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Curse of Old Men: More Creepy than Funny

Unlike women, as men age, there’s a tendency to stigmatize our awful attempts at humor by branding us “creepy” or “perverted” or “just gross.”  Plant an unfunny line on a 20-year-old guy and a teenaged woman might giggle, while the same line said by a guy over 60, to the same young teen, begets the world breaking apart as the whole tone and timbre of the conversation changes to a perceived perversion.

Why is that?

Is there always some sort of unspoken sexual underpinning to every male-to-female interaction that cannot be denied or generationally negotiated?  Why doesn’t the curse cut the opposite way against older women who are labeled creepy and perverted in the same condition?

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The Curse of Super Hearing

I am cursed with the Super Hearing SuperPower.  It’s a curse because I can hear everything at any volume tone or decibel.  There is likely some irony in my “db” email sign off — in fact, several people mock me by addressing me as “dB” — not because I am loud, but because every noise at any level appears loud to me.

Having Super Hearing can be a problem as an apartment dweller in The Big City:

When you live in a building with other people, you always have to negotiate the tricksy totems of living.  Loud music, wild children, stomping feet above you, and banging on walls can quickly descend into ongoing fights and rifts that can never heal.

In my experience in apartment dwelling, I have learned that some neighbors are never worth the time it might take to ask them to temper their behavior because they are so totally unaware of how they come across in the building community; and to waste even a moment of your time trying to help them fit in is time lost when you could be out doing something useful like banging your head against a concrete wall to get them out of your mind.

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Corey Haim Finds Fame in Death

Corey Haim died yesterday, and while we don’t yet know the cause of his death, we do know during the last few years of his life he was desperate, lonely, and out of socket.  His sad reality show — “The Two Coreys” — only elevated his mistakes and his worrisome life as evidenced in this flyer he paid to have published in a Hollywood trade magazine in an attempt to reignite his fading career:

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Curse of the Beautiful People

Have you noticed how people born beautiful are actually cursed throughout their lifetimes — even though they may not know it?  There is a viciousness about The Beautiful that seeps from the inside out and changes their natural shine into an ethereal ugliness.

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Medium Curse of the Hardcopy E-Book

If you write words for a paper page or an electronic interface, you are cursed by the medium of publication.

Hardcopy has a limited life and is stuck in stasis.  You might get paid and you might not.  It costs a lot of money to print, distribute and manage paper.

Electronic publication is fleeting and febrile.  You likely will not be paid.  Ever.  You can, however, move with the wind, revise and fix at will, and have others scrape the wealth from you in illegal republication.

One medium promise eternity while the other guarantees death.

Which is the better devil?

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Curse of the Upside Down Lock

Our building manager Jose decided the building, and all our apartments, will be “more secure” Curse of the Upside Down Lock!if he changes all the locks from Rightside Up to Upside Down.

I discovered this insanity, this madness, this curse of the Upside Down Lock — now means we have to turn all our keys upside down so the teeth face downward in order to fit into the building locks. After a lifetime of living “teeth up” when it comes to inserting keys,

I have to admit the only person who is frustrated by this new Attack of the Locks is me and not “crooks and burglars” as Jose claims. Jose also thinks using upside down locks puts “less torsion” on the key and it “makes your wrist feel better” after turning keys The Right Way all day long.

Has anyone else been exposed to this New Key Madness? Or is this just another one of Jose’s bright ideas that results in making the entire building darkly miserable? Did I miss the memo on new lock theories?

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Curse, of, the, Common, Comma

Do, you, like, to, use, commas, as, if, they, are, running, out, of, style? I don’t like commas and I avoid them.

My students, on the other hand, as well as many amateur authors, use commas as if they were free by the bushelful and need to be crammed into every bramble and sigh. I never add a comma before an “and” though many people employ a comma there.

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