Gender Roles

The topic of the day on the radio was traditional gender roles and what people think of them. The presenter gave the example of cooking, which traditionally falls under the duties of the wife, and asked listeners to weigh-in with their thoughts. As I listened, I plotted the answers in my mind. The X-axis started with the conservative camp and the farther you moved to right the more liberal you get, until we reach the answer a Swedish wife would give. That would be, of course, close to positive infinity. On the other hand, the Y-axis represents the number of opinions at each point of the X-axis.

Statisticians would tell you that you should expect a neat bell curve, which means there will be a sweetspot in the middle where we have the most opinions and then the farther you go away (either more liberal or more conservative) the less number of opinions you should get. But interestingly, the exact opposite happened. An insane amount of listeners were extreme in the their opinions from the uberConservative declaring it's God's will that wives cook for their families to the ultraLiberal who preached equality. The moderates were puny in numbers and opinions with one of them thinking that wives should cook, but they should be asked nicely by their husbands. Morons.

To me, this wasn't an easy question to answer. You see, the typical liberal answer that states that husbands and wives are equal and therefore anyone of them can cook is flawed for two reasons. First, we need to factor in who is more qualified to do the cooking. Though I don't have the numbers, I'm pretty sure that more girls learn how to cook as they grow up than straight guys do, at least in our culture. Which automatically makes wives more qualified for cooking. A second important input is who is more available. What if the wife is working 18 hour days, while the husband is a writer who works mostly from home and has more free time?

Which presents a problem, what if you are a fellow liberal, but you aren't that liberal to start cooking? I feel ya, here's what you could do:

1. Marry the fat nerd. Chances are she didn't have a social life and spent her teen years baking cakes and stuffing her face with them. Get a high-profile corporate job and ensure you get a hawt assistant. Do the assistant and go back home for a fine, fine dinner.

2. Not a career man? Ok, marry a 50-year-old corporate executive, who will be your suga mama. She'll barely come home between her busy schedule, which will give you a chance to do the hawt Asian chiquita you'll hire as a cook with your wife's money.

3. Not into adultery? Hmmm... consider switching teams. As a gay man chances are you wouldn't mind cooking in first place. And if you do, your partner probably won't.

Problem solved.

"Social" Birthday Wishes

Calling people up on their birthday is so yesterday, get with the program granpa. Now we have Facebook, which neatly reminds you that today is your best friend's girlfriend's sister's hot friend's birthday. So you race to her Facebook wall to pay your tribute. Off course when you get there you find a billion birthday wishes already there. So you quickly scan them trying to see if you can offer something original. Usually, you'd lose interest quickly and just spew your cliche: Happy Birthday! Maybe add a few more exclamation marks if she is really hot.

But why stop there? I can see Facebook's next feature: Automatic Bday Wishes. It's very simple, while adding a friend to your list, you add him/her to a birthday list. Each birthday list has a template message, those can be a simple: Happy Birthday [Friend's Name]! or a tad more evil, like: Why don't you go fuck yourself on this special day? Can you imagine the productivity gain out of this? Now you do not need to scroll or click or even think of which cliche bday wish you'll go with! Wouldn't that make your life a lot easier as a birthday wisher?

The downside, however, is that on your birthday you'll be flooded with a million of those cold, heartless auto bday wishes. Of course, you can't ignore them, we're not animals. Enter the even cooler new Facebook feature: Bday Wishes Auto-responder. This feature will be a bit more complex. First, it would change your status to reflect how humbled you are with the torrent of cold, heartless auto bday wishes you got. Next, this feature will relentlessly pursue every shmuck who dared to send you an auto bday wish and spam them with wall posts and private messages "thanking" them. The degree of persecution of your targets will be adjustable from your account settings, but don't worry, even at its lowest level this feature will annoy the crap out of those who thought it would be wise to drop you an auto bday wish.

Now that is social networking I like.

P.S: The farewell party last week was legend--wait for it--ary.

On Work, Life, The Universe and Everything

As today was my last day in office after six or so odd years of corporate whoredom, I thought it would be in order to dispense some pearls of wisdom that I have accumulated over the years:

1. Never shout any insults at another driver if he/she cuts you off. First, it's rude. Secondly, what are the chances that they'll actually hear you when it's so noisy outside and they are chilling inside enjoying the AC? Instead, carry some talking bubbles with words written on them, they should range form an innocent: HEY! All the way to: For doing that, I'll chop your head off and make sweet, sweet love to your mama. This way is much more effective to communicate your frustration to the asshole who cut you off, me thinks.

2. It is no longer kool that the standard answer for: What's your favorite movie? is: The Godfather. Oh and it's definitely not kool to answer: The Godfather, the first one, not the crappy second and third part. Here's the deal, The Godfather came out 30 years ago, it's a great movie and all, but don't you think it's time to move on?

3. Always make fun of the Frozen Wastelands, it's un-natural not to.

But on a serious note, I am happy/excited/thrilled to be moving on with my life. A while back someone shared with me this speech that Steve Jobs gave, and the one thing that stuck with me was the idea of 'connecting your dots'. At first, I thought maybe only a few of us are the lucky ones who do have interesting dots to connect, but now I firmly believe that we all have our own interesting dots. You just need to look back at your past and by connecting those dots, you'll take control of your future.

Isn't symbolic, warm and cuddly that this speech that inspired me so much was given at a Stanford commencement? ....I think I need a hug.

P.S: Check the uber kwel poster that aku put togther for my farwell partAy! Me likey!