What Unfogged needs is for the women bloggers to start posting their own Woo Hottie threads, dammit.
Prediction: the comments on this thread will tend to be more about collegehumor[sic].com than about woo hottie.
Isn't this how you ran the search for a bwo?
Without looking at the site, I predict that all the contestants look very similar to each other, particularly their hair.
Without looking at the site, hook 'em horns!
Ogged, you're out of practice writing these kind of posts. You needed to also make some absurd claim about one of the contestants so we could tell you how wrong you were for hours. For instance, you could have said that Erica is going to win.
If this is the sexist thread, I denounce Bush for throwing like a girl.
Prediction: A girl from a college with a nationally recognized football program will win.
There appears to be a real Seven Sisters deficit.
Lauren of Texas State University lives near the tiny, tiny town where my family lives. I really need to go visit home more often.
And Sybil Vane says Erie is populated by very unattractive people.
Do I get to ignore the interview when deciding who is the hottest college girl in America and just go by the photos?
13: If that's hottest college girl in Erie, well.
America's Hottest ^white^ College Girl
16: There's Briana, from "dirty Jersey," who has the softcoreporniest photo collection so far.
But Ashley wants to be "jacked and tan" when she grows up. You have to read the interviews.
How many of them want to be TV hosts when they grow up?
18: Sure, sure, but if I ignore the interview, I could just go ahead and vote for the hot college girl from North Carolina with a clear conscience. Even though she went to Tennessee.
So ogged's been cyberstalking A____L__ F____ since the Flagpolesitta thread? Tsk, tsk tsk.
Briana says:
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Modeling! I love modeling, and will do it until I'm old, ugly and fat.
I wonder if anyone will volunteer to tell her that, given her situation, this threshold is about 5 years and 15lbs away.
Ping me when you find the girl from UT.
The last time I taught a large undergrad course, about 35 percent of the students looked like these people, or strove to. It was a kind of object lesson in homophily.
The last time I taught a large undergrad course, about 35 percent of the students looked like these people, or strove to.
Nowadays the striving starts young:
Hair treatments like shiny glosses or full-color dye plus highlights, once reserved for women with salaries and mortgages, have increasingly become the norm for pre-pubescent girls as more busy parents with discretionary income are willing to pay salon prices for what used to be done at home.
"We've had girls as young as 6 in for highlights, but 9 and 10 is more the norm," said Tammy Currin, the owner of the Toadly Kool Me. "If it's not a relaxer, highlights are usually the first step mothers will allow. Once the girls' friends see them, they're in the next week getting streaks of their own."
25: The need to have a law restricting breast augmentation to those over 18 strikes me as worse.
20: Oh, apo -- her interview is fucking awesome, Lady Vol though she may be.
America's Hottest ^white^ College Girl
Some of them appear to be orange.
"This is the first presidential election I am able to vote in!!! I plan on voting, and I did vote on American Idol when Bucky Covington was on there. I love him, he is such a little redneck boy."
29: At least she was clothed. She seems the least objectionable of all the linked folk.
There are some pretty Lady Vols. The swim team had their own cheerleaders. They are very convincing when they recruit!
25, 26: How long should I wait before Cassidy needs bikini waxing?
12: Texas State University! My alma mater! Actually, that chick's interview isn't horrible.
Although I think she looks way hotter with the dark hair that she has in that one picture.
13: I don't see any evidence that said girl goes to the Penn State branch in Erie (Penn State Behrend for the purists). That
s a State College product, right there.
At Ole Miss, a boob job is a going-away-to-college present.
35: She seems great. And her pictures are normal.
What's your biggest fear that isn't something boring like spiders?
Ghosts and Monsters!! I have to jump into bed so the monsters under my bed don't grab my feet and my feet have to be under the covers so a ghost doesn't tickle them.
I want to punch her.
At Ole Miss, a boob job is a going-away-to-college present.
God. Please tell me that's not true. And people say the chastity-mongers are crazy (which they are, of course, but still).
#25: Once the girls' friends see them, they're in the next week getting streaks of their own.
A streak of one's own. Virginia Woolf is rolling in her grave.
38: Yeah. I actually think it's pretty charming that she looks sort of awkward in the "sexy" pictures. Like, "eh? Ok, I'm hot..."
So out of the top 64 hottest college women, not even one is Asian? I call shenanigans. And racism.
40: Are you kidding? It's the chastity-mongers who are up for the boob jobs too. Just, you know, save it for marriage.
43: I saw at least one Asian. And I assume these are self-submissions.
Perhaps, my dear Ogged, it's been a long time since you
have been "straight" forwardly sexist, but sex has been on your postings a lot, lately.
This one is right up there with the gentleman's flaccid penis disco party.
#45: I didn't spot any. Which ones are you talking about?
Your self-submissions point, however, is well taken.
"Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" is very helpful for interpreting the South.
36: evidence that said girl goes to the Penn State branch in Erie
But it says she is from Erie. Upper lefthand corner.
An endowment of hotties? A matriculation of hotties?
But it says she is from Erie.
Evidence, perhaps, that the dreaded Hottie! drain is afflicting Erie.
An endowment of hotties? A matriculation of hotties?
A degree of hotties, shurely.
This one is right up there with the gentleman's flaccid penis disco party.
But that one was very funny. This one is just killing beauty. (I'm listening to Loreena McKennit, and damn it's beautiful.)
Oh, so she is from Erie. Hard times indeed. Looks like someone I've seen at the Millcreek Mall.
Golly, both the woman linked in 13 *and* the woman linked in 16 are attending my fine, fine alma mater. I'm so proud.
Do you mean what do I want to be when I grow up? I want to be the Hottest College Girl on College Humor for 2008! THAT'S what I want to be. One of my ultimate goals in life is to appear in Playboy magazine. Also I want to be a HIV/AIDS test counselor because I want to be the change that I wish to see in the world. :)
And to think some women waste their time jogging with the homeless.
Can you, like, search by school? Or do I have to page through them all?
I just had my brain melted off by a rock band. Mere physical or mental beauty is beneath me now.
Let me be the change that I see
The only empress is the empress of hottie.
A degree of hotties is fine, very fine.
Josh come to the middle east upstairs there's still time
35: Stephani is also from Texas State University. Her photos include dorky travel shots, electric guitar playing, tinfoil teeth and an adorable basset hound. AND she loves zombie movies. *swoon*
61 made me laugh out loud.
But otherwise, I find all this hottie stuff just mind-numbingly and soul-deadeningly depressing. If you say it's because I'm a prude, you may well be right about that, but you're completely missing the point.
In her 6th picture, Christina looks like she could win a Liz Phair look-alike contest.
And to think some women waste their time jogging with the homeless.
I can only think of Lindsay Bluth Funke.
be the change that I wish to see in the world. :)
The jogging with the homeless woman quoted this.
I'm not sure that isn't an actual photo of Liz Phair. Weird. 5 minutes in the closet with Christina.
61:
If her high-heeled feet protrude, they come
To show how hott she is, and dumb.
#45: I didn't spot any.
One or two of the women look as if their grandparents or great-grandparents might've been Asian. Maybe.
Now that I've looked at the contestants, the whole freshly scrubbed look starts to be a little creepy. Every day, I see more piercings, tats, and weird hair while walking across a fairly conservative campus than I see here.
The homeless jogger only managed to apply the platitude to treating homeless people like humans. This hottie, on the other hand, knows it to be relevant to the related goals of posing nude and HIV/AIDS counseling.
Josh come to the middle east upstairs there's still time
Unfortunately I don't think I can get a flight on such short notice. (I'm back in The Greatest Place on EarthTM.)
Now that I've looked at the contestants, the whole freshly scrubbed look starts to be a little creepy. Every day, I see more piercings, tats, and weird hair while walking across a fairly conservative campus than I see here.
Around here the super-salonized, highlighted, tanned & depilated look rules all. All the people who matter, anyway.
28 is pretty funny.
Mary Catherine in 66, you may prefer this:
The Marlins franchise doesn't refer to them as cheerleaders, but as a "dance/energy squad" and the first of its kind in Major League Baseball. Trim waistlines and high-kicking skills of the kind displayed by the team's more conventional cheerleaders, the Mermaids, are out. In putting together the Manatees, club officials advertised for owners of "big bellies with the biggest jiggle."
The Manatees range in age from their early 20s to their early 60s, and in build from tubby to something more. But while their weight undeniably adds to the incongruity of the act, the idea is not to laugh at the Manatees because they are big.
Rather, the charm is in the delightful absurdity of their performance; the sight of 14 ordinary guys, who would otherwise be spending the game in the stands with their peanuts and Crackerjacks, strutting and swaggering to the beat, striking inane poses, and occasionally bumping into each other when they forget a move.
66: MC, the deal is to let it just be, I think.
77: But the fact that they're all men probably puts that in the reinforcing under the guise of subverting norms category.
This weekend I had to tell my father that "PK is a little young to learn about 'hot chicks,' dad."
PK: "Why? Why am I too young for that?"
Me: Well, it's kind of not such a great way to talk about women. I mean, if you say someone is a pretty girl, or an attractive woman, you sound like you're talking about a person, right? But if you say she's a hot chick, not so much.
PK: Ah, true.
Me (whispering): It's a little sexist.
PK: Yeah, it is.
Chastened silence from my dad. Sorry, dad, but really, did you need to be going on and on about hot chicks in front of my kid?
79: Give me a choice between having my niece see a bunch of (female) people who have spent extensive amounts of time and money modifying their bodies, and a bunch of (male) people who have spent a little time learning some minor slapstick and dance routines, I'd rather take her to a baseball game and have her see the latter.
(Although what's generally nice about MLB is that it doesn't have cheerleaders. Just mascots.)
One of them says her favorite movie is "probably Dumb and Dumber"; another cites early Woody Allen and specifically Blazing Saddles. No contest!
The Woody Allen fan also has a picture up in which she's wearing a fake mustache, and claims to like Devendra Banhart.
Reading the link in 82, I saw this
indeed, former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda admits having "body slammed" an early Phanatic incarnation to the turf
and thought, that's got to be on youtube. And it is.
Sorry, dad, but really
Yeah, he's really out of date. If he'd only have said h0t chiX0rz, it would have been ok.
it would have been ok. a bit closer
MC, the deal is to let it just be, I think.
I'm trying to resign myself to the possibility that we're now living in Huxley's Brave New World. But I don't have to like it, do I?
And it's not "feminist" or "empowering," I don't care what anyone says.
It was a kind of object lesson in homophily.
If only I'd had the smarts to be an academic.
You know, making fun of these misguided children really is quite the exercise in bottom-feeding. Maybe do something more useful like setting fire to homeless people.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. - Pratchett.
No soma. E and hallucinogens damage cognitive ability and thus earning power, and even pot is not mentioned in polite company. Actually, even drink seems suspect for many people.
Shuffle just brought up Herb Alpert. What was the soundtrack in Brave New World? Plus, what about this? Which caste in BNW listened to that?
I don't understand the regional break downs. There are people from CO and OR who attend schools in those states in the East bracket.
Sorry, dad, but really, did you need to be going on and on about hot chicks in front of my kid?
He's just trying to give a healthy balance, B.
35, 65: The only possible conclusion is that chicks from Texas State University are hot and awesome. Not that I'm biased toward that conclusion or anything.
I don't understand the regional break downs.
Think NCAA.
Also the lack of Wahoos (or any Virginians for that matter, it seems) confirms we're too smart to be duped by the patriarchy. Yep.
92: Fame, or even notoriety, is the new soma. Who needs hallucinogenics when you can partake of the more potent, and arguably more cognitively-distorting, drug of media exposure?
Who needs hallucinogenics when you can partake of the more potent, and arguably more cognitively-distorting, drug of media exposure?
Um, I do, thank you very much.
like Devendra Banhart.
Five point fine for the freak-folk fan.
For the record while apo seems to be about, my favorite name of a city in the whole country is Zebulon, NC, and the people of Raleigh totally failed to appreciate its awesomeness when we played a show there and joked about it on stage.
Zebulon!
I'll give Amy props -- Darkness was a genuinely terrible horror movie.
WE ARE FROM ZEBULON. TAKE US TO YOUR LEADER.
He's just trying to give a healthy balance, B.
Does it change your mind if you find out that the hot chick he was joking on and on about was Princess Peach (of Mario fame)?
So far, America's hottest have told me that Some Like it Hot is "a Marilyn Monroe movie" and that Harold and Maude* is "well loved and somewhat unheard of".
* My friend Jonah suggested Bud Court should film the sequel, Harold.
So far, America's hottest have told me that Some Like it Hot is "a Marilyn Monroe movie" and that Harold and Maude* is "well loved and somewhat unheard of".
Are you disputing either of these?
Though it competes with Fuquay-Varina, which looks positively obscene on the phone bill.
media
Sophistry, or maybe you didn't inhale. I'm trying to finish my taxes and would rather, well, a lot of things sound better.
Are you disputing either of these?
Some Like It Hot is a Joe E. Brown movie that just happens to feature Marilyn Monroe.
Sophistry, or maybe you didn't inhale.
Good title for a boring and pretentious novel.
Veronika who likes Woody Allen and "Blazing Saddles" is afeared of nosferatu and coconut crabs. That more than cancels out the Devendra Banhart thing.
Awesomely terrifying, I think you mean.
It would be great if Zebulon, NC, and Zebulon Pike were named after different Zebulons.
115: I would have a stroke if I ever saw such a thing.
When I was in Roatan there were these giant crabs that wandered around on the road at night. One just drove over them crunchcrunchcrunch. *shiver*
Veronika sounds like a perfectly nice and intelligent young woman, except for this whole being in the "hottest college girls" contest.
117: Zebulon, NC was named after Zebulon Vance, NC's governor during the Civil War. Zebulon Pike died in 1813.
118: Won't you feel just awful when it turns out those giant crabs have gone extinct?
Will the nosferatu still be around to menace us, B?
The nosferatu have already gone anti-excinct, or tcnicxe. It's what happens when all members of a species become immortal.
And they have designs on amking us suffer the same fate!
They were numbered as grains of sands on the beach. Lying in bed at night in my hut, I would hear them dragging their hideous exoskeletons about.
I'm perfectly happy to encounter any number of freakish beasties underwater. On land -- no thanks.
121: I should have phrased it better. I was assuming that they had a common origin in something like a biblical name - which I think Zebulon is. It would be great if someone arrived at the name through some other means.
And yet . . . I RAN THEM ALL DOWN. Fucking dodos.
129: Fucking dodos
Were they competitive or caring?
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I just discovered Des Bishop. He speaks deep truths about Ireland.
|>
129: Without remorse, even, since they didn't crunch. Breathy squawks? TOO BAD, DODOS.
131: I guess those deep truths would help explain the rise and fall of Bertie 'No Bank Account' Ahern?
131: I guess those deep truths would help explain the rise and fall of Bertie 'No Bank Account' Ahern?
In Ireland it is perfectly reasonable for the Minister for Finance to have no bank account.
My face hurts from exploding.
I just heard far and away the loudest band I've ever heard in my life.
Holy crap.
this doesn't begin to give a picture of what it was like.
134: So what you're saying is that youse is all still charmingly premodern and romantically tribal and shit? Fair enough.
What's amazing is that Bertie talks as though he is more sinned against than sinning. In tones of martyrdom, even, like he wears a crown of thorns.
At least he will resign, though. That never happens here.
And because a while ago w-lfs-n mentioned a character in Flann O'Brien with this name, here is Bishop on An Modh CoinnÃollach.
That would be the dative case, I take it?
Suprisingly, Wolf Eyes's album Human Animal is not that painful. A live show must require ear plugs.
143: even with earplugs it was painful, yeah.
I can't think of a show in recent memory I've played or attended a which I didn't wear earplugs. Earplugs! Wear 'em.
That would be the dative case, I take it?
Actually I misremembered -- it's the dative case in the book, as you say. But that youtube bit is about the subjunctive mood, one of the terrors of the language. (In Irish a lot of subjunctive conditionals are framed negatively, something like "Wouldn't you tell us about it ...")
145: it's really hard to understand without the volume.
146: oh, I wore earplugs.
That music scares the hell out of me, Sifu. Are you at all worried that you might now be possessed by a demon or something? I would be. I'm a little worried about myself and I only watched a few youtube clips.
Sounds to me like the Metal Machine Music joke, turned to eleven.
Like, at the show I was at, the vocals were really just the barest little ripple on the sea of noise. It was almost impossible to tell which rhythmic pieces were from people playing instruments, which were effects pedals, and which were from like some kind of intentional rhythm. Also, there was a mosh pit.
Sifu: Truman Sparks' last show is 4/26. You should road trip to C-ville. We'll put you up and feed you booze and loud music.
151: well, yeah. Such is the noise genre. Have you heard much Lightning Bolt?
Have you heard much Muppet Bolt?
153: What do you mean, last show?
153: What do you mean, last show?
Parting ways, my friend. A sad tale. Come down? I'll secure you a couch...somewhere.
I don't know what C-ville is.
Charlottesville, Virginia. A "world-class city", per the motto on the firetrucks.
155: that rules, 'smash, but is an awfully mellow LB track.
Yeah, it's lowkey. I've been digging on that, mellow. I really like Fuck Buttons even though it is a true bastard of drone and shiny happy people music.
Sniff. Okay, let me see if I can talk someone with a car into going. Or Sifu can pick me up on his way.
I find all this hottie stuff just mind-numbingly and soul-deadeningly depressing
People have always like hotties, you know.
The other day, walking back to the car after showering with a bunch of teenagers after a swim at a new pool, bpl said to me, "I understand why guys ogle sixteen-year-olds." What can a guy say to that? "Bpl, you're alright."
What can a guy say to that?
"That's totally disgusting you sick weirdo."
"have always like"? "alright"?
Jesus, O.
Truman Sparks' last show is 4/26
My band has a hard enough time playing in 3/4.
You spell by hottie rules, you have no compunction about accepting your girlfriends' internalized sexism as carte blanche for you to perpetuate same upon a new generation of young women, *and* you don't answer your email in a timely fashion.
My band has a hard enough time playing in 3/4.
We do have a part in 11/17. I shit you not. Flight to the East Coast!
Wait. I botched that. It's less cool. Crap.
11/8, actually. Less zany, and you can count it as two measures of 4/4 and a measure of 3/4, but why not count to ELEVEN!
174: I have some friends who did a massive dance anthem in 11/8, with intro and outro at 4/4. Endless hilarity.
176: I'm cracking up just considering such a thing. Hijinks! (Sorry, I'm in a foul mood and should just remain quietly in the shadows, waiting for an unsuspecting passer-by to stray too close.)
Almost entirely OT, except that Lyudmila Turishcheva might be called a "hottie" if the term weren't insulting to both her astonishing beauty and amazing athleticism, the greatest dismount ever. I confess that I found this while feeding my crush on Turishcheva, who should have been as well known as Korbut and Comaneci.
I really can't express just how much I want to see Lightning Bolt live. They're probably the top band that I haven't gotten to see yet, but THEY NEVER TOUR! AND WHEN THEY DO, THEY PLAY TINY NONTRADITIONAL VENUES AND DON'T SELL ADVANCE TICKETS!!
Which would actually be cool as hell if they came by often enough that their gig in a coffeehouse for 200 people didn't attract 400 people one and a half hours before it even began and well over a thousand by the end of the night...
Argh.
179: yeah they're fucking insane. I might also recommend any of the paperrad bands, especially extreme animals.
The link in 180 is designed to make me feel old and uncool, yes?* If so, mission accomplished. And that's supposed to help my mood how again?
* I'll have you know, punk kid, that I used to be really cool, and I worked in the music business, and people thought I was really cool, because I worked in the music business, which made me exceedingly and also really, really cool. But you kids and your fancy new music, I just don't get it. Also, the loudest show I ever saw was Rocket from the Crypt** -- in Boston. See, it all comes full circle.
** I told you I was old.
180: Nice. Free-jazz-inspired dance party! It's a surprisingly easy rhythm in the middle though, I expected to get tripped up a little on the third measures.
Ari, that's not necessarily old. Hell, they played their official farewell show only three years ago and released an album of it just now. I'm pretty sure John Reis will keep forming and playing in fairly-relevant-but-mostly-rock-as-hell bands until he's on Social Security.
Russian Circles was extremely loud, but Boris takes the cake. Boris just kills it.
The Fratellis have a neat little time signature follies in the middle of "Flathead". I think it's 7/4.
181 to 178. This loud music stuff, wev.
I saw Boris when they toured with Sunn O))), and I think Sunn was the louder. But that's really just because they kept their noise level sustained through the entire show. It was almost physically sickening and definitely boring as hell.
Shellac are pretty damn loud, too, but probably not as loud as Boris or the Load Records crew.
I'm supposed to be writing an investment summary of this IPO, you see, which is why I urgently need to comment on this jury-rigged music thread.
I'm finishing up commentary on Cai Guo-Qiang's Olympics ceremonies and how we're not participating, so, yeah, Shellac wasn't really all that loud. Did Boris and SUNN play simultaneously?
Loudest band I've seen in years were Acoustic Ladyland.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1dqr1W-4-Wo
That doesn't really give you much of an accurate impression of how out there they can be live but it's pretty cool anyway.
Nope, though it was shortly after the Altar collaboration came out, so it seems kind of weird in retrospect. Boris mostly played tracks off Pink, which was more than fine with me.
And I guess volume does depend a lot on the club if it's not one of those bands with their own massive speaker stacks. Shellac was damn noisy at the Hideout (possibly because it's literally the size of a big living room) while they were normal volume at another more typical club in town.
Loudest show I ever went to was probably Mogwai, which was a bit like a jet engine playing post-rock.
192 was me. Towards the end of the Mogwai show, I wandered into the back of the Great American and went to sleep. (I don't even have the excuse of having been pulling an all-nighters that time, just was hella tired.)
re: 193
I fell asleep in front of the PA stacks at Donnington during Kiss' set, in, erm, 1988 I think (?). They were woefully bad, I was 15 or 16, and, in my defence, had drunk rather a lot of gin.
In the southern California desert rave scene in the early 90s, they would take the crossbars out of the bassbins so the little raver girls could crawl up in them and go to sleep.
Er that should be mid-to-late 90s. I don't know what was happening there in the early 90s.
re: 195
Ouch. That can't be good for the ears.
197: I dunno, low frequencies aren't ear damaging in the same way. It does seem like it can't be good in some way or other, but they certainly seemed content.
Another susprisingly loud band, Dungen. The swedish retro-psychedelic-pop lot. Live there's a lot more frenzied Filmore West style guitar wigouts and drum solos which, in a small club gets a bit painful if you're pathetic, like me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvQga1aeF6g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lazcRyy1jN8
||
The BBC is telling me that in a recent study, Britons rate the Yorkshire accent as the most intelligent and the Birmingham accent as the least. Received Pronunciation was also rated fairly low.
|>
re: 200
I worked, briefly, for a bank's call centre, in Glasgow. Lots of banks put their finance customer service centres there because i) wages were relatively low and ii) scots scored high on trustworthiness scores in precisely that kind of accent survey.
199: the first band I saw last night was pretty much two simultaneous guitar wigouts and a continuous drum solo, uninterrupted, for the entire set. It was pretty fucking awesome.
Starting with The Who, Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, and The Grateful Dead, I give demerit points to bands which depend too much on their amplification. I often like electronic effects and sometimes electronica, but the effects you get from higher wattage are annoying and stupid.
Interesting! The Yorkshire accent sounded like watered-down Scottish to me.
"The sheep is not a creature of the air": my favorite accent from Pythonland. People here have told me its generic rustic central England, perhaps Oxfordshire.
201: heh, I just saw a Mitchell & Webb sketch where they were talking about how the best way to sell something health related was to have a scottish woman in a lab coat talking about it.
||
Wow. The BBC was reading listeners' emails on the accent story and one was from an American saying that here the Boston accent is associated with intelligence and culture. Say what to the what now?
|>
The Grateful Dead,
I got entirely too close to the speakers 4 or 5 times seeing the Dead or JGB. I was a dumbass.
I worked, briefly, for a bank's call centre, in Glasgow. Lots of banks put their finance customer service centres there because i) wages were relatively low and ii) scots scored high on trustworthiness scores in precisely that kind of accent survey.
I worked briefly for the economic development authority in my home in deep Redstatia at a time when the call center boom was just getting off the ground (and before the process of offshoring to India had gotten underway).
My department was trying to market my state as a location for call centers (major selling points: "Our residents will work for very low pay, and they have no other job prospects, so retention will not be a problem!"). The initiative went nowhere. Companies would take one look at locating there, and would tell us that (1) you're not in the Central or Mountain time zone; (2) your people talk like a bunch of hicks.
A telecommunications company has since put a call center in that jurisdication (they carefully distribute jobs around in key Congressional districts in their service area), and I can always tell when I get one of my compatriots on the other end: the moment you ask them something that causes them to deviate from the script, it goes from neutral bureaucratese to "Well I declare, that dadburn invoice don't look right a-tall."
I used to know someone who made a special effort to get front row seats to bands whose overamped bass made your body cavities reverberate -- she wore ear plugs. I have never understood that.
The loudest show I ever went to was Elliot Sharp at the Lounge Ax in Chicago.
Basically that concert pushed me over into tinnitus. My ears rang steadily for several years after that. Its gone away now, finally.
I believe that Fargo is a popular call-center center. Though the last call I got seems to have been from the Philippines.
Wow. The BBC was reading listeners' emails on the accent story and one was from an American saying that here the Boston accent is associated with intelligence and culture. Say what to the what now?
I believe they are referring to Boston Lockjaw, not the working class Irish accent. Think Frazier, or Charles Winchester from M*A*S*H.
Shit, I really need to get my ears checked. I never crawled into the speakers during my rave days, but I, well, had rave days. As well as a nasty family history of degenerative hearing loss.
I'm sorry, Jackmormon. Would you repeat that, please?
I have never understood that.
I think a lot of rock music is designed to get you to feel it in your gut. I just leave if a band is loud. You need your hearing!
I prefer not to have my hearing checked. It was bad enough already, and it's not like they can fix it.
I'm probably proving how old and unhip I am, but the loudest show I've been to was when I ended up with third or fourth row seats, right in front of the speaker stacks, to see Iron Maiden about 20 years ago. It was after that show that I started wearing earplugs to concerts.
The most recent Unfogged threads:
1. "That's too much sex!!!!"
2. "Turn down that rock and roll music!!!"
Once your hearing really starts to go, though, it's best to get used to the hearing aids. Otherwise, you really can isolate yourself. (Mom, I'm talking to you!)
Maybe the next thread should be about the magical powers of prune juice to keep you pooping regularly.
Next up:
"Bathing suits are too skimpy!"
"where do you get your fiber?"
Concerts that you have to wear earplugs too sounds like grumpy old man joke about young people today.
214: No, I realized that, but they left it wholly unqualified and the term "Boston accent" just doesn't mean that anymore. It was funnier to think of a Southie What-ya-think-ya-betta-than-me? accent.
The modern call center is about the most Taylorized enterprise in the contemporary economy. Employee performance and productivity is utterly transparent, and management can drain out every last ounce of "productivity reserve".
Partly as a consequence of this (and partly because of wages levels set by competition from India), employee turnover is huge, and extending average employee tenure is a powerful lever to improve efficiency.
I saw a fascinating report (don't remember where) that showed how psychological testing is employed to screen out employees who are likely to leave after a short time. Basically, the ideal profile of a call center employee, from a retention perspective, is someone who has low self-esteem (will put up with being abused), has low motivation and initiative (won't go and look for another job), whose favorite activity is watching television (is passive), and is somewhat overweight (a marker for low SES and limited job opportunities).
Earplugs really do make a hell of a difference.
And JM, bass-heavy music generally is less damaging, I think, although any audiologists here should feel free to correct me.
(Mom, I'm talking to you!)
You'll have to speak up.
224: yeah, it's funny. I was thinking last night that with the headlining band it just literally wouldn't occur to people not to wear earplugs. It'd just be too painful.
We really should be discussing who is cuter: raver girls or head banger girls.
cue: JM and oudemia to fight.
My ears are shot. Particularly my right ear, which spent a fateful evening when it was only 14 pinned (literally, couldn't move) against a stack of amps at City Gardens. When I see anything loud now, it rings for days.
For the record, however, I am extremely regular.
As a grumpy old man, I'll just point out that not going to the concert at all is more effective than wearing earplugs.
Head banger! What?! Noooo.
(JM is totally cuter, though.)
For the record, however, I am extremely regular.
regular is not the adjective I would use to describe you.
I've had tinnitus for so long now, all the ringings in my ears have turned into lovely music.
We really should be discussing who is cuter: raver girls or head banger girls.
Raver girls = cuter (at the median; obviously the distributions overlap considerably).
Headbanger girls = more likely to go for anal (ditto).
JM is totally cuter, though.
Typically female response.
A man would have said, "I am much better looking than that other guy!"
Earplugs are for the weak. Don't you people know that the deaf have a rich and vibrant culture all their own? I for one look forward to joining it. Watching The Muscle Bitches with earplugs in would just defeat the purpose.
114: Veronika is awesome. (And this chica wins for Best Picture.) Amazing how underwhelming is the taste of the white male* staff of CollegeHumour, though.
(* wild guess)
Perhaps an interesting statistic:
Despite an abundance of really cute girls at the All Good Music Festival (when I was there), whenever I was in the communal shower, only really unattractive girls were there.
I am not sure what that meant.
235: that's called Musical Ear Syndrome.
239, the attractive people's communal shower was by invitation only.
Once your hearing really starts to go, though, it's best to get used to the hearing aids. Otherwise, you really can isolate yourself.
Or you become very shouty. Sometimes this is annoying, sometimes it's awesome, especially with elderly belligerent philosophers.
Oudemia is a punk rock girl, who are of course the cutest.
I can hear Cala walking around saying "oldassholesays 'what?'"!
Oudemia is a punk rock girl
Punk rock was the time of high waisted pants.
245: those days are returning, Will. Sad to say.
245: Those days are returning, Will. It's a wonderful time to be alive.
Living in the land of long johns and big heavy coats, it shouldn't really matter to you, DS.
But, down here, we get to actually see the waist line.
punk rock girl[s], who are of course the cutest.
J-pop girls are the cutest.
240.---Yep. I really should get my ears tested. (These days, I've been hearing bits of Beethoven's Seventh.)
248: My God, you don't live in the illusion that Canadians actually dress for the weather, do you? What fun would that be?
The fun of not freezing to death?
Canadians seem to develop a large tolerance for the weather. I visited one New Year's, it was 30 below, and I was freezing, but everywhere we went we saw girls in miniskirts and cute little coats and their limbs did not shatter like flowers dipped in liquid nitrogen as one would have expected given that it was so cold.
the secret is hot, gooey poutine, isnt it?
Pah. The cold simply winnows away the unworthy, leaving only the strong and fashionable behind.
253: Montreal when it's nearly but not quite really spring is a sight. All these young kids (girls mostly, but not only) who are sick of the snow and winter coats running around in spring clothes and short skirts etc, but it's still cold. And they're having so much fun it's infectious.
254: I always get slapped when I offer someone my "hot, gooey poutine," so that's probably not it.
A similar phenomenon occurred at my undergrad institution. Long, cold snowy winters meant the first day the sun was out and it was anywhere near 50 degrees meant girls lying on the lawns in bikinis or wearing sundresses.
the secret is hot, gooey poutine, isnt it?
Back bacon.
256, 258: yeah, Boston is the same way. I'm certainly not immune; it was almost 50 last night and I was driving around with all the windows down and the sunroof open.
I'm sure a lot of places are like that at the end of winter. I suspect it's especially intense in Montreal because of a longer winter than mos places, and a largish urban population that skews heavily towards young and arty.
The loudest concert I have ever been to was undoubtedly Orthrelm and whoever opened for Orthrelm at the Empty Bottle. Not a lot of bass in Orthrelm tunes, either.
261: Oh definitely. It was only remarkable at my former institution because of the giant fields and lawns full of shivering undergrads trying to tan.
263: Yeah, I can remember that at other unis too. Here, we had days in the 80's in January so a celebration of spring sunshine isn't exactly bursting out.
My college is also like that at the end of summer, because it starts being too cold to comfortably dress like sluts after about three weeks of the semester, so it's interesting to see how long some girls can hold out before they start wearing pants and jackets to go out.
No sundresses, though. Urban campus.
Austin's warm and everyone dresses skimpily. No shivering, no seasons, no caveats.
No shivering, no seasons, no caveats.
This isn't actually as good as it first sounds.
re: 219
I saw Iron Maiden a bunch of times in my early teens. TBH, those kind of big theatre/arena shows are never as loud as seeing the rougher end of the punk/jazz/dance sort of stuff in small clubs. It's the size of the venue and everything distorting like shit that causes the real pain.
re: 227
Yeah, I worked in several call centres. However, after the first one, I was 'management' and it was a call centre providing tech services rather than sales. All the shitty things about call centres are largely true, though. The level of Orwellian surveillance is mind-boggling. I left the first one before I was pushed, to be honest, as I couldn't stick the lower rung of management who really were irritating verging on intolerable.
Watching The Muscle Bitches with earplugs in would just defeat the purpose.
I'm not sure if you're joking, but I actually do kind of agree with this. I gave earplugs a try for a little bit, but found that they screw up the midrange tones in annoying ways. It's nice dampening the useless screeching guitar feedback that some bands occasionally throw over perfectly good songs, but not worth it if it squashes the riffs or the samples.
I may have to start doing it anyway if I ever go to shows as frequently as I did in the last couple years. Boring as Ogged may be, he's right that hearing is generally worth keeping.
And to celebrate the end of Chicago winter, and the return of spring in all its windy, rainy, 45 degree glory, I'm in jean cutoffs and a tanktop that says "Juicy" today. Sure, I'm getting odd looks at the office, but they just jealous.
I was fired from a call centre for hanging my jacket over the back of my chair.
Boring as Ogged may be, he's right that hearing is generally worth keeping.
Bpl has a fair bit of hearing loss. It leads to a lot of smiling and nodding, which is a mixed bag.
269: I'm joking about wanting to join deaf culture, but I'm serious about the earplugs, for the very reasons you cite.
Bpl has a fair bit of hearing loss. It leads to a lot of smiling and nodding, which is a mixed bag.
OGGED: [In a faint voice] How about we set up my camcorder and have a threesome with your hot girlfriend?
BPL: [Smiles and nods]
The UK as a whole is like that -- tiny skimpy clothes in horrible weather. With Newcastle and Aberdeen both particularly notorious for it.
Mid-winter here, it was below zero and some of the students had taken the step of adding a scarf [to the sleeveless tank top + sweatpants + ugg boot + huge mussed up hair combo].
272: yeah, it's a problem. I kept readjusting my earplugs last night so they would block less; my hearing is cruddy enough that they were attenuating the high middle end almost entirely. But I didn't love the music enough to suffer for it. Oh well; getting old.
268: Yup. Nobody has amps big enough to do that in an arena, really. Although some try.
270: I really think you should put that sentence in your resume, if you haven't. I would, anyway.
272: The loudest car stereo I've ever heard belonged to a deaf kid. It was terrible, because he literally only cared about bass. He used to love dance clubs too, for the same reason, and pretty much anything where you could really feel the bass. He kept getting thrown out of clubs though, because being born-deaf his spoken language was a bit wobbly, and I think people tended to assume he was drunk.
he's right that hearing is generally worth keeping.
Lots of old timers in the shooting crowd who did a fair bit of outdoor shooting sans ear protection and came to regret it.
re: 270
Harsh. The place I worked wasn't quite that bad although ...
I nearly flattened one of my managers because he accused me of lying [to my face]: one of the dumb consequences of the Orwellian surveillance system. He'd obviously misread the screen and thought the person who'd been logged out for half an hour chatting with their neighbour was me. No amount of denial on my part, or corroboration from the people sitting either side of me that I'd been working the whole time would shift him. Then he leant forward [about 8 inches from my face] and called me a liar ... which seemed a needlessly stupid and provocative thing to do.
I kept readjusting my earplugs last night so they would block less
What you need are something like the Pro Ears. Allows soft sounds through, and can even amplify the soft stuff, but dampens overly high decibel levels. You'll look like a doof, but we're all probably getting too old to look cool anyways.
Mind you, I'm a little doubtful of the psychological profiling story, because frankly, all the traits described are proxies for "recently unemployed", and call centres tend to locate in places with high unemployment because they want cheap labour. So the causality could well be reversed. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if people fitting that description are the ones who stay, and not really very surprised if working in a call centre actually causes those traits.
Anecdotally, those traits fit a few people I know locally who do that work to a T, and this isn't a generally high-unemployment area. So I'm biased to believe it.
re: 281
The selection process for the first call centre job I did wouldn't have fitted with the profiling at all. It was geared towards selling of financial products and a certain glibness, facility with numbers, a nice voice, and the ability to play 'nice' as part of a team were what they were after. But the other place I worked, that may have been true for other departments. I don't know how they selected, but the people doing the work wouldn't have been completely at odds with that sort of profile.
Re 283 and others.
IIRC, the psychological profiling process I described was for a specific type of call center, namely the contract facilities that sell commodity services to all and sundry. For example, the center might do inbound response for television ads for Ginzu knives one day (which means the seller needs surge capacity for irregular spikes in demand), and it might do outbound telemarketing for a magazine doing a subscription renewal campaign the next.
There are other types of call centers that offer a much more humane working environment, for example if you are in second or third level response for the customer service line of a complex technical technical product. In these cases, the employer needs a better class of employee, and will generally pay enough to retain them longer.
Apple Bottom jean cut offs, right?
What else could possibly fit all this junk?
What you need are something like the Pro Ears.
Wow, those are pretty sweet technology. I've only seen one person wearing those muff ear protectors at a concert. At a Boredoms show (also pretty reliably loud), Yoshimi's baby was being held just offstage with ear muffs about the same size as its head.
Makes sense; that describes the one I was fired from reasonably well.
I saw motorhead at a club and my ears were ringing loudly for a week. I really fucked up my hearing and now have tinnitus.
The last show I saw that I wore earplugs was boris. I really like the pink album but they played a lot of slow tempo songs live so I got sleepy and left early.
I just clicked through to the link in the post. Could those women look any more alike?
288: how else could you hope to win such a contest, Sir Kraab?
I admit that I think about Sir Kraab every time I see Crab Man on My Name is Earl.
How long should I wait before Cassidy needs bikini waxing?
I swear, honest, I was kidding when I made that comment.
Ugh. The world is so depressingly fucked up.
Apo:
I apologize. I caused UNC to lose by rooting for them. That has to be the reason.
They can't all lose, Will. The system is jimmied to make sure that there's always one winner. The nice thing about tournaments is that almost everyone loses. But there's always a winner, and that's what pisses me off.
The first half was the worst I'd seen a UNC team play since the 8-20 season. Then they went and had to give us false hope by cutting the 28 point deficit to 5, before giving out completely.
Ah well, maybe everybody will come back for one more shot at it.
I apologize. I caused UNC to lose by rooting for them. That has to be the reason.
Gawd, I feel the same way. I watch, and they're suddenly down by 28! I stop watching, and they're suddenly within five. I don't know what happened at the end. Perhaps checking on the score was enough to ruin their chances. Sorry about that, Apo.
Ah well, maybe everybody will come back for one more shot at it.
Hansbrough needs to go. This is a pretty weak draft year, and he's ready.