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  • Let's Talk About Sex, But In The Least Titillating Way Possible

    We were discussing famous feminists recently and a friend couldn’t believe that I’d never heard of Betty Dodson.  A quick Google rectified that, as did watching and listening to several of the artist/author/sex activist’s videos and podcasts to which my friend insisted on sending me links. While a fair chunk of Dr. Dodson’s writing, commentary and banter with business partner Carlin Ross shades a  tad unvarnished for PG-rated sensibilities, there’s something inarguably awesome and life affirming about a vibrant octogenarian frankly encouraging women to get in touch with and assert their sexuality.  And once the shock value wore off, I could clearly see the universalist application in her oft-repeated exhortation to “get on top and run the f*ck.”  After Tuesday’s Hate To Break It To You and my recent post about vision boards, I was again reminded of Dr. Dodson’s philosophy and thought it deserved a special mention.

    2926794885_a67967a5b3Photo by vk-red

    While perhaps a little crudely phrased, there’s no denying that this advice is A) applicable to both sexes and B) has definite currency outside the bedroom,  if only because so many of us are doing exactly the opposite when it comes to running our lives – ceding control and simply passively lying there waiting for some other power to bring us the pleasure and happiness we crave. But why?  Is it simply habit, lassitude  or the genuine belief that we don’t have the capacity to exert that type of control over our own futures? Believing otherwise is understandably daunting.  If we have the capacity to create our own happiness (i.e.,  run the f*ck), well, the fact that we’re not happy is directly attributable to our own efforts (or lack thereof) as well.  Not to mention the unseemliness of putting in an effort.  If someone or something was meant to be, shouldn’t it come easy?  Shouldn’t it just fall together? Having to work for what we want acknowledges that we have goals and ambitions and acknowledging that we have goals and ambitions means that we have to acknowledge that we might not achieve them.  Uh oh. While I’m the first one to roll my eyes at the latter day Alex P. Keatons who seem to be multiplying at an alarming rate amongst early twentysomethings and whose career tips blogs are addictively blood pressure spiking in their  How to Manage Your Middle-Aged Manager earnestness, effort itself (especially when honestly applied in service of your own particular vision of success) is not the enemy.  Just because it doesn’t come easy, does that really mean it (you) shouldn’t come at all? Please. Happily ever after involves getting our hands dirty and breaking a sweat. Don’t let Disney tell you otherwise. Real life and real relationships have a hell of lot more in common with Groundhog Day than Cinderella, ya dig?

    Dr. Dodson  advises her readers and viewers to acknowledge and  take ownership of their own sexual nature– you are responsible for discovering what brings you pleasure, pursuing it and educating others with whom you share this part of your life as to your desires and needs.  Waiting around for someone else to flip your metaphorical switch (sexual or otherwise) is a weak and timid way to live. And while  my feminism may lean more to the traditional liberal model than the clitorocentric, the good Doctor and I can unequivocally agree  that when it comes to getting a grip on your life and ambitions, the choice between sacking up and running the f*ck and just running the f*ck away is absolutely clear.

  • Hands-Free Is Not For Me

    Hate To Break It To You is a recurring feature wherein we dispense succinct home truths that everyone could benefit from facing up to, unpleasant as they may be.

    1974660198_ba17e3e822

    Photo by Bill Ruhsam

    Recently, I asked an overseas coworker what his future plans were after our project ends. He threw out a couple of vague possibilities about school and different fields he’d thought about exploring, but when I pressed him for specifics, he responded with:

    “I will not choose career. Career will choose me.”

    When did Yakov Smirnoff* start dispensing self-help advice?

    The universe is not your guidance counselor, folks. And it goes without saying that you shouldn’t leave choices and decisions about how and where you’ll spend your  professional and personal life up to its whims. Yes, even deciding not to make a decision is actually a decision unto itself, but that doesn’t mean that governing your future (capital or lowercase f) via apathetic shoulder shrug is actually a viable course of action. There are times to hang back, to wait to see what develops, observe how things play out, to just take a breather and some intellectual and physical space for yourself, but once que sera sera becomes your default decision-making approach, well, you’ve got a problem.

    There’s a balance to be struck between jumping on life’s back and attempting to beat it into submission with a 2X4 and simply lying there thinking of England* while it has its way with you. The former being an an awfully tiring and frustrating battle royale that’s apt to leave more bruises than you care to count and the latter being completely devoid of agency. And frankly, it doesn’t sound like a particularly good time either, does it?

    Sometimes, your judgment will suck. Sometimes, you will make the wrong choice. Sometimes, you’ll hurt someone or get hopelessly lost. But no matter where you’re headed, having both hands on the steering wheel (and the opportunity to consult a map and bactrack or change directions at will) is a hell of a lot more empowering and productive than buying a one-way ticket on the Predestination Express (which has a lot in common with the bus from Speed) and simply going along for the ride.

    *I tell myself that there is at least one someone out there who picks up on and appreciates all of the obscure reference I toss around. Whoever you are, I offer you an intellectual fist bump of solidarity.

  • Arts & Crafts And Self-Actualization

    In my defense, it was suggested by two friends in the span of one week and I do love collages. That (and the fact I figured it would yield excellent anecdote material for some future purpose) would explain why I spent a quiet Sunday afternoon about six months ago half-heartedly paging through my old mags (hint: Atlantic Monthly, Utne and Harper’s are probably not ideal choices for this exercise) looking for images that “spoke” to me and represented my vision of my ideal life and self. Insert patented JMH eye roll here.

    vision boardPhoto by deb robey

    If my gut-level distrust of anything New Agey didn’t do it, I should have known vision boarding (not to be confused with waterboarding, natch) wasn’t my scene when I couldn’t find the glue and had to resort to crudely taping all of the cutouts in place (Did I mention I was hands-down the worst cutter in my first grade class and that my scissor skills haven’t improved much in the intervening years?). The final product actually wasn’t bad looking and it more or less projected generic desires that any twentysomething might possess- career, travel, love, adventure, family, etc. All very vague high-level stuff, badly trimmed and imprecisely taped.

    I propped up my vision board on top of what had been the tv stand (looking at it frequently is recommended) and impatiently waited  for the universe to send me the experiences, attributes and European vacation I had diligently mocked up. No dice. The thing just collected dust until I eventually moved it to a closet, so I no longer had to be confronted with visual evidence of my failure to” turn intention into manifestation” (or something equally Secret-y) every time I cleaned. I’d be lying if I said I was particularly surprised at the (lack of) outcome.

    Perhaps it was my skepticism that did me in. Maybe I should have been more open-minded about the vision board concept, but passivity has never been my game and leaving one’s future fulfillment up to the capricious whim of the universe strikes a born overthinker and hands-dirty tinkerer as not only milquetoast, but downright anti-feminist. It’s a very short skip from staring at glossy pictures of the bikini you want to wear on The Riviera this winter and visualizing yourself frolicking in the waves to lying in your four-poster bed fantasizing about Prince Charming coming to sweep your 12 year-old self away (except, it’s 2009, so Prince Charming would apparently be played by that kid with the busted face from Twilight). And despite the fact that the “believing makes it so” mantra is parroted by  pseudo-inspirational “teachers” of both sexes, I don’t even need to bet the pair of Louboutins I don’t aspire to own to know that this self help phenomenon targeted squarely at women. Now it’s not simply that you weren’t pretty or charming or smart enough to be rewarded with happiness, you can add to it the fact that you were undone by a pessimistic unconscious mind that kept expecting (and thus conjured into reality) your personal worst case scenario. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t (but just wish you did). Seems awfully convenient, doesn’t it?

    And the idea of waiting around for your wishes to be granted simply because you had the temerity to wish them? Everything you’ve ever dreamed of and you don’t even have to worry about chipping your manicure? How boring is that? I choose not to accept that the universe really prefer sops who’d opt for that approach over people who turn over a few apple carts, get their manic single-minded focus on, work the phones, knock on doors, etc. And what about fortune favoring the brave or God helping those who help themselves or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps or whatever other Horatio Alger-esque cliche you wanna toss out there? Apparently, we should replace autonomy and self-determination with …. images of beautifully-landscaped Hamptons estates we tore out of Better Homes and Gardens? Please. I’ll pass on that. Maybe it’s my verbose inner voice talking, but a thousand words (backed up with actions and elbow grease) strike me as a much better value than a single picture.

    I still dig collages, though.

  • Pulling Back The Curtain

    Last week, I asked my sister if I should devote more of GenMeh’s column inches to discussing the trials and triumphs of  my own life. She wisely pointed out this wouldn’t exactly mesh with my uber private nature.  Cards close to the vest and all that jazz. The privacy thing came up again when I mentioned this site to a coworker. He was agog that someone as reticent as he viewed me to be would ever be caught dirtying her hands at something with the salacious exhibitionist potential of blogging.  Apparently, I’m a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a bullet-proof vest.  I can’t help it that I was born with the voices of both Greta Garbo and Gavin De Becker in my head, can I?

    command centre

    GenMeh’s European headquarters

    In all seriousness, while I do plan to write about my relationship with travel once I’m back on the other side of the Atlantic, GenMeh was never conceived of to be any sort of personal Dear Diary outlet.  But just for kicks, let’s pretend we’re besties. These are all the things I would have shared with you about my epically-long (still not over!) biz trip:

    • I would tell you about the tiny little Roma boy begging on the sidewalk in front of the central cathedral. And how seeing him sitting there all scrunched up with his shirt pulled over his knees and the saddest eyes in the world broke my (non-existent) heart to a degree that I emptied my purse of all the coins I could find. If it was a scam (this city does have its share of professional panhandlers), it was a damn effective one.
    • I would tell you about how my colleague turned to me at dinner the other night, looked me dead in the eye and demanded to know when I was getting married, stating that it was about time I started thinking about this. He followed this up by half-drunkenly and unrelatedly comparing me to Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote several minutes later (note to dudes: There’s no chick on earth who would dig being compared to Jessica Freaking Fletcher, okay? ).
    • Or how about the fact that I fainted in the hotel hallway last night? My  first thought upon coming to was, “Thank God no one stole my purse while I was out cold.” My second thought was relief at not having carpet-burned my forehead.
    • I would try to explain to you how very strange it feels to be without words. Other than a few technical terms related to my work and those picked up by osmosis/constant exposure (i.e., sale, bakery, bank, exit, etc.), I have only thank you and an apologetic smile at my disposal.  We talk about being speechless so much in the figurative, but to be struck that way literally is both frustrating and very humbling. Not to mention having to depend on others to interpret everything from diplomatic meetings to dinner orders on my behalf.
    • You would laugh knowingly at how twitchy the familiarity of the standard upper arm grab + double cheek air kiss Euro greeting makes me and how I do whatever I can to head it off or avoid being cornered.
    • I would admit that I forgot my hairbrush on this trip, but that two straight weeks sans brushing has made no discernible difference, believe it or not.
    • I would tell you that I’m writing this curled up under a duvet (why do I not own one of these?) in my enormous hotel bed because we have been exiled from the local office due to lack of space and lack of wireless. I would tell you that this the most comfortable bed I’ve ever had the pleasure of sleeping in (LK, you called it!) and how I love it so much that I’ve taken to eschewing my usual right-sided sleeping habit to flop directly in the middle with my arms stretched out as wide as they’ll go (and they still don’t touch the edge!) in order to absorb as much of the comfort as possible. I would also tell you how I’m listening to Gillian Welch as I write this. It’s making me  just a little blue-ish, but Wrecking Ball is all I want to hear right now. Well, maybe Josh Ritter’s Monster Ballads, too.
    • And I would totally have bought you a souvenir by now (copper cevzes for everyone!), but let’s just forget about that part, shall we?

  • The Mad Libs Five-Year Plan*

    Screw setting actual goals and then feeling like crap when you inevitably fall short of societally-endorsed benchmarks of mainstream heteronormative success. We’ve got your five-year plan right here, baby! Let Mad Libs chart your course over the next half decade. Print it out and play with your friends! Tape the results to your fridge door for handy future reference.

    madlibs

    Photo by katiescrapbooklady

    Don’t have friends? Play solo by completing the following list and plugging the words into the plan template. Try not to feel sad that you’re not only utterly alone, but also leaving your future up to the dictates of a children’s word game.

    1. current age + five years

    2. adjective beginning with the letter H

    3. adjective beginning with the letter P

    4. best drunken compliment you’ve ever received

    5. adverb

    6. verb in the past tense

    7. overused business jargon noun

    8. reaction in noun form upon seeing facebook pictures of your high school nemesis’s new yacht

    9.  pick a number 1 through 5 and then refer to the legend below

    10. flip a coin – heads = success tails =  failure

    11. most far-flung place to which you’d have currently enough money in your bank account to buy a plane ticket

    12. best way to spend a Sunday afternoon

    13. last person who texted you

    14. habit your mother nags you about most often

    15. stupidest New Year’s resolution you’ve made

    16. characteristic of ideal pet

    17. number of times you hit the snooze button on a Monday morning

    In five years, I will be (current age + five years). I will also be (adjective beginning with letter H), (adjective beginning with letter P) and (best drunken compliment you’ve ever received). I will have (adverb) (verb in the past tense) the (most overused business jargon noun) to the widespread (reaction in noun form upon seeing facebook pictures of your high school nemesis’s new yacht) of my peers. If I have not ( pick a number 1 through 5 and then refer to legend below), I will consider myself a (flip coin – heads = success tails = failure). I also plan to travel to (most far-flung place to which you’d currently have enough money in your bank account to buy a plane ticket) to (best way to spend a Sunday afternoon) with (last person who texted you).

    I will have stopped (habit your mother nags you about most often) and started (stupidest New Year’s resolution you’ve made). I will have increased my (characteristic of the ideal pet) (number of times you hit the snooze button on a Monday morning)-fold.

    Done!

    Legend

    1- contracted herpes
    2 – gotten a promotion
    3- stopped sleeping with a nightlight on
    4- met The One, gotten engaged, married and planned the timing to conceive our first through third borns
    5- died

    *Stalin-approved!

  • I R Famous!

    Well, if not famous, at least quotable.

    I want to explore the issue of micro-generations (which I raised in the interview) in more detail, so stay tuned for a future post on why today's youth are ladder-climbing attention whores and why we shouldn't blame them for it.

  • Climb Every Mountain, Ford Every Stream

    Today’s post is the first in a new feature I’m referring to as Rogue Models. Rogue Models will highlight interviews and discussions with diverse twenty and thirtysomethings who are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to pursuing happiness and personal/professional fulfillment on their own terms.

    Last year, former journalist Tamsin McMahon quit her job to hike the Pacific Coast Trail from the Mexican border all the way into British Columbia (over 2600 miles in total). I first read about her in the Globe and Mail (for whom she’s also blogging about her hiking exploits) and when the idea of the Rogue Models feature came to me, I remembered her story and sent her an email to ask  if she’d be interested in sharing her tale with GenMeh’s readers. She graciously agreed.

    tamsinmay20_47914gm-a

    Photo from The Globe and Mail

    What motivated you to quit your job to hike the Pacific Crest Trail?
    I had dreamed of it for years. I always figured I’d hike the trail if I ever happened to win the lottery or otherwise become independently wealthy one day. Then I spent last year commuting an hour each way to work in a lot of bad weather. I enjoyed my job, but my industry was falling victim to severe cutbacks, buyouts and layoffs. I was at the bottom of the seniority ladder and saw the writing on the wall.


    Then it hit me: I didn’t need to have a lot of money to go hiking. I needed as little as a few thousand. I was young enough now to go live my dream and hope the economy would be better when I returned. It seemed the right time to take the plunge.

    Was this a difficult decision or one you arrived at easily?

    It was actually a really difficult decision for me. I did struggle with it. It was a financial and professional risk. I had been pushing for so long to be successful in a career, but when I achieved success, I realized that it didn’t completely fulfill me. I felt a lot of guilt about abandoning a career I still loved and believed in. I talked to friends and family, not all of whom understood or supported my decision. Then I just followed my gut and gave my notice.

    Have you regretted your decision at any point during the hike?

    No, not at all! Surprisingly, I feel more confident in my decision every day. This hike is amazing, an experience I’ll cherish for a lifetime. Sitting behind a desk for what turned out to be a rainy and cold summer back home would’ve been no fun.
    Would friends and family say a plan like this is out of character for you or do you have a history of taking such leaps of faith?

    I don’t think my friends and family were shocked that I’d do something like this. I like to be spontaneous and tend to move around a lot, although I’ve usually quit jobs in the past to take new ones that were higher up on the career ladder. I did leave a job several years ago to go live in Europe for a while, but I was right out of university. That being said, while they probably weren’t surprised, some friends and family felt I was making a mistake.

    What has been the best moment so far?

    That’s such a hard question. There have been so many amazing
    moments:

    Climbing Mt. Whitney just after a snow storm and making it to the summit while others turned back. Glissading (sliding on your bum) down Sonora Pass, climbing Half Dome in Yosemite on July 4, hiking off-trail to a private hot springs and soaking under the stars, crossing the border into Oregon after hiking 1700 miles of California. Take your pick!

    What about the most harrowing?

    There have definitely been a few, although we’ve been pretty lucky with our hike so far. Some of the Sierra mountain passes were a bit dicey – there’s nothing like hiking up a 12,000-foot mountain in just your sneakers to find a steep, snowy drop on the other side. We actually just came through an area that suffered about 30 forest fires because of a big lightning storm. The mountain above us was totally engulfed in flames (a spectacular sight as we hiked this section at night). I woke up to find the tent and my pack covered in ash. The forest service closed this section of trail the next day.

    Do you think about what you’ll do when you finish? Do you have any plans in the works?

    I do, but don’t worry about it too much. It will be a challenge – the newspaper industry is in such a crisis and the economy isn’t doing well. But I’ll worry about that when I get back. Things have a way of working out, even if you end up taking a path you hadn’t intended to take.

    I don’t have anything in the works. I didn’t want to have the pressure of a work start date hanging over me on the trail. People keep telling me to write a book about this experience. Maybe I’ll try.

    What advice would you give to someone who feels as if he/she is lost or stagnating professionally and/or personally and wants to make a big life change?

    Just go for it. I’ve always believed that few things in life are truly irreversible. If going to live your dream doesn’t work out, you can always go get another job. Sure, it may not be the one you had before and it may take you longer to get re-established, but you can get re-established if you want. If you’re stagnating and something else will make you happy, you owe it to yourself to try. I know it’s a cliché to say this, but no risk, no reward.

    Are you a Rogue Model? Do you know someone who is? We’re always interested in suggestions for future interviews.

  • Life is Not a Soundbyte And You Are Not Your Elevator Pitch

    In a recent email interview (you're gonna dig this one, kids), I asked the interview subject which moments in his current life stand out as ones he would never have believed plausible or possible a few short years ago. The question actually prompted me to ask the same thing of myself.  As it stands, my penchant for living in my own head makes me pretty darn savvy at recognizing these previously unimagined moments in my own life. Absurd, touching, hilarious, heartbreaking; it's all there and all worth at least a couple of minute to shake your head and ask, “How the heck did I get here?”

    elevatorPhoto by shinryuu

    Most recently, I recall an evening spent at an Eastern European open-air cafe with two colleagues. Sipping wine and listening to a local singer serenade us with a half-English half-local language version of Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight while they chatted amiably about their firsthand experiences with war. Obviously, they were skimming the surfaces of their recollections and only cherry-picking the details suitable for discussion over cocktails. Nonetheless, it started me thinking about how we catalogue our own history and serve it up for the consumption of others. Heartbreak resurfaces as an amusing anecdote. Effusive happiness can be summed up in a cliched sentence or two. When immediacy fades, poignancy often seems to go with it. Given enough time and perspective, even war becomes so much conversational cannon fodder.  We summarize our emotional histories in much the same way we summarize our job histories. We reduce our 9-5 existence down to a series of bullet point duties and accomplishments and as we accumulate more experience, we further condense or even omit the oldest entries.  The same goes for our non-work lives. It’s all about the editing, the reframing and boiling down to the basics and if we can spin things to make ourselves look more noble/desirable/capable in the process, well so much the better, yes?

    In a way, it's a social time and grace-saving measure. Instead of describing someone as, “the girl I was dating between junior and senior year who ended up doing an exchange to France and we were going to try the long distance thing, but it just sorta faded out around Thanksgiving,” you call her your ex-girlfriend when you're telling your coworker that story about how much her cat hated you and used to pee on your sneakers if you left them by the door. When you're trying to sell your date on a cute little Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, you tell him it was recommended by a friend and not by fellow posters on a message board for fixed gear bike enthusiasts that you've belonged to since 2003. When it comes to hearing about other people’s lives, we have short attention spans and we like unambiguous descriptors. The tangled webs that you weave are interesting to you (and maybe your mother or therapist); the rest of us will take the Reader’s Digest condensed version, thanks.  And keep the emotions out of it, if you please. Better to be thought glib and cavalier than to reveal how raw you still are about your father’s death four years ago or better to crack jokes about having to move back in with your parents than to admit what a number unemployment is doing on your self-esteem.  How gauche!  As much as we like ambiguity, we’ve also been conditioned to appreciate arms-length self deprecation, with a side of non-committal blandness.  We react better to the sight of blood and mangled bodies than to an outpouring of genuine rage, passion or grief.  Never mind that this preservation of the social status quo has given rise to a population of people who reflexively reach for humor as a shield, who have convinced themselves that there isn’t a situation or experience (no matter the gravity) that can’t be shrugged off or solved with the appropriate one-liner.  Sarcasm is our generation’s version of stoicism. Snappy comebacks as a replacement for the stiff upper lip.  Hey, it works in Hollywood, right?

    We react better to the sight of blood and mangled bodies than to an outpouring of genuine rage, passion or grief.

    For the sake of not boring my audiences to tears, I've gotten better at condensing my own history into soundbyte-appropriate snippets and distilling relationships down to their elemental nature*. No easy feat for someone as A) in love with back stories and B) seemingly incapable of magnanimous hindsight as I am. But not so deep down, I strongly resent this reductionist approach to presenting our lives and times. Forget rote responses to close-ended queries, there’s so much  more to all of us. We're more than a 15-second elevator pitch of our high points, more than a self-penned draft obituary (born here, went to school there, etc.) that we can recite on cue when someone asks for our back story and more than bloodless memories floating in jars of formaldehyde. We’re petty, we’re politically incorrect, we’re verbose, we’re by turns ponderous and whimsical. We've got baggage, all of us.  We’re complicated in ways and for reasons that cannot be neatly abridged. And it’s heartbreakingly sad to think that we’re all just biting our tongues, polishing our emotional resumes and waiting around for someone (the right one or just anyone?) to ask us the right questions and show more than a cursory interest in our answers.

    N.B. In a way, this post is an exploration of the small talk wasteland I previously wrote about.

    * Although I do confess that I sometimes still think “brother-in-law” and “niece” sound strange coming out of my mouth.

  • List Served #4 – Transatlanticism

    List Served is a regular feature wherein I present you with an ordered grouping of (at least tangentially) related points. I love lists and the internet loves ephemeral minutiae. It’s all good.

    Chronological Observations From My Recent 18 Hours (adjusted for time zone differences) in Transatlantic Transit

    • Okay, three minutes after take-off and I’m gonna bust out the emergency chocolate rations.
    • I told my mother that I cleaned out my fridge so that if she has to go through my apartment in the event of a deadly crash that she won’t have to be embarrassed at what a lazy slag of a housekeeper her daughter is. She laughed. If I ever go into therapy, I’m sooo gonna bring that up.
    • I should never have taken out travel insurance.  I feel almost duty bound to be fatalistic in order to get my money’s worth out of it.
    • Dude, why did I shotgun that Chardonnay on an empty stomach? Not cool. Not cool at all.
    • Oh man, I hate pineapple in fruit salad. It contaminates everything.
    • Why does the airline have exactly the same taste as I do in obscure-ish tv comedies? Seriously, Summer Heights High? Spaced? Eastbound and Down? F’reals?
    • Am I the only one who doesn’t like to re-watch movies because I worry that I won’t like them as much the second time through? Unless we’re talking about Overboard. Kurt Russell’s mullet and those hillbilly kids never get old. NEVER.
    • Oh, now I have a new friend. Dude, just because your seatback tv doesn’t work doesn’t mean you can invade my space. And moving my laptop off “your” new seat is not cool.
    • Currently building a Berlin Wall out of pillows on the seat between us.
    • Pretty sure he can’t see my screen. Shooting him the side eye to confirm. Nope, engrossed in the Fast and Furious. Wonder who else might be able to see what I’m typing. Paranoid now. Not enough side eyes to go around. Also, hard to execute with glasses on.
    • Shouldn’t I have to pee by now?  All that wine and a diet Coke.
    • Oh God, is it only 7:30 PM? So tired. I couldn’t sleep last night because I was trying to remember where Balki’s character on Perfect Strangers was originally from. Ready to pass out now.
    • Cabin lights just dimmed. Everything is red now. Very brothel-y.
    • Hella bored. Hella bored.
    • The Frankfurt airport apparently has showers. How bourgeois is it that I would seriously consider paying $10 for some hot water and soap? Mama has a hygiene fetish, ‘tis true.
    • Dudes, the aisle is for walking up and/or down, not picking up. Take the banter elsewhere, you’re impeding the path to the bathroom. Seriously, it’s the red light, isn’t it?
    • Aisle is also not for doing calisthenics. Talking to you, elderly gentleman in the Hawaiian shirt.
    • OMG, have to pee NOW.
    • I wish I had someone to play tic-tac-toe with. Is that meta? Unsure.
    • I just realized that I have to stand on the seat to reach the fresh air vent. Humbling that.
    • Five hours in the Frankfurt airport, with another one and a half to go. Misanthropy is hovering at an 8.5 on a scale of 1 – 10. The fact that my colleague is kicking it in the business lounge and I’m hanging out in the cattle pen that constitutes economy class gate seating doesn’t help.
    • It would suck if your dad looked exactly like Quasimodo. I imagine that might make growing up kinda rough.
    • It would also suck if your father made you and your brother wear matching high-waisted khakis (with matching belts, natch) and all three of you had to walk through the airport holding hands.
    • One of my coworkers calls Fanta the official drink of the third world. Just noticed an empty bottle on the seat across from me.
    • God, I have to get on another plane and then be pseudo-chauffered for hours through the countryside. Might hit 40 hours of straight wakefulness yet.
    • Yes, Irish guy, I did sort of steal your seat. They switched me to an aisle at my request, but it was too far in the back, so I just kept my original spot. But I actually did you a favour because you and your Norwegian friend got to sit together.
    • Must not fall asleep in car. Mouth will hang open for sure. Have to keep fighting indignity.
    • My passport photo is so monstrous that the border agent had to do a side-by-side comparison. She remained skeptical (lady, if I was carrying a fake passport, don’t you think I’d opt for a more flattering picture?), but let us proceed.
    • Spontaneous, simultaneous laughter when a-ha’s Over the Treetops comes on the radio = priceless.
    • Hotel room has two beds but no facecloths. You win some, you lose some. Red velvet color scheme is very baroque.  No eerie twin sightings yet, but I wouldn’t rule it out.
    • Unconsciousness

  • How to Get the Girl: A Common Sense Primer

    Recently, I took a little business trip.  Being a consummate pre-planner with specific dietary quirks, I always do my homework when it comes to identifying restaurants that fit my needs in the city I happen to be visiting,  which explains how I found myself in a vegan anarchist coffee house. The fact that I am an amateur Margaret Mead with respect to the intensity of my interest in people watching (now with bonus speculation about their individual backstories!) explains how I came to be sitting in a vegan anarchist coffee house idly musing about the love lives of my fellow patrons. Well, one patron in particular. He came in seconds after I did, made a beeline for an empty table, fished a book out of his bag, hunched himself over it (dude, you might need stronger glasses), didn’t even make eye contact with the server  when he swung by to get take the order (which dude mumbled quietly while not even glancing up from his book). After he wolfed down his samosas, he paid and bolted for the door. All the while, completely oblivious to the pink-haired young woman at an adjacent table who’d been shooting glances his way since she arrived. 10 bucks says that he went home to complain on some message board about how hard it is to meet women in that city and how he keeps putting himself out there, but nothing.

    Were I not too engrossed in eating the hell out of a southern-fried tofu sandwich and only possessed of a single sheet of paper on which was scribbled my hand-drawn map back to my hotel (consummate pre-planner and aspiring cartographer), I would have written down the following nerd/introvert appropriate tips and slipped the note under his water glass when he went to the bathroom.  Because really, who couldn’t use a straight-shooting fairy godmother  type to  wave her magic wand over their relationship woes? So forget what askmen.com or the seduction/PUA community*  would have you believe, here’s the straight scoop on interacting with women  – road tested and double X approved.

    coffee shop

    Photo by mangpages

    Practical Dating Advice for Shy/Nerdy/Awkward Dudes

    1. Women are attracted to confidence.

    2. Confidence should not be confused with arrogance, extroversion, suaveness, physical attractiveness or alpha male status. Confidence simply means being cool with who you are and letting others know that. So you build model trains in your basement, sing in a barbershop quartet and stack all your produce alphabetically in the fridge? This is you. OWN IT. No apologies. Confidence is having a handle on who you are, being okay in your own skin and projecting that comfort to others. If you’re secure in yourself (no matter how far from conventionally alpha that self happens to be), women will pick up on it and we will find it damn attractive.  I promise. To quote the esteemed Buck Owens, “just act naturally.”

    3. You will have to make an effort. Are you an aging billionaire widower with a heart condition? Did you star in three of this year’s top-grossing box office hits? Do you routinely appear on the cover of GQ? No? Then women are likely not going to be throwing themselves at you without provocation (and in the former cases, the quality of the women in question likely speaks for itself). You will need to engage them in conversation, or at the very least eye contact. You don’t need to “sell” yourself or make with the lame pick-up lines, but you will need to demonstrate basic conversation skills – as in the ability to start, maintain and end one. Don’t worry about being stereotypically charming or smooth;  both rank far behind being interesting and genuine. And you don’t even need to worry about being awkward. Creepy and socially tone deaf freaks women out, but awkwardness can be surprisingly endearing. If you can get points 2 and 3 going in tandem (it’s like patting your head and rubbing your stomach simultaneously), you will be golden. I kid you not.

    4. Your job is not a proxy for having a personality. Ditto any material possessions you may have. You are not your work or your condo or your car or even your washboard abs. If you tend to conflate these things, you need to figure out what’s at the root of this insecurity. Do you feel as if these are the only interesting things about you? Do you feel as if they consume your life and thus you genuinely don’t have enough going on outside of this to making you an engaging and attractive individual? Figure this out and figure out what you’re going to do about it before you drag a (relatively) innocent other party into the low self-esteem quicksand with you. It’s just common courtesy, really.

    5. Stop waiting around for your own manic pixie dream girl. She isn’t coming (ditto, Megan Fox). And even if she did show, she’d probably have jacked-up Kirsten Dunst teeth. Seriously, this is the nerdboy equivalent of the hoary old Prince Charming fantasy that women have been told to exorcise for decades. If you’re not happy with yourself and the state of your life, there is no woman in the world (unless she answers to Dr. and makes you lie on a couch in her office for an hour a week) who can compensate for that.  And putting that sort of emotional responsibility on anyone’s shoulders but your own is both unfair and unrealistic.

    **********************************************************************************************************

    It all boils down to doing the work necessary to get comfortable with yourself, so comfortable that you genuinely believe that just being you is enough.  And guess what? It actually will be.  I’ve got your self-fulfilling prophecy right here, fellas.  And you don’t even need a wingman or a facility for negging (seriously, don’t go there)  to make it happen.

    *Every woman should read The Game. For anyone with an interest in pop psychology, it’s an intensely engrossing read.  I’d love the opportunity to interview Neil Strauss. Actually, I’d kill for a joint interview with Neil Strauss and Norah Vincent, the author of Self-Made Man (another must read).