Right Wing Nation

Do you know what happened 792 years ago today? Go here to find out (and click the link).

I see I’m not the only one who had an aha! experience:

Like most of the American public, I have stood at the pump at my local filling station and cursed the cost of gasoline. Yet, after filling my tank I inevitably drive to Starbucks to stand in line with other women seeking a reprieve from morning mommy detail, handing over $4.24 without batting an eye as I order my beloved venti, soy chai latte.

The other morning I had, as Oprah might say, an “aha” moment. After paying for my cup of tea, I thought “What’s wrong with this picture? Why am I complaining about the price of gasoline while forking out what is arguably a lot of money for a cup of hot water and spices?”

Mothers and fathers beware - if certain members of Congress have their way, you will not be standing in line at Starbucks any more because you’ll be too busy waiting in mile-long lines to get gasoline. Every year as summer vacation drive time nears and families get ready to hit the road for vacations, politicians and the media heighten the emotional sensitivities of an American public willing to spend large sums of money on coffee, or in my case tea, but infuriated by the thought of what they spend on a gallon of gasoline.

Indeed (and speaking of, hat tip to Glenn Reynolds).

From Hatemonger’s Quarterly, the money quote:

Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has refused to call Bono, the tonsorially-challenged rock star who moonlights as the self-obsessed personification of a panacea for world hunger.

According to a dubious outfit named Reuters, Bono aimed to speak with the Prime Minister in order to browbeat him into carting off donkey loads of cash for corrupt governments in Africa, to ensure that few starving Africans eat anything, but lots and lots of brutal dictators get their hands on AK-47s. And, as it turns out, Prime Minister Harper would have none of it.

To which we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” can only respond: Bravo, bravo, bravo, Prime Minister Harper!

Hear, hear!

Then, he’s French–that is, an arrogant, useless waste of perfectly good carbon (emphasis mine):

Retailed to us via The Times, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, former French President and author of the failed EU constitution, has written in Le Monde that by making “cosmetic” changes to the constitution “public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly”.

SCOTUS on upholding Washington law. Italics original; bold mine.

“As applied, … [Washington state law] is not fairly described as a restriction on how the union can spend ‘its’ money; it is a condition placed upon the union’s extraordinary state entitlement to acquire and spend other people’s money,” the Supreme Court said.

Read the whole thing. Hat tip to Born Again Redneck.

I know I’m going to be branded a serial-raping misogynist, but yesterday at the store, I had an aha! experience.

There were three women shopping together. They had parked their cart in the middle of the aisle, and there were people on either side who wanted to get through. These three women were just looking at what was on the shelves, something like this:

“I had no idea they made this! Have you ever tried it?”

“How many calories are in a serving?”

“Oh, look at this! I’ve wanted to try this for a long time! Have you?”

“Does it have any trans-fat or corn products in it? Cause I can’t eat corn products on my diet, and well, trans-fats will give you cancer!”

And then, they descended into a comparative discussion of the diets they were on–while people were waiting to get through. What they could and couldn’t eat, and how much of what. The whole time, they would glance from time to time at the people on either side who wanted through, then go back to their conversation.

Now I realize this is an odd situation. I haven’t often seen women shopping together (and as I’ll explain, that’s a good thing), but this was what sparked that aha! upstairs.

You see, I had a specific list of items to buy. Yet, I was in the store for a good forty-five minutes, because before the incident above, I had been behind women ever so slowly moving through the aisles (right in the middle so you can’t get around them), kind of perusing the contents of the shelves, as if they had nothing specific to buy, or no place to be, or nothing else to do. It happens every time I go to the store, and has as long as I can remember.

The next time you go to the store, contrast the behavior of the women and men (unless they’re together, then the woman’s behavior overrides his). The men are zooming (or trying to zoom) through the store, in search of specific items, and when they find them, they get in the checkout line. Women seem to view shopping at the supermarket as some kind of pleasant experience to be savored slowly.

Or the checkout line, note the difference between men and women. Men have their cash/plastic out, ready to buy their groceries and get the hell out. Women wait until everything has been rung up, then search through their purses trying to find their money. Or if they’re using checks, men will not only have their checkbooks out, but often fill in everything but the amount before they get to the checker, while women, again, will wait until everything is rung up before digging through their purses to find their checkbook, and then a pen.

You even see the same difference between male cashiers and female cashiers. Male cashiers ring you up, usually with a “hi” and that’s about it. Female cashiers always want to comment on what you’re buying.

Here’s the aha! part. This behavior is not limited to the checkout line or the grocery store.

We’re all familiar with the common complaint about lines at women’s restrooms. The common explanation is that men have more, er, places to go per restroom, and that men don’t take as long. Well, there’s something to the fewer places per restroom explanation, but there’s more truth to the second than women realize. Last week, Ace (I think) posted a video about the unwritten code of men’s restroom behavior. And the primary one is that you go in, do your business, wash and dry, and leave as quickly as possible. You do not talk. You do not even acknowledge that anybody else is present. It’s maximum efficiency. Get in, do what you need to do, and get out in as little time as possible.

You’ll never see a couch, or a chaise longue, or a vanity, or makeup lights in a men’s restroom–because the restroom is for, er, those things, not pampering or primping (you will sometimes see men washing in large airport restrooms or truckstop restrooms, but only rarely, and it’s allowable because of the circumstances). If you did put a couch in a men’s restroom, I’m sure men would do a double-take as they passed it, but nobody would use it. Ever.

Here’s another example. When I first moved here — as in the first few days — I had no idea where much of anything but Wal-Mart and Wegman’s was. I had not yet discovered the barbershop hidden in the little strip mall behind Wegman’s, the only place I knew I could get a haircut was at Wal-Mart, so I went.

Getting your hair cut in a salon and a barbershop are two drastically different experiences. I told her what I wanted. My grandfather was a barber. I’ve been going to barbershops all my life. Once I get in the chair, it takes no more than ten minutes. No scissors. Just the clippers. No nasty-smelling squirty stuff. No fingering my hair. No talking about my hair.

Oh, but in a salon, she first has to ask you if you want her to wash your hair (uh, I wash my own hair, thanks). Then she has to squirt stinky crap all over your hair and get it wet. Then she has to pull it up between her fingers and talk about it, you know, tell you how thick or thin it is, that sort of nonsense. Then she has to get out the battery of scissors and cut your hair a teeny bit at a time, instead of getting the clippers and just cutting it off (do they even have clippers at these places, other than trimmers?) Forty minutes after I had sat down, she had finished, and was asking me what goopy crap I wanted in my hair (none, thanks). And even with all the scissors nonsense, she could have been done in half the time if she hadn’t run her mouth constantly, if not to me about my hair (who cares?), to her coworkers and the other women, who were all talking thoughout the whole experience. Oh, and of course, my hair wasn’t what I wanted or asked for, but hey, it was cut. I paid and got the hell out.

Yesterday, before I went to the store, I went to the barbershop. They’re only open 18 hours a week on three days (it’s owned by two retired cops), and I got there twenty minutes before it opened and there were already over a dozen men waiting to get in. Yes, it took me about an hour to get my hair cut, but only because there were so many men in front of me. Once I got in the chair, it took him less than ten minutes. Sure, he and I talked, but talking didn’t distract him from cutting my hair. And my God, if barbers dawdled around like beauticians do and squirted crap on your hair and cut it only a tiny bit at a time with scissors, they wouldn’t get any business.

There must be a “Don’t dawdle” gene on the Y chromosome. It’s the only thing that explains this difference in behavior. I mean, who cares how thick my hair is? Why have an extended conversation about how many calories is in the salad dressing? Why not just look, and if it’s too much, buy the low-fat version and keep your mouth shut about it? Why are the similarities and differences between different diets intersting conversation — or more to the point, why are they appropriate conversation topics when people want to get past you in the aisle? Why can’t you talk about your diets elsewhere, like in the car after you’ve bought your groceries? Why would you wait until everything has been rung up before you start digging through your purse for your credit card — I mean, you know ahead of time you’re going to need it, right? So why wait before you try to find it? And yeah, I’ve heard the “women watch the cash register to make sure they’re not being ripped off” argument, and it’s crap, since they could dig out their credit cards before the cashier starts ringing up their items, but they never do.

Sure, there are times I dawdle in the store — like when I’ve never been there before and want to see what they have, you know, important things like do they carry Haagen-Dasz in quarts, and if so, what’s the pricing like. But I’m aware that people have things to buy and lives to live, and try to stay out of their way, and usually, when I go to the store, it’s because I know what I want, and want to buy it and get the hell out so I can get on with my life.

And the corrolary for the dawdle gene hypothesis is this: The dawdle quotient (DQ) increases exponentially with the number of women. So if the DQ is 3 and there are two women, the DQ will be 9. If there are three women, the DQ will be 27. God forbid I should ever get behind four women shopping together.

That’s my explanation, anyway.

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