I applaud w-lfs-n's efforts to finally get Unfogged banned by my workplace's content filter so I can get some damn work done.
can we have some links here? an explanation of what happened to you at lunch? (Did you fuck a kangaroo?) Must I tell you what I tell my undergraduates--cite your sources?
To the kangaroos, of course, we are the freaks.
Yeah, but who cares what they think, B? Those jumpy fuckers with their carrot-shaped dicks...
B's upset because of all the Kangaroo's staring at her, whispering that she only has one vagina.
Be careful, they might kick the shit out of you and your whole single-vaginad, push-a-whole-baby-out-through-that-thing, single-dicked, low-hanging species.
I apologize for the "Kanagaroo's." I am Becks style, and my son won't go to sleep.
Kick him in the head. Or else share your booze with him.
I should emphasize that the person who won't go to sleep here is, in fact, a Joey.
They didn't mention any of this stuff in Tank Girl. That movie needed more realism.
Apologizing for the Kangaroos is just another example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
On the other hand, they do make a fine upper.
Apologizing for the Kangaroos is just another example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
No, the cultural cringe.
Wait, what does "balls on top of penis" mean? I thought this was implying that the balls were, like, at the tip.
Beckett!
(Sorry to go OT, folks. Some things just have to be said.)
Bifurcated dicks sometimes, or bifurcated dicks, somemales?
15: The picture looks to me like the scrotum originates above (anterior to) the penis: balls on top.
Semi-serious question: why am I (and many others) weirdly weirded out by some critters, but not by others?
At some bizarre purity-and-danger level, for example, I am much more unsettled by the thought of a cockroach than by the thought of a grizzly bear. Just the word cockroach can almost make me shudder with disgust and revulsion, but I have no such response to grizzly. And yet the cockroach is basically harmless, whereas the grizzly can, you know, eat me for breakfast.
Is it because I could at least look into the eyes of the bear before it tore me to pieces, while there's no such possible connection to the insect?
Cockroaches are associated with disease. Hence, revulsion. Bears are not associated with disease, just violent death, from which revulsion will not protect you.
Note the url on that picture.
That's the strangest euphemism I've heard recently.
IA, if you ran into grizzlies regularly, or had occasion to, they'd scare you plenty.
Note the url on that picture.
Huh, you shouldn't hotlink, young Ben.
Have you ever encountered a bear in your home, IA?
Wandering into the kitchen in bare feet on a cold early morning and flicking on the light to see the "ee, skitter skitter" of the cockroaches and thinking "oh my god, that was near the oven"---that's where the cockroach revulsion comes from. I don't mind them so much when I see cockroaches dead on the sidewalk.
This reminds me of the scene in Something about Mary, "Oh man! How'd you get the beans above the frank? "
23: true. No longer hotlinked.
But you named the photo pretty-face-penis.jpg?
I've never encountered a cockroach in my home. Just mice, and these.
Despite my logical comment #20, I am not repulsed by the feces-depositing, food-nibbling mice, but I am repulsed by the centipedes who just drink water and eat other bugs.
He didn't change the name, he just moved the picture.
I am repulsed by the centipedes who just drink water and eat other bugs.
Not enough outside interests or something?
I've only seen bears (not grizzlies) a couple of times, and from a reasonably safe distance. And believe you me, I had no inclination to move closer, and would be terrified if a bear decided to get up close and personal.
But I'm not bothered by the fact that there are bears, though of course I want to maintain a safe distance. Whereas the very existence of cockroaches seems like an affront to me. The more so as I'm told the little buggers would survive a nuclear catastrophe (which the bears would not).
Yeah, I keep wondering why I never see centipedes hanging out at the hipster bars I go to. I feel pity for them sometimes.
I don't mind centipedes. They are fierce hunters, and they kill the cockroaches.
But I'm not bothered by the fact that there are bears, though of course I want to maintain a safe distance. Whereas the very existence of cockroaches seems like an affront to me.
I think it's a mammal vs. non-mammal thing. Bears clearly aren't human, but they share a lot of characteristics with us. Cockroaches, OTOH, are just alien; they have the wrong number of legs, they move differently than mammals do, they don't have faces the way mammals do.
They can change direction twenty-five times a second, according to Ruth Chang.
IA: Do you want the evolutionary explanation, or the humanist one?
Evolutionary: Some little creepy crawly things are poisonous, and can kill you dead, even they don't otherwise register as fearsome. Thus it is advantageous to develop a specific fear reaction to creepy crawly things. Big things that can obviously kill you, like bears or falling rocks, can be handled by the run of the mill fear reactions, reactions based on size and rapid movement and loud noises. Since there is little evolutionary cost to being extra scared of creepy crawly things, we can go ahead and make the reaction extreme, and have it apply to nearly any little bug.
I think it's a mammal vs. non-mammal thing. Bears clearly aren't human, but they share a lot of characteristics with us. Cockroaches, OTOH, are just alien; they have the wrong number of legs, they move differently than mammals do, they don't have faces the way mammals do.
But centipedes are even more alien than cockroaches, and yet somehow Invisible Adjunct is not bothered.
So the "disease --> revulsion" is certainly a factor.
HUmanistic: See 34. The important thing here is that bugs move forward by their own, inexorable, alien, logic. They both make sense, and are clearly Not Us.
Bears and roaches each possess the power to destroy us. The bear can do it with domination, and we can respect that. The roach through uncleanliness. It's all about the superior manliness of even a sow griz.
My boy has gone to sleep, but I am clearly still Becks style. I should sleep too.
I bet George Washington could fuck the shit out of cockroaches, too.
I thought the females gave birth through the vagina, it's just after a short 6 week pregnancy, to a tiny and terribly underdeveloped joey with two HUGE arms. She licks a trail to her pouch, and the poor little guy climbs his way up, latches onto a nipple, and then grows in there.
They've also got this totally screwy suspended animation thing, where a female will be pregnant with a zygote, but if there's a joey latched onto the nipple, the zygote will just...stay there until the joey gets big enough that he's no longer permanently in the pouch, just jumping in and out occasionally. Then he comes out of suspended animation and does the big climb.
The more I learn about it, the more it strikes me as the ideal reproductive system. It makes placentals look like LOSERS (seriously, what is up with 9 months of increasingly-incapacitating pregnancy culminating in a 10-40 hour agonizing and life-threatening labor?) And it's even got non-reproductive perks! Even if you never got pregnant, you'd always have the pouch. Which, hi, is also a place for keys, cellphone, maybe even a copy of War and Peace. And also, you'd always have gum!
42 gets it right. Unless it's completely factually inaccurate.
What I don't get is this:
Males have bifurcated dicks (sometimes).
sometimes? Sometimes? What about the bifurcated vaginae? I know the bifurcation is a standard feature of possums. If some kangaroos have them and some don't, that should lead to speciation, lickety-split.
Or by "sometimes" do you mean "some species do and some species don"t/.?
Ben, 30 was maybe the funniest thing I've ever heard.
I guess now we know why Ogged doesn't date anypedes.
They may not be tall, but they've still got a lot of leg.
Ben asked me to come by and clear a few things up.
43: Exactly right: some species do and some species don't. Your big red and gray kangaroos have single-tipped penises, but smaller species (including many of the wallabies) have bifurcated penises. For more on kangaroo reproduction, please see this poorly written student paper: http://www.biology.iastate.edu/intop/1Australia/Australia%20papers/Discoveries%20about%20Marsupial%20Rep
It took you nearly ten minutes to come up with that?!
Well, I did more research than that, actually, but that seemed like the most important point.
For instance, kangaroo reproduction is evidence of the existence of God (so says this guy: http://www.harunyahya.com/theauthor.php) -- http://www.evidencesofcreation.com/understanding12.htm
18: Just the word cockroach can almost make me shudder with disgust and revulsion, but I have no such response to grizzly.
Easy. As a foreigner from a northern clime where cockroaches are rare, to you cockroaches represent all of the things you don't like about your host country: cities, newfangled appliances, freedom, sexual licence, and George W. Bush. Whereas grizzlies, like loons, represent the simple strengths of your rustic native land.
22: No, Ogged, in Canada grizzlies and moose are common pests which you learn to deal with every day.
Also apparently subject to the same hoary old irreducible-complexity argument:
Kangaroos' superb design, their sophisticated reproductive methods and their amazing, energy-efficient locomotion did not come by any evolutionary process. For example, unless the pouch and the joey's ability to find it were fully functional, they would have left no offspring.
This was the second result for "kangaroo reproduction."
Also, god designed those weird penises to fit into those weird pussies. What are the odds on that? It's monkey-typewriter unlikely!
Speaking of Grizzly bear, did anyone see the movie Grizzly Man?
Freaky movie.
As an aside, my family once owned a couple of kangaroos. They can be very intimidating up close.
Still, I don't care. It can never beat hyena clitoripenii.
Het geslachtsorgaan.
Het is vrijwel onmogelijk om de vrouwtjes en de mannetjes hyena uit elkaar te houden. Het uitwendig geslachtsorgaan van het vrouwtje lijkt heel sterk op dat van een mannetje. De clitoris is niet van een penis te onderscheiden. Op de plaats waar het mannetje de scrotum heeft, bevindt zich bij het vrouwtje een dubbel zakje, gevuld met een vezelachtig, niet functioneel weefsel. De opening van de vagina is alleen te zien in de seksuele actieve fase.
"Niet Functioneel Weefsel" would be a good name for an alt-rock band.
I've only seen bears (not grizzlies) a couple of times, and from a reasonably safe distance. And believe you me, I had no inclination to move closer, and would be terrified if a bear decided to get up close and personal
Back in the "Please Don't Feed the Bears" era of the fifties and sixties—a whole popular cartoon was based on the resulting schtick—feeding meant bears were easy to see in parks all over North America. They cracked down everywhere in the seventies.
Algonquin Provincial Park was where I saw bear-feeding most often. You'd drive over a hill and see a bunch of cars stopped on both sides, and in the middle of the road. That was always the reason. Some guy, woman or child would be creeping towards the bear, who was often standing on hind legs, with a hand holding food outstretched. My folks thought it was nuts.
They'd had plenty of bear-encounter stories from the early days in Deep River, about bears wandering into town at night or in the fog, standing up when people approached, and being mistaken for people and greeted, or one my mother told about a woman looking out her backdoor to see a bear's head in the baby carriage, checking the sleeping infant out, apparently without damage that time.
apparently without damage that time
Is that implying there was another time?
Implying that it wasn't a case of being perfectly safe, that the bear wouldn't do any harm if not frightened, like some people are always trying to claim, but was just true that time.
Apparently black bears are timid and unthreatening, but grizzlies and brown bears aren't.
Of course, a bear could do a lot of damage even in affectionate play. They're sort of the klutzy Bubba type.
Cougars also are apparently a real threat.
I've read of cougars that they don't attack adult-human sized bipeds -- we just don't fit their prey image. The problem is that if you bend over to tie your shoe, suddenly you're an edible quadruped.
Everyone knows the old gag about bear discrimination, I suppose:
Q: How do you tell if the bear chasing you is a brown bear or a grizzly?
A: If you climb a tree and it follows you up, it's a brown bear. If it knocks the tree down, it's a grizzly.
Tell it to the jogger lady who got eaten. Though I suppose it's possible that she did tie the fatal shoe.
63: The problem is that if you bend over
Speaking of carnivorous mammals indigenous to North America that might or might not be dangerous to people, that sounds familiar.
My favorite is a list of safety tips for hikers: "Attach bells to your pack so bears can hear you coming and avoid you, and pepper spray to drive off an aggressive bear.... (well further down the list) The feces of the black bear can be identified by the presence of berries and other undigested plant materials. The feces of the grizzly can be identified by the presence of small bells and pepper spray."
I think "You didn't come here just for the huntin'" is a standalone joke by now. That joke travels pretty well.
66, 68:
Are we now to the point where rape + bears = funny?
70: Right, between that and George Washington fucking the shit out of bears, I thought this had become the all ursine rape blog.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's just unusual and worth noting.
71: I don't want to know anything about the online community that came up with that wiki page.
Although personally I don't think rape or bears are funny. Now being eaten by a boa constrictor, that's a reliable source of laughs.
74: Fortunately, no one has suggested that the two are funny on their own. Its the combination that people seem fixated on.
Am I allowed to be annoyed by this? We had a guest sleeping on our couch all week, the friend of a friend of one of my roommates, who last night pounded on my closed door while I was practicing my pedal steel. She sounded alarmed. When I opened the door, she said there was a giant bug. I looked at her with my best "what do you want me to do about it?" look. She said, "I'm not going to do anything about it, but you might want to." It turned out the cat had crippled a medium-sized cockroach in the living room. I killed it with my shoe and disposed of it as the houseguest continued her hysterics.
Now I realize people are creeped out by bugs. I'm not a huge fan of them myself. But shouldn't adults generally get over their phobia enough to kill their own damn bugs? Or, barring that, should they at least approach bug-killers such as myself with humility, not entitlement? And this woman is moving to New York. Is it reasonable to move to New York and expect never to have to occupy the same apartment as a cockroach? (She was so freaked out that she packed up her stuff and moved to someone else's couch that very night. Fine by me.) Or am I being too harsh?
If she's not your houseguest, Bave, I don't see why you should have to kill her bugs.
I think it's a combination of gender issues (you're manly, and therefore responsible for bug killing) and the association of cockroaches with dirt (you live in an apartment with roaches, so you're dirty, so you should be ashamed and apologetic when a guest sees a roach, and move heaven and earth to make it go away). If she lives in NY, she should chill out on the latter front pretty quickly; the former may be ineradicable. And she was just being a jerk about the whole thing.
De clitoris is niet van een penis te onderscheiden.
In Taiwan I learned to get used to roaches as big as mice. Also ants, geckos, a mud-dauber wasp, and a spider with an 8" span. The centipede creeped me out a little, because it disappeared in my room somewhere.
It was partly a gender thing. Although two other roommates (a hetero couple) freaked out memorably a while ago about a cockroach in their room, which I killed for them. I didn't mind it much, since they didn't act entitled to my services and were very grateful afterwards. Maybe this should be in that other thread, but although I don't think of myself as particularly manly, I think "can handle his/her own shit" is a pretty high-ranking virtue. Although I see that it's somewhat gendered.
Wish it wasn't, but part of what present-day Americans think of as appropriately feminine is 'adorably helpless', and some people are going to act that out.
Fortunately, no one has suggested that the two are funny on their own. Its the combination that people seem fixated on.
Next unfogged project: discover three themes that are so disturbing that the combination of any two remains unfunny, but all three together are hilarious.
Fuck that, I always made the girlfriend kill the bugs. I'm not going near those things.
Aw, Bavé Deë, I don't think you should be so cranky about people with phobias. I have one (at least) and the the thing about them is that they make you completely irrational. Entitlement, sure, no virtue in that.
86: And it was totally adorable, I'm sure!
Next unfogged project: discover three themes that are so disturbing that the combination of any two remains unfunny, but all three together are hilarious.
Isn't that apostropher.com's mission?
You know what, though, I think the cockroach/other icky bug thing is totally just imitating other people's behavior. I have a hard time disposing of even a dead cockroach (although I can kill one just fine if I have to; if there's someone else around I can beg to do it, I do so), and it's because my older sister, when I was a kid, would freak the fuck out anytime she saw a cockroach. So I got it in my head that that was the normal thing for adult-ish women to do.
Whereas, I have no such horrible icky inside feelings about spiders, who are, you know, actually dangerous, because there are few spiders in Egypt and my sister chose not to be freaked out by them.
My college boyfriend had gotten a bad spider bite as a kid and so was terrified of them; we had an agreement where he would deal with the cockroaches, I with the spiders. Worked out great.
I think the cockroach/other icky bug thing is totally just imitating other people's behavior.
For some, but a lot of people are genuinely huge wusses. (cough, Ogged, cough)
The wife wants me to deal with all the bugs, but tries to insist that I not harm them. To which I'm like, fuck off. If you want me to crush your bugs I will gladly oblige. If you want me carefully to take them outside and set them down gently in the grass and then make love to them you're going to have to do it yourself.
a lot of people are genuinely huge wusses. (cough, Ogged, cough)
Guilty as charged. Now that I live alone, I just let the fuckers live.
Roberta makes me kill the bugs (which doesn't bother me, except for the interruption), even though she's nominally the outdoorsy camping half of the marriage.
I just let the fuckers live.
They will eat you in your sleep, Ogged.
I have gotten into bed a couple of times to find a spider crawling on my pillow. I blow it off (that's right) and go to sleep.
I don't think those spiders are on your pillow for the hunting, Ogged.
They're just a little lost, LB, and how would you like it if every time you got lost, someone stomped you dead? Hmmm?
I can ignore any creature I have so far encountered in the house, except the long-legged centipedes. Fortunately they are usually in the bathtub so all I have to do is put off showering for a couple days and they will disappear as well.
I'll kill ur bugs dead, but I have a terrible aversion to sprouting vegetables that have sprouted. Garlic, potatoes, onion, shudder.
I kill bugs with a certain amount of disgust, but no real issues. Spiders I'm superstitiously courteous to -- I got a combination of 'they kill other bugs' and Charlottes' Web as a kid that makes it feel wrong to kill a spider, so I do move them if they're someplace I'd rather not have a spider. Big centipedes turn me into a terrified monkey with an irrational need to kill it and make it stop moving like that, but I only ever encountered them in Samoa.
I can't believe Ogged makes his girlfriends kill bugs for him. You're nuts!
102: Women who won't kill bugs are just not smart enough.
I moved a bug in Reno, just to watch it fly.
Big centipedes turn me into a terrified monkey with an irrational need to kill it and make it stop moving like that, but I only ever encountered them in Samoa.
? The centipedes linked in 28 are pretty big. Do they not live in Manhattan?
I can't believe Ogged makes his girlfriends kill bugs for him. You're nuts!
They're also free to let them live. But if you want it dead, you have to kill it yourself. Except for ants. I like to kill ants.
Some bugs freak me out much more than others -- wasps, scorpions, giant centipedes. But as terrifying as those are, someone has to kill them, and I'll do it if I have to. (No scorpions or giant centipedes in Brooklyn, but we had them where I grew up.)
They're also free to let them live.
My brother had a little spider-like creature crawl into his ear. He had to go to the ER to get it out.
Very gross.
105: The ones in Samoa were approximately penis sized -- people talked loosely about eight-inchers all the time, but you rarely saw one. Four or five inches mostly. I've never seen a centipede in New York -- they may not be well adapted to living above ground level.
Also, I love Costa Rica, but I am scared silly of being attacked by a Botfly.
The ones in Samoa were approximately penis sized -- people talked loosely about eight-inchers all the time, but you rarely saw one. Four or five inches mostly.
Sounds like a typical penis discussion.
Would people be more, or less excited to go to Samoa if the main selling point was "not many eight-inchers"?
84: In one of Carol Bly's stories there's an adorably helpless HS girl who screams when she sees a spider if there's a guy around, but who ters off their legs one at a time if there's no one around to rescue her.
Except for ants. I like to kill ants.
But you shouldn't kill ants. Killing ants releases a hormone that makes more ants come after them.
Then you get to kill more ants. Fucking ants.
But you shouldn't kill ants. Killing ants releases a hormone that makes more ants come after them.
It doesn't make more ants exist, though. It makes them move into a location where Ogged can more easily kill them!
Samoa was actually pretty good on the noxious pest front. Mosquitoes, but no malaria, not all that many centipedes, giant roaches but those are everyplace in the tropics, and that was about it. Anything that could really hurt you was in the water -- the reef could kill you six ways from Sunday.
My favorite, favorite bugs are mosquito hawks. My sister and I used to name the ones that wandered into our bedroom. They'd usually last about three or four days, but Juan Carlos hung around for almost two weeks.
116: I love pouring boiling water on anthills. It's socially acceptable mass murder!
The ones in Samoa were approximately penis sized -- people talked loosely about eight-inchers all the time
When I was in the Caribbean I woke up to a 7" centipede biting my nose.
I believe waking up with a 7" penis attacking your nose would be even more disturbing.
119: Those are beautiful. That's something I miss about Samoa, a million different kinds of dragonflies everywhere. They're like Art Deco jewelry.
Are there actually penises shorter than eight inches?
I'm of the "let them live" camp. Every winter we get several dozen pretty little orange and black bugs in our house, and they're quite inoffensive. Two scpecies, a lady-bug-like asian beetle, and box elder bigs.
Back on the veldt, sprouting vegetables.......something something something.
121: See, I'd kill it, and then die because the adrenaline made my heart explode. A centipede on my face? Unsurvivable.
The worst part (in the i-love-my-prada-backpack sense of 'worst') about global warming is that all those scary bugs that live in the South and tropical places that I never have to see due to living in places where the ground freezes and the snow falls will move North. And eat me.
Hey, you had your chance to move to Canada. It won't be tropical up there for another century or so. Get ready for the eight-inchers.
In my sleep once a bunch of mosquito hawks started landing on me one at a time. Apparently human sweat attracts them. I ignored it for awhile but eventually went berserk and killed about twenty of them. Not creeped out, but it was really annoying.
Mosquito hawks aren't dragonflies, I don't think. If so, these were spiderhawks. I had a complete ecosystem -- spoiling fruit, fruit flies, spiders, and spider hawks.
There is nothing at all endorsable about letting cockroaches live - they spread their filth everywhere, and by filth I mean shit, which nearly everyone is allergic to. That said, I see their nauseating piles of little-black-ball shit in all the corners of my house and I still discretely turns away when I see one of the perpetrators because even thinking about the crunch of their guts coming out makes me feel faint.
spoiling fruit, fruit flies, spiders, and spider hawks
And thou.
See, I'd kill it, and then die because the adrenaline made my heart explode. A centipede on my face? Unsurvivable
I was probably lucky that I didn't figure out what it was until it was off my face. I woke up in the dark with something pinching my nose and I swatted it off. I then jumped out of bed. When I looked back it was sitting on my pillow. I let it live and moved it outside. It was actually kind of cool looking, but I didn't sleep well the rest of the night.
Every time I see a (harmless) tarantula crawling up the wall, it takes several minutes for the adrenaline rush to subside to a point where I can take it outside and put it where the cats won't kill it. (The same courtesy is not extended to other spiders.)
No scorpions or giant centipedes in Brooklyn, but we had them where I grew up.
Huh. I grew up (and live) where you grew up, but I've never seen any scorpions or giant centipedes.
I generally let insects and spiders live. My apartment hasn't had many so far, but the house I'm sitting has a lot. Some of the spider webs are pretty cool.
the crunch of their guts coming out
That's the exoskeleton cracking. The guts come out with a faint, squishy sound.
Mosquito hawks aren't dragonflies, I don't think.
I thought the term referred to crane fly, but Wiki says it's used for both.
Wiki: "mosquito hawk" can mean dragon fly or crane fly (unrelated and dissimiliar). Crane flies are vegetarians, if anything (some just mate, lay eggs, and die. In Britain the crane fly is called a daddy-long-legs, but in the US this means a kind of arthropod (but not spider).
Anthropomorphic bugs in childrens' stories always feature outdoor bugs. There are several ants and one set of fireflies in Czech.
Giant St Louis flying cockroaches that live under cracks in concrete sidewalks and physics building subbasements can be disposed of with liquid nitrogen. The insides come out through the mouth.
novice question: can somebody tell me how to render comment text in italics? I keep feeling like this will come up in a thread, and it probably already has, but I'm tired of waiting.
That's the exoskeleton cracking. The guts come out with a faint, squishy sound.
Right, but the crunch still attends the guts ooze, which is the important part. There's nothing inherently revolting about an exoskeleton's cracking; it's just sad.
I hate flying things that sting and/or bite me. Stepped on a ground nest of wasps one time and got mauled thoroughly.
I was carrying a machete at the time and was slapping myself with the flat to kill wasps that were savaging me. While running. I think I am fortunate to be alive.
I was carrying a machete at the time and was slapping myself with the flat to kill wasps that were savaging me.
May I suggest the much quicker Rapier for next time?
Every time I see fireflies, I still think somebody is fucking with me, or that I'm having flashbacks. They're such a literary trope for me---when I was a kid, I didn't even believe that anywhere actually had fireflies.
The only thing that makes me stand on a chair and scream is women.
