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Trivial Pursuits => History => Topic started by: theinevitable on December 15, 2006, 04:57:27 am
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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/12/14/china.dolphins.ap/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/12/14/china.dolphins.ap/index.html)
Did they use the "Bao Xishun" signal to call him, or was he already in China on Herder-business?
What I'm saying is-- did they seriously say "This is a job for... BAO XISHUN!" and then go and get him? Because that really entertains me for some reason.
Also, reaching into a dolphin's stomach.
edit: also, shouldn't "World's tallest man saves plastic eating dolphins" be "plastic-eating?" Otherwise I am getting "The World's Tallest Man preserves Plastic by Eating Dolphins."
and, I mean, what? Do they mean he doesn't have to use his credit card?
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One of my great disappointments was realizing that I was gonna top out around 6'6".
I had hoped I was gonna be tall enough where I would be able to get by on freakish height alone.
Like... as a professional wrestler or as a circus freak or basketball player or something.
I wanna get by on something intrinsic about myself that requires no further effort.
Is that so wrong?
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One of my great disappointments was realizing that I was gonna top out around 6'6".
I had hoped I was gonna be tall enough where I would be able to get by on freakish height alone.
Like... as a professional wrestler or as a circus freak or basketball player or something.
I wanna get by on something intrinsic about myself that requires no further effort.
Is that so wrong?
It worked for John Holmes, why not you?
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damn, 6'6 is hell of tall. I'm shooting for 6', and I might make it (if I grow like half an inch more.)
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That's the thing, though.
It's tall enough for people to say "hey, Mike, you're hell of tall."
But I can't, like, sit in a tent and charge people ten bucks to see how tall I am.
The world owes me a living just for being, you see. I just haven't found the proper mechanism and... like... when young, I had hoped being tall would be it.
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I always prayed for 5'6". It didn't happen. My disappointment is like the empty, bitter Tristan and Isolde ocean.
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I always prayed for 5'6". It didn't happen. My disappointment is like the empty, bitter Tristan and Isolde ocean.
I once read a comic book about the Knights of the Round Table being reincarnated... into our future. Not even like, now? Their future? Our future. Laser guns, flying cars, the whole deal. Not even full-on reincarnation, they just "jump" into a bunch of fully-grown adults. For some reason.
And what ends up keeping Tristan and Isolde apart in the Laser-Gun Future is...
They both end up women.
I dunno, the gender politics of comic books just boggle my mind, sometimes.
Japanese comics, even more so.
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England is mine, and it owes me a living.
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I was confused by this headline when it was given without the 'plastic-eating' because of this other much sadder Chinese dolphin news at the same time:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061214/ap_on_sc/china_dolphin_extinction (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061214/ap_on_sc/china_dolphin_extinction)
I was all, wait, the scientists couldn't find them but then the world's tallest man somehow did? But, no such luck.
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What's up with the world's tallest man being from China? Doesn't that strike anyone else as a little ironic?
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Nah. Billion people over there, figures they're gonna have some tall dudes.
For the large-talent-pool reason alone, China should excel at just about every team sport in the Olympics. I dread the day they start a hockey program--out of a billion people, you gotta figure there's at least 20 dudes who can skate like motherfuckers.
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But will they also love to fight?
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I just got the strangest vision of three Chinese guys wearing horn-rim glasses and playing with their slot cars. The Han Son brothers.
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But will they also love to fight?
According to the law of Hong Kong Action, they will love to fight just for the heck of it/to regain lost honor.
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Like a lot of other short guys, I think the first thing I notice about someone is their height. Anyone over 6'3 or so fits into a category of "freakishly tall". One of the drawbacks of pro basketball in my opinion is that it seems to be more of a spectacle of the physically bizzare than an athletic contest.
There was a point when I was 11 or 12 that I grew 2 inches in 6 months, and I was thinking "here I go". I was looking forward to growth pains, ravenous appetite, knocking my forehead on the door frame, etc. I shot up to 5'7" - and there I have remained for 25 years. I held out some hope until I was 24 (apparently that's when the last growth plate closes - in the jaw of all places). I guess there's some consolation in being unusually short - I don't blend in with all the mopes between 5'9 and 5'11. Probably that's a coping mechanism though. I know when I watch football, lacrosse, or hockey that if I see someone on the roster around my height I'll root for him, even if he's on the visitor's team. Actually, one of the reasons I really love playing lacrosse is that there is a place for short guys in that sport - I wish I had discovered it while I was still in Jr High, rather than my 2nd year of college.
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I once read a comic book about the Knights of the Round Table being reincarnated... into our future. Not even like, now? Their future? Our future. Laser guns, flying cars, the whole deal. Not even full-on reincarnation, they just "jump" into a bunch of fully-grown adults. For some reason.
And what ends up keeping Tristan and Isolde apart in the Laser-Gun Future is...
They both end up women.
I dunno, the gender politics of comic books just boggle my mind, sometimes.
Japanese comics, even more so.
Camelot 3000 is fuck-awesome. Do not disrespect Camelot 3000.
To clarify: They were normal reincarnations, but when aliens invaded that qualified as "England's greatest hour of need" and Arthur awoke from his sleep under Glastonbury Tor. He then went around reawakening his reincarnated knights' memories of their past knightly incarnations.
Also, what was keeping Tristan and Isolde apart in it was not social disapproval, but Tristan's own belief that Isolde couldn't possibly love another woman - in the final issue, Isolde (well, her reincarnation) makes clear that in the future it doesn't really matter.
There is a lot to boggle at in the gender politics of comic books, true (wiki up "Women In Refrigerators" for further details) but don't take a half-remembered comic in bits and pieces to task over what you may or may not recall about it.
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jaydub-- really? I always think the people on the TV screen playing sports look to be kind of average. And then I see them in real life in an ice cream shop, and think "good lord... he had to duck to get through that door. he is tall as all get out."
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(wiki up "Women In Refrigerators" for further details)
I hesitate to follow this instruction because I can't imagine anything that wouldn't be a disappointment in comparison to that sentence all on its own.
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Camelot 3000 may well be awesome. I've never read the whole thing.
I'm just sayin'... the dude who wrote magical-lesbian-reincarnation Tristan and Isolde also invented Mantra. Ultimate Spider-Man seems to be runnin' with the same plot except with cloning instead of reincarnation and... like... half the run of the newest "Dial H for Hero" was about a dude gettin' stuck as a female superhero and ending up a stripper.
Not to mention that amazing amounts of anime also seem to revolve around the idea of men magically becoming women somehow and... escaping the career and social pressures of Japanese male cubicle-until-death culture by retreating into the safety and ease of the Eastern ideal of trophy wife-ism.
It seems like when comic book artists aren't killing off the Green Lantern's girlfriends in progressively gruesome way or eagerly awaiting "the rape pages" of Identity Crisis to come in... they're getting off to the fantasy of becoming pretty girls because being a pretty girl would somehow absolve them of all effort, they could just exist off being sexy women.
A friend of mine in college who was way into anime (he recently passed away of leukemia, sadly) and I worked up this whole theory about gender change in anime as a cultural reaction to their society's "castration" by nuclear bombs, recoiling away from war and business into doll-house stereotypes of womanhood.
"Ranma's One-Half-Culture: The Japanese Retreat into a Feminine That Does Not Exist" we called it.
Deal was, if either of us burned out and went back to get a higher degree and teach, first one to burn out would get that for a TV/Film theory doctoral thesis and totally be teaching wherever the hell we wanted in a week.
Camelot 3000 was probably quite good. Mantra was pretty good in its early run, too. I'm just sayin' that Mike W. Barr wants a pu$$y, probably. Nothing wrong with that. It's just amazing how much of comic book culture is either fat white guys hating pretty girls for not liking them or fat white guys wanting to BE pretty girls.
You REALLY wanna know about the weird sexism in the mainstream superhero comic industry?
Give this'un a read: http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/ (http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/)
It's a running blog by a woman who used to be an editor for DC Comics who quit because she couldn't deal with the sexism anymore and... yeah. It's some rough stuff but it's amazingly well-written and insightful.
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I've read that one and it's certainly thought-provoking.
I basically just tend to get hair-triggered when people start critiqueing comics that are actually quite excellent on the basis of their preconceptions about what that comic "must be like" rather than on the basis of what the comic is actually about. There is an entire sociosphere of comics critique which is as far as I can tell built on wave after wave of people telling each other what Golden and Silver Age titles were like without ever bothering to actually read them.
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I just got the strangest vision of three Chinese guys wearing horn-rim glasses and playing with their slot cars. The Han Son brothers.
You know, I was really proud of this particular jape, yet it got no love.
Sigh.
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I canned you it 'cause it made me think "Putting on the foyer, Coach!"
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I canned you it 'cause it made me think "Putting on the foyer, Coach!"
A can for appreciating that old time (chinese) hockey.
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jaydub-- really? I always think the people on the TV screen playing sports look to be kind of average... "
Well, yeah - until you see them on the sidelines with the trainers or whatnot and you see a "normal man" coming up to the center's elbow. Or standing with the ref for the coin toss. Or best of all, when a female trainer stands on a bench to spray gatorade into a offensive tackle's mouth. The fact that we're actually the same species as some of those guys is pretty unbelievable sometimes.
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oh, see, I never watch sports broadcasts long enough to see any of these things.
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Like a lot of other short guys, I think the first thing I notice about someone is their height. Anyone over 6'3 or so fits into a category of "freakishly tall". One of the drawbacks of pro basketball in my opinion is that it seems to be more of a spectacle of the physically bizzare than an athletic contest.
There was a point when I was 11 or 12 that I grew 2 inches in 6 months, and I was thinking "here I go". I was looking forward to growth pains, ravenous appetite, knocking my forehead on the door frame, etc. I shot up to 5'7" - and there I have remained for 25 years. I held out some hope until I was 24 (apparently that's when the last growth plate closes - in the jaw of all places). I guess there's some consolation in being unusually short - I don't blend in with all the mopes between 5'9 and 5'11. Probably that's a coping mechanism though. I know when I watch football, lacrosse, or hockey that if I see someone on the roster around my height I'll root for him, even if he's on the visitor's team. Actually, one of the reasons I really love playing lacrosse is that there is a place for short guys in that sport - I wish I had discovered it while I was still in Jr High, rather than my 2nd year of college.
Ain't nothing wrong with short dudes. My boyfriend is 5'7", and he's the sexiest man on the planet. I'm 5'4", so I don't have the weird height complex that tall girls tend to have. One of my cousins, Johanna, is close to 6 feet tall and although she's hella gorgeous, she's insecure about being so tall, and tends to slouch. :( Dammit, lady! Stand tall and be proud! And for folks who ain't so tall, like me: Be happy with your height, 'cos I am.
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Do tall girls have inverse short man syndrome?
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Hella yeah that I've noticed. Being taller than average (6'3") made working through female volleyball players in college ripe pickins. They could wear heels and not slouch around me while still having a complex for me to riff on to my advantage.
Heh, that post makes me realize anew that maybe I'm a kinda jerk.
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I'm cursed with being 6' tall. It's taller than average, but still so very normal and boringin its perfect roundedness.
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Being taller than average (6'3") made working through female volleyball players in college ripe pickins.
You are describing something I wanted to do very much in college.
But I quickly learned that I lacked the one thing that pretty much all the female athletes of Syracuse University were looking for in a lover:
A pu$$y.
"Tall girls, tall girls everywhere and none of them liked dink" to paraphrase.
(frowny emoticon here)
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You are describing something I wanted to do very much in college.
But I quickly learned that I lacked the one thing that pretty much all the female athletes of Syracuse University were looking for in a lover:
A pu$$y.
"Tall girls, tall girls everywhere and none of them liked dink" to paraphrase.
(frowny emoticon here)
That story confuses me. Why are men attracted to lesbians? Or were you just hitting on attractive women and then finding out that they weren't straight? I ask this as a serious question because lesbians don't go for men. They like women. Why do fellas hold so dearly onto their "convert the lesbian" fantasy? See also "Chasing Amy".
A guy that I knew in college loved to go to parties with the womens' rugby team in hopes of getting some. Was he ever successful? NO. Dude should have been focusing on flirting with women who are straight. He would've had maybe half a chance there.
Maybe it's the grass-is-greener mindset that makes men (and women) want what they can't have?
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I've always tended to be into tomboy-type ladies and, though it would be unfair as an across-the-board stereotype, it is fair to say that tomboy-type ladies are of a higher percentage into ladies and... therefore... my poor collegiate luck.
It had nothing to do with being "into lesbians" or "wanting to turn lesbians" or anything.
Digging on tomboys and tall girls just tends to lend you down that blind alley more than other tastes in women, I think.
Not that I actually ever dated a six-footer, such as would have been awesome, but pretty much all of the girls I've dated have been assertive and artsy and strong and such. My girlfriend Adri tends to do the fixing of stuff around here and I'm the one who does the bookkeeping and the bills and such.
The only thing that is not perfect about her is that she is 5'7 and not 6'1.
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yeah, I have been quoted as saying "I like girls who kind of look like boys."
of course, only kind of. I have not dated any of these. My current Lady, especially, is very Ladylike.
The "looking like boys" comment is mostly that the girls I go for are typically twiggy and short-haired. I have also noticed that glasses make me automatically think a girl is 10 times cuter, but, that's neither here nor there.
(it's actually kind of strange. it's like I use short hair + glasses as a mental shortcut to judge a girl as pretty. This has led to me pointing out girls as "cute" who were anything but... simply because my primitive male brain only noticed their eyeglasses and coiffure.)
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Have to agree with lfm here. It's a tomboy thing, an iconoclast thing, not an unattainable goal thing. But then, half the students at my college were women, and about two-thirds of them were gay (or at least believed they were). Only about 5% of the guys at my school were gay. This leads to a terrible ratio of availability for the straight guys, and an incredibly phenomenal ratio of availability for the straight ladies. Once in a while you're gonna get tired of the games straight chicks play, and you're gonna fall for someone who A) doesn't put up with that kind of shit and B) has tits.
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That story confuses me. Why are men attracted to lesbians? (...) Maybe it's the grass-is-greener mindset that makes men (and women) want what they can't have?
Sexual fantasies have nothing to do with real-world applicability. Take this from someone who is so deeply embedded in the comics/anime/science-fiction dork giraffebowl that he can't see the edge. Usually when I see the "why is any male attracted to lesbians? They won't go for you!" question it is being posed in the context of, say, the new Batwoman or one of the lesbian characters from Sailor Moon, without the viability of figures who are fundamentally nonexistent as sexual fantasy objects being ever questioned. Well, it's like that. Nobody would question the viability of a sexual fantasy involving a favorite actress, or assume that its existence meant that the person with the fantasy somehow failed to grasp that Hollywood actresses are not generally attracted to the kinds of dudes who post on Internet message boards about cartoon cats. It's a fantasy.
Trying to actually apply the fantasy in real life is something that does indicate a lack of grasp, but as others have said in this case it was probably more an "I like tomboys" thing. Which is pretty normal, all told; a significant percentage of heterosexual men in experiments preferred female faces that had been slightly composited with the features of an attractive man, and a significant percentage of heterosexual women preferred male faces that had been slightly composited with the features of an attractive woman.
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Lezzy porn, now, that's a completely different bag of weasels. Let Daddy try to explain.
To the straight man, the woman is innately beautiful, her preferences disregarded. The beautiful woman clothed is enough to dream of. The beautiful woman nude is the dearest dream.
At this point comes the veering apart of male and female fantasy. Women have characteristically throughout history desired the emotional and compounding love of a mate for life; men have tended to be children of the libido, chasing any beauty who happens to pass through the field of vision. Some blame it on instinct, those claims having no foundation; others point to Mr. Heaven and his directive to procreate (the fertility of men much higher than that of women), the need for which has been long overshadowed; still others point to psychology and claim Nurture as the victor, demonstrating that more and more fathers stray and subscribe to dirty magazines then destined for discovery by teenaged boys. The explanation may well remain hidden for generations. Science and faith have been working fruitlessly to explain it. Perhaps there is none? Echos of the fact are seen in homosexual relationships: lesbians tend stay together monogamously for years; gay men tend to stray periodically even during long-term commitments.
As stated: the woman is beautiful. The male continuation is: the more beautiful women there are around, the better a day it is. This holds true in any situation except family gatherings (and even then in some states). It is a happy man who works in an office full of beautiful women. Ask any Italian. The clothed/nude corollary also stated previously continues to hold: A fantasy of a beautiful woman naked can be sublime. The passive act of seeing beautiful women, clothed, make a man smile if only to himself. The product of the fantasy of many beautiful women, naked, is at this point simple math -- and fantasies continue down each individual's specific avenues of desire.
All this (somewhat strained, I admit) logic yields not a fact, but a trend: Straight men trend to dig the thought of two hotties doing the dirty. If the internet is any indicator, it might be true.
Two cans to anyone who can point out my logical fallacies :)
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See, I'll explain the lesbian porn angle even quicker.
Lesbian porn is the Miller Lite of pornography: less c*ck, tastes great.
There is no lingering revulsion to seeing another man's c*ck/lingering fear that part of what's turning you on is another man's c*ck. It is all naked girls doing stuff, no assault to your male heterosexuality on any level...
Except, of course, for the extent to which the man watching the film is both fetishing the women AND identifying (on some level) with whichever woman is the more active part in the gettin' down and ultimately leaving you open to...
Coming off like a dude who actually wants to be lady. (Full circle!)
Mostly, though, no floppy balls, no strange distended c*ckes, no accidental views of manbutt.
All. Naked. Ladies.
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+1 can to lfm for simplifying my theory. Boiling it down to Miller Lite? So great.
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That story confuses me. Why are men attracted to lesbians?
Well for me it's because the dykes are the only ones into jazz and weed.
But it simplifies down to the fact that lesbians tend to have more in common with men than straight women.
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it's because the dykes are the only ones into jazz and weed.
Aw, man, ain't it the truth. Not so much jazz but...
Somehow, there's something very very attractive about a female stoner, if she otherwise has her head together.
Not, like, a headcase who follows Phish around and doesn't wash and frequents screwed-up hippie orgies and such... but a girl you can blow a joint with and listen to AJA, maybe get out of your goards and start writing Conan O'Brien scripts in crayon and then...
The rest of the time is pretty much a normal person?
Bliss.
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Somehow, there's something very very attractive about a female stoner, if she otherwise has her head together.
Not, like, a headcase who follows Phish around and doesn't wash and frequents screwed-up hippie orgies and such... but a girl you can blow a joint with and listen to AJA, maybe get out of your goards and start writing Conan O'Brien scripts in crayon and then...
The rest of the time is pretty much a normal person?
Bliss.
Yep. Been married to one for 18 years now. I highly recommend it.
P.S. -- It's still good even though we both quit smoking almost ten years ago.
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A can to Choop for that sublime prose. I smile a lot at work, if only to myself.
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In a lovely denouement to the thread:
World's tallest man finds love (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2044951,00.html)
(Yes, this is a big story)
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(Yes, this is a big story)
Well, his wife's quite a small story. I could seriosuly never date anyone two feet shorter than me... That would just be weird!
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I am hell of digging on some shorter ladies lately. However, 2 feet shorter than me would be... an extreme.
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However, 2 feet shorter than me would be... an extreme.
Less crude jokes made about where her head is in relation to his crotch, the better.
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Well, keep in mind that she's 5'6", which means she's still taller than the average lady. (And me.)
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I am 5' 2" and everyone considers me "short" except me. I mean, I know I'm a tiny person, but I never *feel* short except when I'm in a crowd and I realize I can't see anything except peoples' backs and sterna and elbows. I like being the size I am. Mr. MoF is a full foot taller than I am. I like it. It trips some primal "The Man Is The Protector" vibe in me that is really nice.
And lfm, I think you have an idea for pure academic gold, there. You should publish it now, burnout or no!
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despite being about 6' tall, I still think of most people as being taller than me. Until 8th or 9th grade, i was always the shortest guy.