I'm stirring up trouble

So I was over at Bitch Ph.D where she's having a big sex talk. I didn't have much to add, but to discuss the reasons why men are less likely to have serious sex talks with other men. My thought (among other things) is that men are usually homophobic (in that they never want to be thought of as gay), and that in general men are taught not to consider their bodies attractive. This kicked off a big discussion (probably not helped by my initial wording on my comment), so I thought I would put here my full thoughts on male body image.

Basically I know that I don't really consider myself attractive, and I know that many guys that are don't either, however it is more than that (and here is where it differs from women's body image problems), men don't usually think that the male body can be considered attractive (probably as a result of the earlier mentioned homophobia). The end result tends to be misogyny: basically the guy wonders how women can be attracted to men, and decides that they aren't really, they just use sex as a way to get what they want, thus leading to the "all women are whores" sentiment. The solution seems to be convincing men that they too can be attractive, and/or using imagination to imagine that someone can be attracted to something you don't consider attractive.

However most people are products of their environment, and don't have a great amount of imagination, so until society changes there seems to be not much to do. On the other hand society does seem to be changing, and increasing number of men don't follow traditional gender rolls (although metrosexuality doesn't seem like a great thing to aspire to).

anyways, enough on this.

Local music

So on Wednesday I went to a free concert at The Strathmore. There were two bands, one was a sort of art-rock band called Cascade in Blue, and another whose name I forget (a more sort of countryish band). Cascade was pretty good, so I got a CD for $5. I think this underplays the problems with popular music. Most people (in my experience at least) are happy buying CD's, the only problem is that they're all overpriced in stores. When the music is overpriced one of two things will happen: 1. No one will try new music bcause there is too much of an investment involved, 2. People who do want to try new music will do so illigally.

I think this is a large part of the reason why mainstream music has been stagnating in America.

I'm baaack

ok, so I've been back, but I've also been busy, and lacking in computerness (I just built one).

let's see, Belgium is cool, and I wish America was a lot more like Europe. I turned 21 on the 9th, but had been in europe for the month previous, and so was used to legally purchasing booze. umm... yeah that's about it.