December 04, 2008

crushed

It's with no pride whatsoever that I can say the following: the times in my life when a woman has told me she had a crush on me, it took me by complete surprise.

"Me? Seriously?" is usually followed by a thoroughly baffled "Why?"

Significantly, seldom has the woman used the present tense. The crush is always in the past. As in "I used to have a crush on you." I can't help but mentally complete their sentence.

...but then you opened your mouth and ruined it.

What's the "used to" about, besides giving me a complex? As always, I have my thoughts, but I want to hear yours first.

posted by john at 08:12 AM  •  solamente

November 21, 2008

edit

Blondage points out that in yesterday's survey post,

The latest Staff of Perfection, attached to a 33 year old, is said to stay aloft for three hours or more

should be amended thusly:

The latest Staph of Perfection, attached to a 33 year old, is said to stay aloft for three hours or more

When you're right, you're right.

posted by john at 07:08 AM  •  solamente

ye ol' fakeroo

Fair warning: this post is not for prudes, either.

Yesterday's survey was the most lopsided in history. Granted, my empirical studies prof's heart would have exploded at the leading way in which I phrased the question, but still. The results:

Fake: 99.47%
Plausible: .53%

For grins, let's put that into pie chart form.

What fun!

Sampling of reader comments:

he's 1 hour away from a trip to the ER.

Having sampled more than my share of cocks, none of them "perfect" (although many of them quite delightful in their own way) I would say that not only is "Jane's" latest pestle using pharmaceuticals, I'd be willing to bet Jane is abusing a substance that affects her perception of time.

Fake, but I wouldn't burst her bubble. Well, yes I would; it's what pricks do.

This particular superpower is reserved for 13-year olds, I'm sorry.

possible in the way that its possible for there to be a tiny invisible teapot orbiting mars right now, sure!

His entire life? I bet he gave his parents a shock the first time he did that...

And my personal fave:

BASF doesn't make the cock. BASF makes the cock better.

Dorkass checks in, not realizing that "Jane" is someone she's met and already pronounced nuts:

Not in my experience. She sounds like a nutcase.

P.S. I've been told that I have a perfect cervix.

I'll tell you about the cervix joke on Monday. Or maybe Tuesday. First I have to answer the oft-asked "Why did she show you a picture? Why did she HAVE one?"

posted by john at 06:27 AM  •  solamente

November 20, 2008

up, up and away!

Fair warning: this post is not for prudes.

A semi-friend who I'll call, oh hell, let's say Jane, is the only person I know to use the word "cock" casually. When I use it, it's to degrade, and it's invariably prepended to another word. Not so with Jane. Any time she has a new boyfriend, he has "the most perfect cock." Every single time. To drive this point home, she'll show us a picture of it on her cell phone.

"Honestly, it looks like every other one I've ever seen," I'll say. "Except for the herpes sores, it looks pretty much like my own. I couldn't tell them apart."

"BULLSHIT!" Jane yells. "You're just jealous!"

Mind you, I'm not arguing that Jane is a well person.

The latest Staph [sic] of Perfection, attached to a 33 year old, is said to stay aloft for three hours or more, every single time. He can ejaculate multiple times without it losing any of its blood-gorged glory. Every single time.

"Nah, that didn't come from a pill," I said.

"HE'S BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT HIS ENTIRE LIFE!" Jane yelled.

"And you know this how?"

"HE TOLD ME! OH SHUT UP. YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS."

"Yeah. Kinda like I'm jealous of how much work Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are able to knock out in one evening."

But I put it to you, fair readers. Is this superpower plausible?

posted by john at 06:00 AM  •  solamente

June 02, 2008

cheating beauty, part deux

Responses to the cheating beauty survey have been predictably few but thoughtful.

A sampling of thoughts:

I suppose it's also the same mechanism that makes death worse when it's someone young.

I wouldn't have that reaction. I always think it's crappy when someone is cheated on. How beautiful they are makes no difference. Nor does gender. How good they are might make a difference to me, though. Like if someone cheated on a cheater, it wouldn't be as bad to me as if someone cheating on a loyal partner.

Most people don't realize that relationship issues are a result of unresolved subconscious issues. People cheat because mommy drank. People cheat because mommy said sex was dirty. We pretend like it can all be fixed once we have a grown up house and a beautiful spouse. But guess what, beautiful spouse becomes...you guessed it, MOMMY!!! So we punish Mommy or try to escape her. The fact that someone is beautiful brings this issue more to the surface because it isn’t about physically, it’s pathology. It’s harder to deny that we can escape our feelings of inferiority and that the world we live in is an illusion and a projection!

Because we assume that beautiful people are automatically more sexually desirable. And since cheating is assumed to be about sex, why would someone cheat on someone who is very sexually desirable?

Beauty is always considered more valuable. "She's so beautiful!" implies she is worth more as a human being, regardless of her character or moral standpoint. What if she is a bitch? Does that imply she "deserves" it? What if the man is an asshole? Is he more likely to "deserve" it? If it is a "beautiful man" cheated on, most women would react with a "how stupid was she?" Maybe the "beauty" is the problem.

Last question first: I don't think the first stereotypical ideal we assign to men is his hotness...in the long run, anyway; and certainly not if he's in a heterosexual relationship. If he's cheated on, we tend to think of his value and what the crazy bitch (because, that's what she is now, right?) doesn't deserve... Obviously, there's a certain cultural value placed on beautiful women; regardless of whether or not they actually deserve a special place in the pecking order. This being said, I've heard plenty of my guy friends say, "Show me a beautiful woman, I'll show you a guy who's tired of f**king her."

These graze what I was thinking: we assume cheating is about sex, for the man anyway, and along those lines we can't imagine why he'd want to stray from a beautiful woman. But when I flipped the genders, I couldn't think of an example where I thought "She's an idiot. He's so beautiful." No, to evoke this sentiment I had to use things like how well he provides for/takes care of her. Which is how many of us measure value: women for their beauty, men for their money and security. It's a generalization, of course, but I'm pretty comfortable making it.

posted by john at 11:02 AM  •  solamente

May 29, 2008

cheating beauty

Blondage and I were talking about a mutual friend, whose boyfriend cheated on her. Blondage's first reaction mirrored my own: "That's insane! She's so beautiful! What an idiot."

Her second reaction was also the same as mine: "Why does beauty make it worse?"

I have a theory as to why we react this way, but I thought I'd solicit your thoughts first. Also, is it different if the genders are reversed and it's a beautiful man who's cheated on?

posted by john at 08:49 AM  •  solamente

February 14, 2008

smitten

First of all, whereas about 15% of my total hits normally respond to a survey post, some 90% of you responded to a survey about dog crap. What's wrong with you people?

Until I posted that no, it wasn't Percy, almost every single guess was a variation on "That bastard Percy put it there." Once I waived people off the P-train, the guesses stopped coming almost entirely. My favorite:

I'm not sure if I could come up with something feasible even if Ed was still alive - that's pretty high up. But I'll give it a go. Dorkass/Allie/Sarah/Beth/Somebody wanted to give you a Valentine. She knows the thing you loved most in the world was Ed, so when she stumbled across a fossilized pile in the far corner of your yard, she couldn't resist. Since you were about to do a February pruning of the bush we can see to the right of the frame, she knew you'd be getting in the tool shed soon. She shoveled it up there and stuck a little note with it, too, that said - just droppin' a note from pup heaven, love Ed.

That's fairy tale nonsense, of course. No one ever does anything for me for Valentine's Day.

No one guessed the real story. And really, who could? Who could imagine laziness like mine? For you see, a year ago, I scooped up Ed's droppings and placed them in a paper bag. Not wanting to dispose of them right away due to the aforementioned laziness, I placed said paper bag on top of that shed. Six months passed. Ed died. Six more months passed. And finally, the wind blew the bag down, leaving desiccated Ed crap atop the shed and, for the briefest moment, intrigue.

Yes, it's still there.

posted by john at 08:39 AM  •  solamente

February 13, 2008

dook, dook, dook

Reader contest!

This pile of Ed droppings just appeared atop my tool shed, six months after Ed's death. Let's see if anyone can guess how this came to pass. Addendum: No, it wasn't Percy. He's in Arizona. You can stop guessing that.

(This survey is over.)

posted by john at 07:49 AM  •  solamente

January 11, 2008

your cheating heart

Predictably, by far the most common answer to yesterday's survey was "cheating." You also mentioned rape, incest, lying of any kind, lying about money, prolonged unemployment, physical abuse, cruelty to animals, drug addiction, porn, and strip clubs, among others.

With regard to cheating, men were categorical about it. No cheating of any kind. Period. Fini. We're simple that way. Women, however, often qualified it: not if it's serial, not if it's more than once, not if it's more than one partner, not if it's love. Much allowance was given for a single drunken mistake. I'm tempted to write one Stank troll's husband and let him know he's got one "get out of jail free card" coming to him.

It's not often I identify more with men than with women, but here I toe the gender line. One and we're done. The details don't remotely interest me; in fact, after the Big, Stinky Detail is revealed, I'd rather not hear any more. Does that make men less tolerant than women? More possessive? Less inclined to rationalize away betrayal? Maybe.

posted by john at 07:15 AM  •  solamente

January 10, 2008

dump truck

Could your significant other do something so heinous, there's no way you could rationalize forgiving them? It seems an obvious question, yet women stay with wife-abusers, kid-abusers, even murderers (!), all of the time. Me, I don't bear grudges in a relationship—not for the cumulative little stuff. What we argued about last year isn't interesting to me. So in that regard, I'm forgiving. But for major betrayals, I'd be backing up the dump truck so fast, its beep-beep-beep would sound like a smoke alarm going off.

It's this slippery notion of "major" betrayal that inspires today's survey. Have at it. Addendum: I added gender. The responses seem to be polarizing on gender lines.

posted by john at 07:42 AM  •  solamente

December 31, 2007

reader survey: next

I'm having an acute attack of honesty. Internally, anyway. The time has come for me to abandon the writing project that's I've deemed "next" for the last, oh, five years. I need a new next. This space seems as fertile a breeding ground for ideas as any, so I put it to you: which of the topics or themes posted here do you think merit bloviation into a larger, if not actually better, piece of writing?

While we're at it, I added an unrelated bonus survey.

posted by john at 07:09 AM  •  solamente

October 11, 2007

fathers, stop buying jeans for your daughters

Confirms the survey respondent:

If you wish, you may inform the curious that I did not grow up to be a lesbian.

posted by john at 11:39 PM  •  solamente

winner, redux

Says curious Stank troll Dan:

You left out the answer to the obvious question: did she grow up to be a lesbian?

Good question.

posted by john at 02:06 PM  •  solamente

winner! kinda.

The survey results are in. When one reader was ten, her grandmother told her that if she wore jeans, she'd grow up to be a lesbian.

posted by john at 08:06 AM  •  solamente

October 10, 2007

badvice

Perhaps the worst advice I ever got was, not surprisingly, from my father. Upon hearing my career choice of technical writing, he sniffed confidently that there was no such profession and that I would end up starving to death. He based this assertion on the fact that in his minuscule subset of the world, there were no technical writers. What with him knowing everything, this observation must hold true everywhere. Today, everything and everyone in my life flows from my having ignored this advice.

Similarly moronic advice came from my older brother. When during college I bought a computer for word processing, he told anyone who would listen that I was sinfully wasting money. You'd think I was snorting coke off hookers' chests. "Use a pencil," he snarled, thrusting a pencil in my face. Presumably he meant for writing, not for the hookers.

The familial mental handicap didn't stop there. My mother would yell at me any time my genitals came with six feet of the color TV. The radiation would sterilize me, she said. Today, although I am quite nearsighted, I am not sterile. So I wear glasses while I contemplate a vasectomy.

My Polish immigrant grandmother takes the prize, though, for sheer jaw-droppingnessity. Visiting our local pool, she yelled at me to get out of the water. Since I don't speak Polish, it took me a while to understand all the fussing, but with my dad's help I came to realize that she was concerned about my swimming with black children. Why? (Wait for it... wait for it...) Because the black would come off their skin and get on my own.

I defy you to beat that for sheer idiocy. What's the worst advice a family member ever gave you?

posted by john at 07:26 AM  •  solamente

October 05, 2007

but enough about me

Longtime trolls have already seen this, but for you probationary trolls, I'd love to see your responses to the reader survey. Okay, love is an overstatement, but I have no post ideas this morning.

posted by john at 10:50 AM  •  solamente

September 20, 2007

the worst thing

In discussing past relationships with a buddy, we agreed that being called "scary" by our exes was the biggest insult we'd each endured. Scary as in physically threatening. As in only the barest thread of self-control standing between her and physical abuse. Call me stupid, call me selfish, but don't you dare imply you ever felt threatened. Sons of wife-beaters are often sensitive on this point. The very suggestion cuts deeply.

So what's the worst thing you can be called by your partner or former partner? What bomb is nuclear for you?

One time when the Approval Whore (AW) was at my house crying about some perceived slight or another, I made myself a bowl of soup. Importantly, I was in my stocking feet. Well, I slopped that 212 degree soup on my feet, and as socks are wont to do, they absorbed the scalding liquid. I howled in pain. Somehow, the AW managed to turn this into her personal tragedy. My yelp became a Big Stinky Issue. She was terrified, you see, and she never recovered emotionally. That's when my true nature as a woman-beater was revealed to her. I am not making this up. She milked this bone-dry udder.

posted by john at 08:19 AM  •  solamente

July 26, 2007

whack-a-poll

I hopelessly corrupted the poll results by tweaking the question's wording midway. Although this renders my decidedly unscientific survey even more so, one changed word had a fascinating result.

When the question was

If a guy is masturbating to fantasies about a woman he knows, the woman's reaction should be...

results ran 87% "Flattered." After it was posted four hours, Allie called to say that, the anecdote about skanky guys notwithstanding, she didn't think it was clear that I meant that sort of guy. So I added the word "such." As in

If such a guy is masturbating to fantasies about a woman he knows, the woman's reaction should be...

I thought it a minor tweak, merely restating the obvious, but the subsequent results ran 93% "Queasy." Amazing reversal. Like Twain said, the difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

I was fairly abused by the fe-dership for this post. I shan't repeat the charges here, but I feel compelled to restate my original point: when a creepy guy is lasciviously objectifying you, is flattery really the healthiest reaction? Really?

Turns out men don't have exclusive rights on creeping me out.

• • •

Allie, like many women, said there was a big difference between a skeevy guy in a bar and someone she's actually attracted to. I went for the jugular.

"So if you found out Edward Norton was jerking off while thinking about you—" I began.

"Mmmmmmmm."

"—you don't find that the least bit objectifying or creepy or uncomfortable?"

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

"Sick. Tomorrow I'm totally posting a photo of him with a swastika tatoo on his chest."

"Okay!"

posted by john at 07:14 AM  •  solamente

July 25, 2007

flattery

I was out drinkin' with two women when an opportunity came to throw my own gender under the bus. I took it. I always take it.

Noting a skeevy acquaintance leering at them, I made a remark that he was putting them in his spank bank. There was no disgust. In fact, if I had to describe their reaction, I'd say it was "mild pleasure." I asked if they weren't repelled by the notion of such a guy fantasizing about them when he masturbated.

"It's actually kind of flattering," said one.

"Flattering," said the other.

Oh. Anyway. So I'm grossed out, and now I want to know if I'm just a prude or if they're kind of, well, vile. Survey time.

posted by john at 06:32 AM  •  solamente

June 19, 2006

bobby pin, please

Reader contest! If anyone knows the source of the headline, shoot me an email.

posted by john at 10:44 AM  •  solamente

June 06, 2006

name that hairy fetus!

In '95, when I was pondering what to name my new puppy, I happened upon Raising Arizona on TV. As if in answer to my question, there was Holly Hunter's unforgettable turn as "Ed" the cop. It stuck.

Well, Ed's little sister was born a few days ago. She's one of the hairy fetuses here pictured.

When she grows up, she'll look something like this. She's a standard poodle/golden retriever mix, a whip-smart doggie cocktail known better as a "Golden Doodle."

Allow me to take this opportunity to assure you that I will not post about this often. This site is not about boring you with stories about pets. It's about boring you with stories about ex-girlfriends, football and Percy.

Which brings us to what to name Ed's little sister. Jen and I kicked around a few ideas, which I've put into poll form. Have at it.

posted by john at 12:19 AM  •  solamente

July 25, 2005

bugs v. daffy

The late, great Chuck Jones, principal creator of the Warner cartoons as you remember them, once wrote something about character that stuck with me. Bugs, he said, is how he likes to see himself: in control at all times, quick with a witty rejoinder, peaceful until provoked, cool. Daffy, in contrast, is how Jones probably actually is: impulsive, inept, emotional, woefully uncool but he thinks he's cool.

Invariably, this has seeped into my consciousness. I can't watch Casablanca without thinking

How I like to see myself: Rick
How I probably really am: Louie

Or in Saving Private Ryan:

How I like to see myself: Sarge (Tom Sizemore)
How I probably really am: Caparzo (Vin Diesel)
How I really hope to god I'm not: Upham (Jeremy Davies)

Or across all film characters:

How I like to see myself: still Rick
How I probably actually am: Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks' character in Broadcast News)

Your turn.

posted by john at 07:28 AM  •  solamente

July 20, 2005

back to me

The survey results have been a mixed bag. I promised confidentiality, so I won't share, but thanks for responding. That infernal Percy has more fans than I do on my own freakin' site. Also, my reader base sure is a lot more male than it used to be. Does this mean I can finally talk about football?

When I put the questions together, I naturally thought about how I would answer them. One answer surprised me. When I asked about the sexiest trait, my first thought was "competence." (Yep. That's when you know you've been with the approval whore.) Agrees a friend: "Competence = super sexy. It's so freaking rare that it makes my head want to pop off."

posted by john at 05:59 PM  •  solamente

but enough about me

Time for a little reciprocity, ba-by. I want to know what makes you tick. Yeah, even you lurkers! Please fill out this anonymous and confidential survey.

posted by john at 12:29 PM  •  solamente