all women are feminists and all feminist evidence is anecdotal. ask them a question and they will tell you a little story. ask them a question to clarify what you infer is the point of the story and they will tell you another story. when they do attempt to draw a conclusion or a larger inference from an anecdote they will often ask, "does that make any sense?" and the answer, of course is (almost invariably) no, it doesn't make any sense. and since i wasn't trying to get any of them into bed, i would say so (if you're trying to get them into bed, you always say "yes, that makes perfect sense" or manufacture some sensible interpretation that has nothing to do with what they said). telling them that they don't make sense, i found, is like telling them that not only do they not win the trip to hawaii, they don't even get the samsonite luggage. they become forlorn and uncommunicative. that was when i realized that it was impossible to engage them on an intellectual, reasoning, "writerly" level - that is in a purely matter-of-fact fashion. i had to act, had to portray myself as being happy, sympathetic, interested and cheerful in order to maintain a level of...



...i don't know what you would call it. it wasn't communication in any meaningful sense of the term as i understand it. it was a kind of "emotional badminton." i acted happy, sympathetic, interested and cheerful and then it was her turn to act happy, sympathetic, interested and cheerful and then it was my turn, etc. she might accidentally say something interesting where i could, with sincerity, say that i found what she had just said interesting. this temporarily escalated the level of her cheerfulness but, alas, that is all that it did: whatever was being said ranking a very distant second to maintaining and escalating the level of cheerfulness. a very, very distant second.

-dave sim, tangents-