Ask Alex - June 16, 2017

Don't Ever Listen to Mo

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.

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Warning!!! Alex is super hungover and likely to give out particularly poor advice as a result. But that’s not going to stop her from doing it. She is also taking solace in her Thursday drinking buddy being substantially more hungover and suffering through it a whole lot more:-).

I am still working through old questions that came out of #MisfitMischief a couple of weeks back, so I have one new one this week about Dungeons and Dragons and then a bunch of old ones about food, hot chicks, baseball players and dating problems...

Let’s get to it!!!

Submitted by: Sicariothrax
If you were playing Dungeons and Dragons with @molratty @ThomasHCrown @TheRoadbeer @Hella_Right & @PolitiBunny what's your class?

My class would probably be something like “Dungeons and Dragons 101: How the fuck do I play Dungeons and Dragons?”

Buddy, you can’t ask me a Dungeons and Dragons question at Midnight on Thursday and expect me to read up on the game before I post this on Friday! I have, like, a job...and stuff. Also, as I have already mentioned, I am a little banged up today and reading comprehension is not going to be my strong suit.

My searching tells me that a character's “class” is, more or less, its occupation. And using the 5th Edition Player’s Handbook, I learn that there are 12 classes: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard and Warlock. Right off the bat, this little traveling party is in trouble because we brought a bunch of lawyers, a PE Bro-chick, a Twitchy editor and whatever Roadbeer is. Those don’t really seem like the most valuable set of skills if we are trying to, like, I dunno...capture a dragon or something.

Is that what you do in Dungeons and Dragons? Capture dragons and put them in dungeons? If so, then I have some really bad news...if Game of Thrones is to be trusted, then putting a dragon in a dungeon is not a very good idea at all. It serves to make the dragons really, really angry, and when they eventually break out (which they will) they are going to have a lot of rage to take vengeance for. Unless you are a Targaryen, your face is likely to get melted off.

{Digression...I think that Quentyn Martell’s storyline in A Song of Ice and Fire is my favorite example of the care that George RR Martin takes in writing these stories. He invested a huge part of a book into developing several complicated and layered characters and giving them a tenuous and difficult mission. All of that build up was for the purpose of one single paragraph that leads the reader to think “Wow...that seemed sudden”. You can’t surprise a reader unless you break the norms of storytelling, and nobody does that better than Martin does. I don’t know of any other author that would devote that much time, effort, detail and care into such a short payoff that is so minimally relevant to the broader story arc that it was entirely cut from the show}

OK...fine...here goes. I’ll start by making @molratty the Cleric, since she seems to be the sort of all-around fighter/healer/magic user that we can use on this adventure. Clerics seem to be leaders, and I will gladly follow her into any dangerous cave that she sends me. Actually, wait...Mo keeps telling me to do stupid stuff that I end up regretting the next day, so maybe this was a bad idea. Too later, she’s in charge and we are moving on.

I’ll make @ThomasHCrown the Paladin because he seems like he would make a pretty good holy knight. There doesn’t seem to be a character whose greatest skill is “getting his wife pregnant”, so I am going to have to take him a little out of his comfort zone. Crusading for good and order while casting divine spells seems like it would fit, though.

Bunny is gonna be the Fighter. I mean...she seems like a master swordswoman to me, and I trust her to use skill, strategy and tactics as needed to tear up some serious shit on the battlefield. I’ll let her choose her weapon, but I am going to put in a vote for a huge black battle ax, cause that seems pretty bad-ass.

RoadBeer can be the Barbarian. I am doing this exclusively because there are two kinds of Barbarians - Totem Warrior and Berserker - and I really wanted an excuse to link to this clip. You can go ahead and guess what kind of Barbarian he is going to be. Also...we are definitely bringing road sodas with us on this adventure. In fact, I vote that he hire a bartender to bring along and mix us drinks along the way.

Bella is going to be our Monk...looking all non-threatening and passive in her robe, right up until she busts out some Jiu Jitsu shit and breaks your skull wide open!

And I am going to make myself the Rogue, because she seems like a super sneaky bastard, and that is right up my alley. I have no problem cutting a bitch that needs cutting. There are also three kinds of Rogue’s, and you bet your woolen britches I’m gonna be the Assassin...

OK...now onto the backlog of old questions!

Submitted by: Lunatic Rex
Which is the better breakfast concoction, haggis or black pudding?

Goddamnit, Rex...I already told you I am hungover, cut it out with this shit! Talking about eating animal intestines and sausages made out of pig's blood is not going to solve this queasy stomach. [Update: an ice creak cookie sandwich for lunch did!]

The answer is pretty easy, though...haggis is better because it has more in it and a lot more flavor (doubly better if it is in artificial casing). The organ meat might make you a little squeamish, but it’s a lot more flavorful than what goes into black pudding, and it is supplemented by minced onion and spices. When you add in the oatmeal to bulk it up a bit, it becomes a legitimately nuanced and flavorful dish. I can see where the texture would get to you, but there is nothing bad about it really.

Black pudding, on the other hand, is just fat, oatmeal and pork blood. Taste-wise, it’s not that bad...it’s heavily salted and the texture of hamburger, more or less. But the color is really disconcerting: it’s legit black like squid ink. Also, the Brits insist on eating it for breakfast, which seems like a pretty retched way to start the day but shouldn’t be surprising out of a people whose culinary traditions can generally be summed up as “Boiling all food until it is devoid of color and flavor.”

Speaking of which, I am not a big breakfast eater. I know that puts me in the minority, and I love bacon like any Constitution-loving American does, but I am not a fan of big, heavy breakfasts. I feel like it just sits in my stomach all day long like a bowling ball and makes me feel sluggish and gross. That won’t stop me from eating chocolate cake for breakfast, mind you, but I generally avoid heavy, greasy breakfasts. Hangover or not.

Submitted by: CDP
Is Marilyn Monroe really just the Derek Jeter of attractive actresses?

My favorite part of this question is that I don’t understand the analogy at all!!!

But, if we are asserting that both of them are overrated and not as good looking as their reputation? Then fine...I will run with it!

Marilyn Monroe confuses me more as a pop culture icon than anyone else. She wasn’t a good actress, even though she did nothing but play a dumb blond. She’s not that attractive (oh, don’t give me shit over this...you know it’s true. She’s an average looking movie-blond with a super-annoying, always drugged-out lazy eye thing going on.) I know she gets points for getting naked on camera before everyone did it, and for establishing the standard formula for being an otherwise talentless “sex symbol”, but that is about it.

And Jeter, as we all know, looks like The Rock had sex with a Muppet.

Jeter was also a better baseball player than Monroe was an actress. Sure, he isn’t even one of the ten best Yankees of all time, was only the best player on his own team once (1999), has a wholly undeserved reputation for being a great postseason performer, hurt his team for ten years by refusing to cede his Shortstop position to the demonstrably superior Alex Rodriguez and should be ashamed to have accepted at least his last two Gold Gloves, but he was undeniably a great player.

It isn’t his fault that the New York media insists on blowing everything that happens in New York out of proportion to the point that they claimed, almost straight-faced, that Jeter was nearly as good as Tom Brady. He showed up every day for 20 seasons, played the game the right way, won a bunch of stuff and was a credit to his team, the fans and the sport.

The biggest differences, though, are in the way they conducted their private lives. Jeter managed to live in the most intense media market in the country as the face and spokesman of its most visible institution. He did it without ever angering anyone or causing controversy or speaking out of turn. He rarely made a PR misstep despite having landmines around him at all times. OK, so there was this, but you can admit that that is kinda of awesome. Marilyn Monroe couldn’t walk down the street without accidentally becoming a heroin addict or wrapping her car around a tree.

While Monroe managed to get married and divorced three times before she was 35, Jeter avoided getting married at all until he was over 40. This may actually be Jeter’s greatest accomplishment...he dated a bevy of A-List bombshells in their prime, moved on before they got fat or crazy (looking at you, Mariah), milked every ounce out of being the biggest celebrity and most eligible bachelor in Manhattan, and then finally married right before he fell off the edge of his dating peak. Oh, and his wife is better looking than Joe DiMaggio’s!

So, final analysis...I can see some potential in the analogy, but I am ultimately rejecting it. Jeter was better than Monroe.

However, I will state unequivocally: Marilyn Monroe is the Joe Namath of attractive actresses.

Submitted by: Raymond
I just found out the man I am dating loves Bernie Sanders. What do I do?

How committed are you to being gay? Mike Pence was telling me about some conversion therapy that does really amazing things these days…

Or wait...do you mean “love” like “used to date and is still in love with”? Cuz that is a whole other beast, both because it is no way to start a relationship and because I don’t know how you could be around a guy who was sexually attracted to Bernie Sanders...that’s fucking weird.

In all seriousness, though, this is an interesting topic...how different can the politics of two people be who maintain a healthy relationship? I feel like there have been a bunch of stories and anecdotes about things like this recently, most often along the lines of “can I date someone who likes Donald Trump?” but not exclusively written by people on the left.

Clearly, having similar politics makes a relationship easier. It is one more thing you have in common and one less thing to argue over. But it is by no means a necessity, and there are millions of perfectly happy couples who clash over political philosophies. I wouldn’t say that my husband and I clash, (I’m not sure we’ve ever had an actual “fight”, to be honest) but we certainly have different political views. He is a pretty classic Massachusetts suburban liberal (not to be confused with a Cambridge/Newton/Brookline liberal, who is nuts, or a Boston working class liberal, who is socially quite conservative) and I tend to skew a little more libertarian. Certainly we agree on more than we disagree on, but there are still some pretty big differences.

And there are lots and lots of people just like us, although usually the women tend to be more liberal than the men. Some of my fellow Misfits have acknowledged in the past that they have spouses from different spots on the political spectrum, and at least one of them was publicly shamed by a certain group of bloggers that everyone hates that I won’t mention. There are, if that is any proof, plenty of people who simply feel like it is either intellectually dishonest or morally unacceptable to love someone with whom you disagree, but I think that, on this (like so many other things) they are just straight wrong.

Reasonable people disagree, and they also identify their partners by more than their political beliefs. Heck, James Carville and Mary Matalin manage to maintain a seemingly wonderful marriage despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum and both being professionally submerged in that during every minute of every day. People can make it work if they really want to.

So, I guess I would say that you should view this guy as an entire person who has engaged your fancy for some reasons that are probably obvious to you. Clearly you disagree with his criteria for good Presidential candidates, but there is no reason you can’t work past that.

Especially if he is super hot...that kind trumps everything else. Unless you already broke up, in which case I hope that bitch-whore dies in a fire with all the other leeching, flea-ridden socialists.

Up Next Week: Anonymous in Fayetteville asks “I’m dating a guy who roots for the University of Arkansas. What should I do?”