After spending a portion of my day listening to a friend detail a particularly painful break-up she’s currently going through, giving her the best advice I could while recognizing her little painful moments all too well, I started thinking about the process of breaking up itself.

Not the actual nuts and bolts of the deed, those always vary, but the way we react afterward.

No matter who we are, our pain tends to mirror each other during these times. We make the same decisions, fall into the same bad habits, give ourselves the same pep talks, and feel the general sh*ttiness so strongly that most of us, by our mid-twenties, have experienced some kind of life really can’t go on moment.

When a girlfriend goes through a break-up, we give advice, comfort her, but most of all, completely understand what she’s feeling. We completely understand, and never really want to go there again (although most of us will, according to the numbers. Damn you statistics! I knew I got a B- in your class for a reason!).

So certain that we all share the same brain when devastated, author Sandra Ann Miller has written a book, A Girlfriend’s Guide to Getting Over Him, in which she lists “10 essential ground rules to prevent the recently jilted from making the most common breakup mistakes”. The rules are listed here. Read More »

My childhood best friend and I had a Friday afternoon ritual: prank calls.

My favorite gag was calling up girls from our class and pretending to be the Spice Girls. We’d put on our awful English accents and pretend that our weekly victim had won the chance to have a sleepover with the Spice Girls. Cruel, I know.

Worse, though, is the fact that our gimmick worked. Week after week, gullible girl after gullible girl believed that we were the Spice Girls.

Then… circa 1997, there was an influx in the sales of a certain device: the caller id.

And the unfortunate prevalence of caller ids made our Friday afternoon delights implausible. After a few “I know it’s you, Sarah! The Spice Girls don’t have a 7-1-8 area code!”s, fun Fridays came to an end.

But today, the caller id has lost its power. Rather than an influx in caller id sales, there has been a current influx in caller id spoofing websites.

Caller id spoofing? It’s every prank caller’s godsend, and just about everybody else’s worst enemy.

These websites allow you to manipulate the name and number that appears on the caller id of the person you’re calling. Read More »