People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

he settled down in a big house in new jersey

he coaches his son's soccer team, the pirates

he got pissed and left ILXOR forever - like Pluto to the underworld

Wow that article is stupid

i love suburbanites who think if they don't socialize with the neighbors they despise that they're going to wind up in the townhouse development version of shirley jackson's "the lottery."

Instead of stones, they used tennis balls...

try living in the suburbs and NOT having kids. people look at you the same way they probably looked at train-hopping hobos who rolled into town turning the depression.

^^^ this!

i was like the weird cast off of my community because i was not married with children or a dog. after my bf moved in things changed a bit. but we're still not 'one of them'. it's strange.

there are only 3 other condos in our section of the building but i know nothing about any of my neighbors and they act all weird when you say hello in the hallway.

don't ever try to read a book in a park or unless you want a policeman to come over and tell you take your bindle and that there's "work in the next county but not here."

xp This is R1verd@ught3r the PUM@S founder, right? The woman who was kicked off of Daily K0s for making racial slurs?

she's definitely a giant PUMA, didn't know she was the original.

okay, that first paragraph made me lol a lot because my wife REALLY wants a Lexus SUV and I really have no idea why

also this woman is insane

And their children must stay protected from the elements. They must all get buses to school. Some crazy driver might mow them all down if they had to walk on the sidewalks of the neighborhood they chose for its quiet, privacy and safety. You never know and wouldn’t it be better to be safe than sorry? You’d kill yourself if something ever happened to them. Like rain. Yes, rain happens. That’s why we must have a bus to take the kids from one school to the adjacent school in the afternoons where there is more space in the annex. Oh, sure, there is a 500 ft walkway between the schools that is not anywhere near the street and skims the playgrounds between the two schools. But if it rains, they might get wet while they are walking, in a group, with their teachers. It isn’t safe and the threat of unpredictable atmospheric conditions is too risky. We need a bus. Nevermind that school budgets are finite and we might have to cut the late bus for kids in extracurricular activities who have irresponsible, uncaring mothers who work and can’t pick them up but send them home to a dark, unsafe house after school. Safety comes first.

this really is the only point where she approaches making sense

The PUMA PAC is registered as a non-affiliated political action committee (PAC) with the Federal Election Commission and organized as a 527 Organization with the IRS in June, 2008. PUMA's founders state that the group originated out of online comments of a group of Clinton supporters on a pro-Clinton blog, The Confluence, which was created by New Jersey biochemist and former John Edwards supporter Riverdaughter, who had been recently banned from a pro-Obama liberal blog.

the takeaway here is to never have children.

omg the transition to ranting about Weiner is the worst thing I've seen outside of an expository writing paper I wrote 20 years ago

What suburban kid rides the bus? I always picture a morning convoy of 50 Lexus SUVs parked outside Payne Stewart Elementary.

i sympathize with this person but she needs to spend WAY less time worrying about what other people do with their children

it seems like she is worrying about how other people's overprotectiveness is impacting her children

make soem fuckin biscuits bitch

talking shit about other parents is the easiest thing in the world to do once you become a parent yourself but it is fruitless and probably actively harmful 99% of the time. not only do you wind yourself up into an unattractively self-righteous frenzy you lay the foundations for massive karmic payback at some point down the line.

I guess it depends on the suburb you live in wrt kids. To be honest a lot of pedophiles get off on poor kids because they think they can get away with it.

People care about kids until the neighbor's kid or the kid at school gets harassed or molested. Then the victim's family has to relocate because of stigma and shame and gossip.

Pleasant Plains, it is true, there is also a stigma about riding the bus in some suburbs. And what's in your lunch.

My wife is, jokingly (I assume), hinting that I should not encourage our future child to be interested in soccer, lest she be forced to become a soccer mom.

Tracer, I am not disagreeing at all! In fact, I was lolling wholeheartedly at how unpleasantly her rants were painting her rather than the people she was complaining about until the Weiner whiplash; tbh my eyes have still not stopped rolling so I haven't been able to finish the artic.e/

this woman is a dipshit

http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/the-30-percent-solution-why-democratic-women-are-voting-for-mccainpalin/

ha djp i think i was accidentally working up a little rant of my own that sounded like i was trying to convince you of something. sorry.

"Soccer moms" is an amusing term if you're more urbanly located (also this is US bias). All I see are African, Hispanic and Pakistani kids playing it. And I see lots of dads at the matches.

i seriously just misread the last word of buzza's URL as "necrophilia"

I feel like this woman is projecting her siege mentality onto everyone around her.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Spaniards+urged+swap+cars+lifetime+tram+pass/5106460/story.html

It's a shame they didn't allow commenting on that story. Reading Calgarians' reactions to that article would've been amusing.

I know it's filled w/ Canada republicans but Calgary's transit system is still better than your average American city

still wonder why that paper picked up the story tho

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/08/09/alex-steffen-says-dense-cities-are-the-only-way-to-reduce-emissions/

fat chance of that happening

I know (:

wait that was meant to be a frowny

pollution deformed his face

it looks like his mouth melted off but he has unibrow

probably a stupid question, but isn't surface runoff due to concrete a pretty big pollution concern as well? wouldn't this problem increase with bigger, more dense cities?

Not if they used permeable paving wisely! Well, that wouldn't completely eliminate the problem, but there are ways to help minimize it.

I've wondered how permeable pavement is affected by freezing and thawing. Jon, any knowledge? It seems like a porous material would crack more easily.

lol architects. my friend who is supposed to help me with my new garage/driveway project was musing about using permeable. not really price-practical at that level

they used it in the parking lot of a winery he designed but I think they fucked up and didn't let it cure long enough, or it got too wet

big dense cities seem hot and awful

you're dense hot and awful

I've wondered how permeable pavement is affected by freezing and thawing. Jon, any knowledge? It seems like a porous material would crack more easily.

Unfortunately there haven't been a lot of permeable concrete installations in northern climates that have really tested that, but it definitely is a huge drawback at this point and part of why it hasn't largely caught on in the north. Certainly an option in warmer climates though.

exactly how long is it going to be until we get to live in one of these things:

http://www.geocities.jp/gotyamankai/pic/launch_arco.png

2050 iirc? u need microwave and fission power first