How to Woo a Woman

I have just finished reading an article about a “charm school” in Manhattan that teaches men how to woo women. The three-day seminar, including nighttime coaching, applies management science to matters dealing with the human psyche. The coaches are from a company that calls itself Charisma Arts, and the cost for the seminar is $1600.

The men attending the “boot camp” tend to vary in physical attractiveness and professional success. They all have one thing in common - they are lonely, frustrated, and lacking in self-confidence. All of them feel that they lack the dating skills needed to attract and woo women.

The men are taught how to set a mood for wooing, how to engage a woman in conversation and, most importantly, how to let a woman know what their intentions are. A woman wants to know what a man expects of her: is he just looking for a friend or does he have a romantic interest in her. Does he find her attractive? According to the article, the men are told that a good line to use in conversation might be, “Wow, not only are you funny and intelligent, you’re really sexy, too”

After about five hours of instruction and role-playing, the men are finally prepared to go out on the town and approach women - with their coaches close behind instructing them on how to approach different women and strike up conversations.

The first night out, one of the men observed a woman browsing in Barnes and Noble. He struck up a conversation with her, and they talked for about 45 minutes. But the man didn’t know how to advance the conversation into asking her out. He went back to his coach and told him what happened. The coach instructed him to be honest with her. So he went back to her and said his friend had suggested that he should ask her out for coffee. Would she agree? She consented and they had coffee at a nearby place. They later ended up text-messaging each other that evening. We are not told the outcome of this budding romance.

Another man attending the seminar was not successful the first night out. He couldn’t relax as he approached a woman and his conversation sounded forced and mechanical. The second night, however, he was more relaxed and confident as he approached a woman wearing a jacket with big brass buttons. “There,” he thought. “That is my opening for conversation.” He went up to this attractive woman and said, “Hi” followed by his first name. She said “Hi” and gave her first name. Then he intoned, “I love your jacket. I have never seen one like it before.” From there they began to engage in conversation that eventually merged into something they had in common - an interest in art and architecture. After about 45 minutes, he lightly touched her elbow and said, “Wow, not only are you smart, you’re sexy, too. She blushed and said, “Really?”

The man later told the group that his date allowed him to kiss her on their first date.

I Will Remember in November

I will remember
In November
The promises you made
In ‘04.

I will remember
In November
Tax cuts for the rich
And aid cuts for the poor.

I will remember
In November
The secret spying
And Iraqi gore.

I will remember
In November
Abu Ghraib torture
And much more.

I will remember
In November
The many lies
That I deplore.

I will remember
In November
Illegal contracts
And jobs offshore.

I will remember
In November
The Katrina flub
And suffering of the poor.

I will remember
In November
Billions for Baghdad but for Nawlins
Not one oar.

I will remember
In November
The three dollar gas
And after the election, maybe four

I will remember
In November
The wage cuts
While prices soar.

I will remember
In November
Nine trillions of debt
Who knows how much more?

I will remember
In November
The Downing Street memo
Forevermore.

Come this November
I will remember
And in January
It’s out the door.

Blogstream Is a Swift Flowing Stream

(This post is addressed to the distraught bloggers who have deactivated on Blogstream or are considering doing so.)

A lively, bubbling , and swift flowing stream cleans itself quickly after only 30 feet of movement over rocks and sands. Blogstream is like that stream. It may become polluted temporarily, but in a short time (30 hours or more) it renews and purifies itself like the lively, bubbling, and swift flowing stream it is. There are many stalwart bloggers who make up the rocks and sands that help to keep Blogstream free of impurities. An old farmer once said, “If the cow’s around the bend, the water’s fit to drink.” I wasn’t here to see the “cow” that some bloggers apparently had (I was on vacation), but by this time the cow is around the bend; so once again we should feel free to drink liberally of the pure, unadulterated water of Blogstream.

Helping Our Homeless Veterans

As reported earlier in the San Diego Union Tribune, on September 13th of this year a homeless-rights advocate, Larry Milligan, appeared before the San Diego City Council to make a public plea for a moratorium on the city issuing tickets for sleeping on streets and sidewalks.

After using up three minutes of his allotted time to address the council, Milligan requested an additional half-minute to read the final ten lines of his plea. His request was denied. When he turned to the audience and continued reading, he was called out of order, and a request was made that he be escorted from the chambers by two police officers.

All Milligan was requesting was that the City of San Diego (“America’s Finest City”) stop citing the homeless for sleeping on streets and sidewalks WHEN HOMELESS SHELTERS ARE FULL, which they usually are. There are more homeless people than the beds at shelters will accommodate.

In another somewhat related story, the Washington Post reported on March 1, 2006 that a high percentage of Iraq veterans are returning home with mental problems, and reports were coming in of an increasing number of them showing up at homeless shelters. One report has it that 17% of the returning troops have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

One veteran reported that after receiving no support from government programs for veterans, he spent eight months sleeping in his car. When he contacted the VA, he was told that the wait for help was up to a year. In other words, our government is telling our returning troops that once they take off that uniform, they are on their own.

An advocate for setting up homeless shelters said that while our government can find up to five billion dollars a month for spending in Iraq, it cannot find the fifty-million dollars it would take to set up a program for homeless vets.

Meanwhile, as some Americans enjoy their tax cuts and drive their cars around with bumper stickers saying “Support Our Troops”, they don’t seem to care about what happens to those troops who return - some with broken bodies, some with broken brains, and some with both.

These men and women, including some who had suffered through several tours of duty in which they had to be constantly on guard for fear of being killed, and who witnessed unspeakable scenes of their buddies’ bodies being blown to bits, are now reduced to spending all their energies trying to find food, clothing, and especially shelter, where they can sleep without fear of being arrested or issued a ticket as they continue on their journey to nowhere.

(NOTICE: Friday Afternoon - My wife and I are leaving for our timeshare at the beach. I will not be able to post or make comments for a while. I shall continue to welcome your comments while I am away.)

Funny Talk

Do you talk funny? The first time my mother met my father-in-law she exclaimed, “I just love to hear that man talk. He talks funny!” And he did. As a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, he was stationed in many different regions of the United States and had picked up a number of amusing expressions. Some, if not most of them, were hackneyed, trite, over-used expressions; but to someone who had never heard them before, they were colorful expressions that added interest to conversations.

One of the expressions he used was “colder than a well-digger’s patootie”. Now, that expression might not mean much to a modern urban teenager; but when I was growing up, I remember drawing ice cold water out of a well. So I could imagine how cold the well-digger’s derriere was when he was digging the well. After I grew up, I once told a young lady that she had a lovely “patootie”. She smiled and thanked me, but I don’t think she knew what I meant.

Another one of my father-in-law’s expressions that I particularly favored was when he said that something was as “useless as tits on bacon”. That expression had meaning for me because when I was growing up, I went to an uncle’s farm during hog killing time. I remember seeing the “tits” on the sows after they were killed and strung up to be scraped. (Incidentally, at this time the “youngins” would always look for the bladder. They would clean it up and blow it up into a sizeable beachball. You probably remember the song titled “The Sow Took the Measles and Died in the Spring“. Well, as they used to say: they used everything but the “oink”.)

Here are some other colorful expressions my father-in-law used:

“That dog don’t hunt” -used when you thought someone was trying to bamboozle you.

“Like a duck on a junebug” -used when someone abruptly attacks someone else, either physically or verbally. Example: He was on his opponent like a duck on a junebug. (When I was a kid, I used to capture a junebug (a large beetle) and tie one of its legs to a string. When it was turned loose it would fly in a circle as it tried to get loose. Apparently, it was a favorite food of ducks.)

“Harder than pickin’ gnat shit out of pepper” - I think you can visualize that one.

“She's got her tit in a wringer” - meaning she is in a tizzy (Probably not many people nowadays remember washtub wringers, but the imagery this saying evokes couldn't be more descriptive.

“Cold as a nun's fanny” - I think you get the point.

"Busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest" and “Busier than a one-armed paper hanger." - I love the imagery in both of those expressions.

“You don't want to get into a pissing contest with a skunk." - for obvious reasons.

And this expression I heard after George W. Bush became President:

“All hat and no cattle” - I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that this expression originated in Texas and refers to individuals who put on a great show of wealth but have very little material substance to back it up.

Would you like to share some of your favorite colorful expressions from your part of the country with the rest of us?