Stella_Omega
No Gentleman
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It's the travel expenses...Actually?
So are we.
(There are people who'll need roommates.)
G
Guest
Guest
You ever gonna take off that gas mask so people can give you a kiss?
G
Guest
Guest
Liar
now with 17% more class
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There are other parts to kiss.
G
Guest
Guest
BlackShanglan
Silver-Tongued Papist
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Too much Dr. Who. I keep thinking, "Are you my mummy?"
Stella_Omega
No Gentleman
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"Who was that masked man?"
gauchecritic
When there are grey skies
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- Jul 25, 2002
- Posts
- 7,076
[Slight Jack] I already asked him that but he didn't bite. (probably because I didn't reference it) Did you see the Dalek episode when the 'Unit' members put on gas masks and the Doctor turned to the Colonel and asked "Are you my mummy?". I larfed and larfed[endjack]
SR71PLT (in a Jimmyboy stylee)
We've had 'clique' threads, several times (I think I started at least two of them) and the general conclusion that I reached was that most cliques are defined mainly by onlookers, and usually casting anyone that uses 'we', in that mould.
I've seen clique threads where supposed members are in constant private communication co-ordinating riots and pile-ons.
I've seen threads evolve from honest questions about thread relationships into 'clique' threads with individuals damning every other person on the board.
and I've seen clique threads where each poster wishes one AHer a happy birthday.
I'm pretty certain that at the moment there are some that view you as a member of this clique.
Piling on noobs. I've definitely witnessed more welcomes than pile-ons and I believe that for every noob pile-on there has been a voice of calm calling for it to end in the same thread (you can probably find ones that don't) Perhaps you're thinking of those times when a 'stranger' posts something negative about our beloved AH (oops used the possessive there) as a first timer. Well, honestly, what else would you expect?
Speaking of civility, you know what I find interesting? The reluctance to actually name names and the furore it causes when someone does.
BlackShanglan
Silver-Tongued Papist
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trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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A Tragedy of Manners
By: Jonathan Yardley
The Washington Post
Monday, September 13, 1993
In days of yore when movies were still movies and yours truly was still a moviegoer, films aspiring to a certain sophistication frequently managed to include a restaurant scene (Sardi's or 21) in which our hero (Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart) was interrupted mid-meal by a deferential captain bearing not a tray but a telephone. Our hero picked up the receiver, signed off on a multi-million-dollar deal— and left all of us in the audience gasping at the sheer elegance of it all.
But those were old movies and old heroes, as I was reminded last week while at lunch in a pleasant, uncrowded restaurant. Two persons of the male persuasion— events proved them scarcely to be "gentlemen"— sat nearby, immersed in what seemed to be deep negotiations. Suddenly one of them reached into his briefcase, hauled out a cellular phone and dialed up a third party. That business having been completed, he went off to the men's room— whereupon the phone emitted a noisy ring, which was no less noisily answered by his luncheon partner.
The difference between the first scene and the second is the difference between Cary Grant and Michael Douglas, or at least between the celluloid characters portrayed by same. No doubt there are still those in this post Reagan/Trump world who imagine the ostentatious behavior of my two fellow diners to be suave and masterly, but to my taste it was merely obtrusively rude. Watching those two jerks flex their muscles, I thought nothing so much as that they should be sent back to school: to Gilman School, to be precise.
That's because a couple of days before I had read, in the Baltimore Sun, a news story about how this private school for boys "has made civility— a k a courtesy— its theme for the academic year." The headmaster of Gilman, Arch Montgomery, has seen too much rudeness and discourtesy among his students, much of it relatively trivial— impertinence toward guest speakers, impoliteness toward others, violations of rules of dress and behavior— but all of it adding up to a disturbing pattern. Montgomery has decided to take action.
It comes as a form of what the Sun calls "a schoolwide assault on incivility." This means, among other things, that "student behavioral policies have been revised, counselors hired and lessons modified to include a chapter on courtesy." Students will be required to "compile lists of 'civil' words ('honesty' and 'humility' come to the headmaster's mind), and discuss them at a series of lectures the headmaster has planned."
All of which admittedly sounds more than a little quaint: "Mr. Chips Meets the '90s." A day school that charges $9,000 per head per year [$21,000 in 2008] to educate its 1,000 students isn't exactly the real world as most Americans know it, even if it has— as Gilman does— an uncommonly generous scholarship program. But the explanation Montgomery gives for his students' incivility addresses a problem that touches millions of Americans. Montgomery, who is 40, told the Sun: "Ours is the wealthiest generation of Americans, a group no one ever said no to. These people are spoiled, petulant and used to getting their own way, and when they don't, they scream until they do. They are magnificently self-absorbed; they feel they are owed. And these people are raising children. Also, we're rejecting institutions— church and family— that gave order to our lives."
Those are tough words; courageous words, too, when one considers that "these people" are in large measure the constituency served by Mr. Montgomery and his school. Those words also, of course, are true, as is Montgomery's answer to a parent who asked, "What will happen to our civil children when they go off into an uncivil world?" Montgomery said: "It's not an unreasonable question. What happens if we succeed in creating a kinder and gentler environment here, and the kids then go off to Harvard? Are we disarming them for the future? The answer is that people can protect themselves without resorting to incivility. But we must encourage children not to become paralyzed by the fact that others are not living by their standards. You shouldn't expect a reward for doing the right thing. Being a good person is hard, otherwise, everyone would do it."
So the young men of Gilman are to be molded into good people, no doubt entirely against their will. As we used to say in the movies: Rotsa ruck. The odds are against Montgomery's crusade— it's tempting to picture him aboard a spavined steed, tilting at a windmill— not merely because his pampered charges are, in his words, "arrogant, disrespectful or self-indulgent," but because there is virtually nothing in American society that encourages civility.
Ours has always been a raw, touchy, quick-tempered country, but until the past couple of decades it managed to honor certain basic principles of courtesy. Children were expected to address their elders with respect and in deferential language. Profanity and obscenity were strictly limited to impolite company. Dress in all except the most relaxed circumstances adhered to minimal expectations of neatness and appropriateness, if not formality. All in all, people were expected— and expected of themselves as well— to acknowledge the needs and interests of others and to accomodate them when required or merely suitable.
It's tempting to say that the '60s came along and blew all of that away— tempting because in a substantial measure it's true. The behavioral revolution ushered in by that lamentable era was summed up in the catch phrase "let it all hang out," though we were meant to believe that this was a matter of communal rather than merely selfish interest. Whatever the unknowable truth may be, it remains that in time the manners of the '60s were commandeered by commercial interests for their own purposes.
Thus the "let it all hang out" culture was transformed into the "in your face" culture. The mass media, which in previous times had tended to promote stars of a reasonably civil and sophisticated demeanor, eagerly made the transition from Cary Grant to Rob Lowe, from Katherine Hepburn to Madonna. Whether one cares to blame it on Reagan and Trump or merely on the fates, unchecked selfishness somehow metamorphosed from an anti-social liability into a distinct asset.
As Ernest Lefever of the Ethics and Public Policy Center told the Sun, "The harshness, the ugliness that has entered Western civilization is more pronounced than ever, and one of the major indicators is our schools." That isn't mere nostalgic complaint, it's the truth. Courtesy and civility are not merely honored in the breach, they are quite openly rejected. Our culture is contemptuous of people who are mindful of others, who are modest and self-effacing, who speak softly and precisely. It admires people who grab whatever they can, who blow their own horns, whose voices are loud and insistent.
It is precisely for those reasons that Montgomery's crusade, though laudable, looks so quixotic. Changes in society are tidal forces against which the resistance of any single person or institution is hopeless. A nation blissed out on idiotic television programming, big-time college football, professional athletics, aggressive automobiles and wholesale firearms is not going to see the light and transform itself into the kinder, gentler place so foolishly— and cynically— conjured by George Bush.
Still, it's good to see someone trying. Arch Montgomery may change only a few young minds— and those may change for the worse once they leave his charge and enter the uncivil world— but in trying to do so he has made a grand, elegant gesture for which he deserves our thanks. Captain, bring that man a silver telephone.
_______________
Epilogue: A decade later, Montgomery was terminated by the school. It is not known if his termination was related to his 1993 actions.
By: Jonathan Yardley
The Washington Post
Monday, September 13, 1993
In days of yore when movies were still movies and yours truly was still a moviegoer, films aspiring to a certain sophistication frequently managed to include a restaurant scene (Sardi's or 21) in which our hero (Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart) was interrupted mid-meal by a deferential captain bearing not a tray but a telephone. Our hero picked up the receiver, signed off on a multi-million-dollar deal— and left all of us in the audience gasping at the sheer elegance of it all.
But those were old movies and old heroes, as I was reminded last week while at lunch in a pleasant, uncrowded restaurant. Two persons of the male persuasion— events proved them scarcely to be "gentlemen"— sat nearby, immersed in what seemed to be deep negotiations. Suddenly one of them reached into his briefcase, hauled out a cellular phone and dialed up a third party. That business having been completed, he went off to the men's room— whereupon the phone emitted a noisy ring, which was no less noisily answered by his luncheon partner.
The difference between the first scene and the second is the difference between Cary Grant and Michael Douglas, or at least between the celluloid characters portrayed by same. No doubt there are still those in this post Reagan/Trump world who imagine the ostentatious behavior of my two fellow diners to be suave and masterly, but to my taste it was merely obtrusively rude. Watching those two jerks flex their muscles, I thought nothing so much as that they should be sent back to school: to Gilman School, to be precise.
That's because a couple of days before I had read, in the Baltimore Sun, a news story about how this private school for boys "has made civility— a k a courtesy— its theme for the academic year." The headmaster of Gilman, Arch Montgomery, has seen too much rudeness and discourtesy among his students, much of it relatively trivial— impertinence toward guest speakers, impoliteness toward others, violations of rules of dress and behavior— but all of it adding up to a disturbing pattern. Montgomery has decided to take action.
It comes as a form of what the Sun calls "a schoolwide assault on incivility." This means, among other things, that "student behavioral policies have been revised, counselors hired and lessons modified to include a chapter on courtesy." Students will be required to "compile lists of 'civil' words ('honesty' and 'humility' come to the headmaster's mind), and discuss them at a series of lectures the headmaster has planned."
All of which admittedly sounds more than a little quaint: "Mr. Chips Meets the '90s." A day school that charges $9,000 per head per year [$21,000 in 2008] to educate its 1,000 students isn't exactly the real world as most Americans know it, even if it has— as Gilman does— an uncommonly generous scholarship program. But the explanation Montgomery gives for his students' incivility addresses a problem that touches millions of Americans. Montgomery, who is 40, told the Sun: "Ours is the wealthiest generation of Americans, a group no one ever said no to. These people are spoiled, petulant and used to getting their own way, and when they don't, they scream until they do. They are magnificently self-absorbed; they feel they are owed. And these people are raising children. Also, we're rejecting institutions— church and family— that gave order to our lives."
Those are tough words; courageous words, too, when one considers that "these people" are in large measure the constituency served by Mr. Montgomery and his school. Those words also, of course, are true, as is Montgomery's answer to a parent who asked, "What will happen to our civil children when they go off into an uncivil world?" Montgomery said: "It's not an unreasonable question. What happens if we succeed in creating a kinder and gentler environment here, and the kids then go off to Harvard? Are we disarming them for the future? The answer is that people can protect themselves without resorting to incivility. But we must encourage children not to become paralyzed by the fact that others are not living by their standards. You shouldn't expect a reward for doing the right thing. Being a good person is hard, otherwise, everyone would do it."
So the young men of Gilman are to be molded into good people, no doubt entirely against their will. As we used to say in the movies: Rotsa ruck. The odds are against Montgomery's crusade— it's tempting to picture him aboard a spavined steed, tilting at a windmill— not merely because his pampered charges are, in his words, "arrogant, disrespectful or self-indulgent," but because there is virtually nothing in American society that encourages civility.
Ours has always been a raw, touchy, quick-tempered country, but until the past couple of decades it managed to honor certain basic principles of courtesy. Children were expected to address their elders with respect and in deferential language. Profanity and obscenity were strictly limited to impolite company. Dress in all except the most relaxed circumstances adhered to minimal expectations of neatness and appropriateness, if not formality. All in all, people were expected— and expected of themselves as well— to acknowledge the needs and interests of others and to accomodate them when required or merely suitable.
It's tempting to say that the '60s came along and blew all of that away— tempting because in a substantial measure it's true. The behavioral revolution ushered in by that lamentable era was summed up in the catch phrase "let it all hang out," though we were meant to believe that this was a matter of communal rather than merely selfish interest. Whatever the unknowable truth may be, it remains that in time the manners of the '60s were commandeered by commercial interests for their own purposes.
Thus the "let it all hang out" culture was transformed into the "in your face" culture. The mass media, which in previous times had tended to promote stars of a reasonably civil and sophisticated demeanor, eagerly made the transition from Cary Grant to Rob Lowe, from Katherine Hepburn to Madonna. Whether one cares to blame it on Reagan and Trump or merely on the fates, unchecked selfishness somehow metamorphosed from an anti-social liability into a distinct asset.
As Ernest Lefever of the Ethics and Public Policy Center told the Sun, "The harshness, the ugliness that has entered Western civilization is more pronounced than ever, and one of the major indicators is our schools." That isn't mere nostalgic complaint, it's the truth. Courtesy and civility are not merely honored in the breach, they are quite openly rejected. Our culture is contemptuous of people who are mindful of others, who are modest and self-effacing, who speak softly and precisely. It admires people who grab whatever they can, who blow their own horns, whose voices are loud and insistent.
It is precisely for those reasons that Montgomery's crusade, though laudable, looks so quixotic. Changes in society are tidal forces against which the resistance of any single person or institution is hopeless. A nation blissed out on idiotic television programming, big-time college football, professional athletics, aggressive automobiles and wholesale firearms is not going to see the light and transform itself into the kinder, gentler place so foolishly— and cynically— conjured by George Bush.
Still, it's good to see someone trying. Arch Montgomery may change only a few young minds— and those may change for the worse once they leave his charge and enter the uncivil world— but in trying to do so he has made a grand, elegant gesture for which he deserves our thanks. Captain, bring that man a silver telephone.
_______________
Epilogue: A decade later, Montgomery was terminated by the school. It is not known if his termination was related to his 1993 actions.
Last edited:
Le Jacquelope
Loves Spam
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Yeah, I'd hate to see you get accused of being rabid or going postal.Mayhap.
We may have to agree to disagree on that one.
G
Guest
Guest
Le Jacquelope
Loves Spam
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When you roast one of sr71plt's cows, he's bound to accuse you of going postal.
sr71plt
Literotica Guru
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Roast one of my cows, and you'll likely get shot. Sure you can even find Colorado?
Besides, we don't have postmen; whoever is in residence at the ranch has to fly into Craig for the mail.
(But, speaking of civility, have you read my sig line?)
Last edited:
Stella_Omega
No Gentleman
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That's his evil twin Skippylope talking, not him.
BlackShanglan
Silver-Tongued Papist
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- Jul 7, 2004
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You're arguing with the author of the "Who's the Biggest Piece of White Trash on the GB" thread and the man who chose to quarrel with a gay man by posting a picture of a dying AIDS patient. There's precious little he understands other than going rabid and/or postal. Those are the terms by which he defines his life.
sr71plt
Literotica Guru
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Oh, I don't think this was an argument. And your examples do seem to track with "rabid" and "postal" to me.
Le Jacquelope
Loves Spam
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I don't read his sig. I don't read him, either.That's his evil twin Skippylope talking, not him.
I end all exchanges with trash talkers like him right away, before an argument can brew. I don't have time for watching people like sr71 make idiots of themselves. I use iggy and their thrashing ends.
sr71plt
Literotica Guru
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ottohauser1977
Literotica Guru
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The incivility toward newbies like myself might well be a factor.
Stella_Omega
No Gentleman
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May I suggest starting a thread introducing yourself? It's the polite thing to do on any forum.The incivility toward newbies like myself might well be a factor.
ottohauser1977
Literotica Guru
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- Oct 17, 2008
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Does every one do this? I haven't seen any such threads. Well, if it will silence the naysayers, perhaps I will.
Stella_Omega
No Gentleman
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Some people do, it seems to go over fairly well in most cases.
I do remember one guy who started off with "Hi! I let some guy suck my dick once ten years ago, would you guys say I was gay? A lot of people say I'm an asshole..."
That one fell apart pretty quickly!
ottohauser1977
Literotica Guru
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- 636
Some people do, it seems to go over fairly well in most cases.
I do remember one guy who started off with "Hi! I let some guy suck my dick once ten years ago, would you guys say I was gay? A lot of people say I'm an asshole..."
That one fell apart pretty quickly!
No danger of that here. I am still struggling to overcome the homophobia of my East German upbringing. I still tend to portray homosexuals and bisexuals (male, that is) negatively in writing, though I'm trying to get past that bias.
Stella_Omega
No Gentleman
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Well, no one thought he was gay, but it became evident that he was an asshole...
Gay men are just fine by me--- assholes, not so much.
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