Can you get out of the new lease feasibly if you find a good new place?
We have ways to arrange secret gifts.
My sister used to be so controlling about money in her marriage that her husband had to resort to all kinds of trickery to get her presents. She would check the accounts every day. There was one Christmas Eve when I went with my brother-in-law on some made-up errand so that he could buy her a present of some much needed running shoes, with money borrowed from me for a day so that she wouldn't check their account and demand to know why he'd spent $90 at the Nike store. She has, thankfully, chilled out a bit since then.
Go search Narnia Craigslist for houses with 4 bedrooms in districts 9 and 10 and faint.
The very first Craigslist rental listing:
Residence $6,000/mth Condo 3 rooms 1195sqft
I am fainting. At those prices, the $2500/mo daycare is a bargain.
She and I don't buy each other gifts. She and I used to occasionally send each other packages with magazines and nail polish and mix CDs and that kind of crap.
I was commenting from an iphone while intoxicatered. I can translate if needed.
Speaking only for myself, I'd like to know what the "rye bums" are and why your phone uses the British spelling of theater.
3: That's Narnia dollars, I presume, but in the same ballpark as the US version.
I don't remember exactly what I was typing, but the idea is that the return is the same if the two accounts are invested in the same assets and the tax rates at the time of contribution and the time of distribution are constant. You pay more nominal tax with the traditional IRA, but you're paying the tax later (after your money has grown tax-free), so the after-tax cash you receive on distribution is the same either way.
Or, looking at Craigslist, maybe you already converted it.
I didn't convert anything. I forgot about conversions.
10: I think I missed the "money grows tax-free" part of the equation. Thanks.
husband x and I get paid roughly what we would in US dollars, plus the US dollar has depreciated a lot, so it's about the same now. no, well, he has an unusually good-paying professor-y job by US standards. my plan is that we'll kind of just keep spending all that money I have in the bank until more people give me more money. husband x doesn't like this. because it's stupid. stupid like a lamprey!!!! just last year I found a magical extra trust fund to pay our children's 25K a year (each) private school tuition. why doesn't he trust me more?
7: you only get intoxicatered if waiters bring you the drinks.
So first, thanks for the shout-out on the main page, aw shucks, etc. :)
I'd love to dig in a bit more on something LB said in the other thread. She talked about how being able to spend money she'd earned to buy things without negotiation with her partner was of considerable comfort to her. LB, if you pick up this thread, can you talk more about that? It's foreign to my experience, so I'm curious about it, and I've got questions.
Why does the distinction between money you earned and money your husband earned come into the equation?
What is the source of the assumed need to negotiate with your partner concerning spending commonly-pooled money, from which spending money you earned yourself (and which you have partially sequestered from common use) apparently frees you?
Why would such negotiation (assuming its necessity) be uncomfortable?
I'm sure more questions will come to mind, but this is a start. Are disclaimers against taking offense necessary here? If so, assume I've given them, because I have no such intent.
Catering is great but if you do it every day it costs more than private schools.
What is the source of the assumed need to negotiate with your partner concerning spending commonly-pooled money, from which spending money you earned yourself (and which you have partially sequestered from common use) apparently frees you?
Because if you don't communicate, you'll bounce checks. If you do communicate, it will turn into a negotiation.
2: This is a problem for my wife, because we use the same Amazon account and it's the one I came into the marriage with. So I get email confirmations of orders that she makes, including gifts for me. But I think her desire to surprise me is outweighed by the convenience of the Amazon shopping experience, and of course the sweet shipping benefits that come with Amazon Prime.
18: But you can share Amazon Prime with family members...
They're probably necessary, because I am reacting to this in a slightly "Great, now I've revealed that we have a terrible marriage, in which we don't have the free, open trust or capacity to negotiate without annoyance that people who don't mind having completely combined finances do. You're all judging me and Buck, aren't you." way, which suggests that offense is possible. But while my feathers are a little ruffled, I don't mind the discussion and I'm sure you don't mean it offensively. Substantive responses to follow.
20: I don't see how anything you could reveal would lead to the judgment that you have a terrible marriage. Whether money is pooled or sequestered, whether bills are paid separately or by one partner, the choices that led to those arrangements are driven by myriad motivations, none of them good or bad in and of themselves. If my questions led to the conclusion that I believed otherwise, I apologize unconditionally.
It simply never occurred to me (in my naivete) to think that anyone ever did anything other than what we do. The benefits of the arrangement that you have created are not transparent to me, and when you tried briefly to explain those benefits, that explanation led to more questions. Again, if my questions were judgmental and off-putting, I apologize. I had no wish to ruffle your feathers.
LB, I'm doing my part in the other thread to make your marital capacity for trust and open negotiation look golden by comparison.
20: I mean, folks could ask very similar questions of me about our setup. Why do you feel the need to exert complete control over the finances, to the exclusion of your wife? Given that both of you were perfectly capable of paying bills before you got married, why did it occur to you to merge your money so completely after you got married?
See what I mean?
NCP - how old/established were you when you got married? Because Jammies and I had each been out of college for a decade. (To be fair, we were already living together with a kid. But still.) We just had entrenched habits and the easiest thing seems to be to track what we're spending, but not necessarily which account it's coming out of. So he covers some bills and I cover others, out of inertia.
I used to have an account at Inertia.
24: We were 36 and 37 when we got married (5 years ago).
As for entrenchment, that makes some sense. We bought a new house right before we got married, so our separate utility bills went away fairly shortly after our wedding. In retrospect, that was probably the biggest early motivator in our financial consolidation.
We were 36 and 37 when we got married (5 years ago).
Well that shoots my theory all to hell.
Why restrict yourself to districts 9 and 10?
17 is right: if you're spending money out of the same account, you have no choice but to communicate about it in fairly fine detail, preferably ahead of time if it's in any scale comparable to what's in the account. For us, Buck's a micromanager and a tweaker, so anything remotely interesting would turn into a lot of conversation about how it could be done slightly differently. Which, when I'm in the mood for it, can be useful and informative. As a required part of any significant expenditure, though, it'd be tension-producing.
NCProsecutor: I find your incomprehension, incomprehensible.
It's like asking, 'what's the benefit of privacy?', or 'why do you value personal autonomy?'.
Why does the distinction between money you earned and money your husband earned come into the equation?
Probably shouldn't. It makes sense to me that way because we've mostly been of at least roughly comparable income throughout -- if we were the same sorts of people, but only one of us were the breadwinner, or if one salary was so far away from the other as to place the poorer spouse in a totally different class, I think I'd want some kind of equalizing payment into an account over which the poorer spouse had autonomous control.
31: Can you talk a bit more about what you're trying to say? I don't see the equivalence between the questions you use in your comment and the questions I'm asking here.
I should say that my s33kr1t way of buying things is to use one of the US dollar denominated cards I have on which I am the primary and he the secondary account holder, on which he never looks at the bills, because...uh...no one ever looks at them. this nice lady at the bank pays them. tracie. I should probably check because mu US checking account was overdrawn by 15K last month and I don't see why at all. it's their job to make sure I can't be overdrawn. paying my mortgage I guess, but still. (bought property in indonesia). please keep in mind that I'm not actually rich enough to ignore that kind of thing, I'm just shiftless sometimes.
ponder, I'm actually happy to move to bukit batok, or clementi ave 6, or beauty world, or 6th avenue or out bukit timah that way, or farrer road, so long as I can walk to a hawker centre and, if not a grocery store like a sheng siong, then at least a provision shop. I just don't want to move to pasir ris or geylang or YCK or some bullshit. less commute is wanted, not more.
33: In our case, my wife has always made more than I have -- we started out with a very wide gap, but it's narrowed some since we got married. On that basis, I guess it's natural that I'd want commonly pooled money, right? :)
Thinking about it in terms of who earned what does sort of solidify my feelings about it, though. I don't feel as if I have any responsibility or need to control the money Buck earns: he's made the career decisions he has, and he'd be free to choose to make less, or nothing at all, if that was what made sense to him (I'm thinking about something like "I need to spend the next year writing a novel" or something. That, we'd need to talk about, but if it were something that he needed to do, we'd make it work). With that as a baseline, whatever he makes, saves, or spends is something I have an interest in, but I don't need to control.
Likewise, I took a 60% paycut a couple years back to say sane. That was my decision (which Buck fully supported) and what I do with the money I do still bring in is also my decision. Buck's got an interest, and as his wife I'm responsible for making decisions that are in his best interest and in those of the kids, but in case of disagreement I don't need to convince him of anything, I'm free to do what I think best.
33, and others: I guess my hope in asking those questions was to uncover some half-hidden assumptions that went into your arrangement that I couldn't quite see, and that might inform our own decisions about our finances going ofrward -- maybe the privacy/autonomy issues raised obliquely in 31, maybe something else. I thought maybe a conversation about how other couples handle finances (and why) might help our family think about how we wanted our money arranged.
37: Thanks for giving it some thought, I appreciate your comments.
34: I think Moby's 17 and my 30 get to the autonomy point -- if the money's all pooled, don't you need to clear any significant expenditure or risk leaving your spouse in an uncomfortable position?
40: I guess it all depends on what "any significant expenditure" means, and how much clearance you usually leave in checking, right?
40: That would be a problem if both spouses are writign checks out of the same account, but my wife doesn't usually write checks, she uses a credit card (as do I).
You should still probably clear non-repeating significant expenditures, but having to clear the routine ones got really old.
42: That'd be what it'd depend on, certainly. I dunno, because I haven't actually tried to manage a joint account that I used heavily, but I'd think I'd want to know about anything on the order of 20% of what was usually in checking?
You sound as if you don't find the mutual micromanagement thing problematic at all, which may just be a feature of the kind of people you are, or you may be working it out in some way that's so obvious to you that you don't even think about it.
Come to think, poorer partner does all the money management is a very standard pattern, in the working-class men turning their paychecks over to their stay at home wives kind of way. I wonder if that helps solve the micromanagement problem in that the poorer partner doesn't feel entitled to micromanage too much, and the richer partner isn't in a position to.
43: Incredibly naive question incoming: can you give me an example of a routine significant expenditure?
42: Still, once a month you're going to pay off the cards, and an unusual expenditure that month is going to mean an unusual credit card bill.
Every month, there is a bank that wants a largish check in order to keep the mortgage current.
45: "The mortgage is due. I checked the balance this morning, and we've got enough to cover it, but have you written any checks I don't know about?"
44: That's an interesting thought, I hadn't considered it in the "working man/stay at home wife" context.
On the mutual micromanagement front, I guess I don't see that either of us is mocromanaging anything. Believe me when I tell you that I've NEVER told my wife she shouldn't buy a particular thing, and she's never told me that, either. Is that what you mean by micromanage? "No, you can't buy that new laptop, we don't have enough money in checking to cover your credit card bill at the end of the month?"
Okay, I see, consider my 50 answered by 46 through 48.
44: Top end of working class with a stay-at-home partner. We do the stay-at-home-manages the money thing. Works well for us, but we've had joint finances for a long time.
when I was not working it was a form of contribution to the household for me to manage all the money and pay all the bills. I had no money to contribute so I did the work of bill management etc. we order our groceries once a week and plan our meals in advance. now that I'm so sick but still have to work part-time (god-willing etc.) husband z does the bills, those that aren't paid by automatic withdrawals, although I do our maid's salary, her money to go to and from the girls' school, the monthly grocery bill (about 2.2K, horribly), um...the water for the water thingie, the glug-glug, as we call it. our maid plans the meals, and I focus on the being sick as a motherfucker and working.
50: The difference between your situation and my situation is that you're not judgmental about purchases. Here's an example. My husband has a penchant for buying expensive watches. I don't want to know how much they cost, I don't want to know how many he buys. After we've done all the responsible things like pay the mortgage, student loans, etc. we still have a lot of money left over. So he should be able to buy all those watches. And he shouldn't have to see my expression of horror if I found out how much he's spending on yet another watch, and why do you care if the font for the numbers on this watch is slightly different than your other watch. Why does he have to have a watch with a white face, a watch with a black face, a watch with roman numbers, a watch with slashes, a watch with a square face, a watch with a circular face. I will stay grateful that he doesn't have the same attitude about cars and leave it at that.
he's made the career decisions he has, and he'd be free to choose to make less, or nothing at all
This is an important point. I often say that, in the big picture, decisions about job or career have a much bigger impact on one's financial position than decisions about spending, but people have a tendency to micromanage spending. The reason is obvious, on a day to day level it's much easier to adjust spending than one's job but it's important to recognize that if you think of spending as the primary determinant of money flow that's probably wrong -- income is more variable in the long term.
54: I doubt I'm any less judgmental than you! If my wife had that same penchant for buying expensive watches, I might very well cast about for some alternative bill paying scheme that would allow me to avoid knowing just how much she was spending on them.
50, 54: This, and I'm probably even more judgmental. Back when we still had significant non-mortgage debt, I'd be looking askance at anything recreational over some fairly low amount that wasn't going to debt payment. I shouldn't be looking askance all the time, it makes my eyebrows sore.
I want to buy a new house but I think I'd probably have to talk to my wife before that. For one thing, I don't think I can sell our current house without her signing something.
Maybe your husband should adopt a poor Unfogged commenter.
57: One thing that really helped us avoid arguing about money is when we switched up a lot of the chores. I used to buy the groceries and cook the meals and my husband would nickel and dime me about the groceries and then complain that my meals were too boring. Then he started doing all the shopping and cooking, and surprise! It's much easier to cook interesting meals when 50% of the meal comes from an expensive already prepared dish that you bought from Whole Foods.
Yeah, I buy cameras. My wife knows that I don't spend a lot of money on them, or haven't in a few years, but she'd get annoyed if she had to get reminded all the time that I'd done it. The sums are small, but it's irritating having to justify your purchase to someone else who doesn't understand it.
'Why do you need it?'
'Well I don't have anything with a tessar lens design in medium format.'
60: You betcha. Buck does more than half of the cooking/meal planning, and I get cranky about the takeout/wildly expensive butcher expenditures. And then I remember that I'm walking in the door from work at 7:30 or later and eating dinner, and I shut my pie-hole about it.
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Could someone please promote the Austin meet-up post? Thanks.
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Come one, come all. Step this way to see the amazing Austin meet-up. Ladies and gentlemen, you've never seen one like this before.
One more benefit of even moderate privilege is not having to negotiate smallish expenditures.
Also, people can have deep feelings about money-- bottomless insecurity about disaster, or a need to buy or even worse to be seen buying something expensive are both pretty common personality quirks that affect partners.
We decided to combine all accounts when we got married, but various wedding-related expenses that overwhelmed all of our liquid assets. About three days before the wedding both of our accounts were sufficiently low that it made more sense to cash them out than to combine. Then we went to the jewelry store to buy each other wedding rings, each with our separate cash. The male ring is larger and cost much more, so Barbara was wiped out, while I still had enough to buy a tank of gas to set off on the honeymoon, and dinner somehere off a highway.
The rest of the honeymoon we used my credit card; I don't think Barbara had one. On the other hand, I had substantial student debt, then still growing, and she didn't, and she had a car and I didn't.
A few days after the honeymoon we opened a joint account with some wedding gift checks. Since then, no separate accounts. Seems to be working so far, 25 years.
The reason is obvious, on a day to day level it's much easier to adjust spending than one's job but it's important to recognize that if you think of spending as the primary determinant of money flow that's probably wrong -- income is more variable in the long term.
I'm unclear on how you see the practical application of this. Surely one doesn't make career decisions frequently, but one makes spending decisions all the time. And pondering career decisions doesn't keep you from pondering spending decisions, or vice versa.
Are you just saying that people tend to overlook the financial importance of career choices? That seems counterintuitive to me.
We married at 21 and 23. After we'd paid the clerk the marriage fee, we had about 10 shillings left. So the idea of separate accounts was sort of moot.
We both charge as we please. But one writes all the cheques; the other enters everything into Quicken and reconciles statements. So we both know how much was spent on what, but after the fact. We don't negotiate spending beforehand. It's been working for four decades now.
Like NCP, we have a joint account, and I find it means we don't have to micromanage. All the money comes into one account; I save what we have planned, pay the bills, and we both do what we want with credit cards, and pay them off at the end of the month out of the joint account. We don't scrutinize each other's spending; and I think I'd be more inclined to if I knew he was possibly badly managing his credit cards somewhere I couldn't see.
I figure that neither of us would be good at keeping to an individual budget. I've seen some friends argue with their spouses about whose turn it is to pick up the check, because that comes out of someone's entertainment budget, and that would not work for me.
To 44, I think it's more of the "families make adults" attitude rather than a scheme to give the poorer spouse the illusion of control. Young working class men are not typically great with money (shiv can tell you stories); in some ways of thinking, the job of the wife is to take care of that and keep him from being stupid.
I've seen some friends argue with their spouses about whose turn it is to pick up the check, because that comes out of someone's entertainment budget, and that would not work for me.
I think this is basically what my wife doesn't want.
We married at 21 and 23. After we'd paid the clerk the marriage fee, we had about 10 shillings left.
Ha, we were in the same situation. Both 20 and her about 5 months pregnant. A joint account with no money seemed easier than separate accounts with no money. But yeah, what 56 said. We'd likely be more inclined to have discretionary funds in separate accounts if one of us had expenditures that irritated the other party.
54 and 57, this is my style. D and I are having to confront stuff like this for the first time. Basically, any choice I wouldn't make is frivolous and unnecessary.
I've seen some friends argue with their spouses about whose turn it is to pick up the check
My wife never tires of her joke of telling me to put my wallet away because she's got this one and then pulling out the card to our joint account.
75: I use that one all the time, never gets old.
We do the separate accounts version of that, ostentatiously treating each other to things.
I'm unclear on how you see the practical application of this. Surely one doesn't make career decisions frequently, but one makes spending decisions all the time.
It's mostly an exercise in perspective. For myself it's mostly a way to get comfortable with spending money that is (a) more than I would normally spend and (b) something I can afford (and, obviously, my default is towards conservative spending decisions -- I'm inconsistent but tend towards thrifty).
To break the analogy ban I would say that finances are like a diet in that it isn't (generally speaking) the occasional indulgences that get you in trouble but the day to day habits. If I feel myself getting caught up in the anxiety of, "why did I buy that, I didn't actually need it. I wanted it, but was it really worth it . . ." it's useful to step back and say, "do I trust the basic structure of my finances?" If the answer is yes than spending too much emotional energy worrying about one thing is either indulgent or counter-productive.
NickS, I think the new analogy rule is that you have to have a midwife in there somewhere. Try again, please.
Well, let me be the first to admit that I often use cash to conceal purchases from my husband-- yarn, perfume, romance novels, etc. nothing huge, but I get real tired of hearing "more yarn! You have a closet full of yarn! When wAs the last time you knitted anythIng?". This goes on and On. Imagine the same response for the perfume and books. Having my secret stash of cash just makes my life easier.
Having my secret stash of cash ballerinas just makes my life easier.
Being with someone with similiar earnings really makes life simpler.
Somewhat related, my niece announced her intention to be a professor after college, and I had to suppress my "you should see the crap my Unfogged academic friends have to do!" speech.
What do we have to do? I'm worried that I forgot something.
I am very interested in this thread. My prospective husband and I are both bottomless-insecurity pathologically cheap types. Right now we make exactly the same tiny salary. We diligently track shared expenditures and split the costs (there is a box of receipts and a spreadsheet), and there's no financial friction. However it is all but certain that in the next couple years one of us will make much more money than the other, and when that comes to pass I fear we will drive each other crazy.
I would like to propose a new sharing system ahead of time, in particular before we discover who will be the richer spouse or if one of us becomes unemployed, but I'm not sure what system would best suit. Any suggestions, Mineshaft?
81: Having my secret stash of ballerinas just makes my life easier.
Ha! Shows what you know. There are few things more expensive, time-consuming and frustrating than a stash of ballerinas. Why do you think it was only the Czars/Central Committee who could ever afford to keep them? You'd have to be crazy to start accumulating ballerinas in this economy. Trust me, I'm up to my ears in them!
If you're both basically in sync (frugal trackers) then you probably won't have too much trouble.
If you've got a realistic sense of what the richer persons' salary is likely to look like, and where you're likely to live/what it would be likely to cost, you could do a speculative budget, X% to savings/debt reduction, Y% to housing/fixed bills, Z% to food and similar household expenses, and then A% to discretionary spending, where the percents sum to the probable total of your salaries. When the income increase hits, have the richer partner transfer money to the poorer partner so that the poorer partner has A/2% in their personal account for discretionary spending, and there you go. (With a big income disparity, it probably does make sense for the bills and groceries to come out of a joint account.)
If you've both been broke for a long time, though, I might factor in some loony extravagance when the income increase hits. It's a very normal reaction to having been deprived for a long time, and it's pretty harmless as long as you recognize what you're doing and don't keep it up too long.
86 is freakishly more organized than anything I have ever actually done in my own life. Still sounds like a good idea, though.
There are few things more expensive, time-consuming and frustrating than a stash of ballerinas.
They don't eat a lot. But I guess cigarettes are really expensive these days, and they go through the shoes pretty fast.
There are few things more expensive, time-consuming and frustrating than a stash of ballerinas.
A stash of supermodels is no picnic either.
There's no need to fyzicky store them, just to know where they live and to establish a habit of kind treatment
I'm now picturing lw murmuring "Here girl, here girl" while holding out a mirror with a few lines of cocaine on it. It takes a while to get them sniffing out of your hand, but if you're patient about it, they'll learn to trust you soon.
91: I think that could totally work. that's all those skeezy guys who run bars downtown ever do, right?
I really think our system is the best system, and I can't remember if someone already described it, but we have three checking accounts: a joint account and a personal account for each of us. We each contribute an equal percentage of our salary to the joint account each month and pay all joint expenses (which are pretty broadly defined) out of the joint account. Then we each have personal funds for frivolous expenditures, presents for each other, and the like.
Basically friction-free, unless one of us (me) uses the wrong debit card by accident.
Here's another guest post from urple: I'm being required for professional reasons to complete a "bio form", one required question on which is to list my "Favorite Quote". I don't have a favorite quote, but just writing "N/A" seems churlish. Does the mineshaft have any suggestions? Again, they need to be appropriate for use in a professional context.
94. Sedula curavi humanas actiones non detestare neque flere neque ridere, sed intelligere (Spinosa)
It means, "I have done my best not to hate what people do, nor to weep nor to laugh, but to understand." But just give them the Latin and the attribution and let them figure it out.
94: "It's literally an identical overall restrung with rest, if they are invested in the rye bums in theatre."
94: "How pleasant is the sound of a rifle butt on the face of goodness."
OT: I'm putting my kid into some apparently benign psych experiment right now. If her brain breaks I'm suing the university first and all of you monsters second.
OT: I'm putting my kid into some apparently benign psych experiment right now. If her brain breaks I'm suing the university first and all of you monsters second.
If her brain breaks I'm suing the university first and all of you monsters second.
Now, now. Professor Milgram is a lovely guy, and I'm sure he'd never harm anybody.
A friend had a psych student from France staying with her last month, doing research at the college on monkeys. I was worried to ask what kind of research they were doing, knowing only of freaky monkey-insanifying psych experiments. She responded that, no, their lab was concerned with how to make monkeys feel good and relaxed. Do they want vines to play on, what colors and sounds do they like, etc. The happier the monkeys got, the more successful the experiment was.
Maybe your kid will be put into that kind of psych experiment. How can we make Wee Halford as joyful and fulfilled as possible?
94. "All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear of the Law."
The happier the monkeys got, the more successful the experiment was.
The disturbing bit is the sort of things you need to do to make monkeys really happy.
101:That does sound like a much more pleasant kind of experiment, and likely very valuable.
The happier the monkeys got, the more successful the experiment was.
Only half of the monkeys, right?
The disturbing bit is the sort of things you need to do to make monkeys really happy.
94: I suppose "Fuck you, clown." would not be a suitable choice.
If you've got to choose something, you could go with Gandhi's "Be the change . . .", or just pick whatever is at the bottom of the nearest motivational poster.
I also must list "Three Adjectives that Describe You". I can already tell I'm going to despise whatever use this information is going to be put to.
Ridden hard, put away wet, and regretful.
Bored, exploratory, and vaginal-fecal infectious.
Hungry, finicky, and stationary.
Gobsmacked, slack-jawed, and boggled.
Rural, bow-tied, and with a thick southern drawl.
I may go with introverted, circumspect, and shy.
Erect, explosive, and with stamina.
Devious, scornful and meticulous.
Or maybe "reticent" instead of "circumspect."
Querulous, gauche, and con braggadocio.
94: "If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, you can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered"
--Stanley Kubrick
"Reticent. Unassuming. Black (where it counts)."
126 is rather wonderful.
110. "Nasty, brutish and short."
Pale, sleep deprived, and unprepared.
Featherless, bipedal, non-avian.
Apologetic, apoplectic, and alcoholic.
Pick three from the scout motto.
Apple-cheeked, chipmunk-toothed, and button-nosed.
Jealous, petty, and glowering.
Selective, polyamorous, and watching you.
Good, giving, and game.
Scattered, smothered, and covered.
Retromingent, dasypygal, and hitleriffic.
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered.
Purple, obsequious, and clairvoyant.
Eager, hard-working, dependable, loyal, and bad at counting.
Cave! Sic dragones (my favorite quotation of late)
It occurs to me that these could be useful suggestions.
"Warmhearted. Easygoing. Accommodating."
Alright, I think we're okay on adjectives. I need more quotable quotes.
Repetitive, smart-assed, and repetitive.
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain
"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying." - Oscar Wilde
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.
"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit."
- William Somerset Maugham
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." - David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
"Te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est."
"All in all we are, just another brick in the wall."
"Jeremy spoke in class today."
"A minute on the lips, forever on the hips."
"If there's grass on the infield, play ball!"
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
"We will beat them over the head with beer bottles, because we have nothing else." - Winston Churchill
"I have over four hundred words for Eskimo."
"Grand Funk Railroad paved the way for Jefferson Airplane, which cleared the way for Jefferson Starship. The stage was now set for the Alan Parsons Project, which I believe was some sort of hovercraft."
94: "For the whole world has poured its heart into the city by the Palisades, and made it far better than it ever had any right to be."
"Contracts, like traitors, are made to be broken." - Blitzwing
"Street rap may be a little rough but it contains social meaning. This really is propaganda for a healthy lifestyle because it is hard to imagine breakdancing having anything to do with drinking and drugs." - Vladimir Putin
"I'll tell you why I won't vote for Obama..."
"Troubled times bring about troubled vibes." - Aaron Carter, "America A O"
"Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs."
"All we are is dust in the wind."
"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."
If you've got to choose something, you could go with Gandhi's "Be the change . . .",
That would be a good choice, except it's not something Gandhi actually said.
(I followed the link in 175 back to the original egg saga, and I'm weeping with laughter in my office now. I'll be laughing at that when I'm ninety.)
LB is correct that "The egg inside seemed ok" will never, ever not be funny.
"When you're coming in the kitchen, you better bring the noise." - Dustin Pedroia
"When there's nothing but carbolic around, you hanker for rot." - Ralph Richardson in "The Fallen Idol"
178/179: I honestly have never understood what was funny about that story.
"Street parties, although excellent, are transient." - Michael Gove
"The opposite of humour is not seriousness. The opposite of seriousness is incompetence." - David Shrigley
"Technology is not everything. Scientists came up with the atom bomb, doesn't mean we should have invented it." - Marcus Hahnemann
"This is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules." Walter Sobchak
"Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs" -- Guy Debord
or just
"Ne travaillez jamais" -- ibid.
"If anything, don't let your kids watch Pepe Le Pew, because he's a rapist." -- T-Pain
"One thing you can't do with babies, you can't give them steak." - Flavor Flav
"You come at the king, you best not miss." -- Omar
"In a perfect world he would only sleep with perfect women, women of femininity yet with a certain darkness at their core that will respond to his own darker self. But he knows no such women."
"When you strike at a king you must kill him." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Vegan food is soul food in its truest form." - Erykah Badu
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman" - President William Jefferson Clinton
"Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad. I missed you so bad. I missed you so, so bad." —Carly Rae Jepsen
"First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me." - Gore Vidal
105: No, because the control group has to be representative.
I like to have the muse come for the bowel movement. I haven't shit art yet but why not keep trying.
I haven't shit art yet
I have.
I'm waiting for a Venus de Milo shape. Something armless, at least.
This line of comments is actually grossing me out.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must be grossed out.
HBGB, should the austin meet up post be moved to the top? Also, check your email.
186: I'm sure that'll work well.
Let me guess on the adjectives. Short, pink, and wrinkled?
"He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by."
201: Meaning that so far they all had arms?
The Roth Iraq has better architecture than the traditional Iraq.
Also, cheese for dessert is banned.