Lauren Wu dot com

Life is short,

Break the rules,

Forgive quickly,

Kiss slowly,

Love truly,

Laugh uncontrollably,

And never regret anything that made you smile.

I can't remember how I stumbled upon this site, but I'm quite addicted to the site Jezebel.com. Their latest article about condoms being recycled into hair elastics. Aside from being completely disgusting, using these products can be a health hazard. Quoted from the original article from InventorSpot:

"Even though the condoms are fully recycled, it has been shown there is still a marked amount of risk for bacteria to be transmitted as girls are known for holding rubber bands in their mouth as they use both hands to gather their hair into their ponytail. Even if they set the band on a bathroom counter while putting hair into place, nail biting or any other oral contact to the skin touching the bands can cause infection ranging from genital warts to the HIV virus."

I can read this, but apparently not everybody can!

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

I'm excited about this word because prior to learning about it, the only alternative I could think of is quite rude and should not be used in polite company. I found this from M-W.com's Word of the Day.

jerkwater \JERK-waw-ter\ adjective

• Remote and unimportant
• Trivial

Example sentence: "We're stranded in some jerkwater town in the middle of nowhere," said Larry when he called to tell us that the car's engine had blown.

Did you know? We owe the colorful Americanism "jerkwater" to the invention of the steam engine -- an advancement that significantly accelerated travel by rail but also had its drawbacks. One drawback was that the boilers of the early locomotives needed to be refilled with water frequently, and water tanks were few and far between. As a result, the small trains that ran on rural branch lines often had to stop to take on water from local supplies. Such trains were commonly called "jerkwaters" from the motion of jerking the water up in buckets from the supply to the engine. The derogatory use of "jerkwater" for things unimportant or trivial reflects the fact that these jerkwater trains typically ran on lines connecting small middle-of-nowhere towns.

I hate junk mail. It's a waste of paper. The worst type is unsolicited credit card offers because you need to shred them (if you just throw them away somebody may pick them out of your trash and apply for a credit card using your information).

In an effort to reduce the number of offers I receive, I recently used OptOutPreScreen.com to opt-out from lists used by creditors or insurers to make firm offers of credit or insurance that are not initiated by me. In case you're worried about the legitimacy of the website, it's directly linked from the FTC website (which contains other useful information for further reducing unsolicited telemarketing calls, promotional mail and spam emails).

I originally submitted an electronic request through the website, which removes me from these lists for five years, but then hubby & I both sent in a hard copy form (provided by the website) to remove ourselves from these lists PERMANENTLY. I doubt it will complete eliminate all unsolicited offers, but at least it's a start.

This is an old article, but it's a great one titled "The Porn Myth". The tag line summarizes it well, "In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing."

Here are some other poignant quotes:

• "Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity."
• "For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn."
• "The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it."

Investment Dealers are excited to announce the newest structured finance product - Constant Obligation Leveraged Originated Structured Oscillating Money Bridged Asset Guarantees, or COLOSTOMY BAGS. Designed to accommodate the most sophisticated investment strategies, Colostomy Bags contain the equity tranches of Structured High Interest Taxable Derivatives, or SH IT, and are leveraged an infinite amount of times through the innovative use of derivatives.

"Its an actively managed, unlimited liability, open ended investment with no maturity date, which pays LIBOR plus 5,000 and has no correlation to traditional investments" said a spokesman for the Investment Dealer who engineered the product. "It's based on a CDO structure, but it's designed to default BEFORE the first coupon payment, which you'll agree has no correlation with stodgy traditional investments and is a perfect fit for portable alpha scams, er, strategies." Following the default, each month more leverage is added to the structure to pay for the coupon and the Dealer's fees which are set at 80%. "We feel the fees are reasonable, given the adrenaline rush you'll get each month attempting to mark these."

The Colostomy Bags carry a AAAA rating, based on the rating agencies opinion that they are even safer than Treasuries. "You can't use traditional credit analysis to value these babies, no sir-ree" said a spokesman for A rating agency. "Just like Icelandic Banks, we give them the highest rating because you just know that the Fed will bail out all the hedgies who buy these things..remember like Long Term Capital? And the best part is, the beauty of this structure is that the loss given default is NEGATIVE, so by extension we feel that the CDS will trade through Treasuries."

Inhaling deeply on a fatty, he continued "We've been tinkering with our model, which served us well for Enron and the Telecoms in '02, and our stress testing shows that the probability of loss in the senior tranche is close to zero." The model, constructed of a wishing well, Joseph Jett's trading blotter, and drawings of Unicorns then collapsed in a heap. "Well, back to the drawing board!" he cackled.

A real money investor, huddled on the windowsill outside his office, said he remained optimistic about holding the Colostomy Bags but was a bit concerned with the 95% decline in value on the first day they traded. "We've taken a bit of a haircut on these but I'm waiting to see the first servicer report, which should arrive in a few months. At first I was annoyed that the dealer who sold them to me refused to make a market in them, but that makes my job easier since I'm not tempted to sell."

We located a hedge fund manager at a due diligence meeting in the VIP room at Score's. He said he was skeptical of the structure at first but was dared into buying it by a fixed income salesman. "He said to me, 'what's wrong with you, it's quadruple A rated, just buy it, what are you a pu##y?' He also said it was going into 'an index', although he didn't say which one, but I felt that I had to buy it. And that was good enough for me, bro'."

1. Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to stop talking.
2. Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.
3. Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes.
4. Go Ahead: This is a dare, not a permission. Don't Do It!
5. *Loud Sigh*: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)
6. That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.
7. Thank you: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or Faint. Just say you're welcome.
8. Whatever: Is a women's way of saying back off!
9. Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking "What's wrong?". For the woman's response refer to #3.

*Send this to the men you know, to warn them about arguments they can avoid if they remember the terminology.