"Before it was cool" made me laugh.
What's the odds on him having trouble with the no-fly list?
One might be tempted to go by Alan, or Alfred, Albert, or whatever.
I once had a group of friends where an astonishing number of us had grandfathers named Al, all of which were short for unique longer full names. My own was Alfred.
At some point, I tried writing a joke in Spanish about a guy named Alberto who remains in a place ("Al queda"), but it never really went anywhere.
I once had a group of friends where an astonishing number of us had grandfathers named Al
My maternal grandfather was named Albert and went by Al.
What's the odds on him having trouble with the no-fly list?
I know, but a great set-up for a very subtle pun.
I once had a group of friends where an astonishing number of us had grandfathers named Al
My paternal grandfather was an Al (for Allan Jerome), who was sometimes known as "Big Al." He was "a fine, big man," according to numerous elderly female relations on my father's side of the family, and he was also a hockey player.
4: Alan. Nobody called him Al though. Besides are you just trying to figure out all our credit card security questions??
My father had an Uncle Al -- no direct ancestors I know of.
um, yeah. guys my hotel room in bali is nice but there are ALL THE MOSQUITOES. it has a little pool. I have a wicked bruise on my right palm from cracking my hands together with my substitute wedding ring on (you will recall I lost my actual wedding ring in the ocean last time I went to indonesia.) a chile hood spent in SC has left me with prodigious mozzie killing skills, which is good, because you for sure have to get all the ones INSIDE the net. outside in the room, that's so they don't pour in when I get up to use the toilet.
Wondering if alameiida flies into frenzies of mosquito bloodlust now. My beloved does that. At least that's what she remembers to yell before running across the room and slapping me on the head.
She is also from the sub-tropics, but so am I, and I don't do that.
ALso I would like to register a complaint here that the new murakami novel the colorless tsukuru tazaki was NOT long, or difficult to understand, or the sort of thing that leaves you queasy for days in a possibly good way, but rather, a comparative novella of easy-to-read font, high-steppin' jolly fun times on our alienation from our true selves and the pitiless marching approach of death. I almost took IQ64 also and then thought, 'what kind of asshole brings 2 long murakami novels on one 5 day trip.' now I wish I had been that asshole. rather than the one I am now, conceivably.
I would only take stringent measures like that with a horsefly. I do go into rages of killing them, but not on people, generally.
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The little one literally shat in my face this morning, which I never dreamed was possible. The wonders of parenthood!
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Horseflies, mosquitoes, and babies' surprises. Seems like a set.
22: Window screens not a thing there?
Does anyone know of a good online source for Hebrew books?
32: A quick google yields this and this.
More comprehensive list.
Also this, billing itself as "Download, Read or Print Over 40,000 Hebrew Books for free". Who knows what that amounts to in practice.
Back in the "militarization of the police" thread a few weeks ago, one of the sillier sounding examples was someone's's mention that the police had an armored vehicle on hand for the local annual pumpkin festival.
It looks like they had a use for it after all.
34- It's Hebrew, that's actually 00004 books for free.
Omg, the bride from yesterday just texted me that she got two letters, one from each parent, that she described as "horrifying and cruel" that they had mailed to arrive on the wedding day (except they hadn't bothered to check the mail). (Ie homophobic letters)
37: Oh NO jesus christ. How awful.
(except they hadn't bothered to check the mail)
Negligence saves the day! (But otherwise, how unpleasant!)
I can't imagine being homophobic enough to feel the need to communicate this to your own kid on their wedding day and not being homophobic enough to spring for a Fed Ex delivery with signature required.
I asked her if I could write them back. (She said no.)
Don't people love their children? So incomprehensible.
What makes it extra-painful for the bride is that, aside from the OBVIOUS, they've got a very close and loving relationship. Like, they drive in from Nebraska to watch all of her ballet performances (so I saw them pretty frequently in graduate school). They'd arrive a few days early to help build the set, and stuff like that.
A few months ago they disclosed that a few years ago, they joined a support group for parents whose kids have caught teh gay. It's run by an ex-gay pastor. At that point everyone agreed that they would not be attending the wedding.
Thanks, parsimon, one is in SF, I've left a message with them.
Re horrific correspondence, adding it to my long long looooooong list of reasons to a) avoid marriage, or if you succumb, b) elope.
That seems like letting the parents win, in this situation. The ceremony and weekend was wonderful, loving, etc, and the person who officiated was half of the in loco parentis duo, who used to be best friends with the brides parents and so watched the bride grow up, and I believe they are no longer friends with the parents because of this issue.
Also if they had just skipped getting married, then the parents would never come to suffer the deep regret that I hope befalls them.
That seems strange that the parents could more or less accept the relationship but not the relationship as a marriage.
Oh, they hadn't. They were just being stoic and uncommunicative and everyone was pretending things were heading in the direction that they preferred.
Iowa is right out of my keen. All I know is that Council Bluffs pretty much sucks and Iowa City is nice.
45. Has there ever been anyone who got married who didn't consider the elope option?
Lord yes. Most people I know get all kinds of hung up on the event.
We didn't. I liked our wedding.
Your wedding-versus-license story is one of my favorites, though, heebz. (And your friends' celebration sounds lovely! Yay for them! Not that random internet strangers really make up for parental negligence.)
And since we're far enough into the thread, is it worth reading The Goldfinch? I got it from the library and so I probably will rather than send it back unread (which I'm doing with The Magician King, which I thought was the third book and then in last night's bath with nothing else to read was creeped out by how familiar it seemed and then finally realized it wasn't and that I'd read it already and that no way was I going to put myself through that again, although apparently I'll still read a sequel.)
56: The picture I remember you posting to Flickr is beautiful.
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Tossing half an almost-dead vanilla pod into the water steeping your almost-dead pu erh isn't a terrible idea.
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57, 59: aw thanks! respectively.
I need calibration for what nosflow considers a terrible idea.
Regarding haircuts, I get my hair cut by a friend of mine who works at a salon in town. She started cutting my hair when she was still training and needed volunteers to practice on. The thing is, she's now fully certified but still charges me the practice rate of $15 when it's now supposed to be like $40. So I feel guilty and end up tipping her like $10-15, to which she reacts by being sort of embarrassed.
$40? That's a very expensive haircut.
Tipping somebody who gives you as a discount as if they had not given you the discount is just what one does, no?
That is an expensive haircut, though.
I think of $40 as being a mid-range price. One step up from supercuts.
Ditto. I guess manhair is different.
65: What I've heard and done is to calculate the amount of the tip based on the non-discounted amount, not to give the entire difference as the tip. If someone is offering you the gift of a discount, it seems wrong to effectively decline the gift by turning it around like that.
66 is right. This may be gendered, but $200 is a very expensive haircut, $40.... isn't.
I think 65 and 68 are saying the same thing. If full price is $40, and you'd normally tip 20%, then even if you get a discount to $15, you tip $8, because it's 20% of the full price.
I pay $25 with tip and I feel very fancy doing so.
68: right, right. That's what I meant. Calculate the tip as if you had paid full price. Which I guess means Stanley is overtipping. Dammit, Stanley!
66, 68: huh. I mean, I get my hair cut at a regular place (which is to say, not Supercuts), they do a good job, they also cut womanhair, I live in an expensive part of the world, and I pay $25. Dunno. Maybe this is like how states with no income taxes have painfully high sales tax? Texas charges nothing for daycare but makes it up on haircuts.
But what do they charge for lady-haircuts!
That was supposed to be a question mark, not a zinger.
I pay about $25, but the chain I go to is just a smidge above Supercuts. The big savings comes from getting only one haircut every eighteen months or so, though.
55: Lord yes. Most people I know get all kinds of hung up on the event.
The one nurse from Dallas who flew up to NE Ohio apparently did so for wedding planning and preparation. I don't really know the details, but I do wonder what role if any the massive pressures associated with the wedding-industrial complex may have played.
At least otherwise very good news on the Dallas front, however, as Duncan's fiancée has made it through the quarantine period with no symptoms.
It's because our buttons are on the wrong side of our shirts.
75 is impressive. I know you work for the state, LB, but don't you get like kicked out of grocery stores and so on?
Maybe she'll be featured in the NYC analog of "People of Walmart."
I just realized I never, ever, ever have to fly in a plane while pregnant again in my life. I'm so happy.
On me, it looks insouciantly stylish.
Honest.
Flying while pregnant: insouciant perhaps, but stylish?
Don't give ned the wrong idea, here. He's close enough to swanning about in a muumuu as it is.
Do other people's non-Supercuts haircuts come with a follow-up freebie? I usually go back 6-8 weeks after the initial cut for a quick "shape up," which extends the life of haircut for several more weeks. So even if I were paying the full $40, it'd be a pretty good deal: it's basically two haircuts.
Wait what? You get two haircuts for $15? Plutocrat! Insider!
I've been cutting my own hair for years now, mainly with clippers though I'm also playing a long game and totally intentionally removing it from my head entirely one hair (or two) at a time. But haircuts actually cost fifty-some dollars these days? You guys know that stuff grows back afterwards, right?
Well, I mean, not all of it, for all of us. But mainly it does.
Also 60 is probably right: those two flavors really could go well together if the vanilla doesn't overpower everything.
I get my hair cut about once every 4-6 months.
Also, I hope I have as much of a sense of presence as this guy* if my 15 minutes ever come up.
"I wish people would freak out this much about climate change," he said. "It's one of those problems that's real easy for the media to cover, rather than some of those other problems that people should be more concerned with."
*Was in bridal shop getting fitted for a tux about the same time Vinson was there**.
**Although headline only needs "Local" added to the front to be nearly Onion-worthy: "Man not worried about Ebola after visiting same bridal shop as Amber Joy Vinson."
84 led me through questionable associations to imagine Buster from Arrested Development saying: "So insouciant, yet there's a smack of style to it."
90 - If I ever run into Peter Pattakos, I'm buying him a beer.
90: It's quite impressive that he was able to give both that quote and this one:
"I didn't exchange any bodily fluids with anyone, so I'm not worried about it," he said. "I'm much more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer in this country than to be killed by Ebola, even if you were in the same bridal shop."
Zing!
90: I wonder which is larger, the percentage of Americans who don't believe climate change is caused by humans, or the percentage of West Africans who don't believe Ebola is caused by a virus.
Rude Pundit tweet from a day or two ago:
Does any Republican talking about Ebola say, "I'm not a scientist" like they do with climate change?
58: So, subsequent to the last Goldfinch thread I did read it. I think there's a great 250-page Patricia Highsmith thriller in there, but it's 750 pages long, and if you hated the characters in The Secret History you really aren't going to like this lot. In your position I wouldn't read it unless I knew people who were going to keep annoyingly guilting me about it.
I guess that unclosed tag doesn't really alter the tone of the comment.
oddly, weirdly, bizarrely, SE asia doesn't believe in window screens and/or has never heard of them. I experienced some dismay when I realized that the endless hand-carved artistry of my verandah makes it impossible to screen. I am going to blow everyone's mind by having screens and screen sliding doors. I just started an indonesian business bank account this actual moment (they came to me, very nice.) I'm gettin'r'done! remember how I bought part of an island and then just did nothing, paying almost 1000 a month to store my shipping container which I can't receive in the port of jakarta because I don't have the right visa? my husband remembers that time, since he has panic attacks about it every day. now I'm doing stuff! I don't know if I'm going to have to divide and sell part of the land to make up for the fact that I'm so deeply irresponsible and have spent so much money on just life that I need to try to push us into the black. it's too bad my business is going out of business leaving me with maybe nothing after years of effort and investment. it was the one time I ever tried to do something right. maybe my business partner shouldn't have pulled the plug on the show they were going to do about us on A&E. TWICE. on the positive side land prices have quadrupled in the area since 2011. I am a fuck-up, but I'm a prescient fuck-up with good taste. what did I even spend the most money on? traveling to see family. and narnia is the most expensive city in the world. looking back I always think, "I should have bought more expensive jewelry--that lasts." I feel I shouldn't apply this lesson going forward, however. YOLO, conceivably? no one should feel sorry for me, I'm just kind of marveling at what a dumbass I am and how frustrating it would be to be married to someone so crazy.
58: my mom read it and said "you think 'oh my god this opening is so fascinating and so beautifully written,'but then it becomes lame and trite." my mom's always right.
58: No. I don't know what you should read instead, though. I often feel like this crowd is the worst possible audience for my book recommendations. ACTUALLY you should read kayak's book of short stories, obviously. Email me for title.
My wife cuts my hair and all the boys hair. We save several hundred dollars a year. She took the girl in for a real cut the only time we've done her though. And she won't let me cut her hair after a poor attempt, but like others she only cuts it 1-2x per year.
I usually go back 6-8 weeks after the initial cut for a quick "shape up,"
At the rate my hair grows, there's no plausible way you could call a hair cut after 8 weeks anything other than another haircut.
I cut my own hair except for a true, super-short pixie. I'm letting it grow out slightly now even though it looks derpy because I'm being rule 63 klarion the warlock-girl for halloween and I need it to have doofy curls at the side. after that I'm going back to the salon for the hitler youth/my friend in 1990 cut that's very short on the sides and back but has a long floppy piece on top. I know it's sort of passé but eh.
I need to cut my hair; I usually grow it out when I'm going to see my mom, which I did a couple weeks ago, then cut it when I get home. I was going to cut it this weekend but never got around to it. Maybe next weekend.
lurid, how does one email you for title?
There is no way I am confessing what and how often I pay to have my hair cut. Oh, whatever. $50 + $10 tip, every 8-12 weeks.
90-93: The next entry on his Facebook page (after the bridal shop article) includes the line "Only two people have a U.S. federal holiday named after them: MLK, and a child rapist/mass murderer who founded the transatlantic slave trade and was probably the most accomplished human trafficker in history." Thumbs up, Peter Pattakos!
I was just noticing that you had liked his link to the bridal shop article and that he appears to be FB friends with a mutual friend of both ours and the blog. He seems like an awesome guy.
At this address. I feel like I should throw in some misinformation about how it's a collection of thirty-eight short short stories slash prose poems that are, like, if George Saunders and Lydia Davis went on a date and only talked about pigs. But then someone will respond "oh, huh, I think I figured out who your husband is IRL" and it will be impossible to go on.
As short pieces about pigs go, though, they are blisteringly, bloodcurdlingly, Weltanschauung-rearrangingly unfunny. But I'm biased.
(Seriously -- I am biased but it's a good book, very heterogeneous.)
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So, yeah, it's definitely snowing right now. Not that there's anything unusual about that.
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Yes, probably not worth reading The Goldfinch. I read it, but it wasn't great. Not as good as The Secret History.
I usually go back 6-8 weeks after the initial cut for a quick "shape up,
I don't understand what this is, but then I only recently (early August) got my first haircut in, what, four years?
Yes, baffling to me. 6-8 weeks after I get my hair cut, I go back for "another haircut".
But then I keep my hair fairly short to allow my mighty brain to shed heat when it's running at max revs, while teo's priority is probably insulation against the pitiless Arctic winter.
I had a really awesome and inexpensive haircut last spring and have just been letting it grow out since, though I guess one time I had Lee even out the layers at the back and I'll probably do that in another inch or so. I'll probably let it keep growing through the winter and then once it gets long enough that I'm forever putting it up in buns and ponytails tell myself that it may as well be short then and restart the cycle. I guess I am LB?
I will definitely email to find out about lourkay's book! And I got about 12 other books from the library, so I have no shortage of things to read. Just they're all fiction because Selah was with me running around (and she chose Their Eyes Were Watching God as the only book she took out and didn't immediately put back in the right place, and I'll gladly reread that!) and so maybe I should go back and hit up the nonfiction again soon some day when I finish work before I have to get them from daycare/aftercare.
So, yeah, it's definitely snowing right now. Not that there's anything unusual about that.
Each year I was in Michigan, it flaked at least on or before Halloween. I would have actually thought Alaska would be earlier, but I guess GLOBAL WARMING.
Oh, and since I was being bitter about the state of my relationship, I should relate that Lee came home from watching football last night and remembered I'd said I liked when we read together in bed last week, so we did that again for the second time since having children, probably. Just something as simple as being next to each other without the tv on helps me a lot, and maybe won't stay as surprisingly rare as it has been.
71. I'm with Moby. $25 every five weeks.
It's a salon that does both men's haircuts and all the involved and expensive women's hair stuff. The woman who cuts my hair can do several men's cuts in the time it takes for one step of the complex washing/cutting/styling/coloring/etc. for women.
119: My fiance has short hair that needs to be cut every 3-4 weeks. He pays $10, but those people are fast and don't do women's hair. No shampoo.
My person used to be $35 or $40, but he's moved around and now it might be $65.
When I was in college $100 was considered crazily extravagant and something that only the owner of a top salon could charge. In a few years more people will get away with prices like that. $80 is not uncommon.
98: Twice. I thought that the show went through the second time.
Last summer I started going to a fancy salon for my haircuts, and I've been surprised that no one has tried to sell me any product, not even once. Also, everyone who works there has been unfailingly nice. I'm not sure the cost is worth it, but I don't know where else to go either. It was already such a huge decision to leave the woman who had been cutting my hair for 12+ years. (She was great at the Jean Seberg cut, but once I let it grow out, she seemed unable to give me any haircut but the shapeless bob of a dowdy, late middle-aged female professor.)
I have an absurd amount of hair, kept barely in tolerable order by a high skilled professional and it's both expensive and time consuming. Luckily she is fine with me not chatting during our looooong séances.
Donna tart's books sound tiresome. I'm finishing Un roman russe by Carrère, he is one crazy ass dude. Parts of it are quite good, and certainly it is one of the better done extended views from inside totally abusive guy.
Montana has a Wobbly running for Senate? Awesome.
125: My stylist used to try to sell me stuff politely, but he knows that I don't buy it, and I always tip him a little extra to make up for that, since I'm sure that somebody is watching.
Based on information from this thread, I've now recalculated how much I've saved by cutting my own hair, and I feel richer and smarter. If I'm supposed to be paying sixty bucks every eight weeks, that comes to well over six grand over seventeen years. I should buy myself something nice.
My haircut's $15+$5 tip from a nice local salon. It's a fast, efficient operation. I return every 6-8 weeks, after intending to return every 4-6 and not making on schedule.
Somehow, I always free up time for a Monday haircut, and every non-Supercuts place in town is closed on Monday.
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Uggh, not good news from Kevin Drum.
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This is the place to go to for Hebrew books online: http://www.stmus.com/prod/ just FYI.
Each year I was in Michigan, it flaked at least on or before Halloween. I would have actually thought Alaska would be earlier, but I guess GLOBAL WARMING.
Well, there's Alaska and then there's Alaska. In Barrow it snows in July.
It snowed this year in Calgary sometime around Labor Day weekend.
Anyway, the snow is pretty much all melted by now, but there's a chance we'll get some more tonight.
