+1000 on the “having a friend nearby to call people/support you”

I need to work “rape/pillage/smallpox” into my repertoire. Fantastic phrase.

Aw, yeah. First time this white girl tried it was at a dive bar in Houston. The place has a backyard with a few BBQ grills, and anyone can use them - with the condition that they share their food with the rest of the patrons.

Hockey term for “big scary dude who will make you pay if you take a cheap shot at our star player”. It’s very easy to play dirty in hockey - the players are armed with sticks and wearing knives on their feet for goodness sake, and the game moves fast and the refs can’t see everything. Also, it would really suck if a…

Oh. My. God.

You are an ice hockey referee, aren’t you?

Assuming decent internet, if you have some sort of arts or crafts based business you might be ok. (though you’d need a well-established customer base to get to their minimum income requirement). I live on a small Caribbean island - I’m a teacher - but a lot of our ex-pats are artisans of some sort (textiles, jewelry,…

IF (and I personally don’t) one accepts the concept of a “blackout” as a school spirit thing, there is still no reason for the kids to use black body paint. They could just buy those “morph suits”. Those things are creepy as hell anyhow. I saw guys dressed in those - one in purple and one in black -running around the…

I’ve seen them in Houston, too. Unless I was mistaken and it was actually a bunch of Lawrence of Arabia cosplayers waving signs at the intersection of Bisonnett and Gessner.

Excellent point.

Most rodeo events have a basis in stuff that actual cowboys would do (roping, breaking horses to saddle, etc.). Not sure exactly why bull riding became a thing (other than, perhaps, “hold my beer....”)

They breed them to buck. Same with the bucking horses. There’s big money in providing rough stock at rodeos. Hell, for shits and giggles, look at old footage of bull riding vs. the PBR events of today. The bulls are much more athletic now.

I’m sorry for the loss of your cousin. It’s a rough sport, but not one that should lead to death of human or animal.

The worst mistake I ever made was buying a 2005 Outback XT from CarMax and NOT paying for the extended warranty. We figured the 30 day warranty would be fine. The clutch went out 32 days after we purchased it.

I’m still not sure if that or the real estate agent who wouldn’t take no for an answer was worse.

Reminds me of this awesomeness:

Oh my God I hate them so much. When my husband passed away, his student loan debt was forgiven (I have the letter stating so), but somehow his account got picked up by a collection agency. Letters, phone calls, all the f—- time. Usually I screened the calls and didn’t answer, but one time I goofed and picked up.…

Very interesting, and not at all surprising that there’s a racial undertone to this. It makes sense that a “pit bull type” of dog would emerge as guard dogs in urban areas - there were a lot of those dogs around, and people use what’s most available. Very few poor families could afford to import a Shutzhund trained…

Oh how I loved those two. And I got super excited when I drove through Cairo, IL as part of a move-my-friend-cross-country roadtrip. And then I realized how creepy Cairo really is and it made it THAT MUCH BETTER.

The bigger issue, as far as I understand it, is that we’re not sure what the population can actually immunologically respond to. It’s likely that there’s a “genetic bottleneck” in there in regards to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes. Basically, the fewer MHC varations there are among a population, the less…