08:02 – Barbara and I are binge-watching series four of Downton Abbey on Amazon streaming. We’ll finish the final three episodes tonight. We generally keep two or three series in progress. Once we finish Downton Abbey, we’ll be down to just Dawson’s Creek on Netflix streaming. We’re about halfway through that, so we’ll add something else, probably The Wire on Amazon streaming.
09:52 – I think Amazon is screwing with me. They “reward” frequent customers by increasing the prices they charge, apparently on the assumption that satisfied customers won’t bother to compare prices. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed that Amazon is getting less and less competitive, so I’ve cut back on purchases from them. I used to check their dynamic pricing changes by getting prices on something while I wasn’t logged in and then logging in to compare the original prices with the logged-in prices. There was sometimes no difference, but quite often the logged-in prices were higher, sometimes significantly so. And even when they aren’t, Amazon often isn’t competitive with other vendors. That “free shipping” they offer with Prime turns out not to be so free, and even their non-Prime prices are often considerably higher than those of alternative vendors.
For example, I just checked this morning to see how much Amazon was charging for Keystone Meats All Natural Ground Beef, 28 Ounce. Amazon wanted $10.77 per can, whether or not I was logged in. So I went over to the Keystone Meats website, where I found that they were selling a case of 12 cans for $80. Even with $20.62 shipping that comes to only $8.39 per can, so Amazon is charging about a 28% premium.
Good to know about Amazon, and confirms again the conniving and predatory tactics of large corporations who will do whatever they can get away with, and who must be watched assiduously. Yes they have a right to make money, huge profits, even; but rigging the game and using the State to finesse their operations and becoming corporate pirates meantime makes them bad neighbors. Beyond that, the banksters and financial wizards and geniuses who tanked the economy six years ago and continuing, deserve the death penalty.
I recommend “The Wire.” Kind of a sequel, set in Baltimore, to “Homicide: Life on the Street.”
“Downton Abbey” is a huge hit with Mrs. OFD’s elderly relatives but it left us cold. Yet another English upper-crust soap opera, done originally and probably better with “Upstairs, Downstairs” on PBS ages ago and still available.
Yeah, Barbara and I watched all the way through Upstairs, Downstairs soon after we were married. It was excellent, but at least in my estimation Downton Abbey is better, if only for the production values.
One thing DA doesn’t emphasize, probably for PC reasons, is the deep sense of noblesse oblige that the vast majority of upper-class British families felt. They understood, or most of them did, that with their privileges came responsibilities to the people on their estates and to wider society. During the first quarter of the 20th century, with the transition away from traditional social structures, many old families literally bankrupted themselves trying to take care of their estates and their people.
I enjoy Downton Abbey, but then I typically enjoy period dramas. Or, perhaps I just enjoy attractive uppercrust women with British accents and an Edwardian wardrobe. 😉 I believe that one is referred to as an “upstairs downstairs” show (i.e. we get to see the plot develop from the point of view of the aristocrats and the servants).
Another British drama that is quite good is Broadchurch (hunting for a child killer on Dorset coast of England – supposed to be an American version coming soon).
Speaking of British cop dramas, I’ve watched The Fall (hunting for a serial killer in Northern Ireland – stars Gillian Anderson) on Netflix and it’s not bad, but it lacks any levity at all. So, it’s a bit depressing. They need to add a funny character to the cast. Otherwise, it’s just too dark. You need a Prozac to watch it.
On the American side, Season 2 of The Bridge (cop drama in El Paso that plays out on both sides of the border) airs July 9th and I really enjoyed that last year. Great casting.
One thing DA doesn’t emphasize, probably for PC reasons, is the deep sense of noblesse oblige that the vast majority of upper-class British families felt.
The series has been criticized for portraying the upper-class too sympathetically. The series creator is well-known as a Tory, something rare at the BBC.
I see where they’re coming from with that criticism, but I have to disagree. I think DA does a decent job of letting the audience know that Crawleys are not necessarily the norm for British upper-class. The fact that the Crawleys are nicer to their servants than most upper class families has been a side plot on several episodes. However, I think the upstairs-downstairs concept works better when there is more interaction between the upstairs and downstairs.
I’m sure the socialist left in the UK would love it if the Crawleys were portrayed as evildoers standing upon the backs of their servants.
One of the things I do is administer a large library of songs for radio play. When something in the acquired library is poor quality, I look for a replacement. Amazon thus has me pegged as a frequent buyer. I used to be able to get CD’s for as little as $9.99, but now it is never less than $14.95. Never. Had my son check out his price on some of the same stuff, and a recent one that was $14.95 for me, was only $11.95 for him. That is a genuine piece of 25% discrimination. The free market capitalists at work.
Even the mom and pop operators sell through Amazon marketplace. I presume that such an arrangement precludes them having their own web presence, because none of them do — even though they have large libraries of product listed on Amazon. Good old monopoligopolies.
Thanks. We tend to wait until something is canceled and then binge-watch it. There are lots of exceptions, like DA, because we started watching them before we decided to wait until a series was canceled before we watched it.
I suspect that Julian Fellowes battles constantly with the lefties that run things at ITV, but I’d guess he’s with ITV because the even leftier BBC wouldn’t touch DA unless he’d do things their way.
Ah yes, Baron Fellowes, who played the major on “Sharpe’s Rifles.” A very charitable Tory who has been quite concerned with his and his wife’s (she also works on DA) social and political status vis-a-vis Brit royalty.
“…During the first quarter of the 20th century, with the transition away from traditional social structures…”
Yes, the transition that occurred via the Great War and the destruction of most of the upper British class’s young men in the trenches, along with a huge swath of the lower class’s young men.
BTW, I renew my recommendation of BBC America’s Orphan Black. The acting and writing is very, very good.
Season 2 is finished and will probably be available for streaming shortly, as the DVD release is in 2 weeks. I know season 1 is available free to Prime members on Amazon.
One of the things I regret is that nowadays history is generally taught either/or, black/white, good/evil. No shades of gray. It’s almost cartoonish.
And too many things have become unspeakable. For example, although I am utterly opposed to slavery, it annoys me when someone tries to paint the antebellum South as being populated solely by noble black slaves and contemptible white slaveholders who mistreated their slaves, sold them South, split up families, and generally treated slaves worse than livestock. The simple fact is that only a small percentage of Southern whites owned slaves and that most of them treated those slaves well by the standards of their time. In smallholdings that had only a few slaves, the slaves were often as well-fed and well-housed as the white family that owned them. Even on large plantations, particularly in the northern parts of the Confederacy, slaves were generally treated humanely. It’s no coincidence that many slaves elected to remain where they were after they were freed, nor that many of them protected their white owners from the Yankee soldiers.
The Civil War was a mistake. It devastated large parts of the South and killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides, and ultimately gained nothing. Slavery was already on the decline, and would have disappeared on its own simply because in a free market slave labor cannot compete with free labor. Mechanization of agriculture had only just gotten started when the Civil War began. If they’d only waited, they’d have found that not only cannot slave labor compete with free labor, but certainly not with mechanization. The South would have been forced by economic realities to mechanize, and slavery would have wilted away.
We’re waiting until Orphan Black ends its run, when we’ll binge-watch it. I’ve liked Tatiana Maslawny since she played Kit on Heartland.
…using the State to finesse their operations…
How so?
…makes them bad neighbors.
Then don’t patronize them – if enough of their customers felt that way and stopped being customers Amazon would wither away.
I recommend “The Wire.”
Excellent, excellent series. Each season introduces a different aspect of the city. Still haven’t watched the last season since then it will really ‘be over’.
I usually just wait until I hear it’s been renewed for a second season (which, in the case of a wildly popular new show, can sometimes occur after only a few episodes have aired). I got tired of falling in love with a new show just to have it canceled after one season. I really don’t get the games they play with seasons now. Some, 1-hour dramas have 20 episodes in a season. Some have 6., Some take lengthy mid-season breaks. It’s all confusing for the viewer. If it wasn’t for googling it, I wouldn’t know when most shows were beginning or ending.
most of them treated those slaves well by the standards of their time
Most slaves were better off than many of the people that live in the ghettos and public housing of today. At least back then slaves had a purpose, provided something useful, did not shoot each other and were not a leach on society.
RayT.
Who feels a bit of SteveF training coming out today.
The antebellum South should have taken note of how slavery worked in imperial Rome, where there were means by which slaves could become free and in fact become wealthy. Of course, in Rome of 2,000 years ago, slavery was not racially-based. Some slaves were black, but most were white. In fact, more than a few black citizens owned blue-eyed blond slaves. If the antebellum South had worked on the Roman model, the Civil War might never have happened, and slavery might have collapsed much sooner of its own accord.
In the Roman scenario applied to the South slavery might have been more benign but I don’t see how it could have collapsed before widespread mechanisation became common.
Hi Bob,
If there is an Aldi store in your area, give them a look. We buy a lot of groceries and canned/dry goods there that we previously got at Sam’s. Most of their items are store branded, but the quality is generally quite good.
Just be sure to take a quarter, as you put one in the cart as an incentive to put it back in the corral, where it is returned, and some bags or boxes…
Cheers,
Rod Schaffter
The racial nature of slavery in the antebellum South drew a hard line. People who were black were slaves; people who were white were free. That made it easier for whites to think of slaves as less than people, which in turn limited anti-slavery sentiments in the South. And the South was by no means all pro-slavery as it was; particularly in places like North Carolina, there was a great deal of anti-slavery sentiment among whites. A pretty high percentage of Tarheels who turned out to fight for the Confederacy were anti-slavery. They were fighting for States Rights and against an invader, as were a large percentage of Confederate soldiers generally. Just as most Union soldiers were fighting to preserve the union. Most of them didn’t care much if at all about slavery, and in fact anti-black sentiment was probably as strong in the North as in the South.
I can’t convince Barbara to visit Aldi. She thinks of it as a step down socioeconomically from WalMart.
We’re actually doing pretty well on accumulating storable food. In addition to the 600 pounds or so of dry goods we got at the LDS store, we now have a few hundred cans of various foods. I’ll gradually accumulate more–I just ordered a dozen 28-ounce cans of ground beef this morning–but at this point I’m reasonably comfortable.
Amazon is a great example of Caveat Emptor. That said, the website is the best purchasing website out there, bar none. The new ability to ask questions of the sellers or other purchasers is just amazing, I have used it several times for both asking and answering.
I am watching the new show “Tyrant” on the FX channel. Excellent and very well done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant_%28TV_series%29
The wife and I are also enjoying the three Destination channel series, “Buying Alaska”, “Buying the Beach” and “Buying Hawaii”. They are quick 30 minute shows built around a couple looking at three homes meeting those categories. I am waiting for “Buying Texas”.
http://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/buying-the-beach
In addition to the 600 pounds or so of dry goods we got at the LDS store, we now have a few hundred cans of various foods.
Is all this in cans? My recent experience with roof rats in the house has me quite reserved on food storage. Their favorite food by far is the beef pup-peroni dog treats stored in a thick plastic bag. They chewed right through two of the bags.
Nearly everything is canned. Some stuff (spices, etc.) is in PET jars.
Any rodent who tried to get our food would have to deal with Colin, who loves to pounce rodents regardless of size. I believe he’d deal with any rodent, up to and including those meter-long rats they have in Florida.
Not to mention George and Martha, who live in the basement.
Here’s some government idiocy…
A small town in Nebraska was mostly wiped out by double tornadoes on June 16th [wiki]. Now FEMA is saying the replacement homes aren’t allowed to have basements [article]. How many of those families that survived the June 16th tornadoes would be dead or injured but for their basements?
Any rodent who tried to get our food would have to deal with Colin
I have a 35 lb cocker spaniel and a 15 lb white siamese cat. Both would love to nail the rats but the rats are way too fast and sneaky for them.
I hope those PET jars are extremely thick. I think that the rats could get through some of the metal cans in my pantry.
We have meter long rats here also. They are called nutria.
We, on the other hand, have a 75-pound Border Collie who’s faster and sneakier than any rodent. He can not only outrun squirrels that have a good head start, but he can turn inside them. He won’t actually hurt them, but the rodents don’t know that.
PET, as I’m sure you know, has extremely low gas permeability. Its CO2 and O2 permeability are something like an order of magnitude lower than any other common plastic. PET even contains iodine vapor. I seriously doubt that it’s permeable enough to the larger organic molecules that carry scent to allow a rat to sense what’s in a bottle.
I just got back from the vet. One of my chihuahua’s was getting very ill. Heart problems and starting coughing and panting a day ago. I knew it was his heart going. As I was carrying him into the vet he started coughing up blood and died in my arms. He didn’t suffer long, but I still cried like a baby with the vet. A nice lady who comforted me. Two more still living and a loving part of the family.
“Now FEMA is saying the replacement homes aren’t allowed to have basements”
I live in the Mojave desert. When my wife and I built our house, it was about the tenth house in the area to have a basement, and it has been great for over 35 years. We had a big flood in 1984, and parts of the area have been reclassified as flood zones. The local building code enforcers reacted, but only for flood zones. Fortunately, we live on a slope overlooking the valley, so it is not a flood zone, and there is no possible backwater condition. With proper grading, flow can be directed around any structure, whether it has a basement or not.
Still, the locals are not familiar with construction involving a basement. They try to apply the elevation requirements mentioned in the article. Stupid.
That’s not all. They also try to not allow living spaces to be built over a garage, even if all codes are met regarding fire barriers. They don’t seem to understand that a code fire barrier is just effective between a ceiling and floor as between walls, as in a horizontally attached garage.
If we have problems with familiar agencies, I can just imagine trying to deal with one a couple of thousand miles away in Mordor. At least our local agencies are approachable, and will cooperate if they are helped to understand the situation. They try hard to make sense out of often obtuse regulations written by lawmakers who have never built anything other than a campaign fund.
Mr. Atoz, sorry to hear about your chihuahua. Pets are just as much a part of our families as are people, and deserve our grieving. Good that you have an understanding vet.
I’m so sorry for your loss. You can take consolation in the fact that you provided your dog with a wonderful and joyous life.
As Barbara and I grow older, I sometimes think about what would happen if one of our dogs outlives both of us. I think the idea of godparents could be applied in the form of dogparents. I’d hate to think that we might abandon a dog, even in that way.
I can’t convince Barbara to visit Aldi. She thinks of it as a step down socioeconomically from WalMart.
That is too bad, because nothing is further from the truth. However, my cousin’s wife also believes all the stuff at Aldi is seconds or worse, like Big Lots, which — surprisingly — she adores, along with the Dollar stores. Go figure. But she will not set foot in Aldi.
Which is a mistake, because Aldi does not sell seconds of any kind. It is just like its sister store, Trader Joe’s. Everything is custom-made for them, by the best food manufacturers in business. In fact, we used to get a lot of Trader Joe’s branded products in the Berlin Aldi’s — especially nuts and some seasonal specialty items.
After more than 40 years, the Germans understand that Aldi means quality. Their inventory is limited to high volume items; they seldom carry specialty items. Here, their fruit is much better than what I find at Walmart. Pricing is undergoing changes around here, but generally, Cincinnati-based Kroger (who I understand is now the nation’s largest food retailer, but operates under different names in other parts of the country) has been the highest-priced, Walmart second in price, and Aldi almost always significantly less-expensive yet, but much better quality than even Walmart’s most expensive brands.
In Germany, the household drill for everyone is to take the grocery list first to Aldi, then whatever you cannot find there, you go elsewhere to get. If Aldi sells it, it will be quality at the lowest price. It is not at all like the bag-your-own places of 30 years ago that sold only seconds and stuff very nearly, or already, out-of-date.
By the way, the bag-your-own at Aldi should not be off-putting to anyone. In Germany, NO grocery store anywhere bags groceries for you. The practice is to put the stuff on the conveyor, get your butt on the other side of the clerk as quickly as possible, and put stuff back into your own carriage as quickly as the clerk scans it. When I first returned, that was the exact same procedure for Aldi’s in the US, but they have since changed, so the clerk now puts stuff into your cart after scanning. Actually, I don’t like that, because they throw stuff in there like bananas, that get damaged, and would be fine if *I* put it in the carriage.
I know quite a few people here in the US who refuse to shop at Aldi, but knew no one in Germany who did not shop there. The Germans got it that Aldi is high quality on a smaller range of select high-volume items. They have even given up branding with their own names on some items. They always carried Dawn dishwashing detergent branded as Reeva, and Tide laundry soap branded as Tandril. Now they just put out the Dawn and Tide bottles without bothering to rename them. They always were in exactly identical containers to the original brand.
Over the years, there has been an item or two of Aldi’s that was not to my liking — in both countries. But that is truly rare. I cannot imagine anyone actually trying Aldi and not liking it. If I were a millionaire, I would force my staff to buy my food there.
Truly sorry to hear about your loss, Mr. Atoz. Just like you, the point came when we had to put my beloved Irish setter down at the vet’s. I was right there with her, holding her when they gave her the injection. I managed to keep a stiff upper lip until I was out of the vet’s office, but broke down outside the door. Still makes my eyes wet thinking about it now.
When I think of Aldi I think of moms pushing around shopping carts with 8 gallons of milk in them. 🙂 People around here are in love with Aldi’s milk prices.
Thanks to all. I miss him. He adopted my Mom when I moved her in with me two years ago. She’ll miss him the most.
“He didn’t suffer long, but I still cried like a baby with the vet.”
We’ve had to lose a couple of dogs that way here over the years and if my wife starts with the tear ducts I pitch right in, too.
Another hot sticky day here but thank the FSM for the breeze off the lake here which is not occurring anywhere else in VT that we know of; other places along the lake are not getting this breeze. And they’re sweltering; into the 90s again and it was 103 yesterday in Montreal.
Nothing like mad dogs and Englishmen so OFD was out like a damn fool cutting back vegetation and suchlike from the front of the house just now; must have lost ten pounds in sweat.
You can’t make this up. The Feds suing a private company because they fired people who couldn’t/wouldn’t speak English. I would say they shouldn’t have hired them in the first place, but it probably wouldn’t make any difference. Next, they’ll demand pay raises and get the Feds to sue over that. I guess that is one way for libturds to destroy any company they don’t like.
Geez.
I don’t think Barbara has an opinion either way on product quality. As I said, I think she’s more concerned about the demographics of the customers.
Well, I am sure that has changed since I have been back, because they only started accepting EBT cards a couple years back and still only accept debit cards, not credit cards (exactly the same in Germany). But I am being very truthful in saying that the cars in the Aldi lots where I shop (there are 3 I visit a lot depending on where I am working) are one helluva lot newer and in better shape than the ones in the Walmart lots. And the people (including clerks) in Aldi have all their teeth, which is definitely not true of the customers and help at the Tiny Town Walmart.
No kidding.
No Aldis around here yet but a Trader Joe’s just opened down in Burlap, thirty miles south, in the paht of the state that looks like eastern MA or northern NJ. Every time I drive by there it’s jammed.
Easiest way to make Indian at home is to get one of their jars of already cooked curry varieties, pan fry some cut-up chicken breast, and add contents of the jar to the chicken, cover and simmer for 20 minutes and you have what would take about 2 days to make authentically.
Some Basmati rice steamed with tiny carrot pieces, small dried peas, and some Tamarind seasoning, and I think I’ll go to the Indian buffet tomorrow. Tiny Town does have an Indian restaurant, unbelievably.
Fireworks and dogs do not mix, almost fell on the floor laughing so hard:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=706768772701863
The antebellum South should have taken note of how slavery worked in imperial Rome, where there were means by which slaves could become free and in fact become wealthy.
That was true for what I would call the “professional” class of slaves: scribes, chefs, household managers. The agricultural and mining slaves were worked to death in conditions similar to the worst practices in the South, and later Nazi Germany.
No Indian grub for OFD; the smell of it makes me gag.
Seen that dog vid before, good thing nobody got hurt.
“…The agricultural and mining slaves were worked to death in conditions similar to the worst practices in the South, and later Nazi Germany.”
Yup. Among the slaves in those particular conditions were early Christians; the normal work day in the mines on Sardinia was four hours on, backbreaking labor, an hour for rest, and then four hours again, for twenty-four hours, every day. They castrated males under 40 and cut their hamstrings so they couldn’t run away too far. Life expectancy as you might imagine. A couple of the early Roman bishops ended up there.
All of that is true, but you have to remember that the Romans had no jails, and very, very seldom executed people for crimes. Agricultural and mining slaves were largely those dregs that in modern society would be in prison or executed.
I just do not get how people can laugh at something that is truly dangerous like in that video. Good gawd, somebody could have gotten third degree burns from that dog’s antics. I guess fireworks are not considered dangerous until somebody loses a hand, finger, eye, or their hearing. My paternal grandfather’s brother lost a finger and had a deformed hand for his entire adult life from trying to hold a firecracker when it went off as a kid.
Ha, ha, ha, ha my ass. Those people are idiots plain and simple.
Is trichloroethylene *this* dangerous? They’re talking about demolishing houses built on land contaminated with it…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-03/clovelly-park-carcinogen-danger-forces-residents-to-move-house/5568116?WT.ac=localnews_adelaide
I suspect this is a gross over-reaction. According to the article the levels detected in the homes in question are 1/1000th those allowable in a workplace, which are themselves no doubt conservative by probably several orders of magnitude. In toxicology it’s a basic principle that the dose makes the poison.
No no no, in today’s science*, any detectable amount of something bad means it’s deadly and we’re all gonna diiiiiie and you’re just like Hitler to not validate the feelings of the people who feel that way.
* or what passes for science in the public space these days
“…you’re just like Hitler to not validate the feelings of the people who feel that way…”
No, no; the blatant Hitler/Nazi similes are long since passe; he is a “denier,” which gives him the imputed moral equivalency with Holocaust deniers. Esp. in regard to “climate change” and the like. But good for all-purpose stuff here.
Another one I like, which of course applies to him now, since he recently allowed as to how the “Civil War” was a mistake, is that he is a “slaver apologist.” I had that one applied to me twenty years ago in an online news site. Or maybe a “neo-Confederate.”
Ol’ Bob is treading on thin ice these days; he turned 61 and went wild. I might do the same thing in three weeks.
All the drycleaners in Seattle have moved away from TRIC and the result is piss poor.
Got banned from visiting one for making a stink how they couldn’t even get a milk stain off a bedspread. (of course, mentioning it was milk and not a semen stain might have been a factor)
I’ve taken to washing my Pendleton’s by washing them in the shower with Dr Bronner’s.
When my son and his girlfriend had graduated but were still living in student housing (meaning slum apartments with furniture passed through the student trash pick-up network), they threw dirty clothes into the tub. When one of them showered, they drizzled liquid detergent over the clothes, danced around on them during the shower, then rinsed everything off thoroughly and hung it up in the shower to dry. It worked!
You’re getting old, Chuck. When ONE of them showered. Surely it was both or neither…
Ah, uh…well, I don’t really KNOW…
You may not KNOW, but I’m sure you’d agree that the balance of probability favors my hypothesis. When I was young, I don’t think I ever passed up an opportunity to shower with a woman. Doing that is so laden with opportunities, and even if nothing happened a nekkid woman and warm water are a good combination.
I remember you saying that a bunch of guys and girls got dirty playing sport, all got in the communal shower together, clothed, until the clothes were clean, then took them off to get yourselves clean.
Bloody cheapskate students… 🙂
“Bloody cheapskate students… 🙂 ”
Ah, yes, at Oberlin, when I was 20 years old.
To be honest, although they did charge for the washers/dryers in the laundry room, I’m pretty sure that a different reason was more important. I do know that I was all in favor of seeing all those girls nekkid, as I suspect the other guys also were. Not to mention that I suspect all those girls wanted to see all us guys nekkid.
I do love watching young mammals at play, no matter what the species.
Well, I wouldn’t have done that. Those sheilas would all have wanted to have their wicked way with me, and I couldn’t have allowed that. I hate it when wimminz objectify me and just treat me as a sex object… 🙂
Yeah, I am quite sure that 2 people twisting those clothes gets them cleaner than with just one.
College boyz.
My late teens and early twenties did not involve showering with wimmenz.
Probably a good thing, in retrospect.
Keeping girls and boys apart was the solid, hard-and-fast rule when I was at Indiana University. Advance 30 years later when my kids were there, and putting them together is the rule. Many kids in my son’s dorm, had rooms with the opposite sex, and they all used the same common bathrooms. There were floors for the ultra-prudish, however.
MrAtoz:
My condolences, belatedly.
“There were floors for the ultra-prudish, however.”
Maybe there were/are actually boys and girls, men and women, who would prefer at least some of the time, say, during college years, or in the military for that matter, just being apart. They’re not necessarily stuck-up ultra-prudish; they just like a tiny bit of privacy in a world and culture that is hell-bent on abolishing it for all of us since the Glorious Sixties.
I’m always annoyed that wimmin (especially the younger ones) think they can just use the stalls in the men’s room when theirs are all occupied., If a guy did that he’d get 20 years in the slammer.
Thanks, Mr. Robert.
“If a guy did that he’d get 20 years in the slammer.”
I’ve done that when I had no other choice but it was quite a while ago. Wouldn’t attempt it now.
I’ve done that, too. If a female comes in, I just casually say, “Oh, are you in the wrong room?” Befuddles the heck out of them and they usually go check.
Good one! I’ll have to remember that. It kinda goes along with the advice that if you’re at an event or location where you really don’t belong, simply act for all the world as though you do. Most derps won’t even question it, at least at first.
if you’re at an event or location where you really don’t belong, simply act for all the world as though you do
I have done that many times with my cameras. Sometimes I carry a couple of cameras, couple of lens bags, flash bag and an accessory bag all on a waist mounted belt with shoulder straps. More than the average Joe. Most of the time I just walk into an area that I want to go.
When I get challenged I ask the person for their credentials after I inform them I have press credentials. Sometimes I only have a press pass and no specific credentials for the event. When I act like I know what is going, that I really have a reason to be there, they just walk away.
Had an incident on a local German train. I had the proper tickets but the local ticket checker had never seen that type of ticket. He informed me that was not a valid ticket. I said “Valid Ticket” in a stern voice. He then said “First Class Compartment”. I said “First Class Ticket” in a stern voice. He walked away. I was informed later by my German hosts that what I did was indeed the proper way to handle the ticket taker. Act like you know more than they know.
I’d be too skeered to use the ladies room as I might fall victim to the Automatic Tampon Remover… 🙂
“…as I might fall victim to the Automatic Tampon Remover… :-)”
If you grease yerself first….
Ok then, I’ll defer to your greater experience… 🙂
Ho-ho, got me!