Happy 4th July!!!

[Dalty]

Enjoy your continued existence and excellence outside an undemocratic power arrangement that didn't have your best interests at heart!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

YOU SONOFABITCH!!!

[Snide Brexit Comment Goes Here]

[Scotia]

Heh heh heh heh. Hey. We both get a long weekend.

[Dalty]

So do I, but I need to take mine as leave. Off on my annual camping and RIAT trip with my bro! Beer ahoy!!!!!

[Adam54]

Wait.

WAIT.

You have a brother?! There are TWO DALTY'S?!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

[Dalty]

Wait, there is....... another!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

A brother! So, you have a brother. Your posts have now betrayed him, too!

[Dalty]

He's older, richer and more truculent than even me!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I bet a RIAT tattoo costs way more than a regular tattoo.

A rich brother? Two rich brothers?! That only makes sense, statistically, if you were both born into relative wealth. You weren't, were you? I couldn't bear it if that were the case. I want to believe you were an entirely self-made man come up from the ranks of abject poverty.

[Dalty]

My parents weren't rich. They weren't poor or blue collar either so I can't claim "salt of the earth" status. Dad spent his entire career at the BBC starting as an apprentice engineer straight from school and when he retired had made it to Director of Engineering for BBC Radio. Mum was a PA who took a few years out to be a Mum and then went back to work part-time.

[Adam54]

Is he your only sibling? How many of you are there?!

[Dalty]

Only him. One brother, five years older.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Connections! Dalty had connections! My whole world is destroyed! I built you up in my mind as a Scrooge McDuck, Dalty! You were supposed to have started out with nothing more than the one thin dime earned by the sweat of your brow! You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Brexiters... not join them!

[Dalty]

If it helps my Dad told me I wasn't allowed home until I got a job when I left Uni, so I didn't become a graduate wastrel. It launched my exciting 6 month career in typesetting and Mac driving!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It helps salve the wound a bit, but I still feel the pain.

[Adam54]

I for one am a bit disappointed there aren't the Dalty Brothers and the Dalty Sister, Dot.

[Dalty]

I don't see how a career engineer and a PA were connections when I am not a career engineer or a PA? I did, however, get to hang out at Broadcasting House a bit as a kid which had its cool moments.

[Adam54]

Listen, if Lena Dunham got her TV Show because of nepotism, than you certainly got your job because of nepotism.

[Dalty]

My job not in broadcasting and not as an engineer?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

The connections must run really deep!

I'm sure Dalty worked to secure his place in the business world. I don't think for a second that his job just fell into his lap. I'm sure, like Harvey Dent, he's gone a long way toward making his own luck.

Did it help that he wasn't born on the docks to an uneducated, unwed mother and that he probably didn't have to work a forty-hour week on top of going to the university he'd been more or less prepared for thanks to a decent education at a decent secondary school? Maybe. There's really no way to re-raise him from infancy under different set of circumstances and see how well he fares.

I've benefited from my own upbringing's particular set of circumstances, of course. I've gone far in life, and I haven't had to work nearly as hard as some who've found themselves in a similar place. I've made some of my own luck, but some of it has been made for me.

All right. I'm a bad example. The only accomplishment I'm really proud of (outside of being a decent father, I guess) is Hоrso, and I'm mocked relentlessly for it.

Maybe Harvey Dent is also a bad example. Dude got half his face off.

[Adam54]

\The only accomplishment I'm really proud of (outside of being a decent father, I guess) is Hоrso, and I'm mocked relentlessly for it.

Come now. No one mocks you for being a decent father.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

You haven't met my Alabama kin.

[Adam54]

Aren't they known as "kinfolk" in Alabama?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

They're lazy. They never say with two syllables what the could say with one. Unless it's a word the rest of the English-speaking word makes monosyllabic. Then they'll find some way to lengthen it. Out of spite.

It happens with words like "shit" and "yes." Shit becomes "shee-it," and "yes" becomes "yaay-us."