a thing that people say. It's miserable to be at your place of work when your ex- is there. Having your ex-'s uncle there (as your boss, no less) seems bad, but it's possibly tolerable.
So that's your worst-case scenario. Weigh it against the potential benefits. But most importantly, be sure to live-blog the date.
Having your ex-'s uncle there (as your boss, no less) seems bad, but it's possibly tolerable.
Interesting assumption there.
Otherwise, yeah, that sounds reasonable as a way to think about this.
Teo this is going to sound weird but Halford's right. Don't worry about it. Unless she seems super fucking high.
Well, that's embarrassing and revealing.
24: I'm actually not worried about this at all. It just seemed like an appropriate topic for Unfogged.
Would you prefer an inappropriate topic? I think we've established how bad an idea that is.
What do Alaskans do on a typical date? I'm guessing go for snow cones, except up there they're just "cones".
Run up Mount Marathon a couple times and then finish your individual bottles of whiskey?
I am impressed that Sifu is aware of the tradition of running up Mount Marathon.
I just read an article about a guy who died doing it. Sounds pretty dang Alaskan, from the old school.
If it's the guy that disappeared last year, that was the first (presumed) fatality in the hundred years or so that they've done the race.
I suppose that was probably covered in the article.
OTOH if you marry your boss's daughter niece, you could inherit the company and end up as Lord Mayor of London Juneau.
4: In my younger, more handsome and charming days, I got away with worse, but I really wouldn't recommend it.
Few things needle Irish people more than Americans who say "St Patty's Day".
It's just a trick to get you to reveal your gold, Gonerill.
39: It irritates the hell out of me too.
I was thinking that I don't remember ever having seen St. Patty, rather than Paddy's, Day. The latter is just as irritating, of course, but I thought it was the standard.
On the other hand, apparently back in the 1930's, it was a great party in NY. My grandfather got off the boat from Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, had his brother pick him up to go bar hopping, and thought he'd died and gone to heaven.
39: "Patty's" s/b "Paddy's." There, all better.
Sifu is aware of all Alaska traditions.
42.last: I think it was kind of a big deal in the 30s and 40s. My grandparents would keep the kids home from school and everyone went to the parade.
(I don't recall ever seeing it written "Patty," either. Let's all just celebrate St. Joseph's Day, which has the advantage of being associated with a particularly awesome pastry.)
Well, isn't this nice?
http://rt.com/usa/women-children-target-practice-623/
46: That's awful. "Dipicting" for "depicting" is even worse than "Patty" for "Paddy."
Still a big deal in Butte. Which also celebrates St. Urho's Day, so the Finns can get a head start.
46: If the training course also has penalties for shooting the targets without guns, then I don't see the problem. The object is to learn rapid but accurate discrimination in a chaotic situation. So far there haven't been all that many black & white concentric circles or silhouettes nor zombies encountered in any of the mass shootings.
black & white concentric circles [...] encountered in any of the mass shootings
It was just a pattern out of space--a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the alternating black and white extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
The class abruptly stopped practicing. Here was a chance to not only employ their skills, but also to save the entire town.
My grandfather got off the boat from Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, had his brother pick him up to go bar hopping, and thought he'd died and gone to heaven.
This is so beautiful. I want to open a screenplay with it. It'll probably be some kind of stupid mob romance by the time I'm done with it, but at least it will start perfectly.
55: and then, just when New York seems like the promised land, the sky outside the bar goes black... and white... and black... and white, and LB's grandfather has to face... St. Pattern Out Of Space!
Or wait, wait St. Pattern Out Of Space's Day
Honky please, St. Paddern Out Of Space's Day.
Don't water down our villain, Stormcrow.
Hmph. The Feast of St. Pattern Out Of Space.
And for those of you who are afraid of carp, today is a day to avoid; it is the Feast of Saint Polycarp. Mmmm, a carp feast.
55:
EXT. THE BROADWAY - ST. PATRICK'S DAY
PAT and MIKE are WALKING
(31 is in fact what we're actually going to do. I'll be heading out in a few minutes.)
I don't have one of those newfangled bloggin' phones.
Post an answer to Stanley's question from your phone.
You weren't talking to me, were you. That's embarassing.
So, is anyone applying for the right to blow $1500 on an early prototype computing device that will probably have all kinds of bugs?
69: I want to know how I can get the government to buy me one.
70- That's my plan if I win. Check my Flickr pool.
Oops, never mind, I put it in a separate pool from my super secret commenting identity.
(Which is to say, hooray! We can't look at that!)
Marcion requested, "Recognize us, Polycarp." Polycarp replied, "I recognize you, yes, I recognize the son of Satan."
Good old Polycarp.
Cold up there this weekend, but that is just the ticket
Because it's Frigid Sud-sidy
61: My family certainly followed that naming scheme.
The weird thing is that my family always made the older brother Mike and the younger one Pat.
Fucking celticists the lot of yenz.
83: The least they could do is liveblog it.
True story: Many beers have much more alcohol than Yuengling.
PAT: Education is more of a putting in than a drawing out, to be sure to be sure.
Maybe sexist. I get confused. Apparently, beer comes in 10% alcohol by volume.
And more! But yeah if you're used to Yuengling beer with 10% alcohol can be a fun surprise.
Anyway, I am explaining about how an elevator moving through space is gravity to a physics grad student from CMU.
Every brew's a high gravity beer on Jupiter.
"If I travel at the speed of light for one hour, I return an hour older."
It was round and soft. Now go back to work.
I try to avoid free-falling elevators, myself.
After the elevator has been in free fall for an hour it dings, and you get out at the center of the earth. There are dinos.
96: The elevator is pulled through space, by large-breasted aliens with green skin and sexual signaling that is an absurdly unlikely example of convergent evolution.
97: It was short, pink and wrinkled. Now go back to work.
||
Camping wasn't a disaster and parts were fun, but goddamn am I happy to be home a half-day early.
|>
Camping without beer or small children sucks.
102: At the risk of prying, why are you home early?
It turns out all the students also had to be at Scholarship Day to help out with stuff. While I'd told the organizers that I'd be there by 11, the students all had to be showered and nice-looking by 8:30.
I said "you realize that means we'll be packing up tents while it's dark out?" and everyone was amenable to coming home after dinner tonight.
At the risk of prying, law school?
At the risk of prying, I think a rigid beam moving on a fulcrum could amplify the force applied by a factor related to the distance from the fulcrum.
the students all had to be showered and nice-looking by 8:30.
Meh. Just a little Old Spice so they don't smell like Off and you'll be fine.
As long as they aren't too bad, you'll get your deposit back.
Off plus Old Spice is pretty much Axe, right?
49: If the training course also has penalties for shooting the targets without guns, then I don't see the problem.
Oh yes, just so long as we're clear that no quarter will be given, then it's fine.
Heedless of the crying children, dragging fathers from their beds, beating sons while helpless mothers watch the blood from their heads.
115: Thanks! Explaining the details requires a bit of backstory, so please bear with me.
Last weekend, when my friend was visiting, we randomly met two girls who were sitting next to us in a restaurant. My friend is a bit of a laydeez man, so he got to talking to them and invited them to come out with us that night. They did, and I went out with them again the next night, without my friend since he had to catch his flight home. That night we talked a bit about the upcoming Fur Rendezvous ("Rondy"), which started the next weekend, and I offered to show them around some of the events. These girls seem nice enough, but I'm not feeling much romantic potential with them. I do think they'll be good as friends, so I'd like to stay in touch with them.
I spent most of that next week staffing a booth at a conference. Staffing another booth nearby was a cute girl who turned out to be my boss's niece. (This fact was totally coincidental to the way we met.) She seemed pretty cool, so the last day of the conference I sat next to her at lunch and we had a nice conversation in which I invited her to join me and the other two girls at Rondy today. She was very interested.
So this morning I headed downtown for the sled dog races that are the centerpiece of the event. Both the two girls and Boss Niece (henceforth BN) met me there. We watched some of the teams start, then headed over to the museum, which had free admission and a sort of multicultural festival thing today. After that BN had to leave to meet her aunt (my boss) for lunch, and the other girls and I went to a different place for lunch.
After lunch we went to see the outhouse races, another traditional Rondy event. We couldn't see them very well, and the girls had to get back home to feed their dog, so I walked them to the bus station and was intending to take a bus home myself and call it a day. As we were walking to the bus station, however, I got a text from BN saying that she and my boss were also watching the outhouse races. So the two girls took a bus home, but I went back to the races and found BN and my boss. We watched the remainder of the races, then went out for drinks at a bar downtown.
We stayed and talked for a couple of hours, then we decided to call it a night. BN offered to give me a ride home, and I accepted. When she dropped me off she thanked me for inviting her to Rondy and said she probably wouldn't have done anything this weekend otherwise.
So yeah, there seems to be some serious potential here. I like her a lot and she seems to like me too.
the upcoming Fur Rendezvous
IYKWIM.
I believe Burlington Northern is available as a pseud.
And then we can all look forward to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe fur rendezvous merger.
I'm just here to meet a friend.
A friend who knows how to spell, one hopes.
Is there a less promising avenue for dirty jokes than American railroad names? "I'm gonna Chessie System your Frisco Line" is the best I can do.
There's Bloomer Shippers and Crab Orchard, but yeah, slim pickings.
Go Teo! That sounds like the perfect weekend/way to meet to someone.
121: You're Mr. Addison Simms of Seattle, and we had lunch together at the Plaza in the spring of ought-five?
Heading for the Big Hole today. Beaverhead county.
That does sound nice, Teo.
I continue to have many entirely unsexual friendships. I have bitched here in the past about how everyone keeps hinting that one gentleman and I should hook up, but that doesn't actually happen; on Friday night, while out with some other guys, one of them called me on it--"So you two *are* fucking, right? Everyone talks about how you're obviously involved, but it doesn't seem like you to be secretive." No, I say, we're not; thanks for imagining my life is more interesting than it is.
Meanwhile, another male-female friend pair has been getting the same treatment for months, with everyone assuming they're dating and asking annoying questions--"What did he get you for your birthday? Was it something romantic?"--to which they both sort of shrug off and start talking about something else. Last night I was out with them and *that* guy and I had a long conversation that revealed that he and she are not dating at all, and that he really wants to pursue something with me.
What's funny about this is that, basically, that would be impossible, because of all the assumptions our friends have made about us. He would be breaking off a long romantic relationship (actually nonexistent) with that woman, and I would be severing what one of my best friends referred to (according to his own observations) as "a protracted and convoluted courtship ritual that seems to be taking for fucking ever."
It's hard for me to tell where my feelings even are in this with all the projection going on.
I.e., people need to get a fucking life.
It just hard for people to accept it when the Bonnie Raitt lyrics don't apply to life.
Yes! It's like they're trying to gossip us into relationships. IME, that never ends well for anyone.
Now I'm trying to imagine, if I did take up with this other guy, what the fallout would be, and I think it's not worth it, even though he and I are probably the most compatible of the parties involved. It would make too many people angry, because that's not the story they've all been telling each other.
Have you tried holding a conference call about it? That's what we always do at work when we need to get everybody on the same page. Unlike a face to face meeting, you can usually finish your thoughts before somebody asks questions.
There are free web services that let you share your desktop with everybody on the call. You can do some slides and everything.
That's a great idea. Can everyone Skype in and we can all confirm that no one is currently fucking anyone, and go from there?
The real meddler is a woman who refuses to date anyone in the US because she's holding out to meet her real prince charming when she returns to her home country. She basically has the erotic imagination of an 11-year-old, combined with a disturbing amount of repressed libido, which takes the form of projecting desires onto everyone else. She once physically attacked me for dancing at a party with Man #2, screaming, "That's [Other Woman's] man! Go find [Man #1] if you want to dance!"
We use WebEx, which seems better named for your purposes.
Yes, this seems good. Let's all introduce ourselves and say a few words about who we thought was fucking and what our evidence for that assumption is. Good, good, OK.
Man, no wonder people get divorced so often. Who could resist the mystery and excitement of the dating scene?
For a few months it seemed like you had finally found a place that wasn't full of crazy people aggressively annoying you with craziness all the time, but now it's back to normal.
people need to get a fucking life
Man, hear hear.
For some reason, I'm driven 'round the bend by circles of friends discussing my romantic life, at least when it seems to become manipulative. No, I *don't* care whether you think that my seeing so-and-so is a good idea; and I *don't* want to have a conversation with you about so-and-so's merits or lack thereof; and I *definitely* don't want to listen to a retelling of so-and-so's romantic past, even though you think it's for my own good.
Weirdly, it's not just garden variety frustration on my part: I (unfortunately) actually lost a friend on one occasion because he was telephoning me to say that this person A. whom I'd begun to date was trouble, and he'd heard I was seeing A. from this other friend (who then also called me like half an hour later) .. and I just flipped out, said sternly that I did not appreciate this interference at all, don't do it again, you have really pissed me off.
Sigh. Things never really recovered with that friend. He was shocked that I was so angry. I'm not sure why I have this extreme privacy thing going on, but there it is.
Anyway! Where were we?
138: They are really nice, I think, but we are driven crazy by having such a tiny sphere in which to get all our social needs met. Our students complain about having a "world" of basically a thousand people; for faculty it's more like a world of 200, and most of them are not interested in new friends. So it's more like 20. We're very lucky that we really like each other, and we have a lot of fun together, but when it comes to getting sexual/romantic needs met, things become very complicated.
I don't think people want to be rude. My friend who assumed I was in a relationship with Man #1 was just taking as fact stuff other people had pointed out--we leave bars together at the same time, and a couple of times I've stayed at his house to talk to him after everyone else leaves. It's not an insane assumption. We really like each other and go to a lot of events together because of similar interests. I don't mind him asking. What I mind is that this woman is going around telling everyone that it's true, and policing my relationships with other people.
139: Yeah, busybodies need to get busy somewhere else. People are different with different partners sometimes, and knowing that someone else had a hard time with the guy might mean they didn't deal well with each other. I have had friends who have tried to help with information like this, but it's not as if I listened to them anyway.
I don't think you should indulge Princess Expat Crazy, actually, because that line about `Other Woman's Man' annoys me so much.
Perhaps you should stage a runaway horse bus neutron spallation chain bicycle, and one of you rescue the other, and then with as much audience as possible gasp `You! It was really you all along!'. Kiss, music swells, fade to credits. Get Edith Head for the costuming.
140: Yeah, busybodies need to get busy somewhere else and stop bugging me about dating. So far I've managed not to lose my totally awesome temper with the well-meaning relative but the pressure gauge is nearing the red. I mean, it's not as if I've been given to subtle hinting in saying I'm not interested in learning about anyone new, that's a simple and clear declaration, isn't it?
There's a great deal to be said for having a social life and a work life that don't overlap except maybe once or twice a year.
Separating your social life from your relatives is harder.
I see a Robert Halford residency in Montana's future. "Montana Roadkill Law Allows Motorists To Eat The Animals They Hit With Cars."
State Rep. Steve Lavin, who introduced the bill, initially included all animals, but Lavin eliminated sheep, bobcats and bears to offset any financial incentive to intentionally hit them.
It's sad that we are unable to read through strikethrough, and therefore we will never know how 141 ended.
143: it's not as if I've been given to subtle hinting in saying I'm not interested in learning about anyone new, that's a simple and clear declaration, isn't it?
Heh. My mother went through that after she and my dad separated (and then my dad died): she kept saying that no, she wasn't interested, but people kept saying, "Oh, but surely ...!"
Yet actually, no. She said.
146: Finally catching up, are they?
Wildlife, except protected birds, spotted fawn, and bear cubs, killed or mortally wounded as a result of being accidentally or inadvertently struck by a motor vehicle may be lawfully possessed if the possessor of the wildlife provides notice of the claim within twelve hours to a relevant law-enforcement agency, and obtains a nonhunting game tag within twenty-four hours of possession.
I'd love to move to Montana to eat animals. I hear the lawyers get to go to a "big hole" in "Beaverhead County" so that also sounds pretty sweet.
Princess Expat Crazy is a really lovely person I like a lot, but we may have to have a few words about why it's not cool to tell everyone that people are "in love" every time they spend time together. She's so paranoid about this stuff that when someone tries to get a group together for lunch and it turns out it's just going to be herself and any man, she cancels it because his girlfriend (real or imagined) will be jealous.
Most of my friends here are men, in part because the single women I know are the "let's gossip about boys" type and I feel uncomfortable in those conversations. But this means that the gossipers think I'm playing some incredibly complicated game, trying to make one jealous by hanging out with another, or, if I sit down not next to the man they've chosen for me, they offer to reposition themselves so that I can be in my proper spot.
How does one get to be a 35-year-old humanities PhD without questioning these ideas?
This blog seems like it might need some fodder. Does anyone read Freddie DeBoer? He has this discursis on, well, work: the work ethic, the notion of "post-work", tangentially on Ross Douthat.
Sampling:
How do we harness that productive capacity and direct it towards the greater good, which people want to contribute to, if they can? By removing their fear of a loss of material security. You take away people's fear that they will lack shelter, food, clothing, transportation, education, and health care, and suddenly, they can spend their time doing those things that they enjoy and understand.
...
What will you do with yourself in a post-work economy? You'll live! You'll be you.
I enjoy thinking about this. It disturbs me that our society, as currently constructed, is so defined through fear. And control. (A friend once said to me: Control the food, control the people. Don't just follow the money, follow the food.)
Apologies if 153 was impertinent. I'm actually off for a while now.
What will you do with yourself in a post-work economy?
Gossip about your friends' non existent relationships, obvs.
Sorry to hear about your continuing romantic woes, AWB. When does Princess Expat plan to return to the Motherland?
Do you read Captain Awkward, AWB? She has a lot to say about the pressures that friend groups can put on people, what she calls "geek social fallacies." I've been meaning to suggest that you establish some better boundaries and so that you can lead your life the way you want to lead it, but Capt. Awkward will make the case much more eloquently than I.
How does one get to be a 35-year-old humanities PhD without questioning these ideas?
I have a friend who works with academics and is convinced that Ph.D's make people dumber (in terms of social/emotional intelligence and basic life skills).
That's the thing. She and Man #2 and the woman PEC wants him to date are all finishing here this spring. I was just now envisioning a confrontation with her because I'm pretty angry about her behavior, but it's probably not worth creating a rift in our group. I'm not sure.
The thing I'm angry about is that Man #2 was one of my first friends here. We did everything together, and there was some possible sexual interest there, but in a very nascent stage, when this other woman comes along and starts gushing to everyone about her obsessive crush on him. PEC starts policing everyone to make sure no other woman talks to him, because this is True Love and who am I to flirt with a man who is the object of True Love?
I'm grateful that it gave me the opportunity to become close to Man #1, whose company I deeply enjoy. But last night while out with Man #2, I realized that I had lost a friendship I was really enjoying because of this manipulative shit these other women were pulling on me. I'm about to go to a party where I know Man #1 is coming, and PEC will make obnoxious comments about how romantic it is that we talk to each other. But the whole point, for her, is to make sure I don't distract Man #2 by being his friend.
And this has been going on for about five months, and her system has managed to get neither of her target couples into relationships. In fact, it would be a lot easier for me to take up with someone if I didn't have the specter of constant gossip looming.
I am praying that she gets a really good job somewhere very soon.
You have only one choice. Walk into the party, grab the hand of Man #2, and lick his arm from wrist to shoulder.
160 -- agree. Possession through licking is 9/10 of the law of romance.
||
Rare octopus breeding in Alameida bedroom
She's always up to something.
|>
"They are the only octopuses known to mate 'beak to beak' - a position that may be viewed as dangerous considering their cannibalistic nature," Caldwell said. It's dangerous for the males, he explained, because female cephalopods often devour their mates after mating.
You have only one choice. Walk into the party, grab the hand of Man #2, and lick his arm from wrist to shoulder
In Emma, that was what it took to convince Emma.
Speaking of which, has PEC ever read Emma?
164: Oh interesting. I bet Emma is where she got the whole idea, forgetting that the book has an ending. Yes, this makes a lot of sense.
Her personal issue, I think, is that her own mother is very very hard on her for not being more successful in traditional romance, telling her she isn't pretty enough, etc., which is insane because she's magnificently pretty and fashionable. She's managing a lot of conflicting feelings about wanting a relationship but being afraid to commit to something in a country where she intends not to live in the long run, with added worries that people not from her own culture would only be fetishizing and exoticizing her. So she's living vicariously through these great romances she imagines the rest of us are living.
My big ninja move is, whenever she announces how romantic it is that I do something for Man #1 (I hosted a birthday dinner party for him at my house), I then do something equally romantic for her (surprise her with a dessert I made just because I knew she'd like it). I'm not going to be cheated out of expressing my affections, and if I have to embarrass her with romantic love in her direction to get what I want, I will. She knows I'm not straight.
Maybe lick her whenever she says something annoying? I'm not sure that sends the right message, but it'd mix things up a bit.
I'm not sure that sends the right message, but it'd mix things up a bit.
I think the message it sends depends on what part of her you lick.
Sort of like the language of flowers?
Left Eyebrow: Everlasting friendship.
Collarbone: Malevolence.
Right Shin: My regrets follow you to the grave.
You'd have to be careful with that kind of code or you'll have zoophiles saying that dogs were asking for it.
I know a lot more about washing machine design and construction than I did yesterday.
168: oh, that's just superb.
Also want to concur with Gonerill that Irish-from-Ireland people say "Paddy's Day" or "St. Patrick's Day" (or Lá Fhéile Pádraig) but know not this ... Patty?
Peppermint Patty. She was beatified for heroically denying the football to Charlie Brown, time and time again.
I know an English guy named Patrick Lastname and an American woman named Patricia Lastname (no relation) who for part of each year work in the same place; naturally, he goes by Paddy and she goes by Patty and given our American tendency to flap 't's they pronounce these in exactly the same way. Confusion and hijinks ensue.
given our American tendency to flap 't's they pronounce these in exactly the same way
This also presumably being the reason Americans often use the two spellings interchangeably for the holiday.
168:
Auf die Hände küsst die Achtung,
Freundschaft auf die offene Stirn.
Auf die Wange Wohlgefallen,
seelige Liebe auf den Mund.
Auf's geschlossene Aug' die Sehnsucht,
in die hohle Hand - Verlangen.
Arm und Nacken - die Begierde.
Überall sonst hin - Raserei.
Wikipedia making me face my irretrievably middlebrow existence:
Outside Austria, the modern reader is perhaps most familiar with Grillparzer via disparaging references to him in the popular John Irving novel The World According to Garp. The book features a story within a story entitled The Pension Grillparzer.
Although the author(s) clearly have their own irretrievable douchiness challenges: Grillparzer was no mere Epigone of the classic period, but a poet who, by a rare assimilation of the strength of the Greeks, the imaginative depth of German classicism and the delicacy and grace of the Spaniards, had opened up new paths for the higher dramatic poetry of Europe.
176: Maybe everyone should use the Seymour Skinner pronunciation.
172: My Irish-American understanding (consistent with 176) is that Paddy is short for Patrick, Patty is short for Patricia.
||
Stupid rugby team -- the bus that was supposed to drop Sally off at eight won't be here until around nine thirty, leaving me cooling my heels in a Hells Kitchen bar for an hour. I hate hanging out in bars by myself, and it's too dark to knit.
|>
That was intended to encourage people to sparkle and amuse me. Or at least distract me from the goddam fiddlers. As a person of Irish extraction, I suppose I should enjoy it, but I really don't.
I read 182 as a film noir voiceover.
Drink until the music sounds good.
Not a lot of knitting in your average film noir.
I hate hanging out in bars by myself
You and I are different!
Also, 184 is right.
So who's going to pick it up from "and it's too dark to knit"?
"All of a sudden, in walked …"
Sitting in a bar by myself involves either talking to strangers or not talking to strangers, both of which are awkward in their own ways. But awkwardness is kind of a specialty.
too dark to knit
Too dark. To knit. It's too dark, too dark, too dark to knit!
"I considered using the needles to stab the fiddlers, but decided it wasn't worth the effort of getting bloodstains out of silk."
(Someone has just requested that the fiddlers play Feliz Navidad. They refused.)
I hate hanging out in bars by myself
Undo a couple of buttons on your blouse and I'm sure you could find a drinking buddy.
Outside of a bar, yarn's a woman's best friend. Inside of a bar, it's too dark to knit. Which, I reflected, only made more obscure how the barman wound up with his guts raveled around two needles. But I had some time to kill before picking my daughter up from rugby, so I figured I'd pick at the threads for an hour or so.
Undo a couple of buttons on your blouse and I'm sure you could find a drinking buddy.
Two, actually.
191: see if they'll play the "get off the stage" music from the oscars.
"I asked the fiddlers if they'd seen anything suspicious, but they'd been too wrapped up in making a set of catgut strings suffer as badly as the bartender had before he'd died."
Multiple fiddlers were all using the same set of strings?
Damn you. I thought about that, but the sentence sounded weird with sets of strings in the plural.
186: Only of the bones of the private eye involved.
You really can't beat live performance.
201 provides LB with an obvious course of action. Those fiddlers won't know what hit them.
The other two vans are at the drop off point. Sally's? Delayed another half hour. Stupid rugby.
Claim it's to salve the wound of Ireland's defeat and then say haahaa no my daughter is late get away strangers.
I am no longer in the annoying bar, but waiting in front of a van rental place. They won't sell me shots.
Why are these rugby buses dropping kids off at a bar anyway?
Then you must wrest the shots from them by main force!
Alternately, it prompts the further question of why LB left the place where her daughter will be dropped off to await what will be, by the time it gets to where she now is, an empty bus.
LB?
Let's cheer on the brave artists who bravely made films about how brave Americans bravely tortured our enemies.
I don't really know why I just turned on my TV. I don't think I saw a single one of these movies.
I only watched a few seconds of 201 and was disturbed. Should I watch the whole thing?
I saw none of the nine best picture nominees, but three of the five best animated films.
216: As long as you watched to the part where he eats the bananas, there's nothing really new.
I only watched a few seconds of 201 and was disturbed. Should I watch the whole thing?
Yes, but you'll probably still be disturbed.
I enjoyed this Oscar guide, despite its place of publication.
The only nominee we saw was Beasts of the Southern Wild, but then we're stuck with two wide-eyed black girls who want to see their own stories in overwriting losing their dad/parents with the whle world falling apart. I do think they want to watch and I'lll have to narrate the room in between.
We have a Beasts of the Southern Wild DVD here from Netflix, but haven't watched it yet. Otherwise I haven't seen any of the films either.
Did the Oscars used to be in March?
They used to end in March, before they started using the band to stop winners from thanking everybody they ever met.
Some say the lunar calendar uses them.
I've seen none of the movies listed in the guide in 220. But at least I've heard of half of them.
Rugby player finally recovered.
I see darB gnoLeD is still on the Graeber case. I continue to think most of the book was so interesting it can't have been completely useless, and it would be fun to follow up on the references to learn more if I had a spare year or something.
Rugby player finally recovered.
Woo! More shots!
Turns out Australia has the same idiotic visa procedures as the US. I'm kinda surprised I hadn't heard about that before.
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Can someone recommend an attorney in NYC to talk to about subleasing issues? I started subletting a room in an apartment a couple weeks ago. Today, the roommate I was leasing from demanded that I either pay my the entire amount of my rent up front (in contradiction of the lease), or vacate the apartment when my next check is due and lose the deposit. She had a long list of reasons (either fabricated, or odd distortions of the truth) for this.
I was inclined to just do the latter and forfeit my deposit (along with more than half a month's rent), just to get this person out of my life, but she's now emailed me a longer list of reasons, and cleaned them up so that they don't sound quite so crazy.
I'm worried that this list of lies will keep expanding and being refined, to the point where I have more liability than just my deposit and a month's rent. Who do I talk to in order to keep this from spiraling out of control? Do I even want a lawyer? Is it possible I should go to someone else?
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Half a month's rent on a room in an apartment is probably only $200. Just let it go.
I can never tell when you're kidding, Moby. Including the deposit, it's well over an order of magnitude higher than that.
I'm willing to let it go, but I'm worried that, as the list of imaginary grievances grows, she's going to try to hold me accountable for the whole sub-lease term, or perhaps more, somehow.
I can never tell when you're kidding, Moby.
"Always" is a good starting hypothesis.
I assume that Pittsburgh real estate prices are basically the same as the rest of the country and wonder why everybody earning more than $40,000 a year doesn't own a house.
I think what you mean is that you assume that the rest of the country's real estate prices are the same as Pittsburgh's.
I think transitivity means I'm covered either way.
I disagree! There is at least a strong implicature in "I assume that x is the same as y" that we're starting with known y and making the assumption that x is the same as that. (Analogously, if I (somewhat artificially) give you the order "make the table the same color as the chairs", while I might be indifferent as to whether the table becomes the color the chairs are now, or the chairs the color the table is now, or both of them some third color, we generally understand the order to mean: change the color of the table so that it is the color the chairs are now.)
In the present case, you are starting from Pittsburgh real estate prices and assuming that the rest of the country's are like them, not vice versa.
I just tried to idly look into jobs similar to mine in Pittsburgh, and the front page of a state website that might have been helpful just displayed an error message and a few dozen dollar signs.
I'm actually starting with rural Nebraska real estate prices, which just happened to be about the same.
But, on the broader point, I suppose I did imply directionality.
I just tried to idly look into jobs similar to mine in Pittsburgh, and the front page of a state website that might have been helpful just displayed an error message and a few dozen dollar signs.
See, you could be making tons of money in Pittsburgh!
We need a new police chief, if you are in that line of work.
234
I'm willing to let it go, ...
I would not be willing to let that amount of money go (assuming you are in fact totally blameless). But if you are, I would imagine you could get some sort of release to protect you from further claims (which don't seem all that likely to me). Of course IANAL.
We need a new police chief, if you are in that line of work.
What happened to the old one?
The road kill bill is fine, but this Rep. Lavin also has a bill to give corporations the right to vote. Out of state corporations.
247: Compromise. They can vote only if they get hit by a car first.
You've got something there: Rep. Lavin is a highway patrolman, and so good register corps to vote at the scene.
That explains his first bill. If you eat it, he doesn't have to move it off the road.
My sen has a bill going the other way. Hearing tomorrow.
How will you get the deer to drive cars?
UPP, it seems like there are a few NYC lawyers who would know their way around this kind of thing, but if no one pops up here, email me at the address in my pseud and I'll pass it on to someone who will know the right lawyer if not the right answer.
I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advice, but unless the story has some more complications than you're telling, there's not much that I'd expect to happen if you sit tight and pay the rent as required by the lease. It's hard to evict a tenant in NYC, and it's not obvious to me how you'd end up owing the primary tenant more than is provided for in the lease.
I would think this over and try and figure out if you're just rattled because she's crazy, or if there's something particular you're concretely worried about that would trigger legal liability on your part. Here's a NYC Public Advocates page with some tenants' rights information and phone numbers..
My sen has a bill going the other way.
Or maybe he's a rabbit and that's his ears.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpg
Mostly, I'm worried because she's either conciously lying about many things, or is severely disconnected from reality. Even if I have the legal right to stay there, I'd prefer to move out (I'm currently crashing at a friend's place). She's given me the option of moving out and losing my deposit, which is non-ideal, but not disastrous. However, that would violate the lease I've signed with her, which includes penalties for late or non-payment (which will, when read as written, kick in if I don't write her a check by the 1st, even though I wrote her a check for a full month, when I moved in on the 15th.
As it is, when I was there (briefly, to move things I wouldn't want tampered with or damaged out), she was being deliberately unpleasant by slamming doors, etc. She now claims that I've woken her every day at 4 or 5 am by slamming doors, and I suspect that if I stay there, she'll retaliate to the imaginary offense by preventing me from sleeping.
258
... However, that would violate the lease I've signed with her, ...
I am pretty sure you can cancel the lease by mutual agreement. Which you should do if you accept her offer.
It remains unclear to me why you are ok with being robbed of thousands of dollars.
Well, I can't give you advice in detail, and it's really, really not legal advice, but if you're content to exchange your deposit for the right to break the lease (which seems reasonable to me), I'd get it in writing from her and move out.
It remains unclear to me why you are ok with being robbed of thousands of dollars.
Insofar as I understand the situation, UPP signed a lease obliging them to keep paying rent for a year. At this point, they want to move out because the roommate is crazy, but doesn't want to pay the full year's rent. Arguably, the roommate could hold them to paying the entire year's rent. Trading the deposit for the right to break the lease seems reasonable to me.
If UPP was content to stay in place and keep paying rent, there wouldn't be any reason not to get the deposit back. But that doesn't sound like a good option.
232 261
It appeared from 232 that she initiated the break. In which case I think she should be accomodating UPP rather than vice versa.
If UPP was content to stay in place and keep paying rent, there wouldn't be any reason not to get the deposit back. But that doesn't sound like a good option.
But maybe a good threat to negotiate a more reasonable settlement.
One thing to consider is whether this is a legal sublet. I believe it is common practice in NYC for tenants to offer sublets when they have no legal right to do so. If this is happening in your case a lawyer is probably needed to explain your rights.
Might be. But any negotiating plan based on who can make whom more miserable has a lot of potential for unpleasantness. I'd walk away from a fair amount of money not to be in that position.
The thing about a lawyer is that it won't take much time at all to spend more on the lawyer than you'd recover in the deposit. There isn't a lot of upside.
264
Might be. But any negotiating plan based on who can make whom more miserable has a lot of potential for unpleasantness. I'd walk away from a fair amount of money not to be in that position.
Well the threat could be a bluff. Folding immediately doesn't seem like a good negotiating plan either (absent something we aren't being told).
265
The thing about a lawyer is that it won't take much time at all to spend more on the lawyer than you'd recover in the deposit. There isn't a lot of upside.
We are talking about a $2000+ deposit. Isn't an initial consultation like a $100 bucks? If the sublet is illegal then I would expect UPP is entitled to void it and get his deposit back.
And it depends on your utility function. I am the sort of guy who would rather spend $10,000 in legal fees than be cheated out of $2000. Or at least that is how I would represent myself when negotiating a settlement.
267.last has a point.
I've always been skint, but when I've been in a dispute with a landlord I've always been careful to present myself as vindictive, and possessed of richly qualified lawyer-friends who will be prepared to work for me for free.
The only time I had to get 'legal' I was able to use my (then) union lawyers, who made the landlord shit himself.
Is email sufficient for getting something in writing? Considering how this has unfolded over the past 15 hours, I'm hesitant to meet her without a witness (other than her boyfriend, who will probably be there). I moved here recently enough that I only know a couple people well enough that I'd feel comfortable asking a favor of, and they're both geographically distant enough from any reasonable meeting place that it would be a hassle. Also, one of them is of the 267.last school, and this seems bad enough even with only one side screaming angry epithets.
Sorry for not responding to the other comments - I'm way too slow at typing on my phone to respond to everything. Also, this failed with 'no entry I'd the first time I posted. I hope this doesn't turn into a double post
upp, I think LB is making sense here. You don't want to live with such an unpleasant situation, and it's going to cost you something to get out of it. You might be able to get enough free legal advice from a tenants' rights place to formulate an acceptable course of action that you're comfortable with. If not, it might be worth it to seek out a tenants' lawyer who charges a reasonable fee for an hour's consultation. (I know some people who could do this but in the wrong jurisdiction.) If the free advice places turn you down or don't have time, ask them if there are private lawyers they recommend.
You probably have several options that scale according to how much risk you want to take on, aka how much legal hassle you're willing to face. Landlord-tenant law can be counterintuitive; many written lease terms are unenforceable because they're superseded by law (statutory or judge-made). It sounds like your roommate may be misrepresenting the legal situation to you, besides being crazy. So get clear about your rights and your options before making a decision.
You might also want to look into getting a mediator. I'd expect that in NYC there would be mediators who specialize in tenant issues.
Ianal, but the amount of money in the deposit is small enough for small claims court. If it were me I'd try to buy a 1 hour consultation to see whether I could treat the lease as broken due to crazy persons behavior and demands and take her to small claims court for the deposit if she won't return it. But that's partly that I want to learn how small claims court works and RWM keeps not letting me take her various employers who are breaking the law to court.
I mostly agree with LB (the lease term isn't a full year, but her analysis seems spot on, to me).
272: I'm curious how small claims court works, in the abstract, but I'd like to avoid getting into a situation where it's her word against mine. She's lying, but, of course, she'll claim that I'm lying. Luckily, a friend of mine was there when the initial explosion happened, and he witnessed how absurd the whole thing is. But, I expect that her boyfriend will back up whatever she says.
If I could pay someone to handle it, I wouldn't mind doing that, but I have no desire to spend more time personally dealing with someone who is going to lie and spew invective at me.
Email is generally going to be the same thing as writing (that is, any issues are going to be about proving that the email really came from her, and that can happen with paper as well.)
Everyone who's talking about looking intransigent as a negotiating posture is right, that can certainly work.
On the 'her word against yours' stuff: again, I'm not your lawyer, and I'm not a housing lawyer, and you haven't given anything like a full account of the facts (not that you should have, I'm just saying that I don't know the details). But I think it's pretty unlikely that the details of any conflict between the two of you are going to make much of a difference, unless they're intense enough that it would be unreasonable (not intended as a statement of a legal standard, I don't know what the legal standard is in this regard) to expect one or the other of you to remain in the domicile. What it's going to come down to, if things get legal, is the lease (as modified by background landlord-tenant law), your obligations under the lease, and her obligations under the lease. Who started a conflict, or who's crazy, or who said what when isn't going to mean much unless those facts intersect with someone's obligations under the lease.
Thanks for taking the time to comment on this. I really appreciate it.
Keeping in mind that you're neither a housing lawyer, nor my lawyer, is it true that, in general, it's possible to walk away from a lease and not be liable for more than the deposit?
A facilitator in the program I'm in who's the goto person for legal and administrative issues seemed fairly confident that was true, but she's not a lawyer. If that's the case, I'll agree to terminate the lease and lose my deposit, and even if she tries to claim that she never agreed to that, I still won't have any extra liability.
is it true that, in general, it's possible to walk away from a lease and not be liable for more than the deposit?
That's not reliably true in general. There might be some particular reason why it was true in your case (something about the lease makes it void, her conduct was such as to make it impossible for you to stay, or something I haven't thought of). But generally, the deal with a lease is that you're committed to pay for the term of the lease, and if you want out early you need to agree with the landlord.
That said, if you get an agreement with her in writing to get you out of the lease on mutually agreeable terms, even a casual sort of writing like an email so long as it's clear, I wouldn't worry too much. Yes, she can deny the existence of the agreement and sue you for the rest of the rent for the lease term, but if she's that crazy she can sue you for stealing her great-aunt's china: anyone can sue you for anything anytime if they're willing to lie about it, and there's not much advantage to be had worrying about that sort of thing.
Speaking generally, not to the specifics of your case: a lease is a contract that gives the tenant possession of the premises and obligates the tenant to pay rent. Usually, a party can't unilaterally break a contract without being liable. The parties can agree to change their agreement -- so a landlord can let a tenant out of a lease if the tenant moves out. But without an agreement to end the original lease (or without various other circumstances/facts, which might be present under applicable landlord-tenant law), a tenant who simply moves out and stops paying rent during the lease term is still liable for rent.
It is the exceptions to this general principle that might help you here, and not being a lawyer and not knowing the facts or the law of your jurisdiction I can't be more specific.
Usually, you would want to negotiate an end to the lease (rather than walking away and facing potential liability). It sounds like a good outcome for you would be not just ending the lease but ending the lease and getting your deposit back. This might not be possible, but you might be able to negotiate to that outcome.
(Partially pwned on preview. LB is of course completely right.)
268: That worked for me during the divorce, when my X somehow hired a foaming-at-the-mouth issuer of threats. My lawyer wrote back something indicating my inclination and ability to be even nastier. We met at the middle.
In MA the moving-out tenant's liability for the remainder of the lease is modified by the landlord's responsibility to try and find another tenant - they aren't permitted to just sit back with the place/room empty and claim that you owe them for the remainder of the term. I have no idea if this is true in NY - much less how it applies to a sub-let situation - but it might be something to check.
It's also modified in practice by the landlord's willingness to try and take the tenant to court for the money in question. Again, I don't know the situation in NYC, but in Boston I've never heard of a residential landlord who's up for that.
Here's something interesting, FWIW, about the landlord's "duty to mitigate" by seeking another tenant under New York law. Looks different than MA law. Nathan is also right that the way things things shake out in practice depends a lot on how willing the landlord is to go to court.
I've never heard of a lease which doesn't give the tenant the right to leave at a month's notice. Is this not the case in the shining city on the hill?
Nope. Here in America we have (largely) preserved the glorious medieval traditions of Anglo-American property law. In practice it's usually pretty easy to get out of a lease, but in plenty of jurisdictions you're in theory on the hook for the full term of the lease.
I've never heard of a lease which doesn't give the tenant the right to leave at a month's notice.
And I've never heard of one that does. I guess it isn't only your health care system I should envy.
re: 281
I have the impression that they are fairly common, even here. I've certainly had some from agencies in the SE of England that are like that.
re: 283
It is common here to have leases that state the notice period you have to give, or the landlord has to give, and 1 month is quite standard. So Chris is right that it's very common.
In grad school, my lease switched to month-to-month after the first year. Then when I actually let him know that I was graduating and moving out, six years later, with 2 or 3 months notice, the landlord got mad and tried to pull some bullshit shenanigans.
He was mostly absentee. One time my door fell off the hinges and he didn't get back to me for a few weeks.
In NYC not only can you get out of the lease by mutual agreement, but if you find a replacement tenant and the landlord turns them down unreasonably then you're out of the lease as well. Of course, they have a certain amount of time to decide, and the person moving in won't know whether the landlord will say yes or not, so in practice I don't know how often people do this.
but if you find a replacement tenant and the landlord turns them down unreasonably then you're out of the lease as well.
I am unsure that this is accurate (that is, I think it isn't). Bave linked something on 'duty to mitigate' (that is, duty to try to find an acceptable replacement tenant) in NY, and I was looking myself and found a similar page. Again, I'm not an expert and I could be missing something, but I think the current state of the law is that courts have gone both ways -- the current appellate decision that should be controlling is that there's no duty to mitigate for a residential landlord, but some lower courts have found that there is under some circumstances. But I don't think there's a clear duty to accept a reasonable replacement tenant.
Oh, wait, you said NYC, not NYS. Is there some city reg you know about? There could be.
A tenant may not assign the lease without the landlord's written consent. The landlord may withhold consent without cause. If the landlord reasonably refuses consent, the tenant cannot assign and is not entitled to be released from the lease. If the landlord unreasonably refuses consent, the tenant is entitled to be released from the lease within 30 days from the date the request was given to the landlord. Real Property Law § 226-b(1).
Found on here, not totally sure how legit this website is, but it completely matches what I'd read on another website when I'd looked into this (I thought I might want to move out early, but didn't end up getting a job that cycle).
Mitigation of damages is a fine thing. It's the defendant's burden, though, to convince the fact finder that the option open to the landlord was reasonable. When dealing with nutty liars, and assuming that the refused would-be tenant isn't going to come testify, there are logistical issues to consider.
Regs, and doctrines of common law, are only as good as their enforcement. Which enforcement requires time, effort, and money.
I can imagine that a suit for return of the deposit will meet what I would guess is the jurisdictional limit for small claims. The counterclaim for rent due may well exceed that limit, and in many places, that gets you removed to the court of general jurisdiction (landlord tenant division). It's not going to be Jarndyce, but it's not immediately obvious that the initial claim is going to be a net winner (counting in aggravation as a cost).
You're right, I'm wrong (that is, what I said above is right, but it's about a landlord's duty to find themselves a new tenant, and the right of a tenant to assign the lease to a reasonable new tenant looks to be distinct). And not a city reg, for anyone not clicking through, but a state law.
Now, I don't know what the standards are for 'reasonable', and I'd expect this isn't all that applicable in the case of a sublet.
Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that this was relevant to the situation at hand.
And the provision in 290 looks like if the landlord unreasonably refuses the replacement tenant -- which again you'll have to prove -- you still are on the hook for a month's rent. Better than the rest of the term, to be sure, but, again, hard to see net gain in initiating the thing.
As a matter of practice in NYC, I don't recall anyone I know ever having trouble getting out of a lease -- landlords have always been happy to let an early-leaver off the hook to have the opportunity to jack the rent for the next tenant. (Although also IME people do often find replacement tenants for any decent apartment, because everyone always knows someone who's looking for a place.)
294: Well, better than if the landlord wasn't going to let you out of the lease at all, but no better than agreeing to walk away from your security deposit.
Yeah, in most situations it's not useful information. In the situation I didn't end up in, I think it was an important bit of information. I was potentially on the hook for 20K, but would have had three or four months time to find a replacement. (In reality our landlords were reasonable, and I'm sure they would have just found a replacement on their own if we gave them enough notice. But I wanted to know that I at least had some recourse if they decided to play hardball.)
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You know you're getting old when...
You met an old friend, roughly your contemporary, who you haven't seen for a few months because she's been abroad, and her big news is that she's become a great-grandmother.
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I've got a good shot of becoming a great-great aunt before I'm sixty: I have a five-year-old greatniece, and that side of the family tends to have kids young.
My grandparents are both 93 and have four grandchildren but no great-grandchildren. I just realized that that's probably unusual.
Great great aunt/uncle is still fairly common- I know a number of families that overlap or nearly overlap uncles/aunts and their niece/nephew. My brother (oldest son of our mom, who is oldest daughter) is only 12 year younger than his uncle (youngest sibling of my mom) who was then a great-uncle at 37 (my brother had first kid at 25.) And none of those were unusual, like teenage or 50+ parents.
Yes to 301. My dad is 14 years older than his youngest sister and I'm 14 years younger than she is. Mara, at 5, has at least 10 nieces and nephews (though we don't know any of them yet) and there's an age gap of I think 23 years between her dad's youngest and oldest kids.
It's funny - waiting to have kids does cost future generations your grandparent services, sort of. Jammies' mom had him when she was 20, and she's super energetic as a grandparent. My mom had me at age 32, and, well, she's just not as energetic as Jammies' mom.
(Their personalities certainly broaden the gap - Jammies' mom loves babies and is in great health. My mom loves to talk about how if only she weren't tired, she'd be happy to do more grandparenting, with a subtext that she wouldn't really be happy to do more, but she'd tolerate it if we explicitly requested a well-defined grandparenting task.)
It's interesting that being a grandfather at 40* and a great grandfather at 60 seems so biologically right yet so culturally wrong.
*You have a kid when you're 20, that kid has a kid when she's 20.
I was thinking of this in terms of getting sandwich-generationed; that having kids in your mid-thirties to parents who did the same means that you're likely to be dealing with end-of-life issues while you have little kids, which can be tough. I'm not quite in that position: my parents are still healthy and my kids are old enough to not be cumbersome, but it's an easy position to end up in. If you do the 20-year generation thing, your kids are well launched and you're playing with your adorable grandchildren before your parents need much help.
Traditionally a "generation" was shorthand for 25 years, right?
304: At the park in rural OH, I am grandma aged. The moms are wearing Twilight tshirts.
305- Even moreso with lower birth rates. If you're an only child you're totally screwed. Fortunately my parents are healthy and my brother lives very close to them so he deals with their neuroses, like trying to grow citrus trees in suburban NY.
In the past/veldt, though, at 20 your 40 year old parents were probably in need of help.
My mom got her first grandchild at 52. Last at 73.
I was 36 when my son was born, and so me being that old for a last grandchild wouldn't be surprising at all.
At the park in rural OH, I am grandma aged. The moms are wearing Twilight tshirts.
Yeah, grandmas in their 40s are super common here too.
I was at the gym, and chatting with a woman who has an 18th month old and a new grandbaby. The 18 month old was a surprise, though.
I'm currently half my dad's age.
In the past/veldt, though, at 20 your 40 year old parents were probably in need of help.
Probably not -- it's not as if people got old faster on the veldt. They got injured and died more frequently, but a healthy forty-year-old veldtster would probably have been just as healthy as I am.
I thought things like lack of dental care meant they couldn't rip the mammoth-flesh as well and all the 20 year old parents had to chew up and spit out meat for their 40 year old parents to survive.
306: It's supposedly about 25 years in the US now, when we had kids ('68 & '70) it was more like 22 years. Younger than that in the deep South back then tho', I think.
Ah, but their teeth weren't rotted by the demon grains. I actually don't know what kind of dentition fortysomething huntergatherers have, but forty seems early for toothlessness.
veldtster
I'm not sure exactly what kind of car this would be, but somehow it would be perfect for Halford. A sportscar that runs on meat, maybe?
In, IIRC, 14th-19th c. English villages the mean mothers' age at first childbirth was in the mid-20s; in most of France, I think, we think it was even higher. Possibly lower in Germany. A friend on Facebook just posted a similar result that 19th and 20th c mean age of mother at *last* childbirth in the US was in the 40s.
Having several generations alive at once is less appealing when there isn't free land at the frontier.
A friend on Facebook just posted a similar result that 19th and 20th c mean age of mother at *last* childbirth in the US was in the 40s.
That startled me the first time I realized it -- that while I had been thinking of older mothers as a peculiarly modern thing, of course that isn't true, it's older first-time mothers that are modern.
My grandmother had five grandchildren born before she was 50. At her 90th birthday party, all five of us got together for a photo. She thought it was HILARIOUS that she could show people pictures of ther grandchildren, and they'd expect to see cute kids on the playground, but we were greying middle aged schlumps. The schlumpy grandchildren didn't find it quite so amusing.
waiting to have kids does cost future generations your grandparent services, sort of
Sort of, nothing. My kids just turned 10, and their grandmothers are 78 and 88. Step it up, ladies, I'm tired here.
Yeah, our folks will be 68 or 65. I think Mrs. K-sky's mom, who lives about 40 minutes away from us, will still be pretty eager and helpful for the diapery years.
waiting to have kids does cost future generations your grandparent services, sort of
This is kind of troublesome now but the fact is that the limits thanks to living hundreds of miles away kick in sooner than the limits due to our parents' ages.
322- It would have been HILARIOUS if she showed people pictures of her greying middle aged schlump grandchildren playing on the playground.
the limits thanks to living hundreds of miles away kick in sooner than the limits due to our parents' ages.
The joys of living in close collaboration with your blood kin are not universally attested to by folk and literary report.
On the joys of kin, near or far. A phone conversation.
Papa K-sky: Who's your realtor? Want me to talk to him?
K-sky: Her.
Papa: Your realtor let you sign that clause? What was he thinking?
K-sky: She. Just, for the record, my realtor's a woman.
Papa: Anyway, you should tell him to eat some of the additional cost.
K-sky: Dad! My realtor's a woman!
Papa: Sorry, I didn't hear you.
K-sky: It's okay.
Papa: Anyway, what's his percentage?
K-sky: Dad! Her! She! My realtor is a woman!
Papa: You know what? Forget it, I don't need to help you.
Email follow-up: Was your anger a result of your mistaken belief that I was not being politically correct by referring to the realtor in the masculine? If so, I think you should be more selective with the reasons that you choose to be disrespectful.
If so, I think you should be more selective with the reasons that you choose to be disrespectful.
Wow that's . . . kind of awesome. You have to appreciate the craftsmanship -- that's approaching the absolute pinnacle of being infuriating.
Truth be told, without knowing a thing about the clause in question, I can't believe your realtor let you sign a contract including that clause. He really should eat part of the cost. Do you want me to talk to him?
One of my, erm, close relatives was a grandmother at 39. Her grandson is now 20. If it wasn't for the fact that he's apparently* gay, I'd expect she'd be a great grandmother already. He's certainly keen on having kids, and his mother is fairly sure that he's at least semi-discussed it already with an ex girlfriend, with whom he's still close.
* the 'apparently' isn't meant to be snooty. He identified as bisexual for a while, and now doesn't, and I have the impression his sexual identity remains a bit fluid.
330: Thank you.
331: Yes, please. Was that so hard?
I actually don't know what kind of dentition fortysomething huntergatherers have, but forty seems early for toothlessness.
Indeed, hunter-gatherers in general, especially those with heavily meat-based diets, have very good teeth. One of the clearest signs in the archaeological record of the adoption of agriculture is a sudden massive increase in tooth decay.
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From a collection of FCC complaints about SNL (2008-2012).
During the "What Up With That" skit on SNL, actor Samuel L. Jackson said "What the Fuck" and "this is bullshit" during the show. I was watching with my gay friends and we were very upset. Thanks.
a black personality referred to Caucasian females as skinny white bitches. Consider the words muttered on broadcast television: fat black bitches. DO YOUR JOB AND CLEAN THIS UP UNLESS YOUR A FAT BLACK BITCH.
In a skit, a cast member said "fucking". I'd also like to complain that Saturday Night Live is not funny.
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329 is amazing. We are laughing extra hard here because Scomber Mix recently had a similar (but, thankfully, wholly uncharacteristic) mental block regarding a prospective pediatrician.
SM: So what do we know about this guy?
GB: It's a woman, actually.
SM: And so we're just supposed to ask him---
GB: Her.
SM: Right! Sorry. We're just supposed to ask him---
GB: Her.
SM: Gah, I don't know why I keep doing that! Come to think of it, I guess I've never had a female doctor. I'm sure I'll be able to keep it straight once I've actually seen him.
GB: HER.
I actually don't know what kind of dentition fortysomething huntergatherers have, but forty seems early for toothlessness.
Linky to prehistoric hunter gather teeth.
There's some funny stuff in that FCC FOIA doc, and some WTF stuff like people complaining about their children seeing mildly bad stuff on TV at 11.40pm. But there's also a surprisingly and sadly large number of mentally ill people complaining about messages being sent through the TV or being persecuted by various programmes.
SM: Gah, I don't know why I keep doing that! Come to think of it, I guess I've never had a female doctor. I'm sure I'll be able to keep it straight once I've actually seen him.
GB: HER.
Tee hee.
And 329 is truly a piece of art. I just said to Snark, "Maybe we should have another kid, just to give poor Jane a break."
"I'll show you the life of the mind give you reasons to be disrespectful."
