Online-Dating Women: Please Be More Interesting. Thx

All right, so I think guys get a lot of well-deserved flak for writing online dating profiles that are cliched, clueless, creepy, and probably all sorts of other words that begin with "C." No argument there.

But I don't quite get the sanctimoniousness of women, given how fucking predictable and interchangeable all their profiles are. Usually they just break down into a few archetypes:

The Chip on Her Shoulder:
This one usually opens with something about how MEN CAN'T HANDLE AN INTELLEGENT [sic] WOMAN. Look, I know you're proud of the fact that you were the first in your family to graduate from Flyover State University, but the surest sign a woman isn't really that smart is that she tells you. Sort of the same way you can tell a man isn't rich. I have known some truly brilliant women who are undoubtedly amongst the most intelligent people in the world, and none of them ever complained about men not being able to handle them. Just stop dating dumb people.

The Sperm Bank Customer:
This broad typically has so many nitpicky requirements you'd think she were running a eugenics experiment. "Must be 6'1" or taller, white, good job, owns a car, has his own place, funny, charming, gentlemanly, doesn't mind that I'm fat." You're attracted to what you're attracted to, fine, but don't complain when you die alone.

The Fauxbtrotter
She makes sure to post the four photos of when she went to visit touristy shit like the Eiffel Tower and the Sphinx so it looks like she has an awesome globetrotting lifestyle when she's not tending to her three cats. Scuba diving photos and skydiving photos belong here too. On the other hand, post a photo of you straddling the border of India and Pakistan and you win instant respect.

The Artist
All of her photos are in black-and-white, and the most you can see of her is a silhouette. Is that her breast or her knee? She would prefer you not know.

The Lazy
She posts enough photos that you know she didn't sign up accidentally, but she didn't bother to fill out any of the text fields. Still gets bombarded with messages.

STFU Episode 2: Mike Huckabee

 

Mike showing us how many times he unsuccessfully ran for president

Per Huffington Post, erstwhile governor Mike Huckabee on the Newtown massacre: "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

I love when issues like gunning down defenseless children have such easy answers. Why, all we need is to bring God back into school! Mike Huckabee's God! To be clear, that's the one that:

• Slaughtered all the Egyptian firstborns AND animals
• Assisted the Israelites in a massacre of men, women, and children in 60 cities
• Slowly killed David's bastard child
• Sent two bears to maul 42 children for making fun of a bald guy

Among many other things, of course.

Mike, did you even read this fucking book? I liked you better when you were fat and shoving shit into your mouth versus spraying it out.

U...S...A! U...S...A!

Even while hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy, some moments just make you so proud to be an American (via The Telegraph):

Dear Facebook Users:

Would you PLEASE stop posting pictures of your fucking sonograms? It's like vacation pictures - nobody gives a fucking shit but you. Congratulations, you had sex.

Thank you,
Everyone else

Major League Baseball Z

Is it just me or does 1800s baseball player George Haddock look just like the green guy from Dragon Ball Z?

Say it ain't so, Ichiro

It's Not News, It's CNN

Did anyone else notice how badly CNN fucked up today's Supreme Court healthcare ruling?

Lord knows I've made many mistakes in the course of trying to get something out quickly. You know, missing a comma here, misspelling a word there. But this is simply outstanding.

The Real Student Loan Problem

US News says ONU is "more selective." But with an 81% acceptance rate, "more selective" than whom?

This weekend's New York Times had a story on the crushing debtloads of college students, and predictably, it managed to showcase every single one of the typical predatory loan tropes: the I-didn't-realize-how-much-my-loan-payments-would-be-after-graduating-from-a-4th-tier-private-college liberal arts major; the directionless student who takes six years to graduate; the mediocre student who assumed he/she would be rewarded with a lucrative job for graduating from any college at all, etc. Case in point:

“As an 18-year-old, [Ohio Northern University] sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,” said Ms. Griffith, a marketing major. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.”

Look, bitch, you owe $120,000. You have ten years to repay on a standard repayment plan. That's $12,000 a year for which you're on the hook...BEFORE interest! I know you must not have done well on the quantitative section of the SAT, which is why you're in this situation in the first place, but seriously. There are third graders who can do that math.

Now, leaving aside the question as to whether college is overpriced (it is, because student loans are too easy to obtain), that's not to say that there aren't smart people at Ohio Northern, or that it's always a bad choice. But students seem not to understand the concept of expected value. The valuation on Ohio Northern is pretty appealing if they give you a full ride. But if you're going to need a job at Goldman Sachs to afford your debt burden, you'd better damn well go to a school at which Goldman Sachs recruits.

So I don't have much sympathy for the "I paid $26,266 a year to go to Bob Jones University to major in psychology and now I can't repay my student loans" contingent. That was a stupid decision, and nobody should have given you money to go in the first place. I'm sure a lender would love to deny you based on your piss-poor earning potential, but then they'd violate fair lending laws and then have to pay like a million dollars in punitive damages so why not just give you the money, because maybe your parents will accidentally buy a lost Picasso at a yard sale and then they'll get paid back.

I am troubled by the tacit assumption that if consumers are more informed, they will automatically make better decisions. Some most certainly will. But it's hard for me to believe that a student - no matter how young or unsophisticated - can look at $120,000 loan balance and not realize that that would be an onerous debt burden. I think the real issue is that people uniformly overestimate their own prospects. For example, I thought I would easily crack the top 10% of my law school class through a strict daily regimen of drinking and playing video games. I may have very well finished in the BOTTOM 10% were it not for a couple of people who drank even more than I did.

So, my proposal is that every school should have to report the average salaries of all its students in every major. You'd get a slip of paper in your admissions packet that says: "Our graduates who majored in Psychology in 2012 averaged a starting salary of: $15,000. Sixty percent of them are unemployed. Odds are, you will be too."                 

eBay Bidder Behavior: Stupid.

I'm watching an item on eBay (which, despite my hatred of it, is unfortunately still the best site from which to procure rare and/or unusual items) that went up two days ago. With more than 4.5 days to go, six fucking morons have already placed 27 bids on it, sending the price soaring into the stratosphere.

Now, I don't care so much about the price; if that's what the market will bear, that's what the market will bear. However, I simply don't understand the obsession with early bidding wars. There is absolutely nothing to gain by placing an early bid on an item, but a lot of negatives:

1. You signal to other buyers that you are interested - Even the hint of competition will bring out some interest, especially if it is perceived as a sort of validation. If I saw that a pristine prewar Martin guitar had zero bids on it with five hours remaining, I would assume that there was something wrong with it that other people knew about but I didn't. I probably wouldn't bother bidding, truth be told.

2. You tie up money until the auction's over - You're on the hook if nobody outbids you, which is good - until someone puts up a Buy-it-Now listing for the same item, at a lower price. Or your car's transmission falls out and you need to pay for repairs. Oops.

3. You raise the overall price by getting into a one-more-increment bidding war - It's the "in for a penny, in for a pound" theory. Theoretically, proxy bidding should be pretty efficient if people truly have a hard cap on the amount of money they're willing to pay. The trouble is, people are always willing to add a nominal amount to their "maximum." So if you put in a leading high bid of $150, your opponent will not bat an eye throwing in a new leading bid of $151. And hey, you just bid $150, what's two more dollars to win? Rinse, lather, and repeat. That's why you have to snipe. The only way to end that stupid game is to not give your opponent a chance to counterbid.   

The Great "River Monsters" Wolf Fish Switcheroo

One of the few shows I watch nowadays on TV is River Monsters (that's not an I'm-too-cool-for-TV statement; I just spend too much time listlessly surfing the Internet to watch a lot of TV), but the season 3 finale focusing on the Wolf Fish sort of tested the limits of credulity. Observe:

At the end of the episode, Jeremy hooks the fish and pulls it into the boat. The following screen cap is at 41:41:

Note the size of the fish - small enough for him to lift into to boat with one hand. Then, the scene transitions into a shot of him hoisting the fish up to his chest, culminating in the following screen cap at 41:49:

Look, I'm not a fish expert or anything, but I do have three semesters of coursework in "which thing is bigger than the other," and it looks like the fish in the second shot is like fucking five times bigger than the first one.

I know it's tough to film these kinds of shows, but seriously. Come on guys.

Unmarried and Pregnant, the Christian Way

Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him ... uh, probably Aiden or Mason or something.

ABC News brings us a report of Texas teacher Cathy Samford, who has been fired from Heritage Christian Academy for getting pregnant out of wedlock and purportedly violating the moral conduct clause of her employment contract. Then, instead of just shutting her mouth and filing a lawsuit, she hit the airwaves to claim that she had planned to be married, she's not a whore, etc. etc. Setting aside the question of whether the clause trumps the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, if she had just kept quiet I daresay she would have been fine. To wit:

1) It's 2012 and you can get pregnant without having sex, and thus presumably with no moral taint. While the Catholics object to in-vitro fertilization, I don't believe Protestants have an official policy. The Bible, as it frequently does for everything we actually care about, remains silent on the issue. So have you necessarily sinned by having a bun in your oven? Ostensibly not.

2) Their entire fucking religion revolves around a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock! If anything, you're MORE of a Christian role model by being unmarried and pregnant. Provided, of course, that you keep your damn mouth shut and subtly suggest that it was the Holy Spirit's doing, possibly giving new meaning to "the coming of the Lord."  

Fuck Gamestop

And fuck Nintendo for giving XB exclusively to Gamestop.

Huzzah Jamie Moyer!

More than a year ago, I wrote this post lamenting the retirements of all the athletes who were active the moment I began following sports. Of the last remaining baseball players I had identified, only two remain; Omar Vizquel, who is expected to play a utility role for the Jays, and Jamie Moyer, of all people, whom ESPN reports has won a rotation spot with the Rockies at the age of 49. Let's pause for a second to reflect on how unusual this is; of all the players who were active in 1992, who would have guessed that one of the two remaining in 2012 would be a then-30-year-old?

So now Moyer joins a team that's younger than he is, though that's not hard to do at this point. He is actually older than nine franchises other than the Rockies: the Brewers, Rays, Jays, Royals, Mariners, Marlins, Nationals, Diamondbacks, and Padres. In one year he can add the Mets and Astros to that list; if he manages to hang around for two more years, he'll add the Angels and Rangers on top of them.

Generally spotty playing time complicates prognostication, but given a few more seasons, Moyer has a chance at 300 wins. That's more a function of longevity rather than sustained excellence, though - it will be interesting to see what the HoF voters do if he does finish at 300. Not to be outdone, Vizquel himself stands reasonably close (159 short) to the other traditional HoF threshold of 3,000 hits, so we may not even need to wait until Johnny Damon retires to test the "statistical threshold" theory of HoF voting.

The Worst Fucking Article I've Ever Read on the Wall Street Journal

Laura Vanderkam asks, "Are you as busy as you think?":

"I told people I worked 60 hours a week. I claimed to sleep six hours a night. As I lamented to anyone stuck next to me at parties, I was basically too busy to breathe. Me time? Ha! Now I work 45 hours a week and sleep close to eight hours a night. But I'm not getting any less done. I started keeping track of how I spent my time, logging how many hours and minutes I devoted to different activities such as work, sleep and chores. I soon realized I'd been lying to myself about where the time was going. What I thought was a 60-hour workweek wasn't even close."

Thanks Laura. I also tell people I work 60 hours a week, because...it's on my fucking timesheet.  I don't know what the fuck kind of job you had that didn't require you to keep track of your work hours, but I've had to record all my hours at every job I've ever held in my entire life. If your work involved writing articles from bed and you've never once had to fill out a timesheet, it may just be time to pry the silver spoon out of your ass.

"Ask yourself what you'd like to do with your time. Claiming to be busy relieves us of the burden of choice. But if you're working 50 hours a week, and sleeping eight hours a night (56 per week) that leaves 62 hours for other things. That's plenty of hours for a family life and a personal life -- exercising, volunteering, sitting on the porch with the paper, plus watching TV if you like. Set goals -- maybe three hours of exercise and swapping out two hours of TV for reading -- and see where in your 168 hours you could make that happen."

Let's break this one down. Working 50 hours a week is 10 hours per day, let's say 8:00 to 6:00. Starting from the top: You've got to wake up at 5:30 am to rub the crusty shit out of your eyes, shower, eat breakfast, and get dressed. You've got to leave your house at 7:00 am to account for commute time. You work until 6, and then sit in traffic for another hour. You get home at 7 and prepare and eat dinner by 8. To get Laura's eight hours of sleep, you have to be in bed by 9:30 pm, leaving you...1.5 hours per workday! Yes, you have the weekend. But you need to spend those hours running all the errands you can't do during the weekday. Volunteer? Really? They need somebody to work the 8-9:30 shift at the Ronald McDonald House? Fuck you.

It's easy to exercise and volunteer and read on the porch and all that shit when your job is flying in and giving one speech. And when you have a porch.

PS Vita Games Are Fucking Adorable

Seriously, look at this:

I hadn't even planned on buying the damn thing, but...hey, why not.

Acceptance of Asian Men at All-Time High

Yes, I know it's true. Not because of Jeremy Lin; people will be all over a good basketball player no matter how he looks. Exhibit A: Sam Cassell, presumably about to have a threesome with some white chicks.

No, to support my statement, I cite this web ad from Brooks Brothers, the fucking whitest clothing retailer this side of Abercrombie:

Huzzah! I am proud to be one of the many men who has overpaid for a BB suit.

And now, your moment of zen, courtesy Sportsline:

An Asian Who's Good at Basketball: WE ARE SO SURPRISED

The man of the hour is undoubtedly Jeremy Lin, with the New York Times proclaiming, "Lin's Success Surprising to Everyone," making it sound like the guy came out of a fucking homeless shelter or something. But I'm not surprised, and neither is anyone who has seen his summer league game against John Wall - yes, that's a dunk at 1:45 - or really dug into his stats with the Warriors. You see, not only did he put up a PER of almost 15 last year, but he recorded a per 40 minute steal rate of 4.6. 4.6! People are only surprised because he's Asian. Sure, his outside shooting sucks, but someone just needed to give him playing time and he could look a lot like Mookie Blaylock, only with less range and more blocks.

I felt so confident that I bought this for peanuts just before he blew up:

It's cash out time, bitches! Good God.

LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE

Yes, that is Game Boy Tetris, now available on the Nintendo eShop. What took you guys so long? My lifelong goal has been to reach 200 lines (I'm not even close in the above screenshot with a mere 140), but the closest I have ever come is 187. I could have sworn that if you reached 200, you could take a photo and they'd run it in Nintendo Power. Did I imagine that? Maybe. I'm still sending a picture in should I reach it, but alas, my brain appears to be much slower than it used to.

Why Does Standard and Poor's Still Exist?

So S&P finally busted out the red pen today, downgrading 9 eurozone countries. You may ask (and it's a good question), who gives a fuck? And the answer, I think, is nobody.

I mean, I realize ratings agencies are somewhat inextricably intertwined in the fabric of our financial system; I think there are still some funds that are required to purchase triple A paper, like money market accounts. But the reality is that the ratings agencies are so far behind everyone else, that issuing a rating is like looking around on a cloudy day and proclaiming that we have an increased chance of rain. In other words, everyone who knows more about the bond markets than S&P (which is every trading desk in the world) has already taken their position. You didn't need to be Nostradamus a month ago to see that Italy and Spain looked really fucked up.

And remember the last time S&P downgraded a major country? Let's look at how the bond market reacted:

Well shit. Ten year US Treasury yields actually DROPPED (the downgrade was August 5) - under 2%! So basically nobody gives two craps what S&P says. And why should we? If the subprime mortgage crisis taught us anything, it's that we shouldn't assume that the agencies can competently assess risk.