A few of the most manipulative images actually made me laugh. Smashed, twisted bike! Blue sky, with sirens somewhere!
Why don't I have that reaction? I laugh when I see it typed out, but in the actual video I go all slack-jawed.
As a guy on an airplane told me once, "I think you may have the wrong faith."
They were being arrested for ghost-riding their bikes? Regardless, that scene* was horrible and deeply affecting.
* The bikes being ghost-ridden.
I'm not quite sure I followed it, but I think they got arrested by the haircut police, and then had to participate in the Hunger Games?
No one tell HG about the end of Old Yeller.
Biggie's marriage to Faith Hill is truly the love story of our generation, along with Billy Ray Cyrus' marriage to L'il Kim.
Why don't I have that reaction?
Maybe grad school for lit ruined my ability to have emotions about narrative art.
7: Whereas R. Kelly's marriage to Aaliyah was not at all a true love story.
Maybe lit grad school attracts soulless people?
Reminds me of how if you go way back, Aretha Franklin briefly married David Allen Coe. Now that was a barn-burner.
"You don't respect me!"
"You never even call me by my name!"
And so they divorced.
14: I'm so embarrassed. I can't believe I wrote Hill.
Hank Hill married Biggie Smalls? Was it to rescue Dale and Boomhauer or a love match?
Wait, were 10 and 12 pre- or post- knowledge of error? If pre, awesomeness.
Pre. I didn't think your joke made much sense, but whatever.
You're all stupid and I'm taking my blog and going home!
The whole thread is a cheap media stunt, just like Deidra "Spinderella" Roper's brief marriage to Alan Jackson.
10: Wasn't she like 14 at the time of said "marriage"? And R. Kelly was the guy who escaped conviction on charges relating to the sexual abuse of minors for what seemed at the time like celebrity jury nullification, right?
She was 15 when the rumors flew, right. And R. Kelly has got to be one of the weirdest celebrities ever.
Although I'll happily sing along with Remix To Ignition. Can I get a beep-beep?
Faith Evans, dude. Faith Evans.
Ohhhhh. This makes so much more sense. Clearly I don't care that much since I didn't bother to google, but I did have a 'huh, weird' moment when reading the OP.
Soooo much grading. Where are you all?
To the OP: I'd be curious what you make of the video for "One Time One Night" which is blatantly sentiment and manipulative (and dated in interesting ways) but one that I find endearing -- partially because I really like the song (and respond to the emotions in the song).
The linked video (mostly) works for me -- the manipulation is effective, and I like the style, but what it feels like, more than anything else, is a series of movie previews strung together. It's like I've gone to the theater to watch some coming of age drama and there are previews for three different movies about youthful trauma. I don't feel like the video helps me make sense of the song.
Yes, I also need people to entertain me. I'm procrastinating on edits for my diss that needs to be out to my committee Tuesday.
I don't feel like the video helps me make sense of the song.
I agree with this.
Interesting; helping me to make sense of the song is (I am prompted to realize) not one of the things I especially want out a music video.
32.2 - I'm not positive, but I believe this video was assembled from a 30-minute short film Jonze made.
36: I think that's right, and it explains why the young actors in the video are acting instead of being filmed mooning around. Like Blume, I'm somewhat immune to being taken along by a narrative because I keep trying to break it into pieces, but visually it's very well done.
OT: It's Mother's Day again already? Swell. Filial piety is terrific, especially when enforced by the populist media and enacted in the dialectic of sentimental rubbish vs. middlebrow poststructuralist vaingloriousness. [Breaks toys, sets fire to garage, slams door, screams "I hate you!"]
Too soon to go OT?
This WaPo piece on how feminism is all okey-dokey and better now made me laugh a bit for its claim that *thank god* feminists are no longer viewed as women who don't shave.
Painting those with a commitment to gender equality as brutish killers of buzzes and babies has been a useful tactic, not only in distracting the public from anti-feminist policy, but in sending messages to young people. Generations of kids, including my own 1990s cohort, have prefaced feminist statements with, "I'm not a feminist, but . . ." Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played girl-power icon Buffy Summers, once told a reporter that she hated the word "feminist" because it "brings up such horrible connotations and makes you think of women who don't shave their legs."
The article seems to suppose that it actually is horrible not to shave your legs: the problem was just in supposing that all feminists don't shave their legs. Now we know that of course they do!
Apparently they're talking about this over at Alt/house's place. I have not ventured to look.
38: Although I assume you agree that wire hangers are an abomination.
40: Of course. I'm not an animal.
Sure, just like birds aren't dinosaurs.
What is the problem, Flip? Honor your mother if you know her, if she's still alive, if she didn't abuse you as a child, if she's not in a state of dementia, or any other disclaimer that I haven't thought of. You don't have to do it exactly today, you can do it yesterday or last week or last month.
Yeah, come on: "filial piety" incorrectly subsumes familial affection into oppressive hierarchy.
I called my mom for Mother's Day. Ordinarily when I talk to her on the phone we talk for like an hour, but this call was only five minutes because she really needs to get her report cards (and various other end-of-year stuff) done and has been procrastinating about it for too long already. To tie together a couple of subthreads.
38: Is it okay if I allow myself a moment of sadness about not being able to make the ritual phone call, hear the DE make hers, or take her to dinner with The Kid? I promise to get back to stone cold by tomorrow and earlier if even slightly annoyed, even rational sociopaths get the blues.
Incidentally, I say 44 as someone whose family has never held any truck with Mother's Day.
I found it very distracting that they were riding around on bikes with no helmets. I'm pretty sure that's illegal in Canada.
Yes, well, I presume beating people with chairs is also illegal there.
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Speaking of manipulative: what do you do when your kid seems to be a psychopath?
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51: Didn't we just have a long thread about the problems with the "psychopath" concept in this sort of context? It's like the NYT doesn't even read the comments here.
I really admire Dr. Dan Waschbusch and whatever other psychologists decide to dedicate their career to interviewing creepy children who seem to be evil psychopaths and their freaked-out parents. What a depressing job.
Waschbusch cited one study that compared the criminal records of 23-year-olds with their sensitivity to unpleasant stimuli at age 3. In that study, the 3-year-olds were played a simple tone, then exposed to a brief blast of unpleasant white noise. Though all the children developed the ability to anticipate the burst of noise, most of the toddlers who went on to become criminals as adults didn't show the same signs of aversion -- tensing or sweating -- when the advance tone was played.
Here's the study Urple and Halford needed to produce! Correlation?...or cause-and-effect? Bum-bum-BUM!
Also, this is so horrifying and gruesome:
Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans who has studied risk factors for psychopathy in children for two decades, described one boy who used a knife to cut off the tail of the family cat bit by bit, over a period of weeks. The boy was proud of the serial amputations, which his parents initially failed to notice. "When we talked about it, he was very straightforward," Frick recalls. "He said: 'I want to be a scientist, and I was experimenting. I wanted to see how the cat would react.' "
Excuse me while I have recurrent nightmares.
Loosely related: Lou Reed's producer was a bad man.
Wait. 57 isn't true. See the comment from Sean.
46:That seems reasonable, setting aside sociopathy or not.
56: Stupid kid. If he wants to be a scientist, he needs to learn to keep his big ideas in the "I can do this only if you fund me" pile.
60: furthermore, someone needs to tell him about IRBs and how if you want to REALLY have fun anymore you need to work in finance.
I was surprised when a lightening bug just turned on above my computer. He's blinking around the table now.
I cleaned my mom's gutters* for Mother's Day.
*not a euphemism.
"He was a good son, but we installed screens over the gutters to now we don't have to be nice to him."
The Flip-Pater and I used to clean the gutters around the time the Red Sox played their first home game. In retrospect, that ladder was terrifyingly rickety. Who keeps an antique ladder, anyway?
I have an older stepladder that seems very sturdy. Every time I see it, I feel like the obesity crisis is hitting home. It says it has a 220 pound capacity, which isn't that much more than the combined weight of me and a gallon of paint and probably less than me carrying a sheet of drywall. I'm not saying I'm thin, but I don't really think of myself as the kind of guy that needs to check the weight limits on standard issue supplies.
Where are you all?
I'm in Cleveland! Sort of. I'm at some hotel somewhere near Cleveland.
It turns out that until today, I didn't actually understand how turnpikes work. Like, that you can't just stop for gas wherever you want when you're on one. Life is full of these interesting little lessons.
I did not! Barely, though. Barely not.
I was very glad to have a phone that would look up "gas station" (after I got off the turnpike, which was SO MANY miles after I thought "I'll just get off at the next exit) and find one near me in the middle of nowhere in Ohio. I don't think I had enough gas to meander around tiny roads until I happened upon one.
Like, that you can't just stop for gas wherever you want when you're on one
Actually, you can. It's just rare that there is gas wherever you happen to stop.
I was going to be incredibly embarrassed, and probably lie about it, if I did get stranded.
I guess now that I've said that, you'll never know what really happened...
Who keeps an antique ladder, anyway?
My father, now into the cranky stage of healing. He is now claiming that the ladder that broke underneath him wasn't so old--"only 30 years or so"--and that it wasn't kept outside, exactly, more like under an eave.
I'm going to guess that you are in . . . Streetsboro!
I think Cleveland has a casino opening tomorrow, if you're staying.
Close. Boston Heights, and/or Hudson. According to the hotel.
Tomorrow I'm going to (someplace near) Chicago.
I've driven that way. Don't go into Chicago with less than 1/4 of a tank unless you know your way.
I'm not really going actually into Chicago at all. (I'm on my way to Missoula). But I will probably make sure not to let the tank get very low ever again because today made me very nervous.
Are you going to stop at Wall Drug?
There aren't non-corn palaces out that way very often.
I logged about 670 miles of turnpike driving this weekend (for values of weekend which start on Friday) some of it surely over the route E. Messily took. I will admit that my general life rule that stuff is best done later rather than sooner is at times tested for keeping the car supplied with gasoline on turnpikes* (especially when the service plazas are randomly closed or under construction).
*Although none of the three times I've run out of gas (that I remember) have been on a turnpike. Protip: Don't run out with your spouse in the car after they've been bugging you to get gas. The penalty is like 5 years of filling up every time the needle gets below like a 1/4.
Another protip, courtesy my dad: If the fuel gauge says empty and the car's computer says you have a range of 75 miles, go with the fuel gauge.
Pssht, computer. My truck barely has a windshield.
I'm going to bed! See you from another hotel room tomorrow night!
It's just rare that there is gas wherever you happen to stop.
Similar to turnpikes in this respect: the Alaska Highway.
If a car claims to have a 21 gallon tank, but on several occasions you've driven it tens of miles after the light has come on and the most it ever took was 18.5 gallons, what's the disconnect? Is the light coming on too early? Is the tank not really 21 gallons? Is it not really getting filled up? I'm tempted to run it dry just to see whether it really takes 21 gallons after that happens.
If you got it used, the previous owner was smuggling pot and there's 2 gallons of it in there.
Very nice day in Msla today, Mess. Don't you be bringing crap weather from the East.
Sneaky oil speculators, I'll bet.
91: In my experience, for newer cars the light comes with 2 to 3 gallons left. Japanese brands seem to be the "worst". Run the fucker for a while longer and get a good sense of it. I was tempted to push it this weekend: light turned on with 62 miles to my preferred target but I wimped out since I'm soft that way.
68
It turns out that until today, I didn't actually understand how turnpikes work. Like, that you can't just stop for gas wherever you want when you're on one. Life is full of these interesting little lessons.
There are service areas like every 30 miles on the Ohio turnpike which seems sufficient. Or are half of them closed at the moment?
There are certainly longer stretches without gas stations on other interstates.
91
If a car claims to have a 21 gallon tank, but on several occasions you've driven it tens of miles after the light has come on and the most it ever took was 18.5 gallons, what's the disconnect? Is the light coming on too early? Is the tank not really 21 gallons? Is it not really getting filled up? I'm tempted to run it dry just to see whether it really takes 21 gallons after that happens.
My current car has one of those range remaining displays. I have never run it below 0 but it appears, based on the claimed size of the fuel tank, that at zero there are still a couple of gallons or so in reserve. I read somewhere that this is an accommodation to dumb Americans and that in Europe 0 means 0 but I don't know whether this is true.
It's just rare that there is gas wherever you happen to stop.
That is only true if don't stop only at places where there is gas.
If you consider the tanks of passing vehicles, the problem is to get stopped gas at the place you stop.
Will "you" magically appear in comment 98?
99: And the willingness and means to allow the gas to pass into your tank.
Or gas that exhibits very little motion relative to the inertia reference frame of the Earth.
Where "your tank" is understood to be the gas tank of the car you are driving.
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Done with you, first conference poster.
At least one regular commenter's spouse stopped by and said hi!
And then I saw The Avengers. They die in the end.
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Done with you, first conference poster.
At least one regular commenter's spouse stopped by and said hi!
And then I saw The Avengers. They die in the end.
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I'm pretty sure that person is also at most one regular commenter's spouse.
It's also possible that one or more additional people who stopped by were also spouses of regular commenters, unbeknownst to Sifu.
Yeah, if you want to take the obvious parsing.
As a linguist rather than a philosopher, I am generally inclined to take the obvious parsing.
Constipated commenter's spouses never have a nice day say hi!
As a feminist, I am generally inclined ... laydeez
One person was mean to me (well, not mean. They just said that I had done everything wrong and suggested, incomprehensibly, how I could do better), but I'm pretty sure they are not the spouse of any commenter(s) defectating at any frequency (or frequencies).
It costs a bunch to get those things printed on site. I'm thinking of putting a 36" printer in a van and parking outside some of the bigger conferences.
I'm thinking of staffing it with former "recruiters" for Florida potato farms since they already have the van.
I don't think it's a generic trait of philosophers that they prefer non-obvious parsings. I (for my part) would sooner have attributed that to linguists, who, you know, love language and all that.
Oddly enough, it doesn't cost anything more than it does to print them using the printer owned by our department . Except, you know, outside companies do a better job. Still haven't figured that one out. Luckily I'm not paying.
Also I managed to crease the shit out of my poster while hanging it up and mixed up the labeling on one graph. Overall still a success, though.
You should probably put it in poster tube.
118: That is a valid point that did in fact occur to me while writing 112.
122: while displaying it? That seems counter-productive.
124: If anyone asks you can just describe it to them.
I happened upon this page while hoping about the internet and now the episode of Benson where he played Trivial Pursuit with Death doesn't seem so original. Stupid knowledge.
I call it "hoping" but most people would just say "delaying sleep by clicking links."
I unleashed the printer of mass destruction for my wife (IYKWIM)- we have 5 poster printers throughout our various buildings, she works for a public school where the big concession for their meeting was that they got to print up to 4 slides in color. They were then supposed to paste together the various 8.5x11 sheets on a board to make the poster. So I printed her poster on one of our machines and intimidated all the other poor public servants.
Anyone remember which thread there was a discussion about the phenomenon of hearing something for the first time, then hearing it again soon after? Someone mentioned that phenomenon and I wanted to give it the proper name that was mentioned here.
plate of shrimp. plate, shrimp, plate of shrimp.
IIRC, there are several names for the phenomenon, each of which only makes sense to people who have encountered it wherever it was first used.
The Baader-Meinhof Effect (or Phenomenon) was another name for it.
128.2: Is there a name for the phenomenon of always seeing the same episode of a television series, no matter when or where you might be flipping channels? I think I've clicked past one episode of Nash Bridges roughly one hundred times.
OT: Penny Arcade has a thing about China Mieville.
I happened upon this page while hoping about the internet
What were you hoping about it?
Didn't see the Benson episode, but Woody Allen was there long since.
134.2: "I already wanted to punch him from a previous book".
Oh yeah. It's like running a dungeon where your dungeon master is Dave Spart. Or Dennis the Peasant.
"And then, right, you see this hideous conglomeration of twisted flesh and machinery, right, which is just a total metaphor for the way that industrial capitalism dehumanises and alienates the worker..." (contd. on page 94)
I more or less lost it when he had a river full of semi-magical water spirits called vodyanoy who had shop stewards. Rapidly heading into Terry Pratchett territory. ("No, I can do as much lightning as I want but I have to contract out to Blind Io for the thundering".)
136: I am so politically insensitive that I agreed with the PA strip because Mieville's neologisms are ugly, but I assume that for him ugliness is a revolutionary action against Mean Daddy Tolkien or something.
126: The Wikipedia article mentions the great Bill and Ted homage to Bergman. (Though Wikipedia calls it a "parody.")
138: Right, but I thought they were paying homage to Benson.
Anyway I've obviously seen Bill and Ted. I'm deeply into all the wonders of our culture.
I'm deeply into all the wonders of our culture.
No one cares about your Rockford Files/Upstairs, Downstairs fanfic, Moby.
Fifty Shades of Grey on my Firebird
Here's Seinfeld's Bergmanesque Penis vs. Brain chess match.
Since no one clicks the link, 133 is to Death playing badmintonska in De Düva, a short parody of Bergmann films from 1968 (includes Madeline Kahn's first movie role).
134: Is there a name for the phenomenon of always seeing the same episode of a television series, no matter when or where you might be flipping channels?
It's referenced in Crocodile Dundee -- he flips on a TV in a hotel room, and it's playing the same episode of I Love Lucy he saw the only other time he's seen a TV. His line, which I use to refer to the phenomenon, is "Yep, that's what I saw." But it's not much use as a name unless you happen to be talking to my nuclear family about it.
Is there a name for that point, some ways into any thread, where you have no idea what anyone is talking about anymore?
Nur wer die Unfogged kennt
Weiß, was ich leide!
I was fine up to 147, but am now completely verblunget.
I didn't actually know quite what to make of 147 either. Riffing on things I don't understand is an occasional strategy here.
Actually, I know the correct term, but if I revealed it now that we've passed the Comprehensibility Horizon you'd have no idea what I was talking about.
150: I like to think of it as diving for a ball. (Using sports metaphors I have no direct experience with? Also a strategy.)
A panelized, retractable tarping system will save you time and money when repairs are needed.
146: you are intensely longing to get the (missing) point? I dunno, it seemed apt.
135/6/7/8;
Mièville's coinages can be plenty irritating, but "mouldiwarp" is one by E.Nesbit. In her books they are wise and helpful so probably something revolting (in one or other sense) in his.
It's not a coinage, it's a northern (both Cumbrian and Yorkshire) dialect word she merged into canonical standard English. means the tradesman you call in to eliminate moles from your land.
I can't believe I am coming to Mièville's defense, but the Penny Arcade guys have something of a history of letting their dour nerdiness and status anxiety get the better of them when encountering whimsical hipsters and other sorts of people who might like neologisms and portmanteaux: "The organism who answered the door had worn a bow tie - and I am not making this up - on purpose."
145.2 There used to be a period where, if I turned the TV on during a bank holiday, some channel would be showing Crocodile Dundee.