He really seems to have gotten his MO down to a science. I guess that's what happens when you practice something for forty years.
To the OP, of course Cosby is going to accuse Ghomeshi first. Scolding people is what he does. (Well, one of the things he does.)
The part I can't wrap my mind around -- well, okay, there are several -- is the part where Cosby says it is a matter of "integrity" for journalists not to ask him about the allegations. There is no universe, including one in which he is innocent, in which that claim makes sense to me.
I also keep wondering about his wife. Even if she knew, even if she made her peace with it...what must it be like to be the partner of somebody who did this over and over again?
There is no universe, including one in which he is innocent, in which that claim makes sense to me.
I think it would make sense if he were the innocent victim of slander/libel/extortion, and if the accusations made against him were so obviously false and outrageous that only a sleazy tabloid journalist would stoop to participate in the media frenzy. Which is what he is trying to suggest with his unctuous concern for journalistic "integrity."
5: Yes, I can imagine something like that being the case for other (perhaps one accuser) circumstances. But IIRC there were *13* accusations the first time this really surfaced publicly 10+ years ago.
It's almost impossible for me to imagine a case in which there were that many accusations and it was evident to reasonable person that they were obviously false and not worth asking about.
But IIRC there were *13* accusations the first time this really surfaced publicly 10+ years ago.
Wow! Really?! I guess I was vaguely aware of some hushed-up scandal or something many years ago, but had no idea there were 13 accusations against him a decade ago.
Well, it's no wonder he's going with the "we will not dignify these scurrilous allegations with a response" approach: it has clearly worked for him in the past, and he's hoping it will work for him again.
But 17 is definitely a pattern.
I suppose his wife has long since decided that she must not, and therefore will not, believe a word of it, even if she knows it to be true.
It's so much of a pattern that one wonders now about Lisa Bonet. It seems to be the common assumption that the rift between her and Cosby was related to her doing some risqué material, but the film and magazine shoot were both in 1987 and she didn't leave the franchise until 1991. And when I did a news search, I found gossip sites speculating about a tweet she apparently just made about nothing staying in the dark forever. (Although I tried to follow links to the tweet itself and it said the account has been suspended.)
I wonder less about any particular actress he worked with, and more about the universe of people surrounding him. There were lawyers. There was a morals clause in his TV contract. There were insurance companies. There were people who didn't work directly for him, and whose bread and butter didn't depend on him.
This piece, comparing rapists to a missing stair, is pretty good:
Have you ever been in a house that had something just egregiously wrong with it? Something massively unsafe and uncomfortable and against code, but everyone in the house had been there a long time and was used to it? "Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you, there's a missing step on the unlit staircase with no railings. But it's okay because we all just remember to jump over it."
Some people are like that missing stair.
7: The chronology isn't totally spelled out in this Gawker article, but there was a 2005-ish lawsuit that had a named plaintiff, several named witnesses, and 9 Jane Doe witnesses.
7: isn't it more likely that his wife hates him and never speaks to him except for appearance's sake?
11: Slate has a more detailed timeline.
It hasn't been updated with the most recent allegations, though.
He assaulted Lou Ferrigno's wife at a party in 1967? There's a man who is lost to all sense of caution. I mean, I'm sure Ferrigno is a peaceable man, but he's also the size of Newark.
Geeze, that Slate piece is nauseating. It's all nauseating.
16: It appears they didn't marry until 1980, so presumably Cosby wasn't actually risking Ferrigno's ire. She was a teenager at the time, like most of the other accusers.
Ah, I hadn't realized the sequence there. There goes any possible comic note out of what is just a depressing and repulsive situation.
What gets me is the sheer scale of it. He seems to have been doing this more or less constantly throughout his entire career. Decades! Literally decades!
You have to kind of wonder -- multiple, public, credible rape allegations that didn't turn into successful prosecutions had no effect at all on his career. Is that a function of his being a superstar, or is that kind of a general rule about how these things work out?
21 crossed with 20, but yeah, exactly; anyone who interacted with him professionally must have known all about it. (Well, it was probably possible to have remained accidentally ignorant, but most people must have known). How did this not affect his professional life?
21: I don't think any of them became public until he was mostly out of the public eye. The Slate list in 13 is in order of when the allegations were made publicly, and the first one was in 2000.
22 is still a good question. A lot of stories have been circulating in the midst of this about how menacing and intimidating he is off-camera, so that's probably part of it.
And looking at IMDB, I guess he hasn't done much acting since 2000 or so -- not none, but not all that much.
Still. Here I'm speculating, but if things started hitting the headlines around 2000, it seems really plausible that it was an open secret in the industry for a long time before that, the way Ghomeshi was.
The fantasy of the drunkenness and wet hair is much more explicit than what I can remember learning about any pattern before. You can see how his modus approximates and simulates it.
He must have carried that desire, obsession with him for all his adult life, and had the master manipulator's ability to carry it out repeatedly and safely. What a run.
Wow, 25 is remarkably creepy. On some The Five Orange Pips shit.
I'm still creeped out more by Big Ears Teddy over whatever was going on with the wet/straightened hair (obviously length matters/mattered in certain contexts to him) but this is awful. And it's been hard to see all the people saying "Well, if it's such a big deal why are we hearing about it now?" when it's been out there for so long already. That part says a lot to me.
And now I feel like I should footnote that, but what I mean is that I think it's culturally normative that a man could have preferences about hairstyles and what he likes and that's not considered inherently creepy, just you know dudes, whatever. I don't mean to excuse any of the rape allegations, which I think are legit and have thought for a long time are legit, just that I wonder to what extent that scenario was cover as something normal-seeming (what with the woman who showed up after washing or wetting her hair and found him newly nude. I think black women are under a lot of pressure anyway for their hair to meet partners' as well as society's standards and they may have been primed for that.
Ditto to 28. 25 is super creepy.
It's true that the Ghomeshi allegations are certainly much weirder than the Cosby ones, which are mostly just depressing.
One thing supporting the "everyone in the industry must have known" theory is how much time Cosby must have spent on this stuff (especially the grooming).
Surely everyone knew? It's like Saville - everyone knew, there was a lot of intimidation and heavy-ing happening, and also a lot of people just didn't give a damn as long as it wasn't them.
It does seem pretty similar to the Saville thing.
I guess he hasn't done much acting since 2000 or so...
And Little Bill was bad even for the "Let's bore kids into a morals" genre.
And if everybody knew, what else does everybody know?
And we hear it said that a career like Kennedy's, with the complicity of not only the press but of what must have been hundreds of fellow politicians and staffers, from both parties would be impossible today. But would it?
38: Which Kennedy are ou talking about?
She just published a memoir or something. I've seen it in my neighborhood bookstore.
just that I wonder to what extent that scenario was cover as something normal-seeming
I take your point, but don't see it as necessarily exclusive. He's shrewd enough to realize that the fantasy/preference is easy enough to admit to, and can be used as a tool in some situations, even if his actual desire resembles it, only not revealing the lengths he'll go to realize it.
Just read the big Washington Post investigative piece. Cosby now seems like so much a rich, smiling villain he should be a Columbo antagonist.
A few years ago I learned about Kennedy-the-VJ being an outspoken Republican and had a weird moment of feeling personally betrayed. Did I really watch that much Alternative Nation? It was like learning something off-putting about your school librarian.
I think she identifies as a libertarian. (Not that that is really any better.) That's just from reading the jacket copy on the book, though.
Did everyone really hear about the Cosby allegations before this? I don't remember hearing about it before the last couple of weeks.
I did hear that Kennedy the VJ was a Republican before now, though. I'm not completely uninformed.
||
NMM to DC Mayor for Life Marrion Barry.
|>
47 Was just about to post that in the post with the word "high" in the title. Before there was a Rob Ford there was Marion Barry.
42: I agree and like some of Ghomeshi's MO it seems designed to make the woman feel she was somehow complicit in part of the scenario or that if she told others about that it would sound that way to some.
From the Post Cosby story:
Cosby was a familiar face on the party circuit, knocking around with Hefner, author Shel Silverstein and John Dante, the second-in-command at Playboy, according to "Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream," by Steven Watts.
Also, temporary injunction against masturbating to UVa's frats, lasting until Jan 9.
I should probably stop reading all these stories, but I feel a combination if owing it to the victims (if they're speaking out, they deserve to be heard) and there but for dumb luck go I (well, probably not with Cosby, but you get the idea).
As a boy/youth in the 60s, my principle association with Silverstein was Playboy; when I met my wife I realized that he had this whole other following. It's as if Pinkwater wrote pron.
and there but for dumb luck go I At dinner last night, my daughter made the point that all around them at the frat house, consensuals of the kind she'd assented to were taking place, and would have been the experience and memory for all but a very few of the hundreds of people nearby. That's the terror of it.
Or Roald Dahl. Not quite porn, but that same combination of beloved children's author and very adult author.
In this 3-way conversation, my wife said something relevant to our ongoing discussions here: she said my relentless desire to understand predatory behavior, as it were from within, trying to find a point of contact or resemblance between desires of a Cosby and desires I've experienced myself was often somewhat offputting.
Her opinion is that I do that not because I have any points of resemblance, but because I'm baffled that I don't. She feels that she easily accommodates the notion that others have desires beyond her understanding or sharing, and that I'm somehow unable to admit that all sin, all evil isn't reflected in myself.
There's an early episode of 30 Rock where Tracy has disappeared somewhere and Jack wants him to come back and do his job so gets some GE lackey in his office to call Tracy pretending to be Bill Cosby. So the guy gets on the phone in persona Coby and starts shaming Tra to go back to work. Tracy interrupts immediately: Bill Cosby! How dare you call me after what you did to my aunt in 1978!
Jack Donaghy: I've arranged for one of Tracy's childhood idols to reach out to him.
Tracy Jordan: Hello?
Jack Donaghy: Tracy, this is Jack, I have someone here who wants to speak with you.
Rick: Tracy, this is Bill Cosby...
Liz Lemon: [whispering] Really? This is your strategy?
Jack Donaghy: [whispering and smiling] I heard him do this at a party!
Rick: ...I want you to come back to the TGS for the people who like the jokes and the things.
Tracy Jordan: Bill Cosby, you got a lotta nerve gettin' on the phone wit' me after what you did to my Aunt Paulette!
Rick: I think you're confusing me with someone else.
Tracy Jordan: 1971. Cincinnati. She was a cocktail waitress with the droopy eye!
Rick: I'm the guy... with the pudding...
Tracy Jordan: Don't try to tell me what to do! Heathcliffe Huxtable, wit' yo' light-ass kids! Jack! Why would you make me talk to this man?
Jack Donaghy: Tracy, wait!
[Deepens voice slightly. ]
Jack Donaghy: Tracy this is Billy Dee Williams, I just wanna say I love your work, it's very smooth...
[Lemon groans and walks out]
4: #cosbygate, it's about ethics in journalism.
Also, temporary injunction against masturbating to UVa's frats, lasting until Jan 9.
My (U.Va.-heavy) FB feed is split: people saying "yes, finally, a bold and meaningful step in the right direction" vs. people saying "meh, it's already Thanksgiving week, then finals, then Winter Break; this suspension has no teeth unless it gets extended into next semester."
I lean towards the latter camp, but I also think it's fairly likely the suspension will be extended. We'll see.
Also, presumably there's an alternate-world FB feed with a bunch of frat dudes being all #NotAllFratBros, so thank fucking Christ that's not my FB feed.
A few years ago I learned about Kennedy-the-VJ being an outspoken Republican and had a weird moment of feeling personally betrayed.
WTF?!
Republican and had a weird moment of feeling personally betrayed.
WTF?!
To her R-ness or to feeling betrayed by it?
This is how I know how long I've been getting most of my news from the internet: I know very little about her and never watched the show, not getting cable until about 2001, but did know that, and probably because it was discussed online.
Mid-90s, I'd guess, so when I was about the age many of you are now, early 40s. I don't mean that particular piece of information, although it may date therefrom, but when I started getting most news from the internet.
Talking about R again? Everything turns into a statistics thread yards these days.
Oh, so statistics threads are measured by the yard these days. Back in my day, we measured em by the furlong.
I wonder if we'll see a prosecutor somewhere at some point try to really throw the book at some rape-y frat. Can you seize the house under civil forfeiture? How about Going after the frats under RICO?
RICO is for damage to business or property, so I wouldn't think so. Civil forfeiture is generally supposed to be for fruits of the crime, so I think it'd be a reach (but then it's not like the authorities are unwillig to go nuts on the civil forfeiture in other contexts). Good old fashioned criminal conspiracy ought to make a pretty big dent if a prosecutor really wanted to get serious though. I don't think lack of tools is the problem.
The bond, indissoluble between friends, one for all and all for one, to be as gods, is the only motive for "Drew" and his friends that I can comprehend.
So go after that, show the world that that won't stand. Start with the guy in the Anthropology seminar, whom they mocked for his remnant of decency. Break them apart and set them against each other.
RICO is for damage to business or property
What? No. I think the sticking point though might be that (to my knowledge) rape isn't a RICO offense.
10, 20, 24, 56: That's *precisely* like Jimmy Savile. Especially the hiding-in-plain-sight and the fact a lot of scriptwriters and comedians knew and actually said it out loud, like Jerry Sadowitz and Chris Morris. And that he was aggressive and intimidating to all sorts of other people.
Did he do a lot of work for charity by any chance? Hang out with politicians?
"Gurley has 24 prior arrests on his record, police said."
|>
I think the sticking point though might be that (to my knowledge) rape isn't a RICO offense.
According to that link "dealing in obscene matter" is, though. Depending on how that's defined officially, it might be a way to get them for taking and distributing pictures and videos of rapes, which I know has been an aspect of some of these rape cases though I can't think of any frat-specific examples.
I try to do just enough charity work that people don't think I'm a lazy asshole but not so much that I'm suspected of compensating for some horrible flaw.
The easier route federally would likely be under the gang statute. The hurdle on that one would probably be "the activities of which affect interstate or foreign commerce." Maybe if one or more vics was an out of state student or something.
I can see a thread full of African-American people discussing Cosby through a friend's FB feed, and it's interesting. Seems to be about 50/50 split on whether they think Cosby did anything wrong, in a way that doesn't seem to break along gender lines at all. One woman said the others should GTFOOHWATBS, an initialism that should really take off...
76: Do any states have equivalent statutes? That would remove the interstate commerce issue.
78: Most or all. But if you can swing it federal sentencing is where the real hammer is.
Shockingly, I actually managed to figure out the acronym in 77 (I'm pretty sure)
I'm bad at the acronym thing but got 77 easily for some reason.
50/50 split on whether they think Cosby did anything wrong
Jesus.
Now I can't find the thread I saw it on anymore. It was surprising, to me. Several women were expressing the sentiment that everyone knew Cosby was trading his influence for sex from young women, and that this was such widespread knowledge that the young women must have been voluntarily taking part in that arrangement. Then they started getting pushback from other people and backed off to something like "his actions were predatory but not criminal and not rape". Now the guy whose page I saw this on has posted a lot of anti-Cosby articles by Nikki Giovanni and I don't see anyone defending Cosby anymore, so I guess he got fed up and deleted it all from his page.
Or maybe it was never on his page at all but I was seeing it on my news feed because he commented on someone else's post? Fucking Facebook, how does it work?
I think it's the beginning of 77 that makes it decipherable. Doesn't everyone have a daughter who loves to say "GTFO, noob!" Maybe that's just my house.
I got that bit, but then stalled. Clue for the rest?
Oh, "of here with all that..." I got it.
70: Oops, my bad. That's true of a civil RICO action, but I really should always already shut up when it comes to criminal law.
The WaPo article mentioned above is here, btw. Not a lot of new information but it's pretty devastating to see it all laid out in detail.
38.1: As I was saying the other day, I think "everybody" knows a lot of things. Except about Kennedy's bad politics, apparently.
But seriously, when I was down in Omaha, I heard huge amounts of believable but unverifiable gossip about rich and powerful people there. (Mostly the ones with connections to the arts scene, but others too.) Here in Mpls. there was a big Mann Act bust of a bunch of rich guys who had this sort of round-robin approach to prostitution -- like they'd vet one sex worker and then pass her around, and send her back to Chicago or wherever quite a bit richer. I think at least 20 guys were implicated, maybe twice that many, so of course, lots and lots of people must've known about that for quite awhile. But what're ya gonna do? Go down to the DA's office and tell them 3rd hand rumors about rich people you don't know? What would be the point?
There are rich and powerful people in Omaha?
Is Herman Cain still there? Also, Warren Buffet and people with control of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons people seem to be having some trouble lately.
"This led to repeated bans from local casinos, eventually a lifetime ban and finally his nuclear weapons were taken away."
This is a pretty great sentence.
Omaha really can go to your head. All the bright lights and housing plans.
The malls are getting fancier also. Oak View is as big of a step above Westroads as Westroads is above Crossroad, if you can believe.
Plus, Omaha swallowed Elkhorn, with all its glory.
Similar fights have been banned in other states - in San Francisco, it cost the city nearly $20,000 to clean feathers from clogged drains.
Too bad Omaha couldn't keep the momentum going until this year.
To the OP: I was in the library branch in one of the city's most African-American neighborhoods yesterday, and a shelf display of Cosby stuff caught my eye. On closer inspection, they'd put every Cosby book from their collection together, and laid in front of them photocopied articles about the current accusations. This fairly blew my mind, and makes me want to shake the hand of the librarian(s) at work. When I get a chance, I'll put a picture in the pool.
Who all is going to Omaha this week?
Pretty good blog post from a doctoral candidate at UVa discussing how the cult of "honor" at UVa becomes a liability when confronting issues like this.
when we say we live in a "community of honor" we mean, "to question our community is to question our honor."
The Nebraska meet-up isn't going to happen, is it?
106 resonated with me as I happened to be at a social gathering this weekend where someone mentioned that one of their kids had been admitted to a (grad-level) program at UVa. I was the asshole who mentioned that there was a bit of a thing going on related to campus culture (no one else had heard about it). Only caused a short detour in the conversation which quickly moved on to the honor Code and "you can leave a dollar on a table and no one will touch it", and the Lawn and yadda, yadda, yadda.
(I was a bit of a jerk for bringing it up at all I guess, but I assumed everyone would have heard about it.)
"you can leave a dollar on a table and no one will touch it",
"Isn't that funny! I should start wearing a dollar on my pants."
110: If that line had occurred to me, I probably would have used it and ruined the party. But yeah, that was the general directions of my thoughts at the time.
But it would have been too perfect to have left unsaid.
-/, plus? or ¿ if you are standing on your head.
or ¿ if you are standing on your head.
And looking in a mirror.
108: In my younger years I got a phone call informing me that I'd been admitted to a tiny (entering class of 5) grad program at UVa. I'd already said yes to a different grad program, and when I explained this to the (presumably) white-suited gentleman on the other end of the line, he chuckled and said, "Yes, I see, but all our other admits are young ladies who will be very disappointed to hear this." I can only hope they've recovered from their disappointment fifteen years on, perhaps by dating each other and/or taking actual interest in their intellectual careers.
I at least seriously considered applying to UVa for both undergrad and grad school; I forget how far I went in the application process either time. Obviously I didn't end up actually going there at either time. I don't think it would have been a good environment for me, and the recent revelations seem to confirm that. On the other hand, for undergrad I did go to a school with a very extensive Greek presence, and I presume the same is true of my graduate institution although I was much more isolated from that world in that case. I get the impression that the frat influence is much more intense at schools like UVa, though.
I'm assuming the other program you said yes to was at UNO or Creighton. Because all road lead to Omaha.
I did have a friend in grad school who was from Omaha and liked it a lot.
I'm actually just passing through Omaha on my way to Lincoln. Anyway, the bar was out of Yuengling so I drank something that was stronger and not as cheap (Bell's Amber Ale). It did taste better. Like Omaha.
The only part of Nebraska I've been to is Sidney. It seemed nice enough.
I lived in Nebraska for 22 years and haven't been to Sydney.
There's not much to see there. They do have a Cabela's, but that's less unusual these days than it used to be.
Someone I went to high school with lives there or work there or both.
126: They have a Cabela's because that's where Cabela's started.
We didn't actually go into the Cabela's. We did visit historic Fort Sidney, which is now just a residential neighborhood with one exceptionally large building which was once the fort's headquarters or something.
Wikipedia says they started in Chappell, but I think somebody just made that up. Even if they didn't, it's not far from Sydney.
130: You should have visited Ahistoric Fort Sidney. It's all about how aliens won the west.
I spell Sidney variously. See 123.
No, dammit, we won the West! The aliens only showed up many years later, in Roswell.
Roswell is the only place in New Mexico that I've stayed.
The trip to Sidney was actually just a brief excursion from a family reunion in Sterling, Colorado, which is larger than Sidney but not really any less depressing. The economy there was traditionally based on farming sugar beets, and there is (and maybe still is) a notable Japanese community descended from people who emigrated to work in the sugar beet fields. My own ancestors hightailed it to Farmington, NM in the 1880s, but there are still some cousins in the Sterling area.
That was for avuncular reasons. Or avauntular reasons, except avauntular isn't a word.
135: That seems weird. Under what circumstances?
I think the Japanese showed up a lot later.
There were definitely tombstones in the Sterling cemetery that were entirely in Japanese, which was kind of cool. Nation of immigrants!
Anyway, my aunt and uncle moved to Roswell after living in Salt Lake City. I can't imagine how they lived in Salt Lake City in the 50s. They both started on Scotch at the slightest provocation or when it hit 5:00 pm. Whichever came first.
I can't imagine how they lived in Salt Lake City in the 50s.
Roswell wouldn't have been the most enticing location either in that era.
Anyway, my uncle who lived in Roswell bombed Germany. My uncle who didn't live in Roswell bombed Japanese submarines. I don't think either of them spent much time in Sidney. They are all Hall County people.
The program I said yes to wasn't in Omaha, but I did have to drive through Omaha to get there, and I think even spent the night in an Omaha motel, because I-80. It was muggy?
I've passed through Omaha a few times on the train. I think I was asleep two of the times and all I remember from the other time is crossing a river.
Was it in Iowa? That's a shitty state.
149: It's called the Missouri. It's like the Ohio, but with less industrial pollution and more agricultural pollution.
Yes! I haven't lived in enough states to know the shittiest, but I rather liked Iowa City. I'd never lived east of the Rockies before and had never seen fireflies.
"Lotta bugs in this state," said one of the faculty shortly after arrival.
My sister liked Iowa City. The rest of the state is probably shitty.
151: I hear it's big and muddy.
And we got government fliers in the mail explaining how terrible the water quality was because of farm runoff, and you could smell the pig farms when the wind blew from the west, and then I became convinced I had mad cow disease and started having panic attacks as discussed in some recent thread and ended up becoming vegetarian. So maybe 150 has evidence on its side after all.
At one point, I was paid to build pig farms. On the one hand, the pigs seem to have a bad ride of if. On the other hand, nobody else wanted to give me $5/hour.
I wonder if any of the members of the Council Bluffs city council bluff during city council meetings.
I should probably sleep. Somebody can make Smearcase or somebody take my place.
Bluffalo girls won't you come out tonight.
Somebody can make Smearcase or somebody take my place.
Hello! Smearcase hadn't been around at this time of night for ages.
The best excursion into surrounding Iowa was going to Riverside, which has named itself the future birthplace of Captain Kirk and has an annual county fair/Star Trek convention where the funnel cake rubs shoulders with the Klingon costume contest and so on.
Des Moines is slightly more tolerable than Iowa City, which is for frustrated academics and frat boys. But Des Moines is highly overrated, commonly advertised as extremely hip because of all the "young professionals" there. Aren't young professionals like basically the #1 category of human hated most by hip people? WTF.
Des Moines does have a slightly higher population of non-academic people in their 30s with tattoos. There is some non-terrible food also.
Aren't young professionals like basically the #1 category of human hated most by hip people?
Hey! Some of us are relatively non-hateable.
But here's the fucking thing: there's this Social Club thing that everyone talks about as a selling point for Des Moines and all that is lovely about it. But when you go to their calendar of events, roughly 90% of the "social" events are yoga classes and other bourgeois workout things. Every so often there's a music thing or a comedy thing, but nothing like the crazy experimental shit that used to happen in the much-smaller PA town I moved from.
Hating the non-hateable is the extra effort hipness requires.
165: If I were younger, I'd probably count as a young professional now too! But still there's something disturbing about how the two categories are being combined because it's more convenient when your "hip" crowd are also making a middle-class salary doing corporate-friendly work.
comedy thing
My one attempt at Cedar Rapids nightlife was going to a comedy club where a guy in a clown costume called me gay from the stage all night. I'd forgotten the part about comedy clubs being for heteronormative dating.
We used to call them, in fact, "yuppies." It was not a compliment.
the much-smaller PA town I moved from
Which, including metropolitan area, is actually approximately the same size as Des Moines (or, for that matter, Anchorage).
Generally, I think Iowa is the sort of place people not from Iowa can pretend to like for short periods of time. One becomes less and less comfortable here over the years, rather than more and more used to it.
I've never lived in Iowa, and I've only passed through it once that I recall, so I'll defer to those who know it better for detailed assessment. That general region of the country is the one I probably have the least knowledge of, actually.
174 does seem plausible to me. I knew lots of people who stayed in Iowa City after our academic stint was over, mostly for lack of funds or alternate plans, but within a couple of years almost all of them had scattered.
Apparently the new season of "Girls" is set in Iowa City, and is about Hannah's initial enjoyment of Iowa life--lots of space, cheap rent, and smiling white people. I don't watch the show, but I am now perversely interested in finding out when exactly she learns that sex between humans is illegal here.
179: Wait, didn't you say you were fucking someone now?
Not very often. He has a lot of girlfriends, and I'm not in the market for a full-time relationship. I mean, yes, if by fucking you mean lots of pawing and making out and musing that it's too bad there are so many obstacles to us spending the night together.
That comment about prohibited sex has kept me up way past my bedtime reading about consecrated virgins. Apparently some of them end up bitter because being a consecrated virgin actually isn't nonstop spiritual bliss:
Another probable cause of bitterness among consecrated virgins might be unrealistic expectations. Because there is so little information available on the practicalities and lived experience of consecrated virginity, and because the actual women who live out this vocation are so few and far between, I think it's not unreasonable to suppose that a number of aspiring consecrated virgins enter into this vocation with what could be called an overly romanticized conception of the realities of this life.
174: My aunt and uncle were professors (now retired) at Wolf Cub U. My uncle either loved Iowa or had succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome. "Best place to live!" he'd say, "Those beautiful rolling hills!" Referring to the rolling hills of Iowa has become a family joke. He's got family in CA, and owns a camp in Maine, so he's certainly been to prettier places. He just really, really likes Iowa.
182: something similar discussed in the archives, I think - that article by the devout Jewish woman who realised that it wasn't a very nice way to live one's life?
I heard about this one guy who moved to Iowa, it made him so crazy he started hallucinating dead baseball players and so he built a stadium for them in his cornfield.
I still can't figure out what Wolf Cub U is.
182. It sounds a lot like being a nun, except you don't have to live in a convent. (Maybe actual nuns don't live in convents any more?) So, non-Catholic sort-of nuns. Doesn't really seem very attractive long-term.
Having read the second link, you don't even have to be non-Catholic. (Reading all the links, and the links in the links before posting: road to madness.)
185- We should go check that out. I don't know why, I just have a feeling about it.
190: About halfway between there and the other Iowa place under discussion. Unless I'm wrong.
Oh. I was totally going to apply there but instead applied to Oberlin.
I never know how accurate my sense of college reputations are, whether my sense is an NYC area only thing, or whether I'm just idiosyncratically confused. But AWB's place is the only Iowa college where the designation as Wolf Cub makes sense to me status-wise: not just a puppy, but a really excellently special puppy, at least for a humanities scholar who enjoys teaching.
It's hard for me to remember that it is actually in Iowa.
About the only John Irving novel that I could imagine re-reading (but won't) is The Water-Method Man in which much of the action is takes place in Iowa City (and of course it is almost certainly proportionately represented in fiction). It certainly was fortuitously located to feed his wrestling obsession.
I saw maybe a quarter of the movie The World According to Garp. I figure that will last me for this life.
I'd like to think I would have noticed it anyway, but these threads have certainly sensitized me to the inadequacy of viewing life there solely through the lens of the undergraduate experience.
My kids have loved Iowa. For someone from a big city, the changes can be refreshing, or quaint. Sex is not a problem for them. But they can leave, and all of their friends have left after more-or-less brief stays beyond graduation.
We took my son to a nice restaurant, which was good. Farm-to-table, you have to like that sort of thing. But it was head-and-shoulders above anything else we've ever eaten there, and how often would you want to go? There was a faculty group in the next room. Urbane enough, it appeared, but skewing old, and claustrophobia was very easy to imagine.
We bought very good thick-cut bacon and a dozen locally-produced farmers co-op eggs at a long-established grocery store in town. The eggs were outstanding, better and much cheaper than what we were for instance able to buy at our local farmers market Saturday.
It's the best looking town for miles around, but that wouldn't be enough by a long shot. Visitors love it, like Barack did—remember the logo for the '08 campaign? Rolling hills indeed; very Grantwoody. My son, an art major, has the middle-aged self-portrait Wood did on his wall. But Wood's experience in Iowa was nothing for the state to be proud of, for all those love-offerings he painted of it.
I wonder if there's an ICD10 code for that.
199 to getting your penis bit off, not enjoying Iowa.
a really excellently special puppy
I said this last week, but it might have been buried in some discussion: At breakfast on Sunday morning, at a bustling mediocre diner, my son's girlfriend expressed such enthusiasm for Bunyan, for Blake that it was inspiring. I re-read Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience this past Saturday afternoon.
Everybody loves giant lumberjacks but Blake Lively has issues we have discussed here recently.
I was accepted at moderately selective liberal arts colleges.
Bob Weir says that Des Moines is second rate, when compared to Salt Lake City.
I sort-of enjoyed my stay in Iowa City. For part of it I was living in a van and trying not to go mad at the constant stress of having my PhD research yanked out from under me. OTOH I met a really nice woman who introduced herself as 'the bloody shit girl.' Should have ditched my ex for her, but I was still under the illusion that everything could be made to work out.
Des Moines is only two hours from Omaha, so assessments of it are going to suffer from the obvious comparison.
207: It sounds like you missed a real charmer.
Urbane enough, it appeared, but skewing old, and claustrophobia was very easy to imagine.
This is an issue for my friend (my non-blog friend) who teaches there. He and his husband count a couple of much older people among their closest friends. Not that it isn't nice to have significantly older people in your circle, but less so when it's a matter of necessity, due to low numbers of prospective friends.
210: Yes, and the young people tend to be weirdly fascist or so heteronormative as to be hilarious. "What? A coffee? With you? But what will my wife say? What if students see us?" Some of the older people are fairly cool, but mostly tired of trying to remember people's names.
I know so very many people whose names I cannot remember. I can remember details of their lives, but not their name.
209: Oh she certainly was. Just prone to a bit of weirdness, which I rather like.
I've heard from three other new women professors who, like me, tried to befriend male professors in our age range (single, married, dating) who immediately asked us if we had husbands who bowl, play softball, golf, etc. I, of course, said that I'd run a softball team in NYC and am a very good second baseman. "Erm, well, AWB, it's kind of a *man* thing, and we wouldn't you to feel uncomfortable." Turns out it's not an all-male league. The team from our place of employment chooses to forbid women from playing, just on their team.
Low morale and a stifling atmosphere are bad news, because the young ones do a lot of the inspiring. I haven't looked them up but my son's art teachers and the art history teacher, ms. bigcat, don't seem very old in the telling.
214.last: That sucks. Sorry you have to deal with dickweeds.
It's your own fault. AWB! Second baseperson!
214: set up your own team. There's you and those three others for a start.
Yeah, one of the dickweeds (about my age) is trying to block my reappointment, by suggesting in seekrit emails to everyone but me that we just don't know anything about my private life, and there are a lot of unanswered questions there about my discretion and propriety. I'm the only out queer person in the department. I'm sure these things have nothing to do with each other.
we just don't know anything about my private life, and there are a lot of unanswered questions there about my discretion and propriety
The fact that no one knows anything about your private life may raise suspicions about your propriety, but surely it also proves that your discretion is impeccable.
we just don't know anything about my private life, and there are a lot of unanswered questions there about my discretion and propriety.
This seems like a self-refuting concern, but I'm sure that doesn't help in practice.
Pwned. But I spent time on clarificatory formatting.
Obviously, the older cooler people called me immediately to tell me about it, so it's not as if I don't have people on my side.
...unanswered questions there about my discretion and propriety.
How utterly infuriating.
There's a legend at my alma mater of a professor in the 1960s who, when he got news of his tenure decision, ran down the hallway yelling "Hahaha I'm a faggot and there's nothing you can do about it!" That's probably what they are afraid of.
And he did it while carrying scissors.
I hope the story in 224 is true.
Particularly infuriating because, judging by what you say here, it doesn't sound like you have a lot to be discreet about in that area. It would be different if you had a desk planner with "nameless orgies" scheduled in for every evening except Monday and Thursday. (Football and laundry night respectively).
Maybe that's the problem. "Oh, sure, AWB seems discreet, because we're not hearing about what she's getting up to. But if you knew all of her secrets, you'd know that she's not discreet at all! She's shamelessly revealing everything that's happening in her personal life!"
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ATM: Thanksgiving Family drama
I just got an e-mail from my mother's best (and really only friend) chastising me for not telling my mother about my engagement or acknowledging an invitation out to Thanksgiving dinner.
I haven't spoken to my father since March, because he's been pretty abusive and done some really reckless things--like driving a car insured by my uncle when his PCP at least told him not to and probably now even after his license has been revoked. I heard him tell my mother to tell me that his doctors told him that driving was fine. And the lying just upsets me a lot.
My parents invited me to a fairly expensive hotel restaurant, and I'm really not interested in going. Holidays with them are always unpleasant and basically involve me babysitting my mother. And they really can't afford the restaurant. My concern is that my Dad is squirelling money away in ways that could jeopardize his Medicaid eligibilty and subsidy for assisted living. He basically stopped paying his portion of the rent, realizing that my mother's trust would pay it. I was giving them money before, but he managed to increase his income by doing that.
I was probably being controlling, because I was trying to preserve assets, but they had put me in a really bad position, and I had to clean up a *lot* of messages.
The Canadian (my FE who needs a blogname) was concerned initially about announcing our engagement too widely, because he knew that his company wouldn't bother supporting his greencard if they thought he could get one through marriage--and that's still an expensive hassle.
She's right that I should have talked to my mother and told her we weren't going, but I didn't want to blow up at her. She got my father to write a letter of apology which was one of those "I'm sorry I did something that made you feel hurt, and I want you in my life. But, I've done nothing wrong and everyone else in my life supports my actions." A non-apology apology.
My mother and her friend have been friends for more than 50 years, and this friend has been quite kind to me and was certainly more helpful to me during the crisis with my parents than my own family.
So, how can I respond? Family ties are certainly important, but so is my sanity and integrity. I don't want to hurt my mother who is frail and vulnerable (though tough willed and ornery in a lot of ways). Nor do I want to alienate her friend. Thoughts?
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Nothing else for it. AWB is just going to have to have a nameless orgy, deliberately let the news leak, and put an end to all this damaging speculation. I can manage any time in the week beginning December 15.
That's the thing: it's obvious that I know from nameless orgies. I teach courses on sex. I give lectures on sex. I am heard in my office on most days having conversations with 20-year-olds about historical polyamory, premature ejaculation, lesbian sex, sodomy, masturbation, etc. I can do all that BECAUSE I'M NOT HAVING SEX WITH THEM. Weirdly, talking about sex is way more scandalous than having sex. I have become keenly aware of the fact that people who see me cuddling with my male sometimes-partner suddenly seem to be about 35% less fearful and jumpy around me.
That is, if they can think of me as being in a straight couple, they can relax because I'm not going to try to fuck them or whatever they're afraid of.
Turns out it's not an all-male league. The team from our place of employment chooses to forbid women from playing, just on their team.
Oh em gee. Yurk.
there are a lot of unanswered questions there about my discretion and propriety
Questions posed where and by who?
Yeah, one of the dickweeds (about my age) is trying to block my reappointment, by suggesting in seekrit emails to everyone but me that we just don't know anything about my private life, and there are a lot of unanswered questions there about my discretion and propriety.
OH EM DOUBLE GEE WHAT THE FUCK holy fuckballs what on earth is wrong with people and can someone please send this dickweed to... oh, I don't even know where.
235: I told my friend who told me about the email to tell them to ask the fucking questions, and that I would be happy to answer them. I might even ask a few questions in return. If we want to open up the can of worms about faculty private lives, and start with the one queer person, then I hope that means everyone in the department would like to share their answers to the same questions.
The Harper Valley PTA strategy?
I wholeheartedly endorse all of rfts' reactions. In a college English department? What rock did they dig up the dickweeds from under?
230: If you don't want to cut ties completely, I think you need to respond and apologize for not responding earlier. Your options are suck it up and go (while your financial worries sound very real, one expensive dinner won't change anything), or plead a conflict, which you probably have by now. If you and the Canuck were just going to eat dinner at home, that's still a conflicting plan, and you don't need to describe it in detail.
my FE who needs a blogname
"The Canuck"
242: That's my plan with my mother. The question is how do I respond to her friend.
The Canuck and I have been under a lot of stress lately. (That is not going to be his permanent pseud, because I think he would find it offensive.)
I think graduate schools have diverged in a yellow wood in this way. Some people are taught to lick boots and eat shit and become sad, self-loathing, inward, petty, obedient, repressed children who lash out at anyone not in lockstep with them. Other people are taught to seek the most radical, scary, personally and politically relevant work they can find and risk everything constantly to do it. Those two worldviews are pretty incompatible. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader which kind of grad student gets hired to tenure-track positions right out of school and ends up making hiring and retention decisions about the others.
D'oh. How about Dudley Drug Right? IIRC, he was in pharma.
my FE who needs a blogname
"The Fewnab"
diverged in a yellow wood
Very nice. I think your assessment is true, but I don't think it's new. It may be more desperate with job markets and loans.
244: Dear Friend, you're absolutely right that I should have responded sooner to Mother. Sadly, we have other plans for the holiday and won't be able to see Mom and Dad. Thank you for all you do. Maybe we can have lunch over the Xmas holiday. Love, BG
Ignore the engagement question entirely. I can't think of any answer you could give that would explain why others knew and your mother didn't that sounds OK for your mother's best friend.
Try a predominantly-Canadian first name, like Morley or Wilf.
245: I think you forgot the ones who are taught to step over anyone in their way, who got rewarded for their shitty behavior in grad school and still think they deserve all the shared resources.
Sorry if this has come up before, but what is a FE? FiancE?
250: Diefenbaker, like the wolf in "Due South".
252: Yes. He was previously known as My BF.
249: That makes sense. No lunch likely though since she lives 4.5 hours away.
I'm now reading Grave Mistake by Marsh. A woman dies after her daughter brings her new fiance to meet with her mother. So, you could be just protecting your mother.
The Chemist is a possibility, but that might be too much like DE's The Biophysicist.
I was going to suggest Bar/be/cue Sa/uce Jo/nes but it turns out that's already taken.
258: That was very confusing. For a while I thought DE was married to my brother.
Bostonian Guy? Except that sounds like you've named him based on his shoes.
263: Not Quebecois. But if anyone starts dating a Quebecois, I will be the first to suggest Pepsi.
Some people are taught to lick boots and eat shit and become sad, self-loathing, inward, petty, obedient, repressed children who lash out at anyone not in lockstep with them. Other people are taught to seek the most radical, scary, personally and politically relevant work they can find and risk everything constantly to do it.
245: I think you forgot the ones who are taught to step over anyone in their way, who got rewarded for their shitty behavior in grad school and still think they deserve all the shared resources.
I am quite sure I'm not in laudable category 2. I wonder which of categories 1 and 3 I exemplify without realizing it!
"Some call him Tim" would be confusing.
269: He does prefer their coffee to Dunkin Donuts' even though Tim Horton's baked goods have gon to shit.
Tim it is.
271: Thanks for putting a wrinkle in my plans, Mobes.
Present company excluded of course. Things are more complex than this suggests. In the city in which I went to grad school, the divergence was particularly pronounced. It was very hard to make friends with grad students at the nearby unis because they were taught to be secretive about their research, to nod like horses at everything their professors say, replicate the research of 70-year-olds, etc., while at my uni that would have been behavior that professors would have found very troubling in a grad student.
Oh, the blog does fine with multiple Bobs (longlost sandwich Bob, and current bomb-Fukushima Bob.) We can support another Tim.
to nod like horses
The math grad students were taught to paw at the ground.
276: don't be too hasty, LB. Remember the trouble that culminated in the Winnowing of the Daves.
I'm quite sure I'm nothing particularly admirable, even if I'm not actually a lickspittle or a backstabber.
I really want somebody in my life to be called Mothra.
280: But I'm confused -- among the young people of today, is it a compliment to called "hip" but an insult to be called a "hipster"?
If BG takes Mothra, then you won't be able to, MH.
282: Yeah, you could call your wife that.
She might not like that and it wouldn't fit because she is not Canadian.
Canada is the Japan of North America.
If Mrs. Hick were Japanese, her name would be "Mosura", duh.
Out on the road on Saturday, I saw a "MOTHRA" plate on a minivan.
The Harper Valley PTA strategy?
I've been listening to Tom T. Hall lately. He's an interesting figure -- incredibly successful in his day (wrote 37 top 10 songs), but seems mostly unknown now. I just stumbled across him at some point, but it wasn't a name I'd seen mentioned.
He also sounds exactly like a schlocky country singer with one important difference -- he isn't schlocky. When you listen to the songs, like Harper Valley PTA, they're well written and full of sly observations. But if you just listen to the sound of the music and rhythm of the words they sound like generic country music.
Also, I agree with everyone else that the colleagues that AWB is describing sound bizarrely petty and judgmental (and 224 is great).
The Canuck and I have been under a lot of stress lately. (That is not going to be his permanent pseud, because I think he would find it offensive.)
He's a Calgary fan?
And I have another conundrum about what name I want to go by.
I was named after a great great something so my name is
Bostonian Girl PHiladelphia (My Social Security card says BostonianGirl, but I go by Bostonian, and my passport and birth certificate have my first name as Bostonian Girl.
So, I'm Bostonian Girl Philadelphia French
The question is whether I want to be
(1.) Bostonian Girl Philadelphia French
(2.) Bostonian Girl French Horton
(3) Bostonian Girl Philadelphia Horton
or the unwieldy
(4.) Bostonian Girl Philadelphia French Horton
Apparently it would be very hard to become
Bostonian Philadelphia French Horton
I'm not sure I'm following your current name structure. You're now Mary-Ann Joan Smith, (SS card Maryann, you go by Mary, but your passport and BC are Mary Ann)? And you'd like to be Mary Joan Smith Horton, and just drop the Ann?
295: Basically, that's what I'm thinking about.
But I'm also thinking of just going with Mary-Ann Joan Horton.
I think that my Dad kind of likes that, because Tim's last name is the same as Edith Wharton's maiden name, and I have her middle name too.
Plus, my real French last name is hard for English speakers to spell.
293 -- It's certainly plenty common to be known by a name slightly different from the one on a passport/SS card. Aren't the real choices here between Bostonian French and Bostonian Horton?
All names are hard for English speaker to spell.
OK, maybe not all, but I'm always surprised at how much my accent seems to confuse people about how my name is spelled.
297: Yeah, Bostonian P. French or Bostonian P. Horton.
But I could do Bostonian F Horton. I don't want to give up P though.
Just go by your initials, be B.G.P. French-Horton. (Or, if you are a Gentleman rather than a Player, "French-Horton, B.G.P.")
299 We've lived in states that insisted on my wife using one initial rather than the other on her drivers license. I don't remember whether we live in one now.
300: The first 2 initials are actually the same, so it would be a bit of a tongue twister to say B.B.P. French-Horton
I know a woman for whom the four initials of her married name (first, middle, maiden, last) spell her nickname (which is coincidentally BG's as well). Pleasantly recursive.
The first 2 initials are actually the same, so it would be a bit of a tongue twister
Oh, come on, A.A. Milne managed. Also, B.B. King, C.C.H. Pounder, E.E. Cummings, G.G. Allin, J.J. Abrams, LL Cool J and no doubt many others I can't think of offhand.
304 But try saying A.A.M. King.
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My mom went home yesterday, and went to look up a letter she'd had for decades, from her father's high school. She vaguely recollected that it existed, but couldn't remember anything about it.
It turns out to be from one of his teachers, responding to a query from my grandfather. My grandfather attended under his birth name, but wrote the teacher under his new identity, so the reply is full of lines like
...I have tried valiantly to recall you as a boy, but without success. I did not see your name in the 1930 Crimson and Gold, which I managed to keep, but did come across a picture of [other student] in his capacity of member of the Junior Staff. Perhaps you were a L.A. student at the time of issue of the C & G, and I do not have the 1931 issue.
!!
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Funny. Why was he getting in touch with his old school?
307: needed a copy notarized by the secstate so he could start a new life in Bahrain.
Suggestions for the Canadian's name, not having caught up with the whole thread yet:
Maple Leaf Jones
Bob Caygeon
Gordo Del Norte
Haven't seen the full response yet, and I don't think it's fully clear. But why on earth would he say "I was a student of yours" and then give the wrong name?!
That's super weird, heebie. I hope you keep finding puzzle pieces like that!
Never change your name. You might randomly book yourself plane tickets with the old name, and then you have to get to the airport very early and be super anxious about whether they'll let you fly or not.
(Actually though it turns out not to be a big deal. Only one TSA guy out of three even noticed my middle name didn't match, and that got cleared up pretty quick since I brought an old passport.)
You booked it with the (9) at the end?
309: Todd, we've settled on Tim Horton.
Reading 293 made me hungry for doughnuts.
306 -- Makes you wonder how on earth he thought it was going to work. (I just looked, btw, and the teacher would've found him in the 1930 C&G if he'd had the right name.)
315: Nope.
I think Flippanter has a good story about whether the rest of the blog needs to call a significant other by the same name used by the significant first.
(His classmate the Pulitzer winning novelist doesn't seem to be in the 1930 C&G.)
Uh-oh, I didn't notice any of the names to be pulitzer winning novelists. I think this reflects badly on me.
Actually, I don't know which year I'm looking at.
Notable Alumni section of wikipedia to the rescue!
You didn't notice because he's not in the Crimson & Gold, you silly.
Say, Neb, where did your grandfather go to high school in 1930?
(The novelist is still alive and you should totally send him a letter.)
Asking him if he remembers my grandfather? Or letting him know how much I've enjoyed never reading his books?
Some of our friends might have opinions on his recent physics novel.
Say your girlfriend says that she wants a "break" of indefinite duration, because she went straight from an abusive home environment, to an abusive boyfriend, to you, and hasn't ever spent time understanding herself, and wants a little separation so she can get her issues figured out.
Is that just code for "I don't love you anymore"? I knew she was depressed but I always assumed we'd work through her issues together.
We've been together for 2.5 years, and since this happened last week, we haven't spoken once. I still love her, but silence makes me assume the worst, and I feel like each day that goes by is doing lasting damage to my trust in her, though it might be what she needs.
Depending on the level of depression involved it could easily be the normal (bad) tendency of depressed people to cut off social ties and retreat into themselves. (What she said certainly sounds like the sort of thing that a depressed person might say when they really just mean "I want to sit alone in my apartment all day because I can't work up the energy to either function properly or the sense of self worth to not function properly around someone else.") But it could also be a breaking-up-excuse, or mean exactly what she says. I'd worry about the extent to which it was an expression of depression rather than a healthy reaction to her circumstances. If there's one thing seriously depressed people are not exactly good at it's understanding themselves or figuring out their issues on their own. But it's also the way depression makes you want to try to deal with things.
If it is (partially?) an expression of depression on her part rather than a good idea I don't really know what that means for you or what you should do about it though.
333: torque--I'm not sure what you want. I've been very depressed and wouldn't certainly understand (intellectually) if someone didn't want to be with me because of that. I work very hard to stay well, but relapse is always a risk. It would be horribly painful but understandable
It sounds to me, though, like you want to be with her even though she struggles with depression. I don't know your girlfriend, but you might just say what you said to us, that you love her and you understand how hard things have been for her and you'd like to be with her as she works through these issues. And then, if you mean it, you can say that you don't think that you can be on an indefinite break and would prefer to break up with her if she doesn't want to be with you.
Aw man, right up until the last line of 334 I thought it was going to have some really kick-ass advice that would solve everything. Still a helpful comment, so thanks.
"If there's one thing seriously depressed people are not exactly good at it's understanding themselves or figuring out their issues on their own."
Urg, I sort of agree but I also don't want to assume I know what's best for her better than she does.
"you can say that you don't think that you can be on an indefinite break and would prefer to break up with her if she doesn't want to be with you."
Yeah, the indefiniteness is really tough for me to wrap my head around. My preference order is 1. be together (possibly after some specified interval of break), 2. break up completely and start moving on, and 3. whatever the current muddled situation is, but I feel like an ultimatum that it has to be 1 or 2 might rule out 1.
I'm sorry, torque. That sounds rough.
My pessimistic take is that it is a permanent break. The phrase "indefinite break" sounds like an ill-designed attempt either to spare your feelings, or cover her options in case she is a different person in six months who is ready for a healthy relationship. But honestly, it should be a clean break. If she is in a better place in six months, she's still allowed to contact you after a full break-up on good terms. She doesn't need to place you on reserve in the meantime, on that off-chance.
338: Right, I thought it was permanent too, and, if that's the case, it just seems like torque ought to try to make that explicit.
It really, really, really depends on how severe the depression she's dealing with is, but there are definitely times when the people around someone dealing with depression should probably step in to prevent them from trying to deal with things on their own. I mean, that's exactly what depressed people want to do at almost any level of severity, because that's part of the condition, but trying only feeds the depression. If by "spending time understanding herself" involves someone else (therapist?) then I wouldn't worry too much about her state of mind* but otherwise I'd maybe suggest being (a little) aggressive in staying in contact with her.
*(The downside here would be that she's probably just breaking up with you but isn't entirely sure how to be completely direct about it or isn't certain of it herself but probably will be in time.)
I have no real idea. But maybe ask if she'd be up for scheduled lunch/brunch dates at intervals -- every two weeks or so? -- to figure out where she's at rather than having to figure out that you've broken up because you haven't spoken in three months? I think you could be up front about it: "I want to give you the space you need, but I also want to know what you're thinking about our relationship on an ongoing basis."
If on any given occasion, she still doesn't know what she's thinking, you can have a friendly lunch and at least you'll know she's all right. But if she makes any decisions, or you decide you're out of patience, you've got a pre-planned occasion to bring things up.
This only works if she's up for it; I could see it being more pressure than she could handle while 'on a break".
"indefinite break" is my phrase, not hers. She just said "break", and suggested she still pictured having kids together and stuff, but just didn't want to put a time frame on herself.
I definitely like the idea of having scheduled conversations, as my biggest problem right now is that just the minute-to-minute decision of whether to contact her or not is occupying a lot of my mental processing power.
I disagree with 241. Relationships, and relationships ending, is one area where you can't and shouldn't take responsibility for another person's well-being. It's just too fraught. You can contact a third party - friend, stable relative - for updates, and ask that they check up on her. But you can't be that person yourself.
342: that's because it's really pretty manipulative, and so it's fucking with your head. I'm absolutely not saying she asked for a break out of malice, and there are definitely situations where asking for a break is the right thing. But it needs to be a well-defined break under pretty fair circumstances, because it's such a mindfuck for the other person. (Ie taking a break ten years into a very unhappy marriage is a different thing altogether from taking a break from someone who is totally smitten with you.)
On the plus side, after randomly rerunning my neural network code for the 8th time, I got results orders of magnitude better than the previous 7. I thought that shit was doomed. Hard to overestimate the sensitivity of NNs to initial conditions I guess.
Here's my guess: she thinks you are the perfect person to settle down with, and genuinely loves you, but isn't anywhere close to being in a place where she's ready to be in a relationship with a permanent partner. The "break" is because she doesn't want to give you up. But it is over. Right person, wrong time does not work.
I'm really sorry, though - it's an awful thing for both of you.
The sucks, torque. My guess is that it's a break-up from someone who hasn't gotten a lot of positive results when she tells difficult truths. A version of letting you down easy or finding a reason to break up that can't be argued with. If you have mutual friends who you know will check on her and make sure she's OK, I'd just say goodbye. No revisiting, no checking in. (To be fair, I'm sort of notoriously insensitive about dealing with folks with depression in real life, so probably I err on the side of cruelty rather than kindness.)
Ah, on preview, I see I'm pwned by heebie. So, +1 to heebie's comments.
It hadn't occurred to me until ydnew's 347.1, but someone with a history of being in abusive relationships (especially if they don't have much experience being in other ones) would probably be more reluctant than normal to be direct or blunt about breaking up with someone.
I think it's possible to take her statement at face value but also tell her you need a chance to sit down and talk about what you should be doing, timeframes, whatever it is that you need to know. And you need to have that conversation soon for your own peace of mind, probably. But if you can figure out what questions you want to ask, that could help. And letting her know that you care about her and the radio silence is messing with you can also be done in a way that's not passive-aggressive or controlling.
"that's because it's really pretty manipulative, and so it's fucking with your head."
This is good to hear.
346.1 is my guess too, but I don't think it's insanely more likely than her reaching out in a couple weeks. In any case I'll probably do something similar to 335.2.
Right person, wrong time does not work.
My wife and I went out for a year, broke up for four, and then got back together and married. We've been married for fourteen years, and I've never loved her more. This both proves and disproves your statement, I think, but I could be wrong. Regardless, I know we're the exception rather than the rule, so whatevs.
And more important than any of that, I'm sorry, torque. Heartache is the worst.
Thanks for sharing that, VW. It's a really sweet story and it can be encouraging (at least to me) to hear that that sort of thing happens sometimes.
It's a really sweet story
He's probably leaving out something like breaking down her will with four years of incessant stalking.
VW was off doing a second-by-second reenactment of the Civil War during those years.
Called her. Y'all were right. Ty for the advice, probably saved me a day or more of mental agony. A rare case of Unfogged being practically useful! Now I can begin the 4-years-of-incessant-stalking phase. Also the making as much money as possible to make her jealous phase, and the texting her explicit pictures of other, hotter girls I'm sleeping with phase.
351: But at the time did you consider yourself broken up or on a break?
Sorry, torque. I think the "better to know than not know" is as important in relationships as in medicine. Sounds really painful for you, though.
355: I'm sorry. But good you know for sure, instead of being in limbo.
355.last is a bad idea right? I'm calling an old FWB right now, one who always hated the person I just broke up with (b/c I stopped seeing her to be in this relationship), and I'm sort of tempted to ask her if she wants to have a bit of a photoshoot.
359: Maybe just a little teeny tiny bit of a terrible idea, yes.
I agree with 357 completely.
(and maybe 359)
Photos are a bad idea. Get some marble and some chisels and do the thing so it lasts.
I mean, go out and have yourself a salacious time all you like, but the theory is that it's your life now, no longer the ex's.
I speak a bit from experience, though I was actually the breaker-upper: when you do love someone, and have envisioned a life together, but can't help but see the "wrong time" writing on the wall, it takes a lot of courage to speak up and do the deed, break up. Probably hurts as much for her as for you. It's not wise to hurt the whole thing more.
356: we were broken up and had basically no contact at all during that time.
And I'm sorry, torque. That truly sucks. But don't do anything that will cause gswift's colleagues to murder you in cold blood and then reasonably claim you were a dangerous felon.
Odd that there are so many mnemonic tricks for remembering short strings of numbers, and so few for forgetting them. I wouldn't go for full-blown Eternal Sunshine timeline-removal, but I would like to forget her number so I won't be at risk of texting her helpful tips like "Your blowjobs were above average, but had room for improvement. When you're going down on [some rich guy she knows] make sure you play with the balls!"
I would suggest alcohol, but it has the unfortunate effect of lowering inhibitions in addition to removing memories. Sorry you're going through this; it's such an awful position to be in.
Yeah. There are in fact apps for that and you can get gmail to make you do a math problem before emailing or something. But it's okay to feel however you feel and all that good stuff, genuinely. It must be extra hard after holding onto uncertainty for those days. But may it all be better blowjobs for you!
Problem solved I see, but in my experience being broken up with is like being cheated on, or being seasick, or having your clothing catch fire. If you have the slightest suspicion that it is happening to you, then it definitely is.
Good thinking. Where did I leave my "in case of adultery" knife?
so I won't be at risk of texting her helpful tips like "Your blowjobs were above average, but had room for improvement. When you're going down on [some rich guy she knows] make sure you play with the balls!"
There, there. Keep sharing all these impulses here, please.
372: Desdemona was totally cheating on Othello. It's subtext.
being cheated on ... If you have the slightest suspicion that it is happening to you, then it definitely is
This is crazy. False accusations of cheating are a pretty common thing, no?
Somewhere in between. If you're normally not jealous or suspicious, and something sets off your spidy sense that you're being cheated on, you should follow up and trust your gut (for a while at least). If you're jealous and working on internal stuff, then you may be prone to see smoke all over the place, and you should be a little self-aware about that inclination. (Finally, jesus christ can people also be in denial about whether or not their spouse is a perpetually cheating scumbag. Hooboy.)
Also, people are in denial about their spouse's clothes being on fire.
Well, I have been asked if I was cheating, when I wasn't (and hadn't).
359: Flickr pool. It's safer than sending them to the ex and allows us to provide helpful feedback.
Maybe she was and it was projection.
I'm sure it was nothing. Forget I said anything.
The Moby doth protest too much. Set his clothes on fire.
Odd that there are so many mnemonic tricks for remembering short strings of numbers, and so few for forgetting them.
Maybe compose a jingle with lots of similar but significantly different numbers so it all starts to mush together?
Here's an idea. I can still remember the number for Empire Carpet. Just over-write the number you want to forget with 800-588-2300.
Can't believe nobody's pointed out that giving bitter but potentially helpful hints to the ex isn't as good as gentle sabotage. "You definitely had great technique, but you know what guys really like? The sensation of sharp little teeth. Try that out next time. You'll get an amazing response."
Lacks bitterness. I mean gentle more as in kindly offerred.
392: The Cosmo Sex Tips Gambit.
"Just as he's about to come shove a cold carrot up his ass"
For bitterness, try the grapefruit trick.
395: Play with his balls is, like, the quintessential Cosmo sex tip, though.
I only read Cosmo for the damaging normative views on female bodies, not the sex tips.
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Maybe The Knowledge is overrated, but I'm in a Boston cab where after giving the driver the street address of a building on a university campus and told him which campus it's on, he has asked me what part of town said (famous) university is in and made me repeat the name of the university and the street address again. Then he said "I can go to [other street vaguely nearby], right?"
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Rewriting sentences on a phone am difficult grammarwise.
"Just as he's about to come shove a cold carrot up his ass"
Hott!
...um no, wait.
401: Lots of people get it confused with Haverford.
Yep, 390 is the only way to do it that I can think of. Like the story about the leprechaun who buries treasure under a stalk of wheat in a field. Someone captures the leprechaun and makes him show him the stalk, which the leprechaun has to do once by Leprechaun Rules. But homie forgot his shovel so he has the leprechaun put a ribbon on the stalk in question and Leprechaun Swear not to remove it while he goes back to his barn to get the shovel. When he returns to the field, the leprechaun is gone and every single stalk has a ribbon on it.
396: I am really curious about that grapefruit thing. I wonder how many men are willing to try it.
406: we tried it, specifically to feed the blog, but it really didn't work. I suppose I could write a review.
I cannot believe you thought that you could get away without writing a review. Write! Now!
Sorry, I'm absolutely not going to email this. Here's the review of the Grapefruit Technique. Feel free to promote it to a post.
So in a fit of idealism I proposed to Florence that we try the grapefruit trick for science. She was unaware of the grapefruit trick, so I showed her the video linked by the post. When we stopped laughing we agreed that the noise was horrifying and was right out.
Next time she went grocery shopping (it was her turn) she picked up a grapefruit.
What'd we think?
It was a blowjob. So, pretty fun! A smoother action for the member stroking that goes on during the bell-endier activities than usual, overall, but that's 'cause we don't like a big mess from head. Plenty of folks will have lots more natural slidiness from saliva, I bet, and so this will not be much different.
The smell was pleasant and apparently the flavor was nice. If you like oranges better, that might be better. Pineapples could work, with some care.
Overall, not worth the trouble, because it foreclosed on opportunities for certain sequences of activities.
Some tips (har har):
1) You'll want to put a towel or two down unless you are a) in a tiled location you plan to clean (or rinse), b) totally nasty, and/or c) hoping to get yourself a nice ant collection going.
2) Get the right size and cut it to the right extent
3) Laugh, but not until your partner does
4) Warm that thing up for a goodly while, but do take care to avoid scalding!
5) Be sure to check to see if it'll interfere with your meds!
Gotta be handy with the steel if you know what I mean, earn your keep!
Warren G. |>
I would be very, very cautious about pineapple. Eating too much pineapple can give you sores in your mouth, and too much pineapple isn't implausibly much.
410: I think the main proponent of the technique said that navel oranges also work.