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No threadjacking before three comments (that means #5 now).
The whole thing is so offensive that is almost seems wrong to pick out any one thing to criticize.
is s/b it
See! It's so awful that I'm confusing verbs and pronouns.
Diminutive nicknames are definitely a sign of lack of respect and misplaced trivialization.
As a kid I always pointed out how in our exercises there seemed to always be a girl named "Rita". "Rita again!" I would say. None of the kids I talked to had noticed it. Every workbook was full of Ritas. I think she represented Latinos.q
Not to mention that "Ro" rhymes with "ho".
FYI, outrage over this was such that they had to change the website. Which is cool.
Well their website does get one thing right.
If you have sex before you marry your are more likely to:
1. Breakup before you marry
2. Scare off someone who wants to marry a virgin
3. [...]
Now why that would be a problem is another question altogether.
why that would be a problem
Can't you see it? Joe Abstinence is walking to the courthouse with his virgin fiancee. On the way they take a shortcut through a park, and trip over some people having sex before marriage. Joe is horrified, ala Ruskin, at the revelation that women have pubic hair, and swears off marriage forever.
If abstinence education can keep this from happening even once, it will have been worth it.
8, 9: Well, to be fair, the website authors might be concerned about a number of different contexts in which this might come up, for example in employment.
Say you submit an application for a job as a cabana boy at a small, high-class country club. Before the club can hire you, you've got to be vetted by a small cadre of gentlemen members. These gentlemen are likely to ask you about the status of your chastity. After all, all their own young lady friends (from which pool these gentlemen expect to select their own eventual wives) attend this club. If the gentlemen know that you are committed to your own virginity, they can rest easy knowing that their lady friends' unsmudged private parts lie in trusted hands. Imagine if you had to admit that you weren't a virgin, though. Don't you think you would scare them off?
vetted by a small cadre of gentlemen members.
Hubba-hubba.
the Ohio group Abstinence 'Till Marriage (ATM), a fitting acronym
Um.
Of course, if you do stay abstinent, you will scare off people who like to have sex.
That website is going to make me crazy.
When I told my mum that I had my first lover she turned into someone I had never met before. It was like a possession. She got very quiet and started talking about what if in the future I were to fall in love with someone, say a doctor, and he wouldn't want to marry me because I wasn't a virgin. Up until this point I'd only known my mum as a fierce hairy comfy-shoes feminist. She recovered herself, and has had no memory since of her side of the conversation. She thinks I'm joking when I bring it up.
(Sorry about that up there, I had to send a file fast and panicked.)
Oh, God. When I was in college, my mother said she had recurring nightmares that I was no longer a virgin. Jesus Christ, Mother.
You should have told her you were having exactly the same dream about her. You know, throw her off her game a bit. Or something.
I suspect that when I was in college my parents were wondering when I would finally get around to no longer being a virgin.
She's been coming to terms with my non-virginity for ten years, and now she's at the point where if I say I've left the house with a male friend, she assumes we're having sex, "because things are different now from how they were when I was young." It's unnerving.
My mom was kinda jokingly nervous about the whole my-kids-are-having-sex-gah! thing. I remember a night where my college-age brother was headed out on a date and made some joke about getting it on. She tried to joke, "Yeah, well, make sure you double bag it" (no shit), and I proceeded to explain, straight-faced, why it's a bad idea to use two condoms at the same time. That pretty much resolved the issue.
(I may have told this story before.)
Sometimes I worry my mom's no longer a virgin.
21: Tell her sometimes you don't make it all the way out of the yard first.
I suspect that when I was in college my parents were wondering when I would finally get around to no longer being a virgin.
They probably still are.
22: Maybe your brother or his date were very unattractive and the second bag was for higher up. This joke may not be original either.
This joke may not be original either.
ya think?
This low-hanging fruit won't pick itself, you know.
It might not be able to find anyone to pluck it.
I suspect that when I was in college my parents were wondering when I would finally get around to no longer being a virgin.
I suspect my parents were wondering something similar about me. Certainly when I did finally get around to it my mom seemed quite untroubled about the new state of affairs.
Hey, where did your travels take you today, teo? (Everyone should be reading teo's travel updates, by the by.)
Ooh I doubt it'll happen but teo you should totally check out Quartzsite, AZ on the way.
I've heard about Quartzsite, and even briefly considered coming back through that general area, but it doesn't look like it'll happen on this trip. Sounds like a bizarre place.
It's really amazing. I have a friend with a trailer there who calls it "geriatric burning man". Also you can buy amethyst crystals for like $2 a pound, and there's a bookstore run by a nudist that has full sets of back issues for every science fiction magazine ever! And there's a bar called the yacht club that has a boat out front, lack of nearby water nonwithstanding! And there are these people who camp on BLM land for 6 months at a time with no water or power or nothin', all survivalist style with solar panels, painting pictures of eagles and noble wolves of the Arctic!
Yeah, it's great.
And in answer to Stanley's question, Petrified Forest. I took a bunch of pictures.
36 is a description of Quartzsite, not Pie Town. In case there's any confusion.
Here's a brief account of Pie Town's origins. The rest of the pictures give more of a sense of what it's like.
That explanation is disappointingly prosaic.
The interesting part comes later, when the rest of the town basically ceases to exist but for some reason the pie remains.
Here's a brief account of Pie Town's origins.
Ah. When I was there, we headed south from Magdalena and hung out in the mountains, all cold beer and spring break style. I don't think we actually made it to the VLA, cuz we got in late.
max
['Sounds like an awesome trip, teo.']
New comments on teo's story - on the front page! I think it's a cool idea.
Thanks, Stanley. This thread can now return to heated discussion of abstinence.
45: OK. I see you are in Winslow, so keep an eye out for girls in flatbed Fords.
My parents, especially my mom, spent my high school years asking me every few years if I'd finally had sex. They'd also sexile me on vacations - go hang out in the car and listen to your horrible music and read for a couple hours, mama and tatus need some alone time.
16 is what happens when someone has repressed a deeply embedded set of assumptions and covered them over with new ones - you get the right trigger and the old stuff bubbles right up and takes over for a little while before you stuff it back under the mattress. I was raised with those abstinence only values and they still pop up from time to time despite the fact that I'm sex-positive to the point of being an advocate of all manner of perverse degeneracy and sordid frightfulness.
there's a bookstore run by a nudist that has full sets of back issues for every science fiction magazine ever! And there's a bar called the yacht club that has a boat out front, lack of nearby water nonwithstanding!
Finally! A place to spend my golden years.
"Sexile" is fantastic. Thanks, TKM.
As to the "is my child having sex" question, my HS girlfriend's dad was abruptly relieved of any doubt one day when he walked in on us in the act.
Mercifully, he shut the door right away and was nice enough not to bring it up later. But we were both pretty mortified at the time.
Due to the excessive Catholicity of me & my HS GF, I didn't actually start having sex until the middle of college. A few months later, after my dad explained that he had started dating (this was a couple years after my mom's brain injury, when it became clear that she would never recover or come home; he never stopped visiting her near-daily, and was absolutely right to start dating), I said, "I guess now is a good time to tell you that I'm having sex with Bad Old GF*." He responded, "I'm not surprised." I don't think I said anything, but I was like "I stayed a fricking virgin until I was almost 21, and this is my thanks?" Altho, to be fair, I always knew my mom was the one who would have cared. But it wasn't like I thought my dad would be all "Woo, go get 'em, Son."
Anyway.
* In retrospect, the fact that I referred to her that way should have been a clue.
49: Can you enlighten me, then? Is the takeaway meant to be:
a) No girl who sleeps around would ever say no to a guy, even if he's behaving (by his own admission!) like a drunken asshole;
b) Girls who sleep around get raped and deserve it;
or c) If you sleep around and get raped, you may or may not deserve it, but you can suck it up because no one will believe you.
I read this when Lawyers Guns and Money linked to it, and those are the options I came up with, and I was unable to decide which moral for their little fable was most disgusting.
53: Did you really mean 49? B/c I'm pretty sure togolosh was just commiserating with Penny's tale in 16 of her otherwise utterly liberated mom having a sudden and bizarre reactionary pro-abstinence response to Penny's becoming sexually active.
54 is correct.
Though I think the takeaway from the lesson of the Abstinence Only "Educators" is meant to be that there is a presumption of consent for girls who have a reputation. Which is exactly as horrifically immoral as it sounds, and the people who push it should be shunned, ostracized, and frustrated in their evil ambitions at every turn.
55: They shouldn't get any nookie either.
I'm pretty sure it's c) If you sleep around and get raped, you may or may not deserve it, but you can suck it up because no one will believe you., with some extra emphasis on "and you have no one to blame but yourself."
58 sounds right to me, with overtones of (d) Even if someone compels you to have sex that you don't consent to, your reputation means that they have to be presumed to have made a perfectly reasonable error: how could anyone know a slut like you didn't consent to sex globally?
59 seems like it is indeed the message they are transmitting, which just horrifies me.
(Speaking of rape, I just watched the Battlestar Galactica episode(s) that deal with the systematic rape of a Cylon as a torture/interrogation tactic. I was so, so, so horrified by it and simultaneously upset that no one was calling the "events" rape; when they finally did label it correctly, the scene was all the more powerful. For some reason it really did a good job of bringing home to me how important it is that rape be labeled rape and none of this dancing around the topic bullshit).
61: A mental bug I seem unable to shake is that, ever time someone mentions Battlestar Galactica, I think they're talking about Galaxy Quest. Don't know why these two are filed together in the card catalog, but they are.
I always conflate Battlestar Galactica with Battlefield Earth; in fact for a long time I dismissed people out of hand whenever they would mention Battlestar Galactica because all I could think of was John Travolta in those funny headdresses.
Galaxy Quest is a comedy and Battlestar Galactica is anything but. Perhaps that would help in distinguishing between the two?
And now I'm embarrassed for having brought up Battlestar Galactica. /shame
And now I'm embarrassed for having brought up Battlestar Galactica. /shame
Well, you certainly got over it quickly.
Only the public expression of it, M/tch. I am still burning with shame in my heart of hearts.
62: Oh man, me too. I always picture that kid at the end being like, "I know, I know, it's not real."
"No, it is real. It's all true, and we need your help."
"I KNEW IT!"
66: Did you mean "Battlefield Earth" in the last sentence of 64?
68: No, since I've never actually seen it, I don't feel any shame about Battlefield Earth. It's more that my social circle has been teasing me about my sudden-onset obsession/devotion to Battlestar Galactica and have shamed me out of mentioning it to anyone.
69: You shouldn't listen to those losers.
This morning I woke up with a craving for hot buttered toast with Marmite. But I do not have a toaster. I resolved to buy a toaster this weekend. All of a sudden I was struck by the awesomest idea ever: Someone should make a toaster shaped like the head of a Cylon Centurion. I would buy that in a heartbeat. I wasn't going to mention it, but you people brought it up.
Also, there is no shame in being a fan of Galactica. And Galaxy Quest is awesome.
Never give up, never surrender!
72: If you have an oven with a broiler, you have a toaster. You just have to watch it closely.
You can toast on a stove, or even with a lighter.
Sometimes I just stick a couple slices of bread in the dryer with my laundry, for that matter.
72: That's totally awesome. I am sure sci-fi geeks across the country would buy it, even in the depths of a recession. You should get to work implementing your plan.
Also, MH is right. And the added bonus of the broiler is that your toast of whatever thickness never gets stuck!
The disadvantage is that toast in the broiler doesn't pop-up when it is done. It probably isn't very energy efficient either. I'm guessing it still beats using the dryer.
75: And when you set the desired darkness and pushed the little lever that lowers the toast and it could say "By your command" in that tinny voice. And the little red eyeball light goes back and forth while it toasts the bread.
I am going to be so fucking rich.
And it would double as a clothes dryer?
77: Also, you could combine it with your day job and make it fusion-powered. I'd totally buy that.
When the toast is finished, instead of pinging a bell, it says, "So say we all!"
Oh wait, I got the cylons and the humans confused. Never mind.
Would I have to watch BSG to get 75 and 80? I'm curious, but I haven't seen the show yet.
You will be able to buy it from SkyMall. And Sharper Image.
Little toaster ovens are the best because:
(1) They have a timer, like a vertical toaster, but
(2) You can toast with toppings on, like a broiler oven.
(3) They don't heat up your whole house, like a vertical toaster, but
(4) You can also bake small batches of cookies (eg) in them, like an oven.
Toaster ovens FTW!
And the little red eyeball light goes back and forth while it toasts the bread.
Oh god, this is so perfect I'm amazed it hasn't been invented already.
Not as brilliant as my idea, but it sort of crowds the market a bit.
82: yes.
84 is wise. They are also the best for making quick quesadillas. I really, really need to get a toaster oven again. Hm. But I totally lack the counter space. It's too busy being taken up by my stand mixer.
togolosh, yours would blow it out of the water. Don't give up the dream!
I was having a hard time making ends meet a few years ago and spent about 8 months not paying my cooking gas bill. I learned to make almost everything in my toaster oven and have been in love with it since.
86: My God, everything does already exist, doesn't it?
90: That reminds me of my favorite Fran Lebowitz quote: Original thought is like original sin. Both occured long ago to people you couldn't possibly have met.
89: I had one in college, which is also when I learned to make nearly everything in one. Between a toaster oven and a hot water kettle, you can really make quite a bit. One popular invention was toaster oven kebabs. Yum.
So I haven't been watching the final season of BSG, should I be? The show kind of went off the rails after like the first half of season 2. I've kept waiting for it to right itself, but I suspect it's not going to happen. Also the first half of season 4 was so obnoxious it was hard to watch. If Romo fucking Lampkin ever crosses the screen of my television screen again I swear I'm gonna kick it in.
I'd still buy your toaster though, togolosh.
92: But how do you keep the toaster oven from falling off the skewer?
93 I think that this is the strongest season since the opening. They are handling the revelations about the remaining cylons and the history the Earth well. Gaeta had an exciting story arc, recently.
The whole thing is really fucking dark, though. Also, Lambkin makes a brief appearance
82: To get 80, yes, you'd have to see the show. Although just the miniseries/pilot episode would do it. I'm not sure what you're referring to in 75; did you mean 77? If so, yeah, I guess so.
90: This has all happened before.
93: I'm really liking the last few episodes, but if you think the show has been off the rails since the first half of season 2, I doubt you'd enjoy what's going on now much. Apparently the Cylons came first and actually aren't evil and...
I haven't gotten to season 4 yet, but isn't the whole thing really fucking dark, as in, the entire series?
I'm also always sort of surprised when I'm still quite enjoying a series while others are decrying that it's run off the rails. I am led to understand that there's a great deal of debate, though, about Battlestar Galactica's cycles of goodness and badness.
Toaster ovens FTW!
Woo!
My first-ever writing gig was doing a recipe column for my college paper. I got it because one of the editors lived on my hall and witnessed my mastery of the ToastROven.
Greek-style roast chicken with potatoes, bitchez.
98: I mean darker than that.
I dunno. They set up the show so nicely in the start of the first season, and I feel like they just haven't followed through. The characters and relationships that were set up never got developed. Instead they kinda just trashed them and started over. Like, Kara and Lee just got totally reinvented somewhere in season 2 or 3. Now they're unrecognizable as the people that we started with in season 1. Maybe they grew or developed or something because of all the trauma they experienced, but who cares, if the result is that now they totally suck?
Also, why are there so many fucking journalists and reporters and lawyers and low-level politicians on this stupid fleet? That shit's so boring! Why hasn't someone put Romo Lampkin out a fucking airlock yet?
100: I mean darker than that.
A duck then? Pheasant?
Make proper coq-au-vin in a toaster oven and I'll be impressed. There isn't even a volume problem, exactly.
There isn't even a volume problem, exactly.
Not with my toaster oven anyway. My toaster oven goes to 11.
You will be able to buy it from [...] Sharper Image.
I wouldn't so much count on that part of any business plan at this point.
108: Hey, they laughed at Columbus too, Stanley.
106: But coq au vin is started, if not also finished, on the stove.
110: No, Jesus, it all starts with an egg.
Or a chicken, depending on your point of view.
I dropped out in the middle of season 2, partly because I have little taste for military sadism as entertainment, but also because the show was never funny. Did that change in later seasons at all? Rome was occasionally sadistic, but a little skipping left a grim and occasionally funny show. The Wire always had funny bits. BSG was suitably dark, intellectually and dramatically interesting, but may as well have been Thomas Mann with explosions for lack of humor, I thought. The bitchy manipulative ex was kind of funny, but again, always a mean streak.
Okay, go from egg to coq au vin in a toaster oven, and I'll be mightily impressed.
I have an old recipe for coq au vin somewhere around here that calls for a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin (!) which is then reduced by half by boiling (!!). It is to weep. Not to play into stereotypes or anything, but it comes from a book by an English cook.
Hm, I'm only now approaching the end of Season 2 but I think the show has its funny elements - Gaius talking to himself (well, to Chip 6, but still) nearly always cracks me up. Or Starbuck walking in on him in the act ... and some of the pilot humor, etc. But I suppose that probably isn't enough to offset the darkness and there is no Tito Pullo to charm us all.
Hm, I'm only now approaching the end of Season 2 but I think the show has its funny elements - Gaius talking to himself (well, to Chip 6, but still) nearly always cracks me up
The show is actually at its most light hearted at the beginning. It just gets darker as it continues. So it doesn't get funnier. I do agree that the latest season is some of its best though. I didn't like the middle seasons as much stupid mud planet.
Yeah, I want more funny. More funny, less Quorum!
This is a little spoilery, but....
Season 4 gives jms half of what he wishes for in 116.
Also, Cyrus's spoiler in 97 isn't entirely accurate.
A whole chicken?
Yeah. My folks got me an awesome ToastROven for Xmas the year that I went off the meal plan. Still have it and use it regularly. It's critical to Thanksgiving dinner in my one-over household.
113.2: FWIW, apparently you can detect better quality wine in dishes like coq au vin. OTOH, once you get above Two Buck Chuck levels, it's marginal improvements for big cost increases.
Or so I've read.
Season 4 gives jms half of what he wishes for in 116
This made me laugh although I don't think that counted towards the shows humor tally.
I don't think that counted
that should be counted
Make up your mind, CJB!
We already have on little bitch M/tch we don't need two.
I've been fascinated by BSG in theory, but A. no cable and B. hardly any screen-watching at all. We're not snobs, we're parents.
We finally started watching the Sopranos last winter. Speaking of funny shows. As I've said here before, I have a lot of trepidation about The Wire, as it doesn't seem to be a barrel of laughs. I'm not sure I can handle the darkness of BSG, so I've sated my interest by reading episode synopses online. Which is super-lame, but since my interest is sort of didactic (really, I"m just curious about the mythos), it's adequate.
Anyway.
135: You should try out the miniseries. It'll give you a taste of what the rest is like and it's not a huge time expenditure. As for the darkness...I had no idea what I was getting into when I got it from Netflix, I had just heard buzz and thought I'd finally give this thing a try. I ended up watching on a Friday night after a few beers at happy hour and was rather horrifically depressed about it. But also hooked.
But really, just watch The Wire. You might be saddened but its good for you.
125: I haven't found The Wire oppressively dark thus far. It's good watchin', and even fairly funny at least once or twice an episode. Of course, I'm also a fan of dark humor, and probably about half the humor in the series is very dark.
I haven't found The Wire oppressively dark thus far. It's good watchin'
The later seasons do cultivate an air of despair with characters being trapped by their circumstances.
john hodgman has a new recurring character on BSG who is pretty funny.
I've been trying to think of what to post in comment 135 so that 127's link to it will be hysterically funny. No luck so far.
I think BSG is finding its way back. Less mystical whining, less mystical arc that doesn't make any sense, more Starbuck kicking ass. When in doubt, put someone out an airlock.
80: "By your command", surely.
135: That was much less funny than what I was thinking of posting.
I confess that the low humor coefficient is putting me off of unfogged, too. I'm off to Garrison Keillor's Pretty Good Jokes.
(This is a purposely unfunny posting intended to link two threads.)