At a recent archaeology awards ceremony in London, a 21-year-old Cambridge student walked out onto the stage to receive an award and the presenter announced, "She's been researching sexual harassment in archaeology."
A large section of the audience burst out laughing.
The presenter said, "It isn't funny."
The laughter did not abate which leads me to suspect that funniness might be subjective.
Someone wanted to jump her bones?
Quote: john tregorran @ 25th November 2019, 11:19 PMSomeone wanted to jump her bones?
It's entirely possible but I understand that in the world of archaeology, such behaviour is acceptable only after a couple have been carbon dating for a while.
Quote: Rood Eye @ 24th November 2019, 5:53 PMThe strangest story of the week and indeed the strangest story I've read for some time concerns the sergeant major who was shaving in a communal shower room when a major (40) entered the shower room and, while walking past the 6ft 3in sergeant major, gave him a smack on the bum.
The sergeant major says this was done in a jovial manner, although the smack was quite hard.
The story becomes even stranger when we learn that the sergeant major claimed to be so traumatised by the incident that he became quite withdrawn, did not want to engage with other people and lost interest in marital activities with his wife. He was later diagnosed with depression and says the memory of the incident will remain with him for the rest of his life.
The major was charged with battery but denied the charge saying that, if there had been any contact, it must have been accidental contact with his wash bag.
A court-martial convicted the major.
Shortly following the incident, the sergeant major told a woman lieutenant about the incident and says he insisted she gave him a "pinky promise" not to repeat the story to anybody.
It may be that some BCG readers are unfamiliar with the expression "pinky promise": it means a promise given by one party to another and then confirmed by the brief interlocking of one party's little finger with the little finger of the other.
For a number of reasons, this is by some way the strangest story I've heard in a very long time.
I think we need more information.
I analysed this post in detail and located the article. The first two words that came into my mind were snowflake and generation. The next four were potential, for, legal and manipulation. The next was loadsamoney. And the final three were for, goodness and sake. I can buy into some of the angles on this from many aspects of my life. At 14 - note 14 and not older - and somewhat cossetted earlier, I found enforced communal weekends at army barracks extremely difficult. Such were the "joys" of being awarded a free place to a Bojo and Cam sort of school. Much water has flowed under a hundred bridges since and not on any literal battlefield although civilian life often seems like one. That's why I got out of it.
Last month, I reported on this forum that I was unsuspectingly slapped on the arse in a local shop by a bloke who was unquestionably rather older than me. I was ahead of him in the queue. I had a chicken and bacon pasty in my hand. He had a chicken and mushroom one in the hand of his that didn't slap me. The conversation had started with him saying something along the lines of "oh no, that's my favourite and you have taken the last one." I said I was prepared to swap., He laughed in a warm and possibly a pissed way - he was rheumy eyed - and told me not to be such a stupid bugger. He then slapped me close to my ring piece. No one in their right mind would have called it unacceptably physically intimate.
It was much quicker than all the hours rugby players spend with their noses up each others bottoms in a scrum and, of course, there was no facial involvement. It was possibly the most interactively heterosexual thing that could happen to any two males and I was quite impressed that someone in this day and age would brave it. It showed an EMOTIONAL warmth in a reasonable brief way, albeit that it was clumsy or perhaps especially because it was so. It seemed very human to me.
So the senior army guy walks in on a junior shaving and we are told both are heterosexual. One line is that the first feels that there is potentially a tension in the difference between their grades and assumes in what is a basic situation that to slap the second on the arse would be a friendly cut the ice sort of leveller. Another line is that there is the depression factor in the junior. Did the first know about it? Perhaps if he did it was a way of trying to be warm towards him and showing understanding for his problems, not knowing how else to do it. The third line is that the senior may have considered the junior pathetic, for whatever reason and rightly or wrongly, and decided to do something which he would then tell everyone else the other enjoyed but I think that unlikely. That could be done without actually doing it.
From many people's points of view, the junior one had issues. Unusual perhaps. To have been in the army and probably fighting in diabolical scenarios - that most of us couldn't bear - on behalf of the rest of us and our country. To have lived in communal situations with teamwork and camaraderieg. One might want privacy. One might have a preference for it or yearn for it so as to escape all the basic ways and considerable monotony. I get that, What I don't get is the feeling of shock he got on something so arguably bland and so trivial. It wasn't even as if he was stark bollock naked at the time.
At this stage in my life, I have a theory about male sexuality which as a concept hovers over this peculiar case quite heavily. Being at ease with interactive rough and tumble male stuff - wrestling, fighting etc - is in many something which started with them as boys. Brothers. Mates. Whatever. No real thought needs to be given to it. It was as it was. Now let's kill our enemy for the Queen. Epstein is dead? Oh f**k. It's back to viciously torturing then hanging bloody ISIS again.
In those for whom it wasn't because it didn't really exist - let's face it women don't tend to give birth to nine kids these days so that five boys have to share a bedroom - it can go off in as many directions as people do in the world itself. As many who decide to become Miss Fifi La Rue in Soho will decide to join the military so as to prove their masculine credentials. In neither case is there necessarily the assumption of anything other than heterosexuality beyond lame stereotypical perceptions in society at large. Indeed, it is quite possible that when the bloke who wears feather boas puts them down, he's shagging women all over town at every available opportunity while the one in khaki with a rifle has the wifey and kids or if not the strong aspiration for that at some point : - and no other impulses whatsoever but is most concerned in a defensive way on if he is perceived as something other. His is tougher. It's a psychological disability.
So it is the latter sort of person - for reasons of the way society works I am not going to make these comments specific to this gentleman's case - who in my humble opinion needs counselling. He needs to be placed with a counsellor away from everyone else for a week and let his mind go to the most extreme homosexual scenarios possible and to dwell on them all for at least half a week to the exclusion of everything else. By the time he has in his mind being gangbanged by 40 blokes on several thousand occasions - something he would deliberately have not considered before - he will be so bored with it and so clear in his head about how ludicrous it is from his own perspective he will reject it all for him (while accepting that for some it would be enticing). He will be longing to go back to normal life where one bloke slaps another blokes' cheek.
And then in the second part of the week I would think he should consider how everyone is clumsy and can do what we consider to be weird things with the best of motivations, then get out of his own arse and start to find a bit of brotherly love, knowing it comes with awkwardness and not everyone being Brain of Britain. But I suppose a lot of it comes down to what someone wants. There are a lot of gains to be had from being the vulnerable man in a tough guy situation - the maintaining of ego, the potential for early release and financial compensation, satisfying a wife who just wants to have a normal life raising pigs with her hubby in the country or finding some route to becoming an MP with a 16 year old boyfriend who loves briefs, sweat and poppers and television interviews on ITV about how it all then went pear shaped.
Rood Eye has kindly messaged me to say that it was the Major who slapped the junior rather than vice versa. Damn. I got it all the wrong way round. Suspose I am going to have to try to re-work it. I will do my best to do so but shame when it was such a common sense and balanced work of art - and I was just about to start my excellent manifesto thread too!!!
Update :
There - I've now done it but in a slightly sloppy way as my head has moved on. There may still be errors but I hope not!
Katie Price has been declared bankrupt and I have to admit I'm surprised at hearing that news today as I thought it could just be another story to get her in the tabloids. She was once worth over £40m so it's disgraceful of her to blow a fortune when she has the future of her five children to consider. Money that could have been put in trust so her kids had money towards a house or university funding. Or ensuring her eldest son Harvey can afford specialist care and an adapted home in adulthood. She's hardly a role model having been convicted for speeding, drink driving and harassment in a school playground and recently had rehab for cocaine use.
It makes me wonder if any funds can be exempt from being declared at a bankruptcy hearing such as a trust fund or offshore bank account. I don't think bankruptcy means you are skint it just means you don't have the means to pay off debts but the debt was £250,000 so that must mean she really has blown the lot if she couldn't liquidate assets to pay it off. Where's it all gone?
I wouldn't worry too much about Katie Price: she'll be bankrupt only for the next 12 months after which she'll be right back in the game.
She's still a newsworthy celebrity so financial opportunities will continue to come her way for some time to come. If she can manage to rein in her traditionally extravagant spending to such an extent that it totals less than her income, she'll probably live happily enough ever after.
If there were so many opportunities she wouldn't be bankrupt and she's playing a dangerous game if she's holding anything back from the court. I never see her on TV and when she is it's car crash quality. It means a very uncertain and unstable future for her children. I don't hate Katie Price I just see her as the worlds worst sell out and no matter what happens in her life she makes sure the cameras are there. I'm not trying to sound all "won't somebody please think of the children" but wont somebody please think of the children.
Quote: Rood Eye @ 26th November 2019, 8:49 PMI wouldn't worry too much about Katie Price: she'll be bankrupt only for the next 12 months after which she'll be right back in the game.
She's still a newsworthy celebrity so financial opportunities will continue to come her way for some time to come. If she can manage to rein in her traditionally extravagant spending to such an extent that it totals less than her income, she'll probably live happily enough ever after.
Don't you mean "ON the game" ?
Quote: john tregorran @ 26th November 2019, 9:18 PMDon't you mean "ON the game" ?
You might think that: I couldn't possibly comment. 
Katie Price is a really, really weird one for me. She was at one time in my cul-de-sac but I missed her. Honestly, for such an ordinary man, my life has been so rich with very weird happenings. I am absolutely known for it. Yes I am blessed with something of an imagination which has often got me through but my meat and bread is the bizarre real stuff. Mostly it ain't celebrity. It is the oddballs who when I do risk travelling round Britain singly find me or vice versa. The scope for a real story energises me and I get a bit down when nothing weird has occurred for a while. But I said it here at the time. Totally true. When Dane moved next door to me I was going through hell re work and other things on a personal level. I didn't know him from Adam and was later scared of the peculiarity that he had moved so close in a tiny little bungalow. It didn't make sense once I had Googled. Then his girlfriend, an ex Miss Wales, moved in with her cat, There were issues.
They kept cropping up in the papers. I kept my distance only saying the occasional hello, partially for me and my sense of security and partially in thought for him and his need to escape the press. I think it worked well. There was a silent mutual respect. I can't complain at all about him as a past neighbour and good luck to him. Andre - another Price ex - I guess he is four miles away as the crow flies and is in a posh area so that's kind of understandable. But then so was Smiley Culture and that all went terrible. These are NOT my people culturally. In some ways, they epitomise to me where society went wrong. But I have a little bit of sympathy towards them. They got money ish but were also victims and they never hurt me. I also respect any mother who loves her child if he has especial challenges and I do think KP does in her daffy way. So if you are reading this Bowers mate or Katie or whatever, I never slagged you off as most did and I tried my best for you.
Kindest - (the last thing I did was bug them and I do think when I am such a dick that I did at least get that right) :
"The uploader has not made this video available in your country "
I don't mind really.
Researchers at Queen's Mary's University London have announced that many people judge other people's intelligence on the basis of their regional accents.
I think we knew that already, didn't we?
The study was a replication of an earlier study first carried out 50 years ago and the results are very similar.
Your typical BBC newsreader accent (a.k.a. received pronunciation) was rated highly, as was French-accented English and Edinburgh-accented English.
Low ratings were given to Cockney, Liverpool, Essex and Birmingham.
Bias was found to be strongest in the south of England, especially among the posher people down there.
I think we knew that already, too.
There can't be many men in the world who stand 6ft 3in tall yet have a 13-year-old son who is significantly taller.
Reading the papers today, I've learned there is at least one - and that's Donald Trump!
If young Barron Trump doesn't fancy a business career, he might have a future playing basketball!
If you can believe Donald is 6'3"
The accuracy of any information about him has to be doubted. 