I haven’t had cable in years (it’s called the internet) and bringing lunch is not just cheap but convenient.

Still, though, I guess I’m a starving cockney. Chim-chim-a-nee, chim-chim-a-nee, chim-chim, cha-roo…

God I hate Megan McArdle. Of course, I hate the Atlantic even more.

What a way to measure one’s life.

She MUST give absolutely stupendous head–there’s no other discernable reason even someone as majestically shallow as P. Suderman would want her, and her cranium is apparently a perfect vacuum.

If Meghan’s so hell bent on consumerism, why doesn’t she get a makeover? The poor dear is so dowdy.

I bet Megan is all, like, “I feel your pain, dear” while watching coverage of Haiti. After all, the poor thing once “[...] literally could not afford to eat meat regularly or take the tube to work, and as a consequence wore holes in my shoes [.]“ — shit, she is empathy writ large.

Note to Megan: next time you decide to try “walking around a European city” for a living, tell your pimp you want a bigger cut of the action.

Wow, just Wow.

I know her post’s peers are a field of giants, but is it possible that this is actually the most obnoxious thing McMegan has ever written?

I mean, fuck.

McUrdle.

This is my, um, favorite passage:

But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand how awful and terrifying it is to have expected a certain life, and have it stolen away from you by a fate you do not very well control. In June 2001 when I graduated from business school, I had a management consulting gig that was scheduled to pay over $100,000 a year and had just moved back to New York. Two months later, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, killing a number of people I knew and leaving the rest of us traumatized. Four days after that, I was working at the World Trade Center disaster recovery site, trying to come to grips with what had happened. Four months after that, the consulting firm, having pushed back my start date twice, called my associate class and told all of us that our services would not be required.

Poor, poor Megan, losing her $100,000 a year management consulting job right out of grad school, just because some planes hit some buildings and a bunch of people died. What a fucking worthless piece of shit she is.

Gosh, everything happens to her.

Jeez, what a blinkered idiot that woman is.

And I know it’s nut-picking, but from the comments:

But unlike the vast majority of Europeans and Scandinavians, you and your wife get to choose whether you’ll use a dryer or not.

Did you know clothes dryers are illegal in Yurp?

Yeah, this piece is pretty stunning in its combination of broken logic and just plain ignorance.

I know pretty wealthy people who bring their own lunches to work btw. People get rich by saving money, not desperately trying to monitor lifestyle and consumption trends.

Ms. McCardle is still stuck in high school, desperate for acceptance from the richer, cattier girls. It’s amusing as hell but also kind of sad. Most of us work out these sorts of resentments in college while she managed gain more of them.

Since everyone else has done a darn fine job of excoriating Ms. Megan, let me just say that “Clueless” is a very funny movie. Alicia Silverstone is hysterical. If they ever make a movie of McMegan’s life (AS IF), Alicia could definitely play the part.

No way, not unless a horse stepped on her face. More to the point, Cher Horowitz and Emma Woodhouse are not one dimensional, one (sour) note characters incapable of moral reflection or moral growth. Sorry, but no. Meggs’ just not in that league. ZOMG, Suderman as an environmental lawyer or as George Knightley? Not happening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4_dpwKdxo4

It’s possible but not confirmed. Remember that she once wrote that standing in line waiting for the Apple store to open, so she could buy one of the first iPhones, gave her a sense “of what it felt like to be a refugee.” (The quote is approximate, but anyone who read it will remember it.) She then elaborated on the simile in semi-jokey ways, but the moral tin ear–the one she types with and uses to make her living–was on full display.

At any given professional level, you found British people doing things that only much poorer Americans would do, like bringing lunch, hanging their clothes to dry, or going without cable (though the Americans I knew said the cable wasn’t worth it anyway). People in Britain are not poor. But they have a noticeably lower standard of living than Americans do. If they were doing it in 1960′s vintage apartment buildings and tract homes, it would be quite obvious.

Say WHAT!? Some day when she has a few hours to kill, McMegan will have to go down to the second floor of our County courthouse just before the staff starts trailing into the business office for another busy workday. I use the term “busy” advisedly; as County workers are probably the most overly remunerated employees per hour in this area when you add in pensions and health benefits. On any given morning, you will see them hauling in whole trays of lasagna, pans of brownies, pizzas, small shopping bags of breakfast burritos and McCoffees, and enough Tupperware containers filled with munchies to throw a party. Americans don’t bring lunch indeed! It’s estimated that the average County worker spends 1.5-2 hours per day in snack/mealtime-related activities. If the Powers-that-Be removed the microwaves from County offices, we could probably make do with 25% fewer County workers. Of course this caloric free-for-all has led to a collateral epidemic of obesity among County workers, which in turn has led to a snarky game among the non-County workers who have to deal with them on a regular basis referred to as “SPOT THE COUNTY WORKER.”

As for the dearth of Americans who don’t hang their clothes to dry, perhaps McMegan would like to review the CC&Rs for our association–and thousands like them in our fair state–that prohibit outdoor clotheslines.

And I know this will come as a shock to MM, but in many parts of the U.S., you can’t get TV reception without cable.

And how does living in a historic building camouflage one’s standard of living–or lack thereof?

How long has it been since MegMac actually worked in a real workplace, anyway?