Thanks, al. I was waiting to see if you would weigh in on this.
Someone who can remember to engage InPrivate browsing when using a public computer to access the internet is considerably less out of her head than, well, than a lot of the people I know, for a start. The whole "there was a power imbalance because she was female, working class etc" thing is a bit of a red herring (is teo supposed to be "no, I only sleep with men. Because I'm a feminist"?) and there is no onus on anyone not to shag people (assuming willing, adult, and rational) simply because they think the other person might regret the decision at some later date. Pretty well everyone in the world has (while at the time willing, adult and rational) shagged someone whom they regretted shagging at some later date. You don't have a responsibility to make other people's decisions for them, not even in their best interest, especially not out of some sort of White Man's Burden.
In cases of sexual assault people often say "why didn't you scream"? and you just want to say--it was so unexpected! One minute we were having an ordinary conversation!
This, also, is an interesting comparison to draw.
80mg! bring the motherfucking ruckus, people! you fail me in my pre-sleep hours of need. apo's kids, wake him up or some shit. after I take all this topamax and valium I'm going to pass out. lest you think I've fallen off the beam or anything, I just two days ago saw my pain specialist, and my psychiatrist yesterday. thrilling updates from monday: I wore the porcelain off my crown down to the metal, quite surprising the dentist who had thought it impossible, and shattering the opposing tooth on the lower jaw which looks, when lit, like an expensive china saucer you have decided to glue back together, but not ever use again. they have cool cameras to go in your mouth now, it's like science! but they wanted me to watch television instead/as well, with my teeth on a live crawl, which, fuck you. some bullshit australian sky network.
so they're making me a mouthguard...out of flexible glass? I didn't immediately kill the dentist to preserve the value of gold. I did question the need for the hardness and she pointed out the porcelain/metal supra and indicated she could hardly give me some pussy foam one. fair e-nough. then tuesday my pain doctor explained how the cortisone/lidocaine injections I was so reasonably demanding would indeed make me feel fine but would mask the fact that my nerves are getting damaged and then what if I were paralyzed. jesus. so now I get my very own spinal surgeon. I guess an oncologist would be way worse, right? and I might not even have to use dr. hypothetical's services. doctors just shouldn't say paralyzed. I can look at a model of the cervical spine as good as any furrin doctor with his book-larning. seriously, fuck off. well, he does have a treatment plan, but.
now I wish I had just left the post alone after the first sentence, the way ogged would have wanted.
Okay, let's fight. Alameida, everything in your post is wrong, even "and" and "the".
pussy foam
You should probably take something for that.
non-paid-for sex with a cute, clean guy
Cute, clean and articulate!
Hey, Teo, for what it's worth (and I would say it's not that much) I think it's also worthwhile being aware that if we're doing the moral-judgement-thing the women involved did some quite fucked up shit to you, and that's not an OK thing to do to another human, really, and while sure, maybe you screwed up & that's something for you to process as you want to, it's also importantly true that you certainly were not the only acting in a super problematic way.
Yrs, someone whose experiences with the whole-other-people-who-want-to-fuck-but-are-also-morally-problem-causing is somewhat more extensive than I'd wish, looking back on it.
People really do overestimate their own probity
From Moby's link:
"She said the problem with the photo of the breast was that it was across from [Mellon] middle school," he said, "and the kids coming in after school come into the library and might joke about the picture."
My god, some middle school kids might joke about it! The horror! Something must be done!
"Mellon." He said "Mellon." He, He.
9: Reminds of one of the great moments in agalmatophilia courtesy of John Ashcroft.
4: I'm going to kick your fucking ass, walt! tomorrow. I'm...so...tired. stupid topamax and lyrica and valium and amytriptaline and oxy...it's like a world of downs. wait, I love that! well, I do love falling to sleep fast. I'd rather be all healthy and not taking any medicine though. it's like having 20,000 spoons when all you need is a clean needle a fork.
6: apo! I knew you wouldn't let me down. I never did use any of that pussy foam contraceptive, though I heard tell of it. mostly the pill, so I could create an internal graveyard of womb-babies.
One thing I wanted to say: in the other thread I mentioned an Awful Thing that I did through carelessness, selfishness and wishful thinking. Something that was really, really difficult in the aftermath was the fact that a subset of my friends would not accept my statement that I had done something wrong and that I needed to figure out how to fix things. At the very time that I was dealing with some really unpleasant self-knowledge and trying to figure out how to patch things up with the people I had hurt - at the very time when I wished I could think 'it wasn't that bad really' and was constantly tempted to minimize what I'd done - I had to fight that temptation and keep explaining over and over again to this subset of friends that no, what I had done was really actually Not That Great. It made an already painful situation a lot worse and made me feel like I had no one at all on my side, because the people who felt I had done wrong obviously felt that I had done wrong, and I had to keep arguing with the ones who didn't because they would not respect my understanding of the situation.
respect my understanding of the situation
This seems like an important thing to me. I'm pretty much on team "Teo's offence was minimal" but he seems to think it was more than that so I guess I have to respect his understanding.
the women involved did some quite fucked up shit to you, and that's not an OK thing to do to another human
Yeah, wasn't the Egyptian slavery and Holocaust shit enough for his people. What, they have to endure BJ attacks now?
I guess I have to respect his understanding.
No you don't! Maybe Teo is full of shit!
What, they have to endure BJ attacks now?
Will Hamas stop at nothing?
they have to endure BJ attacks
God's chosen people.
Maybe Teo is full of shit!
Right, constipation is another well-known affliction of his tribe.
Just out of curiosity, do people think teo's situation would have been better or worse if, instead of giving him a BJ, the girl had insisted on giving him $200? To me, this alternate scenario seems much easier to judge -- duh, of course teo shouldn't take her money for no reason, especially when she's confused like that, no matter how insistent she is. But this alternate scenario also seems much less serious -- if teo had ended up with $200 sitting on his kitchen counter, it would be wrong, but not a major moral transgression. I think I'm judging this situation differently, because I put a lot more value on human dignity than on money. But I can imagine that other people might value these things differently.
they have to endure BJ attacks
In the words of George W. Bush, "Bring 'em on."
God's chosen people.
Ah, so it's official now? I knew the final round was down to humans vs. pigeons but hadn't seen the results.
21: And then he made that tasteless joke about looking for the hidden BJs under the White House furniture.
I have a dirtier mind than my students.
(As in, a student innocently turned that paper in, and all I can see is...oh, you reprobates will have no problem.)
20: Well, there's also nothing you can do to stop a determined person from leaving $200 in your house, whereas in this case what teo feels bad about was his participation in what happened.
I'm no longer outraged by Bush joking about losing Saddam's WMDs in the White House, because then I would have to also be outraged by Obama joking about blasting off Predator drones at the Jonas Brothers.
26: If a determined person left $200 in your house, you'd pass it on to a charity. IYKWIM.
I put a lot more value on human dignity than on money
Part of this disconnect proceeds from the notion that a person has somehow been damaged or lessened by blowing somebody else, which is a somewhat Victorian (but still common) mindset. She might really need that $200 for food or rent once she sobers up, but fellatios are a renewable resource. She's not going to need that one again later.
15: There's an issue here, where my sense of how to analyze the situation is at odds enough with a lot of people's that I think it makes communication hard. I can agree with "Teo's offense was minimal" in the sense that it's the sort of thing that I could see all sorts of people who I generally think well of doing the same thing, the concrete harm was pretty small, I've done much worse things and I haven't decided I'm too awful to live, and so on. But I still think that it's the sort of thing that's worth looking at as a morally wrong thing to do -- a choice to do something different the next time should be motivated not merely by practicality or esthetics, but by one's moral sense.
It's really hard, though, to express a negative moral judgment of an action in a way that doesn't sound to a lot of people like an inflated perception of its significance. I'm comfortable talking this way because I think of myself as a sort of terrible person on plenty of moral axes, so the thought that "That was a wrong thing to do" fits just fine with "It is also the sort of thing I might have done on any given Tuesday". But I think lots of people see an incompatibility there.
Oh, and that fits in just fine with the $200.
it would be wrong, but not a major moral transgression.
I think they'd both be pretty much wrong, and in a fairly similar way. It's just hard to formulate a way to talk about a sex act as wrong short of being monstrous.
20: Blowjobs are non-rivalrous goods, though; it's not as if this woman has a limited quantity of or capacity for them. Consequently we shouldn't imagine, "what if she insisted on giving him $200?" but rather "what is she insisted on giving him perfect digital copies of first-run Hollywood movies?".
30:
Agreed.
Has a draft ranking been prepared? We should rank who is the worst person morally.
1. People who have cast stones at Teo.
2. Married men having sex with alameida.
3. People who havent support Teo in his desire to wear a hair shirt and put stones in his shoes.
4.Teo.
5. Native American woman for putting Teo in a bad spot.
6. alameida.
7. the lawyers in the thread.
Was the woman was infringing on somebody's patent for a blow job?
34 sounds reasonable.... wait, is that ranking worst-to-best or best-to-worst?
8. People who will never get a divorce.
9. Jews.
10. People who ignore apo's pwnership so they can use "non-rivalrous goods" in a sentence.
11. Society.
12. John Chvington.
13. Obama.
14. Von Wafer.
I don't think I could make an informed decision without having sex with alameida first.
Because someone has to say it:
15: Those belonging to the emperor.
16: Those who look like flies from a distance.
I thought we are just compiling the finalists. Then we can have a survey for another triumph of liberal proceduralism. Will's not the morality boss of us.
I guess I have to respect his understanding.
No you don't! Maybe Teo is full of shit!
Or, maybe, Teo is still processing. So far the primary feelings that he's expressed on the blog, are:
1) A really odd thing happened to me. Who can I tell about it (unfogged) and how should I do so?
2) [tells story]
3) No, really guys, I'm okay. Nobody was physically harmed; maybe I can just call this a crazy experience and move on.
4) I think I messed up, and I'm debating how much I messed up.
All of those seem like completely reasonable reactions.
17. People who make meta-references in lists.
35: Sheila Heti suggests that it is entirely possible.
Re:
>2. Married men having sex with alameida.
Surely this is a class that needs to be divided into two? I mean, not *all* married men (hypothetically) having sex with alameida are equivalent moral monsters, are they?
Husband X is a moral monster for entirely different reasons.
Sometimes I'd swear we're married, LB.
47: He looks like a fly from a great distance.
I forgot to include the gays who keep giving bjs to defenseless straight men. I'd insert them at 19.
Your wife is faster than you are, too?
...which would explain why we never have sex.
Does your partner coming before you even enter the room count as being unselfish?
Every time LB pwns apo, God gives a blowjob to a sparrow.
Repeated use of the word 'blow' in this context has gotten my brain stuck on the penguin joke:
A vacationing penguin is driving his car through Arizona when he notices that the oil pressure light is on. He gets out to look and sees oil dripping out of the motor. He drives to the nearest town and stops at the first gas station.
After dropping the car off, the penguin goes for a walk around town. He sees an ice-cream shop and, being a penguin in Arizona, decides that something cold would really hit the spot. He gets a big dish of ice cream and sits down to eat. Having no hands he makes a real mess trying to eat with his flippers. After finishing his ice cream, he goes back to the gas station and asks the mechanic if he's found the problem. The mechanic looks up and says "It looks like you blew a seal."
"No no," the penguin replies, "it's just ice cream."
30: Powered by clean-burning natural fellatios
I don't get it. Did Teo do something bad?
Not to fuck with the girl!
My reaction was evil triumph: I win.
Maybe it's just me, but I sense tension between those statements.
62: I think Al is saying she was focussed on the idea of exercising her power over men, rather than hurting the girlfriends/wives. The pain she may have caused them was incidental.
56 is great, and I'm now looking forward to passing it on.
re: 39
I've probably mentioned this before, but we have a website at work (I won't link here for work quasi-anonymity reasons) putting online that/a Chinese encyclopedia of the type Borges is kidding about.
Not to fuck with the girl!
My reaction was evil triumph: I win That is the law, are we not men?
OT: Photographer help?
Newt and I ran a 10K the other weekend, and my mom harassed some guy with a professional looking camera taking pictures of the race into taking pictures of us and emailing them to her. The pictures are great (of Newt. I look like hell, but I always look like hell in pictures, and running through the snow in sweats and a wooly hat doesn't help.), but the files he sent are too low res to make prints.
I assume this is a (poorly run and confusing) business, and the model is that you look at the low-res images, and if you like them buy higher res files to make prints from, although this has at no point been explicitly stated. So I email the guy and say that I love the pictures, can I buy bigger files?
His response is sure, I'll email them, I have a PayPal account if you want to make a donation.
Does anyone have an idea of what's reasonable? I have literally no idea.
Forgive me but this is one of Alameida's less coherent ones. Did teo not thank someone properly for oral sex?
If you're actually confused, read the dead babies thread -- Teo starts telling the story fairly early on.
Starts at comment 61 and continues through to about 900 and counting.
I've always felt a bit outclassed here and now all the more so since I'm reduced to asking such simple questions. I don't understand. Who gave teo oral sex? Did he not send a card afterwards?
Sorry, I'm not reading all that. I just hope Teo thanked the lady in a nice way as we have certainly raised him well.
If you press control-F, or command-F on a Mac, you can skip right through the thread to only view the comments made by Teo! Pretty cool, huh? That "find" feature is one that might come in handy for a lawyer, too; I'm surprised they don't teach it at law school.
68: Once, a news photographer took a very nice picture of my son. It ran in the paper on the front of the local section, giving grandma and grandpa all sorts of street cred in the sorts of streets where grandparents hang. So, I wrote him a nice thank you email and he emailed me back the hi res photo. We used it for Christmas cards and never even thought of sending him money.
(Note: I had intended that this story would somehow go in some direction that might be helpful to you, but I'm going to put it up even thought it is now obviously not at all helpful.)
That was more dickish than I'd intended. When reading it, try to imagine it being about 30% less rude.
You misunderstand. I have no desire to read more than three comments about teo's blow job.
Writing that many comments about it, on the other hand, thrills you.
I have no desire to read more than three comments about teo's blow job.
Dude! You've already written more than three comments about teo's blow job.
Does anyone have an idea of what's reasonable?
Def not a blow job while drunk if you are a Native American.
$20.00 per picture.
There's rather more to the story than the blow job, but the story itself ends at comment 115.
re: 68
It'd be pretty standard, yeah. To use low res pics as a teaser for higher res ones you pay for. I've no idea what would be a reasonable rate for that sort of off-the-cuff photography, though.
81: Sounds good. I'm suspecting that I was wrong about the business thing (that is, that he was taking pictures for the race organizers or something and focused on us because Mom either charmed or terrified him (I didn't see the interaction, and either one is possible) and would have sent the big files to be nice), but I don't want to have mentioned money and then give him an insultingly small amount.
Look, today's not a day for splitting hairs. If nobody wants to tell me about toe's blow job in a succinct fashion then I'll attend other matters.
34, 81: Alaska Native.
Most running events authorize companies to take pictures of the participants. You can look up your pictures by your race number.
Around here, you pay about $15-20 per picture.
The confusion surrounding the name "blow job" (where is the blowing supposed to come in?) cleared up for me considerably when I learned of its origin in "below job".
where is the blowing supposed to come in?
The urethra, silly.
And now I'm reminded of another joke -- I've actually forgotten the setup, but the punchline is "Suck, Becky, suck! 'Blow' is just an expression!"
88: I did that. I looked really stupid.
That's a kind of heavyweight punchline.
Also, a word about your penguin joke. I feel it suffers from a kind of conceptual flaw. Namely, you mention the penguin's flippers and their impairment of its ice-cream eating ability. I feel that should be off-limits in this kind of funny animal story, because if the penguin can't eat ice cream by cause of its flippers, plainly its anatomy is relevant to the joke. So how can it drive a car?
89: I thought the etymology came from the same place as 'blow a load.'
So how can it drive a car?
I am astonished and delighted that this is the anatomical implausibility that strikes you as most salient. Rather than anything involving beaks.
So what's the consensus on "Eskimo" as itself an offensive word? People seem to go back and forth on this.
93.2: I was troubled by that as well. In the version of the joke I heard previously, the penguin's ability to eat ice cream was impaired by its beak, which led to its having ice cream smeared all over its face; thus answering the car-driving problem and creating the appearance more akin to that of a penguin which has actually just blown a seal.
/standpipe
92: Like I said, I look like hell as well. Anyone who wants to laugh at me, one of the pictures is in the Flickr pool. I am the large yellow lump next to the joyously bounding gazelle-like young man.
95: No, but the beak (or, you know, the power of speech) hasn't been established as worthy of comment in the joke itself in the way that the flippers have.
"below job"
That whiffs of folk etymology.
Except in that the penguin believes that third-parties like the mechanic are likely to think of it as a plausible giver-of-blowjobs. Which I would surmise that a beaked entity probably isn't.
Not that I know what seals are into.
If a penguin could speak, as Wittgenstein remarked, it would certainly be able to drive a car.
96: I think it depends on what country you're in, and on whether you're referring to a group of people or a group of languages.
100: it's good enough for both urban dictionary and some high-faluting literary critic whose name I can't remember.
The OED is not helpful, sadly.
The true origin of "blow job" seems to be disputed, but I'd guess it's just lexical fuzziness - blowing and sucking are pretty similar actions except for the direction of air movement.
105: that is a fairly crucial difference, though. Casualty departments occasionally see male patients in considerable pain because a close friend has reasoned from first principles and made a crucial and embolism-causing error.
101: I class that in with "the penguin can talk" and "the penguin can make purchases": we'll assume it for the purposes of the joke as long as we aren't given some specific reason to recall that it actually makes no sense—which pointing out how it can't actually grasp things with its flippers does, for driving a car.
Was actually in the situation IRL where a somewhat prim and proper colleague was being teased at an office party for not understanding the expression, so a couple of us intervened and explained it as matter of factly as possible. And her face creased up and she looked perplexed for a minute and then said, "But you don't blow!"
It shares a history with being blown off.
Alternatively, "blow off" seems to have once been slang for "treat," as in to a meal, or generally give someone a good time.
It's a bloomin' shame we gets only a bob a day," said Tommy, "or we'd -- w'at you call it? -- blow you off 'andsome." (George Dewey, Admiral, 1899)
...and as I approached he accosted me thus: "I perceive, sir, you are a stranger. I regret to say that my finances are in a very dubious condition owing to the recent strike, otherwise I would be happy to take you over to our club and blow you off..." (Proceedings of the Convention of the American Bankers' Association, 1899)
I heard someone pretty recently call a hand job a "ho jobo" which I liked.
The penguin can drive, but not well. Poor shifting caused the engine to rev too high, which caused the blown seal.
A baby seal walks into a club ...
Linda: Biff came to me this morning, Willy, and he said, 'Tell Dad, we want to blow him to a big meal.' Be there six o'clock. You and your two boys are going to have dinner.(Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, 1949.)
So what's the consensus on "Eskimo" as itself an offensive word?
More than you ever wanted to know on the subject.
when I learned of its origin in "below job".
I share Minivet's skepticism, because German adopted the same expression ("ein Blasen") independently, AFAIK.
Which just reminded me of the time I was presenting to a French client and used the word "pipe" when what I meant was "tube".
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It's 22 degrees Fahrenheit (above zero) right now, and sure enough, I just saw some doofus in shorts!* Although he was buying a 1.75 liter bottle of Smirnoff at half-past noon on a Thursday, so I'm gonna go ahead and figure "dipsomaniac" works into the explanation somehow.
*Yes, footer bags -- how perfectly foul!
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Penguins can drive, but not well.
<obligatory>Penguins can drive, but not well in a way we can understand anymore.</obligatory>
82: LB is pwning everybody today.
Lots of happy sparrows. Except for one that is now looking to donate to a church.
Penguins can drive, but not well.
</poor taste>
96
So what's the consensus on "Eskimo" as itself an offensive word? People seem to go back and forth on this.
It's fine as long as they don't spell it "Esquimaux."
Honkies have 50 words for people they pushed out of the way.
Penguin joke from Antarctic Newspaper
A non-penguin joke from the same paper
The "below job" theory has been revised recently because Christopher Hitchens mentioned it in one of his last essays, but there is really nothing out there to support it.
I remember reading a fairly authoritative discussion of this issue recently, but I can't find it anymore.* One of the salient points was that the phrase has only gained popularity quite recently. The author pointed out that as late as the 1950s, Air Force pilots could refer to their new jet fighters as "blow jobs" without snickering. And if the military hasn't picked up an obscene slang term yet, you know it hasn't really caught on.
Also, I highly recommend Geoffry Numberg's new book on the word "Asshole."
*I did find this, though.
129: I remember reading a book set in the 50s (aha, which turns out to have been written in 1974*) where the main character sings, to the tune of "Stormy Weather," "Don't know why I've got lipstick on my fly . . . sloppy blow job."
*The Cheerleader. If memory serves, good girl decides to have sex, go to Bennington instead of Smith.
Well, now I know what's going to be echoing through my head for the rest of the day.
a book set in the 50s (aha, which turns out to have been written in 1974
I had a lot of period-piece confusion along those lines growing up, thinking both Summer of '42 and Happy Days were created in the eras they depicted.
OK, I missed all of last thread in real time (yesterday I only got up to the part where teo introduced his story) but, as it turns out, I have a surprising number of data points to offer:
1. Halfway through college, on a solo roadtrip, I stayed a few days with a good [platonic] friend in Chicago. I arrived late at night, she was in her bedrm having been drinking (no idea how much - "sloppy" is probably the right term), and as we were heading to bed (a big one we'd be sharing), she kissed me and grabbed my dick. I was quite surprised, and a bit grossed out by her smoking drunkness (I've always found smoking 100% gross), and so I demurred. Never mentioned again, seemed to have no effect on anything. OTOH, I've often thought that that might actually have been a good opportunity to lose my virginity with someone who wasn't BOGF.
2. Three days later, I'm on my way home, stopping over in Pgh, where I'm staying with BO-not-yet-GF. In whom I also have no sexual interest. We hang out, I go to a separate bed, where she joins me soon after and grinds into me, at which point I figure, well, why not? Worst decision of my life, obvs.
3. A month later, back at school, fooling around with BO-kind-of-GF, she tries to get (still-virginal) me to fuck her. "Oh, what the hell."
4. Most relevant: somewhere in that general timeframe, a female friend who lived on the other wing of the dorm showed up in my room extremely fucked up and came on to me. Again, no previous flirting or anything, although in this case I would certainly have been interested. Except that she was clearly out of her mind, and so I demurred, and it turned out had taken some pills, and we ended up taking her to the hospital.
5. As Josh mentioned, there was the time that a drunk, male classmate showed up at 1 am in the computer lab a couple weeks before graduation and wheedled his way into my pants. Who was I to say no? No negative repercussions whatsoever (we remained good friends for years).
6. In Brasilia, an amorous Braziliana spent the day with me, asking me back to her house to have sex, but I was too scared. Both sober, but massive communication barrier. She somehow managed to call my hotel room in Rio that night and wept on the phone to me (I still don't know what she said).
7. After BOGF and I had broken up and I'd moved out, I was giving her a ride to work (we had always shared a car, plus we still had joint custody of our dog; I should write a book about how we handled the breakup, so people know what not to do). I showed up at my old apt to pick her up, and she was still in her bathrobe. She took my dick out as I stood there passively, but in the end I told her no. Not sure how far I would have let her go before physically stopping her.
Bottom line: No idea. Mostly, I thought it was interesting how many strands of teo's actual crazy situation had appeared at various times in my life.
[pseud obscured because AB must NEVER know about item 7, although I suppose she wouldn't really care at this remove. But Jeebus.]
I'm usually not that petty, but I'm very proud that my google news alert for "horseman baby" finally hit pay dirt.
Is it true that the Eskimo language has 100 words for "blow"?
138: I spent a long time trying to figure out what the link had to do with a pre-1800 version of "Register."
The medial 's' can go blow a seal.
Provides a new spin on "OK, have it your way--you heard a seal bark."
Is this post a reference to a comment in another thread?
The thread with 900 comments and counting.
On "Eskimo": It's the standard term in use in Alaska and is not generally considered derogatory. In Canada (where the term originated and has a long history of use as a slur) it is considered derogatory and "Inuit" is preferred. The two terms are not synonymous. The Inuit are one of several Eskimo groups, but they happen to be the only one in Canada so the substitution works fine there. Some Alaskan Eskimos are also Inuit (though the term "Inupiaq" is generally used instead), but most are actually not and instead are Yup'ik, the other major Eskimo subgroup. In current scholarly usage all these terms are defined primarily by language, which is the easiest and most rigorous way to define them and correlates fairly closely with other cultural characteristics. That is, Eskimo is a language family, and Yup'ik and Inuit are languages that belong to it.
Inuits are not considered Native Americans?
This Wikipedia entry is confusing on the question. It says linguistically related (Eskimo-Aleuts), but not Eskimos. But they are more like Eskimos than anyone else. Is a quasi-Eskimo an Eskimo? Who wants a blow job?
What the fuck. This article says that the Pribilof Islands are home to the majority of the population of Aleuts, but have a total population of like 700. How many Aleuts are there?
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There is no anti-cop imprecation I could hurl which would be as damaging as just reading this link. WTF doesn't even begin to cover this one:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/ex-cop-manhunt-newspaper-delivery-women-shot.html
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And this article says a total population of around 15,000 aleuts, but only around 150 speakers of Aleut. The fucking mystery of these motherfucking quasi-Eskimos deepens.
Eskimo and Aleut are the two branches of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. Aleuts are not Eskimos but they are their closest relatives linguistically. Culturally they're quite different.
There's a big historical/cultural/genetic difference between Yup'ik/Inuit/Aleut and other Native Americans. I'm not sure if "Native American" is meant to include both, or if there's a broader term (first peoples?).
Inuits are not considered Native Americans?
Another weird thing about all this is that historically anthropologists have distinguished very carefully between Eskimos and Indians, based on the situation in Canada where they are quite distinct culturally as well as linguistically. (The situation is quite different in some parts of Alaska where there is more of a continuum culturally.) With the use of "Native American" as a synonym for "Indian" this becomes especially confusing, because by that definition Eskimos aren't Native Americans, even though they obviously are native to America. Also Aleuts don't fit into this schema at all except as a totally separate group that is nevertheless closely connected linguistically (but not otherwise) to the Eskimos. This is one of the reasons "Alaska Native" is the standard term in Alaska, avoiding this whole mess.
Also, "Inuit" is plural. "Inuk" is the singular.
Being an Alaska Native Corporation (but not necessarily an Alaska Native!) is a fantastic way to get rich on the federal teat.
Eh, it varies. Some Native corporations have indeed become enormously profitable due largely to various (and variously corrupt) federal contracting preferences put in place by Ted Stevens. Others have become successful in other ways. Most of them just kind of muddle through.
Are Aleuts part of the same migration as Inuits et al.?
Er, no s.
Hard to say for sure. There's really no consensus on how many migrations there were and who came when. The current distribution of Eskimo groups is clearly the result of some fairly recent migrations that probably postdate the one(s) that brought the Aleuts to the Aleutians, but everything in this field of study is surprisingly murky when you start to look closely at it.
A Canadian friend gave me such shit for using "Eskimo," and I didn't know anything except that I had a friend growing up whose family identified as Eskimo, using that word. I will report back that we were both right and both wrong, which should please the Canadian sensibility.
I would like to read a book on what's known (and how it's known) about major radiations like the Eskimo, Polynesians, Bantu, etc. There were interesting snippets in Diamond's books, but tangentially and superficially.
That would be an interesting book. I'm not sure it exists, though I'm sure there are good books on some individual migrations.
Do it. Actually even better would be to do a Kon-Tiki style migration reenactment for each group involved, only with slightly less crackpot anthropology. If you do the Northwest Passage in a seal skin kayak you will have earned all the Ho jobos and Bo jobos you can handle.
Give it another couple of years of ACC and he'll be able to do the Northwest Passage in an inflated inner tube.
165. A white friend in Edmonton was told by a [Yukon native?], "Oh we're Eskimos. The Inuit are all in Ottawa, lobbying."
171: Heh. There's a dimension of political awareness/activism to the choice of terminology as well. I don't know how this works in Canada, but in Alaska the only people who tend to use "Inuit" in place of "Eskimo" are young people who are very politically aware and tuned into the international indigenous rights movement and organizations like the Inuit Circumpolar Council (which despite its name includes all Eskimo groups). Over time this may lead to a general shift in terminology, but it hasn't yet.
Speaking of the international indigenous, what's the last migration in human history that counts as indigenous? New Zealand?
That was me, obviously.
New Zealand and Greenland are I guess almost the same time.
Hm, that's a tricky one for several reasons.
In North America, which is the area I know the best, I guess I would say probably the Numic expansion, which was ongoing at contact. There may have been other migrations ongoing at that time, or completed shortly before, but migrations are notoriously difficult to document archaeologically.
Oh, but there's indigenous people displaced by pre-Columbian expansions, like the Berber. I should have known that, but somehow forgot.
Now I'm really curious about whether Basque nationalists identify as indigenous...
Depending on how you define indigenous, you might count the the expansion of the Sioux.
Right, or the Comanche expansion onto the Plains from the other direction during the same period.
Iceland? When I was there they were saying that no one had been there before the Vikings.
Iceland would count by these criteria, I think, but it's quite a bit earlier than these other examples.
178: I had forgotten about that article. He's been doing such good work for so long, it's really quite amazing.
re: 177.last
I guess they maybe do. I'm not sure how much Basque nationalism keeps abreast of genetic research. But I used to have a Basque flatmate who was very keen to point out that Basques are a distinct ethnic group that predates 'Spanish' settlement in the area. She had some postcards and things that her family sent with stereotypically Basque looking people on them: blonde rather than dark, for example. So she was certainly aware of the claim to being an ancient historic population.
The genetics change all the time, but it's fairly plausible* that much of the population of Europe (especially along the western edge) is at least partly descended from the first people who moved in after the ice-sheets rolled back. So that makes them indigenous, I suppose.
* or was, the genetics/anthropology blogs I read give the sense its a field in total flux as new and better data comes along.
the genetics/anthropology blogs I read give the sense its a field in total flux as new and better data comes along.
It definitely is. I'm most familiar with the North American literature, of course, but from what I've seen of work on other areas it's pretty much all in flux and without a whole lot of firm consensus.
NZ depends a lot on when you date it --- esp if you pick the dates for first possible arrival vs end of the migration.
Anyway the whole concept of indigenity is, as far as I can tell, leaky as fuck. (Which is good cause it's a political concept and so useful.) But take the British Isles, say. Is there an indigenousness in Ireland? Scotland? The UK?
(Malaysia? Indonesia? etc etc)
Also obviously it's super problematic to talk about Maori as tangata whenua without being aware of the various ways that hapu and iwi have contested control of various bits of land & how those process are tied up with processes of colonisation etc.
See also Moriori as an interesting historical (and historiographic) issue.
Adrian Targett, probably (partly) indigenous to the British Isles.
Was just reading an article on Doggerland (the other side of England from Somerset, but at least partially still in existence at the time of Mr. Targett's ancestor).
Scottish Highlanders say 100 years ago appear to me to be pretty squarely an indigenous people. That is, yes the concept is tricky around the edges, but they're not an edge case. I'm having trouble sorting out enough of what has happened since to figure out how much of an indigenous population there still is in Scotland.
I was trying to figure out cases where you have clear indigenous/nonindigenous people without a "racial" difference. There's a bunch of good Asian examples: Tibet, Taiwan, Ainu, etc.
I was trying to figure out cases where you have clear indigenous/nonindigenous people without a "racial" difference.
Not sure what you mean here. Like Basques in Spain and France, South Arabian speakers in Dhofar, etc.?
I don't know which came first.
I gave several examples. Basques were a border case I wasn't sure on. Tibetans vis-a-vis Han Chinese are a straightforward case, as are Taiwanese Aboriginal people (though since they're Austronesian you might say they're a different "race" from Han Chinese). The pre-Islamic expansion natives of the Middle East and North Africa are another good source of examples, and your Dhofar example may be a good one, I just don't know much there. You certainly see Berbers, Kurds, Bedouin, Assyrians, etc. on some lists of indigenous peoples.
192: I did run accross an article arguing that the Scots-Irish of Appalachia have a lot in common with indigenous people. Though obviously there's a lot they don't share.
Another fascinating border case where the issue is arriving too late, are the Gullah.
From what I can tell Ainu are not a separate race from Japanese, but they do often have distinctive physical characteristics, although they've been heavily assimilated.
Right. Ainu/Japanese is an example of an indigenous and non-indigenous people living in the same place where they're "the same race" (whatever that means).
The Dillon Panthers and East Dillon Lions?
What sense of "race" are you using? Tibetans are genetically very close to Han, culturally and linguistically quite distinct. Ainu is apparently a linguistic isolate, but the people have been culturally assimilated to Japanese and mostly don't speak it. The genetic affinities of modern Assyrians is debatable, but they speak Aramaic, which is certainly intrusive, though earlier than Arabic. Culturally they're Christians in a predominantly Muslim region - both recent developments. Some Kurds claim descent from the Median empire, which would tell against any sort of indigeneity. Again, I don't grasp what you're trying to say.
"Race" like "indigenous" doesn't have a rigorous definition. Basically I hadn't thought much before about what the lay of the land is in terms of what indigenous people do and don't have in common with each other throughout the world, and for thinking about that it's useful to have in mind some cases where Native American/White American doesn't cleanly map on to the local situation.
For example, there's a major way in which Highland/Island Scots are very different from say Aboriginal Australians, which is that Scots could move to America and become just white. That's going to change the longterm dynamics.
it's useful to have in mind some cases where Native American/White American doesn't cleanly map on to the local situation.
Ah. Like Mexico, then.
As a rule of thumb I submit that what indigenous peoples have in common is due to coincidence and what they don't have in common is everything about the world they live in. You could, I suppose, argue that there's a superficial similarity in the circumstances of Americans and Australians - both peoples had their countries stolen by genocidal Brits and Irish. But their original cultures, to the extent that they survive, are very different, so I would tread carefully in making too many analogies.
202: this is basically the first two lectures of the US history as I teach it.
Come spring, I'm going to try to kick this Vicodin habit and get some new fingers.
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OH MY GOD this is the longest day of my goddamn life. How is it only 11:30 in the morning. Stop fighting. Stop being obnoxious. I have planned activities but we don't have to leave the house for another hour. I'm considering just strapping them in the car and going for a drive.
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I have my two little ones solo this weekend as well. They're driving me insane.
Surprisingly relevant: AB & I were having an intimate marital moment this morning, when Kai started crying out in pain upstairs. We assumed he was altercating with his sister, but it turned out that he'd gotten his dick caught in his zipper. Frowny faces all around.
210: that's some bad voodoo or something
I'm really ready for mine to be older than they are. The noise-for-noise's-sake (hey, I just invented a new annoying sound that I will now repeat until Dad freaks the fuck out) is exhausting.
When very old children get bored but have internet access.
212: Heh, I got up at 930 and hadn't even heard mine yet. They'd cut themselves a piece of pie for breakfast and were downstairs watching Archer.
Mine are at great ages (4 & 8), but it drives me insane how poorly they get along. But they're very different people, so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. I hope it gets better before they reach the stage of shitty teen and annoying kid brother. I'd like them to have some fond memories of their shared childhood*.
* they do have some, but it's pretty much an exception; it's mostly stark because, when one is home, it's usually pure delight.
They'd cut themselves a piece of pie for breakfast and were downstairs watching Archer.
You let your CHILDREN watch ARCHER?!
I just told the kids I was putting myself in time-out, and shut myself in my room, because I was becoming such a short-tempered asshole. Dora the Explorasitter is watching them right now.
