Your girlfriend gets off watching porn with you.

Isn't that what you want to be able to brag to your buddies? No longer would you have to bury the porn on your computer ten folders deep in an effort to conceal them from her eyes. No longer would you have to lie and say that porn chicks are unattractive. No longer would you have to hide this dirty little passion for celluloid sex, worried that your girlfriend will dump you upon discovery. The only question is: How do you talk her into it?

Digits: Bookstore Clerk

Sure most large bookstores attempt to offer more entertainment value then the Javelin event at the special Olympics, but for the most part they suck. From the fat chicks wearing bandana's and horn-rimmed glasses to the abundance of tree hugging guys in khaki shorts and brown leather sandals, there aren't a whole lot of reasons to visit a bookstore regularly, other then the books. But if there is one thing present in each and every one of these stores, its the quiet hot chick working part time, and you've got to have her.

Hook

A bookstore is always full of friendly employees more then willing to assist you and share some friendly words. This is not a good thing. All this means is that during the course of the day, the target of your affection is sharing witty banter with 10 or 15 guys as good looking as you, and unless you look like one of our resident playboy's, you need to find an edge.

What you'll have to do is find a section of books that is going to make you seem interesting to her. A cyclical funds index book is not going to work. Try browsing through the film section and find a book about writing screen plays. Now choose one of these books and remember the title. Make up some hokey screen play idea and go find the girl you are after. Ask her to help you find the book and mention to her that you need it because you are writing a movie. If she inquires further, and seems interested in 'what you do' you may have a shot with her. You've shown her that you are creative and intelligent (a writer with an original idea) and she has taken an interest in what you do and why you are doing it.

I remember the days of high school when playing a dumb damsel in distress was some ploy on us girls' parts in order to land the jock with the 2.0 grade point average. It just wasn’t cool to be the smart girl back then. Most of the time falling into the smart girl role left you eating lunch with the chess club or those girls who mended their reading spectacles with tape. So there began the act of dumbing down. Those who didn’t want to be branded “geek”, “nerd” or “social outcast” chose to play the sheep, following the juvenile follies of the majority. She may have driven 30 miles to watch a Jeunet film, and carried a copy of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik in her backpack, but you’d never have known it by the way she gushed over the latest edition of Teen Magazine.

We are but cogs in a wheel moving in an ever-fastidious cycle towards déjà vu. Evolving only toward a repetition of journeys encompassing our lives, leaving us bound to repeat and deny until we find that we've missed our chance to escape the endless metronome of seamless starts and disappointing ends. We hear about destiny, chance, and fate, but what of our hand in it all? Where do we submit our request to change course? When are we given the opportunity to take fate by the hand, changing its direction, breaking the cycle, and thus reshaping our destiny?

Within the wonderful world of love, we too are bound to repeat mistakes; thus finding ourselves in a cycle of failed relationships that never seem to progress toward something lasting and truly positive in nature.

You'd think that after enough turns at the merry-go-round of dating disaster, you’d learn just where you stepped off course. Alas, you still find yourself with the same psycho girl who wants you to change your hair style and ditch your "so called by her" loser friends, thus clenching her nails deeply under your skin until she makes you hers, whether you want to be or not. Yes, she's also the girl who hates your Spike Lee films, despises your favorite food, and can't understand how in the world you find Jeff Buckley easy on the ears. More fundamentally, she doesn't understand you the way your friends do, and her forty five minute dissertation on the life lessons learned from Dawson’s Creek leave you wondering what you ever found appealing in her. Where oh where is your dream girl hiding, and how do you keep ending up with her evil stepsister instead?

Embarking upon a new year causes one to take the opportunity to reflect, to regret, and to map out a new beginning. When thinking about an article topic to kick off this new year I focused on the resolutions we find ourselves making and the way in which we may often find ourselves failing to follow through by year's end. Perhaps it’s all about coming to understand and gain perspective into the topic which we resolve to fix in the coming new year. Given that this is a column centered primarily around the male/female relationship, I chose a topic which gives me cause to write a weekly commentary. Something in which all of this wordy hubbub revolves, and we must all come to understand before we can resolve to make it right.

Whether you be 17 and determined to marry your high school sweetheart, or 27 and living it up in bachelorhood, we all have in us the innate want to love and be loved. Yes, I spend most of my time thinking up ways in which to aid you in smoothly landing that gorgeous looker who bags your groceries at the local food mart, or fool that girl at the end of the bar into believing you’re not really trying to edge your way into her life…errr…pants. What happens though, when you find that person to be unlike any other? What happens when you start to care about her emotionally? What happens when the lust turns to love and you begin to wonder just how you’re going to keep it?