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Notes -
There's certain content -- certain types of gore, certain furry content, etc -- that gives me "the ick".
Sometimes I remember that many people get the same "ick" feeling from anime art in general, particularly the type of anime art that gets criticized as "overly-sexualized".
What are some times when you were reminded of the unbridgeable gap between different modes of perception?
ASMR. My wife watches cooking shorts on Facebook and they feature both TikTok editing (which is simply annoying) and ASMR sound, with all the slicing, scraping, sizzling, slurping sounding like it's happening right next to your ear.
She doesn't notice the difference, but I can't stand them. And some people are paying for recordings where they can hear a woman's tongue unstick from her hard palate.
Two Kathryns in my life, one who spelled her name Katherine and the other Catherine, provided me with what I can only describe using this ASMR term, which is the only thing that makes me suspect it exists, though probably not the way the depraved, pornhungry sound-gluttons imagine it to exist.
The first Katherine was blonde, pretty in a plain way, and had a brown paper bag during show-and-tell in Mrs. Rice's 1st grade class in 1974. I forget what was in the bag, or what she said, who was there, what I was wearing, or anything else, but I recall that moment I was absolutely entranced by the crackle of the bag and the sound--the lilt, the only true meaning of that word for me--of her voice. I felt a slow fizz at the base of my spine that worked its way up to the back of my neck. It was a bizarre sensation. The closest I can get to describing it is like when the prostate is stimulated during voiding--yeah taking you right out of the beauty of the moment, aren't I? Anyway. The second Catherine was years later, also in school (I feel as if ASMR cannot be brought on, as they keep insisting online, but must be the result of a situation where you're forced to focus on something against your will, like Mr. Drigger's class) and she was also up there talking about something, but in this case there was no paper bag but just her voice, like well water. It's what I think the myths meant, at least partially, in referencing spells in the mouths of certain women. I could have listened to her all day. But this wasn't based in her appearance (she was rather plain as far as it goes) but totally her sound.
Anyway that's my defense of ASMR, but I also don't buy the idea of "eliciting" the sensation via video. That has much the same effect on me as it does on you.
This is not about ick or ASMR but your story reminds me of a peculiar memory I have. It was late summer in the mid 90s, a few weeks after our confirmation camp (it's a Lutheran thing in some of the Nordic countries). The setting was a "party" (as much as 14-15 year old well behaved kids had a "parties" back in those days anyway) and there was A Girl there. To this day I remember roughly how she looked, her hair, her name and particularly the scent of the perfume she used that day to the extent that on the few times I've smelled that same scent, it's always taken me back to that moment even several decades later. This would otherwise be par the course for an infatuated 14 year old except I wasn't particularly interested in her. She was just an acquaitance I interacted with during the two weeks at the camp and maybe half a dozen times afterwards but for some reason that specific smell has stayed in my memory forever since.
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Ah, George is posting about the beautiful women in his life, some things never cha-
And they say you can't be surprised any more as you get older.
I believe A-wooga posting is the phrase.
It's true, but I didn't want to plagiarize such a great bit of description. Perhaps I should, they do say imitation is the highest form of flattery.
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I've read Rabelais, so no, you aren't.
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