Basically, what I think is that if a guy (guy #1) is a big loser, has no social skills, no hygiene, or whatever, he is much less likely to be in a relationship. Also, despite his single status, women are much less likely to hit on him or pursue him. If a guy (guy #2) is good-looking, has a nice body, is funny, witty, intelligent, well educated, employed, rich, he is most likely going to be in a relationship. (Isn’t that what women say? “all the good ones are either taken or gay”) Because he can actually *get* a girl, unlike the other guy. And who wants to be single forever? However, these attributes are also going to attract other women. And who would be over flirting with guy #1, who is probably also extremely annoying and overbearing to any girl that will give him the time of day, when they could be talking to guy #2, wedding ring or no? Also, when guy #2 does happen to break up, you can bet it won’t last long if he is looking to get into another relationship. It will be a lot easier for him than guy #1.

I personally think this is a much better explanation than the cliche “we always want what we can’t have” that everyone has been throwing around. If you put two equally attractive, successful, intelligent, funny guys together and one was single and one wasn’t, I will bet you that the single one would be getting more attention than the married one. But then, he also probably wouldn’t stay single for very long.

http://www.weirdal.com/

Personally, he is not the same since he shaved off his ‘stache and got rid of the glasses….”[/quote]

I don’t know about that. He’s a little less physically “quirky”, I guess, but he still makes great music. “White and Nerdy” was great.

Regarding your observations on bohemian artists and yuppies, you’re absolutely right. And one can consciously become different, though one can never consciously become intelligent. Even if it’s conforming, it is different from the “mainstream”.

And they called it guppy lo-o-o-ove ….”[/quote]

Please allow me to show my truly geeky side and answer your question:
http://www.weirdal.com/
Personally, he is not the same since he shaved off his ‘stache and got rid of the glasses….

If we didn’t we’d be complete morons, why would we want something we can have? The ‘want’ wouldn’t last very long since whatever we ‘want’ is attainable. I ‘want’ more money…why? Because I can’t just ‘have’ it.
A woman can ‘have’ a man that is married, just not immediately. Similar to me and more money, they would both take time to get.
People want things that they can’t readily have, because things that you can readily have you simply get, no extended wanting required. I ‘want’ Taco Bell, so I go get it…done. No more wanting. We want things that we need to want for a while before we can get.
Nobody wants something that they literally can’t have, if you do you are a fool. What would the point be in wanting something that is impossible to attain? Just like what is the point in wanting something that is easily attainable?
We want things that we can’t immediately have.
Women ‘want’ married men because they have proven several things already, they are attainble but not readily (shouldn’t be anyway).
Put simply, I ‘want’ a car that has been tested and proven to be a high quality car. I might take a sexy looking prototype car that is untested and unproven though. It just means I’ll have to put the car through it’s paces myself and then judge whether I want to keep it, the proven car (married man) means somebody else has put it through it’s paces and judged it to be worthy.
I actually knew a couple guys that wore wedding rings out to the bar even though they were no longer married, they claimed it helped them ‘pick-up’.

And they called it guppy lo-o-o-ove ….

The truth shall set you free, but first it’s going to hurt.

I’m not claiming that anything that I ever write is the truth; I just like the quote, and your comment brought it back to the front of my mind. In my case, though, that quote was incredibly true. Some singer from years ago had a song called Seventeen, and one of the lines was At seventeen, I learned the truth. I began to see the various truths in third grade, and each apocalypse was an armageddon.

Today, I am a part of the army of the walking wounded, but I prefer that over being a True Believer. Such persons scare me.

Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he knew, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind — surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O’Brien’s mouth as he looked down at him.

‘I told you, Winston,’ he said, ‘that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,’ he added in a different tone. ‘The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.’ He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’

Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.

‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’

He paused as though he expected Winston to speak. Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed again. He could not say anything. His heart seemed to be frozen. O’Brien went on:

‘And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone since you have been in our hands — all that will continue, and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again generation after generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible — and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it.’

A couple of years ago, one of my friends had a teacher who said, “I find it curious that the shortest line in the Bible is NOT ‘Jesus laughed.’”

This caught my attention, and I spoke to a minister about it. He said that he imagined that Jesus laughed and loved life, just as any other normal person in that day. He added, though, that the omission of Jesus’ laughter in the Gospels is indicative of his loving, forgiving nature. His final comment was that “Jesus wept” is more in keeping with the character of Jesus that is presented in the Gospels, whereas “Jesus laughed” is not.