Annoy-O-Index!

Smells Like Team Spirit:  Last month, Pittsburgh Steeler Jerome "the Bus" Bettis announced that he would give up part of his pay so that the Steelers would have the money to resign a free agent teammate.  Damn, what is wrong with this guy?  Don't you know rule number one of sports?  There is no "I" in team, and that means that "I" have to make as much money as "I" can.  Where's your sportsmanship?  Learn a lesson boyo, it's all about me, me, me.  You know what the sad thing about this is, no one learned a lesson from this act of selflessness. Did hid free agent teammate lower his salary demand?  No.  Did the team sign the teammate on and keep Bettis on at the same salary?  No.  This act of loyalty and generosity was largely ignored and forgotten.  It's a shame that in a time when athletes will tout their morals and win awards for their decency then say, "When you look at me, you should see Christ", only to get busted with a prostitute before the super bowl are considered role models.  But Bettis never claimed to be a role model, so that probably makes him the best candidate for the job.

Touched By My A-Hole

    So I was watching TV on a Sunday, and of course nothing was on.  (Good thing I pay over $30 a month for cable.)  My friend and fag hag was turing the channels and we came upon Touched By an Angel.  Bored, she left it on this show while she played on the computer.  What garbage I was exposed to on that show.  This is the family sensitive viewing that we show embrace instead of all of those silly shows that are more "realistic", like Law & Order, Homicide, or ER.  There was a preview for another episode for next week about a "scandal free election".  Hey, I got an idea!  Let's cover our eyes and pretend that reality doesn't exist.  If we hope hard enough, maybe we can go back to the way things were in the 'fifties when every thing was so much nicer and  friendlier and purer and more moral and, most importantly, much more whiter, anglo-saxton, Protestant, and heterosexual.  Then we can all move out to the sub urbs, get a house with a nice white picket fence, then have 2.5 kids; one can be named "the Beave", the other "Cricket", and the little .5 can be "Cindy".  And the husband can come back from a long day at work and put on his slippers and smoke his pipe while he reads his evening newspaper; and the stay-at-home wife fixes supper for her big strong provider, and everything will be perfect and all of those silly minorities will stay in their places and won't bother us for their dumb old civil rights and serve us because were white, that's right get used to it!!!

    Oh, sorry.  Whatever got into me.  (Maybe it was the spirit of the religious right, but I'll get into that NEXT month.  Stay tuned.)  There is nothing wrong with programs like Touched by an Angel and 7th Heaven, I won't watch them, but there's nothing wrong with them.  The problem starts when people want to take the afore mentioned shows like Law & Order and Homicide because they are "too violent".  These are by no means shows for children, but just because kids shouldn't watch it, it doesn't mean that these shows have no merit.  "But when kids see violent shows, they become more violent."  This is the standard argument that the pro-censorship set like to use.  But riddle me this, Tipper: if television violence causes more real violence, then why isn't Japan the world's hotbed of murder?  American television shows don't contain nearly the level of violence that the Japanese shows do, and let's not even mention the nudity.  So why is there a difference?

    Could be differences in culture, could be access to weapons, could be lack of male role models?  It may be one of those, it might be all of them, it my be more factors than these, and it probably is.  But the point is that if we cover our eyes and pretend that we can change all of our problems by watching family friendly television, maybe we can also wish up some live studio audiences as well.

Skinny Chicks on Magazine Covers

     One of the high Heterosexual holy days just passed us by.  February is when the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue is published, and the holiest of heterosexual male holidays, even more so than when the Victoria's Secret catalogue is sent out.  Ok, this year it was more of a Sport's Illustrated Nudity issue, but I digress. Sport's Illustrated is purchased mostly by heterosexual males, so it should appeal to them.  What I don't understand, and really wish that someone will explain to me is why do magazines that are supposed to appeal to straight women feature nothing but bony models in them?  Where are the beefy, scantily clad men?  Shouldn't magazines for straight women appeal to straight women?  I know magazines for gay men are chock full of nearly-naked, muscle-bound men, lesbian magazines are burstin' with Xena goodness; straight girl magazines should have nearly naked men throughout them.

    When I was a young man in Anthropology class, someone put forth the proposition that you could petition the lord through prayer.  No, that's not quite right.  Yeah, I was in an Anthropology class and we were having a discussion about pornography, and why it wasn't a topic on the class syllabus.  My arch-nemeses for that course were a pair of uber-feminists, and I don't think that there was a topic that we agreed on.  But during the afore mentioned discussion about pornography, they put forth the proposition that women don't get aroused by looking at naked men, and that both men and women prefer looking at the more shapely female figure.  (OK, maybe they were lesbians, who knows.)  I told them that scientific studies have proven that (heterosexual) women get equally aroused by looking at naked men as straight men looking at naked women.  After they challenges that fact, I found the study name and date, then proceeded to talk about the male form as a subject of art in ancient Greece, Rome, and in the Renaissance.  What are we to learn from this discussion?  That straight women like looking at naked men, it is stupid to believe otherwise.

    With that said, then why is it that straight girl magazines are loaded with nearly naked, anorexic women?  Well, as near as I (as a gay man) can deduce, it is because the companies that publish these magazines are mostly run by men.  Not just men though, but old, straight men.  So the majority of these magazines (at least the popular ones) are about how women should act, dress, smell, talk, walk, eat, and look to get a man.  This is the only reason that females exist, to please men, so they need to see pictures of how they have to look to bag that guy.  Look at the articles in the most popular magazines: how to get a man, how to keep your man, how to get someone else's man, how to drop weight to meet a guy, how to marry a rich man; these are actual articles.

    What is the gist of this Tirade?  How about buying magazines with some content instead of buying the fluffiest piece of mind candy that you can find.  Instead of looking for next week's trend, why not try to expand your mind.  I've sid it before, and I will say it again; instead of girl power, try some women power.