skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A recurrent theme in the illustrations of Art Frahm is genteel ladies dealing with the public embarassment of wardrobe malfunctions; specifically their panties dropping down to their ankles and being viewed by an appreciating, leering male. The women never is seen as initiating or enjoying a tease in the undie display; she's always upset by this revelation. And, for some fetishistic reason, she's always carrying celery.
I'm glad that the elastic used in panties is stronger nowadays! Or maybe these panty malfunctions are the result of the larger and more massive granny panties that women wore back then!
However, the scene may have a more sinister context: the elevator boy might have delibrately adjusted the speed and abruptness of descent so that the gentle lady would be humiliated by the loss of her panties and exposure of her bottom! There is an example of true sexist behavior!
I'm glad we've gone into automatic elevators. That's a real cultural, social, and moral improvement, but it takes away one possible job for simple-minded people who would be otherwise unemployable. Alternatively, this could be viewed as a commentary on social class tensions, the elevator boy dashing the pretentions of the elegant, middle-class woman!
But maybe some underemployed psychoanalytically-trained individual can explain the celery that seems to be a recurrent motif in Frahm's art!
Despite limiting play time in high school football to 48 minutes, there are still occasional mismatches that lead to collosal blowouts; or in the language of the typical male SEC football fan: ass whuppings!
One of these happened recently in that football-obsessed state, Texas, where the Aledo High School Bearcats easily defeated Western Hills High School Cougars, 91-0.
This prompted one of the parents of a player on the losing team to file a bullying complaint against the winning football team.
Apparently, Aledo coach Tim Buchanan tried to keep the score down by taking out his first-string players, by using a running game, and by requesting that the clock not be stopped after halftime; but the combination of the performance by the Bearcats' subs and the hapless Western Hills team. Anyway, players who normally sit out games on the bench are highly motivated to make the best they can of their limited game time.
After an inquiry, the complaint was found to have no merit.
Texas has no "mercy" rule for football games that ends it after the score becomes too lopsided. And I can't imagine a coach requesting a stop to the game.
In my opinion, calling this lopsided win "bullying" was a real stretch. But what if the school board had indeed regarded it as bullying?
How much of a margin must occur for bullying to have taken place?
Should losing players be given counseling to console them for their loss?
Should the winning team and coaches have to undergo sensitivity training?
Seriously, bullying is a real and serious problem among youth. (I've been a recipient.) But using it in marginal cases like this only muddies the waters.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/91-0-texas-football-blowout-leads-bullying-charge-101510025.html
According to this 'reliable' U.K. source, there is now a new app that allows for men to offer women bribes in hopes of obtaining dates with them, such as jewelry or plastic surgery. This web site was developed by the same guy that came up with SeekingArrangement.com, the site that allows "sugar daddies" to connect with young women in return for their being quasi-mistresses.
This is uncomfortably close to prostitution.
Anyway, the idea is that, if otherwise unacceptable guys were to be able to get into the dating door with an attractive woman, this might give them an opening for the woman to see their positive side and be attracted in turn. It's a hopeful idea, but not likely to work.
Here's the psychology behind why it won't work.
Two separate reasons:
1. There's the cognitive dissonance thing, as suggested by Leon Festinger back in the 1950's. Briefly, this is a social psychological theory that holds that when a person has two or more cognitions, ideas, beliefs, values, or emotions, she motivated to reduce that uncomfortable state. If a young woman is going out with what she perceives to be a marginal guy, she is likely to experience some cognitive dissonance that might be more or less be dependent on whether an inducement is present:
a) She is going out with a questionable guy, but without any external reason to justify it (e.g., as a favor to a friend she is going out with her nerdly cousin); so she has to come up with some possible explanation as to why she is doing so. In the absence of some external inducement, she might conclude that she is attracted to the guy.
b) But if some inducement is present, she can readily ascribe why she is doing so in terms of the inducement. She does not have to explain her behavior in terms of attraction: the inducement suffices.*
In the illustration below, Belle, the Beauty, would be attracted to the Beast because she could not otherwise account for the incongruence between his appearance and her going with him.
2. Then there's research by Edward Deci that indicated that, if you attach an extrinsic reward to an activity that had been otherwise intrinsically rewarding, the extrinsic reward tends to eclipse the intrinsic reward and when it is discontinued, the activity tends to be less likely to persist. In other words, whatever pleasure she might have found from his company is offset or obscured by the offer of the jewelry or the boob job or other extrinsic reward, and makes it less likely that she will enjoy being with him with no external inducement.
[Silly picture comment: I don't think an actual carrot would work, unless she's a bunny. And I don't know of anyone who wears dresses so short! I might go out with a M.I.T. grad out of curiosity, but you would never catch me wearing skankwear.]
*This is why going on a blind date to help out a friend seldom leads to any positive vibes. I've been there.
http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/20/carrot-dating-controversial-new-app-allows-men-to-offer-women-bribes-for-dates-4153532/
It's no secret -- science coverage in the mainstream media is less than stellar, partly because of the rarity of reporters who are versed in science, and partly because the various newspapers and television news programs see any kind of news as an opportunity to grind whatever political axe they happen to favor.
Of course, some science news items are seemingly tailor-made for this: global warming, evolution, cryptozoology, extraterrestrial beings, and lately the controversially-named God particle (the boson) being specific examples.
Of course, news programs like people to make unequivocal statements, rather than seemingly hedge, like scientists are trained to do.
Then there's the confusion of correlation and causality. Reporters jump to conclusions too readily about this. So there's a lot of science reporting off the top of peoples' heads.
There's an interesting little report on CNN that linked better attendance and business for "gentlemen's clubs" to the U.N. having its annual meeting in New York. On the video, they interviewed the manager of The Cheetah, definitely an upscale establishment!
I wonder if the strippers provide a distraction to members of this august body, and that we might consider them to be distractions also to other deliberative bodies. Therefore, I offer a modest proposal:
In Washington, as long as Congress is in session, close down the strip clubs! And maybe the states of Virginia and Maryland could also voluntarily grant the ecdysiasts a holiday as long as our Solons are doing their National Duty! In my way of thinking, it's the patriotic thing to do.
After all, some states have laws closing the bars on election day; or at least while the polls are open.
Hmmm......should we also institute in-session prohibition in D.C. as long as Congress is meeting? Considering the antics (or non-antics) of the current group of losers, they drive the rest of us to want to drink! Maybe the best solution is to move Congress lock, stock, and barrel to Salt Lake City, or some other place not noted for its nightlife.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/politics/2013/09/25/dnt-un-nyc-strip-clubs.wpix.html
To include a little story about my home state, Louisiana, the capital was originally in New Orleans even back in the French and Spanish days. But in 1830, some legislators, finding it to be a bit "noisy" (read that as too tempting), moved the capital upriver to Donaldsonville. (Betcha you never heard of that place!) Anyway, in 1831, they found Donaldsonville to be unsuitable, so they relocated the capital back to New Orleans.
The capital was again moved in 1849; this time to Baton Rouge. They figured that a place named after a Native American boundary marker had little of the aura of temptation. Mark Twain commented negatively on the original capital building there as coming from reading too much Sir Walter Scott, but he was an old grump sometimes.
For many communities on the make, tourism is the Holy Grail of business and revenue generation: It's relatively ecologically safe (unless you discount drunk tourists urinating on streets like in some places), it provides jobs for locals, money for the movers and shakers, and gives a lot of favorable publicity.
Some communities really stretch the point to be seen as a place to go, even to generating faux festivals such as the Opelousas's Yam Festival or the tobacco-spitting contest that Ripley, MS has.
Yeah, right? Do you really want to go into the boondocks to see some adept rednecks expectorate their chaws? After all, not every place is blessed initially with history, like the Alamo or Williamsburg or even Seattle. And Washington gives us reasons to be in awe of the various monuments, diligently active Federal workers, our august legislators passing wise laws to improve our general good. Miami, of course, gives us a glimpse of paradise, with warmish weather, beautiful sun-tanned bodies, Art deco buildings, and curious multi-cultural cuisine and corruption. And New Orleans has the Mardi Gras.
But how do you make a tourist attraction out of an essentially blah place?
One way is to make up your own language, as Boonville, CA has done: Boontling. That will attract some linguistically curious folk.
Or you can sponsor a mass exhibition of buttocks, as a Southern California community annually moons Amtrak. Or thong-wearers on South Beach do year round. Oops, Miami Beach is far from bland.
Or you can play up to the tinfoil hat wearers, as some enterprising people in Roswell, NM have done for over 50 years.
As a matter of fact, the USAF and the State of Nevada have a possible prime site for the New Paranoid Tourism: Area 51.
This secret, restricted area has the ability to draw curiosity more than any woodland with Posted: No Entry signs ever does. It's the aura of mystery. What strange creatures are lurking in Area 51? What fiendish experiments are taking place? What is the Air Force, or the C.I.A., or the Trilateral Commission, or the Bohemian Grove revelers covering up there? Is it a super-secret Burning Man Festival? There is the possibility that reality is quite a bit less than that imagined, but that shouldn't stand in the way of a successful tourism opportunity. Tourism sells the sizzle, not the steak.
Let's see: strategically place around the tourism area a few wrecked airframes and a few objects constructed to look like crashed flywing saucers. Or, even better, flying teacups. Those could be obtained surplus from Walt Disney World. Have a few employees dress like space creatures, but keep them safely in the distance.
Don't forget the t-shirt shop. "I've entered and returned from Area 51," "Area 51: More that what they say is going on," "They grow larger in Area 51."
And, who knows, maybe we'll start some people speculating about just what is going on in Area 52!
There's the Guinness Book of Records, an amazing collection of feats both remarkable and amazing, that some people aspire to being mentioned in for some reason or other. It seems that someone has recently achieved temporary immortality by accomplishing the feat of unhooking 26 brassieres in a minute's time! Now who thinks of such things; and isn't this one of those occasions where just possibly quality is more of a consideration than is quantity?
But was going to be in black and white in the Guinness Book for all to read. And will stay that way until some more enterprising (and manually dexterous) person breaks that record. That sort of thing tempts the enterprising. It's like the Matterhorn: people climb it because it's there.
Anyway, I was approached to be one of the, shall we say, providers of said objects to be publicly unhooked in a local tavern. It was by a friend of mine, a trustworthy sort, a café latte man. It was presented to be as an occasion to help a local Louisianian win fame and glory in doing this feat. It was supposed to be done demurely, with each the assisting ladies lifting up the back of her tee to help our hero set a new record of 30, or even 35! Afterwards, modestly shielding ourselves, we then run to the room of rest for reassembly. The thought of so many in there simultaneously boggled the imagination!
What a rush! To be an accessory to fame! Would I be mentioned in the Times-Picyaune? [Angel B., daughter of Mr. and Mrs. B, a graduate of ______ Academy and the University of ______ was the eighteenth one undone.] Would WDSU-TV cover it live?
Would my grandchildren hear about it someday?
"You know, Cherie, it was Maw-maw, she was a demoiselle of considerable style. She participated in the great bra unhooking of 2008."
"Cool. Can I have a picture for Show-and-Tell?"
"No, but you can take her souvenir t-shirt for having participated."
