I was in a mall on the magnificent mile in Chicago the other day and I saw something that made me cringe and shudder in the same breath. Let me paint a setting: The store to the right of me was Mont Blanc and to the left was Max Mara. Coach was above me and Louis V. and Prada were outside. I was at the time wandering through Cristophe, where scotch glasses started at 68 a piece on sale. I was mostly looking for a reason to get out of the cold because I was dressed in my warm LA clothing and it was no match for the real world. Indoor shopping was the handiest excuse.
So we were walking through this store that I would never actually give serious thought to spending money at considering we were looking at dishes. Just dishes. I don’t care. They’ll be out of style or broken faster than the cool new shoes I can get for the same price as a set. And I can write the shoes off. I need wardrobe for shoots. I don’t need crystal goblets. Especially crystal goblets that don’t even give cause for a second glance in the first place.
Here’s what made me linger in the store for a bit though: a poor downtrodden man and the woman he must have unwittingly married. “Poor” as in helpless, not lacking in funds. He obviously had the funds. She wasn’t anything great to look at and I didn’t get the feeling her personality made her hot either. Her personality was dry at best, and hinted at the possibility of an accomplished nag beneath the surface. He waited with his hands in his pockets in the corner while she shopped the catalog with the sales girl. He was only allowed to take part in the dynamic dish shopping experience when she had made her choice. He was called to her side and she happily shrieked “look honey it’s only $1400!”, to which he responded, “yes dear”, and shuffled back to his corner.
I don’t know what dish could justifiably be $1400 but I do care that I just saw an empty human vessel. There was no man left in him. Nothing. His testicles were a waste of scrotal sack. And as a woman I don’t know how wifezilla could have been sexually attracted to him. It got me thinking about whether I’d ever end up with a man like that and I decided the answer was a firm and resounding no. I suddenly saw a pattern with all of the men who have lasted in my life and the only thing they have in common is they don’t put up with any of my shit. They somehow wriggle respect out of me without trying. Then I realized they all had incredibly large egos as well. So large in fact that sometimes I want to slap them across the face to see if it will make them reboot.
And that is why they stick around: I can’t slap them. I can’t walk on them. I can’t metaphorically neuter them in any fashion. If I slap the man I’m left with two outcomes and both end with me never seeing him again. The first is that he tells me to fuck off, which is highly likely considering I was attracted to that quality in the first place (in a reversed situation I’d tell him to fuck off too). The second is that he puts up with it. Then I have to break it off because now I too am dating a waste of scrotal sack and it’s not attractive.
Whether the means justify the end or not I think it’s a good thing. I treat the men I respect incredibly well and they return the favor. Consider this blog a solemn oath never to put an overpriced piece of kitchenware on another person’s credit card. I hold the hours they’ve spent earning that money in too much esteem and I like their balls intact.
I bet she doesn’t even cook.
2 Responses
We only cross paths as occasional contributors to Mike’s site, and you have been participating a lot more than I have. With the new year and filled with optimism I intend to write more; but that isn’t why I am sending this along.
Your comments about kitchenware and the integrity of a mans balls is well done. Respect is a two way street and there just isn’t enough of it going around these days.
Would you pay $11.82 for a plate? I would. Mikasa, a 60 year old dinnerware company, sells a Cheers Diamond Dinner Plate for just about that price. From their website: “The Cheers pattern is made of fine china that is accented with whimsical dots, stripes, and spirals for a cheerful and useable mix and match concept. All pieces are dishwasher and microwave safe, and are sure to be used day in and day out.” Versatility in style and durability in construction. $11.82 is 1/118th of $1,400.00.
Incidentally, 17 cents is also just about 1/118th of $27.13. 17 cents is what it would cost me – in wear and tear to my computer, electricity, and broadband connectivity – to spend 140 minutes (in 7 twenty-minute sessions) looking at free pictures of you on Freeones.com. A simple use of their “order by date” function shows that there were 85 free galleries featuring you as of August 1st, 2008. If, on average, each gallery features 15 pictures and if I spend, on average, 10 seconds looking at each one, accounting for an additional 30 seconds needed for navigation, it will take me an average of 3 minutes to consume a gallery. I would need to look at 7 galleries in order to spend a full twenty minutes on that site; and I would need 49 galleries in order to do so 7 times. Leaving me another 36 galleries of which I have no need, except perhaps to compensate for any redundant galleries.
All fascinating, certainly, but why the figures? Why, specifically, 20 minutes, 7 times, and $20.13?
If individual photo galleries and/or videos on your pay website, ClubKayden.com, are in keeping with what I, to the extent of my knowledge, consider to be the average size/length of particular updates on other porn sites, then it would take me 20 minutes to consume an update from ClubKayden aswell.
If, on August 1st, 2008, I had purchased a one-month subscription to your site, I would have had access to 7 updates featuring you – either solo or with another person(s). This is the date at which, as best as I can tell, your has been live – or at least providing significant content. It is all I would have had to look at.
If I were to consume “new” (to me) content featuring you via Freeones.com at the same rate that I would be able to consume it from ClubKayden.com, it would have cost me a price that was 1/118th of the same 140 minutes spent consuming ClubKayden content. Instead of paying $19.96 for a month of access, and in addition to the same 17 cents worth of fixed costs, I would only be paying the fixed costs. $0.17 is 1/118th of $20.13.
Now, of course, my argument falls apart once we consider any activity beyond this 30 day time frame. After just another 30 days – September, 2008 – my virtually-free source of Kayden Kross content from Freeones would exhaust itself. The rate in which new galleries are added could not keep up with the rate at which I would consume them. Additionally, if taken as a whole, the monthly update average on ClubKayden increases by over 50% – from 7 to just over 11 – in latter months. Eventually, I would be left with no choice but to subscribe to ClubKayden in order to consume unseen content. This would run up the cost to just over 60% of what it would have cost to just subscribe in the first place and to forego the free content. Or, in “plate terms,” I would be paying $840.00 for a plate; hardly expressive of a fundamental difference in my previous attitude towards money.
But such extra-contextual considerations beg the question: why consider them? What is it about the product which guarantees that irrational financial decisions are inevitable? Especially when the difference between rationality and irrationality is so strikingly large? Why wouldn’t a rational man, when you slapped him with such an increase in cost, give you a virtual “fuck off” and go find another woman’s free content? Why would he take your shit?
If you claim to be the type of person unwilling to exploit the weaknesses (ie: irrationalities) of men, and if you claim to hold their money in high regard, and if you wish to be certain of it for longer than an evening of blogging about it, you must answer that question. You must explain why so much of your pornographic content – the source of your livlihood – is available for next to nothing when so much of virtually the same thing is available aswell, but at an 11,800% mark up. Or, more accurately, you must explain why this comports with your professed convictions.
You must explain to yourself why the emotions driving that woman to substitute a $1,400.00 plate for authentic respect for her husband are not the same emotions driving a man to substitute a $20.13 porn site subscription for the capacity for sexual joy that 17 cents worth of electricity, internet connectivity, and free content is supposed to be sustaining (and not exploiting). Explain to yourself why that psychologically neutered man you observed is not doing the same thing as a sexually patinaed woman giving into whatever weak pretentiousness she thinks she must identify, entertain, and ultimately appease in order to survive – and fluorish (financially at least).