Good morning! Hows the weather? Here is gorgeous... off to Kutna Hora in an hour or so, just sat drinking coffee (and marvelling at the lack of hangover) by the terrace, in full sun.
dont want to come home... *sniffs*
I envy you the choice, Hen. When one's older, like me, and to a lesser extent Liana, available and fault-free members of the opposite sex don't grow on trees. You go out with people even when you know they have faults, partly because you have faults of your own to barter, partly because you just want to live. Speaking for myself, these days I don't even speculate whether it will "work out", just whether it might be fun for the moment. When you are younger, there are more people to choose from, so you can afford to be more discerning.
What I was trying to say earlier was that in my experience the sexually combative and emotionally prickly woman may mellow once she's in a regular relationship, so don't be put off too soon. Yes, it doesn't feel nice being made to feel one of a number of sampled items, but there's a challenge in that, too. You could look at it like this: the more lovers she's had the more of an accolade if she likes you.
er - yes, Neil, I think even I am aware of that....however if you build up over a long period and even phone each other and exchange regular pics, I think the danger is significantly reduced...there are ways of telling whether a person is genuine.
This is a one off but earlier this week I was walking through Wythenshawe shopping centre and passed a girl who was heavily pregnant. Now I tend to think pregnancy is a beautiful thing BUT ...
This girl was wearing a top which was too short and showed several inches of distended belly, in addition to which her belly was displaying a fish tattoo.
The fish looked like it was swimming in a huge pink goldfish bowl. Yecch!
Personality-wise, it's got to be unprincipled ambition.
[%sig%]
You could look at it like this: the more lovers she's had the more of an accolade if she likes you.
Absolutely. If you were a confident man, you would think that.
But if you were scared of women generally, or not prepared to be rejected, then you wouldnt allow that situation to arise, would you? As I said... clever. Nice little self preservation ruse, whilst making the women think it's their flaw entirely.
"The problem with this site in general, I find, is that there's a resistance - nay, hostility - to anything that contains a whiff of the intellectual, the literary or the experimental"
Jon, I like you, but that's utter crap. There's LOTS on this site you could put in those categories, but that doesn't mean they're good, might just be superior-sounding pretentious twaddle.
UKA does have a huge number of good authors and a lot of nice features. What it doesn't have is anything resembling a decent discussion group, because of the tendency of UKA editors (who feature themseleves far too prominently, in my opinion) to paranoia, reinforced by the occasional sensitive soul who threatens to leave the site if they get a poor rating - if they got called a twat they'd probably suicide.
Missi isn't the "spirit of ABCTales" (unless he's just dropped dead) - he just patrols the discussion group being the guy he is, or at least the persona he is. It's part of the boisterousness here, but no one is forced to join in.
My problem is that if I catch someone in a lie just once, then I tend to draw a question mark under practically everything else they ever tell me. This may be wrong of me, and some would say I should give them the benefit of the doubt, but I just can't help it.
All Straw Dogs go to Heaven, you mean? I now love the idea of maiden aunts going to see Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" in the belief that it would be a knockabout comedy - 'If they move, kill em!" - or, in a more mucky vein, confusing The Devil in Miss Jones with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie...
I Love 'pop' opera - Don Giovanni, Carmen etc. - but that's becasue it is a fairly new thing to me. I tried it for years and hated it - but then finally it clicked! Trying hard to catch up now so I'll take Bes's tips and give them a whirl! It drives them mad when I play it in the office though!
What do I hate in people? Saying they'll do something and then failing to follow it through. Failing to pay their debts. Failing to pay their bets (just the worst thing on earth). Being rude for no good reason. Voting Tory or BNP or UKIP. Being intolerant. Having no sense of humour.
I love Katya Kabanova - one of my favourite operas but it's never "done" here any more.
Attractiveness is a funny thing. Was at a wedding yesterday and standing next to a devastatingly handsome man (not my husband who is THE most devastatingly handsome man - this side of the English football team, anyway). When I finally got to speak to this guy it was an instant turn off - he had a girly voice, over inflated sense of self and was clearly quite stupid. Not good.
Good teeth and a nice laugh come quite high up the sexometer.
"*as usual he needs the last word, just like most spoilt brats. Oh well.*"
Says the manchild who has to add another comment on the end, and who will probably reply to this one as well!
Neil - I know there's lots of that stuff on the site, but it's rarely praised, and often gets attacked if anyone does dare bring it up. Some of the poets I brought up on the Discuss Writing... forum in the past got roundly grumped at or ignored for that reason. Even Tony, lovely guy that he is, baulked at 'Flaubert's Parrot' and called it 'up it's own arse', when it's really just a fairly easy going novel that brings in literary criticism. Tony's free to his own tastes, but I object to anything verging on intellectualism being called 'up its own arse' just for being what it is. Similarly, it's been opined several times on this site that I write deliberately 'obscurely', to alienate people 'less clever' than myself, and other such nonsense. And Faithless, a while ago, damned all academics and academia as inconsequential and self-important, an opinion which only Liana and I seemed to object to.
I'm not accusing all members of being defiantly middle-brow, but there's definitely that atmosphere to the site. When Chant suggested we look for 'cutting edge' stuff there was a tirade against the very idea from people who obviously object to the very idea of experimenting and made it quite clear that all they want is 'stories'. It's this attitude that means I end up getting bogged down in often pointless debate here, whenever the topic of writing does come up, and which UKA is strangely free of.
Hey!
The new one is joining the discussion!!!
I would have love to read Sooz' definition of "weak men"...and anybody else's for that matter...
And I agree with Liana: I am glad I had a high level of tolerance when I was younger....made a lot of experiences possible for me...and I don't regret anything I did or any encounter I had. Come to think of it: my poems thrive on such encounters...
No writing without some pain and some disappoinment/anger, right.
Nowadays, I am not so tolerant anymore: do not like to waste my time on uninventive liars or people who lie to cover their own backs (men and weakness??? Is there a link?)
A charming lie can be ok... I guess you all see the difference...
Ulrike
Quite possibly. If there's a blonde liar with dirty fingernails and teeth, who tends to judge people on only bits and pieces of the story in our community, then I'd imagine she's feeling a bit paranoid by now. Especially if she's pregnant and has a fish tattooed on her belly.
weve been told to live our lives just
working on a feeling
waiting for the sun to shine on
what we do belive in
in every man i hear the cry of
someone else
a drowning man reaching out but
no one hears
i know a man living out his life
without a reason
and he says mondays gota beautiful baby
and wednesdays child can never win
little saturdays will work till hes crazy
but fridays child he was born to give
now what about all the unborn people
that will suffer
at the hnads of mr right who cares about
no ohter
i see a mother who lets her children
use her up
i know a father to sacrifice his
wayward son
i wonder
what you givethat someone else
is needing
next to nothing
mondays got a beautiful baby
wednesdays child@ can never win
little saturdays will work till hes crazy
but 'fridays child he was born to give
Missi
I'm not saying ALL men are philanderers or ALL women are not.
The majority of couples I know, whose realtionships have broken up where someone has strayed it has been the man. That doesn't mean I don't know women who have, but I tend to find that the women I know have ended their relationship because they have been unhappy and then had a relationship with someone else.
And Liana's pont - Hen I'm sure you've had relationships with more than a few women - so by your standards you shouldn't have any more, otherwise any prospective partner won't be interested either. It's not about whether someone has had lots of relationships, if you're looking for a serious relationship you would go into it hoping that this is the ONE.
>> ...I tend to find that the women I know have ended their relationship because they have been unhappy and then had a relationship with someone else... <<
ALL people that end their relationship do so because they are unhappy with it, whether they are men or women is immaterial. People that have affairs do so because they have either lost respect for their partner or no longer wish to be with them for some other reason, though many stay attached and live in the twilight zone.
With repect to your comment to Jon, and not wishing in any way to provoke him (although experience tells me he will get defensive) I believe that as he's only a youngster (20?), he can't possibly know the real agendas that older more worldly wise and weary people have in their mind's eye. Young people tend to have relationships with their own kind in general and mostly are untouched by the paralysing effects that major adult relationships can inflict. They also, as has been already stated, have a wide choice of 'attractive' potential partners. As we age we all lower our criteria for a possible partner in some areas, eg. we begin to realise that looks are not what it's about, neither is money, but honesty, loyalty and caring are characteristics that can't be bought. We all also come with baggage that takes some dealing with. Some people never shed their baggage at all, maybe because it caused such deep scarring it will never heal, who knows. The older we get the less options we have. This can have an undesirable effect in as much as we can feel we have to grab every opportunity as it may be the last. This can lead to feelings of unworthiness and inferiority. Jon should set as few limits on what is acceptable in a partner, as possible. Failure to do this may result in him getting a reputation for being an arrogant, demanding and conceited person to be avoided by women at all cost.
hmmm.....writing from chiang mai in northern thailand here....
....I used to place personal ads in the New York magazine back when I lived in connecticut. I always specified someone with a sense of humor who was also reliable. sense of humor turned up fairly often, but reliable never really materialized, I'm sorry to say. Many of the women responding commented in amusement about the 'reliable' bit, asking why that was important. I explained that if the person is not reliable, everything else is meaningless. Of course, the thing is that everyone considers themselves to be reliable, so my point was lost on that crowd.
reliable also means honest. one lie and that person is on my shit list forever, no chance of redemption.
of course, dirty fingernails are not nice either, but fingernails can be washed; liars are permanently disfigured from the inside.
Nice one justyn.. reliable is good. Someone who does what they promise to do. By the way, I saw a teeshirt in a shop yesterday, it had written on it in large letters, "I heart JT". I think it may mean Justin Timberlake, but you never know....
Stephen... I can whiff liars pretty easily. Sometimes I get taken in, but if I work on my instincts, I'm usually right. Don't call me a bitter old woman my friend.. I may be bitter, but I'm not old yet, and my sympathy for you is running pretty fucking short these days.
Sense of humour is very attractive.
Tony Blackburn has been suspended from Classic Gold for playing Cliff Richard records.
Sorry, was going to start new thread but couldn't be arsed and since they are both unattractive, thought this was the best place for it.
How very true George - I was actually going to ask Hen if he required a typed personal life CV from every woman he meets - there is no such thing as perfection we all have flaws
There is one thing that doesn't seem to be coming through in all of this - Motivation - what about the motivation behind a person (note I don't use male or female) lying and cheating - what if their doing so is down to yourself - would you find that as acceptable or go into a state of denial ?
Wow. I haven't read this thread since my last post - what a rollercoaster!
Hen is a great guy, generally mindful of his friends, conscientious, more often than not very modest, talented, he got a first in his degree (woo woo!), he's very clever, and I have a great deal of respect for him.
However... (you must have seen that word coming)
I think Liana's assessment is, in the main, fairly accurate. I wouldn't be quite so harsh as her - I think Hen tried to rile her, succeeded, and then complained when she bit back - but I do believe that she understands Hen's points perfectly well, just doesn't agree with them. Which, now I think about it, is basically what she said.
I only brought attention to it because, in contrast to Jon, I see confidence and experience as attractive qualities, and I was genuinely surprised that he doesn't too. In fact, I think he's been a teensy bit disingenuous. Surely it's not that you don't find girls with sexual wherewithal attractive, it's that you're afraid of being in the thrall of that attraction. (one might argue)
Buddha says all human misery is caused by attachment, mate. I don't understand where this huge imagined emotional investment you talk of springs from. Where's the emotional investment in a blowjob?
Umm... sorry for flogging this dead (and now quite smelly and fly-blown) horse of a thread.
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