Valentine's Day on Unfogged should be celebrated with humorless liberalism.
/Nice story
I thought the official Unfogged way to celebrate Valentines day was
cry,cry,masturbate,cry
but maybe that's just me.
I think the pine nut-anise cake with blood orange compote that CA once made me for V-Day is in the recipe wiki.
In kindergarten a kid presented me with a valentine and then promptly vomited on my desk. He is my FB "friend" now and appears to have deep-seated mental health issues and threatens suicide every other day in order to get more people to interact with him.
I can't believe Jammies fell for someone who would go a year without eating desserts or, apparently, anything slightly pleasurable.
4: Perhaps I sublimated my sweettooth through sex.
Perhaps I sublimated my sweettooth bookkeeping through sex.
Once I went a year without bookkeeping.
Same here, then I turned 11 and the ink flowed copiously onto many a ledger page.
Well, I don't think that muffins should strike anybody.
And when little JP and his friends discovered double-entry bookkeeping, yowza!
Ah, Jesus, the public library is closed today---for Presidents' Day, they claim, but it's clearly a Valentinian plot.
Is it just me, or is Valentine's Day a lot more obnoxious this year? Most years, I don't notice it's happening, but it seems like everyone's pretending it's a real thing.
It's just you, or at least those around you.
It's probably a bad sign that my SO is out looking at clothes and going to open houses while I sit here and look at depressing graphs made from moving time-averages of frequency of sex (currently at an all-time low of 0.38/week).
I've never even had just 0.38 of a sex!
E! is showing Knocked Up this Valentine's morning. Someone who's bored today ought use this fact as a lead-in to a shitty essay about the state of love in America today.
16: How long of a time series do you have? How big is your moving average window?
Does your partner know you keep detailed stats on your sex life?
4 years of data (in a 9-year relationship). I've been playing with different window sizes, from 30 to 360 days; 90 seems the most reasonable so far.
yes, she knows I keep stats.
Someone who's bored should use 19 and 20 as the lead-in to a shitty article about the differences between technical and humanistic disciplines.
22: Wouldn't that... create a certain amount of unpleasant pressure? It's all cute and fun to keep stats when you're doing it twice a day with asterisks for kinky stuff, but if I knew my partner was graphing it all out whenever I left the house, I might clam up a bit.
25: Especially when you do those weekly conference calls to announce the latest figures before the market opens, and the price of your sex futures wildly gyrates if these numbers deviate from analyst expectations.
I've never even had just 0.38 of a sex!
1 hand job = 0.38 sex.
25: But how are you going to have a discussion about whether or not you're having enough sex without data?
but if I knew my partner was graphing it all out whenever I left the house, I might clam up a bit.
Heh. You said "clam".
What I would give to be having sex with my wife 0.38X per week! At this point, 0.38 times per month would be an improvement.
unnamed overanalyzing just inspired me to do a little google searching to find out if anyone has ever been declared "the Sam Pepys of sex diarists." I didn't find anyone right away, though, and need to get back to work.
I think Boswell could be considered the Sam Pepys of sex diarists.
Probably the same people who think of Jas. Boswell.
I was only vaguely aware that Boswell had a first name at all.
Didn't Pepys include rather a lot of sex in his own diary?
do muffins count as desserts? they're more of a breakfast...
38: Autostich works pretty well. I've used it to make a 6 foot wide picture of a range of foothills, from around 15 separate images.
do muffins count as desserts? they're more of a breakfast...
I was very strict. Also, one of them had that dipped-in-sugar muffin top, and the other might have even had chocolate chips. No laughing matter.
find out if anyone has ever been declared "the Sam Pepys of sex diarists."
I'm not finding anything, but a comment on this post is the lone google hit for "Pepys of pornography".
Some interesting applications posted, but I do hope that you decide simply to take a hiatus, lock comments, then resume this blog as the whim hits you. (You can always start new ones to indulge your other interests, and invite those you wish to come and banter over Budweisers.) Harry Mann may well be the Pepys of Pornography, and give us all a wanking good read, but let him and all the others start their own blogs. You think the Bard CUIs with just any blogger? (Damn that indiscretion where I admitted sending my nudie pics to Noam Chomsky's blog!)
Whether this page becomes the second depends on the whims of the ravening hoohole.
Also, one of them had that dipped-in-sugar muffin top
Not to be used as a pickup line. "Oh yeah, you got that dipped-in-sugar muffin top, sweet stuff."
I think muffin top is a nicely accurate descriptor, but that it ought to be said lovingly, like love handles or a pot belly. I wish fat in general were considered cuddly and nice, like baby fat.
So, I want to go to see the Chicago Underground Duo tonight. But a bar I don't entirely disfavor is advertising a kissing booth. Query: should I go to that bar.
I wish fat in general were considered cuddly and nice, like baby fat.
I love the "frequently bought together" thing for that page. Fat, Bones, and Meat.
I think you should go kissing. It's more fun.
Happy Emerson Remembrance Day, all!
Let's map the prospect: you go to the kissing booth. You observe other people kissing the person on duty in the kissing booth. You ask yourself a variety of questions. You pause.
You go do something else for a short while.
Ahem. You return to watch the action at the kissing again.
Then what?
48: having had a... complex experience at a (gallery) party in SF with a kissing booth, I would say probably no.
54 -- Graph intensity against time on a per kiss basis, and work out a moving average over the course of the evening?
In what did the complexity of the experience consist?
Parsimon's 54 is probably an accurate prediction of what would happen. I mean, wouldn't it just be terrible to subject whoever happens to be on duty to my labial embrace just because I can spare a few shekels, or whatever the units of trade are?
wouldn't it just be terrible to subject whoever happens to be on duty to my labial embrace just because I can spare a few shekels, or whatever the units of trade are?
Kiss away, young Neb, without overthinking it.
I say, pay your shekels, and when the moment arrives wave your hand dismissively and say, "I choose to kiss off* this whole silly project." Then, walk away.
* Can one use "kiss off" in this manner? I confess I do not know.
I don't think you can. Plus, shekels don't grow on trees, you know.
So it's like a prostitute, but for kissing? Do you just get a peck? a little tongue? full-on makeout? Can you go for the neck? Cop a feel? Where do your hands go?
I'm afraid the whole thing sounds hard to execute.
Perhaps it's a booth where two—or more?!—people elect to go for some private-ish smooching?
64 is what I had imagined, but Ben and his shekels makes it sound like it's something you buy, like a service. Also, 64 just describes any photobooth in a bar.
58: And yet we could write innumerable very bad short stories based on this premise! They need have little to do with actually subjecting anyone to your labial embrace.
You fleetingly think of taking notes, per CC's 57. You smirk to yourself. You then observe some guy in line for the kissing booth who really looks like he should have washed his hair and done laundry before showing up.
You have a brief reverie about your own big-hair do, how when you go to concerts, people ask you if you're a musician. Maybe you should have cut your hair before arriving at the kissing booth. But of course that's absurd.
You notice a cute woman hovering in observation of the kissing booth. [Is this a kissing booth where members of the public may take a turn in the booth themselves? If so:] You consider catching this woman's eye, raising a mischievous eyebrow, and cocking your head suggestively in the direction of the booth. You are proposing to her that you take a turn and she get in line for a kiss! Will she get it? Probably not.
This kissing booth is getting boring.
Meanwhile, cripe, you can't help but hope that everybody has washed their hands and stuff. Y'know.
I think it's a booth where people who want to be kissed can go, just so other people know.
So it's like a prostitute, but for kissing?
That is the classical, if apocryphal, concept.
Writing bad short stories—that's something I like.
I love the second sentence of that Wiki article
These are more a fictionalized than a historical common occurence, even at carnivals.
Even at carnivals? Well I never!
64: I imagine it's just a peck, but everyone pays the shekels because, you know.. What if they decide to make an exception, for me?
In any case, I think the point is that people who go there are people who are into being kissed and kissing. So there's excitement in the air, whatever happens at the booth itself.
Or 63, actually. A bit Becks style, I guess.
I think muffin top is a nicely accurate descriptor, but that it ought to be said lovingly, like love handles or a pot belly.
As in that one Velvet Underground lyric: "I thought of you as my muffin top; I thought of you as my sweet. I thought of you as everything I had but couldn't keep."
Sifu has experience, so he can say. I'm sure it depends on the venue. At a fundraising sort of event, it's a fundraiser (see Dunking Booth): you get a peck in exchange for cash. So naughty.
As a more free-for-all endeavor, it may contribute to a sexualized air in general. Hence the carnivalia.
A bar would probably need to keep it pretty tightly under control.
I'll kiss anybody reading this for a dollar.
Some people are getting a dollar? I'm reading this for 75 cents!
I'm getting $75,000 and a research assistant to read this for me.
My bad short story is worth more than a dollar, Apo.
77: Put a sock in it and go back to your Westchester mansion, tenure boy.
Oh wait. "This" referred to the comment rather than the thread, didn't it?
In any case, Apo's lips don't reach far enough for him to come through on his promise at this time. We need another meetup.
So it's like a prostitute, but for kissing?
Yes. And the guy behind the bar is like a prostitute, but for serving drinks. And I'm like a prostitute, but for drafting contracts. It's a sick world we live in.
Kisssing is more closely related to sex than drawing up contracts--unless...what kind of contracts are you drawing up?
Wait, I want to go back to UA's sex statistics. What variables you you track, or is it just frequency? Do you include limericks for each data point, like AWB's diary? I would very much like to read a sex diary that includes both limericks and rigorous data analysis.
If UA is doing this, seriously, I don't understand why he or she is doing it, unless its detrimental effect on the relationship is considered to be minor issue.
Cry, cry, muffins, cry.
(It had to be said.)
Keeping the data is something I've been doing for a long time. It's habitual now, like tracking my weight after I get on the scale in the morning. I write down the date and a coded couple of letters for the (basic) acts that occurred. No limericks, sorry. Analyzing it in any real way is new, though.
My SO is actually doing something similar - she uses some menstrual-cycle tracking software that has a flag for (their euphemism) "special days".
My bad short story is worth more than a dollar, Apo.
So are my kisses, but the battered economy makes bargain hunters of us all. We could barter, I suppose.
87: I withdraw any suggestion that it might be detrimental to the relationship. That was presumptuous.
Kisses yearn to be free, but are held in prisons of propriety.
I steal my kisses (and write shitty songs).
Depressing Valentine's Day weekend image of the day: Riding the bus around 10 p.m. on Friday night. A hunched-over, sad-sack fellow in his early 50s with a few bags of groceries sits down on the first seat. A block later, a young woman gets on and sits 2 seats away from him. He says to her "So, have you lived around here long?" She bristles. He says "Sorry, sorry, just trying to make conversation," and hangs his head. She gets off a few stops later and he perks up enough to say "Have a nice night," then goes back to hanging his head and looking dejected.
Okay, kisses are not free, or even paid, to those who are married. For good reason.
UA: I actually aspire to that level of record keeping, but have never had the discipline. When my grandfather died, he left behind every single day planner since 1972--over 30 years of things to do lists. I thought it was cool, but it has become a source of family strife, and now it looks like all the completely mundane stuff he saved-- including a bar tab from the late 70s we found in a fireproof safe--will be tossed out.
94: Oh great, thanks, killjoy. I'll just go back to exterminating my children's head lice for Valentine's Day.
Anyway, fuck a bunch of Valentine's. There's a march in solidarity with the janitors tomorrow! Exciting!
97: Jesus! Kiss your wife! I didn't mean it that way!
96: Actually, in light of 93, I was expecting this one.
I thought that as his valentine to me Teo might not link the comic that shall not be named.
Kobe!: I already did that one. It was in fact the very first one I did.
I don't know why nosflow thinks I would give him a valentine.
102: I hadn't realized that there was a "no repeat" policy.
I have pix of my friend E running a kissing booth at a gallery as some kind of performance piece. She is naked except for pearls. And kissing creepy old art dudes.
There isn't, but the discussion of that one the first time wasn't the sort that made me want to repeat the experience.
On the Pepys of Pornography: I think that the canonical treatment of this sort of statistical analysis is Steven Marcus's "The Other Victorians." He spends a good deal of time with a Victorian diary (housed in the Kinsey Institute's research library) that spent YEARS measuring various prostitutes labia and whatnot. Dude was maybe more the Darwin or the Dickens of Pornography. Anyway, Marcus is drily amusing about the whole thing---and of course this was the book Foucault was referring to when he named the first bit of the History of Sexuality "We Other Victorians."
On Valentine's Day: I spent this afternoon walking around doing errands with the dance-pop radio station blasting through my headphones rather than my usual NPR affiliate. Results: at least THREE significant eye-contact moments with random young men-about-town. Bopping about looking happy and unattached with grocery bags must be some sort of magnet for single people on Valentine's Day.
ATM: What is the protocol if you ran across pics of your ex on a porn site, and are virtually certain they weren't posted with her permission. Let's say further that you are no longer in touch with the ex since the then bf, now husband insisted on her breaking off all ties with exes. The parting was not on good terms since I was rather annoyed that she agreed to this and told her so clearly. Let's also add that the husband is somewhat of a sleazeball - a rainmaker partner at a firm known for its poor institutional culture for harassment of female employees who was so bad that he managed to get fired for multiple complaints of sexual harassment.
107: Check Missed Encounters!
108: Oh, God. This isn't going to end well.
To put it another way, if you were to receive the full brunt of my seduction, you would lose your mind. Right now there is a woman in a hospital who has been in a persistent satisfied but vegetative state ever since a young Smoove decided to give it his romantic all. She could not handle the pleasure she was receiving, and her mind shut down, even though her body was still very fine.
You see, Smoove has, over time, been able to finely calibrate how much seduction a woman can handle before she loses her mind without literally losing her mind. Ladies always ask to try and handle the full Smoove, but each time I slowly shake my head, thinking of that smiling woman in the hospital hooked up to all those machines and knowing I must never do that again.
Uh, Missed Connections. Sometimes I accidentally click on Casual Encounters instead and am horrified.
108: Somebody go find SEK. He'll know what to do.
I don't know why nosflow thinks I would give him a valentine.
!
I may have had a significant eye contact moment walking home from a cafe just now, but there's no way to be sure. Maybe I should have turned around and called out, "hey! wanna go to a concert?". I have nothing to lose but my dignity, after all.
113 - "Alvanley, who's your fat friend?"
108: If you know your ex's current e-mail, you could get an anonymous e-mail account, alert her with the necessary details, and delete the account. She becomes aware of the situation — and it sounds like she should be — and you don't get further dragged into it. (Why yes, I am a big fat coward, how can you tell?)
108 -- You don't really know, do you?
A Brock-ish question: is it normal for the flesh of some fingerling potatoes to have a slightly green tinge? I haven't bought this kind before -- they were labeled something like "French fingerlings" -- and the color looks mildly weird, although they don't smell unusual or exhibit other obvious signs of problems.
I thought that as his valentine to me Teo might not link the comic that shall not be named.
Whenever I think an xkcd comic is funny, I always make sure to check xkcdsucks to get the other side of the story.
If it's just on the surface, yes it's normal. If the whole potato has gone green through and through you might want to go with rice.
"Brockoli" - vegetables eaten well past their prime.
120: No, there's a faint, but definite, green cast through the whole potato. I think I will go with rice instead.
Were you planning to eat the potatoes raw? Because cooking kills germs. If you cook them, they should be fine.
122 should also have said: thanks for the quick answer, teraz.
123.---Are you offering food safety advice sheerly for the comedic value, Brock?
As for the eye contact thing, I'm not sure the dudes should take it as a "missed connection"---more like a a nice, fleeting moment of sexual awareness, which is usually best left alone.
The problem with green potatoes isn't germs, it's alkaloid toxins developed under exposure to light.
Whereas the problem with sexual awareness isn't alkaloid toxins, it's germs.
Huh. You learn something new every day, I guess. A google search of "alkaloid toxin" is surprisingly uninformative, though. But this wikipedia article does include a passing reference (although there's no real explanation, even if you click on the "alkaloid" link in the article).
I take is this is a unique property of bulb/root vegetables?
130: Tomatoes and eggplants, also. And tobacco. All in the nightshade family.
I was aware of the general issue with green potatoes, just wondering if green color might be a (confusing!) characteristic of some fingerlings. If I can safely eat a purple potato, I thought, surely anything is possible.
Solanaceae!
This is why your macrobiotic types call tomatoes and potatoes "nightshade."
Wait, so do cigarettes become more toxic on prolonged exposure to light?
108: What 115 said. You should let the ex know about this in one way or another. Maybe through back door channels (i.e. something her husband is less likely to know about) if you can find them. If you don't have a current email address, maybe contact an old mutual friend to see if they know how to reach her. In a situation like that, I'd actually consider getting her number from her parents or something if necessary.
130: In the case of potatoes, it's solanine, which also is produced by other members of the nightshade family in all parts of the plant. Not unique to bulbs and tubers; caffeine and cocaine are other examples of alkaloids.
essear, the green potato issue is from the outside in, and typically also involves sprouting. If it is a uniform green cast (not a mm or two in from the surface) it's probably just the type.
solanine poisoning is no joke, but it's generated at/near the surface after exposure to light.
To further inform my kissing booth misadventures: 1) there were a number of people staffing the booth, of various genders. 2) I forget if it cost money. 3) It wasn't no peck on the cheek, I can tell you that. 4) Alcohol was applied liberally. 5) Things deteriorated.
134: Developing solanine is an evolutionary mechanism to protect potatoes that are no longer safely underground (so Harold McGee tells me). Tobacco leaves already have developed their nicotine (another alkaloid).
"Solanaceae" turns out to be a much more useful search term than "alkaloid toxin", even though alkaloid toxicity is the very property of the Solanaceae family in which I'm interested.
Anyway, it's interesting. This is all the sort of thing I'd probably know more about if my high school science classes had taught me anything about science, instead of just reading books like this.
I bet you anything that most Americans get some form of mild food poisoning like once a month.
Rapidly consuming ca. 10oz of barleywine at 3:30pm, if you haven't had more than half a cup of oatmeal since around 9am, has predictable effects. News at 4:31.
142: this argues either for or against the kissing booth, depending.
So, Brock-like, I did take one bite of the greenish-tinged potato bits. It didn't taste bitter. So I suspect 137.1 is right and nothing was actually wrong. Oh well. Rice sufficed.
There are so many partial delurkers here. There's lurker, and da lurker or dalurker or something, and delurking. Didn't Parenthetical used to be a DeLurking?
Folks, it's not a commitment; it's just a pseudonym. You can talk.
Didn't Parenthetical used to be a DeLurking?
dalurking1 at the google mail service, I believe.
Ah right, that was the pseud that went with that email.
Folks, it's not a commitment; it's just a pseudonym. You can talk.
But LB does ask that people commit to their pseuds. And then people get stuck with weirdo pseuds like 'essear'.
The problem is that I don't have a current e-mail and also no exact URL. I ran across the pics a year ago and figured they were probably posted without her permission, but who knows - I very much doubt she would have agreed to do so when we were dating, and given the decor the pics were taken when we were still good friends, a year or two after the final breakup of the relationship. The other day I was googling her out of a mix of curiosity and a need for a signature to get her name off an account and found tons of stuff on her husband's sexual harassment issues. That moved my 'probably' to 'almost certain'. But the only contact I found for her was at the private practice she now shares with her husband - not a good option IMO. Plus the idea of contacting her with a 'hey, we haven't spoken in years, how are things going, and you know...' isn't appealing.
144 In my experience the greenish tinge makes the potatoes sweeter, a rather sickly sweetness when it gets bad.
I bet she wouldn't find the idea of pornographic photos of her circulating without her knowledge all that appealing either.
I was googling her out of a mix of curiosity and a need for a signature to get her name off an account
You were looking online for a copy of her signature?
Since everyone seems to be going the other way, I guess I'll just say that, although it's a fairly context-dependant judgment, based on the facts in 108, in my view this is a "none of your business" situation.
(Nothing in 151 changes this judgment.)
149: But LB does ask that people commit to their pseuds. And then people get stuck with weirdo pseuds like 'essear'.
Peh. I changed my pseud like five times when I first started commenting here, before I was satisfied. I realize that "essear" is a hell of a thing to be stuck with, but we love you, so no worries.
I just think of essear as an agrarian revolutionary with a beard, rimless glasses, and a russian peasant blouse.
And I guess I should also say that I don't feel strongly about the judgment in 156, since it is, as I said, very context-dependant. If you say you really feel like you should say something to her, I'd assume my sense of the context here was off somewhat, and that you're right to want to say something to her. In other words: if you think you should say something, you probably should; and in that case, don't be cowardly about it: do say something. But if instead you don't really feel like it's your place to say anything, and are wondering if perhaps you should feel like it's your place to say something, then I'd think you're probably right: it's not your place to say anything. Go with your gut.
151: and a need for a signature to get her name off an account
I assume you mean you were trying to find a contact address for her in order to get her signature in order to get her off an account. Right? You wouldn't have been looking for her actual signature.
Assuming that's right, there's no reason you can't contact her at the private practice she shares with her husband in order to do just that. You might could then, in the course of conducting that business, ask for a way to contact her privately as there's something else you wanted to discuss with her.
Valentine's Day, and related matters, can go straight to hell.
I think muffin top is a nicely accurate descriptor, but that it ought to be said lovingly, like love handles or a pot belly.
As in that one Velvet Underground lyric: "I thought of you as my muffin top; I thought of you as my sweet. I thought of you as everything I had but couldn't keep."
Yeah, but then it gets all creepy with: "Linger
on ... your pale blue ass".
I mean, the poor girl's obviously dead. An "if I can't have you no-one can have you" sort of thing.
One of Many is clearly one of those evil mothers who tells you everything is just dirt.
151 changes what I'd suggest. Sending someone a URL and saying "look what I found" is appalling, but maybe helpful and necessary. Saying "There are pornographic pictures of you out there," if its news, potentially condemns the recipient to hours of unpleasant, probably fruitless searching for evidence.
The evilness consists in the propagation of untruth.
I know what site it was, and vaguely remember when, but even assuming it's still in the site archives it would still take plenty of searching.
No, I was not looking for a copy of her signature online. She is on my bank account. For the most part this isn't an issue, but for some things it turns out they need both signatures which is somewhat annoying. The problem I have, apart from cowardice, is that presumably she knows her husband has issues regarding the treatment of women, what with the dozen or so subordinates filing harassment complaints. Does she really need to know about this other thing? And coming from an ex with whom she parted on poor terms, of all people?
166: Oh. There's no URL for the pornographic pictures.
A dilemma! Nicolas views online porn! Enough that he has no idea where he might have seen the ex's picture. Should he tell her about this a year after the fact?
Um.
I'd stay out of it. The mutual friend route might be ok, if the relationships are valid and current.
Well, I could be wrong. Maybe it's just that the
girl owns a grey (loosely-speaking, 'blue') animal of the sort that spoke to Balaam. Gazing upon them is very calming, I hear.
CC is right about staying out of particularly the issues regarding her new husband.
I know where I saw it, just not the specific URL for the actual pics and it's a big site. How such a site could have possibly appeared on my computer screen is beyond me. No current mutual friends, the ones we had either stayed in touch with me or with her, not both.
169 crossed with 168.
You have every reason to still get in touch with her regarding the bank account. This will have to be done at some point or another regardless.
You might hint around at that time that you regret the way in which the two of you were unable to maintain a friendship, but you guess her husband still feels strongly about the cutting off of exes? And how's the marriage going, for that matter?
You have to address the bank signature issue anyway. Take it as an opportunity to feel her out about other things. When you're talking to someone you used to be that close with for the first time in years, it's natural to say a few things about having missed them, and it's all too bad that you can't be in touch on a casual basis (but of course you understand) .... either she cuts you off cold, or she says a few things that give you a sense of whether you should treat her like a friend.
I feel I'm being pushy. If it was a year ago that you saw these pictures -- and god knows there are zillions of them out there -- maybe it doesn't matter.
You have to take her off your bank account in any case. Though.
174 illustrates why I think staying out of it is a good idea. It's up to her to decide when she wants to invite you back into her life. You think her husband is a bad guy, and that's why you should be involved? She thinks he's a good guy -- and of course she knows about his various legal/employment troubles -- and that you're not welcome in her life.
The bank account sounds like an excuse. Can't you withdraw all the money and put it in a new account in your name? Problem solved.
162: Yeah, but then it gets all creepy with: "Linger on ... your pale blue ass".
Why do you hate the Picts?
Can't you withdraw all the money and put it in a new account in your name?
I'd think if anything required both signatures, closing the account sure would.
I'd think if anything required both signatures, closing the account sure would.
You would think, but when Magpie and I went to the bank to close out our joint account the rep didn't even look at me, let alone ask me for my signature.
178: Leave five dollars in the account. Solved!
When you're talking to someone you used to be that close with for the first time in years, it's natural to say a few things about having missed them, and it's all too bad that you can't be in touch on a casual basis (but of course you understand) ....
That could make an excellent segue: "I've missed you quite a bit, but it's helped that whenever I'm missing you I'm able to masturbate to naked pictures of you that I found online."
I can take the money out but I can't close the account and it has an annual fee, meaning both of us would get credit dings. There was also another issue which I needed her sig for. I worked around it but it was somewhat of a pain, involving getting money from a friend and then paying him back. That was when I googled her and found out about her husband's issues. And while yes, I think her husband is a bad guy, but the thing is I really think I'm the last person who should be getting involved in that. I'd be much more comfortable contacting her if there were no such issues. To go off what Brock said, my instinct is to not inform her, and I was effectively asking if I should go against that gut feeling.
181 That was actually what made her future husband's insistence especially annoying. We had a long and difficult break up that thoroughly wiped out all sexual attraction. We'd frequently hung out at each others places afterwards, late at night, drinking, and there had never been even the slightest sexual move on either side.
176: Can't you withdraw all the money and put it in a new account in your name? Problem solved.
Heh. That might work. I've tended to get confused in a completely ridiculous way about when accounts for things in two names require two signatures, and when they don't. Stocks? Two signatures. Writing checks from a joint account? One. Selling a car in two names? Two signatures, unless the ownership is specified as an "or" relationship (car is owned by so-and-so OR so-and-so, rather than AND so-and-so).
Just ask the bank.
As for leaving five dollars in the account, it might accrue monthly charges for being below minimum balance, which then somebody or other would owe.
I'm baffled by the "stay out of it" sentiment. The suspicion is that someone, possibly her husband, has taken intimate photos of this woman and posted them to the internet without her consent. "Oh, don't get involved in someone else's marriage" doesn't seem applicable. This isn't butting in to a tiff over what color to paint the study. Could it be she's okay with the pix? Sure -- in which case no harm done in mentioning them to her. Otherwise? FFS, she needs to know.
185: Also, isn't that what that creepy Opus Dei spy guy did to his wife? Robert Hanssen? The new husband could totally be a spy.
185 I'm certain it was her husband who took the pics. That was her only serious relationship at the time. Her agreeing to that with a serious boyfriend is not at all surprising, I might still have some in a box somewhere, but she would not have done so with a casual hookup. (I have a very good idea of when they were taken because of the decor in the background.) So the only possibilities are with her consent (unlikely), or without.
182: my instinct is to not inform her, and I was effectively asking if I should go against that gut feeling
It's a tough call, tough enough that I'd probably go for the kind of feeling-things-out conversation I tried to describe in 174. You're not a close friend of hers any more, and if this really goes against your gut instinct, that should be acknowledged.
If she responds really warmly and in a friendly manner to your contact (about the bank account), it would change the situation, I assume. It seems to be about whether she's your friend or not.
IF I AM PICT, DO I NOT BLEED?
188: Okay, so I see no reason not to tell her. It's not going to destroy your friendship -- that's already gone. But here's a woman who is potentially being violated and the question is, do I say something to make sure it's okay or just mind my own business? If it were me, I'd want to know.
I'm baffled by the "stay out of it" sentiment.
I'll bet SEK wishes he had stayed out of his similar situation.
I believe my advice at the beginning of *that* soap opera was "I wouldn't touch this situation with a 10-foot pole."
A student once sent me a picture of me he found on the web, scantily dressed for a role in a play in college. (a) I was glad to know, so I could contact the guy running the website and tell him to stop indexing all these pictures under people's full names, especially since there were other much worse pictures of my friends at private parties. (b) I was totally creeped out that the student found them. He took another class with me four years later and it was fine, but the rest of that semester was a bit odd.
This is a much worse situation, since it's actual porn, you didn't just find it, and whoever posted them must have broken real trust. But be prepared that she will be really really pissed off and possibly scared. She may think you took/submitted them (or convince herself of this to save her marriage), or had reason to look for them, or that you're saying you got off on them.
Tentative conclusion: People, NEVER take nude photos of one another.
Yes, I know that's a drag, but really, you never know when people are going to turn freakazoid and put them online.
Or you could trust people. This is a really hard situation to navigate! What is the general rule??!
It's only a matter of time before everyone has a sex tape. Admitting to it will be like politicians admitting they smoked pot. Paris Hilton was just ahead of her time.
Paris Hilton freely allowed circulation of her sex tapes, didn't she? Or maybe not.
Jayne Kennedy was ahead of her time.
It will not be an improvement for sex tapes to reach pot levels of acceptance. The baby boom has arrived at the highest levels of power, and now all we see are the highest levels of hypocrisy on the issue. Right now politicians can admit to smoking pot--mostly because the press won't give this confession much coverage. But advocating legalization? Kiss of death.
We could get past all these fits and starts if we just went straight to doing it in the road.
200: Old man. Mine are Alpha. I mean, VHS.
191 Because I'm the last person who should be telling her this, plus the arguments that accompanied the end of the relationship were extremely painful, and the idea of a reminder is not appealing.
194 She may think you took/submitted them (or convince herself of this to save her marriage), or had reason to look for them, or that you're saying you got off on them.
Oh great, this hadn't occurred to me. At least if I had the URL she'd be able to see them which would make it clear I had nothing to do with the taking or posting. I was just afraid that she'd think I was deliberately using it as an excuse to hurt her or her marriage.
My dad, in the early 1980s (late 70s?) purchased two betamax machines, and then started renting movies from an pioneer video rental place in the DC area. He also had a early subscription to HBO (I remember the channel switching box had a row of ten push buttons, the kind where if you push one in, the previously depressed one pops out, along with a three way toggle switch giving a total of 30 channels.)
With this elaborate set up, he was able to create an extensive collection of pirated movies, all on betamax. He had like 300 movies, kept on a pair of shelves in the family room. The filing system had levels of unnecessary complexity that I marvel at to this day.
Perhaps predictably, I'm with 195.1. Trust is one thing. But film lasts longer.
Probably M. le President should post some nude photos of the lady in question here so the assembled commentariat can help him locate the missing URL.
(Kidding aside, I see no way that a conversation beginning with "I saw some nude photos of you on the internet a year ago but I don't remember exactly where" can possibly work out well for anyone.)
But film lasts longer.
You're worried about film? I'm worried about digital cameras. It's not just a reel somewhere that could be shown; it's a fucking file already.
If it were me, I'd find the pictures again, get in touch to resolve the bank account, and tell her about the pictures, giving her the URL, and not getting into any deductions I'd made about how they got there: just "I recognized you in them, and wanted to make sure you knew about them in case you wanted to get them taken down." If I couldn't find the pictures, I'd drop it. But you should still get in touch to resolve the bank account.
I'm pretty uncommitted to this, though -- staying out of it is an attractive option as well.
Yeah, NS, I hate to disagree with Di, because she's basically right, but unless the pic is easily findable, or labeled with her name or something, I would say telling her would be a far worse violation of her happiness than not telling her. So the guy may have uploaded a picture. She's not being raped every time someone clicks on it. If you tell her, and maybe especially if you tell her in some creepy anonymous way, she's not going to sleep again for a long time.
208: The anonymous email could avoid this.
209: I learned my lesson before the digital era?
To emphasize, I think anonymous is the worst way to go. If someone anonymously sent me a link to pornographic images of myself on the internet, I would be absolutely positive that someone I know is stalking me and about to murder me. Far better to let her know it's you, if you do it, and take the heat yourself. Anonymous would be fucking terrifying.
212.1 reconsidered in light of 211...
I'm with AWB on not doing it anonymously. That would leave me waiting, panicky, for the other shoe to drop pretty much forever. And anything I can think of to sound reassuring could also sound like a veiled threat, from an anonymous source.
213 is a good point. I wouldn't be terrifed of stalkers so much, but I'd wonder every time I spoke to anyone if they were the anonymous informant and be unable to look anyone in the eye. I'll shut up now, I think.
I'd find the pictures again
You're telling Nicolas to spend another 1000 hours going through pron on the off chance he finds his ex's picture again? I don't look at online porn, but I think there may be no way to find it again. I would find it mind-numbing to click through zillions of pictures of naked women (or men); no doubt that's why it doesn't feel to the viewer like it's a violation of anything.
I know! Hack into her mom's email and send it from there.
I would find it mind-numbing to click through zillions of pictures of naked women (or men); no doubt that's why it doesn't feel to the viewer like it's a violation of anything.
Either the porn industry doesn't exist or this analysis needs work.
Crows are very intelligent. I bet it could work.
220: Amend it to: A violation of anyone? Does that work?
I thought you meant Stormcrow searching, because you were volunteering to do it.
Ok, the conclusion is not to do anything about this. I was pretty weirded out when I ran across them originally, spending several hours hunting them down would feel far too creepy. (I remember enough that it wouldn't take 'thousands' of hours). Given that both knowing and not knowing would have downsides for her, I'm opting for the easier path for myself.
I have to say that if someone posted porno pics of me without my knowledge or permission, I'd be far more upset by the violation of trust than by the idea of people seeing nekkid me.
It wouldn't bother me if people I don't know saw me naked. It would bother me if someone I know saw me naked and then told me how weird it was, and how he couldn't stop thinking about strangers masturbating about it, and wondering what horrible person would violate my trust so much.
(Not that you'd sound that way, Nicolas, but, as you suggest, anonymous strangers jerking off to your picture would be a lot less awful than your ex finding your picture while looking for something to jerk off to.)
anonymous strangers jerking off to your picture would be a lot less awful than your ex finding your picture while looking for something to jerk off to
That's not actually what Nicolas is saying though, right? He's saying the anonymous masturbators are a lot less awful than the violation by her husband in posting the photos.
Aren't there other possible explanations for a nekkid photo from a specific time period ending up on a pron site?
Admittedly, the ones i'm coming up with are almost absurdly paranoid: hackers intercepting email! spiders crawling Flickr for unintentionally "public" candids! conniving data techs at the recycled electronics center! or even---a hidden pron ring at the heart of Google itself!
a nekkid photo from a specific time period ending up on a pron site
Or possibly, at the time when she posed for the photos, she may have actually thought it would be fun to share them with strangers? NS, you seem to think that's impossible. Why?
Actually I couldn't care less about whether or not people I don't know and won't ever meet masturbate to an image of me, or not, as the case may be. People I know, I really prefer not to hear about, unless we're talking about a current lover. Other than that. the only thing I'd worry about is side-effects on their views and treatment of me. Running across my ex's pics was a weird and unwelcome intrusion of reality into a temporary fantasy research world. What I said about strangers seeing naked pics is my personal feeling. I realize that others find the idea of strangers looking at naked pics of them rather disturbing, and I'm pretty sure my ex is one of those people.
213: When you put it that way, I withdraw the suggestion.
In cheerier (cherrier?) news: Red! It's not just for baboons any more:
In many nonhuman primates, the color red enhances males' attraction to females. In 5 experiments, the authors demonstrate a parallel effect in humans: Red, relative to other achromatic and chromatic colors, leads men to view women as more attractive and more sexually desirable. Men seem unaware of this red effect, and red does not influence women's perceptions of the attractiveness of other women, nor men's perceptions of women's overall likeability, kindness, or intelligence. The findings have clear practical implications...
230 I knew her quite well at the time the pics were taken. We were no longer dating, but we did talk a couple times a week and meet a couple times a month. I know how she felt about pron sites - mildly squicky things that for some reason the majority of guys, including ones she likes, seem to occasionally enjoy. She would not have found the idea of random strangers masturbating to her pics at all attractive, as opposed to a person she was seriously into. She also would have been worried about potential professional repercussions. Is there an off chance that her views suddenly changed and she posted them herself? Yes, that's why my initial thought was probably without her consent, but I was far from certain. Posting someone's pics without their knowledge is a sleazy thing to do, and most people wouldn't. It was the extra info I ran across recently that shifted my view to 'almost certainly', going on the assumption that a serial harasser is someone who might actually do something like that.
I'm pretty sure my ex is one of those people
I guess I'm not getting why she would pose for pornographic photos, then.
I dunno. As you say, some people maybe have this idea that pornography gets made for the purpose of their partner enjoying it, but come on, no one can really be that stupid. They're never ever going to use it as evidence that their partner is so hot, and that they got them to do it? People can't masturbate over their own partner all the time, so it's helpful to enlist others.
The process of making them can be fun as well. You're posing and enjoying your partner enjoying looking at you. I had no interest in having my pics shared but I enjoyed having them taken. In fact, making the things is a lot more fun than any enjoyment you might get afterwards, but back when I did it both of us thought they might be 'useful' during times apart. In any case, IME most people have at some point played with a camera, most have neither posted their pics online, nor had a partner do it without their knowledge, though yes, some people do have a strong exhibitionist streak and will do so voluntarily as the zillions of 'verified' pics at the various posting sites testify. I've also never experienced anyone showing me pornographic pics of a girlfriend or boyfriend, ex or current.
This reminds me that the guy who took my virginity was a nude model for the art school at the time. Because a lot of my friends were in the art school, whenever I tried to introduce him to people, they would say, "Oh! I have paintings of you naked all over my house!" The weirdest was when a girlfriend met him and recognized him from her little brother's pictures from life drawing class.
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No more masturbating to Doug Fieger. That's what the little girls do to you.
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NS: If you can't locate the pictures your only decent option is to stfu.
If you can locate them, email under your real name *after* the bank thing is taken care of. Either she knows they are out there and she's going to be dealing with this sort of thing anyway or she doesn't know and sooner or later she'll find out, perhaps in some extremely unpleasant way. It'd be a nice touch to include contact info for the webmaster so she can send a nasty email threatening legal action if the pictures aren't taken down right this minute.
Since she's already forbidden to talk to you it's not like you're damaging a friendship. In her position I would want to know.
If you can't locate them telling her is just cruel, as is an anonymous email. Telling her before the bank thing is done invites major problems, especially if her husband (who seems a fine specimen indeed) decides to get involved.
Alternatively, locate the pictures, send a threatening email to the webmaster yourself, and say nothing.
244 was me.
I'm using Google Chrome as my default browser - Since the recent Buzz bullshit I've deleted all the remembery stuff and have to enter every damn thing by hand. My Google-is-evil paranoia was cranked to 11 by the discovery that they'd automagically signed up my ex wife to follow my Google Reader feed. I don't use Reader since I signed up, tried it out, and found it lacking, so no real violation of privacy. Still, among the people you shouldn't be revealing personal information to, ex-spouses ought to rank pretty high.
Google have clearly been reading Unfogged as they've admitted they did evil with Buzz.
What Jammies should have done:
http://threesixty360.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/valentines-day-math/
238, 239: What 240 said. Surely you can imagine someone participating in a photo shoot with their spouse, whom they trust, fully expecting the images will never leave the house? If it's "stupid" to trust that your spouse won't betray your trust, then, yeah, people really can be that stupid.
...and the comments screeched to a halt as everybody scoured the interwebs looking for Di's nudie pictures.
so I see no reason not to tell her. It's not going to destroy your friendship -- that's already gone. But here's a woman who is potentially being violated and the question is, do I say something to make sure it's okay or just mind my own business? If it were me, I'd want to know.
Has anyone told Di yet?
I am not seeing a lot of benefit to telling her unless the pictures are easier googleable.
If they are relatively inaccessable in the vast internet, isnt she better off not knowing?
No, no. He said he destroyed that video years ago.
If they are relatively inaccessable in the vast internet, isnt she better off not knowing?
The fact that she's still married to the person who ostensibly posted the photos makes a difference to me. But that's probably just because I hate marriage. I would expect you to back me up on such things, Will.
Somebody apparently keeps using photoshop to put my head on the body of somebody with a huge beer belly. And lately, they've taken to making it look like I have thinning hair.
re: 254
We need to find that bastard. I've been a victim, too. You can hold him down, and I'll beat him up.
re: M. Sarkozy's problem
A sleazier friend once emailed me a link to a picture he'd found online, "Do you think that's X?" [a mutual acquaintance that I'd briefly dated years before]. On the balance of probabilities, it probably was, but I couldn't possibly have brought myself to get in touch and let her know. It wasn't linked under her name, and only sheer bad luck was likely to have brought it to the attention of anyone she knew.
Worse than this - I was told by a fairly tech-savvy colleague that the iPhone embeds location information in the metadata of the photos it takes, unless you turn that function off; this means that there are a lot of iPhone photos online which have (unknown to the person who posted them) the exact location of where they were taken associated with them. And while a lot of the time this isn't a problem, sometimes it is.
For example, when someone uses this data plus Google Maps to create a clickable map of "the homes of attractive women who have posted pictures online of themselves not wearing very much".
And someone has, apparently.
258: I haven't had a chance to look for it yet, otherwise I would have provided one. It might be just an urban myth.
re: 257
Yes, whenever I open the camera app on the iPhone it asks if I want to use Current Location. It wouldn't take much to forget and embed the location info.
I should add that the iPhone certainly does embed the data in the exif file that the camera produces. See here.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/12/1553221/Mining-EXIF-Data-From-Camera-Phones?from=rss
I just don't know if the mashup site actually exists.
I just don't know if the mashup site actually exists.
I rather feel we're all better off not knowing - or at least not giving it publicity.
Di is correct. (I missed the part about her being married to the guy who probably posted the pictures.) Let her know what a bad guy he is.
Arent we getting to the point where sex tapes are not that shocking? Doesnt everyone have a sex tape floating around? Or at least some scandalish pictures of them? Do people pay attention for more than two minutes if they arent recent pictures of your current spouse with someone else?
Arent we getting to the point where sex tapes are not that shocking?
I doubt we will ever get to that point. Sexual surprise is continually reborn with every new generation.
Do people pay attention for more than two minutes if they arent recent pictures of your current spouse with someone else?
Well, not more than two minutes at a time.
People, NEVER take nude photos of one another.
Or at least don't count on your nude photos staying private if you do.
I had no interest in having my pics shared but I enjoyed having them taken.
This is almost unfathomable to me. I can understand the appeal of taking erotic/arty/fetish-y/whatever pictures of someone with the intent of showing them and I can understand the appeal of being the subject of such pictures knowing that they will be shown, but I have trouble imagining that taking intimate candid pictures that mustn't be shared ever could be very erotic. Mostly, I think it would just be anxiety-producing for the reasons being discussed here.
(In Mr. President's case, I think #244 gets it right.)
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Quick advice:
I have to write two letters of recommendation for the same student, to the same school. One is for grad school and one is for a summer program.
How different do these letters need to be? It's okay if they are basically identical, save details specific to the program, right?
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Use the exact same letter, but in two different fonts.
when Magpie and I went to the bank to close out our joint account the rep didn't even look at me, let alone ask me for my signature.
It really hurts when your banker chooses sides.