Cat On A Leash

UPDATE

A reader sent in this photo of a cat in a stroller that is whisked around town by its owners:

I thought the end of America would be a long, slow decline over generations, but now I think it might happen in a matter of years.

My man about town, Dodgeball Dan, called from an undisclosed location to inform me that there was a young-ish couple walking a cat on a leash. He was so repulsed and simultaneously fascinated that he had to tell me as the action was going down.

DD: Dude, there’s a couple walking a cat on a leash. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Me: Is the guy a herb*?

DD: Oh yeah, total herb. And of course his girlfriend is cute. [To the couple] Hey, does he fetch?

Herb: Only indoors.

DD: He looks a little confused.

Herb: It’s his first time outside.

DD: [Back to me] Wow. Oh man. The herb just picked the cat up like a baby, cradled it, and carried it off. These are the end times for America.

Between this:

and this:

these are indeed the end times for America. It’s not so much the decadence that’s doing us in, it’s the silliness. (Open borders, cats on leashes… it all flows from the same juvenile mindset.)

*herb, noun – a schlumpy, nondescript white guy with no fashion sense, chin, or sexual gravitas, who has managed to hook up with a cute chick. Herbs usually wear satchels to nightclubs and button down collar shirts with the Hanes undershirt peaking through at the neck. They love anything khaki and are not embarrassed to be seen wearing fanny packs or sandals. A super herb takes it up a notch with white athletic socks and an extra-large t-shirt to hide his man boobs. They have a walk that can be best described as looking like they are carrying a load in their pants. They will annoy you just by being there. The fact that a herb will have usually managed to score a cute yuppie chick will fill you with violent feelings toward him.

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Dancing Douche

Prop

Sometimes the scene will yield the perfect prop to exploit for bonding with girls. This guy gave us ten minutes of quality entertainment:

I know it’s hard to see (dark, buzzing cameraman) but there is a guy dancing in front of the fish tank holding a cell phone to his ear. I’m pretty sure there was no one on the other end of the line. He danced vigorously (leg kicking, pelvis thrusting) for a full ten minutes staring at the fish tank the whole time, cell phone never leaving his ear. Half the bar was pointing and laughing at him. The bartenders began imitating his moves, complete with mock cell phone. He remained oblivious to his public humiliation.

Thank you, Dancing Douche, for facilitating mating opportunities.

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What’s Annoying In This Picture?

Answer below

The satchel.

As everyone helpfully pointed out, there are a lot of annoying things in this picture.

But the satchel-wearing herb is the most annoying of them all. Its 1AM and he’s drinking a beer in a loud bar environment that is not conducive to bringing textbooks and studying for an art history exam. Why does he need to wear that stupid satchel? Did mommy pack a midnight snack for him? Every time one of these dorks turns around the satchel knocks over a drink or hits some short girl in the face. Tres gay.

The worst offenders are the guys who wear bulging backpacks filled with, no doubt, threadless.com t-shirts. They occupy enough personal space for two people.

Contest winners are mm, rina and finefantastic. Please claim your winning prize to perform a free naked pole dance in my bedroom before the end of month. Preferably together. Windex will be supplied.

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Hovering

One of the most socially inept mistakes I see guys doing is the Rejection Hover. (The Hesitation Hover is almost as bad but at least in that scenario the guy can pretend he’s just waiting around for a friend to arrive.) It usually happens like this: Guy walks up to a girl who is alone or with a group of friends, runs his pitch, fails to capture her interest, gets the cold shoulder… and inexplicably decides to hover — like a hungry but stupid bee trying to find the entrance to a complicated flower — in their immediate vicinity even though they have turned their backs to him.

Instead of walking away with his pride intact he opts to loiter along the group’s perimeter, losing status points by the second. It is painful to watch. Nothing telegraphs ‘NEEDY LOSER’ faster than standing uncomfortably with a befuddled and forlorn look on your face peering over the shoulders of people who have concluded you suck.

Why do men do this? (And I’ve caught myself hovering a few times from lapses in judgement.) Odds are most men are just too lazy to move the fuck away to another spot in the venue or aren’t aware how badly hovering carries the stink of beta. You can’t fix what you don’t know is wrong. The other reason may be that he really believes the girl will warm up to him if he physically imposes himself in her peripheral vision. Maybe he wishes that she’ll give a second look at his tough grimace, chiseled triceps, or cool hand-in-jeans-pocket stance and reconsider his mate value. This is projection. Because guys are looks-focused, we think girls are equally looks-focused. But that is a failure of imagination. Once a girl has decided she doesn’t like your personality she loses all interest in your looks or how suavely you can hook your thumb through your belt loop.

This is why it is critically important to refrain from orbiting a set that has snubbed your efforts to engage them, if for no other reason than to avoid looking like a feeble choad.

There are alternatives to hovering that will have you come out looking less beta. You could re-enter the set one more time, gums blazing, and try to sell yourself with a new pitch. You could eject confidently and find another target, preferably one that hasn’t seen you just get blown out. You could casually turn and chat with an adjacent group of people as if your target’s rejection was completely inconsequential to your state of mind. You could call over your wingman to occupy your awkward social isolation. You could walk ten feet away.

Exception: If a girl or group of girls approaches you, it’s acceptable to stay put if your opener receives a chilly reception. In this instance, it would be the group that is hovering, not you.

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Why Are There So Many Lawyers?

In the last post discussing the Japanese embrace of all things A.I., one of the commenters mentioned that Japan’s ratio of engineers to lawyers is 10 to 1, while the U.S.’s ratio is the reverse: 1 to 10. Because I have a special contempt for most lawyer chicks which impels me to fuck them hard, deep and violently until their gratingly argumentative masculinized tough girl exterior lies in a wet spot of pent-up orgasmic release on my bedsheets, I was curious why this is so.

My first guess is similar to what commenter ‘agnostic’ wrote about the Japanese possessing an IQ profile that favors visual-spatial reasoning over verbal fluency. If this is true, we should expect to see disproportionately more Asian-American engineers than lawyers, including second and third generation Asian-Americans, compared to the rest of the U.S. population. Lawyers, for reasons unbeknownst to me and at odds with the objective evidence concerning their contribution to society and the rigor of their curriculum, have higher status in the U.S. than do engineers, so if the highly pragmatic Asians are choosing engineering over law in spite of all the social pressure to do the opposite then that would suggest an ingrained mental proclivity for the hard maths.

Another possibility may be that homogeneous societies, like Japan’s, don’t need as many lawyers because the trust factor is stronger. When everyone looks like everyone else strangers are more apt to trust one another and work cooperatively, negating the need for lawyers. Corruption is lower so the courts are less involved in business transactions. A Harvard study has even shown that more diversity reduces civic-mindedness.

Is the U.S., the premiere multicultural experiment on the world stage, overburdened with lawyers because of its diversity? Is trust so low that recruiting an army of lawyers is the only way anything can get done here anymore?

To answer this, I’ve put together a chart comparing the number of lawyers per capita to the level of diversity for each state in the U.S. The second column is the Diversity Index for the year 2000 and it is based on a Census algorithm. The higher the Diversity Index number of the state, the more likely you are to run into someone from another race or ethnicity there. The lower it is, the more the entire state will look like an extended family backyard BBQ. The third column is number of lawyers in each state per 10,000 residents as of 2001.

STATE	Diversity Index 2000	Lawyers per 10,000 Residents
ME	0.07	9
VT	0.08	8.2
NH	0.10	7.7
WV	0.10	8.8
IA	0.14	6.2
ND	0.16	4.4
MT	0.19	8.5
KY	0.20	7.1
WY	0.21	8.3
SD	0.22	5.8
ID	0.22	6.1
MN	0.22	11.2
NE	0.23	8.3
WI	0.23	6.8
IN	0.25	6.9
UT	0.26	9.1
OH	0.28	8.6
PA	0.28	11.9
MO	0.29	10.9
OR	0.29	7.9
KS	0.30	5.8
RI	0.32	9.1
MA	0.32	14.5
TN	0.35	8.2
AR	0.36	5.3
MI	0.36	7.8
WA	0.37	8.7
CT	0.38	14.3
CO	0.42	13
OK	0.43	8.1
DE	0.44	18
AL	0.44	9.4
NC	0.46	8.2
VA	0.47	9.5
SC	0.48	8.4
MS	0.50	7.6
IL	0.50	14
LA	0.50	11.1
AK	0.51	8
GA	0.52	12
FL	0.52	11.7
NJ	0.53	11.7
AZ	0.53	8
NV	0.53	10.4
MD	0.53	9.4
NY	0.57	20.4
TX	0.61	9.5
NM	0.62	6.9
CA	0.67	10.9
HI	0.73	9.5
DC	0.56	276.7

I’ve separated DC from the main list as an outlier. 277 lawyers per 10,000 residents! In distant second place is New York at 20 lawyers per 10,000 residents. Now I know why I can’t get away from dating lawyers in this town. They’re everywhere. The overwhelming lawyer presence goes a long way toward explaining why DC is the toughest city to game chicks. No wonder there are cat adoption shelters on every corner.

The coefficient of correlation between the diversity index and the number of lawyers for all states is 0.38, which is a moderately positive correlation. So my theory that diversity breeds lawyers has some merit.

Next: I will discover a correlation between a woman’s career success and how often she bitches about guys.

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Robotopia

I went to a Japanese cultural exhibit at the Kennedy Center. The crowd pleasing favorites were the robots. This guy rolls around answering questions in a chipper voice and shaking hands:

He’d make a great politician if his answers were a little more vague.

This robot, made by Toyota, plays the trumpet using a complicated air pump system and lips that mimic those of a human:

Yes, he (she? it?) actually played the trumpet by blowing air into the instrument and pressing the valves with his fingers. He leaned and swayed side to side and backwards like a real musician getting caught up in the emotions of playing a song. He blasted out a couple of pop songs from the 1970s and a Disney tune. The sound was good and not as stilted or mechanical as I expected. A trumpet playing robot is pretty amazing but it’s not yet at the point where it can capture the fluidity and sensuality of a human master musician. Still, I tapped my feet.

A robot baby seal serves as a therapeutic aid to nursing home residents and sick children:

Aw, those soulful eyes. Guess what. If you scratch its face it will turn to the side you are scratching to look at you in appreciation and purr. You can feel the vibrations of the purr if you put your hand on its neck, just like a cat. Touch its whiskers and it makes an annoyed yip and turns away. Stroke its back and it will show its approval with a tail wag and squeals of delight. The makers of this $3500 toy say the noises the seal makes are an exact replica of the noises made by real baby seals in the wild. I asked if it came packaged with a club; the seal growled and a machine gun barrel protruded from its mouth. I moved on.

This is how the robot baby seal feeds recharges:

Check out the pacifier-shaped connectors. The Japanese are weird. If this had been a German product, the plug would’ve been in the ass.

Hmm, now what does this robot remind me of?

They’re coming!

What I learned from this cultural exchange:

• The Japanese are really smart.
• It says something stereotypical about the Japanese that they are leading the robot revolution.
• The Japanese are confronting their demographic implosion and xenophobia head-on by investing in robots instead of importing tens of millions of antagonistic peasants to do the work that Japanese just won’t do.
• We should be opening the borders to cute Japanese girls in pleated skirts and knee high stockings.
• Americans should be ashamed we are falling way behind the robotics race.
• Americans are no longer ashamed of things that are worthy of shame.
• The Japanese understand that a society of robots is superior to a society of lawyers.
• It would not surprise me if an unmarried Japanese-American man were the first to invent a sexbot.
• The robot in the last photo is hotter than 80% of American women.
• I’d tap that.

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My Weird Scientology Date

Role playing is an effective method for bonding with girls. I like to role play with my dates, whether it’s preplanned or spontaneous. The act of assuming different personas and creating impromptu storylines seems to strike at a very primal core in women, making them giggle and light up with waves of pleasure. It’s like women crave this secret world you are inviting them into, a world of heightened sensation and exaggerated drama, as an antidote to their humdrum daily lives of pushing papers at work and emptying the litter box.

The better you are at improv, the wetter she will get. Docter/nurse, cop/speeder, teacher/disobedient student, pimp/hooker, CEO/secretary, irate manager/shoplifter… the pattern should be obvious.

On one date, I gave the girl a guided tour of an old (and very colorful) Russian Orthodox church, complete with ad libbed biographies of the various saints painted on the walls and ceilings. In my best wizened elder priest voice I pretended to welcome her into my confessional as she instantly caught on and slipped into the role of a naughty teenage girl who wished to confess her sin of indulging prurient thoughts of me. I called her “my child” a lot and she answered “yes, father” in lip-bitingly sweet girlish squeaks.

Another time, we went go-kart racing and play-acted a James Bond car chase scene through the narrow streets of Rome. She blew me a kiss as she sideswiped my go-kart into the rubber track wall. My British accent was horrible and her Italian accent left something to be desired, but it was the thought that counted.

But the best/worst role playing date I ever had was one that was more real than imaginary. As we were walking up the ave we stopped in front of the Church of Scientology building. Feeling mischievous and morbidly curious, I told my date we would be disillusioned D-list actors looking for enlightenment from alternative spiritual sources.

When we approached the door a bald, middle-aged man opened it a second before I was about to knock. He welcomed us in and as we stood in the foyer admiring the cartoonish portrait of L. Ron Hubbard hanging on the wall my date and I launched into our spiel about seeking spiritual fulfillment away from the “oppressive dogma of organized religion”. The guy’s face lit up like a home pregnancy test. He gave us the guided tour, enthusiastic but in a carefully measured speaking voice. Like a good salesman, he avoided scaring us off with the hard sell too early, instead asking us questions about ourselves and our search for meaning.

He asked if we had cameras (I lied) because apparently they have a no picture policy when people are present. We walked slowly around the main foyer peeking into each room while our guide spoke of the wonders of Dianetics (oddly, he never mentioned the E-meter which I wanted to try). The first room appeared to be an old study of thick, gnarled mahogany and floor-to-ceiling rows of bookshelves crammed with ancient tomes. There were a few library-style desks with reading lamps at which four men were seated, all of whom wearing green accountants’ eye visors and poring over books, brows furrowed in deep concentration. When we looked in, none of them glanced up from their books to acknowledge us.

At this point my date started to feel weirded out. Why? Because besides the green eyeshades, all those guys were dressed in the same clothes — white shirt, blue slacks, dark tie. And they seemed a little too engrossed in whatever they were reading.

The next room reminded me of that scene from A Clockwork Orange where they pry the guy’s eyes open with a metal contraption and force him to watch an endless montage of violent and pornographic video clips. It was a couple rows of neatly aligned empty chairs placed a few feet in front of a small movie screen. Nothing else, just that. If we were in any other residence, I wouldn’t have given it much thought, but the haunted vibe emanating from this mansion made me think of the worst scenarios. I tried to snap a picture of the room by cradling the camera in my palm and holding it tight by my hip, but our host wouldn’t stop looking directly at me.

While our scientologist friend blabbed, my date’s expression changed from giddiness to discomfort. She was no longer a D-list spiritually-deprived celebrity. She had had enough. The cultish vibes were beginning to accumulate. I cut him off and said we had to go, and he shoved some pamphlets in our hands. Stepping outside felt relieving.

The mood was ruined. I didn’t get a kiss from her at the end of the date. Scientology had cockblocked me.

I wonder if this is how normal people felt during the inception of the world’s major religions. Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, egalitarianism… they all must have struck naturally skeptical people as cultish and absurd when they first began. Only when enough time has passed do religions acquire a veneer of respectability and deference. Enough time has not passed for Scientology to hide its cultish essence under somber rituals and literary texts.

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