You may be familiar with the “How Do You Open” meme on Twitter. A “dating coach” will post a picture of a young, conventionally attractive woman and ask their male followers how they would “open” her in real life — that is, what would be their opening gambit if they wanted to seduce her with maximum efficiency.
Here, some examples.
The replies to these sorts of Tweets tend to be a mixture of earnest (and highly cringeworthy) attempts at pickuppery and tweets mocking the hell out of the premise
But what if the young women in the pictures were women that it might not be such a great idea to talk to, much less “seduce.”
Feel free to provide your own “openings” of these bad girls in the replies on Twitter or the comments here. I might add some more as they come to me. What other bad girls of history deserve their own “how do you open” tweet?
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I always liked that awful velocipedestrienne.
Countess Bathory?
You’re hanging out in late 1500s Hungary when you see this cutie chillin’ in a bath full of virgin blood. How do you open?
[Wiki’s image of Elizabeth Bathory]
Is “three set” supposed to be pickup artist jargon?
Olga of Kyiv:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev
After Igor’s death at the hands of the Drevlians, Olga assumed the throne because her three-year-old son Sviatoslav was too young to rule. The Drevlians, emboldened by their success in ambushing and killing the king, sent a messenger to Olga proposing that she marry his murderer, Prince Mal. Twenty Drevlian negotiators boated to Kiev to pass along their king’s message and to ensure Olga’s compliance. They arrived in her court and told the queen why they were in Kiev: “to report that they had slain her husband…and that Olga should come and marry their Prince Mal.” Olga responded:
When the Drevlians returned the next day, they waited outside Olga’s court to receive the honor she had promised. When they repeated the words she had told them to say, the people of Kiev rose up, carrying the Drevlians in their boat. The ambassadors believed this was a great honor as if they were being carried by palanquin. The people brought them into the court where they were dropped into a trench that had been dug the day before under Olga’s orders where the ambassadors were buried alive. It is written that Olga bent down to watch them as they were buried and “inquired whether they found the honor to their taste.”
Olga then sent a message to the Drevlians that they should send “their distinguished men to her in Kiev, so that she might go to their Prince with due honor.” The Drevlians, unaware of the fate of the first diplomatic party, gathered another party of men to send “the best men who governed the land of Dereva.” When they arrived, Olga commanded her people to draw them a bath and invited the men to appear before her after they had bathed. When the Drevlians entered the bathhouse, Olga had it set on fire from the doors, so that all the Drevlians within burned to death.
Olga sent another message to the Drevlians, this time ordering them to “prepare great quantities of mead in the city where you killed my husband, that I may weep over his grave and hold a funeral feast for him.” When Olga and a small group of attendants arrived at Igor’s tomb, she did indeed weep and hold a funeral feast. The Drevlians sat down to join them and began to drink heavily. When the Drevlians were drunk, she ordered her followers to kill them, “and went about herself egging on her retinue to the massacre of the Drevlians.” According to the Primary Chronicle, five thousand Drevlians were killed on this night, but Olga returned to Kiev to prepare an army to finish off the survivors.
Also, too, General Kala:
And why not Carrie White?
You enter a cavern carpeted in shining gold coins, precious gems, jewelry, and the occasional heap of charred bones. You see a fine hottie of perhaps 20-meters (from nose-to-tail-tip) in length reclining in a particularly large pile of riches. Firelight glitters off of her coppery scales as she raises her head to regard you with her luminous golden eyes, and smoke curls lazily from between teeth swords as she smiles. How do you open?
You see a cell phone charger inside a combination clamshell/blister pack sealed with rivets. How do you open?
@ Vucodlak
“A girl dragon… Oh, sure, I mean of COURSE you’re a girl dragon! You’re just reeking of feminine beauty…”
Buttercup — brilliant!
You’re sitting in the exit row when the flight attendant, whose cleavage you’ve been admiring, comes bouncing boobily down the aisle with her gaze fixed squarely on you. You think she may be inviting you to join the Mile High Club in a minute, but then you notice she’s pointing wildly toward the emergency door and yelling something about how you’re all going to die. How do you open?
Boo. I can’t see the pics because of the anti-virus/etc. Husbeast has installed on my computer and now it just haates the Twitter.
@BQS: Chainsaw. One should never go electronics shopping without it.
A woman named Belle Gunness has placed an ad in a newspaper, seeking a husband to help her on her Indiana farm. How do you open?
You’re a marine sent by the Weyland-Yutani corporation to investigate what caused contact to be lost with the terraforming colony on exomoon LV-426. When you get there xenomorphs come out of the walls and drag you screaming to meet their Queen.
How do you open?
Typhoid Mary:
“Hey there’s an anti-vax rally at the hospital tonight where we’re going to be coughing on anyone who asks us to wear masks. Wanna Go?”
@ buttercup
https://i.insider.com/4d754946ccd1d5bb42120000?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp
@LouCPurr: “How d’you take your coffee?”
Hey, any of you know what magical language I’m suppose to use with insurance company so they stop trying to change my prescription if Adderall into another ADHD medication that has caused me seizures in the past.
I swear ever four months I need to fight with these fuckers to get the thing I need to function fully.
@Elaine
Has your doctor written your prescription “dispense as written”? If not, they need to. That’s the foundation of all your arguments: if you don’t get this precise medication, your health suffers.
If the insurance company is disregarding that physician instruction, start by telling them that the prescription has been marked “dispense as written” because alternatives to (name of your preferred medication) have had a demonstrably adverse affect on your health, which could lead to additional physician visits if not hospitalization. Are your medical visit notes available to you? If so, print them off and work out the timeline of when/how often you had to follow up for complaints directly related to the insurance company’s shenanigans. Have that timeline handy when you’re on the phone with the insurance company.
It is generally useless to shame the insurance company when it comes to them “managing” your care. (I have a few thousand words to write on the topic of “charticians,” but that’s getting off point.) But if you can demonstrate that THEIR actions are costing THEM money, you’ll have a line of attack they may not be expecting.
@ elaine
When arguing with officialdom I use tacit threats of legal consequences. I don’t state outright that I will sue or anything, but I try to phrase things so that if their legal department see it they just don’t want the risk exposure. It might be easier to explain by way of example.
There was a council owned building near where I used to live. It had a leaky gutter; which just gushed down water onto the pavement. All the locals were annoyed at it but we were getting nowhere. So I drafted a letter. I said that we had given up on getting a satisfactory conclusion, so I wanted to get on record that they had been told about the gutter but also that (a) people were stepping into the road to avoid it and thus at risk from traffic, and (b) when it was cold the water froze and the pavement became a slip hazard.
I stated that this was so when inevitably someone was hit by a car or slipped and broke their leg and the council faced criminal or civil proceedings as a result, they would not be able to argue they were not on notice of the issue, nor that the consequences were not reasonably foreseeable. I also cc’d the Health & Safety Executive (who prosecute such offences) into the letter.
It was fixed within the week.
So can you adapt something along those lines.
“Dear Sirs, just to let you know I am being forced to take these drugs against my express concerns, but am relying on your assurance that they are safe. I must re-iterate however my previous adverse reactions so that, in the event that I do suffer adverse consequences and am forced to bring legal action as a result, or your regulator is forced to prosecute, you cannot argue you were not on notice or that the consequences were not foreseeable by you.” And again, cc in any relevant bodies, and maybe their own legal department.
Something like that anyway.
You are asked to give your views on the works of Mark Rothko.
How do you opine?
@Alan
“I like the relationships. I mean, each character has his own story. The puppy is a bit too much, but you have to over look things like that in these kinds of paintings. The way he’s *holding* her… it’s almost… filthy. I mean, he’s about to kiss her and she’s pulling away. The way the leg’s sort of smashed up against her… Phew… Look how he’s painted the blouse sort of translucent. You can just make out her breasts underneath and it’s sort of touching him about here. It’s really… pretty torrid, don’t you think? Then of course you have the onlookers peeking at them from behind the doorway like they’re all shocked. They wish. Yeah, I must admit, when I see a painting like this, I get emotionally … erect.”
@ Vicky P
Heh, I would laugh over that, but I went to a gallery opening on Saturday and that kinda was me.
There’s a great little comedy skit. I wish I could find it for you. But it’s basically some pretentious art connoisseur looking at a painting with just a regular person who doesn’t want to proffer an opinion. Then it’s basically the first bloke saying ‘go on, it’s totally subjective, there are no wrong or right answers’ but then every time the other bloke says something it’s “No!”
I actually do have an original theory on Rothko. It’s that his black over red paintings were inspired by his ocean voyages. For technical reasons steam ships had to be black over red, and the interface between the two does look a lot like his works. So it was that rather than them being an expression of his descent into depression.
Although a fringe theory (i.e. just me) some experts have been highly supportive!
“Maybe that’s not as stupid as it sounds” ~ Artlyst
“Hmm, ok.” ~ James Payne
“I guess anything is possible.” ~ Can’t remember
I could go on. Except that’s it.
@Alan
I’ve always wanted to deliver that speech in an actual gallery, but I don’t think I could keep a straight face.