Thursday, May 10, 2007
Husband humor
First, a quick announcement: If you look at the "subscription area" in my sidebar you'll see that I've added a new option, "+ Bookmark"; if you click it, you'll get a window that'll allow you to add my blog to your bookmarking services, not just Del.icio.us and Digg but a bunch of others too, 33 total as of when I write this. The site that provides this service, Addthis.com, also offers a similar service for feed readers, but it doesn't have nearly as many options as offered by Addtoany.com (my yellow "subscription button"), so I didn't take advantage of it; it's worth keeping an eye on, though, as it'll make for a nicer-looking display to have both buttons be from the same site, and they may catch up eventually.
Husbands generally do things that wives don't like; that's a given. MY husband really pushes the envelope, though: A prime example is his insistence that if he lays down on the floor with his eyes shut he won't fall asleep, that instead he'll somehow become more rested but stay awake... despite the fact that it's NEVER happened that way. His perpetual snoring eliminates any gray area as to what he's doing, but he'll still try to deny that he was sleeping even after he's TOLD that he was snoring; he also tries to convince me that he's an ill-used victim, that I'm inventing the snores that are so loud that I can't hear the TV over them just to mess with him... as this is an all-ages blog, I'll refrain from including my reply to that line of discussion in this post. The thing that makes this behavior pattern so dismaying is that he does this same nonsense at other people's houses; it's bad enough to lie on someone else's floor with your eyes shut, which is rude and weird and socially unacceptable even for geeks, but to then fall asleep in the middle of their living room and start snoring so deafeningly that all conversation grinds to a halt and everyone stares open-mouthed in horror is just unforgivable... especially since he'll do it even when he's warned not to. (Perhaps he wants to make sure that we're humiliated in front of EVERYONE we know?)
He seems impervious to shame about the previous issue, but this next one embarrassed him enough that he's actually making an effort to change (with a little help from ME, of course): One of his favorite ways of being a jerk is to respond to everything I say with "Yes dear"; he's gotten so used to automatically saying it after every sentence spoken to him that yesterday he said it to his BOSS... and the latter is a gay man, and it's anyone's guess what he thought it meant (I hope he didn't think it was intended to be some sort of slur on his sexuality). Luckily, that conversation took place over the phone, and he didn't have to face the man he'd misspoken to... doubly lucky considering that he's a hardcore blusher. Even better, the reflexive blither to the last person in the world he should be blithering TO woke him up to how deeply ingrained his idiocy has become; when I pointed out that his next slip of the lip might be to one of my friends, or one of their husbands, he wanted to deny it but couldn't... and since he's socially awkward even by geek standards, he naturally doesn't want to risk making it harder to feel comfortable with one (or more) of our friends as a penalty for how he's been getting a kick out of being aggravating. An official end has been called to his being able to get away with "Yes dear"-ing me all the time; from now on, if he does it I'm going to whack him with a ruler... I'm not strong enough to hurt him, but the hope is that this somewhat extreme response will prevent him from getting the jollies that encourage him to perpetuate his disrespectful behavior and give him the chance to retrain himself in proper conversational responses before he makes another, possibly worse, faux pas.
As always, we managed to see a little humor in the situation:
Me: The word "dear" should never come out of your mouth again.
Him: But what if someone asks me where venison comes from?
Me: Say you don't know.
Him: Then they'll think I'm a moron.
Me: No change there, right?
Both: LOL!!
No look into my marriage would be complete without something gross, since marriage is in itself gross: While I was typing away on my laptop recently my back knotted up; I eventually couldn't stand it anymore and limped down the hall to get my husband to crack it for me. The door to his study was closed, which generally means that he's, um, taking matters in hand in there; I knocked, and he informed me that he'd just finished... if I hadn't been in pain my "wifely radar" would've gone off and I'd have been there within the 1st 30 seconds, but I didn't perform "whackus interruptus" on him this time. When he opened the door to see what I wanted, I told him that I needed my back cracked... but that he'd better go sterilize his hands 1st, all things considered. In response, he waved his unclean hands in front of my face; I recoiled, laughingly calling him a pig, and he chased me down the hall with his hands outstretched while I shrieked with disgust. When I was able to grab a magazine to shield myself from the biological attack, and aimed a few blows at his overactive groin with it, he went snickering on his way to the bathroom; I called after him that he was lucky that we don't have an autoclave, because I'd expect him to put ALL the affected bodily parts into it. ;-)
Husbands generally do things that wives don't like; that's a given. MY husband really pushes the envelope, though: A prime example is his insistence that if he lays down on the floor with his eyes shut he won't fall asleep, that instead he'll somehow become more rested but stay awake... despite the fact that it's NEVER happened that way. His perpetual snoring eliminates any gray area as to what he's doing, but he'll still try to deny that he was sleeping even after he's TOLD that he was snoring; he also tries to convince me that he's an ill-used victim, that I'm inventing the snores that are so loud that I can't hear the TV over them just to mess with him... as this is an all-ages blog, I'll refrain from including my reply to that line of discussion in this post. The thing that makes this behavior pattern so dismaying is that he does this same nonsense at other people's houses; it's bad enough to lie on someone else's floor with your eyes shut, which is rude and weird and socially unacceptable even for geeks, but to then fall asleep in the middle of their living room and start snoring so deafeningly that all conversation grinds to a halt and everyone stares open-mouthed in horror is just unforgivable... especially since he'll do it even when he's warned not to. (Perhaps he wants to make sure that we're humiliated in front of EVERYONE we know?)
He seems impervious to shame about the previous issue, but this next one embarrassed him enough that he's actually making an effort to change (with a little help from ME, of course): One of his favorite ways of being a jerk is to respond to everything I say with "Yes dear"; he's gotten so used to automatically saying it after every sentence spoken to him that yesterday he said it to his BOSS... and the latter is a gay man, and it's anyone's guess what he thought it meant (I hope he didn't think it was intended to be some sort of slur on his sexuality). Luckily, that conversation took place over the phone, and he didn't have to face the man he'd misspoken to... doubly lucky considering that he's a hardcore blusher. Even better, the reflexive blither to the last person in the world he should be blithering TO woke him up to how deeply ingrained his idiocy has become; when I pointed out that his next slip of the lip might be to one of my friends, or one of their husbands, he wanted to deny it but couldn't... and since he's socially awkward even by geek standards, he naturally doesn't want to risk making it harder to feel comfortable with one (or more) of our friends as a penalty for how he's been getting a kick out of being aggravating. An official end has been called to his being able to get away with "Yes dear"-ing me all the time; from now on, if he does it I'm going to whack him with a ruler... I'm not strong enough to hurt him, but the hope is that this somewhat extreme response will prevent him from getting the jollies that encourage him to perpetuate his disrespectful behavior and give him the chance to retrain himself in proper conversational responses before he makes another, possibly worse, faux pas.
As always, we managed to see a little humor in the situation:
Me: The word "dear" should never come out of your mouth again.
Him: But what if someone asks me where venison comes from?
Me: Say you don't know.
Him: Then they'll think I'm a moron.
Me: No change there, right?
Both: LOL!!
No look into my marriage would be complete without something gross, since marriage is in itself gross: While I was typing away on my laptop recently my back knotted up; I eventually couldn't stand it anymore and limped down the hall to get my husband to crack it for me. The door to his study was closed, which generally means that he's, um, taking matters in hand in there; I knocked, and he informed me that he'd just finished... if I hadn't been in pain my "wifely radar" would've gone off and I'd have been there within the 1st 30 seconds, but I didn't perform "whackus interruptus" on him this time. When he opened the door to see what I wanted, I told him that I needed my back cracked... but that he'd better go sterilize his hands 1st, all things considered. In response, he waved his unclean hands in front of my face; I recoiled, laughingly calling him a pig, and he chased me down the hall with his hands outstretched while I shrieked with disgust. When I was able to grab a magazine to shield myself from the biological attack, and aimed a few blows at his overactive groin with it, he went snickering on his way to the bathroom; I called after him that he was lucky that we don't have an autoclave, because I'd expect him to put ALL the affected bodily parts into it. ;-)
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Do you think for yourself?
Ok, now ask yourself that question again and really think about the answer. Still sure you're a rugged individualist?
Do you have the same political beliefs as your parents? Or the exact opposite ones? Or ones that match the views you encountered in college? Or the same ones as your romantic partner or social group? If you answered "yes" to any of those, and you didn't do an in-depth objective analysis the conclusions of which coincidentally fell into one of those categories, you're not thinking for yourself.
Do you have the same religious beliefs as your parents? If you said "yes," unless the reason for it is that your deity appeared to you and confirmed that you'd picked the one true religion, you're not thinking for yourself.
If asked your opinion on an issue, does your reply parallel what you read or heard from the media, or, worse, on a blog? Unless you did independent fact-checking and, again, in-depth analysis, that just happened to dovetail with those NON-objective sources, you're not thinking for yourself.
If you're asked what music, movies, etc you like, and what comes out of your mouth is whatever's currently popular, either among your circle of acquaintance or in general... do I even have to say it? Popularity is probably the most powerful influence on the average person's preferences; if something is perceived as being popular, even among total strangers whose tastes are unknown, people rush blindly to that thing rather than looking at the ones that are closest to what they already know they like. The New York Times has a fascinating article on this topic called "Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?":
"people almost never make decisions independently - in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the 'best' of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing."
"when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called 'cumulative advantage,' or the 'rich get richer' effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors"
Ahhhhhh, I love to find out why folks do the silly things they do. In case you don't believe the explanation, fear not, they proved it with an experiment:
"more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=79be2f770fc76c6d&ex=1334203200
Do I need to quote any more? You know what happened when people could see how many times each song had been downloaded, right? You can give a little slack to those who're influenced by their loved/liked ones raving about something, or even by strangers if they can see excited faces or hear excited voices, since we absorb each others' emotions so readily, but to just see NUMBERS and be so influenced by those tiny traces of strangers' preferences is pretty scary... and I'll bet that every person thus manipulated would swear to their dying breath that they always think for themselves.
Human beings are social animals, and as such it's natural for us to be affected by what those around us think and feel; that undoubtedly served us well in our primitive days, when we had to all want the same things and work towards the same goals in order to survive. There aren't many of us in the modern world who want to live our lives with others doing our thinking for us, so it's up to each of us to look at all our opinions and ask "WHY do I feel that way?", and to be willing to devote some serious skull-sweat to each topic that we can't find a solid reason for holding our current view on.... only then will we truly be thinking for ourselves.
Do you have the same political beliefs as your parents? Or the exact opposite ones? Or ones that match the views you encountered in college? Or the same ones as your romantic partner or social group? If you answered "yes" to any of those, and you didn't do an in-depth objective analysis the conclusions of which coincidentally fell into one of those categories, you're not thinking for yourself.
Do you have the same religious beliefs as your parents? If you said "yes," unless the reason for it is that your deity appeared to you and confirmed that you'd picked the one true religion, you're not thinking for yourself.
If asked your opinion on an issue, does your reply parallel what you read or heard from the media, or, worse, on a blog? Unless you did independent fact-checking and, again, in-depth analysis, that just happened to dovetail with those NON-objective sources, you're not thinking for yourself.
If you're asked what music, movies, etc you like, and what comes out of your mouth is whatever's currently popular, either among your circle of acquaintance or in general... do I even have to say it? Popularity is probably the most powerful influence on the average person's preferences; if something is perceived as being popular, even among total strangers whose tastes are unknown, people rush blindly to that thing rather than looking at the ones that are closest to what they already know they like. The New York Times has a fascinating article on this topic called "Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?":
"people almost never make decisions independently - in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the 'best' of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing."
"when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called 'cumulative advantage,' or the 'rich get richer' effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors"
Ahhhhhh, I love to find out why folks do the silly things they do. In case you don't believe the explanation, fear not, they proved it with an experiment:
"more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=79be2f770fc76c6d&ex=1334203200
Do I need to quote any more? You know what happened when people could see how many times each song had been downloaded, right? You can give a little slack to those who're influenced by their loved/liked ones raving about something, or even by strangers if they can see excited faces or hear excited voices, since we absorb each others' emotions so readily, but to just see NUMBERS and be so influenced by those tiny traces of strangers' preferences is pretty scary... and I'll bet that every person thus manipulated would swear to their dying breath that they always think for themselves.
Human beings are social animals, and as such it's natural for us to be affected by what those around us think and feel; that undoubtedly served us well in our primitive days, when we had to all want the same things and work towards the same goals in order to survive. There aren't many of us in the modern world who want to live our lives with others doing our thinking for us, so it's up to each of us to look at all our opinions and ask "WHY do I feel that way?", and to be willing to devote some serious skull-sweat to each topic that we can't find a solid reason for holding our current view on.... only then will we truly be thinking for ourselves.
