Monthly Archives: August 2011

August 25, 2011 · 2:08 PM

Stockholm Syndrome

Back in May, I was listening to two of my best friends ramble on about how I needed to roll on this excursion that they were planning for the summer.  It had been a tough winter, replete with personal and professional drama, and I was told that I needed to reward myself for making it through by going on a crew trip.  We’d party, we’d bond, we’d hang out with pretty girls, we’d embarrass our nation, etc.  It all sounded well and good until they told me of the vacation destination that they had in mind: Stockholm, Sweden.

Cue the Ben Stein face.  “Dude.  Sweden?  Really?  You want me to spend thousands of dollars for a week of blonde women and meatballs?!”  Mind you, I don’t have a problem with either of those things, (although one of them is imminently more appealing than the other).  It was more a question of whether Stockholm had anything else to offer besides Aryan lovelies and spheres of gas-inducing beef.

I need to clear up how wrong I was, for the record.  Literally.  Stockholm in the summer was so much fun that I had to write a song about it.  You can check it out at the bottom of this post.

Of course, it could be argued that the feel-good, synth-hop track that spilled out of my ticker and noggin paints a somewhat lopsided view of things.  I mean, it’s basically all about partying and women…but hey, it’s rap music.  Everybody knows that hip-hop ain’t capable of exploring such profound notions as the grandeur of cultural exchange or delight in the brotherhood of man, right?  Shut the fuck up, Donny.

Seriously though, Stockholm is a fantastic place, full of warm, friendly people.  I think I met one mean person the entire time I was there, and that was a clerk at a convenience store.  Since society apparently values me more than it does her, I’m not even going to count that little unfortunate blip on the Scandinavian radar.  Plus, the gorgeous, extravagantly welcoming women who served as our hosts more than made up for her stank ass.  Tack mycket!

Anyway, I hope you dig the track.  Imagine that you’re in your own happy place as you listen, and you’ll get the feel for what Stockholm means to me now.  Of course with my luck, the next time I go there I’ll get beaten by poliser or blown up by an anti-terrorist terrorist or something.  Whatever.

In the meantime, I miss you, Stockholm.

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August 11, 2011 · 7:30 PM

Sex Shooters: Social Media and Female Self-Esteem

If you're gonna post a scandalous Facebook pic, THIS is how to do it. We miss you, Apollonia.

Men spend an inordinate amount of time in the pursuit of encounters with sexy women.  These encounters need not be in the real world, of course.  I mean, I don’t have to tell you which industry is responsible for the big, beautiful broadband world we live in right now, do I?  Hint: it involves naked people having sex.

But guys don’t need to satisfy our sex fix with explicit material.  Women in sexy outfits, making sexy faces, hinting at sexy things that they might do will work just fine (while we’re in public, at least).  Lucky for us, ladies seem more than happy to quench our thirst for this stuff, and the rise of social media has provided them with a huge hose to like, drown us in T&A.  Sorry, Yeezy, but that’s a beautiful death.

From the crazy number of entries to American Apparel’s 2010 “Best Bottom Contest” to sites like ilikecurves.com (lots of pros, but plenty of amateurs in there), women love to let us know that they look sexy.  And I love that they love it.  I just wonder why they love it.

Don’t get me wrong.  It makes my day when I see some fine ass lady has posted a picture of herself with a come-hither pucker on some juicy, shimmering lips, rockin’ a body-hugging dress so tight it appears to be a strange but erotic skin mutation.  Freakum dresses are wonderful, splendid gifts from the gods and are right beneath leggings and biking shorts as the greatest fashion innovation since…well…clothes.

I’m just sayin’ though, it’s like you just walked up to everybody you’re cool with and said, “Me and my girls went to the club last night and I was lookin’ tatalicious: check out these blatant, semi-lesbian photos!  But wait, there’s more!  If you click right now, I’ll throw in this trunk-rattlin’ donk shot – tilt your laptop a little and you might even see some cheek pokin’ out!”

I loves it, but why are there SO many semi-scandalous pictures of you at the club?  And of you in your bikini at the beach?  And of you in your bikini at the club on the beach?  I’m not buying that you got dressed and took those pictures for yourself, etc., etc.  That argument barely holds water in the real world and the whole goddamned bottom drops out the bucket when you extend it to posting photos on Facebook.  By definition, when you put that image on a social network, YOU WANT AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE TO SEE IT.  At least the ones in your personal network.

If you ask me, there’s such a preponderance of this behavior because a big segment of women want desperately to be sex symbols.  It validates their self-image and shores up their self-esteem.  I actually feel somewhat silly writing that because it’s not too controversial of a thought, really.  Women know that men like attractive, sexually interesting (and interested) women, so why wouldn’t women want to appeal to that desire?  We all do what we need to do to feel wanted, no matter the context.  We all want to know that we contribute to the world in some way and to be recognized for it.

Of course, most ladies also want to be respected professionals, venerated spouses and adored parents, too.  No one is denying or minimizing that fact.  It’s just that until recently, as crazy as it sounds, it was a lot easier to be a great ad executive or professor or mom than it was to be a pin-up girl, at least for a big audience.

Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram, where the artsy sexy pics go to live, have changed all of that.  Today, a woman can show everybody that’s she’s a mother AND a MILF, electronically gushing as compliments like, “OK WERK IT GUUUURRRL” and “Damn!  Tell Craig he betta treat you rite!” just stream in.  Cherie, the second year med student, need only tag herself in the mechanical bull shot with her girl Peaches to hint at how sweet a night out with the two of them might be.  Dude, who needs King, FHM or even Playboy when you’ve got the muthaeffin’ News Feed?!

Again, I’m all for it.  Self-expression, especially semi-nude self-expression of the female variety, is a moral imperative.

In fact, just to show my commitment to this noble principle, I’m inviting all you ladies to post your sexiest photo to www.facebook.com/scissorspeaks or tweet it to @scissorspeaks.  The one who gets the most positive comments will win a date with me and I’ll interview you about your experience for an upcoming post – you’ll get to tell errbody how it really is.  But here’s the catch: you’ve also gotta include a picture of you when you first wake up.

What, no takers?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

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August 4, 2011 · 2:17 PM

The Deciders

You gotta give it to him. He never shied away from a decision...no matter how hairy things got.

I’m usually a fan of liberty.  Determining one’s own destiny, living the life that you want to live, making your own choices, it’s all great stuff – usually.  Still, I’ve been thinking a lot lately that freedom of choice can be an awfully heavy load to carry.  I can’t help but feel that sometimes, it would be uber fantastic to part with some of that freedom in exchange for peace of mind.

You know what I’m talking about.

Should you move to San Francisco for the job you’ve always dreamt of having, even though you know absolutely no one there and doing so would mean walking away from a 15% higher salary?  Do you kick it with Eric, the mischievous golden boy with the soft interior (kinda like a slightly rotten Twinkie)?  Or do you get all homewreckerish and throw your chips down on Alcide, the loner with rugged good looks, a heart of gold and a crazy-ass bitch for a girlfriend?  I mean, even something as “simple” as the admittedly bougie law school/business school conundrum is enough to drive the most stable of us to drink.

So, wouldn’t it be nice to just opt out?

If you could have someone else spend time deliberating, then make the decision for you, wouldn’t that just be awesome balls?  Whenever you found yourself at a point at which your ability to gaze through the fog of your own emotions was too limited to allow you to take another step, you’d simply reach out and *POOF* a helping hand would emerge from the mist to pull you onto the right path.

Think of all the excruciating pain you could avoid and the precious time you could save!  You could approach the biggest challenges in life with a sense of optimism, free from fear of that manipulative bastard, Pride or that relentless bitch, Guilt.  You’d always be secure in the knowledge that whatever happened, you made the best decision that you could…given the available data.  (You know the applicable phrase: shit in, shit out.)

Of course, there would be some guidelines:

  1. No decision would be made by just one person.  Instead, each Supplicant would request a decision from a Triune of Selectors; one subject matter expert, one mental health expert, and one lay person.  The objective would be to assess the relative merits of an option with as holistic a view as possible.
  2. Every citizen of voting age must serve as a Selector once per year.  The service period would last for a month.  During that time, the Selector would be called to serve as needed.
  3. Supplicants can elect to pay a fee for the service, or use it at no cost.  The fee would equal 5% of the supplicant’s yearly salary.  If they are unemployed, or otherwise lack the financial wherewithal to pay, then they would be made to perform an extra month as a Selector that year.  If they choose the free option, then they’d pay nothing, but the Triune’s decision would be unequivocally, incontrovertibly binding.

You might be wondering why the cost is relatively high.  Well, as any American middle schooler will tell you after the Civil War unit in social studies class, freedom is never free.  This includes freedom of choice, kids.

The power to shape one’s life is so fundamental to having a worthwhile existence as a human being that willingly relinquishing that freedom should have a price, too.  And that price should be high enough to serve as a reminder of the value of the possession that you’re handing over to a bunch of strangers.  Plus, it keeps idiots from registering a request every time they can’t figure out whether they should get with the flat-chested one with the apple bottom or the human life preserver with an ironing board ass.

I don’t know about you, but I so would love to have this option in my life.  The decisions only get more complex as I get older, and relying on friends and family to help out ain’t always a good idea.  Are you really gonna get career advice from your underemployed brother?  Oh, and I’d guess that your divorced homegirl going through the custody battle ain’t the best source for relationship tips, babygirl.

Still, I know that this is just a pipe dream.  In the end, we’re all the ultimate arbiters of our destinies; we’ve all got to channel our inner Dubya to become The Decider.  (I know, I know.  I just threw up inside my mind a little after I wrote that.)  And hey, I guess if even that dude can accept the challenge, so can we all.

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