Oh, I see this was already being discussed. Whatever, haterz.
Me too. And anybody who can post jokes to the internet while suffering multiple catastrophic organ failures (apparently) is a fucking hero in my book.
Discussed on the blog, or at the other place?
Oh, gosh. Best of luck to him.
He's always had amazing good humor about his health. I don't know how he does it.
In the "Knowing That" thread, below.
Did he link to this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qth8xNZvVM
Let's assume he's pulling a Denny Colt.
I just know him from LGM and I had no idea he was in poor health. Does anyone know what's wrong with him? I hope he pulls through ok.
9 I was a reader then and didn't comment but there are some truly legendary threads having to do with SEK in TFA.
He appears to have a genetic predisposition to finding himself in absurd situations. The one I'm most familiar with is being sued for sexual harassment for finding two students having sex in his office.
10: The most legendary of all was deleted from TFA, if I'm not mistaken.
11: Yes.
The one I'm most familiar with happened in real time on this very blog. I believe Apo has a saved version of the deleted thread.
Deleted entirely or just heavily redacted? I remember the gist of it.
There was also a crazy cancer story, about hiding his diagnosis and entire treatment from his wife. (I assume this is okay to share - I think he described it here before, and I think they are now split.)
SEK popped up on t'other place a few hours ago where somebody was trying to arrange care for the Oldmen, and said there was no need to foster, he'd pull through, which made my day.
17. I think backed up and deleted. (As it should have been, let's be honest.)
19 I'm not on the other place so I'm really glad to hear that. Please update here if you see anything newsworthy. He's really one of my favorite people on these here intertubes.
Before my time, but best wishes to reprobates old and new.
14: Let's get fresh blotting paper.
18: He had that on his blog. Oh, man, and the punchline where a few years later he gets drunk and tells her.
Oh, heavens to betsey. I knew the outlines of the story, but never saw that last bit.
I enjoy hearing about people who are better at marriage than me. I could never keep that quiet about something.
18. The guy is as mad as a box of frogs, but he's clearly one of the best out there. I hope this doesn't screw up his earning potential (I think he's freelance?)
Uh, I think we can safely assume that his earning potential is affected and set aside money for any upcoming fundraisers. (There was a fundraiser just a few months ago on LGM for cat food, right? I don't think the status quo ante was so great.)
More importantly, "Louisa Adams," Smearcase, RT and anyone else in a position to do so should give him a solid pep talk about being on death's door in Houston.
Mossy and others, Acephalous and its best-of links at right, including the infamous office sex post.
26 may be using an unconventional definition of "better at marriage."
Like everything, you judge by information asymmetry.
I don't think SEK was still coming by much since I've been here. It took me a while to connect all the different pieces of work he's done to realize that was all one guy.
28
That's a crazy story, but the ultimate outcome makes me feel better about humanity. I thought SEK had actually gotten investigated for sexual harassment, which was going to make me sad about life.
SEK's writing has often reminded me of someone I knew who turned out to be a complete fabulist about his own life -- a fund of a few good stories, and then a habit of writing up dramatized interactions with other people that are not so good or interesting and have a subtext of 'I am a person who has bizarre encounters often'. The combination of dramatizing one's life, running out of money, and having a sudden dramatic medical episode that is incredibly serious but is dealt with with insouciance raises red flags.
Was it SEK with the deleted thread about the incorrectly addressed email and the advice about other people's marriages?
Confidentially, I suspect this of being, at least to some degree, a lie.
Confidentially, nosflow, you're my favorite. At least to some degree.
What was the fate of the fabulist, Nick, if you can disclose? Still up to it?
What was the fate of the fabulist, Nick, if you can disclose? Still up to it?
Apparently he's now in the hospital with multiple organ failure.
37, 38: I like you both, and everyone here, equally. (That is, to some degree, a lie.)
I have often wondered about the veracity of these stories, prompted by a report of a horrible auto accident and a reply by Shearer (pbuh, to some degree) noting a similar accident in a different location.
39: How terrible. Will he need to arrange foster homes for the catfish?
It's nice to hear that he's all right. I used to read Acephalous when it was still a going concern, and he was one of the most consistently insightful contributors to The Valve, back in the day.
I missed the infamous unfogged thread. I've only caught echoes of the legend it left behind.
It was kind of sad, which to tell you the truth, also reminds me of SEK -- I get a sense of someone struggling from his writing. The guy I knew dated one of my best friends, maintained an elaborate fiction about his past life, eventually came clean, married her, and then pulled back from all aspects of the marriage until it broke down. He also studied cinema stuff, and focused on eccentric, weird bits. He's a lecturer now, trapped in a PhD program that he's never going to finish. I'm not arguing that SEK is a liar, just that the combination of self-romanticization and sadness that I read in his writing reminds me of this guy.
Shearer (pbuh, to some degree)
pbuhtsd is traditional for all the lesser prophets.
Somebody should dump horseshit on Shearer's head.
I didn't really overlap with him, I just found the reduced salawat amusing.
45 Exactly, things improved mightily around here when he stopped commenting.
46 at the risk of bringing him back he was a racist shitbag whose mention is no occasion for even the smallest of salaams or salawat.
Ah, thank you. May he find only war and pestilence. Hrm, I see, I should have read up on TFA.
Is his arm nailed over the door to the server room?
The Bell-Curve racism was genuinely odious, but I did admire his tenacity as the blog's last arch-conservative regular (after perhaps GB, pbuhtsd).
Don't feel obliged to answer that if it would be incriminating.
It could be his, but we'd need a DNA test to confirm.
Not a good person, but I sort of liked having him around as a self-propelled strawman to argue against on the racial stuff. And sharp enough to keep me honest on arguments where I was bullshitting some -- I spent a fair amount of time arguing with Shearer having to back up and make my point properly rather than handwaving past a difficulty.
But yes, definitely gross on racial issues, and I very plausibly underrated how unpleasant his presence made things for people.
sharp enough to keep me honest on arguments where I was bullshitting some
See, there are plenty of people here able to provide that service who aren't also moral idiots.
54.1 was what I had in mind. Your engagement with him considerably diminished his corrosive effect, and on the plus side for him it forced him to show a glimmer of humanity. To some degree.
55: Plenty of people sharp enough to do it if I were arguing with them, but not many pigheaded enough to actually do it much. The comity level around here is high enough that it allows for a certain amount of bullshitting.
He had a weird math guy vibe about him that I found vaguely appealing despite obviously toxic views on race, and yes it's totally plausible that I'm underrating his bad effect on others. At least he wasn't an artless/unfunny bullshit artist in the manner of the most annoying commenters.
57: Are you sure it's comity? Mostly I think we've just had all the arguments until the world fucks up in some novel way.
Maybe more of you are gainfully employed / ungainfully child-rearing.
What's the time frame on Shearer? I don't remember him, or maybe just a little, but sounds like I should more if we overlapped.
Everybody else stopped selling children?
If everyone else had stopped the price would have gone up, so child-rearing wouldn't be ungainful.
61: After you left and before you came back? Couldn't give you years, offhand.
Maybe the most Shearer Shearer comment ever.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_8416.html#793754
Oh man, that was a hall-of-famer. Directed at B, no less (pbuh).
In the Terra Ignota universe, it will of course be PBUT (and never spoken in public).
Shearer's politics were too incoherent to be called conservative, I thought at the time anyway. Maybe he now fits in with Trump. He was most consistent as a racist.
Unless he's made up his brother, sister, and ex-wife and is posting as them too, SEK is really in the ICU of a Houston hospital and possibly in need of some transplants. Talk of transplants doesn't mean they happen tho', death often gets in the way.
Dialing up drama is one thing, this appears to be another thing entirely.
68, no way would he fit with Trump. He was one of those robo-libertarian engineer types. What I remember most was his insistence that teachers should be paid barely anything because they have no effect of student achievement because either people are self-motivated to lean our they aren't.
And *learn, unless you're Sheryl Sandberg.
68: I don't think he'd like Trump. He was really a libertarian
As a racist, he also considered himself an intellectual of a sort, and would have found Trump's racism too crude. Even Sailer's more intellectualized racism was sometimes a bit much for Shearer - though as Jesus points out, The Bell Curve was right up his alley.
Shearer was an interesting specimen, and you can add me to the list of the white privileged who didn't viscerally appreciate how offensive he was.
69: I really hope he pulls through.
Does anyone know what is wrong with him? Why does he have acute multiple organ failure? Did his cancer return?
Also if he was literally at the point of dying, who made the call to transport him from NOLA to Houston "in the car" (for six hours)? And how the hell did they revive him, I wonder?
I dunno that being SEK near-death truthers is a particularly good look for this comment section, particularly given 69. Hope that whatever's going on the guy comes out OK.
It sounds like an extremely shitty situation, that's all. I take it there was some hint that things were dire which led to emergency care plans being made, but to find out that it's life-or-death in the middle of a fucking 6-hour car ride through Louisiana -- that sounds horrifying.
I think SEK said his thyroid was acting up. It sounded like he was already having some trouble and then it took a turn for the worse. Facebook's algorithms make it difficult to just see his posts in chronological order, so I haven't been able to find what I thought I'd read a few days ago.
Agreed with 77.
I don't think Shearer really was a libertarian, but I'm not going to dig around for his comments. He sounded like one when he argued libertarian points but like I said above I don't think he was actually consistent. Somewhere there's a thread where he talked about political stuff he supported and a bunch of it didn't fit with the way he talked about the world. Like maybe he'd be ok with some liberal policies as long as liberals weren't involved in any way.
In terms of people changing their beliefs to support Trump, I've been surprised by people like Roger Kimball going for him. You can never be too intellectual to be a debased white nationalist hack.
81: If you have in mind that list linked on Crooked Timber, Scott Soames was the name that most took me by surprise. I hadn't put him in the "rabid ideologue" camp, apparently due to ignorance! (IANAP)
57: baa did that too. He actually made some very good points in the thread about the woman at Brandeis who criticized women who opted out of certain careers.
Apropos 77, I dearly hope that SEK is going to be okay and that I don't suspect him of lying about his dire medical episode.
But how can jet fuel cause multi-organ failure?
Often, when I'm laughing at something on the Internet, I'll explain to my husband that "Internet Scott"--you know, that guy I mention with the cats, who's into movies?*--is being funny again. He's been in my thoughts since I saw the FB post from his dad.
*Yes, a handful of you have have long-winded titles like that as well: "You know, the math prof in Texas with the same kind of gene thing I have?" et cerera.
I'm totally irate about being called a truther (I assume I'm included in this epithet), but whatever. It's a terrifying story. To be perfectly frank it would be great if it were made up, but clearly it isn't. I'm also in no way connected to any of the players except via the Valve a decade or more ago, and here, so it's also absolutely none of my business.
Sending good thoughts to Houston for SEK. The infamous thread got me hooked on lurking here.
Didn't mean to call anyone a truther who didn't intend to be a truther.
Having seen this on FB as it went along, it all seems pretty real considering the recent-ish health history (recurrent/chronic and episodically debilitating but not hitherto lifethreatening). Can't see the earnest relatives asking for prayers as anything other than genuine.
I am "friends" on FB with a semi-random selection of Unfoggeders. This is complicated by the fact that in one or more cases I have no idea which FB name goes with which Unfogged pseud. For this and other reasons I totally lost momentum about friending other Unfoggeders - if I'm not "friends" with you, it's not because your comments here aren't scintillating but that I'm vaguely embarrassed to ask.
I don't think I have any FB friends in Europe who aren't pollsters in Wales.
I think I'm the only person (other than Jesus McQ) who comments here with his and/or her real name.
True story: For years, I thought "Robert Halford" was somebody commenting here under his real name.
If neb counts, then so does ttam (assuming he isn't in double-disguise).
Also NW along the same reasoning: what initials originally stood for.
And some occasional commenters who use one of their names, just not both
I halfway count.
98: me too. I thought he was pretty brave to be saying all those things under his real name.
||
OT Bleg:
As I've related, my venerable 2009 iMac has had hardware issues. I bought a new one as a temporary while getting the issues (I hoped) resolved. Well, whatever the issue is, it would cost $600+ to fix, and I can just buy one used for less than that. So I'll be getting one from eBay, but it will be a week or so until I can get that one set up and running. Meanwhile, the new one is due back.
So my plan is to have AB buy another new one and return this one. This morning it occurred to me: why not just return AB's iMac in "my" iMac's box? This would save me setting up another new one and wiping the old one, and it would save Apple having to do anything at all with the returned one except repackage.
My concern is that this will somehow cause trouble through product tracking--the box won't match the serial # inside. But A. do they even know that?, and B. Should I care? I assume they won't/can't check during the return process, so this would be some sort of after-the-fact "Sir, we've found a problem" deal.
|>
99: An acquaintance told me a story about how he met "Barry Freed" during his St. Lawrence years and I was absolutely dumbstruck for about a minute.
Hey, our Barry shows up (well, his Twitter feed does) 6th on my Google search for the name.
He looks more like Quincy than I'd have expected.
107 IRL? I don't believe we have met.
105 He was a late childhood/teenage hero of mine.
104: they almost certainly do know that. You can look at your receipt and see if it has your new iMac's serial number on it.
108.1: your Twitter feed has a picture on it, silly.
109: But as long as the box matches the receipt, they won't know what's inside at time of return, will they? I can't imagine that they'll turn it on to compare serial #s. Apple being Apple, there is no serial number on the case.
I commented here under my real name way back when a typical comment thread was five comments. Then I went away for a while before coming back under my current pseud.
But yeah,the recipe does have the serial #. I can't risk them saying that, since I didn't return Serial #1234 within 14 days, I now owe them $1900, even though I did give them an equivalent machine with the number 1235.
Nuts.
M/tch commented under a non-googleable version of his real name back before he got sucked into the other place.
Oh, although I now see that their definition of 14 days is inclusive (which is to say, Friday to Friday, not Friday to Thursday).
Hmm. If I don't have to return it until end of the day tomorrow, and I get the eBay one by Monday, I'm only losing one work day. That's probably less hassle than setting up an extra machine in between.
Christ, what a PITA.
I can't really get into the other place. Mostly I just "like" posts I feel socially obligated to notice.
102.2: That would be me. But, lest anyone is confused, my wife and daughter are not really named Cassandane and Atossa.
Jack Krugman spoke at my college graduation. He was great.
114: yours is one of many pseuds which is in some way a play on your name, and if we include those it's a substantial portion of the commenters, possibly a majority.
116: I read it avidly, several times a day. It's a decent-to-good way to pass the time when I have nothing but my phone handy and nothing better to do. However, I comment or "like" things probably an average of weekly at most, and post or share things less than that. Most of the events I RSVP to on Facebook are hosted by myself and my wife and are at our house, so that always feels a bit silly.
121: True enough. When I got to the first UnfoggeDCon, apostropher thought he had figured out my real name. He was close, had just transposed 2 letters. (I think he had tried to figure out a bunch of pseuds.)
117: Your daughter's actually named "Miley," isn't she?
I was at a musical improv show recently where the audience suggestions "Miley Cyrus" and "the Passion" came almost simultaneously, so they sang about the Passion of Miley Cyrus. It was pretty damn great
Did Weiner use a pseud, and if not, was he the famous one? I assumed the answer was No to both but always wondered.
If I were to go with a pun on my name I'd probably just take it literally and go with "past child" or something like that. That might actually be more meaninglessly pretentious than taking an actual historical thing out of context, but at least it'd keep on theme.
124: Ha ha fuck you. No offense, but seriously, I probably have more animosity towards Billy Ray than any other celebrity.
Speaking of people with mullets, the other day I saw a guy with one that looked like it was ripped from Joan Jett's head in about 1983. It was the Platonic idea of a mullet from before I ever heard the term used.
OT: Why should I be for Halloween?
My son is going as Leatherface. You could go as Sexy Leatherface.
Actually, not really very far off topic, what with discussions of identity, pseudonyms, and wig-like haircuts.
130 A clown. Is there really any other choice?
130 is the question I ask myself every Halloween, but I'm surprised that Sir Kraab is asking it.
Whenever I see new comments in this thread I keep hoping that somebody has more information about SEK's condition. I am crossing my fingers for him.
I probably have more animosity towards Billy Ray than any other celebrity.
Is this like Michael Bolton in Office Space?
132: Maybe, because you are like me, and it suits you better than Christmas.
I stand by my policy that Halloween is a holiday for children and should not be coopted by adults. Thus, grown-ups ought not to wear Halloween costumes.
Eating candy is ok, though, because reasons.
139: What if opinionated children want you to wear a costume? I bought a Superman shirt to wear under a button-down last year at Catwoman's request.
I agree with 139.1. I make an effort to hide my true self every day. Why would I want to do that but more transparently on a holiday?
140: You should wear the Catwoman costume.
I bought a Superman shirt to wear under a button-down last year at Catwoman's request.
That's not a costume. I wear a Superman shirt on a semi-regular basis.
143: I made a perfectly fine Clark Kent, thank you. The shirt has gone on to the costume box because I don't like Superman.
142: I swear I'm not fat-shaming myself but even she doesn't fit toddler clothes anymore and there's really no way I could. P
137.1 I'm not at the other place so same here.
And according to some cryptic posts at LGM these past months it sounds like he's had one hell of a year even apart from the latest.
147: I didn't mean that specific costume.
149: I am fat-shaming myself by saying that's awfully unlikely.
148: I looked and there don't seem to be updated. I'm sure they'll be shared here once there are.
I don't understand how people could not like Superman after all he's done for us. He's saved the world countless times.
Has Batman done that? No. Batman spends his time fucking around with two-bit Gotham City criminals and doesn't take on the big picture.
Dude, Batman didn't even clean up the Batlegos fton the playroom floor this morning AND lied to me about having done so. I need more than heroes.
but I'm surprised that Sir Kraab is asking it
Some years I have an inspiration, some years I don't. There's always Dead _________ to fall back on. (It's like Sexy _________ except not stupid.)
If you didn't want stupid suggestions, you should have clarified.
When people bug me about not having a costume, I tell them I'm Sexy Middle-Aged Dad.
Dead can be sexy too, SK, or else people wouldn't have hope warned not to masturbate.
Its too bad Sexy Ted Cruz is so last year.
Someone in my FB feed pointed out the other day that a Dad Bod is also known as a Father Figure.
How did Tim Kaine get in your FB?
That is so on point, you don't even know.
Tim Kaine is down the street from me right now.
Oh, I didn't mean you Mobes. Sexy Jack Klugman is totally transgressive.
I dressed as a sexy canvasser once, on account of I'd just been out canvassing. Put a sequin-y dress over my "Vote" shirt. It was hawt, let me tell you. Photo posted in the Flickr group.
I can't really get into the other place. Mostly I just "like" posts I feel socially obligated to notice.
My problem with that other place is that half (well, okay, maybe more like one-third, or maybe even one-quarter: but they post so frequently, and so aggressively, it seems like well over half!) of my "friends" are actually related to me by blood or marriage. They post cheesy, awful, "If you love your daughter" memes; and also, and I swear to God (and I humbly beseech Our Lady, the Mother of the Christ Child, to back me up on this one), I can't take much more of their puppy porn. A picture of an abused pit bull puppy is not what I want to see when I login into social media in the morning.
Also, although I love dogs more than, I suspect (based on previous threads on this theme) many of the unfogged commentariat here, I don't love a sentimentalization of our canine companions, at the expense of actually giving a flying f*** about our fellow humans who might need a helping hand, who might actually be in need. If you want to save the life of a puppy, but you don't want to extend the Ontario rental assistance programme to a refugee family from Syria ... I hate that you're in my FB feed, and I should probably block you, Aunt D.
...I can't take much more of their puppy porn. A picture of an abused pit bull puppy is not what I want to see when I login into social media in the morning.
They put pictures of themselves having sex with puppies on Facebook?
164 was me.
And has anyone heard anything more about SEK? I don't "know" him, have never IRL met him. But I've been following him online for about a decade or so, I guess, and I've been thinking about him all day.
I know that he is a real person (and a gifted storyteller, with a quirky intelligence, and a tragi-comic sense of the absurd), and I also know that his health is not good.
I'm the FB holdout in my family; it's too social for my taste for just these reasons.
Any use of it I'd contemplate would block liberally.
166: Still nothing new via FB. It also seems that they haven't yet found anyone to take his cats while he's in the hospital. I gather friends are going to his house to feed them and give them medicine but they'd be better off being in somewhere with people around. For anyone who hasn't seen the post on FB, if you know anyone in NOLA who might be willing to take them in for a few weeks, you'd be doing SEK a solid.
Well, never mind. Seems like they've got it handled for now.
"Meetcha for lunch?" my dad used to say, and then we'd meet up at St. Pat's for Mass, and then go out for chips and falafel.
164.2: I can confirm, via someone I know well, that the American Humane Association once had two wings, the "help needy animals" and the "help needy children" wing, and the animal wing was so vastly better at attracting dollars and publicity that they ended up more or less giving up on the "children" part of the mission five years ago or so. Sorry, kids. My contact was part of the exodus of child welfare staff; it was pretty grim. So yeah, collectively people are kind of terrible.
"(and a gifted storyteller, with a quirky intelligence, and a tragi-comic sense of the absurd)"
--I know you! Your name is Michiko Kakutani and we're friends on the other place...
I hate Batman AND animal lovers, except for wild animals. If there was a real Batman I would totally be a Supervillain who takes down Batman and fundraising for no-kill shelters. Fucking no-kill people are why we have all these stray cats. I would not be Catwoman.
Unless sometimes cats eat other cats. Does this happen?
175/76 to 170, you heartless bastard? (I also neurotically dislike animal-loverism, but oh I don't know. St. Jerome's miniature super-chill lion, is that so bad? I bet it caught him plenty of stray cats, and he achieved sainthood by choking them down with sriracha and a quart of beer per cat. The lion also enjoyed sriracha but had been 20 years sober.)
173: Meet one of the UK's richest charities, The Donkey Sanctuary:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/feb/18/animalrights.fundraising
The Guardian occasionally checks back and it's still ridiculously well-funded as of 2012.
Well, depends how you define "one of the richest". It's well behind Oxfam, Save the Children, the lifeboats, Macmillan Cancer Support, Shelter, etc. https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/apr/24/top-1000-charities-donations-britain Those groups are pulling in ten or twenty times more every year.
If the donkey sanctuary is in a mountain valley it should be called the "mass ass crevasse."
180: Accessible via the mass ass crevasse pass.
I commented here under my real name way back when a typical comment thread was five comments.
In about 2003?, he asked, using his real name. I used to use a pseud here because there was another commenter with the same real name who preceded me, so it seemed polite to defer to him. But he seems to have drifted off.
179: I bet the ratio of human to donkeys in Britain is at least 20:1.
Plus, there are some ethical systems that assign greater weight to human welfare than animal welfare.
184 He's still around albeit commenting infrequently (so infrequently that I've forgotten his pseud but I recognize it when I see it). I met him at a NYC meetup a few years ago.
184: BUT STILL - THEY COME!!!
Got a dream to take them there,
They're coming to Sanctuary.
Got a dream they've come to share
They're coming to Sanctuary.
The donkey thing is oddly relevant to 184 and 186.
First you get the donkeys
Then you get the charity money
Then you get more donkeys
The Donkey Sanctuary may have the lamest utopian vision of all time.
OUR VISION
A world where donkeys and mules live free from suffering, and their contribution to humanity is fully valued.
That sounds ... OK?
I imagine a museum with wings for "carrying things", "pulling things", and "Tijuana".
189: Ha!
Yes, still lurking, and still coming out to the occasional meet up. Happy to leave "chris y" to the other chris y.
They're apparently very soothing.
The donkeys - I don't know about the chrises y.
The map on the right shows the intensity of political violence: the redder, the more deaths in political violence. There is a remarkable amount of overlap between the two maps ... with the most afflicted areas voting for peace
people in wealthier areas, where the FARC had long been defeated and excluded, could turn the referendum into a proxy vote on the Santos administration or gay marriage. Others could indulge their understandable revulsion at forgiving the FARC.|>
Looking at the list in 79, several thoughts:
-- The big dog charity is called "Dog's Trust." There's also a charity called "The Blue Cross (Incorporating Our Dumb Friends League)." Nice job being English England.
-- I've always wondered what the big deal was with that English Royal Lifeboat charity. Literally every other country in the world seems to do OK without a big lifeboat charity. WTF does it actually do and WhyTF does anyone care.
-- The Donkey Sanctuary gets more income than the entire Methodist Church in the UK
Methodists hardly eat anything at all. Very cheap to keep.
They don't even drink wine at communion.
WTF does it actually do and WhyTF does anyone care.
See above. They crew lifeboats, which is helpful to people in distress at sea. They are entirely voluntary, although the RAF and the Coast Guard (civilian government agency in Britain) obviously also contribute.
There are only 200k British Methodists, in ~4600 congregations. I would have thought there'd be more.
If somebody wants, the rectory (or whatever Methodists call the house where the reverend was intended to live) for a very old Methodist church by my house is for sale. It's huge, a bit dated, and directly abuts a graveyard.
202: That really does sound very low. Maybe Methodism really only took root in America? Back home, I would have guessed that maybe they were 5% to 10% of the population.
202. Does that include the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion?
I met a young woman a few years ago who was a touring musician. Her father was a vicar, and apparently also served a local Methodist congregation. I asked whether this was charity work, from the income point of view, and she said no, on the contrary the typical Methodist minister made quite a bit more than a vicar. It depended as it would here on the size and prosperity of the congregation.
203: That's a neat old church. I have pretty good graveyard access on my side of the hill, though.
205: TIL! What a weird name for a Church--sounds more 1970s than 1700s. I guess that makes it ~4621 congregations.
Methodists and Anglicans sharing church buildings is very common in Britain. I suspect the CoE establishment regards the Methodists as a bit semi-detached, since the Wesleys never actually left it.
(Mind you, I know an Anglican church that timeshares with the Adventists. Money talks.)
Right. "Countess of Huntingdon's ConneXion" sounds like a top disco of 1976.
Literally every other country in the world seems to do OK without a big lifeboat charity.
You'd be surprised. Germany has the Maritime Search and Rescue Service, which is basically a charity (no government support), the Netherlands has the KNRM, ditto, Sweden has the SSRS... the US is a bit of an outlier here in that it is entirely the responsibility of the Coast Guard.
183:2003-2004 or so. I did not comment much, but then neither did anybody else.
I associate commenting under your full real name with Libertarians for some reason. They seem to do it a lot.
210 If there were an American equivalent I'm afraid they'd spend their time getting plastered and wind up being more in need of rescue at sea themselves.
I can confirm, via someone I know well, that the American Humane Association once had two wings, the "help needy animals" and the "help needy children" wing, and the animal wing was so vastly better at attracting dollars and publicity that they ended up more or less giving up on the "children" part of the mission five years ago or so. Sorry, kids. My contact was part of the exodus of child welfare staff; it was pretty grim. So yeah, collectively people are kind of terrible.
Along the lines that the Janes have mentioned, the local Commonwealth's Attorney (the top local prosecutor) has often mentioned that nobody calls him when a person gets killed, but, if a dog gets killed, his phone rings non-stop with people who want vengeance.
212: they're not full-time crews; like fire crews in rural areas, they have day jobs which they have to drop when a callout happens.
My town had a volunteer fire department. When there was a fire, sirens would blow all around town. Then, you'd turn on the radio and hear the usual jingle. ("Hey, where's the fire? We'd like to help by avoiding the scene.") Then Scott would say "The sirens you are hearing are alerting members of the X fire department to a fire at X. The X insurance company would like to remind you to protect life and property by staying the fuck out of the way." I may not have the exact quote right at the end, but I know the jingle.
There are volunteers who go out on Flathead Lake to rescue people -- http://flatheadbeacon.com/2012/10/31/quiet-heroes/ -- but they also rescue people on land, so it's not exactly the same.
Growing up in the suburbs any time I or a friend had the occasion to drop in on the local VFD they were usually sitting around a keg and watching a porno. Occasionally one of them would get busted for arson.
(I've mentioned endlessly before that I was part of a volunteer fire department for a year in the mid-80s. A positive experience.)
Clearly Charley was not one of them.
Or maybe he was, just how positive was this experience, Mr. Carp?
I DIDN'T BELIEVE, THAT SOMETHING COULD ...
REALLY HAPPEN, REALLY HAPPEN BETWEEN US...
I NEVER BELIEVED, IN THE IMPRESSION OF...
NECESSARY CONNEXION...
Allegheny County, population 1.2 million, has literally dozens of volunteer fire departments. It's probably not very efficient, but certainly less of an overall drag on the region than the numerous other effects of the absurd number of small municipalities into which the region is divided.
We did have a keg, but that was only for the weekly meeting, and only after doing all the practice etc for that evening, and all the equipment getting put away. I don't remember ever watching anything, or if they have a TV/VCR. Driving the big truck (made in the early 50s, about 1500 gallons) was always the highlight for me . . .
222: The small municipalities keep the suburbanites divided and mostly out of our politics. I don't want a Rob Ford.
137.2: Exactly.
On the one hand, it's my first name and his last. On the other hand, I was in fifth grade when his debut album came out. That's Achy Breaky Heart. I think this is a better reason to hate a celebrity than most.
140: I've done the same thing at least twice. Bonus: I actually was a reporter one of those years, and tend to wear my hair like Clark Kent anyway. (Not the spit-curl in the middle, that's how Superman wears his hair. Kent has a completely different hairstyle.)
215: My uncle is on the volunteer fire department where he lives. They do double duty as search and rescue, and I'm not sure it's entirely a volunteer thing. I think my father-in-law might be on his FD too.
225: I didn't do anything special with my hair, so you win. Sorry! Definitely no spit curl, at least.
I've mentioned endlessly before
You lived in China?
(Not the spit-curl in the middle, that's how Superman wears his hair. Kent has a completely different hairstyle.)
I guess that's another one of Superman's superpowers that he change his hair style so quickly in a phone booth.
My ex-wife was a volunteer firefighter for a year. She had some interesting stories, mostly revolving around absurd levels of misogyny.
210: It is odd that the United States is the country that has managed to turn this work entirely over to the federal government, while people in Enlightened Topless Europe are reliant on private charity.
I sometimes use my real name. . . .like now . . . I've also been pretty confused about who is who from unfogged on FB.
I am very worried about SEK. :(
Thorn, you as Clark Kent = totally hot.
166, others: SEK has spent the night at my house and is legit. he is partially deaf, a handicap that I somehow wasn't expecting at all IRL even though I knew about it in principle from online. I mean, to the extent you are inclined to think I'm a fabulist maybe this fails to reassure? but husband x also knows him and husband x is so pathologically honest I can only now, after years, convince him to forge my signature on accurate documents which are 1) prepared by professionals, 2) destined to be scanned by bored, weary IRS agents, and 3) accompanied by $$$ for the government. I am calling an audit down from the audit gods prolly, but since we don't lie about things, it would be terrifying but not damaging.
some people are genuinely magnets for weird bullshit, like my sister. also, SEK is from the south in that "all true tales of the old south" way. weird shit is happening every day in our great nation, with a good 85% being below the mason-dixon line. back me up, apo. anyway, if there were going to be someone to crack wise from his death bed it would be scott.