The Plastic Spoon

Asian Sideburns

What is up with Asian Sideburns?  Actually what is up with Asian hair in general?  Sideburns, cartoon hairstyles, chin beards, and pointy sideburns... What the eff?!?!

I'm not sure exactly what I feel every time I see the manicured hair of a Japanese dude (or chick for that matter) with sideburns that are actually just really long pieces of hair from the side of their head moused in to a point which ends somewhere near the bottom of their chin.  I kinda freaks me out!  You all know what I am talking about, but believe it or not you will not be able to find a picture of it on the internet.  I'm serious, I have spent the last few weeks thinking about this and looking diligently for a picture to represent the post... but alas... nothing!  I did however find an amazing video on youtube

Enjoy the video and I personally challenge anyone to find me some pictures of pointy Asian sideburns.  Email them to me or post links in the comments section.  If we can get enough, I might just start a wall of fame called AWESOME ASIANS.

How to Impress the Ladies

Men do stupid things all the time to try and impress women.  We believe in our hearts (or perhaps 18" lower) that women are impressed with things like stunts, scars, stories, and silly humor... truth be told, they aren't.  As I have matured over the years(granted slower than most my age), I have come to believe that woman are not so much impressed with the steel plate in my leg as they are when I put on a collared shirt and brush my hair.  I have gone from trying to impress women with the 10 push-ups I can struggle through and now will put on pressed shirt, a nice pair of jeans and some smell good on my neck.  This is difficult for me, because my mother always told me that women liked men who smelled like men, not girls.  And despite my track record, for the better part of my adult life I didn't just smell like a man, but in order to attract more women with more efficiency, I would smell more like an enitre football team. 

Over the years I have tried with an unrelenting consistency to discover what it is that women are attracted to.  My whole outlook was radically called in to question this morning when I came across an article on the Discovery Channel website. 

It turns out that human males aren't the only ones who are having trouble understanding females.  Science is beginning to prove that females are high maintenance in most Genus and Specie lists!  It has long been thought that the ornate and beautiful feathers of a Peacock (which is actually the male version of a Peafowl... the female is known as a Peahen) had evolved overtime as a way of attracting Peahens to mate.  This has resently been brought in to question because of the work of a scientist in India, with way too much time on his hands. Mariko Takahashi has discovered (what the Peacock has probably known for centuries) that Peahens just don't give a shit about what the Peacock looks like... all she really cares about is what he has to say.  The study shows that a Peacock has much more mating success based on his call than his display.  In other words, the Peacock who knows what to say gets laid...

According to the article, this is what they have found.  The Peacock screams out and says something to the effect of "Hey... Look at me!" and will start to dance.  The Peahen then will circle around the Peacock she thinks she might like.  This causes the Peacock to shiver (or perhaps tremble?).  Once the Peacock begins to shiver, the Peahen knows that she now has the control and will ask the Peacock to do little things for her.  She changes the way his feathers look, rearranges his nest, and forbids him to hang out with the Peacocks he used to hang with.  The Peacock will mate with his new found Peahen until she concieves, at which point he will be forced to work longer hours.  The long hours at work and stress over his emotional nest will lead to him loosing his ornate feathers and voice and add more stress to his already disappointing mating life.  In the end, the Peacock will tell his boys to wait and impress the Peahens with more than just words, that the "good ones" will mate with you for who you are.

Needless to say, I was impressed and a bit concerned by this new discovery.  It is truly amazing what science can prove these days!  I wish they would do a study like this on humans... I wonder what it would find?

 

Store High In Transit

A recent conversation with some friends over poor service, mediocre tacos, and cold late arriving beer turned to the study of words.  Etymology, studies the origin of words and can be a lot of fun... it can also cause people to be completely full of S.H.I.T.

Our etymological conversation started when my roommate asked if anyone knew the origins of the word shit.  Immediately every hand held device was on the table looking for answers from the Google gods.  The answer (by virtue of quantity of returns) was as follows;

Certain types of manure used to be transported (as everything was back then) by ship. In dry form it weighs a lot less, but once water (at sea) hit it. It not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas.

As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen; methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern. BOOOOM!

Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was discovered what was happening.

After that, the bundles of manure where always stamped with the term "S.H.I.T" on them which meant to the sailors to "Ship High In Transit." In other words, high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.

As I left dinner I actually heard the same story on the radio as part of an advertisement for a plumber.  So, this morning I did my own investigation and found that this story is a load of male cow patties!

I found the following excerpt at dictionary.com

The origins of the word trace back to the Old English word scitan (to split, separate or divide).  The noun is O.E. scitte "purging;" sense of "excrement" dates from 1585, from the verb.  The notion that it is a recent word may be because the word was taboo from c.1600 and rarely appeared in print (neither Shakespeare not the KJV has it), and even in "vulgar" publications of the late 18c. it is disguised by dashes. It drew the wrath of censors as late as 1922 ("Ulysses" and "The Enormous Room"), scandalized magazine subscribers in 1957 (a Hemingway story in "Atlantic Monthly") and was omitted from some dictionaries as recently as 1970 ("Webster's New World"). Extensive slang usage; verb meaning "to lie, to tease" is from 1934; that of "to disrespect" is from 1903. Noun use for "obnoxious person" is since at least 1508; meaning "misfortune, trouble" is attested from 1937. Shat is a humorous past tense form, not etymological, first recorded 18c. Shite, now a jocular or slightly euphemistic variant, formerly a dialectal variant, reflects the vowel in the O.E. verb (cf. Ger. scheissen). Shit-faced "drunk" is 1960s student slang; shit list is from 1942. To not give a shit "not care" is from 1922; up shit creek "in trouble" is from 1937. Scared shitless first recorded 1936.

So there you have it... but really WHO GIVES A SHIT!

What an asshole!

A retired woman in Germany was experiencing pain in her leg.  Her physician recommended that she go in for a fairly routine surgery to rememdy the situation and to make her life more enjoyable.  When the woman woke up from the surgery her leg still hurt, but her ass felt like the ass of an 18 year old... why?  Well, it seems as though the doctors were scheduled for two procedures that morning.  One, was for the woman with the leg issue, and the other was for a dude who needed a new anus. 

OOPS!

The woman, who did get herself a brand new, sparkley, clean anus and the opportunity to sue the clinic in Hochfranken, Bavaria, and the asshole doctors who screwed the "pooch" if you will.

The person who we should feel sorry for is the weight lifter who was actually due the anus.  He had injured it (so to speak) while attempting to dead lift a Volkswagon.  Below is a picture of his injury.

 

I Guess You'll Do...

the kid's not mine... or maybe?

I was walking along a highly disputed trail the other day, when from behind me I heard a frail voice whisper, "scuuze us"... I turned around, expecting to see the little old lady from The Wedding Singer.  Instead what I saw was quite the opposite... two very attractive moms pushing their strollers with the force of a behind schedule lawn mowing gardener.  The women were trucking along, so I politely stepped to my right to let them pass.  As they passed, a toe headed 2 year old boy lunges out of his stroller and accusingly points at me and declares "That's my Daddy!".  I looked over my shoulder hoping to see a blond guy running to catch up to his needy son, but alas... no one.  So both the mom and I laughed it off and kept on walking.  But the rotten little whistle blower just couldn't leave it be.  He wrapped around the side of his overpriced, motorless vehicle and continued to point and scream, "That's my Daddy", "that's my daddy", "that's my daddy."  Embarrassed (and perhaps even a little confused) the mom and her friend picked up their pace and soon were out of sight.  I on the other hand continued to wonder why this kid thought I was the "Y" in his "XY" make up.  In my mind, there was no possible way that this kid was mine... that is until I got this picture of him.  And, well, let's just say he looks like he could be mine. 

So what changed?  At first I didn't recognize his mother and knew there was no way (short of immaculate conception) that he could be mine.  But now, I totally recognize his mother... and she hasn't changed a bit.  She used to make me carry her like that all the time too.