The Register: “The poll revealed that women report experience fewer difficulties in their lives online than men do: for instance, 46 per cent of men vs. 38 per cent of women reported being infected with a computer virus, and 50 per cent of men complain of excessive spam, as compared to just 38 per cent of women.”
Category / Everyday World
You Can Justify Your Eating Disorder and Have Yourself Two to Three Extra Years Rotting Away in a Convalecent Home. Me? I’ll Enjoy My Damned Burger and Fries.
Wired: “Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge University gerontologist, recently wrote a paper concluding that CR [caloric restriction] is unlikely to add more than two or three years to the mean or maximum life span. De Grey said he is skeptical of CR’s potential for radical life extension in part because he sees no reason why it would be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective. “
An Open Letter to Fake Squealy Women
Dear Fake Squealy Women:
First off, allow me to distinguish between you and your counterparts: specifically, those genuinely squealy women or women with naturally adenoidal voices. I have no specific grievance towards this particular population cluster. Because they are, at least, authentic. Rather, my beef is with you.
Here’s the way it works: Every so often, as I listen or otherwise get my tongue tied up in knots over you, you open your mouth and begin to talk back, thus beginning an amicable colloquy. With most women, this is quite pleasant and intoxicating — particularly if you are smart, sexy and playful. But, with you, fake squealy women, what transpires during this rejoinder is something infinitely disheartening. You see, instead of responding with a natural voice, you decide to adopt a squealy and nasal air, as if the entire world has somehow transformed into helium and entered the confines of your skulls. There is a decided effort and highly noticable inflection in the words you speak. There is often fake laughter directed at statements we make that are not, in fact, jokes but sober ruminations that we are intending to share with you and feel you out on. Yet somehow you think that we have absconded with Oscar Wilde’s throne. What you put on here is clearly a performance. And yet you insist that this is the way you naturally talk. Little do you realize, fake squealy women, that despite being male and relatively clueless, we are not dumb. We do in fact talk with your friends and ferret out the truth.
Even in non-dating circumstances, fake squealy women, you still do this, particularly if you are employed in the public relations or human resources department. Why is this? Do you want to perpetuate this heinous gender divide? Do you want to sustain the atavistic notion that women are somehow dumber than men? Do you not realize how unbecoming and unattractive these faux oxygen-sapping vocal inflections are? Do you not realize, fake squealy women, that when you are over thirty and still doing this that you come across not as cute but sad?
My obsession with sex and the female anatomy is no less ineluctable, juvenile and boundless than that of my colleagues. Nevertheless, there is a clear line of demarcation between putting on a funny voice for a bit of adolescent fun and objectifying yourself by completely coming across as an idiotic airhead (when you are likely smarter). I’m hoping that I can appeal to all of you to stop this damn nonsense and speak with your genuine voices. When you have a conversation with a man longer than five minutes, I should point out that the man is not a policemen and this is not a speeding ticket that you are talking yourself out of.
Or perhaps, fake squealy women, you’re terrified of being yourself.
Very truly yours,
Edward Champion
If I Was a Girl Back in 1966, I’d Be Bad for Airline Hostess, Ballet Dancer, Model and Nurse
The Exciting Game of Career Girls (1966): “Speaking Clearly: Good for Actress and Teacher.”
And I should point out that this was less than forty years ago.
Escape from New York
She has worked at the Haight branch of Escape from New York Pizza for at least four years. So my best calculations dictate. I’ve seen her working there in some capacity since 2001. And frankly I’m a bit worried.
Escape from New York, if you don’t know San Francisco, is a two-branch outlet, specializing in pizza-by-the-slice. You’ll find one in the Haight and you’ll find one in the Castro. You can have yourself a slice of pizza as late as midnight — anything from a slice of pepperoni to the special potato slice. But this is not specifically “New York pizza” — rather, it is some approximation of the same, with considerably less tomato sauce. Walk inside an Escape from New York outlet and you’ll bear witness to pizza-themed records hanging on the walls, as well as autographed photos from the likes of Leonard Nimoy and Matt Groening. In short, the joint serves its purpose. But what makes the Haight street place curious to me is her.
You’ll find her on the evening shift — generally on Fridays and Saturdays. Her hair has been blonde, black and is now currently brown. I get the sense that most of her twenties have been spent at this place. And in the past year, she’s gained quite a bit of weight. I worry and I hope to hell she’s okay. In the past year, I have seen her mouth contort into a vacuous ellipitical shape every time she slides the spatula underneath a full disc of pizza, then transfering a slice of pizza into the oven, where the slice will stay for about 3-5 minutes, and then be transferred to the customer for swift and delectable consumption. I don’t know if this is a method of coping with such a mundane task or whether this is the inevitable conclusion. I don’t think that even a genius can truly intellectualize this pizza-warming process.
I have asked this young lady several times if she will talk with me outside work. She’s said no. I am careful to spell out to her that I am not a pervert or a maladjusted freak or someone looking for a date. Rather, I am curious. I will even confess that I’m a bit concerned. Every time I order a slice of pizza from her, her slipshod hair and her hangdog eyes resembles the telltale sign of one who has had too many hits of pot. Like many working in the service sector, she is going through the motions. One suspects she is trying to survive.
Is this pizza world all that she knows? And if so, how much am I responsible every time I order a slice of pizza?
Is this all she can ever know? Is this all she ever dares to know?
She can’t make much, which is why I always tip generously. But I wonder what keeps someone in a position in which they are clearly miserable. I wonder if there are sidelines, whether ephemeral or addictive I cannot say, that encourage her to remain in this position. I wonder what she’s truly capable of and what her true passions are. And I feel like a bit of a con. Because, after all, she will not speak with me and, even if she did, there is nothing I can say or do to steer her off the track. In short, there’s nothing to contribute.
And every time I order a slice of pizza from this place, I feel somehow as if I am committing my energies towards denying someone a moment. And yet I order the slice anyway, somehow corralling this concern with my hunger. I feel hypocritial. I feel helpless. And I feel irrelevant. I feel as if I somehow commiting all pockets of decency to her demise. Yet Escape from New York is not a Round Table. It’s an independent business. Can I justify this? Or am I just as hypocritical as the rest? Or has this pizza-slinger truly accepted this horrible fate?