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Friday, September 9, 2011

Barbie and Ken - Gone With The Wind Edition (1)

I live in the South. Not the gap-toothed, pig-brain eatin', squirrel-huntin', marry-your-cousin South (been out of Mississippi for four years and ain't lookin back!!!!), but Southern enough that I am surrounded by Southern Belles, cluttering up the social scene with their giant hats, skirts, and attitudes.

Southern.
FUCKING.
Belles.

Okay, they might not have the hats and skirts, and women everywhere can be bitches. You don't have to be a Southern Belle to be a giant pain the ass. In the South, there are quite a few "Neo-Belles" that have modernized exactly parallel to Reconstruction.

Take a drive through anywhere that's NOT Atlanta, GA and see how well "reconstruction" pulled shit together for the South.

ANYWHOO... The new Southern Belles are comprised of a hint of Stepford Wife, a dash of Southern Charm, several pounds of pageant-level makeup, a sprinkling of acrylic nail-tips, and a bitchy helping of pure cunning. They're prepared by baking them in a tanning bed to a delicate beige (or the spray-on, no bake version), and are usually presented with garnishings from high-name fashion labels, mainly purses and shoes, that individually cost more per item than most people pay monthly for auto insurance.

Where I live, there are things a lady doesn't do. Preferably, she doesn't swear, smoke, go out of the house without full makeup, fail to accessorize, laugh too loudly, understand adult-themed jokes, have anything other than a conservative political viewpoint, talk about (or understand) that political viewpoint very often, have hair colored too brightly, have tattoos, have piercings anywhere but her earlobes, initiate conversations, have anything unpleasant to talk about, eat til they are full, or drink ANYTHING but wine, and lots of it.

After all, it's WINE. It's fuckin' classy.

What a CATCH for you guys! What a charming little lily she must be! How feminine! How strong in that femininity, yet delicate and in need of protection! YOUR protection! Just having a little slice of Georgia Peach pie on your arm like her, your life will be set! You can take THIS one home to Mom, Dad, and your Pastor!

Of course, with all that "fiddle dee dee" and such, comes a few side effects. Despite the grooming and manners that leave this woman a visually appealing, seemingly inoffensive cyborg, at heart she's still human. Imperfections are going to seep through and build up in the seams. When the Maybelline-reinforced dam breaks, the facade will crumble, fully and irreparably tarnished in a flood of chardonnay, mascara, and foundation. Much like how you'd envision a wet fart escaping both a corset and a hoop-skirt...

See, this is not a way to live. This is a mode of female behavior that is positively reinforced by men. I'm not saying that women are blameless in this, but come on y'all.. IT WORKS. EVERY GODDAMN TIME. This milkshake brings all the boys to the yard! DAMN RIGHT, it's better than yours! What's the harm, right? Life is about compromise and balance, so isn't it great to have a partner that compliments and reinforces the gender role you idealize?

Well, not really... because it's not real.  We are living in a postmodern world, so no one does any of the work that used to come along with these gender roles. If they did, we wouldn't have so many deadbeat dads, take-out or instant "meals", or kids getting each other pregnant in middle schools. The man who is supposedly the head of the household and the stronger of the couple isn't actually in charge of anything at all, and he knows it. As far as I can see, he never actually has been, which is why it DIDN'T WORK and we all were supposed to take more responsibility for being whole people after the women's movement.

This is a dated ideal of femininity that we can see in our previous generations, like our mothers and grandmothers. Think back.. your dad or your grandfather probably got away with running his mouth a hell of a lot more often than a man would be able to do in today's world, and that's not a trend that anyone really wants to return. Even those guys of you out there who will complain about the "feminization" of society will have to agree.. no one enjoyed having to endure dad's hissyfit about the dishes (that was about everything in his life BUT the dishes) while mom waited it out, only to leap to action the second he left the room in an effort to restore the tone of the household after he got done being a blowhard. That scenario is perhaps a bit specific, but I'm sure that most of you, male or female, could relate with a similar recollection of inappropriate aggressive behavior from your dad.

Mom may have worked too, but of your two parents, she was probably the most likely to remember all of your allergies, food preferences, phobias, interests, and how much it ACTUALLY cost to feed, clothe, house, and medicate you. If you want to delve a little deeper, she was probably in charge of the household finances, food, schedule, and social events. Yet, despite being at the reins in all of these important aspects of family life, she never did the one thing that you would have given up all your birthday money for.. No matter how out of touch, incorrect, or unreasonable your dad's outbursts might have been, somehow there were never any real consequences in place to make that guy shut the FUCK up and knock it off. There was an APPEARANCE, perhaps, that Dad ran the show.. what with Mom listening to whatever crazy shit flew out of his mouth and making an effort to treat it as though it were somehow relevant to something on this planet.. but maybe that's what she put up with in order to keep him working and making more money that she could delegate to the household.  In retrospect, I don't think either one of them looked particularly happy with the arrangement, but they sure as hell kept it going..

All of that being said, recalled, and cringed at.. I'm not here to vilify men and fathers. Not at all. It's not entirely their fault. While your mom sat there and took it, she was storing up currency in her emotional-blackmail savings account, which (instead of demanding his ass to cash the check that his smart mouth wrote), she would spend at a later time of her choosing to admonish him into doing something or other that she wanted him to do. Meanwhile, there are kids living under terrorism in the middle of this ongoing war, never sure where their loyalties should lie or what the hell is going to happen in the next five minutes.

All because Scarlett would rather be a painted doll who could blame all the bad decisions on Rhett, because he's always been in charge, and Rhett didn't want anyone around who could challenge his fragile ego or tell him how to behave.. even if he really needed to hear it. For some reason, people are under the delusion that it's far easier to absolve yourself of responsibility for your life and what you bring or allow into it, rather than to take the risk that Rhett really WON'T give a damn and go off into the sunset, piss-poor attitude in tow. God forbid, Rhett go out and meet someone who tells him he's totally full of shit and he can behave or move on. Sheesh.. it's like you expect someone to mature or something..

WHAT WOULD BE SO BAD ABOUT THAT?

Oh yeah.. a woman alone is incomplete. If, as a woman, you render yourself helpless to stand up for yourself or go get your own drink, then I guess you are incomplete without a stronger personality around who can cover your ass. It's also a lot easier to pretend to be a strong personality when you have someone next to you who both builds you a fan club and seems to enjoy disappearing into your shadow.

It's not specifically anyone's fault. As much as I'm grateful for the feminist movement, we've still got a long way to go. Making men the enemy doesn't really help anyone out, and making women perpetual victims and martyrs has lead to nothing but self-esteem issues in both genders. Men need to have their own movement, and it really doesn't need to be about dominance, aggression, or anger. It also doesn't need to be a big self-stroking religious organization like the "Promise Keepers", where you have the ego security of a whole lot of men patting themselves and each other on the ass for not fucking around on their wives, like it's some huge freaking effort to keep your dick in your pants.

Guys, we know you have feelings. If you didn't care about things, you wouldn't get so pissed off about them. It's kind of a human being thing. Don't sweat it. There's nothing wrong with you if you want to hug the baby a little longer or keep a cat. There's nothing wrong with you if you don't, either. The problem isn't feeling something, its in getting angry because you feel something. Then you're just being a dick, and who the hell wants that around? A lot of you are trying to figure out exactly what you're supposed to be doing in a relationship these days, since it's plain to see from any sitcom, news story, or magazine article that you sure as FUCK shouldn't be model yourself after your dad. You probably didn't need to read or watch anything to figure out that you didn't really want to repeat a lot of what he did, anyway.


Feminism is a political ideal that demanded equal pay for equal work, a woman's control over her own body, and various other equalizing measures that were and are needed so that a woman has the same ability to support herself and her family as a man does. Time has proven that women can do the things outside the home that men can do. One of the most well-known activists of the feminist movement, Gloria Steinem, has been making the media rounds lately, promoting gender equality. Her message is that society recognizes that women can do what men can do, what we DON'T recognize is that men can also do what women can do. They can be just as nurturing and loving and sensitive as women have a reputation to be.

It takes a lot of balls to admit it if you have issues with anger or expressing yourself. It takes a lot of balls to get help and to say you were wrong. I'm sorry that a lot of us girls are using that against you, too. Because, yeah.. it's definitely happening and its a widespread problem.

I don't think there's a woman out there who wants society to regress back to a point that restricts her freedom, but there's an awful lot of you bitches running around, pretending that you're Scarlett O'Hara to snag a man. Like I said, it works. Scarlett doesn't have to bring much beyond her makeup bag and her acting skills to the table, and Rhett can sit comfortably by without direct challenge and with a pretty belle on his arm. Only now, Rhett Butler doesn't dare tell you he doesn't give a damn and leave, because he knows that he hasn't been paying you enough attention and that he was probably mean and scary. He doesn't walk out of your life and let you get along alone, because he knows he was probably insensitive. It's easier to just pay for your cellphone and shut your ass up, because at the end of the day, he was probably MORE wrong than you were. After all, look how upset you are.. how helpless you are. You're not like the other women out there.. you're.. delicate. You don't even swear! However will you hail a cab by yourself?! How will you get out and meet anyone else when you've spent so much time on him, the schmuck who was so lucky to find a real LADY in these complicated times! You only drink wine, not liquor, like those other rough girls out there.

PS: Girls, the label says "Arbor Mist", not "Arbor Monsoon". A drunk bitch is not a class act, no matter what she drank to get there.

So why won't we just freakin' stop already? We're playing games that aren't any fun and, over time, leave everyone miserable. What results from this bullshit are unreasonable expectations and dishonesty. No one's getting anything that they want, because they don't KNOW what they want and because no one is who they seem to be. What's worse is that we are probably closer than we've ever been to equality and understanding between the sexes, and for every step forward we take, someone finds a way to glamorize the concept of kicking us all back into the dark ages.

Ladies, give a man a noble purpose with you.. not an outdated, bullshit one. Let him meet your ACTUAL needs, not the ones you pretend to have to boost his ego. Southern Belles treat men like rabid possum that they need to lure into traps.. traps with merciless steel teeth that are hidden cleverly beneath those fucking hoop skirts. Once they trap him, they have to break him down with steady conditioning until he either snaps or shuts the hell down, soullessly compliant to commands. At that point, she deems him insensitive and boring.. which he is, because she's declared herself victimized by every feeling he's ever expressed, to the extent that life just became easier and he had less reason to hate himself if he just did what he was told, when he was told to do it.

Now, men who are cheering at this and doing chest bumps or whatever... what the hell were you doing to prevent this from happening to you? Did you go out there and meet an attractive, intellectually stimulating woman who can bring something to your life, or did you go find a pretty little thing that made you feel needed? I know there are women reading this who think I'm the most self-hating woman alive, but I'm not. Thank you, I like me very much. What I don't like is watching women treat men like animals, handle them like animals, and then run around all shocked and appalled when they end up acting like animals. I don't like watching men chase after women who don't have anything worthwhile to talk about, for the simple reason that they don't ever have to feel like anything less than her superior. Worse still, none of these behaviors are going to change until everyone accepts the fact that there's a difference between the desire for a romantic relationship and its actual necessity.

I don't know anyone who intentionally seeks out unhealthy relationships like these. No one has a plan to fuck up a partnership, for themselves or anyone else. After you've bounced in and out of a few, it might be worth a serious look at exactly what mistakes you're repeating. It's not rocket science to figure out that if there are elements to the relationship that make you uncomfortable early on, they're only going to get worse if they go unchecked. Humans are like any other mammal, and us mammals are ALL about the path of least resistance. If there's no reason to change, why should we?

So, Scarlett.. if Rhett has committed some unforgivable slight against your honor, either ditch Rhett's ass or shut up. If you don't want to be treated like a whore, quit letting him buy your forgiveness with actual money or goods (like jewelry). What you call "forgiveness", he sees as "right to tap that". Speaking of which, Rhett.. you need to quit buying her shit to solve your relationship problems. You dumb bastard. The interest rate goes nowhere but up, and she's been depreciating since you drove her ass off the lot. One day you're going to wake up and be pissed about it, and by that point, it's your own goddamn fault for not putting the screws to it early on before she'd invested enough of her time in you that she has the right to demand retribution for your outburst.

And so the cycle of anger-prone fathers and passive-aggressive mothers continues...

Thursday, September 8, 2011

oh PLEASE say it ain't so, boys..

Here. Look at this.

Humor's Sexual Side

If this is true, than the majority of you guys are a bunch of pussies. For real.

Since its likely that a large percentage of readers (especially the guys) will be too damn lazy to pay attention long enough to read an entire article that doesn't contain the word "fuck" or gratuitous images of breasts, I'll summarize it.

This article states that some men don't have the testicular fortitude to date or marry women who can actually make them laugh and display a sense of humor similar to their own. To be fair, this is exactly what they said...

"A woman who deploys a typically male sense of humor—one that's aggressive or competitive—is a turnoff to men, says Don Nilsen, a linguistics professor at Arizona State University in Tempe and an expert on humor. Many men feel threatened, perceiving a funny woman as a rival or worrying that they'll become a target of her sharp tongue. "I think every man in the world loves the humor, even the sexual put-down humor, of Judy Tenuta or Joan Rivers," he says. "But very few men want to marry them."

This same professor goes ON to say...

"To say that men don't seek a funny mate is "painting with a broad brush." Men who do appreciate their female partner's humor are usually more secure, mature and educated than the average guy, he says. They hold their mates in high esteem and aren't intimidated."

Dear Mr. Nilsen... where in the hell are these appreciative men of which you speak? All I keep running into are guys who laugh their asses off at damn near everything I say, and in the same breath, bitch at me about how their girlfriend is such a fucking drag. I don't even have to look at the girl to know that she probably has to maintain a specific monthly budget out of her income for cosmetics and aesthetic procedures (waxing, tanning, mani-pedi, hair treatments, etc), because the aforementioned guy is usually looking around the room at women whose faces are literally plastered in place by artificial means.

Or better yet, the SINGLE guys I've met that shove me face first into the "friend zone", all the while complaining about how impossible it is to meet a woman who has anything interesting to talk about. Where, they wail, can I find a woman who can make me laugh? Why can't I meet a woman who can geek out with me about video games and b-movies and funny things on the internet?

This is the point that I usually stare down at my own breasts, then back up at the guy I'm talking to, and then back at my own breasts. If we're out somewhere, I've probably blown off my fair share of other guys while I've been hanging out with this idiot. If he doesn't get the hint about my awesome boobs (HEY DUMBASS. I'M A WOMAN), I figure it's time for me to go to the bathroom and make sure I don't have a penis that I've somehow forgotten about.

Nope.

No penis here.

I guess I just have bigger balls than the guy I left sitting in the other room.

Should have stayed home and pwned some n00bs in Killzone 3.

Praising the Bar

I love to watch people. They're fucking hilarious, especially when they're trying to get laid. Of all creatures on the Earth, human beings really look the most awkward during coitus. Seriously, there's nothing on the Discovery Channel that can hold a candle to us when it comes to fugly mating rituals. This is probably because there aren't too many other animals that try to meet their potential mates while shitfaced in bars.

It's not so bad if you can toddle the line between sober and happy. "Happy", being the first step toward "tanked", at the far end of the scale of inebriation. For extra points, you can be considered one step back from "tanked" down to "plowed" if you can actually SAY the word "inebriated" while you're being hoisted by your underpants into the king cab of your friend's truck. If you don't stop drinking at "happy" you may experience severe visual distortions and lapses in good judgment. As a public service warning, this scale may help.

0 - Sober
Supermodel = Supermodel

1 - Happy
Girl behind bar = Supermodel

2 - Tipsy
Best friend's girlfriend = Supermodel

3 - Hammered
Best friend's mom = Jennifer Anniston (you'd do her, but she's waaaaay too fucking old to be a supermodel, even with your beer-goggles on)

4 - Shitfaced
Anything with breasts = FUCKKK ... WHO CARES ABOUT FUCKING A GODDAMN SUPERMODEL. A SUMPERPOODLE WOULDN'T FUCKIN' TALK TO ME, ANYWAY. SO, FUCK THAT BITCH.. FUCK THAT BITCH OVER THERE TOO GIVIN' ME LOOKS AND SHIT. I LIKE.. (hic) I LIKE FUCKIN' REEEAL WOMEN.. LIKE, FUCKIN A, MAN..YEAH FUCK EVERYBODY.

5 - Plowed
You = Person who is not quite sure if they put their dick back in when they left the urinal. Don't look down! That'd look weird. Maintain, goddamnit!

6 - Tanked
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Your friends don't really want you to stay with them, either. As a matter of fact, we really think its a better idea if you DO, in fact, go home. Go home. Seriously. Now. DRIVE SAFE!

As you can see, alcohol can definitely throw you off your game.. or into the arms of seventy-six year old Mamie, whose tan knee-highs you mistook for black thigh-highs and whose adult diaper fit so snug you thought she wasn't wearing anything at all under that leather skirt.

Oh God. That's not leather. .. and that's not a skirt.

By about 10pm, most of the bar is somewhere between "happy" and "tipsy", and people are having a great time talking to each other. If they're experienced bar hounds, this is the peak time that people begin selecting those individuals that they want to continue talking to all the way through "hammered". Depending upon environmental variables such as lighting, background noise, and crowd density, said individuals are often recalled to memory by a combination of their clothing and most obvious physical characteristics, such as:

Tall brunette, green shirt, no tits.
Short blonde, red shirt, big tits
Tall blonde, short shorts, check for dick later.

Experienced partiers know that it is important to make these selections before 11:30 or so, when people start doing shots. Once someone starts that shot-buying shit, then EVERYONE feels obligated to be a badass and buy some too. Everybody downs a shot (or ten), starts running out of cash, and that practically guarantees that whatever drinks that people buy AFTER shots will be strong as fuck, you know, to make 'em last.

If you haven't already picked someone to try and sidle up to between shots and closing, you might as well pack it in and go home a bit before everyone else does. He who hesitates is lost.....  to Mamie.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Statement of Purpose

Hello.

This blog is intended to be interesting to both men and women, due to its emphasis on male/female communication.

If I go on writing in this blog with the same dryness contained in that description, it will no doubt be interesting to NO ONE.

So.. let's just get this out of the way.

This blog will probably be updated in a somewhat random fashion, but I'm REALLY going to try and do it with some sort of regularity. I've attempted to maintain several blogs over the years, but like houseplants, I just can't seem to keep them alive. This time, I think I've got a topic that's entertaining enough to ME that it can keep my interest. We'll see.

Right now, it's September of 2011, and come September of 2014 you might run across this blog with a total of 15 posts that end abruptly in October of 2011. If that's YOU and you're reading this in 09/2014 and I've killed another potentially fun blog through pure neglect.. well, to hell with you and your judgments! I at least left a trace of myself to float out in the e-cosmos, probably with as many bad puns and puerile humor as I could possibly shove into the pitiful number of posts this blog contains. For like, ten minutes worth of reading, I WAS SOMEBODY... that you probably didn't want to hang out with... BUT I WAS STILL SOMEBODY, DAMMIT!

Tirade break.

In case anyone is wondering, I'm female, over 30, and an avid bullshit-enthusiast. Some have called me an "artist", but as far as bullshit is concerned, I really consider myself more of a hobbyist. Perhaps a connoisseur of fine bullshit artistry. Believe it or not, this rambling preamble is actually leading to the point of this blog. Points, really.

Point One :
Men and Women are different. Their BRAINS are wired differently. They have equal needs, usually the same needs, but they communicate, learn, and prioritize differently from one another.

Point Two :
This causes a lot of problems. A lot. A lot of problems that could potentially be avoided by keeping Point One in mind before anyone says ANYTHING to ANYBODY.

What I plan (hah.. "plan") to do with this blog is to effectively illustrate these two points, as often and obnoxiously as I possibly can. I plan to assist you men out there by decoding the subtle, hidden messages that the women around you are lobbing at you at every possible opportunity. You know how your mom/sister/ex/current/female friend is constantly trying to tell you that so-and-so is a total bitch? Believe it or not, she probably is. However, its pretty dumb to make decisions based on one person's interpretation of this hidden, foreign language. I think it would be better to work on a sort of "travel phrase" guide here, just so you get some idea of what the HELL is going on between the women around you. Trust me, its enough to scare you NOT straight.

Ladies? I'm not forgetting you. Men are loading you down with the same type of conversational manure that they are mired in as a result of our communication differences. Between us girls... well, let's be honest, we're not getting ANYWHERE trying to translate it together. All of our girls nights out are loaded with questions.. questions about men. Usually we're in a small group of women without enough testosterone between us to support ONE testicle, let alone the fact that we're all squawking the same damn questions at each other. It doesn't help that our groups diminish and repopulate based on a bunch of illogical assumptions about what some other girl "meant by that". It could be something as simple as a facial expression. An item of clothing that someone deems inappropriate. Talking to the wrong man or talking to him at the wrong time. It could be anything. We will recognize it as some great personal (or worse) group insult. We will ostracize that girl within an inch of her life, and bring her back only when she has been sufficiently punished for that thing that ACTUALLY meant this other thing that was SO GODDAMN OFFENSIVE that we were momentarily motivated to burn her for the bitch witch she was ...

.. FOR WEARING THAT BLOUSE WHEN SARA WAS TRYING TO TALK TO THAT GUY THAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW. OMG.

Yes, men. It is that bad. Shame on us. Shame on you guys for running about willy-nilly in a gender-integrated world and not realizing the intensity of the female-to-female interactions that go on around you at all times.

Shame on all of us for not being honest. Shame on us for playing this retarded game that makes no one happy.

Maybe, if I can stay interested long enough, I can dig a couple gold nuggets out of the giant shit-pile of confusion that we all work so hard to build, dividing us a species into two, confused, bitter groups of people who aren't getting laid and don't like each other most of the time. I can give it a try.