OSCAR IS A BOY'S NAME

Women keep trying to do a man's job, but they just aren't as good at things like making movies as the boys are. Sometimes, sure, a woman achieves something great by accident, or because her father or husband is Somebody and helps her, or she's beautiful, or preferably all three. But mostly, women can't cut it. Just look at he Oscars. At the end of the show, when they brought all the winners on stage, there was this sea of tuxedos and a puddle of gowns. You can't accuse liberal lefty Hollywood of sexism. No. They would surely embrace with open arms any woman who was as good as a man. The cold truth is women are not men. A man can tell a story or run a set with cojones, but a woman has only her uterus. Acting ballsy is just that - an act. At any moment she could go vaginal, or God forbid, fallopian and the whole project could come crashing down. Millions of dollars are at stake and women are not equipped to guarantee the ejaculatory "Eureka" by themselves. They need support. I myself couldn't write this column without a whole army of men doing all the actual work, you know, taking me out to dinner, buying me jewelry, paying for the apartment, creating civilization. As long as they pay all the bills, why shouldn't they take all the credit? Fair is fair.

LIFE IMITATES TV

People keep complaining about reality television being a blot on the airwaves like the airwaves was invented for prime time instead of the other way around.

Now I enjoy my fiction as much as the next girl, and so try to catch the news as often as possible. Used to be news was reality, but not any more. Now the entire half-hour or hour is scripted like a sit-com, with just the details changing from episode to episode, but the content is decided by market research. Need a shooting here. A danger to consumers there. Canned. Soporific.

Enter reality programs, which can surprise you when you least expect it. Even on Survivor and American Idol, the final outcome is unknown. We humans is endlessly curious about other humans, what they will do, and how they will react. Reality TV gives us a window on a world of folk beyond our small circle of family, friends, and co-workers.

Plus, a lot of these shows is truly improving to your average human's life. Take Clean Sweep on the Home Channel. I have more than one friend who has started carting off carloads to the thrift store after watching a few episodes. And the Queer Eye show's intstructions to hopeless males gives a backdrop for some girls to point out a few fine points about behavior to the guy sitting on the couch next to her eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on the floor.

Actually, these two shows have provided a kind of couple's therapy for one duo I know. This week's hapless swain is so much worse than her guy, my friend can point and they can both laugh. But inside he's learning. And then the sweep people bring their broom to a closet worse than hers and he can pat her hand and promise her they will be happier in the end. And they are.

More importantly, while seeming to deal with externals, my friends actually learn about how to be better to each other. He puts out more effort just to make her happy, and she lets go of baggage that she has been saving just in case. And life imitates television.

FASHION SENSE

Your fashion is your life, your religion, your society. Life is just the acquisition of fashion, which proof is that we are born naked and go out decked in our best dress and favorite jewels not to mention a hefty supply of make-up. Right there at the very beginning, before they even feed a baby, they put clothes on her. By the end, clothes has become so important to who a person is that after the spirit departs, we sure don't send it back to nature au naturel.

All of life's deep issues can be understood more clearly if you first understand the resulting fashion crisis. Resolving the fashion crisis does not put money in the bank, or kick the cheating bastard out of the house. Think of a fashion fix as what I like to call a "deep issue massage." It helps you work through the kinks in your psyche so that you can move more freely into a new job or new relationship.

SMELLING GOOD & PLENTY

Looks is not everything. You may be shocked to hear a girl like I say such a thing, but facts is facts. Opposites attract, leastways when it comes to smell. Gals do not all think the same manly scent is attractive. It seems the smell of a man that will send them into a swoon is the smell of a man whose immune system is farthest from her own. A man whose immune system is close to hers smells, well, like her brother.

So what's a person to do to increase his or her chances. Nix on the cologne or perfume. If you want to arouse the opposite sex, you need to increase blood to the sexual organs, and to do this you need to forget your Versace and your Chanel. According to studies, men are turned on most by a combination of smelling lavender and pumpkin pie. Women get more quickly hot and bothered in the presence of the smell of Good and Plenty candy and cucumber.

So gals, forget about baking him gramma's secret recipe chocolate chip cookies. Serve up some pumpkin pie for dessert. And guys, at the next movie date, pass by the popcorn and buy some you-know-what instead. And let me know how it turns out.

NEO-MODERNISM

My friend Jenny is in college studying writing. Or not-writing. It's hard to tell with Post-Modernism. She tries to explain how first the Moderns said that God does not exist and so it was up to humans to make a better world and that someday, with the perfect education, the perfect government and the perfect merchandise, we humans will be, well, if not perfect, happy.

Now your Post-Moderns say that the Moderns got the God part right and the rest is hooey. Ideas like "perfection" require an objective judge. Objectivity crashed and burned when Heisenberg and the boys started fooling around with atoms and cats. Humanity racing to a brighter future is like a hamster with a vivid imagination on a wheel in a cage. And meaning is meaningless so don't delude yourself.

Having said that, PMs (not to be confused with PMS) go on to inform the rest of us what makes good art and politics as if they was objective authority, apply for tenure at universities and then hire like-minded colleagues so's to influence the future of thought for the better, and come up with a whole science of signs to show how to skillfully undermine meaning's meaningfulness.

It's no wonder my friend who went to school wanting to be a good writer is confused. The only way she can be a good writer is to first give up the idea of good writing, and then she can win awards writing carefully crafted but untimately meaningless stories.

It's depressing. This tells me how deep-down unhappy all these PMs are. They're foisting their depressed and meaninglessness vision of the world on others with the filter that has polarized theirs. Me, I'm a rose-colored glasses person. I'm looking in the mirror and meditating on perfection - seeing is believing after all - and understand how the PMs' vision of futility will be fulfilled. Soon, a school of thought will emerge, and it will replace the Post-Moderns as quick as you can say 8-track tapes.

I'd like to suggest one - Neo-Modernism. Neo-Modernism says the PMs got the Heisenberg part right in that you can't ever try to know something without influencing the result, but Neos applies it to God and meaninglessness and perfection - wherever it suits them. Maybe there's a God and maybe there isn't. I can't know that. Maybe life is meaningless and maybe it isn't. I can't know that.

Me, I will continue to experiment with my own life, trying to make happy 'meaning' out of either the random or the designed universe. I don't care which. I can't know that. But I can be happy, give comfort and joy to those I touch, and not sweat what don't work out.