Andy Rooney says : "As I grow in age, I value older women most of all. Here are just a few reasons why ... An older woman will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, "What are you thinking?" She doesn't care what you think. An older woman knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom . Few women past the age of 35 give a damn what you might think about them. An older single woman usually has had her fill of "...
Schools in Shanghai, China, have taken a novel approach to an age old problem by making teachings in ‘ real love’ and ‘romance’ a part of the official school curriculum. Believed to concerned with the effects of the internet on the modern morality, China has decided to arm its' next generation of young adults with the facts about ‘real and lasting love’ as opposed to what they term the 'internet chatroom variety' of love. Professor Fan Shougang, editor of the new textbook, has state...
My husband is the most practical man alive. I am not a materialistic person, but even I baulk at his painfully logical ideas on occasion. He has been brought up to feel himself undeserving of enjoyment and 'self-investment'. The law of practicality reigns supreme in the mind of my husband and his immediate family. His mother makes a lot of "well, if that's what you like ..." sort of noises about our house, which leads me to believe that I have succeeded in creating a unique atmospher...
Yes, we women make no sense. So, luckily for us, a German publisher has announced it’s plans to produce a guide designed to help men ‘decipher’ various (ahem) ‘ baffling female banter'. The Langenscheidt publishing group, best known for it’s comprehensive (and very well-respected) foreign language dictionaries, apparently sees no irony in publishing a dictionary in ‘female’. According to the guide, when a woman says to a man “let’s just cuddle”, what she really means is “no sex t...
Artificial Life, Inc. is a software company pioneering in artificial intelligence. Formed in Boston in 1993, the companies' Hong Kong based global headquarters has recently announced perhaps it's most ambitious 'invention' yet - the virtual girlfriend. Following success with interactive mobile games and internet-based 'e-learning', Artificial Life formally introduced the long-joked-about 'virtual partner' as a way of allowing those who were happily single to enjoy the 'emotional advantag...
i see a lot of men wasting a lot of time and money trying to unlock the secret as to what attracts the opposite sex. i hear men bemoaning the lack of 'good women', i hear women complaining that men don't want 'good women' anymore. it seems that people are so hell-bent on finding the right person that they forget to work on being the right person. love is meant to represent a state of mutual respect, understanding and affection between parties. so, there should be much less findi...
my mother recently left behind after a visit a 'women’s' magazine containing an article entitled "15 good reasons why YOU are a modern woman". ok, i thought. this is a women’s' magazine. i am a woman. how bad can it be ?. (how did i forget how ceaselessly patronising and awful these publications are ?. they have the pro-women titles like 'your world' and 'womens' way', yet they are jam packed with 'advice' that basically all amounts to the same thing: look good, catch man, trap man,...
presently there is no legal culpability for committing adultery in our 'western' world. the criminal code of “civilised” countries does allow for legal, monetary, or other compensation for physical or “visible damage”. this extends to take into account “emotional” consequences for a limited number of “approved” pre-existing circumstances (ie: 'victims’ of crime compensation act'; which makes certain allowances for a victims’ mental distress). in the eyes of the law, an individual is n...
it has always fascinated me that humans need interaction with other humans, and that generally this interaction needs to be largely positive in order to be able to live a peaceful life. yet it has long been said that humans require other humans to satisfy an emotional need. individuals deprived of any human contact invariably suffer degrees of emotional distress, and it is well documented that children of emotionally distant parents suffer later in life, often failing to adequately exp...
every time i went to the fields i returned disappointed without understanding the cause of my disappointment. every time i looked at the gray sky i felt my heart contract. every time i heard the singing of the birds and babbling of the spring i suffered without understanding the reason for my suffering. it is said that unsophistication makes a man empty and that emptiness makes him carefree. it may be true among those who were born dead and who exist like frozen corpses; ...
i once dated someone whose father could not be understood by any unrelated person. on my initial encounter with ‘dad’, i was at his front door, and he looked right at me and shouted “nissan final termite chew”. upon my non-response, he repeated himself. louder this time “NISSAN TERMITE FINAL CHEW”. he then stood there, obviously expecting a response. he seemed cheerful enough, so i guessed and said “thanks”. my boyfriend then nudged me and whispered “say it’s nice to finally meet y...
in ontario, canada, a lesbian couple who vowed “til death us do part” on 18 june, 2003, have filed that country’s first ever same-sex divorce action. the women, aged 41 and 61, sealed their ten-year relationship by marrying just one week after same-sex marriage became allowed under canadian law. far from being as they envisioned, the couple formally separated five days after their “legal” wedding ceremony. whilst the ruling liberal canadian government has vowed to legalize same-se...
there's a line in the book "the body" (by stephen king) that stayed with me long after i read it. looking back on his childhood, the author states "i never had any friends later on like the ones i had when i was twelve. christ, does anyone?" . friendships at twelve do have an innocence that withers with the onset of adulthood and its' accompanying self-awareness. things start to get in the way. reality bites, so to speak. people grow up, get jobs, get married, get lives . eventually...
at age 27 i emerged, stunned and unprepared, from the end of a tumultuous 6 year relationship. i had no plans. i had simply decided that living alone (for life if necessary) was preferable to enduring even one more day of something so unhealthy . becoming single again was just a by-product of my decision to begin living my life the way i needed to. the way i have ever since. now, as neat and tidy as that all sounds, i did not get from suddenly-single to happily hitched in one seamless ...
unless your intention is to deliberately malign and offend people, delivering your message in an unkind, aggressive or patronising way will not serve you well in this world. no matter how “wrong” someone or something may be, i am yet to see anybody converted to a cause by being ridiculed into it. if what you believe in is important to you, then you owe it to yourself to make sure that your support of it doesn’t leave you blind to it's shortcomings, and to ensure that whatever you say in...