You Polish Ladies Need To Step It Up.

From Reuters:

Britons are among the ugliest people in the world, according to a dating website that says it only allows “beautiful people” to join.Fewer than one in eight British men and just three in 20 women who have applied to BeautifulPeople.com have been accepted, an emailed statement from the website showed.

Existing members of the “elite dating site” rate how attractive potential members are over a 48 hour period, after applicants upload a recent photo and personal profile.

Swedish men have proved the most successful, with 65 percent being accepted, while Norwegian women are considered the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted, the website said.

The way that BeautifulPeople.com accepts new members is simple. A potential member applies with a photo and a brief profile. Over 48 hours, existing members of the opposite sex vote whether or not to admit them, the site said.

Options are: “Yes definitely,” “Hmm yes, O.K,” “Hmm no, not really” and “No definitely not.”

The site was founded in 2002 in Denmark and went live across the globe last month. Since then, the site has rejected nearly 1.8 million people from 190 countries, admitting just 360,000 new members.

“I would say Britain is stumbling because they don’t spend as much time polishing up their appearance and they are letting themselves down on physical fitness,” Beautiful People managing director Greg Hodge said. “Next to Brazilian and Scandinavian beauties, British people just aren’t as toned or glamorous.”

Only the male Russian and Polish applicants fared worse than British men, although Russian women had a 44 percent acceptance rate. Polish women did not appear in the table.

German applicants were slated for offering up unflattering photographs, which may have hindered their acceptance rates at 15 percent for men and 13 percent for women, the lowest rate in their category.

“German men and women aren’t faring well, but they are submitting stern images, they need to soften up,” Hodge said.

 

OMG.  I mean, sure, we all curse online dating for the douches that post 10 yr old pics or head shots only while they claim to be tall/fit/mobile, but damn!  A site that will just straight up reject you like the doorman at The Bank – how brutal(ly efficient).   But they’re not without a little compassion, scrolling to the bottom of the sign in page shows you how you can get past the rope and get a peek – “Too ugly to sign up?  Click here to browse BeautifulPeople as a guest“.  Thaaaaaaaaaaannnnks.

 

How Do I Live… With You… I Want to Know: Part 2

A few weeks ago, I did a post about my Boy Person’s impending move-in date, and how, while I was excited, I was also weighing in my mind the ways in which I view this new definition of commitment as a limitation of opportunity.  How very funny, in retrospect.  This week is my first week as a cohabitant, and the challenges thus far are a little different that the ones I was expecting.

I planned to do my second post on the division of housework and personal time – you know, the standard day-to-day things that keep us all ticking along, and seek input on how you divvy up your own allotments of chores and space as cohabitants.  While space is something the Boy and I are still working on, all of that has come secondary to The Most Important Thing in My Life:  My Job.

As seems to be the nature of my job, things lurch along without much of a problem until, all of a sudden!, we enter a solid week or two of panic mode, wherein I am at the office 11 hours a day, perpetually stressed and wiped out and completely incapable of carrying on functional relationships with the people in my Real-Life, to the point where I am too exhausted and irritable to even make a phone call when I drag my ass home.  I get so physically and emotionally tired that I am a fount of irritability.  I am crabby.  I am short-tempered.  I am brittle.  I am the worst version of myself and I have no time for anyone else.  I never meet friends during the week and I don’t even like to call my mom, because when I get home I just want to inhale the little bubble of solitude I have for three hours until I collapse into bed to have anxiety-dreams and wake up dehydrated and achey at 4:00 am.  It is melodramatic, completely self-centered, and I feel helpless to do anything about it. 

 

The Leaves, Dear God, The Leaves

I believe I can officially say that autumn is my least favorite time of year in this part of the world. Yes, I love the brisk temperatures and the glorious colors. But oh my God, The Leaves.

I don’t know why The Leaves are so abundant here. There are trees in Canada, after all. But perhaps given the climate, the trees seem denser, more packed with leaves than any trees I am familiar with. And so when The Leaves come down, it is almost suffocating. I have a 400-year-old sycamore in my backyard. I have a big huge maple in the front. They are MASSIVE. And when they drop their leaves, we are talking what seem like millions and millions of leaves.

The Leaves haunt my dreams. They fall down the chimney. They end up everywhere in the house. If it rains, they form a thick mat several inches thick that is almost impossible to rake. I am constantly sweeping and raking and sweeping and raking. I saw a snake slither out of The Leaves the other day. I have seen dead rodents in them. I dream I am drowning in the The Leaves. I dream they are alive. I am not a nightmare person, but The Leaves freak me the fuck out.

I am also tense about The Leaves and The Trimbles. Fucking Vern Trimble is out in his yard several times a day, raking them. He is an enemy of The Leaves, and I feel his judgment when I am only out, say, several times a week. He plucks stray leaves off his car constantly, and he’s parked under an oak. He is always, always on top of The Leaves. The Leaves are apparently his life for two months every autumn.

 

Life In A House Where The Animals Out-Number The People

 

Dr. Kitteh Will See You Now: Choose Your Pet’s Vocation

My dad sent me a link to a Wikipedia listing featured on BoingBoing about cats with fradulent diplomas.  The Wikipedia article compiles a list of cases in which cats have been enrolled in suspected diploma mills, resulting in degreed felines and prosecution of the academic institutes in question.  To wit:

“Colby Nolan is a housecat who was awarded an MBA degree in 2004 by Trinity Southern University, a Dallas, Texas-based diploma mill, sparking a fraud lawsuit by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office.[1]

Colby Nolan belongs to a deputy attorney general. In looking to expose Trinity Southern University for fraud, some undercover agents had the then six-year-old Colby Nolan obtain a bachelor’s degree in business administration for $299. On the cat’s application, the agents claimed that the cat had previously taken courses at a community college, worked at a fast-food restaurant, babysat, and maintained a newspaper route. Then the school informed Colby that, due to the job experience listed on his application, he was eligible for an executive MBA for $100 more. The agents then sent for Colby’s transcript, which claimed that Nolan had a 3.5 grade point average.

Jerry Pappert, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, filed a lawsuit against Trinity Southern University upon learning that the cat had received the degree.[2] In the lawsuit, Pappert also told the diploma mill, which had used e-mail spam to sell degrees, to provide restitution to anyone who had ordered a degree from them.

 

NSFW: Where’s The Beef? No, really, where is it.

Howdy Hookers!

In the interest of fun Friday Sex Talk, I thought we would talk about something a little sensitive, a little personal.  Let’s talk about the smallest penis you have ever seen!

 

SinisterRouge Has Something On Her Mind.

On Tuesday, New York City re-elected Michael Bloomberg for mayor, by a whopping margin of 5 whole points.  Before the election, polls had Bloomberg as far ahead as 18 points over Democrat (and former New York City Comptroller) William Thompson Jr. Can we please, please, please stop taking polls as gospel truth? How many thousands of times do they have to be wrong before we’ll understand? This time they didn’t count on the large turnout of African-American and Hispanic New Yorkers.

By Tuesday evening, we knew. Not only had Bloomberg’s money succeeded in buying himself yet another term, but this Bush-loving, Republican sloth won New Jersey. Awesome. One of the things that bothers me about Bloomberg’s win is the way that upper-class, educated, mostly white liberals justify voting for him. The press didn’t talk about it too much in this election cycle, since Bloomberg has since left the Republican Party (this makes it much easier to justify…you see, he’s an “Independent” now). I despise everything that Michael Bloomberg stands for. Since first becoming mayor in 2001, after Giuliani failed to use the deaths of thousands to keep the Office for himself for another few years, Bloomberg has done the following:

 

Cat Massage

I just have one question: when did Anne Murray start kneading pussies?

 

Back-and-Forth: When Someone You Care About Is Accused of a Crime

Last night, I dreamed about being in the art room in my high school, where I spent hundreds of happy hours with a beloved and encouraging art teacher and a shifting but close group of fellow students over my teenage years.  In the dream, I was alone in the room waiting for someone, assessing the work on the walls and the photographs of students who had graduated before me but were still held in places of honor.

I woke up late and mused on this remnant of dream while in the shower, before fuzzily shifting my thoughts to the workday to come.  Rushing on my way out of the house, I checked the weather and my email (rainy, and nothing but a Facebook message notification).  Swallowing my vitamins, slipping on my coat, and shoving my umbrella in my bag, I paused in my flurry of motion to click on the email message.  It was from my high school best friend Milford, a fellow art student with whom I lived attached at the hip our final year of school.  I could see only a link to a local news article, and a short intro from him: “this makes me sad.”

I couldn’t click on the link directly from my email without signing into Facebook, so I charged out the door, but the possibilities were limited.  Milford and I keep only in sporadic touch, so either one of our old haunts was being torn down or our teacher, Mr. Bleeker, was dead.  I hoped for the former but with the memory of my mundane dream still swirling, I felt a dread foreboding that it was the latter.

Postponing certain knowledge of whatever had made Milford sad, I didn’t sign into Facebook to view the link until mid-morning.  And then it got worse. 

 

New Stories for Your Ears: Personal Essays, Different Medium

If you’re a fan of This American Life, radio, or personal essays, you’ll want to know about The Moth, a live, non-profit storytelling event held in New York City.  The Moth was founded in 1997 by George Dawes Green, a writer from Georgia who had relocated to New York.  He and a group of friends at home used to gather together on his friend Wanda’s porch to share stories, and he wanted to recreate that close sense of connection in his new life.  So, he invited friends to his New York living room to recreate story hour, and the event gradually grew into larger and larger venues.  Currently, The Moth holds eight ongoing programs and has told over 3,000 stories to over 100,000 people.

Famous participants include Jonathan Ames, Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Simon Doonan, Candace Bushnell, Spalding Gray, John Cameron Mitchell, Susan Orlean, Dan Savage, Suzanne Vega, and many others.  The Moth Outreach Program “offers storytelling workshops to students and marginalized adults living in New York City,” and works “with high school-age teens from underserved communities and with adults in rehabilitation and training programs, including homeless men and women, recently released prisoners, and people recovering from substance abuse.”  Other events include “StorySLAMS” that take place in Chicago, LA, and Detroit, and offer the public a chance to tell their stories in front of an audience, guided by a host.

You can listen to stories on their website here, which is both a wonderful alternative to watching TV this evening and a pleasurable way to pass the time while cooking or folding laundry.  I’m a big reader of personal essays (like David Rakoff, Sloane Crossley, and Jill Soloway, to name a handful), so this is right up my alley.  It’s also a chance to appreciate a narrative form I enjoy in a different medium, and a reminder of the importance of oral tradition and the community aspects of storytelling.  It exposes unexpected layers to hear the emotional voice of the storyteller and the participatory reaction of the audience members, and how each story is alternatively touching, raw, and usually very funny.