h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been having this discussion with a friend lately... why do men and women have so many miscommunications? Why is it that a girl will be trying to send 'signals' for *months* and a guy will be cheerfully oblivious? Are they just dense? Or is it deliberate, just to annoy us?
It seems a tad unreasonable to assume that all men have some kind of conspiracy to irritate women by ignoring all these signals... especially when it would have to increase their own pain in the long run... so perhaps it's denseness to some extent.
So my conversations lately have run along the lines of (in relation to a specific guy)- "Is he really that dense?" and the answer, usually, is "not exactly- you're being too subtle- be more obvious!".
My guess is, women are so used to analysing the conversations of other women to determine what they *really* mean when they say whatever, or analysing the behaviour of other women to see what they're really doing and men just don't think that way! So a guy misses all the signals, because the girl assumes that he can read between the lines, which is a skill few guys have, because in guy conversation you don't need to do that.
So there's my insight for today... who knows what I'll come up with tomorrow!