They don't make 'em like that anymore

Crime in Mexico isn't getting any less shocking.
On a lighter note, lots of interesting stuff here. Here's what first caught my eye, after mom's insistence that one should always look nice, even at the gym:

In film school, I had a short, strange romance with a French guy, Guillaume, who wore silk shirts, had impeccable manners, and paid for everything. I don’t think I opened my purse in his presence once. Even though I didn’t love him, I was happy.

Until the night he stopped by my apartment at 11 o’clock and caught me in a pair of paint-stained sweat pants. He was appalled, refused to come in. He felt that since we were in a relationship, I should always look my best, as if I were a babe-on-call, ready at all hours to be seductive and kittenish. Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Adieu, Guillaume.

Next: a sentiment I've heard many a friend express, and years ago I felt the same way, not even so much in terms of practical abilities as the ability to have easy answers and hard and fast opinions, when everything from my perspective was so nuanced and complicated. It took a while to understand that these guys didn't have all the answers; rather, they had lower standards for sounding authoritative and considering themselves adequately informed. But really-- it was less than a month ago that a friend, parsing an ended relationship, said she was attracted to that kind of decisiveness. Anyway, here's what Ms. Karbo has to say about it:

Like many overeducated women, I’m unaccountably drawn to men who know how to throw up wallboard, build a rock wall and effortlessly avoid shooting themselves in the head with a nail gun.

This part is great, because jewelry commercials, while always annoying, never make me envious in the most obvious sense, i.e. I'm not envious that someone is being bought jewelry; I'm envious that there are women out there who aren't too jaded to aspire to be the women in the jewelry commercials. What is it like in that world?

I’d love to be the kind of woman you see in jewelry commercials around the holidays who sits before a fire, a cashmere throw over her knees. Suddenly, her beloved swoops in with a velvet-covered box, bearing some hideous pendant that nevertheless cost real money.

I envy this woman because she is so taken with her beloved’s generosity. She never says, “Honey, why did you buy me this piece of crap when you know I need a new crown on my back molar?”