Hanging Out With The Bar Crowd

Over the weekend, we went out to a local Irish pub for drinks and live music with some friends. The songs were bawdy, the audience young and attractive and a great deal of fun was had by all. One particularly cute little blonde right in front of us was hanging all over her date. She was fashionably dressed with a peasant look including a knit hat.

She looked something like this, only prettier.

Everyone was having a good time.

Well, sort of.

Her date was a sullen fellow and looked like he didn't really want to be there. She was getting into the music, making explicit, lurid gestures with her hands during parts of the songs and shouting along with the dirtiest lyrics. It was pretty clear where her night was headed and it made me think of a few things.

SWUGs, for one. "Senior Washed Up Girls." That's the term for Yale coeds who have stopped partying and started looking for commitment. Unfortunately for them, Yale guys being guys, they're looking to get laid and the younger coeds are more than willing to oblige. Traditional morality is flaunted and the eternal man-woman transactions go on. Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love. Only they don't get love because they've been acculturated to live like men. Hence the SWUGs.

Second was this bit about young British men not being up to the standards of previous generations. Diane Abbot suggests that Britain is suffering a crisis of masculinity where the young men have all of the aggression and none of the purpose associated with being male. Well, duh. Everything you want is available cheaply, so why go through the painful process of adopting civilized behaviors? What should they do, live like it's the 50s?

Which led me to my favorite widget.

Learn more about us debt.

Borrowing leads to slovenly, unsustainable behavior. So long as those numbers keep going up and the borrowed cash gets handed out, why teach responsibility?  And even if you teach it, how is it going to stick when it's shown over and over again that there's no real point to it?

The kids in the bar were cute, young and energetic. They were also raised in a world where normal financial and sexual transactions had been stripped of their traditional meaning leading to perfectly predictable results.

Unsustainable results, too, I might add.