If You Belonged Here

Acuvue, Retin-A, Claritin, & Prozac (or: How Geeks Got Dateable)

If I were born a hundred years ago, I think I'd be locked away in an asylum for hysterical women. I can only hope that I'd have the opportunity to be a guinea pig for one of those fancy new electro-vibrators. Nothing relieves hysteria like an orgasm or twelve.

But even if I could calm my frazzled Victorian nerves, with my blind-as-a-bat sorry excuse for eye-sight, I'd never be able to cross a room without sustaining a life threatening injury. I know they had glasses back then, I just don't think I would have worn them. What with spending all my money on handsome young doctors to administer hysteria treatments, I probably couldn't have afforded them and even if I could, they'd have been way too thick and heavy to wear anyway.

Of course, I'd likely live in a house with cats. From what I understand everyone had a cat for mousing, and there's no way I'd just live with the scampering little crumb-snatching rodents. So I would have cats. Maybe five or six. Because I tend to overdo things and because that's what crazy women did back then. Which means my allergies would flare up, and I would rub my nose raw with a twice-starched hanky. Think of all the embroidery I would soil. Think of how chronically dehydrated I'd be from the mucus loss.

I would looked worse than the Madwoman in the Attic from Jane Eyre. As in, call me Bertha and hide the matches.

And since many introverted types are prone to depression--we just love think too much--there's a likely chance I'd have thrown in a little Emily Dickinson-style eccentricity for good measure. To be honest, I kind of already have that now, only back then a woman as feisty and opinionated as myself would have been considered just plain crazy. And without chemical help, my PMS would be out of control.

I wouldn't just be undateable, I'd be unfit for polite society. Especially when you add the fact that there's no way I'm doing the laundry in winter or wearing petticoats in summer.

Hank bless the pharmaceutical companies. They may have our money rather than our health at heart, but they do make some really useful drugs. And contact lenses--I don't know who makes those--but we can't forget the contact lenses. And laser-eye surgery. If I even get the money and courage at the same time, I am so doing that.

Seriously, people. If it weren't for modern medicine, I would be sporting an angry green bulge of a varicose vein on my otherwise pretty left leg, because I have "weak" veins. I might still have a bad case of not-so-adolescent acne. I certainly would have a pack of wheezing, myopic children crawling all over me. I wouldn't have these pretty white teeth. And I would still suffer from head-slamming, blinding, vomit-inducing migraines that appear, for all intents and purposes, to be a form of demonic possession.

And the mood swings, well, we just won't go there.

The geek world, formerly the outcasts and ugly-ducklings of society, flourishes not only because of the advent of the personal computer. That certainly helps. But the bottom line is that geeks have gotten better looking. A lifetime of poor dental hygiene can be overcome by a day at the dentist. Tourette's Syndrome can be controlled with drugs. For that matter, so can most schizophrenia (A Beautiful Mind, anyone?). And the stereotype of the wheezing, sneezing nerd has all but gone out the window. Not to mention the easy accessibility of such necessary evils as electrolysis, hair transplants, chin implants, lypo-suction, and ear-pinning. And don't forget hair dye for the women.

All that and computers eliminated the need for pens, and therefore pocket protectors, too?

Score.

Are we more shallow? Maybe. But we are also infinitely easier on the eyes.

A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis

A Mind of Its Own is a terrible thing to waste. Now, I know some of you are thinking that the penis gets enough attention in this culture. And, yes, the Washington Monument, neckties, and fire hydrants are all phallic. Not to mention guns, rockets, and our current president. But that is only, ahem, the tip of the penis.

Mr. Poppins can tell you for a fact that I see phallic symbols everywhere.

David M. Friedman, author of this scholarly tome, is a man I'd like to have over for dinner. Actually, on second thought, let's stick to coffee. Publisher's Weekly has said that Mr. Friedman's work should "reign as the seminal treatment of the topic" and I have to second that motion, punny though it may be.

With chapters titled The Demon Rod, The Gear Shift, The Measuring Stick, The Cigar, The Battering Ram (pardon me?), and The Punctureproof Balloon, I'd say that Mr. Friedman has a firm and even grasp of his subject, slippery little bugger though it may be.

A sample of some of my favorite sentences, out of context of course:

This was the penis's most awesome and mysterious power of all. (p. 24)
The penis moved elsewhere. (p. 41)
If that penis failed to stiffen, there would be no action at all. (p. 57)
For a girl there could be no more precious acquisition than a penis. (p. 154)

I have to say that these sentences are even more entertaining in context. I mean, haven't you always wanted to know why the Greeks called it seminal knowledge, why Freud was always pictured with that cigar, why Viagra works? Aren't you at least a little curious about whether or not having a newly shorn eunuch's testes flung into your house is good luck--for you, not the eunuch--or bad luck? Don't you want to be able to pepper sentences with such lovely words as castrati, virgo intacta, penis normalis, and sedina stercoraria? While you may be able to guess at the first three, you may be curious about the last. Wonder no more: sedina stercoraria means dung chair.

What the heck?

The dung chair "which resembled an ancient commode, was designed so that when the newly elected Pope sat on it, his testicles would descend through a specially placed hole, where their existence could be verified by a cardinal specially chosen for the task." You might, like me, wonder why anyone would do such a thing. Let me put your mind to rest: Pope Joan (aka, Pope John VII).

You may be shocked to learn that this is not, by a long stretch, the most interesting thing I learned from this book. The most interesting, and often horrifying, histories are too complex to relay in a review. You just have to go to the source.

Did I mention that there are illustrations and that those illustrations include a Leonardo da Vinci penis drawing. Apparently, The Da Vinci Code didn't reveal everything. Man in Polyester Suit by Mapplethorpe also makes an appearance. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here and be prepared to be impressed and, perhaps, more than a little afraid.

P.S. I've launched a guest column for book reviews and Bookgirl is the first to offer a submission.

Good Fences Make for Good Neighbors

This is the first post in what will eventually, no anticipated end date promised, be a fifteen sixteen* part series delving into this INTJs relationships with other types. Typelogic is my primary source for type comparisons and I am using their Relationship Pairs: Definitions to break it down. I won't be going in any particular order, only following my moods and inclinations, which are as predictable as the weather and susceptible to the influence of butterfly wings in Beijing.

Today's mood: irritable.

Which is why I chose to rant write about ISTJs, which are described by typelogic as the INTJ Neighbor personality, because the two types "arrive at the same place by variant processes." So in theory we should be perfect together, right? Um, no. Life is a process, people. Two oxen pulling in different directions only to arrive at the same place have had a very rough go of it. They probably hate each long before they reach their destination. They probably wish they were alone, or with any other ox on the planet, rather than with each other. But two oxen who are not tethered together and somehow arrive in the same place, well, they can high five, drink a little morning dew and chew a little cud (if oxen chew cud, that is).

Now an INTJ and an ISTJ pair can probably get along pretty well in process if one or both of them is not a particularly strong N or S type. They may have different processes, but they aren't wildly different. The trouble comes when the differences are pronounced. As a very strong N, I find that the differences between me and the Neighbors are often blatant. I can make an intuitive leap from A to Z but the ISTJ needs to examine the interim 24 letters of the alphabet before allowing that yes, by golly, A really does traditionally begin a series that ends in Z. We got to the same place, but I wanted to poke my eye out on the trip to point Z. I cannot presume to know what an ISTJ feels in one of these exchanges, but I can hazard a guess: INTJs are willfully cryptic and condescending jerks.

Well, they can just kiss my grits.

(Don't look at me like that, I told you I was feeling irritable.)

Don't worry, if there is an ISTJ reading this, I haven't hurt their feelings. ISTJs are just as cold-blooded as we INTJs. Their only concern with what I just wrote was to, possibly, ask "why do you think that?" or "how did you know?" even though both the ISTJ and I know that my conclusion is right. Nothing derails the ISTJ from trying to pin down a process.

Which is why, at this point, it's a good idea to build a nice sturdy fence between the two types' processes. Which is to say that I'll be getting a manicure, pedicure, and then taking in a movie (or trilogy) while the ISTJ goes through their extraordinarily exacting process, dotting every i and crossing every t only to eventually reach the conclusion and delete all of the preceding information because it really is relatively useless junk filling space between A and Z. And because, I am convinced this is true, the ISTJ is believes that there is a right way and if they don't already know it, Hank as their witness, they will figure out what it is and force us willy-nilly logic-leapers to toe the line.

Screw those guys. I'm going home.

I've got better things to do than watch them think. Or even worse, explain in finite detail the process I used to get to Z. I don't know the process, people. If I have to give you a process, I start with Z and work backwards. My mind is just that stealthy and mysterious. Seriously. If it told me how it worked, it would have to kill me. You think I am joking but I am not. My brain has the Myer-Briggs equivalent to a "Double-O" license, which is why, if I were ever to go to Mexico, I would have to either smuggle it across the border or put it in a safety deposit box for, what else, safe keeping.

In conclusion: ISTJs are great if we meet at the party and they forget to ask me how I got there.

*I forgot that INTJs have to get along with other INTJs