Mail order bride & sour honey

The BBQ Pit
1

So I’m a dumbass:

There’s this Nice Young Man**[sup]TM**[/sup] (Let’s call him Bubba)in my community that makes his living off of bees. That’s right, he’s a professional beekeeper.

Now in the beekeeping business, income is seasonal and prices can vary widely from month to month. So three months ago Bubba approaches me and says he’s tapped out but he’s got plenty of honey to sell as soon as the price goes up. In the meantime, Bubba can’t pay his light bill, or get gasoline to travel around and work his bees, etc. Will I co-sign a $3000, 90-day loan with him at the bank?

So I go look, and he’s got plenty enough honey is his storage building to cover $3000. We go to MY bank and I co-sign the note.

Three months is up tomorrow. Today, I’m gettin’ nervous and go to see Bubba about what’s up with the bank note. I go first to his honey storage house. No Bubba, and the honey he had stored there is all gone. I go to his house. No Bubba. Go to his Mom’s. No Bubba.

I track his younger brother down at a gas station, and here’s the deal: Bubba has sold his honey. Now he’s in Atlanta, because he has to finish paying for his Airplane ticket and other expenses that are associated with flying to Russia to meet and pick up his oppressed mail-order Russian peasant bride. An amount that totals about $6000, according little Bro.

What the FUCK!

Today, I had to renew the loan, all on my own responsibility, plus pay all the interest charges accrued on the old note.

Here’s a clue, Bubba: That oppressed Russian peasant bride? Do you think you’re going over there and pick up Anna Kournikova or some shit? There’s gonna’ be plenty wrong with her, or some Nice Young Russian Man**[sup]TM**[/sup] would have already rounded her up.

To the Oppressed Young Russian Peasant Girl**[sup]TM**[/sup]: This dude ain’t lookin’ for a wife, he’s lookin’ for a slave to keep house, cook, help work the bees, and then pull a night shift at the Zippy Mart to provide some cash flow.

Bubba always says that when he’s feelin’ down or depressed, he goes out and lets some bees sting him, and that perks him right up. When I get through with his scrawny ass, he’s gonna’ need a bunch of bee stingin’, and he better hope his Oppressed Russian Peasant Bride has had some training in the nursing field.

Why do I let myself get mixed up in shit like this?

2

I would have run long before you, at the word “bee-keeping” to be precise.

d&r fleeing hordes of angry beekeepers

3

Methinks you’ve been stung.

4

Wait…you mean mail order brides really DO exist? They aren’t just a joke?

:eek:

5

So there are poor Russian women who are willing to marry some n’do well like him? I gotta get with this deal.

6

I would never ever ever ever ever lend money to anyone except a closely related family member, and even then I’d be hesitant. This sort of thing always happens.

7

You should buy him a copy of The Birthday Girl as a wedding present.

8

This is why you never, ever co-sign a loan. Chalk it up to experience and be glad it wasn’t even more money.

Still, that sucks, though.

9

I just wasted two minutes of my life listening to you drone on.

:smiley:

10

I call this “Introduction to Commodities Futures 101”.

Now buzz off.

11

I like my mail-order brides like I like my coffee - covered in BEES!

That’s really crap though - I hope you get your money back. Or you could break into his house, poke holes in his bee-suit and smear the insides with pollen…

12

You can catch more suckers with honey than with . . . never mind.

13

Since you paid for half of the peasant girl, perhaps you can legally claim rights to half of her? You get first choice of body or soul.

14

I can think of plenty of reasons a nice Russian girl would want to marry some poor American zhlub. Most of them have to do with my experiences with Russian men. Not to mention the economy pretty much sucks there, and an educated woman has to deal with all sorts of crap in the workplace, if she can even find a decent job. I could tell horror stories about job ads that specify height, hair color, and bust size, and have a code phrase “bez kompleksov,” (no hangups), which basically means “will sleep with the boss.”

None of this, of course, excuses him skipping out on the loan.

15

As co-signers, I say you lay claim to right of first night.

16

I’m betting she’s not a peasant and looks more like Anna Kournikova than not. You’ll have to report back to us. She ain’t gonna stick around long, so get a good look at her as soon as you can.

17

Eew.

18

Please tell me you’re kidding, Guinastasia… :wink:

In my dealings with the BCIS (legacy INS, soon to be the USCIS or something like that - morons… 3 name changes in 6 months?) and with newsgroups on family/marriage-based immigration, I’ve seen LOTS of “mail order brides” go through.

Men can visit websites, select a girl, exchange emails briefly, propose. Then, to satisfy the BCIS they must MEET their fiancee before bringing her to the US - so the agencies set up a meeting in Russia. They meet, take pictures, they get engaged, he stays a week, then returns to the US.

Once in the US, the process starts, and he can bring in his “new girl”. Initially costs about 6K to go see her and for the agency, and about 1000$ to file papers, get the medical done and get the visa.

There are/were lots of cases of abuse and such things involving mail order brides, especially from Russia, Thailand and Romania. Because of this, the BCIS now has special clauses for “battered spouses” so that they can adjust their status and stay in the US once separated/whatever…

It’s scary. It’s sad. But it exists… a pal (through newsgroups) of mine who met her fiance through the internet (in the normal way) is from the Ukraine - she says that a standard question asked at the visa interview is whether or not an agency was involved in the “matchmaking”. This is standard in all US consulates in the ex-USSR, Romania, Thailand and stuff…

Uuuuugh.

19

I watched a really good documentary about mail order brides a while back.

It was pretty balanced. It showed the typical rich pig types who just wanted a trophy wife with a cool accent. They were tired of American women and their attitudes and basically wanted a woman who they could control. (Not that I’m saying Russian women are like that, just that they wanted a woman who they could back into a corner, is all, which is easy when it’s either stay with the guy or go back to Russia.)

It showed the family of a guy who had married a woman and she and her boyfriend (who was either already here or came over here later) ended up killing him.

Then it showed some teddy bear of a guy who ended up going over there and finding a wife and they really did fall in love. She had a son, too, and the guy had fallen in love with the kid too (the kid’s bio father was in Russia and could care less about him) so it worked out well.

shrug

20

I have a coworker that has a Russian mail-order bride. He got her pretty much as ** Elenfair ** described it. She is drop-dead gorgeous, around 30, and has him so whipped it ain’t funny. But he is absolutely devoted to her and her son, and I’d have to classify it as a happy marraige. These things can work out.