A Digression Thread: or old furniture in a new house.

The best defence is distance. If I ever meet Deb I'll have profuse apologies on hand.

But till then...

Flowers and chocolates and wine should be at hand as well.

And full body armour. But no wine, some people don't handle drink well and are prone to moon everyone they see.

he was doing soooo well with the chocolates - and then it all just fell in a heap!

Beth is wise
Beth knows all.

It just amazes me how brave Craven is - from a distance.

I remember giving him some perfectly good advice about personal health insurance, serious security measures, and cast iron underwear, amongst other things, if he wanted to torment Deb.

Brave or foolish?

You should never hit anyone with your hat - unless you're wearing one of those soft cap thingies. You might damage the shape of your hat!

I'm surprised Deb doesn't look good in hats - hats are an essential accessory for harrrummmphers!

Isn't that the truth.

Inadvertent phlirting, it seems to me, is one of them thar -- whaddayacallit -- oxinmaroons.

<aside to Beth -- I know you have cleavage. I've seen some pics taken in the Catskills last weekend. Ha! So there!>

<aside to Craven: you can thank me later. Us guys has gotta stick together>

As one of the very old furniture in this new house, all my senses are degrading very fast. I can only hope that my wife doesn't throw me out with all the other accumulated junk in our house - it's hard to tell the difference! c.i.

CI - what an entrance!

Are you flirting?

THANK YOU!

We mustindeed stick together for it was not 5 hurs ago that Deb plotted to divide us.

She said:

"I will call to my aid some hard hitting women from the corners of the globe. After which I will summon unto me the men who are willing to join our female cause. With flirtation I will prevail."

Then she started batting her eyelashes, practicing for her assault on our uinty.

Jesus - as if there was not enough to worry about in this vale of tears, now you mens have an "uinty"!

What it is, and what it does, is too horrific for me to contemplate!

However - even in the face of this new - biological-sounding - weapon, we shall stand firm! We shall prevail!

Deb,

You know prevail means win right?

If you folk have a secret uinty I suspect prevail means hold our own in the face of inhumane weapons of something or other!

Now - as for this supposed oxymoron of MA's - it isn't!

Why, just speaking for myself, I have been told by menfolk to whom I believed I was being simply minimally polite - if not downright subtly dismissive - that I was flirting with them - or they have reacted as if I were!

Inadvertant flirting is alive and well and living most everywhere.

Why, as we all know, the simplest of communications is fraught with possibilities for misunderstanding - simply ordering in a restaurant - how many times have I ordered a 22 and received a 24? (I don't expect you to answer that - it is a rhetorical question. But, if I had not said that, you might well have tried to answer it. See what I mean?)

When you add the ingredient of male/female interaction - a realm sometimes over-burdened with dreams, hopes and, of course, a greater or lesser chasm between the experiences and assumptions of the protagonists - the possibilities for misattribution are multiplied.

Are you bored yet?

Heeee heeeeee

But it is TWUE!

Wow - I only read pages 8,9,10 - this looks fun!

uinty - is that boy-talk for innie or outie?

Oh, Deb, Deb -- that which you speak of (or 'of which you speak,' in case you object to prepositional endings [or beginings for that matter]), as I say, that which you speak of as 'inadvertent flirting' is in fact no flirting at all. The situation which you describe (or 'this situation which you have described,' if you wish specificity and a pluperfect tense) (myself, I'm very relaxed; not tense at all), this situation is not a case of flirting at all. You are obviously describing a situation which leads us menfolk to refer to some of you femalefolk as a 'tease.' (Or, to be more precise, as 'teases' since we were speaking in the plurality and/or pluralism argot here.) Any time a woman behaves in the way which Craven has described you as behaving -- and Craven is an honorable man (so are they all, all honorable men) -- well, the only reasonable assumption that can made is that you are, ipso facto and in hoc signo vinces, propositioning this male. This is beyond 'flirting,' and most certainly beyond being 'merely polite.'

Anyone else asleep yet?

Huh MA, not asleep yet but could be soon.

Welcome Husker! Take your shoes off and make yourself at home!

Drink?

Now looky here MA!

What you are saying (or writing to be precise, and I have just had some experience of the difference - chasm-like - between the two, but I digress) might well be justified IF the situation described by the mendacious Mr de Kere were sooth, instead of being, as it naturally is, very unsooth indeed!

If I had - as he so meretriciously animadverts of me - raised my skirts to show my legs under the petext of examining my "stockings" for runs, such a situation, unless the runs were verifiable, would indeed constitute a horse of a different feather - or something of that ilk. I am unsure if it would necessarily imply a proposition - it might simply be that I am a graceless being, likely to scratch my bottom in public and suchlike - (though, in immediate pre-emptive denial of likely forthcoming missiles (or missals) from the same unsoothful pop-gun, I say that I would never, of course, do such a thing - knowingly). So - as in all things interpretation is a subtle and inexact art.

However, this strange and untruthful hare introduced by Mr de Kere, obviously to startle the leaping greyhound of our discussion and introduce chaos where all was peaceful discourse, was not an example of the sort of misunderstanding I was thinking of.

Is this tropism you demonstrate of privileging such a startling and egregious slander about moi an example of the uinty threatened by Mr de Kere?

Gosh!







(lol)