People who have one super-powerful arm and are otherwise dwarfish are advised to take up crew.
Dr. Joyner said. "Anything worth doing is worth doing well and anything worth keeping a score is worth posting a good score."
Ogged has an MD?
So the takeaway here is that anorexics make the best marathoners, right?
Funny, I saw that article and my first thought was that I was gonna whip it out the next time some asshole tried to argue that women aren't strong enough to do military service.
I was gonna whip it out
To demonstrate that you hold that view even though you aren't a member of the category under discussion?
Cycling has many specialties within the same team and race, for different kinds of peak performance. And Miguel Indurain was over 6' 2", yet won five times straight in the 90s. Longer crank arms compensate somewhat, and he had tremendous lung capacity independent of size. There is an advantage for the small, but in cycling it's not as great as suggested here. And wasn't the British/Australian marathoner Derek Clayton a big guy? He had the world record as recently as the seventies.
"Pardon me while I whip this out..."
Yeah, but marathoners are sick puppies. Few marathoners live past 50, even the ones who aren't juiced.
5: To demonstrate that different body types have different physical excellences that will come in handy in different situations. Duh.
But let us not hijack Ogged's lovely thread.
I'm not sure I believe Ogged any more about his mother ostentatiously doing much of anything. She seemed like a really elegant and kind of quiet woman when I met her.
I'm starting to think this is like the heels and makeup thing: Ogged's just hyper touchy about anything that isn't buttoned up tight. Maybe he should be looking for a nice WASP.
I'm around 240. It's rare I can state this positively.
Ask Mom to adopt me.
Unfortunately, the fun sports reward sheer size and speed. Those are the sports that define what I think of as "athleticism." I mean...crew? Marathon running?
Gary Farber! How the hell are you?
Gary, you don't even want to know the crap I took from my mom when I weighed almost 200 pounds. There's a 5-10 pound range that's acceptable in her mind, anything else earns me worry or scorn.
B, as an Iranian, my mom is expert in presenting a false face to the world. In other words, she was raised right. Also, your 9 is on estrogen, but let's not hijack my lovely thread.
B, as an Iranian, my mom is expert in presenting a false face to the world.
Fair enough.
In other words, she was raised right.
Ah! Now we know why you love me so much.
Also, your 9 is on estrogen, but let's not hijack my lovely thread.
Honey, I was merely summarizing the gist of the article. But let's not hijack your lovely thread.
There's probably some other commenter or group of commenters, who if your mother adopted them along with Gary, and could be convinced to think of the average, rather than individual, weight of her sons, would make her happy, don't you think? Also, if the number were fairly large, that'd tend to damp out any unsettling fluctuations.
You could all travel around in a bus together.
And hi, Gary.
I just realized that the sports discussed are the ones that require the least amount of in-competition thought. I wonder if it becomes harder to make arguments about "best body size" once it is more than a purely mechanical exercise (or a series of mechanical exercises that require decisions along the way). Steve Smith is, I think, tiny, for example. As are a passel of running backs.
You know what this article reminded me of? Stories I'd read about Eastern Bloc sports programs, where they'd sort kids by body type and train them in appropriate sports, regardless of interest.
19: whereas in the free world, we watch and snicker as kids try and fail at sports they aren't made for, until the get tired of failure and switch sports.
The article is banal/stupid. But contains that important information about Robert Cheruiyot.
19: I had a friend who got caught up in that. By the time I met him he'd been in the US (and away from the arena) for about a decade, but boy, when he got some rollerblades those speed skating skills came right back.
the sports discussed are the ones that require the least amount of in-competition thought
trolling, are we?
they'd sort kids by body type and train them in appropriate sports, regardless of interest
That doesn't seem so bad to me. The training itself might be soul-crushing, and that's bad, but parents forcing you to learn to do something that there's a good chance you'll be good at seems like the kind of thing parents should do.
This
is a totally fascinating chart that shows what people actually look like at different weights. I was very way off as to what normal-looking people weigh.
22: I don't see "stupid," but I don't think that coaches the world round needed the good doctor to explain how to scout for the athletes they need. They seem to be doing alright.
I thought there was some evidence that elite long-distance runners are compromising their immune systems in some ways, and are more at risk of getting things like colds or the flu than people who are merely in shape. Those might sound like minor ailments, but the flu kills a lot of people every year. The flu killed more people in 1919 than died in World War I. The etiology isn't clear, but the flu might be even more devastating to those with fewer than 2 whole kidneys. Especially single men past the age of 30.
21: Oh, it's probably the way to go if you want to produce champions, the article just reminded me.
18: Yeah, ball sports are so mental, and so physical in an other-than-gross-physical-dimensions way (like, having a whole lot of 'quick'; or the kind of freak eyesight a batter needs), that the physical type thing probably doesn't work as well.
I remember reading an article describing a middle distance runner (1500m and 5000m) as having the ideal body type for his sport: "the legs of a centaur & the upper body of Don Knotts."
Thanks for the concern, eb, but I'm not running anymore.
24: No, not really. I think it's true. It makes a certain sense: if your sport is purely mechanical, there are going to be fewer things you can do to work around the physical aspects. I'd be curious to see if steroid usage varies with this sort of issue as well.
your sport is purely mechanical
This is what he's (rightly) objecting to. There's less "thinking" in cycling and running than in basketball, but there isn't none.
While sports training often has fatal effects, the mental-health and criminological consequences are unquestionably greater.
26 is interesting for this reason: my own height and weight combination is mysteriously absent. Conspiracy? Or worse?
26: That really is fascinating. What I find most interesting is that there's a huge area in the middle of the chart where I really can't tell the difference -- if I were going to put the pictures in order by weight, I'd have a hell of a time. (Now, this is complicated by the non-standardness of the pictures, but still interesting.)
33: there's a ton of thinking involved in competitive cycling. Tim is totally trolling.
This is what he's (rightly) objecting to. There's less "thinking" in cycling and running than in basketball, but there isn't none.
Should have seen that. Modify as necessary. I just meant the less in game part.
33: Would you say there's little 'thinking fast', maybe? You have to plan, and so on, but you're not doing a whole lot of reacting to complex events on the fly.
35: Take a picture, send it in. Be the change you want to see in the world.
I was gonna whip it out the next time some asshole tried to argue that women aren't strong enough to do military service.
male/female differences aren't about weight, they're about the percent of body mass that's muscle.
28 wasn't really an expression of concern. Just pointing out that marathoners aren't a great example of health.
First search result for video of Cheruiyot running.
40: You haven't watch much bike racing, have you.
That's very cool, hg. I do wish the pictures were of people in their skivvies (because I'm a scientist).
And I'd like a gender breakdown -- an M/F pair at each gridpoint?
For example, my suspicion is that in pro football we would find more variance in the body-types at the so-called "skill" positions than at the other (also thoughtful, super nice, extra smart, excellent poet) positions. But that might be entirely wrong. I'm more likely to be aware of at least some variation at the skill positions because I'm more likely to be aware of the skill positions.
42: And the article really isn't about weight either. What makes you think I'm talking about weight, hmmmm?
Track cycling at the Olympics appears to be nothing but thinking about when to make the break...And there's the whole pelloton/breakaway/team thing at the Tour de France. In general, I'd think that there's more strategy involved in team sports & in longer v. shorter events. But strategy isn't the only mental element--a competitive skier who gets a little scared about attacking the course will have problems.
Also, it just seems obvious that body shape matters regardless of the mental element. For instance, basketball is not purely mechanical, and yet it helps to be tall.
And I'd like a gender breakdown -- an M/F pair at each gridpoint?
If you scroll down at each weight, sometimes there are more pictures.
HG's site is cool. I gotta take a pic of myself and send it in; the woman that's at my height/weight (ish, as far as I know--guess I gotta weigh myself somewhere, too) looks completely different than I do, body-type wise.
I should send one in of myself in the couple years after PK was born, too, when I was just incredibly thin.
51: Scroll down? Each intersection is a simple box for me -- what do you do to see more than one picture?
more strategy involved in team sports
I'd guess this is a tossup, really. A lot of the strategy in team sports is the coach's job, and part of playing them well involves knowing what your position/role is relative to other players and sticking to it.
American football is apparently one of the most cognitively demanding sports because people have to memorize a lot of plays in advance, as opposed to only reacting on the fly.
I sometimes wonder if there's an inverse relation between conventional IQ and the ability to respond in the moment to quickly changing stimuli, like you have to in fast reaction / improvisation sports. One is the ability to remove yourself from a situation and abstract from it, the other is the ability to immerse yourself in something and respond to it instantaneously.
In general, I'd think that there's more strategy involved in team sports & in longer v. shorter events.
I guess I wouldn't call what I'm talking about strategy. I don't know what I'd call it, exactly. But in team sports with longer events, it seems like there is more space to find an unexpected solution to the game. Steve Nash isn't a great athlete by NBA standards, but he's a very, very good point guard with a somewhat unorthodox style. And it works. But he just couldn't do that in something like the 100 meter dash.
55: Ah. All the ones near me are one-picture only, and those were the only ones I clicked on.
I sometimes wonder if there's an inverse relation between conventional IQ and the ability to respond in the moment to quickly changing stimuli
Not in my experience. I don't think it helps your basketball game to be a deep thinker, but clever people tend to be clever basketball players.
57: There's a spectrum between pure athletic events and games. There are a number of ways to play a game, but only one way to run fast. Athleticism is only one component of physical games.
59: And the rest have to depend on their ability to dunk at a young age.
56: I'd bet anything the relationship isn't inverse -- while it's not precisely the same thing as book smarts, I'd be really surprised if there weren't a positive correlation.
Note please that 6' 150lbs. is totally normal-looking (not that I weight anything close to that now, but asking if that's anorexic is out of line, dammit!)
62: but "thinking too much" is one of the worst sins in a fast moving game. You need to make responses automatic.
I don't doubt that in pre-game planning off the court, for example in training methods and preparation, conventional smarts play in.
In fact, isn't it generally true that thinking too much about any kind of physical activity makes you clumsier?
I'm sure that having a brain that forms connections quickly makes it easier for someone to learn the reflexes and instincts that make a great pianist or basketball player, as well as making someone a quick study in other things, but the kind of thinking you have to do to be a physicist or a researcher just isn't the same as the kind of thinking you have to do to be a great ball player or pianist.
yeah, long distance running is quite unhealthy.
"I was gonna whip it out the next time some asshole tried to argue that women aren't strong enough to do military service."
It also that the difference in testosterone&estrogens mens men have muscles more specialized for strength and women for muscular endurance
59: And the rest have to depend on their ability to dunk at a young age.
I concede that I was not a clever basketball player; I tend to space out a lot.
I think there is a correlation between reaction time and IQ, although thats not the same thing, exactly.
The confounding thing about the height/weight charts is that not only are most people clothed, they're clothed in baggy clothes. Which makes it quite hard to tell muscle vs. fat, which have significant differecnes in density.
65: how do you know that? Especially when it comes to the pianist.
but "thinking too much" is one of the worst sins in a fast moving game
"Thinking too much" isn't cured by being stupid.
Crap, fucked up the HTML. Here, re. pianist and cognitive ability, specifically in this case, memory.
Steve Nash isn't a great athlete by NBA standards, but he's a very, very good point guard with a somewhat unorthodox style. And it works. But he just couldn't do that in something like the 100 meter dash.
This makes sense to me. There's a lot more uniformity in the body types and mechanics of runners. At the longer distances there is a fair amount of tactics/strategy going on, but you usually have to be watching the split times to catch it. A drop of a few seconds for a lap on a 10k isn't always that noticeable. I don't know much about sprinters, but I think their strategy is almost all pre-planned: there's just less time to react.
Cycling's different because different guys have different tasks on their teams. Sprinters have a lot to keep track of at the end, but it's their team's job to get them in position for the end. Climbers have different body types, etc.
I mean, the ability to comprehend complicated sequences of ratios in a meaningful, narrative way seems pretty broadly applicable.
re: 35
Yeah, me too. Although there are a few very close, and they do look similar in build to me.
http://www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/509-230.shtml
is pretty close. I'm a little taller, but more or less the same weight.
63: The thing is, of course, that there's normal looking, and normal looking for you.
I was a skinny teenager, about an inch shorter than my mother. She was honestly, really, not particularly psychotic about weight issues, despite what I'm about to report her as saying -- she never gave me shit about my body type, never encouraged dieting, nothing like that. But every so often she'd become aware, numerically, of what I weighed, and would say something along the lines of "Jesus Christ, really? I didn't weigh that when I was nine months pregnant with you." She has the skeleton of a Thompson's gazelle, while I have the skeleton of a moose -- a skinny moose as a teen, and a stoutish moose now, but even when skinny, not lightweight for my height.
I bet if they got a big enough volume of pictures for that site, you could find people who looked 'skinny' or 'fat' at the same height and weight for a whole bunch of h/w combinations.
Now one interesting question is what kinds of cognitive skills are necessary for physics or chemical engineering versus, say, HTML.
The women at around my height/weight in that chart look very weird to me. There isn't anyone in my honey's (rather unusual) height/weight, unfortunately.
78: Agreed completely. The woman at my height/weight looks much hippier than I do, but thinner up top.
Of course, since my boobs weight 20 lbs each, I should really be comparing myself to the folks who weight 40 lbs less than I do.
I bet if they got a big enough volume of pictures for that site, you could find people who looked 'skinny' or 'fat' at the same height and weight for a whole bunch of h/w combinations.
Yeah, that's true; I was trying to pull a fast one.
The height/weight thing that heebie linked is cool. It'd be cooler still if for each h/w, they had a (gender-seperated, as LB and ogged were saying) sort of cloud of pictures, with the ones in the middle being people who looked more "typical" for that h/w, and people at the edges looking more extreme. You could process that subjective opinion via a voting system.
Ideally, if you mouseovered a thumbnail in the cloud, it'd pop up a full-sized photo.
I'd also like a pony.
I'm someplace in between these two, which is obviously super useful.
Not all women can look like wholesome blonde anime, B. Youdon't need to keep reminding them.
Even "the jump" in track cycling is very much more strategic than it looks. It's a von Neuman game though. The more complicated track cycling events, like the "Madison," named after MSG, but now seen only in European pro track cycling, have vast amounts of thinking in them, as do road races. The rules of the Madison survive in this country only in Roller Derby.
re: 84
The body shape thing really is weird. The second guy you linked is both taller than me and slightly lighter, but, I'm fairly sure, heavier looking.
That really is a great site from hg. I'm always amazed at how many creatively talented people there are in the world. There's just not a chance in the world I could come up with something like that site (either the height/weight thing or the larger site). Things like that reassure me somehow.
84: that either makes it utterly mystifying that you're not getting laid, or else explains it completely.
Yes, Einstein washed out as a bicycle racer because he never could master the strategy.
I think it's just now getting going. There are more photos up today than there were yesterday.
I'm a 215 pound road biker. It's a little bizarre, partly just cause I'm built thick, partly cause I recently switched from mountain biking. It means I get dropped like nobody's business on climbs, but can power across flats like nobody's business. Really, I normally can't keep up with a pack, but recently won a local sprint race on a flat course.
90: I'm glad he points out parenthetically that his wife is not 8'2".
I'm this guy, but given the sweats and the gender difference, that doesn't tell you much.
It's funny, looking around for someone built like I think I am, I end up here -- my weight, but five inches shorter. I wonder if that's fucked up body image, or just the sort of thing I was talking about in 78.
87: That guy is wearing a really terrible sweater -- I bet a video, where you could see him moving, or a tighter shirt, would make him look skinnier.
Hmmm, yes, so you vote on two axes via multiple choice questions:
This person looks:
Overly skinny, skinny, normal, overweight, seriously overweight
This person is:
Ugly, somewhat unattractive, normal, attractive, beautiful
(With someone finding the optimal set of unbiased descriptors). Then you plot an up-down axis for attractiveness and a left-right axis for "visual weight," which is your cloud. Then you let people put two clouds on the screen at once (one with, say, a red border to all the pictures, the other blue, so you can distinguish overlapping clouds), each cloud being a single h/w, and then you can obsess about your personal image with SCIENCE! That'd be awesome.
I'd spend, like, hours trying to figure out roughly where I fell on the left-right axis, and then check all the clouds to find out when my point on left-right axis maximized the number of up pictures on the up-down axis.
I found one [small] full length frontal photo of myself:
http://www.mcgrattan.f2s.com/groupday.jpg
[far left, standing, black t-shirt]
http://photos-509.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sf2p/v67/143/107/36812509/n36812509_32780352_4984.jpg
[from the back]
and I'm fairly sure http://www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/601-220.shtml does look fatter than me [unless it's a mental block I have]. If my body image is fucked up it's fucked up in the opposite direction from LB in 95. On preview, 97 may be right, too.
Aha! I found my body type, scaled up about three inches. This lady is a little skinnier on her frame than I am, though.
I agree with Sifu's skepticism in #70. But I'm inclined to like simple, uniform solutions.
95, 96: I should say that I think she looks good -- not skinny, but attractive. It doesn't feel as if I'm beating myself up on the body image thing, but I do seem to be way off.
It's funny, looking around for someone built like I think I am
I couldn't find anybody who approximated my body shape. I have the proportions of a very tall short guy.
In fact, isn't it generally true that thinking too much about any kind of physical activity makes you clumsier?
Well, re: playing an instrument, I think it's right that thinking too much while performing is a no-no. But thinking while practicing, is what you want, iyswim.
103: Gawd, you really are your mother's son.
This is the woman closest to me in height and weight. These women, both shorter and lighter than I am, look more like I think I do.
No, ogged! You told me to eat brownies, so I'm fatter now than when you met me.
103 is correct. Also JM has more of a dancer's body than that woman does.
You told me to eat brownies, so I'm fatter now than when you met me.
Ah, ok. They were totally worth it, no?
Huh. I've been sitting here for about five minutes contemplating linking to the picture that looks to me like Jackm's build, and being unable to decide whether or not that would be obnoxious.
I keep baking cookies to fatten up my honey, but he doesn't eat as many of them as I do. There's something wrong with this plan.
Isn't this about where you are on the chart? She looks about right.
The guy at my height and weight doesn't look that far off in terms of body type, but appears to have thicker arms and skinnier legs than I do.
Although the skirt makes it a little puzzling.
muscle vs. fat, which have significant differecnes in density
This is key. I bet you could do that chart (which is kind of neat, but) in such a way that you found a wide range of body-types at a given intersection. Weight/height really only gets you into a ballpark -- i.e., 500 pounds at any normal height is obviously too much, but 190 at 6 feet could be a bit chubby and could be extremely fit. Really fit people with a lot of muscle mass weigh a ton, and come up as "obese" on BMI and suchlike.
She looks about right.
Now she really does look skinnier than JM. Go on Timbot.
this guy has my height & weight and basically has a body that looks like mine, only gayer.
Yeah, but she's got tiny little shoulders and just seems frail. I mean, I may be skinny, but I can still swagger with it.
Now I must go buy some dinner. After all of this, I'm thinking I should get some fried chicken or something.
Your really should have them against a height standard, because you don't get a sense of how tall anyone is.
118 -- Maybe, I think the skirt might have thrown off my sense of height.
Closest to me:
http://www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/508-180.shtml
119: That's the founder! That means you'd be even cooler if you were gayer!
You've offended JM's macho, LB. I hope she punches you out good next meetup. POW!
I thought there was some evidence that elite long-distance runners are compromising their immune systems in some ways, and are more at risk of getting things like colds or the flu than people who are merely in shape.
There's anecdotal evidence that obsessive exercisers are at greater risk for cancer due to lower immunity. That can apply to competitive marathoners, but can also apply to someone who can't miss a day on the treadmill.
Go on Timbot.
Are you implying that she's a hoax?
I see I failed to link this guy. I have shorter hair.
I am tired of grading my classes' online discussion forum. They are not as funny or insightful as the unfoggetariat. Can I grade you guys instead?
I think its that you shouldn't be trying to do and think at the same time. but both are useful activities. for performance or game, one should do.
First of all, you all get +5 for not using ALL CAPS. If OPINIONATED GRANDMA shows up, she will miss out on that bonus.
I don't understand why people in this day and age use all caps. I guess there was a moment in the 70s where some people at DARPA said you should use them because they thought, erroneously, that they were easier to read. This might have had an effect on early internet culture, but why am I seeing it now?
Is that 165 lbs. with or without the ax?
THOSE WHO FORGET HISTORY ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT, ROB
There's a big, pictureless hole around my height and weight (6'0, 205).
why am I seeing it now?
Rob, have you met people? People are often jerks.
138: 's what I'm saying. We're being discriminated against. Also, we are very close to the same size, predictably.
Huh, yeah, this guy looks way too square and large to be my height and weight, though I'm between him and this guy (whose photo is utterly useless).
People usually tend to underestimate my weight by a fair amount, since I tend to wear tighter clothing and am quite small-framed.
Yes, but people aren't yelling at each other on my board, they are just saying things like this: "AN ANIMAL IS STILL A LIVING BREATHING EXISTANCE AND I DO BELIEVE FROM A CHRISTIAN STANDPOINT THAT LIFE SHOULD BE RESPECTED."
MY CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE IS IN ALL CAPS DAMMIT!
Fuck it, I'm tired. I'm going home.
You know, you're the prof. Can't you drop in and say that class style requires normal case usage? Just for your own peace of mind?
MY TEACHER TOLD ME TO STOP MUMBLING. THIS IS HOW YOU ENOUNCIATE ONLINE, RIGHT?
WAIT, I JUST FOUND THIS AWESOME KEY CALLED "CAPS LOCK" AND IT MAKES LIFE SO MUCH EASIER!!!
JESUS USED AN APPLE II WITH A 40 COLUMN CARD
Me, more or less. I used to be heavier, but I've been dropping weight inexplicably.
onoe of my boarding pals had a class board he had to post on, and he posted for us some of the fine trolling examples. class boards have lots of people who haven't seen many of the common tricks before.
Actually this dude looks pretty close to how I think of myself looking, although it's tough to tell with the baggy clothes.
Never trust anyone who believes from a standpoint. You should always do your believing while seated, otherwise the blood goes to your feet, and then you hit the all-caps key.
I've been dropping weight inexplicably
Dude, are you serious? How much and how quickly? That's almost never a good sign.
Can't you drop in and say that class style requires normal case usage?
I had a professor who specified that papers should be in Garamond, not Times New Roman, because he found it more pleasant to read, and because, after about ten pages, it saved one piece of paper vs. using Times New Roman.
Since I already used Garamond, I was only too happy to comply, but some people found it kind of of strange and authoritarian-ish.
138: Fill that hole, apo. You know you want to.
Garamond is a vastly nicer font than Times New Roman.
149: You said. You know, if that goes on for long, you should really check it out with a doctor.
That would be Sifu Gunga Din Ninja smoking a pipe?
Standpoint Bridgeline lives on a plane in space.
151: You mean that wasn't you in the orange suit?
I didn't say he acted like me, for God's sake.
Although I could see smoking a pipe and owning masks. Different facial hair, though. Veeeery different.
The police were just at the front door. the party is supposed to switch to Plan B.
160: self-image can be deceptive.
Dammit. I finally clicked the link, and now I feel like I should either lose 20 lbs or grow an inch.
164: Go back and read my 78, which contains great wisdom. If you thought you looked fine before comparing yourself to the chart, you almost certainly do.
Gattaca made the idea of changing one's height seem so easy.
If it's unimaginable, then it's barely noticeable at all!
Ok, now I feel guilty about joking about that.
153: Mentioned before. I really probably should see a doctor about it. Although my weight seems to have leveled off--I'm not dropping anymore, although nothing I eat or do seems to put any weight back on me. I suppose something harmless like a tapeworm still remains a live possiblity. But I'm getting more concerned. The weight I'm at is very low--my clothes are loose, my wedding ring no longer stays on my finger, and my watch band is enormous. I had sort of deluded myself into thinking my (solid gold) wedding ring had just stretched out somehow, but more and more friends and family have been commenting on the fact that I've started to look really worryingly skinny. I've also been constantly very unusually tired, but, you know, long hours and a young kid. Perhaps the most troublesome datapoint is that my libido has completely vanished. From robust young male to just plain nothing--and it's been stuck at nothing now for about 9 months or so. I blamed that on long hours and a new kid for a while, too, but it's been a little too long and it's been far too flat. My wife's been pretty concerned about that one, and not just for selfish reasons. And at the risk of ruining all your lovely evenings with way TMI, over the last six months or so I've also started shitting a lot of blood, which I've heard can be a bad sign.
So, um, hey, why not go to a doctor?
170: Jesus Christ, Brock, get to a doctor. Either you really need to see one, ASAP, or after you see one you can stop worrying. Call tomorrow.
I've also started shitting a lot of blood
Motherfucker, doctor NOW. Jesus Christ, Brock, you have a little kid, don't fuck around.
Yeah, I just don't really have one to call. I guess I should just look up an office nearby and see if they have any openings.
Can you get a recommendation from anyone? Does your insurance have an advice line, or something like that?
If they say they don't have openings, first you tell them that you've lost thirty pounds and are shitting blood and there's a very good chance they'll suddenly have an opening, or you just go to an emergency room. Do not fuck around with this.
Oh dear, I'm worried about Brock.
This prompts me to bring up a peeve: In ads for medical things, they always say "Ask your doctor about blah blah blah". How many people have a doctor? I don't have a doctor. My parents don't have a doctor. Some people can refer to "my gynecologist", but not "my doctor" for other purposes. The whole "ask your doctor" concept is archaic for a lot of people.
I don't even know where to call for a physical examination. I would call the number on the back of my health insurance card and get an operator for BigMedicalCenter, and hopefully by telling her "I need a physical examination" she would be able to hook me up with a doctor.
I once lost a bunch of weight when I stupidly stopped taking the medication which slowed down my hyperactive thyroid gland for a number of months. Using my massive medical knowledge and this handy list of symptoms I found on a random website, I believe I'll diagnose you with that. In which case you'll be fine, it's easily treatable.
Finding a doctor: I woke up with pain in one eye and extreme redness and tears, and I called the local Big Multi-Specialty Clinic's main number, asked for the eye doctors, and then talked to whoever picked up there at 7am. They got me an appointment at 10:30am that morning.
The advantage of a big multi-specialty clinic like that, I think, is that they can get you in front of a doctor. Not like a small practice where all the doctors are completely booked up for months.
Um, Brock, how obnoxious would it be to nag you about this? Because my instinct is to hassle you daily, whenever I see you comment, until you say you've made an appointment to see a doctor. I'm giving you the opportunity to tell me not to do that, but if you don't call me off, it's going to happen.
Probably best to go to the doctor so you don't have LB bugging you constantly, Brock. I bet she'd be pretty annoying.
I'm between here and here, but think I look like there. But I'm usually not on the All Hobbit All Stars, any more.
Yeah, for reference on the annoyingness-level, read back over that obstetrics argument with Dsquared.
re: 170
Can I just second everyone else and say get to a doctor. Tomorrow.
If you're feeling conflicted about going to the ER, almost every hospital will have something called the "Urgent Care Center", which exists to deal with people who have a somewhat serious medical issue but no personal doctor. It's where I went for a sinus infection (and discovered a serious heart problem yay!), and it's where I very much hope that you go.
"Losing a lot of weight and shitting blood for three months" is really scary. Like "randomly passing out for no reason once a week" or "chest pain and numbness down my left arm" scary.
Yeah, I'd rather this not become daily nagging. I'm impressed by your collective concern. This may be something I've paid less attention to than I should have. I'll make an appointment somewhere.
Um, Brock, how obnoxious would it be to nag you about this?
Who cares? What Ogged said.
"Losing a lot of weight and shitting blood for three months" is really scary. Like "randomly passing out for no reason once a week" or "chest pain and numbness down my left arm" scary.
Yes, what Jake said.
Yeah, for reference on the annoyingness-level, read back over that obstetrics argument with Dsquared.
You kicked his ass, though.
Brock, seriously, what everyone else has already said. Get thee to a physician without further delay.
You don't suppose this is related to the lead? Didn't you mention that an inspector had declared your building unsafe or something?
Anyway, I looked up the symptoms -- unexplained weight loss, bloody stool -- and it's clearly hookworm. You want that cleared up before you give to the Brocklet: elevated lead levels are bad enough, but hookworm's just gross.
Brock, we're all trying to be motivating without making you piss yourself with anxiety; you really need to see a doctor immediately, not just some time soon.
I was going to tell you all about this guy I knew who was a circus acrobat who specialized in working upside down (that is, walking on his hands) and his weird body and all the things he did to keep his legs teeny tiny, but now I feel that perhaps other, Brockish matters are more urgent.
Brock, we're all trying to be motivating without making you piss yourself with anxiety
Admittedly, I'm not exactly sure we've hit the sweet spot on that one.
Backing off now.
So, how about those Yankees? Clinched the wild-card spot -- we could be looking at a subway series!
Brock--I vaguely remember you being in the Boston area. I don't know if that's right, or where you live or work or anything, let alone your insurance situation, but just in case I'm remembering correctly & you work right downtown? Here's the # for the practice I used to use. They had a bunch of doctors & it was usually possible to schedule something quickly & you could do it during a long lunch break instead of missing a sig. amount of work. In general, the big hospitals have a lot of affiliated clinics where it's easy to get an appointment quickly.
So, how about those Mets? Complete-game shutout by Joel Piñeiro to make them lose the division lead for the first time since May?
193: if not for them getting their butts kicked in the ALDS, I suppose.
193: looking less likely by the day. Fucking Mets.
Brock, not to pile on (ok, fine, to pile on because I really feel it's that important) you need to see a doctor. Now.
Sadly, I've started a baseball conversation which I'm entirely unequipped to continue. ALDS is American League Division Series, I'm guessing? Did they already lose or something, or was that a prediction?
Well, mostly he watched his diet obsessively while working out a lot, but only on his upper body, and being very, very, very attentive to walking and standing as little as he could get away with. He did the dishes sitting on a stool, for example. His build was... striking. He was about 5' 4", with a very brawny top half and exceedingly scrawny legs.
Also, hearing about Brock's story has inspired me to make an appointment with my doctor tomorrow for something I should really get checked out. Solidarity! I don't want to have you all saying "jesus! how did you not get ___ looked at?!" at me in six months.
You dont want pretend internet friends hounding you and pissed off at you for not seeing a doctor.
you really need to see a doctor immediately
Are you trying to say, like, tonight?
DCUnfogged Price of Admission:
Recent checkup from doctor.
If I were a better person, I'd make it a priority to get a photo of me in to that site -- they have a gap at my 5'11" and 180.
Tomorrow's fine. But call tomorrow, and give the symptoms to the person you talk to so they give you an immediate appointment -- if it's later than early next week, tell them to run your symptoms by the actual doctor.
200: You've got the name right, and Sifu was just predicting the outcome. Too optimistically, I fear.
Everyone knows that nausea or chest pain in a 40 yr old means go immediately to the ER to check out for a heart attack?
202: yeah I'm glad I finally got my shit in gear and made an appointment a couple weeks back, otherwise I'd be feeling hugely guilty right now.
You're from Boston, so you hate the Yankees, right? So you're predicting that they're going to win?
Good. It's not that I actually care, but my neighborhood gets so happy.
208: yeah I mean, my natural instinct is pessimism. But you know those Yankee bastards would just feed on it.
Look, there's no way I'm going to the emergency room in this condition, but if I thought it was really important I could slam heavy some heavy weights on my foot until I broke a bone, and then I could while I was in the ER having my foot checked out I could bring up all that other stuff.
201: This sounds like a symmetrical version of Popeye.
Really, nausea all by itself? So every time a 40+ year old guy feels queasy, he should go to the ER?
Subway series are portents of doom anyway.
nausea or chest pain in a 40 yr old
Nausea or chest pain?? Isn't nausea going to be something innocuous 99.98% of the time?
215: Yes! But with a lot more chest and neck, and even less leg. And shorter.
213: my advice, which I've followed in the past, is to call some live human who could get you in immediately if necessary, describe your symptoms, and if they say "come in right away!" with a note of alarm in their voice, do so.
What Are the Warning Signs of a Heart Attack?
For many people, the first symptom of heart disease is a heart attack. Therefore, every woman should know how to identify the symptoms of a heart attack and how to get immediate medical help. Ideally, treatment should start within one hour of the first symptoms. Recognizing the warning signs, and getting help quickly, can save your life.
Know the Warning Signs
Not all heart attacks begin with sudden, crushing pain, as is often shown on TV or in the movies. Many heart attacks start slowly as mild pain or discomfort. The most common warning signs for men and women are:
Chest discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts more than a few minutes. It may feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain. The discomfort can be mild or severe, and it may come and go.
Discomfort in other areas of the upper body including one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or stomach.
Shortness of breath. May occur along with or without chest discomfort.
Other signs include nausea, light-headedness, or breaking out in a cold sweat.
As with men, women's most common heart attack symptom is chest pain or discomfort. But women are somewhat more likely than men to experience some of the other common symptoms, particularly shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting, and back or jaw pain.
Get Help Quickly
If you think you, or someone else, may be having a heart attack, you must act quickly to prevent disability or death. Wait no more than a few minutes--five at most--before calling 9-1-1. It is important to call 9-1-1 because emergency medical personnel can begin treatment even before you get to the hospital. They also have the equipment and training to start your heart beating again if it stops. Calling 9-1-1 quickly can save your life. Even if you're not sure you're having a heart attack, call 9-1-1 if your symptoms last up to five minutes. If your symptoms stop completely in less than five minutes, you should still call your doctor.
You also must act at once because hospitals have clot-busting medicines and other artery-opening treatments and procedures that can stop a heart attack, if given quickly. These treatments work best when given within the first hour after a heart attack starts. Women tend to delay longer than men in getting help for a possible heart attack. Many women delay because they don't want to bother or worry others, especially if their symptoms turn out to be a "false alarm." But when you're facing something as serious as a possible heart attack, it is much better to be safe than sorry. If you have any symptoms of a possible heart attack that last up to five minutes, call 9-1-1 right away. When you get to the hospital, don't be afraid to speak up for what you need--or bring someone who can speak up for you. Ask for tests that can determine if you are having a heart attack. Commonly given tests include an electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG), a cardiac enzyme blood test, a nuclear scan, and a coronary angiogram (or arteriogram). At the hospital, don't let anyone tell you that your symptoms are "just indigestion" or that you're overreacting. You have the right to be thoroughly examined for a possible heart attack. If you are having a heart attack, you have the right to immediate treatment to help stop the attack.
Plan Ahead
Nobody plans on having a heart attack. But just as many people have a plan in case of fire, it is important to develop a plan to deal with a possible heart attack. Taking the following steps can preserve your health--and your life:
Learn the heart attack warning signs "by heart."
Talk with family and friends about the warning signs and the need to call 9-1-1 quickly.
Talk with your health care provider about your risk factors for heart attack and how to
reduce them.
Clayton was Lancashire born, Northern Irish raised and Australian finished. He was considered to combine all the bad qualities of all those particular cultures. And throughout his career he never did anything to dispel what people thought of him. The enigmatic and relatively large (6'2", 160 pounds) would go on to become one of the world's most ferocious racers over the marathon distance ever.He was completely self-trained and averaged 140 to 170 miles a week, and sometimes ran over 200 miles a week. Unfortunately, his stubborn attitude towards his relentless training lead to numerous injuries, which in turn also endured him to many operations. He was also known to have exerted himself to such an extent during the achievement of his marathon world record in the '60s that his urine was black for a week [ bloody urine ] To say Clayton suffered from injuries is an understatement. During 12 years of sensational performances, he underwent 7 major surgeries, 4 to his Achilles tendons, 2 to each knee, and 1 on his heel.Makes the NYT's point that the body types are important, mine that they're not all-important, and John's that these guys are crazy.
I alternate between what I fear is hypochondria in some situations and waiting far too long to see the doctor in others. I can think of at least two occasions in my life when I could have died because I didn't take symptoms seriously enough. I won't think to go to the doctor over a 108 degree fever that lasts three days (true story) but then I'll obsess over a mole I start to think looks funny.
I've never had anything actually important wrong with me -- my only experience with serious health care was childbirth. Other than that, I get strep throat about once a year, but nothing much more exciting.
I obsess over symptoms and then fail to follow up. Clever me.
The last few days I've distracted myself from the AL East nailbiter by watching the Nats beat up on the Mets. So weird to care about a team that is fighting for 4th. But it was far less troubling than watching the Sox (who are losing to the Twinkies tonight while the DamnedYankees are winning). I am surprised at the Yankees celebrating the Wild Card clinch. Is that all they care about?
That thread Brock where referenced his 1st mention of weight-loss is a prime example of LB's persistence. Going to a physician tomorrow is the far better course. Please.
The thing is, md2/4, is that if I'm being honest, it's not technically that much of a nailbiter, given the wildcard. Don't get me wrong, I want to beat those bastards and take the East, but it's hard for me not to be more worried about who we're going to play in the ALDS.
So this is the Phillies thread, eh? Well, as of 5 minutes ago, my team has a share of the division lead for the first time all season.
LOL TEH METS R TEH SUXX000000000RZ
I need to find a new doctor myself (my old one sucks in a variety of ways). Is there any good way, apart from word of mouth, to find a good doctor? Is it considered acceptable to go to a first appointment on kind of a trial basis, to see if you like him/her? Will doing so put me over the number of allowed visits for my insurance?
I am surprised at the Yankees celebrating the Wild Card clinch
Look at their record in late June.
Is it considered acceptable to go to a first appointment on kind of a trial basis, to see if you like him/her?
I think this is perfectly standard from a doctor's point of view, but god knows how your insurance feels about it.
190:
Jesus fucking Christ, I like whatever self-diagnosis machine you used better than this nightmare of a website. I put my symptoms in and it spat out the following potential problems:
Abdominal Cancer
Back tumour
Hip cancer
Rib Tumor
Not those four on a long list, mind you--those four alone. Fucker.
You probably don't have all four.
"Rib tumour"? I've never heard of anyone having that.
Once you go to the doctor and get a clean bill of health you can make fun of that website to its face, brock. Make it cry.
This Sox game is awfully intense, by the way. What's with the situational deluge?
Aw, fuck. Pedey pops it up.
less troubling than watching the Sox (who are losing to the Twinkies tonight while the DamnedYankees are winning)
It ain't over yet.
Crap, never mind. Nice pop-up, Pedroia.
232: Yeah, I kind of cherry-picked the result I got for the least alarming option.
""Gary Farber! How the hell are you?"
Depressed, and extremely worried about money. Same as usual.
"And hi, Gary."
I loves the welcomes, but, y'know, I'm right where I've always been.
See, this comment is so incredibly boring, it's hard to understand why I'd make it, and I'd think it not hard to understnad why I've been repeating it.
But, to be sure, I'm depressed, so I don't tend to imagine any positive responses.
Wait, why am I responding? I'm so sure everyone hates me, after all.
I take comfort in the fact that it's obviously a shoddy website-- why is the "c" in "abdominal cancer" capitalized, but not in "hip cancer"? Why is it a rib "Tumor" (capitalized) but a back "tumour" (lower-case, extra-"u")?
Obviously, their diagnoses are therefore meaningless.
Look at their record in late June. True.
But celebrating 2nd place? The Yankees? The team of Munson?
Frankly the Yankees have been scary this last half. All this while the Sox have stayed a a very good team. (Sox get a run in the 8th.)
240: Gary that was a hell of a Marvin the Paranoid Android impression. How much of your weight is attributable to the brain the size of a galaxy?
The Yankees are one out from winning their game.
Oh that bunt was fair. Rigged umps.
The Yankees have been impossibly good since the break. They are by far the most dangerous team in baseball right now. And there are a lot of good AL teams.
Also, actually having to read 200+ comments since my last is a burden. I'm much more attracted towards watching a DVD, or reading another article. I'd be a lot more attracted towards wading through endless Unfogged comments if I was more.... there's an answer I'm looking for, there. I'm sure everyone else can answer more helpfully, though, and that's exactly the point.
Hi!
Brock, what everybody else said. Get thee to a physician. You probably have something innocuous, but maybe you don't, and if you don't, the second-best time to start treating it is right the fuck now.
I'd be a lot more attracted towards wading through endless Unfogged comments if I was more...
Perverse? Unmotivated? Boredified? Simple?
What helps me is stuff I feel I know about.
My daughter showed me the Iron Man preview trailer today.
"Rachel, the framing and ideas are vile"
"Dad, they're so over-the-top no one will take them seriously"
"Wanna bet?"
Apparently "Stark"—my wife points out at dinner means "strong" in German and Yiddish, which Stan Lee knows—is now injured amongst American combat troops in the Middle East. This is called reimagining. When I was a kid, it was Vietnam where he was injured.
Brock, Becks -- by way of encouragement, really, go get things checked out. I had this strange "spot" (growth?) that appeared out of nowhere. I diligently avoided getting it checked out for nearly a year because it was certainly nothing but I secretly dreaded the possibility of finding out it was something. I finally got it checked out (along with my first full physical in 7 years) and it was, in fact, nothing. I feel much better knowing that.
246 wasn't meant to be trolling, but I'm re-reading it and it fits right into the Anatomy of a Troll framework. Do sports discussions have a tendency in that direction? (Or is it just me?)
So rational me knows that a team's performance against you in previous seasons is not predictive of how they'll perform against you in the current season. I'm nevertheless deeply afraid of the Angels.
Quite frankly, a lot of my issue is just that I'm not exactly excited about telling a stranger I've lost my libido and am bleeding inappropriately. I mean, if I thought any of you weren't imaginary I'd be pretty embarrassed right now. Getting a mole checked out I'd have much less of a problem with. But I guess it's long past time just to get over that.
252. I don't see that as trolling.
Pretend the doctor's a robot, Brock.
That woman profiled in the Times this morning, who wasn't the 911 survivor she's built a life around being? Re-imagining.
"240: Gary that was a hell of a Marvin the Paranoid Android impression. How much of your weight is attributable to the brain the size of a galaxy?"
That was very undepressive. Thanks.
Making people laugh is good, even though I've never found laughing to cure depression. It's still very very good, though. Ho.
Wes Anderson "ho," to be sure.
Otherwise, I could be better, frankly. Very depressed. Bad. I frown at myself. I attempt to defuse the fact that I'm [obfuscatory phrases here].
253: No, it's not, and yet during games they're always showing those utterly meaningless stats about a batter's "lifetime batting average against the Twins" or a pitcher's "career ERA against the Mets". What the fuck is that supposed to tell you? It drives me crazy.
All it takes is a sac fly, tek!
Are you on dialup Gary? Posting is fugal and counterpuntal in the evenings, and timing will be hard if you are. We've a woman now regular here who works being on dialup into her schtick.
I'd also accept a base on balls at this point.
Making people laugh is good, even though I've never found laughing to cure depression
Making people laugh is arguably a symptom of depression, so it's hard to imagine it also embodying a cure, except perhaps homeopathically.
254: It's part of a doctor's job to listen to that stuff, and you absolutely need to tell a doctor about it and get checked out ASAP. Not to be any more alarmist than we've already been, but some of the conditions that fit your symptoms are stuff that can kill you. Suck it up and get in there.
In the spirit of full disclosure and discouraging embarrassment about this sort of stuff, I'll note that one episode of bloody shit in the middle of the night caused me to get on the phone to my doctor the next morning (a Saturday) and into the ER that afternoon to get it checked out. It was no big deal, and I'm inclined toward being a bit alarmist about such stuff because God hates my wife's family and we've been dealing with, among other things, a sister-in-law whose unexplained vaginal bleeding turned out to be Stage IV appendiceal cancer (basically a variant of colon cancer), but still. See the doctor. Tomorrow. Early next week at the latest.
md 20/400 must be watching the game on delay.
I'm sitting in a room in Arlington (VA). So I'm reading the wire. The pain is delayed, yup. But still it arrives.
Quite frankly, a lot of my issue is just that I'm not exactly excited about telling a stranger I've lost my libido and am bleeding inappropriately.
If it helps, rather than feeling not-excited about relaying private symptoms to a stranger, you can think of it as seeing if you can get a reaction out of some doctor guy who likes to think he's all unflappable and stuff. I mean, having a hemorrhoid or some kind of funky rash is embarrassing. Your symptoms are pretty dramatic. I think getting a solid five or ten seconds of shocked silence out of your doctor is not out of the question.
I've decided the "C" on Varitek's jersey stands for "Craptain" this season.
you can think of it as seeing if you can get a reaction out of some doctor guy who likes to think he's all unflappable and stuff
Like the time I went in to see an orthopedist because my knee was hurting. I ended up having 85cc of fluid drained from it; they had to explain to the medical student they'd pulled in to observe that that was, um, somewhat unusual.
Goddamn it was nice being able to bend my knee again.
Brock--I sent you an e-mail with medical suggestions. You don't need to go to the ER, but you can get an urgent care appointment at a hospital-based practice. I sent you the info on one.
Brock, don't be dumb. Chicks bleed out of unseemly places every month and have to talk to their docs about it. Butch the fuck up and go see an MD.
Brock if you get a colonoscopy you have to post the pictures, though.
254: Have you seen the cartoon short entitled "Rejected," Brock? There is a scene with some fun little clouds that may make you change your mind.
277: Yay! It's online! Watch the whole thing, but the part you need starts exactly halfway through.
Little bit past half on mine. It was Ludwig van; I was cured all right.
You've got some catching up to do, AWB, but at least you have good taste in animation.
I've just read more of the thread. Go to the fucking doctor tomorrow, Brock, for God's sake.
I have it on DVD, man. Deleted scenes!
Are you shitting me? You have Bitter Films Vol. 1? I've been tempted; the rest is good?
I don't quite get it. Some woman supposedly asked your mom if you were anorexic, knowing full well how incredibly sensitive she is when the subject of her son comes up, and knowing full well that any suggestion of illness, be it physical or psychological, would send her hurtling over the edge. The woman must have been a total psycho. Has the possibility occurred to you that concerns over your potential case of anorexia originated with your mother, but in order to avoid angering you, she shifted blame to the wife of the wrong-organ worrier? From what you've told us about her, she's rather skilled at applying the appearance of naivety when it suits her (e.g., the story of her run-in with the scientologists). Just a thought.
I have the Rejected DVD. It's not much more than the short, extensive journals about the creation of the film, some deleted scenes, and a history of Bitter Films. But I've seen BF1; it's fabulous. There's some varying quality, and none of it is as masterful as Rejected, but very hilarious.
282: of course she does! AWB is teh awesome!
Stupid.
The woman must have been a total psycho
She had recently married in to the family and didn't realize how sensitive my mom is about this stuff, and my mom wouldn't falsely attribute something to someone anyway. I can totally imagine this woman saying it out of concern. In fact, this woman, sometime last year, when we still thought I had stomach cancer, said something to me about how she imagined my mom would have "been tougher" or "toughened up" a few weeks after the diagnosis. Uh, no.
Stupid enough to be a Red Sox fan still. Tonight was excruciating.
It was it was, Jesus. On the other hand, it was irrelevant. Small comfort, but I cling to it.
We've a woman now regular here who works being on dialup into her schtick.
I imagine that's me. "Schtick," huh?
Who knew?
I'm amazed Brock's wife has let him get away with not going to the doctor.
I'm amazed Brock's wife has let him get away with not going to the doctor.
With that infant around she doesn't have time to notice things like lack of libido.
And god knows she's got enough shit to stare at without looking at his.
I suspect most of the married guys here will back me up on this. If my wife knew I had the symptoms Brock's described, she'd freak the fuck out.
That reminds me of an episode of Diagnosis Unknown, Seeds of Destruction. Discovery Health Channel has crazy stuff.
293: True, 'if my wife knew' being the key condition. We should ask Ruprecht about this.
Aha!
Mr. Ruprecht: "Honey, what would you say if I told you I had [insert Brock's symptoms]?"
Mrs. Ruprecht: "That's awful! Tell me you're joking! I haven't noticed any of that!"
Mr. Ruprecht: "It's not me, but my friend in DC is really worried about his health. He wants me to take care of his kids on December 29th-30th while he gets checked out at the Mayo Clinic. I guess I owe him a favor."
Damn. I meant "Whopper w/Mayo & Sleaze"
300 isn't even worthy of comment around here.
I should have kissed a girl tonight, but didn't. Missed opportunity.
That's the Aioli Clinic, thank you very much.
That reminds me of an episode of Diagnosis Unknown
It's a small (mental) world: that's exactly what I was thinking of. And there was another one where a woman was slipping her kids antifreeze.
I'm amazed Brock's wife has let him get away with not going to the doctor.
Oh right, just blame the woman.
301: Writing 'aioli' instead of 'aïoli' is the Unfogged equivalent of tapping your foot in the stall next to w-lfs-n's.
303: well, hi, if you don't take care of us, who will?
304: I was masturbating and broke my umlaut finger. Aw, fuck for me.
305: Maybe you'll die off and we'll have some free time to get stuff done rather than monitoring your damn symptoms all the time.
One of my heebie-style tendencies is, upon hearing mention of mayo, I think, mayonesa cha-cha-cha. For no apparent reason.
307: where's my veldt pie, anyhoo?
Oh, hell no. I could masturbate with my forehead if the situation called for it. Semper Fi!
Oh you wish, B. We're on a need to wank basis, here. My hand is still working oh-so-well, for the moment.
(shifty look; lithe crotch wrangle)
Anyone who could masturbate with their forehead could also give themselves head, rendering the forehead unnecessary.
314: I'll smash your fingers when we meet, then.
316: it's not really about the forehead, is it?
Of course it is. How dare you even ask.
There must be a protocol for commenting without having read the thread. What is it? I've only been 60 comments up and I've already relived a singularly unpleasant inning and feared for my life and my family's livelihood, on account of tek and my chronic fever, respectively. Is there a graceful way to introduce oneself into a thread without involvement in previous controversies, and the entangling alliances produced thereof?
OTOH, we're pretty much all about the graceless around here anyway.
Or, Brock, to channel Dear Abby for a minute, if you have trouble talking to your doctor about your symptoms, you can just print out this comment thread and let him/her read it.
Quite frankly, a lot of my issue is just that I'm not exactly excited about telling a stranger I've lost my libido and am bleeding inappropriately. I mean, if I thought any of you weren't imaginary I'd be pretty embarrassed right now.
Brock:
Well, just fuck that shit. DaveL already pointed out that doctors are very well paid to listen to people's tedious symptoms. I'm just saying it again and everybody else should be saying it UNTIL YOU CALL A DOCTOR.
You may not care if you crash and burn, but your wife and kid would.
LB: Obnoxious be buggered, start nagging.
True, 'if my wife knew' being the key condition. We should ask Ruprecht about this
I think I have already established that Mrs. Ruprecht is reticent in matters of bowel functions.
I actually have a concrete data point on this. A while back, I made a roasted beet-root salad. Mrs. Ruprecht hadn't eaten beets since childhood, so had no experience with the excretion thereof. The next day I made a comment about how disconcerting it would be for someone who didn't know that beets turn your shit totally red. She got a sheepish look of relief on her face and said, "Oh my god, I'm so glad you said that, I was going to call the doctor and tell her I had blood in my stool."
Oh, and I concur with 173, obvs.
'Kay, Brock. It appears to be business hours in your neck of the woods. Have you called the doctor yet?
293: absolutely, which is why she does not know (except for the weight and libido loss, obvs.)
326: working on it.
Also, BG, my wife saw your email. Which is completely and totally not your fault, but argh. That's going to require a fuckload of explanation, since (a) she does not know why some person named "Bostoniangirl" is emailing me, (b) she does not know about unfogged, (c) she does not know about my symptoms (except that the libido loss has I know made her suspicious of "affair"). How on earth am I going to weave my way out of that tangle successfully (without just telling the truth)?
Just tell the truth. Political/current event discussion site you participate in, you mentioned the health issues you've been having, and all of your (distant, impersonal) acquaintances freaked the hell out on you. (Also, dude? You've actually showed up for meetups, haven't you? And you haven't mentioned Unfogged to your wife? What's up with that?)
On the doctor-finding front, I don't know about your firm culture, but in mine it's very conventional to send out an AllAtty email asking "Anyone have an internist convenient for the office who takes our insurance?"
I suggested yesterday that if we ever talked about spousal knowledge/feelings about this site, we'd get some surprising answers. The people who don't get it are often very close at hand.
What's with people not mentioning unfogged to various spouses, anyhow? Is it really so controversial to bullshit about random things with people on the internet? Am I a freak because I find it utterly mundane, and would cheerfully comment in front of my grandparents?
"Oh, no, maybe you comment where you're from, but not in my house."
330: I suspect it has more to do with wanting to comment freely without having to share all your thoughts about pizza etiquette and Jessica Biel with the spouse.
(Of course, I never told the ex about Unfogged and look where I am now... Take heed!)
293: absolutely, which is why she does not know
See, now you've got to hope that her concern is going to outweigh her urge to kick your ass when she finds out the extent of this.
What's with people not mentioning unfogged to various spouses, anyhow?
This is not meant as a smackdown, but as a general observation: I have learned not to draw any quick judgements about what happens inside other people's marriages. I know couples where my instinct is to say, "That's fucked up" or "She should leave his ass" or "How can anyone ever live with that bitch?".
And yet, all these couples stay together, and seem to derive sustenance from the relationship. "The heart has reasons that reason knows not", as M. Pascal once put it.
In much the same way that no one is ever as good a parent as they were before they had kids, it's hard for the unmarried (to which group I think Sifu belongs) to make sense of what happens between couples.
That's an awfully abstract answer to a simple question, but still on point, I think.
I should have kissed a girl tonight, but didn't. Missed opportunity It's ok to feel this if you're trying to increase your situational awareness and change your habits, but don't overdo it; you often have reasons for acting the way you do you can't articulate right away.
Relationships that your spouse doesn't know anything about would be a sore spot in almost any marriage, and online communities like this are a bit of a slippery slope from "Look at this funny website I found, where I check in and laugh at the jokes" to "Hey, it's sort of an improv soap opera at times" to "I have all kinds of real people cluttering up my head now who I have various levels of actual friendship and ongoing interactions with."
Buck really doesn't read blogs at all, and I've had to make an effort to actively drag him into the comments here a couple of times, just so I wouldn't feel as if I was hiding stuff from him. And I think if he actually did sit down and read the archives start to finish, there's a fair chance he'd be at least surprised, and possibly even a little upset -- my conversation here averages raunchier than in real life, and the general level of conversation is raunchier than I am. (For instance, I was on the 'Hmm, how exactly do I explain the "going to DC for a drunken party with my invisible friends" bit' bench. Luckily, he wants to come, which makes everything cool.)
But the fact that it can be an issue means you really do want to drag it out in the open early rather than late. Trying to explain in the middle of a health worry who all these weirdos on two continents fretting about your health are is the wrong time to do it.
Appointment at 4:00 this afternoon.
LEAVE IT TO ME, BROCK
I WILL SEND YOUR WIFE AN EMAIL SAYING
"DEAR MADAM
I AM NOT HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH YOUR HUSBAND. HIS LACK OF LIBIDO IS FOR PURELY PHYSIOLOGICAL REASONS.
REGARDS,
BOSTONIANGIRL"
My wife doesn't really read blogs. Less interest in it than I, and also has a job that's not conducive to sticking it to the man by wasting vast amounts of company time on the internet. But she knows I read and comment on sites. It wouldn't be a surprise to her or anything.
337: Woohoo, Brock! Well done, that man.
Trying to explain in the middle of a health worry who all these weirdos on two continents fretting about your health are is the wrong time to do it.
Exactly.
Woohoo, Brock! Well done, you.
339: Yeah, but as attested by Google, your wife is remarkably chill.
Appointment at 4:00 this afternoon.
Good work, dumbass.
Huh, for some reason I thought 340 didn't post.
Now that you've made the appointment and we have a few hours to abuse you, maybe you can explain keeping secrets from your wife, but letting her see your email.
If I remember correctly, "blood in the stool" diagnosing cancer is not blood colored, but produces a black, tarry stool. Visible red blood is probably less serious though still should be checked.
Perhaps my perspective is colored by the fact that in the LTR I had that came closest to marriage (really, quite terrifyingly close) we had many of our bonding moments on irc.
I certainly can't imagine hiding the fact that I kill time talking to imaginary people on the internet from anybody I was dating. It'd be like hiding the fact that I wear shoes.
346: Good point -- I've heard the same.
345: maybe you can explain keeping secrets from your wife, but letting her see your email.
Blackberry, I'd bet -- picking it up without the intention of snooping at all, and seeing an unworky looking email address on it.
I don't keep secrets from her, I just don't tell her everything. Also, 331. She read my email (accidentally) because I hadn't logged off the home computer.
It'd be like hiding the fact that I wear shoes.
You wear shoes? There goes that mental image.
346: The difference is only how high in the GI tract the bleed is.
We've had:
a)Couples where both have commented here.
b)Where one comments, and the other often reads w/o ever commenting.
c)Where one comments, and the other has a sense of what goes on here and isn't interested.
d) where the other just happens not to know
e) where the other wouldn't like it if s/he knew.
Just tell her the truth, Brock. Or at least part of it if you're shy about the whole blog thing. 'I was worried about my symptoms and I didn't want to worry you, so I asked online and someone e-mailed me with a recommendation for a doctor.'
Haven't there also been f) couples that have met on here?
So seems like all we need is g) couples who have split up because one comments here.
Get to it, guys!
349: I don't keep secrets from her, I just don't tell her everything.
Yeah, that makes total sense to me -- Unfogged slipped from "Why would I bother mentioning this to anyone" to "Huh, this takes up an awful lot of my time and attention, I bet Buck would want to know about it" very imperceptibly. I'd just think that getting to the 'meeting people in bars' stage would have been a tipping point for full disclosure.
Look folks, see 341. Even though 353 is totally right, against all my better instincts I already told her it was probably spam. (Hold on right there, judgmentalists: there is no air conditioning in our apartment and we have to keep all the windows shut until the abatement happens, and the unbearable heat is affecting my decisionmaking. It's like when the cops put people under those heat lamps to interrogate them.) Now I have to figure out a way to fess up so I don't feel guilty forever.
You don't all narrate your days in detail to strangers on the internet your significant others? Buncha weirdos.
I'd just think that getting to the 'meeting people in bars' stage would have been a tipping point for full disclosure.
It very nearly was.
She read my email (accidentally) because I hadn't logged off the home computer.
My wife would never accidentally read anything like that. It'd be done with purpose. She's really nosy.
Now I have to figure out a way to fess up so I don't feel guilty forever.
I don't know your wife, but if you've already lied about it being spam I think you have a window of hours not days to take it back with a "I was embarrassed about the silly way I kill time online, but it wasn't spam, it was an online friend". Confessing today can come off as a quickly regretted mental error, but if you're taking it back days or weeks from now you start getting into plotting deception territory.
Seriously, you're in deep enough that I'd do a short confession "Blog, comments section, made friends there who are concerned about me" and actually point her to this thread. Way embarrassing, but there aren't a lot of non-embarrassing options right now.
"Probably spam" is not at all a good description of what I said. I mentioned the website ("which I occassionally read and on which I occassionally have commented in the past"), that BG had emailed me a few times previously (about a potential job at my firm), but that I thought this particular email was probably misdirected. Which is a bald lie. But again, 341, plus the unbearable heat. Bah. Unwinding this one is going to be awkward.
(Obviously, all advice should be freely ignored, I'm just pushy about handing it out.)
361: Oh, you're in better shape than I thought. That you can back down from with a simple "I feel silly about it, but I've actually commented there enough that I've gotten to know some people, and when I mentioned the weight loss, they freaked out at me and told me to make a doctor's appointment. Turned out BG was recommending me a doctor." True, and not inconsistent with what you've said.
So...am I right in thinking that maybe Bostoniangirl's email will be even harder to explain since it was addressed to you under the pseudonym of a fictional porn star? Or does Bostoniangirl know your real name?
339 and 352(c) is my position too.
My wife knows I read and comment on blogs. I've even met people from Unfogged (twice) and she knows that I was off to meet my pretend internet friends. I'm also part of a music-based forum and I meet up with the people from there fairly regularly, either just for beers or to play music together. She occasionally comes along for those meet-ups.
However, I don't go into any detail and she's not interested in blogs or online forums herself.
g) couples who have split up because one comments here.
shivbunny hates Unfogged. I think it's because he and I met online, and he sees Unfogged as a collection of a bunch of guys who want to get in my pants and are more educated than he is and so the reasoning goes, would have more to offer. Or something like that. We had a ginormous fight about a year ago but he seems to be over it and doesn't even lurk any more.
This might be a good time to lay off Brock for a while until he wants to talk.
We've had words about what I've written here, and about what others have written here. Our most recent was about something I said to her which was in the style of what is said here, and she called me on it.
She has a very definite sense of the prominent personalities here, just as she would people whom she might have heard about or met once or twice on the street or some event whom I have some regular connection with. And just as would be true in those cases, her sense of those people is not so nuanced as mine because she hasn't read but a fraction of the comments, on so many subjects, in different moods and times.
"I've already been a U of C undergrad for four years, and I've gotten it out of my system" is the snarkiest way she might put her attitude to the blog in general.
I already told her it was probably spam.
Bad move, but you already know that. No judgmentalism here, just pragmatism: there is no way to weave yourself out of this web without getting further entangled. You need to just tell the truth before your wife starts thinking she really does have grounds for suspicion.
So the deal is less that you are embarrassed about the blog, more that you were wanting to hide your concerns about the health issue? I agree with LB that coming clean quickly is a good idea -- "Honey, it wasn't really misdirected. I'm just a little freaked out and not thinking right and I didn't want to get you all worried because I'm sure it's nothing Anyway, I was being stupid. Sorry."
341: That is true, to the extent that it would be better if she already knew, but now she's worried you're having an affair and sees that you're getting e-mail from strange women. The truth is probably going to come as a relief to whatever scheme she's cooking up in her head.
I had told my honey about blogs in general, and Unfogged in sort of vague detail, but when I went off for the first UnfoggeDCon, he thought he'd lurk in on the threads about it. Boy, did I have some explaining to do.
LB's or especially Di Kotimy's 370 approach would be obviously right if I were coming clean on the health issues. Which maybe the best approach. I just want to freak her out needlessly.
367 is probably sensible, and I'm backing off now.
366: Yeah, my concerns about Buck were largely that he might have a version of that sort of reaction if Unfogged got sprung on him suddenly. He still has an image of it as somewhat more seriously political than it is, which keeps on getting wrenched down to earth on the rare occasions he takes a look at it.
something I said to her which was in the style of what is said here, and she called me on it.
"Who wants to sex Mutombo?"
361: No it isn't. You just tell her that there's a website that you read and have commented on and there was a recent thread about health problems and you mentioned--anonymously!--that you'd been having x y and z and people told you to GET TO A DOCTOR and you told her it was probably spam b/c you were afraid she'd be so worried about you being sick.
Her gratitude to the Mineshaft will outweigh her desire to kick your bleeding ass, and you'll be saved!!!
373: Last harangue. You're probably fine, and if you don't want to worry her needlessly before your fineness is determined, that's not nuts. If by some small chance you're not fine, and you're even contemplating keeping not-fineness to yourself, email SEK, who did something similar, about whether that's a good idea. (Hint: No.)
And now I really am getting off your case.
Perhaps since I mentioned the website this morning, she'll check in today out of curiosity and will read this thread. Then I won't have to explain anything at all!
He still has an image of it as somewhat more seriously political than it is, which keeps on getting wrenched down to earth on the rare occasions he takes a look at it.
Well, in my opinion, the Straussian aspects of this administration really trump everything they say publicly, and probably everything else they actually believe as well. The development of a ruling class is always seen as necessary and helpful by said class, and it's up to everyone else to not see that as how things should be.
Any recommendations for where to continue my edification once I've polished off The Wretched of the Earth?
Perhaps since I mentioned the website this morning, she'll check in today out of curiosity and will read this thread. Then I won't have to explain anything at all!
THIS DEPENDS ON HER ABILITY TO RECOGNIZE THAT YOU ARE YOU AND NOT SIFU TWEETY OR ME OR "NATTO TTAM".
If 378 is asking whether I'd keep a negative health diagnosis secret: no, of course not. Maybe that's not so obvious given all that's written above, but that's not even anywhere near a close call.
381: given what she knows, I can't imagine that would be hard to figure out if she read this thread.
Our most recent was about something I said to her which was in the style of what is said here, and she called me on it.
Huh. Are people's demeanors really that different here? How I comment is pretty much how I talk offline as well. If anything, I'm even manlier IRL. Hard to believe, but true.
Good. I just figured it was worth mentioning that we had someone with direct experience of what a lousy awful idea that is hanging around here.
Our most recent was about something I said to her which was in the style of what is said here, and she called me on it.
"Your 2:34 PM gets it exactly right."
Oh, and since my gratitude is probably not at all clear from what's above: thanks for the email, BG. I appreciate it.
Are people's demeanors really that different here?
I've known people who are radically different on and off-line. I have friends who are witty as hell in emails or in web-comments and shy, quiet mice in real life.
I'm a bit like that -- I tend toward the cutting, and so I have a tendency not to say anything funny around people who I'm not confident won't get their feelings hurt. The way I talk here is at about the inhibition level I get to after a drink or two with very close friends, not how I come off 90%of the time.
The way I talk here is at about the inhibition level I get to after a drink or two with very close friends, not how I come off 90%of the time.
I kind of assumed everybody was a bit like that. Otherwise you really are all mad.
Huh. Are people's demeanors really that different here?
Not at all. I have a taste for general speculation. I love trying to define things, to try for a precise formulation of some general experience. I'm a sermonizer, a lecturer, an autocrat of the breakfast table. She isn't. She sees exceptions, particulars everywhere. My favorite 19th C intellectual is Emerson, hers is George Eliot.
She appreciates that this blog siphons off disquisitions she'd otherwise be the only person in range who could be expected to listen. She's only irritated that I'm not all done and cleansed when I get up from the computer.
I don't really know if I'm the same in person. I think I'm a bit less of a jerk, but who can say.
392: Last sentence is perfect.
390 is about right for me, but the friends don't have to be all that close.
I don't really know if I'm the same in person.
Ogged's reaction when we met in real life: "The apostropher was another surprise, just because he seemed so damn normal. I guess I was expecting him to show up in a t-shirt with a gruesome scene pictured on the front, and the entire internet in his back pocket, but, in fact, he seems like the kind of guy you'd let babysit your kids. Seriously."
he sees Unfogged as a collection of a bunch of guys who want to get in my pants
And?
I tend toward the cutting, and so I have a tendency not to say anything funny around people who I'm not confident won't get their feelings hurt. The way I talk here is at about the inhibition level I get to after a drink or two with very close friends
As always, LB and I are sisters under the skin. I'm always surprised (and slightly annoyed) that online people take my rants as seriously as they do.
more educated than he is and so the reasoning goes, would have more to offer
Also, we've established that all the male commenters here are freakishly well-endowed.
all the male commenters here are claim to be freakishly well-endowed.
@396: I don't remember being that surprised by the demeanor or impression of anyone from here I've met. Adam and Michael are actually the only ones I've met more than once.
Are yuo questioning out integrity, B?
*our*. Fuck, that killed that one.
I'm just saying. Those with the goods don't need to be bragging on the goods.
I'm just saying. Those with the goods don't need to be bragging on the goods.
Are yuo questioning out integrity, B?
Make sure to mention the rapidly worsening typing skills to the doctor. That could be a sign of pressure on the brain.
399: I think of it as more of a gracious acknowledgment.
403/404 -- Yeah, advertising doesn't work.
Empiricism, boys. Claims are one thing; physical evidence is what we believe.
Also, Tweety, check your damn email. If you can free your hands from your enormous cock, that is.
405: no, thankfully, I've never been able to type a straight sentence.
Word of mouth is not sufficient to inform consumers in the modern global marketplace, B.
410: Maybe the libido loss is a function of the not being able to be straight, then?
he thought he'd lurk in on the threads about it. Boy, did I have some explaining to do
I hope for your sake he didn't find the Flickr photostream!
What about Bob? What's Bob like in real life?
I haven't seen many signs that men who are unable to be straight lose their libidos.
Totally OT, in response to an email asking if she could please print a few files for me, my secretary (who I've only had for a few weeks, and have given a reasonably good amount of work) just sent the following reply:
Sure, [Brock]; I would be delighted! I'll bring them in to you when they're ready. Happy Friday! :-)
"Delighted!"? This means she hates me, doesn't it?
410: they want a straight sentence they should ask a straight guy.
Those with the goods don't need to be bragging on the goods
...says she who, only a few short hours ago, claimed that her gazongas weigh 20 pounds a piece.
This means she hates me, doesn't it?
She's been poisoning your coffee -- that's what's wrong with you.
420: Which was an obvious LIE, duh.
The libido thing is funny. It's another thing that I thought would worry my wife if I really fessed up about it, so I've sort of led her to think my libido is perfectly healthy, I'm just totally uninterested in having sex with her. I'm not sure that's been the best approach.
so I've sort of led her to think my libido is perfectly healthy, I'm just totally uninterested in having sex with her
OK Seriously, you might want some tests done of your mental function while you are at the doctor's office.
423: All right, you're just messing with us at this point. If not, consider me putting my head in my hands in despair and muttering (unfairly, considering that most aren't like that) "Men!"
423: Please, Brock, say you're kidding or I'm really going to worry about you!
"No offense honey, but I just haven't been able to look at that thing the same after I saw a giant fucking kid come out of it. "
Which was an obvious LIE, duh
Look, I don't want to get the argument about breast tissue density functions started again.
Obvs B's prodigious rack is available for inspection / appreciation in a way that Apo's purportedly prodigious package is not.
I believe Michael Spence won the Nobel Prize for research along similar lines.
Yeah, if that wasn't a joke, your next appointment after the one this afternoon is for couples counseling to work on your communication issues. Honestly, dude.
Jesus, Brock. Ogged's right: you are a dumbass.
418 was so, so pwned.
Brock I think she just wanted to show off her mastery of the semicolon.
423 has to be a joke. Surely?
mastery of the semicolon.
Also the colon, hyphen, and close paren.
Actually I can understand the "don't worry/don't tell" cycle he's got himself in. I assumed that the second sentence is sort of a joke.
434: I'm figuring, but with Brock I have consistent trouble telling.
I usually can tell when he's joking, but this whole "I don't tell my wife about Unfogged or having had the bloody shits for a month and I lied about BG's email" thing has me pretty willing to believe any level of ridiculousness.
Also, like gswift way back upthread, I'm surprised that your wife didn't get concerned just by the weight loss and make you see a doctor. Not that it's her fault or anything, but recent experience in the cala-shivbunny household shows that a) men are stoic idiots about going to the doctor unless they're visibly bleeding until b) they have a diagnosis, and then they're just idiots who want to be coddled and snuggled.
439--
"they're just idiots who want to be coddled and snuggled"
sure; your point?
That someone is very lucky to the tune of not needing emergency IV antibiotics that his wife is a stubborn bitch at times.
Like anything else, it's both a joke and not a joke. It's more blunt that reality, but it may not be far from the truth. When she's asked if I've noticed a change in my libido, I've consistently told her that everything's basically fine. That I've just been frequently tired (true), or busy (true), etc. Of course I haven't said "no I just don't want to have sex with you, honey", but I think that's been her takeaway impression.
Again, I'm not trying to defend this approach. Just noting (for myself, mostly) how hard it can be to talk about these things. And also just wanting to throw it out into the thread on the off-chance that she is reading, so that it will be one less thing I have to explain later.
I can see not noticing the weight loss quite as much as one normally might under the joint circumstances of new baby and drastically reduced intimate naked contact.
She's definitely urged me to the doctor about the weight loss. I've been stubborn.
Brock, you're a freak. You have sex with this woman, right? And you're too embarrassed to tell her about the fact that you read blogs and that your sex drive has been wonky?
Other people's relationships are so weird.
a) men are stoic idiots about going to the doctor unless they're visibly bleeding
You understate your case. It takes a *lot* of blood, or an unusual source (e.g., Brock's ass), before I think there's a reason to go to the doctor.
I don't think you're as far out as people seem to be implying here, Brock. It's not to surprising you're not as completely on the same page about these things with everything else you've had going on.
While my wife and I were always forthright and honest about everything, I would have thought, I was actually surprised by the interest and concern she showed about my libido. I don't know why I should have been, I just was.
So, wait, your method for communicating with your wife is to talk to random strangers on a website you don't want to tell her about, on the off chance she manages to find it and read it?
You take poor communication skills to a whole other level, man. I'm proud of you.
And this has to be one of those stupid cultural things because obviously they manage to survive and make doctor's appointments before they get married.
445--
b, people are funny about sex. even married couples.
that's closer to the norm than the exception.
i agree that it would be better if couples talked more.
i would not say there is anything freak-like about brock or his marriage.
pretty common situation, i suspect.
I think mostly they manage to be young and relatively healthy before they're married, honestly.
449--
interesting question.
i believe that stats show considerable increase in male longevity for marrieds.
maybe the unmarrieds who die early didn't make the appointments.
442: You know, I was just giving you a hard time upthread about couples counseling, but it sounds like you two aren't on the same page about a bunch of stuff. Maybe this health thing (whether it's no big thing at all, or not) makes sense as an impetus to either talk some more in an unstructured way, or go talk to someone together, just to shake things back into a better shape. You guys go to church, right? Your priest, maybe, or a referral through your priest?
445, 450: It strikes me as less a matter of "not being able to talk about sex" as of "not being able to talk about the fear that something is wrong with me," which seems totally normal.
We've had this out with the monstrous regiment of hypochondriac women before. Reluctance to go to the doctor can have many rational causes; AWB's emergency room panic is just one of them.
The problem is that it becomes an habitual disposition, particularly when you're young, and reassessment of the situation is necessary later. But I think the condescension about it is out of line and not helpful.
re: 449
Nah, they mostly don't need to go and then suddenly they do. A friend of mine did a research project examining men's health in Glasgow.
Their health records go:
age 0 - 4: occasional visits, vaccines
age 4 - 15: the odd broken limb from child hood accidents
age 15 - 40: no visits
age 40 - 50: lung cancer, congestive heart failure, liver disease, obesity.
age 50 - : dead
*I* on the other hand, am borderline hypochondriac by most men's standards [a couple of doctor visits a year, usually, mostly about minor injuries that I worry too much about].
452: yes, I think there has been serious research tracing wifely nagging about health to longer male lifespans. I'm serious, not quite sure where to find it though.
Look, it should come as no surprise to any of you that I'm a poor communuicator--you've all seen my typos.
458: And tried to decipher your jokes.
You're concerned, protective and reticent with a tired wife with a new baby? What a monster you are!
Brock, good lord. I don't want to be redundant because there's been 500 comments of "GO TO A DOCTOR" but jesus christ, go to a doctor right this instant.
It takes a *lot* of blood
Heh. I once tried to convince my wife that a cut on top of my head was no big deal. I had been laid off from my job, and wasn't starting a new one for a couple more days, and didn't have health insurance. "Can you see my skull? Brain matter? Then I'm fine."
The reality was that I'd tried to skip the last couple stairs going into our basement by hopping down and caught my head on top of the doorjam. Concussion and ten stitches.
Heebie, I have an appt. at 4:00. I offered to break my foot last night in the event that this was a true emergency, but no one seemed to think that was necessary.
462--
see? she over-reacted. everyone knows head wounds bleed more than comparable wounds elsewhere.
461--
it's okay--he's got an apptmt for later today.
I offered to break my foot last night in the event that this was a true emergency,
"In Case of Emergency, Break Foot."
Good. I must have missed that upthread. Good, good, good.
see? she over-reacted.
In her defense, the concussion totally destroyed my short term memory. Which was odd, because I was kind of a aware I was repeating myself a lot, but couldn't stop.
I once tried to convince my wife that a cut on top of my head was no big deal. I
I was running to catch a train one time and hit my head on the top of the doorframe. Several paper towels worth of blood resulted, but I was on my way out (not home) felt fine, and the thing was nicely scabbed over by the time I got home. My wife was displeased, but there seems to have been no lasting damage.
She took a close-up picture of it to show me what it looked like, though, and the next time we had friends over and wanted to show them something else on the camera, her (female) friend had no idea what it was, but her bf immediately said "dude, is that a head wound?"
In her defense, the concussion totally destroyed my short term memory. Which was odd, because I was kind of a aware I was repeating myself a lot, but couldn't stop.
Which could just as easily have been construed as commenting in the style of an Unfogged thread.
In her defense, the concussion totally destroyed my short term memory. Which was odd, because I was kind of a aware I was repeating myself a lot, but couldn't stop.
Which could just as easily have been construed as commenting in the style of an Unfogged thread.
467--
yup. i had exactly that sequela from a concussion once.
but maybe i already told you that.
Nah, they mostly don't need to go and then suddenly they do.
We've had this out with the monstrous regiment of hypochondriac women before.
Dude, not a hypochondriac. If you, say, have an abscessed wisdom tooth and no health insurance and are gobbling Advil like it's M&Ms, you need to see a dentist and no amount of pretending your wife is overreacting changes that fact.
Anyhow, Brock, from what it sounds like I don't think you and your wife have any serious problems, just that you two probably need a chance to talk to each other when you're not interrupted by work, exhaustion, or the Brocklet.
469, 70: Giggling helplessly.
Memory loss is really disturbing in someone you're talking to. A guy I knew at college -- we weren't really close, but I liked him a lot -- got hit by a car going home on his bike after an afternoon where we'd spent a couple of hours talking. He had the short term memory loss to the point where they made him write the answers to the three questions he kept on asking ('What happened?' 'Where am I?' 'Is my bike okay?') on a card, and just told him to read the card every time he started asking again.
I didn't see him until the next day in the hospital, by which time his short term memory was back, but he didn't remember anything after about noon the day before. It's weird as anything talking to someone who you had a recent long conversation with who doesn't remember it at all.
Anyhow, Brock, from what it sounds like I don't think you and your wife have any serious problems, just that you two probably need a chance to talk to each other when you're not interrupted by work, exhaustion, or the Brocklet.
Oh, certainly. I was mostly thinking that what with the work, and the exhaustion, and the Brocklet, it might be time to make a sort of scheduled effort -- the virtue of 'counseling' being mostly that it was an appointment.
454 is right. I don't really envision having a problem talking about any of this post-appt., with a clean bill of health. Or wouldn't, at least, were it not that I may in some technical sense have lied about it. Which complicates things. But not impossibly.
Be prepared for the clean bill of heath to take a little bit of time to obtain -- blood tests and that kind of thing don't provide instantaneous results.
It's just hard for me, because I'm used to doing most of my serious relationship-talking with my cock. And with the libido thing, well...
doing most of my serious relationship-talking with my cock
Does it answer when you talk with it? Because I'd worry about that, too.
477: You mean, you use it like a little sock puppet, doing silly voices to explain things to your wife? Man, you married ones are so weird.
No, he uses it like a microphone. No less weird, though.
473: in college, I slammed my head into a tile kitchen floor late one new year's eve (hard enough to crack the tile), and thought I woke up about 18 hours later in the hospital. It turns out I got right up off the floor and spent the next 4 or so hours talking to people at the party, and then later went to bed and only upon getting up with a pounding headache in the morning did I have someone drive me to the hospital. To this day I don't remember a thing in between hitting my head and waking up the hospital. I'm told I acted and spoke very unusually/erratically at the party.
There was alcohol involved in 481, though, so that's a confounding factor. But I'd think I would remember the next morning.
I should have kissed a girl tonight, but didn't. Missed opportunity.
Marcus, did it kind of go like this?
No, he uses it like a microphone. No less weird, though.
No less weird, perhaps. But slightly more impressive and/or intimidatin.
Heebie understands, if "uses it like a microphone" is the euphemism I think it is.
I'm used to doing most of my serious relationship-talking with my cock
Brock, the communication misadventures you've related in this thread would be pretty fucking funny if you weren't bleeding out the ass.
My wife is more reluctant to go to the doctor than I am, and avoids hospitals, invariably places of sadness and disaster in her experience. No member of her family however distantly-related, has ever been one that I'm aware of .
My mother, on the other hand, luuuves doctors, and the attention she gets from them. When she starts talking about them, a practically nightly occurrence, I start hearing Richard Chamberlain sing Three Stars in Morning Light in my head.
462: Mr. B. dropped something into his eye while packing up a closet the *day* his military service--and health insurance--ended. The ER people were really nice, but man oh man that was a long wait for a scratched cornea.
This anecdote is not to be taken as evidence for this "men are stupid, women are smart" about doctor stereotype, though: Mr. B. went to the ER all by his big boy self.
would be pretty fucking funny if you weren't bleeding out the ass
Come on. Bleeding out the ass makes everything funnier. The libido issues, though? From what I know of where you are chronologically in reference to getting married and (especially) having a kid, that's not particularly unusual.
I just don't want to have sex with you
Also, this does happen. I don't know either of you or the first thing about your relationship, of course, so I'm not saying it's happening with y'all. But if the physical spark is so-so to begin with, it does tend to go out altogether after a while.
all by his big boy self
Tough love and all, B., but jeez, you probably should've driven the guy there at least.
490: Actually I did. But first he had to drive from Whidbey Island to Seattle in the car, because I was coming behind in the truck. It was not a comfortable drive for him, nope.
Also, this does happen. I don't know either of you or the first thing about your relationship, of course, so I'm not saying it's happening with y'all. But if the physical spark is so-so to begin with, it does tend to go out altogether after a while.
Certainly not unheard of, but isn't that often a "Can this marriage be saved?" event? I think that was where the overreaction in the thread came from -- it seemed like a really bad idea to let Mrs L. think that a big relationship bad thing was happening, when it didn't seem to be the case.
483: I didn't even try, man. When she was appearing much more receptive than Suzy Kolb was. But idp's comment at 335 could be relevant. She was beautiful, but I just wasn't sure interpersonally. Of course, there's an argument that you can't really be sure without kissing a bit.
It was just a first date. The door's open to see each other again. Dunno how or whether the la-dies judge us when we don't take an open door like that. But no doubt that's my own insecurity talking. I do want to get to know her better.
But if the physical spark is so-so to begin with, it does tend to go out altogether after a while.
Certainly not unheard of, but isn't that often a "Can this marriage be saved?" event?
Depends, I think. Sometimes is off in the basement, so to speak, for awhile, then clumps back upstairs if you're lucky. But I've heard a lot about it going out even when it wasn't so-so to begin with.
I think wives wanting out when the husband's spark goes is a new trend, at least in the middle class. Until quite recently, and probably still for millions, that was just the way it was, a sadness but not a reason to end the marriage. Many practical reasons keep it so.
My North Dakota sister-in-law's philosophy is "I like it when Al drinks too much, because then he's less likely to bother me."
Hint: "bother" is a euphemism. In the Winnie the Pooh it's used differently, I hope.
This thread is scaring me off marriage. As though I wasn't committment-phobic enough already.
Dunno how or whether the la-dies judge us when we don't take an open door like that.
I'd expect her to be insecure and prickly after leaving an opening that wasn't taken. If you're interested, I'd be prepared to put yourself out a bit to be appealing.
Hint: "bother" is a euphemism. In the Winnie the Pooh it's used differently, I hope.
LOL
It changes the Winnie the Pooh books if you replace the word "Bother" with "Rape".
He usually uses it as an exclamation, though, so it wouldn't change the meaning of very many sentences.
A friend of mine met a boyfriend online. Another one met her husband. Some of my friends are deeply involved in Second Life and all of them have blogs or MySpace pages or Flickr or whatever. Everyone reads blogs--I've had entire conversations with friends about the lives of people we've never met. I was talking about this blog before I ever started commenting. I share what I read online just like I share what I've read in a book or magazine.
I'm much the same online as I am IRL.
Dunno how or whether the la-dies judge us when we don't take an open door like that.
I'd expect her to be insecure and prickly after leaving an opening that wasn't taken. If you're interested, I'd be prepared to put yourself out a bit to be appealing.
That seems very sensible, but try not to overthink it.
Yeah, mostly what I meant is don't take a little prickliness as evidence that she doesn't like you at all, just that she's feeling rejected. Not a license to be pushy, but maybe to be a little more persistent than you might otherwise be.
If you're interested, I'd be prepared to put yourself out a bit to be appealing.
Fixed. Assuming Marcus isn't.
366: he sees Unfogged as a collection of a bunch of guys who want to get in my pants
No, no, no. It's AWB's pants we're trying to get into. We apologize for the inconvenience.
If you're interested, I'd be prepared to put turn yourself out a bit to be appealing.
Fixed. Assuming marcus has street value.
thanks to all except the icky Sifu. I think the insecurity-for-her thing can be addressed by calling her back really quickly for another date. Throw a tiny touch of stalker-ish energy her way, that's always flattering!
It's just infuriating because I know that if I *do* end up liking her, I'll have to wait a while to be in a deserted park under a full moon again. Ideal first kiss territory. Plus there's the fear of getting shelved as friend before you can show you're a good kisser, but whatever.
No, no, no. It's AWB's pants we're trying to get into
We don't appear to be her type, not to mention the age, marital status, and location issues it's so improper to mention anyway.
499:
I'm much the same online as I am IRL.
I've only met you once, but I'd say this is true.
. Plus there's the fear of getting shelved as friend before you can show you're a good kisser
This would be why you *make* things happen.
I'd be surprised when it wasn't true, and Apo's anecdote is surprising for just that reason. Clearly some personae are harder to read than others, and the tendency to be fully yourself on this blog may have changed over time, in general and in the course of an individual's becoming more familiar here.
I'd be surprised when it wasn't true, and Apo's anecdote is surprising for just that reason.
Apo's anecdote is of Ogged's telling of how different he is in real life?
Clearly some personae are harder to read than others, and the tendency to be fully yourself on this blog may have changed over time,
I can't speak to this blog's history. In general, we do well to remember that what may be going on in real life bears only a passing resemblance to the sense online friends and acquaintances have of things.
I find myself unable to say whether I'm the same in real life as I am here. I doubt it. And certainly in other online forums I've had to point out to people on occasion that they've clearly gotten things (me) very wrong. Not because I've miscommunicated, but because I certainly do not share all things online, and they're frankly deluded if they think they've seen me naked, so to speak.
Public and private, man, public and private.
That's not quite the same as construction of a persona, but it's related.
513: Interesting. I'm thinking about knowing in the sense of patterns of response, associations, characteristic phrases and postures. You could know someone well that way without knowing some important biographical or situational detail, although you might, in some cases, suspect something. I may be more of a believer in personality and character expressed through writing than you are.
514:
Ah. Okay, yes, interesting. I'm not sure it's a question of *believing* in the notion of character as expressed through writing.
I will tell you: some people I consider to show themselves in their developing pattern of responses and language. Some I do not.
Yet I have in the past learned that those I thought I was beginning to understand, well, not really. The same has absolutely been true in the reverse direction: I was told once 'who I was' by a woman I'd known in an online forum not unlike this for several years, and she was so phenomenally wrong it was stunning.
515: I think I have a bedrock belief in my ability to know people from their writing if I have enough of it.
But we all have a tendency to be led astray and project, and the sense of how much you can know is intoxicating, and can certainly lead you astray about important questions. Lionel Trilling explored this process and its pitfalls in the essay The Liberal Imagination, and as you might imagine revisited that analysis in his essay on Emma.
Still, some people intrigue us online more than others, and we want to know more about them.
516: Shit, IDP, should I read The Liberal Imagination, then? It's over there on the shelves and has been for years, but it's there as a classic to presumably be read someday in the way that Said's Orientalism, or any number of other things, is. When do I suppose I am going to read these things? What is this strange shelving behaviour?
I think I have a bedrock belief in my ability to know people from their writing if I have enough of it.
I think you are a romantic.
I think I have a bedrock belief in my ability to know people from their writing if I have enough of it.
I think this can be true only to the extent the person in question (a) knows him or herself adequately to convey that self in writing, (b) is comfortable with him or herself enough to be willing to reveal that in writing. We all wear masks of some sort at some times, portraying ourselves as what we want or fear ourselves to be as much as what we truly are. The speak of "knowing" a person (by writing or otherwise) is a process that is always ongoing, never a completed task.
I think you are a romantic
Oh yeah.
Before someone tells us to get a room, let me ask some questions about the dialup experience now:
Are your v92 features enabled, or do you have to pay extra for that? If so, do they make any difference? Do you have a basis for comparison, such as frequent or even occasional use of a broadband connection? How tech are you, such as would you consider double-modems or customizing Firefox scripts for dialup?
Not sharing the fact of your invisible-internet-friends to your significant other seems really bizarre. But then my GF and I spent a long time in one such universe, and we each now have our own communities of such people, and have spent evenings on the couch with our laptops, trading quotes and stories back and forth about the respective groups. We occasionally wonder if, with all the pseudonyms, there is any actual overlap, but we haven't found evidence of such yet.
519:
Are your v92 features enabled,
Sir, I have no idea what you're talking about.
I expect I'll spend more money on a cable internet connection in the next few months. I sorta can't stand it any more.
That said, with respect to the room, you said the magic word upthread: Emerson. I do hope that was Ralph rather than John.
(Tangentially, AWB back in her anti-boomer generation rant threw "Emerson" into the mix at some point; if she was talking about R.W., she lost. At that moment.)
Emerson
(his vision clouds over for a second. Films of smokestacks collapsing, run backwards, and trains running into tunnels fill the space before he can see his keyboard again)
Do you know:
Stanley Cavell's essay Hope against Hope?
The central section of Christopher Lasch's The True and Only Heaven: "No Answer But An Echo?"
Which biography is your favorite?
The speak of "knowing" a person (by writing or otherwise) is a process that is always ongoing, never a completed task
The glory of it, if they remain interesting, and many people do, to me.
522:
Er. Cavell is, uh. Well, he along with Wittgenstein and Emerson are my nexus. Philosophically and otherwise.
Which one is "Hope against Hope"? I'll have to check. I've read a great deal of Cavell, but I may not distinguish the titles.
The central section of Christopher Lasch's The True and Only Heaven: "No Answer But An Echo?"
This I don't know. Since we're on dial-up, can you, like, photocopy it for me and mail me a copy? (kidding, I'll look into it, or perhaps this room should become private)
As for biographies, I'm one of that crowd who attends first to the work, only secondarily to the life.
Definitely get a private room, this is not decent.
I don't mind if you oldsters get it on at the bottom of an abandoned thread.
1.) Cala, you should just tell shivbunny that this blog helped your marriage.
2.) I talk about you people, but I rarely describe you as my pretend internet friends. I say things like, "I know a guy in Minnesota who dreams of raising pigs on 1000 acres and has his own smoke house" or " a friend of mine is doing a Ph.D. in philosophy.
3.) Jeez, I just checked in and had no idea that I had wrought such havoc. Brock, if it helped you make an appointment, though, I don't regret it
Brock Landers
Dueeeeeeeeeeeede, wTF? that cut ofo most of my last comment. Shit--it was poingnant, too.
OKay I will try to recreate. I can't remember what I said. The doctor asked why I waited so long to see a docotr about this, and didnt' seem amused when I said I was holding out for nationalized health care. I thought that was a clever response. But! She ran tests. My chest xray came back clean. Sexy even, if I do say so myself. So stirke back tumor and rib tumour from the list. The others will have to waitl.
No clue about what it might be? Has she got you doing/taking anything now?
ALSO: everyone should see the movei :"Me and You and Everyone We Know." It's great. "I want to poop back and forth" is my new life slogan.
No , really see it NOW. It is an emergency. Break your foot if necessary.
Thank goodness you're still able to drink, Brock.
532: not really. She ratta-tat-tattled off a long list of possibilities, politely putting the c-word at the very bottom of the list, even though her obvious concern made it clear that it should have been higher.
Sifu, Brock, are you watching this Orioles-Yankees game? Wait &mdash holy shit! Bunt! Red Sox take the division!
537: wooted in the other thread!
Woot! Woooooot!
536: Well, the C word is the big concern because it's the most scary, not necessarily the most likely.
Watch it be hemmorhoids.
539
: that was actually what she said was he rmo st likely guess. "Internal", whatefver the fuck that means.
It means if they were hanging out your butt, you'd have noticed.
Well, most people would. Maybe not you. Probably the doc would have.
Let's all take a moment and admire 540.
Brock Landes? Broch Landerss? Btock Lamerf? Man, it's like I don't even know who you are anymore.
To keep messing up your own name, unless you haven't got the remember personal info? box checked and you have to retype every time, takes talent.
As for biographies, I'm one of that crowd who attends first to the work, only secondarily to the life.
You might be interested in this paper, then.
Bloody hell, Ben. Okay. I'll read it later. Thanks.
