Pychodynamics = Hilarious

Ok people. I’m going to give you some advice that should be given to everyone once they reach the age of comprehension. Swing your arms when you freakin’ walk! I was driving to work recently and I saw a jogger who, I can only assume, was concentrating intently on holding his arms straight down by his sides while he ran. This has got to be one of the most awkward looking things that you can do as a human being, second only to being a thirteen year old boy trying to talk to an attractive female. In any case, this particular symptom of self consciousness does not make you look any less self consciousness. On the contrary, it makes you look like you have some sort of undiagnosed joint disorder, or perhaps a fierce desire to be chosen last for flag football. I tried to imagine what was going on in this guy’s head when he ran. Here’s the internal monologue as I see it.

Asshole’s Id: “Yeah! Let’s get our run on!”

Asshole’s Ego: “Whoa there guy. We want to look cool. Let’s take it in a notch.”

Asshole’s Id: “But it feels natural and good to swing my arms. Screw what people think!”

Asshole’s Ego: “I’ll look out of control and crazy. I’m clamping down!!!”

Asshole’s Superego: “Damn you Ego! Stay away from your mother or I’ll cut off your penis!”

(Isn’t Freud awesome?) How can you expect a guy to run with all that going on up there? I almost feel bad for the guy.

Anyway, moving back towards the original premise. Presumably the goal of all self-conscious behavior is to portray oneself as being unself-conscious, to “act cool”. (Unselfconscious? Un-selfconscious? U-nselfc-onscious? Behold… the beauty of the hyphen.) This is one of those times when our bodies are determined to make us look like assholes. The harder you try to appear casual the more absolutely uncomfortable you look. I think ultimately trying to do things gets in the way of actually doing them, at least on the level of coordinated physical activity. On one side of the spectrum you have our Frankenstein monster of a jogger, and on the other Vince Young. Guess which one can spell coordinated? On the other hand… maybe some people just run like jackasses.

Evidence for Misanthropy

So I stopped at a gas station recently and nature called me into the bathroom. (Don’t worry. There aren’t any scatological jokes coming.) There it was. Written on the wall of the bathroom where I was taking a leak, incontrovertible proof that men are an appalling species. “Meet here 6/4/06 11:00 for blowjob” (It’s hard to convey the real effect of the handwriting… very poor penmanship. I remember being surprised they spelled blowjob correctly.) Every guy in the world has seen this before of course. Women may not be aware of this. I don’t spend a lot of time in the ladies room, but I have a hard time envisioning a female taking the time to scratch the equivalent into a tampon dispenser. I’m reasonable confident that it’s an all male phenomenon. If I’m wrong then I welcome correction from any of the female readers out there. On the other hand, it’s actually astonishing how high a percentage of men’s bathrooms contain sexual appointment vandalism.

This of course begs the question, “exactly how many of these appointments are being filled?” Upon asking myself this, my initial reaction was of course, “suuuurrrely none.” Ah ha… but let’s pause to examine this further… If the answer was none then there wouldn’t be such an enormous amount of similar graffiti attempting to arrange rendezvous in men’s bathrooms. Taking this line of reasoning further, it must be a significant percentage of the time that these dates are being consummated. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps there are just a few hyper-productive sexual deviants emptying sharpies onto the walls of America’s lavatories. My instinct is however, that there are more people involved.

Of course the next logical question (and I’m sure you were way ahead of me here) is, “how many of these encounters consist of a gigantic redneck waiting in the next stall with a nine iron, hoping he gets a chance to beat up a “homo” and then go home and jerk off?” Gotta be like 20/30 percent. I’d say higher, but that presumes a certain level of craftiness on the part of our hillbilly friend, and I’m just not ready to give him that kind of credit.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter how you run the math. Mankind, specifically mankind, is despicable. I understand the desire to procreate. I can even vaguely understand the desire to deface property. What I cannot understand is the appeal of trashing a bathroom wall in the hopes that you might be able to engage in a sex act with, let’s face it, what is probably not going to be a stunningly attractive human specimen. In addition to any likely respondent being either horrendously unattractive, a serial killer, of the same sex, or all of the above, the venue for the subsequent exploit is a public bathroom. I won’t even sit down in a public bathroom unless it is absolutely not going to wait until I get home. Fluid exchange is an entirely different ballgame. But I guess if you are willing to blow complete strangers you really aren’t a stickler for personal hygiene.

Anyway, there’s no real way to close this entry. People are fucked up.