this is exhibit #1 for european-style prices with tips and tax included in the menu prices ! and don’t get me started about tax brackets.

It’s like she’s fired her editor and thinks every idea is gold without any further reflection.

It wasn’t the prefects’ bathroom that housed the entrance to the chamber of secrets. The prefects’ bathroom was a spa paradise. The Chamber bathroom was a random girls’ bathroom with perpetual plumbing problems (mostly thanks to Myrtle).

Hey, you can make a good living as a plumber (especially when you just point a want and everything connects). Not everyone’s headmaster material.

As I recall there are three or four chapters about how the plumbing contractors found this seemingly unused underground water-filled chamber and decided to save a few pounds piping the toilets into it, rather than tying back to the Hogsmeade sanitary sewer system as planned.

I don’t think vanishing is similar to the invisibility cloak. Vanishing sends it somewhere else. Think of the vanishing cabinet. But where is it sending it?

Rowling has always been a mediocre writer, she just hit upon a fantastic idea and a fantastic setting that resonated with children at the right time to catch lightning in the bottle. In her credit she is okay at characterization (though often falls victim to cliche) and decent enough at plot (though bad at avoiding…

I think perhaps one episode had a toilet folding into a wall? Or maybe I’m think of Firefly.

and if it did matter, it would’ve been in the goddamn books

The correct answer to your pop quiz is $40. It’s two $20 bills, so less of a hassle/more likely that you actually have it exactly, and it is a slight overpay to compensate the rest of the group for you getting out of having to participate in the pain in the ass splitting the check process later.

I’m a vegetarian.  I have a natural excuse for not wanting to split the bill evenly because most meats are more expensive than the veggie options.  I just tell the server at the beginning that I want a separate check.

In this same vein, I’m a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I had the thought lately that there is nothing ever mentioned/shown of 24th century methods of relieving oneself. Each of the quarters on the ship has a little vanity area and they have to manually wash/dry their hands, but ain’t nobody seem to…

So, if they didn’t set up pipes at Hogwarts until the 18th century, is that the approximate time the basilisk was able to move about the castle via the pipes as detailed in the Chamber of Secrets, which is only accessible via the prefect’s bathroom? I thought it had been there for a long time, and apparently nobody…

Right? And wouldn’t “Fecal Deletus” or “Urine Exumai” then have to be like, the FIRST spell they learn?

Oh the “OK I gotta go, $20 should cover my food” people drive me insaaaane. Even if they factor in tip, they NEVER factor in tax.

Are the food and drink amounts before or after tax? Going by my tax rate (6%) then the cost after tax is 27.56 so leaving $30 is only about a 9% tip, if these are after tax, then $30 comes to 15% which still isn’t enough.

Yeah. I’m of the firm opinion that splitting evenly never works in a big group. There’s always at least one of the following wildly unfair situations:

Large group dinners are great for the person organizing them, and horrible for everyone else. They are organized by cowards, who want to gather all their friends without doing the work of hosting a party.

Actually, even organizing these things is a nightmare. Do you know how hard it is to get everyone to agree to a restaurant, commit so you know how many chairs, and all show up at the same time so you can actually get seated? But not everyone has the space, roommate situation, or culinary confidence to host, and that’s…

When I was serving, group dinners were the worst. You always had the one person who ordered nothing because they were broke, the one who ordered a lot but didn’t tip, and the one who insisted that their appetizer’s cost be split across a few other people.