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13. And Don’t Forget About His Blurred Sexual History
One of the main plot points throughout the early seasons of Friends concerns the fact that Ross has only ever slept with one woman, his first ex-wife Carol – and that’s not something you’re going to lie about, is it? What would be the point? Cut to season 7, though, and it’s revealed that Ross apparently slept with a cleaning lady whilst he was in college. Which means that… Ross is… purposely… making up the fact that… he only slept with… one woman? Why would you do that, Ross? Why?
12. Chandler Can’t Cry? Not According To Phoebe….
The plot of episode “The One Where Chandler Can’t Cry” concerns the fact that Chandler hasn’t cried since he was a child and that he has no emotions, and that everyone now has to try and make him cry for the sum of the episode – and yet in series 3, a brief story is recounted about a time where Phoebe made Chandler “cry like a baby.” Which sort of ruins the latter plot, doesn’t it? I mean, not really, but… sort of really. A lot.
11. Barry Who Now?
Remember that guy who Rachel was going to marry in the pilot? You know, the dentist? Barry Farber, right? Or, at least that’s what he was known as in pretty much every single episode except for the first, where he had an entirely different surname: Finkle. How and why did this happen? Did Barry go into the Witness Protection Program? Why doesn’t Rachel notice the name switch-a-roo? Why was it changed anyway? TOO MANY QUESTIONS, FRIENDS WRITERS.
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My children won’t learn French. If their school tries to force the issue, I’ll fight tooth and nail. There’ll be the mother of all Agincourts before I let it happen.
It’s not that I have any problem with the language, even though it has too many vowels and you have to say 99 as ‘four-twenty-ten-nine’, making it impossible (I imagine) to sing that song about red balloons.
It’s just that I want my children to be successful, and learning French makes no business sense. There’s a moral issue too, but first the business: no English person moves to France to hatch a business plan these days. They might go there for the lifestyle, or the wine, or to live out their years. But nobody goes there to succeed. My nephew, who recently left school in Brittany, had modest ambitions to be a shop assistant, but found he needed a three-year accreditation in retail. He signed up to be a tour guide, but was required to take a two-year course in pointing at battlements. You cannot lead even the most unambitious life in France without sitting an exam for it. There’s not much incentive to do anything for yourself, either: even if you remain insufficiently prosperous to stay clear of the 75 per cent tax rate, every self-starter who sells their business after ten years owes the state 60 per cent capital gains tax on any profit. Quebec has launched a programme to lure 50,000 French entrepreneurs to its shores, which is a bit like deciding to save 50,000 black rhinos. Too late, I reckon.
None of this makes France unworthy of visiting, of course. France is lovely, and best enjoyed if you can hire a caravan and sit in cafés and buy baguettes. But for these I recommend a phrasebook, rather than six years of verb conjugation.
Of course, it’s not all about France. People point out to me that much of the world — 15 per cent of its land area, no less — is Francophone. Yes, I say, and just look at the state of most of it. Look at Ivory Coast and Chad and Mali and the two Congos and — right now — the Central African Republic. Much of Africa is looking up these days, but these particular countries are irretrievably buggered. And the reason they’re buggered is intimately connected to the fact that they speak French.
Organisation internationale de la Francophonie is an association of countries that ‘speak French, or that sign up to French values’. They speak French because 100 years ago they had no choice, and they sign up to French values because there’s business to be done by doing so. The most recent addition is Qatar, a country where only 1 per cent of the population speaks any French, following the Gulf state’s agreement to put EUR300 million into French enterprise. At the Francophone summit in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, last year, President Hollande said, ‘Speaking French means speaking the language of human rights. The Rights of Man were written in French.’ Beyond the chance of filling the coffers, it is a belief central to La Francophonie that the language and the culture are indissoluble: if you speak French, you will think French. Your sympathies will bend perforce towards France.
Today if you scratch a poor Francophone country you’ll find France. Unlike Britain, France never really left Africa. An African advisory unit, the Cellule Africaine, has remained in the ?lysée Palace since France’s African empire was officially dissolved, capable of shoring up or knocking over rulers as required. Strong bonds of cooperation with Houphou?t-Boigny of Ivory Coast, the Bongo regime in Gabon and Mobutu in the former Belgian Congo have kept those countries reliant on French aid and assistance. France has intervened militarily in Africa 30 times since granting its c many more times it has backed rebel groups or used intrigue and leverage to install or remove regimes. French special forces helped bring down the Gbagbo regime in Ivory Coast in 2010. Last year the French were in M now they’re in the Central African Republic, where 38 years ago France helped install the ‘African Napoleon’, Bokassa I, removing him three years later when his penchant for cutting people’s ears off and killing schoolchildren became an embarrassment. France maintains a permanent and active presence of 5,000 troops across the most fractured, underdeveloped and politically fragile part of the continent.
Over there, you get a lot of bang for 5,000 men. Africa, according to former President Giscard d’Estaing, remains ‘the sole continent where France could still, with 500 men, change the course of history’. And so it has. But then, Plus ?a change, plus c’est pareil. I’ve no doubt that France will save some lives in CAR. But in 30 full-scale military adventures France has not yet installed one worthwhile government nor made the slightest improvement to the average African’s quality of life.
In return for its muscle, France’s nuclear power stations draw half of their uranium from Niger, and France exports oil from Gabon, where it has just given its blessing to a dynastic succession of power. After the US, France is the second largest investor in Equatorial Guinea, a Francophonie member despite its state language being Spanish. It’s a nation consistently ranked among the ‘worst of the worst’ in an annual survey of political and civil rights abuses carried out by the monitor group Freedom House. Every country does business with horrible regimes, of course. What’s amusing is that the President, Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, received an ‘Order of Francophonie and Dialogue of Cultures Award’ from La Francophonie a year after police in Paris raided his son’s house, confiscating 11 of his luxury cars. They also found plans to build a yacht costing the same as Equatorial Guinea’s entire health and education budget.
Of course it’s wrong to disdain the French language — and yes, it is a beautiful language — just because so many people use it to say things like ‘I’m hungry’ and ‘I wish we could have an election’ and ‘I’m taking my money to Belgium’. Plenty of dark plans have been hatched in English, after all: the idea of seizing control of Equatorial Guinea by Mark Thatcher’s friends sticks in the mind. My problem with French is that it’s still at war with us.
In editorials that defend Hollande’s faltering economic model, Libération continually attacks the alternative: clunking, brutal Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire. ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is still a shorthand in French government for anything antithetical to accepted French practice. The historian Martin Meredith attributes this to ‘Fashoda Syndrome’, Kitchener’s rebuff to French colonial expansion that so infuriated Charles de Gaulle that he set up the Cellule Africaine.
In 1990 the CA was headed by Jean–Christophe Mitterrand, son of President Fran?ois. Meredith recounts how, when a Tutsi rebel army equipped by Uganda approached Rwanda in October 1990, ‘it fitted directly into the French notion of an Anglo-Saxon plot… With little hesitation, President Mitterrand, a personal friend of [the Hutu president] Habyarimana, authorised the despatch of French troops to Rwanda.’
Over the next year, French forces oversaw the expansion of the Hutu armed forces from 9,000 to 28,000 men and set up arms deals that helped the regime buy $100 million worth of arms from Egypt and South Africa, despite mounting evidence that they were preparing for genocide. Central to this was the French mercenary Paul Barril, who, even once the genocide had begun in earnest, signed a contract of assistance with the interim Rwandan government
that was carrying out the butchery. French involvement in Rwanda is recounted in the memoirs of UN commander Roméo Dallaire, who helplessly watched French aircraft delivering arms to the genocidaires. French soldiers, believing they had been sent to prevent an invasion by the Tutsi rebel army, were horrified to find themselves protecting mass-murderers and required by their government to set up a safety zone which gave the fleeing genocidaires safe passage into Zaire.
Linda Melvern, whose account of the genocide, Conspiracy To Murder, is one of the most comprehensive, drily concludes, ‘The French policy seemed to be based on the fact that Rwanda was at a crossroads between Anglophone and Francophone Africa.’
Of course, I can’t do anything about all this beastliness and intrigue far away. None of us can. These days we’re even told that aid is futile. But for the sake of doing something futile yet decisive, I will insist that my children don’t learn French. Call it solidarity with Rwanda, where the new government has embarked on a massive campaign to make English the language of government and commerce. They even joined the Commonwealth in 2009. I’m sad, of course, that my children will miss a field trip to Saint-Malo and the ability to watch Yves Montand films without subtitles. It’s just that, in the great marketplace of language, French looks such an unattractive investment. German is going places. Mandarin will be indispensable. Spanish has few irregular verbs and is spoken in a multitude of fascinating countries with positive economic outlooks.
Despite all this I do maintain a liking for French people, French cynicism and French satire. It was an article in Charlie Hebdo (France’s version of Private Eye) in 2009 that led to charges against Barril being filed at the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris. Pending the outcome of the investigation, Barril continues to work as advisor to the government of Qatar, the latest member of an organisation which promotes the French language along with (according to Mr Hollande) ‘democracy, human rights, pluralism, respect for freedom of expression, and the assertion that everyone should be able to choose their leaders’.
Actually, forget what I said about the French and irony.
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Already a subscriber with a Web ID? .(8629361) Seven examples that prove your mother-in-law is right and you know nothing about loading a dishwasher properly
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5. Placing containers belly-upWho makes that mistake more than once?
My mother in law would come over and if I was not home, she would wash my dishes. I would thank her and tell her she didn't have to do that. (God forbid my dope-I mean husband might tell her not to do it.)The minute she left, I had to put them all back and rewash them. A wonderful lady,but a lousy cleaner.
Ric Romero funded research? I needed friggin PEPT research to tell me spooning spoons would not get clean? Try harder.
I let somebody else do it, which is the best way to do it. Also, my wife hasn't seen her mother in more than 20 years because she's batsht crazy. I'm starting to see the resemblOUCH.
I told my sons to marry orphans!
8. Don't put lightweight plastic spatulas, ladles, etc ANYWHERE in the dishwasher because they will make a *bamf* sound and teleport themselves to the heating element at the bottom, making you think your house is on fire and necessitating an extra two washes for that entire load to get rid of the smell.
Bull shiat, if you don't scrub out that lasagna in a pre-wash, the dishwasher ain't goin to get it off. same for peach&cobbler.
It may be generational. &My dad, until recently,&washed in soapy water with no rinse. &Result was, of course, dishes with a soapy film and chunks.We got a dishwasher recently and my biggest sin is forgetting that plastic containers are too light. &They get tossed around and end up sitting with a pool of nasty gunk inside, as the article mentions. &My wife for her part, just overloads the fark out of it. &Its hard to resist, I'll admit.
You can get away with this one IFF the utensils&have a handle with a hole in it. You run a tine from the top level through the hole, which should keep it from working loose during the way - but you can also stick another item above it since the handle by itself&doesn't block much water.9. Your dishwasher probably has angled spots on the racks. Fark's sake, USE THEM for stuff like mugs and anything else with an indented bottom,&so you're not dealing with puddles everywhere. &You can get away with tilting other items 45 degrees and sometimes even more, and they'll be plenty clean regardless&so don't go all type-A about keeping shiat vertical. It doesn't matter. CTFD, wives.10. Plastic bowls and dishes are teh suck. They do not dry.
Wow that was stupid. Here let me save you some time.Make sure you put them in there so the water hits them./science!
Pin them down with a non-dish-type item, something you can stick in the dishwasher with no problem. It doesn't have to be all that heavy.&I use an old plastic basket we used to use for baby-bottle stuff and baby-food spoons&when the kids were little.But don't try washing one of those&little blender-lid clear plastic dome things in a dishwasher. The plastic goes brittle and falls apart.
As someone who has worked as a restaurant dishwasher who later taught his mil how to load the dishwasher better, I'm so getting a kick. &It was a fight at first, because she didn't believe me. &I won. &Why I'm telling you, I'm telling everyone. &Winning an argument with your mil is something you should get a trophy for. &Married men all over drool over the chance to get a win over their mil. &Fil's are easy, you just remind them that you're sleeping with their daughter. &I've gotten him to storm out of the room a few times with that, even after we had kids./told you I was getting a kick
I load my dishwasher with tequila.& His name is Paco.
My friend thinks I have a some kind of mental disorder because I don't like to have breakable pieces touching each other in the dishwasher. I have tried to tell her it's a physics question, not a psychology question. But the dishwasher knocks things together and will chip dishes and glassware if they're jammed up next to each other.
And the dishes don't get as clean if they're touching.Right?
Right?? Please tell me I'm right.
In a month's time, I will have my FIRST EVER DISHWASHER! Hard to believe, gievn my age&(more than 30, less than 40, closer to the wrong end). There's still something inside of me that thinks a dishwasher is a disgracefully wanton thing.I look forward to learning to load it. I guess.
I know someone who refused to use hot water, so anything hand washed was left with a film.& Well intentioned, but entirely useless.
I wish I had my work dishwasher at home. Could get the entire thing done in half an hour vs. the hour it takes the home version to run.
The glaze on ceramics will also wear, even if it's not obviously chipping.& Glasses will expand with the heat as well, shattering them on occasion.& Science for the win.
We got a new dishwasher recently after the 19-year-old one got a slow leak. The new one holds way more stuff, and I mostly don't scrub anything beforehand, just knock off the loose stuff. I know I sound like an ad, but that thing is pretty amazing, if you don't mind it taking three and a half hours./ getting a kick and all
for god's sake, if it's empty and you're adding a few plates and glasses, put them at the back. &And the knives go pointy side down!
After listening to the roommate biatch for months, we finally got a dishwasher in the apartment. (He'd never done a load of dishes in his life before he moved in, and the idea of using soap and a sponge horrified him. He literally used to go years without doing the dishes.) He immediately went about loading it wrong in literally every possible way.Putting a huge spaghetti pot over that geyser thing in the middle? Check. Placing a cuttingboard so that it melted against the heating element? Check. Knives pointing up? Arrange bowls to prevent water from reaching anything else in the box? Check. I think he thought - or at least assumed - that it was like a washing machine, and the dishes would be tossed around in there.The weirdest part was that he instantly became a nag about doing dishes. If I left so much as a fork in the sink, he'd remind me to stick in the dishwasher immediately. I'd open the dishwasher to find a crazy-overloaded jam of pots and pans wedged in however he could get them to fit. We got him trained, for the most part, but he still overloads the poor thing.
runs with mutts We got a new dishwasher recently after the 19-year-old one got a slow leak. The new one holds way more stuff, and I mostly don't scrub anything beforehand, just knock off the loose stuff. I know I sound like an ad, but that thing is pretty amazing, if you don't mind it taking three and a half hours.What modern dishwasher takes 3+ hours to run??
Judge John Hodgeman would like a word.
Also, Obligatory:
Most all of them, depending upon cycle selected, due to energy efficiency requirements.
BurghDude Englebert Slaptyback:What modern dishwasher takes 3+ hours to run??Most all of them, depending upon cycle selected, due to energy efficiency requirements.Nonsense. My Bosch (new last year) runs in about 90 minutes for a standard cycle. The neighbor's - I forget the brand, new 3 months ago - runs in about the same.I can't imagine even the potscrubber cycle requiring three hours.
---How do -you- load the dishwasher?
Diff from the article(s)?
Inquiring minds and all that
Nothing too tall on the bottom, otherwise the spinny-sprayer-thingy under the top rack won't spin properly. &And nothing too tall up front, otherwise the flappy-jobby-door that holds the soap won't open.
Mine has a 1-hour-cycle option, but the 2-gallon super saver cycle takes 2 hours. Then if you don't clean the dishes beforehand, so it actually has something to do, it takes 3 1/2 hours. I run it overnight.
My parents got a new dishwasher last year, and yes it takes longer than the old one. &I just like to assume the dishes are getting cleaner, but my dad has hang up about it taking so long. &I don't get it, 95% of the time it's run&overnight and &the dishes aren't going to put away&until morning anyway. &Who&cares?!Dad: &"I care"&&/le sigh...
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