StatisticalOutlier

I stayed at that RV park a few years ago. They have the "permanents" in the back, more wooded area, and it was pretty skanky back there. The show did a good job of making it look a lot better than what I remember. Her site, for example, was more roomy than most. Also, that place is isolated on the east edge of town, and to get anywhere, you have to go through very depressing areas. It always made me sad. I guess hers is technically a tiny house, but I think what she picked is more in the "trailer" category. Not that there's anything wrong with that--I'm sure it's more practical than a 200-square-foot structure made from found barn wood and featuring a composting toilet. Maybe there should be a house-hunting show for RV parks, and the person could be deciding among three sites: one with nice landscaping but the neighbor has a barking dog left inside all day long; one that's nicely isolated but a train runs about 100 feet behind it every hour, day and night, blowing its horn; and one that's next to a 200-square-foot tiny house with two adults, two children, and two dogs that have to spend every waking moment outside under your window lest they go insane.

Everybody gets off cheap in these situations because nobody has to pay. You say it's not yours, they take it off your bill, and it's over. I don't think you can be sure it was skimmed. In fact, if it was skimmed, I would assume the skimmer would wait a bit before using it, to lessen any suspicions about where the skimming happened. And surely the manager would be sharp enough to wait. I got caught up in the Noodles & Company breach, and there was a lag of a couple of months between the breach and when someone used my card. I used the card at Noodles on April 10, and got fraudulent activity on June 29. I never would have even connected it with using it at Noodles if they hadn't announced the breach. But it's hard to know whether to tell the restaurant. On the one hand, it's very possible the number was compromised elsewhere. On the other hand, if someone else told them the same thing happened, then your corroboration would be significant. Maybe tell them that you have no reason to suspect them for any reason other than the timeline, and even that is kind of sketchy, but you wanted to let them know just in case someone else reports the same thing.

I like nothing better than, behind the mother's back, motioning at kids to shush. I did it from TWO FLOORS UP at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Screaming kid echoing throughout the place, and me on the landing way up above. I stared until I caught his eye, did the finger against my mouth (be quiet) and then pointed at him with a dirty look. He shut up instantly. Something else I enjoy doing is corralling people who are talking on their cell phone in a store. I pretend I'm looking at stuff and get in their space, and they move away, and then I move in again, maybe from a different direction, and they move away, completely unaware of what's going on. It makes me feel less victimized by the yammering, and it cracks Mr. Outlier up to watch it.

Maybe that's the secret to liking this episode. I binge-watched Season Two and had just this first episode of Season Three, and liked it a lot. Or maybe it was the reflected glow from the opening, where Richard hit the Bambot. Ehrlich exclaiming, "Fucking Stanford robotics!" as he got out of the car, and the students creeping out from the woods on the side of the road, and then that damn antlered deer continuing to get up after being kicked. I left that scene on the DVR to pull up in the future when I want a belly laugh.

Lawyer here, too. I don't practice any more, but have always liked the research angle. Just last week someone in an online forum was asking about a county ordinance about parking his RV on his property. He was getting all sorts of different answers from Code Enforcement, and of course getting tons of opinions from people in the thread he started. He finally posted a link to the "law," which was actually just the county's website's "plain English" version of the law, and off everybody went again dissecting it. Then he said his wife asked a CE officer for the citation to the code, and the CE guy gave her a URL that turned out to need a password for access. So I found his county's Code online and got to digging and spent an hour or two (egad, I hate doing legal research on a computer, having learned it pre-Lexis) combing through the Code and found all sorts of interesting stuff, none of which supported what Code Enforcement was saying. Bottom line? There's nothing I could find that said plugging into an electrical outlet was prohibited. So I reported what I found, including links to the Code provisions, gave my opinion on what I thought the county might be thinking, and told him what specifically to ask the people at CE to get to the bottom of it. And what did I get in return? Crickets. These are probably the same assholes who will say, at that drop of a hat, how they hate lawyers. And who will, when a situation comes up, be the first to say, "You should sue! Get a lawyer!" Grrrrrrr. Many moons ago, more than one person advised me never to give away my time for free because people won't appreciate it. Boy, were they right. I majored in Economics in undergrad and needed an elective, so I signed up for a Library Science class. I like learning how things are organized, and I like research. And pre-internet, I loved research librarians, who would answer the phone and find the answer to any old question you could come up with. Amazing. But on the first day of my Library Science class, I got the syllabus and it was a CRUSHING workload. I couldn't believe it. I dropped it immediately, but now kind of wish I hadn't. But it gave me some insight into what it takes to be a librarian. Although that brings me to a huge annoyance in my life--loud libraries. I was in one in Michigan several years ago that actually had a designated "quiet room." The hell? I thought the library WAS the quiet room.

Right. This didn't involve any sort of clarification. It was just a statement that she died. Same with the house hunters. The question is simply, "When was the house built?" Not "Was the house built in 1988?" with a response of, "Actually, this house was built in 1989."

God, no. It's all over House Hunters. Buyer: "How many bedrooms does this house have?" Realtor: "This house actually has three bedrooms." Buyer: "When was this house built?" Realtor: "This house was actually built in 1989." It drives me INSANE. I've actually stopped watching some episodes because of it. (See? That's how "actually" should be used.) On some other show I can't remember now, a woman said, "My mother actually died when I was six."

I forgot this annoyance: When Vicki was talking to Tamra about David confronting her (Vicki) at the party, she said, "You don't talk to women that way." Am I just too new fashioned? I think there are ways that you don't talk to anyone, and maybe this was one of them, but I can't believe it was a greater crime because she's a woman. Certainly not these days, anyway. I'm sure if you said that a woman shouldn't be able to run an insurance agency, she'd have a fit and go all Gloria Steinem on you, but profanely accuse her of something [that she did in fact do]? Completely out of bounds! You don't talk to a woman like that! And I don't know how David talks to Shannon, but I think Vicki's conjecture on that matter based on how he talks to Vicki is way off base. Maybe I'm still smarting from her idiotic statement last episode (?) where she was bitching about how the "government" wouldn't let a volunteer member of its military move from Oklafuckinghoma back to the O.C. But she's been bugging more than usual lately.

So here's the conception conversation: Meghan's Mom: "How many moms can say they were there at the conception?" Meghan: "God, I hope in this way only."

And what about the fact that this is the BachelorETTE, so shouldn't the lead be doing the proposing anyway? I'm on record as hating this whole permission from the father thing, and I'll go even further and say proposals are stupid. I think getting married should be a decision mutually reached by two people, not one person having all the say in whether it happens or not and the other person waiting, hoping, to be proposed to. But if you ARE going to have that model, then why does it have to be the man who has the sole power to propose when it's the iteration of the show where the woman is the one doing the choosing? Oh, because she's NOT doing the choosing even though it's technically her show. In either version, it's the women's job to be the one who gets chosen. Yuck. Andi picked a guy named Josh Murray who had a football player brother.

I guess that's one of the advantages of age. I find her father to be completely unintimidating. Although some of that may have been his outfit, when he wore shorts when he met Robby. For Jordan, he had on long pants. Maybe that was the tipping point.

Yeah, probably not. Unless you wanted to be MY friend. :-) Actually, I'm the biggest pedant in the world about misuse, but I find "Do you want to go with?" kind of charming. But it was not used where I grew up and I hear it only occasionally. In recent years, I've started paying particular attention to idioms and appreciating their weirdness, and "go with" is probably an off-shoot of this.

I noticed that she would make an effort to call it their "blessing," which I think is at least a little different from "permission." But she also slipped at least once and talked about asking for her hand in marriage, so I do think that's what she was talking about, and I just can't get over the irony of watching a woman accept her party's nomination for president one day, and less than a week later watching one of the beneficiaries of the women's rights movement considering changing her mind about marrying someone because he didn't ask her father for her hand. Yeah, I know, the battle was for women to have an equal right to choose what to do with their lives, but come on. But I guess I shouldn't expect any better from someone who would go on one of these shows in the first place. In that respect, I kind of wish EVERYBODY did it to get fame and fortune instead of love. But really, what does her mother know? Or anybody in her family, when they've been around him for maybe a couple of hours in a very odd setting? To me, that's one of the stupidest elements of a very stupid show. If someone had said, "There's a real connection between me and him," I would have cheered. (If someone had said, "There's a real connection between him and me," I would have fainted.) But oh, you're probably talking about as the subject of a sentence. I noticed it mainly from Jordan, and I think it was "Me and JoJo blah blah blah" every. single. time. Like he doesn't know "JoJo and I" is even an option, much less correct. Kind of makes me wonder about Vanderbilt. I saw a little bit of them on Jimmy Kimmel and they seemed happy to be together. They played a "Newlywed Game" type thing where they had to answer questions about each other, one of which was to name one of the other's grandparents. They both failed, so I would predict they'll never make it. Well, except I realized that Mr. Outlier and I have been together almost 20 years and I could name ONE of his grandparents ("mamaw" and "papaw" don't count), and he could name two of mine, but only because they're the answers to security questions for my login on financial websites. Hmm...maybe I should have asked my parents' opinion of him at the 2-month mark--they probably saw this coming.

Is this a recent discovery for you? If so, you must not watch much reality TV. And speaking of, we're now 30+ seasons in, and they STILL misspell "forgo" on the fantasy suite date card on the Bachelor/Bachelorette. It's ridiculous--everybody knows what the card is going to say, and they read it out loud anyway. There's absolutely no reason to SHOW it, especially if it's going to contain misspellings. On the finale of Maron, which was written by Marc Maron, a character said "Zoe and my baby." I would have preferred "Zoe's," of course, but at this point I consider not saying "I's" to be a victory. It made me consider dusting off my Twitter account to bestow kudos on him, but I'm not sure I can explain giving half credit in 140 characters.

I called it, but unfortunately only to Mr. Outlier. But he'll vouch for me. When this whole thing first started, my initial reaction was that you can't trust anything from or around any Kardashian. But then I thought this was a rather extreme ploy for attention, even in the Kardashian world, so I began to doubt myself. Phaylen's analysis makes sense to me, and at least makes me believe I'm not totally insane. I try to pay as little attention as possible to any of this, but I'm really glad I dropped by today. Thanks for the link, millennium.

My policy is to blame all such crimes on the Kardashians. Another incident from some 40 years ago: I'm from west Texas but went to college in Los Angeles. When I was back home, for some reason I mentioned to a person from east Texas that people from San Francisco pronounce "aunt" to rhyme with "flaunt," not "ant." She said that was interesting, because in East Texas, black people pronounce it like "flaunt." Oh. The guy I was basing my San Francisco example on was black. Isn't it always "than we," because "than we are"? I think so, but it sounds odd (and maybe even pretentious) to me so I always modify my statement to put the "is" or "are" on the end to fix that. I also never use the word "forte" when speaking because if I pronounce it correctly most people will think I'm wrong and if I pronounce it like most people do I can't live with myself. I draw the line at W.E.B. Du Bois, though (he came up yesterday, so it's fresh on my mind). Although I probably shouldn't be so critical because I think in some cases, mispronouncing things could actually be a sign of being well read but not surrounded by people with whom to discuss what you've read. I think I should be more impressed by someone who's read Du Bois on his own than someone who slacked through a sociology elective in college but heard the name pronounced correctly. And back to TV--I travel a lot and I do like to watch the local weather forecasts because that's how you can find out how to pronounce the names of the regional towns and counties.

Then why the blond wig? Or is that all they have in Newport; I'll have to ask whichever screecher it was who was going on about that (I can't differentiate them).

Hmm...maybe I was more interested in history than I thought: I graduated from high school in 1975 and saw Harpo Marx. But maybe because David's bug eyes remind me of Harpo's. If you're including 1965, you have to include crew cuts and black horn-rimmed glasses. That's one of the most interesting things about the movie Woodstock (or other documents from the late 1960s)--such a mix of full-on hippies and people who hadn't made the physical transition yet in the late 1960s. Yearbooks from that time are fascinating. Greatest American Hero was also in the 80s. Which makes me wonder when those man perms did take hold. It would be nice to think that it wasn't only women who suffered terrible hair in the 1980s.

Agree on both counts, but at least she was a lot closer to the 70s than David's Harpo Marx. I, too, almost kind of feel sad for her. Yes, she should have known what she was getting into, but she wouldn't be the first woman to believe that her husband will "come around" when the prospect of a baby starts becoming more real. In her case, I think it was quite unrealistic given Jimmy's passel of other children and the fact that he doesn't even seem to like her very much. But she wants a baby and he's her husband and he froze his sperm so obviously he's dying to have another baby, so the path is clear. I blame her for her situation, but I still felt bad for her in the car on the way to the airport. She was excited and hormonal, and he was a dick. Welcome to your future and all, but I don't wish that on anyone, even Meghan. I think it's not uncommon for young people (and Meghan is one) to have little interest in anything other what they're living through themselves. I used to think a big part of it was just that the way history is taught in schools is boring, and that once freed from that we can discover it in ways that make it sing for us, but I've come to think that it is equally the case that young people just don't care about anything but themselves and their little world, and that's just how young people are. Maybe once they become a little less self-centered they can become a little more interested in the world around them. It's their job, and the more clusterfucky, the better. I thought that was the reason to have children.

This is awful, but the first thing I noticed (after realizing it was Aviva, which took a second) was that the texture of her face is similar to the texture of a prosthetic limb.

That's why I bolded the "and"--this was spoken and it had an emphasis that isn't apparent in writing. I didn't think it came through in my post even with my bolding. There was a fairly long pause both before and after the "you AND me," and I heard it as Obama specifically including himself in the "us," I suspect because he's the President and people might assume he gets to give the orders and doesn't necessarily have to act himself, but he was making it clear that he's in it with the rest of the citizenry.

The beaches in southern California are not as warm as people expect. It probably has something to do with all that water that gets up over 70 degrees only at the end of the summer, but I don't know. The local forecasts have different sets of temperatures for the city, the beaches, the valley, and the desert. In the summer, the beaches are always the coolest.

During Obama's interview tonight about race and police, he said, "The one thing that all of us need to do, you and me, is to make sure that..." I don't know if that "me" is even right, but I hear that forgotten little word so infrequently I don't care.

In case you're curious, that thing with prongs someone was using on Jo Jo's head is a Tingler head/scalp massager and it is unbelievable. It's best if you have someone else use it on you, but it's pretty darn good when self-administered. I highly recommend it.

That's exactly how I reacted. She looked scared, and then she looked proud, and it seemed real. But now I wonder if that's just because everybody else's faces don't move, so when one does, it's remarkable.