I live in Jersey (New). As a background, I’m at the edge of civilization, I like to joke. If you go west of me, there’s farms, what we call mountains, hiking, all that kinda stuff. To the east of me, it gets more and more urban until you get to NYC.

Here are my walking distances:

• To the nearest convenience store: half a mile
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1 mile
• To the bus stop: half a mile
• To the nearest park: quarter mile
• To the nearest big supermarket: 1 mile (same as above)
• To the nearest library: I am 1 mile from two different libraries, pretty much smack in the middle.
• To the nearest train station: 1 mile

Adding:

• To the nearest mall: 1 mile
• To the nearest gym: quarter mile
• To the nearest hospital: 1.1 miles
• To the nearest ice cream parlor: .9 miles
• To the nearest record store: .9 miles
• To the nearest arcade: .9 miles

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: Just shy of 3500 miles. Straight-line distance to the Statue of Liberty: 30 miles

When I worked at Barnes&Noble as a teen (~2007-2008), my coworker and I would just whip gift cards around at each other. Was a good three months.

Yeah, I get a letter in the mail like once a week because some fucking company lost it accidentally, and their penance is sending apology letters.

So yeah, monitor your credit, I guess. Just sucks when it’s credit karma or the like who lose your info.

Smedley Butler was a great American.

I respect you for this incredibly outlandish take. I will start saying a few but only meaning two. A couple? Could be anything. Several will now be seven only.

SOAD had two great albums, and they most certainly were not Mezermize/Hypnotize. And Steal This Album wasn’t even a real album.

I live in America and I’m good for about 4 minutes a day and that’s enough.

Wait, you can secure SSDs and not just kinda push em in there?!

Sky’s too bright, this shit starts at like 4am.

It is. I watched it with my daughter when s1 came out, and it was well beyond just tolerable, which is the baseline for kids shows. Good story, well acted, great animations, good music.

They’re the size of my kids, since they’re generally the target if my references to goofballs.

And I guess my phone thought changing golfball to goofball was what I needed. Maybe I should read a little better what I write. Maybe next time.

Funny, I’m in NJ, and within the past month I’ve seen guava and rhubarb for the first time ever on the shelves. Haven’t gotten rhubarb yet, I really don’t know anything about it.

I just got into guava recently. I live in Jersey and my local ShopRite started stocking clamshells with six guavas or so, ranging in size from a goofball to something larger than a goofball but smaller than a baseball. Maybe like billiards ball sized. I’d never eaten them before like a month ago, and so the seeds threw me T first, but I’ve got the technique down now and shit, when they’re ripened, nice and soft, they are fantastic. I worry about the day when I get to ShopRite and the guavas are no longer.

including places whose current inhabitants I would not want to publicly associate myself with.

Long way to say Staten Island.

And a giant dick from JC sounds like someone who moved in sometime after 2000. I feel like the old timers, the real legit JC people, are anything but dicks. That city went through some hard, hard times, and it’s in its golden age right now, it’s nice to see.

I think NJ tends to be a love it or hate it kinda place. I lived outside of NJ a couple of times, but it pulled me back in, as they say.

As for South Central PA, closest I’ve gotten was probably King of Prussia, perhaps. Don’t really know much about it, but I’m always interested. Got a family now, and being able to pop them in a car to go to some kind of experience, versus the cost and hassle of flying (i.e. doors fall off), is appealing to me. And I’m at a point in my life where I can bring my kids to places I find interesting but they find incredibly boring, but when they get to my age they will continue the cycle (barring the apocalypse, of course).

And as for OC, MD, I feel like if you have a beach place you go to, that’s where you go. I’ve been going to essentially the same place for 37 years, at this point. On our way there, we pass Ontario license plates for all them who head down to Wildwood or maybe to MD too. I’ll probably take the family to Rehoboth or Ocean City, MD, at some point, just for the sake of checking the box (barring them being underwater, of course).

I’ll say, haven’t been in a while, but my brother lived in SF and then Palo Alto for a bit during and after law school, so 2009-14 we’ll say, and I had a blast every time I went to visit. I haven’t been back since, and obviously people say the city has changed a bit, but back then it was such a different lifestyle from the East Coast.

I always go back to this story, at that time Dunkin Donuts’s catchphrase or whatever, at least in the NEC, was America Runs on Dunkin, but when I went out west they would say America’s Favorite Coffee, and I always found it a pretty apropos juxtaposition of the coastal mentalities. In NY/NJ, we were all about work. Everyone works, you go out after work in your fuckin suits, you talked about work. It was a culture, and it ran on coffee (sometimes Dunkin). But out west, people seemed to be more interested in taking in life, the sights, the food, and yes, the fucking coffee.

And the catchphrase for the middle of America was “drink it or don’t, nobody cares about you”.

JK, flyover states!

Jersey. The best state.

I actually invited him inside as I had some chipped dinnerware. After he was finished I said “Your caulk looks great on my bowls.”

Watched dudes install a countertop. Apply caulk, one wipe, beautiful. After countertop installed I put in trim (it’s a window to a patio) and need to caulk literally a straight fucking line six inches long. Caulk, wipe, looks like ass. Great work!

Is achieving significant political change really viewed as ezpz?

It’s funny but even catching a well hit fly ball, if you haven’t done it before it’s going over your head.