Say it Ain't So!

I recently read that men don't_actually_want_a_funny_gal to date. The article cites studies which suggest that when we're fillin' out those ubiquitous on-line profiles and asking for someone with a "good sense of humor", men mean one thing and women, another. Specifically, it seems women want a guy who's witty, can tell a good knock knock joke, make 'em laugh 'til they get a cramp. Men, however, just want a girl who will laugh at their jokes. So, to summarize:

For women: good sense of humor=ability to make said girl laugh.
For men: good sense of humor=ability to laugh at said man's jokes.

See the asymmetry, folks? This is a bit horrifying to me--I'm usually the "funny one" amongst my friends. Apparently, that is actually synonymous with "has a good personality." I.e., your parents will probably like her, but you sure don't want to f*&^% her.

Now, I've already blogged on the "possibility" that men want women who are intellecutally inferior--this witty observation must certainly come out of the same bag of beans. And that bag of beans must be what Steve ate...

For Ttractor

She found an I Ching sticker out and about in the crumbling statues of NY; Here is one my photographer friend has tattooed on his arm.

Just felt like sharing for y'all.

A Funny Story

My mother was valedictorian of her high school, straight-A student through college, and really, just quite intelligent. But she's also fond of hyperbole, drama, and playing dumb in order that others may serve her.

While I was in high school, my mother, a teacher, took on an after-school job at a department store to help partially fund her bi-polar spending sprees. She came home one evening as I was finishing up my homework in the kitchen, and upon entering, heaved a sigh heavy with all of the burdens of the world. "Lex, I'm sooo hungry and tired. What can I eat that's easy?" Wow. She was going to fix something herself. This was intriguing.

I offered her suggestions: "Well, you could heat up the leftovers from last night, or you could make a microwave pizza..."
"Pizza!" she exclaimed.
"Okay. Here it is." Since she was actually going to make it herself, I kindly took it out of the freezer for her and handed it over.

She opened the box, took out her meal, and threw away the box, upon which were the directions.

"How do I make it?"

Good Lord. How could a woman, aged 40 years, not know how to cook a friggin' microwave pizza? How had I sprung from her loins? I had just finished my advanced calculus homework, and here I was, having to explain the most trivial of all meal preparations.

But, she was going to cook it, herself. And I wanted to encourage this new, and most welcome behavior.

"Well, you can cook it in the oven so the crust is crispy, or you can--"

"No, that will take too long!"

You'd think she'd been foraging in the forest, eating grass and twigs for two months, as desperate as she seemed for this little pizza.

"Okay, okay. You can just pop in the microwave--put it on the little tray, put it in the microwave for two and half minutes, turn it, and cook it two and a half minutes more."

I left my mother and retreated to my room to ponder the truth of Darwin's theory.

The next evening at dinner, my mother turned to me and said, "Lex, I don't think that pizza turned out right."

"Why?"

"Well, I put it in the microwave for two and half minutes, turned it over, just like you said..."

After my initial shock wore off, I ran to the microwave and inspected the evidence--congealed and burnt tomato sauce, shards of rubbery cheese--all outlining a perfect little square.

Darwin was a fool.

My Alpha and Omega

Much like ttractor 's finger puppet and crack vial collections, I now share with my reader(s?) the Alpha and Omega of my personality, neatly wrapped into contiguous television programming:

I have just watched PBS's Nova special on String Theory--which was mostly correct, though a bit patronizing--and now, I will turn the channel to watch CBS's Rock Star: Supernova.

Amen.

Ain't Nothin' Like the Real Thing

Sometimes it's better.

A suggestion by B-Baltimore, I now blog on covers better than the original.

So far, I have:

aerosmith--the beatles song they covered whose title is slipping my mind right now...

"Come Together." or something like that.

Lauren Hill--Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"

Fugees--Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry"

Lauryn Hill--Bob Marley's "Turn Your Love Light Low"

RunDMC--(with) Aerosmith's "Walk This Way"

Guns 'N Roses--Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"

Peggy Lee--Little Willie John's "Fever"

Aretha Franklin--Otis Redding's "Respect"

Sinead O'Connor---Prince's "Nothing Compares to You"

Sublime--Gerwhin(?)'s "Summertime"


But please....share with us your thoughts, Reader.

Oh, and if any of you say "Jolene" by the White Stripes, I'll punch you in the neck. Otherwise, we're good.

(And make sure to check out B-Baltimore's blog...I think he might give us a little sumpin' sumpin', too...)

Why I Broke Up With Internet Dating

okay, so i'm considering dating again. BUT, the aid of the internet shall not be used this time 'round. I have a massive crush on the boy at my bike shop. He is British and lovely and would know how to fix my bike if something were to go awry on our bike tour of Brazil.

So, bike boy crush aside, here is why the internet failed to work for this gal:

1. The composition of people using the internet to people-shop has changed drastically in the last three or so years. When I first began the wonder of internet dating (introduced to me by none other than Mr. B-Baltimore), the pool of contestants vying to win a date with me consisted of mainly fellow braniacal, part geek-part hipster, tech-savvy people. Now, I'm not saying that the total number of cool people in the universe has changed, nor that all of the cool people have now coupled up and no new cool people have been spawned to replace them; rather, the pool has been flooded by unwanted, unoriginal, dean koontz-reading, "insert witty headline here"-writing, semi-literate folk. It's not that I don't want these people to find love and spawn more humans whose most humbling moment is filling out an internet dating profile, I just don't want to have to wade through their profiles to find a decent date, yo.


2. This problem is even more irritating when coupled with a poor locale. I now live just across the Mexican border in sunny San Diego. I've been demoted from concrete playgrounds and fake breasts (LA) to a surreally beautiful wonderland of brainless and chill "dudes and babes." The boys here really_do_want an activity partner--in the strictest, most hiking biking surfing sense of the word. So, being the adventurous young gal I am, I cast my net wider. I started searching extra-locally.

Internet dating seems to encourage this sort of search parameter expansion...I would spend more time defending my choices to date fellows in Boston, San Fran and Ohio, but given that there are numerous people at-tempting the same fate, I feel it's unnecessary. However, I will caution others against this game. You see, should you find someone amazing cross-country, or perhaps cross-Atlantic, you will spend much time emailing and speaking to this person on the phone...all the while, you will most likely become more and more neurotic about the other's expectations of you, as well as your expectations of the other. "Oh Lord, he said I was hot--do I really look like the picture in my profile?" "He's never smiling in his picture--does he have all of his teeth?" Further, conversations are easy on the phone--cake on email--but in person...oh, my.
Also, this will have carried on for quite some time, most likely, before an attempt at The Big Meet takes place. So, now, at least one of the contestants is a neurotic mess, and you now have, at minimum, two days of staring at the other person, expectations met or not. A normal first date would last, at maximum, five hours. I was staring down the barrel of four days with Ohio, and a whole week with Boston. For a little introvert like me, that was enough to drive me crazier than a cat with a tuna strapped to its back.



Basically, when an attraction grows organically, there's much more leeway for quirks such as I have. But there was always so much pressure with internet dating...when I was locally internet-dating, I always always always met the person at a dive bar with pool tables; that way, I could continue to play pool if the person wasn't interesting/was weird/happened to think the Nazis were "hot." (Dive bars are play-to-win----I always win-->an easy, passive-aggressive out.) But even so, everyone was always trying SO hard to "make a connection" in the first twenty minutes. I just don't work that way. My first long term relationship occurred after five months of mutual flirting and friendship. The only LTR ever borne from internet dating was five months of intensity, marriage proposals, and then the fizz just went flat all of a sudden.

Conclusion: internet dating screws with the time line of dating and relationships by skewing the expectations, intensity and pace of attraction.

Sooo, tomorrow I will bike down to my cycle shop to drool a bit more over BikeBoy. Who knows? Perhaps five months from now one of us will work up the courage to wink at the other.

I am in the best spirits I've been in for, oh, eight years. It's a confluence of goodness. I remember learning that word--really learning that word--when I went on a tree-planting volunteer trip to the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. I had gotten rip-roarin' drunk the night before, and had a hangover the size of which is usually reserved for a teenager's first experience with vodka. I wanted to bail out, but I had volunteered to drive three other tree-planters, and so, heavy with my burden, I hauled my sorry ass out of bed at 8 am and drove to the meeting place to pick up my cargo.
As it turned out, only those who had volunteered to drive others had bothered to haul their asses out of bed...But I digress.

I want to share my favorite poem with all of you--a poem which lingers on my mind these lazy summer days...

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Carl Sandburg's "Happiness"
published 1916 in Chicago Poems