I don't see what the problem is with raisiny snowballing either. The dude seems to think it's easier than eating raisins the normal way.
Then maybe it is the kind of place you'd like to work. And you're Youth, too. They're hiring.
Chewed raisins may be easier to eat than unchewed, but they're not as easy as breast milk. That guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
I see they're related to notorious content thieves collegehumor.com.
Ben, be sure to negotiate for some of their foam shockers as a condition of employment.
I mean, i thought this was the 'pretend to drown so you can make out with the hot lifeguard' trick.
My question was serious! What thread's it from?
That was neat.
Where's swampcracker? Is there still a meet-up in NYC tonight? I think I was supposed to arrange it, but I was gone all day yesterday.
Wow, flashback to middle school. This is very appropriate for 90's Alt-Rock Nostalgia Night.
flashback to middle school
That was uncalled for.
Even from an angel, I'll pass, thanks.
16: That made me choke on my lunch. Where's their editor?
I now feel good, which makes me uncomfortable.
17: The headline was likely the work of the editor or copy editor. They work in obscurity, so they've got to make the best of opportunities like that.
Most people don't realize that writers are generally not responsible for their headlines, such as the one over my review of a Yo-Yo Ma concert calling him a "cellest."
All it's missing is the one 30-something trying to be Down With The Kids.
I like the seemingly involuntary sneer on the face of the pink-shirted dude.
When I first started watching it, I saw the girl flanked by the two guys and thought "Woah, with three attractive young people in a workspace like that, the sexual tension has got to be unbearable!" and so on from there. I think working there would be hell.
I think working there would be hell.
I think working there would be awesome. Sexual tension makes for a more interesting workplace.
We had our grad school department party last night. It was hell.
I thought for sure they worked for American Apparel. But a "new media" company fits just as well.
26: The trick is to keep it out of the realm of the possible. Actual lusting after coworkers can lead to problems.
Actual lusting after coworkers can lead to problems.
28: From Becks?
28: See, that's the thing. I'm fine with both actual lusting and pointless flirting, but if a guy is not going to tell me he's married until 3am, I can't be expected to know the difference.
I speak only of others, of course. I have not lusted after coworkers since my coffee shop days, lo those many years ago.
All it's missing is the one 30-something trying to be Down With The Kids.
No, I'm in there if you look closely.
if a guy is not going to tell me he's married until 3am, I can't be expected to know the difference.
Ah, well that's just fucked up. We were all blithely unattached the last time I had a job like that; marital status wasn't an issue I thought to worry about.
I think it's a grad-schoolish problem. Most of the married people are married to people who aren't their intellectual equals, so they treat grad school like it's a fantasy land filled with bright, attractive, clever people to flirt with. The guy in question is not someone I'm particularly interested in, but he's cute, and has been following me around for the past few weeks and making eyes at me. So I had just gotten around to thinking about whether I thought he was doable when he brings up his wife.
This has happened a lot to me in grad school. I'm always the last to know about wives.
90's Alt-Rock Nostalgia Night
Is someone else doing this tonight as well?
Three dance songs from the 90s that hold up very well today: "Groove Is in the Heart" (Deee-Lite), "All That She Wants" (Ace of Base), "Born Slippy" (Underworld).
That Ace of Base song is a fucking abomination that doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same company as the other two.
35: "100% Pure Love" is better than "Groove is in the Heart."
Last night I nearly injured myself doing the Humpty Dance. It totally holds up.
And here I had hoped to never have to contemplate again the notion of Scandinavian Reggae Pop.
Thanks alot, Kriston.
It's the best Ace of Base song, you have to admit that. And the lyrics are semi-intelligent, and the music is a bit eerie.
I made a couple "Dance Party '94" CDs for a party a couple years back, at the tail-end of the Napster era. I'd been spending a while thinking of the songs that were big back then that have sort of fallen out of everyone's memory. Can't remember very many, other than "Here Comes the Hotstepper", "Ditty" by Paperboy, "Ooh Aah, Just A Little Bit, and this one, which got a great response.
Making the ultimate 90s m1x0rz! is hard work. Does one plays songs by Boyz II Men, Another Bad Creation, and Bel Biv Devoe sequentially as a gesture of respect for the East Coast Family? On the alt-rock side, does one include Pavement, an 00s band that played in the 90s? Or the Pixies, a 90s band that played from the 80s?
Yo-Yo may not be the cellest, but he's way celler than anyone else around.
A) Pavement is not an 00s band! their first single was released in 1989, their first album in 1992, and their fifth and last album in 1999. They're the most 90s band possible.
B) Skip Another Bad Creation entirely, replace them with Tony! Toni! Toné!, and don't play any Boyz II Men songs except "Motownphilly".
US3, "Cantaloop." Everyone loves that song.
Pavement, an 00s band that played in the 90s
Huh?
Also, delight the East Coast Family completists with this oft-forgotten jam by MC Brains.
Drop the crackpipe, Smasher. Pavement was a complete 90s indie band. When you consider their jangly and slightly obscured mixes on the earlier albums, it really sounds like Archers of Loaf and other early 90s underground. You should still include the Pixies and hope no one gets snitty though.
Also, all Pumpkins songs must be off Siamese Dream or earlier releases.
"Cantaloop"
Ooh that reminds me, this song is a must.
49: Oh, I love that video and had forgotten the name. Great song.
44B is absolutely correct. A B'more Club DJ played that song last night and brought the house down even though it was full of 20-somethings who were there for quirky synths, hilarious vocals and pounding beats.
Also, all 90s-style dance parties require La Bouche's "Be My Lover".
And finally, has anyone heard of this before? I remember it being on 120 Minutes a few times, and it may have been a Buzz Clip. Still entirely unique.
Ned, a friend of mine has been using it as a punchline for a while.
Someone linked to that vid here very recently.
of course, if you like a girl at work and but are also tryinhg to not say or be touchy in an inappropriately sexual way and wsait a few months until your internship is up it probably means when you od ask her out at the end she'll be like "chris, you're really cool but i just don't think of you that way" and then you spend a week just listenging to the smiths and hank williams and the verve
Southern Culture on the Skids - "Camel Walk." It gets the people going.
This is why I didn't invite you all. Look, Pavement was far too influential on bands playing to this day to be relegated to the 90s bin; their material holds up consistently to examination. I'm not really a huge Malkmus fan but I recognize that he was an outlier. Irony was not key to 90s music.
The Pixies—no one's going to think to play them on the 80s night, right? Still, I feel a little uncomfortable including them.
Something put that song into my head recently, after not thinking of it for a good eleven years following my brief sexual obsession with it at age 12. Total serendipity, I have no idea what brought it to mind. I fully support "izzle pfaff"s move to make it an internet fad.
re: 45
I saw US3 at the Volcano* in Glasgow in about 92/93. They had an absurdly talented live band.
* the club the club scenes and club exterior shots for Trainspotting were filmed at. Bulldozed, years ago.
Look, Pavement was far too influential on bands playing to this day to be relegated to the 90s bin; their material holds up consistently to examination.
What is this progressivist view of history nonsense? Pavement were an evolutionary level above their contemporaries, eh? Only they understood irony, eh? That would be news to other irony-laden hitmakers of the '90s.
60: Tripping Daisy was, like, my favorite band in high school. They went on to put out some much better, distinctively fucked-up stuff on their next two albums before breaking up and then the whole Polyphonic Spree thing.
Here's one that could be on either the rock or party mix. You can tell I thought a lot about this a couple years ago.
57: See, when Slanted and Enchanted came out it was such a perfect distillation/crystallization of the ethos and aesthetic of its period that thinkng about it as anything other than early-90s is jarring to me. And who said anything about relegation? Perfect sound forver, dude, perfect sound forever.
This is why I didn't invite you all. Look, Pavement was far too influential on bands playing to this day to be relegated to the 90s bin; their material holds up consistently to examination.
I don't understand why "90s-themed" needs to include only 90s-bound bands.
i was just listening to tripping daisy yesterday and was like, "this is such testosterone-only music"
pavement was unique for doing noise in a more frenetic way than people like jesus & mary chain/galaxie 500/shoegaze people. the irony thing wasn't so unique
65: Why testosterone-only? Which CD?
Also, you can't forget to put the Eni-gma in the middle of the dance CD.
67: But I want people to dance, C-Ned.
This was my favorite song in 1995.
I really loved that Lucas-with-the-lid-off number.
About half the tracks listed in the past 5 or 10 comments are by bands I've never heard of. Clearly one of those US/UK divides as a lot of US 'college' bands never cross the Atlantic (and vice versa).
Here's three dance songs that bridge the 80s-90s gap, all from around 1990. Can they be orphans, belonging to no decade? Surely not!
Tom's Diner (it may be a cliché, but I haven't heard it in years, except a couple times on NPR)
Natargacam, I thought you might be surprised that the Gina G song was a hit in the US.
22, 32: I was just saying that what horrifies me particularly about this exercise in narcissism is that most of the staff seem nearly identical to the clique of recent-college-grads that I'm friends with, and it makes me shudder to think what it would be like to work with 50 of them (again.) But what really puts it beyond the pale is that there appear to be a few people in my age cohort working there, desperately trying to cling to the aura of their rapidly fading youth by engaging in these sorts of histrionics. I remember the '90s. Much of it sucked (not as badly as things suck now, but it was hardly a golden age either.) This hyper-nostalgia for the hyperreal is just sad. If you're that inured to the (well-deserved) social opprobrium that should accrue to participants in this sort of nonsense, then you should be using your shamelessness for a higher purpose.
A ping-pong table! Harumph!
re: 74
Good point, actually. It's a bit of cheesy classic here -- I've heard it in clubs fairly recently.
re: 76
Actually, fairly recently means 'about 2 years ago' which shows you how often I go to clubs (other than to see live bands). Bah.
66: " I Am an Elastic Firecracker"
I didn't listen to it for likie 6 months after i picked it up because hte cover creeped me the fuck out.
testeroney because its like all angry and jump around punching stuff. Like i was going to listen to it but i took it out before i picked up my (script-adhering) friend bcause i was like 'no way girls don't like it." i was thinking its as close to metal/hard rock as i come, barring the really weird exception like dopethrone and led zepplin and mcklusky
Most of the married people are married to people who aren't their intellectual equals, so they treat grad school like it's a fantasy land filled with bright, attractive, clever people to flirt with.
Maybe you should talk this over with some of these people--marry in haste, repent at leisure, you know. I've always found it terribly tragic when male intellectuals--in particular--have to wait to leave their wives for a graduate student until they're forty-five or fifty.
75: My nostalgia is limited to the music. And the brief, bizarre commodification of grunge era.
78: Huh. "i am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER" seems very un-angry to me. I guess there are a few pretty hard-rocking songs on that one, but it's not their natural state. But I still don't get what's un-female-friendly about hard rock. All the chicks I know are really into loud rock music.
79: Yeah, there's a guy at my school who's engaged to this woman he obviously despises, and he flirts relentlessly with all the smart girls at school, talking about what a relief it is to be around people who have something to say about something other than television. But he's digging his own grave. I figure guys who end up in relationships like that are marrying for their self-image, getting to be "the smart one" or whatever.
Arguing for Pavement because they were influential in the same post that worries about including the Pixies is a bit odd.
The DNA/Vega track is a great call. Thanks!
A lot of people forget that the Afghan Whigs actually had a hit during the post-Nirvana boom.
Sonic Youth too.
Would Rocket From The Crypt be too obscure?
A ping-pong table! Harumph!
The office where I worked during my brief stint in the dot-com world had a basketball court.
Most of the married people are married to people who aren't their intellectual equals
Most? Yuck.
89: And who talk about that problem constantly. Yes, it's gross.
I was thinking back and trying to remember what I was really listening to in the early/mid-90s. And I have a hard time coming up with much distinctive. All the usual US grunge/post-grunge acts, various bits of the British Brit-Pop 'boom', some of the hip-hop from that period was great (I'm thinking various classic G-Funk type tunes), etc.
But I think that was a period when I was heavily immersed in various bits of 'old' music, though.
The same Christmas when I asked for the Tripping Daisy CD, I also received the soundtrack to Virtuosity. I don't know why that happened, but I really liked it. It has all this really disturbing and cool stuff on it, mostly very early trip-hop.
82: S/B "All the chicks I know are really into loud rock music and psychopaths".
Speaking of the psychopath-curious, where's Alameida?
89: There's an objective dynamic here, of course. A spouse, usually a wife, makes getting a PhD a lot easier.
In my case it's uncertain who was the dumper and who was the dumpee, but if I had managed to stay married in 1975 I may well have ended up grumbling out of the other side of my mouth as a PhD with an unhappy, boring wife.
Completely OT, if I have figured out a convincing argument against David Berri's basketball metric, I would be very, very happy.
I'm almost sure I'm missing something, and yet . . . if I'm not, that would be fantastic.
94: This seems right to me. In fact, one of my conversations with a few girlfriends ended in our expressing of a desire for a wife at home to make dinner, bring a cigar and a bourbon, perform oral sex, and get us into bed at a reasonable hour.
73: I'd tend to think of "Buffola Stance" and "Tom's Diner" as 80s material, regardless of the actual date of release. The dancing, hair and clothing fashions, style of scratching, slightly off-kilter aspects of the Neneh Cherry connect it for me to all sorts of other late eighties hip hop (early Queen Latifah, De La Soul, etc.) The beat of "Tom's Diner" always seemed to me to owe a lot to Soul II Soul , and the dance moves in the videos also remind me more of 80s styles. Granted, this is all very late 80s, and a lot of this stuff persistent into the 90s, just like every hair band didn't drop dead right away. But they definitely fall to the 80s side for me.
While talking 80s music, I should mention that whenever anyone says that someone is the hero, I think of this song, and prefer, in my ignorance, to think that it's an intentional reference.
95: Have you tried asking at Saiselgy's place? He just put up a basketball post.
52: I downloaded a Whale song (mislabeled as The Beta Band) called "Crying at Airports" a few years back that was briefly My Favoritest Song Ever. Had Tricky on vocals, I think. Sounds nothing like the one you posted.
Also, my 2007 is far better now that I remember that "Ditty" and "Cantaloop" exist. A little Scatman John and I'll be ready for the weekend.
98 -- I'm hoping that there will be a response at the linked site.
I know most people here aren't interested in the details, but that was intended as "good news" comment rather than a "help me out here" comment. I just wanted to share.
The update seems a little hasty; we're only 100 comments in. I do think the "workplace sexual tension" subthread is more promising than the "links to 90s music videos" subthread.
Also, my 2007 is far better now that I remember that "Ditty" and "Cantaloop" exist.
Strange, I thought "Whiney Whiney" or "Here Comes The Hotstepper" would be far more evocative.
And then, of course, there's this.
I do think the "workplace sexual tension" subthread is more promising than the "links to 90s music videos" subthread.
The links to the music videos are secondary to the general purpose of reminding each other than the songs exist.
Weekdays are better for the men vs. women threads anwyay.
I've never heard of most of the songs, though, probably because I was in elementary school when they came out. And I still maintain that talking about workplace sexual tension would be more interesting.
(Weekdays seem to be better for all threads around here. I don't know what the hell you people do on the weekends, but it doesn't seem to involve much internet.)
ATTENTION PLEASE - teo will now regale us with ribald tales of workplace sexual tension.
Also, I didn't see what was so special about this video in any way.
Mostly I'm just looking for recommendations of places to work. Two birds with one stone, you know.
75: ... desperately trying to cling to the aura of their rapidly fading youth by engaging in these sorts of histrionics ...
Why do you have to make me cry?
No, ogged is right; this thread is weak. On the other hand, it's a saturday.
103: Man, I wouldn't have thought that'd hold up. I remember loving that song when I was what, 14?
It's not from the 90s, but this song from a few years back seems appropriate. (Not entirely SFW.)
(Boy, I hope no one misreads that as "entirely SFW.")
I'm just saying, the married contingent of my graduate student cohort doesn't feature a ton of dumb spouses, let alone people actively complaining about the intellectual inadequacies of said spouses. Maybe I'd hear more about it if I were single, or maybe I just did an unusually good job picking which fellow students to befriend.
Man, MC 900 ft Jesus. I used to like that song of his about being an arsonist.
Wow, MC Paul Barman. Born too early to be a "nerdcore" superstar.
... and too late to be featured on Beavis and Butthead.
re: 113
the married contingent of my graduate student cohort doesn't feature a ton of dumb spouses
I suspect that claim made by AWB is nothing more than snobbery anyway.
I'm one of those married graduate students, and I'm fairly sure someone who was inclined to measure intellect by qualifications would draw exactly the same conclusion about my spouse. And if they did, fuck 'em.
113: Seriously, if there were a guy, and he was engaged to someone, and he made it clear that he "despised" her--or, god forbid, had actually married the poor girl--well, I wouldn't consider him flirting material. That's an unbelievably crappy thing to do.
And I've met a fair number of people who think that no one outside their programs has any intelligence whatsoever; this is almost always untrue. A marriage between intellectual equals doesn't always mean "a marriage between two people who have read the exact same authorities on Hegel and speak of their intellectual interests in identical, properly-academic terms".
Plus, seriously, AWB, surely you've heard that "my wife doesn't understand me" stuff before.
.
hmm interesting. None of the married people in grad school complained about this problem, and from what I could tell the spouses were pretty smart, if sometimes weird.
It seems we've found our controversy. 500 here we come!
Re: 82: I probably hang out with much more conventional (read: sorority attending) girls than post on unfogged. I suppose this overlaps with the gender part of this thread, too. OTOH, the girl i was trying to hook up with both was in a sorority, and majored in religion and i met workign in a state senators office. activist corssover. papa's got a brand new mixed bag.
also, excpet for on the internet, i don't really think of people with exceptionally high IQ really any better than other people. They're just more neurotic. I usually avoid discussion of politics etc in real life though.
As if ogged isn't just as responsible as anyone for our current unfunniness.
The hollowness of all my aspirations is brought home to me now: what good is all of Unfogged's vaunted intellectual superiority if we can't even be funny?
You can't be funky if you don't have a soul, I guess...truer words were never sung.
Jesus Christ, guys, I'm not a snob, and I've never met these wives. I'm just saying that's how these guys describe their wives. I certainly have never thought people outside grad school are dumb. I just think it's really shitty that it's practically a school-wide pasttime to bitch about how dumb your spouse is and watch everyone else nod their heads in sympathy.
The problem is that we all know too much about each other, so we fall back on the crutches of ad hominem witticisms, and baiting, and tailoring our humorosities to a narrow audience. Quick everyone, start using different screennames, and don't tell each other who is who.
The other thing to note about the update is that the excerpt quoted isn't that funny.
The problem is that we failed to hate them?
I can't hate them because I find the first woman unbearably attractive.
excerpt quoted isn't that funny
Weasel.
re: 127
In that case, these guys sound like pricks.
it's practically a school-wide pastime to bitch about how dumb your spouse is
Your school must be somewhat different from mine. I've never heard anyone, male or female, make this complaint about their partner.
125 gets it right. If Ogg himself can't say anthing amusing in the post itself, what does he expect from the comments?
Fair enough, awb, but you did say "[m]st of the married people are married to people who aren't their intellectual equals" which is stronger than "that's how these guys describe their wives."
McG and I went to schools full of spouse-respecting colleagues, for analytic philosophy is full of the right and the good, while other parts of the humanities are full of contemptuous, spouse-hating snobs.
McG and I went to schools full of spouse-respecting colleagues, for analytic philosophy is full of the right and the good, while other parts of the humanities are full of contemptuous, spouse-hating snobs.
Hey, EXCUSE ME! I'M RIGHT HERE! *waves arms spastically*
The thing is, ogged was never funny. He would always try to make jokes, which always failed, and then he'd blame others for their failure, typically with the ritual expostulation "AMTF".
You're kind of sensitive about this, Ben.
oops, 135's character assassination is from me.
Ben's dissertation, 101 ways to be really funny, is soon to be a bestselling self-help book.
Ben is reveling in the high-brow audience of his blog and comparing it to the Lowest Common Denominator to which this blog is racing.
At my law school, i never remember anyone saying anything bad about thier spouse, although coming straight from college, i didn't end up knowing too many of the married people.
It was true that most of the married people were dudes, generally to lower income/time/pressure/demands career types.
analytic philosophy is full of the right and the good, while other parts of the humanities are full of contemptuous, spouse-hating snobs.
This is of course true. Not just full of the right and the good, but also the suave and the bad-ass.
Which -- The Suave and the Bad-ass -- was the original title of W.D. Ross's book.
I think that English Department faculty tend to be especially vain and conceited. Ecept for the worried, neurotic ones, I mean.
118: And I've met a fair number of people who think that no one outside their programs has any intelligence whatsoever; this is almost always untrue.
I'm sure it's just an editing error, but the "almost" is unnecessary. There is no program such that no one outside the program has any intelligence whatsoever.
139: He's already collecting material for it.
142: crap, I'm trying to make a joke about Rossian intuitionism and how Ross had the power to directly intuit how to get women to make out with him, but he never really resolved the incompatibilities of prima facie layability and conflicts between partners; obviously the joke is going nowhere but the concept seems promising.
It seemed to at the time. Then I killed the blog.
In an attempt to get it out of my head, I'm listening to this again.
If you're bored then you're boooring.
You're welcome, eb.
I can't hate them because I find the first woman unbearably attractive.
There's something telling about the "unbearably," w-lfs-n. I can't quite put my finger on what it tells, but it seems to somehow characterize your high school experience. Which, apparently, sat one row over from mine.
151: Fortunately, I never knew the lyrics, just the tune, which I've now forgotten again.
What the hell is going on here?
That asked, I didn't watch the original vimeo in the first place, got dial-up, baby.
Somebody said something early on about pre-chewed raisins being preferable. That sounded, uh, at least worth a question or two.
No one is on dial-up anymore, parsimon; you're going to have to come up with a better excuse.
I find the first woman unbearably attractive.
Yes, this. We could make this the permanent top post (or make her the banner image) and I don't think I'd complain.
She's very very very cute, but I watched some of her other videos and I think I detect an evil vibe.
Um, no matter how alluring she is, I don't want the permanent top post to show her opening her mouth really really wide. What are you saying, apop?
I finally watched the second, raisin clip. Do they know that there are human cultures in which it's not unusual for babies to be fed pre-chewed food?
155:
Go to verizon dot com or whatever and put in my address: No, the infrastructure in your neighborhood is degraded, sorry. The squirrels and the water -- they call it rain -- mess up the lines alla time. Actually it's just old.
You want me to get cable internet or something? Is there something I'm missing terribly?
Anyway. Meanwhile I have wildlife in the backyard, suffices.
I'm trying to not weigh in about people marrying people they can't talk to, dammit.
What I say about dial-up is a metaphysical truth, parsimon. I don't know from dot com.
My parents also live in an area where DSL is not available, and they were on dialup until a couple months ago when they got cable.
There is no broader band than in apostropher's pants.
opening her mouth really really wide. What are you saying, apop?
I may be questioning your sexuality, Ned. But I'll leave it murky for now.
What I say about dialup is a metaphysical truth also, ogged, but of a different sort.
the ritual expostulation "AMTF"
I google that and get this. But I've the nagging suspicion this isn't what you mean.
Ha! I win!
Also, I would want to argue with 143, being in English myself, but it's true. They're fucking BITTER. I can't wait till I get to be just like them. Seven more years, baby! Then I too can be crotchety about politics and my (lack of a) salary!
149: Really? How could you? '90s one-hit wonders didn't get any better than this.
102 et seq. -- My theory is that failure of the workplace sexual tension theme to take off and the comparative weekday/weekend quality have the same basic explanation -- no one here is deeply in tune to the workplace sexual tension, because we're all spending our workdays reading/commenting here.
Interesting theory, but wouldn't that involve positing that everyone here spends their time so intensely focused on Unfogged that they don't notice anything that's happening around them? Actually, come to think of it that doesn't sound so implausible.
Stras, "AMTF" stands for "A Mineshaft Too Far".
AWB--Of these unequal intellectual pairings, how many involve women who thinks that their husbands are intellectually inferior?
A Midget Trio Frontman
Absquatulating Milanese Terraform Fenus.
173: For some reason, the women I know whose husbands are described as intellectually inferior seem fine with it. It's not a source of angst or an excuse for other sexual desires, that I know of.
Fine with it or not, it seems to me there is something seriously problematic if anyone is describing their spouse as "intellectually inferior."
179: Well, not in those words, but as long as it's not used as an excuse for ill treatment, I'm not sure why we all should be forced to date someone with exactly the same intellect as ourselves all the time. I've dated men who I'd describe, without humility, as smarter than me. Should I never date someone who isn't as smart as me? I think I have the right to do so, but not to use it as a tool to make people feel sorry for me, or as an excuse to cheat on them.
I guess what bothers me, in addition to public slagging on partners, is my suspicion that some people prefer being with someone they see as inferior so they can hold it over their heads, act the martyr, and use the partner's perceived inferiority as a social bargaining chip in professional situations.
Yeah, that's what bothers me about it too. Of course you don't have to date/marry your intellectual equal (aren't you thrilled to have my permission?). But if you are describing your partner to others in terms of the ways in which your partner is (in your mind) inferior to you, there's a serious respect issue.
We used to be funny!
Yeah, sorry. I've been really busy lately and not able to comment much.
I suspect that non-grad students are smarter than grad students for obvious reasons. Llike having decided not to go to grad school.
75: Specifically, the guy in the SILF shirt looks like someone I knew in HS, and he was just the sort of guy who would be cagily pretending to be 25, and working at a place like that.
186: Also, it would be more meta if the shirt read "SYLPH"
Having finally clicked on the supposedly-funnier-than-us thread, it's clear to me that Ogged is confusing "funny" with "British," a phenomenon roughly analogous to that discussed by Yglesias here. Random interjections of "cor!" and "cunt!" and "I'll give them cancer, I will!" aren't actually funny, but are exotic enough to American ears to give the mediocre musings of upper-middle-class websurfers the appearance of rough-hewn, Old World authenticity, which meshes well with wannabe fogeys like Ogged and the targets of their lazy ire (in this case, boisterous youth).
wannabe fogeys will eventually get there even if they change their minds and want to go somewhere else. Or they can die early. Take your pick.
I guess what bothers me, in addition to public slagging on partners, is my suspicion that some people prefer being with someone they see as inferior so they can hold it over their heads, act the martyr, and use the partner's perceived inferiority as a social bargaining chip in professional situations.
This seems way too simple; it's the most obvious explanation, and therefore wrong. Pace Occam.
People with intellectual smarts pair up with partners who aren't inclined that way because life can be boring otherwise. Who wants to go home to more of the same?
Most of my short-term relationships, whether 2 months or 10 months, have been with academics. All of my long-term relationships have been with seriously non-academic types (though still very smart). YMMV.
It comes down to whether your work is your life. Whether you live and breathe it. Some do. If you entirely inhabit your work, you adore being with someone who also inhabits it.
If you don't, entirely, but think you should, you will be conflicted about why you don't. So you might complain about your choice in marriage.
fwiw, I try this explanation on for size. It doesn't quite fit.
Where your explanation doesn't seem to fit is in that I don't read you as perceiving your non-academic partners as your intellectual inferiors. The people AWB describes seem to think that their non-academic partners are dumb -- or at least seem to want to get some mileage out of describing their partners that way. Or from making their parnters feel that way. That's where the big yuck comes in, to me.
AWB also encounters these people, and hears their complaints, because she is flirting with them. She is an egregious flirt. It invites people to ask themselves what they might be missing.
No wonder.
AWB, you could tell me what you mean by that, or not. I used to be your way, or have been at times. There's nothing wrong with it on the face of it. When you have men who are married following you around (your words) however, you yourself are engineering something.
Otherwise, peace.
195: I don't flirt with anyone I know is married. The problem is, they don't tell me until weeks after I meet them. (Once, I found out my closest friend from work had a fiancee a year and a half after we started hanging out.) I don't think there's anything wrong with assuming that someone who never wears a wedding ring or speaks of a partner is fair game.
Maybe you should ask them. First. Before you assume they're fair game.
I don't think there's anything wrong with assuming that someone who never wears a wedding ring or speaks of a partner is fair game.
This seems exactly right.
197: Married men have no agency or responsibility here? Maybe you're envisioning me as some kind of unscrupulous predator, which I'm really not. The case I described above was someone I did not even remotely flirt with--he's just not my type at all--but when it became clear that he liked me and was initiating a lot of flirty conversation with me, I gave him some small attention in return, to which he then replied, "Oh, but I'm married!" Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but I feel there's a bit of a game of "gotcha" going on here.
I'm on my way out.
197: It seems reasonable enough to assume that a guy who wears no ring, flirts back, and never mentions a wife is fair game. It seems a little unfair to make AWB responsible for these guys' failure to disclose.
I think that P. meant "egregious" in the sense of "delightful" or "charming".
Maybe you're envisioning me as some kind of unscrupulous predator, which I'm really not
No, I don't really think you are, but I'd not have been writing these things if it hadn't occurred to me.
That's just utter honesty.
Put it this way: one can work with the assumption that people are available until they show signs that they're not. Or, one can assume that people are not available until they indicate that they are.
Oh, woo woo, it's a delicate game of testing to see. If you walk around sexualized, barge in under the first assumption, you will find people willing to prevaricate. I don't see why you're surprised at all.
To be clear: I have no judgment one way or the other about these approaches to sexual engagement. It's not like you have to sign up for one or the other for life. Just see what you're doing.
Or, one can assume that people are not available until they indicate that they are.
I have found that this is not a very useful way to approach these situations.
If you walk around sexualized, barge in under the first assumption, you will find people willing to prevaricate.
Of all the many obnoxious stock phrases one reads here, blame the victim is near the top of the list. That said, it has its place, and this is it. Isn't that exactly what you are doing here. Apparently some guys lie to AWB about their availablity and it's her fault? WTF?
No, Idealist. I'm saying to AWB that since she finds this happening, she should check.
If you walk around sexualized, barge in under the first assumption, you will find people willing to prevaricate. I don't see why you're surprised at all.
A. What Idealist said, and B. the quoted text looks like a conversational move that annoys me every time I see it:
"People do lousy thing X, and I wish they wouldn't."
"How naive are you? People are always going to do lousy thing X, which means that you're completely responsible for treating it as an inevitable fact of nature, rather than being annoyed by it. Where do you get off calling X lousy?"
Flirting with single women without indicating that you're married is a conventional form of bad behavior. The fact that it's conventional, though, doesn't make it wrong to bitch about it -- conventional or not, it's still bad behavior.
205: She should check, why? Because she'll enjoy life more if she interrogates every man who flirts with her about his marital status? That seems to be a question best left up to her individual tastes. Or because she's in some way culpable for flirting with married men because she hasn't ruled the possibility out? That seems false -- any moral fault, if any exists in the situation, seems to be on the married person who's playing games about it.
Likewise, if I find myself flirting, and I do, I should have a little flier available explaining my no-relationship policy.
One very annoying thing about this place, as pointed out subtly by Teo in 203, is that the people who worked out or stumbled upon more or less workable ways of dealing with courtship assume a.) that their way is a good way, and b.) that everyone with any sense can do things that way. My conclusion that there is no good way may be extreme, but a lot of people have enormous difficulties people have in finding something that works, and not all the advice they get is usable.
Sorry. My impression was that AWB's approach was to flirt with basically anybody, as a general default.
"approach was to flirt with basically anybody, as a general default." s/b "is a giant whore."
No, gswift.
Flirting in general is absofuckulutely fine. It's just that if you do that, you have to be a little careful about your targets.
Do we need separate words for ISO level 1 and level 2 flirting, which does not require a goal of actual sexual activity, and ISO level 3+ flirting, which does?
This is an issue I have given some thought to.
"Do we need separate words for ISO level 1 and level 2 flirting, which does not require a goal of actual sexual activity, and ISO level 3+ flirting, which does?"
It seems as though some people think so.
Intent is the key with flirting.
Intent, and where necessary, communicating the intent. If you are already married and proceed with the flirting, it seems only fair to communicate that you are married and flirting only playfully. When you flirt without mentioning the spouse, that would seem to suggest you are flirting with at least some intent of going somewhere with it, which is kind of shitty and unfair to all involved.
Isn't the whole thing about courtship and especially flirting ambiguity about intent? When I was reading "Pride and Prejudice" I did analyze it in terms of booty distribution , but that level of clarity of analysis destroys courtship and flirting (and the story).
Thus the "where necessary" qualifier. The ambiguity adds to the thrill of flirtation, of course. But one of the things about marriage is that it's supposed to make your courtship position unambiguous (except if you're in an open marriage). That the level of clarity destroys courtship is sort of the point in the case of monogamous marriage.
It's just that if you do that, you have to be a little careful about your targets.
Come on, she explicitly said these guys "never wears a wedding ring or speaks of a partner."
I'm married, but don't wear a ring. Yes, I've been hit on before, but somehow I have never found myself explaining that I'm attached to a single woman I've known for over a year.
re: 218
Yeah, I don't wear a ring either, but I can't think of any friends, male or female, that I've know for any length of time who aren't aware that I have a partner.
What is this "marriage" of which you speak?
'Tis an institution which brings much joy and fulfillment to many. And which lures the rest to the religion you preach, John.
I'm not much of a flirt and I've run into something similar: meet someone, flirt a bit as we get to know each other and become friends, and then when it seems (to me) like it could lead to something, I learn about the guy she's been dating for four years. (This has actually played out over the course of a few weeks a couple of times, not just in the first conversation.) I haven't run into this from anyone married, though.
And just to make this on topic, once this happened with a co-worker.
Intellectually, I understand that the situations AWB and eb are describing occur. Practically, my experience has tended toward what nattarGcM and gswift describe.
It's pretty difficult for no mention of your partner to arise over repeated conversations (or even a single extended conversation). So I'm inclined to assume that if it really isn't arising, the attached person is being manipulative. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not entirely consciously. But it's often an unkind and rather selfish thing to do.
How can converse with anyone for any length of time without mentioning your significant other? Unless you want to cheat.
Last year, I went by myself to a party at a certain mansion constituted almost entirely by dudes and the models hired to make them think the party wasn't constituted entirely by dudes. I didn't know anyone, so I wandered over by the zoo, where I figured I'd have a better shot at starting conversation than at the grotto. A cockatoo fell asleep on my arm; by the time it awoke, there was a nice young lady, one of the few non-hired-sexbots in attendance, shouting at the very pregnant spider monkey in the cage.
We struck up a conversation -- she knew a few people more there than I did, but she allowed me to tag along -- and it got to the level of flirtiness where I didn't want to deflate it, but felt I was traipsing into bad faith. So I gesticulated madly with my left hand, which was then ringed.
It was probably bad-faith flirting. Anyway, she invited me to the afterparty, I declined, my wife moved out, we hooked up, and now we're friends. When we got together, she said that she'd noticed the ring, but I was still sending mixed signals. So you see, kids, if you study hard, you can achieve your dreams, or those of the authority figures who you secretly hate.
Unrelated: it is a pleasant surprise, upon having been sick for four days, to realize that one's wife who moved out left six pounds of New Mexico green chiles in the freezer.
I thought it was well-known that it's polite, when flirting, to casually mention your significant other, preferably in the first few minutes.
It somehow seems to have developed that I've come out as the anti-sex, anti-flirting party here. Which is so laughable that it's just, uh, laughable.
Sorry, friends.
When I flirt with someone, at some point I ask whether what I'm doing is okay. That is all. It's not that hard.
227:
Unless you are close to divorce. Then, it is ok to neglect to mention it. Close to divorce means within the next three years.
"Is it ok to flirt with you?"
I've never been asked that. How is the response?
at some point
The next morning?
at some point I ask whether what I'm doing is okay
You wet blanket, the joy of flirting is in not making things explicit.
Asking if it's OK to flirt seems a bit much. Different strokes, though.
Since that other flirting thread is now entirely about swimming, I'll say here that someone tried to literally race-flirt with me a couple of days ago. She asked me "where I was from" and I could tell by how she asked that she wanted to know what race I am. So I said California. (The other question I'll get is "what nationality are you"? Answer: "American" or "from the United States."
Uh, guys, not to speak for parsimon, but there are a lot of ways to ask if it's OK to flirt without literally asking.
And literally asking can be pretty sexy, depending.
230: If the question is How do people respond to that question, they usually find it charming. It should be delivered with charm and a bit of reserve. It also moves things forward.
Sometimes the response is that the person is in the process of disengaging from a relationship, so things are a little complicated for him. Fair, fair enough, and something I'd want to know.
I've been asked the same thing, you know, about whether I'm attached or not. Sometimes it's on a first meeting. I really don't get why people think that asking, in one way or another, is so weird.
Oh, you meant asking whether someone is married, or involved with someone? That seems not unusual.
Off topic: argh, argh, wtf, wtf.
We now return you to normal programming.
I don't think there's anything wrong with asking; but I also don't think there's an obligation to ask. It doesn't seem to much to expect that someone who is married or attached might mention that fact before engaging in extended flirtation.
240 - The babysitter was on acid, see. Has Jan Harold Brunvand taught us nothing?
If I had any reason at all to assume someone who was flirting with me had a partner, I would ask. When given no reason at all (young, newly in-town grad student?), I presume as if not.
A few of the people I went out with tonight apparently obserbed our interactions and confronted the above-mentioned boy on Friday with "Do you want to sleep with AWB or what?" which is why he finally felt the need to disclose his status. All I'm saying is, that's shitty. There are ways to flirt non-teleologically with married people, but when the vibe I'm getting is that they're actually interested, I proceed when possible.
243: Pardon typos; we were Becks-style.
flirt non-teleologically with married people
Wait, is this what Kierkegaard was getting at?
Have you seen this, eb?
But, to answer your question, yes.
A non-teleological suspension of the marital.
A non-teleological suspension of the marital.
I'd say the marital is essential to the absence of teleology.
How can something be essential to an absence?
Shazam!
Flirting is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is sometimes a married individual.
The individual participating in the universal is called married. The married individual participating in the singular is called flirting. The balance is maintained until the advent of The One, called Neo.
The difference between the tragic hero and Neo is obvious. The tragic hero is still within the Matrix.
The Matrix, called "fate," is the tragedy of the hero. The hero encounters Neo as fateless, interpreted as "gettable." But it is precisely in his non-existence that Neo appears at all. The tragedy of the hero, therefore, is hope, to which, as a married individual, he is fated.
I'm glad that my pain is so easily made abstract.
I submit that because AWB's 256 was a playful jibe, the apparent earnestness of the apology in 257, likely as it is to elicit regret from AWB for not having been more clear in her playfulness, is rude. Any further apologies will also be frowned upon.
Making things explicit ruins everything.
How can something be essential to an absence?
The promise of presence is essential to an absence; else, how would we recognize it as an absence, and not merely emptiness?
Goddamn philosophy nerds.
Hey, Ben, isn't emptiness an absence of fullness?
AHA!
Anyhoo gotta run Larry the Cable Guy broke the shitter agin.
The promise of presence is essential to an absence
Right. But there's been a change: he broke the promise of the presence!
I think you guys really need to define what you mean by "flirting" b/c its a broad category