Would you be more pissed if your partner cheated emotionally? Or sexually? Which one would put you over the edge enough to break-up? A study I found (Forgiveness or breakup: Sex differences in responses to a partner’s infidelity, by Todd K. Shackel, David M. Buss, and Kevin Bennett) says men and women respond differently to their partners’ infidelity. Men think it’s more disturbing when their women cheat sexually than emotionally. Women think it’s more disturbing when their male partners cheat on them emotionally. Men are more likely to break it off with their female partners when they cheat sexually and vice versa for women and their male partners. The authors suggest maybe this difference is based on evolution. When humans began, men wanted to find women who would carry their babies and spread their genes. Women wanted to find men who had the resources to take care of them and their offspring. (Things haven’t changed much, huh?) Now, let’s say a cavewoman cheats on her caveman sexually. If she gets knocked up by this new guy, her caveman now has to wait 9 months to spread his seed. That sucks for him. If she cheats emotionally, that doesn’t really change much for the caveman. On the other hand, let’s say a caveman cheats on his cavewoman sexually. If he gets these other women knocked up, that doesn’t really matter for his wifey. But if he cheats on her emotionally, he may invest more of his time hunting for his new gal, which leaves Mrs. Cavewoman and her babies depleted of resources. What do ya think?

To score my own island in THE WORLD? 

If you don’t know, this photo is of 300 manmade islands off of Dubai in the Middle East. If you click that link, it’ll take you to the wikipedia article about it. This thing cost 14 billion dollars to make. It’s going to be lots of hotels and resorts. It’s (obviously) in the shape of earth (an oblate spheroid?) and you (ha! like “you” will ever go) can swim from country to country to continent. Unfortunately, I don’t think the islands’ millionaire/billionaire owners have the hots for me. There’s a rumor Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are buying Ethiopia. HA!

 

 

 

 

I’m not gonna lie, I miss the days when friends would just show up at my door without the text! I’m guilty of it too though. Ours is a strange generation because we can clearly remember life before cell phones, text messages, caller ID, internet, etc. Now even little kids have cell phones. When was the last time somebody just showed up at your door, unexpectedly?

When I go to a friend’s house, I usually give them a, “I just left my house!” text followed by a, “I am at your house” text. Why are we so afraid to ring the doorbell/knock?

As much as I would love to return to the good ol’ days, I guess I have to accept that times are changin’ and go with it. I have to admit, though, I hate facebook, instant message, and text messages, although I am addicted to this new and strange form of socialization. I especially hate how things get misinterpretted. “Look, Rachel… look at this text message he sent me. He only added one exclaimation mark instead of two. He must not be into me.” Shit like that. Stupid shit like that. Oh, and I hate these kinds of misinterpretation: “this isn’t working.” (Our relationship? Or the phone?) What about this one I got recently on facebook from this DB I haven’t talked to in four years… “Hey baby. I’m drunk. Do you want to hook up?” Ew. Just some advice. Humor doesn’t come out right and neither does flirtation. A question mark is not sexy. 

Okay. Text messages are useful in some situations. When you have just a simple question: “what time is the party,” or statement: “I’ll call you back later. I’m in class.” That works. Sometimes, you just can’t talk. And sometimes, you don’t want to accidentally start a conversation with a chatty person. 

Anyway, just a rant. Maybe I’ll fight the urge and just show up next time. 

To the folks of Long Island- something’s gotta be done about drunk driving, don’t ya think? I mean, Newsday is the most tragic newspaper I’ve ever seen. There have been four teenage/early 20’s deaths in the past few days. (The links to their stories are posted below.) From May 27th to June 9th, 149 people in Nassau county were arrested for DWI’s. Newsday has posted all 149 of their mugshots in an effort to cause a sort of shame to deter future violations. I don’t think it’s working.

 

The newest story is about Natalie Ciappa.. Her father found her drunk on somebody’s couch the morning after partying. We don’t know what happened to her yet. The boy who lived there apparantly got really nervous when the father/cops showed up. Instead of helping her, he cleaned beer bottles and cans and will get 1-4 years for tampering with evidence of a crime scene. Yes, he did something illegal, but we don’t know enough yet to “blame” him for what happened. I guess it’s human nature to find somebody guilty when a young, beautiful girl dies. As far as I know, he was scared shitless of getting charged with her death because he provided the alcohol and he, himself, was a minor. Call me whatever name you want to call me for defending him, but I can see why a kid of his stature would panic in this situation. No matter the circumstances from the night before, he’s underage and scared. This is why the drinking age should be lowered. He was 19 years old and obviously uneducated about the law. If society was more accepting of teenagers drinking (which they’re going to do whether or not it’s legal), kids wouldn’t freak out in situations like this one. Similarly, if society tolerated abortions, girls wouldn’t freak out when they find out they’re pregnant and throw their babies in dumpsters. On a smaller level than society, parents need to be more accepting of their teenagers drinking, even though it’s illegal. It’s all about open communication and education about drinking responsibly. For example, kids shouldn’t be afraid to call their parents and tell them they’re sleeping out because they don’t want to drive drunk. Of course, I have no idea if this guy was hiding something suspicious like drugs, so I’ll post an update about this story when I find out more. 

 

WIth a population of 7,448,618 (wikipedia), I guess it’s expected there will be lots of car-related deaths on Long Island. It’s been going on here forever, but I feel like it’s gotten worse since I moved back here from college. A lot worse. I remember in drivers’ education, the class portion (versus the driving portion) was spent entirely on drunk-driving. We had to cut out three newspaper articles about drunk-driving every week and write a summary about each one. Our final grade was based on a portfolio of drunk-driving Death, basically. We watched video after video of disfigured people and sad mothers. My teacher had lost a brother to drunk driving and informed us: “…look around you at your classmates. Get a good look. At least one of you will die in a car accident by the time you’re 25.” They’re obviously trying to change things and educate us. My high-school did that whole Grim-reaper thing. They “killed” students off throughout the day to represent some drunk-driving statistic. To be honest with you, I was extremely conscious about drunk-driving that day… that week, even… but then it got pushed to the back of my mind and hasn’t popped back up until right now.

 

Long Island tries, but fails to change anything about this problem. The Nassau cops arrested 149 people in two weeks and posted their photos all over the place (whether or not they were found guilty in court), but it doesn’t seem to be changing anything. We’ve got to come up with a better solution. Our legal society is all about punishment and not about prevention. You can punish these people all you want, but we have to get to the root of the problem. Cabs? Public buses? Free anti-drunk driving services? 

-I’m not volunteering myself as a cab driver, by the way. Just putting it out there- maybe some jolly and sober non-profiteer will see this and help us out here on the Island where the booze is a’flowin’

 

Three kids on Long Island who died in the past few days. 

I just watched a horrifying episode of the show, Autopsy. A woman went to a medical examiner to prove that she wasn’t the cause of death for three of her children. She lost a baby daughter to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) while sleeping with her. Two years later, she had twin boys. She got drunk with a friend one night and went to sleep with the babies. They died of SIDS. Of course, the cops and society interrogated her and made it out like she killed them. The medical examiner did autopsies and found out there is no genetic proof that the babies died in any other way than by her rolling over in her sleep and accidentally suffocating them. I feel horrible for the woman! But I do wonder why she slept with the twins after having lost a child in the same way. The truth it, people just shouldn’t sleep with their babies. Check this out and learn the facts if you have an infant or plan on ever having children. Don’t ever keep stuffed animals or pillows or blankets near the infant’s face while they sleep. And babies should sleep on their backs! Sleeping with your baby can be a bonding/comforting experience, but it’s not worth it! 

We all have psychological disorders on some level. Lots of little kids have weird OCD tendencies but they disappear for most kids as soon as they get older and get made fun of. For others, unfortunately, the disorder is innate (genetically?) and they can’t consciously “quit” their ticks. Some count their steps or tap something with their right hand if they tap that something first with their left hand, to “even it out.” OCD is an anxiety disorder. You can say, “Joe, just stop turning the door knob 15 times! How about once?” or “Allison, just STOP washing your hands! It’s not that hard! Just don’t do it!” It’s not that easy. On the same level, you can’t just tell an anorexic to just “eat something, for god’s sake” or tell somebody who is morbidly obese to just lay off the calories. For some, it’s impossible.

 

Is cracking your knuckles a form of OCD? Biting your nails? OCD is an anxiety disorder. If Joe turns the doorknob 14 times, he feels incredibly anxious. He just has to turn it the 15^th time. What if he doesn’t? He will! Because it’s the only relief for this horribly crippling anxiety! Is smoking an anxiety disorder? Drug addiction? Alcoholism? I think so. Try telling a smoker to just “stop smoking then! If you hate it, then just don’t have another one!” Good luck with that. (Although you may have better luck now since the price of cigarettes in Suffolk County, Long Island just got raised to $6.50 and $8.50 in NYC.) 

 

One of the most strange and fascinating disorders is hoarding. For those of you who don’t know about it, hoarding is a form of OCD where somebody has intense anxiety about their possessions and they collect a ton of shit and never throw any of it out. What many people don’t know about is animal hoarding. When my 7th grade science teacher got busted for having tons of animals (dead, alive, and some barely alive) in his house and living in feces, I thought he was just being cruel to animals. I cannot believe there’s more than one person out there who has that disease! I guess I should have figured there was a relationship between Mr. Balsamo and the crazy cat ladies you see on the news who won’t let the authorities take away their precious cats. 

 

There’s a fine line between abnormal and normal. Check the DSM-IV-TR. It’s a clinical guide to psychological disorders. You’re in there. 

Aww!! I don’t think we’d ever eat a baby chick. But chickens are okay because they’re ugly. Are they really ugly? Or do we just pretend all the animals we eat are the ugly elite so we feel better about ourselves for eating them? Before we started eating chickens, were chicks still naturally inclined to become ugly? Which came first?

Listen. I don’t criticize anybody for eating meat. Eat dog shit for all I care! I feel bad for the environment and for suffering animals that you eat meat, but there’s nothing I can do about it and I can’t judge. I would love to be vegan for the sake of animals and the environment, but I don’t think I could ever, in my life, give up ice cream. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream drenched in chocolate syrup and peanut butter sauce with Reese’s Pieces just does the trick for me. Plus, if I were vegan, it would be such a pain in the ass to do anything food-related because I’d have to search the ingredients of everything with a magnifying glass. You’d be surprised how much packaged food has “beef” in the fine print of the ingredients. Especially on Long Island, living vegan would be obnoxious as hell. Restaurants and family parties would be out of the question. I’d be dining alone for every meal and ridiculed for it, I’m sure. Not to mention, healthy food is expensive. 

 

Anyway, like I said, I wouldn’t want to give up chocolate and lots of other goodies that come from eggs and dairy. So I understand that you can’t give up meat, because you think chicken is so damn good. My point is, stop acting like I’m protesting against you just because I turn down a steak! So many people, when they discover I’m vegetarian because I refuse to eat a “vegetarian” salad drenched in bacon bits, think I’m personally attacking them. My theory is that all people feel guilty (especially after seeing those sad videos about chickens being debeaked and other animals being forced into tiny cages and pumped with hormones that allow them to grow abnormally large…) and the guilt causes cognitive dissonance. The ego cannot bear to feel that he or she is doing something morally wrong just because he or she cannot give up that chicken. Instead, the ego justifies immoral actions by thinking things such as: vegetarians are ridiculous, I am right/They are wrong, humans are made to eat meat, vegetarians are unhealthy and pale, you can’t get protein on a vegetarian diet, the animals are going to be conceived and slaughtered anyway- I’ll do my part and eat them so they don’t go to waste. Do you really believe these things, or is your ego playing a trick on you? If you still believe all these statements (and probably more), I encourage you to read this…. Although I know your ego will come up with ways to contradict the statistics. 

Oh.. hello there! Thanks for stopping by. Can I take your jacket? Perhaps your hat?…

I tend to zone out. A lot. While it may look like I’m just staring into space with the consciousness of a rock, sometimes, I think.

• You: What kinda shit do you think about?
• Me: all kinds of shit! Bookmark me and find out the kinda shit that pops into my head. 
• You: Ok.. maybe I will look at your blog sometimes. But you’re not worthy of a bookmark.
• Me: Whatevs! You little bitch!
• You: You’re an idiot. You write about stupid shit that I disagree with.
• Me: Then comment! Don’t be a p****