Awesome. Can I stop by your house, and then we can all go out as a group and punch these people in the face?

"As a d3 varsity athlete...." is my favorite.

"punch" s/b "rape"

I liked:

At age 29 if you’re dating a chick, how big of a problem is it if you’re digging through her desk and you find out that she was lying about what sorority she was in. This happened to a friend of mine.

RE: Lying about Greek affiliation

Posted By: problem on 10-19-2006 11:23 am

I think that’s a bit of an issue. More than the lying, you don’t want to date a girl who couldn’t get into a good house. It spells problems down the road.

I am awestruck by the foresight. I wonder what those problems would be?

My god, who are these people?

3 - Oh yeah. It's a tossup between that and:

RE: what are acceptable handouts from parents

Posted By: taxman on 10-25-2006 6:23 pm

Someone should receive absolutely no more than 30 k/yr and car payments from parents. If you’re above that, you really have problems. Girls may be entitled to a bit more than that with shopping and everything, but I feel like 30k is pretty reasonable.

RE: what are acceptable handouts from parents

Posted By: the cleaners on 10-26-2006 11:07 am

What is an acceptable allowance to give your girlfriend. $200 per week?

How do not know if somebody you are doing is awake or not?

I don't think that anyone will fail to agree that this question would be a good (non-hypothetical!) "Philosophy of Mind" topic.

You know, there are uglinesses of human activity that I wish I didn't know about.

You guys are so mean.

So how much do you give your girlfriend per week?

9: 14*8=112 inches a week.

"So how much do you give your girlfriend per week?"

6 inches. But I'm not sure if she's awake.

10: What day of the week do you do it twice?

Sometimes my girlfriend twitches slightly when I'm doing her and I suddenly realize that she's asleep. She know very well how I hate that.

Periodically I worry about things I say on the internet or places I hang out on the internet. I'm on the job market right now, and any future employer might know that frequent a website that features Labs' colonoscopy. This could be damaging.

Last week's shots gives me perspective. I may be publically known for having a crude sense of humor. But nowhere on line have I asked "how do you know if someone you are doing is awake or not."

Honestly, Rob, of all the stupid things I've posted here, I'm least worried about reports of my colonoscopy.

15: Can you submit links to the "Gayatollah" comment as citations of your work?

Heh, Rob. Amen to that.

Is it wrong of me to think that, in that crowd, the answer to the question is probably "She's screaming 'Get off me!'"?

Yes, Tim, that counts as "peer review."

15: You say that now, but wait until you're denied health insurance.

Well, you did show pictures.

Seriously, Molly was worried when on my blog I answered the question "is habeas corpus a right" by saying "damn straight it is, motherfucker." But that seems so pale next to "who do we contact when we see a wetback coming across?" or responding to a question about when to get engaged with "girl cannot be over the age of 24, guy can’t be under 30. once a girl reaches 24 it is becoming extremely difficult to get married."

of course, what this really shows is that people with power have a radically different sense of decency than I do. In fact, the powerful are fine with "i live with 3 guys and every saturday morning whoever brought home someone unattractive has to find a way to get them out of the house without anyone else seeing them. i usually jam my door shut and then make then climb out the window and use the ladder i have which takes them 2 stories down to the ground. if any of us see someone’s ugly conquest drinks are on them the next time we go out. it really raises the stakes on the consequences of hooking up with ugly girls, and the anxiety i feel while making love to them makes it all the more pleasurable."

Rob, I don't know about your students, but the LNS posts sound eerily familiar to me.

For some reason my students don't tell me about their ugly hook up contests.

No one sporting a Confederate flag or drinking out of a can is a WASP. We like to call them "white trash that happened into new money in trade and still smell of the shop" (or simply, in a sneering tone, " the nouveau riche") and refuse to allow them to attend our social events. All that talk of money is déclassé; True WASP Scions™ never speak of such things, as trust funds were settled on them at birth.

I'm sure this reveals horrendous naivete, but some of that has to be a put-on, right?

Not that specifically, Rob; I meant the arrogance and entitlement.

Wow, this stuff is way better than Veiled Conceit, and by that I mean, can we get a 100% estate tax written into the Constitution now?

100% plus an involuntary organ donation, I think.

Someone should receive absolutely no more than 30 k/yr and car payments from parents. If you’re above that, you really have problems. Girls may be entitled to a bit more than that with shopping and everything, but I feel like 30k is pretty reasonable.

And, like, omg, if you're not in politics, you're just lazy, 'cause it's sooo easy to live in DC!

(Bad taste alert)

28 - According to link #3, it looks like some of them are already getting 100% involuntary organ donations.

Those people live in my nightmares.

Seriously, does anyone know people like this for real? This has got to be mostly a put-on.

Labs just said they remind him of his students.

I'm reminded of the scene in the bar in Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990), where the two young preppies are talking to the old preppy. If any of these people are not bitter, pill-popping, alcoholic, divorced, ruptured sad sacks of shit in 20 years, I will be very much surprised. Of course, they'll deserve it, and I will laugh, but it's a shame that they take up so many scarce resources that might be better spent on a variety of social programs.

I'd agree with the assessment that the horror -- the horror! -- they express at the very thought of the nouveau riche is proof positive that they themselves hail from that terribly unfashionable caste. That question about real Gucci loafers? Man, if you have to ask, you better not mess with it.

LB, I don't know anyone like that (in the sense that I've never been in a conversation like that and don't talk to anyone who I imagine would be), but I can't say I find them nearly as unimaginable as you do. That is, there are people on the outskirts of the people who I do talk to, or the outskirts of their outskirts, who I could see having those conversations.

I'm not saying OJ should kill these people, but I wouldn't mind hearing him discuss how he would kill these people.

Also, having once upon a time been a waiter at a country club, including at events geared towards the teen and college-aged children of the membership, these comments seem entirely believable. I will never forget the guy who was proud that he'd only gotten a Ford Probe (back when they were teh h0tt in American cars) for his 16th birthday because he didn't want to "go overboard, like some people." Or the guy who got pissed off when I wouldn't serve his 14-year-old child a beer. OK, I just have to stop there before the red mist descends.

36 FOR HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER

24: Don't the offspring of the rich and entitled absolutely love slumming?

Labs, if these people remind you of the students who you are ushering through higher education, you realize you're part of the problem, right?

How stupid do you have to be to commit rape then post on a message board asking about it? I really don't understand how that level of idiocy is even possible, you figure they would forget to breath and natural selection would take its course. Jesus.

I will bet you a jillion dollars that the poster would argue to his dying breath that that wasn't rape.

"What is an acceptable allowance to give your girlfriend. $200 per week?"
Is that including or beyond the court mandated payments?

42: I'm not sure they would accept anything short of a "big black buck" coming in and forcibly sodomizing their daughters as rape, so I suppose you have a point.

Exactly. Or, you know, some skanky white trash guy with a knife.

This is probably going to get me into (deserved) trouble but what the hell:

The physical attractiveness of the staffers in those shots, especially the female ones, is positively frightening. This leads to two questions:
Is it all money and being "fashionable" because you are high on the status totem pole?
Where the hell did Jonah Goldberg et.al. come from?

My only response to 40 is a 40.

Wait wait wait wait, is that a Confederate flag bra? Imagine, for a moment, that through some weird and wacky string of unlikely events, you wound up back at your place, undressing this woman and then you saw that. What would you do?

The university I went to was full of people like this. They filled about 25% of the class with scholarship kids with high GPAs (me) and the rest with nouveau riche kids with middling grades whose parents were looking to buy them a semi-respectable name on their diploma. One of the guys in my dorm's mom overnighted him bagels from NYC once a week because he couldn't get any that met his standards in the South.

Take it off so I didn't have to look at it.

And yeah, I have absolutely met people like this.

Yeah, Texas is full of them, especially the rich white suburbs.

47: I've heard a whole meal of food will make anything better, Labs. You should try it. 40's are soooo GDI.

i usually jam my door shut and then make then climb out the window and use the ladder i have which takes them 2 stories down to the ground.

Someone please break into this guy's apartment and steal everything.

Honestly, I'd just tell myself that the bra was ironic.

Just steal the ladder.

I think that's a bikini rather than a bra; it looks like it's meant to be seen in public.

(And the chick it's on looks a little whitewashed, a little young Ann Coulter for my taste, but, hey, de gustibus and all that.)

I love this:

...i usually jam my door shut and then make then climb out the window...

...while making love to them...

(that being said, my thoughts on the phrase "make love" are well known)

Is it all money and being "fashionable" because you are high on the status totem pole?

Um, yeah.

Think what a great teaching moment the Confederate flag bra could afford. Why, soon as you saw it, you could sit down with her and explain that while she meant a Confederate flag bra as ironic commentary (or meant nothing at all), the effects of the racism symbolized by that flag are still so real (and here you might want to quote census data to make it more concrete) that her choice of undergarments* cannot be dissociated from what was and remains a genuine tragedy.

I think you could both learn a lot from that conversation.

*Do you doubt she is wearing the matching panties? Those women ALWAYS wear matched sets, which is why they need a little extra, above the $30K (and car payments) ceiling for parental support.

What 'matches' a Confederate bra? Swastika panties?

12 was awesome, Megan.

63: Agreed.

51: Let me guess, they're called Cameron Crazies...(hater)

The university I went to...

Yeah, Tulane's an interesting demographic mix. (Don't forget the Southerners too suspicious of Yankees to venture north of Baton Rouge for school!) But I'm not sure the frat boys here are those sort, exactly. I think (I hope) Tulane is too riff-raff for the Gucci-loafereds on the Hill.

66. too many jews.

The LNS crowd seems to be strongly associated with UVa.

I think that the Confederate bra wasn't ironic. It was a statement that she wanted to mate with snarky, ironic neo-Confederates.

Did we decide whether falling asleep counts as consent yet?

66 - I think the frat boys there aspire to be that sort but can't even do it right, which is even more pathetic. One of the t-shirts there when I was a student was the Top 10 reasons to go there, with #1 being "Needed to kill four years before going to work for daddy".

Is the student mix any different post-Katrina?

OK, and "Motherfuckers Who Think" is awesome.

Also, motherfuckers who think are awesome.

Where did "MFs who think" come from? I agree it's a great title for a column.

73: Motherfuckers who think is mine.

70 - Not having attended pre-Katrina, I couldn't really say. Your description in 49 sounds about right, though.

I really hope the effects of the hurricane aren't going to induce a segment of overly earnest missionary-mindset community service types to apply. That would suck.

65 made me laugh and laugh.

The LNS crowd seems to be strongly associated with UVa

This does not surprise me in the slightest. I can attest to the veracity of that anecdote about Take Back the Night marchers being harassed (though I don't know by which specific frats were involved). Place can be kind of disgusting until you find the little and very cool subgroups (bus drivers, some of the college radio staffers, etc.). I was very, very close to transferring to W&M my first year.

I was very, very close to transferring to W&M my first year.

And how was that supposed to improve the situation?

78: In hindsight, I don't think it would've, but if you decline to attend W&M, they extend the admission for a year, so can change your mind and transfer. At the time, it seemed like an easy way out. I'm glad I stuck around and found cool people instead.

UVa would have been a really good place for me to do a doctorate, it seemed at one point. I'm glad to hear that the place is horrible.

I'm glad to hear that the place is horrible

Well, it turns out that the professors, are great and there are, in fact, groups of really funny, snarky, sarcastic and hilarious people. It's just that, at first glance all you see are dudes saying "brah" and popping their pink collars. Sorry you didn't join us in mocking them heartily.

Ogg: yes brah, that is a confederate flat right there.

81: Whoa, comma finger. Down, boy.

confederate flat

If a typo, a great typo.

Frankly, I thought the answer to "what would you do?" would have been "guilt-free anal," but I suppose y'all are more genteel than that.

71: Well, sure it's catchy, but if you use Motherfuckers Who Think for a blog title, you're marginalizing those of us who don't fuck our mothers.

And come on. As if fucking your mother gave you some special insight into the problems of the world.

It probably would have been a hard adjustment for me, Stanley, despite the probable academic benefits. I really might be one of those effete, out-of-touch, Europeanized, coastal liberals one hears so much about.

effete, out-of-touch, Europeanized, coastal liberals

So is George Allen, but he seemed to enjoy the place.

zing!!

Charlottesville's hardly the Deep South.

I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.

Charlottesville's hardly the Deep South.

True, the city itself is quite cosmopolitan, but UVa has a very traditionalist streak, lots of racial, gender, and class tensions among the students and between the students and the surrounding community. (One trope is that UVa remains Massuh Jefferson's University—all the poor black folks can work there on the cheap, but their kids'll never attend.) The search results for blackface uva provide some recent, shameful examples.

I've never been south of the Mason-Dixon. Not out of principle, mind you: I just haven't had occasion to wander thataways.

You know, most of California's south of the M-D. Just sayin'.

The M-D line doesn't extend this far west, didn't you know?

You're still south of it.

Also, West of it.

The South begins in central Iowa.

I mean, technically the line only separates Pennsylvania from Maryland.

And Richmond, CA, was never the capital of the Confederacy.

Yes, of course what JM meant was that she's never been to the South. I find that somewhat remarkable.

94: You've never been to DC?

99 -- And then there's Carville's wisdom about Pennsylvania.

94 -- The Nation's Capital is worth a visit. Really.

Gen'l: There were people like this at Cal when I went there, but the mandate of heaven hadn't shifted (back) yet, and they were smart enough to know that this sort of ignorance really had to be kept within very tight circles.

100 -- And Delaware from both Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Did Mason and Dixon survey that border? I was unaware.

You didn't read the book?

That curved line that firms the northern boundary of DE was quite the surveying accomplishmant.

I don't know what book you're referring to, but I assure you I haven't read it.

These comments don't read to me so much as deep south as shallow south, that is, that strange amalgam of southern racism, northern classism, 1950s nostalgia, and a yearning for nonexistant pedigree found among rich people who live in the southeast but don't have noticeable accents. Hubs exist in Washington, D.C., Richmond VA, Durham NC (primarily among the 18-22 age group), and probably other places.

Mason & Dixon.

Is Pynchon really an authority on this issue?

the 1950s nostalgia has for the most part been updated to 1980s nostalgia, an era which itself was infused with 1950s nostalgia--they don't want all of either decade, of course, just the perceived highlights of conformity and cultural stasis.

It's a problem, in that we all love the 80s.

"Is Pynchon really an authority on this issue?"

yes.

I don't love the 80s.

I really should read some Pynchon one of these days.

I think I got carried away by the resurgent "ack!" reflex, thinking about my first encounters with the Good Ol' Boy Network. My point is, these LNS types really do exist, in great number, and yes, it's really fucked the fuck up. As several others have noted.

Now, let's proceed to have another geographical debate, where Emerson avers that Toledo is in the Northwest or whatever.

oh, you love the 80s, alright. you've just got to find the place where you hid that love, is all.

94. You're welcome to come visit. I'll fix you up a mess of mustard greens and tripe!

I was born in the 80s. That's the only plus I can think of.

I don't think 1989 counts as "the 80s".

Does 1984?

Stanley's a more recent grad than I am, but I think he's misidentifying the particular DC strain of collarpopper than the LNS crowd represents. There are plenty of LNS-style people at UVA, but they're not the dominant lifeform -- they're too stupid. Yes, the average UVA student is awful, but in more of a merciless social-climber sort of way. Most of them are considerably more self-aware than the LNS crowd.

(Although it should be pointed out that the LNS crowd THINKS it's self-aware. If you were to call these people on their ridiculous Gucci loafer bullshit they would pretend it's all a joke. And they'd believe it as they said it — but it isn't a joke. There's nothing underneath.)

Note that the above may be wishful thinking. Except for the parenthetical -- that's just grim reality.

Here, Teo, I've found where your love is hiding.

Warning: 123 has music

boy, does it!

Luckily, I keep my computer muted at all times.

122: As a DC-based alumnus, tom certainly knows better than I which wahoos are milling about the Rayburn Office Building. I'm just not surprised that the Southern sons and daughters of heritage make it to DC, right alongside the resume-padding cover-my-ass types (the latter group being relativey competent, in a way). I also think my UVa experience was more bitter than tom's, so there's that.

Okay, I've been to DC, once, when I was eight, but that's as far into the South as I've ever ventured.

I'm not exactly proud of this fact, though it does keep me from opining about a region I shouldn't pretend to understand.

Toledo is in New England, like New York.

Band name: Frank Zappa and the Mothers who Think.

115 -- But wouldn't that violate your Romanverbot?

129 -- Get outta here, Toledo is in Iberia!

The placement of the Mason-Dixon line has always amused me a little, because Maryland, where I'm from, is no longer culturally part of the south (crazy-ass state song notwithstanding). Balmer is more like Philly than like Richmond, the DC suburbs are the DC suburbs, and the collective weight of the two areas has really moved the state away from whatever rural good-ol'-boy axis it once had. Nonetheless, I shall name my children "Antietam" and "Waffle House" in honor of their quasi-southern heritage.

133: I think quite a few posters here wouldn't be too impressed with the official motto of our home state, either:
http://www.50states.com/maryland.htm
(scroll down a bit)

Steve, you should call your kid Sharpsburg just to be safe.

Imagine, for a moment, that through some weird and wacky string of unlikely events, you wound up back at your place, undressing this woman and then you saw that. What would you do?

Forage liberally.

Toledo is in the middle of nowhere.

Toledo is in the middle of nowhere.

Actually, it's in the middle of Spain.

138: "Actually, it's in the middle of" s/b "nowhere s/b"

138, meet 132.

132: "Iberia" s/b "the Mommy river basin"

140: Sigh. I have totally lost my focus.

Yeah, Texas is full of them, especially the rich white suburbs.

You're from San Antonio, right? Did you go to Alamo Heights, or just have to hang around people like that for some reason?

105: Thank you, CharleyCarp.

133: Lies. You are neglecting Elkton.

Alamo Heights isn't a suburb; it's in the city proper, and sort of near downtown, though it's certainly got some rich kids.

I grew up in the Northeast corner of San Antonio, and went to Churchill H.S., if that means anything to you. The kids there were, per capita, the wealthiest kids in any San Antonio high school when I was there. On the bright side, my schools were always bright and shiny and overflowing with arts and writing programs and great extracurricular activities. Thanks, fucked up public education funding system!

Ah yes, Churchill. I think that's who I meant instead of Alamo Heights. I mainly know about this from lots of reading about our f*%ked up education funding system, with San Antonio having some of the state's richest (Churchill) and poorest (Edgewood) school districts right next to each other. Plus for some reason I knew a lot of San Antonians, good and bad, in undergrad.

Glad you turned out okay, and no wonder you don't want to go to your highschool reunion (cite swallowed by the hoohole, which even Yahoo! is often powerless against).

There are literally train tracks in San Antonio segregating the city. The South Side is like a third world country. It's shameful.

Yep, shameful. Of course, in Austin we're classier, we separate out our poor people by a highway, not railroad tracks.

It's amazing how powerful physical features are. In my neighborhood, there's a big drop in elevation right as you cross Broadway -- the west side is literally 80-100 feet above the east side. And the per capita income west of B'way has to be double of the income on the east side.

I thought you lived on the UES, LB, but I guess I was mistaken.

Nope, Inwood. I may be a big firm lawyer, but that doesn't mean I can afford an UES apartment big enough to fit two kids and a dog in without going nuts.

Although the UES has an analog -- there's a sharp drop in elevation as you cross 96th street, and that's right where the UES turns into Spanish Harlem.

Oh, right.

And true about 96th Street.

151- I thought you were a little-firm lawyer?

I think she meant a large, rigid lawyer.

In contrast, some lawyers are big and flabby.

154: Was, in the past. My current home is as huge as they get.

Girthy, some might say.

I remember it blew my mind when I was a kid and I first heard E 96 st referred to as "the great divide."

156: I resemble that remark, and apos, it's nicer to say "mirthful". My mirth is ever expanding...

Psst.