My parents have something like this, which I love. When they're in the open setting, it's like looking through a really thin, delicate gauze. When they're closed, it's like an opaque rice paper.
We've had silhouettes in the bay windows of our dining room for over fifteen years. They've held up extremely well and eventually became the basis for our color scheme there.
My apartment came with crappy white horizontal blinds, and they're still here. We had gauzy saffrony orange and white sheer curtains which looked great in the afternoon sun for a while.
Oooh, I like the way they go up and down from either end - minutes of entertainment there. I guess I just don't give enough of a shit about curtains. We buy crappy cheap stuff and then buy more when they fall apart. I have to scrunch up my bedroom blind and shove it over the bar at the top because it doesn't open any longer. When should I stop living like a student and start living like a grownup?
Asilon-- for me the answer was "when I spent a week sweating my ass off painting the living room." After that, putting up the old and ugly venetian blinds just didn't seem like an option.
I'm telling you, the gauzy fuchsia sari is going to look nice. Eventually. In an exotic, Asian kind of way.
I actually did know a woman when I was a kid who had a huge sculpture made of bras suspended from the ceiling in her living room. It looked like a gigantic cloud. I remember being really impressed by it.
I actually did know a woman when I was a kid who had a huge sculpture made of bras suspended from the ceiling in her living room. It looked like a gigantic cloud.
19: Yeah, in a good way. She was really active in the local children's theater and took a bunch of us up to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival. She and her husband also had a nude picture of him up in either the living room or the hall, right there where god and the kids who came over to her house could see it. They were kind of a vision of how cool and arty my parents could have been, if their marriage hadn't become about fighting instead.
That reminds me of an exhibition I saw in New Orleans years ago called "Feminine Products", where all of the art was made out of things like bras and tampons and stuff. It was really impressive -- not at all the superficial fluff show it could have been. It was a response to a prior exhibition called "Guns in the Hands of Artists", where they gave a bunch of guns that were turned into NOPD's firearm buyback program to artists for them to make sculptures. Some ridiculous percentage of the gun sculptures were phallic.
Odd NYT sentence: "The stage was marked by the usual mishaps, including a flat for Erik Zabel, the German sprinter for Milram, in the last two kilometers and a handful of crashes, one of which took down Julian Dean, a New Zealander with Credit (accent acute on e) Agricole, in the final dash to the line."
As opposed to the other Credit Agricole? Did they just forget to edit this one? I don't think the NYT usually includes all the diacritical (?) marks.
Cala, do you watch the races? my wife is driven to distraction by American cycling commentators' pronunciation of France to rhyme with "pants," as one imagines "The King" did in Huckleberry Finn. The British announcers, and the "general sports-guy" host, Al Trautwig, do much better. We're not asking for French vowels, just make it rhyme with "haunts" and I'd never notice.
22 -- going to Ashland festival as a kid = Teh Fun. My 8th-grade (1982?) English and Social Studies teachers took our class as a field trip and it was a great time, except we all slept in a gym with boys on one side, girls on the other, and I didn't understand that you were supposed to (a) wear pajamas in your sleeping bag or (b) not get up in the middle of the night to pee or (c) at least drape yourself in a towel when you walk across the girls side to get to the bathrooms or at any rate (d) schedule your urine trip for some time other than thirty seconds before the lights get turned on to wake everybody up, stranding you naked in the middle of awakening girls under the glaring gym lights.
We watched Troilus and Cressida and it is to this day the Shakespeare play I have read most closely.
No, I haven't been following the races on television regularly (just at the gym with no sound). I don't quite understand cycling.
I'm not sure what they should do about the pronunciations -- this comes up watching France (well, everyone) in the World Cup (Allez Les Bleus!) -- how much should one Anglicize the names? Pronouncing the names properly sounds odd when it's the only word in the sentence with nasalized vowels and the French 'r' sounds a bit pretentious. But otherwise it's a mispronunciation.
I don't like pronunciations that go part, but not all, of the way to imitating the original language. It still drives me batty to hear about that Baz Luhrman musical celebrating a fin de siecle Indian princess, Mulan Rouge.
31 -- Yeah, would I lie about such a thing? Pretty traumatically embarrassing, yeah, but of a piece with the rest of my traumatically embarrassing adolescence and early adulthood. I've been to see the doctors but they don't have any cure for me.
That's just, wow. 8th grade, too. Did you go to a different high school and leave those kids behind, or did you spend the next four years having to deal with knowing that your classmates had seen you naked?
Clown's story is not as bad as the kid who was caught masturbating on the school's video announcement camera, after which the video of the act was broadcast to the whole school. That was in an old Savage Love. Another person wrote in to say they'd gone to the school and remembered the incident.
'in' is the bane of my pronunciation of French: ('Nous allons inventer une histoire.' Fuuuuck.)
But I think I'd rather a flat American mispronunciation than a mispronunciation that was trying too hard. (Fraunce vs. France when we already have an English word "France".) But names are different.
Wendy: Xavier's gone to school. Okay?
Xavier’s mother: Ah, oui! Il est ą la fac.
Wendy: What?
Xavier’s mother: La fac!
Wendy: LA "FUCK"?
Xavier: Yes. After fac he can telephone maman.
As part of my effort to remake Unfogged into a home-improvement blog,
I have to admit, I totally enjoy watching each successive age group assert its individuality by doing the same shit everybody else does. It's like, liberating and shit.
I thought I'd pass along my choice of window treatments.
They have no Motorization Options! I am transfixed by the idea of motorization options for window blinds treatments (Lithium, marijuana, Xanax...Albatross!).
I thought somebody managed to make adjustable self-tinting windows. Then you just need auto-obscruring windows. Then, you get rid of all this treatment crap.
I LOVE cultural stagnation!
I know, I know, I could have just made my own curtains out of discarded bras and Judith Butler page proofs,
Electric blue & silver wrapping paper. And a disco ball. With glitter on the walls.
but the heart wants what it wants.
I actually had nothing to say, except I hate you for picking today to pop that one out.
max
['Kill the romantics! Kill all them sumbitches!']
Est-ce que vous vouillez les francophones prononces "les Americans" avec un accent francais, ou avec un accent american? Je voudrais ils le ditent avec leur accent natural.
my wife is driven to distraction by American cycling commentators' pronunciation of France to rhyme with "pants,"
I was about to disagree, but then I realized you mean "France" as occuring in "Le Tour de France". People should certainly pronounce it properly in that context; on its own, however (as in "Kitty and I summered in Fraahnce this year"), it sounds affected.
That's good Matt, I realize I didn't make that clear. Yes, of course I use FRAAANTZ myself in English sentences, but "Tour de France" is a name a point worth considering w/r/t Cala's fear of affectation.
celebrating a fin de siecle Indian princess, Mulan Rouge.
It just occured to me now that Mulan was about a Chinese princess. In my defense, I've seen neither movie. But for the prosecution, I know all the words to two songs from Pocohontas, so I ought to have this straight.
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sun sweet berries of the earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once never wonder what they're worth.
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends (that's for you Emerson)
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends
84: My question was aimed at possible pemeation through the institution, such as over the law school PA, or from mobile vans, etc. Do you think I would accuse you of footballism?
It's actually a pleasant experience, as these things go. Don't I remember you were in a marching band? If so, you know the scene.
You have told that story. I had to ride up Clark Street yesterday, because the Lakeshore was so thick with picknic-ers that it felt like riding through a smoking campsite for miles. I wondered if I might see you, but of course you were in f. Milwaukee.
I actually was in town yesterday, but spent the afternoon watching soccer out on the west-side-ish.
Then, see 90.
Also, I went to see the Evanston fireworks last night, which was a much smaller hassle than seeing the Chicago fireworks would have been.
True, awkward story, yesterday, me, quasi-boyfriend and sister tried to go to a somewhat well-reputed soccer bar to watch the game, and I ran into Asperger's guy. Luckily, we couldn't go to the bar anyway, as it was far too crowded.
How is it that in such a big city I unexpectedly run into people I know nearly every day?
Ok, so what do we think of the new Modern Love? I say, despicable, and I don't even care if the "tactics" work. Annoyingly self-indulgent writing, and why the fuck is she constantly doing the dishes?
Don't get offended
If I seem absent minded
Just keep telling me facts
And keep making me smile
...
This modern love breaks me
This modern love wastes me
The kind of people you — and I — know deploy up and down the lakeshore and it's mass-transit lines. Millions of people we will never see live in the area and only very rarely cross paths with us.
Yeah, at least I don't live in an area served solely by a bus anymore; I'd scarcely go a day without running into someone that I knew. On the train there's several cars, so I think I'm frequently on the same train as an acquaintance without ever knowing it.
My daughter and her friends co-locate by cell-phone, often finding each other by text on the same car, or getting off and getting on the next train. When you've got an unacknowledged crush, you've got to do it the old-fashioned way.
97: The column is annoying because the author thinks that technique a) is novel and b) has something specifically to do with animal training. It's just a long-winded rehashing of "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar".
The New York Times: your source for late-breaking folk wisdom.
(that said, she does have a point, albeit a sillily [apologies] expressed one. People get defensive when criticized, or even when merely given suggestions about what to do. More effective for people to have the impression that when they act, it is of their own initiative.)
108: Yeah, it's disgustingly transparent and manipulative. Who the fuck says "thank you for putting your socks in the hamper?" If I were her husband, I would just be like "fuck you."
Is it really that bad? I do a couple of things that drive Buck nuts -- I leave cabinet doors open, causing him to clock himself on the head, I strew shoes blithely about the apartment, causing him to trip, and I take towels out of the bathroom and leave them draped coquettishly about the apartment, meaning that if he doesn't check there often aren't any within reach when he emerges from the shower. I know these behaviors annoy him -- he's told me -- and he's perfectly justified in his annoyance. I'm not attached to doing these things, I just don't remember while I'm doing them.
If a little self-conscious positive reinforcement on Buck's part helped me break the above habits, what would be wrong with that? The presumption is that it works better than just asking, but that doesn't make it contemptutous or mind control.
I agree with 114, but 116 explained why the column, as column, is annoying.
I deleted an earlier comment saying something like, "you unmarried people, just fucking wait." But emboldened by LB, I'm just going to go ahead and be an asshole.
114: I don't really object to the notion that criticism isn't the way to get someone to change their behavior, but a) I don't think that fakely complimentary reinforcement is the other solution (especially for small things) b) mostly what I object to is the framing of the article; "my husband is a wild animal! I trained him!" She's clearly going for some shock value/slight offense, and I think it's playing into a stereotype that I find reprehensible.
On another note, I used to do the leave cabinet doors open thing all the time when living with my ex in college. He would just curse me, and I felt terrible. That seemed to work enough.
Speaking of training animals, I'd like to train that cute kitty to help Mr. B. find his wallet, b/c I ain't gonna do it. (I will admit, however, that ignoring his tendency to lose things like his wallet and keys doesn't actually seem to have made any difference.)
116: Yep. Although I suspect that the argument in this book, which is basically that men are way more likely than women to feel that housekeeping isn't really their responsibility, is largely true. Which is why your boyfriend cursing at you over the cupboard doors worked, while my cursing at Mr. B. never did.
My proposing that we just not put cupboard doors on the new cupboards, however, has solved that problem (though it's introduced the new one of him storing all sorts of random crap on the kitchen shelves, but you can't have everything.)
I want to know what is up with people who constantly lose things. I just finished up a visit with my older sister who I love immeasurably but who drives me insane with her inability to keep track of her belongings. I think she loses her wallet (like, not, "can't find it in the house" but "I think I left it on the seat next to me on the bus") at least once a month. She can't keep track of hardly anything for more than five minutes. It continues to amaze me--I want to have her brain analyzed? She's extremely smart but not dysfunctionally so, and seems to remember details of all the conversations we have, but can't remember to take her keys with her when she leaves the house. I think there should be a study.
116: Okay, but the 'no response' thing does work when your response is part of the ritual -- this works for me very, very well at work, where my partner likes to make people twitch by being abusive. I don't react, and he doesn't abuse me. Another associate at my level does react, and he's merciless. He doesn't like or value me more than he likes or values her -- he just doesn't give me crap the same way.
Now, I don't react because being stonefaced comes naturally, but I understand what's going on because of reading dog training books. So if you read it as 'looking at everything through the lens of animal training made it all make sense', it's a little less offensive. (Oh, you're right about playing up the 'man as animal' shtick, which is bogus, but she does subvert it in the last paragraph where he starts training her back.)
This is also an excellent way to deal with kids. It's not that you never yell or never punish (I certainly do both), but that if you want the kid to do something, praising or rewarding approximations is going to get you someplace much much faster and less painfully than punishing (or even objecting to) inadequate behavior.
119: Huh. Interesting. That same boyfriend in fact instilled in me a lot of habits house-related by the same general approach. When I was 19 and in college, I seriously didn't even know how to do the fucking dishes because we had a maid growing up. I'm now a relatively tidy person. I wonder if the genders hadn't been reversed, if those changes never would have been made.
I feel like praising or rewarding the approximations of a kid is totally appropriate (and awesome!), but when you do that same thing to an adult, doesn't it just become condescending? Especially for miniscule things like dirty-sock storage?
128: A.k.a., in animal-training-speak, training an incompatible behavior. While it's weird using the animal training language, it does get you away from the anger and frustration, and more toward the 'getting what you want to happen'.
It depends (and, being me, I advocate for the make-their-life-a-living-hell-until-they-realize-that-it's-easier-to-just-put-the-socks-in-the-hamper approach), but it is possible to sincerley say "thanks" when you catch someone pitching the clothes in the hamper. And one thing Mr. B. (rightly) tends to get kind of bent over is when I don't even notice that I've come home to a clean house, or that he's made some kind of improvement in something or other.
I really need to stop commenting (much work to do) but this:
I feel like praising or rewarding the approximations of a kid is totally appropriate (and awesome!), but when you do that same thing to an adult, doesn't it just become condescending? Especially for miniscule things like dirty-sock storage?
It's not that I don't recognize and sympathize with your feeling, but why is it more condescending to say something nice than something hostile?
A decent person wouldn't leave cabinets open -- I know it's a problem, and I should be able to control my behavior well enough not to do it. I'm an adult. Once the fact that I'm behaving in an non-adult fashion is noted, the condescension is inevitable, whether the response is "Jesus Christ can you shut the cabinets behind you!?!" or "Dude, you just walked out of the kitchen and the cabinets are all shut!" Both are talking to me like a child, whether a bad child or a good child. Neither should be necessary, but I don't see the pleasant alternative as more condescending than the unpleasant, particularly if it's more effective.
Seems to me that a sincere compliment will rarely be seen as condescending. That's a question of the good faith of the speaker -- and if one's partner is genuinely happy that some thing or other has occured, who's to judge whether that happiness isn't legitimate.
I agree with other old-marrieds that, whatever problems the piece had, the idea of changing what we do might help change what they do is valuable, and thought-provoking.
I'm just imagining someone praising me for picking up my socks and imagining the look of sardonic waffling upon my face.
My dad always used to yell about the cabinet doors and I still leave the fuckers open. But now at least I smirk when I remember to close them.
I would have less problems with the article if it were funnier or pitched its tone so it sounded less like The Rules Girl Goes To The Zoo. Otherwise, yes, you can manipulate people more easily if you're nice and sweet than if you nag.
I used to misplace my keys often, but then a former roommate, tiring of being enlisted into the hunt for the keys, bought a 3M sticky hook and put it by the door and now I put my keys on the hook. Training roommates by appealing to their sense of OCD.
Why is it that it's accepted as true that you can't get people (in the article's case, men) to do things by asking them? I can think of at least ten things that I've changed or gotten someone else to change by saying "hey, I'd really like it if you did/didn't do X." Am I just being naive?
One reason asking may not work is that you're noticing when thing x isn't being done, so are likely to be angry or annoyed in the moment of asking. And then you may as well be criticizing. The trick is for you the asker to also notice when someone is doing the right thing.
Isn't q lot of the interest or secret allure of arguments is to enjoy that feeling of superiority, or superior insight, at least? You can adopt this long suffering air, &c. The praise thing would probably short-circuit that dynamic.
"It continues to amaze me--I want to have her brain analyzed?"
I only extremely rarely lose things outside of the house -- like, once every five or ten years -- and I only occasionally lose things inside the apartment -- usually every few weeks but only for about five or ten minutes -- but the lay version of why this happens is, I think, that some of us tend to put certain routines on "automatic pilot" when we do them, and basically the short-term memory gets either impropery filed or put in the bit bucket, and as a result, when we look up later, we have no recorded memory of that action we took while on automatic pilot and not thinking about it.
I've read some more technical papers that run along these lines, but don't have either the right tools or sufficient interest to go look for them at the moment.
An ex-boyfriend had a ritual of putting all important articles onto a little table, just inside the door.
He moved into a new apartment, and within a month, lost his keys, wallet, cellphone, and addressbook.
After he replaced all of those items at great expense, he designated a new magic unconscious put-things-here place, just inside the new door.
Another trick, for the ladeez: always use the same purse. Move everything--everything!--into the new purse, if the other one doesn't match or something. Can't fit your important everyday stuff into a purse? It's too damned small; throw it away.
No one left a single comment when I posted on this article over a week ago. :-( Or picked it up for discussion here. This proves you all hate me.
140: "Why is it that it's accepted as true that you can't get people (in the article's case, men) to do things by asking them? "
Age and experience.
Incidentally: "Why is it that it's accepted as true that you can't get people (in the article's case, men) to do things by asking them? "
Um, the article didn't generalize about "men." It described the writer's experience with her husband. Can you quote the part that you see as generalizing about men, per se, and not about women? Maybe I just missed it.
No one left a single comment when I posted on this article over a week ago. :-( Or picked it up for discussion here. This proves you all hate me.
Or that you're a lousy animal trainer. Praise the commenters, don't punish them for failing to comment.
But seriously, you didn't disagree with the article, particularly. I saw your post, but didn't have much to say about what you said. Silvana, on the other hand, hated it, which prompted me to disagree.
149, 151: Isn't there a description of those unconscious processes in William James' Principles of Psychology?
I think ac's point is worth noting; we often don't realize how much verification we're getting by railing at someone else's shortcomings. Breaking our pattern is sometimes the key to breaking theirs.
Thank you, commenters for commenting here, and never on my blog! This is good for my sense of failure and worthlessness!
Is that better?
And in fairness to the query I addressed to Silvana, the writer does write of "the American husband." I just took that to be obvious attempted, if slightly lame, humor, though, and didn't read the article as at all specifically indicating that the writer was seriously addressing flaws that she saw as different in women and men; but maybe that's just me; did anyone else read it as specifically criticizing men and not women?
"But seriously, you didn't disagree with the article, particularly."
No, I didn't, I thought it had some useful things to say, but, then, you're exchanging views with someone who was very impressed (by no means entirely favorably, but in the given-to-think sense) when he first read Beyond Freedom And Dignity (B. F. Skinner) circa age 11-12 or so. And who in more recent decades learned a lot from reading in, and a little experience with, cognitive therapy. So the notion of consciously examining what people respond to and why and what works and then acting using such knowledge doesn't at all strike me as inherently condescending or evil or nasty or whatever.
Then I digressed into a bunch of other personal history, 'cause I like to do that now and again so it will be my blog, not just some generic person's generic blog.
160: No, Urple, the correct response is "Great, Gary! Thanks for expressing yourself in such a friendly manner." And when he gets snappish, you ignore him.
Would anyone like me to explain my little joke? It's really ever so amusing. Like, pretend the Modern Love writer is the one who dies of smallpox!!!11!! Ha!!!
Well, for that matter, the only known cases of American Indians being given blankets with smallpox were that of the British, under General Amherst, doing it in Michigan. Were there "prairies" in Michigan?
That is, unless you believe Ward Churchill, who has been definitively found to have falsified his citations. (And of whom it's hard to find an Indian with a kind word.)
173: still true today, but at the time of European settlers' arrival it was pretty much all forest. although the lake michigan coast is very nice in summer.
The tallgrass prairie, characteristic of Illinois, Indiana, and Southern Wisconsin, extends into Michigan, but is not characteristic.
Is that Geoffrey Amherst, overall commander of British forces in the French and Indian War, and presumably afterward, during "The Conspiracy of Pontiac?" Seems the appropriate background for this story. Parkman's book by that name describes the siege of Fort Detroit, in the 1760s. Bet that's it, although I don't remember that detail.
"Is that Geoffrey Amherst, overall commander of British forces in the French and Indian War"
Yes. And actually it consisted of two soldiers, once (that we know of -- but given that they didn't even know of the germ theory in those days, but were already concerned about infection amongst their own soldiers, it would have been a highly uncertain means to have proceeded with larger-scale biowarfare.)
"c'mon, it was a joke."
And those responding were advocating beatings and severe punishment for those who told it. Also, smallpox.
My father's home town in Nova Scotia was named for him. He, Wolfe and Moncton, as young colonels, took over from elderly generals and won the battle of Culloden in 1745. That made them, and they were the commanders of the expedition to Canada in the French and Indian War.
Ancestors of mine have polygamous colonies--now decent towns--named after them in Manitoba! (Set up, of course, to evade the 1890 compromise "revelation" that God would rather Mormons not be polygamous just now in order to avoid outright war.)
A friend of mine is doing an assistant professor gig up at that town and beforehand got an earful from my folks. I hadn't known anything about the connection beforehand. God only knows what other family stories I have yet to learn about.
Gary, I read your blog and like it very much. In fact, I read at least ten to fifteen blogs every day, and I like many of them very much. However, I pretty much only ever comment at Unfogged. Anyway, given that you seem to think that having massive amounts of comments is a barrier to conversation, I'm not sure why you complain about the lack of comments at your place (strangely, for me, the overabundance of comments here is kind of like a safety; unless I say something totally absurd, anything uninteresting or uninsightful I say could be being ignored because of those qualities it has, or merely because there are eight bazillion comments).
Anyway, on to your substantive points: this,
I just took that to be obvious attempted, if slightly lame, humor
Dude, I am forced to call you out on this. Wasn't it just yesterday that you got into a disagreement in re: taking "you" literally? So she says "the American husband," but we are supposed to assume that she's not trying to make some larger point about men and relationships generally? Even without that particular phrase, I think this column is pretty clearly pedagogical. She goes to great lengths to describe the intricacies of her behavior-modification techniques, and is praising their success. There's a reason why this column is currently the number one most e-mailed article from the NYT, more than a week after its publication (and I'm speculating here, but I don't think I'm wrong); people are emailing it to eachother, saying "hey, you/I should use this on so-and-so."
Even though she doesn't explicitly say "men are bad and we need to train them and this is how" since a) it's written from her point of view and b) the things she is trying to change about her husband are very stereotypically "bumbling slovenly male" qualities, the effect is to provide a solution to American women dissatisfied with their husbands' annoying behaviors. She tosses in something at the end about her annoying behavior (which is, come on, complaining about dental discomfort? That's hardly that problematic, and wasn't even represented as something intrinsic to her, like her husband's slovenliness, just something she was doing for a few weeks), but even that is to problematic effect: "he'd begun to train me, the American wife."
So the "American husband" drives too fast, can never find his keys, bothers her while she's doing the dishes, and leaves dirty clothes in his wake, and the "American wife" complains too much?
Also, I wanted to say that given the larger social notion that men need to be "trained" to do this or that (I can't count how many times I've heard a woman say she's trained her husband/boyfriend to do X or Y), the article plays off of and capitalizes off of what I believe to be a pernicious idea to be stamped out.
Thank you, commenters for commenting here, and never on my blog! This is good for my sense of failure and worthlessness!
1) Good lord. Gary, would it be possible to get through a comment thread, just once, without you a) complaining that you were FRIST to publish on a topic and b) complaining that no one comments over at Amygdala? I don't care if you were first or not; if a random teenage livejournalist was the first to publish on a topic it does not, in and of itself, make her writing worthy of an audience.
Your writing is indeed worthy of an audience, but whether you published it at 9:04 or 11:02 has nothing at all to do with it. Unless you're intending to imply someone is plagiarizing your blog, I don't see why the obsession with timestamps. Nor the obsession with commenters; you haven't received many new commenters, I imagine, from badgering other ones on other blogs.
2) More substantive. Your blog occasionally hangs and crashes my browser. This is a barrier to a) reading it, though I do dailyish and b) bothering with the comment registration process. I don't know if anyone else is having problems with amygdala eating their browser, but it appears to find mine tasty.
I don't often comment where I have to register; I don't mind making up a handle, but registration is too much effort. Could you rig your blog so people couldn't post anonymously, but need not register?
Silvana, I love you for being offended by this, but in fact I exhibit all those behaviors, and they are pretty typical. My wife emailed it to me last week mostly for laughs. There are some truths in it but mostly it's kind of silly. Some of us are trying to use it as a jumping off point for some other thoughts, about habits, motives, and living with a person for a long time.
I don't know if you're joking or serious, but really, that's a very interesting question.
I think it would be impossibly hard to refrain from giving oneself internal negative feedback (like right now, how I'm like, goddamnit, I should have gone to the gym tonight instead of sitting around my apartment, talking on the phone, and commenting on Unfogged), but man, I bet it would would work.
And IDP, yeah, I know that it's meant to be a little silly. But as Jackmormon astutely said (I can't remember where, I thought it was on her blog but I can't find it), I'm an equity feminist, and I try to fight negative stereotypes of men as much as I do those of women. In truth, this article pretty well represents how I already try and conduct my relationships, romantic, friendly, and familial; I try not to criticize people and I think I'm pretty good at it.
So, the point is, I agree with the substance, just not the narrative that she uses to frame her description of the technique.
"Could you rig your blog so people couldn't post anonymously, but need not register?"
"Registering," while sounding imposing, takes twelve seconds. It just means entering a "name" in the "name" field, and whatever random set of letters/numbers in the "blog" field you like (contrary to the impression it gives you, this won't create a blog, and there's nothing else involved). That's it. And then you're "registered" for any blogspot blog.
Otherwise, the answer to your question is "no." I wish I could, but I there's no way to do that.
And I tried leaving it open to purely anonymous commenting for well over a year, while keeping a notice posting asking that no one post without using a handle, any handle, and gently reminding everyone who posted as "anonymous."
The result was that most comments were left by "anonymous." I spent more than a year warning that if people were going to keep doing that, that I was going to close purely anonymous commenting. So I did.
And since I did that after a periof of first having it open, then having it requiring registering, but then receiving claims that people weren't commenting because I required registering, I left it open for that year and a half to see if I'd get more comments from those who claimed they weren't commenting because of registration requirements.
I didn't. So I kinda no longer believe claims that people aren't commenting because of the arduous nature registering, I'm afraid.
I don't go around to random blogs complaining that people don't comment on my blog, by the way. On occasion, on blogs where I commonly leave hundreds of comments, I feel sometimes like it might be politely reciprocal to get, say, one comment back for every fifty or so I leave, from a blogowner, maybe, but I don't expect that, and I certainly don't feel it's an obligation; it's just an emotional response that strikes with a pang sometimes.
And more of it is just a desire to know if people I'm talking to have read what I've written than it's anything else. Though response is good, too.
But I wasn't intending to start a rant or long complaint here; I merely responded to LB's request to rephrase, in a way I hoped was faintly ha-ha-ish. And ten days isn't a matter of a time-stamp of a few hours, by the way, just ftr.
Oh, and I have no idea why your browser would crash; first anyone has ever said that to me; I've occasionally had people complain that it's a bit slow to load, which seems odd to me, since I measure it at under 30 seconds, and can name innumerable blogs that take far longer, but that one at least I've heard before; crashing, no.
And I chose not to focus on the gendered narrative, laughing it off, so to speak; I do appreciate what you're saying and what you're trying not to buy into.
"I think it would be impossibly hard to refrain from giving oneself internal negative feedback...."
Actually, that's pretty much what cognitive theraby is about teaching.
As usual, most of what I've learned I've taught myself from self-study, and I gained little or nothing from some formal therapy, but what I've picked up along the lines of training myself away -- to some fair, though quite imperfect, extent -- from negative thought cycles (which were a crucial part of, if not at the heart of, my decades-long history of on-and-off severe clinical depression) have been invaluable. Without having made some progress in teaching myself to some degree ways of getting out of those negative self-lashings and obsessings, I'd still be purely dysfunctional.
To a large degree it's just learning to recognize certain patterns of repeated negative thoughts, and cycles of them, and learning how to interrupt them and override them with other thoughts, but there are a variety of techniques one can experiment with, and try to find out which work better and worse for one's self.
193 -- I was sort of half-joking -- I like you think it would be a great method if only there were a way of turning off the stream of self-criticism. And it just seemed like a funny idea. Is this a way of describing the goal of meditation? My understanding, as a onetime and never successful practitioner of meditation, was that there was not a "goal" to meditation -- but obviously at some level you are doing the meditation because you want something to happen -- and I think "turning off the stream of self-criticism" sounds like a good candidate for what I would want to make happen via meditation.
BTW all you guys should go listen to, and watch, this recording session. Bird, Hawkins, many other great musicians, and Ella! Ella kicks ass. I got the link from Oldnarkoverian a sometimes Mineshaftler but I am forgetting now which one.
Yeah, it's particularly hard because not only do we self-criticize, but we persist in believe that this criticism is a necessary part of change. So it's doubly hard to resist.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with a guy I briefly dated last winter who told me he had read some article in [Cosmo or similar] about how to "exercise like a guy." The substance of this advice (which he took, after assessing that the behaviors applied to him) was that men just kinda do it, while women form all these emotional connections to the things they want themselves to do (like exercising, or whatever), and by doing so they anticipate the self-criticism attendant with failure. God, I am explaining this poorly. Anyway, the point is that he said what you have to do is convince yourself, that, say, "it doesn't matter if I go running today or not, if I do, cool, if not, I'll just do it another time" instead of "I've got to do this or I am a Bad Person."
I don't know if that made sense, but it seemed relevant in my mind.
Oh yeah I meant to say also I think the gendered thing set up in my last comment is bullshit, that all people do this. Lest someone attack that premise or whatever.
Yeah I agree it is bullshit. Well either that or I am confused about my gender identity... ah fuck. Time to go be confused about my gender identity again.
"I didn't. So I kinda no longer believe claims that people aren't commenting because of the arduous nature registering, I'm afraid."
Then you're really clueless. Requiring registration reduces the number of comments on a blog by up to 70%. Now, I can certainly believe that your experience is misleading, because it's hard to tell differences in how much people comment when you get so few comments in the first place. (I certainly wouldn't have known that from the comments on my blog.)
Also, the solution to "anonymous" comments is to delete the comments. You can even say, right there next to your "post a comment" link, that "Anonymous comments will be deleted. Please choose a handle, any handle." Or something to that effect. (That's much better than having it in the sidebar, where you currently have it. Very few people will read it if it's only in the sidebar.) Then delete violators. That's better than requiring registration.
I think the key to consistent exercise is to not push yourself. For cardio, don't go into anaerobic. If you're out of breath, back off. For lifting weights, do considerably less than your limit. This makes exercising much more pleasant, even somewhat enjoyable. Once you've been in the habit of doing that regularly a month or two, you can start to push yourself more. By then you've made a habit of exercising and formed good associations with it.
Actually, my main problem is breaking a sweat; it takes forfuckingever unless I'm doing something really strenuous, and I don't feel like it's really exercising unless you're sweating.
"You can even say, right there next to your "post a comment" link, that "Anonymous comments will be deleted. Please choose a handle, any handle." Or something to that effect. (That's much better than having it in the sidebar, where you currently have it. Very few people will read it if it's only in the sidebar.) Then delete violators."
That is, the boilerplate was in the sidebar, but I did post a responding comment after each such comment. I have no idea how I'd get text into the comment box otherwise. (I know nothing of HTML, basically, beyond a handful of basic tags.)
In any case, a gazillion MT blogs require registration. I took the twenty seconds to register, once. BFD.
You're a sort of smallish person, right, silvana? I've noticed that I, a sort of smallish person, don't sweat much when the air is cool in the gym. If it's a warm day, I'll sweat just lifting weights.
If Becks gets Becks-style and waxes rhapsodic about Sleater-Kinney, silvana gets silvana-style and waxes rhapsodic about Le Tigre. Which is what I am going to do right now.
Only music that can make me reliably dance around my apartment.
Anyway, I see tons of tiny women sweating their asses off at the gym. Like, shirts totally soaked. I don't think there's anything I could do that wasn't pouring water over my head to get that result.
And then you're "registered" for any blogspot blog.
If I recall correctly, you also need to copy fuzzy, dali-style letters into a box in order to prove you're not a robot, which has always hung me up on the blogspot registration.
Regarding exercise woes: I have a very hard time getting my heart rate over 130 which means I'm probably completely wasting my time with cardio.
I wouldn't worry about it if you're feeling like you're working hard. Some people just don't sweat much, even if under layers of padding/uniform type clothing. I can't soak a shirt. I'll just glisten and dampen a collar.
"If I recall correctly, you also need to copy fuzzy, dali-style letters into a box in order to prove you're not a robot, which has always hung me up on the blogspot registration."
Well, so do endless number of blogs; certainly any MT or Blogspot blog. I've done that over 40 times today on various blogs. Should I not comment on any of them? I have to do it to respond on my own blog; should I never respond to anyone?
I don't understand why that's more ardurous than having to reload every ten seconds to follow conversation here.
I think what Cala/pdf23ds are trying to say, Gary, is not that it's somehow bad or wrong to have your blog set up as you do, but that if you are truly interested in driving up comment traffic, those are some things you might do, that's all.
Gary, I don't generally post on blogs that require me to register, largely because I can't do the fuzzy daliletter thing. Apparently it's also an excellent calafilter. Yours isn't more arduous than those others, but I don't post at them, either.
I'm not sure how one gets commenters other than linking favorably to another blog and getting people curious in posting there. But it seems that people often enable registration in order to discourage unwanted commenters, and maybe that's playing a part here.
"I think what Cala/pdf23ds are trying to say, Gary, is not that it's somehow bad or wrong to have your blog set up as you do, but that if you are truly interested in driving up comment traffic, those are some things you might do, that's all."
Y'know, I can turn off requiring registered names for a while, but I've already tried this several times, and I have real trouble believing that if I do, I'm suddenly going to start seeing a bunch of you commenting there.
Anyone want to go on record saying you'll start commenting with some vague frequency? Say, eight or ten people? And prove me wrong?
Incidentally, I don't believe anyone wants to read me discussing my patterns of sweating. God knows I don't. Let's just say I don't have Silvana and Cala's problem. (And, in fact, back when I was thin, I sweated a lot; and so my whole family does; incidentally, at 5' 4", I'm far and away the tallest of my nuclear relatives; I'm taller than my father was and towered, slightly, over my mother and sister; but we all had strong tendencies to not deal well with heat.)
I never get them right at least, silvana. But I think the problem with some robot-protection boxes is that they generate the new code when you go to the page, and then when you post, you have to type in the code. But if you've spent too long composing your posts, you end up with the wrong code.
"...because I can't do the fuzzy daliletter thing."
I find it highly annoying, myself.
Just as I do lots of things about commenting at many blogs. Having to reload a page twice (a constant at ObWi); having to frequently reload and still not be able to fully load the page (here, a day or so ago); etc.
The blogspot ones aren't "daliletter," though. That's elsewhere.
But in the past, when people have told me this, and I've turned off registration, they still haven't commented. So in every case where I've been told this before, it's been an excuse. But I'm game to be proven wrong. Watch me kick that football again, Lucy.
(if you're wondering why i have no AC, perhaps you're thinking "Michael's hooker-and-crack habit has finally made him as indigent as Farber", the real reason is that the gay webcam sites I pose for prefer my naked body to be glistening, I'm visiting and not in charge of the thermostat.)
I just installed a window unit in my bedroom two nights ago, and I already don't need it, but I can't just open the window and let the breeze flow through, because there's a fucking air conditioner in the way. Drat.
Okay, I'm going to bed now. Goodnight, all.
(p.s. pdf, cool blog; haven't checked it out before.)
239. oh, right. it's exactly the opposite situation with M/tch M/lls, with whom the dilemma lies in getting him to stop humping your leg, screaming that you smell of cookies and suntan lotion...sometimes even the taser is ineffectual.
Kind of a gross question, but I woke up at 2:50 because of my cold and have not been able to get back to sleep. It's now 4AM EDT, and I figure that I might as well ask the Unfoggedtaroat for help.
What symptom, e.g. congestion, is it when breathng in through your nose makes a sort of snorting sound which makes it temporarily impossible for you to breath through your nose and kind of blocks your throat with something phlegmy? I'm not coughing up phlegm (not coughing at all right now), and my nose isn't "congested." What kind of medicine can I take for this? An antihistamine? A nasal decongestant? Any ones, by which I mean either brands or generic medical names of drugs, in particular?
247: Have you recently switched to or from windows-closed, windows-open, or AC?
If so, the side affects can be mollified by much liquid, much Vitamin C (even just a bunch of good OJ), and, as possible, a bunch of rest.
Moreover, locally grown honey, one or two nights of NyQuil and/or a Hot Toddy (made with said local honey) will also help mollify and, with luck, help you sleep.
#97: Yeah, it's despicable. I actually had that article in mind when I wrote this:
[Men] like women who treat us with kindness and make us feel valued. That doesn't mean being submissive to us. But it does mean not treating us like juvenile delinquents who need to be trained, re-educated and turned into productive members of society.
The problem is not so much with the wife's techniques per se, but with her characterization of her husband as an animal to be trained. Yeah, I know it's tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, I know she adds a little "and then he used the same technique on me" thing at the end to pre-empt charges of sexism. Sorry, not good enough, and the little picture of the woman with a whip on her belt making hubby jump through hoops doesn't help. The chances that the NYT would have published the same article with the gender roles reversed is zero.
Yet I understood when mcmc took umbrage at the very same quote yesterday, without this context. That view of American women, their essential nature as set by our culture at its worst, has been around since the 18th century at least.
As LB keeps trying to teach me, you can't assume context or understanding, even when you think you've been trading comments with the same people for hours. Somebody else — whom you do want to talk with — will be happening by just as you say the dumbest thing, taken out of context.
The problem is not so much with the wife's techniques per se, but with her characterization of her husband as an animal to be trained. Yeah, I know it's tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, I know she adds a little "and then he used the same technique on me" thing at the end to pre-empt charges of sexism. Sorry, not good enough, and the little picture of the woman with a whip on her belt making hubby jump through hoops doesn't help.
This is fair, although I think the problem is with the tone, rather than the subject matter. I don't think there's anything inherently contemptuous about thinking about some interpersonal problems in terms derived from animal training. But the article was certainly written from a "Woman civilizes brutish man" perspective which is, in fact, sexist bullshit.
Something to focus on in this context is that all of these rigid gender roles hurt everyone. Some are more directly offensive to women, some to men, so you get different people tending to complain about different facets of the whole sexist mess (for example, I overlooked the tone in this thing becasue I was interested in the substance.) That doesn't make fixing them a zero-sum game where fixing something offensive to men will disadvantage women or vice-versa -- the civilized-woman/brutish-man steroetype hurts women too, although it doesn't directly insult us as much. Working on eliminating it is a win for everyone.
That Gawd wasted size on you physically hurts me.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:55 AM
My parents have something like this, which I love. When they're in the open setting, it's like looking through a really thin, delicate gauze. When they're closed, it's like an opaque rice paper.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:04 AM
The Heart is a Lonely Interior Decorator?
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:07 AM
That Gawd wasted size on you physically hurts me.
How do you think it felt to Labs, after, when he miraculously bore His child?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:08 AM
We've had silhouettes in the bay windows of our dining room for over fifteen years. They've held up extremely well and eventually became the basis for our color scheme there.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:09 AM
me
Posted by i don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:10 AM
Saiselgy and I have gone with horizontal blinds.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:13 AM
My apartment came with crappy white horizontal blinds, and they're still here. We had gauzy saffrony orange and white sheer curtains which looked great in the afternoon sun for a while.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:15 AM
When they're in the open setting, it's like looking through a really thin, delicate gauze. When they're closed, it's like an opaque rice paper.
See, spend too long in that thread and you come down with a touch of the Asian fetish.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:15 AM
I like to gaze upon my set of rose and ivory embroidered fabric shades (which my mother paid for--thanks mom). They are so pretty.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:15 AM
In college, I used a towel draped over a stick. A stick I found outside.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:29 AM
Oooh, I like the way they go up and down from either end - minutes of entertainment there. I guess I just don't give enough of a shit about curtains. We buy crappy cheap stuff and then buy more when they fall apart. I have to scrunch up my bedroom blind and shove it over the bar at the top because it doesn't open any longer. When should I stop living like a student and start living like a grownup?
Posted by asilon | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:45 AM
Yeah—by we went with blinds I mean that I just noticed there are blinds over the window. Also iron grates.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:46 AM
In college, I used a towel draped over a stick. A stick I found outside.
Matt, haven't you heard? Talk of human sexuality disgusts Labs. We're discussing window treatments now.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:47 AM
And ivy, shitloads of ivy on the back windows.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:48 AM
Asilon-- for me the answer was "when I spent a week sweating my ass off painting the living room." After that, putting up the old and ugly venetian blinds just didn't seem like an option.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:50 AM
Ugh, ivy creeps me out. Especially on windows, when you look at it from the inside and it has all those little sucker things.
FL, then I commend you on your staying power. I'm usually bored by then, and will go for whatever will finish the whole process quickest.
Posted by asilon | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:32 AM
I'm telling you, the gauzy fuchsia sari is going to look nice. Eventually. In an exotic, Asian kind of way.
I actually did know a woman when I was a kid who had a huge sculpture made of bras suspended from the ceiling in her living room. It looked like a gigantic cloud. I remember being really impressed by it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:01 AM
In a good way?
Posted by Clownęsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:10 AM
I actually did know a woman when I was a kid who had a huge sculpture made of bras suspended from the ceiling in her living room. It looked like a gigantic cloud.
This kind of cloud, perhaps?
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:11 AM
Or this?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:17 AM
19: Yeah, in a good way. She was really active in the local children's theater and took a bunch of us up to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival. She and her husband also had a nude picture of him up in either the living room or the hall, right there where god and the kids who came over to her house could see it. They were kind of a vision of how cool and arty my parents could have been, if their marriage hadn't become about fighting instead.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:18 AM
Kind of a cross between those 20 and 21, yes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:19 AM
That reminds me of an exhibition I saw in New Orleans years ago called "Feminine Products", where all of the art was made out of things like bras and tampons and stuff. It was really impressive -- not at all the superficial fluff show it could have been. It was a response to a prior exhibition called "Guns in the Hands of Artists", where they gave a bunch of guns that were turned into NOPD's firearm buyback program to artists for them to make sculptures. Some ridiculous percentage of the gun sculptures were phallic.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:25 AM
A penisHappiness is a warm gun.Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:29 AM
Bang, bang, shoot, shoot!
Odd NYT sentence: "The stage was marked by the usual mishaps, including a flat for Erik Zabel, the German sprinter for Milram, in the last two kilometers and a handful of crashes, one of which took down Julian Dean, a New Zealander with Credit (accent acute on e) Agricole, in the final dash to the line."
As opposed to the other Credit Agricole? Did they just forget to edit this one? I don't think the NYT usually includes all the diacritical (?) marks.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:36 AM
Cala, do you watch the races? my wife is driven to distraction by American cycling commentators' pronunciation of France to rhyme with "pants," as one imagines "The King" did in Huckleberry Finn. The British announcers, and the "general sports-guy" host, Al Trautwig, do much better. We're not asking for French vowels, just make it rhyme with "haunts" and I'd never notice.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:52 AM
22 -- going to Ashland festival as a kid = Teh Fun. My 8th-grade (1982?) English and Social Studies teachers took our class as a field trip and it was a great time, except we all slept in a gym with boys on one side, girls on the other, and I didn't understand that you were supposed to (a) wear pajamas in your sleeping bag or (b) not get up in the middle of the night to pee or (c) at least drape yourself in a towel when you walk across the girls side to get to the bathrooms or at any rate (d) schedule your urine trip for some time other than thirty seconds before the lights get turned on to wake everybody up, stranding you naked in the middle of awakening girls under the glaring gym lights.
We watched Troilus and Cressida and it is to this day the Shakespeare play I have read most closely.
Posted by Clownęsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:56 AM
No, I haven't been following the races on television regularly (just at the gym with no sound). I don't quite understand cycling.
I'm not sure what they should do about the pronunciations -- this comes up watching France (well, everyone) in the World Cup (Allez Les Bleus!) -- how much should one Anglicize the names? Pronouncing the names properly sounds odd when it's the only word in the sentence with nasalized vowels and the French 'r' sounds a bit pretentious. But otherwise it's a mispronunciation.
But please, no Zidaynes.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:59 AM
Zizou.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:01 PM
28. No way. Really? How much therapy did you need afterwards?
We got rooms in a B&B. Nyah nyah.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:03 PM
I don't like pronunciations that go part, but not all, of the way to imitating the original language. It still drives me batty to hear about that Baz Luhrman musical celebrating a fin de siecle Indian princess, Mulan Rouge.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:06 PM
You'd rather hear "Toor day Frants" to "Toor d' Fraunts?"
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:10 PM
31 -- Yeah, would I lie about such a thing? Pretty traumatically embarrassing, yeah, but of a piece with the rest of my traumatically embarrassing adolescence and early adulthood. I've been to see the doctors but they don't have any cure for me.
Posted by Clownęsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:11 PM
I think if they're going to imitate a foreign pronunciation, they may as well go all the way.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:15 PM
That's just, wow. 8th grade, too. Did you go to a different high school and leave those kids behind, or did you spend the next four years having to deal with knowing that your classmates had seen you naked?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:17 PM
(I think I say Toor duh Frants. Not sure.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:19 PM
Clown's story is not as bad as the kid who was caught masturbating on the school's video announcement camera, after which the video of the act was broadcast to the whole school. That was in an old Savage Love. Another person wrote in to say they'd gone to the school and remembered the incident.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:21 PM
'in' is the bane of my pronunciation of French: ('Nous allons inventer une histoire.' Fuuuuck.)
But I think I'd rather a flat American mispronunciation than a mispronunciation that was trying too hard. (Fraunce vs. France when we already have an English word "France".) But names are different.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:23 PM
I will give you this, Mistress: Phil Liggett's pronunciation of Liqui Gas, "Leaky Gas," remains disconcerting.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:25 PM
Nous allons inventer une histoire.
Bonjour Ma'm'selle Mireille!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:25 PM
Deux jeunes gens.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:25 PM
Bonjour! Oł vas-tu!
Ą la fac!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:30 PM
Deux jeunes gens sont allés visiter la Musée de la Serrurerie.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:32 PM
Elle se promčne sous les arcades!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:34 PM
Wendy: Xavier's gone to school. Okay?
Xavier’s mother: Ah, oui! Il est ą la fac.
Wendy: What?
Xavier’s mother: La fac!
Wendy: LA "FUCK"?
Xavier: Yes. After fac he can telephone maman.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:38 PM
What a nice boy! It would never occur to me to telephone maman.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:42 PM
That movie was a lot of fun, wasn't it?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:49 PM
Oui.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:54 PM
Maman died today.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:57 PM
DRAW ME A SHEEP, MOTHERFUCKER
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 12:58 PM
As part of my effort to remake Unfogged into a home-improvement blog,
I have to admit, I totally enjoy watching each successive age group assert its individuality by doing the same shit everybody else does. It's like, liberating and shit.
I thought I'd pass along my choice of window treatments.
They have no Motorization Options! I am transfixed by the idea of motorization options for window
blindstreatments (Lithium, marijuana, Xanax...Albatross!).I thought somebody managed to make adjustable self-tinting windows. Then you just need auto-obscruring windows. Then, you get rid of all this treatment crap.
I LOVE cultural stagnation!
I know, I know, I could have just made my own curtains out of discarded bras and Judith Butler page proofs,
Electric blue & silver wrapping paper. And a disco ball. With glitter on the walls.
but the heart wants what it wants.
I actually had nothing to say, except I hate you for picking today to pop that one out.
max
['Kill the romantics! Kill all them sumbitches!']
Posted by max | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:00 PM
What movie was this? I think I've gone off script.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:01 PM
Est-ce que vous vouillez les francophones prononces "les Americans" avec un accent francais, ou avec un accent american? Je voudrais ils le ditent avec leur accent natural.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:04 PM
51: WHATEVER, TEABAGGER! I'M LEAVING YOU IN THE DESERT!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:06 PM
Le Petit Prince
Un film de Quentin Tarantino
Palme d'Or, Cannes 2007
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:22 PM
Rated NC-17 for violent sex.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:23 PM
I wonder if Fontana is up for a Larry Clark film-fest?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:29 PM
Why so many pictures of that naughty ktten that scratched up the armchairs? Traffic very light.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:33 PM
ZIZOUUUUUUUUUUU.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:34 PM
AIGOUUUUUUUUUUU
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:39 PM
The Portuguese diving team seems to be performing marvellously, but what are they doing out there on the soccer pitch?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:47 PM
Portugal sont TEH SUCK! ZIDANE!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:49 PM
Leh Suck? Hmm.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:50 PM
my wife is driven to distraction by American cycling commentators' pronunciation of France to rhyme with "pants,"
I was about to disagree, but then I realized you mean "France" as occuring in "Le Tour de France". People should certainly pronounce it properly in that context; on its own, however (as in "Kitty and I summered in Fraahnce this year"), it sounds affected.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:53 PM
"Eul Suck", in straight-out-of-my-butt verlan.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:54 PM
54: Je préfére leur accent naturel, avec le accent franēais est plus jolie que 'FRAAANTZ'.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 1:58 PM
Just saw a very sweet cross-racial Coke commercial on Univision. Anybody else watching that way?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:00 PM
'avec' s/b 'mais'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:00 PM
The Portuguese suck soccer balls straight out of SB's butt.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:01 PM
Y ahora, la pelota!
Univision.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:01 PM
The Portuguese suck soccer balls straight out of SB's butt.
This should be on Pay Per View.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:03 PM
That's good Matt, I realize I didn't make that clear. Yes, of course I use FRAAANTZ myself in English sentences, but "Tour de France" is a name a point worth considering w/r/t Cala's fear of affectation.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:05 PM
celebrating a fin de siecle Indian princess, Mulan Rouge.
It just occured to me now that Mulan was about a Chinese princess. In my defense, I've seen neither movie. But for the prosecution, I know all the words to two songs from Pocohontas, so I ought to have this straight.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:05 PM
India, China, they all look alike.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:06 PM
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sun sweet berries of the earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once never wonder what they're worth.
ATM.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:07 PM
Except in China they carry lotus flowers around all the time.
Between their legs.
Duh.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:08 PM
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends (that's for you Emerson)
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:09 PM
How high does [Labs' cock] grow?
If it rubbernecks, then you'll never know...
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:09 PM
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?--OMG, this song's so dirty
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:10 PM
Or ask a grinning bobcat why he grins?
I think it's obvious.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:12 PM
Tell me, Silvana, why do all my dreams extend just around the riverbend?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:14 PM
Silvana, do you ever get to hear that canned Bobcat scream they play at Northwestern games? My son and I make it to each other on suitable occasions.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:14 PM
83: No, I have never been to a Northwestern football game, nor a football game of any other institution, for that matter.
And Tia, your dreams extend just around the riverbend because you know what's just around the riverbend is for you/coming for you.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:16 PM
I'm really bored, guys. Why is Unfogged so slow today?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:18 PM
All the fun happened over the weekend when I was in fucking Milwaukee.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:19 PM
"when I was in fucking Milwaukee" s/b "when I was in Milwaukee, fucking"
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:22 PM
"in fucking" s/b "fucking in"
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:22 PM
Bored minds think alike.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:24 PM
No, I did my fucking in Chicago, thankyouverymuch.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:24 PM
89: indeed: about fucking; in Milwaukee.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:25 PM
84: My question was aimed at possible pemeation through the institution, such as over the law school PA, or from mobile vans, etc. Do you think I would accuse you of footballism?
It's actually a pleasant experience, as these things go. Don't I remember you were in a marching band? If so, you know the scene.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:25 PM
IDP, I have been in no marching band. I was in a pretentious indie rock band, goddamnit.
But yeah, I don't know the whoop/call of which you speak.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:27 PM
I'll defend my pretense!
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:27 PM
You have told that story. I had to ride up Clark Street yesterday, because the Lakeshore was so thick with picknic-ers that it felt like riding through a smoking campsite for miles. I wondered if I might see you, but of course you were in f. Milwaukee.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:32 PM
I actually was in town yesterday, but spent the afternoon watching soccer out on the west-side-ish.
Then, see 90.
Also, I went to see the Evanston fireworks last night, which was a much smaller hassle than seeing the Chicago fireworks would have been.
True, awkward story, yesterday, me, quasi-boyfriend and sister tried to go to a somewhat well-reputed soccer bar to watch the game, and I ran into Asperger's guy. Luckily, we couldn't go to the bar anyway, as it was far too crowded.
How is it that in such a big city I unexpectedly run into people I know nearly every day?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:39 PM
Ok, so what do we think of the new Modern Love? I say, despicable, and I don't even care if the "tactics" work. Annoyingly self-indulgent writing, and why the fuck is she constantly doing the dishes?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:46 PM
Oops.
The new Modern Love.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:50 PM
Don't get offended
If I seem absent minded
Just keep telling me facts
And keep making me smile
...
This modern love breaks me
This modern love wastes me
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:52 PM
The kind of people you — and I — know deploy up and down the lakeshore and it's mass-transit lines. Millions of people we will never see live in the area and only very rarely cross paths with us.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 2:57 PM
Yeah, at least I don't live in an area served solely by a bus anymore; I'd scarcely go a day without running into someone that I knew. On the train there's several cars, so I think I'm frequently on the same train as an acquaintance without ever knowing it.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:05 PM
Thanks, Tia and silvana, because I needed those awful songs stuck in my head, complete with wood flute backup.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:09 PM
My daughter and her friends co-locate by cell-phone, often finding each other by text on the same car, or getting off and getting on the next train. When you've got an unacknowledged crush, you've got to do it the old-fashioned way.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:16 PM
93: Wha what? You were in a pretentious indie rock band in Chicago? Which one?
As a semi-developing scene kid, I must know this.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:22 PM
After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.
So... this week's modern life column teaches us to train our husbands to balance balls on the end of their noses?
Sweeeet.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:27 PM
97: The column is annoying because the author thinks that technique a) is novel and b) has something specifically to do with animal training. It's just a long-winded rehashing of "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar".
The New York Times: your source for late-breaking folk wisdom.
(that said, she does have a point, albeit a sillily [apologies] expressed one. People get defensive when criticized, or even when merely given suggestions about what to do. More effective for people to have the impression that when they act, it is of their own initiative.)
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:34 PM
No, no. It was a pretentious indie rock band in Texas.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:34 PM
I'm kind of wondering why she doesn't ask. I mean, praising someone for picking up a sock like he's a toddler going potty?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:39 PM
Thesis: Pocahontas is nothing but Disney's incredibly lame attempt to atone for Peter Pan.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:41 PM
It didn't work. Substitute one stereotype for another.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:45 PM
108: Yeah, it's disgustingly transparent and manipulative. Who the fuck says "thank you for putting your socks in the hamper?" If I were her husband, I would just be like "fuck you."
I don't believe it. It's all made up.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:47 PM
But the scene where she dies of smallpox is so moving!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:49 PM
112 to 110.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:50 PM
Is it really that bad? I do a couple of things that drive Buck nuts -- I leave cabinet doors open, causing him to clock himself on the head, I strew shoes blithely about the apartment, causing him to trip, and I take towels out of the bathroom and leave them draped coquettishly about the apartment, meaning that if he doesn't check there often aren't any within reach when he emerges from the shower. I know these behaviors annoy him -- he's told me -- and he's perfectly justified in his annoyance. I'm not attached to doing these things, I just don't remember while I'm doing them.
If a little self-conscious positive reinforcement on Buck's part helped me break the above habits, what would be wrong with that? The presumption is that it works better than just asking, but that doesn't make it contemptutous or mind control.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:55 PM
I agree with 114, but 116 explained why the column, as column, is annoying.
I deleted an earlier comment saying something like, "you unmarried people, just fucking wait." But emboldened by LB, I'm just going to go ahead and be an asshole.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:59 PM
114: I don't really object to the notion that criticism isn't the way to get someone to change their behavior, but a) I don't think that fakely complimentary reinforcement is the other solution (especially for small things) b) mostly what I object to is the framing of the article; "my husband is a wild animal! I trained him!" She's clearly going for some shock value/slight offense, and I think it's playing into a stereotype that I find reprehensible.
On another note, I used to do the leave cabinet doors open thing all the time when living with my ex in college. He would just curse me, and I felt terrible. That seemed to work enough.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 3:59 PM
B., is that you behind me?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:00 PM
Speaking of training animals, I'd like to train that cute kitty to help Mr. B. find his wallet, b/c I ain't gonna do it. (I will admit, however, that ignoring his tendency to lose things like his wallet and keys doesn't actually seem to have made any difference.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:01 PM
116: Yep. Although I suspect that the argument in this book, which is basically that men are way more likely than women to feel that housekeeping isn't really their responsibility, is largely true. Which is why your boyfriend cursing at you over the cupboard doors worked, while my cursing at Mr. B. never did.
My proposing that we just not put cupboard doors on the new cupboards, however, has solved that problem (though it's introduced the new one of him storing all sorts of random crap on the kitchen shelves, but you can't have everything.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:06 PM
Now, if I'd married the kind of guy who gets excited by window treatments, I'd have it made.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:07 PM
I'd like to nominate Bitch for the You Know What I Meant When I Typed 116 award.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:08 PM
I want to know what is up with people who constantly lose things. I just finished up a visit with my older sister who I love immeasurably but who drives me insane with her inability to keep track of her belongings. I think she loses her wallet (like, not, "can't find it in the house" but "I think I left it on the seat next to me on the bus") at least once a month. She can't keep track of hardly anything for more than five minutes. It continues to amaze me--I want to have her brain analyzed? She's extremely smart but not dysfunctionally so, and seems to remember details of all the conversations we have, but can't remember to take her keys with her when she leaves the house. I think there should be a study.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:09 PM
"?" s/b "!"
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:10 PM
It didn't work. Substitute one stereotype for another.
Hence "incredibly lame."
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:10 PM
116: Okay, but the 'no response' thing does work when your response is part of the ritual -- this works for me very, very well at work, where my partner likes to make people twitch by being abusive. I don't react, and he doesn't abuse me. Another associate at my level does react, and he's merciless. He doesn't like or value me more than he likes or values her -- he just doesn't give me crap the same way.
Now, I don't react because being stonefaced comes naturally, but I understand what's going on because of reading dog training books. So if you read it as 'looking at everything through the lens of animal training made it all make sense', it's a little less offensive. (Oh, you're right about playing up the 'man as animal' shtick, which is bogus, but she does subvert it in the last paragraph where he starts training her back.)
This is also an excellent way to deal with kids. It's not that you never yell or never punish (I certainly do both), but that if you want the kid to do something, praising or rewarding approximations is going to get you someplace much much faster and less painfully than punishing (or even objecting to) inadequate behavior.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:11 PM
122: I am your sister and I have no explanation.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:14 PM
119: Huh. Interesting. That same boyfriend in fact instilled in me a lot of habits house-related by the same general approach. When I was 19 and in college, I seriously didn't even know how to do the fucking dishes because we had a maid growing up. I'm now a relatively tidy person. I wonder if the genders hadn't been reversed, if those changes never would have been made.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:14 PM
121, 106, wtfever.
125, sure. They other way to deal with bad kid behavior is to rechannel it into play.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:15 PM
I feel like praising or rewarding the approximations of a kid is totally appropriate (and awesome!), but when you do that same thing to an adult, doesn't it just become condescending? Especially for miniscule things like dirty-sock storage?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:18 PM
128: A.k.a., in animal-training-speak, training an incompatible behavior. While it's weird using the animal training language, it does get you away from the anger and frustration, and more toward the 'getting what you want to happen'.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:19 PM
It depends (and, being me, I advocate for the make-their-life-a-living-hell-until-they-realize-that-it's-easier-to-just-put-the-socks-in-the-hamper approach), but it is possible to sincerley say "thanks" when you catch someone pitching the clothes in the hamper. And one thing Mr. B. (rightly) tends to get kind of bent over is when I don't even notice that I've come home to a clean house, or that he's made some kind of improvement in something or other.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:22 PM
Which pretentious band in Texas? The Unfoggedetariat has fans of pretentious bands scattered across the nation.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:23 PM
It's also possible to spell "sincerely" correctly. But maybe not when you've been drinking beer and eating Bugles all afternoon.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:23 PM
I really need to stop commenting (much work to do) but this:
I feel like praising or rewarding the approximations of a kid is totally appropriate (and awesome!), but when you do that same thing to an adult, doesn't it just become condescending? Especially for miniscule things like dirty-sock storage?
It's not that I don't recognize and sympathize with your feeling, but why is it more condescending to say something nice than something hostile?
A decent person wouldn't leave cabinets open -- I know it's a problem, and I should be able to control my behavior well enough not to do it. I'm an adult. Once the fact that I'm behaving in an non-adult fashion is noted, the condescension is inevitable, whether the response is "Jesus Christ can you shut the cabinets behind you!?!" or "Dude, you just walked out of the kitchen and the cabinets are all shut!" Both are talking to me like a child, whether a bad child or a good child. Neither should be necessary, but I don't see the pleasant alternative as more condescending than the unpleasant, particularly if it's more effective.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:26 PM
131 - Isn't bending him over thanks enough?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:36 PM
Seems to me that a sincere compliment will rarely be seen as condescending. That's a question of the good faith of the speaker -- and if one's partner is genuinely happy that some thing or other has occured, who's to judge whether that happiness isn't legitimate.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:37 PM
I agree with other old-marrieds that, whatever problems the piece had, the idea of changing what we do might help change what they do is valuable, and thought-provoking.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:38 PM
I'm just imagining someone praising me for picking up my socks and imagining the look of sardonic waffling upon my face.
My dad always used to yell about the cabinet doors and I still leave the fuckers open. But now at least I smirk when I remember to close them.
I would have less problems with the article if it were funnier or pitched its tone so it sounded less like The Rules Girl Goes To The Zoo. Otherwise, yes, you can manipulate people more easily if you're nice and sweet than if you nag.
I used to misplace my keys often, but then a former roommate, tiring of being enlisted into the hunt for the keys, bought a 3M sticky hook and put it by the door and now I put my keys on the hook. Training roommates by appealing to their sense of OCD.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:41 PM
The hook thing is fucking golden. I have a hook right by the front door and now I can't help but put my keys there.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:52 PM
Why is it that it's accepted as true that you can't get people (in the article's case, men) to do things by asking them? I can think of at least ten things that I've changed or gotten someone else to change by saying "hey, I'd really like it if you did/didn't do X." Am I just being naive?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 4:54 PM
No, but the kinds of habits mentioned in the article, or by LB, are not so easily changed that way. They're not easily changed period.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 5:00 PM
One reason asking may not work is that you're noticing when thing x isn't being done, so are likely to be angry or annoyed in the moment of asking. And then you may as well be criticizing. The trick is for you the asker to also notice when someone is doing the right thing.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 5:06 PM
Isn't q lot of the interest or secret allure of arguments is to enjoy that feeling of superiority, or superior insight, at least? You can adopt this long suffering air, &c. The praise thing would probably short-circuit that dynamic.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 5:13 PM
Whoa, lot of typos there, and not even commenting drunk.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 5:14 PM
I have generally found it very difficult to train my wife as a dog.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 5:20 PM
You can change a lot of things by asking. But even with a well-intentioned partner, there are a lot of things you can't.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 5:26 PM
my wife as a dog
I wuved dat movie.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:24 PM
I have generally found it very difficult to train my wife as a dog.
Yeah, she's much less likely to lick your crotch just because you put peanut butter on it.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:27 PM
"It continues to amaze me--I want to have her brain analyzed?"
I only extremely rarely lose things outside of the house -- like, once every five or ten years -- and I only occasionally lose things inside the apartment -- usually every few weeks but only for about five or ten minutes -- but the lay version of why this happens is, I think, that some of us tend to put certain routines on "automatic pilot" when we do them, and basically the short-term memory gets either impropery filed or put in the bit bucket, and as a result, when we look up later, we have no recorded memory of that action we took while on automatic pilot and not thinking about it.
I've read some more technical papers that run along these lines, but don't have either the right tools or sufficient interest to go look for them at the moment.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:34 PM
Can't. Resist.
No one left a single comment when I posted on this article over a week ago. :-( Or picked it up for discussion here. This proves you all hate me.
140: "Why is it that it's accepted as true that you can't get people (in the article's case, men) to do things by asking them? "
Age and experience.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:40 PM
An ex-boyfriend had a ritual of putting all important articles onto a little table, just inside the door.
He moved into a new apartment, and within a month, lost his keys, wallet, cellphone, and addressbook.
After he replaced all of those items at great expense, he designated a new magic unconscious put-things-here place, just inside the new door.
Another trick, for the ladeez: always use the same purse. Move everything--everything!--into the new purse, if the other one doesn't match or something. Can't fit your important everyday stuff into a purse? It's too damned small; throw it away.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:41 PM
Can't. Resist.
No one left a single comment when I posted on this article over a week ago. :-( Or picked it up for discussion here. This proves you all hate me.
140: "Why is it that it's accepted as true that you can't get people (in the article's case, men) to do things by asking them? "
Age and experience.
Incidentally: "Why is it that it's accepted as true that you can't get people (in the article's case, men) to do things by asking them? "
Um, the article didn't generalize about "men." It described the writer's experience with her husband. Can you quote the part that you see as generalizing about men, per se, and not about women? Maybe I just missed it.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:41 PM
No one left a single comment when I posted on this article over a week ago. :-( Or picked it up for discussion here. This proves you all hate me.
Or that you're a lousy animal trainer. Praise the commenters, don't punish them for failing to comment.
But seriously, you didn't disagree with the article, particularly. I saw your post, but didn't have much to say about what you said. Silvana, on the other hand, hated it, which prompted me to disagree.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:53 PM
149, 151: Isn't there a description of those unconscious processes in William James' Principles of Psychology?
I think ac's point is worth noting; we often don't realize how much verification we're getting by railing at someone else's shortcomings. Breaking our pattern is sometimes the key to breaking theirs.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:53 PM
But the scene where she dies of smallpox is so moving!
Because the bad husband kept leaving those smallpox infested socks around the bedroom!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 6:57 PM
155: I thought it was the soldiers, with the blankets, in the prairie.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:02 PM
Thank you, commenters for commenting here, and never on my blog! This is good for my sense of failure and worthlessness!
Is that better?
And in fairness to the query I addressed to Silvana, the writer does write of "the American husband." I just took that to be obvious attempted, if slightly lame, humor, though, and didn't read the article as at all specifically indicating that the writer was seriously addressing flaws that she saw as different in women and men; but maybe that's just me; did anyone else read it as specifically criticizing men and not women?
"But seriously, you didn't disagree with the article, particularly."
No, I didn't, I thought it had some useful things to say, but, then, you're exchanging views with someone who was very impressed (by no means entirely favorably, but in the given-to-think sense) when he first read Beyond Freedom And Dignity (B. F. Skinner) circa age 11-12 or so. And who in more recent decades learned a lot from reading in, and a little experience with, cognitive therapy. So the notion of consciously examining what people respond to and why and what works and then acting using such knowledge doesn't at all strike me as inherently condescending or evil or nasty or whatever.
Then I digressed into a bunch of other personal history, 'cause I like to do that now and again so it will be my blog, not just some generic person's generic blog.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:03 PM
155: I thought it was the soldiers, with the blankets, in the prairie.
Oooh, I thought I was the only one who grew up with the Clue: Manifest Destiny version.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:06 PM
Clue: Manifest Destiny version
Well, given its apparent popularity, why not start hawking it in the Mineshaft Gift Shop?
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:12 PM
157-
Thank you, commenters for commenting here, and never on my blog! This is good for my sense of failure and worthlessness!
Is that better?
No. See 136. Pay particularly close attention to the usage of the words "sincere" and "condescending."
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:12 PM
Clue: Manifest Destiny
Scabs, in the mining camp, with clubs.
god that was a depressing game.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:14 PM
The phrase "Is that better?" in 160 was told to italicize itself. It didn't listen. Perhaps I came across as insincere or condescending.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:15 PM
160: No, Urple, the correct response is "Great, Gary! Thanks for expressing yourself in such a friendly manner." And when he gets snappish, you ignore him.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:17 PM
"The phrase 'Is that better?' in 160 was told to italicize itself. It didn't listen. Perhaps I came across as insincere or condescending."
Paragraphs here are extremely independent-minded. They need to be trained individually.
However, it's true that I'm rarely sincerely condescending. Usually it's unintended. It's just a natural skill.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:24 PM
I get annoyed when my site meter goes up too high. I'm writing for the three and half people who read me regularly, dammit. Not the whole world.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:26 PM
People, Pocohontas died in England. The smallpox blankets were about a century later. I know you know this, but, jeez.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:27 PM
Her name wasn't really Pocahontas either. And she didn't sing stupid songs about painting with all the colors of the wind.
Damn Disney.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:31 PM
Would anyone like me to explain my little joke? It's really ever so amusing. Like, pretend the Modern Love writer is the one who dies of smallpox!!!11!! Ha!!!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:33 PM
For the record, I genuinely like that song. I also like Just Around the Riverbend.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:35 PM
Well, for that matter, the only known cases of American Indians being given blankets with smallpox were that of the British, under General Amherst, doing it in Michigan. Were there "prairies" in Michigan?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:36 PM
170: No. No prairies in Michigan.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:38 PM
That is, unless you believe Ward Churchill, who has been definitively found to have falsified his citations. (And of whom it's hard to find an Indian with a kind word.)
More here on Amherst.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:38 PM
Unless, by "prairie," you mean "desolate boring place with shitty winters," in which case Michigan counts.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:40 PM
Very familiar with Lord Jeff, myself.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:43 PM
173: still true today, but at the time of European settlers' arrival it was pretty much all forest. although the lake michigan coast is very nice in summer.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:45 PM
The tallgrass prairie, characteristic of Illinois, Indiana, and Southern Wisconsin, extends into Michigan, but is not characteristic.
Is that Geoffrey Amherst, overall commander of British forces in the French and Indian War, and presumably afterward, during "The Conspiracy of Pontiac?" Seems the appropriate background for this story. Parkman's book by that name describes the siege of Fort Detroit, in the 1760s. Bet that's it, although I don't remember that detail.
c'mon, it was a joke.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:45 PM
"Is that Geoffrey Amherst, overall commander of British forces in the French and Indian War"
Yes. And actually it consisted of two soldiers, once (that we know of -- but given that they didn't even know of the germ theory in those days, but were already concerned about infection amongst their own soldiers, it would have been a highly uncertain means to have proceeded with larger-scale biowarfare.)
"c'mon, it was a joke."
And those responding were advocating beatings and severe punishment for those who told it. Also, smallpox.
I spent winter of '76 in East Lansing, myself.
It was cold.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 7:55 PM
My father's home town in Nova Scotia was named for him. He, Wolfe and Moncton, as young colonels, took over from elderly generals and won the battle of Culloden in 1745. That made them, and they were the commanders of the expedition to Canada in the French and Indian War.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:00 PM
My father's home town in Nova Scotia was named for him.
Your dad is old! (Or, I am mildly Becks-style. Calariffic!)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:06 PM
Ancestors of mine have polygamous colonies--now decent towns--named after them in Manitoba! (Set up, of course, to evade the 1890 compromise "revelation" that God would rather Mormons not be polygamous just now in order to avoid outright war.)
A friend of mine is doing an assistant professor gig up at that town and beforehand got an earful from my folks. I hadn't known anything about the connection beforehand. God only knows what other family stories I have yet to learn about.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:11 PM
Gary, I read your blog and like it very much. In fact, I read at least ten to fifteen blogs every day, and I like many of them very much. However, I pretty much only ever comment at Unfogged. Anyway, given that you seem to think that having massive amounts of comments is a barrier to conversation, I'm not sure why you complain about the lack of comments at your place (strangely, for me, the overabundance of comments here is kind of like a safety; unless I say something totally absurd, anything uninteresting or uninsightful I say could be being ignored because of those qualities it has, or merely because there are eight bazillion comments).
Anyway, on to your substantive points: this,
I just took that to be obvious attempted, if slightly lame, humor
Dude, I am forced to call you out on this. Wasn't it just yesterday that you got into a disagreement in re: taking "you" literally? So she says "the American husband," but we are supposed to assume that she's not trying to make some larger point about men and relationships generally? Even without that particular phrase, I think this column is pretty clearly pedagogical. She goes to great lengths to describe the intricacies of her behavior-modification techniques, and is praising their success. There's a reason why this column is currently the number one most e-mailed article from the NYT, more than a week after its publication (and I'm speculating here, but I don't think I'm wrong); people are emailing it to eachother, saying "hey, you/I should use this on so-and-so."
Even though she doesn't explicitly say "men are bad and we need to train them and this is how" since a) it's written from her point of view and b) the things she is trying to change about her husband are very stereotypically "bumbling slovenly male" qualities, the effect is to provide a solution to American women dissatisfied with their husbands' annoying behaviors. She tosses in something at the end about her annoying behavior (which is, come on, complaining about dental discomfort? That's hardly that problematic, and wasn't even represented as something intrinsic to her, like her husband's slovenliness, just something she was doing for a few weeks), but even that is to problematic effect: "he'd begun to train me, the American wife."
So the "American husband" drives too fast, can never find his keys, bothers her while she's doing the dishes, and leaves dirty clothes in his wake, and the "American wife" complains too much?
Forgive me if I find that a little gross.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:15 PM
Man, I should write about these things on my own damn blog.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:16 PM
Also, I wanted to say that given the larger social notion that men need to be "trained" to do this or that (I can't count how many times I've heard a woman say she's trained her husband/boyfriend to do X or Y), the article plays off of and capitalizes off of what I believe to be a pernicious idea to be stamped out.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:19 PM
Godammit. When I wrote "prairie," I thought, I should fact-check this. Then I thought, nah, not for the sake of a Clue joke.
Woe is
me. . . I?Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:20 PM
the article plays off of and capitalizes off of what I believe to be a pernicious idea to be stamped out
What's the pernicious idea?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:22 PM
That men need to be trained.
Sorry, very poor sentence structure.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:23 PM
Thank you, commenters for commenting here, and never on my blog! This is good for my sense of failure and worthlessness!
1) Good lord. Gary, would it be possible to get through a comment thread, just once, without you a) complaining that you were FRIST to publish on a topic and b) complaining that no one comments over at Amygdala? I don't care if you were first or not; if a random teenage livejournalist was the first to publish on a topic it does not, in and of itself, make her writing worthy of an audience.
Your writing is indeed worthy of an audience, but whether you published it at 9:04 or 11:02 has nothing at all to do with it. Unless you're intending to imply someone is plagiarizing your blog, I don't see why the obsession with timestamps. Nor the obsession with commenters; you haven't received many new commenters, I imagine, from badgering other ones on other blogs.
2) More substantive. Your blog occasionally hangs and crashes my browser. This is a barrier to a) reading it, though I do dailyish and b) bothering with the comment registration process. I don't know if anyone else is having problems with amygdala eating their browser, but it appears to find mine tasty.
I don't often comment where I have to register; I don't mind making up a handle, but registration is too much effort. Could you rig your blog so people couldn't post anonymously, but need not register?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:30 PM
"Forgive me if I find that a little gross."
Good point. Fair enough. (See, I don't actually argue when I think the other person has made a convincing point.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:31 PM
I feel honored.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:34 PM
"Nor the obsession with commenters; you haven't received many new commenters, I imagine, from badgering other ones on other blogs."
I'm sure it will work if I just try harder.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:37 PM
Is it possible to train oneself to modify a behavior by giving oneself praise when one behaves as desired, and withholding it otherwise?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:39 PM
Silvana, I love you for being offended by this, but in fact I exhibit all those behaviors, and they are pretty typical. My wife emailed it to me last week mostly for laughs. There are some truths in it but mostly it's kind of silly. Some of us are trying to use it as a jumping off point for some other thoughts, about habits, motives, and living with a person for a long time.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:41 PM
I don't know if you're joking or serious, but really, that's a very interesting question.
I think it would be impossibly hard to refrain from giving oneself internal negative feedback (like right now, how I'm like, goddamnit, I should have gone to the gym tonight instead of sitting around my apartment, talking on the phone, and commenting on Unfogged), but man, I bet it would would work.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:41 PM
193 to 191.
And IDP, yeah, I know that it's meant to be a little silly. But as Jackmormon astutely said (I can't remember where, I thought it was on her blog but I can't find it), I'm an equity feminist, and I try to fight negative stereotypes of men as much as I do those of women. In truth, this article pretty well represents how I already try and conduct my relationships, romantic, friendly, and familial; I try not to criticize people and I think I'm pretty good at it.
So, the point is, I agree with the substance, just not the narrative that she uses to frame her description of the technique.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:46 PM
"as Jackmormon astutely said, I'm an equity feminist" s/b "I'm what Jackmormon astutely termed an equity feminist."
Let's see how many comments I can leave in a row.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:48 PM
"Could you rig your blog so people couldn't post anonymously, but need not register?"
"Registering," while sounding imposing, takes twelve seconds. It just means entering a "name" in the "name" field, and whatever random set of letters/numbers in the "blog" field you like (contrary to the impression it gives you, this won't create a blog, and there's nothing else involved). That's it. And then you're "registered" for any blogspot blog.
Otherwise, the answer to your question is "no." I wish I could, but I there's no way to do that.
And I tried leaving it open to purely anonymous commenting for well over a year, while keeping a notice posting asking that no one post without using a handle, any handle, and gently reminding everyone who posted as "anonymous."
The result was that most comments were left by "anonymous." I spent more than a year warning that if people were going to keep doing that, that I was going to close purely anonymous commenting. So I did.
And since I did that after a periof of first having it open, then having it requiring registering, but then receiving claims that people weren't commenting because I required registering, I left it open for that year and a half to see if I'd get more comments from those who claimed they weren't commenting because of registration requirements.
I didn't. So I kinda no longer believe claims that people aren't commenting because of the arduous nature registering, I'm afraid.
I don't go around to random blogs complaining that people don't comment on my blog, by the way. On occasion, on blogs where I commonly leave hundreds of comments, I feel sometimes like it might be politely reciprocal to get, say, one comment back for every fifty or so I leave, from a blogowner, maybe, but I don't expect that, and I certainly don't feel it's an obligation; it's just an emotional response that strikes with a pang sometimes.
And more of it is just a desire to know if people I'm talking to have read what I've written than it's anything else. Though response is good, too.
But I wasn't intending to start a rant or long complaint here; I merely responded to LB's request to rephrase, in a way I hoped was faintly ha-ha-ish. And ten days isn't a matter of a time-stamp of a few hours, by the way, just ftr.
Oh, and I have no idea why your browser would crash; first anyone has ever said that to me; I've occasionally had people complain that it's a bit slow to load, which seems odd to me, since I measure it at under 30 seconds, and can name innumerable blogs that take far longer, but that one at least I've heard before; crashing, no.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:50 PM
And I chose not to focus on the gendered narrative, laughing it off, so to speak; I do appreciate what you're saying and what you're trying not to buy into.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:56 PM
"I think it would be impossibly hard to refrain from giving oneself internal negative feedback...."
Actually, that's pretty much what cognitive theraby is about teaching.
As usual, most of what I've learned I've taught myself from self-study, and I gained little or nothing from some formal therapy, but what I've picked up along the lines of training myself away -- to some fair, though quite imperfect, extent -- from negative thought cycles (which were a crucial part of, if not at the heart of, my decades-long history of on-and-off severe clinical depression) have been invaluable. Without having made some progress in teaching myself to some degree ways of getting out of those negative self-lashings and obsessings, I'd still be purely dysfunctional.
To a large degree it's just learning to recognize certain patterns of repeated negative thoughts, and cycles of them, and learning how to interrupt them and override them with other thoughts, but there are a variety of techniques one can experiment with, and try to find out which work better and worse for one's self.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 8:58 PM
193 -- I was sort of half-joking -- I like you think it would be a great method if only there were a way of turning off the stream of self-criticism. And it just seemed like a funny idea. Is this a way of describing the goal of meditation? My understanding, as a onetime and never successful practitioner of meditation, was that there was not a "goal" to meditation -- but obviously at some level you are doing the meditation because you want something to happen -- and I think "turning off the stream of self-criticism" sounds like a good candidate for what I would want to make happen via meditation.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:00 PM
BTW all you guys should go listen to, and watch, this recording session. Bird, Hawkins, many other great musicians, and Ella! Ella kicks ass. I got the link from Oldnarkoverian a sometimes Mineshaftler but I am forgetting now which one.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:05 PM
Ah yes! Dave Heasman is who.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:06 PM
Yeah, it's particularly hard because not only do we self-criticize, but we persist in believe that this criticism is a necessary part of change. So it's doubly hard to resist.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with a guy I briefly dated last winter who told me he had read some article in [Cosmo or similar] about how to "exercise like a guy." The substance of this advice (which he took, after assessing that the behaviors applied to him) was that men just kinda do it, while women form all these emotional connections to the things they want themselves to do (like exercising, or whatever), and by doing so they anticipate the self-criticism attendant with failure. God, I am explaining this poorly. Anyway, the point is that he said what you have to do is convince yourself, that, say, "it doesn't matter if I go running today or not, if I do, cool, if not, I'll just do it another time" instead of "I've got to do this or I am a Bad Person."
I don't know if that made sense, but it seemed relevant in my mind.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:07 PM
Oh yeah I meant to say also I think the gendered thing set up in my last comment is bullshit, that all people do this. Lest someone attack that premise or whatever.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:08 PM
Yeah I agree it is bullshit. Well either that or I am confused about my gender identity... ah fuck. Time to go be confused about my gender identity again.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:12 PM
Ah Happy Fun Kitty. You will not let me down.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:12 PM
N.B. Happy fun kitty is doubly fun silvana-style.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:13 PM
"I didn't. So I kinda no longer believe claims that people aren't commenting because of the arduous nature registering, I'm afraid."
Then you're really clueless. Requiring registration reduces the number of comments on a blog by up to 70%. Now, I can certainly believe that your experience is misleading, because it's hard to tell differences in how much people comment when you get so few comments in the first place. (I certainly wouldn't have known that from the comments on my blog.)
Also, the solution to "anonymous" comments is to delete the comments. You can even say, right there next to your "post a comment" link, that "Anonymous comments will be deleted. Please choose a handle, any handle." Or something to that effect. (That's much better than having it in the sidebar, where you currently have it. Very few people will read it if it's only in the sidebar.) Then delete violators. That's better than requiring registration.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:16 PM
I think the key to consistent exercise is to not push yourself. For cardio, don't go into anaerobic. If you're out of breath, back off. For lifting weights, do considerably less than your limit. This makes exercising much more pleasant, even somewhat enjoyable. Once you've been in the habit of doing that regularly a month or two, you can start to push yourself more. By then you've made a habit of exercising and formed good associations with it.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:19 PM
But being out of breath is fun.
Actually, my main problem is breaking a sweat; it takes forfuckingever unless I'm doing something really strenuous, and I don't feel like it's really exercising unless you're sweating.
But I think I just don't sweat.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:23 PM
It takes me about 12 minutes of jogging in a cool gym to break a sweat.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:24 PM
"You can even say, right there next to your "post a comment" link, that "Anonymous comments will be deleted. Please choose a handle, any handle." Or something to that effect. (That's much better than having it in the sidebar, where you currently have it. Very few people will read it if it's only in the sidebar.) Then delete violators."
Yeah, I did that, for over a year.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:24 PM
That is, the boilerplate was in the sidebar, but I did post a responding comment after each such comment. I have no idea how I'd get text into the comment box otherwise. (I know nothing of HTML, basically, beyond a handful of basic tags.)
In any case, a gazillion MT blogs require registration. I took the twenty seconds to register, once. BFD.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:27 PM
210: Huh. Well why are all the other people I see sweating so damn much? I even see people sweating a lot when they're just lifting weights.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:27 PM
You're a sort of smallish person, right, silvana? I've noticed that I, a sort of smallish person, don't sweat much when the air is cool in the gym. If it's a warm day, I'll sweat just lifting weights.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:32 PM
I don't know if smallish is the word I'd use. I'm short, yeah (5'1"), but not skinny or anything.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:34 PM
If Becks gets Becks-style and waxes rhapsodic about Sleater-Kinney, silvana gets silvana-style and waxes rhapsodic about Le Tigre. Which is what I am going to do right now.
Only music that can make me reliably dance around my apartment.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:36 PM
213: I have a suspicion that I'm similarly freakish.
214: I'm 6' 1", 181 lbs.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:42 PM
Anyway, I see tons of tiny women sweating their asses off at the gym. Like, shirts totally soaked. I don't think there's anything I could do that wasn't pouring water over my head to get that result.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:44 PM
And then you're "registered" for any blogspot blog.
If I recall correctly, you also need to copy fuzzy, dali-style letters into a box in order to prove you're not a robot, which has always hung me up on the blogspot registration.
Regarding exercise woes: I have a very hard time getting my heart rate over 130 which means I'm probably completely wasting my time with cardio.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:45 PM
I wouldn't worry about it if you're feeling like you're working hard. Some people just don't sweat much, even if under layers of padding/uniform type clothing. I can't soak a shirt. I'll just glisten and dampen a collar.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:48 PM
glisten and dampen a collar
Yup, that's about right.
Must be because we're so delicate.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:49 PM
I do declare I am broiling in this exercise facility here.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:56 PM
"If I recall correctly, you also need to copy fuzzy, dali-style letters into a box in order to prove you're not a robot, which has always hung me up on the blogspot registration."
Well, so do endless number of blogs; certainly any MT or Blogspot blog. I've done that over 40 times today on various blogs. Should I not comment on any of them? I have to do it to respond on my own blog; should I never respond to anyone?
I don't understand why that's more ardurous than having to reload every ten seconds to follow conversation here.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 9:58 PM
I think what Cala/pdf23ds are trying to say, Gary, is not that it's somehow bad or wrong to have your blog set up as you do, but that if you are truly interested in driving up comment traffic, those are some things you might do, that's all.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:04 PM
Gary, I don't generally post on blogs that require me to register, largely because I can't do the fuzzy daliletter thing. Apparently it's also an excellent calafilter. Yours isn't more arduous than those others, but I don't post at them, either.
I'm not sure how one gets commenters other than linking favorably to another blog and getting people curious in posting there. But it seems that people often enable registration in order to discourage unwanted commenters, and maybe that's playing a part here.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:08 PM
I can't do the fuzzy daliletter thing
Like, physically unable? Just curious.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:13 PM
"I think what Cala/pdf23ds are trying to say, Gary, is not that it's somehow bad or wrong to have your blog set up as you do, but that if you are truly interested in driving up comment traffic, those are some things you might do, that's all."
Y'know, I can turn off requiring registered names for a while, but I've already tried this several times, and I have real trouble believing that if I do, I'm suddenly going to start seeing a bunch of you commenting there.
Anyone want to go on record saying you'll start commenting with some vague frequency? Say, eight or ten people? And prove me wrong?
Incidentally, I don't believe anyone wants to read me discussing my patterns of sweating. God knows I don't. Let's just say I don't have Silvana and Cala's problem. (And, in fact, back when I was thin, I sweated a lot; and so my whole family does; incidentally, at 5' 4", I'm far and away the tallest of my nuclear relatives; I'm taller than my father was and towered, slightly, over my mother and sister; but we all had strong tendencies to not deal well with heat.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:14 PM
I never get them right at least, silvana. But I think the problem with some robot-protection boxes is that they generate the new code when you go to the page, and then when you post, you have to type in the code. But if you've spent too long composing your posts, you end up with the wrong code.
Or, I just can't tell fuzzy 1s from fuzzy ls.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:21 PM
"...because I can't do the fuzzy daliletter thing."
I find it highly annoying, myself.
Just as I do lots of things about commenting at many blogs. Having to reload a page twice (a constant at ObWi); having to frequently reload and still not be able to fully load the page (here, a day or so ago); etc.
The blogspot ones aren't "daliletter," though. That's elsewhere.
But in the past, when people have told me this, and I've turned off registration, they still haven't commented. So in every case where I've been told this before, it's been an excuse. But I'm game to be proven wrong. Watch me kick that football again, Lucy.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:24 PM
Hey, where'd everybody go?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:41 PM
I'm still here.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:48 PM
The gym, to sweat.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:50 PM
Nothing I am doing this evening involves sweating in any way.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 10:55 PM
...Gary has a blog?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:01 PM
Gary, the reasons I think you don't have many commenters are a bit long and a bit tenditious to stick in this thread, so I made a post.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:02 PM
my evening is going to involve a lot of sweating, IYKWIM, AITYD. ;)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:04 PM
(yes, another rousing evening of turn-off-the-ac!)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:05 PM
tendentious
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:06 PM
237: You know, the point of it is to turn her on.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:09 PM
(if you're wondering why i have no AC, perhaps you're thinking "Michael's hooker-and-crack habit has finally made him as indigent as Farber", the real reason is that
the gay webcam sites I pose for prefer my naked body to be glistening, I'm visiting and not in charge of the thermostat.)Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:11 PM
I just installed a window unit in my bedroom two nights ago, and I already don't need it, but I can't just open the window and let the breeze flow through, because there's a fucking air conditioner in the way. Drat.
Okay, I'm going to bed now. Goodnight, all.
(p.s. pdf, cool blog; haven't checked it out before.)
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:16 PM
239. oh, right. it's exactly the opposite situation with M/tch M/lls, with whom the dilemma lies in getting him to stop humping your leg, screaming that you smell of cookies and suntan lotion...sometimes even the taser is ineffectual.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:17 PM
Thanks, silvana.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:21 PM
"Gary, the reasons I think you don't have many commenters are a bit long and a bit tenditious to stick in this thread, so I made a post."
So I comment there or here?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:31 PM
It's up to you, but I would say there.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:33 PM
Also, I'm going to bed.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 07- 5-06 11:33 PM
Kind of a gross question, but I woke up at 2:50 because of my cold and have not been able to get back to sleep. It's now 4AM EDT, and I figure that I might as well ask the Unfoggedtaroat for help.
What symptom, e.g. congestion, is it when breathng in through your nose makes a sort of snorting sound which makes it temporarily impossible for you to breath through your nose and kind of blocks your throat with something phlegmy? I'm not coughing up phlegm (not coughing at all right now), and my nose isn't "congested." What kind of medicine can I take for this? An antihistamine? A nasal decongestant? Any ones, by which I mean either brands or generic medical names of drugs, in particular?
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07- 6-06 2:05 AM
247: Have you recently switched to or from windows-closed, windows-open, or AC?
If so, the side affects can be mollified by much liquid, much Vitamin C (even just a bunch of good OJ), and, as possible, a bunch of rest.
Moreover, locally grown honey, one or two nights of NyQuil and/or a Hot Toddy (made with said local honey) will also help mollify and, with luck, help you sleep.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 07- 6-06 2:29 AM
#97: Yeah, it's despicable. I actually had that article in mind when I wrote this:
[Men] like women who treat us with kindness and make us feel valued. That doesn't mean being submissive to us. But it does mean not treating us like juvenile delinquents who need to be trained, re-educated and turned into productive members of society.
The problem is not so much with the wife's techniques per se, but with her characterization of her husband as an animal to be trained. Yeah, I know it's tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, I know she adds a little "and then he used the same technique on me" thing at the end to pre-empt charges of sexism. Sorry, not good enough, and the little picture of the woman with a whip on her belt making hubby jump through hoops doesn't help. The chances that the NYT would have published the same article with the gender roles reversed is zero.
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 07- 6-06 2:45 AM
249 gets it exactly right.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07- 6-06 7:16 AM
Yet I understood when mcmc took umbrage at the very same quote yesterday, without this context. That view of American women, their essential nature as set by our culture at its worst, has been around since the 18th century at least.
As LB keeps trying to teach me, you can't assume context or understanding, even when you think you've been trading comments with the same people for hours. Somebody else — whom you do want to talk with — will be happening by just as you say the dumbest thing, taken out of context.
Posted by i don't pay | Link to this comment | 07- 6-06 7:28 AM
The problem is not so much with the wife's techniques per se, but with her characterization of her husband as an animal to be trained. Yeah, I know it's tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, I know she adds a little "and then he used the same technique on me" thing at the end to pre-empt charges of sexism. Sorry, not good enough, and the little picture of the woman with a whip on her belt making hubby jump through hoops doesn't help.
This is fair, although I think the problem is with the tone, rather than the subject matter. I don't think there's anything inherently contemptuous about thinking about some interpersonal problems in terms derived from animal training. But the article was certainly written from a "Woman civilizes brutish man" perspective which is, in fact, sexist bullshit.
Something to focus on in this context is that all of these rigid gender roles hurt everyone. Some are more directly offensive to women, some to men, so you get different people tending to complain about different facets of the whole sexist mess (for example, I overlooked the tone in this thing becasue I was interested in the substance.) That doesn't make fixing them a zero-sum game where fixing something offensive to men will disadvantage women or vice-versa -- the civilized-woman/brutish-man steroetype hurts women too, although it doesn't directly insult us as much. Working on eliminating it is a win for everyone.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 6-06 7:44 AM
214/220: Jesus I can't believe you two are