House of Eratosthenes

I’ve just made the acquaintance of a fellow blogger, whose creative energies have earned my respect, no easy feat that. And he thinks I’m pissed at him. I’m not. The source of the confusion, appears to be my unclear method of writing…a little bit of long-winded rambling, a little bit of dry humor. You see, he is the subject of Installment #14 of “Imitation Is The Sincerest Form.” This is a leitmotif I write up, whenever (1) I say something, (2) someone else says more-or-less the same thing, and (3) that someone-else said the-same-thing at least a day or two later than I said whatever it was I said. When that happens, it becomes part of this recurring theme.

And I get cute. I pretend the other person perused my blog, saw what I said, and made a conscious decision to rip it off. Hence the aforementioned “dry” sense of humor. C’mon, admit it…it’s silly, to the point you have to let off a chuckle, to suppose Ann Coulter herself comes by, takes a glimmer of this very blog your reading now, and decides — heh — this is kinda cool, I think I’m going to steal it.

I mean, obviously, that’s humor. This is The Blog That Nobody Reads. Ann Coulter plagiarizes from it…or Thomas Sowell does likewise…that’s pretty silly. Well, it gets a chuckle out of me, if from nobody else.

So I wrote to this guy…

I’m not posting your pictures yet, but I like them and I said so.

Great idea. I did it first. You did it better. I said that too. Let’s just say great minds think alike.

http://mkfreeberg.blogspot.com/2006/08/imitation-is-sincerest-form-xiv.html

Now, click open the post in question. “Imitation Is The Sincerest Form XIV,” click it open. Read it from top to bottom. Nothing in there negative, right? There’s some subtle insinuation that I’m being ripped off…but if you read it, it’s clear, that as a practical matter I don’t think anything’s been stolen.

So…imagine my surprise when I get this back…

I’m sorry you’re so bitter about the situation.

Just so you know, I had never seen your blog before today. I got the idea after finding a site that had pages and pages of D&D/RPG-oriented “Motivational” posters. You and I aren’t the only rip-off artists. 🙂

-Echo

…and I’m like WAITAMINNIT. Bitter? From whence do you get that?

And then I look around the site some more, and I what’s going on. HE is a FEMALE. And I can’t help but think, see, that explains it somewhat. Oh, what an ugly thought. But I can’t help it. I don’t mean to say guy a would have handled it any better; the site just got linked from FARK, after all, and I’m sure she’s swimming in e-mails. But here’s the thing: It’s no secret, men work different. A man has time to answer e-mail…or else, he doesn’t. Yea or nay, nothing in between. The ladies, there seems to be something going on there. It’s like they labor beneath some standard, something that does not similarly burden the gentlemen.

Look at it this way. I’m a dude, I dress in the dark, I put a dark-blue sock on one foot and a black sock on the other. Or maybe they’re both the same color, but to anyone paying attention they’re obviously different styles. Room for improvement? Sure, but what is the eventual result. Nothing, not a damn thing. Can our ladies do that? Heh…don’t even think about it.

And so, you see, we live in different worlds. So I mean no slight against the fairer sex when I say, upon discovering the person was female, certain things are explained. There is a certain social pressure, a certain sense of discipline, from which I have spent a lifetime being sheltered thanks to the nature of my “hook-ups.” This puts certain taboos in place.

Now, if you’re going to allocate just ten seconds to skim over what I sent her, no more than that, and force yourself to write a reply — I guess maybe it would look like I was upset about something. It’s conceptually possible. Even then, you would have to read very selectively. This is part of the trouble with communication over the “innernets.”

Well anyway, I wrote a reply toot-sweet, trying to set things straight. I’m a FAN. She’s earned a place in my sidebar, whether there’s another reply forthcoming or not; nothing gets a gut-chuckle out of me, quite as reliably as old-Star-Trek humor especially when it involves the nameless guy in a red shirt who gets killed by a monster on the alien planet.

But I like dry humor, too. And it bugs me when someone whose creative energies I admire, thinks I’m upset with what they did, when I’m anything but.

And on that note…

Francesca Cisneros apparently stands to gain just as much from a Time Management course as any other woman living, if not moreso — said course to be taught by a MAN. Oh I know how horrible that sounds, but c’mon. I’ve got a good pair of eyes, and a working brain; I can see stuff and think about what I’ve been seeing. What is it with chicks and time management? Seems like ever since Eve fooled Adam into taking a bite out of that apple — and we all know how well THAT turned out — every biped mammal with indoor-plumbing, trying to get something done in a finite amount of time, seems to be engaged in an exercise not unlike cramming twenty pounds o’potatoes in a ten pound bag. What is up with that???

It’s not like women lack organizational skills. It’s clear, to me, that they are light years beyond men in this department…but everywhere I look, they seem to be falling behind. And it seems to constantly lead to stuff, like the Star Trek lady above, not having the time to see a genuine compliment for what it is — and it also leads to stuff like this.

Francesca Cisneros, 32, admitted she speeds in her 2002 Honda Civic because she�s always late to meetings, police said. She told police she threw the tickets away because she thought nothing would happen to her.

The woman was caught speeding 64 times on Loop 101 and five times on surface streets between March 2 and July 31, police said. Her highest alleged speed was 86 mph. She also is accused of a redlight camera violation in March.

Police have arrested several people accused of speeding excessively on Loop 101 based on evidence from Scottsdale�s photo enforcement program, which began Jan. 22. One man was charged with driving at 147 mph.

Cisneros was arrested Tuesday at a Scottsdale police station, where she had gone to speak to a detective, Sgt. Mark Clark wrote in an e-mail.

City Prosecutor Caron Close said Cisneros faces pos- sible jail time because five of her citations were for alleged criminal speeding “20 mph or faster over the posted speed limit” and she also was driving twice on a suspended license.

If found guilty on all 64 civil speed violations alone, she would be responsible for $10,048 in fines at $157 a ticket.

No, I’m not attempting to slight the fairer sex — what I’m doing, is identifying an enigma, involving things the fairer sex does WELL. Fellas, you know what I’m talking about. Ever watch a woman clean up a kitchen? They get more done in ten minutes than we can in ten months. And yet…they always seem to have a time deficit. I mentioned, above, certain taboos that apply only to them, and these seem to cause the time deficits. The inability to say “that’s not gonna fit” and to drop things. You would think, then, that we’d be sitting around watching them do all the important stuff, like little boys watching their mommas bake the cookies and sort the laundry. You would think.

But who invents everything? WE DO.

What do the chicks have? Windshield wipers. Elevators. That’s about it. Everything else, men did; and we had time leftover for a beer or two. No fights started over the “innernets”; well, not because we failed to read something all the way through, for lack of available time, anyway.

It seems men have an exclusive ability to filter things out. To say, “AW, FUCK IT.” To prioritize. To say, I can clean my bedroom, or I can achieve the next major innovation in nuclear fission…so the room stays filthy. To turn a blind eye to the empty beer bottles all over the floor, while just beyond them, the world’s first stationary alternating-current generator roars to life. It seems the chicks aren’t capable of doing that. To the fairer sex, everything is as well-organized as an alphabetized spice rack…or else, nothing is. No, scratch that. There IS no “or else.” Things just have to be that way. Perhaps this is the source of the time management problem.

And so they have to cut corners. They grab their free right turn at the crosswalk, nearly steamrolling over me on my 24-speed bicycle in the middle of their blindspot…because they’re late to some goddamned meeting. Always a day late and a dollar short. Always running around, chock full of adrenaline, with a cute little day timer bursting at the seams with purple Post-It notes.

Owing ten thousand dollars in speeding tickets. Sixty-nine of ’em! Holy crap.

Not that I mean any of this as a snark tossed in the direction of “Echo.” Had I known she would be so rushed reading through what I wrote about her, I would have worded it more clearly. Should I fail to make my peace with her, I will bookmark her site and continue to watch it with interest. Like I said, her brand of humor is right up my alley.

Captain Kirk deserves to be lampooned much more than he already has been, after all. And in his case, that’s really saying something.

Update: You know, in fairness I can’t leave this post up without recounting something that complicates the theory significantly. But it’s an observation, it’s a fair one, and it provides equal-time. Can’t make the ladies mad, ya know.

I drive a little tiny rice-rocket. It’s seventeen years old. It’s an efficient, zippy little Toyota sedan, and I drive it as if it weighs EIGHT TONS, which it doesn’t. It’s just my way; I like brake pads and I like gasoline. I like keeping ’em around.

I got SO close to being rear-ended. By a MAN. An asshole. I say, there’s something about women nowadays, they’re always go-go-go and this leads to problems. Well, a woman would not have done what this jackass did. Fucker almost rear-ended me. Came just really, hold-fingers-not-far-apart, this close.

I was turning left, he was behind me. I chose not to go through a yellow light. Seemed like a sensible idea; the guy ahead of me barely made it through, after all. So I’m looking in my rear view mirror after I stop, and this guy is just b-a-r-e-l-y catching on to the fact that I’m not going to go, a look of real terror flashes on his face and he stands on the brake. He’s also b-a-r-e-l-y doing something else: Looking at me. He had to swivel his head forward, from off to the right, to absorb what’s going on in front of him. Like as an afterthought.

And after he screeches to a stop, he’s pissed. I can see being pissed at the light, which is known to me as a dumbass light. But no, he’s pissed at me. Well you know what? I’m not in the mood either, asshole. If I wasn’t going to make it, you certainly weren’t going to make it. YOU NEED TO WAIT. Take your turn.

But much more importantly, if you can only pay attention to the action outside of your windshield here-and-there, now-and-then…isn’t your entrance into a controlled intersection behind a long procession of cars, just a great time to catch up on what’s going on? The crossword puzzle can wait for that, one would think.

That’s a man thing. It seems the ladies are driving around with blinders on when they make right turns…the fellas are freakin’ oblivious when they make left ones. Both are too busy to pay attention, especially when the weather is warmer. But they let their guard down at different times. Kind of interesting.

There ya go, gals. Equal-opportunity. More than equal, actually, since speeding-girl is racking up tickets and driving on a suspended license, but Rocketman back there is provoking me into looking him in the eye and swearing and gesturing, something I never do; and just before that, nearly making me piss my pants.

I hate traffic on Friday afternoons in the summer. Sometimes it seems like just a dull pain, other times it’s more like suicide.

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Time ManagementFriday, August 11th, 2006

Time Management
Friday, August 11th, 2006