Wait, the point of those two pictures is how different they look? Sorry, HP is a dead-ringer for HBGB.
Aww, precious. You both had a bunch of hair for babies. Only the nose looks much different.
I can't tell if you're kidding or not. Really.
Don't worrie, heebie, I'm kidding.
Perhaps we've got no perspective, because my mom and I chat idly about how unrelated Hawaii and I look.
I wasn't kidding. Of course, the bottom picture is pretty small/blurry.
4: Are you kidding about kidding? or seriously kidding?
Your wording is a little confusing, in that you mention only one photo, but then under the jump there are two photos.
8: I'm happy to explain, if you'd like.
8: The first picture is what came in the frame. The second picture is HP.
Detailed analysis of a cell phone picture is difficult, to be sure, but the two adorable babies pictured appear to have the same eyes and nose. And cheekbones and ears. And expressions.
Then again, everyone tells us how much E looks like R, but we don't think E looks like anyone.
I always think E looks a lot like one of my much-adored cousins, actually. It's endeared her to me.
Dude, thought the punchline was gonna be that you look exactly alike. Because that's what it looks like to me.
[Not kidding]
Perhaps my mom and I have a ridiculously narrow version of what a Geebie looks like, and compared to the world at large, Hawaii looks like a Geebie, but it's hidden to us.
14: See, the 30 year old photo is of Hawaii, and then that photo of that photo is above it, but then I took a single photo of both of them and left it on the camera for thirty years, so there's really only one photo posted.
the two adopted cousins sit there stoically while we crow about how fan-fucking-tastic it is to look like each other.
I know you are employing comic license here, but if "boy we look like each other!" is ever an actual topic of general conversation, I sure would find it super irritating if I were not among the lookalikes. I'm easily irritated, though.
I actually look pretty much like what you would get if you did that 'If they mated' thing on my father and maternal grandfather.
18: Historically, we've been horribly tactless. I think I stopped doing it once I was old enough to realize how rude it was. My grandmother does it all the time.
Well, you look alike, because you look like white babies making the same face. It's babies. You both look like Winston Churchill, too, you know? I can believe, though, on close examination, that HP looks noticeably like Jammies and not like you.
What's weird is looking at a bunch of photos of a family through several generations and you'll get this thing where a picture of your great great granduncle Ebeneezer as a boy is a dead ringer for your little fourth cousin twice removed Johnny (currently 7).
Hawaiian Punch, of course, looks totally twins with her father. I was quite surprised when she came out.
People are disproportionately likely to say that the baby looks like its father. Everyone, after all, knows exactly who the mother is.
On the other hand, everyone says you should read below the fold first, too.
23: But wait, that brings up an important question: heebie, are you sure you're the mother?
I'm in Camp Look-a-like, too. Seriously. And I am being serious when I say that's seriously the camp I'm in. And, I reached that conclusion before I opened the thread.
I've always been terrible at this game, though. When I was a young child, it used to upset me whenever a new addition to my ever-growing extended family would be likened to one of his or her parents or the other. It just seemed ridiculous to me that a near-bald tiny little human could be thought to look like one of those grown-ups.
You know what would be really funny would be if HP's first four hundred words were all for snow.
22: What is weird to me is how hard it can be for my parents or aunts and uncles to tell who is in what picture if nobody wrote on the back. Apparently, after 50 years, everybody more than 50 years older than you starts to look alike.
All I know is, that's a cute kid.
And I looked like neither of my parents growing up, which was always disconcerting. (Both had dark hair. I was blonde, blonde, blonde, and that one fact alone made it hard to see the facial resemblance - and I did in fact look more like my dad.)
Actually, I have a really difficult time telling white people apart from each other.
People are disproportionately likely to say that the baby looks like its father. Everyone, after all, knows exactly who the mother is.
Doesn't the first sentence suggest that they know who the father is, too?
30: Really? I can tell white people apart where it counts.
"Actually, I have a really difficult time telling white people apart from each other."
The trick is that 'white' actually comes in a variety of shades. Also, we're not required to dress all the same anymore.
When I first looked at the pictures, I was struck by two things:
1. HP looks a lot like Jammies.
2. Those two babies look a lot alike.
I guess I'm in both camps, then. Also, confused.
Doesn't the first sentence suggest that they know who the father is, too?
Only to a pedant.
Doesn't the first sentence suggest that they know who the father is, too?
You're getting a PhD in the right discipline. Most of those guys can't tell the difference between social roles and biological relationships, either.
In my mom's family, physical resemblances among family members are a frequent topic of conversation. My mom in particular talks about this all the time. There are no adoptees in the family (at least, none that we know of or see regularly).
In my dad's family, physical resemblances are very rarely discussed. Some of my dad's cousins were adopted.
Most of those guys can't tell the difference between social roles and biological relationships, either.
You shouldn't equivocate on like terms in the course of two sentences. Clearly "mother" in the second sentence wasn't the social role.
Not just clearly, but distinctly, too. Can't argue with that.
You shouldn't equivocate on like terms in the course of two sentences.
I wasn't, though. When I wrote that second 'mother', I was holding up my hand to clearly indicate the relevant meaning.
There are no adoptees in the family (at least, none that we know of or see regularly)
Don't you find this kind of cruel?
42: Harry Potter was kept out-of-sight in a closet for 11 years. Didn't seem to have hurt him.
Don't you find this kind of cruel?
I would if I were aware of it.
I wonder if the reason that we don't talk much about physical resemblance in my family is that many of us are only half-siblings. Not the same as adoption, but.
JP is a mini Mr. Tonks. Even strangers comment on how he's a carbon copy of his dad.
SG is the unidentifiable child. She looks like neither of us, yet she totally *fits* with the family.
XC, I'm told, looks like me. I don't see it and sincerely hope that's not the case since I don't think I'm all that good looking.
As for HP, there's definitely a resemblance to her Mama. Maybe if she opts to sport a mustache I'll think she looks like Jammies?
Some of us don't look much like our relatives even though we are related to them by blood.
They look alike to me, too. But I can imagine how if I knew what Jammies looked like I might think otherwise.
47: There is that, too, especially in my case. But I'm the outlier - my sister is a carbon copy of my mom, and my dad's other children look a lot like him. But we don't exactly spend a lot of time discussing this.
One of my mom's cousins is blonde while her three siblings and parents all have noticeably darker coloring. When her mom would be out with them in public strangers would sometimes ask her why on earth she had adopted after having three children. Other than in coloring, though, this cousin looks quite similar to many other members of the family.
The top baby seems to have a rounder head and a smaller nose. They seem to have the same chin.
Also, I think the last month or so has finally sold me on the "mainstream media should cease to exist, and be replaced by entirely partisan media". I mean, at least in the partisan media there would be some people saying that things that aren't true are not true.
"strangers would sometimes ask her why on earth she had adopted after having three children"
I hope she chucked batteries at their heads or something.
strangers would sometimes ask her why on earth she had adopted after having three children
Strangers are some fucking nosy motherfuckers, I'd say.
I guess I'm in both camps, then.
That'll be awkward, then, when the kids from Camp Look-a-like canoe across the lake to prank the kids of Camp No-They-Don't.
When her mom would be out with them in public strangers would sometimes ask her why on earth she had adopted after having three children.
Wow.
There exist pictures of both my parents, and of me, at about age two, all posed in roughly the same way, all of which look very similar. But my parents aren't actually related, no matter what the stereotypes of my home state might indicate.
52, 53, 55: Indeed. That part of the story has always amazed me.
54: There's no canoeing across lakes anymore at camps, emdash. Too dangerous. Instead the kids from one camp take photos of donuts on their penises and then send them to the other camp electronically.
50: My mother got questions about whether or not I was her biological child when I was younger as well. Similar situation - she's dark hair/pale, I was blonde/dark skinned. People are indeed, rude.
I knew an American couple in China who had lived there for years and planned to do so for the foreseeable future. They had two biological kids, and then adopted a third in China from an orphanage. This third kid had a moderately deformed hand. Numerous Chinese friends and colleagues, upon meeting the new family member, would coo over the child, inspect the hand, and then ask, point blank, "how come you didn't get a good one?"
61: It's good to see people respecting the old traditions.
Having just seen a high school acquaintance's Facebook profile picture that shows what I assume to be her baby, which looks just like HP, I think I have to conclude that I can't discriminate among babies.
I looked like Nixon as a baby, and my stster didn't. None of these babies have jowls like Dick and me, either.
(Skipping the thread because I'm up too late already from the meetup.) You can't tell at this age, because babies all look kinda cute but also kinda deformed. Later, she'll look a lot like you and a lot like Jammies.
64: Seriously, babies all look the same to me. I was actually worried when I had my own kids that I wouldn't be able to identify them, and I'd take the wrong one home from day care or something. Fortunately, at the time I developed some sort of "my baby" instinct, which let me recognize these particular children. I couldn't explain how, though, and now that they are no longer babies* I have lost the skill again.
__
* well, they act like babies.
Yeah, now that I have some distance or something it seems totally obvious that we both look more or less like every other baby. But it seemed so bizarrely striking to me this afternoon, holding Hawaii and looking at myself. I dunno.
Most babies look alike to me, but then, every once in awhile, there are the crazily ugly ones and the cherubically beautiful ones.
Honestly, Heebie, your noses and eyes are really quite a bit alike. And your innate sense of the futility of existence.
Is HP always right, too? I'm imagining:
1. HP thought: "I have to poop!"
2. Poop.
See? Totally right!
Is HP always right, too?
I seem to be so totally wrong in this post; I wonder if she stole my mojo. On the other hand, part of me secretly believes I just didn't pick the right photos.
Also I picked the cutest picture of myself. In a bunch of the other ones I was a pretty ugly looking critter.
I don't buy the veldt nonsense either. Not least bc PK looked, and looks, like me but people would still say "he looks like his father!" and then offer the veldt explanation.
I do think there may be a veldt impetus to *think* babies look like their fathers, though. Or at least a social impetus to think you think so.
There was a baby in our extended family some years back where one of the prospective grandparents was bitching that the mother-to-be was a slut and she'd be surprised if the baby was even her son's child, etc.*
When the baby came out it was as if someone had created a baby in a lab to most perfectly resemble the father (who is quite distinctive looking). It was genuinely comical how much they were alike.
* she had no reason to think this, other than that she was a grumpy old shit with a quasi-Freudian suspicion of any women who'd seduced one of her pure-as-the-driven-snow sons ....
OT: If any New Yorkers stumble into this thread, I could use an example of a fancy restaurant where a young editor might propose meeting an author for lunch. Fancy enough for her cheapskate boss to yell at her for the expense, but not so fancy she wouldn't think of it in the first place.
77: Jean-Georges apparently has a semi-reasonable prix fixe for lunch.
Uh, first link. $24 lunch, but it is one of the nicest places in town, so you get a not-angry boss and an impressed author.
If she's looking for something to get yelled at about, I'd go for The Modern at MoMA. $48 prix fixe lunch, really nice food, and a fairly hip atmosphere. (I haven't been to Jean-Georges yet. The food at The Modern is pretty fucking great.)
Oh wait, this is for a fictional-type thing, isn't it? You're not actually making a recommendation? I am probably not the one to ask where the happening shit is, editor-wise. I guess it seems like I'd send characters to Union Square Cafe or somewhere like that, but IRL it's totally played out as far as Danny Meyer joints go--The Modern is his more happening place.
Thank you very much. And yes, fictional. The Modern is a good idea -- good visuals. I googled around and came up with Town at the something hotel.
Yeah, it's pretty beautiful, and the food is, too. My ex took me there for a birthday dinner and we sat looking at our desserts for quite a long time before eating them, trying to figure out if they were meant to represent tiny worshipers lined up outside of an ancient temple, etc.
IME, who babies are thought to look like as babies has remarkably little connection to who they look like when they grow up a bit. (e.g. my sister, who was generally agreed to look like our dad when she was HP's age, but grew up to be the spitting image of her maternal grandmother.)
So don't sweat it, Heebie. The teenaged HP will look like herself.
re: 84
Yeah, my niece has gone from looking like a tiny crumpled version of her father to looking exactly like my sister did at that age (only with red hair).
The other baby mentioned in 76 still looks exactly like the baby's father, though.
Wooho, look at me all commenting in the middle of the night like a European!
That said, uh, I concur with emdash?
86 Go to bed, you daft fish. What is it, ten past six there?
That said, I'm commenting in my sleep because there was a knock on the door in the middle of the evening yesterday and there was my brother in law, whose partner has apparently declared relationship over. He has. No. Money. So we had to feed and water him and listen to the sorry saga till far too late.
They are two of the most charmingly feckless people I've ever met, in different, incompatible ways, and who I feel sorry for are their poor bloody children.
re: 87
He's in europe, iirc. So on roughly the same time schedule as the superior class of commenters.
That's shite re: brother-in-law.
Most divorces I've heard of immediately split loyalty along family lines. It's nice that hasn't happened here. Though perhaps annoying that you've been chosen to provide shelter.
87.2 gets it exactly right. Best of luck with everything OFE.
89: I was thinking it might be OFE's wife's brother, rather than his sister's husband.
HP and Heebie do look alike, mod the nose.
girls look like fathers to make mothers love them the girls more
it's like nature's some mechanism, preventing female competition in family, fathers of course are pleased to see mini them and in other format
d; this notion is based solely on my deep observational, deducing and meditating abilities only, coz i hope nobody thought of studying the phenomenon yet if there are studies i'll be upset
but there is a proverb aztai okhin aavugaa duuraina means lucky girls look like their fathers
but it's just some kind of welcoming words for the girls, it has no deep mysogynistic meanings to it, or maybe it has, now when i think about it
but at least it's not discriminating against mother alike looking baby girls coz all the girls kinda look like their fathers in their babyhood
ime too
Sorry about the brother-in-law, OFE.
And facial resemblance in babies is really hard to do in a photo -- in a still, they all look like Churchill. You can see it when they're moving around, but not earlier.
in a still, they all look like Churchill
Except the ones who look like Eisenhower (or so goes the conventional wisdom over here).
The thing with babies, though, is that at different times, they can look very much like different relatives. I've been told Cassidy is a dead ringer for Roberta, for me, for my mother, and for Roberta's mother. None of us look very much alike, but I can see each of the resemblances (as the final arbiter of truth, I will say that she looks almost exactly like my mother's baby pictures).
96: Yeah, a lot of resemblance often has to do with facial expression, and when they're older, body form, posture, gestures, etc.
Adults too -- I look a lot like my father and like my mother. Now, they're not entirely dissimilar themselves, but it's possible to carry off a strong resemblance to two unrelated people at the same time.
Of course, it doesn't always work that way. Sally is (visually) all my family -- the only physical thing she seems to have gotten from Buck is the capacity to get a tan. Newt's a mix.
body form, posture, gestures
Oh yes. To me, Keegan looks waaaay more like my ex-wife than he looks like me (except for the red hair, which seems to trump everything else for a lot of people). But, when it comes to gestures and expressions and postures, he's practically my clone.
People often impose patterns when there are none.
In my teens I was told by strangers that the close family relationship with a cousin was unmistakable. This cousin was not biologically related to me at all (complicated story) except via the Northern European gene pool. We had similar builds, light hair, and were white. From that...unmistakable.
"This cousin was not biologically related to me at all (complicated story)"
Does the story involve a bullet going through one guy's testicles and into the mom's ovaries?
People often impose patterns when there are none.
Sometimes it seems like the primary drive of the human brain is to find patterns, whether they exist or not. It explains so much about comon human behaviors on the veldt.
No, it's much more mundane. It involves my being in foster care. So I can't even claim family behaviors as the identifying feature.
Common human behaviors like misspelling, for examples.
Lack of agreement is all too common.
107: Ah, so you detected the pattern! Well done!
in a still, they all look like Churchill
Except the ones who look like Eisenhower (or so goes the conventional wisdom over here
On the veldt, it was a survival advantage for a baby to be able to do a quick and convincing impression of a revered tribal ancestor. Babies who could do this were on average better fed and less likely to be abandoned.
Russian babies from the 1950s all looked like Stalin.
109: That's why birth rates were so low in the 1970. Nobody wanted a baby that looked like Nixon, Ford or Carter.
The baby boom was essentially a fleeting historical anomaly during which babies were clean-shaven.
I have decided it's a good job babies commit so few crimes, because I could not tell the difference between the wee heebie and the Hawaiian Punch to save my life.
You are both cute babies, though.
Growing up, my sister looks a lot like our aunt (dad's youngest sister) did when she was growing up. The resemblance doesn't seem so strong any more. And now and then people say I look like my sister, but I don't notice it too much myself.
In addition to all the "on the veldt" explanations, maybe all the "he looks just like you did" stuff is related to what we identify people by. I know I'm not great with faces; I rely on clothes, age, etc. to tell certain people apart, even though there's no way I'd actually confuse them in a lineup or whatever. Their faces are very different but that fact has just never made an impression on me. The point is, most people are better with faces than me, but maybe they still rely more than they think on mutable features like broken noses, glasses, male pattern baldness and scars to identify people. And most of those features haven't come up yet in children, so little kids look like anyone.
102-105: So it's not a complicated story, then.
So it's not a complicated story, then.
105 is no evidence of that one way or the other, Perry Mason.
113: Have you considered that perhaps they just don't get caught?
116: If a two month old gets arrested, but then they tell her/him s/he can walk, what happens?
117: some combination of crying, pooping, sleeping.
118: so about like usual, then.
/gswift
OT: More script help. Does this work for dirty French pillow talk? "J'ai besoin de toi. J'ai besoin de ta gout."
I bet Baise-moi has some instructive French pillow talk.
The French have a thing for painful, swollen toes?
I bet even Farber refrains from talking about gout in bed.
Regarding Farber, or Baise-moi, and if the former, how do you come to know this?
Oh it's all on the up-and-up. I always forget you're not on the secret political blogger sexy french-language joint disease discussion list.
SecPolBloSexFrenLangJoDisDisLis has been closed to new membership for a while. It's a cartel, man.
I'd go with "J'ai besoin de toi. J'ai besoin de votre inflammation orteils."
Or course, that's such a cliche to anyone familiar with Camus.
Thanks! I've changed it to "J'ai besoin de toi. Lu-moi une essaie du blog sur le topique du Star Trek, la guerre contre Iraq, et les formespossibles differentes du government."
Ajourd'hui, j'ai besoin de toi. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.
"Tes oreilles sont-elles si différentes? Es-tu complexé ou parviens-tu à les accepter?"
J'ai besoin de toi. J'ai besoin de votre inflammation orteils.
Buh?
I bet Belmondo could have made 134 work.
137: I don't speak French. Blame Google translate.
Which is also how I got:
J'aime les grandes fesses et je ne peux pas mentir.
Clearly he's talking to two different people, nosflow. You don't informally ask for a third party's toes.
I don't know French either. I guess I just have standards.
138: Belmondo could make anything work.
Le Hotttt!
I think you mean "Le Hott1!!1!!!"
I can recognize faces like a normal human, but am crap for spotting family resemblances. I remember attending a family reunion when I was 13ish and listening to my mom war rhapsodic over the joys of seeing the patterns between faces. I had no idea what she was talking about. All of these people just looked like a random assortment.
I've since learned to spot plausible family resemblances to play along with others when this game comes up. I agree with whoever said babies is babies, though.
O.K. I won't demand co-authorship on the script.
147: Until I read that, I couldn't remember if Gerald Ford has actually died or if he was still walking around, playing golf and watching his skin slide off a bit at a time.
Inmates do receive "good time" -- for every year and one day they serve, Ponce said, 54 days are lopped off their sentence.
Why the extra day?
Mythological significance, probably.
120
Does this work for dirty French pillow talk? "J'ai besoin de toi. J'ai besoin de ta gout."
I don't think so, but I could be wrong. Dirty pillow talk sounds weird out of context in any language anyway. Run "J'ai besoin de te gouter" past a French person and see what they think. If they slap you, then it works.
I remember seeing a lot of very similar-looking father-son pairs when I was touring colleges. I wonder whether there is something about that intesection of ages that makes the resemblance seem particularly strong.
If they slap you, then it works.
I would suggest a different criterion.
Whatever happened to "voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?" None of this informal demanding that toi and besoin seem to imply, and clearly all anyone could ever want in a lover is politeness.
voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?
Yep.
155: There's nothing wrong with the classics, but "J'ai besoin de ta gout" implies that your question can be taken for granted and the couple has moved on to specifics.
155: That's more like a threshhold question that must be answered in the affirmative before any pillows get involved.
Wrongshore -- Jackmormon should know, shouldn't she? I recall her as having lived (and had at least one relationship) in France.
J'apprécie le parfum de vos beaucoup les membres joints qui sont couverts en beurre sexy.
Thanks 160.
161, premiere, retrouve les beurre du réfrigérateur.
Bad attempt at a joke, clearly.
As for my more serious suggestion....I'm of the opinion that it's going to sound a little silly no matter what language it is written in, so go full force. Do use besoin instead of vouler; the informal; blah, blah.
If you don't know French particularly well, stick to what you already wrote. My sense of the matter is that actual French pillow talk is going to be pretty slangy and not necessarily something that any one not sleeping with a French person is going to be able to dream up.
I recall her as having lived (and had at least one relationship) in France.
Hey, I lived in France too!
Unfortunately I have no relevant experience.
I blush to recall a girlfriend with whom a great deal of the pillow talk was in French or Italian, though she spoke excellent English. I couldn't get through an elevator conversation in either language now.
166: Vous ressemblez juste à mon enfant infantile, amoureux.
Aimez-vous les oreillers? J'aime les oreillers. Parlons-en un peu plus d'oreillers, OK?
I couldn't get through an elevator conversation in either language now.
The good thing about pillow talk in a language you aren't completely at home with is that the only person (typically) who hears it is pretty forgiving about non idiomatic usage or worse.
Of course the bad thing can be that once you've stopped sleeping with them, if not before, they will tell their friends everything you goofed up.
Doesn't everyone say stupid things in bed?
I mean, regardless of the language?
169: Forgiving or, even better, just plain giving.
No, and now you've outed yourself.
170: "The reason is because I love you"
Bad attempt at a joke, clearly.
I'm hurt.
they will tell their friends everything you goofed up.
Including, presumably, the pillow talk.
173: I say stupid things everywhere. I'm hardly outing myself.
170: That's a really weird fortune cookie fortune.
Including, presumably, the pillow talk.
Well sure, if they run out of other aspects to ridicule.
179: Can I ridicule your standpiping?
Can I ridicule your standpiping?
better take it to the other blog.
I have proved my case, I think. This is why I should never "talk" to anyone.
Was there pillow dirt-heap talk on the veldt?
This is why I should never "talk" to anyone.
I thought that goût was a masculine noun. Wouldn't it be ton goût?
