My neighbors and his son have their picture in the paper. They're riding unicycles. The picture is mislabeled, but still.
3: How many wheels did the caption claim?
The avos'ka, or "naybe/off-chance bag". An easily portable string bag you carry around in case there's a queue for necessities you can join.
Those two plastic card-containing envelopes that I had thought to be replacement credit cards (for expiring ones) turned out to be a pair of $25 gift cards from the blood bank. It was only a couple weeks ago that I sent away for them, but I'd forgotten they were coming.
IOW, I cleaned up my office and found $50.
"Not all who wander are lost" is Tolkien? An Amazon ad just told me this.
$50 isn't going to get you very much blood.
9: Yes. It's something from a poem Bilbo wrote about Aragorn.
The czech word for sporty tires too wide for the car is slippers. Hawaiians call flip-flops slippers. Czech for a nice rack is "awesome goats". I don't know the equivalent in Hawaii, but I guess there'd be one.
This guy, Steffen Dam, does very nice glass, will be showing at SOFA in Chicago this weekend. He has an NYC gallery also.
I have a (third? fourth?) date tonight!
Idiom-wise, Chilean Spanish for "tipsy" is arriba de la pelota ("on top of the ball," like you're trying to stay standing on top of a soccer ball).
An Italian former coworker uses the phrase "You are getting on my stomach" rather than nerves, accompanied by a gesture of a cupped hand, palm down at about chest height.
In personal good news, I got a one year contract extension to continue as a peon working on projects I love with bosses I like and respect. It was a bit iffy because there's a push from higher up not to grant extensions, but apparently standards are still low enough that they kept me.
11 - IIRC it's in a letter Gandalf writes to Frodo.
16: Yes. But when Bilbo sees Frodo next, he says the wrote those lines.
11, 16: Both are correct.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king
Bilbo's poem quoted in Ganfdalf letter to Frodo (and apprantly by Frodo at Rivendell as well.)
I kind of though 11 was a joke. I can't get into LOTR at all.
I've always been charmed by the expression "wie Gott in Frankreich." Living like God, even *a* god, in France would be pretty, pretty sweet.
I like the Hebrew expression for smart aleck which translates as "smart at night".
Then there's the expression people use when you make a big deal of realizing something obvious -- "you've discovered America!"
I'm sending out a bill for a change. Big ups to the Herbert Kornfeld posse.*
Oh, wait, I have to go to D.C. for a conference. Mood plummeting.
* I do not know what this means.
"Kabelsalat", cable salad, that mess of cables and connectors behind the TV and computer.
I have a (third? fourth?) date tonight!
Idiom-wise, Chilean Spanish for "tipsy" is arriba de la pelota ("on top of the ball," like you're trying to stay standing on top of a soccer ball).
Is the ordinal uncertainty related to the tipsiness?
I can't find any individual words, but was amused by this quote from Rafa Benitez.
"He's lying," Benítez said. "Materazzi is lying. He's lying, just lying. Everything that he said is a lie. Simple. When he was talking [about] Mourinho, it's a lie. About the pictures, it's a lie. So he's a liar,"
I am more a fan of individual German phrases, particularly if untranslated.
"Kanonenkugeln hatten hohe Durchschlagskraft"
I just got told by the poor droid in EE tech support that I was the most polite customer he has had all morning. I am absurdly proud of this.
No he's got too many girlfriends to keep count.
12: Love that glass.
I finished a workshop of Olivier Kemeid's adaptation of The Aneid. I'm happy to work, and this was a good project.
My son is reading, joyfully, after a long slog of exercises to improve his binocular vision.
I don't drink beer anyway and the spices don't sound appealing, but it's amused me to hear my local friends getting excited about Thundersnow.
12: OMG, now I really, really want to find a context where I can tell someone they have "awesome goats."
Do you know anyone who would accept, "I'm sorry, I didn't intend to sexually harass you. I just needed a chance to deploy this loopy Czech idiom" as an excuse?
Good news from yesterday? Well technically this morning- my brother neglected to tell me that he was diagnosed with cancer last week and was going in for surgery this morning but mentioned to his wife on the way to the hospital that he hadn't told me so she told my wife who texted me to call her about something moderately urgent so I found out on my way to work. But the positive is that it's a very treatable cancer with just surgery, pretty much 100% 5-year survival, no chemo or radiation likely required.
So pretty much like the elections in that we'll probably all still be alive two years from now even though it might suck.
I am not now being devoured by wolves.
35: Perhaps someone to whom you are bound in holy matrimony!
I'm glad that I had a recital last night, my chorus did, and glad for the timing, as it meant I could avoid election coverage for most of the evening. I had been performing in a musical comedy on election night 2000, and was always grateful about it.
When we finally got home we were a bit irritable with one another because she wants to watch returns and news in general, I don't and don't want to be in the room. This in turn is a rejection of her, and so it goes. This despite usually agreeing with me about the awfulness of coverage, framing, narrative. I would just as soon not take it in in that form.
An endless MSNBC panel discussion, on any or all subjects, closely approximates my idea of hell.
There's a new longform article by Brian Phillips about sumo wrestling.
And the soccer team my friends support got promoted for the first time in 5 years and then this happened.
I went on a date of a sufficiently advanced ordinality that I have no idea what its ordinality is.
36: I'm so sorry to hear that. There really are many cancers that are quite manageable these days
I got about $200 in the mail from a state unclaimed property office - it's from a summer job in college, my guess is I never cashed the check. I found it from missingmoney.com, which is where these state offices put all their information together.
Fremdscham.
This is an emotion rather than a thing; it's what you feel when someone does something they ought to be deeply ashamed of, but somehow they aren't, and you feel shame on their behalf. I suspect that election day is a great opportunity to experience it.
You can use it as a derived, separable verb: ich schäme mich fremd
Do you know anyone who would accept, "I'm sorry, I didn't intend to sexually harass you. I just needed a chance to deploy this loopy Czech idiom" as an excuse?
"When I called you a butterface, I really meant goat's cheese. Because you see... Stop hitting me!"
I bless lesbians constantly, everywhere
42 cracked me up.
I'd like ttaM to weigh in on the 'awesome goats' front, as the only other commenter I can think of with a hcezC connection.
48. Google this phrase in image search " Úžasné kozy" with a professional colleague in your office if you doubt me.
All right, really I just wanted an excuse to spell Czech backwards.
49. That does return a few pictures of women with large breasts, but far more goats, babies of indeterminate sex, pictures of an orangutan swimming with a dog, pair of boots and random cosmetics. Would you care to explain further?
But make sure that safe-search is on, esp. if you have a professional colleague in your office.
Woohoo! I made it to a front page post mention.
I think it's a good time to leave the country for a few years.
As for foreign idioms I enjoyed learning about the Serbian Vukojebina "where wolves fuck" for an out of the way place in the sticks.
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/08/where-wolves-fuck.html
Czech for a nice rack is "awesome goats".
I wonder what movie audiences in the Czech Republic were expecting when they went to see The Men Who Stare at Goats.
I did a google video search of the phrase "úžasné kozy" and got all porn. I then cut this sentence from one of the porn descriptions:
"Nikola má úžasné kozy a pěkně kouří z kategorie České holky"
and got this from Google translate:
"Nikola has amazing tits and a nice smoke from category Czech girls"
An image search, though, just gives me pictures of goats.
I always liked El mundo es un pañuelo; literally, "The world is a handkerchief," which communicates the same idea as "Small world!" to American English speakers.
But apparently to some a minority of Spanish speakers it is amusingly more colloquial and becomes "The world is a diaper."
I feel as if I have said this here before.
Also, it's a bit weird that every candidate I voted for won, and yet the general mood is tepid at best.
As I'm sure I have mentioned here before, the generic "really terrible" in Chinese translates as "pickle cake."
In Russian you wish someone good luck by saying "No down, no feathers" as if they were going bird hunting. Similar to wishing good luck in English by saying "break a leg." The typical Russian response is to say "go to hell."
51. Sure, but first just to verify that your computer is working correctly, please send me all of your Bitcoin.
Sorry, I thought context made this clear-- LB (who actually just wanted to type a funny word) wrote a face-value question about translation accuracy. I responded with a high-stakes suggestion for a test-- I am in a cubicle, so I didn't pre-verify.
The phrase means what I say, I think has social valence equivalent to "nice rack", which in English is something I'm unlikely to say out loud, but which a group of teenagers standing outside might say, or group of marketing guys might say anywhere. How likely the phrase is to be used for tagging photos I have no idea. If you're unhappy, maybe other adjectives "obrovske" "nadherne" or "pekne" would work. The goat-derived adjective for busty is "kozaty" but I have no idea at all of usage context for that. Probably sarcastic. Most of my friends are my age or at most 15 years younger, not sure how to assay what the kids are saying since I am 5000 miles away from the relevant bars.
Anyone else happy about anything?
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. Which is good, because otherwise he probably would be North Carolina's incoming junior senator.
As for foreign idioms I enjoyed learning about the Serbian Vukojebina "where wolves fuck" for an out of the way place in the sticks.
This reminds me of WC Fields' stated reason for not drinking water.
I started having sex with one of my colleagues last week. I'm pretty happy about that.
But apparently to some a minority of Spanish speakers it is amusingly more colloquial and becomes "The world is a diaper."
Truth.
64: I guess that tantric stuff really does work.
68 Argh, joke ruined by extraneous apostrophe.
60 correction- "kozata" for the adjective I guess, "kozaty" is the male form of the word, which doesn't make sense.
64: Congratulations to both of you!
I started having sex with one of my colleagues last week.
And you still haven't finished? Man, I miss being young.
Eh, it might not last the week, or we could end up together forever. Could really go either way at this point.
My brother - of the General Petraeus email scheme - has lately been describing household subterfuge, wherein he's stealthily training the kids to read his actions/words/body language on more than one level - one level aimed at keeping the peace with my SIL, and the other for them to go do what they want, but stealthily behind her back. Explaining to them better ways of doing things covertly, examples of saying "No" verbally but gesturing with his hands that they should in fact do the thing on the DL, etc.
He's kind of gleeful and enjoying the duplicity, and it's easy to laugh and get a kick out of the stories on that level, but what a holy effed up situation, overall.
I know this isn't good news, but it's kind of salacious gossip which is not depressing in the same way as the other thread.
The avos'ka, or "naybe/off-chance bag". An easily portable string bag you carry around in case there's a queue for necessities you can join.
I was introduced to this term by an East German friend. A Fallstasche, as in, Falls ich etwas kaufe.
76: Oh my dear sweet lord. Is there any way you could get your whole family to stage an intervention? Your nephews/nieces are going to be so fucked up.
I love the German phrase "so klein mit Hut" - this small with a hat, accompanied by a the thumb and index finger indicating someone verrrrry small. Expresses embarrassment or having been laid low.
78: Maybe they could sit down and watch Ernest Goes to Family Court?
78: Like with both of them? Or just at him, to maybe reconsider this strategy?
For the latter, I could pretty easily get him to acknowledge that his strategy has its problems, but I think he could make a strong case that it's necessary and practical to teach the kids some form of tact and diplomacy in navigating around their mother.
For the former...I have no idea. It's hard to think of anything that involves her and doesn't make his life harder.
82: I was thinking of an intervention with plane tickets and motel reservations for him and the kids to get away from her. (Unfortunately, I figure this is counterproductive custody-wise, so not that exactly.) But seriously, can you imagine growing up thinking that was how adults in committed relationships related to each other? Fear and treachery all the way?
But seriously, can you imagine growing up thinking that was how adults in committed relationships related to each other? Fear and treachery all the way?
Eh... how old were you when you found out?
56, 65: But apparently to some a minority of Spanish speakers it is amusingly more colloquial and becomes "The world is a diaper."
Truth.
Right. What you get out of it depends on what someone else puts into it.
83: Oh yes, certainly. I cling to the occasional article that say things like "one thing that tends to characterize resilient children through crises is the presence of at least one stable adult figure in their life".
86: LadyBird--a good aunt or uncle can do wonders in situations like that.
Oh, they'll probably be grossly fine -- middle class, no one's hitting anyone, and so on. And everyone ends up with emotional issues from somewhere.
I should really do more on the good aunt front, there. What are actual concrete things that I could do? Do I have to call and talk to the kids? Do I have to send goodies on the lesser holidays? I see them once every few years, which will not change. They're 8, 6, and 4.
The answer I'm hoping for is that there's nothing much to do until they're teenagers, at which point I should do [X]. (Calling and talking to kids, and sending goody bags is not the kind of thing that I particularly enjoy, but I'd do it if that's the answer.)
Basically all interaction will be heavily monitored until they're old enough to sneak around her back, at which point I'm not sure they'd have any reason to look to me for trust/guidance/etc.
Living at a distance is hard -- I don't know how you get close with kids you don't live near.
Start a charitable foundation.
I am in a different situation, but could someone explain how a divorce would decrease the amount of fear and treachery when the couple can't agree on unavoidable, important questions but there are no issues of abuse?
Every time I have thought it through (often), it looks like divorce would only increase the opportunities for treachery and fighting. Plus, I have found that the implicit threat of divorce is close to the only tool I have to get anything close to a compromise on basic stuff (such as not spending every holiday with her family or not registering the kids for new schools without telling me).
I think it can transform treachery into simple open disagreement, if you see what I mean? "Yes dear", with hand signals indicating "Go, disobey your mother" is treachery. "Your mother and I disagree about what school you should go to, and that's one of the things we're hashing out in the custody agreement" is disagreement, and seems less likely to produce emotionally twisted kids.
But mostly, what do I know, and I shouldn't be telling anyone to get divorced. I'm making flip comments on the Internet.
90: From the kid's perspective. Send goodies. They don't have to be gifts. Cards and letters are ok. Don't forget their birthdays. When they are older, invite them to visit you without their parents. Call the 8 year-old.
Do anything and everything that gives them the opportunity to feel like kids and not like little adults who have to parent their mother.
I was introduced to this term by an East German friend. A Fallstasche, as in, Falls ich etwas kaufe.
Oh nice. I guess it makes sense that other eastern block countries (and maybe places like Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany) would have an equivalent concept. It's pretty cool that they have similar etymological logic, though.
Whoo. Sorry I blew your bubble on the waiting until they're teenagers bit. Of course, you should only do what you feel you can do well. Although doing some things that you don't love if they aren't too onerous can be meaningful.
Mostly whatever you do should be done reliably over many years, so if it's only a birthday card, but as teenagers you let them know that you're around, that's great.
Either way, the kids will probably need lots of therapy.
"Your mother and I disagree about what school you should go to, and that's one of the things we're hashing out in the custody agreement" is disagreement
I don't see what the custody agreement adds as far as minimizing treachery. If a parent with custody (joint or sole) doesn't like the agreement, they can fight with the school over every little issue. It looks a great deal like dedicated parenting.
More desk-chair psychologizing for Wry -- also, you haven't really described your situation, but Lady Bird's brother is raising kids in a family structure where you've got a scary person, and a sane person who fears, placates, and evades the scary person. I've got to think that's going to do something odd to their sense of how to deal with stressful situations in a way that joint custody with at least one sane household wouldn't.
99: Conflict isn't treachery. If you have a seriously misguided parent who can't be persuaded in the mix, you can't avoid conflict. But the saner person can at least handle things straightforwardly and honestly, and in a way where the kids are sheltered from the immediate conflict as much as possible.
I agree that using hand signals to say when you can ignore the other parents is a whole different something than my own situation. And I have private email and such.
94: Registering the kids for new schools without telling you seems like kind of a big deal to me. I don't have advice to give (I can certainly fake it if you want), but in that position I think I'd go to the screaming meltdown level of fighting with my partner.
That's what I did (the second time it happened) and what I meant by "implicit threat of divorce" above.
No schools were actually changed on either occasion.
For continuity's sake, Wry, I'm assuming you're President Buchanan? You mentioned the school registration thing before, and I figure it can't have happened to two lurkers.
Have you considered the possibility that your marital problems come from the fact that you're our only gay president? Just putting that out there.
WC, I don't do this kind of work myself, but it seems to me that a comprehensive court approved parenting plan is going to go a long way in establishing boundaries within which conflict can take place.
Wry, I had fairly deep conflict about school also, only 1 kid for me. I bent over backwards not to divorce, because I judged that a single home with deep problems and conflict would be better than 50-50 custody between crazytown and the place I'd cobble together as a single parent. How old are your kids, and how miserable are you?
ie, if addiction or crazy actions driven by despair from misery are a risk for you, divorce looks better, otherwise no. IMO thoughts about consistency and openness being virtues worth sacrificing for have pretty limited scope. They're considerations that apply only as rounding error to the many, many families where there are much more serious faultlines.
Why are we talking about divorce in the cheer-me-up thread?
Anyway, that's probably where I'm heading. I've come to realize that it's a pretty bad sign when the best feature of a relationship is unsatisfying sex.
Yeah, I know nothing close up about divorce, and am the apparently fairly sane product of a truly terrible (although not particularly treacherous, that I was exposed to) marriage, so I shouldn't be telling anyone to get divorced or not.
Except for Lady Bird's brother who honestly sounds like he's being abused.
109 may also be applicable to 112, given Joshua Speed and all. I mean, it's not me, you guys are the ones picking the presidential names.
64 is just great.
|| I was asked out this morning by a client* - sadly this only provides verification for my belief that men who find me attractive are just precisely those men with whom I have zero mental whateverness. Like, I'd say, doesn't read books or non-tabloid papers, or anything on the internet except just maybe Facebook, didn't go to college or self-educate, would never get what I was on about. I could be wrong in this case but i don't think so. Not espcially attractive looking to me either as far as I remember but that's the least of my issues.
I declined by saying I am seeing somebody, complete lie but kindest way to turn down what was a polite approach.>
I am obliged to weigh in that divorce is great, right? I encourage everyone to go through two or three of them.
Done properly, a divorce can assist people in communicating better about many of the issues listed above.
In Polish, "I didn't just fall off the Christmas tree" is the equivalent of "I wasn't born yesterday".
As for divorce... in the absence of abuse (physical, emotional, financial, etc), I would say that if you see a realistic possibility for the relationship to improve with time, it is commendable to stay (divorce is no fun at all) but if you don't, it is healthier and more life-giving for everyone if you get out, generally sooner rather than later.
The apocryphal "frog in slowly heating water" effect of a bad or toxic relationship (it gets worse and you don't even notice what you're missing) can be incredible.
117 last: I picture the frog finally leaping out -and then, "OMG! It's freezing out here!" and jumping back in
This is great! I'd been considering an ATM about divorce with children.
Here's something more cheerful than the election results: The extremely grim TV show Happy Valley. I watched the last 4 episodes last night.
The subtitling was interesting. They simplified the language, not even bothering to write "owt" and "nowt", just translating the characters' words into "anything" and "nothing". there were a couple other words like that.
A few of the characters also drop the word "the" a lot. Sentences like "Why do we have a police woman at door?" Until now I didn't realize this was part of the Yorkshire dialect, or any British dialect (except, for some reason, the word "hospital").
But in some of these cases I thought the "the" was not dropped, just barely perceptible. What is the actual dialect? Were they saying "police woman at door", or "police woman at t'door"?
Prison is a better analogy. You won't die, but there are going to be adjustments in outlook and behavior to make when things change. Think of Cutty in season 3.
119: So spill? What are the specifics you wanted to ask about?
115: Would saying that you don't date clients work? Or would you just lose a client and need a new reason?
120.3: "in hospital" and "in future" instead of "in the hospital" and "in the future" still sound weird to me. I guess "in hospital" makes sense since we often don't distinguish which one, and we otherwise say things like "in school" to mean being not only physically within the institution's buildings but enrolled within it.
Cuban Spanish
"le ronca el mango" -- it snores the mango -- meaning "incredibly bad"
"tratando de meter La Habana en Guanabacoa" -- trying to fit Havana (a large city) into Guanabacao (a small suburb of ) -- meaning "trying to fit something big into too small of a container (canonically, an ass into a short skirt)"
"la luz no llega al ultimo piso "-- the light doesn't reach the top floor -- meaning "s/he's dumb"
"ese huevo quiere sal" -- that egg wants salt -- meaning "something doesn't sound right about that"
Does Cuba have a problem with high blood pressure?
109 may also be applicable to 112, given Joshua Speed and all.
The case for Lincoln is pretty weak stuff.
115: I feel like I have the opposite. I am attractive to people with whom I have compete mental whateverness but zero mutual romantic appeal. This sort of thing is absolutely a fine arrangement to me, but then I end up involved with people who long to be tortured by love. Hence my caution in this situation. We're great together, but I certainly have no freedom to fall madly in love, and my colleague is historically into dramatic emotionally abusive princesses.
128: Oh! Is this a colleague previously mentioned because of, uh, his involvement with a dramatic, emotionally abusive princess?
129: I don't think I've mentioned him here. Maybe I did? But yes, he has had a series of overlapping DEAPs, each one driving him into the arms of the next, in rapid succession. I'll either be a good safe cozy place to chill out emotionally for a while or a source of tremendous anxiety and boredom. It remains to be seen! But I have made it clear that I have no desire whatsoever to be fantasized into some cruel goddess.
123: I went on instinct and I'd say I won't have to revisit the question. In fairness I don't think this guy would react that way anyway - as it happens too it's a probate case so it will come to an end by itself in time, also technically his brother the executor is the client. Probably I will only meet them in person once more in four or five months time.
I realize this guy isn't for you, but just for future reference, if you say that you met a partner when he was your client and you work in probate, at least you have a good set-up for a necrophilia joke.
There are no bad setups for necrophilia jokes, only failed executions.
130: maybe think of it as a chance not to always apply the super fair and reasonable conduct filter that friends deserve, let yourself be in a bad or capricious mood from time to time if that's how you feel. Eg I will be more grumpy if feeling so in my brother's company (we share an apt.)
A failed execution is a bad setup for necrophilia itself.
134: Ha! It had occurred to me that my stern admonitions regarding not wishing to be a fantasy object have already, in certain ways, backfired, as I have merely provided him with new ways of imagining the DEAP as an emotionally withholding, hyperintellectual careerist.
.. But I feel obliged to suppress this in fairness to friends. Feck, not explaining all that well. Different reason totally for my not suppressing in brother's company, than that for which I am suggesting this to you.
But I have made it clear that I have no desire whatsoever to be fantasized into some cruel goddess.
Because you already get that here.
The Samuel Beckett Motivational Cat Posters tumblr is pretty much the only thing that has cheered me up today, along with a few of the above comments. Same as most days, basically.
|| I am drafting a will and looking at recent ones on the server. I see one client has directed that 1,000 be spent on her wake, that she be cremated and her ashes scattered in (local scenic coastal spot) to the sounds of "No Woman, No Cry". >
141: I'd never seen that. It was great. Especially the "nothing is funnier than unhappiness" one.
142: Does that mean 1,000 on liquor?
90: I grew up with family far away who sent cards, baubles, etc. Maybe I was an ungrateful wretch (I did manage thank you notes on holidays but was pretty much unresponsive as a kid), but I don't think it made me closer to the relatives who did than the ones who didn't. Now, I'm in the opposite case where I send packages to friends' kids maybe quarterly. The kids range from 5-8, and frankly, I'm fairly sure they couldn't pick me out of a crowd, and I'm pretty sure the only thing they'll ever think of me for is a source of high school graduation gifts. It might be entirely different for kids in more volatile living situations, but I don't think it makes for much of a relationship. The routes I think you would follow to really build a relationship are probably blocked by the SIL. In short, don't feel too guilty over not sending mail or gifts or cards if it's not your thing. It's hard to get to know kids without help from their parents.
Have you seen despair.com? The world's best demotivational posters.
But they have far, far less than 100% cats and only rarely use a Beckett quote.
No, it would include food. She also requests a party after the cremation and I think but am not sure that this is to be a second occasion.
Cheerful-stuff-yesterday side of the thread: I told my boss bad news yesterday (a major deadline for me will now fall over Thanksgiving, which would be a pain in general and I personally have a week-long vacation scheduled then) and he just shrugged and laughed and said we'll work it out. My job may be boring and more money would be nice, but I couldn't ask for a better supervisor.
As for the divorce side of the thread, mind if I ask what the background is with Lady Bird's brother and sister-in-law? I gather from context that she's using a shared e-mail account to stay in touch with him ("the Petraeus e-mail trick") because the wife is ridiculously controlling, but I don't remember any more than that, and all I can find in the archives is this, which is equally vague. No worries if answering would compromise anonymity too much, I admit I'm just asking out of curiosity.
142: At least $1,000, at most, or exactly? If exactly, I'm picturing wacky hijinks. A really, really small-scale version of Brewster's Millions or something. "Yes, I'm trying to buy half a box of toothpicks! How is that your business?"
145: It's hard in any given situation to know what to do, and it depends on what you want. For me, growing up in a situation of craziness, knowing that my outside family cared enough to think about me was a lifeline.
I think it's different when you're talking about kids in sane/intact households.
But in some of these cases I thought the "the" was not dropped, just barely perceptible. What is the actual dialect? Were they saying "police woman at door", or "police woman at t'door"
Yes, you were right, probably the latter. Although sometimes the former (I'm thinking 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, "lick road clean wit' tongue"). I guess it depends on the next word.
sane/intact households
That's what the anti-circumcision people say, but I'm not sure those are the same.
150: I tried to disclaim that it might be very different for kids with less stability, but that if LadyBird wants something like "relationship," that's hard to establish, since if you get no response, you're shouting into a void. Letting the kids know you care and are thinking of them is a perfectly good goal in itself, but it's not as if you get to know them as people, nor do they get to know you, really, from notes and gifts. Maybe I didn't word it very well, but having a disagreeable SIL blocks a lot of possible ways to interact with the kids that are two-way conversations even at a distance, like phone/Skype, etc.
142. Commision dancers?
Actually, also applies to 137-- consider showing that you have feelings by commisioning Mariachis or with elaborate and elaborately staged gifts.
154: I think it's good for them to know (if it's true) that when they are older, if they get in touch with you, you'll respond. It makes the possibility of a relationship with them as teenagers and adults more likely.
If you exchange notes often enough you can be close even without phone/Skype.
Omg. Hokey pokey has been wanting to play soccer for years. There's a little kiddie league that takes 4 year olds and lasts one month. It starts today. Jammies is coaching pokey's team and hawaii's team because they're really short on volunteers. Hawaii was not that excited to play, and is already doing way too many after school activities.
Today pokey is getting a cast for three weeks for a possible arm fracture. No soccer. And Jammies is stuck coaching two teams, during the month when he's about to have his 4th kid, when neither of our kids want to or are allowed to be there.
Can Hawaii go? Seems a shame not to have one there.
151. No actual Yorkshiremen were involved in the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, though.
That sucks, but at least once you break an arm you get immunity from future breaks.
Hawaii can still play, but isn't much interested in it and is already doing too many extracurriculars.
If Jammies hits a ref, they'll probably insist he leave.
re distant nieces and nephews-- When they're young, send them boxes of candy. When they're older, send them boxes of condoms.
167: Of course, but the tricky part is knowing when to make the transition.
Flavored condoms are the training bras of auntie indulgence.
168: Also, the logistics of getting them a secret p.o. box can be complicated.
168: I suppose you could just always send both. Teens still love candy, and little kids love balloons.
How old are the kids? If they're only a little older than the [your own kids], then maybe when [your own kids] are a little older you could set up a little pen-pal arrangement between them. That could establish a sense of mutual existence between the households that could be good later.
I was really hoping that when I checked back in, you'd all be full of advice along the lines of "Here's a really tactful, civicly-minded way for Jammies to quit both teams without leaving the league in a lurch." What's up, ball-droppers?
Have him ask the league president, "So you don't require CORI checks on coaches, right? Just making sure..."
Sorry, the coach of two teams can't quit suddenly at the beginning of the one-month-long season without leaving the league in a lurch.
173: 164 isn't good enough for you?
It's no problem for him to quit and anyone would understand, but the "without the leaving the league in a lurch part" is hard.
I'm sure you could get enough Unfogged volunteers to visit you for a week and coach the soccer teams, but kids that age need continuity.
174: Or have Jammies play goalie.
176: I know, I was just...hopeful.
I landed a bunch of front flips at gymnastics class. Yay! Filming them revealed a developing bald spot. Boo!
180: The bald spot just makes the flips that much more impressive! Congrats!
Wow. You take gymnastics and can do a front flip?!
172: They're 8, 6, and 4. So they do overlap with our kids in age, sort of.
Ladybird, I used to write Lee's little nieces photos letters about whatever we've been doing, sometimes claiming they were from our dog, when they were going through a hard time as a family, though I scaled back once their lives were stable. They still remember it years later.
And I'm guessing cousin skype/facetime isn't an option, but that works well IME.
183: that is a super-charming take on letter-writing.
And big NOPE on skyping. Because we could take screenshots of the kids. And untoward things might happen, due to those digital images existing.
Messages from normal life, even if the kids can't or don't reciprocate, couldn't hurt. Postcards if you travel, maybe a photo calendar. Cute animal emails.
On the OP, I've remembered that my favorite Turkish idiom I'm probably misspelling is Tarzance, meaning that you speak as if you've just come out of the forest where you've been raised by animals.
My aunt sent us cards for every occasion (birthdays, valentine's day, easter, etc) and it made me feel much more connected to her than I did to relatives who didn't send cards. Being remembered - and knowing that you are remembered - really matters, especially when you're young.
If your aunt had balls, your uncle would have been sending you cards.
141: Sounds like you could use some
affirmations.
191 is great, and genuinely makes me feel good.
Congrats, AWB!
I'm out of the office at a training all this week, which was probably particularly good yesterday and today given how the gubernatorial race is turning out.
As someone who does know about divorce, I'll endorse 95.
I avoided a depressing close following of election results last night by going to bed early because I had to get up at 4:30 to fly to New Orleans. And then today I was in New Orleans. I am now very pleasantly full of oysters, crab, quail, and bread pudding and sitting at a rotating bar drinking a sazerac.
Today I had a pre-interview for a job I would really want. Probably not quite as nice as my current job in terms of location, but in a place I've lived happily before, and much more likely to be permanent. (But whoever invented this notion of some academic jobs requiring a just-as-stressful-not-really-interview a few months before the this-one's-for-real interview? Deserves a terrible fate.) I think it went really well. They have discussed some possible routes to solving my two-body problem. So... mild optimism?
Though I'm still really hoping for something to materialize that doesn't require me to leave my current city, which I've grown pretty fond of.
Essear, I'm having some job tsuris too, of the more-than-enough options kind. There's something strange about having so few options for so long that makes having too many options hard to process. Meeting with my chair about it tomorrow. They might want me permanently, and I might want to leave anyway, but I don't know how much the latter will be a realistic option.
197: Good luck with it all! I can handle having options but the uncomfortable part is having lots of maybe-options and never being sure which are going to turn out to be options and which will be ha-not-really-options.
198: Yes, exactly this. I don't know how much my own will is a matter for any consideration.
If your aunt had balls, your uncle would have been sending you cards.
Inside of your aunt's lack of balls, it is presumably too dark to read them.
Good luck on the job stuff, AWB and essear! Glad to hear you both have at least the potential for more stability in the near future.
150 etc. In most Yorkshire dialects you'd say "Policeman at door", but with an appreciable stop between "at" and "door". (It's not a glottal stop because it's dental and I've no idea what it's technically called, but it works like a glottal stop.) There were indeed no actual Yorkshiremen involve in any version of the 4 Yorkshiremen, but Tim Brook Taylor in the original version comes from North Derbyshire, which is close enough to be familiar with it.
Best of luck to essear and AWB in their various adventures.
It's not a glottal stop because it's dental and I've no idea what it's technically called, but it works like a glottal stop.
It is actually still a glottal stop, but with dental release. That is, the tongue is pressed against the teeth but the glottis is also closed, and it's the latter that makes the audible noise. It's a pretty common sound in many dialects of English on the phonetic level, but doesn't rise to the phonemic level in any dialect AFAIK.
120: It's written as "t'mill", "t'pub" or whatever, but this is a literary convention and actually saying it is a tell that you're faking it. In speech, it's expressed as rhythm rather than as sound - you take a beat after the preceding consonant.
Good luck to both AWB and essear on the job front. At least we've had a bit of that to celebrate here.
Fingers crossed for AWB and Essear.
I like neko wo kaburu, literally "wear a cat on your head" (kaburu is the verb for wearing something on your head or face, so the nuance is "put on a cat mask"), a Japanese expression meaning to act as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. This despite the evil nature of my own cat, who can keep up the pretence of innocence and gentility for only a few minutes before his true nature takes over and he attempts to bite a chunk out of your hand.
a Japanese expression meaning to act as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth
Meaning what...?
Meaning to adopt an innocent, guileless appearance that belies the nefarious nature underneath. Is "butter wouldn't melt in your mouth" a Britishism, then?
It's used in the US but not commonly. I'd be surprised to hear it in conversation, but certainly see it written.
It's, I think, mildly archaic in the US? Maybe less so in the UK? I'm certainly familiar with the expression, but I can't think of when I've heard it in a current context.
I had never heard it before. From context, I took it to mean "you think your shit doesn't stink."
I've heard people, almost always Southerners, say it here in the US.
No, it's "Who, me? I'm a perfect lady who's never done a wrong thing in my life." Slightly different; not arrogant, but deceitful.
My mother has used that expression all her life, to mean 217.
I understand now. But I was hoping for a more polite way to say "You think your shit doesn't stink." I'm writing the family Christmas letter.
I've actually kind of wondered exactly how it works literally. "My body temperature is so low that butter stays solid in my mouth, and low body temperature translates into good character because..." I can make it make sense if the good character is specifically sexual -- "I'm not hot-blooded, in fact butter wouldn't melt in my mouth" -- but generally being physically cool as being a well-behaved person isn't a connection I've seen outside that one phrase.
My mother used it referring to me, but I'm sure she's not representative of current language trends.
220: According to wikipedia, if butter won't melt in your mouth (assuming it is shut and doesn't contain anything extraneous but butter), you have hypothermia or a bad circulatory problem.
220: Even-tempered, mild = "cool." Also, the sense of saying scorchingly nasty things, fiery tongue/temper.
At my UK college, it was a common enough expression among students, probably most often in the truncated form "looking as if butter wouldn't melt". I don't recall ever having heard it among people my age [who are not me] in the US.
What if the butter sublimates instead?
I've thought of it more as suspending disbelief, acting as if the obvious weren't true, massive hypocrisy. Never thought of the sexual side.
223: I guess, it's just the jump from even-tempered, which makes sense to me for 'cool' to actually good, which is what the phrase seems to mean, doesn't work for me.
I would have said more "mild" than "good," although really maybe mildness as tied up with a feminized form of goodness.
But someone who LAIBWMIHM is genuinely mild and self-controlled, there's no deception about that. She's just sneakily misbehaving in a mild and self-controlled way.
I'm cool enough to condense methane.
Idioms vary of course, but I would have associated it just as easily with surreptitious behavior that wasn't mild. "She LAIBWMIHM, but you should see her after a few drinks / hear what she told Rachel the other day about Janet / &c."
I wouldn't find "butter wouldn't melt in his/her mouth" surprising in conversation, but I also thought it referred to sang froid.
I've heard it on occasion (and my Mom would use it if one of the kids had tried to pull something over on her) but I am never absolutely clear on its "real" meaning and always look it up these days.
Discussion of the etymology at Stack Exchange.
I like this Dickens' quote which leaves me completely at sea.
It would be no description of Mr Pecksniff's gentleness of manner to adopt the common parlance, and say that he looked at this moment as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He rather looked as if any quantity of butter might have been made out of him, by churning the milk of human kindness, as it spouted upwards from his heart.
I think I'm thinking of anything that can successfully be kept surreptitious as by definition self-controlled.
I disagree with the trend here and with stack exchange about whether it has any physical meaning or analogy. I think it means acting as if the palpably impossible were what had happened, with an obviously deceitful intent.
Self-controlled, yes, but one can be self-controlled without being genuinely mild I think.
A few interesting examples from an old Safire column.
Was anyone else here of an age and temperament to grow up reading that column and then have their heart broken on finding out the man had been Nixon's speechwriter?
Yes, exactly. Safire and Russell Baker, being pedantic and funny respectively in the magazine section, were my introduction to the NYT, and then I gradually realized that Safire was a very bad person (and that Baker was not) when I got old enough to read the op-eds.
Was anyone else here of an age and temperament to grow up reading that column and then have their heart broken on finding out the man had been Nixon's speechwriter?
*raises hand*
"Butter wouldn't melt..." is pretty common in my region of the UK.
My possibly very idiosyncratic understanding of it - 'so perfect that naturally occurring things stall in their presence.' I hear it used with children and pets a fair bit, as a synonym for that particular sort of bad behaviour masked by natural innocence.
I think it means acting as if the palpably impossible were what had happened, with an obviously deceitful intent.
So, not that this is an actually occurring idiom, but the equivalent of "acting as if pigs could fly"?
Safire truly revealed himself during Whitewater. His was the most crazed part for the NYT's overall massive fail. But the news department fail was certainly far more consequential.
Oh, hey, you know what Safire did for my political education? I can't remember what the column was about, specifically, but I read something he wrote (I cannot remember how old I was. Based on my recalled level of naivete, could have been anywhere from eleven to eighteen), and asked my father: "How come right-wing people are smarter -- that they're making logical arguments that make sense in a way people on the left don't?" And Dad looked at me like I was stupid, and said "They don't. They just say they're making logical arguments and hope people fall for it without thinking them through."
And that really gets you through an awful lot of political rhetoric. I suppose the credit doesn't really go to Safire, but he was definitely the instigating factor.
I managed to miss idp's comment, and that is basically what I was trying to get up with my summary but his is better.
242 That dad's a keeper.
I always thought that the butter wouldn't melt idiom was a Southernism.
So I like looking at really loud clothes. About three months ago, I saw a guy that had a really great look-- pinstripe pleated dress pants, alligator skin shoes, fancy-ass cowboy hat, and here's the thing I want help with: A patterned black and white leather jacket. The pattern was fancy car rims, kind of like this one but looking like a car-themed jigsaw puzzle.
Any advice on how to search for such a thing? keywords are no help.
Being older, I knew who and what Safire was before the NYT. Think the pattern of hiring the likes of Kristol or Douhat is recent?
Columbus then had a morning paper, the Citizen-Journal as well as the evening Dispatch. The C-J was less conservative, and used a lot of NYT syndicate features, like Baker's column. Also ran Pogo, and Doonesbury.
Baker, Richard Reeves and Murray Kempton were original board members and backers of Charlie Peters' Washington Monthly, which we subscribed to from the first issue. Like Charles Pierce today, newspaper humorists were often sharp analysts and commentators.
227/9: The conversation's moved on a bit, but the idea is that you are appearing (looks as if) cool/gentle/mild (butter won't melt), when in truth, you've just been snarling/breathing fire/plotting/doing evil.
245: I'm not seeing anything obvious, looking at google images. Usually I start with google images, and then if I see something in the right ballpark, try to fish some keywords out from the retailer, and keep refining.
I thought "butter wouldn't melt..." was a pretty common expression in books, at least, although I've heard it now and then in person, too.
So the 6th Circuit ruling on same-sex marriage means the girls will get to see their friends' moms take their case to the Supreme Court. That's something positive, right?
All families have the rule "no tongue hi-fives", right?
250: I think so. It would be pretty cool to know somebody who get to be an important precedent.
252: Sometimes they care we're not married, but mostly they just want a wedding so they can get new outfits and be the center of attention and have cake. On that note, if anyone's going to be in town the second weekend in December and wants an invitation to the post-adoption family party we're having (with cake!) let me know!
Today I come home and there is a brand new car in the garage, a gift to my wife from her parents. It seems petty to complain about getting a new car, but why not. I had very firmly (yet politely) refused the offer when it was proposed as a gift to us. We had, I thought, agreed not to get a second car or to let her parents buy a car for us. We already have one car and do not need a second.
I'm now trying to decide what to do. So far, I've just refused to acknowledge that there is a new car in the garage. I could see how long I can keep that up. That or just selling the older car without telling anybody.
No, you should sell the new car without telling anybody.
Is your wife on the fence? Or does she agree with you?
255: I didn't look, but I assume my name is not on the title.
256: The fence got smashed by the car in the garage.
In any case this certainly puts your marital problems from earlier in the thread in context.
In any case this certainly puts your marital problems from earlier in the thread in context.
Indeed. Boundary Smasher, by Boundary Smasher out of Boundary Smasher.
This is the kind of thing which is really just a Rorschach test. I take it things aren't good in general?
Are you saying the car is a butterfly?
Teo's suggestion in 255 is what I would be tempted to do, but I'd advise against it. Otherwise, I can offer only best wishes and perhaps general support for taking the divorce route. Unhappy families being unhappy each in their own way, beyond that I can't say. It took us forever to get through the whole process, but we did it without traumatizing our daughters, and we get along better now than we did before, so there's that. (Incidentally, are you the same Wry Cooter as the one from a few years ago, or did you adopt the pseud when it was vacated?)
On the subject of employment good news/bad news, I decided to come in out of the freelance cold and apply for a managing editor job, which entailed the most labor-intensive application I've ever had to put together. The publisher emailed the other day to apologize for the (month-long) delay in getting back to me, wrote that I'm one of three applicants they're considering, and told me that they've decided to postpone hiring until May. Ain't job-hunting grand?
"Butter wouldn't melt..." To me, appearing benevolently harmless in the highest degree. Often describing a misleading appearance, e.g. "She looked as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but there was no doubt that she was the serial killer."
256: The fence got smashed by the car in the garage.
Well, that will affect its resale value.
Nothing looks as smashed as a smashed fence.
Was the school decision also a proxy war between you and her parents, Wry C? I'm not saying it's not a marital problem if she's being unduly influenced by them, but it seems like a slightly different one than if she's just doing her own thing regardless of you or them. It could be that her lack of boundaries there is getting prioritized over her bad boundaries with you, which still sounds mighty unpleasant.
Nothing looks as smashed as a smashed fence
Did you never see Boris Yeltsin?
262.1: Not the same person as before. I didn't adopt the pseudo so much as borrow it per this suggestion.
I feel weird being the one saying this, as Mrs Until Last Spring We Didn't Even Have A Car, Wry, but is there a possibility that not having two cars was something she perceived as a significant hardship that she didn't think the two of you had considered enough? Like, something about the daily pattern of car usage left her stuck someplace with no way to get anywhere until you got back with the car?
Being out in the no-public-transportation-real-world gives me the creeps at the best of times, and the thought of being out there without reliable access to transportation makes it sound awful. If that's what was going on at all, it makes overriding a marital decision to have only one car sound more reasonable.
Unless there are very weird family dynamics with the inlaws (which, to be fair, if they are buying you cars, it sounds like there are definitely very weird family dynamics there), I don't know why you would ever turn down a new car. If you and your spouse really only want/need one car, do as you say and sell the old one. (Don't sell the new one--that would certainly make things weird with the inlaws.)
Point being, it sounds like whatever weird dynamics exist with the inlaws are the primary issues that needs to be dealt with. Having a new second car is not a problem.
Speaking of cars, when are we going to get a picture of the Breath family Challenger in the flickr pool?
On the average weekday, I don't drive at all and she has continuous, unimpeded access to the car. When we had two cars, she had access to both of them because I still did not drive most places. The second car, which we only got rid of this spring, was being driven less than 2,000 miles a year and had not been used more heavily for several years.
We live in easy reach of a public transportation system. I use transit for something like 95% of my travel when I am not with the entire family. On weekends, sometimes we have two separate activities that aren't convenient without a car and we would have to juggle. That was not common and it is relatively easy to rent a car where we are.
Yeah, what I was thinking of was that both the car and the school thing kind of sounded as if what was going on was that the Cooters had mutually addressed an issue, come to a decision, and then Mrs. Cooter had gone off and done something radically incompatible with that mutual decision. Clearly there's something going wrong with the communication process there, but I'm wondering if she's feeling steamrollered or shut down in the mutual decision-making process.
God knows where they live or under what circumstances, but I can think of a lot of locations where not having one car for each adult would literally mean that one of the adults would have trouble leaving the house without help, which would make a decision to only have one car that she wasn't wholeheartedly in favor of actually very rough on her. Maybe. I'm completely making up facts here -- the 'only one car' thing just sounded as if it might be an odd decision.
(They probably live in Queens, two blocks from the 7, making this completely inapplicable.)
275 crossed with 274. Okay, I have no idea. And the Challenger is now in the flickr group.
I'm now trying to decide what to do. So far, I've just refused to acknowledge that there is a new car in the garage. I could see how long I can keep that up.
I don't know if you are actually looking for advice here, but "So, I noticed there's a new car in the garage... I thought we'd agreed not to let your parents buy a car for us?" seems like a fine place to start. With follow-ons along the lines of "So should we sell the old one, or did you decide you'd actually like to have two cars?" With maybe somewhere in the conversation an "I wish you'd talked to me about this before just doing it..."
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the answer is just that her parents really pushed to give the car and she felt churlish refusing. I mean, again, those are weird family dynamics for sure, but I would certainly fell uncomfortable repeatedly refusing a parent who was obviously trying to do something quite generous, especially if I didn't really have any particularly good reason for refusing it. (Maybe you did have a good reason for refusing it--I don't know all the facts, obviously.)
It's a silly thing for us to own, but it's a nice beast. Very pleasant to drive.
272: Actually, I quite like my inlaws.
273: She does feel streamrollered and I did shut down the mutual decision-making process. The output of the mutual decision-making process was only binding on me so I stopped participating except in response to direct questions. Her dad offered to buy us a car. I said, "No, thank you." My wife asked if I wanted her parents to buy us a car. I said no. Nothing further was said.
With maybe somewhere in the conversation an "I wish you'd talked to me about this before just doing it..."
I'm not about to try that. There was actual, professional (but possibly extremely shitty) marriage counseling happening BEFORE the school switching things.
I would maybe be more sympathetic if I better understood why you were opposed to the new car.
Although regardless of why you were opposed to the car, it sounds like the car is not really the problem. Marital communication is the problem. I suppose that's obvious, but I said it anyway.
My new hope is that one day we will discover that two presidential commenters looking for advice on marital woes are actually married to each other.
|| The PA system at LAX is playing the Imperial March from Star Wars. I can't imagine this is helping nervous flyers to relax. |>
I am opposed to the car because now I have the expense and effort of insuring, storing, and maintaining two cars, both of which are of a kind and style my wife likes but I don't. If I can't sell the older car*, this will mean another five or six years in this same situation. The storage part is particularly galling as we don't have good space for two cars. A second car is constantly in the way and needs to be moved frequently (e.g. snow removal, blocking egress of the other car, alleged street sweeping, blocking access to items stored in the garage, driveway basketball). If I spend more time moving something out of the way than using it, I don't want it.
*Legal question for which I insist on receiving binding advice: Can I unilaterally sell marital property? I'd deposit the proceeds in a joint account, if that matters. Reallocation, not theft.
Just to be safe, I'd recommend driving it at high speed into a bridge abutment, rather than selling it. Serves the same purpose, and no risk of legal trouble.
The car or the house are difficult to sell if a spouse is on the title. That expensive bike you bought last year, though: why not?
281. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that pretending not to notice it is a bright idea. A new car in the garage is the closest thing to an actual elephant in the living room that I can imagine in real life and I'm not sure your position is strengthened by ignoring it. Did Mrs Cooter accept this gift i. because she actually wanted to cars but felt unable to discuss it with you; ii. because she didn't want to appear churlish in the fact of her parents' generosity; iii. out of passive aggression, because she knew you didn't want it?
287: And you might get memorialized in a famous play.
290 may have been better left at Standapipe's.
288: Only the kids have bikes and if I sold them, I'd be the asshole.
If the title for the car says "Mr. Wry Cooter" and Ms. Wrong Cooter", you both have to sign over the title. If the title for the car says "Mr. Wry Cooter or Ms. Wrong Cooter", either of you can sign over the title.
Outside of cars and real estate, you can generally sell all of the marital assets, just like you can legally withdraw all of the money from a joint bank account. Whether you can sell is independent of whether the value you receive counts as joint property.
I stand behind my legal advice. If this response is legally incorrect, you may sue me and take possession of my pseudonym and all of the assets in its name.
Thanks. I'll go look at the title.
This is nosy and intrusive and all that, but you seem to be asking for it.
What's keeping you in the marriage? Just thinking the kids are better off that way, or is there something that you think is worth saving about it for your own sake? Or, being married is miserable but a divorce sounds miserable too and you don't see it making anything better?
Unilaterally selling is pretty shitty. Retitle the old car in her name, get plates that belong just to her on the thing, park it in the street, and let it accumulate tickets and dents if she fails to move it.
I am opposed to the car because now I have the expense and effort of insuring, storing, and maintaining two cars, both of which are of a kind and style my wife likes but I don't. If I can't sell the older car*
I got this far in this comment and was almost sympathetic, because, yeah, maybe there is some reason it would be hard to sell the old car. And then I realized you didn't mean if you "can't sell" it because it won't sell; you meant if you can't sell it behind your wife's back because it's all or half hers, in which case, you're being ridiculous.
All of these drawbacks are dependent on keeping two cars. Why are you contemplating selling the old car behind your wife's back? Can't you just say 'I thought we agreed we didn't want/need two cars, so... since we now have a new one, should we sell the old one?'
Unless of course she actually does want to have two cars, because sharing one was an inconvenience for her or whatever other reason. Which I'm guessing is what is actually going on, because why else would you even be thinking about selling it behind her back?
Regardless, this is obviously a completely dysfunctional relationship. I advise you to use one of the two cars to get out.
While appealing, I wouldn't call that less shitty.
Depending on the value of the new car you or the parents might be on the hook for gift taxes too.
298. Completely dysfunctional would be theft and lying to the kids. This is well within the range of normally shitty.
299. She'd see it that way, but taking WC at face value, she benefits from two cars while not being inconvenienced.
Look, selling the old car puts you in a weak position, because you're then eventually going to have to acknowledge the existence of the new car. The better option is to double down your current strategy: take the keys, drive the new car to a large empty parking lot somewhere, park it and take transit home. When your wife asks what happened to the new car, just respond, puzzled: "What new car?"
kind and style
Also, post photos of the car, motorcycle, or shoes that you'd prefer.
Link in 267 gave me the idea that she needs the second car so she can leave you.
284: And that they both like pina coladas.
This is well within the range of normally shitty.
Really? Maybe my marriage is better than I realize.
300: the car would have to be worth more than $56,000, which is possible but unlikely. (Both of her parents can give up to $14k each to both Wry and his spouse--which can all be packaged in the form of a single car that is a gift from both to both (even if it is titled just in wife's name, since they are married (assuming they file jointly))).
306. Don't take this personally or anything, but detection of external reality is not a strong suit for everybody.
I don't think the car is worth more than $28,000 and assume it was packaged as a gift from both of them to her.
(And even if it's a $60,000 car, no one would owe any gift taxes, her parents would just have to file a gift tax return. No one would owe any actual gift taxes until they hit the lifetime maximum exemption of $5.25M.)
Why are you contemplating selling the old car behind your wife's back?
Reciprocity.
(A $60k car would be a $4,000 hit to that $5.25M lifetime exemption.)
Whoopee, look at all this work on my desk in front of me that I'm not doing. Who else wants unsolicited tax lessons?
Could you work out for me how much I'd have to earn as an independent contractor to match my current salary?
311 is a bad way to think.
313. Again, no unkindness intended, but the way you perceive food is pretty unusual. Relationships are more complicated than food.
Right, this car thing is actually just a relatively minor thing to navigate in a healthy relationship - "What on earth happened?!" "I caved to my parents." "Let's brainstorm how to solve the things that are going to drive me crazy about having two cars, or let's talk about selling the old one."
I think LB's question is the key one - what's keeping you in the marriage? If you'd like to stay in the marriage, then you need some standard principles to operate from, and then the car reaction follows from those principles.
314. I'd like to divide some shared assets without paying capital gains. Can I create individual accounts linked to an existing joint account, transfer assets from joint to individual, then sever the link without breaking tax rules?
I just assumed it was a Ferrari because otherwise what's the point?
Relationships are more complicated than food.
Depends on the relationships, and on the food.
316.2: I got that you were probably suggesting something like that, but I don't understand it as a response to 306--are you suggesting that, given my weak "detection of external reality", it's no surprise that maybe my marriage is better than I realize*, or are you suggesting that, given my weak "detection of external reality", I shouldn't think that maybe my marriage is better than I realize, i.e. it's probably just as terrible as Wry's and I'm just unaware of that fact?
* Which anyway was mostly a joke--a way to say that I don't agree the dynamics Wry Coot is describing are well within the range of normal.
318: are you dividing with a spouse or someone else (like e.g. a business partner)? If a spouse, shouldn't be an issue. (Probably. I guess I'd want more detail before being firm, but honestly I don't think there's much risk there.)
321. Possibly you are optimistic about how unhappy other people are, so fail to detect part of what is normal. Pauline kael problem, applied tointerpersonal dynamics, basically.
Could you work out for me how much I'd have to earn as an independent contractor to match my current salary?
Is this a trick question? Or are you meaning match your current tax-home pay after taxes and purchase of comparable benefits?
If this is still the "things that cheered me up" thread: Xfit Douchbro seems to have sold the gym to his brother! The brother is much friendlier, less douchy, and actually coaches when he runs a class, and seems to have instituted a whole host of changes that I approve of.
On a "things that are a downer" side, the brother also rattled off a slew of racist jokes of the form "This person with a strong Mexican accent or asian accent uses a nonsensical phrase. When the other person asks for clarification, the Mexican or Asian person gives a highly stereotypical, racist explanation for the odd phrase."
what's keeping you in the marriage?
Vague fears, inertia, and less vague fears about kids.
Self-awareness is like marital communication. It's just a trap set for the overly wary.
racist jokes of the form "This person with a strong Mexican accent or asian accent uses a nonsensical phrase. When the other person asks for clarification, the Mexican or Asian person gives a highly stereotypical, racist explanation for the odd phrase."
I am not sure I am familiar with this form of joke. Example?
"This person with a strong Mexican accent or asian accent uses a nonsensical phrase. When the other person asks for clarification, the Mexican or Asian person gives a highly stereotypical, racist explanation for the odd phrase."
Posts like this are the reason I stopped reading Standpipe's blog.
325: I mean the latter, but I don't actually need you to answer the question for me. I have a pretty good idea and a secure salaried job for at least another 10 months.
The only one I can remember was something where the Mexican guy uses the word "bishop" in response to some question question about his wife. (Pronouncing it bee-shope, because Mexican.) Then the straight man doesn't understand, and the Mexican guy says something (in the most absurd Speedy Gonzalez accent, of course) about how she fell down the stairs, and now he has to pick the bee-shope, ie the bitch up. HA!
It's about 14% on the taxes, plus the health insurance contribution, plus the retirement match, plus the vacation days, plus some reasonable estimate of time spent on the unpaid task of searching for more work.
331: At least there's sexism along with the racism.
Oh, you referred to one of these before that I completely failed to understand because I don't have an ear for the accent. ("Little Ceasars" as in the pizza place, sounding like "Little Scissors".)
the brother also rattled off a slew of racist jokes
And this is the *less* douche-y brother?
Wry, if you're still around: I wasn't actually joking that I think the advice in 302 is better than just unilaterally selling the old car. Both are terrible ideas, of course, but you seem okay with terrible.
The problem with 302 is that the kids are perfectly aware there is a new car in the garage and completely unable to ignore elephants. I don't think that is covered until high school.
Why don't you have a bike? Wouldn't getting a nice one be a good substitute for the old car?
That's not reciprocity, that's being a reasonable steward of the planet.
327: This is super helpful advice, along the lines of "You have problems? Why not fix them!" But seriously, this sounds like a terrible situation to be drifting along through. I would think that putting some focus into either, um, fixing the communication problems with your wife somehow and making the marriage not shitty again (yeah, I'm really helpful. I'm considering a career change into counseling), or working through the practicalities of the vague fears and getting the hell out of there with as little damage to you and your kids as possible, would make your life better. Bonus, you won't need to get another car if you leave.
My parents eventually split up in their early fifties. To the best of my knowledge, neither one of them has looked at a member of the opposite sex with anything other than fearful distaste since. This is a depressing way to spend the last half of your life.
(I'm not advising secrecy. But it seems fine to me to announce that now that there's the car [which probably gets better mileage than the old one] you can replace the old one with a bike that'll help the planet, as well as your physical well being, and solve the two objects in the same place problem that the new car presents.)
Or a skateboard, if you want to add a much needed note of physical comedy to the whole situation.
To be serious, Coot, here is what you need to do:
1. Undertake a sane, healthy conversation with your wife, even though past experience tells you it won't go well. "I do not want a second car, because of X, Y, and Z. Here is my proposal: you keep the car in the street, and we cut $ from this budget category. I'm open to hearing your suggestions, but otherwise I'd like to sell the old car."
Have the conversation in good faith, don't agree to anything you're not actually okay with, and be honest with her if you're going to unilaterally sell the car.
2. Talk to a therapist about ending the marriage. You've got some nebulous fears keeping you pretty unhappy; address those so that you can end things. Or address them so that you can freely choose to stay instead of staying out of fear.
I should say: if you're going to end the marriage in the next year or two, an extra car isn't a bad thing to have.
To keep going: worrying excessively about this car is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Time for some soul-searching about your actual Titanic-marriage, because this status quo sounds miserable.
Rearranging skateboards on the Titanic, then.
What this thread needs is d2 to welcome you all to the land of other people's [descriptions of their] relationships.
||
Somewhat related to earlier discussion of foreign phrases: I just stared at the word "Möglichkeitsaussage" for a minute and decided that, yes, of course it meant possibility-sausage, I have to stop second-guessing myself all the time, my German is perfectly good.
|>
I actually think Wry Cooter seems to be responding to the in-laws' car purchase with more grace and equanimity than I would. Good work, WC (although perhaps my marriage is strengthened by my apoplexy about stuff I could take calmly). The unambiguously bad sign is probably that you don't have a good way of working through completely legitimate complaints about the additional cost and MAJOR HASSLE of moving the car around all the time which-- man, I would need some time alone with a punching bag. So maybe that should be the litmus test: if you can find a way to have that conversation, and come to some compromise around it, hope is restored.
WC, others are giving you for real advice, but I'd like to offer solidarity on the second car thing. I'd be totally furious. We have a second for some sentimental reasons (boyfriend inherited it from his father), and it is such a nuisance and an expense from a practical point of view.
I feel like my advice is being misinterpreted, so let me try again: there is nothing weird about being upset about the expense and hassle that will accompany a second car for which you perceive no need. However:
1) If your wife shares your perception that there is no need for a second car, then you can together agree to sell the old car; or
2) If your wife does NOT share your perception that there is no need for a second car, then you need to understand why. And try to figure out what compromises you might be able to arrange to either (a) make your life easier with the second car, or (b) make her life easier with only one car. But selling the car unilaterally in this situation would be a major, grade-A asshole move.
My guess is that you're in situation 2, but are pessimistic about the chances of any successful compromise. (Feel free to correct if that is mistaken.) In this case, of course, all the rhetoric about the two of you having "agreed" not to get a second car starts to sound like BS, but whatever.
I just stared at the word "Möglichkeitsaussage" for a minute and decided that, yes, of course it meant possibility-sausage
Considering all the things that are usually said to be possible sausage ingredients, I'm not sure I'd be open to additional possibilities.
My guess is that you're in situation 2, but are pessimistic about the chances of any successful compromise.
You get me.
And I now assume that we really did not agree on needing only one car. But, how was I supposed to have known that until the car showed up? And, more to the point, how am I supposed to know that whatever compromise we might make to make it easier to keep a second car isn't something that she really doesn't agree to either. Three months down the road, she stops doing whatever her part of it was and we're back in the same place except that now the car is an incumbent fact and I'm the one agitating for change.
Plus the only practical compromise is that she agrees to the do all the car juggling. Effectively, this means that I have to make my wife go out and shovel snow to move cars on several winter nights. I really don't see how that makes me less the asshole than just selling the car. It's basically an asshole installment plan.
asshole installment plan
Make sure they will take your old asshole after they install the new one. You really don't want those things just lying around the house.
an asshole installment plan.
This seems like something that would leave you with too many assholes.
Just plotting it out: you go to her, and say "Remember how when we had two cars, I had to go shovel snow to move them in the winter? I hated that, and I don't want to do it again. I don't really see what the extra car gets us, convenience-wise, that makes it worthwhile. Can you talk me through why it's a good tradeoff, or if not, can we sell the old car?"
I mean, I'm not clear on how bad things are between the two of you. Would it be literally difficult to get her to listen to that? Or do you envision getting a useless or uninformative response? How would that go bad.
You really don't want those things just lying around the house.
I'm told they make sausages with them. I you have enough lying around you can probably sell them.
Or do you envision getting a useless or uninformative response?
I expect to get a useful response that agrees with whatever I just said and that is reversed at the last possible moment before any tangible action is taken after having delayed the moment of tangible action for other reasons for as long as possible.
It's sort of a pattern.
I don't think the conversation has to be productive, exactly, for you to have operated in good faith. You need to inform her:
1. I'm willing to keep the car under the following conditions...
2. If, by say [January], this is not what's happening, then I'll let you know that I'm selling the old car, and then I'm going to sell the old car.
This requires a firm stance on your part, and you've given every indication that both you and your wife hang out in wishy-washy land, where you deliberately balance in the gray area that prevents decisive action...
Actually 359 is not the pattern I expected. Your wife can be decisive!
359: Oh, dear. I mean, in this case, I think that probably means you can work the conversation into an agreement to sell the old car, and then you can go ahead and sell the old car in good conscience, so long as you just blunder straightforwardly through the delaying tactics.
But man, I'm not living your life, and I shouldn't tell anyone to get divorced ever, and kids are important, and and and. But that's no way to live.
360 makes sense.
But I'm am going to find the title and hide it at my office before I mention anything. If the title is already not there, I'll know I'm just outmatched.
I don't know details in your state, but you can get a duplicate from the DMV if the original is 'lost'. If you have explicit agreement to sell the car, and unexpected actual access to a copy of the title, Bob's your uncle.
I think getting the documents ahead of time is a good idea.
Furthermore, consider having the conversation over email - even though you guys talk minimally, I'm willing to bet it's emotionally intense to have these conversations. Over email you both have ways of managing your own emotional intensity and thinking through what you want to say before you say it. Added benefit that it may disrupt some of the most unproductive aspects of the typical conversations you have.
Also, once you're dealing with each other in bad faith, or suspect each other of dealing in bad faith, having a 'paper' trail can clarify things.
I shouldn't tell anyone to get divorced ever
This time it needs to be said. He needs to be out of there because holy shit to 359.
Not only does she obviously disagree about financial and other decisions that they are both liable for but she is willing to dissemble to the last second and then act in her secret interests in a manner that makes it almost impossible to reverse that decision. And she has parents with resources to help her. Cooter, get the process going now while you can dictate some terms. Because in my opinion she is going to leave you and when she does you're going to find out by coming home to a set of divorce papers and her and the kids moved out to another location. And her parents will help her do it.
Taking a step back and looking at this, neither WC nor anybody advising him any more is suggesting that this can be resolved in good faith. Everything looks increasingly Byzantine and tortuous. You cannot go on like that indefinitely. The kids will suss it out in no time flat, and you and your wife will be driven distracted. If you can't improve the general situation through counselling, you need to get out quickish, with or without your car. I suspect the damn car is acting as a distraction.
The car is in on the plotting. It cannot be trusted. A match in the gas tank is the only solution.
I'm agreeing with gswift up to the last sentence. If she's got any sense she'll just change the locks and stay in the house.
370: It's not illegal to kick in your own door, as I've told many a person whose partner has attempted similar shenanigans.
368 redacted in favour of 367 on consideration.
If you can't improve the general situation through counselling
Counseling is for people with a problem and are willing to talk about it in good faith, which is so not the situation here. Don't waste the money, it's going to be needed for a retainer.
369: It's not a red and white late '50s Plymouth Fury by any chance is it?
Okay, the blog has moved on to firmly advocating divorce. I'm good with that. I could be moved off this position by anything suggesting the marriage is fixable, but for now I have a firm position that I know what's best for someone I've never met with a silly pseudonym.
Addressing vague worries: (1) if they're too vague to address, ignore them until the solidify; (2) less vague worries about the kids. I don't know how weird your wife is, but in divorces/bad marriages I've seen, the adults are usually much more the problem with each other than the parent are with the kids. If you're worried about sheltering your kids from her issues, whatever they are exactly, think that there's a real possibility that she will be less weird when she's not dealing with you as much or as directly. If it's not about sheltering the kids from her, but just general 'divorce sucks for kids', eh. Two thirds of the people I know had divorced parents, and they're mostly fine. And growing up in a tensely unhappy household isn't a bed of roses either.
367: I'm not worried about her disappearing with the kids. It isn't in character and it isn't practical for a variety of reasons I can't name without becoming known.
377.2 Observation from within family: if kids have one parent who is seriously flaky, they need the other one to be totally on the level, always and about everything. This is not compatible with the kind of funny games that were being put forward earlier. Also, you may need your wheels.
||Haven't been keeping up today so this is probably pwned, but in case not: probably not much more masturbating to ACA subsidies in federal exchange states.|>
I don't think she literally meant that bob is Wry's uncle.
380: I can attest to that as well. Dueling underhanded tactics will drive everyone in the family insane -- one person being underhanded and the other continuing to deal in good faith can get sad, but is pretty harmless.
378: That's good I guess? Although it seems like from what you describe assuming you know what's in her character seems fraught given her willingness and ability to dissemble about any number of major issues.
Let's not go nuts with assumptions here. I think that if you polled all of our acquaintances, it would come out about 50/50 as to which of us was the most flaky.
383. If Wry is the nephew of the Earl of Salisbury, at least he'll have somewhere to stay.
Sure, but you have the option of becoming straightforward and upright from this point forward through the power of blogular exhortation. At which point all of the relationship problems get simpler to deal with because there's only one person being devious.
I guess if "Medicaid exists, or does not exist, depending on whether the governor is a Republican" is combined with "The average person can get insurance, or cannot get insurance, depending on whether the governor is a Republican", the health care industry may start saying "OK, just create a damn federal system already".
386/388 describes the dynamic in the case I was/am close to. One of them stepped up to the plate.
Okay, the blog has moved on to firmly advocating divorce.
I was still going with the bike, because, you know, it's not just a river in Egypt, but a great river that is the source of all civilization.
Not that I'm disagreeing with gswift on anything here.
382: you think the Court is likely to strike down the subsidies? Seems far-fetched to me. Both circuits upheld the subsidies, right?
I think they're going to strike down the subsidies. It's exactly the sort of gotcha thing that Scalia loves, and I bet Kennedy thinks Ocare is a failure that no one is using anyway.
It'll whack folks in red states pretty hard, but Congress won't fix it until after the decision comes out.
(That said, I'd like to see Reid introduce a bill that says 'although we always meant that the people on federal exchanges get the subsidy, here, let's make it more explicit' -- so if/when the Sup Ct rules, Obama will be able to blame Boehner.)
292 is exactly why their taking the case means they are going to strike it down. Otherwise they'd wait for a split.
Effectively, this means that I have to make my wife go out and shovel snow to move cars on several winter nights.
Well, if one of you has to, why is it assholish for her to do it at least half the time? Feminism and I are on your side here. Have a mug of something hot ready when she comes in.
393.1: Agree. Why else take up King at this point before the en banc from the DC? Activist fuckwad evil racist shitheads.
Burn down the courthouse
If we're gonna stay alive
Watch the black smoke fly to heaven
See the red flame light the sky
The caption says that it's Hatfield House. Am I the only one visualizing slouch-hatted McCoys shooting at it from behind trees?
292 is exactly why their taking the case means they are going to strike it down. Otherwise they'd wait for a split.
Except it only takes four votes to accept a case, right? I sort of assume the same four who voted against it last time voted to take the case, and the same five as last time will vote to uphold it.
I think that if you polled all of our acquaintances, it would come out about 50/50 as to which of us was the most flaky.
Oh yeah, for sure. I can't tell the degree to which you're kidding around, but taken literally, most of your actions/reactions, as you describe them, seem highly maladaptive.
380 can be extended further to say that if your wife is as nuts as you describe, then it's incumbent on you to be double-sane - direct, honest and non-game-playing - whether or not you leave.
397 -- I still think reversal is more likely, but if I was playing politics, I might rather see cert now, so a decision comes out in the spring of 2015, rather than after Halbig comes out, which puts the decision into 2016.
Urple, I completely love 302. If people want to pretend absurd things, I want to pretend that absurd thing right along with them.
401: I think it's very unlikely those four would vote to take it at this point (w/o a live split) if they weren't sure of a fifth vote on their side (and impossible that the 4 dems would do so). I think there's a very very small chance Roberts would be inclined to uphold the subsidies and figures why make his friends at the insurance companies sweat it out waiting for a split (which is more or less inevitable eventually) but far more likely that the plan is to fuck the ACA beyond repair.
Obama can use reversal pretty effectively: taxes are going to go up for X million Americans unless Congress acts now. Call your congressman! Still better to have the whole drama play out in July and August of 2015, rather than February and March of 2016.
Congress I'm sure will be happy to offer up a bill getting rid of the mandate and thereby providing tax relief to those X millions.
Obama can use reversal pretty effectively: taxes are going to go up for X million Americans unless Congress acts now. Call your congressman!
Oh, I've heard that story a few times before... like when Obama had all the leverage on the expiring Bush tax cuts.
What is the downside from Reid introducing a stand-alone amendment to moot the case? It won't pass, because it will be blocked, but I'd like there to be speeches explicitly saying "Of course we meant the subsidies to operate in every state, we never imagined anyone could read it the stupid way, but the SC shouldn't waste a minute on it so we should fix it now."
What is the downside from Reid introducing a stand-alone amendment to moot the case? It won't pass, because it will be blocked
It won't pass, because it will be blocked, and despite the speeches to the contrary, the fact that a corrective bill was introduced would seem to me to lend additional weight to the plaintiff's argument that the law as currently written needs to be corrected.
I don't think much in the face of the fact that the SC has granted cert. "We meant A, we think the language we passed says A, some weirdos have sued saying it means B, and the SC is going to hear the case. We shouldn't have to do this, but we're going to try to insert language making it completely unambiguous in the face of a challenge on this specific point that it means A."
411: In a world where Politico is a respected news source?
411: I hear you, but knowing in advance that the bill won't pass, it seems like you'd be better just having the speeches saying "We meant A, we think the language we passed says A", and nothing else. Especially because it's not as if Republicans are going to sign on to your joint statement that the language Congress passed means A. They'll refuse to pass your bill and say no, this isn't a correction, it's an amendment--we think the current law means exactly what it says.
I guess. This is not the sort of thing where I have any sense at all of what's politically effective -- I was kind of picturing Republicans who were in Congress when the ACA passed being unable to say "We totally thought it meant B at the time" with a straight face. Not that the amendment would pass, but that blame would be on the right people.
Oh, I have no idea what would help.
What I want to know is why hasn't the lawyer responsible for this drafting glitch been singled out yet? I want names, dammit.
Oh, I have no idea what would help.
Canonically, burning shit down.
There's not going to be a name, or even two or three -- I'm sure forty people reviewed the text and none of them caught it.
Can't we at least have a scapegoat? Someone actually wrote it that way. Reviewers bear less responsibility.
I thought the story was that the text worked as originally drafted, because the possibility of federal exchanges was introduced later. So it wasn't bad initial drafting, it was a failure to catch that a change elsewhere required a matching edit in this section. No original sinner, and every reviewer who missed it is equally responsible.
It's so awesome that the Supreme Court has decided to just play Calvinball with both precedent and common sense. a) We are totally fucked, and b) Scalia can't have a heart attack soon enough.
Sounds like a coverup. I guess the guilty party must be related to someone powerful.
Oh my god. Scrapping the subsidies is just such a fucking insane route to be cruel. This conversation is kind of horrifying.
Things that cheered me up yesterday:
Friend came back from short vacation in a Western State with $200 worth of assorted cheer. Been thirty years, honest. Astonished at the quality.
Buuuzzzzzyyyyyyy
I'd just like to note that this is almost literally the last thread in which this discussion should be happening.
Scrapping or diminishing the subsidies is exactly what I expected to happen, although I thought it would take a Republican president. Moving gov't provided goods and services into private provision funded with cash transfers is on page one of the neo-liberal playbook. Legislators know that transfers can always be incrementally trimmed and the frog won't leap from the pot. And this will not get fixed for decades. There will be a massive red-blue state divide, and we will see how it works out.
Some also say the employer mandate will never get implemented.
LB, is that Challenger the bright white or the ivory white pearl?
Do I know? It looks ordinary white -- nothing particularly interesting about the finish. My guess is it's not 'pearl', I'd expect that to be shimmery somehow.
Well, it looks more like the pearl to me, but I'm only looking at a picture.
427: See, this is why women can't be taken seriously.
Sorry, I guess it's not important. I've just been drooling all over your car all day. I hope you don't mind that I plan to show the picture to my wife, to demonstrate that, look, sensible people do too buy muscle cars. When I had lobbied for one, she thought I was insane. (No new cars anywhere on the horizon for me, so it's purely a matter of principle.)
It's hard to find many ads for muscle cars featuring sensible looking middle-aged women.
Buck is really not being sensible, this is him explicitly having a midlife crisis. Which is okay, but it's not sensible.
(The trunk is surprisingly huge, which makes it slightly more practical than you'd think. But not much.)
432: well that's why it obviously helps my case that Buck is not in the photo.
sensible looking middle-aged women.
You take that back. Leaning on that car, I totally look badass. Don't I?
434: Yes. Absolutely. That was sort of the point.
That's some car.
I'm delighted that the pseud "Wry Cooter" has found its purpose on the blog and will remain intermittently available, and I wish the best for the commenter currently using it. Divorce sucks, but sometimes it's better than the alternative.
That Challenger is awesome and I'd have a hard time picking between it and the new updated Mustang.
It's a little embarrassing driving it at my usual speed limit + 4, admittedly. I sense that I'm not treating the car quite as it deserves.
437: I had booked ahead with the car hire firm for a Generic Economical Car, but when I landed in LAX they told me apologetically that they didn't have any left and would I mind having a Mustang instead?
I intimated that I would manage to cope with the disappointment.
Admittedly traffic in LA isn't exactly conducive to putting the hammer down, but late at night on the freeway, or the PCH, or State 2 up into the mountains... nice.
That was actually what pushed Buck over the edge -- he was renting a car for a business trip that made more sense driving than flying (multiple stops on successive days a couple of hundred miles apart), and they handed him a Challenger rather than what he had planned to rent. He fell in love, mooned dreamily about it for ten months or so, and then bought this one.
God I'm jealous. And those cars are so tempting because say what you will about about Ford and Dodge, they offer ridiculously awesome muscle for the money. MSRP on one of those Challenger RT's with the 5.7L engine is only like 32K.
Aaaaaaaaand this is why everyone is drawn to gender essentialism. I just cannot connect with the appeal of a muscle car.
Does anyone know whether these new muscle cars are relatively refined? I knew the old first-generation ones well but they'd be unacceptable to me now. I drove my brother's Viper a few years ago and found it pretty coarse.
Aaaaaaaaand this is why everyone is drawn to gender essentialism. I just cannot connect with the appeal of a muscle car.
I think they mainly appeal to people who live in the West and people over 50.
436.2 Wait, is "Wry Cooter" the new going presidential? Or is there a difference in the way our new (?) commenter is using it?
I'll admit I'm not keeping up to well on all the threads, lately been too busy looking all over for my bachelor's diploma that they want a copy of and I haven't seen the thing for years.
this is why everyone is drawn to gender essentialism
Maybe today, but back in the day many women were drawn to and impressed by them and the guys who drove them. I wouldn't have believed it, until I had the use of a Firebird for a while. I wasn't what they were looking for, but they were looking for something.
Does anyone know whether these new muscle cars are relatively refined?
They're pretty nice these days.
I think they mainly appeal to people who live in the West and people over 50.
You might want to peek out of the lab once in a while and see what the masses are up to.
446.2: just like gender essentialism! In my case I think it's ignorance -- I really have no idea, at all, what it's like to drive a car that isn't a piece of shit. There may be some class or demographic component to that, as well as gender. I think avoiding any experience of nice cars is a protective strategy that I should stick to, though, since I get so spoiled so fast with most things.
Barry! Congrats on the job! Did you sell your guitar, speaking of nice things that spoil people?
No, I'm serious, 449. Periodically on other sports websites guys get into discussions about cars, and what's the fastest you've driven, and it always ends up with an argument between people saying "I was going 105 one day..." and people saying "I can't believe you would be that reckless, there is no possible way you could react in time and avoid a crash". And then it always turns out that the people who crank their cars up as far as they can go live in somewhere that has roads that go for hundreds of miles in a straight line with no potential obstacles except other cars, and the other people are from the East Coast like me and have no notion of such roads.
My boss is from Europe and has also observed the small amount of car culture here. In Europe apparently the car culture is around sports cars that can zip around hairpin turns and stop on a dime. Unlike our car culture around muscle cars, which was optimized for California. But, I've only had one friend in my life who cared about cars, so this is all hearsay.
441 makes me think that Buck's decision was less insane. I didn't realize that he A. had a very specific reason to think he'd love the car, and B. spent almost a year pining for it.
Not saying it was the best choice, just less patently ridiculous.
445: If you tell me what 'refined' and 'coarse' means in terms that make sense to a fairly low skill/familiarity driver (that is, my lifetime mileage is really low) I can tell you what it's like to drive the Challenger.
Naive impressions: it's pleasant to drive, although my baseline for comparison is a rattly fifteen-year old station wagon. Steering feels noticeably more reliable? responsive? than my baseline -- I am restraining myself from speeding through tight curves because it feels fun. Acceleration is immediate, which I like. Um, I don't know how to describe cars. Ergonomically, it's comfortable -- five or six hours behind the wheel is no issue at all.
453: Not judging him, he should have nice things. But pining for a car for almost a year is in fact patently ridiculous.
I think avoiding any experience of nice cars is a protective strategy that I should stick to, though, since I get so spoiled so fast with most things.
This is why I don't drink good wine.
There are many American car cultures, and European too.
Some types predominate in particular locales, but there are usually people nearby trying for something quite different.
455: Well, compared to waking up one morning and buying it based on a latent desire dating to teenager hood....
I still fondly remember a Mazda 323 that I drove so fast in the cattle states that I had motorcyclists trailing me. Once I was speeding to make it to a hot date in a national park campground, which was otherwise empty (!), possibly because of the enormous thunderstorm rolling in (!!cliche!!!). Jesus yes.
... The sonnet I wrote afterwards is surprisingly not embarassing even yet, although juvenile.
452: While it's true that max appreciation of muscle cars isn't well-suited to e.g. mountain roads, it's not as if Springsteen was singing about Fiats. All you need to enjoy American-style muscle is a stretch of open road. They sound awesome*, they go appreciably fast in a short distance, and you tend to feel badass in it even when you're going slowly.
One thing to consider, FWIW, is that old muscle cars were slower than current family sedans, which means they felt fast at lower speeds, whereas new muscle cars handle decently enough. That is, a '68 Camaro was at its limits at going 50 on a curvy road, but that felt fast (because it's not like anything else commonly driven handled better), while LB's Challenger can go 70 on the same curvy road. Classic British sports cars of the '50s and '60s were no faster than a modern econobox, but they were made to handle well, so that it felt fast.
Point being, it's all relative. It doesn't matter that a Mustang can't hang with a Porsche. What matters is that it feels awesome under most circumstances
*my prejudice is actually not for muscle cars, and I think that the sound of a big engine roaring is often silly (e.g. pickup trucks loudly going 25 mph), but a V8 being loud isn't nothing
Everyone has seen this movie, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh6ET39xtpw
454:
They used to do some unpredictable things, acceleration wasn't smooth, there'd be a a moment's hesitation and then it would kick in hard. The brakes were often not smooth in operation either, and would operate differently front and back.
With the short wheel base on a "pony car," what your Challenger is, a muscle car proper was a bigger and longer car like a GTO or Dodge Charger, the steering was a lot quicker than people might have been used to.
Modifications to make the performance better often made the ride harsher, and the car would visibly shake and feel you had to hold it down at idle.
That's for starters, there were other things too that would amaze someone used only to modern cars.
A DVD thereof was one of Buck's Christmas presents while he was still in the comically pining stage.
462: You're sure you don't have the Challenger and the Charger crossed up? I thought that of the two, the Challenger was the larger car.
To the rest of it, nothing like that. The engine's louder than I'm used to, but no shaking, the ride is fine (again, compared to the rattly 15-year-old wagon, but I ride in other people's cars and it's not surprising me in any regard). The steering is, I guess, more sensitive than I'm used to? But not anything that feels difficult.
Did you try coming on to him like in that trailer?
One of my early check-off items when I moved to DC was finding somewhere I could drive my little 4 (a BMW 2002) at least 100.
Circa 1970, the Charger was a mid-sized car and the Challenger was a pony car. Both brands have been though many changes.
In Europe apparently the car culture is around sports cars that can zip around hairpin turns and stop on a dime.
Some places here too. I mean, I appreciate the look of a muscle car as much as anyone, but for me fun driving involves more than going really fast in a straight line.
Also I am amused to see that my (sports) sedan is as fast from 0-60 as the low-end Challenger. Kind of a different aesthetic, though.
465: There's some line about cinema repeating itself as farce, isn't there?
Your friend could drive out to have a look at Albert Gallatin's estate. Great American, ol' Al.
(missing link: http://www.nps.gov/frhi/index.htm)
461: I thought at first that might have been this "gem" from around the same time. James Taylor stepping out of character backed by Dennis Wilson ( and Warren Oates in a more predictable role).
That's not especially close to DC.
Great driving, though.
Oh, wait. Yes, the route to get to Friendship Hill would be speedy and lightly patrolled.
475.last: Yes, that's a great road.
Americans were introduced to sports cars during the war, and postwar they became popular. My brother was into them, and I picked up a lot of lore helping him out. Then in 64 the Mustang was launched to pick up on that market. Actually just a new body on the compact Falcon. But people wanted performance, both speed and handling, and there was a racing series launched, Trans-Am, which pitted Mustangs against Camaros, eventually also Barracudas, Challengers and the AMX ones.
Carroll Shelby, the race driver and constructor, showed how to do it. The entire drivetrain was beefed up, swapping the Falcon components for the next-larger Fairlane's. All the things that make a car comfortable, like the rubber cushions between sub-frame and body, were replaced by solid metal. So the car was much more rigid, and handled better, but would loosen your dentures. And of course bigger and bigger engines, wider wheels and huge racing tires.
These same things were done to all the other makes of pony car too. It was easier in those days, as the companies had graduated sizes and robustness. Basically you matched the small body to the big car powertrain and brakes.
474 - You had better be using the quotation marks to indicate that you are citing Pauline Kael or something, bub, because that is a magnificent movie. I will fight you.
Rfts and I played it at our wedding.
Oh. I see.
I saw it one time when I was 18 at midnight double with The Magic Christian ...
451 Thanks lurid,
No, not yet. I'm planning on taking it to a place next week though. And will probably sell it at a very sharp discount from the price I'd wanted to sell it at before so...
I'm also going to sell my car before I leave in a couple of months should everything work out, a nice zippy 2003 Honda Civic Si.
Two-Lane Blacktop is good! It's like the negative space of a conventional movie.
The Magic Christian vs. Two-Lane Blacktop may represent the complete set of cases where James Taylor's artistic work trumps Ringo's, and I would probably include his role as Thomas the Tank Engine's creepy oppressor.
477: My mom's first car was a TR3, and she always said, "real sports cars don't have roll-up windows"; that is, soft top with side curtain only. My uncle - her older brother - has had a number of 'Vettes over the years, starting with (IIRC) a '58 that he managed to roll yet walk away from.
The Magic Christian vs. Two-Lane Blacktop sounds like a Thomas the Tank Engine special.
I probably owe TLB a re-watch.
