Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on Monty

   I was on a reading-the-high-school-classics kick in my 50s, and Moby Dick was on my list. A friend who read it in high school warned me off of it, so I removed it.

2. 3 days ago on Monty

   I read it when I was too young to see the movie. My mother brought it home from the lost & found in the middle school where she worked. The movie had just come out and I was anxious to see what the fuss was about.

   More boring than the movie for a 14 year old, of course. I didn’t care for the sex scene. It did not damage me; I just thought it was a waste of pages. I guess you could say I didn’t understand it.

3. 6 days ago on Drabble

   Oil changes are the quintessential practice that “no car repairs” rules are meant to prohibit, so I have seen versions of the rule that specifically include “fluid changes” as one of the prohibited repairs (because many people have noticed like you that an oil change isn’t technically a repair).

4. 6 days ago on Drabble

   But that wouldn’t work. When you try to organize your neighbors to eliminate or scale back the HOA, you find out your neighbors like things the way they are. They’re the ones who don’t want you to have all the freedom you want to do stuff in the neighborhood. Your neighbors are the HOA.

5. 6 days ago on Drabble

   How can you possibly justify denying HOAs to people who want them? Sounds pretty selfish.

6. 16 days ago on Drabble

   Good for you. I hate it when people move into a governed community and then gripe about there being rules.

7. 17 days ago on Doonesbury

   As I recall, getting more power plants built was not Enron’s goal. Enron cornered the market, which allowed it to do monopoly pricing. With monopoly pricing, the highest profit isn’t always from selling the most product, so Enron arranged to sell less power.

   The electricity market was still somewhat regulated, though, andEnron wasn’t legally allowed to simply refuse to sell power. So it did things like claim a plant had to be shut down for maintenance.

8. 21 days ago on Baby Blues

   I suffered the same dread of the dentist at that age, but don’t anymore. I’m 60.

   And it’s not because I’m older; dentistry has changed. When I was a kid, even the shot to keep the procedure from hurting hurt. And the dentist didn’t care. He once announced he was going to drill me without anaesthetic because the cavity was so shallow. When I screamed loud enough he had to change his plan, he called me a baby.

   Consequently, when my mother stopped making dentist appointment for me, I stopped going. I finally screwed up the courage to go back when I was a senior in college.

   And hygiene wasn’t very good either, so I always had cavities. I learned how to floss from that college appointment. And sealants stop cavities too now.

9. 23 days ago on For Better or For Worse

   But I doubt a dog can swim against a flood current, even without a thrashing person in tow. Dog paddle is not an especially effective stroke.

10. about 1 month ago on Pickles

    I was around 18 years old in 1980 when I first heard of taking one’s shoes off — it was an Asian cultural thing. It was probably another 20 years before I heard of non-Asians doing it.

    I myself will never live in a shoes-off house. It’s just too much hassle; I’d rather clean the floors and remove the carpets.

    Actual muddy shoes are different matter – those get removed at the door and cleaned.