Beards and Skirts ... and Sh*t Hitting The Fan

   

 
Good Economic Times - Illustrated

Believe it or not, fashion can demonstrate exactly how well a company, or a country is doing. It's a phenomenon called The Environmental Security Hypothesis. Here's how it works.

During good economic times, statistically, men will prefer blondes. Skirts will go up - literally. They'll get so short you could... well... read a girl's license plate. Men will go clean-shaven. Both sexes will prefer people with big, wide, trusting eyes. Everything's happy in the world, and (as a guy, I really appreciate this), girls will be wandering around showing more flesh than a gynecologists convention.

Why?

Well, I'm not personally sure on the hair color. Brunettes? You're economically immune. Huzzah! Red-heads? Well, the study I was reading didn't actually cover red-heads. Consider yourselves a force of nature unto your own not bound by the space-time or the economic continuum.

 
Harsh Economic Times- Illustrated

Bad news for the blondes though. In harsh economic times, all of the sudden the pendulum swings the other way. Men prefer girls with dark hair. Women prefer men with beards. (Actually, men prefer men with beards too, and by that, I don't just mean bears - that goes for hierarchies of men in society too, not just men who... well.. enjoy other men). The smaller your eyes are? The more attractive, and the more friends you'll have. Even though you have little beady eyes.

It's not just beards either. Anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and economists have all turned to that bastion of persistent cultural data - Playboy Magazine - and studied the measurements of the girls within. (I'm sure they also read the articles). The result? In times of economic strife, men prefer taller, heavier and older girls with smaller tits.

 
Playboy Magazine: The choice of anthropological
socioeconomic psychologists everywhere

I've seen this myself. We're entering a recession. We've got about a hundred people in our office - mostly young men. Statistically, according to the studies, you'd expect the preference to shift by about 3-4% towards wearing beards.

Guess how many people grew beards over the past 6 months, since the economic downturn started to really pinch?

Yep, that's right. 4 people grew beards, right in line with the study. Or got more scruffy at least. One guy has been growing a moustache since October, and he still hasn't shaved it. He looks like a 70s (the era of stagflation, Carter) porn star. That's dedication.

I Know What You're Thinking

What can you do with this information? How can we make this useful?

Well, on a micro level, look around the company you work for. Are things going well? Or badly? What does your gut tell you? What signs can you see?

How To Tell If You're About To Get Laid Off, or if the stock market is about to crash...

• Assuming you work in an industry where you're lucky enough to see women, did any women in your office get breast reduction surgery recently? Or get taller? Or both?
• Has anyone dyed their hair from blonde or brown to black recently?
• How many guys have grown beards, or grown scruffy, 80s-style George Michael stubble? (If the reason is not that the woman or man in their life is driven wild by the facial hair, count them as subliminal converters)
• Bring copies of Playboy into work. Are the models as old as your mom? Are any of the models your mom? If so, we might be experiencing economic hard times. (Or at the very least, your mom might be).
• Has anyone switched from glasses to contact lenses, giving them the "Mr. Magoo" effect where their eyes are now just tiny dots? Lasik counts.

Things Not To Do If You're CEO Of A Company And Don't Want To Freak Out Your Employees

The Unexpected CEO Beard:
A Serious Business Faux Pas

As a leader, there are certain expectations you have to uphold. You're not allowed to hold all night hooker and blow parties unless you invite most of the senior staff.  You may only have three reserved parking spots at the office for your variety of expensive sports cars, even if two of them are registered in your wife's name for tax reasons. You can't blow the morale budget on that nice set of golf clubs you saw in the Sharper Image, with the built in GPS tracker in each golf ball.

Most importantly, before calling a random all-hands meeting, you must not - under any circumstances - suddenly start sporting a full beard. Especially if you didn't have it the last time any of the staff saw you. Even stubble is out. There's a reason the bad guys in the mirror universe in Star Trek all had goatees, you know.

The Power of Blankets

Blankets are great.

I don't know about you, but whenever I'm alone at night in a big house with too many windows without blinds or curtains, and I get spooked, I turn to my friend, the blanket.

My blanket is impervious to all demons, serial killers, vampires and deformed mutant zombies. It must be made of titanium, or maybe woven carbon fiber. Certainly at the very least somewhere on a molecular level it's inscribed with all kinds of protective sigils, and the fabric itself was washed in the most holiest of holy water.

Its powers disappear when the sun rises. Until then, however, I'll be stuck underneath it, waiting for the bad things to go away.

Why People Read My Blog (according to Google)

According to Google's Webmaster Tools one of the more popular search terms that leads to a click on my blog (http://www.popcornfilms.com/accidentalscientist) is “Sandpaper porn”

Sandpaper porn!?!?!?!?!?!

I’m at a total loss for words. Here’s the funny ones…

• Milkshake racing game (Race that milkshake!)


• Bruised coxix (Ow!)


• Sandpaper porn (Double triple quadruple ow!)


• 2005 fully clothed sex (Not as much fun as 2007 fully unclothed on the balcony sex)


• British dish mush (Hey, my cooking’s not that bad)


• Accidental pee drunk (we’ve all been there…)


• Diuretics peeing a lot (Yes, yes, they do…)


• Musclewomen porn (Lots of muscular women fans out there) (Very popular in India and Turkey, apparently)


• Muscle woman porn (Some of them don’t like groups though…)


• Pain receptors drunk (The best way for your pain receptors to be)

… and a couple of poignant ones:

• “How to commit suicide using Unisom” (I’ll leave that one alone)


• “Scientist Lost” (Like Milton’s Paradise Lost, but geekier)


• “Books are good enough, but are a poor substitute for life”

I get a scary number of hits for sandpaper porn. Must be some kind of meme going around.


For those interested:
2005 Fully Clothed Sex takes you a follow-up post I wrote on a post of mine describing the Rules Behind Teen Movies (Not Quite Teen Movies). I’ll let you figure out the others yourself…

Of course, this is all going to horribly skew things now, because I've made a recursive reference to the search terms in my blog. Yikes!

Funniest drug warning ever

From the myalli.com website..

You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

(MyAlli is a drug designed to help you lose weight by blocking enzymes that digest fat...)

Overheard in New York

There's a site out there - Overheard in New York - which collects things people overhear in passing. You know, random conversation snippets. (It has a few sister sites too - Overheard in the Office, Overheard at the Beach... and there's another unrelated one called InPassing). It's amazing what you pick up if you just keep your ears open. Here's a few of my recent faves.

Five-year-old: Daddy, I don't wanna see Spider-Man 3.
Dad: Come on, why not?
Five-year-old: I hate the black Spider-Man.
Hobo: That child is racist!

Old man: My psychiatrist told me two important things: one, never trust foreigners; two, don't ever waste an erection, even if you're alone.--Restroom, York Theater

During trailer for horror movie where young girl peeks in door of creepy house and says, 'Hello?'...
Thugette: Why they be goin' into some abandoned-ass house like that?
Thug: 'Cause they white.

Lady: I had the worst experience at that restaurant.
Friend: What did you have?
Lady: Horrible diarrhea.
Friend: I meant, what did you order?

Frat boy: ... And I don't really know what happened! All of a sudden I was in an orgy... And you know what? It wasn't even all that good.

Kindly gent: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Little kid: Retarded!
Kindly gent: Retarded?
Little kid: My grandpa is retarded, and he gets to play and watch TV all day!
Kindly gent: [Stunned silence.]
Kid's mom, embarrassed: He means 'retired.'
Little kid: Retarded! Retarded! Retarded! I wanna be retarded! [Starts to cry.]

There's sort of a game you can make out of this too. It's called Tomato Funeral.

Best review of Suffering: Ties That Bind ever...

Ever see the Grandma Hardcore series? It's a granny who plays video games. And swears like a sailor while she does so.

She's hardcore. Way hardcore.

But our game was her Waterloo ;-)

http://oghc.blogspot.com/2005/10/midway-and-surreal-take-grandma-to.html

Word of Yesterday - Love

('cos I didn't do one yesterday, so this is to catch up... plus bonus definitions...)

Love:

1) The incontravertible feeling that the universe will get sucked into a black hole unless you're with a certain someone.

2) Knowing that whatever someone else does, no matter how bad, no matter which species they do it with, you'll still hold their hair back when they're throwing up.

3) The main mechanism of reproduction for trashy paperback novels.

Word of the Day... Princess

Princess:

A woman who when offered the moon on a stick, complains that she doesn't like sticks.

Word of Tuesday

Yeah, I'm at work, so I'm going to post this early.

Thesaurus;

Extinct reptile that eats libraries.

Word of the day...

Genius: someone smart enough to know the wrong question to ask, and to keep asking it until they get the right answer.

It's snowing really hard

Heard on Monday on the weather report on the radio:

"I came out of the University of Washington on foot, and the snow was coming down so hard it was coming down in pellets!"

I just wanted to call said newsreporter and tell her "We have a word for that, dearie... it's called Hail."

New Job: Nursery Rhyme Defusal Expert

I've decided to create a new job position for myself. Namely, that of nursery rhyme defusal expert.

It's quite simple. It's like a bomb defusal expert, but not quite as bloody, firey or messy if it all goes horribly wrong and I cut the wrong wire.

For example, I can take a dangerous nursery rhyme like Old Macdonald, and completely defuse it with one simple snip.

Old MacDonald Had Some Vowels

E I E I O

See? It's now safe for everyone to use and makes perfect sense. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

Simon Cooke's Devil's Dictionary - Ostracize

Ostracize - [v]
 
When members of your peer group take you and bury your head in the sand.

(part one of an occasional series)

Recursive Junk Mail

Yesterday I experienced my first ever tangle with a weird new phenomenon.
 
Recursive Junk Mail
 
For some odd reason, someone sent me a catalog of catalogs. Inside it, are a whole bunch of catalogs to choose from. Some cost money. Some don't. Some refund you if you buy something from the catalog, but you have to buy the catalog in the first place.
 
My mind is boggling at this. Add to that the fact that they're offering catalogs of flags, different types of sandpaper and muscle-women porn all on the same page, and I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to actually parse this thing. I just keep balking at it. It just doesn't compute.
 
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to order a large flag to erect in my yard, and 3 grades of sandpaper to use to masturbate to my muscle-woman-porn with.