Dalrymple moment

[elfs]

They rented, not bought, the house. They have a very expensive, very large big red Dodge truck with what looks like a enclosed motorcycle trailer, almost the same color. They're in their late 20's, and they have five children. The two-year-old roams the street, unsupervised. The children, unkempt, apparently unwashed for several days in a row, seem almost desperate to make friends with those next door.

Yesterday, a big blue truck with Rent-A-Center came up the road. They unpacked a big stereo system and a huge wall-mounted plasma television.

Their regular friends drive a beat-up Kawasaki motorcycle, the rider cheaply armored if at all, and a totally cherried Nissan ricer, low to the ground with a sweet glossly-blue-and-logo paint job that must have cost a fortune.

Meet my new neighbors.

Actually, I haven't met any of the adults yet, but from what I've seen, things aren't promising. There's something about the Rent-A-Center television and the five children that makes me feel like I'm having a Darlyrmple moment. It might take a while for me to figure out if they're happy people or not, but I expect not. A six-thousand dollar rental television, an expensive truck and a rental home, indicates a deep-rooted expectation of instant gratification, the deprivation of which would be construed as suffering. "Much modern suffering has a distinct flavor of self-infliction. I am not talking now of the physical illnesses that derive from habits such as smoking, but rather of the chronic suffering caused by not knowing how to live, or rather by imagining that life can be lived as an entertainment, as an extended video, as nothing but a series of pleasures of the moment."

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Great article in the link.

What does "cherried" mean?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

"Expensively restored to near-perfect condition," according to the Urban Dictionary.

[(Anonymous)]

A cherried car is one that has been highly and expensively customized by its owner.

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

Is my suspicion that this is a *specific* new neighbor accurate? If so, congrats that it's a rental... that probably bodes well.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

No, not those neighbors. They're down the block. The neighbors mentioned above are right next door. Omaha and I are thinking of moving. Rentals tend to get trashed, and a trashed neighborhood is not good for property values. Neither are third runways.

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

Ouch.. sorry to hear that. Maybe you have some nice equity and can get into something else while the rates are still good... :) Could be if you have an equity evaluation you look at each other and think "Holy Toledo... let's go!"

[I'm just being a pollyanna because my bitchy side is threatening to take over lately.]

Well...

[solarbird]

...Kenmore's turned out to be nice. ^_^

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

They don't sound like obviously good neighbours.

"Third runways" -- airport expansion or slang?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Airport expansion. Closer to us. Noisier. And we're just outside the noise abatement zone where the city will provide free soundproofing. Not that that matters in the summer.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Moving would not be a bad contemplation, especially *before* the runway goes in. They're not allowed to fly between midnight and 6am at MSP, and planes don't really bother me much anyway, but neighbors are a lot harder to ignore. Also you'd want to move before they trash the house, which I'd imagine would make your house harder to sell.

[fallenpegasus]

My parents had five kids in their late twenties.

HOWEVER, we were kept scrupulously clean, good manners were enforced in the presence of strangers, guests, and neighbors. Instead of rental houses and riced red trucks, they would buy the house we would live in, and then we would rebuild the house from the inside out (sort of the opposite of trashing it, I guess.)

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

I once didn't date a guy who was otherwise appealing because I visited his house and he had a giant screen tv and *no books*.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

I couldn't date someone like that, either. Yuck!

more homework

[grum]

Thanks for the Darlyrmple link. I quite enjoyed the article and will be reading quite a bit more of his work in the near future.
His article expressed a set of beliefs that I largely agree with in the medical arena (that the doctors can't help someone until they are willing to help themself), but which I am willing (perhaps even eager) to question when it comes to the issue of social welfare and safety nets.
I think I need to go question some of my assumptions. This should interact very interestingly with the economics class that I started yesterday.

Re: more homework

[fallenpegasus]

If those are the areas that you want to question him in, you will find him more than a little challenging and painful to read. Part of his subtext is that one CANNOT seperate "the medical" from "the social" from "the family". They are all of the same cloth, and all mirror each other.