I need to put this in your head, because it’s in mine.
And I’m not even that big of a Star Wars fan. But somehow, I never noticed that the Indiana Jones theme slid into Star Wars too.
For some reason, when I’m trying to get somewhere, and the route is tricky, I get the Indiana Jones theme in my head. And now, my office has moved to a great big cavernous building, and whenever I’m trying to navigate out of the building or into the office or through the train platforms, the Indiana Jones song pops up in my head, now with words that make me laugh.
This must be kind of old, but it’s new to me and it still cracks me up, so enjoy.
I don’t spend a lot of time reading advice columns anymore, but now and then I’ll see a headline that catches my eye and I’ll check it out. Such was the case with “My husband has no ‘bros.’ Should I be worried?”, and I’m not sure whether or not I’m glad I did. In a sense I suppose I am since it’s given me something to write here today, but if this is the sort of advice they’re doling out on the regular now, woof.
Here’s the question:
QI’ve been married to the love of my life for 14-plus years, and we have two beautiful pre-teen children. He’s a loving, devoted father involved in all aspects of their lives. They idolize him.
I’m writing about my love’s lack of personal relationships outside of work. He has some childhood friends (males), but I’ve only met them a handful of times at our house over 10 years ago (a surprise party for him). We’re now both 40.
He gets along well with his colleagues. One even invited to him to visit their cottage on a weekend.
I’ve spoken to my husband about the importance of nurturing relationships beyond me/the kids/his family. But he’s content to be introverted and at home 90 per cent of a weekend, except for when he visits relatives.
I’ve encouraged him to join social groups or a league but he shuts me down and once asked me if I have a problem with him always being around.
He says that he’s already experienced friends, hanging out and partying in his bachelor days.
I yearn for him to have at least one male friend he can meet up with periodically, invite over, etc. but he’s not interested. It also feels weird when my friends visit for functions and ask how come they’ve never met my hubby’s friends.
My husband’s a confident man, happy by himself, yet I feel it’s not “normal” for him to not have “bros” to call to vent. Any suggestions?
Or, is this more my issue than his?
Unsocial Partner
And this is the answer:
AYes, it’s your issue, and that’s a good thing because writing about it marks the first step in finding out why.
Facts: You describe a near-perfect partner and home life. You have your own women friends so you’re not lacking for female company.
Something else is bothering you. Also, there’s no mention of your actual relationship together — he’s your “love” but you don’t say whether he’s romantic, sexy, fun, etc. with you.
If it had stopped here, that would be great. But it did not do that.
More discovery’s needed as to why he’s “unsocial.” From his visits to relatives, maybe there’s a clue regarding his upbringing.
Start asking direct questions. Did something in his partying bachelor days cause his social retreat? Was alcohol a factor? Or some other significant factor?
Now, tell him directly why you’re upset, and how it does affect your life (and possibly your children’s).
If he won’t see a psychologist or psychotherapist to explore this with you, go on your own to discuss why he puts up a barrier against socializing.
What! In! The! Actual! Fuck!?
This woman is describing something that most of us, no matter our sex, would kill for. The love of her life. A happy, confident partner who gets along well with others, enjoys the company of his family more than running around who knows where doing who knows what, and who loves and is loved by his children. And the solution to this problem, (it’s not even a problem), is that *he* needs badgering and therapy? Are you out of your mind?
Allow me to offer you some actual good advice, because unless some rather important details have been left out, I can kind of relate to your husband here.
First of all, yes. This is 100% your problem. Something is bothering you, and you need to look inward to figure out what it is. Perhaps some counselling for you alone might be helpful to that end. Are you coming to realize that you’re not happy in the marriage? Are you looking for any little thing you can find to validate those feelings or perhaps even to sabotage the relationship? These are questions that only you can answer.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the answer to those questions is no. In that case, it’s important for you to keep a couple of things in mind.
Introverts exist, and that’s ok. Not desiring a complicated, busy social life is not a condition in need of fixing. It’s perfectly normal unless it marks a somewhat recent, extreme personality change. Your husband, as described, sounds a bitlike me. I have a nice handful of friends, many of whom I’ve known since childhood. I get along well in social situations. Can have a decent conversation and a nice time with almost anyone. I don’t have my own kids, but I’ve had and continue to have plenty of children in my life who love the hell out of me. But My favourite place to be is at home, either alone or with Carin. Having too many people around for too long is exhausting and I really don’t like it. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the reason I’m able to do so well around people is because I’m not constantly around people. If I were, there’s a more than 0 chance that I would be writing this from jail.
Couples need to be compatible, but not identical. If you want to have a giant circle of friends and a packed social calendar, that’s great. But you also need to accept and even embrace the fact that your partner does not value those things the way you do and then try to meet him half way. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of other aspects of your relationship, different interests are good, even if one of his interests is having people leave him alone. Carin doesn’t force me to go to book club, and I don’t force her to watch all of the sports. But we have plenty of things that we can enjoy together, and that’s what’s important.
If none of this makes sense to you and you do insist on changing your happy, confident husband, then my advice to you is simple. Keep pushing. Keep right on with the insistence on groups and leagues and psychoanalysis and whatever else. With enough effort, you might just wake up one day to find that your happy, confident husband has become your happy, confident ex-husband. Problem solved.
But if that isn’t what you want, then you need to get out of your own way and let this man be who he is. That’s been good enough to get you through 14 years of marriage. Why mess with a good thing? Do what you must to come to terms with it, because in the end, that’s what you’re going to need to do.
Red Hot Chili Peppers has always been one of those bands that I can take or leave. They have a couple songs I like (Soul To Squeeze, Under the Bridge, My Friends), and everything else ranges from meh it’s fine to it’s not fine but I’m not close enough to change it so whatever.
Because radio has been very good to them through the years, I’ve heard a lot of their songs a whole lot of times. Enough that you’d think that by now I’d have perhaps grasped the meanings of a few of them. But over and over again I hear a Peppers song and am left with the same question. What in the hell is this guy talking about? It’s not just me, either. I can’t count how many times I’ve been in a car with someone, especially someone a little older who still enjoys rock music up to a point, and that person has said some variation of that same thing.
All of that to say that this video here isn’t just what they sound like to people who don’t like them. It’s what they sound like to everyone, perhaps even themselves.
By the way, the transcript offered with this video is essentially useless. It catches a few lines, but for a lot of it it just says “music” and moves on with life. It’s a bit like me hearing a Peppers song, I suppose.
If you work in marketing for a bank and you often find yourself frustratedly wondering why it is that no matter how many humourous, tug at the heartstrings campaigns you launch into the world nobody fuckin’ likes your employer even the slightest little bit, this is why.
Louis Kavaratzis says his retirement plans are ruined after Canada Post misplaced a piece of registered mail that contained a certified cheque for $301,560 — money left for him in his late father’s will.
His brother, George Kavaratzis, sent the cheque from their father’s estate through registered mail from Campbellford, Ont., to Louis in Ayer’s Cliff, Que., on July 25.
But the cheque has seemingly vanished and the brothers have spent every day since trying to track it down with Canada Post, and to get TD Bank to stop or otherwise flag it and issue a new one. However, they say neither institution has offered much help.
After CBC Toronto contacted TD this week, it offered to issue a new cheque with the condition George sign an indemnity agreement, which means he would be held liable for the money if the original cheque is ever found and cashed by someone else.
George, quite rightly, told TD to blow him. I doubt that’s what he actually said, but he did decline the offer, has he should have. He also appears to be much nicer than most people, as evidenced by his proposal that he be liable for $150,000 if that should ever happen. This is quite different from the proposal I would have made, which is that the bank collectively gargle my nards and shove their agreement someplace uncomfortable in an unlubricated state.
To be clear, the idea that someone should sign this agreement isn’t the problem here if simply stopping payment isn’t an option. Someone should. But that someone should be Canada Post, a fact that should be obvious to anyone with an intellect any greater than that of Doug Ford and whoever told him the Greenbelt thing was a good idea. They’re the ones who quite obviously lost the money, so they’re the ones who should be on the hook for it. Why is this so hard?
Officers responded to a Walmart in Knoxville around 9 p.m. Saturday and found Donald Kirkland in possession of stolen items, the report stated.
Police said Kirkland ran from the officers but was eventually taken into custody.
Kirkland told the officers he had stolen three TVs, a karaoke machine and camping equipment from the retail store and was selling the items in the parking lot, according to the report.
No, you’re not wrong. He really did mean the Walmart parking lot. Yes, the same one.
What I want to know is whether he sold anything before the cops shut him down. If that Walmart is anything like the one near our house, there’s a decent chance he might have. Sure you know something illegal is probably going on, but you’re just so happy that there’s actually someone around to help you find items and get them paid for in a reasonable amount of time that you’re willing to overlook it.
No matter how smart and aware you are, you can get scammed. We have people in our family cleaning up after some bank fraud right now. Scam busting people have been tricked. Things happen. Sometimes rather sophisticated things. And then there’s this.
The pair started corresponding through Instagram on June 28, and the scammer claimed that he was a cosmonaut on board the International Space Station (ISS). He blamed the poor cell service aboard the orbiting space station for his lack of communication at times. Things between them quickly escalated when the fake astronaut professed his love to her, claiming that he would want to marry her once back on Earth. Except there was one problem, he simply could not get off the ISS unless he had enough money for a ride back to Earth.
In order to rendezvous with her online lover, the woman ended up sending him 4.4 million yen (about $30,000) so that he could hop on a rocket and leave the microgravity environment behind, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported. However, even long-distance love has a price limit, and the victim soon grew tired of the astronaut’s increasing monetary demands. After making a total of five money transfers between August 19 and September 5, she finally reported him to the police.
Credit to her for finally wising up, but this feels like one of those things that five, maybe ten seconds of thought tops could have prevented.
The cell phone thing, ok, I’ll let you have that. The space station doesn’t use a regular cell network, but it’s at least plausible to think that it might. We do have a lot of things in our lives because of space exploration. But reports say that the woman was also taken in by photos of space on the guy’s Instagram and by the fact that he knew the names of various space agencies. Just wait until she hears about Google.
But even that isn’t the worst of our problems.
I know governments tend to suck in a whole lot of ways, but unless a bunch of us missed a pretty important memo, going to space as an astronaut is still a round trip that they pay for. Even if you’re one of those rich assholes who buys his own seat on a rocket, they don’t leave you up there even though they should.
Something tells me that every night for these two might be a slow one.
In an effort to make sure that they would have a slow night on the job at Wendy’s, Ryan Boria and Amy Schaner hatched themselves one heckuva plan. According to police, the logic went that if the two could find a way to prevent customers from coming to the restaurant, they could rest easy and get paid for it. But how were they going to do that? You can’t just put up a sign that says “do us a solid and eat somewhere else, we’re lazy today.” So one or both of them came up with the bright idea of stopping traffic. That, police say, was accomplished by tampering with some nearby railroad tracks. Makes sense, I suppose. Dead people have no need for hamburgers.
Police said they arrested Ryan Boria, 34, of Tilden Township, on charges of causing or risking a catastrophe, criminal mischief, and reckless endangerment after surveillance cameras captured images of him messing with the train tracks near the Industrial Drive crossing on the evening of Friday, Aug. 26.
“There was another person involved that worked with him at Wendy’s by the name of Amy Schaner,” Cataldi explained. “They discussed putting a shunt on the tracks on their way to work.”
Why did they do it?
They told police they wanted their shift at the fast-food restaurant to go slow.
“During the interview, they told us that their intentions were that if the gates could malfunction and they could somehow block traffic, then that would prevent people from getting to Wendy’s, and they could have a slow night at work,” Cataldi said.
Police said Boria placed a makeshift device on the tracks that messed with the signal sensors, which meant the gates wouldn’t have gone down when a train approached the crossing, and a crash could have happened.
“Their dispatch center would not have determined that the signal was being disrupted,” explained Cataldi. “A crash could have absolutely occurred.”
There haven’t been any updates in the year since this happened, but at the time, the regular police, the railroad police and the FBI were all said to be involved in the investigation. The plan was to look into whether there was another, more sinister motive for the crime. Police explained that if it was found that terrorism was involved, there could be a jail sentence of up to 20 years. Or to put it another way, a lot of slow nights.
A bit late to the party on this one, but better late than never.
One of the worst parts of going to a restaurant as a blind person is the menu, for obvious reasons. In my experience the staff are generally pretty cool about going through things with you, but why should they have to? They’ve got enough to do. Yes, most restaurants have websites with menus on them here in 2023, but to put it mildly, most of them suuuuuuuuuuuuck. If you can read the menu at all which usually you can’t because it’s helpfully presented as either one big unreadable image or a series of them, it’s often out of date. Nothing quite like having your heart set on something delicious only to show up and find out that they stopped serving it four months ago.
So this is where, if it works as advertised, an app called Menus4All could be a serious game changer.
It boasts 1 million accessible, searchable, up to date restaurant menus for cities across the United States and Canada. A full list of those cities doesn’t appear to be available on the website which is unfortunate, but there’s a 14 day trial before the subscription kicks in that you can use to see how well it does in your area. That subscription is either $2.99 per month or $29.99 annually, which is more than reasonable if this thing is anywhere near as good as it claims to be. I’ll definitely be giving it a go. Even if my own city isn’t well represented, it could still be super handy when travelling to others that are.
At the moment it only appears to be available for iOS. You can find it here.
Maybe everybody knows this but me, but if you’re thinking about subscribing to YouTube Premium, do it directly through YouTube and not through the app on your iPhone if you can.
I’ve been considering signing up for a while. Google doesn’t exactly need my money, but I like to support things I find a lot of value in, plus having something I’m listening to interrupted by a three minute diatribe about stuck poop or doorbell cameras or shifty investments while I’m in the shower and can’t do anything about it is pretty frigging irritating. So when a trial offer for Premium popped up on my phone today, I was finally going to go for it.
…
And then I saw the price.
One month free, then $16.99 Canadian per month or $29.99 if you want a family plan, it said. That didn’t sound right. I was expecting something closer to $11 or $12. I knew I had heard those prices somewhere. Turns out I have. On the YouTube website. There, it’s $12.99 per month or $22.99 for a family plan. There’s even an option to pay $129.99 for an entire year if you want to go that route and a $7.99 per month student plan if you qualify for that.
I imagine the difference goes straight into Apple’s pocket since they’re notoriously greedy about anyone selling anything through an app without cutting them in. They don’t need my money either, especially when a much cheaper option exists.
By the way, these family plans that companies sell where the other account holders have to live in your household, can we bugger off with those? That’s garbage. If I’m paying for the accounts, what do you care who I give them to? Just take your money and get on with life.
Old man talking here, but why does every basic action and concept need a silly ass buzz word? Quiet quitting instead of just calling it doing your job as though you’re a properly adjusted person, for instance. It’s not even accurate, for Christ’s sake! When not going above and beyond what’s expected of you in return for no extra pay or benefit is considered quitting, things have gone horribly wrong.
And speaking of things going horribly wrong, just wait until you get to the second to last clip in this month’s blooper video and hear what they’re calling treating yourself to nice things now. I don’t want to spoil it, so let’s just say I can’t believe they expected anyone to make it through that story without something like this happening and leave it at that.