I remember receiving a crystal-clear explanation about when to use what forms of gerund and gerundives by a guy who had his class translate the sentence "No one thought Puff Daddy would be convicted" into Latin on the final exam, but I've forgotten all of it.
Damn, you guys are really upping the barriers to entry in the comments. I bet when Tia and her friend are reunited, one of them will exclaim: сколько лет, сколько зим!
As the Bible tells us, the working class are not drawers of horses but "hewer of wood and drawer of water. (Josh. 9:21). Tia betrays her bourgeois origins here.
When Clapton-formerly-known-as-God said, "A woman's like a dresser, someone's always going through her drawers", he didn't specify "drawers of horses", because it wouldn't fit the meter.
You know what's weird?, I understand BW's comment least of all the foreign language ones (okay, not less than eb's), but I understand best how it relates to my post and what prompted him to post it.
AWB, very few of us were such ardent drawers of horses that we would still be so described in high school, IME, and few of our horse drawing ardors would have burned so brightly in elementary school that it would make total sense to someone who knew us then that that is one of the first descriptors someone who knew us later would use. Also, this Amy is from Southern California, just as she should be.
When Clapton-formerly-known-as-God said, "A woman's like a dresser, someone's always going through her drawers", he didn't specify "drawers of horses", because it wouldn't fit the meter.
Of course, Clapton was merely citing the verses of the prophet Robert Johnson.
This one says horses are big and muscular and go between your legs.
Or maybe that they're an intresting symbol both of physical power and its restraint, and are therefore potent to little girls who have confused relationships with their bodies.
I have one friend who echoes Tia in 15 on the girls & horses theory. I have another who claims it was the sense of connection she had with her horse, the extreme sensitivity--how she good make the slightest movement, the tracing of a finger, and the horse would know where she wanted to go. She liked reading her horse's moods, too, knowing when it was frightened, anxious, or happy and free.
I used to have a nice, nice-looking, sort of boring friend who had bad luck with women. I suggested that if he had a horse and knew about horses some women would find him more interesting. (At that time I also had about 3 women friends who were obsessed with horses.)
But no, he went and married a woman who was a big admirer of Lorena Bobbitt.
But one is left with the question of why little girls, as opposed to little boys, tend to be so taken with horses, and then one gets to some aspect of psychology particular to gender at its root, at least to explain the preponderance of horse loving girls. It doesn't mean that there's only one way in which horse loving girls are attracted by the horses; there can be lots.
On the first day of a Spanish poetry class in college, the prof wanted to know if any of us had any poetry or song lyrics committed to memory with which to demonstrate a point about scansion in Spanish. Everyone was silent until I raised me hand.
I recited:
Cada vez que estoy contigo
Ya no hay sombra ni peligro
Tiembla suelo, la noche se ilumina
Y el silencio se vuelve melodia
(Every time I'm with you there's no longer shadow or danger. The earth shakes; the sky lights up, and the silence becomes melody.)
Everyone sighed at the lines' beauty. "Quien es?" they asked. "Neruda? Octavio Paz?"
I answered: "Es Enrique Iglesias, 'Experiencia Religiosa.' " Everyone was simultaneously abashed and amused.
All those reasons seem connected to me--you, a little girl, get to borrow, on the strength of your special loving emotional connection with your pony, all the power and speed of the natural world. It may be that boys can achieve this perfectly well mechanically, with cars or whatever. But wouldn't want to generalize or gender-stereotype that too much. To the extent that there is a difference, a special connection for girls, I'd think that's what it's about.
As someone who rode horses as a young teenager, it's overrated as an explanation. Pain is likewise a possibility, and enjoyment based on the purely physical sensation of repeatedly clocking oneself in the foldy bits with a saddle is, while I suppose possible, not all that likely. (One should note that few women masturbate by slamming themselves in the crotch rhythmically with a handbag.)
To 25: And to expand on that, there's a sense in which girls are taught not to think of their own bodies as powerful, whereas boys, especially after puberty, are. A girl on a horse may be getting the same type of satisfaction from her control of a powerful body that a boy is taught to get from his own athleticism.
Well sure, if you limit it to just handbags, but then when you get to backpacks and small luggage, you've got an entire community. Don't be so small-minded.
Girls and horses: 15, 13, 23, and 25 are all correct. Think about it: there are very few situations in girls' lives where they are allowed to be in control of something big, strong, and intimate. Not only allowed, but encouraged. Kids like pets, but horses enable a particular and special kind of mastery that girls aren't supposed to admit wanting--or at least, not without some kind of ambivalence--in any other area of their lives.
Plus horses smell good. And yes, one can masturbate while riding a horse, particularly if one is wearing, say, a menstrual pad while doing so.
22: I could have done certain Sublime lyrics in spanish, is that better or worse (certainly less appropriate)? Also, some of these are mistranscribed.
33: though literally, it's "how many years, how many winters?" and I didn't know the idiomatic meaning until I found an online translator last night which got (some) idiom.
I thought the same thing. Eyes bulging with terror, literally foaming at the mouth, utterly incongruous with the woman's contented expression, what gives?
I used to know the woman who trained the horse for the movie The Black Stallion. She's an MD now and was competitive at a high level in martial arts in her youth. And a hot babe too.
I also knew Lassie #7 in Portland. (I'm really a man of the world who gets around.) Lassie was just a regular dog, not at all stuck up.
All Lassies were guys, btw. Bitches just can't be trusted to rescue you when you're trapped under your tractor for the third time in a year.
I thought the deal was that they just didn't have the big fluffy ruffs.
My grandfather once got trapped under a tractor -- it's what happens when a boy from Queens decides to retire to a farm, and gets uppity ideas about what size stump he can uproot. Grandma had to sit on one end of a plank to lever some of the weight off him until the ambulance (and, I suppose, the tow truck) got there.
Are you sure you're not making this up?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 10:24 PM
No, the stories I've heard Tia make up don't go quite like this one.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 10:55 PM
Uh, weren't we all "ardent drawer[s] of horses"?
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:11 PM
O, O, O
Totus floreo
Iam amore equum pingendum totus ardeo
Novus novus novus equus quem pingeo!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:15 PM
Oh, crap. Equorum pingendorum?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:17 PM
A Drawing and Quartering business for horses would be, what, a stable?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:28 PM
Ma tres chere Tia, lorsque tu ais devi
Le malheureux plaint de mes tres chers amis,
Tu ne seras lourde a leurs plaintives prieres;
Non, malgre tout, l'on saura qu'ici, tous soient freres.
----
Done without Becherelle. Apologies for conjugation and rhyme-induced sappiness.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:39 PM
or maybe equum pingendi? Shit, Latin is hard.
I remember receiving a crystal-clear explanation about when to use what forms of gerund and gerundives by a guy who had his class translate the sentence "No one thought Puff Daddy would be convicted" into Latin on the final exam, but I've forgotten all of it.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:43 PM
Damn, you guys are really upping the barriers to entry in the comments. I bet when Tia and her friend are reunited, one of them will exclaim: сколько лет, сколько зим!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:46 PM
Así termina
en paz
esta carrera
del vegetal armado
que se llama alcachofa,
luego
escama por escama
desvestimos
la delicia
y comemos
la pacífica pasta
de su corazón verde.
Posted by El Stanley | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 12:46 AM
As the Bible tells us, the working class are not drawers of horses but "hewer of wood and drawer of water. (Josh. 9:21). Tia betrays her bourgeois origins here.
When Clapton-formerly-known-as-God said, "A woman's like a dresser, someone's always going through her drawers", he didn't specify "drawers of horses", because it wouldn't fit the meter.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 6:57 AM
You know what's weird?, I understand BW's comment least of all the foreign language ones (okay, not less than eb's), but I understand best how it relates to my post and what prompted him to post it.
AWB, very few of us were such ardent drawers of horses that we would still be so described in high school, IME, and few of our horse drawing ardors would have burned so brightly in elementary school that it would make total sense to someone who knew us then that that is one of the first descriptors someone who knew us later would use. Also, this Amy is from Southern California, just as she should be.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 7:21 AM
Young girls and horses
Pervasive cultural bond
What say feminists?
Posted by bill | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 8:49 AM
When Clapton-formerly-known-as-God said, "A woman's like a dresser, someone's always going through her drawers", he didn't specify "drawers of horses", because it wouldn't fit the meter.
Of course, Clapton was merely citing the verses of the prophet Robert Johnson.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 8:50 AM
This one says horses are big and muscular and go between your legs.
Or maybe that they're an intresting symbol both of physical power and its restraint, and are therefore potent to little girls who have confused relationships with their bodies.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 8:55 AM
Así termina
en paz
esta carrera
del vegetal armado
que se llama alcachofa,
luego
escama por escama
desvestimos
la delicia
y comemos
la pacífica pasta
de su corazón verde.
Umm...
Thus ended
In peace
The career
Of this vegetable armadillo
Who, having captured a llama
On a sled
Undressed himself
By one trick after another
To remember
The deliciously peaceful noodles
Of his green sweetheart.
No, sorry, it's over my head.
"Equorum pingendi" = of the drawing of horses.
Posted by ajay | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:12 AM
"del vegetal armado
que se llama alcachofa,"
of the armed vegetable
called the artichoke
later
scale by scale
we undressed
the delight
and we ate
the tender dough
Of its green heart
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:21 AM
I have one friend who echoes Tia in 15 on the girls & horses theory. I have another who claims it was the sense of connection she had with her horse, the extreme sensitivity--how she good make the slightest movement, the tracing of a finger, and the horse would know where she wanted to go. She liked reading her horse's moods, too, knowing when it was frightened, anxious, or happy and free.
I just liked going fast and jumping, I think. The thrill of it.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:22 AM
good s/b could
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:23 AM
I used to have a nice, nice-looking, sort of boring friend who had bad luck with women. I suggested that if he had a horse and knew about horses some women would find him more interesting. (At that time I also had about 3 women friends who were obsessed with horses.)
But no, he went and married a woman who was a big admirer of Lorena Bobbitt.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:30 AM
But one is left with the question of why little girls, as opposed to little boys, tend to be so taken with horses, and then one gets to some aspect of psychology particular to gender at its root, at least to explain the preponderance of horse loving girls. It doesn't mean that there's only one way in which horse loving girls are attracted by the horses; there can be lots.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:34 AM
On the first day of a Spanish poetry class in college, the prof wanted to know if any of us had any poetry or song lyrics committed to memory with which to demonstrate a point about scansion in Spanish. Everyone was silent until I raised me hand.
I recited:
Cada vez que estoy contigo
Ya no hay sombra ni peligro
Tiembla suelo, la noche se ilumina
Y el silencio se vuelve melodia
(Every time I'm with you there's no longer shadow or danger. The earth shakes; the sky lights up, and the silence becomes melody.)
Everyone sighed at the lines' beauty. "Quien es?" they asked. "Neruda? Octavio Paz?"
I answered: "Es Enrique Iglesias, 'Experiencia Religiosa.' " Everyone was simultaneously abashed and amused.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:41 AM
Bouncing up and down in a saddle can be painful for boys, whereas rumor has it that some girls like it.
Or was that too obvious to need saying?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:42 AM
Pretty!
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:44 AM
All those reasons seem connected to me--you, a little girl, get to borrow, on the strength of your special loving emotional connection with your pony, all the power and speed of the natural world. It may be that boys can achieve this perfectly well mechanically, with cars or whatever. But wouldn't want to generalize or gender-stereotype that too much. To the extent that there is a difference, a special connection for girls, I'd think that's what it's about.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:45 AM
As someone who rode horses as a young teenager, it's overrated as an explanation. Pain is likewise a possibility, and enjoyment based on the purely physical sensation of repeatedly clocking oneself in the foldy bits with a saddle is, while I suppose possible, not all that likely. (One should note that few women masturbate by slamming themselves in the crotch rhythmically with a handbag.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:46 AM
26 to 23.
To 25: And to expand on that, there's a sense in which girls are taught not to think of their own bodies as powerful, whereas boys, especially after puberty, are. A girl on a horse may be getting the same type of satisfaction from her control of a powerful body that a boy is taught to get from his own athleticism.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:49 AM
(One should note that few women masturbate by slamming themselves in the crotch rhythmically with a handbag.)
You people just don't travel in my circles.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:49 AM
I said 'few', not 'no'.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:51 AM
Well sure, if you limit it to just handbags, but then when you get to backpacks and small luggage, you've got an entire community. Don't be so small-minded.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:53 AM
You have no idea the iron control it takes not to Google for relevant websites. But I'm sure someone else will.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 9:55 AM
I haven't even mentioned the ones who swallow a compact and a credit card and write LV all over their bodies in an attempt to be a handbag.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:00 AM
сколько лет, сколько зим! = it's ages since we last met!, we haven't met for ages!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:00 AM
Tia got there first.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:08 AM
I've also been told that a good rider controls the jouncing. Horseback riding is very uncomfortable for bad riders, that's for sure.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:09 AM
few women masturbate by slamming themselves in the crotch rhythmically with a handbag
I masturbate by slamming myself rhythmically in the crotch with a handball. But then, I'm not a woman.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:13 AM
Girls and horses: 15, 13, 23, and 25 are all correct. Think about it: there are very few situations in girls' lives where they are allowed to be in control of something big, strong, and intimate. Not only allowed, but encouraged. Kids like pets, but horses enable a particular and special kind of mastery that girls aren't supposed to admit wanting--or at least, not without some kind of ambivalence--in any other area of their lives.
Plus horses smell good. And yes, one can masturbate while riding a horse, particularly if one is wearing, say, a menstrual pad while doing so.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:15 AM
if one is wearing, say, a menstrual pad
I found that complicated the process, B.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:18 AM
Your masturbatory apparatus is more exposed than mine is.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:22 AM
In a museum in Krakow, but probably still NSFW.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:22 AM
Indeed.
I love having my own office.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:30 AM
Goddam, it's the ghost spam again.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:31 AM
Who on earth would pay a spammer to send such a spam?
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:33 AM
eb, I kept rotating my head, but, no, that picture seems to be displayed correctly. What is wrong with that horse?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:34 AM
22: I could have done certain Sublime lyrics in spanish, is that better or worse (certainly less appropriate)? Also, some of these are mistranscribed.
33: though literally, it's "how many years, how many winters?" and I didn't know the idiomatic meaning until I found an online translator last night which got (some) idiom.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:34 AM
Or it's the proliferation of My Little Pony toys as little girls.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:42 AM
45: I don't think it would have been quite as good, because you wouldn't have tricked them into thinking they were listening to serious poetry.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:44 AM
#44:
I thought the same thing. Eyes bulging with terror, literally foaming at the mouth, utterly incongruous with the woman's contented expression, what gives?
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:44 AM
Hermeneutics!
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 10:46 AM
I used to know the woman who trained the horse for the movie The Black Stallion. She's an MD now and was competitive at a high level in martial arts in her youth. And a hot babe too.
I also knew Lassie #7 in Portland. (I'm really a man of the world who gets around.) Lassie was just a regular dog, not at all stuck up.
All Lassies were guys, btw. Bitches just can't be trusted to rescue you when you're trapped under your tractor for the third time in a year.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 11:14 AM
I thought the deal was that they just didn't have the big fluffy ruffs.
My grandfather once got trapped under a tractor -- it's what happens when a boy from Queens decides to retire to a farm, and gets uppity ideas about what size stump he can uproot. Grandma had to sit on one end of a plank to lever some of the weight off him until the ambulance (and, I suppose, the tow truck) got there.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 11:26 AM
It happens to regular farmers too, especially teenage ones.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 11:40 AM
Hell, my grandfather fell off his tractor and it ran over him when he was in his seventies.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 12:27 PM
44: I think it's supposed to look like it's gone mad.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 1:06 PM
Farming is actually the most dangerous profession. Policemen whine too much.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 6:15 PM
44: it seems to be falling off a cliff. the girl doesn't look quite as worried, because she's got a whole big horse to break her fall.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 03-24-06 9:31 AM