Commenter Archive

We keep getting increases in a "local channels" surcharge.

The local affiliates (CBS/NBC/et al) aren't all that, but we can't order a package without them to avoid the "surcharge."

Yeah, I knew you were. I'm just slightly bitter as tough economic times have led to a lot of the businesses in my town closing.

if my job weren't tied to here I'd move because it's getting to the point of being somewhat depressing.

really, really wanting to make a "check your privilege" joke here.

(I don't think there's a single restaurant in my town that uses a chalkboard to do its menu, or that has a menu that changes daily based on "what is in season/catch of the day")

Exactly this. The BBQ I frequented during this time just had little slips of paper clipped to the menus listing the surcharge and explaining why.

I still ordered the ribs.

It's America's Wang (pace Homer Simpson), so i don't know.

I remember a few months when there was a surcharge on barbecued baby back ribs, apparently related to a shortage of them (some hog disease, I think).

In my town, the sales tax (on EVERYTHING, including groceries) is 9.375%. I'm pretty damn good at math (I teach stats) but I still couldn't figure to the penny what my stupid grocery bill will be. (Simple enough to add 10%, but if you care about exactitude...)

Count me in the group who would prefer shelf prices to reflect any and all taxes and fees. I know math but there are a lot of times when I'm shopping where I'd rather not have to do it in my head - there's a screaming child in the store, it's 4 pm, I'm tired, I spent the whole day using my brain already.....one of the reasons I almost always buy groceries on a credit card is to avoid the annoyance of totting up the bill in my head and hoping I have enough cash in my wallet for everything.

Agreed. And from overhearing conversations out and around, I could see actions like those taken in this story being a not-totally-implausiable outcome.

I would not be at all surprised to see the US fragment into several smaller - republics? nation-states? - I don't know - in my lifetime. (And I'm 47, though I come from a fairly long-lived family)

In some self-style "progressive" college towns, we're already getting there.

(I almost blew up at a colleague last month when I tossed a sheet of paper in the trash and his response to me was "You know, you could have recycled that." I was having an awful day that was part of a string of awful days and frankly I DIDN'T CARE. And my town makes recycling complicated)

I also remember being lectured some 20 years ago while in a checkout line at a grocery in Ann Arbor over the food I was buying. If I were a more aggressive person I would have slugged the woman and said, "Walk a mile in my shoes first, wench" but I'm not so I just went home and cried quietly and then didn't really enjoy the cookies she had lectured at me about.

I'm not a DINK and I rarely eat in restaurants (some specific dietary restrictions) but DAMN if I could get grocery delivery where I lived I'd be all over that. Even with the surcharge. There are few things I find more depressing than having to battle the crowds at 4 pm at the local megalomart if it's a week I failed to plan sufficiently to grab everything I needed in an early-Saturday morning run.

I see restaurants as a form of "entertainment" more than I see them as a way of regularly getting sustenance. (And as I alluded to: I have to be careful about what I order and that removes some of the fun)

true. And also, with restaurants, you don't always have 100% control that "I know no one working for me is sick with norovirus/the flu/Hep A"

That said, in the summer, I battle sugar ants on a regular basis. Sometimes not even in the summer. I don't like to think what they might be tracking in on their tiny legs so I try not to.

I'm quite sure my home kitchen would never pass a commercial inspection. I haven't managed to poison or infect myself yet, but yeah: restaurant is one thing I'd never want to do for serious.

*takes notes*

Maybe I just need to found my own muncheteria business. Then again, never having consumed the substance in question, I probably wouldn't know what people wanted.

Also, if (as I suspect in my more dystopian imaginings) they are going to take added sugars away from me, can they please not mess with my enjoyment of cheese? That's about all I have left at this point. (Also: do milk and yogurt - which also have caseins - have a similar effect? And I wonder now if THAT'S why the Ralph Wiggums of the world eat paste....though I guess it's glue and not paste that's made with casein.)

I've said more than once that if recreational marijuana becomes legal nationwide, I am investing in whatever the parent company that runs JitB is.

I teach a lab class (soil science) that is populated mainly by our Conservation majors and also by Industrial Hygiene majors. We use acids and other borderline-dangerous chemicals in there.

Guess which group of majors I have to constantly hound about wearing eye protection? It's gotten so bad I now have a sheet they have to sign off on so if someone DOES take off eye protection, I don't get to them in time, and they get stuff in their eye, I MIGHT have at least a little legal protection of the "but I warned them" variety.

That said: I often tend to be a little cavalier about it in my own research, but I wear regular eyeglasses, so....

I have it on good authority that snow blowers are "fun" and some of the people who operate them do their neighbor's drives partly because they are "fun."

My parents, who are in their 80s, have two neighbors who enjoy snowblowing, so usually their drive is taken care of. If I'm up there when it snows I will shovel if the neighbor hasn't got there yet - shoveling is good exercise provided you're in decent physical shape to begin with (I know of one person who died of a heart attack while shoveling)

Then again, I suppose they'd get teased for their name. But if you're a little kid who is destined to be teased, probably better for your name than for your appearance or something.

I got teased because my given name was, at that time, the name of a witchy soap-opera character. I complained to my mom and her reaction was "What business do eight year old girls have watching soap operas?"

Since then, I have found a number of Hispanic women who share my first name, despite it having essentially German/Scandinavian roots.

Names: Please tell me you're contemplating an "old" name for that hoped-for additional child. Part of it is the fact that I delight in names like Martha or Donald, part of it is selfish: I teach college classes and it's frustrating to have, say, four "Brittanies" in a class of 40 people. (Even more so when they sign their papers "Brittany P.", "Brittany T.", and "Brittany S." like they are in second grade. I alphabetize by surname, people! If you're gonna initial something, go with the FIRST name)

I hope it works for you.

My dad has severe knee osteoarthritis - he had one knee replaced, but the outcome was not what he hoped it was, so he never had the second one done. It seriously limits his mobility. He does PT on a regular basis but that, and Tylenol, can only go so far.

(He is on other meds that rule out most pain medications like NSAIDS. Also, the knee replacement was probably unsuccessful because he waited until "too late" and wound up having to be immobilized for six weeks because of tendon/muscle problems, instead of starting PT right away like many knee replacement patients do.)

He's 81, so I doubt this will come in time for him....but maybe it will to help my brother or me if we inherited his problems.

All that said? I have a horror of general anesthesia and admit I'd probably have whatever procedures I could have done while awake. But the knee procedure sounds pretty brutal, and I didn't even read the squidgy bit.

I've seen about roughly equal numbers of men and women do this (shoot, I've done it myself, though I tend more to to the "1 of n" designation rather than self-replying).

I dunno. This seems a bit to me like a person looking for motes and ignoring some giant beams. There are way bigger problems in the world, or even on the internet.

Thought: maybe it's easier to shoehorn out a bad boss if you can claim they are prejudiced than if you can claim they're just generally terrible to everyone. Kind of a depressing thought but now that I think of it - the two really bad higher-ups I've had in my life were just generally nasty to everyone. "Equal opportunity offenders" as the joke used to go.

I dunno. I'm a Gen Xer who has pretty much accepted that Social Security will either be greatly reduced or nonexistent for me (Medicare going away is a bigger worry for me). I'm fortunate in that I make enough to (by living very frugally) put away some money each month and hope I've chosen wise investments for it. But yeah: I think the systems do need to be reformed in some way and probably a lot of the entitlements are unsustainable at this point, but the only way out is through, and through is going to suck mightily for a lot of people - the people who depended on something that's going away and the people who paid into a system all their lives only to hear "thanks, but the 'lockbox' is empty" when they get to the point of needing help.

I also have a couple of disabled relatives who survive on SSI (and on small amounts of money funneled their way by wealthier relatives). SSI is very hard to survive on, even in a small rural area where you are living in a family home that was paid for long ago. (I suppose if one disabled relative in particular outlives my parents, it will then fall on me to help support them.)

Another reaction of mine: "Wow, I must really be out of the loop because I never heard that gay Black men enjoyed any form of special privilege."

I dunno. I wonder how much of what people interpret as "this individual is biased against the group I am part of" is actually "this individual is a horrible person who doesn't know how to act around other people."

I knew someone that everyone told me was a total misogynist, but when I watched him in action, I decided he was actually just a horrible person - he was equally rude to my male colleagues (dismissive of some, pulled another one's beard (!) asking if it was "real," and so on)

Exactly what Damon said: my first reaction on reading that article was "Wow, he had a horrible boss who way overstepped what she should have done."