Bye Bye Birdie

Somebody in my apartment complex bought a parrot and the incessant squawking is far from an urban Amazonian jungle experience. I had to bear "hola! hola! awwwk! awwwk" every afternoon, in the midst of 500 economics slides, while drawing my supply and demand curves. Vegetarian or not, I want to kill that bird.

I plotted schemes in my head how to get rid of the bird. My first thought was to drug it. Call it bird feed "X". But I changed my mind because the bird might start saying "I love you! I love you!" all day. Then I thought of putting a recording of "kill me! kill me!" right next to it until the bird learned how to say it. When the right time comes, I can say "with pleasure!" Bam! Bird gone, problem solved.

Come to think of it, it's not the bird's fault. It's the OWNER who's to blame. Now what's the best way to deal with the owner?

a) Buy a bigger and noisier bird
b) Buy a dog (for every squawk there's a bark)
c) Buy a vulture and put it outside his window

Brilliant ideas but we all know that I'll end up doing one thing - nothing.

Break the Glass Ceiling in Case of Emergency

Disclaimer: One of the extremely rare, intellectually stimulating posts I've ever written...prepared to be bored to tears.

We've heard it many times before - had the world been ruled by women, World Wars I & II and the 2008 financial crisis would have no space in history. We'll have less poverty, less inequality, and it would've been one happy, floral-scented world of pink bows and oven-fresh, calorie-free cookies. Wishful thinking? 

Unbeknownst to most people, many matriarchal societies do exist (whether these are classified as matrilinear, matrilocal, matrifocal or matriarchal is still subject to much debate) - the Ede of Viet Nam, the Mosuo of China, the Hopi Indians and the Chambri of Papua New Guinea. Corrina Laughlin described these women-led societies as "communal, egalitarian, more nurturing and just" (utopianist.com).

Matriarchal societies exist in a number of mammalian species as well. Elephants, known for their superior intelligence, live in herds of females and their calves, and are led by the oldest female cows. The herd works in a highly coordinated fashion - protecting each other and working together to find food. Female elephants take a huge role in rearing young calves and ensuring the survival of the species.

Now even more interesting is the dominatrix nature of the spotted hyenas. Female hyenas are bigger and more aggressive than the males, and believe it or not, have their own pseudopenis or peniform clitoris (read: these ladies have dicks). The males need to prove themselves before being given permission to mate. Welcome to the alternate universe of the Type-A, suit-donning bitches who have enough balls to get what they want and crush men with their stiletto-ed heels.

And how can we ignore the very controversial species of the Bonobo monkeys? Deemed to be matriarchal, these highly sexual species are dominated by females, who control males through sexuality. The male's rank is determined by his mother's rank in the society. What an amusing world of mama's boys who'll solve world conflicts through sex and not violence (insert canned hyena laugh here).

Most sociologists claim that human matriarchies did not exist in the past and remain hypothetical, but Bertha Diener disputes this claim by saying all human societies were historically matriarchal, which later shifted and degenerated to patriarchy (this, in my opinion, is pushing the Amazonian vision a bit too far). 

The gynocentric society I seek is not the diametrical opposition of patriarchy but a higher form of egalitarian democracy where no barriers and biases against genders exist.

More interesting reading here.
http://matriarchal.askdefine.com/