perfection personified

Love, companionship, all that jazz. I walk the line between cynicism and realism. I feel like an elderly eskimo drifting away into inevitability. I'm old. I'm past my prime.

I did some digging around, and I found some interesting information about marriage and the like.

The percentage of women ages 30-34 who have never been married is 22 percent. hmmm. not so bad I suppose. Now what percent of those people are "marriage material" according to my standards? First, to preface my standards... I'm going to aim low with what I want from a woman, and for the sake of argument, I'll exclude using bayesian inference and personal judgments to wittle that 22% to an even more pathetic number. We're sticking with 22%... no, in fact, let's give it an artificial bump and call it 1/4. The assumption is that each person is equally likely to get married... from a stunning millionaire supermodel; to a wife beating, broke, pile of shit with a single digit number of teeth. I think those standards are very loose, but we'll use them nonetheless to get a "best case" scenario. My standards. We'll say that they have to have no kids, never married, and an IQ of at least 130. Pretty low standards for me... but again, we're after best case scenario. In fact, we'll omit the kids thing for the sake of making calculations easier and further boosting that best case scenario number.
The percentage of people that have an IQ 130 or higher is 5% or 1/20

okay so using simple probability we'll find what percent of the population will be single and up to my standards at age 30 by simply multiplying the two probabilities together to get the probability that I will find somebody that is single and up to my standards.

1/20*1/4 = 1/80 or... 1.25% So, effectively if I meet a hundred 30 year olds. One, and one quarter of a person (maybe a tiny little midget) will be up to my standards. Keep in mind, that is setting very limited restrictions. If I inserted other qualifiers, the number would drop even further. if i wanted a pretty girl, we'll say in the top 2/3 of girls aesthetically speaking... that takes my number down to .4% which is 1 out of 240 girls or so. If i met a thousand thirty year olds... (unlikely since I'm a bit on the shy side) four of them would be potential mates. Those numbers make me feel old. They make me feel like the most likely scenario in my life is that I'll never get married, or that I'll settle for somebody who ultimately won't make me happy... I'm beyond excited about this... woot motherfucking woot! Oh, and if by some stroke of fate, divine intervention, rain dance, lucky rabbits foot, four leaf clover or some other magical mystical occurence, I do find a partner... The chances of us remaining married is less than half. it's okay, never ye fret though... I'm more of a the glass is .2% full kind of guy than a the glass is 99.8% empty kind of guy

let's end on a positive note shall we. I'll make an objective list of the qualities that I am looking for in a partner. This is something that I think everybody should do. If you don't know exactly what you want, it's not nearly as easy to recognize it when it comes along.

must haves:
sense of humor (and preferably wit)
intelligence
financial responsibility
ambition
positive attitude
thoughtful
pretty (but only to the point that I don't want to vomit when I see them).
mature and serious, but with a silly, carefree youthful side as well.

would like them to haves:
be vegetarian, or at least enjoy vegetarian cuisine enough to the point that going out to eat isn't a struggle.
speak another language
a desire to learn new things... constantly. somebody who enjoys expanding their mind
good grammar (ignore mine for ze moment)
the ability to compromise and approach conflict in a healthy way that leads to resolution.
likes tiger army :)
college graduate
I'm sure the list will expand when it's not 4:42 am and I'm not multitabling poker on a klonopine :)

sleepy time. Hip hip hooray fuckers. Tomorrow shall be a glorious day





a few asides... couples who got married for the first time between ages 20-23 reported the greatest level of happiness in their marriage. Couples 28 years and older had the highest percentage of unhappiness in their marriage.

Fifty percent of first marriages will end in divorce, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau projections, taken in 2002.