Indeed, and these are among the reasons that I will not ever consider purchasing a townhouse. Which is kind of a problem, since I live in an area with extremely high housing prices and so can't afford to buy a detached house.
Indeed. That's the conundrum that drives so many people to townhouses. What's the alternative, a condominium??? You've still got the frelling HOA, which now has communal control over your plumbing, electricity, heat and A/C. You have no lawn or garden of your own. You have less space than a townhouse. Your car is parked half a mile away (some townhouses have garages). If you change jobs and have to relocate during a recession when it would be a disaster to sell the condo, you may be the victim of a covenant that prevents you from renting it out.
Either that or you rent, and most landlords aren't as easy to get along with as the Fraggles are. (We have a house back in California and also rent some property, but I live in a townhouse in Maryland where I had to come to find work, and I rent out the upper floors.) Or you could just buy a house in the next county where prices are lower and spend 2 1/2 hours commuting every day plus the cost of gas.
Actually, that's an interesting point - what are the legal liabilities of an HOA?
They've been in existence for decades so the laws are pretty well worked out. As I said, mine is very responsible and wouldn't find itself in that situation.
Are the homeowners in the association shielded from liability? What about the individual officers in the HOA that made the actual decisions? It's not clear to me that there isn't a target for litigation there.
Welcome to Florida. That wouldn't have happened in Maryland or California.
Unless, that is, you're including Asians in "white."
There's a hierarchy of minorities. Of course now that Euro-Americans are destined to comprise less than 50% of the population, we have to learn to call ourselves the "top-rated minority." Asians are second but there is still some hostility.
Certain people make fairly persuasive arguments that the definition of "white" is simply "sociocultural majority," and really has nothing to do with appearance at all. . . .
Last time I was in L.A. I was in a huge mall riding down the escalator behind a Good Ole Boy. He looked down onto the sea of Asian, Indian, African, and a few uncategorizable faces, and huddled closer to me assuming that anyone who looks like him would automatially think like him--amazing how they can forget the Civil War sometimes and not others. And he said, "I never thought the day would come, but I guess it's time to call the Messicans (that's how they pronounce it) "honorary white people."
But even if you don't in for all that, it does seem clear that the definition of whiteness has been expanding in recent years (and historically, c.f. Irish and Italians) what with the changes to the census regarding "Hispanic," etc.
"White" was never much of a formal term. It never even meant "Caucasian" back in the days when that word was in vogue. Arabs and Indians are "Caucasian" and they were never regarded as "white."
The alternative to that kind of embarrassment—being something of a busybody, and as a result frightening a reclusive elderly woman who hadn't figured out what was going on yet—is the ugly kind where they roll out the fly-drawn corpse of a woman who had fallen and hurt herself, and expired before anyone knew anything was wrong before lying there unknown days later.
My mother had a stroke and collapsed on the floor of her mobile home. She lay there very quietly for days, conscious but impaired, waiting patiently to die. Unfortunately the "busybodies" started asking each other, "Hey, has anybody seen Granny Fraggle lately?" They called the cops, the cops let themselves in, and she spent a year in a nursing home having more strokes until there was nothing left but a body on tubes. If you want to die peacefully, a mobile home park for seniors is probably not the best place to live.
Her much wiser sister lived in a mobile on an isolated lot out in the middle of the Arizona desert. When they finally came out to disconnect her utilities for non-payment, they found her in bed with a book and a smile, nicely preserved by the dry desert air.
It's better to beat your spouse behind closed doors... Where no one can see or hear... That's the spirit! He had the drapes pulled at all times.
No. I was referring to the (surely uniquely American) phenomenon of spouses fighting physically with a few unstated rules to prevent serious injury. This is the way they blow off their hostility. I have no idea how common this is but two friends of mine in Virginia have seen cops called on neighbors who were fighting this way, so it does happen.
Heaven forbid someone is imprisoned or loses his/her job if they beat their spouse or rape their family members. Best just keep the drapes closed... I mean these things should never be reported at all and there should be no laws against it, since on rare occasions, you may end up with a false accusation.
You misunderstand, and perhaps you cannot understand because this may be yet another uniquely American phenomenon. False reports of abuse, including sexual abuse, are common. There was an article in the paper just this morning of a guy who's been in prison for 15 years and the "victim" e-mailed him and told him she was sorry but she just did it to collect the money that rape victims get in some jurisdictions. She didn't realize that prison e-mail is monitored.
Children falsely accuse teachers and even their own relatives of sexual abuse because they've discovered that it
gives them power. Perhaps they don't show "Ringer" in your country. That complicated conspiracy about the teenager accusing her teacher of rape wasn't just something they thought up.
Surely the whole world has heard about the McMartin Preschool Satanism hoax. People's lives were ruined by that scam.
Yes obviously what this ultimately accomplishes is to make everyone skeptical of all abuse claims. This is the way America works. We keep changing the rules and learning how to sneak around them. Theoretically it should exercise our brains and keep us smart, but lately it doesn't seem to be working.
