This woman and Kato Kaelin mark the extremes of the conditions under which Californians let people live in their houses.
I'm a horribly sarcastic person but have -- an irony? -- begun to find sarcasm horrible. The internet: I hates it.
I don't think I can help it, if that's what you're talking about.
How about putting all these people back in whatever hole they were found in and rolling the stone back over it.
3: nope, the linked post is dripping with internetical sarcasm.
Sarcasm is like rain on your Independence Day.
2: The sarcasm is most often troweled on so thickly it drips. Boring. Gawker is for the third-smartest people in the room.
the linked post is dripping with internetical sarcasm
And he's an idiot, which makes it all the worse. Rent, utilities, and food in So. Cal can easily run a couple grand a month or more and then there's the problems people run into if they have less than good credit, don't have first and last month's rent + deposit on hand, etc. Room and board in exchange for some help with the kids and housework might in fact be an attractive option for a lot of people, especially someone like the nanny, a single woman in her 60's but still shy of the SS collection age, not a lot of employment prospects, and living in an area with a high cost of living.
Sure, the family might have been terrible, but the nanny is already a documented shithead (on the state's Vexatious Litigant List) so the family gets the benefit of the doubt here.
9. The family lives in Upland, where housing is relatively inexpensive. A quick craigslist search reveals that you can easily get a house share in Upland for around $600.
Meanwhile, the family expected to take care of three children, including a one-year-old, and clean around the house as well. The nanny is clearly crazy and/or a total jerk, but the linked piece is right that the family was exploiting her and breaking the law.
13: Hard to say without knowing how much time was involved. 30 hours a week at 12 bucks an hour would only be 1440 a month.
We had a situation a bit like the OP when I was a kid. The live in nanny (hired legally, and for wages, we're not that evil) was crazy. In particular she was OCD obsessed with folding and/or chopping things into ever smaller units. Anyhow there was about a week between when she was asked to leave the house and when she finally did leave the house, that was a tense time.
The cops didn't remove her from the home, she was somehow compelled to leave voluntarily, but on the night she left she was arrested for causing a disturbance in a Bob's Big Boy.
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France 0-1 Germany. 12 min. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.
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re: 20
Hmm.
2-2 draw at end of normal time. Germany wins in extra time.
Room and board in exchange for some help with the kids and housework might in fact be an attractive option for a lot of people, especially someone like the nanny, a single woman in her 60's but still shy of the SS collection age, not a lot of employment prospects, and living in an area with a high cost of living.
"Attractive" =/= "legal." A sub-minimum wage job may be an attractive option for a lot of people. You're still an entitled douchebag if you pay someone less than minimum wage. This article was a fun treatment of the story.
Actual cost of room and board is irrelevant if it's illegal per CA law, right? Someone posted something which said that room and board could only be detracted from wages up to $37 a week, which would make the family majorly in the wrong. Also, it sounds like this woman was homeless and they hired her off of Craigslist. I'm having a hard time picturing the sort of people wealthy enough that a live-in nanny seems normal but cheap enough that they're willing to try and get a homeless grifter they found off of Cragislist to do it for free.
I'm having a hard time picturing the sort of people wealthy enough that a live-in nanny seems normal but cheap enough that they're willing to try and get a homeless grifter they found off of Cragislist to do it for free.
My wife used to be an au pair. You wouldn't believe, or maybe you would, the sorts of stunts that objectively rich people would pull to try and take financial advantage of the people taking care of their kids.
24
Heh I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'd just assume a self preservation instinct would kick in sooner. Like, these are your precious offspring--presumably you'd want to do slightly more vetting.
22
That woman is a piece of work. I'm looking forward to them getting fined for violating labor law, and I hope the nanny pushes her incalcitrance to the max landlord tenant law will allow.
There's something to be said for the old adage that rich people are rich because they hate spending money. You can cite the odd billionaire who owns eight palaces and a yacht/builds spaceships for shits and giggles/finances the Republican Party, but those people are living of the interest from the interest, so they're the exceptions who prove the rule. Ordinary rich people are tight bastards.
I've mentioned this before, but one of my wife's friends was the au pair for the then recently retired English rugby captain, the one who shares his name with a lager.
He was an exceptionally decent employer: he paid proper wages, gave lots of time off, was very accommodating of her personal life and family, and just generally acted like a mensch in multiple ways. Really a long way above and beyond any of the rest, and although I always thought he was a prick when he was playing, my view of him as a human being completely changed.
Out of that entire circle of friends, who were all working as au pairs, he was the only employer more or less,* who wasn't a total money grabbing exploitative arsehole. I'd say that's more the default, than the exception, in fact.
* my wife's was also OK.
You're still an entitled douchebag if you pay someone less than minimum wage.
Sure, but we don't actually know that's what went on. 12 hour days, yeah. But, say, 5 hours of help a day Mon-Fri? Not so much.
19.last is one of those compelling details that make a story.
28: It isn't just the amount of work. It's the lack of cash wages. The company town, the company store, and payment in housing and company script were important tools for the exploitation of workers. These types of arrangements are illegal for very sound reasons based on very common abuses in the past.
28: My bad. That was meant as an analogy. As Buttercup notes in 23, California law requires actual payment of actual money. Probably because "paying" someone in only food and shelter creates something akin to indentured servitude. I mean, sure, you can always go get a different job. But you can't save for the future or buy a new shirt on your room and board salary. And how do you pay taxes on that income? Send the IRS some canned goods from the pantry?
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A comment on my discussion forum for my bioethics class, where many students work at the lower end of the health care industry.
Well a patient stopped by after going to see the doctor. We called her name and she asked if we take Obamacare. We told her that we don't take it.
This seems to be happening a lot out there. People believe that Obamacare is its own health care plan. Maybe this widespread delusion will become a reality and we will get a public option.
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17: I really wanted your parade narration to conclude with a marching band playing Dixie.
We told her that we don't take it.
If that was all they told her they were being spectacularly passive/aggressive.
And now I have a student insisting health care costs are going up because all the "illegals" are using the ER.
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This New Yorker piece on hippies vs tech people in San Francisco is not going to be the most mental-health-o-genic thing I could read. That seems clear.
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The one answering that description in the latest ish.
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Email from the Library Foundation of Los Angeles with the subject headline: "The library is open tomorrow. Because AMERICA."
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As far as I know, all the docs around here claim they don't take obamacare.
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The cafe I'm in just started playing a Randy Newman song, and for a second I thought it would be "Rednecks", which would have been jaw-dropping.
It isn't, though.
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36: that article is actually pretty skippable. He's trying to establish some kind of unifying cosmology where the hippies and the techies are warring cousins but it never quite gets there. A swing and a miss.
The fact that reasonably well-off people thought a homeless, possibly mentally-ill grifter they found on Craigslist and paid less than minimum wage in barter was an appropriate person to take care of their children explains a lot about the troubles that teachers' unions have found themselves in.
Is it too much to ask that a health care provider clarify how the health care payment system works to patients, rather than letting them dither along in ignorance because it fits your political ends?
Doesn't some part of medical ethics demand that you not deceive patients about billing practices?
Maybe they should take some sort of ethics class.
44.
From what I can remember from studying medical ethics at one point the main lesson of medical ethics is that Doctors should be trusted to make ethical decisions about as often as professional car thieves should be trusted to watch your car for you.
10 et seq. I happen to be in the capital city of Deep Redstatia this very moment. What was from the sounds of it a decent fireworks display a few blocks from here just ended a short time ago. But our room faced the other direction, and we found ourselves too tired and jaded to go out to try to view them. Was here a few months ago and on the same night Brantley Gilbert was playing at the Civic Center the Christian music group MercyMe was at the Clay Center. Big night for white people music.
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Okay, I understand that the main objection here would be that it's a bit derivative of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, but check this out: Hitler Babies. You know? Like Muppet Babies? Except with Nazis instead of Muppets? You could have Baby Hitler, Baby Himmler, Baby Goering, Baby Goebbels, Baby Ernst Rohm, Baby Otto Skorzeny, Baby Leni Riefenstahl, Baby Eva Braun -- and the "Nanny" character could be Paul Von Hindenburg! Wouldn't that be awesome? Oh man, the episodes just write themselves. And then you could even go all Ouroboros and turn it into a Broadway show! With puppets! Like Avenue Q, except, instead, Avenue [Swastika].
That would be so funny!
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48: I assume you have some sort of Springtime for Hitler scam in mind.
Even most people from LA have no idea at all how completely insane the fireworks situation is in my neighborhood, thanks to illegal Mexican fireworks and people having block parties in the streets to shoot off fireworks.
Right now on three sides of the house in a four block radius, there are three separate fireworks scenes going on in the street. These are not even close to "let's light a Roman candle" but more like "finale of the gigantic fireworks display at the Superbowl." Like, huge multicolored rockets in the air, and then those ones that are super noisy and go off like 50 at a time high in the air with explosions. In a 40 block radius there are probably at least 20 such street fireworks party things going on, plus people shooting fireworks into the street from apartment buildings, etc., so there's just a relentless drone of fireworks everywhere. Going on for hours. All totally illegal, but one of the best fireworks displays I've ever seem is from my bedroom porch. Hard to imagine any actual war zone sounding louder or crazier, not that I've ever been in a war zone, though most war zones probably have less Norteno music blaring. I love it so much, though it sure doesn't seem like living in the United States.
Lake Union is a pleasant homely amphitheater for Seattle's fireworks, and we all sit on the fall-line streets and enjoy the public spectacle, but. My street again failed to sing the anthem when the lit flag went by under a helicopter. The Dwarf Lord and I tried! We stood up and sang our best! The only year we got anywhere was when we printed the lyrics and handed them out to children. (At least they can hit high notes. ) Is this just Seattle?
49: Well, the Austrian syndication rights would probably have to cover most of the production costs, it has to be said.
Well, once again our neighborhood chorus of "To Anacreon In Heaven" was ruined by those weirdos down the street! At least they didn't try to confuse the kids by handing out erroneous lyric sheets this year.
Crossed Halford's report while writing; am now contentedly imagining Norteno cover of To Anacreon in Heaven.
Sopwned.
(They don't sing at all. Quiet murmuring. No competing radios, but no local announcer reminding us to stand & sing.)
I should have a pretty good view of the fireworks at the baseball stadium in an hour or so. I've been hearing occasional noises that sound like people setting off their own fireworks, but that seems like a weird thing to do when it's still light out.
East to West and South to North
Fireworks bring Unfoggeders forth.
No legal firewks in my neighborhood tonight -- Parks department says "There's not enough money" by which they mean "There's too many black people"
The fireworks were pretty impressive, but would have been better if there hadn't been a tree partially blocking my view. And people wonder why I hate trees. (I actually hate fireworks too, so in this case it's kind of a wash.)
Also it still isn't dark, so it still seems weird to have fireworks. Save those for the winter!
Do they have trees in Alaska? We live and learn.
Of course Orson Scott Key didn't intend his little ditty to wind up as the national anthem, or he'd have picked a tune normal people could sing.
There were one quadrillion nations in the Universe, but the nation Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout belonged to was the only one with a national anthem which was gibberish sprinkled with question marks.
The fireworks in my hometown were cancelled this year. They were also cancelled in most of the nearby towns. This meant that the town that did have fireworks was crammed with people, some of whom were African American, yes, and it was rather inconvenient to park. Still, we managed to find a great place to watch: an elementary school next to the huge field where most of the crowd assembled, and so the younger boy could do monkey bars (racist?) while we waited for night to fall. All in all, it was good fun, though I was somewhat haunted by the various facebook messages insisting that combat veterans are scared by fireworks, which also apparently destroy the environment (what doesn't?).
63.last is true, and it hasn't helped that the way the troop rotation cycle works had a lot of our blokes getting back to UK just in time for Bonfire Night.
Great. Another quaint tradition ruined by the military-industrial complex.
combat veterans are scared by fireworks
I can easily believe it. They are exploding rockets, after all.
We went to the west side to watch the city fireworks from our friends' rooftop, but then Jane got VERY DISTRESSED by the noise of the illegal street fireworks people were setting off nearby -- they were very loud! -- before the real fireworks started and it seemed we were going to have to go home (but then be exposed to scary fireworks noises on the way? so maybe hide in an interior room instead). But she rallied enough to watch the big display from indoors behind a big sliding glass door and ooh and ahh over them. Now she would like us to pledge always to watch fireworks from indoors, which I am not quite willing to do.
The fireworks in my hometown were cancelled this year.
This one? It somehow never even occured to me that they might do their own. The bike parade was great though.
We don't really have many illegal street fireworks. We went to a park that was a few miles from the actual display to see the city fireworks. In the past, we got a good view from there but this year the fireworks didn't rise above the buildings by much. They must have ran out of lofting funds.
66: the older boy was, for many years, not willing to watch fireworks outside. Then he outgrew that particular fear. The younger boy has never been similarly afflicted.
As a kid my grandparents happened to live in the one nearby city in which fireworks were sold legally.
Looking back on it now, it's a miracle that the whole place didn't burn down every year. Only slightly less miraculous is the fact that I made it through all those 4th celebrations growiing up and still have all ten fingers
Illegal, spectacular Mexican fireworks can't be that dangerous or half the kids around here would be missing a finger. Not this year, but a few years back I saw a group shooting fireworks out of their car, which seemed spectacularly dangerous.
I was in DC last night, and there were lots of people in the neighborhood setting off (apparently legal?) fireworks of the gigantic-fireworks-display-at-the-Superbowl variety. On the apparent legality, I was torn between feelings of FREEDOM/"Damn straight, fuck giving the cops another reason to harass poor people and minorities" versus "Alcohol, explosives, and big crowds of people: this is essentially the greatest torts fact pattern ever invented, except it's not a hypothetical." Also, the gunpowder-y smell in the air was rather unpleasant.
Did anyone take fireworks to a train station platform?
We went down to the mall so the wife could take pictures of fireworks and post them on Facebook. Music selection way too militaristic -- July 4, 1776 wasn't a bunch of soldiers fighting heriocally, it was a bunch of lawyers crafting a PR document. Why can't Lee Greenwood sing about that?
Last night I went to a contra dance party and had possibly the best time I've ever had on the 4th of July. About half the people left after dinner to go watch fireworks, but the other half stayed and danced right through the explosions.
Combat veterans, including many refugees; many children; a lot of pets; I wonder if we could enforce a quiet Chill Zone around one of the interior parks.
75: What do the Sandinistas have at their party?
75: I've always wanted to see contra dancing.
My uncle once appeared in Nat'l Geographic at a contra dance.
We got way too close to comfort on finger loss, but from a door slam on the way out to watch unofficial but I think probably still legal fireworks, which is something I've always been terrified about anyway. Selah can take more ketamine than probably any of you and still be all like "hey, leave my thumb alone!" but she let me hold her and sing to her through the surgery and maybe she'll grow up with a nail. I was in no way at fault but feel ridiculously shitty about it and don't know how I'll explain it to her mom. Lee was a mess, but apparerntly I have good instincts in this sort of emergency and she's as fine as she can be and is totally herself, thanking the nurses and clapping and saying YAY every time they unhooked a guidewire and got her closer to "all done" and so on. But yeesh.
I've always hated this fucking holiday, though it was fun the year Lee and I burned a flag, which was unexpectedly cathartic and moving rather than cheesy. But now there are kids, and more fingers.
Aw, how scary for you! My college roommate lost a fingertip in a similar accident as a child. Out of all the things she doesn't like about her body, the missing fingertip doesn't even register.
"I can't put a finger on my body issues," she would say if she like horrible puns.
July 4, 1776 wasn't a bunch of soldiers fighting heriocally, it was a bunch of lawyers crafting a PR document.
Damn straight. You can join us for a dandy parade and celebration in April.
Speaking of USA! things, yesterday I sat next to an Australian on my flight. She was on a multi-city US vacation, visiting here for the first time. When I asked about her favorite US city so far, she said...Vancouver. And she didn't mean Vancouver, Washington.
81: Eek, yeah, it was bad for what it was and I was, but even in the worst-case scenario she should have a fully functioning digit. The thought of thumb damage is scary even though it seems to be her non-dominant hand. And my biggest worry was for the sibling who accidentally closed the door on her, who's handling it much better than I'd have expected, I suppose in part due to the PR campaign I waged in shouts over the screaming child while heading out the door. All in all a memorable holiday, I guess exept the part the ketamine is supposed to make her forget.
I watched fireworks with a huge crowd of people in Dublin, Ohio, last night. So this is America. Also, Earth, Wind And Fire were playing.
Older boy enjoyed them, younger boy doesn't spectate anything.
In addition to Lee Greenwood, they played Twist & Shout and We Will Rock You. More American than Freddie Mercury it simply does not get.
Dublin, Ohio, is great. Wendy's headquarters and strip malls really work well together.
Selah can take more ketamine than probably any of you
Wait, is it a contest? Can I still sign up?
89: You were, in fact, the one I was thinking of. And they cut her off before she hit her max for sure.
92: You should have asked her about dolphins and Solid State Intelligence.
Yikes. Sorry to hear that, Thorn. Resilient kids are resilient, though.
Poor sibling, too :/
Doors: the accidental weapons. (Good luck, Thorn and family.)
96: truth--I accidentally broke my kid brother's nose and knocked some teeth in, using one.