Elysienne

Not as bad as what I always think when I hear of Mario or anything Italian. The most creepy impression I've ever heard by a friend of mine;

"Its-a me! Mario! I'm-a een your loft!"

Huh...at what time of day and which channel? *gets out the notebook*

In seriousness, though, while I can't talk for the rest of Europe, here in ol' Blighty you don't generally get porn on normal TV channels. Unless you count the slightly more raunchy kind of romance film.

At least, you don't anymore, after Channel 5 decided to clean up its act and try to be a serious contender for decent TV, rather than being the "boobs and news" channel.

Of course, its possible that satellite TV and the like provide for the porn junkies... I don't really tend to watch much telly unless the programme can grab me by the face and pull my feet out through my nose it grips me that much.

Uh... you can? I would have thought that if it were worth watching, I wouldn't have been reading the CoH forums at 5am...

Ah, America... where they can't decide if having free healthcare is communist or fascist...

Speaking honestly, sexism will always be rife. Not a pleasant fact, but there you have it.

Women will always be just one more facet of the downtrodden masses under the affluent white male demographic until the inevitable happens and every single woman in the world withholds sex. THEN you'll see some pretty damn rapid changes in policy.

On a less flippant note, sexism really will be rife no matter what. Even if the sexual revolution really did draw to its natural conclusion and the country became a matriarchy... its just substituting one flavour of sexism for another.

Ahh, so THAT is self-actualisation. Glad to see I can still learn something new every day.
Though I have to admit, I generally think that heirachies of need are generally very over-simplified. Hell, I bet I could have crises on every single tier of that pyramid in a matter of hours... Admittedly, I'm generally fairly laid back, so people probably wouldn't notice it happening, they'd just think I was thinking about breasts for five minutes, and that's why I was drooling and twitching and staring at nothing.

Ye gods, the truth. It burns.

I sometimes feel like I should've gone to college after getting out of school like all the rest of my peer-group... but then I see them stuck in exactly the same kind of dead-end jobs I worked in my first few years in the real world and remember that they have huge debts on top of general "young person broke-ness" and feel like maybe it didn't make the tiniest bit of difference.

Did you know the unemployment rate in Britain for young people (20-30 if I'm remembering the statistic right) is 80%? Only one in five of all young people has a job. Seriously.

Of course, it doesn't help that New Labour (boo, hiss) removed university grants where students would get money for being students, no strings attached.. and replaced it with student loans. Because, hey, nothing encourages the impoverished working classes of the country to better themselves like CRIPPLING DEBT.

A few quick notes, some of which refer to double standards, and some of which don't. And I'm afraid its mostly to do with things that Sorah have said.. why is this? Because Sorah posts a lot, so its easy to pick up easily quotable little tidbits, not due to any malice held towards her. Generally, Sorah, from what I've read you've been a constructive and interesting and intelligent poster. So please, feel free not to take anything I say to heart. You seem to be a strong woman with good self-esteem, so I'm not too worried on that part.

But anyway...

Here's the bit I mostly take issue with.
"4) Guys who are older generally know what they are doing with their lives, they have a career, and so I don't have to deal with that whole, "WTF am I going to do with myself" phase of ********."

I saw this, and remembered you saying you know a few unique individuals who are "self-actualised." Now, I'm not up on the whole... psyche speak, so I'm pretty uncertain on what being self-actualised is, but I'd presume its largely to do with knowing who you are, what you want to do and aiming towards it.
One would assume that this is a process rather than an instant transition, so I have to wonder why anyone would be unhappy with a person going through the process of asking the questions necessary to move towards becoming a happy, stable person. "What am I going to do with my life" is a very important question, one that may often require the support of friends and loved ones to get through. I also find the idea of anyone KNOWING with absolute certainty what they want to do with the rest of their life by the time they're going to university to be more the exception than the norm. Furthermore, just because a person is older doesn't necessarily make them any more self-aware than their younger counterpart. A case in point would be the classic mid-life crisis.

Also, just to finish off my Sorah-based attack on a slightly more comical note;
Duuude, you said you value intelligence then emote stabbing yourself. Didn't you know that's one of the stupidest things in the world you can possibly do?

What temptation?

*Peers at Jabberwocky*

Hm. I don't know what you were trying to achieve there.. Grammatically speaking, its fine. Just full of loads of made-up portmanteau words.

Grammar =/= spelling!

Just want to point out that said seven-letter word has pretty much ALWAYS been pejorative, as the importance of being born within wedlock was much greater back in the day due to inheritance laws (Amongst other things such as social standing with peers)

I've always wondered about the universe... Whether it was finite or not. I believe the current theory is that it's finite but expanding, and will do so until heat death? (Very, VERY laymans' simplification)

Of course, if the universe IS infinite, then that means that... effectively... I AM the centre of the universe! HA! Take THAT, School Guidance Councillor who said I'd never amount to anything!

Cats and dogs living together... Mass hysteria!

Psh, then he has no ambition.

If he'd been REALLY arrogant, he'd have said "Rumours of my arrogance have been greatly understated."

I didn't read through all this thread, just popping in to say

Well yes, hence the term anti-hero. Coming from the words anti, meaning contrary to or against, and hero meaning rail! Er, hero, sorry, Channeling Lyle Langley for a second there.

I can see your point, though. Original antiheroes were shocking borderline pychopaths who single-mindedly and relentlessly pursued their greater good with implacable brutality. A good example is Rorschach, who would rather die than compromise his black/white morality.

Nowadays antiheroes just seem to be sneering analogues of regular heroes, serving to insert sarcastic barbs to ***** the heroic ego. Oh, and wearing lots of leather.

[edit] ...they really censored... but its a legitimate word! To lightly stab! Have the censors never heard of a pinprick? Gah!

Seeing as morality is entirely subjective, I call shenanigans on the above claim. Like so.

*Clears throat*

Shenanigans!

Oddly, I've just made a hero character who is meant to push the boundaries of antiheroism, just to show how not-cool-at-all it can get.

But then, I do <3 my moral grey areas.

I think I actually have the lyrics to the worst song in the world right here.

Solopsism.