Posts tagged with "social commentary"

You Can't Go Back

During his Emmy-award win­ning per­for­mance, Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock had a hilar­i­ous bit on the dif­fer­ences between men and women. He sums it up suc­cinct­ly:

Women can­not go back­wards in lifestyle. Men can­not go back­wards sex­u­al­ly.

An exam­ple he uses for women is the first time they get into a nice, warm car after club­bing, wav­ing bye to their friends who are wait­ing for the bus in the cold. After that, they can’t be with a man who does­n’t have a car, or as Rock puts it, “That’s how the fuck you roll for the rest of your life”. This extends to guys with their own places, then guys who take them on vaca­tion.

On men, he says, “Once we get the sex we like, that’s how the fuck we roll. I like my cof­fee like this, I like my steak like this, and I like to fuck like this…Ladies, don’t get mad at us. Get mad at our ex-girl­friends. She’s the one that [sic] spoiled it for every­body” because if your ex-girl­friend licks your ass, you expect your cur­rent girl­friend to do the same.

For me, the same is true for girls in gen­er­al, but not just in these aspects. I can’t be with a girl who refus­es to try exot­ic foods or refus­es to give uncon­ven­tion­al music a chance, who would­n’t rec­og­nize the effort I put into my presents, who would­n’t cher­ish the love and affec­tion I give, who would­n’t under­stand me, or would­n’t laugh at my stu­pid jokes, because I’ve been with girls who are a com­bi­na­tion of open-mind­ed, appre­cia­tive, roman­tic, on the same wave­length as me, and actu­al­ly find me fun­ny (when not com­plete­ly awk­ward).

That's why this entire idea scares me.

I know most peo­ple get more flex­i­ble on things about their mates as they head towards (or beyond) the mar­ry­ing age but I seem to be mov­ing the oppo­site direc­tion. Each girl I’ve been with has been an improve­ment over the last. Now the bar has been raised so damn high I don’t think I’ll ever get there again, and I’d rather be alone than com­pro­mise or set­tle.

My stan­dards are get­ting high­er, and I can’t go back.

The most private thing I'm willing to admit here: A Social Experiment

A social exper­i­ment to get peo­ple to open up about them­selves, because it’s our lit­tle idio­syn­crasies that make us unique. Maybe peo­ple will learn that they’re not alone in their inti­mate ways as well. In the process, it’s also a way for me to open up more, as I seem to be too care­ful about watch­ing what I say here in recent years, and not writ­ing with the same hon­esty that used to char­ac­ter­ize my entries.

For every per­son who adds a com­ment with the most pri­vate thing they’re will­ing to admit here, between now and Sunday night, I will (try) to add a pri­vate detail about myself. Include a name instead of remain­ing anony­mous1, be as hon­est and open as pos­si­ble, and only one “thing” per per­son please. I don’t have that many secrets. Or do I?

I’ll start every­one off with a bonus one:

I hate mak­ing my bed. I get it messy (I do a lot of toss­ing and turn­ing) in anoth­er 16 hours, so I don’t see the point of mak­ing it. I clean my house in gen­er­al when peo­ple are com­ing over because I want them to be com­fort­able, but the bed is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. The only rea­son why I make it is because I feel self-con­scious about it, not because I care if it makes my guests feel more com­fort­able. This makes me feel like a pho­ny.

  1. Without some sort of iden­ti­ty to bind a detail to, there’s no point to the exper­i­ment. [↩]

Diagram For Heartbreak

I love mak­ing these lit­tle dia­grams. It’s so cathar­tic. I remem­ber read­ing this xkcd com­ic (Do you know the func­tions? Answers in the foot­note1.) a long time ago, and think­ing, “Yeah, I don’t get it either”.

Diagram for heartbreak: Why won't you let me get over you?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Why won't you let me get over you?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Might as well not even try

Diagram for Heartbreak: Maybe I should be an asshole

Diagram for Heartbreak: Kissing ratios?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Lose-lose situation

I’ve always been a visu­al per­son, but I nev­er real­ized that doing some­thing like this would make things so much clear­er. All those years earn­ing a degree in com­put­er sci­ence — learn­ing Venn dia­grams, flow charts, and the like — have final­ly come in handy.

  1. From left to right, top to bot­tom: square root of love, cosine of love (trigonom­e­try), deriv­a­tive of love (cal­cu­lus), matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of love (lin­ear alge­bra), and some­one help me out with the last one, it seems like anoth­er cal­cu­lus equa­tion with some con­stants thrown in the Fourier trans­for­ma­tion of love (Hat tip to Edd Sowden for this one). [↩]