Becks, unfortunately, these guys are not after the likes of you. These tricks look like they might work with the right person. But you are the wrong person for these guys, and that's a good thing.
I used to have a dumb, shallow friend who hung around me for the purpose of hearing some good jokes and other smart stuff from me to make himself seem interesting.
I've got men coming up the wazoo
Don't we all, dear, don't we all.
Don't we all, dear, don't we all.
Even the men.
And how about "the DNA cesspool"?
I actually think the wallaby line might work on me if I didn't know it was canned. On the other hand, no guy who ever made me feel uncomfortable or bad about myself ever parlayed that maneuver into romantic success with me. On the other hand, I've never been picked up in a bar or club. Also, I suppose I'm not your typical steely NY gal.
Oh no, I've just revealed my secret identity! I'm the three-handed secretary!
So far the special vocabulary ("sarging," "PUA," "AFC," "f-close," etc.) is reminding me of nothing so much as that Rolling Stone article on Scientology I just read. Maybe I'm primed for that association by Magnolia.
On the other hand, Steven den Beste's marathon sessions in front of his poor-man's child porn leave him chapped and raw, but happy.
On preview: imagine what Steven den Beste could accomplish with more than two hands. Or don't imagine.
Delete this if necessary.
I need to be quicker on the post button if I want my senseless vituperation to go where it otter.
Steven den Beste has sex with otters.
I propose that we not get SdB all over the blog just yet.
7: The three-handed secretary with the secret weiner. You should get business cards.
We should at least do the blog the courtesy of telling it to close its eyes.
Mmmmm.
Cute little animé girls with cute little animé vagendas.....
"I talked to some of the women who I'd been with afterward...."What the hell did Strauss do with the rest of them?
My wife had a naive college roommate who, when pressed, admitted that she always thought of the "wazoo" as a bellybutton, and pictured laserbeams shooting out of it.
Who the hell invented such a weird expression?
That's not because I've got men coming up the wazoo
I wish I could say the same. I keep telling you people...
Farber must know, and be prepared to engage and question our shallow assumptions about wazooism.
Speaking of "dating," check out this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2058688,00.html
from the evolutionary biologists. Unless the journalist is incompetent, all they seem to have is rapid evolution, and everything else is their presuppositions. Love the bit about the bum being sore from pinching.
According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202.
Damn. I think I have plans that week.
Huh. That VV link doesn't work for me.
I thought things came out the wazoo, not up the wazoo.
*juices low-hanging fruit*
No, seriously. I thought the phrase was 'x's coming out the wazoo.'
juices low-hanging fruit
Squeeze my (low-hanging) lemon 'til the juice runs down my leg.
In my lexicon, things come out the wazoo, and return up the ying-yang.
Up the ying-yang, yes.
Also 'up the crick without a paddle', but that doesn't refer to an abudance of anything but trouble.
Generally not. But there's no reason that it couldn't be.
22: See Yglesias, yesterday, linking to that article, and then discovering via his commenters that it is utterly baseless, as in the study never happened.
225 -- I've always heard it as, "I've got X up the wazoo" -- no "coming", that was just gratuitous ejaculatory imagery.
Yes, I see Weiner was one of the posters. But still, can the people who study this stuff be that lame?
25 - I've always heard out the wazoo, too. What the difference a preposition makes.
24 - I don't know what happened to the VV link. The article seems to have disappeared off their site entirely. But it's the front page article of this week's Voice! Couldn't find a cache of it, either. Maybe it will reappear someday.
We discussed the wazoo-yang dichotomy fairly recently.
(Click while the clicking is good, mes peeps.)
33: I think the whole study is a myth, so there aren't any lame researchers to worry about. I mean come on -- the scientific explanation for finding blondes sexier is that they have higher estrogen levels? The whole thing was written as if being blonde were a sex-linked trait, which it isn't.
There apparently is a study alleging that blondes are evolutionarily sexier does exist, and it seems pretty lame to me too. There is no study alleging that blondes will die out because being blonde is a recessive trait. This comment has maybe the best explanation there about why that makes no sense at all.
(ps SB, are you Standpipe?)
There are two studies being referenced here. The WHO one about blondes dying out and the one about the evolutionary biology of blondeness. The latter probably exists, I'm afraid. I'll go looking for it.
as if being blonde were a sex-linked trait
In fairness, being blonde is a sex-, or at least gender-, linked trait.
(Matt, I am, to the extent that anyone is.)
I stand corrected. Boy, it sounds like bullshit, doesn't it. There's a style of evolutionary psychology that just mystifies me -- argument of the form that "Men evolved greater [spatial awareness, capability with tools, whatever] than women because it was necessary for them to evade predators in the Pleistocene." And I'm left thinking, "What, the leopards were chivalrous back then? Where were the women that was so safe?" Similarly, has this guy got any evidence at all that death tolls for men in the relevant time period were higher than death tolls for women? I don't see how he could.
This guy Frost has a lot on this subject, apparently.
(Matt, I am, to the extent that anyone is.)
Why the change?
It's temporarily more conveeenient. Excuse me while I go cackle.
Here's a book review where Frost talks about hair color sexual selection.
Link's not working for me. I did find a book review on the site you linked above that might be the same one: here. Still struck me as kind of bullshit -- he's relying for the differential death rates on the Inuit, and particularized features of an Arctic lifestyle. How does that apply to temperate-zone blond people?
And on the blondness is associated with higher estrogen levels thing -- I'm not saying it's false, because I don't know much about the subject. I haven't seen that before, and I don't find much on it googling quickly. Do Finns generally have higher estrogen levels? Does Labs? Or does this just apply to women? Is there anything about having higher estrogen levels that makes a woman likely to be evolutionarily more successful -- higher fertility, better health, anything?
This may be perfectly good science, but it really sounds silly on a first reading.
Link in 45 doesn't work; try this instead: http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/frost.html
41: That's just goofy. Men evolved greater capability with tools because they needed it to negotiate Pleistocene office politics.
(SB, I cast a vote for CHANGEBAD.)
My vote should not be taken as determinative, though. I would hate to be the waggling jowls of disapproval that suppress your freedom of handle.
Though I do think "Changebad Bridgeplate" has a ring to it.
Without an opposable thumb, women masturbated for millions of years in primitive stagnation, but once men were able to do so human progress began. This doesn't mean that women are inferior; they just are what they are.
It's also been shown that at the beginning of urbanization and civilization were enormous Egyptian beer-drinking festivals.
I'm just sayin.
It's temporarily more conveeenient.
Is it because of this?
Considering who that kind of dating advice is usually aimed at - guys who don't do a lot of indiscrminate picking women up but would like to - I suspect what matters is that those lines work on the guys more than that they work on large numbers of women. A script of bizarre phrases is a way to trick oneself into overcoming hesitancy, and when combined with advice to try to pick up as many women as possible, it's almost bound to lead to success with some of them.
I'm pretty sure that those playah moves won't work with any woman over the age of 24. Two years out of college should be enough to rid you of the idea that mean people deserve your leisure time.
Of course, it has been conclusively shown that women over 24 aren't attractive to Loess-Steppe men.
I'm trying to figure out how the wallaby line would even work. I mean, I could easily be interested by that, but the conversation would go straight to "What for? Why a wallaby? Where is he going to keep it? Does he have a particular wallaby lined up? Are they trainable, or is this a wild animal type situation?" and I can't see how any of those questions would lead to anything other than an awkward pause, and an end to the conversation. How is that supposed to start any kind of sustainable interaction (in the absence of an actual wallaby plan, or at least some fairly detailed wallaby knowledge)?
LB sounds like a lesbian to me. Straight women are suckers for wallabies.
Wallabies are damn cute, I have to admit. Now who with penis can I fuck around here?
Geez, John, Buck reads this. Once he figures out I'm gay, I have a lot of explaining to do.
(And I am a sucker for wallabies -- that'd be the problem. If I were interested by the opening at all, I'd be focused like a laser on that fascinating wallaby. I can't see how that results in a good social outcome for a man who can't produce some genuine wallaby info.)
If I were interested by the opening at all
LB, it's too late. We already know you're gay. Don't try to hide it.
Humorless feminist complaint of the day: why is it that the dating "rules" for women are all about changing yourself, and the dating "rules" for guys (not, clearly, men) are all about manipulating women?
Don't answer that.
57: So long as there are reasonably clever men who also unfortunately think it's sweet to pick up chicks (and there are) those questions could lead to a reasonably enjoyable conversation. I'm also skeptical about the snakes and crap, though.
Who knows, though? The tricks probably work on women who are otherwise fine people, just as there are probably men who are otherwise fine people who would try out the tricks. It is because we all suck.
And we all suck because of our biology. In the veldt, sucky people drove the non-sucky people into the less habitable zones with their incessent suckiness.
Stanpipe Bridgeplate must always remain Standpipe Bridgeplate.
All questions have been answered. This thread is now finished.
That link goes to an essentially blank page; however, this works.
But to again do my thing, this is just reiteration of that nit Ross Jeffries' stuff ("speed seduction") that he was peddling on alt.seduction.fast more than a decade ago; he was selling his seminars and pamplets and courses back then, and has just built up his business into a niche others have long-since followed him into, and created a tiny, tiny, tiny, subculture (if it's large enough to so dignify, which is pretty arguable). It's mostly a pick-up of some basic NLP material with extra added sleaze and creepiness.
No, it's the friend who wants a wallaby. If you're at all knowledgeable about wallabies, the pickup dude will try to convince you to come over to talk the stupid friend out of getting a wallaby that he clearly doesn't know enough about. You go, the friend acts stupid, you and the pickup dude bond while making fun of his inadequacy, and if he can't take it from there, he missed his chance.
62: I so shouldn't get into this, because I don't want to be commenting all day, but in 55 I pointed out that these rules probably do involve the men changing themselves (I say probably because I didn't follow the link). Isn't other advice that usually goes along with this -- "Don't get caught up on just one woman", "Get used to being turned down and don't worry about it", etc. -- about changing the men?
Of course the goal of all these changes is to be able to manipulate women, so point taken.
65: I thought you'd never ask. (My wallaby lurve was just a put on; now that I know I can have my heart's desire there's no need for fronting.)
68: I'm not sure they're all that different. The Rules was both about changing yourself and manipulating men, e.g. that whole bit about never returning a phone call (which just seemed insane to me).
There are a lot of change-yourself rules for guys. They involve fairly basic things like dressing a little snappier, good hygiene, cleaning up the apartment, and especially, and this is the hard part, not talking to women the same dorky way you talk to your dorky guy friends.
A lot of guys don't have any idea whatsoever what kinds of things women like, and they tend to buy the little manuals with conversation scenarios, etc.
There's also the flowers-and-chocolate routine, which I suppose counts as manipulating women, though for a guy who has never had an interest in flowers it's quite a bit like changing yourself.
for a shy man, it is required to change thyself in order to pick up chicks. A lot of the props and bullshit could be seen as a way to overcome the shyness.
You know, I'll bet that in the outback, playas just reset their tivos with the wallabies and use The Game to start fires with.
Also according to Wikipedia:
"Essentially, a wallaby is any macropod that isn't considered large enough to be a kangaroo and has not been given some other name. There is no fixed dividing line."
There's no fixed dividing line between wallaby-ness and the lack thereof?
I once met a Madonna wallaby. It had died its fur blond and was wearing a conical bra.
There is no fixed dividing line between wallaby-ness and kangaroo-ness.
hmmm
Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 03- 1-06 12:30 PM
__________________________________________
72
hello 55. I was wondering if I could have your opinion. You see my friend over there, the unattractive guy, he wants to buy a wallaby, and I think that is a poor idea, dangerous, besides being illegal. What do you think?
"Buy a wallaby" is the new "reset one's Tivo."
Pat, I'd like to buy a wallaby, please.
I think "buy a wallaby" should be the new synonym for "mack." E.g.: I'm going to go buy a wallaby on that girl. Also, how do you do comment numbering funny business? I want to know.
I am a bar. I am horizontal.
See me roar.
for the next morning: so, comment 55, how is that wallaby you purchased? Did it meet industry standards?
However, there's no fixed dividing line between "buying a wallably" and "petting the kangaroo."
Oh. I thought text had done something fancy so that "text" had legitimately commented. I see not.
"Wallaby" has a euphonious quality irrespective of its meaning, both mellodic and bumptious. Not any cute marsupial will do; c.f. "wombat", which is simply ridiculous. Clearly a great deal of evolutionary selection went into this choice of vocabulary.
there was one thread awhile back where I simultaneously screwed it up and gave away the secret.
That sounds like a canned line, 72. No date, no kiss, nothing. Maybe you can sing yourself a wallaby to help you sleep.
that is, my friend is planning on adopting a pet dingo. Bet you've never heard that one. Plus, I've got a kangaroo that needs petting.
91: Awesome. I have a baby that needs eating. Can you hook us up, 72?
See, one of the things guys have to change about themselves is conceal the fact that what they really want to do is buy a Tasmanian devil and watch it eat roadkill.
It really takes a lot of inner work to get past your propensity for blurting out that predeliction at inopportune moments.
By "guys", of course, I mean the ones who read those pick-up manuals. Certainly no one here, especially not me.
c.f. "wombat", which is simply ridiculous.
OTOH "Excuse me, how do you pronounce 'echidna'?" makes an excellent pickup line.
95: Well, it's more like a five year old. So it may be able to fight back.
Here's something that could be posted upon: I just received - at a real name e-mail address, not as a blogger - a Love O Gram. It looks like some kind of e-mail address collection scheme. I'd play along, but I'm extremely protective of that e-mail account, which rarely ever gets any spam.
The problem with most pickup lines is they don't come with further scripting, so when a dude delivers his crappy cliche come-on, the target quickly responds, "Is that all you got?" These pickup books pretend to have some secret knowledge, when the only thing a guy's got to know is that if you keep talking and don't repeat yourself or say "I don't know," 90% of the time you'll get laid.
my friend was hoping it was in the first trimester so that he could use a more traditional method.
Eh. I'm sympathetic to anyone in the dating world. IME, people tend to end up dating people to whom they already have connections - school, work, friends, etc. If you don't have an obvious channel serving up new possibilities, I'd bet it can be pretty tough just to meet new people. Two people, each in a tough place dating-wise, meet, and thing work out at a higher rate than might be expected. That they attribute the magic to books rather than simple, depressing desperation is a sin we ought to forgive. Maybe that we ought to encourage.
Yeah, I think those are scams. I received something similar in college at an email address that I knew I had only used with limited numbers of people, and I asked all of them and none of them loved me.
90% of the time? Then what they say about White Bears must be true.
you guys think those are scams? I've been wasting my time, sending out all those love-o-grams.
You kids today with your Love O Grams. Whatever happened to
Do you like me?
Yes No
(circle one)
"Hey, lady, wanna fuck?" works better than you'd expect. Not percentagewise, though, you need a lot of volume.
Meeting people != picking up strangers for a one-night stand.
So quiet desperation isn't the only kind?
And Becks, it sounds like you may be in the mood for some reminiscing.
I had a good time with my dad once making up synonyms for "quiet desperation." We read it in a theater program, and I was like, "Why they always gotta say that?" and he was like, "Because it's true," and I was like, "But can't they say it a different way?" So we made up a bunch of ways to say it.
So quiet desperation isn't the only kind?
There's some serioud low hanging fruit here:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.
There's some serious low hanging fruit here:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.
110 -- I think it's time for a cool change.
That correction wasn't worth the double post.
"From the desperate city you go into the desperate country" sounds like the beginning (well the middle, but towards the beginning) of a Grouch Marx routine.
it sounds like you may be in the mood for some reminiscing.
Is that what we're calling it now?
(Note: I cannot be held responsible for the music associates JO makes.)
My musical associates are my own business.
Minks and muskrats?
That's not normal. What a perv.
Agreed that there are "rules" for guys that do involve figuring out why women aren't interested in you, and addressing those things. But I was talking specifically about the genre of "how to pick up chicks," in contrast to the genre, aimed at said chicks, at "how to be attractive so that men will want to pick you up." But yeah, point taken that the "don't return phone calls" thing is manipulative.
Anyway, it's all crappy advice. Have social skills, groom yourself, don't whine. Eventually, given that we're all horny little chimps, you'll run into another horny little chimp who is also at loose ends, and magic will happen.
Wow, that article is unbelievable.
The thing is, if you're a guy trying to impress the laydeez, do you radiate confidence, or do you radiate desperation? That's really the whole thing, right there. Fake confidence is noxious. But genuine confidence is the hottest of hotts.
I'm guessing that the guys who are succeeding with these "techniques" are guys who have learned how to psyche themselves into a state of authentic confidence thanks to the magic potions they now put their faith in. "Do you believe in spells", indeed.
We all know this is true when we're beyond dating, and we suspect it's true even when we're not, but we never know how long eventually is.
That's what Ryabovitch thought and did he get anywhere? No. He got pwned. (Admittedly he was being an ass, and when I read that story as a young'un I consoled myself with the thought that his mid-story reflections on "Even scrubs find love" were accurate and he too might find love long after the story was over.)
126: When I was an undergrad at a 70% male school, we ladies had the darndest time waiting for the nerdy boys to ask us out. (As the saying went, "The odds are good, but the goods are odd.") So within my first year, I developed some no-fail lines for seducing shy dudes. I was really good. They were, perhaps not surprisingly, along the lines of negging, etc., in that they all shamed the guy into growing a pair and asking me out without being so downputting that it was offensive.
I think that's the point of negging in The Game, even if it's nasty sexist stuff made to make her feel insecure. It works because it forces the woman (who is, presumably, being passive) to feel the need to impress or please as much as the guy does.
I'm not defending it; I'm just saying it's smart for reasons presumably not given by the author.
103: (I'm slow.) But how many gentleman meet those conversational requirements?
But there's a difference between making a girl feel insecure and bad about herself vs. egging her on to make her feel the need to impress. The latter falls into the playground teasing/pulling pigtails stuff, as opposed to actually attacking her self-esteem.
(We had the good odds/odds good line at my Engineering school, too.)
And the reason it was absolutely incumbent upon you to wait for guys to ask you out, so necessary, in fact, that it involved shaming guys, was?
Now eb, she was just a young thing, probably didt'n know any better.
how many gentleman meet those conversational requirements?
A higher proportion here than in the wider world, I'll bet. Susceptible persons had better watch out.
It was a terrible position to be in as a chick. If you make all the moves yourself, the nineteen-year-old engineering student from rural Ohio will reject you and then tell his friends you're a slut. If you wait for the guy to make the moves, you might as well watch paint dry. A sly middle ground must be achieved.
Paint drying can, in fact, be very interesting. (Other people got laid in college?)
I was so proud of myself when I got together with my Spanish boyfriend. I totally did the crafty girl thing, and made him believe that he was taking an interest in me, when in fact I had initiated the whole affair. I was like, I have mad skills, yo.
So where's the dispute? People use manipulation because it works. And because everyone else uses it, too. The point is to be good at it, and not a jerk about it.
Exactly, SCMT. It's not rhetoric's fault it gets used for evil.
Other people got laid in college?
Of course not. Don't be silly.
136: Fair enough, that's a pretty good explanation. I was thinking of situations where you both already know each other pretty well but no one's made any moves.
Speaking of getting laid in college, the Discovery Channel thread is reminding me of the time my college boyfriend tried to convince me to act out the lyrics to that song. His mom was just upstairs though (we were at his house). He swore to me that no one in his family came downstairs in the middle of the night, but I was having none of it; it felt like too much risk, and I would only have sex upstairs. But he felt to uncomfortable with that, because his bedroom was too close to his mom's bedroom, and besides, there was no TV with reception upstairs. So we wound up just staying downstairs and watching the X-Files.
Did you have to do it while watching the Discovery Channel? That's too distracting anyway.
No, you do it doggy style while watching the X-Files. Jeez. You people are cultural illiterates.
Tools for Pickig Up Chicks
Chap 1: Forklifts and Palletized Chicks
Chap 2: Cherry Pickers
Chap 3: Come-alongs
Chap 4: The Old Saw
90% of the time? Then what they say about White Bears must be true.
It goes up to 99% if you use Barry White, instead
I'm with eb. Just ask the guys out--it's a lot less work.
Plus, if they think you're a slut for being so forward, then you'll get even *more* dates!
I don't care if I'm married with kids someday, I don't think I'll ever be able to have sex in my parents' house with them in the room next door. That is just about the most mood-killing thing I can think of. Not that it matters because even after I'm married with kids, my dad will still probably make us sleep in separate rooms on separate floors.
Plus, if they think you're a slut for being so forward, then you'll get even *more* dates!
With hostile, contemptutous men! My favorite kind!
That's only true when you get old enough to start dating men over 30. When you're 19 and realize only older guys appreciate a no-frills girl, it's too soon to hit the oldsters. Finally, with a bf 18 years older than me, I've found someone who isn't weirded out by my forwardness.
It's not clear from that last comment that I'm not nineteen and dating a 37-year-old. I'm not.
Only a few more years until I start getting interested in assertive, no frills women. I can't wait.
Funny, I started dating pretty much only 30ish men when I was 21 or 22, and by now, the age-gap has narrowed significantly.
To be fair to the college-aged kids today, I don't think they think of forward women as "sluts." Or if they do, they think, "Sluts! Awesome!" I don't know too many guys, especially among the younger crowd, who are bothered by a woman with more experience than they have.
Finally, eventually, sooner or later, is the whole problem, if sex is all you can think about. Just as we know when we're sick we'll probably get better, we know when we're lonely we'll eventually hook up. Miserable in the here-and-now, though.
156: You're right; that was patronizing of me. Apologies all around.
No apology necessary. I really can't wait -- I'm interested now.
When forward 18-year-olds hit on me, I just brush them off, especially if they're in groups of three or more.
158: Not to be bitter or anything, but what I used to run into trouble with wasn't so much accusations of sluttiness for having had too much experience, but negative reactions to being overly forward -- guys being demurely shocked at having been approached. Maybe that's changed too, in the last fifteen years or so. Hope it has.
guys being demurely shocked at having been approached. Maybe that's changed too, in the last fifteen years or so. Hope it has.
Believe it or not, guys get that reaction from women, too. Symmetry as equality, I guess. I don't know if that still happens.
In junior high there was one day when a group (3 or 4) of girls went around hitting on geeky guys by trying to corner them while saying all kinds of not all that lewd things like "Hi, [name], you're looking fine today" with extremely lewd intonations. The guys usually backed away or ran.
That was the day I learned, to my disappointment, that I was not enough of a geek.
I fear that what presents as demureness is actually the nasty pleasure of getting to reject someone. I've heard both men and women do this. "Bitch was all over me and I was, like, get off me!" and "Ohmigod this totally gross guy asked me out. I laughed in his face!"
166: Huh. I've only rarely seen people say that. Could be. Generally, though, if you date within your league, you aren't going to run into those sorts of problems.
Generally, though, if you date within your league, you aren't going to run into those sorts of problems.
From the perspective of my college-aged self, I beg to differ.
Well, I know where you went to school, LB, and I can't reasonably be expected to take responsibility for that lot of idiot malcontents. I am surprised, though.
It never had it happen to me as an adult. It's something silly young men and women do.
FYI: I looks like the Village Voice article that is the basis for this post might be made up.
170: Yup, post-college life improved greatly (well, once I got back from Samoa.)
171 is awesome. Sure wish I'd been able to get the Unfogged link cache thing to work so I could have snagged a copy.
Yay! One of the Gawker readers sent a link to a cached version of the article.
f-closed
This operation sounds disturbingly mathematical. Later in the evening, he iterated until he found her fixed point.
"Hello, my hovercraft is full of eels." Another promising line.
176:
A maiden and an Engineer were sitting in the park
The Engineer was working on some research after dark
His scientific method was a marvel to observe
While his right hand held the figures, his left hand traced the curves
The MIT Drinking Song is way ahead of you.
'Senora,' Velazquez replied, 'my system embraces all of nature and therefore it must include all the feelings which she has put into the human heart. I have had to study and define all of them. I have been especially successful with love, for I have found it possible to express it in algebraic terms and, as you know, questions that can be approached through algebra yield solutions which are completely satisfactory.
'Now let us suppose love to have a positive value marked by a plus sign; hate, which is the opposite of love, will have a minus sign; and indifference, which is no feeling at all, will be equal to zero.
'If I multiply love by itself, whether I love love, or love to love love, I still have positive values, for a plus multiplied by a plus always makes a plus.
'But if I hate hate, I come back to feelings of love or positive quantities, for a minus multiplied by a minus makes a plus. But if on the contrary I hate the hate of hate, I come back to feelings which are the opposite of love, that is to say, negative values, just as the cube of a minus is a minus.
'As for the product of love and hate, or hate and love, they are always negative, just as are the products of a plus and a minus or a minus and a plus. So whether I hate love or love hate my feelings are always opposed to love. Can you think of any argument against my reasoning, fair Laura?'
'None at all,' said the Jewess, 'and I am convinced that there is not a woman who would not yield when faced by such arguments.'
Lem on "Love and Tensor Algebra"
An excerpt:
In Reimman, Hilbert, or in Banach SpaceLet superscripts and subscripts go their ways
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase
We shall encounter, counting, face to face
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored
She scissored short.
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed
Sightlessly seeking, silently scheming
Some savage spectacular suicide.
I've always been insanely impressed by Lem's translators, and have wondered if maybe all the wordplay isn't as baroque in the original Czech.
Oh good, someone appreciated the link. I would have been disspointed if nobody appreciated the reference.
I completely agree with the comment about Lem's translators but, somehow, I suspect it was as baroque in the original. I like Bruce Sterling's portrait of Lem.
"Lem compares himself to Crusoe, stating (accurately) that he had to erect his entire structure
of "science fiction" essentially from scratch. He did have the ancient shipwrecked hulls of Wells and Stapledon at hand, but he raided them for tools years ago. (We owe the collected essays to the beachcombing of his Man Friday, Austrian critic Franz Rottensteiner.)
These essays are the work of a lonely man. We can judge the fervor of Lem's attempt to reach out by a piece like "On the Structural Analysis of Science Fiction:" a Pole, writing in German, to an Austrian, about French semantic theory. The mind reels. After this superhuman effort to communicate, you'd think the folks would cut Lem some slack--from pure human pity, if nothing else."
Though, given my affection for the prose in books like the Cyberiad and The Star Diaries, and the clunkiness of some of his essays, the translators may deserver more credit than I give them.
aah. i have to say: the WHO hoax story is REALLY STOOPID. blond(e) people are not going to die out because, funny that, dutch and danish and finnish and swedish people LIKE MARRYING OTHER PEOPLE WHO SPEAK THEIR MOTHER TONGUE. also, LIVE NEARBY.
please not to post about people who look like me going extinct just before i go to bed after what might be more wine of saint joseph than i thought.
Kandel is a God among translators. I love the bit of the Cyberiad where they turn the armed forces to philosophy, and it is announced that the Second Royal Fleet switched from naval maneuvers to navel contemplation and sank without a trace.
a Pole, writing in German, to an Austrian, about French semantic theory. The mind reels.
I don't know, my excerpt was from something written by a Pole in French about a Walloon soldier stranded in Spain and his encounters with Muslims, Jews, Gypsies, Spaniards, Italians, nobleman, bandits, street urchins and others -- not all of whose identities turn out to be what they first claim them to be -- told through overlapping and intersecting stories ranging from Spain to Belgium, Mexico to Italy, and around the Mediterranean. And he shot himself.
182: Whoops; I haven't read him in forever and forgot.
No worries, I haven't read him ever yet somehow knew that.
The Cyberiad is wonderful, as is a bunch of his other stuff.
Sounds like Jan Potocki, Saragossa Manuscript, a Polish book and movie. If I am not mistaken, in the movie the Jewess had a wonderful cleavage and a smirky smile.
I've never seen the movie, but have been meaning to. The book is awesome, for the most part.
Kryzstof Penderecki did the music for the Saragossa Manuscript. I just say this to make up for not having clicked eb's link.
195 -- "fucking hilarious" cleavage?
what I used to run into trouble with wasn't so much accusations of sluttiness for having had too much experience, but negative reactions to being overly forward
Yeah, I got that too. But like LB said, it's a good way of figuring out that even though that guy is cute, he's a dumbass, so you don't want to date him anyway. And like SCMT says, guys get negative reactions too. If everyone pulls back from negative reactions in the adolescent years and never asks anyone out again, we'll all turn into hentai-watching assholes who frequent strip clubs because strippers generally don't say no.
And that I assumed that, in the time I read what I did, someone else would post the 200th comment. Victory with cognizance forever eludes me!
199: I don't know, in The Way We Live Now there's a character who, having been rejected, resigns himself to a life of quiet but quite respectable loneliness. But then that novel seems to be all about becoming resigned to make the best of what you have within the constraints placed upon you by the circumstances in which you find yourself living, even as the world changes rapidly as the result of forces over which you have no control.
bout becoming resigned to make the best of what you have within the constraints placed upon you by the circumstances in which you find yourself living
I'm suspicious of an answer like the above, because I think people vastly overestimate their understanding of the constraints placed upon them. IME, there are more kind, cool people out there than one would think.
I'm sorry I missed this thread, too, because I would have liked to ask A White Bear what her lines were in 130.
203: What do you expect out of 19th century Britons in a dry Victorian novel? Thinking outside the box for one character meant running off with an honorable clergyman in order to obtain a perfectly respectable marriage. The character I mentioned above probably would have seen the existence of "more kind, cool people" as yet another reason to stay quietly ensconced on his country estate, better to preserve the values he grew up with rather than change and risk finding happiness on terms to which he did not wish to agree.
#203: Alas, real life is not a Trollope novel.
204: They were highly specific to my alma mater. I.e. "I'm not a bad-looking girl, right?" (Assent.) "You'd never know it around here. [School] guys never ask girls out."
The line itself was not smooth at all. It was the way I said it that clinched the deal. The important factor was moving from conversational eye contact ("right?") to abstract-thought face, then, at the last moment, direct eye contact.
I've dropped the line itself, which is quite stupid, but every time I've used that pattern of eye contact since (i.e. in NY bars), I've been furiously kissed.
Whoa. SCMT was right -- here's the message from the Voice editor, along with the apology from the author of the article.
I don't think you need to limit it to that specific instance, Joe.
True; you were right about this, too.
re: 207
It's all about teh eye contact. Sometimes you just know that some girl across a bar/crowded room is into you because of the eye contact --- that makes life *so* much easier, no need to fear approaching them, etc.
