Earl Bockenfeld: Heart

Hell Has No Fury ....

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 01:15:26 GMT

Hell Has No Fury ....

Emily has invited all of the internet in to enjoy watching her playing, Now I've Got You, You SOB!

Emily's Blog:

This photo is what I've been talking about, the favors that I called in for. Brilliant, isn't it? I think so. I ran out early this morning to beat the rush hour traffic (didn't quite go as planned but at least it wasn't standstill) and got a picture of my billboard. My way to tell the world about the lowlife I've just wasted so many years on.

I put it near Steven's office so his co-workers and friends could see exactly what a cheating scumbag he is. And of course, for all of you to see as well. I've decided to do what so many quiet, back-stabbed wives don't -- take charge, make my whoring, cheating, adulterous, fornicating husband know what it feels like to be humiliated. And do it with many decibels.

It's a personal message for everyone to read. Thanks goes out to my husband who chipped in on the price tag. Golly gee honey, I would've never been able to tell the world about your exploits with my best friend without your contribution! Gotta love joint bank accounts. Oh, sorry Steve, I had to splurge on the lights, too. Some people work late, like you. And they're always driving home when it's dark. Burning that midnight oil, Steve-o. Just like you.

So for the next two weeks, starting with today, I will exact revenge on my whoring husband. And who knows what a disparaged woman with lots of resources at her disposal might do?!

It's going to be 14 days of vengeance. 14 days of unbridled revenge. 14 days of Steven looking over his back to see what's coming next. Because I've decided that 14 days is precisely the amount of time I'll still devote to that faithless and deceitful husband before I wash my hands of him completely. These 14 days will be a message to all of those nut-sacks who betray their family. Remember in Jamaica, on our honeymoon, when you said we were now a family? Me and you. Oh, you remember! It was on the terrace, in our white satin robes, right after you came prematurely. (Shoulda seen that pattern!) 14 days of misery for Steven, 14 days of reprisal for me, and 14 days of fun for all of you reading this blog!

Welcome to Emily's 14 Days of WRATH! Wait till you see what I've got in store for Steven tomorrow - a wine tasting party with a twist!

Gawker thinks this ad, on Houston Street in New York, near Katz's Deli, is probably a teaser ad of some kind, possibly for Washington Mutual. The font does look familiar.

UPDATE: Check out this site for more. Some of the language on Emily's blog is pretty NC-17-rated for a marketing campaign, if that's what this is.

If this is guerilla marketing, it'll be interesting to find out what client approved these phrases:

"whoring, cheating, adulterous, fornicating husband"
"all of those nut-sacks who betray their family"
"after you came prematurely"
"that ho-bag once called my best friend, Laura"
"After tomorrow, husbands will be rubbing one out in the shower"
"Steven and Laura have been doing a lot of fucking lately"
"has been putting his small, little tool into another woman's toolbox"
Etc, etc.

The same billboard is up in L.A. on Sunset Blvd. Wonder why our girl Emily doesn't mention that on her blog?

Music

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:37:22 GMT

Music

Foo Fighters: Times Like These

Pink Bats Help Benefit Breast Cancer

Mon, 15 May 2006 18:07:19 GMT

Pink Bats Help Benefit Breast Cancer

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Hulking Jim Thome. Rugged Manny Ramirez. Brawny Adam Dunn. "The thought of these big macho men, swinging pink bats to help women with breast cancer ... what a novel idea," Louisville Slugger president John Hillerich said Tuesday.

Major League Baseball granted special permission for players to use the colorful bats - baby pink, at that - for Mother's Day. They're part of a weeklong program to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation

Baseball granted special permission for players to use the colorful bats for Mother's Day as part of a weeklong program to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. (Brian Bohannon / Associated Press)

Derek Jeter, David Eckstein and Marcus Giles are among dozens of players who intend to try them Sunday. This is the first time pink has been approved for bats - dyed at the Louisville Slugger factory, they're usually black, brown, reddish or white.

Kevin Mench was among several Texas players who wanted their mother's names burned on the bats. The Rangers slugger, who homered in seven straight games earlier this season, also planned to have a bat for his grandmother, who died from breast cancer.

"My mom is the glue of our family, and I just want to do something to thank her for all that she has done," Mench said before Tuesday night's game against Minnesota. "At the same time, we are raising money for a great cause."

Howard Smith, senior vice president for licensing for MLB, said the idea for the pink bats struck a chord with commissioner Bud Selig and other executives. The question was how many players would use the sticks.

"It takes a big man to swing a pink bat in a major league game," Smith said.

More than 400 bats were being made for 50-plus players. David Ortiz, Jim Edmonds, Mark Teixeira, Michael Young and Hank Blalock were also on the list.

The Louisville Slugger factory started making the bats last week. Players were still placing orders as of Tuesday, and bats will probably be made and shipped overnight until Thursday or Friday.

"The response has been phenomenal," Hillerich said.

The bats posed something of a logistical problem for Louisville Slugger. Each player uses a different model and size, so coloring, branding and shipping them for Sunday's game has been a challenge, company spokesman Dan Burgess said.

Along with the pink bats, players and all on-field personnel will wear pink wristbands and a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness on their uniforms. The pink ribbon logo will appear on the bases and on commemorative home plates, and the lineups will be written on pink cards.

The bats, along with the home plates and lineup cards, will be autographed by the teams and will be auctioned off later with the proceeds going to the Breast Cancer Foundation.

As promotions go, this was (forgive the pun) a home run, not only because of the impactful use of color, but also for the unusual placement in the macho world of pro sports. Louisville Slugger is now selling the "Going to Bat for Breast Cancer" bats on its site, and the company and Major League Baseball are donating $15 to the cause for each bat sold.

Many Couples Live A 'Brokeback' Marriage

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 18:34:20 GMT

Many Couples Live A 'Brokeback' Marriage

One hour into "Brokeback Mountain," Amy Jo Remmele began to cry, and not just for the woman on-screen, standing in a doorway in Riverton, Wyo., watching her husband embrace a man.

"When I saw that look in her eyes, I thought, 'Oh, yeah.' Even though I never saw my husband with another man, I knew exactly how that woman would have felt," said Mrs. Remmele, a respiratory therapist in rural Minnesota.

On June 1, 2000, Mrs. Remmele, then 31, discovered her husband's profile on the Web site gay.com. The couple stayed up all that night weeping and talking. Soon afterward, 10 days before she gave birth to her second child, Mrs. Remmele's husband went off to spend a couple of nights with his new boyfriend. "I tried to talk him out of it, and he left anyway," Mrs. Remmele said. "I was devastated." Three months later the couple divorced.

Mrs. Remmele — now married to a farmer who raises cattle, corn and soybeans — is one of an estimated 1.7 million to 3.4 million American women who once were or are now married to men who have sex with men.

The estimate derives from "The Social Organization of Sexuality," a 1990 study, that found that 3.9 percent of American men who had ever been married had had sex with men in the previous five years. The lead author, Edward O. Laumann, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, estimated that 2 to 4 percent of ever-married American women had knowingly or unknowingly been in what are now called mixed-orientation marriages.

Such marriages are not just artifacts of the closeted 1950's. In the 16th century, Queen Anne of Denmark had eight children with King James I of England, known not only for the King James Bible, but also for his devotion to male favorites, one of whom he called "my sweet child and wife."

Other women include Constance Wilde, Phyllis Gates, Linda Porter, Renata Blauel and Dina Matos McGreevey, wed respectively to Oscar Wilde, Rock Hudson, Cole Porter, Elton John and James E. McGreevey, the former governor of New Jersey.

Despite their shock and their anger, many women, especially those criticized by gay husbands for being too sexually demanding, are relieved to understand what was wrong.

The remaining third of those she has studied try to preserve their marriages, Dr. Buxton said. Half of those stay married for three years or more. More than 600 such couples belong to online support groups.

In a 2001 study, published in The Journal of Bisexuality, of 137 still-married gay and bisexual men and their wives, Dr. Buxton found that most lived in suburbs and medium-size cities and had been married for 11 to 30 years. Only tiny percentages lived in rural areas, where family privacy may be harder to maintain.

The survival of even a small minority of these marriages calls into question the conceptual shoe boxes into which human partnerships, affection, attraction, commitment and sexuality are often jammed. Describing their permutations and combinations turns out to be much more complicated than checking a box on a form labeled "gay," "bisexual" or "straight."

"Brokeback Mountain" should prompt social conservatives to ponder whether it is good family policy to encourage gay men to live lives that are traditional yet untrue. Would honest gay marriages be less destructive than deceitful straight ones? I think so. Many disagree. Even if they oppose it, however, seeing this film may give heterosexual marriage proponents a better insight into why so many Americans advocate homosexual marriage.

"Brokeback" also concerns homophobic violence. The October 1998 beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., the July 1999 fatal baseball-bat attack on gay Army Pvt. Barry Winchell, and the non-lethal assault on gay soldier Kyle Lawson last October, among other incidents, should remind filmgoers that this grave matter was not buried on the Great Plains decades ago.

Will You Be My Electronic Anti-Valentine?

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 06:50:27 GMT

Will You Be My Electronic Anti-Valentine?

To the lovelorn who mock Cupid as stupid and can't wait for another Valentine's Day to pass: Relief is closer than you think.

For most, there is no crueler day of the calendar year than that of Valentine's Day. While a tiny fraction of the population can look forward to a holiday of wine and roses, poetry and song, the vast majority of us can anticipate a day of nausea and grimacing, trauma and grief. A day in which minutes seem like hours, and hours like days, as we reflect sorrowfully on yesteryear's romantic indignities, today's loneliness, and the unknowable but certain heartbreak that will be visited upon us repeatedly in the years to come.

The primary motive behind Valentines is MONEY. And plenty of it! Hallmark is cleverly cashing in on the sales of Valentines Day greeting cards. The same with people who sell flowers, Candy and cute cuddly bears. They all do this under the guise of something called Love.

Valentine's Day is like herpes: just when you think its gone for good, it rears its ugly head once more. No wonder some people prefer to call it VD.

Whether you got dumped on New Year's Eve or were stood up in Central Park, you can still get in a last dig at that not-so-special person on the Internet, where bitter candy hearts and testimonials to romance lost abound.

On anti-Valentine's Day sites across the Web, the lonely commiserate over breakups and the lack of movie-perfect romance. Some sites suggest pranks for that heartless "ex." Others lambaste the faux-holiday as a marketing enterprise that portrays love as being all chocolates and roses.

"For a long time, I wasn't in a relationship and it was a really a torturous holiday," said Megan Green, 35, a graphic designer in New York. "You are surrounded by people who are expecting all this stuff and you go home to nothing."

This year, instead of bon-bons, Green bought two boxes of BitterSweets, an anti-Valentine's candy from Despair Inc., a cynics' novelty retailer.

Shaped like the ubiquitous chalky "I Love You" hearts, these candies are inscribed with slogans like "Do My Dishes" and "Pre-Nup Okay?" Green shared some with friends at a party where guests felled a Cupid-shaped pinata.

"Almost everybody, no matter how happy they are in their relationship now, has been through an unhappy, dysfunctional and toxic relationship at one point in their lives," said Despair Inc. founder E.L. Kersten.

"I'm actually surprised at the amount of reactionary movements that are popping up — you don't see it happening with Christmas, Easter or Halloween," said Marc Leonard, a Black Hearts Party producer and co-editor of the Internet site.

He cited protests by hardline Hindu groups in India — where heart-shaped greeting cards were set ablaze last year — who say the Christian saint's day encroaches upon their culture.

"Valentine's Day is intruding on people's personal lives...(Love) should not be mandated by the marketing division of Hallmark and the idea that everyone in the world should celebrate that specialness at the same time strikes us as false," Leonard said.

Thank You, Grandson

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:21:32 GMT

Thank You, Grandson

I will be away, and won't be posting for the next week. I am going to
greet my grandson, as he returns to the US from a tour of duty in Iraq.
Will talk to you later.

Can Rogers & Cowan Control Cruise?

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:29:37 GMT

Can Rogers & Cowan Control Cruise?

Tom Cruise has tossed off the shackles of Hollywood oppression and is piloting his Scientology-fueled funny car straight towards you. The tires are smoking and he's screaming to the stands about Katie, psychiatry, sex, space aliens, and Brooke Shields.

We would love to have been a fly on the wall during the negotiations which led Tom Cruise to dump his sister, Lee Ann DeVette, as his flack in favor of hiring Hollywood insider Paul Bloch of Rogers & Cowan. (For the record, DeVette has said she wants to spend more time on Cruise's charitable activities.)

What, after all, is the new PR strategy? For Cruise to go into extended seclusion? Though the headlines about the megastar leaping on couches, having verbal tugs-of-war with Brooke Shields and other antics involving impregnated fiance Katie Holmes are now old hat, those events have led the press to sow new seeds of scandal almost any time Cruise breathes—whether there’s truth to any of it, or not.

We recently read in a celebrity magazine (no, we don’t actually buy them; they just have this habit of landing in our lap), that Katie Holmes’ lawyer Dad was holding up the wedding over the prenup; in another one we read that Cruise had bought a house for he and Katie in her hometown, Toledo, to appease the in-laws. Is any of this true?

Unlike the appearance on Oprah, there’s no footage to verify any of it, but the normalcy of negative headlines about Cruise these days would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Whatever happens from here, people in PR and marketing will be watching Bloch just as closely as they surreptitiously scan headlines to catch up on the latest alleged Tom Cruise scandal.

Dating in cars: Things People Notice

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 02:35:36 GMT

Dating In Cars: Things People Notice

Scientists discover that some chicks who dig Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts also dig cars

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Men and women agree that cars play an important role in dating, but they don't always agree on what should happen once things get rolling.

Eighty-nine percent of males and 95 percent of females said they were extremely or somewhat likely to notice their date's car, according to a survey conducted by Ford Motor Co. The survey was conducted as part of a program, including "speed dating" events in various cities, to promote the company's new Fusion sedan. The survey polled 400 single men and women.

It's not just the make and model of a car that's getting noticed, according to the survey. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said the condition of their date's car would at least somewhat impact their attraction to the person.

Women felt more strongly about their date's car condition than men with 69 percent saying it would at least somewhat affect their attraction to their date compared to 47 percent of men.

"You often get one chance to make a right impression and, many times, your car is one of the first personal things your date sees about you. Similar to your clothes, your car says something about you and your style," said Ellen Fein, dating expert and co-author of The Rules.

About 20 percent of respondents said they had been "asked to chip in for car-related expenses by their date." Of those that had been asked to chip in, 15 percent said they were asked to spring for gas followed by parking (9 percent) and tolls (6 percent).

When asked to recall their "most embarrassing car date moment," 22 percent of respondents said it was being told by their date that they were a bad driver. Far more women suffered this insult than men. Second overall was suffering an "upset stomach," followed by being pulled over for speeding, and getting in to a fender-bender. Just barely making the list was "getting caught fooling around."

Sixteen percent of those surveyed ranked kissing as their "favorite car date activity." But, only 8 percent of females surveyed chose kissing versus 24 percent of males.

Gosh, a car company discerned that shiny new cars might help garner affection ? Whoda thunk it.

Sex Is A Fact Of Life Among Americans In Uniform

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 08:08:38 GMT

Sex Is A Fact Of Life Among Americans In Uniform

Salt Lake Tribune Link

The Army's rules on sexual activity is not covered in General Order No. 1A, but the chain of command instructed married troops not to fool around, “and if you're not married, just don't get caught.” The General Order does say that members of the military can't drink alcohol or possess pornography, “which everyone does anyhow.”

TAQADDUM, Iraq - If every male soldier here were having as much sex as he claims, his female comrades would hardly have time to fight the war. Still, sex happens. And in Iraq, it happens a lot.

It's hardly a national secret that male and female soldiers have been mingling for as long as both sexes have been in uniform. And, some soldiers are wont to point out, some male warriors have been finding comfort in each others' arms for as long as wars have been fought.

But with limited exceptions in other conflicts, there has never been a time in which American men and women have served, side by side and in such numbers, in units engaged in combat. And troops here appear to be making the best of that situation.

Male and female soldiers in four Iraqi cities were eager to speak about what goes on when uniforms come off, but as sex at the front remains such a taboo with commanders, most asked for confidentiality, noting their careers were at stake. In the plywood hallways lining the spaces between the steel shipping containers that serve as a dormitory, of sorts, for most of the enlisted soldiers of the 146th Transportation Company, soldiers meet and mingle and sometimes find a partner.

It is, they note, only natural for the teens and 20-somethings who make up the majority of U.S. forces in Iraq to do what civilians of their age back home are doing. "They can try to keep us apart as much as they want, but they miss the point," said one female enlisted soldier, a Utahn. It's about being young and having sex. "And that's what people this age do."

And a spokesman said the military is not keeping statistics on the number of women who return home from the battlefield because they become pregnant. Though, in all commands, soldiers note, the military's machinery does seem to understand that sex happens within the concrete walls and razor wire that surround each forward operating base: Base exchanges sell trashy lingerie, medics hand out condoms and, in some places, have a supply of pregnancy test kits available.

[...]

By their sheer numbers, most male soldiers are not regularly having sex, despite some male braggadocio to the contrary. But testosterone-induced swagger being what it is, word of others' exploits tends to get around. Male soldiers figure anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters of their female comrades are accepting of sex while on deployment.

Perhaps surprisingly, many female soldiers say those guesses are probably low. "If you include all the girls who are having sex with girls, it's much closer to every one of us," said one female enlisted soldier from the 146th.   The military still bans homosexual conduct, but enforcing that policy in a world where men berth with men and women berth with women is a practical impossibility.

The same soldier boasts she's made no less than seven of her comrades "feel a little less at war and a little more at home" since arriving in Iraq about three months ago.   Not everyone is simply trying to bolster morale, though.

"Some girls here say, if you just flirt with a guy you can get whatever you want from them," said Sgt. Emily Zike, one of two female soldiers with the Utah-based 222nd Field Artillery. But such exploits have consequences for female soldiers who do not make themselves available for conquest.    Zike, one of the senior soldiers in a barracks at Camp Ramadi comprising women from other units, says she walks to and from the mess hall with her hat pulled low over her eyes. "You make eye contact with them and they'll be all over you," says Zike, a resident of Indianapolis. "I try to look as unapproachable as possible."   Zike, who is married, feels fortunate to have fallen in with the 222nd.   "It's unlike any other battalion I've ever been in," she says. "It's like I inherited 500 big brothers - I've never seen that many happily married men in my life."    Married women, on the other hand, are considered "up for grabs" until they demonstrate otherwise, at which point, many female soldiers bitterly say, they are considered to be "bitches."
[...]
Even anonymously, female soldiers are reluctant to speak about sexual harassment. "They won't demote you, because that would be too obvious, but you can forget about being promoted, or even treated like a human being, if you make those kinds of waves," said one female soldier in Mosul.
The other choice to being a bitch, writes Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Kayla Williams in her recently published memoir, is "slut."   "If you're a woman and a soldier, those are the only two choices you get," Williams writes in Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army.

About 15 percent of the Army is female.   "And that whole 15 percent is trying to get past an old joke," Williams writes. "''What's the difference between a bitch and a slut?'" A slut will have sex with anyone. A bitch has sex with anyone but you.
"So if she's nice, friendly, outgoing or chatty - she's a slut. If she's distant or reserved or professional - she's a bitch," she writes.

But, one female Marine officer stationed in Ramadi notes, this is not a problem unique to the military. "What a lot of these women don't understand, because they are young or inexperienced with sex before they came out here, is that it is the same back home, too," she says. "Men want a girl to be easy, but they don't respect a girl who is easy. So whether we're in Iraq, or Salt Lake City, or New York or wherever, this is our reality.

"You have two choices: You can keep your pants on and be miserable and be harassed or you can take your pants off and you'll still get harassed, but you'll be a little less miserable."

Kayla Williams, a former Army sergeant and author of a new book, talks frankly about an often taboo subject relating to the American experience in Iraq: sex. As for male soldiers taking an interest in her (she is unmarried), “I just couldn't believe that guys would hit on me when I was the dirtiest that I ever was in life.” In her book, she describes soldiers tossing rocks at her, aiming for her breasts, but she points out that they “also throw rocks at each other's penises for fun. It was very strange to see.”

Short (Of Cash) People

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 02:34:06 GMT

Short (Of Cash) People

Millions of people from the Gulf Coast are suffering from the devastation of this hurricane season;
victims need your help today.

You can give to any of the "Network for Good" charities listed in the categories below.

Help Hurricane KATRINA Victims Rebuild

Help Hurricane RITA Victims Rebuild

Where Is God?

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 16:11:53 GMT

Where Is God?

Robert:

God is on a roof in New Orleans, waiting to be plucked off. God is in the streets of New Orleans, trying to keep order as a lone policeman in a mob of looters. God is in the Superdome, hot and sweaty in a fetid atmosphere. And God is the National Guardsman trying to help people there. God is the woman with all her possessions in two plastic bags in Slidell. God is the woman stranded in Mississippi, unable to buy gas from a pump that can't pump, unable to go forward, unable to go backward. "Lord, when did we see you?," the people ask at Judgment Day, in Matthew 25. Look around Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama: you'll see God. What do we do now? We help. We help in any way we can.

skippy is taking charge and issuing a challenge to all bloggers -- no, all Americans -- to donate $100.01 to the Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Please help:

You can also call 1-800 HELP NOW. America depends on your generosity.

New Orleans in Peril

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:19:33 GMT

New Orleans in Peril

On the day after Hurricane Katrina was declared to be not as bad as originally feared, it became clear that the effects of the storm had been, after all, beyond devastation. Homeowners in Biloxi, Miss., staggered through wrecked neighborhoods looking for their loved ones. In New Orleans, the mayor reported that rescue boats had begun pushing past dead bodies to look for the stranded living. Gas leaks began erupting into flames, and looking at the city, now at least 80 percent under water, it was hard not to think of last year's tsunami, or even ancient Pompeii.

Disaster has, as it almost always does, called up American generosity and instances of heroism. Young people helped the old onto rafts in flooded New Orleans streets, and exhausted rescue workers refused all offers of rest, while people as far away as Kansas and Arizona went online to offer shelter in their homes to the refugees. It was also a reminder of how much we rely on government to imagine the unimaginable and plan for the worst. As the levees of Lake Pontchartrain gave way, flooding New Orleans, it seemed pretty clear that in this case, government did not live up to the job.

But this seems like the wrong moment to dwell on fault-finding, or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation. All the focus now must be on rescuing the survivors. Beyond that lies a long and painful recovery, which must begin with a national vow to help all the storm victims and to save and repair New Orleans.

People who think of that graceful city and the rest of the Mississippi Delta as tourist destinations must have been reminded, watching the rescue operations, that the real residents of this area are in the main poor and black. The only resources most of them will have to fall back on will need to come from the federal government.

Those of us in New York watch the dire pictures from Louisiana with keen memories of the time after Sept. 11, when the rest of the nation made it clear that our city was their city, and that everyone was part of the battle to restore it. New Orleans, too, is one of the places that belongs to every American's heart - even for people who have never been there.

Right now it looks as if rescuing New Orleans will be a task much more daunting than any city has faced since the San Francisco fire of 1906. It must be a mission for all of us.

New York Times New Orleans editoral

He Shoots, He Scores

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 05:46:15 GMT

He Shoots, He Scores?

Man, this is one weird story. From News of the Weird:

Six years ago, during a brief affair in Chicago, Dr. Sharon Irons manually inseminated herself with sperm from Dr. Richard O. Phillips, following oral sex. The result was a daughter, now aged 5, for whom Phillips has reluctantly been paying $800 a month to support while his lawsuit against Irons for deception travels through Illinois courts. A trial judge had dismissed all of his claims, but in February, the Illinois Appeals Court granted a partial reversal, ordering a trial on whether she inflicted "emotional distress" by a legally "outrageous" act. However, the court dismissed Phillips' claim that Irons had "stolen" his sperm, stating that "it was a gift, an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee" and that, without a specific agreement to return it, it was hers to do with as she pleased. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-AP, 2-24-05]

Am I the only one trying to imagine their goodbyes that night? "Bye, Sharon, I had a really nice time!" "Me foo! Mye, Miffarve!"

Dr. Dick Fillups will presumably think twice about this semenly innocent act in the future, and possibly start administering oral exams after they blow over. He will also be sure to look gift whores in the mouth from now on.

BTW, pay the child support, Doc. The kid didn't ask to be born, but she's here now and she's yours. Don't punish her for the mother's malice and your stupidity. I'm sure you'll steer well clear of any blow jobs in the future, so whether or not a chick swallows or spits won't matter, huh?

UPDATE: What happened between Dr. Richard O. Phillips and Dr. Sharon Irons six years ago is a "he said-she said" story. Irons said Thursday in a telephone interview that she and Phillips had intercourse several times during their brief affair. Not only did Phillips know she was still married during their affair, she said, he also knew she was pregnant with his child. He even watched her do several pregnancy tests, she said.

The complete story from both sides in this Associated Press article!

England's EBay for Sex

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:34:17 GMT

England's EBay for Sex

[Wired Story Link]

Just as myriad swingers sites allow soccer moms to commit adultery and married men to cheat with impunity, a new British website is helping people to become part-time prostitutes.

Across Britain and Ireland plenty of people are willing to pay for sex -- and plenty more are willing to provide it, but until now it has largely been the domain of professional sex workers.

Britain's AdultWork website is plugging into the growing niche industry of sex-work dilettantes, people who spend a few hours a week in front of a camera, or in bed with a client, to augment their income -- or maybe even just because they like it.

Sex and the internet have a long history. Besides pornography, there are plenty of sites where sex-starved people can hook up. AdultFriendFinder is the world's most popular "no-strings" sex site, with almost 17 million users. Others like Swingers Europe, Naughtynightlife.com and Swinger Zone are far from unpopular.

And there are plenty of specialist sites too: Gaydar and Gay.com for gay hookups, URNotAlone for transsexuals and Alt for bondage and sadomasochism enthusiasts.

But while these sites are just dating forums, AdultWork is an online clearinghouse for sex work.

At present it has almost 3,000 members offering services, and several times that number buying or browsing. In addition to sex, the services on offer include webcam peep shows, homemade movies, phone sex and sex by cell-phone SMS. The site launched in late 2003 but had little immediate impact. It's taken just under two years to rise to prominence.

Users must create a free account to browse the services offered. Users can rate the services they've tried, or even offer their own services. Like eBay, AdultWork takes a cut of all transactions, which are processed through the web bank Nochex.

Indeed, with its ratings honor system, AdultWork is something like an eBay for sex. And sex isn't the only service available through the site. All the secondary occupations supporting it are also listed -- bodyguards, cleaners, receptionists, even web designers.

[...]

One of AdultWork's part-time escorts is Melissa from Belfast. Melissa is an attractive, intelligent and well-read 20-year-old. A full-time student of communications, she is internet- and media-savvy -- a far cry from the clichéd call girl.

"I think what I do is very different to prostitution, well in my head, anyway," she said. "I guess it depends how you codify things -- everyone is a prostitute at some level. We're all willing to whore some aspect of our body or soul for financial or material gains."

For Melissa, escorting is part-time work that provides good money. She insists it's not sordid.

"Prostitution suggests standing on a street corner to feed a drug habit," she said. "I think of myself as a Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany's kind of call girl.... It's been a bit of a fantasy for me to have this secret life that only I know about."

[...]

The owners of AdultWork, AW Systems, remain a mystery. Despite being aimed at a British and Irish audience, the site is hosted from the Netherlands. Holland's liberal laws allow sex for money to be openly promoted. Ironically, a similar site for the Dutch is a non-starter: Prostitution has already been normalized.

A British Home Office spokeswoman said prostitution is not illegal in the United Kingdom, but solicitation and pimping are -- and that AdultWork is pimping.

"Action would be a matter for the police," she said. "But if such a site was indeed U.K.-based, it could be shut down."

Avedon Carol, a spokeswoman for Feminists Against Censorship, said shutting down the site helps no one.

"Anything that gives women more power over their work would help," she said. "Stigmatizing sex, preventing women from being able to work together and so on, those things just make them more vulnerable.... Taking your clothes off doesn't necessarily make something a bad job."

UPDATE: “Melissa” Exposed And while we’re on the subject of ripoffs today: A story on a UK escort site that appeared on Wired News yesterday includes several quotes by “Melissa”, described as “an attractive, intelligent and well-read 20-year-old” from Belfast who’s a “internet- and media-savvy”, a “full-time student of communications, and “a far cry from the clichéd call girl”. But before you get out your credit card and start booking a flight to Northern Ireland, consider the fact that Melissa seems to have “borrowed” the pictures she uses in her profiles on several websites: specifically, and coincidentally, she’s passing off photos of Neon at Burning Angel (whose photo Wired used yesterday to illustrate the article, though it’s since been removed) and Mary and other models from Suicide Girls as her own—and whose different looks she explains with a simple “I’m now longer a brunette…I’ve returned to dazzling blonde!”. “Internet savvy” indeed. (Maybe she was just doing research for a book contract or something?) Caveat emptor, folks!

Melissa Bliss (Tripod)
MelissaBliss 69 (profile @ Adultwork.co.uk)
Melissa of Belfast (Punter web)
"Melissa" @ escorts.female.uk.com

MoSoSos Not So So-So

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:17:08 GMT

MoSoSos Not So So-So

[Wired Story Link]

Not long ago, London resident Christine Tomas received a text message through her cell phone from a stranger who shared her belief that George W. Bush is an alien.

That unlikely moment presaged more texting, about movies, and eventually led to Tomas finding a long-term salsa dancing partner.

Tomas is a heavy user of Playtxt -- a cell-phone service that connects people nearby who have stated similar preferences.

Across the pond, in New York, Diane McGunigle used another service, dodgeball.com, as the lubricant to introduce herself to someone she saw on the subway but had been too bashful to talk to.

"I checked in to dodgeball," she said, and "I got an alert that 'so-and-so has a crush on you, and he is at X bar, go and say hi.'" she said.

So McGunigle went to the bar, and by coincidence, it was the same guy she'd just seen on the subway. Like her, he'd been too shy to make an approach, but not to send a text message.

"I now had a valid and less-frightening excuse to meet him," McGunigle said.

Dodgeball and England's Playtxt are two examples of mobile social-software services, otherwise known by the catchy acronym, MoSoSos.

MoSoSos are the mobile equivalents of online social networks like Friendster and LinkedIn. They help users find old friends, or potential new ones, on the go.

Typically, users set up a profile listing interests, hobbies and romantic availability. They also state what kind of people they'd like to meet. Because the service is tied to a mobile device, it knows when people with similar interests are near each other.

Not surprisingly, MoSoSos are ideal for hooking up young, active professionals tied to their mobile phones or laptops, and they're starting to take off.

[...]

Jambo Networks: Launched at last month's Demo conference, Jambo utilizes Wi-Fi hotspots to connect its members, who join through their university, workplace or affinity group like an alumni association. The service determines if anyone logged onto a hot spot with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop, PDA or smartphone is a member of the same group. If there's more than one, each person sees the other's profile, which, among other things, highlights similar interests.

Following the MoSoSo model, Jambo facilitates pseudonymous messaging between the two users, who then decide if they want to introduce themselves.

[...]

Plazes: Based in Germany, Plazes revolves around the idea that anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop can define a "plaze." A plaze is usually a Wi-Fi hot spot. It tells where the user is located and looks for other members nearby.

[...]

"Geographically, mobile messaging is maturing and finding new groups of users beyond the initial curious," said Judith Meskill, a social-networking expert. "People are now beginning to get how amazingly valuable this is to their lives in motion."

But Meskill thinks MoSoSos are a natural fit for universities or groups like the American Cancer Society.

"Passive social-networking services that merely aggregate our friends, and their friends, ad infinitum, eventually lose their luster," said Meskill. "Geographically mobile solutions that help us connect with our affinity groups or friends are infinitely more sticky."

GuessWhatiHeard.com encourages members to “dish” on their ex-friends, flames, business partners and classmates — earning itself the title of “juiciest site to hit the web in years” from “industry experts” (which industry? which experts?). Site founder Kelly Felix says he created the site in response to reviews of Friendster et al as “boring.” Apparently, the proper antidote to boring is gossip!

Male Mating Rituals Laid Bare

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 01:27:31 GMT

Male Mating Rituals Laid Bare

THEY slap their fellow males on the back, sprawl across sofas and shoot repeated glances at target females. The moves of men on the prowl in bars have been analysed by academics using techniques more commonly associated with observing the mating rituals of apes and other wild animals.

The researchers found that success came from expansive “dominant male” gestures towards fellow men. Leaving women in no doubt that they were the focus of attention was also key — 13 glances in half an hour was the average for a “pull”.

The study suggests men use the moves to demonstrate their status, health and general prowess to females who they have not met before. It is bad news, however, for more diffident men who keep their arms folded or shift politely to allow others to sit down — they betray their inferior place in the pecking order and probably wreck their chances of chatting up females.

“Males who successfully made ‘contact’ courtship initiation with females exhibited different body language in this pre-contact phase than did males who did not make contact with females,” write the Austrian-American research team in this month’s edition of the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.

According to the researchers, the necessary traits included significantly more glancing behaviours, “space-maximisation movements”, touching of other men and less closed body movements.

The findings were supported by Desmond Morris, the veteran anthropologist and author of The Naked Ape. “These sorts of observations are valuable because they tell you what happens in real life,” he said. “Glance-direction is very important. The man who pays attention is going to have a real advantage.”

The research was carried out among men aged between 21 and 34. The academics secretly observed them in bars during evenings out, analysing their behaviour in detail for half an hour, then following their success afterwards.

In the hour after the detailed observations about a third of the men managed to talk to women for more than a minute. The posture and actions of this group were markedly different from those who failed to make contact with female strangers.

An early giveaway that a man was plotting an approach was when he started stroking his beard area — an implicit signal, said the researchers, to draw attention to facial features.

The average of 13 glances at women for successful men compared with six for the “wallflowers”. Gestures among the successful also included jokingly punching their male friends, tapping them on the shoulder or elbowing them in the ribs.

They also made an average of 19 “space maximisation” moves — such as expansive gestures or resting their arms on seats adjacent to the ones on which they were sitting; the men who flopped made just 10 of these gestures. In addition, the lothario group were more likely to stand or sit with their legs wide apart and hands on hips.

The researchers believe women observe a man’s body language from a distance to judge whether he is interested in them, friendly, and whether he has the social and physical characteristics of a potential mate.

The giveaway sign of a man not about to “score” is his crossed arms and drooped shoulders. He is also the one likely to be prodded or slapped by the friend who will later leave him at the bar as he chats up a woman.

The research team, based at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Urban Ethology at Vienna University, and at Bucknell University in America, includes Professor Karl Grammer, a senior social anthropologist, and two American researchers, Lee Ann Renninger and Professor T Joel Wade.

Their aim in researching the paper, called Getting That Female Glance: Patterns And Consequences of Male Nonverbal Behaviour in Courtship Contexts, was to find what prompts a woman to send a signal to a man that she is happy for him to approach.

Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University, said: “Females like males who are high status and who have the respect of their peers. Men have a pecking order — if there is a group of guys, there will be a hierarchy.”

Christoph Atkins, a 22-year-old accountant from Cambridge, said the research accurately reflected his experience of being “on the pull”. He said: “Making eye contact, giving a little smile and then looking away a few times works. You can tell that way if she likes you or not. And when you’re with other men you try to draw attention to yourself.”

Victoria Orme, 24, a civil servant from Birmingham, said: “You notice when they preen themselves. They think we don’t notice all that stuff but we do.”

She added: “Eye contact is very important — as long as they’re looking at your eyes and not anywhere south of there.”

5 Things They'll Notice About Your Place

Sat, 08 May 2004 05:34:46 GMT

5 Things They'll Notice About Your Place
By Bob Strauss

By the time you've reached a certain age — barring bankruptcy, flood or other natural disaster — your place looks pretty much the way you want it to. But while you may be comfortable with your living situation, your boyfriend or girlfriend is bound to inspect the premises like a cranky elementary school teacher grading an overdue diorama. Here's a quick rundown of what your significant other is likely to focus on, with a view to how men and women (surprise!) tend to see things slightly differently.

The Bathroom

What women look for: Cleanliness. Even if she never, ever plans to do serious business there, a gal won't settle for anything less than sealed-for-her-protection sterility: No scum in the toilet bowl, no fungus on the shower curtain, no nudie magazines stashed clumsily inside the hamper.

What men look for: Weird stuff in the medicine cabinet. There could be a six-inch cockroach leading a kazoo chorus in the sink, and your boyfriend will be so fascinated by your UFO-shaped birth-control-pill dispenser that he won't even notice the blaring bug band.

The Closets

What men look for: Lack of room. If a gal's closets are crammed to bursting with pocketbooks, cocktail dresses and enough shoes to stock a Macy's warehouse sale, it makes the average guy wonder: Will I be able to support her in the manner to which she's become accustomed?

What women look for: Room, and lots of it. Your girlfriend doesn't care if your sports jackets are 100% cashmere or a rayon/Garanimals blend; she just wants space for all her pocketbooks, cocktail dresses and shoes.

The CD Collection

What women look for: Death metal, early '70's synth rock (think Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer), or "novelty song" compilations. Ownership of any of these genres in bulk points to a guy who is constitutionally incapable of having a mature relationship.

What men look for: Waif-like, weepy oh-so-liberal female folk singers. Any gal who owns more than one Kate Bush, Sarah McLachlan, or Jewel CD is, to the average Joe's ears, already way more trouble than she's worth.

The Pictures

What men look for: Old boyfriends. Framed 8X10 glossies of you and your ex-beau sipping champagne aboard a yacht in the Mediterranean are bound to make the new flame in your life a bit, well, depressed. If you're divorced or separated, prominently displayed wedding portraits may make him suicidal.

What women look for: Old relatives. It's nice to have one or two pictures of mom in the living room, but any more than that, anywhere in the vicinity of the bedroom, reveals a lot more than you probably intended.

The TV Set

What women look for: Size — screen size, that is. Anything over 32 inches is bad news; it means the guy they've hooked up with is either a sports junkie or owns the complete Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD box set. Anything less than 17 inches, on the other hand, points to a fellow who's unemployed and/or six months behind in his alimony payments. They'll breathe a big sigh of relief when they see that standard 27-incher parked in the living room.

What men look for: The remote.

[Via MSN Match]

A Man Stands Up

Tue, 04 May 2004 00:37:22 GMT

A Man Stands Up

Today's Baltimore Sun has a profile of Spc. Joseph M. Darby, the 24-year-old reservist who blew the whistle on the atrocities being committed at Abu Ghraib.

Bernadette Darby, his wife of six years, said she didn't know a thing about her husband's role in uncovering the scandal until a reporter called yesterday. But it sounded like something he would do, she said.

"Whenever he knows something's wrong, he doesn't stand by it," she said. "I'm behind him 100 percent." [...]

[Maj. Gen. Antonio M.] Taguba's report mentions Darby twice - once in a list of witnesses and again with two other soldiers "we observed and believe should be favorably noted."

Darby, the report states, "discovered evidence of abuse and turned it over to military law enforcement." The other soldiers mentioned are a dog handler who refused to participate in improper interrogations and a military policeman who stopped an instance of abuse and reported it up the chain of command.

Three soldiers - of how many who had contact with that prison? Three soldiers stood up for what was right. Spc. Darby wasn't swayed by the praise and attention of MI and civilian interrogators, like his NCO Chip Frederick was. The unnamed dog handler doesn't seem to have needed a copy of the Geneva Conventions on hand to know that he shouldn't sic his animal on a helpless prisoner. These three guys did what anyone should have done - but the fact that there were only three of them suggests that the sense of common decency which motivated them was far from common among their fellow soldiers.

Bernadette Darby lives in Cumberland MD, a town of 24,000 people who are heavily invested in supporting the 372nd Military Police Company. I hope the Darbys are being treated well there. Certainly, he's the man that Cumberland should be proudest of, but I suspect it doesn't work that way. So does Mrs. Darby.

Bernadette Darby said she is a little nervous about how other military families will react to her husband's role in uncovering the scandal, but she said she is proud of him and would do the same if she were in his situation.

"It sickened me whenever I saw those pictures," she said. "Trust me, his whole unit, they're not all like that. The community is in an uproar about it, and it's just - they're not all sick like that. They're a good bunch of guys."

The wife of one of the only Americans in Abu Ghraib with a moral compass is afraid that people will see him as the enemy. She's been an Army wife for a long time, so I doubt that she's worrying without cause. She knows these people. She's seen them rallying around their boys, even after the news came out from Abu Ghraib. She's probably seen these angry letters sent to 60 Minutes after they broke the story.

(Sample: "Why in God's name would you choose to air such a story at this time? This is something our country didn't need to know now. [...] We are losing our fight with other countries to support us, and now you have just sealed it. ... We've just lost the goal of helping anyone over there because of this show, and God help us. You are no better then those who did these horrible acts. Your reports are bringing down this country.")

There's a reason why soldiers don't talk about war. Not always what they saw but what they did. Some do behave honorably--the people who came forward to expose this are some of them. But Bush sent them over to kill. They already saw the Iraqis as what? Enemies, animals...whatever it takes to kill them. Now we find this evidence of torture, but to me it is not suprising. Sad as hell, and disgusting, but it's war and that's the problem in the first place.

The big picture, the ones ultimately responsible are the people who started this war.

[Via Baltimore Sun]

Why marriage equality advocates will win

Sun, 22 Feb 2004 03:15:45 GMT

Why Marriage Equality Advocates Will Win

by Dirk Steele

"Sodomites celebrated Newsom's debauchery, as perverts from across the nation lined up outside city hall for the sixth straight day to receive a "license" to engage in sexual crimes and abomination."
--Covenant News

"This whole country is based on justice and equality for all...what makes us so different is we are not [equal]."
--Gay newlywed Michael McBlane

"Therefore, such lawmakers and judges are not only anti-Christian by approving of sodomy, they make the civil government a vile cesspool from which the abominations vomit out across the land."
--Christian lobbyist Jim Rudd

"The next day, we woke up married for the first time in more than 17 years."
--Advocate editor Bruce C. Steele

"It's an abomination before God and there's a penalty you will pay both in this life and the next for violating God's will."
--Nashville Church pastor Maury Davis

"I am not a pedophile or a pervert...I've heard some horrible things said about me. I'm human, created by God, just like all of you, with a loving, giving heart."
--Lesbian Utah state Rep. Jackie Biskupski

“He (God) is not going to bless wickedness and perversion.”
--Rev. Mike Anderson

“When two people sincerely love each other and that love is not recognized by the government … it hurts.”
--College student Chase Flynn

"We want to confront the nation with what happens when you call sodomy marriage. These people are unable to control their lusts"
--Anti-gay activist Jonathan O'Toole

"I'm married like you!"
--Make-up artist Erwin Gomez sharing his joy with a heterosexual client.

This shows me that the Christian religion is actually being sodomized by these perverted wacho religious nut-cases who agree with the anti-gay quotes above, and that the "Marriage Protection Amendment" should be more truly named as the "HATE Amendment" or the "Re-elect Bush Gimmick". It also means that the "Right Wing" actually prefers that gay people should live in sin.

I've never understood why so many religious types get so het up about homosexuality. If "God hates fags" that much surely he would have prohibited homosexuality as one of the Ten Commandments. Adultery is directly forbiden by God but allowed in law. Thou shalt not kill doesn't end with "except gays."

Jim Henley thinks that just like the "collapse of the Berlin Wall" that this whole phony issue could disappear very, very quickly, very, very peacefully and with the gravest joy, for everybody when the legal barriers against same-sex marriage fall away. That may explain most of the hysteria and desperation of the (Marriage-Protector) zealot Republicans.

[Via The American Street]

Warren Zevon, Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 56

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 14:06:49 GMT

Warren Zevon, Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 56

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Warren Zevon, who wrote and sang the rock hit "Werewolves of London" and was among the wittiest and most original of a broad circle of singer-songwriters to emerge from Los Angeles in the 1970s, died Sunday. He was 56.

A lifelong smoker until quitting several years ago, Zevon announced in September 2002 that he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and had only months to live. He spent much of that time visiting with his two grown children and working on a final album.

Zevon died Sunday of lung cancer at his home, his manager Irving Azoff told the Los Angeles Times. Azoff did not return calls from The Associated Press early Monday.

Phone messages also were not returned from Zevon's publicist, Dianna Baron; Baron's assistant, Cathy Williams; and Zevon's record company manager, John Baruck.

Zevon faced death with the same dark sense of humor found in much of his music, including songs like "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," "Life'll Kill Ya" and "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead."

Zevon said he "chose a certain path and lived like Jim Morrison and lived 30 more years. You make choices and you have to live with the consequences."

<snip>

His next two albums, 1976's "Warren Zevon" and 1978's "Excitable Boy," followed those songs with darkly humorous tales of prom-date rapists; headless, gun-toting soldiers of fortune; and werewolves who drank pina coladas at singles bars and were particular about their hair.

They cemented Zevon's reputation as one of rock music's most politically incorrect lyricists, giving him a lifelong cult following that included gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and "Late Show" host David Letterman, who provided backing vocals on "Hit Somebody," Zevon's 2001 elegy to a professional hockey goon who longs to be a goal-scoring hero.

"I always like to have violent lyrics and violent music," Zevon told The Associated Press in 1990. "The knowledge of death and fear of death informs my existence. It's a safe, kind of cheerful way of dealing with that issue."

Other admirers included Bob Dylan, whom Zevon cited as one of his principal songwriting influences and who performed on his 1987 album "Sentimental Hygiene." Still another was Bruce Springsteen, who co-wrote "Jeannie Needs a Shooter," Zevon's tale of a lover shot to death by a woman's jealous father.

Not that all of his music was dark and violent. His oveure contained some straight-out comedy as well, including "Mr. Bad Example," "The Hula Hula Boys" and "Gorilla You're a Desperado." The latter told the tale of a Los Angeles Zoo ape who escapes by locking a yuppie in his place and going off to live in the man's apartment, only to end up depressed and divorced.

<snip>

Zevon, born in Chicago to Russian immigrant parents, moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, making a living writing jingles for television commercials. He also composed the song "She Quit Me Man" for the movie "Midnight Cowboy." He was just out of his teens when he went to work for the Everly Brothers, first as a pianist and later as their band leader.

Warren Zevon RIP

[Via New York Times]

MIT's Freshman Orientation Guide to Hooking Up

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 01:34:58 GMT

MIT's Freshman Orientation Guide to Hooking Up

The Engineer’s Guide to Romance, An Orientation Dating Guide

By D.M.

Welcome, freshmen! Let me guess, you just got to MIT and you’re looking for a hook-up. The only problem is you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Well, that’s why I’m here to help you. If you want to get anywhere with anyone during orientation, follow this guide:

1. Personal hygiene goes a long way. You’d think that people would’ve learned this in health class, but it’s amazing how many people can just plain forget when they’re coding for 72 hours straight.

2. Be friendly. Initiating conversation is half the battle. Everyone here is just as clueless, lost, and eager to meet people as you are. Go ahead and introduce yourself. That applies equally to both men and women.

3. Be interesting. If initiating conversation is half the battle, then maintaining it is the second half. If your life is as bland and boring as Al Gore’s personality, go to #4.

4. Ask questions. If I’ve learned nothing else, I at least know this: people like to talk about themselves. A lot. Be inquisitive and get to know what this person is really like.

5. Don’t forget names. There is no bigger insult. Well, I guess calling them fat, ugly, and stupid could be worse. Just don’t get caught forgetting someone’s name when they remember yours. If you fail, have them introduce themselves to your friend. You’ll have another chance to learn their name.

6. Don’t be sketchy. There’s a thin line between friendly and too close for comfort. There’s also a thin line between being drunk and giving consent, but I won’t get into that. Wait, maybe I already did.

7. Young ladies, know this: you not only have freshmen guys seeking you out, but upperclassmen as well.

8. Young men, know this: you don’t have older women checking you out. However, Wellesley, an all-female college, is a short Senate Bus ride away (to find a date).

9. Don’t be desperate. Asking a guy out isn’t desperate. Asking him to sleep with you is.

10. Tower Court is a big party at Wellesley on Labor Day at night. Men and women are welcome to try their luck. Any fraternity will probably take you.

11. Under no circumstances should anyone in the incoming class of Wellesley students be called a freshman. Refer to them as “first-years.”

12. Bragging about your S.A.T., AP, or F.E.E. scores will not make people like you.

13. Take it slow. You’ve got four years at MIT to contract VD. You want to start your freshman year off with a bang, not with the clap. If you’re not going to wait a while, at least be smart about it. Free condoms are everywhere.

14. Don’t sell yourself short. Remember that there is always someone smarter, funnier, and better looking -- at another college in the area.

15. Don’t stalk people. That’s just plain scary. Following people around campus will get you slapped with a restraining order.

16. Don’t be afraid to defy typical gender roles. After all, this is the 21st century.

17. Be open-minded. You’re meeting people from different backgrounds, races, cultures, and countries. Be mindful of their cultural sensitivities. Like Jet Li in Fist of Legend, if you are able to be fluid and adapt, you will always be the victor.

18. I’d like to think that it’s a bad idea to ask people out over e-mail, but I guess that’s the only way some people can communicate.

19. Always be ready to make a good and lasting first impression. People are not going to remember everything about you. They will remember the stupid thing that you said or did when they first met you.

20. Give people a chance. They might surprise you. You might even surprise yourself.

All you need now is a little bit of confidence. Go out there and show them who you are.

This article originally appeared in The Tech, issue ## volume ##. It may be freely distributed electronically as long as it includes this notice but cannot be reprinted without the express written permission of The Tech. Write to archive@the-tech.mit.edu for additional details.

[Via MIT Tech ]

Couple arrested after water tower sex tryst

Tue, 20 May 2003 01:01:23 GMT

Couple Arrested After Water Tower Sex Tryst

Saturday May 17, 2003, By Paul Rioux

Talk about unsafe sex.

Slidell police said they arrested a couple who scaled a 215-foot water tower early Friday in a quest to have intimate relations "on top of the world."

"I guess they wanted to take their relationship to a higher level," Slidell police Lt. Rob Callahan said.

John C. Meyers, 44, of Alexandria, and Brenda Orme, 45, of Slidell, were booked with criminal trespassing and disturbing the peace by being intoxicated in public.

Shortly after 3 a.m., police received a complaint about someone "hootin' and hollerin' " on top of the water tower in the 3300 block of Front Street, Callahan said.

Police found a car parked near the tower's unlocked gate, but no one responded when an officer used a loudspeaker to call out to whoever was on the tower.

As two officers began to climb the ladder, two people, later identified as Meyers and Orme, started coming down. The officers met them on a catwalk and escorted them to the ground, Callahan said.

"When asked why they climbed the tower, Meyers said he wanted to have sex 'on top of the world,' " Callahan said, adding that it is unknown whether the couple completed their mission.

Although the tower is one of the highest points in St. Tammany Parish, it falls far short of Mount Everest, the true 'top of the world.' It would take 135 such towers to match Everest's 29,000-foot peak, a fact not lost on Police Chief Freddy Drennan.

"This is the poor man's version of the mile-high club," Drennan said.

Meyers and Orme were being held in the Slidell City Jail, where their bail had not been set Friday afternoon.

Meyers, who was working for a company that is repainting the 750,000- gallon tower, had a key to the gate. He has since been fired by Apache Construction, police said.

Former co-workers said they were surprised by the stunt, even though they described Meyers as a bit eccentric.

"I can't believe he was able to get her to climb up there," said one of the workers, who asked not to be identified. "I can't even get my wife to stand on a foot stool to change a light bulb."

(Check out their mug shots.)

[Via New Orleans Times-Picayune]

Samantha Sheppard: Image You Won't See In Every War

Sat, 12 Apr 2003 01:55:53 GMT

Samantha Sheppard: Image You Won't See In Every War

Samantha Sheppard, 28, from Plymouth, a soldier with the 2nd Light Tank Regiment, smiles as she receives a flower from a Iraqi man on the streets of east Basra, southern Iraq, April 2003.

[Via APphoto]

'Survivor' contestant splits deaf community

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:18:49 GMT

'Survivor' contestant splits deaf community
By Tanya Barrientos
Inquirer Staff Writer

Christy Smith (left) is not using sign language on “Survivor,” which troubles some in the deaf community.

If Christy Smith, the first disabled competitor on Survivor, thinks she's facing adversity in the Brazilian jungle, wait till she gets back home and faces some of her deaf fans.

As the newest and most visible deaf celebrity on TV, Smith, 24, has become a magnet not only for praise, but also scathing criticism.

On one hand, the deaf community is proud of the Colorado native who is a graduate of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world's only liberal-arts college for the deaf.

But on the other, many deaf people are angry that she is not openly displaying more pride in deaf culture. They want her to use sign language when she speaks, and to teach other members of her all- female tribe how to sign.

They are particularly critical of her choosing to read lips and speak instead of insisting on a sign-language interpreter during the Darwinian game show. Those choices are particularly insulting to strong proponents of deaf culture.

"I was so excited when I learned she was going to be on the show," said Kristy Griffin, a youth specialist at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Germantown. Speaking through a sign-language interpreter, the classroom aide said she had looked forward to the first episode.

"Then, whoa! She's not signing, she's speaking. I told my husband that I was sure she'd have a sign interpreter at Tribal Council, so I waited and waited and she didn't. It's so not deaf-friendly."

The show does not allow journalists to interview contestants until they've been voted off. Smith is still in the competition.

The tug-of-war between signing and speaking has long been a sensitive issue in the deaf community. Many deaf-culture advocates believe that hearing-impaired people who read lips and speak are acquiescing to the expectations of the hearing world.

The deaf community is often split between those who embrace a deaf lifestyle - using sign language and considering themselves similar to an ethnic minority - and those who emphasize assimilation into the mainstream.

"Deaf people should be proud of signing," said Fred Turner, 16, a ninth grader at the Pennsylvania school, where both students and teachers have been watching the show closely. "Be proud of being deaf."

"It's almost like she doesn't want people to know she's deaf," said Billy Hartman, also in ninth grade. "I guess I'm kind of hurt."

Some in the deaf community have questioned whether Smith, who signed on her audition tape and during preproduction interviews, was pressured into reading lips by CBS.

"It was completely her decision," said Colleen Sullivan, director of prime-time series at CBS. "We left it up to her on how she wanted to handle it."

But, Sullivan said, the network did not offer to provide a sign-language interpreter for Smith during the competition, which now has six women against six men.

"We had the discussion with her in advance," Sullivan said. "We said, 'Do you think it's fair that you participate without an interpreter?' And she said, 'No, but life isn't fair and I want to do it.' "

On the first episode, Feb. 13, Smith did not tell the others on her team of her deafness until they were encamped. The men are still not aware of her disability.

"She knew she was going to spark controversy," Smith's mother said in a phone interview. "When she's in the deaf world, she doesn't voice at all. I guess on the show she didn't want to stand out because it's about survival, right?"

Raised by hearing parents, Glenda and Bob Smith, in Basalt, Colo., Smith was diagnosed as severely hearing-impaired when she was about 6 months old.

"She was a preemie and so we knew she was in danger of having physical problems," Glenda Smith said. "She's had hearing aids since she was 2 years old. She can hear some sounds, but not much."

As a child, Smith was not exposed to deaf culture and did not use sign language.

"We live in a rural community," her mother said. "We chose at the time to integrate her with lip-reading and speech therapy." But, she said, her daughter grew to feel isolated and unhappy.

"She came home from school one day her sophomore year and said, 'I'm never going back to that school again. You have to decide where to send me.' "

She finished her high school years at the private academy in Washington that is associated with Gallaudet, and went on to college there.

That is where Christy Smith embraced deaf culture.

"I know all this controversy about signing or not signing going on in the deaf community seems stupid to hearing people," Glenda Smith said. "But it's very real."

Judging from the charged messages being exchanged in Internet chat rooms and on Survivor: The Amazon fan Web sites, Smith's participation in the show has fanned flames in both the hearing and deaf worlds.

"Yes, deaf people do have their role in society and can be extraordinary people, but the bottom line, as cruel as it may sound, is that Survivor is about dealing primarily with communication," wrote someone called JaiPeur on a chat site called Survivor Sucks (which is actually for fans of the program). "... It seems to me deaf people might struggle on Survivor."

"You need to show them that you can do it, Deaf!" a chatter called Survivor Tikis replied. "Deaf, you can establish pride for the disabled!"

Some deaf chatters have argued that it would make no sense for Smith to sign on the program because none of the other contestants knows sign language.

Jennifer Peterson, Smith's best friend from college, agrees.

"I tell people, 'What if you were placed in the middle of nowhere, in the woods, with a bunch of hearing people? Would you sign with them? No,' " she said. "But that aside, we're all so proud. Christy being on the show is an amazing milestone for the deaf community... . She's educating the world about an invisible disability."

[Via The Philadephia Inquirer]

The naked truth about 'Girls Gone Wild'

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 05:10:30 GMT

The naked truth about 'Girls Gone Wild'

By CHRIS GARCIA / Cox News Service

AUSTIN, Texas -- Lauren is not getting naked.

Somehow, the bleached blonde with a toffee tan thinks that a girl can get wild without really getting wild. That in this day and age a girl can attain most righteous wildness by spurning the fundamental step of giving the public a peek.

What lollipop world is she living in?

When the video cameras from "Girls Gone Wild" come to your town -- and they came to Austin on Tuesday night -- there are certain expectations, and every single one of them has to do with bare skin. The "GGW" cameras do odd things to young women. Naughty things. Namely, they inspire women to lift their tops and expose themselves, often while their tongues hang out sloppily. This is called wild.

Not, says Lauren.

"I will not be showing (anything). Absolutely not. No way. It's called 'Girls Gone Wild,' not 'Girls Gone Naked,' " says Lauren, who, like many in this story, withheld her last name. The 21-year-old with a leonine mane of yellow hair and jeans low enough to reveal lots of red silk thong works at a bar and is studying to get her real-estate certification.

"I don't look down on any girls who are wild enough to do that. To each her own," she says. "But that's just not my style. You've got to leave room for the imagination, you know."

Thirty minutes later, Lauren was taking it off.

There she was, on stage at country-dance warehouse Midnight Rodeo in South Austin, gleefully lifting her Girls Gone Wild mini-tank top for about 700 howling, whooping, screaming, yelling, barking, caterwauling young men, who were apparently seeing their first bare breasts. Writhing with professional panache and shooting a carnal glare at the boys, Lauren's soft-spoken modesty melted, then hardened into Elizabeth Berkley in "Showgirls."

Woooooo-yeeeaaaahhhh-owwwww! went the men.

Ha! went the dozen women on stage.

The women, ages 18 to 23, were competing in a "Girls Gone Wild" talent contest (is lap dancing a talent?), the winner of which will appear on a "GGW" pay-per- view event in March.

The direct-order video company's Austin stop was part of a 31-city tour that's brought camera crews to San Diego, Philadelphia, Dallas, Lubbock and, the night before, San Marcos. First prize Tuesday night was $100 cash and an all-expenses paid trip to Panama City, Fla., where the winner will take part in another "GGW" contest.

It's a common perception that in party aka college towns, Mardi Gras has become a kind of open-air flesh bazaar. Like members of a native tribe, grunting young men proffer tacky plastic beads to greedy women, who gladly, if drunkenly, haul their tops over their chests and under their chins for impromptu peekaboos. The boys go wild.

Joe Francis, the 29-year-old multi millionaire who created "Girls Gone Wild," decided several years ago to bring video cameras to these and similar spring breaky gatherings. Give the girls beads, make them go wild, tape it and sell it.

"GGW" boasted more than $90 million in direct-response orders last year and the brand has become shorthand for "drunken-girl antics." "GGW" trades in "normal people" and avoids strippers, Francis says.

The company's 83 titles include "Craziest Frat Parties," "Ultimate Spring Break" and "Sexy Sorority Sweethearts." MGM is making a feature film based on the video exploits, something between "Spring Break" and "American Pie."

Francis says any young woman will lift her top for the low price of guaranteed male attention.

"You'd be surprised, man," Francis says by phone from his L.A. office. "Every time I go out, I see a girl who I thought would never do it."

Joe, meet Lauren.

"I know, I know," says Lauren, holding her forehead like a kid who's been caught breaking a promise. She's backstage, being escorted by the "GGW" crew to the winner's circle. Lauren won the contest.

"It was the heat of the moment," she explains.

Sociology of a shirt lift

"I'm not drunk enough," says Crystal Woodworth, a bespectacled blonde in a white tank top.

Tonight, she's leaving the stripping to her peers.

"I encourage them. If you have a beautiful body, why can't you share it with everyone else?"

Crystal's friends have been wheedling her to do it all night.

"Why do I have to go on stage to do it? I can do it for you myself. I don't need that extra push. I do it for my friends all the time."

Crystal is a good friend.

On the other side of the rambling, neon-splashed dance hall, -- where bar servers sling Day-Glo shots in test tubes and a guy named Robert is coaxing his girlfriend Stephanie to get on stage -- giggle Amanda Brown and Melissa Dotson, 19-year- old University of Texas students.

The brunettes are dressed in tight, slight outfits that would pass for loin cloths in some cultures. They rushed to Midnight Rodeo when they heard about the event on the radio.

"We're lookin' to be famous," Melissa says.

"We get off on it," Amanda says.

"We're not doing it against our will in any way. Not everybody has to like it," says Melissa. "We're not porn stars. We're 19, we're experimenting, we're having fun. We're out there."

On stage, Amanda and Melissa gyrate, kiss each other and lift up each other's shirts. (They eventually take second and third place.)

The boys hoot with stadium-rock abandon. They slaver and yell obscenities. Their eyes bulge like blood-shot moons. The overall expression on their faces is something like this: !!!!!!!!

Wes Parnell, a slightly slurring 22-year-old UT student, assumes the role of resident sociologist and human behaviorist. He speaks waveringly, but with confidence. He spies two young women registering for the contest.

"Oh, they're going to take it off," Wes assures us. "They don't have a choice. When they get up on stage and start drinking alcohol, they start doing things that they don't know they're doing. They love it, they absolutely love it. Girls start seeing what the guys think and the guys trick them into doing more."

There's a study of what makes girls go wild waiting to be vetted for psychological illumination. We can listen to Wes, or we can drag in an expert in feminist media studies.

That would be Mary Kearney, assistant professor of radio-television-film at UT, who explains, "There's some recognition when you're a woman in your late teens and early 20s that sexuality is a form of power for you. And for a lot of younger women, it's the only form of power they have. They are told on a daily basis that their primary goal in life is to get male attention. So if they're getting it by lifting up their top, so be it."

Especially for middle-class white women, Kearney says, "This might be a chance for them to feel sexy in the moment, for girls to be wild. It's sluttish behavior, and girls might be pushing the boundaries for themselves, to be like, 'Ooo, I'm wild and crazy!' Of course, they don't really understand that it's a pretty conventional climate for girls and women to be rebellious."

Though it can be a litigious one. A Florida State University student who lifted her shirt in New Orleans sued for invasion of privacy after being featured on a "Girls Gone Wild" video. The case was settled out of court.

In November, state Rep. Miguel Wise, D-Weslaco, filed a bill that would make it a crime to photograph or videotape a person in public or private without their consent and with "intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person." It was referred to the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.

We return to the wisdom of Wes. "Girls have such low self-esteem, they need guys to cheer 'em on," he insists.

"I don't have low self-esteem. I just don't feel like being a . . . "

That's a brunette named Chanbra, who's been encircled by several boys begging her to join the contest. One of them thrusts a cocktail into her hand.

"It's just for fun, just for fun," says a guy.

"I know . . ." Chanbra sounds breathless and confused.

"Just do it. Please," says another guy.

"This is the third time I've been told to do it, and I'm not doing it. Sorry, y'all," Chanbra says, and leaves.

"Well, lost cause."

The call of the 'Wild'

A petite young woman named Joanna bolts off the crowded stage mid show and makes a hasty retreat back stage. She pulls off her cowboy hat and sighs with what sounds like relief. She was fleeing.

"I couldn't do that to myself," Joanna says. "I'm not like that. I think it's trashy. Looking at the crowd, I decided I'm not putting myself out there as a piece of meat. I'm shaking I'm so nervous."

Why was she up there then?

She was egged on by friends, despite her protests. "I thought it was fun being part of the scene, and then it just got too far."

Away from male taunts and chants of "Show your . . .," Crystal Woodworth looks exhilarated. She wound up on stage flashing the crowd after all.

"I was naked! I don't know why," she gasps. "I can't believe I did that because I come here a lot and I know everyone. Oh, my God."

Woodworth was persuaded by her friends, including Kimberly Hyde, who joined her on stage.

"I'm just crazy like that," Kimberly says. "It was a blast."

It's nothing new for her. She flashes her guy friends upon request.

"Wanna see?" she asks.

[GJ Sentinel]

Miller Lite mud-wrestling commercial sparks debate

Fri, 24 Jan 2003 17:47:35 GMT

'Tastes great' - 'Less clothes'

Miller Lite mud-wrestling commercial sparks debate

JAN 16, 2003 - If the goal of Miller Brewing's newest commercial for Miller Lite beer is to create buzz, it seems to be working. CNN's "Crossfire" debated the ad called "Catfight" last week, and Stuff magazine hopes to feature the commercial's stars in a photo layout.

The commercial has been airing since Jan. 1 during NFL playoff games, some college football games and late-night TV. It starts with two attractive women turning the classic Miller Lite debate of "tastes great, less filling" into a brawl. They fall into a pool while ripping off each other's clothes and end up mud-wrestling.

The ad cuts to a bar. It turns out the catfight was the fantasy of two guys sitting in the bar (with their girlfriends) as their idea of a great commercial. A cable-only version of the ad ends with the brunet saying to the blond: "Let's make out."

Miller has received 400 e-mails about the commercial, with about half for and half against, said Miller Lite spokesman Ron Acosta. Most of the complaints are from over-40 married women with families. The NFL has gotten a "handful of complaints," says spokesman Brian McCarthy. Executives at ABC, Fox and CBS report no viewer complaints. That could change. Miller may run "Catfight" on prime-time shows and sitcoms, a spokesman said.

"Every time I see it, I cringe," says Laura Ries, an image guru. "It's explicit. It's degrading. It has no real message, except: All men are idiots, and all they think about are girls mud-wrestling."

Miller executives said the spot is a hit with its target audience: 21-to-31-year-old beer drinkers. "They see it for what it is: a hysterical insight into guys' mentality," says Tom Bick, Miller Lite brand manager. "It's really a lighthearted spoof of guys' fantasies."

A poll at USA Today found about twice as many people found it offensive as didn't. Realbeer.com thinks there are other questions to ask and invites you to vote if you found it clever, offensive, "less filling" or something else.

Search The Real Beer Library For More Articles Related To: Miller Brewing, commercials

Save Our Blondes

Sat, 28 Sep 2002 06:03:40 GMT

Join The Sun in the Save Our Blondes campaign

Let's be fair ... Page 3 beauties Nicola,
left, Anna and Jo campaign yesterday

By OLIVER HARVEY

THE world has fought to save the whale and the panda.

Today conservationists face a new challenge — the demise of the blonde.

We told yesterday how blondes are an endangered species. Too few people carry the right hair colour gene for them to survive to 2202.

Alert ... yesterday's Sun

Now we are launching a vital new campaign to Save Our Blondes. It is a sort of World Wildnights Fund to preserve these proud, magnificent creatures.

Three blonde Page 3 beauties yesterday backed our crusade — without saying whose hair colour came out of a bottle.

Anna, 21, said: “If they can save the whale, The Sun can save the blonde.”

Jo, 23, said: “Gentleman prefer blondes. Something must be done.”

And gorgeous Nicola, 21, added: “We won’t stop campaigning until the blonde is saved.”

Hair we go ... Jo confronts threat

The vital statistics may look bad. But plenty of experts are sure to pay close attention to the problem.

To help their studies, we collected some hard facts, right, about the ecology of the endangered blonde.

HERE is our observer’s guide to help keen new twitchers identify the different characteristics of bottle blondes and their natural cousins.
A close examination will confirm that the natural blondes are those showing their feathers, left.

Emma Bunton picture: MATRIX

Fact file

MIGRATION PATTERNS

BLONDES originally travelled south from Scandinavia as fair-haired Viking males plundered and pillaged their way across Europe.

Today all-female groups may be spotted travelling around the M25 stopping at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls before ending up in the Time And Envy nightspot in Romford.

Despite inclement weather, large single sex groups also congregate in Newcastle’s Bigg Market at weekends.

Seasonal movement occurs with blondes flocking to Ayia Napa and Faliraki in the summer months.

NATURAL HABITAT

BLONDES are easily enticed into glamorous situations such as films and modelling.

But others of the species can frequently be observed serving behind bars and on supermarket checkouts.

Favoured habitats include nightclubs, hair salons and boutiques.

The creatures are also drawn to Ford Escort XR3s with Level 42 on the stereo.

Note: Blondes may be safely approached in their natural environment. But beware when getting too close.

The creatures can become loud and excitable — and they may even become aggressive if asked to dance. If confronted by an agitated blonde in such conditions, back off slowly and observe them from a distance.

MATING HABITS

FEMALE blondes appear keen to pair with the male of the species. Breeding grounds may include football club hospitality suites, backstage at Oasis gigs and the back seat of the Ford Escort motor car.

Males of all hair colours are often sent into a bizarre mating ritual at the sight of a blonde.

They may develop a tendency to boast and exaggerate following the experience.

MATING SEASON

ALL year round — but particularly frenzied activity is shown in the office Christmas party season and on foreign migration trips or holidays.

MATING CALL

WHAT’S your salary?

FEEDING HABITS

Breakfast: Nothing. Elevenses: Chocolate.
Lunch: Green salad, no dressing.
Evening: Vodka and Red Bull, Bacardi Breezers and Malibu and Coke.
Late night snack: Kebab, extra fries and ketchup. Fizzy drink.

PLUMAGE

G-STRINGS which show above the trousers (although underwear is normally optional with these creatures), plus strappy sandals with four-inch heels, lift and push-up bras.

SUB SPECIES

THE natural blonde is considered the real McCoy by blonde watchers. Their nearest relative is the bottle blonde which has been recorded in a number of different variations.

The bottle blonde may be recognised by its cry of: “I’m a Natural Blonde, Honest”, “What Do You Think of My Highlights?” and “Oh No, I Need My Roots Done”. Another giveaway is their brown eyebrows.

POPULATION

NUMBERS of blondes are declining rapidly but Sweden — which has 4.5 million blondes — and Finland remain strongholds.

In many areas of Europe natural blondes have been replaced by the fast-spreading bottle blonde.

Naturalists have compared the situation with blondes to the ousting of the native red squirrel by the introduced grey squirrel.

Good Or Bad PR for Virgin Atlantic Airways

Fri, 20 Sep 2002 03:26:35 GMT

Good or Bad PR?

I read this story today, about Virgin Atlantic Airways having to replace all of their mother and baby room table because passengers are using them to join the elusive 'mile high club' and thought to myself "is that good or bad PR?"

I mean look at it this way:

Virgin gets in the public eye for something that not horrendously frightening.
Virgin gets in the public eye of people that are looking for a good time (something Virgin is pretty sononymous for).
Airbus gets it name mentioned again, even though they really just make a commodity that most people can't even think of affording.
Richard Branson gets to stroke his ego one more time (which he loves to do) for just having his company's brand in front of people.

So, the question is, is this good PR? Well, it's not bad PR, but it's also not good PR, IMO.

If I were an airline company, I'd take it in a heart beat though, considering all of the bad press that industry has gotten over the past year... and it can't hurt to be part of the water-cooler discussions can it?

You know, I bet its great PR in the UK, though, now that I think about it. The Brits have a great sense of humor when it comes to things sexual in nature.

Tips For Men Who Like Women For The Totally Clueless

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 03:15:35 GMT

Tips for men who like women | online dating etiquette

{After being asked repeatedly, here now is a follow up to the wildly popular and highly controversial, tips for men who like women | for the totally clueless}

1. Let's start at the beginning. Choose your screen name wisely. We're not favorably impressed with the likes of what BeachBum876, or 6FootSwell has to offer. We've worked hard to have a successful career and expect the same from the men we date. We're skeptical that SuccessfulRichDude is anything but a dude. Romantic_Dreamer makes you sound like a sap. Nothing about those names is encouraging.

2. The women tend to get bombarded on these services, due to the male female ratio balancing clearly in favor of those with boobs. Don't expect a response. Similarly, don't write your life story on the first email. We're sorting through tons of emails. Respect our time.

3. Equally bad are first emails containing questions that would require us to write a novel in order to adequately answer it:

Tell me all about yourself. Cheers, Bob

Isn't that the purpose of the essay section in our profiles? Better to ask something specific like, "do you have herpes?" or "didn't we have a one night stand back in '92?"

4. If the woman specifies she's looking for someone between the ages of 30-40 and you are just shy of 23…she's not interested. Similarly, if she wants a black man, and you are white…you aren't going to be the one to change her preference. If you are gay, don't contact a woman no matter how much you the love the handbag she's carrying in the photo. She probably won't have a child for you and your partner no matter how nicely you ask.

Trust me. Read what the woman took the time to write and then look in the mirror.

5. Don't contact us if you don't have a clear photo. If you don't want to post it for fear the cops will finally track you down and get you for all those missed child and spousal support payments then send it to us via email. Sounds complicated, I know. That means you'll have to send two emails with match.com. Don't worry, you'll figure it out.

6. Don't write a poem in your "about me" section. Don't write a poem in the "about your ideal woman" section. And don't, under any circumstance write one in the first email you send your prospective mate.

7. Spelling still counts. Grammar will get you everywhere.

8. Don't send the same stock email to every woman. We often sign up for these things with our friends. We talk. A lot.

9. If she says, let's get together Thursday and you don't hear from her she's not interested. It sucks, I know but so does the email saying "I don't think we're a match."

10. Which leads me to perhaps the most important one. If we say it's not a match, don't send emails telling us we're a bad person for not feeling the chemistry with you. That only makes us more confident that we made the right decision.

I know this all sounds unfair. But there was a point in our lives when you were in control. Remember all the times in college when you'd have sex with a girl and then never call her again? Or the times you slept with your girlfriend's sister, roommate or mother? And then told all your buddies about every last detail? Or video taped your bedroom acrobatics without telling her? Okay so maybe you were the one guy who didn't do those things. My mom moxie is a relatively bright blonde woman, yet still she's often called a dumb blonde. Get it?

Online dating is karmic payback for your gender. For now anyway, the women are in the driver's seat.

Oh and if you follow all the rules and meet a woman, try to shower and look presentable for your date. It really sucks for us to have to tell our friends, "he was nice but he kind of smelled funny."
posted by phoebe slade

Fort Bragg Murders, Suicides

Wed, 31 Jul 2002 04:19:21 GMT

Fort Bragg Murders

12:30pm, THIS JUST IN
In a series of email correspondences with Tanya Biank, the reporter who broke the Fort Bragg murder story for hometown paper the Fayetteville Observer last Friday (see last update below for content), Biank informs me of the following:

all I can say is that there must be something in the hot summer air down here.... stay tuned, much more to come with this one... :) Sorry can't say anything unitl we go to press! We don't want to get scooped!!!

When pressed further, she replied:

Eric!!!! We will have something Wednesday and something Thursday. I can't give away anything else because everyone is chasing this story and we don't want to be beat.

It would not be much of a stretch to conclude that something big is going to break on this within about the next 12 hours.

I mentioned Ann Salisbury's outrage last night over the lack of coverage of the murder of four Army wives by their husbands at one base in the last month. Matt Welch points me to the Sarge's coverage of this shocking story, which somehow I missed, blinded by visions of CDs dancing in my head or something. I will wear a large DUH on my forehead for the day.

Regardless, PBR wrote:

....The Base Commander's feeling some major heat right now, so the word is going out about stress reduction and all that. Plus, they'll probably have mass briefings and smaller classes to "deal" with the problem, but these things are almost always done mainly for the upper echelon's benefit. The base commander can point to all these things he's done to fix the problem so he can take the heat off his ass. Everyone knows it's just an oddball thing that's happening and it'll go away of its own accord soon enough, but until then they'll have to go through the motions. Still, a nice marriage counseling class never hurts

Equally interesting is the comments section of the post, in which possible explanations are presented, refuted, represented, rerefuted and otherwise bandied about. My guess is that Paul is right about this being one of those contagions that pop up from time to time where people subconsciously emulate the behavior of others under duress. Still, it's all very peculiar and tragic.

Reader Bruce Rheinstein adds these thoughts:

We received a direct order not to discuss the incident with the press or anyone outside the unit. Don't expect the military to give out the straight dope to the press. A little digging by an enterprising reporter would probably ferret out the real story. Word about these things tends to spread pretty fast in a unit and someone is always willing to talk.

UPDATE
Here is yesterday's USA Today report on the story. They seem bewildered and treading lightly:

Three of the killings involved special operations soldiers who had been to Afghanistan. That has prompted questions about the stresses the soldiers may have been under at the time of the murders. All four slayings occurred in the past two months.

The three special operations soldiers -- Sgt. 1st Class Brandon Floyd, Master Sgt. William Wright, and Sgt. 1st Class Rigoberto Nieves -- were in different units. Floyd and Nieves killed themselves after killing their wives.

The fourth soldier, Sgt. Cedric Ramon, a combat engineer, had not been sent to Afghanistan. He is accused of stabbing his estranged wife at least 50 times.

''In our initially looking at it, we're not sure there was any one factor,'' said Maj. Gary Kolb, spokesman for Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.

All four soldiers had been away from their homes for about two months each, officials said. None exhibited signs of alienation. And each of the three who went overseas received, along with their wives, a customary Army briefing on the stresses of being reunited.

The Afghan war was the first war in which special operations troops such as Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs took the lead in ground fighting.

Special operations forces from Fort Bragg played a major role in coordinating air attacks on forces of the ruling Taliban government in Afghanistan. They also worked closely on the ground with Northern Alliance troops.

They endured enormous stress working in small groups and without the usual trappings of a large ground force. The troops were often isolated in the field, fighting against a much larger enemy.

Military sociologists say the Army takes great care in counseling soldiers and their families. In most cases, the separation and trauma of war are not the main factor in spouse abuse or domestic violence, says Jim Martin, who teaches courses on military family life at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

''Most likely, these kinds of things are related to people having significant problems beforehand,'' Martin said.

Special operations troops are said to be among the most carefully selected and tested of all military personnel.

Merely qualifying to become a Green Beret can take up to a year. Many of the elite units require exhaustive psychological testing for applicants.

''I think in this case, you need to look at each individual's background, possible precipitating events and the context of each marriage,'' Martin said.

Military sociologist Mady Segal said the overwhelming majority of military families cope fine with the stress of separation. She said recent research suggests that violence among military families is more common than among civilians. But true comparisons may be difficult to make, Segal said, because military communities are much more likely to report spouse or child abuse.

Fort Bragg and the surrounding community has long had a reputation as a Wild West town. In recent years, community leaders have attempted to repair that reputation, but high-profile cases continue to tarnish its image.

Seven years ago, an Army sergeant at Fort Bragg went on a shooting rampage, killing an Army officer and wounding more than a dozen other people.

The NY Times calls it "a growing problem of domestic violence in the military."

While some soldiers here say the stress of separation and fears of infidelity by wives may have contributed to the killings, Ms. Tucker said the real explanation was more likely a history of trouble in the marriages — including some previous violence — combined with husbands who craved control and felt anxious about losing it during deployment in Afghanistan.

Reporter Fox Butterfield found someone sort-of willing to talk:

The sergeant, who recently returned from six months in Afghanistan, said the usual problems of family separation during war had been eased during the fighting in Afghanistan because his unit had several satellite phones that allowed soldiers to call home every few days.

But some men in his unit still worried about what their wives were doing, either failing to pay bills or having extramarital affairs, he said.

The sergeant did not have the problem himself, because he is divorced. In 1997, when he had been married only seven months, he was sent on a training mission to Fort Polk in Louisiana, he said, and when he returned his wife told him she had had an affair.

"I was easy about it," the sergeant said. "It wasn't worth it to shoot her and spend the rest of my life in jail."

Good point, bud.

Here is where the "trend" comes in:

The task force has issued two major reports in the last 18 months calling for sweeping changes in the way the military handles domestic violence cases, including requiring military units to keep track of the names of soldiers who are under restraining orders for domestic violence or who have been convicted of domestic violence.

The requirement follows the passage of a federal law in 1996, written by Frank R. Lautenberg, then a Democratic Senator from New Jersey, that made it a federal crime for a person under a court restraining order for domestic violence or who has been convicted of domestic violence to buy or possess a gun. The law applies to all Americans, including police officers and members of the armed forces.

But Ms. Tucker said the military had responded slowly and unevenly to the requirement, since carrying it out could mean soldiers would lose access to their weapons and could face discharge from the service.

A disincentive for the military to implement scrupulously indeed.

Uh-oh:

In fact, a spokesman for the Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, Maj. Gary Kolb, said he had not heard of the Lautenberg law, or of a Defense Department directive that military units identify soldiers who have restraining orders against them or convictions for domestic violence. Major Kolb said such information would be the responsibility of the commander of Fort Bragg, not the Special Operations Command. A spokesman for Fort Bragg did not return phone calls today seeking comment.

The Afghanistan connection is there, but it would appear to be a catalyst only to the extent that serving there required physical separation, and mistrust, between the spouses. The soldier's destination could have been anywhere, it's the separation that appears to have been the necessary condition:

But Dr. Browne also noted that three of the four killings apparently involved situations where the wives were seeking separations. Studies have shown this is the time when violence is most likely to occur.

UPDATE
Writing in the Fort Bragg area's home paper, the Fayetteville Observer, reporter Tanya Biank did some digging beneath the surface for this report last Friday:

Yvonne Qualantone, president of the 3rd Special Forces Group’s Family Readiness Group, said her phone has been ringing since the killings. The organization is a support group for families in the unit.

‘‘I’m getting a lot of phone calls, and we’re trying to make sure everyone is getting the right information,’’ she said.

She said stress levels are a little higher than normal. And since the killings, she said, some women who have been having problems with their husbands have called wanting to know to whom they should talk before things get worse.

‘‘We’re giving our chaplains a run for their money,’’ she said. ‘‘And just kind of leaving the lines open so we have people to contact.’’

Qualantone said that having husbands in Special Forces is hard on the wives, and they learn to be self-sufficient.

‘‘I think it takes a stronger woman than most,’’ she said. ‘‘Because you are on your own quite a bit.’’

Another woman married to a Green Beret, who asked not to be identified, thinks the service doesn’t do enough for families.

‘‘I firmly believe that the Special Forces lifestyle and demands have played a bigger role (in the killings) than the Special Forces leaders want to admit,’’ she said.

‘‘I don’t know what they are dealing with over there. I think they are doing a poor job of managing the stress of these deployments. Somebody dropped the ball.’’

Military officials and civilian investigators have not indicated that marital infidelity played a role in any of the recent killings, but the Special Forces wife who asked not to be identified said that it can be a problem. Men are gone from home for long stretches; wives are left alone, often in communities where they have no family.

The woman said she found out her husband cheated on her during a deployment. They are now working out their problems, she said, but not because of help from the military.

‘‘My husband had cheated, and not one person contacted us to offer support, not one person sent the chaplain over,’’ she said.

‘‘No matter what they say, Special Forces is not about family values.’’

....Martha Brown, the Deployment and Mobilization program manager for Army Community Service at Fort Bragg, helps prepare units and families for deployments and reunions.

Brown said that before a deployment, couples need to discuss such things as finances, home repairs, children and medical needs.

After a deployment, couples have to work at reconnecting, she said.

‘‘Their expectations are different,’’ she said. ‘‘The service member may be expecting a nice quiet reunion when he gets home, and then the spouse may have something totally different, a big party, people staying home for a couple weeks. So what we stress is that they need to communicate.’’

Oral Sex Can Help Lose Calories

Sat, 20 Jul 2002 06:05:47 GMT

Another Madiera, M'Dear?

From Ananova, but too good to not quote in its entirety.

An Italian professor says it takes 15 minutes of oral sex to burn off the calories consumed in a long sip of wine.

Dietician Bruno Fabbri has been looking into the exercise value of sexual activities.

He found a 26-minute sex session which ends with an orgasm gets rid of half a pizza.

French-kissing for 53 minutes can help you lose the fat found in a burger and chips meal.

News2000 website reports that even undoing a bra can help you lose fat.

He said: "That's not of course if you unclasp the bra with two hands, which will cost you just eight calories, but unclasping it with only one hand statistically takes the count to 18.

"Trying to unclasp a bra with one's mouth instead takes an average 87 calories."

Why does porn got to hurt so bad?

Mon, 17 Jun 2002 22:13:29 GMT

http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_06_02_armedndangerous_archive.html#77482059

Like me, Eric thinks that most porn is pretty dreadful. Unlike me, Eric decides to do some research and try to figure out exactly why it's pretty dreadful. His conclusion seems bang on, as does his point that if he's right, the conventional feminist viewpoint on porn is wrong. [For those whose well trained hackles are already rising, I should point out that ESR thinks the reality of the situation is worse than most feminists believe.]

The article is definitely worth a read, even if, like me, you're at work and can't follow the links to the pictures. :)

Why does porn got to hurt so bad?

A couple days ago I chased a link over to unablogger and found myself unexpectedly confronted by pictures of naked women. This picture, in particular. And I noticed something unusual -- which was that I liked it.

Don't get me wrong, here. I'm a functioning heterosexual male; I enjoy looking at naked women. It's most pictures of naked women I can't stand. I've found by experience that most of the vast amounts of pornography available on the Internet leave me feeling more repelled than aroused. And not out of puritanism either; I have no intrinsic moral objection to porn, and I judge that the consequentialist arguments against it don't stand the reality test.

No, the truth is that I find most porn subtly and deeply ugly. Unablogger's picture (which happens to be of a Czech model named Veronika Zemanova) was a sufficiently glaring exception that it stimulated me to think seriously about why.

It was immediately clear to me that Ms. Zemanova's physique was not the primary reason this photograph struck me as an exception. Ms. Zemanova unquestionably has a very shapely and appealing body and a pretty face. However, I have seen many photographs of women with equally lovely bodies and equally pretty faces that I nevertheless found ugly and unstimulating as entire compositions, without being completely clear about why.

My initial reaction was reinforced when I searched for other images of Ms. Zemanova and discovered ugly generic porn. The difference, clearly, was not in Ms. Zemanova's body but in way the attitude and setting -- one might say the implied narrative -- of her pictures differed. Time for some analysis...

Like any good scientist, I proceeded to do some research. I surfed to a well-known porn index site and random-sampled the content, sticking to pictures of single unclad women in order to control some obvious variables. Using my own hypothalamus as a calibration instrument, I graded the samples into "excellent" (I want to keep a copy) "good" (pleasant to look at) "mediocre" (mechanically arousing but unpleasant) and "bad" (just plain unpleasant). There were very, very few "excellents", and almost none of the caliber of Unablogger's image of Ms. Zemanova.

After the first grading pass, I re-sorted the images in an attempt to compensate for the presence of particular physical features that I know are powerful sexual releasers for me (red hair is an example). I did this because, to the extent possible, I wanted to try to separate my autonomic arousal reaction to the images from my esthetic and psychological reaction. So I downgraded images in which the women had obvious, powerful releaser traits for me.

Now, this was hardly a controlled experiment. And it's just me. But once I corrected for my autonomic biases, a clear pattern emerged, especially in the "bad" category. Many images contained elements that were, at least to me, anti-arousing. Over-styled hair -- especially over-styled blonde hair. Fake pearls. Strappy high heels being worn by otherwise naked women. Feather boas and tacky hooker lingerie. Bloated silicone breasts. Excessive makeup; excessive makeup was, in fact a rule even in most otherwise uncompromised images.

The pattern was not surprising; I had had some insight about this before without thinking it through completely. Bad porn is full of the fetish signifiers of sexual allure, to the point where they crowd out the reality of sexual allure. Porn models often look more like women trying desperately hard to be sexy than they look like sexy women. There is a wrongness there.

Contrast this picture of a model named India Allen with Ms. Zemanova's picture. I have no doubt that Ms. Allen is quite a fetching young woman; indeed, I chose her image because on the physical-traits level she can compete with Ms. Zemanova quite handily. But this image is not good porn; it is crowded with elements that distract one from Ms. India's native sexiness. The silly carousel horse. The glare spot behind her left hip. The teddy artfully half-removed despite the fact that she is obviously not planning to strip for sex in the immediate future.

I can't speak for other men, but my gut reaction is "What is all this bullshit?" Where the Unablogger photo of Ms. Zemanova offers us a narrative about sex ("I'm taking my clothes off because I want to have sex with the person I'm looking at -- yes, that would be you.") Ms. Allen's offers us a narrative about being sexy -- looking alluring in a fantasy context that makes actual sex quite unlikely. How many of us, after all, have ever gotten laid anywhere near a carousel horse?

And typical porn is actually far worse than this. Mostly the models have a vacant-eyed, stunned look to them. They frequently contort themselves into bizarre positions that would make sex impossible and aren't really plausible as a stage of foreplay either. Or they sprawl, surrounded by fetish objects, passively waiting to be fucked. They don't smile; their faces are either mindlessly slack or locked in a rictus of simulated passion as obviously fake as a three-dollar bill.

As I looked at more bad-porn images, I found myself waking up to a deep bewilderment. How could these pictures arouse anyone who was actually paying attention to them? Why is there a market for this crap?

When I remember the good sex I've had, or imagine the good sex I might have, my head is not populated by vacant-eyed women surrounded by fetish objects and passively waiting to be fucked. No; my fantasies, and my experience, is of women who are intelligent horny animals like me; live-eyed, smiling, fully awake and quite ready to seize the initiative if I drop it, thank you. For real women, the meaning of the sex is the sex, not the ooh-look-I'm-hot posing that goes before it. The Unablogger image of Ms. Zemanova looks like she has a real woman's attitude; most of her competitors' pictures (and indeed most of her own) don't.

Bad porn is superficially sexual in a way as stylized as Kabuki theater, but deeply anti-erotic. To be aroused by it, you have to be reading the code that tells you are supposed to be aroused -- the artificial boobs, the decorticated stares, the garter belts. If you delete or mask out that code, no actual sexual charge remains -- there is nothing left that connects your desire to the subject of the picture.

Mediocre porn, though mechanically arousing enough to facilitate masturbation by someone with a case of serious hormonal back-pressure, has only the subject's body parts and the viewer's autonomic response going for it. For very few men is it plausible to have sex with a lipstick-and-eyeshadow-wearing starlet/bimbo type with 40DD breasts who's somehow had her skin lacquered to a gloss that resembles model-airplane dope and just happens to be bent over a motorcycle while stark naked. Sorry, no sale; a real woman would at least have her hair a bit mussed.

The fetishistic perfection of such scenes actually puts distance between the subject and the viewer's desire. It removes the subject from any real world in which one might meet her and actually take her to bed. Autonomic response to the picture itself is the limit of the possible.

Good porn, by contrast, conveys a sense of plausibility. You believe the women in it exist. You can imagine meeting them. You can imagine liking one of them, having her like you, and the two of you sliding off somewhere for a mutually happy fuck. Being aroused by such a picture makes emotional sense; you don't have to either fight or ignore any sense that the subject is an inaccessible fantasy.

The contrast is perfectly evident in two pictures of Ms. Zemonova. In this one, she looks like an unusually sexy but normal young woman in the act of removing her panties while she looks at the viewer. The narrative is clear; she is stripping for action, and you are the fortunate object of her desire. Women do this sort of thing. If you are not a virgin, you've probably seen it happen, though perhaps never with a partner quite as exuberantly mammalian as Ms. Zemanova. This is a plausible scenario.

In this picture, by contrast, Ms. Zemanova is a heavily cosmeticized, unsettlingly glossy womanoid-thing in an unlikely position, masturbating herself and gazing off into space over your right shoulder. You are not involved. Nothing like this would be even remotely plausible in your bathroom -- if only because sensible women masturbate in their bedrooms, where they can collapse onto something more comfortable than a tile floor when they orgasm. This picture is not presenting a plausible scenario, unless you are the sort of wealthy British rock star who builds huge custom bathrooms in which to boff acquiescent supermodels.

This image makes an ironic example of good porn because it demonstrates that the apparent lack of artifice in good porn can be just as misleading as the fetish objects of bad porn. This innocent-looking girl-next-door posing as though she's giving her boyfriend a private thrill is actually the star character of a large and very raunchy German porn site. While one can hope she has nevertheless remained as sweet-natured and unjaded as she looks, betting money on this possibility would be imprudent at best.

Nor, despite the partial clothedness of my two examples, am I arguing that good porn has to be soft-core, either. This woman is leaving little to the imagination. But she has a nice smile -- something which, in a medium supposedly devoted to pleasure, is astonishingly rare. I searched through many hundreds of images and found almost none that combined full nudity with a simple human smile. Symbolically, the first one I found had disappeared by the following day, and I won't lay odds that the link above will stay good.

Very well, the facts are in hand; as many of them as I'm likely to get, anyway -- I've had as much exposure to bad porn as I can tolerate. Let's return to the central question. Why does pornography have to hurt so bad? Why is there so much bad porn out there and so little good stuff?

At one level the answer is fairly obvious. Like the purveyors of any other commodity, the people who produce porn have to respond to demand. Indeed, because production is cheap and the sales cycle is short, market selection can be expected to drive production to match demand very rapidly. There is no evidence of massive market-rigging, and good porn is no more expensive to produce than bad porn -- in fact, it may be less expensive (the same models can be used for good and bad, and the good stuff needs less in the way of elaborate props). Therefore, if most porn is bad, it's because most porn consumers want it to be bad.

Let's unpack that. The trash percentage of porn is so high that, unless the producers are collectively insane, most consumers must actually want images of women who are doing the bad-porn thing. That most porn consumers actually like the trash is further suggested by the tacky, gaudy, crude design of almost all porn websites. They scream, they leer, they spew misspellings and degrading language at high volume. The sheer aggressive ugliness is far too consistent to be the result of incompetence.

So the real question is this: why do most porn consumers seek trash? Why do they buy the fetish objects, the implausable poses, the unobtainable women? Why welcome such an anti-erotic distance between their sexual fantasies and their sexual reality?

We can certainly imagine how it might be different. Why don't porn consumers choose images they might plausibly act out, with partners rather sexier than the ones they have but still attainable? In fact some do; most porn sites have an `amateurs' category -- but it's marketed like a minority taste along with pictures of older women and fat women.

I am forced to the unhappy conclusion that plausibility is exactly what most porn consumers don't want. That somehow they feel better when their fantasies are safely distant from reality. All the possible reasons I can imagine for this are very sad.

One reason could be simple old-fashioned sexual guilt. If you believe sex is sinful and desire is dirty, if you have that old madonna/whore complex, than you may be more comfortable thinking of porn models as whores. You may indeed, be so conditioned to associate sex with sin that you can't get it off without feeling wicked first.

A more plausible construction for most potential porn consumers today is that they have issues about female power. Men who get lots of attention from attractive three-dimensional women are not likely to be buying porn-site subscriptions. Therefore, we can safely assume that the consumers who define demand patterns for porn producers generally feel that their sex life is hemmed in by female choices and the female power to refuse. Defining the objects of their desire as "cum-sucking sluts", to be used but not related to any emotional way, is a kind of equalizing move in the sexual-power game.

This theory differs sharply from conventional feminist critiques pf porn, in which porn seen as a ratification of existing power relationships that privilege males. The difference is testable. If the conventional theory is correct, porn should be becoming more and more irrelevant as women become more independent -- or, at least, assume the nostalgic character of references to a golden age of male privilege that has already passed.

On the other hand, if bad porn is a compensation for male feelings of powerlessness, we should expect it to become steadily tackier, uglier, more strident, and more popular in direct proportion to the degree that female power in the real world increases.

I think it's pretty clear which of those worlds we are living in. The gloomy conclusion is that porn is likely to get worse before it gets better. If it ever does.

Posted 7:22 AM by Eric Raymond

Men: Breaking Up Is Bad Only If Women Do It First

Wed, 12 Jun 2002 06:02:19 GMT

http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=healthnews&;StoryID=1076753# Men: Breaking Up Is Bad Only if Women Do It First
Last Updated: June 11, 2002 01:37 PM ET

By Alison McCook NEW ORLEANS (Reuters Health) - When rating previous breakups, women view the process of ending of the relationship no differently if they are the dumper or the dumpee--but the same is not true with men, new research shows. According to researchers at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina, men believe there was much more scheming on the part of their partners, less finality in the relationship and less working together during the breakup if they were dumped than if they ended the relationship themselves. For example, when rating how much scheming went into the breakup, "females don't differ much whether they were the actor or the target," Dr. Mike Jordan told Reuters Health. "The males, on the other hand--if they're the ones who did it, they thought 'Oh, there was no plotting on my part or anything.' But there was a lot if she broke up with them," he added. Jordan and his team asked 28 male and 90 female undergraduate college students to report on their last relationship that ended before it lasted 6 months. The students rated the breakups according to certain qualities: how much the couple worked together to decide to end the relationship (collaborativeness), how much plotting occurred on the part of the dumper (scheming), and how much they felt the relationship was truly over at the time of breaking up (finality). The investigators found that women perceived there to be equal amounts of scheming, collaborativeness and finality whether they initiated the breakup or whether they were forced out of the relationship. Men, however, felt the breakup was much less pleasant if it was forced upon them, rating much higher amounts of scheming, lower collaboration and less finality when their partners dumped them than when they started the breakup themselves. In an interview with Reuters Health, Jordan said that the women simply perceive breakups as a negative experience overall, whether or not they initiate the process. "Females just saw it as kind of bad all the time," he noted. However, for men, dumping a partner may not be so bad, the researcher added. "The males are not bothered if they end the relationship--it's not threatening to them," Jordan explained. "But if they are the target--the girl ends the relationship--this is highly threatening to them, and they don't take well to it," he said. He added that demonstrating that men perceive the relationship as less final when the partner ends it may explain why men are more likely than women to pursue their former partners after the relationship ends--such as phoning them, or showing up where they work. Jordan and his team presented the findings here Saturday at the American Psychological Society's annual meeting.

Women: Let's Talk About Sex

Mon, 27 May 2002 05:34:30 GMT

http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,53696,00.html

Women: Let's Talk About Sex


Columbia
*The women in The Sweetest Thing don't have sweet mouths.*

Saturday, May 25, 2002
By Michael Y. Park

NEW YORK — The FCC's censors might want to get out their red pens the next time women want to engage in "girl talk."

According to a study at Penn State University, young women speak more frequently and frankly about sex and sex-related subjects than young men do.

It's a definite challenge to the age-old image of locker-room banter versus the demure chatting of a knitting circle. Yet Eva Lefkowitz, assistant professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, said that the real world is much less like American Pie and more like The Sweetest Thing or a certain hit show on HBO.

"Movies generally portray college-age men talking about sex with each other frequently and openly. There are stereotypes of men in terms of 'lockerroom talk.' There are reports that men think about sex many more times a day than do women," Lefkowitz wrote in an e-mail interview. "The reason the TV show Sex in the City is considered so groundbreaking is that it actually shows women talking about sex."

Lefkowitz conducted her study over three months among 124 women and 81 men between 18 to 25 and focused on how the subjects communicated with their same-sex friends.

It found that women talked more frequently than men about sexual matters including sexual behavior, sexual feelings, dating and romantic relationships, "making out," the dangers of sex, abstinence, how attractive members of the other sex were, how attractive they themselves were, date rape and contraception.


	AP
	*The men in American Pie* don't have a monopoly on sex talk.**

The findings were published last month in the paper "Communication with Friends about Sex-Related Topics During the Transition to Adulthood."

"If parents (particularly mothers) talk about sex more with their daughters than with their sons, women may learn to discuss these issues more openly and frequently than men," she wrote. "This experience may then translate into women's friendships in young adulthood."

The only topic that men discussed more than women did: masturbation.

"My hunch would be that, first, there's evidence that men masturbate more than women so there is more experience with masturbation to begin with," she wrote. "Also, female masturbation may be more of a taboo subject in our society than male masturbation ('nice girls' don't do that)."

The data might be more valuable than simple blind-date small talk, Lefkowitz said. Women could be going into relationships with a lot more experience talking about sexual issues than their mates, meaning that there would be an unequal level of comfort in the relationship.

But none of the study's results particularly shocked or titillated some twentysomethings.


AP
*The girls from Sex and the City* lunch — and laugh about men.**

"We talk openly about orgasms, about what works and what doesn't," 27-year-old freelance editor Lauren Neefe said. "It's not so much about whether I had sex last night, but I like to talk frankly about sex … and I think you have to talk openly about it to make (a relationship) work."

Holly Rich, 28, a buzz marketer, said that she can't talk to all women as openly, but "once the floodgates are open, there's no holding back."

"I have very close friends who I'm surprised don't want to know anything about my bedroom life, and I have friends who want to go into every last detail," she said.

"It's about becoming a more complete person, and sexuality is a part of it. You talk about eating healthy, exercising; being healthy sexually is just another aspect of that."

Predictably more reticent about the subject was 27-year-old Web designer Brian Miksic, who never spoke to his parents about sex at all while growing up in Milwaukee.

"I don't talk about it with anybody," he said.

And when he does, he said it's more about the relationship than about the sex itself.

"It's usually about the meanings behind it, like what does it mean, what's going to happen next," he said, sounding increasingly embarrassed by the subject. "I rarely talk about actual acts. I just don't think it's anybody's business."

Wed, 15 May 2002 19:40:45 GMT

http://www.cosmiverse.com/news/beaten/beaten05150202.html

60% of Workers Have Office Flings
May 15, 2002 8:30 CDT

Right or wrong, workers are adding "sex in the office" to their job descriptions. A whopping 60% of office workers have reported having flings with coworkers, and 10% of them admit to having had at least four different colleagues as sex partners.

Where is all of this sex taking place? Sex on a desk came in high on the list with 50% reporting it as a common location. 16% have used the boss's office. Chairs, the conference room and the office parking lot also made the list. With this going on around the office, you'd think some workers would be caught in the act. 7% admitted that they had been, but most avoided retribution.

All these saucy statistics on "work" in the office was the result of a survey of more than 30,000 workers by Elle magazine and MSNBC.com.

So, what's the attraction? Is it the danger or just the sex? Two workers reported their thoughts during the survey, "I managed to have sex in every bathroom in the building as well as in the lobby during business hours," one 30-year-old man said. "I think women in my office were intrigued by my bad boy reputation."

A 51-year-old woman who had two office affairs said: "I find the clandestine, forbidden nature exciting and a way to spice up my work week." The sociologist conducting the survey stated that an office romance is like playing with matches.

Ananova reported that she added, "There's the chance of danger, but it's slim. Given the potential rewards, at least for single people, the risks are clearly worth it."

14% of those surveyed didn't seem to agree because they reported that they would never date a coworker.

Wed, 08 May 2002 21:19:34 GMT

http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

Touch Yourself For The Cause
National Masturbation Month. National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. You make the connection
     By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
     Wednesday, May 8, 2002
     ©2002 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

Proud proud proud I am to be doing my part on National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Which is today, by the way. Which no one really expected you to remember. Which is just fine because they aren't exactly having a parade or serving drinks or bringing in strippers or anything. Which of course they should. But that's another column.

I am doing my part. I have very graciously agreed not to impregnate any teens for the entire week, so far as I know.

Not only that, I have officially chosen to serve this worthy cause by sponsoring, on a per-minute basis, some very munificent and warm-hearted "athletes" who are generously donating their time and energy and moist towelettes for a very special marathon, the Masturbate-A-Thon, in celebration of National Masturbation Month.

Oh stop it. You read correctly. I am not making this up. It really is National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and it really is National Masturbation Month and just because the former is a dryly official completely unsexy government thing and the latter is a brilliant annual pro-sex PR event sponsored by Good Vibrations, which donates all the money from the Masturbate-A-Thon to women's health clinics, doesn't mean they aren't beautifully compatible.

Just look. Look at that delicious irony. Casually do you notice that a day designed to raise awareness about the awful scourge of young pregnant teens pillaging our fine nation just happens to fall smack in the middle of a month designed to celebrate the only type of sex absolutely guaranteed not to get you pregnant, except for maybe phone sex and chat-room sex and we're not counting those because they require the phone company's help and that makes it all weird and wrong, somehow.

The irony is this: The Teen Pregnancy Day agenda will naturally include lots of stern verbiage and sanctimonious finger-wagging and parental frowning, coupled with some admittedly well-intentioned exhortations delivered in the government's usual completely unhip, unsexy monotone, which in turn will only serve to repel and depress any self-respecting sexually aware teen who accidentally stumbles across the organization's e-questionnaire while trying to surf to Nerve.com.

Whereas National Masturbation Month includes lots of happy verbiage and enthusiastic finger-wiggling and enormous amounts of laughter and humor and genuine sexiness, all couched in a harmless, healthy, safe-sex celebration of the body and spirit, delightfully commingled with a flagrant dismissal of the still-rampant belief that masturbation is somehow amoral and dangerous and wrong and isn't that the Catholic Church still calling masturbation a sin? 'Nuff said.

Seriously, what better way to prevent teen pregnancy than by encouraging healthy masturbation habits? Masturbation creates kinder, more benevolent citizens. It gets the heart rate up and gets the blood flowing keeps teens off the streets and out of trouble and out of the babysitter and out of their parent's pot and vodka stashes and into their fabulous collection of Penthouse and vibrators and Liquid Silk. All good things, inarguably.

Masturbation is nontoxic, noncomedogenic, nonfattening, completely organic, inexpensive, deeply relaxing, almost always better than Budweiser or meth, and is a perfectly patriotic all-American slap in the face to those scary hardline religious terrorist types we hate so much these days, the ones who apparently can't look at a woman's exposed ankles without screaming and shooting someone.

Masturbation means freedom, like cheap gas and cable TV and fake Gucci watches. Priests and clergy worldwide are almost universally prohibited from masturbating. Generates lust and immoral thoughts, they say. And just look at what happened to them.

Isn't it important to love yourself before you can love another? Isn't it important to learn about the body, feel comfortable in your own skin before groping someone else's, learn the various systems and pleasure zones and what vibrating insertable toy is best for what occasion before you venture out into the angry world? Of course it is.

We have no official celebrations of sex in this country, no special days to recognize sexual activity and awareness, no positive and enthusiastic message to send out to hormonally ravaged teens telling them the truth: that sex is wonderful and dazzling and good and you should have as much of it as humanly possible, but only if it's full of respect and humor and protection and consent and superlative technique and maybe some nice scented candles some early Van Halen or Leonard Cohen or Chill Out Lounge Volume III.

Instead teens have admonitions. Threats. Guilt. Sin. Fear. Don't have sex you wayward slackers but if you really must please please please use a condom or suffer the consequences of a baby or a very unpleasant STD, not to mention the scowling disapproval of a deeply hypocritical adult population, all of whom would love nothing more than to be 17 and carefree and hormonally gluttonous again, if just for a day.

Former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders tried it once. She announced on official government stationary that masturbation is healthy and good and should be encouraged, and that teens should have free access to condoms. She was summarily fired. And that was under Clinton. We now languish under the most sexually uptight, anti-everything administration in five decades. Let's just say we aren't exactly making any progress.

Hence, National Masturbation Month. And the brilliant Masturbate-A-Thon. Pledge forms are still available. Sign up your favorite teen today. Heck, sign yourself up too.

What, you'd rather have them zonking on violent video games and skateboarding across the roof of your car and stealing all your jewelry and griping about you in therapy and having bad sex their whole lives and getting pregnant too soon and turning into Republicans? Of course you wouldn't.

Hoochie Pants Butt Cleavage -- Isn't Just For Plummers Anymore

Fri, 03 May 2002 13:12:29 GMT

[butt cleavage -- "isn't just for plumbers anymore..

It's all just controlled by economics....(duh)

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/05/02/MN92096.DTL&;nl=fix

May is here, the wind is cold, and the women of San Francisco have been tripping about, bare-midriffed, since last summer, at least.

Yes, this is a column about Hoochie Pants, and the socioeconomic factors that mean butt cleavage -- as this month's Allure magazine so eloquently put it -- "isn't just for plumbers anymore."

Reading material like this is why I go to the gym. How, otherwise, would I ever find out that the Derriere Decollete butt facial ($75) is a newly popular beauty treatment in L.A. among those whose delicate lumbar-region skin may have been, uh, chapped by winter weather?

At this point, a few of you -- for example, those more practically minded males who have persisted in reading today's column out of strong senses of civic duty to be well-informed -- may be asking, "But gosh! Why don't women just wear sensible clothing that keeps them warm and protected? After all, they don't call it Northern California for nothing."

With the endearing schizophrenia that typifies fashion magazines, a small article in the same issue points the way to an answer to this question as well:

According to research psychologist and author Nigel Barber, women's clothing choices are determined by the state of the marriage market. When there are more marriageable women than men, women dress more provocatively; when the reverse is true, women's fashion becomes less revealing.

Well, duh. But one might ask whether that means we can expect, or even fervently hope, to see fewer back tattoos anytime soon. After all, the government's current population survey shows there are now slightly more than 32 million never-married men over the age of 15 in this country, versus fewer than 28 million never-married women.

Barber -- whose book "The Science of Romance" will appear later this month - - has compiled data on historic fashion trends that suggest this disparity could mean women will suddenly begin wearing longer skirts, while men will grow mustaches -- facial hair, and lots of it, being a way for males to demonstrate their testosterone production. Envisioning San Francisco's blue- shirted herds in formal suits, mutton-chop sideburns and handlebar mustaches makes an amusing change from reading the latest study on infertility. On that note, Barber's research also suggests that when female fertility is viewed as important, as it was during the 1950s, women play up their cleavages and smaller waists, not their booties -- something that could come as a blow to the importers of Brazilian jeans.

It's all very interesting, but in a purely abstract kind of way, because Barber doesn't really expect to see more clothing on women soon. "This trend is due to a worsening marriage market for women," he explains. "There's no reason for it to reverse."

Statistics don't show, for instance, how many of those 32 million never-married men actually dream of their wedding days -- or account for what Barber, in his paper, "Women's dress fashions as a function of reproductive strategy, " describes as "the alternative reproductive strategies model according to which women vary the relative importance of careers and marriages depending on the importance of each as an economic strategy for supporting themselves and their children."

Now there's a phrase that will keep you warm as you shiver in your low-cut jeans on the Muni platform -- climate, it goes without saying, being far less germane to fashion than demographic trends. "It's the same here in Maine," notes Barber. "People go around in miniskirts and bare midriffs in winter. I don't know how they do it."

Well, women still outnumber men in the general American population. Barber believes this may also help explain the recently publicized increase in drinking problems among college women. "Basically, they feel free to behave like men," he says.

Then again, he points out, this isn't the first time women, finding themselves in the majority, have scandalized society. In the late Middle Ages - - when, as a result of war and disease, there were only 85 men for every 100 women in many European cities -- Hoochie Pants hadn't yet been invented, but female licentiousness was in the news.

"During Chaucer's lifetime, you can read similar accounts of women suddenly going out and drinking beer and dancing, feeling free to be the sexual aggressor," says Barber. "(You may be) feeling a little cold. They spent hours doing their hair."