Almost nobody plays Monopoly by the printed rules. A genuine game of Monopoly takes approximately eleventy-seven hours, so most people make up their own ways to play so that, if they started at sunup, they stand a reasonable chance to finish by supper time. By Monopoly’s printed rules, the Banker is supposed to hold an auction for any property a ...
O! How lucky we are to live in a world that gave us Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs singing their weird little pop song1, “Oh That’s Good, No That’s Bad.” In the Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ (we'll truncate them to StSatP — you're welcome) song, every seemingly good thing turns out to be bad, while every bad thing leads ...
Your typical Virginia bar-room lawyer will have plenty of free advice on “legal separation,” despite the fact that such a thing does not exist in Virginia. The phrase does not even appear in the vaunted Code of Virginia. In this meme-dominated age, California celebrity often eclipses actual facts, and in California, people can obtain a “legal separation.” Not so in ...
Schoolyard taunts: I know you are, but what am I? Oh yeah? Make me! Most of us grew up hearing these, either directed at us or spoken by us. Sometimes we enlisted a bigger friend or older sibling to bail us out: Touch me and my big brother will cream your corn. We (mostly) grow out of these disputes. The ...
Divorce in Virginia can take many months, or even more than a year. First comes separation, which itself must be six months (no kids) or a year (with kids), and then the divorce itself. During that time, are you supposed to essentially freeze all your activities? Stop shopping, pay cash for everything, live with an old clunker — what are ...
The American Institute of Stress1 courteously points out that divorce is the second-most stressful thing you can do (second only to having your spouse die). We even have a standardized measurement tool for stress: The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory, which gives a 73 out of 100 to divorce. For less than that amount of stress from only the one event, you ...
Comedian Ben Bailey has a routine on odd expressions, including “Have your cake and eat it too.” You can either have your cake or you can eat it. Why would you have cake if you were not going to eat it? Getting a separation from your wife and having a girlfriend at the same time, though, is a bit like ...
Ever consider making your own coffin? You can choose for a straightforward and relatively inexpensive plywood casket, or a more elaborate “toe pincher” style reminiscent of the Old West. Plans are available, for free, on the internet for the do-it-yourself funeral fancier. We are not recommending this, nor do we pass judgment. We only say you can do it, not ...
Ever have liquid nitrogen thrown in your face? Surprisingly, you can survive, though we don’t recommend the trick. The cold reality of being in an ill-fitting marriage is a bit like a shot of liquid nitrogen to the face. This egregious epiphany can come through many avenues: affairs; substance abuse; incompatibility. Perhaps the harshest hit is from the realization that ...