buzz

Men, Women, and Parking Spaces

funsizebytes:

Subtitle: Wherein I take my personal observations and consider them normative…

Yesterday, I wrote:

I just realized that the difference between the way men & women choose a parking place for a car has everything to do with public bathrooms.

I have long noticed a difference between myself and my wife when choosing a parking spot in a not-crowded parking lot.

I will leave at least one vacant spot between myself and the next car.

She will park right next to another car even if she doesn’t have to.

Yesterday I realized that our friend (also female) had done the same thing.

Maybe it was because the parking lot just had the lines re-painted, but suddenly I saw it just like each spot was a urinal.

Every man over the age of reason understands that when choosing a urinal, you choose the one as far away from any other guy as possible. There was even an email which circulated a few years ago which had ASCII drawings showing how to decide.

But the rules boil down to this:

Unless you are at a sporting event, concert, or other extremely-high bathroom-volume experience, you do not choose to stand next to another guy at the urinal. Ever.

I mentioned this to The Wife and at first she laughed—but then she added: “Well, see, we always choose a bathroom stall next to someone in case there isn’t any toilet paper.”

I rest my case.

Really, what more evidence do you need?

Coda: when not using the urinal, men might choose a bathroom stall next to another guy. Most guys will try to get some distance between them and the next guy, but really, our highest priorities for the sit-down are a) clean seat and b) no previous unflushed content. Also, if we look down and there is no toilet paper, there is exactly a 0.000000% chance that we would ask the guy in the next stall for toilet paper. Seriously, I would sooner use my underwear as toilet paper than stick my hand under another guy’s stall asking for toilet paper, because these are your options for what happens next:

1) He pees on your hand

2) He poops on your hand

3) He ignores you

4) He’s an elected Republican official and puts his dick in your hand because he thinks you gave “the signal”

5) He comes out of his stall, kicks in the door to your stall, and beats the crap out of you.

6) He actually gives you toilet paper.

Now I know that seems like a one-in-six chance, but really, that last option is like 2% because “getting your hand peed on” has about a 75% probability.

Pssst, wanna buy a Prada bag for $20?

smartasshat:

A Movado watch for $25, a Gucci handbag for $20.

…

Federal officials, working with the Derry police, spent two years investigating the sale of counterfeit products at a local flea market.

…

Buying a product that looks like the real thing but isn’t may seem like a victimless crime, but it isn’t. Among the victims are the people who lost a job or didn’t get one because of the counterfeit trade

…

Wow. Unbelievably flawed logic. No one who pays $20 for a Gucci bag would pay $700 for it if the fake weren’t around. Yeah, I get that they shouldn’t be allowed to put fake labels on shit, but a two year investigation to raid a flea market? Please.

Haha… that logic is pretty self-serving.  To their point though (but certainly not in agreement), those that are willing to drop $700 on a handbag are going to be less likely if the $20 version is being flaunted by the “undesirables”.

As I mourn the loss of someone I didn’t know, hadn’t heard of and could have conceivably never have learned of, I am amazed at the unexpected consequence of the digital-social lives we now lead.  I remember talking with an alumnus of my grad school after a number of attempts to link up.  We laughed about how much I “knew” about him and his family just as a result of having met him once and following his flickr stream.  I congratulated him on his latest child and wished his wife (also an alumnus) and family the best.  It felt just a little creepy to have that intimate knowledge of someone I didn’t “know”.

Today I learned of the death of @jamield.  After seeing it mentioned for the 3rd or 4th time on twitter, I did a little research.  After reading a poem dedicated to her and a couple of other thoughts, I began to get some notion of who she was.  It turns out that @jamield was just another person.  I mean, she wasn’t “famous” as we might consider a celebrity.  She had micro-celebrity of a sort.  Internet-famous, even.  Based upon the response to her passing away, I can only say that she touched a lot of people’s lives.  She was apparently warm, friendly and quick with a joke.  A good person.

I read her last twitter updates.   Checked out her tumblelog.  I am struck by how innocuous her last messages were.  It drives home  the sudden and unexpected nature of her death.  The sudden nature of death in general.  I guess I’m struck by the outpouring of sympathy and feelings of loss from others who had never met or heard of @jamield either.

I didn’t know Jamie Leigh Dyer Dordek, but if she was anything close to the things that have been said of her, I too am sad for the loss.