Amusements 4/97 • j********o@***.com 23/04/1997 00:00:000 UTC Cartoon Roundup! Both from the fertile mind of Mike ("Beavis and Butthead") Judge. King of the Hill - tr���s amusado! Hill is, of course, a younger version of Anderson, from B&B. My favorite episode is probably the first: most illustrative of the Middle American mindset which it should, and often does, champion. "Git off my property, twig-boy! You're not welcome here!" I also like the way he made the Hill's new Chinese neighbors ("I am LAOTIAN! LAOS! It's a country, east of Thailand! Morons!" "Oh, Peggy Hill, what giant shoes you have! Look at me, like little girl in mama shoes! Ok, bye.") giant jerks, instead of put-upon sane people. Daria - equally amus���. Daria Morgendorfer is, of course, the acquantance of B&B: she moved away from Highland to Lawndale, where she hangs out with the equally alienated Jane Lane, a more artistic type. (Ya know, for cartoons, they're pretty cute! I prefer Daria - I love a cute smirk. Reminds me of WNN's departed Thalia Assuras. Hmmm Hmmmm... Thalia's such a sassy little bitch: I'd like to grab her by the shoulders and shake her 'till she cries. Then, I'd throw her down on the ..., um, but that's a post for another newsgroup...). Ahem... there's a curious dramatic resemblance to B&B (sans the videos): the structure of the episodes is similar: the pair encounter a situation, must embark on a mission, confronting an indifferent world, and return none the wiser. The difference is that Daria and Jane are wiser, and smarter, to start off with. In some sense, they are female equivalents of B&B, although I'd be hard pressed to say which is which (also, I have trouble remembering which B is which). Probably Daria is analogous to the wiser and more cynical Butthead, while Jane is like the more pro-active Beavis. The supporting cast is also entertaining, like the innocently jock-brained Kevin, although the two black kids are much saner than the rest of the class, as if to give them quirks like everyone else would be inviting trouble. Gorno Just saw the Graceland special on VH-1: it's cool to see the technical way Paul Simon writes his songs. "The Mississippi delta is shining like a national guitar, And I am following the river, down the highway, Through the cradle of the Civil War. (sic) I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee, I'm going to Graceland. Poor boys, and pilgims, with families, And we are bound for Graceland. She comes back to tell me she's gone. As if I didn't that, as if I didn't know my own bed. As if I'd never noticed How she brushed the hair back from her forehead. She says that losing love is like a window in your heart, Everyone sees you're blown apart, Everyone sees the wind blow. Woooo, in Graceland, Graceland, I'm going to Graceland. Poor boys, and pilgims, with families, And we are bound together for Graceland. I may be obliged to defend Every love or every end, Or maybe there's no obligations now. But I've a reason to believe that we all will be received In Graceland." • j********o@***.com 25/04/1997 00:00:000 UTC Neat Millenium: finally coughed up something beyond serial-killer-of-the-week. Maybe this means we're rid of whiny wife and daughter. Neat X-Files: more humor than we've seen in ages, plus no annoying murders. I _liked_ that chameleon guy: the shame is that he could just have given himself a Mulderoid facelift and had a successful love life... well, I guess he'll get out of prison some day. How they convicted him, I can't imagine. Even his victims wouldn't believe the rape charges, much less a jury. Maybe they got him on unlawful handling of Type 4 medical waste, or whatever it is in that state, etc., etc. . Heaven forfend that he might have done the unspeakable to Scully: she is an young, single woman... I assume she dates (occasionally). It got me thinking about the value of beauty. If an ugly person could become attractive, would they be more or less successful (at romance in particular, but life in general as well) than the average attractive person? The ugly person might remain "socially awkward" if they had been before, or crippled by anger and resentment of the opposite sex ("They're ALL asking for it! Every one of 'em, ALL the time!"). On the other hand, looks change the way identical behavior is received. Continuing in my presentation of revolting aspects of my personal life (is there another kind? Yes! My middle name is Mark, after my paternal grandfather Mars... that's cool, ain't it?) As a concrete example: there was this somewhat cute girl (no names will be given so as to protect the privacy of those involved) who worked with Hamont Patel in whatever office ajoined ICON back in my day (her name was Robin Epstein, if memory serves: she also worked in the physics office; not to be confused with Robin Bey, one of the cute girls who worked in the bookstore and lived in Stage XII B, I think, but that's another story...). Arun Seraphin and I both sort of liked her, but she was obviously not our type, and besides, we didn't stand a chance. A certain handsome former ICONite, who will remain nameless (Ken Kurpiel) saw her working security at the con and started chatting her up. Now, he had spoken with her for maybe ten minutes (Ken and me were working together or something, so I was privy to these events, as well as oogling all semi-attractive women from the command deck), but the next time he saw her, he presented her with a bunch of (purloined) balloons, which she received with obvious pleasure. Now, it's certainly true in life that fortune favors the blind, I mean, bold, but there's a reason _I'd_ never do that to such a slight acquantance: she'd call the F'ing police! So, anyway, over the next week or so, they date (I think he nailed her), then he dumps her, since he says she's an idiot (to paraphrase). Good for you, Ken! (in several senses). Makes me believe in a moral order to the universe: the best part was that she had to keep working next door to us, and was obviously real pissed off about his treatment of her! (Arun, shortly after their cessation of cordialities, handed her something for Ken (since they were semi-attached, as it were): she was not amused!) So, good looks can change what, from a less attractive person, would be threateningly serious, into a positively recieved act. On the other hand, attractive people often treat their romantic interests like crap, since they know that there are lots of fish in the sea (for them): so a less socially awkward ugly person, transformed into an attractive one, might be more successful because of greater social graces. In addition, the formerly ugly person might be interested in and set his sights on targets of lesser beauty than the always-beautiful one would be satisfied with, targets who would be nicer people, and more receptive, than comparably attractive ones (as argued). What of the reverse? An attractive person able to become ugly? (Assume that it's an X-Files type thing, so we'll ignore any bitterness that a disfigured person would be likely to have. I'm also implicitly considering the case of a male, since the two options are not quite interchangeable.) The formerly attractive person would possess a greater self-confidence, which is useful, but, as argued, it could get him into trouble. He might continue to exude charisma, which is, like the related self-confidence, considered innately attractive (in men, at least). Accustomed to more attractive romantic interests, he might set his sights too high, or continue to treat his interests with a disdain that his appearance no longer compensates for. (These are admittedly a number of conflicting points lurking in the preceding argument: since there are presumably fewer beautiful people in general, the selection within that group alone would be more limited, not less; if there are indeed more fish in the sea for the attractive, it presumes that the more attractive person is willing to consider persons of lesser appearance categories as objects of desire. The ugly person is presumably limited instead by the interest range of his potential targets. I've implicitly assumed both an expectation of comparable subjective beauty and a shared expectation of minimal beauty, which tends to cast the problem as one in which not only do the attractive refuse to date the ugly, the comparably ugly refuse to date them too! (This could be represented nicely with demand or satisfaction curves.) This confirms the suspicion that the problem for the ugly is their own pickyness, while the attractive may be comparatively un-picky! (Yet still too picky to accept the ugly.) So, let's simply accept the satisfaction curves for the average representative of any particular appearance level, and those among his targets, rather than factoring the individual's attractive qualities against his breadth of interest. One might presume that nice behaviour and appearance combine in forming a degree of "romantic effectiveness," assuming that an individual acted to maximize his attractiveness, everyone would be nice. Apparently, there is some level of satiation in effectiveness, beyond which the individual acts less nice, because they don't need to be any more effective, and presumably derive satisfaction from incompatable behaviors (like locking your latest girlfriend out in the street naked after an argument, as a friend of my brother did: she came back the next day, begging forgiveness! Jezuz!) I am also assuming the existence of relatively objective standards, as argued by Doctor Rob and experience, that people of comparable objective beauty wind up dating. This assumption isn't essential, as a subjective satisfaction curve can produce the same result: say I like "short, flat, and thinning hair," (to quote the commercial) or am otherwise exceptional in my tastes; my demand curve will rate the same women differently than another's, but may have the same shape and spectral divergence as that of any man of my relative attractiveness. Unless this ensemble of women have a particularly powerful aversion to short, pot-bellied men with beards and glasses, say, my unusual tastes will not affect the breadth of my potential mates. Statistical evidence is unconclusive on this matter: it has been argued that women cut their hair when they feel comfortable in their lives and want to spice them up a little, so they may in fact be more likely to be attached, hence unavailable; to invoke non-appearance factos, short haired women are probably more liberal in mind-set, so that's not good; and, of course, the "Ellen" factor, ahem.) So, where does this leave us? Probably waking up in a pool of our own vomit in a Tijuana gutter, with a warm handgun in our palm. But it's a good kind of vomit. Neat episode. Gorno