Notes of A Dirty Old Man

It's funny how dating changes as you get older.  When you're young, and you go out with some 21-year-old, and she says something like, "I wanna be President!", you're like, "Good for you!"  If you're in your 30's and you go out with that girl, you're like, "Yeah, good luck with all of that.  Call me after Reality's had a chance to shit in your mouth."

The flip side of that is when you actually date a girl your own age, and they've already abandoned wide-eyed optimism for excessive comfort and jaded resignation, like a we-all-shit-so-it's-okay-to-talk-about-anything-way-too-soon-after-meeting-you attitude.  You say something like, "I just took an awesome trip to Thailand," and she replies with, "Oh, I was supposed to go there last year, but I had bronchitis and coughed so hard I got a hemorrhoid and had to have surgery on it."

Great.  Lovely.  Wonderful.  Where do we go from there?  How many dates away are we from you shitting with the door open, at that point?  There's a happy middle ground!  Find it.  I cling to my illusions (i.e. - the person I have sex with doesn't make poopy) like the mentally feeble cling to religion...and guns...and truck nuts.

Waiting List

Lunch is served.

I went to a little cafe for lunch recently, and when I got there, the hostess seemed baffled by my presence as she proclaimed, "There's a wait list, sir."  Really?  A wait list?  That's a little self-important, don't you think?  It's just a wait.  A wait list implies it's going to take a year and possibly several deaths before I'll have the opportunity to receive what I'm requesting.  There was literally one couple in front of me.

Don't Walk in Front of Me...

I was walking with a friend (female) a little while back, and there was a girl walking in front of us with a ridiculous body.  I said something to my friend, and she laughed.  But then, when we passed the girl, we saw that she was only like 15 or 16 years old, and my friend goes to me, "You're disgusting." 

What?!  You didn't have any beef when we were still behind her!  You agreed with me!  She had a ridiculous body, and I stand by that, unapologetically.  I can't control the pace at which nature dictates individuals' bodies mature!  Sorry.  It's not like I would do anything...jeez...

Now this is where some lines have been crossed: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/doug-hutchison-51-weds-courtney-alexis-stodden-16/story?id=13893244

Trading Races

I saw this black dude hitting on these three chubby white chicks the other day (God bless him), and he goes to one of them, "Girl, you too fine to not have no boyfriend."  And I thought to myself, "That's a double negative."  And then I thought to myself, "No fair.  White guys can't get away with that shit.  That was awesome!"  But then I thought, "Hmm...I guess that's actually more than fair, given the amount of racism black people have had to endure in this country.  I don't think I'd be willing to trade; randomly getting pulled over and beaten by the police for no good reason just to have the ability to be really direct with women?  . . . Nah.  I'll shut up now.

Dating Strategy

You know what I've found is a psychologically effective move on a first date?  At some point early in the evening, commit the ultra-rude date faux pas of looking at your phone and responding to a text.  Be polite about it.  Say, "I'm really sorry; I just have to respond to this real quickly."  Give your complete attention to that text for about 8-10 full seconds, then turn your attention back to the date, and as a gesture of genuine remorse, tell her you're all hers for the rest of the night, and turn off your phone for her to see.  It probably doesn't hurt to throw in some joke, like, "I don't care if my mom calls because she's dying from a gunshot wound to the abdomen and wants to share her last words; she can leave a message.  Tell me more about your dog."

But think about it.  It's like she just went from feeling insulted and unimportant to being a made a priority.  It's an emotional roller coaster...and she loves it.  She's thinking, "He has his own things going on, but he can still make time for me."*

*Point of clarification: I'm not some sleazeball who sits around strategizing about this shit in advance while reading The Game.  It just so happened that I was on a date one time, and I was waiting for a text that I'd PROMISED to be around for, so I responded to it, and then turned off my phone because I wanted her to know that I wasn't a total douche.  I noticed a significant uptick in her interest after that, and then later thought about why that might've been.  I haven't done it since.  But if you're okay with being a phony...you're welcome.

Driving Eitquette

The other day, I was in the right lane at a red light, and the woman in the middle lane frantically waved at me to indicate she needed to get over into my lane.  I naturally assumed she needed to make a right at the light and kindly obliged.  Wrong.  Turns out she was just a diseased whore who proceeded to drive 20 miles per hour, right in front of me, preventing me from getting over into the middle lane because all the cars with non-whore operators were whizzing by.

You don't get to plead with wild gesticulations just to cut someone off; you can only do that if you're going to miss your turn or exit . . . and even then, it's at the driver you're motioning to's discretion.  Die.

(I typed "diseased whore" into Google Images, and pictures of Paris Hilton kept popping up...)

Preggers v. STD

No, that's not the precedent-setting court case of Wanda Preggers v. Simon Theodore Davidson (I'm retarded).  It's a question... Which would you rather deal with: a pregnancy scare or an STD scare?

As a guy, I'm gonna say, my answer is dependent on the girl's age.  Under 30, pregnancy is temporary, if ya know what I'm sayin'.  Thirty or over, the girl's more likely to want to keep it, so I'd probably opt for the STD scare and hope for the curable sort.  Thoughts?

The Art of Photography

A friend of mine is a photographer, and he does a lot of shoots of women, both clothed and not-so-much.  He sent me this text the other day:

"Some girls are just so annoying.  They just want to be insulted.  I don't know more than maybe one nice way to say, you're not attractive/interesting enough to take photos of.  But hey, let's just keep asking or making passive aggressive jokes 'til I snap and make you cry."

The King

As another NBA season comes to a close, we are enveloped by a new wave of LeBron loathing... And I honestly don't get it.  Can you think of anyone else who has been so maligned for doing so little wrong?  Seriously, what has he ever done that's so terrible?  He's arrogant?  He orchestrated a nation-wide media circus surrounding his off-season free agency tour?  The hated "Decision" special raised three fucking million dollars for kids!  When's the last time you generated even one dollar just for telling people where your next place of employment will be?  Never, because no one cares what you have to say.

Fine, he's arrogant.  The guy's been told he's the best athlete to ever touch a basketball since he was, like, eleven!  I think he's held it together pretty well, considering.  All he's done is live up to the unrealistically high expectations heaped upon him by his coaches, his friends, his mom, his home town... With the Cavs, he was the best player in the world without any help from his teammates (evidenced by the fact that in their first season without him they went on the worst losing streak in the HISTORY of the NBA), and he worked his ass off without complaint to piggy-back them for seven years.  Plus, he's 26!  Aren't you supposed to be arrogant in your 20's?  I was arrogant when I was 26, and I hadn't accomplished shit!  (Although maybe that just means I'm an asshole, too.  Hmmm.)  Anyway, the guy works his ass off, gives back to the community, and is the best in the world at what he does.

If I'm not mistaken, three super stars came together a few years prior, and everyone applauded them for their selflessness and desire to win.  Kevin Garnett toiled in Minnesota without assistance for many years.  Ray Allen did the same in Seattle.  They'd had enough of losing because management couldn't lure the necessary talent to their small markets, so they decided to join forces in Boston for a few more shots at winning it all.  LeBron and Bosh devoted seven years to their respective teams in Cleveland and Toronto, but were unable to win because management never gave them the necessary pieces.  They saw what Garnett, Allen, and Pierce did, and followed suit.  LeBron's sole mistake was not picking up the phone before The Decision, to let Cavs owner, Dan Gilbert, know that James was not going to be returning to the team.  And given what we learned about Gilbert's maturity level, I kinda understand why one wouldn't want to make that phone call.  (Okay, a second mistake was not going to The Bulls.  They had better pieces for him to work with; James' and Wade's games are too similar to facilitate a smooth half-court offense.)

Now, in the wake of a lackluster performance in the NBA Finals, LeBron is feeling the backlash again.  Never mind that he had an outstanding season, leading The Heat to 58 wins and the number two seed, despite it being a completely revamped team in its first season together.  Never mind that the two best role players on that team, Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller, didn't play the entire regular season due to serious injuries.  Never mind that LeBron had an incredible playoffs up until The Finals.  Never mind that they still did make it to game 6 of The Finals against a Dallas team that caught fire from three-point land.  Never mind that just the series before, against The Bulls, Wade had an awful series (something the media attributed to a mysterious injury), and LeBron carried the team to victory over the number one seed and number one defense in the league.  When LeBron had a sub-par performance in The Finals (something that warrants criticism), where were his teammates to pick him up?

Look, it's not that I feel bad for the guy.  He lives an awesome life for playing a sport, and deserves to be critiqued when he doesn't come through.  Shit, I'd trade places; you can hate me all you want, and I'll collect hundreds of millions of dollars for playing basketball and doing commercials.  Deal?  I just have trouble getting behind all the misdirected anger.  I gotta tell ya, if they'd caught everything Jordan said, on camera, and replayed the shit out of it like they do with everything LeBron says...he'd have been a lot less likeable, I assure you. 

Go ahead and be happy for Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki, but LBJ will be back there next year, and maybe a couple more years after that.  He's really good.  I don't like when he over-celebrates after a dunk either, but it's not like he raped a chick in a Colorado hotel, or cheated on his wife with tons of cocktail waitresses, or drowned dogs, or was accused of murder, or brought a loaded gun into a club and accidentally fired it...all things professional athletes who are way less hated have done.  Just seems like jealousy, or something, once the vitriol crosses a certain threshold, because all in all...he seems like an alright guy.  Although if he doesn't win next year...what an asshole.

And there you have it.  My positive post for the year.

Skinny Sticks

I figured out why Asians are so skinny; I finally put it together...  Chopsticks!  Done.  Game over.  Mystery solved.  A) You can only pick up a little bit of food at a time, so the whole process of eating a meal becomes way more taxing.  You're only gonna eat what you need if you have to work for it, plus, your stomach has the necessary time to send the "sated" signal to your brain.  B) Our American utensils enable us to shovel heaping mounds of fried food into our gaping maws at alarming rates.  Look at American-Asian girls; a little more meat on those bones, no?  No FAS (Flat-Ass Syndrome) anymore . . . and I love it.

Cultural Differences

I saw a Mexican guy wearing a Jose Cuervo T-shirt, and I thought to myself, "I should get a Manischewitz shirt."

How Twitter Affects My Blog...

...It's made me too lazy to think in thesis form.  I used to have "ideas" I wanted to explain, and "points" I wanted to make...but now?  If it's not 140 characters or less, it feels laborious.  It appears technology is going to turn us into amorphous retards.  Although, maybe this just encourages quality control.  Like, now, I really have to feel strongly about an idea in order to motivate to write about it.  So you, the readers, win!  Right? 

Anyway, point is, follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ImTheCurmudgeon

Litigiousness

I saw a commercial that was trying to be funny (though it wasn't) in which a guy throws his TV off his roof, sending it crashing to the ground.  On the bottom of the screen, whilst this is transpiring, is written, "Do not attempt."  No!  Sorry.  You don't get to write that because you shouldn't need to!  If someone is so stupid that they throw their TV off their roof and then try to sue the company that made the commercial because there was no explicit warning not to do so, that plaintiff should be sentenced to death.  He/she is clearly holding all of us back.

Think about it: if you could be given the death penalty for filing staggeringly inane, frivolous lawsuits, people would be far less litigious.  They'd think twice before wasting taxpayers' money and blaming everyone and anyone else for their own mental deficiencies.  And if they're still too stupid to think twice...good!  We're rid of them.  Furthermore, any judge who rules in favor of these ignoramuses should also be sentenced to death.

Murderers sometimes deserve a second chance, but not these leeches who force us to scrawl "Do not attempt" everywhere.  Given the right context, murder? . . . I can understand.

NOVA scienceNOW

I've been meaning to talk about this forever, but I keep forgetting.  Watch PBS's NOVA scienceNOW.  Yes, the way they write the title is annoying, but after watching it, I'm gonna go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt because they're way smarter than me.  They have tons of clips on the website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/

This year they aired new episodes about colonizing Mars, animal intelligence, how the brain works, how we came to exist, and futuristic social robots!  But another episode, about the possibility of living forever, really got me thinking.  They talked about being able to isolate longevity genes, induce medically assisted hibernation to slow one's metabolism and reduce the rate at which we burn oxygen in order to limit the damage of a heart attack or stroke, and grow living human organs in labs in order to eliminate transplant waiting lists... But what if we succeed at all these fascinating things?  What the hell are supposed to do if no one ever dies?  Our planet's already being pushed to its limits!  Do we create the medical technology and then limit who has access to it (which is, I guess, what we already do now, huh)?  Anyway, here's a mind-blowing segment from that very episode.  Enjoy:

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA scienceNOW.

Parental Pride

The other day, I saw two women, one with a stroller (and a baby in it; not a dog, which, in LA, would not be out of the ordinary), bump into each other after not having seen one another for a while.  The baby-less one asked, "What have you been up to?"  And Mama Bear exclaimed, "I had a baby!"  A) No shit.  B) The pride with which she proclaimed this rubbed me the wrong way.  I mean, I'll concede, the miracle of life is a pretty incredible thing: it's like, wait, let me get this straight, I stick my dick in there, it feels really good, and then we GROW a fucking human that looks like us?!  Holy shit!  That's amazing!

Now, having said that, is it really something that warrants pride?  It's not like you really did anything to get it.  Quite literally, all you had to do was lay there.  Granted, labor is fucking brutal (though I'll never know for sure...thank God); I'll give you that.  But were there really many options by that point anyway?  You had a baby.  Congrats.  A man jizzed in your vagina.  Wait 'til your kid grows up to not be a total retard fuck-up drain on society before you go patting yourself on the back, okay?

I'm a dick.  I know.