My Bah Humbug moment!

Christmastime is here...

Well, at least that’s how the song goes.

A few days back I was flipping channels and landed on A Charlie Brown Christmas.

I hadn’t watched it in a long time. It’s so familiar, it’s one of those touchstones of youth. However, as clearly as I remembered it, the actual broadcast of it didn’t match up to what I remembered.

Maybe, I should clarify that.

The story is actually very good in a lot of ways. Simplistic, but the core message of it is wonderful and more than likely is a big reason it’s still in holiday rotation 40 plus years after its first broadcast.

The animation though, wonderful to me as a child, pales in comparison to animation of today.

The prism of memory though made the show golden and it was a reminder yet again of how memory can play tricks on one.

Right now, where I live it’s snowing. Well, I know it will bring a smile to many the prospect of a White Christmas but I hate the snow. I’m not fond of cold weather but snow is even higher on my dislike list because it comes with the promise of some backbreaking labor shoveling out after the storm departs.

So, I shake my fist at the sky and curse the flecks of white as they fall. Truly it is my bah humbug moment and all the while I am thinking about wonderful New Years past spent in the calmer climes of Florida. Memory’s rosy glow is unnecessary to make that look golden to me.

Nonetheless in the waning days of the year (and I believe my time on the site) I wish all a Happy Holiday. (1493 Views pre transfer)

Married, Crazy or Gay.

I got to talking with a friend of mine the other day...

This is a woman I’ve known for almost 20 years now; we met and became friends while working at an ad agency. At the time, I was in my early thirties and she was in her late thirties. I was single and she had come out of a failed marriage. There wasn’t and never has been any kind of romantic entanglement between us, we’re just friends. It’s an odd pairing but, I’ve always enjoyed her slightly sarcastic sense of humor and have truly marveled at her creative ability.

Advertising or any branches of the creative fields have changed just as the world around us has changed. What I mean by that is the focus of our society seems to have progressed where we place more and more emphasis on youth.

I’m not bitter or anything either about that... I’m kind of in a happy place and wouldn’t want to revisit the emotional state of my 20s. Certainly having the physique of my 20s wouldn’t be anything to complain about but, if it came at the expense of the emotional makeup I have today it wouldn’t be worth the trade off.

My friend, she was a real powerhouse. She did TV campaigns, print campaigns... hell; she could even turn out some good lines of copy when called upon. She got to certain level in the field and she lived a comfortable life for a while.

Then something happened...

The world, the industry she was in changed around her. Jobs changed, responsibilities changed, the whole dynamic of the creative field metamorphosed around her.

I’ve seen it happen a few times now.

Just how business gets done has changed so radically from the way it was conducted in the early 90s it’s amazing and what is more amazing still is how little people are willing to acknowledge how much things have changed in such a short span of time.

So, what happened was my friend began to find it harder and harder to get work.

She was getting older and since this is a ‘young’ business, getting older only diminished her appeal somehow. I’m making an observation here, not a determination about the justness of the situation.

What came next was a series of moves...

Over the course of five or so years, she moved to smaller and smaller apartments. She started out in the West Village and the moved to Williamsburg. The next move was into a smaller place in Williamsburg and from there she moved further out into Park Slope. Her funds dwindled; she was out of work for a long time and had trouble getting hired for even the most mundane of jobs. Family helped out but eventually that had to stop too. She moved down to North Carolina finally getting her own place with some help and then she got a job in a Wal-Mart.

She got fired from Wal-Mart a few days ago, she doesn’t know what’s next but there is a certain relief along with the dread of not having a job.

The relief for her comes from not being subject to the insane whims of Wally-World anymore. The stories she regaled me with over the two plus years she spent there were amazing, it sounded like the Wally-World employee manual must have been written by Kafka - everyone on their backs with their legs twitching in the air like bugs. The nightmare you find yourself in not knowing how you arrived there.

She had met someone recently and when we talked previously was anticipating her first date. It didn’t come off; he wound up being missing in action. She didn’t know what happened but it was one more slight in a series of frustrating slights that have weighed down on her these past years.

And while she was lamenting, she relayed to me what a friend said to her about people who make it to this point in life. Her friend said, ‘Anyone out there now (being at or around this age) is either married, crazy or gay.’

I thought about that for a second and realized she may well be right.

Call me crazy. (2335 Views pre transfer)

FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!

So, I like comments. I’m as much of an egotist as anyone else.

Still, there is an option where you can approve comments or not on every blog if you so choose. I turned it off (meaning comments go through unmoderated). However, I still reserve the right to delete something I don’t like or feel is inappropriate.

Some people might get all up in arms about that but, the thing is, it’s my playground. What it means is I get to choose the course of discussion here.

It may not seem like the fairest thing but you know what? LIFE’S NOT FAIR!

Further, if you want to get your views out in the world, you have the option of starting up your own blog. It’s a simple as that. This isn’t anyone else’s forum, it’s my forum and in this forum I make the rules.

Someone recently wrote a comment and I deleted it. I won’t go into detail of the whys and wherefores but, I did send off a short note to the person if only to explain my action. I’m not saying I was right in doing what I did. Again, I’m making the rules and if you want to play in this sandbox, those are the breaks.

The Internet is a strange place in that great disputes can be built up between total strangers. People who have never met, who remotely won’t ever possibly meet in real life, can build up a lot of strum and drang in a war of words taking place in the ethereal corridors of the Web.

I don’t have time for it.

I have precious little time as it is and even a scarcer amount of motivation at times to make sure I get what needs to get done, done. Spending it on an Internet fight is just an absolute waste.

The phrase for this is ‘flame war.’ I won’t indulge it and I won’t tolerate it either.

As it is, I am here for a single purpose; to meet someone nice, to meet a person I can spend time with, someone I can have a positive effect on, someone who adds to my life.

I do not want to spend one more second than I have to here and really neither should you. It’s not about building a community, if I meet people who I become friends with – that’s great but, it’s not what I’m here for.

The less time I spend on the computer, on a dating site, means I am spending more time doing other things and truthfully on the list of what I enjoy, spending time on an Internet dating site trying to line up dates is down at the bottom. It’s a necessary evil and while I try to have fun doing it, I don’t think I want to spend a second more doing it than is absolutely necessary.

Think of it this way, when you find something, it’s always in the last place you look and why wouldn’t it be? Once you’ve found it why on earth would you keep looking?

Isn’t everyone here looking to meet a special person?

Anyway, in the course of the email exchange with the angry commenter, the point was bought up, ‘why have a blog if you don’t want to hear the opinions of others?’ Blogs have always struck me as solitary in nature, you can leave comments but blogs exist without them. Also, blogs are not newspapers – they’re op-ed pages on the internet. It has less to do with being factual and more to do with perceptions of a singular viewpoint. Someone can agree or disagree but, it’s not their job to ‘put me in my place.’

After a couple of emails (I think there were three back and forth), we finally got to the point where the ‘f’ word was used and it wasn’t me that used it. Consequently, it verified to me I made the right decision in deleting the comment.

Got an ax to grind? Got unresolved issues towards men or women? Fine. It won’t fly here though. Oh and if you’re a really serious person and really angry by all means please… stay away! Call it what you will, just like on the radio or the television you have the option of changing the channel or not joining the discussion it’s as simple as that. I’ve long gotten past the point where I find it necessary to apologize for having an opinion. Even further past where I find it necessary to justify everything I say or to have a contest about who is right.

As it was put to me: “Oh for f*** sake, let it go.”

PS – And I swear to God I hope I to never rack up thousands of posts or thousands of comments on this site (apparently people have been here for years). Nothing would be sadder. (2482 Views pre transfer)

How to win every argument with a man.

If you’re easily offended I’ll save you the trouble and tell you not to bother reading any further. This also is the case if you are uncomfortable with sexual topics or if you believe frank discussion of sexual acts somehow is demeaning towards one gender or another.

Okay.

I’m giving you your chance...

Just go to another page.

Really, just close the window...

...or click on some other link.

I’m waiting.

Alright, if you’re still around, don’t say you weren’t forewarned and certainly don’t get all indignant on me.

Okay.

So, in the past I’ve spoken about how hard it is for people to remain together. Particularly in our society today. Somehow, there is this image that marriage or long-term relationships are nothing but flowers when the truth is they’re anything but.

I know people who have been married for over twenty, even thirty years and then I have people I know who have called it quits even after they’ve been together for a decade.

One day not too long ago, I was talking to a friend of mine. She’s been married a long time now. I first met her when she was still a newlywed, I think she had only been married for a few months, and today she is passing the twenty-year mark!

Her husband is a good guy too. He used to get on my nerves but through the years I’ve grown to appreciate the kind of person he is. He can be difficult at times but then again all of us have our moments.

My friend and her husband took the plunge and they had kids. As with a lot of couples today, they waited a long time before they actually set about starting a family and when the time felt right they had a bit of trouble getting pregnant.

So, my friend had her first child at 40 and then lo and behold she had twins at 42! The kids are her life. She loves them to death and she‘s a good mom.

The husband? Well, he probably would’ve been okay stopping at the one.

Like a lot of couples who are together a long time, especially those with kids and jobs (since they both work), there are big demands on their time. It’s just part and parcel of living in a society where both parents work and parents as a rule are much, much more involved in their children’s’ lives than they were decades in the past.

A lot of couples face this but the side effect of this is that the couple rarely has quality time for one and other. It just becomes hard to catch those moments of romance or intimacy.

During one period there was a rise in fighting. I don’t mean slap down, drag out brawling or anything of the sort. Just the kind of incendiary words flying back and forth between people over the course of the day. In and of itself it shouldn’t be a big thing but when it becomes the bulk of interaction between two people long-term problems begin to take root.

Of course, a lot of what is at issue is trivial in nature but underlying all of this is a long-simmering animosity that can grow into something more.

So, we got to talking about this my friend and I and knowing her as well as I do (and her husband too) I gave her the secret to win every argument.

It’s as simple as a blowjob.

Women will no doubt groan but most men you ask, if pressed and absolutely honest about it, will tell you it’s a simple truth.

Am I saying that men are smart? No.

We are simple creatures driven by the basest of urges and quite frankly even if we are all caught up in the anger and emotion of the moment we are hard pressed to ever refuse sex when it is offered up to us.

As I told my friend, you want to win an argument?

Go over to him, unbutton his pants, unzip him, take his dick out and give him a blowjob.

I defy any guy to stay angry at that moment.

Now, my friend of course, doesn’t want to win a fight that way. Thing is though, if you’re with someone, I mean if you love them and everything else and you want them to stay interested in the relationship, what is the problem with a little gratuitous sex every now and again?

Besides, she married the guy!

Anyway, the husband? He was all for it. See, it‘s true as reprehensible as that may sound to a lot of women. Yes, men think about sex that much. You can win every argument with your man if you can just swallow... well, not just your pride.

Anyway, now that I’ve positioned myself as the penultimate sexist pig and pariah let the flame wars begin!

* on an interesting note: I run this through the spell checker in Word if only to avoid looking any less intelligent and was surprised to find blow job actually got caught by the spell checker as corrected to the one word blowjob. Who knew! (2690 Views pre transfer)

The Honey Don’ts?

I found an email in the inbox on one of my email accounts today and I found it very interesting and thought I would share. At the same time of course while reading it, I compared myself to the email to see if I had exhibited any of the behaviors:

Top 10 email turnoffs for women.
• Don’t ask her how much she weighs or what her measurements are.

My first thought is, why not? If I’m going to get a woman that can pull the plow through the field why wouldn’t I want to know whether or not she is ‘STRONG LIKE BULL!’ ( LOL )

Seriously though, unless I was a tailor or a clothes designer I don’t see where that would be any of my business.

• Don’t email her seven times asking her why she hasn’t responded to your first email.

I rarely email blind. Usually, I just wait until i get an email, or someone hot lists me, or winks or something. Sending an email is an individual thing based upon the person (see more further on) and writing an absolute stranger... I don’t know it’s something of a non-starter.

There have been instances where I have been especially taken with someone’s photo or video enough to write then and pass along a compliment. Generally though I’m not a big believer in the whole ‘pest’ school.

If I do write someone and don’t hear anything after awhile I will generally send off a quick email if only to ascertain whether or not I’ve offended someone (if just for the opportunity to apologize).

• Don’t ask her how many other dates she’s been on.

I’ve had people ask me this question and if they do I answer and expect an answer in return but, generally the trail of bodies in someone’s past is their business to withhold or disclose at their leisure.

• Don’t send her a nasty email if she hasn’t responded to you after several emails.

I’m sure this works with masochists but I don’t date masochists.

• Don’t ask her if she wants to have sex with you on the second email exchange, and don’t send her dirty pictures of you.

I’ve already talked about the whole ‘nude pic’ phenomenon. It escapes me although I had an ongoing exchange with someone and asked if I would be seeing anything more revealing from her. Of course by then the exchange itself had taken on a more explicit tone otherwise I can’t think of it being appropriate.

• If she gives you her phone number, don’t wait a week to call her.

I’m really guilty of this!

I just find I like talking on the telephone less and less as more time passes. Also, I don’t know what people’s schedules are like and find myself concerned about calling at the right time.

Lastly, I’m really not the kind of guy who is going to do a hard sell on a woman anyway. I just never thought it really garnered results. Consequently I tend to operate at a snail’s pace when it comes to these things, which I think several people have found more than a little frustrating.

• When asking for more pictures, do so without any references to “Can you please send me a picture so I can see your body?”

I thought they had already covered this?

• Don’t get offended if she doesn’t want to talk to you on the phone right away and/or wants to talk to you via email first to get to know you.

It’s an either or for me. Email just happens to be a lot slower in terms of building something and as I had said I am not know for moving at a mercurial pace so this might be akin to watching paint dry.

• Do not email-stalk her.

See above comment on ‘hard selling.’

• Don’t send cut-and-paste emails.

This is funny actually. Due to a glitch in the server side software recently I was able to see someone else’s account and get a sense for how other people operate on the site..

In this instance the person in question did just that! He sent out a standard one or two line email that generally said the same thing with a little modification and he had been successful with it!

This was surprising to me but, I have to wonder if the author of the article wasn’t wrong on this point.

Still when I write I write to the individual so this doesn’t work for me at all. (2455 Views pre transfer)

Sexual Politics.

I’m baaaaaccccckkkkkk.

You know there are times you just have to walk away from the Internet. Being online comes at the expense of the real world and I spend far too much time online as it is.

But... enough about being online, let’s talk about sexual politics or is it the politics of sex?

So, last week I lost a date over the election.

True story!

I had emailed back and forth with someone and we were approaching the juncture where we were to meet for the first time. After exchanging phone numbers, having the initial conversation and the stars were aligned for our eventful first face to face.

Then things went awry...

On the night of the election I called up to firm up plans for the following day and suddenly everything went off the rails.

What could have happened?

Very simple actually, we disagreed.

I don’t even know if we disagreed per se, I get every sense we voted for the same person. As a matter of fact I’d be willing to bet on that but, there were assumptions being made and I didn’t feel compelled to correct those assumptions.

The lady in question had canvassed for our President elect, something I find admirable indeed. Thing is, I sincerely feel (and felt) whoever won the election was going to have a bunch of tough slogging ahead of them. There just isn’t any way to deny tough times are ahead.

I volunteered as much as well. So, even though I voted for the same guy, I hadn’t ‘drunk the Kool-Aid.’ I have a jaundiced view of the American body politic and I take campaign promises with a grain of salt.

Also, I had caught a George Carlin special on DVD over the weekend and while reminding me of how much I loved Carlin when he was alive, it certainly tapped into my more cynical tendencies.

So, not being all excited and celebratory, I had the feeling there was an assumption I was on the (evil) OTHER SIDE!

I just don’t have the patience for this. I have grown so very tired of the divisive attitude of many people I find it far too easy to tweak them. Plus, I don’t expect someone to agree with me on everything. If anything, I think things are better, more interesting, when couples don’t agree on things. It keeps people honest. I’m not talking about being challenged by the person you’re with at every turn, more about being able to have a passionate discussion where you respect and listen to the opposing side.

Something in the nature of dialog, especially where politics are concerned, has become a thing with a ‘Take No Prisoners’ attitude.

The older I get the more I realize the world isn’t black and white. I find it extremely funny when a person who passionately espouses a liberal point of view is simultaneously closed off from any kind of further discussion.

The person I was talking to lives in Manhattan. I was relaying to her how Manhattan cannot be taken as representative of the entire country. The country is such a big place; there are so many people across the nation who live different kinds of lives. Not wrong or right, just not the way we may live our lives. Does this mean their opinion is somehow less valid because they don’t agree with us?

I think not.

Anyway, I played a bit of the Devil‘s Advocate throughout the conversation. Not to be malicious but because the deeper into the conversation I got the more I realized there wasn’t any room for any other opinions.

So, why bother?

It’s like I was following the siren call of some vague principle but principles don’t get you laid on a Saturday night.

BRAND OBAMA.

The Obama Brand.

Or where John McCain missed it.

I started this a few days back and since I am out the door in a little bit to vote I might as well finish it up:

Thankfully we are only a few days out from the election. I say thankfully because I tire of the quadrennial frenzy out nation descends into every time a Presidential election rolls around. If only people would get as excited and as passionate for local elections – where are all you f*@#ers then?

Anyway, watching John McCain flounder through this campaign has been a real wonder to behold. I mean that in the most snarky and sarcastic sense because if ever there was a political candidate who so embodied the character from Animal House it would be Red State John.

Watching the ’08 edition of the Republican Party flail away has been simply amazing as they have tried time and time again to make something stick against Teflon Barack.

The thing is, Barack Obama has positioned his brand so well coming into this election cycle, he made himself almost impossible to beat.

Obama’s campaign from the very start was based around a single premise, a premise his whole brand identity was built upon.

Change.

It’s as simple as that, you can sum up Obama’s campaign in a single word and the candidate has hammered away continually reinforcing it in the electorate’s mind. A single word, which serves a multiple purpose.

First, it plays well to all the people who have been carrying pent up anger and venom ever since the 2000 election. These are the people who have so loudly and repeatedly called for some kind of change in the makeup of our government.

Funny thing is, we had a taste of that change during the ’06 midterm election when the Democrats. The end result... not much.
Six-point plan
Prior to the election in July 2006 Democrats unveiled a six-point plan they promised to enact if elected with congressional majorities. The plan was billed the “Six for 06 agenda” and officially called "A New Direction For America" and compared to the 1994 Republican “Contract with America.” The six-points of the plan include: “honest leadership and open government, real security, energy independence, economic prosperity and educational excellence, a healthcare system that works for everyone, and retirement security.”


People in this country have short memories, plainly put with a Democratic majority in both houses for the last two years and Congress has very little to show for it. This rally cry against one party or another doesn’t address the underlying dysfunction in our government. The government of our nation has been at best a reactionary force in American society and at worst a sterling example of how bureaucracy fails when compromised at the alter of Capitalism.

The dialog in our country especially in regard to the current election has been a fascinating glimpse into the fractured psyche of the American public. Is our government supposed to be a paternalistic entity? If so, how far are we willing to let our government become involved in our affairs? People at once want government to do something about health-care, about education, about business and a host of other issues but how restrictive do we want government to be? When government starts becoming involved in social issues, is it a good thing or a bad thing? We walk a tightrope here, some recognize it but many do not.

Getting back to the current election though, Obama has built the perfect brand... his brand is change.

Are you unhappy? Change.

Not making enough money? Change.

Don’t like our foreign policy? Change.

Worried about government spending? CHANGE!

It’s so broad and generic a term it defies the inherent hazards of specificity.

This is where John McCain has failed because he has been unable to distance himself from the current administration. John McCain’s campaign has tried repeatedly to figure out how to position their candidate - first it was as the ‘experienced guy’ but that didn’t work. Then, it was as the ‘heroic guy’ but that didn’t work either. Finally it was the ‘progressive guy’ (as evidenced by his VP choice) but ultimately that didn’t work either.

In the meantime, Obama has positioned himself as an agent of change. What that change will be, the American people have a vague idea of but it will be change.

I’ve gotten emails about our descent into Socialism, as if somehow this is supposed to raise some specter of fear in me.

Yet, I’m not afraid.

McCain has not been the only candidate frustrated by the Obama campaign’s deft positioning... speak to any HRC supporter and you’ll find a lingering bitterness, a disbelief in how her coronation somehow could not come to pass. How was it possible for the ultimate strategists to be outsmarted so?

Strategy? You must of course realize Barack Obama has not just foiled the plans of the RNC. No, he has also managed to foil the very carefully mapped out plans of the Clinton camp. Plans that included HRC sticking it out through Bill’s many dalliances, HRC taking a senate seat in a state to echo the path of RFK and all the built-up goodwill of stumping for so many Democratic candidates over the last 8 years building chits to be called in during her abortive presidential bid.

In any case, this year’s election has to be one of the best examples of the marketing of a candidate to come along since we started having elections. This has been the perfect example of an election for a media-obsessed society. To the detriment of everything else put on hold as we progress to this one-day.

I’m back and I’ve already taken care of voting. It promises to be one of those elections where there is a big turnout. I was 31 out of 400 registered voters for my polling location and it wasn’t even 7:30! I’m not going to watch all the polling news, I’m not going to stay riveted to the TV over this. Tomorrow, one way or the other it will be settled, we will have voted and a decision will have been made. It’s not a football game, or the World Series where you root for one side or another. As long as people come out and vote... we all win. (1123 Views pre transfer)

NOVEMBER 5!

So, November 5th will be a very eventful day.

November 5th I will be getting my long, long hair cut finally.

Off with my hair!

A ponytail will go out to Locks of Love. No longer will I have the need for those bandy things anymore, showers should take considerably less time as well.

A great weight will have been lifted from my shoulders!

Oh, I think we’ll also know who is going to be our next President by then too.

The important thing for me though is getting my first haircut in little over two years.

Amazing!

Between now and next Wednesday I have to at least take some pictures of myself with the unruly mop of hair exploding out like it can. If only to remember it.

I’m not sure if I’ll be growing my hair long again. Never say never but, I’m not entirely sure if the long hair thing works so well for guys my age.

I don’t even fathom what does work for guys my age but certainly the long hair isn’t it. If anything I probably should be going in the opposite direction because the one thing you don’t have to worry about, as you get older is hair.

Hair grows just about everywhere the older you get.

Not in places you want it to, but boy does it sure grow!

I’m not a hirsute kind of guy; still I’m always aware of all the weird bad things that happen to guys, as we get older. It’s like our bodies are old driveways and weeds keep springing up. If we’re not careful, we get overrun by the damn things.

Women don’t mention it to men but it doesn’t mean they don’t notice either.

I’m talking about things like the slight bush growing out of your ears, or the dandelion of nose hair or even the one wild thick strand going awry from your eyebrow. You’ve got to stay on top of that stuff.

I was out with someone recently and she was relaying how she had been out with a man whose eyebrow looked like a caterpillar doing a dance across his forehead. Needless to say there wasn’t a second date, it just doesn’t work unless a gal is an entomologist.

Well, all I know is I’m cleaning up my act. I’m sure any potential companions will greatly appreciate the effort. :) (1274 Views pre transfer)

Don’t believe in change.

Election day is almost upon us and of course in the next few days the drumbeat will increase to a fever pitch as the very real prospect of one candidate winning and the other losing will become a reality.

I’ve made up my mind who I’m voting for, I still can’t fathom people who say they are as yet undecided. Do these same people need help having someone picking out their clothes for them in the morning or having another person feed them?

Thing is, whoever gets in, people need to be a lot more realistic about what our prospects are.

We are on the cusp of a prolonged recession. The volatility of the market aside, over the coming months there will be decreased consumer spending, higher unemployment and growing deficits.

If you doubt me on this, ask yourself how freely you spend money given the current economy and how secure you feel about money going forward.

The point is whoever wins this election will have a tough row to hoe. There will be very little leeway for any chief executive after dealing with the problems of the economy. Consequently, expect the next year to two years to be a very difficult time.

I don’t want to sound pessimistic but, as caught up as people can get in the frenzy of campaign season, it is imperative to realize January 21st, 2009 if your guy wins, the sun will not immediately come out, birds will not start singing and all will not suddenly become happiness and light. The people who believe that are going to be in for something of a rude awakening.

Likewise, if your guy loses... well, it’s not all the new President’s fault if things suddenly don’t go swimmingly. I would venture between now and round about June of 2010 were going to be having some sobering times. The booms in the last century were in the 20’s, the 50’s and the 90’s it may be a bit of time before another boom comes along. (1334 Views pre transfer)

I’M CUTTING IT OFF!

So after much thought and an equal amount of frustration I have come to a decision. Something must be done. There is no escaping it and drastic measures are called for.

How I set upon this path though, requires some explanation.

A few years back, I was saddled with the burden of caring for an aging parent. This is a truly onerous task to put it mildly. Taking on this burden meant everything in my own life had to be put on hold, on hold for a period of several years.

If you try to explain the scope of how all-consuming a task this is to someone who hasn’t gone through it themselves, they can’t fully grasp its scope.

When you care for an aging parent, your life is a constant battle, as you are being challenged by a person of diminishing capacity who does not want to let go of the reins of control. Think of a fading power unwilling to change the status quo.

To be a caregiver is a challenging job in and of itself but, to add the element of battling with someone who knows you almost as well as you know yourself, makes the job take on Sisyphean proportions.

You sacrifice.

Things fall by the wayside in your life. Works, relationships, friends, all are a fading backdrop as your time is increasingly occupied by the management of your charge’s deteriorating condition.

Age is the one disease from which no one recovers.

If you can comport yourself with grace and retain your sanity, you are one of the special few, but no doubt there will be moments when literally you will think about banging your head against the wall in frustration.

So, why cut it off?

After watching the woman in my life have her fill of this and realizing I had no time to even think of dating, I began to wonder what use I had for even toying with the concept of a social life. Also, I thought given the circumstances and the competition I face in my age group, it wouldn’t matter much anyway.

I’m talking about my hair, of course.

You might have read something else into the title but, I had let my hair grow incredibly long.

On the one hand, I thought it was to my advantage. Many of my peers can no longer boast about having a full field of hair never mind having long flowing locks. And... I have hair; it has a life of its own! Although the rub is, I keep it up most of the time, so I can’t say anyone enjoys it.

There was an earlier period when I first met my previous companion and having such a mop of hair was a plus. She loved being loomed over by a beast of a man and being buried beneath wild tresses.

There was something very raw in those moments, raw and fun.

I lopped off all the hair as a concession though. Wanting to impress those members of family I came to meet who were conservative, I wanted to make that ‘good impression.’ So, as the song goes, ‘that long beautiful hair’ it was gone.

I stayed with short hair for quite some time, and then I took on this burden and she left.

And my hair grew...

...and it grew and grew.

Until we reached where we are today.

It’s more of a bother than anything now though. Lacking a single focus of my attentions, wanting to make that good ‘first impression’ my mane has become more of a liability. Instead of it being appreciated, it takes on the aspect of me being ill-kept and ungroomed.

So, off it must go!

Still, there is a chance to take anything and turn it to good ends if you are of a mind and even though I am taking the dramatic step of going back to ‘short hair’ some good will come out of this.

I found an organization that will take my long locks and turn it into a wig for children stricken with cancer. At the very least someone will get a chance to appreciate it and in the end that’s all that matters. (1278 Views pre transfer)

My funniest debate moment.

Not sure if people picked up on the irony of it or not.

Funniest moment: Listening to the candidate who complains the loudest about wasteful government spending and wanting to cut government costs whining about how his opponent didn’t take money from the government for his campaign. (1627 Views pre transfer)

NUDE PICTURES!

Okay, this one is for all the guys out there.

Apparently, this is happening a lot more than I realized. So, if you didn’t get the memo... guys, nude pictures of yourself to strangers are unwelcome.

Aside from embarrassing yourself (even if you’re hung like a horse and have great definition), you’re impressing no one.

Look at it this way, if it’s not okay to hand a nude picture of yourself to a woman on a first date, how in your right mind can you possibly believe it’s a good idea to send her a nude picture of yourself before you even get a chance to meet her?

Let’s make a bit of a joke about it... it’s bad form.

I’m kind of surprised to tell you the truth but it seems like every woman I meet who does the online dating thing has the story about some clown who sent her a nude picture... or who wanted her to be in a threesome... or who wanted to be a top to her bottom.

Listen, save yourself the trouble and the embarrassment and go over to Adult Friend Finder and see what you can scrape up. Adult Friend Finder is set up for that kind of thing, even if a women is interested in the activities described above... at least, AT THE VERY LEAST! Give her some credit for being discriminating.

C’MON!

It seems that responses to the whole man sends a nude pic of himself thing can be broken down to a few select reactions as follows:

• Eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

• Rolling of the eyes, immediately dismissing the person mailing the aforementioned nudie as a loser.

• Uncontrollable giggling.

• and (in very rare instances), yum.

Believe me, from polling I’ve done, survey says, 9.5 times out of 10, IT AIN’T YUM!

So, in closing... keep it to yourself guys.

At least until you’ve gotten a woman fooled enough into buying your bs. You’ll save yourself a lot of embarrassment and keep a really ugly stereotype about our gender from being perpetuated.

And ladies, now’s the time to chime in to confirm how you feel about these things because if I‘ve got it totally wrong, well... we men would like to know. And if I’m on the money, believe me when I say nothing aside from being blunt will ever put a stop to it.

Just sayin.’ (1887 Views pre transfer)

CALLING ALL GENIUSES!

So, given the events of the last few weeks does anyone still think it’s a good idea to privatize Social Security or allow people to invest their own money for retirement?

I’m thinking this should end that discussion for once and for all. (2165 Views pre transfer)

History repeats!

I came across this tonight and was stricken by how familiar sounding it seemed:

These revolutions arose from such a wide variety of causes that it is difficult to view them as resulting from a coherent movement or social phenomenon. Numerous changes had been taking place in society throughout the first half of the century. Both liberal reformers and radical politicians were reshaping national governments. Technological change was revolutionizing the life of the working classes. A popular press extended political awareness, and new values and ideas such as popular liberalism, nationalism and socialism began to spring up. A series of economic downturns and crop failures, produced starvation among peasants and the working urban poor.

Well, the peasants aren’t quite starving yet but a lot of the other things mentioned resonate somewhat with recent events, no?

If you think so, go to Wikipedia and look for the Revolutions of 1848.

A gentleman never tells.

I tend to be discreet about my activities.

What has come to my attention though, is there is a breed of man out there in the world to whom no reasonable boundaries exist. When I say boundaries, I’m not even talking about following some arcane rules of etiquette as much as I am about observing normal social niceties. I cannot help but be amazed by the temerity, rudeness and stupidity of some of the guys out there!

Case in point, without going elaborate detail, I’ve corresponded with several women and heard amazing tales of their experiences in the world of online dating. These have included strangers (or near enough) sending along videos of themselves, or pictures or just notes with what would best considered inappropriate suggestions. What I can’t for the life of me fathom is how a guy could think it would be okay to do something on the Internet he wouldn’t do if he were meeting a date for the first time!

Think about it...

I can’t say I’ve ever handed over a nude picture of myself to a woman on a first date, nor have I unbidden suggested we immediately engage in either an open relationship or a continued study of the intricacies of the Kama Sutra.

Well, today topped all.

I got to emailing back and forth with someone and she was describing her experiences (which were pretty funny to say the least). As proof of the veracity of her stories she forward along a picture of Spider Man to me.

Well, maybe I should qualify that.

She forwarded along a picture of a guy (from the back thankfully) who was body painted as Spider Man and pretending to wall-crawl.

Nothing is as funny as seeing naked Spider Man for the first time! (2113 Views pre transfer)

I’m going in to delete all my emails today AND YOU PROBABLY SHOULD TOO!

Why?

Well, twice in the past two days I have lived other lives. That is two times too many.

What do I mean?

Well, something happened here that has never, ever happened to me before in all the years I’ve surfed the web (and that’s a lot of years people because I started surfing with Mosaic).

I logged into the site and yesterday I was a 40 something year old woman from Texas.

Today I was a 30 year old guy living in Manhattan.

I didn’t do anything special. I just logged in the way I normally do... as a matter of fact, I got a notice there was an email waiting for me today and when I followed the link I wound up logging in through someone else’s account!

Stuff like this?

It shouldn’t happen... ever.

I would send a message off to the mods but aside from them digging about in people’s emails and blocking people from communicating with me, I’ve found them to be almost entirely unhelpful.

I got a bit of a vicarious thrill, actually I got a chance to see how someone else approaches the whole online dating thing but none of this stuff is private - and people should know that. You should be aware that if you send your phone number or direct email address to someone via FC email, there is the very strong likelihood that someone you hadn’t intended to get your private information will gain access to it. Unless you delete the email you sent containing that information and the person receiving your email does the same.

A word of caution TO EVERYONE! YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF THIS AND ACT ACCORDINGLY!

If it had been a one-off thing, I wouldn’t be as concerned but it has happened now twice in two days so, I know for myself as a precaution I’m deleting all those emails from people who have written me containing their personal info and if you have any respect or concern for the people you’ve come in contact with through the site you probably should too. (2707 Views pre transfer)

A question about John McCain.

Does anyone else get this image of him as the cantankerous old guy who lives on the block and who is always screaming at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn and turning the hose on them?

Just checking. (2006 Views pre transfer)

Fearless.

I just watched an old movie yesterday. I’m a movie guy; I like movies quite a bit (or maybe I should say film because it makes me sound so much smarter) .

I just watched a good flick today - Margot at the Wedding but the one I was thinking about when I started to write is from way back in the sixties.

The movie I was talking about is this old Roman Polanski movie, Fearless Vampire Killers. I don’t think a lot of people have seen it, or at least not a lot of people under the age of 40 for sure.

It’s a good flick, racy for its time and a bit forward-looking in its sensibilities. I guess you could put it on a double (or triple) feature with something like What’s New Pussycat or Casino Royale pretty easily.

Sharon Tate is in it too. I’m not sure if she and Roman Polanski were already an item when it was filmed or if their romance grew out of making this movie together but in either case it’s a little piece of history too.

I hadn’t seen it in a long time; I mean a really long time. I think I caught it on broadcast TV as a teenager and hadn’t seen it since so I was a bit curious to see if it held up to the memory I had. It did, something that is the exception for a lot of films.

Halloween is coming and I got to thinking a lot of folks usually go and rent Friday the 13th or some other scary flick but this is a bit more fun.

Check it out and you’ll see what I mean. (1573 Views pre transfer)

LOW!

I was listening to this earlier (actually I was watching the video on YouTube) and I just remembered how much I like the song. Also, it’s got a great video with Sandra Bernhard - but I like the marriage of lyrics to the video:

Sometimes I wanna take you down.
Sometime I wanna get you low.
I brush your hair back from your eyes.
I take you down let the river flow.

Sometimes I go and walk the street
Behind the green sheet of glass.
A million miles below their feet
A million miles, a million miles

I'll be with you girl
Like being low
hey hey hey like being stoned
I'll be with you girl
Like being low
hey hey hey like being stoned.

A million poppies gonna make me sleep.
But just one rose it knows your name
The fruit is rusting on the vine
The fruit is calling from the trees

Hey don’t you wanna go down
Like some junkie cosmonaut
A million miles below their feet
A million miles a million miles

I'll be with you girl
Like being low
hey hey hey like being stoned
I'll be with you girl
Like being low
hey hey hey like being stoned.

Blue blue is the sun.
Brown brown is the sky.
Green green are her eyes.
A million miles a million miles

Hey don’t you wanna go down
Like some disgraced cosmonaut
A million miles below their feet
A million miles a million miles

I’ll be with you girl
Like being low
hey hey hey like being stoned
I’ll be with you girl
Like being low
hey hey hey like being stoned.

120 miles.

I took a ride the other day. I went up to visit a friend at their house. It turned out to be a sixty-mile trip each way.

120 mile roundtrip for a visit isn’t usually the kind of thing I would do but I had promised I would do it and it had been put off for a bit of time. The reasons it had been put off had to do with weather, health and obligations but I finally managed to do it this past Thursday.

Thursday we were supposed to have the kind of sunny days that are dwindling down to a precious few now that we enter October. The temperature was supposed to get up into the 70’s and it was supposed to be sunny. What it would up being was a mostly overcast day and about ten degrees colder. We even had a pretty good rain at one point in the afternoon.

It may seem a little odd to spend so much time dwelling on the weather but there’s a good reason for that.

I rode the scooter the entire way.

The trip up took a bit longer than I had planned; it wound up being around two and a half hours. I had printed out a triptik from the triple A website and there was just a little less detail in the thing than I would have liked. So, at one point I managed to take a wrong turn that added a bunch of time to the trip. I compounded that by taking a second wrong turn adding even more time.

Being a guy though, I wasn’t lost. See, guys are never lost. ( LOL )

Actually, I stopped for gas after the second wrong turn asked a girl in the gas station (to no avail) and a lady school bus driver (again no help) before finding a strip mall I had been in once a long time ago. The strip mall has a supermarket and a Rite-Aid but neither of them had a county map! Fortunately, I found another way to determine my location and got to where I was going.

It rained during my visit. This had me dreading the trip back especially since rain hadn’t been forecast but, the weather cleared and even though I took a bit more care because of the wet roads the trip back was shorter and less eventful than the trip up.

However, I have to say in retrospect... it was an amazing day!

Sometimes, I forget just how beautiful the countryside around me is. Literally a short drive away is some of the most picturesque landscape a person could imagine. It really is awe-inspiring. I had forgotten that. I don’t know why but I had and it was wonderful just to be out exploring.

I road from where I live over the Bear Mountain Bridge. To get to the Bear Mountain Bridge from here requires you to drive along a winding, heavily traveled two-lane road that clings to the shear face of a mountainside. I’ve driven this road on the scooter a few times now and I love it. The mountains are lush and the river cuts through them making everything look postcard perfect.

After I got over to the other side of the bridge, I shot up 9W past West Point. Here, the road climbs and climbs and climbs as it makes its way over the mountains that border the river. You go further and further up until you have a view of the land on the opposite bank spread out beneath you. After you crest the ridge you have a long downhill run that winds up in some rolling fields of farmland.

Then it was a matter of cutting through gently rolling landscape populated by damp groves of trees and meandering small rivers occasionally bursting out into swatches of open fields.

Four hours plus of riding.

Aside from the strong winds on the way up and a little bit of a chill it was a spectacular ride. Next time, I’m making sure I dress a little warmer but I’m also going to take my time and stop along the way to take some pictures. (1685 Views pre transfer)

Debate this.

I started to watch the debates last night and I just had to turn it off.

Really.

Listening to the news today, one question came to mind immediately... when did not screwing up become a measure of success?

To hear all the analysis of the debate, someone (I’m not going to say who) didn’t screw up, didn’t make an obvious gaffe and didn’t do anything that would prove detrimental to the campaign over the long haul but, how is this a victory?

Is this emblematic of the watering down of the standards we have for our leaders?

The debates are fine and everything but, they are so tightly choreographed as to be almost useless to a lot of the American electorate. Besides, who are the debates really for?

If you’ve already made up your mind about who you are going to vote for, is anything that happens during the debate really going to sway you away from the candidate you’ve chosen?

Debates I imagine are for that vast pool of undecided voters. They’re for them and for the rest of us they are akin to some kind of sporting event (this is proved by the existence of the Palin Bingo card). (1448 Views pre transfer)

A call to the liberal left.

So, I had the most interesting discussion tonight. Maybe I’m being a little facetious but not so much.

Tonight, I called someone who had given me her number through the website. I think we talked for about three minutes and in those three minutes she was able to determine I was not for her.

It’s more than a little off-putting.

Actually I find it offensive but more on that in a moment.

They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows, nowhere is this concept illustrated better than in the union of James Carville and Mary Matalin.

If opposites attract then certainly Carville and Matalin have proven that old saw as well because there is obviously a great chasm in their political views. Somehow though they manage to make things work.

So, getting back to matters at hand. Tonight I called a woman who had given me her number. Within the first few minute or two of the conversation she said the deal breaker would be if I was a Republican (which I am registered) and pretty much that was it.

I got off the phone and was done.

See, I think that the biggest problem in our country today is the very strong partisan lines that seem to be drawn in the sand by both political parties. These lines are polarizing in that they try to cast every issue in our country into a simple black or white.

That’s a problem and a big one.

By failing to recognize that there are subtleties to everything we encounter during our voyage on the planet, we remove the ability to compromise. There are no absolutes in our political landscape; there are no true ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys.’

Somehow though, I think I may be an exception.

See, I don’t believe in voting entirely along party lines and I can’t say that I ever have. It simply doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Consequently, there have been several occasions where I have voted for a candidate that was on the Democratic line. As a matter of fact in the upcoming election I am swayed to cross party lines - strongly (and if you don’t believe it, I do have another blog where I’ve written at great length about that very topic).

I can’t say I’ve ever voted for Junior either (although you would be surprised at the number of people who assume that is the case because of my party affiliation). I just didn’t like the guy and after 8 years I’m glad I didn’t vote for him. The Mother Jones article I read way back in ’99 pretty much nailed it spot on.

So, when I’m talking to someone who supposedly embraces the tenets of the Democratic Party and the liberalism that is purported to be part and parcel of the parties’ worldview, I find it amazingly ironic someone would be so entirely dismissive of me.

Of course the thing is, I’ve also gotten to a point in life where I can’t find it within myself to argue with stupid people. If you are that intellectually stunted where your world can be broken down into two camps, chances are no matter how much I try I’m not going to convince you that life isn’t a zero sum game.

And that goes for the Republicans out there as well as the Democrats. When we talk about what is broken in this country, I think we need to begin with the dysfunctional political rhetoric that we engage in. If we truly want our country to be a better place we had better start trying to listen to the arguments that each side would offer up and then work towards an acceptable solution to both parties.

But then, maybe I’m too much of an optimist and living in a fantasy world. (1337 Views pre transfer)

On birthdays.

My birthday just passed within the last few days, I won’t say exactly when but in the last week.

Birthdays are minefields for a lot of people, minefields in that they can be our most wonderful of days or our most terrible, all having to do with how we approach the day.

Long ago, something clicked inside of me and rather than making my birthday some incredible celebration, I focused on just having a nice day. It sounds inane, ludicrously simple, but there is a challenge in the concept of the basic nice day.

Think of it as a day free from the petty annoyances and anxiety over those little challenges we all face during the course of our daily existence, the moments when we are not at our best; the affront while we are in traffic, or maybe in line at the supermarket, all the little insults that wear away at our nature like water eroding a rock.

Good days.

My birthday was a pretty good day as days go. Nothing exciting, nothing earth-shattering or eventful, just a decent day that ticked by painlessly.

I spent part of the day on the scooter. This is a newly discovered joy. Even though I have had my scooter for a little over a year now, I find myself I am just embracing riding, as I grow more confident in my skills.

Even though a clear mental image of me on the scooter, a la the bear on the tricycle at the circus dances around in the recesses of my mind, this bear still has great fun taking his tricycle out.

In the evening, I went to a ballgame after going to a favorite place for Korean fried chicken.

It was a simple but good day.

There was a time in the past when I really thought my birthday had to be THAT GREAT DAY! By that I mean, it had to have some enormous, earth-shattering celebration.

I remember vividly when my thinking was adjusted; I made the mistake of going into work rather than taking the day off. Without going into detail, it was just a miserable day. No birthday should be spent at work, ever.

It was that one particular birthday that did it.

Ever since I realized that the best gift I could give myself was just having a good day on my birthday and I’m glad I kept the string going this year. (1284 Views pre transfer)

Hurricanes blow.

Can someone explain the logic of putting newspeople out in the middle of hurricanes?

I wrote about this somewhere else because I simply find it fascinating.

How many times do we need to see some poor idiot standing out in the middle of a driving rain to know how bad hurricanes are? Is this merely a question of geeky news directors, the guys who were part of the A/V club in high school enacting their revenge on the ‘pretty people?’

I’m thinking too in some way TV is doing a great disservice to people.

Stick with me on this...

If you tell people that a hurricane is coming and it’s a good idea to evacuate in advance of the storm then why would you send people into the midst of it? Isn’t that sending the message that it‘s okay and safe to ride out the storm? If the newspeople are willing to go into the middle of the storm, the reasoning probably is that it must be somewhat safe now, isn’t it?

I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow but perhaps one of the best moments in the film was this point where there is a plague of twisters in the LA basin and a newsclown is out in the street doing a report on it when a car is flung out by the wind of the twister taking the aforementioned newsie out.

It underlined the stupidity of sending newspeople into these things.

People are home watching the TV and every time one of these hurricanes hits there are a slew of newsies on the scene.

Yesterday or the day before, Geraldo Rivera was out in Galveston when suddenly a wave came along and took the footing out from underneath him.

Can you imagine?

I can see the headlines now, Geraldo Swept Out to Sea!

The man who boxed Frank Stallone, who gave us the secret of Al Capone’s vault and Trash TV taken from us in a singular moment of irony provided by Mother Nature.

They need to create a Jim Cantore award for these people but really they need to stop sending them out in this weather to begin with. Last time I checked, aside from flooding, rain, wind, tornados... well hurricanes are all pretty much the same, it’s just a question of how badly you’re going to be f*#$ed. (1179 Views pre transfer)

Who called?

This week I was on my way home and someone called me.

I know it was another member, a possible dating candidate who was reaching out to me. This is extremely flattering.

However, my mind is a cluttered mess.

Really.

This particular day, I was on my way home after seeing the doctor to resolve the whole aforementioned ear issue. It was one of those hot days and I had been schlepping around the city. Schlepping around the city is fine and everything but add to that not feeling well and it gives you a pretty accurate picture of my state.

As it was EVEN WITH the heat and feeling crappy and all I had still walked from the village all the way up to midtown.

So, I’m on the train and the phone rings.

Now, the train is one of those blessed places where there should be at least some civility, or at the very least that’s how I view things. Maintaining that civility involves not having the very loud cell phone conversation to the consternation of all your fellow passengers around you.

Plus, it’s not exactly a private thing now is it?

There are times I have to restrain myself from adding to someone’s cell phone conversation when they abuse the privilege and regal the rest of us in the car with the minutiae of their day.

Most common element of any phone conversation I have heard while commuting?

“I’M ON THE TRAIN!”

Immediately my first thought is, ‘No shit Sherlock,’ followed by the ever popular, ‘Aren’t the rest of us lucky?’

I don’t want to be one of those people.

Plus the woman in question used her first name. Great if you don’t have anyone else in your life with the same first name? Then the confusion starts to set in especially if you’re tired.

So, this woman called and said, ‘Hi! It’s ********!’

My first thought was, ‘????’ followed by, “Oh, hi!”

If I’ve only emailed back and forth to you, chances are I still only think of you by your online handle so, unless you make a point of connecting the name with the handle the first few times... well, you’re s@#t out of luck (or at least I am because I won’t make the connection).

So I begged off (I was on the train) and said I would call back (because the cell phone captures the number and all that late in the evening) and when I did I got the trunk line for the place where the woman works. I don’t know her extension, I don’t know her last name and I haven’t heard a peep from her since.

Of course I have been dealing with my own ear situation.

So, just sayin’ if you called me last week... you might want to give it another go.

And if you are going to call me and we haven’t spoken? Be sure to give some background info the first few times out because again I have a very cluttered brain. (1271 Views pre transfer)

I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

I have an ear infection at the moment.

Actually, I have an infection that started in my left ear and has now made its way over to the right ear. This is gross, I know. It’s really, really f@$#ing painful too!

I’m losing my hearing though and I imagine this is a harbinger of what it will be like when my ears decide to give up the ghost. Over the last few days I was trying to see if I was hearing properly just by speaking and my voice sounded like it was muffled.

Weird.

This is the second time I’ve had something like this happen in the last ten years. Five or six years back I was working with a client, one of those all consuming jobs where you are either at work, or you’re thinking about work, or you’re working from home. My work can be that way at times although since I’ve learned to set boundaries for people.

In this instance, I had been running around with a bug for a few weeks. Not a full blown cold but one of those things that just wasn’t going away because I wasn’t giving myself the proper rest and opportunity to get rid of it.

I was run down, tired and finally there was a glorious day when I awoke with ear splitting pain in both my ears and just about couldn’t hear a thing.

A trip to the hospital ensued.

Long story short, after running around for a few weeks staggering like a drunk even though I had never partaken of any kind of alcohol taught me the lesson to pay closer attention to the cues my body gives me.

So, these last few days I’ve spent in a strange state of alternately sleeping or shuffling around the house in a ghostlike fashion. I’ve been dealing with it since Tuesday but the left ear feels like it’s getting better and hopefully in the next day or two the right ear will follow suit.

The good part about this is that I finally was forced to get my hearing tested and came to find out that while we all will find a deterioration in hearing as we age, mine is just a bit more than my peers. Usually I don’t mind it or notice it that much but there are times when I just miss a few words here and there. I’ve also found closed captioning to be a bit of a godsend because if I do miss something I can at least read it to fill in the gaps.

This failing will probably limit further the potential pool of candidates but, feh! Take me as I am or not at all. (1390 Views pre transfer)

Just sayin’

If there was a website where people went to write... only they wrote about picking their noses, it would be called Booger right? (1188 Views pre transfer)

Porno

So, another one of the blogs had the question of whether or not men “need” porn.

I chimed in (like a dope).

I imagine it has to do with where you are in life and also whether or not you’ve been in a long-term relationship or not.

If you want to understand, go back and take a look at the movie American Beauty. There’s a sequence that shows Kevin Spacey at the start of his day. He’s in the shower and I would take odds he’s not thinking about his wife at that moment (even though in the film he’s married to the very lovely Annette Bening).

The inference though is that there are two people together and while they’re together certain things are no longer a part of their marriage.

It’s hard work to be with someone.

Not even hard work, it’s constant work. To stay with someone you really have to work at it and in addition to working at it you have to be forgiving of your partner’s shortcomings and failings.

Dating is interesting but the person we present when we date is not who we are.

No, instead it’s an idealized version of ourselves without all the bumps and bruises. It’s the person we would like to be were we not carrying around all the baggage of the years piled up neatly in our very own Samsonite all weather set.

Some of us have more pieces in our luggage than others but even the best of us has a carry on (maybe one of those jobbies with the little wheels and the telescoping handle).

The whole discussion about porn was surprising if only for the very extreme response it generated from some people. It’s a dicey issue to be sure but I never fail to be amazed by what will get some people’s back up.

I really don’t think men think too much about it. Certainly not quite to the same extent women may and definitely I don’t think it’s something they look upon as a betrayal of their relationship.

It’s not something they’re proud of (except in those special instances where a person has embraced their deviance), it’s just another fact of life for many.

It might have something to do with the dynamic between the sexes as well because wooing as it is requires an exertion of effort and there are times when men just want things to be easy.

Is that really a crime? (1011 Views pre transfer)

If genitals were stocks.

So, I posted that entry about the whole “play” thing in profiles and although I got few responses, I did get a number of views.

It stands to reason if you put anything remotely sexual in the headline of a blog post you’re going to get traffic – this is akin to my Flickr stream where if I post photos of women that I’ve taken, many feet beat a path to my door.

One of the responses that I got to the earlier post observed play was pointedly not to be confused with activity partner.

This brings me to today’s topic of genitals as stocks or better still commodities. Stick with me on this one all the way through to the end otherwise you might find yourself getting angry without fully hearing me out.

Also, I’m going to use some vulgar terms here so if you’re easily offended you might just want to save yourself the trouble of getting all indignant and stop reading now.

Okay, everyone who would be offended gone now?

All right then, let’s get to it...

If dick were stock, it would be a penny stock.

What does that mean?

It means that there isn’t as great a demand for penis as guys would like to think there is. So, for all of you that think sending a picture of your erect member to women will somehow equate to success... ummm... in a word, no.

It may come across as sexist on my part but, women generally don’t have a shortage of dick unless it’s by choice, meaning there are a lot more sellers than buyers in the marketplace, hence the penny stock comparison.

As a guy, even at this stage of the game, I still think about sex a lot. I thought that would go away with time but, you know... surprise, surprise, it just doesn’t.

Perhaps the only thing that is different now is there is something of an ewww factor when I look at a woman below a certain age. Not on my end... well you get the drift.

Ladies however are much cooler customers when it comes to the whole mating thing though. Basically unbutton a button or two on a blouse, flash some flesh and like a fisherman at the height of the season they’ll get a bite.

Women deny having this kind of upper hand because to them it is more often than not a matter of having pickable choices. It’s not that there isn’t something in the offing, it’s just their choices are poor or maybe the one guy (that big fish?) they want doesn’t seem to be biting at the lure.

Women basically throw back a lot more than they catch.

Pussy, is in demand. (Ouch, some people will hate that I used that word!)

Since there are more buyers than sellers as a commodity it has a higher price.

This equation seems to reverse itself somewhere around the age of 40 or so though because the pool of decent men really begins to dry up for older women.

One of the reasons I find myself musing on this subject was the response to the "play" post. I’m thinking unless you are this side of Adonis, generally play doesn’t have much of an appeal for the fairer sex. If you’re unkempt, overweight or generally scraggly... well, play probably is not in the offing.

Also, I was talking to someone awhile ago (another member of the site) and she was telling me how a guy had sent a nude picture of himself, unbidden.

Guys, haven’t you seen enough Dateline NBCs to know this isn’t a good idea?

But, maybe I’m alone on this. What do you think? (1489 Views pre transfer)

Where are the orgies I keep hearing about?!?!

I got an email from another member today that was interesting. I won’t disclose their name but I will present a portion of it:

I'm also sorry to say I was very new to this a few weeks ago and hadn't yet discovered the "play" option - I have since updated my profile to clarify that I'm probably not a good match for someone who is also looking for that. I don't mean to sound judgmental (consenting adults and all that) - I just know that I would not be comfortable dating someone who indicated that he was interested in that.

Wow!

I mean, really... WOW!

In one sentence by means of a simple word I have been consigned to world of lurid sexual encouters with absolute strangers!

I wish! :)

Would that it were life was so infiinitely exciting. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in such a place but, it’s amazing to me that someone presupposes I do, based entirely around the fact I say that I am open to play in my profile.

It’s not that casual sex isn’t appealing, just that it never has seemed to be in the offing.

As I understood things though ‘play’ as it were could mena just getting together with someone to do something, go somewhere. Nothing at all sexual in the slightest.

When I meet someone, while I do guage whether or not I’m attracted to them in that manner, I don’t assume we are immediately going to swap bodily fluids.

Am I the exception or is there something I’m missing out on here? (1491 Views pre transfer)

Getting screwed.

I thought I would post about a recent experience, if only to act as a cautionary tale for other members of the site.

I’ve had my account for a bit of time now and I upgraded to gold status sometime last year. My renewal date was coming up on the 25th and for the last few days every time I logged in an annoying startup screen would display with the options to renew the Gold membership.

I figured I would renew it, I just didn’t want to do it until I absolutely had to and since the account was due up today, I planned for the first order of business this morning would be to renew it when I got up.

Imagine my surprise when I logged in and found that I had been booted back down to “standard” status?!?

Well, not much of a problem. I figured to just go in and renew the account. The one option that had appealed to me most was a renewal at $8 plus per month for six months. The thing was that now when I went to the renewal screen, it was no longer an option?!

So, I sent off a note to customer service and asked what was going on? At this point I still have yet to hear back.

This afternoon, I called customer service figuring whatever the problem was speaking to a ‘live’ voice would manage to resolve the matter in relatively short order. I was still a bit dumbfounded since the Gold status was set to expire today, I imagined I had at least until the close of business if not 11:59pm before my status reverted to standard so it wouldn’t be so much of a problem.

Man, was I ever wrong!

Aside from the fact that the wait to speak to a person is just this side of interminable, I have to acknowledge that I have rarely come up against such unflinching bureaucracy outside of government offices.

See, I figured as a customer... well, customer service was always the goal but, I was mistaken. As the person I spoke with told me, they weren’t customer service, no they were billing!

So, even though I wanted to renew my Gold status for six months at the price I had been offered because my account had lapsed back to standard status this offer was now denied me and there was nothing that could be done.

I pointed out that the Gold status didn’t expire until today and it was still the 25th but, the truth is when you get a notice stating that your account status expires on a certain date the reality is that the service actually considers it expired the day before!

I’ve got this lovely email generated at 3am in my inbox telling me that my account has reverted back to standard status - even though it was supposed to expire today somehow in the world of online personals the day ends at 3am EST.

To say that I’m pissed is putting it mildly. That I wasted my time both on hold and then dealing with one of the most obstinate people I have ever run across just adds fuel to the fire.

See, I had this inconceivable notion that since I was paying for a service there was a certain level of consideration involved but now I find that not to be the case.

I’d certainly like for my ‘gold’ status to continue but, seeing as it’s been made very clear to me that I’m not desired as a customer it may just be I’m better of shutting the account down and going somewhere where they are a little bit more service oriented.

However, you have been forewarned. (1593 Views pre transfer)

I bought some hats the other day.

You know, they have that old saying that goes “clothes make a man.”

As more time goes on in life I realize how relevant that is. Clothes do send as much a signal out about us as anything. Problem is I think I send mixed messages or maybe I don’t send good messages.

So, I bought a hat... well, two actually.

This is something I had been thinking about for months. I had been wandering the streets, looking through the Internet, trying to find a place where I could make my purchase.

Friday I was bopping around Manhattan and I finally got over to the hat store.

I really loved it too! There is something of my grandfather’s generation in a hat. Needless to say I always thought my grandfather was way cool.

I had checked out this store on Fifth Avenue, a really classy place in the 30’s but the time I went in with a friend the sales folk were unresponsive and the prices were a bit on the high side. Ultimately, I found the perfect place over in the Garment District and it made me so very happy.

I’m funny that way; these little victories can make or break a day. Another thing off my list and at the same time I really, really had a good time talking to the guy in the hat store. He was another throwback New Yorker, another peer who remembered when the city wasn’t so gentrified, so disneyfied and when you could actually go to different parts of town and find them to be the loci of different industries.

I wound up getting a Porkpie and a Blues Brothers (at least that’s what they call them). I looked at a Top hat and also a derby but I wasn’t crazy for the way the Derby fit. The Top hat may be something for a later day.

I have to figure they’re better than the baseball cap I sometimes wear.

I’m not a clotheshorse by any stretch of the imagination but, I do like the ‘costume’ aspect of clothing.

I’d really like to see about getting a zoot suit or one of those big baggy jobs like David Byrne wore back in the day.

Normally though I have to admit it’s jeans, jeans and a collared shirt. I have a couple of pair of slacks that fit okay but slacks just don’t hold up well for me.

Anyway, the upshot is now I get to take some new pictures with my hats! (1206 Views pre transfer)

Days like mileposts.

I hadn’t gotten much of a chance of late to update this thing. I find the blog is more of a way to pose questions to all those other lost souls out there seeking companionship.

I just took an overnight roadtrip to Pittsburgh, visited an old friend and took in a baseball game with her.

I remember in the movie When Harry Met Sally, Harry observes that men and women can’t be friends because the sex thing is always in the air. Maybe not for women so much as it is for men? I’m not sure but, here I am with a friend who I’ve had for 20 plus years and she’s a very beautiful woman.

I can have this wonderful friendship and while it doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to her, it’s something that can go on the back burner.

I’m mystified by women.

Maybe that’s overstating it a little but, I continually manage to be surprised by women.

The dating thing is an interesting conundrum. As a guy, I wish there was some one size fits all kind of approach I could take to the whole thing. It’s not so much about laziness as much as avoiding uncomfortable moments.

I absolutely hate uncomfortable moments.

I come to realize though that my gender has none of the mastery of nuance and subtlety that the female of the species has. This seems to cause no end of problems, not just for me but also for people the world over.

Ladies, don’t ever expect men to take a hint.

Men don’t do hints... really.

I hear frustrated stories from women about men they’re interested in and the fact that the guys in question aren’t picking up on that or inversely about men who women have absolutely no desire for making an absolute pest of themselves.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. People wanting something but unable just to say what it is they want and having these uncomfortable moments.

God! I hate that. (1370 Views pre transfer)

Worth a thousand words?

You know, the old proverb goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

I can’t help but think of that as I spend time thumbing through profiles...

I don’t know about other people but, I just don’t like photos of myself.

I don’t recognize that person staring back at me in self-portraits. Actually, I’ll let you in on a secret, I kind of cringe when I see photos of myself.

(look at my photos, you may too!) ( LOL )

So, I posted a bunch of photos and I can’t say I’m crazy about any of them.

The photo that is the lead picture in my profile is decent enough and coincidentally, I am in profile. Still, the strong shadow in the shot can make it look as if I have a hooknose to the casual viewer - not a great thing.

I put up a bunch of pictures of my socks...

...not because I have a foot fetish or anything. I just like those socks and think they’re fun. I was thinking, how they’re representative of a playful attitude I have towards life and I hoped to find a way to get that across.

Then, there’s an old photo from days when I was a punk or at least, my approximation of a punk. I always considered myself more of a ‘mod’ at the time.

And there’s another shot I photoshopped a little because of the horribly ugly wallpaper background in it and the really harsh fluorescent lighting.

Making a little bit of a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I didn’t alter my features, just corrected elements of the shot itself that only made things unflattering (bad color and horrid shadows).

So, in the five photos I’ve put up that’s what? Five thousand words? I wonder what story people are getting from those pictures.

On the flip side I am amazed by some of the pictures I see.

I don’t know about other guys but, seeing those shots of women with old boyfriends... you know the ones, where the guy is cut out but his arm is still very prominent or there is just a botched bit of work with the stamp tool are just a bit in bad taste.

Ladies?! Can’t you find a decent picture of yourself smiling without your ex in it?

Then, there are the garishly obvious shots with generous portions of flesh.

I wonder if the women in those pics thing of themselves as meat? Not that I don’t have an appreciation for female flesh, I have to profess to having a gourmand’s taste for it - it seems posting gratuitous flesh shots are akin to being in a used car lot.

Everyone here has a certain amount of mileage - do we need the big numbers in the car window? Is the hard sell necessary?

I think maybe some women aren’t aware of their greatest lure if you will - the simple beauty of a woman’s face.

I am always reminded of this passage:

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack’d;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear’d to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’s azur’d arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

A friend of mine who is at the very young age of 85 commented to me that, “Beauty fades, but cute is forever.”

See, I keep looking at those profiles and wonder how many of the women have the same problem I have, in they look at their pictures with a critical eye, seeing only the faults that lie within.

It makes me figure all of us should be asking other people to help us to pick out shots.

Then, the other thing is that just cropping alone can make a great shot. Sometimes people can’t be bothered with that. I find that the most fascinating thing of all because it’s so easy! It probably has something to do with the fact I find myself working with photos and layout frequently.

Anyway, I’ve droned on.

So, speaking as a guy I would say pics of the old boyfriend floating around in them are something of a no-no. Not that you don’t have exes, but do I need to see how happy you were with them before things went awry?

What about you other folks out there, men and women both, are there any things you find in profile photos you think are non-starters? I think we all could use to learn a thing or two about this. (1847 Views pre transfer)

Age and lying.

I wonder if this has happened to anyone else?

(I’m being a little disingenuous for the sake of conversation because I know this has happened to other people)

You’re online and you have emailed another ‘contestant’ and they ’fess up that they’re really older than what they’ve put in their profile.

I won’t mention names... but I’ve had it happen a few times.

The thing I don’t get though is what’s the big deal?

Also, isn’t lying about anything to someone at the onset of a potential relationship positioning you as a person who sacrifices truth for the sake of expediency?

Now originally, pompous, sexist ass that I am, I thought only women lied about their age but, I came across a recent complaint by one woman that she had in fact run across more than a few men who played loosey/goosey on the age issue themselves.

Maybe I’m a bit naïve but what‘s the big deal?

A number is after all a number but, I wonder why we are assigning such importance to it?

I’m closing in on 50 myself and no one is more surprised by how fast the time seems to go by but, it’s not like I crossed some invisible boundary. Not in my mind anyway although, I think in the minds of others that well may be the case.

The flip side to it is I like who I am now.

There is something which happens, not for all of us, however quite a few peers I’ve spoken with describe and understand exactly what I’m speaking to.

We get into this... (for lack of a more apt descriptor) better headspace.

We are just a little more balanced (?) than we were when we were younger, not sweating the small stuff as much as we might’ve in the past. Everyone seem to be in agreement it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to have a 30-year old body again but, not at the expense of going back to the strum and drang emotionally of that period of our lives.

Now, there was this old saw when I was growing up that a gentleman never asks a woman her age but, here in the world of Internet dating there’s no escaping one’s age. It’s part and parcel of your profile, It’s another detail in the spew of personal identifying info we put out to attract potential mates.

Is it that limiting?

I have a friend, he’s 85 now. He met his current wife when he was my age. She was 19! Do the math; they’ve been married for 35 years or so!

I know she was aware of his age but it wasn’t off-putting to her.

Even I acknowledge that’s a big gap but, I have to wonder if age isn’t more a matter of our own perspective.

Look at it this way... closing in on 50 (again, even I am surprised by this), there are some quarters where I might be considered old but to my friend (at the ripe age of 85), I’m still a baby!

Maybe I should go back to counting half years as if I were a kid.

Do you remember that time? Four and a half, five and a half, six and a half? A time when six months was a big deal?

Why lie about it though? Isn’t it better to embrace one’s age?

What do you think? (1631 Views pre transfer)

Women and glasses.

Maybe it’s me but I like women with glasses.

I haven’t worn (or needed) glasses until quite recently and truthfully, I never really gave it much thought. Now that I need them to read mousetype, well I guess it becomes more of an issue.

Certainly it was never an instance of something that would put me off of someone.

In other words, whether a woman wore glasses or not, if I found her attractive I really didn’t care.

I’ll even go one step further… glasses are sexy!

So, all you ladies out there who somehow think having glasses is a detriment really should rethink that stance.

The best way I can illustrate this to you is by using the example of an old TV show.

Back in the dark times, the olden days there was this show WKRP that used to run on CBS (I think on Monday nights). It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t the kind of show that everyone would watch but there was something about it that I liked.

It had a decent cast, a bunch of character actors who would pop up through the years – I’m thinking of Gordon Jump, Howard Hesseman and Tim Reid but. The thing I think most people would remember about the show was the fact that it was the vehicle through which Loni Anderson blazed a trail into celebrity.

There were two women regulars on the show; Loni Anderson as Jennifer Marlowe and Jan Smithers as Bailey Quarters.

Loni Anderson was blonde, with the big smile and the killer bod but, there was something about Jan Smithers.

Even with Loni Anderson in the show there was no denying the incredible cuteness, the beauty, the sexiness of Pam Smithers.

I think men of the day got divided into two camps.

There were the guys who would just be blown away by Jennifer Marlowe but, I think there were an even bigger number of men who just were in love with Bailey Quarters. Bailey was the girl you could spend a weekend with, and even those frames couldn’t hide those great eyes of hers… you could lose yourself in those eyes.

Glasses?

They didn’t make the slightest difference.

If anything they made her look even sexier!

So, the next time you curse poor eyesight… well, all I’m saying is don’t knock glasses because they can be as good an accessory as anything else that can be used to attract a man. (1865 Views pre transfer)

Jumping right in, both feet first.

I had toyed with the thought of writing a blog here. Not that I don’t already have a blog but, I generally refrain from writing about dating on it.

I created this a few days back but then found myself stymied with what to write. What I mean to say is, is this an entirely futile experience? Who’s going to read it?

Further, will it serve only to further limit my pool of potential mates by being perfectly blunt about dating and the surrounding issues dealing with meeting people over the internet?

Mmmmm...

Who knows?

Well, let’s start off by making a bit of a request. I don’t know how to do it, but if I could I would create a pool here if only to get other’s opinions about the whole internet dating thing.

Internet dating seems to have taken the place of the personal ad. Maybe that’s not an accurate statement though. Perhaps, internet dating would better be viewed as the personal ad but, just in online form.

The difference though between the personal ad and the internet is in you can conduct a dialog with someone much more rapidly than you ever could through the personal ads. Email, at the very least allows us to communicate with strangers without entirely giving up any of our privacy. It’s less intrusive than other means of communication.

Is it better though?

Further, is there some kind of framework for how that dialog should progress? I’m curious how others think because I’ve yet to entirely figure this out for myself.

How many emails back and forth before moving to the next step (phone) or is it just better to cut right to it and plan on meeting someone quickly to see if there is any of that magical chemistry everyone is always talking about?

Any suggestions? (1402 Views pre transfer)