why you're still single and what to do about it

Recently, I came across an article about a woman's attempts to date successfully at 41. There's some advice from a "dating coach" that anyone could use.

the OK song

I'm gonna plant a 90s song in your head. It's made mostly by Kevin Krakower aka Kevi, and his "band", 1000 Clowns, which I keep remembering (when I do) as 10000 Clowns. Big difference between 1K and 10K, though the song can still be found, together with the history of it all.

the breakup game

I’ve have never been good at saying good-bye of any kind, including funerals. And as a consequence, I have also avoided playing the break-up game as much as I could.

Arabic and Anal Sex

Today I was going to tell some bloggers important things about life, but then I thought I put it here.

security

derping around on tubes I found an interesting comment, which brought back memories of Rimbaud..

Mica rugaminte! (Sergiu feat. Andrei)

I’ve recently discovered a Romanian song. I have a feeling I’ll be referring to it later, so I am posting it here together with its lyrics and Romanian translation.

sexting

I recently had an SMS conversation about sex with someone and I thought I'd better post it here, for the world to see. OK, not the whole world, but rather the 3-4 people who read this blog.

Yet another statutory rape

I stumbled upon a strange story: a 14 year old girl from Iasi, Romania, claims she was seduced by a 22 year old man and he “refuses to continue the relationship”.

puttycat fail archive

Sometimes, when dealing with an apparently normal person, we might tend to forget the full complexity of their personality. If your engagement with the said person is unilateral, as it is usually the case with a public persona, you don't need to know more than what they publish or allow to be published in the public sphere. If, however, you engage with someone on a more personal level, sometimes you need to remind yourself of who you're dealing with..

imprumut dragoste, cumpar sclava, rog seriozitate I

I-am promis lui Z. ca scriu sau incep sa scriu povestea lui cu Mertzank, poveste pe care nici el n-a spus-o, nici eu desi o cunosc. El n-a spus-o ca nu vrea sa se murdareasca, cica, eu ca-s lenes – zice el. In fine, ce sa mai incolo si-ncoa’e, voi scrie din punctul lui de vedere.

Modern Love - His Version

I've recently read in Adevarul ("The Truth" - a Romanian publication similar to Daily Mail) a story in a new "serial" I wanted to comment, as I had some inside information. Then I thought, why comment on only one when I could comment on all of them? :)

Lisa Kennedy Montgomerry

It's not just that her name is annoyingly long, she is easily the most annoying 40-50 y.o. on the face of the Earth. And that says a lot..

Les Chrysanthemes

I thought I dedicate a song to Natalie. It's all I can do.

Natalie Wood, truth drowned

I finally heard a few days ago news that I longed to hear ever since reading about the weird circumstances of Natalie Wood’s death.

Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead

Though we’re all saddened by Amy Winehouse’s joining “Club 27”, I reminisce about some of her songs and also remember other similar deaths.

NSFW: ochiul vedic si sexul anal

I recently discovered a blog where some of the themes attacked as of late here - anal sex and the Vedic eye - intertwine in an unexpected fashion. I am presenting it here for you. (NB: NSFW means that you may find what you’re about to see objectionable).

Love or Lust?

What kind of girl is this dude craving for? At first, I did not watch til the end, I was getting annoyed.

Yo DUB, B gd 2 me!

Every now and then, when my 80s cravings strike, I remember one of the best one hit wonders to have ever hit my ears, infecting me with the dance bug, modifying my DNA and significantly improving my music taste buds.

Farmville infanticide

Recently, the Supreme Court has been debating suppressing violent games. There is clear evidence that they should be taking a closer look at the "innocent" Farmville (or, better yet, do nothing). We’re looking not only at Farmville, but also at South Korean game addictions and Supreme Comedy.

We do not believe that violent games cause violence anymore than so-called “click-games” the epitome of boredom and addiction on Facebook. As if to prove this assertion in the most vile manner, a Jacksonville Florida mother entered a guilty plea in the death of her son:

Alexandra V. Tobias, 22, was arrested after the January death of 3-month-old Dylan Lee Edmondson. She told investigators she became angry because the baby was crying while she was playing a computer game called FarmVille on the Facebook social-networking website. She told investigators the baby cried loudly as she played the game, which prosecutor Richard Mantei identified as FarmVille, a simulation game in which players raise crops and livestock with the help of Facebook friends.

Furthermore,

Tobias then put the baby on the couch and stepped out for a cigarette to regain her composure, the arrest report says. When she came back in, the family dog knocked the baby off the couch. The crying started again and Tobias shook the baby a second time before calling for an ambulance, the arrest report says. (..) She told the judge she'd graduated from high school. Court papers say she went to Samuel W. Wolfson Senior High School in Jacksonville. The paperwork also said Tobias did not have a job. (..) According to court records, her child abuse arrest violated a six-month probation she began serving just a few weeks before after pleading no contest to a domestic battery charge.

Farmville may have had other, even more counterintuitive effects. A story from just a few days ago in SeattleWeekly suggests that 27 y.o. Gary A. Veldhuizen from Ferndale, FarmVille player, pleaded guilty to raping a goat (i.e., bestiality):

The billy buggering took place at a farm near Enterprise Road at Willeys Lake Road in May. Apparently a family member caught Veldhuizen in mid-shag and called sheriff's deputies who came and arrested him. Veldhuizen's Facebook page shows the pudgy Ferndalian's love of ranch life extends to the virtual world as well, as he is a big fan of the game FarmVille. One of the more recent posts says he wants to "share some grape bushels with you."

Incidentally, Farmville has also other similar “click” games, one involving Mafia and organized crime, but that game has yet to result in someone’s death.

South Korea Online

Sad as it may be, this is not the first time addictive, non-violent games were involved in the death of children. Only a few months earlier, in February-March 2010, a South-Korean couple was arrested for starving their 3-month-old prematurely born daughter.

Once a day, between 12-hour stretches at a neighborhood Internet cafe, they fed their baby.  Instead of nurturing their own daughter, they became obsessed with raising a virtual child in the popular role-playing game called Prius Online. The couple were arrested in Suwon, a suburb of Seoul, 5 months after reporting the death of their baby.  The baby’s autopsy showed that she’d died due to a long period of malnutrition. (..) This is the dirty underbelly of South Korea’s fast and cheap Internet connections.  Over the last ten years, there have been many stories of Internet addiction and compulsive gaming leading to serious consequences and even death. In 2007, South Korea established an Internet addiction camp to help people overcome their addiction to the Internet.

According to PBS, in the more than 20000 Korean “PC Bangs” (i.e., Internet cafes), the more time you spend playing, the less you pay:

• Roughly 50 percent of South Koreans play games regularly, and 75 percent of gamers prefer online games
• Currently, the most played game in Korean "PC bangs" (Internet cafes) is Aion, a massively multiplayer online role playing game. It is due for release in the U.S. in fall 2009.
• In December 2008, the Korean government announced it would invest $237 million in the game industry to help expand gaming exports, which topped $1 billion for the first time in 2008.
• The South Korean online games market is expected to exceed $1.7 billion by the end of 2009
• Korea hosted the first Global Online Game Awards in 2008
• One-third of South Korea's population of 48 million has registered to play the game KartRider at least once
• Video game consoles, such as Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Wii, are less popular than PC games, in part because of widely available broadband Internet and a previous ban on Japanese cultural imports.

In 2005, a 28-year-old Korean man died after playing Starcraft almost non-stop for 50 hours. He inspired (or was he inspired by) the South Park WoW episode. He had just been fired for playing games too much. The government solution is Jump Up Internet Rescue School, a boot camp to cure online gaming addiction. According to New York Times,

South Korea boasts of being the most wired nation on earth. In fact, perhaps no other country has so fully embraced the Internet. Ninety percent of homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband, online gaming is a professional sport, and social life for the young revolves around the “PC bang,” dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner. (..) Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem. (..) To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer. Researchers have developed a checklist for diagnosing the addiction and determining its severity, the K-Scale. (The K is for Korea.)

NYT offers even insight into how such addictions get started:

One participant, Lee Chang-hoon, 15, began using the computer to pass the time while his parents were working and he was home alone. He said he quickly came to prefer the virtual world, where he seemed to enjoy more success and popularity than in the real one. He spent 17 hours a day online, mostly looking at Japanese comics and playing a combat role-playing game called Sudden Attack. He played all night, and skipped school two or three times a week to catch up on sleep. When his parents told him he had to go to school, he reacted violently. Desperate, his mother, Kim Soon-yeol, sent him to the camp. “He didn’t seem to be able to control himself,” said Mrs. Kim, a hairdresser. “He used to be so passionate about his favorite subjects” at school. “Now, he gives up easily and gets even more absorbed in his games.” Her son was reluctant at first to give up his pastime. “I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.” But later that day, he seemed to start changing his mind, if only slightly.

The Supremes

In USA and especially California, addiction is not seen as a problem. The “problem” is solely violent games. Recently, the Governator signed a strict law to control game violence, a law eventually appealed by a Game producers association all the way to the Supreme Court. The hearings were, according to the Hollywood reporter, cause for comedy:

1. Justice Alito getting a sly dig at his colleague over "original intent" in the U.S. Constitution: "I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them?"
2. Justice Kagan, the junior member of the high court, trying to show she's hip: "You think Mortal Kombat is prohibited by this statute? It's a candidate, meaning, a reasonable jury could find that Mortal Kombat, which is an iconic game, which I am sure half of the clerks who work for us spent considerable amount of time in their adolescence playing."
3. Justice Breyer creating, excuse the pun, a tortured metaphor about a 13-year-old playing video games depicting violence: "I have tried to take as bad a [scenario] as I could think of, gratuitous torture of children. OK. Now, you can't buy a naked woman, but you can go and buy that, you say to the 13-year-old. Now, what sense is there to that?"
4. Justice Scalia muses about whether it would be a good thing to let juries act as censors: "Juries are not controllable. That's the wonderful thing about juries, also the worst thing about juries."
5. Just about anything out of the mouth of Justice Sotomayor, including these questions:

• "One of the studies, the Anderson study, says that the effect of violence is the same for a Bugs Bunny episode as it is for a violent video. So can the legislature now, because it has that study, say we can outlaw Bugs Bunny?"
• "Could you get rid of rap music? Have you heard some of the lyrics of some of the rap music...?"
• "Would a video game that portrayed a Vulcan as opposed to a human being, being maimed and tortured, would that be covered by the act?"
• "So if the video producer says this is not a human being, it's an android computer simulated person, then all they have to do is put a little artificial feature on the creature and they could sell the video game?"
• "What happens when the character gets maimed, head chopped off and immediately after it happens they spring back to life and they continue their battle? Is that covered by your act?"

It seems to me that Schwarzenegger, though not a big fan of such a law, signed it stating “children must be protected” not because he believes that, but rather because he thinks that reason is unconvincing for parents. All hopes that such ill-conceived legislation will be stopped so that it does not push game development to Asia rest now with the Supreme Court.

Video: PBS: Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, 1 Game Too Many, sp-mlnw, sp-s10e08-inside

Sources / More info: [yt-fv-parody], [yt-fv-tr], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-fv-prblm], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-h8-fv], [Supreme Court], SC-hearing, Jacksonville-mom, jacksonville-sentencing, huff-j, /.-exodus, /.-sc, atlantic-arnold, nxtwb-sk, st-kd, nyt-kbc, gzm-bsy, Kogia-study, wiki-lv,notwc, sw-veldhuizen, fb-veldhuizen, bbc-spanish-piglet

VerbaVolant, farmville, violence, game, games, online, online games, supreme court, supremes, mmog, mmorpg, massive multiplayer, massively multiplayer, schwartzenegger

average people, average lies

Many years ago, in the current gallaxy, a book purporting to show a male’s inner thoughts was published. ‘twas called The Average American Male: A Novel and it sold well. Though in this age of suffocating political correctness I had expected to find numerous echoes, this was not the case. Now that the sequel was published, let us have a quick look at all the hoopla and videos.

Zamolxe told me in a comment that my language might be NSFW. Bollocks, I say!

Sure, I like to tell it like it is. But so does most other male, sick and disgusted of having to play a role he hates, only to get by, to avoid ending up in jail or to get laid. We’re all dawgs, it seems, and we need to pretend we’re not in order to please our biatches.

When, a while back, I revisited the old book of truth, I found it difficult to believe that it is one of the very few books transforming truth into entertainment in such a manner. Should I be surprised though, considering that only a few decades ago the Diceman was banned for life from MTV and there were feminist demonstrations against him?!

So what does the “average american male” think, really? Here’s a sample:

The one good thing you can always count on at Century City, and any place in this fucking city for that matter, is that there will always be a shitload of hot bitches with perfect bodies walking around. As chance would have it, I’m staring at one when my girlfriend says, “Do you wish I looked like that?”

I wonder if the three hours I’ve spent looking at shoes and other gay shit could possibly earn me one second of honesty with Casey. Probably not. Instead of answering her, I just look up at nothing in particular and say, “Do you smell pizza? I’m hungry.”

You get the idea. What really surprises me is not so much that such a book is being sold, but the implication that there may be women who do not know this, and even more frightening, that there may be men who do not know this. How did we get here?

...

Back in the 80s, two New York women, tired of looking for men like the Russians in Moscow, wrote a book on how to get a men by following a few “rules” and pretending you’re someone you’re not. They called it “The Rules” and it became an instant success. Most rules dealt with important things such as how long to wait before calling him back, or how many dates to withhold sex before “allowing” for it. Men waited about a decade before coming up with their own rules, crystallized in the “alt.seduction” community.

And things went on like this for another decade..

In the old times parents arranged marriages and adolescents were angry at parents for a while, but proceeded to make babies and went on with their lives. Today, we were led to believe in free will and that “love and respect should be the foundation of a marriage”. As a result, we either divorce shortly after marriage (as more than 50% of marriages end) or don’t get married at all. More and more people discovers “the joys of being single” and live miserable lives as a result. They’re still angry at their parents.

Like Dr King before him, xkcd had once a Beautiful Dream:

But maybe all this crap is for the better. People have started exploring “alternative lifestyles”, like polyamory, which is a way to make unhappy more than one person..

Sources / More info: zamo-test, av-am-male, lie-inside, avam-inside, dirty sanchez, i-m-bitch, golddiggers-la, rdt-single, evo-poster, yt-av-am

Cracanel, average american male, men are from mars, sex wars, sexwars, communication, war of the roses, sexism, chauvinism, male, female, dawg, biatch