Truth! - part 8

The following statements are true:


You do not cross "T"s. You cross lower case "L"s and transform them into "T"s.


Supposedly most men prefer big boobs to small boobs. I think this is actually a misinterpretation. I think most men simply prefer near boobs to far boobs. The closer the boob, the better we like it. If two women are standing next to one another, the bigger boobs are closer. Think about it.


There is a small thing that Americans could do to help smooth relations with both Iraq and Iran, and really everyone else to a lesser degree. It won't end the war in Iraq or prevent it with Iran, but it might contribute to countering the US's image as ignorant and arrogant. Pronounce their names correctly. It's not "eye-rack" and "eye-ran". It's "i-rock" and "i-ron" (Actually it's a tapped "R" but some people just can't do that, so we can let that slide.). How would you feel if Iraqis kept calling us "Ay-meeric-ay"? You'd think they were ignorant and arrogant and you'd be right. Granted they tap the "R" in "America" but then so does the governor of "Cahleefohnia".


A poetical yet sexist notion: A great many women never learn the value of silence. Some men don't either but the misunderstanding seems more pronounced on the female side. This is somewhat ironic since the act of quieting someone with "Shhhhh" is immitating the sound of a mother's heartbeat heard from the womb.

A famous person's public persona tends to eclypse his or her real persona. If someone is a tough guy, I would imagine most people assume that their whole life is tough. Or if someone is pretty, you would think their whole life is pretty. Obviously this can't be true. There are completely banal parts to the most exotic people's lives, just like the rest of us. In a nutshell, what I'm leading up to here is that Jimi Hendrix probably owned a red and white checkered dishtowel. No paisley. No screaming guitar riffs when he used it. Just a plain old dishtowel. I find that interesting.

There is a secret compliment that you can pay to your lover that no one knows about but you. Even your lover won't know. It's a compliment that your subconscious pays them, with or without the permission of your conscious mind. It's when a song that was previously associated in your mind with a former love is reassociate it with your current love.

Things I Don't Understand - Part 5

Have you ever been walking down the street behind someone who is walking slowly? You want to pass them, but, even though they are not particularly large or doing anything in particular to block the sidewalk, somehow, try as you might, you just can't get around them for some reason. How are they doing that? What is it that is preventing you from walking around them?

Physicists can talk about some really complicated, mind stretching things. They can completely dumbfound some of the most intelligent people. However, in talking about gravitation and what effects what, they will inevitably refer to things as large bodies and small bodies. All matter has gravity, but the significant effects of gravity are only exhibited in large bodies. At what point does a body go from small to large? If it's an either/or situation and not a gradient (nobody ever talks about almost having gravitational effects), that suggests that a single microgram could make the difference between gravity and no gravity. You're floating above an asteroid when a random bit of space dust hits it and suddenly you're plummeting? That can't be right, can it?

I'm on a diet. I was sitting around the house all day the other day. Out of boredom, I weighed myself several times. I watched myself drop a whole pound in the course of a day. In that time, I both ate and pooped. I did not poop excessively--roughly as much as I ate. So where is that mass going? Think about a pound of meat. That's not something that can just evaporate. That's a pound of meat. I don't recall seeing a pound of me lying around my house anywhere. Where'd it go?

Manual transmissions make sense to me. I can picture the gears and what happens to them. Automatic transmissions seem like magic. How does it know what gear it should be in? I can imagine a computer being able to control an automatic transmission, but automatics were invented before computers were small enough to fit under a hood. So how does it know? Hell, sometimes people don't know what gear to be in. How is an inanimate object supposed to know?

How is it possible to work at a perfume counter at a department store for more than an hour or so? Smell is cumulative, meaning that the chemicals that enter your nose, have a finite number of receptors to stimulate. At some point, you will cease to smell anything you are exposed to, unless you stop being exposed to it for a while. So, wouldn't the perfume ladies stop being able to smell their product after a very short time?

Mucus is not water soluble. That's what makes it useful in it's various functions (moisturizing and protecting animal tissue, making slugs icky, etc). Now it's already amazing that we can even produce the stuff at all (a water soluble creature creating a non water soluble substance), but I'm sure that's just some run of the mill chemical process. The baffling part is this : There's not only six billion snot producing humans on this planet, but thousands of other animal species that produce mucus as well, and millions of years of ancestors doing the same thing. Since mucus doesn't really dissolve or degrade like the rest of our biological effluvia does, shouldn't we be knee deep in snot right now?

Let's Alienate the Wimmins!

I have a controversial thought in my head. A thought so explosive, it requires a preamble. One of the many double standards under which we languish in this culture is...well it's better illustrated than described:

Person speaking in public forum: "I think women are smarter (or any other positive quality) than men."
[audience applauds, cheers, etc]

vs.

Person speaking in public forum: "I think men are smarter (or any other positive quality) than women."
[audience screams in disgust, throws chair, labels speaker as a Nazi, etc]

There is a cultural stigma in the west against criticizing female culture. There are easily understandable factors that cause this. Typically an oppressed population is free to criticize the oppressor but not vice versa. It's a balance thing. This is not the controversial thought I'm bringing up. I'm just laying that as a foundation because my controversial thought goes against the "don't pick on women" thing and if we can circumvent the Pavlovian kill-the-chauvinist reaction, then perhaps we can give this some serious attention and get wiser as a species. Also, I'm not saying that I necessarily think this is true; I just think it's an interesting area of thought that's worth looking into.

Okay here goes:

Why do women tend to talk more than men? Why do women tend to focus so much energy on communication? Why do women not only try to express their feelings, but try to get others to express their feeling as well?

Maybe it's because they're not very good at it.

It's generally assumed that women are more sensitive and more communicative of emotion than men, but could it be that the opposite is true, that men by and large are actually better at expressing their feeling than women? It could be. If something comes naturally to you, you don't tend to talk about; people only tend to talk at length about things that have some sort of uncertainty. There aren't many conversations about how the sky is up or how water is wet. Imagine this scenario: I walk in to my home. Aaron say, "Hey, how's it going?". I say "Meh, work sucked. I wish I didn't have to work.". To which Aaron replies "Yep. Not much you can do.". Sounds like a standard grunty male non-conversation, but we have just communicated effectively and efficiently our current emotional status, our attitudes toward work, our desires for a better world, and acknowledged that we understand and feel for each other. Not only have we made this communication happen, it happened without effort and in a matter of mere seconds, leaving us free to go scratch ourselves and lift heavy things and rehearse complicated handshakes. No obsessing over minutiae. No handholding and processing out loud. Just quickshot, meat n' potatoes, brain-to-brain data transfer. That's some pretty good communication skills.

Now I'm not saying this is true. I am no great fan of my own gender. I am however trying to knock down a prejudice. Prejudices keep us from thinking and, call me crazy, I think thinking is good for you. Perhaps women are better at communicating than men, or maybe men are better at it. Or perhaps, and I think this is more likely, we each have a different style of communication that should be honored and appreciated. The fact that humans communicate at all is pretty cool, doncha think? Hello? Is anybody understanding me?