Jay On The Go

Okay, the saying goes like that in order to find her prince charming , but I thought that they meant it figuratively.  It seems, though, that online dating companies like Zoosk are getting pretty desperate to force this sweet looking girl to make out with a real frog by French kissing the poor animal.  Pretty gross I think. 

If you feel like me you are not alone.  Over the years, except for an occasional bill that I get in the snail mail, almost everything else is junk.  So why is it that the less junk mail we read, the more we get.  Well, it is complicated why that happens.  First of all, some idiots still read their junk mail and actually buy stuff based on it.  Two, the more USPS struggles financially, the more it lowers the rate for shipping junk mail , so marketers can flood our mailboxes at increasingly lower rates (junk mail accounted for 56% of all postal deliveries in 2011, compared with 45% ten years ago).  That means that they can still turn a profit on direct mail and not spend that money on online advertising .  And finally, as technology has improved, direct marketers now have highly detailed profiles on you because they have married the data they have collected online on you and the ones available from traditional resources like county records, neighborhood statistics, and surveys comple

If as a woman you feel that when you go on a diet and exercise mission to lose weight with your male partner, he starts to achieve his goal ahead of you, as similar as women and men can be in so many ways, in this aspect, apparently women's bodies work differently.  University of Missouri researchers have concluded that men's bodies respond better to diet and exercise .  The scientists also found that overweight women must also reduce their calorie consumption -- in other words, give up their cupcakes and chocolate -- while guys can get away with just hitting the gym.

I haven't been able to comprehend the nonsense coming out of crazies who have been arguing that women should not be allowed on the front lines.  Even Major Judith Webb, the first woman to lead an all-male field force in the United Kingdom, said that, "Women are not fit enough to fight on the front line."  Just tell that to Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall, who was decorated for her actions in Iraq, because as she told The New York Times, "Yes, and I already have."  Look, we all got tired of this crap in the past when it referred to gays.  If we want to be a truly merit based society, as long as a woman can meet the same physical standards as a guy, what difference does it make that her underwear is different.

While the American politicians are bending backwards to support illegal immigrants , the English are choosing an opposite path.  They want to tell potential immigrants that the United Kingdom is not paradise and they should not relocate there.  Under the EU treaty, citizens of poor countries in the Union can simply move wherever they want and these folks then move to rich countries, collect welfare, burden the native taxpayers, and make no contribution.  The UK government is running a campaign in Bulgaria and Romania to "correct the impression that the streets here are paved with gold."

When I recently refinanced my home mortgage Wells Fargo gave me a hard time with my income numbers.  I would not be surprised if the bank even gave me a higher rate because of that.  A study by non-profit Consumer Federation of America has found that auto rates for lower income drivers are almost always (only GEICO and Progressive were exceptions) higher than those for higher income individuals, even when the driver with lower income has better driving record.  Basically, when they ask you for your education level and occupation, they assume, for example, that someone with just a high school diploma must make a lot less than someone with a master's degree.  What is worse is that sometimes auto insurance companies even refuse to provide a quote for someone with a perfect driving record, just because she has fewer years of education.  So when you shop around for car insurance, be careful about these questions and make sure you do not settle with the first company that gives you a qu

Considering the weakness of older Chinese men for younger women , the best strategy is to tempt them.  So this is a story that might appear to be right out of a movie but in reality this is how a group of industrialists in China (the main characters being Lei Zhengfu, Bo Xilai, Wang Lijun, and Xiao Ye from the Chongqing area) manipulated government bureaucrats and Communists to get what they want out of them.  Otherwise, they threatened, they will make their weakness for extramarital relationships public. Use women as honey bees:  So hire beautiful women who are willing to have sex as part of their job.  Then provide them with information on the targets.  The women start off by sending them a text message on the lines of how the sweetheart scammers work .  These women mention that they met them at a banquet and if the man responds that he has no recollection of meeting them, use your cuteness to show fake anger that he had forgotten and broken your heart.  Considering that even

I am a news junkie and stay on top of the news, but of course, I have my limits.  So until now I had never heard of Republican Senator from Wisconsin Ron Johnson.  And then he was in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, making a fool of himself during hearings related to the attack on the Benghazi consulate.  It was so clear that he was trying to attack Hillary Clinton and I can only assume that he along with fellow senators like Rand Paul and John McCain expect Clinton to run for president.  I wish he had sounded a bit more intelligent than that and after making himself look like an idiot by not doing any research (Senator John Kerry made him realize that he was just poorly informed because he did not like to work hard) he should have hid in a cave for a few weeks.  No, he could not resist going to talk to Soledad O'Brien and further embarrassing himself.  Now, I know there are good folks in Wisconsin but what kind of people choose to vote for clowns like Johnson and Paul Ryan

Well, my sister-in-law is an educated woman but she is a single mom who is hoping to get into a relationship . She has been on a few dating and affinity websites and talks to a whole lot of people online in the hope that she can find a good match for herself. It was during this effort that a man wrote to her describing himself as geophysicist working for the United States Geological Survey and currently on a mission in Nigeria helping to find mining reserves. He lives in Florida (he even gave her the address of the property and said that he is in the process of selling it because he wants to move to a condo), is divorced, and is looking for a woman like her. They even spoke on the phone and that is when she mentioned it to my wife and I. Initially we were excited about her finding a good guy but when we heard the whole story and heard about the Nigeria connection, I told her to give me more information. She then told me his name, the property address, and I went to w

I thought that being a mother meant that you became MADD (mothers against drunk driving) but that is not what the reality is these days.  As someone who loves technology and gadgets and makes a living online , I get shocked how addicted the masses are to their gadgets .  I hate to say this but losers who have never written a software program in their life or don't know the difference between a flu virus and Windows virus hang on to their smart phones and stare at the screen as if they are responsible for the defense of the United States .  Most likely, the update they are looking for is from another loser who is checking into McDonald's and wants the world to know about it.  So this new USA Today survey says that four out of five mothers with children under two years talk/text while driving with their babies in the car .  So are these moms going through some mid life crisis that they want to behave like teen girls now?

During last ten years or so, especially after we discovered Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon, a glass of wine at dinner time has become pretty routine for my wife and I.  Yeah, there are days we try other wines like L'Authentique or Les Portes de Bordeaux, but we also drink plain water as well (no carbonated beverages and no fruit juices unless they are squeezed at home by us).  Our typical dinner time is some time between 6 and 7 PM.  Turns out that this is the perfect time to drink alcohol because it is several hours before our 10 PM bed time .  A recent study has found that nightcaps might make you pass out and go to sleep but then you don't sleep so well.  You don't get what is known as the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. 

For last couple of years, I had been beating myself up for not buying Apple (AAPL) stock.  As a management consultant I should have anticipated that people will go nuts wasting their money on iPads and iPhones.  Instead, I kept my money in XLK and QQQQ, index funds that track technology stocks.  The stock kept rising and I kept getting depressed for blowing the chance, until now when I heard that after the sales cooled off, investors dumped the stock and people lost a lot of money.  Yet again, a reminder that it is so hard for individual investors to accurately figure out the best time to enter and exit a stock.  The best thing to do is to invest in a basket of stocks .  So yes, the downward pressure on Apple did impact index funds, but not as much.

I learned this new term today and basically what it means is that when you have too much of something you are unable to progress.  You know how they say that necessity is the mother of invention or that lack of resources makes people resourceful.  That is why when you have things available without even trying, you just waste your life.  This paradox explains that despite having so much wealth, the Middle East is so screwed up with people basically becoming terrorists or not doing much with their lives.

I know you will be hurt and offended to hear this, but if you use Facebook, you are simply stupid .  In fact you are so stupid that you are willing to tell a company everything about you and all you get in return is an opportunity to get depressed watching your friends and family always having a good time .  Unfortunately, if you keep using Facebook, there is no way to hide from your friends and the world (depending on your privacy settings) who will know not only that you like a particular band or that you traveled to London or that you liked an update from a friend who complained about Walmart .  In other words, people can now find almost every click that you ever made on Facebook, most of the time without thinking about it at all.   The best way to use Facebook is to simply never update your status, never like anything, and never use anything .  Yes, just looking at the pictures of friends and family is telling a lot about yourself to Facebook (e.g. if you keep clicking on the party

Lip syncing is pretty widespread in concerts, sports events, and even presidential inaugurations.  I personally hate the whole idea and find it unethical and fraudulent.  When I want to listen to perfect music , I turn on the Bose music player in my home .  When I choose to listen to live music -- I am not stupid -- I expect that the music will be less than perfect.  In fact, I have been to concerts where if you don't get the best seats or if the auditorium is not perfect or if you are outdoors, the music can be really awful, especially if you have listened to the perfect rendition before.  But the reality is that going to a live event is all about being part of the experience, enjoying the company of others who are like me, and listen to something happening in real time.  If something is not perfect, it is part of the experience.  That is why my preference will be that if a singer wants to have that perfect performance, it is best to simply play the recording and cut the crap by

A lot of people are crazy about branded luxury goods .  Of course, the newly rich Chinese top the list, and so do a lot of young women who have only recently acquired some money to buy stuff .  While there are a few genuinely wealthy people who appreciate expensive brands , most people who carry around designer goods with visible logos are most likely aspirational customers, which is a fancy way of saying that these folks really do not belong to the exclusive club of multimillionaires and billionaires but buying a piece of their lifestyle -- even if they will be paying their credit card for next fifty years -- they can feel good about themselves.  Definitely, Cara Delevinge is one such loser.

According to an article in The Times by Nathaniel Rich, Hydrozoans are small invertebrates that, depending on their stage in the life cycle, resemble either a jellyfish or a soft coral.  In a paper titled “Reversing the Life Cycle,” it was pointed out that this particular species — at any stage of its development — could transform itself back to a polyp, the organism’s earliest stage of life, “thus escaping death and achieving potential immortality.”  Christian Sommer, marine-biologist has found that this species refuses to die. It appears to age in reverse, growing younger and younger until it reaches its earliest stage of development, at which point it began its life cycle anew. So ladies and gentlemen, do not yet give up the desire to live indefinitely , because maybe we will figure out a way to live forever .

According to University of Canterbury researchers Carsten Grimm -- surprise, surprise -- making love, partying , and drinking alcohol make us the happiest and we should be doing more of them.  Some people also found happiness engaging in listening to music , hanging out with people they like , and volunteering.  Again, do more of these.  And what not to do?   Working, doing chores around the house , commuting, and believe it or not, using Facebook.  The last one really surprised me because I see so many people spending hours Facebooking which in reality makes you depressed because you only see the happy side of other people's life.  People share their photos dressed up in beautiful clothes or vacationing in exotic places or hanging out in bars and restaurants .  Almost no one updates their status saying that they don't have money to pay their bills or that they failed in an exam or their boss called them incompetent.

Indians continue to amaze me.  Apparently Howrah Bridge is a famous landmark in India but pedestrians who cross the bridge kept spitting on it -- the way Indians spit everywhere -- but the corrosion effect from the spit is so toxic that the bridge is about to collapse.  Indians were spitting after chewing a product called gutka which -- prepare to be entertained and shocked -- contains betel nut, tobacco, lime, paraffin, lead, arsenic, chromium, nickel, cadmium, and magnesium carbonate. 

Since I am such a big fan of Renee Zellweger and have admired both her acting and beauty, I never stop wondering where she is but I also know that she is a very private person and does not enjoy the spotlight.  So it was nice to see her again, gorgeous as ever, in a black halter neck dress, but I do notice that on her hands you can see signs of aging .  I guess we are all getting old . -->

If Helen Flanagan can shine as a retro housewife , the so very pretty and stylish Julianne Hough can rock any outfit , particularly a flirtatious dress and modeled in a house painted with bright colors and decorated with mid-century furniture.

I do not follow any sport seriously but I do have many personal heroes in the world of sports.  I was disappointed with Tiger Woods (not because he cheated but because I would never be able to tell any kid to think of him as a role model, despite the fact that he is an excellent golf player) but I am devastated by Lance Armstrong .  He broke hearts of so many of his fans who admired him and considered him to be a role model.  Since he admitted doping, the jokes have been unstoppable, but this prank by the librarians at the Manly Library in Australia were the best.  Of course, not only anything he ever said in the past or whatever he says in the future should be treated as fiction because a man who can lie under oath can never be trusted again.

An illegal immigrant Fernando Costa in Watertown, Massachusetts, who was caught driving with a suspended license, decided to pay his $250 fine with fake bills.  I mean, it can't get any more hilarious than that.  Not only are you illegally in the United States , you then drive without a license, and then want to game the system further with counterfeit money.  It also turned out that he had a deportation order pending against him.  What do these people think America is ?  A place to break laws?

You know how they say that if you say a lie often enough, people start to believe it.  Remember the Putois story by Anatole France ?  It seems that after a concerted effort by Republicans, Fox News, Donald Trump, and birthers, a record number of Americans now believe that President Obama was born in Kenya, and not Hawaii as the record shows.  Okay, if Republicans and Teabaggers believe so, well, they are nuts anyway and cannot be persuaded by facts, but a survey by Fairleigh Dickinson University has found that as many as 14% of Democrats also believe this conspiracy theory that Kenyans are secretly plotting to take over America. Now assuming that some of these Democrats still voted for the president, well, it is an awesome sign.  We may have reached a point that so many Americans now think it is a stupid law that the president must be born in America.  So as sad as it is to see how people can believe in lies, it is nice to see that people can see right through the stupidity of some l

This adulterous relationship of two married Chinese people maybe of interest to political scientists or those who are disturbed by the level of corruption in China, but to me, I was intrigued by how two married people have an affair in China.  Yi Junqing is 54 years old and a powerful Communist while Chang Yan was 34 year old ambitious woman who initially used her charms in addition to Swarovski baubles, Hugo Boss cologne and US$8,000 in cash in bribes to get a permanent job with the Government.  Since the old dude was also obsessed with sushi , sake, and lunch dates with his lover , she indulged him in the hope that she will get what she wanted.  Well, it turned out that this Communist party official was addicted to such gifts and sexual favors from women , so when Ms. Yan found out that he had other lovers as well and was simply using her , she decided to blackmail him if he did not bribe her back with $50,000.  When that did not happen either -- oh the corrupt Chinese -- she decid

In the reality television program The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Kim Richards stood out as a very troubled woman .  You almost fell sorry for her, for being obsessed with having lots of kids (as if she was trying to fill a vacuum in her life with them), for being messed up, for getting into fights , for having low self esteem , and other issues that I could not even identify.  Now that she has had a nosejob supposedly for removing a bump on her nose , hopefully, she will get rid of some of her issues and maybe find a boyfriend .

When I wrote about these married women cheating without hiding I was impressed.  It turns out that that women are now like men when it comes to cheating and having affairs .  The way many men boasted of their adventures with women outside marriage, it is the women who are now doing the same.  In a report from Kinsey, 19% of women and 23% of men confessed to cheating.  This gap used to be a lot wider in the past, though, one could argue that women were probably reluctant to admit their indiscretions.  Or could it be that women now work in powerful jobs, make as much money or even more than guys in some cases, and technology has allowed cheating to be easy.

A typical woman who decides to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) as part of her fertility treatment will typically take a set of drugs so that she can produce a lot of eggs.  When these eggs are fertilized, the fertility doctor will implant them inside her body and hope that she will get pregnant.  There are a few reasons for this.  One, the doctor is doing this for money -- lots of it -- so that as soon as he does this, he is going to get paid, whether or not you get pregnant or give live birth.  Secondly, by the time a woman in her 40s shows up at a fertility clinic she has already wasted valuable years so waiting any more is risky. Now, doctors are finding out that the stress on the woman's body from hormones is so high that her body is simply not in its best form to implant an embryo, nurture it for 9 months, and then give birth.  That is why the rates of getting pregnant are so low and even if she does get pregnant, the rates of miscarriage are high.  That is why scie

Background:   My wife and I are both self-employed.  We have 800 plus credit and except for a car lease of $300 a month, have no other debt.  Our net worth is more than a quarter million dollars and during the last two years our income exceeded $100,000.  We have lived in the house since 2001 and have paid each and every bill on time.  We also have more than one third equity in the house. Bank:   From the moment we bought out house our mortgage has been with Wells Fargo.  I am no fan but it works for us so we have even refinanced it with them twice.  This was our third time refinancing but first time since the banks tightened their standards after the 2008 financial meltdown.  The first person we talked to convinced us that we were better off just using HARP to keep things simple.  Not that we were afraid of property valuation but this was going to keep things simple. Interaction with Wells Fargo:   I am a well organized guy so all my paperwork was in order.  When the first set of

Both men and women have been cheating forever but a new trend is starting to emerge: women are going public with their adultery and are talking about it the way they talk about shopping or vacations .  Michelle, shown below, is a woman in her late 30s with two teens.  She has no plans to divorce her husband because she does not want upset the nice arrangement the family currently has.  Her biggest complaint is that sex with him is boring and rarely happens .  She says , "I feel totally unloved and neglected. When we first got together he was so romantic , buying me flowers and even writing me poetry . But now it is as if he hardly knows I exist.  I love being treated and taken out for dinner . I am hoping that my new married lovers will wine and dine me, as well as taking me to bed ."  She feels no guilt nor does she care about her actions because she suspects that her husband might be cheating too and she has a right to get action in bed if he can't give it to her.

In an interview with SELF magazine, Emmy Rossum gives out all the details of how she manages to be super-slim and look as if she has not even an ounce of extra fat .  According to her, she lets a nutritionist Carrie Wiatt send her meals so that she can't go wrong.  She does have some freedom to eat whatever she wants on two cheat days.  She is also a fan of spinning.  In addition, she does her regular weight training and cardio .  She clarifies, "My go-to moves are walking lunges, leg raises, and my favorite: four sets of 15 ballet pliés, holding 8-pound weights."

There are genuine health arguments that can be made against cosmetic surgery but a lot of the surgical procedures are so safe and affordable that I really do not think there is anything wrong with going under the knife .  That is why I believe that people have a right to look the way they want to, and that typically means that people want to look better .  In case of Big Ang's plastic surgery it is so obvious that she either had a bad cosmetic surgeon or she has a very wrong ideas about what a beautiful woman should look like .

In addition to Render and Masa , we decided to go to lunch at this Indian restaurant in Boston's South End neighborhood.  On a Sunday, contrary to our expectations, it was dead.  In any case, there are several places to eat in the area, so we probably would not have liked to wait.  Thankfully, we also found street parking.  It is a small place but decorated well and I really appreciated the white napkins and nice dishes, things that are typically lacking in Indian restaurant brunches.  There were about a dozen dishes to choose from and I ate lentils, tandoor chicken, spinach paneer, stuffed dosa, and nan bread.  Overall, nothing worth talking about and the bread actually may not be as fluffy as it sometimes is.  Definitely, a pleasant experience eating there but I would not categorize it as anything special, but then lunch in Boston for about $13 is a bargain.

After a lot of thought we bought a Frigidaire Refrigerator FRS6L9EFSS4 and we were generally quite happy until the water dispense broke when a visiting teenager pressed it too hard (it was only then I realized that this part should have never been made from plastic considering how heavily it is used and how someone can apply extra pressure).  When I called Frigidaire, I was told that they could install it at a cost of $200, which sounded way too high considering that we paid a little less than $1,000 for it.  That is when I decided to research if we could repair it ourselves, even though I had never done a job like this, nor does the manual have any instructions on how to do it, but there are YouTube videos from DIY types, who make it look quite easy. After buying the part on Amazon for about $40, I could not even make myself open the water dispenser unit because I was afraid that I might damage something.  This is where Craig's List came handy and I put an ad for a handyman who

Since I live in New England, I know what dry skin feels like.  Fortunately for me, being married to a woman who is an expert in beauty and health, we use plenty of body lotion.  We were big fans of L'Occitane until we discovered the EveryDay Shea Moisturizing Body Lotion that was parabens free and fair trade and so we switched.  It generally works most of the time but when it gets really cold and the air dries up completely, it does not matter how many times you apply these lotions, the skin still itched.  In fact during a cold snap this year, it got so bad that I literally had blood on my nails because I was scratching so hard.  That is when someone recommended Cetaphil.  I had never heard of the brand and was a little skeptical, but boy, it worked.  I can't say enough good things about it because my dryness disappeared completely and I need to apply just once a day.  I do it right after my morning shower.  Strongly recommended.

Since I am fairly slim and towards the low end of the BMI in the healthy range , I read with a lot of interest the study by Katherine M. Flegal of the CDC that overweight and obese people lived longer than healthy people.  Ouch!  All the diet and exercise I did, I thought, for nothing.  Why bother if I am going to die sooner and not be able to enjoy a long life?  Not so fast, ladies and gentlemen, to start pigging out and sleeping on a couch your whole life.  The reality is that no one knows, yet, why is it that healthy weight people die somewhat earlier and fat people live longer.  There are hundreds of other reasons that determine how long we live, for example, our stress levels, or how hard we work, or how spiritual we are, or how strong our relationships are.  It is definitely documented that overweight people, while living longer, have lower quality of life because they are more likely to suffer from all kinds of illnesses.  So I would rather live a few years less and enjoy each

If you are not already tired of speculation about pregnancies of celebrities and princesses, the baby bump watch, the childbirth itself, and then the weight loss after giving birth, get ready for your obnoxious friends who think that by getting pregnant they are doing a service to humanity and you better pretend to enjoy their newly found passion for pregnancy and kids.  Several greedy companies will put the inner workings of your womb on display on a monitor in your living room while your bored friends pretend to be having a good time.

Overall a great outfit on her, the black cropped top, the leggings, the heels, the barely visible hairband, but more than anything else, I noticed the car.  The beautiful vintage red car and I don't blame her for literally making out with that piece of steal because if I were her, I would do the same.

It turns out that while we realize that we are different than we were in the past, we expect that will will remain largely unchanged in the future. Daniel T. Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard University calls it the "end of history illusion."  So look back and think of all the mistakes you now think you made and how you would not have done those things knowing what you know now, like dating the wrong person, or having poor habits, or not saving enough money.  According to these experts, that is exactly what you will feel 10, 20 or 50 years from now.

I am one of those individuals who has health insurance but I almost never go to the doctor.  I eat healthy, I exercise regularly, take a few multi-vitamins and supplements, sleep a solid 8-9 hours, and try to live spiritually.  That's it.  As a middle aged man, I am in excellent health.  So when I read that according to research from The Cochrane Collaboration the annual medical checkup that your family members and/or family doctor keeps nagging about our useless insofar as their impact on healthy life or living longer.  Apparently, the physicians bill hundreds of dollars each year to health insurers for your checkup and because most people have them without thinking too much, they provide a steady stream of revenue for the clinics and hospitals.  I have had just one during last twenty years and I am not going back any time soon.

Apparently anything, or at least a young and hot wife.  That is 62-year old Italian billionaire Flavio Briatore with his 32-year old supermodel wife Elisabetta Gregoraci while vacationing on a beach in Africa.  To reinforce the message that she is no gold-digger, they have a son shown in the photo below and they have been married for about five years now.  Good for them.

Believe it or not but Kourtney Kardashian has lost a massive 44 lbs of pregnant weight.  That is one third of her body weight during pregnancy with Penelope.  She is now down to just 106 pounds.  So how did she lose all the baby weight?  The old fashioned way with diet and exercise with personal trainer Tracy Anderson (who made her do 90 minutes dance focused workouts).  Needless to say, she also reduced the portion sizes.

My mother always told me to control my emotions, hide them, and to the extent possible, never get angry or upset.  These early childhood lessons have served me well and I am fairly calm person, but occasionally, I do get disturbed by something but unable to express it.  I swallow my anger and while I have developed coping mechanisms to deal with negative emotions like these, I have experienced anxiety as a result of this.  Not good, according to University of Jena scientists Marcus Mund and Kristin Mitte.  According to them when we hold off expressing our emotions, the body still is reacting to them and during the course of this experience, the heart rate goes up, eventually leading to high blood pressure.  We all know that over a long term it can cause serious health complications. "They avoid risks and always seek a high level of control over themselves and their surroundings," according to Mund, and he could very well describing me.  His advice is to simply let out so