Monday, August 25, 2003
The anti-feminists guide to free food and activities.
I am, at heart, a scam artist. All my friends will tell you so. I'm always thinking of great ways to cheat the system, but typically my underlying value system keeps me from following through. I typically announce things like...you know when they sell things buy one get one free...all you really have to do is buy two of them, then return one without the receipt. Then you just got one free, and that's much more fun.
After statements like this my husband gives me a kind of startled look and I declare loudly and with conviction "I would never actually do it, but it would be really simple."
Maybe some other time I'll give you a whole list of scams, but for now let's focus on a legitimate way to get free things. Now, if you're a militant, lesbian feminist, (Which from now on will be abreviated MLF) you might as well quit reading now, you will just get all offended and unhappy and you will end up having to waste time doing something stupid to prove your own feminine independence, like checking your oil when you pump gas, or mowing your own lawn. Just avoid the potential threat to your own mental and emotional well-being, by simply stopping reading.
Ok, with the assumption that all MLFs are safely changing their own flat tires somewhere now instead of reading this, here is my suggestion for free food and activities. Use men as coupons.
See, coupons are a perfectly legal way of getting things you want for less. Let's say you're bored and would like to go to a movie. You just call up John, your guy friend who has made it perfectly clear he's interested in you, but you would hate to get all emotionally tied up with. The phone conversation will go something like this...
You: Hi, is John there?
John: Oh, Cathy...I was hoping you might call sometime, I haven't seen you in so long.
You: That's so true, I was thinking we should hang out.
John: That'd be great, are you free tonight?
You: Well, I did have some plans this evening, but you know what, I've been wanting to spend some time with you so, forget my plans, let's go see a movie or something.
(Always say something partially complimentary in this conversation. It has to build his self-esteem just enough for him to be willing to fund your pseudo-date, but not enough that he will call you every day for a week afterwards.)
You: Anyway, I've really been wanting to see that ________ movie. It's showing at _________ time at the ________. Do you want to pick me up around 5:30 and we could get something to eat first.
John: I'd love to, see you then.
Now the hard part is done, your only further obligation is to dress up and be charming. Don't bring your purse with you, so there's no way you can pay. Of course you might want to leave a ten spot in your pocket just in case the guy's a creep, but a huge part of manipulating men into paying for your date is pre-assesing the man in question to make sure he's a good mark, umm, I mean gentleman. Anyway, enjoy your dinner and your movie, and when he walks you to your door instead of giving him a goodnight kiss say something like, "I had such a good time, I'm so lukcy to have a wonderful friend like you, John," The word friend will instantly tip him off to the fact that you are not interested in a romantic relationship. Now don't feel bad, he'll be a little dissapointed, but honestly not that surprised.
To be truly succesful at using men as coupons you should have at least five, and hopefully up to ten "friends." The coupons are typically redeemable once per "friend" per month. If the coupon begins to become ineffective it can easily be recharged by a night with drinks...perhaps you even pay for your own...as a show of good faith, where you say something to give him hope, such as "you know, the guys I date are nothing compared to you, and the more time we spend together the more I wonder if I'm not wasting my time with everyone else." If it's an extremely deseperate situation you could even kiss him at this point.
The next day, call him up, thank him for the wonderful night, tell him you hope you didn't say or do anything to make him uncomfortable, that alcohol just really messes you up. Then make the token friend comment and you should be set for at least another year's worth of free food and activities.
Now see, MLFs might imply this was somehow degrading to women, I would argue that actually it's degrading to men. Women should stop getting so hung up on proving that they have the identical strengths that men have, and should focus more on their differing strengths, i.e. charm, beauty and manipulation. If you have any questions about the process described above please feel free to leave questions in the comment box or email them to alertminion@hotmail.com. Really good questions might be answered in a future blog entry wherein I live out my long hidden fantasy of being a question and answer counselor in teenage magazines.
*I have recently become bored with awarding star ratings...but if I were forced to give the above post a star rating it would be three stars because it was unusually cruel, and to my warped sense of humor, unusually cruel typically translates to unspeakably funny.
Friday, August 22, 2003
Ok, so my plan to stick to a single topic and refine my writing skills in order to one day land my own humor column lasted all of one posting. Today I decided it would be really boring to only post on my blog when I had new insights that fit my anti-feminist agenda. So, all of my anti-feminist posts will be posted both here and on a sister site, http://undergroundhumorcolumn.blogspot.com That way, anyone who is annoyed with the fact that I ramble on and on about a string of unrelated subjects can go directly to the underground humor column site where everything will hopefully flow very well together.
So, if you're still here I'm assuming you're excited to hear my latest random musings on: my hometown. I live in Loveland, Colorado. Yep...it pronounced Love Land. Although, we try to soften the "a" in land and run the words together real fast to kid ourselves into thinking we don't live in one of the hokiest towns in America. Valentine's Day is a big thing here. We crown a Miss Loveland Valentine and hang large wooden hearts on all the street lamps, people pay money to have messages written on them for their sweethearts. We also have a special postmark stamp that features a boy cupid complete with arrows and chaps. People send their Valentine's Cards here from all over the country just to get it postmarked Loveland. Yes, it is a sad, sad, sappy world.
Infact, before I lived here they used to have an annual kissing competition. What I have gathered about this event is that in the 80's and it may have even spilled into the early nineties, (the first few years of every generation have that hazy spillover don't they? Where you're still wearing all the weird stuff from the past generation but you are slowly waking up to the realization that it's not all that cool, so you still wear it, but with a little less conviction until the next new fad comes along.) Anyway, people used to enter a contest which forced them to lay on the local football field in a lip-lock for as long as possible. Now, no one has ever described it as a pleasurable experience, but I bet if they ever started the contest up again, I could win. Basically because I'm one of the most stubborn people alive.
Now, since Valentine’s Day isn’t for another 6 months. We Lovelanders have to find other things to celebrate. Hence, the Loveland Corn Roast Festival. The festival begins tonight with the annual corn-shucking contest. Nothing says late August like a good corn shucking. Apparently the festival started in 1895, and my own personal claim to fame is that my sister-in-law was “Little Miss Corn Roast” 11 years ago. I’m sure she’ll write about the life-changing experience on her blog if we all bother her enough about it.
Now the reason I bring up the corn roast festival, besides to give the reader the feel of the mid-west lifestyle here in Loveland, is this: There is no roasted corn at the corn roast festival. That’s right…nowhere at the corn roast festival will you find any roasted corn at all. This crazy midwestern pageant is a huge fraud. All the corn is boiled, that’s right boiled! Oh the ironic tragedy of it all! I guess they would have felt a little silly having a boiled corn festival…that’s right up there with having a pickled yam festival, and we leave that kind of thing to the hicks in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. So next time you’re in Colorado in the late summer, stop by Loveland, pick up some boiled corn at our festival, and join the elaborate lie of the residents of “one of the top 10 cities to raise a family,” as ranked by the Reader’s Digest.
*Loveland is also in the record books as having the only cemetery divided by a U.S. highway!
Thursday, August 21, 2003
My New Niche
I am the voice for the anti-feminists, an under-represented group of the population. I am one of the steadily growing groups of enlightened males and females who realize that women have reached their apex in society. Now before you begin with the booing and the hissing and all related unpleasantness, let me explain.
You see, as a woman, I am capable of becoming a surgeon, an astronaut, a lawyer, heck I can even play professional basketball in front a pathetically small audience known as the fans of the WNBA, and yet I am not required to kill spiders, open my own doors, take out the garbage, or ever change a flat tire.
However, if any man insinuated that I was incapable of doing any of the aforementioned (definitely beneath me) activities I could get extremely pissed off. I also reserve the right to shout obscenities anytime he kindly offers to do one of these things and, I just happen to be in a bad mood. Of course under such circumstances, I would still take him up on the offer to complete the undesirable activity, but I would have the prerogative to vent completely unrelated anger. Does it get any better than this?
I'm a little concerned that if militant lesbian feminists continue on their warpath for "equality," they may actually achieve it, which might mean I'd have to pay for my own meals and/or movies. Why can't we continue in our own little utopia of the privileged equal?
Well, my new niche is that I will champion the privileged rights of the anti-feminists, who with great respect for past feminists, believe that current feminists are whiney bitter women who serve no real purpose in society.
Now, I understand that women are still being paid less than men for performing similar jobs. The thing is, I'm pretty sure that if I were performing a similar job to a man I would do a much better job. (See anti-feminists are not sniveling hermit push-overs, they're actually self-assured brats!) So, I would naturally be paid as much if not more than my male counterpart, and the idea that I should have some kind of emotional support group or political activist organization fighting for my well being is, frankly, insulting.
I refuse to give up my rights to be emotional, nurturing and pretty just so that some unsuccessful woman somewhere can make a few more cents on the dollar. I will continue to make every effort to become the stereotypical female, and whenever the song with the lyrics "All you women who independent, throw your hands up at me," comes on the radio, my husband will continue to take my hands and force them into the air, waving them from side to side.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
I've decided that my blog will now become an underground humor column. Please don't take this the wrong way. You must understand that in my world, underground is code for "not popular enough to sell-out yet." I have learned from certain acquantinces who believe that the worst thing you can label someone as is "a sell-out" that the quickest way to become popular is to make your audiences believe that they are part of some elite club who know about some secret enterprise. If people believe that by knowing about your enterprise they are somehow transformed into non-conformists they will generally be very satisfied.
Now, I'm not going to lie to you. Reading my blog does not make you "hardcore," in fact it really doesn't make you different from anyone else at all. It may eventually give you bragging rights that you knew me when, but that's about it. You're all just part of the elaborate scheme of mine to become a syndicated humor columnist. However I can promise you that my intentions are no different from any other underground enterprise. I mean honestly, that band you labeled as "sell-outs" last week, did you really think their goals never included being signed to a major recording contract and selling as many products with their names on them as possible? The only difference is that I'm being honest.
My ultimate goal is to sell out. I would love to sell out. In fact, the only reason I haven't yet is because I have no real niche. Every humor columnist needs a niche. I actually have a great niche in the back of my head, but I'll save that revelation for my next post. Of course, trying to develop a reader base means that I will have to start doing at least one re-write or revision of each blog I post, so I'm going to work on that. Not now, but once I begin writing within the realm of my niche market. Which should include my very next post. So look forward to that everyone, really begin to look forward to it! And one day, when I sell-out, be happy for me, shout with glee, and say "Now there is one succesful sell-out."
This post has been awarded a 2* rating, mainly because it created anticipation which is worth at least one star.
Thursday, August 14, 2003
My blogging has been interrupted by a visit from my best friend from high school. Don't take this the wrong way, it is not as if she squelches my time, or even my creative motivation. It's more that she changes my whole perspective on life, and so it's difficult to blog in a way that will be unbiased.
Let me simplify things this way. You know when you tell a story, not just any story, the most hilarious story that has ever happened to you, in fact, it's so funny that as you're telling it you start laughing a little in the middle of your own story in anticipation of reaching the comedic climax of your story. Of course, your own laughter interrupts your story-telling just enough for you to pause for a minute and look at the faces of your audience, thinking to yourself how much they will appreciate this gem of a story, but that pause gives you just enough time to realize that no one is really engaged in the story. In reality, everyone looks quite bored with the story.
So, you begin to ham it up a little bit knowing that if you can just hook their attention they'll be grateful later, because this is the funniest story ever told. And of course in your renewed effort to make the story funny, it becomes a little desperate, and the more desperate it becomes the more your audience gets that look in their eyes, you know the look, it's the one that says "oh, this is kind of sad, I feel almost sorry for her, maybe I'll humor her at then end with a slight chuckle." It's then that you realize that your story is a dreaded "I guess you had to be there" story. Of course, you're just a few juicy sentences from the real punchline of your story and these people have been patiently listening for between five and fifteen minutes, depending on how many dramatic flourishes you added to the story during the desperation stage of story telling, so you can't just drop it. You are forced to finish the story and receive the sympathy chuckles. Deep down, you know that you are forever killing a truly hilarious story, it dies an innoble death and you never tell it again.
Now maybe this scenario only happens to the average person once every few months, but for me it has happened enough for me to begin to sense these "I guess you had to be there" stories even as the stories are still in the process of being created. So, this has been an entire week of uproaring hillarity, that has had me constantly thinking, I will never tell anyone how funny this was.
And, it's a little sad really, because if you had been there, you would have laughed until you cried. But, you weren't there, and I'm just insecure enough to spare myself a socially awkward story printed out on the internet where I would never get the non-verbal cues that say, "please stop, you're embarassing yourself." See, the story would just go on and on, it wouldn't be allowed to die even an innoble death. It would become a vampire of humorous stories. The undead, unfunny. It would surely be one of the more pathetic things I had created in my life.
So, all you will know about this week while my best friend is visiting is that every few moments something super funny happened, and I let it die while it was still in it's prime, and did not subject it to an eternity of sucking the blood out of the funny bones of unwarned readers too kind to stop reading in the middle of a story that was clearly going no where.
In the words of some song that was popular sometime when I was in highschool, when I still had not learned the inward pride of avoiding social awkwardness in all it's forms, "I guess this is growing up."
Boy maturity sure sucks. It was kind of nice when I was 14 and could just go on and on with my best friend telling a story that would never be funny to anyone but us, and super attractive boys would laugh, mainly because our competitive story-telling was cute and funny, and possibly because they were trying to get into our good graces, and we were able to go on telling the story, just as sweet and naive as could be, never knowing that no one ever found the story itself funny! Sometimes it is better to be laughed at than laughed with, mainly its just those times when you're too oblivious to tell the difference.
This posting has been awarded a one * rating, primarily because it was filled with reminiscing and, even worse, the description of unfunny stories. I'm convinced if there is anything worse than telling an unfunny story it is creating a running commentary on the social phenomenon which is the undead, unfunny.
Monday, August 04, 2003
I have learned two interesting life lessons in the past few days. I've decided that the early 20s are definitely a peak time for learning life lessons.
A few nights ago, while playing scrabble with my husband I learned my first important life lesson. It is: There is nothing inherently fun about scrabble. Most games involve something humorous or enjoyable, take Life for example. In the game of life you receive a car, and a little peg colored blue or pink to represent you. Then when you get married you are "supposed" to receive the opposite colored peg to represent your new spouse. Oh come on, did you honestly think you were the only person who gave your brother a blue peg when he got married, and then laughed and laughed uncontrollably? In addition to the possibility of homosexual jokes, you could also push your siblings cars off the road and pretend they all died in a horrible car accident. Yep, Life was a great game.
Scrabble, on the other hand, is pretty damn boring. It's like one of those "educational games" a third grade teacher would invent to trick you into learning. The whole point of scrabble is just to prove that you are vastly more intelligent than your opponent. So, it is basically only fun during the last ten minutes when you realize that there is no way for your opponent to catch up and you will indeed beat them, even if they get a 50 point bonus for using all their tiles in one word, which if you've ever played scrabble you know is virtually impossible in the last few turns of the game, because there are never enough spaces left! Hmm, I think I have just betrayed myself, by displaying my knowledge of scrabble, which let's face it is a little too vast for me to have ever been prom queen.
However, I am incredibly competetive, so I love scrabble. I will play scrabble again and again, even though about ten minutes into the game you would rather kill yourself than pull four more tiles, because when they invented scrabble they left out the really cool rules that would allow you to sabotage your opponent, or at least make up funny jokes about them. Just for my audiences infomation, I did beat my husband by 50 points on our last game. So, as it turns out, Ryan may be great at counting the syllables in haikus, but he sure does have a sucky vocabulary!
Ok, next life lesson. Your parents will always amaze you, by turning out to be nothing like you imagined them when you were younger. Case in point, for as long as I can remember, whenever my dad took a picture of anyone he would tell the subjects of the photo to "Say hot-toc-aloosa." Of course most parents would say something like "Smile" or "Say Cheese." But, no, not my father. Of course I'm used to his being weird, so that has nothing to do with my latest life lesson. Now I always just assumed that this "hot-toc-aloosa" was just some nonsense word he had people say because it would make them smile, being super weird and all.
However, last night, while minding my own business, not wanting to be surprised by any weird new revelation about the reality, (which I have worked so hard to surpress,) of my childhood, my sister informs me that while she was visiting the massive redwoods of Northern California with my father, a nice family asked my dad to take a photo of them. My dad of course used his standard photo taking phrase, and my poor innocent naive step-brother, not knowing that in most cases it's better not to know, asked my dad what "hot-toc-aloosa" meant.
Now, I have three siblings, and none of us had ever thought to ask what this phrase meant, we know my father too well, and knew just to ignore him and assume he was a little senile. It never occured to us that the phrase could have some meaning. As it turns out, it does, my father told Victor that it is a Chactaw (A Native American tribe that lived in the Chyamichi mountains where my father's family were missionaries while he grew up) word which means, get this, "black man." So my entire life my father has been telling us to "say black man" anytime he took a photo, not only of us, but also of complete strangers who were foolish enough to ask him to take their pictures there they were smiling and saying "black man" while a polite fatherly man took their picture. Very bizzare.
Now what can I draw from this new revelation...I'm not sure, and quite frankly, I don't really want to think about why it is my father thought people should say this when their photos were being taken. I think I will just put it completely out of mind, and never speak of it again. So, you see I have learned one of the most important life lessons of all, which is: when it comes to bizzare behaviors or parents, or really any family members, the best policy is "don't ask, don't tell."
Now everyone together...Say hot-toc-aloosa!
This post has been awarded a 3* rating, mainly just because I'm tired of rating posts, and three is in the middle.
