Seriously… From her blog…
Please, it’s good advice…
Pies are meant for eating. Like with ice cream or cheese, on a plate, with a fork.
Myself, I’m too pissed off to be funny lately. Glad someone’s making me laugh.
As I’ve mentioned before, I generally hang out with women. I’m comfortable around them. I enjoy their company and companionship. But dating is tough. When you go from “friends” to “more than friends,” there are substantial changes in what’s allowed and what isn’t, what they’re worrying about and the way they treat you.
Last month, I put up a personal ad on a dating site just to see what would come of it. My profile was natural, just a quick ramble about myself, what I didn’t want, what I was looking for and where I wanted to end up.
I was also quite clear that I didn’t want to date women with children, because there are simply too many points of possible conflict such as distraction which take away from being able to get to know one another, conflicts with schedules, meeting ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends, families who don’t take kindly to anyone else other than the father-of-a-child being with their daughter, discipline issues, etc. etc. etc. I simply don’t want the stress of that.
I was also quite clear that I wasn’t looking for mind games, and wasn’t putting up the ad simply to find a boink-of-the-night.
Unfortunately, all of these things were ignored.
Out of fifteen people who I went out with over the course of a month (yes, my profile was popular)…
The remaining three were sweet, they were fun. There was no real chemistry between us, but they’ve become friends nonetheless. But a twenty-five percent rate of having an amicable time together is bad odds. It is absolutely astounding that seventy-fire percent of the women I went out with from that site were such total … err, umm … well, you know.
It’s truly refreshing to see Joan over at Seven Inches of Sense make a similar argument. It’s good to know that just when I’m feeling despondent, someone of the opposite sex can pipe up and make an argument about very thing that’s I have known is true, and has been bugging the crap out of me.
Somehow, over the past fifteen or so years, the attitude of women has changed drastically. They have gone from striving to prove their worth, to asserting it without ever having proven anything. And the problem is, somebody is allowing them to do it. Men have become so scared of being called ‘sexist’ that they are enabling these bitchy little divas to walk all over them. It’s time for that to stop, boys. There are other options.
Seriously, if I see another video, movie, or book about what scum men are and how the scorned woman can destroy them, I think I might just pluck my eyeballs from their sockets. Do you know how much shit a man would get for putting this kind of hatred out into the world against women? Need I remind you of the fallout over the Eminem song, Guilty Conscience, where a man is urged to kill his cheating wife? It got ugly. Yet when the Dixie Chicks sang a song about killing an abusive spouse, people dedicate websites to explaining step-by-step how to get away with murder. Seems a bit lopsided doesn’t it?
[…]
I’ve been hurt by men in some truly horrific ways. But at the end of the day, how I handle it is the only thing within my control. And that is the only part of the ordeal that says anything about my character. Everything else is on them. If I go off the deep end and ruin someone’s life because they hurt me, that becomes definitive of who I am as a person, and as a woman. Do I want to be a cruel, jaded bitch? Not especially. There are people who think this makes me a pushover. Personally, I think it makes me an adult…not a whiney little child.
I don’t make demands of my mates (except in bed). I make requests. How they react to my requests, lets me know what kind of person they are and if the relationship is going to work out. But everywhere I look, I see women beating men down into submission with the entitled diva attitude. It makes me very sad for those men. I guess they don’t know it doesn’t have to be like that. Even though that attitude does seem to dominate popular culture, it isn’t indicative of all women. Just keep looking and you’re bound to run up on a good one at some point. But when you do, you better hold on to her for dear life because she might not come around a second time.
Bravo, Joan! You’ve singlehandedly restored my faith that there might actually be some normal, rational women out there past my group of friends!
I was actually starting to wonder…
I can remember, back in 1970-something, seeing the first video game console — the Magnavox Odyssey — coming to a twelve or twenty-five inch black and white television near you.
The fugly, black-white-and-woodgrain behemoth came complete with the most clunky controllers you’ve ever attempted to use. And talk about GRAPHICS — the included set of plastic overlays attached to the television screen (thus the twelve or twenty-five inch requirement) so you could get COLOR! But God forbid that your mother used one of those overlays as a place mat during one of your younger sibling’s episodes of projectile-spitting carrot puree — Why, then you’d never be able to find the secret treasure in the Haunted House!
That’s right — and we had to walk ten miles to school, in four feet of snow! Uphill — BOTH WAYS!
It’s truly magnificent to see how much progress has been made over the last thirty-five years. Now, we’re seeing video games with completely destructible environments. If you’re not sure what that means, check out this Video of Crytek’s upcoming game, Crysis:
Although several other manufacturers have now released PC games with similar features, such as Relic’s Company of Heroes or HD Publishing’s Joint Task Force, Crysis looks like plenty of fun.
Having a reasonably well-spec’d PC, I tend to stay away from video game consoles and the like, but the Xbox 360 has really pushed the technology envelope — especially if you have a Windows Media Center Edition PC in your home (or even a Windows Vista with Media capability). In that case, the Xbox 360 not only serves as one of the most advanced video game consoles you can buy, but also acts as a DVD/CD/MP3 Player, DVR and a Media Player for all the music and photos you’ve downloaded onto your PC — maybe even wirelessly if you’re set up for that. It’s less a video game console, and a more a Digital Convergence appliance, giving you a pretty full range of functionality to complement your home theater.
The downside is that it’s damned expensive. Even the old Magnavox Odyssey only retailed for $100, while the Xbox can run you four times that easily. (Ok, truthfully, that $100 in 1972 was as hard to come by as $2500 these days, but still…)
Of course, you still have Sony out there trying to beat out the Xbox 360 with their Playstation 3, but seeing as how they’ve had an additional year to release the unit, it won’t be much wonder if they did manage to cram some extra functionality it. I suppose when it’s released in the second half of November 2006, we’ll know whether or not all the hype was for real.
And, then, of course, Nintendo is still at it, skipping all the cutting-edge technology and just making a Video Game console that is simply that. The Nintendo Wii (pronounced “we”) has focused on keeping games “fun” and “playable,” something that seems to be a bit lacking with their more expensive counterparts who’ve focused on cutting edge confusion and overly complex gameplay.
And their television advertising surely drives that nail home with a sledgehammer:
Of course, given the choice between Rosie O’Donnel and Paris Hilton, I’d still choose neither… 😉
The other day, Anton (from LR2) and I were talking about stupid headlines. He says, “I saw a great one the other day…”
Women Have More Orgasms During Lesbian Sex than Men
Once I stopped laughing, I responded with, “Yeah, I can see that. Once most guys get it over with, they turn off the video.” I mean, I certainly can’t think of any men who engage in Lesbian sex (I mean, past the occasional ménage à trois, which apparently doesn’t count as “lesbian”), but then, it’s a big world … so who knows?
Unlike the last Media headline I loved, “Jets May Be Vulnerable to On-board Bombs,” I don’t have any screenshots or cut & pastes of the headline.
The original article, however, was real, and could be easily found from multiple sources ynder the titles, “Lesbians Have More Orgasms” and “Variety is the Spice of Sex Life.”
AP, Reuters and miscellaneous others often change these sorts of absurd ambiguitues soon after they’re discovered. However, it’s a good thing for us a lot of that many people under Media outlets’ employ aren’t proactive in doing it beforehand.
It gives us the occasional opportunity for a comical comeback!
If ya find any good ones, send them to us! If we find them equally amusing, we’ll post them and give you a link and a credit.
That still makes me cringe every time I see it typed.
And it never fails. You go into an IRC channel, an AOL chat room, telnet to your favourite talker or MUD, or even Usenet and someone who doesn’t know you will most always ask …
how old are you.
m or fem?
Your initial thought usually gives regard to the lack of capitalisation or punctuation, perhaps even a lack of decent grammar. But then you get over it, often thinking, well, Hell, at least I wasn’t innocently exploring AOL and getting an instant message from BigDick90210…
HOW BIG ARE YOUR TITS.
Messages of that sort that can be terribly confusing to anyone who is, very obviously, not physically equipped to even answer of a question (or statement, as it may be) of that sort. Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, these people aren’t worth talking to. But… these questions… they’re not that offensive or anything, really… just…
how old are you.
m or fem?
You start to answer, but then you think about it for a moment, and realise, hey, that’s kind of rude, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
Maybe it’s the way I was brought up. You could talk to strangers a bit when I was a kid; everything wasn’t so dangerous that you were afraid to let children out of your sight. But then, if I had walked up to someone I didn’t know and asked either of those questions, my parents would have given me a good, hard wallop.
“You don’t ask people how old they are!” my mother told me. “That’s just plain rude!”
I can’t say that I don’t disagree.
Still, sometimes I sit there, wonder about it for a moment, and think, “Well, okay, this is a bit silly of me, really. I mean, hey, we’re all chatting here in this space, sometimes for a few days, weeks, whatever … this is somebody I’ll get to know, perhaps. They’re just trying to see what commonalities we have…”
And then, I usually end up telling them. I just find it odd, I guess, because I rarely, if ever, ask those sorts of questions myself (and never out of context, mind you). Usually, if you pay attention, and you’re a reasonable judge of character, you can get a pretty good sense of who a person is just by idle chat: the things they say, the way they compose themselves during a “conversation” or what have you.
You assure yourself that it’s only an Internet-related phenomenon. It’s not like they’re walking up to you in public and saying “How old are you?” or “Are you male or female?” In public, they can of things easily (unless it’s someplace like 42nd Street or K Road). They’re being inquisitive online because they can’t see you. The net is free of those kinds of prejudices, for the most part. Of course, there are those who want there to be prejudices like Age and Sex and Where You Live to be thrown in there, but for the most part, the people you meet online are nice enough lots.
Most times, if the group you’re talking to is within a given area of the world, there might be some sort of get-together where everyone can meet each other, see who they’ve been talking to for all those weeks, months, sometimes even years. Quite a few of them will be inquisitive about what you might look like, considering they’ve imagined, from time to time. Usually, it’s at a local club or coffee house, and everyone sits around, talks, has a few drinks… Nothing major, and it’s usually quite different from the chat rooms. Some people get disappointed initially because someone didn’t look like someone else thought they would or something of that nature, but for the most part, those types of gatherings can be fun, right?
And it’s usually a bit odd meeting them face-to-face for the first time. But if you’re comfortable with who you are, and you’ve been chatting for some time, it’s no big deal, right? All those questions in the beginning about how old you are, what sex you are, they don’t have any bearing on real life, do they?
You walk into the assigned meeting place, to the assigned set of tables and look around, realising that these are average Joes, not unlike yourself. There was nothing to worry about, nothing to feel odd about at all. You may even chuckle to yourself a bit about feeling pressured.
And invariably, someone will turn around and loudly ask…
who are you?
how old are you?
But back to the problem at hand… The question… How to answer… “Ah, yes. I know,” you think to yourself, grinning slightly.
i’m 83 years old bucktoothed bowlegged and a horrid alcoholic with chronic halitosis. i live in a trailer in BFE and i live to swill beer, watch a broken television set, work on my big red truck with the gunrack in the back and beat my wife. my name’s mark, and it’s nice to meet you.
“Ahh, yes,” you think. “I’ve outsmarted them now. Now maybe they’ll realise that was an off question and we can start again.”
It’s only then that you realise the gross error you’ve made. They respond.
hey man it’s nice to meat you i’m kelly and i like to work on pabst blue ribon what do you drink
.
.
.
do you like sex
“Dammit!” It’s only then that you realise what you’ve gotten yourself into. You finally notice that the first three thousand IRC channels are #!!!!!!!!HORNY_SLUTS, #!!!!!!!!!SISTER_SEX_PICS, #!!!!!!!!!fuck_my_wife and the like…
“Gods,” you mutter to yourself with despair. “Perhaps there really aren’t any social skills left amongst the Internet geeks…”
