Although since it is the Christmas season I suppose we could create work houses as an option.

My god it is so much worse than I thought. If Heartland America had any idea they were being snootily lectured about their lifestyle by some jackhole who plagarizes his work for a living and admittedly spends 90% of his time sitting with his goddamn worthless thumb up his fucking stupid ass, they’d go find his house and burn it down.

My five-year-old son has no idea what I do for a living. As near as he can tell, I spend the bulk of my time in a basement office, staring at a computer screen, and occasionally talking on the phone or typing. He probably wonders why I don’t do something more interesting, such as play computer games, because that’s what he’d do.

So this self-published author whose novel is currently only selling because he’s part of the wingnut welfare network is doing work basically of no value whatsoever except in a tiny corner of the economy that, given a shift of the winds, would evaporate completely and leave him a pauper. He’s not a good writer, he doesn’t know anything that intelligent or curious people want to know, he’s doing nothing more than propagandistic hackwork for a wealthy master, and he’s sitting there from his perch of fucking righteousness sneering at people who take food stamps as if they’re somehow “gaming” the system.

Fuckpaste oughtta take a look in the mirror.

Yes. I’m a self-published author, too. I make money doing IT work at a large company and I’m worth every dime. Miller is a fucking barnacle waiting for the scraper.

Trevelyan is, justifiably, reviled to this day.

Duh. Capitalism doesn’t care if there’s abundant supply to let people starve.

Many groceries would still not sell to them, telling them they should just eat cold food and shut up.

Grr.

I remember hearing it on a TV show from England, and I’m wracking my brain trying to remember what show (I’m tempted to say it was “What We Learned From The Victorians/Stuarts/Tudors” but I can’t even find that show anymore).

I wonder if they were “middle-class” food in Ireland? ie the Mahons had cut back but were still doing a lot better than the folks they evicted.

In the 1700s, lobsters were considered poor people’s food in both the Colonies and homeland.

It got so bad that the indentured servant contract had to be altered to specifically limit lobster to three meals a week in the Colonies!

So it’s possible that the lobster soup was actually a step down from more elitist foods.

Depends on the surgery, Arky.

For example, one of the best rapports I’ve ever established with a doctor was after my cancer excision, when the plastic surgeon had to reconstruct my nose. The follow up was about a year, year and a half, and he and I had long conversations both before and after the surgeries.

I guess he felt he wanted to get a sense of who I was, how comfortable I was with scarring and if I’d be flexible about a changed appearance. My office visits with him were often longer than I’ve spent with my GP during my annual checkups.

But I take your point: many surgeons look at the patient as just another chance to screw up a success rate. I imagine that cutting someone up would instill the same feelings in me, to depersonalize as much as possible so I don’t think about whom I’m slicing open.

*icy unblinking glare*