Nice Guys Finish Last...

...But the really good ones finish at the same time as her.

This article, and mind you I have not read the book, seems strikingly similar to the arguments made by many a self-proclaimed "nice guy" that couldn't get a date. The article paints Dowd as a woman bitter by the fact that her intelligence and power seems to preclude her from the dating scene, and pretty much has given up on men as a whole, and from what I have read by and about Dowd before this, I'm inclined to pretty much agree with this sentiment. The problem I have with this is that this phenomena is totally marred by the self-diagnostic attitude that is growing out of this.

For example, as I may or may not have held this view of myself in the early years of high school, the term "Nice guys finish last" has always killed me. Why? Because I am a nice guy. I am a very nice guy. And I used to finish last, and it was very relieving to me to blame this stupid mantra as the cause. The problem, of course, was not that I was a nice guy and that meant girls didn't like me: the problem was girls didn't like me because I confused being nice with being a doormat. And just about every time that I hear a guy say that a girl dumped him or shot him down because "he was too nice", I want to retch. No, she didn't like you because you were spineless shell of a man who tried too hard to hold the woman up on a pedestal that was higher than yourself and that either turned her off or, worse yet, you convinced her that you were right and that she did in fact have no business being with a mopey turd like you. Of course, thanks to a little psychological phenomena known as the confirmation bias, these episodes just reinforced your belief that every woman hates a nice guy, even if that isn't true.

This would be like TO saying keeps getting into trouble because everyone on the 49ers and the Eagles didn't like him because he had too much talent, and not because he is a cock-gargling sociopath.

And the article seems to come across the same way for intelligent and powerful women. But it seems to me (at least on what I gleaned from the article), that there are probably a lot of intelligent and powerful women out there who base their identity on that power and intelligence. Hell, a lot of men do that too. In fact, most people who make it to those levels of success need to do so as a way to get there, male or female. The problem is not that men don't like you because you are intelligent and powerful, but because you think of yourselves that way which makes you constanly have to assert yourselves as such, which is a terrible and pretty much insufferable quality to have in general, but especially early on in the courting process. Of course, when things don't work out, it isn't that your Type A personality is a particularly high maintenance attribute that is likely going to put most potential mates off (especially those that have the same ones, just like everyone else that exists in your social sphere), it's because men fear your power. Yeah, that makes sense: hundreds of men have all run screaming from you and would rather wash their nuts in battery acid than speak to you again because they fear your intelligence, not because you are a self-centered and overly-driven asshole.

But hey, if you really do want a man that attends to your every needs and will never run screaming from you no matter how much abuse you dole out, I've got a bunch of "nice guys" sitting around that would be perfect for you.

Craptacular

1. Yeah, this certainly fits with the motiff of the season: every player other than Brady that the Pats can't afford to lose goes down. Seriously, if I made a list of players last February that were most important to the success of the Pats, it probably would have gone:
1) Brady
2) Harrison
3) Dillon
4) Bruschi
5) Matt Light
6) Richard Seymour
7) Dan Koppen
8) Deion Branch
9) Vinatieri
10) Dan Graham

Well, I guess two out of ten healthy aint bad.

2. Wait, yes it is. That sucks. Meh.

3. There is no truth to the rumor that, when A-Rod found out that he won the AL MVP award, he promptly tensed up and went 0 for 20.

4. Sleep now.

Close but no cigar

Okay, so maybe it wasn't a concussion like I said, but I was still pretty damn close. It begs the question, why wasn't he watching the play?

Time marches on...

1. It's sad that I got excited chills when I read this: "I think the Patriots won a road division game without their starting running back, tight end, left tackle, right tackle, strong safety, right corner and one starting receiver. That's pretty good, I would say. Real good."-Peter King

2. The Pats game was pretty unspectacular this Sunday, for as exciting as it should have been. The game reminded me a lot of the Buffalo game earlier in the year. But hey, a win is a win, and the Pats bought themselves another day in first place. I'll take it. My hanging on hope for the season follows the script of: win the attrociously bad AFC east, thus garaunteeing a home playoff game as the 3rd or 4th seed. Have everone back healthy for a week 17 tune-up so they can get back into form. With most guys back from their injuries, absolutely destroy the wild-card in the cold winds of the Razor. Build off that moment and blaze through the second round opponent, then utterly destroy and humiliate the Colts in their own dome (see 2003 regular season) to get back to the superbowl. Wallop whomever is unfortunate enough to have won the NFC, cement Bill & Tom's places in the hall of fame, restore order to the NFL, people rejoice in the streets, and... Oops, I think I need to change pants.

3. Hell of a weekend. Long time since I had last hung out with The Friendly Redistricted ColOmbian, Haverhill Lopez, Joe D Profanity, The Buffalo Beauty, Peter Donovan, The Lynchpin, and Bill Yettobenicknamed, and it was fun to see everyone together back at our renovated stomping grounds. Unfortunately, the night out of drinking has excacerbated an already brutal headcold and case of swimmer's ear, so I look and feel my best today. Plus, I'm once again broke, this time because I am an idiot and for some reason paid a bill twice. Oh, shudder. But regardless, it was a nice weekend, and fun to see the Rhode Island and Maryland refugees, and once again bust out the worm on a dancefloor coated with what I only hope was beer.

4. Please note, I never want to make up that many nicknames in such a short time again.

5. I'm guessing that the attendance of my three classes today was roughly 35% occupancy, of which maybe half were on time. I guess my nice pants and shoes don't command the same respect they did at the beginning of the semester.

I am never moving to Kansas...

And I quote:
"It gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today," said board member John Bacon, an Olathe Republican.

You know, John, I would totally agree with you if you replaced "gets rid of a lot" with "injects a whole fuckload". There is no truth to the rumor that, after making this comment, he then screamed, "Yeeeeeeeee-haaaaaaaawwww!!!" and started firing his guns in the air.

Fucking Creationists. There isn't enough ass in the world for them choke on.

However, I think I finally have a solution. I am proposing a law that requires everyone who believes in Intelligent "Don't call it Creationism when someone who doesn't believe in it is within earshot" Design and has a wife that is missing fewer than 4 teeth and doesn't break the 200 pound mark will be required to have sex with me until we create a spawn (note: the wife, not the believer). We'll breed out this fuckers and they won't even know it, because they don't believe in genetics, lineage, and selective breeding. Call it McGuffinetics. Now, granted, the amount of time and... resources... I will have to devote to this movement will most likely be rather taxing, but that is a sacrifice I am prepared to make for the common good. No need to thank me, I feel it is my duty as a smart person.

Screw the Colts, Screw Duane Starks, and screw... well, I guess that's it.

1) The Resident Female and I learned about our current building from a friend from her old job who moved in her with her husband. They both met at Harvard, and have formed a fantastic unit of a hopelessly romantic, naive idealist and a lawyer. Further, this building in which the four of us live happens to be rather close to a bar that runs a quizzo competition. As such, I am proposing this thusly: the Resident Female and I, two graduates from the Practical Ivy, should bond with two graduates from the Ethereal Ivy, and create dare-I-say the greatest Quizzo team in the history of man. This is my new goal in life. Now if it were only 2000 and I could use the greatest group name ever, "Your mom is a pregnant chad", we would be all set. I guess we have to settle for the old standard, "These girls could suck a New York City cab driver through immigration".

2) Um, yeah, that game sucked. Personally, I think Peyton Manning should be punched in the balls for going for two, but whatever, I guess he deserves the satisfaction for one night after the horrors he has endured during his time in the league against the Pats. Now he can sleep easy, knowing that history will not repeat itself, as something novel and new will happen for the first time in history: the Patriots will win the Super Bowl for the first time without beating Colts twice in their victorious season. Ah, well, I guess just beating them once in the playoffs, at their own house no less, will still have to satisfy me, but it's the end of an era. I guess we can only kick their butts half the time now...

3) Book keeping note: since I am getting a ridiculous amount of spam postings, mostly on older posts, I've decided to enable a word verification setting to be able to post on the weblog. I don't want to have to get to the stage where I have to actually approve or deny specific comments individually, so we'll see how well this works, and hopefully it is good enough to stop "musica" and the dozen or so other bots that think I need 30 or 40 comments per post pointing people to erectile dysfunction websites. Isn't the internet great?

4) I wanted to do a longer post tonight, but unfortunately the Resident Female has started doing a kick-boxing workout video, and I am not able to remotely concentrate. I need to start teasing her.

Evolution makes baby Jesus cry

1) And the band played on... Why have we as a country become so hostile to the idea that ideologies are not sacrosanct and scientific progress is not destrucitive? Stories like this make me wonder if the US will split down the middle, with Rome, NY being one capital and Instanbul, Texas the other.

2) I know it is like shooting fish in a pile full of fish, but I thoroughly enjoyed the arguments I raised with the two PETA protesters today, and the two prototypical arguees that I talked with. The first one was of the, "Yeah, man, I agree with you, but what are you going to do?" mold, where whatever I said anything that was critical of PETA as an organization he sympathized with (which begs the question why he was involved with them). The second guy (the first's reinforcements) was the blatantly hostile and angry type that wouldn't listen to me counterarguments. For example, the following exchange occurred:

"Aren't your shoes leather?"
"Actually, their synthetic leather."
"But doesn't that just propogate the fashion trend that leather should be worn?"
"NO! Not at all! Geez!"

People like these are the ones that have put off all the people in that CNN article above.

3) Personally, I think Theo left at the right time for himself. Theo could have been great; he could have stayed the course, got better, rehabillitated the farm system and notched a few more world series trophy along the way. Then again, he could have fallen flat, or stagnated, or had any of a hundred things go wrong, only tarnishing his reputation. Yet he walked away, and is foregoing a potentially legendary career; instead, his reign will be a mythic one, told for generation in Boston, about how the boy wonder came into a franchise that was the model of anguish, and within months turned it into a 3-time playoff contender, twice being arguably the best team in the league, and bring a trophy to the town for the first time in decades. Sure, the whole leaving situation is pretty messed up and somewhat disheartening, but let's just say the man knows how to make an exit. Oh, and screw Dan Shaugnessy.

4) I was pleased by the results of the Sunday night's contest, but I am still a bit worried about the Pats. Of course, I am more worried about ESPN, who twice were talking over the plays when there were turnovers. That announcing team just has a way of picking the wrong time to do anything, most notably of which is speak. That team is coming desperately close to shooting blood out of my ears every time every week. Then again, we can't fire them, as ESPN would probably replace them with a crew of Stuart Scott, Gilbert Godfriend, and the Vietnamese townswoman that Tom Berenger shoots in the head.

5) Okay, did anybody get the reference to the Roman Empire in point # 1? Anyone at all? Fuck it, I don't care and I hate all of you.