The irony in this case is that being a woman is probably a significant part of the reason why our fellow forumite thought something so normal was so strange. (That particular subject, the issue of how women perceive their own and each other's attractiveness and how they act about those perceptions, seems to be one item on which women understand women less than men do!... but that would have taken too long to make a punchline out of...)

What a cool idea! If I were a monster/predatory animal/alien, I'd love to do that to a guy! Sounds very Larson-ish, in fact.

You know, he'd probably end up getting away in the end, 'cos I'd be too busy literally ROFL at the look on his face to catch him in time.

YES! Beowulf and Grendel: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402057/

Yes.

Reminds me of an old Andy Griffith show where Opie comes home from school crying over a girl who he likes but she's treating him badly (or something like that). So, Andy sits down with Opie and says (paraphrased) "You know Opie I'm much older than you and I've been around women my whole life and do you know what I've learned about women in all those years?" And Opie says "No, what?" Andy replies "Nothing!"

I wouldn't put her as pretty, certainly not in the same class as other actresses. I would class her as attractive but average, except for her feet. She gotts some ugly feet.

As for Data not using contractions, it was part of the programming. It was explained in the first episode with Lore. Despite that, he does use them a few times.

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I'm not gullible because I'm a Leo.--Actually said to me by a co-worker
Never trust anyone with 'The' for a middle name. --Said to me by a guy in Denny's at 4 am.
The difference between planning and pessimism can only be seen in retrospect. -- One of mine
Truth ain't like puppies; a bunch of them running around and you get to pick the one you like best." -- Emerson on Pushing Daisies

I'm not much on Star Trekana, and I didn't know who Lore was until I read him on Wikipedia half an hour ago.

At any rate, if Data specifically does not use contractions except a few times, I'm inclined to think that was Brent Spiner slipping them in, as the human actor no doubt uses contractions all the time. It makes no sense, not even in Star Trek Land, for an android to have instructions to use contractions only one out of every, say, one thousand possible instances.

As for any 'explanation,' I'm also inclined to believe it was merely the response of Star Trek writers to fan-based questions about why a super-intelligent android can't combine two words together. The reason Data doesn't use contractions is because it sounds robotic to television viewers.

Why are you bringing reality into a ST discussion?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

That's one of the ones I referred to, and I thought it was awful. The jewelry's nice, though.

I don't find Uma Thurman asking if she's pretty at all surprising, and not just because I don't think she's all that attractive, either. The fact is, there are lots of beautiful women with low self-esteem. It's where a lot of cases of anorexia come from, for starters. Beautiful women with beautiful bodies who think they're fat because society currently demands women to be as thin as possible, and having real curves isn't, by the standards of popular culture, all that appealing.

I'm told that I'm attractive; I don't believe it. A lot of people don't believe they're as attractive as other people think they are. Besides, at the moment of your wedding, you'd want to be as beautiful as possible, I should think, and you'd probably want confirmation of that.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

They why does Worf not use contractions? Or T'ealc?

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

There was a survey done a few years ago in some magazine that said the number 2 thing a woman wanted to hear to really make a certain activity the best it could be was that he loved her. Number 1 was that she was beautiful.

I also think that the gorgeous-girl-that-can't-get-a-date thing is reasonable. Some of the prettiest girls in my high school never really had dates becasue the guys either think they were so hot they already had boyfriends, or that there was "no way a girl like her would be caught dead with a troll like me". I think that's why so many pretty girls end up with jerks too. The jerks are just about the only ones bold enough to talk to them. My opinions only.

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I'm not gullible because I'm a Leo.--Actually said to me by a co-worker
Never trust anyone with 'The' for a middle name. --Said to me by a guy in Denny's at 4 am.
The difference between planning and pessimism can only be seen in retrospect. -- One of mine
Truth ain't like puppies; a bunch of them running around and you get to pick the one you like best." -- Emerson on Pushing Daisies

Search me. Like I said, I'm not a Trekkie. I wouldn't have guessed that Worf didn't use contractions, and I've never heard of T'ealc.

My original assertion stands, if not for Data specifically, then for other movie androids in general. They're constructed of far-futuristic materials and have petabytes of memory and processing capability, yet they talk as if they were programmed with 4-bit instruction code.

The only anti-cliche that I can think of, was Lore singing "Abdul the Bulbul Emir" I did not expect that one!! If it was a cliche, it would have been some "au courant" pop song from the late 20th Century--immediately identifiable to the audience at the time....not an ancient obscure British Vaudeville song....

Dale in Ala

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"Ad astra per aspera"

Yes, but your parents have to say that.

Believe it or not, that is semi-realistic. I've heard fashion models are among the most insecure women in the world about their looks, since that business has such unrelenting standards that a single wrinkle, pound or birthmark can affect their income.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

TNG never really had any late-20th-century music, plays, or art. The closest they came was playing "Magic Carpet Ride" in First Contact. That's about the most "contemporary" thing I'm aware of. Oh, and the punk rock "song" on the bus in "The Voyage Home", of course.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Worf and T'ealc! You are mixing serials. Worf is Star Trek but T'ealc is SG1.

As far as feminine beauty is concerned, I like the hourglass shape. Twiggy does NOT have an hourglass shape. Marilyn Monroe is NOT fat.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

Yes, but the point is neither of them use contractions, despite having spoken English-- and having spent the majority of their time talking to people who do use contractions-- for years. Other Klingons use contractions, why not Worf?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort