misfitS pOLITICS
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Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- Hey look...Alex managed to turn out a column two weeks in a row! In fairness, this one is a little thin, but I can only answer what I am asked, so really it is your fault, not mine. We’re going to tackle booze, with a little side-visit to the Great Molasses Flood, then move on to pizza toppings, fantasy football rankings and some instructions on how to win the lottery! Finally, we'll explore Dave's hatred of the less fortunate and I’ll give you a construction update. Submitted by: Sicariothrax If you could live off of vodka and rum alone, would you do it? You ask this question like I have never tried… So, the answer to the question is an obvious “No”, for a whole bunch of reasons. First, I’d be drunk all the time, and that seems like a problem. I’ll give you a moment to get over your “But Alex, you are drunk all the time” laughing fits… (truth: it’s been a very boozy summer.) I do, however, spend most of my time sober for both professional and personal reasons. Drunk Alex is a fun Alex, but sober Alex is the one that needs to show up at work every day and get the children to and from school. Also, given the substance abuse issues of both of my parents, it is probably not a great idea for me to drink that much. Let's learn some stuff, shall we? I will note that the word “Vodka” is a diminutive form of the Slavic word вода (“vo da”) and therefore means “little water”. Since water is the second most acutely important thing required for human survival, I feel like Vodka probably qualifies as life-supporting sustenance, no? That’s what I am going to tell myself, at least. {Memo: explore changing the name of cocaine to "little oxygen"} Rum, it should be said, kinda sucks. I appreciate that it has historically been used as money, and I’ll never turn down the punch from any one of 100 bars in the Virgin Islands, but I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had a drink with rum in it anywhere else. I made a bread pudding for an office bake-off a couple of years ago that needed rum, and I am pretty sure I packed up the remainder of that rum before construction started last month without taking so much as a sip in between. WAIT!!! Hold on, I just remembered...I do like a good Dark and Stormy now and again, so let’s not go banning rum just yet. Maybe just the clear stuff. We’ll file it under affirmative action: dark coloring is to be viewed as an affirmative characteristic in rum when filling out your liquor cabinet. Fun fact time!!! Sugar products were first fermented into alcohol in India and China several thousand years ago and Marco Polo reported “a good sugar wine” on his travels. Modern rum distillation started in the 1600’s in the Caribbean when slaves discovered that molasses (a byproduct of sugar refining) could be fermented into liquor. From there, its popularity spread throughout the New World rapidly, and there were distilleries in New York and Boston within the decade. I can’t talk about molasses distilling in Boston without touching on the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. As funny as the idea of a really slow-moving wave of molasses is, it’s really quite the tragedy. The flood resulted when a storage tank burst and a 2.3 million gallon wave raced through the streets of the North End at nearly 35 mph (turns out that “slow as molasses” is pretty fast when it is flooding out of a storage tank). In the end, 21 people died, 150 were injured and several blocks were demolished and buried under several feet of molasses. I’m also pretty sure that everything in the greater Boston area was sticky until about 1937... Back to rum, though: it was so popular, in fact, that both Connecticut and Massachusetts tried to ban the sale of rum in the 1650’s, which probably seemed like a good activity with which to fill the time left over when they stopped burning witches. That, of course, failed, and the triangular trade of slaves to the colonies and rum to Europe turned out to be a super fun happy time for everyone involved! This went on until Kunta Kinte and Jackie Robinson parted the Erie Canal and led the slaves to freedom in Poyais. The end. Submitted by: ST Hey Alex, I want draft advice for the QB position, but really, who else is there besides Number 12? Nobody that matters, that’s for sure! Fantasy football rule #1 is that, in most normal leagues, Quarterbacks don’t really matter. Which is kinda stupid. They are the most important players in actual football, and it seems kinda dumb to devalue the most important position in the sport you are mimicking. But, since a normal league has 12 teams and each team starts one QB, only the top 12 players make it into anyone’s lineup on a weekly basis, and the difference between the best QB and the 12th best Quarterback is not that big. At least not compared to the difference between the best Running Back or Wide Receiver and the last player who is drafted to be a starter on someone’s team. Depending on your league format, there are likely at least 24 of each, and maybe as many as 48 WR’s that are being drafted for the purpose of being someone’s starter. There is an easy fix to this - have every team use two starting QB’s every week - but fantasy football players seem content to devalue Quarterbacks. Math: according to the rules of the just-formed Misfit Fantasy Football League, the highest scoring QB last year was Aaron Rodgers,with 385 points. The 12th highest scorer (the “worst” starter) was Blake Bortles and he scored 270. There were a half dozen players who scored between 260 and 270 behind him. So, by draft Rodgers, you are gaining 115 points over the worst team at that position, and about 85 points over the median player. Compare that to RB, where David Johnson’s 327 points were nearly 200 points more than the 24th best, and 150 points better than the median starter. This doesn't’ even count the effect of the W/R swing position, which likely means that most teams are starting three Running Backs every week, not two. So, the first piece of advice is to not draft one for a while. There is no point in taking Drew Brees in the first round and then trying to fill out your starting RB and WR positions with randoms taken in the fifth and sixth round if you can instead draft Julio Jones or LeSean McCoy and then still get a Quarterback like Russell Wilson or Andrew Luck in the fifth or sixth round. But, once you start drafting, assuming you use standard rules, you should take the top 12 in this order: Rodgers, Brady (cuz you don’t get extra points for winning), Brees, Luck, Ryan, Wilson, Cousins, Newton(cuz you don’t get extra points for being ridiculously good-looking), Winston, Mariota, Prescott, Dalton. (While there will always only be one “Number 12”, it is helpful that Aaron Rodgers also wears #12). Frankly, you can basically throw a blanket over the last six there and the next six...there just isn’t much difference at all. None of which is as important as this huge announcement: THERE IS GOING TO BE A MISFIT FANTASY FOOTBALL LEAGUE!!! We're going to have a couple of openings since some of us won't play (*cough* Rex and Musket are afraid to lose to girls *cough*), and you can message one of us if you want to take one of those spots. We'll come up with some means of randomly selecting the last couple of players if we have more interest than we have spots. Submitted by: Anonymous Help me, Alex. I am in charge of ordering pizza for a party in an office of 75 people and I don’t know how much or what kinds to order. What do I do? The "how much" is pretty easy. In a normal office, two pieces per person (of eight-slice pies) is more than enough, especially if you have other food. Some people (lactose intolerants, glutenophiles and communists) don’t eat pizza, and a lot of people will only have one slice. If you order 19 pizzas, you will probably have a couple left over. You do need to adjust that based on the type of office, though. Is the staff mostly young men or abnormally fat people? Are any of them physically active at work - warehouse workers, construction, etc? Do you work with Joey Chestnut: the Second Greatest Living American? If so, then you may want to get a couple more pizzas. By similar logic, if the office is largely women and you are also getting salad and other stuff, you can cut a couple out. This question, though, has gotten me thinking about a pet peeve of mine: most people over-top their pizza. I’m not sure if this is a new phenomenon or not, but Americans seem to have decided that every pizza should have an entire other entree spread over it. If you want to eat pizza, then eat pizza...don’t dump an entire Pu Pu Platter on top of it. Burying a pizza in toppings does nothing but demonstrate that, deep down, you probably just don’t like pizza. I love plain cheese pizza. I love pepperoni pizza. I love mushroom pizza. Really, I love all kinds of pizza so long as you terrorists don’t put any fucking pineapples on it. There in only one fruit that belongs anywhere near a pizza, and if you go reaching for any non-tomatoes, you deserve to have your hands cut off. In fact, I believe that Hammurabi’s complete, un-edited code called for the severing of the hand of any man who put pineapple on pizza. (Chef’s note: caramelized onions and ham is a similar combination that is not, you know, abjectly disgusting). You also shouldn’t put olives on pizza, but that is only because olives are a trash food that tastes like candle wax mixed with garbage water. I had dinner once in a restaurant in Boston of tremendous acclaim run by a world-renowned chef and they served Green Olive Ice Cream for dessert...I nearly walked out. I mean, we were done eating, so that wouldn’t have been a terribly dramatic action, but still. It tasted like frozen olive oil (and I love olive oil, in its non-frozen varieties). Other than that, though, you can put pretty much whatever you want on your pizza, so long as you don’t put too much of it. I tend to like salty stuff (TWSS) more than I like sweet or spicy things or vegetables. Actually, while we are at it, who are you kidding...hold the vegetables and stop pretending you care about the health benefits of your pizza. It’s white bread and cheese...you’re not markedly improving the health score of your dinner because you also also ate a green pepper. I don’t care how much pizza you order and who is eating it, you will have leftover veggie pizza because no one really wants to eat it. It’s like buying a cookie sampler plate - at the end, the last cookie sitting there on the plate will always be oatmeal raisin. People don’t eat that kind of shit food unless all other options are exhausted. To answer your question, though, go heavy on the plain and the pepperoni - not that those are everyone’s favorites, but no one will complain if they can’t find their favorites so long as those staples are in abundance. Maybe four or five of each, so about half of the total. Beyond that, just fill in with whatever looks good. I’m sure someone will eat the chicken pesto and the sausage and peppers, and you probably even have some morally bankrupt people who want veggie pizza, too. (Memo to HR: fire those people). So, pick some that seem like they may be good, and then get ready to tell everyone to fuck off for complaining about your choices. Submitted by: J-Bone Did you win the lottery? What are you gonna do with your $730 million? [$760 million] Sadly, I did not win the lottery, so I am stuck like everyone else on Twitter wishing that I had Brownskin money. The winner is somewhere here in Massachusetts, though, so there is a chance that I know them! (Fact check: no there is not). Weirdly, the lottery commission announced that the winning ticket was sold at a convenience store in Watertown (of Tsarnaev fame), only to correct itself and tell us that the winning ticket was sold in Chicopee (of absolutely no fame at all, save for being a pretty shitty place to live). But...I am here to help, so I am going to give all of you some advice on what to do if, in fact, you ever win several hundred million dollars in a lottery. And to do so, I enlisted the help of a very special guest wealth management expect, the devastatingly handsome Mr. Alex, currently on location with the children… The very first thing you should do is absolutely nothing. The woman who won marched right down to the lottery office and claimed her prize, which is probably a really, really stupid way to handle it. You’re going to want to lay low. I know you want to tell everyone you know, but really, I can’t stress this enough...don’t say a word to anyone! Not your parents, or your kids or your brothers and sisters. You will have plenty of time to tell the necessary people later on, and there is a lot to be gained by keeping this a secret. Next, drive to the nearest bank, get a safe deposit box and put the ticket in there for the time being. After that, you need to get in touch with an advisor who has experience dealing with ultra high net-worth clients. This doesn’t mean your cousin Joey who sells mutual funds and shitty life insurance products for a retail financial planner. You need a person/people who understand the legal and financial ramifications of this money. If you have nowhere to go, you can try your bank’s trust department, but the wealth management practice in the biggest law firm you can find may be a good place to start, too. Or, think about the richest person you know and ask them for a recommendation. {True story: Chris Gabrielli, a wealthy venture capitalist who ran for Governor and Senator of Massachusetts, had a housekeeper once win like $100 million in a lottery. She was an immigrant from somewhere in South America who had the good sense to ask him what to do. The actual prize wasn’t claimed for a couple weeks while her newly assembled legal team figured out the details.} They will ask you a million questions about what you want to do with all of this money and then walk you through the appropriate way to proceed. The decisions you make before you actually present the ticket to the lottery office will have huge ramifications for how much money you end up with, and who knows that you suddenly have all of this money. As one minor example: in some states, you can claim the prize anonymously, but in others you need to make your identity known. However, you might be able to get around that by funding the NotYourName Revocable Trust with the ticket, after which the Trustee, as legal owner of the trust property, is the person or institution who goes on record as the winner. Your long-lost relatives and former classmates with sob stories and great business ideas will never know you now have all of that money! A couple other things to remember, as well. Like, that you didn’t actually win $760 million. You won a series of annual payments with a nominal total of $760 million, but a present value of something less than that. And if you want to take a lump sum instead of your annuity (which you should, since the implied return on the annuity is pretty low) you actually win $480 million. Which, obviously, is still an awful lot of money. Only, you didn’t really win $480 million, either, because you need to pay taxes on that. The actual amount you owe will depend on how you receive the money, but as a starting point, the winner is going to owe somewhere near $190 million in Federal taxes and $24 million in Massachusetts state taxes. The actual pile of money that you will end up with is going to be on the order of $265 million. {Note: this is not to be confused with the $120 million that will be withheld from the payout as prepayment of your Federal taxes: you will owe the difference between that and your ultimate tax liability when you file your 2017 Income Tax return.} This is clearly still enough money to live like Puff Daddy for the rest of your life, but it is only about one third of the advertised jackpot. You can offset that tax liability by giving money away to charitable causes (but beware: giving it away to non-charitable causes might INCREASE the tax liability; see below). It may very well make sense to establish a charitable trust, which allows you to take the tax deduction now as an offset to your huge winnings but decide the specific recipients of your largesse later on. Example: say you have a brother that has been your best friend for your whole life and who you really want to share this with. You think that giving him $25 million is a totally reasonable gift that will change his life and barely even put a dent in your fortune. BUT...simply writing him a check for $25 million is going to cost you between $8 million and $10 million above and beyond the gift in the form of gift tax. There are better ways to give money to him and his family that don’t have the same tax ramifications (like making annual exclusion gifts directly to him and his family, paying for his or his kids’ education, etc.) And that is is really why you need the professionals to guide you...a good one will ask you a lot of questions to understand what and who you might like to give money to, and how you would like to enjoy your newfound riches. They will also do the required math to make sure you don’t manage to live beyond your means, which is surprisingly easy, even at these massive dollar levels. They’ll save you from yourself. Once they’ve worked with you to make a plan (a process that is going to take some time), THEN it is time to get that ticket out of the safe deposit box and start buying Bentleys!!! Submitted by: Brown Skin My contractor had to rip out a large section of curb, gutter, and ramp because the slope exceeded the max. 8.33% grade required by our onerous federal ADA regulations. The aggregate slope was 8.92%, which is negligible unless you use a smart level. My question: Are you installing an elevator in your building? Oh, so Scrooge McWarbucks hates handicapped people...why does this not surprise me?! First you try to build a ramp that will plunge the wheelchair-bound to certain death at breakneck speeds, and then you try and pretend it was an “accident”. You probably took out insurance policies on the little old ladies using that ramp, didn’t you? You’re a monster, BrownSkin...a monster. Don’t you already have enough money?! This question reads like you are somehow blaming the ADA because you don’t know the building codes. Aren’t you an engineer?!? Can’t you do your own math on the slope of your accessibility ramps? I’m starting to wonder if maybe you aren’t a very good engineer, Dave! I mean, here on a 25 foot ramp (I’m guessing) you missed by a full two inches. TWO INCHES...aren’t you supposed to be more accurate than that?! You can do an awful lot of damage with an extra two inches (TWSS!) The real answer to your question is that we are replacing an elevator. I live on the fourth floor (third from the front door, fourth from the rear of the building) and our completed, combined unit will occupy that floor and the one above. The building currently has a (very old) freight elevator that is not approved to carry people, and which I would be terrified to get into. It’s good for carrying groceries and furniture, but the people have to take the stairs. We are replacing that with a passenger elevator that will be more useful. Pleasant surprise: elevators are not actually as expensive as I'd thought. Unpleasant surprise: the work required to widen the elevator shaft is really, really invasive. Since our place is already torn apart, that isn’t a big deal, but for the people on the lower floors, it requires ripping out and moving some walls by a foot or so. Since this adds very little value to the unit that occupies the bottom two floors, we’re paying for all of that work (and we are fortunate that they agreed to lose a little bit of space in their foyer and a bedroom and go through the construction), which makes the retrofitting quite the endeavor. Speaking of...construction update! Electricians have been working furiously for a couple of weeks and have a couple more weeks of work to do. The last of the original knob and tube wiring is getting replaced, along with some other old wiring, and...well, pretty much everything else. I think the rough plumbing is done to the kitchen and the bathrooms, and the old stuff that went to the kitchen upstairs is all gone. Also...random note...I’ve had like five different neighbors tell me that they have shit in their basement that they want to get rid of and asking if they can pay us to throw it in our dumpster. Is there seriously a giant swath of Americans just sitting around waiting for someone to clean out their basement? Is there a business to be built that involves simply driving around with a dump truck for people to throw shit away that can’t go out in the regular trash? Like an ice cream truck, only instead of selling ice cream, you just take trash away. But still use the cool jingle? Speaking of, I’ll close with a definitive ranking of the best ice cream truck treats:
See you next week!
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Once, there was a war. In the midst of this war, there was a boy. The boy’s father, a merchant, had moved his family from their home in a now occupied city to a town behind enemy lines. Due to his age, the boy was able to obtain passes which, along with papers attesting to his being below the required age for enlistment, enabled him to travel to the occupied city to conduct business for his father (in most wars in human history, both sides required local merchants with connections.) The boy arrived on Christmas Eve, and though he planned to finish and depart in two days, the merriment of the season and charms of at least one of the young ladies of the city induced him to stay an extra night to attend a party.
Upon leaving the city the next day, a sentry of the occupying army inspected the boy’s pass and, given that the boy was leaving occupied territory and would have no more need of it, tore up the pass but otherwise allowed the boy to go on unmolested. A short while later another sentry stopped the boy because, as the sentry later said, the boy was traveling at a “suspicious angle” which made it appear the boy was headed for enemy territory. This was perfectly true, but now without the pass, the boy could not prove that he had permission to do so, and he was detained and taken back to the city under guard. When questioned later by an officer the boy freely turned over a memo book which was found to contain, written in Morse code, information on the disposition of troops and defensive fortifications in the occupied city. Also found on his person: his line pass from the enemy army, his proof of age papers, a packet of letters from a number of young ladies in the city to his two sisters, and two locks of braided hair. One of the letters was found to contain the supposedly incriminating line “I shall be anxious to hear how Davie got through.” A little over a week later, on January 8, 1864, David O. Dodd was hanged as a spy by the United States Army in front of St. John’s Masonic College in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had been tried and found guilty by a military commission, despite his not guilty plea and offer to take the oath of allegiance to the Union in exchange for pardon which Abraham Lincoln had offered just a month earlier to all Confederates, excluding only officers and government officials. The commission ruled that the offer did not apply to spies, and after a six-day trial sentenced Dodd to hang. On that cold January afternoon, as Dodd stood awaiting the noose, the executioner realized he had forgotten a blindfold. Dodd, pale but calm, was reported to have said softly, “you will find a handkerchief in my coat.” * This story is important in the context of current political events for the simple reason that the Civil War is the one historical event that is allowed no “nuance” in public discussion: the Confederate states seceded illegally, and they all fought to preserve a despicable and uniquely Southern institution, period. Furthermore, anyone not immediately on board with, at the very least, moving all Confederate monuments to museums must harbor some hidden racist feelings. Why else but racism would anyone not consider all memorials to “traitors” as something that should be removed? If nuance is important in other issues, surely it is important in discussing the defining conflict of our nation. Surely it matters that there are more monuments in the state of Arkansas memorializing David O. Dodd (despite his being a Texan by birth) than to not only any other Confederate but to any person associated with any war from Arkansas, which include Douglas MacArthur and Brigadier General William O. Darby? Surely it is understandable why some citizens of a state which simultaneously approved a convention of secession and sent more anti-secession delegates to it by a wide margin; who immediately elected an anti-secessionist as the convention president; whose elected representatives only voted to secede after President Lincoln demanded Arkansas troops be sent to fight the already-seceded Atlantic states and was refused by the Governor, a governor who would actually later threaten secession from the Confederacy over conscriptions; whose legislature was threatened with military retaliation on the one hand and economic retaliation on the other...surely it is understandable why some of these citizens might look unkindly on all of their ancestors being painted as men who only cared about slavery, that evil institution. Surely one can recognize that, for at least some of them, the issue is no more complicated than outside forces once again telling them what to do. The answer would seem to be a resounding “no,” it does not matter. A century and a half is a lot of propaganda to wade through from both sides. History is usually ugly and unpleasant, because human beings are usually ugly and unpleasant, at least some of the time. One person says the war was fought over slavery, to which another retorts, yes, but due to electoral politics and not some moral desire to make slaves full and equal citizens, and the truth is that both are correct. The nation’s sin is much easier to address if secession is just declared (illogically) impermissible, and the winners can sweep their own culpability for the sin under the rug by pointing to the dead as the price they paid for absolution, and to the enemy dead as just the beginning of their penance. It is much more palatable to believe six hundred thousand died for a noble cause than it is to consider it was really about a pissing match between monied interests on both sides combined with one man’s desire not to be the man who lost the Union. The story of David O. Dodd is ultimately not one of secession or slavery, of heroism or virtue. It is, in the end, a story about what lengths men and the governments made by men will go to when they believe their cause is just: the belief that hanging a 17-year-old boy, guilty of communicating a probably inconsequential message on the placement of a small number of troops and artillery (which he may have done merely as a favor to a friend, or for the affection of a girl), when all that is necessary to save his life is to administer an oath which he has made clear he will take, is the right and just decision is proof that even in the service of justice men can become monsters. To say that’s just the nature of war, or that Dodd was a spy for “traitors”...well, tyrants will always find a justification for their tyranny. The case to remove monuments to government officials of the Confederate States of America seems reasonable, given the fact that the Confederate government did expressly defend the institution of slavery (although the failure to teach the true history of these men, such as that Jefferson Davis graduated from West Point, fought for his country in both the Black Hawk War and the Mexican-American War, served in both the U.S. House and Senate, was United States Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce, and counseled against secession up until he received word that Mississippi had seceded, seems like a concerted effort to obfuscate any possible nuance to the issue of secession.) But the desire to remove monuments to soldiers, to the war itself...well, that smacks of an effort mainly to render illegitimate any belief that states are sovereign, and that siding with your state against Washington D.C. could be a choice made by brave and honorable men. It is largely of a piece with the belief pushed for 150 years that secession was and is treasonous: if the southern states had no legitimate, Constitutional right to secede (if the “Course of human events [when] it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another” was just a historical one-off) then everything done to keep the Union together was wholly justified. If the VMI boys at New Market were traitors, then they cannot be heroes, and the last thing you want a conquered people to retain is its heroes. There is no doubt that many Confederate memorials were erected not to honor but to intimidate. It must also be remembered that 1911 marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the war, and there still were veterans living, and that Reconstruction had left the South relatively bereft of funds for things like statues, so not every memorial or statue erected in that time frame can be assumed to have been for the latter purpose. The way to honor the dead on both sides, and more importantly to ensure the survival of the system of government their grandfathers and great grandfathers fought their own war to institute on this earth, and most importantly to continue to ensure that all men regardless of race have their say in how they are governed (the insinuation that the ancestors of slaves don’t deserve the right and the chance to vote the statues into museums should be seen as insulting), is to recognize that these issues should be decided only by citizens of the state or locality where the monument in question resides, and not the federal government or outside protesters or rabble rousers of any political stripe. Only in this way is justice truly served. And your fellow Americans, left to their own devices, might just surprise you. *There is a lot of conjecture, rumor, and Apocrypha in many of the writings on Dodd. To avoid charges of cherry-picking from those that might have a pro-Southern slant I have included only the bare-bones facts, which all appear in one way or another in this post at the New York freaking Times.
Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- Twice in a row now, this has been a bi-weekly column. I hope to not make a habitof it, but I make no promises… I have, like, a job and stuff... For your regular update on “Where is Alex, and who is watching her children?” I spent last week at the beach with the girls, mostly (pretending to be) working while they were in camp, and then this week I was home and my husband was with them. I will be back at the beach at the beginning of next week, not, as any sane person would have done, heading to Paris with my sister to hang out with her boyfriend and his family (long story...you should ask me next week). So, let’s talk about Missouri, cats, trolls, kale, Misfits and Nantucket, shall we? Submitted by: Harry Bergeron Hi, Alex, I couldn't think of the Capital of Missouri the other day, and drew a series of blanks when I tried to look it up on Google. Google wanted to sell me maps of Missouri, vacations in the Ozarks, tickets to Branson, Tshirts, cars and homes instead of providing the Capital. It finally dawned on me that Missouri might well be too careless, forgetful, poor, or backwards to actually have a capital! Would you look into this potential scandal? And if they do ever get a capital, should they call it "Missouriopolis?? That worked out just fine for Minnesota. Thank you for your kind attention to this peculiar matter. Missouri does, in fact, have a capital - the mostly forgettable Jefferson City. And while Missouriopolis has a nice ring to it, that would NOT mirror the state of Minnesota, where St. Paul (not Minneapolis) is the capital. The parallels you were looking for, of course, would be either Oklahoma City, OK or Indianapolis, IN. Jefferson City is notable for a couple of reasons, though. First, it is one of 4 state capitals named after Presidents (Lincoln, Madison and Jackson, although Jackson was only a general when they named the city after him), and one of only four state capitals that does not have an Interstate Highway (Juneau, AK; Dover, DE; Pierre, SD). This, of course, means that Honolulu, HI does have interstate highways, which is probably worth a little bit of thinking. I also just learned that Pierre, SD is not pronounced like a french guy, but rather as “Peer”. Wikipedia says so, and Wikipedia would never lie. Since South Dakota named its capital after a Frenchie and North Dakota named its after a German, I am somewhat surprised that we have never seen a Great Dakota War... As to your question about Missouri being too careless, poor, forgetful or backwards to have a state capital, I think you are being kind of hard on the Show Me State (note: worst state motto). It’s a little larger than average, ranking 18th of 50 states in population, and a little below average in most qualitative factors: 36th in per capita income, 39th in education, 28th in obesity, 40th in life expectancy. In other words, it is sort of a shitty state, but it’s nowhere near the bottom of the barrel (hey West Virginia and Mississippi...you’re up.) You know where it punches above its weight, though? Major professional sports championships. Mostly on the strength of the St. Louis Cardinals 11 World Series Championships, the state of Missouri has won 16 Championships, which is substantially more than its relative size would predict. You know what other state punches above its weight on that list? Mass-a-fucking-chusetts, bitches!!! 17 NBA Championships, 9 World Series, 6 Stanley Cups and 5 super bowls means that we’re trailing only New York (which has 58 Championships) and California (42), and managed to do it with only four franchises! It took New York 13, and California 14 to win all of those rings. On a per-franchise basis, Massachusetts is pretty well the king of sports, and don’t you dare @ me because the only other State that is even close is Illinois (29 from five teams including two that went 88 and 108 years between wins respectively.) I mean, if we are being really honest, we totally cheated...we got to use Bill Russell and Tom Brady and Bobby Orr. There are only six cities that have won championships in each of the four major sports, which seems like not very many. New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. There are also a handful more that have won in all three sports in which they play (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore). San Jose is the largest US city, by population, to have never won a championship, checking in at about 14 times the size of the smallest city to ever win one - the 1922 and 1923 NFL Champion Canton Bulldogs. It’s almost ten times the size of Green Bay, which has won 13 NFL Championships and currently fields the NFL’s second best quarterback (you should be very proud, @molratty)! Biggest underachievers? Texas and Florida seem to be low on that list based on their population size, but their populations (especially Florida) are young enough that they don’t really have long histories to rely on. There are nine franchises in Florida, but the oldest (the Miami Dolphins) is only 51 years old, and seven of them were founded after 1988. Given that, 9 Championships is actually not so bad. It is a similar story in Texas, which has 15 Championships, dominated by the Dallas Cowboys (6) and San Antonio Spurs (5). No...the real winner for being losers has got to be Georgia. And really, given the most recent foray in almost-winning, I hate to kick you when you are down, but this is starting to get pretty embarrassing. The Falcons were founded in 1965 and the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966. The Hawks began playing in Atlanta in 1968 and then two hockey teams came and went, the (now Calgary) Flames from 1972-1980 and the (now Winnipeg Jets) Thrashers from 1999-2011. That totals up to 171 seasons played and a grand total of ONE championship (the 1995 Braves). Rather than beat up on the poor peach-staters any more than I need to, I will just maybe leave this here. Here then, in closing, is a Jesse Kelly-style list of State Capitals by cultural/political/financial relevance and national/international importance: 1. Boston 2. Atlanta 3. Phoenix 4. Denver 5. Indianapolis 6. Austin 7. Sacramento 8. Salt Lake City 9. Oklahoma City 10. Nashville ----- 41. Concord 42. Dover 43. Carson City 44. Frankfort 45. Augusta 46. Helena 47. Juneau 48. Bismarck 49. Pierre 50. Montpelier Submitted by: Bo Cat If my human does not change the litter in my litter box, is it permissible to pee in her bed as a demonstration of my displeasure at her inability to maintain a proper litter box? What time is a good time to ask to be let outside? I was thinking maybe like 3 AM, but she doesn't seem to agree. Can you help? Full disclosure: I hate cats. I mean, I really, really hate cats. I am deathly allergic to most of them, which doesn’t help, but I also think that I just plain don’t like them. You know why? Mostly because cats hate people, and what kind of nerve do they have to hate people who feed, house, clean up after and protect them? This is limited to domestic cats, since I think wild big cats are pretty fucking awesome. I’ve documented my completely rational and not at all unhealthy fear of jaguars, and I’d love to be a lioness...that would be pretty boss. And, fun fact time...the unofficial scientific designation of “Big Cats” (also, Alex just invented the term “unofficial scientific designation”) includes the four largest species of the genus panthera - panthera tigris, panthera leo, panthera onca (jaguars) and panthera pardus (leopard). These four share certain physical traits that other large felines (including the other species of the panthera genus, uncia, the snow leopard, along with cheetahs, cougars, bobcats, lynx and others) do not have, the most notable of which is a unique larynx formation that allows them to roar. Which is really kind of the most important part, right? Anyway, I’d love a pet ocelot, but domesticated cats are basically just fur-generating parasites that prey on the sympathies of lonely old crazy women. If it isn’t keeping you mice-free, that cat is really bringing nothing to the table beyond an appetite and a detached disdain for any humans it meets. (Memo: if you have rats, you can not get a house cat...they will kill the cat. You could, however, get a mountain lion. That will solve your rat problem quickly, but you have to be willing to kind of give up on ever using the basement again.) You know who doesn’t hate people? Dogs don’t hate people. Dogs love people and will happily show that affection regularly. Your dog is the only person in your house who will always be happy to see you. For as long as there have been civilised human beings, there have been domesticated dogs to assist in hunting, herding, protection and general companionship, and there is no better testament to their usefulness than the fact that humans don’t eat dogs unless they have no other reliable sources of widely available protein. Really, if you learn one thing from Guns, Germs and Steel, it is that a societal decision to NOT eat large, domesticable mammals is a sign of extraordinary usefulness. Looking at a 1,000 pound horse that very, very few humans eat regularly kind of gives away the “Civilization’s Most Useful Animal” mystery… (And if you have never read the book, you should. It’s fascinating in a super-dork kind of way and it’s got a million eye-opening observations.) And dogs do so much for us, too! They sniff for bombs and drugs, they work with police and ride fire trucks. They herd sheep and cows and chase away predators who would eat livestock. They show blind people around!!! They may be saving the cheetah population. Is there anything cooler than seeing-eye dogs? Think about how amazing that is...a dog can learn enough about helping a person navigate their life as to largely free the person from being dependent on other people. And all the dog wants in return is a warm bed, food and the right to go into restaurants where his fellow dogs can’t! This also reminds me of the time I saw ten little lab puppies on one long leash wearing orange vests that said “Please don’t disturb us, we are guide dogs in training”. Cutest thing I have ever seen? Definitely top five. In conclusion, change your own litter box, you freeloading pee sniffer. Or learn to shit outside like a dog would...I mean, you’re not dumber than a dog, are you? You can figure it out. Submitted by: Kurt Michaels What is the proper etiquette for dispensing with Twitter trolls? Do you block, mock, mute, refute, ridicule or something else? What was your greatest victory over a troll? I generally like to mock them. Jokes about the size of a male trolls genitals are always a good place to start...usually hits pretty close to the mark. Or jokes about their sad living situation and lack of female attention, cuz these guys usually live in Mom’s basement and definitely don’t have girlfriends. At least real girlfriends. Trolls tend to be really easy to insult because often their low opinions of themselves are what drove them to be trolls in the first place. Really, my most common response is to just ignore them. I have muted a couple who just wouldn’t shut up and were cluttering my notifications. Generally, they have no interest in making a point, they just want to get a reaction out of you. Reacting just feeds the beast, and there is nothing to be gained by it. I believe I have only ever blocked one person on Twitter, and it wasn’t because he was a troll. It was actually someone that I spent a lot of time interacting with and “knew” quite well. In the end, I blocked him because I felt like he had taken advantage of my better nature and wasted a lot of my time without ever really having any desire to make the changes necessary to fix the problems that he complained about. If you enjoy complaining about being miserable more than you desire not being miserable, at least have the common decency to admit it. Interestingly, I am blocked by a relatively large number of people with whom I have never once interacted, or had like one really innocuous interaction a long time ago. Deray blocked me. A couple of the Buckleys have blocked me, likely by association, even though the only interactions we ever had were quite pleasant. The since-departed most annoying one blocked me because he thought I subtweeted him. Blocking someone who has never once interacted with you because you think she is subtweeting you takes a pretty special level of self-importance, but he is pretty well known as a true legend by that measure. Funniest part is that the tweet was actually directed at a former Misfit:-) There is one person that blocked me for reasons I don’t know and that bothers me...but c’est le vie, it’s Twitter, I guess. Also...if someone at Twitter could let us easily see who has blocked us, that would be really helpful. Maybe get to work on that, @Jack? Submitted by: Schultzie Can I get Stockholm Syndrome from eating kale? If you are eating kale, you probably already have it...why else would you be eating dirt-flavored construction paper? You have clearly been kidnapped by kale and psychologically tortured into sympathizing with your captor. Or maybe you have been kidnapped by rabbits and you are sympathizing with them by liking rabbit food? Do you find yourself hopping around your backyard, popping out large numbers of kids and eating carrots, too? Those would be telltale signs… I dunno...I could go either way on this one. Just to be safe, you should eat an ice cream cone. Submitted by: Groupie I need to learn more about the Misfits. Please sort them all by:
Thanks a lot! Height: You’ll probably be surprised to know that Rex is over 7’0” tall and both @CDPayne79 and @Vixenrogue are about 6’9”. This is why we usually dominate in the Blog Wars Basketball tournament. She may look like she is normal height, but @molratty is actually only 4’3” tall, and is shaped roughly like a bowling ball. It’s quite a sight! Real answer: Rex and Marc are both about 6’0”, so they are probably tallest. @Blazermc88 is the tallest of the Beckys, and I think I am the shortest. JR is pretty tiny, too, but she is taller than me to begin with AND she is so oppressed by the patriarchy that she wears Trump heels at every moment of every day so she looks more like 5’7” to anyone who has ever met her. Either that or she works professionally in some field that requires women to never, ever remove their heels under any circumstances...hmm... Weight: Even though she is shorter than my seven year olds, Mo weighs somewhere near 350 pounds. Seriously...salad, Mo. Just once in awhile. And then there is the pregnant Misfit who is super gigantic these days, but that may still be a secret, so I won’t say who it is (spoiler alert: it’s @2009superglide). And again, JR and I are the tiniest Age: This is somewhat irrelevant because we are all a part of a sunlight-averse cult of immortal wiccans. Also, we’ve been told that we all act like children on occasion, or at least teenagers (#MisfitMischief, #MischiefAfterDark, tonight!!!). Rex is the oldest, and the only Grandparent of the bunch. I’m actually not sure who is second oldest...Marc maybe? He, Daryl, Mo and @RebeccadeWinter are all in the same age bracket (at least as I think about them!!!). After that, Dan, Musket and @CDPayne79 make up the back end of Generation X, before you get to me and JR. @GentlemanRascal is the youngest of the boys, followed by Kayla and finally, the juniorest Misfit: @_CCHayes! She may still be on her learner’s permit. Residential Elevation: Well, this is an odd question, but it one that I am prepared to answer!!! I should acknowledge that this is not terribly precise because I am not actually using anyone’s address.This is all based on the Google-reported elevation of the city or town in which each person lives (except my own, which is my address). Rex: 13’ Marc: 48’ Rebecca: 48’ Alex: 50’ Kayla: 243’ CDP: 463’ JR: 489’ Dan: 541’ Rascal: 810’ Daryl: 890’ Musket: 4,268’ CC Hayes: 4,820 So, surprisingly, while there are five of us that basically live on the coast (or near enough), only one is really near sea level, and two of us are WAY, WAY up in the thin air. Also worth noting that this is a totally different answer than the one you would get for “Which is the highest Misfit”. Moving right along... Income: What is “income” really? Is it just the money we earn from our jobs? Or is it all of the non-monetary rewards we garner from our life experiences? Is Rex’s income limited because he is retired, or is it in fact infinite because he owns the freedom of retirement? Daryl and CC may not gain much money from being in school, but how do we measure the value of knowledge and wisdom? And what does CDP even do? No one knows...NO ONE KNOWS!!! Here I will list some amounts of money. Some of them may be my estimates of various Misfits’ incomes, and some may just be random numbers: $100,000 $85,000 $38,000 $800,000 $54,000 $675,000 $27,000 $145,000 $75,000 $70,000 But I am not telling you who is who or which one of those is a real estimate. You’ll need to guess! IQ: Funny you should ask this...we had a former member who loved to talk about his IQ, as if it were something that is measured in the same way that height or weight is (note: he was also short and fat). According to his version of his self-administered test, he was like the smartest person in the upper midwest and always had trouble in school because they didn’t have things that were capable of keeping someone of his intellect adequately engaged. But, since pure intellect will always win out, he is due to be promoted to behind the bar at Applebee’s any day now. Funniness: Kayla says that she is fine being last in IQ as long as she can be top three in funniness. I strongly doubt that she is anywhere near last in IQ, but she is a safe bet to be top three humorist. @Marcannem96 is probably the funniest, but Musket and CDP are really funny, too, and truthfully we can all be pretty funny if the mood strikes. Daryl wins any Dad-joke contest... # of Children/Grandchildren: Rex is the runaway grandchild winner, since he is the only one with any. There really isn’t anyone else who is particularly close...the next oldest children (Rebecca’s, Marc’s, Musket’s) are still in college and (hopefully) not working to make any of them grandparents imminently. On the children front: Marc has 3, Rebecca has 3 and Mo, Musket, Dan and I all have two, although those underachievers needed two pregnancies to do it. CC, JR and Kayla all have one and CDP, Rascal and Daryl just get to sleep in every day and wear clothes without (someone else’s) chocolate stains. And one of us is about to have another:-) Education level I think Mo is the champ here, since she is a JD, which makes her a Doctor...a Doctor of Laws! Beyond that, we have a bunch of graduate degrees, which mostly just means that we wasted time and money in school while Marc was busy golfing... Submitted by: Daryl What is there to do on Nantucket other than writing limericks? This question made me giggle-snort...maybe Daryl’s best corny joke yet. Also, for those that were maybe curious, based on all of the data available, men on Nantucket do not, in fact, have genitalia large enough that, in concert with their flexibility, they are capable of self-fellating. I mean, I can’t say that I have done a scientific study or anything, but,...you know what, I am just gonna move on from this. Seems like as good a time as any to wrap it up here...until next week!!! |
MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
January 2024
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