The Disney Princess Theorem

Now last time I tried to tackle religion and I got more of a bad response than I usually do, I'm not surprised, admittedly my strong suit isn't tackling serious topics. I was just a little pissed off that a few people on email, Twitter and Facebook destroy my inboxes and feeds with inflammatory anti-religion articles and statements. I just was wondering how they justify it being any different than Bible-thumping that they are so opposed to. I did terrible at it, I'm not sure who were most upset, atheists or Christians; I practically had more people saying how full of shit I was, than people actually reading it. The message was so convoluted that the valid points I made were overshadowed by the overall abrasive tone, so if anyone wants to re-read it after taking it with a grain of salt, please do. Anyway, I gave a few friends a preview of this one I'm doing now, and they were already upset before I wrote it; but I did all the research for it so, I'm doing it. I will note my friend's objections, they don't like relationship ones, people have already written about these topics, and I make it seem like people don't have minds of their own. Objections noted, but I've never written about it and like I said this one is pretty much written and I doubt less people will like this than the last one so, enjoy!

Once again this is just meant to be funny so take it with a grain of salt. Ever since high school I have always wondered why women enter obvious destructive relationships. There was that Pearl Jam song about not being able to find a better man, but I see it all the time, a perfectly good guy (usually even good looking dudes as far as I can tell, I'm really not a great judge) will try to court a girl but she throws it all away for the obvious bad catch. I guess I never really understood it before but then I was playing a video game called Kingdom Hearts II based on the Disney and Square-Enix characters (I'm a nerd, don't act surprised). But I soon realized, all of the Disney Princesses have very destructive romantic relationships. I don't fault Disney so much, and for sure there are enough people already doing that, you can even see a whole Disney section on snopes.com. It's just an observation of how we emulate stories that are meaningful to us and it forms our character and even certain preferences. I challenge you not to realize that one of these hits somewhat close to home with one of your friends.

Snow White: She seems pretty normal when compared to any other woman but the underlying mania that Snow White possesses is gullibility that rivals her beauty... that and living with 7 other dudes. To know the full tale of Snow White you must first realize that this is one of Grimm's Fairy Tales, the whole story elaborates the my point so away we go. Firstly she's not tricked once, she's tricked 3 times by the queen in beggar garb (depending on which translation you use, sometimes she is even in the same disguise). The third time she eats the poisoned apple and dies, and since she's a total hottie the dwarfs craft a glass coffin, so that they can look at her beauty, not surprisingly though they really just get sad looking at that dead body so they take it outside and take turns guarding it. After being dead for 3 days a king's son comes across the cabin and the beautifully undecomposed corpse of Snow White. Though unclear weather the prince was in the market for beautiful dead bodies or if it was just an impulse buy; he offers the dwarfs money for it and they refuse, but when he offers to be BFF x 7 with the dwarfs then they let him have it. One of the prince's servants drops the coffin dislodging a piece of the apple and Snow White isn't dead any more, the prince realized having a living chick is even better than a dead one and proposes, and Snow White was like, "whatevs" and they got married. If you think the Grimm story is weird, guess what happens to the Queen? No joke, she gets iron shoes and is forced to dance in them until she falls down dead. The Queen's DDR score was never beaten, and they all lived happily ever after!
The moral: If you're hot enough, you don't have to have common sense, hell you can even be dead and motherfuckers will still be buyin' you shit. Snow White was the first literal trophy wife, she was in a glass case for God's sake.

Cinderella: This is also a Grimm tale but I don't really need to get into it for this point. Cinderella's wicked step mother and sisters force her into a life of servitude as a scullery maid. Prince Charming sends out a nationwide booty call, Cinderella can't go and all of the sudden a fairy godmother shows up and turns pumpkins to chariots... all kinds of nutty shit. And then she's good to go, Prince Charming dances with her, knows instinctively she's the one; midnight strikes she has to run away because her chariot will turn back into a pumpkin and loses her shoe. The prince searches the countryside looking for the girl missing the shoe, finds it's Cinderella and they live happily ever after. What is so bad about that?
The moral: You don't need to stick up for yourself or sever abusive family ties; nah, just keep-on-keepin-on and then one day you'll get a free pumpkin chariot and some dude with a foot fetish will come around and "take you away from all this," all you have to do is hang in there and bury those tears deeeeeep down inside. A couple of mouse friends you can talk to won't hurt either.

Aurora: She's Sleeping Beauty if you are wondering, Malefecent gets dissed and not invited to Aurora's christening and curses her that she will touch a spindle and die when she's 16 (which one of the fairies changes to her sleeping). Why you wouldn't invite someone who does shit like that when they get snubbed, is beyond me. Maybe she's one of those people who you invite to everything and they never show up, but then the get pissed off when you don't invite them somewhere. Anyway, she meets a stranger in the woods, who turns out to be Prince Phillip. He lays the mac down and gets a date (officially this is the only thing close to a healthy relationship and the only prince with a name so far). Her aunts (the fairies) tell her she can't go on the date, she gets super bummed and asks to be left alone. She touches a spindle falls asleep and Prince Philip saves the day and kisses a girl that's sleeping. And she wakes up and they all live happily ever after.
The moral: Somebody tells you some shit you don't want to hear... just hurt yourself... make yourself bleed.... just a little bit... they will be sorry. A bonus moral, you know that one thing you aren't supposed to do... WELL JUST FUCKING DO IT, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE! What could possibly kick more ass than touching a needle? That kind of reminds me of this story there was one tree in the world where you weren't supposed to eat the fruit of... never mind.

Ariel: A mermaid who has everything she could ever ask for saves a drowning prince and starts hording statues of him and other doodads from the human world. Not content to live in her aquatic paradise she decides to trade her beautiful voice for legs to walk on land. Yet another prince falls superficially in love with a girl he barely knows. This is a running theme, I counted the number of words spoken by the princesses to the princes before they knew she was the one: Snow White-0 Cinderella-19 Aurora-30 Ariel-0. Not too surprising since 1/2 of the princes prefer unconsciousness in their women. Ariel somehow manages not to walk away without a smooch from prince Eric despite having a pulse. That being the condition of her contract with Ursula she is dragged down and Ariel's father Triton is forced to trade himself for her. Prince Eric nuts up and kills Ursula and they all live happily ever after.
The moral: If you see a guy you like, the best way to impress him is to make a little shrine to him in your grotto. Make sure to obsess about him all the time, to the point that forget that you live in a place where crabs play drums and fish play saxophones. Then do whatever irresponsible, reckless thing you need to do to make him yours.

Belle: With Belle we finally get to the scary stuff. I didn't really realize exactly how strange of a situation she was in until I was playing Kindgom Hearts II. There is a lot of dialogue to weed through so I'll just put the key points. So in the game you arrive in the Beast's Castle and he is super pissed off, Belle is scared shitless in the other side of the castle and his servants (the clock, teapot, candle guy, etc.) are locked in a room pissing themselves. It's hardly even a stretch to say this looks like a domestic disturbance.

Donald: Where's the Beast?
Belle: Oh, he must be in the west wing. We don't talk like we used to.
Sora: Did something happen?
Belle: Yes. Isn't that why you're here?

Interviewing both parties separately...

Beast: Xaldin... that's his name. He came from the darkness... He...used my anger to control me. He took all my sorrow, my sadness, my pain---and turned it all into rage. There was nothing I could do... I could no longer see the truth.
Goofy: Well, I'll be. That must be why you threw all of your friends down there into the dungeon. You wanted to make sure that you didn't hurt 'em, right?
Beast: Was that it? Was it to protect them?
Goofy: Sure. We know you're good inside.

It's a good idea to get your story straight before the cops get there...

Beast: I've mistreated her... I've mistreated her and been so selfish.
Sora: She didn't say anything about that.
Beast: She'd never tell anyone of my cruelty... She's too good.

Is it that... or does she know what will happen to her if she does?

Beast: Where is Belle?
Wardrobe: Why, she left in a hurry. Something about going after this...man in black.
Beast: WHAT!? Why doesn't she do as she's told?

Not a jealous man, but females lie...

Beast: Belle... I-I'm sorry---I...wasn't myself. I hope I haven't done anything to hurt you. Forgive me.
Belle: I know you weren't yourself. You don't have to apologize. But I had hoped...that you might have changed a little bit.

Uh yeah... I WISH I was taking this one out of context.

Belle: Do you have to go?
Sora: Yeah.
Goofy: Now, no more arguin', okay?

Please don't go, we can play Scrabble... or watch a movie... I'll make popcorn... please don't leave me alone.

The moral: Instead of that guy that everyone in the town (even your father) loves; you should really pick the selfish verbally and physically abusive asshole who ruined the lives of everyone he knows with a single dickheaded maneuver and even locked your father in a dungeon one time. It's pretty much a no-brainer.

Jasmine: There is no background story for this needed.
The moral: If you're a suburban princess and daddy doesn't show you enough attention, find a hardened convicted criminal to go out with. At first he may not be able to provide for you, and he may not exactly feel the need to pull himself up by his boot straps. But hey he just needs to hustle a little bit, jack some shit here and there, and perfect his rhymes a little bit and KAZZAM! Dr. Dre will come out of a magic lamp and give him a record contract. Street Rat Life!

Pocahontas: A very regal, independent, environmentally conscious, Native American woman with almost no flaws, except oh yeah she starts seeing another guy when she's engaged.
The moral: Cheating is okay, as long as they are in different river-bend codes.

Mulan: Fa Mulan goes in place of her father to war because he is much too crippled to fight. In an attempt to bring honor to her family she dresses as a man in order to fight in the army against the Huns.
The moral: Two words... penis envy. Just kidding, no the actual moral is that if you don't fit in at first, you should be ashamed. You need to dress, look and act like everyone else in order to make others accept you.

Okay, What About Inner-Beauty? Um... I do have Inner-Beauty Right? Hello?

Recently I have been noticing a sad trend in my life. It's not that I feel my prayers go unanswered, but it's even worse than that. You see I have been getting what I pray for, but it's in some weird Twilight Zonish, sold my soul to the devil, cursed wish giving monkey's paw, be-careful-what-you-wish-for-you-just-might-get-it sort of way. I hate to be the guy who never gets over shit, so this will be hopefully the last time I mention it, but I prayed for some time off so I could do the things I like, and soon after I got laid off and have been for almost 10 months. So needless to say, even if I say I haven't lost my faith, what the hell can I do, pray for something just to have it explode in my face. Case and point, I was at the gym today and I saw this cute girl (doing the same exercises as I was) and she even gave me a seductive sort of smirk. Well she goes over to one of the club employees and talks to him, he said, "hey Jesse" and waved me over, and the girl motioned for me to take my headphones out. I was like, "damn, that's awesome she must have asked that guy what my name was so I would introduce myself to her." Well she starts talking to me about my shirt and then about school and we're having a good chat, the club guy even leaves for a few minutes. We continue our conversation, then the guy comes back a little while later with a card that he gives to Laura and she starts writing her phone number on the back of the card. I thought to myself, "fuck yeah, I got a cute girl's number and all I had to do was be in the right place at the right time!" But then the guy turns to me and says, "You know, I can get you a free session with Laura here." "Excuse me?" I said confused. "You look like you could use some help and Laura is a personal trainer here." So it's not about she wants to get to know me better, she's buttering me up so I train with her. And what the fuck was that about "I could use the help" I don't know if that meant I was fat, or I didn't know what the hell I was doing; either way it wasn't nearly as good as a phone number from a cute girl. Now suppose I had a genie and I said, "I wish that girl would give me her number" and then shit like that went down and it ended up being some fucking fat joke that I'm the butt of; I wouldn't use the lamp anymore. So benefit of the doubt; God, Buddha, Allah, Shiva, Zeus, L. Ron Hubbard, whoever my prayers are going to; had to have fucking saw that, and is probably still laughing his ass off. I'm probably on some deity YouTube getting passed around in an email to all my friends and relatives that have passed on.

It even gets weirder, so a few months ago a friend that I had only hung out with a few times, IM's me and says the guy she's seeing is breaking up with her, etc etc etc. Now I'm definitely not in a position to be giving my advice in this area, but I can lend a sympathetic ear. Well she ends up inviting me out that weekend, and generally I've never found her too attractive, but if she had the courage to ask me out, I definitely owed it to her to see where it goes. I know what you're thinking; I'm one of those guys who just sits there and bitches about girls but never has the balls to ask them out? NOT EVEN CLOSE! I've tried every approach ever concocted, every suggestion, every method I (or anyone else) can think of. In fact I think Einstein actually died from his fucking mind blowing-up trying to comprehend how the law of averages didn't even yield one prospect in the HUNDREDS of women I've tried to hook-up with. I even remember at one point it was just like a dog chasing cars, I had no idea what I'd even say if I walked up to a girl and asked her to dance and she took me up on it. I was a little drunk and I just walked up to a girl and asked her for her phone number in a night club next thing I know her (girl) friend wants to fight me and follows me back to my table and continues to bitch at me in front of my friends. Purely statistically, you would think there was some girl on the planet that wanted to go out with me, but it blows people's minds that there actually isn't. It's hard to believe but some girls even get fucking pissed when I try to talk to them. So believe me, I'm not one to make any girl feel bad about asking me out.

The days leading up she called a few times to make sure I was still in for going with her, my friend's friend even opened up a new night club and I suggested we could go there, but she was insistent that I would like her activity better. I could tell the woe-is-me act was just the way she operated, mutual friends we have warned me that she considers herself a "player" at work. But I'm a fucking dude so if some girl wants to rail me and tell her friends, I really wouldn't mind even slightly. When that girl from the "social networking" blog bragged to my friends, I was fucking Beowulf around there, people sung my praises around camp fires and held mighty feasts in my honor. Some people didn't even believe I actually even existed, so trust me, this girl could tell her friends whatever she wanted. But I could also tell that her player act was just insecurity because she's always talking about being some spinster and she's barely my age. So how could this go wrong, she asks me out, she makes it a point that I go, she doesn't let me change my plans. Well, we meet up, and she has a fucking other dude with her, I guess over the course of the week she got set up with another dude by one of her friends. And I spent most of the night talking to her friend who was married or in a relationship, something; if it wasn't me that I was talking about, I would wonder how in the fuck this could even go wrong! No matter how you slice it, that's awkward, for me and for the other guy to have another single guy there.

So what is it? Bad karma? I'll never fucking know, but it's just crap. This reminds me of another time I had the dumb ass idea to ask a platonic girl friend "what am I doing wrong?" She was a girl at my work and I knew she was happily married, but she had the exact same Starbucks drink order as me and so I was fast friends with her. But we had only known each other for like 2 months and I let the, "what am I doing wrong?" question slip out when we were talking over lunch one time. Well she rattles off like 20 things without even pausing. I was almost sick: I'm fat, I lack confidence, I am messy, I don't shave properly, I'm short, I flirt too much, I don't flirt enough, I am an alcoholic, I have freckles, my hands shake sometimes, I'm too nice, I'm inconsiderate, I'm selfish. It's like she had a fucking list already made, just on the off chance that I would ask, "what is wrong with me?" You know, I may not be the nicest guy in the world but I at least think for the most part people are okay just the way they are. But shit, if girls I'm friends with have that list going, who knows what strangers and girls looking for guys think. Feel free to give me any advice you want, but I guarantee I have heard it all before so it may not be even worth your time. I am who I am, and when I try to be someone else, it just seems too fake so what can I do? But all of you who have become discouraged in love, just remember this, "you can't possibly strike out with a girl who calls you up out of the blue and MAKES YOU CHANGE YOUR FUCKING PLANS AND INVITES ANOTHER DATE AND DOESN'T EVEN TALK TO YOU THE WHOLE NIGHT"... THAT IS UNREEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAALLL!