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Good Heavens, Miss Sakamoto; You’re Beautiful!
There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a young woman.
That’s from Proverbs, the sayings of Agur the son of Jakeh. Now, between you and me, I don’t know Agur the son of Jakeh from Adam son of a Hole in the Ground, but seeing as ten-year-olds aren’t noted for writing many proverbs, we can assume that he’s an old man. He must have been young once; he must have done this. Still, he’s ranking it as too amazing for him. Maybe it’s something he forgot with age? Well, I’m a young (relatively speaking) man, and if anyone ought to understand the way of a man with a young woman, it ought to be me, right? I don’t understand it. I can, however, pass on my observations, for science.
Take one male specimen; me. Non-standard, but it’ll have to do. Take him as he’s walking (uncommon) without a thought in his head (very common), and pass him by a female specimen. Unfortunately for the cause of science the amount of data in the control group (no female specimen available) dwarfs the experimental group.
The control case is plenty monotonous. The male of the species starts at point A, lumbers over to point B, and is almost never rewarded by finding cheese there. Repeat ad nauseam. The experimental case, however…
Normally the male specimen is oblivious to changes in his environment more subtle than being hit by a city bus. Through mechanisms unknown to science however, he instantly recognizes the female specimen and, at a speed that shames most supercomputers, measures her temperature against a hotness scale. Most people calibrate between 1 and 10, but I’m a fan of the Soto Normalized Scale.
Should the female of the species register high enough on the man’s scale, (“high enough” is variable, but know to depend on who’s watching), the next operation is a chemical assay, again of amazing speed. In the presence of precious metals on the female’s left hand, the experiment reverts disappointedly to the control case. Science has tested this method for substance detection in the diamond fields of South Africa to statistically negligible effect.
Should no metals be detected the heretofore astounding processing in the cerebrum takes its toll. The Medulla Oblongata steps up its work, increasing the heart rate and, for some damn fool reason, sending a large production order to the sweat glands. The cerebrum, on the other hand, has shot off most of its ready neurotransmitters, and no longer produces coherent thought. Indeed, we’d think that it no longer produces any thought at all except some of those thoughts get short-circuited through the flapping jaw.
This stage can last for some moments to months at a time. I believe it’s an exponential distribution, but more curve-fitting needs to be done.
How this fugue terminates is a matter of great interest to science. When observing samples who, having lost their higher functions in the moment, walked into stop signs and been put out cold, they appear to awake to no ill effect. Aside from the dent in their head.
For experiments where the subject is not lucky enough to hit a stop sign, the fugue state begins to dissipate when the female specimen signals that she already has a boyfriend or, and we’ve correlated this with how much jaw-flapping has happened, other means if she’s feeling less charitable. Sometimes means more painful than the stop sign.
If the female sample is removed and the effect is allowed to dissipate without being prematurely terminated, we see a follow on effect. The brain rebuilds its supply of neurotransmitters and lurches into a Sherlock Holmesian state. The smallest details are noted (except, oddly enough, what shoes she was wearing. Completely unknown to Science.) Wild chains of logic emerge, deductions are made, building on one another to a monumental conclusion: A probability calculation as to how likely the male specimen is to encounter that female specimen again. The number calculated is wildly optimistic.
That, I’m afraid, is the entirety of my survey of the subject so far. If you have observations of your own to share please do.
Published in General
Ah, “the power to cloud mens’ minds . . . ”
Fine post. I love science.
I just finished The Story of Civilization and am now immersed in the Iliad. I’m not sure how important the assay is. Oh, and the ladies were pretty accommodating in Don Quixote, too.
Get close enough and you will be assimilated. You will like it; resistance is futile. You’ll be part of the worldwide community of assimilated men, obeying traditions that extend beyond the dawn of civilization. You’ll get to participate in continuous conversation while barely speaking a single word. You’ll be an exclusive subscriber to a personal podcast about other couples you know, their foibles, their linens, where they buy their linens, and how tough it is to find parking there. And let’s not even get into the subject of their children, how they compare to yours, and whether or not they’re getting into Princeton. This is all free of charge, BTW, and like I say, you won’t even have to open your mouth.
Funny thing is, after a while, it seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Unless they’re conspicuously slutty.
I don’t think I’ve ever noticed what shoes a woman was wearing, slutty or not.
This essay make me happy that I married my high school sweetheart, and avoid years of emotional, analytical, and intellectual anguish. Granted, I traded them for a certain other types of anguish, but still.
Actual exchange with my former business partner:
Her: Do you like these shoes?
me: Yeah.
Her: You don’t think they’re too dominatrix-y?
me: That’s what I liked about ’em.
I’ll never forget the day Chuck came to work looking somewhat the worse for wear and with a pretty large bandage on the side of his head. Rather shamefacedly, he admitted that his wife, Judy, had whacked him on the head with a frozen leg of lamb, after he got a bit frisky.
So, men, proceed with caution. There are some things that just won’t be bound by the laws of science. And women are in charge of most of them.
In the 80’s, I was building restaurants. Not many females on the jobsite, until the wine salesmen came in. They were always pretty women and were disappointed that I wasn’t able to close a deal. We always knew they were wine salesmen as soon as they came in the door.
The Frank Soto Normalized Scale?
Correct. Goes from 1 to 7, apparently results in less argumentation than the standard 10-scale.
You were partners in an early Nineties detective agency with Cybill Shepherd?
Science, or mysterious arts? Perhaps only the Shadow knows.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the April 2019 Group Writing Theme: Men and Women. There are plenty of dates still available — hey, look! Sunday and Monday, wide open. Tell us about your favorite couple, witty or tragic observations between the sexes, or perhaps the battles and truces. Or do something entirely different. Maybe a musical or dance post! Our schedule and sign-up sheet awaits.
May’s theme will be blossom midway through April’s showers.
Not really. The arguments just shift to kvetching about the scale, and the scale lacking 2 necessary axes for crazy and… something else.
How rude. I always thought it was our job to be frisky.
And just what kind of lab do you think I’m running here?
Sluttiness has up until the present juncture largely been a matter of theoretical conjecture. I hope to secure funding to build a supercollider to extend the frontiers of Science, but the NSF no longer returns my calls.
The idea is that 4 is the mean woman (possibly with leg of lamb). That number encompasses all people within one standard deviation of the mean. 5’s are one standard deviation above average, 6’s are two, and 7’s are seldom encountered in these mortal lands. Same deal on the opposite side of the scale, ranging from ugly to hideous to turns-you-to-stone.
IIRC, there was a series of early Eighties car ads in magazines (General Motors, I think) that tried to dig them out of the hole of having a lousy reputation for assembly quality. It said something like, “By actual inspection, our quality quotient has increased from 85 to 93 points in the past five years, and we’re not stopping there!” But they didn’t tell you the fact that it wasn’t actually a percentage. It was based on a scale of 130.
Those bastards!
Well, you all know the bumper sticker, “Electricians Do It ‘Til It Hz, But Physicists Do It ‘Til All Factors Reach Steady State Equilibrium”.
I’d have to have my reading glasses on to be able to read that one.
I have nothing at all clever to say. I can only say that I laughed through your whole post! Thanks for making my evening. (And I’m sure glad I’m a woman!)
They wear shoes?
Everything I know I learned when Tom Cruise started singing You lost that lovin’ feeling in the real-world documentary where he beats the Soviets with this plane that flies upside down. Again, for the cheap seats, if you can fly & have won the Cold War, you’ll do fine.
While reading the post I figured I would mention that some of us do notice shoes, but I guess that’s been covered thoroughly by other commenters. I will add Crocs are the worst. Just the very worst.
I made a New Year’s Resolution to look at ladies’ shoes more often. (Insert joke about outgoing engineers here.) I figured that seeing as shoes were important to the ladies then maybe I could learn something from observing them; much like someone could track a mountain lion by it’s spoor.
Nope; I have maybe remembered to check women’s shoes on three occasions since I made the resolution. Just can’t manage it.