With friends like these, who needs a demented, maniacal stalker? (551 hits)
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Submitted by Alasdair (View user info) at 2004-07-22 08:35:18 EDT
[Author's note: I wrote this last year (my final year of high school) as part of my ongoing dissent in an English class taught by a rabid feminist. The assignment required us to "Discuss the topic of difference as it relates to gender". For the record, I got a D with "marks for orginality", but it was worth it to see the look on her face when it was handed back.]
Having encountered several girl's bedrooms in my time (often, though not always, from inside a closet), I have noticed a definite trend emerging in the decor of all of them. Girls, quite simply, are obsessed with adorning the walls of their bedrooms with as many photographs as possible of their friends, family, pets, favourite door-to-door salesmen and virtually every single person who respires within 90 feet radius of them. As an aficionado of late-night movies, most of which feature Emilio Estevez or a wise cracking robot that develops a conscience and/or a ravenous desire for human flesh, I have learnt a few absolute truths (read: completely fabricated, wildly inaccurate aspersions) about the kind of people who revel in such bedroom aesthetics. Experience has taught me that they are either haggard, Tommy Lee Jones-ish FBI agents with shady past, pretentious avant-garde artists who communicate through sighs and varying degrees of lip-curling, or deranged sociopaths in the process of stalking and plotting to kill their shapely neighbour.
Imagine my shock, then, when I recently walked into a female friend's room to be greeted by a sight eerily reminiscent of Robin Williams' apartment wall in "One Hour Photo". Plastered all over the walls were photos of all descriptions, depicting all the people of significance in this particular girl's life; it was a veritable timeline of her existence, albeit with a few too many Hawaiian shirts for my liking. What exactly is it, then, that compels girls to behave in a manner more befitting the unibomber than Hilary Duff?
Firstly, let us examine the pronounced disparity between the priorities of males and females. It would seem that women seem to lift their spirits by reminding themselves of times gone by, integral people in their lives and the fun that can be had by taking the exact same photo of the same person in a slightly different pose (i.e 'wearing a hat') and promptly taping it to the wall in three different locations. Men, as opposed to waxing nostalgic, merely drink themselves into a stupor and hurl abuse from cars at other men. Basically, this is much less labour-intensive, in addition to being a prime opportunity to expand one's repertoire of witty insults such as "Nice shirt, FAG!", "Nice hair, FAG", "Nice 16 inch switchblade FA..oh shit", and so on.
Women, in order to facilitate their obsession with their friends, seek to reiterate to visitors and themselves that yes, there are indeed several hundred friends, acquaintances and hangers-on in their lives. As such, their rooms tend to become some sort of chronological vacuum, with images encompassing various stages of their lives plastered all over the walls. Should a man accidentally wander into such a room, he will immediately begin to feel disoriented, nauseous and promptly collapse to the floor in the foetal position, whilst quietly humming the lyrics to a Tori Amos song.
Conversely, men, by nature, tend to be the practical sort, devoid of the need to heap effusive attention upon their friends. If it were at all possible, i'm quite sure that the average male would gladly arrange all the important people in their lives into one photograph, not unlike the cover art of "Sergeant Pepper". Whereas the female of the species enjoys the spontaneous identification of friends via discerning that one particular photo in the faceless mass upon her east wall is of "Grace from tennis! Oh my, I would have forgotten about her if not for the 900 separate, autographed pictures of her I have!!", I think males would appreciate a more ordered system of friend identification.
Man: "Hey, it's been a while since I reminisced...perhaps it's time to reflect upon my various interpersonal relationships! Lets see...row 3, centre...well i'll be! It's Mark! What a crazy and/or wild and totally brilliant guy! This group photo was the wisest investment I ever made, except possibly for the sweatshop in Java...."
The following example highlights the formulaic as opposed to wanton method of nostalgia favoured by males. Another such difference between the two genders is their priorities within a friendship. In order to aid you in discerning these differences, I have produced two lists which compare the substantial lack of symmetry between said priorities.
The Things Men Want to Know About Their Friends
. Will he mind if I mess with him while he's drunk?
. Will he mess with me if i'm drunk?
. Is he a filthy, godless Communist or a Creed fan?
. Can I borrow his car?
. Does his ex think i'm cute?
The Things Women Want to Know About Their Friends
. The size, colour and design of every article of clothing in her wardrobe
. An exhaustive dissection of everything she and her boyfriend did the night before (even if this was to square dance for five hours and top off the heady night with a saucy game of bridge)
. Her Chinese star sign
. Her genetic profile
. Could I navigate her house successfully at night whilst being pursued by Libyan
extremists with attack dogs?
. Could I write an uplifting, factually correct biography of her entire life, including graphic details of her birth?
Once all these criteria have been satisfied, young women are ready to enter a symbiotic relationship and shed all vestiges of their life as an independent being.
One particularly irksome facet of female friendships is their penchant for 9 hour phone conversations. Surely, nothing could warrant spending the equivalent budget of a small African dictatorship on monthly phone bills? Now, I may be wrong, and these phone calls may be liberal think-tanks, replete with poignant discussion of America's neo-colonial prerogative, but I somehow doubt this is the case. Having never actually been privy to one of these notoriously epic conversations, I can only surmise that, in keeping with their unsettlingly obsessive relationship with one another, phone calls between female friends can be broken down as follows:
1 hour of small talk
7 hours and 59 minutes of mutual heavy breathing and macabre cackling
1 minute of arranging plans for the next day
The penultimate stages of such conversations usually unfold like this:
Friend 1: "Huuuuh....huuhhhh....i'm gonna slit your throat from ear to ear....hurrr"
Friend 2: "haHAHahHA...WhICH DooR aM i aT, KaTiE?!....hAHhahH"
Friend 1: "Beach tomorrow at 11?"
Friend 2: "Ok, cool..will Corey be there?!"
Friend 1: "You know it!"
Friend 2: "Yummy! Bubye sweetie!"
Friend 1: "Byyeeee hun!!!"
No, I do not understand women, nor shall I ever. Until such day as some techno boffin writes the book entitled "Why the Bitches Be Actin' So Wack", which all men have been craving for centuries, I think we males shall be forever at the behest of our erratic, wholly enigmatic female counterparts. I intend to add more to this groundbreaking study soon, wherein I shall conclude my study of female relationships, as well as revealing a great recipe for apricot chicken which I found whilst looking for photos of Steve McQueen...I swear to God.
Until next time
"Way to waste 3 perfectly good minutes of your life, FAG!"
User Reviews
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-05-12 19:18:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/69453#2410463
Submitted by Dance.With.The.Devil. (user info) at 2007-04-11 15:42:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
shut the fuck up bitch
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2007-04-11 14:01:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Decent, but not really anything new.
Submitted by Beano312003 (user info) at 2007-04-11 13:36:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by Kaelic (user info) at 2004-08-20 02:29:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
How did this get a D? Man, you were so wronged. This was brilliant. I have fond memories of drunkenly calling other guy's fag at four in the morning.
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2004-08-20 01:48:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by AbraCadaver (user info) at 2004-07-22 10:34:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"Great. Stunning. Gorgeous. I laughed. I cried. I tripped over a small rock.
Submitted by The_taste_of_Monkeys (user info) at 2004-07-22 10:02:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Why the Bitches Be Actin' So Wack
I need this book!
Submitted by espo (user info) at 2004-07-22 09:14:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for not letting the man, err...woMAN, keep you down.
DOWN WITH FEMINAZIS
Espo
Submitted by spedmonkey (user info) at 2004-07-22 09:03:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by money_shot (user info) at 2004-07-22 08:48:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The first part was good. I couldn't be bothered to read the rest. Have a +2 anyway.