I use "How do you know [the host]?" all the time in awkward situations.
More and more I'm realizing that my strategies in awkward situations is just to stand around awkwardly, though. Oh look, I'm immersed in watching my kid eat his cupcake. Fascinating.
What was your name back in the States?
In real life, I ask people either what they do for a living or, if they have kids in a familiar age range, where their kids go to school. I despise myself for both of these.
I've mentioned before that I loathe dancing around, "So do you stay home with the kids not that that's bad but also if you don't not that you seem like the type that would but if you are ambivalent not that there aren't good reasons to do both and if you don't where do you work unless that's sensitive too?"
The guy at the bar last week kept saying, "I watched my father die." It wasn't really a question, but he said it often enough and with such flat affect that I was really glad he only drank soda.
Who is your daddy and what does he do?
The guy at the bar last week kept saying, "I watched my father die."
Same guy you've described before?
This is a really impressive snowstorm. Probably a bad call to not have made it a snowday in NYC -- getting in to school won't have been that bad, but if it keeps up getting home, for anyone not right at a subway stop, is going to be epic.
Yep. He was king of the disturbing non sequitur.
8 Yes, this seems like the worst one yet.
Getting around wise, the thick layer of fresh snow over the imperfectly cleared layer of week-old ice is also pretty amusing.
9: That's funny! One of my (many) nicknames for my step daughter is "queen of non sequitur".
In her case she just likes to blurt out phrases she's heard on TV or youtube without having any idea what they mean.
11: I'm glad you find the concussion I recieved last week amusing.
I'm mean, I sure did, but I tend to get really giddy after blows to the back of my head.
Running for the bus this moring -- jumping over a big snow pile, tentatively running over possible ice patches, etc, -- inspired me with an idea for a Winter Olympics event -- the Winter Steeplechase. The course would be few miles long and have parts with a foot of soft snow, other parts with sheer ice, maybe some sleet etc.
I wonder if the Kenyans would win at that too.
The Queen, of course, invariably goes for "And what do you do?" followed by "And how long have you done that?" This normally works for pretty much everyone she meets, but there was a story about her visiting a warship and meeting the ship's cook who was (versions differ) either not very good at English or rather hard of hearing, or both; in any case, he had been briefed in advance on the likely direction of the conversation with Her Maj...
"And what do you do?"
"I AM THE COOK, MA'AM."
"That was a wonderful lunch, did it take you long to prepare?"
"THIRTEEN YEARS, MA'AM."
And there's the story about the rather stupid French general meeting a Martinican soldier:
"Alors, mon gars, vous etes negre, n'est-ce pas?"
"Oui, mon general."
"Bravo, bravo, continuez!"
17: Please add an "n" where it's needed.
"Bravo, bravo, continuez!"
Reminiscent of the occasion during WWII when a very elderly Black Jack Pershing, introduced to Charles de Gaulle in D.C., asked about the health of his old pal Petain.
De Gaulle: "When last I saw him, he was very well."
re: 18
I can't read that without thinking of the wire-brush and Dettol joke.
http://www.thebritishairborneforcesclub.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?3442-Wire-Brush-and-Dettol
20: no, he meant "I wonder if'n the Kenyans would win at that too".
As they'd say in Latin class, that is a question expecting the answer "ayup".
inspired me with an idea for a Winter Olympics event -- the Winter Steeplechase
Something along those lines is actually being considered. I commented a few days ago about cyclocross being under consideration; the context is a cross country obstacle run being proposed.
I know someone who substitutes "So, what are your passions?" for "So, what to do you do?"
25: Or, from the very splendid Robert Massie in "Dreadnought":
...At dinner one night at Osborne House, the Queen entertained a famous admiral whose hearing was impaired. Politely, Victoria had asked about his fleet and its activities; then, shifting the subject, she asked about the admiral's sister, an elderly dowager of awesome dignity. The admiral thought she was inquiring about his flagship, which was in need of overhaul. "Well, ma'am," he replied, "as soon as I get back I'm going to have her hauled out, roll her on her side and have the barnacles scraped off her bottom." Victoria stared at him for a second, and then, for minutes afterwards, the drawing room shook with her unstoppable peals of laughter...
Reminiscent of the occasion during WWII when a very elderly Black Jack Pershing, introduced to Charles de Gaulle in D.C., asked about the health of his old pal Petain
I'd never heard that. De Gaulle had been a protégé of his, before WWI when Petain had been a Colonel with very out-of-fashion ideas. They had a long history.
Source?
I've mostly lived in cities with transplants, so asking them where they're from is a good start. If they're from Louisiana, "What does your grandma drink for breakfast?" is an excellent follow-up. Answers have ranged from Miller Light to Wild Turkey.
"Your mother, she is?"
"How do you know?"
27: I thought it was too good (or too obvious?)an idea to be original to me.
Where did you go to high school is a classic St. Louis question, too. I know where emdash went to high school, because of course I asked. (Do we have any other commenters from St. Louis?)
34: And if so, where did you go to high school?
This kind of question is not only information-gathering, it also establishes insider/outsider status. Because my parents were transplants to St. Louis, they could never answer this question satisfactorily, and they never really felt a part of the community.
30: this post "http://vastarrayofthevaguelyinteresting.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/unfortunate-tete-tete-de-gaulle-meets.html
credits "The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France he saved" by Jonathan Fenby, and dates the encounter to 1944.
33: Maybe you can improve on the existing proposals. Cross country running through the snowy forest while being chased by wolves?
Ski-rugby has been discussed here in the past...
I'd also be a supporter of ski-polo, in which the players ride caribou.
Or bears!
Sorry, winter polo, obviously. I'm not suggesting putting caribou on skis, that would be the act of a madman.
34: And if so, where did you go to high school?
In the country, about an hour out! I had enough friends in St. Louis and was there for enough time (college) to know what the different schools mean, even though not having gone to one myself.
40: the sort of thing tycho brahe might have done
39: Don't bears hibernate during the winter?
So they're extra cranky when you wake them up for the games and are more likely to eat their riders.
34: You never visit when you're in town.
I, too, know where emdash went to high school. IIrc I made a dumb joke about his school and sounded like a jerk.
43: good point. We'd need to have the winter Olympics in the southern hemisphere, and fly the bears in.
34: You never visit when you're in town.
I had no idea! Are you in school there, or a more permanent gig?
Polar bears don't hibernate in the winter. Plus they are going extinct so a breeding program to make rideable semi-tame polar bears would be an environmental mitzvah.
30, 36: It was indeed 1944. Here's a contemporaneous account.
3: I was at an annual meeting for a library I belong to. Because it was in the afternoon, 90% of the people were retired, so I spoke to the two people who looked like they were under 50. Eventually, I did ask him what he did for a living, but first we talked about the meeting and the library's endowment and our lack of deep pockets (they want donations to make up for losses in 2008 and just got a big cheese retiree from Citigroup put on the board) and the book group he was going to. It was great.
The southern hemisphere is really underpowered in the bear department.
48: Kidding. Not in school, but I wouldn't exactly call my gig permanent.
I've mostly lived in cities with transplants, so asking them where they're from is a good start.
Even as a transplant myself it can be rather fraught in London, though, as in my geographically, citizenship and modestly ethnically mixed social circles it can carry an implied "you're not British, are you?" even if it's not meant to. So I tend to avoid it, at least until I have enough context to ask which town in county/country/region x.
Still, I'm the worst person in the world at small talk, so I'm not holding this out as best practice.
8: I'm going to Colorado in a week and a half, and all that I can think of is going skiing. It's nice and fluffy snow too.
30,36, 51:
Link in 51 doesn't have Pershing sounding clueless at all.
49: and, with that achieved, it's really just a question of building the armour. (What a great character that was. "I am an armoured bear; war is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe." Brrrr.)
28: does that strike anyone else as an opener likely used by that semi-slimy guy at your friends' cocktail party who made unspecified loads of cash in the dodgier realms of VC, is strenuously avoiding all conversational clues the you are in a long term relationship and your partner is standing right across the room, he met one of your friends at some yoga retreat/zen meditation group/burning man, and for whom there is no evidence that he has ever sustained a relationship of any length? And he keeps on asking you out for lunch? Or am I the only one who can't seem to shake these dudes at parties? The are nasty.
When abroad, meeting someone who claims to be "from Minneapolis", of course I always inquire what HS they went to, since the answer is so often "Wayzata" and I get to feel superior.
But mostly I scramble in these interactions for something non-offensive and yet non-canned-sounding, much like 4 above. Usually I fail. In the arts scene, it's usually pretty safe to ask if someone "has anything coming up" although then you might give the impression that you would actually go if they did.
46: You did? I don't recall, but let's just assume that I remain mortally offended and challenge you to a duel.
I get pointed questions: "Are you an engineer?" "Are you a professor/historian?" "Are you a journalist?" "Are you an architect?"
"I'm a lawyer."
Puzzlement.
Apparently Ayn Rand would bust out "What are your premises?" as a conversation starter at parties. Because she was charming and shit.
At a grad school party I once asked a guy where he was from, and being brown, he got a little huffy. "What do you mean by that?" Um... nothing? Where did you grow up? I can see how he might have misinterpreted it, but I really did just mean it as the innocent small-talk question.
In New England people often ask where you went to college. In the Central Valley of California (outside of an academic context), not so much.
"It never occurred to me ... that Hello/How Do You Do might have any formulaic follow-up. So, to answer the question, in my experience the answer is 'Nothing.'"
This is me. "How do you know our host?" is sometimes appropriate; "Can I get you a drink?", "Did you have trouble finding this place?", "Have you met my wife?", "What about that Woody Allen, then?", "Lef Nicolaievitch, I have long wished to ask you, do you believe in God?" all have their place. But "Where do you come from?" and "What do you do?" are for much later in the acquaintance, and "Where do you go to church?" is boorish and intolerable.
58: I rather more envision a guy in a brightly colored polyester suit with disco hair and platform shoes. Also he says "baby" a lot.
I don't know if there's something odd about the geographical density of the UK, but if you were from anywhere more than about 2 miles from where I'm from, I'm sure I'd never have heard of someone's high school.* I can't imagine that answering that question would convey any information at all to me.
'Which school did you go to?'
'Craigmount High.'
'Thanks. Now I know everything about you.... where's Craigmount High, again?'
* with a couple of exceptions for posh private schools like Eton, or whatever.
And then of course there's always the preemptive:
"I know you! You're Mr. Addison Simms of Seattle, and we had lunch together at the Plaza Hotel in ought-six!"
"What does your grandma drink for breakfast?" is an excellent follow-up
She's dead.
58: Sure seems like a slimy asshole thing to do to me!
Apparently Ayn Rand would bust out "What are your premises?" as a conversation starter at parties.
"A small office in midtown, a branch office in Brooklyn, and a large warehouse in Ronkonkoma."
67: In a US context, where high schools sometimes have 1,500-2,500 students, and HS sports are often kind of a big deal, the number of high schools that anyone from a given region might be familiar with is often pretty large. In this area, most suburbs only have one large HS, sometimes two, so that places you in the SES pretty reasonably. And the larger cities generally have 4-8 big high schools, plus a couple of prep schools and some parochials. So you could name for me one of at least 50 local high schools and be giving a pretty full account of your class antecedents, and occasionally your religion as well. Maybe 100.
re: 71
My high school had 1,500 - 2000 students, also. And in the surrounding larger town area, there was another four, I think, of similar size. I'd have known the name of each of them, but the only thing I could have inferred from the name of your school was whether or not you were i) Catholic, and ii) Catholic enough for your parents to choose to send you to Catholic school.
I would know literally zero about the class background of the person I was talking to purely from the name of their school, though.
65: "What do you do?" is fraught? it is because of class, isn't it?
"What do you mean by that?"
"I just wanted to see if you're an oversensitive asshole."
In Chicago, certainly, someone's high school tells you a lot about them.
A lot of the awkwardness/not of the situation is down to how awkward you feel, rather than what you ask. At a church social a few weeks ago, a woman quizzed me two steps beyond what I would have thought was appropriate about my own religious practice or lack thereof, but it turned out that she suspected, rightly, that I was an unbeliever like her husband, and wanted to introduce us.
But HS sports aren't really a big deal in the UK, right? That's the thing here: during tournament season, you're almost guaranteed to hear a bunch of information about relatively obscure schools that happen to have a good basketball or hockey team. Likewise, the school district/suburb mapping is fairly close, most of the time. So if you hear someone went to Forest Lake (or "Flake"), a school in a fairly well-to-do outer-ring suburb, there's a chance that they're working-class and busing in from a little farmstead, but more likely they are from solidly UMC commuter stock. Alternatively, if someone says they went to Loring-Nicollet, the longstanding alternative HS in Minneapolis, I can guess that they're working-to-middle class and were kind of a fuck-up in their teens, but smart & motivated enough not to just drop out completely.
While traveling in Europe, I learned that asking "Where are you from back in the states?" is a good way to piss off Canadians. It's really their own fault because I only made the mistake on people who neglected to sound like a real Canadian.
As I recall, St. Louis is also very segregated, no? I suspect that makes it easier to draw conclusions about someone based on where they went to high school.
The high school SES placing can be wildly wrong in public high schools. Upper Arlington, my HS in a Columbus suburb, had some very wealthy and entitled students and some nearly destitute. And every conceivable level of cultural capital, not tracking at all well with wealth.
So the HS told you squat.
Oh, you went to Simeon? I hypothesize that you're black.
I don't know it well, but my impression is that in the New Orleans professional world basically 100% of what people care about in education is where you went to high school; college is a total afterthought.
Here, I'll usually ask the high school question for natives I meet here socially, but that's maybe 15% max of the people I meet.
78: That's what all the people rich enough to afford a house in UA want you to think.
"Where do you go to church" would be unthinkable, because
a) it implies that I am going to form some sort of judgement about you based on the answer.
b) it implies that I have automatically assumed that you must go to church somewhere, and are not, say, Jewish, or an atheist; and that I would therefore think less of you when you reveal that you are.
I think the only time I would ask that is if the other person had already told me, explicitly, that they go to church, and I just wanted to know which one.
Similarly "where did you go to university" is only to be asked of someone who you are absolutely sure did actually go to university. And it still shouldn't be asked by someone who went to Oxford, because the other person is going to reply "Birmingham [or wherever], how about you?" and then it looks like you are just looking for an opportunity to casually drop in "Oxford".
Also, people from the Midwest can get really defensive if they're living on the coast and someone starts asking questions that indicate that they think you grew up as a comely milkmaid or strapping thatch-headed swain.
Once, some fairly urbane MPLS friends of mine had moved to NYC and were complaining that the super who was showing them around an apartment was at pains to explain that Verizon was a phone company, after he told them that the place had good reception for Verizon phones.
in the New Orleans professional world basically 100% of what people care about in education is where you went to high school; college is a total afterthought.
Edinburgh, too.
I was taking the #18 past the UA high school when I saw the Stanley Cup. Somebody landed a helicopter on the field and a guy got out holding the Stanley Cup.
78: Uppity Arlington? They may be wrong, but people do make assumptions.
At least it isn't new money, like New Albany.
54/63: I usually start with asking whether a person is from DC, then ask where they grew up. I just hate opening with asking what they do for a living, since anyone unemployed ends up fumbling.
69: Yes, I guess I've aged out of that being truly effective small talk in present tense.
That's what all the people rich enough to afford a house in UA want you to think
It's possible there's been a lot of teardowns and nearly-universal renovations. Northbrook in Chicago is like that. The surviving tiny houses, once characteristic are endangered.
In my day there was a lot of cheap/small.
Similarly "where did you go to university" is only to be asked of someone who you are absolutely sure did actually go to university. And it still shouldn't be asked by someone who went to Oxford, because the other person is going to reply "Birmingham [or wherever], how about you?" and then it looks like you are just looking for an opportunity to casually drop in "Oxford".
"Oh, I went to university at a cow crossing."
66:they are always very plausibly turned out, usually nice looking as well. Slimy on further acquaintance. Strangely passionless, for all the dogged pursuit.
re : where are you from? When I lived in Paris a close friend had a girlfriend from Marseille whose family were from Armenia, hence got to know many French by way of Armenia folks. When I said I was from California, French people would usually say "Ah! Los Angeles! San Francisco!" unless their family were Armenian, in which case they would say "Ah! Fresno!" and then we'd have a nice chat about the summer of their 15th year that they all seemed to have spent staying with their aunt in Clovis.
meeting someone who claims to be "from Minneapolis", of course I always inquire what HS they went to, since the answer is so often "Wayzata" and I get to feel superior.
Happy to help.
UA was also surprisingly philistine. The curriculum and teaching were very mediocre.
I'm astonished and gratified that my kids' Chicago HS, admittedly the smallest and artiest of the selectives, was so much better.
Well, it's all relative to the rest of Ohio.
58, 66, 69: I guess it's all context-dependent. The person in question is, in fact, young, queer, female, and graduate-student poor. I think it comes from a place in which the she has a day-job she loves but many of the people in her social circle do not, so she is just using it as an avenue to get them to talk about what they are actually interested in.
They enabled the Refresh app on Glass so you can look up info about people you meet, but I don't understand how it looks up that info or what the interface is. I guess I could try it.
She sounds like a potentially charming lunch date! I should ask her out!
70 Having grown up a couple of towns to the west of it, I'm surprised Ronkonkoma is so widely known.
91: A very working-class-conscious guy I knew, who attended St Jo/hn's College Oxfor/d, was rather embarrassed about thus compromising his class status and therefore always used to just tell people he'd gone to "St Jo/hn's". And when they asked where that was, he'd say, in a tone of Northern loathing, "Oh, it's a college down in the south".
Hmm... this sounds a little too structured- I want my facial recognition app!
"Glass users sign up for Refresh by connecting their calendar and social networks to the app. When it finds information about someone you are meeting, it will send you "cards" with relevant information to swipe through, one by one."
I'm surprised Ronkonkoma is so widely known.
I only know about it because of its convenient proximity to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven.
Moby, am I right that people here tend to ask, "So, are you from here?" Or I should say, "people in my circles" tend to ask that. Because there's a better than even chance that the answer is no, and until recently being a "transplant" was noteworthy, because locals could be a little distant to outsiders.
I suspect that my general circle is the only one where it's a relevant question: hardly anyone of low SES comes here from elsewhere, so they're all locals, and ISTM that the ruling class is pretty much all locals as well.
84.last: At least the NYCer took for granted that the hick knew what cell phones were.
103: Yes. Personally, I'm going to switch to asking where people went to high school.
My family rented, in crowded duplexes or multiplexes and ramshackle houses.
Whenever I've driven through Wilmette or Winnetka, I've wondered if kids are going to New Trier from out of basement apartments, and what their lives are like.
103: In fact when I first came to Pittsburgh (not so much now) if I asked someone if they were from Pittsburgh, they would be likely to say, "No I'm from Etna" or the like. Etna being a small industrial suburb literally across the river from Pittsburgh.
People are ever so insistent on the micro-geography here. Even for places that objectively suck, like Etna.
Brighton's suburb, the rather more upmarket town of Hove, is known as Hoveactually, because when you ask someone if they're from Brighton they say "Yes, well, Hove, actually."
107: Yes, of course! People also love to specify neighborhoods, of which we have 90. IIRC a friend of mine once clarified that she was from Highland Park.
The irony of which is that everyone in the county uses "Pittsburgh" as their mailing address, which drives AB insane. It's really weird that people who avoid the city at all costs nonetheless give their mailing addresses as Pittsburgh instead of Tony Suburb. 130 fiercely independent municipalities, and none of them think the USPS has heard of them.
106: Actually, both people that I can recall talking to about going to Upper Arlington HS were fairly poor, and hated it because they said everybody was rich and snobby.
What bugs me is when they get pissed that they can't vote in the city elections.
Do the various colleges at Oxford have any import?
"What do you do?" is fraught? it is because of class, isn't it?
No, it's not fraught. It's a combination of a polite assumption that most people would prefer not to talk shop in a social situation and the fact that whatever they say, you are wildly unlikely to be able to comment intelligently (see Heebie, passim, on the sort of things that get said to her when she says she's a maths professor), so it's unlikely to be much of a conversation starter anyway.
both people that I can recall talking to about going to Upper Arlington HS were fairly poor, and hated it because they said everybody was rich and snobby
I seem to have been as oblivious as Clarence Thomas about stuff like that. Never felt alienated enough for any "Such, such were the Joys" emotions. And the balance, the number of poor versus rich may have been different enough in the sixties to make for a very different vibe.
103: In fact when I first came to Pittsburgh (not so much now) if I asked someone if they were from Pittsburgh, they would be likely to say, "No I'm from Etna" or the like. Etna being a small industrial suburb literally across the river from Pittsburgh.
"Are you from Kansas City?"
"No, I'm from Kansas City."
||
We just got a notice that some of the phones are out, but that "the problem has been escalated to Verizon," meaning that Verizon has been notified of the problem. Googling finds other people discussing this use of 'escalate'. Please please please don't let this become standard usage.
|>
Do the various colleges at Oxford have any import?
In terms of class/personality/other social stereotypes? Absolutely. In reality, not so much.
The important thing to remember about Oxford colleges is that Peter Wimsey went to a real one and Harriet Vane to a fake one.
And that Harry Potter ate at one of them.
I thought Hogwarts was in Scotland.
118: That horse is so far out of the barn you can't even here it whinny.
I had no idea "escalate" was a back-formation from "escalator". The figurative meaning only dates to the early '60s!
Anyhow, JP Stormcrow is correct, although usually escalations happen within a given institution's support hierarchy, not from one hierarchy to another, which presumably lives metaphorically in a great cloud fortress far above the escalator's origin.
120. Shrewsbury is a thinly disguised Somerville (Sayers' own college). I suspect Sayers recognised that Vane was enough of a Mary Sue as it was without actually connecting her to her author by biographical details.
Can complaints be funiculated? Because that would be great.
I hered it whinny in 60s, and was always puzzled by the then-current use: what was being ever escalated was the scale of the conflict in Vietnam.
I would have thought that memory would have made the word taboo.
The issue has been erected beyond our organization.
The downpour rain just snapped over to enormous white blizzard flakes.
There are crazy huge snowflakes coming down in Durham right now.
118 - I was quite taken aback when I discovered that "escalator" was originally a brand name for an Otis Elevator product that has since become a generic term.
Thanks to this thread, "escalate" has now replaced whatever phrase I previously would've used for ... taking the thing to the other place?
To be fair, it might be a combination of this thread and my concussion.
In standard corporate speak, "escalate" means, "I can't handle this, kick it up to the next managerial level." If you're a Verizon customer, escalating to Verizon would mean, "3rd party first level call centre can't handle this, their client is going to have to own it"?
Verizon escalated much of the ground surrounding my house to find a loose connection in their wiring. They say they can't deescalate in this weather. Probably correct, but still annoying.
125: man, it would be hilarious if Somerville Massachusetts, adjacent to Cambridge Massachusetts, was named for &c.. Doesn't seem to be, though.
The enormous white blizzard flakes are now small blizzard flakes again. This commute home is going to be Mr. Sucky Face, although it is fascinating to be within the teeny band between solid rain (in East Boston) and uninterrupted snow (towards the western edge of Arlington).
111: The irony of which is that everyone in the county uses "Pittsburgh" as their mailing address, which drives AB insane.
I'm not sure the history of this, but I believe some of it is rooted in Post Office history and what they* viewed as a branch office versus a separate PO. For instance for my zip code, which does not cover any of Pittsburgh proper, the USP-Accepted localities are in this order: Pittsburgh, Aspinwall, Sharpsburg (the office itself is located in Sharpsburg)--and my township is not in that list. Find out what they have listed for your zip code in this 1100+ page pdf here. I am wondering how actively it is managed since for my work zip it lists Pittsburgh and Allegheny, the latter being a city which has not existed as a separate entity for over 100 years
*Although they may have in fact just been picking up local preference.
"Are you from Kansas City?"
"No, I'm from Kansas City."
It's all in the intonation.
No, it's not fraught. It's a combination of a polite assumption that most people would prefer not to talk shop in a social situation and the fact that whatever they say, you are wildly unlikely to be able to comment intelligently (see Heebie, passim, on the sort of things that get said to her when she says she's a maths professor), so it's unlikely to be much of a conversation starter anyway.
One of my favorite bits in one of the Dirk Gently books is when Dirk meets a woman who's a double bass player. She asks what he does (NOTE: both are Brits), he says "Holistic detective" or whatever, and there's a long pause. She then explains that people always say the same things to her when she says what she does (e.g., "Bet you wish you played the violin"), and so she always makes a point not to say the first dumb thing that comes into her head when someone tells her what they do. She then asks what people usually say to him, and he says, "There's usually a long pause."
136: I didn't realize that I can, with the approval of the Post Office, use my neighborhood instead of my city.
65, 83: "Where do you go to church?" is boorish and intolerable.
God yes, for all the reasons outlined in 83. I've never encountered such a question in the wild myself, but my work partner has taken to asking me, when I recount certain kinds of things about other people, "Which church does he/she/they go to?" (if story is about someone in the area); or recently with respect to a story about my mother's response to my brother's gayness, "Oh, did she go to Methodist services?"
What? Huh?
I am so far unable to mask my hostility at hearing these questions, and just bust out with "Church? Which church? I have no idea if they go to church at all; why would you think they do; what does that have to do with anything?" or "No, my mother didn't go to church; I don't know anyone who goes to church [you idiot]"
It's begun to really creep me out. My preference would be to explain to him why and how this is so disgusting to me, but so far I'm stuck on barely masked curling of lip and sharp, clipped, end-of-discussion responses.
I suspect that my general circle is the only one where it's a relevant question: hardly anyone of low SES comes here from elsewhere, so they're all locals, and ISTM that the ruling class is pretty much all locals as well.
I've also noticed that.
The 90 neighborhoods in the city and 130 municipalities in Allegheny County has always seemed a bit much. But, y'know, hills.
138: I believe that I have, in fact, seen that, however rarely.
Looking at the linked PDF in 136, it appears that there are a couple dozen placeholder ZIPs, held in reserve, I guess, for growth that is unlikely to happen. Nothing between 15250 and 15295 appears to be a real PO/locale, although I haven't tested all of them.
141.last: a lot of it was created by steel barons and coal operators who were looking to minimize taxes while maximizing social & political control. One of the reasons that Braddock is such a wreck is that almost all of the mill is in North Braddock, which is, in fact, a significantly wealthier and more stable muni (although not wealthy by any means).
Nowadays it's all driven by provincialism, but the origins were top-down.
93: Wait, I thought you went to Bloomington Jefferson? Perhaps that was our drinking companion, who never seems to come around here anymore.
Further to 140: Oh, I see "Where do you go to church?" is the opening topic of the OP's linked piece. Sorry, hadn't looked at it.
143: Hrm, that makes a lot of sense. (And I feel like I've heard that before, possibly from you.) Sometimes it's easy to forget how manorial the plutocrats were around here. I had no clue about the Braddock/North Braddock distinction, will have to read up on that.
Speaking of Pittsburgh Plutocrats, have you seen the Charles Guggenheim film about the Jonestown Flood?
I thought Hogwarts was in Scotland.
The outside was in Scotland, the inside was in Oxford. Magic!
I can't remember a standard question since "so, what A levels did you do?"
Although I do remember a feeling of relief when I moved here from Oxford (aged 29) that finally people I met socially didn't care where I went to university, so that must have been a reasonably frequent topic of conversation.
Edinburgh, too.
For a split second, I occasionally wonder why people are talking about the Rio Grande Valley.
Are A levels the OWLs or the NEWTs?
102 is true of me, but I wouldn't have guessed it of ajay. Wait, ajay: what do you do? (And where do you go to church?)
115: oh, well that is quite different from my experience
My next-door neighbor asked me, while we were unpacking the moving truck, if I had children, and then if I planned to.
144: Edina. I figured it would work similarly in that situation.
148: Yes, at the Johnstown Flood Museum, I believe. Great museum in a town without much else to recommend it.
In one of my periodic attempts to escape BOGF, I once went on a secret date there. After a terrible meal at a strip mall Chinese place, things took a turn for the worse when I mentioned that I despise Louis Kahn's work.
In a funny coincidence, I later learned that a very good friend of mine (whom I hadn't met at that time) had a workplace crush on this woman.
workplace crush
If we were somewhere with a reasonable number of attractive people, I wouldn't be the least interested. But, compared to the rest of the people here....
I mentioned that I despise Louis Kahn's work
My brother. If you also hate Richard Meier, we should go on a totally non-gay date.
where do you go to church?
I've never even come close to being in an environment where "where do you go to church" would be appropriate (actually, in my line of work, I'm totally in the closet at work about going to church because people find it weird and offputting without a lot of explanation and qualification). But I can kind of see it in a small town where social life is largely arranged around different churches; I'm sure it would have been the key piece of social information you'd have wanted to know in a lot of small 19th century US towns or whatever.
Are A levels the OWLs or the NEWTs?
NEWTs, I believe. Though they sound more like the GCSE, which is what replaced the O-Level (OWLs).
155: I've been trying to tell people that all the really horrible, stereotypical Edina people decamped for the further reaches of suburbia some time ago. Yeah, you get a little bit of the old attitude now and then, but it's sure not like it was in the old days.
157, 159: Get a brutalist pile, you two.
In the MO town I spent the fall 2008 campaign in, everybody went to church. One congregation seemed to specialize in Christian secularist liberals and atheist/agnostic types. When I asked my agnostic hosts why they bothered they said it was partly cause it was socially unacceptable to not go to church and partly for the community aspects.
Also, I would have thought that Meier's stuff would play into Halford's appreciation of the culture of Palm Springs, but I guess not.
Meades article on brutalist architecture in Guardian, haven't read it yet.
I don't hate all architecture of the era; for example, someday soon
this">http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/01/huells_desert_volcano_lair_wyvernwood_set_for_approval_process.php#silver-valley-1">this will be one of my homes.
But I can kind of see it in a small town where social life is largely arranged around different churches
Musing about this the other day, I realized that some significant part of my objection, aside from the assumption that one goes to church at all, is that I feel rather strongly that social life can and should be arranged around secular civic institutions. That community activity should be centered in and through and around churches is offensive to me: not only does it exclude atheists, non-christians and whatnot, church-based community activity is frequently (not always; see Unitarians) apolitical.* That's wrong and bad.
* At least that's my impression: I hear church-goers talk about organizing bake sales and book sales and pot-lucks and cookouts, which are basically about raising money for the church itself, or about socializing in general. Not much about, oh, food drives for the needy or applying shared moral principles to legislative or governmental decision making. Maybe these are just lame-ass churches that I hear about.
I mean to say: if a bunch of people in a given area just want to be part of a local club of some kind, there is no reason on earth it has to be premised on religion.
Quite happy for most churches I have any knowledge or experience of to stay well the hell out of politics, thank you very much. Been a bit too much of that in the US.
One of my projects is directly next door to a Meier house, as well as a Venturi-Scott Brown House. Needless to say, I now refer to that as the area with the Meier, the Roth, and the Scott-Brown houses.
If I can rouse myself to do it, I'll post a picture to the Flickr.
167 is very nipple-y.
I hate being asked where I'm from because people want a one word answer, but each of the single words I can give is so trivial as to be misleading. (Do they want place from birth to 1.5 yrs? 1.5-13? 13-19? 19-29? 29-50?) I don't mind telling a story, but as you people know as well as anyone, my stories can be boring.
I don't mind 'what do you do' because I have a one word answer. But then people ask what kind of law, and I say 'I tell stories' instead of the one word answer they are looking for.
168: You're leaving out history. Many of the older religious organizations were created because the civic institutions of the time were closed to them or uncomfortable for them.
I don't mind 'what do you do' because I have a one word answer.
Once you leave the confines of the medical/industrial/educational complex, it can become a bit difficult to explain what I do.
170: Quite happy for most churches I have any knowledge or experience of to stay well the hell out of politics, thank you very much.
I am not saying that I want churches to be involved in politics. I'm saying that if church-joining is simply a means to join in the local community, there's no reason for religion to be the vehicle for it: why not become active in a local CSA, or food bank, or cooperative bookstore, or environmental clean-up effort, or senior support center, or volunteer daycare center, or for heaven's sake a political cause?
I think most people have a limited amount of organizational energy, and I see church-goers (Protestants, chiefly) expending all of that energy on the church's activities, which are rarely outward-looking, mostly self-involved and exclusionary.
Some people do actually believe in God. I think it's a pretty rare church that doesn't do some, if not quite a bit, of charity work.
(actually, in my line of work, I'm totally in the closet at work about going to church because people find it weird and offputting without a lot of explanation and qualification).
I just knew Halford worked for Wolfram & Hart.
why not become active in a local CSA
Not everybody wants to refight the Civil War.
Not everybody wants to refight the Civil War
Had some New Brunswick relatives, "Province Men" as Thoreau reports the Maine usage of his day, at Little Round Top. Just couldn't stay out of it, I guess.
177: Sure, and if that's the reason for joining a church, go right ahead. I seem to encounter quite a few people who belong to a church just because they're in the local community and want establish their membership in it, and the church is the thing they see .. to the point where if someone in the local community *isn't* a church member, they find it odd, as though the non-member is being hostile in some way.
But sure, if it really is a act of religious devotion -- if you're devout -- well and good. I just have the impression that quite a few church-goers aren't devout at all, and it looks from the outside like a ridiculous performance.
178 -- huh, I hadn't watched that show. I must say that aspects of that firm's wikipedia page do seem not totally unfamiliar.
Follow-up questions are hard. I remember being started to hear "what do you do?" considered a somewhat boorish conversation opener, and I still don't know an adequate replacement. Mrs. K-sky told me that in her Burning Man circle, the question was deprecated as there was a mix of people working in their chosen fields and people working random jobs to have money to buy things to blow up. She didn't really know a lot of her friends' jobs. I find this admirable but hard-won.
I have lived in Los Angeles long enough that I can knowledgeably ask people who grew up here where they went to high school, which surprises them.
"How do you know the host" is very handy. In Los Angeles, of course, you can talk -- no joke -- about street routes. "How did you get here?" The question is especially interesting to me if it involves any of the weird streets around the 10 and the 405, Veteran, Motor, National, etc. which I still don't understand after 16 years in this city.
I have no particular opinion about the 20-odd high schools in my hometown that I didn't attend. I'm vaguely aware of the likely socioeconomic status attached to a few of them, but for most of them, nothing in particular comes to mind.
On the other hand, I do recognize the names of a lot of high schools around the country on the basis of remembering their quiz bowl or science olympiad teams.
I just ask people "which David Bowie are you"?*
*homage to excellent work being done by k-sky in the other place.
136: We've always just used "Pittsburgh" despite it being inaccurate.
Three of the bigger North Hills POs are Glenshaw, Allison Park and Ingomar, which are "places" which have to a large extent lost their identity and do not have governments (the "municipal" governments in those are provided through townships, but the zip code areas* do not correspond to those township boundaries). So the official PO names exist as a somewhat eccentrically-named idiosyncratically-bounded overlay. Except it's your "hometown" that the newspaper will use when the neighbors finally break in and discover you eaten by your dogs. So it may be understandable why some of those people might just use "Pittsburgh."
*It may have been this way for a while, but I only recently noticed that if you simply search on a zip code, you can see its extent in Google maps.
In Los Angeles, of course, you can talk -- no joke -- about street routes
When my family would visit our relatives in NYC, I remember lively, drawn-out, and sometimes heated discussions of the best way to get from one place to another.
188: That was one my wife's family's main modes of interaction. Whenever we showed up I'd find that I better have prepared a rock solid defense of my route choices.
Worthless as it is, I claim authorship of 188.
There are several cities that have the how-did-you-get-here conversation. Every time it comes up it makes me nuts, and I can never figure out if it's because I don't care at all, or because I care very much and am certain that whatever way I would take is the one and only way.
189: And they I'd say, "You live in New Jersey, but you're actually east of Coney Island." And they'd look at me with awe, and my mother-in-law would say, "Are you sure you aren't Jewish?"
As someone from Pittsburgh, I can report that it used to drive my teenaged self irrationally insane when people from, say, Fox Chapel, would describe themselves as being "from Pittsburgh." Then I grew up to be someone who lives in Shaker Heights but has certainly said she lived "in Cleveland." Hypocrisy, c'est moi!
When my family would visit our relatives in NYC, I remember lively, drawn-out, and sometimes heated discussions of the best way to get from one place to another.
I have these all the time, but they tend to involve bus routes, which I suspect is not the case in NYC, let alone LA.
193.last: "Let me check." (Starts to remove pants)
194: It seems like I may be confusing a comedy routine with a memory of my family, but as I remember it the dispute was usually over whether to take the bridge or the tunnel.
It seems like I may be confusing a comedy routine with a memory of my family
And so the debate resumes.
193: Depends on the audience, though. I bet you meet more people from not-even-close to your city than when you were growing up. I think LA is the worst for the petty differences between suburbs, but it's ridiculous to say you live in Torrance rather than LA if you're at a meeting in NYC.
My doctrinaire fifteen-year-old view was that in that case you should say "I'm from outside Pittsburgh." (Or "outside LA" or whatever, but I didn't care about whether people laid false claim to other cities.)
200: Smart teenage you! That's an elegant solution if you're a stickler.
191: The back-in-the day conversation in my family for any inter-city travel would be how many/few traffic lights they had to go through (generally reduced yearly by the slowly expanding interstate system).
188, 189, 192: My god does my (NJ, Jewish) family drive me nuts with this. Most recently, around xmas I was going back and forth a lot between my parents' house and the hospital where my dad was recovering from back surgery--a roughly 15-min drive--and we had repeated, anguished conversations about my insistence on following the simple directions my phone gave me, as opposed to the convoluted back route they wanted me to learn to save maybe a minute or two.
203: We really are just like our comedians say we are.
Hey teo and asilon, much of the day there have been literally hundreds of seagulls wheeling around over the river next to my workplace. There are often a few around, but don't recall anything like this. It's even crepping me out a bit.
203: A slightly morbid example: For my mother-in-law's funeral a few towns over, my father-in-law gave me very explicit directions on how to get there form his place. They sucked, but since he was going early with his kids and I was bringing our kids and nephew niece later I just said fine and found my own way. I told the kids that if they ratted me out it would go very badly for them. So that worked.
But then while sitting shiva, a local historian came by and I was asking him about the Revolutionary War plaque to Washington I had passed on the way to the funeral and my FIL overheard. I was sure that I was busted, but he got distracted or something.
The main items of contention were how to get to/from I-80 /I-95 and the GWB. When the Christie bridge stuff first came up I was well-prepared to understand the importance of the Fort Lee lanes.
206: And I know of the told the story here of how in the trek from the funeral home to the SE Queens cemetery I started following the wrong hearse. because non EZ Pass at the time.
I have often used "so are you from here or...?" because for the last ten years I've lived places where most people are transplants, and also because I've lived a number of places so I can kind of make conversation about a number of places.
Presumably within a few months this will have changed to "indica or sattiva?" or "hey, is Mercury hella in retrograde or what?"
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Fucking storm drains, how do they work? Do they work?
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"Where did you go to school?" as in high school is something that seems very common among Philadelphians of a certain age (older than me, basically) or of a certain social class (everyone other than UMC, basically).
My generic questions are just "What do you do?" meaning work, or "What's your connection/how did you come to be here tonight?" But I try to pay attention enough that I don't have to fall back on the generics.
I like to ask specific things like, "So are you a full-time parent, or do you also do paid work?" or "What is your son really into right now?" (if they have small children). I don't care where the kids go to daycare/school, and it's generally much more interesting to hear a parent think for a minute and then say, "Well, he really likes working with his hands, so we do a lot of Play-Doh and modeling clay" or whatnot.
I also occupy myself with trying to figure out what will put people at ease, but that's probably because I end up at a lot of events where people feel moderately out-of-place.
207: OMG. Do they try to make you get off and take that other road? 4something? I have this fight with my family all the time. I'M JUST GOING TO STAY ON THE TURNPIKE, OK????
Re: 'from outside X'
I read the bio of an IT journalist recently who is a friend of a friend. About half way through I realised I was at school with him, and was amused at his self description as being from just outside Glasgow.
Where we are from is only about 25-30 miles from Glasgow, but in the central belt of Scotland, that's a long way. We were also 25 miles from Edinburgh. Just outside either would be a misrepresentation.
I met a guy who told me he was from Chicago. I asked where specifically, and he said he used to have a place 20 blocks east of Lake Shore Drive. I said something like "in the lake?" Oops.
I also tease people whose town is closer to Iowa than Chicago but say they're from Chicago. Not sure why they don't want to claim Des Moines.
Blandings went to Edina? I tutored a few kids there. Mr Robot and I technically lived in Edina for a few years, but it was more Hopkins, really.
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If anyone else is thinking about improvised snow removal tools, a small plastic garbage can with a smooth edge (i.e., no lip around the rim) works surprisingly well.
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I don't get 215.1. At first I was thinking East Chicago or Gary or something, but from Google Maps it doesn't look like the LSD extends that far south.
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Clarification: the garbage can works well for removing a giant pile of snow left by a snow plow behind your car. It doesn't work well for removing a thin layer of snow from a sidewalk.
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DADDY WAS A COP
ON THE (nonexistent) EAST SIDE OF CHICAGO
218: He meant west of LSD, but what a crazy mistake to make if he actually lived there.
220: Born and raised in South Detroit.
223: Inconvenient train schedules with ambiguous destinations.
222.1: Maybe he was originally from California. I only ever found my way home in Chicago because the giant body of water one can't see across is on the correct side.
159: You never went to a diocesan convention, did you? (Neither have I. I'm told that they can be full of intrigue and politics.)
200, 201: I will often say "around here" when asked that question byoc residents who I know are from someplace else.
So direction nazis are a thing. An ex in Boston was obsessed with the most efficient route, and I figured (well, I knew) that she was just weird. You know what, honeybuns, every time I aim for Wayland and don't end up in Yarmouth, that's a win, and I don't really care how it happened.
What the hell were you going to Wayland for?
Her mom lived out there. Pretty place. Eric Montross was their next-door neighbor. He's tall.
Is that another word for gingivitis?
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Somebody posted the incoming message tape from the big group house I lived in (in lieu of going to college) twenty years ago. It is weird and hypnotic and confusing.
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There was a Boston radio station that made a joke song about a guy driving around and singing to himself about all the "Entering <City>" signs- Entering Beverly, Entering Chelsea, until he takes a wrong turn and ends up entering Dennis and Dudley. They didn't try Entering Yarmouth, if only because the local pronunciation would ruin the joke.
235: here you go. It is not a good song.
234: That is freaky. Especially the part at 1:09 where I apparently called you when everybody was going to be gone for a week.
Further, did anyone ever get a hold of Al?
Anyone have much luck with going meta? E.g., "so, what's your least favorite conversational gambit?"
136: Further to the discussion, on the way home I drive past the Sharpsburg Post Office, and as I thought I recalled, it says Sharpsburg Branch and underneath that Pittsburgh PA and the zip code. Seems they did not completely follow the guidelines : According to this from the post office:
Branch: A postal unit administered by a Post Office. Beginning in May 1908 it referred specifically to units located outside of city limits, although that distinction does not always hold true today. (See "Station.")
Station: A postal unit administered by a Post Office. Beginning in May 1908 it referred specifically to units located inside city limits, although that distinction does not always hold true today. (See "Branch.")
And: At the same time, the name of the main Post Office was removed from the branch's postmarking stamp, so that, for example, the postmark would read "Cambridge, Mass.," instead of "Boston, Mass., Cambridge Station."
So, where do you go to church?
In my working class, heavily Catholic, part of Boston (Mass.) you were as likely to be asked what parish do you live in as to be asked in what neighborhood.
150: "Edinburgh, too."
For a split second, I occasionally wonder why people are talking about the Rio Grande Valley.
More Post Office tricks dating from about the same time. No "burghs" allowed in the US. Pittsburgh only place large enough to resist, and even there it was touch and go--still some "Pittsburg" traces from the time, most famously on the old Penn Station next to the current Amtrak station. Edinburg seemed to be named after the edict, so it was named for Edinburgh, but was probably forced to use the shortened version.
241: Definitely still true among old-school Northeast Philadelphians. I've known plenty of non-Catholics (and even non-Christians) who would actually answer with the parish when asked where they lived by a local.
Chicago navigation is about the grid. My wife is a native and always, anywhere in Chicago's hundreds of square miles, knows where she is. But she tolerates alternate routes, unlike those NY/NJ folks. She has favorites, like Irving Park, which I used to tease her by calling it Sendero Luminoso back in the eighties when that was a current reference.
I found in October I could navigate easily in Columbus, not visited in 15 years and not lived in in 30. Seems to be one of those things you remember forever if you learned it at the right time.
by calling it Sendero Luminoso back in the eighties when that was a current reference
OT: The guy who put the final torpedo in the Bismark is still alive. That's impressive.
you were as likely to be asked what parish do you live in as to be asked in what neighborhood.
Totally a mormon thing as well, but they call them "wards".
247: So is the last territorial governor of Alaska. There was just a story in the news today about him.
And, yes, "94-Year-Old Man Falls Down" is the kind of story that makes the news in Alaska.
On the actual topic, I think this differs a lot among different social circles even in the same place. The bit in the article linked in the OP about not asking people in Alaska how they got there doesn't ring true to my experience, but I mostly meet people who grew up in Alaska, and the first thing they usually ask me is whether I did.
ogged's experience on the Rez also seems unfamiliar to me, for basically the same reason.
205 - why would you tell me about creepy seagulls? *shudder*
"So are you a full-time parent, or do you also do paid work?" = "So are you a full-time parent, or do you also get off your arse and do something useful?" and would probably take me aback slightly, even after 17 years of explaining that I'm a lazy bonbon-eater.
I was asked on Sunday by someone I haven't seen for a long time to tell him something funny and something horrible that had happened since we last talked. I didn't.
why would you tell me about creepy seagulls? *shudder*
Don't encourage him.
On the OP, my wife got the same spiel about what's your church when she/we moved to small town SC 18 years ago. As an outsider journalist I don't think she got asked this as much as was predicted.
I'm obsessed with directions too, but I contain multitudes. I love trying different routes and figuring out which seems faster at different times of day. I can rarely do much better than google maps, though. So I just wouldn't be that interested in haranguing someone about the best route. More perceiving than judging, I guess.
253: sheesh, does this really need to be so fraught? the force of the reaction seems more about your hangups than theirs.
ON THE (nonexistent) EAST SIDE OF CHICAGO
Chicago doesn't have an east side at all? Did it break off in a storm and drift away, like the west side of Craggy Island?
152: I don't do anything to do with particle accelerators, I just make a habit of picking holiday destinations by their proximity to things that could destroy the world.
256 - I was wondering why it grated, and I think it's the "also". As in, "do you only do half a job?" Without the "also" it seems quite a normal question. And seriously, probably slightly taken aback comes across as fraught?? Not really.
My mum and dad went on holiday to the LIGO at Livingston a few years ago.
something funny and something horrible that had happened
this sounds like an improved version of "best and worst" that we do to sum up our days at family dinner sometimes.
244: I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, and I never had that conversation, ever. Not once.
246 is unfuckingbelievable. What were they thinking?
261: right up there with the old Scottish Nuclear positive PR campaign, inviting people to check out their power stations' visitor centres. Slogan? "Come and See". Good job Scotland isn't as religious as it used to be.
253, 254: Let's just say that we here at Miniluv have noticed and appreciated your helpful comments on the subject, and will have Room 101 setup to your liking when the time comes.
253, 254: Let's just say that we here at Miniluv have noticed and appreciated your helpful comments on the subject, and will have Room 101 setup to your liking when the time comes.
Chicago doesn't have an east side at all?
I assume you're joking, but in case you're not, Chicago's downtown is along the shore of Lake Michigan, so if you start at downtown and go east, you run into the lake. There's north (wealthy), south (poor), and west (mixed), but no east.
re: 266
I think ajay is getting at the fact that Chicago clearly does have an east side. The bit on the east of the city, no?
Different frames of reference, I suppose. Relative to downtown, versus, not. I don't think British people really think of cities in quite that way.
No, I just didn't know that the middle of Chicago was right on one edge, as it were. I suppose there are probably lots of towns in Britain that don't have one side in that sense.
Right. So the middle of Chicago's downtown ("the Loop") is the point from which north/south/east/west is calculated --the corner of State and Madison to be specific. There are miles of north and miles of south and miles of west -- but there are only a few blocks of east, and you don't get too far out of the Loop before the curve of the shoreline eliminates what little east there was.
But I also suspect that UK people tend not to think of cities in that way either. I wouldn't talk about living in "North Edinburgh" to another Edinburgh resident; I'd say I lived in Leith, or Trinity, or Pilton or whatever.
Further, so the time you get to the North Side, for example, an address right on the lake might be 1100 West Loyola (or whatever). There's a bit more on the south side -- a U of C address might be 1010 E. 59th, but even that only puts you 10 blocks east of the median.
271 is also true of Chicago. People will just give the name of their neighborhood when discussing where they live, but cardinal directions are used often in media where the audience includes the suburbanites who wouldn't know some of the neighborhoods but have a general idea of the geography.
271: A Chicago resident might specify northside or southside, but to another Chicagoan they would definitely say the neighborhood -- Rogers Park or Hyde Park or Lakeview or whatever.
But I also suspect that UK people tend not to think of cities in that way either. I wouldn't talk about living in "North Edinburgh" to another Edinburgh resident; I'd say I lived in Leith, or Trinity, or Pilton or whatever.
London definitely has North, South, East and West, but it's not clearly defined. North and South are relative to the river, of course, but where does it stop being central London? Is Shoreditch East London or North London? As for West London, the West End definitely isn't in it, but is everything west of it?
Anything outside the Roman walls is suburban London.
ogged's experience on the Rez also seems unfamiliar to me
It was a combination of being on the rez and talking to IHS doctors. Broadly, either idealistic docs at the beginning of their career who plan to stay until they have school-aged kids, dedicated lifers who make a career of it and are typically fantastic doctors, or wash-outs, who have either lost a license, have skeletons in their closet, or don't get along so well in polite society. The last group is sizable, so you typically don't ask why they left the last place, or why they came to the new place.
Also is "have skeletons in their closet" metaphorical in this case?
253 etc.: Interesting, because for me the "also" is meant to imply (and seems to be interpreted that way by my listeners as) "Certainly this work of childraising that you are doing is every bit as important as paid work; I don't mean to dismiss it but I am curious about whether you also do paid work."
It's the ALTERNATIVE to saying just plain old "Do you work?" because that implies that parenting isn't work. A huge insult in the social circle I grew up in.
It's really splitting hairs, and will certainly vary from person to person, but ok, my completely over thinking take on it:
You don't ask, are you a full time parent OR do you do paid work, because then the people who do paid work say, hey, I'm a full time parent too, I don't stop being a parent when I'm at work!
So then if you ask, are you a full time parent and do you ALSO do paid work, means do you only do this parenting job that everyone does anyway, or do you have a proper job as well?
I guess using these terms I'd ask, are you at home with It full time, or do you do paid work. But, fuck it. If you're smiling about it, I probably wouldn't actually care.
263 - I used to like you, and find your recall of the fucking archives endearing. Bastard.
282: I can see that interpretation, sure. For whatever reason, though, nobody I've said this to has been (overtly) offended by it. Hopefully none of them are stewing!