Unsolicited Advice Wednesday: Ass Dialing

Try to avoid ass-dialing 911, or really any legal authority, while in the midst of making a drug deal.

Unsolicited Advice Wednesday: Netflix Everywhere!

Did you know that there exist magical devices that use your electrical outlets to extend your internet network?? So you don't have to wire your entire house if you want to watch Netflix on your TV!

You just plug an ethernet cable into one of these wherever your router is set up, and then another ethernet cable into another of these, anywhere in your house that you want internets!

Here is an example: Netgear XAVB5001 Powerline Network Adapter Kit

Unsolicited Advice Wednesday: Soapy

Wash in warm soapy water before first use.

Whatever it is. It can't hurt, right?

The Abby Game

Now it's time for a game! I'm going to read you a letter, and you tell me what Abby advised.

Feb 29: Should student spill beans on her prof's behavior?

I am a 19-year-old student taking courses at a community college. One of my classes is taught by a great professor who also works at a state college teaching other teachers.

After an evening class with him one night, I returned to the classroom because I forgot something and ended up walking with him back to the parking lot.

While putting stuff into my car I saw him get into another student's car. I waited a while without them realizing I was there and ended up seeing my professor and this student smoking weed and fooling around.

I feel angry and betrayed knowing he would put his career in danger. They are both consenting adults, but I don't know whether I should report it or not. What do you think?

Did Abby:
(a) Reiterate the problem but not offer advice
(b) Come down hard on the side of telling, scolding the LW for even considering staying silent
(c) Come down hard on the side of staying silent, scolding the LW for even considering telling

Answer:

Where are you from, and what’s that on your face?

Lulu: This is relevant to your interests: Carolyn Hax discusses the “Where are you from?” question. Tired of being asked, ‘No, where are you really from?’

Ashley: Wow, yeah. I did used to get annoyed at that, because it gets tedious having the same conversation over and over.

Lulu:Agreed. People are trying to show interest and just inanely commenting on anything and they don't think about whether you've had that conversation over and over. I rarely make those kinds of comments, but it's out of an opposite kind of insensitivity

Ashley: You don't care about other people!!!

Lulu: It doesn't occur to me to ask!!

Ashley: It’s one of the things I like best about you!

Lulu: hahahaha

Ashley: But yes, in general I would just say the overall region (she could go with "pacific islands" or even "asia", probably?) and then deflect further questions.
"Oh, WHERE in Asia?"
"We moved around a bit. I lived near Beijing for a while." You know, if "near" is like Boston to San Francisco...

Lulu: People always ask where even though they wouldn't know what you meant if you responded correctly

Ashley: And in that regard, I'm with the LW, because she knows which will be the confusing part of the answer, and that's where conversation stalls or you get stuck in explaining your weird cultural customs and how to pronounce your name. And then you find yourself giving a lecture on palatalized consonants, and then no one is happy! She just needs to find an appropriately generic response and then practice it until it's just like, "My name is blah. What's your name?"

Lulu: Does it help to be like "Ha ha, everyone always asks me that"? I feel like that would make me feel ashamed, as a questioner, but then, I like to be original.

Ashley: I've said that a few times too, but it didn't seem to register. I don't find the question offensive, like she seems to, though, so Carolyn is right that she seems to be taking a lot of offense at a fairly innocuous question. I think it's boring but I don't find it offensive, so my responses aren't meant to embarrass or anything, but just to avoid me having to explain my whole life story again.

Lulu: That's what she says she wants too - a way to end the conversation.

Ashley: But she seems too offended based on the side remarks in the letter.

Lulu: I'd say it's not fair, but it's also not necessarily offensive in that people are just well-meaning dopes. It's not even really a race thing, just an anything-unusual kind of thing.

Ashley: There's always something...

Lulu: I always have to explain my lazy eye and my crippling social phobia

Ashley: ….

Lulu: I had blue hair for a while; if you dye your hair blue you end up having a lot of blue hair conversations,
but you brought that on yourself, really. Same with tattoos. You can assume if you see a tattoo that the person wouldn't mind discussing it, since they proudly placed it on a prominent body part, but it’s not an assumption you can make about ethnicity / accents / injuries / genetic abnormalities / etc.

Ashley: I imagine it is tiring to hear the same comments over and over about your dumb tattoo you got when you were 18

Lulu: YES I branded my forehead with PANTERA RULES. NO I don't have strong feelings about Pantera right now.

Unsolicited Advice Wednesday: Library

I'd like to start a new weekly feature where we offer unsolicited advice, just little discoveries we have made which may help you along this bumpy road called life.

Did you know you can borrow books out of the library...for free??

Knit, purl, invade Poland

We're back, baby! And all it took was a question about knitting.

From yesterday's Miss Manners:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a young woman in my early 20s, and I have recently taken up knitting in an effort to broaden the scope of my hobbies. I thoroughly enjoy it, and it provides endless entertainment for me.

I started off knitting at home, and once I became more confident in my abilities, I began taking my knitting outside with me. It has proved to be useful in staving off boredom while waiting for the bus or at the doctor’s office, among other places.

Unfortunately, since I have been taking my knitting with me, I find myself frequently asked by several people when the baby is due. I am not pregnant; I am merely a larger girl with an affinity for homemaking crafts. I find myself at a loss for a response and typically end up looking at the offender with a mix of shock and surprise.

Sometimes the look is not enough, and they remain there smiling and waiting for an answer, at which point I have a tendency to laugh nervously and say something to the effect of “I’m not pregnant.” I feel bad about how chagrined the questioners are, but I can’t think of any other response besides making up a due date to preserve the poor folks’ dignity.

Is there a better response I could give these well-meaning (and seriously misguided) people? Am I more or less doomed to pregnancy questions because the only feasible reason for a young woman to knit is that she is expecting?

Miss Manners responds:

GENTLE READER: As Miss Manners understands it, football players who knit do not have this problem. But we all have the problem of inspiring strangers to voice the first silly association that comes into their heads.

Pretending to be pregnant would only encourage such people to make even more intrusive comments. They have compromised their dignity enough as it is.

Unless you are knitting booties, you can merely state what it is, in fact, that you are knitting: “Actually, this is going to be a ski mask. For skiing, not for robbing convenience stores.”

Lulu: Unexpected but welcome robbery humor from Miss Manners! It's a good point, too, that you could say 'oh, this is an adult sweater' or 'oh, this is for my sister, I'm not having a baby' and pretend to assume they thought you were pregnant because they thought you were knitting booties and not because you are fat.

Ashley: Except they DO assume you're pregnant, because being pregnant doesn't mean you're knitting for the baby. They assume if you're knitting at all that you're pregnant. So what would happen there is that it would become a longer conversation. I've gotten that comment a few times, and I'm not fat*.

[*Ed. note: Confirmed.]

Lulu: That is so weird.

Ashley: "I'm not pregnant, I just like to knit" is what I go with. But like matter of factly, not embarrassedly.

Lulu: Yeah, in a friendly way.

Ashley: Right. As if it's a fine assumption on their part to make, and I'm the weirdo. It's one of those things where it's really not worth fighting over... I know, even for me, right? :D

Lulu: Ha.

Ashley: mostly it cuts the conversation off quickly, which is what I want. I don't want embarrassed stammering on their part about how their sister blah blah. I do not care.

Lulu: Lots of people knit these days, you would think it wouldn't be that weird.

Ashley: I told you the I knit like a nazi story, right?

Lulu: haha what?

Ashley: DUDE. This happened like last week. This is why pregnancy comments don't even phase me anymore. There are NAZI comments.

Lulu: Oh man. I need to hear this.

Ashley: So I'm knitting on the 39, and there are tons of empty seats, but this woman gets on the bus, sees me knitting, and plops down next to me. She observes me for a while, really intensely, and then says, "That's weird, you knit like a nazi." In a super conversational, friendly tone.

Lulu: HOW DOES A NAZI KNIT

Ashley: LIKE ME, LULU

Lulu: Is this the Continental vs. American thing?

Ashley: So I go, "cough, erm, what?" And, yah, it turned out that the REASON English/US people knit differently is as a form of protest against the nazis. So like they all used to knit like me, but during WWII, they switched!

Lulu: Really?? They just starting knitting less efficiently? To protest Teutonic efficiency???

Ashley: Apparently!! A woman from knitting group confirmed it! I haven't wikied it yet though.

Lulu: But all of the Continent still knits Continental.

Ashley: I knooooow. She ended up guessing that I'm not American from my accent, so she seemed less concerned then. She just wanted to make sure I wasn't a nazi sympathist counter-protester! But I like how that was just like a thing you're supposed to know.

Lulu: I am American and I learned from you, so for me it's a problem.

Ashley: Yeah. You're just fucked.

Lulu: I don't want to be a nazi, but at the same time, I like how those people knit. They make some good sweaters. I'm just saying.