in the five months we've been dating long-distance
!!
I hadn't noticed.
Phone sex, too- much safer than the real thing.
That is, pseudo-sex is just as amenable to IM as to phone.
Heh. There have been a fair amount of comments about how no one ever got a relationship out of Unfogged comments, and I've been biting my tongue because no such couple was out of the closet. But now we can use you as an example!
I'm not sure if 1 is earnest, but I actually hadn't noticed. I miss, like, one thread out of five, and still it's enough to ensure that I never know what's going on.
So maybe it takes two years for the Unfogged magic to work for Miss Year X. Teva-woman: only 23 months to go!
3: Not true; typing requires two hands.
That said, the existence of IM has pretty much made me hate phones even more than I used to.
Apo, you must have been in the other room when I was menacing Ficke.
Why would we when there's IM, email, and text messaging?
To each her own, but being able to hear a person's voice makes a huge difference if there is sweet-talking involved, IMHO.
4 makes me think that LB hadn't noticed either, in which case I feel absolved.
But damn, I don't think I could do that. I hate IM, and e-mail's not so great either. Then again, maybe with the right person...
I knew, but I didn't 'notice' -- I was told in person. I don't think there was publicly available Internet info to notice.
You have to read between the lines.
Revelations! Young love! The Unfogged Sex Palace! Woo!
As for the phone business, I still want to hear a voice, and the phone lets me walk around, or lay on the floor and throw a ball at the ceiling (NOT a euphemism!). You kids are missing out. You should have tried this long distance business when talking to your beloved meant several hundred dollars in phone bills each month.
I want to be next in line for an Unfogged relationship. Where do I go to get on the list?
I thought Ficke had given the game away here.
You should have tried this long distance business when talking to your beloved meant several hundred dollars in phone bills each month.
Several hundred?! How? Was she living in Myanmar?
15: many a young hacker dude built his first blue box pining for distant love.
If I sever my tongue from biting it it's all your fault.
So the youth of today celebrate Five month anniversaries with a blog post?
Several hundred?! How? Was she living in Myanmar?
So young, so naive. There was this one phone company, see, and it was called AT&T, and it could charge you whatever the hell it wanted for long distance.
23: well, copper wire was expensive in the 1890s.
16: Not Texas, I think. Move to a city with some other commenters, and we'll start pimping you out.
Kids these days!!! They probably do not even remember expensive cell phone calls. Unlimited minutes??!?!? Back in my day....
"I want to be next in line for an Unfogged relationship. Where do I go to get on the list?"
Plus, you do not laugh enough. Incorporate more belly laughs in your posts.
21, 27: This means that the entire Unoggedtariat has paired off with one another except me and Timbot, right?
29: "Falling in love again, falling in love again...." Call me.
Heh. For me, it worked the other way around -- I got involved with Unfogged due to a relationship. I'm not terribly surprised to see it can happen the other way around.
Oh, and Apo? Thanks for this. And "bizarrely overchicked" is, if anything, an understatement.
28: What's a recommended, non-banned representation of a belly-laugh?
ogged seems to prefer the somewhat creepy "bwahaha..."
33: That sounds more like the mad scientist laugh to me.
It all depends on who you're trying to attract.
Bwahahaha!
Muahahaha!
Ha!
Hee!
Teehee!
Funny.
Funny!
Too funny.
Hilarious!
Love me.
Awesome!
34: Our Bond films tell us that mad scientists--or at least evil ones--get mad play.
If you have an annoying laugh in person, are you obliged to represent it visually in a way that conveys its annoyingness?
36 \:
Is this "Match the laugh with the girl you want to attract"?
I'll match frowner and "Bwwahhahahhaha"
7: What else did they invent chat/ webcams for?
Do the Unfogged women give plus or minus points for a laugh induced snort? How about soda spitting?
Love me.
Nice, though don't you have to say "via Life in Hell"?
41: "You owe me a new keyboard" jokes are *sooo* 2004.
44: Punk kids. I was making 'new keyboard' jokes in the eighties.
Your letter brought forth in me laughter so uproarious that I did hit the table, causing the Victrola to skip.
Sincerely yours,
LOL
""You owe me a new keyboard" jokes are *sooo* 2004."
People have been telling masturbation jokes a lot longer than that.
46: The most obnoxious site I've seen (or heard) in quite some time. Thanks again, Apo!
I was making 'new keyboard' jokes in the eighties.
And it really meant something back then. Typewriter keyboards are much more expensive than computer keyboards.
Are you going to have to suck up to NCP all the time now, apo?
51: for all we know he has very good reason to, the scofflaw.
49: Thanks, bro. A week of honeymoon bliss in paradise did wonders for my disposition.
and throw a ball at the ceiling (NOT a euphemism!)
They reach that far? I'm impressed.
See this would be much more fun if I had known that Becks was secretly involved in a relationship and had been trying to guess who it was with, rather than finding out all at once both that a secret was being kept and what it was. That is, two secrets were revealed, one of which was that there was a secret.
I might have to comment less during work hours.
I figured it out at the point Ogged indicated in 17, although I had it recently confirmed.
That said, I think I've been in a handful of long-distance relationships, and the ones conducted primarily over email and IM went much more smoothly than the ones conducted over the phone. The ones conducted by hand-written letter were, by far, the awesome-est.
The ones conducted by hand-written letter were, by far, the awesome-est.
sent by carrier pigeon, no doubt
sent by carrier pigeon, no doubt
But of course. Painstakingly inscribed on parchment using a stylus. Have you ever tried having mail-sex in Linear A? Ridiculous.
Have you ever tried having mail-sex in Linear A? Ridiculous.
That's why they invented Fucking A.
I tried having a long-distance relationship via cuneiform tablets sent by a carrier pigeon, but it never got off the ground.
63: That was so funny I spit metheglin out through my nose onto my carrier pigeons. You owe me some new ones.
It's delicious that the blog leads to relationships for the commenters as it cockblocks ogged.
I communicate with people either online or by letter; the phone is only for those family members who are behind the times when it comes to the net.
Though it's true that some people are best interacted with (excluding in person) by phone.
Though it's true that some people are best interacted with (excluding in person) by phone.
Not only that, but best interacted with by landline. As I've recently discovered, having just gotten a cellphone. Crappy sound quality! No intonation, no sublety!
I am amazed at the number of people in my life for whom the postal rate increase is a non-factor. Apparently I am one of the last living souls who pay bills through the mail and send paper letters.
Crappy sound quality! No intonation, no sublety!
So true. I miss landlines.
69 - I think that could be part of it. I used to call people a lot more when I had a landline. Now that I'm cell-only, I make far fewer calls.
Becks & Matt, Congrats!
I really liked talking on the phone back in the day, but that certain something you get out of hearing a person's voice is highly dependent on audio quality, and long conversations don't have quite the timbre on mobiles. The downside of nixing the landline. I make a lot of little tiny "hey you! just wanted to say hi and tell you a joke," calls, and really appreciate getting those and similar voicemails.
Crappy sound quality! No intonation, no sublety!
Fortunately, some of us have found better ways of sharing music than playing it over the phone.
Yeah, landlines sounded much better, but you can't send drunk texts that way, and that by far is the most expressive medium.
Crappy sound quality!
Definitely true after I put mine through the wash the second time.
I don't make phone calls because I'm afraid of who will pick up the phone.
Oh, man, I hate talking on cells. I've complained before that my hearing isn't all that, and I find cell conversations strained and difficult.
On the topic: I hate instant messaging and e-mailing shivbunny. Big fan of the phone, including text messaging. Weird, for a couple that met online, but there it is.
Well, at least Cala's not crazy. Seriously, doesn't this resonate with people here?
We've had some discussions about that here, though I can't find them. Some people, like me, hate IM, and other, fallen people, seem to love it.
And why the fuck weren't you meeting me online?
I think it's come up. You probably didn't approve and I probably didn't care.
That sounded snippier than I meant it.
85: 'Cause I already had a shivbunny?
Some have never used it.
Indeed, if you don't like answering the phone whenever it rings, why would you endure being instant-messaged?
Christ, I ask people's permission before I phone them -- long-distance friends, that is, with the intention of chatting for an hour.
I'm not sure why people have ditched their landlines altogether; mine costs all of $12/month just to have it.
You are all living in the future.
Cala, you owe us the story of you and the Shivver met. Distract me from the St Petersburg Paradox, I beg you.
Not my fault you're doing decision theory.
78: totally with you here, to the degree that since I made the cell my only phone, I find myself putting off necessary catch-up calls to friends and relatives because I dislike the strain that the shitty sound imposes on the conversation so much.
mine costs all of $12/month just to have it.
Holy hell, where do you live? I was paying about $25 in basic fees just to keep a landline active.
I see that should have been "78, and a lot of other numbers." Didn't read all the way upthread, oops.
if you don't like answering the phone whenever it rings, why would you endure being instant-messaged?
B/c you can check messages without having to get up, and you can multi-task while messaging more easily than you can on the phone.
$12/month?! Does that plan allow you to both make and receive telephone calls?
95: Is this an admission that interactions with people often seem filled with pointless moments when you pretend to listen while trying to go through the day's checklist? I could see that. Non-phone interaction makes that easier. In person interaction seems to have fewer such moments. At least initially. I suspect the end-point is the Emerson No Relationship life.
39, what makes you think I laugh? Ever? I haven't even smiled since 1992.
Any humor you find in my remarks is entirely the creation of your own fevered brain.
93:
You're in NY, no? What can I say.
Apropos of the future, Armsmasher points out that Cars are cool and the past is for chumps!
http://grammarpolice.net/archives/001305.php
Apologies to all and sundry for refusing to get the embedded html under my belt. really.
I am not a fan of IM or voicemail. Send me an e-mail or see me in person. Or schedule a phone appointment, my long-distance friends.
To return to our past topic of laptops in the classroom, here's a utopian for you:
Laptops in the classroom: Mend it, don't end it
As a teacher, I can confirm that most of us love to be the center of attention, and laptops threaten our fiefdoms. For years, we have pointed the desks toward us and shut the window blinds to maintain our monopolies. When we punish the class clown, it's not for being funny; it's for being funnier than we are. Admitting laptops into the classroom means facing the reality that in the competition for attention, our best lectures can't even beat solitaire.
To productively use laptops in the classroom, teachers need to be willing to surrender their supremacy. Students no longer need us for the facts because facts are instantly available on the Internet. Instead, they need us to help them figure out what to do with all that data. It's ironic that law school professors are leading the laptop backlash, since their discipline saw this trend coming decades ago when they stopped trying to teach the law and focused instead on teaching legal reasoning.
IM is horrible. It's like typing out an entire telephone conversation. A telephone conversation with a bad delay.
Talking to people on my cell phone sucks because sometimes I can barely hear the other person, and there's a slight delay which means I'm always jumping in when the other person's started to speak, and vice versa.
Email's the only way to go.
I liked cell phones, and then I got in-calling, and then I got engaged, and now my mother can call me an hour a day.
Does in-calling only apply when your phone service is with the same company? Or does it mean that you can receive calls for free from anyone, like the way mobiles work in the UK? Because, if it's the former, you should switch carriers right away, Cala.
It's the former. The whole Calaclan is on verizon and omg they never stop talking.... who has the ability to receive calls for free from anyone? Internationally (i.e. Canada) even?
I don't think that anyone does, not here. They do in the UK. That's why it costs more money to phone a UK mobile than to phone a UK land line.
We ain't immigrating to the UK. For one, shivbunnies retail poorly secondhand on eBay.
IM is horrible. It's like typing out an entire telephone conversation. A telephone conversation with a bad delay.
Back in '02 several friends of mine and I spent the winter group IMimg each other. It was fun. None of us have done it since, however. I can't even remember my IM password now.
Cell phones I love, though. The convenience more than makes up for the shitty reception.
102 is correct, if by "Email" you mean "Facebook".
Also, parsimon totally got that link in 100 from me. 'Cause we said exactly the same thing walking through the Modernism exhibit at the Corcoran.
111: I had never even heard of Facebook before I read a New Yorker article on it.
And get off my lawn, Ned.