**REVIEW** Book of the Month (BOTM) Club

Remember the Book of the Month Club? You know, back before Audible got to be so popular? Yes, well, I checked it out recently and I'm not such a fan.

I open and close my Audible account like a crazy girlfriend who is in one of those love-hate relationships. It's all based on finances and health. If I'm broke but having a decent few weeks of health, I shut my account down. Then I'll get sick and stuck in bed for several days and need Audible to hold and comfort me until I'm feeling better.

The other day, I was stuck in bed again and started thinking it would be nice to hold an actual copy of a book and read myself past the icks. So I signed up for the Book of the Month Club. I had immediate regrets.

First of all, what the hell is up with that Satanic-looking logo?

I'm putting a spell on you!

Okay, I'm just being silly with that one. Kind of. That is some weird-looking symbolism though. Makes me want to wrap myself in tin foil and douse myself with some holy water. Ugh.

Getting past all that, my real problem with BOTM is that you can't just go in a choose a book from a large selection. Matter of fact, you can't go in and choose a book at all until someone says "Go!" (Why didn't I read the FAQs first?)

Because I subscribed near the end of a month, I was told that I had to wait for the next month's selections before I could choose a book.

Strike One.

They sure didn't wait until the next month to charge my debit card. So, what? I was stiffed out of that month's book? I decided to wait and ask about that later. I was still sick and didn't have the energy to email a nasty letter right then.

The next week I get a notice that now I can choose a book from that month's selections. Soon as I can, I go over to pick out a book. I see 5 books lined up to choose from. FIVE. Just five. This is what's printed on the selection page:

We love these five books, and think you will too. Choose your favorite today.

Strike Two.

Here's the thing: I don't care what books someone else might "love". Really, I don't. (And, by the by, I didn't like any of the five books that these other folks were so in "love" with.) I thought that I was going to get to pick a book from a wide selection of books. Apparently, I was wrong.

Members aren't limited to choosing from those featured 5 books (thank goodness, because those all sucked), but when I checked out the wider selection of "Extra Books", I discovered the selection wasn't that wide. Also, I wasn't thrilled by what I saw.

Okay, well, different strokes, right? Apparently, there are some people who like the BOTM thing. Good for them. It's not for me so I decided to cancel my unused membership. And... of course, that is never made easy.

Strike Three.

I had to hunt through the FAQs (which I was obviously reading for the first time) to learn that I had to email or call BOTM to cancel a membership. Fine. I shot off a quick email. This is the response I received.

Hi Trudy!

Thanks for contacting us. Since it’s the beginning of the month, we’re responding to a large number of excited customers, so it may take us a few days to get back to you. Rest assured, we’ll be in touch soon to address any issues you may have!

If you’re having an issue with your box and need immediate assistance, please call us at : 1-877-236-8540. We’re open Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.– 6 p.m. EST.

Oh no no no they di'int! (I sent a follow-up email basically telling them to get my refund processed as fast as they processed the withdrawal.)

Yeah. So. I learned my lesson. No more BOTM for me. I'm still looking for membership in a club that will allow me to choose actual books to populate my bookshelf. I don't need a BOTM that limits my selections or tries to sell me "swag" ($20 book totes with cheesy sayings printed on them or something called "Sunday Socks" for  $10). I just want to buy a book every now and then.

I guess I will just put my Prime membership to use or see what Barnes and Noble has to offer. For now, I have to go and make up with Audible again. Our relationship needs work but we've got a good history.

Peace
--Free

When Truth Hurts

You know how you know what you know but wish you didn't because all that knowing can sometimes be painful?

I know, right?

If you care a great deal about anyone - a child, a lover, or a very dear friend - this right here is one of those sometimes painful truths:

~sigh~

See what I mean?

I have a flaw (yes, only one!): I always think I am right about everything. Ev-ver-ry thing. Especially when I am being critical of someone else's behavior. Or choices. Or logic. 

When The Girls (you know, those 2 kids my sister, mom and I raised in our little village of family) were young, I hated to watch them make mistakes. I didn't want them to find out the hard way what it meant to choose a bad "friend", walk away from a good friend, or crush on the worst guy ever. As their auntie and one of their protectors, I wanted to talk them out of doing things that I knew they'd end up regretting. 

Here's another painful truth my mother always preached: Sometimes you have to bang your own head against that brick wall of life to learn a lesson.

I still attend classes

I've learned from (most of) my mistakes. The girls learned. We all do. Well, we do if we at least admit we are human enough to make mistakes.

What I can't deny, I'll try to ignore

What I love is when people dim their mistakes and flaws by shining a light on someone else's. I know some folks like that. They are the ones who sit on their mountain  to laugh at someone else's molehill. I'm just waiting for the day when they need to borrow my shovel to dig themselves out of their fantasy that they are better than the rest of us. Even if I'm still busy using the shovel for myself, they will learn to see themselves a little clearer when that light is turned back on them. I know this from my own experiences.

I just realize I have another flaw (that's two!): I tend to ramble when I try to blog on the fly! (I'm supposed to be doing a trial run of packing to see how much will fit in my suitcases. I only have one more weekend to finish everything...)

Well, that's today's post. Hope you enjoyed it.

Peace

--Free

"Nice" People and Their Dirty Deeds

What is the worst thing you have ever done to someone? Steal from them, cheat, lie on them?

The worst habit I practice
&
The one I hate most

The worse thing I have done to someone is to make them feel insignificant. It was a long time ago and, thank God, I learned how damaging that action can be.

I know lots of nice, wonderful (and, in some cases, Christian) people. I know folks who would feed a stranger with the last crumb in their pantry. Unfortunately, some of these people do horrible things every day, many times a day. The sad thing is, most of them probably never think about the dirty deeds they do.

Most of the best things I know about being a decent person are ones I learned from my mother. I'm better at some of these things than I am at others, but I am a work in progress. One of my less attractive habits (that I still cling to with a little bit of selfish relish) is calling people out on this blog. Sorry, but this is my rooftop and I'll shout if I want to!

A lot of us need to be called out every now and then. Like Carly Simon sings in"You're So Vain", some of you might think this song is about you.If so, then just do better or stay miserable. So, in my best Jeff Foxworthy voice (if not his humor), I present:

You Might be a Dirty Deeder...

• You talk, talk, talk, but never listen, listen,  listen
• You are annoying in the same was ways that others annoy you
• You've forgotten how to say "Please" and "Thank you"
• You think that being bossy makes you a boss
• You never think of anyone but yourself (and it shows)
• You take people for granted
• You have a "God" complex - your universe, your rules
• (God will deal with that one)
• You mistake your faults for strengths
• You're only good to people when you get credit for it
• You mistake being a control freak for being in control
• You forgot everything your elders taught you about being decent

Do you know people like this? Do you have friends like this? If you are young, you might as well know that you'll likely meet a lot of people who practice dirty deeds. This article could be helpful.

It happens

I've been on the giving and receiving end of careless unpleasantness. Once upon a time, if dirty deeds were a band, I'd have been the lead singer. These days, I'm just an occasional groupie. What helps me is feeling that my mother is watching me from Heaven and shaking her head when I go on the road. Mostly, I try hard to make her proud.

And make sure you don't choke

As a (mostly) reformed member of Dirty Deeds, I am forming a self-help group. Not really, but I have some advice that I know my mother would approve of. Matter of fact, I learned this from her as well:

• Don't say you care. Care.
• Try to hear yourself with the ears of the person you are talking to.
• Know who you are dealing with and adjust your approach accordingly.
• Learn to bite your tongue. It's a metaphor and won't really hurt so much.
• Interact with and speak to your elders in the way you will want your children to mimic.

My mother wasn't big on words. She didn't often say that she loved me, but she was the queen of actions. Even so, I didn't realize what was truest about my mother's good heart until I saw this

Don't know who he is, but I like this thought

Peace

--Free

Annoyed by Advertising

As I am packing up, I spend lots of time watching shows on either Netflix or Hulu. Netflix is my favorite because I get to watch my shows ad-free. Hulu... Well, I wonder sometimes why I even bother to watch anything on Hulu. For one thing, they have this annoying habit of asking which ad I'd prefer viewing. Seriously? I'd prefer not having to use the Page Reload trick to skip the usual 5 commercials they show.

Are there ads that I don't mind? Sure. I liked the one with the little girl "driving" from the backseat while her dad does donuts in a parking lot. I liked it. The first twenty times I saw it. When I see it now, I find that adorable little girl to be an irritating brat I never want to see again.

I'm not just annoyed with TV ads. I hate almost any kind of advertising.

whatev

The worst advertisements are the ones that so clearly misrepresent the service of whatever company they hype. Capital One? Yeah, I want them in my wallet until I'm two days late with a payment. Bank of America? Well, they might want to sell themselves as a giant of customer service, but I've seen first-hand how lousy they are at employee relations... Such a joke.

Whenever Jennifer Aniston comes on to tell us how Aveeno is her secret weapon of beauty, I want to ask for a notarized statement of truth about the photoshop and makeup artists that are hiding behind the backdrop. Come on now. There's nothing wrong with a little vanity, but when you are lying to your fans about your "natural" beauty, I start seeing visions of Diane Keaton's and Ellen's un-photoshopped pics. Fight the battle of the wrinkles in the front lines next to me, but stop lying about your results.

Then there is the ad for some car. The prospective customer is hesitating over his purchase until he recalls all the good deals he's missed out on his life: dumping some now-famous actress because she was ugly; skipping out on the Twitter start-up because he didn't understand the 140 character idea... So, yeah, he better jump right on buying this new car. That's so stupid, all I can do is shake my head. The girl was an investment in love, the start-up was an investment in finances. The car? That's going to lose value the minute you get your car keys from the dealer.

Is it that ad agencies are lazy? Or do they just realize most of us pay only the most minor attention to anything we see or hear?

Tell you what, I was fascinated when someone took screen shots of all the fine print shown in minuscule font at the bottoms of most ads. I still needed to wear two pairs of glasses to see the enlarged shots of those. Once I saw them, I realized I'd need a top attorney, a linguistics expert and an inside man from Madison Avenue to interpret the fine print.

Why not just advertise what you're selling without all the lies, hoopla and spin? Just tell me that the candy tastes good. I don't need to believe it's going to make me see psychedelic colors or swim across the moon. I just want to know whether it's chocolate or not, does or does not have nuts, and maybe if I can buy it in a multi-pack or singles. If you're selling makeup, I only need to know if it's got sunscreen and what shades it comes in. Laundry soap: with bleach or without?

Car commercials are the most outrageous. Apparently, car companies are selling way more than a machine that goes forward, backwards and stops. I guess it's not a "car" if it doesn't talk to you or entertain you. Oh, and don't forget that any decent car must inspire drivers to play music inspired by Motown or 80's teen movies so that people pulling up alongside in traffic will want to dance and sing along with you and your car. Huh?

And what's with the people in the commercials? Where are all the folks that I can relate to? I've never seen people so happy to do dishes, laundry or other chores as the ones who appear in commercials. If we believe advertising, all our homes are full of light and sunshine and families who are nicely and neatly dressed enough to, well, appear in another ad.

Even the sort-of-cute ads by the popular nighttime cold medicine was a laughable jab at my self-esteem. You know the one - it showed people getting such a good night sleep that they were (supposedly) unconcerned with the way they looked. Yeah. Out of five or six people, there was one seriously real-life looking chick. She must have really had a cold at the time she filmed. The others - hah! - they could have been models for a pin-up calendar called "Sick and Sexy". (I might need to work on that title, but you get what I mean.)

I'm so sick of commercials now that, as I'm packing, I get the most stuff done the minute I hear an advertisement begin.

Maybe when ad agencies realize that they are starting to get stale with their "new and fresh" approach, they will just get back to basics. We really only need to know 3 things about any product: what it is, how much it costs, where we can buy it. Otherwise, it's all "adverse-tising".

I'm dreaming into a worm hole if I think even one advertiser gives a whit what I think. But, um, isn't that the whole point of their existence?

Peace
--Free

Love Food, Not the Shows

I love food, so I should love shows about food. And I do.

"Unwrapped" is probably my favorite because not only do I get to find out just how some of my favorite snacks are made, I get to find out about things I've never had a chance to try. "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" is fun because Guy Fieri seems to have so much real fun visiting the different eateries. He's cute with his family.

What I can't stand are show like "Man vs Food", "Bizarre Food",  and "Dinner Impossible". Let me break this down:

Watching "Man vs Food" makes me feel a little ill. When that dude puts down that much food in one sitting is just a glorification of gluttony. I have caught sight of this show more times than I'm proud to admit. I usually last until I find out what monster-sized meal he's going to try gnawing his way through, but when he starts sweating and dribbling on his napkin, well, I'm just done.

"Bizarre Food' is interesting. I'm always fascinated by foods from different cultures. I grew up in a culture where every part of the pig, ox and cow is not only eaten, but craved by a lot of folks. The thing that irritates me about Zimmerman is that I can never gauge how well his taste relates to that of most westerners. He will eat the anus of an alien and remark about the smokiness and layers of flavor. Rarely does he go ahead and just say how gross most of us would find a dish. I mean, come on, man: tell us that something is just delicious to you and the people who grew up acquiring a taste for it.

I admire the guy who does "Dinner Impossible" because he seems to do a lot of charitable events. It's his over-the-top manner that turns me off. He has figured out his TV persona and he works it like a boss. Very annoying. He's probably a super nice guy, but I can only take about five minutes of the "realism" that is him.

I'm not ashamed to say that I used to dig me some Paula Deen. I'd never use her recipes because of all the pounds of butter and other fatty stuff she uses, but I liked that motherly attitude she had. It wasn't her use of derogatory terms for ethnics (specifically, the "n-word"), but when I heard that she had a super-foul mouth. This was probably two years before she weathered the accusations a former employee made about her (and her son, Bubba). I just lost my liking for her when I realized she wasn't anything like my own mother or any other mother I could truly admire.

Now, don't misunderstand my irritation with these shows. I have nothing against eating flavorful and seasoned food. My peeve is when some shows seem to encourage people to over eat or just slam down any and every kind of food. I can't get a handle on what media wants more: to have everyone thin and beautiful with great cholesterol numbers or folks who glut until they can't breathe.

I do like it when food shows try to help teach ways for saving time or money in the kitchen. There just aren't enough shows like that. I used to like "30-Minute Meals", but...

Rachel Ray is just a little too damn perky for me. She's probably belongs in the club of the perfectly nice (right along with the "Dinner Impossible" guy), but, boy, I can only take so much of her hyper-happiness. She is really a cute lady though, isn't she?

My sister likes Bobby Flay and his "Throwdown" series. Not me. He comes off as the kind of person I avoid on a prejudice. I prejudge him as arrogant and grating. My sister agrees, but she finds his ways cute. He does too. You can tell.

Love, love, love the "Two Fat Ladies". I don't find many of their finished dishes to look very appetizing, but they are so much fun to watch. They seems so down to earth and real. They do no posing for the cameras - unless they are pretending to be women who don't pose. Fun stuff.

I really like Ina Garten on "The Barefoot Contessa" for the same reasons I like "Two Fat Ladies". She's so elegant without being frou-frou. I like how naturally loving she and her husband treat each other. I also like that she looks like someone who actually eats what she cooks (and that she cooks it without pounds of butter). She just seems like a person who'd have you in her home for dinner even if you don't live in her zip code.

In the We Never Agree category is "Good Eats". My sister doesn't like it. At all. I love it. I like learning not just about a certain dish but also how and why it's best prepared a certain way. Not that I often use what I learn. I have watched shows on fixing meat in a dutch oven right after I tossed my tin-foil wrapped steak into an oven that I forgot to even turn on.

Anyway.

I have food on the brain tonight. My girlfriend called and gave me a recipe for steaming my vegetables in broths and stocks instead of plain water. I can't wait until she mails me her son's recipe for vegetarian collard greens. (When you stop giggling about what I just said, think about all the fatback, smoked hocks and necks most people season their greens with. I'm not that bad, but I'm looking for more flavor without going broke buying smoked turkey wings.)


Peace
--Free

(I tried linking to videos of the mentioned shows. Sure hope I didn't pick ones that contradict any of my complaints!)

Websites That Reveal and Repel

If I haven't done this before (my memory is asleep and I'm too lazy to check old posts), here are some of things websites do that will have me clicking the the close button in a hurry. I'm not naming names (mostly). You know exactly who you are...

• You blast sound at me as soon as the page loads. Sound from your embedded music player, sound from an ad or, worse yet, sound from something that sounds like porn (and you aren't even a porn site). Notice the YouTube vids on this blog's sidebar. I leave it up to the viewer to decide whether or not they want to share my "Song of the Day" or not. No pressure.
• And if you do force your tattle-tale audio on me, I have to go scrolling all over the place to find it so I can shut that sh*t down. (Well, I use to look for the Mute button. Now I just close out of the site. It's less disturbing to my nerves.) I mean, come on. Forget being at work or some other place where you shouldn't be checking out the sleaze that is mediatakeoutdotcom anyway. What about when you are just sitting up home late at night with a sleeping child, cranky roommate or jumpy pet in the vicinity? I clicked on a shopping site one night and the blast of an ad nearly made my cat climb up the side of my face. STAHP! Just. Stop.
• Your page barely finishes loading up before it's flashing your damn plea for me to "Like" you on Facebook. First, we all know how I (and many other people) detest any and all things FB. Second of all, why would anyone "Like" your page until they have a chance to even see it? If it's not Facebook pimping, it's a beg for me to subscribe - to a newsletter, email list, or whatever. That right there is a turn-off. It really just makes me NOT like you, or want to subscribe to your page, or ever click on another link to your site. EVER. I went to a site once after hearing about their fashion items. It took me two seconds to leave because there was no way to see anything on the site without first joining up. That's so stupid. How about you let me see what you're offering members before asking me to join? That's like letting me meet one person in your clubhouse and making me sign a blood oath to love all the members before I get in the door. Nah. You can miss me with it.
• The sites that post great articles or interesting information need to stop spoon-feeding it out. If I have to click "Next Page" every two paragraphs, I will get annoyed enough to leave. This is really a pain in the butt on those sites with the audio or "Like" begs that come up on every single page that load. At least Cracked Magazine has the option to "view entire article." That's cool because I have a theory that other sites only make you click over so that they can load your brain with more advertising. I'm just saying,
•  If I do get onto your site - with some initial peace and quiet, no membership required - you ruin the game with another peeve: anything that starts madly flashing at me. Reminds me too much of porn sites when I've, um, accidentally landed on them... Obviously,  you had my attention when I came over to view your site, right? All that damn flashing is just going to make my brain go into flee mode and get the hell out of there as fast as I can. Imagine a married man, trying to slink into a titty bar and being greeted with a flashing spotlight -outside the entrance? I don't even want everyone in town to know that I'm walking into Nordstrom.
• I hate the shopping sites that claim to let a user "sort" items by price, when their sorting doesn't actually work. I was looking at fragrances on a favorite site and sorted some items by "prices low to high." I had two things in my Checkout Cart before I noticed similar items at even lower prices. Just to make sure I wasn't screwing up, I went back and re-sorted. Guess what? On this particular site, $37.99 for Oil de Vanille is less expensive than $7.85 for Oil de Vanille. And I thought I was bad with numbers.
• If you are selling products, try to have: a) a decent image of the product, or b) an image of the actual product - not just one "representative" of the product, or c) an image at all. I hate trying to use my browser's Zoom to view something that you want to charge $20, $30 or even $100 for when the image looks like it was taken from space. And I have returned items that looked legit on your site, yet, when delivered, looked like it came from the Dollar Store's clearance bin.

Am I the only one with these peeves? I can't be. We live in a world where a lot of us do everything via website: learn, shop, amuse ourselves, socialize... You'd think any site out there would do all they could to keep viewers coming back.

Peace

--Free

Real Resolve

I didn't make any New Year resolutions, but I sure as hell hope some of you will. I'm so tired of just a few people wrecking chances for the rest of us to be happier and more content with this beautiful life we've been given. So, if I can be honest, let me suggest a few goals for some folks out there.

• Will you "yummy mummys" please go away with your rubber-band bodies? The media have overloaded the rest of us with your useless wonderfulness.You have a baby and, two weeks later, we see your naked ass all over Instagram and Twitter. I am speaking for the rest of us who are a little fatigued of seeing your 110-pound bodies (where the tits account for 10 of those pounds) all over the news. With the exception of a few ladies (who just happen to have stolen the metabolism I had in my twenties), you gals forget to mention the staff of "Personals" you have helping you make the rest of us hate you: personal trainers, personal chefs, and those folks you hire to keep you away from fattening food the way you hire other folks to keep you away from drugs. Get out of my face.
• You celebrities who like comparing yourself to soldiers and policemen and even (~sigh~) Jesus... Will you stop already? When you can honestly say that you personally rescued someone or laid down your very life for them (without calling the paparazzi to record the event), then I won't hurt myself doing an extreme eye-roll the next time I hear you bragging about making it rain in a strip club. 
• This one is a little random, but touches closer on us "regular" people. Let me ask all the international vacationers to be a little more courteous to the citizens of the land you're guests in. I am so embarrassed when I hear about the way we Americans act away from home. Keep it up and the next time I go somewhere out of the country, I'm not going to correct people who assume Alaska is part of Canada. And for the folks visiting us here in the U.S., please treat us the way you'd want us to treat you. I'm not going to call out any specific people here, but I will just say that being rude does not make you look classy, educated or above the rest of us actual mortals.
• (To the ladies) For those of you who like to whine about the poor quality of men in the world, why not try being a better person yourself. I believe that we attract what we signal for. I'm not saying that there aren't some bad apples out there, but, if you don't talk but scream like a banshee, dress like you just don't give a damn, and act like a skank, well... Don't be surprised when you attract guys who wouldn't be ashamed to have you as their woman. And please stop judging a man by his wallet. If he's got a job, he might only need a good woman to work his way to the "de-lux apartment in the sky-y-y". If you do get a jerk, hope that your friends wonder why you are with him. By the way, there are lots of jerks with great jobs or lots of money. Who the hell wants a jerk? Oh yeah, a skank gold-digger.
• (To the guys) Please start wearing your big boy pants again. If you like a woman, don't wait for her to break the ice. When you break the ice, try to be a gentleman about it. Wolf-whistling and making a comment about a woman's ass is not the way to go. (Well, not most of the time.) And please stop rating women only by the way they look. Haven't you ever been attracted to someone for their smarts, their quirks or sense of humor? Well, you don't "see" all that until you get past the makeup, hairstyle and Victoria's Secret magic. One more thing: before you start looking for Miss Universe, take a good look in the mirror. (That also go for the Plain Janes looking for a Channing Tatum.)
• (To the kids) I'm talking to those of you in your teens - thirteen to nineteen. You are young. Be young. Enjoy it because you're going to miss it when it's gone. Stop trying to be as stupid as some adults who think that being "gangsta" or "hard" is a good thing. Being stupid is not a good thing - for the young or old. Try being smarter and kinder. Shoot for setting trends that will make a positive difference in this world. Get your education. Enjoy the paid-for roof over your head. Talk to - no, listen to, all those "old" people in your life. They are part of your history and you, someday, are going to need to share that with your kids.

Yeah, so...

Maybe the only resolution any of us should make is one that is easy to accomplish: to just be better today than we were yesterday. I can handle that. Can you?

Peace

--Free

The Ideal Man & Woman

Sitting around on a week-day night, drinking alchol and eating hot wings with celery sticks and ranch dressing is not conducive to intelligent conversation between single and platonic friends. Nevertheless, this is what happened to me, a gay guy, two straight guys and a recently-dumped female. (Sounds like I'm about to tell a dirty joke, doesn't it? Maybe.)

We actually came up with (okay, mostly they, because I can't hold my liquor) a list of conclusions.

The ideal man:

• (If really unattractive) has a fat wallet, and/or high-salary profession, and/or high profile and exciting life, and/or great bedroom skills. Or maybe he's just over-paid and overly generous to a fault.
• (If moderately attractive) has a great job, and/or looks cute holding a kid, and/or has a personal charisma, and/or talks a great "game," and/or has great bedroom skills.
• (If really attractive) doesn't wet himself in public.

The ideal woman:

• (If really unattractive) has the same things as an unattractive man and/or is really smart, and/or is really cunning, and/or lacks any morals whatsoever, and/or can treat men like crap and make them want her just because they will never be sure they can keep her, and/or makes a man feel like he has the best bedroom skills ever.
• (If moderately attractive) could do better but settled for the one she got, and/or has a great job and is generous out of stupidity or neediness, and/or has either great bedroom skills or great faking-it-in-the-bedroom skills.
• (If really attractive) doesn't wet herself in public (unless it turns a guy on).

You'll think I'm kidding, but this is what came out of the conversation my friends and I had. (I might not want to be friends with a one of them anymore.)

Does it matter that we were all a little bit bitter and lonely, on our way to being pissy-drunk, and feeling completely safe with each other? Maybe. But, if you look at North America as a general snapshot of life, isn't there a little bit of truth in there? Don't you (even if secretly) agree with the observations? And, yes, I know that they are about as deep as wrinkles on a teenager.

My personal input about men didn't get past my declaration of "They need what they don't want and want what they don't need." My whole take on what I think men think of as the ideal women was completely bitter:

"She has the breasts of a nursing mother, the hips of a teenage boy and the ass of perfection. Must look good in heels." (I won't get into the whole big ass vs little ass debate.)

So - were my friends and I really lopsided and sexist and ignorant in our general observations, or did we actually see through the Jack and Coke to make some sense? (I don't care how you feel about the other stuff, I stand by my theory on the ideal woman.)

Peace

--Free