Fucking marigolds.
Category: Grooming
Bad Behavior
Back when I was still on the dating scene (shortly after someone discovered fire), I was thankfully spared the prospect of my date behaving badly by being glued to her cell phone during the meal. (Back then, I didn’t even have a landline phone because the phone company — in South Africa, the Post Office — had a three-month backlog on new home phone installations.)
However, that was then and this is now. Here’s what one guy did when faced with such a situation:
A man has caused a debate after admitting to walking out on a date without paying his portion of an $80 bill because his potential love interest was ‘constantly on her phone’. The man, who is from a major US city, revealed he met up with the woman after matching on a dating app. The pair hit it off and decided to meet in person.
The man was quick to brand the woman as a ‘vapid moral monstrosity’ who had the ‘attention span of a gnat’, after she spent a whole five minutes ferociously texting as they waited for their food.
When they finally began to chat she was quick to, yet again, start answering her ‘buzzing’ phone . The man attempted to make a few hints to his date about her antisocial behavior by joking and even saying he would throw the phone out of the window if it continued. However, his incessant hints fell on deaf ears as her eyes continued to be glued to her phone screen.
An appetizer and two drinks later, the man realized he was miserable and there was no possible way to turn this date around. He headed to the toilet, promising himself that if her eyes were still locked on her phone screen, then he would be making a swift exit out of the door.
When he came out to find her eyes fixed fixed on the screen, he validated that promise by quickly leaving. He detailed: “I looked the other way and there was a service door open behind the kitchen. I turned right instead of left and exited into the sweet, sweet air of freedom.”
And here’s the kicker:
It was only 30 minutes after he had left that the date even realized his absence, texting him: “Did you leave?”
Good for him. I’m even glad that she got stuck with the tab, because having such appalling manners deserves to be punished.
I don’t even know why there would be a “debate” on the topic.
Flaunting It
It’s a well-known fact that I am somewhat conservative in my outlook [chorus of “No, Kim… not you!], but not really when it comes to women’s clothing. Having come of age during the late 1960s and 1970s, I kinda like it when women show off their bodies (allowing for the Lizzo Exception, of course).
However, this one made me stop in my tracks:
Granted, she’s another one of those Brit Celeb/Actresses/Houris [some overlap] but at least she’s apparently married to the father, so there’s that. But I still feel a little… uncomfortable? looking at that display.
Now I’m not one of those “cover up everything because pregnancy is somehow shameful” people — sheesh, that went out with the Victorians — and I recall seeing some awfully-sexy pregnant women in Chile who were not at all shy about wearing tight little mini-dresses and high heels as they strutted their stuff around downtown Santiago. I love the whole thing about pregnant women, too; I think it’s glorious.
Still, I can’t help feeling that the above is a little too ostentatious or even vulgar. Can we not say that women need to be a little more ladylike about the whole thing?
I know, I know:
“Kim, women show off their tummies in bikinis and midriff tops all the time — and you’re a serial offender when it comes to posting those pics, you dirty old bastard. So why should it be any different when they’re pregnant?”
Because it IS different.
I welcome comments on the topic.
When Does It Become Obscene?
Surfing on a bellyboard along the waves of Teh Intarwebz, I was struck by something, and not for the first time.
Readers of this corner will of course be familiar with golf hottie Paige Spirinac, who possesses quite possibly one of the best female bodies around, as evidenced in these pics:
Now here’s the thing. While young Paige’s derrière is by no means underrepresented, it’s not by any means over-large, e.g.
So why have huge buttocks become a thing?
Maybe the trend started with screechy pop star Jennifer Lopez:
… and was amplified [sic] by the awful Kim Kardashian (who has never been slow to ride a trend, so to speak):
It seems, however, that this trend has no upper limit — and I speak not of all-over fatties like Lizzo, but of “Playboy models” like this one:
It’s been decades since I looked at a Playboy, but if this is the trend of their models, it will be decades more before I do it again, if ever. Horrible.
Another example is “plus-size” model Ashley Graham, who despite having an exquisitely-beautiful face, has a backside that would fill a school bus:
Among African tribes, a large pair of buttocks is a feature of attractiveness, because it speaks not only of fertility but also of the owner thereof being well nourished (a source of pride for their husbands as providers).
But that’s in Africa. We live in the West, and have a European standard of beauty. And I speak not of ultra-skinnies and the like (that being more a creation of homosexual fashion designers), but of women who have proportional statistics.
Here’s actress Sasha Alexander, for instance, who has what I would consider a decent set of proportions:
Note: no inflated breasts, nor a bulbous backside. Another example? Sure, why not? Here’s the rather Mumsy-looking Laura Hamilton, who in in her forties and has two kids:
Let me say in summary that I’m not asking for women to strive for some impossible ideal of beauty: anything but.
What I’m asking for is proportion, and not grotesqueries.
And yes, I’m familiar with the contradiction of all the above, considering that pneumatic sexagenarian Carol Vorderman often appears on my back porch:
…as does the equally-balloony Kelly Brook:
What can I say? I’m a sucker for a pretty face.
Model Failure
Yesterday I received another one of those email ads trying to get me to spend more money. I was about to junk it, when something caught my eye, to wit, this:
Great Aphrodite’s bleeding eyeballs, when did models turn away from being beautiful and into heffalumps like the above?
Yeah I know, “body positivity” and all that Womynz Issues stuff, but seriously?
Here’s something for the Fashion Industry to ponder. Somewhere between this:
… and this: 
…is a happy medium — basically, a women not emaciated or boyish, and not a fucking blimp either, but a woman who looks more like a happy medium, i.e. not like this:
…but more like this: 
The latter girl, by the way, is not a model, but just a random pic of an ordinary person taken from a newspaper — with an acceptably-pretty face, and a decent-but-not-perfect body. That, I would suggest, is more of a happy medium than what we’re having shoved in our faces today.
Fuck their “body positivity” and all that jive. If I’m going to be persuaded to buy something, I just want to see it presented in an agreeable form.
And this from a man who actually prefers zaftig women over skinnies. But I have my limits, and modern advertising has stepped well over them. Here’s the latest such offering:
I love Miriam Margolyes beyond words… but as a model? No.
If I want to see ugly women, I’ll go to WalMart.
What’s The Fuss?
Back when I lived and worked in Chicago, I had a pair of Timberland boots like these:
I got them for several reasons:
- they had soles that resisted the cold from the ground (Vibram?)
- they were the best boots I could find at short notice, at any price (and yes, they were quite spendy at, I think, about $125)
- they were available at the Timberland store at the mall, and
- Made in Maine, U.S.A.
Just over a quarter-century later, I gave them to Goodwill because I’d put on weight, gone up a shoe size and they no longer fit. They were still in perfect condition, despite having spent 15 years in all kinds of Chicago and New Jersey weather (not to mention the occasional trip to glacial Wisconsin and northern Michigan, see below for proof).
Last year I was getting ready for my trip up to Boomershoot, and decided that I needed another pair of Timberlands because Idaho weather and why not? they’d been great boots for me.
Bah. Compare and contrast the list below with the bullet points above:
- no longer made with Vibram soles
- rubbish quality, judging from a significant number of reviews on Amazon AND on Timberland’s own website
- no longer any Timberland stores in malls, and
- Made in Dominican Republic (real Timberlands) OR Made in China (fakes you get through Amazon).
So much for Timberland, then.
All that came to mind when I saw this silliness in (where else?) the Daily Mail, in which they were making fun of BritPM Rishi Sunak for wearing (gasp) a pair of Timberland boots:
Rishi Sunak is mocked over his £150 Timberland footwear as they steal the limelight during speech
One of the less-than-endearing traits of Brits is what I call “Toff Envy”, i.e. the hatred of people who are wealthy and own things that are of higher quality and (mostly) expensive.
As always, the Greatest Living Englishman has the condition nailed: “In America,” saith Clarkson, “if you drive a nice car, the Americans will think, ‘Great car! I need to work harder so I can afford one like that’, whereas Brits see the same thing and think, ‘I’ll soon have you out of that, you plutocrat bastard’.” And that’s reflected in UK insurance companies, by the way, where by far the largest number of repair claims are for “keyed” doors and suchlike vandalism. We just don’t see that thuggishness Over Here, do we?
I don’t know what the problem is with £150 Timberlands (that’s about what they cost, if not more nowadays), and more to the point, Sunak is a fucking billionaire (well his wife is, which comes to the same thing). What did they expect him to wear? Oxfam slippers (like the awful Emma Thompson)?
Idiots. No wonder their governments are all socialist, regardless of party label. And don’t get me started on their reptilian journalists…
Afterthought: an RFI on American-made work boots. please? Must be insulated and waterproof. Personal testimony a must.