Because…people who look like that, want people who look like that…

Speed daters go for crowd-pleasing looks

LONELY hearts beware: looking for love at a speed-dating event may leave you feeling unlovable. In big groups, people judge on looks so much that the less stunning may as well forget their clever chat-up lines.

In primates and birds, the larger the group, the better the chance that non-dominant individuals have of being chosen as a mate. Alison Lenton at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and her team looked at whether this is true for people too.

Speed-daters race through a series of "mini dates" of about 5 minutes then invite whoever catches their fancy to get in touch again later. Lenton and her team studied 118 sessions with groups of between seven and 36 people, and found to their surprise that as the size of the group grew, the offers became skewed towards just a few individuals, while the least popular ended up with fewer or no offers (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.08.025).

So why do humans seem to differ from other animals? In smaller groups, says Lenton, people trade off different qualities in prospective mates – physical attractiveness for intelligence, for example. Faced with too much choice, however, we resort to crude approaches such as choosing solely on looks….

Now I know why good looking gay guys are always telling me I should just hit the bars more often to find a mate, and are utterly oblivious to the fact that it doesn’t work for anyone but them.

I know…I know…   It’s my fault for not being more handsome.  Oh…and getting old.  Shouldn’t have done that…

Just fucking tell me to give up why don’t you?

Per the previous post…

Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (Hardcover)
by John T. Cacioppo (Author), William Patrick (Author)

From Publishers Weekly
Eleanor Rigby might have been in worse shape than the Beatles imagined: not only lonely but angry, depressed and in ill health. University of Chicago research psychologist Cacioppo shows in studies that loneliness can be harmful to our overall well-being. Loneliness, he says, impairs the ability to feel trust and affection, and people who lack emotional intimacy are less able to exercise good judgment in socially ambiguous situations; this makes them more vulnerable to bullying as children and exploitation by unscrupulous salespeople in old age. But Cacioppo and Patrick (editor of the Journal of Life Sciences) want primarily to apply evolutionary psychology to explain how our brains have become hard-wired to have regular contact with others to aid survival. So intense is the need to connect, say the authors, that isolated individuals sometimes form parasocial relations with pets or TV characters. The authors’ advice for dealing with loneliness—psychotherapy, positive thinking, random acts of kindness—are overly general, but this isn’t a self-help book. It does present a solid scientific look at the physical and emotional impact of loneliness.

A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness (Hardcover)
by James Lynch (Author)
"Thirty years ago, anyone blaming loneliness for physical illness would have been laughed at," the editors of Newsweek observed in a March 1998 cover story…" (more)

Amazon.com Review
We’re a lonely society. Twenty-five percent of American households consist of one person living alone; 50 percent of American marriages end in divorce (affecting more than a million children); 30 percent of American births in 1991 were to unmarried women. These factors are linked to an increased risk of premature death, according to loneliness specialist James J. Lynch, Ph.D., who has spent almost four decades clarifying how loneliness contributes to a marked increased risk of developing premature coronary heart disease. "Mortality rates in the United States for all causes of death, and not just for heart disease, are consistently higher for divorced, single, and widowed individuals of both sexes and all races," writes Lynch in A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness. An important point in this book is that loneliness in childhood has "a significant impact on the incidence of serious disease and premature death decades later in adulthood." School failure is a major contributor to this problem. Children who fail in school are socially isolated and deficient in the language and communications skills that could help them overcome their isolation. Lynch also explores the links between loneliness and premature death, and describes the biological power of human dialogue–which, he says, is more intimate than sexual intercourse, because dialogue involves the heart, not just the body. This is not a fluffy, feel-good book. There are no quick tips, no instant relief from loneliness, no "do now" lists of activities. This book is for readers willing to delve into the subject of loneliness and health risk. Lynch wants you to understand the magnitude of the problem, which he presents in a style that is both academic (with plenty of statistics and graphs) and accessible. He also wants you to understand the complex solution: contact, companionship, and communication. –Joan Price

From Library Journal
Psychologist Lynch’s The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness (1977) was the pioneering work that linked mental and emotional states to physical well-being. In A Cry Unheard, he expands on the connection between the stress of loneliness and the state of one’s health. Drawing from his own and others’ research, Lynch contends that loneliness has become a silent epidemic, leading to depression and early death. He points out that parents’ use of language and school failure can result in alienation and antisocial behavior, which sow the seeds of loneliness. And while we may seem more "connected" through technology, Lynch warns that technology-induced loneliness is likely to increase and result in even more medical problems. Loneliness, writes Lynch, is a lethal but avoidable poison. While not a "how-to" book, this is worthy of inclusion in larger consumer health collections.
-Valeria Long, Van Andel Research Inst., Grand Rapids, MI 

A lethal but avoidable poison…   I’ve tried for decades to avoid it and all it got me were friends who think I never tried hard enough.  This is why I don’t think I’m going to make it out of my fifties alive. 

…or not.

In Loneliness, the psychologist John T Cacioppo and the science writer William Patrick report on the situation in the United States: Between 1985 and 2004, the number of Americans who said they had no close confidants tripled. Single-parent households are on the rise, and the US Census estimates that 30 percent more Americans will live alone in 2010 than did so in 1980. As the American way of life spreads around the world, no doubt loneliness is being exported with it.

People do like to be alone sometimes. But no one likes to feel lonely – to feel that they are alone against their will, or that the social contacts they do have are without deeper meaning. According to Cacioppo and Patrick the feeling of loneliness is the least of it. They present scientific evidence suggesting that loneliness seriously burdens human health. By middle age, the lonely are less likely to exercise and more likely to eat a high-fat diet, and they report experiencing a greater number of stressful events. Loneliness correlates with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. During a four-year study, lonely senior citizens were more likely to end up in nursing homes; during a nine-year study, people with fewer social ties were two to three times more likely to die.

To explain why loneliness hurts so bad, Cacioppo and Patrick turn to evolutionary psychology…

Caleb Crain, Lonely together

(Emphasis mine…)  A chance comes along for you to do something good, maybe something wonderful for a friend.  Perhaps nothing will come of it.  The odds are poor at best.  But it’s a chance.  It has dropped in your lap.  You need only lift your little finger to give this chance to your friend.

But perhaps lifting your little finger is too much trouble.  If instead, you allow this chance to float away on the wind, like a dead autumn leaf, don’t tell yourself afterward that it wasn’t really of much importance.  Don’t just shrug and think that, after all, probably nothing would have come of it.  That isn’t the point.  …scientific evidence suggesting that loneliness seriously burdens human health. By middle age, the lonely are less likely to exercise and more likely to eat a high-fat diet, and they report experiencing a greater number of stressful events. Loneliness correlates with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. During a four-year study, lonely senior citizens were more likely to end up in nursing homes; during a nine-year study, people with fewer social ties were two to three times more likely to die….  Is this what decent people allow to happen to the ones they care about?  Of course not. 

So don’t tell yourself that it was nothing.  Don’t reassure yourself that the odds were poor anyway.  Stop making excuses.  Look yourself in the mirror, and fess up to the fact that if you care so little about this person, that you’d allow even a billion to one chance they’d find happiness to fly off into the night without so much as a shrug, they were never really someone you cared all that much about to begin with. 

It would be so nice to have someone to come home to here at Casa del Garrett on any night, but especially tonight.  I might not get myself tied up in knots waiting for the outcome in California.  But then…hey…I’ve been single for nearly all my life and I should be expert at handling stress all by myself. 

If only.  

I don’t expect my friends to go to any great lengths to find me dates.  But when something that looks like a good match just drops in their fucking laps and they just let it sail off into the sunset with little more then a shrug of the shoulders it’s hard not to feel betrayed.  No…strike that…I’d be in denial not to see that for what it is. 

Hopefully there are enough good-hearted people in California that come tomorrow morning their gay and lesbian neighbors won’t have to wonder if their hearts ever really had a home there among them.  But if not…whatever doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger…

Not sure if that applies to all the Tequila I’ll be drinking tonight though… 

I’ve been giving it some thought lately.  Probably I’m no different in this regard then any middle aged man who is staring it in the face at this point in his life.  You’ve lived so many years, and now it’s looking you in the face.  And I happen across this article in Scientific American that pretty well tracks my own thoughts on the matter…

Never Say Die: Why We Can’t Imagine Death

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

It should strike us as odd that we feel inclined to nod our heads in agreement to the twangy, sweetly discordant folk vocals of Iris Dement in “Let the Mystery Be,” a humble paean about the hereafter. In fact, the only real mystery is why we’re so convinced that when it comes to where we’re going “when the whole thing’s done,” we’re dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does—it’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?

Yeah…that’s about it…

Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself slipping away, but it isn’t as though there will be a “you” around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you’ve died—and once you’ve died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce. In a 2007 article published in the journal Synthese, University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols puts it this way: “When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there’s an obstacle!”

Actually…I’ve never had that problem.  Maybe it’s just a failure of imagination…and mine is altogether too good for my own good.  But here it is:  Think of sleep.  You lay down, and then you sleep.  Perhaps you dream.  Perhaps you remember a few of them when you wake up.  Fine.  But what about that part you don’t remember.  The part where you are just..not there.  That void between sleep and awake.  That’s death.  Or if that doesn’t do it for you…try to remember what it was like Before you were born.  That point in time when you weren’t.  That’s it too.

It’s a horrible thing to consider.  But ironically, it’s nothing to be afraid of either.  There’s a lot of ways of Dying that are worth being afraid of for sure.  But if death really is the end of you, then you won’t know it, so it’s really nothing to fear in and of itself.  A painful death maybe.  A failed life maybe.  But the saving grace of actually being dead is that won’t know it.

I’m 55 now.  I don’t think I’m going to make it past my sixties.  My body is getting tired.  I can feel the strength in it slipping away.  I think I have more of mom’s side of the family genes in me then dads.  Males in her side just don’t last all that long.  I figure I have maybe another ten years or so in me and that will be it.  Either my heart will go or I’ll get a stroke or something like the males in her side usually do and that will be that.

Of course, that’s assuming I get the natural death and there’s no guarantee of that.  I live in the city after all.  I was taking my nightly walk the other day, with my iPod’s earbuds plugged in.  I was strolling through my neighborhood where I’ve always felt safe, listening to a favorite classical piece, my mind wandering between this and that, when a friggin’ huge pit bull lunged at me from out of nowhere.  This lady was walking her dogs…the other one was this little fluffy white thing…and as I passed by the big pit bull suddenly decided to take offense at my existence.  There were parked cars between me and her and I didn’t even see them coming, just the motherfucking dog lunging at me from between two parked cars while it’s owner struggled to hold on.  "Jesus Christ", I exclaimed, and she looked at me for a moment like she’d have loved to just let the dog go.  They walked on by without so much as a word of apology from the lady.  And here I always thought my violent Baltimore end would be at the hands of a mugger.

So…it could be anything…really…at any time.  It’s a thing I’ve always accepted, I think, somewhere in the back of my mind.  But when I was younger, it was only the violent or accidental death that seemed to be looking me over from somewhere just out of reach.  I still had most of a natural human lifespan ahead of me, and in that, plenty of time to find a mate.  Now I think, I’m just waiting to die because something somewhere in some corner of my mind has finally concluded that it won’t happen.  And I’ll pass on from life never having had experienced that love of my life that so many others do…even if it’s only for a while.  If I’d had it to do over again, knowing how it would be…I think I might have just opted out.

My brother once helpfully told me that a lot of people never find their soulmate.  Thanks brother mine.  Another of my gay Happy Hour friends helpfully told me recently that I should give up looking for that certain someone.  "I’ve seen the guys you keep looking at," he told me.  "People who look like that…want people who look like that."  This from a nice looking guy who himself has an older lover.  Thanks.  Thanks a lot.  I get the message.  I don’t qualify.  I reckon this is why the two of them decided to leave me stranded at the gate.

I kinda like the Fark.Com commenter’s responses to that Scientific American article…

"Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness."

Don’t try that. I did and wound up falling face-first into the coffee table.

…

f there’s an afterlife, you probably think "Whoa." If there is no afterlife, it’s probably like the last scene of

He’s probably referring there to that last brilliant last episode of The Sopranos…

Imagining death is the only way I get to fall asleep every night.

…

I do this all the time while brushing my teeth in the morning. It makes going to work not seem so bad.

…

So what about the virgins?

…

As long as I can taste Key Lime Pie. 

…

The last second firings of the last neurons to go create a neurologicalexperience that only seems to last an eternity. 

…

Yes I can. I’ve been to Ohio. 

…

I was not alive for 14+ billion years before I was born, didn’t bother me in the least. 

…

I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE. 

…

In every moment, we choose our eternity. Because eternity happens in an instant. I’m filling mine with love – and cream cheese. 

…

Isn’t imagining death counter-productive? I mean, if you imagine it, you’ve just proved your alive.

I would think that not imagining death is closer to actual death.

Now there’s a sharp mind.

A five page artical from Scientific America about Death… before noon. Christ, I was hopping to put off my despair untili after 4 o’clock today… Thanks subby… asshat. 

…

i dreamed that i died one time. i actually went to heaven, and could fly. but i still had to watch out for the powerlines just like i have to do in the dreams where i can fly, but haven’t died. 

…

Imagine death? I can barely imagine Australia. 

What’s awful now is that I can imagine death, but I can’t imagine being in love.  Another of my gay happy hour friends gave me a little impromptu lecture the last time I was visiting him, about how having a lover is "work".  You gotta love the way coupled people try to make lonely singles feel like they’re not missing out on anything.   Especially when they leave you hanging at the gate as though your missing out on a chance to find that certian someone wasn’t any big deal.

Some time ago I bought myself one of those "body pillow" things.  For those of you unfamiliar, they’re oversized pillows, about four feet long, that you can cuddle up to for comfort.  I’d seen them advertized, mostly to women, and resisted the impluse to go out and get one for myself because I don’t have the kind of brain that can fool myself with subsitutes for the real thing (which is partly why I’ve never just gone out and rented an "escort" for the night).  But I was at Costco one day and saw a big box full of them and the ones they were selling were so soft and nice that I found myself checking out with one and brought it home.  It’s actually kinda nice to have something to just wrap myself around at night, but the interesting thing I’ve discovered is that just having that…mass…there in the bed with me has become addictive, even if I don’t snuggle up to it.  It’s warm, it retains body heat, which will probably be nice when winter sets in here at Casa del Garrett.  But the thing is it’s this object that’s just there laying next to me in the bed and now if it’s not there the bed seems so horribly empty that I have to bring it back in or I can’t get to sleep.

There’s probably some primitive subconscious thing going on there, having to do with that human need to have that other there with you. It’s just a big long pillow.  It’s not flesh and bone, it doesn’t breath, it doesn’t have a heartbeat, it doesn’t roll over and hog the blankets.  It’s just a big soft pillow.  But it’s something.  We are not made to be single all our lives.  But some of us are condemned to be that.  The crying shame is it doesn’t have to be that way.  All the lonely people don’t have to be that way.  The human family could put its mind to fixing that if it only wanted to.  But the nature of coupled people is they stop caring about the lonely.   They are complete, and they don’t want to be reminded of how it was when they weren’t.  So they don’t pay attention to those of us who need help.  That leaves us at the mercy of predators…dating service cons…"escorts", love advisers, and other opportunists that just take our money because they know we are desperate and easy marks.  At least the body pillow only cost me a few bucks and it doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t.

Sleep these days, is the only time I don’t feel alone.  Death won’t be so bad, except if I see it coming I’ll know I failed, and it wasn’t really worth being alive.

[Edited a tad…]

Sometimes the images just leap out at you as you’re strolling down the street…

This was taken by a Blockbuster Video store that’s downsizing.  They used to put current release posters up in the windows on that side of the store.  Now they’ve vacated that side and the posters are in tatters. 

Be careful what you search for…you might find it.

Be careful what questions you ask…they might be answered.

Be careful what you dream…it might come true.

Be careful most of all, of your heart’s dream…

Be careful of every new threshold you find yourself standing upon.  It may be you are standing on the edge of forever…

A friend calls…and during the conversation we discuss our working lives, and how it is good to have a job that engages you completely…thoroughly.  A couple friends of mine are taking the Big Detour off their career paths after years, because they aren’t sure they want to spend the rest of their lives in them.  Some friends have been laid off.  Some don’t know what they are going to do with their lives.

Fine.  But that’s not my issue.  Career isn’t crap.  It isn’t.  Neither is money.  Some time ago I did one of those cute little MySpace surveys…and one of the questions was…

28. Would you rather be rich and smart or young and beautiful?
(sigh) Whatever comes with smart. Stupid is not worth being beautiful for. Or rich either.

Okay…  I have another question.  Would you rather have the job of your dreams and be single, or wash dishes at some cheap dive and have your soulmate.

But it’s not rocket science.  Not at all.  Whatever comes with the soulmate, that’s what I want.  That’s all that matters.  That’s it.   That’s everything.  Everything.   I work on the Hubble Space Telescope project.  I make good money.  I own my own house now…and a Mercedes-Benz.  I get five weeks of paid vacation every year.  I make really good money.  I should be counting my blessings.  I should be relishing the good life fate has given me.  And I am miserable.  I’d trade it all…in a heartbeat…for the minimum wage dishwasher job and the soulmate.  In a heartbeat.   In a heartbeat.  And think myself so goddamned lucky.  So very very goddamned lucky…  But life hasn’t given me that choice.  I don’t think it ever will.

I feel like a failure.  I feel like a leftover part.  My friends…they just don’t understand that.  They think I’m making a big deal over nothing.  Some of them have found their other half.  Others have loved and lost, and loved again, and maybe lost again, and are bored with the whole dating and mating thing.  They think I should be so glad to have a good job, and be making good money, and be able to do whatever I want with my free time…because I’m single…

And it’s all the worse when you begin to realize that your friends are telling you all this, because they figure you’re really not boyfriend material, and so they’re trying to be kind to the love cripple.  Just accept being single Bruce…it’s for the best…  You’re not really all that good looking…and let’s face it…you’re getting old…

I hate my life.  I just…hate it.  Thank you god for Tequila..

If you were drowning, a better friend would tell you about the life vest they almost bought for you.

Seems more like an approaching head-on collision with a train then a birthday on the way.

I really need to be someplace else…

The flower scene from The Brave Little Toaster. Just for kicks and grins I decided to see if anyone else out there was struck by that scene and maybe posted it to You Tube. Sure enough. It’s shorter then I remember, and I got a few details wrong, but otherwise I seem to have remembered it fairly well. And David Newman, who composed the background music, knew what he was doing.

You know…that damn scene still makes me want to bawl…