Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

This fight is for everything.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The words do not have to be perfect.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Saturday Night (Alright for Fighting) Open Thread

Saturday Night (Alright for Fighting) Open Thread

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The Watertown Meetup at Donahue’s came off splendidly, as far as I can tell — everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the people who had to leave early sounded genuinely regretful. My personal thanks to Sean/ Qkslvrwolf, JimB, Mary/Lahke, Ken & Betsy, Tom L, John & Ilana, Peter/ EFGoldman & Marilyn, and especially SiubhanDuinne, who gave us a reason to herd cats! (And apologies to those whose names I left off the list, I’m sure there are one or two people I’m forgetting.)

There was even talk of doing another meetup, at somewhere with round tables. The Helmand, across from the Galleria, was mentioned as a possibility. Also The Friendly Toast, in Kendall Square…
***********
In other Boston-centric entertainment, recently Kim Costa, Mayor of Medford (home of Tufts, one town over from Harvard) posted a Facebook rant that entertained a great many non-student residents. I spent fifteen years at a major Midwestern state university town before moving out here, and the residents of Lansing shared exactly the same resentments towards the bipedal cash crop:

Real quick reminder to all the college students coming back to Boston to continue their higher education. This is really important. This is something you are going to carry through your entire academic career in the 617 area code: nobody likes you, you’re a visitor here; an interloper. I want you to keep that in mind when you’re strutting through the crosswalk in Harvard Square with your pink popped collar and your fucking Banana Republic, date-rape slacks. You have been obsolete to me since my 21st birthday. No need for yah. I’m sure when you graduate you’ll want to move here cause it’s so awesome—and you’re right, we’re awesome. But people like you will be contained to places like Lexington and Concord, where you can live, and wear Tevas, and recycle, and have a kid when you’re 50 years old. And you know what, we probably won’t like them either. And with that, welcome back.

(via Boston Magazine)

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  3. 3.

    lamh36

    Evening BJ.

    So here I sit watching another Hallmark movie.See Jane Date. Ya know, I just can’t believe that someone would actually make up a date just to go to a wedding? Why? I’ve been single ALONG time, but I’d just not go or I’d just not even worry about it. So question of the day? Have you ever made up a boyfriend or girlfriend just to impress people? Or do you know anyone who has invented a BF/GF and you later found out that it was a lie.

  5. 5.

    raven

    @lamh36:

    In sports, actions speak louder than words. It is nearly impossible to evaluate Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o on the tangled web of words he has provided about a girlfriend, a woman he called the love of his life, who never existed.

    What is real about Te’o, what put him in the Heisman Trophy race and helped Notre Dame regain relevance, is his playing ability. Tackles, interceptions, instinctive displays of brilliance, those can’t be faked or fabricated with Twitter posts and Facebook photos. They’re real.

    We’re used to athletes being embroiled in embarrassing public scandals. Tales of infidelity, criminal activity, and performance-enhancing drug use are familiar athletic imbroglios. See: Tiger Woods, Michael Vick, and Lance Armstrong. But Te’o’s faux-mance with Lennay Kekua, a woman now said to be created by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo as part of an intricate online and telephone hoax, is one of the most bizarre and confounding sports stories in recent memory.

  6. 6.

    Suffern ACE

    Went to see Kristin Wiig’s new movie, the Skeleton Twins. It is probably the best movie I’ve seen in months. I would not be surprised if the leads get Golden Globes nominations, although no oscars. Suicide, depression, grief, child abuse are covered in the film, so it has to be a comedy, and oscars aren’t given to comedies.

  10. 10.

    mb

    I graduated from a little college in a little town. Some years prior to my matriculation, the resentment from the townies had reached a fever pitch. The president began to pay the faculty/staff with silver dollars. The town merchants were, subsequently, flooded with silver dollars. The resentment subsided substantially.

  14. 14.

    lamh36

    @raven: oh yeah, I remember him. But I thought it was that he did have a “girlfriend”, but it turned out to be a hoax. So it’s not the same thing as creating a mate out of thing air.

    Which is what this movie I watched seems to be about

  15. 15.

    MomSense

    Glad to hear that you had fun at the meet-up! As a Jumbo alum who also had family in Somerville, I love what Mayor Costa had to say. I may have been a student at Tufts but I was never really a Barney.

    Really needed the laugh tonight. Still no sign of our sweet kitty and our neighbor heard a commotion and saw a fox the night he went missing. It has been a very difficult couple of days. Also found out that one of the feral cats I trapped tested positive for feline AIDS. The plan was to spay him and return him to his neighborhood. Instead I’m going to go and sit with him tomorrow so he knows that someone cares for him.

  17. 17.

    Poopyman

    And Penn State scores its first touchdown of the game to take a lead over Rutgers with a minute left. Now just hanging on.

    Lotta cardiac candidates amongst the faithful all across the US tonight, kids.

  20. 20.

    raven

    @efgoldman: In Athens people kept bitching about all the untaxed property the university owns. There was talk of putting a tax on them so, when the university system built a new building they put it in a neighboring county.

  21. 21.

    MomSense

    @efgoldman:

    Of course, Harvard Square is just a shadow of what its used to be. Elsie’s and the Wursthaus are gone ~20 years. Now it’s just pretty much an outdoor mall.

    It turned into any town USA with the same chain stores that are everywhere. Sad. I loved going to Das Wursthaus. Please tell me that Schoenhof’s is still there.

  23. 23.

    raven

    @efgoldman: I should have mentioned that the adjacent county has been drawing lots of businesses out there and killing things here. Most of the people out there are white, upper-middle class and make their living at the university.

  25. 25.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Did I mention in the last thread that I sold a story? I think I did. Here’s the text of the email:

    Thank you for submitting Peaceful, Colorado. I am pleased to tell you
    that it has been accepted for inclusion in the group anthology. A
    contract will be sent shortly. Payment will come from Alban Lake
    Publishing.

    Cheers!
    Michael Merriam, Editor
    Minnesota Speculative Fiction Anthology Project

    I’m over the fucking moon right now.

  27. 27.

    Tenar Darell

    @lamh36: Honestly, there were a couple of times when my grandmother got on my case that I wished I had the guts to make up dates. Just to make her stop asking me all the time. But I was smart enough to realize that with the number of people needing to be fooled or warned off -aunts, uncles, cousins, not to mention Mom & Dad – well, I could never have pulled it off. That would make a great slapstick romantic comedy though. “Don’t Tell Grandma, My Fiancé(e) is Fictional…”

  31. 31.

    Mnemosyne

    Blogwhoring for the evening crowd: my promised piece on Night Nurse (1931) is finally up! I have most of Trouble in Paradise written, so now it’s a matter of creating the clips — hopefully I’ll be able to do that tomorrow and/or Monday.

    ETA: Don’t forget, if your cable package includes TCM, you can livestream all of this month’s movies directly to your computer even after the official air date — check the TCM website for instructions.

  32. 32.

    Suffern ACE

    @lamh36: I once made up a new boyfriend as a cover to deceive my roommates so that they wouldn’t know that I was seeing an ex boyfriend again, if that counts.

  33. 33.

    The Dangerman

    I’m not sure which makes me happier; UCLA surviving Texas without Hundley or BC taking out the Trojans.

    Ah, hell, call it a tie.

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    Never made up a boyfriend. I still think my family was half-convinced I was secretly a lesbian, so they were surprised when I brought G — an actual man — over for Thanksgiving.

  36. 36.

    srv

    Given that Boston has eleventy-billion colleges (that’s only a slight exaggeration), I don’t understand why they’re so stuck up about it. Colleges and med schools ARE the culture, without them, there wouldn’t be anything there there. Place would just be another Scranton.

    @lamh36: We just pick up hookers for our family weddings.

  38. 38.

    PurpleGirl

    @lamh36: I like to talk to taxi drivers, makes the rider go faster. Once in a taxi I elaborated on my boyfriend’s hobbies because the cab driver was asking way too personal questions. I suspect he was looking for an American woman for immigration purposes. Now my SO does do martial arts and he does call himself Cougar but it seem that he acted like a dangerous cat. I also told the driver that he was gett5ing way too personal. The driver did stop asking questions.

  40. 40.

    M31

    @Tenar Darell:

    “Honestly, there were a couple of times when my grandmother got on my case that I wished I had the guts to make up dates. ”

    A while ago, for some reason (don’t ask) I looked up “girlfriend” on eBay, and there were quite a few women offering to pretend to be your girlfriend for you. They’ll post on your facebook page, text you, etc.

    After your agreed-upon term was over you could renew, or they’d break up with you.

    From the number of African-American women offering that service, either the grandmas are especially troublesome, or it’s for men on the down-low. (Or both!) Or maybe for white guys with racist grandmas, to get them to shut up :-)

  41. 41.

    lahke

    Hi:
    Yes, meetup was great, and I’m sorry that I had to bail early. On the other hand, Jay Hunter Morris was singing for one night only, and Die Tote Stadt was magnificent. Looks like Boston is back to having two opera companies again, and Scranton it ain’t. Lots of great theatre here too, and if the students are helping keep all that afloat, more power to them.

  42. 42.

    ? Martin

    @The Dangerman: Come on – there are few things better in life than watching USC lose. Actually watching them lose isn’t that great – rubbing it in the face of all the smug-ass SC fans the next day is what’s great.

  43. 43.

    M31

    @efgoldman:

    “Albany, maybe. Or Providence. Boston’s the state capitol, after all. ”

    So Cambridge would be a town not too far from the capitol. So to keep with the Providence analogy, it’d be Pawtucket, or Woonsocket.

    [You have to go all the way to Pennsylvania to find a better town name than Woonsocket.]

  44. 44.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    Surprised the hell out of me. I really thought BC wouldn’t beat anyone except UMass this year.

    There was a rumor that, if they lost to USC, they were going to add MIT to their schedule.

  45. 45.

    lamh36

    @srv:heh, that’s another movie plotline. I kid ya not. There was a movie with Debra Messing (Grace of Will & Grace) called The Wedding Date, and in that one Dermott Mulrouney (sp?) played an “escort”, cause hooker was too vulgar?

    She hired him for her sister’s (Amy Adams) wedding who was actually marrying the older sister’s (Debra Messing) ex-boyfriend’s best friend (the sister btw, slept with the sister’s ex-boyfriend too or something weird like that).

    I thought to myself, well, isn’t it a crap shoot when hiring an Escort?

  47. 47.

    The Dangerman

    @? Martin:

    …there are few things better in life than watching USC lose.

    True, true, the list is short. Laker Girls bus breaking down in front of my place would probably top the list. Twins (no, not the movie) is in there someplace. Watching USC lose IS fairly close to the top.

  48. 48.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    If you are a science fiction fan and have not yet read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice you need to drop whatever else you’re doing and read it. It’s amazing. The ending is a bit weak but it doesn’t really matter because everything that has led up to it is stunning.

    There are authors I love, especially Guy Gavriel Kay and Jon Courtenay Grimwood, that I read and that encourage me in my writing. They may be better at it than I am but we are doing the same thing. I read them and I recognize the thought process and can think of myself in the same concept as them.

    Ancillary Justice is the kind of book I read that makes me question just what the fuck it is that I think that I’m doing. The character of Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen is absolutely picture perfect. She is interesting, believable, important and carries the story. And I would never have come up with anything like her.

    Fortunately, I’m confident enough in my writing that I don’t let something like that psych me out for more than 12-18 hours. Once I’ve slept on it I’m good to go again. But that moment in reading it when you realize that this author is doing something that you couldn’t do is exquisite. I just can’t recommend it highly enough.

  51. 51.

    Gravenstone

    Mayor Costa should know that most college students despise the “townies” as well. Probably because the “townies” cop such fucking attitudes about the students. Not that a percentage of students don’t richly deserve such disdain, but the majority are just looking to get through.

  52. 52.

    Little Boots

    okay, anyone, and some they will and some they won’t and some it’s just as well. what song is that stuck in my head?

  55. 55.

    Little Boots

    soooooo, syria. pain in the ass, huh. oh I wish I knew what to do about the whole middle east. probably just leave it alone. we do not know what the hell we are doing there

  57. 57.

    Hal

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Ancillary Justice keeps popping up on this site every couple of weeks. It must be slowly making it’s way around. I loved it. I said in a previous thread weeks ago I had been looking for a pure sci-fi novel to read since I hadn’t picked one up in a long time, and it really hit the spot. I was thrilled to read there is a sequel because I was left with so many questions.

    Leckie also just won a Hugo award in August for the book, so good for her. Now I’m just wondering if someone would make it into a sci fi mini series. I would be in heaven.

    EDIT: The other Hugo nominees also have great reviews, especially Neptune’s Brood, which Paul Krugman apparently loved.

    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
    Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross (Ace / Orbit UK)
    Parasite, Mira Grant (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
    The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books / Orbit UK)
    Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles, Larry Correia (Baen Books

  58. 58.

    Little Boots

    so no omnes? no steeplejack? no music?

    oh good god, john, the hell is happening to this place?

    no cornerstone?

  60. 60.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Hal: I don’t like Charlie Stross. His casual writing style does not appeal to me at all and I end up feeling like his stuff is very superficial. I read Saturn’s Children, to which Neptune’s Brood is a sequel and was wildly underwhelmed. I started reading Accelerando and gave up because I couldn’t develop any interest in it at all.

    It’s not like Neal Stephenson in that someone else saying that they like Stross doesn’t automatically lower my opinion of that person like praise for Stephenson does, but I’m not going to try reading him again.

  62. 62.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @efgoldman: I have 3 favorite teams: UCLA(undergrad), the University of Washington(grad & my dad graduated there), and ANYONE playing against U$C. Today was a good day.

  63. 63.

    Tenar Darell

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I know, right? The top of my head flew off reading that book. (I didn’t even feel bad that it’s the first of what will be a loose trilogy, which I usually hate accidentally getting into without warning).

  67. 67.

    Tenar Darell

    @M31: LOL. I certainly would have had to work a little harder than that to even find a fake “friend” in the 90’s.

  69. 69.

    Violet

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Congrats! That’s a wonderful achievement. Take it as a sign you’re doing the right things in your writing.

    @lamh36: I saw that movie–got some free preview ticket. Stupid but Dermot Mulroney is easy enough on the eyes.

    I may have made up a boyfriend at some point to get an annoying guy to leave me alone. I know gay men who made up girlfriends. And a next door neighbor in college, a lesbian, made up a boyfriend. Hopefully as our culture has changed those last two are less common because less need to hide who you are.

  70. 70.

    Radio One

    I’ve started re-reading A Game of Thrones a few weeks ago, and I think one of the smartest things Ned does in the later chapters was to reject Renly’s offer of a hundred swords to capture Cersei’s kids. I don’t think there was ever a chance in hell that Renly and his soldiers could have done that, after Ned stupidly warned Cersei in the previous Ned chapter that he would not acknowledge her bastards as heirs to the throne if he remained Hand of the King. I think his only real hope after all that was Littlefinger and his promise to buy off the city watch.

  71. 71.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Tenar Darell: I’m actually disappointed to learn that there’s going to be a sequel to Ancillary Justice. Given how good it was, Leckie could surprise me but I felt like she had said what she had to say with it. I’d prefer it if she moved on to a new story and showed me what other things she had to say.

    This is, I think, a serious problem with where both fantasy and science fiction have gone: the need to write series rather than individual novels. Rather than commenting on anyone else’s work that should have stopped earlier than it did, I’ll just look at my own. The most common reaction I get to my short stories (not the one that just got published, but with a lot of others) is, “Oh, this is great. I wish it were the start of a novel.”

    If I’d had a novel’s worth of things to say, I’d have written them as novels. I don’t in most of these cases. (I actually do have one short story that I can see as the opening to a novel though I don’t have those ideas yet.) I had something specific I wanted to say and the story I wrote said it. On one level it’s gratifying that people read a story and feel like it is grounded in enough depth that they can imagine it as a novel. On another, though, these have been critique groups and someone saying, “This should be a novel,” when that is manifestly not what I have written isn’t helpful.

    And I feel that way about Ancillary Justice. I have a bad feeling that it’s going to be like George Alec Effinger’s sequels to When Gravity Fails, that simultaneously were enjoyable reads while also feeling like they cheapened the first book by reducing the whole concept to just another cyberpunk series. He’d said all of the important parts in the first book and I would have preferred to see him writing something else that was important.

    Then again, I felt the same way when I learned that there was a sequel to Chris Moriarty’s Spin State. And the second book of that series was only very good and not at the level of the first. But the third book, Ghost Spin was shattering in exactly the same way that Ancillary Justice was, so there’s hope. And given that the themes of both Moriarty’s work and Leckie’s are similar (playing heavily on ideas of identity and multiplicity), maybe this will work out better than I fear it will. At any rate, I’ll certainly read a sequel to Ancillary Justice, which is all the publisher cares about.

  72. 72.

    oldmtnbkr

    @efgoldman: Amazeballs! My dad was also ’37. We have family in the metro area whom we love to visit but I have little desire to go back to Cambridge or Boston.

  74. 74.

    Cervantes

    @MomSense:

    Please tell me that Schoenhof’s is still there.

    It is.

    But in keeping with the tenor of you people, I hasten to add that it is but a mere shadow of what it used to be.

    (Even though it isn’t true.)

  75. 75.

    Cervantes

    @efgoldman:

    With all the colleges, medical facilities, churches, and government buildings, half the land in Boston isn’t taxable.

    More or less, but many schools, including Harvard and MIT, make substantial payments “in lieu of taxes.”

  77. 77.

    Mandalay

    Mark Stanford’s former fiancée has made it clear that he is the lowest form of shit slime.

    After’s Stanford’s blubbering about how his engagement’s termination was forced on him due to his vindictive ex-wife, it now turns out that his fiancée called things off because Stanford wouldn’t commit to a wedding date with the alleged “love of his life”…

    Ms. Chapur said Mr. Sanford had asked to delay the marriage by two more years, when his son Blake would no longer be a minor and a divorce fight with his ex-wife over visitation rights would be moot.

    “I’ve already been five years waiting and two years since the engagement,” she said…

    Ms. Chapur said on Saturday that she did not buy Mr. Sanford’s explanation that his divorce was standing in the way of their marriage, and that he should not “leave blame on Jenny.” Ms. Chapur said she felt as if she had been cast aside now that Mr. Sanford was back in political office (he will face no major challenge this fall).

    “I think that I was not useful to him anymore — he made the engagement thing four months before the elections,” Ms. Chapur said. “So this is not about his son, this is about his career and his ambitions.” Mr. Sanford, she said, “truly was the love of my life.” But, she added, “In 24 months, what was it going to be?”

    Mark Sanford is a really vile, disgusting human being.

  78. 78.

    Hal

    @Mandalay: I saw an article on this story over at Gawker, and damn some of the comments calling Jenny Sanford a vindictive ex wife with an ax to grind, and oh the poor children! I don’t know why anyone would vote for this guy.

  80. 80.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Hal:

    I don’t know why anyone would vote for this guy.

    The answer to this question is easy, there’s a “R” after his name.

  82. 82.

    scav

    @Mandalay: He also seems to have a talent for picking, picking on, and then underestimating women unafraid to elegantly slice him afterwards.

    Poor little family value trolls of traditional values. Was a possibly profitable but overbusy week for them, defending domestic and parental abuse, with a quick dash later to defend an adulterer’s right to not marry his partner in adultery but have the kids over all the same.

  83. 83.

    Cervantes

    @JordanRules:

    Recent data:

    [MIT] is Cambridge’s second largest employer and largest taxpayer, representing over 12% of the city’s revenue stream. MIT pays taxes on its commercial property and provides an annual payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) for property that is used for academic purposes and is legally tax exempt. In fiscal year 2013, the Institute made a voluntary PILOT contribution of $2.2 million to the City of Cambridge and paid over $38.6 million in real estate taxes.

    This article from 2005 gives some background re these payments (including Harvard’s).

  84. 84.

    John Wright

    Kim Costa’s remarks ring true. When my wife and I arrived in Cambridge to pursue a graduate degree in 1960, it was clear that we were despised. It didn’t take long for us to reciprocate, especially when the drunk locals, at closing time, rolled out of the bars on either side of the dingy apartment we were stuck in for our first year. I have no notion of the significance of a ‘pink popped collar’, but I’m sure the locals got laughs at the sight of me slogging through Cambridge winter slush in my hush puppies, unable to afford better footwear for a while. As for driving, I acclimated rather well, so much so that, when we drove back to California for a visit after our first year, I got no further west than Denver before being pulled over for failure to yield the right of way to a pedestrian. When I explained that I had been living in the Boston area for a year, the cop let me off with a warning.

  85. 85.

    gian

    @efgoldman:

    how about parks? when I was little, there was – and lie I do not – CT state park called “gay head”
    the “head” is a geography term.

    I think it’s renamed “gay city”
    the english language is always changing.

  89. 89.

    ThresherK

    @Mnemosyne: Anyone calling themselves an Insufferable Movie Snob and dropping the term “Pre-Code” has got themselves a new follower.

    Your blogwhoring has paid off, madam.

    Now I’m off to tell one more person how Jeanette MacDonald was the cat’s meow way back when.

  90. 90.

    Ramalama

    @Cervantes: More than anything I miss the countless bookshops in Harvard Square.

    And Coffee Connection.

    And all the ice cream shops, except JP Licks is local and pretty damn good. Christina’s in Inman Square is still there (and looks exactly how the original JP Licks used to look — I always speculate about a breakup between the two companies).

    But a Hong Kong tycoon has purchased a nice chunk of the Square and is installing other restaurants and even, gasp, some kind of schmancy ice cream place.

    Maybe he’s nostalgic…or just innovative….or plain old markety mark mark.

  91. 91.

    Ramalama

    Also? I’d like to shout out to the world’s best dentist who practices in Medford. The tall ass brick building on the river right in Medford Square. I believe it still has a sign that says “Dentist Office” or some other generic title.

    Dr. Nanette Demonteverde is the gum whisperer. You won’t find a better dentist anywhere. Which is why I’m typing this while in Quebec, thinking of making an appointment, 7 hours’ drive away, to go back for a checkup.

  93. 93.

    SFAW

    @Mandalay:

    As Atrios might say, “Stay classy, Rusty Marky”

    He’ll still get elected, because “oh well, you know how they can be.” [Where “they” = women in general, Latinas, or some other grouping into which Ms. Chapur falls.]

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    And it’s SC. I believe the saying is “Too small to be a country, too large to be an asylum.”

  95. 95.

    Botsplainer

    @Hal:

    I saw an article on this story over at Gawker, and damn some of the comments calling Jenny Sanford a vindictive ex wife with an ax to grind, and oh the poor children! I don’t know why anyone would vote for this guy.

    To be fair, Jenny was being ridiculous in having morals fights with regard to visitation and a 16 year old. That probably sapped a lot of his positive feelings.

    I’ve been doing family law 25 years – I can only remember a couple of times that visitation conditions have even come up over a 16 year old; by then, they usually stay with who they like, orders be damned.

    I don’t care how many resources she had to bear – my judges would have stopped that shit cold. I imagine that the tender little boy is an incredible candy ass at this point.

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    OK, Costa is not the mayor, she’s just someone who lives in Medford. That makes the whole thing a lot less freaky.

    I mean, I can understand the source of a lot of these resentments: to some extent it’s about having your neighborhood periodically invaded by wealthy douchebags. But speaking as someone who came to the Boston area to go to grad school 24 years ago and is currently raising a kid in a blue-collar town that has not so far ridden me out on a rail, the unto-the-nth-generation, sort of eliminationist aspect of it worries me. How do you detect someone whose grandfather wasn’t a townie?

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @Ramalama:

    More than anything I miss the countless bookshops in Harvard Square.

    Me too. There was one used book store, I think on Church Street, that I could spend hours in. It was tiny, but it was pretty crammed with all sorts of stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s been gone for awhile, but I haven’t been back there in years, so I don’t know for certain. The Coop used to be good for textbooks and similar, and things like posters, but I imagine it’s changed as well.

  98. 98.

    SFAW

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I mean, I can understand the source of a lot of these resentments: to some extent it’s about having your neighborhood periodically invaded by wealthy douchebags.

    Thankfully, none of Costa’s preferred type of people were ever douchebags at any point in their lives.

  99. 99.

    JR in WV

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    BUT~ Have you ever read any of Charlie Stross’s Laundry novels? They’re about a math genius who is drafted into The Laundry where he learns that math is at the highest levels magic, which can release Lovecraftian monsters into our plane. In the Laundry the task is to quell the monsters without allowing the citizens to know anything is amiss.

    If you do the wrong equation in your head it can eat your brain… The Nazis were playing a huge death cult magic game in the concentration camps, it wasn’t just to kill but killing to change the world Ifor the worse, of course!) with the magic. If you like people overcoming eldrich horrors, it’s pretty good.

    Ancillary Justice is good, isn’t it? I have trouble waiting for sequels / rest of trilogies…

    Congratulations on the sale, it would put me over the Moon, so it should you too! Keep the nose to the grindstone, only way to get better at writing is to do it more and more.

    Good luck!

  101. 101.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SFAW: I think I remember that little bookshop. I found some good John Sladek novels there.

    The Coop’s operations got taken over by Barnes & Noble, and last I was there it was basically a big B&N.

  102. 102.

    SFAW

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think I remember that little bookshop.

    I remember it having a fairly large picture window, and the rest of the storefront was a bright blue, close to a royal blue. Don’t know if it’s the same place. I lived semi-near to HSQ until the early/mid-1980s, would go there a lot, when I was still single.

  104. 104.

    Cervantes

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The Coop’s operations got taken over by Barnes & Noble, and last I was there it was basically a big B&N

    Not taken over, no. The Coop’s directors — including MIT and Harvard students, alumni, faculty and staff — decided to hire Barnes & Noble College Booksellers to manage day-to-day operations.

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