July 29, 2005 :: The shotgun strategy

OK, this one isn't so much a new theory as it is an application of an existing theory: the law of supply and demand, with a twist. A whole lot of women say things to me like this: "Why do I get approached by so many short men?" Substitute "short" with "broke", "lame", or any other pejorative you like, but the idea is the same. Why are there so many more bustas than desirable men out there? The answer is: there aren't. Well, maybe there are, but not nearly as many as a person in that situation might think.

Those of you who might have taken a little statistics, population biology or public health should be familiar with the classic bell curve, and what it means for a characteristic that can take a range of values. Essentially, it says that for any population large enough, the vast majority will be clumped around the average. In our example, that characteristic is desirability in some shape or form. Specifically, let's look at height. The average American man is five feet, nine and a half inches tall, and the bell curve tells us the vast majority of men will have heights close to that... say, within three inches. As it happens, black men trend slightly (about 3/4 inch) taller. So where are all these short men coming from?

First, let's consider an average guy, and let's call him Joe. Joe is average height. Let's put our average guy Joe in an average social environment, with about the same number of men and women. Let's say Joe is trying to find a woman for a date. On average, Joe would have to proposition, oh, let's say n women before he found one that agreed to go out with him. The exact number isn't important; what's important is that there is one.

Now let's look at a short guy, let's call him, say, Peewee. Peewee is five feet five inches tall, which puts him squarely outside the vast majority of near-average men we discussed earlier. Simply put, there just aren't that many Peewees out there. And let's say Peewee is on the same mission as Joe. Peewee has balls, so he's not afraid to approach any women taller than him, but he also doesn't have a height preference. Peewee also has to talk to a certain number of women before he can find one to go out on a date. But women like tall men. So Peewee has to approach more women than Joe before he can find one to go out with. How many more? A lot more. A whole lot more.

Just like there are a whole lot of men around the average height, there are a whole lot of women who have about the same height cutoff in their list of requirements for men they date. Some like em taller, some shorter, but the vast majority will be in that same area, give or take a couple of inches. Peewee falls short. And because he is outside that area where so many women have their cutoff, he's going to have a hard time finding those few women for whom height isn't so much of an issue. So what does Peewee do? He employs what I call the shotgun strategy: aim broadly, with as many attempts as possible, to increase his odds of hitting a target. And Peewee might have to sacrifice some of his other preferences to find that hard-to-find Peewee-loving woman. So he'll talk to anybody. Put just a couple of Peewees in that average social environment, and they'll probably approach every woman in the room, something that Joe would never do.

So if you're a woman, what does this look like? It looks like an army of Peewees, constantly hitting up you and your friends, because Peewees make many more propositions than average Joes, just to achieve the same result.

This idea can be extrapolated in the other direction. Let's say there is a guy who's significantly taller than average. Let's call him Superjoe. Superjoe is highly desirable because he is so tall, and women love tall men. So when Superjoe goes to the same club that regular Joe and Peewee also went to, he doesn't have to proposition as many women as they did. Superjoe's n is smaller than Joe's n, and a LOT smaller than Peewee's n. So to women, this looks like a shortage of Superjoes, because they don't have to approach as many women to find what they're looking for.

I just spent this whole discussion talking about height, but really it can (and does) apply to many other desirability factors. The key is, every time you add another factor to your personal equation (be it financial stability, general looks, skin color, whatever), the effects are multiplied. That means that the apparent number of Peewees explodes, and Superjoes become exponentially harder to find. In fact, I think that there is a point of desirability beyond which men's personal n becomes zero; that is, they don't have to approach anybody at all. They are so desirable (for whatever reason) that women literally throw themselves at them. These men are essentially invisible, because they never approach anyone, so women often don't believe that they exist. Think of them as black holes - they are out there, you know they are out there because of the effect they have on people around them, but you never actually SEE them.

So ladies, don't sweat the Peewee brigade. There's a regular Joe out there for you, and if you're lucky, maybe a Superjoe.

posted by Rainmayun at 11:03 AM -

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July 21, 2005 :: The superwhore theory

As you've probably learned by now, I have a theory for everything. I've decided to share some of my dating and relationship theories with you. I was going to save these for a book about relationships that I plan to write and get rich from and retire, but what the hey... maybe this blog will help me to reshape and refine some of my ideas.

Today I'd like to combat an idea that I find to be prevalent among many women, and probably by extension some men: that men are bigger whores than women. They aren't. In fact, I think men and women are equally whorish. For the purposes of this discussion, we'll only consider heterosexual activity.

First, let's consider the "ideal" situation:

In this fantasy land, each person has the same number of sexual partners, namely three. Therefore, men (in blue) and women (in pink) have the same number of average partners, three.

Of course, reality is nothing like this. Women insist that men have slept around more than they have. In practical terms, this would mean that men had to have a higher number of average partners than women.

This is impossible.

Every time a man has a partner, he's sleeping with a woman. Therefore, the total number of encounters for all men and all women is always the same*, and the average is the same. But women insist that they've had less, and that most women (or at least the women they know) have had less. Is this possible?

It is, under a special circumstance. In order for this to happen, there would have to be a small subset of women who have slept with a whole lot of people. We'll call them superwhores.



In the superwhore situation, you'll notice that girl A has had 5 partners, more than anybody else in the diagram. In fact, she's slept with everybody. All the men still have 3 partners, and a couple of the women have only two, making them feel more chaste I would imagine.

This is, of course, a very small example. In the general population, the numbers would have to be much drastically different. Depending on the size of the superwhore subgroup, their "body count" (so to speak) would have to be much much higher than everyone else's, including the most sexually-active men... probably an order of magnitude higher. Still, this could be possible. Finding this population would establish this theory beyond a doubt, and actually somewhat vindicate the women who feel good about feeling chaste, but I think it's unlikely we'll find them... it's sort of like looking for the Higgs boson, establishing a theory of everything.

In reality, I think the world probably looks something like this:



Here, there is a distribution of numbers of partners. Most people are around average, with a couple of people on either side above or below average. In a large population, it probably resembles a bell curve, and it's the same for men and women.

So, in conclusion, if you find some superwhores, let me know. I've got some, uh, questions to ask them.


* The sexually active population of men and women isn't exactly 50-50, there are a very few more women than men. In these calculations, they'd be in the 2nd decimal place, so it doesn't matter.

posted by Rainmayun at 10:56 AM -

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July 18, 2005 :: All's well that ends well

Since a few of you asked for follow-up on the dinner trap described in this earlier post, I decided to post the response I got from the woman:

I found a young lady on craigslist to be the "decoy" and she had dinner with him. Needless to say, my suspicions were correct and we are history.... but I kept the 2 carat ring.

'nuff said.

posted by Rainmayun at 9:28 AM -

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July 15, 2005 :: I wish I didn't have home training, sometimes

I'm not a naturally violent or vindictive person. Really, I'm not. When I get mad with someone, my instinct is normally to put as much distance as possible between myself and the object of my ire.

Having said that, here is a list of people I'd like to slap:

• That fool who managed to step on one foot, then immediately step on my other foot with his other foot, and didn't even turn around or say anything.


• People who drive out of control on the beltway. It was pouring rain yesterday as I drove home, and I was on this stretch of the inner loop by College Park that's under construction, so the surface has been scraped for it to be repaved. It just ain't safe to push a 3 ton steel object at 70+ mph in heavy traffic on any kind of regular tires. And sure enough, I got stuck RIGHT behind an accident and had to wait a few minutes for the fire & rescue and a state trooper. bammas!


• People who are drive completely oblivious to the world around them. If you are comfortable doing 60 on the beltway, in sunny dry and normal speedy conditions, that's fine. But get the hell out of the left lane, because you're going to cause an accident, or at least a slowdown behind you as people stack up and can't pass.


• The waiter at my friend's birthday dinner. We had a party of eight, and he tried like hell to be scarce. Even ran away from the table three times before we'd finished giving him instructions. He knew his 18% gratuity was already included. And of course no one cared but me.


• The stupid online furniture vendor who sent me a bed without any screws, nuts or bolts, and then sent me only screws when I complained about it.


• The other stupid online furniture vendor who thought it was reasonable to charge $225 shipping on a $600 purchase.


• Verizon, for deliberately fscking up my phone line because I don't have DSL from them. Bitches, the noise is AUDIBLE! I can HEAR it! But apparently they don't give a shit because I only have regular voice, and it's "good enough". I can't even get dialup faster than 33k sometimes. I hate them so much I'm considering leaving my great ISP and signing up for cable modem with the hated Comcast. *sigh* but at least it is working today, because I needed to work from home today.


• That DC meter maid who gave me a $100 ticket for expired tags, when the shit had just arrived in the mail the same day. I am going to mail in my evidence, though, and fight this one.

There's more, but I'm tired of listing them. I think this calls for a therapeutic trip to hoslap.net. I wish you could paste in other people's faces.

posted by Rainmayun at 12:42 PM -

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July 12, 2005 :: Everybody loves somebody sometimes

Apparently the old adage is true: there's somebody for everybody. I've recently been witness (sort-of) to two examples of this saying.

On my flight back from Boston on Sunday, I saw a quite interesting couple on the plane. The first thing I noticed about the two women was that they were deaf. As passengers found their seats, they were having an animated conversation in sign language. One of the women was white (blond, Scandinavian-looking white at that, albeit with a sort of tan), and the other was a sort-of unidentifiable ethnic that I could only vaguely guess as Brazilian. The second thing I noticed was that the ethnic woman had two different colored eyes... one was blue and one was brown. I have seen this before in people, although I see it more often in cats. I wasn't totally convinced she wasn't wearing a blue contact, though, because the blue was very intense, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

I didn't actually notice they were "together" until after we'd gotten off the plane at BWI, and I saw them holding hands and being intimate and generally violating each other's personal space in a way that I wouldn't tolerate from anyone with XY chromosomes. It was a genuine "things that make you go hmmm" moment... that's a niche of a niche of a niche pairing there, if I ever saw one.

The other thing that I noticed was quite a bit more ... well, dramatic. Spotted in a Craigslist posting:

Chocolate Beauty needed for dinner only 7/15 @ 5PM - m4w - 35

I need the company ONLY of a beautiful black sista for dinner. I am a lady who recently found out that her fiance has been chatting with women online. He recently made a date with one (me incognito). He does not suspect a thing. I will pay the right chocolate beauty to meet and have dinner only with him. I hope you can understand, woman to woman, that I just want to know BEFORE I marry this man. Please contact me with your information.

Now this is kinda sad, but also amusing at the same time. Apparently he's devious and sneaky enough to sneak behind her back and use the Internet to meet women, and she's sneaky and devious enough to try to set him up. If they don't belong together, who does? I think, however, the over-under on that marriage (if they even have one, which is a different bet altogether) is probably 18 months.

I did send her a note asking to find out how things turn out. I can't lie, I want to know the epilogue to that story.

Note: Thanks to uptown brown girl for the inspiration for this post.

posted by Rainmayun at 2:16 PM -

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July 01, 2005 :: Club chronicles

Last night, a friend of mine who is a clothing designer had a fashion show at a well-known aquatic-related club down on the waterfront. The show was quite interesting, she was one of several participating designers, and the last designer appeared to work exclusively in bodypaint... all of her models came out with no clothes on top, but the bodypaint was elaborate enough that I really could not tell from my back row vantage point that there were no clothes involved, except that their nipples poked out.

I saw some funny things that night. Here are a few:

• A somewhat older couple (maybe late 30s) who I thought were together, but upon later observation probably were not. The man was talking to the woman, had his hand on her shoulder, etc. She was fine, the sort of fine that you want to marry so that your woman is fine as long as the two of you shall live. He slipped up, though. Stepped behind her for a moment to look at her ass. Got lost in the majesty of it, and dropped his drink all over her dress and his shoes. It was all I could do not to die laughing, because all she noticed is that he was a klutz, and she has no idea why. But the peanut gallery knew, because we were all laughing.


• While the crowd at this fashion show event was relatively benign (i.e. not thugtastic or ghetto fabulous), the brothers in the front row had no shame whatsoever. They all had their cell phones and blackberries out, trying to take pictures of the models. I found out later they were actually leaning over to take pictures up their skirts as they walked up the steps to the runway. Purely trifling!


• After the show was over, said friend and I went to another opalescent club near the old convention center site. Nothing special going on there, although we both remarked at the midget couple making out by the front door. I suppose midget is a little harsh, I think both of them may have hit five feet (but barely). And they were going to town! I wanted to tell them to get a room, but it really was just funny to watch. I guess there really is somebody for everybody.


• The Thursday night promoters at this opalescent club decided that their draw that night was going to be the viewing of R. Kelly's "In The Closet" video parts 1-5. I've been avoiding "urban" radio and BET and the like for almost a whole year now, so while I had heard of this phenomenon, I had not heard any of the music or seen the video. Arruh has definitely hiti on something... he's recorded the SAME DAMN SONG FIVE TIMES, and he has people begging for more to the point that the video ended with "parts 6-10 coming soon". It was basically a black ghetto soap opera, sort of like a Tyler Perry R&B remix. I guess Arruh really is a genius, because he's going to record THAT SAME DAMN SONG five more times, and people will eat it up. I wish I had such genius.

posted by Rainmayun at 2:37 PM -

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Living in the hood sucks, sometimes

This post is purely a rant.

My DSL has been acting up for the last couple of days, ever since I had unplug it to rearrange some furniture. It's been very flaky, going up and down more than a cheap K street hooker. I have been on the phone with my DSL provider's tech support (Speakeasy, not Verizon, thank God) quite a bit recently. They're wonderful, but this one is probably out of their control. They got the line provider (Covad) to run a mechanized loop test on the circuit from my house to the central office, and found out that I'm even farther from the CO than I thought... 20300 feet, or damn near four miles. At that distance, it is a miracle that the DSL works at all. It doesn't even make sense that I live in the city and I'm so far away. That's just proof that the local telco (Verizon, again) doesn't give a shit about my neighborhood or the people (mostly black, and older, retirement age even) in it. I'd already downgraded my account speed to 768/128 a while ago in the interest of stability, and it was working... but now it's being crazy again. The provider said essentially that there's not much they can do for me at that distance, except put me in "safe mode", which means slowing my speed to 480/128. I had already been spoiled by the initial 1500/384 speed, but now this is ridiculous. They said it would be grounds for me to get out of my contract, if I wanted to, and to get another provider.

Now, I know some of you local people are thinking "why don't you just get Verizon DSL?" Plain and simple, they suck. Their policies suck, their customer service sucks, their tech support sucks. And that wouldn't move me any closer to the CO. In fact, I don't think Verizon would even allow me to order ADSL at this distance, so they'd probably make me order some crappy IDSL that costs $99 a month and gives 128/128 speed.

Some of the smarter people are probably thinking "well, why don't you get cable internet?" They finally started offering it in my neighborhood last year. Again, the neighborhood. The cable plant here is 25 years old, and it was probably a chore to upgrade it to support a service they thought (rightly or wrongly) that my neighbors wouldn't be interested in. So I could get cable internet... but then there are the technical issues (shared backbone, static IP), and the cost issue. Presently, I *ahem don't pay for cable tv. I don't watch enough tv to justify the cost, I figure. But if they come install internet, I'd probably have to start paying for cable tv too. So that's at least $100 a month there, all for the sake of internet access. Not a fabulous deal. At those prices, it's almost worth it to get Verizon Wireless Broadband, which should work anywhere in the city. Of course, the equipment for that is made for laptops, and I have two desktops at home. Oh well.

Suffice it to say that none of this would be a problem if I did not live in the hood. Proof positive of the institutional neglect of black neighorboods. Hell, in some of the tonier NW neighborhoods, I could probably leech an unprotected WiFi signal from an unsuspecting neighbor. Oh well.

posted by Rainmayun at 2:24 PM -

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