I think if you leave your wife for your pregnant girlfriend you should wait until your wife is screaming at you and then make a pun on "bigamy"/"big of me."
I probably should have called this post "Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires".
That would be big of all of them, Mobes. (I haven't looked because I'm a little touchy about post-separation financial insecurity at the moment. My life is a lot better in a lot of financial ways from not having the burden, but knowing there's no backup is its own stress too.)
I'm not annoyed by this sort of thing the way other folks often are. I mean, sure, she's getting a lot more attention (and a freelance fee) for problems that are relatively minor in the big scheme of things. But she's got real problems, and she writes about them with solid self-awareness.
Lord knows I am quite capable of feeling sorry for myself, despite the fact that my problems don't amount to much.
And if I don't want to read about this woman, I don't have to -- unless her work gets linked in an eclectic webmagazine; then I have to. But that's not her fault either.
Oh god, I really didn't mean to imply that the financial insecurity after divorce isn't awful and deserving of sympathy. I apologize if that came across.
I mean, that's the fundamental weirdness of marriages with either a SAHM, or a big income disparity. The poorer spouse's class status is entirely dependent on the continued health of the relationship. Kids complicate it, of course -- they're both expensive to the custodial parent and lead to a certain amount of income transfer, but once the kids are out of the picture, a low-income person married to a high-income person in a marriage that doesn't last? Is going to end up low income.
Oh, no, I just meant I'm grumpy about other things and haven't used this to make myself grumpier. Everyone should grump away and/or be supportive of her and so on!
I mostly posted it to stir up trouble.
6: That's what people get for social climbing.
I just want to say that I strongly endorse the use of "grump" as a verb.
I wonder about the kids. You've got one set of kids growing up with less material support than you have the other set of kids, which is basically the starting point for many fairy tales and, I suspect, lots of young men with anger issues.
Maybe instead of having stupid amounts of concentrated wealth we should have a UBI. There's so much social work of change to be done and it's so easily destroyed. Why do we get out of bed?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that a UBI would provide less than this woman gets under the stupid-concentrated-wealth system.
To crush your spouses, to see them driven to poor-people zipcodes, and to hear the lamentations of your women!
house in a white district
Admittedly, in New Hampshire, pretty much the only kind of district.
But do all of them have spas?
They were grotesquely wealthy
This is just regular wealthy. Which is to say, the disparities are actually much worse. Which is to say, God damn America.
During the years my wife was working and I was home, I didn't expect us to get divorced or anything, but I did have the thought that I should make myself more employable, because a forty-something guy who has to scramble for a job after a long employment gap would not be in an enviable position.
Still, you can be a kept man in your thirties, but for kept women it gets really hard after twenty-five.
Because my daughter attended a school for ex-pats, we had an interesting window into that world of synthetic wealth. OK, yes, you're living in a mansion in Potomac now, with all the trimmings, but soon enough you'll be back in a two bedroom apartment in your home city, having to actually pay for stuff out of your own salary, just like the rest of us.
24: Interesting. I think Tim would have liked to come back home to see the kids as a friendly houseguest, but I was transparently enough not up for it that he never quite proposed it.
She probably only did it because she knew she could sell the story.
I've asked Lee not to come onto my property, but that was after she had made threats to call child protective services because the toys in the side yard seem to make it messy enough it should count as neglect, apparently. I'm on an antibiotic that gives me vivid nightmares and I've had several where she is in my space and won't go away. The worst!
She would like me to commit to come with her and do childcare for international travel in a few years. I had already turned down the cruise version and letting a child travel unaccompanied to Asia to meet her there in this hypothetical future. I don't think people would believe me if I tried to sell my stories.
Maybe change somebody into a wizard and do it as fiction.
the excellent and safe public school codes (to me) like she overpaid for a house in a white district.
A split-level in town is like $150K in this part of NH, and the public schools are great. District is certainly pretty white, though.
How much for something with a bit more class than a split-level?
A castle, say. Just hypothetically.
You could probably get a decent castle for about 800K.
We were looking at a well-restored 1850's brick house in the nice part of town for $230K.
But you need to figure how much it will cost to fix it up with shag carpet and wood paneling.
Oh, if its shag carpeting and wood paneling you want, those are in ample supply. My wife really wanted to get this place which features aluminum siding that's been painted electric blue. The interior pictures don't do it justice, though... there are no pictures of the pink-tile 70's bathroom, the blue-tile 70's bathroom, the mustard-yellow vinyl wall covering in the breakfast nook, or the massive disco-themed finished basement with mirrored inlays on the bar.
Unfortunately, it was a bit of a fixer upper, and we both knew which one of us would be stuck with doing the fixer-upping.
33: you could get a habitable castle (as in: someone was living in it and now wants to sell) for a lot less than $800k. I've seen several listed for around £350k.
Is that in the part of Wales where nobody has steady work, but everybody has huge houses, and the police inspectors wear $800 coats?
They mostly seem to be in Galloway, home of cattle, Robert the Bruce, and various possibly-murderous 1920s landscape painters.
Yeah, well, castles are a lot more difficult to come by in the New World. Its a supply and demand thing.
Robert, a Bruce, probably couldn't even afford a cattle.
I thought cattle came from the Urheimat, in Ukraine. Or Anatolia. Or Kazakhstan.
Scotland (or the Celts in general) invented writing long poems about stealing cattle.
Which, aside from meat, milk, and leather, is the main point of cattle.
Also, if you get enough cattle, in some parts of the world you can trade them for a wife.
The Táin sucks. Except the part where Cuchulainn keeps hitting people on the forehead so hard their brains come out of their ears. That was funny.
The people were white male medical professionals so it's okay to laugh.
I was talking to my cousin who was married to the Leisure Studies guy at my uncle's funeral last week, and it doesn't sound pretty.
She (the ichthyologist) never got an academic job and works as a high school biology in a semi-rural town in Northern California. He was a stay-at-home Dad, and when they got divorced, he sort of half-assedly tried his hand at making craft furniture. He also sort of got a job at the same school, possibly doing handyman-type things.
He has since come into an inheritance and is "retired". He moved about an hour north to Sonoma County and has a big property. Recently, she moved to that town, is renting out her house (a disaster!) and commuting each way so that her kids can spend more time with their father. It used to be one week at each parent's house, but he wasn't taking the kids during his week. After years of being a not-great Dad he's involved. She has rooms for both kids (17-year old son, and 15-year old daughter) but the son never stays with her, preferring Dad's place where he also has a 3-D printer.
When her kids are in college, she'll probably go back to the 1st town and take extra work teaching at the community college, but for now her financial situation is "pretty dire." He's got tons of ex-girlfriends and she's bitter. She's the one who left, and she was still in love with him when she did. It seems ridiculous to me that she's put herself into a financial bind because of him, but she loves her kids and this is what she thinks is best for them.
I mentioned to her that her brother never liked H. She said, "nobody liked him." Too bad she did once.
She would like me to commit to come with her and do childcare for international travel in a few years. I had already turned down the cruise version and letting a child travel unaccompanied to Asia to meet her there in this hypothetical future.
I'm not sure if I'm not understanding this because of basic reading comprehension, or because it's too ridiculous to comprehend on first read. Is this to say that she wants to travel around Asia with the kids but also for you to accompany her as nanny slash valet?
Anyway, she should move to NYC and get a job as a teacher. They do pretty well, apparently.
Charley, if you might be interested in a referral send me an email (I can't find your email address).
After closing they had an engineer in? I can't bear to read any further.
51.last is how she thinks of me anyway, but yes, that's exactly the plan. She doesn't feel she can handle more than one child on vacation at a time or it stops being fun, which is why she had to bring a babysitter for a long weekend in Chicago with Selah last summer (almost age 5), though she managed two or three days in NYC with Mara the summer before (so age 8.5).
Wait, a high school teacher? Calling a drone strike in on Boerum Hill. Danger close.
You can buy a whole Shetland island for 250K pounds.
Is it the anthrax one? I'm not clicking that link.
I bet the broadband available at that 250K island is shit.
The bigger problem than broadband is that there are no roofs on the island.
I'm a little confused in the OP about marital assets. I'd have expected them to own a lot of stock and her to get half of it.
Look, whats more important: decent broadband, or a roof over your head?
61 She got a chunk of the credit card debt.
I'd never heard of a deal where support gets reduced if the custodial parent's income drops, which is apparently another facet of her divorce. I assume that makes sense somehow that I'm just not getting, but it does seem harsh.
61: Where did it come from? Don't know about NY, but in a community property state like California inheritances are not part of the community property. In the Northeast, you could accomplish the same thing by leaving the money in trust.
I found the story irritating for my own reasons, because it seems like a woman who was always rich (her dad had a private jet?) and was raised to live well beyond her means. She spent most of her life being upper-middle/lower-upper class and wanting to be middle/upper upper class. Then when she achieved that, she and her husband lived paycheck-to-paycheck to fund their super luxe lifestyle, with zero foresight that it might end.
I'm not saying there's anything not understandable about that, and she certainly has a right to feel bad, but I just can't identify with her core values.
55: Christ. It's a shame your interactions with her can't be reduced to something limiting the boundaries like multiple choice.
67: That's kind of the goal. She has the two youngest every other weekend and I don't plan to give her any more time than that unless a judge forces me to. She can have 10 days of vacation a year plus a specified Christmas and then Thanksgiving on alternating years. It's fairly minimal involvement as is and it gets excruciating for me pretty fast, but could be so much worse.
68: Right, but from this and other things you've noted, it seems shit still slips through.
69: Indeed. She also seems to think I should be her therapist and appreciate her drunken middle-of-the-night musings, but nope and nope.
64: I remember Dave Foley whining mightily that he did not get a reduced support order after News Radio was canceled. I don't know if he had a point or not.
I wish the writer had specified the details of why and how she went, in one paragraph, from "Vacations were spent with my father, who took us on exotic trips to the Bahamas, flying us over in his private airplane to rendezvous with his 52-foot boat," to "I paid my own way through college in Boston, and for a time I was even homeless."
Where was dad? Did she choose to be scruffily independent during and after college? Or did dad decide he was done with her, and if she was homeless he didn't care? Or did he lose it all? Kind of a jarring gap there.
64, 71 - support goes down, generally, if the non-custodial parent's (i.e., the rich absentee Dad stereotype) income goes down, because it's fair to make them pay less in that situation. It goes down if the custodial (i.e. struggling former stay-at-home Mom) parent's income goes up (because less money is needed). But as LB says she seems to be saying (as the custodial parent) that her support goes down if her income goes down. I can't see any possible justification for that in the world and have never heard of it.
(maybe it's like "Republican child support theory" -- if you work harder, you and your kid get bonus support, if you work less, the support gets taken away. That will teach you to work, you lazy-ass divorced Mom!)
I was misreading 64. That does seem odd.
Yeah. I could imagine a support order that declined to raise the support order if the custodial parent's income went down -- that is, saying that a working mother with custody would get support with her salary factored into the equation, but that that calculation wouldn't change to give her more if she lost her job. Something like that might make sense, so as not to incentivize custodial parents from quitting work. But actually dropping her child support if her income dropped seems super weird.
Wouldn't your kids hate you if you stopped support, even legally, because of something the other spouse did? I mean, you've got the second set of kids, but why should you think you're going to be better at living with their mother than the mother of the first? Plus, call me an old-fashioned romantic if you wish, but I think you should live your life such that you maximize the percentage of your kids who would feel obligated to try to fix things if they found you in an abusive nursing home.
Plus, call me an old-fashioned romantic if you wish, but I think you should live your life such that you maximize the percentage of your kids who would feel obligated to try to fix things if they found you in an abusive nursing home.
This seems like a way of living life consistent with, say, waiting until after you divorce your first wife to impregnate your second.
Let's not go nuts with the demands for self-control.
What if your biological cock is ticking?
It's supposed to start ticking after 45, right?
Vacations were spent with my father, who took us on exotic trips to the Bahamas, flying us over in his private airplane to rendezvous with his 52-foot boat
Her father was totally a drug smuggler.
She gives some background on her upbringing in this article "
I might look country-club rich, but I'm actually drowning in debt". Divorced parents, father was very wealthy but mother whom she lived with most of the time struggled.
She seems to have written several variants of this article over the past few years.
Well, they say to write what you know.
Don't even bother to write anything is my motto.
I'm pissing off a guy in Australia right now. I spent two hours looking for a cartoon instead of doing work for a resubmit.
I couldn't find it either. I'm pretty sure it was SMBC though.
OT: In case anybody was wondering how the American health care system was going to get worse: Hospitals pushing patients to take out loans before receiving services.
I guess that's better than postponing treatment if the person can't prepay? Which I gather happens all the time currently.
I don't think it's better because it will make it possible to postponing treatment until payment a general standard and because it's a ridiculously coercive way to make a loan.
The Winter Olympics are causing problems in my marriage, because my husband feels resentful and hurt that I prioritize watching the Winter Olympics over him. Also, we live in a studio and he is I think going crazy because I stream the Olympics 8+ hours a day.
I don't usually like to take sides in other peoples' relationships, but your husband is 100% right.
I wish the writer had specified the details of why and how she went, in one paragraph, from "Vacations were spent with my father, who took us on exotic trips to the Bahamas, flying us over in his private airplane to rendezvous with his 52-foot boat," to "I paid my own way through college in Boston, and for a time I was even homeless."
Where was dad? Did she choose to be scruffily independent during and after college? Or did dad decide he was done with her, and if she was homeless he didn't care? Or did he lose it all? Kind of a jarring gap there.
I'm a cynical SOB, but I know lots of rich people who like to pretend they had a more hardscrabble life than they do and talk like she does about pretty minor things that are mostly voluntary. It's not technically untrue, but it creates a false impression. I.e., rich people who worked in their parents' country club one summer in high school to earn car money talking about "when I supported myself as a waitress." "Homeless" probably means she had a month between apartment leases in the summer and couch surfed with friends. Paid my own way could be anything, from paying tuition to paying for her own books. Her comparison set is really wealthy people, so paying for anything herself probably feels like paying her own way.
97 When Alpine events are on, you're in the right. When it's Skating, he's got the better argument.
"You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, that much is true. But even then we knew your uncle owed the place, and your dad too."
I agree with 100, but still don't want to rule out the notion that the dad's late-70s-private-plane-Bahamas-yacht lifestyle may not have been entirely legal.
101 Unless it's Virtue and Moir. Just because they fucking.
I.e., rich people who worked in their parents' country club one summer in high school to earn car money talking about "when I supported myself as a waitress."
Change it to "waiter" and Paul Ryan is especially shameless about this.
101: Are you insane? As spectator sports, figure skating kicks skiing's ass. Oh look, let's watch 50 people go down an identical hill. Be still my beating heart.
Also, we live in a studio and he is I think going crazy because I stream the Olympics 8+ hours a day.
Jesus. I'm amazed he hasn't moved out for the duration.
Are you insane? As spectator sports, figure skating kicks skiing's ass. Oh look, let's watch 50 people go down an identical hill. Be still my beating heart.
Rather that than watch 60 people ski around a flat course for hours on end, which is what we're doing now :(
101, 106: short track is clearly the best spectator sport! It also has the virtue of being over quickly.
(That was my actual husband, BTW. He unconsensually stole my laptop and posted that.) And we're watching biathalon, which is one of the most exciting sports out there. The men's cross-country ski race comes next.
The biathalon would be so much better if they had to keep moving while they shot.
That was my actual husband, BTW
I had been curious.
106. Only an addlepated slackjaw could write 106. You want spectator thrill, then choose gopro footage of basejumping or urban bmx (here).
Televised skiing gives us the happy chance to empathise with those wizards of balance and speed, see them excelling at a normal human activity. Figure skating turns dancing (something that's nice and that people do together socially) into a hypertrophied display staged for the benefit of spectators. It's worse than competitive singing.
I thought Triplets of Belleville had a sensitive perspective on both participating in sports and watching them.
113 Are posthumous silver and bronze medals allowed?
God help me, I can watch just about any winter olympic sport and enjoy it. Ice dancing, sure, it's pretty women with incredible bodies. Biathlon is racing, with guns! (My kids love it, and there was a photo finish the other day.) Downhill skiing, they're going 80 fucking mph, so there's the frisson of potential crashes and hundredths of a second margins. Etc. The one that's a bit of a stretch is long-track speed skating, where any single moment looks exactly like any other single moment, and there's rarely drama at the finish, but even that can be mesmerizing if you're in the right frame of mind.
Why not cross-country skiing and shooting paintballs at each other? Maybe not in the Olympics, but for the general public.
BUT! If Buttercup is watching with the sound on, I'm on team B'sH.
Ice skating. Virtue and Moir because they definitely fucking. Also there was a bare titty on the ice. Or so I heard. Hooray!
I may have been drinking so you know, apologies.
I also missed the nipple, though I did see the replay. It was a perfect, Olympic-class nipple.
118 is exactly what I had in mind. Also some sort of stock car racing but with Sno-Cats.
The biathalon would be so much better if they had to keep moving while they shot.
YES. You'd think that our horrible gun culture could at least produce something like that. Why not moving and shooting semi-automatic rifles at charging bull caribou released to attack the skiers on the biathalon course. Points are a combo of speed on course and caribou bagged. Need to figure out a way to make the bull caribou consistently mad but that feels solvable.
Explain we caused global warming to them?
I did enjoy the Canadians ice dancing last night.
Biathalons would be more entertaining if they were all like the one in For Your Eyes Only.
Also the competitors should only be visible as silhouettes, like in an opening credits sequence.
I can't be the only one who wants to see what world class athletes could do in Olympic snowball fighting.
YES. The winter games should always end with a giant international snowball fight involving all athletes. Summer games should end every time with an international tug of war competition, also involving all athletes from other sports.
I was disappointed to learn what the biathlon pursuit really involves.
Also, I can enjoy the time trial style skiing and skating events but only if I invest the time to watch enough to be able to follow the intermediate splits, which is how you can figure out what's going on. US TV tends to hate providing that kind of information for longer races, preferring to tell stories, run ads, or interview people from other events. Maybe someone should sell split times as data-driven TV. Innovate!
Need to figure out a way to make the bull caribou consistently mad but that feels solvable.
Cow caribou behind the skiers. (This is how they do the Running of the Reindeer here.)
How many skiers does it take to pull a cow caribou?
Maybe three or four? They're not very big.
Mature females average 175-225 pounds.
I always pictured them as bigger than deer, but that's basically the same size as a mule deer.
Bulls are larger, but yeah, they're smaller animals than people tend to expect.
I guess Santa is shorter than I figured too.
Ground hogs were much bigger than I expected, partially because nobody told me they were just woodchuck.
I have very little sense of what distinguishes caribou from moose. I suspect that's true of most people well outside their habitat (/ non-hunters).
Moose are really big and have very distinct horns (like Bullwinkle).
An unarmed moose is probably more dangerous than a caribou with a gun.
Apparently, you can hunt elk in Pennsylvania. Honestly, I wouldn't bother because after you shoot one, you have to drag a really big dead thing back to your truck. A white-tailed deer is more portable and you can probably just wait until one walks close enough to your truck that it isn't a big deal to haul it.
Plus, a deer is small enough that you might just be able to call an Uber to where you are and get it picked up that way.
Where are there elk in Pennsylvania?
Mostly Elk County and its vicinity.
History of elk in Pennsylvania
Exterminated in the 1870s and brought back in the 1910s as part of the conservation craze.
I didn't realize there were only 125 licenses a year. That's not many elk. But then I'd bet an elk needs a lot of land.
Elkton, Maryland was known for its early, dominant role in the global elk market.
The only way to stop a bad moose without a gun is a good caribou with a gun.
One of the short stories I'm likely to nominate for the Hugos this year is entitled "Laminated Moose Zombies and Other Road Maintenance Problems," by Michael F. Flynn and Dennis M. Flynn. I kept cracking up while reading it. Premise is a non-lethal slow-motion zombie apocalypse caused by a fungus that reanimates dead tissue (while being only somewhat annoying to the still-living), and the protagonist is an Alaskan Department of Public Works employee who gets to drive around cleaning up after all the reanimated roadkill corpses. Published in the Nov/Dec 2017 issue of Analog.
Elk is very good eating.
It's really confusing talking to Europeans about elk, because I think they mean moose. The best solution is for us to just go with wapiti for our North American animal.
I tell them that moose is the plural of elk.
I've probably mentioned before the efforts the fish & wildlife folks are going to regarding our local wapiti herd. Trying to get enough hunting pressure so they stay wary of people, and out of our yards. (Closest to the house I've seen this herd is about 800 feet, but they do mostly stay half a mile or more away.) We're living in their winter range, I guess.
I might shoot one, if they help me drag it to the truck.
On second thought, isn't standing next to a leather sack of freshly dead meat a really good way to being eaten by a bear?
My brother-in-law enters a lot of those hunting lotteries, and a couple years ago he finally got to shot the elk he always wanted, in Maine.
Now he's got the head mounted on his wall. His foyer is quite the monument to dead animals.
One time, there was a fire at his house, and he rushed back inside to retrieve the striped bass.
I TOLD THEM THE RAPTORS WERE A MISTAKE.
Its the undead animals you've got to watch out for.
If only I could find where to get streamed ice hockey I'd never get any work done at all.
I'm feeling sad this morning because my plan to introduce to the world the term "casheteria", meaning a "money laundering machine", got spiked at the last moment by the sub who pointed out that Wash\eteria own a trade mark. But how else to describe the use of slot machines by retail drug dealers?
It's really confusing talking to Europeans about elk, because I think they mean moose.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_14740.html#1820538
EUROPE/ North America
REINDEER / caribou (big, furry horns) - these are actually various different subspecies of the same species, Rangifer tarandus, thanks teo
ELK / moose (huge, silly nose) - Alces alces
WAPITI / elk - Cervus canadensis (very similar in appearance to the European red deer, Cervus elaphus, but a different species)
But how else to describe the use of slot machines by retail drug dealers?
Funny, I thought all the small-time money launderers had moved on to purchasing mass quantities of Hennessy as distributors look the other way.
That seems like a great deal of work.
It's really confusing talking to Europeans about elk, because I think they mean moose.
It's like English muffins.
Cut a moose in half, fill with a fried egg and some bacon.
You could use British bacon, which is like Canadian bacon, but not as round.
Wash\eteria
Which I'd bet no Americans have even heard of.
174. Like reindeer and caribou. Until I ate an English muffin in the US, I believed that they were crumpets (UK). But it turned out that while they were very similar to crumpets, they had significant differences and were not exactly like anything that can be bought in England (except at a PX if there are any left).
I still think that if I smuggled crumpets into the US, people would call them English muffins because they're close enough. But they're not what you seem to get at Target.
Target is our finest baked goods purveyor.
The word "crumpet" sounds like it should be used for something tastier than an English muffin.
Which I'd bet no Americans have even heard of.
Which I'd bet at least some have, since washateria.com quotes its prices in US$.
I liked the English muffins from Target a lot. But they weren't quite crumpets. I'd eat them happily if they sold them over here, but I'm not sure what they could call them that wouldn't confuse people.
American muffins are the things like cupcakes that have made an unsuccessful break for freedom, unlike actual muffins in England which are another kind of small round bready thing that you slice in half, toast, and eat with too much butter.
Wash\eteria
Which I'd bet no Americans have even heard of.
What? The closest laundromat to me at this moment is called Spincity Washateria.
We've had a long discussion on this very blog and determined that English Muffins are what English people call muffins. Do keep up.
180: It's half crone, half strumpet.
In Germany, they call fresh cabbage "American kraut".
In India, they call type II diabetes "American metabolism".
Actually South Asians are one of the highest-risk populations for type II diabetes; the NHS puts out public health messages saying that you should get yourself tested for diabetes if you are in any two of four high risk categories, and along with "being very fat", "being over 45" and "having high blood pressure" is just "being South Asian".
I thought that came with western diets.
Nope, happens to South Asians living in South Asia too, and the south Asian diet seems to be one of the reasons:http://www.asiandiabetesprevention.org/what-is-diabetes/why-are-asians-higher-risk
I knew curry wasn't healthy. I'm going to go get chicken tenders and fries.
I also didn't realize that China had caught up to the U.S. on diabetes. It's really to have some (relative) genetic protection against the harms of being fat and drinking.
Culture news:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/15/iain-m-bankss-drawings-of-the-culture-universe-to-be-published-in-2019
And Amazon is adapting Consider Phlebas for the screen.
1
she had a poor lawyer
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/11/nyregion/in-custody-war-moderately-luxurious-has-a-big-price.html
2
didn't she notice all the guys leaving her friends for younger, prettier 2nd wives ?
and therefore, why didn't she put a few diamonds away for a rainy day ?
196
I was just going to tell you that. It turns out white privilege really involves having evolved to eat frosting out of a can and drink gallons of cheap liquor with slightly less deleterious health effects.
178
You can actually buy crumpets in America, though not at Target. They're also called crumpets, and they're sold next to the English muffins. I have to say I much prefer English muffins to crumpets, they're crisper and much less soggy. Also, the Target ones are OK but you can get much better English muffins elsewhere. Americans also do eat English-style muffins, except you have to make them at home. Store-bought or bakery muffins are sugar-laden monstrosities.
I gave up frosting out of a can (including a spray can) for Lent.
169: Its the undead animals you've got to watch out for.
Yeah. Just to give you a quick taste from the story:
That's when Sergei and I swing into action, patrolling the roads along Muldoon between Tudor and JBER and keeping an eye peeled for the undead. It's not hard work. They aren't even the "walking" dead, let alone the zippy ones they tried to sell us in those movies a generation ago. They're more like the "crawling dead," or "slithering dead." Technically, they aren't even "dead," since the fungus that moves them is very much alive. But try telling that to drivers when they see roadkill inching its way down Boniface or when some poor herbie working night shift in a mortuary finds a corpse swinging its arms or kicking its feet. Morticians have to wear brown pants these days.
188: Roberto Tigre had the definitive wrap-up (bolding in the original comment): So, more precisely, we can say the following: in America our most prominent brand of English-style muffin has an IP-protected trade-secret formula for creating "nooks and crannies" in the muffin that is not found in the English-style muffins historically sold in England. However this does not prevent what in America is known as an "English muffin" from being, in fact, an English-style muffin recognizably akin to muffins sold in England. It is thus justifiably known, accurately, as an "English muffin."
Also discussed at some length on this here very blog. Some people were wrong and annoying.
It's like some people are providing value-adding links and quotes.
Ore referencing that comment in their comment.
ore
Stay gold, anonymous commenter.
The excerpt in 201 shows a solid understanding of Anchorage geography. It's also funny to me because I am right now in a coffee shop on Tudor near Muldoon, even though I'm very rarely in this part of town.
I have to say I much prefer English muffins to crumpets, they're crisper and much less soggy.
But the crumpets are soggy with butter and honey. That's the good kind of soggy.
There's a store by my house that sells just honey and other bee-products (beeswax?, anaphylactic shock? ). I'm afraid to go in there because if you go into somebody's small artisanal shop, you pretty much have to buy something.
212. Royal jelly, a well known quack medicine.
In the worst case, you walk out with a pot of honey. I don't see the issue.
It's New Hampshire. You'd have to work pretty hard to find someplace that's not safe and not white. And other than a few towns, it's pretty cheap.
I've never been, but I hear the mountains are nice.
Better to get your bee products from Apis Meadery in Carnegie, as they're nice enough to make sure they're fortified with alcohol. (You can also buy the major local honey brand there, too.)
I wonder what gin and honey tastes like? Probably diabetes and sadness.
218: It's the Bee's Knees http://postprohibition.com/recipes/bees-knees/
It's New Hampshire. You'd have to work pretty hard to find someplace that's not safe
I find New Hampshire rednecks plenty scary.
This discussion of baked goods brings to mind the most sophisticated joke I knew when I was fourteen: "I thought Muffin the Mule was a children's series until I discovered Smirnoff". See also this advertisement from the same campaign (at least if it's genuine, which I believe)
The joke in 221 is too sophisticated for me, but the link: OMG.
Except sadly it's not real.
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-11-22/opinion/op-2060_1_culture-jammers
Spoilsport.
This one looks more genuine and I think I actually remember this one .
You: "It was a bed-siit in Earls Court until I discovered Smirnoff"
Me: What language is this?
Apparently a bed-sit is a studio.
Also, OT, I love this so much. Dolphin noises.
That one looks like it could be captioned "Smirnoff: The drink of white slavery."
I came home and made a Bee's Knees and it made me happy. (With 3 dashes if bitters that weren't in the recipe I linked to)
Hah, I've been drinking those as well lately.
I think my Trader Joe's sells something they are calling British style crumpets.
Reading the recipe, I think bitters would be a good addition.
I like them without -- the combination of gin and lemon is enough to make the honey not oversweet.
I'm pretty sure the local bar doesn't even have honey, so I won't find out.
You could bring in your own honey?
Maybe. Apparently, I can't bring my own gin.
"But it's my emotional support liquor" doesn't work.
Speaking of which, I've discovered that I have an emotional support liquor. Zirbenschnaps. I'm having trouble figuring out where I can get it in the US.
