Strange days at the Village Voice

I was thumbing through the Voice on my way to work today and was completely wrapped up in the cover story about The Game, a manual on how to pickup women at bars. Aside from wondering where this book was during my prime bar-hopping years (and also wondering about if I'd have the cajones/lack of respect for women/absolute lack of self consciousness to actually use them), I was struck by the way that many women were holding this book in contempt. I mean, sure, such a book is a bit, shall we say, sleazy, but is it really that much worse than all the female self help books like The Rules and whatnot? Isn't it the same thing, one about catching/tricking a man into a relationship, the other about picking up/tricking a woman into casual sex?

But, before my righteous indignation crested, I sought the online article from the Voice's website, and lo and behold, found this:

http://http://villagevoice.com/news/0610,news,72372,2.html

It's amazing how far down that paper has gone, even for a free periodical. Anyway, it's a good read regardless of whether its true or not (and its seems that it isn't). It's still in the trusty red Voice boxes on a street corner near you.

Oh, and for the picking-up impaired, the book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060554738/sr=8-1/qid=1141329201/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0075750-1218357?%5Fencoding=UTF8