items of interest to me and, possibly, to you.

I really loved Michael Ian Black on Ed and now on Burning Love, but he sure comes across as an unbelievable douchebag in real life (and in his book). For some reason, that kind of bums me out.

This actually contains some good tips.

“No matter how well you do all of the above, you will falter at some point and find yourself at work on a crazy day when you’re hungry and can’t get any food for a few hours. Keep a stash of non-perishable healthy snacks at work and/or in your purse just in case. I have a bag of almonds in my filing cabinet, and they’ve saved the day more than once. The things that seem to work best for most people are nuts, jerky, or ready-to-drink protein shakes.”

“Instead of being regarded as heroes who changed their own destinies, “phoenix men” have long been unpopular in the Chinese marriage market, especially among “peacock girls” — those from urban, relatively wealthy families. Women dislike what they perceive to be the men’s insecurity, fear of failure, penny pinching, inferiority complexes, and prioritization of his extended family over his own wife and kids. These are thought to be traits irreversibly ingrained in his psyche by the time he reaches adulthood.”

LOL

“Simply put, doctors and moralists feared that masturbation made men more dependent—and women less so. Kellogg and Graham worried that boys who masturbated would not only lose their physical vitality, but would become more easily influenced and even dominated by women. The boy who could resist pleasuring himself as a teen was learning the strength he’d need not to allow himself to be manipulated and hen-pecked by his future wife. At the same time, Granville, Baker-Brown, and their peers worried that a woman who learned to give herself sexual pleasure might pursue self-sufficiency in other areas. At a time of rising male anxiety about feminist demands for suffrage, female masturbation became an unsettling symbol of women’s independence.”

“Recently the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) issued a statement to its member clinics suggesting that healthy, postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 54 should no longer be discouraged from pursuing pregnancy via donor eggs or embryos.”