He didn’t look like a stalker. He looked like a nice, well-mannered twentysomething with a fashion sense that lurched toward the emo.

He didn’t sound like a stalker, either. He sounded nice, and friendly, and totally easygoing.

But even as I walked into the coffee shop and saw the sleek blond hair, the stylish hipster belt, and the anti-used-car-salesman smile of a nice-looking 23-year-old, there was still a little part of me that feared I was meeting with a middle-aged alcoholic in (a really good) disguise.

He was polite, funny, interesting, and sweet. He knew that the idea of dating someone I had met online scared me, so he did everything he could think of to make me feel more at ease. He opened car doors for me, he knew how to cook, he wasn’t messy, and he kissed exactly like how the guys in my Prince Charming dreams always have.

Thanks to OKCupid, my life had become one big Kodak moment—one big temporary Kodak moment, that is. I was scheduled to leave in three weeks for a semester abroad in China, and I wasn’t about to turn down any guys who’d offer to take me out for dumplings and tea there just because of some contrived connection I had with a dude I’d met online at home.

I sat Danny down a week before I was scheduled to leave. “I have to be single when I go to China,” I said.

“I completely understand,” he answered. “That’s fine.”

I got on the plane feeling great. Then I found out that as soon as I’d left, Danny ran out and bought a wall calendar and a thick red marker. “What’d you do that for?” I asked. Read More »

I remember being accompanied on the subways of New York City by armed soldiers, dressed in camo. I remember waking up every day checking the current terror alert color along side the weather. One day would be yellow, the next day orange…as long as it wasn’t red; I really didn’t care.

So what color terror alert are we on today?

Rudy Giuliani recently spoke to his supporters and reminded them all that terrorism is still here and that it is a reality that we cannot wish away. And yet, polls have shown that 8 out of 10 voters in Florida think that the terrorism threat has disappeared.

The inconsistency here is choking.

Yes, I marginally cared about those alerts…about as much as if it were going to be windy or cloudy on any given day, but the emphasis I placed on these in the past is neither here nor there. The fact that we have politicians broadcasting the ongoing threat without the follow up precautionary steps is what really gets to me.

Is the reality of terrorism more staged than we have been imagining? Many of my skeptic friends would say, “Yes, Of course.” So why the continuing of the charade? Read More »

• This device could only have been invented by a man.

• Jessica Simpson and Dolly Parton to Du-et.

• Would you wear this?

• With the Hawaii Chair, you will never work out again.

• If you don’t know this band, you should.

• Jack spills beans about Project Runway.

• Kissing, Monogamy & The Future Of Makin’ Babies.

• Starbucks … Closing in a city near you.

• Avril Lavigne wants to make you smell like a slut.

• Cat Power or Frank Sinatra? You decide.

• Top Gun is really gay.

This just in: Britney has finally ceased the madness and allowed herself to be checked into a hospital for at least 72 hours. It’s not completely clear why she’s there (Perezhilton is reporting it may be due to a suicide attempt, and that Brit’s new psychiatrist called the hospital), but because she was committed, she must stay at UCLA Medical Center for three days.

Apparently, B. Spears’s mom wants to take her home to Louisiana once she’s released, to get her away from her paparazzi pals and the douche twins, Sam Lufti and Adnan Ghalib.

Hopefully, all of this will happen, and Britney will get better, and I will stop feeling a personal need to put her in a headlock and march her to rehab myself.

Dear Ladies, I want you to ask yourself a question I often times ask myself on the shameful walk through an apartment which I hardly recognize on a hung over morning. The man at hand’s name is still new to me and I’ve left him snoring in his sheets. His roommates are awake and have no fucking clue who I am, so I wave awkwardly and put my boots on as quickly as possibly. I tell them to have a nice day and I just know, as I stumble down the building’s steps, one of them is asking the other:

“Wasn’t that their first date?”, chuckle, chuckle, chuckle.

So the question of doom is this, ladies:

Are you really a lady?

I’ll be the first one to rub hot wing sauce on my jeans. I can be as tomboy as they come… can’t break a nail cause I don’t have any to break…so I know that I’m not a stereotypical “lady”. But when it comes down to sex, I’m starting to see that the “Anything Goes” handbook I’ve been using for dating might not exactly be relevant anymore. Read More »

If you’re dying to get rid of your old English lit novels, or if you find your boxed set of Little House on the Prairie books gathering dust in the corner of your room, then boy, have I got the places for you.

What if you could find someone on the Web who wanted your old books, but you wouldn’t have to go through all the trouble of finding that person yourself? What if you could also search the Web for almost any book you wanted and get it for free? Pretty cool, right?

Well, swapping books is all the rage nowadays, and there are a multitude of book-swapping sites to prove it. Most are free to join and score you on a point system. For listing a book on the site, you get some fraction of a point. For actually giving a book away (that is, putting it in an envelope and slapping on the postage to send it), you get a full point. And for every full point you earn, you get a free book of your choice.

Here’s a smattering of what’s out there: Read More »

All of us girls have played out this scenario in our heads multiple times (and if we haven’t, then our parents have and they’ve been sure to articulate the matter more than once)…

We are walking down a dark alley (why are we always in these dark alleys?) and we get attacked. By a hostile stranger. He wants to steal our purse or rape us or kill us or all three. How do we defend ourselves?

Well, many women have come up with their own protection system. Some don’t walk alone at night. Others have invested time and money into self defense courses. And still others opt for the bad ass route of the knife, the mace, or the…taser gun.

The taser gun has actually been growing in popularity these days…but I have some questions for the women who are orchestrating this new taser marketing campaign: Read More »

Well, the College Candy commenters have spoken, and you know what girls? You’re totally right (Of course you are!).

I thought I had this roommate situation all under control. I decided it was a bad idea, I told him it was a bad idea, but that we could discuss it further if necessary, and keep an open mind.

Apparently the words “discuss it further” and “bad idea” entered this boy’s head and came out sounding like “let’s make out some more“.

The other night I got home late from work, tired and cranky. I wanted nothing more than to sit on my couch, watch crappy TV and eat a vegan cupcake. Is that so much to ask?

As I was getting ready for bed, he was the only one left in our living room. I walked past him en route from the bathroom to my bedroom, and he grabbed me by the arm, pulled me towards him and practically stuck his tongue down my throat. He had just smoked a cigarette, and kissing him was like licking an ash tray.

“I just brushed my teeth!” I hissed, yanking myself away and hoping our other roommates wouldn’t hear. He pulled me in again, this time kissing my neck, as if this would make me forget all about the fact that he just AMBUSHED me. I pulled away yet again and went straight to my room, shutting the door behind me. Read More »

This season of Nip/Tuck has been pretty damn good. It’s maintained my interest through all of the kinky sexual escapades (Sean and Eden), the strange plastic surgery requests (hair-plugged mustaches?) and even the guest appearances by Rosie O’Donnell.

But last night, I was reminded of the original, the raw and the murderous side of this sensational piece of show — because of a) Gina’s ‘suicide’ and b) Crazy Agent Colleen.

Ok so, Christian is officially a murderer. Although the whole screwing Gina off a high-rise building seemed unintentional, I can’t help but wonder if he kind of meant to shove her off the edge. She was making his life a living hell, so why wouldn’t he want to get rid of her?

However, when it came to telling his son Wilbur about her death, it became quite obvious that he was mourning. What I’m most curious about though, is whether or not the whole incident will come back to haunt him. Will he ever get caught? Read More »

On the afternoon of January 22, Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York City apartment.

A week later, I’m still unsure which is worse – that a tremendously talented young actor died, that I probably learned about it before his family, or that his family heard about it from the media, the same way as me.

From the moment the news was released, nearly every media outlet seemed to toss journalistic integrity out of the window in favor of reporting rumors and speculation. We saw pictures of Heath’s body carried out of the apartment in a body bag, TMZ had a live stream outside of the Frank Campbell funeral home on Fifth Avenue, similar to their feed outside of the Britney Spear’s court hearings (after many of their readers protested the funeral home feed, TMZ finally took it down), and Tinsley Mortimer, a New York socialite, was speculated to have used Heath’s sudden passing as a photo op, getting her nails done at a salon next to the funeral home and not so close to her own home.

There is no glamour in dying. Upon death, there should be no indignity. Yet at every turn, the stories ran wild – Heath Ledger died in Mary Kate Olsen’s apartment; pills were STREWN around his room, Heath was depressed and had a drug problem.

With celebrity comes endless scrutiny, yet in life, Heath Ledger was spared from a lot of it because of his low key profile away from the glare of Hollywood. But his death was another story entirely, and it wasn’t just paparazzi outside of the building. New outlets were there right next to the gossip photographers, covering the coverage of the event just to get a burning headline. Read More »