Skepticism

Comment o’ the Week: Large Fake Mammal Edition

This is just getting absurd. Instead of contenting yourselves to be individually clever, you commenters are now regularly teaming up to be clever in groups, making the COTW very, very difficult. So for the second week in a row, there are multiple COTW winners, including but not limited to LOLKate, Expatria, Peregrine, Ooxman, and Rystefn. A portion of the winning banter:

View it all here!

This week, winners receive one slightly used, partially refrigerated Bigfoot costume courtesy of these yokel hoaxers. Congratulations!

Remember folks, nominate posts you like by referencing them along with “COTW” in the comments! Also, hello n00bs — why not get yourself a fancy gravatar for your Skepchick comments by heading to gravatar.com? It’s free and easy, just like Sam’s pants. I’m not sure what that means.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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48 Comments

  1. Ya’ll made me laugh for a good 5 minutes at work

    First, it’s y’all. It’s a contraction of “you all,” you see. Second, If anything I say makes a pretty girl smile and laugh, then I call it a win.

  2. Yay! Not only did I get to contribute to a COTW-caliber run of jokes, but I also get a thinly veiled reprimand from Rebecca for not having an avatar! Awesome. And I’ll get right on that.

  3. Not gonna lie…I was in my good friend’s living room in a crowd of guys, and we all laughed about that strip of comments for about ten minutes.

    So. Rystefn…you made another girl smile and laugh….don’t know how you feel about the other 5 guys who thought it was hilarious as well.

    …Also hoping my avatar is working properly.

  4. Perhaps one of them….but that is because he is my ex *hisses*…back off man! Ha.

    No..just kidding. No. They aren’t pretty….think of Vikings. Hairy Vikings.

    Viking Shrews? I think they can drink almost as much as that Shrew.

  5. “Tall blond guys with long hair and beards can’t be pretty? Are you trying to hurt my feelings?”

    Don’t worry, Rystefn. I think there’s a misunderstanding. A serious misunderstanding. Maybe Nighean means more of a Gimliwhen she’s actually talking about Aragorn (Danish).

    Otherwise…?

  6. I didn’t say that Tall blond guys with long hair and beards aren’t pretty….I said that VIKINGS weren’t pretty. Vikings are incredibly awesome and tough. These guys that I hang out with are about 6 foot 3 (average) and weigh over 220lbs each.

    ….and for your information, Rystefn, most of the guys I tend to date have hair longer than mine, and are at least a foot taller than me (which, granted, isn’t hard…because I’m only 5 foot tall).

  7. I got a COTW honor AGAIN? go me! Thanks for inflating my already dangerously oversized ego Rebecca!

  8. whitebird…perhaps you are right. Dwarves, NOT PRETTY….Aragon, VERY PRETTY. The guys I’m talking about are like…6 foot tall Dwarves.

  9. Rystefn….I feel bad…cause I’m hurting feelings and I don’t mean to!!! *whine*

    Do you look like a giant dwarf? I have a feeling you don’t.

  10. Also, don’t worry too much about hurting my feelings, red. I’m just giving you a hard time is all. I know I’m irresistibly pretty. ;)

  11. Who’s depiction of Tolkein’s dwarves? That’s a fairly broad category, there, young lady.

    Also, I’ve dabbled in teaching myself Gaelic for a touch over a decade. I tend to pillow-talk in Gaelic a lot, actually.

  12. oh goodness you shouldn’t have told me that…*wink*…I think Gaelic is one of my most underrated and beautiful languages EVER. It really touches my scotch heritage.

    Also…I give up on the dwarves. Despite how much of a geek I am…I could never keep Tolkien’s world straight. However, I have played a D&D Dwarf before…a female one. It wasn’t fun, cause my Charisma was like…3…and people would simply stare at me when I was trying to persuade them to do something. *sighs* Never again.

  13. Ah, well my Irish Gaelic is a touch different, then. Still, it’s one of those languages that comes either extremely beautifully or harsh and ugly with very little middle ground, depending on the timbre and accent of the speaker… although I’ve found that if you can sing even two lines in Gaelic, you melt the panties off of every female person within hearing distance – which is a lot of fun at parties, let me tell you.

    Also, when you’re playing D&D, put your 3 in Intelligence – it’s far more fun to be the dumb character than the one nobody likes. You can play as a reflexologist or something. Hilarity ensues.

    Yes, I’m a nerd. I’m most brands of nerd, truth be told, but don’t let it out – might damage my reputation as an angry rebel who hates everything. ;)

  14. I have no doubt that you have a lot of fun with the Gaelic. I can’t speak it very well, but I recognize a few phrases and such.Well…lets see. One of my favorite things ever written in gaelic, and see how different it is:

    Is tu fuil ‘o mo chuislean, is tu cnaimh de mo chnaimh.
    Is leatsa mo bhodhaig, chum gum bi sinn ‘n ar n-aon.
    Is leatsa m’anam gus an criochnaich ar saoghal.

    No way man…I always loved playing the Druid. Then I could have a totally kick-ass animal companion that could perform all of my melee while I create chaos from the backround. Our party was once being chased by an army of trolls, and we crossed one of their beloved bridges….and I turned around and cast “stone to flesh” on the bridge. Grossest result EVAR.

  15. I’m so not qualified to comment on it, really… I can’t be sure if the things that look off to me are the difference between similar languages, conventions I’ve picked up that aren’t actually rules, or me just being wrong… I’ve dabbled so long in so may languages that I’ve picked up a crap-ton of odd conventions and they often spill across lines from one to another in odd ways.

    It looks a little awkward, but I think it would be in most languages. “You are the blood of my veins, you are the bone of my bones/Yours is my body, so we will be one/Yours is my soul until the end of our worlds.” Yeah? More or less, at least. Parts of it are nice and poetic, but the flow seems off. Was it written first in a different language, then translated into Gaelic? Poetry has issues with translation sometimes, and that might be the problem.

  16. Impressive. I believe it was first created in English, and then translated into Gaelic, but it was modeled after the blood vows at marriage ceremonies right after they tied the wrists together. I’m impressed.

    …you are probably right though, it might look a bit off to you.

    Speaking of off…I’m gonna DIE this upcoming semester because I’m taking Japanese. AWESOME language…but hard as HELL to learn.

  17. What? Japanese is FAR more easy to learn than English, and you’ve got that down pretty well. It’s got about half the sounds English does and nothing like the thousands upon thousands of rules-exceptions because it’s an actual language, unlike English, which is the bastard offspring of three different languages and has been borging up half a dozen others over the last few hundred years as well, wakarimasu ka?

  18. Hai, wakarimasu. It doesn’t seem complicated, per se, but from the sheer memorization (ha, like being a Genetics major doesn’t have a lot to memorize!) I know…other languages have just the same amount of vocabulary, but with French is was a bit easier because they at least resembled plenty of English words. I think I am more intimidated by the sheer number of characters. I watch plenty of anime though…so I should be fine. Ha.

    And back to the topic of nerds…I am more of a science nerd, RPG nerd, and music nerd. OMG speaking of which…YYZ by Rush just started on my shuffle…YES!

  19. Well, as an English speaker, you already know a good third of French walking in. You know it wrong, but you know it, since French is one of the languages from which English grew. We always like to say that English was born from Norman nobles trying to seduce Saxon barmaids.

    You claim you’re a music nerd, but while you were talking about Rush (so very mainstream) playing on your list, Nerf Herder came on mine. :P It was after Motorhead and before E Muzeki.

    …also, 99% of anime is utter crap.

  20. Yeah, that’s one of the three kinds of nerd I’m not. I don’t like anime, I don’t like Sci-Fi TV shows (exception: Firefly), and I don’t like Buffy and her spin-off shows.

  21. *shrugs* Well, I am all other brands of nerd – subject to the discovery of new brands of nerd I have not yet been exposed to, of course.

  22. Exalted if for DBZ-fans. No thanks. You go play your “I’m invincible” RPGS… those of us with the intestinal fortitude for a game so lethal you can die during character creation will be playing over here at the big-kids table. :P

  23. Oh. That translation for the blood vow was basically verbatim, btw. You looked it up, didn’t you?

  24. D&D? Traveller?

    With Paranoia you could be dead 20 times over before you got through the front door.

    The Computer is your friend; do you not trust the Computer?

  25. Funny you should bring it up. My Paranoia character is currently sleeping through a case of sudden-onset battlefield narcolepsy, but after killing five commie traitors (only three of which were other players), I think he’s had a good run.

    My philosophy on Paranoia is that if anyone gets to the mission briefing on their first character, you’re doing it wrong.

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