On Feminism

If I were Elaine Showalter, I'd have secretly written a bodice-ripping romance novel full of poor character development and trite symbolism by now, to be released only upon my death.

You know, just to mess with people.

Part of me says it would be to deconstruct my own deconstructions, to prove that no one viewpoint is ever the entire objective picture, but my gut says it's just to make people think.

Because people hate thinking. Especially people who plan on doing your for you.

The Difference Between Men and Women

I don't know how I've never blogged this before. Actually, I've got a fairly reasonable guess: I spout this bit of sensical nonsense rather frequently and in person. I try to teach it like Jesus taught Buddhism with parables. Shepherds don't understand Buddhism, but they understand sheep. Men and women don't understand the subtly nuanced interactions they experience on a day-by-day basis because, frankly, no one understands them. The people with the best guesses are trained relationship counselors and sociologists and psychotherapists and I have it on very good authority that none of them ever agree on much of anything. Truthfully, if anyone anywhere were suddenly able to explain men and women to each other, religion would disappear overnight. That said, I suppose this is my own small attempt at heresy.

The truth of the species is this: Men are dumb. Women are simply crazy.

That's it. That's all there is. Now, you can expand on that, but it's just fleshing the idea out to make it more palatable. Men aren't necessarily dumb. In fact, most of history's greatest geniuses were men, though I suspect this statistic is in large part weighted by the fact that educating women hasn't been in vogue until very recently, at least on a sociological scale.

But here's the kicker: Men are logical, but they're very dumb in how they go about it. If something doesn't make sense, a man will stop and stare at it for hours if not days, until finally he reasons out its very atomic nature. That's how Einstein did it. Anything that isn't capable of being solved is an object of intense scrutiny, followed by either subjugation or blinding, seething rage.

Women? They're brilliant. They don't have to think linearly in time or space. They can see every facet of a situation and immediately weight priorities by non-logical intuition. They understand parables while men are the shepherds or, more often, the sheep. When any man demands in an argument, "How can you say that?!" He actually wants an answer. He wants to reason out where the logical error lies and prays to the club-meat-fire Man Gods that it isn't his. To the same thought a woman would more likely demand, "WHY would you say that?!" She has no interest in your logic, at least not yet. She is more concerned with what you think and feel that would cause you to phrase your point in the way you did, because she found it needlessly hurtful.

Men argue the facts, women argue how those make them feel.

And as much as you may already disagree with all of this, here's the part that will win back most of the men I lost and cast off any women left in my camp, but that's not how it should be.

Women, it is all your fault.

I'll wait. Okay.

The trouble is Men are too rational. They're typically not in touch with their emotions and anything they don't understand is likely to be confronted by logic, not deep, emotional introspection. Women, are phenomenal at that. They're are amazing. And because they're just as smart as men they can understand Men's small chimp-logic. They can understand even if it pisses them off, and if they don't try than they're just being dumb too.

So here's the deal: Crazy people can understand stupid people if they're smart enough, but dumb people can never understand crazy people because, well, they're too dumb for that.

Women, you have to be the ones to make the effort, because at least you have a friggin' shot at it.

On Bees

I was driving to the notary today when a thought occurred to me:

"How the hell do bees evolve?"

I man really, how does that work? Normally one member of a species develops a trait that helps it survive better or at the very least have more children. Passing on those mutant freak genes is how complex life evolves. So how the hell do bees do it?

For one thing, bees have the wonderful defense mechanism of the stinger. Except they die when they sting you. So it's beneficial for other bees if one bee mutates and gets a stinger. Other animals learn not to eat bees, remaining bees thrive. Except now the only bee with a stinger is dead and there's no one to pass on the trait.

So maybe they all develop stingers. Then everybody protects everybody else. Great, except now we're talking simultaneous, parallel evolution of an entire species for the benefit of the species instead of individuals within that species. Cooperative evolution. Oh man.

Then of course we have to raise the issue that none of the bees who ever sting you get to reproduce. They have queens for that. The simplest answer, I suppose, is that it was evolutionarily beneficial for a specific queen bee to birth crazy, stinger-equipped mutant offspring to defend her and help her personal colony.

These bees ended up dominating all nee life until no other bees were left. Yes. Good.


You know, most people think about normal things in the car.

On Just Your Everyday, Regular Guys, You Know?

"I want to ask this question, but I don't want to- I know it'll make me- I don't want to sound like an asshole."

This is what a very dear friend said to me a few hours ago. It was somewhat leading, based on the conversation we had been having, but the question itself was in no way obvious from context. Given two normal, everyday people alone in a room, I would not expect one to know where this discussion was going more than, say, 30% of the time. It is precisely this issue that allowed me to know exactly what question I was about to be asked, because it's not normal and I've already wondered countless times, but I've never asked because it does make you feel like an asshole.

"'What the hell do normal people think about all day??'"

It was a good minute before I could hear anything but raucous, almost disbelieving laughter coming through the receiver in my cell phone–that and occasionally a few syllables of "DAA-AAAAVEEE!!"–but this was enough to tell me I hit the nail on the head. With a sledgehammer.

You see, there are two types of people in this world, as loath as I am to use that simplified stance on anything. There are people who with great consistency wonder what other people must think about at all hours, thinking, "Well I think of these things, but I'm considered weird, so normal people probably don't think that. Maybe they think about football? Or hockey. Maybe people think about hockey.It's already Fall. They play hockey on ice all year but I thought hockey season would be in Fall and Winter since they traditionally must have started when there was ice out. Crap. What was I thinking about? Oh yeah, 'what do normal people think about?'"

The other type of people are normal people, and I have no idea what they think about because as far as I can tell they're not inclined to ever wonder that. The only people who seem to ask that question are the type of people who ask that question. Somewhat circular logic, I know, but frankly you just have to split the difference when you can. Some people ponder how introspective other people must be, while other people don't wonder about wondering.

Which is not to say they're incapable of it. I avoid asking the direct question because I don't want to come off as a complete douche, but my friend Dean has answered once or twice. He seems to indicate that he thinks about whatever it is he's been tasked with doing, then maybe thinking about what he's going to do on the weekend or something. If he's at work and bored, he might check Facebook to see if anyone's RSVP'd to do whatever it is he wanted to do this weekend to spend the money he has earned by working. There's a correlation of thought processes.

I asked Dean once, "What do you think about when you're going to bed? Right before you actually fall asleep but the lights are out and you're actually trying to become asleep, what thoughts are going through your head? What do you think about, right then?"

Dean indicated that he didn't. He just goes to sleep. I asked if he thought about what he had done that day or try to plan out what he has to do tomorrow. He seemed to indicate more towards the latter, but it really petered out around 'go to work, have dinner with dad Thursday."

I'm always thinking. Weird thoughts, too. I cracked the meaning of Donnie Darko's time vortex in the shower. The Terminator time travel. I came up for a mode of faster-than-light telecommunication that is scientifically sound but can't possibly exist for at least 50 years, also in the shower. I do a hel of a lot of thinking in the shower. Before bed, my life tends to swing between feeling so contented in my nice cozy sheets that I drift lazily to the most restful sleep reserved usually for new-born babes and the cruelly, psychotically remorseless … or I just think about every mistake I've ever made and how stupid I am for it and why my inability to not fuck up will leave me forever ruined and without love. One or the other.

On the other hand, Dean has the most amazing ability to fall asleep anywhere, doing anything, and fight through every possible stimulus against waking. Last Sunday he fell asleep at the movies and a hard slap across the face only managed to wake him gradually.

So maybe he's not the best source to ask about pre-sleep thought patterns.