Sex and The Numbers

What is the average number of sexual partners for a 25 year old? Well that depends on who you are asking of course.

I was sitting around with a large group of guys in their 20’s and this question popped up. Before gleaning the proper estimate, they added the wrinkle that this “average” person was of the somewhat good looking and popular nature to create a stable sampling. No bookish types messing the numbers up.

After a bit of back and forth they came up with this: Guys 20-25. Girls 4-7.

I asked “Since the numbers aren’t balanced then are these guys sleeping with their parent’s friends or other guys?”

This started a melee that I will save you the tedium of but essentially what we have on display is hubris, or to put it another way...the male ego. Guys want their numbers high and they want to believe a girl’s are low.

What I tried to explain, mostly in vain, was the numbers have to be the same for both genders. The ledger has to balance. The only way to skew guys so much higher would be if the vast majority of his sex was with girls that were 26+ years old “at the time of the encounter”.

The average good looking 25 year old guy has been having sex for roughly a decade and chances are most of that sex has been with girls well under the age of 26 at that time. If he lost his virginity at 16, chances are she was 16. If he got laid at Prom, he probably wasn’t taking a 27 year old.

Every time a guy has sex, it counts for him and her. “Tick” on his side of the ledger. “Tick” on her side of the ledger.

At this point most of my twenty-something friends were looking at me as if they had paws and I was wailing on a Dog Whistle.

Finally one proffered this nugget. “A minority of slutty girls are putting up big numbers and affecting the average.”

Really?

Let’s say there were two girls called “Rosie Rotten-Crotch” and “Suzy Nice-n-Tight” and they were banging the world and cranked up numbers of 100+ each. A guy can bang them both all he wants but it still only counts for 2 on his side of the ledger. He still has to go out and bang another 20 freshies to get in the proposed range. And those 20 “hits”, if they are roughly his age, will have to count on all those “nice girl” ledgers.

Averages are averages and the math doesn’t lie.

So where does this leave us and what is the truth? My guess is there is a little fibbing going on, on both sides.

To bring the guys numbers down or a girls up, you would have to rule on “Just the Tip”. Guys count it and girls usually don’t. Guys also have a tendency toward “Fish Stories”. You don’t see women in a bar regaling people with a story that has the line “It was 10 feet long if it was a foot”.

Now when it comes to malfeasance girls have us guys licked. For they know most guys covet a virginal girl so they fight like hell to keep that number down. They accomplish this by playing the "It Doesn't Count Game".

For example; “It was on vacation”, “I was drunk”, “He was drunk”, “It wasn’t long enough” (that can be used two different ways of course). “I don’t remember”, “It was hate sex”, “It was pity sex”, “My bf pissed me off that day”, "I didn't get off", "He didn't get off", "Justin Timberlake promised it'd be our secret" and the list goes on and on.

The end result is guys count everything and then some, while girls have a more selective memory.

So instead of worrying about the fact that girls are having exactly as much sex as you fellas, try and enjoy the sex you are having ;)

Manifest Destiny?

Stephen Harper won a majority and Osama Bin Laden was killed, now which is the bigger story? I suppose that seems too easy given the media hype over the latter but I am here to say the real answer is the former.

The closest thing to a dictatorship in a democracy is a Parliamentary Majority.

Harper doesn’t need to ask his 167 MP’s how to govern. He can decide, hand them their marching orders and pass swift legislation. This is not a Conservative reality, this is a Parliamentary reality. We are about to see someone with the ability to make virtually any decision in the face of an economically crumbling world without the need to pacify public opinion.

This is a key point, as most people couldn’t run a corner store so polling them on how they “feel” is not always an effective way to govern an entire Country.

Bin Laden on the other hand was shot point blank surrounded by 24 highly trained Navy Seals, none of which suffered so much as a scratch in a “fire fight”. Was there no value to asking terrorist Number One a question or two? Was he so inconsequential it was more important to move his body posthumously for an impromptu Sea Burial?

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are still churning as I write this and will continue in the foreseeable future.

American’s are still paranoid, distracted and broke.

Interestingly Americans took this news as if they were a Nation of Forest Gumps whose team had just won the big game and began celebrating in the streets. A reaction I found distasteful and juvenile. I watched like a curious dog with a crooked neck. Had these people lost the plot? Are these ruffians really the manifest destiny they think they are?

I can see this was an accomplishment worthy of some relief and vaguely connective pride but where was the perspective? American death toll in “The War on Terror” approaches 10,000 and you can add many more 10’s of thousands on the other side.

People wrongly compared this death to that of Hitler because everything in America still gets compared to Hitler. That death however ended a World War. Bin Laden’s death is a trophy mount, a gold sticker, “a fucking tee shirt. At best”, to quote Brad Pitt.

The perspective is this: America killed a Boogeyman.

In the last 9+ years Bin Laden was unable to pull off another attack. He failed to harm a single person out of 300,000,000 obese Americans trundling about the third largest country on planet earth. Herbert from Family Guy had more teeth.

For Chrissake lighting picked off 400 Americans in 9 years and it wasn’t even trying.

If you’ve been reading this blog, one thing you know for sure is that America is in horrific financial trouble. These Yanks are going bust quicker than Bill Maher sold his Libertarian beliefs and we Canadians need to prepare for the worst.

I hope Harper will know what to do when the shit hits the fan because America seems happy to shoot first, ask questions later and party like they’ve won something.

Here Lies the USA Economy. RIP

In a nutshell the USA is starting to realize how utterly and hopelessly screwed they are. Unfortunately none of these wet-noodled leaders are going to do a damn thing about it. Perhaps they know the truth. They can’t.

The Republican's and the Democrats have released plans to reduce the deficit ($4.4 Trillion over 10 years and $4 Trillion over 12 years respectively). Sounds like progress right?

Not even close.

Neither actually reduces the deficit. These make-believe plans are only attempts to reduce the amount they will be going into debt each year.

These plans are like telling your alcoholic Uncle that he needs to stop drinking or he’ll die…if he was deaf… and your were wearing oven mitts…and your lips were crazy glued shut….while you drove him to the LCBO…and bought him booze.

These plans are so stubbornly useless that even with grotesquely fabricated “Inflation” and “GDP” estimates blended into the mix, they still can’t show themselves not running massive annual deficits in a decade!

Might as well buy your Uncle barrels of his favorite booze, place him in Depends undergarments and cheer on the inevitable.

Also it’s worth noting none of these “law makers” will even be in power in 10 years to account for how pathetically wrong they were. It’s a cute trick.

Oh and how much of the cutting in these plans will take place over the next 2 years when they are actually "in power”?

2.5%.

That's right. 2.5% of these plans affect the next 2 years. The other 97.5% kicks-in during the last 8-10 years. That's how cute these buggers are.

Doing virtually nothing is a plan I suppose. Eventually your drunkie Uncle will die and he will no longer be drinking, so problem solved.

Obama even had the audacity (and not the Hope kind) to give a speech about what kind of America they should be. Broke I'm guessing.

And before you think raising taxes on the rich is the solution here is the truth:

Every person who made over $100,000 in 2008 ($100,000 is not rich btw) had a total combined taxable income of $1.582 Trillion (Wall Street Journal).

The Government is already getting $650B of that with current Federal and State taxes leaving the "rich" with roughly $900B of net earnings.

Now if you taxed the "rich" at 100%. That’s right. Take every dime they make and left them with nothing…the Government would still be running a deficit of $700B.

Of course the deficit will only be $700B if projections are spot on. Last year they estimated they’d go in the ditch $1.2 Trillion but ended up at $1.6 Trillion. That is a miss of $400B or 33%. Nice going fellas.

Putting aside everyone who used to make over $100,000 is now making $0 and the economy is dead. We still have to find another $700B to balance this budget!

One slight problem... the remaining citizens (all those that make under $100,000 per year) don’t have $700B left in their pockets after paying their existing taxes.

That's right. If you take 100% of EVERY citizen's income...every last dime of every American’s earnings for the entire year...you still can't balance one single year of the budget.

Now that is a colossal clusterfuck.

In 2000 the cumulative budget deficits of the USA was $4T.

By 2008 it climbed another $4T to a new total of $8T

In the last 3 years it has grown another $6T to a total of $14T.

Americans are now amassing more debt in 3 years then they did in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s…combined!

Not bad enough for you?

The low interest rates of the past 10 years, coupled with American’s ability to write off mortgage payments against their income, has incentivized it’s citizenry to borrow against any equity they once had... and spend it.

That’s right. Private debt doubled in the last 10 years as people borrowed and spent their future.

Hard to let a temporarily low interest rate suck you into squandering your future but those plucky Yanks sure did.

To add insult to injury all that spending didn’t help the economy all that much in America. That’s because they don’t manufacture anything. Ask the now 14,000,000 millionaires in China how well all that American spending worked out.

Ok now your Uncle has no food in the cupboards and is strictly living on booze could it be any worse?

Oh yes it can.

We are all familiar with the looming worry over aging Baby Boomers and the $50+ Trillon Entitlement Programs (Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security). What is less known is how fortunate the USA has been for decades.

You see in the Dirty 30’s there was a depression going on and in the early 40’s a World War. Baby production was in a lull for 15 years and it is those “Lull Babies” who have been utilizing Entitlement Programs for the last 15 years.

Amazingly the Government has been going bust taking care of the “Lull Babies” with the aid of the massive Boomer Demo in the workforce and paying the bills.

Over the next 5 years those Boomers are going to push off of payrolls and onto the Dole and then instead of a “lull” at the public trough…you’ll have Ka-“Boom”.

All bets are off after that.

The invincibility cloak of America will finally fall and lay bare for all the world to see…that in the end the greatest economy that ever was...got gutted.

And all anybody could do...was watch.