After the 14 hour workday, I am home. And ten minutes after I collapsed at my own personal desk and not the one I have at work, my thoughts were interrupted by my new neighbors arriving home. They moved in a few days ago, but they haven't bothered to come by to say hi even though they're in the apartment next door, and I haven't been so inclined to stop by their place. When I poked my head in their place when it was still being shown to prospective renters, it still reeked of cat urine from the previous inhabitants. But I digress. The new neighbors disrupted my thinking since one of them announced loudly (and probably drunkenly) to the other, "Man, I better be getting a blow job. There'd best be a blow job waiting for me." Having recounted that, I'll now sit back and wait for the oral sex-oriented search engine results to roll in on my sitemeter. Speaking of oral sex, I scored myself a copy of a recent issue of Glamour tonight. Someone at work put a bunch of magazines in the kitchen for public consumption, and I surreptitiously stole the Glamour. It's been awhile since I've indulged myself, mostly because I can't bring myself to buy either that magazine or Cosmopolitan on the newsstands due to that whole heterosexual male insecurity thing about possibly being perceived as gay -- despite the fact that others might actually believe I could be buying it for my nonexistent girlfriend, since they don't know she's nonexistent. But again, I digress. I love reading Cosmo and Glamour for a couple of reasons. read more » One is that it's interesting reading about what women think men are thinking about, especially since they're so off that it's hysterical. Another is because it's interesting reading about what women are being told to think about men and fashion and sex, especially since it's so The Rules- and materialistically-oriented that it'd be offensive if it weren't funny. Granted, I skip the 120 of the 175 pages that contain beauty tips, but there really are some very hilarious articles in those magazines. And it makes me wonder how many people actually subscribe to the notions these writers are peddling. It almost reminds me in some ways of the movie version of Josie and the Pussycats that came out last year, where a small group of business people were influencing fashion purchases through subliminal messages, inventing random trends as quickly as they could to make these people buy more. How many of these Cosmo and Glamour editors and writers are sitting in staff meetings, trying to invent new fashion strategies because they know thousands upon thousands of drones will run out to Express and Limited the day after the issue hits the stands to purchase six different variations on the theme they propose? "Fuchsia is the new chic!" they announce, and suddenly, men everywhere are blinded by their glow-in-the-dark dates. Naturally, I know this is not characteristic of every woman and that I'm making vast generalizations. But you'd still be hard-pressed to find someone in this country who doesn't feel pressured in some way to wear something mildly fashionable in order to fit in or feel comfortable. Hell, I do. Whenever I go out, despite my own preferences, I still make sure that I'm wearing clothes that match the "level of dressiness" that whoever I'm with is wearing because I feel uncomfortable sometimes if I'm the only one in jeans and the people I'm with are all wearing khakis or corduroys. Now you'll pardon me. It's late, and I have to catch up on the fall fashions so I can go shopping after work tomorrow.