photo credit: mdanys

Dear irresponsible parents of noisy and rambunctious children,

I have an appeal for you. Well, two actually. And then, I’d like to close with a little motivational information for you.

Please read the entire appeal, even if you don’t want to hear it…I have to listen to your children – the noisy and rambunctious children of the world – for hours sometimes when I absolutely don’t want to; it seems only fair you read this letter, which should only take a few minutes.

Appeal #1: Stop bringing your children to cafés. Maybe the babysitter is sick. Maybe you are tired and trying to suck the energy out of your coffee latte before undergoing three hours of pushing Billy or Daisy on the swing.

Not only do I understand, but I’ll even give you a hug, if you’d like.

*Hugs!*

Okay, but now that you realize how nice and understanding I usually am, try to reciprocate just a little bit.

Do you see me over there working? Or that guy who’s reading and keeps snarling periodically as he glares over the top edge of his page. He has been trying to read that page for the last half hour. And I’ve read that book; it’s good and a quick read.

There are also two men over there in the corner – they are the only ones in here with ties on, if you hadn’t noticed…by the look of them and the attachés at their shiny-shoed feet, I’d say they were having a meeting.

(Usually, meetings are scheduled events with time constraints. Sometimes people will even travel across the world to have them!)

Now, if I can’t hear myself think because your noisy and rambunctious bundle of love is screaming his head off and running around the cafe tables, I tend to believe that those two men can’t hear one another.

Maybe you could do something about that?

Appeal #2: If you simply must take your noisy and rambunctious bundle of love to the café – to the potential detriment of everyone else’s day – would you mind teaching the noisy and rambunctious bundle of love the golden rule or something?

If you don’t know how to and are looking for an example, maybe I can help you with an idea. Give your noisy and rambunctious bundle of love a toy; then, when he starts playing with it, pick it up, wander around absent-mindedly with it, then act like you’re going to give it back… and then wander around absent-mindedly again. Then explain that such a thing is equivalent to the torment café-goers are subjected to when there’s screaming and running around them.

Now, I’d like you to know that since you decided to start bring your noisy and rambunctious bundles of love to the cafe, condom sales have gone through the roof.

I’ve spoken to several people in their mid-20s about the prospect of child-rearing and found that only a select few were gung ho to have children (many did want offspring a few years ago, but recently gritted their teeth and said, “mmm…never mind…”).

One of them said he was saving up for a vasectomy.

And of those potential future parents, all have vowed (without prompt, I might add) to never let their children run amuck in cafés, disturbing would-be reproducers, and that they would teach their children either the golden rule, or about its eastern cousin, karma.

I just thought I’d let you know, on behalf of the stressed out café-goers of the world, that we love you, have compassion for you, but really really would prefer to spend our cafe experience as we’d envisioned it when we bought our espresso drinks and fruity green teas – not wallowing in our own self-pity at the prospect of sharing the cafe with your noisy and rambunctious bundle of love for however much longer you decide to have your oblivious coffee klotch.

I’m done now.

Sincerely,

Tasha N. Shayne

Of course, that’s far from true. And if you stick to any of the following categories, you and your honey baby are bound to come out wearing something original.

Not to mention, if no one can figure your costumes out, it’s even better! You get the pleasure of informing ignorant couples just what your brilliant and original costumes are and then you get to act like you’re just oh, so over their obvious ones.

“You’re a pair of ghosts, right? What, were your mommies on vacation?”

That’s right. Snap!

Okay, let’s get started.

For the corny couple:

Two love birds

Two peas in a pod.

( photo credit: claudiogennari)

For the artistically witty:

Van Gogh and his ear

Pavarotti and his facial hair

For the Mythological:

Dido and Aeneas

Echo and Narcissus
Zeus and Pretty White Cow (Io)

photo credit: Artshooter

Awesome (but forgotten about) Famous Couples:

Chopin and George Sand
Abelard and Heloise
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

For the Looney and Cartoony:

Smurf and Smurfette
Yakko or Wakko and Nurse

photo credit: merlinprincesse

I loved to think about the tremendous coincidence it would have to be for one stranger who places an ad to actually expect some other particular stranger to not only read the “Missed Connections” section, but that particular ad in the “Missed Connections” section, of that one, specific newspaper, and recognize some vague description of him or herself.

Then, I actually was skimming the “Missed Connections” section of craigslist and I came across a description that could have fit me.

My heart started beating rapidly – not because I was excited about the prospect of having a secret admirer, but because the ad was obviously written by a creepy person that I definitely would not want secretly admiring me.

Happily, I read on and realized that I hadn’t been in the store this guy frequents in quite some time and that I don’t own a pink hoodie.

But the whole thing got me thinking about the woman who had missed that connection and how lucky she really should consider herself.

Then, I thought about a good amount of the missed connections I’d read over the years, and I realized that most of them have been pretty bizarre, creepy, or just kind of odd and desperate-sounding.

Though I still find “Missed Connections” fairly amusing, I’ve had the realisation that kind of odd and creepy people actually walk among us, notice us, wish they could see us again, and then write weird things like to us on Craig’s List.

Here’s a sample of ten “Missed Connections” ads posted on Craig’s List by presumably creepy/odd people:

1. Boulder main post office – m4w -41 (Boulder main post office [Colorado])

You: Mailing a box, tattoo on lower neck/between shoulder blades of an anime style bear (?) with blue stars, GIRL-brand backpack, some blue dye in your hair.

Me: short dark hair, black short-sleeved shirt, grey jeans, glasses, hadn’t shaved in a few days, a couple people behind you in line. I look more like 33.

No connection made…I tried to avoid staring… but if I could have borrowed a line from the cowboy in The Big Lebowski, I’d have said “I like your style, dude”!

2.   How was your (frum) lunch? – m4w – 32 (Boro Park Brooklyn [New York])

Today. We were both eating lunch at………………

You ordered __________ and I couldnt help noticing how you were looking at me both while you were waiting for your order to arrive and while eating….. (So was I, looking at you, for that matter!!)

How about we continue punching on our blackberrys, only, this time, i will have your number…..:.)

Fill in the blanks above, tell me what you ordered, and where this took place.

I can’t wait to hear from you.

3. Greenwich – Stop & Shop – m4w – 43 (post rd [New York City, New York])

I saw you today at the Stop & shop, it was lunch time for me. You sat outside the entry to stop & shop, you were smoking & YOU were SMOKING!! I saw you again later at the DD down the hill. Your eyes were captivating. Tell me your eye & hair color & what color pants I was wearing so we know we’re on the right path.
:-)

4.   holy flagged post batman, wtf – w4m rlington t stop, and mista j – w4m [Boston, Massachusetts]

look, i am looking for you j. i look for you everyday on the train, at your stop, in the city. i look for you online and you are never there. the suspense is killing me

5. The open mic stand up was not so good – m4w – 19 (Oakley & Armitage [Chicago, Illinois])

I apologize for my poor conversational skills. I wish I had asked your name. We were sitting up front, which was a little awkward being so close to the stage. I guess that I never really had a good chance to ask your name, considering that I was asked to leave. Let me know if by chance you’re reading this.

6. Ralph’s on Beverly and Doheny Sunday night – w4m – 25 (West Hollywood/Beverly Hills [California])

I always wonder if anyone actually reads these things! This is so sad but worth a try just because I keep thinking about your pecs!

You were wearing a black hat and t-shirt, I was the black chick in a red jacket. You looked kinda mean and kinda depressed-which was damn hot! I intentionally ran into you in the store like 3 times only to get “sorry” from you and that’s about it. You ended up in line behind me and still we didn’t talk. I kept looking back at you-thought you were looking at me too but maybe you were just wondering why the hell I kept staring at you! All the same stuff in your cart I would have bought normally! (sigh)

7. I just fix a leak for you!!! – m4w (nova [Northern Virginia])
I just fix a leak you have and you proposse some nice and delisioso fun time so Im here for you just waithing for your call any time love to be with you! call me please call

8. I still miss your crazy nice ass – m4w – w4m [Denver, Colorado]

Anywhere.

9. hey gorgeous, we met at o’hare a/p, wanna get to know you! – w4m – 47 (denver [Colorado])

hey gorgeous, we met last nite i was heading for ” blank” and you to denver!! i asked you if you knew what time it was… i think i’m in love with you! please write me back and so i know it’s you, tell me when you first spotted me, you asked if it was a chicago or “blank” … i answered “chicago”. i never – EVER do this – but i can’t get you outa my head!!

10. Holly at OK cafe – m4w – 27 (not from here [Atlanta, Georgia])

You were my waitress a week ago…I called you a beautiful Georgia peach and believe I even proposed prior to my departure. Don’t have high hopes, but if you see this say Hello.

photo credit: snaiwed

My vision of the perfect mate was someone who was heroic, smart, determined, of a strong moral fiber, a highly skilled fighter, and interesting. Usually, he also had fabulously defined musculature.

With the bar set so high, the only males who fit such a description were often fictional characters.

Here’s what my Top Ten list looked like when I was 6 –
(in no specific order, as my fondness for these characters likely changed on a weekly basis):

1. Link – from the Nintendo game Zelda. My brother loved Zelda and I spent countless hours sitting next to him while he played, listening to him sing Link’s praises; I guess his appreciation ended up rubbing off on me. Besides, Link seemed to be close to my age – but, he was the only boy I knew who could wield a sword and pull off a green bonnet!

2. All of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – I actually loved the Ninja Turtles all so much that, after returning from dinner one night, I made my family stand around the living room while I staged my own wedding ceremony (my mother was very supportive) to each of the imaginary turtles. Michelangelo was first; he had a great sense of humor.

3. Aladdin – from the Disney version of Aladdin. He just seemed like he had great skin and really soft hair. Plus, he was really nice to animals and knew how to put up with hard women. I actually found him more attractive in his street urchin vestments than when he upgraded to his princely garb – I liked him just the way he was.

4. Westley – Cary Elwes’ character from the film version of The Princess Bride. He’s the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy I ever had a crush on. But he was just so witty! I watched The Princess Bride so many times that I ended up memorizing most of the script, handwriting it out tirelessly, and then re-enacting each scene with my third grade classmates. Westley and I belonged together. Around that time, I also tried to change my name to Buttercup and refused to answer to my own name.

5. Robin Hood – Kevin Costner’s character from the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The character was just so charming and had such good values. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor and all that. I guess he was kind of blonde, too, but he didn’t have blue eyes. And he fought against the evil sheriff, with awesome theme music!

6. Bruce Lee – not really Bruce Lee, but Jason Scott Lee from the film Dragon, which, by the way, my parents allowed me to see way too young; I think I just really liked the idea of his pectoral muscles. The strange noises he made when fighting were a little hard for me to get over, but he more than compensated with his crazy-good jumping skills.

7. Michael Jackson – what girl didn’t have a crush on Michael Jackson in the early 90s? Though, I must say, I never appreciated the gold leotards. Not strictly fictional, but not strictly in everyone else’s reality either.

8. Edward Lewis – Richard Gere’s character from Pretty Woman, which I saw at a sleepover, much to my mother’s dismay. However, when I told her that I was in love with Edward, she immediately told me that I had to see Richard Gere in his modeling days. Thus began a full-fledged infatuation with Richard Gere that lasted into junior high.

9. The Rocketeer – Bill Campbell’s character could fly AND fight Nazis! Plus, he was a determined man in a uniform. If Jenny (Jennifer Connelly’s character) wouldn’t accept him, I was hoping he’d fall, even if heartbroken, into my outstretched arms.

10. Zeus – The Greek god. I had an idea of what he looked like from drawings, and he seemed like a really charismatic person: very good with women. The beard, I could do without, but on the upside, he’d never age. We could be young together for eternity, eating grapes atop Mount Olympus (his powers would prevent any potential nosebleeds), being serenaded by musical cherubs, and sneezing lightning bolts at rivals!

photo credit: Sappymoosetree

Let me start this article off by admitting how petrified I am of spiders. Every man in my life has been transformed, at some point, into an all-powerful spider warrior.

It goes like this: my fiancé will be working quietly in our home office when, suddenly, he’ll hear a shriek from the kitchen; he’ll fall out of his chair and come running with a penny loafer, our 180-pound mastiff galloping alongside him, fur flying. I’ll be in the kitchen when he gets there, pointing wildly and jumping furiously in place.

So, I’m writing this article to spare both my fiancé and me increased potentiality for cardiac arrest in our mid-twenties (no need to worry about our mastiff – he needs the exercise). From everything I’ve been reading, there’s a bunch of reasons not only to get rid of arachnophobia, but to actually embrace spiders (not literally…dear god, not literally) as a wonderful part of one’s natural –– and sometimes home –– environment.

Here are a few that have impressed me as viable reasons to love/tolerate spiders:

1. Spiders have been revered in hundreds of really awesome myths and folk stories the world over. Sometimes they’re cast in the role of Creator, sometimes as gods and goddesses. Check out some of the stories, if you ever have time. They’re fun reads. Here’s one about Anansi the West African spider god: http://anansi-web.com/anansi.html
2. In North America, at least, only two kinds of spiders are truly harmful to humans – the brown recluse and the black widow (and, by all means, get rid of them). The rest actually just eat other insects we usually find pretty scary, including mosquitoes carrying malaria (the world’s #1 fatal disease) and flies carrying cholera.
3. The presence of spiders in your house is a sign that 2,000 fewer bugs per spider will be there every year.
4. In your garden, spiders eat those bugs that love to damage your plants! In fact, they’re used in organic cotton farming for exactly this reason.
5. It’s actually rare for most spiders to bite humans, unless they feel threatened in some way. A spider will probably not find its way into your bed more often than once or twice a year, and on those occasions, will most likely not bite you. It doesn’t want to suck your blood – it just wants to eat insects. Most spiders are unfairly blamed for bites when mites, fleas, and bedbugs are the real perpetrators.
6. Spiders love to eat mosquitoes. That’s a terrific reason to keep them around. Mosquitoes actually want to eat you; spiders are terrified of you, and only want to run away from you.
7. Like I said, spiders generally don’t want to bite you. A spider can’t even see you until you’re about a foot away from it, since spiders have horrific eyesight. Thus, it’s not going to aim for you when it falls from the ceiling (it’s probably just lost its grasp) or when it sees your foot on the floor.
8. Spiders are generally a sign of good luck in many cultures the world over!

Okay, and one incredibly cool fact that I discovered while on my quest for spider awesomeness: Spiders can’t die of natural causes and there are apparently these spiders living in China that were hatched in the Mang-Tsun dynasty 2,800 years ago; they’re known as “holy spiders”!

Now, if you still can’t stand your 8-legged friends, videojug offers a lovely instructional video on how to delicately remove the little monsters from your house:

Random Hilarity:
How To Catch A Spider

It sounds so romantic, stolen kisses in the night. You can see the words in a brilliant but sensitive and heartwarming novel of star-crossed lovers who were reunited at the end of WWII …

There we stood, alone and breathing hard like two school children full of expectation and hope. The others were laughing gaily as the orchestra played our song. Under our own gazebo of stars, for the first time, we held one another and gazed into each other’s eyes. It was magic, but not the kind involving a rabbit and a hat, or even a girl being sawn in half. No, this was love. No, better than love. Beyond earthly description, like Orion’s Belt. The entire evening swirled around us and we were alone in a sea of people, drunk on foolish romance. Not the people, I mean us. Dorothy and I. Alone for perhaps a minute, but not before sharing those unforgettable stolen kisses in the cool autumn breeze of the inky inky night.

I wrote these words in a book I entitled “In a Sea of Your Love,” and was told by no fewer than fifty editors that it was sappy, cliché and amateurish, yet in places spotty with an unconscious intent to be altogether droll. Moreover, ten of the editors chastised me specifically for invoking the phrase “stolen kisses.” What do they know? They sit in their offices on piles of manuscripts and critique the works of others. Is that any way to make a living? I’ve had it with them all, especially that creep Lenny Birnbaum from Simon and Shusters in Manhattan. I doubt that’s even the name of a real publisher.

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Anyhow, between you and I, separated now by fifteen years since I wrote that novel, though it’s not easy for me, I have to admit I don’t even know what “stolen kisses” are. I’ve read about them, but the phrase confuses me to no end. How can you steal a kiss? See what I mean? Doesn’t make sense. You can’t even borrow a kiss, let alone steal one. You can give one and maybe take one, but you can’t steal one. There’s no quantitative way to prove that a kiss is missing, proving that it can’t be stolen. Ask any police detective. It’s not even a crime to steal a kiss. Why? Because it’s not possible.

Nor can you have one out on loan.

image: julianrod

The curator of Atlanta’s Botanical Garden has in past years transformed the institution into a lover’s paradise on Valentine’s Day night, with candlelit paths, misted green foliage and soft music. If that’s not enough to get you in the mood, the Garden serves up rich desserts made of chocolate, specialty coffee drinks, bubbly champagne and martinis.

While you’re kissing your beloved you can breathe the sweet aroma of orchids and be carried away by a man-eating, rare Amazon fern.

Okay, everything’s true except for the part about the fern. Sex is strongly discouraged within ten feet of the cactus display.

image: glitter feet

The blue and pink pair have already won the iF 2009 Design Award and are available in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB varieties.

Check them out here.

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With the abundance of test prep being done nationwide for the SAT, LSAT, ACT, MCAT, GMAT and HAZMAT, is it any surprise that couples are taking a prep course for their New Year’s kiss this year?

You do only get one shot at your midnight kiss after all. (Though I still contend that like the LSATs, a weighted average of past kisses should factor in to the final score, but I don’t make the rules.)

Today 50 New York City couples are meeting up in Times Square for a massive make-out practice session. Organizers are hoping that New Year’s will be the world’s biggest group kiss and claim that it could potentially be the longest in history.

“That is up for debate”, says the Fox News Team. “We’ve been working hard to kiss-up to the Bush Administration without a break for over 8 years now.”

Kissing expert Andrea Demirjian, author of the book “Kissing — Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About One of Life’s Sweetest Pleasures,” will be on hand to help guide the couples as they practice for the lip-lockdown to take place when the famous Waterford crystal ball drops in Times Square on Dec. 31.

Photo: Walmink

Some wifi menu items include: “Mmm Yummy Muffin Only 2 Euro,” “Buy Another Cup You Cheapskate” and Our Favorite (and excuse for posting this) “BuyCoffeeforCuteGirlOverThere?“

I’m for any marketing idea that sells its product and fosters flirtation at the same time.

Read more at DirectDaily: link