The first place Google takes us in our quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP) is Gradspot.com where a writer named Gritz tells us that the new dating paradigm is to look for career-oriented women at the office and forget about chivalry.
Paradigm Shift #1: The office is the new bar
As Rosenbloom explains, “Those who follow the evolution of the workplace romance say the stigma may be fading because the line between business and personal life is blurring among younger workers. They are working longer hours. Their workplaces encourage collaboration. And, of course, most single people are in the work force.”
Paradigm Shift #2: Feminists are the new hot girls
...A “career-oriented” women—too often used as a descriptive shorthand for a feminist—is now more acceptable than ever....
Paradigm Shift #3: Chivalry is dead
Fourth Dwarf Analysis:
It appears Gritz and the writer Stephanie Rosenbloom have spent little time in the workplace and possibly less time dating. The only "new" thing in this 3-part paradigm shift is the throw-away line that "chivalry is dead". People have always hooked up wherever they happen to meet. Feminists have always been the hottest women. If chivalry is dead, based on the comments we've seen about how it's appreciated when guys pay for dinner, fellows who revive chivalry are well appreciated.
It could be that Gritz is suggesting that women should stop looking for chivalry in the men they are dating. Unfortunately, Gritz has given us no basis following this suggestion, but we'll explore the idea in future postings.
Several weeks ago, I told you all how to get down to kissing at the movies, and a bunch of you turned it into a silly discussion on paying for meals and assessing personal characteristics. Near the end of this discussion, Zoom suggested that "The world needs a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm™."
Does it? I almost replied, Isn't what I've suggested good enough? Get yourself next to a snoggable someone in a dark place and try out your moves! It might not be revolutionary or new, but it works.
However, many of you are not willing to accept my expertise in this area and maybe it's my fault for not giving you enough reason to. So, I have embarked on a quest to find a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP). (I won't be trademarking it as Zoom suggested because I believe in freely sharing the wealth of my intellectual property.)
Step 1: Go to Google.
A search for "Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm" only gets 1 hit. (Of course, by the time you are reading this, it'll be 2 hits, and far more if you're only getting around to reading this after I've finished this series and the world catches on to the brilliance of the RNDP). The lack of other hits is a sign that nobody else has found a revolutionary new dating paradigm and may even be evidence that Zoom is right that the world needs one.
A search on "Revolutionary Dating Paradigm" gets the answer "No results found for "Revolutionary Dating Paradigm". (Not anymore of course, but how about I stop writing these parenthetical disclaimers and we just take it as understood that every time I describe a search, this posting and any posting that quotes it will be on Google if you try the search yourself.)
However, when we try "New Dating Paradigm", we start to get somewhere: 15 hits.
Step 2: Literature Review
I have examined each of the sites with references to a new dating paradigm and I am happy to report that while a couple are useless for our purposes, there is some valuable work taking place out there on the World Wide Web. There are relationship scholars who are using their formidable skills on this topic and even some who are doing crucial fieldwork at their own risk and expense.
Investigating the work of these scholars has taken me on a wide-ranging adventure. I've combed through scientific articles, Wikipedia entries, the urban dictionary, and many other sources.
In addition to looking for new dating paradigms, I've also investigated new dating schemas, and new dating methods. (Did you know that to tell how old bones are, radiocarbon dating is out and now they're measuring the amount of radiation that has been absorbed by the sand that is found with the bones?)
Step 3: Report back on the new paradigms
In upcoming posts, I will be looking at sites that describe a "new dating paradigm" and reporting on what we can learn from them.
Step 4: Report back on further work
Following these posts, I'll be exploring schemas, methods and other research avenues that have been suggested in the paradigm research.
Step 5: Conclusion: The Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm
That's right - a conclusion. This series will end with an answer. Not a suggestion that further research needs to be done and a request for more funding. You'll be getting your paradigm.
I don't get it. Why hold a Two Lip Fest? Makes no sense to celebrate something so ordinary. Doesn't everybody have a pair?
Or is it supposed to be about the kissing...? Like in those old country songs, where there's always a line about "pressing your two lips close to mine..."?
Pandora and coyote are pleased to announce that they are ramping up an Ultra Cosmic Top SeKrit Project, final results of which will be released in due time. It will be highly secret and scientific, involving ummm, really science-y secret things.
Do not try to find out what we're up to, or you will face consequences. B-a-a-a-a-d ones.
Pandora's sprightly dimples camouflage extensive international training in the dark arts of elocution instruction, which have equipped her with an infinite number of ruthlessly exotic ways to stun, torture, maim and/or kill those who would try to subvert our purpose.
Coyote’s semi-mythical snout camouflages an extensive set of real pointy chompers, and he owns cookbooks full of exotic cat recipes that would make a Tartar blanch. Oh. And millennia of experience have made him kinda sneaky about the bite-and-run thing.
If, in the course of your daily rounds you accidentally spot us doing Ultra Cosmic Top SeKrit Stuff, look away. Leave quickly. Go someplace else. Hide. Tell no one. If you do tell someone -- or worse yet, if you actually try to follow us or question us on this matter, we absolutely cannot be held responsible for what accidentally happens to you. But it will be b-a-a-a-a-d... and we'll really enjoy doing it.
Thank you. You may now commence floating the usual wild and groundless speculations.
Lately I've been reading overheated media coverage of Ottawa's graffiti problem. You know, Krylon Invasion, city councillors buying business constituents high pressure washers to zap offending spraybombage - like that. I've been ambivalent. I know a lot of it defaces private property, but we coyotes like certain graffiti. Some of it is really beautiful, and when I see it, it makes me happy. I speak of the true public artists. Taggers? Not so much. May their sooty black aerosol cans explode in their sweaty little mitts. I digress.
Saturday, though, I sprayed a mouthful of my customary breakfast (Piping hot crumpets, cat marmalade, steaming mug of fresh-brewed vitriol) all over my morning Petfinder. Patrick Curran, OC Transpo's business development manager, was floating a trial balloon about selling transit station names to the highest-bidding corporate sponsors. Some city councillors and the usual suspects on the editorial page seemed to like it.
The argument is that Transpo needs the money, and there's no more space for ads on the buses. Seems to me that maybe the city should just fund the service properly. But dreaming up billion dollar tunnels and harebrained 'innovations' is way more fun than making sure the existing bus system works well in the most basic ways.
Mr. Curran rather disingenuously notes that St. Laurent transit station already is named for the attached mall, and argues that opens the door to more of the same. Nice try at historical revisionism to support a thin-end-of-the-wedge propaganda technique, but, ummm, no. The mall is labelled for the rather prominent nearby boulevard that the mall promoters swiped its name from.
Ottawa is a town where, when a boneheaded fuckwit has a idea that shrieks out for rapid trashing, then tries to smoke it past us by self-diagnosing it as 'innovative', a buncha other boneheaded fuckwits will nod sagely and murmur, "Mmmm... innovative!" It's how decisions are made. But non-sequitur-ish corporate sponsorship isn't innovative. It's already been inflicted elsewhere. Yoohoo! Senators Coliseum? Which became the Corel Centre? An asshatted monument to momentary corporate hubris - and sanctioned graffiti, really. Now it's ScotiaBank Place...
Transit is about moving people efficiently. Renaming transit stations - all of which now (very handily) key on nearby geographical features - is not. We already let businesses deface the cityscape by smearing it with their kind of graffiti. We just call them 'logos', 'signs' and 'advertising'. Why let 'em further confuse a bus ride, too?
Paradigm Shift #1: The office is the new bar
As Rosenbloom explains, “Those who follow the evolution of the workplace romance say the stigma may be fading because the line between business and personal life is blurring among younger workers. They are working longer hours. Their workplaces encourage collaboration. And, of course, most single people are in the work force.”Paradigm Shift #2: Feminists are the new hot girls...A “career-oriented” women—too often used as a descriptive shorthand for a feminist—is now more acceptable than ever....Paradigm Shift #3: Chivalry is dead
It appears Gritz and the writer Stephanie Rosenbloom have spent little time in the workplace and possibly less time dating. The only "new" thing in this 3-part paradigm shift is the throw-away line that "chivalry is dead". People have always hooked up wherever they happen to meet. Feminists have always been the hottest women. If chivalry is dead, based on the comments we've seen about how it's appreciated when guys pay for dinner, fellows who revive chivalry are well appreciated.
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