Finally Friday…

Compare and contrast: Alessandra Stanley (critiquing the cable movie about the American pollsters/political campaigners working for Boris Yeltsin’s re-election campaign) and Virginia Heffernan (critiquing the mid-season series “Wonderfalls” – about a young woman who listens to inanimate objects telling her to do good deeds – a “Joan of Arcardia” without God). Two tv critics – now part of the same newspaper (Heffernan was the ex-Slate.com tv critic) – I’ve been more partial to Heffernan, because Heffernan feels like someone who likes tv even if the show she’s watching sucks. But, Heffernan’s comments about the US version of “Touching Evil” (on the bottom of the article on “Wonderfalls”) seems a little too caustic for me (then again, as I said in a prior blog entry, I didn’t think too badly of the original British “Touching Evil”).

I’m almost finished with reading Peter David’s “Stone and Anvil” (the latest Star Trek: New Frontier book); I’ll be making my comments on that in a future blog entry.

Marriage the institution or the Institutionalize Marriage?

I can not tell anymore …. A few weeks ago, there was a partial rant on the topic from an oblique angle. The whole Howard Dean and Dr. Steinberg touched it off I believe. Anyways, I think the Titanic and Dean’s campaign were remarkably similar in how fast they sunk.

But I digress…. A J kindly forwarded this website to me and fair warning to all, it’s highly irreverant, insulting, amusing, stereotypical, but definitely entertaining: The honest marriage and relationship advice for men. I had to share this site with B- and she found it shocking, amusing and scary all at once. She did ask me, “Is any of this true”? I flatly said, “Yes.”

My favorites links are:

American women are fucked, they priced themselves out of the market
Fucking decent mid-priced whores twice a week is less expensive than a wife
Marriage means you become a slave to your job

Hilarious quotes:
American women offer up a shit sandwich and then get pissed off when men go elsewhere to eat.

What is the relevance here? You wouldn’t get such an obvious Howard Dean and Dr. Steinberg situation in Asia. That’s nothing to say about what goes on behind the doors, but solidarity and long-term are just so much more the norm in other cultures than in the US when it comes to relationships and to marriage in general.

And this sort of thing goes on in Asia too as a lot more women begin to adopt more Westernized notions of relationships and attitudes. There’s a hierarchy nowadays I’m beginning to detect. Men avoiding the obvious choices like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and looking toward Malaysians, Vietnamese, Thai women. The “headache” of dealing with women who’s sole aim is to marry well and be kept for the rest of their lives is a guy’s nightmare seconded probably by divorce and losing everything.

My education here of the sexes has been fascinating and not sure what to make of it. Need more time to digest it. I’m not suggesting that things are amiss with me and B-, things are really wonderful and still “honeymoonish” but going through counseling and having serious chats has helped. We’re still learning about each other, nothing is perfect, we have good and bad qualities. Looking forward to August 31st.

=YC