From: martinc@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: More on guys who aren't dating Ed Wright
Date: 27 Sep 92 18:50:32 GMT
Distribution: soc
Organization: UNC Department of Computer Science


  *** Sorry this is a new thread, the news server here flaked out ***
     *** and I'm too lazy to dig up all the right backpointers. ***

In article <ewright.717559558@convex.convex.com> ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:

   In <MARTINC.92Sep26115753@grover.cs.unc.edu> martinc@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:

   >Ed, you know what?  There are something like 5 million people in the Bay
   >Area.  Big-time attendance at a Giants game is something like 40,000.

   Have you ever heard of television, Charlie?  Do you know it's not
   actually necessary to *go* to a baseball game in order to watch it?
   Did you know that the World Series and the Super Bowl are the highest
   rated programs on network television.  What?  They aren't?  I'm just
   making that up because I'm a jerk?  Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.

Ed, here's what you said:

      I also know that Los Angeles and San Francisco have their own
      baseball/football teams and that the seats are not empty for every
      game.  You may not go to football and baseball games, but somebody
      must.

You notice where it says "the seats are not empty"?  Or "You may not
*go* *to*"? And actually, I *didn't* know the Super Bowl and World
Series are the highest rated shows on network television -- in fact, it
isn't even true -- but assuming it were, is the Bay Area the only market
to which network television is sent?

Why are you so *devoted* to defending the idea that ANY interest in ANY
sport whatsoever is morally wrong?

   >But get a clue, man!  The Gulch is *full* of programmers!  They're *all*
   >computer geeks just like you and me.  You've never *lived* until you've
   >watched some of the softball games -- they're almost as funny as Giants
   >games.

   If they were really "computer geeks" they wouldn't even being trying
   to play softball.  Or watching Giants games.

Yeah, I know.  Any time spent on sports detracts from improving your
mind.  I remember that argument.  It's still asinine.

But in the mean time, you carefully deleted the *point*, didn't you?
The part where I wrote:

      Hunks with Porsches are in the distinct minority, and while they
      often seem to get the "trophy" women, you're not looking for a
      trophy anyway, are you?

You see, there are lots of physically inept, unfit, bright and ambitious
but merely salaried computer people who *do* have relationships, get
married, all that stuff.

   >It just doesn't seem to stand up to statistical examination at least.

   Okay, you want statistics?  Consider this...

   * There are roughly a million people living in Dallas.
   * Roughly half of those (500,000) are women.
   * Maybe a fifth of those are between the ages of 25 and 35 -- 100,000.
   * About a third of those are single -- 34,000
   * Probably half of those are without a boyfriend at the present time
     -- 17,000.
   * Over half of them have gone to college -- 9,000.
   * But fewer than half of all people who start college graduate -- 4,000.
   * Maybe one in five college graduates goes on to get a graduate
     degree -- 800. 
   * Perhaps one out of every ten graduate degrees awarded to women is
     in science or engineering -- 80.

   Now, realistically, I don't assume more than 10% of the women I am
   interested in will be interested in me.  You would no doubt claim
   some phantasmagorically higher figure, like 99 or 100%.  But we are
   still talking about somewhere between 8 and 80 women who are somewhere
   out there amongst a mass of one million people.

Thereby proving that if you simply call random phone numbers, you have
no hope.

BUT... there's a little sampling problem here.  You're not likely to
*meet* women who are distributed like the general population of Dallas.

(Also, by the way, you're making some pretty strong assumptions if you
presume that the ONLY women you're likely to be interested in will have
GRADUATE DEGREES in SCIENCE or ENGINEERING.  [I'll admit that if you
insist on that in their resume you'll likely find ... that you don't
meet many women.  Hmmm.  Do you see any pattern to this?]  How about
lawyers?  M.D.s?)

In any case, as I said, you aren't going to meet women with the same
distribution as the general population of Dallas.  I doubt you regularly
go to church socials and AARP meetings, so that narrows the age range.
You're much more likely to go to plays than to Cowboys games -- thus
you'll likely meet women who are interested in the theater and
literature, and who are bright in the bargain.  You work for a high-tech
company, so unless you're the night janitor you're much more likely to
meet women with technical degrees, or at least college degrees, than you
would in the general population.  (And if you don't, don't give up on
secretaries and admin assistants: they're often as bright as anyone
you'll meet, but pushed into these "second string" jobs by lack of
college finances or by social pressure.)

In fact, if you think about it, the women you meet in day-to-day life
are most likely interested in the same things you are, or at least some
of them, simply because they're there!  Unless you presume that everyone
other than you is out doing things they *don't* like, unable to choose
freely to do the things they do like.

   >But I think a dozen people here have tried to tell you that *our*
   >impression of you -- from your self-pity, 

   Self-pity?  That's rich coming from you, Charlie.  Who was it that
   posted that blatant, whining plea for sympathy because Friday was
   his tenth anniversary with his ex-wife, 

Ed, as the little cake said to Alice: Eat me.

   he didn't have a girl, etc.?

Could someone please send me the thing where I said I didn't have a
girl.

ED YOU NITWIT, THE WHOLE POINT HERE IS THAT *I'M* NOT A HUNK, *I'M* NOT
AN ATHLETE (or even in particularly good shape, a summer of driver
writing and hay fever/asthma has lead to a pretty sedentary summer) AND
I'M GETTING ALL THE GIRLS I CAN HANDLE!!!  And they're not "best of a
bad situation" choices either: I'm dating a cog psych grad student,
another women with three degrees in three different areas, a lawyer, a
journalist and and a couple of nurses.  (Or at least I think we're
dating.  We're going out, at least.)  With a dermatology fellow and an
post-grad Asian Studies major in the bullpen.  I'm dating more than I
ever have in my life!

Why?  Because I *asked*.  Because I met women I thought were
interesting, and asked them out.  I also got turned down a lot, but what
the hell?

   >your inability to tell the difference between an
   >honestly-stated attempt to help and a personal attack, 

   Rubbish.  I've *never* mistaken one of your personal
   attacks for an honestly stated attempt to help.  

See, that's just what I mean.  What you've actually done is
*consistently* mistaken my honest attempts to help for personal attacks.
But Ed, if I just wanted to *insult* you I could do a *helluva* sight
better job on you than I've done.  (Remember what Dawn wrote to you a
few days ago: about how I'd said "Wait a minute, I think this guy really
needs help" and told you about my therapy?  *She* certainly thinks I was
trying to help.)

See, Ed, the reason I keep coming back to you is that it just blatantly,
screamingly obvious that you're someone in -massive pain-.  Even worse,
it's massive pain that I can identify with only too well, because you
sound like me 15 years ago.  I don't know what happened, or how -- if it
was your childhood or your karma or your stars or your genes -- but you
have this massive investment in hopelessness and your own worthlessness.

   I doubt you're even capable of an "honestly stated attempt to help,"
   and I'm sure you have no desire to do anything of the sort.  You've
   even refused to answer email that I've sent you because your cheap
   shots would be wasted without the audience you have on the net.

Would everyone who's sent me email and not gotten an answer please hold
up their hands?  Thank you.

Ed, I'm honestly sorry I missed replying -- but I am both a little bit
of a flake about email anyway, and I'm at the end of a really unstable
net link right now.  (Remember a couple days ago my mentioning that Beth
and I both were seeing replies to things -- one from the other -- where
we'd never seen the original post?)  I don't remember getting anything
from you by email.

   >misquotation

   Ah, I see you've read Lenin. -- "Always accuse the enemy of
   doing what you intend to do yourself."  You have learned well,
   Comrade! :-)

Ed, so far in this most recent exchange, at one point you've accused me
of saying that your fat friend "deserved to die".  I'm quite certain I
didn't say that -- nor have you responded to my request that you show me
where I said it.  When pressed, you said that I said she had low
self-esteem and that being fat was all her fault.  I don't think I said
*that* either, but it doesn't matter: it certainly isn't the same as
saying she deserved to die.  Misquotation.

You've also said that I said I "didn't have a girl" in this very post.
I don't remember saying that, and doubt you can find a post in which I
said it.  Misquotation.

You twisted your own argument from "seats in a stadium" to "watching
television" -- misquoting *yourself* for Christ's sake! -- in order, I
guess, to avoid the idea that maybe some people other than yourself
didn't watch sporting events.

You've cut off paragraphs that made my point -- admittedly a quotation
out of context rather than a strict MISquotation.

If *I've* misquoted you, show me the quote and what I said that
misquoted, and I'll apologize.  But there's *ample* evidence that you've
misquoted me, distorted my words, or twisted your own to make a quote
out of context from me look bad.

(And by the way: Lenin?  Comrade?  Not only is that a pretty clumsy shot
at guilt by association -- ludicrously fallacious -- but given my
general reputation as having politics somewhere only slightly to the
left of Barry Goldwater it's pretty laughable.  And why the smiley?
Don't you at least have the courage to stand behind your own fallacies?)

   >It's because you're a jerk.

   I thought this was the newsgroup that believed women always went
   after jerks?  

Did you think of that all by yourself, or did you wait for Maxie to
think of it, and use it uncredited?  In any case: I'm not "this
newsgroup" I'm just a single strong voice.  I don't think women go after
jerks, I just think that whimpering simps always think that emotionally
strong, assertive, and self-confident men are jerks.

You, however, are not a strong, assertive, self-confident man.  

You're still a poor kid who can't get over his mommy calling him skinny,
or his daddy calling him a klutz, or his grade school gym teacher
laughing at him when he fell down, or something.  Something that has
made you feel deeply disfigured, just like MY mother made me feel
disfigured because I was fat and scarred.  Something that has affected
you so deeply that you feel like there is no hope that *anyone* *ever*
will love you, no matter how good you are at other things.

I don't wonder that you quoted Cyrano.  (It's my favorite play in all
the world, by the way.)  Think of it: a great poet, a great writer of
prose -- an artist, famous for his nobility of spirit and his panache --
and the greatest swordsman in all France, maybe the greatest swordsman
of all *time*, a man who in real life *did* fight 100 men simultaneously
and win.  For all his accomplishments, for all his endeavors to be
"admirable in all things", he couldn't win the one thing he *really*
wanted: the love of a woman.  Don't you see something of yourself in
your own list of accomplishments?  Don't you think, down deep, that if
you were only admirable in all things that it might get you what you
*really* want: love that you can value and accept, love that makes you
feel, finally, good about yourself?

But you remember the end of the first act of Cyrano?  Just before he
says that strives to be admirable in all things?  He takes a glass of
water, half a macaroon, and a grape from the serving girl, because she
insists that he take *something*?

That scene is always played with the serving girl looking at Cyrano with
awe, and admiration, and maybe even love -- and Cyrano is always blind
to it.  He can't see past his nose when it comes to seeing that someone
*might* love him even with his disfigurement.

Ed, it's time you learned to see past your own nose.
--
Charles R. Martin/(Charlie)/martinc@cs.unc.edu/(ne crm@cs.duke.edu) 
O/Dept. of Computer Science/CB #3175 UNC-CH/Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
H/3611 University Dr #13M/Durham, NC 27707/(919) 419 1754
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every
one I meet,/Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew
before?/ Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your
nonsense?"  _Leaves of Grass_ xxiii.4.
Newsgroups: soc.singles,alt.romance,alt.romance.chat