when you deploy that phrase, you're provoking a surge of anger in the other person.
It's context-dependent, but this is a useful phrase and not offensive if it's offered in good faith.
Properly deployed, it's saying: "We're not going to accomplish anything with further conversation on this, right?"
I recently refereed a debate between two colleagues in which one of them said: "I'm not going to engage with this any further because I don't want to say something I'll regret."
She was absolutely right to end the conversation, which had reached a dead end, but she should have said, "Let's agree to disagree."
I understand that overtly that phrase is saying that. But "We're not going to accomplish anything with further conversation on this, right?" sounds like something being said with more camaraderie.
I suppose inflection trumps any single choice of phrase. I just think people often inflect "let's agree to disagree" in a way that conveys "I'm taking the moral high because I'm more virtuous than you, you prick."
That's why I just say, "fuck you, clown!" instead.
Let's just agree to disagree.
Is "let's agree to disagree" as bad as "calm down!"?
Ooooh. I think it's similar in mechanism.
At least I can take comfort in having poisoned the phrase here forever.
6 and 7: I think "Calm down" is way worse.
My mother has this particular way of saying "Hmm." Which means "I I love you and don't want to argue, and I'm going to do whatever thing I want to do anyway even though you don't want me to."
Calm down is much worse. Those are borderline fighting words.
Where as "let's agree to disagree" can be said in good faith.
Huh, it wouldn't have occurred to me that "let's agree to disagree" was specifically a problem. Like, it's only going to come up in an at least mildly tense situation, where there's a disagreement that's not going to be resolved right now, but I wouldn't see the wording as any worse than any other way of saying "let's stop arguing despite not having convinced each other."
I can see a lot of situations where "let's stop arguing" would be a jerk move in itself -- I say my piece, maybe including some really indefensible bullshit, and then immediately say "but let's not argue about it" before you can respond. But that's not about the wording.
We have code words in my family -- "parachute!" means whatever we're talking about, we have to stop talking about it; and when the kid was little, whenever he'd had enough of whatever I was talking about, he said, "Moo!" and I had to shut up.
Wow. That essay reminded me of something from buzzfeed. Something perhaps entitled "Adulting" and enumerating activities of daily living (e.g., getting out of bed, getting dressed for work, going to work, paying bills, talking to roommates, etc.) as if each was a traumatic & historically unparalleled burden equivalent to an Arctic expedition.
Kind of? Like, if those things strike you as important burdens that you can't easily figure out a workaround for, marriage might not be for you?
Like, eating together is actively nice! I can see reasons why it might not be for some people, but for most people, isn't it? Combining money is tricky, but is also a huge win in terms of security, in general. And so on. (Even without being terribly close, and with a certain amount of mutual they thought I was from Mars and I thought they were, I kind of liked having in-laws. My Marine/yoga-instructor/I-think-she's-a-witch-now? ex-niece is still a bright spot in my FB feed.)
I did something to my back somehow and getting out of bed, or even up from a chair, is an accomplishment today. Also, I love the word "adulting." Somehow the bullshit stuff you need to do is easier if you view it as a performance.
Trying to get your kid to respond to emails from the guidance counselor is frustrating. "Taking an active role in the intergenerational recapitalization of privilege" is more interesting.
I usually go with "I don't think we're getting anywhere with this, so I'm going to change the subject." Less passive, more aggressive, I guess.
Sometimes you can do "That's just your penis envy talking."
Not in an email to the guidance counselor though.
Looking at that list in the linked essay, I don't think my wife and I do jointly do all those things.
1. Eat together: we often feel hungry at different times, or want different foods, and we both work both long and quite different schedules. So, multiple nights a week, one of us eats with the child, and the other either eats the left overs later, or eats something else entirely. At the weekend, it's family meal times all round, but Monday to Thursday, absolutely no certainty we'll eat together.
2. Combined money. Used to do it, now don't. We've been married for 20 years, and for the first 10 or so, we had everything in joint accounts, now we don't. I think the change is for the better. We still agree on all major spending,* and major bills, etc come from a joint account we both pay into, but otherwise, money is separate.
3. TV shows. Nope. Inevitably one of us is working late into the night. TV together is nice, but almost never happens.
* I wouldn't go out and spend on something that cost, say, more than about 10% of a month's salary without a conversation first. There's no right of veto there, but having the conversation is helpful.
Right, in 20 years with Tim we never combined accounts, because we had kind of incompatible financial styles. But we we had joint financial responsibility for big decisions and for supporting each other when necessary. Combining money in terms of responsibility doesn't have to mean combining it administratively. (That was actually one of the big signs my marriage was in trouble, when he bought a muscle car without my agreeing to it. I can't quite remember -- he might have told me what he was going to do a couple of hours before he literally bought it, so I suppose I could have "forbbiden" it and found out what would have happened, but I certainly wasn't involved in the decision.)
Buying a stupid car is never a good sign in a middle-aged man.
Certainly was part of a classic set of symptoms.
Let's agree to disagree and really indefensible bullshit
How much do people express their their inner thoughts about their partner to their partner? In particular, constructive criticism-- you'd be a better person if you {stopped leaving your crap on the floor} or {eased up on the compulsive cleaning} obviously never ever a good thing to say but I'd bet an extremely common thought, similarly analogous sentiments about money or time management. More delicate is when one person's limitations lead to shared bad outcomes, or when there's a mess of tough circumstances and questionable choices. Basically I'm big on some distance-- persistent small disagreements can break the trust necessary to manage big disagreements.
Also, dating and dating-style light cohabitation are a lot easier to manage than marriage IMO. Sharing everything imposes huge costs, yes there's a payoff when it works.
Props for sharing good funny writing, heebie (is props still a current-language thing to write? What's a normal way to express broad approval?)
I bought a stupid car when I was a middle-aged man, but I was just trying to save money.
I think the title of the essay really wrecks it. In the book, it's called, "And you may ask yourself, 'how did I get here?' " which is a much less unpleasant spin and evokes a sort of mild sleepwalking through domesticity that you then awaken from when you're saddled with kids and questioning everything, which is what I think happened in her case.
"Sleepwalking" is harsher than I'd describe her. I just think it's what she's trying to evoke in the essay.
We had a 1971 Pontiac Catalina station wagon. It was great, but eventually my grandmother drove it into the steps of the post office.
27: the book is a very quick, enjoyable read!
2. Tim has an account for joint stuff. I keep a certain amount of money in that, but I have my own checking and savings for some other stuff. We each transfer a certain amount of our paychecks to a savings account for the mortgage and a separate account for utilities so that we have a cushion for high electric or high heating bills.
We put a lot of expenses on an American Express that I'm an authorized user on and figuring out the bills every month when we each paid that separately was stressful. I have a separate bill for the cell phone plan that I pay for with my own American Express. I never use that one otherwise, but a I keep it because, unlike the MasterCard and Visa, I would lose access to the other AmEx if Tim died.
We closed a credit card I never used, because we needed to buy a new laptop, and Apple will let you pay in installments at 0%. In the past we did a 0% loan from Citizens Bank for our iPhones, but now you have to get their Credit Card. I have to say that this metal card is really kind of cool. The number isn't written on it, but if you need it, you can access it on your phone, and it's easy to track transaction on the app.
The other thing I really like is that any payments are due on the last day of the month, no matter how many days it is. Anything bought in January is part of a balance due February 28, anything purchased in February is due on March 31st. It's so much easier to keep track of!
We had a 1984 Buick Century which I crashed into another car.
We had a 1986 Chevrolet Cavalier, which once of my siblings crashed into the nun's car.
We also had a 1978 Ford Granada, which my grandmother drove into a utility pole and a 1968 Ford Thunderbird, which I rolled over my brother's arm.
Hick family car insurance premiums must be sky high
Take away the Hicks' drivers licenses! Unsafe at any speed!
I can kind of get into the spirit of the essay a little, but it does seem like it makes too much out of things like sharing meals and finances and even sleeping arrangements which no one outside the couple ought to care about and of which there are many successful permutations. We usually have family meals together every day of the week, but if we're getting takeout we're getting it from multiple places, especially since the Calabat now will side with me in the Thai food or hamburgers debate, and while we technically share a bedroom we don't when someone is ill*, and that's been seven of the past eight weeks and it turns out we both sleep better apart so we have to figure this out because I am enjoying the space.
*he snores like a lawnmower if he is congested at all. we have small children in public schools during the post-pandemic rebound of all respiratory viruses. there was much snoring. I tore my ACL and promptly got a bad cough and laryngitis, then recovered long enough to travel and contract COVID. I will see him in April. It will be fine.
I understand the existence of the whole "separate accounts" thing. But I do not understand it.
We have never had separate accounts. We always consult each other about anything that costs more than about $50. Which works because we rarely spend more than that on anything. Except gifts for the other person.
I cannot fathom buying a car without at least several months of back and forth about the necessary of the car; the utility of the particular kind of car; the existence of any deals or specials for similar cars; multiple test drives of the car and similar cars, at multiple dealerships; and multiple frank discussions of any other opportunities that are being foreclosed by the purchase of the car. And then we would still defer the purchase of the car for several months until some precipitating event forced our hands. We operate very much as a "we."
Excessive, small, recurrent expenditures (e.g., buying meals rather than taking lunch from home) are addressed through nagging.
I cannot fathom buying a car without at least several months of back and forth about the necessary of the car;
You can't fathom being in a situation where you need to have a functioning car immediately? Privilege!
Like most people, I make sure my wife doesn't know how much I spend on tents and backpacks.
I crashed my wife's car too. Totalled it, which is only the second car I've totalled (the above-mentioned Buick was the other). She wasn't very happy about that, but we bought a new car pretty quickly.
The linked essay is funny but yeah, I think the details of her situation and attitude are less universal than it implies.
We have separate accounts and the system we've worked out is that I handle routine household expenses and Amadea handles savings and unexpected big expenses. That plays to our respective financial styles and strengths in a way that's working out pretty well.
Now I see why Moby takes the bus so much.
It was Trump's fault. I had been watching the coup attempt and was having trouble focusing.
Let's all post our SAT scores and the number of cars we've totalled.
Two seems reasonable. I've been driving since 1987.
It wasn't hurt at all. Except for the tire marks.
With most finance stuff I think it matters more that everyone is on the same page and not ridiculous than where the money is kept. shiv is historically not great with money, but he knows this, so the solution we came up with is to let me be the family CFO and handle savings/long-term plans, and the tradeoff is not worry about the small stuff (but how many board games does one man need?), he never has to worry about whether the bills are paid, and if he wants to undertake a bigger project like moving a wall he has to give me enough notice to squirrel away the cash.
We never merged finances although I think we're both technically on the others' account. We used to have guidelines for who paid for what, but it's dissolved into "hey do you have enough in your checking account to pay off my credit card? those plane tickets busted my total up" and just winging it. I handle savings/investments.
We were sort of similar -- Tim was better at paying close attention, but worse at not spending everything available, so we split big bills, he did a lot more of the day-to-day spending, and I did more saving.
However I've never totaled a car. In fact, I've never been a driver in any sort of crash outside of a parking lot.
Parking lots are tough. The pillar in the parking garage at the JCC took a swipe from the side of my car.
Three of my cars have been totalled, but every time the insurance companies determined it was not my fault. One time a kid sped through a stop sign and ran into my car, one time I was backing out of a parking spot at the same time as the other person was backing out of their spot and banged into my car, and one time a drunk guy plowed into my car and my wife's car (our cars were parked) totalling all three cars. In the case of the backing out accident, my car was only totalled because it wasn't worth much to begin with -- and in fact I continued to drive it after it was totalled.
I have been the person driving a car when it was totaled, but considering that I was rearended while motionlessly waiting to merge into traffic, I don't think that was on me.
(Also, a fragile old Checker. The driver who rear ended us wasn't going that fast, but the Checker had a lot of rust and the whole back end tore like paper.)
My sister used to have a purple Checker, inherited from my grandfather who was committed to the brand for some weirdo political reason. And then a little old lady murdered it while I was driving.
I recall those things being built like tanks
I didn't even know they sold cars to civilians.
I think you had to make an effort to buy one. Arlo Guthrie had one, and Dr. Oops is over six foot, with a lot of wild curly gray hair even in her twenties when this all happened. So she got mistaken for him from behind at least once on a car ferry. Might have happened repeatedly, but I'm only sure if the once.
Yes. Also good reason to drive a normal car.
I have definitely been guilty of a version of "let's stop arguing about this" so that I can take the high ground and pretend to be more mature. Trying not to do that any more.
The only time I can specifically remember using the phrase "agree to disagree" was when talking with my son, then probably ~3 years old, about whether a dark-colored object we were looking at was black (my view) or brown (his). After several rounds of back and forth, I said "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree" and he replied in his little pre-school voice "I'll agree that it's brown."
"Children give life to the concept of immaturity."
I can kind of get into the spirit of the essay a little, but it does seem like it makes too much out of things like sharing meals and finances and even sleeping arrangements which no one outside the couple ought to care about and of which there are many successful permutations.
I think people here are responding from a starting point of "of course you figure out what works best for you as a couple", but a ton of people out in the world do work from the expectation, insufficiently interrogated, that everything on the list is what a couple does, period. (Many will react in concern if they hear a couple does not share a bedroom, for example.)
65 is one of my favorite Dr. Oops facts. Just picturing the guy expecting a middleaged folksinger and having him turn around and be an attractive twenty-something woman must have been so baffling. The hair, the height, and the car were all dead on.
I've totaled two cars: one '73 Volvo station wagon/tank when I was 16 (in grand rolling fashion) and a tiny Daihatsu about a decade later when a deer with poor survival instincts decided to dash across Highway 86 a strategically questionable time.
We had a sky-blue Checker Marathon with a fold-out middle row of seats when I was a kid. My parents and their eight kids could all fit into it.
46 is us, but in reverse. I hate things and would never buy anything if I had my druthers, but it's actually important to buy some stuff. So yeah, by default I handle the savings and big ticket items, and RWM handles all smaller stuff.
We only eat the same thing maybe 4 or 5 dinners a week? Sometimes we go out, or have frozen food, or leftovers, or delivery, and then it doesn't have to be the same. And our opinions are pretty compatible anyway. It's weird to me to think of that as at all a problem.
70: That's fair. Finance boards in particular tend to be really polarized about whether couples ought to combine all finances or maintain separate accounts, like it's an entire reflection of how marriage oughta be or something.
"Choose someone you can spend an enormous amount of time with, just about every day really" is pretty solid advice.
"You now watch TV shows together. Don't worry, you don't have to like them the same, but you do have to watch them simultaneously. "
This OTOH is completely insane. Why would you watch all the same TV shows? You have to discuss which TV shows you want to watch together and then save those to watch together, but beyond that watch whatever you want. I don't watch *any* Reality TV but RWM does, she has some friends she watches K-dramas with and I don't, conversely I like to watch trashy CW-style/ABC Family TV that she watches none of: Pretty Little Liars, Reign, The 100, Dickinson, The Great (that one we did watch one season together), etc.
I handle almost all money (shared, joint accounts but also AJ's retirement, taxes, etc but he has a bill or two in his name that I remind him to pay), but the deal is that AJ has to pretend to care when I talk to him about it. That works OK. Combining accounts felt weirder than moving in together, though! He could see every dumb thing I bought myself (another latte?!). Luckily, he doesn't care and rarely looks at any accounts.
Nobody in this house watches TV with anyone else. It's very rare we can find something even two of us will watch.
My relatives are basically all on the same page about politics but tend to spend a large fraction of family gatherings ranting at each other anyway. At one point my brother came out with "Can't we just agree to agree?"
77: We both get home around 7 and eat dinner and watch TV (or one watches and one reads). We probably have it on from 7:30-9:30. It's rare one of us is home and watching TV without the other. So, in practice we pretty much watch the same shows. I like serialized TV much more than he does, so I haven't seen a lot that I'd like to. I'm not seething with resentment or anything, but I am gearing up to insist on the next season of Ted Lasso.
My wife watches that, but I won't.
I liked the first season an awful lot, the next one less, and am prepared to be kind of bored by the current one but will watch it all anyway. Brett Goldstein is the best, though.
80: Quoting Dylan, sort of...
The cry of the peacock, flies buzz my head
Ceiling fan broken, there's a heat in my bed
Street band playing "Nearer My God to Thee"
We met at the station where the mission bells ring
She said, "I know what you're thinking, but there ain't a thing
You can do about it, so let us just agree to agree"
I just don't have the attention span for serialized comedy.
85: Attention span is only long enough for cereal comedy (Jamelle Bouie's cereal reviews)
The only cereal I eat is steel-cut oatmeal. Nobody else here will eat that either.
She sure put a lot of pressure on her marriage. Maybe the high intensity, all-in format works for some people, but you avoid so much conflict if you can treat marriage as an array of a la carte options, rather than a set menu.
M likes tv more than I do (I don't ever binge watch, for example, and I can only watch one show at a time), plus I only watch kdramas anymore. So, he watches whatever he wants on his own time, and I pick one kdrama at a time for us to watch together. But I guess I would feel pretty betrayed if he moved ahead on our shared show without me.
I *loved* Season 1 of Ted Lasso and *hated* Season 2, and just feel like the whole world is trolling me by so many people liking both of them similarly well.
I'm curious whether the author's obsession with "togetherness" only applies to things with a certain amount of tradition. Like did she think marriage means commenting on the same blogs?
I feel like the world is trolling me by using "woke" to mean both "applying basic human decency" and "running banks carelessly."
86 he is awesome and those are awesome except that he's objectively wrong about Cap'n Crunch
83 oh fuck, fantastic actor. Very sorry to hear this. RIP
I've totaled 2 cars, but only 1 that I was driving. I've driven like 300k miles since then with only 1 other accident more serious than a scraped bumper.
33.1 and 46 roughly describe our situation. Every few years we check in to make sure that we're being reasonably equitable in our bill-paying responsibilities, although that's less strictly divided with autopay.
Wow, he was really young.
I find the speed with which news agencies come out with fully-fleshed-out obits to be off-putting. It really makes you aware of how vast their collection of canned obituaries must be, and how much effort they put into anticipating celebrity deaths.
Work is work if you need the money.
Many will react in concern if they hear a couple does not share a bedroom, for example.
After BOGF and I broke up, one of our closest friends commented that she thought it was a pretty bad sign that we didn't share a bed. TBH that was not in the top 100 of problems we had, but I'm happy to share a bed with AB. I mean, the not-sharing wasn't emotionally fraught, but that's because I wasn't emotionally engaged in the relationship, and it was a good, concrete example of our incompatibility.
Oh yeah, and the mom of a grade school friend* drove a maroon Marathon. It had jump seats, which was awesome the time that the bus never came to bring us back from the gifted center at another school, so she picked up like 8 of us and squeezed us all in (this was 3rd grade, could've been more than 8).
*on whom I had a long-term crush. The classmate, this was year's before Fountains of Wayne
77 is correct. Like, I'm old enough to remember having only 1 TV in the house and so, sure, you were pretty much stuck watching together (or having to not watch at all), but especially in the streaming/tablet era, having to watch "everything" together is just crazy talk. Like, who would expect that, let alone treat it as a big deal?
88 gets it right. I don't know if it's insecurity or just a certain personality type (one obsessed with meeting expectations like it's a test to ace), but I just don't get it. AB & I are about as close and loving/happy as can be, and do in fact eat the same dinner together every single night, but we also feel no pressure about adhering to the things that don't work for us. We've had occasional arguments or hard feelings, but never about the arrangements of our coupled lives. Mostly that's from good compatibility, but it's also not sweating these things.
I've totalled one car. My dad's car, which I drove to high school one winter day because the heat didn't work in my car, but it turned out the tires didn't really work so well in his car, and I slid right off the road going around a turn sprinkled with snow. His buddies never let him live down the fact that he had been buying used tires for the car.
I've never totaled a car, or had one totaled. But once in high school I completely lost control in an intersection - no apparent cause, maybe an invisible oil slick? - and careened around until I was on the grassy right side of the road facing opposite to traffic. Lucky I didn't hit anything.
105 more or less happened to me while I was driving on I-81 between Harrisburg and Bethlehem. Fortunately it was the middle of the night, so no other cars around. Going off the highway sideways led to both tires going flat; I think I limped the car off the highway--happened to be right at an exit--and left it at a service station while someone came to fetch us. Or maybe I got it the rest of the way home? I don't think so.
Anyway, it was hydroplaning, but there hadn't been any danger signs, just hit a wet spot out of nowhere, more or less.
I put the family van in the ditch one night after I hit a patch of black ice. The whole family was in the car, including grandma, and I didn't have a license yet.
I've never (not yet, knock on wood) totaled a car. I can probably chalk a lot of that up to having lived carless in enlightened topless Europe for most of the last 25 years. On the other hand, three years in the Republic of Georgia about near made up for the rest of it. An illegal passer damn near totaled me when I was making what turned out to be an ill-considered left turn, stopping just enough to plant their front right fender into my driver's side door instead of all the way into the driver. That I only had one other accident there is little short of a miracle, considering how people drove there.
Speaking of miracles, I once went into turn #3 on Monteagle Mountain (not the side that Johnny Cash sang about) a little too fast after some rain, spun across three lanes of road, missed a major rock, went off the road down the mountain backwards and wound up at about a 30° angle with the front end about five feet off the highway looking for all the world as if I had just backed into a notional parking space.
Oh hey, as scary car experiences go, waking up at the wheel on the other side of a bridge you don't remember driving across is well up there. No alcohol involved.
Sometimes I think it's a wonder so many of us are still alive.
On the marriage front, open communication is pretty hit or miss in general, but essential if you crash a car. Even if it isn't your spouse's car.
Speaking of the TV, The Mandalorian is probably the only recent show I've watched and wanted to watch again.
Oh man we're so stereotypical in finances. I handle everything and she just spends whatever is necessary for trips, kids activities, donations, etc. I make sure there's enough in the account to pay bills each month, then I pay all the bills, transfer stuff around, do retirement and taxes. I don't know if she even knows all the accounts we have. I offer to show her how to do taxes each year but we never get around to it. Maybe because my income is (stereotypically) much larger and also more complicated so it would be hard for her to know what income streams to expect.
We've been trying to have dinner as a whole family at least once a week but it's hard during hockey season when I'm out with a kid coaching three or four nights a week. Another kid is 18 and goes wherever, one has a girlfriend who lives nearby, one does babysitting some evenings. Just the two of us go out every Saturday so we at least get that time. We also each take a kid out every other month for a 1:1 meal.
We share a few hobbies together so spend a few hours a week doing those, and have some series we're watching together but also each have series we're watching with various kids so it's all slow going.
We had one argument when I was in grad school because she needed a new laptop. I had a stipend in my fellowship to buy a new computer so I bought her one for her birthday (nominally mine because of the fellowship but it was completely for her use.) Even though it wasn't really spending normal money she was not pleased I had bought it without consulting.
You could say you stole the laptop from the library, so there was no choice.
Oh, weird. I got the ebook out of the library and read it this evening, and near the end she mentions the day they got married. Same day I did, October 4, 1997. Funny coincidence.
The whole terrorism thing was my anniversary. We kind of never got into celebrating them much.
I am trying to spend down Tim's FSA while Tim is still employed, and I need to buy a pair of glasses. Does anyone have go-to online sites. I keep not filling my prescription. I have a pair with prisms, but I need to get prism-free ones.
I have 2 pairs in this style (different colors)
https://www.coolframes.com/glasses/kate-spade-eyewear/kendall-womens-eyeglasses.html
And that's basically what flatters me. If they still made it, I would buy a 3rd pair. Any suggestions for online places? The optometrist measured my pupillary distance, so it would be easy to order them online.
Doesn't everyone go to Warbly Parker (sp?).
I mean, I go to a regular store. But if I didn't, I'd go to Warbly P.
I want to avoid the late 80's early 90's look with the glasses that clobber my cheeks.
I avoided the regular store because of COVID and being cheap.
Eyebuydirect is what Wirecutter recommends and they are owned by Luxottica, one of 2 companies that makes most glasses.
I'm leaning toward these. https://www.eyebuydirect.com/eyeglasses/frames/surrey-burgundy-m-23893
I thought about trying these
https://www.coolframes.com/glasses/kate-spade-eyewear/analena-womens-eyeglasses.html
But realized they wou,d be too much.
You can sometimes get glasses in the CVS.
122: By "too much" I meant that I would look like the crazy cat lady in church who wears a similar style as Tim reminded me when I asked his opinion.
Zenni. Best place for glasses and cute frames. Can't help that the giant 80s frames are back tho.
The Mandalorian is probably the only recent show I've watched and wanted to watch again.
In this house we call it "The Baby Yoda Show." I did not care for the most recent episode, as it did not heavily feature Baby Yoda.
Jesus, Moby.
2nd 95.
Andor is great. Like, really, The Wire great.
My car insurance company is still ahead on my account. I've never totalled my own car.
115: how'd you think the book held up? I feel like it's not the most earth-shattering thing, but a nice quick read, but I did such a terrible job selling it that now I'm wondering if it's actually good or if I just have low standards.
If Taylor Swift can sing for more than three hours in a single, live concert, she could probably lower her standards for long enough to be married at least once.
129: Are you proposing to her? You might need a better approach.
So you don't buy the conspiracy theory that she's already married to Joe?
Joe is a smart man and when asked if they were secretly engaged said:
"I mean, the truth is, if the answer was yes, I wouldn't say, and if the answer was no, I wouldn't say."
I think Lavender Haze refutes that.
What if I told you that not all of Taylor's songs are literally autobiographical, and even when they have biographical elements those could be looking forward or backwards and not about the present?
I wouldn't believe you. I assume she killed a guy and got away with it.
128: Not badly written. The author rubbed me the wrong way, but that's not a judgment on the book, just a strong feeling that I wouldn't have liked her. And I was sort of genuinely thrown (for no good reason) at first by the timing being very similar to my own marriage, and then at the end exactly on, which had nothing to do with the book but it bothered me.
From Happiness, I know that not only did she and Joe get secretly married, they were secretly married for seven years and have gotten secretly divorced.
133: Is there any consensus among Swifties on what drug that is about?
No drugs, it's about the TV show Mad Men. The conspiracy theories about that song aren't about drugs, they're about how it means she's a closeted lesbian.
Song interpretation has changed drastically since the 1960s. Also they probably aren't familiar with that vintage obscure ditty, "Purple Haze".
Ok but it sounds a lot like opiates to me
OT: Is Trump really going to be arrested on Tuesday? I have a thing, but can move it if there is a reason for a party.
I'm hoping he'll go full Ford Bronco. Wouldn't that be fun?
I'm still Facebook friends with the woman whose party I was at where we watched the low-speed chase.
I thought I was in high school during the chase, but if it was in June, then maybe I was on summer break before my senior year.
I was at a party in the part of Columbus, Ohio that they have since gentrified.
141 I suppose even the line excuse me while I kiss this guy has passed into oblivion.
OMG wife's Twitter account was hacked and I found she's been using the same insecure password for dozens of shopping and social media sites. That's much worse than anything mentioned in the book. Going through and editing everything- she's like what is someone going to steal from us by ordering a thousand donuts from Dunkin?
Having an online account with Dunkin' Donuts is the most New England thing ever.
I've also recently come to the realization that "Are You Experienced" isn't about a job interview.
I'm not sure I'm any better than SP's wife at passwords.
I get a doughnut at Dunkins maybe once, twice a month. I had no idea you could get an account there. I like the maple donuts, but I don't get how the coffee is considered great. Also, try the avocado toast with sun-dried tomatoes.
It's really just guac, but the tomatoes make it work.
My best friend and her wife sat down last night and agreed to divorce. Last I heard via text is that they slept on it, woke up thinking divorce was still a good idea, and have been spending the day separating their finances out. I think it was inevitable; my friend is a trans woman whose wife really, really did not take the transition well.
They probably didn't eat the same food enough.
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the majority of polemical tracts written by Orthodox churchmen were in Polish (though the titles, pseudonyms, and terms of abuse were often of Byzantine origin)|>
People underestimate the marriage saving element of being messed up and broken and only getting along well with one person for a long period of time. Neurotic personalities that mesh well is all you need for lifelong virtually unbreakable commitment.
It helps to start early when you are both a total wrecks and then just gradually become somewhat less wrecked. The pace can be off though. One person may become less screwed up than the other. But if you are bad enough at the start and reasonably kind you will remember how that person liked you when you were an absolute disaster, and be unwilling to jump ship because that sort of thing gets rarer and rarer as you get older and older.
I don't know how well adjusted happy people form the kind of bond it takes for this kind of thing.
People underestimate the marriage saving element of being messed up and broken and only getting along well with one person for a long period of time. Neurotic personalities that mesh well is all you need for lifelong virtually unbreakable commitment.
It helps to start early when you are both a total wrecks and then just gradually become somewhat less wrecked. The pace can be off though. One person may become less screwed up than the other. But if you are bad enough at the start and reasonably kind you will remember how that person liked you when you were an absolute disaster, and be unwilling to jump ship because that sort of thing gets rarer and rarer as you get older and older.
I don't know how well adjusted happy people form the kind of bond it takes for this kind of thing.
159: More Snyder? How are you coming along with the book?
Also, "Byzantine Terms of Abuse" sounds very promising, both as a band name and as a topic for discussion. At least among people who like that sort of thing.
Also also, it makes sense that there was a lot of debate in Polish. People tend to forget how much of Poland went in for various flavors of Protestantism. Along with Transylvania, it's one of the birthplaces of Unitarianism, for example. Add in the ideology and culture of debate in the noble democracy, and it's easy to see why Poland was known as a "paradise of heretics," at least before the Counter-Reformation really got going.
162: Yes. It's interesting. I am precisely in Poland (and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) in the (Counter) Reformation.
In parallel, I've finished Ascherson's Black Sea, don't remember if you've read it. History travelogue more than history, and I'm not sure how dated in some parts, but I enjoyed it. It also threw up this oddity, which I'm not sure I'll finish, but it starts promising.
I read Black Sea in the early 2000s and don't remember all that much, but have a vaguely positive impression. Three cheers for promising starts!
Speaking of oddities, I may be about to start in on They Were Counted an interwar novel, set before WWI, from a Hungarian writer named Miklos Banffy (give or take a diacritical or two). A friend has also published a book on political networks and Soviet Abkhazia, which has a decent Kindle price and could be very interesting. Though it will definitely get the "Of Interest Mainly to Specialists" tag on the blog.
Thanks to your tips, I'll probably pick up Reconstruction of Nations and Sketches from a Secret War. Maybe Bloodlands, too, in due course.
Since Roman Catholics celebrate Christmas earlier than eastern-rite believers, Christmas usefully separated Poles from Ukrainians, and placed Poles in flammable wooden churches.
Is Russia deciding to become a satellite of China?
166: Yikes! Somehow I don't think that ends well...
167: I've seen two takes on that via Twitter. One, that the current Russian leadership finds it preferable to be (mostly) invisibly subordinate to China than to visibly lose to the West. Of course they may wind up getting both. The other take is that the Russian leadership made that choice quite some time ago when they, consciously or not, decided not to become a normal European country. And thus the newest signs of vassalage are just mile markers on a road already taken.