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I'm working on my novel just now, so here's a Sausage Family I found on the wall of Vienna's Naschmarkt last week:



In my novel I'm working on a little problem: how could two men be each other's uncles? Hisae and I were on the U2 line on Sunday when we saw these two men on the platform:



Hisae said "Do you think they're father and son?" and I replied "No, I think they're each other's uncles." We then spent a long time working out whether this was possible, and how. It's actually a really difficult problem, and I'd like to hear your answers. I now have two ways they could be each other's uncles, but one only works if one of the men is the other's great uncle.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 09:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xchimx.livejournal.com
An older brother offers his sterile sibling a chance to have a child by cloning himself and using his brother's wife as the surrogate host. The sterile brother gladly accepts because he loves his brother and feels that since his brother was such a morally upstanding citizen it would be natural for his clone to as well--but also because the younger brother likes the idea of being the eldest to his older brother for a change. 9 months later the child is born, and the older brother becomes the uncle of himself, while the baby becomes its own uncle.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 09:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neil-scott.livejournal.com
The man in the mackintosh is the conventional uncle (mother's brother) of the man in the poncho. The man in the poncho marries his mother's mother's sister making him the uncle of the man in the mackintosh.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 09:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chickensnack.livejournal.com
If they both married sisters of their parents?

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 09:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chickensnack.livejournal.com
On a related note, someone sent me a link to this less than an hour ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_popular_culture

I love wikipedia's random assortment of "* in popular culture" and "List of famous *s" pages.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 09:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alvaroceb.livejournal.com
They are each other's uncle because their grandma was from Limerick.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 10:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dzima.livejournal.com
I'm not sure whether they're related or not, but I'm glad to see a fellow gaucho man preserving traditions and wearing a (quite nice) poncho in Berlin.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 10:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peacelovgranola.livejournal.com
one's a square and one's a hippy, to be sure. although, you can't be sure which is which.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 11:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alvaroceb.livejournal.com
They are each other's uncles because they wear each other's hat

HE´S MY NEPHEW HONEST

Date: 2007-12-04 11:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] electricwitch.livejournal.com
They´re each other´s uncles because they´re each other´s gay pimps, right?

...

Date: 2007-12-04 11:58 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
They were born of the same mother.She used to do LSD while pregnant and sometimes, although not admittidly, would gobble down packs of those french Prince biscuits.All aside, these two were delivered into this world proud and healthly but one minor genetic detail: as a very uncommon but not alarming derivation of siamesian coupling, they where jointed by their Aquiles.
They are each other's ankle.

Alex P.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 01:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kumakouji.livejournal.com
Image

This much I know is correct. I'm not gonna post anymore theories until I'm 99% sure.

*goes to get more paper*

PS. Fuck you for posting this question.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 01:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cap-scaleman.livejournal.com
There is another bunch of sausages (http://www.perisarc.com/calgary/images/9-26-2.jpg) roaming the world in a movie (http://www.perisarc.com/calgary.html).

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 01:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kumakouji.livejournal.com
OK. I think this is right, here goes (third time's a charm):

Your mother has a brother, your uncle. Your mother fucks your greatgrandfather and gives birth to you, her son. You are your grandparent's half brother as well as their grandson.

If you're still with me and you haven't yet been either perplexed into stupor or so disgusted by the implications of this that you've stopped reading, this is the anwser (as I originally suspected): It's impossible to be your uncle's uncle, but you can be uncle's half uncle if your mother IS A TOTAL FUCKING WHORE AND REALLY REALLY GROSS.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 01:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alvaroceb.livejournal.com
This time I really got it: they are each other's uncles because they surrender to each other!

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 01:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kumakouji.livejournal.com
It's just dawned on me I'm pretty much the only person who's taken this question even remotely seriously. I've been sitting here, procrastinating for the past 45 minutes, squiggling family trees on bits of scrap paper. This is why I'll never make anything of my miserable life.
Image

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 02:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moose-noise.livejournal.com
If I was right to call my mother's sister's husband "Uncle" when I was growing up, then surely I just have to marry his mother's sister to become his uncle too? There's nothing incestuous in that, and my wife needn't even be much (or at all) older than me, either, not that Click Opera readers are troubled by such things.
Also, you could substitute "father" for either instance of "mother" in that first sentence and it would still work.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 02:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kumakouji.livejournal.com
I was trying to go by the bonafide "blood uncle" root to see if it was possible. The marriage root is too obvious and easy, and if you can take the marriage root you can also take the "honorary Title" root too. For example, one of my childhood friends growing up used to refer to my mother as "Auntie". This is a socially established practice but would mean that anyone could be your uncle or auntie.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 02:36 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Why is everyone's recommendation so incestuous. What if you married your uncle's wife's aunt? You would be his uncle-in-law.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 02:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moose-noise.livejournal.com
If a man has a son by his daughter's daughter, then the baby is his own mother's brother's mother's (half-)brother.
It's Chinatown, Jake, forget about it.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 02:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moose-noise.livejournal.com
Really I should have read the foregoing posts properly before commenting, shouldn't i?

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 03:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] scottbateman.livejournal.com
The Sausage Family = good, old-fashioned nightmare fodder.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 03:49 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Maybe if you had sex in space (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/feb/24/spaceexploration.internationalnews1), it could result in off-key relation problems as the one posed in today's post.
Extraterrestrial love, dude!

Re: ...

Date: 2007-12-04 03:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] imomus.livejournal.com
Ha ha ha, points for the pun, but it won't fly in French!

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 03:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] imomus.livejournal.com
So "you're your uncle's uncle" is really the clever way of saying someone's a sonofabitch?

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 04:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kumakouji.livejournal.com
Son of a whore, but I'm not gona split hairs after you've already robbed me of 45 minutes of my life.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 05:20 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
you left out sausage adam and eve! which would be a powerful clue..
by means of time machine

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 05:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] unwoman.livejournal.com
That's the solution I worked out, too. Not terribly appealing to marry your great aunt, but I guess it gets you in good for inheritance reasons...

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 06:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrobot.livejournal.com
if they both married each others aunts

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 06:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] microworlds.livejournal.com
I don't know, but there is a common joke between Mormons: the nephew being older than the uncle. It's actually true, I've come across such an instance while at church.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 07:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] akabe.livejournal.com
'each other's uncles' is a pretty cool concept and shouldn't be explained. let the future french readers just enjoy it as a paradox or agonize over it like kuma-chan just did. (i hope they're not reading this, it'd have already spoiled it)

Re: ...

Date: 2007-12-04 11:35 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
You writing your novel in french ??
Feel free to copyleft my wittyness in your novel, if you like!

Alex P.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 11:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] niddrie-edge.livejournal.com
Yeah Jerry Rubin comes to mind.

Re: ...

Date: 2007-12-04 11:41 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
You writing your novel in french ??
Feel free to copyleft the joke, if you'd like.

cheers
Alex P.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-04 11:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] niddrie-edge.livejournal.com
Was Uncle not a Cockney word for a fence?
They could be selling on each others stolen goods.

This is very simple

Date: 2007-12-05 05:31 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Their Dad had sex with his daughter and she had twins. They are both the brother of each other's mother, making them uncles.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-05 05:34 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
They are also the brother of their own mother, making them their own meta-uncle.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-05 06:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peacelovgranola.livejournal.com
hahahaha. perfect.

100% true

Date: 2007-12-07 01:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 1stpostlastpost.livejournal.com
My own life provides one possibility:

Owing to a sordid family drama involving teenage pregnancy, an allegedly prophetic dream, and hints of Masonic conspiracy, my (doubly maternal) great-grandmother and her (sterile) second husband were named my legal custodians when I was aged 16 months. Adoption followed a few years later.

Neither was a pop star and they did not live in a flat, but that is beside the point.

From her first marriage, my mother-slash-great-gran had a daughter, my sister-slash-grandmother. Her son, being the full brother of my biological mother, is thus my uncle/nephew.

Biologically, he is my uncle; by law, I am his.

Fortunately, no chromosomes were harmed in the making of this family ouroboros.

Re: 100% true

Date: 2007-12-07 11:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] imomus.livejournal.com
Wow, a real world scenario! Excellent, thank you!

(no subject)

Date: 2007-12-08 07:10 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
i dunno... i think your last question was really retarded. whats the point of it, really? ooo you are such a deep thinker.

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