Why Guys Like Porn (short version)

Ok ok ok. Everyone calm down. Now let's just get this thing out in the open, and then we can all go back to living in shame.

Guys like porn. Men and women are different in a variety of ways (Matt... I promise I'll explain what goes where on NYE), but none more fundamental than their mode of reproductive urges. Men are hardwired to try to spread their seed. Women are hardwired to seek out the best mate for the propagation of the species. You can see it in nature. In our primate cousins (don't bother reading further if you don't believe in evolution or at the very least, Flying Spaghetti Monster-ism). You can see it in dogs. You can see it in how horny dudes are. That's right ladies, no matter how much your dude loves you, and he does honestly, there is an innate desire within him to do it with as many chicks as is possible... his seed must live on! Society has decided that pornography is inappropriate and to be shunned. In a lot of ways, this blog is pornographic, in that it's offensive, and perverse. And I may or may not be wearing pants right now. But let's look back at porn for a second:

Ancient Greece: Thursday, 7:48 pm. Horatio arrives at the sex party that his friends Horace and Helen are having. Horatio knows that tomorrow he takes his apprentice, Hortence out for that "initiation" ceremony that all mentors love (and mentees fear), and wanted to ensure he was... UP to the task. So Horatio strips naked like the rest of the 20-some party goers, and ties a little piece of string around his wangsticle. This he notes, is to signal that he is not "participating" tonight. So how does Horatio occupy his evening? Well, he WATCHES all his friends wife-swap, and do "butt" stuff and whatever else those sick Greeks could think of. And Horatio watched. And thus porn was born. Although probably sometime in history before that somebody watched somebody else bone.

Flashforward to the present. Now back in the day, there was no stigma associated with looking at porn. Today it is like a dirty little secret. Well, here's the thing. Guys like porn. I'm just talking about the average, run-of-the-mill stuff. Naked chicks. Not the like triple-anal-ball-gag-ground-beef porno. That can only be explored in "Why Guys Like Porn (long version). A guy looks at porn and has a momentary fantasy. A guy looks at porn and thinks about boning some chick. Every time a guy walks down the street and sees a girl, he instinctually ponders, "what would it be like to fuck her", even if it's only for a second. Porn affords guys the ability to "fuck" a virtually unlimited number of girls. A guy can have sex with a different girl anytime he wants to. That doesn't mean that he doesn't love you, ladies. It doesn't mean that he doesn't respect you. He is satisfying this instinctual desire in the healthiest way he knows how... sheer fantasy.

So here's the deal: Guys look at porn, not to get ready to cheat on their significant others (although this sometimes happens, admittedly), not because they are unsatisfied with their sex-lives, not because they want to be with someone else. Guys look at porn, because it's in their nature to LOOK. When a guy cheats, that's different. He's broken a promise he's made to someone else. But when a guy fantasizes about some slut in a magazine, he does so so that he doesn't have a need to stray from you. He does it because guys are always naturally curious... is the grass greener? Or shaved? So don't condemn a guy because he likes to LOOK. Shit.

iPod, RIAA, and Blockbuster

Ok, everyone needs to take a really deep breath. All over the news sites I read are headlines like, "Will the iPod kill Blockbuster?", and other inane drivel. These stories first site that the iPod has already "killed" music stores, and with Apple's alleged deal with Fox and other studios to launch a web-based movie rental service, the industry fears Apple will hunt them down. Let's deal with each delusion in turn.

Apple did not destroy the record industry, and by extension music stores. The record industry destroyed the record industry, and by extension music stores. For YEARS the mp3 was a file format that provided computers with an eminently transportable version of user's CD collections. Apple was NOT the first mp3 player on the market. Much like Sony's Walkman didn't kill the tape deck, to insist that a media player would destroy a media industry is ludicrous. No, what killed the recording industry is the fact that studio executives A) didn't understand what the technology was— this is what happens when incompetence and ignorance are given multi-million dollar salaries B) didn't hire anyone who knew what the new technology was C) didn't think that people might tire of the CD as a format, and be looking for something more compu-friendly. It's not that people don't listen to music. And as iTunes has proven, it's not that people are unwilling to pay for it. What people were unwilling to pay for was a format that had become arcane. In our current state of technological innovation, for a media format to have survived as long as it did, is a testament to the quality of the CD as a medium. However, fidelity being pushed as high as it would go, and content being as terrible as ever, people turned to the intertron for their music needs. Once again, I must stress, the fact that people share songs on P2P networks, or rip their friends' CDs did not destroy the record industry. This was merely the effect of their self-defeating approach to the marketplace. The market changed, they didn't, they got burned, and now they're trying to sue someone so that they can still be rich. When the clipper ship industry collapsed, did they sue the steamboat operators?

That brings me to Lackluster. I mean Blockbuster. The Gurftastic blog already gave a full account of how stupid it is for anyone to EVER go to Blockbuster again, and personally pledged not to, until they stopped trying to get away with screwing me over. Well, to sum up, Blockbuster always is a few YEARS behind a good trend. With Netflix already showing a truly thriving business model of internet based rentals (their online video watching thing isn't quite a money maker yet, I think mostly because they don't have many good choices online, and the quality of the feed is pretty poor) Blockbuster belatedly started its own service. And by focusing so intently on just "destroying Netflix" they lost sight of what their customers really wanted (sound familiar????). The game had changed. People didn't want to go to their local store and be hassled by the employees who never knew where anything was. People didn't want to go check out a film they really wanted to see, only to find it wasn't there (but 15 copies of some senseless drivel like Hannah Montana takes Morocco is!!!!). People didn't want a limited selection of movies. People wanted ALL movies. And with the advent of movies-on-demand from cable and satellite providers, there were fewer and fewer reasons to leave the house, drive to Blockbuster, wait in line, and pay too much money for a movie. Netflix already killed Blockbuster a long time ago. Blockbuster died the day Netflix came out, when Blockbuster waited 5 years to start their competing (read: not as good) service. Remember when Blockbuster killed the local home video store? It's the natural progression of things. Get over it, Blockbuster. You're next.

As for Apple putting a nail in the coffin? Yeah... I could see that. I think however, that the proposed venture would be more of a way to try to sell more AppleTVs than to get people never to rent a dvd again. I mean, the logical step is, I rent a movie from iTunes, I can play it on up to 5 devices. I like watching it on my iPod/iPhone/Macbook (Pro if you're Matt) but I'd really like to see it on a bigger screen. I read some tech blog where the writer actually said, "I don't think that this rental venture will be a game changer. When it comes right down to it, people want to watch movies on their big screen TVs." Now, how can I see that AppleTV is the logical bridge, but this professional tech dude can't? Because I'm the fucking man. I guess the whole buying TV shows on iTunes hasn't worked that well, has it? Oh wait, it's been a cash fucking COW. Wake UP! Apple is always seen as this tech innovator, years ahead of the competition. Why? Because they actually are in tune and in touch with what their consumers want. Use-ability. Portability. PERIOD. Ease-of-use and on-demand take precedence over everything these days. Why is the iPhone so sweet? Everything is at your fingertips. All the time. What makes the iPod great? Your entire music collection is right in front of you. Yeah, AppleTV hasn't sold well... YET. Watch for it. Not that I'm gonna go get one. I'm perfectly happy to watch a movie on my computer. Or on my iPod. Or on my iPhone. Between Netflix and iTunes, I may never have to leave the house again...

The Odyssey

I think Charles Ives put it best when he wrote, "Trumpet in C". I
really tend to agree with him there.

This morning marks the beginning of a three month span of voyages. And
I hope at least to take some of my cues from Homer's epic. I mean,
after all those years at sea, he and his crew never resorted to
homosexuality. It probably had something to do with the fact that
everywhere they crashed there were chicks who wanted to bone them.

Step one: Banish the terrorist water. This just in from the front
lines of the War on Terror... Your bottled water is a threat to
airline security. I actually got all the way through the x-ray and was
having one of my trays hand screened by a pretty hot TSA girl when she
found my unopened bottle. "This is a sterile area so you can't take
the water with you".

Now maybe I'm just cynical, but if you let me take my lunch through he
sterile checkpoint, why is my water such a problem? "What if I drink
it?"

"You have to go back out through security and drink it, then come back
through."

"What if I dump it?"

"No".

So it became increasingly clear that my terrorist water was a serious
threat. After all, it had one of the major components of a hydrogen
bomb. Can u guess what component?

Why didn't the incredibly hot chick behind me on line to board, sit
next to me? Why do you torment me so, US Airways? Why do you subject
me to Faith Hill singing fucking Christmas carols while I board? I
checked isitchristmas.com this morning before I left for the airport,
and do you know what it said? It said, "NO". That means I shouldn't
have to fucking listen to fucking Christmas fucking carols by Faith
fucking Hill and what now sounds like the saxaphone dude from 1990's
SNL. Jesus would be so proud.

Anyways, this blog is about the Odyssey. It seems fitting, Odysseus's
was a sequel as is mine. Only in his sequel he got laid a lot and met
a cyclops (incidentally, the word 'Cyclops' was translated in my high
school edition as 'Kyklops', which is exactly the reason that people
shouldn't try to re-translate texts just for cash. They fuck it up.
We all know it's the fucking Cyclops. Deal with it!) and several
nymphs who wanted to bone and never let him go, all so he could make
of back to his wife whom he expected to be chaste whilst he was gone.
In my version, I travel around a lot and get screwed over by the gods
too, but seeing as how I already met the Cyclops (the one-eye) and won
that battle (thanks MPV) I wonder if I'll find myself awash on the
Isle of Lesbos.

Hey Philadelphia, thanks for making me walk the perimeter of your
entire airport only to make me suffer the indignity of again going
through security. I never left the terminal area and followed all the
signs, and somehow ended up having to get screened again. But I
learned my lesson from earlier... I dumped my new water out before it
went through the scanning machine, thus preventing it from becoming
Terrorist Water II. Yeah for some reason it was fine for me to dump
it, walk through the line, and then fill it up again. They must have
scanners in all the fresh water pipes leading into the airport.

I'm hoping to be lured in by a few sexy Sirens, even if they devore
and disembowel a few of my cohorts. Perhaps I can someday tell the
tale of my inane journey to not so distant lands in exchange for room
and board.

More riveting action to come!

Sent from my Holycrapbestphoneever phone.

I need a...

Drink.

So Arni announced that California is going to provide healthcare to all its residents by 2010. Now his own party bemoans the fact that there isn't the cash to make it happen, and it still needs to be ratified by the state senate and a popular vote... but here's the thing. I'm all for all 36 million Cali residents having health insurance. I think that health insurance is one of the biggest scams our country has going... Look around, plenty of civilized nations have universal healthcare and haven't exploded in anarchy.

No, what makes me need a drink is Arni. I mean, I still like watching his steriod-induced muscle madness in Conan: The Destroyer (way better than Conan: The Barbarian, James Earl Jones and all... I mean shit, Destroyer had Wilt Chamberlin, and this chick). But the man is such a fuck-up in so many ways, and yet even my folks have to admit that he's actually been pretty good for California. I don't agree with his politics, I don't agree with his philandering (well, I mean, I agree with it, but I don't respect it), but I gotta tip my hat to him... He actually isn't just toting the party line there in Republicanland. I mean, he wants tougher emissions standards, and won't just sit there and take it while the Feds try to sue the state. I dunno... I guess I'm just gonna go look at more pics of Olivia d'Abo. Damn she was hot when I was four.

PS: I just realized that Olivia d'Abo also played Kevin Arnold's sister on The Wonder Years. Damn. I knew I always loved her.

Xmas Merriment

The best thing about being a Jew on Christmas is that I don't give a
fuck about the war on Christmas. I know you might've missed that on
your google reader the last few days, but believe me, folks there's a
war being waged on your mind, most likely by god-less liberals and for
some reason multinational conglomerates. And probably illegal
immigrants. And the letter 'X'.

Nice as it was to get photos of my recital from my aunt, all the pics
of me an the X looking very happy and relationshippy were not exactly
what I wanted for Xmas. What I wanted was pics of the crockoduck at
my recital. But there were none to be found.

So I hope you're all having a merry Xmas and that you're not nearly as
overfull as I am. For a Non-christian, I sure did attend a hell of a
lot of Christmas parties. The worst part about holiday parties at your
family friends houses is that you, as the child have the same
conversation about 188 times. I don't know if more sick of answering
the question of "how does it feel to be a master of music" or "so what
are you going to do NOW". What I do know is that answering the same
questions to people whom I barely know makes answering the questions
to people that I actually do know and care about all the more tedious.
Lifelong family friends are great and the holidays are a wonderful
time and everything, but I really am just OVER the whole experience
right now. Anyone who needs me, I'll be the salty dude at the bottom
of a bottle somewhere.

Mobile Blogging test

Ummm this is a test of the emergency mobile blogging system. Had this
been an actual emergency the text you just read would have been
different. Carry on.

Sent from my iPhone.

Nip-fucked

OK, here's something that really pissed me off today. I happened upon a show called Nip/Tuck. I had first seen this show a year ago or so on re-runs on FX. I blogged about it here in 2005 (yes I know, it's a fucking friendster blog... well SOMEONE convinced me to have a friendster account, and that's what happened... if you're not a lifelong Gurftastic subscriber, you may want to peep the very beginnings of my temporary insanity), about how dark and fucked up the storylines were and how it was pretty sweet. Well, I found the show again today. And it seems to have turned into Melrose Place. Just to catch you up on what's happened since last I checked in:

The main character, Sean has moved his plastic surgery practice from Miami Beach to LA. His wife became a lesbian and left him for another woman. His best friend/partner had a girlfriend who was SUPER hot named Kimber. Kimber got kidnapped and we thought killed, but it turned out was alive... she now has a kid with Sean's son, who was last seen getting peed on by an angry group of trannys (I think he dated one, but when the dude was pre-op instead of post, he freaked and beat the dude/chick up... long story... and weird), who's now a meth-head. Ummm and Sean's best friend and lesbian ex-wife are in love and are sleeping together in secret. And umm, the lesbian-ex's lover has a older teenage daughter (probably 19), and that chick boned Sean. And is crazy.

So, I don't really know where to begin. I'm disillusioned that the entire show has taken on this sort of campy soap-opera vibe. It was this dark show about the fallibility of beauty, and the dichotomy between the good doc (Sean) and the bad boy (best friend), and how each truly longed to live the other's life. Now it's more a show about who's sleeping with whom, and what evil plots people might be up to. If that's not bad enough, I'm pretty sure some of the plotlines are directly lifted from Melrose Place. I mean, Sean and his buddy inexplicably live in the same house/condo (even though they are both WIDLY successful plastic surgeons). Oh yeah, and Porsche de Rossi (read: hottest lesbian on the set of Arrested Development, hands down) is on it, for some reason. And I guess because it's on late on FX (like 10pm) and they can say "shit" and "tits" they think it doesn't matter that the show sucks ass, it'll still be racy. What happened to the fucked up episodes about removing a fat woman from her coach where she'd been stuck for 2 years because her skin had grafted itself into the fabric? What about the episodes where Sean's son is trying desperately to find his sexuality, after falling in love with a tranny (played very hotly by the very un-trannified Famke Janssen)? What about peeing on him? DAMMIT!

Anyways, yeah. That shit is annoying. You know what else is annoying? Hitting shift to capitalize words. My iPhone does that for me. So I'm gonna have to go ahead and blog from my iPhone so I don't have to keep capitalizing words that I don't want to.

If I want one thing for Christmas, it's for people to stop taking themselves so damn seriously. Honestly people, you will do bigger and better things for the rest of your life. Take it easy, would you?

Poop!

Some of you may remember a few years back there was an "incident" involving feces and a car. To be specific, someone broke into my 1986 Ford LTD Station Wagon and finding nothing to steal (as it had been broken into twice previously, and I no longer kept it locked) the "perp" decided to leave some of himself. Under my steering wheel. It was poop. Lots of it. And while many people rued the fact that they hadn't come up with the idea of pooping in my car first, I always figured it was just some random act of what is commonly known as RAF (Rochester as FUCK). Well, it turns out to just be another in a long line of the Gurfblog being a trendsetter for all the sick fucks the world over. Check it:

Poop!

I'd like to know his whereabouts in Spring of 2002... The interesting thing is this dude's technique. He froze his excrement, and then would break into peoples' cars and leave it to defrost... and he was doing this for a fucking YEAR. Awesome. Anyways, if all the other weird shit that happens to me is going to then start happening in Norway, they better look out, cause I've seen a lot of weird shit.

Something I did when I was drinkin'

I guess I created a new blog last night. I mean, I vaguely remember it. But mostly I remember going to random bars in Santa Monica, watching a dude in one of those breath-controlled wheelchairs (complete with In-n-Out bumper sticker) dance with his lady, while a guy who looks like a somewhat fatter version of my high school band director sang karaoke. Also, there were some hot chicks. Then I remember going to a crowded club. And as I stood there trying to drink away the tiredness that slowly crept in (it still somehow felt like EST, so it was like 4 am at this point), I noticed three things that all clubs have in common: 1- CHODES/DOUCHEBAGS by the MILLIONS. 2- Hot chicks dressed SUPER scandalously (does your grandma know you wear that when you go out?... not that I'm complaining...) 3- Ugly people who dress like they are not ugly, so as to confuse your drunken senses, and cloud your destiny. Then I guess I came home and caved to the undying burden of pressure that has befallen me from one, Matthew Aldwell-Schacter Marques. So Matt, this blog is for you:

Dude, wanna like get hammered on the beach, and then like spend all day hungover, only to have Jr make us go drink, and while you guys scarf pickled eggs and hot dogs, I go yack in the bathroom?

Behold, the atheist's nightmare!

Yes, it's true... the Gurftastic Blog has found a new home... Check back for updates/old ass blogs that are funny...