This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly. The ferret is wondering what you people are talking about.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I like grilled cheese sammiches
With a little pesto on there. Yep.
With cream of tomato soup.
Holy crap! New thread just in the time it took me to log in.
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Louis
Obviously, I am a terrible Enthusiast. I shall strive henceforth to do better! (Although the naked lap tempts me…)
Although this would be helped if the only beer in the house wasn’t Pabst Blue Ribbon. (It’s only one can, and was a gag gift, but still…)
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Improbable Joe
Good luck to you and the wife. I hope things work out in whatever way is best for you both and your animal companions.
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Beatrice
I see your Malwarebytes, Avast, and AVG (love!) and raise you Spybot S&D. I know I’m paranoid about my computer after a major infection all but destroyed the previous one (many years ago).
Oh damn, I feel like something the cat dragged in. Yes, I should have listened to my GP when she told me to see a specialist for my frequent infections weeks ago.
I must snap out of this habit to neglect my health again.
Grandma’s birthday went reasonably well, without sister killing mum and I’m proud of her for not doing it. Yes, she got shouted at for putting a rosary on grandma, i.e. her pearl necklace.
And it seems like she’s saying goodbye, giving us words of love and thanks.
+++++
cicely
Yes, that’s about it.
As much as the Pill for men will be a blessing for many guys, does anybody actually think that those whiny assholes who call a vasectomy “genital mutilation” with a straight face would take if there could be some even so slight sideeffects for their precious selves? No, just keep on dumping all the risks on the women and then cry about not having any rights and being enslaved by child support.
I’ve always thought ferrets were terribly cute and smell terribly bad. Would never want one as a pet.
I’ve had friends with ferrets and they were wonderful pets. They weren’t overly odorous that I recall.
That is one adorable ferret!
redpanda:
You can have a ferret’s scent/musk glands removed. If you keep their litter box and nest area clean, it isn’t a problem.
Plus, they love tubes! Have you seen a ferret run down a tube? It’s a tube in a tube and that level of CUTE! cancels out any smelliness IMHO. :)
Audley — if my sister had taken that option, I might be less averse to ferrets now.
Oh, and somebody tell the ferret what it wants to know.
Who is this ‘you people’ the ferret is wondering about?
I have a question, and I hope I’m not derailing any previous conversations by throwing this in out of the blue.
I’ve spent some time recently debating things like alt-med, climate change, and creationism online, and something that I’ve started to consistently notice is that advocates of pseudoscience never seen to care when you catch their icons in a lie. I’m not just talking about “they’re misrepresenting the scientific position” lies, because those are difficult to nail down when the person you’re arguing with doesn’t understand it himself. I’m talking about lies like “this study concludes A” when you can quote the study directly and see that it clearly concludes the polar opposite of A. Or quote mining where their source is very clearly taken WAY out of context and used to defend a position that the person being quoted does not hold. They usually don’t even respond to me pointing these things out, and if I insist they just hand-wave it away with something like “who cares, much of their other information is spot-on and I agree with his overall point.”
Perhaps I’m this way after feeling betrayed by a creationist and alt-med filled upbringing, but intellectual integrity is VERY important to me. If someone blatantly twists facts in order to sell their opinion, I don’t care how right I think their beliefs are I want nothing more to do with them. Why aren’t more people like this? How can they simply shrug off blatant deception like it doesn’t even bother them and continue drinking down everything else that person says?
Is this just a human psychology thing? I don’t get it. Recommended reading appreciated.
That’s musk from males. If you have a simple operation done, no more problem! Ferrets are adorable, bursting with personality, love climbing in your pyjama leg, are prince clowns of boxes, etc. They are also quite clean and use litter boxes. They are fabulous pets.
^Hmm, I didn’t know that. Good news! My dogs would probably eat it if I got one, though.
redpanda, it may help to think of it as their “religion”.
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I’m having my coming out party on Sunday. I’m going to be a Single White Female at an Atheist Convention.
I’m not particularly *scared* (it is, after all, going to be populated with mostly A+ type bloggers, so I feel like it’s going to be the folks who will have my back). However, I’m a bit intimidated & lonesome.
Suggestions for finding friendlies & making brand new BFFs at the Ascent of Atheism? Any one planning on attending who wants to meet up so I have a commitment to actually converse with someone, instead of just aimlessly wandering, with the hope of speaking to another human at some point?
Obligatory. Yes, I know, I linked to it the other day. Don’t care. Too funny.
Oh, and PS… I’m hoping the Lounge was the appropriate place to post said solicitation for socialization…
I think you just explained most of my interactions with my alt-med family members. I feel like you just gave me an epiphany. Thanks.
redpanda, I wish I could help. If it made sense, and was logic-based, they wouldn’t have these beliefs in the first place.
Alright, alright.
I don’t have any shineys.
The ferret is wondering what you people are talking about.
And what do you mean “you people”?
I’m not sure I like that ferret anymore.
Hallo ferret! You may appreciate this recently completed transcript of the August 25th Google+ Hangout between Stephanie Zvan, Alex Gabriel, Ophelia Benson, Debbie Goddard, and Jason Thibeault.
Thanks to all the volunteers that participated, and especially thanks to trinioler for hosting, creating and maintaining our transcription wiki. I hope that, in time, we can make the rich world of atheist podcasting accessible to people with little or no hearing. Doing our part for A+!
* puts away megaphone *
I had an idea about a simile regarding religions recently. Probably already been said, but here goes.
Religion is like a sci-fi movie. Like any movie, you have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy the plot and the characters. If you know a lot about science however, you can’t help watch the sci-fi movie without noticing all the things they get wrong. Explosions in space, people changing within minutes after tinkering with their DNA, etc. Quite often the bad science is at the core of the movie’s premise; the plot won’t work if they tried to do the science right. The more you know about science, the more obvious the flaws.
Christianity is the movie equivalent of “The Core”. Totally contradicts scientific knowledge on multiple levels, yet the average (i.e. scientifically illiterate) viewing public won’t recognize what it got wrong. In fact, much of the public gets their “understanding” of science from TV shows and movies, which perpetuates the scientific illiteracy of their audience.
Just thought there were interesting parallels.
First transcript is up and done! https://a-plus-scribe.com/doku.php?id=transcriptions:aug_25_google_jason_thibeault
Much thanks to Carlie, woden, 1000needles, and Cipher!
Damn it, and KG!
We’re now looking for volunteers. If you’d like to help, sign up. I’ll send you a code which you can then post here in the Lounge for authentication. Once that’s done, I’ll promote you to be able to edit the transcription pages. :)
Aw yiss. Two minutes.
Ohly four people plus you? That means somebody was doing a big chunk. Kudos to whichever of you that is – I didn’t realize how much effort it was to do until I did it. I’m looking at downloading the free version of Express Scribe, does anyone know if it’s any good?
Five carlie. Yeah its a lot of effort, and there’s people who are working on PZ’s hangout transcription right now.
The more volunteers we have, the easier the work is. :)
*airy wave*
No need to thank me. I just have that effect on people.
:D
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cyberCMDR, it’s not just science fiction movies. Going to the movies with a bunch of SCAdians to see a period piece can be either an exercise in outrage…or the history equivalent to Mystery Science Theater. Out-of-period armor and costuming and architecture, excessive liberties taken with the history “plot” itself—the fun never ends!
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DubsCK –
Holy shit, Agnes likes metacam! It’s a fucking miracle. First time I haven’t had it spit back in my face.
I like ferrets.
Oops, blockquote preview fail. Well, y’all can figure it out anyways.
redpanda:
As has been said, humans are rationalizing animals long before we’re rational ones. A lot of alt-med supporters (and creationists, and godbots, and…) come to their first discussion with a preconceived feeling as to what is happening and, rather than looking for facts are instead looking for justification. Said justifications don’t need to be scientifically valid; what usually matters is quantity, not quality, because “10,000 people can’t be wrong” or its equivalent.
To be fair, a lot of scientists approach with a preconceived “feeling” as well; the difference is that, in science, reality is the ultimate authority and cannot be superseded. If your feeling ends up being contrary to observation, you have to change your feeling (not ignore observation). Now, the amount of scientific malfeasance proves that scientists are often bad at letting go of such gut instincts, but science itself advances by averages, not individuals. That’s its power, and why it will always succeed over systems that rely on individuals.
God’s Job evaluation.
Me: Good morning God, I trust you know why we are having this meeting?
God: [Hand up] I know. I know. You want to worship me.
Me: Not exactly, this is your job evaluation.
God: Job evaluation? But I’m perfect so my work product must be perfect. And I know everything, so how come I wasn’t told about this?
Me: That’s minus one for non-omniscience. So tell me about the rumour that you do not play nicely with the other gods?
God: Haven’t you kept up? Check out my ten commandments. They are all inferior to me because I said so.
Me: so tell me how long have you been working here?
God: Have you not read my book? [shrugs] It’s been 6016 years now, although it feels like just over 6 seconds.
Me: What accomplishments are you most proud of?
God: Well, I did create the earth, dirt and all. There was also that rest of the universe, but that was just an afterthought, sort of an art project. And love, I love me some misery, mosquitoes were an inspired creation along with viruses, bad germs, no-see-ums and bilharzia snails. Not to forget earthquakes, floods, fires, storms and tsunamis. Did I mention that I love misery?
Me: What other accomplishments should I know about?
God: Well, there was the bible, the best selling fiction of all time. Well, selling may be a slight misnomer, what with the giveaways and all. Note that I didn’t say most read, most bibles are in pristine condition years after being “sold”. All except those in hotels/motels where them darn athiests (sic) have treated them with the reverence and respect they deserve.
Me: Anything else?
God: Well, there is that communication thing. I’ve improved the throughput by orders of magnitude.
Me: How did you do that?
God: Simple. By just ignoring everything and leaving things up to chance. I covered that in the book. Strike that, I believe the book talks about mustard seeds and moving mountains. Got a little carried away there. What I meant to say is that I’m so much better than them that I just ignore their pleadings.
Me: What have you done in the past 2000 years?
God: Vacation.
Me: What are your plans for the next 2000 years?
God: Vacation.
Me: Please pick up your redundancy payment on the way out the door.
Really? My broken cat absolutely loves Metacam ™.
And here’s PZ’s hangout, just finished by Cipher! https://a-plus-scribe.com/doku.php?id=transcriptions:aug_26_pz_myers
Thanks to Ariel, Cipher, Richard, Lori, and Jadehawk!
Yesterday was mass euthanasia day for the most likely to have been exposed snakes in my collection. This included Lia, a snake from my very first clutch who was so calm from right out of the egg that I decided to try to breed a line of corn snakes purely based on native temperament. They were going to be my Sweet Corns. I’m hoping I can clear her parents of any exposure to Crypto, so I can repeat that breeding and start the line over.
But losing Lia was definitely the hardest of them. Love you little girl.
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/5134/lightpip3.jpg
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/3271/keeper2111.jpg
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/9777/keeper7111.jpg
The Color Affection shawl is progressing. According to the pattern – which I’m NOT really following – I have only another 21 stripes to do before binding. I think I have more yarn than that, and I’m planning to use up at least one of the balls completely, so, more stripes. I think I’m halfway through the total.
Sili:
Yes, I know cats like metacam. Cats do not have the same olfactory abilities as rats. Rats do not like metacam. Agnes is the very first in a long line of rats that will actually take it willingly.
I’m so sorry, Rowan. ♥
My girly kitty loves it so much that she licks it out of the syringe.
Personally, I think metacam smells atrocious and I hate having to draw it up for dispensing to clients. D:
Turtles are cool.
*hug* for rowanvt. I’m not big on snakes myself, but she was a very pretty snake.
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Found @ Wonkette.
I’m sorry, Rowan.
I apologize to all for participating in the Pharyngula podcast, I was busy driving an injured hummingbird to a rehab facility in St. Louis. And feeding it with a syringe of sugar water. Awwwww.
We give metacam to a couple of the birds at the raptor rehab place I volunteer at. I don’t think they have any particular problem with it, I think they object to the cosequin more, which is in powder form. They tell me that the birds eat around it if you don’t get it mixed in well enough.
Joe: Congrats on the somewhat good news. I still wonder if there is a possibility for someone to do some head-cracking in Nevada though.
A bomb from WWII is about to be detonated in Munich.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120828-44617.html
They still have to remove people from the perimeter.
There it was.
Kind of scary. Not very loud. It’s just a distance of about 3 km from where I live.
Rowan:
I think it smells bad and tastes worse*.
*I’ve had it spit right onto my mouth. Nasty stuff.
@Caine
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
I’ve had the “joy” of tasting advantage and revolution. Put medication on animal, animal shakes…. Try not be talking at that point. :P It was the worst taste I’ve ever experienced, plus it made my tongue go numb (but didn’t remove the ability to taste!) and made me drool for an hour.
Blech.
*snicker*
Momo Elektra ,
In 2008 (maybe 2009?) there were 4 bombs from WWII found on a construction site less than 1km from our apartment, all in the span of about a month.
Yeah, it’s a bit scary. As you say, there they were. And there are a lot of apartment buildings there.
Beatrice, wasn’t that also in Munich? Scary, scary. 1km isn’t very far. Suddenly WWII is not nearly 70 years in the past.
I heard there are still several thousand bombs supposed to be in the ground all over Germany.
People are making stupid jokes about it on Twitter.
I’m wondering how long we will keep finding those bombs. It’s been almost 70 years since the war and there are some found like every week somewhere in Germany. Don’t want to know what’s burried in the woods behind our house, this is an industrial region…
And now I’ll get my ass to bed
Momo Elektra ,
Zagreb.
A stray bomb is found every now and then in bigger cities on the coast or in the sea and some in Zagreb.
Considering how often they get found here, the number of them in Germany is probably scary.
Giliell, yeah, they do keep finding them.
Rowan:
Oh, ick, ick, ick. One time, I had to give one of my cats vet grade amoxicillin. I didn’t realize she had a large globule of it on her chin. I was petting her after getting it down her, then she shook and *bam* right into my mouth. I broke out in an awful sweat and was shaking for about 15 minutes.
Beatrice,
Ah, yes. Isn’t war just the gift that keeps on giving?
Bet they didn’t calculate that into their expenses.
Bombs get found regularly here, too. Someone’s always digging somewhere and building something. Usually they’re just taken away. This one was special, kind of intended to get off at a later date.
Uh, nasty.
Found a video of the detonation.
Er, go off, not get off. It’s late. -_-°
I haven’t even noticed the “get off”. Heh.
On that note, will someone pretty fucking please make one of these? :(
Well, so much excitement before bed time is not good.
Some buildings are burning. We were all still very lucky.
The bomb was under one of the quarters most famous bars (which doesn’t exist anymore). The Rolling Stones used to drink beer with Uschi Obermaier there, it’s said.
A bomb was found in Warschaw this week, too, apparently, but I can’t find anything on google news.
In other WW2 bombing news, the atomic bombs are apparently still killing people. Lovely.
This sounds like good news:
THAT’S MY GIRL! I’ll pretty much eat anything put in front me.
Q: Allergies?
A: Can they be deep fried?
Q: Dislikes?
A: Um, an empty plate?
Eats – just happy and grateful to see ’em.
That ferret is like, “I took yer pocket watch? Noooooooo….” Oh dear god it’s Consuela!
::hugs:: and ::more hugs:: to rowanvt. I’m sorry you have to deal with losing your snakes – and kudos to you for dealing with the health disaster the way you have to. Hope you do manage to re-establish that breeding line.
This ferret thanks everyone who made the Atheist, humanist or A+? transcription possible.
rowan
I am so sad about your snakes. How horrible. At least you got to be Lia’s favorite tree for a while.
That phrase comes from my son, a former vet tech. He told me the story of a snake brought in for an infection. It took literally months to treat, cost a small fortune, but the owner was determined to save his pet. When they finally decided he could go home, they handed him to his owner. The snake immediately began twirling around, over the shoulders, around the waist (it was a 4 ft boa) around the arms, back up to the shoulders, all very quickly. My son, who had handled the snake every day, said he had never seen a snake react like that. He decided the snake was just excited because he had found his favorite tree.
I mentioned your story to my son the other day. He was pretty distressed on your behalf has well. I wish Lia had been with you longer and I hope you are able to save her parents.
Oh, btw, I registered on the atheism+ forum as Nevyn. Sorry if it seems like nym-shifting, but that’s always the name I’ve used on forums.
If anyone cares, anyway =D
rowanvt,
Massively sorry about your snakes! I know how hard it can be to deal with, and my thoughts are with you.
Hi guys, just wondering if you could give me an opinion. I know thi bit probably won’t go down well here, but hear me out. I am booking my daughter in for a catholic baptism and was hoping to do it in September, my brother is atheist and I’ve had the speech so that’s not what I’m looking for here. Problem is, the priest has told us that we can’t get in and has given us a date that happens to be my neice’s birthday. How would you feel about the offer of doing a joint event for a baptism and a child’s birthday?
So we have a tornado warning for another 10-15 minutes. The storm surge is pretty big (I live more than 20 miles inland though).
It’s totes awesome to be stressed about being jobless AND worrying about severe weather.
I thought 2010 and 2011 were my cosmically allotted bad years. 2012, I’m not sure how fond of you I am.
@helena: I’m against combining kids’ special events on principle. Combining them will mean that the birthday will be overshadowed by the baptism or vice versa. Unless your niece is turning one or maybe 2, in which case she won’t care as long as there’s fun things to do and cake. I’d get another date for the baptism. If your priest doesn’t understand, get a new church.
BTW, I don’t know about anyone else, but I have no particular problems with attending a baptism. It doesn’t mean much to me, but I understand it means something to the person holding the event and respect their desires. Raising your kids to believe that they’ll go to hell if they don’t obey you or your daughters to believe that their bodies don’t belong to them, that I have a problem with. A ceremony in a nicely decorated building involving sprinkling water on a baby and making a speech I’m fine with.
Thank you all for the sympathy. It’s horrible having to do a mass cull like this, but Crypto is such a nasty way to die that even if the results come back “all clear, no sign of parasites in any of them”, I will not feel too sad. And that would mean all my adults are safe as well.
@otrame-
Lia was always good with everyone I handed her too, but you’re right. I was her favorite tree. She was a “hang out and watch TV together” type of corn snake, and they’re not typically like that.
I attend baptisms, first communions, confirmations, etc for my religious family members. It’s an hour or two out of my life and it means something to them. I would go see a movie that didn’t interest me with someone I cared about too. But I would be pretty ticked off if my sibling had a choice of dates and CHOSE the date of my child’s birthday. My child’s birthday HAS to be that day, your child’s baptism could be any day.
Even when I was christian, it made me super happy that my parents had never had me baptized. It also reminds me of the fact that my ex-fiance called himself a catholic even after he stopped believing in God *because* he baptized. O_o
Tony:
May this outer band be perenially cursed for intruding upon you.
Also *sends in more dry air*
Radar cane images:
http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?product=N0R&rid=LIX&loop=yes
Is ‘the outer band’ a reboot of The Band?
No, nothing useful to really say. I feel (mentally) like shit. I even went back and looked at the yearbook (k-12 (small school)) and still cannot remember her name or face. Makes me feel like shit.
Random observation: in some performances, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant sounds almost exactly like Janis Joplin.
Noticed that the other day when I heard part of the Song Remains the Same video without knowing what it was at first.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice this.
Seriously, all in the way of Isaac, be safe. Didn’t mean to sound dismissive/uncaring. Sorry.
I graduate in less than a year and I don’t know how to find a job! I need a job while I take a break (the time between my graduation and when I go to grad school). I’m going to fail and I’m going to be poor and have to move back in with my parents. OH GOD.
You aren’t going to fail. You might struggle for a while, but you are too smart to fail.
rowanvt:
I’m sorry you had to put down your snakes. Did you do it yourself, or have someone else?
I recall being in the room holding my cat Kara, when they put her down. It was incredibly rough. I believe I cried for nearly half an hour. I felt I had to be in there with her til the end. Even today, I’m not sure if I would do anything different. I’m also not sure I’m strong enough to watch as a beloved animal companion is put down.
StarStuff:
You won’t fail. It may not be easy, but you won’t fail.
Ok I hang out here, fully understand EG thrashed a few folks at Abby’s so what did I do today
Got on an elevator alone,
woman gets on alone, she looks familiar, look at her name tag “Oh its you, how have you been?”
“Yeah its me”
I hang at the back and wasnt until she got off that I noticed by her body posture that she had no fuckin clue who I was and she was nervous
headdesk
broboxely:
no one is perfect, and at least you’re aware of her possible uncomfortability. The very fact that you’re headdesking means you’re cognizant of the slip up you made.
I don’t know what time zone you’re in, but if it’s not nighttime, perhaps the situation is mitigated a bit.
In the case of Rebecca Watson, there were other factors that led to her situation being creepy (such as the time of day, early morning if I recall; I don’t know if she or EG had been drinking)
Pteryxx:
I ran that malware program you mentioned, but I’m still getting randomly linked words (my above post @89 has ‘cat Kara’ linked to Surf Canyon?).
I wonder if this is connected to *every* blog at FtB having the box for ‘notify me of new posts by email’ checked, even though I haven’t clicked them all…
Tony #92 it was at my new work, she was a close co-worker of mine 3 years ago elsewhere. Apparently I didnt make much of an impression back then
Tony, do you download torrents? isohunt’s new chrome extension did the same thing to me.
@ Tony-
I held them while the reptile vet at my work did the injections as we do our best to do cardiac sticks in reptiles. Their metabolism is really slow with the drug, otherwise. It really sucked having to draw up and line up 13 syringes of euthasol. We were so slammed yesterday that it took us about 2 hours to get to all of the snakes.
Counting mine, we did a total of 18 euthanasias yesterday, 7 sets of x-rays, 3 hot-spots, and a laceration repair. X_x Utterly swamped.
Helena,
If you do the baptism for your daughter on the day of your niece’s birthday, you would be sending the message to your brother that you prioritise the priest’s timetable over your family, and it would look like a deliberate, personal, religiously-based insult.
Plenty of smart people fail. Failing has nothing to do with smartness. Failing doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Especially with failing at getting a job, there’s often nothing you did wrong or anything you could’ve done differently that would’ve worked.
Yes, I’m picking at this because I think this kind of sentiment causes a lot of the feeling stupid/bad/depressed when people fail.
JAL – thanks for the reminder, though it was directed elsewhere. I am constantly worried my teeny tiny new business will fail, mostly because I wasn’t smart enough/persistent enough/strong enough, fill-in-the-blank to make it succeed.
trinioler:
No downloading of torrents here.
In fact, since I bought my laptop a few months back, I haven’t downloaded anything (tech inept here). I visit a lot of porn sites, so I figure any malware came from one of those sites (I don’t visit religious websites, which apparently are pretty good places to pick up spyware and/or malware).
I know the worry of failure. I have to remind myself everyday that this not smart/strong/good enough to succeed is a crapfact. It is so hard sometimes. Well, most of the time actually.
*hugs* if you and Starstuff want them.
Tony, stay off of the porn sites as they are full of malware. Stick with the big professional free ones. You and red. I keep scraping malware off of peoples computers who stray elsewhere
Yeah, this. Don’t do that.
Thanks JAL. Hugs appreciated. I feel so panicky about it every day.
And I think I neglected to say earlier that I’m sorry you couldn’t get pictures for Little One. Maybe next year?
Okay, wow. Helena, if you care about your brother and his family at all, don’t do it.
Besides if you’re silly enough to believe that your kid is going to hell (or purgatory or whateverthefuck the Catholic church is “teaching” people), I know you can do an at home, DIY, quickie baptism before the official ceremony, left over from the days of high infant mortality rates.
So, why are you actually here?
I found a frog and I think I’ve identified it! I think it’s a Squirrel Treefrog (Hyla squirella), going on what I’ve found in my new, fancy Reptiles and Amphibians field guide.
Have I mentioned that I’m taking herpetology this semester? :D
StarStuff:
A ‘squirrel tree frog’? Are they related to crocoducks? (sounds like something a creationist would come up with. Would be a much bigger clade than archosauria, but it does sound like a creargument.)
And why the fuck can I not even rip the albums that I FUCKING OWN? All of my Beatles CDs and some of my Kingston Trio CDs keep getting spit out by Windows Media Player when I try to rip them. Aaaaaaaaargh.
Helena, huge NO on scheduling the baptism on niece’s birthday. That’s a massive slap in the face. If anyone should be told to get their shit together, it’s the priest.
Or, just you know, schedule it for another time. It’s not as if baptisms can only happen in September.
rowanvt:
I feel insensitive asking this (I’m really not trying to be, so please tell me to STFU if I’m crossing a line here), but I’m really curious: what do you do with the snakes after they’ve been euthanized?
****
broboxley:
um, what do you mean by the “big professional free ones”?
I typically venture to Xtube, Xvideos, PornHub-places like that, which are free.
****
Venturing into possible TMI talk now.
Fair Warning.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I must say it’s strange to talk about porn sites. I think this is the last vestige of societal (at least in the US) mores about sex and pornography. With regard to sex, I’ve long advocated people being more open and honest about their desires-especially with the person they’re sleeping with. I’ve told guys before that if they’re with someone who uses teeth during oral sex (and if they don’t like that) to *tell* the person. Or if you don’t like being bitten or scratched or spanked-talk to the person. A lot of people (and I used to be like this a lot; to a certain extent, I still am) would rather bite the bullet and suffer through it. I’m thinking: WHY? If you talk with the person and they are understanding, they won’t do it again. That will make subsequent interactions that much better (all things equal).
I recall an impromptu poll I took with a bunch of male employees a few years ago. A friend and I somehow got on the subject of masturbation and he mentioned that he does it dry. My response was utter shock. I couldn’t believe anyone did it dry. The friction alone sounds unpleasant. I decided to ask around. At this job, everyone knew I was gay. Even though no one had an issue with my sexuality, several guys thought it was awkward to talk about their masturbation techniques. I had to assure people that I wasn’t asking for some devious purpose, but out of genuine curiosity. Out of 10 or 11 guys (including myself), it turned out that 6 of them used no lubrication. 3 used a specific lubrication (astroglide, wet, etc). The remainder used whatever was on hand, whether it was lotion or vaseline. I came away from that poll (yeah, I know) flabbergasted.
Ayup. Whether you intend it to be a passive0aggressive jab or not, that is exactly the effect it will have.
Helena:
I’m not sure I have an answer for you. As an atheist, I think baptisms are a waste of time and are self serving with no benefit to the child. I think celebrating your niece’s birthday is more important.
Audley:
I wondered the same thing. Asking a group of [largely]* atheists their opinion on matters involving religious ceremonies seems…odd.
*I just realized that I’m not certain if all the regulars in The Lounge _are_ atheists
****
The rain has stopped, temporarily. Lots of wind right now. I believe the tornado warning is over, but we’re still under a watch.
****
thunk:
Does your interest in meteorological phenomena extend beyond hurricanes and tropical storms?
@Starstuff, 108-
Fun! :D I’m quite jealous.
Not so odd coming from someone who views ceremony as important and homogeneous. Count me among those who would find such a suggestion distasteful, as an atheist I don’t want to put an archaic religious ceremony on par with a yearly acknowledgment of undeniable physical and mental changes.
Tony,
Well, her brother is an atheist. *eyeroll*
JAL – I knew as soon as I hit submit that it wasn’t quite what I wanted to say, but I was running out the door and couldn’t correct myself.
Smart is no guarantee that you will succeed professionally, or that you won’t be poor. I was thinking more along the lines of “you aren’t a failure if you’re a good person” and I see the folks here as good people and as intimidatingly smart, so I can’t imagine them as failures.
Which is why preview and thinking before you hit submit is a good idea.
I apologize. And thank you for pointing this out.
Tony @ 113-
Normally I would take them home and bury them in the pots of some fruit trees I have growing on my balcony.
In this case, however, they were individually labeled with tape as to their names, and then put into one of 3 baggies: Known, short-term exposure. Low risk, long-term potential exposure. High risk, long-term potential exposure.
Then I put them into a styrofoam container with a cold pack and fed-exed them overnight to UC Davis and they kindly paid for the shipping. They’re going to be tested for the organism, and if it is found they are going to attempt to develop a serpentis-specific PCR
DubsCK (interesting ‘nym), are you only coming for the Sunday. I’ll be there. I’m fresh out of red carnations, but I can wear a black T-shirt with an orange octopus if you want to look for me.
rowanvt, so sorry to hear about your snakes. Lia looks tiny, or were those baby pictures? And so elegant. I hope that the veterinary research comes up with something to help against the disease in the future.
Dhorvath:
I meant odd with regard to asking non believers. I guess somehow people here might be more in tune with the desires of her atheist brother…?
Markita @122-
Lia was about 2 1/2 feet long at the time of her euthanasia. Just shy of being an ‘adult’. The first pic I posted is her literally just out of the egg. The second was a few months later, and the last was taken about a year ago.
Tony,
I did poorly at expressing what I meant. To one who is tied up in a ceremonious and relatively long standing religion which has such a pervasive hold on people’s lives, it would seem odd not to seek out the opinions of other people who share another’s differing perspectives. I don’t think this was an odd thing to ask from her perspective, although it is from ours.
Tony, your talk of lube reminded me of an old jackie Martling joke
“I jerked off in the shower so often that I got a hardon every time it rained”
Dutchgirl and Boiling Billy, welcome to the Lounge!
Josh and thunk, RETURN POUNCE. A bit late, I know, but fortunately pouncehugs are very good at waiting and lurking. :D
Rey Fox, I’m sorry about your grandmother.
Obvorbis and Katherine Lorraine, *hugs*
StarStuff, you’ll do fine. I’m happy your troubles in Georgia were so expediently resolved.
Ing:
:D :D :D
Caine, I’m happy to hear that Zoe and Carrot are doing so much better. And that the girls are recovering nicely from their surgeries. Please pet Vasco for me and Louis.
cicely:
Definitely evil grin. ♥
Tony •King of the Hellmouth•, good luck with weathering the storm.
Giliell:
I’m so sorry. Facing that reality is one of the hardest things anyone can deal with. *hugs*
Improbable Joe, *hugs* for you and your wife. Good luck.
rowanvt, I’m so sorry about your snakes. *hugs*
Yes! A+scribe has already had benefits!
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2012/08/28/transcript-for-google-hangout-on-atheism-plus/
Yeah, he uses our transcript to refine and support his point. :D
Good on you Trinioler.
I tried to read the recently transcribed Google+ conversation and got this:
Fatal error: Class ‘DokuWiki_Action_Plugin’ not found in /home/zeroth/webapps/ascribe_wiki/lib/plugins/tag/action.php on line 15
I guess I need a plug-in.
I caught my two cats staring intently under the TV stand in the living room. I figured it was either a frog or a lizard. It turned out to be a frog. Minimal trouble was had saving the little critter. I was shocked. Usually it takes me some time to gather them up.
I think frogs are so cute and adorable, even if they’re a bit slimy.
Dhorvath:
I understand (and agree with) you now :)
Markita:
GLADE makes really nice Plug Ins…
(sorry, I just had to)
Did you ask if they were circumcised? My Roomie is uncut and lube isn’t needed. The friction isn’t a problem. On the other hand, every other man I’ve known was cut needed lube.
Obviously, all anecdotal.
This goes for me too.
Interesting. I never thought of circumcision being a factor.
I finally heard how the niece’s ultrasound went: very bad. Baby apparently stopped developing at 12 weeks (~3 weeks ago) and they couldn’t detect a heartbeat this time. She’s scheduled for a D&C tomorrow due to concerns about infection.
I’m filled with such conflicting emotions. On one hand, having been through this myself many years ago, I would never, ever wish this kind of pain on anyone, much less the girl who has always been my “4th child.” On the other, she’s 16 and this tiny little voice in my head can’t help but see this as a second chance for her to continue on her previous, exceptional path. (Not that I would ever say, imply, or even admit this to anyone outside this space.) And that makes me feels guilty for thinking it.
I just wish I could be at home with her. We talked and cried together for a couple hours, but being on a phone halfway across the country is not enough when someone you love is hurting.
— —
rowan
*hugs* I’m so sorry.
—
Tony
More than once this week, I’ve caught myself thinking that this Dec 21st end-of-the-world thing would be a good idea, and today has almost cemented it. 2013 had better be freakin’ awesome because I am near to losing the pinky nail’s worth of optimism I’ve managed to hang onto. And my mood is only liable to worsen as the next 9 days crawl by in a PBJ-sandwich and macaroni & butter haze as I wait for my financial aid overage to go through. I might be calling for an asteroid strike by then. :)
—
helena Add another voice to the chorus of atheists that attend religious events for family/friends, and another vote against holding the baptism on your niece’s birthday. That’s liable to cause more hard feelings than inviting an atheist (or six) to attend a religious service.
—
Starstuff
You’ve made it this far and you’re going to continue succeeding!
—
broboxley
You’re human; we all make mistakes and missteps happen. What matters is acknowledging our errors when we make them and striving to do better the next time.
@ogvorbis
This is because Windows media Player is a wretched piece of shit. I recommend you download VLC. It can rip audio from pretty much any CD, IME.
Phew, used the Redhead’s parents visit to clear out the backlog of unshredded/unfiled mail since the first of the year (when I became preoccupied for some reason). Ran across a lot “misplaced” stuff which can now be put away with one session if the Redhead sleeps in one day this weekend.
Dalillama:
Don’t beat around the bush. Tell us how you really feel about Windows media player.
If anyone wants to play with me on Twitter (@spokesgay) I’m compiling a list of Feminist Things™ to do for tomorrow’s #FeministVagenda. Items so far:
1. Castrate.
2. Enfemulate.
3. Pick Color Palette for new disposable vaginas.
4. Share royalties with Ophelia.
5. Install RDF chips in Trojans. Signal activates when sperm is available for stealing.
6. Secretly replace their manly soap with new Silk-n-Sassy depilatory creme. Let’s see if they notice.
7. Donate coffee makers to all hotel rooms in Downtown Europe.
Josh, you forgot steal money from poor helpless males via paternity suits. Also, cause extinction of humanity via abortion.
Thank you Dianne! I’ll add those.
Oh, and check your email.
Josh, email from earlier today got and responded. Is there a later one?
Dianne: Yes. Just now.
Caine:
I was all worried that there had been rattie injuries over the weekend, until I remembered that a bunch of your girls were spayed recently. Phew! Here are some *virtual peas* for Mallory.
Our dogs have never liked Metacam either. When our arthritic old girl was still around, it was the battle of the syringe every evening, and she had to have cheese afterward or she would look at you like you had betrayed her.
StarStuff:
*hugs* I’m in a similar place, except my inner monologue is “I’ll never find a job once I’m done grad school, and I’ll never be able to move out of my parents’ house and away from this city.”
Deep breaths, we’ll get through this. I keep reminding myself that I can work shitty jobs (hey, at least I live somewhere where there are some jobs) and live cheaply until a decent opportunity comes around. And I try to use the worry as a motivator and not get too overwhelmed (although I’m not always successful).
Rowanvt: I’m sorry about your snakes. I hope some good will come from donating the bodies to research.
#FeministVagenda? I’m not going to have to shave my mangina for this, am I?
Oh, Joe-yes! And thank you for contributing an item!
Joe: if you have a mangina, perhaps you and the missus should talk.
JAL #134
me uncut
queue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qwSZY2_-6A wonder where a guy could get a little action
hang on sez I while I look for lub… splooge… damn
sorry never needed any
it has a mind of its own, and unfortunately when he is thinking I am usually not.
simple physics folks.
Its a gland that expands with blood flow. Manipulating the gland with a smooth stroking motion causes stimulation then ejaculation follows. Sometimes even with a dry shot. Hooded unhooded, cut in half fer jeebus sake 90% mental 10% physical gets you to the ejaculatory contractions
the majik foreskin does not effect how the biology works.
you can manipulate the glans with a sock, pair of pliers (padded) other handed, fleshlight, two fingered backwards flip etc lube is not required in any way, shape or form.
Josh, dont forget to check to see if she swallows to ensure she wasnt holding some back for later
dammit fix #150 cut dammit no majik foreskin on me, so no docking only swordfighting (no I have no intention of doing that)
Um, ewww broboxley?
Markita, that was a momentary issue with the site when I tried to install a plug-in. It all works now. :)
Broboxley:
Ok, first- that was funny. Don’t quit your day job. But it was funny.
Second- I disagree. I’m cut. Without lube its dry and nearly painful. I can understand if you’re uncut and don’t need lube (hey, another reasn to not get circumcised), but if you’re cut, friction is an issue. Never having been with a woman, I don’t know what cis sex is like, but when women are aroused, don’t they get wet? Isn’t there a form of lubrication?
I’m speaking from ignorance here (please forgive me, I don’t typically like talking about things I know nothing of), so if I said something supremely stupid, please be kind.
Yes Tony. They get wet. With venom. It dissolved the penis but only after encountering a catalyst present in ejaculated semen. That way the sperm can be stolen before necrosis.
Pst, Tony. Het sex works just like it does for angler fish Don’t tell anyone or we’ll never get any new victims. Um, I mean, partners.
I’m cut, and I do it dry. I don’t really need lubricant, and cleanup is easier.
Ogvorbis: I wouldn’t expect anyone to remember faces and names from that long ago. Goodness knows I don’t, and I have no reason to actively suppress them. The first boy I crushed on? Chris…I think…and I have absolutely no memory of his face. The members of my 7th-grade crowd? Well, let’s see…hmm…I can only positively ID two of them; the red-head and the Asian girl.
Try and cut yourself a break, is what I’m saying.
–
This.
Also, This.
It gave me a nasty shock when I realised that, if I should lose the job I’m at right now, I’m virtually unemployable; not for stupidity, or wrong-doing, or even (necessarily) because the economy sucks, but just for age and medical history.
–
And if they continue, maybe you should re-think the nature of the relationship you’re in.
–
This is going to come as a nasty shock to The Husband.
Oh, wait. No uterus, no venom-producing organ.
–
@Josh
Good thing I wasn’t drinking anything. ^_^
Tony – I totally agree with you on the people should talk with those they are sleeping with. Too many women I know still kind of have the “lay back and think of England” attitude (most don’t explicitly say that, though some do), and feel like they can’t speak up about what they do or don’t like.
The first full day of the GOP convention, and I desperately want to boot someone’s face in. and I only listened to bits of two speeches. Holy shit.
Rey fox: interesting. Ive tried that and it just doesn’t work for me.
****
Josh: venom you say…good thing I like the back door. Nothing deadly there.
I got text messages from a cousin today. She got into a debate with another couple of cousins, and wished I had been there for backup. (the opponents were the chaste-til-marriage gayness-is-a-sin couple). She was asked whether she was gay since she was so pro-gay-rights, interrogated about the possibility of her same-sex encounters. The interrogater was shushed with “Oh don’t say that, how could two girls even have sex?” Seriously. And last time I talked about this with that person he was upset about his marriage certificate saying “Party A” and “Party B” instead of “husband and wife.” This is the Midwest, folks. Any vacancies in, say, Seattle?
Yep, sex can’t occur without penises *eyeroll*
Tony:
Yes, most women do. However, it goes different from one woman to the next. Some women don’t get very wet, others very very, others inbetween.
Portia:
In many splendored ways!
Does anyone else get a “This website is down” warning screen when refreshing? That particular screen only ever shows up for the lounge for me.
—
Caine, but how?? Without penises!? The nerve…
Also curious. Note that I have had very little good sex ed, and am mostly clueless*.
*Partially my parents’ fault. They’re of the very “abstinence-only” persuasion, freak out at the mention of (me getting) condoms, and similar things. When I was younger, I checked out a book on intersex conditions (morbid curiousity), and they took it away. Absurd.
So… any good resources as to the above?
Thunk, I feel you. I got literally no formal sex education. (Yay homeschooling!) I’m looking for good resources to point you to.
ただいま！
I’m home!
Bandwidth!
Booze first then catch-up.
I feel sorry for women who can’t conceive of sexual pleasure outside PIV. Right after I want to dump them out of the car for spewing their hateful repression onto other, more vulnerable people.
Portia- the next time someone says such a stupid thing, make the International Sign of Scissoring with your fingers.
Thunk:
Um, I’m pretty sure Portia wasn’t being serious, but to answer you, lesbian sex is as varied as hetro sex. How it goes specifically depends on the people involved and how they prefer to make love, of course. Women do and can fuck though, make no mistake about that. Dildos aren’t required, either. Optional, though. :D
Thunk, I get where your coming from. If the internet hadn’t been invented I would be a very very clueless little munchkin. I am hardly clued in (sorry if TMI but I am a virgin so could never claim to be clued in), however, I am no longer totally and utterly petrified of sex. I’ll try to find some of the websites which helped me to be less clueless and post them here.
Josh — ahahaha excellent idea.
Thunk — yeah, lest I be mistaken, I wasn’t being serious. (Where’s that snark punctuation mark again?)
Caine’s answer is very thorough and appropriately inclusive. Woulda blown their minds had I told them some women have penises…
Caine:
Obviously, and I don’t think I was being serious either.
Portia, Thunk, wiki is always a good start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_sexual_practices
#FeministVagenda:
MOAR SHOES!
Lexie:
Part of the problem as well is that I’m really averse to finding out. It’s the sort of Good Kid thing.
Thunk: short version is, like men, women have parts that feel good when they’re touched in the right way by the right person. The thing that does the touching does not need to be a penis. Tongues, fingers, and toys are the standard alternatives. Straight couples can also take advantage of these alternatives, and women can do it on our own when we masturbate (well, maybe not the tongue thing, except for contortionists).
The more you talk, thunk, the more I see we have in common.
Caine — thanks :)
I must be a Sooper Slut™. I started fucking my way through the Eastern Seaboard at 14 and never looked back. .
. .oops!
“The Joy of Sex” — and oldie but goodie — and there’s also “The Joy of Gay Sex,” “For Yourself” for women learning to pleasure themselves and enjoy sex, “Your Body–an Owner’s Manual,” and “What’s Happening to My Body” books for boys and girls. The last pair of books point out that what preteens and teens want to know is not necessarily about sex but what the heck is happening to them.
I upgraded Firefox and can now read the A+ hangout transcripts. :-)
And note that I did have quite a bit of femme-phobia when younger. I once received (as a birthday present) somee Bratz dolls, and literally freaked out because they were GIRL TOYS!!! onoz!
Now I claim to know better yet am still somewhat scared.
Minirant upcoming.
Greta makes a request for good resources here. People post videos. Trinioler gets sad and mutters, “This is why A+scribe is needed you dumb fucks.”
Minirant over.
Bedtime for me now!
Really, I think I know the basics (yes, parts, etc etc.), but I’m still relatively averse to finding out more or to actual sex. But whatever, the truth will set ya free.
Markita Lynda, nope, the problem was on our end. A plugin installation failed. Was fixed almost right after you tried to access the site. And enjoy the transcripts!
Goddamnit. So I gave Francine a valve job a couple weeks ago. When I went to replace the valve cover (and gasket) I couldn’t get three of the eight bolts to thread. . they kept spinning and not grabbing. EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING. They’re wicked short with no room to play and easy to drop (Chrysler, why?).
So I let the three on the end go, “reasoning” it wouldn’t matter that much.
Now Francine is leaking sprayed oil all over the side of the engine wall and on the driveway. For Christ’s sake.
What IS IT with bolts like this? Any tips, horde?
Markita Lynda:
I’d try looking for them at local libraries, but I’m afraid my parents will find out, or they won’t be available. I guess I know the standard stuff about puberty though…
Well, as the topic has drifted in this direction, and given the recent activity in Thunderdome regarding birth control and STD prevention, and that not-that-long-ago thread about blaming gays for AIDS….
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2572#comic
No automotive advice, but I forgot Francine was your car, and I thought “valve job” was a sex act I hadn’t heard of…almost went over to urbandictionary for a minute…
Oh, and sorry bout the car : {
Thunk, don’t worry about it. You’ll know when you’re ready to find out more. Just remember, before getting to the point of actually having sex, the more you know, the better.
Josh, probably stripped threads.
Duh. I should have thought of that John. Thanks!
thunk: my go-to core resource for years has been Inside the Erotic Mind, an ongoing series on the Erotica Readers and Writers Association page. Every so often they add another question, like “what was losing your virginity like” or “size vs foreplay” and readers send in their opinions and stories. They end up representing quite a range. It’s a massive infodump though and often very explicit – not trashy, just matter-of-factly ‘here’s exactly what we do and how’ explicit.
http://www.erotica-readers.com/ERA/ITEM/Inside_The_Erotic_Mind.htm
Josh @ 189:
Your best bet is to drill and tap the holes to the next size bolt (which could be metric or SAE). When you re-install the gasket use a liberal amount of automotive silicone gasket compound on it. To keep the bolts all the same size, you would need to drill and install helicoil inserts (a much more involved process).
Hey guys? Any suggestions for patching up a memory-foam & air wheelchair seat cushion?
Not necessarily stripped, although it’s definitely a possibility, depending on exactly what you observed. I’ve had bolts/screws that were just really hard to get lined up so that they’d go into the holes, for whatever reason. Did they spin at the mouth of the hole and not go in, or did they go partway in and not catch any threads?
In the former case, it might just be a matter of getting them angled exactly perfectly into the hole, which can be hard if they’re in an awkward spot to reach. In the latter case, you need to determine whether it’s the bolt or the hole that’s stripped, so that you can decide if you need to rebore the hole or replace the bolts. Also, sometimes there are little doodads that you can use to repair damaged threads.
Well yeah, no shit. Bratz dolls deserve a huge freakout no matter who gives ’em to you and what for. Unless you had been telling everyone you wanted them more than anything else for your birthday, and then the Bratz dolls would have deserved a huge freakout from everyone who wasn’t you, about your apparent lack of proportion and sensibility. Ugh.
John Morales @ 194
I agree something is stripped. If it is just the bolt, you are in luck. If a new bolt still won’t hold, try my solution.
Vaguely related anecdote: I was camping this weekend with a group of friends. Camping with my friends tends to involve lots of eating, drinking, and sex jokes. At one point during the weekend, one of my best female friends turned to me and said, “I’m so glad you came out. There’s a whole new world of sex jokes available to me now.”
So, Kylie Sturgess. Y’all know her, right?
She got her book The Scope of Skepticism reviewed in Skeptical Inquirer by DJ Grothe. This, for her, is a big win.
See here for the full book review:
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1814-book-review-scope-of-skepticism-from-the-token-skeptic.html
For what values of “win?” Why, these values!:
Notice the unsubtle conflation of “applying skepticism to religion” with “a partisan political position.”
Moar from DJ:
And yet Moar:
You feel heartened by this, DJ?
This is a massive fail. It’s not an “important” debate, decades-old though it may be. It’s a systematic failure of Skeptics Incorporated™ to live up to their remit. It’s a bald-faced pandering to political considerations (all the while projecting “politics” on to anyone who rightly says “Um, religion can be evaluated for truth, too”).
More and more I hope the next generation of skeptics/atheists/humanists leave these dinosaurs in the dust.
We’ll just leave them off the ark. The Ark+?
Ok g’night all. I have a long day of rebuking myself for not being productive ahead of me.
Outdoor stores sell repair kits (patch and adhesive) for air mattresses. Does that sound like what you need? For example patch up punctured sleeping pads, works on REI and other major brands
Josh, thanks for this. Now I can distract myself from being pissed off at Fincke by being pissed off at the “don’t get your atheism in my skepticism” crowd instead. :D
[digression + reminiscence]
Back in the day, I had a chopped Beezasaki (W1 650) and discovered banjo bolts the hard way (dry sump).
(Things I’ve learnt since then: ape bars and extended forks are less than optimal, suspensions work best with damping, and exhaust muffling is not a bad thing; also, girlfriends don’t particularly like getting sprayed with hot oil)
So, there are quite a number of people/organizations listed as having been interviewed for or discussed in that book. I do have to wonder if all of them would actually appreciate being used as props for an argument like the one DJ just made. Here’s the table of contents:
Tim Minchin
Joey Haban
Caroline Watt
Daniel Loxton
Jennifer Oullette
On “Gorillas In Our Midst”
Bruce M. Hood
Desiree Schell
Ben Radford
Stephen Fry
Petra Boynton
Pamela Gay
Sharon Hill
Julian Morrow
Global Atheist Convention 2010
Viy “TigTog” Smythe
Lyz Liddell
Hayley Stevens
Scott Sigler
Indre Viskontas
Are all these people really in that same mindset? It seems unlikely to me, which makes me sorta hope that this is just DJ riding his hobbyhorse and not actually the dominant theme of Kylie’s book. But I’ve already learned today that I have a habit of being *way* too charitable to people, so who the hell knows.
Thanks, hotshoe! I’ve been needing this for years.
Dowsing rods and Nessie:
Now, where are my cryptids? It’s way past dinner time.
Tropical update:
As can be seen on New Orleans radar, Issac’s forward progress has been blocked by a ridge over the US. The hurricane seems to have taken a turn to the left, although it could just be wobbling. Right now, it is headnig to the SW and slowly spinning with its center offshore, but with the eyewall sitting over Grand Isle and outer bands spinning around.
Thunk, you are going to become a meteorologist, yes?
Josh:
Well of course. Admittedly, Issac seems to be turning back NE now.
I know this makes me a terrible person, but I find myself kind of halfway wishing that we’d get another hurricane coming up to the northeast. Irene was exciting and gave me a good excuse to sit around goofing off on the internet instead of doing actual work. Also, it motivated me to get my garage cleaned out so that we could wedge the car into it. (The garage is really too small for our car, but we can angle it in if absolutely necessary.) *Someone* who shall remain nameless has since made a huge mess in there again, and it’d be nice to get it clean.
@ Josh
Oops, it does sound like you’ve threaded them – as John and machineintelligence say. Perhaps you can get by with a tap and die set.
Further: Make sure the cover is seated very well. Use a torque wrench to tension the bolts equally (part tightening each in turn as you go). Gaskets must be fitted with a lot of precision or you will end up with no end of trouble.
@ All
Good hair, as in “Governor Goodhair” (Molly Ivins description of Rick Perry), seems to be an important requisite in the Rethuglican party. So I was wondering – where would Rmoney be without his hair?
(Picture the alternative Mitt.)
Thank you, Theo. Never seen a tap and die set before. Must check this out.
theophontes: I agree, Romney actually looks more trustworthy and honorable without hair. Like maybe he’s just somebody’s friendly uncle, as opposed to a guy who enjoys firing people. Also: it would be absolutely brilliant if someone were to convince his campaign staff of this.
The fact that I can now go for a midnight pee without putting on shoes and a coat is offset by the fact that I cannot move because there is a kitteh on my lap.
@chigau — Awwww, you gots kitteh-snuggles! Give the kitteh some extra loves ‘n scritches for us, yeah?
…now, where’s Gracie? I need some kitteh-loves myself.
Hi all! Is this the line to get your pharyngulite horde merit badge? I can’t afford to wait all day; I’ve got babies to hunt.
@theophontes 215: I think you’re on to something there. The reason Romney “looks more presidential” than Obama is clearly the hair. Yep. Obama’s hair is too short. Definitely that.
@ Josh
I learned about mechanics the hard way, by putting a hole through a cylinder on a trip to Zimbabwe (amazingly the car still drove). I spent two weeks stripping the engine completely, giving it a rebore, new pistons and reassembling.
@ Anna C. Hanna
Snap! I was a bit surprised when I made the image, but that is the first thing that came across. Or perhaps he doesn’t really look like a sleazebucket after all, we’ve just learned to make that connection through his actions.
I am fascinated by the Rethuglican convention. Not least because cousinphontes got married right there about a year ago. We stayed in the Marriot and got sloshed in Jackson’s Bistro. Looking about for a knertsie (Afrikaans for “nightcap”) we ran into a very tall tattooed cowboy who insisted the only place to get one so late at night was in a “TittyBaah”.
Cousinphontes is driving delegates around to make some extra cash. Hopefully we get to hear some juicy details soon.
@ chigau
Skritches to teh kitteh. And don’t move.
I have nothing specific to discuss. I’m just here to approve of the ferret. Everything’s better with ferrets. Also daleks.
I feel so bad.
I contributed to this nasty sex talk going on in The Lounge. It’s just not right.
I feel like we need a Come To Jesus moment.
I’m going to pray for each and every one of you. I may even pray for PZ.
…now that *that* stupidity is out of the way, on to you wondeful people who kept me endlessly entertained while T and I had dinner.
****
Socio-gen:
I’m sorry your’re not liking this year much (for a second there I was going to play Frustration Olympics, b/c it sounds like you have it worse than I do, but we’re not in a game of oneupmanship). Can we fast forward the clocks to 2013?
****
Josh:
Love your Feminist Vagenda list.
It makes me wonder what a similar MRA list would look like (and what would it be called).
****
Nutmeg:
Can I borrow that bottle of optimism? Mine is all out. Yours seems to be working better than mine did anyways.
****
dianne:
It’s probably a good thing that human females aren’t like female angler fish…
****
Ogvorbis:
I think you’re a little too hard on yourself buddy.
Not being able to remember her name doesn’t make you a bad person (I don’t think you’re broken either, despite the ‘nym). On the memory front, I shared a story with T this evening about one of the *few* childhood memories I have. You see, I’ve never been able to recall much from my childhood. Heck, there’s stuff from middle school and high school that I don’t recall. Not that anything bad happened, or stuff I wanted to forget. I just figure my brain doesn’t remember a lot of stuff. I know a lot of events that happened to me, but I don’t have a direct recall of them. It’s almost like looking at the events of someone else’s life, but it’s mine. It’s frustrating sometimes, because I’d like to recall my childhood.
****
cicely:
This.
I’ve had friends who had issues with their sex lives and they won’t say anything to their partner. So of course that just builds and builds. I imagine it doesn’t end well (assuming no attempt at communicating the problem is made). Some people like to diminish the importance of a healthy sex life. Yes, there is a lot more to having and being a partner than sex, but that *is* a component and it *is* important.
****
lexie:
Speaking only from my limited experiences in the United States, I have to wonder about the lack of sex talk that goes on in many relationships. Of the many things I was talking to T about tonight, we chatted about teen pregnancy, STI’s and ‘the birds and the bees’. Neither she nor I were taught anything by our respective parents about sex (I recall my father explaining to me what the wet spot on my bed was when I first began hitting puberty, but that was the extent of our talk). I wonder how many parents out there actually *do* talk to their children about sex. I’ve heard from the xtian parents who don’t want sex talk in schools. They often say that should be up to the parents. My question is:
Do the parents actually talk to their kids about sex? Given the puritanical view of sex, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that significant numbers of parents never talk to their kids about sex.
PS: More about the convention: LOL
Kitteh moved.
I went for a pee.
Returned to bed.
Kitteh rematerialized on lap.
It’s good to be home.
@Ogvorbis and Tony
I agree w/ Tony on this one, Ogvorbis. About the only reason I remember the names of anyone I went to elementary with is because about 5 of them were named Chris.I pretty much can’t reliably recall anything from more than about 3-5 years past; names, faces, dates, anything.
@ Josh
Just wondering… do you know if there is a Haynes manual for Francine. My Haynes certainly saved my hiney several times. They really are very good.
Good morning
rowanvt
I’m so sorry about your snakes. But I think you’ve proven yourself to be the best owner your pets could have.
helena
What Caine said. Your niece’s birthday is a fixed date, baptisms can’t be done at other times. You’d be telling your niece and her family that your religious ritual is way more important than the actual birthday of your niece. Would you want that?
I’m a “catholic godmother” btw as well.
broboxley
So, you made a slight mistake. And you noticed. Maybe next time you meet her outside of an elevator you can renew your acquaintance. I don’T think anybody has ever called for perfectly behaving people.
Socia-Gen
Oh I’m so sorry. That’s such a shit, to get that message without no warning. But I understand the “pling” inside of you.
Josh
I love your list
Starstuff
I understand that this is so hard, to be depending and stuff. But please get this notion out of your head that economic success (although absolutely necessary for having a nice life) is the meassurement of success and failure.
lexie:
[general commentary here]
*I* might be unhappy having sex without penii involved, but I’m sure for a great many people out there, it’s not necessary or even desired. More to the point, I don’t care what kind of sex consenting adults have.
****
portia:
I don’t recall ever getting that message.
I checked it out for you. Sure enough, There is an entry for Valve Job
Wow.
But golly, the definition refers only to cis sex. I guess gay men can’t perform Valve Jobs on one another…
What a narrow view of sexual interactions some people have.
****
Ye Olde Blacksmith:
Yes please. Size 12. Wide, flat feet. Like Sketchers and Steve Madden.
****
Josh, Official SooperSlut™:
TMI warning:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I was late to the party. I hit puberty around 13/14, didn’t learn how to masturbate til I was 16 (yeah, getting aroused for nearly two years, but not getting off…sheesh), and had my first sexual encounter @21 (parking lot blow job).
Perhaps you have the answer to my question in the last thread. Obviously you can only speak for yourself, but why did you name your vehicle? I’ve always been puzzled by naming vehicles and giving them a gender.
****
Had to look up what the heck a Bratz Doll was. I don’t recall them being around when I was a kid (80s).
****
thunk:
Perhaps I’m not parsing this correctly, but are you saying you’re hesitant to learn more about sex as well as HAVE sex? Not judging you here. If you want to wait, that’s your decision. I just can’t tell if that’s what you were saying here.
****
Amphiox @191:
Thanks for that link. Vewwy vewwy funny!
****
Caine sez:
Seconded. Thirded and fourthed.
****
hotshoe:
What’s so freaky about Bratz dolls?
****
Tony, I don’t have wide experience but in my experience the answer is either parent’s don’t talk about it or what they say isn’t helpful. I got the following information from my mother, 1. sex (mum’s definition of sex only seems to extend to PIV) hurts women though it can get better with time 2. it’s something men like 3. when you are married you will need to compromise with your husband’s impulses. My female family members definitely seem to be along the “lay back and think of England” line of thought. This resulted in me being totally petrified of sex and was probably worse than if they’d said nothing IMHO.
Rowanvt, I feel sorry for you. I hope that they are negative so you’re other snakes don’t need to get put down. I hope they find a PCR soon so others don’t have to go through it.
I am currently cooking curried red lentil soup, would anyone like some?
Thunk et al: another way of putting is that almost anything that you might consider “foreplay” can be extended or focused on to be “having sex.”
portia @204:
if we have an Ark+, does that mean someone has to write a Bible+? What would that entail?
Bible plus social justice? Shyeah, right.
Bible plus Logic? Ha!
Bible plus Science? How much more wrong could the bible be concerning science?
Now maybe we should rename The Jefferson Bible. We could call it Bible minus all the make believe shit.
****
thunk:
Gee, that I didn’t need to hear :(
****
Anne:
Irene must not have affected you too badly if you’re wishing (even somewhat) for a hurricane to hit up there. These things are scary.
****
Collin:
Hello there!
I think the merit badges went the way of the dodo when PZ reorganized things. You’ll have to settle for pulling up a chair at the Lounge Bar and grabbing a refreshing cocktail* from the sexy bald caramel bartender. He’s around here somewhere.
*If you want a Mojito, you’ll have to see she who carries the DarkFetus, her royal majesty Audley (the check is in the mail right Audley?)
****
Amarantha:
nothing specific to discuss? I think we’re coming off a sex related discussion if you’d like to add anything.
Topics included:
educating oneself about sex
accepting that people have sex in a wide variety of ways
masturbation: lubricated or dry [pretty sure this only applies to guys, but I’ve been wrong before]…lots to chat about.
Just jump on in.
Socio Gen:
I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of your niece’s baby. The conflicted feelings you have are understandable. I hope you’re not beating yourself up for feeling conflicted.
This brought tears to my eyes. I wish you two were able to talk in person. It’s clear she means a lot to you. Am I correct in guessing that goes both ways? Hopefully you’ll be able to see her sometime soon. Even if you can’t, you still have unconditional love and support to give her. The importance of that cannot be stressed enough.
The mildly deranged penguin is packing up the portable trebuchet right now. Please stand by — actually, ducking might be better — when one flying kitty whishs off…
lexie:
Stuff like that is what I was afraid of. Did you accept what your mom and female family members told you? I hope not. Stuff like that can be difficult to reject. If you did, I hope you’ve managed to shake that off. Having never been with a woman, I can’t comment on the act itself, but I *know* that in a relationship, sex ideally doesn’t center around the needs of one person. I also know (from anecdotes) that women enjoy the hell out of sex. When you choose to have sex, I hope you will have educated yourself enough (perhaps you already have) and maybe spoken to people with a decidedly less religious perspective on sexual activities.
lexie:
(missed this part)
I’m sooooooooooooo not hungry but if there were a bowl of this in front of me, I’d have to eat it. I love lentils. I love curry. So yes, please!
Yeah, it really didn’t. It mostly rained a lot for a very long time and got a bit windy. Some trash cans blew around noisily. There was flooding around Philadelphia in the low-lying areas, but apparently my neighborhood is on high enough ground (or well enough drained, or well enough barricaded from the rivers) that there wasn’t any here, despite the fact that we’re pretty close to the Delaware River. I’m pretty sure that it sucked for a lot of people who weren’t me, and probably it could’ve actually sucked for me too if circumstances had been ever-so-slightly different. My grandmother used to live in Florida and we’d always be checking every time another storm came through there to see if her trailer park was still there afterward.
Watching this current one creep closer to New Orleans is really freaky. I visited the city not long before Katrina, and I really liked it there. Seeing it practically erased from the landscape in spots was pretty disconcerting. I don’t get the impression that this storm is supposed to be as dangerous as Katrina was, but it’s hard to trust people saying, “Don’t worry, our preparations are sound,” in that area anymore.
Thanks for your input. I understand that you think it’s weird that I asked here, but I wanted to try to get a feel for how atheists would respond to this. I never really saw it as an issue to do the christening and have a joint party, but was wondering if it was likely to cause offense with my brother. I guess you are more in tune with his way of thinking than me.
Tony
Yes, and no.
Things get wet, but it’s not a switch. The amount and consistency change during cycle (I’m only telling you because you’re an approved mangina, so don’t tell this the MRAs: when we’re fertile the consistency is more fluid and sperm friendly so it helps speeding them along to our eggs so we can then enslave the poor sods easily.)
TMI: I really want lube because I tear easily and like it rough. Not a good combination. But uncircumcised Mr. is pretty indifferent to it and has never asked for it for a hand job.
sex ed
There’s something to be grateful about with my parents, at least.
thunk
Take your time, do things at the speed you’re comfortable with. The fact that there’s no magical theological reason not to have sex at time X in manner Y does not mean there’s a good reason to have it either. The only good reason is that you (and involved partners) want it and feel comfortable with.
There’s nothing wrong with having exactly ONE sexual partner in your life and if missionary in the dark while wearing socks is what you find the best then that’s the best sex for you.
+++
Last night I had a really strange dream. Apart from all the logical breaks that happen often within dreams, I remember that I travelled through different countries. Interestingly, I could do all of it on foot, one time the frontier was within an apartment block. While the one I went through first was not so much different from my own, the second one was a kind of Orwellian state where people were taught that the world was just their country and they were shocked that I commited the crime of saying words like “Canada”.
portia
Hehe, English not being my mothertongue I only learned words like “hand-job” when I went to study in Ireland. So I was a bit taken back when I read the headline “”of sleazy men and nose-jobs”
How does that work?
+++
Kylie and DJ: Looks like a perfect match for me. Token skeptic indeed. A token amount of skepiticism. Apparently, it’s just all about Bigfoot.
Ogvorbis
May I chime in? The accusations you make against yourself sound a lot like the stuff we fling at people like Romney who claim not to remember the abuse and bullying they commited as youths.
And we fling the stuff at them because it shows that they simply don’t care. But you didn’T forget because you were indifferent to what happened but because your brain simply shut down in order to survive.
A propos of nothing in particular, Georgian is a *crazy* language. Check this shit out — these are actual (transliterated) Georgian words:
gvprtskvni (you peel us)
gvbrdgvni (you tear us)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_language
IBAN codes and US banks: Talk to someone in the receiving bank’s wire department. They’ll tell you what information is needed.
(I’ve never wired funds from the US so I’ve no idea how much of a hassle that is? Wiring to the US hasn’t really ever been a problem, after learning what the receiving USAlien bank wants.)
Fees vary dramatically, and can range from sort-of reasonable to absurd. The banks on both ends charge a fee (sort-of understandable), but just what determines those fees is opaque.
Tony,
I did believe them for several years and it resulted in me being totally petrified as well as being completely confused (sorry if it’s TMI but I had no idea that women could masturbate or have sexual feelings so I had no idea what I was feeling or what the hell I was doing, though I still felt bad about it, the other thing that I felt very confused about was that I’ve been attracted to women too).
While I no longer believe them I do still irrationally sometimes feel scared. I have done some research via the internet. The internet is a wonderful thing, I don’t know how I would have got out of some beliefs without it as I don’t really have any close enough friends that I could talk to about it, plus a lot of my friends have also come from/are still in such ridiculously conservative circles.
Sadly, I think they are being genuine (particularly some of them who have chatted to me extensively). In their world sex and to some extent relationships aren’t equal. I don’t think their male partners ever even ask them what they enjoy or try to ensure both parties have a good time. I may be totally off base but I can’t understand that if you truly love someone you wouldn’t want them to enjoy themselves too let alone actively hurt them.
Their whole weird world view is that somehow women are just supposed to want flowers occasionally (I do not particularly like flowers) or a kiss on the cheek, and are supposed to just be satisfied with their man having a romantic thought but beyond that it all seems to center around him.
As much as websites with sex ed have been useful to me reading Pharyngula has been amazing. I have never met a man who describes himself as a feminist, nor any that were clued in to women’s issues. Also just hearing people here talk about loving and respectful relationships reassures me that such things are possible. Anyway sorry for the short essay on my still ridiculously confused brain.
Soup is finished and is being sent via USB.
Oh! What did I miss?
Heard about the RNC dude who threw peanuts at the black CNN camerawoman yet?
rorschach
See Josh above: HIs review of her book and how important it is not to apply skepticism to politics and stuff.
<blink>
In the news: Paralympic boosting cheats under the spotlight
Ah ok, thanks! Btw, it’s not so much “just about Bigfoot” with those people, that would be unfair, but Bigfoot skepticism is easy, and religion skepticism, or skepticism applied to politics, is hard and may offend the wee odd punter who would otherwise vaccinate their kid. Or so they tell us. These guys are good-weather skeptics and accomodationists, but we’ve known that for a long time.
Ogvorbis I know you know this, but everything, including of course what is happening now and what your memory is and is not remembering, is the fault and responsibility of that person and anyone colluding with him. I know you know this; I hope it isn’t too stupid or presumptuous of me to say it anyway.
Chocolate.
Socio-gen
I can understand the importance of not mentioning it elsewhere if you know people won’t understand, but fwiw I think you’re absolutely right. It must be devastating if she really wanted the pregnancy (rather than just having resigned herself to it?) but at 16 it is a second chance!
@Tony:
No merit badges? What a rip-off! Stop censoring me! (Too soon?)
Anne:
I live in the panhandle of Florida, so yesterday (which is still today for me, since I haven’t been to sleep yet) was ‘pins and needles’ day. It looks like Wednesday will be as well. Last time I checked Isaac slowed down. Some of it is still over the water, IIRC. Not sure if that means it could still pick up more intensity (I don’t know if the hurricane needs to be completely out at sea to pick up strength****paging thunk, thunk please****your know-how would be appreciated my friend).
Oh Tony, I forgot to say. Storms are scary. I hope that you, T and K are all still ok and that none of you are affected by the hurricane.
lexie:
TMI? What’s that? I have absolutely no problem discussing sexual activities or reading about others’. I only put in TMI in my comments out of respect for people that many not wish to know certain things.
I wonder to what degree other women share your experiences (the not knowing how to masturbate, the *having* of sexual feelings, same sex attraction).
If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your geographical location? I ask because I’ve spent much of my life in the southern United States, where religion has a stranglehold on everything, and what you’ve revealed sounds like it’s straight out of some ‘Proper Southern Lady’ etiquette book.
Shaking such beliefs can be difficult for many people. Don’t feel bad if you have lapses into the irrational fear. It’s only natural. Given that you *sometimes* feel scared, perhaps in time you’ll completely overcome your fears.
It sounds like you’ve come a long way (in a healthier direction). I hope you have meatspace friends that you can talk openly and honestly with. If not, stick around in The Lounge.
Ok, so probably no on the close friends to talk with. Have you thought about exploring a secular, humanist or atheist organizations in your area? I suspect that you’ll find more than a few people with a more positive view of sex and relationships.
Yikes. So to them, it’s all about pleasing the men? I cannot say fuck that enough times. No matter who you find yourself intimate with, you deserve to enjoy the interaction as well. This definitely falls under something you may want to discuss at some point with any potential partner.
TMI
Anecdote
Time: K (the guy I’m dating) and I haven’t had sex yet. We’ve discussed what we like and/or don’t like. We’ve been fairly open about how we both prefer sexual interactions to be. As a result, I think when we do cross that road, the sex will be that much more enjoyable.
Looking back (I’m 36, and started having sexual encounters at 21), I can think of several people I’ve been involved with that I *wish* I had talked to about my likes/dislikes. I’ve had some *bad* sex (the worst was the guy who *literally* just laid there; ugh, I’d rather fuck a rock). If we had discussed things prior to the act, I believe those interactions would be a bit more memorable.
When it comes to sex, I believe that those involved should be able to enjoy themselves in whatever manner they desire.
Oh hell no! Your needs, wants, desires are just as important as the guys’.
I hate the commercialization of holidays in the US.
Oh, it’s Valentine’s Day, let me book a table for us at this lovely restaurant.
Oh, it’s Mother’s Day, let me take mom out to eat on her special day.
I don’t have a problem with people who choose to do this.
What I do have a problem with is this notion that doing these nice things on these holidays is sufficient to show someone you care (I’m simplifying things a bit here, but in the case of some people I know, not by much).
I would *much* rather have my partner surprise me (or vice versa) on a *random* day with a homecooked meal. Or rent a condo on the beach for no good reason other than wanting to rent a condo on the beach and spend time together. Or buy me flowers just for the heck of it. That’s the kind of partner I want, because that’s the kind of person *I* aim to be. Even with my friends. I can’t tell you how often I’ve bought something for E (one of my roommates/best friends; we’ve been living together since 2003) on a whim. Favorite video game here, cool t shirt there, box of yogurt while I’m grocery shopping. Yesterday when I dropped T off at work (she’s a trainer at a gym), she mentioned that all she was going to have to eat was a protein bar, b/c she was in a hurry to leave the house. While I was out doing errands, I stopped at a sandwich shop, picked her up something and took it to work for her. Stuff like that I very much enjoy doing and I want the person I’m with to not be so tied down to specific holidays that he doesn’t do random acts of niceness the rest of the year.
You don’t need a holiday to show the people in your life that you care.
You have no idea how wonderful it is to hear that. I’ve only been posting here for a little over a year, but in that time, there have been more than enough troublemakers, MRAs, anti-feminists, Pharyngula-haters etc. It’s wonderful to get the scales balanced and hear from someone about their positive experience here. I imagine many of the regulars feel the same. PZ really has a great thing here.
Yep, I agree with you about the stories people share. I’ve never had a long term relationship (nothing has gotten beyond 3 months for me, and the last boyfriend I had was nearly a decade ago), but I too have hope.
No need to apologize.
I very much enjoyed reading what you had to say, and I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to open up.
Oh, and if you think *you* wrote a short essay, I wonder how you’ll react to this term paper I just wrote you.
Storms are scary.
Where else do you get the lightening necessary to reanimate your latest creation?
Plugging the monster into the mains is expensive. And lurching around with a long extension cable coming out of the back rather limits the region of terror.
You like pale monsters, blf?
Kepler finds first multi-planet system around a binary star http://phys.org/news/2012-08-kepler-multi-planet-binary-star.html
— — — — —
The Onion: Things That Shouldn’t Be Said In Modern Society To Be Said At Least 1,400 Times At RNC http://www.theonion.com/articles/things-that-shouldnt-be-said-in-modern-society-to,29336/
Excerpt: “If this gathering were held in the 1700s or 1800s, a certain fraction of the comments they will make on issues like religion and commerce might be considered somewhat appropriate by people of the time,” anthropologist Gregory Switzer said. “But much of what is said at the RNC about fairness and the treatment of fellow human beings in need, for example, is far more consistent with the very beginnings of rudimentary social empathy in our species dating back to the earliest emergence of human civilization some 10,000 years ago, when our barely developed ancient ancestors would literally smash each other’s skulls in with large rocks without a care or second thought.”
— — — — —
The ferret is from the South. It is wondering what “you’all” are talking about.
— — — — —
Is it a coincidence that the -literally- underground swinger S&M sex club found in Louiseville is in the Bible belt? Repression does strange things to the mind.
Yarg, advanced geometry! You make me cry.
Realizing that the circumference of a Dyson Ring would be immense, to the point where you’d never be able to go anywhere in it ever. Realizing that the circumference of a Dyson Ring at .1 AU is also immense, to the point where you’d never be able to go anywhere in it ever. Realizing that the circumference of a Dyson Ring at .01 AU is STILL freakin’ immense, to the point where you’d never be able to go anywhere in it ever. Realizing that the circumference of a Dyson Ring at .001 AU is, yea you get the picture.
At 116 million KM, an AU is ridiculous. 1 million km even, you’re talking about over 6 million km in circumference. The earth’s circumference is about 40,000 km.
Screw the Dyson Ring. I’m just going with a relatively enormous space colony with a cold fusion reactor in the center. So it’s a Dyson Ring in spirit. It’ll probably be 100,000 km in radius, which makes it freakin’ bigger than anything ever, but at least it’s reasonably sized. Plus, not having to go into actual AU measurements makes everything nice and simple to figure out mathematically.
Tony,
I always apologize for writing too much because I also stupidly feel that I’m wasting people’s time or annoying them simply by talking to them. This is another one of my stupid beliefs, which I haven’t totally managed to shake. I’ve written an even longer essay this time, you can read it if you wish.
Oops I made a mistake I meant that if you loved someone you would want them to enjoy themselves and wouldn’t want to hurt them. This is not what happens in the relationships of many of my female family members.
Yes in their world sex is all about pleasing the man. I should have figured this out earlier but perhaps “lie back and think of England” is not a phrase used in America or maybe it’s just something that conservative women know (I don’t even know if conservative men know). The basic thought behind it is just to lie back and think of something else while your husband has sex with you. I know a lot of women who think like this, not only does their husband not really try to give them a good time too, they don’t even require their wives to mentally be present. The attitude really seems much more like the husband has a sex doll rather than two people doing something together. I suppose it probably results in sex similar to what you described as fucking a rock, but I’m not sure these conservative men care. A younger women in my family, was puzzled when her husband wanted her to be active and be mentally present (i.e. complained that she was just lying back and thinking of something else) (Note – he wasn’t actually particularly concerned about her since he basically makes her have sex when he wants it even if she doesn’t he just enjoys it more if she is more active). So you can now imagine why I was totally petrified of sex. I do now finally get that I should be cared about in a relationship too.
I’m an Aussie so I have never read that book but I can imagine the kind of thing is in it. I was taught a ridiculous set of etiquette something between old-fashioned (almost Victorian) notions and religious conservatism. Some bizarre things have stuck, even once I got rid of the obviously harmful beliefs sometimes I catch myself thinking stupid things like I can’t dye my hair, or that I have to dress a certain way.
I have no idea regarding same sex attraction but the more I look into things I think that there must be heaps many young women who have similar religious backgrounds who have had similar confused thoughts on simply just being sexual beings. One of the things I think is particularly difficult for women is that boys are told that they will get sexual feelings and want to touch themselves, even though it is totally wrong to tell them to repress their sexuality at least they know that sexual thoughts happen. I felt like I was wrong or unnatural simply because I had sexual thoughts or felt aroused. I discovered masturbation before I knew it was even called that, I had heard the word but I had only every been told that that was something boys did no one said that women do it too (because they were telling us that we were basically non-sexual beings).
I do hope to completely shake them off along with other sets of bizarre beliefs. I can’t shake them off by talking to friends, but one of the reasons that I started commenting on Pharyngula is that I want to chat to people who share my beliefs rather than constantly defending them. I’m hoping that if I ever find a partner at least some of the stupid sex ones might go away.
I only know of one local atheist meetup group but I don’t know what it’s like and am a little scared to go by myself (oh, well hopefully I’ll pluck up courage some day).
I think your approach when it comes to chatting about sex before you get there with a particular partner is what sounds best to me too as then you know your both on the same page. I think for me too having heard only horrible things from family knowing that we’d discussed it and that they knew what I was thinking and stuff would help alay some of my fears.
I totally agree that the commercialization of holidays is silly. I think that thinking of someone just because is so much better than regulated, I had to think of you situations. You sound like a wonderful friend to your housemates doing things because you care for them not just because you were supposed to think of them. My other pet hate about commercialization of holidays is the amount of money involved, it seems to be suggesting that the only way to show love is to spend massive amounts of money, going out for an expensive meal or buying expensive presents. Small gestures such as cooking dinner, or buying flowers just because as you say are so kind and mean so much more. Personally I love tea, making me tea is normally a way to my good books. I love cooking so I love making dinner for people and seeing them enjoy (hopefully providing I didn’t screw it up) what I’ve made. However, I like buying presents for people too and regularly pick things up that I see that others will like. This is the type of partner I would hope to be, however, the views I was bought up with would just tell me that I had to cook dinner and that he (choice of pronoun here is deliberate) wouldn’t really take it as any sort of special gesture.
I hope that things work out with you and K because you do deserve a great relationship.
For some of the people I refer to they do seem to have the view that this is sufficient to show their love but for others that isn’t the whole picture. It’s just that according to the world view I was brought up with women get into relationships because they want companionship so they just want little romantic gestures. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with companionship and if I ever get into a long-term relationship I definitely want a strong friendship but that’s not the end of the story.
I’m glad that you feel appreciated because you should, pharyngula is a wonderful place, the scumbags who try to ruin it can’t. It did so much for me as a lurker and now is even better now that I’m commenting you are a bunch of wonderful and amazing people.
birgerjohansson:
did you enjoy yourself while you were there?
Just finished reading “The Republican Brain” by Chris Mooney. Anyone else here read it? Would love to hear the hive mind’s thoughts.
I thought there were interesting bits about how personality traits for “openneness, integrative complexity, need for certainty/closure, in-group/out-group thinking” etc affect one’s political views and acceptance/non-acceptance of contrary evidence. I found the discussion of System 1 (gut feeling heuristics)and System 2 (rational, reasoned, thinking) and how the first affects the latter interesting. I also liked his study of fact checking organizations to show that, on political matters, the GOP can be shown to lie more often and more egregiously than Democrats. I was very dubious about his discussion of how genetics affect political outlook, don’t know enough about genetics but my skeptic spidey sense was tingling very hard.
Predictably, he ends his whole argument with a huge paean to accomodationism and how unless, like him, you understand the psychology of communication, you can never convince a conservative of anything with facts and moreover you will just make them believe wrong things harder.
The one good thing out of his last chapter was advice to liberal politicians that it isn’t enough to have the facts right and on your side, you need to have a convincing story/message. The GOP have no facts on their side and plenty of lies but goddamned if their messaging isn’t effective. I was a trial lawyer and from my anecdotal experience, judges and juries understand stories way, way better and more deeply than facts. And if your story is supported by facts the you have a winner.
I missed the secks talk, dammit!
As far as ladies natural lube, meh. Not only is it inconsistent during your cycle, it’s inconsistent during different periods of your life. As of right now, I’m the least lube-y than I’ve ever been (eeeew, pregnant lady secks!). Also: menopause can make a woman dry and uncomfortable during penetrative sex. It’s a good idea to have some lube of your choice on hand for whatever pops up.
Anyway, as I’ve said recently, I’m really frustrated by “sex” being defined as “penetration”– I think sex should be whatever you find erotically pleasurable.
Tony:
Dammit, I’ve only got dark rum kicking around! Check the stock, man! ;)
WMDKitty – I’ve sent an e-mail to my contacts at medical equipment suppliers as to the best way to repair a wheelchair cushion. It may be Friday before I have an answer because I’m taking my kids camping later today. I sent the question with the assumption that you have a rip or hole. If not correct, please email me at camandpete yahoo.
thunk – I recommend http://www.scarleteen.com. It has frank answers to questions, and is generally affirming. And it doesn’t say that “everyone must have sex.”
If people are after mojitos, I have the required ingredients.
Anne C Hanna:
Must be nice to have fond memories of Irene. My neighborhood was evacuated and flooded, as was my in-law’s town (which was pretty much destroyed and is still being rebuilt) and the city where my office is located. There were entire communities here in upstate NY that were pretty much swept away.
lexie,
As you note, it’s a feeling, not a belief; hence, it cannot be a stupid belief.
IMO: You’re being too harsh on yourself, and actually indulging in that very type of behaviour when you do that — and I don’t mean this unkindly (rather the opposite); I’m being straight with you.
Anyway, long comments are no biggie, if they bug people then people will let you know, and if they’re doing it unfairly others will let them know.
(This is Pharyngula!)
So, I for one encourage you to carry on and express yourself as you see fit. :)
I’m a equal-opportunities mad mathematician and eccentric engineer. Colour, shape, smell, preferred food, number of brains / arms / horns / et al., attitude towards penguins, and so on doesn’t really matter. Well, mostly “and so on”. Cheese- and MUSHROOMS!-destroying monsters are evil.
And worse then evil are pea- and horse-tolerant monsters. Those should be fed to the thugs currently gathered in Tampa in the hope that they (the thugs) choke / explode / return to whatever planet they invaded from. Actually, that probably works the other way around as well. Feed the thugs to the monsters (eliminating one evil) so they (the monsters) choke / explode / return to whatever dungeon dimension they invaded from (eliminating the other evil).
Swedish chef actually speaks Norwegian: report http://www.thelocal.se/42886/20120829/
Author Martin Amis on Mitt Romney’s empathy problem and why Ronald Reagan would be a pariah in today’s Republican Party. http://www.slate.com/articles/video/conversations_with_slate/2012/08/martin_amis_on_romney_reagan_and_the_republican_right_in_2012_video_.html
GANGNAM STYLE in English: Misheard Lyrics (Open Condom Star) Parody of PSY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXdkbL6sRic
“did you enjoy yourself while you were there?”
Alas, that sex club was apparently active in the seventies/early eighties, before my time…
PS lexie, it is a bit of a wall-o-text, though.
Maybe if space your paragraphs more it will be more readable; unfortunately, this site does a pretty poor job of separating paragraphs.
One simple work-around is to make an apparently empty line by employing a non-breaking space, the code for which is
Thus.
Thanks John Morales.
Blf – Am I an evil monster? (I like peas and horses) :)
Thanks again. It is a very long wall of text, I did mean for there to be paragraphs but apparently they didn’t transfer in my copy and paste from word. Thanks for the tip about how to actually make better paragraphs.
Bah. lexie, my bad; I just noticed you didn’t actually use paragraphs, only new lines.
You are allowed one blank line, like this.
Both “consensual” and “over the age of consent” need to be in there somewhere.
Argh! Just found out that my favorite hoodie* doesn’t fit around me anymore (it’s cold here this morning). *grumble grumble*
*My N7 hoodie. Why yes, I am a total nerd, why do you ask?
Blf:
But of course!
Talking about sex-ed, the little one is sitting in my bed looking through the condoms leaflet. How did she get the package anyway?
lexie
Sometimes we need to get that stuff off our hearts. It’s OK to do so. It’s also OK not read everything because you just have more important things to do.
As for communication: talking before sex is great. But necessarily there will be a time when you don’t know yet what you actually like and what not. And well, we don’t like all the things all the time. Some nights are really the nights for hours long experiments that involve BBQ sauce, and some nights are really nights for just familiar you know everything beforehand sex, just like some nights are for watching an old movie you like and know by heart.
To come to the core: communication must be ongoing.
I think that many aspects of relationships are poisoned by the external expectations society teaches you: gifts, holidays, sex. You have to have dinner in the most posh restaurant in town and you damn better enjoy it or there’s something wrong with you!
Josh may be ewe but it may be true, add it to the list
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,528035,00.html
Spotted via the Bad Science forums: Alcopal pills, “pills which allow drivers to drink five pints of beer and still pass a breathalyser test”.
Decapitation has the same effect and is less dangerous to other drivers, passengers, cyclists, pedestrians, and trees, as well as being a permanent and ultimately cheaper solution.
Josh, I have a bad memory, but the age of Francine makes me think that you can get slightly longer bolts, then shim them. Makes it easier to start. I remember some after market parts we used to get like these
http://www.jcwhitney.com/y-wing-bolts/p2031890.jcwx?filterid=j1
make it look purty too
If one death is a tragedy and thousands of deaths are just a statistic, why does looking at a table of data showing that hundreds of young people in the US are dying unnecessarily of a treatable cancer making me want to throw up? The paper will end up getting written like the Roberts paper, with lots of caveats about what we can’t prove, but it’s pretty definitive: lack of insurance kills.
Yes, I remember. And then she ran to her room and impregnated herself!
Only, of course, it wasn’t true as he later admitted, they just fucked without a condom. He later even used that story to feature in a spot about safe sex.
Oh, here’s a tip for parents: Don’t ask your kid if they know about masturbation while the family is watching TV.
I think I could have massively benefited from that talk, but in that situation I just panicked and said “yes of course!”
Josh, way back when:
Kylie Sturgess and DJ Grothe are… there are no charitable words. “Let’s not use skepticism to confirm or reject political positions” IS A POLITICAL POSITION!! Fuck!
Oh, and Scott Sigler is cool nuggets.
Good Monday morning to all. Wife is working her streetcorner today — she is happy to be back to work!
Then why do I remember the names and faces of the boys in my cub scout den but can’t remember hers? I feel like I’m treating her as a thing even after all these years.
I recall lots of my childhood. I can remember almost every person I went to school with in elementary school (okay, the class size was only about 12 to 16, so not fair on my part). I can remember my friends (and their friends) from middle and high school. I can remember the bratty little sisters and little brothers of my friends. I can remember the kids I babysat (well, toddler/preschool sat). But this girl who is so prominent in my memories, who is so important when it comes to why the asshole was using the camera, I can’t place her. I feel like I am still abusing her because I can’t remember who she is.
I remember my classmates, partly because there were so few.
Wife and I used to name our vehicles. Old vehicles have personality. Today’s vehicles are impersonal, so damn perfect, that they no longe feel alive, there is no ‘them’ to them. Just lots of reliability. Old cars need names because they are almost alive.
Well, hurting someone and then not even remembering it sounds about the same.
But I remember what happened now. I remember what I did to her. I remember the perp with the camera and he didn’t have to tell me what to do. I remember doing it, I do not remember who she is and that scares the shit out of me! How can I not remember her?
I know this is the fault of the rapist who decided that a cub scout den was his harem. I know that. Really, I do. And even though I knew that I had no choice (I was wrong, but that boat has sailed), I was still a willing? participent. I remember, but I feel like, since I can’t remember who she is I am slighting her, hurting her again. Not fair! And I have tried arguing myself out of this and that just leads to me telling myself that I am evading responsibility (I know that sounds weird, but describing an internal argument ain’t easy!) even though I am not because it wasn’t my fault but maybe I am refusing to remember her because of what I did except that what I did wasn’t my fault etc. Does the term ‘racing thoughts’ ring a bell?
Giliell, thanks. I did need to vent a little for several reasons. The comment about not bothering to read it was really more directed at Tony than anyone else who I figured would not bother to read it anyway but on re-reading it, it comes off as a little badly, so sorry.
Ogvorbis
Is it possible that you never knew her name?
Mass merchandized dolls representing sexualized teenagers? Not freaky? Yeah, they’re a horrible perversion of anything a doll should represent to the child who is an appropriate age to want to have a doll. Especially for the older girl who supposedly was the Bratz target audience (11 and up) the doll’s scrawny bodies and Hollywood makeup were yet another shameful factor for body-image problems. Too bad that our culture is so empty that the adults in those girls’ lives couldn’t think of a better way to interact with them, couldn’t think of a better inexpensive present to give them for birthdays … sell them Bratz!
The name itself should be a giveaway. Can’t be an expressive real woman because that would make you a bitch, but if you’re young enough and attractive enough to be excused from being a bitch, you can be a cute little brat.
Yeah, it’s all subtext, and lots (most?) of the girls didn’t notice, but it’s still something decent people should not buy into. I don’t follow kids’ fads nowadays but it looks as if they’re still as popular as they were when they were first marketed. Yuck.
It is possible, but considering the small size of the community, she would have had to have been significantly outside my age ranger (more than 3-4 years) for me not to have known her.
Thought some may like to know I watched Al jazeera news on Aussie ABC TV late the other night. It wasn’t what I expected I must admit. I was pleasantly surprised and they weren’t the propagndists I thought they were, so okay, I’ll admit I was wrong about them.
I’m also on (picks up book, opens bookmark – the old fashioned variety) page 88 of ‘iran [sic caps.] – Empire of the Mind’ partway (abbasid period) through chapter 3 “Islam and Invasions : the Arabs, Turks and Mongols” taking me a while but reasonably interesting reading. Now found out from it where the name of the planet ‘Iskandar’ in Star Blazers :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5oniErmeuE
my all-time favourite cartoon as a kid came from. Turns out to be Farsi for Alexander as in Alexander the Great which is kinda neat to discover. So, cheers for the recommendation again.
Ogvorbis
May I first send you a ton of hugs?
Please also tell me to STFU if I’m talking stupid
Have you considered that until recently you couldn’t remember the other stuff either. With every new horrible memory that came forward, you could have asked yourself that question. How could you not remember that?
Maybe that memory is still blocked, have you considered that idea?
Adults can fuck up children’s minds about what’s wrong and what’s right pretty well. Just look at all the cases where the family convinced the youngest boy to murder his own sister because she dishonoured them. The kids are still willingly doing it, when it seems so wrong to every reasonable person.
How? How can your memory or lack thereoff hurt her? Currently the only person suffering harm from your lack of memory is you.
No, because you grew up to be a person who tries not to hurt people. Romney and Co grew up to keep hurting people.
Ye-es, I think I get your drift. Maybe your memory about her is still blocked or gone because that’s the thing where you still put blame on yourself because it happened?
That was when there were still gaps in what I remembered. I went from remembering that I hated cub scouts to remembering what the rapist did to remembering details about what he did to remembering the camera to remembering her. I can remember what happened and I can remember every name but hers (well, I can’t remember the scout leader’s name but that makes sense!).
It is possible but it seems strange that the one memory that would still be blocked would not be what happened but would be who.
It doesn’t hurt her physically but I feel like I hurt her and for me not to remember means that I am still treating her like an object not a person.
Possibly. I know that I didn’t have a choice but he didn’t have to tell me what to do and that scares me so you may be right.
Threadrupting in progress when sleep occurs.
Tony et al…
Issac, after spending a few hours stationary south of Grand Isle, has resumed its forward progress and is now heading over Houma to the NW. As it runs into less bayou-y land, it will weaken, slowly at first, but more quickly, as less of its circulation is exposed to water. The slightly ragged eye is moving away from you, Tony, and the ill effects should subside.
HAHAHAHA WOOOOOOOW. From Dawkins’ new favorite Chill Girl™:
In other news, a friend of mine spotted this product at Mall-Wart. That calls for some creative alteration, IMO. Leaving the passive-aggressive “I’m just saying” intact, of course.
About a quarter of the notebook folders were fundy-fied. Another said, That’s just begging for “But I still make him use a condom” added underneath.
***********************
Tony:
Well, sometimes it’s inexperience, on either person’s part. “Maybe this is just what people do.” Sex-negative attitudes don’t help, especially (as Lexie says) for women, who are socialized to just put up with things. Also, a lot of people don’t have the social finesse to confidently yet tactfully communicate about these issues with their partners. Again, our culture makes it harder than it has to be.
Also, what Hotshoe said about Bratz dolls.
Socio-gen, best of luck to your niece, whichever path she chooses.
StarStuff:
BT, DT, twice. Of course, both times were in better times, so I was able to move out roughly a year later. But, in times like these, lots of young adults are moving back in with their parents. It sucks pretty hard, but it’s the New Normal, not a mark of loserdom.
Joe:
Yes, you are! Just make sure to rinse any stray hairs out of your PrivilegeSkin™ afterward.
Portia:
It’s not just Teh Magik Peen™ that needs to be involved. Someone on Leah Libresco’s blog was bloviating the other week about how the only kind of sex is PIV, because sex implies and includes at least the possibility of reproduction. (Catholics have some kind of theological song-and-dance to explain why PIV sex involving one or more infertile partners is still “sex.”)
Thunk, I second ImaginesABeach’s rec for Scarleteen. They have pretty good sex-ed info for teenagers.
Anne, be careful what you wish for.
*waves at Collin*
Tony
Why thank you. I’m glad to know it is an exclusively hetero activity…sort of.
No, no, no. The Ark+ is just what everybody can get on board or get left behind. I want nothing of the Bible involved in this. Except maybe Song of Solomon, which would be quite fitting with our discussion. I’ll take some of the blame for the sex-talking, but only if you stop praying. I’m gonna have to sin all over this place to get it back to normal.
Socio-gen
I’m so sorry about your niece’s loss, and I’m very glad she has you. Glad you could share your conflicting feelings here.
Giliell
I think there’s a Family Guy joke about that…oh wait no it’s ears. (No I haven’t watched that show lately).
Lexie
Oh man, can I relate to that.
What did Beatrice say about apologizing? : )
Rorschach
Yes. Rage ensued.
—
Good morning everybody. I’m gonna go refinish some chairs and do a little lawyering. Probably in that order.
Giliell, at #273
It could be worse. I remember my small daughter coming to me one day to ask, Mummy, what’s that thing in your bed? It’s making a noise.
When the answer is, That’s Mummy’s vibrator, dear, you don’t really want the question.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, is that the same one who was saying that she doesn’t get harassed because she doesn’t call people misogynists? Gag.
Daisy Cutter:
I’m still wishcasting Hurricane Illinois Has It Too Easy.
Hey hey hey thunk, I’m ok with Illinois the way it is.
And in regards to the fluffy cuteness at the start of this edition, I present (and why no one else dropped this before now, I have no idea) The Ferret Snog by Monty Python!
Er, that’s The Ferret SONG, not snog. Sorry.
Although The Ferret Snot does have a certain kink to it . . . .
Atheism+ is totally the Tea Party… if by that you mean that it actually stands for something and gets things done? Because Dawkins, Randi, and all their supporters generally don’t seem to do anything except sit complaining at people who don’t support their efforts at… sitting around complaining.
Oh! But remember, according to L. Rushbo, Obama controls the hurricanes. You’re not gonna get any action up there in Chicago.
Portia, yes, she’s the same one.
Although The Ferret SnoG does have a certain kink to it . . . .
I’m getting my whole weekly homage to Tpyos in in one eay!
<pedant>I thought The Ferret Song predated Monty Python, albeit John Cleese was one of the original(?) singers.</pedant>Good interview here :
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3579042.htm
with Climate Central’s chief climatologist Heidi Cullen on the new record Arctic sea ice melt plus much more.
Guess many of youhave already seen but here :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/27/update-new-nasa-map-of-sea-ice-minimum/
&
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/27/arctic-sea-ice-extent-now-at-record-low-levels/
is the Bad Astronomy blog’s latest on that too.
I think it does, but I could only find it listed under MP so I assumed I was, as usual, wrong in the way I remembered it.
ferret
http://xkcd.com/20/
Daisy:
I highly doubt that is what the bible actually says.
Hey, I’ve got these series of tubes and a Google machine; I can just look up the verse for myself!
John 14:1 KJV:
Hm, not quite. I know! Let’s try the NIV:
Still not it. Dammit, I hate it when Jesus humpers try to be all trendy and shit.
Portia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Lake_Huron_cyclone
If the great lakes get up to around 26 degrees, and wind shear is low, and something detaches from a front…
Audley and Daisy, yeah, I know, hurricanes are generally really bad news, and my neighborhood got off easy in Irene. I don’t mean to trivialize the bad stuff that happened to other people. Wishing for another one was intended as a bit of dark humor to deflect my worry about NO. Sorry it didn’t come off well, and, yes, I can see (in the light of day) why it didn’t.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/image-of-the-week/2012/08/28/fire-survivor/ – A Surly-Ramic.
Hair-on Rmoney looks exactly like a televangelist, to me. Possibly with a side-line selling used cars.
–
The Men’s Rights Movement might be better called the Men’s Privileges Movement.
–
Tony…you give me my brain back, and I mean right now mister!
See, Brother Og? That’s at least two data-points suggesting that an inability to remember people from Way Back is not a symptom of Moral Turpentine.
–
And Dalillama @226 makes three…three shiny data-points! Ah ah ah!
*flicking away a tear*
–
Looks like this area may be spending quality time with Isaac Friday morning, around 1 am. Yay! (Sarcasm)
–
Tony, in my admittedly jaded opinion, the rhetoric about is solely a ploy to get Sex Ed out of the schools. They have no intention of discussing it in any meaningful way, because if you talk about it, they’ll just want to do it. They think that a good, thick coating of ignorance is the best prevention of premarital sex. Never mind that biology works (and point out in vain that dogs, cattle, ocelots, etc., don’t need sex ed to get to the secksing, ’cause . Never mind that Real World Facts suggest that ignorance doesn’t prevent Teh Secks; this is religion. They can’t hear you. *fingers in ears* Lalalalalala!
–
portia
The one who controls HAARP controls the hurricanes. And Obama is Prez. It all adds up, no?
Except that I do remember the incidents (shit, yeah, more than onee) and I do remember my classmates and my friends and my bullies and my teachers and damn near everything else. I don’t view this as makeing me a bad person. Put it this way: if I hurt you, and then remember hurting you but don’t remember who the fuck you are, is that treating you like a human being or like a thing?
people are rude
http://twitchy.com/2012/08/29/sick-wikipedia-entry-calls-mia-love-dirty-worthless-whore-and-house-nigger/
Reminds me of my run in with the unlamented Fuckosaurus, who argued that women and LGBT people had to remain second class citizens for the sake of a stable society. A stable society in which he had privileges.
The Hoax (Piltdown Man) was highly supportive of the Fuckosaurus despite the Fuckosaurus claiming to be an atheist. Go figure.
Og,
I have nightmares in long term memory as well. I wont try to compare it with yours except that they are horrific in many different ways.
So
Drink Heavily
try not to repeat any evil from the past
treat people kindly
then limp along into the future
Ogvorbis,
I’ve avoided commenting because I tend to slip into “bull in a china shop” accidentally. I hope I’m not being offensive, but you’re making a pretty basic error here. Memory is largely out of our control, but you’re assigning intent and maybe even action towards people outside of your head based on an uncontrollable function of your brain. You’re inability to remember isn’t the same as you doing something, and no blame can or should be assigned based on things out of your control.
I remember NOTHING before I was 6-7 years old, and I have no clear memories until I was around 9 years old. I’m sure I had friends back then, and people I didn’t like, and fights I got into with other kids… but the fact that I can’t remember them doesn’t mean I’m treating them a certain way, because “treating” implies a level of control that simply doesn’t exist. It isn’t a slap in the face to my mother that I can’t remember any birthday presents, or an insult to my dad because I can’t remember him teaching me to ride a bike.
Broboxley, funny how that blogger is whining about the misogyny of the left; as if that excuses all of that Akin/Ryan shit.
Funny how that blogger is oblivious to the ongoing battle between the leftists who truly believe in equality and the misogynistic left.
How Mia Long is being portrayed by some of the left is a disgrace. But Twitchy is just using this as an excuse to ignore all of the misogyny of the RNC.
And Mia Long is just a token. A mistreated token but still a token.
Helena:
It is *not* an issue of being in “tune with your brother’s thinking”. What the fuck is wrong with you, that you don’t understand that common, garden variety decency already provided the answer you were seeking?
You never saw an issue in co-opting your niece’s birthday? Really? That makes you one hell of a thoughtless person. Why don’t you just tell your niece how little you value her and get it over with?
Ogvorbis:
The fact that this bothers you means you’re treating her as a human being. Memories are fallible, especially memories involving trauma. If your only association with her is the trauma, it doesn’t surprise me you can’t remember more about her – assuming there is more to remember at all (which is a big assumption).
But aside from all that, it’s your compassion and guilt at even the possibility that you’ve hurt this person that matters. That is where humanity shows. That doesn’t mean, however, that your guilt is appropriate or useful. I won’t say it’s wrong, because feelings are never right or wrong, but it may be misplaced or misdirected.
I wonder how much of this guilt is misdirection, taking the feelings of “I should have done something to stop this from happening to me” and making them into “I should have done something to stop this from happening to her”. It’s often easier to justify beating ourselves up in the name of other people. It’s important to remember that you were a victim here as well.
I don’t know if you ever got a therapist – I know you were hoping that you’d finally had your breakthrough – but this is exactly the kind of thing that it helps to talk out with other people, because we are often our harshest critics and generally completely unrealistic in that criticism.
You are a valuable person. You obviously care about and value other people as people. Don’t beat yourself up over some assumed fault arising from a flawed memory.
Dalillama, I left a question at your talk page on the wiki. It should be easy to find if you log in. (Should be a little box on the screen saying you’ve got messages, or some such.)
Broboxly, just found out that Twitchy is run by Michelle Malkin. Wonder if Twitchy has anything to say about the Republican delegates who threw nuts at the black female camera operator?
Be careful of what you link to.
Caine:
What’s funny to me is that I have religious family members (Catholic, natch) who think the same way Helena does: that these stupid, pointless little ceremonies are so fucking important that everyone in the family will drop everything to watch some dessicated priest dribble water onto a baby (who doesn’t care either way) and we’re supposed to be honored to be there.
In a large family of mixed religious views (in my case: Catholics, Jews, and atheists), this mindset goes beyond rude. It’s extremely self centered, but not surprising.
Audley:
You can say that again. Yes, I know how important baptisms and the like are to believers (I grew up Catholic), however, I’m flabberghasted that anyone would need to be told that acting like your niece’s birthday was not remotely important is wrong.
Audley, I completely agree. Personally my least favorite are the brises. I am never going to one of those damn things again. Ritual child mutilation FTL.
Caine:
But but but! Babby’s SOOOOOOOOOUL is at stake!
The only religious ceremonies I will attend anymore are weddings. And even those can be a fucking chore to get through when the priest, minister or whatever goes off about serving the big sky daddy.
Anne,
Ick. Bris.
Thankfully, none of the Jewish side of the family practices, so the entire family has been saved from that religious nuttery. (Not that the boys aren’t circumcised, but it’s done in the doctor’s office, so no one but the parents have to see it, nor do we have to celebrate it.)
Audley, do not forget those of us who change the diapers of the newly circumcised boys. Having to see the large scab on the tip of their little penis. Sigh…
Speaking of poor memories…. My mom, brother and I all measure in the bottom 5 or 10% on memory tests. It makes life pretty frustrating and messes with my perception of how much time has passed since an event occurred. I often joke that I’m practicing to have alzheimer’s (runs in my family blech) and I’m going to be really good at it! Of course, no one is going to be able to tell when I start developing it because it won’t seem any different from how I am now.
Oh, Janine. :(
I still can’t wrap my head around why anyone would think that’s a good thing. I mean, I can’t comprehend otherwise thoughtful people saying “yeah, God told Abraham to cut off his sons’ foreskins as a symbol that they are the chosen people and I’m cool with that”. It’s patently absurd.
janine, I was aware of who owned twitchy, but I didnt really expect to see that reported on huffpo,
Doesnt matter which side does it, just that it is wrong
The worst part of brises for me is imagining the in-law pushback I’m going to have to deal with when I don’t have it done to my own kids. It’s already bad enough that I’m a goy and won’t be converting, so the kids won’t be Jewish (for Orthodox purposes). But not having a bris is also going to be the first step in me “depriving” them of their oh-so-important religious heritage. Thankfully my partner wasn’t too tough to convince on the, “Why on earth would we want to mutilate them just to make it easier for them to adopt one particular god delusion?” front. But the rest of his family, even the ones who aren’t Orthodox, will probably just think of brises as just the Right Way To Do Things, and I’ll be bucking that.
I’m also worried in regard to my own side of the family that if I’m not careful somebody will baptize them (Catholic) in secret. It’s not quite as nasty as bodily mutilation, but I *really* do not want that institution to get to count my children as members after I worked so hard to get my rejection of my own baptism recorded.
Time to leave the 19th century behind; all the with it Mad Scientists have installed Mr. Fusion™ in their basement laboratories. Side benefit: never again have to worry about Where To Hide The Body!
True. And it’s worth noting that while getting the power for your Great Work courtesy of Mr. Fusion™ represents a great time savings (never have to wait for a decent thunderstorm again!), the manufacturer does recommend that you not install it directly into any sentient, quasi-sentient, or emergingly-sentient creation, especially where said creation is mobile by its own volition. You’ll want to read the combination User’s Manual and Disclaimer before installation.
–
I approve of this plan.
The beauty of it is that the infestation is conveniently localised, and even if the monsters fail to im/explode as per spec, we still have the napalm-and-flamethrowers approach to fall back on. Or if needed, tacnukes.
–
I think that rather than being an evil monster, you were instead indoctrinated by evil monsters at an early age. That early indoctrination is hard to throw off; some people never do manage it. Still, a-peaism is on the rise, so there is hope for a pea-free future, and don’t let the accomodationists tell you any different. Or that a need for peas is “built in” to the human psyche.
That’s just what the Horses want you to think.
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I’d say that the fact that it bothers you, now, is good evidence that you don’t consider her a thing.
As Richard Austen said better, and at more length.
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#332 a bris is a down payment on a real estate deal for a piece of dirt in the middle east. Since you are a non Jew your children are not eligible to be tenants so no bris needed.
Anne,
Oh trust me, I’ve had the religious fights with the in-laws. Hell, for the longest time, Mr Darkheart himself was pro-circumcision, even though we agreed that we weren’t going to raise our children as Jewish (or in any faith, for that matter), because otherwise we were denying any (possible) sons a piece of their Jewish identity.
Right around the time we found out that I’m pregnant with a girl, Mr Darkheart told me that he’s and atheist and, oh yeah, I was right about circumcision. I’m extremely proud of him, but on the other hand, I’m sure you could hear the slap! of my facepalm for miles.
Anyway, the in-laws. I’ve been told by my MiL that I should be forcing my husband to attend temple (my reaction was, “you know I’m an atheist, right?”). My SiL told me I needed to “pick a religion” before I had children, otherwise I’d be doing them a disservice (she’s Catholic. *eyeroll*). Those are pretty typical of how my extended family views religion (a good thing) and my lack thereof (I’m a poor, misguided soul).
Broboxley, it’s not quite true that my hypothetical future kids wouldn’t be eligible to become Israeli citizens.
First of all, it is possible to convert to Judaism. Jews don’t actively recruit converts, and the process of conversion is not trivial, but if I were to go through it, I’d be a straight-up Jew and just as eligible for a scrap of Israel as any other Jew. The story of Ruth is often used as a model for converts.
Second of all, the law of return in Israel extends to the spouse, children, children’s spouses, and children’s children of a Jewish person, regardless of whether those people are themselves Jewish. However, Jewish people who have converted to another religion (which my partner has not and will not do) have somewhat diminished eligibility. The point of this is to protect everybody connected to the tribe from Nazi-style persecutions, which were based on weird old “corruption of the blood” nonsense, and not on the actual dictates of the Jewish religion.
Broboxely:
Uh. No. Being circumcisized is a symbol of a Jewish man’s pact with Yahweh and depending on the tradition (Reform or Reconstructionist), it doesn’t matter if mom is Jewish or not, as long as one of the parents is.
Any Catholic who is waiting for a convenient time to baptize their baby is endangering its Immortal Soul™.
Making a big ceremony is probably a sin of some kind.
“I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” *sprinkling all the while*
boom.
done.
One of my godparents wasn’t even present.
Audley, yeah, I’ve already had some of the fights and they’ve been unpleasant. We’re currently in a “mostly leaving each other alone” state, but I expect that when I have kids it’s all going to come roaring back. My partner is more mellow towards religion than I am, in the sense that the thing that he hates most about it is being forced to talk about it in any way whatsoever. So he’ll probably mostly back me up on what we actually do, but as far as the arguments with family go, there will probably be some friction between the two of us just because my approach will involve too much talking about religion for his taste.
Well, three out of four ain’t bad.
I know it is not something I can control. I am aware of that. That doesn’t mean that I am being rational, or can be rational, about my reactions. Guilt is not a rational emotion but that does not mean it does not exist.
Which is a part of the ongoing argument inside my head.
Except that, for me, it wasn’t trauma. Damnit! I enjoyed it and that is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! I understand that my body has evolved the capacity to feel pleasure even when my brain is telling me it is wrong. I accept that (well, not always — 3:00am can be pretty weird). But I took pleasure in doing something to someone else, treating her like a thing. And I am afraid you may be right that there may be even more.
I considered her a thing then. This feeling that I should remember her as more than a thing is quite irrational, isn’t it?
Thank you, all of you, for putting up with this. I need to talk about it to/with someone and Wife doesn’t know. Talking about it pseudonymously really has helped. Can I get off the roller coaster now?
My point about the bris being: No one honestly believes that they’re getting a chunk of Canaan for their foreskin. It’s symbolic.
Anne:
*solidarity fist bump*
Audley,
My partner’s family is mostly Orthodox, so for them, my kids will not be Jewish unless I convert before they’re born, they are put through an infant/child conversion ceremony (including being immersed in a mikveh and some other stuff in addition to circumcision), or they convert as adults.
Audley,
Indeed. :)
Terrorist fist jab?
Oggie:
I have no advice, but I do want to let you know that I’m here to listen to you and if we should ever meet, I’m bringing you a big bottle of the best beer I can get my hands on.
Sounds like some fun family get-togethers, Audley!
Just out of sheer nosiness, roughly what proportion of the whole extended family would you say is jewish/catholic/atheist? I mean, if you had a tug-o’-war or a rugby scrum, would the teams be evenly matched? :)
.
Ogvorbis, I think Richard Austin has said it pretty well too (and certainly better than I could have). It might be that your memory never comes back completely, and there could be a lot of reasons for that. But in any case, everything I glean from what you write around these parts shows what kind of person you have become/made of yourself – and that is good people.
I was raped by a scoutmaster at ages 9 & 10. I still have nightmares about it 37 years later. I didn’t tell because: what happened to me is what is supposed to happen to girls (that’s from the scoutmaster); he was a pillar of the community and I was known for having a vivid imagination so I knew I would never be believed; it was my fault that it happened again and again and again. You have my sympathy. No one should ever have to go through that. Ever.
I disagree. I am probably wrong in this instance but, from past experience, both in meatspace and here, grammatical nitpicking is a very useful tool to derail a conversation and, to be perfectly honest, I still do not see why xe brought up the grammatical error if not to derail.
I did not claim that xe was a paedophile. I did, however, make the implication that the reason for xe’s grammatical nitpicking could be to move the conversation into a less-uncomfortable area. Just as, during conversations here about rape, things like male circumcision, alcohol, dating, and every other thing involving sex is introduced in an attempt to move the conversation away from rape.
And that last one by me is in the wrong thread. Sorry. I multitask about as well as DOS 2.12.
Opposablethumbs:
The Catholic and the Jewish sides are pretty much evenly matched, with 3 “out” atheists in the mix. The Catholics are way pushier than anyone else, so they’d prolly end up winning the tug o’ war.
Every time I start to think of myself as a good person right now, a little voice in the back of my head comes up with, Oh, yeah? Well what about what’s-her-name? and I cringe inside. I guess I haven’t quite worked out where the line is between victim and participant. Or if there is always a line.
Oh my.
The truth about Catholic beliefs is stranger than anything you can make up, from the Vatican website:
[italics in the original]
Oh, that’s just my in-laws. In my immediate family, there’s my mom (raised Baptist, is now a Buddhist), my dad (raised methodist, now is a deist-y “we’re all connected” spiritual kind of new ager) and my sisters (two neo-pagans and one undecided) and me.
It’s an intersting group.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/05/us-jews-fight-israeli-law_n_565291.html
Heck Anna, you may not even really be married :-) the reason I gave for the Bris is the actual theological background you could use with the inlaws. The “covenant” is a real estate deal. The laws are the rent. That’s why they kept getting evicted back in the day. (according to their own documentation)
You can imagine how interesting it gets when I run into a Lubavitcher we both have a lot of fun.
Ogvorbis
*hugs*
I wish we could find a way to make those fucking voices in the head
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Maybe they’re right?
I sometimes wonder, if I ever meet any of you in meatspace, will I be who you think I am? Or the disaster I think I am?
Broboxley, actually we’re not married at all. We haven’t even lived together in a common law state, so as far as the law is concerned, we’re essentially strangers who happen to share a lease, a car title, and a few bank accounts and credit cards. I still keep holding on to the (probably futile) hope that some day the government will stop certifying “marriages” entirely and just give everybody civil unions, so that I’ll never have to be somebody’s “wife” in order to secure my and my partner’s legal rights. The word just gives me the creepy-crawlies.
Also, I think the stuff you’re saying only applies to Jewish marriages performed in the state of Israel. As I understand it, people who aren’t Jewish can still do whatever they want, and Jewish people who don’t want an Orthodox ceremony can still get married outside of Israel and have their marriages legally recognized. So it’s nasty, but it’s not *quite* as bad as you’re making it out to be.
But even if you’re right, it doesn’t change much in regard to the question of the value of circumcising my children. Even if my marriage was not recognized, my children (assuming my partner supplies the sperm or adopts them) would still be the children of a Jewish person and would thus be legally eligible for the right of return, circumcised or no. Only I would be ineligible if we had a marriage which wasn’t recognized, and I would probably still be able to get in on a pity-plea of being their mother. (I don’t remember all the details.)
In any case, I don’t have any real interest in arguing with my in-laws on theological grounds. I have no respect for their religious views at all, and if they haven’t figured that out yet and start trying to impose those views on me, they’re going to learn it right quick, if necessary, at the cost of them ever seeing their grandchildren. Same goes for my own family, for that matter. I’m not going to let *anyone* push that stuff on my kids. Education is one thing, and I’ve got no objection to them answering my kids’ questions or even showing them what religious rituals are like. In fact, I *want* my kids to learn about religion. But the moment anyone starts pushing for indoctrination, things are going to start getting ugly fast.
Oh, and, in re your accidental post, Ogvorbis, although I don’t entirely know the history of what you’ve shared here, the little snippets I’ve seen so far sound awful, and you have my sympathy. I don’t mean to distract from your struggles with that by gibbering about my family’s religious differences. I would have said something sympathetic earlier, but I didn’t (and still don’t) feel like I know you well enough to comment on something so personal. So, good luck and I’m sorry it sucks.
Anne:
No problem. One of the things I really like about
The Endless TET ThreadThe Lounge and Thunderdome is the sheer number of conversations that can go on at once. Dealing with religious differences can be a royal pain especially since every version of every religion claim that they, and only they, have the one and only Truth. When 10,000 groups are right, and they are mutually exclusive, it can, and does, get really weird.Blimey, Audley. That’s quite some mix you’ve got there!
.
.
.
Ogvorbis I know very well I don’t have anything like adequate knowledge or understanding to speak to this – and I suspect that if I knew you in rl I’d probably be trying to persuade you to talk to someone whose empathy and training did qualify them to do so. My inexperienced reaction is: though I wouldn’t try to say a 9/10 year old has no agency at all – but hell, when full-grown adults can be and are coerced/manipulated/bullied/tortured/abused into apparently going along with their abuser, what chance does a young child have?
A. R runs through the Lounge screaming: I finally got the gene I ordered for my new research!!!!!!!!!
There is one guy I work with who I’m pretty sure has to get help wiping his own ass.
And he’s not disabled in any way. He’s just completely incapable of taking any initiative to figure anything out on his own.
And he’s a demanding asshole too.
This is the signature on his emails from his phone. I’m not one to be in any place to complain about typos, however
He’s one of our sales reps and sends thousands of emails a month to customer from his phone. And every single one of them has that.
Good news! Thanks to Dalillama, we have our first story for our collection of LGBT love stories on the wiki, here.
Please add your own! There should be so many that we have to reorganize it like the Cookbook.
The chance to not hurt someone even younger? I don’t know what chance I had to be an independent agent. Probably none. Doesn’t change the fact that I have gotten so far into guilt that I may as well become a Catholic. I’ve done pretty well accepting that what he did to me really was beyond my control. My understanding of rape culture has helped me accept that the feelings of helplessness, the feelings that it was my fault, were creations of him and the milieu, not reality. I’m just having a real problem dealing with what I did to her, in front of a camera! to please him. Part of me sees no qualitative differnence. Part of me sees a world of difference. Again, where is the line between victim and participant? Are coerced participants automatically off the hook?
Denim?
Opposablethumbs:
I will say this: we all know how to par-tay! We’re like a microcosm of the upper middle class, white, American religious experience.
(Shit gets even more interesting when you take my mom’s religious upbringing into account: my grandmama was raised Baptist and my grandad was Catholic, but since they were both communists, they were both non-theists. My mom was only dragged to church when her grandmother was in town (every weekend in the summer and major holidays) because that’s what decent people do. My great grandmother was highly disappointed that her daughter didn’t inflict religion on her family and went so far as to force my mom and my aunts to be baptized when they were in their teens, even though my grandparents objected.)
‘Drown’ does not begin with a ‘j’, dammit!
*snarl*
–
Ogvorbis, it strikes me that your current dilemma may, in some significant ways, be similar to that of the rape victim whose body betrays them by feeling pleasure among the humiliation/pain etc. cocktail. You don’t want to have enjoyed any part of it, you’d rather you hadn’t enjoyed any part of it, but…
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Happiestsadist sent me this WTF article about fascination with Hitler on the Indian subcontinent.
Well, there’s a new
doorstopbook for some “thought leader” or other in the American business world.Audley:
Oh, ffs, I hate that patriarchal shit where the wife is considered entirely responsible for the husband’s social behavior, religious welfare, and health. Even if both of you were believers, it’d be his job to go to temple, not your job to “force” him.
And then, of course, this belief feeds into the stereotypes of wives as “nags” and “balls and chains.”
I see what you mean. I already went through a lot of wondering about why I felt pleasure when he was raping me and the explanations offered here helped a lot. This seems somehow different. Maybe I am bullshitting myself and there is no real difference. In one case, I was a passive recipient of his assault (well, not totally, but when I did things it was because I knew that’s what he wanted). In this case, I did things to someone else to please him, that’s what he wanted. What I did comes under the heading, for most people, of unforgiveable. And I did it willingly.
Seriously?
Like Caine said, you don’t need some Magical Atheist Viewpoint to consider how other people might feel. It’s not that hard. It’s just basic empathy.
You probably never saw it as an issue to mash the two events together because it’s not your birthday that would be co-opted. Here’s a hint: try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and imagine how you would feel.
Good evening
What do you do with a child who flat out refuses to take responsibility for anything that happens?
I’m not talking about garden variety lies like “I didn’t knock the cup over”, but sheer denial of reality.
For example, on the holidays she lost her way while riding her running bike. When she finally found her way back she accused us of having moved the caravan and the the camsite-people of having changed the way. She was all angry and serious. And I usually have a policy of consequences, like tonight she wouldn’t get dressed for bed, she missed the goodnight story. I understand she’s sad and angry, but she draws no connection between her not getting ready and her missing the goodnight story.
Apart from the flat out denial, she deprives herself of any possibility to change the situation. Actually the idea of consequences is to give them a certain amount of control over the situation…
Anne C. Hanna
Well, I was Mr.’s excuse why he doesn’t do all the religious stuff instead of plain telling his grandmother that he’s left the church. Not that his grandma is a godbotherer and treated godless me with anything but love and kindness.
But I understand your worries. I’m still very anxious that somebody might tell them about god and babby Jesus, even though Germany is pretty secular. I’m worried about when she starts school next year where the other kids will have religious education and she’ll notice that we’re different for the first time.
cicely
Well, I learned from the recent MRA on the A+ forum that men are positively oppressed by the fact that the potentially life-threatening condition of pregnancy can’t happen to them.
Maybe I should sue for not getting free prostate screenings as Mr does…
Audley
I recently read a piece by a religious Jewish doctor who came to the conclusion that his Jewish identity was more than chopping off bits of peens and that it was a cheap way out. So he decided to leave his son intact and hope that he was doing the raising so the boy would one day asked to be circumcised.
Interestingly, for Mr. having children seems to have been the final point where he changed from “something out there beyond” spiritualist and pretty accomodationist to atheist and more confrontational, too
+++
Chocolate brownies with custard, anybody?
+++
Ogvorbis
At age 10? Yes, definetly and always.
You tried to please the man who had so much power over you. And yes, you might have even enjoyed dealing out the hurt because you had no other means to deal with it.
That’s because you were a child.
#1 often lets out her frustration at her little sister. Which is, of course, not OK and met with consequences. But don’t you think that I could make her hurt her sister systematically by just condoning it, or by even scolding her sister? I could so easily fuck with her head. I could make her hurt her sister and enjoy it, enjoy the power.
I’ve written a lot about my childhood here and my relationship with my mother and how she fucked with my head while she was not even malicious (I’m still not calling all that shit abuse. Maybe I should, but I don’t). This was in my head as an adult and I did shit myself as an adult as a result of that.
You were a child. All the insight, the knowledge you have now wasn’t avaible to you then. It took me a hell lot of work even to realize that there was shit in my head
The long standing canard that a diet of kranoj and tepid water would allow one to live to an extremely old age has been thoroughly debunked
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/30/science/low-calorie-diet-doesnt-prolong-life-study-of-monkeys-finds.html
Thank you. That clicks. Transference? Displacement? Whatever the term for it, it worked back then. Was my willingness to participate, to hurt someone else (what the fuck is your NAME!?) a means of defence? But I was older and could absorb more abuse so that doesn’t get me (and I mean the irrational me that won’t shut up) off the hook.
And she’d do it to please you, just like I did it to please him. That makes sense on so many levels. Yeah, he did fuck with my head. The whole men/children (children exist to please men, some children become men, hurting others makes you a man) idiocy; the pain and rewards; all of it. Fucker.
I keep telling myself that and not believing it (I believe it, but that voice in the head?). I have a tendency to do what historians are not supposed to do — impose today on yesterday and judge by today’s standards. I keep looking at me as a child and thinking that I had the tools then that I have now. I didn’t. Thanks for pointing that out. Sometimes I mess the really obvious.
Another thing to consider: there’s a bit of a tendency (understatement alert!) for humans to “follow orders”, submit to outside authority (especially where that authority is, or is perceived as being, “legitimate”). And to a kid, an adult is an Authority. “Do what you’re told.” “Because I said so!” “Don’t ask questions!”
Later, for adults, it’s “Go with the flow”, and “Don’t make waves”.
And grown men and women fall victim to Stockholm Syndrome.
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Og:
As others have said, you were manipulated and used. Part of what you were used for is to manipulate and use others. In a sense, psychologically speaking, you were weaponized. It’s a brainwashing similar to what happens in the military, except you never volunteered to become a weapon.
That last fact, in and of itself, removes from you the responsibility for what you did under the influence and control of others. This isn’t something you signed up for or could have signed up for (I doubt anyone here will argue that any 10 year old is capable of fully informed consent), and the results were part of a chain of causation that you didn’t instigate.
You are not to blame.
I know that doesn’t help the feelings of guilt, but it may help you live with them.
Gyeong Hwa peers in and pokes Josh for not appearing in the IRC. :P
As I said before, Og, I don’t really know the full details of your story, so forgive me if this is misguided or if somebody has already said this.
I’m wondering if it might be useful to think of this in terms of how you would feel if a ten-year-old you know had been subjected to the things that happened to you, rather than it being your own personal experience. I know you wouldn’t blame that hypothetical kid at any level for what happened to him, so, as you’ve said, it seems that your current self-blame might be more about projecting present-you onto past-you than about what it’s reasonable to expect of a ten-year-old. But your ten-year-old self was a different person from who you are now, someone whose really nasty memories present-you just happened to get. Can you think of this as having compassion for him?
Pikachu!
*waves*
Copied from the, Can these otters holding hands..? Facebook page. Passed overwhelmingly, the first reading of the Definition of Marriage Amendment Bill.
Hello Chigau, how goes you?
President Obama has done something few others have accomplished:
Bring down Reddit. (It’s actually up and down right now)
Ogvorbis:
No, they aren’t. You’re strong and compassionate enough to know that, too. I’ve been dealing with those voices almost my whole life (since I was 3 years old). Don’t let them boss you around, kick ’em to the curb with passion, because those voices aren’t yours, they belong to those who harmed you and fucked you up in the first place.
Finally took my chicken stock off of the stove. OMG, I wish I could simmer stock 24/7, it makes the house smell incredible.
Gyeong Hwa
The sun is shining, the birds are singing and we’re making bread and chicken soup.
It’s all good.
Familiar with the term. Never thought about it in my own terms. Interesting.
Actually, I did. 98GL, USArmy.
Of course, I was an adult then.
The idea that I was brainwashed, was weaponized, scares the shit out of me. Put me under enough stress and do I revert? Scary. Not likely, but I needed something else to be worried about. ;)
Telling someone else this is not their fault is easy. It’s just words. Telling myself that, however, gets a whole lot of pushback. I want to have compassion for the ten-year-old me but, damnit, what I/he did to her is, to rational humanity, unforgiveable forever! Not easy.
Sometimes I think it would be so much easier to just give in and accept who and what he said I was and who those voices keep saying I am. I’m not going to, but it would be so much easier to just believe the guilt, accept it, and be done.
Good to hear, Chigau. I’m just dropping by to say hi to people before I go back to making white people uncomfortable on the inter-webs.
Here is one of the best films I have watched the last decade:
“The Unknown Woman” http://www.amazon.com/Woman-Ksenia-Rappoport/dp/B0026IQTQS/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1346274158&sr=1-1&keywords=unknown+woman
It is about a woman with a false identity who insinuates herself into a family as a maid. Brief flashbacks reveal glimpses of the horrors she endured in her past.
The film is Italian, but it is available in ´Merica with English subtitles.
Ogvorbis:
I know. It is easier. However, that’s a bad, bad road to take and if you do, it’s so much harder to pull yourself out. The tears, the fear, the guilt, the rage, the despair, the fury – they won’t last forever in full storm, they will quiet, eventually. They will always be there, but they’ll be easier to deal with. Just gotta fight through this storm for a bit.
Although not a topic I’ve ever seen on Pharyngula, I’d like to mention the 2012 Paralympics begin today. If you’re a sports fan, I encourage you to take a look. Personally, I’m bigger fan of the winter games, but that’s because my niece is on the US women’s sledge hockey team.
Well, you’d be wrong. Because right now you feel bad for things that aren’t your fault. If you give in to it, you’ll STILL feel bad and have the added weight of the capitulation dragging you down.
You probably DO need to get some professional help in integrating these experiences into your life, because they won’t ever go away but maybe they can be put into a fuller context where they don’t hold so much sway over you. The one thing you shouldn’t do is give up.
Gyeong Hwa
Well, then.
Carry on.
If I copied this link correctly, you should be able to watch Jon Stewart’s take on the RNC convention.
http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/464064
Ogvorbis, this scene is pretty famous from Good Will Hunting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtkST5-ZFHw
Its something I have to keep in mind for myself, and I know others have been saying it. But maybe Robin Williams will make it real for you. :)
Lot’s of talk up-thread about Jewish relatives and Jewish traditions. Here’s a not-nice, simply horrible story about an anti-Jewish hate crime that the police are saying is not a hate crime.
Link
Improbable Joe:
That’s a personal decision, it’s not for everyone.
Wow, sexism ruins EVERYTHING.
All I’m trying to do tonight is get so drunk that I vomit, and watch cool guitar-related YouTube videos. So I’m watching gear videos from this year’s NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show, and one of them is Courtney Cox from the Iron Maidens (female Iron Maiden cover band) demoing an amazing self-tuning guitar. Since I love Iron Maiden and cool guitar playing, I click through a couple of other recommended videos.
Yeah, I get that Courtney Cox and Nita Strauss are attractive women… but to see the YouTube comments, you’d think they were standing there twirling their hair and shaking their asses. Instead, they are fucking rocking out at a pretty damned high level of technical proficiency… certainly higher than mine, truth be told. It just makes me so angry to see highly skilled musicians who aren’t respected because they are women.
Caine,
I understand that… BELIEVE me I understand that. I’ve suffered with major depression my whole life and no professional I’ve seen has ever helped me in a significant way. I don’t dismiss the idea out of hand, though. And I don’t think it is perfect or an absolute recommendation, which is why I said “probably” although I could have softened that a bit with “possibly”. Also, I didn’t specify what sort of professional. There’s doctors who have a cocktail of drugs for everyone, there’s psychiatrists and psychologists with various forms of talk therapy, and even the semi-professional help that people can get from various support groups run by people with specific training.
And then there’s nothing, which is what I’m stuck with. But I don’t believe everyone necessarily has to be stuck with nothing, and I know “something” sometimes really helps people.
Improbable Joe, well its not really any consolation but that is the same fan base that freaked out when they found out Rob Halford was gay.
Daisy:
Yeah, not only is it my duty in my MiL’s eyes to make sure that Mr Darkheart is attending temple, but I’m sure she was hoping that some of it would “rub off” on me.
Blech. Just goes to show that she doesn’t know me or her son very well.
Giliell:
Mr Darkheart has evolved from being a believer to wishy/washy spiritual to an atheist in the few years we’ve been together. Undoubtedly, it’s due to my good influence on him. ;)
Tony @232:
I’d love to, but I honestly don’t have the time right now. I’m hoping once my project is finished I can contribute more to the conversation, but for now I’m just skimming and making an occasional brief comment that doesn’t require commitment to the discussion.
I regret not being able to participate more, because the people here are awesome. You all restore my faith in humanity, and give me something to aspire to once I have a bit more free time.
broboxley,
I don’t mean to scream at you, but HOW THE FUCK COULD ANYONE BE SURPRISED THAT ROB HALFORD WAS GAY?!?!?!?!?! He dressed like the guy from the Village People and/or an on-set extra at the “Blue Oyster Bar” from the Police Academy movies. And this is from the early-1970s onward, it isn’t like he climbed on the 80s hairspray bandwagon.
Fools!! Shit, I was a relatively unenlightened asshole back when Halford officially came out, and my reaction was “Hmmm… ok, I guess that explains the leather hat” and otherwise nothing.
Improbable Joe:
Uhm. There’s a razor’s edge there. I know plenty of gay guys – out and otherwise – who don’t “fit the type”, and I know straight guys who do “fit the type” but aren’t gay.
Don’t try to classify people by what they wear or how you think they look, please. It’s part of stereotyping and discrimination and all that.
Ogvorbis, I had to be away from the computer for a bit and I was thinking about this and trying to find words … but Giliell, with the concrete example of her own two little ones in front of her, has said something better, and A.C. Hanna has a good point too. If you heard of a 10-year-old, a stranger to you, in the same situation it might be easier to see the responsibility squarely where it belongs – on the adult who abused the children, plural, both physically and mentally.
Richard Austin,
Sorry, “bull in china shop” tonight. I’m not saying that Halford had to be gay, or that everyone in leather is gay or anything like that. I’m saying that it was kind of silly to be surprised by it. There’s people who don’t bother to hide the fact that they are gay, whether or not they openly admit it. And to be upset or angry on top of being surprised is really bad, for the obvious reasons.
It is just that Rob Halford never seemed particularly closeted to me, and I remember reading interviews with the rest of the band where they were like “well, if you actually knew him for more than a day it was obvious, worst kept secret in metal, and we never gave a fuck” and that sort of thing. And again, even if it was a surprise, there’s no reason for a negative reaction to it.
Richard Austin, I’m snerking at this exchange on Reddit:
Lynna, this post went up an hour ago:
Per commenters on the Freep article you linked, the rumor mill has it that Tennen actually got into a drunken fight over a woman at the party.
Cops do lie, and witnesses do too, but what really happened in this case seems uncertain.
On a basic level I agree with this but it still gives me pause. I mean, I guess having a professional set a broken bone would also be “a personal decision”, but most people would hardly argue that it shouldn’t be advised.
Granted finding professional mental health assistance that’s not victim-blaming/sexist/racist/goddist is probably more difficult than finding someone to set a broken arm without those issues. I mean, I get that, I spent months finding a therapist. I just wonder why socially we seem to have issues with professional mental health care that we don’t have with professional health care for the rest of the body.
kristinc,
That was directed at me, and I get it since I’ve had my own nightmare encounters with mental health professionals. The difference is that there’s not 30 opinions on the best way to set a broken bone, including three opinions that involve letting it set on its own and four that involve forcing the patient to confront their pain.
True, true.
Kristin, speaking as someone who has been through a lot of therapy: The comparison between psychotherapy and, to use your example, a broken bone is mismatched. Every patient who presents with, for example, a fractured humerus will undergo roughly the same course of treatment, with minor variations. All patients who present with psychiatric problem x? They will not all be drawn to the same modality of treatment. The therapists they see will likely disagree about what constitutes the best treatment (there are no “schools of thought” on how broken bones are best mended). And outcomes will vary based on numerous factors, which may or may not be foreseen.
And therapy really isn’t for everybody. Some people don’t take to it. They may be more likely to find healing in such things as mountain climbing, artmaking, service to others, or meditation. Other people, such as myself, will be quite up for therapy at one point in their lives, unwilling to touch it with a 10-foot pole at other times.
I agree that the stigma should disappear. However, the comparisons between depression and non-psychiatric ailments never really hit the mark because of all we don’t know yet about the brain.
And Joe put it much more bluntly and (grimly) amusingly than I did.
So, I’m finally home after work and battling old ladies at the supermarket to find that the filter on the turtle tank is completely clogged with shit &/or algae and has been all day–my kitchen now smells like a fucking swamp. Also, the roofers started their work today. Which is great, don’t get me wrong, but no one warned me that my storage room would be completely exposed to the elements.
Looks like I’m fixing a filter and moving boxes tonight! Blarg. I just wanted to read my book. >:(
Joe:
Er, actually, that’s pretty close to what you did say, which is why I commented.
I realize you’re going through your own stress at the moment, and so I won’t push it beyond this post – and, actually, apology accepted because I honestly think you didn’t intend anything by it. But even your follow-up statement of, “I’m saying that it was kind of silly to be surprised by it,” makes me wince a little.
Anyway, just something to think about in the future, when the world doesn’t feel like it’s falling down around your ears.
I just want to thank the Horde for all the help they’ve sent to Improbable Joe and I. Josh, you rock. The Horde, ya’ll rock. Thank you so much!
Richard Austin,
Your concern is noted, and I’ll think about it some more tomorrow. Obviously my presentation is wrong, but I’ll need a little more thought to make sure that the foundation of it isn’t also broken.
Hi, Bossnurse. :) You’re welcome.
bossnurse:
Yes dear. :)
In case anyone is confused, “bossnurse” is my wife, and she wanted to come here and thank all of you for the help and support you’ve sent our way over the last month or so. It has been cash and kind words and good advice, and we appreciate every bit of it.
Joe:
That’s all I can ask :)
… and, it looks like you’re being followed (points at bossnurse) :)
Follow, ME? Nevah. Heehee ;)
Back in the day the metal crowd (fans) were not the brightest sticks in the the forest. I still remember when Freddy Mercury came out that he had aids. I knew folks that would exclaim ” I thought only gay guys got aids” Not in a derogatory way.
I was attending Ozzfest in Tampa in 2004 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozzfest_lineups_by_year#Ozzfest_2004
the first time Judas Priest had toured in years and in the long line to the cans after the concert you could here guys going, “Rob Halford is gay” “Bullshit, no way!”
Just to be clear, I also speak as someone who has been through a lot of therapy. I also went through a number of years buying into the mind/body dichotomy* and thinking that somehow treatment for mental health was less valid than treatment for any other kind of health, and I now regard that time as the equivalent of not having my broken arm set — lots of needless suffering.
*Not that I think you or Caine are promoting a mind/body dichotomy, just that I think my experience means I’m sensitive to anything even close to it.
Shit-biscuits… now I’m being stalked by my own wife. AWESOME!
The difference is that there’s not 30 opinions on the best way to set a broken bone, including three opinions that involve letting it set on its own and four that involve forcing the patient to confront their pain.
Actually, there kind of are. And depending on the bone in question, letting it heal on its own may indeed be the best option. Forcing the patient to confront their pain without proper analgesia is considered poor form though.
dianne,
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
Shut up with your facts and truth and reality! You ruined a perfectly good analogy!
I’d say a major difference between a broken bone and a mental illness is that with the mental illness you’re often treating symptoms rather than cause (because even a proximate cause isn’t necessarily known or discernable; damn you complex neurochemistry!). With a broken bone, you can pretty easily pinpoint the source of the problem even if exact details of how to treat it may differ based on opinion.
With a broken bone, you can pretty easily pinpoint the source of the problem even if exact details of how to treat it may differ based on opinion.
Unless the bone is broken due to osteoporosis or domestic abuse or osteogenesis imperfecta or…ok, fine, I’ll just take myself off now.
Kristinc:
I don’t have any issues in that regard. If that is what a person thinks is the best thing for them, I’m all for it. My comment to Joe was coming from an extremely personal place.
My father was schizophrenic. A (mother) was always working under the assumption that sooner or later, it would hit me. Anyway, she was in the medical profession and had the ability to lock me up whenever I did anything which displeased her. She started having me locked up in institutions when I was 7 years old. I was also forced into psychotherapy, and put in with one psychiatrist after another, then psychologists, then group therapy, then locked up again, lather rinse repeat.
I never spoke one single word through all of it. I never spoke of the abuse, I never spoke of anything. You couldn’t pay me to get near a psychiatrist, but that’s me.
Caine
mental health professionalsHow are the ratlets?
esp. Amelia
You’re most welcome! Cuz you know, you’re rockin’ it out. Like a what? Like a fucking Bossnurse!
Chigau:
They are all doing just great, including Carrot & Zoe. Amelia…oh. I hardly know what to say. She came out of major surgery acting like absolutely nothing happened and was seriously hyper and playful when we got home. She keeps insisting on coming into the studio and I do let her in and she loves hangin’ with the boys and manages to hold her own. The other girls don’t want the boys messing with them, so they prefer to stay in the annex. Not Amelia. She’s been hell for leather since she got back from her surgery, so pretty much the same, only more so. :D
I’m reading this (http://www.everydaysexism.com/) and going “OMG THAT HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME”
For example: Every time I’ve ever gone out to eat with my BF, people hand him the check. Every fucking time.
Caine
That’s my girl!
[rant]
What happened to version numbers with FireFox. They had many versions of #3 for years. Now their up to version 15, and 14 was only 14.0 and 14.1? It’s like grade inflation….
[/rant]
StarStuff
My recent experience with dining-out has been that no matter how many people are at the table and no matter what their apparent gender(s), the server puts the tab on the table exactly in the middle.
Mathematical genius.
Pikachu!
*pouncehug*
–
A noble cause!
:)
–
bossnurse, here’s a *hug*, if you’re interested in accepting such from total strangers.
:)
If not, would you care for *chocolate* instead?
–
Hugs and chocolate work for me!
Ogvorbis, for what it is worth, I think the only person who did anything unforgivable in this instance was your abuser. You were a little kid trying to survive this horrible thing that was being inflicted on you by an adult whose power over you was tremendous. I don’t know the precise details of what happened, but I imagine that, like any kid being abused by an adult, you had no real means of resisting his wishes.
I don’t know if you want to try to think about it this way, but what occurs to me is that surely you were frightened, possibly scared half to death or nearly all the way there. Your agency was obliterated by a man who knew precisely what he was doing by making your survival seem contingent on hurting another person. And by that I don’t mean that he had to necessarily be threatening to kill you in any overt way for you to have been fighting to stay alive. From my own experience, I think that, when a child is exposed to the level of violence inherent in rape, then they face a kind of psychological obliteration in the moment that is constant and ongoing until the ordeal is over. And I think this can happen whether the rape is a single event or a repeated string of abuses.
I think that it is almost certain that you were not in control of yourself or anything that was going on around you. The man who raped you stole your agency to hurt another child at the same time. He took it from you because he could, because he was bigger and more powerful than you. The whole crime belongs to him.
I don’t know about the voices you hear telling you that you shared his guilt, but the voices I hear telling me similar things are also the effect of what I had to do to survive what was happening to me at the time. I had to have some kind of control over what was happening because to be completely under the power of this other person was unthinkable. I made myself responsible in order not to completely lose myself. But it was a trick. It wasn’t actually true.
Does that make sense? If not, then nevermind me. I do think it is worth fighting back against the self-blaming chorus, though. It might seem easy to just accept the guilt and the badness but myself I’ve found that, as difficult as it can be to keep struggling, living death sentences hurt way worse.
Just a small heads up from my other (work-related) community on the Internet; it seems like you/we are having an impact — even in way remote areas:
http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2012/08/you-dont-get-to-choose-how-other-people-feel.html
http://shadow.cat/blog/matt-s-trout/neither-nerd-nor-bro/
… [a third one I will post in a separate comment to avoid the spam trap]
Those three folks can easily be described as leaders in the perl community: well known, widely read and well respected. All of them were keynote speakers during our global tech conferences.
I’ve been in that specific community for well over 10 years and never heard a peep about sexism in that industry (apart from accusing the Ruby guys to blatantly engage in it… tribalism FTW!) Suddenly, over the past 6 months or so, many of the folks there are speaking up for inclusiveness and equality. The culture is indeed changing, and I guess you — FtB, Skepchick, Atheism+ and allies — are at least somewhat to blame for that!
*does a happy dance*
[Third link:] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAOxGjNbp_Y (one of this years keynotes of the largest conference in perl, although I’ve been told it has its flaws in being over-broad and somewhat paternalistic)
Thanks, Mera. That’s nice to know.
“Hey! Listen!”
most irritating. ringtone. ever.
And I love it.
If I were to ever have a cellphone my ringtone would be:
“answer the phone!”
My experiences with psychiatrists and psychologists. The former recognize that certain drugs counter balance what the brain is doing at the moment. As one told me one time, which is better, suicide or full blown mania? I prefer to treat the mania.
The others try to use various therapies such as feedback, self correcting somewhat understanding that the brain can be tricked by the brain to behave in a certain pattern of behavior either self or externally directed.
Personally I think both methods have some small value. However after demanding to see my own record and found that a psychologist had written that I was the most dangerous person he had ever met and should be locked up for life, his colleague who allowed me to read my records indicated that the writer had sever issues of their own. That was the last time that I ever spoke to either group.
I have a clear understanding of how my mind works, unfortunately I can dispassionately watch it head for a train wreck without much ennui and hope that when I decide to intervene with myself its not too late.
Sucks to live on a rollercoaster but at least I understand I am on one.
I wish I did.
Another eye-rolling link from Happiestsadist: First Save the Pearls, and now this bullshit.
Note the hero’s last name. In case it doesn’t ring any bells, here you go.
Daisy Cutter:
Oh come on! Here, I’ll take over your struggle to support the privileged group and write a book about it!
I don’t even… that’s why we need Kickstopper.
Storm of the music duo Paul & Storm has a ringtone that calmly says: “Ring ring. Ring ring.”
I always figured I would have a dulcet female voice (like the announcements at airports or the “your call is important to us” message?) genteelly announcing “Excuse me; you have a call.”
[meta]
Mera, you can post up to five links in a comment before it’s automoderated.
Oh Jesus Fucking Christ.
“IN A WORLD…where puppykickers control society, one renegade non-puppykicker risks everything…”
I just finished reading the Onion’s latest article on the RNC. Apparently John McCain offed himself with a .22 caliber pistol after pleading with the attendees to return to a more sane direction. Is it the gin and Dubonnet, or is that ironic as all hell?
For fiction class I had written a short story about a world where everyone loved roaches and kept them as pets except one crazy homeless guy who was repulsed by them. He wound up wishing hard enough that he woke up in our world where everyone shared his view…the story ended with a homeless guy who hated babies
thunk…you just let me know when to evacuate, and I will.
Audley — my SO’s mother is so Catholic that I’m fairly certain she thinks that I’m his mistress, given that the Church never officially dissolved his previous marriage. (The state did, which is all that matters to me).
Speaking of the SO, is it good or bad that I know what his voice sounds like right before he suggests we break up? /emotionalrollercoaster!
Can someone translate that from crackpot for me? I really don’t know what it means.
Portia:
Ah, borkquote.
Beach & Daisy Cutter:
Scarleteen is really quite good actually. Thanks.
*takes out glasses* Ugh hold on, I speak Gobbledegook
Yadadadadadada. He’s saying he thinks it’s hard scfi fi and an actual thing that could happen in the future.
That’s what I was afraid of. I’ve never heard the term “hard sci fi” before. Is that to indicate it’s intended to be predictive of an actual potential future reality? (Wow that felt like word salad). Hence the “speculative”? Facepalm.
HAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!
Best. Response. Evah.
If you weren’t taken I’d propose marriage to you right now.
My male bff just asked me to be his “best woman” in his as-yet-hypothetical wedding ceremony. *happy dance*
Oh, and Ing, seconded, thanks for the smile.
portia:
The more you know :)
thanks Tony. You’re more kind than I am…I’ve used http://www.lmgtfy.com way too often.
Josh,
If you propose to someone else, you lose your spot in the ‘Everyone loves Brownian cueue’.
You people and your acronyms :-). It’s like every other day there’s a new one I have to go look up.
Tony, now me and the ferret want to know what you mean by “you people.” ;) As for lmgtfy, use it, love it, live it. It makes for great snark.
portia:
By comparison, virtually every Hollywood sci fi film would be ‘limp sci fi’ (or ‘wet noodle sci fi’)
Tony — that makes sense. Hard sci fi sounds much more interesting.
I’m going to start inventing acronyms that no one has heard of.
First up: GFFY (Google fu for you).
LLOL, Tony, GFFY has a nice flow.
I wanted GFFU, but I wanted to be a proper lad.
You?! Proper? Say it ain’t so…
oh my
limp scifi vs hard scifi
I wish I’d had that concept 40 years ago.
Tony,
As a lifelong hard-core SF aficionado, I can tell you that ‘sci-fi’ is like unto SF as pulps are to literature (pabulum for the masses); as for Hollywood SF, it’s science-fantasy, not science-fiction.
(The modern consensus is that SF refers to ‘speculative fiction’, but true ‘hard’ SF is that which violates no known scientific theory (but which may be set in any society) yet extrapolates* – that said, by convention, hard SF is allowed one conceit (unsupportable claim) which still must not violate known science)
<elitist>
—
*A classic example is The cold equations, sociologically and technically dated as it may now be.
Well, I figured I should be more respectable, like LOUIS & JOSH & JOE. They’re such sweet innocent good boys.
I ♥ed Harlan Ellison when I was younger.
John:
I’ll take ‘things I already knew for $500, Alex’.
I was trying to be the opposite of proper. HARD vs LIMP sci fi…
(Must work on jokes; Louis are you still teaching those classes?)
::thank you though::
Thank you, everyone, for your kind words. Today was rough for my niece, naturally, but we talked frequently which helped. (Well, helped me. I hope it was helpful for her as well.)
I think I might actually sleep tonight. Maybe. Going to try anyway.
— —
Tony
I feel silly for even complaining because my problems this year have mostly been small and very temporary frustrations with the occasional big-awful. I just get so annoyed because these same little frustrations keep happening no matter how much budgeting and planning I do. I just honestly don’t know what more I could do to prevent it, which frustrates me even more.
—
cicely:
*raises the tea mug*
—
Ogvorbis
To me, there is no “putting up with” your pain here; it is about bearing witness.
So often, I just don’t know what to say, cannot find words express my sorrow for what you have endured and continue to, or offer any constructive advice. But I’m always listening because the least I can do is refuse to turn away. I don’t know if it is a comfort (although I hope it is) but you are heard, you are believed, and your pain and struggles are acknowledged.
—
StarStuff
Oh jeebus on a stick, yes. Even worse, for me, was taking one or both of my sons out to eat and watching THEM get the check. And then, when I’d take it away from them, having the server chide them for letting their mother pay.
LIMPFLACCIDThere you go. I think Louis would approve.
Instead of HARD/LIMP why not Flexible/Rigid Which is nicer than my other suggestion of Fun/Stodgy
Well bugger.
A fine Monitor I am.
I cannot send PZ an email from my current set-up.
There is a Mabus-like thing in the Thunderdome @41.
alert!
@Chigau
Weird Al’s Virus Alert is now going through my head, thanks
@ StevoR, A.R & Caine
YAY!!!
I don’t know that I’ve seen a flexible penis…
Flaccid? Yup.
Limp? Yep.
Gargantuan even.
But flexible? Nope. We’re talking penii not pretzels.
@Tony
You clearly have not been to the NYC Penis Puppetry shows
ING:
Is that for real?
What a sheltered, proper life I’ve lived.
I must ramp up the debauchery.
Luckily this weekend is SOUTHERN DECADENCE* in New Orleans (assuming the hurricane did not cause much damage)
*gay Mardi Gras
@Tony
http://www.puppetryofthepenis.com/
I have to warn you thought, it may be NSFW *aside* It uses a lot of Flash
Ing. What am I looking at. Why are they upside down.
Monitors are aware of the appearance in Thunderdome?
Cuteness from my child: My Step dad hears voices so he sometimes talks to people that aren’t there. My daughter told him “I wish you could hear my voice in your head so I could say nice things to you.” AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
Another instance: My step dad was walking Little One home from school. She saw a skin head tatted up, swastikas, 1488, etc. She asked him what that means. He explained racism. She asked him what that meant. She having having trouble getting it since it’s the exact opposite of what we say. So Step Dad points at his skin says “They think this [skin color], means more than this [points at his head].” She says “Oh, so they aren’t smart.” XD
Crap from my neighborhood: Apparently, my child someone shooting up when she looked out of our window last night. The next door neighbors are dealing apparently. Was just told this tonight, going to have a word with the landlord tomorrow. I don’t expect it to go well considering what happened when we reported the drug dealer living next to my mom.
Good luck with the landlord. I recently had to speak with mine because of wafting marijuana smoke (which I am not opposed to on principle but really detest smelling).
You have a very smart and compassionate kid there.
Tony:
The plural of ‘penis’ is ‘penes’, but ‘penises’ is also valid.
</pedant>
So what is the singular for pretzel?
chigau, convolute?
Pretzepus?
Ing, tentacled cats?
(Coeurl)
So. Apparently, because different places in the US have different political climates, the US has no federal government or federal laws, and thus I can’t talk about things happening in the US, or cite statistics drawn from the US, or even just mention the US as a generalized entity at all.
Also, there’s no such thing as anti-atheist bigotry, not even in the US (which I’m not supposed to talk about). Atheists are reviled, but we deserve it until we start talking about how we’re into interfaith dialogue because some of us agree with Sam Harris about Muslims and racial profiling.
All this from…this person -sigh-. Yeah, I’m beginning to feel totally safe venturing back to the demonstrations, considering that I keep running up against the central figure making horrible arguments.
Was just slightly confused by the appearance of a new character on my computer screen. It looked like an exclamation mark only with the line across the top like the ‘T’ character. On closer inspection it was indeed a capital ‘T’ with a small speck of dirt on my monitor obscuring a tiny portion of it. If that speck of dirt had not been exactly the right size to obscure only the down line on the ‘T’ the illusion would not have worked, if the speck was not in precisely the correct position the ratios would have been all wrong and the speck would have betrayed its identity as a speck. If I hadn’t highlighted the text the speck would not have shown up on the black ‘T’ against the white background, it was only the inversion of colours that allowed it to be seen. If I had scrolled the page in any direction, the illusion would have been absent as would the rendering of the letters in any other font.
Surely such precise computer monitor speck placement can’t be accidental and clearly points to a higher intelligence who is aware of the special properties of specks, has a hand in their accurate placement and was benevolent enough to allow me the opportunity to see this miracle?
JAL I think your Little One is pretty wonderful – she’s clever and empathetic and kind, and aware of what is going on around her. This stranger in another country thinks she’s cool :)
Oh, almost forgot;
Take that atheists!
Where some intellectually disabled people will compete against amputees. It’s a very weird setup.
marko,
Aligning the text with the dirt on your screen is a standard function of most text formatting and display softwares. So is ensuring the ink cartridges run dry, the printing mechanism streaks, and the paper jams. It has taken years to develop the algorithms and all the necessary bugs to accomplish these enhancements and add value to written documents.
Whilst writing this reply, another improvement became apparent. Clicking the wrong mouse button with the mouse in the wrong position deletes the draft, thus consuming more time and increasing the amount of exercise your fingers get using a keyboard designed to reduce the frequency of mechanical jams.
HI bosssnurse and welcome to
TETthe Lounge!+++
So, #1 is missing two bracelets which she wore for kindergarten on Tuesday. There’s a very small possibility they’re in the sandbox. there’s a much bigger possibility that another child took them (especially since several children witnessed him taking them before). I guess our chances of getting them back is about zero because admitting that your precious boy took some sparkling bracelets is just too much. Better teach him that you can get away with nicking stuff.
[/firstworldproblems]
JAL
The little one sounds like a real gem.
Did you know that Clarence Darrow got 2 kids acquitted who had confessed to murdering someone, based on arguing for psychological determinism and against free will? In 1924? Now that’s cool.
Rorschach,
There’s a pretty darn good play about that. My father, after he retired, go involved in community theatre and got to play Clarence Darrow in it.