This is the first of a series of posts we’ll be doing on the best breakup songs of all time. The below 100 was originally published in our book BUH BYE: The Ultimate Guide to Dumping and Being Dumped (which was called “hilarious and fantastic” by our one Amazon reviewer). Naturally, we like the list, but want to know which essential songs you think are missing, and which, if any, you would definitely not include. Unleash your wrath in the comments section.
1 “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” – Paul Simon
2 “Absolutely Zero” – Jason Mraz
3 “Against All Odds” – Phil Collins or The Postal Service version
4 “All Alone Am I” – Brenda Lee
5 “All By Myself” – Eric Carmen (definitely not the Celine Dion version; the Bridget Jones version works, but only with the visual)
6 “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” - George Strait
7 “Alone Again (Naturally)” – Gilbert O’Sullivan
8 “Another Lonely Day” – Ben Harper
9 “Apart” – The Cure
10 “Are You Lonesome Tonight” – Elvis Presley
“It happens when nobody is looking” is the tag line for this award-winning Amnesty International PSA about domestic violence. Installed in a bus stop in Germany, it features an eye-tracking device so that when people look at it, the image morphs from a scene of domestic violence into a scene of domestic bliss. (The image of the bus stop above is in English for publicity purposes.)
There’s been a bit of a debate going on in the Confessions section about whether porn is good for you or bad for you. We also got two questions recently from ladies disturbed by their partners’ porn consumption. So we “remixed” our Wise Guys’ thoughts on the topic with some of our own to come up with advice after the jump:
Dear Em & Lo, I just learned my amazing college boyfriend uses porn to masturbate, at least twice a week. Understand, we’re not talking an unhealthy dependency on porn, and he remains very focused on me when we have sex. He says it’s just an old habit from high school. I consider myself very tolerant, and I am aware that most guys indulge in this kind of thing. However, I can’t understand why he needs the help of a girl he’s never met to satisfy himself. I realize there is high quality porn available that helps empower women, but that’s not the sort he described to me as his preference. I just can’t understand the appeal of what he’s watching. To a degree, I almost feel cheated on. I’m not ridiculous, and wouldn’t demand an ultimatum or anything silly like that. I just don’t understand.
Dear Em & Lo, My wonderful husband and I have a full and varied sex life, yet my husband insists on watching porn. I generally like porn for us to watch together. What he does however is watch porn during the day when I am not home. I have asked him several times to not do this and he either says he will stop or is non-committal. Now what he does is watch it anyway but deletes it from the history in the computer. My question is, am I wrong to ask this of him? Do I need to just get over this issue even though it really bothers me? Read the rest of this entry »
Last week we told you about 5 Types to Avoid in Bed; here we present five types to avoid going steady with…
The Umfriend: Someone who always introduces you as an acquaintance of nebulous status, as in, “This is my…um…friend.” Your companion may suddenly downgrade you from new girlfriend/boyfriend status to an umfriend when they unexpectedly bump into a recent ex who is either heartbroken-slash-psycho or someone your companion would like to get back together with (sorry, sucker).
The Method Dater: Someone who adopts your personality traits and beliefs, in the process losing their sense of self. It might seem flattering at first, until they morph like a chameleon into a less convincing version of you, reminding you of everything you hate about yourself.
The Serial Dater: Someone who tries on relationships like new outfits and handles breakups with eclat, occasionally shedding a single tear if it seems right. They like their monogamy in brief, intense bursts. They leave their baggage at home. They like long walks on the beach, but they’re not particularly picky who’s holding their hand by their side — it’s just nice to have company, ya know? So you never know if they’re really into you or just the idea of you.
Our contributor Abby Spector, whois double-majoring in English and Feminine/Gender/Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University, has a confession to make:
“If you got pregnant, you’d have an abortion — right?” Max asked during our customary post-coital cuddle a few months back. My mind began to spin. For the seventeen years I had been a virgin, babies seemed far away. Now I was having sex. We used condoms, but according to Planned Parenthood, those are effective only 98% of the time. I went into calculator mode, trying to figure out the likelihood of getting knocked up if I had sex five times a week for a year. “Abby…you in there…?” Max, the commitment-phobe I had been dating for two months, was waiting for me to answer. Shit.
Politically speaking, I am pro-choice. Hell, prior to Max’s baby question, I often considered pro-choice synonymous with pro-abortion, a misunderstanding that made the concept of an unwanted pregnancy alien to me. Knocked up? Get an abortion. It seemed like a no-brainer. But now, lying in bed with Max, the scent of sex still looming in the air, I realized that deciding to get an abortion is not about politics or logic. It’s about emotions. And my emotions were clear — I would keep the baby. Read the rest of this entry »
Advice from three of our guy friends. This week they answer the following: What are the best ways for a woman to pick up a man in a bar?
Gay Single Guy (Daniel): Well, what kind of bar is it? If it’s a sports bar, talk about the game of course! I’m going out on a limb here as a queer man, but most straight men lurve women who are into sports. And why is that? Because it’s a pleasant surprise that keeps giving pleasure. Imagine meeting someone attractive that happens to share an interest with you that you can talk almost endlessly about. Wouldn’t your heart just melt if you met a genuinely straight guy who loved shopping for clothes and talking about it? It’s the same kind of surprise and euphoria for a woman and sports! But outside of the sports bar, I know the absolute best way: walk up to the man and offer to buy him a drink. Why is this frakkin’ brilliant? 1) Totally unexpected; 2) Demonstrates both a cleverness and a sense of humor; 3) Shows independence and adventurousness; and 4) It’s also an open door to a smart discussion on male-female dynamics, role-reversals, feminism, etc. See, it’s perfect!
Straight Married Guy (Figleaf): You’d think the best way would be to ask for his phone number and say, “Can I call you later.” Unfortunately that seems to make men nervous if they’re not already pretty interested. That’s not as unfair as it sounds, though, because chances are good that unless you’re already pretty interested, it makes you a little nervous when men try to pick you up! Here’s what I’ve seen work pretty well no matter who’s asking: make or permit eye contact without making a big production out of it. Then go back to doing what you were doing before. Try for eye contact again every now and then. Smile back if he smiles. If he seems interested, find your way over to him (if he doesn’t come over to you first) and find a way to say “hi” without making him feeling cornered. You can both probably take it from there. One important point though: don’t be shocked and, especially, don’t be hurt if he declines your overtures. We’re used to thinking of men as always interested, but that’s more a function of men traditionally initiating. If he gets to know you a little better he might change his mind… or even ask you out himself. Good luck.
Although the Internet has successfully reduced our collective attention span to the time it takes to watch “nunchucks pro” fall flat on his face, there are still some great online opportunities for enlightenment if you apply some patience and commitment. Fora.tv, for example, is a vast “collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences.” Basically, the kind of fascinating stuff that’s wasted on hungover college students. The videos will test the nerves of the ants in your pants, but the erudite cocktail-party conversation starters you walk away with will be worth it.
If you need a nudge to commit to an hour-long lecture without the benefit of an entire audience keeping you from walking away to check out the snacks in your fridge, why not start with those videos related to the universally-appealing and attention-grabbing topic of sex? There’s Michelle Goldberg on sex, power and the future of the world, Mary Roach on the curious coupling of science and sex, or CUNY’s panel discussion of America’s war on sexual rights. With this last one, Fora even breaks down the discussion into various parts so the inpatient among us can skip the excruciating 8-minute introduction and get right to the 90s seconds on the war on gay rights or the two minutes on the crackdown on masturbation.
The New York Times reports that, Mark Sanford and Jon & Kate notwithstanding, the institution of marriage has become more resilient in recent years, not less so. In fact, after Sanford’s confession-slash-lecture-on-sin last week, we wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to take credit for single-handedly strengthening the institution of marriage. Whadda guy.
Okay, and just to prove we can be fair and balanced, too, just like Fox, apparently John Edwards made a sex tape with his mistress. Which just goes to show that, when it comes to politicians, blinding idiotic ego trumps party affiliation any day of the week.
Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. Each week, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg tells one lucky reader what their dirty dream means (after the jump). This week, a woman asks Lauri:
I hooked up with a guy at a party several months ago. We met through mutual friends and clicked right away. I’m a 20-year-old virgin and I don’t have much experience with flirting, etc.; in fact he was the third person I’ve ever kissed. I ended up at his place and I spent the night. We didn’t have actual penis-in-vagina sex (I told him I wasn’t “that kind of girl” and he was okay with it), but we fooled around. The next day I gave him my number and we texted and flirted the entire evening. He, however, told me he wasn’t interested in anything (ie. a relationship). Our flirting via text ended there.
Then a month ago I texted him again asking if he would like for us to meet again. I didn’t really want to text him (I found it embarrassing), but my friend forced me to. We had been talking about him and she “dared” me to text him, or else she would call him. He didn’t reply to my text and a few days later I had this dream:
I am at my parents’ house, sitting in the living room, when I see him outside. He is carrying a HUGE backpack (it looks like one of those backpacking-backpacks and it’s the size of a human; six feet tall). I freak out and go to the bathroom to put on some makeup. My parents greet him while I’m in the bathroom. As I make my way to the front door to greet him I pass my mom, and she says, “What a lovely young man!” I get to the front door, but I can’t see him. The backpack is outside lying on the ground. I then see he is coming down the stairs. The light is weird, so I can’t see his face until he is right in front of me at the bottom of the stairs. He smiles at me and says (with a very strong accent, which he does not have in real life): “Let’s put on a smile on that face!” He walks outside to get the backpack, I assume, but instead he suddenly takes off running and laughing.
I didn’t wake up from this dream, but when I woke up in the morning I had a feeling I had cried in my sleep. It was the first time I dreamed about him and it really weirds me out. What does it mean?
It’s a link to our SUNfiltered post on The Top 10 Things Your Father Inadvertently Taught You About Sex. By clicking on any of the links to it in this post you’ll help us try to win a most-trafficed-post contest, which will help us keep EMandLO.com up and running. So if you enjoy our site at all, please, show us a little love and CLICK ON THIS LINK! It’s your last chance to do so before the contest is over end of June. Thank you!
aries (Mar. 21st-Apr. 20th)
You’re like the ice cream man at the town park in humid 80-degree heat: everyone wants a piece of you. Be careful who you give licks to.
taurus (Apr. 21st-May 20th)
Take this holiday off just to pamper yourself and relax. Don’t worry about going to all the best BBQs or getting a great tan or finding the best American flag shirt with matching slacks. Even if you just stay in and catch up on all that Tivo’d Frontline you’ve been meaning to watch, that’s patriotic enough. What this has to do with love, we have no clue.
gemini (May 21st-June 21st)
Sign your Declaration of lnfatuation already and distribute it to the object of your infatuation. You’re guaranteed at least 200 years of love.
YourTango presents a four-part series on male infertility — all the difficult decisions a couple has to make together when she’s fertile and he isn’t.
CollegeCandy gets a bunch of dudes to explain what a woman’s bikini wax (or lack thereof) says about her. We think that any dude who wants to judge a woman by her pubic topiary should undergo a mandatory back-sack-and-crack wax first.
BitchBuzz tries to imagine who the hell took part in a recent survey which found that 72% of women use their period as an excuse to avoid getting a speeding ticket or parking fine: Oh, excuse me officer, I was speeding because I really need to empty my Moon Cup.
If our “Name That Schlong” contest got you hankering for an up-close-and-personal view of the specimens, you might want to consider booking your next vacation to Husavik, Iceland, where you could visit the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of phallic specimens — each lovingly stuffed and mounted — belonging to all manner of mammal, including whales, polar bears, shrews, and mice. There is no human specimen available for viewing yet, though the museum claims it has “legally-certified gift tokens for four specimens belonging to Homo Sapiens.” In other words, men who will be willing to donate their appendages, once they are done with them.
Playdar is the casual sex equivalent of gaydar: when your sixth sense tells you that the person you’re dry-humping on the dance floor will be more than amenable to your dirty suggestion, whether that’s joining you and your partner for a threeway, dressing up in a leotard and leg warmers and riding you like a balance beam, or simply coming back to your place and going “all the way.”
So tell us: Do you have good playdar? Or do your dirty suggestions more often end up with an overpriced cocktail in a plastic cup thrown in your face? Embarrassing stories in the comments section, please…
