All's Fair in Love and War

Maybe she wasn't such a cootie queen after all.

History is always told from the perspective of the winner, not as it actually went down.  Our history books are all written in such a way that applauds the actions of the ones in control and condemns those of the loser.  This is simply one of the spoils of war; the winners get to tell the story the way they want it to be told, and very few actually question it.  This is not only the case in our civilization's history, but love as well. 

Some time last year a good friend of mine was telling me about a new guy she was kickin' it with.  He was a musician, handsome, sexy, and despite the fact that he was staying with her (temporarily til he found another place, supposedly), he had a girlfriend.  I told her run for your life, he's playing you as live-in booty while he plans a life with this chick, you're gonna get your feelings hurt.

Well, last week they got engaged.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to people who are in pre-marriage relationships:  One is that these people are in committed relationships and their relationship should be respected and left alone, and anyone who tries to interfere is just foul and dead wrong.  The other, which was best summed up by my mentor who was a notorious flirt, is "You're single until you're married."  In the Infinite Wisdom of my 20's (and by "Infinite Wisdom" I mean "I thought I had shit figured out and then I actually lived life and was proven terribly wrong") I was of the school of thought that the latter attitude was just awful and an excuse to sleep around for as long as possible.  And even still today I get irritated when someone persists in trying to holla even after I inform them that I have a boyfriend.  But my friend's good news got me thinking about whether this issue is as black and white, right vs. wrong, as I originally thought.

Take my friend as example.  When she first started "dating" her now fiance, 9 out of 10 disinterested women polled on the street would probably tell you she was being a scandalous scallywag for messing with someone else's man.  Now in hindsight though, I would merely have to say "She won."  The ultimate purpose of dating (for most people) is to find someone to build a life with, ideally to marry.  But the fact is that many people are in lackluster, half hearted relationships that they are holding onto for whatever reason, maybe because it's not bad but not really fantastic, or out of habit, or because that's what they think they want, or whatever.  If someone else comes along that is a better match, should they bypass it because of some sense of obligation to the lackluster relationship, or go forward and pursue greater happiness?  Should the interloper walk away from someone showing interest in them because that person is supposedly in a relationship which the interloper has no knowledge of its depth or complexity?

Let's take another example: my very own sister.  She dated a guy from high school for over 5 years, but then her junior or senior year of college she had another guy incessantly in her ear, calling her all the time over the summer, not really caring at all that she had a boyfriend.  That other guy is now my brother-in-law, they have 2 beautiful boys and a wonderful life together.  Had he abided by the "rules" and left my sister alone out of "respect" for her relationship with a guy who honestly was slipping, my sister would not have the life she has today.  My brother-in-law presented himself as the better option, plain and simple.  He won.

I'm not saying that anyone who is not married is 100% fair game and that the follow up question to "Yes, I'm seeing someone" should always be "But are you happy?" because really, that just comes off as rude and disrespectful.  I'm just making the observation that when it comes to love and dating, history rewrites itself such that seemingly questionable behavior all the sudden becomes justified and endearing.  I would be willing to bet that a great number of "how we met" stories involve the scenario "he/she was dating someone already, but I really wanted to get to know him/her" or some other reason why the situation wasn't exactly ideal at the time.  During none of the umpteen times your dad tells the story of how he met your mother do you think "Man, what an asshole", but rather "Wow, he really, really wanted to get with mom."  After the fact we applaud the persistence, the determination, the romanticism, and the poor ex ("Ole Whats-His-Name") just becomes a forgotten casualty of love.

So I guess I do have to agree that, in the grand scheme of life, you really are single until you're married, not in the sense that you can willy nilly do whatever you want in a relationship and use that as a defense (try saying "It wasn't wrong because we're not married" to your boo and see what happens.... you won't be in that particular relationship much longer), but rather there are no guarantees until you say "I do".  Married people are definitely off limits, and at that point you merely become a homewrecker.  But for everyone else, relationships come and go and the reality is that there aren't always clean breaks in between them.  In the end, when it's all said and done, the only person who matters is the one who won.

All is fair in love and war, loved ones..... and the victor gets to rewrite history.

*Disclaimer: Idiosyncratic Thoughts will not be held responsible for any head busting or beat downs you may catch going after someone else's (wo)man. Please proceed with caution.

The Craptacular Truth about Law

Yesterday as I was visiting my beau for lunch I stopped in and said hi to his boss.  He knew I was looking for a new job and he had a connection in one of the other Big Firms here in the city and asked if I would be interested, to which I replied with an emphatic "NO".  Then he asked me about non-profit work, which I have no problem with, and he asked if I'd be interested in a Christian legal services organization.  Again, "NO".  I explained that I had no desire to go back into the traditional practice of law and was merely looking for something legal skill related, and he proceeded to give me the look that you might give....oh..... a crazy person. 

But I ain't crazy.

If I've said this once, I've said it a thousand times:  Law is not a Golden Ticket.  When most people hear the word "lawyer" they automatically think "big money" and "ballin" and "powerful" and "successful".  When I hear the word lawyer I think these words: depressed, unhappy, struggling, overworked, undervalued, underemployed, unemployed.  I'm sure people think I'm being pessimistic and just reacting to my own unfortunate set of circumstances, and that if they were to go to law school things would be different for them, but I'm not.  I have friends-- licensed law graduates -- working temp jobs, secretary jobs, waiting tables, running clothing stores, teaching, everything BUT law. Then there are my friends taking a stab at their own law practice, dealing with clients who don't want to pay, can't pay, or want to have "business meetings" to either holla at you or get as much free info out of you as they can.  You also have the government attorneys who make around the U.S. median household income, if they're lucky, and the non-profit attorneys who have to work second retail jobs to make ends meet.  Finally you have the just flat out unemployed who are plagued with the problem of being "overqualified" for EVERYTHING and can't even get a job at Target.  Most of my friends who started out with the "dream jobs" at big firms are no longer there, either forced out by the firm or by their own last shred of sanity, and finding themselves in one of those situations mentioned above.  More than one friend has voluntarily walked out of a six figure job into nothingness... no new job, no prospects, nada.

Those are some powerfully compelling arguments against law as a profession.  Yet they are arguments non-lawyers don't hear or don't want to hear.  There are still waiting lists a mile long at law schools full of people who just want to further flood an already oversaturated market with their pipe dreams of instant success and fortune.  Let's just stop the madness already.

I recently came across a blog, The Unemployed Lawyer, written by another law school alum, and while I don't necessarily want my misery to have company (meaning I'm wishing misery on someone else) it's always nice to know it ain't just me and something I'm doing wrong, a feeling that has many, many of us law grads and licensed attorneys feeling quite dejected and questioning our self worth.  She sums it up pretty well in this post that made me tear up a little bit because it is so very true:

"I went to law school, passed the bar, and now I'm doing something completely unrelated to my over priced degree. And I'm broke. Are you going to finish that drink?" 

It makes us feel pretty shitty when someone in the bar (or anywhere) asks us what we're doing with ourselves these days, and that's the "craptacular" truth we're forced to reveal (or cover up).  I recently skipped being a guest at an awards breakfast, invited because I was the top undergraduate business school award winner the year I graduated, soley because I didn't want to have to explain that yes, I was the top business grad, yes, I graduated cum laude from law school, yes, I had the Big Firm job, and yes, I'm now working a county job that doesn't even require a degree and doesn't pay my basic bills.  Because the general public is so deluded, they think we're idiots, or damaged goods, and the worst are the prospective law students who think that we must have done something wrong and that they can do it better.

Naw, honey.  If you wanna take a stab at graduating cum laude with a published law review article and see if your results are different, be my guest.  But this is across the board regardless of your class rank.  I see shining stars get shot down from the sky every day.

I guess my point is the same point that I constantly make on Twitter that law isn't the express lane to success, but also that I'm not crazy for telling that jealous mistress named Law to kick rocks, and I'm tired of being looked down upon (and looking down on myself) for reaching my goal and finding it to be an ill fitting dead end.  This break up is ending with "It's not me..... it's you" and NOT the other way around.

She's not your Little Freak

Results may vary from those shown.... proceed with caution.

So this morning I was listening to my Thursday morning guilty pleasure, Wrong Number Flirting, and the mission on which Slutty Chelsea (the telephone decoy) was put upon was a bit different from the typical chick trying to find out if her man is a philandering man whore cheating.  Today's caller was a woman (let's call her L) who had been dating a chick (let's call her B) for about 6 weeks and was SO in love with her, but suspected that B still had her foot on the other side of the fence, i.e. she was still seeing men.  This was B's first lesbian relationship but had told the L that she'd never felt like this with anyone before, really cared for her, etc.  But thanks to a Blackberry and a bit of snooping, ole girl realized her new lady friend was still e-mailing her ex-boyfriend.  Enter Slutty Chelsea and her first lesbian challenge.

Slutty Chelsea calls B pretending that her girlfriend recommended B for hair coloring services.  Per usual, Slutty Chelsea goes on to play the "you sound hot let's meet up" card, to which B responds that she's flattered, but she has a BOYFRIEND.  Busted.  L comes back on the phone, hurt and asking for explanations, to which B replies in so many words "This was nothing serious..... I was just having fun."  And then her solution to the problem was an an offer bring a guy into the mix.  Aye dios mio.

As much as I laughed in my car at the whole scenario (as I do when anyone gets busted), a bigger part of me was pissed on behalf of L and all the other women who have had their feelings hurt by someone who was "just having fun."  Dabbling into the realm of bi-sexuality seems to be all the rage now. It's almost a rite of passage for women from 18 to 25 (or beyond).  Young women play around for a bit, then box up that phase in their lives and go on to marry Mr. Right and have her 2.5 kids, and might whisper about her exploits to her fellow soccer moms over one too many martinis.  No big deal, right?  Wrong.

The thing that pisses me off the most about the treatment of gays and lesbians by our society is that they are not seen as human beings with regular human lives and human emotions.  All our society sees is SEX, which for any heterosexual person is accepted as only a small facet of their life (unless you're a porn star).  ALL people have feelings, seek love, and avoid hurt.  B treated L like a game, something fun to do til she got it out of her system, while L was looking for a real committed relationship.

Does this sound familiar?

Let's change the scenario around.  Let's say L is a black female, and B is a white male.  B has only dated white women, but has always wondered what it would be like to shag a black woman.  So he engages L in what she thinks is a relationship, tells her how much he cares for her and how she makes him feel, and later she finds out that Becky has still been on the scene all this time while B used L as something to check off on his "Things to Do Before I Die" list.  Swap "black" and "white" for any sort of characteristic (fat, skinny, amputee, little person, visually/hearing impaired) and flip flop the genders..... in all of these scenarios, one person was objectified and treated as a novelty, while the other played with their emotions for the sake of experimentation.  People are not experiments, loved ones.

Going back to lesbians..... contrary to popular belief, lesbian women are not solely here for men's entertainment and sowing young women's wild oats.  Those girls you see tonguing each other down in the club are not the representatives for women who love being with other women.  I know lesbian couples who have been together for years, have homes, families, kids, LIVES together. They want love and happiness just like any other woman.  But they want that with another WOMAN, not your freaky ass and whatever dude you want to bring around to add to the mix.  Experimenting and dabbling is fine and all, but don't involve someone who is looking for a serious relationship and/or let her know up front what your intentions are.  There are plenty of other dabblers and Nicki Minja Little Freaks out there to accomplish your purpose.  There are also plenty of lesbian women who get off on "turning out" straight chicks and will enjoy using you just as much as you are using them.  Just let them know up front where you're coming from and let them choose whether they want to proceed.  Don't play with people's emotions and mislead them for your personal enjoyment, m'kay?  It's really a simple, universal rule for any type of relationship.

So ladies, do your thing, explore your lives, just make sure you're not committing woman-on-woman emotional crimes and doing the same thing to lesbian women that you don't want done to you.

Twitter for Blackberry: an Uber Disappointment

So yesterday I tried out the new Blackberry Twitter app. I've been an Ubertwitter user for over a year now, but I was eagerly anticipating what Blackberry had to bring to the table.  After all, it's their app designed for their phone, and who knows you better than yourself right? WRONG.  I used it for 5 minutes and switched back to Ubertwitter (actually never stopped using Ubertwitter, but rather parked the Blackberry Twitter app right next to it).  And here's why:

 

1)  No visual distinction in the timeline for DMs and @ replies.

 

Even though I love to read, I'm very much an "at a glance" type of girl.  I want information assimilated into my brain as quickly as possible, which is why I love the fact that Ubertwitter makes @ replies yellow and DMs green within my timeline.  As I'm skimming through new tweets, these catch my eye.  The Blackberry Twitter app (hereinafter referred to as BBT) makes no color distinction.  Sure, you can go to the menu and just go to your @ replies and DMs, but Ubertwitter gives you that option as well.  Slightly related to this is the fact that I love the prominent "In Reply To" button on Ubertwitter so I can follow a conversation all the way back.  Yes, BBT does this, but it's not as convenient.

 

2) Refresh > every 5 minutes.

 

Blackberry are you serious??  Do you know how many tweets an average Twitter user can amass in 5 minutes??  I don't either, but I know it's a lot.  I'd be scrolling forever to get caught up every time it would do a refresh.  Ubertwitter gives you the option to refresh as often as every 1 minute.  Sure it's more pull on the battery to refresh that often, but battery management is MY decision to make.  And that's what chargers and USB cables are for. BBT makes you wait an eternity to see your new tweets, leaving many Tweeps deprived and frustrated.

 

3) No editing for retweets.

 

Someone obviously didn't do their market research to realize that this feature from the Twitter website is loathed by just about every Twitter user on the planet.  It is as if nobody wants to admit that they screwed the pooch on this one and keep forcing it upon us to make us like it (dammit!). For one, I like to be able to add my own comments to RTs so I'm contributing to the dialogue, not just parroting someone else.  For two, I don't like these random strangers' names and faces showing up in my timeline when one of my friends retweets them. I want the person who retweeted's name and pic to show up, and THEN if I want to go to the original poster's profile & timeline, I can.  I'm all about choices, if you haven't figured that out by now.

 

4) No autofill of friends' names.

 

It's really pointless to do an @ reply when you misspell a person's name, because they won't see it anyway.  Ubertwitter solved the problem of trying to remember the spelling of people's names by automatically filling in names as you type.  Once you type the @ symbol, a list of all your friends pops up and gets sorted as you type out the name.  You can also scroll down the entire list and choose a name.  This really comes in handy when you're like me and have the memory of a goldfish and can't remember how a person's name is spelled, or if you want to @ reply multiple people or when you are drunk Tweeting.  In BBT, like the web, you either have to cut and paste (which doesn't work for multiple Tweeps on your Blackberry) or try to remember exactly how everyone's name is spelled.  That's just too much work.

 

5) Limited viewing options.

 

One size does not fit all, but BBT seems to think so. There is no option to make text size smaller to fit more tweets on the screen.  At most in BBT I could see 1 or 2 tweets, when in Ubertwitter I can fit around 4 for average length tweets.  Doesn't seem like a big difference, but it IS.  Ubertwitter also allows you to have different text sizes for timelines versus tweets, so your timeline can be smaller for skimming, while tweets can be larger for reading and composing.  BBT also gives you one line in which to composed tweets, as opposed to Ubertwitter providing an entire window so you can see your whole message as you compose it.  Call me a nerd, but there's a certain aesthetic quality to the arrangement of words and characters in Tweets that you just can't see in that little one line.

 

My verdict: the Blackberry Twitter app bites.  If you like the fabulously sucky features of the Twitter website, then maybe you'll like it.  If you're expecting Blackberry's app to do anything extra that Ubertwitter doesn't besides further clutter up your primary message list (which you can basically do anyway by enabling the "text on new tweets" option on the website, and then what's the point of having an app in the first place??) you'll be sorely disappointed.  Ubertwitter already does a great job of being fully integrated into Blackberry's features..... I've sent things to Ubertwitter that would take me forever and 5 steps to do online like sending pictures, music AND video.  I can take a picture either before or after I start composing a tweet, as it's fully integrated into not just media, but the camera function itself.  If you want visual notifications, it's hooked into that and can be customized from Blackberry's options screen.  It seems like Blackberry let Twitter design this app, and everyone knows that everyone else does Twitter better than they do.

 

Blackberry (and Twitter) you need to take some notes from Ubertwitter.  In fact you should have just done your product development like the Burger King did coming up with BK's sausage muffin sandwich and just copied the whole concept lock, stock and barrel.  Blackberry, I love you and we can still be friends, but you really missed the mark on this one.

This Ain't 1984....Yet, It Is

 You often hear about people Googling a man or woman they just met in order to get a little free background on them; make sure they're not a registered sex offender, make sure they're not wanted in 5 states, make sure that they aren't a featured member on some gay porn site, just a check up to see what they might not be disclosing in the first 1 or 2 dates.

But..... when was the last time you Googled yourself??

These days, we live our lives online.  We communicate with friends, we meet people, we share pictures, stories and thoughts with basically the entire world.  But that's something I don't think people think about.  We tend to think just about our "friend list" or our "followers", but in reality what you put on the internet is an open book for anyone to pluck off the shelf and peruse.

Here, take 30 seconds to do an experiment.  If you are on Twitter, go to Google and type in your screen name.  I don't care whether your account is "private" or not, I guarantee at least some of your tweets are going to show up as results.  And not just the tweets themselves, but other sites that analyze your tweets.  For example, according to Cursebird.com, I apparently curse like a gangsta rapper.  This site is solely dedicated to examining how much cursing is going on via Twitter, and will tell you exactly how often and what curse words you use. 

Now think about every site you're a member of, every e-mail address you have, every blog your write or comment on, every picture you're tagged in, every status update you post..... that is A LOT of info just flung out into the world wide web.  You post it and forget about it with the next post.  But guess what, loved ones: it's still there.  Still there for employers, lovers, friends, acquaintances, your pastor, a stalker, or anyone to find.

So.... what do you do?  This is an unavoidable issue for the vast majority of us, and removing yourself from the online community completely is not a very feasible option.  After all, there is some utility to being accessible online.  So, loved ones, here are some strategies I use to minimize the impact my online immortal words (and images) have: 

1)  Have more than one "identity" and keep them from commingling. 

I am essentially two different people online.  I have my "public me" that is on my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that is associated with my real name, info and photos.  I then have my "private me" with is associated with my blogs, Twitter, and Tumblr that always uses a pseudonym and rarely (if ever) uses a photo of my face.  The "public me" is the info that I don't necessarily mind an employer or a family member to see.  In fact, I have my mother AND my kids as friends on my Facebook page, so that right there acts as an automatic censor.  The "private me", oddly enough, is actually the REAL me, but being that I often say, think and write things that may make me seem crazy not necessarily be acceptable and appropriate in all settings and to all people, I like to make this persona not easily identifiable as being me.  Sure you could use context clues to put two and two together to get five, but it would take some effort and time.

I keep these two identities separated, in effect creating a Chinese Wall between the two. All these sites have the option to linking to other sites, cross posting and the like, which may seem convenient but it also creates an easily traceable path back to you.  I may link up my Twitter and Tumblr, but neither of these two are going to be linked to my Facebook page.  I don't have the option of simultaneously posting tweets as status updates, and that's is on purpose.  For me, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.

2)  Use different e-mail addresses.

Along the same lines as the first point, have different e-mail addresses for different purposes.  My e-mail address that I have associated with my Twitter account is NOT the same e-mail address that is listed on my resume.  It is possible to do a search of an e-mail address and see every site that you joined using that address.  Also when you join social networking sites, they often give you the option to search for people via your address book.  If you don't want your boss knowing what crazy trending topic you went in on last week, don't use the e-mail address that he or she has for you.  

3)  Don't post crazy shit.

This is kind of an obvious one, but one that I see people get caught up with all the flipping time.  I cringe every time I see someone tweeting about smoking weed, or driving drunk, or any other illegal activity because that can be used against you by an employer, or worse, a court of law.  Be careful what photos your post and what photos other people tag you in.  Recently I went on my son's 17 year old girlfriend's Facebook page and saw a picture of a table full of booze bottles.  I'm not even her friend on Facebook, but was able to go peruse her pictures freely.  Also don't contradict yourself.  If you call in sick, don't then Tweet about chillin' on your friend's boat all day.  Don't post anything that will get you fired, dumped, or cause your family shame and dishonor for generations to come.    

4) Google YOURSELF.

Do the very same thing that you regularly do for the guy or lady you met in the club last week.  Every so often, do a check-up and Google yourself and see what comes up.  Put in your name, your name in quotes, your e-mail addresses, anything that someone (i.e. an employer) would obviously use to find you, and just see what comes up.  My first result that comes up is my LinkedIn profile, which is exactly the sort of result I want people searching for me to see.  My Twitter account doesn't show up, my blogs don't show up, nothing that I would be worried about anyone seeing shows up.  Through this check-up process, I did discover an social networking site I was no longer using that was still connected to my e-mail, which prompted me to go delete the page.  If I hadn't Googled myself, I wouldn't have even thought about it's existence. 

Basically this all comes down to not just common sense, but constantly being mindful that everything online, no matter what your privacy settings are, is public.  If you don't care about your image to potential employers, clients, or future mother-in-law, by all means say and do whatever you want and while you're at it go get a huge face and neck tattoo.  There's a time and place for everything, loved ones.  Just don't make it all the time and everywhere by putting every aspect of your life on the web.

*And if you have no clue how 1984 has anything to do with this, please go read a book.

Public Snooping... just don't do it

This is how snooping SHOULD be done.... and in that outfit, too. He might be less mad.

One of my new guilty pleasures has become Thursday morning's Wrong Number Flirting on a local radio station.  Basically it's the telephone and radio version of the "sexy decoy" on talk shows.  A female who suspects her man may be cheating calls in, tells her story, gives some background, and one of the radio hosts plays the role of "Slutty Chelsea" and calls dude up with a somewhat plausible story and tries to get dude to hook up with her and/or admit some other fact that his girlfriend/wife suspects he's hiding.  For example, last Thursday's guy was a math tutor and his girlfriend suspected that he was cheating with his female pupils, so Slutty Chelsea called pretending she needed "late night tutoring sessions."  Another week it was a baseball coach and Slutty Chelsea calling as a MILF in need of coaching for her son.  Or my favorite was the woman who suspected her fiance had been engaged before and her ring was a hand-me-down..... Slutty Chelsea called claiming to be a friend of the girlfriends, and not only did dude try and have a date with her (because he thought he remembered her) he also admitted to being engaged before and that they only reason his fiance got the second-hand ring is because they were both fat and that was the only place he could get a plus sized ring.......*ouch*. 

As entertained as I am while I drive Mini-Me to school each Thursday morning, I also delight in the loathing that I have for the women who call in to set their dudes up.  They're usually whiny, insecure, passive aggressive little nags who flip out when someone is prettier than them.  For many of them their only "evidence" that their man may be dipping out are the fact that he interacts with women and "acts weird".  I'm not much of a fan of snooping in the first place, but if you must do it, do it in private.  These women, however, choose to investigate with thousands of people in central region of the state listening in. And this is even worse than the talk shows, because at least the guy consents to going and sitting on Steve Wilko's stage, and if he doesn't have enough sense to know some bad shit is gonna come of it, that's on him. But to just blindside a dude and take your snooping to the public domain by tapping his phone conversation via a popular radio station......cuán patético. 

My favorite part, however, is to hear the guys' reactions.  Some of them are, in fact, low down dirty dogs who get busted, and it's funny to hear them fumble through an explanation.  But for the innocent guys, I like to hear them go OFF on their girlfriends.  Sometimes they try and make it seem like dude is an asshole for getting pissed, stressing that there's nothing to be upset about because he "passed" and isn't "in trouble", but I think they are perfectly justified in being pissed off to the highest level of pissivity.  Not only does he have to deal with an insecure, whiny chick who's probably already cracked all his passcodes and checks his pockets daily, he's now got to deal with the world knowing that his woman just tried to throw him under the bus on a crowded street.  She's taken what should be a private matter and made it very, very public, and didn't even have the she-balls to do it herself.  They act like they can't understand why he's so mad.  I'm a rather private person (despite what you read on here and Twitter), so I perfectly understand and sympathize...... in fact, I can often be seen driving in my car screaming at the radio "Yea, dumb ass, that's what you GET!"  I laughed allll the way to work one day over a woman who ruined her own engagement surprise.  Ha ha, bitch.  Ha.

Whether you're an advocate of snooping or not (I'm not), or believe it's justified when you find something incriminating (I don't), this is just entirely the wrong way of going about it.  Relationship problems should not be aired to the general public in graphic detail, whether that's on a talk show, radio show, blog or Twitter (and yes, I admit I've been guilty of such in the past, but I've checked myself).  You shouldn't need the mass media market to back you up.  I can't stand that show "The Marriage Ref" because I don't think you should leave it to Madonna and a live studio audience to work out your marital issues.  You should just grow a pair (ladies, too) and confront your mate one-on-one, not hide behind some show and let them do your dirty work that you're too much of a wuss to do yourself.  The very fact that there are thousands of people like me who eagerly listen and laugh at what otherwise should be a serious issue should deter, not encourage you.  These women have reduced themselves to cheap forms of frivolous entertainment and unwittingly dragged their dudes right in along with them.  So yes, they deserve to get thoroughly embarrassed and read the riot act in public, where they put themselves in the first place.

So handle your private business in private, loved ones. If you are so immature as to have to get a third-party to trick your mate into revealing information, maybe you need to rethink whether you're mature enough to handle a real relationship in the first place.

Everything Ain't for Everybody

"You know what they say..... everything ain't for everybody.... but I tried anyway......"

I have been a Blackberry user since 2007.  I remember when I first got my Blackberry Curve I got teased by one of my friends because he said my phone was so "corporate".  I couldn't get the iPhone I wanted (and the reason I switched carriers in the first place) because it wouldn't work with my firm's enterprise server, so I was stuck with a Blackberry or a Treo (been there, done that). At first I resented the little bastard..... I wasn't "corporate", dammit!! (even though I was working as an associate at the largest law firm in the city at the time)  I wanted a sexy phone, too!  But ultimately it became an issue of utility over form and I dealt with it.

Since my first Curve 8300, I've had a Curve 8350 (well, the guts of it anyway, after my friend spilled a pint of Blue Moon on my 8300 and another friend gave me his 8350 with a cracked case, so I got out my little screwdriver set and swapped out the body.... easy stuff), a Bold 9000 (which I LOVED), and now a Tour 9630.  I don't know if someone was smoking crack while the designed the Tour or whether I just have really, really bad luck with phones, but I am now on my 4th replacement Tour (so 5th phone total).  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result, then apparently I am stark raving mad.  But this past weekend made one thing abundantly clear to me: I'm just a Crackberry fiend lover.

So, my 3rd replacement Tour, as all the others before it, started effing up.  Freezing up, screen delay when turned on, trackball lags, just acting a plumb donkey.  Sprint (bless their souls) is very good about replacing phones on warranty versus making you use your insurance, and their policy is that on your third replacement you get to switch to a different model. Unfortunately, the Tour is currently their best Blackberry, and the Tour 2 won't be out for months, so on my 3rd replacement I decided to forgo that option.  However, on this 4th time I was just fed up.  I lucked up and got Ben the Assistant Manager this go around and he offered to let me pick any phone I wanted. *cue hallelujah chorus*

Let me back up.  My beau prides himself on his ability to get things for free.  And one of the things he's been able to get has been not one, but TWO phone upgrades at no cost.  His latest and greatest triumph came in the form of the HTC Touch Pro 2, currently Sprint's most expensive smartphone with a retail price of about $600.  And it does everything.... walks your dog, tells you how great you look, signals alien space crafts, all the bells and whistles.  We would have races to see who could look up some random bit of information faster between his HTC and my Blackberry, and yes, he would usually win.  He would always mockingly (but jokingly) point out some cool feature that his phone could do that mine couldn't.  It was sleeker, sexier......and not corporate.

Back to Saturday and Ben the Assistant Manager.  So I wouldn't come off as trying to get over on anyone (which I wasn't) I feigned ignorance and acted like I was just *so* put out by the fact that they couldn't offer me another Blackberry and asked him what my options were, when in my mind I knew exactly which damn phone I wanted: that Touch Pro 2, so finally, FINALLY, I could shake my smartphone inferiority complex.  I pretended to browse down the row of display phones before finally saying to Ben the Assistant Manager, "Well I GUESS I'll try out that one."   And of course the first message I sent was to my beau with the "neener, neener, neener, lookie what I got!" text.  Victory in the form of a sexy phone was finally mine.

But then I got home.  Actually first I was trying to play with it in the car (kids, don't try this at home) and damn near wrecked a few times because I couldn't manage to work the touch screen right and the keyboard is so long it can't be used one handed.  Ok, I told myself, I just have to get used to it, set it up, customize it.  I started doing the set up and customizing my settings, and slowly began to realize that while it did all these great fancy things, it didn't do what I needed it to do.  No push (i.e. real time) e-mail, no custom notifications (I couldn't use my Perry the Platypus sound for texts (!!), or vary the vibration types), no Google Talk application, no Pandora app (?!!!?!!!), and no Twitter application that seamlessly integrated the camera and media on my phone.... really no Twitter app at all.  Navigating through the phone wasn't as easy as it was on my Blackberry, and admittedly when it comes to my phone usage I'm an OCD ADD user.  I need everything I need, right there, easily accessible, functional, and admittedly..... basic. 

Then there was the issue of it just being wrong.  The weight of it felt wrong, the keyboard slide out and two hand usage felt wrong, and it just looked wrong in my possession.  I'd glance over at it sitting on the table and think "That's not my phone, that's HIS phone."  I had already mentally associated it with my beau, and it was his identity, not mine.  It worked for him and the way he used his phone, which I now appreciate is very different from the ways in which I use mine.  I realized that while it is a great phone, it was no better than my mildly attractive "corporate" Blackberry.... just different.

So despite his insistence that I just had to get used to it, the next day I took it back and asked for another Tour, this time brand new out the box instead of another refurbished replacement.  I'm hoping that makes a difference because I have a feeling that the problems I was having were common to all these refurb Tours and I was simply getting someone else's recycled crap.  And if not, and it's truly a piece of crap, I'll just keep swapping it out until the Tour 2 gets released and get my hand on one of those.  I've just accepted that this is a small price to pay (or not pay, thanks to Sprint) for what I'm comfortable with and satisfies my needs.

Of course there's a bigger life lesson here, which was so aptly summarized by Jilly from Philly at the beginning of this post.  It doesn't matter how great someone else tells you that something is, or what you should want, or how great something works for them.  In the end it's about YOUR needs and the life choices you make to meet those needs.  Too many people go through life seeking what they should want-- in a career, a mate, a lifestyle--not what they actually want, only to be sorely disappointed when they wasted their time on someone else's ideal.  It's not that you were misled or that the other choice is inferior.... it may just wrong for you.