Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Yes! Men are entitled to be Men. Finally!

I got this email from my brother. It is hilarious check it:



This is pretty funny bro!! love you, jeff

I like to think that I am a modest person. (I also like to think that I look like Brad Pitt naked, but that is not the issue here.)

There comes a time, however, when a person must toot his own personal horn, and for me, that time is now. A new book has confirmed a theory that I first proposed in 1987, in a column explaining why men are physically unqualified to do housework.

The problem, I argued, is that men -- because of a tragic genetic flaw -- cannot see dirt until there is enough of it to support agriculture. This puts men at a huge disadvantage against women, who can detect a single dirt molecule 20 feet away.

This is why a man and a woman can both be looking at the same bathroom commode, and the man -- hindered by Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB) -- will perceive the commode surface as being clean enough for heart surgery or even meat slicing; whereas the woman can't even see the commode, only a teeming, commode-shaped swarm of bacteria. A woman can spend two hours cleaning a toothbrush holder and still not be totally satisfied; whereas if you ask a man to clean the entire New York City subway system, he'll go down there with a bottle of Windex and a single paper towel, then emerge 25 minutes later, weary but satisfied with a job well done.

When I wrote about Male Genetic Dirt Blindness, many irate readers complained that I was engaging in sexist stereotyping, as well as making lame excuses for the fact that men are lazy pigs. All of these irate readers belonged to a gender that I will not identify here, other than to say: Guess what, ladies? There is now scientific proof that I was right.

This proof appears in a new book titled What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works. I have not personally read this book, because, as a journalist, I am too busy writing about it. But according to an article by Reuters, the book states that a man's brain "takes in less sensory detail than a woman's, so he doesn't see or even feel the dust and household mess in the same way." Got that? We can't see or feel the mess!

We're like: "What snow tires in the dining room? Oh, those snow tires in the dining room."

And this is only one of the differences between men's and women's brains. Another difference involves a brain part called the "cingulate gyrus," which is the sector where emotions are located. The Reuters article does not describe the cingulate gyrus, but presumably in women it is a structure the size of a mature cantaloupe, containing a vast quantity of complex, endlessly recalibrated emotional data involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of human relationships; whereas in men it is basically a cashew filled with NFL highlights.

In any event, it turns out that women's brains secrete more of the chemicals "oxytocin" and "serotonin," which, according to biologists, cause humans to feel they have an inadequate supply of shoes.

No, seriously, these chemicals cause humans to want to bond with other humans, which is why women like to share their feelings. Some women (and here I am referring to my wife) can share as many as three days' worth of feelings about an event that took eight seconds to actually happen. We men, on the other hand, are reluctant to share our feelings, in large part because we often don't have any. Really. Ask any guy: A lot of the time, when we look like we're thinking, we just have this low-level humming sound in our brains. That's why, in male-female conversations, the male part often consists entirely of him going "hmmmm." This frustrates the woman, who wants to know what he's really thinking.

In fact, what he's thinking is, literally, "hmmmm." >

So anyway, according to the Reuters article, when a man, instead of sharing feelings with his mate, chooses to lie on the sofa, holding the remote control and monitoring 750 television programs simultaneously by changing the channel every one-half second (pausing slightly longer for programs that feature touchdowns, fighting, shooting, car crashes or bosoms), his mate should not come to the mistaken conclusion that he is an insensitive jerk. In fact, he is responding to scientific biological brain chemicals that require him to behave this way for scientific reasons, as detailed in the scientific book What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works, which I frankly cannot recommend highly enough.

In conclusion, no way was that pass interference.



well there you go
in Christ,
jason

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Ah, Home Crap Home

But seriously I love Rockford. I was merely quoting a fantastic Tom Hanks movie from the 80s. Anyone...anyone...Bueller. It's Money Pit. And that second quote was from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Come on people.

It was really hard to adjust back to Rockford actually. The interrupting, the loudness. It was cool though because I was able to acquire a small taste of what new-comers to our lovely environment must feel. On team I've had to enervate (oh, a GRE word, I'm really into these lately...I'm such a pedant (oh, that's totally another one, I need to knock this off (but yes, I did just nest three sets of parenthesis, it's starting to look a bit like a Java method call (that was some computer science humor, I all around appologize for this sentence)))) some of my Rockfordian characteristics to get along with my teammates (okay now re-read the sentence and skip over the parenthesis). Characteristics like, "hey my story's better so I'll talk louder" and, "wait I have something funny to interject here that could quite possibly draw all the available attention to me." Don't get me wrong, I like these qualities to some extent. They make life light-hearted and crack me up. They were just hard to readjust to. As a side note: I've often wondered if we would have some of the same problems that my team has with each other if we were all placed under similiar conditions. I guess I'll never know.

Brian wins the medal of courage award for singing Clarence Carter's Strokin and Backdoor Santa in front of my parents. They thought it was hilarious by the way bri.

okay that's it for now.

in Christ,
jason

Monday, December 13, 2004

ifrickingmadeithome.blogspot.com

I'm in Rockford. That's right you crazed masses, you fervid fans. I have returned.

in Christ,
jason

Thursday, December 02, 2004

My autobiography

So, I decided a need to write an autobiography. And here's the kicker. It will only be one page long. The one page would have, centered in the middle of it, the sentence, "Jason is always right." Then the rest of the book will have a crapload of references, graphs, charts, examples, and a massive preface. All pointing to examples in which I'm 100% correct, appear to have more knowledge then those around me, or statements that just alude to my overall superiority, etc. A couple examples of such references, to give you a flava, would be as follows:
  • "I know you like my music better than his music; because I like my music."
  • "I'm right."
  • "There's something horribly wrong with your opinion."
    You get the idea. I think it could really sell.

    So I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. Mine was pretty cool. My team and I watched 4 movies. Yes 4. We were really in need of relaxation time and we were at the house of my teammate Natalija so it was low pressure. We watched The Chronicles of Riddick, Mystery Science Theatre 3000's version of the Creeping Menace, Major Payne, and A Mighty Wind. It was glorious. Our danish teammate was kinda disappointed though. She thought that Thanksgiving would entail more social aspects. I explained to her that this was not a typical Thanksgiving and I really missed not playing games. I think everyone was just tired and didn't want to interact very much. I definitely missed my family games of Cherades and The Couch Game (Much love, Gorski-Reschke Mo-thugs).

    Also, just an aside, I met a girl last night named Jennica. Her mom wanted to name her Jessica and her dad wanted to name her Jenny. That's a true story. I love original names.

    That's it for now, love you all,
    in Christ,
    jason