Things Girls Don't Understand About Boys

Jenna Marbles's latest video blog: Things she doesn't understand about boys. VERY NSFW!

Well, her previous video, about things guys don't understand about women (again, very NSFW), cleared up the long-held mystery I've had about why it takes so long for women to get ready to go out. So, she's looking for answers in turn? Well, I owe her, so here goes.

Channel surfing: That's a vestige of our hunter mentality. That is, we're biologically conditioned to hunt.
This is true of watching TV, shopping, cars, dating, whatever.

Back in cave man days, it did you no good to hunt in an empty field; you moved over the ridge to the next spot. Same is true with channel surfing. If I don't immediately like what I see on TV, I'll just move along to the next thing.

That said, if I find myself in a situation where there isn't plenty to choose from, I'll just take what's in front of me. For a hunter-gatherer, a rotting carcass is still better than starving; in the same way, seeing Marcia Brady get beaned in the face with a football never loses its appeal. It's biological.

Men are always looking for something better, even when what they have is perfectly fine; and when we're looking for something, we make decisions quickly. Back in cave days, if we didn't, we were dead.

Review: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What more can possibly be said about Cormac McCarthy and Blood Meridian, arguably his masterpiece?

It's worthy of every bit of praise heaped upon it and more. You know you've read something extraordinary when comparisons to Conrad, Faulkner, Melville, Poe and Dante all seem inadequate.

McCarthy has four great gifts that make Blood Meridian, as well as his other Westerns, lyric and memorable:

-- He knows how to start a book / introduce a protagonist. Until now, I had considered "The Old Man And The Sea" to have the greatest first 250 words ever penned. Blood Meridian took that crown with its immediate impression upon the reader of exactly who The Kid is, what this book was going to be like, and the Sargasso Sea of language that one swims throughout its 350 pages.

-- He has absolutely mastered hubris and nemesis. You know, going in, things are not going to turn out well for any of McCarthy's main characters. It's in the twists and turns that takes one to the final answering that makes Cormac McCarthy such a joy to read.

-- His command of English is humbling. His sentences are every English teacher's nightmare-cum-epiphany. How one can write run-on sentences with little semblance to generally accepted rules of syntax, grammar and punctuation, and manage to paint so vivid and complete a scene, simply defies description. It must be experienced, and in experiencing it, one is simultaneously stunned and satisfied.

-- He knows how to end a book. Every plot thread is sewn up tight at the end of Blood Meridian; and yet, you simply don't want it to be over.

I found myself dreaming the scenes of this book several nights in a row, shortly after having read each of its perfect-for-nightstand chapters. I cannot remember the last book that accomplished that task so readily or commonly.

One thing is clear: I must read everything else he has written. McCarthy has won me over completely.

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Review: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the title states, at 18 years old, Jillian Lauren took a job as one a Brunei prince's concubines in the early 1990s.

This memoir is generally about her two trips to Brunei, and the time between trips and the events that led to her decision to go back. Interspersed throughout are details of life events that brought her to those events.

I'll give Jillian Lauren one thing: She's honest about herself, which is rare enough a trait.

If anything, she's a little too quick to criticize herself, a little too hard on herself. That's not to say much of what she did in her early life was admirable; that's not to suggest that she clearly wishes a number of things had gone differently than they did, and she knows her decisions were the reason things worked out the way they did.

It is to say that I'm not sure Lauren -- nor many of those criticizing this book -- are willing to accept that we are also biological creatures, and sometimes the ways we act, especially when we are young and inexperienced, are guided by instinct, even when we know, somewhere in the back of our minds, it won't end well.