no boys allowed in the room!!!!

hay, has anyone had a dude named "Allen White" request their friendship on Facebook? Is that an ilxor or just some random creep?

IO: I have two female friends who's mugshots are online because they were arrested (and not convicted) of DV. They were loudly fighting with their SOs, neighbors called the cops, cops booked 'em both. Definitely delve for some backstory, but without a conviction, it might be nothing.

idk about the US but in NZ whoever calls is the one who WON'T be charged - my ex hit me in the face/head repeatedly, tried to smother me, a few other things, and i managed to split his lip in return. HE called the cops on ME, and i almost got arrested. without witnesses or evidence - my black eye hadn't come up yet and there were no visible marks from the head-hitting or smothering - that's how it goes down.

i think that's true everywhere. some states have laws about who to arrest but everywhere manipulators know to call the police first and know what to say. it's sad but so many assault complaints turn out to be utter bs. it's nice to be able to find out people's history by googling them but otoh while you can expunge dropped cases from government records, private sites and news sites that reprint police press releases without question don't have to get rid of anything. sucks. at least in maryland you can look up anyone's case and find out what happened to it. which is both good and bad, depending on who's looking.

I just had read a paper about a police department that took part in research that had officers responding to DV calls either arrest the accused or refer her/him to a treatment program depending on what color card came up in a shuffled (re: random) deck of colored cards. It was like, blue = arrest, green = don't arrest, send social worker. So whether you were googleable in connection with a DV arrest was completely random. Just sayin', guy may be bad news, or guy may have had a bad break.

Um forgive failure to grammaticate there; you get the picture, I think.

Don't some states have laws that require them to arrest both people involved in a DV call?

I'll be real - I'd probably call it a day with this guy based in that info but I'm old, tired, and don't have time for sleuthing. Also have had bad experiences overlooking such things in the past.

I'm not saying I'm right. Just offering perspective.

Whatever you do is the right thing, obv. Thinging of u IO and sending sisterly vibes :)

oh god I cannot type/write for shit today.

i would probably call it a day too but i feel bad for him if it's false. i don't quite understand the study q is talking about but i think randomness permeates the criminal justice system.

Yeah I did not describe it coherently at all. Basically, the study wanted to learn about effects of arrest vs. treatment program referral on subsequent offenses. The officers involved in the study were given, basically, a deck of cards that (randomly) assigned a particular response to a DV incident (falling within certain parameters) to either 1) arrest the accused, who would have to deal with that or 2) mandate that the accused participate in some sort of anti-DV training. Then accused were followed up to see if they had subsequent arrest, or something. I dunno, it was in Minnesota so DJP is to blame.

Um, wont the guy be bit weirded out that you googled him for criminal stuff? I'm not defending what he potentially did, but I feel that if I went on a 2nd date with a guy and said "hey on the the internet I saw you did X! :D :/" I can be confident the guy would be running backwards away from me with a guy-shaped dust hole in his wake muttering "you creepy woman" at me. Maybe I have just had paranoid dates. I dunno.

Oh and I'm not saying you did anything creepy L! I just feel like thats what guys think of ME if I did such things.

Googling is just so prevalent, though, and to me it doesn't feel creepy - it feels reasonable, especially if you're thinking of actually getting involved. You can always start with 'I was interested/intrigued/[insert mental state of choice here] after Saturday, so I googled you. And....' I mean, that's honest, and if it's creepy, then I'm creepy!

Dont get me wrong, the first thing I do with a guy is look for his facebook/twitter/lastfm playlist etc

I havent ever thought to just google a name for like, criminal stuff tho. Ive googled guys names but only after I knew em better.

Way creepier to have DV charges than to google. Stay away Orbit. I think every guy is Patrick Bateman though.

just came back from the GP after 2 sets of scans as the first had hinted at ovarian tumor/cancer. relieved to find the second shows nothing. that was a frightening couple of days.

oh what a relief, I'm sorry you had to go through such a scare.

ooff, Trayce. I hope you get some answers soon.

This thread is the best, thank you for all the thoughtful answers! Getting my drama out there helped me calm it, plus was in a good circle of women last night and got my head right a little bit. Maybe I needed to be so sad yesterday for var reasons but it seems to have passed over.

Hello no googling someone isn't creepy! If you're going to go somewhere with someone when you might be alone or remote, you should do whatever makes you feel safe! The internet IS a public space. I wouldn't normally do it because I think the process of ppl choosing to reveal things to each other in a certain order is part of intimacy and I don't like to co-opt it, and actually the dv thing isn't my greatest concern w/r/t whether to date this guy, but if you find something serious enough to possibly affect your safety, then hell yes.

Or as one of the women from last night would say, "Putting all your stuff out on Front Street." <3 <3 <3

Let's all agree to clutch our beneficial delusions close to our chests and LIVE.

been working for me so far
(on and off, but mostly on)

I love the saying about putting your business out on the street. I use that one a lot.

Trayce that is good news! :D

I routinely do background checks on people I am dating. I am excessively paranoid, perhaps.

I feel bad I may have seemed to imply anyone doing it is creepy. I dont think they are! I just dont get why you hear people always say "what, thats invasive and WEIRD" if you bring it up in conversation.

But, that then brings me to mind of the "women aren't crazy" article HomoII posted on FB this mornign (which was AWESOME).

someone i know googled a man who seemed perfect after one date and found that he beat a woman nearly to death with a tire iron

OK yeah I'd wanna know about shit like that.

in the last two trips to a certain grocery store, my cashier has
1) told me i was "perky"
2) looked at the wine i was buying (2 bottles) and asked if i was having a party

different cashiers btw

meanwhile, over at the aveda website (which i was forced to visit bc they did not have the 1 product i buy at the store i visited)

hair concern
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3830/11172826135_f5ca4b1622.jpg

pure privilege club
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3685/11173016323_2afef0c401.jpg

"How can we make you feel terrible about yourself? Let us count the ways (and also give you new and approved vocabulary for all your self-criticism needs)."

i went there for perfume (there's one i like, i think it smells good on me, i can keep it in my purse, i have neutral/good associations with it) and came out feeling like i was covered in focus grouping insects

If you weren't you, you would have to be the William Gibson character who's so sensitive to branding and aesthetic signifiers that she can only wear one kind of plain pants and tshirts and one kind of jacket and removes the tags and logos from all her possessions.

thank goodness that's not my most outstanding characteristic! good lord.

i have been kinda hungry for girltalk lately
what's going on with y'all?

All baby all the time.

She's still in the hospital (nothing wring with her, just had to learn to eat) but should be released soon. Then I can move from this exhausting frustrating liminal state of having but not having a baby to being an actual parent.

ugh i can imagine that being a v frustrating state
glad it's on the horizon though!

me: i lived through one holiday and it was very pleasant, now i have two more holidays + 10 yr wedding anniversary coming up
have been trying not to feel shitty about a number of things, and mostly succeeding
lots of drumming

I'm going to kill my roommate because all I ever do is wash his dishes and replace the foods he uses, since he still can't use one hand and barely leaves the house. I can't wait until he goes home for almost a month over the holidays. The other day he put potatoes on the stove and left them boiling until they boiled dry and covered the bottom of my pot in potato soot, which sat in the sink for 2 days until I scrubbed it. This morning I washed all the dishes in the sink and then vacuumed the floor of all the crumbs he drops when he stands in front of the fridge breaking off chunks of bread.

I've always struggled with how to talk to him about his not cleaning and not being thoughtful but it's reaching new lows b/c I've tried to be patient of his injuries and now I feel like his housekeeper.

It's particularly galling to me that he has never learned to "see" his own messes because he's never (apparently??) been responsible for cleaning them up. I wrote a piece on this phenom actually (since he's not the first guy I've heard that excuse from), maybe I'll post it and link to here.

people who can't see their own messes are astounding to me

i've lived with a guy like that, and there's a guy in our friend group who is so frustratingly messy that even the grossest people can't live with him. he even junked up a campsite on a camping trip and didn't realize he had done it. who does that! obv an extreme case. i think some of these people need cognitive therapy, but most probably just need to live with someone who bosses them to clean up their junk. it's uncomfortable and makes them feel like a child (and you like a parent), but someone has to have that talk with them or they will be 100 and throwing vitamin water bottles into a heap on the carpet, alone

Such mindless entitlement. That shit drives me nuts.

Ooh can I steal "mindless entitlement"?

God yes. Freely given to the world.

Bless you.

you should ask him for his pure privilege member number the next time he boils something to death in one of your pots

ahahaha

Or I'll just email him this.
http://limitedliabilitygirl.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/nature-also-hates-doing-the-dishes-or-so-i-hear/

^^^ really excellent!

Yay ty!

Why are some physical indicators of aging easier to stomach than others? I'm fine with my wrinkles, more or less OK with my sun spots, I bought bigger pants rather than try to stay at the (under)weight I was in my 20s, but I am rather not liking my softening jaw. It's like the flesh of my face moved down a fraction of an inch over the past month or so, just in time for my upcoming 40th b'day.

I'm embarrassed to admit that sometimes I look at my jawline and think "ugh, I'm going to look like my mother." But I love my mother! And I love that she never opted for the knife for anything cosmetic! It's like I'm OK with looking older as long as it is Angelica-Huston older, but not older like normal-people older.

Anyway, I'm back in DC for a week to take care of various errands before the next phase of the Year of the Midlife Crisis, and am remembering how much I love this city and city life in general. I used to think I could do city or rural but nowhere in between; now I know that rural does not suit me for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Good stuff to figure out before you buy a farmhouse in Iowa or whatever.

god yes

the daughter of a family friend had been living in the city for about 10 years, prior to that she had grown up in a small farming town - but had lived in the town part rather than the farm part.
she met a guy and fell in love and moved to a sheep station in the Northern Territory. ie The Outback, captial T capital O.

after about 2 months she was completely miserable. but she stayed there for a couple of years (!) and even had a kid with me which...she's moved back home and is up to her neck in custody insanity and all kinds of mess. extreme example, I mean what she did was beyond rural, that's full on isolation, but to your point, rural life is not for everyone. but it's hard to explain when the scenery is so nice and the people seem so easy going. but if you've grown up in suburban or relatively populated areas, you take all the convenience for granted that you have to forgo for bucolic pastoral loveliness