I went out with my brother yesterday and came home to a voice mail from a friend of mine who wanted me to settle an argument between her and her fiancee.
She gave me two three-digit numbers and asked me to subtract one from the other longhand. I did, then she asked me how I did it. I told her that I started from the right and worked my way over to the left. She thanked me and told her that they had been arguing over that for a few hours. See, he said you start on the left and work your way over to the right.
Papa Tiger and I have had long arguments over the correct pronuciation of that tomato-based condiment that graces every hamburger: Is it ketchup or catsup? He’s a catsup man; he actually SAYS cat-sup. I point out that the bottle now says ketchup – that’s ket-chup, not cat-sup – on it but he insists they’ve just pandered to the rapidly declining English language.
Oh, and he insists that you can smell mayonnaise clear across the room. (Can you tell he’s mayo-phobic?) Unfortunately, both Young Tiger and daughter whiterabbit are on his side in this one. At least we all agree that Miracle Whip[sup]TM[/sup] is a crime against humanity.
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A lot of people who do mental math quickly (myself included) subtract this way. Offhand, I think its because it reduces the number of things that have to be kept in memory at once. It also gives you the most significant information first, which is handy if you don’t need an exact answer.
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Ah. Does he also insist that it’s Welsh rarebit, and never has been Welsh rabbit? (Note that Heinz, the One True Ketchup, has always said “ketchup”.)
I have an aunt who has tried to have so many stupid arguments that no one will argue with her any more. You know, for instance, how sometimes you’re driving onto a divided highway, and some utter moron in front of you will drive to the very end of the on-ramp and then come to a dead freaking stop? I’m sorry to say that might have been my aunt. She insists that’s the proper way to enter a highway, because there’s a yield sign, and yield signs are just another kind of stop sign. If someone fails to stop, and instead matches her speed to the traffic on the highway and merges in, that person is a <naughty word> who “cuts people off”! :rolleyes:
The good news is that she also thinks divided highways are incredibly unsafe compared to surface roads and will go to great lengths not to drive on one. So your chances of being behind her on the on-ramp these days are comfortably slim. But if you do meet her, for the love of god, don’t try to argue!!!
I am here to correct the urban legend that Kirk is somehow inferior to Pickard. Kirk got more chicks, had a better command style, came up with more creative solutions to problems, and would probably beat down Pickard and the Enterprise E with his own original Enterprise. In my own humble opinion, of course.
I already confessed Relative Driving Distances Between Locales In Hazard County as being a popular debate in our house.
In addition, I think Who Does The Cat Like Better? is a serious topic and does not qualify as a stupid family argument.
Other stupid, ongoing arguments include:
If We Were Going to Buy One of Those Gigantic Inflatable Animals, Like The Kind They Sometimes Have at Used Car Lots, Would It Be Better To Get A Gorilla or a Kangaroo?
Who Was The Last Person To Use the Spare Key, and Where Is It Now?
Okra: Divine Foodstuff of the Gods, or Vile Putrid Abomination
Resolved: Garth Brooks (his music, not his person) Should Be Banned From Our Home
I must chime in and say that DQ is MUCH more low rent than Baskin-Robbins. Don’t get me wrong, I love those Blizzards, but it’s decidedly low rent.
The classic family argument in our house was always “Who’s the smartest?”
There was never a clear answer. I have the highest SAT scores. Dad had the most complicated profession. Mom has a master’s degree, and my brother can now legally be called “Doctor” (he’s a chiropractor).
Trivial Pursuit challenges could grow violent, and I can’t think of anyone who’s won more than anybody else. We once all took the same IQ test, and came out within a five-point spread.
Of course, now that my sister-in-law got a PhD. in Genetic Epidemiology, we’re all pretty much screwed.
A few years ago, my great-uncle Paul died. He was buried in a plot adjacent to his mother and father. Shortly after his interrment, one of his sisters noticed that his plot was two feet closer to their mother than hers was going to be. This, naturally, caused a major fuss within the family.
We ended up having to have Uncle Paul dug up and moved a short distance from his original spot. This finally made my crazy great aunt happy.
When me and my cousins gather together at holidays, we like to torment my grandmother by threatening to get some shovels and restore Uncle Paul to his earlier “privliged” location.
This is no BS. Truth is stranger than fiction, especially in my nutso clan.
It is a serious topic. How could I have forgotten this one? Ever since I moved in, my sister and I are constantly discussing the question of Who the Kitties Love More?
Agreed on both counts. The cat question is serious. We have three cats in our house, and we always fight over who gets which one(s) in the event that my husband continues to be so Stoopit that I will have no choice but to divorce him.
Also, of course Dairy Queen is low rent. Know why Baskin Robbins doesn’t have soft serve? Because Baskin Robbins customers have all their teeth, and can therefore bite into their ice cream like properly civilized people.
We also often have the “Evil Tomatoes” fight in my house. Wherein my husband claims that he doesn’t “like” tomatoes at all, except when they are made into sauce or ketchup, or when they are made into soup, or when they are put on sandwiches.
I have no idea what other uses there are for tomatoes, but my husband doesn’t like them in any other application. Oh, and of course it is ketchup-with-a-K, not catsup-with-a-smack-upside-the-head-you-dolt.
I’m all about Pink Bubblegum and/or Mint Choc. Chip (with a sugar cone), although I do occasionally branch out.
I think my SO’s logic is that you can get hard ice cream at the grocery store, so it’s nothing special. You cannot, however, get soft-serve (which he prefers) without a spiffy, special machine.
(Well, OK, you can leave the ice cream out to melt or something, but it’s just not the same).
Our stupidest argument? The pronunciation of the word “library”. My husband is one of the most intelligent people I know. Really. Hands-down smarter than me (and I’m not exactly a blithering idiot [shut up]). Why, oh, why can’t he pronounce lie-brair-ee? He says “liberry”. I always quote an elementary school teacher of mine: “I’ve heard of strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries. But never have I heard of a lieberry”. Hubby says that if enough people pronounce it this way, it becomes a “correct” pronunciation. Well, I’ve known lots of people who say “pissghetti”, but just because a lot of people mis-pronounce it does not make the mispronunciation correct!
So, the quesiton is this: why can’t I just accept that he mispronounces this word, and is likely to always mispronounce it, for the rest of his life? Such a little thing, really. Why does it make me want to beat my head against a wall?
(a) this may be the best story ever
(b) I’m convined that you’re right. There are some words (prism is a good example) which have a syllable that is so short that it has no meaningful vowel. Saying “prism” takes up less time than saying “pri-zam”. But say “app-all, app-ol, app-il, apple”. They all take the same amount of time. There is, indeed a vowel in the second syllable of apple. (And back when I was a kid at Y camp, I also liked to sing it as “aypayls aynd baynaynays”).
I will maintain this position until someone truly authoritative refutes it.
No, no, rockle: Baskin Robbins doesn’t sell soft-serve because they have the clientele who are eternally amused by the “upside-down cone on a scoop of ice cream” clown. They figure if they can get away with that stale old joke, then no one will notice their ice cream sucks dried-up cow udders.
Not only does Dairy Queen have better ice cream, it also represents racial unity: note the vanilla cone dipped in a vat of chocolate…
[sub]Pink Bubblegum ice cream, auntie em, my love? But… what if I swallow the gum and am forced to live with it in my gullet for the next forty years? Is the pink really worth that risk?[/sub]
