Comment #1 is insulting and controlling, toward a woman.
We are off to a fine start.
I was going to say, "Great post", but I must defer to Sifu Tweety in this as in all important things on the blog.
I would not agree that it was much more entertaining. Maybe a little. Ogged really knew how to troll everybody.
Unfogged should have:
1. More meta-posts.
2. Less meta-posts.
3. We need a new post to discuss the fact that this one was even suggested.
I don't really have an opinion because for us "kinder and gentler" meant we got to arrange the piles of stones in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Also, we were nearly naked most of the time, so cock jokes weren't as big of a deal.
I'd say it was somewhat more entertaining, possibly just because the commentariat was smaller and more intimate, but definitely not any nicer.
Oh, sure, put up a new thread while I am in the process of composing a long and overly earnest comment at the end of the last thread.
I think unfogged is less funny that it used to be and a little less addictive. I suspect part of that is that people have gotten older and have other things going on in their lives (and more children) the general intensity of engagement is lower.
But I also think that it is nicer now, and is still the only place on the internet that competes, in any meaningful way, for affection with the people that I know in RL. There are other sites that are good time-wasters, but I still feel very strongly that, where I to be somehow cut off from unfogged, I would be losing a group of friends.
Unfogged was certainly more authentic before it signed with Warner Bros.
3.1 would have been witty, had it been written by anybody else.
And it might have been witty as written! But bob, context is everything. If you actually want an answer to your repeated question in the other thread: We know ari was joking in 447 because he was clearly joking. And had a joke of ari's been misunderstood - especially one like that - he wouldn't have hesitated to say so.
You still haven't said you were joking in the other thread, I assume this is because you weren't joking. I mean, if you were, what was the joke?
11.3: I've been confused by this in the past, but doesn't that belong on Standpipe's other blog?
3.1 would have been witty, had it been written by anybody else. before 2008.
Unfogged was certainly more authentic before it signed with Warner Bros.
The true suckage started when Sammy Hagar replaced Fontana Labs.
11, 13:Setting aside "All about Bob, all the time"
...and, if possible, setting aside "I know that guy, and he is just not like that"...
is 3 accurate about 1?
15.3: Use the fucking brain God gave you, bob. ... oh wait, you are.
I'm not going to claim that this is a particularly moral stance, but: the cock jokes are just funnier when they arise in the middle of a vicious personal fight, and they always were.
Unfortunately, I have to go swim drive to Fox Chapel. I hope I don't get lost like the last two times. I can only find the liquor store.
Okay, then let's look at #2
I will, for the sake, assume it was an affectionate objection to #1, but there remains a small element of objection, a recognition that #1 is ever so slightly objectionable.
Is this accurate?
FWIW, I found unfogged to be both funnier and nastier back in the day. There was also a broader range.
I missed the edge well before I left. Then again, as far as I can see nobody has bemoaned that act* since, so I probably didn't fit in so well; That probably means I shouldn't bother with this but now it's done.
* whinge, whinge
FWIW, I found unfogged to be both funnier and nastier back in the day. There was also a broader range.
I missed the edge well before I left. Then again, as far as I can see nobody has bemoaned that act* since, so I probably didn't fit in so well; That probably means I shouldn't bother with this but now it's done.
* whinge, whinge
Not sure about nicer, but I otherwise endorse 9.last and will add that I value the RL friendships that have resulted from unfogged.
/earnest
Plus, I usually laugh out loud several times every thread, which makes it entirely worth it.
I probably didn't fit in so well
Well, sure, if you double posted.
FWIW I read Unfogged semi-regularly* from about the time it was added to the CT blogroll (as one of the places to go if CT was boring/ I had already read the rest of the internet) until the Big Bitch Blowup, which I gather was resolved fairly quickly, but I was not in the mood for poison what with being in the middle of a post-divorce mope and all, so didn't return until mid 2008. My impression is that the changes were: Enormous comment threads (they'd been getting longer, but perhaps I hadn't really registered that when I split), and more PC eggshell-walking in the comments. Also I don't think there were as many "I have an interesting story about last night" type of comments (which I really like).
*I recall commenting a bit under another pseud, but can only locate one comment via google. I blame Obama.
cock jokes are just funnier when they arise in the middle of a vicious personal fight
Like the naughty bits in UFC?
20: No.
Off to swim read a less boring thread.
26: "oh and he's going for the 69 choke but.. no! He's been mounted! Could his opponent have 'checked the oil'? That's definitely frowned on in a pro bout."
Unfogged was funnier before Obama was elected. Fucker kills blogs for profit.
more PC eggshell-walking in the comments
Didn't used to be any at all at the beginning. See what happens when you let girls in the clubhouse?
After leaving comment 14, I put on Van Halen II for the first time in probably a decade or longer. I'm in a much better mood.
even Shearer can feel welcome here
That seems unlikely.
This will be a short thread, seeing as 18 has always already got the answer exactly right. Unfogged has always been mean, but the cock jokes provided the comic relief necessary to keep things in balance. Sadly, the only one I've got is Rory's pronouncement that she wouldn't marry a cock. But I think I've overused that by now.
Protip: It's not that hard to skim right past bob's comments. Tedious, but it can quickly become a habit (with occasional lapses).
Now really going back to the other thread.
What NickS said. I miss a few of the old-time commenters -- Drymala, Armsmasher, md 20/400 come to mind. And Di's persona, when she was first recovering from UNG.
I think "blog" as a social phenomenon is just not as intense as it was a few years ago. Unfogged may reflect that. Still enjoy the community.
Also, I think much could be solved if Dona Quixote would step it up on those rebound prowling updates. If necessary, I will throw my hat back into the insane pursuit of sex and/or romance ring. But I'd prefer not to.
I'm looking forward to when unfogged is all about what unfogged is about. It's a natural progression.
...had it been written by anybody else. before 2008.
Oh, there is a point here. There are a lot of us still befuddled by how people were "taken in" by Bush, by Obama.
The thread below really exploded when I started talking about the PUMAs.
I grew up in the company of a man, physically attractive, charming, funny as hell, so beloved by casual acquaintances that he went into politics, and as verbally abusive, controlling, and soul destroying as anyone you can even imagine. When he could get away with it. But what I really learned is how even the most apparently innocuous interchanges, the jokes and banter, damage and move the lines of what is "unobjectionable."
The above three bullet points of course connect in our micro and macro discourses, the local and global, politics and feminism. Hegemonies are subtly established that are almost invisible. Unwritten rules rule. The Emperor wears a fine style.
But the potential victims, and I am not one, can't be reached, won't listen. This is, on a personal level, for those you love, horrifying. On the level of politics it is terrifying.
I don't like certain kinds of men. I don't like them a whole fucking lot. Maybe I see things that aren't there, maybe I see things that are there but invisible to others. Maybe I am crazy, maybe I am smart and crazy.
But I am not, and do not intend to be, malicious or gratuitously cruel.
OK fine. Hard for me, hurts like hell, but gone. I am so soured on group interactions that I am thinking of pulling the plug on the whole fucking internet. But I can obviously no longer contribute, participate, or share at Unfogged. Goodbye.
39 crossed with 37 and 38, but I guess I can take one for the team if that's what it takes. Anyone who wants to assist by fixing me up with a total disaster, let me know.
Wait. I should say thanks. You have absolutely no idea how much I have appreciated most of my time here, how much I care about most of you.
Take care of each other, everybody. Be kind.
I think Bob does a lot to keep this blog entertaining. I don't really care for his vendettas, but as trolls go, I think he's one of the more interesting ones. We could do a lot worse.
Sorry to see you go, Bob. As annoying as I have found some of the periodic threadjacking, when you do play respectfully, you do "add value."
Sorry to see you go, Bob. As annoying as I have found some of the periodic threadjacking, when you do play respectfully, you do "add value."
I have a roommate who's a total disaster, but I've sortof got my own eye on him. So that's promising.
Don't know how that happened. I must be doubly sorry.
50: Like! If you step up, that would save me the trouble.
Take care of each other, everybody. Be kind.
Aw, fuck it.
Bob, I hope you come back, whenever that may be. Taking a break sounds like a good idea, but the picture of you out walking your dogs for miles has to be one of the indelible images of unfogged.
I think you've all become a bunch of pussies in Unfogged's decadent stage and it's time to mean this place up until you all become the tough, fit commenters of yore. That's why I'm personally committing to act like as much of an asshole as possible, starting right now. Who's with me?
There is in fact a reason why parties don't last forever.
Maybe bob can do a guest movie-review column once a week. No blood running in the street allowed, just movies.
42: Don't let the door hit you on the... Awww, fuck it, I'll believe it when I see it.
Your graciousness and magnanimity is a wonder, Knecht.
I think you've all become a bunch of pussies in Unfogged's decadent stage and it's time to mean this place up until you all become the tough, fit commenters of yore. That's why I'm personally committing to act like as much of an asshole as possible, starting right now. Who's with me?
You could take notes from Tripp.
starting right now
Don't sell yourself short. You got a jump on that game ages ago.
55: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsTAUs_h_uY
I'm stepping up! I've been house painting. But I plan to make many poor life choices in the near future, ideally tonight, though it will be a straight crowd.
And I may not have mentioned this, but I am also open to being set up with complete disasters, even though I don't really know any of you. (See? Questionable judgment!) Criminal insanity not necessarily a dealbreaker, depending on hotness.
54 -- Maybe you should pick a different commenter each day, and harass them til they cry.
but I am also open to being set up with complete disasters,
A gazillion blog hero points if you seduce Pam Geller and liveblog about it. She's running around loose somewhere on the Upper West Side.
62: The meanest case of lesbian revenge sex of which I am familiar involves my friend's crazy ex (really crazy) intentionally seeking her (my friend's) estranged father, fucking him, and forwarding her the "sexts" they had exchanged. But, I mean, there was no joy in that, I'd think. Unlike seducing straight girls at a party.
AS THOUGH I WEREN'T ALREADY HAVING TROUBLE SLEEPING, JP
re: 65
Wow, that's setting the bar fairly high.
ideally tonight, though it will be a straight crowd
Sounds like the perfect setting for disasterously poor choices!
63: Not funny.
65: I don't think that can be topped.
The stunning and beautiful black lesbian trainer at the gym, the one who only seems to train very beautiful women, got her name graffiti'd on the door of the gym in lipstick, with hearts. Seems like you could count on whomever did that to make a few more grand gestures. I could try to get a name, but one assumes she's local to Sacramento.
The first girl I was ever involved with was a) crazy, and b) vengeful. After we had stopped sleeping together, we tried to be friends, met up for drinks. I told her I was sleeping w someone else, and mentioned the uncommon first name of the new hook up. Took Crazy 5 days to tack down New Hook Up and fuck her. This is in a major city. I was mostly impressed.
33 describes 42 pretty neatly.
65 is maybe the worst thing I've ever heard. And dedicated.
What's really amazing is that the story in 65 is not the kind of thing I'd easily believe, but the attending circumstances of crazy ex's whole path of destruction, etc. were sufficiently bad as to be looked into by authorities and the whole thing got pretty well documented.
74: Hah! Back in the mean days of Unfogged Classic people talked about gluing caterpillars to death.
since I seem to be here today anyway...
I can't top 65 but it reminds me of something I once did. Yes, I'm ashamed of it a bit, but it's also sort of weird.
I must have been 18 or 19, and a friend had slept with my girl. It wasn't about the girl, but the fact he'd done it to one up me pissed me off. Being a teenager, this was an epic betrayal, and required an epic response.
So I made a list. His older sister, his younger sister, his best friend since grade school, his current girlfriend, his mom.
Here's the weird thing: Over about 18 months, I was almost completely successful. I'd reached a never before or since realized capability for targeted seduction... wtf?
After gloating in the payback a bit and rubbing his nose in it, I figured out that this lay mostly in not having anything real riding on it, and I really didn't like the guy doing this. Gave me a new look at how I was defeating myself when I did...
Well, it is pretty easy to sleep with swaths of women when you're a handsome young president.
At what point did people realize your intention?
Is this Blogfight Weekend or something? The McMegan thread going on at DeLong's is entertainingly nasty.
Is this Blogfight Weekend or something?
We're commemorating 9/11.
If we act nice, the terrorists will have won.
48
Sorry to see you go, Bob. As annoying as I have found some of the periodic threadjacking, when you do play respectfully, you do "add value."
I thought read added considerably more value. Just saying.
83: The way she keeps digging a bigger hole in desperate self-defense is awesome.
Also, I second 81.
63 is a reference to the read thing, right? I have given up on finding this in TFA, because read apparently also is a commonly occurring verb, if anyone would care to point me to it. It's referenced enough that it feels canonical.
p.s. I have no opinon on any of this because I've only been here since it got nicer/more boring/the same, hooray!
OT: Does it make me a bad American if I go rip out the flag someone planted on my front lawn (and every other lawn in the neighborhood?
87: You could set fire to it, to celebrate freedom of speech.
84: Maybe she did, but I still don't miss her.
You can make up for it by finding whomever planted that flag and fucking every other member of his family.
If you rip out the flag in your front yard, it makes you the best kind of American.
If you rip out the flag in your front yardheart, it makes you the best kind of American.
Wow. Almost exactly one year ago. Never forget!
Thanks, Di. If memory serves, you took the brunt of it so sorry if I've induced PTSD. Nonetheless, I'm curious so I'm going to go read it now.
Let's pick all the scabs!
*I* jounced the limb. Because I was a literary critic.
96.last: There's that word! The true depths of read's patient revenge slowly dawned on everyone.
98: Learn to walk down the stairs, gimp.
As an exercise in procrastination, I went and looked to see if I could find my very first Unfogged comment. Early May 2006, apparently. Read through a few threads; people seemed awfully nice. And maybe O was on hiatus . . . ?
Now, I better" get that dog walked.
81 really deserves a reply. This is a need, John Kennedy! Ask what you can do for your blog!
Haven't gotten any better at linking over all those years.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_4900.html#335788
I confess that I am finding myself impervious to blog meta-angst and various RL sub-optimalities this weekend because every half-hour or so I think about this.
At what point did people realize your intention?
Some of them never did on my account. One of his sisters was onto the game pretty early, but wouldn't spoil it.
Also, I second 81.
Yes. That was a bit cliche, but fun.
For the record, I've got middling looks at best. That whole episode was an interesting education on how far you can make up for many things with attitude.
107: You hypercharismatic telepathical knight, you.
Knight of Infinite Cock
Knight of the Doleful Cock
Redcocke Knight
106: I don't give a shit, Emerson. C'mon, make my day.
105: I never get tired of this story on dangerous horses.
110: The ToS has been impersonating Emerson, which seems to be the case here again.
87: If you want to be a real American, you have to report the flag planter to a vicious homeowner's association.
You hypercharismatic telepathical knight, you.
well, no. i didn't write that very well.
the point is, if your goals are incredibly narrow and you really don't care how you come out of the whole thing, it's a lot easier to be convincing. and assholish, mostly.
58:"[G]ratefulness and magnanimity is?"
96: A little bit, tbh. But my fault for being fool enough to reread that entire thread. It's like my own private 9/11.
I see nothing really wrong with "graciousness and magnanimity is." Ben was thinking of them jointly, as a single quality. I call "macaroni and cheese" exception.
Oh, hey, the flag planter actually left a note in the mailbox identifying herself! An obnoxious local realtor and instructions to leave it up through Sunday.
119: Mail it back to her, postage due.
You must have been drunk when you wrote this post, LB. Though I can't blame you. I had to be drunk in order to read it.
Halford, I'm a little surprised you presume to even know what tough means, given your confessed Led Zeppelin fandom. Anyone can listen to Led Zeppelin. If you were really tough, you would listen to 36 straight hours of Justin Bieber.
For everyone else: Arcade Fire sucks. Feminism causes cancer. You're lousy lovers, and even lousier cooks. Obama has disappointed you so because he is a punishment sent by God for your manifold sins. Repent!
I googled Justin Bieber to make sure I was spelling his name right, and came across a picture. He really does look like a lesbian.
124: I see that more as a condemnation of lesbians.
124.last: Bieber was born in 1978, has 171 friends on Facebook, and drives a 2002 Subaru.
That's Justin Bieber the Philadelphi personal injury lawyer.
116 in that case I am an asshole, but a repentant one, and now an asshole better versed in local lore (aka TFA.)
Not at all, Smearcase! I'm sure it was therapeutic, and that I've grown!
114: "Hypercharismatic telepathical knight" comes from here.
I did get lost, but not my fault. A sign was down.
shit, bob, don't go away. I will now go on record as always liking bob's comments, even and especially the totally crazy ones.
I will now go on record as always liking bob's comments, even and especially the totally crazy ones.
Can you at least carve out an exception for one or two recent ones? I'm not trying to be all with-me-or-against-me, but geez.
I don't read the whole blog anymore, so if he came out as a Nazi or something, I didn't like that one.
That whole episode was an interesting education on how far you can make up for many things with attitude.
I wouldn't gloat too much. When it's really easy to be an asshole, I think there's a good chance that you always ever were.
134: I think we collectively refudiate ths.
To be fair, Bob was being a total jerk, but some people like jerks.
138: There's a whole "massage" industry that relying on that.
I think there's a good chance that you always ever were.
No argument from me. A new direction though.
Unfogged of old wasn't funnier. The frogurt thread above made me laugh out loud a bunch.
Old Unfogged did have a much higher rate of new posts, a lot more political posts, and a lot more linking posts. Posting is hard. I love being a front-page poster, but there are a lot of categories that I'm terrible at blogging.
There are a bunch of commenters who left, who I miss, but there are also a bunch of new commenters who I love.
I'd say Unfogged took a hit when the blogging heyday wound down, as someone mentioned above, but that happened a while ago, and we've been on a nice plateau for the past year or two.
You guys have totally killed the blog. I have never seen so many contortions. NickS's last comment in the lengthy prior post is good.
I agree, NickS' comment was excellent. I meant to note that earlier. Rumors of the blog's death, however, are greatly exaggerated.
141: You were already being self-effacing, and I shouldn't have piled on.
I killed the blog, by my presence and then neglect. I ban myself for a thousand years.
The blog is dead, but it can be resurrected thus: in total darkness, stand in front of a mirror and say, "Majik Johnson, Majik Johnson, Majik Johnson."
145.2: You did not!
If people could manage to develop a thicker skin, or a lighter attitude, it would be great. Circling the wagons I do not like. That is all.
The problem with circling the wagons is that someone always, eventually, has revenge sex with your mom.
Some people prefer not to shut themselves off behind a thicker skin. Some feel too seriously about certain things to take them more lightly. To each their own.
Ok, but the thing is, Di, that makes you a bad person.
Unfogged was certainly funnier back in the days, but this version has its charms.
Heebie, did you actually read Unfogged of old?
I just want to be clear that no one should diss hippies, else I shall turn into an utterly humorless and skinless flint.
150: That's it. I'm quitting the blog. You broke my heart, nosflow.
153 Are you going to be live-blogging your seduction of his parents, siblings, and best friends?
Absolutely! So best friends--that's pretty much everyone here, right?
147: Circling the wagons I do not like.
I have this vision of the minature Unfogged chuckwagon (wrangling by minature neb) being chased through the house intertubes by a large dog named McManus before the wagon spookily disappears behind a cupboard door. There to be transformed into dogfood.
max
['It's BACON!']
Unfogged was better when I was 12.
I finally decide to quit and then you have an infrastructure thread and then standpipe and text show up again. I see how this works. In other news, it's way too easy to get around leechblock. I guess I should edit the hosts file.
Right, because that's hard to get around.
fa, I appreciate that you're writing about your expetiences elsewhere. I wanted to say that in the other thread but I also wanted to avoid saying so in that thread.
I think unfogged is nicer these days, but I also think the extent to which a reader comments matters a lot in terms of feelings. I had never expected to feel confortable and happy here. I don't kniwif I would have if I'd indeed commented in 2003, but there's a good old past contrary to fact for you. (Sorry for lack of hyphens, but I don't know whoch era would be most sympathetic to my laziness there.)
You have absolutely no idea how much I have appreciated most of my time here, how much I care about most of you.
I think you had a comment here recently, that came fairly out of the blue, saying that you cared deeply about Unfogged as a collective. It was touching, and I'm sorry to see you go so soon after that declaration.
I care about you too, bob. Take care of yourself.
and then standpipe and text show up again
Rehab, I think.
I don't seem to be done quite yet: the driving people off business is uncool, and has a very chilling effect. I'm not going to argue about bob, except to say that he was, in bob fashion, trying to work with this place.
I'm also not too up for the thought that there's some kind of tussle going on for the soul of unfogged. !! The place has changed a lot; it is a politer society, not necessarily for the better. Just different, no doubt, but also more constrained and constricted. I'm not just talking about cock jokes.
Used to be a lot a philosophers here; now a lot of lawyers. That's changed the nature of discourse. And now I have become tired of this.
You know, back in the good old days, an Unfogged thread like this would have ended in someone confessing a felony.
Now all we have are misdemeanors. How low the mighty have fallen.
Heebie, did you actually read Unfogged of old?
Uh, it depends when "of old" begins. When I started reading there was some lamenting of a time before already. But sometimes people lament for times, and I was there already.
164. Funny, I was thinking that the only person I've seen driven off (invited in no uncertain terms to leave) during my time here that made utter sense was a person who'd confessed to a felony. Yeah.
The only things that can kill Unfogged are satisfying work and successful romance.
If people could manage to develop a thicker skin, or a lighter attitude, it would be great.
Really? Because I have held off on a million comments about my extreme privilege over the past month or so. But I'm happy to let loose.
169: You just sent the comments off to be gilded and now they're back from the shop.
170: Only mcmanus knows. Is that the real FL?
Guys! Keep the meta stuff going. At this rate, we should manage to lure back Weiner by comment 500.
169: Go ahead.
I hope McManus is not really gone, but he's a stubborn guy.
FL? Really? Is that what you were waiting for?
167: Although come to think of that, that thread was nothing like this. But I'll be damned if I let accuracy get in the way of an irresponsible analogy.
161.1: Thanks, although that almost makes me wonder if there's someone else with my pseud writing elsewhere about more interesting experiences.
177: Right. I don't remember that actual thread with any clarity, probably because it bore no resemblance to the last handful of drivings-off around here. Right. Sorry, must be getting tired.
178: -Apparently some of us like to hear about roommates and libraries and so on. I feel comfortable using the royal we.
I'm also probably ready to go to bed at last, though a new crop of snoring makes me want to consider being somehow belligerant. If my dog is sleeping, surely I can do the same.
168: Along those lines (that is a lie; OT), my promised report on first return to meat market: disaster! (It's not even midnight?) Epic disaster, playing into every insecurity, ever. Fantastic. Perhaps too soon?
My question for anyone who cares to answer: when does it (being unceremoniously dumped for a mythical (straight) person) stop being so so shitty? Enough for me to get laid? It's possible I'm crap at this, tho I used to be ok.
Feel free to ignore. I've had a drink or two. Still, though: a nunnery seems attractive rt now.
Oh my god, I just literally ran into a door. So odds are good I will have an entirely different perspective on things in the morning. Commenting from one's blackberry is...inadvisable? Dangerous. Apologies.
Still, though: a nunnery seems attractive rt now.
Been reading eighteenth century French let recently I take it?
My own post-surprise-break-up experience has been: a couple of brief awkward flings and then settle in for a good six months or more of being single. It was a harsh truth to face for me, and it may not be the same for you, but I think it's worth being prepared for, if it comes to that.
Stanley, this is the second time you've mentioned a break-up. Did I miss an announcement? Is this the announcement? I'm sorry to hear it.
Do you need me to fix you up with crazy lesbians?
185: Wait, was that to me or to Stanley?
If to me: hell the fuck yes.
And also, you guys are really sweet.
I managed to run into some awkwardness tonight. NYC is apparently not that big. I think part of my shock was just the reminder of how tough it is to meet people in a bar. That shit SUCKS.
Stanley: I feel you. Maybe. I dunno. I'm trying to empathize, but don't know your situation. Suffice to say: thank you for the advice, sincerely.
Pretend they're the sisters and the mom of the person you're really trying to punish.
185: I've been reluctant to talk about it here, so you didn't miss anything. Crazy lesbians would be great, because I wouldn't have to worry about the anxieties of sex but could still go to fun parties. Send on the crazy lesbians.
Also: my recent thing is nothing comparable to DQ's to be clear. It was mutual and quite civil; just out-of-the-blue-ish.
Can (either of) you come to Sacramento to claim them?
OT gloating sharing: We just got back from seeing a new cut of Metropolis, with 25 minutes of restored footage, inside an old power plant, with a live score. It was very cool.
Ahaha. I'm just imagining what a surplus of crazy lesbians looks like. What it does to your property values. (Actually probably helps; have they started a garden? Compost heap? What have you?)
There must be crazy nesting going on.
If I could...I would. Sacramento is far, though. Also the territory of my mom's recent ex / my recent ex step-whatever. So. Probs not.
Stanley?
Holy crap, Stanley, that sucks. Civil or not, I'm really sorry.
189: Condolences, Stanster, that's rough.
I'm sorry to hear it, too, Stanley.
Would seeing a new cut of Metropolis help?
Ari, I finally read Mockingjay. It didn't have the verve of Hunger Games, I didn't think.
192: Flights are expensive. Though I'll be in Miami in January, so if Megan has a Miami connection...
193: Thanks. It's fine. It's actually been awhile; I've just not talked about it here, having been well-taken-care-of in the off-blog world (overlap: Di Kotimy sent me a very sweet CD). Focus your break-up advice on DQ's woes, people.
Would seeing a new cut of Metropolis help?
Is the answer to this question ever "no"?
Hmmm. I wish I had more to offer.
Virtual hug?
No spoilers? But I thought I was the last person on earth to read it.
I'm #86 on the library's waiting list.
197: agreed. And I found myself disappointed to discover that I didn't care enough about the characters to overlook hasty storytelling, muddled plotting, and a sudden conclusion. Oh well, it was a great ride for two books.
DUDE. I was 113 on the list (82 copies), and then I was first on the list. Then the book was IN TRANSIT. But it didn't arrive on Friday, which would mean I wouldn't get it until Tuesday, so I finally caved and bought the hardback copy I didn't want. I should send it to you.
Crap, I didn't see 200 or I wouldn't have mentioned that Dumbledore died. Sorry.
(Stanley: if you find yourself worked up and Werner Herzog doesn't do it for you, try a documentary on the Buddha. ...I have odd coping mechanisms. But: I'm doing the solidarity fist-pump.)
Good night all.
Sorry about the split, Stanley. You know who always makes all of Unfogged feel better? Brad Neely, that's who.
Sorry Stanley, karaoke might help if you still need help, I hear it's something the unfoggedariat likes
DQ It's been a while but about half a year after a very difficult break up, when I decided it was time to start dating, I found that online stuff was very good for meeting other traumatized and horny people. It wasn't particularly good for developing friendships or even casual relationships and I wasn't up to serious relationships, but they sure seemed into random sex.
stand in front of a mirror and say, "Majik Johnson, Majik Johnson, Majik Johnson."
I tried this. Nobody died, but an individual did come around making infuriatingly reasonable statements. And then ogged kept complimenting him in an uncomfortable, supplicating way.
Alas, we're usually known for our humor.
And that rust colored Pesach matzoh.
I was quite skeptical of seeing that new cut of Metropolis, because it seems like every fire years or so there's a new version. But it's really great, and of course never a bad idea to re-watch Metropolis.
Never a bad idea as long as you avoid the colorized one with the Giorgio Moroder soundtrack.
Why is it impossible, I wonder, to find the soundtrack (Moroder or not, I"m not sure. I hardly know 'er, in any case.) on cd, by which I guess I mean a suite because it's awfully damn long. Also why am I awake, I wonder too as well.
Could the reason there used to be more postings back in the day perhaps be simply that more than a third of the front page posters presumably posted things and weren't peace-be-upon-them gone or just very intermittent checker-inners? I'm asking. I wasn't here.
Not having known an older Unfogged I definitely do prefer the current one. But as I am here now it can only get better, so retry this post in a year or so & the responses can be conclusive.
last handful of drivings-off around here.
"Handful"? Really? So there was the felony thing however many years ago. Read a year ago. And now Bob. (Accepting, arguendo, that these folks were "driven off.") Do you recall, Parsi, that read drove me off before anyone managed to persuade her to take it elsewhere? Is it your opinion that I was just being too thin-skinned, but read, well she was righteously offended by people calling her a jerk? Is that it? Telling people to quit acting like abusive jerks qualifies as "driving away" in your belief system? But being an abusive jerk, even if that causes people to leave, that's not "driving away" but just a bunch of thin-skinned babies taking a little abuse far too seriously?
DS!
Clearly the answer to this is to give Bob the keys on the understanding that he only posts about movies and only on Sunday mornings or some other quiet slot. And he can say what he wants in those threads.
I miss Stras. Really. The only bugger to seriously lose his shit at me.
220. As I remember, I took a six month break after that incident because I couldn't work out why nobody was working on keeping you around rather than read. I'm no use in that kind of situation because I instinctively walk away from it. I can resist that instinct IRL sometimes, but not so much on line.
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate that. (To be fair, quite a few lurkers supported me in email.) In a situation like that one, somebody inevitably was going to be "driven off" by the acrimony. I find Parsi's handwringing over assholes being unable to bear being called assholes, well, a little assholish.
You seriously should get yourself a "Home" button on these discussion pages.
223: Chiming in merely to call someone an asshole seems non-constructive, but the failure to speak up has the effect of making the troll's target feel isolated.
My recollection of Unfogged's history is that we've had very few high-profile "drivings-off," a few high-profile stormings-off, and rather a lot of driftings-away. I'm sure BG (the unofficial blog historian) has a list of them all.
220 223
You and read got into a fight. You had a bunch of friends willing to take your side (without much apparent concern about who was right) and read didn't so you won.
Read annoyed the fuck out of me and I enjoy Di quite a lot. The end.
227: Oh good grief, why do I bother, but, no -- re-read that thread (1 year ago today!). A whole lot of folks took read's side or claimed that there was zero difference between what read was saying and what Di was saying. Some of read's comments were so vile and offensive (and made with read's stated intent to be vile and offensive to Di "because she is so weak and whiny" [vel sim.]) that they ought to have been deleted. She had so many defenders (remember, too, that read was recently back after another large dust-up in which a non-zero number of folks had left because everyone was so mean to read [d2 among them]), in fact, that someone in that thread (who had maybe been a defender?) remonstrated with read that she was badly embarrassing those who had spoken up for her.
227 You had a bunch of friends willing to take your side (without much apparent concern about who was right) and read didn't so you won.
Oh, fuck off. You were around for the thread six months before read's departure when read accused Di of being so selfish that she wouldn't even care if a friend committed suicide. There was a persistent and vicious set of attacks by read on Di that was unprovoked and really explicitly trying to cause emotional pain, not just the casual sniping you see all the time in blog comment threads.
228: That's pretty much why I think Megan's call for discipline from the frontpagers based on procedural fairness was such a goofy idea. In any nasty argument there's going to be a side with more charming and endearing and generally valuable to the blog posters, and we're just unlikely to take action against them, for fear of losing people we'd miss. At that point, anything purporting to be procedural fairness turns into an unpleasant kind of figleaf over a popularity contest.
I'd rather keep any enforcement there is honestly arbitrary.
227: The relevant thread is linked above, James. Read it. As between me and read in that thread, it's really quite clear who was right. It's also quite clear that there was hardly any one-sided taking of my side. Read herself made it quite clear that she targeted me not because I had somehow wronged her (I hadn't) but because I looked "vulnerable." She was, of course, quite right. Take whatever side you want, but don't rewrite history.
Also, I enjoy Heebie quite a bit, too.
Use 1d20s.
Bob rolls an 8, fails his saving throw and writhes in LizardBreath's Crushing Group for 1d6 days!
Damn and double damn. Crushing Grip.
Awl staggers beneath a sudden rush of typobats.
Buck might not be happy about my handing out precisely that kind of discipline.
Fewer Testicle-crushing jokes at the Unfogged Crushing Group.
I also have no desire to have this particular discussion again. So carry on as you will, but I'm off to swim mow the lawn.
231: You're probably basically right. But I'm pretty comfortable saying that my reasons for calling a particular shot boil down to X perpetually pissing me off, while I quite like Y.
Calling it a popularity contest seems to cheapen my desire to govern based on who gives me the most love and adoration.
238: And that's fine, really. Taking action on the basis of "I find the blog more irritating with you commenting than without," is reasonable, and a fine way to keep the comments chill. The procedural justice thing just seems unworkable -- the standard isn't justice, but taste.
It is true that read allowed herself to be baited into self-destructing. So she looked pretty bad at the end. But there was a prior history.
you should all read the book metropolis, by the director's wife (he based the movie on it.) I read it the other day and it blew my mind and I considered, how is this not a canonical work of SF like stapledon or something? it turns out she was a big Nazi. like, joined the party in 32 Nazi. but we still care about leni riefenstahl! seriously, it is better in some ways. you can also understand the movie about 1000% better. YOU MUST READ THIS!!
Well, see, your taste is fine, because you are the blog overlords.
Fifth, if you'd step in before banning, as in telling people to come back in a week, or telling people to leave a particular thread then you might have to worry less about the consequences of taking sides.
Fourthly, of course you could enforce it. Send someone who's wigging an email and modify the next few comments and people will get the message.
I don't see why that strikes you as more objectionable than the dynamic we're in now, in which we're entrained in the same dumb arguments. (Unless it seems more objectionable because it creates more work for you and gives you additional responsibilities. But that's the cost for avoiding this type of fight.)
You guys have more tools than we do, and we know where we get when we use the tools we have (which is essentially commenting or not, which is the pile on/leave target isolated problem). Use your tools so that we can have a different outcome. It might be better, might not, but we know that everyone acting as if they're bystanders works out poorly.
241: What's this, are you the rep for the troll union? Plenty of people tried to persuade read to tone it down, on and off blog, but no, she had to be Free!!! Free to be as offensive as possible! Otherwise she would be letting people tell her what to dooooo!!!! By the time she left, I was glad to see her go. Same with McManus. Fuck him.
220: "Handful"? Really? So there was the felony thing however many years ago. Read a year ago. And now Bob.
I was thinking of Stras, actually, more than read.
Is it your opinion that I was just being too thin-skinned, but read, well she was righteously offended by people calling her a jerk?
No, it's not my opinion that read was righteously offended by people calling her a jerk. She was being a jerk, and I don't believe I've suggested otherwise.
Use your tools so that we can have a different outcome. It might be better, might not, but we know that everyone acting as if they're bystanders works out poorly.
UnfoggedCon 2011: Be The Change You Want To See In The World.
244: The kind of oversight you prescribe assumes the frontpagers are working in shifts, monitoring every single comment in real time. It's probably not far from the truth—I'd be surprised if a half hour passed without one of the frontpagers popping by and catching up on comments, our lives being that exciting.
Even with that sort of "response level", you're still going to end up with shit like the recent bobocalypse: by the time LB and nosflow showed up and sternly stepped in, the wreckage was already there and getting worse despite their interventions.
i didn't read that thread or this one; could someone give a 2 sentence summary? did bob leave or get kicked?
249: He left in the "more in sorrow than in anger" style.
248: I agree, actually. The front pagers aren't exactly getting paid for their efforts here. It's a lot to ask for comment moderation in a forum like this one. It would be nice if there were an easy solution to this kind of crap, but I honestly don't think anything more can be done than to speak out when someone is being out of line, and then withdraw from engagement. The problem is we don't all agree about what's out of line -- so when three people call foul, and 2 retort that whatever it was was perfectly fine, we get a shitstorm. If people could stop being wrong about such things, it would really help.
Pars, I'm glad I misunderstood. Can you see, though, how I got that impression when youreferred to a "handful" of drivings off and the read thing had been brought up already in this thread?
251.last: I can see that. I'm not as read-focused as you (for understandable reasons) are, so we were looking in completely different directions.
Unfogged is one of the few blogs where it really doesn't matter if you're a front pager or not; make them into the blog police and that will change.
253 is well-put. Megan's process proposes strike me literally (yes, literally) insane. If this blog were that kind of benevolent dictatorship, I would quit reading it.
Nosflow will be banning you for 'literally' abuse now.
No, I'll be banning you for not keeping track of my positions.
Yeah, but then he'll feel bad when Megan announces that her plan has the full endorsement of FDR, the Archangel Gabriel, and the front four of the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers defense, the famed "Steel Curtain".
248:
If anything good has come of the Late Unpleasantness, it's got to be the word "bobocalypse".
Seriously though, we're all going to be a lot happier when bob comes back.
Ogged will bring cargo.
Labs will bring gay porn.
Bob will bring dogs.
the front four of the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers defense, the famed "Steel Curtain".
They called them that because during the off-season, they sold security gates for store fronts. Salaries weren't so high in those days.
Agree in full with 257.
I hope Bob and Read and Dsquared all come back, which should not at all be seen as tacit or explicit endorsement of everything they've ever written, which is the problem with this whole insanely annoying "whose side are you on" discourse. If the blog propietors start running anything like Megan's scheme, I'm out of here.
Which would probably be good for my productivity.
I meant 254; I'm not too sure what the Steel Curtain has to do with anything.
And Stras.
Also, no moderation but that which develops organically through lengthy, lengthy, teeth-gnashing discussion, the occasional quiet remark, and arm-wrestling.
Oh for crying out loud, Halford. Neither Bob nor read was a situation where people were demanding that people pick teams. Both were situations in which inappropriate personal comments were made and called out. And yeah, when someone explicitly declares an intent to target a commenter for deliberate cruelty, or decides to imply that a commenter is a wife-beater, the targets are kind of a little justified in taking offense when people expressly approve of the conduct. Your heartfelt annoyance at people speaking out when they or people they care about are attacked is insane. If you prefer a forum where people sit by quietly and just accept whatever abuse is thrown their way, you're in the wrong place.
And I don't think anything is keeping bob or read or DS or stras away other than their own decision to move on. If we want to discuss commenters we wish would return, I'm going to go with Cala and I Don't Pay and Katherine, and I wish Teo and M.Leblanc and Otto von Bisquick were around more often.
And, of course, Ogged.
Expressing annoyance and fighting back are fine. The calls for banning, escalating the situation, and then demanding loyalty from all who don't choose condemnation, is extremely annoying in my book. Although I might have reacted the same way you did in the same situation, I think the read and McManus situations were basically both massive overreactions to engaging, decent weirdos who are pretty clearly slightly mentally ill.
270: It's true, I'm sad they're all gone as well, even more so as it's clear to me that you'll never hear from any of them again, unless you happen to visit my basement.
I'm not going to revisit the read thing, and I don't know what bob said, and don't care to find out, but I can guess that it was something crazy. Come on guys, bob says crazy things. That's his role and function, and when we get annoyed, we call him a troll, but his craziness is fun and interesting and sometimes correct. And yes, abusive; he'll imply we're all idiots -- that's about 80% of the charm.
text: maybe refrain from weighing in on an incident when you're also explicitly saying that you're not even going to bother finding out what the incident was.
but his craziness is fun and interesting and sometimes correct.
You're pretty easily amused. Maybe having lived with a crazy person has immunized me to the charm of craziness, but I don't get it.
Nostalgia already? How can you ever miss me...
1) Been a long hot summer, even for Dallas. The dogs and I are depressed and irritable. We may not have that many parks and pools left.
2) There was, like age 5-30 in which I fucking read good books. I was a happy boy Then I threw The Names against the wall and switched to genre fiction, jigsaw puzzles and radio sports from 1980 to about 9/11. Somehow the Internets have, if not reinvigorated my intellect, at least returned my misplaced ambition. There is help available for the first time in my life on the net, scholars.
Dialectic of Enlightenment is sitting there. Le Goff. Bloch. Lyotard. I want it. I think I need it. Maybe I should throw in some Critical Thinking and Grammar and start a blog, but I am a selfish person, or think just reading smart people gives them something. Grateful Dead.
Doesn't matter, maybe its pointless and purposeless, pathetic and ridiculous, maybe I never understood a word, but I enjoyed reading hard books.
Like you can't imagine how much.
But there is this damn crack I am addicted to that I can't seem to do in moderation. It has been eating me for years that I can't find the time or space to read the damn books. It bugs me to comment on a site and somebody mentions Braudel and over there Braudel sits, like a Christmas Ghost. It has been making me mean.
I gotta pull the plug on the blogs. Maybe I will gradually shift to autonomism or something and organize. But I no longer see any point to yelling about politics.
My email is unlikely to change, unless Goldman Sachs buys Time Warner. Wake me for the guillotines.
Read got a lot of abuse for almost the entirety of her tenure here (and the fact that she seemed fairly vulnerable didn't seem to faze her attackers at all) and, while she was colossally nasty to Di at the end, I don't think the situation with her was like that with bob even a little.
Old man wants to relive his wasted youth. Kinda funny. Fuck it.
I have to say, 271 gets it exactly right. Yes people end up picking teams and, at that point, it's almost impossible to say anything without it being taken as weighing in in favor of one side or another.
That said, like Halford, I would also be trying to put together a team to back me up if somebody was attacking me in a personal and unpleasant manner, and wouldn't back off.
Thankfully it doesn't actually happen that often. I do find 253 to be a succinct and convincing argument for why additional moderation isn't the right response.
maybe refrain from weighing in on an incident when you're also explicitly saying that you're not even going to bother finding out what the incident was.
I respect your wishes, but that is just not what this place is about.
277 gets it exactly right. I think read got the shitty end of the stick really rather more than some people ought to feel comfortable about. Although she was, as you say, bang out of order re: Di at the end.
280: so okay, in the spirit of robust public debate, he intimated that I beat Blume, you stupid worthless fuck. Now you're informed, you loser fucking jackass, and you can shut the fuck up for another eight months and we'll all be the better for it.
See? Robust, bracing public debate and nobody has to get all whiny and quit the blog for three hours! HOORAY!
283: But 282 is so appallingly rude that I'm going to refrain from commenting for the next five minutes!
282:Ecce homo. But you love him! He's so funny!
Whatever.
I can't be drawn back into this cesspool.
It was a crazy thing for him to say. Personally, I don't know why you'd take it seriously, but I guess everyone has buttons.
In the spirit of telling pointless stuff about daily life, it's weird how the interactions here mirror what's going on in my poker gang. We've been playing for around six years, with people drifting in and out and a small nucleus that stays relatively stable. What started out as a fun time for people who weren't too attached to each other has become a very strong social bond. Because of the game, I guess, people always got pissed at each other and picked fights from time to time. Now, though, that type of thing is always accompanied by some who consider quitting because it isn't what it once was, and every blowup is magnified because people are more invested in the relationships.
Also, I won five dollars there.
I respect your wishes, but that is just not what this place is about.
Meta-blog discussion is not quite the same as an article linked in a post. Do try to keep up.
text why don't you let slip a fact or two about your personal life and I'll see if I can gin up some ways to use it against you. Ideally it would be something involving somebody who is blameless, but can be drawn into the whole stupid fucking argument, like maybe your mother. What's her name?
And on that reasonably vituperative note, I'm going to quit the blog for three hours like an asshole. Good luck getting bob to come back, everybody!
I can't be drawn back into this cesspool.
What's it called when the very act of making a statement invalidates the statement being made?
Listen, it's sweet that you are being protective about this, but it sounds to me that you were the one being insulted. It was an insult, and I'm sure it went beyond whatever else was being said, but people insult each other here all the time. Not saying that they should, but do you really want the special protection you have asked for here, and are getting?
To unquit the blog after a record two minutes (take THAT, half-assed half-assed quitters!) really, text, if you weigh in without having read the thread in question you just look more like a fucking idiot with every comment. I swear to god, this isn't just me yelling at you, now I'm, trying to help. What did I ask for, when? Can you point to that?
I, type, lots, of, commas, when, I'm, trying, to, help, people, not, look, like, morons, apparently.
290:Comedy is controlling. WTF does that guy contribute?
I stand by my original concerns. Sifu is scary. This situation is I think typical, including the utter rejection of my intuitions. There are a lot of cursers and ragers about but I never worried about Emerson or anybody else. Even ToS.
I would never blame the victim. Sifu is not a victim here.
Blume and I have had interactions, and I have felt she feels...compelled...to support Sifu.
How about the rest of you? Read the thread. Who is demanding support? Am I being threatening to the crowd? Where is the rage?
I hope I'm wrong. I know I'm unwelcome.
Keep an eye on each other. Have care.
Fine, I am going to search through all the fucking threads and read it now. As to who looks like a moron, I'll let all the lurkers who email me decide.
Text, look, we (you and I, I mean) can probably agree that an insult from bob, no matter the content, is not something that, objectively, merits getting very worked up about, but if Sifu is worked up about it, and found it insulting, then it's a little silly to pester him so forcefully to the effect that it's irrational or absurd that he's offended. You know?
He didn't like it from bob, and bob should have laid off. He doesn't like hectoring from you about it, so why don't you lay off? I mean (avert your eyes, Sifu)—I wish he'd just shrugged it off too! But, among other things, your comments don't have the presumption of trollishness that bob's do, so even if the initial reaction was too strong in virtue of the source, the reaction to your comments is, well, a little better justified.
HANDY CHEAT SHEET:
Does someone not like it when you do that to them?
ACTUALLY THEY LOVE IT: Keep up the good work.
THEY DON'T MIND: Well, do you like it?
YES: Go for it.
NO: So stop already.
NO, THEY DON'T LIKE IT: Maybe don't do it, then.
How did a little bitch grow up to be so wise?
See, consider bob's thing about Blume in his most recent comment. You might think, neither Sifu nor Blume should get all that worked up about it, because, hey, bob. It's not as if anyone takes that remark seriously.
Suppose one of them does take offense, though. You might express the above thought thus: "yeah, that's a shitty thing to say, but, you know, bob. Don't let it get to you—that's my advice. He's nuts."
That comes off pretty well-intentioned, don't you think?
Here's a bad way to express the above thought: "I can't believe you got upset at that. Talk about hypersensitive! WTF is wrong with you?"
That's just insulting in its own right!
Actually, Bob, I wouldn't worry about Dialectic. Despite everything he said, Adorno knew whose side he was on - when the students occupied the department in 1968 he called the cops on them. Having had the landespolizei kick seven bells of shit out of the people who were trying to put all the stuff in Erziehung zur Mündigkeit about education needing to be a subversive act into effect, he then went for a long holiday on Sylt where the Hamburg shipowner/merchant class hangs out and repeatedly didn't appear in court as a witness, either for the cops he called or for his students' defence. the whole thing is quite sad.
300 was meant sincerely, btw -- both 298 and 301 are seriously smart reflections on how to deal with these kinds of issues.
Maybe neb is secretly using us all to do experimental moral philosophy.
300 was meant sincerely, btw
Yeah, but unfortunately it looks like a response to 299.
(That's a joke, btw. As is, clearly, 299).
Jesus Christ, people. What the hell happened over the weekend?!
302:No, the advice professionals give to those who would pre-emptively intervene is to just walk away.
I just kept seeing the uncontrolled rage from Sifu in this thread at all the other commenters, and everyone's inability to see...
...neb, why don't you just close this thread, and try to avoid bringing me, read, or related subjects up. Sifu will calm down if he gets to dominate the blog. I don't need an area of power or control.
Keep an eye on each other is all I asked.
Adding my voice to the "neb is vey wise" chorus.
It seems a little silly for neb to close the thread now that we're all praising his wisdom and leadership. Unless he were to put 298 and 300 up in the form of a new post so we could go praise him there.
And yet you continue to taunt him with typos.
I mean, thanks, everyone. My secret is that I listened to Ted Cohen tell racist jokes.
Ok, my judgment: that was shitty of bob. Egg all over my face. Here's the only thing, guys. Bob gets shit on every day here, and Blume and Tweety, you don't. Maybe bob is a complete asshole who just comes here to beguile and mislead, but even then, against his will perhaps, he ends up writing comments that I enjoy to read. More likely he's a somewhat mad fellow who wants to participate here, felt attacked and struck out irrationally. To go apeshit over bob makes you look bad, and when I saw that he had successfully trolled someone, I didn't think it was you guys.
I stand by my original concerns. Sifu is scary.
What concerns, bob? Didn't you spend multiple posts being theatrically offended that people were taking your "concerns" seriously? Didn't you just do that again in 285?
bob, you are transparently acting in bad faith. I don't see how anybody can give you a pass on this any more unless, like text, they are proudly ignorant.
We see Sifu's uncontrolled rage as clearly as we see Obama's Hitler moustache.
comments that I enjoy to read
This looks weirdly ungrammatical to me. Is this just my idiolect being peculiar, or does it bother others? ("I like to read" is fine. "I enjoy reading" is fine. "I enjoy to read" sounds totally bizarre to me.)
318: You are correct. Or at least not alone.
I learned awhile back I can be a bit tone deaf on this blog. Perhaps also in life. Hugs and kisses, folks.
Still, here is what I object to:
In fact, bob believes that good faith is for suckers, as his own words reveal. And every day that we treat him with anything better than derision proves him right.
This was knecht. I think it's wrong. Assuming that is bob's belief, we prove ourselves hypocrites by failing to afford him good faith. If that's his game, he's winning. We prove ourselves suckers just by spending so much time here.
Sorry guys, I love you, but it doesn't look good to kick bob.
318/320: It sounds stilted but not wrong to me. And I can't think of any good reason for the stiltedness- "enjoy" is clearly a transitive verb, right? So it should take an infinitive as a direct object, no problem. Weird.
323 was supposed to have "emotion" somewhere in the description of the kind of verb "enjoy" is.
Fuck it, if you want to be mad at him, be mad. But "enjoy to read" is perfectly fine.
"enjoy" is clearly a transitive verb, right? So it should take an infinitive as a direct object, no problem.
Huh?
In many cases, the infinitive as a direct object makes sense to me only if it expresses purpose (I bike to exercise; I eat to gain weight; I see to gain visual information [seems bizarre in other respects]). But that doesn't make any sense with "enjoy to read". And "enjoy to read" parallel to "like to read" also strikes me as odd.
If this thread continues, it can only be to continue discussing this issue or to continue praising me.
Oh I guess I can think of some other emotion verbs that seem to behave the same way. Fear, appreciate, anticipate, and resent, so far. Too bad I never read any syntax or I might know something about this.
well we miss neil the werewolf, and maybe soup. And tia, of course. Always tia.
this meta handwringing is getting boring though.
[now, back to supporting in email]
Guys, if you want to sidetrack me on grammar, that's going to work. "Enjoy to read" is fine. Perhaps stilted, but some of us go for that.
325: I really don't think it is fine, but this is an aspect of English grammar I've never consciously considered before. Some verbs can only go with gerunds and others are fine with infinitives. I can say "stop fucking with my head!", but "stop to fuck with my head!" doesn't work (or, rather, means something entirely different, like 'stop [in order] to...'). But I'm not sure I have a logical grasp of which verbs fall in which category; it's one of those things that just sounds right or wrong.
326- all the emotion-related verbs I thought of at first, seemed fine with an infinitive
love to x
hate to x
want to x
like to x
desire to x
then I thought of the ones in 327, though, so now I have withdrawn my claim of weirdness. And substituted another one, which is that I don't know what the difference between the two groups is.
Google turns up a nifty list, but it doesn't help elucidate the underlying principle.
Di:
I have no buttons. Everything I wear is break-away.
329- is it a Brit/USian thing? Where are you from (ish) and what do you think of the verbs in 327, with infinitive objects?
I agree that "enjoy to read" looks malformed, but I'm not sure why. (It actually looks specifically like an utterance from someone whose first language is French or Spanish, maybe Russian: I'm hearing it in a comedy accent.)
right, but when you are modifying the verb, rather than issuing a declaration, an infinitive works just as well as a gerund.
"I enjoy making hats"
"I enjoy to make hats"
shit, that looks wrong. fuck you all, motherfuckers.
332- that's a terrible list! it mixes modal verbs with normal verbs, and gerunds with non. Boo, prescriptivist grammars. (but yay, you. I'm totally sure you're extremely smart and pretty. Please don't take this criticism personally in any way.)
Everything I write should be voiced in a comedy accent. LB has caught me out. I'm actually Russian. I've been using this blog to figure out how to read and write in your stupid language, and now I'm going to pick someone out and insult them until you all hate me.
337: I don't understand. Are you disagreeing with their categorization of which verbs work with infinitives and which with gerunds? I don't see why it matters if the verbs are modal or not; there are some verbs that work with infinitives, some with gerunds, and some with both, and whether the verb is modal or not doesn't seem to be a factor in the determination. Or am I missing your point?
I was also confused by the reference to emotions when classifying "enjoy". I mean, if we're going by what the verb expresses, then the phrase "can live with" seems to be of the same type as "enjoy" (though plainly it has a different valence).
Perhaps also "esteem". "I esteem bathing": fine. "I esteem to bathe": nonsense.
328: and maybe soup
Maybe soup? Maybe?! I must fight these "lurkers" this instant, for soup is the most missed of all! I say we vote.
Seriously, I read the phrase "enjoy to read" as a somewhat playful locution, technically wrong for English, but otherwise unobjectionable.
What about slol? You know, I'm starting to think Unf lied to me when he told me all the old commenters went to live on a farm.
Actually, where's Brock been?
342: Myself, I do pilates. But esteem bathing sounds like fun as well.
This blog needs a Russian Baths meet-up.
The list seems accurate as a list, but doesn't include any categories that I can see and the forms of the verbs in question (the main verbs, not the direct objects) are all over the place which makes it impossible to figure out what the rule is.
It's interesting that 'enjoy' is the only entry with the special note. This must be a more common error.
The illustration is also very nice.
But what about "I hate to bathe"? Perfectly acceptable. "I like to bathe." Same. I put "enjoy" in the category. Fuck you all motherfuckers in your motherfucking belly-buttons!
Di: I have no buttons.
You have a bellybutton.
I put "enjoy" in the category.
this is when, in the old days, we took leave to make sweet love to our oboes.
346.1: Right; I think it works perfectly well as a descriptive account of which choice is made for various verbs. It doesn't give any insight on the underlying rule. (Is it possible that there is no underlying rule, just historical accidents? I feel like there should be slightly more logic at work.)
348 can only be read as accompanied by apo playfully tickling will's belly button.
Assuming that is bob's belief, we prove ourselves hypocrites by failing to afford him good faith.
What did you think of bob's repeated discussion of ari's 447 in the other thread? When bob repeatedly demanded that someone engage his silly argument, what did you think of his silence once I finally did in 11 above?
What did you think of his bringing it back up again here in 285, as though nothing had been said in the interim? And when I challenged him again, what did you think of his ongoing silence after that?
Good faith isn't something that's granted by other people. If you're going to argue that bob is acting in good faith, you actually have to be willing to discuss his actions. To insist on something while simultaneously saying you're not going to examine the evidence is, well, it's bad faith. Sorry.
"enjoy to read" is an idiom error. There is no underlying principle, sorry.
Now I think the list I linked gets some of them wrong. "Tried [x]ing" works as well as "tried to [x]", at least for me.
354: Is "idiom error" a plausible word pairing for this? I thought if something was idiomatic, it wasn't an error. It was just nonstandard or something. Idiom error would be if you used an idiom incorrectly.
353: Look, I am not stupid enough to try to defend everything bob says. I don't want to defend any of it. If bob argues in bad faith, then it's fine to point out that he's arguing in bad faith. By "afford him good faith," what I meant, and should have written, was that we should examine what he is saying and respond to it -- or ignore it, if it doesn't merit a response -- rather than just telling him to fuck off because he's bob.
just telling him to fuck off because he's bob a troll
If I were a lurker, I would support text in email.
Idiom error would be if you used an idiom incorrectly.
Which is what you have when you use an infinitive after a verb that idiomatically takes a participle. This is a category tested on the SAT these days.
As long as the kids stay off my lawn, I guess they can learn what they want.
357: You know, I've got a fair amount of sympathy with a lot of what you've been saying. But there's a point of bad faith at which it stops being worth the effort to sort through for bits of sincerity. I've seen the ToS say coherent, informative stuff on other blogs -- he's not just an insult machine, there's a person with thoughts in there. That doesn't mean I'm going to check each thing he posts here and let it through if it makes sense.
Bob over his full history has said some interesting stuff, mixed in with a fair amount of both what looks like sincere craziness and what looks like intentional trolling. Bob this weekend, I'm not seeing enough of anything of anything but venom and low-quality lawyering to make paying attention to him at all worthwhile.
362: That's fair, and it's hardly consistent of me to just magically appear as the peacemaker, as I have been a dick on here before. But I am just so full of peace now!
Is that what they call it these days?
I guess so. What would you like to call it?
163: I was just thinking how much I miss Cala and Labs
273
... but his craziness is fun and interesting ...
I would vote for sad and pathetic.
A friend of mine went on a Bad Gay Internet Date and was told by the gentleman in question "I cherish antiquing." It could only have been worse if he had said "I cherish to antique." And I think Jackmormon is right, though if there are whole lists of words that take one or the other, I'm inclined to wonder how it came to be, just a little. Maybe it's more historical than idiomatic? Language of origin thing?
226: I do not possess such a list. There are some people I could e-mail, but I was thinking that I miss cerebrocrat who drifted away.
I don't know what happened to My Alter Ego. I miss JRoth quite a bit right now, but I know he didn't leave in a huff, and he may not really have drifted away. He could just be busy. I hope it means that he's got so much work that he's making money hand over fist.
And I don't really think of myself as someone who was here back in the day. LizardBreath predates me, and B had been banned before I came by.
Maybe that was the silver age or the bronze age, but I wasn't here for the true golden age.
I don't know if this is helpful to Bob or anyone else but he does identify as BPD, no? I may be wrong here, going with one of those overly subjective clinical intuitions, but instinctively I read the behavior of making a provocative statement then adjusting one's stated sincerity about it in order to steer between provocation and attempts to elicit sympathy a borderline thing. Maybe I am defining splitting really liberally, or just looking at regression under scrutiny as most markedly the province of those with borderline (as I do think of this as a regressed behavior.) I may just be wrong. For me there is something borderliney about the projective act of saying, in effect, "everyone is angry at me because X is being bad" too.
The upshot of this? Not sure. It's really clear that this bullshit about Blume is lousy behavior in the blogosphere or out, and I think Bob probably knows that, and it isn't helping him not do it. And it doesn't really help me excuse it, though I don't know about anyone else reading, supposing this is even a compelling way to look at it. I guess if I were the target I'd consider this and do my damnedest not to engage, because the whole problem of dealing with BPD is the induction you experience--the, uh, what-I-want-to-call ego-weakness of the person with BPD is like a tar baby, very difficult to extract yourself from once you're enmeshed.
dsquared was mostly wrong about the read thing, though there were some harsh (though provoked) moments. I do wish that he were still here.
I kind of wonder whether he was just using that episode as an excuse to leave. I haven't seen him on the frontpage of crooked timber, and he wasn't putting that much up on dsquared digest. I don't read that many blogs. (Hell, I quit LG&M when they moved.) Is he out and about on the internet generally?
Speaking of d-squareddigest, does it have two posters or is it just that dsquared uses more than one pseud in comments, or what?
Oh, I think that's a really good insight. I'd forgotten about the BPD stuff, but keeping it in mind will be useful for me at least. I do feel guilty twinges occasionally for not engaging when bob's talking to me, but you're exactly right about why I've made that my policy.
very difficult to extract yourself from once you're enmeshed.
Tar babies wearing macramé vests are the worst.
374: I'm almost certain it is the latter.
rather than just telling him to fuck off because he's bob.
This seems perverse. In fact, it's the exact thing that bob keeps saying while refusing to offer any sensible evidence that this is so. Bob asks repeatedly: Why do we assume that ari is joking just because ari is joking, when we refuse to assume bob is joking just because bob is being serious?
It has always been universally understood that bob is permitted to behave in a fashion that would not be permitted for other people. The only conversation we've been having is why this is so, whether it ought to be so, and what are the appropriate limits of giving bob special treatment.
It's tough to have this conversation with you since you've already said straight up that you're not interested in examining the evidence. But I'd be curious for some evidence, if anyone has it, that bob has been treated roughly "because he's bob."
Writes more on d2 than he used to, regular at jamie kenny's place, seems to be active on ct threads. was sort of everywhere a couple of years ago, isn't anymore.
bruschettaboy is daniel davies too. from aaro watch.
Well, I've missed you, BG. How are you doing?
381: thanks, that's what I thought, but it seemed like a very strange thing to do.
It's because he's sometimes logged in as bruschettaboy in blogspot I think. Aaro watch is anonymous. D2 stopped caring.
But I'd be curious for some evidence, if anyone has it, that bob has been treated roughly "because he's bob."
Obviously I have a lot of problems with 372, but is the time in this whole fucking fight that anyone has said that I might actually believe what I am saying.
Everyone else, for two fucking days, has assumed I was insincere and arguing in "bad faith"
There is two days of "evidence" Thousands of comments
And what do I believe? I have accused no one of any acts. What did I say?
I have actually said that Sifu can be abusive, and asked that whoever might know them might watch out for Blume.
282:sifu to text
you stupid worthless fuck. Now you're informed, you loser fucking jackass, and you can shut the fuck up for another eight months and we'll all be the better for
sifu has done stuff like that every fucking day for years, and far from only to me.
If someone yelled that in your house at a party, you would have absolutely no concerns?
You people are amazing. This how women get hurt.
I was just thinking how much I miss
I've been here for so long that that list is a very long one indeed. But recently, SomeCallMeTim.
Man, things sure are quiet around here since bob quit Unfogged.
381: Some explanation from a comment 2/3rds of the way down here. (And I certainly do not understand the whole context.)
It's a joke, for heaven's sake. There are three people who post using the name "bruschettaboy", which is a reference to Aaronovitch's famous "bruschetta orthodoxies" article. We do in fact quite like Decent Dave and have quite a friendly relationship with him. I don't think we've ever publicised AW and it would have remained an in-joke for a dozen mates if Aaro hadn't linked itAlthough
On a note of internet etymology, I don't think that "bruschettaboy" can be correctly called a "sock puppet", as I have never (except by accident a couple of times) used the BB screen name in the same comments threads as my own, and have always immediately admitted it when I did.From 2006, don't know that he sticks to the latter anymore.
I have accused no one of any acts. [...] This how women get hurt.
Stop it, bob.
Boo fucking hoo, bob. I've asked repeatedly: Were you being serious or not? Give me either answer, and I can show a bunch of comments demonstrating your intentional bad faith.
And this isn't some arbitrary issue that I've pulled out of thin air - this is the issue that you chose to berate us for repeatedly. Nobody else was dumb enough to take the troll bait, but I was.
So now that I've done so, your sudden refusal to discuss the issue is also unambiguous bad faith.
Listing commenters of the past is making the bits I can remember of Lament For The Makers rattle through my head. Unfortunately, that's not much: mostly it's just Timor mortis conturbat me over and over. And the bit with Sir Mungo Lockheart.
I should go read the poem if I'm going to get stuck on it like this.
But recently, SomeCallMeTim.
I thought of him after the NBA finals.
379 - Not to pile on Knecht, this is what I was referring to:
every day that we treat him with anything better than derision proves him right.
I don't think Knecht's opinion is unique. Sometimes people bring up crazy things bob has said in the past in order to convince others to ignore him. And it's not stupid to think that way, but it's also not, in the long run, productive.
I don't know, I don't recommend that you all start taking TOS seriously - every time I see one of his comments I feel a little sick. I think Bob is different, and I think it's a difference in kind rather than degree. Then again, he's never called me a wife beater.
I think what's infuriating is not that we hold bob to a different standard than everyone else, but that he often doesn't try to live up to the standard that he applies to everyone else. I mean, nobody else tries the shit that bob tries, but if they did, we'd all be just as confused. Maybe that's the price we pay. Then again, I'm hardly ever here.
392.last, 393.last: Nice meta, LB.
But recently, SomeCallMeTim.
Yeah. He still shows up under that pseud elsewhere, but his absence has been a real loss. As others have noted, Cala and Katherine were also unique in their contribution.
bob, too, for that matter. It's a real shame what he's done here. I continue to think that we ought to make serious allowances for whatever problem he's got, but I also think there are limits.
Doesn't matter, to you, if I was being serious or not.
Nor does it really matter to the point about ari
282:sifu to text
you stupid worthless fuck. Now you're informed, you loser fucking jackass, and you can shut the fuck up for another eight months and we'll all be the better for
Not does it matter whether that is "serious" or not, and that is what people don't get. When you hear that as a kid, or a woman, or as someone vulnerable, the following "I was only joking" makes it worse"
Serious about Sifu being an abusive personality, a serial abuser? You bet.
Not that I'm *hurt* exactly...
367: Katherine is a real loss, but she was a lawyer and not a philosopher. We haven't heard from her since the move. She never came to a Boston meetup.
395, 397: See? See the incoherence that results from well-intentioned clean-up?
bob, I can deal with whatever anyone says to me. and you just can't go around alleging domestic abuse based on perceived aggression in a blog. and the way you did it looked, to me, like purely an attempt to provoke. you should apologize, read some more, and when you think of something else to comment on, do so, leaving this episode behind.
SomeCallMeTim
Showed up in the DeLong thread on McMegan recently, which was nice.
||
I wrote my first greasemonkey script!
|>
390:What can I do, apo?
I have intuitions, feelings, which are contemptuously dismissed, and thousands upon thousands of abusive sifu comments. Toward many people. I could find some in this thread.
You cannot prove the negative, and what, you had three drinks with the guy and he made you laugh? Do you know anything about the science? hilzoy had some posts. There's Wiki.
Sifu is not di kotimy. is not Megan, is not Thorn. This is not a gentle guy.
But that is what you are telling me.
Bob, let me throw this out there for you: there are many, many people around here who have met Sifu and Blume *in person.* There are also, if I can be blunt, a huge majority of people whose sense of empathy (meaning able to model another's emotions/thought processes in their heads and *accurately* predict mood, etc.) is more closely tied to reality than your own. If none of us find it at all likely that Sifu is violent/rageful, perhaps you can take your own acknowledged difficulties into account and give us all the benefit of the doubt.
Seriously, dude. You're crazy. (There's no value judgment there. I'm crazy too. Medicated to the gills and highly functional, but crazy.) Take a deep breath, chalk it up to brain chemistry gone awry, apologize and come back another day.
DW-- I'm okay. Busy. I spend a lot of time commuting to work and taking the bus doing outreach work with our MH clients. I'm hoping to comment more when my Verizon contract runs out, and I can get an iphone, because I'm on the bus so damn much and can't do my actual paperwork.
I need to go to bed, since I have to get up early.
I want to move into a policy field, because, boy, the system as it is now is crazy and dysfunctional,and I don't like just hunkering down and trying not to care.
I miss SCMT too, though we never interacted much. He's been gone for a while.
baa left the instant that Labs was gone and was mostly gone once Ogged left. I liked the dynamic of their discussions.
406: Wikipedia and science both say Sifu isn't gentle? Can't argue with science. Or Wikipedia.
405: That reminds me. I forgot to add coolant to the old car.
One thing I have learned, although I have known it for years, is that people really don't close read, or pay attention to the dynamics of blogs and comment threads.
People also remember what reinforces their existing prejudices.
and politics and popularity gets the weakest hurt the most. I am not talking about me.
What if I'm right?
This blog was better before McManus left, never to be heard from again.
Oh wait. Still the same old unfogged, apparently.
Bob, what text says in 403. Totally, crazily out of line of you to accuse someone of domestic violence based on your verbal altercations with that someone on a blog. Not that I think Sifu is blameless in terms of your exchanges with him, and I've said as much in the past: with you and Sifu, it is definitely a two-way street. But I don't think you're blameless either (though I agree you've been treated too roughly, overall), and you're really not helping your case here.
I miss Cala, Katherine, and Most Missed too.
403: It's not just that bob made a baseless, nasty personal accusation against Sifu - that's really pretty ordinary for bob. The rest of us, including me, have always been tolerant of bob's abuse of S.T.
bob, however, has continued to engage in really ruthless bad faith on the subject. Serious trolling.
Almost all of us - again, including me - have accepted bob's bad faith in the past, but I think there are legitimate limits.
Nobody's banned bob, and I'll again say that I think nobody should. But I think the son of a bitch needs to go away.
413.last: Oh, great.
THE NEIGHBORS TELL ME THAT GRANDMA'S MAILBOX IS OVERFLOWING AND NO ONE'S SEEN THE LIGHTS ON IN HER HOUSE FOR DAYS. HAS ANYONE SEEN HER?
Baleful bloggers boldly bitch 'bout banning bob because boneheaded blabbing blows.
WAIT DOESN'T SHE LIVE NEAR SIFU TWEETY? DOOM!
But banning bob before batshit behavior's bounds breached brings bum-outs, balefulness, blubbering.
||
I don't know what it is like in other states, but here in MN, the dichotomy between what you have to do to get unemployment, versus what you have to do to get food stamps could not be more pronounced. Unemployment requires the worker to spend maybe 5 or 10 minutes filling out stuff on the state website. Food Stamps requires several paper forms, including information about EVERY SINGLE PAYCHECK received for the last EIGHTEEN MONTHS!!! And the previous and current employers for that period each have to sign off on it. It's so completely ridiculous. How much does it cost the government and private industry to process all those goddamn forms? Just to get a little bit of food stamps -- you know, those things that represent a mostly-unacknowledged subsidy to US agribusiness?
AGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!
||>
Chopper - I didn't know you were crazy! No wonder I like you.
Totally, crazily out of line of you to accuse someone of domestic violence based on your verbal altercations with that someone on a blog.
bob has mastered a trick of many successful trolls. There are layers of assholishness here, Mary C., that you are failing to give their proper due.
Personally, I think it would be a bad thing to accuse someone of domestic violence based on verbal altercations on a blog, but I don't think that's completely beyond the pale. For example, it wouldn't surprise me if ToS spray-paints racial slurs on synagogues, and it doesn't embarrass me a bit to say so.
What's truly beyond the pale is making such accusations based on nothing whatsoever, and then trying to pretend that you didn't really say that in the first place, and then repeating that you did say it, and meant it. That's what bob has done here.
Are you seriously prepared to argue that there is some element of Sifu's commentary here that suggests violence toward women?
And I'd like to see you offer a single example of bob being treated harshly "because he's bob" rather than because he's behaved like an asshole. As I said to text, your view on this strikes me as perverse and completely unsupported by the facts.
420: One more "b" than 418. You are aggressive.
Hey, politicalfootball, I don't want to butt in, but maybe if you dropped it, it could be dropped.
Parsi proffers poli-f polemics postpone posting positive post powwow peace pact.
426: I'm not advocating that this be dropped, so I don't find your suggestion particularly helpful.
If McManus has mental problems, I hope he gets better. My advice is to ban him. He's more disruptive than the troll of sorrow.
Don't drop discourse during.... Fuck it. It's only fun when you can't get to a thesaurus.
How about if I request that you drop it?
Slamming Sifu suggests silencing sanity, subsequently shaming several similar stentorian supporters seeking specious salvation subverts serious settlement.
The degree to which (the) British television (that I am exposed to) is better than American television (all of it, I think, except for The Wire and a few other shows here and there) really is quite extraordinary. No, this is not off-thread. Figure it out.
Well, the US TV I'm exposed to is much better than the UK TV I'm exposed to. For what it's worth.
For what it's worth.
Not much, I'd say. Someone please ban David.
Canadian kiddie TV is the dullest thing since the farm report. They managed to broadcast the sensation of being in Ontario.
Back in the day, commenters took the initiative and banned people themselves, all the time, without expecting posters to do it for them. You've all grown fat, lazy, and parasitic. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.
Figure it out.
Ah, c'mon, give us a hint. Some of us are not too quick on the uptake, after all. The Office? I've never watched the US version, admittedly, because I am certain the UK original cannot be beat. Also, my lifelong crush on Tim Canterbury cannot, or will not, tolerate an American interpretation. (Also: Ricky Gervais).
Oh, I almost forgot, I met a wild boar the other day.
Canadian kiddie TV is the dullest thing since the farm report.
Canadian kiddie TV basically is the farm report. Or the pre-farm report, I guess.
437: I'm deeply offended, Apo, at any imputation of fatness, laziness, or parasitic .. ness. Point taken, though.
441: I meant that stuff that they show in the U.S., mostly on Sprout or Nick Jr. Which, to be fair, may be the cheapest Canada has to offer, not the best.
Oh, I almost forgot, I met a wild boar the other day.
Was it radioactive?
How about if I request that you drop it?
I'd certainly take such a request very seriously.
Any particular recommendations, ari?
The new Sherlock Holmes show is really wonderful.
I'm still reading the thread of doom - some good stuff. TLL, I have not appreciated you enough these years.
bother. anyway, those lyrics were funny.
We only get a pretty small selection of British TV here -- there's a large amount of dreck that's not exported. And I don't think anything British comes close to the top tier of recent US serial drama -- Sopranos, Wire, Mad Men, etc. And our comedy is getting better -- until recently, the American Office was at least arguably better than the British version (though they were very different kinds of shows) and Always Sunny in Philadelphia is great and very much has a low-budget BBC vibe.
That said, there's a lot of great stuff getting exported from Britain. Top Gear is incredibly well done and great. I've been enjoying the InBetweeners, which is a pretty great teen comedy.
re: 451
British TV doesn't do the sort of long-format high-budget dramas you mention there: Sopranos, The Wire, etc. Usually serious drama runs to somewhere between 3 and 6 episodes, comedies to somewhere between maybe 6 and 12 in a series. I think it's probably true that very little British produced drama approaches the very best of the US stuff. I'm thinking particularly of the Wire, here, but also Mad Men and the Sopranos. However, there's still quite a lot of high-quality product produced. I'm thinking here of the output of writers like Paul Abbott, Andrew Davies [mostly historical adaptations these days], etc.
As it happens I generally prefer British comedy to US comedy -- with a very few exceptions -- so I'd still argue that's probably an area where British TV in general out-performs the US. There's consistently a LOT of good comedy on British TV and has been for decades.
It's around sunrise NY time, so sure.
421: Yes, that sucks big time. You know, there are just hordes of non-poor people who would apply if we didn't make it so hard.
The U.S. Department of Education has it down. They talk to the IRS, with your permission, to figure out what income-based rate you should pay. You have to show paychecks the first time. After that they just rely on your tax return for 5 years. If you lose your job or your paycheck goes down significantly, you can submit alternate documentation.
The one that gets me is the number of food pantries which require people to provide income verification. They have scarce resources, and they have pre-signups and stuff, but if you're really hungry and need to go to a food pantry while your food stamp application gets processed, should you really have to get all of your papers in order first?
Christ, did McManus ever do a number on this thread.
You realize if you'd just turn this place over to the benign overlordship of the Afro-Canadian Liberation Front, you wouldn't have problems like this.
Yeah, drove us all to a pathetic, terrorized discussion of British TV. I hate when the blog gets like that.
(I'm a little worried that my mental age is regressing -- I've been watching Dr. Who and finding it right at about the level I can handle after a full workday. Given that I can recognize that it's objectively written for pre-teens, this concerns me a bit.)
We have a lot of candidates for overlordship, and all are so far rejected. One mustn't let one's personal tastes dictate policy.
456, 457: still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I tell you what. Even without knowing exactly what was written.
I can't find the comment, but I do recall, DS, that you were rejected for overlordship by none other than ogged himself, on account of excessive reasonableness.
459: (TBH, the Afro-Canadian overlords would be mystified at the existence of a big debate about whether accusations of domestic abuse are ban-worthy. That BitchPhd was actually banned for a time from this blog but McManus has yet to be is a bit of cosmic weirdness like that whole year where 36 Mafia had an Oscar but Martin Scorsese didn't.)
460: I know! How could a Hidden Imam be so wrong? Shook my faith, that did.
461.1: (Dude, sweetheart, just to be clear, McManus got the crazy exemption. You see.)
Look, everyone should just ask some friends to check their spouse/significant other for bruise marks. The single people should check themselves for bruise marks. Then we can all report back, and we can have this discussion based on FACT, not innuendo.
462: All the more reason for a just banning to even things out!
463: Oh, I know. It's just I wouldn't have one of those.
TOP GEAR???? Halford is so fucking banned. And The Office is definitely better than the US version - much as I do very much love the US version, it has never made me cry.
464: A blogwide Russian Baths meetup would serve the same purpose, no?
I fucking love Top Gear. I'm actually worried it's making me more politically conservative -- it's already made me spend more money than I probably would have otherwise on a car.
467 -- Only if we brought significant others to the baths.
And it's not much of an issue for me, since I've already seen everyone's wife and/or girlfriend naked.
I am really sore today and wishing I was in NYC so I could go to the Russian Baths.
Also, this weekend, I discovered that I really, really should have Body Glided some additional body parts.
So you're saying we need to inspect you for abrasions, now? This is going to turn into a full time process.
467: That trick won't work on those of us who've seen Eastern Promises, I'll have you know.
468: The Top Gear where they drove to the North Pole was pretty good.
those of us who've seen Eastern Promises
Yummy.
I'm not going to stop you from inspecting, LB. But I know exactly where they are. Ive been walking very gingerly today.
468 - seriously Halford, if you're that suggestible, please stop watching Clarkson.
469.2: He .. Het .. Heteronormativist!
I have that damned card for the Baths that means I can only go when Boris is working or I'll continue to feel stupid about buying the thing and perhaps sit in a corner and bruise myself.
476: It's worse than that: straight-man-and-lesbonormativist.
And I'd like to see you offer a single example of bob being treated harshly "because he's bob" rather than because he's behaved like an asshole.
To be fair, sometimes people treat him harshly after he makes what would not be a particularly outlandish statement out of context, just because we remember him expressing virtually the exact opposite sentiment in the same apocalyptic tone a few days earlier. I can get pretty infuriated by people who do that.
478: You're right. Wow, Halford really has been watching too much Top Gear. (Which, by the way, I've never heard of.)
370: I don't know what happened to My Alter Ego.
My mojo broke, and the insurance wouldn't cover the repairs, so I've been saving up for a new one.
That, and a more hectic schedule at work.
A hectic bruising schedule at work.
No bruises, but about 20 mosquito bites. I forgot to shut the window screen after the cat, and the mosquitoes, recognizing a rare opportunity, attacked en masse. Even after all the hating I have plenty of hate left over for mosquitoes.
On the subject of British TV shows I can tell you, after spending 7 days in British hotels, that there does not seem to be a single good show on British TV other than the news. Maybe the good shows are all on the British equivalent of HBO and Showtime, only seen by an elite few. What I saw was the news, and show after show of comedians sitting around a table making jokes, and reality shows just like ours. And prime-time broadcasts of the kind of movies that get dumped at 4 AM on American TV, in particular this and this.
483: Indeed, business at the dungeon has actually increased since the recession started.
feel stupid about buying the thing and perhaps sit in a corner and bruise myself.
This is when you need to have them beat you with the birch branches.
The Botswana Top Gear was great. The newest ones shown in the US (drive cars around a track, complain about them) is a depressing contrast.
Even after all the hating I have plenty of hate left over for mosquitoes
Aw, but we *love* you, mcmc. (Namely the blood part of you, but still. Love's love.)
|| I'd try to rise to the challenge posed by will -- maybe it was in the other thread -- but I'm too pissed off to insult anyone. Filling out an SF86: list all contacts over the past 7 years with foreigners to whom I or wife are bound by affection, influence, and/or obligation.|>
mcmc: How can that be!??! Isnt it snowing there already?
490: Sweet jesus, that sounds like a pain in the ass. And a quintuple pain for someone with your particular life.
Speaking of pissed off, has anyone else seen that crazy website Citizen warrior with its "3 things you should know about Islam"?
Any good rebuttals?
Carp:
Are you going to rat out Unfogged? Can you simply list the website?
I already had to give them my in-laws' address (along with siblings, parents, and kids). I hope the FBI tries to interview my mother-in-law.
Don't forget DS, MC, ttaM, asilon, ajay, Alex, Keir, tierce, etc.
Will, I nearly listed you in item 16, but it seemed over the top. No one here is a foreigner, right? No one I like, anyway . . .
CC: You should tell them you listened to Foreigner within the last seven years. If nothing else, they'll think you're playing "Head Games" with them.
(496 -- and read, D2, and wasn't there a Kiwi with a pseud starting with W . . . have to go back 7 years. Dear FBI: RTFA. Yours affectionately, CC)
No one I like, anyway . . .
That's the key. Just present yourself as a stone-hearted bastard with no bonds of affection or obligation to anyone.
(496 -- and read, D2, and wasn't there a Kiwi with a pseud starting with W . . . have to go back 7 years. Dear FBI: RTFA. Yours affectionately, CC)
493: Just the usual Islamophobic buillshit. There's probably a short-form online rebuttal somewhere, perhaps through Islamophobia Watch? If there isn't, there needs to be...
497: Irritation counts as a form of influence, albeit negative, doesn't it?
490, 492: When I was doing my security clearance forms for a job a couple years after college, I had to list all my residences for the last 7 years, which led to some flailing around in a desperate attempt to figure out what my sophomore dorm room had been.
I am routinely covered in hidden and not so hidden bruises. I rarely recall how I got them, but they typically match up quite well with table corners, counters, doorknobs. I am also currently covered in mosquito bites (several of which have begun to look like bruises) and feeling very irritable about the itching part.
Also Charley, don't forget UNG is a foreigner.
I have a mosquito bite on my forehead. Hate!
I had one of those! Crazy. Looked like a tilak. But then it went away very quickly and I missed it.
On the subject of people we missed, did anybody explicitly miss I Don't Pay? I miss that entity. If only because I could never quite figure it out. Was he/she crime, personified? Or a very stingy person?
The thing that's worse than a mosquito is a deer fly. Those creatures are vicious.
I also miss JRoth. Does he have a blog?
(And I'm also going to stubbornly insist on missing McManus, if he's really left never to return).
I also miss Tia. In Mad Men there is now a coterie of young idiots in the creative department of the new firm, and when I think of how I reacted to the "hey stop being assholes" type comments Tia and others sometimes made, I put myself in mind of those idiots. Because I'm a feminist. And there was that game she had, which was fun.
Look, everyone should just ask some friends to check their spouse/significant other for bruise marks.
Btock style bitches! Any good vibes here? Let me kill those for you.
You know what's not so fun? Going on calls where you have to check little kids for bruises.
Thankfully, no bruises last time I did that (a couple days back). Sometimes, ex gang member dad with multiple warrants living in the homeless shelter with the kids is the "good" option. Mom got banned from the shelter for being violent and in in a motel somewhere getting high. Sidenote to shelter worker who called us because she "suspects" he's mistreating those kids. Godamnit, I know you may not like the guy, but he at least seems to be interested in caring for the kids. He's in a small room in a homeless shelter with three small children. Of course you might hear him yell at the kids from time to time. Hearing a kid cry and him yell does not equal "OMG I think he's beating the kids".
Later that afternoon I chased a heroin addict for over a block who decided to run away while still in handcuffs (my buddy turned his back on her and she took off). My casual observation of "thank god there's no kids" was met with, "I have two. One is living with my parents and one is living with the dad's parents."
In summation, the answer is yes, we should be handing out birth control like it's Pez.
When people don't comment for a while I try to think happy thoughts like they're too busy with family and work.
511: I'm writing a country song. For real.
Or doing an important job that has a real, immediate impact, apparently. I don't know if you've been here or not lately, but I also miss you, gswift. I'm not really very drunk.
Text, you're going to make me all weepy.
I still read threads but comment more on days off. Old job at E/bay meant much higher comment volume. Fast internet connection along with boredom.
It's early in the morning here, so I am post-shower but pre-coffee.
I've always got bruises, although usually just on the shins and forearms; sometimes the bruises have identifiable treadmarks. "Oh yeah, Adidas ...." Last few weeks I've also had a weal that looks like a burn, because someone [who should have known better] wore running shoes to class and they have sharp edges.
I really don't bruise easily, though. Walking into furniture doesn't usually leave bruises, thankfully, otherwise I'd be covered. There's a couple of door handles I seem unable, despite several previous incidents, to avoid crashing into.
re: 510
My mother is a social worker [although mostly psych rather than children and families these days], and yeah, a lot of the stories make one think unhealthy thoughts about who should and shouldn't be allowed to have kids. It must suck to be in a position to have to make decisions that can impact upon that.
When people don't comment for a while, I like to think they're running away from gswift in handcuffs.
That was kind of funny chase. I went to the apartment to back a guy who got a tip that she was living there with a boyfriend (both had felony warrants). She answers the door and gets cuffed by the other guy. Supposedly boyfriend is in the apartment. No answer when we call out for him to come out. Apartment has a hallway with a bathroom and a bedroom off of it. Other guy sits her down on the floor and is keeping an eye on the hallway while I go clear the bedroom and then we check the bathroom. All of a sudden I hear my buddy say "Fuck, where is she at?".
We go running down to the front of the complex and she's nowhere in sight. A neighbor points down the street and we take off. We get to the corner and look both ways, still not in sight. I'm kind of simultaneously pissed off but trying not to laugh, because she's not wearing my cuffs and I wasn't the one watching her. Another person out in a yard points south and we start looking. I find her pretty quick trying to hide behind a garage. Her response to "all right, no more nonsense, let's go back to the car" is to turn and take off running again.
She made it about another twenty yards before I caught up and knocked her down. Which is kind of a pain in the ass because now we've got to wait around for crime lab to photograph her abrasions (I've never taken a fall while my hands were tied behind my back, but it sure looked unpleasant).
God, you or your partner must really be ugly.
Mrs y bruises if somebody looks at her hard. I say, "Jesus you've got a bruise the size of a football on your leg. What happened?" And she says, "Have I? No idea." It was worrying at first, but I've got used to it.
