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The Duke “F*ck List”: Thoughts and Consequences

13 Oct

 

Duke: Home of the Blue Devil, and an endless supply of hot men.

 

Last week, Jezebel posted the Duke University “Fuck List,” created by student Karen Owen, in its entirety. The “Fuck List” consists of 42 Powerpoint slides complete with pictures, charts, and thorough descriptions of the sexual performance of thirteen different young men, all of whom happen to be Duke athletes. The Fuck List entertained me more than anything I have had the chance to read in recent weeks, and it shed clarity on what appears to be a continually disputed idea: are women as vigorous in their quest for sex as men, and if they are, should they be allowed that right? Of course the answer to both parts of that question is yes, and the “data collection” performed by Ms. Owen is little more than a visual representation of a common occurrence among young women and men alike – people are having sex and talking about it, and this should hardly be news.

Owen, who titled her Powerpoint “An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics” (quite a clever title, indeed), ranked her 13 “subjects” in the following categories: physical attractiveness, size, talent, creativity, aggressiveness, entertainment, athletic ability, and bonus points (“Bonus points were given for extraneous factors, such as the presence of an Australian accent and/or professional surfing skills. Points were deducted for rudeness or being Canadian.”) Now, call me cynical, but isn’t it COMPLETELY NORMAL to either discuss these details with close friends and/or record them for future entertainment? Owen’s creation of a detailed Powerpoint presentation is no different from the sex gossip that covers college campuses – the only difference is that someone found her creation highly entertaining, and chose to forward it to other friends in a fateful email.

Now Ms. Owen is facing a slut-shaming barrage from various media outlets, including both NBC and Fox News. The treatment of the “fuck list” in the media is sensationalist, with clear aims of portraying Owen as a sex-hungry young woman with no respect for any of her sexual partners. But let us pause for a moment, and imagine, if you will, that the Duke “Fuck List” was the work of a young man. There would likely be backlash from women’s rights groups and feminist media outlets (I will include Jezebel in this category), in addition to interviews with female celebrities expressing their “anger and outrage.” Many recent TV interviews with Duke students show an amused student body, entertained at the fact that Owen was sure to include penis size comparisons and indications of lame and/or inattentive lovers. But would students (especially female students) be entertained at a ranking of tit size or blow job ability? Perhaps they would, but my judgment says no. There is a clear double standard when it comes to sexual promiscuity. Men are encouraged to fuck as many chicks as possible, while women are cautioned away from enjoying sex as they please. Women are continually discouraged from pursuing sex, and when they do, they are labeled “sluts,” “whores,” and “ho’s,” while their male counterparts receive high-fives.

The media is portraying Karen Owen as a real-life biblical harlot and one gem of a video clip comes directly from Fox News, in which Megyn Kelly offers her sage advice to young girls everywhere:

http://www.youtube.com/v/8Whnt3zn-k4?fs=1&hl=en_US

See girls? It’s that simple! Do not sleep around! It’s dirty! Of course we would be lead to believe by Fox News that Ms. Owen is a huge slut deserving of little more than the recognition that she is a slut!

Ms. Owen is a normal young woman who has been blessed with a sex life that appears to be something out of a series of Harlequin romance novels. I am firmly in the camp that feels Owen deserves at least a book deal, or perhaps some sort of sex advice show. Any woman who can enjoy sex and have a sense of humor about it is golden. She also bagged a lot of hot, athletic men, for which I give her props. If Ms. Owen were a man herself, she’d be receiving high fives from all of her male friends and sneers from women. But in this world, and according to most media outlets, Ms. Owen is little more than a disrespectful slut deserving of shame. If being a “slut” entails enjoying a healthy and fun sex life, then I’d take being a slut any day.

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More Reasons to be Disappointed with Men, Including “Blue Walls”

21 Sep

Today I have several reasons to be disappointed with the opposite sex:

1. The charming existence of the article “Local bison bear all at Phi Kappa Psi’s Annual Lingerave” in the Johns Hopkins University school paper, The News-Letter. This piece of shit, written by a very spiteful young man named Greg Sgammato, insults all women with disgusting misogyny. Sgammato comments on the harmful existence of “fat chicks” and their clear intent to prevent douchebag frat boys from hooking up with their “hot friends”. Here’s a little gem from his “article,” describing the tragedies taking place at lingeraves (a combination of the words lingerie and rave, leaving endless possibility for make-believe debauchery):

In the future, one can think of at least one alteration to make; indeed, perhaps advertising a party as a “Lingerave” will bring about more bad than good. While seeing a hot chick in only her underwear is undoubtedly a treat, seeing a blimp without the welcome shield of clothing is a much worse fate for everyone at the party. A seasoned veteran should have the confidence to wait until the bedroom to see his girl without clothing; don’t subject the majority to the tyranny of the – funnily enough – enormous minority.

Hmmm, blimps, huh? Other terms Sgammato uses to describe women include: “livestock,” “elephants,” “grenades,” “bison,” and “it”. Now, I could go on and on about how Sgammato is likely an ugly man who could not even get a standard hot chick (whatever that means) to blow him if he tried, but all I really want to say is how he’s just ignorant. How could someone who holds such nasty opinions of women think that it would help his writing career to put his name on such sexist trash? More importantly, is this really how he feels about women? I weep for the day this moron ever has a daughter, because she will need therapy galore. This guy deserves to have his name associated with trash writing for at least the next few years. Oh, and as a bonus below, Jezebel found this picture of Sgammato, who is seen on the far right with fellow bad writer Javier Avitia on the left and the FEMALE editor of the Johns Hopkins News-Letter in the center. Is he winking here? Ugh.

2. The even more charming existence of a SECOND sexist piece in the SAME edition of the Johns Hopkins News-Letter, entitled, “Banging Under the Influence: The Ups and Downs” by a moron named Javier Avitia. Javier tries to argue that having sex when both parties are drunk is the best thing ever. According to the author, being drunk while fucking makes girls “slutty” and “submissive,” while men become “emboldened”. Yuck. Avitia writes:

For guys, the appeal of this is obvious: it cuts out the hassle of having to pretend to care about a relationship and the protocols of a thing called “courtship” if they want to sleep with a girl, it gives them an excuse to think with the other head, and, as many a study has shown, girls become more submissive when intoxicated while men conversely become more emboldened. So score one for the men.

The sad part about this quote is that it showcases what seems a prevalent attitude among college men – why be nice to a girl and actually care about her as a person when she has holes for your dick that feel good? That’s all we women are good for anyway. Javier’s piece is yet another reminder that women are still thought of little more than objects used at any man’s discretion. It also insults both the acts of drinking and sex, both of which are enjoyable and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Thanks Javier, for ruining drinking and sex for everyone.

3. I can’t go to work without being leered at by both customers and coworkers. I would like to go into more detail here, but I probably shouldn’t, and I would rather make the point that creepers are neither worth my time nor my energy. I will say one thing – if you are a major creeper, do not keep trying to touch a young girl’s shoulder with your creeper hand, because she will give you the stinkeye and then write about how gross you are in her nationally read blog.

4. I don’t like it when a guy gets you all hot and bothered for him and then leaves you with whatever the equivalent of blue balls for women may be (actually, I just Googled and Wikipedia mentions “blue walls” and “blue box”- how classy). I mean, if you’re telling a girl all the things you like sexually, you should maybe follow-up on that sometime in the future. Hello, you’ve got a girl who’s DTF into you – do some work, you lazy ass. I’m hot, you’re hot, let’s hit it already. And I may remind you that I am not on call for such things – I’m not a nurse or a traveling saleswoman. Please change your attitude stat.

And those are all the reasons I can think of to be disappointed in men at this very moment.

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I Never Want to Hear “He’s Just Not That Into You” Ever Again

12 Sep

"Haha! I guess we don't really like each other after all!"

The most toxic phrase infiltrating the pop culture lexicon is “He’s just not that into you.” Coined by authors Greg Behrendt (a comedian who does not hold any sort of psychology degree) and 49-year-old never-married and eternally single writer Liz Tuccillo (not exactly an expert on relationships), the phrase is the title of their 2008 book He’s Just Not That Into You, also a terrible and poorly-written “romantic comedy” starring practically every star of the moment you could think of.

The book claims to offer advice to women on the dating world. Greg, who seems to think that every man is a type A personality who will jump at the chance to ask out any woman in a hundred-foot radius, is sadly mistaken. Not all men are cut from the same cloth, and it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round. I know from personal experience that not all men are like this. Most men, in fact, are shy, confused, and generally terrified of asking a woman out, never mind asking out a woman they really like.

The book and film offer these gems of advice for women: be completely passive when it comes to dating; your only job is to accept or deny dates as the offers come flooding in; NEVER EVER call or pursue a man in any way, shape, or form. In other words, become a subservient doormat with no wishes or desires of your own to fulfill. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a woman asking a man out. I’ve asked out a few guys in my short lifetime, and guess what? I did not spontaneously combust into flames while doing so.

My main problem with the He’s Just Not That Into You philosophy is its assumption that all women want to be wooed and yet are not allowed to do any of the wooing. Why is it that HE is just not that into me? What if SHE is just not that into him? Can’t this idiotic philosophy be applied to both sexes? And what is wrong with giving a guy a call? I admit that I’ve questioned my attempts at wooing men, but why is that? We are taught that women are automatically the weaker sex; we are small forest creatures, if you will, waiting to be hunted down by the proverbial kings of the jungle. God forbid we ever pursue a man we actually like – we should just take the ones that force themselves into our lives.

I also have a major problem with thinking that everything must happen within a certain time frame for a relationship to develop. The idea that a guy must call you within three days to express his continued interest does not account for confusion, shyness, being busy with actual life commitments, and/or the possibility that you’re not the only thing he has to worry about. I’ve noticed that some of the strongest relationships start out as friendships. In these cases, both parties are interested in getting to know each other before jumping into anything serious. I think if you do not get to know someone at first, you could very likely end up with the very sort of people you need to avoid – stalkers, assholes, and perverts, who always seem overeager to make something happen.

The advice in He’s Just Not That Into You can be summed up as such: if you pretend to be a weak woman in need of a strong man, a strong man will find you and sweep you off your feet. Never mind if he’s not really someone you are attracted to or compatible with; if he’s calling you then he’s all you deserve. Also remember to play plenty of mind games, because men love a woman who comes off as an enigma – he won’t want to get to know you as a person anyway, so do your best to confuse the hell out of him.

My current situation in the “romantic realm,” if you will, involves a lot of confusion on my part. I am definitely attracted to and interested in one guy in particular; however, my current limbo-like state in life and romantic history makes me unsure of whether I want an actual relationship or some sort of fun fling. Hence, I am confused. I would not be surprised, considering what he’s told me about his romantic history, if he were confused as well. However, if he really is “just not that into me,” I suppose I will have to curl into a little ball with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and cry until some asshole comes along to sweep me off my feet. But no thank you. I will continue to wait this one out and see what happens – I’m certainly in no hurry.

There is one more thing I would like to add: if you happen to encounter a guy who does everything without hesitancy and says all of the right things at the right time (much like the “ideal” men Greg describes in the book), chances are he’s a player who likes to fuck ’em and leave ’em. The type of man that Greg glorifies in his “book” is exactly the sort women need to avoid.

I suppose my point is that we are not all simple creatures who know what we want and/or need at any given moment. Dating is much more complicated than saying “he’s just not that into you.”

Protected: Getting Laid in Your 20’s Should Not Be This Hard

24 Aug

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No, My Body is Not for Your Viewing Pleasure, Thank You Much.

20 Aug

The dreaded miniskirt - a gaurantor of catcalls.

A recent conversation among friends (in addition to this Jezebel post) prompted me to comment on what I feel is one of the most tragic, perpetual obstacles facing girls and women everywhere. The constant objectification of the female body is a challenge presented to all women, regardless of whether they want such attention. The matter of clothing, and the question of whether women can attract “negative” attention by wearing certain things, is becoming a hot-button issue in the media. I remember Bill O’Reilly had made some comments regarding a young woman, Jennifer Moore, who was raped and murdered in New York City. For some reason, the fact that she had worn a miniskirt out that night made it into the reporting of her brutal murder. O’Reilly, ever the scumbag, made this gem of a comment on his show:

She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at 2 in the morning.

The idea that the victim of such a horrific crime could be somehow culpable for her fate is truly nauseating.

Every day, women are subjected to unwanted evaluations of her appearance. This is not due simply to what she could be wearing – this is because women are institutionally perceived as sexual objects free to be rated and criticized by men. How do I know this? It happens to me every day, no matter what I’m wearing.

Women, whether we like it or not, are subject to a constant stream of assessments of our face, body, and overall physical appearance. Men constantly decide whether we are “desirable” or “fuckable”. We are the entertainment for our male counterparts. Many men (I’m not trying to make a blanket statement here, but trust me, it’s a lot of men) believe they have a right to rate and judge the appearance of every woman who crosses their path. Cat calls, whistling, nasty comments (“Spread those legs, mami,”) are often the norm in the lives of most women. I believe I first noticed men looking at me when I was little more than ten years old. Of course I was tall (perhaps around 5’4″ at that time) for my age and probably had begun developing in my chest, but I was nowhere near mentally or emotionally capable of understanding what was happening when I saw men leering at me. Adolescence can be a frightening thing for either sex, but with the growing emphasis on the sexual worth of young women, the difficulty of growing up as a girl in a society that seems to value the appearance of a woman above any other attribute can be devastating and confusing.

This constant objectification has spread into the educational realm, as well. At my high school, girls whose outfits were deemed “inappropriate” were forced to wear an over-sized yellow t-shirt for the rest of the day. I remember my sister being subjected to this barbaric display of control when she was a sophomore. I also noticed that the girls who were often forced to wear the big yellow t-shirt were the girls more often known as “troublemakers”. I would often wear tank tops or shirts that gave hints of cleavage, things very similar to what the other girls were wearing, but I never had to wear the t-shirt. This has led me to believe that certain girls were targets for breaking these dress code rules, while others (the A students, the Homecoming court, etc.) were the exception to this rule.

So what can be done to reduce the horror that comes with having breasts and hips? Nothing, really. Parents can take the extra steps to help educate their children on the sensitive nature of a developing body, which could perhaps change the attitudes of people over time. I know that if I have a son in this lifetime, I will surely teach him to keep any sexual thoughts he has to himself while in the company of young women. That’s probably the least I can do. Respect for women begins within the family, and it’s a parent’s responsibility to portray this ideal. Sexual thoughts, however, are natural, and it should not be a goal to suppress such a thing. Exercising discretion is likely the best anyone can do.

Unless something magical happens to change how society views women and their bodies, I will likely continue to endure catcalls and leering eyes for however long men will think I’m “hot”. Because being hot is the only thing a woman should have going for her – ignore her mind, humor, and values. She is tits, ass, and legs – nothing more. This is reality, and it’s sad for us all, but at least I look pretty living in it.

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Fake Accents and the Women Who (Don’t) Love Them

2 Aug

Can you tell me what country's flag this is? Oh wait. No, you can't.

This weekend I went to my favorite bar only to be hit on by an idiot who decided to pretend to be Scottish. I was trying to tell one of my male friends how common it is for men to try to pretend to be something they are not in order to impress a girl. Faking an accent, certain personality traits, and perhaps even lying about where one has spent time is all very common when young men try to pick up on girls. The real issue with men faking exotic foreign accents is not whether they can pull it off, but rather more about how women actually fall for such nonsense.

The stereotype that no woman can resist a foreign accent truly bothers me. If this were true, I’m sure a lot of women would move to Europe or Australia (the Australian accent is the most irresistible accent, as both Russell Crowe and The Outback Steakhouse have taught us) for the express purpose of finding a man with an accent. When women fall for such superficial bullshit, they automatically set themselves up for disappointment. Just because a guy has a British accent does not mean he could be any less of a jerk than an American guy. Accents do not serve as a cover for being a true asshole.

In my particular case, a young man approached me, telling me that he thought I was beautiful. I thought he sounded funny from the beginning – he immediately followed his compliment with a declaration that he was from Scotland. Um, okay. No, you’re not. There were several reasons for me to doubt what he was saying – first, he was wearing a Von Dutch hat. The Von Dutch hat is not only the mark of a douchebag, but it also signifies someone who knows very little about fashion, which many Europeans actually care about. He also kept going on and on about some military regiment he was in and that he had come here to train American soldiers to rescue others from bad weather situations in the mountains. What mountains in Scotland could he have possibly trained on for such nonsense? I ended up Googling “mountains in Scotland” and found out that the highest peaks of the Highlands are no more than 4,000 feet. How could that possibly compare to a Colorado fourteener? Another lie. Then I tried to play detective.

“So what’s the capital of Scotland?”

Blank stare from Mr. Von Dutch.

I went to college, I know the capital of Scotland is Edinburgh. That should be easy enough for someone who claims to be Scottish, but, no answer.

Then he made a fatal mistake. I don’t remember what I asked him, but his answer was “Aye.” What Scottish dialect uses “aye” as a substitute for yes? The answer is none of them, unless all Scottish people are pirates.

I finally asked this moron if he had either  a passport or visa to show me. He said he had neither of those with him. I made my point a little more clear: “This is a bar. They had to have checked your ID at the door. Can I see the ID that you showed them?”

The young, stupid boy pulled his wallet from his back pocket and opened it, revealing a standard US military ID. He tries to pull it out of his wallet ever-so-slowly. And what could be underneath this military ID but a motherfucking TENNESSEE driver’s license!?! I caught him lying and told him,”Look I know you’re faking an accent and I think it’s really lame.” A look of embarrassment and shame washed over his face and he trudged away.

I couldn’t help but point out the stupidity of this kid. He chose the wrong woman to try his horrible Scottish accent on. I once met James McAvoy at the American Eagle Outfitters I worked at in New York, for godsakes. I know a Scot when I see one. (But mostly when I hear one.) The sad part is that there was most likely a woman on whom his pathetic Scottish-Southern accent worked. And he probably got laid. That was a sad night for America.

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Cleanup Required: Bad Kissing and Its Victims

1 Jun

A famous kiss in history, no cleanup required.

We’ve all been there. You’ve been flirting heavily with a certain guy or girl throughout the day/night and things seem promising. That’s right: you have a make out session on the way. The make out session is the thing of junior high, high school, and college, of summers past and present, of work breaks and office holiday parties. Unfortunately, the make out session always has the potential to go horribly wrong.

I had one recent make out session that disappointed me like no other before. First off, and I have no idea why, this guy prefaced our encounter with the stunner, “I’m very picky about who I make out with.” Um, okay? What is that supposed to mean? I have some inkling that he was trying to portray his kissing abilities as first-rate and that I should somehow feel lucky, but instead, he came off like a smarmy a-hole. And how picky could he have been anyway? I’m no supermodel (as close as a human can be), but this guy should have felt lucky to have me talking to him at all, especially since I had witnessed his lame dance moves to retro house music. This guy also talked way too much about house music. He was trying to explain the difference between techno and house to me, but I kind of did that thing when you space out and keep saying, “yeah” every couple of minutes.

I soon found out why he is likely “picky” about whom he makes out with. He’s such a bad kisser that he probably wants to limit his failure to a few people so the truth will not come out. You know that nervous feeling you get when someone leans in to kiss you? I totally had that until…I was attacked by a roving tongue. My expression instantaneously changed from excitement to disgust. This guy was using WAY too much tongue. It was as though he was using his tongue to search my mouth for the cavities that my dentist may have overlooked at my checkup last month. There’s nothing wrong with the right amount of tongue kissing, but this was completely overwhelming. It was like a spinning propeller gone rogue in my mouth. Not pleasant at all. I recently read an article in Cosmopolitan (go figure) that described how men get turned on by sloppy saliva-soaked kissing. I simply don’t understand how this can be. And even if it is true, shouldn’t they ask the girl they’re kissing what they like first, before they get all crazy sloppy with it?

When it was over (I tried to cut this whole thing short) I felt as though I needed a dishtowel to soak up the excess saliva left in and around my mouth. This guy seemed really pleased with himself, even though he was too dumb to take a hint when I kept closing my mouth. I later found out that this guy was a bit older than he had told me, and had likely lied about his age because he knew I was younger and wanted to seem more appealing. However, all this tells me is that there could be up to 20 years worth of victims of his horrible kissing roaming the earth. I probably should have told him straight up that he was a failure, but I restrained myself because I felt like being nice.

What can we learn from this incident? Kissing with too much tongue is pretty disgusting, and it should only happen if both parties like it, and most likely, one person will not like it. Oh, and if you meet a guy in his mid-30s who is either single, never married, or has never been in a serious relationship, it’s probably because he sucks at things like kissing. Or that he likes dancing to retro house music in lame, trying-too-hard-to-be-trendy basement bars. Or both.

Do you have a horrible kissing story? That’s right, this blog entry has become the embarrassing moments page of Seventeen. Feel free to share your woe.

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How to Spot A Manwhore In Da Club (Go Shawty…)

8 May

Typical t-shirt worn by a manwhore.

 

In recent months, I’ve spent most of my leisure time doing what the kids call “getting tore up from the floor up.” I go out a few nights a week to drink, dance, and generally have a good time. I’m a bit surprised at the frequency of my clubbing – I think I only went out a handful of nights when I was in college (shocking!) and spent the majority of my weekends in a basement computer lab or in the library. College was a time of discipline and focus for me, and I think now that I still have yet to enter the “real world,” I’m simply getting all of my pent-up partying out of my system while being much more social.       

One of the few unfortunate things about nightclubs is the lack of savory people. Sure, you’ll meet a nice guy or two, but chances are that “nice guys” are not often found on the dance floor (where I spend most of my club time), where overtly suggestive dance moves are often the norm. This is why it is often imperative to go out with at least one other friend, who will act as a physical buffer for unwanted dance advances made by creepers. Of course, you could always dance by yourself, but people will probably take a video if you with their phone while you’re in the throes of “Red, Red Wine.” (Yes, they still play that song at clubs.) 70% of the time I am completely turned off  by the guys who try to dance with me – I do not go to clubs to meet men. I go to clubs to drink, dance, and perhaps meet new people. I highly doubt that the man I am destined to be with will be standing in the corner by the DJ booth while checking me out with a Colt 45 in hand.       

However, once in a while I’ll see someone I want to talk to. There is one guy I had had my eye on for a minute. We’ll call him Douchebag Jiggalo, to keep him anonymous. Douchebag Jiggalo is my exact physical type – blonde, blue eyes, tall, athletic physique, nice smile. He’s a bartender at a place I frequent, which should have been red flag #1. Apparently I’m the last girl in the world who was unaware that the only reason any man would bartend at a nightclub was to score vag. As my friend Angie said, “You can see it on him. When he’s pouring drinks he’s thinking of pussy.” Basically, Douchebag Jiggalo is the poor man’s Brian Flanagan, but without a Jordan to marry at the end of the movie.       

As it turns out, Douchebag Jiggalo is a manwhore. One of his friends revealed that any involvement with him comes with nothing more than barrels of tears and general bad life experiences. I’ll pass, but not without doing a service to my club-going sisterhood.       

The manwhore is not a unique being. He is plentiful, he is a shapeshifter. Here are some signs of the manwhore:       

1. Wears gaudy, expensive t-shirts in the Ed Hardy or MMA variety.       

Ed Hardy t-shirts, in addition to MMA-related apparel (See: Tapout) are the first indicator of douchebag-manwhore status. Only an idiot would think that a ridiculous t-shirt with an excessively large skull and rhinestones would ever be cool. Also, most men are not even capable of being MMA fighters. But you can pretend to be like one with your sideways Tapout hat.       

2. Either comes to a club in a group of four of more, or alone with his “wingman”.       

They travel in only two modes: swarm or couple.       

3. Reads Tucker Max or pretends to have read Tucker Max.       

If you don’t know who Tucker Max is, I’ll give you permission to Google him just this once. Now forget that you know he exists.       

4. His favorite movie is Wedding Crashers, The Hangover, Old School, or another masterpiece of the bromance genre.       

The bromance dominated the first decade of the 2000s. Expect your manwhore to count Vince Vaughn among his heroes. He’ll also likely talk about an “epic” trip to Vegas he’s planning.       

5. He only listens to two different kinds of music: shitty hip-hop (of the Plies and Gucci Mane persuasion) or Dave Mathews Band.       

The manwhore loves terrible rap music. He probably has the Gucci Mane song “Wasted” as his ringtone. If he plays guitar, he probably only knows one song – “Crash into Me” is guaranteed to get him laid.       

6. He favors light beer, but when light beer is unavailable, he drinks Vodka-Cranberries and pounds Jagerbombs.       

The manwhore is a bit of an amateur when it comes to drinking, and light beer is his best friend. When he’s feeling adventurous, a Vodka-Cranberry is the way to go.       

Those are all the signs I can think of for now. Do any readers out there have any I can add?

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Shutter Your Mouth Island

24 Feb

Last weekend, just like $40 million worth of American moviegoers, I wandered into my local theater to see the latest offering from my betrothed, Leonardo DiCaprio, and his betrothed, master filmmaker Martin Scorcese. Despite having ruined the film for myself well over a year ago by clicking on a fateful IMDB thread, Shutter Island was not a disappointment. The acting is solid, the visuals are very 2010, and the story is for a thinking person.

Leo hates it when someone texts in his movies.

However (yes, the dreaded “however”), I could not help but be completely annoyed by the constant talking to my right, which was accompanied by heavy breathing and coughing that came straight out of Napoleon’s typhus-ridden retreat from Russia. Why is it that people do not follow proper etiquette in movie theaters? I could rant about this for days – poor theater etiquette is my biggest pet peeve. I, and I assume most people, do not go to movies to listen to a chorus of “What just happened?”, “What did he say?”, or “Happy Birthday, Jessica!” (Aside: At a late showing of Jennifer’s Body at Village East Cinema*, a group of pubescent Long Island girls screamed “Happy Birthday, Jessica!” at midnight. There were no survivors.) We have become a nation of mouth-breathers, coughers in desperate need of a Halls cough drop, askers of annoying questions, and serial users of cell phones at the most inopportune times.

Cell phones are the biggest problem, and although the heavy breathing from the other day was unrivaled, the glow of tiny screens is visible to EVERYONE in the theater. It only takes one 13-year-old little shit with a Sidekick to ruin the experience of a movie. And who do these 13-year-olds text, anyway? I know that when I was 13 the only person I called on my cell phone was my mother. And mothers generally cannot text unless you spend a painstaking two hours explaining T9. (Which I had to do the other day.)

Enough of my white hot rage, and back to Shutter Island. SPOILER AHEAD!

One scene in particular is still bothering me. In the scene in which Teddy (my main man Leo) is interrogating the older female patient who murdered her husband, the woman asks Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) for a glass of water. Chuck obliges and returns with a full glass. The woman appears to pick up the glass, but a shot of her drinking reveals that her hand is empty and cupped around thin air. When she puts her hand down, an overhead shot of an empty water glass is shown. However, the camera then cuts to a wide shot, in which a full glass of water is seen on the table. I am unsure if any part of this could be a simple continuity error, or if everything was intentional. I spent a long time arguing with someone about the lack of a glass in the actress’ hand. If anyone noticed the anomalies of this scene, please feel free to discuss. Did Martin Scorcese make a mistake? I am likely going to see the movie a second time to decide for myself.

*In one funny distraction that occurred during a viewing of The Soloist, Bobert accidentally almost entered the theater after a bathroom break though the exit door located directly next to the screen. Polite giggles were recorded in the synapses of my mind.

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Are You a Woman with a College Degree? Prepare to Die Alone.

23 Feb

It’s been a little while since my last post. My apologies for that.

Last week I saw an article that requires a response from women everywhere, especially women who are independent, educated, and hold strong opinions.  In a piece decrying the nature of “hookup culture,” conservative writer Charlotte Allen makes an extreme claim that as women get older, their intrinsic stock goes down.

In The Mating Mind, Geoffrey Miller wrote:

Our ancestors probably had their first sexual experiences soon after reaching sexual maturity. They would pass through a sequence of relationships of varying durations over the course of a lifetime. Some relationships might have lasted no more than a few days. .  .  . Many Pleistocene mothers probably had boyfriends. But each woman’s boyfriend may not have been the father of any of her offspring. .  .  . Males may have given some food to females and their offspring, and may have defended them from other men, but .  .  . anthropologists now view much of this behavior more as courtship effort than paternal investment.

That’s a pretty fair description of mating life today in the urban underclass and the meth-lab culture of rural America. Take away the offspring, blocked by the Pill and ready abortion, and it’s also a pretty fair description of today’s prolonged singles scene. In other words, we have met the Stone Age, and it is us.

Living in the New Paleolithic can be hard on women, many of whom party on merrily until they reach age 30 and then panic. “They’re at the peak of their beauty in their early 20s—they’re luscious—but the guys their age don’t look as good, so they say to themselves: ‘Why do I want to get married?,’ ” notes Kay Hymowitz, a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, who is writing a book about the singles crisis. “Then they get to age 28, 29, and their fertility goes down and they’re not quite so luscious. But the guys their age are starting to make money, they look better, they’ve got self-assurance, and they’ve also got the pick of the 23-year-olds.”

She has a degree, but does she have a man?

The “new paleolithic” that Ms. Allen describes is the growing trend of women to delay settling down and getting married. I do not have any statistics on the subject but I would like to assume that the sort of woman who waits to find a potential partner until her late twenties is quite possibly busy improving other aspects of her life. Perhaps this woman attended graduate school, perhaps she spent her 20’s traveling or volunteering. By blaming the Pill and other methods of contraception as the cause of a “prolonged singles scene,” Allen is vastly underestimating the single woman. If a woman takes the Pill, she is not doing so to avoid settling down. It could be for any number of reasons. Here it seems that Allen is measuring a woman’s value by the number of eggs she has left – what about accomplishments that would otherwise go unfulfilled if she had simply settled for the first man who came along?

A silly claim Allen makes is that “beta” men are those  suffering in today’s dating scene:

it is actually beta men who are the greatest victims of the current mating chaos: the ones who work hard, act nice, and find themselves searching in vain for potential wives and girlfriends among the hordes of young women besotted by alphas.

In other words, these beta men, whom one can presume are beta either due to a lack of traditional good looks or a lack of a college degree, are suffering because of feminism! God forbid that a woman go off and get a college education! What about the beer-bellied, couch-ridden men of America? Someone help these men!

Worst of all is Allen’s insistence that a woman generally loses her desirability  by the age of 28. When a woman reaches this magical number while still single, she is forced to settle for a dreaded “beta”. So ladies, if you have a college degree and you’re headed toward 28, be prepared to spend the rest of your days a sad and lonely specimen, a dusty relic of “hookup culture”.

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