I saw that earlier and had the same reaction: good for him. Plus, he's always been ugly.
Another U of C dude. I haven't watched the show in years, but I always liked his omnivorous, Saintsbury-like love of movies.
One of my favorite bits from News Radio:
Normally at a time like this I'd ask you for advice, and you'd say something that would make no sense at all, but somehow it would all fit together. Like, I would tell you, "Sir, I have a problem," and you'd say, "Well, what is it?" and I'd say, "Well, sir, Lisa wants to have a baby, but she doesn't want to get married," and you'd say "Dave, why milk the cow when you have a fridge full of steaks?" And I'd say, "Sir, that makes no sense," and you'd say, "Well, it sure made sense when that guy Chuck Connors said it in that movie Chinatown," and I'd say, "Sir, Chuck Connors wasn't in Chinatown," and you'd say, "Dave, if I wanted to have this conversation I'd have hired that guy Siskel Ebert to do your job," and I'd say, "Sir, Siskel and Ebert are two people," and you'd say, "Dave, just because the man is fat is no reason to make fun of him."
Still, good for him.
I wouldn't have recognized him.
Maybe you're autistic; probably should have a doctor check that out.
Shorter this post: Ogged, don't let that scar stop you from postings those bum shots.
It's not so bad. He looks like Mel Tormé now. God rest his soul.
Maybe you're autistic
No, I can't draw for shit.
How much of it is the lack of glasses?
Maybe Heebie and Ogged could post a common bum shot in solidarity with cancer victims. It would be selfish of Heebie to refuse.
Common Bumshot is a village in western England, right?
Just south of Upper Topping, I believe.
Article needs a quote from Vincent Gallo.
The link in 15 brought me to this. What has DeLong said lately?
He's linked back to that fairly recently without suggesting revisions.
He's linked back to that fairly recently without suggesting revisions.
Some revision here.
That article owned. If I were some gossip rag photographer, I'd give Ebert a wide berth for fear that he'd tear my head off as an example to the rest of my kin. @_@
Anyone else up for the Lee Marvin series at Lincoln Center in May?
http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/leemarvin.html
Doesn't he look better now than he used to?
I was amused that he described his communication style as consisting of gestures and eye-rolling.
Flippanter, thanks for linking that, I'll probably try to make a couple of them.
Don't you just live the parting shot in the article linked in 15? I may be fat, but one day I will be skinny; you, sir, will always have directed that film.
20, 24: If you get the chance, see "Hell in the Pacific." Bizarre, surreal WWII flick with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. And no one else. Saw it as part of a class in college 33 years ago and it's still vivid in my memory. As opposed to most of college.
28. Um, I remember seeing that film in the theater as a lad. Thought it was cool.
I'd like to think that I helped, in my own small way, to bring him to his current acceptance of his disability by being one of the people who picketed him after he gave a good review to Million Dollar Baby.
Seriously, though, Ebert's always been a class act. I picket because I love.
What I got out of his reviews is that he loves the movies, and doesn't need to impress the rest of us with which film school he attended. He accepts popcorn movies for what they are as well as "art films" for what they are, and finds the good or crap in each.
The sheer volume of films Ebert reviews is astounding. Does anyone else even come close to writing 3,4 and 5 full movie reviews a week? And he's done that for 30 years.
He writes so much that it's pretty easy to get a really good sense of his tastes, so that even if you disagree with him, you can still typically tell whether or not it'll be your cup of tea.
Ebert and Gallo kind of kissed and made up after the Brown Bunny spat; Ebert even had some kind words for Gallo's re-edit of BB.
#32 is absolutely right, and Ebert is also an excellent writer; he's not grinding out hackwork.
What a classy, bitchy, funny guy. Good for him.
Completely off-topic for this post, but this item from a list of stupid patent applications does combine the two central Unfogged themes of exercise and penises:
Penis Exerciser (1995)
Bet your health club doesn't have one of these. To stay, um, functional as you age, use your male organ to repeatedly push up the bar attached to the metal box. You can pump up the difficulty by adjusting the fulcrum. Be very careful not to pull any muscles.
I just saw The Lookout; I recommend not doing that. At least until DVD.
Also, while I'm leaving a somewhat on topic comment (it is about movies): I can't believe I didn't know that the New York City Corporation Counsel was named Michael Cardozo and whatever relaton of Benjamin Cardozo one is to one's grandfather's first cousin. I really need to read more local news stories.
whatever relation ... one is to one's grandfather's first cousin
First cousin twice removed.
That's boring. Does it have a better name in some other language?
being one of the people who picketed him after he gave a good review to Million Dollar Baby.
Get thee hence Eastwood hater.
That's boring. Does it have a better name in some other language?
In Latin, a step-sibling born of your father's new wife is your consanguineous sibling; a step-sibling born of your mother, impregnated by her new husband, is your uterine sibling.
Arabic has distinct terms for those relationships as well (though I don't recall what they are). They are generally translated with the Latin terms.
In Latin, a step-sibling born of your father's new wife is your consanguineous sibling; a step-sibling born of your mother, impregnated by her new husband, is your uterine sibling.
They'd be half-siblings, not step-siblings.
33: As he should have. I loved The Brown Bunny, and, though it was obvious how bad it would have been with the half-hour or so more footage that was originally still in it, the re-edit was beautiful. Gallo's an asshole, so much so that he might have let the first edit go out bad so he could garner a lot of hateful reviews and then piss in everyone's face with a kick-ass re-edit, but, from what I understand, almost no one went to see it because of his comments about Ebert. Nobody fucks with Ebert like that and gets away with it!
I should admit that BB is still not as good as Buffalo '66, but, well. Hrm. Now I sound like a Gallo apologist. Yes, I know he's a dick.
He writes so much that it's pretty easy to get a really good sense of his tastes, so that even if you disagree with him, you can still typically tell whether or not it'll be your cup of tea.
When I came to Chicago, thirty years ago, he was local, although he and Siskel were in the process of inventing the format. I would see him hanging out, sometimes, and got a sense of how he talked normally, which is the same as what you see on tv. I came to rely on the fact that you could use his sensibility as gauge, even though your own was bound to be different. And the sensibility has been reliable, and stands up well when you look at what he wrote then, as I did recently for Days of Heaven. He would write about the same review today, I think.
45 - "What-ever"? If you're going to distinguish between consanguineous and uterine siblings, surely you'd want to distinguish between half and step? Pah, what happened to the spirit of pedantry?
In Jane Austen, "step-brother" can mean "brother-in-law". What a bimbo.
Among the Yanomami of the western Amazon basin, men are only allowed to be friends with their brothers-in-law.
Tell me why, smart people.
You go, USC!
A 19-year-old USC student was charged Tuesday with making criminal threats and committing an assault with a handgun at a weekend party near campus.
Zao Xing Yang, an undergraduate, was arrested early Sunday morning after fellow students wrestled him to the ground when they saw him holding a .25-caliber handgun.
Note: #52 is not an attempt to spark a whole gun debate all over again. I just want to give some props to the USC students who stopped Zao before he got all shooty.
I've bought Ebert's yearly movie review compilation just about every year since 1987. With almost no new Ebert reviews since mid-2006, it's like a part of movie history will always be missing for me.
Off-topic for the thread, but loosely related to 52: The Annotated Richard McBeef.
men are only allowed to be friends with their brothers-in-law
not lovers?
Would there really be gossipy articles about how bad he looks? Fuckin' cancer-of-the-salivary-glands A, would that really happen? I know, it's a wonder I can find the comment box with all this naive trust in the way. I guess I could buy that someone, somewhere, would be all a-wag with "isn't it wonderful he made a public appearance despite his horribly disfiguring condition from which of course I wish him a full recovery," but seriously, aren't there editors anymore?
Get thee hence Eastwood hater.
The OneMind is bifurcating. Million Dollar Baby is one of the only movies I've walked out of.
#55 is simultaneously wrong and awesome.
I walked out of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Million Dollar Baby I found quite a bit more compelling.
Eastwood is a god. MDB was powerful, but Unforgiven remains his best film.
BTW, I haven't seen his two Iwo Jima movies, so I can't say how they stack up.
#57, people have been mocking Ebert for his appearance for years, ever since he was "the fat guy" on Siskel & Ebert. So he's probably fearing the worst, even if basic human decency tells us you don't make fun of people with cancer.
The only movie I've walked out on was The Queen. No, I also walked out on a home showing of Johnny Mnemonic.
Eastwood is a god.
Paul Rubens could take him.
52: Pete Carroll should consider recruiting them. The Trojans didn't do so well the last time a guy with a big gun came into town.
Do you feel lucky? Do ya, Pee-Wee?
Wow. VT's memorial of a semicircle of rocks for the massacre victims includes a rock for Cho.
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- On the edge of the Virginia Tech Drillfield stands a semicircle of stones _ 33 chunks of locally quarried rust-grey "Hokie" limestone.
There is one for each of Seung-Hui Cho's victims.
And there is one for Cho.
Each stone is marked with a paper "VT" adorned with the student's or professor's name, and each is bedecked with flowers. Cho's is fourth from the left, between those for victims Daniel O'Neil and Matthew Gwaltney.
His memorial has fewer blooms than some, more than others.
Dude, that would really suck if your rock got fewer flowers than the killer's.
I really love the way that our great nation is able to make lemonade out of anything.
If we had enough completely pointless mass killings, we could keep the warm affirmative glow going all the time. Perhaps Cho was really trying to help us feel good after all.
OK, so I guess I am a mere babe in swaddlnig etc. I cannot fathom making fun of someone for how their cancer treatments have made them look. I just... no, my brain shuts down. Making fun of him for being "the fat guy" isn't surprising, that's a brand of cruelty to which I myself will sometimes descend in my worse moments but gods below, fucking cancer, people.
s/swaddlnig/swaddling, of course.
Million Dollar Baby is one of the only movies I've walked out of.
Really? It's not my favorite movie of his by any means, but I genuinely am surprised that some people found it unwatchable.
I've never walked out of a movie though, by God, I should have walked out of Dracula 2000.
71, did you check the comments in the link in 66? It's pretty sickening.
Hey, Pants. You're a computer security guy, Look at this, would you, and tell me what it means? Avedon Carol linked to it and at my level of technical understanding it's sinister but incomprehensible.
As a rule, if a movie includes the year it was released in the title, you're asking for trouble. Cf. Godzilla 1985.
I walked out of my first movie a few weeks ago; it was a short that was the last entry in a compilation of short films, though, so it's hard to say it's the same thing. It wasn't bad, I just found a particular aspect of the content too disturbing to sit through even though I was telling myself that it was just a movie, etc.
The only full-length film I've walked out on was a friend's renting of the first Austin Powers film, and I actually ran screaming from the room about twenty minutes into that.
75: the comments at wwtdd.com are always that way.
75: I didn't; rather, I consciously chose not to read their comments. I hate people.
76: Off to read it now, I'll shoot you an email.
I just found a particular aspect of the content too disturbing to sit through
What? What was it?
I should have walked out of Dracula 2000.
When you find yourself shelling out 10 bucks to watch Dracula 2000, it's time to cut back on the drugs.
Is there some reason we are not discussing Linda Hirschman's op-ed in today's NY Times?
(Come on, I rely on you guys for my Linda Hirschman analysis.)
Clearly you need to be one of the cobloggers here, assClown. Some of them aren't pulling their weight anymore.
82: I was only there because the woman I was dating at the time wanted to see it. I might have sat through it, though, on the (unrealized) hope that Jennifer Esposito was going to get naked. In any event, that was one unrelentingly shitty movie.
In any event, that was one unrelentingly shitty movie.
Sounds like someone could use some Pepto.
Linda Hirschman falls into the groupism trap, in which some group, such as "women" or "working mothers" should do X or not do Y, because it's supposedly good for their group, or, more grandiosely, for "society".
What if it were established that it was good for "society" for women to stay home and raise the kids? Would Ms. Hirschman be admonishing career women to hang up their business suits and get back in the kitchen? Why not just let each individual person make his or her own choices?
I walked out of David Lynch's Wild at Heart or whatever it was called. I was 13. I came THISCLOSE to walking out of Gladiator because it was fascistic.
Sounds like someone could use some Pepto.
You guys have read about/seen the YouTube performances of Cho's one-act Richard McBeef?
It's lousy stuff, but the name and overall creepiness makes me think of Paul McCarthy's Bossy Burger. That's a guy I wouldn't put above taking out a crowd in the name of a performance.
David Lynch's Wild at Heart sucked with the fury of a thousand vaccum cleaners.
I've never paid for a movie that turned out to be so bad I had to walk out of an actual theater. It would have happened at Robin Williams's Jack, but we went to see it after a cousin's graduation ceremony. 'Twould not be polite. Similar deal with Powder.
Saving Private Ryan, which I recognized even as high school as war pr0n. Also, my high school gf was sobbing hysterically.
90: Pepto Rap! Also, how is it that LAZ D is less silly than Speak, the Hungarian Rapper?
I came THISCLOSE to walking out of Gladiator because it was fascistic.
Was it? I mean, Rome itself was kinda fascist, so it's sort of inevitable that it would come off that way in parts, but the idealization of the good ol' country life seemed more prominent.
Wild at Heart sucked
This is crazy talk.
"At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is "overlooked," or why I wrote "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."
What a mensch.
One of favorite Ebert remarks is his description of a movie as "a critic's nightmare: too dull to watch and too loud to sleep through."
I walked out of the incredibly lame Ruby in Paradise and the abominable First Night and out of another unbelievably pretentious flick I saw around 1992 about the "Cartesian errors" of modern civilization discussed by two guys walking around windmills. I can't remember the title. It was like My Dinner with Andre meets The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
Ebert has had a lot of great zingers. I like this one:
"Pink Flamingos has been restored for its 25th anniversary revival, and with any luck at all that means I won't have to see it again for another 25 years. If I haven't retired by then, I will."
I didn't know that American couples (only married ones? Cohabitees? What about same-sex marriages?) could do their taxes jointly - were even *encouraged* to. Whilst I wouldn't mind being able to pass over my tax-free allowance to my partner, we stopped that kind of stuff a long time ago in this country. (Since 1990, according to a quick google?) No point to my comment I suppose, I'm just a bit surprised as it seems like a really oldfashioned situation.
Why not just let each individual person make his or her own choices?
Dangerous words! Where're the thought police?
I'm not convinced it benefits society to have all its parents working. I'd like to see more and more people having an actual choice; fathers feeling more able to have career breaks, etc.
I read this article the other day. All seemed fairly obvious to me, tbh. But I was rather surprised that there was no mention of the possibility of there being anything else important in life besides money.
At least Hirshman talks about status in society as well as earning power (though of course status may just = money in many minds). Though her idea that mothers who don't work have no "participation in public life" seems pretty daft to me.
I'll bite. The Hirshman link is not Times Select, so everybody can read it.
I also found this, which I hadn't seen before. I keep going back and forth about Hirshman's message. I think it's important, even if I think some of the criticism is valid, too. Baby/bathwater. But I do like this piece.
I particularly like "Never know when you're out of milk"
only married ones?
Yes.
What about same-sex marriages?
Not recognized by the federal government, so not on federal taxes.
The article in 101 is extraordinarily rare in it's cheerful, easy-going, pro-working-mother tone of voice.
I'd like to see more and more people having an actual choice
Making a choice implies giving up something in favor of something else. Women (and men, too) do have a real choice: Stay at home and raise kids, or work and climb the career ladder. That's a choice.
The first movie I walked out of was Dog Park, which I picked randomly to see with some friends because it had Luke Wilson (who we adored from the immortal Bottle Rocket) and the chick from Species. Unfortunately it turned out to be a crappy romantic comedy and we left after half an hour. We then popped into the neighboring theater and saw the last 2/3 of Stigmata with an Arquette sister. It was also bad but not walk-out bad.
I left Alexander the Great after two hours. I just couldn't take it anymore.
I left The Black Dahlia five minutes before the end, as a symbolic gesture. That was one of the worst movies I've ever seen: an unmitigated disaster with nothing to redeem it.
Hirschman's scare tactics and demagoguery are also laugable. In the link in #103, she writes:
The abandonment of the public world by women at the top means the ruling class is overwhelmingly male. If the rulers are male, they will make mistakes that benefit males. Picture an all-male Supreme Court. We may well go back there. What will that mean for the women of America?
Hirschman seems to have forgotten that an all-male Court decided Roe v. Wade, while a mixed-gender Court put limitations on it.
I think an all-male Supreme Court is scary.
Movies are much more interesting than Hirshman.
106. Hot Damn! Now it all comes back to me. I went to that movie out of love for Liv Ullman. Hm. I didn't remember Sam Waterston being in that movie at all. And it was Mont Saint Michel. I remembered Windmills.
Maybe I'll rent it and see if it's as awful as I remember.
107: Not much of a choice if you can't afford health insurance on 1 salary (which, as I've mentioned before, could easily be the case if you were, for instance, a Minneapolis Public Schools teacher with a spouse and a kid). Or, forget the health insurance, what if you're say, supporting an aged relative who can contribute childcare but not much else, and you live in one of the many economically depressed areas of the country that the current prosperity doesn't reach? Or one of the boom areas where housing prices have vastly outstripped wages for working-class people? Jeezum Crow, what provokes this atavism?
113: Stay away! It's as terrible as you remember, if not worse.
I watched it in high-school, but even in high school I recognized it as idea pr0n. I was sobbing hysterically.
My brother and I both saw it -- it's become one of those epic bad-experiences for us. Like the time when you went to a restaurant, got awful service, opened a bad bottle of wine, got food poisoning, got overcharged, and then got in a car accident on the way home. Awful awful awful.
Last movie I walked out of was Raiders of the Lost Ark, when I was six. I don't think I can claim it was an aesthetic judgement, but those corpses sure were scary.
Poverty is a pressing issue worthy of discussion, but I don't think it's the issue Hirschman is focusing on. She's talking about well-educated women who leave their career-track jobs for extended periods of time to raise kids, and then find that they can't just pick up where they left off.
Populuxe, if you like unbearably pretentious movies with Sam Waterston, you'll love Merchant and Ivory's Savages.
Here is what struck me as weird in the article. The statements,
So they also have more freedom to leave their jobs. But why do they take the option? It's easier in the short term, sure, but it's easier to forgo lots of things, like going to college or having children at all. People don't -- nor should they -- always do the easier thing., don't seem very well coherent. There are a bunch of assertions but they don't really fit together very well and there's nothing to back them up. Is it really easier to forgo having kids? So howcome nearly everybody (for some values of "nearly" and "everybody") has 'em? "People don't always do the easier thing" appears to mean "People don't always leave their job/not go to college/forgo having children" which doesn't sound like a very meaningful statement.
Also, I don't think I've walked out of a movie in over a decade, the last one was Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995), which is an amazing, brilliant movie, but I was a little the worse for drink and couldn't maintain.
I never saw Dog Park, but it must've been pretty bad if Stigmata was better -- I mean, I thought Catholics were against abortions!
Dracula 2000 was hardly a "good" film, but it wasn't that awful for mid-budget horror. And I thought the Dracula-origin that the film advances actually could have been very interesting if the rest of the production had lived up to it.
When I was 5, I walked out of Star Wars (at some point during the Tatooine scenes) because I thought it was boring. After I got some of the action figures, I went back and saw it a bunch of times and liked it. Go figure.
"So howcome nearly everybody (for some values of "nearly" and "everybody") has 'em?"
A post-doc in my lab brought in her newborn baby yesterday... and damn, that little thing was cute. I want me one a them critters.
From the link in 103:
Never know when you're out of milk. Bargain relentlessly for a just household...Men are not natural villains, but they will not make a fair deal on the home front unless women stand up and ask for one. As the economists say, they never met a man who washed a rented car before he returned it to the lot. It's an old story, but we'll tell it as long as we have to: Only when women make it necessary for men to take on a fair share of the family labor will they do so
Here's my take: bargain relentlessly for a just household by all means, but accept that the compromise you'll have to reach will not meet the standards you have probably internalized. That a man bargaining in good faith is going to ask "why do we have to do this? Is the effort worthwhile?" And "you don't support me" "because I'll be the one who's judged by this house" "because I'll break down and do it if you don't" are not fair answers. That is, they can't be the end of the conversation.
Both men and women have to bargain in good faith, and accept going in that each will end up doing more than they want to, and that a great deal that they wish were done simply cannot be done.
122: mailto:bayes.rule@gmail.com s/b mailto:babies.rule!@gmail.com
115. Thanks arthegall. I think I'm content to let Mindwalk remain just a bad memory.
I don't think exclamation points are legal characters in email addresses, unfortunately.
I like both babies and kittens. And that plastic grass that comes in Easter baskets.
Wait, why do people choose to work, get an education and procreate, even though the path of least resistance is to sit quietly indefinitely until you starve to death?
Interesting point.
125 - A wise choice. Once you've watched it, you can't unwatch it.
Well, duh. It was for comedic effect.
97.--It's a little hard for me to remember my anti-Gladiator argument these days, but if I recall correctly, it had something to do with gigantic gestures of violent nobility poorly justified by vague evocations of revenge and Heimat.
132: I just don't think it's appropriate for children to see a movie that glorifies making your slaves fight to the death. That's just the kind of thing kids love to imitate.
132 -- or the clear joy (the energy!) of the camera whenever Russell Crowe beheads a dude with two swords?
There were probably actual fasces in the movie, too.
Re: Gladiator, am I the only person in the world who felt that Oliver Reed's party's $435 bar tab on the day he died should have indicated to his companions that he might not be feeling very well? Unless all anybody ordered was well vodkas, that just doesn't seem very impressive for a man of Reed's famously prodigious appetites.
132: That's also the problem with The Lion King.
The only movie I've ever walked out on was The Mirror Has Two Faces. I stuck it out with my girlfriends who had wanted to go for a loooong time, but couldn't hack it when Barbra Streisand's Newly Empowered character asks her best and oldest friend who is still Stuck In Their Old Rut why she's eating a hamburger--"doesn't that make you feel bloated?" Fucking bitch.
The movie I wish I'd walked out on was Scent of a Woman. Instead I contented myself with ranting about how crappy it was afterwards and offending the Nice Guy with Puppydog Eyes who was Mr. B's coworker and who'd wanted to see it.
I've decided to stop seeing movies I know are gonna suck just because some friend with bad taste is an idiot.
I don't invest time or money in a movie unless I'm almost positive I'm going to like it, so once I'm in a theater, I tend to feel too committed to walk out.
All the same, the only thing that kept me through to the end of Celebrity was that the fact that I was watching it with someone else.
Also: After watching Natural Born Killers, the only thing that kept me from killing the director and burning down the theater was the fact that I was sure somebody else would do it for me.
#123: Only when women make it necessary for men to take on a fair share of the family labor will they do so
See, that's the kind of thing that gets me all riled up. Assuming we're talking about a situation where the woman is home doing housework, and the man is EARNING THE MONEY THAT PAYS FOR THE DAMN HOUSE, I'd say that's a more than fair division of labor right there.
If both spouses are working and the woman thinks then man isn't doing his "fair share" of the housework, then maybe the two of them have different opinions on just how much housework is actually necessary. In such a case, the woman should either (1) hire a maid if the family can afford it, (2) do the housework she feels is necessary herself without forcing her neat-freak neurosis on her husband, or (3) divorce him and marry someone who shares her passion for folded socks and made beds.
that's the kind of thing that gets me all riled up. Assuming we're talking about a situation where the woman is home doing housework, and the man is EARNING THE MONEY THAT PAYS FOR THE DAMN HOUSE, I'd say that's a more than fair division of labor right there.
Most women who are staying home are taking care of kids. And most adults have lived alone and, gasp, had to pay rent *and* clean up after themselves. You don't want to clean up, hire a maid.
136: "He died suddenly from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, reportedly after drinking three bottles of Captain Morgan's Jamaican rum, eight bottles of German beer, numerous doubles of Famous Grouse whisky, and beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm wrestling"
Ain't nothin'.
Gosh, Gajin, I think the only response is to be silly, because if I took 139 seriously I'd develop an ulcer.
So instead I'm making a flip book of a little stick figure named "Gajin" reading a feminism primer and seeing the error of his ways.
Though her idea that mothers who don't work have no "participation in public life" seems pretty daft to me.
I'm can't read this right now, but I agree so hard with Asilon. Every moment I spend at my job is a moment when I'm not thinking about the larger world, the public sphere, whatever. What jobs actually constitute or enhance participation in public life? Being a teacher? A lawyer? A pundit? Yeah, let's all be pundits!
"I've decided to stop seeing movies I know are gonna suck just because some friend with bad taste is an idiot."
By replacing "seeing movies" with the variable "X", that statement becomes a truly profound life principle which I am going to attempt, but fail, to adopt immediately.
I hate hate hate cleaning and as soon as I can afford to I'm hiring a maid again. It was easy in grad school (three people in a house split the $75/visit tab) but on my own in a smaller place I haven't been able to pull the trigger. But man, when I make more money or split rent...wow. Fuck cleaning. Fuck cleaning in the ear.
"her passion for folded socks and made beds."
Okay, I rate pretty high on the slovenly scale, but even I know that's a pretty hilarious standard for crazy, over-the-top neatness. I mean, making the bed is the one chore even six-year-olds are asked to do. We're not talking about the white glove test, here.
146: Never fuck your ear with anything smaller than your elbow.
You're missing my point, B. Yes, I've lived alone, quite happily, paying rent and cleaning up after myself, too. But when a former (now ex-, for obvious reasons) girlfriend, who also worked a full-time job, moved in with me, suddenly, nothing was good enough. The amount of "necessary" housework suddenly tripled, and I wasn't doing my "fair share" -- whereas previously, I had been doing 100% of the housework myself.
Well, what if you have to make those hospital corners and stuff?
Next chapter in the flip book: Gajin making hospital corners.
143: To be fair, the larger point that money = a public presence (for which some people, e.g. writers or artists, can substitute cultural capital instead) is a totally valid one. Yesterday in the hospital waiting for Mr. B.'s test results (chest pain, apparently non-cardiac, he seems okay), I thought fuck, if he dies, I'd be kinda screwed.
I also, of course, thought wow, I'm worried and I hope he doesn't die and all that more wifely stuff, but the fact is that being a stay-home mom is a riskier proposition long-term than people often realize.
Also as of today I am officially unemployed.
The gap between people who thing making the bed is trivial and those who cannot bring themselves to do it is a large one, and it's very difficult for either side to achieve understanding. I know I fought a ten-year battle with my mom over making the bed, which I largely won by the middle of high school. I'm sure it scarred me, though.
149: Never had an argument with a male roommate over this stuff? Or is it just "women"? B/c other than that, I don't quite see what your full-time working g.f. with high standards has to do with other people's stay-home wives.
142: When you're done with the flip book, can you tell me what is inherently unfair about a husband working and a wife raising the kids? I'm not saying it's the ideal situation to which all men and women should aspire. But what's unfair about it?
Seems like if one spouse works 80-hour weeks as a lawyer or what have you, it's not unfair for the other to handle the domestic front.
155: I'm not saying I make my bed. I'm just saying that it's on my list of "make my apartment vaguely presentable" tasks, and, given negotiations over acceptable levels of squalor with an S.O., it's a point I'd probably end up conceding.
Fuck a hospital corner, though. I ain't in no damn army.
I think I'll sit this particular debate out. GB would be a really valuable resource for a Rip Van Winkle type who needed to get up to speed on the center-right received wisdom, though.
Fuck a hospital corner
In the ear.
what is inherently unfair about a husband working and a wife raising the kids?
That the roles are expected to be divided in this manner, rather than the other way around.
81: Depicted cruelty to an animal. It wasn't graphic, the animal was never hurt (even within the story; it just remained highly possible that it would be hurt), but its circumstances were pretty tremendously awful. I can watch zombies chomp on people all day long - am in fact looking forward to a local showing of the unrated version of Day of the Dead next month - but animal cruelty just won't fly.
Actually I think 149 states the issue well. This is not to talk about the demands of children, which are often beyond the imagination of either party; it's about a household with two people.
At the time of the original Hirshman discussion here, late '05, Amanda Marcotte admitted that she simply couldn't live with the level of housekeeping the men she was living with previously had been willing to accept, and her reasons had to do with class and the expectations she was raised to and felt she'd be judged by.
154: Sympathies on the unemployment (or congratuations if appropriate).
I'm mildly surprised that she didn't repeat her advice to go to law school and then marry a slacker (or more generously a career that pays a lot of money early and but also tops out early) so he gets to stay home.
I've had male roommates all through college and grad school. We pretty much each minded our own business and didn't argue about chores. (With one male roommate, I mainly argued about him eating my food out of the fridge.)
I've also had women roommates (girlfriends and non-girlfriends) who didn't nag about housework. People are individuals.
162: "Art-house devotees may be a tolerant lot, but it's doubtful they want to look at a stallion's erect penis stretched across the big screen like a sailboat boom, at least in public."
Similar?
what's unfair about it?
The fact that the person not working is economically extremely vulnerable if, say, the working person gets hit by a bus or, more commonly, decides he wants a divorce. Then all of a sudden "their" money becomes "his" money.
The fact that in the actual world we actually live in today, it just so happens that the economically vulnerable person is usually a woman.
The fact that, as a consequence, women as a class are much poorer than men as a class, especially in retirement.
The fact that domestic labor is seen as "not really work" and therefore not really worth things like, y'know, social security or worker's comp or what have you.
The fact that foolish people will always say "it seems fair to me" because they want to pretend that every individual situation occurs in a vacuum, unaffected by the broader cultural context, thereby perpetuating all the things above.
Do I really need to explain this to you? Can't you like, go pick up a copy of Ms. Magazine or something?
165: leftover chinese food only stays good for four days anyway. If it's in there for three, and you're at work, it's fair game.
Obviously the answer is to combine the two themes of this thread (and Unfogged in general) and rent "The Odd Couple" starring Lemmon and Mathau. Movies, housework and sublimated homosexuality all in one neat package.
That the roles are expected to be divided in this manner, rather than the other way around.
Nah, it's all good if the wife works and the husband stays home with the kids. And it's not wrong if the husband works and the wife stays home either, even though that is a Traditional Living Arrangement and, therefore, suspect.
a career that pays a lot of money early and but also tops out early
Professional sports!
159: Amen.
163: Interestingly, after Mr. B. was actually in charge of the housekeeping for three years, mysteriously his standards of cleanliness went up. Amazing what happens when a person actually realizes that, like, X task is their responsibility.
164: Congrats, really, thank you. It just feels weird is all. Especially the day after taking my hubby into the e.r. with chest pains.
Then again, he injured himself on the same day his AF job was officially over and neither one of us had a job and we lacked insurance, so it kinda seems like the sort of thing that happens.
Hooking doesn't pay well, actually.
The fact that the person not working is economically extremely vulnerable if, say, the working person gets hit by a bus or, more commonly, decides he wants a divorce. Then all of a sudden "their" money becomes "his" money.
Yeah women really get screwed in divorce court these days. But anyway, none of those problems you mentioned will be affected in the slightest by making the husband fold some of the sheets and wash some of the dishes.
I've lived with partners who varied wildly both in how much housework they were personally prepared to do and in how much housework they thought ought to be done. With some annoying people both i) expecting loads to be done, and ii) not being prepared to do much themselves. This is, as I understand it, the default old-school male chauvinist position.
People also have wildly inaccurate views on how much they actually do. National surveys of housework always come up with figures that are either i) false or ii) have some wierd sampling error in which only obsessive-compulsives are polled.
I used to listen to one ex- bonding with her friends about their housework-incapable boyfriends and sighing in agreement over how much they did when in fact she did virtually bugger all as I was a student and was at home most of the time, so just ended up doing 80% of the housework by default.
On the other hand, I'd hold my hands up and confess to doing less housework than my wife and this is largely due to being a lazy bastard and for which I have no good excuse. However, it's a 60/40 split or something, rather than wildly disproportionate.
174: Maybe you just weren't very good at it.
B, I thought you found a teaching position you liked at a small university. What happened? Would it be rude to ask for more info?
"I used to listen to one ex- bonding with her friends about their housework-incapable boyfriends and sighing in agreement over how much they did when in fact she did virtually bugger all"
Ooh this one gets me. Emerson, what's that life philosophy of yours again?
178: Globalization has also depressed wages, I believe.
76: email? No, post it here please. We're all interested. Or at least I am.
174. Well streetwalking doesn't pay, but surely of the $1000 per night Charlie Sheen pays $500 goes to the provider and the balance to the madame or other procurer? I am afraid I am unclear of the details of that end of the transaction.
181: Yeah it's getting so suburban stay-at-home dads have to compete with 800 nubile young thai boys for every quality trick. Darn shame.
172.2: But then he went back to work, about the time you stopped. Simultaneous changes amounting to a shift. When one has been in charge of housekeeping, and then goes to work full time, so that both are working, then a different set of issues come up.
172: I'm glad that the chest pains turned out to be non-cardiac. Heart conditions are very scary.
171: Software Engineer!
162: You should probably forego Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) then. The cruelty to actual animals totally eclipses the special effect laden cannibalism. I didn't walk out, but I did have to shut my eyes a few times.
167:
I was talking about this a while ago with acquaintances, and she was a bit worried about this trap. As it stands, he just gives her exactly 1/2 of his paychecks (done automagically by the bank) as `income' (she's not employed), but this of course doesn't address being out of the workforce etc. They were considering forming a company with 1/2 shares each, which would contract his current job (employer seemed ok with this) and have them both as employees. It wasn't clear if it was worth the trouble, and made some things more complicated.
They were considering forming a company with 1/2 shares each, which would contract his current job (employer seemed ok with this) and have them both as employees.
Wouldn't they have to pay company tax on top of personal income tax? I suppose it may depend which state they're in.
182: Less shady than buying your voting machines from GOP activists, more shady than not outsourcing important election functions to GOP activists. No wrongdoing is necessarily implied, though; they got hired to do a job and did it. They could have messed with election results if they really felt like it, but if I'm going to conspiracy theorize it would be most useful for holding back unfavorable results until voting machines could be rejiggered or whatever.
re: 180
Yes, there were a great many other poisonous aspects to that relationship (on both parts) but that's the one that I still remember 10 years or more after we broke up.
170: a Traditional Living Arrangement and, therefore, suspect
I know this was meant to be funny, but it's not all that far off the mark. Like B. says, being the non-working-for-pay partner in a relationship is very financially risky; for most people, their lifetime earning potential is a much more important financial asset than anything tangible they own, and not working for pay kicks the crap out of your earning potential. If a marriage ends through death or divorce, wherever the financial assets end up the partner who hasn't been working for pay is likely to be screwed.
That doesn't mean that it's always the wrong thing to do, but it is a fundamentally asymmetrical situation, where the non-money-earning partner is trading maybe some extra leisure for a lot less financial security (even ignoring all the Hirschman-esque concerns about social and professional status, public influence, and so on).
Where you've got a way of setting a marriage up that's that asymmetrical in its risks and benefits, and strong social forces selling people on the idea that it's a normal, sensible way to run your family as long as the woman stays home, but it's awfully weird for the man to stay home, there's a good chance that there's some injustice going on.
Wouldn't they have to pay company tax on top of personal income tax?
No, if they were the only shareholders they'd just form an S-corp, which is exempt from the corporate income tax.
189: That was part of the `wasn't clear'. I'm making it sound more simple than it was, tax position was already complicated and there were other reasons for maybe doing this. However, one major motivation was that she didn't feel comfortable with current situation.
none of those problems you mentioned will be affected in the slightest by making the husband fold some of the sheets and wash some of the dishes.
If men realized housework was (1) their damn job as adults and (2) actual work, they might be a little less sanguine about "letting" their wives do it for free without insisting that there be serious provisions made to provide her with resources and an income if something happened. And they might be just a wee bit less assholish in divorce court. But as long as they're more willing to argue about whether or not they "have" to make the bed than they are to just make the goddamn thing, that sense of entitlement ain't going nowhere.
179: No, I write for a porn site.
183: $1000/night sounds like a lot of money, but it's damn exhausting work and I'd be really surprised if high-end call girls worked more than 2-3 nights a week. And those are presumably the women who live in pretty expensive cities. It ain't that much.
186: Thanks, me too.
There were probably actual fasces in the movie, too.
Probably not; Rome was ruled by an emperor during the period of the movie, not a dictator, which was a phenomenon of the Republic anyway, wasn't it?
186: Presumably the "half" he gives her is after his own social security and pension and 401K or what have you are taken out, right? So it's a little less than half.
195.3: Especially if you keep in mind the expense of dressing "well" and being "well-groomed" for high-end clients.
"And they might be just a wee bit less assholish in divorce court."
You're talking about the subset of men that are assholish in divorce court, presumably.
I assume a different set of issues attach when women are assholes in a divorce.
What I've always found most interesting in Hirshman is how people who want symmetrical relationships, who are committed to try to live that way, go about it. How society and their own expectations have to be confronted and dealt with.
"Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) then"
I absolutely love gore filled zombie and splatter flicks of nearly every type, but I've always felt like renting that particular movie was going to get me put on some sort of list.
I don't date men who live in squalor. If they can't keep their own apartments clean, they've lost some serious sex-appeal points.
198: Well, to be fair, I think that a man in a divorce (assuming a traditional arrangement or a large disaparity in income) would have to be a near saint *not* to be an asshole, financially. The entire point of hiring a lawyer is to watch out for your interests, not to be "fair" to the other party. And the reality is that we largely think that the name on the paycheck = ownership of the money.
I think women are more often assholes over things like custody, probably, but in all honesty I think that socialization teaches women to try to be fair and unselfish, and men not to, and that when divorce happens, those differences tend to play out. And as I've said before, this is based merely on *my observations of friends' divorces*, one of which did actually involve a guy bending over backwards to be fair, but most of which especially with kids ended up with guys being dicks about child support.
154: Does Mr. B not have life insurance? If not, this is something you really should rectify, immediately.
Death: Life insurance
Divorce: Alimony. Child care payments. Marry someone else.
Really, how is being a housewife any more "risky" than working in a paid job? It's actually a lot more common to be fired than to be divorced, and getting a new job after you've been canned can be very hard. Looking for work month after month with no new cash coming in is no picnic.
It would be sweet if your previous employer paid you alimony to support you and the lifestyle to which you've grown accustomed until you find a new gig, but unfortunately, a few weeks' severance pay is all you usually get.
It would be sweet if your previous employer paid you alimony to support you and the lifestyle to which you've grown accustomed until you find a new gig
Isn't this exactly what unemployment insurance is?
Really, how is being a housewife any more "risky" than working in a paid job? It's actually a lot more common to be fired than to be divorced, and getting a new job after you've been canned can be very hard. Looking for work month after month with no new cash coming in is no picnic.
It seems to me that these things may be worse if you have been unemployed for, say, 20 years and are trying to support yourself without having acquired any work experience or resume material from ages 23 to 43.
180: "After four years, the house doesn't get any dirtier".
Quentin Crisp.
That life philosophy?
And right now I have a woman friend going through a pretty cruddy divorce, and I *do* think she's being a little unfair over custody. But there's a strong point to be made that stability is better for a kid than shuttling back and forth every week, and that her doing so is consistent with her desire to be unselfish rather than (merely) an expression of her anxiety and feeling that she's spent the last 8 years investing in being a full-time mom and really wants to hang on to her one asset.
Meanwhile, her husband's haggling over spousal support by arguing that the money he's given her in the last five years (after he left, but well before he recently filed for divorce--rightly or wrongly, she was under the impression that this was going to be one of those "amicable separations" rather than ending in actual legal divorce) means he doesn't have to keep paying spousal support. Also his verbal report of his income is about half what it says on his tax return.
This is a man who makes almost $300k/year, divorcing a woman who doesn't have a college degree.
196 -- Surely there was something bundled in the movie though, right? Even Empires need Bundles...
guys being dicks about child support
I know this is true, and yet I'm constantly amazed to see it. My ex and I never involved lawyers; we split physical custody of Keegan 50/50 and just keep track of our individual expenses for him. At the end of every month, we look at what we each spent on clothes, activities, and the like, and then settle the difference. I know it's silly to expect everybody to act like a responsible adult and parent and take care of these things among themselves, but I still do.
"I think that a man person in a divorce (assuming a traditional arrangement or a large disaparity in income) would have to be a near saint *not* to be an asshole, financially."
Noted.
"but in all honesty I think that socialization teaches women to try to be fair and unselfish, and men not to"
I... really? I'm having a hard time seeing this as anything other than a wild overgeneralization, even with the IME tag. I'd agree that men get taught to be aggresive where women are taught to be submissive and agreeable, but I don't think selfishness or fairness are good metrics. Certainly I was raised to try to be both fair and unselfish, and I hardly think I'm an outlier.
Really, how is being a housewife any more "risky" than working in a paid job? It's actually a lot more common to be fired than to be divorced, and getting a new job after you've been canned can be very hard. Looking for work month after month with no new cash coming in is no picnic.
Because you're missing years of work experience. This really does make a huge difference: looking for work when you last worked as a mid-career professional six weeks ago is entirely different from looking for work when you last worked in an early-career position ten years ago. Child support is (a) supposed to offset the actual expenses of caring for children, and (b) ends when they leave the house, at which point the woman is probably not dead, but is going to have an even harder time finding work. And alimony's very rare these days.
It's very risky.
203: Oh hell yeah he has life insurance. But housing here is way pricey, and unlike him, my potential income almost certainly isn't enough on its own to afford a house, especially w/ the added cost of daycare/ nannying.
I wouldn't end up starving, but there'd be a serious drop in our standard of living and financial security, no doubt about it.
"But there's a strong point to be made that stability is better for a kid than shuttling back and forth every week, and that her doing so is consistent with her desire to be unselfish"
Unselfish to the kid, I suppose, unless they'd like to see their father more often, if it's really that strong a case. Having experienced both scenarios (weekly shuttling vs. occasional visitation) IME they're both kinda sucky.
And alimony's very rare these days.
Really? In divorces where only the husband earns an income, alimony for the wife is rare? That's a surprise to me.
210: Agreed. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to be a decent parent to one's child, but I'm amazed at how many guys get so hung up on being pissed that "not getting ripped off" becomes their primary agenda.
211: Perhaps a rephrasing, then. What counts as "selfish" for women is different than what counts as "selfish" for men. Usually, not often. E.g., GB's argument that it's "fair" for a woman to do all the housework on top of a f-t job raising kids if her husband earns the money to pay for the house. Contrast that with the statistics on the amount of housework women who work full-time do as compared to their husbands.
210: I think the key there is a combination of amicable divorce, and 50-50 physical custody, so you really believe in your bones that caring for Keegan is your problem. The stories I know with divorced fathers who are dicks about the child support all (okay, I'm generalizing from three cases here. This is not science) seem to be guys who are at some distance, either physical or social, and see the kids either really rarely, like on visits during holidays, or maybe for a weekend day. Guessing at the thought process, I'd believe that they're feeling that even though they love their kids, the kids live with the mother, the mother cares for them, they're the mother's problem now; from the father's point of view the kids are more associated with the past, and now ended, marriage than a current relationship. Anything the father kicks in is an expression of generosity or an unjust imposition, not a responsibility.
But I'm surmising from a small sample of people I don't know well, so this could all be bullshit.
214: Well, he'd still see his father on weekends. The kid does want more time with his dad, which is why I said I think the mom's being a little uncool on the custody front.
215: What my divorcing friend tells me is her lawyer says spousal support lasts for a year, by which point somehow you're supposed to be self-supporting. Which again, compare a $300k guy with 20 years of work history to a h.s. dropout who did small secretarial jobs now and again in the first part of her marriage, and tell me that's fair.
215: I'm talking out of my ass here, but I think long-term alimony is pretty rare -- you might get a couple of years of payments, but that still leaves you a couple of years out with a career that's been irrecoverably impacted by the long gap in employment.
219: Exactly. Plus keep in mind that the working partner probably had a chance to build a career when he didn't have to split his time and attention with being a single parent, much less the single parent to a kid who's learning how to cope with newly divorced parents.
What we think of as a "traditional" family is based on a very specific period of time, the post World War II economic boom and the resultant baby boom. The US economy was 50% of the world GDP because everywhere else was bombed out. The "Leave It to Beaver" scenario is no longer a valid frame of reference, but because it comes from the fountain of all knowledge, the television, it must be so. The pig is taking a long time to go through the snake.
Which again, compare a $300k guy with 20 years of work history to a h.s. dropout who did small secretarial jobs now and again in the first part of her marriage, and tell me that's fair.
Or even (to forestall the "Well, how well off would a high school dropout have been if she'd never married the guy who ended up making $300K") a woman with a five year work history as a low-level manager, and then 15 years not working, against a man starting in the same place but with a continuous twenty years of promotions. Even if he spends a year or two giving her spousal support after the divorce, her income is never going to come close to matching his.
I agree with 221. The normal state of affairs is that two parents must work (usually at the same, family business) to support the family.
However, in our country, everyone works outside the house, so one can't watch the children while working. This is the real problem.
see the kids either really rarely, like on visits during holidays, or maybe for a weekend day
Ah. Yeah, I can see how you could get incensed at kicking in half of the expenses when you rarely get to see the kids. That's a crap situation all the way around.
(to forestall the "Well, how well off would a high school dropout have been if she'd never married the guy who ended up making $300K")
Good point, but in this case I think she would have built her catering business rather than simply cooked at home because she didn't "have" to work, and it was just hunkydory with her husband to have a full-time wife. Now she's trying to start from scratch, which means she's unlikely to even see a profit for 3-5 years.
216.2: I would say that's more of a (however intentional) misunderstanding of how much work/risk is actually involved than qualitatively different notions of fairness. I would also note that making generalizations based on Gaijin Biker's comments here seems fraught. But maybe that's not what you're doing.
I'm not saying that guys don't play ridiculous head games with themselves so that they can believe, e.g., cleaning the gutters once a year is exactly equivalent work-wise to cleaning the floors once a week (or however often you crazy neat freaks do that sort of thing), I just think that's exactly what a lot of people do when they luck into the easier half of an asymmetrical relationship and don't want to think too hard about why they might be so lucky.
See, e.g. US consumers of overseas-manufactured goods.
The normal state of affairs is that two parents must work
Of all my acquaintances with kids, I can only think of two couples who can afford to have one parent stay home.
Contrast that with the statistics on the amount of housework women who work full-time do as compared to their husbands.
The BBC reports:
Here's a little question for you: Who works hardest, men or women? It's women, isn't it?
Indeed, most people (and academics) think it's women but it appears they are wrong.
A study from America's National Bureau of Economic Research has found that across northern Europe and America, the total workload combining activity both at work and home is now shared almost equally. Women still do more housework but men make up for it in the workplace.
I just think that's exactly what a lot of people do when they luck into the easier half of an asymmetrical relationship and don't want to think too hard about why they might be so lucky.
Yep.
(I don't know many wealthy people, obviously)
It gets better:
Philippe Weil from the Universite Libre in Brussels said: "This has been an argument in the gender war, that women have this double burden hitting them but we do not find evidence in rich northern countries that this is the case."
Nevertheless, many women do feel they have less spare time than men; but the answer may not lie with work, but sleep according to Mr Weil.
"The time spent not working is identical for men and women. How this time is used differs for men and women and it turns out that women for instance spend much more time sleeping than men do and that extra time that women spend sleeping, men usually spend watching TV, so that may explain the perception that women have less free time."
IANAL, but having been divorced I believe that in California if you have been married for longer than ten years it is deemed by the court to be a "long term marriage" and the alimony or spousal support is for the remainder of the spouse's life. Otherwise it is for 1/2 of the term of the marriage, i.e. married four years, spousal support for two. Child support runs until the child is eighteen. Hiding income or assets from your spouse should be a criminal offense, punishable by jail time. But so should denial of visitation, barring abuse.
230: They're wealthy in love, Apo, wealthy in love.
227: I know. I find myself entirely bemused by people who argue (I've only met them online) that having a mother stay home is a sensible economic decision because of the cost of childcare. I can see that it might look like a pretty close call for a couple of years, but geez, man, make a plan five years out.
228: "The time spent not working is identical for men and women. How this time is used differs for men and women and it turns out that women for instance spend much more time sleeping than men do and that extra time that women spend sleeping, men usually spend watching TV, so that may explain the perception that women have less free time."
Lazy women!
224: See, the "paying for kids I don't get to see" thing is exactly the issue. But the fact is the kids need to be supported whether or not you get to see them. I kinda suspect that the key difference between moms and dads on this one is that the dads want something in exchange for their money (time with the kids) whereas maybe I'm being essentialist here, but I think that even if I could never saw PK again, I'd at least want to be able to make sure he was taken care of economically. If anything, I think I'd be inclined to send *more* money in order to compensate.
And let me note that, for example, a lot of migrant dads send virtually all their money home to their kids, so I don't think this is an inherent sex thing. I think it's an American money-for-services attitude that women aren't inculcated with as much as they are the mommies-sacrifice-for-their-kids thing.
164: I tried this route. I don't recommend it.
226, agreed. And god knows there are women who make the same argument that it's fair for them to stay home. That's why the Hirshmans of the world shout at them to get their heads out of their asses.
232: Huh. My friend's been married 13 years and is being told that she's only entitled to a year of spousal support. I'll have to ask her about that.
#226:
I'm not saying that guys don't play ridiculous head games with themselves so that they can believe, e.g., cleaning the gutters once a year is exactly equivalent work-wise to cleaning the floors once a week (or however often you crazy neat freaks do that sort of thing), I just think that's exactly what a lot of people do when they luck into the easier half of an asymmetrical relationship and don't want to think too hard about why they might be so lucky.
Are you saying the guy who cleans the gutters once a year (and works a full-time job outside the house) has the easier half of the relationship, and is lucky to have someone who cleans the floors once a week?
237: Such economy. So awesome.
#235: Hey, they need their beauty rest.
Are you saying the guy who cleans the gutters once a year (and works a full-time job outside the house) has the easier half of the relationship, and is lucky to have someone who cleans the floors once a week?
Why do you keep acting like the default scenario here is that the floor-cleaning person's only responsibilities are to keep the house nice? That's really not so common.
"The time spent not working is identical for men and women. How this time is used differs for men and women and it turns out that women for instance spend much more time sleeping than men do and that extra time that women spend sleeping, men usually spend watching TV, so that may explain the perception that women have less free time."
Translation: "When she gets home from work, the wife cooks dinner and does housework, then goes to bed tired. When he gets home from work, the husband sits on his butt and watches tv."
GB, the very piece you're citing says that women do more housework.
237 -- wow, you played professional sports?
241: In context of the argument you're making here, GB, that's a pretty assholish remark.
"but I think that even if I could never saw PK again, I'd at least want to be able to make sure he was taken care of economically"
This is really a scenario you can imagine? That sounds less like the result of divorce and more like the result of something quite a bit more horrible happening.
In any case, I think it's pretty weird to say that not only are women who are jerks about custody are doing it for the welfare of the child, but that men who are jerks about asking for visitation rights in exchange for support are simply trying to get their money's worth on an investment. If you're a divorcing father, and you want to see your kids (because, you know, you love them and miss them), and the mother is being a jerk about it, support may well be the only lever you have.
246: I'm not saying what you're saying I'm saying.
241: Christ, man. Try to disguise the disdain a little.
239: No, I was talking specifically about the equivalence of those two tasks. In my head it was in the context of a two-income relationship, but since I didn't share that I suppose I shouldn't expect you to know it.
247: "I think it's pretty weird to say that not only are women who are jerks about custody are doing it for the welfare of the child"
What the heck am I saying, anyhow? Besides "are," that is.
246: I'm really not trying to generalize about all men here -- this is, I think, shitty behavior, but its pretty normal shitty behavior, and it's not because men suck, it's just that there's a fairly lousy post-divorce pattern it's easy to fall into. The guys I'm generalizing from aren't withholding support as leverage to see their kids more over resistance from the mothers (at least not that I'm aware); they're just kind of drifting away and getting less interested in them. They don't like interacting with their exes, aren't crazy about doing single-parent childcare... it's easy for the post-divorce fathering relationship to turn into 'that guy who visits some'.
And then the feeling that "I'm not all that close with these kids nor am I primarily responsible for them, why should I be sending money to my ex when they're really her kids and her problem?" sets in.
The using-child-support-as-leverage thing probably also happens, but that's not the pattern I've seen.
252: Beefo Meaty is a pirate!
they're just kind of drifting away and getting less interested in them
That's heartbreaking.
Less bitchily (I really do have to get off Unfogged, though), I can imagine it, sure. It's the kind of thing you imagine all the time when you have kids. That plus last year my s-i-l was encouraging my husband to leave me and take PK.
What I'm basing my distinction between what men and women think re. custody on is what they *say*. My friend obviously wants primary custody partly because she's very invested in her identity as a mother--but what she *says* is that she's worried about her kid having a consistent social life, about not missing Little League games, about his father living 45 minutes away from the kid's school while the mom lives within walking distance. Whereas what I've heard men *say* is that it's not fair for them to pay child support without being able to see the kids. Unless you assume that most people are conscious liars--which I honestly don't believe--what they're saying expresses their conscious thoughts about the situation. There may be other things that aren't acknowledged or are hidden in subtext, but I think the differences here are significant.
In fact, I *do* think that most men are terribly saddened by divorce and not seeing their children. But I think that saying *that*, rather than being an angry jerk, would improve the situation enormously. If I were a mom with primary custody and my ex was withholding support as leverage, I (and the court) would reasonably see this as a reason he should see the children less, rather than more. Being willing to punish your children because your feelings are hurt ain't a big recommendation.
253. Throw a new wife into the mix and watch the fun begin!
253: Those guys are fuckheads, then.
254: Ninja, please.
Where you've got a way of setting a marriage up that's that asymmetrical in its risks and benefits, and strong social forces selling people on the idea that it's a normal, sensible way to run your family as long as the woman stays home, but it's awfully weird for the man to stay home, there's a good chance that there's some injustice going on.
But it says in that Hirshman op ed that 60% of American women with preschool children work. That doesn't seem to me like there are strong social forces at work, or that it's still considered the norm for mothers to stay at home whilst the fathers work. I guess the reason for the pro-SAHM movement is because they have now become the minority, and are on the defensive.
And if it all boils down to money (e.g. B: To be fair, the larger point that money = a public presence is a totally valid one), then I'm disappointed again. I'd like to see more of an argument than money. And I realise that my safety net is better than most, but still, surely there IS more to life than money?
And to keep telling those who stay at home how risky it is - honestly, I find that so patronising! (I'm imagining LB and Hirshman and B maybe and whoever else, standing round surveying my life, sucking their teeth like dodgy mechanics, telling me it's gonna cost me.) Do you think that people don't consider their choices? Do they just forget to go back to work after the baby's born and have to be reminded of the apparently newsworthy fact that if they don't work for several years, then over their lifetime they'll earn less than someone who worked constantly from college until retirement? Seems self-evident to me.
Also, life insurance, pension plans etc. I'd be ok if my partner died, because we have thought about this and done something about it.
251, see 249. Pulling the "aww, I'm just joking" when you say something kinda crappy in the middle of an argument is manipulative as hell. In another context, that remark would have been fine with me--I mighta made it my own damn self--and you know it.
Sucky, yeah. This is a pattern I'm thinking of from a couple of friends who were kids in divorces like this: men with a first set of kids where they were building careers and not spending a lot of time with family, and then got divorced, and then remarried and had a second family they were very involved with. It's not like the fathers lost touch completely with the older kids, but that it was a distant, uncle-ish kind of relationship, and one with a lot of child-support related hostility that the kids picked up on.
Do you think that people don't consider their choices?
Yes. Especially if you insert "possible second-order or long-term effects of" after "consider".
"In fact, I *do* think that most men are terribly saddened by divorce and not seeing their children. But I think that saying *that*, rather than being an angry jerk, would improve the situation enormously"
Which may be where the societal expectation that, for men, being an angry jerk can be a fairly effective way to get what you want comes into play.
(Implied IME noted; trying to avoid pedantry)
259: You know, I really don't have a sense of the comparative risks in a country with a real safety net like the UK -- I have the sense that being broke isn't all that scary there. Here, it's really scary.
Also, life insurance, pension plans etc. I'd be ok if my partner died
My wife would be more than OK if I died--life insurance, Social Security, etc. I have to sleep with one eye open--it's not good to be worth more dead than alive.
These discussions about housework always seem bizarre to me. I know anecdotally that such asymmetrical relationships exist outside of my world, and I realize that I'm an outlier (raised to know how to clean, cook and use a sewing machine; way more dedicated to maintaining the household than my wife), but I can't think of men who don't share in housework as anything but jerks or hapless slobs. Among your friends and acquaintances, are they really that numerous? Brothers, are you such men -- and if so, what the fuck is wrong with you?
And to keep telling those who stay at home how risky it is - honestly, I find that so patronising!
But there are a lot of misleading articles written that give the false impression that it's not risky to stay at home - that it's easy to re-enter the workplace and pick up where you left.
That doesn't seem to me like there are strong social forces at work, or that it's still considered the norm for mothers to stay at home whilst the fathers work.
This isn't exactly the norm I was talking about -- the social forces I was talking about were the ones that enforce that is that if one partner does stay home, it's nine out ten times going to be the woman.
Pulling the "aww, I'm just joking" when you say something kinda crappy
Except when it clearly is a joke, and that one was pretty clear.
265: Here in the land of larger income inequality, there's also much, much further to fall. Which has to make it scarier.
My wife seems to be in the process of deciding that she wants to stay home full time with our kid (plus any future ones that come along). I can assure you this is not at my urging, although we can technically afford it, so I've told if she decides it's what she really wants to do then I'm okay with it. (Although she's a fucking terrible housekeeper, so I'll probably still be stuck doing most of that). She has a professional degree and high earning potential, so in the short term at least she'd be fine picking up a career were anything to happen to me (or if we divorced). But her employability is of course going to crumble away as the years pass by, and she's going to become pretty dependant; I figure in about a decade or so I'll be free to bang my secretaries daily, without fear of her leaving. I'm not sure I'm happy about that.
Among your friends and acquaintances, are they really that numerous?
No, not at all. But then nearly all of my friends are two-earner couples.
her employability is of course going to crumble away as the years pass by,
Probably faster than she thinks.
I have the sense that being broke isn't all that scary there
Scary enough if you've got kids to look out for. The critical difference, as always, is health care.
My wife would be more than OK if I died
Surely most people in work are worth more to their s/os dead than alive. My wife and I sleep on different floors with rottweilers chained outside our doors. Or not. I know a few people who have been bereaved young, and it ain't worth it.
267: I know a bunch of couples where the housework looks 60-40 or so, with the woman doing more, and a couple that are more like 90-10 (although, to be fair, the two I'm thinking of are higher income and hire cleaning ladies, so the 90% I'm thinking of is more shopping and management and thinking about stuff rather than doing a lot of scrubbing).
Buck and I are 40-60 if I give myself a lot of credit, maybe 70-30, but I can't think of another couple I know with an obviously unequal split of household labor in the guy's favor.
I am so glad feminists who're way more eloquent than me came along and took over when I left to go teach, around comment 150.
275- you mean I can start openly banging secretaries sooner than a decade from now? How long do I need to wait?
274: Yeah, me too, so maybe I wasn't clear enough. It's even worse, of course, when both partners have jobs. The idea that a woman in that situation should still be expected to shoulder the majority of the housework seems bizarre and antiquated.
Your manifesto is interesting, and I'm thinking about it.
Translation: "When she gets home from work, the wife cooks dinner and does housework, then goes to bed tired. When he gets home from work, the husband sits on his butt and watches tv."
..."However, because she worked fewer hours at her paid job, she does the same amount of hours of (Paidwork+Housework) that her husband does." This is clearly the point of the article.
GB, the very piece you're citing says that women do more housework.
However, they do less paid work, resulting in the same amount of hours of (Paidwork+Housework). This is clearly the point of the article.
268 - oh ok, I haven't seen them though.
269 - ah, now that's interesting. Because wouldn't the logical thing be for the one who earns less to stay at home? So is that usually, *even before children*, the woman? I certainly don't think that we're in some sort of post-feminist utopia - the rot has clearly already set in long before people become parents.
For us, we live like this because we want to. (And sadly we're not wealthy either apo!) I wanted to be with the kids, my partner wanted to keep working. And Brock, we're a decade into it, and I'd have few qualms about leaving if I needed to (and those would be about the kids).
a couple that are more like 90-10 (although, to be fair, the two I'm thinking of are higher income and hire cleaning ladies, so the 90% I'm thinking of is more shopping and management and thinking about stuff rather than doing a lot of scrubbing).
Ah, so it's more like 9%-1%.
265: And thus does an ill-maintained social safety net keep marriages together. Yay for family values!
What do stay at home moms do where the kids are in school, esp. if they have outside cleaning help? (Trabaco aqui por favor, Lupe) Seems to me alot can be done between 9 and 3.
I'm totally fucked re: silliness, myself.
289 re: the Heebie Manifesto.
283.2: This is part of the heat behind the Hirshman argument; it starts looking like a self-fulfilling prophecy: "Why are you dropping out of the workforce?"
"Women don't get paid as much."
"Why don't women get paid as much?"
"They're so much more likely to drop out of the workforce."
258.1: See, and what LB and I are saying is that their fuckheadedness isn't innate, but more a function of what men and women learn their respective responsibilities w/r/t money and children are.
259: That 60% of working moms usually earn less and do more childcare and housework than their working spouses, so it isn't true that there aren't social forces telling us that kids are primarily a mom's job. Though I do think that the defensiveness of SAHMs is partly because that's a fairly unusual thing these days, and often only something available to the relatively rich. I think another part of it is a sneaking suspicion that they *do* have a pretty cushy gig (I know I do right now)--what the feminazis among us are pointing out is that it isn't as cushy as it seems.
No, money isn't the only thing: but it's pretty damn hard to talk about things like quality of life when you can't see a doctor or afford to pay your mortgage.
Re. patronizing, did you miss the point upthread about how I am currently an unemployed freelancer sahm myself?
I'm silly almost 24/7, and I'm not even a woman.
What do stay at home moms do where the kids are in school, esp. if they have outside cleaning help?
Darned if I know -- I don't know anyone who stays at home and can afford a cleaning lady.
289 - me too. I don't know if you saw 142 upthread but silliness is really my main coping mechinism.
"However, because she worked fewer hours at her paid job, she does the same amount of hours of (Paidwork+Housework) that her husband does."
See 288. Note that those of you with paid jobs are currently commenting on Unfogged. Note that I am a stay-home mom who is currently commenting on Unfogged. Yeah, I could be doing laundry, but why should I be working when you're not, especially since I'm not getting paid for it?
Keep in mind that I am a stay-home mom who doesn't give a shit if the kitchen only gets cleaned on the weekends, which is rather unusual of me.
294 - in all seriousness, that's a statement that a guy who was insecure about his masculinity wouldn't make.
182: 190 neatly summarizes what I said to LB in email, only I was much spammier about it. My main problem with the supposition that it indicates an effort to cheat at an election is that, given the little I can glean from the article & hypothesize on my own about the architecture of the system in question, it seems like such a dumb way of trying to do it with a lot of obvious points of failure.
187: Duly noted - thanks!
295: Yesterday I wrote part of a book I want to propose and publish at some point, then I did some research for a book article that's due in two weeks. I wrote two blog posts. Then I took a nap before picking PK up from school. Today I've commented on Unfogged and written a blog post and talked to the dentist's office on the phone.
300: Pretty much, that is, the same stuff I did when I was a professor and not in the classroom. If anything, I write more now.
293.1: Not buying it. A guy who loses interest in his children is an asshole. A guy who fails to win much in the way of visitation rights, grows distant from his children through no real fault of his own, eventually gets pissed off, and vents via the available recourse of the money he's sending (proximally) to the person who (IHE) caused that degrading of his relationship with his kids: not acting too mature, but not definitionally an asshole.
300: I think freelancing takes you out of the scope of the question. I'm assuming TLL's point was that being a stay-at-home-mother with school-age kids and hired cleaning help is a pretty sweet deal in terms of leisure, and so it is.
186: actually they accounted for that, but that was only part of the problem. She got more of the take-home for her retirement savings, but it doesn't address other issues, of course.
I wrote part of a book I want to propose and publish at some point, then I did some research for a book article that's due in two weeks.
B, this isn't being unemployed, this is being a free-lance writer.
305: They're different? This changes everything!
295. Let me introduce you to my wife. I think that for a time there was an ethic that being a SAHM was a "job", and the women who were in a position to do that took that job seriously. Then they found out that job was mind numbingly boring, so they "went running for the shelter of their mother's little helper", to quote the wise man.
Buck has this great T-shirt of a guy sitting on the street holding out a cup for money with a sign saying "Employed Writer".
303: I think that most stay-home moms do stuff during the day--maybe volunteer for the kids' classroom, handle all the appointments and management stuff (thereby freeing up the husband from making those phone calls at work the way most of us do), run errands when their husbands call from work and say "honey, I need you to take the house title to the county and pay the fees so that we can get the roof replaced" (as one stay home mom was saying she'd done yesterday after school), do things like research and sign the kids up for summer camps (as I did on Friday), etc.
I mean, there are certainly other moms I talk to on the playground who spend part of their days at the gym, getting manicures, etc. But not very many who seem to do nothing but watch tv, and I suspect those gym&manicure moms are doing that stuff instead of reading and commenting on unfogged.
I think the article mentioned in GB's Slate link is important, in fact. Think about what it says:
Suppose that on average, a woman sleeps more hours of the day than a man. Therefore, if they work the same amount, she has less leisure time. This in fact appears to be the case, surprising as it is that across all these countries the amount of "hours of work" is similar between men and women. Resentment is logical in this situation, but perhaps it is often misdirected.
307: Yeah, it's a tradeoff of financial risk and professional/social status for leisure.
this isn't being unemployed, this is being a free-lance writer
There's a fine line, one I've been walking since before my kids were born.
305: It ain't paying any social security, health insurance, or the mortgage. If Mr. B. has a heart attack, I'm going to have to get a "real" job.
308: Me want!
running for the shelter of their mother's little helper
If I was a stay-at-home parent with kids in school all day, I would almost certainly develop a pill habit.
298 -- I beg to differ. I am totally insecure about my masculinity, and yet I manage to be proudly silly.
314: Nah, you'd just blog a lot more.
Oh wait, I am taking meds. Hmmm.
If I was a stay-at-home parent with kids in school all day, I would almost certainly develop a pill habit.
One of my visceral fears is of waking up in a 1950's suburban home where I was expected to be an obedient housewife and because of the kids I can't run off and join the beatniks. I'd be drunk by 10:30 every morning.
Unfogged: "Mother's Not So Little Helper"
309. Certainly that is the sort of thing my wife does during the day. And I thank her for it, because it does free me to be more "productive", therefore allowing goof off time to comment on Unfogged. Win-win!
309: IME stay-at-home-moms sit around watching TV, drinking rum-and-cokes, and reading the Catherine MacKinnon for laugh lines to use later when haranguing the working member of the household. But I'm willing to call that an outlier.
315 - maybe "defensive" instead of "insecure about their masculinity" would be more accurate.
I actually begin to suspect that the reality of the sahm workday is that from, say, 8-3 one does housework, etc, plus enjoys the leisure of going to the gym, etc., because one's work day is a split shift from 6-8 and 3-9. Whereas the standard employed worker's work day is from about 8-6, and his leisure time is from 7-bedtime. Guys who do stuff like wash the dishes or read the kids to bed are doing the equivalent of sahms who wash the breakfast dishes and call the insurance company or pay the bills or whatever while the kid's at school: leisure interrupted by light chores.
317: Beatniks like kids, right? Run off to the Village and teach the kids to play bongos and smoke dope, thereby poising them to be on the cutting edge of hippiedom in a decade or so.
324. That's the way it is at our house. By the way B, PhD, do you wear your pearls when you vacuum, now that you are June Cleaver?
325 -- Have any of you guys read Jennifer Egan's Invisible Circus? It is an awesome first novel.
Dang! If only I knew/cared how to search comments, I'd find the one where someone connected pearls with the Tampax Pearls.
328 -- that was Becks.
325 - but what if I lacked the wherewithal to think of that? That's where the nightmare kicks in. I'm TRAPPED!
that was Becks
and it was the recent thread about mobile computing devices.
328: The search engines have not yet indexed that comment. It's a shame that MT's site search is such a useless feature.
Fortunately you all have eidetic memories.
Seems like it'd be way more efficient to roll your own comment system that uses flat files. I know w-lfs-n's got it in him. It could work exactly the same way.
335 - No, asking Clownae is pretty easy.
326: I don't vacuum. You should see the living/dining room floor right now. In addition to lots of dust and pieces of easter grass and hair bands and crumpled ex paper airplanes and little bits of food under the table, I can spot: two pieces of origami paper, PK's easter basket, a throw pillow, two clothespins, the top of a pirate board game, a felt-tip pen, three dirty socks, the top to a yogurt container, a couple pieces of scrap cardboard from some project or other, an empty grocery bag, an inflatable beach/baseball, the phone, a paper airplane, a plastic bin that probably had or has some toys in the bottom, a red straw, and a burst balloon.
And that's without looking under the couch or noting the dirty dishes on the counter, kitchen table, and coffee table, or the latter's load of books and craft supplies and games and takeout menus and baseball cap and plastic bag from the pharmacy.
335: I like your definition of "efficient."
338: Jackmormon totally won't date you now.
According to the Unfogged Adjusted Cleanliness Scale, Rah and I are neat-freaks. Sweet!
338, 341: Never have I been happier that my wife doesn't read Unfogged.
Oh, I'm not slovenly out of principle or anything, I'm just like that. I doubt it's catching over the Internet.
341: Yeah, after about a month of being a freak about wanting the New House to Look Nice I just decided fuck it. I invite people in when it's like this and everything. I can't tell if this makes me seem relaxed and normal, or horrifyingly slovenly, but I've decided not to care. If they're not like you and me, we're not going to become close friends anyway.
According to the Unfogged Adjusted Cleanliness Scale, Rah and I are neat-freaks
However, according to the Gay Man Domicile Index, you guys are just 50th percentile.
297: See 288. Note that those of you with paid jobs are currently commenting on Unfogged.
Yeah, and it's 3:45am here. See the part of the article about men sleeping less.
Actually, I'm still at work, procrastinating on finishing up a presentation for tomorrow. Er, today.
338. Are you relaying that from your drunken stupor on the couch? Or is it some kind of "I Spy" for slobs?
344 -- but J McQ had asserted above that his wife is slovenly already -- it's not a matter of her catching it, more of her being reinforced in her existing identity.
Is it scientifically established that women need more sleep than men? Anecdotally it does seem to be true.
344: So is she. I just don't want her having any encouragement.
On the other hand, the kitchen cupboard doors are closed.
Oh, and did I mention the two stuffed monkeys that are now permanent accessories hanging from the chandelier over the dining room table? I probably forgot because they've just become part of the decor.
340.---I've got to admit that food trash on the floor is my absolute signifier for Squalor. Other people can do what they please with their homes, of course.
The irony is, based on B's recent comments, I probably put more effort into cleaning around the house than she does.
For example, I vacuum. Well, not every square inch of floor, but if there's obvious dust and stuff on the floor, I vacuum it up.
347: Brother! Anyone who can be procrastinating at 3am the morning before something is due is my kind of worker.
353: For all my inattention to basic cleanliness, I pretty much can't stand that either.
My roommate has a mellower take, which, grody.
351: Sexist. Down with your patriarchal cleanliness standards! Up with free acknowledgment of what households with children look like!
350: Yeah, we're still making up for time lost during the baby years.
338: isn't that what those little robots are for?
349: Simultaneously pwned and supported by Clownæ.
I have a bad habit of turning normal assignments into all-nighters. Unfogged certainly doesn't help.
Also, it's like 90% done; I'm just nailing down the odds and ends. If I worked straight through, I could have been done hours ago.
357: Dude, those cleanliness standards come from my mother. I blame women generally.
For the last several years my fiancee and I have both lived with roommates, and both she and I are generally "the neat one", or "the one who doesn't make messes". The difference is that she spends lots of time cleaning up her roommates' messes while grumbling about irresponsibility, whereas I get home and say "Let's see here...nope, NONE of these 15 dishes in the sink are mine....the crumbs on the counter aren't from me either. These socks in the living room aren't mine, and I didn't screw up the sofa cushions, and I wasn't the one who knocked all those books on the floor." But I absolutely cannot bring myself to clean up other people's messes, so I just get annoyed, and put up signs which are ignored, or I gradually retreat to my own room so I don't get irritated by all the other messy rooms.
The point of this is that when we live together, I hope this doesn't lead to a pattern by which every chore gets done by her because I can live with it being undone longer than she can.
Now that I'll finally be in a 1-bedroom apartment I will have to regain the habit of cleaning things up as soon as possible instead of saying "I'll do all nineteen of those chores at once as soon as it stops raining and I can open the windows".
353: "Food trash" is such a harsh word for some crumbs under the table, or the occasional Cheerio. Given the dog, anything else edible doesn't stay on the floor long. On the other hand, she produces snowdrifts of dog-hair. You win some, you lose some.
354: Yeah, well, let's just admit that you're superior to me on every front, and that this is obviously something we can generalize to all men and all women and we'll be done, then.
353, 356: Just wait until you have children, oh ye-who-can-eat-without-spilling. I spent a couple years sweeping under the table after ever meal and I'm just fucking sick of it. Whatever, it's crumbs.
Mostly.
358: Yeah, I put the robot down about once a week or so, after we pick up all the toys and throw pillows and dirty socks and shit, okay?!?!?
361: Yet more evidence that patriarchy infects all of us.
So LB is a slovenly housekeeper who starves her kids and pulls overnighters to finish her procrastinated work @ $600 per hour for BIG LAW because she has frivolously spent her time commenting on Unfogged. And we listen to her why?
Not even the most advanced Roomba can get stuffed monkeys off of chandeliers, though.
364: They totally need to invent one of those robots with little arms to pick up random lightweight stuff.
366: And GB spends all night "at work" because he fucks around when he should be working, yet feels its fair to argue that women should do all the housework if men work "80 hours a week." I vote we boot both of 'em.
Bphd, your son's love for cute rodents is a good excuse to leave unsanitary deposits of food around the house in order to attract them.
put up signs which are ignored
You put up signs? Dude, that would annoy the fuck out of me.
368 -- Yes! and positronic brains, dude, then we'll be in business!
However, according to the Gay Man Domicile Index, you guys are just 50th percentile.
Rah wants us to redo the kitchen counters at some point and that will probably help when we get reevaluated. By then, however, the back yard will have achieved sentience and resent our presence.
363: That's what she was talking about. Geez. I was thinking more "it's not okay to just chuck your McDonalds wrapper onto the carpet when you're done."
371 - Not about specific incidents, just one saying "Dear occupants, if you leave food out, I will eat it, and leave droppings nearby -- Best wishes, a mouse."
And one on the door to the balcony that says "DO NOT LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN", inspired by our enormous winter gas bills.
371: Brock would smear Ned's signs with feces.
366: starves her kids
Hey, my kids will kick your kids' asses. They may have other flaws, but they are large, strong, and well fed. (Not to be interpreted as an actual threat -- I don't know that you have children.)
But other than that, certainly I should be shunned.
371: yeah, signs would be annoying.
The one time I was stuck in such a situation, I resorted to a much more direct approach: `you've got 24 hours to clear that crap up properly or I'll just dump it in your bed'. This was in reference to a nearing week-old pile of dishes & pans in the sink.
370: You should see the mess the goddamn mice in the new cage that isn't an aquarium are making by kicking their bedding out all over PK's bathroom.
I was thinking wrappers or dirty dishes on the floor. Crumbs aren't that big a deal, unless they're gigantic or have accumulated.
379: Oh, that was one of the more charming house rules at my MIT co-op -- if your house duties were left undone for long enough to piss people off, the uncleaned up mess was transferred to your bed.
Never actually happened while I was there, but it was on the books.
376: It would be more effective if you just shit next to the food leavings, rather than waiting for a mouse to do it. Then you could express shock at the size animal their food waste was attracting. "That's gotta be, at minimum, a baboon."
I'd like to try 379 on my wife, but I worry that it might not turn out well for me.
Oh good. The dirty dishes are all elevated above floor level. I pass!
384: Almost certainly a well founded worry.
384 cracked me up.
385: Brock, didn't you once gripe about your wife dusting the baseboards for company??
I'd like to try 379 on my wife
...but short of having my spinal column replaced with a giant Slinky, 69 is all I can manage.
I'd like to try 379 on my wife
Seems like you'd run into a problem with dumping the mess in "her bed".
378. My children have been refered to in previous posts. The age differential favors my offspring at the moment. Do not rile the boy, tragic results may ensue.
382: It did happen once ... what's more, on a friday night. The culpret came home falling down drunk and slept in most of it. On the upside, we were nice enough to put another roomies plastic mattress liner thingy on the bet before dumping the dishes there --- saved him trying to get vomit out of the mattress, too....
389: I do believe that was the point.
369: And GB spends all night "at work" because he fucks around when he should be working
Are you deliberately trying to be obtuse? I am not supposed to be at work at 4 in the morning. If I choose to spend my free time on Unfogged instead of finishing my work on time and then going home and sleeping, that's my choice.
Anyway, since I get paid based on the quantity and quality of my work product instead of for billing my time, it doesn't matter how many hours I put in so long as I get results. Being efficient is a good thing.
387- more likely I griped about my wife wanting me to dust baseboards for company. I don't mind if she cleans anything she wants. She does want to make things insanely clean for company. Or at least used to; since the baby, her standards have (understandly) slipped. That's just about the only time she ever cleaned, though. And we don't have company over nearly often enough anymore.
You know, now that I've gotten up to pour another drink fetch the mail, I realize I neglected to mention the detritus that was out of eyeshot. Add to my living room flooor a stuffed frog, a badminton racket, a pair of scissors, dice, more felt-tip pens, the little file I bought to keep my freelance receipts and shit in for next year's taxes, and two more plastic bags under the coffee table, one filled with garbage which I am now going to stand up and throw away because that's too much for even me.
Obviously, what should happen, in this day and age, is that the members of any co-op should start a blog. Can you imagine it? A new post called "that sink of ours, or, the lasagna" with 56 comments?
390: Mine are crafty and deceptively cute, as well as large, strong for their ages, and vicious. Not that I'm making any threats here.
391: You just never know when having a bedwetter around will come in handy.
392- well, that was part of the point, yes. But the bad consequences I imagine are legion.
393: Nonetheless, those are hours spent out of the house, at work. Which would count in the survey you were trying to cite upthread as evidence that it's "fair" for women to do more housework than men.
400: Point taken. I guess I'm getting tired and cranky now. Time to finish up and get some sleep.
Good night, all.
40: Hey, working the refs works!
Later, slobs. I've got to get out of this pigsty to pick up my daughters at preschool. Then I'll fix myself a drink and get back to reading Unfogged finishing up an already-late assignment while I watch them.
Last comment from me: 401: No, they would count as TV-watching hours at home. Except instead of going home and watching TV, I'm staying here and commenting on Unfogged, and doing more work later on. I like working at night; I'm a night person and having the office to myself helps me be productive (when I'm actually working, of course.)
And with that, good night.
309: But isn't the pressing social issue of our day how we can work it to go to the gym, get the manicure (screw that, deep tissue massage), *and* read and comment on Unfogged? Goals are important!
248: The "go to law school and marry a slacker" option. Based upon said experience, I am highly skeptical of this "women and men in wealthy countries do the same amount of work crap." Because my stay-at-home slacker lamented daily how underappreciated his housework was and how he did *everything* and how very lazy I was for not doing more -- and I felt horribly guilty and worthless for this for years. Then the divorce and I had to take care of my full-time job and the household myself and I find the house is no more of a mess than it was before and the amount of effort necessary to maintain said state is not overwhelming. (Though my capacity for avoiding run-on sentences has clearly deteriorated.) Which isn't to say he didn't spend the hours he said he did, but that the level of actual effort expended is not properly measured in hours.
Having finally caught up, long after all the comments I would have made have already been made three or four times, let me just say that a world in which the women in one's office appear to think that it's some kind of significant accomplishment to manage to keep a 10 year old fed and get him back and forth to school and activities for a week while one's wife is out of town has some distance yet to go on the equality thing.
395: Bitch, are you sure you aren't working on an art installation?
Which isn't to say he didn't spend the hours he said he did, but that the level of actual effort expended is not properly measured in hours.
"I get up every morning and scrub the baseboards from 9 to 5, and that bastard never notices!"
382: I did that to somebody the one term I was kitchen manager.
411: slackers are no good, but speed freaks are amazingly good housekeepers if you can make sure that that's what they're doing.
Which isn't to say he didn't spend the hours he said he did, but that the level of actual effort expended is not properly measured in hours.
Which is also the point that GB is so resolutely missing about a study that apparently measures "hours of paid work" by hours spent in the office. No, most of us spend part of our office time screwing around, too.
412: Heh. I really liked living there -- the people, but just the physical house was great. I wish I wasn't so bad at keeping up with people. The next big-deal reunion is in 2009, right?
Damn, I go off to a meeting and get called humorless by Apo? Stone cold.
As far as cleanliness goes, and I'm sure this has come up, I cannot recommend highly enough hiring someone to clean your house, if you can afford it.
When I go out to lunch, I take note of all the kids I see, usually in strollers, and the people that are pushing those strollers. 97% of the time they're women, and I feel a bit disappointed in society.
This discussion is compelling me to go put in a load of laundry and wash some dishes and maybe scrub a few spots in the kitchen floor. Fortunately, I have a long compile/test run going on, so I can even claim it as legitimate work time as well. Random dead time to do light housework is a definite virtue of the telecommuting gig.
413: Every so often I think about developing a speed habit. Tidy, focused, and hardworking all sound like qualities that would greatly improve me, and the eventual psychosis couldn't be that bad. Then I lose track of what I was thinking about.
2009, right, for the big four-oh.
I go off to a meeting and get called humorless by Apo
No, just B and GB. I'll add you in if it's important to you, though.
418: Besides, who needs teeth, and those receipts aren't going to sort themselves into categories based on size, number of folds and the sum of the digits in the first listed price.
the eventual psychosis couldn't be that bad.
Ah, innocence.
416: I keep on trying, because I feel guilty about not pulling my weight cleaning-wise (and, to be honest, I'd like the house cleaner than it is, but I don't want to actually do any more work) but Buck's opposed. We've had cleaning people twice for three week bursts, and each time he decided it was making him unhappy.
418: Hmmmm...sounds like ADHD. Would you like me to write a prescription for Ritalin?
424: Need hotter cleaning people?
421: Eh, if it's all the same, I'll just stay humorful.
I cannot recommend highly enough hiring someone to clean your house, if you can afford it.
We used to do that when we were poorer than we are now. I'm coming round to the idea that it's better to bank the money and learn to just not give a shit, although I admit we're still having some trouble on the first part.
My mother's helpful advice as she sent me off to college included "Don't do speed, it's too much fun."
The prospect of actually finding a cleaning person is very daunting to me, somehow. I tried asking a few people for recommendations, got nothing good, and gave up. That's pathetic, I realize, but there it is.
424: Yeah, we got rid of the cleaning service a while back because the hassle of making sure that crap was picked up on cleaning day was producing more stress than the cleaning was fixing. And how much damage can giant killer dust bunnies under the nightstands really do anyway?
I had a friend who turned himself into the police during his amphetamine psychosis and found out that he was not wanted for anything. That really made him paranoid.
431:Don't worry. I'm not actually a psychiatrist.
430 The bigger ones are called dust rhinos.
426: If you try it, you must blog the results (although I suppose that blogging the results would itself be an indication that the drugs weren't working). I've thought for years that I'd probably be more functional with chemical help, but I'm kind of used to myself the way I am and I think I'd rather adjust my world to fit me than try to do it the other way around.
432: That's wonderful. "Shit, there's the police! They're not following me. Nobody's following me! What am I going to do!?"
424: We had an initial guilt hump to get over, but we pay our cleaning person pretty well, and the peace of mind seems to be worth it.
(I'm leaving "guilt hump" in there as a gift.)
434: But I like looking down there and imagining a little tiny Jimmy Carter rowing away in terror. That way I get a chuckle rather than a dose of guilt.
Best amphetamine psychosis story I ever heard involved the guy trying to swim the SF bay clad only in the tablecloth he'd just stolen from a restaurant.
I've read that employees of those cleaning services are treated worse than dirt and, worst of all, the home office takes more than a pimp's cut. In my librul mind, there is simply no way to justify giving a company $20 to send somebody to clean your house when they only get $7.50 for it.
My friend concluded that the police were waiting for him to lead them to other people they were looking for.
440: Oh, I wouldn't hire a service for exactly that reason. Our two attempts were independent housecleaners.
there is simply no way to justify giving a company $20 to send somebody to clean your house when they only get $7.50 for it.
My parents hire someone who works for herself, not through an agency, for this reason.
It would be sweet if your previous employer paid you alimony to support you and the lifestyle to which you've grown accustomed until you find a new gig, but unfortunately, a few weeks' severance pay is all you usually get.
Oh, so the employed person owns the marriage and the stay-at-home spouse is the employee?
Yeah, I wouldn't do a service either.
408: That sucks. I'd like to think that slacking and passive-aggressive guilt tripping do not necessarily go hand in hand, but maybe this is just inherent in stay-at-homing.
Oh, definitely, avoid a cleaning service. We found our person, who works for herself, through friends.
Speaking of college, rfts, can you drop me an email? matt at unlikelywords.com.
440: Depends on the service, I think. Ours was run by someone who worked in some kind of salon or something and hired others who were doing the same thing and wanted to make a few extra bucks. I don't doubt that she was taking as much cut as she could get away with, but it wasn't one of those hugely exploitive operations that hires immigrants who don't have many other options.
By far the best cleaning help we ever had was the high-school age daughter of a friend. The problem was that she graduated and went off to college after a couple of years.
445: Yeah, that's kind of the point. The biggest financial asset of the marriage is in most cases the earning potential of the partner who works out of the home, and that leaves the marriage with that partner.
I've hired a service; I just doubled the bill and told the cleaners that the extra (in cash) was a tip. But I'd rather hire someone working independently, yeah. Make sure and give 'em two weeks paid vacation.
430: Cleaning up for the cleaners is good for the soul; reminds you what life was like before you got your ticket to the boogie-wozzie.
430: Not much damage ... until they reach critical mass and/or go sentient. Then it's too late.
I don't believe I've ever had a ticket to a boogie-wozzie, although I'm not sure how I'd know if I did.
447: No, I don't think it'sinherent in stay-at-homing. I think it's inherent in the attitude that, while it's hip and cool to be a stay-at-home dad, laundry and cleaning are women's work that it was a personal affront to expect him to do...
Slacking and passive-aggressive guilt-tripping *do* go hand in hand -- it's the latter that, for at least a little while, enables you to get away with the former. Smoke and mirrors...
"Smoke and mirrors"
Very important indeed to a slacker. You're going to also want a razor blade, a rolled up bill, and some munchies.
I knew somebody who hired a housekeeper mostly because the anticipation of her coming was the only thing that could really get him to clean.
I also had a roommate who hired a housekeeper to do his share of the chores. Blah.
454: I'll sell you mine--I have to stay home and clean the house.
454: When you start hiring servants you're part of the ruling class. Calling them a cleaning service fools nobody. We have a cleaner (independent), so sue me.
459: Does that mean that as long as there's crap on the floor, I can say I'm down with the gente?
459: Ahh. You brits and your homonyms.
Where does 463 rate on the unfogged comment whiteness meter?
He's the boogie-wozzie bugle boy of company B.
232: Not so. I was married for 17 years; alimony was not really on the table, despite the ex's income being 3X mine. [He worked in movin' pitchers; I merely worked in law.] Hell, Wife #2 hired a sleazebag who even suggested that, because the Offspring is adopted, my ex shouldn't have to pay any child support either. [Very bad lawyer, not fully aware of CA law...] As it was, I settled for $500 less child support per month than I was legally entitled to, and didn't renegotiate after I became ill and had to leave my job. [In hindsight, that was probably a mistake; I should have insisted on the whole package and banked it for the Kid's college.]
464: I think the only question there is whether it's higher or lower than Ogged's love of Whole Foods.
468: Did he say "dude?" Because that's the honkitude appendage, right there.
468: I just think we should all be clear that, despite periodic claims to hispanicity, you are one of the whitest people here.
While it's obvious that 338 is a description partly for comic effect, I'm curious whether it also represents something of an evolution from the view once expressed about confronting the husband about dropping his outer clothes short of the closet or dumping the mail on the table, and in general about shouldering or forcing the sharing of responsibility for housekeeping. If this is movement toward never knowing when you're out of milk—admittedly the standard for the woman with the f-t job—that would be interesting.
Ok, I admit I only said 470 because I wanted to say "hispanicity." Unfortunately, I think I was beat by Tweety's "honkitude appendage"
You aren't really a man 'til Tweety beats you with his appendage.
466. Did you not qualify for alimony because you were working? My understanding is that alimony only goes to SAHMs, but my knowledge is only anecdotal. My brother pays alimony, my wife's brother receives alimony(!) while my ex and I waived any spousal support due each other.
Completely OT, OT: Monica Goodman has just been given immunity to testify (NPR news on as I type). Popcorn stocks going through the roof.
"honkitude appendage"
The four-dollar words don't make it any less wrong to make fun of the size of a guy's dick.
This is still pulled out of my ass, kind of, but I looked at a CA divorce law website, and it looked as though alimony were possible for 1/2 the length of a marriage under 10 years, or forever for a longer marriage, but possible doesn't mean it's going to be awarded. Again, I have the impression that extended alimony is rarely awarded these days.
I think it should be emphasized that the party which is theoretically supposed to get cash compensation (normally the wife) usually ends up worse off, because the standard award, the ideal award, the average award, and the court-ordered award are all completely theoretical, and there are all kinds of ways that the money actually received can end up being less than those. my guess is that the cases of exorbitantly high awards are rare and mostly involve actors and famous novelists, whereas the cases of uncollected awards are so common as not to be news.
My sister actually only got a small proportion of her settlement, even though she had been quite reasonable during the trial, and she and her kids suffered for over a decade because of that.
Fucking foreigners can't spell, you know that.
479: Might this be linked to the increase in two-income couples?
483: Sure. The presumption these days is that women can work, so why shouldn't they be self-supporting after a marriage ends. Which is where the risk comes in for non-income-earning women; midlife after a divorce is a lousy time to start or resume a career if you've got a long gap in employment.
Someone should work up a routine comparing the Christian non-blowjob Monica to the non-Christian blowjob Monica. The Christian played serious goon-squad hardball at Justice and apparently was an actual crook.
A picture of the Christian Monica with some kind of rightwing jism dripping off her chin would be tasteful. Even just a cute beret on the Christian lady might do it.
484: Rather, might the decline be attributable to the percentage of divorce cases with two incomes, rather than to a decline in the percentage of single income cases where alimony is awarded?
487: Nice Christian girls take their jism from plastic beer cups?
486: Damfino. That's not my impression -- my impression is that extended alimony is unusual these days regardless -- but I'm not working from solid knowledge here.
488: That would be crass. Her pocketbook is full of jism.
Apo is frighteningly knowledgeable about the mores of Regent University.
As Morris Day said, it's important to keep this tasteful.
Which is where the risk comes in for non-income-earning women; midlife after a divorce is a lousy time to start or resume a career if you've got a long gap in employment.
I think the big thing that never quite gets folded into these discussions is the effect of life course events on the end results. It's not just that it's hard to get a job, though it is, it's that it's hard to do the job as if you have no kids when you do, and in the absence of a support structure that wasn't built on the assumption of a married couple with kids. I actually think that these life course types of influences are the biggest factors at play.
Single mothers have a weak bargaining position, because they need the job badly and have trouble changing jobs.
"Loyal employee" => "low paid employee". A disloyal employee gets more raises.
So you're saying I can start banging the secretaries now?
The House Committee on Oversight and Government reform also voted to subpoena Condi about the Niger uranium fiasco.
For some reason when Waxman issued the subpoena he said he took no pleasure in it. As a utilitarian and a grudge holder, I think this is a shame and a waste.
You should hire a service to bang your secretaries for you.
497- Brock, is your Presidential nom de cyber Bill Clinton or something? You seem unduly interested in the steno pool.
"Representative Henry A. Waxman, right, said he took no pleasure in authorizing a subpoena against the secretary of state, then refused to show the press if his fingers were crossed."
You can start trying to bang the secretaries any time. The Unfoggedtariat gives no warranties, express or implied, as to how the secretaries, your wife, or the EEOC will respond.
They have to be dead presidents. What if Bill Clinton wants to come in here some day and post about his sex life?
504. Which secretary's figure were you speaking about?
Because this thread couldn't get any drearier, I am going to wonder aloud whether anyone's posted anything about Steve Miles' Oath Betrayed, the searchable database of medical complicity in detainee abuse in the ongoing imperial conflict.
Deee-sturbing.
505. Ah. I did not know the protocol. Jack Kennedy, then.
I would have expected prominent place to the Malkin cheerleader video at Unfogged, of all places.
Of course it could get drearier. We could talk about mental illness and the wrongheadedness of the shock expressed way back in comment 69 at VT students grieving for Cho as well has his victims.
What if Bill Clinton wants to come in here some day and post about his sex life?
1) That would be awesome.
2) He would certainly choose a dead president name for such posts. Thus, the "Bill Clinton" name would remain unused and available.
3) How can we be certain he hasn't already done this?
How, for that matter, do we know that "Brock Landers" isn't Bill Clinton?
511: Okay, I'll qualify that: "drearier without recourse to obvious trollbait"
513: Yeah, that had always been my assumption. I mean, who else would choose a handle like that?
512.3: I don't think any straight male member has copped to the kind of stories he just has to have, even under a dead prez pseud.
514: But is that really a fair qualification when at least half the thread consists of troll-feeding?
What would be far more awesome would be if he showed up here and posted some great confession, thinking it an obscure but still technically public place to do so, used his real name, the rest of the thread was spent trying to identify the "pseudonymous" commenter and thus he was ultimately denied the confessional experience. I love the guy, but that'd be pretty rockin'.
This one time, at Camp David, . . .
516: Oh, the stories my straight male member could tell.
Re. patronizing, did you miss the point upthread about how I am currently an unemployed freelancer sahm myself?
No, I was aware of that. You only got a "maybe"! Although you do seem ambivalent about your current status. But my annoyance is not really aimed at anyone here, more the Hirshman/other annoying articles that I seem to have read too many of in the last few weeks. Which have been a very annoying few weeks anyway, with an ongoing drain problem that has made me very glad that we're not both working so we didn't have to negotiate who would be at home for the workmen. So I'm annoyed all round really, but didn't mean it personally.
518: Is a confession real if no one believes it? What about an apology after said confession? Can one accept that apology even if one doesn't believe in the confession?
472: No, I still think men should clean up after themselves when their wives are writing dissertations and neither one of them are employed.
521: Oh, I'm not personally annoyed, particularly, no worries.
522: I maintain that it could still lighten the psychic burden of the person giving the confession regardless of whether it's believed but my time here has taught me that authorial intent is meaningless.
I confess, I'm a heartbreaker.
I do feel better!
523: Never realized that was the subtext.
519:
What is the origin of the references to "One time at band camp..."? I have a funny feeling about this.
513/515: This possibility has already been discussed.
528: Tell us about your funny feeling, and we'll tell you the origin of the quote.
529: And was the straight, male member's privacy restored by those erasures?
Go watch American Pie, IDP. It's not that great of a movie, but the one scene that the quote is from is golden.
528.2 is to be respected for not sinking so low as the "I'm feeling lucky" button at Google.
Oh, so this is where the party's at!
532: Yeah, it's one of those times where the long setup actually pays off.
I stopped reading this thread around comment 100, but just searched it for "cock" and "titties" and got nothing. What the fuck have you people been doing?
Mostly cock and titties, Ogged.
Arguing with GB about whether women should do more housework than men. What have you done all day?
Oh, Jesus. I saw that start up and thought, "I'd rather stick pins in my eyes."
491, 499, 531, 520 to 538.
It ain't much, but there's dicks.
We've been using your name to post death threats against major political figures, Ogged. You really should read the comments.
I stayed out of that one, mostly because I'm such a slob. Not wanting to discuss housekeeping issues is a major reason for the relationship-free life.
"In the name of my Lur ancestors I call down FIERY VENGEANCE upon the head of Dennis Hession and his black-hearted minions!"
I live in a small apartment. If I'm really busy, it gets cluttered, but it also takes like half an hour to make it pretty again.
516: I believe the Drudge-promoted rumor at the time was that the president had a crooked male member.
548: I think Gennifer Flowers has said otherwise.
Arguing with GB about whether women should do more housework than men.
I'm back, and I'm on deadline, so I'll have to keep this short. But I was NOT arguing that women should do more housework than men. I never said that, and if you claim I did, you're a liar.
My position is that neither spouse/partner/etc. should be trying to compel the other to do more housework than he/she feels is necessary. In other words, no nagging.
414: the point that GB is so resolutely missing about a study that apparently measures "hours of paid work" by hours spent in the office. No, most of us spend part of our office time screwing around, too.
Yeah, and that goes for women who work in offices, too, so it cuts both ways. Especially since more women than men are secretaries (er, "adminstrative assistants"), who do nothing but play solitare, surf the net, and occasionally answer the phone.
Plus, do you really think women doing house chores are working under third-world sweatshop conditions, where they need to clean X dishes per hour, lest the factory foreman beat them and take away their dinner? Who do you think soap operas were created for? They're called soap operas because they were orignially designed to market laundry detergent. To housewives. Women goof off, too.
Aaaannd, back to work for me. See ya later.
549: Are you calling Drudge a liar? Or poorly sourced?
Those were the good ol' days, eh? Back when we could trust prominent media figures, and before the current debasement of public debate.
It's not that great of a movie
Bite your tongue!
Also, more delightful derision from GB in 551. Dependable!
See, GB just got less than five hours of sleep. That's 3 hours less chores he should have to do.
Like ogged, I departed this thread for some hours around post 100. Unlike ogged, when I saw 500-plus posts, I assumed that this was the result of a spirited discussion of movies.
But, a few observations as this thread (maybe) winds down:
-there was some discussion of men using custody issues as an excuse for not wanting to pay more support. I know a guy who had zero interest in his kid, but talked about seeking custody in order to extort a more favorable economic settlement. I am sympathetic to Dr. B's view that men are something of a problem.
-having gone through a divorce of two career people in which there were no kids and no grotesque behavior by either party and that, nonetheless, was a pretty disputatious divorce, I am intensely sympathetic to people with kids and complicated situations who divorce. In some ways, the relationship of divorced people can be as complicated to manage as the relationship between married people - but married people, at least theoretically, are working from a spirit of cooperation.
First chore is to bake some damn cookies. Obtuse and argumentative is fun for a while, but after a while it gets tiresome. And then the Big Billygoat Gruff kicks your ass.
TLL - I was self-supporting and making decent money, if not movie-industry $$$. I don't think any court in its right mind would have given me alimony; I just didn't need it. As it was, we settled it ourselves, out of court, despite his sleazy attorney, who refused to sign off on the extremely fair settlement. [His comment to my lawyer: "How can we make any money if they talk to each other??"]
Re: Housecleaning: Jeebus, people - we keep a couple thousand square feet neat & clean with very little effort. Except the Offspring's room, which needs an Augean make-over. How hard is it??? [Well, OK, we don't really dust much, but in SoCal it's pretty hard to keep up with the particulate matter anyway.] Our main problem is stacks of books awaiting a place in the bookcases. And they're handy end-tables, anyway.
Ever watch the BBC show How Clean is Your House? You'd never complain about mere clutter and stray socks again.
559: TLL: Come to think of it, I probably could have got a court to give me some extra $$, as I cut back my work hours - and salary - significantly to take the Kid to therapy and help him with his homework [he has a hefty reading disability]. Ah, well...
Are you calling Drudge a liar? Or poorly sourced?
The most intimate encounter I have had with Bill Clinton was shaking his hand, so I'm not proclaiming the accuracy of either story. But I'm pretty certain I remember seeing Gennifer Flowers (on the Daily Show maybe?) being asked as the final question of the interview whether Clinton "leaned" left or right, and she coyly replied, "Right down the middle."
