Speechless

"Whose tits do you like better, mine or his?" She thrust her chest forward while pulling her shoulder blades together.

It was an easy question, really.

Whenever a girl asks you to choose between her boobs and your guy friend's man pecs, any answer between, "Yours" and "Let me motorboat the pointy orb thingies" is acceptable. Hell, even "His" is fine if you say it jokingly. What is not acceptable is looking as though she asked if you like being anally fisted while sucking on a horse penis. "Uhhhhh..." is not the right answer.

Dr. Rob's Simple Advice to Ladies so You Don't Get Dumped

There are no magic words, no breathing or muscle relaxation techniques, no amount of drugs (recreational or medicinal) that can take away all of the angst and distress if you insist on making a small number of erroneous and perhaps not entirely conscious assumptions:

1) There is such a thing as a 'guarantee' in relationships or life in general. Read my post on why marriages fail for more on this. Life actually brings just the opposite, a constant series of risks, especially at the romantic level. Just think of the number of dates/hook-ups/boyfriends you and your friends have had over the course of your life. How many of those have ultimately ended? Almost all of them.

2) Men can essentially be put in a bubble, removed from their history and current interactions with the outside world, that they can have a healthy life generated solely by your relationship with them.

3) That you 'can't live without him.'

Coming at you late tonight.

Four Ounces has Carwin/Velasquez at UFC 104?

Drinking For Two has cigam, universe and name

The Production Blog is 87 days out

Drinking For Two has Fucking Dreams

Philalawyer has been interviewed

I did a couple interviews in the past two weeks, both with new college graduates, touching on issues ranging from the career choices they're facing in our present economy to my book's themes to whether Youporn beats Porntube. In the first, I answered the questions. In the second, which will be up in the coming week or so, I did the questioning and answered some follow-ups, not unlike the Sex Drugs and Death (A Trifecta of American Hangups) and A Running Conversation on the Intersection of Work and Life pieces I did with Dr. Rob of Shrinktalk a few months back.*

A 13 year old trades his iPod for a walkman for one week.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

via Daring Fireball

A six year old child is diagnosed with schizophrenia.

She suffers from delusions, hallucinations and paroxysms of rage so severe that not even her parents feel safe. She's threatened to climb into an oven. She's kicked and tried to bite her little brother. "I'm Jani, and I have a cat named Emily 54," she says, by way of introduction. "And I'm Saturn-the-Rat's baby sitter."

via LATimescitydesk

Ryan Holiday has Practical Knowledge

Drinking For Two has truth

there's something about being in nature looking at all of the trees, the animals and the lack of people that really makes you feel like you could get away with it.

Groundhog Day

During my post-doctoral training I was fortunate enough to be educated at a prestigious hospital in upstate New York. My office overlooked an executive golf course and lots of small, rolling hills and greenery. Albeit slightly pretentious, the whole campus smacked of top-shelf, brand name mental health riches.

On the grounds of the hospital were lots of groundhogs who seemed to patrol the campus, almost like sentinels. My fellow students and I called them Land Monsters [1]. We often tried to pet them - despite the potential diseases they carried - but they would never allow us to get too close before scurrying off to safer pastures. But when you saw them from your office chewing on leaves or grass, you felt at peace. Top notch training, a killer office, wild beasts running amok. This is what it's all about.

If you want something to tax, tax lies

As well meaning or effective as they might be, pretexts are sleazy arguments. Something hired liars use in courtrooms, lobbyists stuff into talking point memos and television ministers spit from the pulpit as "1-800-GIV-2GOD" flashes on the megachurch's Jumbotron. They're what you say you're doing when you can't say what you're actually doing because what you're actually doing is dumb, solely self-interested or malevolent. They're also embarrassingly obvious. Anybody with a child's appreciation for the art of debate can spot a pretext coming a mile away. And no, the fact that the other side's position is a fraud doesn't give you license to offer an equally false response, particularly in regard to an issue as important as personal freedom.

Not too much going on in the Rudius universe today, but if you're looking for something to read, here's a very in depth report on Scientology. Scary, scary stuff.

Our own Mark Ebner went undercover and wrote about Scientology back in 1996.

Sleepwalking Through Work

I've worked in an office most of my life, but never really, fully been there. Anything I see or hear can take me from the moment, set me thinking about something entirely disconnected from everything I'm doing. Any image or sound I run across - the slightest stimulus providing a hint of a basis to start my imagination running away from Where I'm Stuck. An advertisement for cheap plane tickets on a passing city bus will have me running a reel on what it might be like in Prague that time of year through the balance of most of the morning. A disc jockey's joke about George Bush crackling out of a radio in the bodega where I pick up the newspaper leave me musing on what the administration's plan was - what the end game might have been in that seemingly mindless war, and why we can't seem to get the oil spigots running. Perhaps a conspiracy's afoot - some nasty plan between the administration and oil companies. But how would the delay help? What would their aim be?

95 Days

This actually leads me to a point some people have asked me about: How similar is IHTSBIH to The Hangover?

I guess I can see why, if you only read the loglines, you might think the movies are similar. The Hangover is about three guys and what happens in the aftermath of a bachelor party in Vegas. IHTSBIH is about three guys who go on a bachelor party, and how that affects their friendships. OK fine, if you stop there, I guess they seem similar. But trust me on this: These two movies are about as different as two movies can be, while still being in the same basic genre (the R-rated male comedy). The Hangover is just like most all other Hollywood comedies, except its funnier. The piece of feedback we get the most consistently across all screenings is this, "I can't really describe this in terms of another movie--it's not like any other movie."

Hollywood Interrupted in on the TV. Check it out.

Ryan Holiday has Contemptuous Expressions

If You'd Beso Inclined

Beso might be the last man sanding when the economy finally recovers. If so, it won't be because it's that great of a restaurant. It won't be because the food is great. The food is just good enough. It won't be because it's reasonable priced. It's not. It's just not as overpriced as some of the places that strive for the same clientele. (And most of those places have failed. People aren't tolerating the fifty-dollar steak like they used to.) It won't be because, as one bartender aggressively told me, "Dude, we are so much nicer than bartenders at other bars. We are so much nicer than we have to be!" He was almost spitting as he told me this, but more on that later. If Beso weathers the current economic storm, and all evidence says that it will, it will be because Beso does just enough right to not piss you off to the point of never returning.