Tag: neighbors

Extremely Bad Advice – Snowy Situation

Published on by SJLeave a comment

DEAR SJ: How can I get my husband to take it easy on shoveling snow?

Every time it snows, my husband goes out with his shovel and scrapes our driveway. Then he scrapes the sidewalks for about five or six houses each direction from ours. He says he “has to” because he knows there are people walking dogs and he wants to make a nice path for them.

The thing is, none of the other neighbors shovel their driveways or sidewalks, so he’s the only one in the area putting himself out. It’s a problem for me because after he’s done, his back hurts so much that he just sits on the couch all day and complains, making me bring him coffee and snacks. I’ve tried talking with him about it, getting him to ease up and just do our driveway, because that way he wouldn’t hurt so much, but he says it’s the right thing to do, so he’s going to keep doing it.

How can I get him to stop doing so much for other people who don’t appreciate it?

— Snowy Chloie

Dear Snow-job,

You don’t. You don’t get him to stop doing so much for other people.

That’s not the problem. Neither is his back pain, his complaints and demands on you, or the fact that others don’t appreciate his service. You wanna know what the problem is? It’s you. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Don’t you see? The reason that we’re in this situation is not that other people don’t shovel their sidewalks and therefore your husband has to. We are here because you have this irrational belief that your husband, and you by extension, do not owe your community anything beyond not farting in front of them in line at the bank. That’s a ridiculously smooth-brained perspective that, up until about a hundred years ago, would have resulted in your starvation at the first bad harvest.

What has this world come to that we’ve gotten to the place where people doing something good for someone else is now a bad thing?

Read the rest on Patreon.

Disgusted By Modern Life

Published on by SJLeave a comment

A few weeks ago I saw a beautiful picture in the local weekly paper. A happy couple, dressed up in their finest attire, kissing with passion. I’m pretty sure it was these people:

2018-04-07
http://nostalgiaphotographystl.com/weddings

Now, I don’t have anything against weddings. Hell, I had one myself. Flowers, pretty dress, booze, rain, fraternity brothers hitting on sorority sisters, pictures in a book, tears, dancing, falling asleep before you could consummate, the whole works.

Weddings are fine things. They’re fun, they’re exciting, they’re a momentous occasion. I think they should be special.

I also think they should be reasonable. And what’s unreasonable about the picture I saw, in that newspaper, was that it was a full-page advertisement. For a bank.

Your Perfect Day

We’ll help you pay for it.

Wedding Loans as low as 4.99% APR

Special Rate through March 31

Ugh. Disgusting. We have now sunk so low as a society where this is acceptable. Where going into debt for an experience is considered reasonable. Where people who don’t have enough money to support themselves somehow think borrowing money is going to solve that problem.

Where bank executives, driven by profit targets, see an untapped opportunity and instead of counseling people to, perhaps, I don’t know, LIVE WITHIN THEIR MEANS!, reach out and collect interest from those who would likely be better off delaying the party for a year in order to save for it properly.

Where “investors”, a.k.a. you and me in our 401(k)s, seek ever higher and higher returns, driving bank executives to predatory practices, driving advertisement that indebtedness is a good thing to people who really shouldn’t be borrowing and are too naive to know better, driving dissatisfaction with life and the marriage, driving, ultimately, a negative cycle of emotion and action.

Don’t get me wrong – borrowing can have its good uses. Mortgage on a house, college loans, even auto loans are all using money to create more value for those who borrow. But borrowing to have a party? Putting yourself even further behind as you start your relationship? Seems ridiculous and short-sighted on the part of those who are taking out the loans, seems predatory for those who are making them, and seems negligent for those friends and family members who are sitting around and encouraging it.

Please stop this modern merry-go-round. I’m sick, and I want to get off.

Extremely Bad Advice – Sloppy Neighbors

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Dear SJ: My neighbor has been inviting us over for dinner for months. We went once and were quite disgusted. The place was a mess. Pizza boxes on the floor, dirty clothes all over, old newspapers and mail covering all the counters, and the cat’s litter box is right in the middle of the room with little pieces scattered in front. We had to move decades-old piles of food trash to sit at the dinner table, and even then I could barely see my wife on the other side. I can’t imagine that these people raised two children in a house like this. I am not interested in going again. So far we’ve been able to have convenient “plans” every Friday with my wife’s teaching schedule. However, the semester has come to an end so they know we’re no longer busy on Friday nights. How can we politely decline this invitation?

Yours, CONFLICTED IN CHICAGO

All right, here’s the deal, Conflicted. It’s clear from the situation inside the house that these people don’t give a shit about themselves or you. If they’ve let the place go half as much as I imagine it’s probably just a month away from being featured on a Hoarders: Special Edition episode. In situations like this, remember: It’s not about the stuff. It’s about the imbeciles behind the piles.

This couple is so dense they can’t see the feces right in front of their faces. [Hahaha! Made myself laugh with that one.] Instead of building a better future for the next generation, people like this and their progeny are lowering the average IQ of their community, the state, and, unfortunately for the rest of us, the nation. This couple puts paid the adage “Some people shouldn’t breed.” And the sad part is they’ve most likely trained their children to do the same. Thus, since you and I have a vested interest in making this world better, the solution is obvious.

You need to take a Molotov cocktail to their place when they’re sleeping one Saturday night. Now, I say Saturday, because, just like anal sex, I’m going to ask you to take one for the team soon. It’s not great in the moment, but you know the outcome is going to be totally worth it.

The next Friday they invite you over, you need to accept their invitation. Go, have that dinner of expired kibble with the side of dried-up roach wings. Wipe your mouth with the cum-stained sweat socks they offer you as napkins. Excuse yourself for a minute after dinner, and that’s when you and your wife have the most critical task: find and disable all their smoke detectors. It’s not enough just to remove the batteries – you’ve got to get in there and cut the wires. And you’ve got to be good – we don’t want any unfortunate misses on this one.

Then, on Saturday, make sure to call those kids and remind them how much mommy and daddy miss them, want to see them, and really, really, really need them to come home for the night. If you can do that, we’ll all owe you a debt of gratitude. And don’t worry – your conscience will be clear as a forest stream for all the good work you’ve done. Good luck, and happy snipping!