Dear Friends on Facebook & Friends in Life,

TGIF!

First off, thank you so so so much to everyone that read and/or shared my ‘Perfect Lunchtime Read’ yesterday.  Your compliments pierced my heart, in the best way imaginable.  Your attention to my writing means the world to me, I am forever grateful for your time and support.

Allowing people to read my writing has always been one of my greatest fears and so now I’m doing my darndest to get over it in 2011.   The same way Oprah fears weight gain, I fear letting anyone read my writing.  Its a terrible fear to have, its lived in me for years and unfortunately I’m not sure where it came from.  Perhaps someone made fun of my writing style back in the day when ICQ chat was still around.  I like to think that that’s what happened and now I’m spending the rest of my days fighting off this ridiculous fear while burning off the little red devil that sits on my shoulder yelling negative shit all day.

One of the ways I plan on nipping my fear in the butt is by posting what I like to call ‘The Perfect Lunchtime Read’, which is an opinionated piece on a random hot topic.  I’ll be posting a new Perfect Lunchtime Read on every weekday for as long as there’s interesting stuff to write about.  Each entry will be long enough for you to read while munching on your sandwich or salad.  I’ll be giving myself a break on the weekends but I’ll continue posting random stuff related to culture, art, fashion, film and music on my website justdistracted.com 24 hrs a day 7 days a week. 

With that said, if you have an annoying coworker that’s always trapping you in mundane water cooler chat and bothers the shit out of you during your much deserved lunch break please feel free to direct them to justdistracted.com so that they could read my entries and leave you the fuck alone for once.  If you have a friend that’s feeling down and there not in the mood to talk to anyone, feel free to text them justdistracted.com and remember to give them a big hug and smile the next time you see them.  If your writing a paper for school or in the middle of a serious business meeting that’s not going anywhere, hit up my website for some real escapism and brain break.  Last, if you have any questions, comments or hot topics for me to write about please send them to justdistracted@gmail.com.  I look forward to distracting you so that you could focus on what’s important in life, which is living your life to the fullest :)

On to more important matters…

Yesterday I made it very known that I hate Valentine’s Day BUT that doesn’t mean I hate love.  There’s a difference, you see, Valentine Day is a superficial corporate driven, twenty-four hour rendezvous, filled with high expectations and an overdose of glucose and fructose.  Love only comes organic and lasts forever.  Even when you try to kill the thought of someone you loved prior to loving a new person, you never can forget about the love that you once shared with your previous lover.  (Yikes!  That probably triggered you to think about your ex…forget about dem…good for nothing-dirty bastard!  I betcha every last damn dollar of mine that he or she isn’t thinking about you…unless or course there reading this.  In which case maybe its time to make up lovebirds.  Tweet, tweet!). 

Whether or not you’re single or in a relationship everyone understands the exhaustion of finding love.  It’s often during a girl’s night out that one (sexually) frustrated girlfriend will throw a tantrum about the lack of available men in the world.  In the midst of sipping their martini, they’ll slap it down on the bar and yell “FORGET LOVE!  OK?!  Where the hell do I find a sane, decent human being, that’s single…with no kids?!  Or if they’ve got kids, how do I guarantee that they don’t decide to fall back in love with their baby’s mama every time it’s the child’s birthday when they decide to come together for the goodness of the child.  Huh?  Where the heck does one find Mr. Right, Romeo, Fabio minus the long hair, creatine infused body and phony accent.  Where the hell do I find MY Brad Pitt…actually…forget Brad Pitt and his lying cheating ass!  How’s he gonna cheat on his wife and then go and have 8 babies from all over the fucking map?!  Why is that ok?!  Someone answer me that!  Where do I find someone that’s willing to cook at least one meal a week for me?   Huh?  Where do I find someone that’ll make me laugh instead of making me laugh at them?  Huh?  Where DO I find someone that thinks I’m hotter than Angelina Jolie all the time?  Huh?  Someone PUH-LEEEZ tell me where the good guys are or else I’m gonna call up Whoopi Goldberg and ask her if I can borrow her nun costume so I can star in my real life Sister Act!  OK!?! Preach!”

Right after the rant is over there’s usually a loud cheer, everyone yells ‘amen to that sistah!’  Martini glasses are clinked together.  Next, someone feeling brave and wild calls for a round of shots and the night ends with you holding one of your girlfriends hair back while she vomits the happy poison and tells you how much she loves you and declares you her best friend in the whole wide world!  Whether you’re the one venting, chundering in the public stall or holding back your girlfriends hair you’ve been in this situation before and it stinks, literally.

I think there should be a guide to finding single loveable people in your city.  Hey, someone should make an app for that.  I mean call me old fashion but I’m a strong believer in finding love in person, mano a mano, face to face.  Why?  Because there are already so many mysteries to crack when you meet someone in person.  I’m not a love doctor; I’m not even a nurse so please take my thoughts lighter than your Mac Air.  Over the past 10 plus years millions have found true love online, which is beautiful and wonderful all wrapped into one.  However online dating just seems like it adds so many unnecessary extra steps to meeting someone.  First you have to remember a password and you have to login and search.  Then when you find someone of interest you have to hope and pray that the person your chatting with is the same person in the profile pic.  Then months later you have to meet the person on what’s essentially a blind date.  And what happens if you find out that the person you’ve been raving about for months is a 16-year-old boy who lives in Houston, TX?  Then what are you going to do, ask to speak with his mom?  If you do that you’ll be in the clinker faster than you could say read me my rights.  On the plus side I guess it only takes one ‘bad connection’ to end an online relationship HA! Get it ‘bad connection’.  I mean c’mon how many butterflies can one get from seeing a smiley faced emoticon and the letters ‘xoxo’.  Truth be told, I know several people that have found true love online and to them I say, more modem power to you!  No matter how you find it, love is love.

If you prefer the traditional methods of finding love, here are a few places where you might find your next lover:

1. At City Hall arguing a parking ticket.  I know it’s not exactly the coffee shop but you must understand that most men take pride in winning wars especially when they’re against law enforcers.  Now the man you meet won’t argue with you he’ll just love to tell you about his defeat.
2. The biggest pharmacy in the city, women always get trapped in pharmacies.  Why?  Because they have everything we need with way too many options.  So we spend hours circling the aisles, picking shit up, then putting it down then picking it back up, we can’t make up our minds, we need assistance, we get help, we don’t agree with the help so we go back to the first item we picked up then by the end we buy both and say to ourselves that we’ll be the judge of what works best.
3. The only good men’s retail stores that exist.  Don’t walk into an Adidas or Nike shop thinking your gonna find the man of your dreams.  Walk into a guy’s retail store where you actually like the clothing that’s being sold.  That makes it so that they guy walking into the store to shop is already somewhat your type, he’s got your favorite style down pat.  Stay away from gentlemen stores like Tip Top Tailer, no man good enough for you should be buying their suits 2 for 1, a good suit is an investment that’s always worth it.  Fortunately there’s not that many good men’s clothing stores so it should be easy to check out your favorite ones.  When you spot someone that peeks your interest say your looking for something for your brother even if you don’t have one and then ask for there opinion. Score!
4. I hate to say it but the nearest independent coffee shop but only on weekdays between the hours of 8am and 2pm.  This is when ladies will most likely go out for coffee on their own without their girlfriend who may make it harder for you to spit whatever game you rehearsed in front of your mirror.  On the weekends your chances are slimmer because that’s when we like to go to the coffee shop with our best friends to catch up on the week and lack of men in the world.

On that note, try one of these spots this weekend and if you don’t find a crush or lover email me and I’ll give you a couple more specific spots to hit up.

Ciao for now and thanks for reading,

Just Distracted