Re: Meritocracy

1

How fucking dare you hate on Britney, you with your food channel crush and your giant scar. Just wait til her cover of "People are strange."

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2

I'm not sure why you think I'm hating on her, Mr. Projection.

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3

Federline comes off well.

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4

He's definitely the smart one.

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5

"I feel like I'm missing out...[burp]...on life...and things, and...things...going on." Man, we've all been there.

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6

Ogged, is that possible? To time, travel, speed?

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7

The last part of that conversation is so worth it.

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8

K-Fed knows the score.

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9

Pardom me

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10

We should re-enact that dialogue as part of a blogging heads exclusive.

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11

Dude, Saiselgy is on bloggingheads sometimes. He needs to step up and include some of those lines at opportune moments. Drinking game!

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12

This is just so, so sad.

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13

He can start with "Huhh?"

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14

I take it all back. K-fed is a genius.

"I'd rather watch the movie and drink at home"
Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!

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15

Duuude.
"Yerr doin' somethin' weeeird!"
"Yerrr liiiiine!"

I should make dinner, but I'm stuck staring into the abyss.

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16

Baa, who amongst us doesn't like to watch the movie while drinking at home?

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17

It's mesmerizing. I also like her weird snapping gestures. I think she has a dainty form of tourette's

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18

That's my plan for later tonight. Just as soon as I'm off the treadmill.

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19

True afficianados might also like this. "They look like boobs, but they're not. They're my knees."

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20

Anyone feel the sincerity in Federline's response to "I'm ugly"?

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21

Ya Know?
I realize that I haven't posted enough for y'all to trust me. And I haven't seen more than 3 seconds of teh video; but I'm already feeling some ambivalence about this.

Yes, the first 2 seconds of the video I saw made me want to scream "take the gum out of your mouth, you silly cow!" I don't like gum, and I don't need to see the rest. It's just Britney Spears being Britney Spears, except maybe high, right? She's kind of a clown, right?

Where the ambivalence comes in is the prospect of watching a bunch of post-grad-degree-holding assholes point & laugh at someone less educated than themselves. Face it, making fun of Britney Spears is like tripping the retarded kid on the playground. It's, IMO, the least attractive aspect of this blog. It's an attitude...well, I'll take FL's word for it that the quotation in 5 is accurate. So BS, despite being dumb as a stump, is aware of her ignorance?

Really, by your standards, I guess I have to identify with the gum-chewing doofus.
I really do love this place; I'm not much of a commenter, but I've been lurking for a long time. And I really, really like most of the regular commenters here. But this is the sort of shit that makes me draw back.


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22

Emily, that seems like a strange complaint. Laughing and pointing at her 1) Has nothing to do with her level of education (I know plenty of people who don't have PhDs (I don't), and some who don't have BAs, and none of them act that dumb, ever). 2) Is satisfying because she has enough money to buy us all and send us to the local zoo. I mean, this isn't Bumfights that we're watching.

At this time, I take no position on tripping retarded children.

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23

I was gonna say, this video made me feel more sympathetic to ol' Britney than I ever did before. But I'm drinking already.

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24

Wow. That was like Beckett. It wasn't really Beckett, was it?

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25

Wait, someone actually reads this thing?

Emily, I'm sympathetic to your complaint, and I'm actively trying to resist the urge to make a joke about travelling back in time to change what we've said. Britney is an interesting case, because, obviouslam, she's just a 24 year old kid with a crazy life, and all of us have had conversations like that (i.e., where we look dumb). On the other hand, well, the video.

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26

Also, what's the provenance of this video? Was this from their "television show"? If the put this video out into the world knowingly, well... all bets seem to be off.

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27

I hear you on the sympathy thing. Shit, sometimes I feel bad for even Lindsey Lohan, but isn't there some big social rule that says that we're allowed to make fun of the rich and famous?

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28

If we can't make fun of the rich and famous, what good are they? Also, can we bring the food detectives from the other thread in to identify what she's eating?

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29

The record should also state that I am eating dinner by myself on a Friday night while even my pretend electronic friends have a fun booze-soaked time at the meet-up. Worse, I'm stuck here with the gimp.

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30

Nah, we get to snicker at people who have vast sums of wealth, yet sit around all day, and don't educate themselves. Also, it's fair game to make fun of y'all for spending too much time on the comptuer. Pasty nerds.

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31

Oh right, the meetup. Bastards!

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32

FL, you're welcome to come hang out with me.

There, now you're sitting at home all alone by choice.

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33

Ironically, it makes me feel as though I am missing out things, and things going on.

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34

I'm with slol, again. It made me like her more. But seriously, if we can't make fun of Brittney, then we can't make fun of anyone. Is the argument supposed to be that we can only make fun of people above us on the food chain, and only along those vectors in which they are superior? That's going to be tough. Lots people above us (or at least me) in all sorts of hierarchies, but coming up with ways in which we can put them down for being better than us? Hard.

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35

But then I'd have to do the walk of shame in the harsh morning light of Saturday, Michael, and I don't want my neighbors to know.

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36

Unfogged: the self-hatingest blog on all the internet!

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37

When do we get to make fun of Miss Emily?

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38

Is she really drunk? There's no way that can be organic dumb.

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39

37: after you unsuccesfully hit on her?

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40

Oh. So, Miss Emily, what are you wearing this fine summer evening?

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41

This isn't going to end well, is it?

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42

Ask her if she wants to see your scar.

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43

My impression is that she's under the influence of something, and also doing a bit of a put on, and also kinda dumb.

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44

But I have no idea what's up with Britney.

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45

Zing!

Totally kidding, Miss Emily. Want to see my scar other blog (if you know what I mean)?

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46

That was awesome. Is that from chapter 5 of Ogged's compleat comic blogging guide?

Also, update that other thing-- it looks like you died.

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47

Those losers at the meetup! They have no idea what they're missing!

Ogged, this video is teh awesome! Damn, it's good having you back around these parts!

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48

If this night ends with Ogged having sex with everyone, I will cry.

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49

You guys slay me. Where's that waitress with my drink?

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50

You guys slay me.

You're not kidding. When I read baa's 14, I couldn't stop laughing, which really effin hurts, so between gasps I had to go, "Mom, mom, come tell me about Lebanon!" True story.

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51

Seriously guys, This is my 4th attempt at a reply here. I keep getting the Forbidden thingy w/ no kitten! Surely that's just stunningly coincidental. Since you're talkin' smack & all...

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52

Quick, Emily, say something funny-- maybe he'll rupture.

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53

Watching that made me awfully sad.

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54

the kitten is at the meetup. fucking new york kitten. waitress!

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55

I keep getting the Forbidden thingy w/ no kitten!

That's odd (and beyond my purview, these days). Anyone else getting that?

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56

51: What is this kitten thing people keep mentioning? Does it come w/an error message? How can I get one?

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57

I get that only when I try to comment here using safebar. I wonder if it's a cloaking thing.

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58

If this night ends with Ogged having sex with everyone, I will cry.

Whait is it the kids say? Ain't no fun if the homeys can't have none?

[passes out{

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59

Annie, instead of a typically unfriendly Internal Server Error message, Becks put up a picture of a very cute kitten. If you haven't seen it, you haven't gotten any server errors.

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60

59: Oh, okay. I don't want this kitten then. Thanks for filling me in.

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61

Now, I will share with you all that I was catheterized several times while wide fucking awake when I was in the hospital. The good news: I'm no longer afraid to take advantage of the free overnight stay at any American Gulag location.

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62

Wait! I just got a kitten when I click 'post' on 60...but it posted.

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63

She's obviously high. Good for her.


At least she won't blind anyone with the glare coming off her forehead.

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64

61: So catheters -- as hilarious as I've been led to believe? A nurse friend of mine has a favorite story she tells about a well-endowed gentleman who couldn't have an internal catheter due to the potential for infection. Instead he got what's basically a condom with a tube on the end -- a device called a "Texas Catheter" (I try to conceal this fact from Smasher at all costs).

Anyway, she, a cute blonde girl, had to tend to this guy's (let's say it was a sponge bath). He became aroused, the catheter popped off, he couldn't control his bladder, there was some loose firehose-style action, and he laughed hysterically through the whole thing.

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65

"guy's" s/b "guy's intimate regions"

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66

Yes, please, let's have some "ogged pees on a nurse" stories to make the meetupers jealous.

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67

I could have been having a funny catheter experience? No, my friend, after surgery, given the abdominal trauma that follows surgery in the area, and because anaesthetic can screw up all your "functions," I was actually unable to pee. But they wanted me to try every day, so they'd take out the catheter and when I was about to burst (900cc of urine in my bladder and I couldn't go; you go measure it out), they'd put it back in. Having a tube stuck all the way up your penis into your bladder is exactly as cringingly unpleasant as it sounds. And there wasn't a cute nurse within miles of the place.

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68

Alright then. Consider me talked out of the catheterization body modification craze that (I assume) the kids are so into these days.

My mom was having some similar trouble when she was still in the hospital. She was convinced that the nurses genuinely disliked her because she couldn't comply with their excretory demands. I tried to get her to believe that they probably didn't have all that much of a stake in the matter, but she wouldn't buy it.

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69

The nurses are trained, I think, to encourage you to get back to normal as soon as possible, so they play hardass a little bit. They left me alone after I asked them specifically if moving around would hurt me, they said no, I tried it, and wound up bleeding all over the bed.

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70

I'm glad Miss Emily said it and not me.

The problem with making fun of Britney is that everyone makes fun of Britney. And the fun-making is all of the "money can't buy class" stripe, which is pretty snobbish (which is, I think, where the post-graduate degrees thing comes in--not in terms of education, but as a class marker). She's a young woman who got pushed into a nutty kind of life at a young age. Whatever her native intelligence might be, that shit wouldn't have done any of us any favors.

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71

Which isn't as amusing as hospital stories, and I'm sorry I brought it up again after y'all had moved on.

A girlfriend of mine, in the hospital after childbirth, stood up to go to the bathroom when she couldn't get the nurses to come and passed out and broke her two front teeth.

Labs is right, Ogged, you need to update the cancerblog.

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72

B, maybe after I have seventeen drinks we can talk about whether trashiness is objectively bad or if our feeling that it is so is merely a response arising out of the need to enforce our hierarchy.

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73

But then I'd have to do the walk of shame in the harsh morning light of Saturday, Michael, and I don't want my neighbors to know.

Whatever. You just don't want to be associated with me because you have a post-graduate education and I don't.

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74

she couldn't get the nurses to come

Sometimes, nurses suck. In fact, I might have the nurses to thank for my blood loss, since they insisted on moving me to a different bed just a few hours after surgery. Moving, in this case, meaning grabbing the corners of the bedsheets and dumping me like a sack of potatoes. We begged them not to do it, but they wouldn't listen. I've never been in such pain, and my mom was going to beat up the nurse, but my ex physically restrained her. Another true story.

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75

Want to see my scar other blog (if you know what I mean)?

I have a friend who underwent a similar-style abdominal attack, but his incision was down the front, not the side. Every time he's been on a date since the op (it's been three years), the automatic question is: "Did you show her your scar?"

And Ogged, if you're feeling up to using a razor, is it to get back the svelte, hairless feeling you got when they shaved your whole torso?

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76

They shaved a quarter of my torso, as you all discussed at length, not so long ago.

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77

I have to say I'm on your mom's side. I'd beat someone up if they did that to PK.

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78

70: And the fun-making is all of the "money can't buy class" stripe, which is pretty snobbish

To me, what's funny is actually not about Britney being less educated or even lacking "class." People without much in the way of formal education don't automatically sound like dolts. What makes Britney unintentionally funny is simply that in certain respects, she plainly isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

You might say this is a sort of snobbery of the intellect, and you'd be right. But you know... there are worse sins.

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79

Isn't what is funny not the class thing or the education thing but the fact that she's a normally high-polished pop princess doing things like burping? Truth behind the plastic façade?

Anyhow, while I'm not really a celebrity mocker, I see no reason not to mock someone who could, if she wished, pretty much purchase me to write 'The Philosophy of Blondeness: A Study in Youth' on one week's royalties.

My liberal guilt's spoke for in other places.

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80

Call me puerile, but I found the belch highly amusing, precisely because she's a pop princess. And because it was the robust, resonant kind of belch that a guy would be proud of. Not me, of course. Other guys.

I still suspect that the dialogue was at least adapted from Beckett, because it was just too perfect. The belch, however, was an exquisitely timed ad lib, so even if she's basically a twit, she achieved genius for that one brief moment.

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81

That video is like all of my friends from high school rolled into one girl.

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82

Moving, in this case, meaning grabbing the corners of the bedsheets and dumping me like a sack of potatoes.

I wasn't completely aware of my surroundings when I got moved into my bed after surgery. But apparently it wasn't pleasant, as my wife tells me I screamed when they did it. On the plus side, no catheter.

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83

Making fun of the rich and powerful (and Spears is both, even if she is (in the case that she truly is) too dim to use the power she has) is an old tradition of marginalized people (and ostentatiously intellectual folk like us are marginalized in the US of 2006 with its red-state know-nothingism), and I refuse to condemn it.

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84

The record should also state that I am eating dinner by myself on a Friday night while even my pretend electronic friends have a fun booze-soaked time at the meet-up.

Oddly enough, given all the Beckett in this thread, I was alone at a bar named after him last night reading "Warten auf Godot". (The drinks lists come in the form of pages inserted into random books by Beckett, which makes it easier to be there alone, since you automatically get reading material.)

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85

a bunch of post-grad-degree-holding assholes point & laugh at someone

Just think of it as "Revenge of the Nerds."

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86

Don't blame Britney for the music. Her Swedish producer is the guilty one. Nobody understands the Swedish-producer threat except me.

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87

I could care less what happens to Britney. She's one in a long line of thrown-against-the wall pop princesses and let's see who sticks.

Now what happened to Elvis, that's a dinkum American Tragedy.

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88

she couldn't get the nurses to come

WTF -gg-d -- not like you to pass up such an obvious set-up.

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89

I suspect (and really hope) she was high.

Funny that so many people brought up Beckett. My first reaction was to remember a quote I read on a blog somewhere to describe a similar non-Britney video clip: "She gives this incoherent soliloquy directly out of Scenes That Could Have Been In Tennessee Williams Plays But Aren't".

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90

I've been wanting to drop the, uh, title* for a while now. Thanks for the assist.
Bringing the topic back to hospital stories: I was once informed by a nurse that I would be catheterized the next morning. I tossed and turned between disturbing dreams involving garden hoses and various farm implements.

For no good reason. Apparently, it's hellish for guys, but nothing special if you're a girl.

*will also consider abdicating the throne for the right man.

Now let's see if this one posts!

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91

At this time, I take no position on tripping retarded children.

But ogged, your position is on record.

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92

91 was me. So is 92.

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93

Anti-intellectualism is a worse sin than snobbishness.

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94

So, now that Britney has been ruined, when is it acceptable to start perving on Jamie Lynn?

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95

Nobody understands the Swedish-producer threat except me.

Don't give me that, Emerson. When the Swedish Army liberates us you'll be singing "Fernando" at the top of your lungs just like the rest of us.

That video is what Al Gore invented the internet for.

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96

Okay, so the reason it was wrong for certain people--let's call them "us"--to want to fuck Britney when she was 16, was that she was too immature and unwise to be able to consent to such a momentous undertaking?

As opposed to, now?

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