My mom says I shouldn’t pack the fine China with the bowling balls, I say she’s being too pessimistic

93.  Apparently, when things get serious in an interpersonal/emotional way, I respond by telling jokes.  I’m not emotionally unavailable— honest!— I just think that many times these trains of thought make people sad, so I have to constantly pull over so that the engine doesn’t overheat.  Also, I explain things in metaphor.

OMG!  I’m moving tomorrow and I don’t know what to take with me.  The problem is that I don’t really have much space.  So how do I fit all of the important things in life in just 65 cubic feet?

The strategy I’m going for is to take all unique and potentially necessary items (such as clothes or philosophy books), take a few big, expensive items (such as electronics), and take many small, expensive items (such as bed sheets and covers).

When I arrive, I can buy toothpaste and ramen noodles, for instance, but I can’t easily buy pots and pans.

Here is what I’m taking so far:

• All the clothes I have that fits and I’d be willing to wear (so, like six outfits)
• A few dozen books that make me look and feel like a real philosopher (plus, the complete Far Side collection and some Ultimate Spiderman comics)
• Bed sheets
• Mickey Mouse covers
• Sleeping bag
• Tent
• One of those Wal-Mart style fold-up chairs
• Fire staves and poi
• A flying pig
• My laptop
• My external hard drive
• 48 tamales
• Five Rubik’s cubes of varying degrees of difficulty
• Some sentimental stuff like letters and pictures and a novelty-size permanent marker.
• A 30-inch tall photo album
• Pictures
• high school yearbooks
• (My mom suggests I should also take some pots and pans)

I like living my life so that people think everything I say and do is just setting up a punchline.  Sadly, every item on this list is very real and not made up.

I calculate I have very little space left.  If you were me, what else would you take?

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And that was when I stopped caring

82. None of the products in my bathroom were tested on animals.

So I’ve decided to extend my contest a bit to give people more time to enter.  PLUS: I’m going to be traveling in a third-world country soon, and everybody loves lead-based toys and candy, right?

Last Year: I'm such a jerk to myself (Part II)
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Enter now, supplies are limited, entry is not

77. My parents immigrated to the United States in 1987. As a direct result, I sort of want to thwack people whenever they talk about immigration (illegal or otherwise). Frankly, there are very few people I consider qualified to talk about the subject in any in-depth way.

I’m doing it. I’m going to have a contest. Hey, I might as well, right? You guys are like, fans and stuff.

This particular contest begins as an offshoot of this contest. I’ve entered several identical contests since then, but haven’t received anything yet (despite winning one a few weeks back). So I’ve decided to hold my contest now rather than later because I’m impatient like that.

This contest is a Pay-It-Forward-style giveaway. I send a care package to three of the people that comment on this post.  Each of those people then holds a similar contest online and sends a similar package to three other people.

In my particular version of this contest, two names will be chosen at random from whomever comments and one will be chosen based on their ability to stump me. All you have to do is think of a general knowledge question that I cannot answer. (No Google.) You can ask as many questions as you want, but the winning question will be be something I should know but currently don’t.

Ask me anything you want, I’ll answer what I can and keep you updated on who is winning.

The contest ends on Saturday. Comment now, comment often, and let’s see if you can Stump Pixel. Good luck!

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Do men have lower standards than women?

29.  I was single from January 1, 2002 until November 12, 2005.  That’s 46.35 months.  After that, I realized that I don’t know if I can trust anyone who doesn’t know what it’s like to be alone.  I think being able to stand yourself for any amount of time is key to being mature, and self-reliant enough to bring something to a relationship.  But then, I’m hardly an expert on relationships.

This idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while.  I even wrote a big post about it, but it didn’t save, so I put it on the back-burner for a few days.  In the meantime, I began asking people, usually women or professionals of some sort, whether they thought that their ideal partner would have to be ejukated.

The conclusion: a good number of women thought that intelligence was an important quality in their ideal mate, with this section being heavily biased toward more educated women.   Women used a lot of ’share’ language when it came to talking about their ideal mate.  The men I talked to did not.  In fact, I think men think about it differently.  Men seem to only want an outlet.  For a lot of guys, a good life consists of a job, friendships, and a relationship which, when totaled, satisfy all of their desires.  It’s an odd thing to process and I’m not at all sure if it’s universal.

But what that says to me is that women would have a harder time finding someone to ’share’ their life with if their life consisted of things very few people were interested in.

Take the sad case of Eleanor Abernathy, a Harvard and Yale M.D. and J.D. (respectively). Abernathy was a very good doctor and lawyer, but was unable to meet men as a result of her professions.  She devoted all of her attentions into her pets and eventually became a notorious cat hoarder.

Presumably, this is typical of women who get over-educated.

I am, of course, talking out of my wazoo.  I have no credible evidence that this is the case and can only resort to common experience.  But it seems like it is at least the case for some people.

What do you think?  I know most of my audience is women, so I’m interested in seeing what place intelligence has in selecting a mate.  How important is it?  Inquiring minds want to know.

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Podarchy!

My friend and I are going to start a podcast soon, but we want to come up with a name first. So throw out ideas, I’ll leave this post at the top until we have a name for our show. Our conversations will essentially be this blog in mp3 form. There’ll be some skits, some music to commit suicide over, and some brilliant and/or off-the-wall conversations.

If we like your idea the best, we’ll give you the forbidden prize of mystery. Ready?

Last Year: The tooth is out there
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