Ogged: "Comity" in thug font over the small of your back, go go go!

"Naturalized Patriot" in curly font, and underneath in tiny block caps:
"the face-rapings will continue until morale improves."

I was thinking "Soy Ogged" Maybe as the label of a soy milk carton.

I will seriously actually pay for you to have 2 done.

(In other news, jesus I hate Violet Blue, like, a lot.)

How come? I have no idea who this chick is.

For typical angry feminist not-entirely reconciled to the whole "sex-positive", "pro-porn" thing, combined with a certain amount of internalized misogyny and some very peculiar nerd credentialism/identification angst that bleeds into a general hatred of the Boing-Boing style pop-geek bullshit that in large part accompanied the dotcom boom, combined with slightly different Stop Fucking Talking For Me And My People(s), Heteronormatively Submissive Bisexual Women angst.

But back on topic: a band around the bicep, reading Is Banned:Is Banned::Is Banned:Is Banned

That's awfully specific hate and oddly impressive.

OK, OP is decent, and 7 is pretty rocking, but my dream is "LOGOS" (w-lfs-n help me w/ the greek chars) on my sternum.

I actually have a number of really embarassing geek tattoos that are quite possibly worse than 9. Which I regret! And will probably have removed! Or incorporated into something less dopey, yet more obvious. So, just warnin'.

Well, no, one of them is pretty awesome, although it's musical and not self-consciously geeky per se.

I could get "OSTMWHYB" tattooed on the palm of one hand, and "WMYBSALB?" on the other, and if someone says something dubious, I can just hold up my hand to make the point.

Dammit, 10, share. Besides, re 9, it's a Christian thing. And 2 would work only if NP were in thug font in the traditional place, and the subtext was in courier 2" below the belly button.

I want LR to write a description of Unfogged. I imagine it would be less boring than my own.

Once everyone has a tattoo, will it be rebellious not to have one? I'm banking on that.

14, sure, like with teenage girls and earrings.

The ones I'm specifically thinking of getting rid of are as far as I'm aware unique to me and well outside the realm of the usual for geek tattoos in basically all aspects (stylization, location, content), such that they'd instantly blow my cover to anyone who happens to know me, with absolutely no room for deniability, plausible or otherwise.

I also have a Metroid, because I'm dumb.

I know a guy who had an Atari symbol before it was cool. /rimshot/

14: It's kind of long since been that way, or close enough. It makes it difficult for those of us who would like to mark our bodies in a socially unacceptable way. I'd go with scarification, except I doubt I could manage anything other than a cross. A swastika, maybe, if I was lucky.

I've always wanted "Laser Tattoo Removal" in Comic Sans across my forehead.

13: I don't think I know enough humanities jargon to describe Unfogged in a way that is illuminating, funny, and accurate simultaneously, mostly because I come up short of fancy German terms for "wondering if Ogged really is actually gay".

19: Heideggerian

I mean, seriously, how do you describe "wanting to sex Ogged, because he is sublime, but only that part of him which is like Andy Kaufman, which part would cease to be if actually sexed and thus recognized, therefore, Ogged is actually a big douche, so you want to violently assrape him, but not in a sexual way because (as stated) he is a big douche, which irony is itself sublime, and like Andy Kaufman"?

Who's with me?

Bloggers.

17: Caesarian scars on dudes are the new hotness.

Hi L-Rock.

Damn you.

The thing is, we all live in the mediasphere and are surrounded by symbols all the time. They're everywhere, and I'm sort of sick of them. The unmarked body is an outpost of wild and chaotic nature. Putting symbols on it almost seems like a form of domestication to me.

This take may have started as a form of simple contrarianism, but by now I actually believe it.

26: I have to say, my nose has begun to seem like needless artifice. Show-offy.

Alternate 21: Unfogged = /b

27: your nose, too, is an outpost of wild and chaotic nature. Observe, and marvel.

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could have a tattoo of a fad from every decade? I'd get "slackers, uh, unite?" in tiny script somewhere hard to see and I'd get Members Only(tm) across my ass-cheeks with, I dunno, "Two Car Household!" and a picture of Eisenhower worked into some nice thorns around one ankle. Yeah, that'd be rad.

I'm sort of drunk. Is anyone else?

An attractive woman offered to buy me a drink in a bar tonight, and I turned her down. It wasn't out of loyalty to other women I'm dating right now (although I suppose it should have been), it was just out of instinctive disbelief that she could have meant it.

What's with all the anger tonight?

31 to 32.

Shut the fuck up, teo!!!1!!

Wait, I am one of the people you're calling out as angry? Hmm.

I'm not drunk, I just wish I was. Unless nicotinaztion from second-hand smoke counts as "drunk".

30: one tattoo of a psychedelic Fred MacMurray in girl jeans fronting Devo, captioned "RAVE ON/KEY PARTY" top and bottom, and you'd be done.

Save some money.

OK, that's it, Teo. Step outside.

I'm punchy, not angry. My Boston's up.

one tattoo of a psychedelic Fred MacMurray in girl jeans fronting Devo, captioned "RAVE ON/KEY PARTY" top and bottom in gothic script, and you'd be done.

Dammit.

Thanks, teo.

It may just be my perception.

I'm not angry, I just find the tattoo silly. I am also silly however for I first read it as "flogger" which I for some reason found less silly. If anyone's sitting around feeling angry I prescribe a couple of hours sitting on the couch with Rah, listening to music on shuffle.

Now playing: "Orthodox Caveman", Sunn O))). Anger subsiding... replaced with yawning, existential dread... sludge... all consuming....

Say, that does work!

39: Great, now I want a tattoo.

Actually there's a specific one some friends and I have long, er, longed to get but we're all a bunch of big wusses, wild and free.

Don't worry, Pants, I didn't think your comment was angry. I think I was just struck by the combination of LR's (on rereading, not particularly angry) comments here and the weird hostility I remarked on in the other thread. Carry on.

ANGER IS BETTER> FUCK EXISTENTIAL DREAD.

I'm not angry either, Violet Blue's just always given me hives. I'd be angry about yoyo's freaky anti-materialist crap in the environment thread, except I've kind of always assumed it was a troll.

But hey, if anyone wants to start a dismissive whine about the priviledged position of the sciences, I could totally work up some righteous anger.

45: OG unmasked!

45 to 42. I am of course simply trying to protect myself from my own existential dread.

43: if you get it and get in a tattoo mag you have to tell them it's called "Generations"

I should totally drop out of school and paint that image over and over again on black velvet.

48: ANGER EXPANDING / EMPTY SUN / BEHIND THE FUSION: BLACKNESS

I am of course simply trying to protect myself from my own existential dread.

Many years ago I decided that the best way to do this was to focus my attention on getting laid. I don't necessarily recommend this.

Sorry, teo, but the best way to do it is to actually get laid. Keep us posted!

Exactly.

Focused attention is key to eyebeams and scientology, however.

I take back 52. The existential dread that follows getting laid may actually be worse than celibate dread. Because you can no longer pretend that getting laid will fix it.

Good news is, the aging process eventually robs you of the energy required for existential dread. It's one of nature's little mercies.

Getting laid is really overrated. Especially when like everyone you are sleeping with decides to fuck off to visit their family or go to some stupid convention or has the gall to actually get called when they're on-call or some similarly pedestrian crap, and they leave you all alone for the weekend.

Rereferencing 41: shuffle is so f'in' awesome sometimes. Following up the Sunn O))): Egyptian Lover, "Los Angeles".

Getting laid only postpones and intensifies the existential dread.

56: hi, this is why you have sex with your family at conventions? Duh?

Anyhow, wasn't DefCon last weekend?

I so need to get an ipod. But it would be a major lifestyle change.

Gee, thanks, guys. How about you go back to being angry?

(I see LR's already there.)

Yeah you certainly don't need more music in your life.

No, that was Blizzcon.

(I did not go, although I thought about it, if only to get like five sets of tickets and then scalp the murloc suits on eBay for a zillion dollars.)

62 to any of the 10 previous comments.

You confuse self-pity and petulance with anger, young teo.

I have cartons of CDs in various places, and even cassette tapes in my car. My sole concession to the 21st century is a satellite radio.

63 makes me realize I may well be an ex-nerd at this point.

But, if you can try an fail to get laid for a sufficient period of time, this will indefinitely postpone ED. Of course, this works for trying to do anything. I CAN HAZ BUDIZM???

L-Rock, the Pedantic Petulant.

I really need to start getting more sleep. Also, antidepressants. Moving out of my parents' house would help too.

Sup, 67.

68 handsomely recreates Douglas Adams' instructions for flying.

Petulance is a really fun emotion. Expressive and hostile, but not as corrosive or draining as anger.

73 is the kind of comment that makes me wonder why the hell I still read this site.

Better 71.

btw, if Violet Blue is anything like what Ms. Rockette described, we should all be pissed. But, atm, LR is not. When she is, you'll know it.

71: I don't auction my dignity.

Why the anger, Teo?

Anyway, 1 AM, bedtime...

Teo you bring light to darkness.

74 was written more in sadness than in anger.

79: The other way 'round, I think.

Dark you light bring to teoness?

I want to fucking punch all of you.

82: Yep.

83: Even me?

Love the fuck up, teo!!!!1!

No, but that's because my eternal reaction to you is to want to give you a hug, and also buy you a hooker. A nice hooker.

Well now I feel bad. I like you Lunar Rockette! I had an unexpected videogamectomy, and it made me needlessly mocking of too many creative, entertaining people. If I could get that part of my brain back, I would.

Which is kind of like my eternal reaction to Ogged, except that I also want to punch him, simultaneously. And maybe not as nice of a hooker.

Aww, thanks, LR. That's possibly the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me (though Stanley's 85 gives it a run for its money).

86: nice like down-to-earth, or nice like fine? Or nice like sorta friendly, but none too memorable?

88: oh, I love that video.

No worries, Sifu. I kind of hate recreationally; it's sort of a running joke with my friends. Except when some asshole takes it too seriously in annoying misogynist concern troll way, which has not yet happened on this thread.

Yoda was the original concern troll.

I can't tell if it's just my somewhat muddled state of mind, or if half the comments on this thread really don't make any sense at all.

Can we hate on Star Wars recreationally now, please?

94: could it be the muddled state of mind of the other commenters?

96: It very well could.

LR mostly wants to punch me, that's her MO. Which wouldn't be so bad, if there were a hooker involved. Unfortunately, my respect for the gaming industry is implicit, which, while not protecting me from rockettes, leaves me open to hooker-punches. Such is my station in life; I remain stoic.

Okay, I have to be serious for a minute: am I really the only Unfogged who knows of /b?

Or am I just really unfunny?

Hey, interestingly, I've probably posted close to half the comments in this thread.

I know of /b.

Unfoggeder. Unfoggedtariatarian? Unfoggedesian?

I have never wanted to hug you more in my life, Teo.

98 is a good example of the kind of comment I'm talking about.

Antidisunfoggedetarianism

103: Do I get a hooker upgrade?

104: incomprehensibility needn't bore.

107 is another good example.

I think foolish is basically just kind of fucking emo and bad at humor.

Also: you know, I've always been kind of cranky about NYC style smoking bans for angry class-based reasons, but these motherfuckers smoking under my window are make me really really really really really really really want a cigarette. And I've never actually really smoked in my entire life.

Touché.

OK, have your fun. I may have mentioned this before, but like popeye and god, I am that I am, and I ain't breaking neither of them for nobody.

Damn Ogged and his drive-by tanking.

106 requires a Pokeymans joke in return, but I never played any of them. Fuck.

Jigglypuff is always appropriate.

Don't worry, I never played any of them either.

I really do wish I had the philosophy of science background to write an angry rant in the Environment thread for reals, though, goddamn. Also, goddamn, I have the world's biggest blogcrush on Megan precisely because she is so very, very good at those kind of rants, m-fun and hippieness aside.

I am 100% on the side of m-fun.

I know, Sifu, it's why I fear you.

I am 100% on the side of m-fun.

I knew there was a reason I didn't like you, Tweety.

Well, plus I'm sort of mean sometimes.

Bad at humor, that I can live with, chaq'un a son gout. Emo? That's a new one on me, but whatever, I suppose I am a whiny bitch, if that's what is meant. The weird thing is I'm pretty comforted by the elucidation of my faults. I like having LR around, and would rather her dislike me on some tangible flaws of mine than exist as some internet blob of disapproval.

Teo, on the other hand, I could take or leave.

Teo, on the other hand, I could take or leave.

You're not the only one.

indefinitely postpone ED

Now I know what all those soft-focus television commercials are about.

123: /rimshot/

122: Nothing personal teo, strictly business.

re: 115

I could act as a rant consultant if you like. Reasonable fees. Good swearing thrown in for free.

Foolish: ΛΟΓΟΣ

Is Lunar still here? I had tea yesterday with a fellow dj who kept being really, really enthusiastic about by voice, both on the air and in person.

No. Everyone's gone home/out/to bed.

I made a friend a pin on cafepress with this text which, if I ever got a textual tattoo, would probably be the text I used, too.

Wait, why does LR need a phil. science background to rant about the environment thread?

I'm gonna take this thread to 256 tonight, just you wait.

w-lfs-n: yes I know the greek, but how do you represent it in HTML? There must be a unicode, yes?

I'm around,vaguely, just having a flurry of emo self-pitying text messages with my woman while she waits on a connecting flight in Houston to this convention she's going to.

And I'd need a phil.sci background to actually articulate some of the finer points I'd like to make without degenerating into "BLARGH PHYSICAL REALITY IS IMPORTANT DON'T MAKE ME BASH YOU IN THE HEAD WITH A ROCK".

127:
c.f The Environment.179, Decoration.132.2

Use the source, foolishmortal. Or this table of HTML entities.

And your voice is great, as is that button. Although I swear, if that's directed at me, my dislike of Violet Blue is less about fetishizing my own authenticity than just a crushing awareness of, crap, how very little my authenticity is worth.

No, it's not directed at you; I just remembered about the button b/c of the tattoo text discussion.

I only know about Violet Blue because of the frequent reference made to her on BoingBoing, which is enough for me to hate her.

The whole "nerd version of Unfogged" would totally be worth it, if only as a forum for being mean about Cory Doctorow, which is what it would inevitably devolve into. In other news: Python's pretty cool, you guys are right. I wish I had more braincells to spare to try and grasp more of it idiomatically.

I'm still here, I've just been browsing apartment listings. I'm about to go to bed, though.

Isn't the current version the nerd version?

What really surprised me about Doctorow is what I will relate in the next few sentences. I quickly grew to dislike his crap BB posts, but I always assumed that he was at least a decent writer of fiction. Hadn't he won an award or two? And his book covers have been attractive. But then he made Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town available FOR FREE NO COPY PROTECTION THANX, and I read the first few pages, and oh my god it was such amazingly crappy crap. And the main character was obviously Cory's dream version of himself.

His horrible piece about the teenaged girl gamer who has a semi-Marxist (or is it Libertarian?) revelation about goldfarmers in a totally-not-EQ/WoW-MMO made me want to hit things. With brickets.

You probably don't like Xeni either.

What's a bricket?

The suck, it burns.

Anda didn't really start to play the game until she got herself a girl-shaped avatar.

You can tell that this is a bad article from two words in the first sentence: "the game". What game? It hasn't been introduced yet. We're supposed to be sucked in, I guess. It's a really transparent attempt to sound portentous, and a universal warning of shit writing ahead.

And "Ada Lovelace Comprehensive"? Gag me with a spoon.

That's as far as I read.

Article, story, wev.

A croquet mallet with a brick for the hitty-part.

And "Ada Lovelace Comprehensive"? Gag me with a spoon.

This, in a nutshell, is why I wish Joi Ito and Anil Dash would fucking explode.

You know, there are tattoos to be devised.... w-lfs-n must have at least one in mind.

Actually, I don't understand 147.

I've got it! w-lfs-n:On the index, middle, and ring of the right, "w", "H", and "O." On the fingers of the left, "W","H","O", and "M."

No, "I", "T", and "S" on the little, ring and index fingers, oriented so that when my fingers are pointing up they letters are right-side up. I can make the apostrophe with my middle finger.

Or have an X-ed out apostrophe on the middle knuckle of the middle finger so I have to raise the finger for it to be visible, or something like that.

I hate non-nerds fetishizing nerd culture, for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which being they get it wrong.

Who gives you the right to say who is and is not a nerd and what is and what is not nerd culture! That's kind of authoritarian degree is distinctively jock-like. So are you a jock?

I get home at 5:15am and this is what you've been arguing about all night?

That's fine. Teo seems sad, though the comments he points to as disillusion-making seem pretty quintessentially unfoggedy to me.

Damn. w-lfs-n makes fun of me when I'm not even awake. I have arrived.

153: yes, is generally pretty repellent.

cory doctorow is nice irl, not to interrupt the hate.

Not being nice has never seemed to be Cory's problem. Being a massively self-promoting terrible writer with bad taste and cringe-inducing whiz-bang instincts can co-exist perfectly happily with niceness.

Wow. It's not Modern Love, but this couple obviously went out of their way to get their precious little Hamptons dinner party written up in the NYT, coming off as total asses in the process.

I don't expect Kelsey Grammer will be hanging out much with them in the future.

159: On the upside, almost every article ever written about the Hamptons -- that one included -- makes me profoundly unenvious of the lifestyle on display.

Oof, talk about cringe inducing.

I will stand second to no man in my irritation with Cory Doctorow (or, in deference to Alameida, at least his online persona), but Anil Dash (whom I know, vaguely) doesn't seem to be Cory-esque in a meaningful way.

139 - He's the perfect packager of online trends for a slightly older audience of science fiction fans who can't tell that he's full of shit (although they should be able to tell that if he were the last man on earth and left to write his way out of a wet paper bag, the wet paper bag is the obvious winner of the Hugo). Also, he's clearly really really good at networking.

But then he made Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town available FOR FREE NO COPY PROTECTION THANX, and I read the first few pages

Man, you didn't even get to the part where his magic realist son-of-a-mountain spirit beast decides to team up with the street punks and start a WiFi company?

For while Mrs. Bancroft, 52, is about as steady a fixture as one finds on the society circuit -- involved in charities galore, and a good deal of fashion promotion -- Mr. Bancroft, also 52, shows up in the party pages as often as J. Press alters the hemline on its Bermuda shorts, which is to say almost never.

So, did someone make a bet about how far they could push the cloying obsequiousness to the rich and still get a piece published in the times, kind of like Wally Wood drawing Power Girl's breasts?

Wow, she certainly has a lot of.... power. I liked this part:

She also had large oval cut out of her white uniform just above her rather large breasts, the sole purpose of which was clearly to show off her cleavage. Befitting her autonomous name and outfit, Power Girl would be a clear feminist in contrast to Supergirl's sometimes mousy, prim and proper ways.

Because feminists are all about objectifying themselves in tight, cleavage-bearing outfits.

165: Quoth Wikipedia: A similar treatment of the character can be seen in Superman/Batman #4 (written by Jeph Loeb), in which the heroes need to distract the Toyman while Batman and Superman battle Captain Marvel and Hawkman. Seeking a way to accomplish this task, Batman notes that their opponent is a thirteen-year-old boy, and all attention goes to Power Girl, prompting her response: "What's everyone looking at me for? How am I supposed to distract ... oh."

So, did someone make a bet about how far they could push the cloying obsequiousness to the rich and still get a piece published in the times

Is there any more quintessentially American experience than the opportunity to sit at a keyboard, drop names (including a representative from the Sotheby's Family) like a motherfucker, and suck up to the rich as dusk falls?

165: Honestly, I think I could deal with the cutout if it wasn't for the extreme gravity-defying boobs. The girl's like a 28J cup and they're like helium balloons. Have the artists never seen breasts?

This is why we're skeptical of guys claiming any one comic book isn't sexist.

Cala, you're forgetting that they're Kryptonian super-boobs. On a red sun planet, no doubt we'd see some more sagging.

Maybe it's Kryptonite underwires and the boobs are trying to escape through the cutout!

I went after Doctorow awhile back, and Ray Davis stepped in to defend him. I have as much implicit faith in Ray as alameida, but really, I mean, really. The man's a lover's lover.

170: Does she have "computer programmer" tattooed on her ankle?

168: Comix aren't real, Cala.

So, did someone make a bet about how far they could push the cloying obsequiousness to the rich and still get a piece published in the times

Is the idea that cloying obsequiousness to the rich lessens one's chances of getting in the times?

Is the idea that cloying obsequiousness to the rich lessens one's chances of getting in the times?

I thought there had to be a point of diminishing returns, though the article has me questioning this assumption.

At a certain point you get bumped to a New Yorker profile, no?

I think that the question is "Will the Times ever decide that enough is enough? Or will this continue to escalate?"

Nobody saged this thread? Lawlz

139 et seq.: No one -- and I mean no man, woman, child, animal, vegetable, mineral or creature of light from another sphere of being -- surpasses me in hatred for Cory Doctorow.

Not only did I come to hate him more after reading two pages of the free pdf version of Someone Bores Flippanter to Tears, Someone Tears Cory Doctorow a New Ass, but the venomous hate engendered by those two pages made me hate myself for liking Gene Wolfe, whose only offense (apart from having belonged to the Pringles food science development team) was having provided a very favorable blurb re: Doctorow on the cover of that book. I will not even mention the deleterious effect of Doctorow's praise on my onetime fondness for William Gibson and Warren Ellis. Even now, the shame lingers.

Sometimes I fantasize about adding DRM to things like floors, rugs, socks, shoes, concrete and asphalt so that with every step that Doctorow takes, he will know the shame of betraying his most ardent beliefs.

Who's Cory Doctorow?

A nice guy, apparently.

You know, I'm not a great fan of Doctorow's writing, either, but I do suspect part of the bile stems from the fact that he's just so darned happy all the time.

I'll come out and admit it: I didn't hate Eastern Standard Tribes. Liked it quite a bit, in fact. I think what we have here is a fine example of a moderately talent, moderately clever guy whose prose suffers from extra-textual baggage. Were it not for Boing Boing, no one would waste their hate on a middling scifi/cyberpunk author. (That said, if you ever manage to make DRM socks, I'm so there.)

For typical angry feminist not-entirely reconciled to the whole "sex-positive", "pro-porn" thing, combined with a certain amount of internalized misogyny and some very peculiar nerd credentialism/identification angst that bleeds into a general hatred of the Boing-Boing style pop-geek bullshit that in large part accompanied the dotcom boom, combined with slightly different Stop Fucking Talking For Me And My People(s), Heteronormatively Submissive Bisexual Women angst.

I wish I were more heteronormatively submissively bisexual because I would totally totally make LR my girlfriend.

LR, wanna guest post for me on SG someday? Pretty please?

Also, getting laid: completely not overrated at all.

I knew a girl who was heteronormatively submissively bisexual. Every day with her was a little like Christmas.

184: Wait, what is SG? But okay!

My Anil Dash hate is far far less than my Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow hate, as does have more technical clue and seems far more reasonable and thoughtful than both of them, but he's still pretty much a parcel of the whole "Web 2.0" thing, which I am basically compelled by my nature to hate with the searing intensity of a thousand suns.

Also, Cory Doctorow's parents were academic Trotskyites? lol.

186: I have occasionally mused that hate is really an emotion of reflection, both internal and external, rather than intention, so perhaps a lunar metaphor would suit it better, as well as abandoning the now-hackneyed figure of "a thousand suns." Also, I tend to burn easily. Just constructive criticism. Don't mind me.

171 - Ray is a fantastic human being and a highly acute critic, but he is lacking the critical "meanness" gene that we evolved on the veldt to determine when it was the proper time to beat primitive proto-human bloggers to death with rocks. I think you're spot on. Cory's slow-dawning love affair with Linux and hate affair with Apple are perhaps the most irritating cases to me, but a throw-away comment about how he didn't get the appeal of Winsor McCay until someone with better taste recommended the (expensive, of course) oversized volume from Sunday Press really summed him up in my mind. If Restoration Hardware walked as a man.

Sometimes I fantasize about adding DRM to things like floors, rugs, socks, shoes, concrete and asphalt so that with every step that Doctorow takes, he will know the shame of betraying his most ardent beliefs.

This is awesome.

186: See here. Unfortunately their commentariat is only marginally brighter than what you'd find on, say, YouTube. But don't let that stop you.

186 - He likes Prince! And praised my slumbering blog in interviews a couple of times! I think you should hate him with the searing intensity of maybe a half-dozen suns.

Oh, SuicideGirls, duh. I R SMRT.

SG actually bothers me quite a bit, but hey.

I hate the Web 2.0 phenomenon with the searing intensity of a thousand suns, people. Not Doctorow.

SG actually bothers me quite a bit, but hey.

B's done a pretty good job of infilitrating a bizarre space, I think. ("Virally" infiltrating, maybe? Can I say that, or too pop-geek?)

193: B's done a pretty good job of infilitrating a bizarre space, I think.

I love B, but I'm not sure how much I'd bank on that - for all the whiny RadFem blogger slagging off her column as a sellout co-opted by The Man pissed me right off, since it's so very beautifully unadulterated in it's B-ness. I'm just not sure whether any of the SG audience I object to is actually reading, or whether it's enough to impact certain negative trends stemming specifically from alt.porn that I've seen reflected in, well, my daily life.

I really, really, really hate alt.porn, in seriously unfunny and TL;DR fashion.

"TL;DR"?

195: "too long, didn't [or don't] read"

I haven't read most of this thread, but I did scroll down. For the love of all things decent, people, don't write "lol."

HA! is acceptable, but "lol" is banned.

As in "I could go on about this for a good long while."

Basically SG is Playboy with piercings. The bulk of alt.porn isn't that distinguishable from just plain porn, except it comes with all these "outside-the-mainstream" pretensions.

The bulk of alt.porn isn't that distinguishable from just plain porn

Of course not. For they are all meant to be handled.

197: lol

And it's more than just "playboy with piercings"; I know a number of basically cool, liberal guys who were almost starting to have minor epiphanies about women in the media, largely motivated by being completely unattracted to stick-thin blonde Cosmo models and seeing how miserable that kind of crap standard made their cute, curvy/chubby, less-than-conventionally-attractive-at-the-time girlfriends. And then alt.porn came along and said cute girlfriends started consuming it or doing it or going to those fucking stripper classes, and the guys failed to have those epiphanies and the women basically completely chucked most of their youthful feminism and started buying chunky high-heels, because that was different than the stilettos they'd always hated, and it all fucking sucked.

198: The thread takes on an Ourobourian form, as we return to the matter of body art.

200: Hmmm. I guess I'd be tempted to wonder how close the "epiphanies" in question really were, and how much of loss of feminism relates to the generally depoliticized atmo of the Nineties / early Oughties.

Not that I'm all that eager to get too far into the alt.porn debate; both sides of the "sex-positive"/"RadFem" coin annoy me.

201: Which is fitting, since comment 1 already won the thread.

202: The RadFem thing annoys me, but only because it often is accompanied by an unpalatable anti-material hippie New Age-ness. I basically wound up on the side of the pro-sex/alt.porn/isn't-it-cool-to-be-kinky crowd just because I didn't want to lose my significant other to politics when he was transitioning FtM, but I really resent what the alt.porn faction and similar compromises on sexual politics did to the lesbian communit a lot more than I resent the negative impact the RadFems have had. Especially since the RadFems, or people who were similarly unpalatable to the mainstream, historically did a lot of the work that enabled the alt.porn-ites to exist.

i love m-fun too. i just don't like eating local.

I really resent what the alt.porn faction and similar compromises on sexual politics did to the lesbian community

Can you elaborate?

Quoth AWB:

Teo seems sad, though the comments he points to as disillusion-making seem pretty quintessentially unfoggedy to me.

I am sad, but I'm not sure how much insight my comments from last night give into my character. I was in kind of a strange mood. Surely you can see that "disillusion-making" and "quintessentially unfoggedy" are not mutually exclusive categories, though.

LR -- if you ever do guest post for B, be sure to leave a note on unfogged because I wouldn't want to miss it.

Also, count me in for a "what exactly did happen with feminism in the late 90's, early 00's?" discussion if it could happen on a thread with a lower level of background frustration and annoyance than this one.

204: "Anti-material[istic]," "hippie" and "New Age" seem like three different things, much less of a piece with radical feminism, alt.porn (I don't know, but I bet Lisa Palac is somehow involved) or whatnot. It was taxonomical slither like this that gave us an embarrassment of riches when it comes to things around us that are suddenly "bourgeois."

The funny thing is that insofar as there's hippe New Age-ness going on amongst the RadFems, I find it one of their redeeming qualities.

207: I just meant, if Unfoggedy things are depressing you, why comment during periods of sadness? There are times when a little sunshine will do wonders that Unfogged can only undo.

206: I could do so in a much longer TL;DR fashion in, as NickS says, a thread with a lower level of background frustration. But to sum up: kept beloved significant other (good), lost community/friends I loved (bad), had community supplanted with judgemental, shallow, hipster assholes (worse).

And that is a gross oversimplification on many many levels, but there you go.

There are times when a little sunshine will do wonders that Unfogged can only undo.

Unfogged: The sunspot of the internet.

213: Okay, so, another time then, that's fine.

I do admit I'm not quite getting the sense of "background frustration" that NickS and LR mention, this thread seems pretty mellow to me. But then, I'm insensitive generally.

I hate non-nerds fetishizing nerd culture, for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which being they get it wrong.

None of this would matter to other non-nerds, but Cory Doctorow can't write. I tried Eastern Standard Tribes and I want my twenty minutes back.

211: What else am I going to do?

I don't really get the background frustration thing either, although I'm willing to accept it as shorthand for "stop cussing all the time, Rockette".

Although, you know what happened to feminism in the 90s/00s? Ogged. Ogged happened.

What else am I going to do?

Walk the earth. Meet people. Have adventures.

That's not really my style.

Like Ash from the Pokemon cartoon.

Though I did just finish making an elaborate map of the area when I'm looking for apartments, and now I'm going to drive around there and write down the phone numbers on the "For Rent" signs.

See? There you go. Drive the earth.

Teo, have you tried birdwatching?

Also, someone leave a comment in this thread if the The Environment thing ever turns into something that won't make me want to rip my eyeballs from my head? Thx.

225: Meh. Why plan for those kinds of changes when we'll all get hit by a comet, anyway?

210: I'm specifically refering the believing-in-"energy", let's-reject-modern-medicine-for-the-sake-of-it, science-is-a-tool-of-the-Patriarchy stuff, here. Other forms of hippieism, and even possibly New Age-ism, I am basically down with.

Sorry, my last comment was made on the run, I didn't mean to do a drive-by.

I do admit I'm not quite getting the sense of "background frustration" that NickS and LR mention, this thread seems pretty mellow to me. But then, I'm insensitive generally.

Some of that was bleed-over from reading the Environment thread, but I just had a sense that this was turning into a thread for random kvetching and there's frequently something futile about trying to turn kvetching into a serious discussion.

It may also be that I don't read boing boing, so I'm missing about half of the references in the thread.

Lunar Rockette, I wish I had known you in the nineties. I pretty much withdrew from a lot of feminist and theorizing-about-sex-related stuff because I was so demoralized by both the alt.porn-ites and the RadFem people. I remember reading a little squib about one of the first independent retro-porn magazines back around 1994 and feeling a terrible, terrible sense of cultural doom. Of course, all that nonsense about "ditch your transgendered friends or accept that you are a Pawn of the Patriarchy" makes me want to kill people in horrible, painful ways.

God, I hate to see left movements self-destruct. Especially through the same vices that have been around on the left since, oh, about 1923.

This SuicideGirls site sort of depresses me because it contains a bunch of hot girls who are empowering themselves in a way that non-hot girls obviously can't do. This leads to solidarity among hot girls and a return to them presuming that their appearance is what they are valued on.

At least they feel sympathy rather than scorn for the girls who aren't in their clique.

"what they are valued on"? Maybe I meant "what they are evaluated by". Or "what gives them their value".

SG depresses me from the little I've seen because it regards itself as edgy or progressive because instead of thin white boobed blond girls posing, it's thin white boobed girls with technicolor hair.

Some of them don't have much boobage to speak of. Or, uh, so I've heard.

Teehee.

Frowner and LR should clearly have a long and friendship-destroying argument about whether transgendered women should be invited to attend the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.

IF YOU DIDN'T GROW UP EXPERIENCING THE TREATMENT THAT WOMEN ARE SUBJECTED TO, HOW CAN YOU FEEL WELCOME

197: lol

L-Rock, I almost wrote something really nasty in response, but I don't want to, but the absence of "lol" is one of the really nice things that differentiates this place from the rest of the internet. Please don't destroy it.

237: wtf

BG, you looked really cute in Tweety's pics.

235: Do you know that I actually have a RadFem relative who feels strongly that Transgendered People Do Not Belong at Michigan? This depresses me mightily. I don't talk about it with her because I don't want to create an ugly scene and I don't, myself, want to go to Michigan. But bleah.

You understand I'm using it ironically, right?

(Seen on my way to get groceries: A comcast sign reading "Productivity is the name of the game. But your business is no game." Does that confuse anyone else? Because, seriously, I cannot understand where the pith is supposed to be.)

235: Oh god, let's not, please? I've actually had some of those. (My current position, shared by JC is: it would be nice if Mich could collectively kind of get over it so we could go without angst, but their reasons for not getting over it are ultimately a lot more sympathetic than the really radical parts of the trans camp at this point, who have basically become gigantic trolls. The whole brouhaha with Bitch performing at the Dyke March? That was fucking lame.)

(My current position, shared by JC is: it would be nice if Mich could collectively kind of get over it so we could go without angst, but their reasons for not getting over it are ultimately a lot more sympathetic than the really radical parts of the trans camp at this point, who have basically become gigantic trolls. The whole brouhaha with Bitch performing at the Dyke March? That was fucking lame.)

Well, my relative's reasons aren't that sympathetic, but otherwise I like your reasoning, LR.

Cala, how could you forget the tattooes? That's what makes it edgy.

14 to 243, befitting this thread's recursive nature.

Also, a tattoo inside somebody's mouth of "RSS" or "Atom/XML" would be good.

243: Oh, right. Edge restored!

The combination of 236 and 240-241 made me laugh. Zomg!

BG, you looked really cute in Tweety's pics.

Wait, pictures of cute women? Address please!

Teo, have you tried birdwatching?

No.

I hate pigeons. There aren't any other birds that walk down the street unafraid of people, though. At least not around here.

Pigeons are avian rats.

249: Here too, although there are a lot more pigeons around than there used to be for some reason.

BG, you looked really cute in Tweety's pics.

Agreed. She really does look like Christina Ricci.

You know what creeps me out the most about pidgeons? Sometimes, there are freaky, deformed, squished-face mutant pidgeons, and you just don't know what made them that way.

I saw a ridiculously obese pigeon in New York when I went to see the orange gate thingies. A sphere of gray feathers and malice.

239: Thanks Cala. I felt kind of grubby, because it was a hot day, and I did need to wash my hair. Most people think that I look better with my hair down, but that wasn't happening that day.

I'm tiny, but my stupid chest isn't.

252: Damn, I don't like Christina Ricci. My sister is cute, but blessed with a forehead that is not as high as mine. Her nose is a bit more pert, but I'm not complaining.

255: I feel your pain. We should go shopping sometime.

And I would say a cross between Christina Ricci and Julia Stiles. It's the smile.

Damn, I don't like Christina Ricci.

Sorry. I do like Christina Ricci, so the comparison was intended positively.

My sister is cute, but blessed with a forehead that is not as high as mine.

I forget, do women wish they had high foreheads, or not?

BG seems to wish she didn't.

That's one of the things that women seem to have a Platonic Ideal in mind for, but I can't remember what the ideal is.

258: It's not terrible. I just think that it makes my head a little big, but it's more of a tastes vary thing. She's also dirty blonde instead of brunette and more golden toned (with a slightly smaller, though still plenty full chest). Her arms aren't tiny the way that mine are. Hers are actually useful. She's half an inch shorter. Go figure. Her fingers are bigger, but not as long.

257: I know that it was.

256: Cala, I'd love to. If you're ever in Boston or I'm in PA or wherever your undisclosed location is, we definitely should.

I have a gigantic forehead and my mother has wished that I'd return to my mid-90s style of wearing bangs ever since I grew them out. I took solace in Chaucer who said that the Wife of Bath was smart because she had a forehead as wide as her hand. I would be happier if my eyelashes and eyebrows had come in a darker shade so it didn't look like the Great White Friggin' North north of, uh, my nose.

My sisters all have high foreheads but they have eyebrows to break up the expanse except for the one who doesn't and everyone says, oh, she looks just like you, Cala, but with straight hair.

My real name is biblical and means something like smart and of goodly countenance.

I need to get my brows done. I usually iron my hair.

Eyebrows are another thing where, when women say they don't like how their their eyebrows look, I have no idea what they would prefer them to look like.

Others:
- ankles
- hands
- wrists
- cheekbones
- neck

A high forehead is a sign of intelligence. Women used to pluck their hair.

obese pigeon

Read this as "oboes pigeon" initially.

I just should invest in MAC re: brows and my hair is as curly as it is in the wedding photos.

I think my name means 'My mother went to a Catholic girls' school.'

FUCK TO OBOES PIGEON

264:

Eyebrows: darker and neater, with fewer straggly hairs.
Ankles: slender, and not puffy.
Wrists: small circumference, delicate.
Cheekbones: high, defined, angular.
Neck: as a tower of ivory. Or a young gazelle. Damn you, Song of Songs!

265: I admit that my attempts at the oboe were not mellifluous, but still...

Opinionated Grandma is a regular reader. Who'd'a thunk?

Dude, I'm a beautiful woman.

Pigeons are avian rats.

Everyone picks on the poor pigeons. I think of them as rock doves.

ogged, no boobs. Schade.

Scheisse.

Rock doves are avian rock dassies? Much cuter image.

272, 273: There are ways around that, you know.

Just think of the drag names you could pull off, Ogged! Think of them.

mammalist.

276 to 274, of course.

There appears to be only one Iranian drag queen. The field is ripe for competition.

BG,Cala and other forehead worriers: you are lucky, even if your foreheads are slightly larger than you might like. Mine grows.

As is probably obvious from my Christina Ricci comments, I really like the big forehead look on women. I had a friend at school (from Boston, incidentally) who looked like that; in retrospect, I really should have asked her out when I had the chance.

57*: Walked into the kitchen a few minutes ago, to which Rah is piping music as he makes brownies to take to D&D tomorrow, and heard an incredibly melancholy, gods-why-can't-I-just-die cover of "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler playing.

Me: "Weirdest cover of that song ever."
Rah, smiling: "Magnetic Fields."

I love shuffle.

On the Doctorow front, the only thing I've ready by him was Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom, which I quite enjoyed. I had some minor complaints along the way but overall I thought the setting was so fun I didn't need to get my knickers knotted. A friend has gotten to know him through various things over the years and says he's a sweetheart. That's good enough for me. The phrase "Web 2.0," however, causes me to roll my eyes right out of my head, around the room and back into my skull.

* Those who hate scrolling can suck it while they scroll if that'll help pass the time.

in retrospect u shoulda asked out lots of girls

in the future, this means you shoudl ask out girls you're not super into. i'm serious do this shit.

Yeah, I know.

well, knowledge is pretty worthless as far as getting laid.

282 is a perfect example of why you should not do that, Teo.

But that, I am convinced you really do know.

I suppose, but it's definitely true that I need to be a lot less reticent about this sort of thing.

It depends how well you know the girls in question. If you know them well/are likely to see them for a long period of time, you can be more selective. In either case, consider the following useful exercise: put yourself in a situation where you are exposed to large numbers of women you are unlikely to see again, and ask them out scattershot. You might be successful, you might be shunned. In either case, you will develop a tolerance for a)asking girls out and b)getting rejected. I did this while traveling when I was 18, and it helped me immeasurably.

oh lunar rockette, if that only was the case.

286: If it's a confidence thing, don't let it be. You're very cute. There are probably a number of shy young women who are scared to ask you out.

If you are anything like all my college friends you remind me of, Teo, as soon as you move to a major metropolitan area and join a social circle that is composed of your peers (namely, folks your own age with degrees in similar subjects), it will take care of itself. Actually, if you were Chinese as opposed to Jewish, I would be confident in predicting you'd be married with two years.

join a social circle that is composed of your peers

How do you do that?

I've heard grad school or working at an institution that's basically fed from a University helps.

Seriously, though, it was kind of amazing to watch the rapidfire Cute Chinese Postdoc Wedding Season of '05.

290 is the worst advice

290 is very feminist. it will be a nice experiment for you.

I should contact this woman in an effort to effect a transformation von Gesprächspartnerin zu Geschlechtspartnerin.

What must it be like to be yoyo?

well the w-lfs-nnes>>>yoyoness

I remain unconvinced that yoyo exists.

I thought you had a girlfriend, w-lfs-n?

Not since over two years ago.

I shouldn't read Craigslist w4w, I always feel like such a bad person afterwards. Although heeeeey.

i didn't know existential questionaires still floated about.

I also shouldn't read the w-lfs-n blog, because I always feel much dumber afterwards.

291
join a social circle that is composed of your peers

How do you do that?

Yeah, I'd kill for that recipe.

Although,
rapidfire Cute Chinese Postdoc Wedding Season of '05
hee! I was there for that, too.

Pish tosh, Lunar.

304: No, really; you're suprisingly smart in a very wide range of ways one normally doesn't find clustered together at all. It's very impressive.

303: Am I correct in thinking you're in Cog Sci and are in MA? I wouldn't be suprised if we actually have some acquaintances in common.

Thank you, then.

Probably not representative, but when I performed 290, it set me back a couple years. I'm a geek-type person and, for whatever reason, it turns out I tend to get along with art-type women. When consorting with geek-types I found that it was way male-heavy, and that my comparative advantages didn't tend to register with the geek-type women. Not that 290 is a bad idea (for most people I know it works out), it's just not always a panacea.

In my limited experience, 290 is absolutely fantastic advice.

Doing something connected to a university probably helps, though it isn't necessary. The depressing bit is that--in my experience living in NYC--many people tend to use the friends they've carried with them from college as the base for their post-collegiate social/romantic networks. So if yours is small to start with, you're at a severe disadvantage, and it's too late to fix that. One thing you can do is attempt to get drawn into the social networks of others.

Nerdy activities--activities that require engagement, like reading groups or whatever--seem to be good for this. The problem, though, is that you need to at least have a decent sized weak-tie network to get it started, unless you want to just go Craigslist.

I just watched Trainspotting with my parents and am now unaccountably happy.

290 sounds like good advice, but despite my best efforts, it looks like I'll be living in a decidedly minor metropolitan area for the foreseeable future.

Finding yourself a social circle based on heroin is not going to solve your problems, Teo. Don't think you've found a magic bullet.

Wait, where in New Mexico are you exactly, Teo? (It is New Mexico, right?)

311: It could get me some hot underage ass, though. Or so I am led to believe.

312: Albuquerque.

313: Rats.

Um, why?

I have a sweet, slightly younger Jewish friend who is transitionally in NM working for [mensch-y public works endeavor I won't mention for privacy reasons], and she's facing somewhat similar problems to you. But she's in a different part of the state and although I'm not sure from lack of blog updates, I think must have wound up hitting it off with a young man she met a while back. Completely different part of the state, though.

I'd be interested to hear what part of the state she's in and why. You can e-mail me if you don't feel comfortable mentioning it here.

Unsuprisingly, it involves a certain US government agency that does things with rocks. Ahem.

Now I'm even more intrigued.

Trying not to be too identifying, but as opposed to my training as a Bath Toys-ologist, she's basically an Earthquake-ologist.

(And yes, I know those are stupid descriptors for "fluid dynamicist" and "seismologist", but whatever.)

I thought you were avoiding those terms for purposes identity-protection purposes.

322 should only contain one instance of the word "purposes" (and I just started drinking like a minute ago...).

Teo: New Mexico proper or, like, Placitas?

God I'm smacked. That should be Albuquerque proper. or some attractive suburb. Oh, never mind. It wouldn't make any diff.

322: they're euphemisms. LR didn't just want to come out and say her friend's a hardcore club kid way into cocktails and bass, who works for the Department of Rock.

Move to a foreign country.

Who, me? But why?

324/5: Albuquerque proper. I live in the University area now and am moving downtown.

I love B, but I'm not sure how much I'd bank on that - for all the whiny RadFem blogger slagging off her column as a sellout co-opted by The Man pissed me right off, since it's so very beautifully unadulterated in it's B-ness. I'm just not sure whether any of the SG audience I object to is actually reading, or whether it's enough to impact certain negative trends stemming specifically from alt.porn that I've seen reflected in, well, my daily life.

1. Aww, thanks.
2. Some of the jerks read. Mostly in order to yell about what a bitch I am--but they keep reading. I do not know if it's enough to impact some of the negative trends, no--partly because I haven't yet even started writing about beauty standards (which I infer is a big part of what you hate about "alt" porn). Mostly I've been trying, desperately, to get young hipsters to realize that being pro-choice and pro-the-right-of-women-to-post-naked aren't properly feminist unless they also extend to recognizing that even pregnant women and mommies also have the right to do shit that's considered "fucked up" by the hipster childfree classes. Moderate success in that area.
3. Hilariously, some of the folks who initially were thrilled I was writing there have gotten increasingly pissed off at me because they've decided *I'm* all RadFem, since I refuse to denounce Twisty's anti-SG post. I suppose in that respect I'm tackling the annoying libertarian/isolationist/radical individualist bullshit aspect of "alt" porn. I amuse myself by refusing to explain to the assembled outraged masses that it's totally possible to do things that are less than 100% justified in one's own mind, what with the world being imperfect and all.