Self Image (I'm a Sexy Bitch...)

How I look to my dog:


Why on earth would my dog want to please me?


On a different subject:

The mysteries of human reproduction

Beautiful women seem to fall into two categories:

• Ones who think they're basically unfit to be seen in public, no matter how much evidence they are presented to the contrary. Men in the presence of these women are rendered incapable of rational judgment by sheer lust, but the babe continues to live her life assuming she is ugly and that men act that dorky all the time.


• Women who know they're hot. This group, for some reason, tends to be as obnoxious as another species of women: the ones who aren't fit to be seen in public, but insist on hip-huggers with holes in the butt, half-shirts and lower back tattoos with religious themes.

I suspect that the same cultural pressures create both types of women. Most seem to enter the alembic of American pop culture and emerge believing they're chopped liver; a few come out thinking their shit has been transmuted to something that doesn't smell.

Men fall into two categories also.

• Guys who are 100+ pounds overweight, poorly dressed and hygienically lacking, who figure they're 'not bad.'


• Guys who live at the gym, working on rock-hard six-pack abs, juicing until their nuts turn to raisins and their brains go soft. This is to make them attractive to beautiful women who know they're good looking.

How does the species propagate? It would seem that (unless you're going to compete with the steroid freaks for obnoxious Paris Hilton wannabes), all attractive women are basically out of the league for any guy with a sperm count.

How Lobsters Reproduce*

*No Lobsters were sexually gratified in the snapping of this photo.

Vetting Daughter's Dates

This also falls under the category of why television has to stop. I don't have cable, or a dish, just an antennae, and the outrages that still penetrate my home! I try not to watch, but I caught part of a show one time, 'My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé.' I guess this is what they are talking about when they talk about reality TV:

• This chick (who I'd guess falls more or less in the second category of beautiful women, though she was only beautiful in the most utterly superficial and plasticky way possible), they get her to go on a TV show where she gets a bunch of money if she marries a total stranger. And she has to sell her family on this deal, get them on camera and humiliate them.


• The guy, according to the setup, is in the same position. I think the only reason this drew me in is it amounted to an extended 'Candid Camera' routine, and I always kinda dug that show. The guy, of course, was a regular, ordinary guy. He looked more like John Belushi than Brad Pitt, but he was an actor, as was every person brought in as his family members.


• When the 'men' of these two families were brought together, one of the things they did to make things hot for the Barbie-clone and her family, was all the guys, including the fiance, from the 'actor' side of the family started pulling up their shirts, doing 'OK' signs around their nipples and shouting "MOOSE!"

The chick was still at the alter when push came to shove, at least if I remember correctly. Yep, that's reality alright...

I thought the Moose was great. Em thought it disgusting. So we worked out a deal. When she gets to be a teenager and a guy asks her out, there's an audition required. Not the nervous, furtive exchange on the front porch that characterized my high school first dates**.

The pimply goon has to come to dinner at our house. I'm not looking for elbows on the table so much as signs of him being too much like me at that age. Basically, I know my daughter is going to make mistakes, but I think Frau Lobster and me should have the chance to vet the nominee for an hour or so. Not grill him, but get a sense of wehter Em is making a mistake on the order of a guy she'd rather not see in the halls at school, or one that's likely to end up with a 3:00 a.m. call from the police or a hospital.

So anyway, the deal is, if at any point in the dinner I pick up a Jeffrey Dahmer vibe, or the guy brags about how fast his car goes and how ideal it is for hill-jumping...

Then, Em can turn to the boy and say, "You can finish your meal if you like, but after that you might as well go. There's no future for us, you got the Moose."

Kind of 'Meet the Parents' cross-bred with the Gong Show.

**First dates were usually only dates, but I had a lot of them. I learned at an early age that most girls won't decline a first date. I think this is because they: 1) Feel like it would be rude, or otherwise have a notion that it's wrong to hurt even an unattractive guy's feelings; and 2) Know it's a free movie, meal, whatever, and might not be worse than watching TV with their parents. The reason my dates tended to stop at the first is the large proportion of girls who found out a date with me was so much worse than watching TV with their parents. Cured them of caring about my 'feelings.'