Reason #144: What’s In A (Middle) Name
Growing up, the middle name used to be something of a feared thing. It only came out when you were in the deepest of troubles, and the worst of yourself. But something has happened recently, and it appalls me. It has suddenly become in vogue for girls to refer to themselves by their first and middle names. Gone is the surname. Maybe it’s a guise to be more of an “individual”, and denouncing your heritage, but it’s just something silly and dumb that girls have taken a shine to. I may just be bitter because I don’t have a middle name, but I’m pretty sure this is a ridiculous thing to do these days. I’ve talked to a few girls and they have the gall to try and tell me that it is “more representative of who I am”. That, my dears, is a load of shit. Your excessive need to express your independence and individuality has resulted in, what else, but a dumb fad that just makes you one of the crowd. I’m sure all of you are the ones that started it, and the others are just copying you, but that isn’t much of an accomplishment. Getting rid of your last name in Facebook isn’t reinventing the wheel, it’s just getting to the radius.
Reason #142: New Years Eve
New Years Eve is the epitome of over romanticized holiday.
The kiss at midnight.
The champagne.
The resolutions.
The stolen moments and tension and anxiety about what the next year will bring.
I’ll tell you what the new year will bring: More of the same. You’ll break your resolutions, you’ll have some great memories, and some even more heartbreaking ones. You’ll live your life a little older, a little wiser, and you’ll fall into old habits and familiar failings. To me, New Years Eve is just like Cinco de Mayo, your birthday, and Arbor Day…especially Arbor Day- an excuse to get drunk on a Thursday. So enjoy it people: just heed my warning don’t drink and new years eve kiss. You might wind up ringing in the new year with a girl you wouldn’t normally want to…despite how bubbly you feel.
Reason #141: Hindsight
Hindsight may be 20-20, but it’s a bitch. You can say all you want, but there is always the girl you wish you didn’t spend so much time in love with, the girl you wish you could have dated but didn’t, the girl you could have slept with, the girl who you should have asked out. Plain and simple your world is full of regrets, what ifs, and wish I didn’ts. You can fill your neurotic little head, (if you are anything like me), with all types of hypotheticals.
Reason #140: Rebounds
Rebounds serve an important person in life. They are about not letting life get you down, even if you miss the mark. But most importantly getting back on the horse. Of course, in this case the horse refers to women. And, no I am not advocating getting on top of, below, or anywhere near girls that remotely resemble equines. I don’t think rebounds aren’t an important part of any relationship (or more accurately post-relationship), but let’s be honest with ourselves in the fact that the people we rebound with aren’t exactly good decisions. Here are a couple classic rebound scenarios.
The Revenge Fuck
Any time you start dating somebody, there will be certain people of the opposite sex that will just bug the bejesus out of your significant other. Either you are a little too friendly with your female friend, too friendly with her female friend, or she’s irrationally jealous of a coworer or a girl she knows wants to sleep with you. Whatever the case may be, there is going to be the female that if you slept with, your ex would murder you. This extends to any of her friends, family, roommates, coworkers, etc. Basically the revenge fuck isn’t about the girl you are sleeping with, it’s about the fact that it will piss off your ex.
The Sure Thing
Another potential rebound is a female that is significantly slutty, or just somebody you know you can easily get. Why haven’t you gone for these girls in the past you might ask? Because sure things are boring, and we all love a challenge. But, more importantly than that, it is because we really don’t like these girls enough to give them prime relationship consideration. They are the B squad. Understudies that we relegate to special teams. Drunken mistakes, self loathing, and the rebound.
The Stranger
The next girl you meet after the breakup that you designate to be the rebound is automatically going to be a minor player in your life. You aren’t over your ex yet, but you enter into this relationship that is doomed from the start because it becomes about proving lying to yourself that you are strong enough, and over it enough, to move on. Of course you aren’t, so you are setting yourself up for a short lived failure.
Yes, rebounds are great and fun, but they are ultimately more about yourself, and your ex, than the rebound girl. There is a reason that we constantly avoid trying to be the “rebound guy/girl” because you know you are fighting a battle you can’t win. Just because you didn’t hit a goal with the first shot, the rebound doesn’t entirely make up for it.
Reason #139: The Fake Emergency Call
I know this isn’t exactly gender exclusive but I’m pretty sure women started it, and have perfected it throughout history.
Example 1: Eve
Whilst bickering with Adam over her eating of the apple and damning all man kind, God “just happens” to show up and banish her from Eden. C’mon he just decided that was a good time to commence the banishment. They were in cahoots, God was just trying to get her out of that jam.
Example 2: Harriet Tubman
Do you really expect me to believe this was just about slavery. She was using songs, telegraphs, and the like to get the heck out of there. Escaping the south? More like escaping all the lame southern dudes.
Example 3: Jackie O
Oh yeah, I’m saying it. Jackie O was behind the whole thing. Jack Ruby? Lee Harvey Oswald? C’mon conspiracy theorists…aim a little higher. Jackie O was the mastermind behind that one. And why shouldn’t she be? Her husband was a hot shot playboy AND president to boot. He could have Marilyn or any other lady he wanted…does this a good husband make? And we’ve all learned how tough and frowned upon divorce was back in those days (thank you Mad Men). Sure, she’s a national treasure, but part of that is her bravery and spirit in the face of her husband’s death. That was the ultimate excuse for her to get any situation, all she had to do is act choked up, she didn’t even have to say, “Oh I’m sorry, my husband was shot…” Because everybody already knew where they were when this happened and she had all of our sympathies.
Reason #138: The Dumb Things They Say
You can’t help but fall victim to slang in your life. Phrases that come shooting into the vernacular and within five minutes are already passe, we’re constantly looking for the new, fresh way to sound hip & cool. Personally, I’m very jive so these phrases tend to bug the bejesus out of me. Back in the 90s we were treated to many million mini Alicia Silverstones. Years later, girls still refer to Clueless as a “classic”, but you don’t hear “As if” at all anymore.
The latest offender is something that grates at my soul and is worse than nails on a chalkboard to me.
Obvi
Now there are plenty of other offenders but, obvi just annoys me to no end. Apparently in this text,blog, twit-a-minute world we live in we don’t have the time for “ously”. Probs and the like also bug me, but there is something so immature, so childish….and not like high-school childish, not even jr high school childish, I’m talking middle-school childish… about this. It reeks of the obnoxiousness of tween girls and Miley Cyrus. To me obvi is so obno annoy.
Reason #137: Revisionist History
Hindsight is never remotely 20-20, I don’t care what people tell you. Our biases and time are the strongest things working against our memories. I can’t tell you how many times a friend of mine is convinced something happened that never did.
Mis-remembering your ex can go a number of ways. Firstly, much like an a battered wife, you can convince yourself that you two weren’t that bad together. The next heartbreak always makes the ones you’re over pale in comparison. You tend to build your ex back in your mind, you start to wonder, I don’t get why it didn’t work with us. Sure, you had some rough patches but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the psycho you just got rid of. Right? Wrong.
The other way this could go is that due to guilt, remorse, stubborn pride, or any other reason, you are convinced your ex is the devil, or at least on the devil’s payroll. You could have wronged them, and been the horrible party in the relationship, but it doesn’t matter, you shun them. You don’t talk to them. It isn’t fair, or remotely logical, but you convince yourself that that psychopath was everything that was ever wrong in your life during that relationship.
Reason #136: They Praise Sex & The City
I have been forced to watch entirely too many episodes of Sex & The City over the years. Yeah, a relationship is give and take lots of time. You give them twenty two minutes of biting your tongue, they might give you 22 minutes of biting things of yours, or using their tongue.
We’ve all been there guys, and I’m fine shutting up for half an hour watching Kim Cattrall act like a complete whore under the guise of “sexual empowerment”, but when you ladies claim that is such an amazing show. What gets me even more is when they start to tell me that the writing is amazing.
I have watched countless hours of television. Old sitcoms, cartoons, dramas, cable series, procedurals, teen soaps, shitty sitcoms, everything. I am an aspiring television writer, and I can not remotely understand the praise this show gets.
Yes, it was one of the first shows on HBO to really jive with a mass audience. Yes, it’s the reason the cosmo is a popular drink now. Yes, it was a pop culture phenom, but it is something that is almost already dated.
TBS and other syndication have given Sex & The City a second life. I find it funny that a whole new generation is discovering this show…an older generation. The censored down episodes have become a hit with housewives and older ladies. This is a show that was aimed at a generally 20-something audience of women. This was the 90s, and under the guise of feminism, these women were gonna go out and talk about all the crappy men they encounter.
But who in this show is a good character. You’ve got a bitchy workaholic, a whiney WASP, a wishy-washy horse-faced SJP, and Kim Cattrall. Anything Kim Cattrall says on the show is an entirely too forward comment about sex. It lacks subtlty, it lacks nuiance.
Yeah girls, we get it that you’ve all had shitty dates and bad relationships. And you want to put on pretty shoes and dance at the clubs and hang out with your gals…but this show is not the be all/end all, amazing show that speaks to your soul for the rest of your life…it’s a guilty pleasure. It’s escapist fun, not the most gratifying show you’ll ever encounter.
Reason #135: Girls Named Megan
I really don’t have much elabortion for this one, but I’m pretty sure girls named Megan (not Meghan, Meagan, Megann, Meahgan, Mehgean, Meaghan…. or any variation there of) are evil and secretly demons sent to this Earth to rip out souls.
Reason #134: Burn Out
One of the oldest metaphor’s for relationships, love & lust, is the idea that there is flame. Passion is represented with this idea that there is this burning flame for someone, or something. So the new relationship is pretty much a burning match. That first encounter that sparks the feelings in you, and before you know it the oxygen is sucked away by the flame. You can’t think rationally, you can’t breathe..you are consumed in the fire. For a while there everything in your life is secondary. There is no escaping it, you are trapped. The two of you will constantly want to see you on more-than-normal bases. It’s great and wonderful and magical.
But then you burn out.
You kind of get sick of the person and you want your space. This is why it is best to kind of give yourself a little breathing room in the beginning of the relationship. You want the flame to last for as long as possible. You don’t want to end the honeymoon phase and be over the person in two weeks. I’ve been there. These girls are the ones I forget exist a year or two later. Their names evoke an “oh yeah, I remember her”. Giving each other space and room to breathe at the beginning of the relationship is best. However, if you are destined to burn out and finish, you are only prolonging it. It’s a mixed bag really. You never know how long these things will last, but when they finally do burn out, you get to find your next ignition
Reason #133: Dead Butterflies
I think one of the awesomest feelings in the world is that sensation you used to get when you were in grade school. When the girl you liked grabbed your hand out of nowhere for the first time and you lost all ability to think. You get the funny feeling, the butterflies in the stomach. It’s new. It’s exciting. It’s the pinnacle of happiness and the onset of neurosis. I don’t have fond memories of my first kiss, my first date, or my first time, but I have a fondness for the butterflies. Clouded heads and a nauseous, a good nauseous feeling.
I think as you get older the butterflies are more elusive. It’s harder to get that feeling back. That stuff isn’t new to you anymore. Even more so, you’ve been on good dates before. It’s just a matter of wading through the trenches. Sure you can like a girl, and enjoy everything you do together, but those knock-out kisses and moments where you just can not think, are not always going to happen. Maybe it’s a lack of being able to get out of my head, but when I find a girl that can actually take me out of it, I find it that much more spectacular.
Reason #132: Lipstick Parties
For those not in the know, lipstick parties are allegedly when a bunch of grade schoolers have a party and each girl wears a different color lipstick. And each pre-pubescent boy at the party tries to see how many different shades of the rainbow can be adorned on his 8th grade boner. It sounds like good clean, American fun right?
I know what you are thinking. How on God’s green earth can I sit here and turn the idea of a lipstick party and complain about it. I’ll tell you exactly how: it’s an urban legend. Lipstick parties are less likely to happen then breaking down in the middle of nowhere and encountering a guy with a hook hand. You are more likely to get spooky calls coming from inside the house. And it pisses me off that this bogus story has been spread.
Now, I can completely understand why the rumor has been spread: twelve year old girls these days are way sluttier than when I was twelve. I’m 25, and I’m spouting off a back in my day, but it’s true. Girl’s were not remotely as slutty back in my day. I’m pretty sure if the idea of a lipstick party was floated around it would do wonders for my juvinile sexual promiscuity. By putting the idea into a wide-spread rumor, parents took arm. But kids…kids are impressionable, and easily coherceable. They want to grow up quicker than they should , and they want to do whatever it takes. Peer pressure is a time tested way to get a kid to do something. So, if a kid was unusually crafty, and aware of the stories…he might formulate a grand plan to get one of these into action. Unfortunately, I don’t buy that any grade schooler is that manipulative or clever…and I sure as hell don’t buy that there have been many, if any at all, lipstick parties.
Reason #130: Behind The Counter Allure
I think there is something universally appealing about women in the service industry. Maybe we’re all secret misogynists, or been watching too much Mad Men, but a girl that brings you coffee, beer, or a hot meal. That’s the kind of girl we like. And girls in the service industry know one thing better than to just bring us things. They know how to do it with a smile. They toss their hair and flirt with us. Why? Tips. I pity the foolish customer that is naive enough to think that it’s because they want a bigger tip. That just might be why nabbing a bartender something of an accomplishment.
This happens to make these girls look more attractive then they are. The booze, and the fact that we can only partially see their entire body, doesn’t exactly hurt either. I have fun into many a bartender/waitress/barista out of context, and more importantly, on the other end of the counter…and it’s not always as pretty as a picture as you build in your head.
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