ugachaka :: Jacob was here

The final article that I had published on PartyCampus.com before it went away…

From the very first date, a girl usually tends to analyze each move that the guy makes to determine its meaning. I have been asked on more than one occasion to interpret these male moves or actions by some of my female friends, but, sadly, I usually have no idea what the actions really means–and most of the time, there is no meaning behind them. Guys and girls play two different games when it comes to dating.

Girls see dating as a game of chess, but guys are just playing checkers.

For girls, each piece and each move is part of great plot–a great plot to get in bed with them or, in the circumstance of a nice guy like myself, to develop a relationship. Every piece a guy moves has rules and a specific objective, and girls try to analyze every step of the way to figure out how the guy will get the checkmate. If they can guess the guy’s next move, they feel some type of accomplishment and preparedness. They want to know the guy is still playing for a checkmate and not quitting. The King’s Gambit rarely works for those of you outside of chess, that’s a checkmate in three moves.

Guys are far less complex in their dating rules and behavior. In checkers, there is no real strategy behind it except to keep moving forward. Guys just throw out all the pieces and hope to get kinged. There may be no meaning behind any one specific move, but, as long as he is still moving pieces, the game continues. The piece may just be the closest one to the guy’s hand when it is his turn.

This means that, in most cases, as long as guys are still pursuing a girl, they are probably interested. If a guy smiles at a girl, it may be no sign of attraction, but if he starts to flirt regularly or call a girl, it probably means he is sending a checker out there to try and make it through enemy lines.

If a guy doesn’t call you one weekend or takes a few days off from talking to you, it may just mean that he wanted a break from the game, or, in some cases, he might be playing against another girl on another board–which girls must admit is perfectly legal since girls may also be doing the same thing. In any case, girls play chess and take much longer to think about their next move, so guys have some downtime.

If a guy doesn’t talk to a girl when she sees him at a club the night after she woke up at his place, she should probably be concerned that he considers the game over after being kinged and has lost interest in her.

It is not that he’s just not that into you. A guy may just be bad at checkers or trying to take his time and select the right piece to throw out there. If he draws you a picture of a duck with your head on it and gives it to you, it may just be his style, or he may very soon start up a cult and drink the punch–in that case, you don’t have to worry about any more duck pictures. There are many different ways to play checkers. A guy’s method could range from cheesy lines to just the lustful stares of a brooding artist. One guy’s method may not work for you, and maybe you should end that game.

In short, the only true way to know what a guy thinks is to wait it out through a few turns and sweep the checker board off the table at some point to ask him the hard questions. Girls can ask directly what his next move will be without ruining the game, but girls must also make sure that they wait until the guy has made several moves and is fairly committed. If not, the guy may get scared off by removing the checker barrier and run back to find a new opponent.

Whenever you girls out there start trying to analyze the moves of a guy, remember which game is being played. You don’t have to figure out the strategy he is using, just make sure he is still moving the pieces and decide whether to king him or triple-jump the hell out of him and leave him crying over his checker board.

Technorati tag: college, dating, checkers, chess, overanalyze.

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Another article from the former PartyCampus.com that I wrote back in the fall of 2004. Not many comments from the PartyCampus.com readership on this one…

A recent article in The New York Times highlighted recent news release segments produced by the government to promote agendas or support initiatives such as the war in Iraq. Video segments were filmed and sound bites were placed praising the administration for their job in Baghdad. The same story also brought up columnists who were exposed for being paid by the government to write in support of the administration’s policies. Now, it is fine for the government or any institution to try and generate positive publicity. Celebrities and corporations are constantly throwing stuff out there to try and advertise products or themselves. All you have to do is marry Britney Spears, which isn’t that hard these days. If there wasn’t so much secrecy surrounding the White House, the Bush family might have their own reality show on MTV.

The problem with this practice arises when news organizations neglect to inform people that these video clips or printed news releases are made by another institution and not the news organization. Most people take what is in the paper or on the televised news to be objective reporting, so putting news releases on without attribution is comparable to lying to the public.

As the public of tomorrow, we shouldn’t let the world we will inherit become a manipulating commercial nightmare. Press releases have tried to put spin on news forever, but video news releases go out pre-formatted with interviews and commentary ready-to-play for news programs. If someone sends you your homework, you probably will just use it as is and not write “Made by my friend Mike” at the top of the first page. Video releases make it too easy for journalists to be lazy and not preface the report with a statement on its source. Small-town stations serving rural areas are especially likely to show these releases because they don’t have the resources to investigate themselves. Within those communities, no one would be able to scrutinize the news and have no other source to contradict the news released. Jethro and Paw would be none the wiser–maybe they would have been anyway, but they deserve a chance.

If this policy continues, pretty soon the news will be a series of commercials for various corporate and government interests. I know I don’t want to start seeing infomercials on my news broadcasts. I get enough of those in the early hours of the morning while recovering from the night’s festivities. Just imagine “1,000 soldiers have now lost their lives in Iraq, but you could save tons of money if you switch to Geico.”

Some media outlets, such as the FOX News Channel, have already been accused of spreading propaganda in their programs, and, if the media begins to air un-attributed news releases, all channels would eventually go the same way. It is not the place of the government to frame and report on its own functions; journalism and the First Amendment were designed to maintain a watch on the government for the public. It is also not the place of the government to influence columnists or influence them to gain their support. Columnists are not paid to write someone else’s opinion; people look to columnists as having their own personal biases, but not advertising for the highest bidder.

I can appreciate independent sources of opinion and news for keeping commercialization out of the media. Perhaps we will all just have to start going to more bloggers and Internet sources for our news. What has the world come to when “Diary of a FreaKaZOID” has more truth than CNN? While these outlets may or may not have their biases, in many cases they admit their bias. We expect a need to be skeptical of things we read on the Internet as opposed to what we see on the front page of the paper. Whatever the solution, I hope journalism will survive without being spoiled by a flood of government or corporate produced news releases because it is not fair to any of us.

With that said, we should all rush off to our nearest news station that we feel is not being responsible and burn that mother down–no kids, you can’t blame me because that is not what I am saying. All I am hoping to instill is a demand for morals, a foreign concept for some people during their youth and possibly their entire lives. It is these morals that will prevent media from becoming a commercial spectacle.

Technorati tag: Bush, Iraq, journalism, fox.

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Another column from PartyCampus.com which caused some controversy.

It didn’t take me long to realize college was a completely different social environment than the high school scene. Back in high school, the cool guys were the AC Slaters. The jocks were stars covered in the city newspaper and getting visited by colleges. Standard attire was t-shirts and jeans. From this experience, you would probably understand my shock when I got to college. Suddenly, moccasins, khaki shorts, aviators and a pink polo shirt are the uniform for social success. The longer your hair grows, the cooler you are, and if you can flip your collar up on your polo shirt, your coolness increases two-fold.

When did that become cool? Last I checked, that is what middle-aged men wear when they are skipping out of the office. It wouldn’t even be so bad if it was the wardrobe of some candidate for best-dressed, but I don’t think that anyone wearing a polo shirt with the collar flipped up should be considered to wearing THE in-style look of our college demographic.

Apparently, this look is associated with the “fratty” or quintessential fraternity man. According to fratty.net, which prescribes this fashion sector down to the very specific detail of color combinations, the more you look like you don’t care about how you look, the cooler you are. Personally, I would rather look like I didn’t care what I was wearing in a t-shirt, jeans and Nikes.

Even in what Texans call winter, guys are still refusing to give up their pastel polo shirts and shorts. When the high is less than 60 degrees, you would at least think that they could pop the collar on a fleece and break trend for a moment.

You can never say that these misguided individuals are even in a fraternity because now many guys are simply copying the style to look “fratty.” They think they look cool. To them, I say congratulations. Thanks to your popped collar, you can’t see the heads of everyone you pass shaking because you are trying too hard. You would probably have a better chance looking cool if you found your own style and didn’t all dress alike. I mean, when a website says exactly how to dress like you, it is probably going to lose its glamour pretty quickly. Now, don’t you feel unoriginal?

This is not my campaign against fraternities either. I am in a fraternity, but my fraternity prides itself on being original. I am afraid you are not going to see me flipping up the collar on my polo or even wearing a polo shirt regularly on campus.

I offer all of you “fratty” individuals this suggestion: look in the mirror and not just to check that your collar looks like you didn’t check it in the mirror. “Fratty” is an epidemic, and I am sad to be the one to inform you that your secret is out. Just another note, not all girls dig the whole moccasin concept either.

Technorati tag: college, fraternity, fratty.

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This is the first article that I had published on PartyCampus.com, a college life online magazine that has since been shut down. This is the first in several columns that I had published there that I will put on here under the PartyCampus.com category…

There are unspoken rules about college laundry rooms. The most important rule of etiquette is to take any clothes left in the dryer out and put them on top of the dryer or on a table if one is available. There are even myths that of nice individuals folding the clothes when they take them out of the dryer for you.

One common issue is clothes randomly appearing in your laundry. No one really knows where these items originate. Perhaps the “sock monster” regurgitates some clothes from time to time in a later laundry load, or maybe some cheap individuals toss clothes in with yours in the dryer to save the 50 cents to run a load.

On one typical laundry day, I voyaged up three flights of stairs from the laundry room and dumped my clothes on my bed. As I folded them, a pair of tighty-whiteys fell out from inside one of my shirts and onto my bed. Now, I know they are not mine because I am a straight-edge boxer man and rarely even get into that hybrid boxer-brief stuff, so immediately, I am pretty disgusted by the fact that someone’s package strap got mixed among my clothes.

Not wanting to assume that some poor schmuck had decided for some reason that just one lone pair of underwear needed to be dried right away and threw them in on top of my completely Fruit of the Loom free laundry, I assumed that they must be my roommate’s. Somehow in the confusion of cleaning our dorm, they must have gotten picked up and tossed in the wrong hamper–eah, that’s it, just a mistake. A very, very disturbing mistake. Since my roommate was in class, I placed them on the foot of his bed so that he would see them when he got back. I was not about to leave them sitting on my bed because I already know I never wanted to have to touch them.

Forgetting about the pressing matter on my roommate’s bed, I finished my laundry and left to get some food and go over to my girlfriend’s place. Little did I know what was about to happen in my dorm room.

Unfortunately, my roommate returned with his two study partners who were both girls. Seeing the underwear on his bed, his initial reaction was shock that I had gotten comfortable enough to throw my tighties on his bed. To save face in front of his female study partners, he ducked into the room to grab them and, thinking he was doing me a favor, he shoved them into my sheets on my pillow before the girls entered the room.

You can imagine my disgust when I settled into bed later that night and found the long-forgotten briefs on my pillow. That is where your face goes, and what guy wants his pillow coming into contact, even second-hand, with another guy’s crotch?

Needless to say, crotch-tainted pillow spent the night on the floor until I could wash my pillowcase, and the underwear was very quickly dispatched to the hallway my resident advisor to straighten out if he saw fit.

We should all wake up screaming in our sleep just knowing there are underwear droppers out there right at this moment. They walk around us on campus everyday. What kind of monsters lay inside of the heart of those who share your laundry room?

Technorati tag: college, dorms.

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