Neanderpundit

included standing on aluminum ladders in the pouring rain and cleaning gutters, as much time as I spend doing that. But no, they’re just most annoying then, which is why I clean them then. Fortunately for me, I have frog togs, which means only my hands and eyeglasses get wet. Well, and my feet. if I’m gonna stand on an aluminum ladder in a thunderstorm I want there to be GOOD contact. Though the aluminum rungs on bare arches are murder.

I feel for the guy, i really do. The brakelights arent stuck on, the brakes are clamped shut.

you are of the opinion that snark is a relatively new beast, you should read “The Egg and I” by betty MacDonald. You can read it on Gutenberg for free here.

Betty- prior to discussing her life as a beast of burden in the pacific northwest- talks about her upbringing for a couple of chapters. About the foul and inedible baked goods of her grandmother, containing onions and fruit pits and etc, and the even more disturbing cookies, which the neighbor children were all too happy to get, as THEIR parents fed them dog biscuits.

You can see the subtlety of her snark when she discusses ironing with ‘Sad irons” or flatirons.

Tuesday—Ironing! Ironing with sad irons has nothing at all to do with preconceived ideas about ironing. It is a process whereby you grab a little portable handle and run over to the stove and plug it into an iron which is always covered with black. Then you run back to the ironing board and get black on your clean pillowcase. You take the iron over to the sink and wipe it off and it is of course too cool, by now, to do any good to the dirty pillowcase so you put it back on the stove and repeat the process until your husband comes in and wants to know where in HELL his lunch is.

You really have to read the whole book to understand; the most of people would look at it and say “What sane woman would put up with this bullshit?” but she does what is appropriate for a woman at that time- and you have to admit she’s thirty times as tough as most of the women today who would not “Put up with this bullshit”. You have to respect her for what she went through, and for the level of snark she exhibits. For a woman who lived that hard and died that young, she left an amazing legacy. Definitely reccomended reading. If I knew a man who was that tough I’d offer to carry his bags.