Picaro Life

The Missed Connection Ecosystem

2009-01-01T15:41:00.000-08:00

Posted on 19th October 2008

You were wearing a beige trench mac, standing next to an ad for the latest Ian Rankin novel. I was wearing a navy pane suit, eating fries, pondering whether Ian Rankin had consented to, or even requested, the prominent faceshot.

We gazed at each other, then away, and then again, and smiled. When the train arrived, you entered my car, though the door was not the closest for you.

We both stepped out at Kings X. You took the Victoria line, I took the Northern line.

I should have asked for your opinion on the faceshot, or told you the Murakami story of the 100% perfect girl, or borrowed the pen you were annotating those big sheets of paper with and added the important note: "I think you are beautiful, would you like to go for a drink?".

Response received on 25th October 2008

that was so beautiful

Response received on 22nd October 2008

maybe it was me. i live near edgeware rd tube.

oh and lol. sounds like ur writing poetry or some kinda of short novel.

What are the chances of this missed conncetions person lookn for u on gumtree???????????????????????

?!!

Let me know how it goes. I am intrigued.

Response received on 1st January 2009

You're a bit of a silly cow aren't you!

The Last Laugh of Harold Pinter

2008-12-29T03:43:00.000-08:00

Laughter

Laughter dies but is never dead
Laughter lies out of the back of its head
Laughter laughs at what is never said
It trills and squeals and swills in your head
It trills and squeals in the heads of the dead
And so all the lies remain laughingly spread
Sucked in by the laughter of the severed head
Sucked in by the mouths of the laughing dead

2007-02-06T17:46:00.000-08:00

BBlogs.

Rawtop's blog and the other gay blogs he links to are interesting. Before reading them, I wasn't aware that it is a practice to piss inside someone's ass while fucking them on crystal meth, causing the drug to be uptaken by the pissed-in participant. The study of the psychology of gay male sexuality must be useful to the general study of male sexuality for a similar reason that high energy colliders are useful in particle physics.

2006-12-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

Doosh!

http://nyjiujitsu.com/AP-TraderMonthlyArticle.htm

2006-11-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

400 Teddy Bears: A Life

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6143010.stm

Carpe Diem! It'd be more exciting to be a manatee.

2006-11-01T16:53:00.000-08:00

A parable to the virtues of the free-market.

Britain

Transport

Lights Out

An innovative transport solution in the birthplace of Adam Smith that the great Scot himself might have commended.

RAILING against the follies of regulation, Adam Smith invoked the metaphor of the system-obsessed man who thought human society could be arranged as easily as the pieces on a chess-board, concluding the folly of this by remarking that "[I]n the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislator might choose to impress upon it."

Robert Nesbitt, Director of the Road Traffic Engineering Department (RTED) in Kirkcaldy, is the town's latest proponent of deregulated locomotion. For decades, glacially-moving traffic had been the norm at the town's busiest junction, and Mr. Nesbitt, a 20 year veteran of RTED, was mandated by the town council to find an economic solution. His radical approach to improving traffic flow involves the removal of all road signs, traffic signals, and street markings from the busy downtown intersection.

"I thought: let's just get rid of everything" says Mr. Nesbitt of his plan for the overhaul. A stout, confident man, he talks pugnaciously about the local opposition to the plan. Standing at the intersection beside a poster for the Campaign Against Rob Nesbitt's Plan (CARNP), organized by Kirkcalder Greta Green, he remarks that "They were worried more people might die".

The Economist believes, however, that Mr. Nesbitt's liberalization of the traffic markets, hobbled since the beginning of the automotive era by inflexible government laws, will likely reduce traffic related accidents by promoting alertness and fostering responsibility in motorists. Moreover, these benefits, when matured, are likely to echo positively throughout the town's entire economic system.

Mr. Nesbitt reports that Ms. Green (said to be the town busybody and a congenital drunk), in an effort to block the progress of his traffic-streamlining scheme, has taken her complaint to the European parliament, where CARNP has found the sympathetic ears of several French MEPs. However, given the wretched condition of Le République, these MEPs may prefer to focus on addressing the multiple paralyses afflicting their own state, rather than interfering in the affairs of others.

Asked about the parallels between he and Smith, Mr. Nesbitt is characteristically modest. "Never heard of him", he replies. Perhaps Smith would have perceived the analogy between his chess pieces and the vehicles of Mr. Nesbitt's modern Kirkcaldy. It may be hoped the ideas of both these natives of this small town continue to flow without any artifical impediments.

2006-09-24T11:21:00.000-07:00

The poetic, lies, sense.

Distinguish between a lie, which is a statement the teller makes knowing it to be either untrue or is unsure whether it is true or not, and an untruth which is a statement the teller makes believing it to be true, but it is nevertheless false. Although the lies people tell others (eg. "I've read Sein und Zeit".) and the untruths people tell themselves- the conscious self-deceptions -are both vast, vast categories, the latter, like Republicans- if you live in a large urban area, are only indirectly observable. We only learn of the untruths people tell the themselves when they reveal them to us. Sartre calls these untruths examples of "bad faith", surrendering freedom to self-deception. Here are two examples of externally manifested internal untruths:

1. In a 1991 Melody Maker interview, Shane McGowan said:

The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks. They spend a lot of time talking in pubs,
unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions,
who never develop their higher spiritual values,
who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.

I discovered this quote on the "about me" section of a girl's (drink preoccupied) myspace. Shane McGowan may have been being partly tongue-in-cheek when he said this, but the quoter is using it as a finger-up-to-the-world justification for their lifestyle. The first two lines are an example of a common way to tell an internal-untruth to another- dowse it in humour before you vocalise it to hide it's smell from them, and yourself. The last three lines are the most important. It is interesting for what it says about the teller and the myspacer, but as a statement, it is beneath refutation. Call it just sociability, or self-indulgence, or alcoholism, or I-don't-give-a-fuck, but don't pretend your drinking is part of an intellectual self-improvement program.

2. Someone's old blog entry:

I shed my virginity
06.07.03 - 3:05 a.m.

(This is a strange entry. This is a wonderful entry.)

I am a twenty year old virgin.

My travails with sex should be familiar to all of you that know me. I love
sex and fear sex and hate sex all in the same breath. I have the potential
to be a languorous sex demon. I want to be the languorous sex demon. I want
to embody the freedom, the comfort, the pleasure it entails. But antiquated
morals, then traumatic experiences, then deep seated fear take their turns
with me. I am a twenty year old virgin.

But this doesn't mean I'm a stranger to sex. I've been fucked by fingers,
by tongues, by vibrators, by the handle of a hairbrush. I've kissed girls,
kissed boys, kissed cocks, kissed two cocks at once. I masturbate often. I
lost my hymen somewhere, somehow. So in the strictest technical sense, I've
lost it a long time ago. But no penis has ever entered my vagina. Thats
because through all my insanity and dumbfucked-ness I've clung to my
virginity. I've clung to my virginity because it symbolized goodness and
wholeness. I've clung to my virginity like a lifeline because I never felt
good and whole with any sexual partner. I never really felt comfortable.

I've never been comfortable because I was racked with expectation, because I
was crushed with pressure, I felt used, I felt cheap, I feared I was not
pleasing the other, I feared I was compromising myself.

There were all these maybes and hidden traps in this dangerous world of sex.
So many ways it can go wrong, because there are so many ways in which I'm
vulnerable - especially given my past record. But when it comes down to it,
it's because I was uncomfortable with myself. I was letting myself be vulnerable.

I'm taking some of this power back.

I'm taking my own virginity.

Why not? Who says I can't do it myself?! In many ways, I gave birth to
myself. I do not accept conventions or traditions on what makes a good person.
I do not pay heed to social norms or to parental guidelines. I have created
myself in the image of no one. I have no idols - growing up nomadic and Asian
and female in America, there was no one remotely similar to me. Therefore, I
gave birth to a concept of a person, tailored to suit the life I want to live
and the qualities I admire. Sure, I'm strongly influenced by society, but I'm
able to see through the social guises and understand what dwells at the core.

Therefore I'd able to see virginity as a relic of times past. I see it as a
mechanism for a man to feel control and domination over a woman. I see it as
a social prize. I see it as a social stigma. I want to be associated to none
of these things.

I have always supremely valued self-autonomy. The more philosophy and
anthropology I read, the more I am supposed to convinced that it doesn't
exist. Bullshit. You just have to struggle hard to live beyond the beguiling
veil. It makes me relish this more.

This is how I'm taking control. I don't want to be socially stigmatize for
being a late virgin. I want to play this game of sex by my own rules. No one
else's. I don't want to hand over power and vulnerability on a platter to guy
who'll probably flatter himself with it. Right this moment, I don't want to
empower anyone but myself. I want relief. I want liberation.

I shed my virginity.

I usually like this writer's stuff, but this entry is literary jilling-off. It prioritizes mood and invention before consistency with the outside world. The premise (or rather, poetic device) is logically absurd. It would make good cautionary reading against letting linguistic tangles determine your perspectives of reality, a'la the ontological argument. I'm reminded of Seamus Heaney's poem Digging, in which (like a rhinestone cowboy) he equates the toiling in Irish peat-bogs of his forefathers to his own more literary labouring. The denouement of the self-indulgent digging/writing metaphor goes thus:

Between my finger and my thumb,
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Digging was written in 1966, when Heaney was 27. Perhaps now, he wretches over this lilting castrato self-validation, as did the older Rimbaud with his assessment of the fruits of his early career as a poet: "It's all slop".

2006-09-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

Seeking cute, bookstore loitering, female.

Seeking cute, bookstore loitering, female.
I'm 32, I have a MSc, and I occasionally partake in red meat. I was a student at the U of C, and while I'm not taking any courses now, I regularly attend workshops, lectures, and university-sponsored events. My academic interests include philosophy and cultural anthropology. I have an insatiable lust for profound ideas, which I find to be conspicuously absent in pop culture, and relatively abundant in obscure art forms. Therefore, I turn to expressions of culture that have either stood the test of time or inhabit the fringes - I'm constantly on the look out for good inde film, good literature, new ethnic restaurants, recipes, masterful recordings of classical music, and interesting places to visit. I consider money a means to an end (not an end in itself) and therefore I tend to eschew materialistic values. In other words; friends, family, community and experience trump mere things. However, I'm not naive enough to think that one can do without those dead presidents. Looking for someone fun and interesting with whom I can enjoy Hyde Park. Email me with a jpeg and I'll reply in kind.

This was posted in the UoC marketplace 'personals' section by someone called Simon.

From the post, it's possible to draw in outline the psychological makeup of the poster. He's representative of a distinct "type" of man: It's very common for educated males to fit this outline, thus it is legitimate to reify from the outline a type with those characteristics. It would be overly simple to label this type "bourgeois" and leave it at that. To best understand these kinds of people, it would be necessary to answer the following questions:

Is this type of man a modern phenomenon? When did this type come into being?
What socio-cultural tectonics were responsible for bringing his type into being? What older types did it arise from?
What have been peoples attitudes throughout history towards this type?

I'm not qualified to answer any of them, so this discussion is limited to breaking down the personal-ad and analyzing it, smuglet by smuglet, to give a piecemeal outline of the person-type. Note: To avoid repetition, I have not made mention of him hammering in to the reader his intellectuality, since he does so on every line.

I'm 32, I have a MSc, and I occasionally partake in red meat.
Observe how he makes his first impression- the first two facts he gives about himself: his age and his MSc. Is having an MSc really one of the two most important things a potential romantic companion ought to know? This is not a signal of eligibility, this reveals his overweaning pride he has in having an MSc. It also indicates how he might judge other people: Symbols of intellectual status are of utmost importance to him. He is a Derrida tacker for sure. The dainty opening quip: "I occasionally partake in red meat" is intended to show his humour and levity. It's hard to believe, however, that he could have written this if he wasn't overly forbearing with regards his lifestyle.

I was a student at the U of C, and while I'm not taking any courses now, I regularly attend workshops, lectures, and university-sponsored events.
Possible translation: "I was a student at the U of C, and while I'm not taking any courses now, I regularly ooze around the campus area in a vain attempt to get laid".

My academic interests include philosophy and cultural anthropology.
The use of the word academic here is interesting. The only way its inclusion could be justified is if he was doing academic research on those subjects. Since he doesn't have a doctorate (would he have forgotten to mention it if he did have one?), this is unlikely.

I have an insatiable lust for profound ideas, which I find to be conspicuously absent in pop culture, and relatively abundant in obscure art forms.
"Insatiable lust": rather violent phrase, don't you think? Does he really need to inject such excessive hyperbole into a (obstensibly non-sexual) dating ad? Is this what is called "sublimation"? Why is it the profound ideas are the ones lusted after? -What causes lust for profound ideas? This is a very abstract lust indeed. It's all good to have a liking for Beethoven or Bergson, but to like Profound in abstracto is very odd. How do you decide whether something is profound? -What constitutes profundity? I would guess by profound he really means 'that which is obscure and requires recondite knowledge to fathom'. Using his university education and by deliberately choosing interests that few others follow ("obscure art forms"), he is able to enjoy the exclusivity that comes with being a lover of the profound (so defined). In short, profound is a synomyn for abstruse.

Therefore, I turn to expressions of culture that have either stood the test of time or inhabit the fringes - I'm constantly on the look out for good inde film, good literature, new ethnic restaurants, recipes, masterful recordings of classical music, and interesting places to visit.
The first sentence can be translated as: "Therefore, I turn to expressions of culture that possess an intellectual seal of approval either because they are antique or obscurantist ". "Therefore" implies the list of things that follows are the holders of the profound ideas. It's a first for me, seeing recipes and ethnic restaurants being described as such. Notice the passive nature of many of the things he is "on the look out for": He doesn't go to concerts- he looks for "masterful recordings of classical music"; he doesn't go places to do things- he goes there "to visit".

I consider money a means to an end (not an end in itself) and therefore I tend to eschew materialistic values. In other words; friends, family, community and experience trump mere things.
A possible translation: "I'm broke and have nothing of materialistic value and therefore I tend to platitudinize that money is a means to an end (not an end in itself)". "I tend to eschew" is a bookish euphemism for "I have contempt for" (or rather "I like to project the image that I have contempt for"- reality is unimportant, only it's appearance). "[M]ere", serves to magnify his obstensible contempt for "materialistic values". The language is hoity-toity: Can you imagine anyone speaking like this in real life? Is this your 'voice', Simon? Would it not be more appropriate to sound unaffected if you're introducing yourself to someone for the first time? He wants someone, but he has very specific requirements for them: he wants someone who will think of him in a particular way. The most important thing to him is how people think of him. His post is the vignette he wishes other people had in their heads when thinking of him. He never interacts with others without trying to project to them how he wants to be thought of- it's deeply ingrained in his personality. The whole post drips grotesquely with implicit self-praise. This guy'll never be truely interested in anyone but himself- his words about family and friends are yet more sham.

However, I'm not naive enough to think that one can do without those dead presidents.
Paraphrasing: "However, I can smugly make pop-culture references, so long as it's plain that I'm deliberately being ironic".

Looking for someone fun and interesting with whom I can enjoy Hyde Park.
Translation: "Looking for someone who's willing to watch Me give demonstrations of how great I am, and with whom I can enjoy Me". It also suggests that he may still be living in the warm womb of the UoC campus area (located in Hyde Park, Chicago's dullest neighbourhood) long after graduating.

Email me with a jpeg and I'll reply in kind.
..And unbelievable! -After all the 'profound' talk, what does he do but brusquely conclude with the demand (it reads as a command) applicants send him a picture for screening purposes. Replace the distorting modernisms jpeg and email and it becomes "Send me a picture and I'll reply in kind". At least this line reveals what is actually important to him, despite the previous idealistic proclamations. It ends with the businesslike "[R]eply in kind", ie. "we're going to perform a transaction here".

Who are these people? How do they get this way? This is a guy, in his 30s, has an MSc from UoC- one would have thought he must have a relatively high degree of self-awareness -so what's going through the heads of the rest of the population? How far does the ladder descend??

2006-09-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Railing on a trifle

Recent observations suggest that closely-cropped, boxed beards are in. This is the style of beard worn by George Lucas. On every face I've seen with this style, the sharp demarcation of the jawline it effects amplifies the presence of the loose skin on the neck beneath the beard, producing a buldging effect. Even those without neck fat can look like they're suffering from hypothyroidism. Compare George Lucas and the common bullfrog below. Lucas is an extreme case, but his plight well evinces what an egregious life-choice the short-box can be.

Let's now consider the beard at large. I am a pogonophobe, with some qualifications: The hairy faced whose growth is an incidental badge of laziness I have no qualms with; men that use their beard pragmatically to hide a hideous deformity or congenital weakness of jaw should not be censured; those whose beard is a natural consequence of their religio-cultural habitat cannot justly be criticized any more than can a non-bearded man existing an anti-beard milieu. The group which deserves the volley of scorn and mockery are the vanity growers. These, with little overlap, can be split into two subgroups: those driven by intellectual vanity (the IVs), and those driven by physical vanity (the PVs).

The stock of the first subgroup will be well known to anyone who has spent time on a university campus. The beard-density amongst students of a given subject is proportional to importance of the romantic notion of genius and the prevalence of hero-worship within the group pursuing the subject. Math and philosophy majors are particularly likely to be offenders (the latter can be usually distinguished from the former because of the formers partiality for trilby hats). But why is the beard the symptom of the affliction? Aside from imitating illustrious bearded ancients, growing a beard signifies a rejection of the conformal act of shaving. IV beards are typically wildly unkempt, genius not often being associated with conformity. An interesting exception to this is the neat Christian goatee. This is a very popular choice for the ultra-christian. By cultivating this arrangement of folicles, with its mild counter-cultural overtones, they are able to make a small (but relatively massive) expression of individuality, an unrebellious rebellion. It is interesting to note in connection to this that Satan is often depicted with a goatee. In either case, their diligent work ethic and ineptitude in social interactions differentiate the IV bearded types from the lazy-stoner beardies.

The second, and by far the largest, group are those motivated by physical vanity (the degree of self-awareness of their motivations will vary greatly from high for the urbane, self-deprecating homo down to zero for the herdish, brick-witted celeb-imitator). Their beards will typically be closely shaved; the goatee in particular is very popular among the PVs. I wonder if these unfortunates ever pause whilst shaving and despair, in a silent encounter between themselves and their images in their bathroom mirrors, that (Oh wretched beast! Dancing marionette to absurd drives!) they've become slaves to gene-expression as they ritualistically groom and arrange the hairs on their mugs. It's arguable that these folk deserve a slightly smaller dollop of the contempt than the IVs- they at least cannot fairly be accused of hypocritically looking down on the beardies in the other group.

2006-09-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

All the world's a stage

I saw Hamlet at the pier on its opening night last Saturday. In act II, Scene I, Polonius forgot his lines:

Polonius: ...He closes with you in this consequence;
'Good sir,' or so; or 'friend,' or 'gentleman'-
According to the phrase or the addition
Of man and country.
Reynaldo: Very good, my lord.
Polonius: And then, sir, does he this,-he does-
[There is a long pause. He turns to the audience, looking terrified, and babbles:]
What was I about to say?-
By the mass, I was about to say something:--Where did I leave?
Reynaldo: At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,' and gentleman.'
Polonius: At -closes in the consequence'- ay, marry!...

It was a surreal moment, evoking similar sensations to the sputterings in and out of reality you can experience from booze induced delirium tremens. I genuinely believed at the time that Mike Nussbaum had forgotten his lines. The spell of the play was lifted from me for a good ten minutes afterwards. However, these lines are actually included in (at least) one of the Folios. The lines, intended to suggest Polonius' senility, rather convinced me that Nussbaum was the senile one. Later in the play, when Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading, Shakespeare pokes more fun at the old fart, having Hamlet reply:

Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.

None of the fossilised old mink coat and cape crowd who frequent the Lyric were visible. I guess the Chicago Shakes isn't expensive enough to be worth being able to tell their friends they attended.

Cringe-inducing muttering broke out every time Hamlet delivered one of his more famous lines, eg. "To be or not to be..", "Alas, poor Yorick..". I'm certain the group of all the attendant mutterers coincides with the group of people who have classical music ringtones on their mobile phones. I mean, people, what the f**k is that about? I can only assume the butchered, warbled version of Mozart's Symphony no. 40 allegro that your cell emits (prompting you to press a button and say "Yellow") is meant to indicate to those whose ears you continually smite with it how cultured you are. Oh profound souls! Had I known you were all coming, I could have made galloping commerce selling Jean-Paul Sartre bobble-head dolls (with one fixed eye, one joggle eye) outside the auditorium.

The last time I can remember it being as painful to be part of an audience was when I saw Mulholland Drive at the cinema. People were breaking out into pseudo-spontaneous laughter in order to let their fellow cinema-goers know that they "got" the abstruse, humourless cross-references.

Sometimes I think the worst thing about living in a large urban area is the high density of pretentious assholes. When Derrida died last year, someone tacked his NYT obituary onto the front counter at Filter, my local coffeehouse. Rodney Dangerfield died that week too, but did he get any respect? If I was getting my BA in philosophy and I had walked into Filter that day, seeing that (and by extension, my future as a barista) would have scared the s**t out of me. The uneducated dude with the spoiler on the back of his car and the conspicuous bling who seeks recognition for his material assets is the cubist portrait of the Derrida-tacker.

2006-09-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

Founding Myth

Picarolife was precipitated after the happy coincidence of me thinking of some extra stuff I didn't get to say in an email and the google word-of-the-day being "Picaresque", a collision imparting sufficient activation energy to break the bonds of apathy. As with all good founding myths, this one was conceived a few pages hence from the beginning.

This post, I hope, will be the only self-referential (read: self-excortiating, confessional) one to burden the blog. My life will not be directly mentioned here, lest it exacerbate feelings of blog-shame. The only writing rule I've established for myself here is that I will not struggle to make the entries sound unpretentious and folksy, as would make me feel more comfortable posting. I shall try to choose the most accurate words regardless of whether they are unmelodic or high-falutin': 'tis nobler to keep ones head down and sound pompous than to be an importuning laugh-whore.

2006-09-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

Male Sexuality Gone Wild

Jason Fortuny poses on Craigslist-Seattle as Female-seeking-Male and publishes the (hundreds of) responses, including photos and contact details of many of the respondees, here.

This candidate looks remarkably like David Brent:

Whereas this guy looks merely fearsome:

In what follows I use the "sexuality" to refer to a person's notions of sexuality and sexual proclivities. Note: a person can have a highly developed sexuality and never get laid, or could conversely be a prolific shagger but never bother to concern themselves with the "inner nature" of sex. It would seem the default occupation of a man's mind is sexuality and if left at leisure, his brain will revert to this default. It doesn't seem like a very judicious choice of hobby though- the more it's fed, the more it demands and the harvests it yields amount only to brief, periodic releases of endorphins. Nurture sexuality, and it billows out into the shape of one's psyche: submission-shaped, domination-shaped or whatever. You'll reap same harvest, but the method of reaping it will become more peculiar. Seems best have a nice quick, vanilla w**k in the morning and forget about it. Perhaps some often think along these lines but find it ultimately unsatisfactory because their lives would feel directionless without sexuality? It can suck up so much time though, time which you could devote to other (equally pointless) endeavours, ones that are less intensely gratifying, but also less transitory. On the scale of the brain, the rewards of the past never weigh for much in the present. I'm reminded of a letter, written to Bolyai, the 19th century mathematician, from his father, exhorting him to give up the study of the parallel postulate:

For God's sake, I beseech you, give it up. Fear it no less than sensual passions because it, too, may take all your time, and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life.

It makes evident that, contrary to popular belief, those old-timers weren't shepherded away from sexuality just by Christian influences. Rationality also underlaid their attitude (a rationale which seems everywhere in consumerist West deeply unfashionable now).

As the photos sent are presumably the ones the senders believe present them most attractively, it's interesting to note what you can infer about the nature and extent of the senders' aesthetic sensibilities- some non-existent (eg. not even bothering to suck in their beer-belly), others kind of artsy-fartsy (eg. one has a black background; his head is slightly bowed, exactly half of his head is in view- what a c**t).

Finally, since many of them were aware that they would be competing with lots of other males for the girl's attention, it's also interesting to look at their responses from a marketing point of view: how do they look to achieve product differentiation? Some of the responses are gauche, rambling and conversational, but many include detailed body measurements, and even short erotic stories.

2006-09-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

Richly Endowed

A selection of roommate-isms:

[Comparing Nicole Richtie and Paris Hilton] I think she's slightly smarter, but that's because she's slightly uglier.

Bears and Gorillas: that'd be a pretty good natural alliance.

[Pointing to some sugar cubes on the counter at MM's, the tobbaconist] Hey, those things are sugar, right? -those little cubes. Oh, good. I put some in my coffee, but then I was worried they might be something for smokers.

Can you get cancer from touching someone else's cancer?

[On hear a quip that Alexander Litvinenko was killed by the radioactive element Putin-ium] Really! Is that what it's called? Wow, that's ironic!

[When watching Honey, I shrunk the kids, and the daughter says,"early bird catches the ant"]: "Hey, what's the right saying there?" " 'The early bird catches the rooster'?" "Yeah, yeah, that's it". [a minute passes] "Wait.. that doesn't make sense".

On Judith Dimon Kent: "Y'see with those chicks that keep their names when they get married, there's a 90% chance that they're hot".

"I'm sorry, I actually dropped some your books in the toilet". [Interlocutor looks into toilet to see another of his books floating in toilet] "What about this one?". "Shit sorry, I totally didn't see that one".

Dude we gotta have a threesome with a fat chick, like brothers.

[Extract of letter to Warren Buffet:] Mr Buffet I think you are you of the great individuals of all time, along with Abe Lincoln and Pattern. I would like to invite you to dinner. Mr Buffet, I would be enthralled.

(R:) So where you from? (Italian Girl:) Italy. (R:) Oh wow.. I love reading about that Roman history, like ancient Rome.. they er.. got those hills.. those two hills.. (Italian Girl:) Seven Hills? (R:) Yeah, yeah, seven hills, right.. love that history.. So, what d'you study?

[Inspecting a globe of the Earth] Huh! I didn't know the equator was that far South!

Do you think I'm an intellectual?

[Animatedly] I can't go anywhere and enjoy myself, y'know? Like, if I go to the cinema, I'm always thinking about the margins of the guy behind the popcorn-stand and how much they're takin' on each dog.

Hey, so I got a question for you. My mom's friend has a table she's getting rid of, and my mom said she'd pick up the table for me. But now this lady's in hospital getting treated for cancer. So my question is: Does my mom owe me a table?

"You're a flautist? What's that? 'Sounds really dirty." "It means I play the flute".

"I applied to an internship at a private equity firm in the city. Those guys were assholes. They called my recruiter back and told them they had a problem with someone who included 'Watering plants' as a job on his resume."

2006-09-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ultimate Screed

..So I met a guy from the physics department last week. We made small talk about northside bars and restaurants. The first place he mentioned to me was The Handlebar (a veggy-only restaurant in WP). This, his long hair, liberal-arts college background and perhaps his general whiteness resonated in me.. "I bet this c**t plays frisbee". Sometimes you can identify a frisbee player by their feet- many of them walk everywhere barefoot, so the soles of their feet are often caked in gum, spit, snot, squished insects and dog and bird shit. "Do you know the bar Piece nearby?". "Yeah, of course. I go there on tuesdays, they put pizza on for my Ultimate team". Frisbee: it's not a sport, it's a lifestyle. What else do you expect the pacifists, the Students For Dean, the goatee-afflicted, plant-eating, bandana-wearing, dreadlocked white and asian surburbanites to have as a sporting-pastime, if not co-ed Ultimate, the most unmanly of all the sports? The word itself, "Ultimate" (accompanied by electric guitar, one riff of, and lightning bolt), has camp and absolutist overtones that give hint towards the same subconscious underliers that make middle-class suburban kids aspire to be ninjas. The very instrument of the sport, the frisbee, flimsy and impermanent, is not unlike the disposable party plate. A comparison to the robust and corporeal basketball suggests why young black frisbee players are as common as young black Bread fans. John Mark Karr looked like the prototypical frisbee-player: slight, meek-looking, walkover-able. The kind of guy who'd let you dance on his head if you asked his permission forcefully enough. If you were to peer into the psyche of the frisbee acolyte, past his self-righteousness, and beyond the embedded compulsion to make-the-world-a-better-place (fantasies of building hospitals in Namibia) you'd find JMK: a high-school reject seething with lust-for-recognition. Frisbism tongues ass and then kisses its grandmother on the lips.