Dinosaurs

Searching for things to pack in shoeboxes last year, I ran across a set of self-labeled “realistic dinosaurs.”  Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered that they are actually something entirely unique–perhaps representing a heretofore-unacknowledged advance in paleontology and biology.

Everyone knows there’s only one proper way to display dinosaurs, so I whipped up a primeval swamp diorama.  This is why it’s critical to always have construction paper in the house.

This one is obviously a sauropod.  It’s also one of the smallest dinosaurs in the set, so I’ll call it diplodocus.  A sad diplodocus.  Look at that face.

Not a triceratops, but a styracosaurus.  This website describes styracosaurus as “a rotten dinosaur. very strong and imposant.”  Don’t you believe it.

Wait, dimetrodon isn’t a dinosaur.  It’s a Permian reptile, and everyone knows dinosaurs didn’t evolve until the Triassic.  This particular dimetrodon is probably more concerned about its giant misshapen tongue, though.

The pterodactyl is also not a dinosaur, but at least it coexisted with dinosaurs.  This one seems to have feathers; perhaps it’s a pterodactyl-archeopteryx hybrid?  Oddly, it’s one of the largest dinosaurs in the set.

A duck-billed dinosaur, surely.  I decided it’s a maiasaura, but I have no idea what’s wrong with its weirdly bent hands.

This one isn’t even a reptile.  I think it’s some kind of mutant megacerops, even though it’s got tusks and at least two extra sets of horns.

Here’s the first one I couldn’t identify, even tentatively.  Is it some kind of tapirsaurus?  Really, really long-necked giant elephant shrew?

This one, on the other hand, is easy to identify.  It’s a Godzilla monster.  It looks like it wants to give you a hug.

Let’s see.  We’ve got a long pointy nose, an armadillo/pineapple-looking body, and a big handle on the back.  Yeah, I got nothing.

Aside from the alien head and the broken wrist, this could be a pretty normal theropod, maybe an allosaurus or…AAAGH WHAT IS WRONG WITH ITS FOOT

All right, that’s it.  There’s no way around it: That’s a dragon.  It has friggin’ wings.  Nobody on Earth could possibly think that was a dinosaur, not even Jack Chick.

Group shot!  And a bonus: the original background that came with the set.  I like their sunset background, but otherwise, mine is clearly superior.

What I haven’t decided yet is whether any of these monstrosities should be inflicted on children.

Oddity of the Week

Snooping for Christmas vinyl in my parents’ cabinet, we found this on the back of Lanza Sings Christmas Carols:

IMPORTANT NOTICE

This is a “New Orthophonic” High Fidelity recording, designed for the phonograph of today or tomorrow.  Played on your present machine, it gives you the finest quality of reproduction.  Played on a “Stereophonic” machine, it gives even more brilliant true-to-life fidelity.  You can buy today, without fear of obsolescence in the future.

By Way of Explanation

Hopefully my previous post was self-explanatory and/or amusing without context, but I’d hate to alienate anyone based on it, so I’ll give it some context anyway (and because I lack anything Christmas-related to post).

The whole pick-up artist subculture is, in addition to being creepy and unethical, profoundly disconnected with human reality.  Nothing exemplifies this as much as their alpha/beta/omega “Greek system” of ranking people.  The terminology is copied from the popular conception of wolf pack hierarchy–itself discredited, as we now know that the “alpha” male and female of a wolf pack are in fact the mother and father, and the “lower-ranking” wolves are their offspring who don’t interbreed because their pack mates are their siblings and parents.

When applied to humans, the concept makes even less sense.  Generally it refers to how successful one is supposed to be at dating, but whiny wannabe pick-up artists use “alpha” (or alpha alpha, alpha alpha alpha prime, facial alpha, and so on, creating new terms as needed) to refer to anyone who is more successful than them at anything–up to and including Austin Powers.  It’s a useful system for lazy narcissists; one can classify oneself as a beta and thereafter blame your lack of success on your beta status (ascribing other people’s successes as due to their alpha status and therefore unattainable by you) while simultaneously being able to look down on anyone you don’t like as an omega.

But, even if you limit the terms to the “dating market,” the silliest part remains: The attempt to rank the entire population of the world from most desirable to least.  Every pick-up artist and hanger-on believes that there are a small class of people that everyone of the opposite gender (same-sex attraction doesn’t exist in their world, and neither do people outside the gender binary) wants to date, and that anyone who dates anyone outside that group is settling and would switch in an instant, abandoning their girlfriend, boyfriend, or even husband or wife, if they had the opportunity.

As I said, silly.  You can’t pinpoint a person that everyone in the world wants to date any more than you can create an ice cream flavor that everyone in the world wants to eat.  Even among your group of close friends, people who share common interests and attitudes, odds are you’ll find at least one or two significant others who you would never want to date, but your friend seems to like quite well.  And that’s before you account for obvious factors like age: Hopefully a 40-year-old’s ideal girlfriend or boyfriend isn’t an 18-year-old (and hopefully no one over 18 is aspiring to date a 17-year-old, but that’s another kind of creepy).

So Roissy’s tests are simple self-obsession.  He’s taking the sort of person he would want to date and makes a blanket declaration that these people are dateable and everyone else undateable; for men, people like him are dateable and other people (you know, the normal kind who don’t kiss people who obviously don’t want to be kissed) are undateable.  A lot of unintentional subtext surfaces in the question choice and scoring. Notice his resentful tone towards “alpha” women: You’re doing well now, but someday you’ll get what’s coming to you!  Perhaps Roissy realizes that most “alpha” women (and women, period) wouldn’t want to date him.  Also observe the lack of questions about men’s physical attractiveness.  Because that would be gay.

For a closer analysis from someone who actually had the fortitude to take Roissy’s tests and tally up her scores, check out the female and male tests at The Pervocracy.

So half of my test is simply my version of Roissy’s test, taken to absurd extremes.  I like Doctor Who and don’t like coffee drinkers, so obviously tea-drinking Whovians are objectively desirable.  Of course it doesn’t even work that far; even individuals rarely have tastes as rigid as the Greek system requires.  Blue-eyed redheads with ambitions of being desired by me, take heart: It all depends.  Or, you know, don’t take heart, since I’m married.

The other half is simple nonsense.  Roissy’s test is so disconnected from reality that you might as well ask random questions and assign them random point values.  Explanations of specific points of obtuseness are below the cut.

A Gender-Neutral Dating Market Value Test

If you’re single, or even if you aren’t, you have no doubt used Roissy’s incisive and well-calibrated tests to calculate your dating market value for men and for women. It’s important to do this at least once so that you don’t set your sights on alphas way out of your league or waste your game on worthless omegas when you could do better. However, Roissy’s tests suffer from one flaw: They aren’t gender-neutral.

To fill this void, I am proud to present this fully-accurate, updated, and objective gender-neutral market value test.

1. How old are you?

• 15-17 [-10. Go do your homework, kid.]
• 18-23 [+0]
• 24-29 [+1]
• 30-35 [+0]
• 36-40 [-1]
• 41-50 [-2]
• 51+ [-3]

2. What color is your hair?

• Blond [-1]
• Brown [+0]
• Black [+0]
• Red [-2]
• White/gray [-1]
• Dyed something unusual [+1]

3. What color are your eyes?

• Brown [+0]
• Blue/gray [-1]
• Green [+1]
• Heterochromia! [+2]

4. How wide is the distance between your eyes?

• Not sure [+0]
• Normal [+0]
• I actually went and measured the space between my eyes because you asked this question [-1]

5. Do you wear makeup?

• Yes, a lot [-1]
• Yes, a little [+0]
• No [+1]

6. Do you have a birthmark in the shape of an identifiable country?

• No [-1]
• It looks sort of like Belarus if you squint [+0]
• Yes [+1]

7. How strongly gender-identifiable are you?

• I am very masculine or very feminine [-1]
• About average, I guess? [+0]
• I’m super androgynous [+1]

8. What is your clothing style?

• Practical [+0]
• Super trendy [-1]
• Very professional and well-dressed [+1]
• Fun and creative [+1]
• Goth [-1]

9. Do you wear glasses?

• Yes [+1]
• No [+0]
• I wear sunglasses all the time [-1. Do you pop your collars too?]

10. What is your IQ?

• Under 100 [+0]
• 100-120 [+0]
• Over 120 [+0]
• IQ is a meaningless concept [+5]

11. What is the register of your voice?

• Tenor or soprano [-1]
• Baritone or mezzo soprano [+0]
• Bass or alto [+1]

12. Do you have a car?

• No [-1]
• Yes, it’s a beater [-2]
• Yes, it’s a Corolla [+0]
• Yes, it’s an SUV [-1]
• Yes, it’s a pickup [-1, but +1 if you help me move]
• Yes, it’s a Miata [-1. Show a little originality.]
• Yes, it’s a classic [+1]
• Yes, it’s a Lotus [+5]
• Yes, it’s a Nissan Cube [-5]

13. What is your favorite book out of this list?

• Harry Potter [+0]
• The Lord of the Rings [+1]
• A bestseller (Stephen King, John Grisham, etc) [-1]
• Bodice rippers! [+0. Whatever floats your boat.]
• Any Shakespeare [+2]
• The Divine Comedy.  Shakespeare is too mainstream. [+3]
• Twilight [-5]
• Atlas Shrugged [-A million]

14. What is your favorite hot drink?

• Starbucks [-5]
• Other coffee [-1]
• Cocoa [+1]
• Tea [+1]

15. How many friends do you have?

• None [-1]
• A few close friends [+0]
• A lot of friends [+1]
• I’m pretty much made of friends [+0. Potentially divided loyalties.]

16. Kitties?

• Kitties! [+1]
• What? [-1]

17. You are at a party. Some interesting people you don’t know are talking on the other side of the room. You…

• Mope in the corner and hope they come to you [+0]
• Carefully approach them, constantly scanning the room and calculating your optimum position relative to them [-1. Seriously?]
• Act normal [+1]

18. Which doctor is the best?

• Four. I’m traditional. [+1]
• Five. I respect anyone who wears a decorative vegetable. [+0]
• Nine. He brought it back. [-1]
• Ten. He’s got the hair, the coat, and the best sense of humor. [+1]
• Eleven. I’m getting in touch with my inner child. [+1]
• One of the others. I’m totally obscure. [+0]
• My general practitioner? [-5]

19. What best describes your sense of humor?

• None [-1]
• Practical joker [-1. Too risky.]
• Silly punster [+0]
• Witty and clever [+1]
• Cutting and sardonic [+0]

20. Which of these manikins do you identify with?

• I am wired with explosives [+0]
• I am being eaten by an amoeba [+1]
• There’s a fried egg on my stomach [+0]
• My belly button is walking away [+1]
• I’m asleep [-1]

21. How many times have you watched Nyan Cat?

• Never [-1]
• 0-5 [+0]
• 6-50 [+1]
• I’ve watched the 10-hour version [-1. There are limits, people.]

22. The Who is…

• A good band [+0]
• The best band [+1]
• Who? [-1, but hopefully you won't get fooled again]

23. What are the odds that you will answer this question correctly?

• 25% [+0]
• 50% [+0]
• 25% [+0]
• 0% [+0]

24. What is your favorite pony?

• Rainbow Dash [+1]
• Pinkie Pie [+1]
• Rarity [+0]
• Fluttershy [+0]
• Twilight Sparkle [-1]
• Applejack [-1]

25.  I’m going to assume that you’re lying and that your real score is 10 points lower than whatever you post.  How does this make you feel?

• Terrible.  My soul is crushed forever. [-1, and go see a counselor]
• Ha, just as I predicted!  It’s all part of my plan! [-2.  Suuuure.]
• What?  Why would you do that? [+0]
• Who gives a crap, it’s an internet quiz [+2]

Scoring

-1,000,045 to -45: Below omega. They have to make up new letters to account for you.

-44 to -25: Zeta. You aren’t sure how the Latin alphabet works. If only we were using the Spanish alphabet, like the Russians do!

-24 to -15: Omega. Your life sucks, and now an internet test has confirmed it.

-14 to -5: Lesser beta. You are pretty much average, but you should feel bad about yourself anyway.

-4 to 4: Betta. You show immediate aggression towards everyone, so you should be housed individually in a small container.

5 to 9: Classic beta. You may increase in value if kept in mint condition.

10 to 14: Alpha. You are a psychopath with as many as 50 conflicting personalities in you at once.

15 to 24: Facial alpha. You’re some sort of spa treatment, as near as I can figure.

25 to 34: Alpha alpha. You are awesome, and yet everyone seems to hate you, especially short guys with eye problems.

35: Alpha alpha alpha prime. Everyone has to order you, even if they don’t like alpha.