quoththeraven

Not sure where else to put this: Victorian boot makers were very open-minded people! Source

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Okay, finally found what I was looking for. (Others will have to go in that other Friday Funnies.) Source Source

You made me roll my eyes again, Mr. Smith! But then that's your purpose in life, isn't it?

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I don't have a problem with them either. They're not really my style, but I like the design elements and you certainly can't call the colors garish. I've seen plenty worse. I've seen those. They're hilarious (to us, anyway). Have you posted this link before? I'm pretty sure this site was where I saw the link. Not nearly as bad as Lurid Digs. Now we're getting into the realm of picky.

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Yes, I had a chat with my first date (who never got back to me afterward, but I figured that was going to be the case, and I got a nice lunch and learned something about how DC Entertainment, where he worked until it moved to CA, operates) about how there are more timewasters on OKCupid because it's free. And that's fine, and I realize that as well. There are additional features you can pay for, and I did (to see whether someone "liked" you); I only spent $15 for three months, but it wasn't really worth it because it isn't a predictor of compatibility. And I've learned not to "like" people too soon (I don't even bother anymore; it's the messages that matter), and past that, who cares? The "best foot forward" profiles are the vague or impossibly romantic ones, but as long as someone has a profile that is longer than a sentence or two, you can tell a lot about them. The absence of any information is information, too: the person's not interested in communicating and isn't giving anyone enough information to judge whether they'd like to meet unless your only criteria are looks, which is like, hello? I have limits, but I don't lust after or want to date (or even have sex with) good-looking dweebs. A dweeb is a dweeb. They're going to be selfish and egotistical in bed too. This morning I finally got the absolutely most perfect first message: "Hi would you like to grab a coffee someday?" It bears mentioning that the guy who said that is a 31 year old Asian/Hispanic working full-time, going to school at night. Given that he speaks Spanish and some Japanese, my guess is he's half Japanese, half Hispanic. Direct, to the point, and he gets to skip the line. Everyone else gets dealt with on the basis of the order in which they contacted me. I also penalize people who piss me off but who I'm not yet ready to write off. Not that I tell them that, but I won't go out of my way to help them. They're less likely to get photos. They get less priority in scheduling. As for my approach to explicit photos: only headless so it's not identifiable, and (in part because I don't think how I look naked is my best selling point, but also because it's difficult for me to take good selfies) still wearing something. I'm just about to look at some I took of me in a baby doll nightie and nothing else. I know gay/bi guys may do things a little differently, but to me there is nothing more sexy than, say, photos of Peter Berlin with a raging hardon visible through his underwear. And it keeps enough back so there's still some mystery and anticipation for the meeting.

I misunderstood what you meant by "targeted." I thought you meant "organized movement."

Explicit can be good, but it can come back to bite you in the butt, and it isn't what we're talking about here. We're talking about maximizing the chance of a good encounter by letting the other person know about our age and appearance, including perceived racial characteristics, because as Rudynate observes, race is a social, not a genetic, construct. There is also a way of minimizing the issues with explicit discussions: don't link them to or include them in discussions of financial arrangements.

He's not part of Black Lives Matters. He's stirred up by the same things they are, but he's not a protestor, and you are not doing the facts any good by linking them. Charlie Manson had every right to march in a nonviolent anti-black/white supremacist protest, but that's not what he did. He committed murders in the name of precipitating a race war. That is the right analogy, not the Black Panthers.

I prescreen based on the written profile, photo, compatibility score and location. Once that's done, there's not much purpose to a lengthy back and forth. I can learn a lot more from actually meeting. I'm not looking to sext and between here, LJ and Twitter, I don't need more online/internet friends. So I would be relieved if someone suggested a time and place to meet right away. I've found people (it's almost all men even though I changed my profile) oddly reluctant or unable to get to that point.

The Black Panthers, police brutality. On other issues, King's SCLC. It can't be legislated away. Non-black folks (myself included) need to learn to resist and retrain their thinking and reject the implicit but insidious implication that White is Right, White is the norm, and blacks just don't measure up and never will.

Tyger Hudson/Bhughatti.

Actually all of the responses are racist in the sense that they're based on stereotypes. Descendants of Africans live in England too. Has no one ever heard of South Africa and other English colonies, Jamaica or Bermuda and the Caribbean sugar plantations that underpinned British wealth? And "I was not expecting a black person, you sounded really nice over the phone is straight up racist in equating "nice" with "white."

Maybe you didn't read the link to the good experience I had yesterday/last night with someone I met online? I'm just saying there's a lot of chaff one has to sift to find the wheat. And men looking to date women are strangely reticent to get to the point other than the ones who are only interested in fucking. Which is fine - knowing that actually helps me ahead of time because personality compatibility becomes less important and looks more important and there are other topics we need to discuss, like that we need a neutral place to meet the first time and that condoms are a requirement for anything other than oral and fingering. I'm okay with having a face pic up, but that's why (although I don't think there are any pics of me floating around on the internet that have my real name associated with them -- I don't have a Facebook account) I refuse to reveal my first name until we've arranged to meet. And, if I could take one that wasn't blurry, a full body pic. I understand wanting to see what someone looks like and since I'm not using a function that's tied into GPS like Grindr, I need the face pic in order to be able to find the person when we meet. It's the people who won't fucking read your profile and believe it who bug me. There's plenty of free porn to jerk off to, and sexting doesn't really appeal to me unless we're planning to meet to fuck. I don't respond to the ones who are clearly off base or not a good match and I block liberally. It just eats up a lot of time I could spend using the service to look for people I'm interested in and messaging them, which somewhat counterintuitively OKC's data shows results in better matches.

I've mentioned a recent positive experience of mine in another thread, but here I'm throwing it open to discussions of Grindr, Scruff, dating sites (I'm on OKCupid) and the like. I sure hope escorts don't encounter as many people as I do who completely ignore or don't read my upfront statement that I want to meet, not chat, that they need to be local (I've now spelled out what that means), they need to have a photo, a profile showing some level of thought and personality, and a comptability ratio (based on the questions OK Cupid uses) north of 50% or so (although a good profile can make up for some of it). Then there's the people who contact you and delete their account the same day or who decide midstream they're no longer interested. Or who stand you up (that's happened once). Or give you a telephone number, ask you to call, then don't call back. I've been asked to Skype by someone who isn't local (answer: no), asked whether he could come inside me (answer also no, but the account was gone by the time I went to respond), asked if he could come on me (answer: yes, but that account was gone then too). I had someone I really wanted to meet balk at using condoms to turn around and contact me four or so days later, ask if I do anal, and expect an immediate response. At that point I felt like I was being treated more like a piece of meat (we'd discussed dick size and positions already) so I waited until the next day tp respond and sure enough, he disappeared. I've also been asked if I'm into younger guys when they're within the age range on my profile (35-65). If I never see the words "want to chat," "darling," "pretty" (strangely, "beautiful" and "sexy" are okay) and "want to get to know you" without any actual questions or specifics about what in my profile attracted them other than my photo, I will be a happy camper. And for awhile it was like pulling teeth to get people to commit to a meeting. What about you?

And I thought I had no use for relish, having given up hot dogs. I like them occasionally, but they're full of preservatives and I'd rather have a hamburger. Will have to remember this during today's shopping trip!

Or in your case...ho cake. Said lovingly and with Pride. -Filthy pig slut lady

I agree. I heartily endorse the rest of Juan's post, but not that. This case has been discussed extensively in my Twittersphere. A friend whose son just graduated from high school and is heading to college tweeted as follows: Me: what would you do if you met a girl at a party and she passed out drink [drunk] behind a dumpster? Son: um, get help? *looks bewildered* 5 mins later, he asks: so what *should* you do, call an ambulance? We discussed options. He is ready for university, I guess. (My response to the first tweet was "You would think that would be the obvious response." I love that he looked bewildered.) Dating or hiring an escort is not a solution. That's not what rapists want. Rape is more about power and control than sex, which is why the competitive, "he scores!" view of normative male sexuality and the concomitant slut-shaming of women and view that it's their job to enforce boundaries is such a crock. I may have posted this link before, but if I have, here it is again. http://goodmenproject.com/noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz/on-sexual-aggressiveness/ Key excerpt: There are two models– one could call them the “rape culture” and the “consent culture” models. Very few people are pure rape-culture or pure consent-culture; nevertheless, I’ll describe them in their purest forms, so you can see them clearly. Rape culture: Sex is about a man, who is the only one who actually desires sex, pushing a woman as far as she is willing to go. Sex occurs in a rigid set of steps: kissing, then breast-groping, then manual, then oral, then PIV; any other sex acts are signs that the man has Super Won (or that he’s a pathetic loser). Any tactic, short of ignoring a direct no (and even then) is allowable. Rape is basically like committing a foul: as long as you don’t do anything that’s technically against the rules, it’s all good, and calling someone a rapist for ignoring a “I’d rather not” is like the ref calling the ball out of bounds when it was clearly inside. If they have intercourse, the man has won and the woman has lost: he’s awesome, and she’s a slut who needs to learn to respect herself. The woman’s goal is to get a man into a relationship; if she gets his commitment, he’s pussywhipped and she’s a Smug Married/Be-boyfriend-ed (God I love Bridget Jones). Queer people can, with some straining, be fit into this model; the general idea is that one is the ‘man’ and another is the ‘woman.’ Consent culture: Some people decide that sex (whatever that means to them) would be fun and then have mutually enjoyable sex with each other. The end. I know which model I prefer.

There are actually two commentary tracks on the most recent Criterion release: one with a single commentator (Tony Rayns, I think) and another with four or five commentators who each talk about a section of the movie. Coincidentally, I just watched the movie again last weekend before seeing any of the posts here. Other Kurosawa movies with Mifune that are worth seeing that haven't already been mentioned: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, High and Low (all three of which have contemporary settings). I am also partial to The Bad Sleep Well, although opinion is divided as to how successful it is as a movie, and The Lower Depths, which is very slice of life and a little slow-starting, but then so is the Gorky play on which it's based. Scandal is a mess, but seeing Mifune as a turtleneck-wearing artist on a motorcycle (or it may be a motorbike) caught in a media-made scandal may make it worth seeing anyway.

The new M7 isn't out yet.

There's a lot to absorb in the movie, and much of the meatiest part depends on a knowledge of class structure in Japan during the period depicted, although Kikuchiyo's rant in the middle and subsequent developments make some of it clear. What you get out of it also depends on the ways in which your background and experience intersect with the movie. There's an aspect of the bandit's previous raid that I became sure of after my first or second viewing that others who've seen the movie many times never picked up on. I am looking forward to the remake of Magnificent 7. The original was promising for the first half-hour and then descended into racism and sexism. I think using Mexican bandits and then focusing on the bandits rather than the villagers was a mistake. But I'm not sure how it can be remade in a US context without overt racism because our history is different from Japan's. Even with a diverse cast of men rescuing the villagers, what group will the bandits come from? Traditionally, they'd be outsiders. That doesn't line up with Seven Samurai, where both the bandits and rescuers are ronin (masterless samurai); the real class conflict is between farmers like the villagers and samurai.

Reminds me of how some people allegedly find empty NYC apartments by scouring the obituaries. ::sadface:: I guess my references to Toshiro Mifune (and even photos, jeez) whenever the subject of man buns and perceptions of Asian masculinity arise have gone unnoticed. He's one of the greats of Japanese cinema! We should all hope to be equally as cool and dynamic. But more importantly, how has no one mentioned Seven Samurai (best movie ever) or Yojimbo, of which A Fistful of Dollars is an unauthorized remake (making Mifune's character Sanjuro, which means "thirtysomething," the original Man With No Name), or Shogun? I wish I could find a still of the scene in Seven Samurai where he captures a fish while wearing next to nothing. In reality, he hid the fish in his loincloth until it was time to pretend to snatch it out of the stream in which he was fishing.

Truth in advertising!