So Says The Mouse In My Hair

Dear Miss Eliza: The BIO 110 Edition

And now a special edition of Dear Miss Eliza, stemming from the fact that I spent my day reviewing for my Bio final. And now of course, I know everything there is to know about behavior so I felt compelled to share such knowledge with you. Feel enlightened, dear readers!


Dear Miss Eliza,
My mother is the queen bee in my hive, and I’m next in line to inherit the throne. But I don’t understand why I should have to do all the reproducing by myself, I mean why can'’ some of the other bees help me out here? Do you know why I have to do it all myself? Nobody ever told me.
Princess of the Hive

Dear Princess,
See, reproduction is awfully complicated. For example, depending on which species you are, it involves sex. Which means that a girl and a boy have to meet and… you know… And some females aren’t so good with being around male genitalia. Your sisters might be penophobic, which would explain why they aren’t interested (or even afraid of) reproduction.

Or perhaps they prefer to focus on their careers. This is very common, you know. People do it all the time, so why not bees? And since all your sisters’ careers revolve around you reproducing well… there’s your result right there. You make babies and they raise babies and everyone’s careers are fulfilled!

Then again, it could be the whole haploidiploidy thing. Which means that you ladies have twice as many chromosomes (one set from mom and one set from dad) as your brothers do (One set from mom and none from dad because there’s no sperm involved in making boys). So your sisters are more related to you (r=.75) than they are to their theoretical children (r=.5). This means that the best way for them to pass on their genes to future generations, is for them to help you have lots and lots of kids.

Of course what really makes you haploidiploids into freaks is how you relate to your male relatives. For example, a male receives all his genetic information from his mother which means his relatedness to her is 1. But she only passes on half of her genetic information to him, which means her relatedness to him is ½. It’s sort of the same thing with you and your dad. You got half your genetic information from him, so your relatedness to him is ½. But he gave you all of his genetic information, so his relatedness to you is 1. Cooky, huh?
-Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
So my partner and I robbed a bank, and got caught. Oops, of course, but it’s a little late to complain, you know? Anyway, they took us downtown, and put me in this room with a table, a couple chairs and a mirror, right? They told me I had a couple choices. If I talk, and tell them everything then they’ll cut me a deal and I’ll only get 6 months in the big house. But If I stay mum about the whole thing and my buddy talks, then the whole thing gets pinned on me and I get 5 years. Thing is, I got no idea what he’s telling them in there, and what if he’s trying to pin the whole thing on me! But what if he’s not and I got this chance to save my butt? Can I really afford to pass that up?
Prisoner with a Dilemma

Dear Prisoner,
This happened to me once you know. Well, not the bank robbing thing, in high school my boyfriend and I got picked up for jaywalking. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. But I did have pretty much the same choice. For me it all came down to food. My mother’s best dish was a Big Mac if you know what I mean. So I was all for spending a little time in juvie. I kept my mouth shut.

It backfired though, because Lindy (That was my honey’s name… don’t look at me, I didn’t name him!) kept his mouth shut too. Apparently he had this nasty test coming up in accounting class, and he really wanted to get out of it.

So since neither of us talked, and the only witness was this cute little old lady with glaucoma, they didn’t have anything on us and had to let us both go. Sad because I had to go back to big macs, which led to my weight problem, and he failed his test. We learned our lesson though.

Next time we jaywalked, we did it in front of a MUCH more reliable witness!
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
So I’m this great guy right? And sure, I don’t know how to meet girls or anything. We all have our issues, right? So I was thinking, right? The personals section! What a way to meet a girl without ever even needing to meet her. Definitely a good way to go, I’m thinking, right? But I sit down to write it, and my mind goes totally blank. I mean, what should I put down you know? How do I make myself look good enough for a girl to actually look at me? And I come up with nothing. I just don’t know. Do you?
SWM

Dear SWM,
Since everyone and her sister would tell you to make yourself look mature and capable, I’m going to ignore that part. I mean DUH! Instead, let’s look to the psychology of the female who searches the personals ads. What sets her apart from females who don’t search the personals ads? Most importantly, it means that she’s looking for a mate. I mean, if you’re not looking for a mate, you’re not going to look in the personals ads are you? (Well, not unless you need a laugh or something, but you don’t need to be worried about those kinds of girls. They’re only going to make fun of you.)

So what you want to do in your personal ad is to show these girls who are looking for a mate, that you could fill that role. And the best way to say "You’re looking for a mate, and I can be a mate," is to just say that. So stress the fact that you could be a mate. Come right out and say that.

Next, the girls who are looking for mates are all well and good, but they need to me looking for a male mate for you to qualify in any meaningful sense. So don’t forget to emphasize the fact that you’re a male mate. One might expect that this would be covered by the M part of SWM, but what about those people who think that M stands for Mylanta? So you should restate this somewhere.

So now we’ve got "SWM, and I can be a mate." To this I would add, "But only the male kind of mate, because that’s what my dad made me."

Now you might want to add something about the kind of girl you’re looking for. And of course, you’re looking for the kind of girl who is looking for a male mate, because that is what we’ve established to this point.

So your ad should read: SWM, and I can be a mate. But only the male kind of mate because that’s what my dad made me. Looking for a female who'’ looking for a mate." And I think that's followed by some code that’s worked out with the personals ads makers or something.
Well, I hope you’re happy now that I’ve done all your work for you. Good luck with that girl of yours!
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Do you have a question for Miss Eliza? About anything? I promise, I'm not picky or anything. In fact, I might go so as far as to say I'm... what's the opposite of picky? inclusive? Well, that's putting it nicely, but we'll go with that. I'm inclusive. I'm also a caring sensitive person who loves to help. If you have a situation/question/sentence ending in a question mark that you would like help with, just drop it in the comments section, or e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com and jsut like that, you become a priority. Didn't you always want to know what that felt like?
- Miss Eliza

posted by Sarah Eliza @ 2:43 PM