TresSugar

Learn To Read, Not Write

GiggleSugar — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:00:00 -0700

The hard-core book clubs don't waste no time with grammar.

Book of the Day: The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes

GiggleSugar — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:45:00 -0700

In the mood for a corny joke? An offensive joke? A thought-provoking joke? Or just a really funny joke? Well step right up to The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes. (More than 2,000 of them from folks as disparate as W.C. Fields and Wanda Sykes.) When I think of The Friars Club and their celebrity roasts, I think of a red-faced Dean Martin smoking a cigarette and insulting Don Rickles with off-color humor. Turns out, the private club that's been a haven for entertainers has been around since 1904, and they've been holding their roasts since 1950.

Although you'll find old-school jokes in the encyclopedia that might make your PC meter go haywire, you'll also find such gems as the following from Mae West: "I like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign." Rrreow!

The Banned Book Club: What Books Have Joined?

CitizenSugar — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:00:00 -0700

Though most book-ban inquiries remain hush hush, 9,600 requests to censor have been logged since 1990. With the help of news and librarian reports, the American Library Association tracks what tawdry titles threaten to jump off bookshelves into children’s knapsacks. And now USA Today has made a fancy chart, sortable by title, author, reasons for challenge, location, and final decision.

Sexual content was the most oft-cited reason - 144 out of the 272 times - while the racially themed, vulgarly worded, and violently depicted were other chart toppers. Someone even tried to remove the dictionary!

So what aren't we reading? To see some of the most well-known titles and why they were banned, read more.

Removed Books

The Bluest Eye: A Toni Morrison novel - and Oprah Book Club selection - was removed from a Colorado school for sexual and violent content.
Clifford the Big Red Dog: The bilingual edition was removed from a California school for unspecified reasons. Que?
Girl Interrupted: Removed from a Maine school for language.
The Lovely Bones: Moved to the faculty section of library after concerns that it was too frightening for students. So, violence?
Huck Finn: Removed from multiple schools for racial themes.
Harry Potter series: A Catholic school removed them because of inappropriate religious content.
Beloved: Removed from an AP English class's reading list because of sex and racial themes.
Prep: A Novel: Removed from a school after a parent complained it was pornographic.

Any here shock you? Was a book ever banned from your library or school?

Book of the Day: The No Cussing Club

GiggleSugar — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:00:00 -0800

Meet McKay Hatch. At 14 years old, the most "cyberbullied kid in the world" (this is your brand, kid, really?) decided he was going to get his friends - nay, the world! - to stop cussing. (You know this is all in the service of getting into Harvard, or Bob Jones University.) But I have two observations, McKay. One, I've been cussing since I was able to walk, and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. (The English language would be poorer without cuss words!) And two, with a name like McKay Hatch, you should be out stirring up trouble and writing crazy poetry. Just a thought. Check out the gallery below to see the amazing products the No Cussing website sells as well as to see some of its illustrious members.

View 6 Photos ›

Meet Matchmaker Amy Andersen, Part III

TresSugar — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0700

This week I've been sharing my interviews with Amy Andersen, matchmaker to successful singles who can afford her pricey services. Amy has shared her thoughts on gold diggers, as well as her belief that a woman should not take the reins on a date as she might at work. Here's what she has to say about her female clients.

You spoke about how women and men should assume more traditional roles when dating. Is it possible for your female clients to still “be women” in the traditional sense when they are pursuing men through your service?

Amy Andersen: Half our clients are women. Our female clients, just like the male clients, are absolutely exceptional in every sense of the word. They’ve worked hard in their lives to achieve academic and professional success. They have great friends and are very well-rounded except for the fact that they find it really hard to find a man of substance, who is commitment-minded, and shares the same core values as they do - especially when it comes to raising a family. It is very much possible for a woman to still “be a woman” in the traditional sense when she is pursuing a man through Linx Dating. Our service can be likened to a friend introducing you to a friend. Yes, there is some formality involved, but beyond that it is perfectly easy for a woman to enjoy herself and be courted by a genuinely good guy whom I have met individually through the interview process.

For Amy's advice on where to find a guy, read more.

In your professional opinion, where is the best place for a woman to meet a man?

AA: You need to envision the types of guys you like and you desire to end up with. After this, then start thinking like guy. If you are into the athletic jock type, where would the jocks hang out? Maybe they participate in a coed runners club or spend their Saturdays at a sporting-good store. If you are into the academic type, where would he hang out? He’s at a lecture, in a bookstore, part of a coed book club. Once you start thinking like this, then you need to map out a strategic game plan and develop your own strategies and plans to place yourself in these seemingly target-rich environments. This thinking could be carried over to any type of guy you are into. Once you start thinking like them and discover where they hang out, then you end up in these favorable environments. The next step is learning to flirt and approach, but that’s another discussion.

What do you make of Amy's approach to dating? Does her emphasis on "traditional" gender roles come off as refreshing or infuriating? Would you ever consider using a matchmaker?

5 Reasons Vampires Are the New Bad Boys

TresSugar — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:00:00 -0700

Vampires have long been a staple of romantic literature and movies, but with Twilight and True Blood, we're in the middle of a vampire sexual revolution.

In the latest issue of Nylon, True Blood star Stephen Moyer offers his theory as to why women are so drawn to vampires as sex symbols:

"The thing about vampirism is that it taps into a female point of view - you have an old-fashioned gentleman with manners who is a f*cking killer . . . it’s an interesting duality, because in our present society it would be an odd thing for a woman to say, 'I want my man to be physical with me.' . . . It’s difficult stuff for a bloke, but a vampire gets away with it."

Yikes! Vampires as sexual-domination fantasy? I hope that's not what the teenage Twihards are after. But it's hard to ignore the fact that for many modern young women, vampires are the new bad boys. Here are five good reasons why.

Book About Finding Mr. Right Disprupts Egypt's Boys Club

LibertySugar — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:45:08 -0700

Young Egyptian men work years to save enough money for marriage, an event that certifies manhood. But Egyptian society often treats women as mere objects to marry, and teaches young girls that their futures rely on becoming a bride. Twenty-nine-year-old Ghada Abdelaal has turned the tables - the female author wrote I Want to Get Married, a fun book which challenges Egypt's patriarchal norms, showing that Egyptian women have desires similar to men. The popular book about looking for Mr. Right, began as a blog, and Ghada is now making her story of entertaining Egyptian characters into a sitcom.

The book speaks to the crises surrounding marriage in Egypt. Young people cannot get married until they save enough to buy a pricey apartment. Marriages are often arranged between strangers and Egypt's newlywed divorce rate is high. One Egyptian sociologist believes high levels of sexual harassment of women and rape result from conservative norms, including no sex before marriage. Others blame violence on gender disparity, instead of sexual frustration.

Perhaps the humor and entertainment featured in Ghada's book will help Egypt shed some of its oppressive norms.

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Relationships Can Make Us Gain Weight and Other Qualities

TresSugar — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:00:00 -0700

On average, men gain 14 pounds when their partners are pregnant. The plumper papas credit the sympathy weight to reasons like wanting to make their partners feel better about their own weight gains.

This story got me thinking: what other qualities do people suddenly acquire thanks to their partners? Here are some examples:

Musical tastes: Your iPod might suddenly be filled with ambient music from bands you never heard of thanks to a new crush. The more people you date, the better your library.
Reading lists: If you hook up with a nonfiction buff, you might check out the latest releases so you can have your own book club for two.

To see other things you might gain from your new partner, read more

Vocabulary: I definitely heard my friend's boyfriend say, "Whatevs!" more than once, after they started spending a lot of time together.
Style: We've all seen those shapeshifting couples who slowly begin to dress alike.
TV watching habits: I know some men that blame their girlfriends for a newfound Real Housewives of New York obsession. And if your partner likes sports, you might actually find yourself rooting for the favorite team, too.
Food: If your partner cooks, you might learn to appreciate foods you previously hated.

Of course, it's not desirable to change yourself completely when you're in a relationship; but much like the men who gain weight when their partners are pregnant, sometimes we can't help but be influenced by the people we're close to.

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More Is Less? How the Kindle Will Change the Way We Read

TresSugar — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:00:00 -0700

I know the Kindle is really what you're all after in our amazing TrèsSugar giveaway, so it seems like the perfect time to read into how the gadget will change the way we read.

Book publishers, tattered and tired after years of fighting the Internet, are perched on an opportunity to sell books like never before. Will we read them? Not sure. But we're certainly going to buy them!

The Kindle is a portable bookstore that's already capitalizing on impulse buyers. Want to try a little Proust? Just read the first few pages of Swann's Way and you'll get every madeleine reference you'll ever need to know.

Of course, you'll have to pay for that madeleine, as pauper publishers are eager for your coins. But who would pay for a few lines? Ha! You will, my dear reader; we all will. The Wall Street Journal has laid out a semidystopian vision of how the future will be written. To find out, read more.

Imagine being able to create a library of every book you've ever read in a matter of clicks, and then search it with keywords. This will be indispensable for research and terrible for bookshelves.
Readers online will call out passages, much like they already do, and Google will rank pages and paragraphs, allowing the most popular to rise to the top. A well-linked quote will drive sales far more than an NPR interview.

Confused by a paragraph, chapter, book? You'll instantly be able to connect to other readers debating its meaning. It will be like a global book club that's always reading what you want.
Writing for Google is where it starts to get scary. Authors and publishers will consider how individual pages and chapters will rank in search results and write accordingly. Best case? Some tagging and strategically placed words and paragraphs. Worst? Whole books written for search engines.
A la carte pricing will be on the menu. Nonfiction books may be broken into sections and sold. Fiction? Expect to see a return of the cliffhanger, and novels sold in chapters.

It's easy to say this will never happen, but it already is. Kindle's current incarnation has a Web browser tucked in a folder called "experimental projects," and Amazon has an iPhone app that's ready to jump-start the future. Will you be reading?

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Conventional Wisdom: Ask a Lawyer

TresSugar — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:30:00 -0700

I got out of a three-year relationship about two years ago. I have since dated half of LA. I'm getting wary of dating. Rarely have I been on a date where both of us liked the other - either I get interested or the guy does - and rejecting someone is about as much fun as being rejected.

I am starting to see a pattern: the guys will come on strong and chase me until I resist and when I kind of seem to get interested, the guys just vanish. Whether I tell them I'm interested or not interested - they vanish. I'm at a point where I'm too scared of going on dates for fear I'm going to scare people away. What do I do?

- Almost Too Scared to Date

To hear what a lawyer has to say, read more.

Dear Too Scared,

Your situation is all-too-common among both sexes in the dysfunctional modern dating pool. Though I'm happily married now, I can confirm from very recent experience in the land of lovelorn singlehood that this dynamic/syndrome you are describing likely has less to do with your particular approach and more with your commitment to the idea of DATING with a capital "D."

There's something about the whole ritual, with all of its attendant expectations and conventions that seems to encourage a "chase is better than the catch" mentality among those who abide strictly by its tired protocols. More importantly, my experience with serial DATERS is that they often tend to be looking for the next best thing as a matter of course. They're just DATING with an idle hope that maybe it will just click with someone. But a DATE, in my experience, is a pretty lousy forum for actually getting to know someone and to see if you have actual compatibility, mutual attraction and chemistry.

My main piece of advice, therefore, would be to modify your expectations about what it is that you're doing, and to try to look for Mr. Right with a changed modality. If you are looking for a DATE, you are ultimately hoping to find someone to offer you love, companionship, nooky and sexual fulfillment, support, trust, entertainment, and everything else that comes along with finding someone awesome to share the world with, but much later and down the line, after you have made sure that he meets the sniff test and that you enjoy being with him. These are all things you can explore with guys in different social contexts that aren't so freighted with expectations, insecurity, performance anxiety, and all-around awkwardness as with the dreaded DATE.

So the approach, which is a tired cliché of the syndicated advice columnist for a reason: get involved with a group of people who share your interest in something (music, arts, book group, hiking club, discussion forum, team sport). Join an organized activity of like-minded people. And start hanging out with this group more and more (assuming they're not a bunch of weirdos and misfits that you don't enjoy spending time with).

See if there isn't someone in this broader group that you start to establish a friendship or rapport with (or who you find yourself attracted to, or scoping, or who seems to be attracted to or scoping you). And try as much as possible to avoid thinking of this person as a potential DATE, but rather, as a potential COMPANION (we'll leave it ambiguous for now).

Next, see if you can start to modulate your contact with this potential COMPANION. Maybe you invite him to some other group activity that you participate in. Maybe a party, or a BBQ, or whatever. Seth Rogen's character in Superbad might suggest inviting him to a pumpkin patch, but you get the idea.

You're ramping up towards an outing that we might typically call a DATE, but while you're at it, you're gathering all sorts of intel about this fellow, his likes, his dislikes, if he listens to cool music or butt rock like Nickelback and Hinder, whether he's more country or more rock and roll, if he's funny without trying to be (DATES are a notoriously embarrassing forum for us guys to try too hard to be funny, and enduring a DATE can often feel like watching some stand-up also-ran on Comedy Central).

Finally, if you are still interested in this COMPANION-cum-DATE, you'll identify an opportunity for just you and he to go do something together. If you can find something in the context of your initial meeting (say you are in that hiking club, then you suggest heading out to somewhere cool for a walk). You are making that DATE move, but in that context, it may feel a little less DATEY.

Significantly, you have already been around this person enough that, if he is interested, you don't need to use the awkward format of the DATE to find out stuff about the guy. You already found out all that stuff at the pumpkin patch. And if he has come along on the hike and made it through the preliminaries, one assumes, you may just find yourself a little more in sync, and less wary of one another. Because a DATE automatically has low expectations.

An ambiguous outing that feels less like a DATE and more like two people who are starting to enjoy spending time together? It's a space that you're likely to be much more comfortable with, and, just maybe, is less likely to generate that weird "catch me if you can" vibe that seems so endemic to DATING.

Best of luck in any case,
A lawyer

Click here to find out more about Conventional Wisdom and here to submit a question.

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