Guest Bloggers...

...Seem to be the perfect solution until I graduate and don't have homework any more and can actually be a good, consistent blogger.

Plus I'm trying to figure out how I actually want to write about my new man, or if I want to, and he knows I write one and I challenged him to find it. So, he's probably reading it like right....now.

Maybe by reading how crazy my friends are about boys you'll understand how we all fuel each other.

Act Like a Man

I love stumbling across blogs, written by people as nerdy and excited about one topic as I am.

Edward Keenan's Act Like a Man blog is an interesting read. Basically, his goal is to get "guys" to well...do the title.

Why do so many "guys" prefer not to be called "men," and shirk their responsibilities and be less romantic and miscommunicate with the girls they crush on? I always blamed it on the rise of feminism, but Ed (we're so totally on a first-name basis) thinks that's a totally lame excuse.

Recently, a cute boy asked me, "Are you a feminist?"

I said no. I think partially because I wanted him to like me. But also because I would have no problem staying home, cooking delicious food, and raising beautiful babies.

However, both the cute boy and good ol' Ed made me realize my wrong ways.

The definition of feminism is simply advocating equal political (and social) rights between men and women. Why yes! I DO want to be treated equally!

Well...almost. I want to be treated special. Because I get to have babies.

Not yet, obviously, and I would probably even like the chance at a career before that happens. And I want someone to help me make and make a home for those babies.

So, can I have a career and have some babies AND not emasculate my baby-making partner? Ed thinks so. Ed also thinks that partner should step it up.

I think I found a cute boy who is stepping it up. Oh no, am I actually dating a MAN!? Not a "guy?" Not simply a cute boy?

Best date idea ever....

And by "idea," I mean, this actually happened. His idea.

We wrote a song and then recorded it.

It's the perfect date - active, creative, CHEAP (well, if you already have a guitar and/or recording software I suppose), and still plenty of opportunity for flirting and/or chemistry and/or double-entendres in the lyrics.

Holla. Why do I have to graduate now that I may or may not have found a decent JMU guy?

An interesting follow-up

I'm currently researching the effects of new media (the internet? blogs? i'm not sure how specific to get yet) on politics (partisanship? bias? again...the specifics have as yet alluded me).

While reading this article, based on a speech from a democracy conference in 2000, I came across this paragraph:

Now, the new technology allows us to talk to people all across the world. But as far as I can make out, our problem is, we don’t know how to talk to our neighbors. We look to Bosnia, we look to Africa, yet we can’t talk to each other. People can’t talk to their wives and husbands and children. Yet we are celebrating that we can now talk to strangers across the world. The democracies we have in small nations are not working very well yet wse hope to have a global democracy because of the new technology?

Generally, I've learned how to talk to my roommates, am working on my friends and family, and am in the middle of changing how I talk to potential dates.

And here I am, naively blogging, I think opening my audience to the whole world. Who am I kidding?

Communication

I think being a communicator has messed up my dating life a little bit.

My roommate met a cute boy this weekend, and got him to ask her out by being elusive.

"When can I see you again?" he asked, that first night.

"When do you want to see me again?" she coyly responded.

After some back and forth, they finally had their first pseudo-date tonight. When she came home and told us all about it (as girls so often over-analyze and digest and celebrate and get jealous), one thing she said she asked him is how he feels about piercings.

"Why, do you have one?" he asked, quite logically after her question.

She shrugged, so coyly, then asked, "How do you feel about tattoos?"

"Well, it depends! You've got to have one if you're asking, right?"

She shrugged, ever so coyly.

I have tried my hardest, especially in the past year, to be a clear communicator. Boldness comes with this territory, and I've had to take a deep breath and make myself tell a boy I like him before. Why not be honest? Why not tell him what he wants to hear? Why not make everything easier in the long run by establishing trust and sincerity upfront?

Well, I have dated about four guys in the past three months of this year. Every single one of them I've considered myself a decently honest person. And they all seemed to appreciate it at the time.

I know it's soon, but my roommate already has a second date lined up and cutesy texts like, "tonight was perfect."

I don't really talk to any of those guys I was trying to communicate clearly with anymore. Maybe I should stop communicating and start teasing/intriguing, like my hott roommate. Separate my professional goals from my personal.

Jalisco, Mexico

Our airplane shrank above the ground, a rainbow

Blessing our tropical journey with the flock

Of students bobbing sleepy heads to balk

At napping. I turned my eyes down below,

Where I imagined Mexican farmers sow

Their fields of patchwork quilts and ticking clocks,

Nested in pop-up mountains being mocked

By an American vacation’s shadow.

At the hotel, bare chests distract me by day

While it’s tequila squared that gets me at night.

Add to the list green waves and smiling faces

And I’m a camera-happy tourist who pays

No mind to local salesmen dressed in white,

Like saviors to our money and Spanish phrases.

Rescue by Eve 6

Though I'm in a poetry-writing class now and have come to appreciate the art form much more than I did back in high school, I still generally enjoy song lyrics as my favorite form of "poetry." Lyrics can be just as witty and visual as poetry (especially Eve 6's), but most poets would probably argue lyrics are too cliche. But cliches just give us something to understand and relate to!

(My dad is an avid musician who goes to a lot of open mic nights. Noticing the "emo" trend, he often comes home and says "Someone needs to tell these kids that not every page in their diary can be song lyrics! Give me a cliche, give me something to hold onto!" I am probably biased by his classic rock bias.)

Listening to Eve 6 while writing a brief homework assignment - but my poem about spring break in Mexico up behind that - these lyrics hit me. It's almost exactly what happened to me last week in a bar in Puerto Vallarta filled with multinational non-JMU (yay!) attractive men (and of course two of my amazing sexy, but spoken-for roommates):

Well I kind of sort of knew what was going to happen
When she put her number down on a restaurant napkin
She said goodbye I think the words were when you're back in
Town lets have each other again I'll come around and see you again

Long story short, I had a more-innocent-than-normal (for spring break standards anyway) rendez-vous with a beautiful Canadian (could he be any more geographically unavailable?). When we met, trying not to rely on expensive roaming cellphones, Eve 6 explains exactly what I did - wrote all my information on a napkin for him.

The boys of Eve 6 wrote this song 8 years ago, so of course now we can rely on cell phones and email more and there's always facebook to socialize long-distance. Or so I hope.

"I definitely want to keep in touch with you. There have been facebook marriage proposals before, right?" he half-joked with me on the second-to-last night of our vacation.

After a long goodnight, we made plans to meet the next day. Here the napkin plan hiccuped - he only had my information. So when I didn't hear from him, I had no other option but to wait. And go home. And not know his last name. And not be able to stalk him on facebook (uh, I mean friend! Friend him on facebook!).

Here's the chorus of Rescue:

Like Jessica Rabbit she collects bad habits gets her drinks for free
Animated vixen stole cupids arrow and came to rescue me
In the blink of an eyelid my lid opened up and I could see
That she'd come to rescue me

First of all, I'd always thought the "drinks" in the first line was really "trix." Rabbit, you know? Yeah yeah... I can be naive. On the other hand, I know I have a tendency to want to rescue boys, so am I turning into Jessica Rabbit? Developing the bad habit of only dating geographically unavailable men? I don't like how these lyrics sound...