When I sing along with you

There is allways going to be a replacement for you (sic)

...Thanks, guy.

I get in these moods where I just sort of collect information.
I mean, I'm always in a "collecting information mood," especially when it comes to fact.
But then I have these times where I collect more subjective information and then ascribe and organize it, with the weight of fact, in my mind.
And I notice that I do it a lot when it comes to other people's perceptions and judgments of the world. Particularly people's perceptions of other people.
And often most interesting to me: the way men look at women.
And I don't think there's any shortage of information on the subject. There's no shortage of information on how people feel about most things, in this medium.

I'm in this mood right now where everything is just hitting me as being quite poignant or extra meaningful. And boundaries between my own thoughts and feelings and this information is sort of dissolved lately.
So I'm having a strange time with this thing I found on Craigslist, which is where I do so much of my intake and boundary testing.
On one hand, it's the same crap you run into all the time: online, at the bar, in your family, on TV, in books and magazines. It's fucking everywhere.
And it's easy to dismiss, right?
The more I read this one, the more I think its the most generous of the crap I've encountered so far.
And there's a self-deprecating aspect to the whole thing that suggests a guy who thinks he's crap, but no woman could ever be better than less.
I mean, this guy could be some miserable prick who's never had a meaningful relationship in his life. Who will only look at/fuck/marry/value that one type of woman who was maybe raised to behave like a commodity creature that is only looked at/fucked/married and valued for everything but (insert cliché about inner beauty here). And as such raised and valued and bartered for, sees her own relationships primarily in terms of goods and services. And then the resultant happily ever-after.
I've had men like this talk to me like I should enjoy being a potential commodity, and I've had men talk to me like I didn't deserve to live for not being pretty enough to acknowledge as human. I think most women I know have had this experience. I've seen the long-term fall out from this type of attitude. I've seen women treat men much the same.

But this whole scenario is too simplistic.

Some woman just emasculated him, ripped his heart out and now he's drunkenly posted to an anonymous forum some sort of power statement. THE WAY IT IS. YOU'RE WELOCME. Maybe. I hope it made him feel better to make it. Maybe that's his story.

(I hate to think of someone writing this for, like, a hundred different reasons. To name a couple: That someone would be in so much psychic pain over their relationship their only outlet is pissing in MC on Craigslist... That some dude(s) out there consider "honest communication" the ability to call their loved one a bitch... That every time I come across this type of thing it makes me wonder if life is meaningful at all.)

The worst thing is, I'm reading this over and over and over and it's making me wonder for a third possibility. What about this is true?
I feel like I'm coming away from this thinking that it's somehow true.
For the fact that this is the way a sizable number of men would look at me, and my friends, and my mother, and my daughter, and my sisters, and then make those thoughts known... for that, this is a sort of fact, isn't it? And as fact, should be accepted?

It's a fact that people feel this way.

Is it a fact that this is the way people feel.

See what just happened there?

This is where the porousness of intake and disregard for the subjectivity of the information always trips me up.

I don't really like it when I get like this. It's like everything is all of the sudden true and equally valuable, unevenly distributed towards things that I find disconcerting and disappointing.
Which I happen to suspect is not true at all.

Anyways.

That is our destiny for you.

ATTN WHINEY WOMEN! - m4w

Date: 2010-01-15, 4:41AM

Ladies ladies ladies, what WILL we do with you?
Have you read through the ltr posts lately, or the missed connections.
Get over yourselves! HA!
The baristas are flirting with you, partly for the tips, partly because they can.
We don't want to inspire you to reach new heights, you will just move on.
We aren't here to complete you, if we did you wouldn't need us anymore.
We aren't going to fix your self esteem issues, that is how we got you, that is how we will keep you.
You are kidding yourself if you think you are going to find something long term and meaningful on here, you will find plenty of attention though.
I know you said and meant that you aren't looking for just a hookup. But, a three month relationship is just a hookup. You dragged it on and on about twice as long as should have gone for.
Any man knows that a bush in the hand is worth two in the club. But, we will still call it quits if you try to change us.
If we are the kind of guy you could change, you wouldn't want us anyways.
You say you want a nice guy, but we will treat you like shit and you will love us even more for it.
You will know if we think you are getting fat, because we will stop having sex with you.
We will not give up our rutine for very long for you. Because we would rather screw our hand than you when you are acting like a child.
We are men, we like our space and our solitude, if you invade that then we will run or fight, there is only two options here.
If you think this is a battle of the sexes and you can hold out on sex to win the war you are wrong.
You are women and you can never get organized well enough to cooperate with all other women to orchestrate that.
There is allways going to be a replacement for you, so give us incentive to not do that.
Sex with one person is boring, even though some of us have never cheated, we will resort to porn if we have to.
You want open communication, but you don't want to be called on being a b*tch or a child.
You think that you can just change your mind all you want and it's okay because you are a woman.
You are wrong, those women end up alone, which is fine by us, we couldn't stand them anyways.
As for bbw's: you get your own category.
Nerd fodder or fatty lovers. That is our destiny for you.
The high school heartthrobs will not want you till you look like a cheerleader. Lose weight, big is not beautiful, it's unhealthy almost as gross as horrible teeth.
Fat women sweat, alot. Sweaty women aren't hot unless they are covered in jello or baby oil.
Those last two instances don't count for bbw's.
Women who want the nice guy:
The bad boy will steal you away every time, you have a nice guy but won't give him the time of day, you call him your friend.
Guys don't make friends with women without having intention of trying to sleep with them. It is in our nature.
Give the little guy a shot, he may not be the most attractive, but he will die trying to make you happy.
When we actually marry you:
We don't drink too much, it just takes that much to stand living with ourselves while you ruin everything for us.
We will smoke and drink and gamble and eat unhealthy food all in the hopes that we will die because we can't stand you anymore.
Lastly; for those women that are dating:
Us buying dinner or flowers was not a way to manipulate you, we just were hoping to make a good impression so we could fool you into sleeping with us.
We buy jewelry when we mess up, including the engagement ring!
We bought that jewelry because we still want you around, but it was a momentary lapse in judgement as our buddies will quickly point out that there are plenty of women out there that can do the dirtiest things with their tounge.
We want you to take a traditional roll in the relationship because we need you to stay home so we can get the hell out of dodge and feel like a man again, even if it is just for 8 hours at work.
We expect you to cook and clean if you aren't rockin the headboard like a porn star.
Quit watching movies like "He is just not that into you". We are into you just enough and just long enough to get in your pants, but it better be a short trip, because we would gladly get on the next "express" woman that comes along.
There is no fairey tale relationship, and if there was such a thing, you sure wouldn't deserve it.
To get your self esteem up do something esteemable. Men are not responsible for your feelings or emotions, you are.
If you feel neglected, get our attention, usually a sexy outfit will do it, but you will only have it untill about 12 seconds after sex.
This of course does not apply if we think you are getting fat, then we will ignore you and go surf the net for sexy cheerleaders or naughty catholic school girls.
The only woman who ever deserved to get exactly what she wanted was Mother Theresa, and look how that turned out.
As for your girl friends: They will tell you that your new boyfriend is great and sexy and " you better watch out or some other B*tch is gonna steal him up", then they will later tell you that the guy was a dirtbag and a jerk and really never deserved to have such a rare gem as you, and deserves to be alone forever, and even later tell you that the new girl he is dating is ugly, or fat, or some combination of the two. ( And you think we are shallow?!?!).
Get off your ass, get into the gym, get into victoria's secret, get into the kitchen, get into bed. And for god's sake and our's... Shut the hell up!
ps: you are very welcome for this.

• Location: minneapolis

Some Torn Main Sail

Magical thinking for 2010:

The way you spend your New Years Eve will determine the quality of your year.
Mine was not worth describing. (You know what that means...)

There were all these other superstitions I'm guilty of, that I thought of last night but are now escaping me.
One that occurred to me in the car today: admitting desire is handing over a sizable portion of the control you think you have over what happens.

Oh, another one: devices that exist to distract you from the rough times never work when you really need them to. Clearly this is because your upset brain waves are having some terrible Pauli Effect on their electromagnetics. Or something.

It's invigorating to be so openly stupid.

I guess I didn't color correct these so cohesive-like.