Best of 2004 Wildcard

It was suggested that, on account of the lack of quality in the fourth quarter of 2004, that I run a “wildcard” competition between the runners up of the other three polls. I thought this was a good idea. I also added the Intelligent Design post, as it seems to be the only Q4 post with an advocate. The other three quarters (in this poll) will be represented by a runner-up from that quarter, but not always the second place entry.

In Q1, I took “Feminine Idealism” because the winner got 71% of the votes and three entries shared four votes… so I took the one that I liked the best. In Q2, the third place entry was included here because I decided to take #1 and #2 into the final poll. In Q3, the second place entry got the nod (even though I personally preferred the third place entry).

So here we go:

February 24 Feminine Idealism

Inspired by trashy romance novels, soap operas, romantic comedies, and an over-riding sense of male guilt for… god only knows what. It’s the expectation that guys should be perfect at all times, and when one fails to be such an animal, it’s just proof that men are pigs. After all, any guy who isn’t going to ride up, shirtless, on a glistening white stallion, grab you tightly in his rippling biceps, tell you that your ex-boyfriend’s mother is in the hospital with spontaneous brain cancer, and then toss out a cheesy, self-deprecating one-liner simply isn’t fit for you, right ladies? Any good boyfriend would do that. Or so the media would have us believe.

May 23 What are they Thinking?

So over the past few months I’ve heard several (and I mean SEVERAL) stories of people (both guys and girls) taking their boyfriends/girlfriends/fiances/etc back after having been cheated on, repeatedly lied to, or worse. The question on my mind every time I hear a story like this is: “What in the HELL are they thinking?” The answer, most times, is that they’re really not.

August 9 Help Willing

But that’s not entirely true. There are lots of jobs like that. Problem is the lack of jobs meeting those requirements that also pay $25-30 an hour, which is a conservative estimate of what I think I’m worth. The problem, I believe, is not a job shortage, but that it doesn’t seem to be worth these companies’ time to post those ads because there are so few of us out there to respond. As a result, I think I need to take out a “Help Willing” ad, to let the companies who DO have openings of that variety that I’m available. It would go something like this…

December 17 ‘Intelligent Design’

[Arguments for Intelligent Design] all hinge upon the thought that because we can’t explain something scientifically, we’re required to assume that there’s no scientific answer and take some alternate (and non-scientific) explanation. This, of course, flies in the face of pretty much every piece of serious scientific work since the dawn of humanity. One huge part of science is finding good explanations for things that we can’t currently explain… if we took the Intelligent Design approach to other issues, we’d be stuck back in caves waiting for some mystical being to intelligently design our next meal.