I’ve got a lot of questions on my mind today: Is it humanly possible to read four books and write two papers in the next 72 hours? How did it go from zero to winter in five days flat? When will it stop raining? Who is balloon boy and why should I care about him?

And I’m not the only one asking questions. Take a look at some of the burning queries that have been occupying CC writers for the past week:

- Can intercultural dating ever work out for the best?

- Is paying $89 to get a bump-free bikini line worth it?

- Will frat houses be able to survive the Great Swine Flu Freakout of ’09?

- Is it weird to have a huge crush on Aladdin?

- Can anyone afford post-college apartments?

- What’s worse: sexist iPhone apps or slutty costumes for 7^th graders?

- Where can I get an adult-sized Barbie jeep of my very own?

- Would anybody seriously buy a vagina mint?

- Should you resist the urge to go Facebook official?

- What’s keeping us from actually liking the nice guys?

- And finally: Does anyone want to get some Italian food and go sailing with me?  Columbus Day be damned—that just seems like a sweet way to start off the weekend, despite the frigid temperature.

Don't run away from me. I'll get you!

I just went on a date with a guy who blathered on about himself (which is only okay when I do it!), and referred to women as, and I kid you not, “dumb bitches.” Since said date last Friday, he has not called me.

And I really, really hope he does.

Look, I like to consider myself an intelligent, rational person. But what I will never get is why a person becomes 10 billion more times appealing to me when they don’t want me. The day after our date, I was actually dreading the dude calling me…I didn’t want to spend a second evening with the most egotistical person since Tucker Max (who he, by the way, actually quoted. Good role model!). But as each day went by and no call came…I suddenly found myself only focusing on his good qualities. He was smart. He was cute. He was funny (maybe he was joking when he said women were dumb bitches…). Why was his unavailability suddenly turning him from nightmare to dreamboat? Read More »

"Here's the thing about us women..."

There are so many things I’ve wanted to say to guys over the years.

Things that would no doubt make my life (and the life of the girl who came along after me) so much easier…and pleasure-filled. Or things that I never got the chance to say because the boy decided to break up with me via email instead of growing some balls and saying it to my face and I didn’t want to look like the crazy bitch who can’t handle a break up and then sends back an angry email talking about how bad he was in bed and how he’s clearly over-compensating in his life for his lack of package.

Sorry. Little bit angry right now.

The point is, if I’ve learned anything from all my he said/she said-ing, it’s that communication is key when it comes to the relationship between men and women. They can’t read our minds and we can’t read theirs.  So I started thinking about all the things I’ve wanted to say to boys over the years – everything they need to know when it comes to us ladies – and I asked my guy to do the same.

Hopefully this will clear things up for all of us and we can all live happily ever after.
Now where’s my Nobel Prize? Read More »

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last four years, it’s this: Girls. Dig. A**holes.

Seriously. There are a lot of us who actually ENJOY meeting – and dating – this special breed of douche.

Okay. I might be EXTREMELY overgeneralizing here, but I have seen a wide range of chicks fall for guys who treat them like absolute sh*t. I’ve seen girls who stick with their sub-par lovers for years and can’t give you a straight answer as to why they put up with it.

I probably fall into this category as well; nice guys like me all the time, yet I constantly shy away from them in favor of their more dramatic/mysterious/douchebag-y counterparts.

This might be like flossing a dead horse – or watching a Tina Fey as Sarah Palin SNL skit (again, not that I’m complaining!), but seriously, why the hell do nice guys finish last? And whose fault is it, really?

A few of my theories : Read More »

I have to admit, I’ve been that girl boo-hooing to her friends that every guy she meets is a jerk, every guy she has ever dated was a jerk, and why oh why can’t I just find a nice guy?? I’ve made these comments on multiple occasions, and then, the other weekend…I met a nice guy (at a bar no less. Guess the old adage “you don’t meet nice guys in bars” was a lie).

We had a date, then a second and third, and then I stopped calling him.

After three dates we had kissed once, he was talking about taking me to his hometown (across the country) to meet his family, he called me beautiful all the time, and sent me texts like “a beautiful girl like you should enjoy this beautiful day – with love.” I don’t have the stomach for that kind of flattery and adoration, nor am I used to it. Read More »

Remember Mr. Deceptive, the nice guy who turned out not to be so nice after all? Part 1 talked about what a supercilious jerk he was to other people, but this time we’re going to see how his better-than-thou attitude affected our relationship, too.

An old friend of ours (but a relatively new friend of mine), set the two of us up when I said I wanted to date a guy who was genuinely nice. On our first date, our conversation covered a lot of ground, and I made sure to mention that I am agnostic — a fact that I’ve found is often a deal-breaker in new relationships. I wanted to get it out into the open as soon as possible.

To my delight, Mr. Deceptive told me that he also was nonreligious, having become quite disillusioned with religion. I later learned that he had an obsessively religious mother and a family environment where, even at 24, he wasn’t allowed freedoms such as staying out past midnight or having a bank account without his parents’ names on it.

Sounds kind of creepy, doesn’t it? Maybe the fact that he blamed his mom for his break from religion, yet didn’t have the guts to refuse to get up at 5:30 every morning (!) and pray with the family, should have clued me in. Read More »

I was sick of dating “bad boys” and dudes from the not-so-smart category. I wanted to date an intellectual, a nice guy.

Instead, I got Mr. Deceptive.

Mr. Deceptive was definitely smart, but he wasn’t as nice as he made himself out to be. He was a Nice Guy Poser.

I think the first time I realized this was when I saw him interacting with a florist he used pretty regularly. (Yes, he sent flowers to people often enough to be a regular at a florist! And no, that doesn’t make him the dream boyfriend you’d think it would.)

During this particular visit, Mr. Deceptive wanted to arrange to send flowers to a colleague’s wife’s funeral.

“How much do you want to spend? ” the florist asked as he started to show Mr. Deceptive the flowers he recommended.

“Oh, about $50 or $60,” Mr. Deceptive answered.

Even I, who admittedly knows nothing about funeral flower arrangements, thought that seemed a bit low. Turned out I was right. The florist hesitated and looked at Mr. Deceptive quite hard. “May I suggest you send a live plant to the person’s house, instead?” he asked carefully. Read More »

M was a friend of my roommate’s boyfriend and I started dating him after he saw my picture and decided he wanted to get to know me. He lived in NYC and I lived in Boston, but he was determined to take me out.

Normally I wouldn’t bother getting into the long distance thing, but he was super tall, extremely intelligent, and not bad looking, so I figured I’d give him a chance. Plus, he was super nice. Like he would drop everything when I called, take me anywhere I wanted to go, kind of nice. What girl doesn’t want that, right? I was just getting out of a relationship with a guy I loved but who didn’t drop everything at the drop of a hat for me, so I figured this would be refreshing. M came to Boston one weekend and took me to dinner.

Right away my roommate told me her boyfriend didn’t want us dating. “She’ll end up hurting him,” he had told her. Me, hurt a guy? I’m not exactly known as a super-b*tch when it comes to dating, so I really didn’t foresee myself hurting anyone.

After another perfectly nice date, M came to visit again, also known as our third date. My friends arrived at my apartment, anxious to meet him. M wasn’t there when they arrived; he was out trying to find a restaurant that served chicken pot pie. See, I had this craving, so I told him I wanted one, and he was off on a mission. After a bit, he ran back into my apartment breathless and defeated. “I couldn’t find one anywhere,” he told me. But I wanted one badly. “Did you try Z’s?” my friend asked. “They have them there.” “Really?” he replied eagerly. And he was out the door again. Fifteen minutes later and I had my chicken pot pie in hand. Read More »

[Want Tuffy Luv to answer your question? Email her at tuffy@collegecandy.com.]

Dear Tuffy Luv,

Here’s my dilema. I’ve been dating my boyfriend for about 7 months. He’s great, really into me and always doing anything he can to make me happy. At first, all the “you’re so beautiful and perfect” blah blah comments were cute and flattering, as any girl would think, but he’s still doing it now, to an extreme, and it’s a little…annoying.

I mean, every girl needs a little bad boy now and then, not a mush ball ALL THE TIME. Sometimes I wonder if I’m with him because I’m afraid no one else will treat me as well as he does, but other times, I love being with him. Am I forcing it? Am I leading him on? Should I end it now, before things get further along? UGH

~Overloved

Dear Overloved,

Honey, you need to sit this boy down and tell him to cut that sh*t out.

It’s great to be flattered, but it’s only great if you know it’s sincere. And to Tuffy, it sounds like this is exactly the problem. How are you supposed to know he means it if he says it all the fricking time?! Read More »

If I had a dollar for every time I heard a girl complain about how they always date the bad guy and are not attracted to nice guys, I would be a freakin millionaire by now. It’s the typical college girl dilemma: Do you go for the mysterious and enticing bad boy who will most likely break your heart or stick with the comfortable sweet guy who is more of a good friend and absolutely adores your every move?

In my dating experience, I have gone back and forth. After getting my heart broken by the asshole frat guy, I opted for a more conservative wholesome dude. The only problem was that I had to force myself to be attracted to the latter and eventually gave up on that after a few months. I have now settled somewhere in the middle with my current bf. Or at least I’ll keep telling myself that.

Regardless, I do think that nice guys tend to get the short end of the deal; I stumbled upon a website recently with many entertaining reasons why women tend to prefer bad guys, from a woman’s point of view.

Here are a few of my personal favorites from the list that I found funny and actually somewhat true:

“Nice guys feel so undeserving of ‘awesome you’ that they make you feel that you have, most assuredly, picked a real loser.” Read More »