StatisticalOutlier

Mr. Outlier is 10 years younger than I am. We met when I was 41 and he was 31, and as they would say on RHoNY, "We know each other 18 years." It was a little weird at the beginning, but I think that was just because it was so outside the norm (which is sooooo ridiculous and unfair--nobody bats an eye when the man is 10 years older than the woman). But after a few months, it didn't register at all any more, except when certain cultural references come up. (He didn't really know who Spiro Agnew was, for example, and...Depeche Mode? Really?) To be honest, I'm not sure it would be that much different if Mr. Outlier were 18 years younger than I am. (He's still be too old for a man bun, and therefore in the safe zone.) I have a male friend about my age whose girlfriend just turned 40 (17-year age difference there); they've been together for about 10 years. Seems to work for them, and I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me. I'm childfree (by choice) and old (by nature). If someone tried to use either as an insult, I would just think, "Huh?" Even my poor fashion sense--if someone threw that in my face, I'd just be inclined to agree. Clearly I'm not meant for a reality show, but sometimes I wonder if I'm even meant for existence. ETA: Actually, that's one reason I watch these HW shows--they are so far outside my world that it's almost like watching science fiction. Not just the money and social life, but their general behavior. I don't know anybody who acts like that, and am therefore sickly fascinated.

In the last episode, or maybe the one before that, Farrah read some gossip/facts about Matt and called Amber and talked to her like a friend. It was completely out of character, and shocking. And I think maybe she was kind to someone else, but surely I'm imagining that. Whatever...it didn't last.

A well-executed "What is wrong with you?" is a thing of beauty. This one reminded me of the movie Mystery Train, where Steve Buscemi plays a nerd dentist who gets involved with his cousin or someone, and ends up being an accomplice to two guys knocking over a liquor store. One of the guys (Joe Strummer) murders the clerk out of nowhere, for no reason, and comes running to the pickup and jumps in, to be met with Buscemi saying, simply, "What is wrong with you?" A while back someone linked to Jules's wedding announcement in the New York Times. It said: "Mrs. Wainstein, 27, is an event planner for the Women’s International Zionist Organization, which raises money for private schools and programs for women and the elderly in Israel. She works in Manhattan." Unlike Bethenny, I'm not an expert in such matters, but those bona fides would make me think twice before popping off about Mrs. Wainstein's Jewishness.

Another pet peeve--brightly lit exit signs in movie theaters. Actually, all lights, but exit signs in particular because they're often right by the screen. At the Arbor in the 80s (they've moved since then), they had drapes hanging over the opening for the exit, below the exit sign. In one of the theaters, I figured out that it was possible to take the edge of the drape and swing it big and high and make it catch on the exit sign, dimming it dramatically. It might take a few tries to get the motion right, but it would eventually work. One time I did it I was back in that same theater about a week later and the drape was still like that So nobody on the staff even noticed that the curtain was askew, making the light about 10% of normal, but everybody in the audience has to endure the blinding exit light unless some asshole like me does something about it.

I'm pretty sure Brandon and Teresa are BIG believers in nurture vs. nature.

If you take the Celestial Seasonings tour in Boulder, Colorado, they have a peppermint room that they make a big point of saying is optional because some people just can't take it. They keep that stuff separate from the other flavors so it doesn't contaminate them, and it is pretty overwhelming. You could probably be the permanent tour guide in there. Yikes. Most employees of places like grocery stores and drug stores are cautioned never to offer a senior discount to anyone. Since you're in Austin...you know the Arbor Theater? It shows art/foreign movies and weekday matinees are always a sea of cottontops. One day a couple of years ago I was looking at my ticket and realized the girl had given me the senior discount without my asking (and for which I don't qualify). Worse, the discount was 25 cents. That's why they're not supposed to do it unless asked--people can really get insulted about that sort of thing. I wonder if she's used to everybody asking for the senior discount at weekday matinees and she just does it kind of automatically. But it's happened at other theaters on the opposite end of the spectrum--those staffed and frequented by hipsters. I've been given the senior discount without asking there, too, and I think the problem there is they think anyone older than them is old. Whatever--if they give it to me, I'm not going to argue. Oh, and a peeve? Senior discounts. I think they're ridiculous. People don't automatically start living on a [limited] fixed income when they're 65 any more. Hell, it's the millennials who can't get a job (although they manage to find enough scratch for tattoos and vaping). And back to age, another peeve--the prohibition on asking a woman's age. Maybe this ties into Bastet's rant about the impossible position women in the public eye are in when it comes to growing older vs. plastic surgery. I have never had a problem with anyone knowing my age, but I had a friend who said the problem with a woman admitting an advanced age is that expectations for her are immediately lowered. That kind of made sense, but on the other hand, I've always been a fan of low expectations, especially when it comes to me. And actually, I've always thought women should lie older. Like if you're 55, tell people you're 70, and they will say, "Damn she looks good." The risk, of course, being that they might say, "You don't look a day over 65." (Never mind the fact that none of this should matter at all.)

I think it's an uncommon experience for certain socioeconomic groups. Leah, for example--probably hardly any of those people ever leave the holler. Maci's family and friends seem to be a step above that, but I still don't think they're the type to all be going to college across the country or moving overseas. And even the ones who did--I really don't think she'd remain particularly close to her friends who went away to college and stayed away, mainly because their lives are so very different from hers.

That right there is the killer argument. I defy anyone to say, "Yes, I would want Vicki to show up if I'm in an emergency situation and need calming down" with a straight face.

She kept calling it a micro pig, but it looked to me like a baby pig. It won't really stay that size, right? And surely she doesn't think it will. She already said it was the size of a Campbell's soup can, and that was clearly wrong. Or maybe it already grew that much on the plane flight. We can't even trust what we see with our own eyes (Cate not really being at the Easter party), much less a sound. I don't think the show is helping new teens one bit. Or old teens. Or anybody else. I think there was definitely chaos, and probably a fight, and Catelynn had a big meltdown (one that's been coming for a while). Tyler looked worried/scared the next morning, and I for some reason think he was concerned about her and not that she would rat him out for kicking the pig or whatever.

I enjoy the fact that she can contort her face, unlike everyone else on the show. She looks so lifelike compared to them. He's a true wise ass, not a kid-being-cute-wise-ass. I'd be happy to have him hanging around.

This was in the days before printers, but I rented an apartment once that was fully furnished, and I mean fully. Books on the shelves, cookware, cleaning supplies, some food. It was a condo owned by a woman who'd been moved to a nursing home and I guess they just moved her and her clothes and left everything else behind. It was crazy.

Back when only sailors and bikers had tattoos, I had a friend who was in Mexico and got drunk and got a tattoo. It was a hot air balloon on the bottom of her foot. I'm not a fan of tattoos, but that one seemed kind of perfect--born in drunkenness, inoffensive, and on the bottom of your foot so you never have to look at it if you don't want to. I think you're on to something. I was only half watching, but I think in one of the "coming up" things, it was "about" Wells and Ashley and they cut to a silhouette of a couple behind some sheer curtains, presumably in a fantasy suite. It was obviously not them (we now know), and I shudder to think what they could do with actual footage of them anywhere near a fantasy suite.

The admonition against paper towels or wet wipes is because when you empty the holding tank, those items remain solid and can clog the outflow pipe. It has nothing to do with the toilet itself. I said upthread that since Kelly said, "Where's the bathroom?" and then said the toilet wouldn't flush, it's likely she just hadn't been shown how to operate it. Yeah, it's a little remote for that. Plus I don't think a dune buggy fits their standards. If she was getting carsick, then why in the world didn't she go sit up front in the passenger seat? It's kind of weird riding that high up with the huge windshield, but it's got to be better than sitting sideways in the back.

I didn't see the episode, but the housing market in Austin is insane. Napa couple: Ha ha ha, the man said "zeroscape" for xeriscape.

She said it wouldn't flush. But I think maybe she didn't know how to flush it--RV toilets are different from household toilets. And when she was running back there, she said, "Where is the bathroom?" so I think she hadn't been shown how to use it. I still don't know why they wouldn't let Nick use it.

It's a two-way street in the Outlier household. The other day there was a Red Bull commercial on TV showing Formula 1 cars and the driver's team was talking to him on the radio about his brakes. I blurted out, "They can't do that!" Mr. Outlier informed me that the rule against the teams talking to the driver about car mechanics that came about this season had already been rescinded. Trust me--no way in hell would I have known about the rules of F1 if not for him. Sometimes I watch the race, sometimes I surf the web on the computer and halfway listen to the race while he watches it, and sometimes I just listen to him bitch about how F1 is run. It's pretty much the same for him and Teen Mom, although he rarely actually sits and watches this mess, which is fine with me; misery loves company, but there's a limit. In actual TM news, I just got caught up on Jenelle being in the car wreck (because UBT expected the woman in front of him to run the yellow light and she didn't and had the gall to stop, and he rear-ended her), and the police report had Jenelle as the passenger (and car owner) and the report said she said she was more than 10 weeks pregnant. When the gossip sites reported this, she denied it. Now, I've been known to lie a time or two in my day, but this just amazes me.

In a Frontline documentary on PBS about the Iran nuclear agreement, David Remnick (editor of The New Yorker) was talking about an election that didn't turn out the way certain people expected, and he said, "They had the champagne bottles metaphorically on ice." Well done. (Never mind that there probably were champagne bottles literally on ice.) However, I have reported here before that in an interview on Fresh Air on NPR, Remnick said, "for my wife and I." And I don't think this was just a case of his bringing his "A" game to TV. It makes me sad because it appears we've already lost the literally vs. metaphorically battle, so his Frontline performance was nice but not necessarily important, while I still cling to the hope that this heinous use of "I" instead of "me" everywhere can somehow be stopped.

I know this was a typo, but I'm furiously trying to come up with other late-1800s novelty gifts. I'm stuck at Chinese finger traps. And I was thinking that maybe the original Spencer Gifts was Oleson's Mercantile.

I think I'm going to have to ask to see your papers because you're sounding pretty non-American there. I flove Big Red. Every day for three years of junior high, for lunch I would have a hot dog, french fries, and a large Big Red. (This was in the early 1970s, so a "large" was probably a whopping 16 ounces.) To this day, that first whiff of Big Red takes me happily back there.

I can see that. Integrity is important in the Teen Mom world.

Frankly, I think it's the only draw for me. I wish I had the strength some others do to not watch at all and just read the forum. A few times I've told people about this forum full of intelligent, educated, hilarious (seriously--I used those exact words, too) people talking about Teen Mom, and I just get that look, so I've stopped trying.

You're exactly right, and mea culpa--that scene started with Debra saying, "Hi, mama" in that baby, sing-song voice and I started FFing immediately and missed the rest. I don't doubt that, and I read somewhere else something about her not wanting her grandmother to know she was pregnant but not engaged. But it makes NO sense to me, and I'm not going to be able to articulate it well because, well, it makes no sense. But...even if you assume there's something "wrong" with getting pregnant when you're not married (which, hello Maci, you've done it TWICE already, once with this same guy--what's the difference?), being engaged is not the same as being married. Back when getting pregnant when unmarried really was considered wrong, people had shotgun weddings, not shotgun proposals. Because the kid is illegitimate if you're not married, and being engaged means you're not married. Also, what's Jayde supposed to make of all this? I regret that you were born before I was engaged, and clearly it was (and you were) a big mistake and NOT something I would allow to happen again under any circumstances. It was so important that this new baby be different from you that I either (1) let people think I was so stupid that I didn't know I was pregnant for the third time, despite my job as a public speaker on unwanted pregnancy, or (2) was willing to be shown (or let people think that I was) drinking heavily while pregnant with your little brother, despite my status as a role model. That is how important it was for me not to make the same mistake with him that I made with you. It just pisses me off. Feminists fought long and hard for women/girls like Maci not to be shunned or sent away to visit relatives for a few months when they get pregnant without being married, and the thanks they get? All this ridiculousness about a damn proposal, a proposal that she's been having to beg for. Yeeeesh.

John wouldn't be a perfectly acceptable male for me (seriously--if I ever tell you ONCE not to do that "there's something on your shirt" thing where you hit my nose with your finger when I look down, you damn well better not EVER do it again). But if Dorinda is okay with him, then good for her, and when she said she went to the Berkshires for 8 days by herself, I was impressed that's she's working both angles to her satisfaction--a committed relationship and independence. I think nobody can ever have it all, but in my book, she's pretty close.

No, the world would be so much better and things would work better if only everyone would do what I say.

I'll admit that I haven't kept up with what Madonna's been doing for the last few years, but it's my impression that she's still holding her own on the stage and she's 58--not that much younger than Marilu Henner. Or maybe I'm just taking these "advanced age" comments a little personally.