merde felt that her kvetch in thread_note might not be the appropriate place to comment on the under_tone of 'get a girlfriend' and the cost issues associated with it. So I thought I would raise her general kvetch to a top level entry. She noted:
i recommend that you get a girlfriend who likes games, and ask her about the console vs. PC deal.So allow me to start off and note that there is a central power problem that needs to be addressed in any relationship. HouseMates are SOOO EXPENSIVE! Since one has to deal with 'shared expenses' and the obligatory negotiating strategies with what is an equitable way of solving the costing factors.
i also feel that i would be failing in my duties as a feminist if i didn't register at least a token protest against all this talk of how expensive girlfriends are. i've said it before: men who don't want to have to spend a lot of money on their girlfriends should stop dating the kind of women who expect to have a lot of money spent on them.
i started off on a long, completely tangential rant about dating and romance and what people expect from it and what's wrong with that and what isn't, but realized that this is not the most appropriate forum for such explorations. besides which, i have a personal axe to grind in this area, and thus should probably just keep my mouth shut.
Where I of course agree with
merde is that one may need to dump 'the gold digger' if they are merely a cost center with no 'equivolent exchange' in the process - a point that is as true of economic gold diggers as with psychic gold diggers who are merely there as parasites on one's Chi. During the nineties amongst my WarMongerBabyKiller[dm] Buds there was the 'china beach syndrome' where a certain class of NonMalePerKin would 'get involved' with a V-Vet simply to live out their own phantasies about 'fixing him' - a la the TV show. In one case there was the grand comedy of this getting seriously silly when it turned out that one of these had latched onto a V-Vet WannaBe...I had the charming awakening the other evening when it struck me. My 'closted gay friends' have a certain advantage over me that JUST PISSEES ME OFF! They can go places with their 'significant other' and no one has to know what is going on. But IF I show up with a NonMalePerKin, I have to deal with all of the freaking LatentHeteroSeXualism of my Freaking Country's So Called CULTURE! I have been obliged at times to re-iterate the assertion, "I do not kiss and tell." Since it really is no one else's BeezWax!
Ok, so I am actually sorta pleased that my life has mellowed out mostly enough to not have to worry about the "old ways" when one's "significant other" WAS considered a 'viable target' - Hum... Well, back in that transient period before the whole world changed and the current administration went off on it's policy of being against torture, but wanting to be exempted from being held liable to american law.... Gosh, and they still are not sure which position they are taking on Burning CIA assets, and whether a persons significant other is a viable target because they have not grown the stones to go mano-a-mano with the Male Person they are having their issue with.
Hum...
Maybe my what people expect from it and what's wrong with that set of issues are still, well a little different....
But You Go Girl!
What I dislike MOST about having a 'girlfriend' is the complete waste of time. I mean it is Like SO HARD to get out of bed, and decide that one really is going to finish reading Proste, or the current edition of Foreign Affairs Quarterly, or review the M1/M2/M3 rates when there is a NonMalePerKin there.... They ARE SUCH A DISTRACTION!