theworldofdale

Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

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Jesus, take the wheel. And the windshield.

In Communication, News and Politics, Religion on October 25, 2015 at 2:37 pm

Today, I went to Mass. I had fallen off a bit in my attendance during a low couple of months but my priest (I refer to him as “my” priest, although I’m pretty sure he’s seeing other people*) gave me the push I needed to get back in the groove.

*Father PLSJ, please forgive me for that joke.

As usual, the homily seemed to be written specifically for me, because that’s how they work. As usual, I left feeling better. Happier, lighter, more at peace. I was ready to enjoy my afternoon with a little laundry, a little dancing, and probably a nap. As not usual, there was a note waiting for me when I returned to my car.

After the nanosecond of fear that I received a ticket (much like when a police car is behind you on the highway and you start going through your driver’s test handbook in your head, trying to find a law that you are breaking), I got out and grabbed what turned out to be a note.

I can’t tell you exactly what it said. I went back into the church and gave it to my priest (he presided over the Mass). I wasn’t sure what emotion I was filled with – maybe anger, maybe panic, maybe sorrow – but whatever it was, I knew keeping that note would intensify and prolong it.

The gist, however, was that this person was very disappointed that I voted for President Obama (yeah, the sticker is still on my car. Whatevs). S/he wrote how saddened they were by my support for the most pro-choice, something, something, Muslim president ever to be elected. There were a few other sentences about how misguided I was and how they hoped I’d make a better decision in the next election. It was addressed to “Sister in Christ” and signed with a similar vaguely religious but anonymous title.

Putting aside the creepiness of someone who watched me arrive to Mass and then left an anonymous note on my car (the “Sister in Christ” confirmed they knew I was female), I was shaken. I had often joked that someday, the Democratic stickers would result in my car being vandalized when I visited the considerably more conservative town where my parents reside or parked in the parking lot of a church whose parishioners had very strong political leanings. It hadn’t really occurred to me that while parked at a downtown meter outside my (fairly progressive) parish, I would receive a personalized condemnation by someone who considered themselves an authority on WJWD (What Jesus Would Do). It was the first time someone of the same faith had expressed judgment of me. Really – I know that may surprise some who think my wildly liberal views would send lightning surging through my body once the holy water hit my forehead, but this was my first encounter with overt disapproval.

The initial surge of adrenaline that was fueling my anger, panic, or fear has subsided, if not disappeared entirely. I will pray for this person. S/he feels a hollowness in their own faith that must be filled with the damnation of others. S/he is too cowardly to bring their petitions to me face-to-face and have to support their electoral argument. His or her concept of grace is restricted to a box-checking idea of religious merit – that if one votes a certain way or pastes these particular bumper stickers to one’s bumper must be stressful and joyless – rather than the knowledge that grace is extended to all. S/he didn’t hear today’s homily, where Father P’s interpretation of the scripture was that it wasn’t the blind and likely unsavory Bartimaeus who served as the lesson, but the crowd – the followers of Jesus who rebuked Bart and his pleas for help.

Rebuke means to express sharp and stern disapproval because of someone’s behavior or actions. The note of rebuke left on my windshield was probably written in the spirit of good faith. This person thinks they did the right thing. S/he thinks they helped me today. And they did, because I learned that the anger or panic or sorrow that my brain initially signaled to my body’s endocrine system was an extension of the lesson from scripture. While the crowd rebuked Bartimaeus, Jesus called him over and gave him sight, and without the condition of following his teaching. But Bart did follow Jesus. And hopefully, the crowd, and the Note Writer, learns that love, not judgment, is the key to grace.

To the person who left me this note: Next time, speak to me. Put your beliefs in the light and assign yourself to them. If you truly are a follower of Christ, there would be no need to hide behind the anonymity of an unsigned note. You should have the strength of heart to be a true messenger. My prayer for you is that your faith begins to sprout from love instead of the kind of anger only 4-year-old bumper sticker can arouse.

But don’t worry. I won’t vote for Obama again.

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P.S. It really is creepy to watch me and leave a note on my car, so let’s just also keep that in mind when evangelizing, ‘kay?

can’t tell me nothing

In Communication, Relationships, Technology on July 21, 2015 at 6:53 pm

I have no idea who reads this blog. I don’t know how many people read it. I know there are analytics and metrics and they are easy to understand, but I just don’t care. I like having people read my writing, but I would still do this if no one read it but me (and my mom, who is contractually obligated to love everything I do). I don’t care how many people follow me on Twitter or Instagram. The threat to cancel subscriptions that would shake the boots of newspaper editorial staffs have lost their power in the age of free information (and free misinformation). I don’t get dollars for followers, so unfollowing, following back, all the status of social media is lost on me.

BUT (I like big buts and I cannot lie – sorry, couldn’t help myself): I am always bemused by the fact that the men I date have one thing in common (and truly only one thing). None of them read (past or present tense) my blog.

It used to bother me – look at this perfectly simple way to internet-stalk/gather counter-intelligence/bask in my brilliance! Men complain they don’t know what women want or what they are thinking, and here I am putting it on this easy-to-read design template. Granted, there are no pictures, but there are at least a couple dick/poop/tampon jokes (that is the grossest collection of slashes ever). And really – if he likes me as much as he says he does, why wouldn’t he support my completely non-profitable venture?

Until a couple nights ago, when I was reminded of the observation that if, for example, you get a rash every time you eat shellfish, maybe it’s not just a bunch of bad shellfish. Maybe it’s you. If you have a lot of friends who take advantage of your time and energy, maybe it’s not that you’ve happened upon horrible friends but because you are attracting them to you. It was time to contemplate why this single similarity tied together the (number redacted because it’s none of your business) men I’ve dated.

My theory about readers developing crushes on my words was confirmed when I wrote a sports blog for cincinnati.com. All of a sudden, emails and Twitter DMs (google it, mom) were pouring in with phone numbers and requests for “just a chat about sports over beers.” If my ego wasn’t already so inflated, I would have been flattered. But I suspected that a crush on my words did not translate to a crush on me. There is a distinct voice to my writing but it’s not necessarily my voice – or at least it’s only a portion of it. This voice is cultivated and uses thesaurus.com regularly and is expressed with an indistinct audience of me (writers write what they want to read) and a nebulous population of at least semi-anonymous readers in mind. My words are an orderly collection of sentiments meant to entertain.

But me? I’m not orderly at all. I’m chaotic and messy and mercurial, not just by diagnosis but by temperament as well. It’s not just my moods that ebb and flow and rise and fall. My house is usually a mess; my playlist goes from Kanye West to Conway Twitty; I’m alternately sentimental and emotion-phobic. In the words of Walt Whitman,”Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself; (I am large, I contain multitudes).” There is a dialectic of complicated simplicity to my nature that results in great frustration but, ironically, comfort, since all of those Jenga pieces still fit back together even after they splay over the game table.

I can’t be sure, but I’d like to think that the men I date like me, the person, and my writing doesn’t have the reckless quality of my human form. There’s something to like – something he has to like – about my agitated life that wouldn’t be sated by a few hundred words every few weeks or months. And even if he was a faithful follower, there would be a discomfiture between the woman he knows and the words he reads… an uncertainty that sometimes confuses even me.

Then again, maybe dating me is more than enough exposure to theworldofdale. In any case, it means I get to write about them and they’ll never know.

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yes. women are funny.

In Communication, Relationships on July 8, 2015 at 9:21 pm

Another white man is talking about the rare and elusive “funny woman” (as the endangered beast is commonly identified). It’s happened before and if you don’t know about the instances to which I’m referring, let me summarize: women aren’t funny. beautiful women really aren’t funny. funny women aren’t beautiful.

I tend to ignore this noise because I only care about if people personally find me funny and if their brand of comedy is Jeff Foxworthy or Dane Cook or whatever that shit is that Chuck Lorre makes, then I’ll go ahead and let them be wrong in their own little world.

But I’ve broken my silence because widespread falsehoods are a pet peeve of mine. A former boss described me as having a justice gene – I can’t just sit by and let things go to shit without trying to do something about it. The good news is that my justice gene is easily sated and a blog post is sufficient to quiet the hungry growl of integrity tying knots in my stomach.

Women are funny. Funny women are beautiful. As a stand-up junkie, I’m well aware of stunning comics like Nikki Glaser, Jen Kirkman, Aisha Tyler, Kelly Oxford… you get the point. These are gorgeous women. If you just saw pictures of them, you’d think, wow, that chick’s hot. They could model. And for the benefit of the Adam Carollas of the world, these are your societal beauty standards examples. There are plenty of other gorgeous stand-up comics, writers, and performers.

Beautiful women are funny. Read an interview with Mila Kunis, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lawrence, Anna Kendrick… these women, known for making us mere mortals wear paper bags over our heads in deference, are hilarious. I would gladly friend-date any of these women and totally forget that they have the freakish beauty normally associated with exotic flowers or a Jaguar C-type.

After much contemplation as to why the concept that women aren’t funny has become so prevalent, I was hit with a eureka moment.

It’s not that women aren’t funny. It’s that men don’t like women to be funny.

The theme of most “women aren’t funny” arguments is that women like different kind of jokes. Softer, gentler jokes, with a story and the humor of a sly pun or unexpected irony. Women, it seemed, just weren’t capable of what’s actually funny. The kind of funny that only men can produce: dirty jokes. In the world of stand-up, it’s called working blue. Andrew Dice Clay (incidentally, one of my mother’s favorite comedians) is the personification of blue jokes. When people say women aren’t funny, they mean they aren’t blue-funny.

Men don’t like it when women are blue-funny. They don’t like it when they are blue at all. Women aren’t supposed to be graphic. They’re supposed to be demure. They are supposed to perform the soft, soothing comedy of food jokes (see DeGeneres, E. & Poundstone, P. – who are excellent and hilarious, by the way) that the audience is comfortable with – because a lot of women don’t like women working blue either.

We are at a point in America where a woman can be required to endure a trans-vaginal ultrasound to undergo a private medical procedure and, at the same time, saying tampon in mixed company will result in a male cringe registering 7.0 on the Richter scale. We are at a point where merely mentioning that I was on the toilet when I hit my head on the sink left the men in the room shuddering at the thought of a female expending waste. My sense of humor is blue with a side of black (there’s some dark, sick jokes that roll around in my dirty little brain). I see firsthand, albeit on a much smaller scale, what Amy Schumer encounters – the discomfort with an attractive woman who swears like a sailor and confesses sins as a raconteur instead of a shamed heathen.

Men have long been unable to bear the burdens women encounter daily. I’ve watched grown men physically fight over one yelling across the street at the other, but when the guys across the street advise me that they like me better when I’m thick, I move on with what is a regular day. Men can rarely withstand the onus of emotions, so they compartmentalize them into the office, the gym, the bottle, the laptop – whatever is convenient and accommodating of their immersion. The way men complain about a kidney stone indicates they have forgotten that there are women doing essentially the same thing EVERY DAY in order to CONTINUE HUMAN EXISTENCE. But by all means, tell me more about your urethra rock.

I’ve sat at many a table filled with women telling side-splitting stories about every filthy topic you can imagine and many you can’t. The games of “Would You Rather?” I played with my grad-school girlfriends would shock & awe Howard Stern. At long last, Bridesmaids and Inside Amy Schumer are among the beacons of hilarity in the testosterone pool of blue-funny. Society is finally coming to terms with the fact that women poop. We are tiptoeing cautiously into the nearly infinite world of ridiculously sublime tales of sexual absurdity.

We have reached the edge of the bonfire where I told the guys who couldn’t handle my whiskey my favorite joke:

Three tampons are walking towards you. Which one talks to you – the one on the right, the one on the left, or the one in the middle?

…

None of them. They’re all stuck up cunts.

infinite shades of grey

In Communication, News and Politics, Relationships on December 7, 2014 at 4:23 pm

I hate writing about racism. I’m white (with just enough Potawatomi to have some melanin but not nearly enough to get followed around department stores), and it feels inherently dishonest to offer an opinion based on my unavoidable ignorance of the experience. It is like my refusal to see a male gynecologist because their female counterparts immediately have a leg up on you, knowledge-wise (no pun or disturbing mental image intended).

But the problem when the only people who talk about racism are the people who experience it, the audience is limited. The very ears who need to hear about racism are less (albeit increasingly) likely to be near the mouths of those who live it every day. I am certain that I know plenty of white people, probably many I call friends, who never talk to any black people. Not necessarily out of racism; it’s just that the circumstances of their lives rarely cross, because this city is so segregated that you can live your life without ever interacting with a person of color.

That whole bunch of unnecessary chatter is the tl:dr of this sentence: I’m going to write words on this page about racism.

The story of most recently Eric Garner and starting with basically the first black people to set their feet on American soil is beyond heartbreaking. It’s pure horror on the level of the Holocaust. The collateral damage- physically, emotionally, economically, mentally, socially – it throbs through the nation with the subtlety of a migraine. My ancestors came to America from Canada and Finland long after slavery and never ventured south of Michigan, so I even have what so many consider a “Get Out of Guilt” card. (“Well, my ancestors didn’t own your ancestors. They were too busy pickling fish.”) But that non-existent card would still stay in my wallet.

I have no words for the injustice, the violations of Constitutional rights, the incompetent legal and governing systems that have spilled out of Missouri, New York, Ohio, and so many other uncomfortably similar situations erupting across the country. I can’t fathom the loss the families feel — loss of a loved one and loss of hope delivered by weak and insulting responses to life lights snuffed out by hasty gunfire.

What happens when you’ve aligned yourself with one side of an issue, it’s decided that there are only two possible sides. Everyone has to fall into one category. There is no gray. If you are with the victims, you are against the police. If you are with the police, you are against the victims (and I refer to Mr. Brown, Mr. Garner, Mr. Rice, and the hundreds or thousands who have experienced anywhere from mild denigration to the ultimate judgment as victims with careful and deliberate consideration, because their power has been eviscerated).

But what if it’s not that simple? What if you think these actions are heinous but you still want the police to be a positive part of the community. What if you wished that the police officers who say quietly that these incidents are not representations of their service would speak louder? What if we didn’t have to cling to one photo of a white cop hugging a black boy as the sole example of peace and love in a country of turmoil? What if everyone could be not on the side of the cops nor the side of the victims but on the side of both: the side of progress and dialogue and real understanding. The side of seeing the best in people, finding commonalities, expecting goodness and empathy and mercy.

There is no despair like the despair of hopelessness. The vacuum that followed the post-9/11 outpouring of love has left us with a black hole of compassion that, to borrow a pundit cliche, is exactly what the terrorists wanted. The nation intended to be a melting pot is separating itself as oil from water. No one, including me, wants to talk about racism and privilege or face our own preconceived notions about who we are, what we believe, and whether we are willing to admit that we are never as open and kind and tolerant as we imagine ourselves to be.

That is the tl:dr version of: we have to talk to each other.

We have to have every version of “the talk” that is uncomfortable and dreadful and stomach knot-creating with everyone who is different, everyone who is similar, everyone who is a complete unknown, because it’s only by getting to know each other that we stir the oil and water. It’s only by listening that we feel another’s pain. It’s only by speaking that others know our story. It’s only through cooperation that we rebuild what we’ve broken. It’s only through love that anything changes.

I didn’t want to write about racism because I didn’t feel like I was qualified, and I’m still less qualified than if not most, at least many. But there are some jobs with no qualifications and no requirements: listening in the midst of chaos; speaking in the midst of silence; stirring the bubbling pot; writing words on the interwebs (the pay is about the same, too).

Like finger mustache tattoos and washed-silk track suits, even the most ludicrous ideas can catch on and ripple across a nation. A few people talking here and a few people talking there, and eventually there’s an immeasurable shift. Then another minuscule step forward. And like all great progress and social change and revolution, the words will gain momentum until we have no choice but to confront the elephant in the room.

Incidentally, the elephant is grey.

she drives me crazy

In Communication, Health and Wellness, Relationships on June 2, 2013 at 12:47 pm

I am pretty open about having bipolar disorder. If someone sees a stigma in it, they would have probably found in me another unforgivable trait like how often I mention poop. Some people ask questions; most don’t. I’m fine with either. But since my diagnosis, I have learned a lot about the disease – just as you would if you found out you had diabetes or cancer or herpes. It’s been especially on my mind in the past year and I’ve felt called to talk about it.

What has spurred this deeper study in the past year was a new psychiatrist. I am no longer seeing the kind of assembly line doctor who made me feel like I was in line at the methadone clinic. We have started tinkering with my medications, finding out that not only could I sometimes feel not shitty, I could even feel good once in a while! This was a major breakthrough in what is essentially a terminal disease. A correlating diagnosis of ADD to add to the OCD and anxiety platter made me the wet dream of pharmaceutical companies everywhere. But the brain is a complicated thing, and it’s very inter-connected. So what makes one neuron manic or depressed can then also make me count my steps and forget most of my life experiences. Anyway, that’s just technical stuff – I’ve also been studying neurology in general so I get really excited about generating new connections between the brain cells I haven’t killed yet.

What spurred me to pick up the laptop and write the first post on Snarkler in over a year was a tweet. Stupid fucking Twitter is going to go and affect my life again. Mandy Stadtmiller, a writer at xoJane, tweeted to Amanda Bynes that she should DM her about writing for the site.

I am a fan of Mandy’s writing, although I don’t always agree with her. She’s smart and she gives good advice. Her writing is open and raw without reservations of vulnerability. When I read her popular article about the hit piece written about her, I was disappointed that she called being labeled bipolar a libelous act. It’s a disease, as indiscriminate with its destruction as any deadly illness and should cause no more shame than a congenital heart defect. Then last night, I saw her reach out to Amanda Bynes.

Wednesday, former Chappelle’s Show writer and current stand-up comic Neal Brennan tweeted this:

You know Amanda Bynes is mentally ill, right? You might as well be mocking someone having a heart attack or a seizure.

I don’t think Mandy is mocking Amanda Bynes. And this post isn’t about Mandy Stadtmiller. It’s about not understanding mental illness as what it is: a disease to be managed, a part of one’s self but not its totality, and impossible to understand with a normal brain. Like white people can never truly know what life is like as a black person, and men can never truly know what life is like as a woman, the sane cannot comprehend the distortion going on between our ears.

The empathy is kind, but trying to relate to the symptoms of true illness only keeps you from learning what you need to know. 30% of people with bipolar attempt suicide. Your rainy day doldrums are not comparable. I don’t mean to diminish the real struggle people have with depression, anxiety, and the stresses of the shit show we call life. But there is an instability at work with bipolar that makes it more of a tornado than a hurricane. It’s unpredictable. Its intensity and direction swing wildly such that you aren’t quite sure where you landed. There is no control. Your mind cannot defeat matter. (Please appreciate that I didn’t go for the very punny reference to gray matter in that allusion.)

These words aren’t meant to invoke sympathy or debate and most certainly are not intended to diminish the struggle of every human life. It’s just to point out that it’s serious shit. Amanda Bynes’ behavior (and Britney Spears’ before her) reminded me of my own psychotic episode. It was about 10 years ago, and fortunately only lasted a week before my very smart mother determined through conversation that I was having delusions and hallucinations. Amanda Bynes doesn’t have my mom. She doesn’t have Britney’s dad. I don’t know who she has. I do know that it should be treated as gravely as a heart attack. This shouldn’t be a story. This should be a mission.

Don’t let all this bummer shit think I don’t still love life. I manage and monitor my disease carefully and lead a pretty normal life, or at least a safely interesting life. It’s just… this.

the best policy

In Communication, Relationships on September 13, 2011 at 8:59 pm

You will hurt people.

People will hurt you.

People who you love and care about will hurt you and be hurt by you. It’s inevitable. It is going to happen. (That’s what inevitable means!)

There is something about that certainty that is comforting. It’s after you’ve done your interview and before you find out if you got the job. It’s what is hopefully a brief moment between the proposal and the yes. It’s the time after you’ve released the responsibility and before the consequences arrive. There is a freedom in certainty that allows for flexibility everywhere else.

I’m really honest. I’m not just truthful. I tell truths whether they are required or not. To say I’m blunt is to say that American Beauty is a downer. But there is a method to my madness. At least this madness in particular.

While the hurt is inevitable, it’s not necessarily permanent. I could be wrong, but I kind of think that it’s a lot harder to hurt someone irreparably if I’m always honest with them. Deceit is to trust as poison ivy is to my skin. It hurts really bad at first. Then it gets better. But I still have scars, although some are barely visible. For the record- I probably have more poison ivy scars than emotional, lest you think I merely wax poetic. But I strongly believe that no truth is fatal.

Maybe I’m just lazy, because when you’re always honest, you don’t have to remember what you’ve said. I have no memory anymore, so maybe it’s a protective reflex to keep from getting my ass in more trouble than I usually am. And you’d be surprised how often being honest as kept me from getting into trouble- I mess up, but no one thinks there’s a motive. Because I would have already told you my motive.

I’m not trying to say I’m totally awesome and perfectly honest and never tell a lie, because I am not Jesus or even Felipe Alou. I’m saying, I’m totally okay with you hurting my feelings, as long as it’s true. Because then I can recover.


you get what you get and you don’t get upset

In Communication, News and Politics, Relationships, Technology, Work on July 26, 2011 at 12:15 am

The world doesn’t owe you anything.

You don’t deserve anything.

You might spend your whole life doing the best you can and still get dealt a shit hand.

Life, like love, is complicated and unfair and beautiful and horrific. I think a lot of unhappiness is based not on what occurs, but on your expectations. There are books and studies and theories and greeting cards based on the idea that it’s not what happens to you but how you handle it. Why wait? Why not start with, I’m not going to say lowered expectations, but a lack of entitlement.

Nothing is more 21st century American than feeling owed. People are mad that their iPhone doesn’t get service in such-and-such neighborhood. They can’t stand the injustice of inconvenient parking. White liberals in America love nothing more than feeling discriminated against. They will concoct reasons that their lives are hard. They are vegan. They are atheists. They eschew professional career paths. They live in “up-and-coming” neighborhoods.

I’m cynical, but I’m not pessimistic. In another post, I’ll tell you how my cynicism and optimism coexist peacefully (and optimally). But all you need to know for now is that, yeah, life can totally suck. But the resilience of the human spirit is what makes it all worth it.

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what the world needs now is love

In Communication, News and Politics, Relationships on June 26, 2011 at 9:33 pm

The vote on gay marriage in New York has me thinking how totally fucking ridiculous it is that there there has to be a law specifically stating that gay people can get married. Here’s the gist: PEOPLE WERE STOPPING PEOPLE FROM GETTING MARRIED JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE THE SAME SEX.

It’s embarrassing that people didn’t realize that this was probably all based as much on their Christian values as their laziness to not change the first license forms they made up. So few people are even willing to engage in monogamy, I can’t see the point in stopping the people who really want to do it. These folks are just trying to tell the world they plan to try to avoid fucking other people for at least a few years, and the government cares enough to stop them?

People get married for all sorts of reason, some of them more logical than others, but almost all of them are legal. You can marry for money, or health insurance. You can marry for prestige. You can marry for companionship. You can marry for a big ol’ fancy wedding. You can marry for security, and you can marry for control. You can even marry for love, should you be so crazy. But you can’t marry for any of those reasons if you’re gay?

It’s not that you’re banning gay marriage. It’s that you’re banning  gay people from getting married. Whatever your problem with homosexuality is, it’s not going to go away with any amount of legislation. Love will always find a way, and it could care less about what your rules have to say about it. The bans on gay marriage have done nothing but waste a bunch of time that could have been spent creating jobs or limiting pollution or just minding your own fucking business.

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don’t hand me no lines

In Communication, Entertainment and Nightlife, Home, Relationships on May 17, 2011 at 9:59 pm

Did you know that some people marry people they aren’t in love with? Did you also know that I’m overcoming the visceral reaction to rearrange that sentence so that’s is too awkward to read but does not end in a preposition? Let’s move on. Damn it!

I’m in my early 30s, which is when folks begin to nest. They start settling. There isn’t so much a biological clock as there is a dearth of single, childless friends to carouse with on weekends. You look around and start realizing that the make-out party is becoming less party and more make-out and you’re running out of suitable partners.

While I don’t think everyone is going to meet their soulmate, I take the oath of marriage pretty seriously. I take it so seriously that I haven’t taken it. People stay in relationships with someone they don’t love, sometimes even going so far as to marry them. They might divorce, or they might stay unhappy forever. There might be affairs. There might be children.

Men always think I like them more than I do. They think each crush is love. They think they hold my heart in their hands and it’s up to them to care for it. You don’t do me favors by faking feelings. You don’t do me favors by being half-invested. You don’t do me favors by putting off breaking up.

Often, people are afraid to end things because they don’t want the other person to get hurt. Honey, the hurting is inevitable. And in the meantime, you’re stealing from them. You’re stealing time and energy and love that they could be sharing with someone who reciprocates. You’re stealing their ability to trust again, and their self-confidence.

I never get worked up when someone doesn’t like me “like I like them.” First, I hardly know you yet. Second, there’s been unrequited love in both directions in my past. Sure, it sucks – both ways (that’s what she said). But I haven’t had much stolen and I haven’t stolen much.

Which is pretty good for 32.

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the battle of the sexes

In Communication, News and Politics, Relationships, Science on April 28, 2011 at 9:32 pm

In the battle of the sexes, men are the superpower. They are the United States, or the USSR, or China. They have the resources. They have the inherent advantages of size and strength and speed. They get to go around doing pretty much whatever they want without regard to the collateral damage.

Women are Afghanistan. We seem like we’re weak. We seem to lack resources. We seem like we can’t fend for ourselves and we’re kind of bat-shit crazy. Everyone wants to take care of us. We are, in short, a mess.

But we can’t be beaten. Even Alexander the Great, who suppressed enough of his sexual urges to take over half the planet, still couldn’t conquer Afganistan. Do you think if he had a Josephine he wouldn’t have ended up with a Waterloo? Give me a break. Men have power, but the real super power belongs to women. And it’s in our pants.

My favorite comedian, Louis CK, has said that the most amazing thing about women is that we can decide to not have sex. Right in the middle, we can just decide not to do it anymore, and we can stop. Men don’t have this luxury, and therefore are required to do our bidding once the plateau has been crossed. I have no problem when a man thinks of me as a sex object. While he is thinking with his dick, I’m thinking with my brain and all of a sudden, he’s helping me move that weekend. There is a power in sexuality and to pretend there isn’t is as much a feminist manifesto as making sandwiches in the nude.

Men are awesome, women are awesome. Relationships are awesome. Love is a beautiful, genius thing. But like many things of beauty and genius, it’s fucking crazy.