This reminds me of B

As B and I are coming upon our three year anniversary, I'm reminded of this forward I got a while back. B reminds me of Martha.

Let's say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then, there is silence in the car.

To Martha, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Fred is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Martha is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily towards, I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Fred is thinking: ...so that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Martha is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed - even before I sensed it - that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Fred is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Martha is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Fred is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty...scumballs.

And Martha is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Fred is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their...

"Fred," Martha says aloud.

"What?" says Fred, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have...oh dear, I feel so..."(She breaks down, sobbing.)

"What?" says Fred.

"I'm such a fool," Martha sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"There's no horse?" says Fred.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Martha says.

"No!" says Fred, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"It's just that...it's that I...I need some time," Martha says. (There is a 15-second pause while Fred, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

"Yes," he says. (Martha, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

"Oh, Fred, do you really feel that way?" she says.

"What way?" says Fred.

"That way about time," says Martha.

"Oh," says Fred. "Yes." (Martha turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"Thank you, Fred," she says.

"Thank you," says Fred.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Fred gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a college basketball game between two South Dakota junior colleges that he has never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it.

The next day Martha will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification.

They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it either.

Meanwhile, Fred, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Martha's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: "Norm, did Martha ever own a horse?"

And that's the difference between men and women.

Come on, you know you wanna watch this

Because I do.



(Thanks to 25 for the find.)

Slideluck Potshow in NYC on Nov 17

http://www.slideluckpotshow.com/

Last year's slideshows: http://www.slideluckpotshow.com/index2.php?PageName=slpsix_contributors

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/arts/design/27slid.html?ex=1333512000&en=2baf093843cf2240&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Only in Japan

would this be an actual game show.

Up next, the Wii version.

Proud to be an US American

from South Carolina, nonetheless. Yippee kayay.

From the Miss Teen USA competition:

Near the end of the competition, one of the judges asked Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina, what she thought of a recent poll that showed one fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Upton’s answer, a spew of half-English gibberish, is a must-see case study in stupidity, confusion, and panic. (And yet Upton finished the event as the third runner-up.)
--from http://www.veryshortlist.com/lists/

Revenge of the Bookeaters

Cool show to benefit a good cause: Revenge of the Bookeaters Benefit Concert

A benefit for Dave Eggers' tutoring program-cum-superhero haberdashery 826NYC, this musical celebration of all things literary featured such smarty pants as Feist, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Grizzly Bear, Spoon's Britt Daniel, the New Pornographers' A.C. Newman, and Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew.

I have a mancrush on Jim James. (Yes, a man crush.) Oh, and Feist was there.

uh no, this isn't bizarre at all...

not. at. all.

http://gawker.com/news/cats-and-dogs/the-wonders-of-the-animal-kingdom-292326.php?autoplay=true

What Went Wrong

is my fave song of the year, and it's by the Slackers, one of coolest bands around. :-) I've been listening to this song non-stop.

Glen Pine, the lead vocalist in this song, has an amazingly sexy voice. His cover of Sam Cooke's Cupid is effing amazing. The guy on the keyboard is Vic Ruggiero, one just an all-around brilliant wordsmith and musician.

If you've never seen these guys live, they put on such a good live show (for those of you that missed the booze cruise last weekend): http://www.fabchannel.com/user/allcarbon/playlist

Or, just check out this random slideshow homage to the Slackers I found on YouTube:

inappropriate yoga guy

"Do you come here often?"

Plenty of singles don’t mind having another yogi propose dinner. Elana Wertkin, 31 of Park Slope, Brooklyn, went a few dates with a cute guy she met in a neighborhood class.

“We walked out at the same time and he said ‘Let’s go for a smoothie,’ ” said Ms. Wertkin, a documentary film producer.

But her interest in him was soon cut short. On their third date, he confessed that part of the reason he loved yoga class was watching women lie on their backs, legs spread.

what's your sleep number?

Article The Myth, the Math, the Sex by GINA KOLATA:

August 12, 2007

One survey, recently reported by the federal government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.

“Some might be imaginary,” Dr. Graham said. “Maybe two are in the man’s mind and one really exists.”

oh my gawd, was i not supposed to do that???

B flew back from Florida yesterday, and this is what she had to report:

so yesterday, i was in line at the security thingy at the airport and the woman at the xray machine kinda looked funny for a minute and she looked at me, and i looked, and i had all my stuff... so she looked at the woman behind me and i watched, b/c she looked so weirded out. so she called a man over and she goes - she put her cat in the xray machine and the woman with the cat (in a very thick southern accent) goes, oh my gawd, was i not supposed to do that??? and i looked, and sure enough, there was a kitty that just went through the xray machine. the man was like, well, ma'am, it's an xray machine...

from my home town in S.C.

Of course this would be the only piece of news from my home town in South Carolina to hit the CNN homepage.

Chocolate Rain

Tay Zonday


Spoofed by John Mayer


Spoofed by Tre Cool


Spoofed by McGruff the Crime Dog