a wolf angel is not a good angel

I forgot about people-I-hate Monday, which is ok, I guess, since there don’t seem to be as many misanthropes around as I might have expected.

Since it’s a day late for that, you can amuse yourself reading how very very indignant people get over the question of under what circumstances, if any, it is appropriate to leave a cart in line at the grocery store to pick up forgotten items.

I am surprised that my answer (it’s acceptable for one or two items, and only until you’d start putting your items up while the people in front of you are being served — at that point, the people behind you move your stuff out of the way) isn’t very common. I also go to a coffee shop, put down a coat or sweater or purse (after removing wallet), then order. I have no intention of buying coffee if I am playing Russian roulette with the chance of getting a table.

In other news, one of the cats (female, I think) has decided to hide *somewhere*, and I don’t know where. This means that they are loose in my house overnight (there is nowhere for them to go, I’m just hoping they’re not destructive). But both cats have now purred while I patted them at least once. Matilda is with my at my parents’ house, shooting the evil eye at the orange cat, who just wants to be loved. She will hate me even more this weekend when I have my friend’s two cats as well.

I have, I think, mentioned my fascination with reading advice columnists.

Dear Annie: At a recent family gathering, we were all greeting one another as we usually do, and I heard my 62-year-old sister, “Roz,” announce, “I don’t want any hugging and kissing.” As I turned, I noticed my husband move to hug and kiss her cheek, as he has done for 38 years. She then became angry with him.

Roz was very cool toward me the rest of the night. When we got home, I asked my husband what happened, and he said he thought she was just kidding. I called Roz the next day, and she told me, “I said I don’t want any hugs and kisses, and your husband did it anyway.” My husband has always greeted my sisters like this, as he does his own sisters.
My brothers-in-law always give me a hug and kiss, and I think nothing of it. I told Roz she could rest assured my husband would never hug or kiss her again. I said I’d be happy to take all of his hugs. She replied, “I would appreciate that!” She never apologized for her outburst.

My husband is a gentleman and would never do anything out of line. One of my other sisters called me the next day and said my husband could hug her anytime.

I do not want this to be a problem when we next get together, so please tell me how to handle it. Should my husband shake her hand? Am I wrong to expect an apology? Life is too short for little things like this to come between family members. — Embarrassed by Sister’s Behavior

Dear Annie;

My sister asked us not to do something, and we did it anyway, and now we feel slighted that she got upset. Why won’t she apologise?

Irritatingly, the response wasn’t: well, you don’t deserve an apology, it was more “she’s not going to apologise for her outburst”. I don’t actually see an outburst mentioned, but I’m sure it was there.

• people who don’t set up the auto withdrawal that they’ve been agreeing to do for months, then play like it’s my fault;
• tourists who like to sit in a caleche so all of Old Mtl smells like horse shit;
• people who walk in the bike path when there’s a pedestrian path right next to the bike path;
• people who drive their scooters in the bike path (ILLEGAL) because otherwise they’d be going the wrong way down a one way street;
• people who bike or rollerblade side by side in the narrow bike path;
• people who are so freaking desperate to pass you that they do it as someone is coming the other way instead of waiting 10 seconds then passing;
• stupid fucking morons who STOP and CHAT in the middle of the bike path, or slow down when walking across it and they see you coming[1];
• poorly maintained bike paths that jostle you when you’re getting your period and want to be home lying down already.

This post brought to you by the letters P, C, and I.

[1] Totally appropriate in a crosswalk if a car is being pesty. Cars = easy to start again, bikes = not.

Please don’t hate me, but today I went through an 8 items or fewer lane with more than 8 items. Normally I won’t do that, even if I have 9, but I didn’t have many (11), and no one was in the line, and all the other ones had people with full carts and I know it was wrong, but it was so fast!

Update: to be honest, people were waiting in the other 8-or-fewer lane, but it was right next, so I don’t know why none of them moved. And people came into line after me, waiting for me and my more-than-8 items. But at the time, one person was paying and no one else was nearby as I wrestled with my ethical dilemma before going ethics-free. I bought only locally produced fruits and veggies, except for the bananas, though.

Do people not realise it is the epitome of rude to chat on the phone while you’re paying for stuff? Or — worse yet — having a conversation on the phone right under a “please do not use cell phones here” sign? Or — my least favourite — answering the phone while in the middle of an important conversation? There’s a reason you have voice mail.

Normally I leave somewhere between 15-20% as a tip (for average service). Sometimes this drives me nuts — just pay the servers more — but usually it’s fine because you just use the total tax and round up.

Last night, though: get seated in the back, a little low on the light. Okay — we’re not really dressed that nicely, and sure it’s just bistroish, but we’re under-cool for this place. Get the menus immediately, get our orders taken quickly, get the food as soon as it’s ready. (The food is very good.) And then we never see our waitress again.[1] Refills on our water (to go with the spicy meals we both ordered)? No. Bills, when we want to go? No. We walk to the door, where someone else says we need to pay the waitress. So we wait, as she tries to open a bottle of wine, fails, walks right by us without even saying ‘Sorry, it’ll just be a moment’, spends 5 minutes (I checked) doing who knows what, 4 feet away from us, then finally passes us our bills (also without saying a word, just puts them in front of us and walks off).

So, on an 11$ bill, what would you have left as tip? For the record, minimum wage is 7.75, minimum wage for people who get tips is 7.00, and there’s some presumption of a minimum %age you get in tips (for tax purposes) but I am unsure about the exact details.

(And actually, there was no bad mood, because we’d had ice cream before dinner! Ice cream means no bad mood!)

[1] Question: why does waiter seem to be male-only in a way that poet and actor are not? Is it just me? Should I make the switch?

After on Profgrrrl’s story of rudeness in class, I will admit that in large lecture classes (where attendance was mandatory but not otherwise helpful), I would hide headphones under my hair (very easy to do!) and listen to music instead. Maybe the prof could see me, but it was a class of 200+ people. I’d say I’m sorry, but in retrospect, I’m really not.

A week or so ago, there was a discussion at Ozarque (just generally a very interesting read, by Suzette Haden Elgin), spread over a few posts, about, generally, money. Much of the conversation annoyed me, but I am now calmer about that, so I am going to respond to it, in parts. (I am wolfangel78 there.)

The gist is this: SHE was responding to an ad which went something like: a teenager girl asks her father for 80$ for jeans. He asks the name of the designer, goes and buys stock in that designer, and hands her the cash.

I pointed out that no designer sells their jeans for that little, that, in fact, average jeans come close to that.

The conversation then began to revolve around what is average, and what is reasonable, etc etc.

(I’m trying not to be too defensive, because I think this is just too reminiscent of my old roommate, who would sit there and wonder how I could spend my money on whatever, while she enjoyed using my whatever, which grated.)

We had lots of people laughing. Ha! Like Gap is average! I can get my jeans at Target/Walmart/thrift shop for 30/20/2! That’s average! Well, no, it’s not. Average means in the middle.[1] Not the cheapest or the most expensive. Of course you could get them for less, or you could get them for more. Ignoring the 4 digit prices, it’s easy to get 2 or 3 hundred dollar jeans at a mall in any middle class neighbourhood. Thrift shops are not average prices by any means, though you might be able to make a good case for 30$ jeans.

Then we had the Well, it’s just if you care about brands that you shop at the Gap, Target/Walmart/thriftshops have jeans that look as good and last as long etc etc. Point one: expensive things are often expensive for a reason. They fit better, wear better. Point two: my time is worth something. I can walk into a Gap-brand store and I know the jeans there fit me well. I dislike shopping for jeans, so making this process painless is worth something on top of my time. Gap is certainly not a trendy, cool brand, either.

And there was the question of morality: is it *immoral* to buy jeans that cost 80 dollars? But at what point is a luxury immoral? Is it immoral to go out to dinner, since you could make the same food at home for less? Immoral to buy other than the store brand of anything? Immoral to travel, since you could save all that money? Immoral to buy new computers, or more expensive computers than you absolutely need? Buying them at all, since there are public libraries with computers? Immoral to use washing machines instead of washing your clothes by hand? Immoral to buy books, because you could go to the library instead, or donate all the books you buy to the library? Immoral to see movies? At what level are we allowed to spend more money to make our lives easier or more pleasant? Is it only ok to ask this of people who have money, or can we also tell people without money that it’s immoral to smoke or drink or eat dessert or whatever? Stephen at Ethesis also made this point, which no one there responded to. Presumably because everyone has their own little luxuries which they are understandably unwilling to give up. My contention is that if you have some, you really have no basis to condemn them in other people.

Of course I judge people too — someone remarked upon a $10million bat mitzvah which is really horrifying. I don’t know where I draw my line, but it’s somewhere after 80$ for jeans and before 10,000,000$ for a party.

But it’s interesting, the amount of self-righteousness — to which I was not immune — there, about what is and isn’t appropriate or ok to spend money on, what people do or don’t “deserve” and what they are or aren’t “entitled” to. (I dislike those verbs; they give much the wrong emphasis.) Where it is okay to spend money on yourself and where it isn’t. (The answer, of course, is that whatever I do is right, and anything different isn’t.)

I want to defend spending more than the absolute minimum of money necessary, but I am not into conspicuous consumption, either, and I can’t figure out if this is just the answer above or something more thought-out. I am not sure, either, why some things are okay to spend on (computers, books, food) and others not (clothes, televisions). I can come up with some ideas, of course, but none seem quite right.

The word ‘need’ doesn’t work for those purchases but — few people only purchase what they actually *need*. It’s rather hypocritical.

In the end, I try to stick to one rule: you can insult what other people buy or like (it’s fun), but not to their faces.

[1] Yes, it has other meanings, many of which are precise.

“Carpool lanes are making criminals out of people who are simply trying to make it to work on time,” California Assemblyman Ray Haynes, a Riverside Republican, wrote in a 2000 editorial against carpool lanes.

Hmm. “Laws against burglary are making criminals out of people who are simply trying to get other people’s stuff.” “Laws against murder are making criminals out of people who simply like killing people.” This could be extended endlessly.

“Some motorists have used imaginative deceptions to appear eligible for carpool lanes. Some have been caught with dummies in the passenger seat. Others have carried infant car seats without infants. One pregnant woman insisted that her unborn child was a passenger.”

Because actually *carpooling* is too hard to deal with, and we’re all too important to wait or follow the laws.

via Obscure Store

“Hello.”
“Hi, who am I speaking to?”
“Who would you like to speak to?”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Who would you like to speak to?”

Lather rinse repeat.

I will never actually answer that question first.