Milestones! And a Brief(ish) Response to a Yahoo Dating Article

First milestones. Over the last couple days my ramblingsofacinephile hit over 1000 views (1034 as of this writing) and I'm kinda excited. or really excited. Probably that second one. And what means even more to me is that since June 27 there has not been a SINGLE day that this blog has gone without a view. That's amazing to me. Anyway thank you guys so much for all your views and for reading these things. I hope you enjoy reading my posts as much as I do writing them.
Also I have several side projects I've started working on so the amount of times I ramble on this site will drop, but fear not, I am still posting here, just less often. I will also be announcing those projects here when it gets a little closer to their release.
And now for the rebuttal.
A couple weeks ago I saw this article about what guys find unattractive in women on yahoo. Now I always find these kinds of things funny because they assume that all guys are the same. And as a result we all want the same thing in a girl. Which of course means all girls should act the same way. And since that is ridiculous, I thought I'd point out which of these seven points I agree with and which one's I think are just utterly idiotic. (Also I'm adding pictures of each thing so as to help illustrate each point).

1. Being too drunk

Ok this one is definitely true. Good start yahoo. Yep girls who get disgustingly drunk, you know, throwing up all over the place and stumbling over their words while trying to tell their friends that they used to be the wild ones are...well disgusting. However, I'd like to point out yahoo, that this is universally true for all sexes (and probably species). I submit into evidence Exhibit A:

Case and point.

2. Talking about bodily functions:

I realize that picture has nothing to do with women talking about their bodily functions, but it's funny, I like Harry Potter, and I'm writing this post so pipe down. Anyway, the article claims that guys as a collective don't like for women to talk about their periods, about which he'll get little argument from me. Periods are gross. However, he also goes on to say that if women mention they have to poo or "tinkle" as the professional writer calls it, then that too makes our sex organs crawl into our body. Now as for me, while I don't think it is necessarily attractive, guys talk about poo and pee as well and so we are perfectly capable of understanding that women may also talk about that. I don't expect women to never poo. If a woman never poos I'd be concerned as to the horribly painful constipation she must be having. Knowing women have bodily functions is not unattractive. If a guy doesn't go running for the hills after one of you girls says "I need to poo," it doesn't mean he's weird. It means he's an adult.

3. Excessive Body Hair

Ok so I imagine this one is a personal preference and it's time for me admit something. Not a wookiee fetish - although if that's your thing watch Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus - but that guys (at least I as a guy) am attracted to certain physical qualities of women, such as fitness level, breast size, hair color, eye color, face shape, smell, etc as well as personality, intelligence, and confidence. Just like no matter how many articles tell you girls like guys based on their personality, Channing Tatum will always be considered more attractive than John Goodman. So anyway in conclusion, I don't like lots of body hair, but I'm sure there are guys out there who do.

4. Too Much Makeup

This one I agree with. Ok girls. I like you when you look like you. If you want to put on makeup to make yourself happy, then go for it. But I, like Colin, prefer it when a woman just lets me see what her face looks like. When a women is herself, both physically and personalitally (which I understand is not a word but for the purposes of symmetry I used anyway), she is far more attractive than if she makes herself look like she is always blushing. Cause that's weird. But again this comes down to personal preference. Some guys like makeup. Some guys don't.

5. Belittling Us

Don't make us feel like Bryan Cranston

This is another one I agree with, but I think limiting it to women is extremely sexist.  We, as humans, don't like to be told we're less than. That's why if you go to any facebook profile and correct one of the million people who type 'there' instead of 'they're' you will get lynched by ten or twenty people. People prefer to be built up, told that they are doing well and maybe being told the ways they can improve themselves. So the same goes for men, it sucks when someone belittles someone else. Don't do it. Make other people feel awesome.

Unless you're making us feel like this Bryan Crantson:
bad ass even when not wearing pants

6. Swearing

1:17 seconds into that trailer is the scene where Justin Timberlake tells Mila Kunis she is uncomfortable with swearing and she proceeds to try to prove him wrong. It's adorable. There is nothing wrong with swearing. Swears are words. Just more powerful words. And girls, any guy who doesn't want you to swear, but swears himself, probably doesn't like you swearing because he feels that is a sort of verbal area women should not be allowed to access. Which is sexist. Swearing can be attractive and it can be unattractive depending how it is used. I personally find it to be attractive because it means the woman is comfortable enough with being herself to show me that side of her. It's the same thing with bodily functions. Women, like men, are people. And as a result I find it more attractive when that is the way you act. Like you.

7. Nagging

I also agree with this point, but just as is the case with belittling us, nagging is universally annoying, not just to men. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a task to do will become bitter if reminded to do it over and over and over again. Here's why it's annoying. See that picture up there? The way that guys is just looking off into the distance probably thinking about whether he wants KFC or Popeye's for dinner (he wants Popeye's, who wouldn't?)? He is not even listening to her, because he has already logged away the task she's nagging him about as something that must be done. Thus, constantly reminding him of it will drive him crazy. But this is true for everyone. Any person who is the target of nagging will not appreciate said nagging. So in conclusion, don't nag, gently remind once or twice. We'll get to it eventually.

Conclusion Part 1

Women, men are not all the same. I find different things attractive and unattractive in women than the writer of this article. As a result, there is no single archetypal woman that all men think is amazing and thus a single archetypal way to behave in order to attract a man. We're all different, so we like different things. So if you want to attract a specific man, find what he thinks is attractive.

Conclusion Part 2

Don't do that. Don't mold yourself into what you think a guy wants you to be. Chances are we'll find you far more attractive if you just be yourself anyway. And even if that guy you like doesn't find you attractive because of your swearing or your body hair (within reason I mean hygiene is important), then his loss. Move on. Eventually you'll find someone who does. Behave the way you want to behave and eventually you'll find someone who likes you for that exact reason. Unless you want to be an axe-murderer. Don't do that.

So do you agree? Disagree? Have more stuff you want to add? Just ate a delicious sandwich and want to share the recipe? Please say so in the comments.

The Source of Great Human Cities

Have you ever been somewhere – visited a city you’d never been to, stayed the night in a little town on the way to your ultimate destination, or even just seen a picture of a place you want to go to and immediately fallen in love with it – just knew you belonged to that place and that place belonged to you in a sort of symbiotic relationship that makes even the deepest of love stories seem tame by comparison?

Me neither.

I’ve always wanted it to happen. I have this romanticized idea that one day I’ll just up and leave Irvine and move to some wonderful city whose culture will compliment my personality perfectly and inspire me to write some great American classic like The Great Gatsby, The Godfather, or Ferris Beuler’s Day Off. I want there to be this perfect place, a place meant for me, like my soul-mate, but a city. And I always expect it to be somewhere else. New York, San Francisco, London, Amsterdam, Venice, Hamburg. Cause each of those places has this legendary charm. Your great people come from great cities. Or at least get there eventually.

But I live in Sunny Southern California; I’ve been to Manhattan; I stayed for a week in Connecticut; I drove all the way across the country, from Ukiah, CA to Orlando, FL, seeing amazing cities like San Antonio and New Orleans; I’ve walked the streets of Seattle at one in the morning. I’ve been to all four corners of the country and most places in between and the closest I got to falling in love with a city was when I was stranded for three days in Mississippi. After we left New Orleans it was getting dark and as we hit the Louisiana-Mississippi border it started raining. And after about five more minutes driving in Mississippi it started pouring. Well, pouring actually isn’t the best word for it. Torrential-downpour-of-some-domestic-animal-way-larger-than-cats-or-dogs is much more accurate terminology for this particular storm. Anyway, we were driving through this storm when we realized we needed gas so we pulled of the freeway. And my friend who was driving, who I shall not name, but you know who you are, took the off ramp at a speed that was entirely unnecessarily fast and then, as the inevitable stop sign suddenly leapt into sight, he slammed on his break in a puddle whose depth must have rivaled that of some man-made lakes. We lost traction, spun out, hit a curb, and a wheel broke off the car – OFF the car.

We waited for hours for a tow truck driver, who arrived at the same time as a cop. Now we hadn’t been drinking or anything, but we were all young, clearly from out of state, my other friend (whom you can see peeing in a cave here) was vomiting all over the side of the road as a result of sucking some bug poison off his fingers in an attempt to cleanse them of some post-car crash Pringles dust, and our car was lying in a ditch on the side of the road, and so I definitely expected a breathalyzer test or something for all of us, never mind who was driving. Nothing. The cop didn’t even ask. Not if we were drinking, not to see our licenses. Nothing. All he, the tow truck driver, and a hundred people who drove past our wrecked vehicle while we were waiting for the tow truck driver, did was ask if we needed help. Throughout our entire three day stretch in Mississippi, which was not a particularly attractive place (old run down buildings, air so humid a landshark was not just a horrible, impossible nightmare, but something that was in all likelihood possible, and just ridiculously hot) every single person we met was friendly to us. It was as if they actually trusted us. And the environment was amazing. We spent hours and hours just sitting at the mechanic’s shop chatting with the secretary. Random people who worked there offered to go out of their way to drive us to our hotel. We were treated like we were fellow people. Not some sort of foreign entity that is not to be trusted, as I found was the case in nearly every other city I’ve been to, with the single exception of the small town I grew up in. What made Biloxi, Mississippi bearable, and indeed enjoyable, was not some artistic culture that encouraged me to create, but just people treating other people like people.

 In Irvine, which must be the most unoriginal, least creative place I’ve ever been, I have been far more productive as a writer than I have ever been previous, due to the people around me who enjoy my writing and online communities like Nerdfighteria that encourage me to think and try and improve our world through that thinking. And while I absolutely hate Irvine for its architecture, city planning, culture, and corporatization, I think the reason that I dislike Irvine most is because people are afraid of each other here. We don’t talk to strangers here. We don’t help other people here. And I’m part of the problem because I don’t actively fight against it. Louis C.K. pointed it out best I think in his show Louie in regard to his friend’s cousin asking a homeless person if he needed help with the comment “No, no, he needs you desperately, that’s not the point. We just don’t do that here.”

I believe that the ‘city soul-mate’ doesn’t exist. Cities aren’t great because they’re inherently great. Cities are great because people allow them to be great. The best place I’ve ever been was just that because the people there treated everyone else like people. If we can begin to treat each other like we are all the same. Like we all have the same problems, think the same thoughts, and are just as human as the indeterminate “they” are, then I think we can make any city great. It’s not about finding places that foster a loving environment; it’s about creating that environment ourselves. My friend Alliey described this phenomenon as “we are all alone together.”

In conclusion, though I desperately hope I get out of Irvine after college cause I hate it for more reasons than the one I have just discussed pretty thoroughly, I don’t believe I will ever just find a place that will make me happy, cause places don’t make people happy. People make people happy. And I think we can move onto a world where everyone feels as welcome as they do in Biloxi, Mississippi if we just remember that everyone else is just like us: looking for a place where they are accepted for who they are and for someone who will love them just because they simply are. 

A (Hopefully) Thoughtful Response to Angry Atheists

So I recently was perusing facebook, cause it’s summer and I don’t really have anything to do, and while I was on facebook I saw a post that made me an odd mixture of angry, sad, and aroused (Not sexually! My gosh, in like an ‘I want to do something about that’ kind of way - you people and your sexual deviancies.) Anyway the post was one of those really long essay posts entitled Why Atheists are Angry. Rather than directly quoting it or screen capping it, I’ll just summarize in order to save space. The essay-post lists several really tragic occurrences, such as the pregnancy of a young girl due to her father’s sexual abuse (and the church’s subsequent excommunication of her due to her abortion of the child, even though she would have likely died had she gone through with the birth), the Catholic Church’s money laundering, the criminalization of atheism in foreign countries, the one that makes me the saddest: the persecution of a girl trying to separate church and state by a group of children and adults who call themselves Christians, as well as many others.

The reason I had such a strong emotional reaction to this particular post wasn’t because it demonized Christians, because far too often those who call themselves followers of Christ have earned their own demonization. No I was so profoundly affected by this tirade because it missed the major problem consistent throughout these issues: the fault of man. All of the problems listed in the essay-post are absolutely tragic. And they make me angry too. However, this is not an issue inherent in the religion itself, just like how terrorism is not a problem inherent in Islam and immorality is not a problem inherent in atheists and agnostics. The problem here stems from a human tendency to value rules and preconceived definitions as a constant more than we do the situation or the person rules are meant to protect. This is a tendency known as legalism. It is why certain laws persist even though they’re silly and it is why often times conservative Christians are cold and careless. It is horrible and it assumes that everyone can live a perfect life, even though no evidence has ever existed that suggests humans can live mistakeless lives. I do not defend what these people do and in fact condemn them just as much as the person who posted the essay-post.

However, to blame such problems on religion excuses them as results of religion exclusively and not on human fault. These problems stem from a human failure to be consistently compassionate to those who need it. And the only way to improve such a failure is to make the decision yourself to stop. To stand up for what is right and work towards a better world. To suggest that horrible travesties such as these, which are admittedly performed in the name of religion, are caused by religion supposes two things detrimental to the improvement of our world. The first supposition is that without religion these things would not happen. This shows a fundamental lack of knowledge as to the horrible things that have been done in the name of things completely separate from religion, such as greed (which though often experienced by religious people is not a requirement for religion, see Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc). If it were not for our human penchant for greed we wouldn’t even be in the war in which we are currently participating. The second supposition is that all religious people perform these atrocities or ignore them happening. There have been a number of religious people have done very little other than improve this world, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa to name just a couple. Many effective charities, such as Jewish World Watch and Islamic Relief, were founded by religious people or operate based on religious beliefs.

In conclusion my point with this post isn’t to defend religious people over nonreligious people. But just to warn that blaming religion for many of the atrocities committed across the world is missing the problem. The problem isn’t in religion. It’s in us. And the only way it can be stopped is if those of us who see these atrocities and get angry actual do something about it. Improving our world isn’t dependent on abolishing belief systems that have both guided people towards evil acts and towards good acts, but in we as humans fighting these atrocities and actual focusing on something greater than ourselves. Think about it. 

Do you agree? Disagree? Have questions? Tell me or ask them in the comments!

(Oh yeah and by the far less solemn way, I wrote a review of The Five Year Engagement for SidewalkOnline Magazine right here)

Adsense: Please Don't Cheat.

Hey guys! So it's been almost a week since I posted; sorry for the lack of content I swear I will post something in the next couple days after I write my review of The Five Year Engagement for SidewalkOnline Magazine. I haven't decided what on yet. Maybe I will tell you about the breast Leprechaun or maybe write a horribly defamatory story about my neighbors. I don't know. We'll see. It'll probably be a thoughts from places sort of thing though since I just checked out an exhibit on Cleopatra at the California Science Center. (Nerdfighter girl I ran into there, if you ever read this it was nice seeing seeing you repping the pizza John shirt and don't forget to be awesome.) and it was kinda inspirational as to the effects of an individual and the secrecy of the past.
But I digress.
The real point I'm writing this almost-diary-entry-like post today is because I have had a recent influx of ad clicks and I would like to both thank you for your patronage and ask a favor of you. First the gratitude. Thank you guys for clicking on the ads it means a lot to me that you are even reading my blog and by looking at that stuff your are helping me support myself through my writing and that means quite a bit to me. However, the pattern of the clicks have been somewhat suspicious so I would like to make something clear, if you click on ads I need you to make sure to only click on ads that legitimately interest you. I promise nothing weird will ever pop up from any of the advertisements and I made sure to block silly stuff like dating ads, mostly cause that's not really the content I want people to associate my blog with. (with which I want people to be associating my blog! Jeez Scott, get it together.) Anyway, google thinks that oddly patterned clicks are not really clicks, rather just me scamming them out of money so I urge you: if you find the ad legitimately interesting, click on it. If not, don't. I don't write these posts for money, I do them for fun so don't worry about ads that don't seem interesting to you.
Also! I would really like to start hearing back from my readers so if you guys could start following me through google reader

There should be a link right over there

and commenting on my posts with your thoughts, what else you'd like to see from my blog, or what you ate for lunch it would be much appreciated. And I will reply to all of your comments. ALL OF THEM. So yeah, sorry for the kinda boring post, if you would like to see something more interesting you can check out a better adsense rant here. Or enjoy this video (which I believe I have posted before) of a manatee running into some glass: