The Kiss

I heard about Mwah! a bit ago, and here it is now, arriving in our bookstores, or traveling all sci-fi style to our e-readers, just in time for Valentine's Day.  So if you haven't yet purchased your sweetie something as previously recommended here, you might want to pick up a copy of The Science of Kissing, so your significant other can point out not only all the things you're doing wrong with each kiss, but also cite scientific research to back it up.

I can't really comment about the science of kissing, but as a long time practitioner, I feel qualified to comment on the art of kissing.  Or rather, I feel qualified to comment as the victim of much artless kissing.

My first encounter with really bad kissing was with the Reverse CPR Kisser, a man who inhaled deeply mid lip-lock, sucking all the air out of my lungs, leaving me blue and gasping, and frantically pushing him away before I passed out from a lack of oxygen.  For some reason, I actually dated this guy for quite awhile.  Maybe it had something to do with a perversion I didn't know I had, and didn't particularly enjoy.

Then there was the Snake Kisser, who flicked his tongue in and out of my mouth rapidly.  I half expected him to hiss before swallowing me whole, creating a five foot nine lump in his throat slowly moving down his digestive tract.

Who could forget the Chin Licker?  He ended each passionate kiss with a swipe of my chin with his tongue, as a finishing touch.   I tried to mask the look of horror and and disgust on my face as I wondered where the hell he learned that move.  Surely it was the result of some prank a frat brother had played on him:  "And you know what women really like?  Chin licking.  Drives them wild.  You'll be in her pants in no time."

Reconsidering all this, I wonder if I should have said something to these guys, offered them advice, set them on the Path to Better Kissing.  But sometimes late at night, when the house is quiet and all I hear is the cat getting up and resettling herself at the foot of our bed, I wonder if some guy is out there telling jokes about the way I kissed.  Maybe I'm the punchline of his blog. 

In the end, who knows how we learn to kiss "right" (if we ever do)?  Maybe we just keep going on, we keep kissing until we find someone who likes being breathless, or flicked, or licked.

Lesson #1617 on Why You Should Never Send Nakie Pics Over the Interwebs

I recently had an on line account locked due to "suspicious activity."  It turned out the "suspicious activity" was just me accessing the account from a different IP address, which, I guess is sort of dodgy, since internet nerds rarely venture out of  their parents' basement to log in from, say, Montauk, LI.

The incident got me thinking (and by thinking, I mean "worrying," in all my neurotic glory.  Other topics I've been thinking worrying about this week: bedbugs, head lice, and whether or not the phenomena of the Tiger Mother is just so much bullshit or will all my children grow up to be abject failures due to my weak-ass parenting)  about password security when I came across this article from the police blotter to magnify my paranoia:  Yes, Facebook Sucks for So Many Reasons, and Here is One More . 

I've been thinking that most of the security questions I get offered to safeguard my accounts are easily answerable by the guy who had the misfortune of being stuck standing in line with me at the Dunkin Donuts for ten minutes.  Where did you meet your significant other?  What was your high school mascot?  What's your favorite movie?  Favorite sports team?  

My husband has one possible solution: stick numbers on everything.  (Don't you try it, 'cause you're a perv, and I already know you'd put "69" on everything).

Leaving the nerd topic of password protection for a moment, let's turn to the nerd topic of sex.  In reading that article about the guy who sabotaged the Facebook accounts of all those women, what really struck me was not the number of accounts he was able to "hack" (that seems simple enough to do, see my discussion above) but the number of women who had sent nakie pics around.  I know I was dating before the ubiquity of camera phones (I find that I'm becoming more of a geezer as each day passes), but no one ever asked me for a nakie picture.  I like to think that my uptight, Catholic, legs clamped together demeanor would have cut that question off before it made it to their lips, or maybe my predilection for nerdy, brainy, I-can't-believe-I'm-with-a-real-live-girl types meant I never encountered guys who were ballsy enough to ask for a porn pic.  Still,  I wanted the opportunity to hysterically scream "No freaking way!" to their request all the while secretly, and smugly knowing that I have a rockin' hot body.  As it is, I can only suspect that I have a rockin' hot body, without independent photographic evidence to support my conclusion.

Anyway, I knew a bunch of girls in college who did this, because I knew a bunch of guys who told me and, in one case, showed me.  It really never made any sense (and set off all kinds of alarm bells) to me.  Why give nakie pics to a man I was (presumably) intimate with?  He could see me real life nakie.  What's with the picture?

This Opinion Has Nothing to Do With the Fact that I am a NY (football) Giants Fan

So Ed Rendell thinks there are grave national implications for the NFL moving the Eagles-Vikings game from Snowy-time Blizzard Day to Tuesday:  Nation of Wussies!  If only the Eagles would have played that game on Sunday, if only all the fans and concession workers and security manned up and grew a pair and interfered with efforts to clear the streets of snow in order to get to a football game, we'd erase that trade deficit with China!

I like to describe myself as a yellow dog Democrat, but Ed Rendell can't leave the governor's mansion fast enough for me.  All you need to know about Ed Rendell is in the sixth paragraph of that Seattle Times story: Rendell does football commentaries after each Eagles game.  I guess Ed had to find something else to do with his Sunday.  Perhaps he could, oh, I dunno, govern the state or something.  Instead, he probably moped around the governor's mansion muttering to himself about how pathetic Americans are, letting snow emergencies interfere with their games!

Speaking of pathetic Americans, how about Congratulations on Giving up on that Dog-Torturing Thing After You Got Caught and Went to Jail For It. If you can figure out who I find more pathetic among Vick, Obama or Lurie, you'll win a prize.*


*It's a trick question.  I find them all equally pathetic.  So no prize for you.

For the person on your gift list who has everything . . .

Unfortunately, I found Dying For Business  after I'd finished my holiday shopping, but for you procrastinators out there, you can still spread some of that Christmas cheer with a thoughtful and, um,  inspirational gift from the LA Coroner's office gift shop.

And Valentine's Day is just around the corner.


I'm thinking we should have gotten my father-in-law this instead of the 42 inch LED television (split three ways, our share came out to $187) we gave him, but I'm guessing jokes like that become less funny when you're closer to eighty than to forty.

Lesson #564 in our continuing education on Why You Should Never Post Naughty Pics of Yourself on the Intertubes

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Pacte Civil de Solidarite!

File this under "Law of Unintended Consequences":  In France, Civil Unions Gain Favor Over Marriage

Turns out, French heterosexuals have taken to civil unions in a way never anticipated by the lawmakers who intended to provide the legal protections (but mostly tax benefits) of marriage to gay couples without the, um, marriage.  Civil unions are called "pactes civil de solidarite" in French, an oddly cold and sterile phrase from a language that usually makes things sound much more romantic and sexy.  For example, my high school French teacher, the darkly handsome Monsieur Badeau, used to say to me (all the time) "Fermez la bouche!"  To which I would respond, haltingly, "Je ne comprends pas!"  and continue disrupting class with my non stop chatter.  In French, it all sounded like witty, flirty banter but in English, it often ended up with me making a trip to the principal's office. 

According to the New York Times, for every three marriages in France today, there are two civil unions.  The article is short on reasons  why, other than to note there appears to be a generational hostility both toward religion and the concept of marriage, which is imbued with lots and lots of religious imagery and symbolism in France, I guess.   And, oh, yeah--you can dissolve a civil union just by sending a registered letter to your not-so-much-any-longer better half.  I'm thinking I had one night stands that required more effort to escape.