gasps
monocle falls to floor
Yes, yes, but what I meant was that persons who routinely behave unethically in one set of ways, might perhaps not be generally expected to behave ethically (or not so reliably), in any other given way
Quality-controlled by whom? There’s always going to be more risk of accidentally dealing in tainted or bogus merchandise in an illicit market, but that doesn’t absolutely preclude one from dealing in illegal merchandise ethically.
Nor for me, but that’s besides the point (or besides my point, anyway).
Perhaps you could clarify. This post:
Did you mean that we shouldn’t be surprised if Winehouse’s dealers act unethically because drug dealers are notoriously shady characters, or (as I read it) did you mean that drug dealers are acting unethically by being drug dealers? If it’s the former, I misread your post and I don’t really have an objection.
Except that knowing your product is quite possible tainted or bogus, but still selling it is an unethical act.
A bit of both, although I won’t be accepting the specific phrase ‘notoriously shady characters’ being put into my mouth, if someone later decides to pick on that bit in particular.
I’m saying that it’s no big surprise to find drug dealers behaving unethically - that I expect loose ethics to be not at all uncommon in that profession, and also that there are aspects about drug dealing that inherently encourage or promote the formation of loose ethics.
Drug liberalisation advocate though I am, I would certainly argue that crack dealers are intrinsically unethical, since the adverse consequences for the user are so manifest and well-known. Less addictive drugs, sure, I would agree that it’s possible to sell with a clear conscience, but when you’re selling crack cocaine and heroin, no way.
Well, the obvious solution is to legalize all drugs, and have them as strictly taxed and regulated as alcohol and cigarettes.
I’m not kidding.
Sure it would be. Generally speaking, though - illegal goods have “quality control” in the same measure and for the same reason that legal merchandise does - the vendor has a self-interest in keeping their clientelle happy.
Of course, this does not hold true at the street-corner level, but this is a tiny fraction of the market.
I saw more than enough of this trade for twenty years or so, and don’t recall ever purchasing something that was significantly misrepresented or adulturated. This comes down to Lux’s Maxim: “Don’t eat stuff off the sidewalk.”
I hate to step in front of a thread derailing but as for the actual OP, I am with the camp that it is a desperate concerned father and sometimes they say stupid things with the best intentions. Cut him some slack.
Isn’t it, though? And it’s only a hair better, IMHO, than “You Know I’m No Good” or “Back to Black.”
I don’t think I’ve been quite this in love with a female vocalist’s voice since Aretha.
Tears Dry On Their Own
You Know I’m No Good
I agree, RTFirefly.
Digging a little deeper into her catalogue, it’s pretty crazy stuff. She’s like Laura Nyro’s harder-living British cousin, transplanted three decades into the future.
Speaking of which… what the hell does “surry” mean?
I don’t know, but it sounds right. I always pictured a kind of lazy dance, I guess.
I don’t think she’s all that; I have a bunch of her songs, and the more I listen to them, the less I like them. I don’t think she’s the genius she’s being made out to be.
OK, now I’ve a mental image of Steve Martin wild-and-crazy-guying it (in slow motion) heading for a picnic. Thanks.
I would make the comparison between a drug dealer and a liquor store owner, rather than a bartender. The drug dealer isn’t in a position to monitor the buyer between sales like a bartender does. It’s a different model…point-of-sale retail (buy and go home to use) vs. in-venue retail (buy and use in-house).
She is a living breathing trainwreck that one cannot turn away from.
I enjoy her voice and wish she could straighten out her problems for a few more albums.
You are a bad, bad, bad, but funny, man. 
( I think I may have used too many commas.)
To me she is a good singer. She’s not great but if her songs come on the radio I’ll listen to them.
I think I like the use of dashes in that spot: "You are a bad, bad, bad – but funny – man. "
Parentheses could also work.
I must make a confession here. The Bulwer Lytton contest judges edited my winning sentence “for clarity” by removing two commas and replacing them with dashes. “Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee.”
We discussed it before they published it. First of all, I thought “clarity” was the last thing they were looking for in the world’s worst sentence. But, I had considered the dashes myself, before submitting with the commas, and I went with the commas because I didn’t think dashes constiuted proper English grammar. I never learned about their use in Catholic grade school. And my impression of the contest rules that the sentence must be grammatically correct even though conceptually awful.
So I learned, through conversation with Scott Rice, the contest guy who is an English literature professor, that there are “schools” of grammar, some of which allow dashes, some of which don’t. Catholic school grammar, when I was groing up, didn’t.