For those of you still hiding out underneath your comforters, emerge and rejoice!  For it is National Man Day today and what holiday could be better?  I can hear you now, “But, I’m not a man…how could I possibly celebrate this wondrous yet highly sexist holiday?”  Just use the following as a guide for your behavior today and no one will notice your lack of penis.

Find Pointy Objects - If it is sharp, dangerous, shiny, and/or pointy, go play with it.  Poke your friends, have pseudo-lightsaber fights, etc.  The more dangerous the object, the more fun you can potentially have with it.

Enjoy a Short Attention Span - The only thing that you should be doing for longer than 5 mins is going to the bathroom or watching TV (sports and action movies only, of course).

Don’t Call People - If you are dating someone, don’t call them.  Wait for them to call you and possibly send a text tomorrow or the next day.  You know, whatevs.  You may, however, take some calls from your friends but you should communicate mostly in grunts and keep all conversations under 13 seconds.

Make Things Explode - Take a chair from your living room, some gas from the garage, and a match.  Combine the three ingredients.  Watch the results with a bunch of friends, a case of PBR, and substantially less facial/arm hair.

Quote Bad Movies/Simpsons episodes – No need to think, just respond to everything with some random and obscure quote from a really bad movie or 6-year-old episode of The Simpsons. People will think you’re really funny.

Eat…Everything - Seriously.  Everything in your fridge, your cupboards, or anywhere else in your house that you can find food (that slice of pizza under your bed? Done deal) is fair game.  Extra points if you eat mostly red meat or horrible take-out food (massive amounts of Taco Bell, anybody?).

Perpetrate Random Acts of Violence - I’m not talking about going out and shanking your neighbor, but punching everyone you see in the arm as a friendly “Hello” would work just fine.  Also, random and totally not homosexual wrestling matches will be acceptable.

Go Hygiene Optional - You have full permission to roll out of bed, throw on that sweatshirt and those jeans that are on your floor and call it good for the day.  After all, you’ll just be sitting around watching TV with your hand down your pants – that is, when you’re not grabbing food or blowing things up with your friends.

Think About Sex. All Day. Without Fail. If you’re eating lunch, think about eating a sandwich while having sex. If you are driving, think about having sex while driving. If you are hanging out with your mom and grandma, try really hard not to think about having sex with older women, fail, then just think about sex with Paris Hilton to block out the image that just came to your mind.

Good luck, ladies.  I have already gotten a good start on National Man Day by getting drunk and picking fights with substantially larger men who get in my way.  I also may or may not be looking at pictures of girls with big boobs at the moment.  It’s good to be a guy.

[Every week, CC and John bring you some of the weirdest, funniest, saddest things he hears on his college campus. Join the Overheard revolution!Leave your own overheard convos in the comments or send ‘em over!]

(Girl and guy, across dining hall.)

Girl: You’re beautiful! What’s your name?

Guy: Oh, thanks. You’re not very pretty at all.

(Guy, in the dining hall.)

Guy: I love space monkeys. But, you know, not in a t-shirt way.

(Girls leaving a class building.)

Girl 1: Oh, my God, that was complete bullsh*t.

Girl 2: Double bullsh*t.

Girl 3: Yeah. Fart fart fart.

(A professor, during an exam.)

Professor: Everyone, stop, take a break. This is a very challenging exam. I want you all to stop and think about puppies.

(A group of girls at the dining hall.)

Girl 1: I… I don’t know how much you guys talk about the Simpsons. It makes me uncomfortable.

Girl 2: We don’t even talk about the Simpsons that much!

Girl 1: No. You do. You don’t know what it’s like. You haven’t lived like me.

(Guys and girls clustered around a computer.)

Guy: Yeah, he’s pretty thirsty. And he walks really well for such an old guy!

(Two girls, arguing in line at a coffee shop.)

Girl: No, no, it’s like… the gay male equivalent of vagina dentata.

(Girl and guys, sitting on the grass outside.)

Guy: This whole week has been, like, hell.

Girl:  If you needed a study break, you could have come and watched me projectile vomit this morning.

(Girl, on the phone.)

Girl: … No! That’s your job! Your fat ass started all this sh*t, and your fat ass is gonna fix it!

(Guy, coming out of the bathroom.)

Guy: You know, you guys are slow. Like, if I didn’t tell you all, none of you would know I peed on the seat.

(Girl, at a computer.)

Girl: Guys, what’s “galactorrhea”? Is that where you sh*t entire solar systems?

(Guy, nervously walking up to a bar.)

Guy: Can I have… um, a Sex on the Beach? With… extra sex?

(Guy, yelling into a phone.)

Guy: No! Speak American! You’ve got a … a frickin’ Prime Minister! The only prime thing we have is prime rib! … And prime numbers!

(Girl and guy, talking in a hallway.)

Guy: How was studying?

Girl: Awesome. I got from Moses to “Space Jam” in only five Wikipedia pages.

1. Horror Movie Overload

As a horror movie fanatic, this is my favorite time of the cable television year. On any given day of the week, you’ll find yourself choosing between installments of Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street. Scour the TV Guide, and you’ll probably also find lesser-known thrillers like The People Under the Stairs, or a wide selection of Steven King novel-turned-creepy-classics.

This is also the time of year for new horror flicks to hit the cinemas. I’m tempted to shell out $10 for Saw V, which hits theaters October 24. I also have to admit I’m tempted to check out The Haunting of Molly Hartley, which comes out on Halloween, and not just because of Chace Crawford.

2. The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Special

Can you believe that this year’s Simpsons Halloween Special will be number 19?!? Though we have to wait until November 2 to see ToH XIX, you can bet the other 18 episodes will be running in syndication every weeknight for the next couple of weeks. This year’s episode will supposedly feature spoofs of Transformers and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (another Halloween treat that deserves an honorable mention on this list). The opening credits are also rumored to have strong political ties, but I’d rather not spoil the surprise. If the blood and gore of horror flicks gross you out, you can still appreciate the hilarious parodies that The Simpsons bring us every year.

3. Haunted Houses and Haunted Hayrides

Any small town is bound to have an annual haunted fundraiser of sorts, where local girl scouts, boy scouts, and drama clubs volunteer to act as zombies, witches, and ghouls for your entertainment. Sure, they’re usually cheesy, and are more likely to make you chuckle rather than scream, but it’s the holiday spirit that makes it fun.

If you live near an amusement park, you can also enjoy such festivities as Bush Gardens’ Howl-O-Scream and Six Flags’ Fright Fest, which sends dozens of professional actors out in costume to try to scare the bejesus out of you while you wait in line for an adrenaline-pumping roller coaster.

4. Guys in Full-Out Jack Sparrow Costumes

If you go to a big enough Halloween party, you’re bound to find some dude that shelled out the dough for the full Jack Sparrow digs. I’m talking the hat, the wig, the jacket, the pants, the boots. True, this guy is probably a comic book geek who put too much time, money, and effort into something he can only wear one night. True, he might have just as big of a boner for Johnny Depp as I do. But the fact of the matter is, that Jack Sparrow guy is going to grab my attention, and spark some of my deep-seeded fantasies. And if I get drunk enough, I might wake up in the morning and see the real man behind the mascara.

5. Test Tube Shots

Not only are the campus bars going to be packed with costume-wearing, binge-drinking partiers, but they’re probably going to have some killer drink specials. Some popular gimmicks include shots in test tubes (which a lot of bars serve on the regular, but which are more fun to buy from a shotgirl dressed as a slutty mad scientist), fish bowls with fake body parts floating in them, and pretty much any shot that’s blood-red or slime-green (note that these shots will obviously reappear at Christmas time, but have a totally different effect). Halloween is also a great excuse to do shots of Tarantula tequila, which, in my opinion, trumps Mike and Ike and Snickers any day.

In 1993, Lisa Simpson assessed the female role models of her time, and came up with a grim prognosis.

“Millions of girls will grow up thinking that this is the right way to act,” she said, “that they can never be more than vacuous ninnies whose only goal is to look pretty, land a rich husband, and spend all day on the phone with their equally vacuous friends talking about how damn terrific it is to look pretty and have a rich husband.”

In 1998, “Sex & the City” aired for the first time, and Lisa Simpson’s fears came to life.

“Sex & the City” was (does anyone not know this?) a TV series that followed the lives of four women as they navigated the perilously sexful world of life in New York City. These women were meant to stand in for their entire gender, in spite of the fact that they were uniformly white, straight, and rich enough that they could have afforded to feed third-world villages with the money that they spent on shoes. They spent their (apparently endless) free time engaging in all life’s most vital pursuits: boys, gossip, clothes, and parties.

In spite of its patently unrealistic set-up, its exaggerated characters and neatly ridiculous plotting, many viewers were convinced that “Sex & the City” was a masterpiece of realism. People moved to New York because of the show. If they lived here, they tried to live like its characters; if they didn’t live here, they imagined our lives on its terms. These people, mostly women, who Gawker aptly christened Scary Sadshaws, elevated “Sex & the City” out of its proper place in the universe – light entertainment, with sex and terrifying costumes – and treated it as a lifestyle guide.

It’s no coincidence that one of the most successful SATC alums – a “plot consultant” by the name of Greg Behrendt – moved out of television once the show disbanded, and now writes handbooks for dating. Underneath every “revelation” sparked by the show, every gushing magazine piece that praised its “honesty,” every conversation between girls who decided the SATC girls were “just like us,” and proceeded to become more like them, there was this assumption: that this was the way women did, or ought to, behave.

Therein lies the problem.

Boys, gossip, clothes, parties: women have been assigned, and confined to, these pursuits since, roughly, the beginning of time. Back in, let’s say, the Victorian age – or 1950s America – sexism was justified by the idea that women were essentially children, in need of a strong Daddy figure to pat our heads and lay down the law and make sure that we didn’t spend too much money on those all those silly dresses and manicures. Be a good girl, kitten, and I’ll take care of you. This was the dream, and the program, and the trap.

It’s also the guiding myth of “Sex & the City.” Its characters may have jobs (although we rarely see anyone but Carrie working), but they nevertheless adhere to the old formula, running around in a tight circle of frivolity and consumption, rarely (if ever) exercising any real power. They’re children set loose with Daddy’s credit card in the world’s biggest shopping mall. And they are all, in the end, looking for a man to complete them.

Of course, in the long run, this conversation may go back to a problem addressed (where else?) in an episode of “Sex & the City.” When Charlotte chose to quit her job and rely entirely on her husband’s income, Miranda, as the token voice of feminism, told her to reconsider – to take a second look at the old, and scary, form of powerlessness she had embraced. Charlotte, of course, answered that her decision to be completely dependent on a man was empowering, because she had chosen it. The conversation ended with Charlotte sobbing, chanting her demented mantra into the phone: “I choose my choice! I choose my choice!”

So do we all. But “choice” is not – has never been – the point. Choice means nothing unless you understand the options on the table, unless you really examine the goals that have been laid out for you and understand how they fit into the larger picture. Choice remains meaningless until you play some role in creating new options for yourself, and for the rest of the world. And none of this can happen if you’re taking directions from a damn TV show.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to write a column about my sex life. Someone, please alert me when I’ve saved the world.