The Greatest South Park Episode Ever

Maybe the greatest TV half hour ever. This episode is perfection from beginning to end. The Ring.

There is very little in TV and film that promulgates my worldview. My themes are beyond the pale, which really means the truth is beyond the pale. South Park comes close. The Wire, too. Swingers and Roger Dodger contain elements. In The Company Of Men was brutally clear. I’ve noticed that women who have seen Neil LaBute’s masterpiece universally hated it, when in reality they would be all over the type of men portrayed by Aaron Eckhart’s smooth talking, manipulative alpha character.

A lot of Hollywood’s critically-acclaimed “dark” films aren’t truthful, they’re just subversive, which is not necessarily the same thing. I don’t think unflinchingly candid films stripping to the bone the monstrously human motivations of all the characters, including the sympathetic protagonists, do very well because people don’t want to be reminded of their true, ugly natures. Is there a more powerful cognitive bias than self-delusion?

Did Michael Jackson Commit Suicide?

Based on the sketchy evidence that has come in so far, I don’t think this possibility can automatically be ruled out. Will we discover from the autopsy that his body was flooded with a massive dose of the painkiller Demerol? If so, was the overdose intentional or accidental?

What we know: Michael Jackson was 50. For a guy who didn’t want to grow up, turning 50 must have been a hammer blow to his already fragile prepubescently regressed psyche. He was in debt. Did the stress of a new worldwide tour to get him back in the black (innuendo intended) push him to the ultimate despair? He was underweight. As people age, their metabolisms slow and they begin packing on the unsightly pounds. There are only two (natural) ways to stay adolescent-thin as you age: Exercise, or eat a lot less. Michael Jackson didn’t look very healthy. Most likely, he solved the problem of middle age spread by drastically cutting down the amount of food he put in his mouth. Prolonged (as opposed to intermittent) intense calorie restriction can play havoc with a person’s psychological state, not to mention his health. Michael Jackson wanted to be white. No sense pussy-footing around that, it was as obvious as the caucasian inspired reconstruction of his face and skin, and his (very) white-looking kids. Did his living with being black finally tumble over into self-immolation?

Most importantly, Michael Jackson was fucked in the head from his father’s mistreatment. The manboy was robbed of a childhood (imagine having to hear your brothers banging groupies at the age of 11 as you hide under the bedsheets sticking your fingers in your ears). Jackson was a genuinely asexualized, emotionally stunted, and fantasy-prone age-regressed headcase. Did he believe, or want to believe, that he was still an 11 year old boy? It’s possible Jackson really did see himself as a little kid and it felt natural and normal to him to have boys over for slumber parties. Whether his adult-sized id led him to rest his chemically bleached penis in those kids’ hands is an open question, but does the pedophilic sexual urge of an adult necessarily have to be mutually incompatible with psychological self-identification as a young boy?

If Jackson imagined he was a boy, he would have most feared getting old. For him, aging would have been an encroaching horror he was unable to grasp, let alone cope with in the way most humans cope with the slow decay of their bodies — through the liberal use of happy clappy platitudes and a healthy sense of self-delusion. If you wake up and see a creature in the mirror looking less and less like the boy you think you are, it could send you off the cliff edge. Especially when the real boys you like having over for pillow fight parties start becoming more creeped out by “the old man” who wants to play with them.

Add up all the above, and the speculation of suicide as the cause of Jackson’s death seems reasonable.

Thoughts on Farrah Fawcett:

Cancer sucks, but anal cancer is just humiliating. How does one get anal cancer? I can think of three ways. Random misfortune, eating too much red meat, or taking HPV-positive cocks in the ass. The mind wanders…

Thoughts on celebrity deaths in general:

I’ll never get the outpouring of grief by people who have never met their cultural heroes and don’t know them from Adam. I must be missing the gene for abject celeb worship. When Diana died, the maudlin displays of garment-rending anguish reaffirmed my deeply felt disgust for the mass of humanity. Fucking no-life losers.

When someone I love dies, it’s a big deal. When a pop singer dies, I couldn’t give less of a shit. Unless I’m writing a dastardly blog post insinuating everyone’s blessed icon offed himself.

Thoughts on Michael Jackson and Game:

When a get rejected, I moonwalk away from the girl.

I think Virgle Kent could do a funny retrospective on the Gloved One.

‘Beat It’ was my favorite MJ song. Eddie Van Halen composed the guitar riff for ‘Beat It’. Does it matter that Michael Jackson didn’t write any of his songs? As a music snob and hobbyist guitarist/drummer/clarinetist/pianist, I used to be of the opinion that “pop stars” who didn’t write a lick of music were unworthy of stardom, but that’s a limited view. MJ had a distinctive singing voice, he was a great dancer and popularized a lot of innovative dance moves, and he had charisma, however eccentric. His hit songs are catchy and he had a flair for showmanship. Composing music isn’t the only measure of talent.

A Test Of Your Game: The Judging

Here is how I responded (or would respond) to the game challenges I posed in Tuesday’s post.

Part A

“You’re ten minutes late.”

“I don’t *feel* tardy.”

She doesn’t laugh. “Are you always late for dates?”

You pause. She’s reacting to your lack of punctuality worse than most women.

What do you do?

I stared at her for an uncomfortable two seconds, mentally wrote her off as a date-worthy prospect, and said “The problem is that you came right on time. No DC girl does that.” This reply seemed to mollify the bitch in her. Thinking back, the emphasis I gave to the words *RIGHT ON TIME* implied that she was more invested in the date than I was. I believe this caused a subtle shift in power to my benefit.

Best reader answers

el chief and his classic Asshole game (although I’d just use his second line):

Look around like Stevie Wonder, and say in a German accent: “Mother is that you? I’m sorry mother. I von’t be bad again.” Then laugh. Then order a beer.

If she presses say “Gimme a fuckin break. I thought you said you were fun and easygoing?”

Another version of Asshole game is One Word Game. One commenter suggested answering her pointed question like this: “Maybe.” Short, sweet, leaves ’em wanting more of your dominance.

I think One Word Game will be the next big thing in pickup science. It is my contribution to expanding the oeuvre. Look at the pros and cons. Pros: It’s mysterious, requires little memorization, saves you from paralysis by analysis, doesn’t smack of try-hard, gets you into her head, and captures the essence of ambiguity that so tempts the typical woman to fantasize scenarios involving your penis in her vagina. Cons: Can be misconstrued.

roosh’s genuine but uncompromising Superior Man game:

“If you’re in a bad mood we can reschedule the date no problem.” Definitely no smirk or smiles. Laser eye contact. If she leaves then you just saved yourself a couple hours of hell.

Brad demonstrates the power of Turn-The-Tables game:

I smile, stare at her right in the eye, HOLD… HOLD… and then say: “You missed me that much, huh? Well, I guess I can understand that..”

Firepower drops funnyman game:

“chill, baby – I’m only late when I’m pulling babies from burning buildings…and, maybe for girls I like.”

I’d dispense with the second half of his response. Similarly, I think a funny answer that could work would be: “Yeah, it was a rush for me to get here, but I had to take my sick mother to the doctor and feed orphaned babies, and I figured you’d be understanding about that. Like, WOW, I’d hate to meet a girl who was against sick mothers and orphaned babies!”

Fenton offered an example of witty game that works (i.e. note the succinctness):

“Well, you’ve been waiting four days, what’s ten more minutes?”

Most of the rest of you gave answers that were too nasty, too defensive, or too clever by half. Your goal isn’t to piss the girl off, nor is it to impress her with your Shakespearean wit. She isn’t worth your effort, yet, right?

To the commenter who wrote that the best reply is the Cary Grant “Big Face” push followed by draining her drink while signaling the waitress to come over for another order, I commend you sir. If anything will set America back on the path of world-bestriding hyperpuissance, it will be the big face.

Cuntrag, as usual, gave the opposite answer of what you should do.

Part B

Your date mentions she reads local DC blogs and likes most of them, and you wonder about bringing up your fandom […]

There is only one acceptable response to this situation. You steal my ideas to use as conversational fodder without mentioning you read me. I am such a fucking humanitarian.

Part C

Same as above, except this time, before you have decided whether to announce your everlasting platonic love, your date mentions she has read and hates him. […]

Your response should be the same as Part B. Don’t reveal you’re a reader, then change the subject. What are you, my eunuch servant who screens concubines for me? If she hates me, she’s masturbating to thoughts of me at night. Why boost my status even higher?

There is a catch in this particular situation. You have the option to play beta white knight to the hilt (see: Keith, Cliff Arroyo, DA, Jessica Valenti’s husband, any random urban liberal SWPL off the street) and say you have read as well and TOTALLY agree with her that he is a foul, bitter misogynist who probably doesn’t get laid and his ideas are all wrong, 1950s Ozzie and Harriet throwback shit and he uses women like a sperm receptacle. Then tell her how you feel privileged to have almost been aborted by your mother, and the biggest injustice in the world is that gay marriage isn’t yet accepted by Afghan goat herders. After you have massaged her ego, you slyly wonder aloud if maybe he is right about this or that subject and suddenly you are having a rollicking conversation with her and your hand is resting too high up her thigh.

I should bottle this magic.

Part D

You are me. You are on the date with the girl from the above story and have been talking with her about the book you are writing. She is intrigued. A little later in the date, she mentions she reads a lot of local blogs. She says there are some she reads that she really hates. You nod again. Then she asks you if you write a blog.

What do you say?

I lied.

She also mentions she ran a triathlon the day before.

Now what do you do?

Go big or go home. Same night lay or number deletion. Chicks who participate in triathlons are almost universally unfeminine. And by unfeminine, I don’t mean her looks, I mean her attitude. These kinds of women are at war with their femininity. It is the essence of yang polarity to take up personal challenges and compete against the limits of one’s endurance and pain threshold. This is what men do. When women do it, it’s unnatural, a big middle finger to the sex she was born as. While women like this can fuck like champs, they will invariably fall short in the areas that matter to men for long term relationships — generosity, nurturance, compassion, submissiveness, alluring coyness, and proper female deference.

I asked her if she was a tomboy growing up, then I ran the digit ratio routine on her. She had a masculine ratio. I told her that meant she was “ambitious”, which is a nice way to tidy up the word “bitch”. I am now going to craft an Andrew Sullivan-like neologism: Ambitchious!

Where’s my Atlantic Monthly paycheck?

A Test Of Your Game

Pulled from the headlines! A four part installment.

You met a girl at a bar. (Where else are you gonna meet her, tiger? The church social?) She’s a six foot tall, 23-year-old statuesque brunette who would probably intimidate most men, but not you. You gab for twenty minutes and score the digits.

On your first date four days later you arrive at the swank Connecticut Ave lounge ten minutes late, as per your usual routine. Your date is already there, drinking a cocktail. A smile flashes across your face, as much for seeing her again as for the thought that you will not have to buy her a drink. You sit down and notice she is glowering, her legs crossed geometrically. You hope she’ll uncross in homage to Basic Instinct.

“You’re ten minutes late.”

“I don’t *feel* tardy.”

She doesn’t laugh. “Are you always late for dates?”

You pause. She’s reacting to your lack of punctuality worse than most women.

What do you do?

******

You are on the date with the Nordic Amazon from the above story. You are an avid reader and feel he has made your life immeasurably better, and at a cost of nothing! Which, in occasional misanthropic moments, rubs your hero raw. Your date mentions she reads local DC blogs and likes most of them, and you wonder about bringing up your fandom, thinking the wealth of topics about sex and social dynamics written by your Infallible Lord, Master, and Philosophical Heir to the Divine Right of Kings would provide much fodder for rapport building and sexual future pacing.

What do you do?

******

Same as above, except this time, before you have decided whether to announce your everlasting platonic love, your date mentions she has read him and hates him. You mull in the mind whether ’tis more opportunistic to admit fandom and suffer the slings and arrows of angry, yet energetically and erotically charged, conversation about inspired themes, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing or denying thricely Disciple Peter-like the ugly truths he tells the world end any chance of the date imploding in your face like an overmicrowaved burrito.

What do you do?

******

You are me. You are on the date with the girl from the above story and have been talking with her about the book you are writing. She is intrigued. A little later in the date, she mentions she reads a lot of local blogs. She says there are some she reads that she really hates. You nod again. Then she asks you if you write a blog.

What do you say?

She also mentions she ran a triathlon the day before.

Now what do you do?

Test begins… now.

Picking Up Girls Using The iPhone

I was discussing the potential of iPhone game recently with a couple of buddies. One of my friends had gotten the new iPhone and was giddily sampling all the apps like a kid at Christmas, when we stumbled across some novel uses for the phone as a tool to satisfy men’s insatiable sexual demands.

There is an app that acts like a lie detector. You speak to the phone (using its voice recognition capabilities) and the app calculates the truth content of your statement. Obviously, it’s not truth serum, but it makes for excellent opener material.

You sidle up to a chick, tossing your monstrous cock over your shoulder and out of the way. “Hey, check this out.”

Chick: “What?”

“Say something about yourself to the phone. It’ll tell you how truthful you are. Here, like this: ‘The girl I’m talking to feels dizzy in my presence’.” You press the analyze button. “Hm, 99% truthful. Do you need to sit down for a minute?”

You can go in all sorts of directions with this basic iPhone game template. For instance, walk up to a set and tell the girls you found a new app that guesses their ages. Then hold the phone up, wave it over them, and put it back down with a worried look on your face. “Hm, must be miscalibrated. Nevermind. I don’t think you guys are cougars, yet.”

Another opener: “I’ve got a new app that tells me which girls like me.” Hold phone up to group. “OK, you guys are gonna have to decide who gets the first crack. I’m a one woman kind of man.”

For the truly advanced womanizer, there is a free app for the iphone from the website Loopt.com described as a “social compass” which allows you to GPS track anyone within the loopt network. Now you can turn all your number closes into coordinates on a map for convenient stalking. You can “happen” to “run into” twenty girls a day for followup game. The sky’s the limit.

The world is moving toward a pickup nirvana, connecting alphas with the hot chicks who would love them. The job, house, marriage and kids never seemed more anachronistic.

Quotes Of The Day

“When women claim to be seeking kindness, respect, a sense of humor, etc., they mean at most that they would like to find these qualities in the men who are already within their erotic field of view. When a man asks what women are looking for, he is trying to find out how he can get into that field of view. Women do not normally say, either because they do not know themselves or because it embarrasses them to speak about it. The advice they do give harms a lot of lonely men who mistakenly concentrate their mating effort on showing kindness and courtesy to ungrateful brats rather than working to gain the things females actually respond to.”
– ‘The feminine sexual counter-revolution and its limitations’, F. Roger Devlin

“Sexual desire is preoccupied with youth, and the progressive influx of ever-younger girls onto the field of seduction was simply a return to the norm; a restoration of the true nature of desire, comparable to the return of stock prices to their true value after a run on the exchange. Nonetheless, women who turned twenty in the late sixties found themselves in a difficult position when they hit forty. Most of them were divorced and could no longer count on the conjugal bond — whether warm or abject — whose decline they had served to hasten. As members of a generation who — more than any before — had proclaimed the superioirity of youth over age, they could hardly claim to be surprised when they, in turn, were despised by succeeding generations. As their flesh began to age, the cult of the body, which they had done so much to promote, simply filled them with an intensifying disgust with their own bodies — a disgust they could see mirrored in the gaze of others.”
– The Elementary Particles, Michel Houllebecq

I Tried The Apocalypse Opener

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the magisterial Apocalypse Opener, go here to read about it in detail.

Essentially, the Apocalypse Opener is three simple sentences. A description from the link above:

You rock up to a chick and, in a confident, level voice you say

“Hey, how’s it going.”

She will say

“Fine.”

You then say

“Cool. What are you doing later?”

She will say

“I’m not sure.”

You then say

“Do you want to come home with me?”

Then you hold.

Hold.

HOLD………………..

HOLD IT MY SON……………………..

HOLD THE FUCKING LINE………………

Boom. Makeout. [editor’s note: he means a makeout should be forthcoming, not that you should initiate a makeout]

So that’s all I had to memorize. “Hey, how you doing.” “Cool. What are you up to later?” “Do you want to come home with me?” Easy enough, but of course nothing is ever that simple. The real power of the opener resides in your confident body language, casual delivery, and most importantly how well you maintain state control after you say the final knockout line. Again, from the website link above:

The key to making it work is not how you say it, but what you do in the 30 seconds after it’s left your mouth.

Before I talk specifics, let’s state the single CARDINAL SIN of the Apocalypse, which is the ONLY THING that can blow you out.

NEVER BE WEIRD

That’s it. Don’t be weird. You have to deliver the opener deadpan. Like you are talking about the WEATHER. You are not making a BIG THING of it. You’re just ASKING.

You are not MOCKING. You are not JOKING. You are not TOO SERIOUS.

It is NOT PLAYFUL however – it is REAL.

You are REALLY ASKING HER.

If she says no – you only need ONE COMEBACK.

It is this:

“Ok.”

The key to making the Apocalypse Opener (“AO”) work seems to be that you are being sexually genuine without being sexually eager. That means: No creepiness, no giggling, no bashful smiling, no reneging after you’ve uttered the killer line, and no goofball backpedaling during that critical 30 second post-opener window. In sum: NO FEAR. I imagine if the girl reacted poorly, even angrily, to the AO most guys would be tempted to reassure her that it was just a joke.

He then goes on to explain that if she says “No” you just start talking about random shit like you would do with any girl you were being friendly with in a bar. He claims that 50% of the time, a girl who declines the AO will reengage you later in the night, as long as you handled the blowout with supreme nonchalance. He also makes the outlandish claim that the AO will “work” (that is, it will result in a same night lay) 40% of the time.

I had my doubts, so I decided to try it for myself and for the entertainment of you, my readers. The things I do for you people…

I went alone to a bar I don’t normally frequent. If I was going to risk getting a beer poured on my head, I didn’t want my buddies pointing and laughing at me and I didn’t want to cause trouble in a bar where I knew the staff. I decided to make my move before it got too late in the night and crowded with garrulous frat boys that my target could wave over in case the AO failed spectacularly. I also didn’t want to use it on very drunk girls. Almost any bold direct game will work to some degree on drunk chicks, and I wanted to test the AO without alcohol falsifying the result.

I, on the other hand, needed a couple of stiff drinks for this challenge. Although the AO sounds incredibly easy on paper, when you are standing there alone in a semi-crowded bar about to take your first steps toward your target, the lines you have practiced saying by yourself suddenly jam up in your throat. The AO is no ordinary opener; I was feeling intense apprehension the likes of which I hadn’t felt since I sat next to THE CUTEST GIRL IN THE WORLD in sixth grade English class and negged her pink backpack.

I walked up to her. I chose my target well. She was standing by the bar alone. I couldn’t see the AO working on girls in mixed sets. She was a solid 6, mid or late 20s, not GF worthy, but certainly lay worthy. There was no way I was ready to run the AO on a bonafide hottie.

“Hey, what’s up.”

She smiled. “Oh, not much. You?”

“I’m alright. You doing anything later?”

“Um… I dunno. Why?”

I focused hard on sounding casual. “Do you want to come home with me?”

After I said it, I felt a tremendous rush of adrenaline. I think I might have chubbed out a little, too. I kept my eyes locked on hers and a slight smile throughout. I made sure not to arch my eyebrows imploringly.

Her mouth hung open. At first she had a startled look, then amusement, then a darkening seriousness. She glanced down at her feet then back up at me.

“How many women has this worked on?”

“If you’d prefer not to, then that’s cool.”

“I just… I mean, it’s sort of OUT THERE, you know?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe compared to the average guy.”

“Well, um, I have to tell you I’m waiting for my boyfriend to arrive. So I’m flattered, but…”

“Ok, no problem. Catch you around.”

And with that I left the bar.

Apocalypse Opener: FAIL. But of course this was a sample set of one, so I won’t draw any conclusions about its efficacy or the adroitness of my delivery yet. She may have really been waiting for a boyfriend for all I knew.

I suspect the AO won’t work very well if you are an older man hitting on a much younger woman. Large age discrepancies need indirect game. This chick wasn’t much younger than me, but if she had been 19 I think my AO would have gone over like a lead balloon. I’m not a huge proponent of direct game, (and AO is about as direct as it gets), but in situations where you already communicate high sexual status through your looks and fashion sense, the AO will yield more success for you.

Since the AO has such potential for generating humorous and humiliating stories, I plan to purchase a small voice recorder that I will hide under my shirt when I do future AO attempts. Then I will post the audio on my blog for your edification. If you don’t hear any sound after I say the opener, that means I’m getting some.