I was wondering what you'd make of that. An unsatisfying column with a quick, disappointing finish, as if the writing is a recreation of the virginity's loss.
2: Depends on how drunk she was at the time.
Seriously, did you feel cheated by the quick 'oh, did I mention I got laid?' at the end? Yawn.
I didn't feel cheated so much as I wanted to slap her. Ordering a prescription of birth control pills because otherwise the doctor might ask her if she was certain she wasn't pregnant? Honey, please. You're not that important.
6: But you can't argue with results!
"...and then, when I thought I'd remain a virgin forever, I met the Iranian of my dreams down at the local pool."
Every time Becks posts one of these, I try to figure out whether the situation is inherently impossible to write about without sounding like some kind of a jerk, or whether this is just the wrong writer/editor/market.
Some things are really hard to write about for an audience. Isn't that why we have friends and spouses?
But gah. Most of the time I just want to shake these people and fill that very expensive 1/4-page of real estate with something else.
7: yeah, I guess guys really don't want to bother with condoms anymore.
10: I only tell you I'm wearing one, FL, so you won't be all antsy and spoil things.
6 - What annoyed me even more was "Every month, my period, which had been cloyingly regular since the day it started, served as nothing more than a reminder that there was no possible way I might be pregnant. I was sure I could hear mean giggles coming from inside the box of tampons as I opened it." After hearing almost the exact same words from friends dealing with infertility, her problem doesn't seem as bad in comparison. I know, I know -- everyone's problems are a huge deal to them but still.
I recognize the contradiction, but articles like these make me things that writers shouldn't be allowed to write about stuff.
Skilled laborers make you things.
Wrongshore's got another things coming.
15 s/b preceded by the phrase "In Russia,".
re: 17
This is true, to the extent that I am about to send a camera all the way to the Ukraine to get repaired. As i) they can do the work properly and ii) it's a fraction of what it'd cost here.
Sweet. Do the shipping costs serve to make "a fraction of what it'd cost here" --> "roughly what it'd cost here"?
re: 19
No, the shipping costs are surprisingly reasonable -- in the region of about $30 US dollars shipping. So it still works out a lot cheaper than it would here, plus the guys I am sending it to have an international reputation as *the* guys for this particular gear.
As i) they can do the work properly and ii) it's a fraction of what it'd cost here.
careful, simply mentioning this undeniable fact[1] can get you sent on compulsory diversity training. There is no fucking justice.
[1]admittedly, and asking if we were paying the Polish bankers cash in hand in order to avoid paying employers' NI.
D^2 at the company diversity training is a pleasant picture.
Although telling the CHP who pulled you over that you are going to your second day of state-mandated diversity training, and if you show up late you have to do the whole thing over again, will get you not only out of a ticket but also what may be the most sincere expression of sympathy and regret ever to pass the lips of an officer of the law.
Modern Love exists in an unhappy netherworld where the writers are too lowbrow to really teach you anything new, but too highbrow to give you the satisfactions of juicy self-revelations that you can really dig in to. But this may be the lamest one yet. Anyone who can make losing their virginity so incredibly boring has no future as a writer.
This article was far better on the subject of modern romance (h/t to FL in the previous thread):
(But I've just been reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH -- it probably stands for something else in 2^D's context.)
Anyone who can make losing their virginity so incredibly boring
Aha! This sparked an answer to my own question from earlier. If you can't be as funny as Eddie Izzard talking about his virginity, stop writing.
Or at least don't try to write humorously.
And Clown, beware of the sequels. They're not bad, but they're not Mrs. Frisby.
30 -- I know. I loved, loved the original book as a kid but the sequelae never did anything for me. I am intensely gratified by how much my daughter is getting into the book right now. I just bought a DVD of the animated movie, which I have never seen, on eBay -- was it any good? The user review of it on IMDB was pretty enthusiastic. Here's a cool bit of trivia from IMDB -- They changed the mouse's name from Frisby to Brisby before release because of infringement issues with Wham-O, but rather than re-record the dialog they had sound editors change the Fr's to Br's throughout the tape.
Sorry, I haven't seen the movie. Is this the Disney "Secret of NIMH" or did they do another one?
Funny about the sound editing. I had to go look up Wham-O to understand what the infringement issue would have been.
I had to go look up Wham-O
Kids today...
The 1982 movie. My understanding is that it was made by Disney animators who had left the company to make their own studio.
I hate to say it, but that article wasn't as bad as I was expecting from the comments here. At least not by Modern Love standards.
Also, the animated Rats of NIMH I saw as a kid I enjoyed; if there was more than one I don't remember which one I saw.
they had sound editors change the Fr's to Br's throughout the tape
Interesting. This would actually be pretty easy to do.
Based on my searches at IMDB there would appear only to be the one.
Kids today...
Dude, it's a memory thing. Never mind the manufacturer's name, "Frisbee" and "Frisby" are stored in completely different places in my brain. It would never occur to me to confuse them.
As I read the article, I kept thinking "the NY Times cannot find better writers than this one?!??!?!"
More info on sequels: the two other NIMH books were not written by Robert O'Brien, author of Mrs. Frisby, but by his daughter. I think I probably never actually read them, because I see the first of them came out when I was already 16 and beyond such childish pursuits.
Don Bluth, in the house!
The Lives column was a really sad story this week. Husband gets diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, proceeds to alternate demands for divorce with wildly romantic proposals. Moves away, declares love, etc. It left me really sad to read it, but then I told some women at a party about it, and they said, "Sounds like all the men in Los Angeles."
NI is National Insurance -- a sort of payroll tax. I believe it funds the National Health Service, or was originally meant to do so. Someone will be along in a moment to explain to the USA what that means.
And I have just had to send off a Japanese camera to Portugal to be repaired. It only has one very small thing wrong with it, but I was told they might very well estimate £100 or more because of the cost of Portuguese labour.
re: 42
Yeah, some more modern cameras are not cost effective to fix. One of my Pentax SLRs has a slight fault -- the shutter speeds don't always show in the finder when the shutter release is partially depressed -- and it would cost me more to fix it than to buy two or three similar SLRs on ebay.
31:The Secret of NIHM movie kind of sucked -- I just rented it for my kids. They added on all sorts of extraneous and unexplained magic, that made the plot make no sense at all.
I actually found the article kind of touching - but then, both I and my wife were late virginity-losers, so I can relate both directly and by proxy. Kay went through years of getting chewed out by various medical professionals for not using birth control, who hadn't bothered to ask if she needed it. I suppose that one might learn to deflect such questions with a wry reference to "involuntary abstinence" as one's method of birth control, but this can be a really sore point among those affected. I don't think it is bad to have an article that underlines that point.
Yes, knowing that the author did manage to hook up after all makes it easy to trivialize her concerns - "see, if you'ld just waited a little longer, everything would have been just fine." And most people who want to manage to hook up eventually - but not everyone. There is nothing inevitable about getting partnered. Some people - even good, reasonable people - go their entire lives, or major portions thereof, without finding the romantic/sexual connection they are looking for. And when you are in the middle of that process, you don't know if you might be one of them, or one of the vast majority that manage to connect after all.
42: I think this is really more a reflection of both relative complexity and the rate of change in the area. Once the technology tails of (if?) a bit, it'll be more cost effective to fix, I think.
44: I remember being really pissed off by that as a kid.
I nominate ED guy to write a genuinely good ML article on the topic at hand.
48: Thanks, Witt, but I don't think they accept pseudonyms for authors. I've got stories to share, but I'm still trying to figure out if I'd be willing to blog about them even pseudonymously. It's not just my own privacy I have to worry about.
On the other hand, the idea of writing a ML article about some of this stuff does pose an interesting twist to the adage: "don't write anything on the Internet that you're not willing to see on the front page of the New York Times."
We watched The Secret of NIMH tonight and I gotta say, what a lame movie.
About 20 minutes in Sylvia was saying, "The story in the book is better, right?"