“Jersey Shore”, Season 03, Episode 07 was entirely painful to watch. :)

I mean, I really didn’t want to watch some of it. I wanted to fast-forward to another section, but I really needed to absorb all of the tomfoolery in order to get a proper grasp on what I feel happened.

Where’s The Disclaimer?

First of all, right off the bat.. MTV has done it again, completely whitewashing Female -> Male violence… AGAIN. I was already tired of this, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, but the saga continues.

Ronnie, of course, was in the wrong for starting to throw Sammi’s things around before and after she told him not to touch her stuff. ~22 minutes into the program, Mike says “I’ve seen them, obviously, fight before, but this one was pretty serious” in his confessional and then it cuts to a scene where Ronnie’s touching the left side of his face, and says to Sammi “Touch my face again!”, while Mike’s suddenly trying to usher him out of the room. The next scene is Ronnie fixing his hair.

I don’t see how with at least two cameras, and maybe three filming one scene, that a) they didn’t catch whatever Sammi did to Ronnie on tape, b) they didn’t have Mike say what happened in his confessional, because he was right there, and/or c) they didn’t have Ronnie say what happened in his confessional, because it happened to him.

~28 Minutes into the show, Vinny’s watching Ronnie throw Sammi’s things around, and Ronnie says “You know what? **** this *****, Putting your ******* hands on me? I told you if you ever put your ******* hands on me again… if you ever put your ******* hands on me again… **** OUTTA HERE! :/”. He keeps ranting, which sounds like the editors looped what he said and played it again while Sammi’s belongings were flying out the door onto the porch.

This seems like the raving of a lunatic, because MTV elected not to show Sammi putting her hands on Ronnie, AGAIN, and if they honestly didn’t get the footage, they elected not to fill in that very important blank by having people talk about it in confessionals, which is how they fill in the blanks and write storylines for “reality” shows.

Yes.. There are WRITERS for “reality” shows.

The reason I keep bringing this up isn’t for “Men’s Rights” of some kind. It’s because ‘reporting’ like this gives females an incorrect idea of what can and often DOES happen to them for putting their hands on guys when cameras aren’t rolling and the guy isn’t under contract not to punch your lights out.

If Sammi had thought for one split second that Ronnie might have punched HER in the face right after she punched HIM in the face, she wouldn’t have done it. She didn’t look for one split second like she was willing to take damage in a “fair fight” (which it wouldn’t have been, because obviously, Ronnie’s way more athletic than Sammi is, even though she appears to be taller than he is) with Ronnie. This means that she should have kept her hands to herself.

Not that it’s a good look for Ronnie, throwing another person’s belongings around like as if he had bought them himself.. he looks rather pathetic doing that, actually… But when MTV paints Sammi to have done nothing at all, when she had previously punched Ronnie in his face and apologized (I believe I saw that) for hitting him and he most likely had a DO. NOT. PUNCH. ME. IN. MY. FACE. EVER. AGAIN. conversation with her, which she agreed to, except now, she’s accosted him again.

Beef & Drinks

One of the problems with these “reality” shows is that all of these people are getting money to be there. They all signed contracts that say stuff like “If I hit someone, I can be thrown off the show”. I think this fact escapes a lot of television viewers.

The reason this is important is that you’re only seeing a limited range of reactions from people on televison, and in the real world, you could get something completely different and most definitely worse for doing the exact same thing.

An example is that there is now an epidemic of drink-throwing on television. Did you notice that? :D haha That’s because everybody signed agreements that they take a loss if they HIT someone, but nobody signed an agreement not to throw liquid on someone.

Throwing drinks, specifically, sticky ones, like the orange juice and cranberry juice that they give you to mix with the $30 bottles of vodka that you paid $300 for as a part of “table service” in the club, is perfectly disrespectful, might mess up someone’s look for the evening, will certainly get them upset and MIGHT COULD get THEM to punch YOU in the face, causing them to be ejected from the show.

In the real world, if you throw a drink on someone, you’re getting elbowed in your face and going to the hospital. Period.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy watching shows like this. I like seeing how people adapt to their current environment. I like knowing that when people are in jail and not allowed to have money, they use cigarettes and food as currency. I like knowing that when you separate ethnic groups, it’s easy to convince kids that they dislike people with another skin color, even though THEY DON’T KNOW anyone with another skin color. I like knowing that it’s possible that liquid is going to be flying around if I’m in a club or a bar, because they saw people get away with it on “Bad Girls Club” or “The Real World”.

Character & Consequences

I’ve been wondering for a long time what the hell is wrong with people these days. I think I’m starting to get it. People, nowadays, lack CHARACTER, because they don’t go through any character-building experiences. Everything they do is virtual and has no real consequence. They start believing their own hype because they live in their own little fake worlds where they’re the stars of something.

I first noticed this in the video game world. Dudes that play games talk all kinds of yang to each other because they know that nobody knows who they are or where they live. Put those same dudes in the real world, in front of a guy that’s ready, willing and able to smash their ******* faces in, and you’re not going to hear a single peep out of them.

This way of being has now made it onto television. You can do anything you want to people on “reality” shows, because they’re prohibited by their contracts from decking you… unless they’re females, of course.

Vinny can’t tell Mike “I’m gonna drop you the next time you try to steal one of my girls”. Ronnie can’t tell Mike “I’m gonna drop you next time you wake my girlfriend up and point out to her that I’m socializing with Jenni so she comes downstairs and punches me in my face”. This prompts Mike to keep gossiping about and snitching on people, because there aren’t any consequences to his actions.

Jenni feels free to spinning back-fist Mike in his face, because there aren’t any consequences to that.

Sammi feels free to punch Ronnie in his face, because there aren’t any consequences.

Ronnie feels free to destroy a bunch of Sammi’s property that he didn’t pay for himself, because there aren’t any consequences.

The cast members break doors, beds and trash the house because MTV’s going to pay for it.

Nicole goofs off at work at the t-shirt shop because she’s a star now, and can’t get kicked off the show for not working, like Angelina.

This also sets up another problem, which is people creating fake relationships with people and maintaining them until the slightest issue comes between them.

Mike claims to be Ronnie’s friend, but violates “guy code” anytime he feels like it so he can get his gossip&snitch on. This is because the concept of “friends” is just a word these days. All it means is “I’m cool with that person”. It doesn’t have anything to do with trust, honesty or alliance.

It doesn’t make any sense that after all the stuff that Sammi, Nicole & Jenni said about each other that it can be patched up by Sammi apologizing to Nicole. That’s the BEGINNING of fixing a relationship, not the ACTUAL FIX! :/

Anyway… from the general to the particular…

Bitchassness

Right off the bat, Mikey-TMZ gets busy with the gossiping and instigating. He tells Sammi “You and Ron had so much drama in Miami that it’s never going to get better.”

First of all, he doesn’t own a crystal ball that tells him whether something’s going to get better or not. Second of all, he should mind his own ******* business. Third, according to “guy code”, he should be either saying things that help Ronnie get laid or he should be shutting the **** up.

The obvious problem here is that Mike was the first one to kick it to Sammi at the beginning of season 01. Mike was also the guy that concealed Sammi’s shenanigans from Ronnie, who only found out at the reunion that a) Sammi had been talking to another guy behind his back, and b) Mike was facilitating the situation.

Mike and Ronnie aren’t friends. They’re actually rivals. Mike is also a rival to Vinny, as he keeps trying to steal his chicks and used to get away with it before Vinny made a come-up during the last six months. Unfortunately for Ronnie, he easily falls for the okey-doke of Mike saying that they’re friends, even though his actions consistently and clearly show that he isn’t.

Sammi isn’t smart enough to realize that Mike isn’t HER friend either. He’s not trying to help her by bringing this stuff up. He’s trying go get her to break up with Ronnie, creating Single Ronnie that everyone wants to see back in action, including The Kid.

If Ronnie & Sammi break up, Mike gets his prime wingman back, which means more girls for Mike. That’s the WIN here. The other win, of course, is seeing the end come to the relationship between them, which would have never occurred if Mike had sold out before Ronnie and kept Sammi in deep check.

Ron calls it properly that Mike’s playing both sides, but fails to do anything about it. This is that lack of character I was talking about. What should have immediately happened is Ron should have walked out of the bathroom and told Mike to butt the **** out of his relationship and stop undermining him with his girlfriend. That didn’t happen.

Please Stop Trying To Drink And Think

Ron & Pauly hit the boardwalk. Sammi and Deena also hit the boardwalk, except they start drinking alcohol.

Pauly & Ron walk past Sammi & Deena BY THEMSELVES… WITH NO GIRLS… and Sammi goes “I think he was with a girl”. :/

This is the beginning of the end of the entire episode. What THE **** was she looking at? Probably nothing, because Sammi’s mind has been playing tricks on her for months.

Even if he HAD been walking with a girl, mind your ******* business. You’re not his mother. You’re his girlfriend. Play your position. You don’t get to tell a grown-ass man who he can hang out with or talk to, and you don’t get to punch him in the face when he doesn’t do what you ordered him to do.

Sammi’s response to her delusional disorder is to tell some dude she doesn’t even know to come over. This is where I heard the most pathetic confessional in the history of “Jersey Shore”. Sammi goes “You want to play that game, I’m gonna go out there and I’m gonna find the hottest guy in this bar and get Ron back for talking to a girl”. She said it like she was dropping science. She was positive that a) she was doing the right thing for herself, and b) that this was going to be an effective tactic to hurt Ron. I watched this several times, because it was so incredibly juvenile and elementary-school-playgroundish.

Let me give y’all females a tip… When you spend an entire year, 365 days, sweating ONE DUDE, Nobody Believes You when you turn around and pretend to throw sex at the next man. You’re not fooling anybody, not even yourselves. If that’s what you wanted to do, you would have done it BEFORE. If Sammi wanted to kick it with any guy OTHER than Ronnie, the time to do that would have been right after she had been informed that Ronnie was cheating on her and he confirmed it.

Of course… 30 minutes later, I was sitting there with my head in my hands after Ronnie trashed all of Sammi’s belongings and cried in the bathroom all night because she had danced with a guy in front of his face. :/

As they’re leaving the bar, Sammi says “**** Ron.. I just found my new boyfriend”. Pathetic. Once again… If you’re the type of person to be jocking some dude for a full year, you’re also *NOT* the type of person to STOP JOCKING HIM 15 seconds after seeing him walking with a girl, which he wasn’t because you’re a psycho and you can’t see straight when you’re drinking.

Nobody. Believes. You. that you’re going to give sex to this dude that you met in a bar in the daytime on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights. This is another symptom of that lack of character that permeates society these days. People think they can redefine themselves on the fly. It doesn’t work like that. The only people that fall for that are head-cases like you.

Jedi Mind Trick

Next, Ronnie makes a scene, talking about what he’s going to say to Mike. This is ridiculous, because he should have said it to Mike WHEN. HE. HEARD. IT.

Mike comes in, and instead of telling him “Dude. Stop ******* up my program with my girl. Stop talking to her. Get off that girl-code **** and act right”, Ronnie says some passive-aggressive line about Mike being Sammi’s friend.

Since Ronnie wasn’t drinking, this leads me to believe that he already forgot the footage that he saw on the first reunion show that had him ready to cry. Mike has been in cahoots with Sammi this entire time, as the videos revealed. Similarly, Jenni has been in cahoots with Ronnie this whole time, but played it off like she was supposed to so Ronnie wouldn’t get in trouble with Sammi. Accusing Mike of being friends with Sammi is like year-old news already and certainly doesn’t approach “Putting him in his place”, like Ron had claimed he was going to do.

Now.. The funniest thing about Ronnie, which we see in his interactions with Sammi and now in his “argument” with Mike, is that he’s not good with… talking. He’s good with sounding upset and speaking loudly and waving his arms around, but when it comes to the technical issues, he’s lost every discussion I’ve ever seen him have.

Ron has SEEN THE VIDEO TAPE of Mike confirming to Sammi that what Nicole & Jenni wrote in the note was true. He’s seen Mike rat him out with his own eyes and heard it with his own ears. There’s nothing to discuss here. Somehow, Ronnie gets talked out of his argument. o_O

After protesting that he’s never stabbed Ronnie in the back (which everybody with a television knows that he has, repeatedly… and stabbed Vinny too.. repeatedly), Mike fakes him out by apologizing.

Mike says “You know what? I’ll be honest with you right now. I’m gonna say I’m wrong”, and all of a sudden, Ron doesn’t have anything left to say. I couldn’t believe it. Pauly called this perfectly when he said “I’m definitely surprised Mike & Ronnie are hugging it out after this big, heated argument they just had. I dunno.. Maybe Mike gave him some, like, voodoo trick or something like that to avoid getting his ass kicked by Ronnie, I dunno.. But I think Mike was just apologizing just to shut Ronnie up, and it worked”.

I’m sorry… If I were one of these relationship-people, and some dude that was supposed to be a friend of mine told my girl “I saw The Kid playing you dirty” and then I found out that the dude said that and then I passively-aggressively confronted him about it and he apologized, that doesn’t get him back on Friend Status. Apologizing doesn’t un-ring the bell. You still snitched on me. You still created an obstacle for me to get over in relating to this chick. You’re not saying “I lied about that and never saw him do that”. You’re saying “According to ‘guy code’, I was wrong for ratting you out to this chick”. Everybody already knows that you were wrong.

The funniest part for me about that was that the apology came right in front of Sammi. Mike basically said “Yeah.. You’re right.. I should never have confirmed to this chick right here that you were making out with several chicks simultaneously at the club before coming home and climbing into bed with her to get your night’s sex”. Ultimately, nothing’s going to be different, because Ronnie’s contract precludes him from decking Mike for being nosey, so Mike will remain the Porch-Lady House Gossip.

Popularity

Jenni goes on a date with Roger to this Mexican spot. Dudes keep coming by and saying hi to him, haha :D She’s clearly not used to dating internet famous, or, in Roger’s case, locally famous people, because she’s frustrated by the constant interruptions.

This makes sense because the dude she used to go out with seemed to keep to himself. In contrast.. Everybody that knows me knows that I have 2,600 Facebook Friends, and depending on how large the party is, I’m liable to know 80 people in the same room with us. The entire night is non-stop meeting, greeting & chatting.

The only time it’s not like that is when we go off the grid for a #NOBLOG event where we specifically sequester ourselves so we can spend quality time together.

Another problem for Jenni is that if she decides to get slick in an upcoming episode and play Roger dirty, there are a lot of people that know she’s with him now, so all eyes are on her. >:D

How Could You Lie To Me?

In a question that’s heard by men around the world at least once every single day, Sammi asks Ronnie “How could you sit there and look me in the face, watch me cry and lie to my face?”.. The answer, ladies, is “If I had told you the truth, you would have stopped giving it up… so **** that.”

Ronnie, who can always make an argument sound passionate, yet never intelligent, goes “I have enough respect and love for you to ******* admit what I did was ******* wrong and shameful and disrespectful.” um… What? :D

First of all, you didn’t admit it until Nicole & Jenni snitched on you. Actually, you STILL denied it, initially. Unfortunately, he didn’t learn anything from getting SERVED by Mike, or else he would have said “You know what, Sammi.. I’m gonna be honest with you right now. I was wrong”, and then they would have hugged it out and he could have screwed her as usual.

Instead of doing that, he justifies his cheating by saying “Be a woman and man up for your **** for once. I had a REASON to **** on you in Miami. Realize That!”. This isn’t a high-percentage play, actually. :D It’s rare that when a female says “You cheated on me!”, telling her “You deserved it!” gets her to STFU and spread her legs, which, of course, is your goal in speaking to her at all.

Sammi follows up with “You embarrassed ME! You don’t deserve somebody like ME!”.. This is where I wish MTV wouldn’t edit this show so much, because I was looking forward to Sammi listing the qualities that make her “Somebody like ME”. Somebody like what? o_O A chick that hits a dude for being friends with another chick? A chick that starts flirting with guys in a bar because she drunkenly, mistakenly thinks she saw her boyfriend walking with another girl on the boardwalk? A chick that won’t STFU when men are arguing, causing her boyfriend to get into not one but TWO fights, the second of which, he got arrested for? A chick that can’t cook White Castle burgers or anything else for that matter? (which came up later) A chick that’s constantly depressed and laying around in bed instead of going to clubs? A chick that hands out orders to a grown-ass man about what he can and can’t do like as if he’s a kid on a field trip? What exactly is she claiming that her redeeming qualities are?

This is where I finally thought Ronnie was going to snap out of this. He goes “You know what? I can’t do this. This is, what? The seventh day we fought in a row? How about You do you. I’ll do me. You should be happy. You ruined your time in Miami. Don’t ruin your time here. So, you know what? This conversation’s over. We’re done. Leave it at that!”. I was like “YES!.. THANK YOU!!!.. FINALLY!!! :D”…

Little did I know the problems between these two were just starting, not ending. :/

Continued in Part 02
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So, The Kid was invited out to lunch the other day by a female friend of mine. This was *not* a date, but the issues are relevant to dating, because the only difference is I wasn’t trying to get laid…. So the way it went down, she ended up selecting the place…

This is important because I like to keep it simple when I eat. I normally stick to your garden-variety American food, Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, Pizza, Shrimp Fried Rice, you know, regular food.

So, if I had picked the spot, none of this would have happened to me. :)

So, I’m like “uh-oh” off the bat, because the place she picked had an Italian-sounding name, and it wasn’t Sbarro’s or Olive Garden. So I knew I was about to be outclassed. That’s what this post is about. Grace Under Pressure. How to carry yourself when you’re that proverbial fish out of water.

Be Punctual (on time)

So when you’re going somewhere to meet a gal, it’s extremely in your best interest to be AT LEAST on time, if not EARLY. I covered this base by exiting the subway 15 minutes before meetup time and lounging within striking distance of the restaurant. I needed to not get there first, because the reservation was in HER name. I needed to not get there LATE, because The Kid is courteous to his lady-friends *bows* :D So I kept my eye on the clock on my G1, while Twittering, eMailing & AIMing to pass the time.

Two minutes until my mark, I was standing across the street from the restaurant doing a final systems check on my smartphone. Let me switch my usual wallpaper of me licking some chick’s neck to a sunset or something. Check! Let me delete this text message thread from this other chick. Check! Let me terminate all processes so the wrong website doesn’t come up if I choose to show her something on my browser. Check!!! I was ready.

So I walk in the spot, and it’s this really nice (to me, anyway, hahaha) Italian place. I look at the bar and don’t see her. I walk a little further into the place, looking for whomever’s paying attention to me, which means they work there. This cute blonde chick starts walking over and I can tell she’s one of the greeters. I give her my friend’s name for the reservation so she can see if she’s here already and she goes over to the computer to check…. This is when I notice…….

This. Chick. Is. Fine. Than. A. GOOD-GoodGoogeleMoogela…… DAYUM!!! O_o

Keep Your EYES On The PRIZE

So, all of a sudden, I have a problem. I was cool, calm and suave until I noticed that this chick had more bounce to the ounce. I mean DAYUMMM!!! :D JEEZ!!! :D So now, I don’t want to meet my friend for lunch AT. ALL., because all energy from the dilithium crystals have been diverted to my only goal in life, which is hooking up with this chick I just saw 20 seconds ago for the first time in my life. DAYUM!

This is where GAME has to kick in. This is where experience has to carry you to irrational decisions. This is that playoff situation where the ballplayer is really good during the regular season, then chokes when it really counts. Experience is the only thing that will keep your eyes on the prize. I mean, my eyes were SQUARELY. ON. THE. PRIZE… but that wasn’t *THE* prize, dig?.. I was there for a specific reason, so I had to get my enjoyment on, mark it down for future reference and get my act back together… NOW! :D

INexperience would have placed me at my friend’s table completely out of my mind and unable to function as a gentleman. Not acceptable. Ain’t Goin’ Out. Like. That! Ain’t Goin’ Out. Like. That! (WE AIN’T GOIN’ OUT!!!)

So, my future ex-wife leads me to my friend’s table and I’ve cleared my head out and I’m back on point by the time I greet her with a nice kiss on the cheek. I thank my beloved and she leaves me a menu and breaks north as my focus remains directly on my friend instead of the greeter-chick’s ass.

So we’re chatting about this and that from sneakers to hats, and here comes the… I don’t know what his title is. He’s the guy that announces what the specials are, but he doesn’t actually bring you anything, and he isn’t the greeter either. So there’s the greeter to bring you in from the door to your seat, this guy, then the runners who actually bring you stuff and then the waiters?… Anyway…

So he asks if we’d like anything to drink. Anybody who knows The Kid knows he asked THE WRONG PERSON if I wanted something to drink! haha

Meanwhile, you don’t want to come off like a Cro-Mag, like “I’mma drink REGARDLESS, SUNNNNN!” :D So, beside the fact that you always have the ladies order before the men, I had to place the ball in her court, because worst-case scenario, I would have suffered through a non-alcoholic beverage for the sake of the hangout. I didn’t WANT TO, but I *would* have! :D

Play It Off

Fortunately, even though she wasn’t “drinking”, she didn’t mind if I did, so I asked dude what the beer list was. This is where I realized what my next obstacle was going to be. He rattles off a list of beers, and I can baaaaaaarely understand what he’s saying. I mean, I know what the names of the beers are, but I need to decipher his accent. Apparently, they hired a SPANISH dude to work in an ITALIAN restaurant, :/ so now, I have a big problem, because I can’t even understand when he says Heineken or Blue Moon. I *KNOW* I’m gonna be TOAST when it gets to the MENU! :/

So there was only one beer that he named that I totally had never heard of. It was an Italian beer, so I said I’d have one of those. When in Rome, right? :D So he disappears and we keep chatting. At some point, I realize she had already retrieved her napkin from the table, which meant it was sitting in her lap. I followed suit, ASAP. I normally wait until they bring the food, but it’s usually a good idea to mirror the sensibilities of the lady you’re sitting across from. BTW, for those of youse that don’t know, this is another courtesy issue. It’s not like you actually believe you’re going to spill something on yourself, it’s just what you do… like not having your elbows on the table and not eating as soon as they bring your food if the other people at your table haven’t been served yet.

So the beer was good and the conversation was good, and then it came to the moment of truth. Dude comes back and is like “Would you like to hear the specials of the day?” So I refrain from asking if the blonde chick could tell us instead of him, and he starts talking.

Act As If

Now, I probably know about 12 different foods, Hamburger, Steak, Shrimp, a couple of different types of Fish, Hot Dogs, Pizza and all those weeds that they call Thai food, etc. OH, and I’ve heard of Tofu. So this guy proceeds to rattle off all these names of expensive-sounding Italian dishes with a Spanish accent and even if I had ever heard of the food-types he was talking about, I wouldn’t have been able to decipher what he was saying, so I kept nodding as if I knew what was going on. Every once in a while, I would smile and then look at her, like “Oh! Doesn’t THAT sound delicious? :D” I had no. I. DEA. what he was saying.

So he leaves the menu, which, fortunately, had English subtitles under each dish description. Now, I’m looking at the section that says “Specials”, because the Spanish dude had asked if we’d like to hear the specials, right? So it’s like the lowest-priced item was like $18. Now, before Frank starts jumping up and down… She had already told me lunch was on her. So I was playing the reverse role and tryin’na Keep It Cheap! :D

So I decide I’m going to have the $18 Salmon (which is *NOT* pronounced with an “L” in it….. SAAMUNN. Just like how there’s no G in SANDWICH). So dude comes back and I have her order first, and she says blah blah blah which I didn’t understand, since she ordered in Italian, so I wasn’t EVEN gonna play myself by trying to say the Italian title, so I go “I’ll have the salmon and pointed to it on the menu. So, the dude looks at me funny, like as if *I*M* the one with the accent :/ So I’m like “The salmon… This one, right here”, and I hold the menu up so he can see what I want. So dude looks confused and I’m thinking JEEZ, what’s the problem now? So then he goes:

“um……….. That’s an appetizer.”

So now, I’ve played myself, due to the fact that since I don’t speak or read Italian, I had no idea where the appetizers ended and the actual meals started. Of course, with my TGI Friday’s-going-ass, I didn’t imagine that it was possible that an APPETIZER would cost $18. :/ I mean, damn… Once you get in the double-digits…. Anyway… So, instead of doing a Fonzie, and going “I knew that.”, I stuck to my guns that I wanted salmon, and my friend suggested that I get the actual meal that included salmon. I allowed the announcer to go BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH as if I understood what he was saying was going to be surrounding the salmon when he brought it, smiled, nodded at him, said “That’s great. I’ll have that.” and thanked him whilst handing over the menu.

Hold It Down

Now.. The key to navigating that very embarrassing situation is to remember who you are.. That is.. if you ARE anybody. That’s a loss I was perfectly willing to eat, because I never claimed to know anything about menus written in Italian. I also don’t know anything about soup. I also don’t know anything about wine, other than it comes in the color red and a clearish color that they call white. They both get me drunk, so I couldn’t care less which one is available to me. That’s who I am. I don’t hang out with the Duke & Duchess of York at their castle (or wherever Dukes live) with the long, 18-person dining tables. I don’t go “Skiing in the AspenS”. I couldn’t give a flying &@#$ about stuff like that, so there are going to be times that I’m just going to have to take a loss and look like I don’t know what I’m doing. :D

So, There were more mishaps, but I’m sure you’re already bored. The bottom line is that everything isn’t always going to be rosy in The Game. There are going to be situations that come up that are going to throw you off. How you deal with those situations is going to determine whether you correct yourself and succeed or spiral out of control, crash & burn. One of the WORST issues, IMO, is feeling dumb or stupid or outclassed. Your only refuge in situations like that is reminding yourself WHO. YOU. ARE… WHAT. YOU. DO… and how well you do it.

It’s like when someone was snapping on you back in the day, and the only thing that kept you from losing it was you knew that after he finished talking ALL KINDS OF GARBAGE about you, you were gonna go “That’s not what YOUR *MOMS* said last night!” and the whole crowd was gonna ERUPT because you just pulled out the stops, and his only recourse was to try to throw the hands with you and catch a critical beatdown.

You have to have that mental location where you take refuge when the going gets tough. You have to be able to retreat from the reality of embarrassment and dwell in the realm of your own ultimate flyness until you can stand to get back in the game. It’s ALL about Crunch-Time… Grace under Pressure. Those bad situations feel like a ton of bricks at the time, but if you make it through with poise, you’ll gain more cool points for that then what you lost for ordering the equivalent of calamari when you were supposed to order steak & eggs.

Character & Distinction

Anybody can come off fly when things are going well for them. When you can still “hold your head” in the midst of adversity, that’s where your character shines through and you distinguish yourself from the masses. Conversation over your head?.. Play it cool and then bring it back down to a level you can kick it on. Chick’s talking about places you’ve never been (and really don’t have any intentions on ever GOING? :D), tell her about being on 125th or the L.E.S. or Central Park in the middle of the night. She hasn’t been THERE, for sure.

Focus on *YOUR* strengths and good qualities. List them mentally, if you have to. Over and Over. As the walls of reality close in on you and you feel increasingly embarrassed and inadequate… remind yourself of how WELL you would be ROCKING THIS if it were in YOUR arena. Remind yourself how WELL you’re gonna rock it if/when all this Bourgeoisie $*#& ends and it comes down to you vs her, one on one, in PRIVATE… YA HEARD? :D

Hold your head and weather the storm… Knowing that regardless of how far behind on the count you are, you’re gonna keep hitting fouls until you get that one pitch you need to smash it out of the park! :D
 
~ Bill Cammack

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Does anyone know why Twitter automatically shortens URLs?

It seems to me that if you’re within your 140 character limit, Twitter should mind its own business and leave what you wrote alone.

For example, I just typed http://billcammack.com/2009/04/10/time-part-06-whats-your-budget/ into Twitter.com and also into TweetDeck and they both resulted in a tinyurl of http://tinyurl.com/c6x54q.

Example #1: http://twitter.com/BillCammack/status/1532756085
Example #2: http://twitter.com/BillCammack/status/1532757140

So since my statement would have fit within the 140 characters, how come I received a tinyurl?

Trust

The main reason I bring this up is that a lot of people won’t click on shortened links with very good reason. You don’t know what site you’re being directed to.

This isn’t just an issue on Twitter, but on forums, newsgroups, etc.

So what happens if I want people to know that I’m directing them to my own personal site, where they’ve already been 100 times and know what they’re likely to see?

In case you don’t know what a URL shortener does, it changes a link with a long string, such as http://billcammack.com/2009/04/10/time-part-06-whats-your-budget/ into something shorter, like http://tinyurl.com/blahbl so that it’s easier for people to remember, re-type or fit inside whatever character limit you have (such as Twitter’s 140 character limit).

So the problem is that lots of people & companies use shortened URLs to send you places where you don’t actually want to go. The more people get caught with this, the less they trust shortened URLs and then your links are automatically shortened by Twitter. :/

Another problem is that sometimes I link to my own site and sometimes I link to YouTube or to someone else’s site. I have to go out of my way to indicate that I’m sending people to my own site or take my chances that they think “ah… Another YouTube rock video. I’m not going to click on that link.”

Failure

Another problem is that in the case of the shortener company failing temporarily or permanently, those links no longer work, so then what?

Search

Another problem is that since the frenzy right now is trying to use Twitter for search, your site’s URL is being removed from every single post you make. That happens to make no difference to me, personally, because my Twitter name and my site name are the exact same thing. For people or companies that aren’t set up this way, it looks like they’ll be missing out on quite a few opportunities for search results.

Solutions?

Tyme White decided to make her own short URLs. Another way to get around the issue is to not use the long-format URL of your post, opting for something that looks like http://billcammack.com/?p=4667 (this post). If you know your actual post number, you should be able to fit it within the shortener cutoff, depending on the length of your actual site name.

This had been temporarily relieved a little while back, and I got to put some actual URLs in Twitter [link], but they closed it off again, apparently.

Anyway, if you know of some good reason why URLs should be shortened when they don’t need to be, feel free to enlighten me in the comments. I don’t really care about this, because people aren’t searching Twitter for my name.. They’re searching Google. For the people that DO care about being searched on Twitter, this may very well be a major issue that will affect them down the line, when there are zero mentions of their website and a million references to tinyurl.com available in search.twitter.com.

Edit: Jayson Flint ( jaysonflint.com / @jaysonflint ) left me a comment on Facebook that putting an asterisk * in front of the “http” solves this problem. *http://blahblah.

I just tried it and got the result I was looking for => http://twitter.com/BillCammack/status/1534164738.

The URL was still shortened in the text, but my site name was clearly visible/searchable, and the entire URL shows up in search => http://search.twitter.com/search?q=billcammack.com.

Thanks, Jayson. Cheers! :D

~ Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
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Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
 

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Add John Edwards to the list of politicians who were discovered to have had sex outside of their marriage, including Eliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton, David Paterson, etc, etc, etc…… *yawn*

I’m going to try to get in and out of this one, haha no pun intended, rather quickly, because I’m actually completely bored of the topic of people “cheating” in relationships. The fact of the matter is that human beings operate off of FREE WILL and do whatever they want WHENever they want, regardless of what they told you last month, last week, last night or the last telephone conversation you had with them.

Politicians, however, are in a “special circumstances” situation… at least, if they’re aiming for the top…. which… of course… is to become the President of the United States of America.

George Bush is the forty-third and current PotUS. Out of those 43 men, only ONE wasn’t married. That was James Buchanan.

James “Jimbo” Buchanan, Jr. was the fifteenth President of the United States, between the years of 1857 and 1861…. That’s EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SEVEN! :D hahahaha That’s the middle of the NINETEENTH CENTURY! There was not ONE unmarried PotUS in the entire Twentieth Century. The first and last one was approximately ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO! :D There is absolutely no end to this trend in sight…. I mean, it’s not even a “trend”. James Buchanan was an anomaly. Getting married is virtually a prerequisite for being elected President.

I’m sure you can imagine that this puts an incredible amount of stress on young male politicians to get married whether they want to or not. On top of that, they need to do it early, so that they can be seen as upstanding members of society and receive the endorsements that are going to eventually carry them to the big show.

Meanwhile, in every other profession on the planet, you can be single and prosper. You can have as many chicks as you want and all people are going to say is “Go, Man, Go!” or hate on you because you have stuff that they wish they had and are never going to get.

The reason why being a politician creates “special circumstances” is that you’re being groomed to take charge and control of really important things….. like… the Armed Forces?… And at the same time, you’re NOT supposed to do what YOU feel like doing. I mean… It would be one thing if you had NO money, NO prestige, NO power, NO fame and NO opportunity, then, yeah, sure… be happy you got one girl ever in life and leave it at that. Being a politician, though, requires shouldering ‘heavy’ responsibilities and making hard decisions that affect many, many people. Politicians are GROOMED to impose their will on others. That’s the only way to properly represent the people that elected you to office. What are you there for, if not to effect change and advocate for what you believe in and what YOU want for your constituents?

So, politicians are between a rock and a hard place. They can either get married and have career potential or NOT get married and have women that they’re physically attracted to and enjoy having sex with as a trade-off for their highest professional aspirations in life. It’s actually worse than that, because some politicians probably only became popular with the ladies AFTER they had positions of power, which means AFTER they were already married with children. How wack is THAT? :D When it’s FINALLY time for you to get on, you’re not supposed to do it. When chicks are FINALLY throwing panties at you, like they never did when you were an A+ student GEEK in high school & college, NOW, you’re not supposed to hook up with them. NOW that you can afford to spend $4,000 a pop on imported hookers, people literally want to make a Federal Case out of it.

I have to pause for the cause, here hahaha. I was in DC one time for my sister’s friend’s birthday party in some kind of pie-in-the-sky hotel where the center of the bar/club in the penthouse stays in one place and the outside slowly rotates, so you can sit at your table and get a 360 degree view of the surrounding area… beautiful! :D So anyway… I had to go downstairs and come back up to the party, and I was waiting to transfer to the elevator that went to the PH. This middle-aged dude comes out of a room and sits down in a chair to wait for the same elevator. Nothing unusual. Next thing I know, this ONE other middle-aged dude ushers no fewer than SIX much-younger Asian chicks (yet obviously legal) out into the hallway, dressed to the NINES, and they flock around this dude in the chair like he was like… I dunno… Brad Pitt? Richard Gere? hahaha So I’m thinking WTF is going on here? :D So we go to the party, and I’m hanging out with my sister and her friends at the bar, and I spot that same one dude on the dance floor with ALL SIX CHICKS AROUND HIM! :D That’s when I got hip to the fact that “Money Talks and Bullshit Walks” and he had obviously “ordered out”.

Now, I don’t know a thing about that dude as far as whether he was a politician or business man or whatever, but that’s how some dudes are living. Doing what they want to do, when they want to do it and spending their money on what they enjoy… in that particular case, women. That’s GOT to be hard for poliicians to listen to on the back 9 of the golf course… especially when THEY probably have more money and prestige than the guys livin’ it up!

Does this EXCUSE them? Nope. They still made the agreement. They accepted the commitment that comes along with marriage. If they get caught out there doing their thing, their character takes a hit and that might very well signal the end of their political careers anyway. Politicians should be as accountable as anyone else for not being people of their word. It just seems like people are MORE shocked when its a politician involved in these monthly scandals, when basically, it’s like Chris Rock said, ““A man is basically as faithful as his options”.

Speaking of “Special Circumstances”… What’s the deal with making the wives do the perp-walk with them to the podium? Hand-in-hand, merrily they walk to center-stage while he camera flashes go off, and the wife stands there for however long she has to, looking like “Picture of Rejection”, while her husband “admits” what has already been in the tabloids for days, weeks, months or years. I mean, seriously. Someone needs to revamp the speeches they write for these guys and put a couple of lines in for the wife, too.

I know what the point is. It’s showing the world that a) you didn’t get dumped when your wife found out what you did, and b) that the most slighted person in this situation has apparently forgiven you, so everyone else should just ease back and fuhgeddabouddit. Unfortunately, that only works when your wife is SMILING and appears to be HAPPY to be standing next to you. When they look shellshocked, because you dragged them on stage one day after they found out what you did on the television news or your daughter came home from junior high school with the story, it really doesn’t help your campaign for sympathy.

Anyway… As tough as it is to run successful companies, it’s got to be tougher to run cities, states and countries. We’re bred as Americans to take what we want and strive to be the best at whatever we do. It’s just not natural to expect the leaders of leaders of leaders to not indulge in the finer things in life. Having said that, we would like to imagine that our leaders are beyond reproach. I think this is the key to why people are so amazed every time this happens. We’d like to believe that our politicians believe what we believe, which is why we elect them to advocate for us. We’d like to believe that no matter how much power, money or fame our leaders accumulate, they’ll still carry themselves with the humility of a West Virginian lumberjack who goes to church with his wife, plays XBOX with his son and participates in the annual log-rolling competition. But if you think about it….

What’s the point of being the President if you can’t get blown under the table? :/
 
DatingGenius
 
 

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I’m not impressed with Serial Monogamy.

Call it what it is. You’re messing with someone, and then you’re not.

It’s interesting how some people pride themselves on only hooking up with people they’re in a relationship with… but then… getting into or out of a relationship with them is basically instantaneous. Sure… EVERY relationship ends instantaneously…. It’s ON and then it’s OFF. I’m just saying that it’s a trip how serial monogamists front like every time they’re in a relationship, it’s going to last forever, and then it doesn’t, and then the next one’s supposed to last forever. Meanwhile, they have their psychological excuse for hoing (male or female).

I was first introduced to this concept when I was around 13. Not the technical definition, of course, but the behavior as it pertains to dating. I remember asking a friend of mine about some girl, and he basically informed me that they had broken up, and now he was dating this other chick we knew. That lasted about a week, and then he was dating another chick, but meanwhile other friends of ours had switched off as well. The effect of this was that at some point, ‘everyone’ dated ‘everyone’. What was interesting about this was that there weren’t any politics involved. Politics arrived later, around 16, when people started worrying about status and popularity.

By “no politics”, I mean that there wasn’t any drama involved with a guy, friend or foe, going out with a girl you just broke up with the other day. There wasn’t any drama when she’d break up with that guy and go BACK out with some guy she dated before, or start messing with some new guy. There wasn’t any possessiveness over chicks at all. It was just you were dating someone, or you weren’t.

Once politics became involved, there was a form of status attributed to exclusive ownership of a particular person. There was also a stigma attached to people that messed around, but weren’t in relationships. As usual, because we live in a patriarchal society, the females caught the worst of this, being called hoes, tramps, sluts, easy, etc. For the guys, it’s all sport. How many chicks (if you’re interested in more than one at a time) can you keep in ‘Deep Check’ simultaneously? How many numbers can you pull? How many chicks can you screw?

The addition of politics/drama to the dating scene created the environment in which serial monogamy thrives. From the chicks’ side, they don’t want the stigma of being “loose”… by either definition, hahaha, um, anyway… so they make being in a relationship a requirement for hooking up. This way, no matter how many guys they mess with, they were always in a relationship, so it’s sanctioned, and they can’t be criticized for giving some to their boyfriends (even if she was only with each guy for a month or less… week or less?… day or less?).

Meanwhile, the guys evolved with the girls. Eventually, it became clear that this relationship thing was getting in the way of getting on, so guys learned that it was easier to lie and feign being in a relationship with a chick or three in order to keep them useful. This is one reason why relationships break up suddenly, and it seems like the guy had a ‘change of heart’. He goes from faking being in a relationship with her to not caring about her at all, instantaneously. If his incentive was sex, then as soon as he’s not interested in having sex with her anymore, or he’d much rather hook up with one of his other girlfriends, his entire demeanor towards her changes.

The worst-case scenario of this is the combination of a guy that wants a one night stand with a girl that only wants to give it up to “the right guy” or “the one”. The woman thinks she’s an excellent judge of character, so as he jumps through the hoops, she validates him. Once she decides he’s legit and “the one”, she finally gives it up… then he disappears… or, at least stops taking her calls. This doesn’t even get to the stage of serial monogamy, because his entire goal was to hit it one time… Once. There’s no way she could have known that, because there’s no way he would have TOLD her that.

For some odd reason, women think they can judge this in guys. It’s completely unfounded. How many times have you heard a woman say that she was surprised that some dude hit it and quit it? :D Compare that to the number of times that you’ve heard of a woman telling a guy she knew he was just trying to have sex with her and he admitted it.

So now, we live in this evolved culture. People still want to do what they want to do, but they don’t want to be talked about like dogs, so they find ways around their behaviors. They utilize serial monogamy to act like they’re just poor judges of character and that their relationships continually FAIL, to their great surprise and dismay. Meanwhile, to them, “significant other” simply means “the person that they publicly admit to having sex with at this point in time”. There’s nothing wrong with that, but since THEY see something wrong with it, they use these mechanisms to put up a front.

Another unbalanced aspect of serial monogamy is that women eventually face biological clock issues. The timing of this is critical, because if she’s currently dating a serial monogamist and decides she wants to have kids, there could be positive or negative consequences as a result of flipping the script. It’s entirely possible that the guy had no intentions EVER of having kids with her or moving in with her or even having sex with her once she got out of shape. Suddenly, he has the choice of honestly breaking off the relationship, as Laure suggests, or lying and acting like he’s interested in what she’s interested in so he can keep tappin’ that.

In a perfect world, he would ‘release her from her contract’ so she can go ‘get her biology on!’ :D … Then again… In a perfect world, people would Stop Frontin’ and do what they wanted to do without hiding behind meaningless titles in the first place.

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