Category Archives: Uncategorized

Andy Cuts Himself (and it’s all your fault)

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It’s always irritating to me when certain individuals (you know who you are) jump into in-depth discussions about the “big questions” in life (i.e., who are we, why are we here, etc.). It’s not because the questions don’t interest me, because they do. I think it would be rare to have the capability for critical thought and not consider what this is all for. The discussions bother me because people scarcely consider options beyond the scope of their general system of beliefs.  If we both agree, for the sake of civility, that God does exist and has a general plan for creation, very few individuals will consider the prospect that humanity is not a central part of that plan. The God premise always seems to come with the built in assumption that people are his greatest creation. I think it more likely that we’re just a rough draft of a more civilized race he was working on, or an experiment in free will that got out of control.

Maybe Satan’s rebellion and subsequent fall made God think that maybe, just maybe, he was too controlling of his creations and should breath life into a sentient being with the freedom to choose: something with the option to resent, and rebel, and serve only themselves. If he just instilled in them the capacity for love, then maybe, just maybe, they would choose to be caring and selfless and good, and would in turn create something even more beautiful. Then we popped into existence and fucked it all up. I used to think that the simple fact of our existence meant that we had an ultimate purpose, because why else would he allow us to so ruthlessly dominate this planet without penalty? Now I’m not so sure. Now, I think that he permits our continued existence because he can see how the events unfold and has stepped aside to let us barrel headlong into our own destruction, saving him the trouble. Alternatively, there’s the idea that mankind is just a pawn, inventing and engineering things we don’t understand so a more deserving species can take the reins when we’re gone.  Maybe we’re just renting this planet until the real tenants get here and evict us, like the Book of Joshua*, but with aliens.

Even with the knowledge that there are billions of galaxies and trillions of stars with innumerable planets orbiting them, human arrogance still has us convinced that we somehow play an important role in the whole scheme of time and space; and further, that the mere fact or our existence qualifies us for an eternity of happiness. Just keep your head down, your mouth shut, and don’t do irreparable damage to another human being, and heaven awaits. HA! Maybe God keeps this planet around for entertainment, so he has a species he can vent his aggression on without feeling guilty, like a giant stress ball hanging in space. Any time he’s irritated, he sends a comet whizzing past just to see us scramble, or whips up a hurricane just because he feels like breaking something. In his defense (or my defense), tragedy really is the only thing that makes us shut the fuck up and exercise some human decency. At least when the disasters are natural, there’s no country or group of people we can use as an outlet for our grief and anger, because if we can blame someone, we will, regardless of how weak the connection:

“Let’s go kill those people!”

“Why?”

“Because they look vaguely similar to the physical manifestation of my hatred and fear!”

We are, as a whole, the worst thing that has ever happened to this planet, and while it will be a bummer, I won’t be surprised in the slightest when we finally get wiped out.

 

* For those readers who aren’t familiar, the Book of Joshua is when God finally makes good on bringing the Israelites to the promised land by helping them conquer the people that are already there.

 

 

Relax, it’s just sex.

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I don’t really like strip clubs, and given the choice will avoid them altogether.

Sadly, when a man makes a statement like the previous, there aren’t many who will truly believe him, as I’m sure many of you are currently furrowing your brows in an understandable expression of skepticism. It’s not that you’re making any assumptions about me personally, but as human beings you know that I, like you, am possessed with a natural degree of sexual depravity. The miscommunication lies in the fact that people always interpret my words as “I don’t like looking at naked women.” On the contrary, I am a big fan of the female body, probably one of the biggest fans. What repulses me about the notion of strip clubs is not only the concept of paying to be sexually frustrated, but the way in which it is so stigmatized by polite society, creating an atmosphere synonymous with sin and regret.

On the occasions that I have gone to strip clubs, the scene is always the same. The bouncer triple checks my I.D., always handing it back with reluctance and fixing me with a threatening glare, making me feel like I’ve done something wrong before I even cross the threshold. Upon entering the club, the world suddenly becomes ten shades darker, and only a select few spotlights illuminate the stage, while dozens of men sit motionless just beyond the shadows. The girl on stage keeps her eyes down, retreating from reality for the duration of her performance, and I can never decide whether she’s ashamed of herself or disgusted by us. My guess is that she’s ashamed of herself BECAUSE she’s disgusted by us, and who can blame the poor girl? We come in and skulk into chairs all around her, sipping our beers, and holding up dollar bills as our only mode of communication. We create an invisible barrier, behind which she becomes an object for us to exercise our lustful nature, and we become a faceless manifestation of creepiness that she has to endure in order to pay her bills on time. Mind you, this detached relationship is something we adopt by choice, not necessity. When’s the last time you asked a stripper how her day was, or complimented her technique, or showed her any amount of human decency? Probably never.

As a result, the strip club has become like a secret sin dungeon:  a popular destination for bachelor parties, business trips, or any group of men seeking a getaway from their sexually repressive home life. As soon as the decision is made, every member of the group is sworn to silence so that when it’s all said and done they can go back to being chivalrous boyfriends and devoted husbands. But why the charade? That inclination to conceal our behavior, to hold these rendezvouses in the darkest corners of the city is precisely what gives strip clubs such a seedy reputation. It’s not the thing itself but our collective attitude toward it. When you come home after being out for a while, and your dog is hiding in the corner with a guilty look on it’s face, is your first reaction not to begin chastising that dog even before you discover what it did? It’s not any type of physical evidence that leads you to assume the dog has done something wrong, but merely because the dog is acting as if it has done something wrong. On that same note, when a man acts ashamed for going to a strip club, one immediately assumes it is because he did something deserving of that shame.

The experience is debasing because we refuse to be open about our perverse nature. Instead, we act as if lust is some twisted aberration that’s been forced upon the human condition, and we isolate it from the rest of our character like a contagious disease. We pretend that that lustful part of us doesn’t exist, so that our female counterparts can go on deluding themselves into thinking that we’re different from the others, that we don’t have the same instincts. Granted, some guys are different, but only in the way they manage their desires, by exercising them in moderation and at regular intervals. The rest of us act like a 13-year-old with his first porno mag, burying our desires just below the surface of conscious thought, only setting them free when no one is looking.  I’m not saying that we should integrate strip clubs into our weekly routine or openly exploit our baser nature like some modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, but we should at least be able to be open with each other about what we are.

 

 

Dance Class, pt. 2

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There are a lot of things about me that I’m thankful for, but there are few traits I appreciate more than my ability to dance. You would never think, by observing the men at a family wedding, that moving to a beat would be one of my strong suits. Most of my uncles and male cousins need ten drinks before they can confidently take the floor, and at that point it’s just because they’re too drunk to care. Nevertheless, by some miraculous twist of genetic fate, this seemingly conventional white kid was blessed with unstoppable rhythm, and I could not be more grateful. Although it’s just for fun, I don’t even consider it a hobby:  I dance because I have to. I don’t just feel the beat because that would suggest some level of control on my part. When that rhythm hits me with both barrels, the feeling is more comparable to a demonic possession that rips through my body, screaming to be exercised.

I tell you this not only to provide a brief window into my soul, but also to establish that my motives for attending a dance class are pure. Granted, for some people that disclaimer isn’t necessary, as they ask why any self-respecting man would be caught dead in a class full of female dancers; however, I feel the need to defend myself to those among you who understand that that question answers itself. Dancers, as a whole, are absurdly hot. They have toned legs, tight cores, and asses that defy the laws of physics. There have been many a class in which I have stared in awe, not from lust, but out of sheer disbelief that a butt that big could be that perfectly spherical in shape.

In my current dance class, there is one such angel that comes from the ranks of posterior perfection. My weekly object of ocular affection is Alicia: the persistently upbeat former Cavs girl that instructs the class. I try not to stare, but not only does Alicia face away from the class when she’s teaching but she frequently directs our focus toward her hips and legs; therefore, it would seem odd if I was looking anywhere other than that incidental work of art that she calls an ass. Even if she catches me in the act, I can plead innocence. Unless, of course, she reads this blog. Then I’m screwed.

I always try to maintain a safe distance, at least at first, for two reasons. Primarily, like a bug zapper shimmering through the darkness of a summer night, beauty has a tendency to blind even the best of men to their better judgment. Secondly, leading with my animal instincts has almost never gone well for me. Sure it’s great at first, but when you’re lost in the moment, you tend to forget that there exists a tomorrow in which these very same people will be waiting to hold you accountable for your actions.

In my previous post of the same title, I briefly mentioned a redhead who seemed to eye me as if I were a steak dinner, and upon further review she has come to stand as a perfect embodiment of my need for restraint. She’s small and flexible, with a pretty face, and a series of body tattoos that stand out in contrast to her pale, freckled complexion: aesthetically, she was batting a thousand. Nevertheless, once she started talking, she became about as pleasant as a sandpaper condom, revealing a personality designed for driving men to suicide. I’m really not trying to be mean here, but believe me when I say that this girl would make anyone want to reach for something sharp.

I know it’s difficult for me to objectively discuss the physical proportions of a gender I’m naturally attracted to, because the act is inherently perverted. However, I beg you not to see it as one person ogling another, because that would ignore the massive respect I have for dancers and the amount of work they put into their craft. Dancers don’t set out with the ultimate goal of attaining  incredible bodies. They work to improve their art, pushing themselves to their physical limits and exploring the endless kinesthetic capabilities of the human body; the sculpting of gravity-defying rear ends is merely a positive by-product. So, in reality, my wandering eyes aren’t driven by voyeuristic deviance, but by heartfelt artistic appreciation.

 

 

They’re Going to Think You’re Gay

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One day toward the end of my senior year at OSU, I sat in my shared living room with my two roommates as they played XBox while I wrote a paper on my laptop, with iTunes simultaneously shuffling through my music library. At one point the shuffle landed on Adele’s “Someone Like You,” and naturally, I turned that shit up. Almost immediately, one of my roommates stopped what he was doing and contorted his face in what appeared to be a combination of a sneer and what happens when you catch a whiff of a really bad fart. After his look of disgusted inquiry didn’t have the desired effect on me, he decided to try his words.

“What if somebody walked in here right now?”

I understood what he was implying, but when people ask me dumb questions, I like to give dumb answers.

“But there are already people in here,” I added just enough sarcasm to make it count.

“If someone walks in here right now and hears you blasting Adele,” he continued, “they might think you’re gay or something.”

To which I replied, “And?”

My hope was that he would realize his point wasn’t having the desired effect and begin to grasp just how stupid his premise and argument were, but no such luck.

“What do you mean, ‘and’?!”

“So,” I started slowly. “You think that I shouldn’t listen to music I like solely because of what other people will think about me?”

Even after I spelled it out for him so blatantly, we failed to come to any sort of a logical compromise, as both of us seemed baffled by the fact that the other one wasn’t getting the point. I don’t know if my roommate was legitimately concerned with my publicly perceived sexuality or if he thought any trace of effeminacy on my part would place his masculinity in question, but in the end, I just felt kind of bad for him. Regardless of motive, he truly believed in his heart of hearts that another person’s potentially misguided opinion of my sexual orientation would be enough to deter me from doing something I enjoyed.

For any of my gentlemen readers, I implore you, nay I beg you, to hold on a little more loosely to your pride and stop pretending that you don’t have feelings, because you’re not only lying to yourself but you’re making the rest of us look bad. The next time somebody says to you, “people are gonna think you’re gay,” please do me a favor by looking them square in the eyes, adopting your most condescending look of sympathy and replying, “Who cares?”

Reduction to Absurdity

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Reduction to absurdity is a basic rhetorical argument and if you read the news or follow any form of political punditry, you’re probably familiar with it: “If we let a man marry another man, what’s to stop a man from marrying a dog, or a lamp shade?”  The irrationality of the assertion is by design, and it’s been a favorite talking point from hard line conservatives, associating same-sex marriage with a concept so ridiculous that it allows them to seem like altruistic defenders of traditional values while still being assholes. While I believe that proponents of this view are wasting everybody’s time on an issue of basic human rights, I don’t think they should abandon the matter altogether. They merely need to retrain their focus on a group deserving of vilification, because there is a much more severe threat to the national social structure. I’m talking, of course, about sex with robots.

Go ahead and laugh, but it’s going to happen, and for no other reason than the inherent laziness of my species: impressing women, and the ceaseless dick-measuring that that entails, are man’s only sources of motivation (for life, in general). Men are shameless, perverted, and impulsive animals, which is why there is no doubt in my mind that one of us will be (or already has been) the first to philander a robot .  To us, women are the world’s most complex puzzle, like a giant labyrinth that reshuffles itself every twenty minutes, giving you just enough time to gain your bearings before turning the world on its head. There’s a steep learning curve in talking to girls, and it’s a skill that requires a fair share of vulnerability and rejection:  two things to which my gender doesn’t take kindly.  Therefore, I can earnestly identify with the desire to avoid such humiliating social circumstances by finding other means of gratification.

I’m not saying girls are an impossible undertaking, or even improbable, as a large part of the male population overcomes such odds on a daily basis. However, the difficulties are sufficient enough to dissuade the more apathetic of our kind from making the effort, and nothing caters to that instinctual disinterest more than technology. One of modern society’s greatest ironies is the fact that there is a small percentage of our population working tirelessly to ensure that the rest of us never have to tire from working. Not that it’s hard to deter people from exercising their will power, but the mental back flips we can accomplish to justify laziness can be quite remarkable, especially when sex is on the brain. There have been dozens of times (mostly in college) in which I was attempting to get laid, and decided to throw in the towel and jerk off from sheer lack of motivation. I can only imagine the activities I would be tempted to abandon if I had the convenience of an anatomically correct model of Emma Watson waiting in my closet: a man could easily justify that as nothing more than an expensive sex toy.

Even so, the dispassionate masses are not the only ones under suspicion here. You may be asking yourself what type of person would be lonely enough to realistically invest in a sex robot. Well, nothing says complete lack of social skills like the ability to create robots. Let’s face it, ever since the movie Weird Science, nerds have been itching to score themselves some artificially intelligent ass, and anyone who has played video games in the past five years can testify to that. As the game graphics have improved, female characters have gotten hotter and hotter, as they’re given increasingly larger breasts complimented by inversely proportioned waistlines. It’s unrealistic to believe that women with boobs that big can perform the level of physical activity necessary to be that thin. Their backs just wouldn’t support it. I remember playing a level in God of War on PS3 in which I had to make love to a goddess while two of her female servants watched, and those servants would (depending on my performance) become incrementally more aroused before eventually hitting the floor to start their own party. Mind you, this whole scene had absolutely nothing to do with the arch of the plot. It was there solely for the sake of animated porn.

This fundamental, and even glorified weakness of our nerd community is evidence that men are susceptible on every level of the social ladder, from the best and brightest all the way down to our inert legions of armchair champions. If we’re not careful, mankind may be headed for a (not so) far off dystopian future in which the men have been willingly confined to underground burrows, each of us with a robotic sex surrogate that the ruling class of women uses to harvest our seed and keep us collectively pacified by our own emotional simplicity. To avoid this future of passive captivity, I desperately urge my species to stay vigilant, follow your heart and make sure your larger head stays in control, otherwise we’re doomed to be imprisoned by our own immoral inclinations. However. If you think I’m overreacting by taking a simple issue and drawing a string of hypothetical social circumstances before reducing it to a single absurd scenario, I completely understand. After all, that’s kind of the point.