Why I should not be allowed to Play with my Food

I got a connection request in LinkedIn today. I tend to connect with a lot of people in linked in; half of them are students I once had so even though I did not expect to be contacted by an engineer, it did not throw me off. After he messaged me, however, I looked closer and was amused at his profile.

Picture is of a thirty-something man in a nice suit standing in front of a a table loaded with lit candles (romantic moment?). The guy says he is a petroleum engineer in Houston, One degree (a BD!) in petroleum engineering (really? a Bachelor of Divinity in petroleum? wow!), which he received in 2003. But his work record starts as a "senior well control instructor" for Halliburton in 2000 (so he had an internship in a senior position?). For the last year he has been "self-employed" (warning bells get louder).

It has been happening for some time now, the false profile to pick up women. It is almost de rigueur on dating sites, and we ignore it as a matter of course in Facebook. But I never expected the fake profile move in LinkedIn. Here's what happened [name redacted to protect the guilty]:

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GD: It's a wonderful moment for me coming across your profile on here and i feel honored connected to you here while searching for my colleagues and believe me I've been caught up by your perfect smile and beauty and can't leave without sending my compliments across, believe me you look so beautiful and gorgeous and I would love to get to know more about you...What exactly keeps you this happy and beautiful? I do hope you would have a great and wonderful day as I do hope to hear from you soon. 

 Great Smile... G.

Me: Did you just hit on me in Linked In? WTW?

GD: Hello dear, Thanks so much for your responses regarding towards my message i really appreciate, i deeply apologize for writing this on your professional page as this is not a dating site. Well I think it was a great privilege to have met with such a wonderful woman like you,i have not come here to search for a woman but your smile and beauty has made me thought so many things.Am a single father, I've been caught up by your perfect smile and beauty,I just couldn't help but notice your charming, beauty and you look so gorgeous and amazingly sweet.with your beauty you have my complete and undivided attention,i like you JANA,and am so glad and proud to meet you,you are the kind of woman i want to spend the rest of my life with.if only you will give me your time and attentions,to get to know me more.you sounds so interesting and i will like to continue this conversation with you and see how it goes,pls feel free and ask me anything you need to know about me. 

 have a blissful day, G.

Me: You are right this is not a dating site. And people do not behave like that here. 

 I do have a question for you. Is this even a real profile? You have a poor grasp of the lexicon, as well as capitalization and punctuation issues--not what I would suspect of a professional person looking for contacts on LinkedIn.  

After a bit of close scrutiny I see that your degree comes from an Iranian university. You are "self-employed" (which is often code for either retired and consulting, or unemployed). A brief search tells me there is a G-- D-- in Houston who works in the petroleum industry, but he is 65+, married, and has a law degree as his first degree. If your picture is even close to accurate you are much younger than that. 

The speech patterns in your message are of someone to whom English is a second language but, although you list an Iranian university for your "BD," you do not list Farsi, Turkic, Arabic or any other languages besides English. This tells me you are being disingenuous (look the word up). 

Do you really think women are dumb enough to fall for the "you have a beautiful smile line" when you haven't met them and have only seen one picture? You come across as a scam. Get real, Dude.

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There may be desperate women out there, but for heaven's sake, even if you are desperate, do your research before falling for bullshit! And gentlemen (and I use the term loosely) you have to do better than this. Get the hell out of LinkedIn. 

"Another Year" from the "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" Video Series

So. Amanda Palmer. Singer. Girl Extrordinaire. Hell of a voice. Wicked sense of humor. Yeah, Amanda, I can see you with Neil.

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are Dating! (And Other Tidbits From Housing Works)

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are Dating! (And Other Tidbits From Housing Works) Posted using ShareThis

You go, Neil. And Amanda. (Now I have to go find out who she is, seeing as she has stolen the heart of one of my favorite authors.) And hoorah for them for making money for the Housing Works folks, too.

BTW, Amanda? I totally agree on the naked thing. Naked is fun.

Be happy, kids.

Love me because of who I am not in spite of who I am

Shakespeare said:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds. . . .

Which is exactly the subject of this blog post from Stinky Angels. Well said, Jae and Bill!

Because of.... Sunday, April 12, 2009 [from Stinky Angels]

For anyone who is counting, today is Andreas' and my 6 year wedding anniversary. That makes it the 12 year anniversary of our first date. (Yes, we did that on purpose. Too cutesy?)

Back at the very beginning I created a phrase that described how I wanted to love and be loved, and Andreas and I have subscribed to this philosophy ever since. I said that I wanted someone who would love me "because of, not in spite of" the way that I am, and I'd do the same in return.

If I were to love everything about him except the one or two things, then I'd constantly be trying to "fix" him. If he were to love me "even though" I am one way or another, then he'd wonder when I was going to change. Instead, we try to accept each other exactly as we are, and love all of those things that are the hardest to love.

Andreas has loved me because of my big heart, my love of animals, my joy of life, but also because of my (occasional) sharp-tongued jabs at his expense, and the way I smell (stinky) after two days of not showering because being a mommy sometimes means I forget to be a (clean) wife.

In return, I have loved him for the way he sees humor in everything, his ability to keep me calm and sane, and the way he can make friends with anyone, but also the (sometimes maddening) way that he volunteers out his time to anyone who needs help even if I need him at home, and how he (usually, but not always, correctly) thinks he knows the best way to accomplish any task.
Now we have Eme (whose 14 month "birthday" was yesterday) in our lives. There are days (though they are very few) when we might wish that she would be different than the way she is (please, please, PLEASE sleep through the night). But we love her. Just as she is.

We love Emelie because...

she is very good at making us laugh.
she is amazingly smart.
she almost never lets us take naps.
she learns new things every day.
she gets excited by anything that moves by itself (trucks, cats, leaves, whatever).
she says "mama" and "dada" and means us.
she loves us.
she sometimes stinks.
she knows how to spit her food out (see Cuffs and Peaches).
she enjoys singing and dancing.
she enjoys spinning around in circles until she falls down.
she enjoys doing very unladylike things even when we're in public (see The F Bomb).
she's usually sweet and gentle.
she's sometimes not sweet and gentle.
she's awesome.

For all of these reasons and more, we love our beautiful, stinky angel.
Posted by Jae at 12:21 PM