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thatbadadvice · 1 year

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Help! Death is inconvenient!

Dear Prudence, Slate, 6 December 2022:

Q. Bothersome Burials: Is it appropriate to hold a funeral on a Saturday? I have recently noticed that funerals are more frequently being held on Saturdays instead of weekdays and I think it is bad etiquette. On most Saturdays, we already have plans for weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, ski trips, softball tournaments, etc. and I am perturbed when we are expected to change those plans to attend funerals. It seems to me that when you lose someone very close to you that you should be taking time off of work anyway rather than waiting until your scheduled day off to have a funeral and grieve. When you lose an acquaintance, or perhaps do not know the deceased but still want to support your friends and family, you should be able to limit it to a few hours during the week and not give up your weekend plans. Also, it seems inconsiderate to make the funeral home and cemetery staff work on a Saturday. I believe that Saturdays should be off-limits, am I mistaken about this?

Dear Bothersome Burials,

Funerals should absolutely never be held on Saturdays, for all of the excellent reasons you describe. It is inconsiderate in the extreme to interrupt people's ski trips even for legitimate reasons (whatever they may be — nothing immediately springs to mind, but the Bad Advisor is sure someone somewhere will be able to drudge up an example). To derail a romp on the slopes for something as inconsequential as a community gathering to grieve the departure of a beloved friend or family member from the plane of existence as we know it frankly defies comprehension. For the snuffing out of one's mortal lamplight to cause scheduling conflicts around more minor commitments such as weddings and baby showers is naturally a lesser infraction — attendees can always simply RSVP to the next one, or the one after that — but nevertheless impolite. Of course, few will share your deep concern for the wellbeing of those death professionals who work on Saturdays despite undoubtedly being, as you are, shocked by and entirely unprepared to accommodate the customs and traditions surrounding the inevitable fate, old as life itself, that awaits all of us. But your selflessness is noted here nonetheless.

If you are mistaken about anything, it is in failing to interrogate the cause of these breaches of etiquette. There was a time when people treated each other with just a little more consideration — when we left our doors unlocked, our unvaccinated children played together barefoot in the streets until dawn, and we dropped dead when and only when it was convenient for people's busy weekend schedules. My mother would have rather died than shuffle off the mortal coil just before Little Maydelayne's big softball tournament! Sadly, people these days think only of themselves, their own needs, and their own petty concerns — to say nothing of their unwillingness to sacrifice a day of fun and fulfilling work to attend the final celebration of life for some douchebag who had the gall to kick the bucket without checking their second cousin's day-off calendar first. Grief is already experienced for only those fleeting moments we spend attending funeral services; it is unseemly to defer our limited 40- to 90-minute mourning periods until such a time as we can gather together in meaningful community.

Alas, that's the world we live in today! We can lay much of the blame on the obvious culprits — video games, reefer, and heavy metal music — but we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not admit that we are responsible for making time for what matters. The next time a cherished friend, loved one, or colleague sets off on that long, mysterious journey to the undiscovered country, we must prioritize the apres-ski reservations at the lodge bar.

#advice #bad advice #funerals #death #dying #dear prudence #grief #loss #kids these days #what is the world coming to #the good old days

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glidingsilvery · 23 days

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Belle Épine (Dear Prudence) 2010

#Belle Épine #dear prudence #rebecca zlotowski #swann arlaud #Agathe Schlencker #SwannActing

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recliningbacchante · 1 year

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#dear prudence #siouxsie and the banshees #hyæna #hyaena

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theoriginallittledarling · 2 months

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Here’s a real musiciany post for all of you

Today I’ve been trying to learn the baseline in Dear Prudence, the real distinct part that stands out in the second verse. The entire baseline is on the D string

I first noticed that Paul slides out of each not before playing the next higher note each time, so I started trying to play it by playing the note, sliding down the neck, and playing the next 2 notes.

My brother told me that I needed to slide into the note rather than sliding out of it, so I started learning it that way; slide into the note, play the next note, then play the string open before sliding into the next note

After listening to it again I realized that he’s actually doing both, sliding up the string into the note, playing a half step next, then sliding out of the half step, then sliding back into the same half step, then playing another half step and so on

It’s such a good bassline and I’m really not a good enough bassist to be trying to play it

#but I guess that’s how we get better isn’t it #Paul sliding up and down that d string on John’s song #mclennon?#Paul McCartney #beatles #the beatles #dear prudence #hofner bass #bass #bass player #john lennon #white album

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kdo-three · 4 months

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Siouxsie and The Banshees - Dear Prudence (1983) John Lennon from: "Dear Prudence" / "Tattoo" (Single) "Hyæna" ( US LP|CD) "Hyæna" (CD) (2009 CD Reissue Bonus Track)

Post-Punk | Neo-Psychedelia | The Beatles

JukeHostUK: (left click = play) (320kbps)

Album Personnel: Siouxsie Sioux: Vocals Robert Smith: Guitars / Keyboards Steven Severin: Electric Bass / Keyboards Budgie: Drums / Percussion / Marimba

Robin Canter: Woodwinds The Chandos Players: Strings

Produced by Mike Hedges / Siouxsie and The Banshees

Recorded: @ The Angel Recording Studios in Islington, London England UK and The Europafilm Studios in Stockholm, Sweden July, 1983

Single Released: on September 23, 1983 Polydor Records/Wonderland Records (UK) in North America May, 1984 Geffen Records (US)

#Siouxsie Sioux #The Beatles #1980's #Dear Prudence #Siouxsie and The Banshees #John Lennon #Robert Smith #Budgie #Steven Severin #Neo-Psychedelia #Post-Punk

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music-interpretation-review · 8 months

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(Creep with Postmodern Jukebox is a contestant in the tournament, so it does not appear in this poll)

Videos under the cut

youtube

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dragonmuse · 1 year

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Are there any Revenge-family siblings we haven’t met or heard about? We’ve seen the Hands siblings and the Boodhari siblings and obviously Alma and Charlie, but does anyone else have siblings who haven’t shown up in the stories yet? There are a lot of confirmed only children and the only sibling I can think of off the top of my head who has been alluded to but not shown up is Faith’s sister who was the one who gave Izzy her ring after she died.

( There may be, but they haven't made themselves known to me yet! But in the meantime, here's someone I never thought I'd write about)

Pru Morris was walking away. It wasn’t the first time. At eighteen, she’d walked away from her parents' house with just the contents of her carefully packed messenger bag in boots that belonged to a dead girl. Those boots had carried her to her first three dead end jobs and then, at last, to a big accounting firm where an executive called her ‘assistant’ and meant ‘surrogate wife’.

For three years, Pru handled everything in the man’s life, including his actual wife. She never slept with him, but it was a close thing once or twice. The second winter, the boots had died at last with the sole slipping from the right one. She probably could’ve fixed them, but it felt right to put away childish things. She’d never even liked them really. But she didn’t throw them away, just tucked them in her closet and forgot about them.

Then the man got promoted and got a new assistant. Pru was handed over to the new man without ceremony. It was a silent divorce that she felt in bones, and she forced herself to start dating again to make up for it.

Drew Morris was fine. He had a good job, a good car, and he took her to nice dinners. He wasn’t flashy, but he was steady. When he proposed a few months later, it was with a decent ring and she said yes without much further thought.

The honeymoon was beautiful. Days in the sun and he held her hand and Pru felt loved for the first time in a long time. But then they got back and the handholding stopped. For a while, she was sure she’d done better than her mother at least. Drew never raised his hand to her, rarely yelled.

But he also barely looked at her, barely spoke to her at all. On her birthday, every year he had a bouquet sent to her at work and every year, the card was the same tucked among the blooms. Pru knew his assistant had ordered them. It was the same message she had chosen for her executives a dozen times.

“How pretty!” One of the other girls at worked cooed. “You’re so lucky!”

“Lucky that someone else keeps his calendar,” she said flatly. It was year four.

Pru Morris was twenty-nine years old. She was sitting in her bedroom which was meant to be theirs, but Drew was away a lot. He told her to decorate it however she wanted, then wrinkled his nose when he’d seen what she’d done. ‘A little gaudy, isn’t it?” he’d said and all the pretty things she’d picked out became cheap and tatty all at once.

Maybe that was what she needed. A fresh take on the bedroom. She could redo it, get it right this time and maybe he’d want to linger. With a renewed sense of purpose, Pru got a garbage bag and started pulling things out of her closet that she hadn’t worn in a while. She’d do a purge, donate some things and get started on a fresh vision.

At the back of the closet, she found a pair of black boots. The right heel had come away on one. Pru fell to her knees and drew them out. Without any thought, she pulled them to her chest and started crying. The tears shocked her. Pru was not a weeper. She hadn’t cried on her wedding day or the day her executive dumped her. But today she wept over the broken leather and rubber, holding the boots to her as tenderly as a baby.

“Fuck him,” she realized as she held them tight to her. Pru didn’t swear, crisp memory of her father shoving soap into her mouth had ripped all that away. Even she said ‘heck’ she’d remember the horrible taste and his hand fisted in her hair.

But she didn’t taste soap right now. Just her own ears. “FUCK HIM!” she stood abruptly, letting the shoes cascade down. Then she went and got her suitcase and filled it with the few thing she cared about, some clothes and her toiletries. She ripped off her perfectly nice ring and left it on top of a note that was much politer than she wanted to be. She had her own money, carefully hoarded. Drew had been so afraid of her siphoning off his money that he insisted on separate accounts. Asshole.

She got a studio a few blocks from work. Cramped, but her own again. She put the boots by the front door as a reminder. For good luck, she’d tap her toes against them as she went out the door to meet her lawyer.

In the end there was no fight and she got plenty of Drew’s money anyway. Enough that she could sustain herself in the studio for as long as she liked. For a few months, she stayed at work, talked like everything was normal and only mentioned the divorce if asked where her ring had gone. People fussed like she should be melting down, made sympathetic noises, asked if he had cheated.

She just shook her head and said, “Just went our separate ways.” A few of the women stopped talking to her, but Jenny from the front desk and had groaned and said, “I KNOW that feeling.”

They went out for drinks. Jenny was raw and funny and Pru had no idea why they’d never talked before. She was divorced too and was happy to talk to Pru about every dating service under the sun. They went speed dating together and laughed over the awkwardness afterwards. Pru had had a lot of ‘friends’ over the years, but Jenny felt like a real friend.

“Hey, there’s a three bedroom opening up in my building, what do you think?” Jenny offered. “Get you out of that bachelorette special and me away from my horrible roommate?”

The apartment got a lot of light and Jenny was a good roommate. They hung out a lot, but also gave each other space. And the first birthday Pru had in the apartment, Jenny gave her a framed print of the poster for A Walk to Remember, Pru’s favorite movie. Pru had cried for the second time in as many years. Jenny had hugged her and not judged.

“Hey, is it okay if I move these?” Jenny asked when they were both on a cleaning kick. The boots sat by the door still.

“No!” Pru said then winced.

“I don’t mean away,” Jenny assured her. “I got us a shoe rack. Is that okay”

“You did?”

“Mhm, so we don’t have the water dripping onto the hardwood, there’s a mat that goes under it.”

“Yeah okay.”

Jenny set the boots on the lower rack, noticed the broken sole.

“They were my sister’s,” Pru blurted, the words no longer able to stay behind her teeth.

“You have a sister?” Jenny’s eyes went wide.

“She died. When we were still kids.”

“Oh wow, that must’ve been awful.”

“We didn’t get along,” Pru twisted her hands together in front of her. “Fought all the time like everyone else in that house, but I figured we were sisters, you know? It’d work out. It always did on tv. And then she just died. Mom and Dad tried to toss all her things, but I got a few. I didn’t even know why...I was fifteen. Just seemed wrong to make her disappear like that. She had his thug boyfriend, took her ring from me. My parents took her bedding, her cassettes, most of her clothes and just tossed them. I hid her boots under my bed. Grabbed her hair brush too, but I lost it somewhere along the way.”

“Oh, Pru,” Jenny hugged her and she hugged back. The boots stayed on the shoe rack.

Dead at seventeen. Pru was thirty-one. It could happen, she thought as she tapped the boots with her toe each morning. She tapped them the day she changed back her name. She tapped them the day she saw the poster for an interior design class. She tapped them the day she got her certificate and the day she headed out to meet her first client.

No one ever called her work gaudy.

“You’re a miracle worker,” Patrick said when he walked into his new kitchen. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

“You had a really clear vision,” she told him eagerly. Patrick was on the short side, closer to her height and his hair was thinning a little. He dressed beautifully though and had poured over samples with her just as invested as some of her female clients.

He was divorced too, pictures of a daughter scattered around the apartment and a bedroom set aside for her visits.

“You’re great at visions, Pru,” he told her eagerly. He paid her and as soon as the check was in her walled, he said, “This is probably really inappropriate and I hope I’m not putting you on the spot, but would you...get dinner with me some time?”

“I’d like that,” she beamed and she did like it. They both kept their places and Jenny teased her about being ‘the other woman’.

“You’ve got it wrong. He’s the other woman,” Pru announced and then Jenny cried on her, which made things feel a little more even.

Pru Callahan wasn’t walking away from her past any more. She was running towards the future. And she’d need some sturdy boots for that. With her heart in her throat, she brought them to be repaired and re-soled. That winter she spent every day in fashionable outfits, accessorized with vintage Docs.

#leda house and the kraken verse #ficlet #dear prudence

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mikhayhu · 3 months

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The sun is up, the sky is blue. It's beautiful and so are you–The Beatles

#dear prudence #lea seydoux

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coochiequeens · 4 days

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Of course the nephew sucks. Why else would the parents want him to stay with the aunt just for "a change of scenery" and say that's an equally good reason as hosting his sisters when they were attending college.

Dear Prudence,

I comfortably live in an area with a very high cost of living. My older two nieces came to stay with me after college while they were trying to figure out their places in the world. Their “rent” went into savings so they could start out with a bit of a nest egg. They were expected to clean and to pay for their own food. We didn’t have a problem, and they both went on to have successful adult lives.

Their brother is another story altogether. He basically coasted through high school and then failed to do anything. No job, no interest in education, no interest in anything but video games—he hasn’t even gotten his driver’s license yet. He is 22. My sister has babied him his entire life. My brother-in-law is at the end of his rope and demanding something be done. My sister thinks that sending him my way for a change of scenery will inspire him. She says it is only “fair” that I help my nephew, as I did my nieces.

My sympathy has limits. My nephew refuses to see a doctor so any root cause like depression is not being addressed. My sister has offered to pay me until her son gets settled, but I am not willing to live with a lump lounging in my living room playing video games night and day. How do I have this discussion with my sister?

—Not a Launch Pad

Dear Launch Pad,

Your sister’s belief that you are obligated, in some way, to put up her children in the big city is ridiculous, of course. You are not! If you do not want to host a third of your sister’s children, rent-free, for some indeterminate amount of time, that is totally fine.

But I would not expect your sister to respond well if your stated reason is that her daughters were cool but her son sucks. And if you really enjoyed the company of those young women, and were pleased to be part of their young-adult lives, I’d remind you that you don’t really know that much about their younger brother or what he would actually be like as a houseguest. Maybe he would be a lump. Or maybe he would in fact find the city (I’m assuming) a welcome change in his life. There’s every chance you might similarly enjoy building a relationship with this young man and helping him along his way.

Or maybe you are not interested in the hassle! If that’s the case, a simple “I’m so sorry, but I just can’t host your son right now” will suffice.

—Prudie, hospitably

Anyone else think she should be upfront, even if boymom isn't going to like it? What the hell is she going to do if the parents kick him out but they leave him at her doorstep so they can tell themselves they didn't really kick him out?

#dear prudence #WTF #Of course he's going to suck as a guest #The mother wants him to get a change of scenery #The father is at the end of his rope #Who knows what the sisters said about him?#No job #No outside hobbies #No continuing education #Another man ruined by video game addiction #It sounds like she was already approached about and the sister is still asking #Babied sons become manchildren

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morffyne · 7 months

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#Siouxsie Sioux #Siouxsie and the Banshees #Dear Prudence #1983

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ubiq80 · 10 months

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Siouxsie and the Banshees. 1983

#siouxsie and the banshees #dear prudence #80s #vintage ads

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thatbadadvice · 1 year

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Help! My Girlfriend Didn't Appreciate The Awesome Present I Gave her

Dear Prudence, Slate, 9 January 2023:

Dear Prudence,

My girlfriend thinks I’m trying to undermine her. How do I prove to her I’m not? My girlfriend “Katie” (33F) and I (30M) have been dating for three months, and so far it had been going very well. I even thought we could become very serious. However, something has changed, and I’m worried that she’s getting cold feet.

This all started a few days ago, when my parents dropped by my place to chat. Katie was in the kitchen, making the two of us dinner. My parents and Katie have met a couple of times before, and they seem to get along. Additionally, Katie’s normally very calm and easygoing. However, when my mom walked into the kitchen to help out, Katie seemed to become irritated. She said that she “prefers to cook alone,” and when my mom grabbed a knife and some carrots and started to chop them up for her, Katie asked her not to cut them because they have to be cut “a certain way.” Katie told my mom that she didn’t want help and demanded that she go back into the living room area.

I’d never seen Katie this upset, and I wasn’t happy with how she treated my mom. When my mom left the kitchen, I hugged her and said, “Sorry about that.” I asked Katie what was going on and she said nothing, but at the time, I was alarmed and suspicious. Later that evening, I had to get some groceries, and while I was at the supermarket, I decided to pick up some Midol as a nice gesture. I didn’t know if Katie was on her period, but knowing that she isn’t normally this irritable, it seemed possible to me and if she was, she might appreciate the gift. When I got back, Katie was watching the World Cup, and I silently placed the Midol on top of her bag. Katie gave me a weird look and asked why I had bought her Midol, and I said it was because of how she had acted with my mother earlier.

Katie did not like this explanation. She said she was annoyed because she didn’t want someone interfering with her cooking, not because she was on her period. She said it made her think that I don’t take her feelings seriously and am trying to “undermine the legitimacy of her emotions.” I explained that this wasn’t true, but I don’t know if she believed me. I think the damage might have been done. How can I salvage the relationship and win back Katie’s trust? — Midol Mishap

Dear Midol Mishap,

Does Katie usually have a problem with self-soothing, or does it mostly happen during meals where people enter her space uninvited and intentionally disregard her stated preferences when she tends to act out like this? Does bedtime/bathtime usually go okay? Can you drop her off at the office without tears and a tantrum? Figuring out the answer to this question will reveal the extent to which this relationship can be salvaged, but I think you're in for an uphill battle if silently leaving a box of bitch pills on a woman's purse doesn't have her running back into your arms with relief and appreciation for the thoughtful care you showed her while she was being a real cunt.

Usually women appreciate being told that their emotions are wrong, and welcome thoughtful explanations from men about how the things they have felt and experienced are incorrect due to being incongruent with a man's feelings and experiences. But some women, and it sounds like Katie might be one of them, lack the self-awareness necessary to recognize that the things they believe they think they interpret as being insulting, disrespectful, and patronizing are not that way because some dude somewhere said so.

It might be worth opening up a dialogue with your mother about how to handle Katie; I don't mean to suggest that all women are the same (that would be sexist, yikes!) but you have both experienced what it is like to be under the thumb of someone as cruel and controlling as Katie, and you may be able to offer each other some comfort while you figure out how to get the woman you've been fucking for three months back on the right path, in terms of her behavior and emotional regulation. Meds are a great start — Midol is an absolute miracle drug for shutting down an ungrateful cow — but you can't just crush it up over Katie's ice cream every night.

The right solution is going to necessarily involve some effort on Katie's part to tell you only what you want to hear and agree with everything you say, and she might just not be mature enough to do that kind of hard internal work right now. A lot of people wouldn't — they'd say they have a right to assert boundaries, be taken seriously as full human beings, and not have their legitimate concerns belittled as mere hormonal hysterics of an unstable female — but it's possible Katie is capable of real change. The next time she has one of her little episodes, try using a little babydoll to coax Katie into seeing what a silly little monkey she's being when she rejects the precious opportunity to bond with your sweet mama by letting her do whatever she wants no matter what. Katie could speak directly to the doll about how she believes she thinks feels until she's ready to express the emotions you want her to have.

If you try this, you might want to wait until after dinner, when the knives are put away, just in case. Best of luck, dear boy!

#midol #PMS #advice #bad advice #dear prudence #sexism #misogyny #parents #parenting #cooking #too many cooks in the kitchen #too many cooks #just so many cooks

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