this notion that if a woman's vagina isn't under some man's watchful eye, it's going to run amok and cause widespread destruction is a bit antiquated
On the other hand, it does make for compelling imagery. You know how in the first X-Men movie (and maybe the comic books too, but I wouldn't know because only idiots and science-fiction fans read comic books) Rogue discovers her powers making out with some dude? Picture a similar scenario, except things have advanced a little further. Her nethers, swollen with blood and haughty pride, become self-aware and, like a cancer, continue to leech blood away from the rest of her body, which withers and shrinks even as the labia—now more like ropy arms than lips—and sinister clitoris become the size of a small dog, swathed by the crus clitoris (pic NSFW) as by a cape! And indeed, in order to maintain her very health in this degraded state, our heroin—now a frightful, vampiric villainess—needs must kill others and drink their blood! And the more blood she drinks, the more she needs!
Of course things aren't all beer and skittles at the opposite end, as the army labia reach out and grab all who can't flee fast enough and, stuffing them head first into the aptly-named corpus cavernosum, where powerful vaginal muscles grind their bones to make their breadteeth!
So this should be an interesting experiment to watch - how strong is the taboo against making incest/pedophilia jokes? I know I had one half-written that I just deleted.
And in what universe does Wolfson say, "Oops"? Clearly the injury was worse than he has let on.
Friends of mine who have done research on the question tell me that Christian girls are enthusiastic, curious, and uncritical. They need a lot of persuasion and feel guilty afterwards, but they keep coming back.
In my son's HS ca. 1990 there was a girl with a tiny gold padlock around her neck. Only the right key could open that padlock. She was big flirt and very cute, and she told everyone about her special padlock. (Don't know how that one ended up).
In which Unfogged's long-running experiment on the psychological effects of graduate school comes to a disturbing close...
Also, I really like that the girl wearing the eye-ring is about to move to LA to pursue her acting career, a move that's sure to prove virginity-friendly.
I'd like to talk about something else now. Observe that in this picture, the young Ms. McLemore is wearing jeans with not exactly a seam but at least a notable line (possibly owing to the presence of a seam—what am I, a tailor?) going down the front of her legs, whereas in years past, that area would have been smooth or, if not smooth, not smooth in a different way. My question is this: what is it about this arrangement that's so compelling?
Also, would I find the dad's weird smile and hands-in-lap posture creepy if I didn't know about the ring thing?
The other thing I find creepy about the whole "silver ring thing" that wasn't mentioned in the article is that the father is supposed to take the purity ring off the girl's finger during her wedding ceremony right before the groom puts on her wedding band. The baton-passing aspect of that is icky enough but who wants to be standing up in front of a room full of relatives who are all now looking at you thinking about you being deflowered later that evening?
But absent the ring article and our discussion thereof, you wouldn't have had my "trouser seam theory of desire" at your disposal, so you wouldn't have made the inferential leap, and so you wouldn't have found it creepy.
And I totally agree that the picture of the girl and her dad is creepy. It's not the trouser seams, it's their postures and body language. If I didn't know the backstory of the people in the photo, I could easily imagine it accompanying an article on a middle-aged man who frequents Eastern European sex tourism venues.
the father is supposed to take the purity ring off the girl's finger during her wedding ceremony right before the groom puts on her wedding band.
This, I think, is a practice worth not ever doing. Take whatever distaste I have for a father's plain-vanilla "giving away" his daughter, and multiply by barf thousand.
I didn't know there were pictures. The daughter is pretty hot. The dad is sitting much too close regardless of what you know about their relationship or indeed about whether the weird-looking old guy is even her father.
Christian girls are a pain in my ass. Always go with the heathens.
I think that for the purposes of women who are looking for a Christian man, a 57% Christian isn't nearly good enough. And then the heathens are creeped out because I'm not nearly heathen enough.
It's a good thing I'm attending a seminary, where I am among an unusually high concentration of people with similar Christian/heathen ambiguity.
What's the difference between a pagan and a heathen?
(This is not actually a set-up, but punchlines are welcome. And by "pagan" I don't mean holders of New Age pagan beliefs. I mean, historically, what's the difference, if any.)
18: Well, I mean I guess that some Jewish weddings 2,000 years ago, the marriage was the part that we'd call consummating the marriage, and that the party really got going when they brought out the bloody sheets.
This Christian girl thing is a slander. I'm a Christian, and I've got no religious hang-ups about pre-marital sex. (I don't personally care for one night stands. I don't think I'd be comfortable with them, but that's a whole separate discussion.) I really think that Christian girl is a term of art which ought to be properly labeled as such.
The words originate in different eras, although they mean pretty much the same thing. "Pagan" is from the Latin for farm, and the connotation is 'hick' -- someone who's so backwoods that they haven't yet converted to Christianity like all of the big city sophisticates. "Heathen" I don't know the origins of, but I'd guess off-handedly that it's an early English version of the same thing -- those guys huddled out there in the heath, who haven't converted like civilized Saxons.
I apologize. I think we all do mean stereotypically devout evangelical Christian girls, and this stands as a shameful testimony to the religious right's stranglehold on the definition of "Christian."
I do think that now "pagan" connotes someone who subscribes to a particular religion or group of religions--druids, Wiccans, like that (maybe I'm conflating a bunch of different religions here but I DON'T CARE), while "heathen" connotes the absence of religion of some sort or another, and is probably always used ironically.
In the platinum ring he made for Carrie when she was 13, two sapphires represent his watchful eyes
You just know at some point she's going to have just finished banging some guy and he is so going to say, 'What's the ring mean?'
but girls promising themselves to their fathers is creepy
I was at a friend's place and this new friend he had came over right after new friend's daughter had left. So he comes over to us and says something like 'Man, she's all developed' or something similar to that. He said it and gave the exhale meaning 'Whoa, she's hot'. They chattered about it for a minute. I said nothing because I didn't have the heart to say, 'She's hot? See didn't seem hot.'
I gotta figure chasity dude is about par for the course. "It's female! And young! And in my house!'
Probably why they used to marry them off at 13; get them out of the house because they cause any trouble.
Here's the bonus deliciousness: I found out about purity rings because last night I was watching Law & Order: SVU, and they were trying to tempt a paroled rapist with a hot young thing. So they got a cop who "could pass for a teenager," and had her wearing a short Catholic schoolgirl skirt and tight sweater. Who played the cop? Our very own C/arrie "Dad's Eyes" Mc/Lemore. Being an interactive TV watcher, and skeptical that the teenager was anything but a teenager, I looked her up, and found the article.
Their names are spelled differently, Ogged. Are you sure it was the same C/arrie Mc/Lemore? Did you see the purity ring on her finger? I'm assuming she left it on during filming because after all, only her father can take it off, or else she loses her Daddifying protection and she just up and vaginas herself out to anyone with a penis.
What's with all this gratuitous slashing and googleproofing, by the by? I will say it loud and clear: Carrie McLemore, Carrie McLemore, Carrie McLemore. ex.: "That Carrie McLemore is one fuckable virgin, that's for sure."
I googleproofed because I feel a little skeezy about having a teenager google herself and find a bunch of people discussing her virginity and her creepy father.
I remember purity rings making a big entry into the social arena at around 9th grade or so, but it was driven more apparently by churches than fathers. Every once in a while you'd see some kind of abstinence signature petition circulate or one of the local megachurches would host an abstinence lock-in (the comedic genius of which only strikes me now).
Those were fun nights, since you could go to the mall without running into any l4m3rz. The girls who didn't show up for the abstinence pledge drive didn't put out as unhesitatingly as one might've hoped, however.
54: Are you saying BG isn't curious, enthusiastic, and uncritical? I've got a pair of bunny slippers that say you're wrong. Except for the uncritical part.
Okay, according to the OED "heathen" has traditionally been considered a calque of paganus into Gothic, whence it spread into the other Germanic languages, but there are difficulties with this explanation. They cite someone named Bugge who considers it an Armenian loanword into Gothic, translating ethnos. So not as clear-cut as it might seem.
Yeah, "begging the question" definitely falls under calque; I just couldn't remember the exact Latin phrase. And 40 is an accurate account of the synchronic distinction, at least as far as I know -- my father describes himself as a heathen (he was never baptized or otherwise initiated into an organized religion).
54 and 55: I belonged (and still belong) to the denomination known as God's frozen people.
The conversations I had with my father about this stuff were all very oblique. He did say not to smile at strangers when alone after dark. (A lot of college age women smiled, in a friendly way, at him as they were walking home from the library in the college town in upstate NY.)
He also told me that he aand my mother had announced that they were engaged; he had not asked my grandfather for his permission or his daughter's hand in marriage.
He did once tell me that someone he knew had tried to shock her conservatve, German father by asking him to get her a diaphragm for her birthday. His reply was, "Ah my dear, when you are old enough to need one, you are old enough to get one yourself." I took that to mean that if he thought I was too embarassed to take care of b/c myself then I was too young to be having sex, but other than that he trusted me to handle this stuff on my own, and more than that, it probably made him uncomfortable, and he didn't want to talk about it.
The whole thing reminds me a bit of the extremely showy group of evangelicals in my high school. There were kids who were Christians in various ways and to various extent, but then there was this little extremely ostentatious social clique of evangelicals who basically apporached religion like something out of "Heathers".
So, in order to contribute to this conversation I have to admit something embarassing about my wife, which I suppose isn't that big a deal since she doesn't read this site: she still likes to check in on the message boards at various wedding-related websites, even more than a year after our own wedding.
Anyway, she was remarking that over at "The Nest" (which is a particularly conventional wedding site) there are a number of threads from new brides (those who abstained from pre-marital sex) about how awful their sex lives are. The first time (or the first week) was just awful, and now they never want to do it again, and they have all these body-image issues, and they're just freaked out by the whole thing.
This seems really sad to me, although I'm guessing it wouldn't be part of a compelling argument for pre-marital sex. But if you spend most of your life thinking that sex is this awful thing that you shouldn't do, it must be hard to make the transition into, you know, enjoying it.
74: Yeah. You can see that sort of thing coming even before they get to the point where they're married. I remember one time a particularly devout Christian girl happened to be sitting in (it was a school trip, I think) having a somewhat raunchy conversation, senior year of high school. She started asking us a bunch of questions, and of course, I was happy to explain, and giving the particulars of all sorts of sex acts to her. I believe I made a passing reference to oral sex, and when she inquired further, was fucking horrified that it was somewhat common for a guy to actually put his mouth "there." I was like "dude, trust me. It's a nice thing." Still horrified.
I don't think she talked to me again after that...
The video's dim lighting and black drapey material obscure that the robot is upside-down, and the ballerina's apparent successes (particularly her, um, pedipulations) are just the opposite.
One evangelical subgroup is the sin-and-repent revival Christians. They do what they feel like and then throw themselves at Jesus' feet. I believe that in Russia this sort of religion even had theologist advocates -- though my main source is Dostoevsky.
I wouldn't call it a rule, but there's been much discussion about the merits of making jokes explicit versus leaving them implicit. No consensus has emerged.
And some jokes become so explicit over time they pass beyond the realm of jokes or even running gags to become meta-jokes, existing only to comment on themselves in their capacity as jokes. See: cock jokes, the mineshaft.
Actually I think a better example of a joke which comments on itself as joke is "Yo' mama so shaggy, she ain't that shaggy". The Mineshaft is just an ordinary in-joke, I think.
ogged's reaction to the yogurt-dipped penis anticlimax still makes me laugh out loud. (Like eb said, start at the link* and scroll down. It's so worth it.) That's a darned good thread right there.
In re 31, I thought that, historically speaking, the heathen were converted and the pagan merely slaughtered. Though it could easily have been the other way around.
this notion that if a woman's vagina isn't under some man's watchful eye, it's going to run amok and cause widespread destruction is a bit antiquated
On the other hand, it does make for compelling imagery. You know how in the first X-Men movie (and maybe the comic books too, but I wouldn't know because only idiots and science-fiction fans read comic books) Rogue discovers her powers making out with some dude? Picture a similar scenario, except things have advanced a little further. Her nethers, swollen with blood and haughty pride, become self-aware and, like a cancer, continue to leech blood away from the rest of her body, which withers and shrinks even as the labia—now more like ropy arms than lips—and sinister clitoris become the size of a small dog, swathed by the crus clitoris (pic NSFW) as by a cape! And indeed, in order to maintain her very health in this degraded state, our heroin—now a frightful, vampiric villainess—needs must kill others and drink their blood! And the more blood she drinks, the more she needs!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:02 PM
Of course things aren't all beer and skittles at the opposite end, as the army labia reach out and grab all who can't flee fast enough and, stuffing them head first into the aptly-named corpus cavernosum, where powerful vaginal muscles grind their bones to make their
breadteeth!Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:05 PM
Oops. s/and, stuffing them/and stuffs them/
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:05 PM
So this should be an interesting experiment to watch - how strong is the taboo against making incest/pedophilia jokes? I know I had one half-written that I just deleted.
And in what universe does Wolfson say, "Oops"? Clearly the injury was worse than he has let on.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:12 PM
heroin?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:15 PM
Oops!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:17 PM
The Leonkassian parents will give their kids purity rings, the rest will give their kids cock rings, and we'll see which have the greater power.
"And in the darkness bind them", indeed.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:17 PM
Friends of mine who have done research on the question tell me that Christian girls are enthusiastic, curious, and uncritical. They need a lot of persuasion and feel guilty afterwards, but they keep coming back.
In my son's HS ca. 1990 there was a girl with a tiny gold padlock around her neck. Only the right key could open that padlock. She was big flirt and very cute, and she told everyone about her special padlock. (Don't know how that one ended up).
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:17 PM
I can guess.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:18 PM
In which Unfogged's long-running experiment on the psychological effects of graduate school comes to a disturbing close...
Also, I really like that the girl wearing the eye-ring is about to move to LA to pursue her acting career, a move that's sure to prove virginity-friendly.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:22 PM
Is anyone else remembering The Beastmaster, where the guy had that ring that was actually watching him for the evil wizard, and sometimes you could see the evil guy's eyeball rolling around in the ring? I picture the virginity ring sort of like that.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:26 PM
What are you talking about, Labs?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:27 PM
Your hankering for Christian virgins.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:28 PM
Your hankering for Christian virgins.
Perfectly rational.
I'd like to talk about something else now. Observe that in this picture, the young Ms. McLemore is wearing jeans with not exactly a seam but at least a notable line (possibly owing to the presence of a seam—what am I, a tailor?) going down the front of her legs, whereas in years past, that area would have been smooth or, if not smooth, not smooth in a different way. My question is this: what is it about this arrangement that's so compelling?
Also, would I find the dad's weird smile and hands-in-lap posture creepy if I didn't know about the ring thing?
Discuss.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:33 PM
My question is this: what is it about this arrangement that's so compelling?
You are projecting your desire for the attractive young woman onto her garments.
Also, would I find the dad's weird smile and hands-in-lap posture creepy if I didn't know about the ring thing?
No. You would have attributed his beady-eyed satisfaction to his daughter's taste in denim trousers.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:37 PM
But by your own logic, his satisfaction in her trousers would have had to have come from his "satisfaction" in her attractive young body.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:40 PM
Which—and I'm not judging this possible father here, I'm just pointing it out—is actually beyond creepy.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:41 PM
The other thing I find creepy about the whole "silver ring thing" that wasn't mentioned in the article is that the father is supposed to take the purity ring off the girl's finger during her wedding ceremony right before the groom puts on her wedding band. The baton-passing aspect of that is icky enough but who wants to be standing up in front of a room full of relatives who are all now looking at you thinking about you being deflowered later that evening?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:41 PM
But absent the ring article and our discussion thereof, you wouldn't have had my "trouser seam theory of desire" at your disposal, so you wouldn't have made the inferential leap, and so you wouldn't have found it creepy.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:43 PM
And I totally agree that the picture of the girl and her dad is creepy. It's not the trouser seams, it's their postures and body language. If I didn't know the backstory of the people in the photo, I could easily imagine it accompanying an article on a middle-aged man who frequents Eastern European sex tourism venues.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:46 PM
the father is supposed to take the purity ring off the girl's finger during her wedding ceremony right before the groom puts on her wedding band.
This, I think, is a practice worth not ever doing. Take whatever distaste I have for a father's plain-vanilla "giving away" his daughter, and multiply by barf thousand.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:57 PM
I could easily imagine it accompanying an article on a middle-aged man who frequents Eastern European sex tourism venues.
Wait a sec. Are we now saying that is creepy, too?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 2:58 PM
It was in the "Legal Notices" section of the classifieds. Nobody reads that stuff.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:03 PM
I didn't know there were pictures. The daughter is pretty hot. The dad is sitting much too close regardless of what you know about their relationship or indeed about whether the weird-looking old guy is even her father.
Christian girls are a pain in my ass. Always go with the heathens.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:06 PM
The dad is sitting much too close
Thigh contact!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:15 PM
On a bee-ee-dee, no less.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:29 PM
Just because the dad is a gay Christian doesn't mean that there's a problem. Jesus, guys.
Adam, Christian girls are a pain if they think that you are a Christian. Bwahahahaha!
Or so my sources report.
Apostropher is on record with an unseemly willingness to help introduce barely-legal young women to the wonders or eros. Where is that guy?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:31 PM
"of eros".
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:32 PM
Adam never should have had that poll.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:33 PM
I think that for the purposes of women who are looking for a Christian man, a 57% Christian isn't nearly good enough. And then the heathens are creeped out because I'm not nearly heathen enough.
It's a good thing I'm attending a seminary, where I am among an unusually high concentration of people with similar Christian/heathen ambiguity.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:54 PM
What's the difference between a pagan and a heathen?
(This is not actually a set-up, but punchlines are welcome. And by "pagan" I don't mean holders of New Age pagan beliefs. I mean, historically, what's the difference, if any.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 3:58 PM
18: Well, I mean I guess that some Jewish weddings 2,000 years ago, the marriage was the part that we'd call consummating the marriage, and that the party really got going when they brought out the bloody sheets.
This Christian girl thing is a slander. I'm a Christian, and I've got no religious hang-ups about pre-marital sex. (I don't personally care for one night stands. I don't think I'd be comfortable with them, but that's a whole separate discussion.) I really think that Christian girl is a term of art which ought to be properly labeled as such.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:00 PM
The words originate in different eras, although they mean pretty much the same thing. "Pagan" is from the Latin for farm, and the connotation is 'hick' -- someone who's so backwoods that they haven't yet converted to Christianity like all of the big city sophisticates. "Heathen" I don't know the origins of, but I'd guess off-handedly that it's an early English version of the same thing -- those guys huddled out there in the heath, who haven't converted like civilized Saxons.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:03 PM
Bostoniangirl,
I apologize. I think we all do mean stereotypically devout evangelical Christian girls, and this stands as a shameful testimony to the religious right's stranglehold on the definition of "Christian."
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:05 PM
Thanks, LB, I knew this was the place to ask. (Yes, I know about google, but I'm lazy.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:08 PM
Yeah, "heathen" is from "heath." So it's parallel to "pagan" -- it could even be a calque.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:14 PM
And in what universe does Wolfson say, "Oops"?
The same one in which he immediately follows it with Perl joke, apparently.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:32 PM
Tom doesn't appreciate the classics.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:34 PM
calque
How had I never learned this word before? I love new tools with which to express pretentiousness.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:36 PM
I do think that now "pagan" connotes someone who subscribes to a particular religion or group of religions--druids, Wiccans, like that (maybe I'm conflating a bunch of different religions here but I DON'T CARE), while "heathen" connotes the absence of religion of some sort or another, and is probably always used ironically.
But others may demur from my interpretation.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:40 PM
I have a pair of pants like that! I was wearing them yesterday.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:45 PM
It would be teh awesome if you had a chastity ring, too, alameida. Any chance?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:46 PM
In the platinum ring he made for Carrie when she was 13, two sapphires represent his watchful eyes
You just know at some point she's going to have just finished banging some guy and he is so going to say, 'What's the ring mean?'
but girls promising themselves to their fathers is creepy
I was at a friend's place and this new friend he had came over right after new friend's daughter had left. So he comes over to us and says something like 'Man, she's all developed' or something similar to that. He said it and gave the exhale meaning 'Whoa, she's hot'. They chattered about it for a minute. I said nothing because I didn't have the heart to say, 'She's hot? See didn't seem hot.'
I gotta figure chasity dude is about par for the course. "It's female! And young! And in my house!'
Probably why they used to marry them off at 13; get them out of the house because they cause any trouble.
ash
['Phermones are not your friends.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 4:59 PM
Hrm. D'you think I'll pick up more guys if I get me one of those, since I'm bible beltin' it these days and all?
Posted by profgrrrrl | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:07 PM
Here's the bonus deliciousness: I found out about purity rings because last night I was watching Law & Order: SVU, and they were trying to tempt a paroled rapist with a hot young thing. So they got a cop who "could pass for a teenager," and had her wearing a short Catholic schoolgirl skirt and tight sweater. Who played the cop? Our very own C/arrie "Dad's Eyes" Mc/Lemore. Being an interactive TV watcher, and skeptical that the teenager was anything but a teenager, I looked her up, and found the article.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:07 PM
Their names are spelled differently, Ogged. Are you sure it was the same C/arrie Mc/Lemore? Did you see the purity ring on her finger? I'm assuming she left it on during filming because after all, only her father can take it off, or else she loses her Daddifying protection and she just up and vaginas herself out to anyone with a penis.
What's with all this gratuitous slashing and googleproofing, by the by? I will say it loud and clear: Carrie McLemore, Carrie McLemore, Carrie McLemore. ex.: "That Carrie McLemore is one fuckable virgin, that's for sure."
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:35 PM
Spelled differently, but remember that I saw her on the show, and it's definitely the same person, T/oads.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:37 PM
I googleproofed because I feel a little skeezy about having a teenager google herself and find a bunch of people discussing her virginity and her creepy father.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:38 PM
skeptical that the teenager was anything but a teenager
uh huh. I'm sure the reason you looked her up was skepticism.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:41 PM
Well, thanks a bunch for making me feel guilty for ogling a teenager, Ogged.
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:44 PM
I can't believe I share a little vignette from my life with you and you call me a liar, silvana. She did look good in the little skirt, though.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:44 PM
Well, I have to say that I do approve of your googleproofing, to save Ms. McLemore from being creeped out by this thread as I have.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 5:49 PM
Any obnoxious comments I make about Christian girls, here or elsewhere, implicitly exclude any one of them who reads what I write.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 6:08 PM
I remember purity rings making a big entry into the social arena at around 9th grade or so, but it was driven more apparently by churches than fathers. Every once in a while you'd see some kind of abstinence signature petition circulate or one of the local megachurches would host an abstinence lock-in (the comedic genius of which only strikes me now).
Those were fun nights, since you could go to the mall without running into any l4m3rz. The girls who didn't show up for the abstinence pledge drive didn't put out as unhesitatingly as one might've hoped, however.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 6:12 PM
54: Are you saying BG isn't curious, enthusiastic, and uncritical? I've got a pair of bunny slippers that say you're wrong. Except for the uncritical part.
Um, sorry, BG.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 6:22 PM
Where is that guy?
It's football Sunday, yo. And might I just add: SAMKON GADO!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 6:23 PM
re:39 "I love new tools with which to express pretentiousness."
I love you too.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 6:45 PM
Now children, "calque" is a genuinely useful word that expresses a complex concept easily. It's not just a tool to express pretention.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 6:52 PM
One ring to rule them all...
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 6:56 PM
Re: pedophile jokes — how about this one:
A guy's girfriend says to him, "I'm breaking up with you, because I heard you're a pedophile."
The boyfriend is shocked.
"Pedophile? Pedophile?" he sputters. "That's a big word for a ten-year-old!"
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 7:00 PM
Thanks Ben.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 7:34 PM
As if "tool to express pretentiousness" was an insult!
"Beg the question" is a calque, isn't it?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 7:37 PM
"Beg the question" is a calque, isn't it?
I believe so. There are loads of them in English, mostly from Latin.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 7:40 PM
Okay, according to the OED "heathen" has traditionally been considered a calque of paganus into Gothic, whence it spread into the other Germanic languages, but there are difficulties with this explanation. They cite someone named Bugge who considers it an Armenian loanword into Gothic, translating ethnos. So not as clear-cut as it might seem.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 7:51 PM
"Beg the question" is from "petitio principii", as I'm sure Weiner knew.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 9:02 PM
It was more of a "what counts as a calque?" thing.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 9:15 PM
I just now noticed that in 31 there is a parenthetical that makes my 40, like, totally dumb. I am filled with shame.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 9:42 PM
Yeah, "begging the question" definitely falls under calque; I just couldn't remember the exact Latin phrase. And 40 is an accurate account of the synchronic distinction, at least as far as I know -- my father describes himself as a heathen (he was never baptized or otherwise initiated into an organized religion).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 9:49 PM
54 and 55: I belonged (and still belong) to the denomination known as God's frozen people.
The conversations I had with my father about this stuff were all very oblique. He did say not to smile at strangers when alone after dark. (A lot of college age women smiled, in a friendly way, at him as they were walking home from the library in the college town in upstate NY.)
He also told me that he aand my mother had announced that they were engaged; he had not asked my grandfather for his permission or his daughter's hand in marriage.
He did once tell me that someone he knew had tried to shock her conservatve, German father by asking him to get her a diaphragm for her birthday. His reply was, "Ah my dear, when you are old enough to need one, you are old enough to get one yourself." I took that to mean that if he thought I was too embarassed to take care of b/c myself then I was too young to be having sex, but other than that he trusted me to handle this stuff on my own, and more than that, it probably made him uncomfortable, and he didn't want to talk about it.
We got sex ed in school. So, it was all good.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 9:51 PM
Re: 67. It's those damn bunny slippers; they're destroying your brain.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 11-13-05 9:55 PM
The photo is definitely creepy.
The whole thing reminds me a bit of the extremely showy group of evangelicals in my high school. There were kids who were Christians in various ways and to various extent, but then there was this little extremely ostentatious social clique of evangelicals who basically apporached religion like something out of "Heathers".
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 5:41 AM
Follow up to 69. We never talked about this stuff in church. ever.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 6:42 AM
I wouldn't expect you to talk about 69 in church, really.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:10 AM
73: Nice.
So, in order to contribute to this conversation I have to admit something embarassing about my wife, which I suppose isn't that big a deal since she doesn't read this site: she still likes to check in on the message boards at various wedding-related websites, even more than a year after our own wedding.
Anyway, she was remarking that over at "The Nest" (which is a particularly conventional wedding site) there are a number of threads from new brides (those who abstained from pre-marital sex) about how awful their sex lives are. The first time (or the first week) was just awful, and now they never want to do it again, and they have all these body-image issues, and they're just freaked out by the whole thing.
This seems really sad to me, although I'm guessing it wouldn't be part of a compelling argument for pre-marital sex. But if you spend most of your life thinking that sex is this awful thing that you shouldn't do, it must be hard to make the transition into, you know, enjoying it.
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:31 AM
M#3, this us totally brilliant. (Everyone else, click that link--quicktime video--before the explanation.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:39 AM
'us' s/b 'is'
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:42 AM
74: Yeah. You can see that sort of thing coming even before they get to the point where they're married. I remember one time a particularly devout Christian girl happened to be sitting in (it was a school trip, I think) having a somewhat raunchy conversation, senior year of high school. She started asking us a bunch of questions, and of course, I was happy to explain, and giving the particulars of all sorts of sex acts to her. I believe I made a passing reference to oral sex, and when she inquired further, was fucking horrified that it was somewhat common for a guy to actually put his mouth "there." I was like "dude, trust me. It's a nice thing." Still horrified.
I don't think she talked to me again after that...
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:01 AM
I meant to say "sitting in while my friend and I were having a particularly raunchy conversation..."
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:02 AM
The video's dim lighting and black drapey material obscure that the robot is upside-down, and the ballerina's apparent successes (particularly her, um, pedipulations) are just the opposite.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:06 AM
From over here in godless, promiscuous Old Europe all this US abstinence/chastity/wierdly-repress/icky-Dad stuff just looks wierd...
Then again, I think even non-religious Americans are freaky wierd about most of this sex/dating/marriage stuff. [Sorry]
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 9:05 AM
PERL jokes
Huh. I thought that was a sed joke.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 9:13 AM
One evangelical subgroup is the sin-and-repent revival Christians. They do what they feel like and then throw themselves at Jesus' feet. I believe that in Russia this sort of religion even had theologist advocates -- though my main source is Dostoevsky.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 9:28 AM
Osner: see 38.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 11:04 AM
If a woman comes up to me, her first thought isn't that I might be available for sex."
Whereas, without the ring, SURELY that would be her first thought.
I can't believe no one else commented on that before I got here. Thank you, everyone.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 12:03 PM
I have a front tooth missing, which is much more effective.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 4:24 PM
I thought the comment was implicit in ogged's introduction of the quotation.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 5:06 PM
Since when do we hold back on making the implicit explicit? Is this some new rule y'all introduced in my absence?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:22 PM
I wouldn't call it a rule, but there's been much discussion about the merits of making jokes explicit versus leaving them implicit. No consensus has emerged.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:32 PM
Actually, yes, sort of.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:32 PM
And here.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:33 PM
Yeah, what he said. I bet Standpipe will rustle up some more supporting links.
E.g.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:33 PM
Teach you to ask a question, B.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:36 PM
Moreover.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:40 PM
And some jokes are just so explicit, they're too implicit. Start here and scroll down.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:42 PM
And some jokes become so explicit over time they pass beyond the realm of jokes or even running gags to become meta-jokes, existing only to comment on themselves in their capacity as jokes. See: cock jokes, the mineshaft.
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 7:56 PM
Actually I think a better example of a joke which comments on itself as joke is "Yo' mama so shaggy, she ain't that shaggy". The Mineshaft is just an ordinary in-joke, I think.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:04 PM
ogged's reaction to the yogurt-dipped penis anticlimax still makes me laugh out loud. (Like eb said, start at the link* and scroll down. It's so worth it.) That's a darned good thread right there.
*Disclosure: my comment.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:04 PM
Actually I think a better example of a joke which comments on itself as joke is "Yo' mama so shaggy, she ain't that shaggy".
Really? You don't say.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:11 PM
Was it only five months ago?
Evidently, yes.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:12 PM
Yes, SB, I like that joke. What's your point?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:15 PM
I do apologize for the needless sarcasm. I just wanted to collect all but one of your ain't-that-shaggy evangelisms in a single comment.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 8:44 PM
Have we been getting more combative in comments as time goes on?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 9:27 PM
It's my opinion that I used to be much meaner to Ben. Looking back at some old threads I feel abashed.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 9:30 PM
I think I laughed out loud at the yogurt story two or three times. And yeah, that'll teach me to ask questions.
You know, someone really needs to write a thesis on the Unfogged Shaggy Dog Comment Thread. Ben?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11-14-05 11:43 PM
In re 31, I thought that, historically speaking, the heathen were converted and the pagan merely slaughtered. Though it could easily have been the other way around.
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 11-15-05 7:05 AM
In comment 1, "heroin" should be "heroine".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 11:46 PM
I see that the error was already pointed out.
I blame demon gin.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 11:47 PM