Okay, Europe – here’s your report card. You may say “Bryan, who the h-e-double-hockey-stick are you to give us a report card, and why should we care?” And those are excellent questions, but not relevant to my purpose, which is to frame all world events in terms of how they affect meeeeee. So you can see where I’m coming from on that.

In any event, there are a lot of things here to make fun of, o...r praise, or both, so let’s get going…

First of all: you have a pretty cool thing going, what with all that history and culture and buildings and food and mountains and stuff. We thoroughly enjoyed it. So good on ya there.

Second, and more importantly: the light switch goes inside bathroom. You wanna have the down position be for “on”? Fine, sure, whatever – but switches should go where the lights are.
Here’s a great idea: let’s put all the switches for the entire house on a single gigantic panel next to the front door! Do you know why we don’t do that? Correct, because it would suck. The bathroom light thing? Same concept.
I’m actually curious about what feature of having switch in the hall you find so awesome -- which activity that you perform in the bathroom is enhanced by the potential addition of darkness, provided by someone outside the room?
Or is it that one shouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom without waking everyone in the hotel room?
Or that you should have to guess which is the hall light and which is the bathroom light until you have them memorized?
Get back to me when you have answers, Europe – in the mean time, put the d*** switch in the same room with the light. You’re welcome.

With that clarified, here are some official grades/commentary on the rest of your stuff:

RENTAL BIKES: Big cities with racks and racks of easily-identifiable bikes for rent for a few Euros. Awesome. A+.

THE METRIC SYSTEM: Definite win. The USA (aka Luddite-ville) not only has failed to get with the program (ie, a system that’s easier and more intuitive), some Amerikins are silly enough to make fun of the metric system, or somehow feel superior because they have to divide everything by fours or twelves or eights or sixteens. Basically, when it comes to measuring things, we’re a bunch of hillbillies.

NICE PEOPLE: Now granted, we mostly dealt with people in service or tourism industries, so they’re bound to be at least a little bit invested in politeness, but even when we used our terrible French or Greek or Italian or German on random people in the street, they were unfailingly polite and helpful. A.
Note: in Venice I watched a couple of cops approach a homeless man begging in a plaza. I expected to see them roust him rudely from his spot, but they merely greeted him, shook his hand, and gave him a few coins. Just like at home. Not.

SPEAKING ENGLISH: Unbelievable how many people speak at least a little English. Again, it’s probably to be expected in the tourism industry, but it was also true of random people that we engaged with. When they didn’t speak any English (or spoke it poorly), they were often apologetic about it, kind of like saying “Really sorry I failed to learn your language better in preparation for your arrival...” A.

SPEAKING MULTIPLE LANGUAGES: A-. It’s true, Europeans do tend to speak more than one language. Here’s a joke:
What do you call someone who speaks multiple languages? A polyglot.
What do you call someone who speaks only one language? American.
Har. But here’s my point. It seems to me that while many (most?) Europeans speak more than one language, many of them seem to only speak one language really well, with proper grammar and a good accent. It’s not like everyone is completely fluent in 3-4 languages. So that’s whatever.
Europeans sometimes do a thing when needing to communicate with strangers, where they run thru languages until they find a common one. I’ve always thought that was super cool, and guess what? I got to play the game, twice! Well, I played it more than once, but I mean successfully. It went like this, both times:
Me: English?
European person: Non. Francais?
Me: Non. Espan~ol?
European person: Si!
Us: [many words in Spanish]
After which I felt impossibly cosmopolitan and accomplished. :-)

HOTEL INTERNET: Most of our hotels had free internet, which was nifty, but more often than not it was too weak to pick up reliably, at least above the first floor. D.

SECOND FLOOR BEING LABELED THE FIRST FLOOR: I’m tempted to argue that what we in the USA call the 1st floor (ie, the Ground Floor) is a more legitimate first floor, and what you Yurrupers call the 1st floor is actually the second floor. But I realize that if we reserve the right to label the Basement “B”, and the ground floor “1”, then you should probably be able to label the Basement “B” and the ground floor “0” if you want... Pass.

LATE ROOM CLEANING IN THE HOTEL: It was awesome that the maids didn’t come knocking on the door at 8:30am, and every half hour thereafter. I like being able to sleep late while Deb is downstairs presenting a paper or whatever. A.

TIPPING (OR LACK THEREOF): It was actually kind of nice to have the service built into the price of the meal – the service was decent anyway (maybe not as faux-friendly as at Applebees, but decent), and because we did tip a little extra, we got excellent service from that person thereafter. A-.

CASTLES: Your habit of wantonly and randomly having castles everywhere is awesome. Good job on that. A.

SCOOTERS! I applaud your contribution to the environment, and I admire your almost complete disregard for traffic laws or your own personal safety. Frankly, I’m amazed that the streets of Europe’s major cities aren’t strewn with the bodies of scooter riders and their little machines. My only complaint is that when we all stop for a light, you come buzzing up between the lanes and surround the front-running cars like a bunch of bees, and it’s hard to get going again without running over you. Which we almost kinda feel like doing, to tell the truth. B.

SMOKING: I used to say that Russia is the smoking section of Europe, but a friend corrected me and said that “Europe is the smoking section of Europe”, which turns out to be true. What’s with you guys and the cigarettes? The Mediterranean Diet and all the red wine in the world isn’t going to stave off lung cancer forever. Smoking is bad for you – perhaps you’d like to read up on that, in between all your scooter riding and having castles, or whatever. F.

TINY LIFTS: I get that a lot of your buildings are old, and lifts are a retrofit. Still, I think even Dracula would find some of them uncomfortably small (get it, because he sleeps in a coffin…) In any case, it does encourage one to take the stairs… B.

PATTERNED DRIVING: Slow drivers on the right, fast drivers on the left. Fantastic! Wonderful! And everybody gets it! (If you don’t get it, some guy in a souped-up Audi drives 3 millimeters off your bumper at 140 kph and flashes his lights, so it doesn’t take long before non-European drivers do get it…) It warmed my heart to see, Europe. Thank you. A.

SHAVING LEGS AND UNDERARMS: I’d heard stories, Europe. But thanks for (mostly) getting with the North American program on this one. A-.

CLEANING LADIES WANDERING AROUND IN THE MEN’S BATHROOM: This was a surprise. Not that I care either way, but I think it’s ridiculous that we get so uptight about that kind of thing in the USA. It’s not like she’s actually looking at anything, or cares to. B.

SPORT BIKE DRIVERS IN FULL LEATHERS: Did someone tell all the guys on crotch rockets that it’s illegal to ride in anything but a full, matching set of leathers? It’s like an amateur street race on the A7…

MEN DEB DOESN’T FIND ATTRACTIVE: Nice job on being skinny and scruffy, European men! It turns out I was the only attractive man in Europe, or so Deb says… :-) A+.

WOMEN’S ATTRACTIVENESS: I had the idea that Europe was populated primarily with supermodels. Turns out, not so much. There was the occasional pretty 20-something in Venice, but Deb was far and away the hottest woman to be seen. And the only one I looked at anyway :-) D.

COGNATES!: This romance-languages thing is awesome. Spanish, Italian, French, and even German – once you know a few words in one of them, there are cognates everywhere. Very handy, thanks. A.

MONEY: Your bills are cooler, and the 1- and 2-Euro coins are awesome. Why are Americans so resistant to dollar coins? Canada has had loonies and two-nies for ages, and they’re an isolated, desolate backwater – surely we can do at least as well as they can.
My only gripe is that the Euro bills are so wide they won’t fit in my wallet. Please see what you can do about that before our next visit. A-.

FERRARIS ON THE ROAD: A. Enough said.

CHEAP MEDICATIONS: Paid 10 Euros for what would have cost $80 at home. Something is wrong with this picture. A.

LESS VIOLENCE, MORE NAKED PEOPLE ON TV: So strange that American TV shows all manner of horrible violence, but we all come unglued at a minor wardrobe malfunction (my children were watching! Now they’re terribly scarred!) Please. A.

PUBLIC TRANSIT: Not always completely intuitive to use, but pretty darn good all the same. A-.

TOLL BOOTHS: Inconvenient and expensive to drive thru, but a very efficient way to directly tax the people who get the most use from the item. A-.

ELECTRICAL OUTLETS: I don’t mind that you use big round prongs instead of small flat ones. In fact, I think your plugs stay in the outlets better than ours do. But if you want to be considered a civilized place, you’re going to need a lot more of them. People have a lot of electronic s*** nowadays -- one outlet per room just doesn’t cut it. C-.

BIDETS: Those of us who enjoy having a clean backside thank you. A.

TWIN BEDS: Two twin beds pushed together is sort of like one big bed, but not exactly. If you advertise a kingsize bed, it shouldn’t come with a big crack down the middle that you fall into in the middle of the night because the two halves slid apart on the tile floor. C.

RANDOM ENGLISH ON T-SHIRTS: It’s kind of flattering that you would choose our language to put on clothing, but it would be way more awesome if the words made some kind of sense. “Athlete To Score – 10!” sort of seems to have meaning, but the exact message is a little obscure. Many are worse, like “SMILE TO MOST BANG SKILLFUL” or something similar. B.

PUTTING THE KEY CARD IN THE SLOT TO TURN ON HOTEL ROOM POWER: I admit that this does help one keep track of the hotel key, but on the whole it’s a little annoying. Do you really have a problem with people sneaking in and turning on lights? On the other hand, I guess it’s a pretty good way to reduce electricity usage. B.

NOT PICKING UP DOG POOP, EXCEPT FOR SWITZERLAND, WHERE THEY PROVIDE BAGS IN THE PARK: Yes, I get that it’s poop, and you’re French so you’re too good for that kind of thing, but this is the sidewalk. Or the park. Pick it up, it won’t kill you. D-

CREATIVE BEGGARS: I’ve never been to Cairo or Calcutta, which I hear have the most pitiful beggars in the world, but I’ve seen some pretty sad stuff in Russia and the Ukraine. On the whole, the beggars we saw on this trip were the youngest, most creative, most able-bodied people I’ve ever seen ask for money. One perfectly normal-looking teenage kid just walked among stopped cars with a cup – no sign, no message, no reason, just a smile and “hey, I’d like some of your money”. A Russian woman in Barcelona had pinned a nametag on her jacket and written “AIDS” on a tin can – she informed us she was collecting money “for AIDS”. Barcelona also had a deaf guy who sold pictures of the hand-alphabet, just like at home, plus a guy who stopped by our outside-cafe table and simply said “I’m hungry.” I offered him our pizza, which he folded in half and stuck in a paper bag, then gave me a fist-bump and disappeared. In Venice there were women in black shawls, and young gypsy-looking girls who both seemed to have perfected that sad-eyed, cringing, bent-over, hand-extended look you might see in a cartoon of someone asking for alms. Venice also had the kid with hair covering half his face – shaved short, but thick and brown, just like his scalp hair. In all other ways he seemed completely normal and healthy; it didn’t seem like much of a disability – it made me wonder if he faced discrimination such that he wasn’t able to find work. Marseille had the woman who made a big speech, ignoring my protestations that I didn’t speak French, then at the end switched seamlessly to shouting abuse at me as I drove off. No grade, just interesting…

MUSIC CONCERTS: We found them in every city, just had to look – usually they were in the churches. People seem to have mostly stopped attending the cathedrals for mass/etc, but they seem pretty enthused about the arts… A.

A HUNDRED WAYS TO FLUSH A TOILET: Seems like somebody would have decided what’s the best way to do that, and standardized it, like maybe when you created the Eurozone or something. In any case, it was kind of fun figuring out each new way to do it. B.

NO PAPER TOWELS: Those air blower things suck, except maybe the new gray “air blade” things (or whatever they’re called). Sometimes you need a paper towel, like if you’ve rinsed your face. Try it, you might like it. D.

ADJUSTABLE SHOWER HEADS: Very nice. And compared to California with its water-saver shower heads (the work of Satan), the volume of water was great, too. Of course, compared to California shower heads, a person spitting while they talk would seem like excessive moisture, so perhaps the bar is low on that. A.

TRAFFIC STUFF:

ROAD SIGNS: I think the fact we arrived with minimal trouble everywhere sans GPS and with only a couple of maps is a testament to their effectiveness. The same basic pictograph to indicate you’re on the way to the Autostrade/Autopista /Autostrasse/Whatever the French call it, which I’ve forgotten now. A red line through the name of the town to indicate you’re leaving it. Electronically-posted speed limits, which can vary by lane, traffic conditions, and time of day. And cetera. It would be nice to have a few more how-many-klicks-to-[city name], but other than that, things were pretty good.
TRAFFIC LIGHTS: Not so much on those. They were often small and difficult to spot. Lots of intersections didn’t have them. OTOH, it’s nice to have the arrow on the light so you can control traffic by lane, and it’s really cool to have a yellow light indicating a coming green as well as a coming red.

ORANGE PAINT FOR TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION LANES: Cool. Makes a lot of sense: you can leave the old lines there if necessary, and maybe even use a different paint that will come off easier when it’s time to change back…

YELLOW LINES VS WHITE LINES. This is a huge fail. Yellow vs white seems to have no significant meaning in Europe. This is a thing you guys could learn from most US states: yellow means oncoming traffic, white means same-direction. Easy to stay in your own lane, easy to identify one-way streets. Sometimes it was impossible to tell what lane went what direction. I suppose since in many countries the lane markers were more along the lines of a vague suggestion anyway, it’s not as big a deal, but I sure missed my yellow & white markers...

BLUE FOR PARKING: Parking lots and parking spots are almost always blue. A NO PARKING sign might be just a blue circle with a red slash thru it (ie, don’t do the blue thing here). Very handy. A.

ROUNDABOUTS: Awesome. Quick, easy, intuitive, lower accident rates.

HOOKERS AT THE ROUNDABOUTS (COSTA BRAVA ONLY): Seems very efficient – no more stopping in the middle of the block and backing up…

OVERALL TRAFFIC GRADE: B+

So there you have it, Europe. Mostly your stuff gets “Exceeds Target”, but you have a few things to work on, also. So keep up the good work, and hopefully we can check back in soon...

Let's keep it all about sex, at least peripherally

So what do you think about this take?

From http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-04-23/news/bs-ed-horsey-secret-service-text-20120423_1_three-secret-service-secret-party-colombia

Secrets of the Service


(LA Times/David Horsey) April 23, 2012
By David HorseyWe have learned a secret of the Secret Service: At least a few of those tight-lipped tough guys are not quite as straight-laced and serious as they appear to be. In fact, they apparently love to party like frat boys.
Three Secret Service agents have already lost their jobs after it was revealed that 11 agents and 10 U.S. military personnel engaged the services of as many as 20 prostitutes in one wild night while they were doing advance work for President Obama's visit to Colombia. According to preliminary reports, the dusk-to-dawn drunken sex spree came to light when one of the women -- who insisted that she was a high-paid call girl, not a common street hooker -- got upset when one agent refused to pay her a fee worthy of her status.
The woman complained to the police -- in Colombia, prostitution is a legal enterprise -- and the secret party became embarrassingly public.
To be fair, these particular agents were not part of the elite cadre that protects the president, and there is, as yet, no evidence other agents at other times engaged in the same sort of activity. Plus, as noted, what they were doing was not against the law. Nevertheless, the incident dominated news during the president's visit to Colombia and has given a big black eye to the Secret Service, which, until now, seemed to epitomize moral rectitude and selfless loyalty.
America's image in Latin America took yet another hit from this and it gives the president one more mini-crisis to manage that Republicans will certainly try to use against him. But, whatever the larger implications may be, I find I am most interested in an answer to the same question I had about Bill Clinton, John Edwards and other public men who let their libidos blind them to consequences: What were they thinking?
Surely, a few of the Secret Service agents had qualms when one of their buddies came up with the swell idea of calling in a troop of willing women in short, tight skirts for a night of booze and bunga-bunga at their hotel. Surely, one of them said, "Hey, guys, we're on a mission representing the United States of America in a foreign land. Maybe we should drink a little pineapple juice, play a few rounds of Uno and turn in early."
Or maybe not.
I can hear a lot of people saying, "Hey, they are men, after all, and everyone knows what men are like." Yeah, I know what the men with whom I am acquainted are like and -- sorry to spoil the stereotype -- they would not have done what these guys did. Whether from moral principle, fidelity to wives, concern for doing a good job, mere frugality or simple fear of getting caught, there are plenty of men -- certainly almost all the men I know -- who would not have done what these Secret Service agents did.
Is there something different about guys in law enforcement and the military? Since they are required to exude an intimidating kind of macho in their daily work, does that dictate a high testosterone ethic in every part of their lives? When you are expected to put your life on the line at any moment, does that automatically instill an eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die attitude? Are they like members of a football or rugby team who revel in male bonding rituals that almost invariable include proving sexual mastery?
I'd say yes to all of the above. So, while we should demand restraint and professionalism from these kinds of men when they are carrying out official duties for our country, we should not be shocked if, occasionally, they fail. We did not hire them to do flower arranging or assist in the kindergarten (or to draw cartoons, for heaven's sake). We hired them to use a gun and take a bullet whenever necessary.

All about sex and stuff

Haven't posted in forever. I figure it's time for a post in which I make many broad generalizations based on projections from my experience and recent conversations with friends, and present them as if they were capital-T Truths. I’ve been in a few relationships now, and while I probably am still full of **** a lot of the time, I know a lot more than I used to. Let me also say that the relationship I’ve finally arrived at is incredibly fulfilling and happy, so that’s nice. :-)

Anyway, let’s get started with the sweeping judgments, shall we?

It’s pretty common for couples – gay, straight, or otherwise – to have some measure of asynchronicity when it comes to how much sex each person wants. If it’s pretty close, then you’re like overlapping sine waves, so even if one is higher on average you end up with times when either one or the other may be more or less enthused, and you can meet somewhere in the middle and everyone’s happy.

Other times, you’re further apart. For simplicity, let’s call the partner with the higher idle speed the “man” and the one with the lower idle the “woman.”
;-)

The weird thing is, I believe that thinking styles and communication issues can make this seem like a bigger difference than it is. Women do tend to have more barriers – mostly emotional
ones – and with men everything’s more near the surface (“a sack of wheat, a bit of falling masonry, and we’re ready to go…”)
But at base, I think often we’re closer than it seems – at least in terms of how much we need it and enjoy it when it happens.

Women tend to need a clearer emotional and logistical space to be ready to have sex – recent emotional activities, kids, work, schedules, how long since a shower, etc, etc – all needs to be more or less sorted for them to relax and focus. Men typically need five minutes and a reasonably large object to hide behind. Or for some of us, just the five minutes is adequate. Our thought process goes something like “Hey, look, a woman --> sex.”

But men aren’t stupid, and we learn early that such a direct no-frills approach is a non-starter for most women. So we learn to do some amount of helping to create the space.

In a marriage/exclusive relationship, if we’re asynchronous, the hotter-running partner may also tend restrict how much they ask. If we know she’s not in the mood, we don’t want to create a dynamic where she’s always saying no – we don’t want to mess up the space by pushing when we think it’s useless. (Plus, who likes to be turned down? Rejection isn’t fatal but it’s still no fun.)

But the problem with the filtering system is that when we DO ask, it means more to us. So if one partner declines 3 times in a month (or whatever), they think “what’s the big deal?” But that might actually represent 15 times that the other partner *wanted* to be intimate, even if he/she only asked 3 times.

And obviously it’s okay to not want to have sex sometimes. Everyone has life priorities and pressures, and we don’t expect our partners to drop everything instantly every time we want them. That would be selfish and ridiculous. Unless we’re narcissists, we honor our partner’s right to decline.

But appointing myself spokesman for higher-idle partners (ie, men) everywhere, I’ll say that what we DO want is:

1) Turn us down graciously, with the reassurance that you love us and that it will happen soon.
If you try to create a frame where your partner’s supposed to feel guilty or selfish and wrong for wanting you, you are totally and completely doing it wrong. It’s nice when you act flattered
and regretful that it can’t happen rather than simply brushing us off; acting annoyed is very bad behavior.

2) We want you to understand that when you turn us down, for you it may be a discrete event (ie, We thought about having sex, but it wasn’t convenient, end of story.) But for many men, from the moment you decline until we actually do have sex, it’s like a clock is ticking: a context has been established wherein we want sex but you don’t, and you are fully aware of it. (Note that for guys, desire doesn’t typically just disappear -- it builds – so from now until we have sex we want you this amount or greater.)
At that stage we’re not upset, we’re just lustful.
And if you engage us sexually later that night, you feel like it’s all even: I asked once, you asked once, seems fair. But we may not consider that you initiated anything at all – in our mind you just *finally* said yes to the standing, unfulfilled expression of desire for you that you turned down earlier.
And if we *don’t* initiate, and you don’t either, we go to sleep grumpy, and you don’t know why – the next morning you say “what are you cranky about? you never even tried anything!” That’s because we assume you must *know* we still want you, and we waited for you to initiate because we don’t want to pressure you any more or make you feel bad if you aren’t ready yet.

This is why it can seem to one partner like the other one only remembers the “no’s”. A couple might have sex every day, but it could still feel to one of them like they spent most of the week not getting what they needed: because once we get a “no”, then every possible opportunity that goes by between then and when it actually happens feels like another “no”.
(And remember, for men it doesn’t have to be a very big space to be considered an opportunity.” )
We may be happy with sex 3 times a week, but let’s say we ask in the morning and sex doesn’t actually happen until the following night; and let’s say that during the intervening two days, five legitimate opportunities (that we invested hope in) go by, but get ignored. At the end of the day we got exactly what we wanted, and we're well on pace for 3x a week, but we spent most of two days feeling like our needs were unimportant, like we only have sex one seventh as much as we need. It’s not logical, but hello, it’s about *feelings*, which are notoriously subjective. And which you’d think women would know all about :-)
And if we want it again the next morning, and you say “we just had sex last night”, to us last night doesn’t count as last night, because last night was just catch-up for two mornings ago. :-)
Not saying this is reasonable, but the I-want-sex-and-you-don’t clock may start ticking even if we don’t ask. When we suppress a request because we can tell you’re not in the mood, we can unconsciously already be in that space. And we feel like you should know we always want you – really, how many times have we ever turned you down? – most of our penises have an open-door policy. So:
a. I want you.
b. Yes, right now.
c. When in doubt, see (a).

A lot of stress on this issue would go away if we could just change our view on the whole ticking clock thing. But this is how a lot of us naturally feel, and it can be as hard to change as it might be for you to learn to get over your roadblocks and conditions and learn to regularly enjoy spur-of-the-moment sex in the car or the kitchen or the garage or whatever.

3) We wish for you to prioritize making a space for sex, not make that 100% our responsibility, not just expecting it to happen.
Especially if you’ve already declined an offer -- know that we’re not upset, but we *are* eyeing you lustfully, and waiting for you to make a move.

So what else can one do? When not feeling like it is *your* issue, do what you can to address it (Take a nap? Talk out something you’re worried about? Limit the days where your schedule exhausts you? Go to bed earlier?)
Tell your partner explicitly what he or she can do to help create the space (help me with the housework so it’s not on my mind, make this call for me, listen to me vent, help me pay the credit card, fix the fridge, make me a card, take me to dinner, give me some quiet time, open the wine, whatever).
Maybe you need your partner to ask again, not wait for you to make the next move after you’ve declined – if so, let him/her know that.

Learn to be okay with sometimes giving it a shot even if you’re not in the mood right then. A couple I knew had a 10-minute rule: each agreed to be willing to give it 10 minutes, with right to call a halt after 10 minutes if they still weren’t into it, with no whining or guilting from the other partner.

Some people feel “well, there’s always later, when it will be better/more convenient”, forefronting quality over quantity. But for others, that’s a moment lost, an opportunity foregone, out of a limited and ever-shorter set of opportunities in our lives.

This is important: We would love it if occasionally (okay, often) out of the blue you said “I want you right now on this couch” or “ok, cowboy, show me whatcha got” or just grab us and start in. Or wake us up with your tongue. One you-know-what while driving is worth 50 sandwiches. One random “get over here and [take] me” is worth 100. (Actually 106.25, but I rounded… :-)
Did you pay attention to the above? No, you didn’t, you just said “yeah, yeah, men are pervs” or something in your mind. Go back and read it again, and pay attention this time. Do you want your man to idolize you? Do you want your marriage to be better? Did you overcharge the credit card? Do you want him to fix the broken sprinkler? Do you want him to say yes to getting a kitten? Read the paragraph above every day, and try it out. I guarantee you will be the most adored among women.

Note that this is a boundaries issue: people must give what they feel comfortable giving. When you give more than you’re comfortable with, you aren’t maintaining healthy boundaries. Be honest with your partner (and yourself) about how you can comfortably live; if it feels icky to do something, you shouldn’t do it. But if that becomes apparent to you, own it and do your partner the respect of letting him or her know, so you can at least talk about it.

And this part won’t resonate at all for the devout among us, but I believe it’s absurd for one partner to expect monogamy, while at the same time expecting to dictate the amount of sex in a relationship. If you want your partner to save it all for you, then make a space to receive what they have to give and be willing to meet their needs. To do otherwise is unconscionable: it’s controlling, self-centered, and immoral.

And I’m sure there are things that each partner could do to make the other feel more loved and cherished and valued and appreciated and adored. Don’t be shy to tell each other about them. Even if you’ve told them before, or you think they should already know. Individuals (especially men vs women) just think differently, and most people not above a few subtle (or extremely broad) hints.

That’s all I have to say about that. For the moment. If you disagree, feel free to say so...

And then there's this

Note: there's a shorter version on youtube if you don't want to spend 9 minutes of your life on it -- look for "Japanese Precision"...

Thanks to SI for this :-)

Weird. I was just doing this same thing with my friends yesterday...

For some reason I find this funny

So then this happened...

My motorcycle broke down today, so I walked a quarter mile or so to the bus stop. As I was waiting for the pedestrian signal to let me cross, I saw my bus, which was the last one of the day going to my town. I ran across the street (in front of the bus) and came panting up to the closed door. The driver was apparently mad that I'd made him wait by running across the street in front of him, so he looked right at me, scowled, and drove away.

I expressed my displeasure by waving my finger at him. Seriously, it would have taken him 4 seconds, no exaggeration, to open the door and let me on.

I got on the next bus, which caught up to the first one at a central bus stop/park-n-ride. I got off bus #2, and got on the original bus I'd wanted. As I got on, I said to the driver "Are you going to let me on this time?" He completely ignored the question, told me information about the fare, and pretended like nothing had happened. Then he was really nice to me for the rest of the trip.

Was it the finger that showed him the error of his ways? Probably not, but it kind of makes you think...

:-)

kinda cool...

In which I am moderately rude...

Exit row, aisle seat – had to fight with the checkin kiosk to make it surrender such a prize to me, but it was worth it. Some leg-room, yay!

Window-seat passenger is already there – white guy, mid-30’s, average-looking, frat-boy haircut.
The overhead bin contains one small satchel, plus Window Boy’s laptop in a small case, right in the middle of the bin. I slide the laptop over next to the satchel and stow my roll-aboard next to them. I didn’t do anything that would hurt the laptop, but I did it all quickly, and without looking like I cared much about acting careful. Which I didn’t.

Note for less-frequent flyers: with the overhead bins, it's not entirely first-come-first-served. On a full flight, the basic idea is that overhead storage is for the big bags first, small stuff second; when there’s not much room, small things like laptops go under the seat. It doesn’t make much difference to me, since 90% of the time I check my bag anyway, and keep my backpack with me under the seat. But it’s still lame when the bin’s full of jackets, purses, little gift bags, etc and people all around are trying to find somewhere to stow their big bags.

Anyway, WB frowns at me and says “Is that my laptop you’re moving around up there?”
I say yes.
WB: “Well, watch how you’re treating it.”

And normally I have a reasonable amount of zen going on, but today I’m tired. And the place he’d put it was ridiculous. And he was rude. And I *do* have decades of backing down and apologizing in the face of crankiness. So instead of my normal response (“Sorry about that”), I say “Well, it doesn’t really go here. You could put it under your seat so there’s room for the big bags overhead.”
WB: “That’s why you check your bags.”
Me: “Whatever. Roll-aboards go up here, small bags go under your seat. That’s the way it works.”
WB: “Yeah, whatever. It’s going to be a looong flight.”
Me: “Do you need your ass kicked right now, or do you want to wait until we land?”

Okay, I didn’t say that last thing. But I thought it.

I review the conversation in my mind, conclude that I could have displayed a lot more tact, and also that I’m not sorry. Screw that guy. If I’d left his laptop the way it was, it would’ve slid around during flight a lot worse than anything I did to it.

Five minutes later we’re getting the exit row spiel from the flight attendant. She asks each of us in turn for a verbal “yes” to indicate that we’ve understood our responsibilities and are able to carry them out in case of an emergency. She looks at Window Boy, who doesn’t respond, just stares passive-aggressively out the window.
Flight Attendant: “Sir? Sir? Did you hear anything I just said?”
WB: [finally looks at her, then points to the signage on the exit door] “I was reading that.”
FA: “But did you hear anything I just said?”
WB: [sarcastically] “No.”
FA: “Ok, you know what? I don’t have time to deal with you. I’m moving you to that seat [points to a middle seat several rows back]. Get your things please, and move to that seat.”

WB retires in shame to the other row. I try to avoid being overwhelmed with schadenfreude, but fail miserably ;-)