I'll just add my original question, and I quote:
I've been reading Unfogged for a couple of years, and working on de-lurking for a few months. But it's a little weirder than "coming out" on other blogs, isn't it? There's something intriguing about Unfogged: namely, it's far more conversational than any other internet I read. I might also say insular--not subject-wise, but I don't get the idea that random people are dropping by all the time.
Which demands the question, "how did I get here?" And I have honestly no idea. And yet, this is one of my favorite corners of the internet.
Also, I'm fairly certain I got here through some thread on Sadly, No--but even that strikes me as a flimsy memory. I don't see many, or any, of those folks over here, so if it was a link or comment that lead me here, it was a fluke.
Via Crooked Timber way back in the days when a long comment thread was like 11 comments. I stopped coming by for a while, dropped back in in time to catch a horrible blowup between BPhD and Ogged which really turned me off for a year or two, and then returned in my current incarnation.
I came here from 11d and, secondarily, Crooked Timber. I can't remember what brought me over, but I'd only read a day or two before I started commenting. I was making puns with a week. This was after ogged quit for good (certain election day posts excepted), but not very long after.
I think I got here via Larry Summers; he and I were sitting on the lanai at the faculty club at Harvard during one of my occasional jaunts back home from my job working on some rather hush hush business with ADCS out west discussing our mutual difficulties attracting the smoking hot humanities grad students we craved, on his part due to the misinterpretation of his impolitic but terribly brave comments on the academy, and on my part due to the toe fungus so visually and olfactorily obvious through my government-mandated open-toed sandals. Well, one thing led to the other after my return to California, and I found myself with quite a bit of extra time and nobody to talk to after the death of the monkey that had been chosen to accompany me during my seventeen weeks in an isolation tank, so I fired up my blackberry and checked things out. Soon enough my toe fungus was healed, and I was hooked!
I started reading Unfogged in the summer of 2005. I think I got here originally from Yglesias, several blogs back when he had a blogroll and Unfogged was on it.
I think I remember getting here through The Valve, possibly via SEK. Or maybe just Crooked Timber, and I'm misremembering.
I got here through passion, hard work, dedication, and commitment, like anything worth doing.
I think not directly from Crooked Timber, although at the time that had mostly replaced Making Light as my first port of call and blogroll to follow. The post I first read was the "how many five year olds" thread. So I have seen a lot of the original bannings, unbannings and stormings off. I remember the kick I got when LB came on board, since she was one of my favourite commenters around the blogosphere with no blog of her own.
I think probably BitchPhD, which begs the question of how I got there, to which I have no answer. Oh, except I'm sure it was from a mommy blog of some sort, because that was what I mostly read back then. And it must have been at least six or seven years ago, maybe longer.
For a long time, though, I only read the posts, not the comments, and I never commented because I had a full-time job, a kid, and I was in school. I didn't have time for conversations, ha. I only started very occasionally commenting after I quit my job eighteen months ago, and then slightly more occasionally commenting after I dropped out of school last year. Still mostly a lurker, though.
I think I was first here because of one of ogged's criticisms of Leiter. I remember his Wesley Clark crush, so I must have been reading semi-regularly in 03-04.
15 days until the tenth anniversary of the blog.
Mostly a lurker, and I have been for years now... maybe five? I have no idea how I found this place either.
I think I like it because, as Mentioner says, unfogged is rather unlike most blogs. Feels like you happened to just run into a cafe with dozens of friends hanging around, talking about interesting things.
In fact, this has led to an impression I have (possibly wrong) that you all know each other in real life. That is part of what makes this place awesome to read, but it also makes de-lurking feel a whole lot more like rudely butting in on a group of friends chatting than contributing to a normal blog.
For reals, I guess through Brad DeLong, and I remember Ogfed saying he was sort of in favor of the Iraq war because his Iranian relatives wanted freedom imposed from abroad, so that must have been ... a really long time ago.
I only started commenting in maybe 2008? Once it felt too creepy and voyeuristic not to, and also when I felt you all were finally prepared to receive enlightenment.
G, though I was reading here when he was a lower case g.
Unfortunately I'm not sure I can say how I got here specifically without outing myself, b/c I originally commented in my real name, but I was lurking on and off via links or odd references from Bitch PhD, Crooked Timber, Yglesias. But I really got sucked in when an ex/friend started bitching to me about the blog's extreme cruelty in mocking real people which struck him as exemplary of a certain culture of intelligent callousness that he found deeply depressing. He was really depressed in general and really upset by some specific post, and after reading about it, I decided to point out the mean element. I don't think I was very persuasive, and pretty much annoyed everyone, but that was my priggish start. The friend is long gone, having rather cruelly cut me off without warning b/c his girlfriend demanded it 2+ years into their relationship, and I am much more cynical and willing to mock people now, and get to hang out on unfogged quite often. Wins all around.
I feel like I've been around longer than since 2006, but that's when. I had a blog 2004-2005 that was fun, but very political and angry, and in Jan 2006 I started ITNSII? BPhD asked me to do a few guest posts at her place, and introduced me to Unfogged.
12: Flattery will get you anywhere.
I don't remember how I got here -- could have been CT, or Yglesias, or Pandagon back when it was Willis and Klein, or ObWi. I'm actually surprised that I was memorable anywhere before here -- I must have compressed the amount of time I was commenting before finding this place (around when tologosh did).
Not sure. Maybe via Obsidian Wings. I remember heading to the Flophouse with BR and both of us wondering whether we were insane for meeting these people face-to-face.
15, 16: Lots of people know each other in real life now, but almost everyone met in the comments here. New people really aren't an intrusion at all.
I am convinced that neb and Lb have a secret chart where they have listed how each commenter arrived.
I showed up sometime in 2006 as well. Also having been referred via reading of BitchPhD. It's crazy to think it's been that long.
I'm actually surprised that I was memorable anywhere before here
It was recognizing your pseud from Obsidian Wings that convinced me there must be something worthwhile here. I'm still looking for that, by the way.
23
Thanks!
New people do seem to be fairly rare though, no? Or, maybe there is some universal lurk:comment ratio that all blogs participate in.
I got here through apostropher.com, which is now for sale, apparently.
27: I would say it's true that we get fewer drive-bys than most blog communities. Part of it, I think, is just that when you click to open the comments, it's a whole new page without the post at the top. It sounds silly, but it's apparent that the conversation is not 40 comments responding individually to the post itself (which is how shitty comment sections work--"Nice post!" "You are wrong!" etc. "You" here almost never means "the person who wrote the post).
There are other reasons, I'm sure, why people don't comment. I always find it funny when I run into people who read or have read Unfogged, but not the comments.
I think we had a lot more flux in and out back in the Bush administration, when the political blogosphere was livelier and linkier. Now, there's less going on to attract people who aren't already invested.
I do miss arguing at ObWi. They had conservatives who it seemed like you could maybe get through to.
Yeah but they only let you post a comment once.
ObWi was a great place. I think Carp was the person there who referenced Unfogged.
Must be nice to be able to correct your multiple posts.
I actually have perfect spelling, but LB changes my comments just to screw with me.
Around my last year or two of college, I started to read all the blogs and became aware of all internet traditions. Including this one. I don't think it was on my blogroll at the time, but a lot of quasi-affiliated blogs (BPhD, Examined Life, etc) were? I lurked for years before I commented.
maybe there is some universal lurk:comment ratio that all blogs participate in
I bet the higher quality the commenters, the higher this ratio is. If the comments are crap, nobody reads them, even the commenters themselves -- everyone just zooms in, says their piece, and zooms out. If the comments are masterpieces of erudition, then the bar for commenting is a lot higher; people will read them for the insights but refrain from commenting because they don't feel like they can contribute on the same level.
Where unfogged falls on this continuum is left as an exercise for the reader.
I always find it funny when I run into people who read or have read Unfogged, but not the comments.
There are posts!?
If the comments are masterpieces of erudition, then check if the sky is green and birds can talk because shit has gotten weird.
I first came here from Crooked Timber* back in 2005. I lurked for quite a while before I started commenting though.
*And I found Crooked Timber through Cosma Shalizi's site that I'd been visiting since the 90s.
The earliest comments of mine that I can find are from summer of 06, but I was definitely reading for at least a few months before I started commenting (in part, because I couldn't come up with a pseudonym). So I think I started reading sometime in early 06, though I can't remember how I found the site or what exactly the first thread I read was. Definitely my early image of the site is 1000 comment threads about sex and feminism with many comments from Tia and LB.
I got here when ogged linked to my (no longer existing) blog in 2003.
my (no longer existing) blog
Huh. What happened?
Necrotizing Fasciitis By Internet.
I got here when ogged linked to my (no longer existing) blog in 2003.
I don't recall how I started reading Unfogged (Yglesias? Crooked Timber? Something like that, and a long time ago), but I do remember when Ogged linked to a post of mine. It was a bad post, churlish and unamusing, and it was a comment on something here. Ogged's post was actually quite nice, and the brief comment thread that followed was very welcoming, but I was embarrassed by the whole thing and ran away quickly. Some time later I started commenting semi-regularly.
I let the domain expire. I hadn't posted anything there in a long time.
Via the DE, who used to read me choice comments, and who got here via Bitch, as I remember it. Sorry about that.
I started following Unfogged sometime in 2004, as I had already been reading here for a while when the blogger with ovaries was added. I have no memory at all of how I got here. Somehow it took until 2010 (and meeting some of you reprobates in person) for me to start actually commenting.
Yeah, Blandings, I think of you as a newbie, but you have weirdly comprehensive knowledge of the archives.
51
I think I would have a hard time meeting-up without already having some comments under my belt.
I don't remember exactly how I got here -- has to be either Bitch PhD or -- does this even make sense -- Kevin Drum?
I was reading a lot of Bitch PhD during the early stages of my divorce in 2006. That's the most likely culprit. The earliest comment I found (under my old pseud) was 9/06, but I didn't get a fruit basket until 4/07.
That's the most likely culprit.
(For the divorce, of course.)
54: otter guest blogged for Kevin drum at one point.
Bitch PHd is to blame for many divorces.
KPCC -> Volokh -> {Yglesias, Drum, Pandagon} -> Here.
otter guest blogged for Kevin drum at one point.
First arrived in August '03, via the Poor Man. Never really commented, mostly because I can't think of a good pseudonym.
The Editors accused me of blog cheating when I first started commenting here. There were tears.
I think I landed here a few times over the years via links from Pandagon, CT and the like, but kind of WTFed at the comments section and did notstick around. I think it was finally a Michael Bérubé comment over at CT about Unfogged having the "best comment section on the internet" that led to me actually reading one (there was some CT/Unfogged inteprlay going on about disability).
The first comments I recall making were during the Great Font Insurrection of 2007 (great but short-lived, and stripped of its history by the scorched font policies of the blogmeisters ogged).
||
This seems like the sort of thing the Mineshaft would appreciate.
|>
53: I was in the middle of a divorce and feeling like I had very much narrowed my circle during my married years, was going to lose roughly half of even that narrower circle, and needed to find some ways to branch out again. Going to a meetup: an idea so crazy, it just might work. I could not possibly have imagined how well it would work.
I started reading when Bob posted, but not Labs. Probably the winter of 03-04.
So apparently I've read Unfogged for 27% of my life, or 60% of my adult life.
I first started reading the front page posts back when ogged still supported the Iraq war -- what would that have been? 2003 or 2004? I think my first visit may have been following a link from DeLong. I read intermittently for a few years before discovering the comments in 2006 or so. My first comment was mid-2007.
66: I assume that was the one where I spilled your beer in my lap.
My handle takes on a whole new significance, I guess.
I wasn't actually much of a fan of the blog for a long time, I read all kinds of crap then (Tacitus comments!). I clicked through from Mark Schmitt's blog sometimes - his blogroll was only like five links.
I mostly liked Bob, and he quit.
I saw an unf post or two, so it must have been a while back. Maybe from mark schmitt's blog, maybe from instapundit. didn't comment much for several years, arguably still haven't commented much.
The blog's really been goin downhill since Bob left.
I always find it funny when I run into people who read or have read Unfogged, but not the comments.
Such people exist?! Poor shmucks.
I recall slolerner bringing me here. And for a long time, people apparently thought I was a woman. I also had a couple of other pseuds -- and not -- before settling on this one.
That was a very interesting anecdote!
I think I got to BPhD literally by googling "feminism" or something, because I'd recently had the lightbulb go on and wanted to find out more.
And now back to the world's longest and stupidest Keynote presentation. See you when it's done!
78: I was wondering where you'd been lately.
79: I only really comment, except late at night, when I don't have a lot to do.* I know this marks me as lacking the essentials (including buoyancy) to comment in the big leagues.
* Or sometimes when I'm writing and need a break between bouts of productivity.
Unfogged
A two-person blog is a great idea, and this is the very clever product of "Unf" and "ogged." Plus, their friend Bob, which gives the whole thing a Kevin Smith feel. It's a great blog all around, but now that Unf is back, they're hitting on all cylinders. Plus, they were among the first to link to me.
I just wasted about an hour poking around looking for early comments of mine (duckduckgo seems to be much better at trawling TFA than Google, but you can't easily sort by date without drastically narrowing the database; I used "06" and "07" as search terms to try to pin things down, but I couldn't figure out how to restrict it to, say, "-07" [and thus avoid Julys] without making it an excluder. I suck at the internet), and it looks like the end of '06 is when I started occasionally commenting, with an inflection point coming after a (temporary) breakup the following Valentine's Day. I got here via BPhD's blog, which in turn I found from CT or something other part of the academic blogosphere; I think I may have been reading AWB's and Tia's blogs before I really started reading Unfogged. As for why--partly what Blandings said, the faint hope of meeting smart and interesting people in real life, at a time when doing so through normal channels seemed beyond me. And partly as a simultaneous performance of, and escape from, the role of 'failing grad student.'
Oh yes, I was definitely regularly reading both AWB and No Tickling! back then.
Incidentally, how much traffic *does* Unfogged get these days? I feel like there aren't all that many commenters; does the traffic imply that there's some huge number of lurkers out there?
I feel like there aren't all that many commenters
Few enough, it seems, that a couple of weeks before my three-year anniversary, I'm apparently still a "newbie".
Someone - I think Becks - used to crunch the numbers and tell us who were the biggest commenters, etc. I honestly don't know where that information even is. I know that we're way, way down from our peak, but I don't think we're hemorrhaging readers the way we were the first year after Ogged left.
I don't think of you as being a newbie, Blandie. I think of you as showing up about the same time as Smearcase, because all of a sudden there were two Misters, which was briefly confusing. I think of both of you as regulars.
What's great is that ever since I first started lurking, there have always been conversations about how good it was back in the day, back when it was funny, etc. So Unfogged was funny on one single occasion maybe in 2003, and has just been on one big nostalgia trip ever since.
87: I'm pretty sure the guy who called me a newbie knows when Smearcase showed up.
I started reading in '03 or so, when I had my own pop culture-ish blog and was entirely sure I wouldn't fit in here.once I was with Lee and foster-blogging with this pseud since '09 or so, it was only a matter of time until someone mentioned my undergrad thesis topic and I had to start talking! And so to bed.
A political blog linked to some post of Ogged's in ought-five, and I came here to argue with him.
32: I do miss arguing at ObWi. They had conservatives who it seemed like you could maybe get through to.
I know (as a reader, not a commenter). Like Moe Lane's stuff used to be interesting to read. I checked out what he's writing on RedState the other day, and it just makes my skin crawl. Or Tacitus himself, for heaven's sake, who at some point crossed the line from "deeply disagree but worth reading" to "ick." I've never figured out exactly what happened.
slate->instapundit->Marginal Revolution->From the Archives->unfogged
I don't read any of the intermediate steps anymore, although I do still consult Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide.
This is my ealiest comment I can find: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_10238.html#1124909
I've never figured out exactly what happened.
LSD Ocean World. Pomposion X. Rage cloud. Shit'll mess you up eventually.
I remember Redstate itself as always awful, but then spiraling into complete madness.
91: I had no idea you were before me here.
I did an estimate of comments by year some time back (just using the comment numbers) but not coming up with the search terms to find it. I think it was near the beginning of last year.
96: He changed his pseud at some point.
99: So we'll cut you some slack.
I think I found this blog while looking for a header image for the then in-development Crooked Timber--maybe early summer of 2003. IIRC, I came very close to ripping off the branch image, or part of it (because TIMBER, see). Good job I didn't. I think I've got some pretty early-days comments here before I was swallowed by my pseudonym.
103: huh, in my memory you did steal it briefly, and then ogged got all offended because he had actually taken the picture.
Regardless of what actually happened, that's what I'll go with.
I have no idea when I started reading, I think first comment thread I was involved with was an argument about blade-running-man between Bitch & ors and Ogged & ors. (From memory.)
I'm pretty sure I got here via the "just wandered over from Unfogged by mistake" tag on a CT post. Sometime in 2007, maybe? It took a fairly dire spate of grad-school procrastination to make me click on the comments, and then, as for Blandings and trapnel, months of serious social isolation (after a cross-country move and academic culture shock) to make me start commenting. But I very rarely seem to catch active threads, so I tend not to comment much.
104: I don't think that actually happened. We got a much higher-quality picture on the up-and-up, and from a real photographer, too, and it's the only one we've ever used.
CT Trivia: the other name we considered--and I much preferred--was "The Grumbling Hive", after a line from The Fable of the Bees. Much better than that Isaiah Berlin/Kant rubbish.
There as active as you make 'em, GB! Try my strategy: if things seem slow, drive everybody away by googling random bullshit about ponies or sharting.
Von Wafer had other pseuds before he commented under his real name? Did I know that before?
I briefly had other pseuds, yes. Then I commented under my name. Then Tweety convinced me that was a bad idea, so I adopted Von Wafer. Now I ride the pine in China.
That story gets better and better, doesn't it? A classic in the making!
My 2004-era group blog had such a dorky name.
I wonder if my prolific erstwhile coblogger is pseudonymously blogging or commenting anywhere these days. There was a time when it seemed like he could have become at least a B-lister before he seemed to lose interest.
I started lurking here maybe eight or nine years ago back in the blogsplosion days of Calpundit and Yglesias and a very different Crooked Timber; I got here somewhere from there during the final years of my wasted undergraduate education. Then I remember sitting in the UC Berkeley library's public computers, in the midst of the darkness of Bush's second term, reading your many different solitary, principled visions of how to deal with our future -- this was around the time of ogged's departure. Since then I've never stopped coming here a couple times a week (though I've almost always successfully fought the urge to delurk) -- this place has remained unlike anywhere else on the internet despite any number of curveballs it's been thrown. I wonder how many other lurkers there are like me for whom unfogged has become a constant fixture: you guys have become part of my model of the world in a certain subtle way, and in a manner most salutary. Thanks, unfogged.
Now I'm a somewhat frustrated advanced grad student in Chicago and I'm drinking at home with my wife on a Sunday night for no reason and I have to teach in the morning. A toast to tomorrow.
Then Tweety convinced me that was a bad idea
I what? Really? Between this and convincing Moby he should be drinking a buttload of Drambuie I should really keep better track of what I'm talking people into.
This reminds me: you were totally right about that artichoke thing, Tweety. I had no idea it would fit in there like that.
Oh, that I remember. Nature finds a way, Stan.
I think we had a lot more flux in and out back in the Bush administration, when the political blogosphere was livelier and linkier
I started reading in 2004, when the election inspired me to read a bunch of blogs. That was really the only time when I was actively exploring the blogosphere. Since then I've mostly continued to follow people that I started reading at that point.
It feels weird to go to a new blog, read a couple comments, and realize that I don't know any of the people in the comment section.
54: otter guest blogged for Kevin drum at one point.
That made me think of Respectful of Otters which was for a while one of my favorite blogs.
I got here through Bitch, PhD as far as I can recall, possibly around 2006? It looks like I first commented in 2009, and slowly (very slowly) began working up the nerve to chime in more often.
"Angela Lurkel" is a pretty good pseud!
119: Stanley "Heh"ed that back in 2010. Try to keep up, neb.
Yeah, "Angela Lurkel" is fantastic.
I started after Sherry mentioned Unfogged in Stay of Execution, circa 2005.
The blog's really been goin downhill since Bob left.
FWIW, I think the last couple of years have been a good incarnation of unfogged. Less busy, less dense (and less competitive) than the heyday, but very humane.
In fact, this has led to an impression I have (possibly wrong) that you all know each other in real life.
In addition to the occasional meet-ups one also tends to accumulate a lot of biographical information about the regulars. I'm sure that contributes to the impression (one of my irrational fears about meeting people in real life is that I will be embarrassed by failing to remember important things that they've shared here and will feel like I'm being rude.)
</Earnestness>
FWIW, I think the last couple of years have been a good incarnation of unfogged. Less busy, less dense (and less competitive) than the heyday, but very humane.
I agree.
Try to keep up, neb.
78. I find it insufferable to the way people spread word about the latest novelties and make a fuss over them. I am charmed by the man who remains unaware of such fashions until they have become quite an old story to everyone else. …
79. A man should avoid displaying deep familiarity with any subject. Can one imagine a well-bred man talking with the air of a know-it-all, even about a matter with which he is in fact familiar? … It is impressive when a man is always slow to speak, even on subjects he knows thoroughly, and does not speak at all unless questioned.
Less busy,
I'm not contradicting this, but keeping up with all the threads must still take an insane amount of time.
114: I asked the bartender, and I'm the only one who drinks Drambuie.
I was personally invited to comment by Matt Weiner.
I read the Invisible Adjunct archives around the time IA stopped blogging and got to Unfogged through some old comment thread there. I started to read and comment during the week of the party where ogged met the Swedish grad student. I have the impression that a lot of people started commenting sometime in the first six months after the 2004 election, though many from that time are no longer around.
I started reading in the first few months after the 2004 election, if I recall correctly. That had more to do with a change of jobs on my part at the time than with the election directly, though. I can't recall exactly what led me here. Could have been CT, could have been Saiselgy.
I didn't start commenting for some time after that.
though many from that time are no longer around
Yeah, like a million Iraqi civilians. You have a lot to answer for, ogged!
I've been kind of mad at VW for interpreting me so uncharitably in that other thread, but 133 makes me think I got off easy.
134: huh, I thought I was pretty careful to say, over and over again, that I was happy to give you the benefit of the doubt because you're you, and that the only reason I began to feel troubled by the story was first that it seemed so completely out of character for you and then, after you decided that you weren't likely to some horrible disease, that you didn't seem especially fussed about the whole episode.
I mean, if you want me to bend over even further backward on your behalf, you're going to have to blow me first.
Like those million Iraqi civilians did!
At least a million. I'm still chafed.
That's sort of a weird image, I must admit.
What, you've never seen an circumcised penis? Antisemite.
Wot, guv'nor, step inside to see an 'ircumcised penis, only a shilling, the toast of Basra, guv.
135: Yeah, I mean, I'm willing to believe you did say that, but it didn't stand out to me when I was reading the thread (and I'm sure as hell not wading back in there to check). What did stand out was that other people kept trying to give me the benefit of the doubt based on some of my comments and you kept pushing back by focusing on the comments that you interpreted as indicating I wasn't especially fussed about it and explicitly saying that they overruled the others.
I just feel like I made those comments in response to your comments but not really understanding what you were talking about, and instead of asking me to clarify when my responses seemed callous and out of character you just took them at face value as evidence that I was some sort of remorseless monster. I explained this before, so I'm sure you know it, but just to reiterate: when you and others kept talking about how I should be freaked out I thought you were talking only about my personal safety, which a whole lot of people later in the thread seemed to be concerned about too. My responses that I wasn't freaked out referred only to that. (The "wacky adventure" phrasing was a bad way to express what I was thinking, I admit, and I really regret it.)
I guess I just assumed that it would be obvious from the story itself that I knew I had made a huge mistake and that I regretted it, but clearly it wasn't, and that was my fault for not explicitly saying so at the time. Anyway, I'm sure people are sick of me going on and on about this, and I'm not really very mad at you anymore, but this was one loose end that's been bugging me all weekend and I felt like I needed to talk to you about it.
In some future thread, somebody will say they started reading here during the blowjobs.
To be fair, it was really just one blowjob, followed by thousands of comments.
But I will shut up about it now. 142 was just something I felt like I needed to get off my chest.
144: you're forgetting VW's million.
Er, million blowjobs. I'm sure he hasn't posted that many comments yet.
Ah, true. I'm not sure if foreign blowjobs count.
Man I must admit at this point I am nearly out of blowjob jokes. Maybe this Joan Didion thing I'm reading will have blowjobs in it.
I don't think Joan Didion is really known for her blowjobs.
142: so you're not willing to go back and read the thread, but you want to hash things out with me here? Okay, I guess, but I'm afraid this isn't a great idea.
Regardless, for my part, I think you're a wonderfully bright and decent guy who did a pretty horrible thing (not that I think it's really any of my business). That you've subsequently realized as much speaks well of you, I think, but I had no sense that that's where your head was the night in question. And, let's be clear here, neither did a great many other people. Which is to say, a number of other people viewed the incident and your reaction to it very much as I did. Indeed, as I said in that thread, both the tone and content of your comments explicitly led me to believe that you were being quite cavalier. Again, you seem to have done a great deal of soul-searching since then, and I'm glad of that.
Even having said all of that, I went quite far out of my way, given how upset I was by your story, to note in that thread that I believed that you, because you're you, deserved many benefits of the doubt. I was quite clear that I wasn't there, that I wasn't interested in judging you, and that the whole thing seemed entirely out of character for you. That that wasn't enough for you is, well, I'm not sure what it is.
As for my argument with Halford, I'm sorry if that put you off. He and I sometimes argue. But even given that context, what I was saying at the time was that I didn't understand his view of your comments and -- as I made clear at least once -- I wanted to be convinced by him that I had misread you.
Like Moe Lane's stuff used to be interesting to read. I checked out what he's writing on RedState the other day, and it just makes my skin crawl. Or Tacitus himself, for heaven's sake, who at some point crossed the line from "deeply disagree but worth reading" to "ick." I've never figured out exactly what happened.
Both Moe and Tac were only ever good at keeping the mask on for a while. Even when he was posting at ObWi, if you found Moe's comments at right-wing blogs he sounded just like any other wingnut. Same with Tac at his first, now-deleted, blog (before he started using the pseud).
152: Fair enough, and I really don't want to keep rehashing this here. I accept that your characterization is a reasonable way to interpret what I said from your perspective. I'm sad that I wasn't able to convince you that I realized at the time that I had fucked up bad, but again that's my fault for not saying so up front. I think that's where we'll have to leave this.
154: you have nothing to be sad about with regard to me, teo. And for what it's worth, I don't think fault has anything to do with it. Also, I've subsequently accepted that you were rattled enough at the time that your tone, as I (mis)read it, didn't accurately reflect how you were feeling.
I've subsequently accepted that you were rattled enough at the time that your tone, as I (mis)read it, didn't accurately reflect how you were feeling.
Thanks, I really appreciate that.
I'm not sure what step amends is in the program, but I think you should have a drink.
Comity!
I know where this is going. Just come out and say it, VW: teo's never going to feel totally absolved until he gets a Ph.D. in history.
The earliest comment I can find from myself is late 2005. So that would have been when I found unfogged, I wouldn't have lurked, I don't think. I came via CT.
I started writing a long comment in the original thread explaining in detail my thought process at the time and since, but scrapped it because it's not worth drawing this out any longer. I think at this point everyone accepts that I realize that what I did was very wrong and that I am very sorry for it.
One for Halford here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/10/kalahari-metalheads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2013/feb/10/botswana-heavy-metal-pictures
I think it was spring 2006 - came over from Bitch, whom I'd been reading for a while. I don't think I read for long before attempting to join in. Elsewhere, chatting privately with RL friends, I see that in June 2006 I was joking about "these Americans I'm trying to impress" and saying that I thought my infiltration would take the rest of my thirties (I was 35 then), and then in March 2007 doing a little fist pump that I was mentioned - by Idontpay I think? - in a comment thread in which I hadn't participated.
Christmas 2006, I was stuck with the parents for 2 weeks and dodging out to check in on Unfogged helped. Fruit basket was January 2007. http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_6154.html#478925
3. togolosh, are you me?
65. I can't believe that map leaves out Wetwang in East Yorkshire.
I've been lurking so long I can't quite remember how I got here. Most likely from Crooked Timber like most of you all (odd that Unfogged is not on the blogroll there). Possibly from the Poor Man - maybe even via Apo's comments there. I think there's a comment from me in 2005 and another from 2009. I only started commenting semi-regularly for the last few months. Chris y encouraged me to hang out in comments more (thanks chris).
169 --- no idea if this is the reason or not (my memory runneth not to the times this would have happened) but I think we may be, as it were, in the wardrobe.
God knows. Probably via CT? Or via Brad DeLong? My first comment is from 2006, IIRC... this, however, is my highest comment so far (5,950 ft). Even as I type the pitiless winds are whipping snow against the windows. Raving, ice-clumped lunatics stagger in through the door shaking the snow from their beards and demanding antiseptic for their penguin bites.
Not much more masturbating to Pope Benedict qua Pope.
"Both Moe and Tac were only ever good at keeping the mask on for a while."
Seconded.
(odd that Unfogged is not on the blogroll there)
Absence noted by bob (with bonus overwrought commentary) in this comment from late 2009. So probably fell off not too long before then.
I came by here during the Democratic primaries of 2004 and stuck around as hopes were raised that Bush II would have only one term. (I also stayed to see Ogged troll the blog.) The long hangover from that kept me immobile and incapable of leaving. I have no idea how I got here. CT or Drum or Sausagely? It looks like I didn't start commenting until later. That's not my what I recall, but OK.
Ile, I only figured out in the last month or so that you were the person I liked to read under your real name. I just wanted to say that I appreciated your writing elsewhere and really enjoy it when you're around here. Mara's best friend is from India and his mom made a little bread when we were over there and showed us how she'd roll up bits and feed it to him with spices, though Mara mostly had hers plain, and I told Mara the story of your mom feeding you and how parents find special ways to connect with their children that they both remember as they grow older. Thank you for all the things you've shared.
unfogged was taken off the blogroll at CT when a story was posted there that, having been posted here already, would endanger the anonymity of one of our commenters. it was meant to be thoughtful rather than critical. we could probably petition to get back on.
168: Your evil doppleganger, I am. Muahahaha!
My best guess is that I came here via Sausagely. Like others, I didn't read comments here for maybe a year - "interesting comments section" being an oxymoron in my experience.
Again like others, I went through a long period where I was too intimidated to comment. My first comment was in 2006.
177:I knew that at the time of 174 but wasn't going to say so in comments because that would create a connection counter to the reason unf was de-rolled. So the comment linked in 174 was meant as a complete injoke.
We have very recently taken this OP trip down rosememory lane. 2005, don't remember, probably Sausegely and his DC associates.
181.first: Pandagon had a really good comments section about three moves ago. Since it's become more high profile the quality of comments has gone down. I miss the old Pandagon. The declining quality of comments there was one of the things that brought me back here.
Specifically, I seem to remember coming to unfogged from Saysehely through the S-museum person (Fire...?) and Becks. I was looking for a little culture blogging as a break from politics and war.
I began lurking in early '05, or possibly late '04, and began commenting in late '05. Prior to commenting under this pseud I think I might have very briefly used an ancient, pre-Internet pseudonym, and there might be a comment or two somewhere here using my real name. Don't remember how I got here.
and Ogged guesting for Drum was hilarious. What a mismatch.
I googled to find out the date of my first comment here -- it was March 31,2006. I started participating in a game of Botticelli -- I guess this was a relatively non-threatening way to delurk. It might have been a one-time thing, except that I won. So, since then I've been stuck here, making increasingly pathetic attempts to recapture my instant of glory.
I suppose it's time to come clean -- I cheated. Not only was I juiced on steroids, I also used Google.
No idea when I first started commenting here, I thought it was 2006, but google only finds comments dating back to 2007. Anyway, it was after unf and before Ogged went off on his Last Swim.
Been aware of the site for longer, but its earlier contrarian leanings weren't my thing, nor was the fairly aggressive commenting style.
187.2 is hilarious. I was definitely lurking during the Botticelli time.
I suppose it's time to come clean -- I cheated
You actually came clean the last time we had a thread like this. You're already clean!
I will even break the sanctity of off-blog everything to share that peep even looked clean when he and I had our tiny meetup. So there!
190: I confessed to the blog before? Really? I'm like Louis CK with Marc Maron?
Gosh! I wasnt' kidding about "increasingly pathetic"!
191: I do remember confessing to you, Thorn.
I never lurked here. Because my opinions are that important.
It was the "Fuck You, Clown" thread that lured me in. BPhD had linked it, I think.
I do remember that the first day I really commented here I was rude to people (the shape of things to come, sort of, except that I was rude to people through mere internet bad manners rather than out of political principle) and also that on that same day when I went to get a coke from the coke machine at work I did not get a coke but instead got a bottle with a tiny plush [Large Land-Grant-University] mascot crammed inside in a really disturbing way. Sadly it was not a prank but a promotional project of Coca-Cola (also known as "murder the union organizers" Cola) and the university. I assumed that the plush toy was some kind of Unfogged-related omen and kept it on my desk for several years even though it was hideous before finally giving it to my boss's daughter, who liked the thing.
As I've recounted at multiple meetups, and probably here too, I was one of those who for some time read the posts but not the comments. I started reading pretty early in its life, maybe around 2004*, and I suspect I may have glanced at the comments but seen sparse stuff like this, so I saw it mostly as another source of quotes and links to skim through.
*I'm pretty sure it was Mark Schmitt providing the link with the language in 81, but I can't find it in his archives, so no date.
190: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_12020.html
Do you remember this, heebie?
During the winter of 2004-2005 I think. My first comment to which ogged responded approvingly was a reference to this Rimbaud passage, to illustrate that the Gauls put butter in their hair.
I was surprised and upset that Kerry had lost, as were FL and ogged, in an amusing way. I was starting to read a lot of blogs in the evening while also doing legal type work and this was by far the most amusing, if not the most informative.
I started as textualist, but the term has inapt implications.
In the winter of 2004-2005 I starting dating this guy who had a blog (now defunct) in whose blogroll was included Unfogged AND, I believe, BitchPHD, two blogs that I ended up dating far longer that I dated the guy in question (nice guy nevertheless). I didn't lurk for too long before commenting, because I'm arrogant like that. But Unfogged was the beginning of a significant internet-obsessed phase that lasted for about 5 years. That was a crazy time.
Remember the original Unfoggedcom? That thing was crazy. Or maybe I was just naive and it seemed crazy.
I know I started by 2006. Maybe earlier. I probably found this with a link from Ezra Klein or Matt Yglesias, but Pandagon, Oliver Willis, or Balloon Juice are all also possible. I don't read any of those regularly any more. Change in their focus, crappy comment sections, comment sections that I'm sure are scintillating but I can't participate in them from work any more, changes in my own tastes...
As I recall, LB, Cala, and Standpipe all came -- or started commenting -- shortly after I did. SCMT was here a lot and Neb still had something to prove. I consider it a golden era.
Who first suggested the idea of commenters meeting in person? Unfogged is the only blog I know of that does that.
I suppose there's Kos, but I think of that more as a political organization than a blog.
I came over from Bitch's place. Has someone invited her to Unfogged20con?
In other news, I don't want to be at work. I want to be watching a movie where lesbian space pirates fight a floating squid monster until they discover a way to communicate and make peace with it. Can someone make this happen?
I want to be watching a movie where lesbian space pirates fight a floating squid monster until they discover a way to communicate and make peace with it. Can someone make this happen?
Do you want the p/o/rn or non-p/or/n version?
With enough artistic merit it can't be considered porn.
Remember the original Unfoggedcom? That thing was crazy.
Without having read the rest of the thread: I think I started reading the comments in 2006, but the error bars on that are huge; I chose that year because it was the midpoint of my grad school career, and the narrowest statement I can make 100% confidently is that that was a going concern when I began visiting (insofar as it ever was).
I have no idea at all whence I came, but it must have been a post elsewhere or a link to the frontpage - I haven't roamed other comment sections. Was Unfogged ever on a blogroll at Idle Words, when it had a blogroll?
I'm thinking a hard R.
I would also be interested in an Opera based on the Iliad or a period piece about class divisions among dinosaurs.
Hey it looks like I have some options for one of these.
I don't know why I capitalized "opera" I'm not interested in a web browser.
206: For artistic merit, you can't beat 19th century Japanese woodcut prints. (NQSFW)
I showed up about the same time as Blandings, yeah. I had not long before started dating someone who mentioned that there was a blog he read a lot. I took a little while to decide if asking "what's that blog you read?" was an overly personal question, asked, checked it out, found it baffling and somehow intimidating, made a few tone-deaf comments under another pseud, I think left it alone a little while, decided with great determination that I was going to figure out WTF you people are on about and enter the conversation, picked current pseud, commented a lot, and failed to ever figure out WTF you people are on about.
213: picked current pseud
Speaking of which, is your pseud taken from a scene in Sullivan's Travels?
Wait, I know: a wacky caper flick set in the Abbasid caliphate.
I should've gone with Upstairs, Dinosaurs!. How about The Prince and the Pawpawsaurus?
To Catch a Caliph?
I'm not getting much work done today.
214 is right and was what immediately endeared Mr. Smearcase to me (me to Smearcase? Which way does endearment mean?). I have a cat named Sullivan. I hope to someday introduce the two of you.
210, 216, 217: Keep going, these are great!
209 Les Troyens is as close as I can think of but it's the Aeneid.
Speaking of which, is your pseud taken from a scene in Sullivan's Travels?
Yes! I've used it for years and years. K-sky was the first person ever to get the reference, being, as it is, a little throwaway scene in a movie that isn't all that widely loved.
218: "endeared X to Y" meant "made X dear to Y", i.e., Y likes X.
Lesbian dinosaur space pirates Iguanadonna and Helioceratops of Troy used to be in love, but their relationship fell apart over Helioceratops's fling with Achillesaurus and Iguanadonna's self-consciousness over her low station. But now they have to work together to go back in time and steal the mask of Al-Mu'tamid, the only way to defeat the TERRORSQUID, known galaxy-wide for its unquenchable rage... or is it loneliness?
Who first suggested the idea of commenters meeting in person? Unfogged is the only blog I know of that does that.
It's a pretty common thing IME; it certainly pre-dates blogs. One of the newsgroups I used to hang out on started having Unfoggedcon-style parties in the mid-'90s.
224: yeah I most of my oldest friends through BBS meetups or 2600 meetings, when I was in high school.
I came over from Bitch's place. Has someone invited her to Unfogged20con?
I reached out to her, ogged, and Labs. She has cross-country travel plans close to that date that will probably nix attendance. Ogged has a new responsibility that likely keeps him home as well.
The fact that Rolling Thunder will mean we'll be sharing DC with thousands of bikers (rough trade in chaps!) means Labs can't be ruled out.
2600 meetings
Obviously I googled this, but my first thought was "Atari supported BBSs?!"
225: You accidentally most of your oldest friends?
Lettuce diplomat spangle pitches Iguanadonna and Helioceratops of Troy used to be in lubricant, but their relic feminist apart over Helioceratops's flit with Achillesaurus and Iguanadonna's semicircle-conservationist over her low statue. But now they have to work together to go backer in timing and steal the massage of Al-Mu'tamid, the only wealth to defender the TERRORSQUID, known gallon-wide for its unquenchable railway... or is it loneliness?
Another topic change:
Something has to be done about people forwarding pictures with inspirational quotes from Billy Joel. Having the author of "We didn't start the fire" tell me that "If you aren't doing what you love, you are wasting your time" is just just a step too far.
I first got here via Sausagely in 2003 and first commented in 2005.
230 reads like the spam that launched a thousand ships.
231: Would it help if you thought of him as the author of "Uptown Girl"?
@231
It's Billy Joel's way of telling you to get out there and make that lesbian-space-pirates-squid-porn movie.
Be the change.
YOU MIGHT HAVE HEARD I RUN WITH A DANGEROUS CROWD
WE AIN'T TOO PRETTY, WE AIN'T TOO PROUD
WE MIGHT BE LAUGHING A BIT TOO LOUD
(bait taken)
Thing is, Billy Joel didn't just waste his time by writing "we didn't start the fire." He wasted everybody's time.
235: On the other hand, rob, "Don't be changing to try and please me."
224: I attended one or two extremely low-key ARKPLEs (alt.religion.kibology party-like events) that were not very party-like at all back when I was an undergrad. In retrospect, maybe I should have tried to get to know the mousily attractive woman who was one of the only other kibologists at Chicago better. O well.
I ACTUALLY DID START THE FIRE.
237: You scoff, but "We Didn't Start the Fire" probably did more to educate people about recent U.S. history than any textbook.
Do you remember this, heebie?
I find it comforting when I behave the exact same way twice, despite having no memory of doing it before. I'm consistent. (Also sometimes when I am reading old blog posts or comments by me, if I need to scroll I'll unconsciously finish the sentence in my head, then scroll down, and realize I wrote it the same way then. It's comforting!)
My response to anyone who posts Billy Joel lyrics:
I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life. Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.
You can't murder the same drifter twice, Heebie.
Can't tell 'em apart, though, so.
Out of curiosity, is any search engine better than Google for finding one's first comment? I've always thought I started here in 2006, but I can't find any comments of mine before July 2007. I could have lurked, or read it infrequently before jumping in, but that's not how I remember it.
246: Bing can at least give different results. Not sure if it's better in that wise.
Yahoo is in general an inferior search engine, but seems to do better than Google with Unfogged if you use the advanced search-y thing.
The comments I remember as my first are January 2005, which, now that I recall the timeline, is about the same time I switched jobs from the weird little litigation boutique back to a particularly unpleasant BigLaw firm. If I hadn't had this place to socially retreat into, I might be a partner by now. Going straight to hell, but rich.
And when I say about the same time, I mean to the week.
I wonder if I have any '04 comments? If I were guessing at the date, I'd have guessed that the comments from January '05 were actually from fall '04 sometime, but maybe I was just reading rather than commenting then.
My first comment was Jan. '06 and I'd lurked for a while before that. Maybe clicked over from Calpundit or something? That was back in the days of my ebay gig where I had two monitors and a job that required very little of my actual brain power and attention.
Right, Ogged was thinking of buying a gun, and you showed up to represent gun owners. (I wonder if he really was thinking of buying a gun, or if he was just trying to get a rise out of the commenters.)
203: Special interest groups on Compu$erve and AOL used meet in "meatspace" frequently in the early 90's. The French Market in WeHo sometimes had two such meet-ups going on at once.
So gswift wasn't yet a cop when he showed up as a lovable gun nut? I hadn't realized that but I suppose it makes sense.
The link in 197 had the comment where I did a rough estimate of comments by year. To which I hereby add 2012.
2012 140000
2011 130000
2010 140000
2009 160000
2008 240000
2007 260000
2006 340000
2005 115000
2004 6800
2003 2300
251 - I liked it then, you were always on in the middle of your night, as I got up in the morning.
Yes we are in terms of individual readers and commenters. We've got a smaller number of people talking to each other more volubly.
The link in 197 had the comment where I did a rough estimate of comments by year.
Wow -- that's actually remarkably stable from 2008 on (assuming that 2008 had a bunch of extra comments because of the contentious primary campaign makes me think that, even though the count for 2008 is close to that of 2007, it might fit into the 2008+ group).
And yeah, lots of my best friends are people I met online about 10 years ago.
Which makes my children snigger at school when they have their lessons about not meeting weirdos off the internet - my mum took us to camp in a field with a bunch of people she didn't know! And then flew to DC!
I think I would have a hard time meeting-up without already having some comments under my belt.
Not necessary! We're nice! Everyone should come to meet-ups! It's just like meeting the friends of a friend or something.
I go to regular music events that originate in a usenet newsgroup, although most of the actual online interaction now takes place via Facebook, irc, and twitter. We usually have one big communal gig/jam a year and a couple of non-gig meetups. It's the only time a lot of the participants play in public each year, so people invest a lot in it.
Never really commented, mostly because I can't think of a good pseudonym.
Unacceptable reason. We're here to help!
At the risk of incurring LB's wrath, I'll even suggest just grabbing any ole pseud and jumping in and then we can help you think of one you like better.
Also, who's the current keeper of the Flickr gate key so the lurkers can see what a bunch of dorks* we all are?
*With certain exceptions, but not the people who think they're the exceptions.
My wrath isn't even a little about needing a good pseud -- look at the idiotic thing I'm posting under. It's just that common first names and really short initialisms are completely unmemorable for me, so if you've got one like that, I'll neve know who you are.
I started reading in 2006, via BitchPhD, and it was a very random sort of stopping in here and there. I didn't comment until after ogged had left, in 2008.
258: You think, from 2010-2013? I just meant we're stable.
Not necessary! We're nice! Everyone should come to meet-ups! It's just like meeting the friends of a friend or something.
Agreed. Almost everyone has returned home safely. As she mentioned, asilon even made it back to England mostly still in shape.
I meant your wrath about changing pseuds (which I find entirely reasonable).
265:
Do I need to change mine so you remember me?
(Somewhere in that time I realized I knew some of the commenters in real life, and I probably shouldn't have started commenting given the weirdness of that, but I did. Oh well.)
My earliest comment is from July 2006, as near as I can figure. Got here b/c I started dating someone (my future wife) who knew Apostropher IRL. Upon reflection, anyone who knows me IRL and read that comment would immediately know that I am NCProsecutor. Oh well. :)
One of my favorite comment exchanges was with LB about a year later, on the question of prosecutorial ethics and the plea bargain process (starting w/ LB's comment at 8). I haven't been a working prosecutor for some time, but I think it holds up pretty well with respect to NC's state-level prosecutors (excluding the feds, about whom I have no knowledge or experience).
Even when the comments around here can get, uh, heated (hey, LB -- remember the whole "sometimes police officers shoot mentally ill people" kerfuffle of July 2007?), I've always found unfogged to be a very welcoming place to folks with all sorts of perspectives. One of my regrets as my life has moved in a different direction (parenting, mostly) is that I've been unable to participate in this community in the way I once did.
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to reminisce a bit.
Oh, and this was a great chance for me to re-live my hatred for using html tags in comments. Thanks!
Also, Apostropher.com lives no more?
*tear rolls down*
Some third party blog (I really can't figure who it would have been) was iirc commenting on the B-O blowup, which brought me over here, which sent me over there. I think I regularly read B for awhile before lurking over here.
In my memory I hardly lurked at all, but the first comment I could find (when I looked a year or so ago, last time we went through this) was much later than what I recall reading in real time. Whether that's flawed memory or the hoohole, I don't know.
Also, I'm quite bummed about the app.com news, since there were about a half dozen mixes I never got around to downloading, and it was only a few months ago that I had the relevant page sitting in the background.
I'm weirdly passive about downloading mixes - something about the process of importing and making sure the order is correct and the metadata and all that shit.
also known as "murder the union organizers" Cola
I think I know why that nickname hasn't taken off.
asilon even made it back to England mostly still in shape.
And that was after sharing a hotel room with me, so now you know we're all bark and no bite.
JRoth, I'll happily post up any mixes for you on sendspace or something similar.
http://web.archive.org/web/20120630191059/http://www.apostropher.com/blog/
Thanks, apo.
Hey, whaddya know about that? I was able to download Burnt through the Wayback.
As it turns out, I was only missing that one and 1 or 2 others. I'll let you know if I need more.
I was able to download Burnt through the Wayback.
Wow, that's surprising. I just finished up one to listen to in my car that started out being topical to the decade meet-up, but then devolved into "what caught my ear over the past six months". First song still works, though, and I called the mix Ten Years Down the Drain, so.
I suppose we're about due for one of those threads.
I first wandered by in 2006, led by links from ObWi, but didn't get it and feared the time suck that it was evident that unfogged could become to me. I didn't comment much ever, and may have only started late last year. (If I commented previously, I can't find it, and I know it wouldn't have been thrilling.)
apostropher.com lives no more
I blame apostropher's youngest child for this. Probably the youngest two both deserve blame, but the youngest really seemed to be the nail in the coffin.
I know it wouldn't have been thrilling
I'm mustering great restraint in order not to extravagantly contradict this claim.
I believe I started commenting in March of 2005, having lurked for a few months before then. Actually having a job that requires me to work during the day has definitely prevented me from being a regular commenter anymore, but I still lurk.
I guess it's finally time to remove apostropher.com from my rss feed.
I'd be interested in the answer to 264 as well. I'm torn on the topic of seeing what people look like IRL because I have a mental image of most of you as some sort of muppet like creatures. OTOH I intend to go to Unfoggydoggycon so the mask will be ripped off anyway.
Or, of course, you'll discover that we are all muppety creatures.
Despite not playing the piano, I've always identified with Rowlf.
I am clearly an order muppet. Probably Bert.
Order Muppets--and I'm thinking about Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle, Kermit the Frog, and the blue guy who is perennially harassed by Grover at restaurants (the Order Muppet Everyman)--tend to be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises and may sport monstrously large eyebrows.
The heuristic in 292 doesn't quite work for me. I surf a Gonzo-Kermit sine wave between chaos and order.
264: There are people here who think they're not dorks?
What brought me here was a 600+ comment argument about Jared Diamond linked in a CT comment a year or so back. (Or maybe it was the post adjacent to a post linked from CT.) I recognized some of the more intelligent pseuds from CT (definitely LizardBreath, maybe Keir), and the level of erudition and vociferousness intrigued me. Any place where the conversation casually transitions to Austronesian expansion is alright by me. And what brought me to CT was Paul Krugman's review of Charles Stross's fantasy series.
The sentiment express in 15 & 16 definitely rings true. This site's community has a weird combination of being tightly knit yet easily accessible, which makes posting so intimidating and lurking so easy and pleasant. (*relurks*)
Like many of you, I got here via CT or maybe BPhD (or maybe DeLong?). There was some intense argument going on; that and everyone's familiarity with each other scared me a bit. First comment, August 1, 2006.
I used to be around more, but life is such that I can barely keep up with the latest on teo's blowjob.
If someone buys apostropher.com, do the archives come with it?
Apo, you do have the site cached somewhere, don't you?
Because I am nosy (as appears to be a common trait around here) I would like to know how Shearer made his way here.
I'm slightly btocked, so this may be inappropriately sentimental, but the thing about lurkers is that I figure anyone capable of sustaining interest in this nonsense for an extendef period is my kind of people, whether or not you've been commenting.
So if you're reading several hundred-comment threads, I'm already fond of you even if you've never said anything.
Can you be fond of someone you can't be sure exists?
Without paying a licensing fee to Disney, that is.
If you drunkenly hug any lurkers at meetups make sure they're ones who actually showed. You might fall over otherwise.
299
Because I am nosy (as appears to be a common trait around here) I would like to know how Shearer made his way here.
I don't remember possibly via Drum or Yglesias. In general it seems like the blogosphere was smaller and more tightly connected back then. And not as ideologically sorted.
303: Although possibly still safer than hugging actual lurkers/commenters -- who knows where they've been?
I'd like to apologize for the misplaced hyphen in 300. I do that sober, they're a weak spot, but I'm still not maintaining standards.
LB supports the lurkers in absentia.
I should also say that being my kind of people is in no sense an uncritical endorsement -- it means there's something very wrong with you.
226: The fact that Rolling Thunder will mean we'll be sharing DC with thousands of bikers
Obama is bombing Hanoi? Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have voted for him.
Also, why hasn't anyone made an orange Guantanamo/black site prisoner flag yet?
I've said this before, but I should probably repeat it from time to time: I really, really love being a front page poster here, and consider it an unbelievable privilege to be posting on the site with the best conversations anywhere on the internet. I feel extremely grateful for this unique, bizarre privilege.
311: I mean, isn't it bizarre that the US has this entire POW/MIA subculture, based on these absurd and transparently false allegations against the government of Vietnam, and simultaneously has been engaged in making those fantasies a reality for anyone caught up in the dragnet in SW Asia? People are going to look at that 100 years from now and be aghast.
300, 312: Holy shit, IP terrorism gang group hug.
that and everyone's familiarity with each other scared me a bit
I remember on one of my first forays into the comments that a few people were discussing when Leblanc would be back from a visit to Egypt she was on at the time. That people knew another commenter's whereabouts when she wasn't there blew my mind.
A friend and I sometimes think of ourselves as Statler and Waldorf. Especially when we are at the opera. Once we were even in a box.
313: you know what always surprises me? How few people are aghast about the shit that happened 100 years ago. I'm starting to think that people have short memories, prefer not to think about horrible things, or don't give a fuck about world-historical injustices.
316: Once we were even in a box.
On a boat?
Really? It's all just too overwhelming to take in.
Shorter LB: "You fucked up... you trusted read us!"
317: You know who else was aghast about the shit that happened 100 years ago?
You'd think the assassination of Schuhmeier would still inspire outrage.
Btocked or not, that was very kind. I'll wear the something very wrong with me badge with honor.
Somebody probably licked them.
Less often than you'd think.
Apo, you do have the site cached somewhere, don't you?
For as long as the Wayback Machine keeps it, I guess. But otherwise, all we are is dust in the wind.
317: Have you ever seen suburban Irish-American people still mad about 1920 or 1849? Not that they don't have a point, but really not something that needed encouraging, IMO.
317
313: you know what always surprises me? How few people are aghast about the shit that happened 100 years ago. I'm starting to think that people have short memories, prefer not to think about horrible things, or don't give a fuck about world-historical injustices.
My feeling is the statute of limitations has expired for anything that happened over a hundred years ago and people who bring up ancient grievances are generally just trouble makers.
If you think a hundred years is too short, how about a thousand?
317: Is that above and beyond the general ignorance of history? Or are you referring to, say, people who by all expectations should know history pretty well but don't want to consider its implications?
313 -- I presume everyone's seen the Bravin article on Slahi. You don't have to wait 100 years to call every single person who earnestly uttered or typed the words 'ticking time bomb' complicit scum.
Sweyn Forkbeard was a real badass, they say.
Actually having a job that requires me to work during the day has definitely prevented me from being a regular commenter anymore
Jobs that require real work totally suck! I should ask them to demote me back to postdoc.
330: there is a guy in my lab who is trying so desperately to stay a postdoc. He refuses to apply for jobs, and for his postdoc funding he had to make up some amusingly unbelievable claims about needing to be trained in a certain technique, despite having taught a class on that technique for several years. (He has managed to avoid being first author on any papers using the technique, and I think for some technical reason didn't need to list the class he taught.) He did apply for one job before starting his postdoc, at one of your puppy-type schools, but narrowly avoided being offered it.
Just come out and say it, VW: teo's never going to feel totally absolved until he gets a Ph.D. in history.
That would certainly be a harsh punishment, but no, academia already has too many people who are tempted to abuse positions of relative privilege to take sexual advantage of people in more vulnerable positions.
I am probably the person who surprises Von Wafer but the more I typed about it, the more I suspected I sounded like some kind of asshole.
(And thanks for putting up with my whining last night, VW. I had had a couple drinks and some of the less admirable of the many feelings I've been having over the past few days were coming out. Your responses clarified a lot of things for me that I hadn't fully gotten before.)
Hey, I was here too. And I was very encouraging.
334: sorry, can't talk now, getting blown by the subaltern.
333: our people have been persecuted! We don't have to care about anyone else's suffering!
317: "Aghast" as in real emotion or as intellectual awareness of bad stuff having happened? I've plenty in the present, can't afford to waste any serious angst on the past.
Most of those kids are white. Otherwise, that's a pretty good likeness.
336: Oh, right, sorry. I'll come back during office hours.
||
You guys, the world of Star Wars fan edits gets really deep. I had no idea.
|>
Speaking of kids, why, oh why, didn't I have kids when I was younger and limped less?
343: no link? You're such a tease.
Just because you don't blow somebody....
But that doesn't quite get at how insane they are. Here's a post about modifying a toy (sorry, model) AT-AT so it exactly matches the filming models used in The Empire Strikes Back so it can be used to film new matte-composited effect shots to be added to the battle on Hoth.
Yeah, 348 is a better illustration of the point. 347 is deep, sure, but it's the kind of thing any group of acolytes would post about modifications to their sect's sacred text.
Since the younger boy no longer likes Star Wars, about a week ago my wife gave away approximately $7 million worth of toys: lots of starships, action figures, and what looked like an Emperor Palpatine dildo.
I can't remember when I first commented here, but it was way back in the day, just shortly after ogged (pbuh) left a comment at my (now long-defunct) blog. I've been in and out ever since, but seem to have missed several key years.
Was there a golden age, a prelapsarian past from which this blog has sadly, if inevitably, fallen? I tend to think not, actually. There were some golden moments, certainly, and a few episodes of pure blogospheric (and most often, comic) genius. But I also like "the heebie years" (and I think of this blog as heebie's now, whether or not that is strictly accurate).
I think I'd like a new pseud. (my current moniker sounds too much like someone I might know: a sister or a cousin, for example, or something like that; or perhaps some girl I went to school with...), but I'm too lazy/unimaginative to come up with anything good. And of course I miss Emerson (yes, fb, sure, but it's not really the same thing).
Who do you have to blow around here to get your group's historical suffering recognized in the canon?
349: no but that's not them discussing modifications that have been done; that's them describing the modifications they did to fix it.
365: And I think there is a (somewhat remote, but measurable) that in the long run a fan edit will emerge as the most beloved version. (Especially for the prequels.)
Actually, I'm wrong, but I'd rather live in that world than one where people did horrible things to each other a mere 100 years ago.
356: oh, that I didn't get. Because my mind wouldn't go there. What a world!
I think I'm grateful that that kind of Star Wars website didn't exist when I was, like, 12, because I would have gotten sucked in and god knows what would have become of me.
358 to ??? but not 365 (I don't think, anyway).
358: I'm pretty sure that a fan edit (Harmy's unspecialized edit) is the preferred/definitive BluRay version of the original trilogy in fan circles right now. Partly that's because it's a recreation of the theatrical release (which isn't on the released BluRays) but holy cow that is some painstaking shit.
And thanks for putting up with my whining last night,
To be embarrassingly selfish, I appreciated that comment because it was the first time you acknowledged that you had some appreciation for the people who had been defending you (for lack of a better term). I admit to having felt slightly hung out to dry by the fact that you exclusively thanked the people who had been most strongly critical of your comments.
[I probably shouldn't even mention this since (a) the horse is thoroughly dead and (b) it was really obvious that there was no motivation for you (or anyone) to dig back into a point-by-point recap of the conversation. But I'll say it anyway.]
365: I find your lack of pants disturbing.
365 s/b 358. Wait other way around.
To be embarrassingly selfish, I appreciated that comment because it was the first time you acknowledged that you had some appreciation for the people who had been defending you (for lack of a better term). I admit to having felt slightly hung out to dry by the fact that you exclusively thanked the people who had been most strongly critical of your comments.
Thanks. I've been thinking off and on that I should say something to thank the people who defended me in that thread (you, Halford, AWB, I know there were others but I can't think of any other names right now). I did appreciate your comments and they made the ordeal of reading the thread easier. I think your interpretations of what I said were valid ones, even though I ultimately decided that the people who had been strongly critical were more correct on the underlying issues.
317: My aghastness reflex is more likely to be triggered by those who act as if the shit that happened 100 years ago could not revisit us today or tomorrow. As a dead racist once wrote, "The past is not dead. Actually, it's not even past*."
*And his estate is trying to prove it.
Amusing to find this navel gazing when I dropped by wondering what all y'all are up to. Miss you guys.
I can't remember when I first posted. Ogged was very active, Unf was very not though.
Best to all of you!
- s.b.
More comments reproaching themselves on lack of pants, please.
I genuinely am not wearing pants right now.
369: I find your lack of biscuits disturbing.
Speaking of kids, why, oh why, didn't I have kids when I was younger and limped less?
Didn't you?
I find your lack of biscuits disturbing.
If you're soup, there's always biscuits in the tin.
It's too cold to not wear pants. My pajama pants are comfy.
374: I never run out of biscuits, JP. I am a lazy typer sometimes.
381 unintentionally meta.
Also, I'm not wearing any pants.
I just donated to both of the organizations I mentioned in the other thread, btw.
Everyone should post their salary, SAT score and state of pantsitude.
383: The Puerto Rican nationalists and who else?
387: I find your lack of salary disturbing.
Oh wait that was soap. Good effort Sifu you dingus.
384: plus any recent blowjobs.
387: That was no lack of salary, that was a lack of SAT score
I find your lack of celery disturbing.
I find your lack of "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" disturbing.
I think I would have a hard time meeting-up without already having some comments under my belt.
I quite consciously believed that the two activities could be mutually reinforcing, and probably would be. So even though I only came out in January, the spate of northeastern meet-ups late last year began to make attendance and emergence seem downright inevitable, and built momentum for my overlapping meeting-up and de-lurking.
(I imagine that the belief above would be less useful and potentially counterproductive for someone farther from probable meet-up spots, but for me New York and Boston are equally accessible and equally congenial.)
"If you watch it again, ah, my pants are too tight."
I just can't really make the core concept visual transition work.
The hall light just turned itself on. That's a little creepy. I'm just going to go to sleep and there is a logical explanation that doesn't involve somebody wanting to murder me.
I just mailed my Permanent Fund Dividend application then bought a fifth of R&R. I feel very Alaskan.
398: a rusty nail caused a short.
Rich & Rare Canadian Whisky. It's the preferred rotgut of the Native alcoholics.
Houses make a lot of creaky, thump-like noises.
402: I admit, that leaves me with more questions.
404: There are several ways you could interpret my interest in trying it.
Is there an academia-themed porn flick called Can the Subaltern Fuck?
I guess there is not an academia-themed porn flick. Ah well, a project for the sex grotto.
405: ahh I huh. Yes, I suppose that's true.
I guess it is probably a bargain.
I guess there is not an academia-themed porn flick.
I'm quite certain there are many.
406.last: I highly doubt that is true. There may not be one starring actual academics, I admit.
I guess it is probably a bargain.
$10.99 for a fifth, which is remarkably cheap for Alaska. I didn't check to see if it was absolutely the cheapest hard liquor at the store, but I suspect it is. It was certainly the most popular in the aisle, judging by the number of bottles that had already been taken.
But probably still worth it for the price.
Do you get a paper bag free with it?
No, but I did buy it in a plastic bottle.
That is handy.
So uh you know about the next day and liquor like this, right? They paying you enough to spring for the fancy stuff in the glass bottles?
Oh yeah, this is mostly just an experiment. I'm drinking lots of water. We'll see what happens.
This is your big chance to pay forward the blowjob.
Thanks for making that explicit, whoever-it-was.
Anyhow we may come to regret that teo's phone doesn't record video.
406: Just wait till I come out with my porn extravaganza, Anus Mirabilis!
I also would like to give mad props (is that still a thing?) to Can the Subaltern Fuck?, which, with permission, will definitely be my second great porn title.
As I believe I've explained elswhere, the problem* with Anus Mirabilis is that it literally means "miraculous old woman".
* Or is it a problem?
(There is already a script pretty well hammered out, but we can definitely include more anus.)
Something makes me think I'm not the only one who's been drinking tonight.
Mirabilis I'd like to fuck.
My best academic porn title is "A Theory of Just Ass"
Also I had two drinks tonight of better stuff than Teo's rotgut and feel huggable.
I had a couple of glasses of wine, alone, and am fine, I think. The usual. I need to resist the temptation to click the Bing "Translate" function under a friend's FB posts in Mandarin because half of them are about her plans to do awful matchmaking shit about me and another friend of ours, which I find humiliating and horrible.
I had a couple of glasses of wine, alone, and am fine, I think.
Oh, I'm sure. Anyway, I'm not in any position to judge, for numerous reasons.
thank me too, teo. I totes had your back, and stuff. not right at that crucial moment, but later, and metaphorically.
Hm. The clipboard app I'm using cut off the http part of the link.
I... thought I did? In the very first comment on your post? Anyway, yeah, thanks. You have more experience with this general sort of fucked-up situation than most Unfogged people, so I was wondering how you would react.
For anyone who is still baffled by how bizarre and out of character my behavior in that incident seemed, btw, I think my 332 in this thread is the best context in which to see it. The deep-seated and very troubling character flaw that led me to do what I did in this situation is I think not uncommon, but among people of my general socioeconomic background it more often manifests in things like professors sleeping with their students. Not that that's an equivalent or even really an analogous situation to mine, but it's a situation that commenters here have likely thought more about, and it involves the same kind of succumbing to the temptation of taking sexual advantage of someone with less power without fear of any serious consequences.
331 could be great for a series of comic short stories.
I believe I came here from BitchPhD's blog sometime in early 2006 or so. Earliest comment that I've found on Google, though Google isn't always thorough about older comments. First meetup.
If you think a hundred years is too short, how about a thousand?
Thousand year old atrocities? I give you the St Brice's Day Massacre. It's a wonder the Danes didn't just come over and occupy the whole damn country! Oh wait, they did.
That whole family is full of great names. "Bluetooth" is great for simplicity, but my favorite is Harthacnut.
15-odd years ago, when things were still hot in the Balkans, I was at my dad's house for a bowling party (as in members of the bowling league came over; his house does not include an alley), and one of the guys was of Serbian extraction, and told my sister some story from the 14thC battles between the Serbs and the Turks (?), and as he described some Serbian prisoner managing to stab some Turkish general or whatever, the guy's eyes lit up and it was as if he was telling a story of the recent past. It went a long way in understanding just why the Balkans are the way that they are - long memories.
BdL is working at getting more people to read here.
By linking to a November 2011 post?
I'll put in a plug for attending meetups as a lurker. I went to one in Boston in... 2007, maybe? Everyone was welcoming and smart and fun and not at all awkward.
I think I started lurking a year or two before that. Came over from Stay of Execution, I'm pretty sure. Since then, I've stopped reading a few times because of school/work/life demands, but I keep coming back. There's just something I enjoy about hanging around creepily on the outskirts of interesting conversation, I guess.
Everyone was ... not at all awkward
I find this hard to believe.
The whole concept is so suffused with awkwardness that it obviates awkwardness.
My experience anyway.
Oh good. I was worried I wouldn't fit in.
Let me suffuse you with my awkwardness.
By linking to a November 2011 post?
Yeah. In the past few days he's linked to two from TFA. One of them he even adds in a bunch of comments. It's like he's recruiting for this place.
I can make any meetup awkward just by walking into it, personally.
My force of character is actually such that I can make an entire subway car awkward. Pigeons and squirrels shuffle their feet and fail to make eye contact when I'm around.
445: No awkwardness particular to being a lurker, I mean. There was still all the usual awkwardness that I carry around with me. But I didn't feel like I was intruding.
It was probably the booze. I came a bit late and had already had a drink before that. BG was there, along with some folks who have since gone away or changed handles when I wasn't paying attention: mcmc, mrh, and arthegall, at least.
Why do
Pigeons and squirrels shuffle their feet
and fail to make eye contact
when [you're] around?
Just like you
They long to be
Somewhere else
451 and 453 are both great. I should clarify that while I hate myself for spending so much time here when I should instead be fixing my life, y'all are awesome.
It bears mentioning than an unfogged commenter* literally wrote the book on awkwardness.
*who has taken emeritus status
I guess there is not an academia-themed porn flick.
Didn't someone once link to the "blackboards in porn" tumblr from here?
398
The hall light just turned itself on. That's a little creepy. I'm just going to go to sleep and there is a logical explanation that doesn't involve somebody wanting to murder me.
Happens all the time at our house. The living room has a ceiling fan and light controlled by remote control. The thing is, every so often the light or fan turns on by itself. As best we can figure, a neighbor has a garage door opener or TV remote or something on the same frequency.
457.2: Exactly the same thing happens in my house, and we came up with the same explanation.
But an alternate hypothesis for these apparently unrelated incidents, is that G-d is fucking with unfogged commenters.
Yes. The light was on a remote control. But I've never seen it go on by itself.
And at least 12 installments of Anal University by 2003.
One of the more absurd things my mom (who had a good sense of humor but was fairly straight edge, at least as an adult) ever did was, on a drive down US 24 through NJ, madly pressing the garage remote at the houses we passed. You had to be there, of course, but it was hilarious. Alas, none opened (that we saw).
My mom used to let us kids play with the garage door opener as we drove until one day somebody's garage door opened. She wouldn't stick around to see if the owner just happened to be driving out at that moment.
Let me be the first to suggest Revisited Highway.
You could choose Bruce Dickinson and have screaming matches with Robert Halford.
(In a different context, I did briefly use "Ohio Silver" as a pseud.)
474: " ... laydeez" as a pseud would briefly be transgressive and disturbing but quickly degrade to boring and stupid.
"Mutombo" would be useful for meet-ups.
"Dot Com"
"In Wisconsin"
"Five Dollars" (or the unwieldy "And Then I Found Five Dollars" but that would be a stupid pseud).
Did we ever find out what pseudonym unimaginative decided on?
And his super-hero career was off to such a promising start...
Florida Man run over, killed after dog pushes vehicle's accelerator.
Silver lining: "Florida Man" now available as pseud!
482: I do think <insert client's state or city here> <Man/Woman>" would work.
484: In fact I hereby unilaterally declare that to be the Unfogged standard for lawyers when referencing their clients in comments here.
Would it represent a success or failure of that policy when somebody starts referencing "Encino Man"?
Depends if the client is in fact a man from Encino.
Hey y'all, pause. What was the deal with the Tea Party wanting to do a separate rebuttal? play.
The realization that the whole thing is infotainment, and that there aren't any rules.
Charley, how would you define "law of war"?
The whole Tea Party rebuttal thing is just a platform for Rand Paul to advance his presidential ambitions.
491: He conspired to have that water placed out of Rubio's reach.
457 & 458 reminded me of a recent "haunting" development here at Stormcrow Manor. And this deep in a dying thread is probably a good place to relate it since it involves me mocking a recently-dead cat (but be assured that I had no role in its death, and my wife only an indirect one).
For years (10 or so) we had been stalked/besieged by Toby, a crazed cat belonging to a friend and neighbor. He bit, attacked, fought, pawed at our windows, threw himself in demented leaps at our windows, emerged unexpectedly from a myriad of places (from within the garage, from on top hood of my car, from the engine compartment of my car, you name it). But we're stupid, sloppy sentimental cat people so the kids just deemed him the "demon cat" and we tolerated him. But he was notorious throughout the neighborhood. Anyway, he recently launched a minor attack on my wife which she mentioned to her friend (the owner). Next thing, my wife gets a call from the owner, "I'm on my way home from putting Toby down." She said she had been struggling with the ethics of it for years (she is a multi-pet rescue type) but as he was getting even more cantankerous and unpredictable in his older years, my wife's report led her to finally do it.
But of course a demon cat can never die, and we are sure to be haunted now forever. Or as I said to my wife. *you* will be haunted forever, and immediately played for her Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" (the unhinged window attacks were probably the cat's most memorable feature). Fortunately my wife was in dark humor appreciation mode. And Kid #3's response to my e-mail, That's a bit sad, but yeah, I'm also no less afraid of him now.
Heathcliff [insert wife's name, not Heathcliff but two syllables ending in "ie" so rhymes], it's me, Toby, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in-a-your window. And then I found five dollars slipped and fell on the ice in my driveway. It has started.
490 -- A body of law that defines when killing people is privileged? This can't be responsive.
Did you read the DC Circuit's Hamdan opinion from last fall? http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/722A4A4B384D5EC985257A99004D77C0/$file/11-1257-1399811.pdf I think the law of war analysis there is fairly sound.
I've checked with the people in charge, and they say sure.
It's no Shlomo Bananahands, but it'll do.
482:Disappointingly, the regular docket clerk on Monday said that the substitute docket clerk who had spoken with me was full of shit and "John Doe" was fine. My client enjoyed some of the suggestions, but wanted to use a variant of his girlfriend's name.
498: Is that a Virginia Woolf refererence, an Ariosto reference or are you just like a flower in spring?
Or an homage to the first Puerto Rican Globetrotter?
506: Occasionally I look at someone with a ribbon on their lapel for some cause, like the green Newtown ribbons at the SoL, and it seems so strange that they all go back to a Tony Orlando and Dawn song. That's the history, right? Tie a Yellow Ribbon, to yellow ribbons for the Iranian Embassy Hostages, and from there to different color ribbons for the cause of the week?
That's the history, right?
Right. Although then people were really tying the ribbons around trees.
But how did they migrate to little ribbons on clothing?
I think the first non-yellow ribbons were for kids murdered in Atlanta in 1981, who got green ribbons, but I think they were still big ribbons tied to shrubbery. I don't know when the symbolic little twist of ribbon happened.
Then red ribbons for AIDS awareness shortly thereafter.
Maybe jealousy of the French and those very tasteful ribbons sewn into jacket lapels?
513: Oh, that's probably where TO&D got it from, but it wasn't something people did.
511; 512: I don't remember when AIDS awareness started being a ribbon thing. Was it after the Gulf War? I guess remembering the '80s it was all ACT-UP Silence=Death graphics.
Speaking of tying stuff around trees...whatever happened to the fearsome tide of gypsy moths?
whatever happened to the fearsome tide of gypsy moths?
They're still here; they're just called Roma moths now.
but it wasn't something people did.
I don't know, it was certainly something JoAnne Dru did in the movie, and the practice is described in popular song apparently going far back. I mean, sure, that's not evidence that people did it in real life, but with a popular tradition like that it seems like you'd want a reason to think they didn't. Or maybe I'm just not understanding what you mean by "something people did." Certainly seems plausible that the Tony Orlando song primed things for adopting the practice during the hostage crisis.
(513 was me on a phone, sorry.)
519: Yep, per the Wikipedia entry on "Yellow Ribbon" in general:
The song/poem "She wore a yellow ribbon" has appeared in various forms for at least four centuries. It is based upon the same general theme: A woman of destiny is under some sort of test or trial as she waits for her beloved to return. Will she be true to him? This seems to be the lingering question and the basis for a great unfolding drama.
The song appears to have been brought to America from Europe by English settlers. The origin of the yellow ribbons seems likely to have come from out of the Puritan heritage. It was during the English Civil War that the Puritan Army of English Parliament wore yellow ribbons and yellow sashes onto the battlefield.I think it is fair to say that its current ubiquitous manifestation in American popular culture stems primarily from the TOaD rendition (song written by two other gentleman). And the Wikipedia entry gives some information on Vietnam-related immediate precursors to the song being written.
Oops, didn't click potchkeh's link.
Also this thread was supposed to be dying.
516: It is still coming, (see the graphic showing the spread in the US here). In places like Pittsburgh, where it has been for a while, there has been an increased die-off in oaks, and absent some countervailing trend*, the forest succession around here will continue to be less oak-y.
*Of course there are a lot of other trends, but not necessarily countervailing ones--anthropogenic warming for instance.
By "thing people did" I meant (not comprehensibly, mind you) that it wasn't the same sort of thing. Now it's "I'm aware of and care about this cause or news event". Before the TO&D to Iranian hostage crisis transition, where it happened it was an individidual expressing a connection to another individual. That was what TO&D was referencing, but the cause ribbons go back to that song more than to the pre existing tradition.
523. Not sure if that was addressing me, but I think that was sort of what I meant to be getting at in 520.last.
I worked with a guy whose brother was an Iranian embassy hostage. He said that his brother had met his wife (who had been a hostage in some other Middle East situation) at some State Dep't. get together for former hostages. I have no idea now why that seemed relevant when I started writing it.
524: you've got your met-cute story. Now finish the screenplay, monkey.
TOaD rendition
and
Before the TO&D to Iranian hostage crisis transition
I just skimmed this thread and spent a few moments wondering what military operation entailing prisoner transfer was known by the acronym "TOaD."
525: You know who met Eva Braun cute?
497: Will this do? - Orlando.
Orlando Man*. Do see 483-485 and try to keep up ignore 499 & 500.
*Or Woman. But I was presuming because I'm a masculinist.
I'm assuming it's Orlando Calrissian.
Tony Orlando Calrissian would be a terrific Halloween costume.
For as long as the Wayback Machine keeps it, I guess. But otherwise, all we are is dust in the wind.
This is no different than burning down a library.
