Aggy Gets Personal Trainer

With all the "high-maintenance" talk, I have decided to do a little "maintenance" of my own. (Bob has also inspired me, but what else is new).

So, fellow ESIs and other readers, I am announcing officially today that I have employed a Personal Trainer. Some of you may remember him -- you know, the one who did some work with Madonna? I will be reporting regularly on the progress of my "fitness plan." Carlos has his work cut out for him.

High Maintenance Women 2 - Defining Terms

High maintenance women are like high maintenance sports cars. They're lots of fun when you're out on the town together, but for every hour of showing off, there are another 10 spent on upkeep and repair behind the scenes. After hours of polishing the headlights in your garage, you might ask yourself -- is this really worth it, just for a couple of rides?
[from Are High Maintenance Women Worth It? by Madeline Murphy]

Distraught over my poor finish in New York and busy with my upcoming Astrogation and Biosphere exams, it still behooves me to bring some clarity to the discussion on high maintenance women.

Why me? While the other ESI lads have had experience with high maintenance women, there is general agreement that if one of us is truly an expert on the topic, it's the Dwarf. (Although it could be Coyote. There are unexplained gaps on his curiculuum vitae if you catch my drift. And for all that he's a semi-mythical prairie creature, he's the one you'd ask to fix your Volvo.)

Let's get precise: Agatha, if you conclude that all women are high maintenance, the term has no meaning. Similarly, Bob, if you conclude that no women are, the term also becomes useless.

I've gone to the web and surveyed the attempts others have made at defining "high maintenance".

There are definitions on Urban Dictionary, a number of lists with titles like "Four signs she's high maintenance", as well as the comments from the Chair, Coyote and the IO. There is no universal definition, but we can identify qualities that appear on most lists:

• Extremely Self-absorbed - focussed only on her own needs (Coyote coupled this with narcissism and sociopathy, however, I 'd say other personality disorders could also lead to the extreme self-absorption of the high maintenance individual.)
• High HBA factor (HBA: Health, Beauty & Accessories)
• High emotional needs
  
• Controlling - outrageous or irrational demands, wants constant presence, etc.
• Communication difficulties - misinterprets positive and neutral statements to be insults, cannot understand statements about others needs.
• Unfair: She will blame her partner for things that are not his fault, like a sudden rainfall; or hold him to expectations that she does not expect herself to meet.

The Chair says there could be a woman with a high HBA factor and low emotional needs (or vice versa) who would qualify as a high maintenance woman; while Coyote and the IO seem to think high HBA can be missing, but high emotional needs are a mandatory part of the definition.

In my review of the literature, I'd say that while most experts agree with Coyote and the IO, some suggest that a high HBA factor is a strong indicator of high emotional needs. Others say a high HBA factor should only be a concern when it is a problem for the man, for example, if it means she is never ready when she says she will be ready, or if she can never be kissed or touched because it will muss her makeup or hair.

Corollary factors: Several lists mention big money problems as a sign of the high maintenance woman. It all depends on the cause of the money problem. Out of control spending to fill emotional needs? or simply not earning enough money to meet basic needs?

Some writers link high maintenance to low intelligence, others to high intelligence. In my experience, high mainenance cuts across all IQs, but the more intelligent, the more attractive and the more diabolical they can be.

Aren't there also High Maintenance Men? Of course there are. We usually characterize them differently. First of all, the HBA factor is often completely absent, or is expressed very differently. Also, while it's cute for a man to be with a controlling, self-absorbed woman; women with controlling, self-absorbed men are referred to spousal abuse experts.

So this High Maintenance business is sexist crap, right? Yes and no.

When it's used to refer to the ordinary maintenance that any woman needs, it is sexist crap. (For evidence that this happens, read this news article about a massive sexual harassment and sexist hiring practice lawsuit.)

But maintenance isn't a bad thing: Right. Every intricate mechanism needs ongoing and emergency maintenance. Without it, the most reliable machine can become high maintenance or just stop working.

Annotated bibilography:

• Top 10 Signs She's High Maintenance by Shawn Croft: I think Croft has dated one high maintenance woman for a couple of weeks and thinks he's got the field covered.
  
• Lists: A High Maintenance Woman by Tintin: this blogger hasn't been out with any high maintenance women, but he's watched Paris Hilton on TV and thinks he's got it figured out.
• MensHealth forum on the topic: a bunch of wankers like us flailing away at the topic without the benefit of illustrations and HTML formatting.
• EveryThing2.com's article: a fair compare and contrast that gives the flavour for the term without being definitive.
• Wikipedia's definition: a nice, neutral definition. Clearly influenced by women with expensive tastes who like the idea of being considered "high maintenance" or by others who want to dispel the stigma of the term.
• MSN's Four signs she's high maintenance by Marcia Jedd: A well-researched piece that goes to the core of the issues.
• Blog Quiz Are You High Maintenance? A set of lame hypotheticals that leads to obvious results with the mandatory pros and cons of whatever personality type you turn out to be ("... while it's good to aim high - you're scaring Mr. Perfect away.")
• Are High Maintenance Women Worth It? by Madeline Murphy: Murphy also tries to balance the pros and cons, but she does it in an insightful way and has makes some excellent points. ("Do you let her pick out her own gifts on her birthday and at Christmas because she's so picky that you don't want to bother giving her something she'll only return anyway?")

Now then, Aggie, you were asking about the positives and negatives? I think maybe we fellas are more interested in discussing how to avoid ensnarement.

Sorry, I'm not here ... in either language

OK, something's steaming the lens of my telescope, so bear with me. Why must outgoing telephone messages from federal government offices be in both official languages? It's a staggering waste of time.

As a well-connected astronomer, I dial a lot of government phone numbers and rountinely spend up to two minutes listening to people tell me twice that they are not around, in two separate languages.

Did I miss a bone-headed Treasury Board directive? Are public servants forced to do this? As a popular comedian once remarked, I think we're all pretty familiar with the whole answering-machine-please-leave-a-message drill no matter what language we speak. The thing beeps and you talk into the phone. That's it. There are no special instructions, cryptic Da Vinci Code passwords or skill-testing questions.

The outgoing bilingual phone message is a gigantic time burglar. If Stats Can were to study this phenomenon, I'm certain we would discover it is costing the Canadian economy hundreds of millions of dollars in productivity annually while people sit stupefied at their desks, listening for cumulative hours on end to repetitive and entirely annoying messages. And then having to hang up because they forgot why they called in the first place. (Yes, laugh if you must, but this has happened to me.)

What's next, English, French, then Inuit throat singing versions of the I'm-not-here spiel to let us know the bureaucrat is in yet another meeting? Don't get me wrong, I support the whole idea of bilingualism and the Official Languages Act. But there has to be a smarter way to do this.

So a fervent plea to the tens of thousands of federal employees who regularly read this blog: How about simply answering with, "Hello, you've reached Wanda Prudentmanager's voice mail. Je ne suis pas disponible en ce moment. Please leave a message. Merci."

This will work for 99.9 per cent of callers. And trust me, you don't want a message from the other 0.1 per cent anyway.

What's wrong with high-maintenance women?

In an ESI meeting last evening, the issue of 'the high-maintenance woman' came up. Some implied that being involved with a high-maintenance woman was a negative thing. Some suggested that it could be ok. I challenge the ESIs - and Bob - to define 'high maintenance' and to discuss both positives and negatives of being involved with a high-maintenance woman. We'll deal with high-maintenance men another day. Here are some prompts to help you get started: "High-maintenance women are....."; "High-maintenance women are challenging because...."; "High-maintenance women are wonderful because...".

Courtroom Sketch Artist

So the cover of today's petfinder has a sketch of three men being tried for a firebombing that left two children dead in 2004. Indeed a tragic story, but I found the sketch rather interesting as it appears to be something one would see right out of the pages of DC comics. Without knowing the details I would say the guy in the middle was the ringleader, the guy on the left was the weasel-like backstabbing henchman, and bald guy on the right as the dopey lackey.

Maybe it's time we repeal the "no cameras in courtroom" laws.