Does anyone else remember several years back when every Father’s Day was celebrated by various columnists feeling the overwhelming need to point out that there are a lot of dads that ditched their wife, beat their wife and kids, and/or were just generally worthless people? I don’t miss that ritual at all.

It takes a special kind of loser who spends the holiday season on a soapbox for the sole sake of denigrating someone else’s holiday.

The last couple years the target has been Kwanzaa. If you don’t like Kwanzaa, by all means don’t celebrate it. It’s a really simple concept. I personally can’t take it seriously, so I don’t celebrate it. But there are always some people out there that feel that it’s their job to Set The Record Straight and generally be a know-it-all prick.

Are critics of Kwanzaa factually correct? I’ve seen nothing to suggest that they aren’t. Then again, junior high school kids are factually correct when they call the fat kid a “fat-ass”. It doesn’t make them any less a jerk. People who go out of their way to denigrate Kwanzaa don’t do it out of some cosmic devotion to factual accuracy. They do it because it makes them feel superior (Ooooh! Look at me! I’m politically incorrect! I’m a rrrrrebel!!!!!) at best. At worst, it’s a wonderful opportunity to lord it over black people while being able to say that you’re not attacking black people.

The same is true for all of those people that believe that Christmas is the perfect opportunity to point out that it was absconded from the pagans, the Christ was almost certainly not born in December, and so on. Yay for you. You sure are smarter than all those Christian rubes! Haha! You’re right and they’re wrong! You’re wise and they’re dumb. Go you!

Somewhat unrelatedly, it seems that last year the story of the year was the supposed War on Christmas cause stores had the gall to tell their employees for people to wish people a Happy Holiday or whatnot rather than Merry Christmas. All that was missing for it to be accurately be described as war would be dead bodies, killing, armed struggle, territorial dispute, and people’s lives being physically in jeopardy in any way at all.

Luckily, this year the story moved on to something else, which ties somewhat in to the main topic of this post. I’ve seen story after story of schoolteacher, pastor, busdriver, and hall monitor telling younsters that Santa doesn’t exist. I’m curious whether it was a media meme (like the black churches burning in the 90’s and the shark attacks of 2000-01) or whether a disproportionate number of people decided to be idiots this Holiday Season.

So anyway, it’s a little late, but Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Honukkah, Happy Winter Solstice, or whatever else may float your boat!

Nothing says “filler” like online tests. I took OKCupid’s Brutally Honest Personality Test and got the following result:

Loser- INTP
13% Extraversion, 80% Intuition, 60% Thinking, 46% Judging

Talked to another human being lately? I’m serious. You value knowledge above ALL else. You love new ideas, and become very excited over abstractions and theories. The fact that nobody else cares still hasn’t become apparent to you…

Nerd’s a great word to describe you, and I seriously couldn’t care less about the different definitions of the word and why you’re actually more of a geek than a nerd. Don’t pretend you weren’t thinking that. You want every single miniscule fact and theory to be presented correctly.

Critical? Sarcastic? Cynical? Pessimistic? Just a few words to describe you when you’re at your very best…*cough* Sorry, I mean worst. Picking up the dudes or dudettes isn’t something you find easy, but don’t worry too much about it. You can blame it on your personality type now.

On top of all this, you’re shy. Nice one, wench. No wonder you’re on OKCupid!
Now, quickly go and delete everything about “theoretical questions” from your profile page. As long as nobody tries to start a conversation with you, just MAYBE you’ll now have a chance of picking up a date. But don’t get your hopes up.

I am interested though. If a tree fell over in a forest, would it really make a sound?

This is the first pseudotypology test that I can think of where I’ve been listed as a “P” rather than a “J”. My most common result (over 80% of the time) is INTJ. Looking at their description of INTJ, however, the description for INTP fits much more closely. I am guilty of many things, but arrogance is not generally among them.

Ezra Klein thinks that too many young people are learning useless languages:

Unless quite a few more folks than I think plan on doing development work in Africa, the absurd amount of French-language education going on in schools makes no sense {…} why we’re not throwing those resources into Chinese and a nearer dialect of Spanish baffles me.

I’m inclined to agree. I do have to tread at least a little bit carefully here as my sister co-majored in French and she is a much smarter and already more successful person than myself, but at the very least we ought to be branching out to the greatest extent possible. Some people in the comments point out that it’s difficult to get teachers for some foreign languages. I can’t imagine that we can’t find enough Chinese willing to come over here and teach Mandarin in return for a green card.

To the extent we focus on a single other language, that language should be Spanish (particularly if you’re west of the Mississippi River). Though I do think that Spanish is the #1 foreign language taught in schools, I don’t think it is so by a wide enough margin. I’d say the same about Canadians and French, except even moreso.

One of the more admirable things about the missionary program of the LDS church is that Mormons know foreign languages in very impressive numbers. It also makes them more fun to be around during the World Cup, cause they’re generally rooting for their mission countries or whatever they’re called.

Every now and again I will see an odd couple where the guy is considerably less attractive than the woman. That’s not always so surprising when the guy makes up for his looks with charisma, but the odd ones are when I talk to the guy and he seems to have a somewhat dull and unremarkable personality.

I’ve finally stumbled on a the missing link between nearly every couple where this is the case that comes to mind:

What the guy lacks in appearance and charisma, he makes up for in tolerance. When I finally talk to the girlfriend or spouse, she ends up having an extremely obnoxious, cold, hypermelodramatic, and/or annoying demeanor. They’re not necessarily unkind to their man, but they find a way to be chalkboard-grating obnoxious even when they’re not trying to be mean.

I remember one guy I met whose girlfriend was so smug, self-important, and abrasive that I wanted to quietly leave the guy a note letting him know that yes, he rose above his station, but no, it’s definitely not worth it.

Does anyone else remember those $3 joke bills that had Bill Clinton’s face on them?

That got me thinking about presidents and currency. It’s interesting to see whose faces we have bestowed the honor of putting on currency. The most recent president to have a face on currency is FDR, who died over sixty years ago.

It got me thinking: Will we ever have a president who is put on currency again? Considering that partisanship is far from a new concept, it’s hard to believe that we got some faces on there at all. Particularly Lincoln and Roosevelt, neither of whom were universally admired when they got the imprint.

We could theoretically replace one of Washington’s or Jefferson’s two appearances. But have we reached the point where a president will never be admired enough that political opponents won’t block attempts to put a more recent president on currency?

The most obvious candidates would be a two-termer. That would mean Eisenhower, Clinton, Reagan, or our current president (assuming that he serves out his term). Maybe Harry Truman. Eisenhower would be the most likely because he is the least controversial (and we’ve tried before on a dollar coin)… but is he the least controversial because he was a war hero and a moderate or simply because he’s the oldest listed? If it’s only a matter of time, is it possible that Clinton, Reagan, or Bush could eventually be given the honor? It sure seems unlikely.

The biggest obstacle, I think, is that we haven’t had any positive defining moments since World War II. The only exception that comes to mind is the Cold War, which would be a point in Reagan’s favor, but only if he is given at least partial credit and Democrats are unlikely to give him that.

So are we stuck?

(Personally, I think the greatest currency-related travesty is that James K. Polk is not on any currency. America would be an entirely different country if it were not for his run (the same could probably not be said of any president post-FDR). If two 19th century Tennesseans is a bit much, replace the much less consequential Andrew Jackson.)

This joke is a bit dated, but it still works.

A newly married couple was still getting their bearings down on the marriage. The wife had not yet figured out how to ask the husband for money. She felt a little skittish. She finally devised a strategy:

“Honey, I need to borrow ten dollars. But only give me five.”

“If you need ten, then why are you only asking for five?”

“Because that way I will owe you five and you will owe me five and we will be even.”

Abel has an insightful post from a little while back on physical intimacy with a widower. I haven’t much to say on that, but it reminded me of the philosophy I came to on dating and intimacy.

Several years ago I was very close to a young lady named Silke Modaber. Silke was 19 or so and a virgin, due at least in part by her Catholic upbringing. While in college she was seriously dating a guy named Vernon. Vernon was her first serious boyfriend and, as far as such things go, almost “out of her league.” Before too long, she said that she had been thinking about having sex with him and asked for my input.

I actually had to think hard about how to answer. In most circumstances, I would be encouraging provided that he or she was comfortable with it. But I also knew that when we first met she had intended to save herself for marriage and I hated to see her give up something that was once so important to her for a guy that I viewed as a non-permanent fixture in her life. Yet it would have been hypocritical for me to tell her not to when I certainly never waited for marriage, even though at some point I intended to.

I wasn’t in a position to tell her not to and yet that was my advice. It got me thinking a lot about the subject.

I eventually posited it as a what-if. The question I asked her was whether or not she would regret having had sex with him if the relationship doesn’t work out. That way, if it was part of some effort to hold on to him (though their relationship wasn’t in trouble) or if she was just getting impatient, it would at least expose those motives for what they were (even if it didn’t change her course of action).

The more I thought about it, the sounder this philosophy was. I fleshed out the question a little more and it became “if the relationship cratered before it doubled in length, would you regret having done it?” In other words, if you just met the guy would it be a problem if there was no relationship after? If you’ve been with him for six months, would you regret it if it didn’t quite make a year? Yes? Then you probably shouldn’t do it.

Of course, such advice always sounds better to the person giving it than the person recieving it. She said it was a moot point because their relationship wasn’t going to end, she just knew it.

So she did.

And it did.

And I comforted her when she cried and cried.

I am told somewhere that there is an animated short entitled, “How To Pick Up A Woman.”

The first video they had was entitled “WRONG” and it showed a scrawny nerd walking up to a cheerleader-type asking, “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” He gets splashed with drink.

The second part was entitled “RIGHT” and it showed a studly, athletic looking fellow walking up to a cheerleader-type, asking, “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” He gets the girl.

A while back I had a coworker that complained about his inability to hook up with young women. Essentially, it was his point-of-view that he was having difficulty finding a woman because he was shy and unremarkable in appearance.

He was correct insofar as those two things hurt his chances with the fairer sex, but those two things did not even begin to describe the barriers he’d put between himself and a happy, fulfilling relationship. When he wasn’t bitterly ranting, he was sulking. He attached moral superiority in any debate to the side with which he had more in common. That he was generally quiet around new people didn’t hurt his prospect nearly as much as much as what he said when he was ready to start talking to you.

This guy is an extreme example of a pattern that I’ve noticed among a certain subset of guys: their problems with women are not what they think their problems with women are — and their tendency to lay primary blame on that which they cannot change mostly just excused them from making those changes that they could make.

Almost every close friend I have had a good deal of trouble with relationships in high school. We didn’t even set our aims very high and yet we came up short time and time again. Over ten years later, all but a couple are married or living with someone as though they are. It wasn’t purely a matter of lightning striking because they had opportunities before their spouse and had they never met their spouse I am relatively confident they would have found somebody acceptable to them.

All of this despite the fundamental things that we perceived our problems to be (shyness, unremarkable appearance) didn’t change and, in some cases, got worse (years add pounds, it seems). That is to say the things that we could not change ourselves did not actually change to favor us, for the most part. Those things that we could change, however, we did at least to some extent.

I was thinking about this when I read commentary on Half Sigma and 2 Blowhards on the subject of finding women. The moral of the story for many is that there are absolutely no girls out there looking to date geeky, tech-oriented guys and they guess they’ll just go eat worms so there’s not much point in really trying.

It’s a not-uncommon belief that being interested in geeky things (computers, scifi, fantasy, comic books, and anime) is off-putting to women and it’s not wholly without merit. The thing is, though, that these things largely serve as indicators and not generally, and of themselves, a factor in the decision-making of most women that I know.

So what do these things indicate? A stereotype, mostly, but one with enough real-world grounding as to be significant. People that identify with the above hobbies tend to be introverted and socially awkward. They also are very oftenly underachievers insofar as a lot of their brainpower is dedicated to minutae that aren’t particularly helpful in a marriage and family. Very smart people that apply their smarts to their career become lawyers and superstar programmers in Silicon Valley and typically don’t have much trouble with women and to the extent that they may be interested geeky things is usually an afterthought.

So to an extent, geeks have a bum rap in that they are associated with the most problematic of their kind. On the other hand, if you cultivate enough social skill and otherwise have enough going for you, the fact that you’re interested in geeky things is something of an aside, of not much import (except to the extent that the person you end up with must be interested in these things, which is itself a problem) .

For the most part the answer is to improve that which you can. What’s hard about this, particularly for the proud geek-type, is that you have to admit your shortcomings and stop viewing life as unfair that you have them. In a perfect work maybe introversion and lackluster looks wouldn’t hurt you. But what matters is that they do hurt you and if you want to succeed at relationships you have to spend time and energy figuring out how to compensate for them (usually by learning how to meet and talk to new people and improving hygene and attire).

The good news for now, though, is that if you’re a geek, it’s relatively easy to stand out from the pack with even marginal social skills and hygene habits. To wit, the average guy-girl ratio at anime conventions when I used to go was about 4-to-1 or so, 7-to-1 if you don’t count girls under 15. Yet despite these long odds, three of the four of us that used to go to these things together managed to meet someone at a convention.

But it seems that a lot of geeks have very little interest in self-improvement. They seem to feel that the world is stacked against them, to an extent, and would prefer to leave it that way than risk their pride by admitting the the problem may not entirely be society’s and that, on the whole, the system may not be merely as unfair as they had previously suspected.

Hugo Schwyzer has an insightful very long post about male self-loathing, popular music, and passive-aggressively defusing women’s anger.

There’s another aspect to all of this “Self-Hating, Passive-Aggressive Male Pop.” As many women find out, lots of men use self-loathing as an effective tool for deflecting female anger. Women very often express profound exasperation with their boyfriend or husband, only to have him hang his head and say “You’re right. I’m a worthless piece of shit. I’ve always been shit. I can’t believe you stay with me.” If he fought back (not physically, mind you), a constructive discussion might take place. But if the fella says worse things about himself than his wife or girlfriend would ever say about him, then he cleverly tries to steal her thunder. She’s forced to either agree with him or to bite back her own anger and begin to comfort him. Many women find out sooner or later that male expressions of self-loathing are usually a passive-aggressive technique designed to avoid conflict. It’s a technique that invariably undermines and eventually destroys the relationship. It leaves both partners depressed and exhausted. And it has no place in a healthy relationship.

The only issue I take with the post is that this is not a distinctly male phenomenon (and by extension disagree that this has much to do with feminism and the increasing confidence of women. In fact, the James Blunt song is more expressive of the female manifestation that I’ve witnessed than male behavior. A sense of not impotent anger but pitiable helplessness. I’ve actually run in to more females that do this then males, but then considering that I am a straight male it would be the female manifestations that capture my attention.

The basic idea is this: He/she is a broken person. They have a cafeteria of weaknesses to choose from. You are good for them because (when they’re doing well) you bring out the best in them and (when they’re not) you help them through like no one else can. By this point they usually have you sufficiently ensnared that they do not have to explain why they are good for you.

Young ladies are susceptable to this logic because their self-esteem is often tied up in service. It’s the whole “you complete me” line from Jerry Maguire. For that line to work, he has to be incomplete. An incomplete male provides a romantic job opportunity. A use.

Young men are susceptable to this logic because their self-esteem is often tied up in protection. If the damzel isn’t in distress, a knight has no reason to suit up. There are very few wicked godmothers and evil kings have better things to be doing, so we take opportunities where we can find them.

Ultimately, though, these confessions are little more than a pre-emptive strike. On The Wire, a character by the name of Wee-Bay copped a deal assuring that he would get life in prison but not the death penalty. He was told to confess to every murder he’s done because if he leaves one out, he could get the death penalty. So he confesses to anything and everything he can think of so that he doesn’t get burned.

Which is sort of how the relationship confessions work. Like Weebay, they think (consciously or usually subconsciously) that they can’t be punished for anything that they admit to up-front. And if they find something else and leave you, even then they are not accountable for all of the time, money, energy, and love of yours that they wasted because you were warned.

If you’ve never heard that line at the end of a timultuous relationship that you carried most of the weight for, I wouldn’t recommend it. You’re angry because you now realize it as the cop-out it always was… and you’re angrier still because they were right and you were warned.

And of course if you are the one that leaves, everything changes. If you’ve ever tested someone’s theory that they don’t deserve you and that you’d be better off leaving, you know how quickly the tune changes once you actually do try to leave. Nothing they’ve said is untrue, mind you, and they are usually aware of that on some level. But though the evidence doesn’t change, the second you seriously contemplate leaving, the verdict changes almost immediately.

My best friend Clint has a tendency to do this (the James Blunt, feminine manifestation). His current girlfriend was the first that I recall that actually called him on it. She apparently said “I don’t want to hear it” when Clint would open up about his varied weaknesses. She believed, as I do, that the first several months of a relationship are about setting expectations (of your own behavior) high so that you have the goal of living up to them later.

So whether your male or female, beware of anything that is enthusiastic about telling you all that is wrong with them.