Yahoo's Dating Tips

Thank god. Yahoo has explained it all for me. Apparently, as a [smart] woman, I keep making all of these [stupid] dating mistakes [that men do not make].

8 Dating Mistakes Even Smart Women Make

Dating Mistake #1: Being Too Available
Take Sebastian, 34, from Chicago, for example: “When I was single, there were women I initially liked who seemed to be waiting by the phone for me to call, which let me know if I didn’t meet someone else I wanted to date, I had a standby. There just wasn’t anything to work for, and that turned me off,” he says.
It's hard for us women to contain ourselves when a new man floats into our lives. But if we want to keep these slick little angelfish from swimming to someone else, we must stay away from them. Let them swim to us by making them think we don't want them. We can always catch other fish, we don't need the angelfish. [get it? other fish in the sea hardy fucking har]

Inserted halfway through the article is this linked message:
"Related: 25 Things That Keep Him Hooked and Happy"
Because, for the love of god, girls, once we have one we have got to do everything in our power to keep him! And we are also responsible for his happiness and thus, his fidelity.

Dating Mistake #4: Feeling Sorry for Yourself
Ladies, stop feeling so bad about the fact that you're single [even though you shouldn't be]. You don't need a man to be happy [yes you do], isn't that what every movie and book tells you all the time? [No it's not] That's why every movie ends with the girl shirking the idea that she needs a husband or boyfriend to be happy and goes off into the sunset by herself [Bridget Jones, Muriel's Wedding, 10 things I hate about you, etc.].

Most single women know how much fun it is to have their relatives ask them if there's anyone "special" in their lives, and then lamenting when you say "no." Aaww, you're too great to be by yourself, you'll find that perfect guy soon. But women never let this bother us, because we are constantly being reassured by society that it is okay to be single, so why would we ever feel sorry for ourselves?

Dating Mistake #5: Knowing His Thread-Count Before You Know His Phone Number
Follow the advice of super-sexy leading man Gilles Marini (he was Samantha’s sexy neighbor in Sex and the City: The Movie): “Men love women who respect themselves and who do not rush into bed with them but instead go on a few dates, where they can start to gain an understanding of each other and then decide whether or not to take things further. Women need to know that taking it slow and getting to know one another is the best way to get into a good relationship,” he says.
Take it from the sexy guy from the Sex and the City Movie - this is simple enough, no man wants to date a slut. Plus, women get so attached as soon as they have sex with a guy. I can remember this time that I had sex with this guy and as I was doing it I pictured us at our wedding. When he lifted my veil in this fantasy I had an orgasm. [I lie]

Men, on the other hand, never become attached as a result of having sex with someone. Feelings and sex never go together for men, never. [not true] That is why they can have as much sex as humanly possible with many women and not even blink. But when they're looking for that special woman to settle down with, they will look to the girl who hasn't had a lot of sex. Maybe even a girl who doesn't know what a penis looks like. Inexperience is such a turn-on for them, who knows, maybe she won't know which hole it goes in. Silly, virginal women!

Another strategic link insert - See our tips: 12 Things Guys Wish You Knew in Bed
Learn everything you need to know about how to please a man, but don't practice it with too many men. You shouldn't get too good at it because no man wants a whore.

Dating Mistake #6: Being Too Selfish in Your Relationship
Women are notorious for thinking only of themselves. We never make enough sacrifices in relationships or life. When we want something we don't compromise, we just go after it. Like with careers, for example. Kids, be damned! I'm going to work! Your father can make all the arrangements for you while I'm on my business trips around the country. Maybe I'll have a few affairs while I'm gone, but, hey, that's my business.

Dating Mistake #7: Believing in The One
Instead of convincing yourself the ex you dumped was your soul mate or that perfect-but-married co-worker was your one that got away, take a cue from our male counterparts and approach the dating scene with the idea that there are plenty of men who are capable of making you laugh, sharing your values and melting your heart
Men have it all together. Just do what they do when it comes to dating and we'll be fine.

Dating Mistake #8: Forgetting Your Manners
We can’t imagine this is something you’d ever do, but a little reminder never hurts: Say thank you.
Good of you to remind me because I'm usually not thankful for anything. And if I'm in a relationship I need to thank my lucky stars for every day that passes that a man has decided to put up with me for an undisclosed amount of time. I could increase my chances of making that a longer amount of time by thanking him.


I feel so enlightened. I tried to make my own cheat sheet to print out but I couldn't get the whole article down to one page. It's probably because I'm a woman and I'm so bad with technology. Hopefully Yahoo will come out with a how-to for women and technology-related tasks. But knowing technology isn't going to get me closer to getting married, so that article wouldn't be worth reading.

Oh! And there were also a number of additional suggested readings at the end of the article -

More from Glamour:

* 10 Things He’s Thinking When You’re Naked
* 8 Sex Moves Every Woman Should Try Once
* Why He Hasn’t Proposed (Yet)
* The Fastest Way to Create Sparks with Your Boyfriend

I'll tell you the fastest way to create sparks with your boyfriend! Light a stick of dynamite and toss it to him, he'll toss it back and then you'll toss it back at him again. It could be like a relationship bonding experience that could bring you closer together [but also, possibly, further apart].

Read more gemstonery here.

solitude and leadership

My boss, the venerable Bill Shore, forwarded one of the most phenomenal speeches I've read in a while. Not that I'm reading 100 speeches a day or anything. It's titled Solitude and Leadership by William Deresiewicz. It was delivered to the plebe class of the US Military Academy at West Point last year.

It was long, and that's always hard for me, especially if I'm reading it online. My attention wanders to other tabs at least several times every few minutes. For example, while typing this post I remembered I had to buy tickets to the New Pornographers show. So what did I do? Bounced over to Facebook to get the link to the website to purchase the tickets and the rest is history.

One of the ideas I got out of it was the concept of trying to quiet all the noise of Twitter, Facebook and everything else (Blogger, perhaps?). It's gotten so hard to focus on one thing at a time. To concentrate and dedicate our energy into one task at a time. Even as I type this I'm thinking of all the things I have to do today, the plans I have for next week, etc. This guy ain't kidding...

The main theme, of course, as the title would indicate, is the idea of pairing solitude and leadership. Sometimes, when something matters to you, a principle, a belief, you have to be the lone champion. You have to become okay with criticism. You really have to find a way to allow yourself to continue when everybody thinks you're crazy. Radical ideas are sometimes just new ideas that people can't process yet. Of course the Tea Party goers might say this and that doesn't lend much credence to my defense. But, to help me out, here's another example, my ties to feminism puts a wedge between me and some of my friends, sometimes. Many of my friends would argue that women have arrived. They arrived back in 1920 when we got the right to vote and we should've shut up a long time ago. But I'm not going to let their criticism keep me from arguing otherwise. I have to become comfortable with not always agreeing with everyone I'm friends with.

The speech was an eye opener, to say the least. I love these little bits of inspiration that float my way. They keep me going.

Read the speech here.

immigrant discrimination

I can remember a time when I was adamantly against the "dirty Mexicans" who were taking over "our" country. It is not a time I'm proud of, but I will admit that in my ignorance, and in a voice that wasn't my own, I shunned and criticized a group of people I did not know or understand. Where did this voice come from? Was it my parents? My peers? Either way, it was decidedly hateful and with no knowledge to back it up - that's the scary part.

It wasn't until I graduated from high school and went on to college that I learned more about my "enemies."

I started working at a real estate office part time during my time in school. It was like the United Nations of real estate in many ways, as I met people from all over the world, Ghana, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Columbia, Peru...

I became especially close with one Peruvian girl in the office. We talked and laughed about everything, thus my feelings regarding Latinos, Hispanics, etc. began to soften in a major way. Then one day she told me her story of coming to the U.S. Her parents left her and her brother, both around the ages of 8 or 9 at the time, with a relative. And on their own, they came to the U.S. to carve out a life for the family. It was not out of greed that her parents decided to go north, but out of necessity. Peru at that time was being run by a military dictatorship, fraught with corruption which crushed civil liberties. They didn't leave because they wanted to, they left because they felt that had to.

Her parents spent several years working as much as they could, and saving for the opportunity to bring my friend and her brother up north to join them. She spoke to her mom, as much as she could, over the phone. She paused as she began to explain the time that she told her mother she had gotten her period. I could tell she wanted to cry, and it took her some time to continue. Her mother was so overcome with the fact that she could not be there for her daughter during this milestone. Her mother knew that the years of childhood she missed could never be brought back, she couldn't stop time from bringing her daughter and eventually her son, too, into adulthood.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Never in my sheltered existence had I thought of a situation so desperate and difficult within a family. My feelings regarding "Mexicans" and immigrants would never be the same.

This was the first time I saw immigrants as humans, as families, as people who are fighting for happiness just like everyone else. But, due to the hand they were dealt, they have to fight harder. They have to travel further, they have to endure more.

That is why it is so frustrating for me to listen when I hear Americans belittle their struggles. For a country that has done a pretty good job of taking what is not ours, (hello, Native Americans), we certainly have a lot to say when other people want in on the American dream.

In an article on Yahoo! regarding Obama's promise to reform immigration, the comments flood in from all over, many negative.

Strange to think that being born in this country instills the right to guard it from all enemies, real or imagined. And we can do so in our own broken and abhorrent English:

Jim C says: You want result! pack the Illegal criminals in busses and take them back where they came from!!

Jack M says: At the least learn and speak english, pay a big fine, and go to the back of the line.

I could give these comments to the immigrant students in my English class to correct. "At the least" they would know how to spell "buses" correctly.


I think if we really want results we should get to know the people who are working to make our lives easier, at McDonald's, cleaning our offices, our homes, doing our gardening, taking care of our children and much, much more. Maybe then we could see them as people who really just want what we want, to be happy.


Source http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100319/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_immigration

the art of using the bathroom

I might start a new Facebook group:

"I know you're waiting for me to leave the bathroom so you can poop"

We've all been there, haven't we? Silence in the bathroom when you know someone else is in the next stall. You've already walked in, closed the stall, peed, and now you're washing your hands and you haven't heard a cricket's fart from your clandestine stallmate.

When you're the one who doesn't have to #2, you're left with the uncomfortable task of hurrying yourself along at lightning speed to give this person some privacy.

But really, come on, we're both adults here. Don't be afraid. Let's talk about this right now, or, better yet, feel free to unload. I know you have to poop, you can't fool me.

all for an abortion

I read an entry recently that made me want to cringe to the point of literal physical discomfort and bawl my eyes out simultaneously. It was titled "Lucky Girl" and was written by Bridget Potter about her experience of the pursuit and eventual finding of an illegal abortion in 1962.

She became pregnant as a result of failed birth control. Male condoms were considered "disgusting, unreliable, and boys didn’t like to use them anyway." Needless to say sexual education was not considered a good idea back then. Because, after all, young people should not be, and therefore won't be, having sex, anyway. Any sort of education would surely encourage teenagers to go out and have safe sex.

So, then, after the pink foam spermicide she was using failed, only 19 years old and nowhere near ready to have a baby or get married, she thought of seeking an abortion. It ended up being a several week journey of judgment, (from disapproving male gynecologists), and disappointment which inevitably took her all the way to Puerto Rico. It was in a remote part of the island that she eventually had the procedure done in what looked like a house on a wooden table with no anesthesia.

When she returned to the states and saw a gynecologist for the aftermath, she learned that she is not the only one who has been through such an ordeal. She was, however, a lucky one...

“The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous ‘coat hanger’—which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in—perhaps the patient herself—found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it… Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion—darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.”

If there is a simple and safe solution to stopping unwanted pregnancies, why would we deny women the right to such a procedure? Are we just looking for a way to "punish" women for having sex? May they never repeal Roe v Wade here and may they also never insert loopholes to make access to abortions more difficult for women of all classes *cough* STUPAK!

Even today, 67,000 women die from abortions each year around the world, mostly in countries where abortion is illegal. Women should not have to subject themselves to self-torture in order to avoid having a child.




See "Lucky Girl" by Bridget Potter http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1615/lucky_girl/

Photo source: we heart it

kittehs

A friend came to visit from Ohio & I made him take glamor shots of my girls -








source

gay marriage in DC!

At long last gay marriage is allowed in DC, what a proud and exciting day!!

As with most happy events, there always seem to be a few stinkers who want to ruin the day, open a storm cloud on a big parade, etc. That was the job of Fred Phelps and his crew yesterday.

The infamous "God hates fags" crew was on hand to make sure that people could see them publicly wave their self-righteous fingers at love between two people. How did they get to DC? I'm not quite sure, I wish I could tell you a time machine from the eighteenth century, but I can't. That would be a lie.

Where would the world be without these fundamentalist religious nuts constantly reminding us how much god hates us?

I wake up every day wondering, does god love me? And of course I know the answer is no:

I live with a gay man who I platonically love and support. (hell)
I support a woman's right to choose. (hell)
I have premarital sex. (hell)
I am agnostic. (burning hell)

It's strange because I had always been taught growing up that God loves you no matter who you are or who you love. But Fred Phelps disagrees. Because, according to him, if god represents anything, it's shame and guilt. And luckily, for us sinners, he has rained down these representatives to remind us just how far into hell we all will be going.