Taomeow

On 6/30/2025 at 7:35 PM, Nungali said:

Catholic school sex education . 

 

Zilch .   

 

Little Nungali listening to the older boys ;   "  ..... and they got a thing down there and ya put your willie into it . 

 

 

" Ya  what  ?   ?  ? "  

 

" Well, that's what my big brother said .... and he has seen one ! "

 

"What's it look like ? "

 

" I dunno , I haven't seen one ..... I suppose its like our one but bigger and wider and so we can fit into ."

 

Hmmmm ... that makes sense  ....  must be some long tube or something that hangs down there .   

 

Until an older girl offered to show us hers ....   "What happened to it ?"

 

She didn't know what we meant ... so then the boys had to explain to the girl why hers was 'missing ' .

 

But she insisted it wasn't . 

 

....  Sex can be so confusing sometimes . 

 

I can't imagine what today's kids imagine when they're taught "sex education."  I guess it used to be simpler for kids in the countryside -- they could at least observe what animals do.  An animal doesn't screw with one's mind when it screws.  It's all rather straightforward.    

My own ideas at the age of innocence came from misinterpreting an article in a magazine called "Health" -- a kind of medical 101 for lay people, which my mom was subscribed to and I loved to read.  The country kept all sex related information under wraps back then but the magazine devoted to 'Health" had to somehow mention STDs at some point, right?  Well, at seven, I read this article therein about syphilis.  It was presented in the form of a real life story: a girl meets a guy, they hit it off and start dating, then they exchange kisses...  Then the guy disappears and the girl starts experiencing this and that, all symptoms presented in dark and gloomy but rather unclear hints as to what they are exactly -- the only symptom that was clearly named was, her eyebrows started thinning out.  And also there was clear emphasis on shame, this was no ordinary disorder, apparently it was something that destroys one's social status and turns the victim into some kind of untouchable whom everybody shuns and despises.  The article terrified me.  Since nothing sex-related was revealed, I had to infer that the sequence of events leading to this shameful, despicable, and in some unclear way horrible disease was just this: 1) girl meets boy and likes him; 2) they kiss; 3) he leaves; 4) as a result she gets a horrible disease.  

I gave the article to my best friend to read, and we discussed it, wide-eyed with fear, trying to figure out a way to prevent this syphilis thing by never liking boys and never god forbid kissing them.  Then keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that no boy would ambush us, jump out of some corner and plant a kiss -- oh horror, this could result in that devastating disease!  We better watch out!  

(An aside:  Naive as it was, today I believe most people's ideas about where and how various illnesses originate are as much removed from reality as was the case with that one in our case.  And I don't just mean lay people.)            

5 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Great point about the all-too-often forgotten yin side and the importance of darkness. I take it on faith that the word "enlightenment" refers to a real phenomenon, but I´ve never much liked the word -- or the endless fractious discussions that spring up around it -- perhaps because the emphasis on light feels so one sided to me.  In a similar vein, what´s with our cultural overemphasis with going up?  Seems to me it´s just as important to go down.  Like yin and yang, I think one begets the other.  If you wanna go up ya gotta go down; wanna go to the light, find the darkness.

Very true. 

Also...  In taiji, we always go slightly back before any move forward -- it sort of helps gain the correct vector, along with "stitching together" the move forward with the previous one --

which was also forward so if you "stitch" forward to forward you can't get a seamless move! 

And after a turn to the left, a turn to the right follows, and then if you still need to keep going to the left you go slightly to the right first.  And of course opening and closing alternate -- opening is akin to light/yang/expansion, closing, to dark/yin/contraction...  and they interchange continuously.  (One hallmark of bad taiji is when they don't, and the practitioner remains "too open" or "too closed" without minding this rhythm.)  Sorry...  couldn't resist a taiji example -- "everything" philosophy is therein, it so happens that all questions are answered there...  including those one hasn't thought of asking.  

Chapter 24 of the I Ching (as used by Syd Barrett in the great song of the same name based on it nearly verbatim):

"The seven is the number of the young light,

it forms when darkness is increased by one."   

Taoist dialectic: extreme yin turns into yang, and vice versa.  Of course those who are not familiar with this inevitable cosmic scale dynamic process that is followed by all of the "ten thousand things" will always try to increase light by taking it all the way to its ridiculous, caricature level extremes.  Whence it will flip into darkness -- inevitably.  In social movements and in "spiritual" pursuits alike it's especially obvious -- the best, most enlightened ideas, trends, intentions inevitably flip into their darkest opposites.  (And, less obviously, vice versa.   And slower.  Yin is slower...  yang is always in a rush.  That's why light flips into darkness more readily than vice versa.)  

So, the sensible way to increase light without going overboard is by increasing the nourishing, nurturing dark yin which we all come from (remember the womb?) and return to.

A good night's sleep

A dark retreat, or at least meditation with your eyes closed, in a dark room

Black sesame seeds, blackberries, bilberries (nourish the retina and literally make it more receptive to light, improving night vision while protecting from the irritating effects of excessive illumination)

A screens/electronics fast -- limiting one's exposure to all those oh so bright, oh so much light devices that, predictably, darken the soul.

And so on.  Look for where yin is deficient and increase; look for where yang is excessive and decrease.  This is a yang-skewed civilization, in most situations you will find you need less light, not more.  And if you do find you need more light, go for the mellow kind -- sunset, sunrise...

1 hour ago, Apech said:

I used to have a landlady who was besotted by a Georgian boy and used to go there to go ‘walking’ with him.  He threw her over for a very young ‘doll like’ girl with whom he planned to have many children.  She was devastated and her behavior became increasingly erratic.  She is a fairly famous playwright and has a wiki page so I won’t mention her name.

 

Georgian suitors (not all of them of course, but there's always something like trends...) are passionate and can go over the top at that, but there's a bit of a double standard regarding how they treat their own (pretty traditionally, at least it used to be the case) vs. "foreign" girls.  Sorry to hear your landlady wasn't prepared for this turn of events and had to suffer.  

In middle school I was friends with a girl who was Georgian, Lali was her name, and she was very popular, perhaps the first girl to "wake up" our boys to the existence of girls, a coming of age thing.  After the 8th grade the family moved back to Georgia, and some heart-wrenching letters followed -- Lali fell in love with an Ossetian (an ethnic and religious -- Muslim -- minority in Georgia) and her family demanded that she has nothing to do with him.  It was a drama of many years that ended in their eloping I think and getting disowned by both families 

-- such a medieval story, I thought, so weird -- Lali was so modern, always on the cusp of fashion and trends...  and voila.  

47 minutes ago, Apech said:

If I understood him correctly he was full of praise for the USSR and how he could move from Baku to Ukraine. 

It's a fairly widespread sentiment in the former Soviet Union.  I don't think the majority of the population got a good deal out of the break-up.  Some left for greener pastures, a small percentage got rich, and a very small percentage got stinking rich -- but for the majority of ordinary folks it was just endless difficulties and complications and loss of whatever social safety net and a lot of new but not necessarily improved things that, once the initial excitement wore off, just felt alien and dystopian.  That, of course, is not how "everybody" feels, and I don't really know the percentage of people who do -- but it is very, very common.  Some of that sentiment is based in reality, some, in illusion that edits out the dark aspects of the past and preserves the rosier ones.

47 minutes ago, Apech said:

I have to admit a certain vagueness about the Caspian Sea, Georgia, Armenian, Ngoro Karabash (?) etc.  I don’t think the British empire penetrated thus far - or was it part of the Great Game, not sure.  I should brush up on my history.  After all weren’t the Proto Indo-Europeans supposed to originate somewhere around there?

I've been to all those places (except Nagorno-Karabakh, but I know what the conflict was about) -- the Caspian Sea is warm and always somewhat stormy because the wind blows relentlessly, Georgia is blessed with great climate and great soil and is home to my favorite cuisine in the whole world, Armenia is -- well, they tell the story there about how god sifted the soil through a fine sieve and made Georgia, and all the rocks left in the sieve, he threw across his shoulder to discard and that was how Armenia came to be.  Azerbaijan is Muslim, Georgia and Armenia are Christian.  Nagorno-Karabakh was an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijani territory and a site of several wars over whose it is, the latest ending in Azerbaijani (backed by the West) grabbing control and kicking out the Armenians.  The British Empire was very active in Azerbaijan in the early 20th century, due to wanting their vast oil fields around Baku.  They even gained control of it for a while after WWI and established martial law.  Then they were very active there before and during the 1917 revolution and the civil war that followed.  But the Soviets prevailed back then.  

4 hours ago, Apech said:

 salam nechusum

 

or something

7 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Well, you already know how it is.  The 4th is associated with fireworks, barbeque, parades, and beer.  Drunken grilling accidents?  Deeply American.  Critical thinking?  That´s more of a Russian thing. 

Didn't Hollywood movies portraying Russians teach you anything?  What critical thinking?  All they do is plot world domination while raising their glasses of vodka and toasting each other invariably in Polish ("na zdrovie!").  As for drunken grilling accidents, that part is not very different except Russians prefer shashlik (shish kabob) to burgers when celebrating whatever.  Critical thinking is for quiet conversations in the kitchen...  the greatest school of thought it used to be.  Mystery schools of Alexandria meet political dissidence over tea with homemade preserves and cigarette smoke.  Don't know about now...  that "social sciences" scene might be out of vogue by now.

4 hours ago, Sanity Check said:

 

 

Productivity was so much lower back then.

 

2% tea tax was huge?

 

Interestingly enough economic growth for that era in the USA was 10% or higher.

 

Now politicians break their arms patting themselves on the back if they can achieve 3% growth.

I don't think taxes have much to do with productivity except strangle it.  But in general I don't know the deeper why's and wherefore's of the war for independence in its non-mythologized version -- something any historical event requires much in-depth study to begin to unravel --

now the North-South civil war is a different matter, I did my homework on that one diligently...   That one, indeed, had everything to do with productivity, technological advances, and all that industrial jazz.        

1 hour ago, thelerner said:

Happy 4rth.  It it wasn't for our Founding Father's we'd be.. we'd be.. Canada!?

which, imo, wouldn't be so bad.  i was just hanging out in Vancouver, nice city.  Chicago-ish but cleaner. 

I don't know what Montreal is up to these days, but a long time ago when I was there it looked like it was trying to strike a balance between New York and Paris -- 

the Paris part came from a homeless bum who asked me for a couple of dollars "for a cup of coffee."  In French.  

I may be bad at economy so it's a bit hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that to celebrate winning a war over 2% tax on tea, we pay a 7.75% sales tax on anything we might want to use for the celebration.  Not to mention the rest of taxes on... um... on being alive -- also on being dead, since the 7.75% sales tax applies to coffins too.    

9 hours ago, Apech said:

To all American Bums.

 

🇬🇧💂💂🇬🇧

No treason.  The Old World is not a lizard that can lose its tail so that the independent tail becomes the New World.  Rather, it's a snake -- which occasionally plays ouroboros with itself. 

At least that's one way to look at it.  

/\ We have a whole series of jokes based on interpreting what one hears in a "lik lik" known language.  Goes both ways, by the way -- e.g. we use "bread of sieve cable" to mean "bred sivoy kobyly" -- an idiom meaning "delirious bullshit," literally "the ravings of a grey mare."       

The latest example from my just-concluded trip to Greece.  Me and my friends were sipping espressos in a cafe in Corfu Town, and at the next table some young Greek guys were having a very lively conversation.  In the course of which one of them jumped to his feet and exclaimed, with great feeling and energy, what sounded like "Shabliaka ty moliaka!" to my ear.  Now I don't know about other people's ears but to mine it was simply delightful.  In Russian it could have been a yet unknown curse, but also words of endearment, or a nickname for a friend, or a dire warning -- watch out, I'm about to kick your ass!  Could be anything but due to the manner of delivery I was convinced it wasn't something boring.  So later I tried to pick AI's brain to decipher it.  What Greek expression, in a context I described to it, could it have been, and what could it mean?  After a brainstorming session we zeroed in on "Ti blaxia, ti malakia" -- which is the Greek for "what nonsense, what stupidity!"  Perfect.  I still haven't decided which version I like better, the real one or the misheard one, but I'm tempted to start using one of them, or maybe both.      

29 minutes ago, Apech said:

They say what sounds like zharka for hot … is that a regional accent?

 

 

No, that's how "o" in an unstressed syllable is pronounced -- like a semi-swallowed "a."  English speakers often have trouble with it when they learn the language -- they pronounce it too distinctly like an "o" everywhere.  E.g. the word "horosho" (good or well or OK) which Anthony Burgess phonetized as "horror show" in "A Clockwork Orange" is a typical example -- but it's actually pronounced "harashO" since only the last of the three Os is under stress.  

Note (putting on my Henry Higgins top hat): there's regional dialects in some parts of Russia where o is indeed pronounced as o in an unstressed position, and a special verb in the language that specifically refers to this way of speaking -- Okat'.  Then there's the Moscow accent and a word for that -- Akat' -- characterized by exaggerated a's where unstressed o's are encountered.  While standard Russian, like I said, often semi-swallows them, a bit like the English schwa /ə/.)  

It's perfectly fine to do it the English way -- i.e. drop statements about the weather.

SeVOdnya ZHARko  -- it's hot today.

KhoROshaya poGOda -- the weather is nice.

BUdet dozhd' -- it's going to rain.

Or you could get curious (the American way):

OtKUda vy? -- Where are you from?

Iz kaKOvo GOroda? -- From what city?

Vam zdes' NRAvitsya? -- Do you like it here?

Actually, if you give me a sample list of things you would say to a neighbor who does speak the language, I can try to come up with a Russian situational equivalent.

Don't underestimate loo paper (aka toilet paper in our parts).  In China I've come across rolls of toilet paper with profound statements in English adorning them.  My favorite was, "Mind connects to mind..."  Not sure what it meant in that particular context, maybe it was geared toward people who like to do their profound thinking and contemplation on the toilet.  For me it was a bit entertaining to read those and similar words of wisdom on TP, especially coupled with what the inscription on the plunger (that rubber thing for unblocking a clogged toilet) said:  "The sucker will suck and suck!  Never give up, never stop sucking!"  

27 minutes ago, Apech said:

Every time a Daobum stops remembering an Apech dies.

39 minutes ago, Apech said:

TM has no manager!

No manager to damage her!  

P.S.  This appears to have been fixed now, or else fixed itself.  Thanks.  

Profound thanks to the wonderful mods who helped me get back on after some password/email adversities -- 

but now the site asks me to sign in all over again every single time I open it, so I have to enter my password as many times as I visit.  Before the reset it merely kept me logged on at all times for countless moons and never asked for password. 

Is there a way to fix this?  I did check the "remember me" box but the forum still doesn't.  

Meow?  

I know it's a serious matter, but I can't resist offering my favorite movie scene dedicated to anger management:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEE7xzwogMc

2 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

Pride is the Wrong Word

 

I´m a gay white man.  What would happen if I say that I´m proud to be white?  My fellow Bums would likely get a lot of use out of the new "oh boy" emoji.  I might be banned from the board for being racist -- and rightfully so, I think.  What would happen if I say that I´m proud to be gay?  On the whole, I´d wager the reaction would be a lot more positive.  And yet being attracted to other men is not like winning the national tennis championships -- it´s not a soaring personal accomplishment.  I didn´t train hard daily, sweating through grueling workouts, in order to think that Brad Pitt is hot.  

 

This is why I think Gay Pride is misnamed.  Nobody should be proud -- or ashamed -- of their sexual orientation.  It´s not a hierarchy thing; there´s no better or worse.  Just like it´s not better or worse to be white or brown or black.  Pride isn´t the right word.  I´m not sure the right word exists in the English language.  There´s a subtle feeling of self-affirmation all people have access to when they do the hard personal work of making friends  with themselves, a feeling of basic OKness that is not dependent on anybody else giving a thumbs up.  It´s this subtle feeling of self-affirmation I hope all of us feel this June, whether we march in a Pride march or not.  If you feel it, whew -- well that´s something to be proud of.

You are, first and foremost, a smart man.  Consequences may occasionally pan out to be -- what's the word I'm looking for -- severe?  alienating? politically incorrect? 

I used to have a roommate and friend who was a gay white man.  He was not proud of being either, but it so happened that I helped him accomplish something he became so proud of that he kept bragging to everybody every chance he got, even though for everybody else it wasn't an accomplishment at all...  He came from a wealthy family and grew up in a community completely shielded from the rest of the world, and all he knew about swimming was always done in swimming-pools, by everybody he knew.  (He was alienated from his family at the time I made his acquaintance.)  So we went to the beach and I gave it all I had to convince him that the ocean was, well, swimmable.  He doubted it.  Waves.  No boundaries.  Sand, wind, all that weird stuff you don't encounter in a swimming-pool.  I shamed him into trying, and he discovered he liked it so much that I had a hard time getting him to finally get out of the water.  He was happier than I'd ever seen him.  So he proceeded to brag to everybody he knew and even to strangers, just mentioning nonchalantly something along the lines of, "how was your weekend? Me, I went swimming in the ocean..."  

18 minutes ago, BigSkyDiamond said:

and marzipan scones

under sapphire skies, trees creak,

mint breeze enfolds me

Mint breeze enfolds me.

Don't know about the people,

but scarecrows look cool.  

(with a nod to Kobayashi Issa's late Edo period classic:

"Approaching my village:

Don't know about the people,

but all the scarecrows are crooked.")

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

 

like the falling rain

I plink, pour, puddle, and plop

Leia´s sweet revenge.

Interesting bilingual play of words for me.  Lei is, incidentally, the Russian for "pour" in the imperative mood.  Leika -- a watering can, and also the diminutive of Leia.  Lei-ka -- same as lei but the imperative mood is expressed more informally.  

16 hours ago, doc benway said:

 

dragon wings thunder

raising arms in defiance

I care for others

I care for others,

I don't care for still others --

like the falling rain.