wsgy
You do English wrong
No bio...
User ID: 3373
wsgy
You do English wrong
9d ago
I've read that collection and don't remember that particular essay so probably not
wsgy
You do English wrong
9d ago
I was working as a caddy and was on hole #3 with one of my regulars and her friend. The club had a strict no cellphones policy so we had no idea what was happening. One of the other caddies is frantically going around in a cart talking to groups around us, who, after speaking with him, immediately pick up their balls and start walking back in. "I wonder what's up. Doesn't look like rain." I say. The ladies agree. Then my coworker heads straight for us.
"The Twin Towers in New York are on fire," he says. "You guys might want to come watch the news, it seems like some kind of attack." I'll be honest, I was pissed I was going to be out 120 bucks. When I saw they were letting caddies into the clubhouse though (where we weren't allowed), I knew it was serious.
We get to the clubhouse and CNN is on. People are mostly silent except for this one 50ish Italian member near me who says, "I bet it was that raghead, Osama something." His wife tells him not to talk like that. He retorts: "We was fuckin attacked!" I agree with him and he gesticulates in my direction, happy I backed him up. I feel my cynical teenage anti-Americanism melting away.
I didn't at any point consider joining the military. My mother even preempted this later that day, telling me in no uncertain terms would I be joining up--I was headed for college. Instead, I got recruited by a CIA officer when I was a senior. I thought using my brain for the cause would be a better idea. Besides, intelligence and covert ops were going to be how we got those responsible, not by invading Iraq. Didn't get past the psych evaluation. They don't tell you why, but I suspect it was my occasional pot use.
But I did have a friend join up, and it was exactly who I expected: the lone Republican in our friend group. He didn't handle it well and I'm afraid we're going to lose him. He's been divorced twice. The last time I saw him I watched him polish off a quart of rye, by himself, and seem largely unaffected by it. In high school he was three sheets to the wind after as many beers. It's clear to me he is a serious alcoholic. He also can't seem to talk to civilians about his experience. I'm glad he's involved with a lot of veterans' groups because I'm sad to say this is probably out of my hands at this point. All he has said to me is he wished he had gone to college like the rest of us instead, and that he lost some friends though he never specified if it was combat or suicide. If you ask him questions he just gives you a blank stare, not even a mean one just a "not talking about it" face. I call him every couple of months but he never wants to talk about his own life, only mine, which is concerning.
My oldest made a 9/11 joke on Friday I won't repeat, but I did chide him. It's a little unclear why but he seems to not have realized this was a real event so I had him ask his mom what she was doing when it happened (she was in high school, her teacher said some pretty prescient things). I pointed out I had put the flag out that morning and it wasn't just for fun. I guess the point got across; he was pretty sheepish for the rest of the night.
I was never properly mad about 9/11. I am mostly sad about it, both the event proper and the fact that it was a pretty hard punctuation mark for the end of my childhood.
wsgy
You do English wrong
9d ago
Looksmaxxing seems to me to be a direct consequence of dating apps, social isolation, and the decline of third spaces. If your entire hook for a woman is your profile picture, and she isn't going to offer you a chance to charm her unless you pass the looks test first, how you look is going to matter a lot more. Men will notice and respond by hitting the gym and doing whatever else Clavicular is pushing. I met pretty much all my girlfriends in third spaces and that gave me time to prove I was funny which can take you from a 4 to a 7. I'm lucky I'm married--I'd be in hell if I had to rely on the apps.
wsgy
You do English wrong
14d ago
Get them to list all their passwords on some kind of document. My aunt was the most organized person in the world but this was a big hiccup when she died
wsgy
You do English wrong
15d ago
He probably has. My uncle had a friendly relationship with him before this and I can't imagine them not having talked about the situation
wsgy
You do English wrong
16d ago
Usage notes:
Bit of a legal usage conundrum popped up in my family:
20 years ago, a farmer who owned 700 acres of land sold 300 acres to a farming LLC to help pay for his daughter's college tuition. The 300 acres abuts a river and is only accessible by a private road the farmer still owned. So the LLC and the farmer got a Simple Country Lawyer to draft an agreement which created an easement for the road that the LLC had to pay to lease, a "biannual sum of $500" for the next 30 years, which is roughly how long the farmer thought he would still be farming.
Unfortunately for the farmer, he recently has had some health problems that means he now finds it too difficult to do farm work. So he decided to sell the remaining land. The LLC wasn't interested because of liquidity problems so instead my uncle bought it after last year's harvest. The farmer turned over the contract to my uncle and made sure he knew about the payments, though apparently all they said was they were due next January. My uncle called the LLC, said he was the new owner and gave them his address for where to send the check. Sure enough, he got his first payment in late December, but my uncle, who thought "biannual" means twice a year not every other year, was a bit confused when he didn't get another check in June/July and called them up to complain.
The LLC told him the payments were every other year and there was no check in the mail. Uncle threatened to sue, LLC told him to kick rocks. My uncle grabbed the contract to bring to our family's annual July 4th celebration at the family compound in Arkansas, knowing that my cousin, who is a lawyer, would be there. My cousin, who is a bit pompous about having a law degree, immediately agreed with my uncle and said he would file a suit on his behalf, while working on contingency for 20% of the recovered amount as a bit of a family discount. I overheard the conversation and told them they would likely fail in court.
I'm a bit of a usage nerd. I have a well-used copy of Bryan Garner's wonderful A Dictionary of Modern American Usage and am very familiar with the entry on "bi-" words. "Biannual" is hopelessly ambiguous in American usage (and abusage) to the point that it is a skunked term. While "semiannual" and "twice a year" are unambiguous reflections of my uncle's understanding of the situation, and "biennial" and "occurring once every two years" are reflective of the LLC's understanding, "biannual"'s precise meaning entirely depends on the speaker. It really does mean "twice a year" but it doesn't matter because so many people are confused. The Simple Country Lawyer (and I emphasize "Simple") has done everyone a disservice with his choice of words.
I explained all this and added that since this contract had been in force for 20 years, and had been paid in the way the Lawyer, LLC, and farmer all agreed concerning the meaning of "biannual" that no judge was going to side with my uncle's novel interpretation of the word. The tradition was in place already, and my uncle was going to be out $9500. I might be wrong, and they still think it's worth trying, but I did end up dampening their hopes.
Also I have seen you guys abuse a couple things this week. Not gonna quote it because I don't feel like being an ass today but
bury the lead
It's bury the "lede". Something to do with printing presses but that's the correct term
Also, you don't capitalize after a semicolon, "I have a big presentation tomorrow; if I don't do well I will be fired."
wsgy
You do English wrong
30d ago
"I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers" has been my elder millennial response since 2010. Before that it was "plain"
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
Both of those are major memes on /r/bookscirclejerk for, I'm assuming, a pretty good reason
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
Perdido Street Station and I'm about to drop it 120 pages in unless someone convinces me not to
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
Not sure if it applies because I played several instruments before discovering it, but https://www.musictheory.net/lessons pretty much taught me music theory 20 years ago
I'm a big fan of Blade Runner (1982). I don't want to bother listing all its positives, but one of the things I like about it is, as far as I understand it, the movie ends ambiguously. Is Deckard a replicant or not? I was pissed when Blade Runner 2049 came out and removed all doubt: turns out he's a guy after all. Still a good movie though.
This ambiguity at the end was also something I liked about John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I have a family member who works in Hollywood and somehow we got onto the subject of The Thing. She said she didn't like it because of the same ambiguity, but then as a matter of course in doing her job she got to spend time with John Carpenter and asked him to clarify the ending. Apparently he gets this question a lot.
Turns out he has no idea what the confusion is about.
I said it seemed to be a bit too subtle for a movie where a head grows spider legs and scuttles away. She said no, it's why Carpenter is a genius.
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
I sometimes fantasize about an ongoing usage post every week here to get everyone's grammar and such better. I did this on reddit for a week though and BOY WERE THEY MAD
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
enough to shoe us away or something
"shoo" is the correct term
::gets into the usage-Nazi-mobile and drives away::
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
If it's cold out, a Manhattan
If it's hot, Tom Collins or Moscow Mule
If it's neither, Negroni
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
I am a little lost as to why this is a problem. If it is her age... why is that a problem? She's an adult!
I suspect the real reason is you guys don't like her. Don't make me tap the sign (The Five Geek Social Fallacies). Just tell her it's not a good fit and cut her out, she'll survive
wsgy
You do English wrong
1mo ago
I just finished Consider Phelbas and was underwhelmed enough to not continue the series. It gets better you say?
wsgy
You do English wrong
2mo ago
To my knowledge there has never been a Supreme Court decision where the 3rd amendment was the primary basis. If you were a writer on The West Wing, how would you work an interesting 3rd amendment Supreme Court case into an episode?
wsgy
You do English wrong
3mo ago
Without a doubt the best job I ever had was being a preschool camp counselor. It made me want to have kids of my own. Some of the boys started dressing like me by the end of the summer
I sometimes fantasize about being a biology or history teacher at a fancy boarding school
The guy who writes the Lexington column in The Economist, or really any kind of prominent writer/intellectual that gets invited to go to panels and opine on whatever. btw buy my latest book
wsgy
You do English wrong
3mo ago
My mother has something similar with her friends (70+ year-olds). Whenever they get together there is an "organ recital" where they each complain about their latest health problems then quickly move on to other things
wsgy
You do English wrong
5mo ago
BPD-traits make you both more likely to be abused
How do they figure because I'm sure if I uttered this phrase elsewhere I'd get cancelled for victim-blaming.
heritability figures from 40-60% for BPD
Well shit, my SIL is BPD. I guess I'll try super hard not to beat my kids lest they inflict that terror upon us all.
wsgy
You do English wrong
5mo ago
I've spent time in a psych ward, as a med student, not a patient, and I'm aware. But while I have your ear: what's the deal with borderlines having childhood sexual trauma? All of the ones I met in my 6-week stay reported some form of abuse, and I'm inclined to think becoming a crazy person is some downstream effect of it, but I don't know the modern take on "cluster B as trauma response" discourse.
wsgy
You do English wrong
5mo ago
A shorter version of this essay is a better one, though I still liked it.
I came across this disaster on reddit and immediately thought it would end up here. Someone even posited that she's not a real person and is instead a psyop by a right winger to make leftists Coasties women journalists look insane. eg. here's another of hers: "I Couldn't Fulfill My Boyfriend's Fetish, So We Opened Our Relationship". Her boyfriend is a feeder, which means he likes helping a partner get fatter. That he's in a relationship with someone who has an eating disorder is, I'm assuming, not a coincidence. In atypical fashion, though, opening their relationship did not immediately blow it up.
"She's not a real person..." I say while rocking on the floor of my hospital room. "She's just three cluster B personality disorders in a trench coat, she can't get you."
wsgy
You do English wrong
5mo ago
Parents of young kids with a pet that is not long for this world: how did you navigate this? My eldest kinda knows about death but not the rest and Larry the basset hound has got maybe a year tops left. We got him before we were married so he's been a permanent fixture in the family. We've been through a lot with him and I may, in fact, cry about it this time.
I'm leaning towards getting another dog, probably a Golden, before he goes as a way to soften the blow. I'm aware this is a known strategy but is this considered bad form?
(Also accepting input from former little kids of dead pets.)
Wife and I were in LA for a wedding. It was childfree so we ditched the kids at my mom's house (good luck, have fun), flew in Friday morning and out Sunday afternoon. We decided to do some sightseeing Friday in case Sunday was a wash from a couple of hangovers (it was, sorry Griffith Observatory, maybe next time). I had just read a book on the massive 1986 fire at the Central Library so I wanted to see that, and if you never heard of it don't feel bad because nobody else did since three days earlier a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl decided to do a little trolling and that was hogging up all the headlines. My wife wanted to see Rodeo Drive because she likes that bit in Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts tells off the snooty saleswoman. She also likes handbags.
I hate LA for a number of reasons. I don't like the movie industry, the obsession with status and money, but most of all it's the superficial vanity of the people in a land where image is everything. It's a huge city, so obviously #NotAllAngelenos but you're still going to see it around. I mention this because I am predisposed to attribute normal behavior I wouldn't think twice about back home to the pervasive psychic corruption I imagine affects everyone within LA county who has been there for more than a week. And everyone wants to tell you about the project they're working on. In the Uber out of LAX the driver asked us what we were doing there, and after we answered he decided to tell us all about the animal rights activism he was doing. Another one told us about a screenplay he was working on. Another one told us about volunteering at an abortion clinic to keep away protesters. All unprompted. I don't like NYC either but at least the Uber drivers there have the decency not to involve you in their lives.
The library was pretty cool. LA has a tendency to tear down anything old. There's a weird absence of respect for history, replaced by the fetishization of newness. The city feels like a series of McMansions sometimes, and normal wear and tear isn't considered so much as wabi-sabi, but as a defect. We used to build wonderful public buildings in this country and I especially like that Art Deco shit from the 20s and 30s, and LA has managed to save some of its buildings from that era, like the Central Library, City Hall, and Union Station. I'm glad they didn't tear down the library after the fire, though many wanted to. I smelled some older looking books and one of them still smelled like smoke. This is a pattern for us, me dragging my wife to a cool old building with some interesting history, walking around smelling the merchandise while she hides her face from onlookers. Then we do whatever SHE wants while I try my best not to be too snarky.
Rodeo Drive was walking into the belly of the beast; it is a monument to luxury brand everything. I thought Valentino might jump out of the bushes and get me. It's garish, like a retail version of the Cheesecake Factory. We walked past the Tiffany and Co. store ("don't get any ideas, honey, haha") and through this kind of outdoor mall situation they have going on. At the end of it we saw a bunch of people taking selfies and pictures of each other. There were even these photographers kinda hanging around taking pictures of these two very instagram-model types. The ladies had a bunch shopping bags and would walk towards the photographer, then they'd all look at the pictures together for a bit, then they reset and did it again. After that, they handed their bags to one of the photographers and said "thank you".
"My God," I said to my wife, "there are so many people having their pictures taken for the 'gram these guys are doing it all professionally for tourists. Hell, they even have empty shopping bags you can hold like you actually just bought something expensive! I bet they take Venmo. Someone call Xi and tell him to nuke us and put us all out of our misery." Then the models went back with a photographer to the entrance, and the two stood there and kinda rocked back and forth, simulating walking while the photographer took more pictures. I thought, "man these girls really want to be real models don't they. Too bad ladies, you're just a couple of THOTS."
My wife is enjoying the show as well but at least had the wherewithal to google the brand on the bags. It was a fashion company for trendy young women that I'd never heard of. My wife was a bit puzzled because it's not high end. "Maybe it's a marketing thing," I said, "like the Starbucks in Harvard Square that doesn't make nearly enough money for the rent. They've got one on Haight-Ashbury too." My wife googled the nearest outlet. Well there isn't one on Rodeo Drive. There isn't even one in all of Beverly Hills. And come to think of it one of those models looks an awful lot like this one on the store page.
So it turns out while I'm talking all this shit about these instagram "models" they actually are, well, professional models, the kind who get paid to wear clothes and pose instead of the kind who get shit on by Arabs. I hate the city and vapid social media use so much that when I saw a bunch of dudes walking around with $6000 camera lenses taking pictures of a couple of hot girls I thought the girls were paying THEM, not the reverse. They were pretty hot, but there are a lot of hot women in LA so that's not going to tip you off. If this type of scene was playing out in my tier 3 midwestern city I would have correctly clocked what was going on because a midwest 9 is like an LA 6, so imagine what an LA 8 looks like here. Good enough to blow your dick clean off, that's how.
People at the wedding (which was a blasty blast) liked the story because I don't normally get egg on my face this badly and my wife really likes leaning into the dumb husband jokes when she can. I like LA more now, possibly enough to not want to nuke it.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah
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