I like the timing of how the bassline resumes just after the kid screams. That could be incorporated into a remix.
Um, why the particular warning to women on the second link? Sexist.
Moms, don't do this.
Dude, scaring your kids shitless is perhaps the single greatest pleasure of parenting.
(one never really outgrows being the oldest brother, I suppose)
Youtube: Sharing your embarrasmments with the world since 2005.
The guy in the second link appears to be faking it.
OT: Does anyone know what happens when one takes expired ibuprofen? Is it just less effective? Is it actively bad for you in the way that antibiotics are. I have bad back pain and need to go to the store, but I'd like to take something first.
Moms, don't do this.
You mean posting a video that will cause your child to be subjected to ridicule for years?
Um, why the particular warning to women on the second link? Sexist.
Well, "sexist", in the sense of differentiating on the basis of gender, is appropriate in this case. Women don't know from firsthand experience what it feels like to get hit in the nuts. Men do. It's like how women get to lecture men on the pain of childbirth.
Moreover, TV shows and movies often portray getting hit in the nuts for laughs (another example of how our culture trivializes violence against men!), so women can be forgiven for underestimating how much it really does hurt. Men, however, need no reminders.
BG, my instinct is to say that for most things that are a simple molecule in dry pill/tablet form, they stay stable much longer than the expiration date if they are stored properly (kept dry, and in their original closed bottle). This does not apply to liquid medications.
And...wow, there's an actual article about this exact issue.
http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/0,21770,681486,00.html
The kid grows up to be Ben w-lfs-n, doesn't he?
Thanks Ned. I'd have never thought to look it up in Real Simple, but I guess that there is good, basic advice in there. Next I'll find myself reading O magazine. (Shudder.)
The crying in the second video seems the product of fear more than pain, like he's someone who got whacked as a kid or something. I've only cried a few times like that, ever, and it was usually a response to being attacked in ways that reminded me of having been attacked as a kid.
12: Please, GB. Do you even know any women? You guys talk about the pain of getting hit in the nuts constantly.
Please, BPhD. Do you even know any men? You guys talk about the pain of giving birth constantly. There's no way we can't imagine what it's like.
I can't believe you're going to let B bait you like that.
For what it's worth, being punched hard in the kidneys hurts about as much as being punched or kicked in Marvel Essentials Volumes 1 and 2, so the experience is really available to one and all.
You guys talk about the pain of getting hit in the nuts constantly.
Could it be... because it extra wicked hurts, and happens more times during the course of a man's life than any of us would prefer? And is depicted for laughs with some frequency? (And also, is a very good thing to teach your daughters about in threatening situations?)
Too bad that little kid is going to grow up both gay AND damaged. Wait... those videos aren't of the same guy, are they?
19: Tsk. You're right. I fell for it too.
20: I've heard that about kidneys. Fortunately it seems to be easier to evade kidney punches than testicle assaults.
21: I'd be willing to bet money that it's you boys, rather than us girls, who depict that shit for laughs.
23: I'd have to take your side on that bet.
it seems to be easier to evade kidney punches than testicle assaults
True.
It's pretty hard to kick someone in the balls unless they aren't expecting it. Which is underhanded sneaky shit that I would only expect form the English, and you colonials.
The thing is, there are actually a wide spectrum of kicked-in-the-balls sensations. A glancing blow usually yields more of a startle reaction than actual lasting pain. I get that, for instance, when I come home from work, and my 4 year old greets me my charging toward me yelling "daddy daddy daddy" and rams her forehead near my crotch if I don't dodge quickly enough.
But the hard, direct blow to the testicles, that is a whole nother experience, one I remember clearly from late adolescence. You get a warm tingling sensation spreading out from your groin that ends with your face getting flush. That is not an experience you want to have, and it can easily leave you sobbing, but it also is mercifully rare.
Nicholson Baker's next book should be about the sensation of being kicked in the balls.
18: Also, I didn't say I could imagine what it's like; I merely said that we chicks know perfectly well that it's painful and therefore hardly need to be especially warned.
But the larger point, honestly, was that GB is the last person in the world whose opinion on what is and isn't sexism I'd take seriously.
The sensation of being hit in the nuts doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not like any other pain, and it's not really the pain that's debilitating; it's more like your life force engorges your scrotum and you have to fall over until it recedes back into the rest of your body. Very odd. I've also taken a shot to the kidney (from a thrown ball) than hurt like hell and knocked me down, but that's much more like getting the wind knocked out of you than being hit in the balls.
being hit in the nuts doesn't make a lot of sense
I've experienced *worse* pain, but nothing else in my experience is remotely similar pain.
34: Surgery without anesthesia?
For me, the uniqueness of it is that after simply being hit, it feels like they are being squeezed very tightly and there's no way to know when the squeezing will stop. For most parts of the body, that doesn't happen; a hit is just a hit.
35: Undoubtedly that would be worse pain, but utterly dissimilar.
Unless it was vasectomy surgery, probably.
33 & 34 are right, it isn't like other sensations. Ogged describes it using a downward rushing metaphor, and I used an upward spreading one, but I think we're getting at the same thing. There's a lot of light headedness.
It would be a great subject for a heterophenomenological study.
"heterophenomenological study" = "Nicholson Baker novel"?
Dr. Venture: Did you lift anything heavy?
Dean: I told you, it's not a hernia.
Dr. Venture: Were you roughhousing with your brother?
Dean: Nooo.
Dr. Venture: Oh dear god. You two haven't been... experiment with inappropriate touching-
Dean: No! Gross!
Dr. Venture: I know you've been seeing a lot of that little tramp who lives next door. Lord knows what kind of diseases that hussy carries.
Dean: [groans] It's getting worse!
Dr. Venture: Dean, I don't want you hanging around with Triana Orpheus any more. I don't approve of the way she dresses! Girls like that are usually on the dope. [gasps] Dean! Have you been shooting dope into your scrotum!? You can tell me, I'm hip!
Dean: Daa-ad!! Why are you doing this?! I don't know what I did!! Suddenly it just felt like someone kicked me in the rocks, and- and they never took their foot away!
I'm in no way making a comparison to the utter uniqueness of you gentleman's exquisite testicular pain, but a hard hit on the pubes hurts like fuck. And a blow to the boobs ain't exactly fun, either.
40: I think it is supposed to be more data driven, at least in Dan Dennett's version.
42: The boob thing might be similar actually, judging by some of the reactions I've seen from nursing mothers whose boobs are especially sensitive. In any case, I didn't want this to become a contest. I was just marveling at human subjective experience.
Once upon a time, I had nipple rings. The time I caught one of the rings with the corner of the car door as I was slamming it shut and nearly ripped the ring out came close to the same kind of immediately dropping to one's knees, overwhelming shock, lightheaded with pain feeling, but went away quicker.
Jesus Christ, Chopper, don't even write about stuff like that. I'm cringing to the point of inability to type here.
But the larger point, honestly, was that GB is the last person in the world whose opinion on what is and isn't sexism I'd take seriously.
That's funny, I feel the same way about you. Since your answer to "Is this sexist?" will always be "Yes."
I'm just going to stand over here for a while.
46: Let me point out that that wasn't as bad as getting kicked solidy in the balls.
So I have my navel pierced, and one time I was doing laundry and carrying the laundry basket with its wicked slats, and the slats caught on the little twistie in my navel, and I spent five minutes or so kneeling on the floor with my eyes watering as I tried to disentangle my navel from the basket.
I cannot imagine if the twistie had been attached somewhere actually sensitive.
I'm worried about where this thread is going.
The image in 50 made me laugh. Sorry Cala.
My dad slammed my thumb shut in the car door when I was 13 or so. Nothing broken, and I'm surprised it didn't hurt more. Thumbs are tough little buggers. It was very painful for the five seconds it was caught in the door, though.
52: It was pretty funny. The part of me that wasn't in pain was trying to figure out how I'd managed something so dumb, and whether I'd have to carry the basket around forever.
The worst thing that's ever happened with my nose piercing is having to pick boogers out of the back of the jewelry.
47: Well, if you have to ask....
God, with the number of times I had fingers slammed in car doors as a kid, it's a wonder I don't look like this guy.
45 and 50 are among the reasons that piercings totally creep me out. Even earrings, to some extent. I like the fact that the human body generally doesn't get caught on things.
55: I really want a little nose stud but I think I missed the age window for doing that.
Cala on the laundry room floor, in tears, no shirt, stuck to laundry basket waiting for honey to come home.
58: How old are you? I'm 39, and having lost my last nose stud (yet again), I'm going to have to go get it re-done at some point. And I damn well will.
53: See, this is what I was worried about. Next someone is going to talk about the time they got their face stuck in a blender or something.
I had a shirt on! It just was a little midriff baring.
60: 27. I feel like I could justify it were I in college, but not when writing a dissertation.
58 - I think nose rings age really well on women.
Stop ruining the image Cala.
Wow. Bitch and I are the same age. I thought she was younger than me.
I don't turn 39 for seven months yet. HA HA! BITCHPHD IS OOOOOOLD!
63: Cala, what's wrong with you? I got mine while dissertating. Seriously, lady, if you don't get a nose ring, you're going to end up wearing sensible shoes or something horrifying like that.
65: I'm immature.
My eyebrow ring (at least before I lost it) would frequently get caught in loose-knit sweaters and other such items of clothing. There is that ever-present worry in the back of my mind that one day it'll just rip right out.
67: I'm from Pa. We export sensible! No nose piercings before the wedding at least. Though, the potential for freaking out my mother.....
All of this discussion of piercings getting caught in stuff is making me extremely unhappy. You're all banned.
I have a lip ring, since we're sharing.
73:
I know I am showing my age ... but doesn't that make kissing hard?
I also have a rook piercing in my ear that seems to freak people out occasionally. Success!
I'm edgy. I smooch through the pain.
I don't even know what a rook piercing is -- you jam a large black bird through your ear?
76: Can you engineer it so the ring gets caught on the other person's lip, for general amusement?
I freak people out accidentally all the time. Would getting piercings make me seem even more disturbing, or would they set the mood better and reduce the freaking out?
75 - That's not freaky. Those people need to get out more.
79: It looks a little angry. Was that right after it was pierced?
LB's kids are going to get a thousand piercings. Each.
There was a girl in my dorm in college who had something like 50 piercings, at least half of them in her face. The freakiest were the ones through the front of her neck.
It was also right after spending 12 hours in the sun at an outdoor music festival, so some of the red is from that.
78 - I do like to wear dangly chandelier earrings every now and then for everyone's entertainment. Or paper clips, etc. So, yes. For entertainment, sure.
For halloween next year I'm planning on showing up with a fish hook in, and the line dangling. But I think that's been discussed here before.
With ears that shiny, who needs decoration?
Last weekend I had the pleasure of hearing a girl describe in vivid detail the time "some guy," who actually turned out to be someone I know, ripped out her clitoral hood piercing with his teeth.
Have fun with that one, everybody. I'll ban myself on the way out.
The rook piercing seems a lot less freaky than freaky mouth-piercing girl heebie.
79: I wouldn't usually notice something like that. But if a close-up photo of it were to appear on my computer monitor, then I might just have to shriek in terror and leap out the window.
80 - it's funny - I'm totally the opposite of you. I can't ever freak anyone out, no matter how ridiculous and over the top I look.
89: Ouch. Was this deliberate (on either her part or his, I suppose)?
What part of 'you're all banned' did you people not understand? Pierce whatever you want, but don't talk about piercing related injuries. (Or that fishhook costume, which is also creeping me out. But interesting -- would it be combined with scales?)
87: How would you get it out? Those things are barbed. You'd have to cut the end off before removing it, I guess.
A friend of mine had IUD earrings.
Heebie: I'm a divorce lawyer and a dad. Nothing freaks me out. People tell me about the weird stuff they have done. My daughter hands me boogers. Nothing freaks me out.
96: See? That. Stop saying things like that.
96: Presumably they're not barbed on both ends. If you can get it in, you can get it out.
I used to want a tongue piercing really, really badly but I never worked up the nerve. I grew my fingernails out and painted them various shades of Bruise instead.
99: But they have a loop on the one end where you tie the fishing line. Would the loop fit through the piercing?
Depends on how big it is. Probably. Piercings stretch a little.
It would fit. Skin stretches pretty well.
I bet you could pull it through.
I have two sets of holes in my ears, one almost directly below the other, due to my stupid 7th-grade decision to put six-inch, heavy traffic-whistle earrings in my newly-pierced holes. They travelled and new holes had to be made.
Anyone have one of those chains that go from your mouth to your ear?
Piercings stretch, even cartilege piercings. But that hurts a lot. Like for instance, if you did the piercing with a safety pin and then need to stretch it to a ring. Ouch.
107: I get in fights way too often to tempt fate like that. Shudder.
They travelled and new holes had to be made.
I like the idea of them "traveling." I imagine not that the hole got bigger from the weight but that the hole moved and left unblemished skin behind, like one morning you woke up with a whistle hanging off your elbow and no sign it had ever been in your ear.
Traffic whistle is a pretty cool choice, IMO.
I suppose I should spare LB from the story of slamming a door into my ear and having the piercing pop out, and the ensuing re-piercing shortly thereafter in my massively swollen ear. Mm, pain.
AWB:
Fights? Did you say fights? I want to hear more about that?
Perhaps we can have a new game of fill in the sentence:
"AWB can kick ______'s ass because he/she ________."
A friend of mine used to dream often about a having a travelling mustache. Each day, shave a little off one side and let it grow a little further on the other.
Over a few months, it could run all over your head! In one ear, out the other, down your shirt and come back out of your mouth. Just be sure to take a photo every day for the flip book.
110: That's not quite what happens, but with piercings (like navel piercings) where there's a lot of movement, the piercing will usually move a little bit one way or another, so it settles where it's comfortable, and the hole "moves" with it rather than getting bigger.
113:
"...is usually the first to decide that he/she is in a fight and gets the first shot in, occasionally with the help of a chair, stick or chain" would be a realistic filler-in for most people who get in a lot of fights.
I heard tongue piercings are bad news.
I figure if I hold out long enough, the no piercings/no ink look will seem all radical.
Piercing and tattoos have always been a big deal in my family. While for me, they signify an affinity for punk culture, my rural Oklahoma dad associates them with being "white trash." We were discouraged from doing things I thought meant one was hardcore because Dad would feel like his acquaintances would see me and know about his secret trailer-park upbringing. Class issues are funny that way.
a travelling mustache. Each day, shave a little off one side and let it grow a little further on the other.
God, that's brilliant. If I were still in grad school, I'd totally do it.
I've never intentionally changed my appearance, except for getting contacts instead of glasses.
112: Not much to say. I wish I knew what the hell was going on sometimes.
Skin stretches pretty well.
I used to want a tongue piercing
I recall reading that dentists are now discovering that tongue piercing correlates strongly with badly damaged tooth enamel after a few years.
my rural Oklahoma dad associates them with being "white trash."
I once used wiresnips to make a fake safety pin earing, when I was in high school. I wore it home and watched my mother turn sheet-white when she saw it. She also gots the hardcore up-from-whitetrash class pathology. And of course, wearing earrings was liable to make me gay.
I held my friend's hand while she got a tongue piercing. She said it barely hurt at all, but I nearly fainted.
121: I knew - knew - that I was going to regret following that link, and yet I couldn't stop myself. God dammit.
I was 15 and living at a residential high school in town when I got both of my ears pierced. The first time my mother saw them was when I showed up at church the following Sunday. She said, in the sanctuary and without lowering her voice at all, "You look like a goddamned freak."
I recall reading that dentists are now discovering that tongue piercing correlates strongly with badly damaged tooth enamel after a few years.
No doubt. Everyone I've known with a tongue piercing has had a habit of clicking it back and forth against their teeth.
I was going to regret following that link
I could have posted far, far worse, but thought I should keep it toned down.
Your restraint is admirable, apo.
I'm with LB- I think it's bad enough when my ipod headphone wire gets caught on something and the buds are yanked out of my ears.
Now you're just baiting me, AWB.
Click on 130, LB. Awww, look at the cute kitten!
Ages ago, trying to be clever, I asked my wife if the little scar on her upper lip was produced by a fishhook. Yup. Turns out her brother's casting attempt went a bit astray once upon a time.
I got a fish hook story that's pretty well guaranteed to get me banned.
I wonder if there's some kind of membrane or lens covering the hole in 30's nose ring. It seems like otherwise your mucous membrane would get all dirty.
Tongue piercings are just ridiculous, imho.
Also, obviously skin stretches a lot. Pregnancy, people. Which btw I've been told that if you have a bellybutton piercing, you'll probably have to take it out at some stage of pregnancy.
130: That Modblog site is just fucked up, man. I don't care how old it makes me sound, there's no need to go encouraging the kids to do that shit by publishing pictures of it.
138: You're right about pregnancy and navel rings; basically, once your belly gets big enough, there's no more room for the piercing to migrate, so it ends up pushing out or generally getting irritated.
"You look like a goddamned freak."
At breakfast, the morning after my brother pierced one of his ears, my father looked up from his coffee and asked him "What the hell are you supposed to be? A pirate?"
This is the part about how anyone who doesn't do things that I do is hopelessly conventional and anyone who does things that I won't do is an idiot, right?
I keep my edginess concealed under a thick layer of vanilla. It's much edgier that way.
138: Funny, all my girlfriends seemed to think it was pretty great...
136: I wonder if he could mount a magnifying lens in there?
139: But they make sure to show the consequences of body modification!
Uh, don't click on that if you regret clicking on anything else in the thread.
144: Or host a little fishbowl with a guppy in it!
138: If by "ridiculous" you mean "ridiculously awesome." Though I wouldn't want to have to actually maintain one.
And yes, actually, the bulk of the modblog stuff is pretty tame. The really extreme chopping / stretching / cutting / scarring isn't going to be attractive to anyone who's not already so inclined, and it's a good thing that there's a community out there at least educating people to be safe about it if they're going to go that nuts.
138. That's true, but my brother's wife didn't remove her navel ring until the morning before she delivered.
I keep my edginess covered in creamy nougat and coated in chocolate.
I have my ears stretched, and indeed am wearing these exceedingly expensive little objects (in only a 7/16" gauge, though) as I type. This gives me a certain sympathy for the flinch-inducing fellow with the stretched nose. My god, though, you couldn't really stretch that, since it's cartiledge. You'd have to chop it out! Oooo-er.
149: You're wearing a 'New Customer' in your ears?
And if anyone wants to know, my ears were already a good bit stretched from wearing heavy earrings before I started this whole thing. It does get a bit addictive, though...I keep telling myself I shouldn't go up another gauge and then the sheer prettiness of the bigger plugs lures me on. I was going, for example, to stop at a 0 gauge. Now that I have the really expensive ones, though, I may just stop because I'd feel guilty for replacing them.
150: Yes, and when I work up to a bigger gauge I'll get a "returning customer". Half for each ear, naturally.
Darn it! I wanted that link to work, though. They're pretty little carved jade doohickeys that cost the earth and have a hole through the middle so that you can look through my ears(....add something about how even though my brain is drying up with age, you still can't do it the other way).
"Yes, and when I work up to a bigger gauge I'll get a "returning customer""
This would work much better with genital piercings.
actually, the bulk of the modblog stuff is pretty tame
Compared to Genesis P-Orridge, at least:
"Genesis relocated to New York City with his second wife, Lady Jaye, nee Jacqueline Breyer and began an ongoing experiment in body modification aimed at creating one pandrogynous being named "Genesis Breyer P-Orridge". Genesis P-Orridge received breast implants and began referring to himself as |s/he.|"
143: Well, if you don't know what you're doing, I suppose a little tongue stud might at least make sure she knows you're down there.
154: ...and transformed himself into Carol Channing.
Piercing: wrong.
Thanks for commenting, everyone.
155:
I am so easy. That made me laugh out loud.
So much for the "humorless" label, boys.
157: You misspelled "Persians," Ogged.
Piercing: wrong.
Disagree. Tongue piercings are awesome, or so I've been told. In fact, if your unfortunate friend who has women throwing themselves at him has a prioritizing problem, tell him to limit the first cut to those with tongue piercings. That ought to narrow it nicely.
If you take a tongue ring out, the tong closes up pretty much instantly; it's about the lowest long-term investment you can have in a body modification, and it's still totally rebellious. I think they should be mandatory, but made out of healthy plastic or some such. Kids gotta let off some steam by mutilating their bodies, y'know? If it's not this it's cutting or white power tattoos or brands.
155: I wasn't talking about oral sex! I don't do that. Because I'm a feminist and all.
Actually, I think it was the double-flick effect.
"Carol Channing performs your favorite Throbbing Gristle tunes" would make an awesome lounge act.
I knew a guy who had a number of implants: that's not a way you want to go unless you're pretty sure you're otherwise extremely employable. But for some people, a ridge of forearm lumps is worth it.
Compared to that a tongue ring is as logical as glasses.
140: Now that Roberta is just a month away from blastoff, her bellybutton has gone from innie to outie, presenting entirely new navel-piercing possibilities.
149: Yup they do them with little plug drill bits, basically.
167: Seemingly fairly unpleasant ones, long term.
heebie-geebie: perhaps we should get a matched halloween set!
coated in chocolate
Racist.
166: implants are pretty hardcore, but reversible. I'm pretty sure the amputees take that particular cake.
I know a woman with lots of tattoos and a row of half-a-dozen small, knobby implants along the top of her chest (like, collarbone-to-collarbone). Frankly, they're kinda gruesome. But the really unsettling thing is that she strikes me as the most together and down-to-earth person in her particular social set.
As Andre Breton remarked to Luis Bunuel, with great sadness: "It's impossible to scandalize people nowadays."
172: I'm going to take apo's lead and not say what I think the most hardcore body mod is.
Ask me later.
The guy I know with implants is literally the smartest person I've ever met.
There's a fellow who works at a Chipotle 'round here who has sort of mer-person ridges implanted in his skinny arms. I was very surprised by how viscerally repulsed I was to see them--it's not like they're raw or horrible little windows into the interior of the body or anything; they're just lumps.
Minneapolitan (who I know in waking life) that's not the woman who works at the bookstore, right? The one with the dots?
I was totally ignorant of the practice of implants (excluding of course breast implants and I guess penile implants -- is that done? My spam correspondents seem to think so) until this thread came along.
Breaking up the standard outline of the human body is pretty viscerally weird, but implants don't really bother me personally. I think it's kind of wild the guy who does them doesn't use anaesthesia, but I guess I understand there's a principle at stake and, hey, it's not me.
174: Genital hack-and-reattach mods would only count against really specific types of employability, right? Or are you thinking of something more hardcore than that?
The one that squicks me is the apparently fairly old Japanese practice of sticking pearls under the skin of one's wang to get the "knobbed for her pleasure" effect. Yeesh.
182: Just barely beating out genital bisection, I think, yes.
I know a drag performer who got cheekbone implants.
"If thine arm offends thee..."
I'm neither attracted nor repulsed by body mods, either piercings or tattoos; it's one of the things people do that I don't get.
186: Hey, it's not every day we get to find someone's Achilles' heel.
The most perverse body mod, of course, is FULL ROBOT BODY. But thankfully that is not yet available to those kind of sickos. Glenn.
it's not every day we get to find someone's Achilles' heel.
I would totally go for a robot body.
That seems like a handy way to hang someone up fetishistically or not.
Around 1992, when I lived in Seattle, I saw the Jim Rose Circus side show at club. They were then the cutting edge (ugh) of "modern primitivism." The second performer was called The Human Pincushion. He came on stage an a bathrobe and then removed it to reveal--well I don't really remember much. I just remember running out of the night club to hurl.
The next day I was at work behind the cash register reading The Rocket or The Stranger or some such, and it had article about the show. The text of the article was superimposed on a picture of a gentleman called The Amazing Lift-o, who picked up cinderblocks with a chain through the piercing in his penis. I didn't see the picture at first, but eventually my eyes focussed past the text onto the image. I fainted and hit my head on the counter. For the next hour my vision was blurry, and I eventually went to the emergency room just to be sure I was all right.
"Could my robot body be a beautiful woman? Then you'd better believe I'd put my brain in a robot's body."
190: Some of these links may cause me to re-evaluate my opinions on television, golf, etc. How is it possible to get bored and alienated enough for sticking something through the back of your ankle to seem like a good idea?
Buy one robot body and get a FlowBee hair vacuum free!
193: I presume the body would share my sexual orientation.
195 -- "Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl/ So I could wreck myself in the shower..."
By the way, the link in 195 will not squick anybody out and is very much worth your time.
Frowner: Nope, it's one of the people who hangs out with the guy who has all the crazy ideas, you know, the one who likes helmets. She does some kinda postmodern bur/esque too. Not an ironic bone (or implant) in her body, from what I can tell.
194: There's a somewhat apocryphal Jim Rose story making the rounds in which the performers themselves were out-grossed by an audience of German bikers while on a tour of Europe. Given your story, I won't go into all the gory details, but... let's just say that if it's true, you can consider yourself avenged.
Human Pincushion? No, that's Zamora the Torture King.
I had a friend in college with two tiny barbells piercing the edge of the head of his wang. If asked nicely he would let people touch them. It looked like a cyborg caterpillar.
I am sad that 195 pre-pwned my "With the strength of five go-rillas!" That assumes that 195 is a YouTubing of that Sealab 2021 episode or some part thereof.
197: Why is a bowtie poorly pasted onto that pic?
Piercing: wrong.
But on the upside, lots of piercings is like too much ink, a nice flag signaling a person with issues.
Flames ahoy.
If people are going to claim that piercings are also not a good proxy for anything, we're going to have issues.
209: Who's saying that? Some people like what it's a proxy for. See 208.
If you argue that normal earrings are a good proxy, we'll be back in makeup territory.
Nah, earrings really aren't a proxy for anything.
LB has already argued that dangly earings are telling about how receptive a woman is to some advances at that time.
Yes, but the parallel, were we allowed to make analogies, would be arguing that any woman who has earrings at all is obviously going to be too girly/submissive to the patriarchy.... She put holes in her body, man!!!
214: Nope. I argued that men react to them as if they were, and so it it might be a useful technique to wear them if you're trying to attract men.
I didn't wear dangly earrings, back in the day, because I was in a receptive mood -- I wore them because I had dangly earrings I wanted to wear. Noticing the additional attention from men came after the fact.
It's not the thing itself, it's what it means in context. That's why some people were arguing that makeup in NY tells you nothing, but might on the West Coast. So pierced ears in America is pretty meaningless.
Some people like what it's a proxy for. See 208.
Depends. My wife for example, several in each ear and a nose stud. But multiple face piercings, studs in necks, etc., no thanks.
I didn't wear dangly earrings, back in the day, because I was in a receptive mood -- I wore them because I had dangly earrings I wanted to wear. Noticing the additional attention from men came after the fact.
Hmm. Noticing that didn't change your behavior, in the way that everyone commenting on how nice your suit was might?
I love the traveling mustache idea SO much.
Re: special pain, obviously it's no kick in the nuts, but I always find that blows to the head throw me off all out of proportion to the actual pain. A crack on the head (say, from miscalculating and standing up before you've fully gotten out from under something) can make me cry when a similar amount of pain inflicted on some other part of my body would just make me go "ow." And then I feel stupid because what the hell am I doing crying over nothing?
Oh, sure -- given that it appears to work for lots of men, I now think of 'dangly earrings' as a good way to reel them in, so it wouldn't be a bad rule for guessing whether I, personally, am interested in getting hit on. But I made the generalization based on how I noticed men reacting, and shaped my behavior to it: not knowing whether other women have noticed the same thing, I wouldn't make any guessed about what any other women meant by wearing dangly earrings.
(I am wildly entertained that makeup is a character-revealing means of making a spectacle of oneself, while jewelry is neutral.)
218: Body piercing in the SFBA is pretty meaningless.
But there's a very low rate of rejection.
223: I think I agree with ogged re jewelry and makeup. But perhaps "character" is the wrong word; it seems to suggest something that might be good or bad, rather than more or less agreeable to a specific person.
Nor really "jewelry"; earrings.
It is common enough that I can't figure out what it would signify over-and-above the things that are assumed by somebody being in the bay area San Francisco in the first place.
SF is probably more fair. But who cares about being fair to the east bay, they're all stuck in traffic.
Damn straight.
Heterosexist.
Er, or homosexist? Wait, I can't figure it out...
blows to the head throw me off all out of proportion to the actual pain...And then I feel stupid
Ah-HA! See?! See?!
208: Aggressivly non-conformist doesn't necessarily mean issues, but it can. I'd say it's as large a mistake to make that assumption as it is to simply write off people for being conformist.
184,182: for whatever reason I don't find either of these to top the bodymod `hardcore'. I'd rate both below castration and limb removal, easily.
Whole Robot Body still seems to be short of the endpoint of personal modification - you need to get into brain/mind modifications to really go hardcore. Solipsist Nation is as far out on that limb as I've seen.
The kid in the first video reminds me of John Cameron Mitchell.
"Permutation City" sounds like a really tedious place to live.
208. Once you move out of your parents' house your tats and piercings are not that interesting.
http://photos.sexyandfunny.com/viewer.php?mode=gallery&g=67&photo=18
But tasselled loafers! are FABULOUSLY interesting!
I have to admit that it's unfathomable...or something...how not telling tats are/are going to be fifteen years from now. I can't quite get over the multi-tattooed arms yet, but I'll have to, because there are an awful lot of them out there.
Of Course they are! http://manolomen.com/
URGENT FOOD QUESTION
I'm trying to reproduce a salad I usually buy from the deli that has black beans on it. Do I just dump the black beans from a can out and wash them and put them on the salad or am I supposed to cook them first?
Canned beans are usually already cooked, but you'll want to rinse them.
phew! modelling bad bean behavior averted!
247 - that's what I thought, but they don't taste the same as the deli's, even after rinsed. maybe I should have refrigerated them.
249: Canned cooked beans generally don't taste as good as dried ones that you cook yourself. Sad but true.
Becks, does the deli serve them as part of a salad with a vinaigrette? Because if something has been marinating in olive oil and some kind of vinegar for eight hours or so, that will definitely alter the taste.
Also, some stores sell beans in glass jars rather than metal cans. Supposedly this makes them taste better. I am not sure I can tell the difference.
On tattoos: To me, tattoos on hands (especially fingers) are still a significant tell. Other than that they seem to have been mainstreamed in 0.5 generation, basically. Kind of breathtaking.
Yeah, canned ones tend to have a different texture too. Sometimes I prefer to use canned pulses -- if I am adding chickpeas to some kind of pilau, for example -- but dried ones are better for a lot of things.
Is pilau Britspeak for pilaf?
What is (are) pulses?
Becks, does the deli serve them as part of a salad with a vinaigrette?
No, it's just a lettuce salad with black beans, corn, tomatoes, and celery. Sad fact: I'm a bad enough cook that I can't reproduce this at home! Woo!
Home-cooked food will always taste different from store-bought food. You don't watch the store's cooks add salt and oil...
223:
But I made the generalization based on how I noticed men reacting, and shaped my behavior to it: not knowing whether other women have noticed the same thing, I wouldn't make any guessed about what any other women meant by wearing dangly earrings.
The dangly earrings thing continues to amuse me, insofar as I have not noticed any particular response from men; I wear dangly earrings always, to the extent that wearing no earrings, or just studs, would be a deliberate act.
There may be some truth to the suggestion that dangly earrings = feminine (?) = potential sexual object. Perhaps not unlike long hair, or wearing one's hair down.
I'm reminded of my mother telling me sometime in my mid-30s that it was time I cut my hair short; that on women after a certain age, it was unseemly. I laughed, after I got over my annoyance. It didn't occur to me at the time that she might be referring to something like sexual availability.
I suppose I might entertain the possibility that dangly earrings are a proxy (grr, obnoxious) for being an unashamedly sexual person. Still amuses me.
... and MSG. My aunt used to work at a supermarket prepared food section, and she told me they measured MSG by the bowlful.
To a salad?
Although I agree. There are some foods I refuse to cook at home simply because I refuse to add the amount of oil required to make them taste good.
257: I love MSG. When I lived in Shanghai, everyone cooked with it as a matter of course. bought it in big bags and thought "MSG headaches" were just some silly fancy-pants foreigner prejudice. You measure it out on the end of a big square chopstick, at least you do if you are the euphoniously-named Dr. Hu who taught me a lot of cooking stuff.
I've never been able to figure out the MSG-headache thing, because I know people who get them. I can only assume that if you grow up eating it regularly you adjust.
Final verdict: edible but not great. And thanks to the wonderfulness that is living alone, I get to eat this every night this week. Woo!
Depending on the person, MSG headaches are:
(a) Actually a reaction to something else in their food;
(b) Psychosomatic; or
(c) Part of a larger sensitivity to glutamates, in which case they will also get migraines from things like parmesan cheese.
I've never been able to figure out the MSG-headache thing
Headache, flushed, pounding heart, the whole bit. MSG sucks.
Canned beans are generally somewhat overcooked. That's the main thing.
262, etc: No, no, what I meant was "Why don't Chinese people get them?" Or if Chinese people do get them, why is there such a pervasive belief that they are both imaginary and a foreign problem?
No, no, what I meant was "Why don't Chinese people get them?" Or if Chinese people do get them, why is there such a pervasive belief that they are both imaginary and a foreign problem?
But 262 answers this question!
262 does not answer the question. 260 sort of does.
re: 253
Pulses are beans and legumes. It's a handy generic term. And is also not an exclusively British usage.
And a pilau is the same thing as a pilaf. Pilau is the way I've always heard it used, which isn't surprising since wikipedia tells me that's the standard Indian/Pakistani usage. So, it's not Brit-speak.
Salt and oil to a prepared salad? Absolutely.
2^8: When I had my pierced ear I wore dangly earrings mostly. I liked them a lot more than stud earrings, which never really lifted my spirits. Especially, I had this earring which I think was made by a Modesto acquaintance of mine, which was a silver triangle hanging on a short silver chain, that was my favorite. I was undone in the end by a combination of allergic reactions to the posts, and an oppressive societal perception of dangly earrings as effeminate.
I direct your attention especially to 262.b.
Americans do grow up eating plenty of added MSG, by the way, in contexts such as bags of Doritos. As well, glutamine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in many foods. MSG is just the sodium salt of this amino acid. When glutamine that is not bound to other amino acids (i.e. "free glutamate") encounters sodium ions, monosodium glutamate forms naturally. Tomatoes, cheese, and mushrooms are all high in free glutamate.
RFTS -- a bit of received wisdom from my year in training at the Health-food institute is that MSG is a synthetic form of a flavor molecule found in seaweed, so that the superior, more natural way to season your food is to use seaweed. Is there any kernel of truth to that?
If I wear silver, stainless steel, or unidentified-metal earrings, I'll have an infection within a couple of days. As a true child of the Yukon, I've got to have gold.
I was undone in the end by ... an oppressive societal perception of dangly earrings as effeminate
Wimp, to be undone by this.
Wimp
Help! I'm being oppressed!
269: Ah, thanks. I was waiting for you to say pulses was a typo. I have truly never come across it before -- not in print, not in a recipe, and not in speech. Huh.
Seaweed is chock full of free glutamate + salt, so yes! In fact, refined MSG was originally made from seaweed, and the discovery of umami and eventual patenting of MSG were both inspired by the tastiness that kombu seaweed imparts to dashi.
The MSG you can buy at the store is made by fermenting things like molassess or food starches such as corn starch (by the way, "modified food starch" in an ingredients list also refers to added MSG). I don't know what they do to refine out the glutamic acid or how they introduce the sodium to the mix.
So, Ogged, what do you think "piercings" are a proxy for? Is a pierced eyebrow as significant as pierced nipples? Is a pierced navel more or less meaningful than a half-inch hole in the earlobe? What's the significance of a nose piercing on a woman who wears clip earrings? Do tell.
Help! I'm being oppressed!
You jest.
I do think about this sort of thing more than I'd like: I used to dress much more, shall we say, alternatively, than I do now.
I get such a variety of feedback about it, from friends known on the internets who meet me for the first time, for example, and say everything from:
"I thought you'd be more earthy-crunchy."
to: "You're funkier than I thought."
Since I'm currently considering actually wearing a bit of make-up (again, after 5 years or so), I fuss. I'd rather not give a flying fuck one way or the other. The truth is that I toned down in dress a great deal in grad school when I began teaching. Now I have no such audience; there's no need.
Provisional conclusion: these things are a matter of habit more than anything else.
Is a pierced eyebrow as significant as pierced nipples?
No.
Is a pierced navel more or less meaningful than a half-inch hole in the earlobe?
Less.
What's the significance of a nose piercing on a woman who wears clip earrings?
I couldn't generalize about such a low-frequency phenomenon; it would depend on the situation.
281: But you're not saying *what* these things signify.
They signify a deviation from our societal norm.
That's terribly informative. Thanks.
197: Why is a bowtie poorly pasted onto that pic?
Dunno. Boredom, I guess.
277 - A friend of mine was working in London during his first extended stay outside the U.S.; he bought a cookbook and prepared to do his marketing, although he was somewhat trepidacious about it because of the bizarre ingredients and metric system (and, I assume, because of English cuisine's world reknown). He was delighted when he got to Sainsbury's and discovered that "courgette" was simply British for zucchini rather than some form of offal.
I can only imagine how disappointed he was when he found out that "mangold-wurzels" are not sausages.
242: I used to have a cartoon on my fridge showing an indigene of some sort, tattooed and pierced, waving a spear at a youth and ranting "No tattoos! No piercings! What is this, some kind of adolescent rebellion??"
It's the oldsters in this house who have the body mod. The Offspring just got some ear cartilage pierced, for some reason had a barbell installed that was clearly designed to be nipple hardware, and wound up with an infection. When his ear clears up, I'm taking him to my piercing parlour, where they'll take better care of him.
274: Ever try niobium? I react to pretty much every metal that is used in earrings, but niobium works beautifully.
re: 286
Heh. I have British, US, Australian, Czech and French- made cookbooks.* It's interesting switching between all the different conventions, terminologies and styles.
What is interesting is buying ostensibly the same thing in different places and discovering how different they taste. For example, Czech smetana doesn't really taste like any equivalent British cream, and their variations on bacon, despite being explicitly called 'english', are nothing like British bacon.
* e.g. I have books of Mexican and Thai cooking which are printed in Australia, a Czech made book of central european Jewish cookery, etc.
