Mab has sent me three photographs taken at her dacha — ! her dacha ! — outside Moscow. It’s SO interesting to see where the Hatters live.
These are older pictures taken with a not-very-good camera. The road in the dacha community where my little house is:
the light one morning, taken after I came out of the outhouse and saw what I call “Hester Prynne” light:
and one of my cats with a spectacular mushroom (I stuck her there to show the size of the mushroom):
An update, July 5, from mab (I ought to mention that if you click two times on the pictures you will get them much enlarged and in more detail): These pictures I took Friday late afternoon with my better camera.
This mushroom definitely looks poisonous….
The Queen Anne’s Lace had a nice bug on it:) (Click twice to see the bug at a reasonable size –AJP)
I rent two rooms built on to the garage, with a kind of terrace between them. The yard shot is the view from my terrace looking back into the yard. My landlord’s house is a kind of double house (for two families), designed by my landlady’s brother-in-law, who is a relatively famous architect here. The “other side of the house” is the view of his side of the house from the back of the yard.
You can see that we don’t do much landscaping — we just live in the woods.
A Bad Guide 
Incredible. I’ve never seen a dacha before. Now I want one.
Me too. How do they do those sunbeams? The Scarlet Letter isn’t very Russian.
Very nice indeed.
And the cat is gorgeous.
So, what is the difference between the ‘birch’ mushroom and the ‘white’ mushroom? Are they what Americans call porcini?
I’m sure you already know that белый гриб “white mushroom” or боровик is the wiki translation for the US porcini. The Norwegian is steinsopp (like Steinpilz in German) and they grow where we live, but we aren’t sure enough to pick them (we pick chanterelles, among others, though).
I suspect mab may be a Russian mushroom expert.
MMcM — are you asking about the difference between Boletus edulis (porcini) and Agaricus bisporus (white/cremini/portobello)? I assume that this is a mycological question rather than a culinary one. I’m not familiar with a ‘birch’ mushroom, per se, and Wikipedia only directs me to Leccinum scabrum, a European species with which I’m unfamiliar.
Mushroom identification is endlessly fascinating and extremely difficult, often calling for spore prints, chemical assays, or microscopic study. At the moment I’m only equipped for the first of these. But as the vaguest of starting points, note that the porcini, being a bolete, has pores under the cap whereas the white/cremini/portobello has gills. Of course, many poisonous species match belong to either category.
What I’m asking is what are the two mushrooms in the wrong question:
— Какая же разница между бѣлымъ и березовымъ?
— Въ шляикѣ почти нѣтъ разницы, но въ корнѣ.
Either botanically or modern English common names. I’ve seen what Wikipedia says on Boletus edulis and Leccinum scabrum, but are those the two?
Ah. Then my bookshelf probably won’t help you; mushroom guides tend to be pretty regional in scope. Both B. edulis and L. scabrum appear to be found throughout the northern hemisphere, and both are known to grow under birches, and L. scabrum’s name suggests bristles on the stalk, but neither is particularly white — the former being somewhat brownish to brownish-red, and the latter being, I think, a light brown. I’ve skimmed an English translation of the linked chapter and doubt there’s enough information to know what Tolstoy had in mind with any degree of certainty. Another mushroom referenced there, for example, said to have a red cap and white flesh, reminds me of the Russula emetica, which is said to have a peppery flavor and induce vomiting, at least when raw — pace Arora’s mention of its use in Himalayan cooking. I spotted one in the woods today but will not be sampling anytime soon.
I should have included it originally, but here is some English, with annoying (but fungally topical) ads, but without having to download the whole novel for just one chapter.
One of the things I am not completely certain on is indeed whether Tolstoy’s Russian readers would have specifically identified the references. I admit it’s possible not.
This is where dictionaries sometimes don’t do so well, latching onto one species, even when several are possible, or failing to note varietal distinctions more important to foragers and greengrocers than mycologists.
The only problem this year at the dacha is that my server goes down for long periods without warning…
Isn’t it lovely out here? This is an old dacha community that first served the scientific elite — members of the Academy of Sciences — so the lots are big by Russian standards.
The mushroom is a porcini (“white”). An under-the-birch (подберезовик)is a birch bolete. I actually don’t know them well; I think you have to grow up picking them. When I go mushroom hunting with friends, I just stop and point like a setter and wait for someone to tell me if what I’ve spotted is edible or will kill me instantly. I can only pick out lisichki (chanterelles) and whites with any certainty. But I do know how to cook them (and eat them in large quantities).
Russians know them to every last blemish and coloration. I’ll find something I’m sure is fine, and they’ll say, “No no no — you see the fans under the cap? They should be slightly gray. And the shape is wrong — the stem should be straight, with no narrowing towards the cap….” And this is a 4-year-old speaking.
And isn’t my cat pretty? She’s a Siberian, a long-ago cross between a domestic shorthair and a Persian. She has incredibly long, thick and silky hair, short legs, and a kind of turned up nose. She has the silly name of Trixie. She was a stray my pet food store took in; they had run out of names and called her Triksi, which is simply the name of a German company whose pet supplies they import. But I had an old cat name Ed, and since I grew up watching the Honeymooners, I had to take her.
Yes, Trixie’s a lovely cat. Don’t you have a picture of your other one?
Did the Famous Architect build the pale-yellow brick bits, or are they from an Academy of Sciences’ dacha?
Wow, more dacha pictures. I would have missed it if Kron hadn’t made a new comment on the thread and I saw it by accident.
Techi note: if you want to make a new post, but you want a different post to stay on the front page of your blog for a while, you can make it “sticky” so it is the first thing people see when they click on your URL.
The red mushroom looks like the red-capped variety of Amanita muscaria (fly agaric). The Amanitas are generally the most poisonous mushrooms and most likely to be lethal if ingested.
Looks like a fine, proud cat.
Do I have pictures of my other cat? Can birds fly? (that is, will send).
Trixie is actually a slut cat who thinks she’s a Golden Retriever. She greets guests by flopping down on her back so that they can pet her white belly.
Ah, the architect figures it out. No, the famous architect’s side of the house has no yellow brick, and he rather disdains the in-laws for using it. But it was 1991, the country was bankrupt, and my landlords used whatever they could find to build up the house.
The red mushroom is actually an older picture, taken one late August. SnowLeopard knows his toadstools. It’s a very poisonous mushroom. But then, who’d want to eat it?
One of the things I am not completely certain on is indeed whether Tolstoy’s Russian readers would have specifically identified the references. I admit it’s possible not.
As mab says, Russians know everything about mushrooms from the earliest age. I had a Russian visit me in Massachusetts and she took a basket as a matter of course when we took her on a nature walk, and spent quite a bit of time scouting the bases of trees. There is no chance Tolstoy’s readers would not have been fully au courant with his mushroom references. (I myself have a very useful book on Russian mushrooms that’s been of great help with Russian literature.)
Thanks, I’ve now done this.
Friends who lived in Basle said that they’d go a-mushrooming on a Sunday and then repair to the Municipal Mushroom Inspector, show him their harvest, and he’d pull out all the lethal ones for them.
he’d pull out all the lethal ones for them
I wonder what kind of premiums he pays for malpractice insurance. My understanding is that even in Russia, hundreds die each year from mushroom poisoning.
A mistake? In Switzerland? Hard to imagine.
SnowLeopard is right — people get sick and die here from mushrooms every year. Russians believe that either 1) they mutate or 2) mushrooms “soak” up the bad ecology.
But… Switzerland IS Switzerland.
That happens here too. You can go to our local town on a Sunday afternoon and have your mushrooms evaluated by an amateur who knows what she’s looking at.
One of the many things that makes Norway a reasonable place to live is that people don’t often sue one another.
The red mushroom looks like the red-capped variety of Amanita muscaria
Yes, that jibes with my Norwegian mushroom book.
I wonder if mushrooms in foreign languages are part of MMcM’s vegetarian book collection? If so, I’ve got a jolly good one for him.
1. I believe that it is unwise to trust visitors from across the sea in these matters, no matter how competent they are in distinguishing fungi at home. There will be useful local lore about just what detail distinguishes some food item from its evil twin, and there is no reason the visitors will know this.
2. My wife’s parents used to do some mushroom-foraging, and they had a friend who was much more knowledgeable about it. One day a basket of fungi appeared on their doorstep, with a note saying “thought you might be interested in these”, but some of them looked like seriously inedible varities. Puzzled as to whether they were really OK, they went to the friend’s house and caught him just as he was leaving. His response: “I didn’t mean interested in eating them; I meant interested in identifying them!”
3. Small pet peeve: The convention
mushroom = edible
toadstool = poisonous
I thought a toadstool was something gnomes lived in.
Sorry this is off topic, but I didn’t know where else to post it: I was just about to reply to Language Hat: The Movie and now it’s gone. Tantalizingly, I can still see the references to the recent comments in the sidebar, but when I try to click on one of them, I’m told I’m *totally* in the wrong place, like I’ve done something really stupid. So, what gives?
I’m guessing Crown has taken away that page temporarily for some editing.
I’m sorry you missed it. It was getting a bit rude and rowdy, so I’ve taken it away. A far better idea than mine anyway was Grumbly Stu’s Barchester Towers, here.
In my opinion you were wise to remove it. I have been thinking that this romp, engaging as it was for a number of us, offered some of the same dangers as the “amateur theatricals” in Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park”.
I’ve never heard of that towers thing you keep linking to. Am I missing something?
Barchester Towers is a novel by Anthony Trollope, who’s one of the better 19th-century English novelists.
You can look at Grumbly’s page and then read a bit about the novel on Wiki. I’m almost sure they’d have it at your public library. You should read “The Warden” first, before you read BT, because they are both part of a series.
Mansfield Park would be a good one to cast after Barchester Towers. I see Noetica as Mrs Norris and of course Grumbly as Fanny Price.
If you look at the number of comments for “Language Hat the Movie” it’s pretty impressive. I counted 62 comments, not including the ones that were deemed offensive. Nothing I have written has ever generated that kind of interest.
Part of the reason it’s so fascinating is because of the nature of the internet. How do you interact with someone without being able to see and hear them? Trying to choose a character/actor for someone gives us more clues about who they are–clues we normally get from non-verbal signals. Seeing what character someone else chooses for us is also fun, because it hopefully gives us a mirror to how we are communicating in this still-new technology.
I’m not sure exactly what was said, but I’m guessing someone was offended by someone else’s internet behaviour and instead of asking them about it, made disparaging remarks about the actor/alter-ego playing them. It could probably happen on any thread. In all fairness, the thread also did have some very well thought out and complex and insightful comments as well.
From the techie standpoint there are several options. Comments can be edited or deleted. Personally I have never deleted anything, including hate speech, although I do point out what it is and why it’s offensive. Profanity I edit with asterisks (I tell WordPress I’m child-friendly.) You can also close comments on a particular thread, or you can open a new thread to discuss a particular topic. As far as individual commenters, you can ban someone by putting their IP in the filter, or you can put specific words in the filter so they will be held for moderation and you have to approve the comment before it does public. For that matter you can put your whole blog in moderation, but that’s a bit extreme and is usually only done in the case of stalkers.
The only thing I remember from that era in England is Mrs. Malaprop from Sheridan’s The Rivals. It didn’t encourage me to seek out more of the same, so perhaps my education in this area has been neglected. Grumbly’s page and the Wiki were likewise uninspiring, or I wouldn’t have asked. Reminds me of the thread on LH where everyone talked about the sound of the words in a given work. I had always read for content. It persuaded me to read Hemingway for the first time, and although he didn’t really resonate with me, I saw his complex sentence structures and started to get an idea of what people were talking about. I also started being less afraid to write complex sentences, I habit I got out of after I took English 101.
Fair enough, it’s your blog and your decision, but I probably wouldn’t have been so confused if I hadn’t still been able to see and click on the comment links, although that didn’t take me anywhere useful. As a matter of fact, the links are still there now. Why did you not remove them as well?
He can’t remove them if they are merely “private”. It’s the way the this particular theme works. If he wants them to disappear from the comments he would have to type
visibility>edit>public>okay (it is still invisible to the public at this point), then
status>edit>pending review>okay
then “publish”. They are all then invisible on the front page.
Instead of “pending review” he could also select “draft”. (I just tested these on my blog that has the same theme.)
The only advantage of “pending review” over “draft” is that if you tend to have a lot of drafts (I keep minor passwords, like for computer lab, in unpublished drafts), it makes it easier to find it if you want to do something with it later.
Perhaps to go with our Grumbly Stu I could be Sycophant Stu because I applaud the decision to remove the “movie” page. AJP’s blog is a real oasis of tranquility for me and anything that restores that is to be applauded.
You could be Crumbly Stu (with a C).
Seriously, I had a nagging sense all along that there was something ill-advised about this casting game. It did not stop me from playing the game, but it was there all the same. I have been thinking of saying something about it, but have been held back by not wanting to be a wet blanket. I’m glad it’s over; I don’t know how much my reasons overlap with the reasons behind with Crown’s decision; I’d like to post this even though the point is now, in a way, moot.
I stumbled upon the LH blog two or three weeks ago. (An idle search for references to Daffy Duck’s line “pronoun trouble” happens to be what brought me there.) It was love at first sight, and I have been hanging around ever since. I have also been hanging around Bad Guide. (These are the first blogs that I have ever frequented.)
Not that all of what goes on at LH means much to me, but I was drawn right in by the factual content, the sense of shared interests, the spirit of fun, and something harder to define. My appreciation for this community has been deepened by dipping into the archives. I saw newcomers showing uncertainty, being welcomed gracefully, and coming to see themselves as part of the gang. I came across a couple of long threads from last year in which some real strains that developed were dealt with in a way that reflected the good intentions of all concerned. (I am thinking of the very long one in which Crown was said to have been thrown in the pool, and the other one where people were getting their panties in a twist.)
It is famously difficult to communicate nuance of feeling over the internet. I personally worry sometimes about whether something I have written will be taken in the right spirit, or even about whether I meant it in the right spirit. Internet contact can bring us close together while at the same time keeping us far apart. The lack of faces and voices makes for a lot of guesswork, as does the fact that you do not entirely know who will be reading what you write. In view of all these difficulties I marvel at the successful establishment of such a sense of cohesiveness and trust at LH.
Some of this has been said by Nijma in this thread, but I’m not inclined to put such a positive spin on it, in relation to the casting game, as she did.
I worried about some Hatters feeling left out, feeling left out of some inner circle, if they didn’t find out about the game until after the fact. I worried about hard feelings on the part of those who were not mentioned. I worried about giving offense to people who are very much part of the LH community but who present a more serious front, by involving them, even passively, against their will. I worried about the sudden potential for new kinds of one-upsmanship. I worried about us giving offense to each other by presuming more intimacy than was appropriate, maybe in the course of striving to be in the inner circle.
Okay, I didn’t worry about all of this right away, and I didn’t put it into words for myself until now, but it has been bothering me, and I have been asking myself whether I want to speak out. It’s possible that my concerns were baseless, but I don’t see any downside to expressing them.
In fact, if Crown had not put a stop to the casting game, I might have aired all these concerns and suggested that, just in case there are any hard feelings about this anywhere, we should blame it all on Crown and, in a collective gesture of unity and cleansing, throw him in the pool again. But under the circs I think we can skip that.
I worried about some Hatters feeling left out, feeling left out of some inner circle,… I worried about…I worried about…I worried about us giving offense to each other by presuming more intimacy than was appropriate, maybe in the course of striving to be in the inner circle.
This is just plain weird on so many levels.
So what was the offensive comment about?
This is all getting a bit pointlessly polysyllabic and pataphysical for my tastes. When the pretty pictures and simple comments come back, so will I. All this talk of “inner circles” reminds me too much of Usenet esoterica.
Nijma,
I am not aware of any particularly offensive comment. I don’t know any more than you do about what led Crown to make the thread go away. I never even saw any comments on that thread after my last one about Andie MacDowell.
I know how I was feeling, and I have tried to explain part of it. I want to add that another part of how I was feeling was that we are all having some harmless fun. But I wanted to acknowledge those concerns, in case it helped anyone who had similar concerns or whose feelings had been hurt a little.
I’m not laying any blame. I know that I have been heavy-handed in expressing myself. I was pretty sure I was making a little too much of a big deal of this, but on the other hand I had something to say that seemed important to me.
I’ve never heard of Usenet. I am new around here. I am suddenly very embarrassed. I liked it when this was an oasis, too. Sorry. Can we just rewind, please?
And, Crown, that stuff about throwing you in the pool was meant to be a light touch. Please don’t take offense.
I should have made my question more clear. What was the offensive comment about, AJP. In general. If you don’t mind “sharing”.
Protected: Language Hat: The Movie.
4 July 2009 • 62 Comments
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Oh my, this blog is becoming a Clan des 7* of its own. Or is it a club, with restricted membership? What on Earth has been said there that cannot stay in the public eye? Not that Grumbly Stu has been dressing like a Tijuana whore I hope! (An illustrated article, a piece of video?)
Never did I imagine that this movie was not to be seen by people under 18. But I shall wait, patiently.
* Secret Seven
Oooh! Kron! If it’s got pic of
Grumbly, send me the password!!!1! My email is on my blog.
All visual evidence was destroyed 44 years ago. I even burned the negatives. So you guys can recall the sleuths and save yourselves the investigative expense accounts. Nobody can prove that I wasn’t just making it all up. <* giggles like a mad thing *>
As to The Movie: I think that, as time went on, JJ was experiencing the same qualms as those now described so well by empty. I certainly was. One of my last comments, before the riot police moved in, was that “what had begun as a pleasant conceit was degenerating into tackiness”.
degenerating into tackiness
…whereas before we were talking about high-minded stuff like Grumbly’s miniskirt outfit with the purple fuzzy sweater and how to amuse people at parties by pulling long strings of snot out of your nose.
This is just plain weird on so many levels.Nijma, you’ve said several times, as above, that for a long time you were only able to “read for content”, and didn’t understand “the thread on LH where everyone talked about the sound of the words in a given work”. If that were true, it would explain why you don’t seem to understand the feelings that empty wrote about, and why you call them “weird”.
But I don’t actually buy your story. You’re just as capable of insinuation and snide asides as I am, or any of us (some of us, anyway) – capable of dishing it out, and of suspecting we are the target of it. Where you and I differ, apart from taste in frizzy sweaters, is that I back down explicitly and frankly when I feel belatedly that I’ve overstepped the line, or see that someone is seriously offended by something I’ve written – whether or not it was intentional on my part. But I get the impression you would rather cut your throat than eat crow, or even acknowledge what’s on the plate the waitress has just slammed down in front of you. You clutch your grievances like a terrier biting a shoe. Let up already!
Again I must remind you that it was not “pulling long strings of snot out of your nose”, but dribbling long strings of saliva out of your mouth. The mouth is below the nose, and has very different functions, even at parties.
And that was a completely different thread, if I may be permitted the pun.
This post is password protected.
I put it up so that Bruessel, having been herself portrayed in it (by David Suchet, aka Poirot), could at least take a look at what was going on. Now it’s been destroyed; the pieces of code were sunk in concrete containers to the bottom of the deepest fjord in Norway.
She replied:
(The answer to that is it’s Sylvester Stallone who wishes to play me.)
There was no one outburst that made me take it down, it was more that I didn’t like the tone and I was feeling queasy about the whole game (Grumbly’s is much better and, what’s more, it might even encourage Nij not to write-off Trollope — who, in addition to writing all those novels, also invented the post-office pillar box).
I pretty much agree with everything empty wrote, above (at 4:21 am). I think empty would be a very good blogger; perhaps he could write one with tgg , nafahthi and Russell Crowe.
perhaps he could write one with tgg , nafahthi and Russell Crowe
What a fabulous idea! I’m going to ask Mabel to contribute more to my site, and bring her friends along.
I didn’t know she had any friends.
Of course she has friends. As I’ve related at Hat, she dates Jan Phillip Reemtsma occasionally, which elevates the tone of her circle somewhat (though I suspect she’s primarily interested in the duty-free cigarettes he brings from Germany). Recently she made new acquaintance in the Juárez pokey, where she had to spend a week due to a misunderstanding about smuggling. A waitress has to get along with all kinds of folks. She has a heart of gold, as many a wronged woman in the past has had.
You don’t frequent such social strata, I suspect, so you may imagine things to be worse than they are. The weather in Norway probably keeps hot-blooded low-life at bay, so perhaps you don’t even have opportunities to improve and instruct yourself on these matters. Seen from within, though, it’s just Dickens-on-the-city and Hardy-on-the-country. jamessal, in his book, presented all the characters with complete impartiality, no goodies and no baddies. That kind of literary probity is a hard thing to achieve, and I think he did it well. Life itself is almost impossible to handle in that way.
Consider my graceful manners and urbane conversation, for instance. Do they not more than compensate my unclubbable origins in the flesh-pots of West Texas? Didn’t you just suggest that I should play Fanny Price?
I was afraid to look this morning and see more evidence that I had been just acting weird and ruining things for people. I was beginning to wonder if I was the one who needed to be thrown in the water this time. Thanks for the support, Grumbly and Crown. I think I will have a better night’s sleep tonight.
Nobody is unclubbable here. But did you have to club Nijma so hard?
This all has a history, going back to my first weeks at Hat. Sometimes one has to get things off one’s chest, even though silence would be the better part in a public forum. All I ask of Nijma is: let up already! ‘Nuff said.
a history, going back to my first weeks at Hat
It sounds like boarding school.
How does Mabel know German tobacco money like the Reemtsma family? Or does she come from very old cigarettes herself?
Yes, much like boarding school as I know it from English novels. In Texas, we had to go out on the range to gather experiences in bullying, subordination and furtive fumbling.
Mabel chipped in for the first time as “Mabel (Waitress)” in this Hat thread, as far as I can reconstruct things. There, among other things, she mentions dating Reemtsma “when he passes through town” (El Paso), though typically she doesn’t say exactly how she met him.
That was quite an interesting thread, Stu.
Amazing grasp of German Mabel has, considering she’s from El Paso. How’s her Spanish?
Serviceable, like the goats in season.
I mean: pretty good when she’s in the mood.
But I don’t actually buy your story. You’re just as capable of insinuation and snide asides as I am, or any of us (some of us, anyway) – capable of dishing it out, and of suspecting we are the target of it. Where you and I differ, apart from taste in frizzy sweaters, is that I back down explicitly and frankly when I feel belatedly that I’ve overstepped the line, or see that someone is seriously offended by something I’ve written – whether or not it was intentional on my part. But I get the impression you would rather cut your throat than eat crow, or even acknowledge what’s on the plate the waitress has just slammed down in front of you. You clutch your grievances like a terrier biting a shoe. Let up already!
Well said. As for not clubbing Nijma, if she would somehow restrain herself from coming into a perfectly pleasant thread and saying something like “This is just plain weird on so many levels” to someone who is trying hard to explain difficult feelings, she wouldn’t have to experience the occasional clubbings. She combines a cheerful willingness to offend others with eagerness to take offense herself, never a winning combo.
Oh, and I was glad to see the movie thread disappear; it made me uncomfortable too, for reasons that empty described better than I could.
Wow, what a thread to have missed! As Hat and Crown know, I’ve been on vacation, travelling south for BBQ and fried chicken — all of which food ventures will of course be recounted on Robin’s blog: caviarandcodfish.com. For now, let me just say (since I’m sleepless after catching a cold) that Savanna, GA, absolutely seduced us. We love that city. The spanish moss draped all over every oak tree makes the whole place sad and creepy and really, really sexy.
Mab: To answer your question in the Muntz thread, Champ is a mutt: part (we’re constantly guessing) rottweiler, mastiff, yellow lab, German shepherd, chow (spots on tongue), and maybe some akita. He’s the most snuggly dog I’ve ever met, let alone owned.
Your cats look really impressive. How much do they weigh? And the dacha is just gorgeous.
jamessal, in his book, presented all the characters with complete impartiality, no goodies and no baddies. That kind of literary probity is a hard thing to achieve, and I think he did it well.
Thanks, Grumbly! After spending some time just now in the Savannah slums (they’re gorgeous, in their way; plus, great fried chicken), I may have to try describing such strata again, in one form or another (though this time as more of an outsider). It is tricky, neither romanticizing nor condescending (nor being boring!).
Empty: I’m glad you found us! Having watched Good Fellas a hundred times as a teenager, I was tickled to be played by Robert DeNiro. But no, you were dead-on. Well said.
Having watched Good Fellas a hundred times as a teenager, I also know it’s spelled Goodfellas.
jamessal: is Champ a Leaner? You know — the kind of dog who lopes up to you when you are sitting at the table and leans against you? Well, in any case, he’s clearly true to his name.
I don’t know who much the Trickster weighs. Every time the vets come — in Moscow THIS IS GOING TO MAKE YOU ALL SICK WITH ENVY the vets come to your house — I say in a small voice, “I guess she’s overweight, huh?” The vet always says, Нормально! It’s her constitution, you see.
(In a small voice again) I think of LH and this blog as the internet equivalents of my dacha: a peaceful place to hang out with witty, intelligent, knowledgeable people. Sometimes the electricity goes off at the dacha or — like now — we go through day after day after week of cold rainy weather. Or sometimes someone has a bad hair day on the blogs. Oh well. Бывает.
Нормально! Vet’s visits, big-boned constitution — if only they were Нормально.
Thanks for that mab.
And now, due to the demands of house, family, garden and (other) animals, I will be taking a holiday from blogging.
I will be taking a holiday from blogging.
Well, come back soon, for Pete’s sake! We’ve become accustomed to our daily goat (or dacha, as the case may be)!
I second what Hat said!
I am absolutely stunned. (et tu,
Steve?) I finally find someone’s open router with an intermittent low signal I can hop on to do some internet surfing and I find that I am late to the party.
I was glad to see the movie thread disappear; it made me uncomfortable…
If Hat is uncomfortable–for poorly articulated reasons, for reasons no one else can understand, or for no reason at all–that should settle the matter.
Do I wish I had referred to that weird statement as something like “pointlessly polysyllabic and pataphysical” instead of using the word “weird”? Probably not. If anyone chooses to be offended, it’s fine with me. If the shoe fits, &c., &c. I just want to know when “feelingshat” is going to change back into “languagehat”.
I think that Crown gets to be the arbiter of taste/civility for his blog. Likewise Hat for his, and you for yours, Nijma. At this point I don’t know that either Bad Guide or LH is the right setting for this plague, or party, or whatever it is, but that’s just my opinion.
Nijma, check your email.
Calloo callay, it’s back!
Which email should I find interesting, null hypothesis, “Connect with Christian singles FREE* + We screen for marrieds & felons” or “This is to officially inform you that(ATM Card Number 4278763100030014)has
been accredited with your favor.Your Personal Identification Number is
822.The ATM Card Value is $6.8MILLIONUSD.”
My all time favorite email was this one (NSFW):
Sorry I mentioned it.
On a lighter note: My wife and children and I have just met the cat of our dreams, and we will be welcoming her into our home any day now. When Crown returns and all is again right with the world, I know that I will need to post pictures of her.
empty,
Sorry, I checked several of the email addys I have used here and didn’t find anything. For some reason it went in the spam folder; I have it now. I apologize.
Just send me the pictures.
Thanks. It will be while. I will wait until the cat has settled in, settled on a name, and so forth, and until someone (probably my wife) has taken a picture that shows something of the cat within.
I promised Empty I would respond to this thread publicly when I was able to do so without anger. Now that I have finished moving, my internet connection is back up, and my midterm grades have been turned in, I’m not going to put it off any longer. Yes, some very nasty things were said about me on this thread, and at a time I was not able to respond, but perhaps I made my points badly. Let me try to respond now.
Empty’s original comment offended me. Not just because AJP is my “imaginary friend” although I do believe in defending friends, and he is well worth defending on that basis, but also because AJP acted responsibly and acted correctly. Part of what makes him interesting is creativity and spontaneity. The movie thread was all of that. But when he got uncomfortable with it, he made his own judgment and closed it. That should be the end of the story. There should be no Monday-morning quarterbacking or ominous talk about throwing and blaming.
You see, it’s about taking people on faith. If anyone believes AJP has deep dark ulterior motives, why would they even be here? To take it one step further, what happens on the internet? Communication is fast, unpolished, like the brainstorming phase of starting a project. Commenting takes time, and no one has the time to endlesssly proofread before hitting the comment button. So there has to be some level of trust and acceptance. What happens if someone is constantly carping and criticizing and looking for blemishes? Sooner or later the person who is putting in effort is going realize that no matter what they do, they run up against a wall, and their creative process is going to shut down, as AJP did when he declared his vacation. Of course, if you have just met someone, you don’t know how far they can be trusted, and it’s only natural to have questions, as Empty did. But I have seen AJP’s comments for long enough to know that he is not vicious or spiteful, and that Empty’s fearful ruminations are way off base. Let me go one step further and point this out. Grumbly has an almost identical thing on his website, with a play instead of a movie, and naming some of the same commenters–and no one has said boo.
Empty used a bunch of emotionally loaded words and phrases–“I had a nagging sense”, “I’m glad it’s over”, “I worried”, “left out of some inner circle”, “passively, against their will”, “presuming more intimacy than was appropriate”….you can almost hear the thunder of the timpani in the background. Good heavens, we’re talking about comparing people to movie stars here. Like having an avatar. Like trying to imagine what someone looks like when they walk out of their front door in the morning. And “striving to be one of the inner circle”? Pa-leez. Does anyone really expect to get a job, or even tenure, by posting at LH? Hat is self-employed–he has no favoritism to bestow. His “inner circle” is cats. I’m newly arrived at the blog myself, but I haven’t seen anything resembling dog-eat-dog competitiveness — it’s pretty much a collaborative and fact-finding effort. I have heard that academia is heartless in its internal politics, though–if someone is used to that milieu, maybe they expect to see it all over the place.
As far as being accused of “insinuation”, “snide remarks”, “dishing it out”, “suspecting”, “clutching grievances”, “biting shoes”, and “slamming down plates”,– uh, what was that all about? It would really help to quote me directly, so I can respond fairly. Anyone who grew up in Texas should know that Moliere is not commonly taught in American high schools. My question was genuine. I really did want to know if it was worth reading. And my question wasn’t answered, which was why I asked it again. But the fact that no one can do more than say “google it” or point to a list of characters does sort of answer the question.
As far as “ruining a perfectly pleasant thread”–a thread that details playing with snot and describes the goats that have done nothing but give people so much happiness in the most vulgar of sexual terms–, expecting me to keep my mouth shut when I see a friend insulted, intimating that I should never disagree with anyone or have any opinions or loyalty,or saying I should be verbally brutalized..that is just totally beyond the pale. And claiming that I have motives of “willingness” or “eagerness” that can be ascertained–with what crystal ball has this “mind-reading” occurred? If someone has said they are offended-who? And I have claimed to be offended–when? Again, it would really help to quote me directly if any fair answer is really expected. That “beacon of crisp thinking” has been obscured in order to score cheap points–hopefully it will be restored soon.
Now, aren’t you really glad we had this little chat?
I’m getting a bit worried about my reputation. Sure I’m kind to animals, but I can still be vicious and spiteful when I feel like it. I have tons of dark ulterior motives every day.
Real Vikings aren’t supposed to have motives, we’re supposed to have feuds. True, we don’t have blood feuds any more, but in my family at least, the art of the 50 year feud and even the hard-headed Norwegian 75 year feud has been perfected to the point where blood would be anticlimactic.
Nijma,
I’m glad you came back to this. I will respond quickly (I hope that that does not get me in trouble through writing in haste and being misunderstood) because I have a lot to do today. I hope that each paragraph will be convey its intended meaning, but I don’t have time to build a very coherent whole.
I never even came close to suspecting AJP of dark ulterior motives. I merely thought that a pleasant pastime, begun is a harmless spirit of fun, had got slightly out of hand. Before AJP killed the thread, I had been considering saying as much, and was mentally working on a comment to that effect, but had not decided yet whether to actually say anything. During this mental composition phase, I was thinking of closing my comment with something about throwing Crown in the pool, not because I wanted to paint him as the villain but because I wanted to inject a light touch into what was otherwise going to be a rather heavy-handed piece of preachy prose. There was maybe going to be the word “scapegoat” somewhere. I did not want to say that it was all his fault; I wanted to say “hey, let’s pretend to blame it all on Crown; he can take a joke”. That nuance did not come through for you in the final version. I don’t blame you for this. It is really difficult to communicate nuance through this kind of medium.
Yes, after AJP made his own decision to shut down the thread I did write and post what I have since come to call my Big Serious Confessional Comment (“confessional” in the sense of baring the soul, not in the sense of mea culpa, although I was blaming myself as much as others). I tried to indicate at the time that (a) I knew that this might be a bit superfluous, and (b) my discomfort with what had been going on — what we all had been doing — might or might be the same sort of discomfort that had AJP had been feeling.
“Inner circle” turned out to be a loaded word. I’m not still not entirely sure why. I did not mean that there is an inner circle, let alone an inner circle with some real power, but rather that people can get their feelings hurt by feeling left out of what others are doing.
When the thread was abruptly ended,
I had a hunch that there would be some back and forth about the reasons, and I wanted to be a part of that discussion. Since I had already been working on putting my reasons into words, I jumped right in.
I was aware that my use of words like “community” and “feelings” opened me up to being a seen as, I don’t know, too touchy-feely or something, but your reaction went beyond that. More than once you have used an expression like “looking to blogs for emotional fulfillment”. Here’s how I look at it: Let’s say I met a stranger on a plane flight and we found that we had some interests in common and we had a rambling and interesting conversation about this and that and then something that I said inadvertently provoked an angry response, which provoked some bad zingers from her and then we both felt bad, I might want to explore what had gone wrong and try to repair the damage. But that would not demonstrate that I “look to aviation for emotional fulfillment”. What happens here is part of life. Let’s be real with each other, in whatever way seems most appropriate.
I never accused you publicly of anything. I was very glad when several commenters jumped in to thank me or agree with me after my BSCC, because after your response I really needed it. But even in that moment I was genuinely sorry that Grumbly Stu came down so hard on you. I even said so at the time (but I did so in the midst of punning on “unclubbable” — again my light touch fails?).
I still don’t quite know why you saw my BSCC as an attack on Crown. But because it was clear that you did I have since made sure to clear things up with him through other channels.
By the way, I am laughably naive about academic politics.
I have not objected to the related casting game on Grumbly’s blog, mainly because nobody is playing it.
I have Viking blood in me, too, I think, by way of Scotland. About 25% came from Scotland at some stage, and I look a bit Norse. But I’m not a feuder.
to continue:
When (on a different thread) I engaged with Grumbly on saliva trick talk, I felt that I was crossing some line, but I crossed it anyway, because I was having fun. In fact I have no doubt that this particular bit of gross-out humor and the airing of the associated story from my past was meeting some deep need of mine. But I’m not here to plumb the depths of my soul. My point is that sometimes people’s urge to be a part of what’s going on can get them to behave in ways that they later regret, and I thought that the movie game we were playing had some potential for that.
I would love to write a long thoughtful post on this, in particular expanding on what I meant by the danger of “intimacy”, which I am pretty sure was another unfortunate hot-button word in the BSCC; but I really must not take the time for that until later in the week.
I’ve no objection to anyone using swear words or talking about gross things. Please go ahead. I do those things myself.
If someone says something I find really objectionable I might well delete it, rather than risk spending ages arguing about it.
I certainly didn’t think your BSCC was an attack on me. I thought I might be able to make use of it as a guideline for future dubious posts of mine.
Oh, I see. You appear to attack him in public while appearing not to attack him on a back channel. That makes complete sense.
Although I agree with you on the current contretemps, I think we’d all do well not to be satisfied with your airline analogy. Blog commenting combines (to a degree) the immediacy of conversation, the thrill of interacting with strangers, and the self-revelation of writing. It is psychologically and emotionally complicated — no way around it. (Not that nasty phrases like “looking to blogs for emotional fulfillment” are any more helpful, of course.)
That was addressed to empty.
Nijma,
Please do not blame me for appearing to attack him. I did not attack him. However, in the end my judgment led me to correspond with both you and him in private, to try to correct any misunderstandings.
Ok, but I completely agree. Good insight.
Thanks! I have been emotionally fulfilled!
Well said, Jamessal. I agree.
My coffee is brewed, and I have work to do.
Or just ” go on vacation”.
I can appreciate trying to avoid telling someone they have hurt your feelings; they might mistake criticism of their actions with personal criticism. I can think of other reasons for removing the thread–like because it’s about someone else’s blog– but not because any of the Hatters are eeeevil or trying for “one-upsmanship” or any of that other nebulous but icky stuff.
I have seen very inappropriate web behavior. I have been stalked. I have had my real name published. I have been called a “fucking terrorist bitch” and “a fucking Arab whore”. I have seen my words copied from one blog and pasted onto another blog in order to ridicule me behind my back. I have been impersonated by someone claiming to be Nijma and linking back to my blog.
Believe me, there is no evil here. AJP and the Hatters have done absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, they have bent over backwards to avoid misunderstanding. I think we’ve have about enough talk about throwing people in pools or using them as scapegoats . I don’t think it’s any less inappropriate for me to say so than for someone else to have made the original remarks impugning less than sterling motives to the LHters.
And now Empty also has his answer about whether people feel comfortable with AJP and trust his blogging judgment. We do. At least, I do. I am willing to take whatever he writes in good faith. Carry on , old chap, tally ho and all of that.
Probably what I didn’t like was that I was making a joke that I was a little worried might be taken the wrong way and suddenly people started fighting. I enjoy a good punch up as much as anyone, more probably, but not while I’m telling jokes. Well, not unless I’m drunk.
Hey, when can I get some Satisfaction?
Come on. Four more comments and we reach the first hundred.
Where’s Grumbly? I suppose he’s gone off to Munich again.
Coffee? ZOMG, no wonder I’m still up.
I’m too old for this hi-test stuff; I should have had the decaf.
It was funny too. I was googling all those names of movie stars so fast–I didn’t recognize so many of them. And it didn’t help that my netbook was on its last legs and couldn’t play anything on YouTube. I wasn’t particularly offended, although I didn’t think the actress I ended up with last was anything at all like me.
He’s probably busy filing his teeth.
I’m working, unlike some I could mention
Yeah. Looks like it, Grumb.
Oh, I see. You appear to attack him in public while appearing not to attack him on a back channel. That makes complete sense.
Do you not recognize that this is a jerky thing to say? Your basic modus operandi is well stated upthread:
If anyone chooses to be offended, it’s fine with me.
That is a jerky attitude (I am deliberately choosing a low-key adjective in deference to your delicate sensibilities). You seem to delight in presenting yourself as the Tough Gal from Chicago who has Been There and Back and can Take It and Dish It Out. None of this is remotely helpful around this neck of the internet. I’m sorry you have “seen very inappropriate web behavior,” but that’s no excuse for exhibiting it yourself. I have had to e-mail at least two people asking them not to quit LH because of your behavior, and I’m good and sick of it. There’s only one person in the entire previous history of LH who has caused this kind of turmoil, and that person, thankfully, went away (this was before your time). I do not want you to go away — when you’re not being offended and/or offending people, you’re a charming interlocutor — but I sure do want you to amend your behavior.
Someone once pointed out, in a totally jokey and non-aggressive way, that you’d misspelled a word, and you posted a long response in which you justified yourself by googling your misspelling and discovering that it was (quite accidentally) the correct spelling of an entirely different word that you had not meant to use. Do you not see how crazy that is? The proper responses would be: 1) ignore it, 2) say “oops, my bad!” But you seem incapable of letting anything go: witness this renewal of a messy exchange everybody else had moved on from.
Please try to see the difference between LH and A Bad Guide and the mean streets of wherever it was you were stalked and called names. Play nice.
Aargh: for
I am deliberately choosing a low-key attitude
please read
I am deliberately choosing a low-key adjective.
Sigh. Many a good rant has been ruined by a well-placed typo.
I’ll use Hattic magic.
I don’t think that’s very funny, LH. I’m defending the people who read your blog. If someone thinks that’s “inappropriate”, fine, but I don’t, no, I don’t agree and I don’t think I should have to agree. Instead of choosing adjectives and/or attitudes, or declaring that every thing is all my fault, or trying to read my mind and inform everyone of what I was really thinking in a given situation, maybe it would be more productive to address the issues I raised.
A jerky thing to say? No, it was angry. Everyone knew my internet connection was down and they knew I was trying to get moved out of a gang-infested building, and they chose that time to talk about me behind my back and say I was icky. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect someone to allow people to hit them without defending themselves. If it was anything besides LH, I never would have put up with it for so long.
As far as people being offended, you left out the most important part of what I said. That is, if the shoe fits, they can wear it. I didn’t call anyone names; I said what they were saying about the people who read LH was not reasonable. They are free to agree or disagree–preferably they would address the issues and give reasons instead of saying I’m icky for not agreeing with them.
Oh, and I guess you must have missed the thread where I lamented my frequent typos.
You’re tired of emails? So am I. You’re sick of turmoil? I’m the one who’s been up for two days. So much for everyone having “moved on”. But it’s nice to have people email me and ask me not to leave LH. Still, I liked it better when it was about language.
But it’s nice to have people email me and ask me not to leave LH.
Nijma, such obtuseness is almost too much to bear, and simply not credible. Yet again, you’ve found a way to misrepresent a glaringly obvious situation. In your misrepresentation you are ill-used, misunderstood and persecuted, and just on the verge yourself of leaving LH in a huff – then your fans plead with you to stay and not yield to hurt feelings.
What is glaringly obvious is that you are within an inch of being publicly humiliated by being publicly told in no uncertain terms to leave, and stay left. What Hat and others, like me, have already said to you in public would have offended any self-respecting person and made him extremely angry, regardless of whether anyone thought that saying those things was justified. That person would have just gone away to do other things. But you positively thrive on turmoil and recrimination, even warming them up weeks later when you have no current beef. You demonstrate no self-respect in practice, although “respect for Nijma” is your main battle cry.
Recently you’ve started in on me again, waffling on and on about snot, sexually abused goats, my sock puppet Mabel and “unfair to waitresses”. I’ve tried to ignore it, but it just doesn’t do any good. I’ve never encountered such a schlock poppet.
I don’t think anyone cares anymore “who started it”, or “who finished it”. No one cares why you cease and desist, just so long as you do so.
Nijma,
A jerky thing to say? No, it was angry. It’s clear that you were angry. And it was a jerky thing to say. Both things are true. Some people, when they are angry, do sometimes manage to try to choose non-jerky ways of expressing their anger.
I feel great fondness for Crown, and I have loads of respect for his judgment. At the same time, I also believe (as he does) that his movie idea, in hindsight, turned out to be a (subtly) regrettable one. Both things are true.
When I am thinking of commenting at one blog or another, I am sometimes held back by concern about my own motives. (Jamessal found very good words for some of what I am referring to now: … combines (to a degree) the immediacy of conversation, the thrill of interacting with strangers, and the self-revelation of writing. It is psychologically and emotionally complicated — no way around it. ) I can distrust my own motives, even when I also know that I have something potentially amusing, or interesting, or even useful, to say. Both things can be true at the same time. Then I have a choice to make. This sometimes leads to regrets. (If I had known what it would lead to, I would never have posted my BSCC.)
I don’t want you to go away. I do wish you would cut the shit and take some responsibility for your actions. Both things are true.
Yeah, what he said. Less self-justification, more playing nice: is that too much to ask?
Sorry to show up to the party late again. I’ve had a car on fire and I must dash off again.
What Hat and others, like me, have already said to you in public would have offended any self-respecting person and made him extremely angry, regardless of whether anyone thought that saying those things was justified. That person would have just gone away to do other things.
So it was intentional. I see.
I’m going to need an extension on this. Finals week and all that. I’m not sure how much is rant, how much is why-don’t-you-stop-beating-your-wife, and how much is serious, but I myself wish to be taken at face value and I will try to give an answer that takes these questions at face value. I can’t do much about the anger except tell people what is going on and wait a period of time before answering. I can probability count on one hand the times in my life I have ever been angry and I really don’t know what else I can do. I have an extremely long fuse, but once I have been provoked, it takes time to extinguish. But considering the number of comments I have made on Hat’s blog, I do feel I owe him some sort of response.
I see AJP has the Cone of Silence up on the comments widget and has also posted the Usual Disclaimers, so it’s time to post my answer to LH before my hangover wears off and the level of acetaldehyde in my bloodstream is no longer high enough to make me docile and malleable. :~)
I’ve done it line by line so I won’t leave anything out.
Oh, I see. You appear to attack him in public while appearing not to attack him on a back channel. That makes complete sense.
Do you not recognize that this is a jerky thing to say?
This is actually called reductio ad absurdum. It is meant to make people stop and think about the outcomes of their actions. Is attacking someone in public a good thing? What about a public attack and a private retraction? What would you think if someone wanted to hurt your public reputation but reassured you privately they didn’t mean anything by it? Why would they not be willing to make that information public, if it was genuine? I have had more than person saying very sharp things to me on a thread while simultaneously sounding conciliatory in emails. The cognitive dissonance is deafening.
You notice no one has defended the practice, they have only attacked me personally (ad hominem) in response.
At this point, I consider the continued background emails to be destructive. We have gotten our beloved goat blog back, and I think that was a good use of emails and worth the effort, but now we need sunlight on the process. The fact that people are telling me “everyone else has moved on” when my emails say no, means I want to clear the air and from here on out put everything out in the open.
Your basic modus operandi is well stated upthread:
If anyone chooses to be offended, it’s fine with me.
That is a jerky attitude
It is a pragmatic attitude, and you left out this part about “If the shoe fits, &c., &c.”. The reality is that no matter what I say, if someone is determined to put a negative interpretation on it, or cherry pick some phrase to try to “prove” I’m eeeevil, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. I say what I say. There is no way I can make anyone listen.
(I am deliberately choosing a low-key adjective in deference to your delicate sensibilities). You seem to delight in presenting yourself as the Tough Gal from Chicago who has Been There and Back and can Take It and Dish It Out.
Ah, I see you’ve come across the Chicago Weather button I keep on my blog’s sidebar. Yes, I’m Delicate AND Tough. Simultaneously. Also, Versatile. If anyone tries to tell you it’s just about weather, tell them I’m really a gangster and a bootlegger. But seriously, did it ever occur to anyone that if someone posts on a language blog, people might wonder which side of the pond they’re from? Or maybe if their speech is rhotic? AFAIK, I have lost my previous accent and my speech is now completely midwestern, typified by the accent that has its epicenter in Chicago. Why should I hide my city?
None of this is remotely helpful around this neck of the internet. I’m sorry you have “seen very inappropriate web behavior,” but that’s no excuse for exhibiting it yourself.
I have some strong opinions about the Middle East and chose to go where they play rough in order to advance my opinions. It was worth it.
I have not exhibited “inappropriate behaviour”; in fact, a certain individual tried to involve me in bullying other LH commenters, but I was not interested, not then and not now. And can we leave the “dancing on someone’s nose” and “neoteny” euphemisms and just say “bullying”? And yes, I stick up for people who are being bullied. Including myself.
I have had to e-mail at least two people asking them not to quit LH because of your behavior, and I’m good and sick of it.
Well, I didn’t tell them to email you. Also, I didn’t email you and threaten to leave if you didn’t ban so-an-so, even though I think some recent comments have been over the top. That’s emotional blackmail–I would never do that.
There’s only one person in the entire previous history of LH who has caused this kind of turmoil, and that person, thankfully, went away (this was before your time).
I’m sorry you think I am the cause of other people’s behavior, but I assure you I do not control their behaviour, nor do I want to. They are free agents. I am not holding a gun to their heads.
I do not want you to go away — when you’re not being offended and/or offending people, you’re a charming interlocutor — but I sure do want you to amend your behavior.
I deserve neither the encomium nor the meconium.
Someone once pointed out, in a totally jokey and non-aggressive way, that you’d misspelled a word, and you posted a long response in which you justified yourself by googling your misspelling and discovering that it was (quite accidentally) the correct spelling of an entirely different word that you had not meant to use. Do you not see how crazy that is? The proper responses would be: 1) ignore it, 2) say “oops, my bad!”
IIRC this would be “preemptive”? I don’t doubt the veracity of the poster, but I’m not sure about that other word, as it has a rather specialized legal sense and is not commonly used here. We do use “preemptive”, when a sports events preempts the regular programming or breaking news preempts the scheduled broadcast, or when there is a preemptive military action (yes, international military presence is part of American cultural baggage–and vocabulary). This is part of my active vocabulary, and I believe it is correct. I don’t have a problem using new words if I am sure how to use them and have picked up new words here like “milieu” and “neoteny”, but the other one I’m really not sure how to use, I have no usage dictionary and for some reason, probably because I was moving and my internet kept dropping, I never followed up on that one. Really, I don’t think anyone took offense, and there is only so much detail you can expect from readers.
But you seem incapable of letting anything go: witness this renewal of a messy exchange everybody else had moved on from.
I think I have already explained that this was part of a process of clearing the air and moving a private email discussion back into the public realm where it belongs. It is too much drama and too time-consuming to ask me to deal with alone–someone else will have to handle it.
Please try to see the difference between LH and A Bad Guide and the mean streets of wherever it was you were stalked and called names. Play nice.
You have just made the point I was making about the nature of (most) LHers better than I could have.
And most admin is reasonable when something is called to their attention. When I challenged my name being published, it was taken down. The fake Nijma posting was also taken down and the commenter banned. I suppose I should have hid my identity better and not trusted anyone, but you can’t spend your whole life hiding under the bed if you’re going to have any interesting experiences to mull over when you’re in your rocking chair.
I’m not going to give anyone with a blog advice about what to do about bullying though, until I have my own successful blog and have solved the problem myself. If you have any interim advice, I’m all ears. What I don’t think is appropriate though, is to expect people to allow themselves to be used as doormats, to “blame the victim” for being bullied, or to expect them to accept or participate in their own self-negation.
Yeah, what he said. Less self-justification, more playing nice: is that too much to ask?
That depends on what “nice” is, as already expounded upon.
As many people who spend time on blogs do, I have discovered that blogging is taking up way too much of my time and I need to scale it back, especially as I need to finish moving and get settled. I hope no one will be offended they see quite a bit less of me at LH or if they try to engage me and I am a bit busy. One of the commenters is itching to discuss intimacy–I’m afraid I will have to miss out on that one too. Oh, and for anyone who is worried about my car, it is back on the road now but limping a bit, and scheduled for surgery.
AJP, good chap, can you do some of your Bad Guide magic and change that last word in the first paragraph to “malleable” before some prescriptivist sees it and starts giving me the heebie jeebies?
Very sorry about you car, Nij. I’m glad it didn’t happen on your big trip back east.
Ah, but I had a tire blow out and ended up changing tires on the side of the expressway outside of Lowell with eight lanes zooming around me. I couldn’t get the old tire off–who knows how long it’s been since anyone did that, and I started going through the little care package tool kit my dad gave me with the car. He had put a little ball peen hammer in there and that was exactly what I needed. I wonder how he knew. It could have been worse though, an hour later and it would have been dark. It’s ’91 and with a car like that you know things are just going to break every once in a while. It’s good to have my regular mechanic though. He has been very familiar with all of my cars.
My dad also gave me invaluable advice about travel: “Bring less suitcases and more money”.
And I see my response
has gotten lost in the change from threaded to unthreaded comments.
Nij: And I see my response has gotten lost in the change from threaded to unthreaded comments.
No it’s still here, just in some bizarre sequence where 23 comes before 22 but after 21. Maybe empty can figure it out, he’s a mathematician.
JJ, thank God you’ve changed to a linear comment thread! That’t what you have at LH and most other general blogsites – apart from techie ones with crude formatting and no graphics. I had been meaning to urge you to do that for a long time.
That branching of subthreads you had, which were then indented up to max 5 levels (I think it was), made it difficult for me to find new comments when notified by email that there was one.
The explanation for the current order of posts is that the old tree of posts (nodes in the tree) was “flattened”. Mathematically, one speaks of a “traversal” of a tree – going through all the nodes according to some rule (algorithm). This gives a list of the nodes, and so a linearization of (the nodes of) the tree.
The last two comments, by you and Nijma, appear somewhere in the middle of the current sequence. What I suspect is that the part of your server that handles comment threads may still be maintaining the tree structure. In other words, it may be that once you start a comment thread as a tree structure, you can’t go back. The software always maintains the tree, but will linearize the display for you when you change a setting somewhere.
The “new comment” box seems to be associated with the end of one of the (now invisible) minithread branches. Every new comment in that branch prolongs the branch. Its nodes now appear in the middle of the overall sequence, because the “flattening” algorithm remains the same. A “depth-first” algorithm to order the nodes would have this effect.
Aha, now I see what I did wrong, and now it’s better! Not perfect, perhaps; but at least verging on the chronological.
Feel free to continue arguing! Or, now that we have a hundred-and-twenty comments, not. As you wish.
Arguments are in 12A. This is abuse.
Stupid git!
And now for something completely different …
This is abuse.
Stupid git!
Talk about well-stated modus operandi.
I want to retract everything I said before about LH being an oasis of creativity and spontaneity and trust, about taking people on faith, and especially about fearful ruminations being way off base and LHers not being vicious or spiteful. I can no longer defend the position with any degree of conviction.
Check this out before you retract, Nij.
We do have television here in the colonies.
You notice which role they choose for themselves.
…but if they’re trying to make me forget about being angry by making me laugh, it’s working. I just wish I could ditch this hangover–it was a cheap $5 bottle of Italian red wine.
Nij,
Keep laughing, please!
Now: I hope this next topic does not take us to another minefield, but …
Since the South Side of Chicago is your home, I can’t help wondering if you are at all emotionally invested in the White Sox? After Buehrle’s perfect game, there must be great joy in Mudville, and I am hoping for your sake that you have a share in it.
Isn’t a hangover caused by dehydration? Drink lots of water.
And what sort of a name is Buehrle? German of some kind, I suppose. Bührle.
The Buehrles are a rich Swiss family who created a public foundation for their art collection.
There is a fairy tale Das Bürle (The peasant) in the Grimm collection, KHM 61, but that’s something else. I can’t find a translation of it on the net. In any case, the player’s name is spelled like that of the Swiss family.
#61 bilingual.
Thanks for reminding me Kron, I just took a handful of vitamins. My students just fed me though–last day of summer session–and I’ve turned in my grades, so I should be better soon. Also I have a small bottle of Leinenkugel’s Oktoberfest on hand, and will be drinking half a glass of the hair of the dog before I characteristically fall alseep over it.
Hangovers are mostly caused by drinking irresponsibly, but losing water-soluble vitamins (C & B complex) doesn’t help any. Also the body manufactures stuff to metabolize ETOH that can be unpleasant in quantity. A small amount of alcohol in the system the next day does reverse the metabolism and change the chemistry in the bloodstream to something a little less toxic although it does then take longer to metabolize.
I’ve only been to one White Sox game in my life, empty, back when my husband was alive, and I wasn’t aware they were playing this time around until I saw something on the internet. A few years back, they even managed to move their entire ballpark without me being aware of it. The only sporting event that doesn’t bore me to tears is the marathon, but of course when it comes right down to it I’m still a southsider and a loyal Sox fan and I’d rather see them win than not.