Lament 3: Cry Hard With A Vengeance

[Flagg]

Yeah the uppers are a piece of cake, it's the lowers that suck, especially since its hard not to get dry socket.

[RogueIce]

according to the dentist, upper wisdom teeth (like mine) are easy peasy lemon squeazy, they can be out in under a minute (not counting the time for the anaesthetic to kick in), and it's the lower ones that are the real problem.

Well the ones I got out were lower so

anyway the important thing to take away from this is that all of you that went 'omg go for general anaesthetic' are a bunch of wimps

fuck you

Also when I had it down they did not pull cleanly. So they started cutting. And then pulled some more. It took awhile and I'm pretty sure the dentist was getting annoyed. And the Novocain didn't work for shit.

So yeah. It sucked.

[Questor]

On wallets, I have two setups:

Every day in my local area (low crime, pickpockets would probably be publicly beheaded to entertain the masses, and if you think I'm joking, as Joviwan):
Front right main pocket: keys
Little sub-pocket of front right pocket or right jacket pocket: phone
left pocket or inside jacket pocket: wallet
Wallet, keys and phone go in desk when at work, or on box by front door (with charger) at home.

Places where mugging/pickpocket/"official demands" are common:
Back right pocket: Throw wallet with expired credit cards, a couple bucks (local currency) change, voided/damaged ID
front right pocket: same set up as at home
wallet goes in hidden compartment in my bag or zippered compartment in jacket (mostly used in moscow, less so in ME).

Note, I tend to use drastically different setups when wearing different clothes than usual/different environments.

[joviwan]

Every day in my local area (low crime, pickpockets would probably be publicly beheaded to entertain the masses, and if you think I'm joking, as Joviwan):

They will cordon off individual square feet of brown grass in an otherwise green patch, and post a sign that says "Landscaping in progress"

A pedestrian walking home at night after 10pm will have two squad cards and a plain clothes officer question them.

They send two cars to take reports of stolen bicycles.

They'll pull you over to give you a warning or even a ticket if you wear earphones while biking.

Apartment management will post letters to your door for every day you have something on your patio that can be seen over the fence.

[timmy]

Jesus christ, do you live on The Truman Show or what?

[Oxymoron]

Sorry we blew all the budget on law enforcement, there's nothing left for community services and school subsidies.

[Bakustra]

*wisdom teeth chat

I don't have wisdom teeth.

[joviwan]

Jesus christ, do you live on The Truman Show or what?

It's a wealthy suburban city full of mostly upper/middle class, with an obnoxious cost of living. They go so far out of their way to maintain the image of the city that it's basically a business. It's been rated safest city in the US multiple times, and the schools are actually pretty good, I think, but it comes with some weird caveats, like a large population of bored suburban youth with nothing to do but recreational drugs, and it's one of the bike-theft capitals of the US as well, or has been in the past.

But these caveats are all extremely invisible. Nobody ever sees a homeless person, for example, because they're usually picked up and taken to other cities or something. If you are caught stealing a bike or picking a wallet, three or four squad cars will show up to solve the problem.

[RogueIce]

Sounds awesome. What's the name?

[Infinity Biscuit]

I hope you're being sarcastic about the sounding awesome, especially the whole "treat the homeless...ness problem by exiling or disappearing them" thing.

[Oxymoron]

How do you think they pay for all these patrol cars ? They just sell the homeless to the Big Pharma corps.

[RogueIce]

I hope you're being sarcastic about the sounding awesome, especially the whole "treat the homeless...ness problem by exiling or disappearing them" thing.

I was seeing if anyone would confuse me with Ryan Thunder.

I suppose it'd be nice if the homeless people were ending up in shelters or something like that, but unless there's a fuckload of charities or the city/county government is really generous in their social programs probably not.

[Questor]

I hope you're being sarcastic about the sounding awesome, especially the whole "treat the homeless...ness problem by exiling or disappearing them" thing.

I was seeing if anyone would confuse me with Ryan Thunder.

I suppose it'd be nice if the homeless people were ending up in shelters or something like that, but unless there's a fuckload of charities or the city/county government is really generous in their social programs probably not.

I'd say there's a combination of two things going on, the first is that the city actually does have some of the best social programs in the area, and there is low-income housing** as well as shelters and other types of services, they're just hidden behind a facade of affluence.

The second is that even more important that the "active" exclusion efforts that Jovi is hinting at (which - aside from the enforcement of loitering laws* - are far less common than most residents think, just like the police force is MUCH smaller than it seems) are the passive exclusionary traits. Gas is 5-15% more expensive, food about the same and service oriented businesses generally have about a 20% premium. The ability to scavenge from parks and the like is drastically reduced because of aggressive maintenance programs by the city (Trash cans are generally mounted and covered to prevent litter, emptied quite often, that sort of thing, HOAs prevent leaving trash cans accessible).

I have my own gripes with the city and its residents (we can start with the burgeoning insanity that is the "Great Park" and continue to some of the more eccentric denizens of the south side of the city), but the implication that there is a mass exile of the homeless and poor at the point of a gun is false. The truth is far more insidious, and far harder to fit for a black hat. A lot of the reputation just comes from the fact that the city, school district and university just give a crap. Vandalism is repaired quickly, potholes are patched, parks are well kept, preventative maintenance is done, I have a really hard time faulting the city for that kind of thing.

* In general, assume all laws are enforced at maximum effort in Irvine, even the curfew is enforced, and I've never lived in another town that could say that.

** This includes the most affluent looking Habitat for Humanity neighborhood I've ever seen.

[joviwan]

Sorry, I probably should have afforded to be less flippant/inaccurate than I was. Questor's on the ball about all of this. It's just easy to poke fun at the city for rigorous, meticulous grass maintenance as a counterpoint to the real problems families face trying to live there.

I haven't paid much attention to the city politics or the Great Park, partly because apathy and partly because I don't actually live there, but I grew up there and went to one of its better high-schools (with Questor), which is where most of my experience with the city comes. *

The low-income housing is a bit of a gas, though. I've known people who lived in some of the city's examples of it, and they scratched by on the skin of their teeth, but I don't think anyone should call it 'affordable'.


*the crack about pedestrians walking home happened to a friend of ours: he was walking home from my house one night wearing a dark coat. A plainclothes walks up and starts asking questions, then tries to ask leading questions about if he has any drugs. A bit later, two patrol cars roll up and they all question him. When friend reveals that yes, he's walking home, his dad--oh by the way he's the Fire Captain for the area--was expecting him soon. They apologize, let him go, and then his dad learns that that plain clothes guy got shit for weeks about it at the PD.

[Questor]

Yeah, I tend to be very specific when talking about the city, partly because Irvine politics fascinate me, and partly because the continued existence and success of the city has contributed so much to my own personal philosophy.

Irvine is in many ways proof that if you take Libertarian ideals, optimize relentlessly for a single specific kind of self interest (in this case, property value), plan meticulously, and pursue that goal with a relentlessness, single-mindedness, flexibility, ability and luck that would make a David Weber heroine envious, you can produce results that are almost identical to liberal ideals. Hand to God, if you could come up with a direct way to link medical care to property values, Irvine would have public health care to put the best European country to shame, and they'd do it more efficiently than anywhere else in the world, and no one would be able to articulate how it happened.

[Stofsk]

You guys have a curfew? And it's actually enforced? Wow.

[joviwan]

For reals.

[Questor]

Yup, Yoof can not be out alone after 11 on unless returning from a school event, though in my experience the cops were pretty lenient on interpretation of this one, I can remember many times we bandos were at Del Taco well after midnight after a football game, but we weren't exactly causing havoc either.

[timmy]

There was talk about putting P-platers on a curfew here Chris, with them not allowed on the street between the hours of 11pm-7am. It was killed because it would be too complicated with the shift workers and the apprentice bakers(no, really).

[evilsoup]

are curfews a common thing in the USA?

[The Spartan]

For kids? Yeah, it seems to be not-uncommon in the suburban areas. In rural areas, it seems to be less so. I'm not sure about urban areas.

[Gands]

There was talk about putting P-platers on a curfew here Chris, with them not allowed on the street between the hours of 11pm-7am. It was killed because it would be too complicated with the shift workers and the apprentice bakers(no, really).

That makes sense. I could never understand why passenger limits never took off as a thing for P platers.

[RyanThunder]

Oh, we do that here. Curfews too.

Yeah, I tend to be very specific when talking about the city, partly because Irvine politics fascinate me, and partly because the continued existence and success of the city has contributed so much to my own personal philosophy.

Irvine is in many ways proof that if you take Libertarian ideals, optimize relentlessly for a single specific kind of self interest (in this case, property value), plan meticulously, and pursue that goal with a relentlessness, single-mindedness, flexibility, ability and luck that would make a David Weber heroine envious, you can produce results that are almost identical to liberal ideals. Hand to God, if you could come up with a direct way to link medical care to property values, Irvine would have public health care to put the best European country to shame, and they'd do it more efficiently than anywhere else in the world, and no one would be able to articulate how it happened.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. You admit up front that the city's success is improbable, but it's still affected your personal philosphy. Why is that?

Why not just accept that they're successful in spite of their ideals, rather than because of them?

[Questor]

I'll probably elaborate more later, but you're reading more into that statement than is intended.

Unlike most, I don't care what route you take to get to the places I agree with, as long as you get there.

I could not disagree more with the lines of reasoning used by the city to make its decisions, but I think most of the end results are laudable.

Put simply, unlike my perception of most of humanity, I don't care why you are a good person as long as you are.

[RyanThunder]

Well, it only really matters in this case because it affects how long they're likely to stay that way.