This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.

The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Fu-zu Jen, SEAS/WH, 2003

** This article was originally published for the Wharton Undergraduates Journal **

This bar napkin would make for a good wingman, wouldn’t you think? -doris-

This man, Riusuke Fukahori, from Japan is simply amazing. His 3D method of painting goldfish is worthy of the highest accolade! No one can achieve this level of greatness unless you LOVE what you do. I invite you to watch the genius of Riusuke Fukahori.

Source:

www.PonderAbout.com

It took me 38 days to finish this article.

I was asked to write about falling in love. One would think that since I sell love for a living, I should be overflowing with inspiration. The fact of the matter is that for 37 days, inspiration eluded me! I have prayed, fast, cleansed, became a vegetarian, begged the universe, gave $20 more to the church, listened to Whitney and I still hit that writer’s block. A girl who sells love for a living ain’t got nothin’ on love!

On the afternoon of Day 38, I decided to put away my credit cards in my jewelry box in anticipation of my IKEA trip later that day. I happen to have an insatiable appetite for IKEA’s bath & kitchen items. In order to overcome this Swedish addiction, I always leave the credit cards at home and carry cash. I do not want to be that lady who went into IKEA in a Honda and came home in an open-bed pickup truck of some no-name driver found on Craigslist.

As I tucked away my jewelry box … I saw it!

At the very bottom of my dresser, there is a box with worn out edges containing good times of old love past. There were faded theater tickets, crumpled notes, a napkin from far away, pictures of treasured moments, and an unsent letter.

I am sure you have kept similar of such objects in the back of your own dresser, or inside your Prado (Prada – made in Van Nuys!) shoebox size 8, or in the attic where it gladly collects dust, or if you live in LA where the extra space is considered a luxury, you store your forsaken box in Public Storage warehouse # 114, inside a really old armoire you inherited from Grandma.

My box breathes the story of my own contorted fairytale fantasies, misled by years of aggressive false advertisements of what love is and ought to be. My box opens to reveal my personal evolution of love, filled to the brim with profound self empathy. It divulges my stumbling and getting up upon a chance encounter of what I had hoped to be a good man, but was proven wrong. It shares my disappointment for not yet finding a good man, but rejoices in my own triumphant discovery of finding good with every wrong I made.

In my younger years, my distorted Cinderella fantasy painted the idea of a good man complete with his whirlwind of ambition that would reward him financially. He is a good kisser, 6-ft tall 195 lbs – when I bury myself in his embrace, his strength envelopes me and eludes me from the outside world. His kiss melts mine. We enter the room as a team and hush our surroundings with awe and envy. Every year we pop open a vintage Dom in celebration of our anniversary. I unbearably miss him when he’s away on a business trip, and wear his t-shirt because the smell of him brings me comfort.

My earlier idea of a good man was full of flaws and self-serving interest. It thrived on ego and languished on the principle of altruism. My far-fetched distant fantasy of a man was rhetorical, unattainable, and hopeless. It’s a robust imagination I borrowed, then plagiarized from Charles Perrault to fit my own modern life literature circa present moment.

I have had the privilege of falling in love several times. It has taken me off the beaten path and took me places I wouldn’t have gone myself. It has put me at the steering wheel of a yacht, placed me on the winding road leading to secluded wineries in Central California, lulled me to sleep with mood lighting from New York City’s skylines creeping through the fiber of the sheer window curtain, and awakened me with the smell of slightly burned caramel drizzled on my Parisian breakfast in bed. I have left my heart in San Francisco, misplaced it in Minnesota, accidentally dropped it in Marina Del Rey, gave it away in New York, abandoned it in Hawaii, tripped on it in Beverly Hills, but despite of it all, it managed to find me home again in Los Angeles where it all started.

My falling in love, both its attributes and its path, has successfully made me 15lbs lighter, romanced me to bed from the coast of Malibu to the skyline of Manhattan, shook the hands of extraordinary people I otherwise would not have had the opportunity to meet, and launched a company.

Now 10 lbs heavier than I was during my last relationship, with hair 5 inches longer, smiling more, definitely older and hopefully wiser, I reminisce on old love past of how I loved and my many failed attempts to find ‘the one’. I learn that the only person who needs to be found first and foremost is really myself.

It took me a while to realize that I often fell in love with men whose qualities I ambitiously strived for myself but somehow fell short. What I lacked in me, I made it up in the men I chose. Far too many times, I would begin a relationship with a hole in me, not with the whole me. I fell in love with an expectation to be saved from something I thought I myself could not have had overcome, and wanted to be elevated to be someone I presumed I would have had the pleasure of becoming.

Now older and a bit wiser, I make sure what I lack I make up for and fill it up to the brim myself. I no longer enter into a relationship hoping for my partner to complete me. I must come fully contented in full circle and extend an invitation for him to share in on my journey.

At the conclusion of this writing project, my editor hopes that I can give the best advice on falling in love to you the readers. I never liked and was never good at giving advice to others. I am in no position to change that today. If I am privileged to fall in love again the next time around, my advice I give to myself is this:

That when I find love in a man blessed with riches, I fall in love with his strength and resilience of how he got there in the first place and how he remembers the people who place him there. I fall in love with his hard work, his stories of failure and his stories of success that follow. I fall in love with his vigor to get up, dust himself off, start it all over again and doing it better the second time around.

That when I find love in a man who makes a living doing what he loves best, even at a salary I cannot justify or comprehend, it is I who should raise my standard of living to meet his. My own insecurities should not pollute his blessing. I want to fall in love with inspiration sleeping on my right side of the bed, who tirelessly whispers to me that the most important thing in life is doing something that you love the most. Money always follows where the heart leads.

That when I find love in a man whose age box is located two lines down, I am constantly reminded of how very lucky I am sharing my life with a man scarred with wisdom. I share his badge of honor in lessons learned and bedtime stories of his jubilees. May I fall in love again and again each time he shows me ways to go and ways not to go, derived from his very own familiarities.

That when I find love in a man younger than me, let his vivacity for life becomes a constant reminder of how I should live mine. Despite his curiosity and unanswered questions, he teaches me to humbly look inside myself and find the student within.

That when I find love in a man with a shadowed past, I prosper in his solace of finding the truth as he baptizes marred decisions from his youth. His crusade for change becomes a fanfare of admiration and muse for my own evolution to be a better person making better decisions.

The idea of falling in love with a good man still lingers sans the tangibles. Now, I simply look forward to falling in love with a man whose goodness brings out the goodness in me.

The rest is insignificant.

###

-doris-

This is sooo funny! I am guilty of saying a lot of these and so are my friends! Hilarious!

A clever design from Jung Woo Lee for Ek Design.

If only it has an adjustable pivot!

Charlotte Price changed her name to Pink Sparkly And All Things Nice. She must have liked the sound of Metta World Peace.

via The Mirror

This smart Japanese man found a way on how to move those slow-moving people out of your way! Why didn’t I think of that?

This polar bear is super cute. Siku’s mom was not able to produce enough milk for Siku and so this cute baby polar bear was left abandoned to die. The zookeepers at Denmark Zoo went to the rescue and adopted him.

Take a look at this cuteness: