Entries Tagged 'personal BAWWWWW' ↓

Flickr: cigarette (by SuperFantastic). Used via a Creative Commons License.

In high school I was drug free, alcohol free and smoke free. These days people call it SxE or straight edge and make it a part of some movement. The only movement that I caused was laughter when I revealed that I didn’t partake in such things.

Back then I was pretty sheltered and I was not joining the “in crowd”. I felt that I had an honour and image to uphold. Sometime between the 12th grade and my freshman year in college that image began to erode.

After getting teased rather mercifully, I began to finally rebel. Normally kids would begin to drink, smoke and do other bad things starting the 9th to 10th grades or even eariler. It took me until the end of freshman year in college to drink regularly. It took me until sophomore year to lose my v-card at the age of 21! What began as an exercise to fit in, soon was normal.

I first started with liquor and then moved on to “malternatives” (aka Zima and Mike’s). After the so called “Alcopops” tore up my stomach due to the acid, I settled on beer. I first drank nothing but Sam Adams but then for some reason I had taken a liking for Heineken. I don’t care what people say, its fucking good beer. Oh and NO its not “skunky”.

After that, in late 2002 to early 2003 I began to smoke on and off. My family at the time was going through some very rough times, so I began to smoke. I remember the first thing I smoked, was a shitty 7-11 cigar. I had lit the wrong end.

I would smoke some cigars once in a while and then I would switch to cigarettes only when I was drinking. My fatal flaw was when I realized that smoking would be a great icebreaker to talk to people, mostly women outside. (So thank you anti smoking laws for making me smoke MORE!)

Soon I would smoke due to work stress or with coffee. (GOD I miss coffee and cigarettes). I would start to smoke so much that Parliament would send me tons of buy one, get one free offers to me in the mail. Still I figured that I only smoked “socially” and it wasn’t a big deal.

Unfortunately I would have breathing issues, my teeth would be yellow, my breath would stink and other things that I am not at liberty to discuss.

After I finished school in Buffalo and moved back to New York I decided to quit. My mother had smoked a few years back and quit, while my grandfather had died from it. When New York State raised the taxes on cigarettes I finally decided it was probably the best time for me to quit. (Of course this was not my first attempt at doing so)

Regardless of what happens to the economy, $7-8 a pack is not feasible for me. That alone made me quit cold turkey. Besides, the costs are too great both physically and figuratively for me to continue to smoke.

Unfortunately I will have to find another excuse to talk to girls at bars. As I mentioned earlier, PUAs won’t be of much help.

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Courtesy of ssandars via flickr under a creative commons license.

Due to the success of the VH1 show “The Pick Up artist” and the book (soon to be a movie) “The Game” by Neil Strauss, the “game” of seduction is becoming mainstream.
Because of this, numerous men (AFCs aka Average Frustrated Chumps) who suck at talking at women are now invading bars, clubs and other places annoying women with “routines” and “negs”.

I remember a time when I was an “AFC” and I stumbled on Pick Up Artistry (aka PUA). It almost felt like I found my “Matrix”. From high school on to college I did not act like a man. I worshiped women and put them on a pedestal. I did not know how to approach or even call girls on the phone.

From 2002 to about 2003 I read a lot of seduction pdfs such as “Double Your Dating“* and “Unstoppable Confidence”*. I learned about things like the “neg” hit, how not to supplicate(aka give things like free drinks) to women, routines, kinds of eye contact, non verbal language, and body language (aka kino in PUAspeak).

I did learn a lot of things, but routines made me very uncomfortable and I did not use them often. If I did it was only for “training in the field” (yet another instance of PUAspeak). I think one time a girl threatened to punch me in the face and another girl cursed me out!

I used a “routine” (again PUA speak for pickup lines) like “Who lies more”:

“Hey guys, quick question…Who lies more…men or women?”
—(Girls talk for a bit, then you cut them off.)
“Ok, I can only stay a sec, my friends are waiting, but who cheats more, guys or girls?”
—(Girls talk for a bit, then you cut them off.)
“I was waiting to get a haircut a few weeks ago, reading one of those women’s magazines, and it says that girls lie more and cheat more…is that true??”
—(Girls talk about topic. Go into your next routine.)

Its a good thing I didn’t get used to saying this, (it really did not sound right coming from an “intimidating” black man). A female friend of mine once heard this a year ago and instantly recognized it. Now because of PUA’s popularity it is no longer effective.

As I continued to read and occasionally tried these things out, I was able to get a wingman to go out with me on Long Island. I remember this guy who had spikey hair and often wore more jewelry than girls. He called it “peacocking” (PUA speak for wearing things to attract attention). The most “peacocking” I did wearing a silver chain around my neck that I eventually pawned off.

For I guy who saw himself as socially advanced, he wasn’t. All he would talk about were plans on how to scheme girls out of their panties. I met more wings in Manhattan for a “field mission” and they were even more screwed up than this guy. I recall one guy suggesting I wear leather pants! No way!

So after that and getting no where with PUA studying, I gave up. While I did learn a lot about social dynamics, it did not result in anything except for maybe one or two make out session with drunk girls. (in PUA they called this “fools mate” aka getting lucky)

The funny thing that happened? I got laid MORE without PUA tactics. Most of it was…you guessed it “Fools Mate”. Other times it was me acting more aggressive and trial & error. I did still retain a lot of the tenets such how to recognize signs of attraction such as eye contact or overt body language. Thanks to PUA, as a cardinal rule I never buy girls a drink in order to talk to them UNLESS they are good platonic friends of mine.

Still I would probably be ten times more successful if I lost weight and was less cynical. (I can’t help being that, I tell it like it is.) For the current “AFCs” who are now in awe of “The Pick up artist” on VH1 should really take care of OTHER issues before going out making fools out of themselves.

If you want further reading, I would read “A long list of ways that the seduction community can make you weird”
Its good I came to my senses before it made me VERY weird.

*Disclaimer: I did NOT pay a dime for any PUA books or DVDs. I downloaded them them all via bittorrent. The only thing I paid for was the “session” in Manhattan for $60 to be instructed by a “Master PUA”. I got off easy. There are guys who paid THOUSANDS of dollars for “advanced” bootcamps and they STILL didn’t get any.

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Because I have the dexterity of Micheal J Fox (I know i’m going to hell for saying that.)

I broke my iphone’s screen yesterday. This means when I start working again I’m probably going to get me a iphone 3g. Good thing they are only $200.

It also makes me calmer knowing that I can get $150 for a broken iphone on Ebay. I’m guessing people in china want one still at any cost.

BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

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Cnet’s webaware recently had a post speculating about 11 companies that may go tits up due to the current economy.

Among the 11, were myspace and Twitter.

Personally, I won’t shed a tear if myspace goes. It is a cancer of the Internet. Unfortunately FOX is making too much cash by exploiting their idiot masses.

Twitter, whether you love it or hate, is the darling of our internets. Once used by social media mavens with unwarranted self importance, it is now exploited by Jet Blue and CNN!

Could this happen to twitter??

I initially written off the site. I joined a year ago and tweeted this:

Just reserving my name here, this site is useless.

I pretty much dismissed the site and just registered it as placeholder. Then my brother continued to bug the hell out of me to use it and of course I’m really hooked. The site makes it easy to connect to friends and the API makes it adaptable for use on numerous platforms. In my case, I use twitteriffic on my Mac and iphone. With that ease of use I was able to connect to existing friends and made new ones.

The first thing many notice is that twitter does not have any ads running (except for the Japanese version) I often say to myself how can a company continue to run with out a visible business plan or any advertising. I think I may not be alone with these thoughts.

As the economy continues to worsen, venture capital funding is going to be difficult to acquire. The staff at twitter MUST find a way to monetize while keeping their user base happy. There should be subtle advertising before or after some tweets. Maybe they can sell ad space directly to twitterers wanted to promote blogs or their business. To satisfy the twitter addicts maybe there should be a Twitter “Pro” option with guaranteed uptime and special features.

The company should not wait for a sugar daddy in the valley to buy them out. They should focus on making money NOW before its too late.

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