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1950s Instructional Film: What To Do On A Date
March 8, 2009 | 
Author I might have benefited from this film when I was a teen (and possibly from some therapy). This 1950s instructional film is pretty swell. I appreciate their use of the word swell and demand that it be brought back into the common slang. Call your congressperson today using the swell old phone number listings and the giant ancient phone.
Try not to notice how Kay’s being a little sly looking at Nick’s butt. Try not to consider Kay’s particular interest in the weenie roast and taffy pulls. It’s not really all Freudian.
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Logan’s Run and Population Control
On my 30th birthday I reflected on how happy I am that the premise of Logan’s Run isn’t reality. In this great 70s sci-fi cult flick, starring the excellent Michael York (of Gilmore Girls fame & some other stuff) as well as 70s hotties Jenny Agutter and Farrah Fawcett, the futuristic post-nuclear society has decided to maintain population control by sending each person who turns 30 on some wheel thingy called Carrousel (DVD box spelling).
Carrousel is supposed to be a meaningful ‘ride’ that reincarnates people into newborns, which is really a bad deal if you consider that one would have to go through the stress of high school again. In all actuality, the Carrousel thingy is just killing every new 30 year-old who gets on it, thus making the movie a great gift for each friend of mine who turns 30 and isn‘t already depressed. Especially the single ones. I will be getting it for one of my brothers very soon.
Renew! Renew!
In the movie, which is being remade (yes!) by Warner Brothers for an upcoming release starring Ryan Gosling, all the people in the society are fitted with giants dots on their palms called life clocks that glow green when you‘re still young, then blink red when time is up. I’m not sure why they didn’t bother with calendars, but with a giant dot, hours of fun can be spent contemplating how much time you have left before you die. I‘m thinking of fitting my grandparents with them, if only to schedule my vacations better.
The idea of population control is sort of an interesting one. A few years ago I was kidnapped to a peace museum which, as one would guess, is antiwar, but for some reason had an exhibit showing the increasingly rapid growth of the world‘s population, and apparently seemed to promote population control (they’re trying to have their cake and eat it, too). It occurs to me that pro-population control and anti-war ideas seem to be somewhat at odds with one another, but maybe that‘s just me. It would seem that war would be one of the best ways to implement population control. Or birth limits a la China. Or inadvertent single living.
Jenny Agutter loungewear
As of 2004, there were just under 6.5 billion people in the world and a recent alarmist study suggested that by 2050 there should be approximately 8.9 billion on our planet living elbow to elbow, though maybe they’ll mostly hang out in New York and Beijing. These results assume continuation of the status quo and current trends: declining fertility rates, better disease preventions and treatments, lack of severe climate changes or major catastrophes like nuclear holocausts or biological warfare or the seven plagues.
I think, under these circumstances, it would definitely be in our best interest to change the environments and climates of deserts and other arid regions making them cooler and more habitable, with lusher flora and groovier fauna. Grow fruit trees. Maybe add spidermonkeys. These would be great incentives for people to start spreading out to currently undesirable areas such as the Sahara, Death Valley, Nevada, and Utah. Perhaps, like others in these regions, families could become polygamous and load the population under one roof. And have pet spidermonkeys in the orchards. Aren’t you surprised you haven’t thought of it?
In Logan’s Run the entire society was marriageless. Everybody belonged to everyone else, like in some of the finest cults. It seems the author’s vision of a futuristic Utopia is actually universal bachelordom. I suppose, as a single person, I’m doing my part to help with population control. I knew it was all very useful for something.
(Page 2: Esperanto Rhymes With Tonto)
The secret word is Euthanasia.
Vaguely Related Reading:
Celebrity Crushes: The Girl Next Door
Sound Of Music DEATHMATCH!!! Liesl v Maria
Getting Colder:
My Bucket List: 100 Things To Do Before I Die
Which Is Your Type? A Pseudo-Cosmo Quiz
The Prophecy Of The Tornado And the Trailer
How NOT To Decorate The Bachelor Pad
Bachelor Step #10: Collect the Right Toys
Bachelor Step #1: THE BACHELOR PAD
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11 Steps To Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: #5. TRAVEL THE WORLD
Family of Bachelors in London
by Jonathan B. Perry
Traveling the world is a key ingredient in that domesticated bachelor soufflé. Not only do you get to stuff a fanny pack of experiences under your belt, but you gain fantastically obnoxious stories to share at your bachelor dinner parties. Even if your trips were miserable or dull as mud and you never want to go back to Anglodutchistankong again, you can at least say you’ve traveled the world and then milk that for a while. This will gain you great favor with the mortals, increasing your level of domestication, and you can proudly proclaim that information on your Facebook page: “Jonathan is drinking goatmilkshakes with the Sherpas and telling jokes in Nepalese before hitting Everest‘s summit. If only Tenzing would quit farting in the tent! LOL!“
Women like to size up a potential traveling companion and can best do it when they know you‘ve traveled, so be sure to talk about it a lot. For instance, if I was really shameless and wanted to present my travel resume, I’d yammer on about my trips to Taiwan, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Wales, and Scotland. And maybe Japan, if I was feeling especially cocky, although I never left the Osaka airport either time. Also, I was only in Austria for the afternoon. Of course, these ladies will want an idea of what sort of stuff you can handle, so it might be good to limit the complaining in your stories and pay special attention to the good stuff.
Then, talk about your future travel ambitions. Work into the conversation that you want to walk the length of the Great Wall to demonstrate the courage of man or paint the big weird statues on Easter Island. This might be attractive to a potential mate because she’ll think, “If I’m with him, we’ll travel the world together.” *sigh*. Don’t be too distracted by the virtuous virtues of travel. The douchey do-gooders will say that travel is important for understanding the world and getting along with other cultures, blah blah blah UN blah blah, but really it’s good for fun experiences, seeing pretty things, and self-aggrandizement. And meeting women. Date-traveling might be interesting.
If you really like to travel, you might consider test traveling with a special lady (with separate rooms, of course). Traveling with the bachelor cousins and uncles is great, but it’s time to try something new. Test out your potential long-term traveling companion and see whether you’d do well as co-travelers or just drive each other batty. Some women travel well, while others just whine well (guys too). Traveling together is like experiencing a relationship in a concentrated form before you’ve added water. Or something. This testing tool is best manifested in the tv show The Amazing Race. There’s lots of travel pressure on The Amazing Race with mental and physical competitions tied into the timed premise. Couples find out all the time that they suck together under fire. Then again, many of those couples grow stronger, overcoming the stresses or realizing they should just never go back to the Sahara for an archeological dig during the summer.
If you learn a language for or on your trip, your hipness is enhanced manifold. If you spend a year or more in another country, you’ll come closest to godhood and will forevermore be an expert in several semi-unrelated, though equally obnoxious, areas. If you haven’t already, you might even meet a special lady-friend while there (this is how my brother met his wife). Of course, you may only get blisters, but even that’s a story. And you just copied my trip to Germany.
40,000 LADY-MAN-LADIES!!
I’m not accusing you readers of being transgender. I’d never do that. Not publicly. Actually, last night, on the 28th day of this domesticated blog, we reached our 40,000th hit! 40,000 hits in just 4 weeks is unreal and completed unexpected and only moderately weird, like those cross-dressing pics recently added to my computer (for blog purposes only), but I’m glad you’re visiting and reading and coming back. Some of the recent posts have been devoted to crushworthy types of women (if you haven’t read them, the links are below or on the right) and to continue this theme, and celebrate the 40k madness, I present Flight of the Conchords in “Ladies of the World“! Thanks for reading!
Which is your type? A Pseudo-Cosmo Quiz
Celebrity Crushes: The Girl Next Door
Celebrity Crushes: Is Elegance Elitist?
Thanks to alphainventions.com for the frequent promotion!
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Tree Pruner or Medieval Weapon?
by Jonathan B. Perry
Saturday night I went into Ace Hardware to use my $5 birthday gift card before it expired (I’m on their mailing list). I dragged my car the 3 minutes through the snow and ice with the single purpose of buying a tree pruner, one of those telescoping tree pruners for high spots in your tree that you can’t reach with the regular clippers. Now, in December I actually climbed one of my trees to trim it, but that didn‘t feel so safe and I was a bit lightheaded after coming down. I’m not the monkey I used to be. Ace has 3 telescoping pruner models and even though there was a big price gap between the 8 foot and the 12 foot models, I went with the more expensive 12 foot pruner and can’t wait for it to warm up just a little so I can pretty-up my trees.
Taking my long pruner down from the display, it occurred to me how much this felt like a medieval weapon. This was perhaps why I dawdled in the store a little longer, walking up and down the aisles, either feeling like a guard with a spear or a horseless jouster. 
It was pretty excellent. I even ran into an old friend who was shopping for a drill bit (I won’t say anything about tool size comparison). The cashier asked a bit sarcastically if she could bag it up for me. It felt great to finally get this excellent gardening tool-weapon to add to my arsenol of domestication.
I remember using the telescoping pruner on my grandparents’ property in CA over the years. They had walnut trees, oaks, and eucalyptus, mostly. They’ve since sold the grand old acreage, much to everyone’s great sadness, but I bet they still have their tree pruner. They still have trees. They still like tools. They’re still alive.
BACHELORS IN CATHOLICISM
Sean Connery & Christian Slater monk it up in 'The Name of the Rose'
by Jonathan B. Perry
My brother Jay thinks it was our slightly crazed college history professor, Dr. Schroeder, who once said that the Dark Ages were brought on, in part, by all the good thinkers dying out as non-reproductive monks. This actually makes some sense when you consider that monks filled medieval monasteries with the most educated minds of the time.
It seems they were all locked in the libraries where they got smart, recorded some chants, filmed “The Name of the Rose”, and died off with little instruction to procreators. Still, they managed to copy thousands of books by hand and probably had plenty of time to read a few tacky romance novels along the way before these non-pop-up books were shipped to places like the Alexandria library before they were accidentally destroyed in heavily regretted book burning accidents (the Alexandria library was probably destroyed long before monk-writing became all the rage, but whatever). 
If, like these medieval monks, you have lots of free time in isolation where you don’t necessarily have to farm to maintain a livelihood because the peasants are growing potatoes for you, then you could work through a few books a week or perhaps write a swell treatise on the nature of Christ and how he did alright as a single dude, at least until that whole crucifixion thing.
Catholicism has long been a solid bastion of support for bachelorism. Monasteries, abbeys, and, in fact, the entire church hierarchical structure all the way up to the papacy are designed with the bachelor’s interests at heart. Popes have historically been celibate bachelors. “Officially”. Thomas Aquinas became a monk and successfully avoided sex, even when his brothers did a frat hazing and tried to lure him with a prostitute. Despite the many bachelor successes, there are a couple notables who procured women (sounds like snagging weed) and followed up by changing to Protestantism. Martin Luther was still a bachelor monk when he posted his 95 Theses. 
Then he married a nun and they became Protestants, quickly populating Protestantism with six children.
English monarch Henry VIII liked women so much that he cast off the smothering confines of Catholicism and started his own church with himself as the head of it so he could divorce the queen and marry some chick with 12 fingers before he executed her and married a few others.
Despite the institutionalized singleness in Catholicism, it seems any loss of reproduction in the church hierarchy has been more than made up for by the lack of birth control for the non-single Catholic, so the plan does seem to be well balanced and thought out after all. Whether it was really planned that way is uncertain.
Oh, RABBIT RABBIT!!!
Related Reading:
Famous Historical Bachelors-A List
Bachelor Profiles: Vincent Van Gogh
Bachelor Profiles: Sherlock Holmes
Bachelor Profiles: Mad King Ludwig
Bachelor Profiles: The Bachelor President
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