Handbasket Travel Ventures

The cleavage caveats

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:07:49 -0400

Since writing the cleavage primer, it's come to my attention that no one agrees with my views on admiring cleavage. I might have anticipated this, given the number of blank stares I generally receive when engaging in enlightened conversation with my peers. The problem with writing, of course, is that people can't give you immediate feedback on what you've written; there are no blank stares to inform you that you've just wrapped the conversational car around a telephone pole. Instead, you have only the three other voices in your head to offer you guidance. And, let's be honest, they're more of a hindrance than a help. So, it wasn't until the comments started coming in that it became clear that my understanding of cleavage etiquette does not mesh nicely with other folks' views. Let's call it a learning experience.

In my original post, I arbitrarily selected 0.34 seconds as a reasonable duration of time for a man to inspect a woman's cleavage. Really, I pulled that number out of a hat, and several males in the comments area guffawed at such a piddly little span of time. The problem, I now realize, rests in selecting an absolute time to begin with. For instance, while discussing the activities of a Fourth of July weekend with a friend, he estimated that he had stared down a woman's blouse for about four hours. And, given the way the night progressed for him, I have to admit that four hours was probably the proper amount of time to admire this particular woman's cleavage. Circumstances are what establish proper interaction between a man's eyes and a woman's chest. With that in mind, I give you the Cleavage Caveats.

1. The Clooney Caveat: I alluded to this in a comment in my original post, but I'll repeat it here because I think it's important. The primary determinant of how long a man can look at a woman's cleavage is how attractive the man is. As an extreme example, I postulated that George Clooney is permitted to stare at cleavage as long as he wants. I also postulated that George Clooney is permitted to vomit a bottle of whisky into the cleavage of his choosing. I stand by both of these statements. Clooney is a fine example of the "women want him, men want to be him" phenomenon. And, really, I don't begrudge him this, because he also makes my list of non-dbag male celebrities who would probably be fun to drink with.

I know what you're thinking, "But, HTV, I don't have any 'Facts of Life' acting credits on my resume. And, while I'm curious about how long George gets to ogle boobies, I'm more immediately concerned with how long I can ogle boobies." I hear ya. And, here's where things get slippery. You have to somehow assess how physically attractive you are. You could do this via trial and error using nothing but a stopwatch and your nerves. Simply stare at cleavage until you receive negative reinforcement regarding your activities. Wear a protective cup, though. Alternatively, try asking your female friends (if you have any) if they'd be willing to pin down how attractive you are. If you're lucky, they'll be straightforward and honest with you. More likely, they'll try to compare you to characters in poetry or Jane Austen novels, in which case I highly recommend that you tune them out. You're not going to be able to follow the discussion, and you'd be better served by strapping on your cup, grabbing your stopwatch, and heading down to the nearest Starbucks.

2. The Beach Caveat: The beach is just different. It's a definite see-and-be-seen environment, so if you're a dude, you pretty much have a green light when it comes to admiring the ladies. Sure, you can go too far, but that's why God invented dark or reflective sunglasses. Really, your only problem is if the girl you're admiring has an Olympic weightlifter boyfriend, and if you have good foot speed, you don't have to worry much about that either. (If you're slow-footed, you have to be a little more cautious. And, if you do find yourself trying to outrun some dude who looks like a Greek god thanks to mountains of designer steroids, don't run in a straight line. Stop crying -- an eye full of tears is only going to blur your escape route -- and weave in a zig-zag pattern when you hear the footsteps getting close, much as you would when trying to avoid getting deep-sixed by a charging buffalo). I digress. Oftentimes, the hardest thing about beach cleavage ends up being not how long you're permitted to admire it, but figuring out how long you can point your head straight forward while staring at a chick out of the corner of your sunglasses and not doing any eye damage. Every woman who read that sentence is now shaking her head. I'm okay with this, because every straight guy is nodding his in agreement.

3. The Club Caveat: I don't spend much time in clubs, mainly because I have the Straight White Boy Blues. But, my few club experiences have taught me this much: that chick who's trying to fight off the seizures from the strobe lights and the heart palpitations from the little white pill she just popped because Date Rape Johnny told her that he got it from a guy he "totally trusts" is really much too worried about having her left ear drum ruptured by DJ Skribb's awful techno beat to worry about whether you're checking out her cans.

I don't enjoy clubs. Did that come across?

4. The Bar Caveat: Black and white gives way to gray. How dark is the bar? Who frequents said bar? Is the bar some awful "I'm not sure if I'm a bar or a club" hybrid? I don't think it's worth setting up rules for cleavage viewing in bars, because the variability in bar climates is simply too great. You're on your own here. In fact, it's even worse than that, because in your head you're probably hearing strains of a recent conversation with your female friends in which they're talking about some dude named Fitzwilliam Darcy and all you want to know is if the duration of time that you're allowed to stare at cleavage is in any way proportional to the cup size. I wash my hands of the matter.

5. The Funeral Caveat: What? I'm kidding. (Sort of. Death is funny in its own way, but that's definitely another post.)

6. The Bachelor Party Caveat: Stare early. Stare often. If you've got a bunch of your boys around, then you can fall back on the "strength in numbers" truism and not worry too much about repercussions for your "Hi, my name is Oooga Moogu, the Cro Magnon with 20:20 vision" routine. Besides, this is one of the few evenings in your life when Oooga Moogu gets to call the shots, and if nothing else Oooga Moogu knows how to have a good time. Besides, chances are you're at a strip club, and the rules there are vastly different anyway. Which brings us to...

7. The ViXXXen Corral Caveat: I really, really don't want to get into a discussion about strippers and economic-circumstances-as-a-gun-to-a-19-year-old-girl's-head when I'd much rather be making a Candy Cantaloupes joke. Personally, I think that strip clubs are a lot like Communism: they sound great on paper, but the implementation is a little messy. For instance, I don't know how you're supposed to suspend reality and believe Candy's whispered assertion that you're the object of all of her sexual desires when one of your friends from your middle school days is sitting three feet away from you, chugging an $8 bottle of Miller Lite, and lamenting the fact that the Steelers don't utilize the fullback in their running game anymore.

Annnnnny-ways..... you might as well get your money's worth while you're at The Corral. The talent has likely given up on viewing any male as a worthwhile human being, and you've already dropped about $50 between the cover charge and the three drink minimum. Start buying lap dances for your friends, and tell Oooga Moogu he's in charge for the rest of the evening. Sure, the purchasing power of the almighty American dollar has been falling, but it's still strong enough to buy you staring privileges.

8. The Bachelorette Party Caveat: Sorry, ladies, this isn't a "how long can you stare at a dude's pecs?" item. (Besides, why would you want to stare at his pecs when you could be debating whether he's more Fitzwilliam Darcy or Charles Bingley? That's right, I'm gonna make Pride and Prejudice jokes until the cows come home, and I'd like to see you stop me.) If you're a dude at a bar, and a bachelorette party staggers in, you need to treat them differently than you would the other ladies in attendance. For me, anyway, I need to stay as far away from the bride-to-be as possible. I can't tell you how many times I've wound up wearing the bride's spilled drink about 17 minutes after her maid of honor shouted "Let's do lemon drops!!!" at the bar next door. Anyhow, that's my problem, not yours. More generally, you should know that the bachelorette party desperately, DESPERATELY, wants to make fun of you. If you pay them any attention at all (and that includes lusty glances at their lady orbs), they will start making jokes involving unflattering comparisons between your manhood and those itsty-bitsy pigs-in-a-blanket they ordered as an appetizer at their dinner 6 hours ago. Really, just let it go and start focusing on the Delta Gammas at the end of the bar.

9. The Age Caveat: Alright, it's time to get serious again. If the ratio of your age to her age is 3:2 or higher, you need to carefully consider how long your eyes alight -- like an innocuous little butterfly, I know -- on her lovely bosom. If you fail to heed this advice, you might find yourself being scolded by an enraged woman many years your junior who's asking questions like, "So, tell me, Ephraim, did you lose any of your brothers at the Battle of Shiloh, or were you too busy staring at a field nurse's rack to notice?"

10. The Money Caveat: Once upon a time, being a suitable male mate entailed being able to pound the living shit out of a mountain lion that stalked into your family's cave. As a 6' 1", 153 lb male, let me say that I'm glad those times have gone the way of the woolly mammoth. These days, Bill Gates could probably get into your average woman's pants by saying, "I could buy the entire Caribbean, but I want to eradicate AIDS in Africa instead." It's an ugly little truth, but having seven or eight figures squirreled away in your portfolio is the present day version of, "Look at the heart I just ripped out of that mountain lion, honey. Who's your Oooga Moogu?" If you're a man of means, stare like it's going out of style. HTV says it's okay.

Have I helped? Probably not. At the end of the day, the rules surrounding admiring cleavage are really much too complicated. Yes, there are costs to staring inappropriately. But, there are also costs associated with not looking at all, as some substantial portion of ladies rely on male glances as a sign of attraction and a source of self-esteem. The truth is that you're best served by being a mind reader. But, since I doubt that any of my readers meet that description, I'll offer the following: you'll probably maximize your enjoyment by looking first and asking questions later. But, for Christ's sake, don't pull that shit at work.

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The Chug Monkey Affair

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:18:34 -0400

There are plenty of reasonable motives or excuses for being inebriated while flying (unless, of course, you're the pilot), so I don't generally ask people why they're getting hammered before hopping on a US Scareways jet. Consequently, I didn't ask the question on Friday night when I was dropping a friend off at the airport, and he suggested that we have a beer before he stripped down for the TSA reps at the security checkpoint. Actually, I had a beer. He had two martinis in about 20 minutes. At the time we arrived, the best seats in the house were two stools at the end of the bar, the ones conveniently placed next to the mini bar-top video machine. In more degenerate settings, these things typically feature games like "Spot the minor Photoshopped differences between these two images of a well-endowed topless woman." (One of my female friends affectionately refers to this pastime as The Booby Game.) Of course, since we were in a tiny airport bar and there were impressionable minds and eyes a mere ten feet away, this particular machine featured tamer fare, like a large cartoon ape named Chug Monkey who desperately wanted to play video beer pong with, um, anyone, as far as I could tell.

I was still slowly working on my beer when my friend finished his second martini and announced that he should begin the arduous process of convincing the TSA that, although he was experiencing alcohol blitzkrieg, he was really pretty harmless in the grand scheme of things. But, knowing that I didn't have anything better to do, prior to his departure he cautioned me against a couple things. He said, "I don't want to read your blog next week and see something like, 'So then my friend left, I had another coupla beers, and damned if the Chug Monkey didn't start talking to me.' Oh, and I also don't want to read anything about you hitting on any of the women in here, because they're all hideous."

Done and done.

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I'm thinking of a number between zero and zero

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:50:00 -0400

In response to a recent post in which I claimed that the male to female ratio for Americans between the ages of 25 and 33 is 9:1, reader Maris ~~whined~~ pondered aloud:

so what the hell is my problem then? the ratio is 9:1 and I still can't find a decent man to date? Perhaps my standards are just too high- but you tell me. There is a job requirement (you must have one), you must not be married (seriously), and live in the general vicinity of where I live (this is only a recent requirement), have a strong dislike of the packers and be a cubs fan (this is non-negotiable) and still nothing! Do I stay here and hedge my bets (the guy sitting across from me in the coffee shop (early 30's) is rockin a tee that poses the question "wanna ride me longboard?" Is this really what I have to look forward to in this town? I like the longboard as much as the next lady, but do you really need to ask me about it publicly and in group format? Please. Or head for the big city where the ratio of douchebags to non douchesbags is just a bigger number and I get to hear/see more inappropriateness. Such a pressing decision. Perhaps I'll just get another dog.

We have a lot to tackle here. But, before trying to answer Maris's questions, I have one for her: is the quote "wanna ride me longboard?" supposed to be "wanna ride MY longboard?" or does the tee feature a leprechaun posing the question, in which case the spelling is correct?

Let's do a naive statistical analysis to see how many males meet Maris's requirements. First, she informs us that her man must be employed. Let's say that the unemployment rate is around 5%, so there's a 95% chance that a male randomly selected from the general population has a job. (Excuse me while I fix myself a stiff drink.) We'll tackle her second and third requirements -- must not be married and must live nearby -- together. From the year 2000 census statistics for Maris's current town (source: U.S. Census Bureau), I find that there are approximately 60,000 souls, of which roughly 4,500 are males between the ages of 25 and 34. Unfortunately, obtaining information about marital status is a little tougher. The percentage of married males between the ages of 20 and 34 is 33.6% (this being a national figure from the 2006 census), and the number jumps to 63.6% for males between the ages of 35 and 44. These figures, along with basic intuition, suggest that more males get married as they age. Consequently, we would expect the percentage of married males between the ages of 25 and 34 to be above the percentage for the larger 20 to 34 group. So, let's crudely estimate that 40% of males between the ages of 25 and 34 are married, which means that 60% are unmarried. That is, if Marisa restricts herself to unmarried, gainfully employed men between the ages of 25 and 34 in her town, the pool of suitable males is 4,500*0.95*0.60 = 2,565 dudes. Now, things get a little murky. Her man must have a strong dislike of the Packers, which to me seems tantamount to insisting that he hate beer, Santa, and breast implants as well. Are there plenty of Yankees haters out there? Sure. The Red Sox? Ten years ago, I would have said no, but today I'd have to say yes. The Cowboys and the Patriots? Plenty of people who don't like those franchises. But, the Packers? Good God, woman. I imagine there are throngs of people who aren't fans of the Packers, but there's a much smaller number of people who actively and strongly dislike them. Let's say that 75% of males are passionate enough about professional football to hate a particular team. And, if we evenly distribute their hatred among the professional franchises, then let's say that roughly 3% of them hate the Packers. Personally, I feel like this grossly overestimates the number of Packers haters, but onward we trudge. With her Packers hatred requirement, Maris is now down to 2,565*0.75*0.03 = 58 guys. But, wait, there's more. Must be a Cubs fan. Taking into account that Chicago is a major market and even if we include the hordes of bandwagon Cubs fans who couldn't pick Ernie Banks out of a bunch of emus, I can't imagine that the percentage of Cubbies faithful in a town 1,600 miles away is any more than 15% of the total population. And, again, let's estimate that 75% of the male population is passionate enough about baseball to consider themselves a fan of a single team. Maris has now whittled her list of suitable mates down to 58*0.75*0.15 = 7 guys. In a town of approximately 60,000, Maris has a 0.01% chance that a randomly selected person from the population will be one of her suitable mates. That's not 1%, people. That's 1% of 1%.

Matters might actually be worse than that, however, because I've neglected all of the following things: I've supposed that everyone is either truly single (that is, not dating anyone) or married. So, unless Maris doesn't have a problem breaking up an engaged couple to get the guy, that makes things harder. Moreover, we've made no mention of preferred education requirements or aesthetic desirability (the latter being the 800 pound gorilla that everyone's ignoring). I've also assumed that Maris would date a person of any race, religion, political persuasion, income level, and sexual orientation. Yikes. Plus, I've supposed that she would date someone who doesn't speak English. So, unless Maris doesn't mind dating a gay Mexican midget, we might need to start thinking about those magnificent seven dudes as an upper limit on the actual figure.

So, should you accept my calculated number as gospel? Uh... probably not, because all of the dorks who are reading this are howling in disgust, and no fewer than three of them have probably had an aneurysm by now. The big oversimplification I've made is in supposing that all of the preceding percentages are independent of each other. For instance, I supposed that 75% of males are passionate football fans and 75% are passionate baseball fans. But, presumably, there's some overlap there, and being a passionate football fan is probably correlated with being a passionate baseball fan, in which case simply multiplying 0.75*0.75 would not be valid. Allow me to bore you to tears to further illustrate this point.

Suppose that HTV fanboy dap (hereafter referred to as HTVFD) has 3 red balls and 2 blue balls which he carries around in a large ballsack. I know, I'm laughing too. In the first experiment, we're going to consider "sampling with replacement" in which HTVFD is blindfolded by a scantilly-clad, buxom, chestnut-haired nymph so that he cannot see the contents of his ballsack. First, he selects a ball from his group of five balls, his lovely assistant records the color of the ball, and HTVFD places it back in the sack. The impossibly beautiful assistant then jiggles HTVFD's ballsack to randomize the positions of the balls. Next, he selects another ball from his ballsack, and again the nymph records the color of the ball. Throughout this entire process, the buxom brunette coos and giggles and comments to HTVFD how big his biceps are, but this doesn't influence the outcome of the experiment. What are the odds that HTVFD selects a red ball and a blue ball (without worrying about the order in which he selects them)? Since each ball gets replaced after each selection, the probability of selecting a red ball during either step is 3/5, and the probability of selecting a blue ball during either step is 2/5. Since the ball selections are independent (that is, the color of the first ball does not have any impact on the color of the second ball), we can state that the probability that HTVFD selects a red ball first and then a blue ball is the product of 3/5 and 2/5, or 6/25 = 0.24 = 24% and the probability that he selects a blue ball and then a red ball is also 24%. Ergo, the total probability of selecting one red ball and one blue ball is 48%.

I realize nobody's still reading, but here I go anyway. Let's now consider "sampling without replacement." Here, we run through the same sequence of events as in the "sampling with replacement" scenario, with one important distinction: after choosing the first ball from the ballsack, the beautiful assistant records the color, and then the ball is handed to the beautiful nymph's buxom younger sister, who has blonde hair and has just returned from her Pilates class. She coos and giggles as well and remarks to HTVFD what powerful hands he has, though once again, I should caution the reader that this does not impact the outcome of the experiment. HTVFD then draws a second ball from the ballsack and the experiment is complete. Again, we ask the question: what is the probability that HTVFD selects a red ball and a blue ball, in either order? The probability that he selects a red ball on the first try is again 3/5. But, the probability of selecting a blue ball the second time around depends on what HTVFD selected first. If he selected a red ball with the first trial, then there are 4 balls left in the sack, only two of which are blue, in which case the probability of selecting red then blue is the product of 3/5 and 2/4 or 6/20 = 30%. But, he could also get a red ball and a blue ball by selecting a blue ball first (probability = 2/5) and a red ball second (probability = 3/4), with a probability of 0.4*0.75 = 30%. Adding together the probabilities of selecting red-then-blue and blue-then-red, the total probability of choosing a red and a blue ball is 60%. Granted, this might not seem to differ immensely from the 48% result in the "sampling with replacement" scenario, but the distinction can be important in many contexts. In both scenarios, unfortunately, the probability that HTVFD will have sex with either the buxom blonde or brunette is 0.

Why am I boring the crap out of you with all of this? It's a good question, and it occurs to me now that in a future post, I should really go on a 1,200 word tangent about some truly obscure math morsel completely unrelated to what I'm discussing, but not admit this until I've wasted your lunch hour. Man, we'd all have a good laugh about that. Anyhow, HTVFD's ballsack problem is relevant to Maris's inability to locate a suitable man, and I'm not going to make any joke here, because they're all too easy. The ball selection problem was discussed to illustrate the point that if probabilities depend on other factors or events (as in the "sampling without replacement" scenario), you need to think harder about how you combine your probabilities. You cannot simply multiply the "global" probabilities as I did in the calculation of suitable mates for Marisa.

The question remains: are there really only 7 Packers-hating, unmarried, employed male Cubs fans between the ages of 25 and 34 in Maris's town? Probably not. I don't know how much faith you can put in my calculation, but I would suppose it's not much. Having said that, I've thrown a lot of numbers at you, and you're probably too exhausted to think about how you could potentially arrive at a better number, so you'll likely just accept my analysis as some reasonable approximation of the truth, even though I could be wrong by a factor of two, twenty, or fifty. Which means that like any statistician worthy of the name, I've done my job.

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Where the ladies at?

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:36:40 -0400

Hey guys, I don't have anything original to share today, but I did come across the following story on cnn.com, and I've appended it below. It explains so much.

_______________________

A study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine provides quantitative support for a notion long held by American males between the ages of 25 and 33: the ladies have gone the way of the dodo.

While it's not unusual to have a slight imbalance in the sex ratio of all births in a country as large as the United States, the annual number has generally remained within a fraction of 1% of a perfect 50:50 split. However, statistically, it's possible -- if improbable -- for the ratio to reach much higher levels of imbalance. So, you can imagine the surprise of researchers when they discovered that from 1975 to 1983, the aggregate male-to-female birth ratio was approximately 9 to 1. Just as remarkable, the ratio immediately returned to 50:50 in 1984 and has remained there since.

SexRatio

Naturally, it's reasonable to ask why this situation wasn't identified sooner, especially since the necessary data does not require an extensive amount of analysis to arrive at such a simple conclusion. Said the study's lead author, Dr. Alvaro Mentirador, "Well, they still haven't made some of these documents available in electronic form, and nobody wanted to go to the library to look them up. I mean, some of those books are pretty heavy. Of course, it didn't help that one of our peer-reviewers was a first-grader who refused to provide critical comments in any form other than crayon drawings of dogs humping birds." Mentirador continued, "Hey, I like a good picture of a beagle giving a blue jay the business as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place for that sort of thing. I still can't believe the editor made us address those 'criticisms'."

What are the possible implications of the finding that men in their late twenties and early thirties outnumber their female counterparts by a wide margin? Zach Rudson, a graduate research assistant and co-author of the study, commented, "On the one hand, it's something of a relief. I'm 28, I'm single, and maybe it's not my fault. On the other hand, it suggests that I need to start dating women who are too young to get any 80's pop culture references or are so old that their biological clock is pounding." Added Rudson, "Shit, I don't want some baby-crazed old chick telling me what color we're going to paint our nursery while I'm trying to choose an appetizer on our first date."

Researchers are now trying to understand the reason for such a strong imbalance. Infanticide does not seem to be a cause, as the total number of childbirths was consistent with prevailing rates and simple population growth models. Moreover, meta-analysis of health studies on the age group in question suggest that environmental or medical practices during the late '70's and early '80's did not contribute to the unusual male-to-female ratio. When pressed to speculate on a possible cause, Dr. Mentirador said, "I don't know. I could suggest any number of foolish and unlikely causes, but the one I keep coming back to is this: maybe God just hates all these dudes."

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Margarita Madness 2008

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:04:12 -0400

During my childhood, my family went to the beach annually, and as the calendar trudged toward the end of July, the boredom of hot, humid Pittsburgh summers gave way to anticipation of a week of miniature golf, ice cream, and staring at women 8 years my senior who would never give me the time of day. As we grew older, the vacations grew more expensive, and when my older brother enrolled in college, the annual pilgrimage to the beach became a luxury we could no longer afford. That was the mid-90's.

A couple years ago, the tradition was reborn, albeit in a slightly different form. Less miniature golf, more torture at the hands of a full-length championship course with obscene greens fees. Less Coke, more beer. Less staring at women 8 years my senior who would never give me the time of day, more staring at women 10 years my junior who would never give me the time of day. In other words, though we're occasionally loathe to admit it, traditions are not immune to evolution. And, entirely new ones are born.

Which brings me to this claim: the first thing you should know about the inaugural Margarita Madness is that it started as an accident. My sister-in-law was preparing a Mexican-themed dinner, and my brother and I decided that we should serve margaritas with it. Because only terrorists don't like margaritas. After making a full batch -- something suitable for a half dozen adults, none of whom needed to drive that evening -- my brother and I discovered that we would be the only ones drinking. The excuses ranged from "I don't like margaritas" to "I used to like tequila, but the mere smell of it now makes me want to vomit, and I'd rather not explore the reasons for this in front of my parents."

After finishing the first batch of margaritas, we (that is, my brother and I) were confronted with a partially empty bottle of tequila and a partially empty bottle of margarita mix. And, really, who wants to drag those bottles back home when it would be much easier to let your liver do the heavy lifting? (When it comes to alcohol, my brother and I generally believe that most problems are actually opportunities in disguise.) I believe we weighed the merits of making another batch of margaritas for about 13 seconds, and it was probably about as balanced as those "debates" on Fox News where the 32-year-old blonde with the top-notch boob job argues that George W. Bush is the best president ever and the 73-year-old white male former Family Research Council lobbyist argues that, no, he's only the second best president behind Reagan. So, we made the second batch of margaritas, we finished the second batch of margaritas, and before I move on to the rest of this anecdote (really, it's going nowhere grandiose, if you must know), I think there's an important truth here that should not be glossed over: one of the best things about having a brother is that not only will he fully endorse your dumbest plans, he'll often assist you in their implementation and even suggest ways to elevate the whole endeavor to ever-loftier levels of stupidity. It doesn't matter whether you're both 3 or 30.

Of course, once you're a margarita reservoir on wheels, there's only one reasonable thing to do: go miniature golfing. I don't have any decent stories from the miniature golf portion of the evening, but I can tell you that mini golf is more challenging, more rewarding, and much more fun when you're drunk. I also vaguely recall a half hour long conversation about the age/legality of an extraordinarily attractive blonde who was also golfing. Those types of conversations, as it happens, are also more challenging, rewarding, and fun after a few adult beverages. Like most fun nights -- whether alcohol is involved or not -- I remember having a thoroughly good time without being able to pinpoint precisely what made it so enjoyable. For others, however, I think a fair amount of the entertainment was derived from watching my brother and me navigate a miniature golf course while trying to act sober in front of all the 10-year-olds.

Naturally, the following year, expectations were very high for Margarita Madness. Unfortunately, both my brother and I were exhausted from a demoralizing round of golf, and following two margaritas apiece, my brother stretched out on the living room floor of our condo and was asleep shortly thereafter. This event is now referred to in my family as Margarita Sadness. We have pictures.

Fortunately, life sometimes offers you a shot at redemption, and so this past year my brother and I felt a near-sacred obligation to restore to Margarita Madness an atmosphere whose festiveness was exceeded only by its irresponsibility. And, in retrospect, I have to admit that having a fridge with a crushed ice maker was a huge facilitator that evening. An evening that yielded an empty bottle of tequila and a rousing game of mini-golf. Rousing largely because my brother, sister-in-law, and I were playing for the family championship. Despite being a living, breathing Jose Cuervo cartoon, my brother took a one stroke lead over his wife and a two stroke lead over me into the 17th hole. After placing our tee shots about 6 inches from each other and one foot from the hole, my brother confidently strode up to the hole and tapped in my golf ball. He didn't realize his mistake until I started fussing like a wild turkey being administered a surprise prostate exam, at which point he pulled my ball out of the cup, replaced it, tapped his own in, and insisted that everything was cool. And, I wanted to be like HEY DUDE, THIS ISN'T IRAQ. YOU DON'T GET TO CLAIM THAT EVERYTHING'S OKAY WHEN IT'S NOT. The following morning, my dad, who has recently become obsessed with the rules of golf for reasons I do not understand, looked up the penalty for playing the wrong ball in the official USGA rules book. It's a two stroke penalty, which would mean that my sister-in-law and I share the family championship and the entirely worthless bragging rights that accompany it. But questions abound: was my brother right in insisting that everything was cool? After all, we were standing next to a large plastic ornamental elephant at the time, and she didn't seem to be upset about the apparent rules violation. Or, do USGA rules matter, even if you're much more concerned that the family of four behind you can smell the tequila on your breath? Whatever the case, the events on the back nine are precisely the kind of controversy that will make next year's round of family championship miniature golf stupidly important. And, really, I wouldn't have it any other way. Because if I were to select two modifiers to describe Margarita Madness, I would be hard-pressed to choose better than "stupid" and "important."

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Pepper, vacation edition

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:27:16 -0400

Evening walks on the boardwalk can be pleasant, and they can be maddening. Mostly they're maddening on account of the hormone fueled boys weaving in and out of the foot traffic, drawing attention at every possible turn. And, for as much as I'd like to throw one of them like a javelin into the ocean, I have to admit that these early teen runts understand what I never have: what matters is being noticed. Whether it's good or bad attention is irrelevant, so long as the warm glow of the spotlight is yours. On a boardwalk bench, a small group of boys in their early teens are playing acoustic guitars and serenading passers-by. They've attracted a small harem of similarly-aged girls, who have taken up seats on the tops of the benches, creating the impression of poor man's stadium seating. Two chords and a lousy voice never went so far. Still, I must admit that if it gets you to second or third base, that's not such a bad life for a high school freshman.

At the North end of the beach, the boardwalk narrows and the overhead lights become less frequent, less intrusive. There's a mother and a daughter walking in front of me, far enough that I can hear their voices but not discern their words. The daughter's rocky teenage years stretch before both of them, but for now she hasn't yet concluded that her mother knows nothing, and they're having a pleasant conversation. There's a smattering of people in front of them, and the density of bodies grows steadily as the distance to the center of town decreases. It's an interesting visual, and yet I'm drawn instead to the legions of insects endlessly hurling themselves at the overhead lights. Even in paradise, there's futility. At the least, I'm pleased that I noticed this detail, and I'm thinking that these are precisely the ornaments that worthwhile writers hang on their narrative trees. While getting lost in my thoughts, I've closed the distance on the mother and daughter in front of me. When I get close enough to hear their conversation, I find that they're talking about all the insects endlessly hurling themselves at the overhead lights.

A family dinner draws to a close, and my brother asks his two-year-old daughter if she'd like more milk. She replies, "No! No!!!!" -- the second "No!!!" lasting in excess of two seconds -- and shakes her whole body violently from side to side, as if someone had just asked her if she'd like to have a hornet-infested loveseat shoved up her butt sideways. After she's settled down a little, my brother waits until she looks at him before calmly saying, "You can just say 'No, thank you' if you don't want any milk." As you might imagine, my brother and I spend the rest of the week answering each other's simple, innocuous questions with "No! No!!!" and violently tossing our heads from side to side.

Normally, I'd go the entire week at the beach without checking my email, but since I'm hunting for a job, I thought it would be in my best interests to check it at least a couple times in case anything important developed. (Years from now, I'll be able to laugh, too.) Of course, there are plenty of establishments that offer "free" WiFi, in the sense that it's free if you buy something else from them. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and I hunker down at a coffee shop with plenty of lousy ambiance. I try to connect to the network, only to discover that it's encrypted. There's a cute, but not intimidating blonde who has apparently successfully connected to the network at an adjacent table, and I figure that this is a fine opportunity to talk to her without appearing creepy and invasive. Or, at least not as creepy and invasive as normal. But, I stall. And, I hesitate. Dear God, man, just ask her what the password is. But, instead I start trying to guess the password based on the network name. I crack it on the fourth try -- a new personal best -- and as I glance at the blonde, I can't help but conclude that I'm intrepid in all the most useless ways.

I'm pale. So very pale in fact that my family likes to joke about my "albinism." (Okay, I joke about it more than anybody else, but it is the 800 pound gorilla in the room.) These past few years, my virtual translucency has served as an inspiration for a new game: can we locate a beach-goer who's actually paler than I am? Miraculously, this year, we finally saw a chick whose sickly pallor rivals my own. I was tempted to approach her and ask if she'd like to have invisible children with me, but that didn't seem appropriate.

The afternoon skies are mildly threatening, but it's not enough to dissuade me from wandering down a brick-lined side street with a surprisingly varied collection of high end boutiques and beach-themed shops that primarily hawk what I would call crap. You might suspect this would be an uncomfortable arrangement, but it works. The power players from DC snack on crepes at the French cafe a few paces from a family of sunburnt Packers fans who are laughing at a "Tell your bOObs to stop staring at my eyes" t-shirt. But, we're 200 yards from the ocean on a Tuesday afternoon, and no one seems to mind the blurring of class lines. As I walk past a seashell shop, a beautiful Irish Setter, probably not a day over 18 months, pokes her head out. She doesn't take interest in the other patrons, but steps gently forward as I approach. A quick sniff of the hand and she's convinced that I'm not such a bad guy. A few ear scratches and I'm off again, before the owner either traps me in a boring conversation or tells me to stop molesting his dog.

It's late Thursday afternoon, and I'm still on the beach. My brother's heading back to the condo, and since there's only one key between the two of us, he's going to have to return with a second key for me after hauling his family's stuff. Even though I'll have to head back in less than an hour, my brother is both sufficiently aware and sufficiently courteous to ask the question, "How many beers do you want?" Sans cooler, two seems like a reasonable answer. After all, I'm enjoying the day, the beer, and the hot chick about ten yards in front of me. She's wearing a brown bikini with an embroidered butterfly on her butt, and I'm surprised that I'm noticing details like this, because mostly I'm violating the 0.34 second rule. I watch her for a spell (behind reflective sunglasses, of course), during which my brother delivers the two beers and one key, and after a while, I half convince myself that she's preening, posing, and trying to attract my attention. Unfortunately, this fantasy crumbles swiftly when I notice that she's also attracted the attention of some dude who's much tanner and better-looking than I am. Actually, he resembles one of those tough guy wannabe Ken dolls on hotchickswithdouchebags.com. I remind myself that I'm taller than he is, but since no one's trying to fetch a serving dish from the top kitchen cabinet, that doesn't seem especially relevant right now. Finally, Occam's razor kicks in, and I'm compelled to admit that she's weaving her web of hair tosses and flaunting her lithe frame for his benefit, not mine. These things happen, and the world turns on axis. But, later, she leaves, with nary a glance at me or Super Tan Ken. At long last, the penny drops. Somewhere, there's a dude whose lust and/or love matters to her, and Occam's razor advises us that it is neither Ken nor yours truly. That Occam was one smart dude.

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Judge Smails would be proud

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:37:54 -0400

It takes little reflection for me to conclude that golf is probably the worst possible sport for me. I'm a perfectionist. Always have been, and in spite of my father's best efforts, I always will be. There are sports where a perfectionist's cravings can be satisfied. A pitcher can throw a perfect game. A bowler can roll 300. A tennis player can win in straight sets without losing a single point. These things aren't possible in golf.

Any golfer will tell you that perfection will never be yours once you start winging a little white ball all over creation. Consider the most coveted shot in golf: a hole in one. And, for the sake of this conversation, let's not even restrict ourselves to a hole in one on a par 3. Let's say you manage to drive the green on a short par 4 and the ball miraculously trickles into the cup. You'd be happy, sure. But, think about this: that's still one stroke against you. Your score still creeps upward, even though you just hit the most remarkable shot of your life. Of course, I spend much of my time on a golf course thinking that I didn't just hit the most remarkable shot of my life. And, since I'm a perfectionist, this troubles me greatly. And, when I say "troubles me greatly" I mean that I often want my golf bag to explode just before I spontaneously burst into flames.

In spite of all of this, I generally look forward to golfing. Because maybe today will be the day when I don't want to spontaneously combust. I harbor optimism, even, and this makes precisely no sense at all. A good 98% percent of my brain will be saying "this will end badly for you... just start drinking now" and yet I listen instead to the 2% that's saying "good things will happen for you. You can do this." God, that 2% voice is an idiot.

In recent years, my dad, my brother, and I have tried to play at least one round of vacation golf at The Rookery in Milton, Delaware. It's a relatively young course, and it's well-maintained. The layout is pretty open (because all of the trees are still young), the beer cart girls tend to be shapely (because, like the trees, they're still young), and it's not a long drive from where we stay. Win, win, win. The big concern for me was that my most recent round before vacation featured some of the worst golf I've played in about 15 years. I'm accustomed to posting a score in the 80's. On my good days, I'll head to the low 80's and on my bad days, I'll play bogey golf. So, you can imagine my dismay when I dropped a 109 while playing a relatively easy course in upstate New York. I'll spare you all of the gory details, but suffice to say that the best shot of the day was a tee shot on the back nine where I swung as hard as I could, caught the ball perfectly flush, and hooked it out of bounds. Sure, it was a lost ball and a two stroke penalty, but it felt damn good.

Unfortunately, the mental scarring that accompanies such a round of golf sticks with you for a while. What if I had developed the golf version of Steve Blass Disease? What if I never hit a ball solidly during a round ever again? What if I suddenly started shooting triple digit scores? What if all of these things happened and I never had the good fortune to burst into flames while shrapnel from my exploding golf bag ripped me to shreds, finally putting me out of my misery? These are the things I tried not to think about on the first tee at The Rookery.

Fortunately, I could take comfort in the fact that I was wearing my favorite golf shirt. In the past, I've taken some ribbing (for everybody's pleasure but my own) about my baby blue polo shirt. But, here's the thing: I've played some of my best golf when rockin' the baby blue, so it's in pretty heavy rotation on golf days. Besides, it brings out the color in my eyes, and one of these days, that's going to matter to the right beer cart girl. The truth -- really -- is that if I broke 80 while wearing a "kick me in my misters" shirt, I'd wear it every time I went golfing, even if there was a Crotch Kickers Anonymous convention in town.

Some days, though, even your baby blue polo shirt isn't enough. I mishit my opening tee shot and limped around the front nine while trying to maintain a jovial demeanor for the rest of my foursome. They say that God never challenges you with anything you can't handle. Which makes me wonder why He let me leave consecutive sand shots in a greenside bunker before picking the third one clean and airmailing the green entirely. It definitely didn't feel like I was doing a good job of handling it, and given how far the rest of my foursome stayed away from me for the next two holes, I have to imagine that they felt the same. Walking off the seventh green, I decided not to keep score any more. The 98% voice had been right, and the beer cart girl was pulling a Where's Waldo? routine at the worst possible time. Remarkably, in spite of my poor play, it still represented an improvement over the previous round of golf. But, I guess if your previous round featured multiple instances of you snap-hooking a drive out of bounds and then trying to kill yourself with a pitching wedge, it's hard to go anywhere but up.

Speaking of going places, I don't know where I'm going with any of this. I simply can't be rational when I start talking, thinking, or writing about golf. It's this johnson-withering bitch of a sport that makes you feel bad about yourself and the world, whether you're a perfectionist or not. Oh, and if you think I'm not looking forward to my next round of golf, you're crazy.

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When snoring attacks

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:18:46 -0400

There are modifiers I would not use to describe the beginning of my recent vacation. For instance, auspicious wouldn't make the cut. Flawless, sublime, or smooth would not be used either. Even something like "passable" seems overly generous.

Our destination was a beach in Delaware, one my family visited religiously once a year when my siblings and I were younger. And, since the traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge becomes biblical sometime around mid-morning on a Saturday, I accompanied two of my family members on a drive to Annapolis, MD on Friday night, so that we might cross the bridge in the early morning on Saturday.

I have only one question about my dinner on Friday night in Annapolis: How come when a server finally decides to touch me about fourteen times during a meal, it's not a 19-year-old brunette named Ashley with girl-next-door approachability but a middle-aged dude named Kevin? Honestly, I'm not asking for the world.

I supposed that getting molested by our server was just a hiccup and that better fortunes would prevail as we moved into the weekend. But, there was a pretty substantial hurdle still to clear. My two traveling companions, with whom I would be sharing a hotel room on Friday, are notoriously powerful snorers. Fortunately, I had prepared for this situation by purchasing a 75-minute rain recording from Amazon's mp3 store. Some pre-vacation testing of the soothing ambient noise indicated that it would do a pretty good job drowning out noise pollution like the sound of the air conditioning unit, people in the hallway, or a blind, legless squirrel trying to land a Boeing 747 in your left ear canal. Unfortunately, as I discovered Friday night, my traveling companions' snoring is louder than any of these things. And, my little mp3 player with its eardrum splitting volume levels was woefully inadequate as the situation clearly called for the services of an old priest and a young priest. I'm not sure if it's possible to do justice to the noise levels we're dealing with here, but imagine the following. If you recorded a timbersports event involving chainsaws with engines larger than your average midget and slowed down the audio by a factor of 100, you'd be in the right ballpark. Alternatively, at times the snoring is reminiscent of a family of pneumonia-suffering rhinos being fed -- against their will -- into a chipper-shredder. Hopefully these are noises with which you're familiar.

*********************

It's about 6 AM on Saturday and I've been awake since 1 AM. I don't rise from bed until I hear the bathroom door open. While standing beside my bed, trying to steel myself for a busy day on only two hours of sleep, he who just left the shower remarks, "I tried to be as quiet as I could in the shower. I hope I didn't wake you up."

Given my condition, I'm convinced that this is the funniest thing that any person has ever said. I manage to get out, "No, you..." and then I start laughing so hard that tears come before the end of the sentence does.

An auspicious beginning? I think not.

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On hiatus

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:20:56 -0400

Being unemployed is grueling work, so I'm headed to the beach next week to relax. Which means that my pitiful posting schedule will be even worse than usual in the coming days. Honestly, if you still have serious expectations for this space, it's time to revise them downwards. In the meantime, one of my college friends just launched his own blog for reasons that are detailed in his first post. Check it out here. Among other things, he claims, "I promise to be intelligent and interesting a majority of the time."

That's the kind of thing I would never promise my readers.

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Rolling with the dead

nobody@vox.com(Handbasket Travel Ventures) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:46:56 -0400

Like most dogs, my parents' pooch, Casey, is a perfectly fine companion. She's sweet, she's entertaining, and her devotion to the other members of her pack is unwavering. That's not to say, however, that she's without her blemishes.

She has a strange and unfortunate fixation on things that, in the parlance of our times, smell like shit. Like, for instance, shit. She finds that a hearty roll in a steaming pile of horse or deer poop is intoxicating. So much so, in fact, that she is completely oblivious to the horrified screams of her owners as they strongly advise her against smearing another animal's excrement all over herself. Sadly, this is not her most foul habit. Casey's most foul habit -- in my estimation, anyway -- would be her desire to roll in the dead carcasses of woodland creatures who have lost battles with beast, infection, or good old Father Time. I haven't asked Casey, but I don't think that the cause of death is of much importance. What matters is getting as much rotting flesh on her coat as possible.

And, so it was on Sunday morning in the bucolic calm of a public park that I didn't spot the lawnmower-ed groundhog soon enough. By the time I arrived on the scene, Casey had covered some reasonable portion of her left and right flanks with her fallen comrade, and as no amount of verbal dissuasion was getting the job done, I had to jump into the fray and pull her off the dead fella. (I'm tempted to make a joke about the expression the groundhog was wearing at the time of his passing, but honestly, I don't think that my face would be a picture of distinguished calm if someone dropped an inverted running helicopter on me either.)

After fouling the peace of an early Sunday morning with a series of expletives and pulling Casey a safe distance away from the decaying carcass, I wailed, "Why? Why do you do that?"

Still panting from the ecstasy of the moment, she looked at the ground and at a nearby bird for a little bit before working up the courage to make eye contact with me. And her expression said, "I know.... I know.... but that one had maggots on it! Maggots!!!"

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