Monthly Archives: February 2013

Train Etiquette Question

Say you’re sitting on the train reading a really engrossing novel and a woman gets on the train.  The train is crowded now so she stands next to where you’re sitting.  It’s winter, everyone’s got bulky clothes on, the woman included.  In addition, she has what looks to be a baby bump beneath all those layers of clothes.  Here’s the problem; you’re not sure if it actually is a baby bump or not.  Do you offer her your seat and risk potential embarrassment of both her and yourself or do you merrily continue reading your book and allow a potentially pregnant woman to stand?  I did the latter except for the “merrily” part because I spent most of the train ride trying to figure out if she was pregnant or not while not making it obvious that I was trying to figure out if she was pregnant or not.

What would you do?  Discuss.

Respecting Women, Being Attracted To Women; You Can Do Both

(Edited for clarity so a friend doesn’t think I’m calling him a homophobe.)

Who doesn’t like being groped by strangers?  Oh right, everybody.  Listen guys, this is not difficult.  Unless you have a relationship of some sort with a woman, you should not be touching them.  End of story.  You also shouldn’t be laughing at other women being groped by strangers.  Nor should you “like” videos of such.

See that woman walking alone down the street?  She’s pretty hot, isn’t she?  Make eye contact with her as she walks by.  Smile at her.  Maybe even wave politely.  Congratulations, you were successfully attracted to and respecting of the woman!  Wasn’t that easy?  There are very few other options in this scenario.  A vast majority of women would not be comfortable with you approaching them.  To do so is to disrespect all women even if you happen to be successful in striking up a conversation.  You are saying that your needs are greater than the woman’s needs.  You would be wrong.

See that woman sitting on the train reading a book?  Ooh la la!  Is she reading a book that you have read?  No?  Then leave her alone.  She wants to read.  Congratulations, you were successfully attracted to and respecting of the woman!  But you say you have read the book?  Do you have something productive to say about the book?  No?  Then leave her alone.  She wants to read.  But you say you do have something productive to say?  Very politely interrupt her and say what you have to say.  Pay very close attention to social cues to determine if she wants to be interrupted.  If she doesn’t, apologize for interrupting and leave her alone.  She wants to read.

See that woman playing volleyball against you?  Sexy and athletic!  You are in a social situation so feel free to talk to her and flirt with her if she seems receptive.  That’s what social situations are for!  Just remember, she is under no obligation to return your interest.  She may just want to play volleyball.  It is not her fault she doesn’t want to talk to you.  It’s not your fault she doesn’t want to talk to you.  It’s just a current state of being.  Congratulations, you were successfully attracted to and respecting of the woman!

See that woman at the bar?  What an outfit!  She is likely there to have fun.  You know you are there to have fun.  Feel free to talk to her and flirt with her if she seems receptive.  That’s what social situations are for!  Just remember, she is under no obligation to return your interest.  She may just want to hang out with her friends.  It’s not her fault that she doesn’t want to talk to you.  It’s not your fault that she doesn’t want to talk to you.  It’s just a current state of being.  Congratulations, you were successfully attracted to and respecting of the woman!

That wasn’t so difficult, now was it?  Just remember, that woman is a person.  Say that to yourself before you approach her.  Ask yourself if you would mind a guy coming up and flirting with you in that situation.  If you would never want be ok with that, you are likely a homophobe and should get over that before attempting any relationship.  If you think that you would be flattered if you just swung that way, chances are that the woman would be too.  Follow these simple rules and you too can be respecting of and attracted to women.

External Airbags

A Danish company is working on designing external air bags on cars to save the lives of bicyclists.  Another Scandinavian company has an air bag bicycle helmet.  We are falling way behind in the bicycle safety war.  Are we going to let some stinkin’ blondies beat us?

Personally, I think we should be spending more money inventing Securefoam.

 

And where are the three seashells I was promised!

There Is No Magic Age Of Adulthood

A bit of a follow-up on my post on the deaths of young people in Chicago based on a comment from a friend.  I think it’s important to understand where I’m coming from.

From my point of view (with exceptions, I’m sure), those young people who were killed are children.  Even the 25 year-olds.  Turning 18 does not magically make you an adult.  Turning 21 does not magically make you an adult.  Expecting someone to behave like an adult just because they have a magical birthday is magical thinking.

Yes, the law says that you are an adult when you turn 18.  The law is fucked up, though.  We pick an arbitrary age for adulthood because it’s easy.  It fits snugly within our paradigm of personal responsibility while allowing us to smugly shrug off the experiences of the children who commit crimes.

That isn’t to say that using a certain age as a guideline is a bad thing.  It is perfectly reasonable to assume that a person should be an adult by the time they turn 21.  Where we fail is in our steadfast adherence to everyone being an adult at age 21 no matter what.  Demanding a 21 year-old who had no support system growing up to behave like a functional member of society is like me demanding that my grandmother be able to pick up an iPad and use it flawlessly.  I see 3 year-olds using them as if they were second nature so surely a 90 year-old should too.

What we call “adulthood” is just learned behavior.  We were just lucky to have the correct combination of parents, friends, and neighbors to attain “adulthood” at the socially acceptable age.  When we demand that others who didn’t have that combination behave like us or suffer life altering consequences, we behave like children.

1,118 In The Last Five Years

That’s the number of homicides of children under the age of 25 in the city of Chicago.  The Chicago Muckrakers has a map of all the homicides.  As they say in the article, “you can see where and when they died, their name, race, age and gender.”  Homicide deaths are the red dots, non-homicide deaths are various other colors.

It’s kind of shocking.  That’s a lot of death.  It’s very easy to dismiss this.  Say that a 25 year-old is an adult.  Say that they were criminals.  In doing so, we completely dismiss the traumatic experiences these kids go through in life.  And its easy to dismiss that as well.  Out of sight, out of mind.  This, though, is the end result of hopelessness.  1,118 dead children.

Something I Am Not Good At

Well, it took 39 years, but I have finally found something that I am not immediately good at.  Snowboarding.  Wait, check that, I am really good at falling down while snowboarding.  By the time I stopped, I was also pretty good at getting back up again.

A typical run went like this:  Ride up.  Boogey over to the slope.  Sit down.  Strap in.  Stand up.  Slide down 10 feet.  Fall.  Struggle to get into a position to stand up again.  Stand up.  Slide down 10 feet.  Fall.  Repeat as necessary to get down to the bottom of the hill.

After an hour of this, my body was numb and my lungs were on fire.  Skiing and snowboarding are similar in that the goal in both sports is to exert as little energy as possible while going from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain.  I chose to exert the most energy possible while snowboarding.

I’m sure that if I had an hour a day for a week or two to spend just practicing snowboarding I’d get it.  Unfortunately, there is no mountain in my back yard.  As it is, I only go skiing once a year.  So, I’ll stick to skiing for now.

As a side note, while sitting in the cafeteria, I was watching the end of one of the black diamond slopes.  The amount of small children barreling down the slope effortlessly was just astounding.  Such simple grace and fearlessness!  Lucky kids, both being able to afford skiing and to have parents that took the time to teach them or give them lessons.  Unless they are those overbearing parents projecting their dreams on their children.  I saw some of those too.  God, I hate that.  “Sometimes is never quite enough.  If you’re flawless, then you’ll win our love.”

It’s Restaurant Week!

It completely snuck up on me, but Chicago Restaurant Week starts today!  Yum!  Of course, this is my first time as a vegetarian so we’ll see how well it goes.

For those of you not in the know, Restaurant Week is a week of semi-affordable fixed price menu items at over 250 of the Chicagoland area’s best restaurant (and the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company).  It’s a great opportunity to try that really expensive restaurant that you always wanted to go to but can’t really afford.

It’s time to eat!

David Mamet, American Buffaloed

David Mamet has an article in Newsweek calling for a State with maximum guns.  He starts out quoting Karl Marx so you know where this is going.  And fast.  It is chock full of gems like this:

Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.

Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime.

I had forgotten how many cities of similar size as Chicago are in Texas, Florida, and Arizona.  D.C. is certainly an outlier, but if you actually look at gun deaths by state, you get pretty much exactly what you’d expect.  The States normally associated with gun right have the most gun deaths.

You should also read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “David Mamet and the Irrelevant Meaning of Actual Words” post.  It has gems such as this:

The message one derives from this is that power gives you the privilege of lying. If you are big enough, if your name rings out far enough, you may make words mean whatever you want them to mean. I experience this as a kind of violence against language. If we can’t agree on the meaning of “is,” then we have no ability to talk. And if we have no ability to talk, we really are that much closer to guns.

That is why I have a man-crush on him.  We, like David Mamet, are a people capable of massive intellectual laziness.  It’s no wonder so many of us think we need guns.