Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Friends, Romans, Comrades, I’m working on a couple of posts on our favorite topics, ballet dancers and anthropology godbags and feminism (just kidding, Richard!), but in the meantime I want to share with you a heart-stoppingly beautiful photo:
Isn’t it gorgeous? I came across this picture and was absolutely captivated. I want to be there. I want to sit on those old stones and gaze out at that gorgeous blue-green water.* I want to have an afternoon picnic of cheese bread and local wine, then maybe go for a swim. (Because of the wine I’ll probably drown, but we won’t think about that.)
Now, because I’m an annoying old bat it’s not enough for me to just show you this picture and say “isn’t it pretty?” I have to turn it into a guessing game.
So here’s the game: Where is this place?
Since mountains, water, and even arches are not automatically diagnostic, please note that I have used my special Hint atomiser to spritz this post with a delicate mist of Eau de Clue. I can only hope I haven’t over done it.
*Important point: the gorgeous blue-green water is an artificial reservoir, not a natural body of water.
45 Responses to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
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Paul Tergeist says:
Apolakia.
January 9th, 2007 at 2:52 am EST -
will says:
Buggs Island, of course!!! This picture was taken by the Army Corps as part of its effort to encourage tourism around the Kerr dam.
Of not, then it is definitely Lake Louisa
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Violet says:
Apolakia is an excellent guess, Paul, but actually that’s not it.
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B. Dagger Lee says:
Shangri-La.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Samos, or damned close!
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Violet says:
Nope, nowhere in Greece.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Piffle. A ‘captivating’ place where wine is made and has a man-made watercourse and Roman columns?
OK, I’ll look in Turkey.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Elba
Pianosa
Capraia
Gorgona
Giglo
Montecristo
Giannutri -
Kaitlyn says:
Iraq?
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Violet says:
Nope, not Iraq, not Turkey.
I guess I didn’t overdo it on the Clue spray. Y’all are going to have to put your thinking caps on!
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lisa says:
It’s beautiful!
Is it France? -
Kaitlyn says:
Memphis, Tennessee?
Japan?
Kazakhstan?
Romania?
Roswell, New Mexico?
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Paul Tergeist says:
Let’s do this logically. Mountains, she says. Do islands have mountains? Yes. Wine, she says. It must be an area where vintage occurs, but not necessarily of grapes….although I doubt if Vi is much of a pruno drinker. Captured, she said. A key word! ‘Old stones’ she says. I still have mine, so she must mean the Roman arches. An historical spot! “Friends, Romans, comrades” she says. Romans were there, but Romans were bugger-all for centuries…’comrades’ …hmmmm….A communist country? The body of water is an artificial reservoir and she’d swim in it. So it can’t be very high, very cold, or a sewer pond. Vi is a tender little thing, not taken to swimming in effluent. And it must meet at least some standard of anthropological significance or she wouldn’t have mentioned it. If it isn’t Greece or Turkey, what’s left? The Balearic Islands? Mesopotamia? Lebanon? Egypt? France? Italy? Spain? Portugal? Who cares? Why am I even involved in this? My brain is full!
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Violet says:
Hey, now you’re thinking. But you’re reading too much into some things (I would swim in cold water, I love mountain lakes) and missing a couple of largish clues. Like, the title of the post, for example.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Lesbos? I already thought of that. Eau de? Maybe tomorrow.
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simply wondered says:
don’t ask don’t tell…hmmm. that means it’s a secret place - is it the new recreation and prayer complex at guantanamo bay?
or center parks peterborough uk? -
Paul Tergeist says:
It’s beautiful!
Is it France?
-LIt can’t be France. Thousands of wastrel French people would be lying about snogging cheese and bread and tossing off bottles of cheap red.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Well, it COULD be France….especially of Eleanor of Aquitaine were involved. But everything about the area is written in some foreign language.
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kalibhakta says:
Gay Head, Massachusetts!!! :)
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Violet says:
I made it too hard.
Okay, under normal circumstances Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would be an extremely indirect clue, but as it happens Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been in the news this week with stories centering on a Certain Person. That’s why it jumped out at me as a good post title: the obvious angle of secrecy (since it’s a guessing game) plus the name of the Certain Person in the news.
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annared says:
Shiremoor, WWII bomb crater now converted into reservoir - viewed through Marsden grotto.
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Paul Tergeist says:
GRRRR! You ASSume that any of us are interested in the news. I am not. However, at great personal effort and expense, I have sussed out the more prominent names associated with DA, DT this month.
John Shalikashvili, b Warsaw Poland.
John S. Cohen, b. Bangor Maine
Marty Meehan, b. Lowell, MassachusettsSomeone else’s turn.
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simply wondered says:
i know the polish godbag, but the other two are american so how would i know who they are?
also looks more like whitley bay quarry than shiremoor puddle to me.
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Violet says:
John Shalikashvili was born in Poland but that sure as heck ain’t no Polish name.
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Paul Tergeist says:
John Shalikashvili was born in Poland but that sure as heck ain’t no Polish name.
-VSNo. It’s ethnic Georgian and probably derives from something else. What is your point? That anyone should be able to figure out a taxonomy of the ethnic Georgian name of an ex-CJCS who retired from the military ten years ago as a clue for locating a mysterious geographic point in space which has Roman ruins and has vineyards?
Is that your point? Oh, well that’s easy! Klopstokia! This is the very reason Hitlery won’t be elected.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Or that, from DA, DT anyone should logically progress to the name Shalikashvili? GRRRR!
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Violet says:
Shalikashvili has been in the news this week, which is the only reason I thought his name would spring to mind from the reference to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Names ending in -shvili are always Georgian, and Georgian names are rare in the United States, so they kind of stick out.
The country where the picture was taken is Georgia:
1. Former communist nation and home of Stalin
2. Famous for its wine
3. Famous for its cheese bread, which is pretty much the national foodThere are also abundant ties to anthropology and history; Georgia is an ancient nation located in the Caucasus and has Roman ruins, etc., though I expected those clues to count only as confirmatory evidence once you’d already thought of Georgia.
My mistake was in overestimating the degree to which people key into Eurasian ethnic markers in names. I do that automatically because of my background and interests: ah, a Basque name! a Georgian name! I should instead have put in some clues about the Golden Fleece or a pointed reference to Stalin, but I feared that would be too obvious.
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Kaitlyn says:
Something about Atlanta would have helped! Sheesh.
(Kidding, Atlanta’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean!)
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Paul Tergeist says:
(Kidding, Atlanta’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean!)
-KBAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Do you like antiques? Ahhhh…nevermind. I am a notorious flirt and I got nothing to back it up.
Violet dear, ‘comrade’ isn’t a reference to Stalin. And I wasn’t looking for a country, I was trying to pinpoint a locality. Look, I have one for you. I’m thinking of a name. :-)
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Paul Tergeist says:
Vi, move along, there’s nothing to see here. Did you hear that King George is sending more Americans to buffer the civil war in Iraq and that he threatened Iran and Syria? I told you the guy was up to no good. I think it’s too late to impeach him before he turns the earth into a nuclear conflagration.
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Kaitlyn says:
We could put him in a lockbox until Jan 2009!
Or some sort of virtual world, where all this goes off without a hitch, and everyone does what he wants, and his wife gets more creepy looking by the day. (She’s always smiling! They’re from Connecticut, right? Stepford!)
And yes, Paul, I do like antiques, but I’m braindead, and have no idea what you were talking about!
I know nothing about Georgia the country except for the bit in ‘Back in the USSR’. I should be ashamed. But I’m not!
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Violet says:
I know nothing about Georgia the country except for the bit in ‘Back in the USSR’.
That settles it, by golly: later this week we’ll have us a full-fledged Georgian Festival, complete with satellite imagery, recipes, and an extensive analysis of putative relationships between Kartvelian and the Indo-European language family!
We’ll all come in costume as Great Figures from Georgian History. I’ve already played Medea on stage so this time I’ll come as Queen Thamar. Paul can be Stalin.
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Paul Tergeist says:
My mistake was in overestimating the degree to which people key into Eurasian ethnic markers in names.
-ViSimplest mistake in the world. It could have happened to anyone. Eurasian ethnic markers in names! How COULD I have overlooked it?!?!?
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Kaitlyn says:
That settles it, by golly: later this week we’ll have us a full-fledged Georgian Festival, complete with satellite imagery, recipes, and an extensive analysis of putative relationships between Karvelian and the Indo-European language family!
-ViI have some postcards my grandparents sent me from Georgia for a project on a state in elementary school.
Will they help? :P
Wake me when we get to Iceland, I think the base I was at for 3 years was established to fight the commies. I wouldn’t know, I left when I was 6.
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Paul Tergeist says:
“I should be ashamed. But I’m not!”
-KYou stand up, girl! I should be ashamed too but instead I wish I had something to be ashamed about. I am actually ashamed that I don’t.
“Paul can be Stalin.”
-ViI want to be Macro Tovar Shalikashvili. I’m too tall to be Stalin and I don’t smoke.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Wake me when we get to Iceland…
-KI surely will! God forbid you should miss all the excitement of Iceland in the middle of winter. We can all sit around the glacier while Vi explains the etymology of Icelandic surnames and skinny-dips in the volcano.
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Violet says:
Eurasian ethnic markers in names! How COULD I have overlooked it?!?!?
It’s not that arcane. You’d recognize Papadapoulus as Greek. And O’Malley as Irish, Lombardi as Italian, Rodriguez as Spanish, Pavlov as Russian, etc. Shalikashvili is Georgian.
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Paul Tergeist says:
It’s not that arcane.
-ViPiffle. Deriving Shalikashvili from DA, DT? How many of the attending professors in the listening audience got it? Show of hands, please!
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Violet says:
Identifying Eurasian ethnic markers in names has nothing to do with deriving Shalikashvili from DADT. You’re changing the subject.
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Paul Tergeist says:
You’re changing the subject.
-ViHow do you expect me to win the argument otherwise? Honestly Vi, sometimes I wonder about you.
Anyway, there ARE a lot of remarkably intelligent people who visit here. I give you that and I admit that I am nowhere as bright as any of them. But I wonder how many people DID figure out your not-so-arcane clue. If the number is ~ZERO, plus or minus, I make the case for arcaneness.
It is a sad fact that smart people, such as yourself, (compliment, not sarcasm) expect too much from the rest of us who are forever racing down the road, choking in dust, trying to keep the peloton in sight over the next mountain.
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simply wondered says:
My mistake was in overestimating the degree to which people key into Eurasian ethnic markers in names. - that and thinking that anyone gives a shit about dead russian guys who danced a bit of ballet.
Of course Djugashvili was Stalin and this other guy was his cousin. -
Violet says:
Paul: as you see from my comments #20 and #27, I agree that connecting DADT to Shalikashvili was quite tenuous. I only thought of it because I’d been seeing him in the news every day for a couple of days, all about how he regrets DADT, etc., etc. But I don’t fault anyone for not making that connection. It was definitely a rather obscure clue.
I also don’t fault anyone for not recognizing Shalikashvili as a Georgian name, given that we’re not Russians here and Georgia is a rather obscure little country for those of us in the West.
The game proved nothing about anyone’s intelligence; things like this are mostly dependent on what particular mental associations people are carrying around. Consider that my last two guessing games were way too easy: Ginmar guessed Nijinsky instantly and a bunch of people identified Paris right away.
I shall work on honing my clue-giving skills until they are perfectly calibrated to match the mental furniture of my readers.
Richard: you really, really want me to post more ballet pictures, don’t you?
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Paul Tergeist says:
I shall work on honing my clue-giving skills until they are perfectly calibrated to match the mental furniture of my readers.
-ViYou mean you are going to give me the answer beforehand? Gee, that’s swell!
I really was trying to give you a compliment there in 40. You are a gem and the people who post here are brilliant for the most part, one notable exception being that trashmouth from the other thread. :-O
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Violet says:
I really was trying to give you a compliment there in 40.
I appreciate that, and I thank you. I just don’t want anyone to think that I was trying to make people feel stupid.
Creating guessing games is tricky precisely because it’s impossible to know what other people know. I posted that naked drawing of Nijinsky, a sketch with absolutely zero identifying characteristics, and Ginmar guessed it right away! For all I know there’s somebody out there who would even recognize where that Georgian picture was taken (the Ananuri monastery).
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Paul Tergeist says:
I just don’t want anyone to think that I was trying to make people feel stupid.
-ViNo one would ever think that of you. Good Heavens!
