Monday Trivia #72

Will Truman 39 Comments

Japan has 12
China has 10
Thailand and Vietnam have 3
India and Russia have 2
Brazil, Myanmar, Nepal, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Ukraine, United States, and Venezuela have 1

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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39 Comments

      • Judging by Wikipedia, it’s any statues over 40 meters, of which a decent percentage happen to be Buddhas.

          • OK, I actually got in the same universe as this one, Buddhist shrines was my guess but got no further.

            The LikkoTrums continue to delight and amaze.

            40 meters? 3 telephone poles? Jesus Buddha Christ.

  4. Man, people got this one fast. My brain was still stuck on tentacle porn, and it was already over.

    (Exercise for the reader: is this a new experience for me?)

    • What is tentacle porn!????!?!

      I have seen Kimmi reference it from time to time, but (with all due respect if you’re reading, Kimmi) I have come to avoid asking Kimmi to elaborate on anything anymore.

      But you’re not off the hook, Ryan. Is “tentacle porn” an actual thing, or is it just a joke? I can grok if it’s just a joke. If it’s an actual thing, then I almost want to know… but not quite. Certainly not enough to end up on whatever watch list you get added to if you’re caught Googling “tentacle porn.”

          • Oh. Oh, dear. I… I… oh, dear.

            I really, really should have left well enough alone. There was no good reason for me to check that Wikipedia page. I… I have only myself to blame.

            Martinis. Yes. A martini will help. Must wrap up work and go have a martini. Yes. A martini will help.

          • And to think, next time it comes up, you will actually know what people are talking about. Know of its illustrious history. You may just be able to explain it to other people, when they ask.

            (Of you can just direct them to the Wikipedia page, as I did.)

          • Maybe I’ve had a few too many spins ’round the internet, but if we are talking about the “Tentacle Erotica” page, it seems rather tame. Did I miss something?

          • Dude. Leave well enough alone. We’re already going to have some weird search terms sending people here to be sorely disappointed as it is.

          • I was thinking “porn” was metaphorical, like when I call Forbes magazine “money porn”. No such luck.

          • Ordinary Gentleman David Ryan did direct a half dozen critically-acclaimed movies containing sexually explicit scenes, which you will soon be able to see on the big screen in Uruguay. Does that count?

        • The best part is that it was invented to get around censorship laws. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again!

  5. We may have to explain this.

    After FDR died, allowing Truman to win the war in the Pacific, General Douglas By Gawd MacArthur had a new Constitution drafted for Japan. While it was kinda maybe based on such things as The Real Constitution, it included such things as allowances for Censorship in the name of Public Decency and whatnot.

    What this means is that Japan was soon able to pass a law prohibiting the display or depiction of genitalia.

    This is all well and good so far, right? Sure.

    The problem is that laws get passed and never, never, never, ever sunset. So as pornography got mainstreamed, so did a whole bunch of people with a desire to display and/or depict genitalia… and, of course, the law forbade this and you won’t find two politicians in Japan to rub together that would be willing to argue “we should repeal the genitalia law!” on the floor of the legislative branch… so the law stands.

    Which brings in such things as “gaming the law”.

    “The law says that we can’t depict dongs.”

    “Yes.”

    “Can we depict tenticles?”

    “Um… what?”

    “Can we depict a hideous demon with tentacles instead of fingers?”

    “Er… well… technically… the law doesn’t exactly *PROHIBIT* tentacles…”

    “Awesome! You’re going to love this new movie! We only have to blur out the female genitalia!”

    (Due to explicit content, the rest of this comment has been rot13ed.)

    (Abgr: fvzvyne pbairefngvbaf jrer uryq ertneqvat jurgure gurl pbhyq qrcvpg gur funcr gung fnyvin jbhyq gnxr ba gur inevbhf cnegf bs tubfgf jub jrer fbyvq ohg abg ivfvoyr jbhyq, grpuavpnyyl, oernx gur ynj… be jurgure shyyl pybgurq jbzra jub unq erprvirq sne-gbb-ynetr zvyx rarznf cynlvat ght-bs-jne naq tbvat ba gb unir “nppvqragf” orvat svyzrq jbhyq nyfb, grpuavpnyyl, oernx gur ynj… be zbivrf qrqvpngrq gb ynetr tebhcf bs zra npuvrivat betnfz ba bar fvatyr, pybgurq, jbzna naq gura fubjvat ure pbirerq va… npuvrirq betnfzf… sbe n tbbq puhax bs gvzr jbhyq grpuavpnyyl oernx gur ynj.)

    (Japan is why I argue that the US should not make condom use in pornography mandatory. I fear that we would make Japan look like Utah when it came to gaming the law.)

    • Hedonistic utilitarianism is not a valid behavorial calculus. I have just proven this, with Jaybird’s assistance.

      I knew I would regret rot13’ing that encyphered phrase. I knew it. How could I have not known it? But did I stop myself? Did I say, “Self, come on, you know that whatever is in there, reading it cannot concievably make you any happier”? A rational weighing of probable expected outcomes and balancing work to output would have guided me to choose leaving it alone.

      No. No, I did not. And now I have the result I predicted for myself all along.

    • you won’t find two politicians in Japan to rub together

      Onscreen, anyway.

    • There was an article in the Atlantic once, written by a guy who’d spent considerable time in Japan, talking about porn there. I’ll let Burt repeat the experiment:

      Bar bs gur fubjf ur qrfpevorq jnf n fbnc bcren jvgu frk fprarf nobhg n lbhat, cerggl tvey nfpraqvat gur pbecbengr ynqqre, bsgra ol fyrrcvat nebhaq fgengrtvpnyyl. Fvapr gurer jnf na nofbyhgr ona ba fubjvat travgnyvn ba GI, rira bofpherq, gur frk gurl fubjrq jnf qvtvgny ba uvf cneg (gubhtu cerfhznoyl oebnqpnfg va nanybt), naq abg dhvgr travgny ba uref. Naq dhvgr tencuvp.

      • If (this) does not technically violate the prohibition, one should never be surprised to find that they’re doing (this) to the hilt.

        Pardon the pun.

          • You know what they say, once you go cephalopod, you’ll never go back to the rod.

          • There once was a Gentleman Tod
            Whose gal had a wonderful bod
            She left him one day and we all heard her say
            ‘He is good, but no cephalopod’.

            Sorry, I’ll show myself out now.

          • There once was a customer Sid,
            In search of a specialty vid,
            A boisterous buyer, we heard him inquire,
            ‘Bout two boys, three girls, and one squid.

        • So hedonistic utilitarianism does work. Eventually 🙂

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