I was hoping for Ahmadinejad kissing a Hasidic Jew.
I guess I canceled my subscription one week too early.
I'm just reporting that I bicycled 44 miles today to Earl's Tavern in Melrose, Minnesota, a forties-themed hipster bar with no hipsters and original-issue WWII bartenders.
My goal is eventually to bicycle to every rural bar within 20 miles of here (mostly avoiding the big city of Alexandria, pop. 10,000). That's 27 bars in 11 towns. So far, 7 bars in 6 towns.
Sauk Centre, birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, has seven bars on one block.
What? No one cares? [*sniff*]
Sweet.
With all the stupidity that surrounded Ahmadinejad's visit, I'm betting the thing that will be remembered longest is the sound clip of the audience bursting into laughter when he said there are no homos in Iran.
Emerson, that sounds like a fine little project. There is something great about rural bars (the ones that aren't scary, anyway) and also something quite like gambling about bicycling long distances to go to unknown ones. WWII bartenders sounds like a winner.
Although, I really can't wait until the word "hipster" goes out of fashion.
The 1993 New Yorker cover I alluded to in 2 is inexplicably missing from this collection. You youngsters will have have to trust me that my comment was incredibly witty and funny.
cerebrocrat, why do you hate hipsters?
What's the deal with the socks in birkenstocks on the guy tapping him?
For reals though, this constant sturm und drang at work is really getting to me. I broke my vow and started flaming people at a local conservative blog (like that's so specific) today.
I am going on such a tear this weekend!
Beer, beer, puppets, beer!
Minneapolitan: there was a Hinderaker obit in the Strib this morning. Was it Hindrocket's dad?
Hipsters hate hipsters. Everyone hates hipsters. My hipster son hates hipsters.
10: Argh.
11: Yeah, I wondered about that too. Nobody wears birkenstocks to bathroom sex.
Also, M. take it easy on the puppets. Their toxic effects have not been fully studied, but there are indications.
11: That's Senator Ortolan Finistirre.
4: I bet you're missing out on some swell bars in Parker's Prairie.
14: Can't find the obit, probably wouldn't be able to figure it out anyway. It's not that blog.
Also, it's only puppets in small degree. Mostly cabaret.
It's a bit outside my area of comfort, bicyclingwise. Have you been there?
That's a great area to buy lakefront property. Lots of lakes, weak economy.
I'm more of a Long Prairie man, myself. Have you hit the Thunder Lodge yet?
Long Prairie is also at the far edge of my comfort zone. Statistically those two places are poor at the level of Alabama, though I think that there's less rich-poor difference.
Have you been around there, or are you Googling?
Google's better than going places.
Wobegone has a country club? I'm shocked.
The French, they are a funny race,
They fight with their feet,
And they name places things like "Prairie du Chien" and "Grand Marais"
M, I have argued that the French in Minnesota are "original peoples", because they were here before Anglo settlement.
My dad was one of the founders of the country club / golf course. I've never been to that bar recently, though I'd probably meet some of his surviving old friends if I did.
It's a good cover, but it's unfortunate that it's running after "Iran So Far", which seemed to me to be a pretty good parody of modern R&B songs wrapped around a core of homophobia.
Emerson, if you keep calling me "M", I'm going to be forced to subject you to my Peter Lorre impression the next time you visit. Over and over.
M, you're the wrong person to do Peter Lorre.
Is the city councilman a relative?
Well, it's true that, of the characters in M, the one I pretty much exactly resemble is Inspector Lohmann.
Sauk Centre, birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, has seven bars on one block.
I care, Emerson! Of course, you'll just mock me for still working on my dissertation after three years (despite the cancer and the being hit by a car), so I refuse to share my interest in anything relating to dear Sinclair.
No, no. He'll mock you for being married.
They say he spoke with a very thick local accent to the end of his life.
The Sinclair Lewis Museum has a lot of interesting miscellaneous stuff, including some Japanese prints he bought.
I'll give you a year of credit for your health problems. I was under the impression that you have a writer's block, but I see now that I was far wrong.
That I can take. He'd have married my wife had he met her before me.
Question: does mockery of Ahmadinejad per se make war with Iran less likely, because it makes a possible enemy out to be a goofy figure of fun and thus defuses tensions, or more likely, because despite the belittling tone it still places Ahmadinejad/Iran at the center of a nationalistic obsession in which Ahmadinejad/Iran is still coded as a bizarre and potentially hostile Other? (Note: I'm genuinely unsure here, and I liked both this cover and the recent Andy Samberg sketch; just throwing this out to get some impressions from the Unfoggedtariat.)
Whatever the generation is after Generation Awesome, they are going to be the most cynical generation in history. We'll probably get some decent music and literature out of it. And maybe even something exciting in the visual (plastic) arts! Haven't had any of that for awhile.
Everything is so fucked up, I guess it's natural that way.
36: stras, the Unfogedtariat already discussed this question.
I'm inclined toward the latter, Stras, because goofiness doesn't really address the (illegitimate) rhetoric of the warmongers. So he's goofy; he still wants nukes to wipe Israel off the map, and hey, goofiness is just another kind of crazy...
36: No real effect. The war is already decided upon. But anyway, goofiness as a feature of the enemy is just as useful in propaganda as menace.
Is it significant that his pants aren't down? Is that meant to suggest that he's cruising, or just that they don't want to draw him with his pants around his ankles?
30: It's all about empowering women by offering them the broadest possible range of choices. For example, a woman might choose to have only the tummy tuck, or she might go for the breast lift with or without the implants, or she might opt for the whole package, which is only 30,000 dollars, after all.
"Is the Mom Job Really Necessary?" seems an odd way to frame the question: that "really" already concedes too much to the necessity side of the debate, imho. But it points us in the direction toward which we are fast moving, I suppose. Before long, this will be not so much an idle-rich luxury as an informal requirement of anyone who wishes to maintain middle-class status (much like access to good dentistry, so yet another class marker).
Ah, plastic surgeons.
If you go to the doctor's website, the weird thing is how many of the "before" pictures look notably better than the "after" pictures. One glance at the breast augmentation page really should be enough to dissuade anyone from doing it.
Neil, the newspaper obscures the details of what's going on. It's possible he doesn't execute a full pants-drop.
I took the cover to show a surprised Ahmadinejad, not a cruising one.
45 is correct. I usually don't drop the pants below the knees.
I usually don't drop the pants below the knees.
I almost did a post about this a couple of weeks ago. Some guys drop their pants to the floor. What are they thinking?
42:
Before long, this will be not so much an idle-rich luxury as an informal requirement of anyone who wishes to maintain middle-class status
Dear god, don't you think this is overstatement?
Yes, it's tempting to see current trends continuing inexorably in that direction, but really.
Huh. I am not sure why I have such trouble thinking we'd really go that far, that plastic surgery would simply become the norm. Hey, I thought the current wave of feminism was supposed to be protecting us from all this. It's a new age and all that. No?
Some guys drop their pants to the floor. What are they thinking?
Thank you. The only place I take it to the floor is at home, with a known toilet. Otherwise, it just seems undignified.
how many of the "before" pictures look notably better than the "after" pictures
This tummy tuck before/after seems a little insane, no?
Let us be culturally sensitive, class. Iranian cruising behavior may be different.
Yeah, the floor is a lot filthier than the toilet seat. I don't want my pants touching that. What if they get wet?
Unless, you know, I need total freedom of movement in order to succeed in there.
This tummy tuck before/after seems a little insane, no?
Yup. I guess she couldn't bear to look at that little bulge on her lower belly. I guess "that's just the way things are" doesn't go very far with some people.
Every time I use a public bathroom, I strip and burn my clothes before leaving the stall, lest they accumulate stranger danger.
With cheap enough labor, the strangest ideas start to make business sense.
46: I think Ahmadinejad just isn't into dudes who wear sandals.
Link in 51 tells me it doesn't exist.
Of course it would be an overstatement until it wasn't. The dental reference is telling, as the smile middle class Americans take for granted as a class marker really isn't anywhere else. We've often written about that here before.
Some plastic surgery, not just reconstruction but also cosmetic improvement, is so clearly beneficial you'd have to be very mean not to approve. But somehow a lot of pointless, short-term, ultimately harmful alteration goes on with it, driven by insecurities and the availability of services. This may be human nature but it's the kind that always seems more extreme in this country for some reason.
Here's the question I have -- what if you get a "mom job" including a tummy tuck and then get pregnant again? Wouldn't the stretch marks be really, really bad? And wouldn't it hurt or something?
I mean, I assume most people would wait until after having their last kid, but there's always the chance of an "oops". Or is a tubal ligation part of the "while we're in there" package?
64 - I just have to wonder if these things are being fully considered by the patients.
The excess tissue is sucked out of the ovaries.
64 - I just have to wonder if these things are being fully considered by the patients
What do you think?
Also, the above link (avoiding the cheap joke) is NSFW.
I've never seen it linked. Ridiculous that it's necessary.
According to this website, the US is 19th in per capita plastic surgery, beaten by both Canada and Mexico.
I think we all know what we need to do.
It surprised me. Good work, Becks, or whoever runs that site.
I can't figure out how to access the date-based archives but there is some interesting stuff under the category archives.
The tummy tuck pics linked in 51 are sad. She had a cute little tummy, and the bad doctor made it go away! I want to give her some ice cream.
I think I remember Dr B talking about (and maybe contributing to) that site.
the US is 19th in per capita plastic surgery, beaten by both Canada and Mexico.
Isn't cosmetic surgery especially rife amongst the rich in South American countries?
I had a girlfriend with stretch marks and a "mommy tummy"; it was really sad (to me, anyhow) how self-conscious it made her about her body. This is why scarification needs mainstreaming! For shame, scaronormativists.
I thought Brazil was the plastic surgery leader. Clearly, we need to outlaw the beach.
Scars are banned.
I thought about having a "show your scars" thread a while back, but figured no one would do it.
I have some bitchin' scars. Urban cycling'll do that to a fella.
79 - Ogged, people sent in pictures of their cocks. They'll do it.
I think that was Ben's cock, six times.
Could we possibly combine the two? Scarred genital pictures, forthwith!
81: You mean that was real? I always thought it was a joke.
Thank goodness I seemed to have missed the "unfoggeteer cock picture" portion of the archives.
There's a reason you can't embed photos in these comments.
The c0ck pictures never got posted, to the best of my knowledge.
51, corrected by 60: That was obviously money well spent.
49: Honest to Christ, I wish I could believe I were engaging in alarmist overstatement. But I truly believe that plastic surgery is on the fast-track to soon become the norm. Allow me to call attention to some of the "trending data":
Nearly 11.5 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed in the United States in 2005, according to statistics released today by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS). Compared to 2004, surgical procedures increased 1% to 2.1 million, while nonsurgical procedures declined 4% to 9.3 million. The Aesthetic Society which has been collecting multi-specialty procedural statistics since 1997 says the overall number of cosmetic procedures has increased 444% since the collection of the statistics first began. The most frequently performed procedure was Botox injections and the most popular surgical procedure was liposuction."The surgical portion of the statistics show interesting results in the breast augmentation and breast lift areas," said Aesthetic Society president Mark L. Jewell, MD. "While some procedures are down, these areas continue to increase; breast augmentation by 9 percent and breast lift by 23 percent. This also marks the first year that we have segmented the device used for breast augmentation, saline or silicone. This should give us significant trending data when silicone devices are approved by the FDA."
But the news is quite optimistic, really, for anyone who has been following the past three to four thousand years of written human history. When, in the annals of the patriarchy, have women had so many choices in relation to their own breasts?
85 - We said we'd only post the pictures (and have the "match the cock to the commenter" contest) if we reached a critical mass of 10 pictures. Alas, we did not.
Back on the veldt, scars were required for entrée into the dominant class, and people often visited specialists who would help them get more and better scars.
and people often visited specialists who would help them get more and better scars.
Lions?
91: shoot if it was after I started commenting you'd have had at least three more.
92: Isn't this actually true? Which are the nomadic African tribes who actually do have elaborate scars for cosmetic purposes?
Tattoos are of course scars after a fashion.
I suppose you could say the dueling scars from the German fraternities have the same function.
And when I key the cars of people who move into the neighborhood.
I had a girlfriend who had been a serious cutter. She had a tracery of scars all over.
90:
But the news is quite optimistic, really, for anyone who has been following the past three to four thousand years of written human history. When, in the annals of the patriarchy, have women had so many choices in relation to their own breasts?
I hope this is a joke. But I can't really tell.
When, in the annals of the patriarchy, have women had so many choices in relation to their own breasts?
Like this "What are we wearing for Halloween?" Onion Infographic.
102: Crazily, I've mentioned her before. When we split up, she cut herself once again, but I sensed she did it rhetorically.
Tattoos are of course scars after a fashion.
Lame. Not real scars.
104: cutting is fundamentally rhetorical, no? I'm not sure on this point, having never done debate club.
I'd contribute a scar pic. Like you didn't already know that.
106: Cutting in the sense of snubbing someone is rhetorical, yes.
Also, I'm disappointed that 100+ comments in, no one's explained the Birkenstocks.
Shame I wasn't here for the "great" unveiling. I'm a regular Ziggy Sobotka, only, you know, more modest.
(In case no one believes me, witness my manliness!)
101: Really? For real, you can't really tell?
It's about 110% pure snarkitude. I think it's beyond awful that the ordinary processes of our life this on earth are now being pathologized as so many "deformities" and "deficiencies" to be "corrected" by plastic surgery. I further think that American feminism took a wrong turn about 25 years ago, when it turned away from collective political action in favour of individual "choice," which wrong turn now makes it very difficult to object to any of this, except by being merely snarky, but anyway...yes, it was a joke.
I'll be lurking around yr campus later this semester, SEK. But not because of that photo.
104: cutting is fundamentally rhetorical, no?
Not necessarily. The gf cut herself almost entirely in places concealed by clothing (she wore long sleeves).
110: Are you sure you don't mean Frank "Three Inches of Blue Polish Steel" Sobotka?
Also Colombian per capita plastic surgery rates one fifth those of Canada? NationMaster, please.
109: I think they're supposed to be some typical Iranian male footwear, establishing along with the newspaper that the bathroom is in Iran. Where there are homosexuals.
how'd that work out?
silly sifu, sex with crazy chicks=teh hott, remember? I used to have the greatest scar ever for a while. I got stung by a portuguese man o'war and had this amazing tracery of dotted scars where the long tentacle had wrapped around my leg twice. seriously hurt unbelieveably bad. I was very disappointed when they faded.
81: how would you verify that it was *theirs*?
IA is a commie. I should have seen it sooner.
I got stung by a portuguese man o'war ... seriously hurt unbelieveably bad.
When we were in Australia and hanging around the Great Barrier Reef I learned about the Box Jellyfish, whose sting is often fatal. The guidebook I had said something like, "Symptoms: The victim runs screaming from the water and collapses, unless shock causes death by drowning first."
117: I meant long term, al. If you think silly sifu is innocent of the beguiling attractions of teh crazy, you have misread sifu quite thoroughly.
I'll totally post my scar pictures.
Wouldn't the Unfogged cock pictures pretty much have a scar thread covered, too? Assuming US circumcision stats are approximately represented within the commentariat?
110: Heh. And one hopes dramatically less stupid. A fuckup character who nonetheless appreciates the potential value of having a pornstar cock: one of the many ways The Wire is revolutionary teevee.
112:
101: Really? For real, you can't really tell?
I had to be sure.
No, I couldn't *quite* tell because the fact is that there are not a few people out there, women even, younger women, who tell us in all good faith that things are so much better now, that women are indeed more free to control their bodies, have more choices than ever before .... Just the formulation you chose.
I've said before that I'm gullible, and part of what that means is that when you so closely mimic a narrative that's currently in play out there, I have to rely on little more than my sense of you.
Thanks for spelling it out. Call me humo(u)rless, but I like to see people say it.
I got stung by a portuguese man o'war
OOOOOOOOOWWWWW. Man o' wars (men o' war?) = pure evil.
Box Jellyfish
Dude. I once shared labspace with a guy whose wife studied these things. Do you know, they have eyes? And they sometimes use their creepy little eyes to pursue prey!?
Invertebrates that peer at you with primitive little eyes and chase you down and kill you = beyond pure evil; Cthulu swimming among us in the flesh.
Invertebrates that peer at you with primitive little eyes and chase you down and kill you = beyond pure evil
Yeah, well, I'm straight, too. Jerk.
119: Sifu, you wound me. I'm not a commie at all at all, just a mild-mannered and unassuming Canuck that nobody even notices in these comment threads until I say something that sets off the alarm bells with somebody who wants to get all G. Gordon Liddy on my innocent north-country arse.
For example, I wouldn't even dream of cooking up a rat and then eating it. Where I come from, we eat those fuckers raw, when we're not out hunting for moose.
Don't eat rat brains, though. Get some fucked up encephelopathy of that noise, eh?
somebody who wants to get all G. Gordon Liddy on my innocent north-country arse.
huh?
Peace, man.
re:fake boobs: American feminism took a wrong turn about 25 years ago, when it turned away from collective political action in favour of individual "choice,"
I am avowed opponent of plastic surgery, particularly the booby kind. I find pseudo-breasts to be unattractive and vaguely disturbing; whenever a beautiful champagne-glass rack is cut, I also am diminished. However, I must say that the beneficiaries (?) of plastic surgery tend to be rational actors, and I have no right whatsoever to tell them what to do. Hell, if I were an independently wealthy woman I'd scour the earth in search of a surgeon who could turn my tits into Pez dispensers. Which is why the Man has seen fit to keep me a)male and b)poor.
I wonder whether we'll see any wingnuts misread the sandals as meaning hippie footwear = liberal gaylord academics = columbia cozying up to Iran etc. You have to ignore the paper to do this, but they're good at doing that.
I once shared labspace with a guy whose wife studied these things.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
the human mind
I once shared a house with a woman who studied those things.
Also, I'm disappointed that 100+ comments in, no one's explained the Birkenstocks.
Maybe The New Yorker just wanted to steer clear of Ahmadinejad's dislike of Shunnis.
Wouldn't the Unfogged cock pictures pretty much have a scar thread covered, too? Assuming US circumcision stats are approximately represented within the commentariat?
Probably overrepresented, actually, since we have so many Jews.
Speaking of which, Happy Simchat Torah, everyone!
I mentioned this on another thread today, but Current TV ran a short documentary on transsexuals in Iran. It's legal.
But most white goyem are cut as well. Personally, I blame AIPAC.
Legal to have sex-change operations, that is.
Fake breasts, as it turns out, are still quite fun to play with. Still and all, boo, hiss!
But most white goyem are cut as well.
White goyim are also overrepresented here.
142: Yes, but we are like goysters, each with pearls of wisdom within.
After asking about the Birks originally, I decided they were probably Naots and it's a comment about how the Israelis are flirting with the Iranians. I'm not sure what flirting symbolizes though.
Is it oversharing to say that I find this trend laughable and alien? I, whole man!
But most white goyem are cut as well.
And yet, every time I've been mistaken for a Jew, I've had my pants on!
Is it oversharing to say that I find this trend laughable and alien?
What trend? Circumcision? Birkenstocks?
Gay cruising in Iranian men's rooms?
147: all of the above. I could get with the cruising, I guess.
I just noticed that the calligraphic bit at the top of the right side of the paper Ahmadinejad is reading looks a lot like it says "CUT." If it's actually meant to say anything rather than being the usual gibberish it's probably "Al-Bab" or something similar.
I'm pretty pissed that he fashion world has turned its back on birkenstocks. They are very fucking functional sandals! Next, they'll be after my Eccos, I suppose.
goysters
Hm. I've been thinking about a new pseud...
145: Undersharing, apparently. Although, because I totally have faith in you, bro, I am sure that 125 is hella funny, even though I don't actually get it.
Whatever the generation is after Generation Awesome, they should obviously be dubbed Generation On A Hotdog for the time being.
re: the disembodied birkenstock:
If you were to cruise men's restrooms for sex, what footwear would you choose? Your foot is all you can use to represent yourself; it is your only form of expression. You are the cruiser: how are you shod?
Wait, teo: you took a snowshoe class, right?
H-Beam Hovercraft writes at 132:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
I like this at least.
Something I encountered recently, apparently from a letter Heidegger wrote to Hannah Arendt, July 24, 1925:
Wer noch Blut und Leidenschaft in sich hat, wird ja notwendig eines Tages diesen greisenhaften verkehrten "Ernst" - der dazu noch weitgehend auf
einer "Ernst"-ansteckung aus dem "man" her beruht - satt bekommen, und die werden auch nicht in das ebenso verkehrte Gegenteil einer mueden Ironisierung von allem hineingeraten - die ja nun erst recht Hilflosigkeit ist.
Translated thus:
Someday, anyone with any blood and passion left inside will necessarily get sick of this inside-out, old man's "earnestness"--which is also largely the result of an infection of earnestness--and then will also avoid the equally contorted opposite extreme of weary ironizing - now /that/ really is futility.
I clicked on the link in 158 just to find out how a picture of slippers could be NSFW.
Oh, man, sorry, you guys are talking about shoes.
Oh, man, sorry, you guys are talking about shoes.
Mostly me, it seems. I'm doing the Lord's work here.
For all it lacks in discreetness, this shoe makes up for it in squick factor. (Also NSFW)
Wait, teo: you took a snowshoe class, right?
I did.
And finally, for the sake of plausible deniability, the jester shoe.
("Hey, man, I was just kiddin' around!")
Too late, Stanley.
This blog is about inappropriate.
132: Oh God! I can see forever!
You people are so not going to get laid in the bathroom. I would wear my old Mephisto boots: French label, no longer made, instant plus. Worn out, grommet missing: this sends a signal : "These boots have trod four continents: whatever you've got, I'm ready for it; I've seen better and worse," Also, excellent traction.
I feel like I should be embarrassed to admit that I don't get 168. That's not from a Lovecraft story, but it is from something related, right?
how creepy is stuff living under the sea? this creepy. extra-terrestrial life, when we meet any, is going to look so beyond gross. that shit in the ocean is related to us!
That's not creepy, that's beautiful.
"Oggy" has been commenting at Kotsko's. Ogged should charge infringement.
It looks like Finnish, but I'm pretty sure it's not. Maybe Estonian. It looks a little like Turkish, but I don't think so.
Also, I'm disappointed that 100+ comments in, no one's explained the Birkenstocks.
See 17.
172: This is why people love to visit aquariums: to marvel at the notion that we are somehow related to these monsters.
172, 176: Monsters? Shit in the ocean? I have no idea what you're talking about. Those things under the water are awesome. If you want to talk "shit in the ocean," however...
Capt. Charles Moore of Long Beach, California, learned that the day in 1997 when, sailing out of Honolulu, he steered his aluminum-hulled catamaran into a part of the western Pacific he'd always avoided. Sometimes known as the horse latitudes, it is a Texas-sized span of ocean between Hawaii and California rarely plied by sailors because of a perennial, slowly rotating high-pressure vortex of hot equatorial air that inhales wind and never gives it back. Beneath it, the water describes lazy, clockwise whorls toward a depression at the center.
Its correct name is the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, though Moore soon learned that oceanographers had another label for it: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Captain Moore had wandered into a sump where nearly everything that blows into the water from half of the Pacific Rim eventually ends up, spiraling slowly toward a widening horror of industrial excretion.
For a week, Moore and his crew found themselves crossing a sea the size of a small continent, covered with floating refuse. It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting.
Monsters, indeed...
Prophesied by Jim Morrison:
When the still sea conspires in armor, And her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters.....
then will also avoid the equally contorted opposite extreme of weary ironizing - now /that/ really is futility.
You know who also hated irony?
re: 174
It's Estonian.
[If you google any of the phrases from that site they all appear on Estonian websites]
Estonian and Finnnish are nearly identical, though, no?
There's a super-hot picture of Nureyev on p. 89.
re: 181
Not according to Wikipedia. It seems there is some mutual intelligibility but not much.
I just have to wonder if these things are being fully considered by the patients.
I suspect that most patients fully consider such issues. (This issue is similar to our risk discussion the other day.)
In my authoritarian world, elective plastic surgery would be illegal until the person was 30.
The plastic surgery ship sailed a long time ago. Soon, we will all have perfect xray vision and wings. I wait with breathless anticipation.
OT, the cover of the New Yorker is excellent.
I only looked briefly at the first page of the what-pregnancy-did-to-me website last night just before I signed off, so my impression might be mistaken, but where are the guys who have "caused" these changes?
Before somebody says "because it's not all about you," let me declare that when it's all about an assault on a woman's sense of her attractiveness, and is justified by her saying my beautiful child, with the father's reaction to the changes subordinated or left out, I do think something's wrong.
These changes, with which I was intimately concerned, had a profound impact on me, on my sense of connection and responsibility. I'd probably have felt that anyway, but still.
Estonian seems to have a lot more borrowed words.
The picture to which Ben refers can be seen here. Avedon took another NSFW picture of Nureyev that raises the question, was he a shower or was he hung like a horse?
Oh, and Alameida is totally right: all those floaty living things in the sea creep me right out.
This letter is the tipoff that that was Estonian:
รต
This is why people love to visit aquariums
Also the simultaneous senses of living war and living peace, not in the least anthropomorphic. Song dynasty painters took an interest in fish and insects, which coincided with a freer, nearly impressionistic style.
The ocean gives people a safely distant way to muse about life. It turns out that effective population sizes for many ocean species (strictly, the amount of variation between individuals in a species, a proxy for population size) are orders of magnitude higher than for landbound poulations. This ocean minute brought to you by your city's confederation of central american sushi chefs.
Link in 187: scarier than link in 172. The pictures of grimpoteuthis (just to be clear: not a pet name for Nureyev's cock) are particularly awesome. My favorite part, though, was this picture legend:
The small Benthocodon jelly has been found near sea mountains, some of which dwarf the Himalayas.
For those who didn't click through, there's either a jelly or a mountain visible in the picture, but not both. Can you guess which?
lw, the picture in 190 is great. Is there a web locale where one could find more like it?
Not that I know of, unfortunately. There may be a fair amount in Chinese, but I can't read the language, so don't know how to query usefully. Song painting is really wonderful, same impulse as the impressionists (reaction to a stilted formal, realist style), but much better implementation.
183: I know I was once taught that the language most closely related to Basque is Finnish, but most closely related of course does not imply a reciprocal relationship.
I can't believe you people are htis anti-surgery. It would be nice if surgery was completely safe, but i'd quite like to have it. I don't know of any useful surgeries i could have though. Is it some kind of anti-platonism that prompts you to defend tattoos and scars, and abhor proper surgeries?
I feel like I should be embarrassed to admit that I don't get 168. That's not from a Lovecraft story, but it is from something related, right?
I thought it was a reference to this comic or possibly this or its several variants (all of which I presume came after that comic). But now your comment makes me think I missed some higher-brown reference, leading to feelings of intellectual inferiority and remorse. Thanks a lot, eb.
It's a horror movie, and I know it from references rather than having seen it -- some name like The Man With X-Ray Eyes or something. Mad scientist gives himself X-Ray vision, which gradually grows more and more intense until at the end he goes mad with the quoted line.
Thanks! My google searches turned up what Stanley found along with people in forums making a similar joke and others in the forums not getting it.
Also, Finnish and Estonian are related but Finnish seems to be more intelligible to Estonians than Estonian is to the Finnish. This may be related to Finnish tv being available in Estonia even as far back as the Soviet era. At least this is what some Estonians told me a few years ago.
