Sex educator and Philadelphia Weekly columnist Timaree Schmit posted the peculiar document below to Twitter the other day. It was evidently handed to a friend of hers who was innocently making photocopies by some guy who wanted her to know that she had given him a boner and that he felt really really bad about this, because Jesus.
Guys, don’t do this.
Here’s the creeper’s little manifesto; the pic is a little blurry, alas, so I made a slightly less blurry version of the key bits and pasted it below the original.
I already used the nope badger in an earlier post today, so here’s a nope doggo instead.
H/T — @TByrne75 for letting me know about this, thanks!
A few weeks back, I bought a cute little back, turquoise-y, not too bright with a sloth on it. I keep my cell phone and keys in it, and I’ve been getting all sorts of remarks on it. Which I love, because I love this bag, and I love that so many people recognize sloths when they see them. (Not everyone, but many.) This would so not have happened when I was growing up, and it gives me this happy feeling of natural history geekiness spreading.
As to the guy… Is this better or worse than indecent exposure? public masturbation?
@Valentine
I just want to agree with everyone else, you are totally adorable?
Спасибище Katie! ? but maybe i will become very arrogant now because of all this complements… ;)) This is now my #1 favourite article of all time ))) ?
@guest:
The only one of those I’m ever likely to do is the book one, but, even there, complimenting someone on their book choice feels a little off, to me. It’s like I’m awarding them my coveted seal of approval from my lofty position as Supreme Authority on Good Literature. Why should they care? Much better, I think, to make it a question: “Excuse me, is that $author’s new one? What’s it like?” If they’re up for a conversation, you have a non-creepy starting point, but if they don’t want to talk, they can easily give an answer which makes that obvious.
@Wicked Witch Of Whatever:
One particularly fraught “social context” is the workplace. If you pay a stranger an ill-judged compliment, at least they can get away, but if you manage to creep out a co-worker, they still have to share an office with you every day, which can be uncomfortable.
“You see, *I* didn’t give you a boner; the boner was in you all along.”
OK, you win the tangent.
I was going to follow ‘Use it wisely, or not at all’ with ‘Preferably the latter, though the two may in fact be one and the same in your case’, but I thought that was getting a bit too wordy.
I have not had my hair cut in over thirty years because I’m too damn lazy to bother with any hairstyle more complicated than tie-it-back and because I hate having strangers mess with my hair. They always pull, and it means having someone’s hands on me. It reaches its natural length after ten or fifteen years, so it’s down to my butt. The only time it’s in the way is after I wash it, while it’s drying, because it’s loose then and it sort of floats around and catches on everything. Also, the last time we had a kitten she would sneak up and get me in the back while I was combing out my hair. It is hard to disentangle a kitten from long hair.
I have a full grown cat who, every so often, gets the urge to eat my hair right off my head. Yuck.
I often wake up to my dog grooming my hair…maybe she’s eating it I don’t know but she probably learned to do it from my cat (before she passed over the bridge, otherwise this would be heading down the Stephen King road of stories…).
The whole gouging out of an eye thing may be directly taken from the Bible, but I always want to ask “what happens if the other eye makes you stumble shortly after the right one which you’ve gouged out?”…Clearly they’d be totally blind, and why on earth would Jesus want that?? 😛
This thread is already sufficiently derailed, so I will take the opportunity to point out that it was myself and Pagan Reader – Misandrist Spinster who first declared allegiance to Valentine’s adorability 😛
Also, shaven heads, mmmmmmmm.
Re: “Eye for an eye” biblical rules. In the culture they were living in at the time, “an eye for an eye” was more reasonable than the other groups rules.
And the “gouge out an eye if it makes you stumble” is now generally interpreted as a metaphor, not something Jesus actually wanted to be done. Whether it was originally meant as metaphor or not… opinions vary.
@LindsayIrene
I knew my cat liked my hubby when, shortly after first meeting him, she ate his hair. She only did that to people she liked, and everyone she didn’t like turned out to be awful people. I kept him around. 🙂
@LindayIrene:
Not really a comment of much relevance, but have some solidarity from another person who’s into the feets.
On the topic of hair and the touching thereof, I’ve mentioned before that my scalp is pretty sensitive and it might not be obvious from my avatar (especially since it’s over a year old at this point) but I have rather long hair as well. Having my hair played with is great, but it is one of those things that generally applies to intimate times. Granted, it actually hasn’t ever come up in the context of just hanging out with people or being in public; I don’t often even get any comments on my hair at all.
Kootiepatra,
Oh! Hershele Ostropoler! He used to comment here!
I actually think he posted that here; it seems very familiar to me.
ETA, ah, it’s from 2012. No wonder!
(Also, I spotted Ozy’s nym being mentioned; she is an old friend of WHTM, too.)
@Valentine – Echoing the common consensus, yes, you are most definitely adorbs.
Concerning complimenting strangers, I work as a cashier at a rather busy grocery store, so talking to strangers is a daily thing fore me. Usually, I won’t make any comment on appearance, but sometimes I will, mostly on jewelry and tattoos. A few weeks ago I had a young man come through my line with lovely long hair and I mentioned how beautiful it was. He cracked up and replied it was the second compliment he’d gotten that day!
Completely O/T but apparently Trump has said he wants to postpone the state visit until such time as the British people come to appreciate him!
That’s a timescale only people like EJ are used to thinking about. I’m guessing ‘heat death of the universe + infinity years’.
@Alan
How lucky for you! Now if we can convince him to take the same attitude towards political action. For example, “I’m not signing any more executive orders until American people appreciate me!”
I did see on the rogue POTUS staffer twitter feed that he was pouting after the Paris climate fiasco because no one is ever happy with anything he does, so maybe he’ll melt down and quit at some point.
@ kupo
To be honest we were coming round to the idea just for the opportunity for fun protests. It would also be interesting to see what the Queen would do. She’s obviously above such things, but you may recall that when the Chinese premier visited she got the Guards Band to play the imperial death march theme from Star Wars.
I like your idea though. Maybe you could start a campaign that Trump should refuse to do anything until people appreciate him. “They don’t deserve you Mr President” sort of thing. He’s daft enough to fall for that.
Ooh, and heard a great insult about him from a Scouser friend:
“How can anybody be that stupid with only one head?”
@PeeVee – Ah! I didn’t know that; that’s really cool.
@Moggie
That’s my personal pet peeve. Anytime someone compliments me by saying anything along the lines of “oh, I like that ______.” It’s like they’re bestowing their personal seal of approval on my choices. Ugh.
Full Disclosure: My parents did that. It made me livid. They meant well, but it was soooooo presumptuous and patronizing. Ugh.
Fuller DIsclosure: It is marginally less aggravating if they compliment a product of my efforts, as in “oh, you built this building? I like it.” Still, it should be possible to praise something without sticking all that narcissism in there.
Okay now i have to add this article to my bookmarks ??
@dashapants – I’m much more okay with “I like ___” than I am with people describing to me the thing that they like. “You changed your hair!” “Hey, that’s a TARDIS shirt!” “You got some sun!” Mainly, because I know how to respond to “I like your _” (“Thank you!”), but I have no idea how to respond to “You changed your hair” (“…Yes, you are correct, 10/10 observation skills”?)
Capra said (back on page 1)
I like that idea but I’d do it in glossy, blood red with either Creepsville or Dracula font. Horst Roman Gothic would be great, but I think it’s an all caps font.
Ooh, good call.
Valentine is adorable. I’ve done the maths, it’s objectively true.
In all this talk about boners, how has nobody brought up the ultimate boner? The quintessential boner? The boner that has left an impact on the popular culture writ large?
I refer of course to Richard Milhous “Boner” Stabone, as portrayed by the late great Andrew Koenig.
http://loopclothing.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/andres_koenig.jpg
Rest in peace, sweet Boner.