Re: Titties, Fast & Slow

1

People forget that nature really sucks. I mean, even animals mess-up breast feeding to the point of having their young die.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:02 AM
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2

This is prime Opinionated Soviet Tank Commander/Lactation Consultant bait if I ever saw it.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:22 AM
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3

Huh. You know, I have worried about being a breastfeeding Pollyanna, because it was genuinely super easy for me. On the other hand, if there's one thing about me that's weirder than the rest of it all, it's that I actually do better with verbal instructions than direct demonstration. If someone shows me how to do something, I'm still kind of lost until I turn it into a verbal narrative.

It hadn't quite clicked that maybe all the verbal descriptions aren't helpful for people who learn things in a less weird way than I do.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:31 AM
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4

I didn't have problems with the concept or execution - milk came in on cue, babies latched just fine - but it was unbelievably painful from about day 3 to day 14. Especially with Hawaii. Just awful. I was told that nipple shields were a bad idea, and so I didn't use them until Ace, when I started to trust my own experience over the wisdom of the internet/friends/whoever had impressed upon me otherwise.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:34 AM
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5

The day 3 to day 14 thing is specific to Hawaii. It was shorter and not quite as grueling with each successive kid.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:35 AM
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6

3: LB tells herself it because she's so incredibly verbal. She can't face the truth that she's a natural Earth Mother.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:35 AM
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7

Is Reductress like the Onion, but just for women?


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:37 AM
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8

Mrs ttaM took a while to get into it, although it was never so much of an issue that xelA wasn't getting enough food. It just didn't come super naturally, and was uncomfortable as per heebie's 4. That said, once into it, he was breast-feed for a _long_ time.

We did go to a lactation consultant, and, if I'm honest, it wasn't very helpful. The person who did the ante-natal breastfeeding class at the hospital -- young, no-nonsense, black single mother and very much not the upper-middle-class earth mother type -- was much better in many ways. She did a demonstration of how to hold a baby that was hilarious and heart in mouth: swinging about in a way that looked wild, but was in fact very comfortable for the baby (gurgling, happy throughout) and secure/easy for the mother.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:41 AM
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9

Having had to hospitalize our newborn for something that would have most likely been avoided if the lactation consultant wasn't a purist fuck (or if we had been confident enough to tell her to go away), I'm not really any more fond of the hospitals now hiding the formula because reasons.


Posted by: Gerald Ford | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:43 AM
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10

Fuck grammer.


Posted by: Gerald Ford | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:47 AM
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11

7: I guess. I was expecting more harlot-y things.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:48 AM
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12

Probably that was the joke.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:54 AM
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13

I have never heard a good thing about lactation consultants. I wonder why they systematically suck. (And yeah, I've heard similar stories, about real hardship imposed by hospitals requiring breastfeeding.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:54 AM
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14

I wonder why they systematically suck.

Well played?


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:56 AM
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I have never heard a good thing about lactation consultants. I wonder why they systematically suck.

Systematic sucking is an essential part of the whole breastfeeding experience.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:56 AM
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16

Let me be the first to note that sucking is a required part of the enterprise.


Posted by: Opinionated Soviet Tank Commander/Lactation Consultant | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:58 AM
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17

Unintentional, actually.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:58 AM
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18

I remember when you couldn't say "this sucks" in polite company because everybody knew it was short for "this sucks dicks."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 6:59 AM
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19

Or ass. Or something.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 7:02 AM
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20

re: 9

Yeah, I think we felt the same way about both the lactation person, and the NCT* trainer. Both were judgemental purists in ways that were unhelpful. The lactation person was pretty good at cheerleading for breastfeeding, but not, I don't think very helpful for people struggling to make it work out.

* like Lamaze


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 7:03 AM
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21

I have had the same thought -- there's a word that got totally semantically bleached. I wonder why? Maybe when it was still recognizably obscene, it was characteristically used by middle class teenagers, so it was unthreatening?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 7:03 AM
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22

I blame Bart Simpson.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 7:06 AM
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23

I offended one adult gravely when I was maybe 10-12, saying something sucked. I told my parents about it, assuming we'd all agree that the other adult was unbelievably fragile and delicate, and my parents asked me, "Well, do you know what sucks is short for? As a phrase?"

It had never occurred to me that it was short for anything, but I had my pride on the line, and so I shrugged and guessed, "sucks dick?" and they made kind of pleased/impressed shrugs back at me. And said not to say it around that one adult anymore.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 7:15 AM
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24

That would have been circa 1989-90.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 7:15 AM
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25

You should have told them not to have a cow, man.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 7:55 AM
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26

There was a big thing where Fox didn't have a station in Gainesville until maybe 1993, so Bart Simpson was a big rage for years and my middle school was covered in Bart paraphenalia and t-shirts, yet no one ever watched it. I don't think I ever saw it until it came to town, three or four years deep into the phenomenon.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:00 AM
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27

Nobody in my middle school had any Bart Simpson stuff.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:02 AM
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28

I'm not 100% convinced that what happened with "sucks" was true semantic bleaching vs. the ever-increasing coarsening of our discourse.

The phrasing is pretentious, but I'm basically serious. We, as a society, have decided that very, very few words are unacceptable in polite conversation, and have also narrowed which conversations are expected to be polite. It used to be, when I was growing up (and even, to an extent, when I was a young adult), that conversation was assumed to be "polite" (that is, no swearing and no overt reference to anything your maiden aunt would consider outré) unless marked otherwise. Then there was the whole concept of mixed company. But even all-male business meetings where there was hierarchy or unfamiliarity would stay fairly "polite" until whoever held the most status broke the spell.

And I don't think any of that holds anymore. I think nobody (at least among decadent coastal elites) defaults to those standards; instead, you converse politely only if children or elders you suspect to be uptight are present. There are still limits, but they're super-narrow: I'm struggling to articulate them beyond the c-word (for non-Brits) and explicit sexual description. I'm not saying that every conversation respects no limits but those; rather that those are the only limits that apply to every conversation that isn't consciously raunchy. But e.g. at a holiday party with a house full of adults and kids? Nothing our parents would have recognized as standards hold anymore.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:26 AM
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29

28- Sound plausible to me.


Posted by: roger the cabin boy | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:29 AM
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30

I don't think the realm of politeness has narrowed, so much as changed. That's why Trump voters are so angry. Sure, they can say 'shit', but they can't express their opinions about other races, women, homosexuals, etc.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:30 AM
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31

Based on recent experience in-country, Americans remain way more averse to casual swearing among adults (or as they call it "curse words") than Brits.

It is also interesting seeing which words have become less acceptable. It was perfectly OK in 1925 for a young upper-class woman to refer to her aunts (disparagingly) as "bitches", at least if PG Wodehouse is anything to go by.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:37 AM
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32

But if their one of their aunts was a lesbian, they would have had to say "a gal with her own library card."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:44 AM
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33

I'm with Moby, the politeness domains have shifted. Swear words are now the domain of winking uptight Republicans.

Freaking out about the gay bar downtown or making fun of the patrons is considered deeply rude, I think nearly everywhere. Anything to do with kids bullying is considered deeply rude - especially applauding the humor the bully employed. (Adult bullying has much laxer standards.) I'm trying to think of standards that have infiltrated even the more conservative end of what I'm locally exposed to.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:49 AM
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34

It used to be you could say "sphincter" because there are lots of different sphincters in your body, but now you can't because it only means the sphincter that holds back your poop.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:56 AM
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35

That article rather annoyed me. The noble savage will teach us how to breastfeed! They don't use formula or bottles! (Just goat's milk, which doesn't count as signifying a problem with breastfeeding supply because noble savage.) Any research on the ubiquity of prelacteal feeds in traditional cultures?

I dunno. I believe women should get all the support they need to breastfeed, but I also believe that the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding are pretty damn negligible assuming access to clean water and food. Giving a baby a bottle of (clean, properly prepared) formula so dad can help is actually pretty nice.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:56 AM
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36

Hey, remember that commercial heebie posted a couple of months ago, where that mom (an academic) winked about using bad words in front of her kids? I forgot what the commercial was about, but was interested enough to read the book that the actress had written.

It was pretty good! It was how the notion of obscenity has historically shifted back and forth from the sacred to the bodily/sexual, based on what society has most valued; and how now the worst things you can say are neither of those, but rather racial epithets.

So, in short, what Moby said in 30.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 8:59 AM
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37

My memory was that the "sucks" battle was just beginning to be waged during my adolescence (late '60s/early '70s). At least in my household/milieu it was still considered rather improper in public (except among other youth and with "safe" adults). The battle in my household was over its acceptability of its use in the home in front of the parents (and why did we feel the need to use such a coarse term at all). My sense it was completely verboten in most of my peer's households and I was semi-careful* in using it.

*Within the broader context of a generally impudent white UMC teenager male of the times.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:05 AM
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38

Reading the article, I was slightly surprised that it didn't reinforce my favorite back-on-the-veldt theory around breastfeeding: wet nursing. Maybe that's not actually as much of a thing as I assumed it would be.


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:06 AM
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39

On the veldt, I think people lived in pretty small groups. So maybe there wouldn't have been an extra lactating woman around.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:12 AM
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40

I got in trouble for using the word "sucks" in a notice I wrote for my high school bulletin, in the early 90s. It honestly had never before occurred to me before what "sucks" referred to.

When I was a kid I thought my parents never swore, but later I found out that they just never swore in English. Turns out my dad was a profligate swearer in his native language. I just didn't know they were swear words because I had never heard anyone else use them, and I assumed since my dad was doing it it must be ok.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:12 AM
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41

But if their one of their aunts was a lesbian, they would have had to say "a gal with her own library card."

Choosing to miss the joke: what a simultaneously hilarious and sad euphemism.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:12 AM
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42

It's Mallory Ortberg's joke. I was going to link, but I got lazy.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:13 AM
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43

35, 38: Sarah Hrdy, "Mother Nature", is what you want. IIRC, and it's been a few years since I read it, wet-nursing and reciprocal childcare (which she calls alloparenting) is extremely common in hunter-gatherer societies.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:35 AM
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44

IIRC wet nursing has always been an important thing, and for people who didn't have wet nurses (a rare occurrence), infant mortality rates were really high. We can have a society where all women have to breastfeed their own children as long as we don't mind a 40%+ infant mortality rate.

East Asian cultures have the mother-daughter knowledge transmission institutionalized with "month sitting." I had a friend who through somewhat unusual circumstances didn't have anyone to help but me, so I had to help with latching and washing stitches and stuff like that. We muddled through just fine but having the childless foreigner help wasn't her first (or probably even her tenth) choice. When the public health nurses came for a check in they were pretty horrified. My friend had a bit of trouble the first few days but by the time she was released from the hospital she was producing tons of milk and the baby was latching fine. In fact, she made so much milk she had to express during the day, and she'd make us wash our faces with it at night.

Like all things, we've managed to take a good idea (try to breastfeed if you can) and turned it into an obnoxious mommy purity competition.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:50 AM
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45

That article rather annoyed me. The noble savage will teach us how to breastfeed! They don't use formula or bottles! (Just goat's milk, which doesn't count as signifying a problem with breastfeeding supply because noble savage.) Any research on the ubiquity of prelacteal feeds in traditional cultures?

Yeah, the set-up was super annoying. Nevertheless, the ultimate point was the opposite of this.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:51 AM
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46

I used to not swear very much, and then I lived in Australia for a bit. I came back saying "shit tons" for lots, and every other word was "fuck."


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:52 AM
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47

and she'd make us wash our faces with it at night

As one does?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:54 AM
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48

47

She claimed it made your skin softer and lighter, and I'm not very assertive in China so I just went along with it.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:57 AM
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49

I swear quite a lot, but a lot lot less than 25 years ago. Scotland is a very high density swearing culture.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 9:57 AM
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50

48: Motherboating?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 10:05 AM
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51

Several people have, independent of one another, assured me breastmilk eliminates pink eye lickety split. Could see it being helpful for acne.

The lactation consultant i briefly interacted with was helpful and practical, but is it any surprise the trade attracts moralizing puritans? Breastfeeding was still pretty darn painful for quite some time (months not weeks) but I've got abnormally sensitive skin so not too surprising.

There is recent research on the knitting up of infant guts and the role played by all those who sail in us and human milk sugars, I would be surprised if there aren't properties of human milk not yet replicated in formula that are critical for finishing the cooking of human infants, we are after all born remarkably under baked. But I couldn't express or pump for the life of me so the kid had non-human milk when I wasn't around. Homemade bc we are absurd like that (there was taste testing involved).


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 10:22 AM
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52

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/breast-feeding-the-microbiome re baby guts & human milk


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 10:24 AM
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53

My grandmother didn't produce enough milk to feed my father, and I don't think formula was much of an option in 1950s Eastern Europe, so apparently a neighbor who was also nursing helped supplement/wet nurse. My dad was delivered at home because there was a bad flu going round the hospital wards--the flat is still in my family, so I've actually been there.


Posted by: J, Robot | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 10:25 AM
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54

Meanwhile, I've been binge-watching Midsomer Murders (which was not very PC in the early seasons), and I've noticed that John Nettles looks quite a lot like my paternal relatives. I wonder if he has Polish heritage.


Posted by: J, Robot | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 11:16 AM
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55

Cassandane's only problem with breastfeeding was that she wasn't producing quite enough milk, if I remember correctly. There were a few tips and tricks to get more, but mainly we just had Atossa on a mix of breast milk and formula starting when she was just 3 weeks or so old. A consultant helped us figure this out. Guess we got lucky in having a reasonable one.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 11:21 AM
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56

54: Me too.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 11:42 AM
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57

Did you see the one with Orlando Bloom yet?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 11:49 AM
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58

I wonder if he has Polish heritage.

Wikp says he was adopted at birth in 1943 with his birth mother an Irish nurse, no mention of father, so... possible, I guess!


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 2:14 PM
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59

I would bet good money his father was Polish. He's the spitting image of my uncle.

Sucks as a detective, though. Anyone else notice that once he and DS Troy appear on the scene, there's a guarantee of at least two or three more murders before they solve the case?


Posted by: J, Robot | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 2:54 PM
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60

Yes. At least, unlike Morse, neither of them seem to have sex with the witnesses.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 3:14 PM
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61

I've also been watching a couple of episodes of a show where a detective gets sent to Wales, lives in a trailer, and solves murders which are all rooted in things that happened decades ago. I guess because Wales is that kind of place.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:09 PM
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62

It's not even a nice trailer, but it's parked somewhere very scenic.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:11 PM
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63

30 and 36 are great points, although I'd quibble about "racist terms are the new curse words". Set aside the extremely complicated n-word, and I feel as if ethnic slurs were fading from usage long before "traditional" curse words came into wide usage. Maybe the exact timing doesn't matter, but I feel as if in, say, 1980, you'd have been viewed as pretty coarse to use anything from suck to fuck, wop to kike at a couples dinner. Maybe that's a class thing, and I'm putting too much weight on UMC (white) mores, but in 1973 Archie Bunker was supposed to be a loudmouth: his use of slurs wasn't considered as offensive as it is today, but it was supposed to be at least a little outrageous and certainly out of step.

On a related note, have I ever mentioned here that in Studs Terkel's book of oral histories with people from the WW2 years, you get absolutely contradictory claims about how widespread cursing was at the time? I've never known what to think of that, but I don't like the easy answer (the people who say there was less cursing were full of it), in part because, as we're discussing right now, I've seen usages change in my lifetime, and even in my adulthood. To me it always feels like Slate-pitchy anachronism to insist that every society/culture is basically the same, that cursing, fornication, irony, etc. are always and everywhere present in almost precisely the same proportions. Seems like a staggering failure of imagination.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:30 PM
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64

I am super mad about that show because Netflix doesn't show the Welsh-language version. I wouldn't have enough Welsh to follow it anyway but I'd have ended up with more than I have now. Watching their cheesy Turkish remake of a k-drama is definitely bringing back my small amounts of bad Turkish.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:37 PM
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65

That's not right. Welsh is only a written language, without a spoken form. I've seen the signs. The words are not pronounceable.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:40 PM
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66

What's the name of the Welsh show?


Posted by: J, Robot | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:40 PM
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67

I'd have to go clear down stairs and flip through Netflix until I found it. So let's hope Mr. Anonymous knows.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:43 PM
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68

Oh, wait. This internet knows. It's "Hinterland."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:44 PM
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69

If you don't like detectives who don't find the killer until a whole bunch of people are dead, maybe Episode 1 isn't for you.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:45 PM
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70

Or Y GWYLL as it should be.

-Opinionated commenter who complained about ghost but didn't remember to remember personal info.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:46 PM
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71

Spoiler alert?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:46 PM
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72

About GHOST? I hate this phone.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:47 PM
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73

Moby uses the Netflix rolodex app.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:47 PM
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74

I googled "Wales Detective Netflix".


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-17 4:50 PM
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75

have I ever mentioned here that in Studs Terkel's book of oral histories with people from the WW2 years, you get absolutely contradictory claims about how widespread cursing was at the time?

Class differences, and military/civilian differences. One thing you get from a lot of WW2 memoirs (especially written by officers) is "Good Lord people swear A LOT in the army. I mean ALL THE TIME."


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 2:40 AM
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76

Though not so much in combat. Here is a recording of a RAF air crew over the target: you'd think that the profanity would flow freely, being as how they're a) in the military b) being shot at and c) some of them are Australian, but in fact they sound calmer than I do trying to parallel park:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R5NI-IrUU0


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 2:47 AM
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77

"racist terms are the new curse words"

AIMHMHB, I was once witness to a real ding dong row between two small brown children in a playground. Eventually one of them satisfied himself that he had won and started to walk away. His opponent watched him for a couple of seconds, trying to summon up the most devastating clincher he could think of, then yelled "Fuckin' Paki!".


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 4:04 AM
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78

Maybe they were Hindu?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 5:42 AM
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79

|| ttaM, can you send me an email? |>


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 6:29 AM
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80

76: "Don't shout all at once." Well, now I know what the unflappable headmasters in a hundred years of fiction sound like.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 1:46 PM
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81

I wonder if that sort of calm is a requirement of the job. It makes me think of this story from Richard Bach:

We had been flying North, low-level formation in a pair of F-100 day fighters out over the Nevada desert. I was leading, at that time, and Bo Beaven's airplane was twenty feet away at my right wingtip. It was a clean morning, I remember, and we were cruising three hundred feet above the ground. I was having some trouble with the radiocompass, leaning down in the cockpit resetting a circuit breaker, clicking the control from ANT to LOOP to COMP to see if the needle would show any life. Then about the time I thought that the problem was in the antenna itself, and that maybe I shouldn't plan on having any help from the radio at all, there cam Beaven's voice filtered in my earphones. It was neither a command nor a warning . . . it was a simple calm question: "Do you plan on flying into this mountain?"
I jerked my head up, startled, and there angled in front of us was a rugged little mountain, all brown rock and sand and tumbleweed, tilting, flying towards us at something over three hundred nautical miles per hour. Beaven said nothing more. He didn't loosed his formation or move to break away. He spoke in the way that he flew his airplane . . . if you choose to fly straight ahead, there will be not one hole in the rock, but two.

Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 2:13 PM
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82

I assume being unflappable is an advantage, but sometimes it comes out in jargon or formality quite unlike that particular bit of slightly domestic phrasing.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 2:25 PM
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83

That makes sense.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 2:44 PM
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84

It was neither a command nor a warning . . . it was a simple calm question:

"Billy, do you like gladiator movies?"


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 2:53 PM
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85

What I've seen called "Army Creole" : the basic swear words as all parts of speech. Sentences where all words except articles , prepositions and conjunctions were such. Naturally, context was all-important.

I got used to it, but never swore myself, which I'm sure was noticed, for better or worse.


Posted by: idp | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 3:05 PM
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Reminds of Tom Wolfe's claims of widespread Yeagerian influence on pilot chatter.

That voice, started drifting down from on high. At first the tower at Edwards began to notice that all of a sudden there were an awful lot of test pilots up there with West Virginia drawls...Military pilots and then, soon, airline pilots, pilots from Maine and Massachusetts and the Dakotas and Oregon and everywhere else, began to talk in that poker-hollow West Virginia drawl, or as close to it as they could bend their native accents. It was the drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 3:08 PM
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87

A convention in Midsomer is that all the upper class characters will have slept with each other. I find it tedious.

As for Morse, those crushes of his never seemed likely to be consummated. Yes, that character: romantic, audiophile, failed student intellectual was someone I identified with, so maybe I'm projecting naively.


Posted by: idp | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 3:36 PM
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85. AISIMHB George MacDonald Fraser said that the soldiers in his unit never swore at all. They fell into two categories, those who didn't use swears, and those who who inserted a swear every two or three words, but meant nothing by it other than a form of verbal punctuation.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 4:42 PM
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89

The lactation consultant i briefly interacted with was helpful and practical, but is it any surprise the trade attracts moralizing puritans?

I also had a fairly brief interaction with a lactation consultation who was basically helpful and practical. Well, except for that time she made me cry: I had given my one-week old infant a bottle of formula, not because I was an uncaring mother, but because I just couldn't bear to see the little guy go hungry. The LC scolded me, and suggested I wasn't fully committed to the cause. Which, yeah, did come across as a bit moralizing.

Anyway, she did help me get things going, and once we solved the latch-on problem, I found I could cheerfully ignore some of her advice (I breastfed that child for 19 months, but was only able to do so while maintaining my sanity because I didn't take the "exclusively breastfed" injunction too seriously, nor did I worry about "nipple confusion." He was "mainly breastfed," or "breastfed a lot," but if I wanted/needed a break, he had a father who could give him a bottle, and that was that).

so apparently a neighbor who was also nursing helped supplement/wet nurse.

I'm sure this happened a fair bit in the days (times/places) before formula was readily (and affordably) available. It's just such a prelapsarian myth that breastfeeding used to come naturally and instinctively to women, before industrialization denatured motherhood, and made women too "nervous" (or perhaps too "selfish," in some versions) to realize the "essence" of maternity.


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 4:54 PM
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76: Here is a recording of a RAF air crew over the target:...

"Good show!" The lack of cursing is not nearly as remarkable as the apparent lack of panic (if they're panic-stricken, they're certainly not letting on...).


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 5:08 PM
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How many people here have had kids post whatever WHO baby-friendly hospital initiative. I mean the hospitals are judged based on how many women leave breast feeding. I'm sure they can tick a box if it's contra-indicated because of a medication the mother must take, but they are definitely trying to reach targets.

What about this skin-on-skin stuff? Is it just common sense or does it feel oppressive?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 7:38 PM
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92

Can't you just put the whole baby in a condom?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 7:52 PM
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What about this skin-on-skin stuff? Is it just common sense or does it feel oppressive?

Maybe neither? I think it's good, but I doubt it's just "common sense," and I'm not willing to proselytize along such lines.


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 8:29 PM
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Maybe there could be a pamphlet?

"You can touch your baby, if you must."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-29-17 9:08 PM
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The lack of cursing is not nearly as remarkable as the apparent lack of panic

I don't know, actually. In my experience people (including me) who are actually operating in a state of extreme fear and stress do not sound like the stereotype of panic (loud high pitched voice, screaming, incoherence etc). That sort of clipped emotionless tone is just as common.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 1:41 AM
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I can think of times of extreme panic and fear when I've gone both ways. Not utter screaming incoherence, but certainly high pitched and not calm-sounding voice. And, at the other end, I doubt you've tell from my voice that I was at all worried.

Someone nearly drove into us in the car the other day, and I think my comment, as I watched them coming and had intuited that they were almost certainly going to hit us, was something like, "Oh, don't do that." Said in a very relaxed voice.

As it happened at the last minute they looked where the fuck they were going, and emergency braked before T-boning us.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 4:43 AM
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97

Some men laugh at death. Some women smile and giggle a bit.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 4:55 AM
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95: They now hold off on giving the vitamin k shot and weighing the baby so that the mother can bond with her baby, and having the baby lean against the mother's clothing is discouraged. Also known as kangaroo care. The baby is naked and placed against the mother's chest.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:06 AM
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95: They now hold off on giving the vitamin k shot and weighing the baby so that the mother can bond with her baby, and having the baby lean against the mother's clothing is discouraged. Also known as kangaroo care. The baby is naked and placed against the mother's chest.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:06 AM
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95: They now hold off on giving the vitamin k shot and weighing the baby so that the mother can bond with her baby, and having the baby lean against the mother's clothing is discouraged. Also known as kangaroo care. The baby is naked and placed against the mother's chest.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:06 AM
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101

The baby is the one under extreme fear and stress?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:30 AM
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97: got to say "bright blue bandana" wouldn't be my first choice of headgear for urban sniper warfare. Also, top tip for any Unfogged ladies thinking of following her lead, don't stick the barrel of your rifle out the window because that makes it easy for the enemy to see which window's got the sniper in it, viz. it's the one with the rifle barrel sticking out. Get well back and shoot from inside the room, with as narrow a field of view as you can manage, and you'll keep most of the flash, smoke and report inside the room as well.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:34 AM
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Everybody has a first day on the job.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:45 AM
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Anyway, if she hadn't had a bandana, she would have gotten all kinds of bits of the wall in her hair.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:48 AM
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Also, shouldn't she really have a bigger scope? That looks about as big as what deer hunters use here and they're probably never shooting at more than a few hundred yards.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:10 AM
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If she's fighting in a city she probably isn't shooting at much more distance than that either. Not all sniping happens at super long ranges.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:14 AM
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When I'm scared I get super calm sounding and almost robotic. I've never been in a situation where I completely lost it from fear so I don't know if I do the high pitched voice thing. I've been relatively lucky not to have to face many situations where panic is called for though.

I'm trying to think of specifics. The first time I had a gun pointed at me was nerve wracking, since the soldier holding it was more scared than I was. I had a moment whitewater rafting where I was pretty certain I was going to die and my thought process was all about the reasons for it - basically Archimedes principle - the water I was displacing was foamy with little bubbles so I was displacing a lighter liquid, reducing the buoyant force. My thought was "Oh great, I'm going to be killed by bubbles." The the water cleared up and I popped to the surface. I didn't get to the point of losing consciousness or anything, but at the point I popped up I was on the verge of involuntarily inhaling water. I think I may have told this story before but I'm old so I get to ramble.

Those are the two incidents that spring immediately to mind. I had a guy try to pick a fight with me and fail badly because I wouldn't stop talking politely and calmly to him while he was amping himself up with screaming and yelling. Eventually his friends pulled him away, but for a moment there it really looked like I was in for a trip to the emergency room as the guy was bigger than me by almost a factor of two. He did try to kick me in the face but failed badly in the execution.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:21 AM
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I've never been in a situation where I completely lost it from fear so I don't know if I do the high pitched voice thing

One for the next meetup, then. "Remember, this is for science. LB, start the recording. Smearcase, release the leopard."


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:25 AM
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Why does Smearcase get to hold the leopard?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:30 AM
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There should be a contest to see who gets to do that.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:32 AM
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108: Actually, of all the big cats the leopard is the one I'd least like to be killed by. Lions tend to snap the neck but leopards tend to suffocate their larger victims. So the high pitched noises I make may be a little muffled.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:36 AM
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Unless Smearcase owns a leopard. That's probably it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:37 AM
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Why does Smearcase get to hold the leopard?

I dunno, he just strikes me as trustworthy with regard to leopards.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 7:06 AM
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There used to be leopards on the grounds of the library where I work. Not before it was a library but while it was operational as a library. I was told their names recently but I've forgotten. In other news the Gulf is a weird fucking place.

I am preternaturally calm in extreme stress emergency type situations but extremely stressed out with occasional trips to the edge of panic at all other times. In another life I could easily have become an adrenaline junkie for that reason alone.

102 is some sound advice. A bright blue bandanna might be just the thing if she was part of a counter-sniper team but it looks like she was just lucky. May her luck hold.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 7:51 AM
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I thought it was weird that libraries sometimes have swimming pools here.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 8:02 AM
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That's for the tigers. The leopard is not a keen swimmer.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 8:04 AM
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I NEVER IMAGINED THE LIBRARIANS WOULD RIP MY FACE OFF


Posted by: Opinionated Leopard | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 8:33 AM
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115: Really! The inspiration for the Alan Hollinghurst novel?


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 9:04 AM
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Just your friendly neighborhood robber baron nearing death and feeling the need to assuage his guilt.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 9:08 AM
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The Carnegie Library of Homestead has not just a pool, but a concert hall. Hanson and Ben Fold's Five will there this summer.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 9:12 AM
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More practical and just as experimentally useful for this purpose is to get Smearcase to hold a baby.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 9:21 AM
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91: Skin-to-skin (golden hour!) was, iirc, encouraged but not really pushed when I had the Calabat, but when Pebbles was born, they were definitely sticking to that hour as much as they could. The Calabat pooped on me and the golden hour so wound up being swaddled/vaxxed/etc after about five minutes, but Pebbles stayed on my chest for an hour while they swooped around and took all the measurements, etc. She was a little bit chilled so they put a warm blanket over us instead of putting her in the warming tray. I didn't feel like it was intrusive but after about 45 minutes I felt like we were mostly waiting around less for bonding time and more because regulations said we had to wait another 15 minutes before moving to the recovery room.

The hospital had also switched to a policy of not offering pacifiers to babies unless the mom specifically requested. This to me felt too paternalistic.

The bad part of the BFHI is when they use breastfeeding as an excuse to close night nurseries. I am a big fan of rooming-in, but it shouldn't be mandatory if mom rightly judges that she is better off sleeping and having the staff attend to the baby. Not everyone has a large helpful family nearby, and I think it's cruel to expect a new mother (who may have had a C-section) to mind a newborn with no help at all. Fortunately, the nursery here was open.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 5:21 PM
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In s sort of similar circumstance, I had a baby chick take a dump on my shirt after I let it climb on me.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-30-17 6:11 PM
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Why?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 6:42 AM
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Why did it take a dump or why did he let it climb on him?


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 6:45 AM
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The chick seemed bored in a little box. I couldn't take it for a walk because it wasn't strong enough to move a leash. So I picked it up to walk around with it and it decided to walk up my arm.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 6:49 AM
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It's almost as if you people don't know how to misinterpret a sentence for comic value.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 9:53 AM
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Once I thought it was dead, but it was just sleeping very deeply.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 10:06 AM
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I had gone to the garage to get a garden trowel so I could bury it before anybody else woke up.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 10:08 AM
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Beneath that drunken exterior, Moby is just a big old softie.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 10:09 AM
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Every animal I've buried was dead, so far as I could tell.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 10:51 AM
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Or at least dead to you.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 11:55 AM
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I have no idea why, but 2017 is the "year of the bear trying to eat you" in Alaska. There was just another one today. An 11 year-old boy stopped a bear charging him with a shotgun loaded with birdshot (and then adults with bigger guns killed it).


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 7:45 PM
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Spoilers, bro.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07- 1-17 9:04 PM
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How was the bear able to charge while carrying a shotgun?


Posted by: Todd | Link to this comment | 07- 2-17 8:04 AM
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Practice.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 2-17 8:31 AM
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One paw for the gun, one paw swipes the card.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 2-17 9:08 AM
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"And with prices like these you won't see many more!"


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 07- 2-17 12:02 PM
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