Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Tongue

Mourne Kransky

21:23 / 03.11.05

Just watching Susannah Constantine on tv, concentrating, and she's sticking her tongue out as she does so. I do that. I would love not to but find it impossible to avoid doing it. People have laughed at me for it all my life. I feel it makes me look like Jamie Oliver with his fat, too large tongue.

I can, however, roll my tongue into a neat tube. As can 50% of the population. The more talented half, obviously.

Olulabelle

21:28 / 03.11.05

I wouldn't worry about looking stupid Xoc, I find that tongue sticking out thing rather endearing, so it stands to reason other people must also feel the same.

I too am a tongue roller and I believe it's assumed that the ability to do it is genetic. However, I know someone who taught themself to do it, just to prove a point.

Warewullf

22:24 / 03.11.05

I do that sometimes and I have to admit that I, too, find it an endearing quality in others.

Spatula Clarke

22:43 / 03.11.05

One of the women in the staff canteen at a previous place of work used to find it impossible not to have her tongue waving about whenever she did anything that required even the slightest amount of thought. Its most frequent appearances were when she was counting how many baked beans she'd scooped onto your plate, making sure an extra one hadn't slipped through.

It didn't make the dinners any more appetising, it must be said.

Olulabelle

22:45 / 03.11.05

She counted baked beans as she served them?

That's fucking hard, no wonder her tongue was sticking out.

I can type

With my tongue

In the night

Naughty

electric monk

02:12 / 04.11.05

My brother does that when he's concentrating intensely on something. The tip of his tongue pokes out and curls up over the top lip. He's a programmer at a steel mill, so I imagine he does it pretty much all day, with a break for lunch (when the tongue is otherwise engaged).

I admit, it makes me laugh a little when I see him do it. The boy is friggin' whip-smart though, so I really shouldn't deride his process. A mark of genius, perhaps?

electric monk

02:19 / 04.11.05

Obviously, I meant he does the sticky-outy thing, not the type-y thing.

Legba, clean the keyboard when you're done. Can't have the keys sticking.

LykeX

04:10 / 04.11.05

Legba, have you ever read one of those reports on how many bacteria there are on various items, like keyboards?

All Acting Regiment

04:38 / 04.11.05

Built up a resistance

Rimming Carol Smiley

Gorgeous

Lilly Nowhere Late

05:35 / 04.11.05

Earlier this week (tuesday I think) I randomly listened to a show on Radio 4 about tongue rolling. It said that 80% of population could do it.
So much tongue in one week! What can this tell us???

All Acting Regiment

05:45 / 04.11.05

That's what Barbelith's all about: tongue rolling or omg trolling.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

05:58 / 04.11.05

I can't curl my tongue but I can touch my nose with it.

Mistoffelees

07:43 / 04.11.05

...I randomly listened to a show on Radio 4 about tongue rolling. It said that 80% of population could do it.

I always wonder, where people get these data from. Do they randomly call people? Ask them on the streets (I did that [for something else] once)?

Maybe they test the tongues of people they do an autopsy of?

Mourne Kransky

08:16 / 04.11.05

This article estimates the tongue rollers at 70%. Obviously we are more fertile than the non-rollers and are taking over, like the Grey Squirrel and the New Zealand Flatworm.

He also makes the case that tongue rolling is not a simple inherited trait, as La Belle Olu hath also said. He has found evidence of a conspiracy in playgroups all around the country to pervert the tongues of small children. Or maybe not.

Misty, I presume they just ask sample groups people if they can roll their tongues. I can picture very frustrated pathologists trying to convince corpses to do it.

Here is an online survey of tongue rolling and it comes up with a figure of
80% claiming to be tongue rollers. I have no way of ascertaining whether they are real, tube-tongued, tongue rollers or just pretenders to lingual callisthenics with a slight incline at either edge of the tongue.

Char Aina

08:45 / 04.11.05

aw....
he's thinking!

just dont click on the link.
not unless you really like tongues.
oh,and have eaten breakfast a while ago.

Char Aina

08:48 / 04.11.05

proof of intelligence in our relatives?

Mourne Kransky

23:36 / 04.11.05

How did you manage to sneak into our bedroom and take pictures of Ganesh first thing in the morning? He's concentrating really hard because he's trying to find my sex appeal (I take it off and hide it overnight so as not to disturb him when he's asleep).

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:02 / 05.11.05

I remember in biology class at school the whole tongue-rolling thing was used to illustrate some point or other about genetics. I guess because it's a fairly inconsequential trait that's apparently genetically-coded, and also because it gives the kids something else to fight about which, say, the tendency to colonic cancer probably wouldn't.

Sekhmet

06:15 / 05.11.05

I had a boyfriend once who could not only curl hs tongue, but also turn it upside down. Rotating either way. Floop.

I rather miss him.

Mourne Kransky

08:59 / 05.11.05

Not fair. I want a boyfriend like that too.

Spatula Clarke

10:45 / 05.11.05

I can do that! And stick it up my nose. I think it's something to do with my almost complete lack of lingual frenulum.

Yes, I did have to look that up.

Mourne Kransky

11:11 / 05.11.05

Didn't you use to front the band KISS?

w1rebaby

11:29 / 05.11.05

Hmm. While I can roll and curl my tongue I apparently can't rotate it the full 180 without using lips or teeth as well - only about 90, it seems, in either direction admittedly but it would be a bit unwarranted to add the two 90s up.

On the other hand I've discovered that I can do that quite rapidly, 90 clockwise to 90 anticlockwise and back about two and a half times a second, meaning about 900 degrees.

Has anything amusing ever happened to other Barbelith contributors in connection with a tongue?

ibis the being

12:22 / 05.11.05

I had a boyfriend once who could not only curl hs tongue, but also turn it upside down. Rotating either way.

I can do that. Apparently, and I have little memory of this, I decided to demonstrate this neat trick to my current boyfriend the first night we met... but we were drunk, and it was dark in the room, and he just thought I was making some really weird scary attempt to be sexy by randomly wagging my tongue at him. It says something about him that he continued to see me after that, and probably not something good.

It's still a good trick, though.

Mourne Kransky

12:38 / 05.11.05

Not only can I not do these things but I didn't know anybody could. What a sheltered life I have led.

Quantum

12:42 / 05.11.05

Fridge stoppit, you're turning me on.

Mysterious Transfer Student

17:38 / 05.11.05

Just to pour cold water on this increasingly sexualised thread, I would like to advise everyone that if you're planning on developing a mouth ulcer anytime soon, try to avoid growing it on what E. Randius helpfully reminds us is called the lingual frenulum (the stringy bit underneath).

Once, a few years ago, I had two of the painful fuckers there. Very helpful and not at all embarassing and agonizing, especially when working in a call centre.

Shrug

17:46 / 05.11.05

PICS

Hurl

Disturbing

And sympathies Canty, they are certainly a very nasty affliction .I tend to get them only if extremely run down, normally on my upper jaw/gum. Makes my eyes water just thinking about one under the tongue. Ow.

Mourne Kransky

00:46 / 06.11.05

Such intimacies can be executed by a skilful tongue. Drunkish and been dancing. It was at the forefront of my mind, the tongue /hottness thing.

Add Your Reply