Are girls' shorts the same? Maybe Hokey Pokey could wear them. If you can find any non pink / flowered / princess ones.
I have the opposite problem from Ho-Po. I can't find any shorts that go past my knees, except the ones with a bunch of useless giant zippers and sashes.
Sadly, even if not pink/flowered/princess they would be instantly perceived as girly. Newt had a very nice pair of tailored (that is, woven material rather than stretchy, not huge and floppy) white shorts off the girls rack when about that age, and the babysitter identified them as inappropriate and eliminated them post-haste. You can resist that sort of pressure if you want, but I don't think there's much hope of just slipping by undetected.
I know this sentiment is not new to anyone, but jesus, clothing being designed such that you have to buy a whole new wardrobe for a second child that is a different gender from the first is so fucking stupid.
We have a couple shorts from her that he can wear, and he does. We didn't buy anything for her, because we used to be downstream from two different families with tons of hand-me-downs, so her clothes were more gendered than they might have been if I'd been picking them out.
We sneaked some stuff past the social pressure, and it's much easier to put boy clothes on a girl than vice versa, so Sally had some boy stuff to hand down. But yeah, adults are very very clear about identifying and objecting to gender nonconformity. Kids, we weren't really pushing it that hard, but nothing we ever tried to dress the kids in got a "Hey, that's gender-nonconformist" reaction from other kids.
This past weekend, the wife of a college friend marvelled that Jammies, Hawaiian Punch, and Hokey Pokey were all playing dolls together. She said "I've never seen someone let their son play with dolls before!" Jesus fucking christ.
clothing being designed such that you have to buy a whole new wardrobe for a second child that is a different gender from the first is so fucking stupid.
It isn't if you sell clothing for a living.
This past weekend, the wife of a college friend marvelled that Jammies, Hawaiian Punch, and Hokey Pokey were all playing dolls together. She said "I've never seen someone let their son play with dolls before!" Jesus fucking christ.
Would blow her mind to know that my kids spent most of last evening both wearing skirts and playing with Polly Pocket dolls.
"I've never seen someone let their son play with dolls before!"
A FB friend from high school recently had a status about her son playing with his sisters' dolls. She joked (except not really) that she was about to go in, take the dolls away, and give him the toy tractors he was supposed to be playing with. It was one of those moments where you have to close FB and walk away so as not to make unwanted comments.
Maybe this is an urban thing, but every school playground I've ever seen has been fenced off from the outside. It's less to do with vandalism, I think, than kids running into the road and, these days I suppose, stranger danger.
I'm used to fences around parks, but generally there's a gate or entrance so that you can get in. This one is specifically gated off so that adults can't scale the fence and get in, and the gates are padlocked when school is out. Also there is a cop who lives in a trailer on the premises, but that was also the case when I was growing up. The fence is new.
12: There is a cop who lives on the premises of an elementary school? That one is new to me.
Yeah. It wasn't until I was writing the comment that it occurred to me how strange that is. Since the mid-80s, at least.
I'm used to fences around parks, but generally there's a gate or entrance so that you can get in. This one is specifically gated off so that adults can't scale the fence and get in, and the gates are padlocked when school is out
Again, if it's a school playground, this isn't surprising to me at all. Even when I was a kid, the school playground was only accessible from within the school. And the school round the corner froom where I live now is the same.
I get that it's annoying if this playground used to be available to the public at large, but at least in my experience in British cities/towns, that's an extremely unusual thing in itself. Public playgrounds aren't part of a school. They're part of a park or housing estate.
||
Of all the forms of spam in all the media in all the world, the worst is computers that call your phone and then play a recorded message at you. And the worst of those dial your land line so you have to get up to take the call.
That is all.
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15: then how close is the nearest public park? This town basically does not have any parks that aren't associated with elementary schools.
One of my best friends in high school lived across the street from an elementary school with a nice playground. We hung out there playing various fun playground based games we'd invented in the middle of the night. I'd be very sad if they fenced that off.
Which is not the case at all in the town that I live in - tons of public parks and playgrounds.
re: 17
I can only speak from personal experience, but parks of some kind or another are common.
Where I grew up there was a small park in the middle of the street [universally known as the 'wee park'] for kids with a climbing frame, some swings and logs and things. Another hundred metre walk or so took you to the 'big park' which had a football pitch, some more swings, a slide, and a roundabout. Both were horrifically dangerous by modern standards -- concrete underneath the equipment, etc. All of the council estates round where I lived had at least one park, and a children's play area. Sometimes not in great repair, and at night they'd be full of teenagers, smoking (or worse). But quite large green spaces -- big enough for a football match or two -- with some sort of place for smaller kids were everywhere.
Where we live now in west London we have a small children's park with a climbing frame, small swings, and a small slide in the gardens for our building, and a big park with an extensive playground about 10 minutes walk away. I could walk to another two within about 15 minutes. Similarly, in Oxford, we had a park within a few hundred metres of our house.
This past weekend, the wife of a college friend marvelled that Jammies, Hawaiian Punch, and Hokey Pokey were all playing dolls together. She said "I've never seen someone let their son play with dolls before!" Jesus fucking christ.
To which the correct response would surely have been "Oh, no, Jammies isn't my son."
7, 9, 10: I'd love to know if this sort of thing (which was all over the place when mine were little) is backlash against the '70s gender neutralish feminist ideal, or if "Free To Be You And Me" only ever sold a couple of thousand copies and the '70s norm was just as rigid for the vast majority of people as it is now.
re: 22
I tend to think of it as one more sign of the decline and fall of our civilisation, tbh.*
* said in a Marvin the paranoid android voice, but you know, not really funny.**
** the general deliberate rolling back of almost everything good that's happened over the past 100 years by bastards.
As a child of the 80s, I have pretty clear memories of playing with my cousin's Barbies and my neighbors' My Little Ponies. Of course, they also played with my toy cars and soldiers. Are people like the women in 7 and 10 opposed to boys and girls playing together at all? It seems like if they enforce gendered toy-ownership, "letting their son play with dolls" becomes equivalent to "letting their son play with girls".
I imagine I've told this story before, but when I was a toddler my mom gave me all kinds of dolls to play with so that I wouldn't be trapped by preconceptions of gender, only to see me completely ignore them in favor of a rapt fascination with anything truck-like.
20: In my current town, too. I'm just saying that generally elementary schools are fenced off only when other parks are available. Otherwise it's rather sad.
My sister and I dressed very similarly as kids. She had a few girly party dresses for special occasions, but apart from that we both dressed in regulation jeans and 70s coloured t-shirts/jumpers/tank-tops. If I look at photos from then it's remarkable how much more gendered kids clothes are now. And I had longer hair for quite big chunks of our childhood.
There have always been weird people enforcing gender segregation, though. In our street the boys and girls played somewhat apart, but we'd all gang up together for some games. In the summer we'd play tennis and rounders, and be much more a big group together. Winter, the boys played football and the girls didn't play. However, I remember going round to call on a neighbour -- 2 doors down and I'd known them since I was about 4 -- to ask the little girl out to play (we were about 8 or 9) and her mum doing her nut because, 'I'm no lettin' Caroline play wi' boys'.
Are people like the women in 7 and 10 opposed to boys and girls playing together at all? It seems like if they enforce gendered toy-ownership, "letting their son play with dolls" becomes equivalent to "letting their son play with girls".
IME, people like that assume that there's a natural antipathy that will lead boys and girls to avoid each other assiduously in the wild. Or, not exactly an antipathy, but they believe that given a choice, they're very very unlikely to want to do the same things.
Baby clothes became much more gendered in the early 90s when everyone was able to find out the sex of their baby ahead of time. That might have trickled upwards.
Also, clothes got much cheaper compared to other expenses, so stuff that couldn't be handed down got less burdensome.
Another relevant childhood anecdote!
Until I was four we lived in [ town 1 ] and probably 80% of my playmates were girls. We then moved to [ town 2] and I started school. This approximately coincided with the peer pressure to declare girls icky, but as I was a little kid, I didn't really get the whole "age" aspect and thought it was a "location" thing, such that I really struggled for a few years to fake my way through social situations in this strange new town where girls were apparently icky. I remember writing in some kind of briefly-attempted diary thing "nobody can know I used to be friends with girls!"
As for gendered toys and playing, I think for a while one of my favorite toys was a She-Ra figurine. I might have been as young as 3 at the time, although who knows about early memories. I think I remember an adult remarking on it in a neutral or positive way, but, again, who knows.
As for gendered clothing, it's disappointing, but this is hardly a new problem.
I'm more annoyed that my efforts in promoting gender nonconformity (in areas of interest to me; dresses are fine but god damn it my kid should be interested in toy cars and dinosaurs) are backfiring due to a massive lack of interest. My current hope is that we can somehow transform the princesses and castle interest into a broader interest in the middle ages, particularly warfare and law.
I liked my She-Ra figurine too, but not as much as the old standby horses and ducks figures (which my brother played with too). I think my parents were worried about getting me She-Ra, that it might cause a spiral into Barbieland, but I just never had any interest in anything like Barbie. All those accessories, god. I still hate accessories.
She-Ra was cool because she was a Princess of Power.
33: Mara has recently decided that Iron Man is for girls, and periodically says IRON MAN! and throws her fist in the air to mimic his his iconic look. I'm also pretty sure she taught a mixed-gender group of three-year-olds to pretend to breastfeed toy dinosaurs, so I don't want to make her a model of how to behave on any front.
Heebz, we bought as many boy shorts as we could for Mara because her legs are so long that girl shorts look frighteningly mini, but Target had a lot of cheap plain cotton shorts for girls that were a good middle length and in a lot of colors. That might work. (I almost sent her to school today with pajama shorts under her skirt only to realize they were boy pajamas with the fly thing rather than the little cotton day shorts, so I had her change.)
a broader interest in the middle ages, particularly warfare and law.
You have to make it matter to her; when she disputes your authority offer her the choice of trial by battle or by ordeal.
16: Is it encouraging you to take part in the government scheme to get free cavity wall insulation?
38 It was going to talk about my rights if I'd been mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance, but I didn't listen long enough to find out whose side it was taking.
15: then how close is the nearest public park?
To me? About 200 yards. The actual park bit is quite small, but it also has a skate park and a couple of five-a-side football pitches. If I really want to "go to the park", for a picnic or whatever, I take a short bus ride to Regent's Park or Hampstead Heath, which are proper massive.
I thought She-Ra, being part of the He-Man mythos, was by default okay for boys.
It was going to talk about my rights if I'd been mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance, but I didn't listen long enough to find out whose side it was taking.
Heh. I got a text spam/scam about that today. Which, given that I've never bought PPI, I found fairly easy to ignore.
39: Ooh, haven't gotten that one yet, but the insulation people call at least once a week.
I'm also pretty sure she taught a mixed-gender group of three-year-olds to pretend to breastfeed toy dinosaurs, so I don't want to make her a model of how to behave on any front
Indeed. That shows a dangerous lack of respect for cladistic norms.
Right. Even the dinosaurs that give "milk" to their young, like pigeons, don't breastfeed.
On the other hand, I am wearing a shirt with a picture of pterosaurs shooting each other with laser beams from their eyes, so I'm not in a great position to lecture anyone about realistic prehistoric animal behaviour.
31: "nobody can know I used to be friends with girls!"
This made me laugh.
My current hope is that we can somehow transform the princesses and castle interest into a broader interest in the middle ages, particularly warfare and law.
The link is obviously princesses-castles-knights in armour-shields-heraldry-rules of cadence and differencing-intellectual property law.
"In those days, you see, Daddy would have worn a tabard to work, and his business cards would have said something like 'Halford of Eltham, Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary'."
I'm also pretty sure she taught a mixed-gender group of three-year-olds to pretend to breastfeed toy dinosaurs
Talk to your kids about Daenerys Targaryen. Before someone else does.
On preview, I'm owned by 49, but you should make sure that Mara stays the hell away from the Houses of the Undying.
We dress Jane pretty girly, but her toys are all gender neutral. Cars and blocks and Maurice Sendak books and stuffed animals and a Clover measuring tape. And her Batman cape. Pretty soon I think she might be old enough for a World's Greatest Detective starter kit, although barring any run-ins between me and Joe Chill she probably won't live up to her potential in that regard.
"In those days, you see, Daddy would have worn a tabard to work, and his business cards would have said something like 'Halford of Eltham, Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary'."
"Chaos prevailed. Barbaric acts of misappropriation were commonplace in those days, before the Statute of Anne brought order to Kingdom. Around the same time, a new knightly caste of arose, swearing an oath before God and King to protect the integrity of authorial property rights. Their weapons were the subpoena and the cease and desist order."
What's Ned on about with the "sashes" on the shorts up in comment 2? Zippers and pockets I've observed. Sashes?
I'd frankly love to see grown men swishing about with sashes from their belts, or waists, or what have you. Don't get me wrong.
Daenerys Targaryen
Rather OT, but I've been working my way through the first season of Game of Thrones, and man, I can't say I love it. Nor do I hate it. But as I remarked to a friend last night: the thing is, I don't like any of these characters, at all. They're all assholes.* Which is okay in its way, but I don't care about any of them; and I've read and/or seen many, many multi-charactered dynastic power struggle world-building stylee series, but this one just kind of leaves me cold and wondering what I'm supposed to care about. Does that make sense?
* Except for John Snow, Ned Stark's bastard son
41 makes very little sense in context. That's what I get for trying to sneak in one last comment before lunch.
I wonder how many of the bronies of today were little boys playing with their neighbors' toys 20-odd years ago.
re: 53
I watched three episodes of series 1 on a plane journey. Didn't really love what I'd seen yet, either, although Peter Dinklage's character and performance is great.
53: I've said the same thing about the novels. They're good, but that doesn't mean they're fun. As for character likeability, I think Tyrion, Jon Snow and Daenerys are all likeable characters, as well as three or four more sometimes-or-almost-likeable characters. Not perfect characters or people, but reasonably believable characters with interesting storylines.
So naturally, all three of those are pretty much on rival sides of the big war and there has only been like one scene with two of them together in the whole series. Even if you count the sometimes-or-almost-likeable characters, most of them have met at most one of the others.
10: I am not good with the close-FB/walk-away approach always. I kind of got into it with some friend-of-friend who got very indignant (in response to one of those articles that made the rounds) about what would happen if her little girl wanted to dress in boyish clothes. She unabashedly considered it her right to have a little princess and did not consider that it might not be wonderful parenting to force her kid to conform to rigid gender norms. My blood pressure is going up just remembering the conversation.
56: Agreed on Peter Dinklage (who plays the so-called "imp"). The seemingly gratuitous presentations of naked women, often having sex in ways that seem to be pornified, are still getting in my way. Those pornified depictions are presumably intentional, and I can't figure out what the point is. I do my best to ignore them as annoying. I can't tell if there's supposed to be a subtext there about how that sort of thing is normal in that society, and you (the viewer) are supposed to get that it's normal in that society, and these depictions are supposed to clarify the nature of the society to you. Which is to help you understand. Either that or it's just plain porn inserted into a TV series. So that gets in my way.
(Let's add "stranger danger" to the list of phrases I find incredibly grating.)
Except for John Snow, Ned Stark's bastard son
Is it really a good idea to give your fictional character the same name as one very famous and three slightly famous real people?
i was out running in standard running shorts, one day last fall, when i passed some pre-teen boys playing catch in their yard. when they saw me, they started singing "we like short shorts / na na na nana nana / we like short shorts."
so, i guess knee length is in these days.
Tyrion's brother becomes a sympathetic figure later on, some of the more sympathetic figures of the early part of the series become rather less pleasant.
I haven't watched the series, but I get the impression from reading about it that in the process of condensing it for TV they left in a disproportionate amount of sex e.g. the intense incestuous relationship between the Lannister siblings is pretty important, naked dancing girls at the wedding rather less so (and less noticeable on the page than on the screen).
57: I think Tyrion, Jon Snow and Daenerys are all likeable characters
All the characters have believable storylines, I'd say. I'm not sure why I'm hung up on likability.
The Daenerys story bothers me. She was ushered into a forced marriage through, essentially, rape. She rallied and took control of the situation through coaching from a prostitute on how to please a man. This placated the husband and seduced him into not actually raping her. Hurrah. Now they're allies in the pursuit of power. I sort of want to throw up about this, but I don't doubt that many women live with it.
Anyway. I'm not sure why I'm hung up on character likability. I wouldn't have thought I was so narratively lame.
I enjoy Game of Thrones (TV version only), but come on, it is deeply ridiculous.
Also, as (I think) Kotsko or someone said, it's interesting how "fantasy" genres always mean "imagine a world of slave girls."
This placated the husband and seduced him into not actually raping her. Hurrah.
Fifth wave feminism.
Anyway. I'm not sure why I'm hung up on character likability. I wouldn't have thought I was so narratively lame.
One of the great virtues of serial fiction is that it can take the time to build up characters and world and allow the audience to become accustomed to them in a way which is difficult to do in one-off works.
The flip side of that is that the audience has to be willing to spend a lot of time with those characters and, even, to follow them when nothing that is happening advances an immediate plot. This doesn't completely apply to GoT since the narrative and plot have been written in advance (different from most TV series or comics) but, still, if something is going to ask you to follow a set of characters for years (real time) it seems reasonable to want those characters to be people you enjoy spending time with.
My theory on the sex scenes is that characters need to be doing something while giving exposition, and it's HBO.
63: There's an absolutely ridiculous, gratuitous sex scene (of sorts) in episode 6 or so that I watched last night in which the guy who runs a brothel is coaching two prostitutes-in-training on how to do it convincingly: it basically shows two women having sex, the one robustly finger-fucking the other, with lots of (acknowledged to be faked, since they're prostitutes-in-training) gasping and moaning. All the while there's a serious conversation about the inter-political machinations going on. Good grief.
I kept thinking: this might be hot to some viewers. Is it? Mostly it's stupid and distracting, and completely undermines whatever attraction there is in porn.
Those pornified depictions are presumably intentional, and I can't figure out what the point is.
"We're HBO, and we can do this!"
Sex in GoT is a big topic, but I do remember thinking when I saw the scene described in 69 that it didn't appear in the books. HBO can't really blame GRRM for that.
Does parsimon not know about the special arrangement?
Mostly it's stupid and distracting, and completely undermines whatever attraction there is in porn.
Let's not get too crazy here.
Sifu thinks I'm going to click through to Gawker.
I.. yes? Because that's where the video that you would find amusing is linked? It's not a trick.
I clicked on the link. I will never feel fully at ease in the world ever again.
71: I'm glad someone else noted that scene. I do know that GRRM's series has been discussed here (and elsewhere), but I haven't read the books and am only now catching up with the TV version, so had little to say in previous discussions. I remain stymied by the utterly unstimulating and frankly misogynistic porny scenes in the series.
I feel as though the makers of the TV series should be embarrassed by themselves.
65.2: Is that true? At least in written fantasy, slave girls never struck me as a dominant trope. There are obvious examples, like the John Norman Gor books (and I take it, Game of Thrones), but is it that common? Or do you mean TV/movies?
I liked the clip. Watched Sleeping Beauty last night, though, and I'm feeling like maybe I don't want to indulge the inner teenager for a while.
72: "Firefox can't find the server at www.viddler.com."
An SNL skit. That's okay.
Last time I try to find parsimon a funny, relevant video.
If you can explain what ned meant upthread about the sashes on the man shorts, you can redeem yourself.
Just the mere fact that you even have to ask, disgusts me.
re: 82
I think he means all those little loops, drawstrings, and strips of extraneous fabric that cargo/hiking type shorts sometimes have.
FWIW, hipster types here [men] have been wearing shorter shorts for a few years. Paired with espadrilles or boat-shoes with no socks it's a sort of perfect encapsulation of the sort of person one could happily punch.*
* not because of teh hipster, but because of teh preppy upper-class David-Cameron-esque Boden-for-art-school-graduates twatiness of it all.
Searching for "cargo short sashes" turns up these which seem odd to me, but perhaps that's what's in these days.
When I needed running shorts, I had trouble finding a pair that hid enough thigh to preserve my modest nature. That's probably a different thing than hipster fashion.
Yeah. Most "board shorts" and some cargo shorts have a sash. On some of them it's way too long and it's looks like a freaking pashmina woven into a rope belt, and the shorts themselves look like this, probably the ugliest clothing catalog picture ever.
twatiness
Huh, I would have gone with "twattiness".
re: 91
I'd probably have chosen a less couth word, tbh, given a free rein. But yeah, double-t.
Waitaminute, is somebody keeping you from swearing colorfully on unfogged? Who is it? They must be stopped! Nosflow? HEEBIE?
espadrilles
I like those -- I mean, to wear, as a woman -- and they're increasingly hard to find. Or the ones I find are really stupid, with like polka-dot patterns on them.
Seeking espadrilles! No polka-dots! No stripes!
It's more that (a) certain word(s) is(are) known to be offensive to Americans in particular, and have gendered connotations which, while not part of the connotation the word has in most Scottish idiolects, explains why it might be best not to chuck 'em about willy-nilly on blogs.
re: 94
Easy enough to get here. e.g.
is a major high street chain.
Assuming we're talking about "cunt" vs. "twat", am I missing some anatomical subtlety?
FWIW, hipster types here [men] have been wearing shorter shorts for a few years. Paired with espadrilles or boat-shoes with no socks it's a sort of perfect encapsulation of the sort of person one could happily punch.*
That's the other option. I always hesitate to complain about the fashion options open to men, since women always have it worse, but it's hard to find shorts that are comfortable between the extremes of
- minimal pockets, ought to be ironed, entire knees exposed when standing, afraid to sit down because thighs will look like two frozen turkeys
- 8 or 10 pockets, reach below knees, look like I sewed them myself from two pairs of ripped khakis
In American English, 'twat' sounds silly-profane while 'cunt' sounds hostile-profane, at least to me -- same denotation, but I'd agree that 'twat' is lighter (and I will always treasure the fact that Robert Browning referred to nuns as twats in 'Pippa Passes' because he'd mistakenly picked up the impression that it referred to some part of a habit, and no one corrected it.) Anyone I know to be from the UK, 'cunt' doesn't sound particularly offensive, though -- the connotation is totally different than in American English.
Maybe the first variety would work if you took care to thaw your legs in the morning.
entire knees exposed when standing
I sympathize in general -- I've been buying boy clothes for Newt and this is a real problem -- but you've got a problem exposing your entire knees when you're wearing shorts? I think of respectable men's shorts as being a couple of inches above the knee without looking weirdly short (or, as I generally describe it, 'Australian') at all.
In American English, 'twat' sounds silly-profane while 'cunt' sounds hostile-profane
This sounds exactly right to me.
re: 101
Yeah, both words I almost never think of their formal denotation except in some context where someone explicitly draws attention to it. 'Twat' has more connotations of the pathetic.
97: Thank you, ttaM. I used to find those simple things as a matter of course everywhere here -- in walk-in stores -- but increasingly rarely now.
But everybody hear's ttaM's comments in his accent, right? To me that argues for a rigorous commitment to the queen's idiom.
You can by Espadrilles (aka Toms) at the supermarket.
94.last: You can't walk 5 feet in SF without tripping over someone wearing these.
Pwnt by 109, but I added value with the link.
Old Navy also has some espadrilles right now, though the patterns may be the kind you consider stupid. I just got the striped ones; they look way better on than they do in the website photo.
I think Tyrion, Jon Snow and Daenerys are all likeable characters
I'm not sure Daenerys is all that likeable, to be honest. She starts out sympathetic, it's true, but as she becomes more of her own person, it's not a particularly pleasant one. Even if you are rooting for her to purge Westeros with her dragons.
The Daenerys story bothers me. She was ushered into a forced marriage through, essentially, rape. She rallied and took control of the situation through coaching from a prostitute on how to please a man. This placated the husband and seduced him into not actually raping her. Hurrah. Now they're allies in the pursuit of power. I sort of want to throw up about this, but I don't doubt that many women live with it.
The way the TV show compresses and pornifies the GoT story as a whole makes this aspect of the narrative come off worse that it otherwise would. In the books, it's much less, well, rapey, beyond the more or less institutionalised rape of organised marriages. But, yeah, it's not particularly comfortable reading either.
104: As someone who wears pants almost every day, the only reason I wear shorts is because pants would be too hot and confining. I just mean the shorts that are above the knee aren't baggy enough and look preppy, and the shorts that are below the knee are too baggy and look stupid.
I wear pants every day! I also wear trousers every day. You do not want to see my knees.
110: Those don't appear to be true espadrilles, because they don't have the ... rattan or whatever? ... soles. Woven soles. I can't do with any rubber soles.
113: The way the TV show compresses and pornifies the GoT story as a whole makes this aspect of the narrative come off worse that it otherwise would. In the books, it's much less, well, rapey, beyond the more or less institutionalised rape of organised marriages. But, yeah, it's not particularly comfortable reading either.
Thanks for the further explanation, Ginger. I was curious about the differences between the TV show and the book series (which I've heard some about already, the shifting upward of the ages of the girls/women, in particular). I can't imagine how the book series would have represented all those women being mechanically fucked from behind like cattle, as presented in the TV show, and which has been deeply annoying. I don't watch a lot of porn and don't even know whether that kind of depiction is supposed to be hott. Don't know what it's doing there.
Cattle are pretty much standing up for sex. That's something entirely more athletic.
"Don't know what it's doing there."
It's to keep guys from changing the channel during scenes where people talk to each other, just another version of the cops or spys checking their weapons.
I haven't found any of the main characters particularly pleasant. They're tough people in a tough world and niceness mostly buys one a knife in the back. What I do like about the books/show is that I can't predict what will happen next and it isn't about cops, docs, or lawyers.
"Dragon Cop" would be a good idea for a show.
No. With a blonde woman who nurses a dragon back to health and uses it to fight crime.
The dragon could also heal people, but they can't practice law. That's just not supported by science.
Dragon Wagons with Jesse James & the Teutuls
127: "This man burned himself to death in a state of despair over the fate of his house and Gondor."
It's a great age... for MURDER in MORDOR. (YEAAAAHHHHHH!)
"This murder could only have been stopped by an heir of Isildur."
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Ugh, this has really not been my week. Various frustrations at work, including not getting to go on a trip next week that I had been looking forward to, and just now the property manager told me that I had overloaded the washer I was using for laundry and broken the machinery. It can't have been broken that badly, since after he took out most of my clothes it continued to wash the rest of them, but the landlord may charge me for the cost of fixing it.
|>
How many clothes did you wash at once?
Too many, apparently. It didn't seem like that much more than I usually do, but the manager said it was three times what I should have put in the washer. I dunno.
Tell him to go fuck six moose if he bills you for it, unless it really was enough to stop the cylinder from spinning.
Not five. You government types compromise too easily.
We'll see what happens. The way he phrased it made it sound like they could bill me but wouldn't necessarily, and I'm not sure why.
Teo probably shouldn't put 17 pairs of jeans, two sets of sheets, 32 tee-shirts and god knows how many socks in the washer. That's true.
Yeah, that sounds like a bunch of bluster. If it's working, it's working. Extra clothes taken out, problem solved.
Did you have to leave much more space in older washing machines for them to clean the clothes properly? My mom never ever fills the machine, and I can't tell if it's a holdover from having used older machines or if it's just an odd belief that she has, that the clothes get cleaner that way. I put in probably twice as many clothes as she ever would, and that's still far fewer than Tweety thinks is a-ok.
Fucking seven moose means he's into moose sex. That's not a threat.
Yeah, that sounds like a bunch of bluster. If it's working, it's working. Extra clothes taken out, problem solved.
Well, he said the basement filled up with smoke, and while there wasn't any visible smoke when I went down to check a little later there was definitely a faint lingering smoky smell, so I don't doubt that something went wrong. I do suspect that any repair that ends up being necessary will be pretty minor. I'll just wait to see what happens.
If we're having a serious conversation about how many clothes to put in a washer, I must say my housemate puts too few, in my opinion. I mean, come on: 2 jeans and 4 shirts and a scattering of socks? That's it? (Maybe he needs to buy more clothes, I think, if he has to keep washing those ones every four days.)
You started the sex with large grazing animals thing.
Where do they put sprinkles (for ice cream) in the store?
The guacamole and hummus are by the chocolate syrupy but I don't see sprinkles.
Are you drunk? Look, the sprinkles go with the things you put on cupcakes, which are in the baking section, I would imagine. When you're done finding them, find the maraschino cherries.
A bit, yes. I decided to walk to another store because I want less shitty sprinkles.
If you're just shotgunning vodka and sprinkles you have to throw in some Angostura bitters to give it that rounded mouthfeel.
The truth is that my household is rife with chocolate sprinkles, provided by my housemate's Dutch father as part of his annual Christmas gift package sent from the Netherlands. They seem to be good quality, but a person can't possibly use all those sprinkles in even several years. The picture on the box shows a piece of toast with what looks like butter, with chocolate sprinkles on it. I guess that's a thing?
Parsi is right: the sprinkles will be in the baking section, very near the fake frosting and the birthday candles, and at eye level or above (not below eye level, which is where the boring flours and sugars go). Unless the store has a seasonal end aisle display (which will probably be near the freezer section) of accompaniments to ice cream (cones, syrups, etc.), in which case they may have moved the sprinkles from baking to additions-to-ice-cream to add a festive touch to said seasonal display. Unless you're shopping at a 7-Eleven, needless to say.
Thai is exactly what I am looking at. Get out of my head.
There are two types of generic Bisquick. The copying fuckers.
The Dutch will also put candy-coated anise sprinkles on toast! Watch out for the Dutch!
Don't take any shit from the housing manager, Teo. He should be providing an industrial quality washer!
There's some shit where front loading machines can totally take a fuller load than top loading. IYKWIM. But whatever. I just fill it so it looks like the clothes will still kind of move around each other. Do what I do! One time I did kind of break the dryer by letting dog hair seep in behind the filter until it overheated and warped something?? And my unassuming, shy landlords were totally unassuming and shy about it and got it fixed. But I don't get to work in any National Park so I guess you win some and you lose some.
Or wherever anyone works, I dunno. It's bedtime.
Moby, I don't know why you're talking about Thai. Maybe you should go to bed after you pick out your sprinkles. I don't know.
159: You know, I just figured that out. Either you were losing your mind, or there was something else going on.
Both, but thanks for trying to explain it away.
Stupid laundry machines and landlords. I understand that in Europe people are civilized and all have washers in their own homes. When I was looking for a new apartment recently I told myself I would only rent one where I could have a washer and dryer in my own apartment, or at least free use of one in a basement. And then I caved and settled for one with a private staircase from my apartment to the coin-operated one in the basement. But what's the reason landlords always want coin-op laundry? Couldn't they just buy normal machines and then charge slightly more rent to cover the cost, which would be basically negligible spread over time? Keeping a steady supply of quarters around is a pain.
Anyway, I also got hummus. That stuff really grew on me
66: Fifth wave feminism.
I put this out for consideration and query apropos of the discussion upthread; I'm going to bed now myself. I meant what I said about not understanding just how, in Game of Thrones, the naked chicks being treated like cattle dogs, yet somehow empowering themselves through acceptance, is supposed to be okay with us, here and now.
For example: my co-worker's daughter, who is an out bisexual now (initially lesbian), was apparently put off by the sexual stuff in GoT, but after a few episodes became an enthusiastic fan of the series. I don't get that.
If your hummus is growing, I think something is wrong.
Upon further reflection, I suspect that what the manager told me was really just kind of a warning that doing this sort of thing could leave me on the hook for the costs of repair. The machine seems to still work, and he didn't put an "out of order" sign on it or anything. I think it'll all be fine. Sure is annoying, though.
165
... I don't get that
What's the point of arguing about people's tastes? If you don't like the series don't watch it.
The sexy sex sex sex in GoT often goes for titillating in a direction that is not so awesome, but I personally in fact appreciate the degree to which it presents its many competent female characters as being at a genuine disadvantage, with limited means of getting any power and who are at frequent risk of sexual violence as well as all the other kinds.
The sexy sex sex sex in GoT often goes for titillating in a direction that is not so awesome, but I personally in fact appreciate the degree to which it presents its many competent female characters as being at a genuine disadvantage, with limited means of getting any power and who are at frequent risk of sexual violence as well as all the other kinds.
The appreciation so nice, I appreciated it twice.
Speaking of sex and tv, I'm watching the most recent Mad Men episode and... ick. I feel like the amount of misogyny the show depicts was kind of getting toned down over the years, but they seem to have decided to make up for it all at once.
165: ... is supposed to be okay with us, here and now.
It's not, while the rest of that medieval world is? Any guess as to the infant to teen and childbirth mortality rates? It's done well enough so people can find someone to identify with and think about how they would have dealt with life, not that they would want it there when they step out the door on Monday.
The sex is mostly a ratings hook because the networks can't show that much skin and also what redfoxtailshrub said twice.
It's not okay, and any responsible adult should have a reaction something like this.
More seriously, I know people like to harp on the scene in 69, but it's in perfect thematic keeping with the episode. Littlefinger is explaining to two women how to convincingly fake being pleased by a john. In the same episode, he convincingly fakes being helpful to Ned Stark. It's clever, funny and, you know.
I am pretty hooked on Game of Thrones for reasons suggested herein. I read all the books; they're great, although you could do worse than skip book 4 and read the plot points on Wikipedia. I've been holding off on Season 2 until we can do a big-ass marathon.
Stupid laundry machines and landlords. I understand that in Europe people are civilized and all have washers in their own homes.
Washers yes. Dryers, not so much. In ten or so years of living in rented accomodation I've only had a dryer for one year, and that's because I got fed up of hanging clothes and bought it myself.
not understanding just how, in Game of Thrones, the naked chicks being treated like cattle dogs, yet somehow empowering themselves through acceptance, is supposed to be okay with us, here and now
Almost the first scene in the series is a man - a sympathetic character! - forcing his seven-year-old son to watch him beheading an innocent person. Later on we're going to see people pushed out of windows, cut in two, tortured, set on fire, enslaved, blinded, mutilated, killed with molten metal, stabbed, shot, impaled, mangled, mauled, eaten, maimed and stoned to death.
The biggest problem that most people seem to have with the series is that it has too much female nudity.
I have a washer dryer. Its drying abilities are not fantastic so I mostly dry stuff on a rack / in the hot press and maybe finish them off in the machine. Really I manage because whenever I visit my mother I do a bunch of washing there and she has outdoor and indoor washing lines and when my sheets are washed and dry she will drop them in with her own for ironing at the local laundry/dry cleaners (cheaper ironing than in the city). The next weekend I'm there, I collect them.
Otherwise sheets and towels go to a laundry place near me to be washed/dried etc.
Unintended tone contrast there between 181 & 182.
I've read all the Ice & Fire books, so I have no burning urge to see the programme, but will probably see it eventually. I hear Peter Dinklage is particularly good in it.
Unintended tone contrast there between 181 & 182.
I don't have a problem with female nudity; I have a washer-dryer.
I have read all this thread, so I have no burning urge to read the books or see the programme. I have no idea who Peter Dinklage is.
Well, in my head, he's Miles Vorkosigan.
(I'm assuming if you actually wanted to know, you'd just search.)
We have a washer but no dryer, and use this awesome drying rack, which fits an astonishing amount of clothing (though sheets are sort of a pain). I have had more than one friend puzzle over how we could possibly use a washer with no dryer, which I find totally bizarre.
Don't clothes come out all crunchy when you dry them on a rack?
165: Similar to what others have said, I am moved to quote Joan Didion quibbling with some cinematic over-analysis: The "motive" of Bullitt was to show that several million people would pay three bucks apiece to watch Steve McQueen drive fast.
Towels and jeans are somewhat crunchy, though not as crunchy as when you dry them outside on a line. Putting white vinegar in the fabric softener compartment helps some. The larger problem for me is that I wear pretty much exclusively knit shirts, and those do benefit from being dried once in a while to retain their shape.
Thanks for linking to that, Blume. We have a smaller Ikea rack that's not so great (and a dryer we use for most things).
And I think we're far enough in that I can threadjack, especially given the thing about the locked playground in the post. Lee is making noise again about buying a security system. I have a kneejerk negative response to this. (I know of two break-ins in the last year, both in the last month. The first was an empty house for sale where the copper was taken. In the second, the mom suspects her adult son left the door at least unlocked and possibly open after going out for a smoke, but it did result in a person in their house stealing stuff while they were asleep, which is scary.) Am I being stupid and short-sighted?
It would be awesome if they had a toaster big enough to fit that rack.
193 makes me shrink away and put my arms protectively over my chest.
192: Just steal somebody else's security system sign.
I dry all my shirts and pants on hangers. It's like half-assed ironing.
192: if you get the kind where the police come, the police will inevitably (like, 99%) end up responding to a false alarm if they do get called. If you get the kind where the police don't come, it won't do anything. You should get an alarm sign and stick it in the yard and call it done.
I guess having a non-working alarm system doesn't do any harm; people will see the window sensors or whatever.
Dinklage sounds like it ought to refer to some ancient traditional right of access to the village dink.
That's toast, SP.
Unlike toast, however, clothes always land butter side up.
198: You could put a fake motion detector (they have ones with little lights) in a spot where someone looking in the window would see it.
192: I found one of those in the closet and used it yesterday for drying an electric blanket. The cats were delighted with a whole new universe of play.
How do you dry clothes with a big dog?
A dry Komondor would absorb a lot of water
Just googled Komondor. There ain't no such dog, surely. The Hungarian Rasta Hound? Has to be a hoax.
209: IMX, learned while attending dog shows decades in the past, slowly and carefully. To keep them really clean is really lots of work.
In other words, I should get a short haired dog.
Alarms are horrible! Don't cave! Additional security isn't worth the thirty seconds of annoyance a few times a day.
213: Thank you! I will tell her that my friend on the internet says she's wrong, and that should resolve the issue.
I will say it again, in all caps, if that helps the cause any.
She went on a long rant about "I've never been burglarized! I've never had a four-year-old! I've never had two four-year-olds and a five-year-old! This year is unlike any other!" and I had to stop her and point out that she's still never been burglarized and STFU. We have the world's nosiest neighbors next door and a barky dog and several other neighbors who work from home, which is about as good as we can get in terms of coverage.
(And this is not me whining about Lee, really. She has a lot of other stress to deal with right now and I think this just hit some sort of panic button for her.)
163: I don't think it's supposed to do that.
