I’m on a date. At some point during the evening, the guy opens his mouth and the following words come tumbling out: “I was in the Navy for two years.” Oh my dear sweet lawd! I’m a very visual person. So, when I blink, I immediately envision the beautiful man sitting next to me as a U.S. Navy sailor decked out in dress whites and standing at attention. I looooove men in uniforms. One of my readers, Howard from The Web Pen Blog, was in the Navy and I think that’s the sexiest thing ever. Hmmm … What is it about a man in uniform? I mean, seriously, when you think about it it’s just another outfit, right? So here’s what I’m wondering … Does *everyone* get universally hot and wet at the thought of a man in uniform, or are there people out there who are immune to the appeal? Please feel free to use the comments section to share your thoughts. Comments from all are welcome. And, I’d be especially curious to hear from those who don’t find men in uniform particularly droolworthy at all.
From the monthly archives:
November 2007
“The Highly Screwable Threesome.” Two fellow Nerve bloggers, “Charlotte_Web” and “SJ100″, at Nerve’s launch party for their latest magazine.
After that, I stopped by the In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series to say hi to Rachel, Nichelle and the rest of the fabulous crew. I took no photos, but a good time was had by all.
Once In The Flesh was over, I stopped by a friend’s birthday party. Here’s a photo of me and the birthday girl.
And, the picture below is a shot of me and the birthday girl’s sister.
And, this is me and California Girl.
Have a good weekend everybody!!
I don’t feel 100%, but I’m back up and at ‘em; I’m ready to rejoin the land of the living. Yesterday, I stayed home and I called in sick to work. I spent most of my day laying on my couch wrapped in a blanket. And, of course, there was a small amount of special quality time with Oprah. I don’t watch The Oprah Show on a regular basis because I’m never home when it comes on. (Besides, these days, I don’t really watch anything on a regular basis that isn’t Nip / Tuck.) Anyway, so, yesterday Oprah did a show called, “The Greatest Love Story We’ve Ever Told“.
Herman Rosenblat and Roma Radzika met when they were 12 years old. Herman was in a concentration camp, and Roma came by daily to secretly give him apples through the fence. (Roma was Jewish as well, but her family pretended to be Christian.) Eventually, Herman gets moved from one camp to another, so he never sees Roma again. The Russians eventually liberate Herman’s camp. He survives, and he moves to grand old New York City. Something like 15 years later, a friend sets him up on a blind date and it’s with, yep, you guessed it, Roma Radzika. They don’t recognize each other but once they started talking about their childhoods the memories come flooding back. Now, of course, they’re married. They’ve been that way for almost 50 years. I’m not a sappy person, but even I think that’s a beautiful story. It makes me wanna believe in true love and all that mushy shit. In fact, I even took Oprah’s “What’s Your Love Type” a test to find out how my personality affects my love style. (See, I told you I was feeling mushy.) Oprah tells me I’m an “Explorer” in love. I’m like [and I'm quoting directly from the site here]: a “bad-boy rocker who lives hard, taking drugs and having risky sex“. Oh my. They know me too well. ;) Anyway, if you’re interested to find out whether or not you’re Tommy Lee’s doppelganger too, take the test.
PS: If you’re in the mood for even more cute and mushy gushy stuff, my friend of my friend CaliforniaGirl has a video in one of those YouTube contests. If you like the video below, click here to vote for it. (Yeah, yeah. Shameless plug, I know.)
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Photo credit: Peter Ong
I’ve been battling congestion and the early stages of a cold for the majority of the week. Man, I sooo hope this isn’t the beginning stage of the flu. I hate the flu. We’ve been enemies for years. That’s the sick part of “Sick and Tired”. Now, tired. I’ll be back on the blog tomorrow, but if you need your daily fix of updates from my dating life, be sure to check out my piece, Tired of Dating, over at Nerve magazine.
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Photo by Georgios Wollbrecht
[I typically do these "How To" updates during the weekend only, but I've decided to do one during the week in order to answer the question a reader named "K" asked about making money via blogs.]
You may have seen the word “monetize” making its way around the internet over the past few years, and you’ve probably heard that some bloggers make money from their blogs. How do they do it? To “monetize” a blog is to convert it from a page that simply provides content to a page that provides content *and* adds a few extra quarters to your piggy bank. If you’re a blogger who would like to earn money with your blog, Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger is a must read website. I think he’s great. He writes very good, simple, straight-forward pieces about blogging. In particular, you might be interested in his post titled: “How Bloggers Make Money From Blogs“. See what I mean? Simple. Straight-forward. He’s great, right? And, now, in case you were wondering how I make money on FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com, here’s the scoop:
Google AdSense: The sidebars in the left include ads and links to websites that may be of interest to you. In general, these are automatically chosen to match the words that appear on my website. (If an ad appears that seems totally random and inappropriate — like the advertisement that once appears for a plastic surgeon who provides nose jobs especially for black people — I go into my site and manually take it down.) These links and ads are called AdSense. Google’s adopted tagline for the service says it all: “Earn money from relevant ads on your site.” With AdSense, every time a reader clicks on an ad that is of interest to them, Google sends the blogger who owns the site a couple of pennies. I don’t have the site traffic that Dooce, Kottke, Scoble and other probloggers have, so Google doesn’t pay me that much money. Seriously, some days I earn like two pennies. But, still, over time, it helps me buy software to upgrade my blog, pay for some of my DSL expenses, and do other things that make FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com a better site for you.
RSS Advertising: If you read “How To ‘Subscribe’ to a Website”, you know know how to subscribe to a site’s RSS feed. My feed includes Google AdSense similar to the ads on my blog.
Amazon Associates Program: Just like with AdSense, the Amazon Associates program allows readers to support bloggers without paying them a dime. However, unlike AdSense, Amazon doesn’t pay bloggers for clickthroughs. Get the difference? Google pays for clicks. Amazon pays based on dollars spent. The next time you shop on Amazon.com, if you use this link Amazon will kick a few referral / commission pennies my way for every dollar that you spend. Need suggestions? I’m currently reading She’s on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission by Rachel Kramer Bussel. It’s a great read. Check it out. Want other suggestions? Try one of the dating books listed in the right sidebar. Recently, FBC readers have purchased: The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, that book Into the Wild, The Tipping Point, and other products such as electronics. You can buy anything you like; Amazon credits me just the same. (In case you were wondering, your purchases are completely private; Amazon tells me what people bought, but they don’t tell me who bought it.)
Linkshare Affiliate Marketing: I’ve signed up with this program for Match.com, Lavalife and iTunes. The links are in the sidebar, but I’m not sure that I’m going to continue with this affiliate service.
Freelance Writing & Blogging: Ooh, ooh, ooh! This is the fun part. If you’re a blogger who likes a particular thing and you’re good at doing that particular thing, the chances are pretty good that someone somewhere will actually pay you for your talents. I swear, every day, I hear a new story about one of my favorite kickass bloggers getting some sweet deal to do something they love. Angry Aussie loves to broadcast really funny angry shit on his blog and on YouTube. Guess what? People noticed. He just got back from filming a TV pilot of some sorts in Los Angeles. That’s the Aussie. Over in England, when blogger Andre Jordan created really sordid (but funny) doodles on his blog, the BBC noticed. They recently commissioned him to do a weekly series of drawings and doodles for their site. A blogger known as “The Assimilated Negro” is now a successful freelance writer who writes for just about everyone and everywhere. Comedian/blogger Baratunde Thurston recently got a job at The Onion. What about me? What do I love? When I got my BS and an MA in sociology, I chose to do it in that field because understanding how people relate to each other really fascinates me. And, not to mention, I’m somewhat of a neurotic exhibitionist when it comes to my own life. So, when I started FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com, I started writing about my own relationships and my life here in New York. I never expected to become a freelance sex/dating/relationships writer, but I’ve very happy about the opportunities that I’ve been given. Seriously. I could place big, fucking huge, drippy kisses on the lips of everyone at Nerve and the other magazines who have recently given this funky brown chick (the Funky Brown Chick) an opportunity to do her thang — for pay, no less. So, getting back to the point of this post, I guess that’s the key to making money with your blog. As trite as it many sound, just do (and blog about) what you love. The money will follow.
When I see that Jason wrote that women in their late 20’s are “just undatable”, I probably should have stopped reading. Here, lemme explain. You probably already know about Yelp, right? It’s kind of like Facebook meets Citysearch. You can find (or write) great reviews about hot spots in your city and share those reviews with friends and others. If that wasn’t fun enough, hold on to your panties folks because the shit’s about to get even more exciting. You see, the secret about Yelp is this: It’s not just about the reviews. Oh, no. Sometimes our lovely little Yelpers actually delve into discussion about the Wonderful World of Women and Men. Yep, relationships. In fact, almost two weeks ago, a friend brought this discussion to my attention. A chivalrous gentleman by the name of Jason H. writes:
” … [W]omen in their late 20′s are just undatable. The combination of being jaded by failed relationships and dating in a city where they outnumber single men while many of their friends have either gotten engaged or married pretty much makes them into neurotic messes with way too much baggage and loudly ticking biological clocks.”
Oh. My. Dear. Sweet. Little Buddha. But, simmer down people. Before you all write this younger man off as a an official “milf-hater”, let me explain something. According to what he writes on the site, Jason is NOT against dating older women. He likes early 20-somethings, but he also likes cougars in their 30s. The problem seems to be the late 20-somethings; they’re the neurotic ones according to Jason. Of course, not everyone agrees with Jason’s assessments. In fact, a Yelper named Kurt S. plainly states that Jason is, “all kinds of wrong”. Late 20-something women aren’t neurotic, Kurt tells us. “Everyone knows all women are neurotic, not just a certain age group.” Wow. This shit only gets better by the word, doesn’t it? So, there you have it. Head over to Yelp if you’d like to read the rest of the conversation. Swoon as one of the male Yelpers declares that a 30-something women are probably a sexually diseased functioning alcoholics. Consume other morsels of wisdom that are ready and waiting for you on tap at Yelp.com. Meanwhile, here at FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com, Jason H and the other guys from that Yelp online exchange are today’s “Manly Monday” pick.
[It has suddenly become aware to me that some of you might want more info on blogs and other various tech shit. So, over the next few weekends, I'll post an update about random blog-related stuff that may or may not make your time on the FBC more enjoyable.]
I’ve been blogging here at the FBC for a couple of years now (and blogging elsewhere since even longer). Currently, I have more than +500 unique blog posts and +5,700 reader comments filed away in the various nooks and crannies of this website. “Where can I find some of the older posts?” you may be asking. Good question. I try to keep everything in order so that you can quickly click your way through the stuff you like the most and/or skip the stuff you like the least. Each and every FBC post is filed in a specific category such as Manly Monday, Understanding Women, and Dating and Mating. Let’s stick with Understanding Women for now. The posts that I’ve filed under “Understanding Women” include information for men who love women, for women who love men, and for women who want to hear the secret details about what men think about women. I mean, yeah, sure, there’s a slight heterosexual bias in there. But, I’m a dick chick, and I’ve never claimed that I was any different. Anyway, so, if you’d like to read all of the “Understanding Women” posts, for example, click here. The page shows 3 – 4 posts, and you can click “Next Page” to read more. In particular, y’all have either emailed me or left comments indicating that you really like these posts in that category: Why Women Say Let’s Be Friends, How To Make Boobs Look Perky, Bitches. Men Love Them and Save It or Shave It. If you want to find a particular FBC post about a particular subject, you can use the “search” box on the right sidebar. For example, if you do a search for “sex”, you’d find a post that I wrote called “Go Feline: Meow During Sex“. If you aren’t looking for a post about a particular subject, you can also look through my archives by month or by category. The sidebar on the left includes drop down boxes that let you do both.
I think that’s everything, and that gets any new folks up to speed with the old folks. I hope this info about how to scan through my archives was useful. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program — updates about my life and dates in New York City — on Monday.
Update: First of all, I just wanted to say a public THANK YOU to all the folks who left supportive comments and sent kind emails to me yesterday. As I mentioned here and at Nerve, I’m gonna keep blogging the same as I always have — despite who at my church or in my family may be reading. So, now, on with the show …
Dating, like game shows, has so many scripts that are so familiar to so many of us. Older rich guy dates hot young girl. Couple dates for a long time only to learn that one was cheating on the other with a very good friend. Girl realizes that her true love is the longtime friend who’s been right in front of her eyes for a very long time. And, the stories go on. It seems like every dating story is a story that’s been told before. After more than a decade in the dating world, I can honestly say that I’ve “been there and done that” for a lot of stuff. However, the one dating script that has played itself out only once before in my life is the script where I meet a really sweet, attractive, interesting guy only to learn that he doesn’t live in my town. He’s just visiting for a few days. And, he wants to hang out with me while he’s here. Interesting enough, after happening only once before, this has happened to me TWICE this week. Head over to Nerve to read “I’m in Town for the Week” if you want the full details. In the meantime, here at FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com, I just wanted to share this YouTube video clip with you:
