quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

"Do you have anything else in the store?"
"No sir, we just have this table."
"I would like to purchase the table."
"I'm sorry sir, it's been sold."

not NYT but holy hell

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577010351275810044.html?mod=WSJ_NY_MIDDLELEADNewsCollection

Some New York City children take after-school classes in dance, pottery or softball. Once a week, Gillian and Hunter Randall add an unusual activity to the list: lessons on how to shake hands.

It's a class taught by SocialSklz:-), a company founded in 2009 to address deteriorating social skills in the age of iPhones, Twitter and Facebook friends.

Faye Rogaski, the founder of socialsklz:-), is attempting to wean children off junk words like "um," "ya know" and "like." WSJ visits the modern-day manners class.

"It's hard to have a real conversation anymore. And you know what? I'm guilty of it too," said the Randalls' mother, Lisa LaBarbera, noting that her 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son both have iPod touches and handheld videogame devices. "You get carpal tunnel, but you're not building those communication skills."

Ms. Rogaski now offers classes that range from $150 for a one-day workshop to $540 for a 12-week after-school program, with sections for children as young as 4. The classes cover skills as varied as how to host play dates, talk on the phone and hold a conversation.

SocialSklz:-) looks like a name that was created by a 60 year old soccer mom

SocialSkullz(:-[])

even though that class is patently ridiculous, i gotta say that having social skillz drilled into me at a young age has served me well in life. my mom was p aggro about her children being as well-mannered as possible. not like weird cotillion stuff, but general "how to talk to adults and not be a little twerp" stuff. seeing horrible children acting rudely in public is one of the few things that makes me feel like a big ol grouch. also sort of one of the few things that makes me feel "conservative"; i generally assume that kids behaving terribly (not just "kids being kids" cuz everyone is a lil monster at some point) have SOMEthing up at home. i understand that this isn't entirely a fair thing to think.

i think the point is not that those things are unimportant, but that only the ruling class would desire to or be able to afford to have someone teach their kids manners in a class

I was always good at talking with adults as a kid but not really very good at talking with other kids

now that I'm an adult I'm no longer good at talking with other adults :[

OTM

Someone asked me the oth day if I was "gifted" at anything as a child, and I said, Yeah, talking to adults and ordering them around since I was 3. o_O Feel like this is going to be true for a lot of us, tbh.

Ha, just ran here to post that.

It's a class taught by SocialSklz:-), a company founded in 2009 to address deteriorating social skills in the age of iPhones, Twitter and Facebook friends.

is such a crock of shit - kids have always been rude. but yeah, learning manners (and teaching that "manners") are a social code that can be used TO YOUR ADVANTAGE in pretty much any situation is def. valuable, and if the parents can't be bothered to do it on their own, and decide to pay off a third party to do it, everybody benefits from the transaction

eh feel like kids learn things like this more by observing them than via being taught, these parents are prob too rude, kids gonna be rude too

same/same

seeing horrible children acting rudely in public is one of the few things that makes me feel like a big ol grouch.

this, oh god, this. every impudent word uttered by a child fans a small flame of hatred in my heart.

worst instance this year: stuck across aisle from a shrieky little bad seed for a transcontinental flight
/strangle

I am pretty sure my parents didn't take me out in public until I was nearly 3 years of age and took me behind the woodshed if I were to speak a sideways word

It's why I know I'd suck as a parent.

"I can't shout at you as you are a child. Worse, you're my child. ARGH."

i have a pretty high tolerance for "kids being kids" but i also LOVE kids \(o_O)/

times were you could punish your child for misbehaving in a store by locking them in the car but those days are gone

*puffs pipe*

those days, you could smack someone else's kid for sassmouth, good times they were

i have a pretty high tolerance for "kids being kids" but i also LOVE kids \(o_O)/

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, November 1, 2011 2:28 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

dude this is totally how i feel, fwiw, lest anyone get the wrong idea. i used to work with kids, it was great. but i still feel like there are times when it's ok/justifiable to think "ok buddy there's a line between puckish little imp and actual inconsiderate person and you just crossed it"

moreover, when i feel like a grouch, i'm actually thinking to myself "you are being a grouch, cut it out," but...i can't help it. i def had the "that's not the way it works around here" chat with several of the kids i taught, who were seemingly devoid of any social graces whatsoever (children of the 1% in entitled-attitudes shocker)

Manners are so middle-class.

one time on a plane this kid threw a non stop tantrum the whole way taking time out only to blow some milk on me through a straw

milk all over me

the new mixtape

I'll be glad when we move past the archaic practice of meeting/conversing with people in person. Then we won't need handshaking classes.

I like this comment, at least the first half. I think I've seen that jug band.

Reality BasedBrooklynOctober 27th, 201111:54 amLast evening whilst walking on my urban Brooklyn block I was bemoaning the apogee of faux or "vintage" life-styling seeing another group of suspender and tweed clad hipsters pretend to be a jug band. They were performing a horrendously unmusical, "rootsy" version of the spiritual "When I Die" inside a new bar built to mimic some half baked idea of "vintage authenticity". This impulse to deny the truth of the cultural and political moment and instead seek refuge in an imagined virtualized "cozy" past seems to me the apogee of indulgent sentimentalist decadence.

Esty represents he triumph of mediocrity in design and creativity. The "designs" on the site are almost exclusively copies of copies, derivations of ideas that were done to death a decade ago. Esty is however a very clever and modern business model; a trope, seeming to help artisans market their "wares" but actually about monetizing clicks and an easy source for "trend spotters" and retailers to collate mediocre ideas to knock off.

can you really pretend to be a jug band

IDK but I hear music like that all the time in the L and it's starting to make me want to go animal house.

Demonic kids on plane needs fabled response of Paul Lynde: "Lady, if you don't control that kid... I'm gonna fuck her!"

Worst is the little kids that sit behind you on the plane and kick the back of your seat the entire flight.

flying is such a horrible experience i cant really stay mad at the sobbing kids, im just thinking, "man i want to be doing that too"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/garden/sheep-lawn-mowers-and-other-go-getters.html

not very quiddy imho

Worst is the little kids that sit behind you on the plane and kick the back of your seat the entire flight.

Uh, tell them to stop?

xpost, Oh it picks up: "Richard Charles, a Wall Street technology manager, decided to become an urban farmer after he was laid off twice, first by Citigroup, in 2008, and then by Goldman Sachs, in 2009. He and a former colleague from Citigroup, David Lowe, started EcoVeggies, a company that uses aeroponic technology to grow plants without soil. Their plan is to convert abandoned buildings in Newark into high-tech urban farms that will supply produce to local restaurants and schools."

I don't really understand the Stockbox shipping container grocery store thing. Isn't it just, like, opening a grocery store?

arent YOU just like opening a grocery store

I repurpose old commercial storefront spaces to open grocery stores.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/fashion/millennials-in-church-up-close.html

Mr. Aiuto, 39, bristles when his church is singled out as particularly cool. “I don’t want this church to be special,” he said over chicken mole at a Williamsburg taqueria. “I don’t want us to be a church for artists. I want it to be a garden-variety church. What we have to offer people is God.” He paused for a moment. “And I think our music is really good.”

http://asthmatickitty.com/the-welcome-wagon

The Welcome Wagon is a married couple, the Reverend Thomas Vito Aiuto and his wife Monique, who execute a genre of gospel music that is refreshingly plain. Their hymns are modest and melodic takes on a vast history of sacred song traditions, delivered with the simple desire to know their Maker—and to know each other—more intimately.

NOT MENTIONED: dude's band on asthmatic kitty

i take that back; actually it was mentioned and my eyes must have glazed over or something

What the what.

The tight-lipped look of the groom in the photo says, loud and clear, "I'm so upright that I took over from my autonomic breathing function, now I have to remember to inhale." Mentally unbalanced by divorce imo.

What a maroon.

Re-enacting the wedding may pose a particular challenge, the studio pointed out, because the couple divorced and the bride is believed to have moved back to her native Latvia.