Ladies love to dance. Even ladies who possibly shouldn’t dance, love to dance. You may meet a lady who will profess that she doesn’t dance, but deep down inside her is a disco diva just waiting to burn the house down!

Face it, guys. You’re going to have to learn how to dance.

Fortunately, there’s help. Of course, I speak of the bemani!

When it comes to dancing games, you have a few choices. There’s Dance Dance Revolution (by far the most popular, but not necessarily useful for our needs), Pump It Up (better music to actually dance to), the dreaded ParaParaParadise (which should be avoided at all costs, always. We’ll just forget that they ever made this game).

DDR sounds like it would prepare you well for any dance floor. But don’t let the “dance dance” in its name fool you. The latest versions of DDR feature songs with bpms that would better train your legs for sprint relays than booty shaking. Earlier versions of DDR had tracks that you might actually get some dancing out of. But unless you’re at the anime con rave, playing DDR is not going to help. And let’s be clear on this point. Raving is not dancing. Probably showing my age a bit here.

Pump It Up offers the widest variety of dance tracks. Sure, you tech players out there may think it’s kid stuff compared to DDR. But we’re not looking for high bpms or step counts. We’re looking for music that makes you nod your head, tap your feet, and shake that ass. From K-Pop to 80’s remixes, a few sessions of PIU even at the beginning level will, at the very least, get your body moving to a rhythm. That’s what we’re looking for. Stay away from that safety bar. The bar is a crutch. You need to learn how to balance on your own while stepping in all sorts of weird directions. You won’t have a bar at the club and hanging on to random people for balance will end your date right quick.

One of my favorite tracks is “Caution (Don’t Bother Me).” It’s got an old school hip hop beat with some pretty decent vocal work by the group Tashannie. Here’s a live version of the song. Unfortunately, I don’t think the duo is together anymore, but it’s a lot of fun. But make sure you turn up them speakers. I guarantee you’ll be nodding your head to the beat.

NOTE:  Okay, if you must go to the anime con rave, you must.  But please, please, watch for swinging glow sticks.  Them things can poke an eye out!

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Here in the D.C. area, Mother Nature decided to unload last night. She’s had a lot on her mind lately and felt like we haven’t been paying attention to her. So we’ve got a mix of snow and freezing rain and everything is closed. It’s time to snuggle up on the couch and watch a flick with your loved one. Here’s a list of five good ones in no particular for romantic crappy weather day watching.

• Love Actually - What I like best about this flick is that most of the love stories are awkward and clumsy. The film never goes out of its way to idealize relationships. We get to see the messy side of love that doesn’t always end happily.
• The Holiday - Kate Winslet is absolutely brilliant in this flick. Vibrant, full of life. You can tell she had a great time with Jack Black. Cameron Diaz isn’t so bad either, but Jude Law’s end of that relationship made it all worth watching.
• Juno - When it comes out on DVD, Juno will be a perfect addition to your rainy day, rom com movie fest. Fun, quirky, post-modern coming of age story more than a typical romantic comedy, but it still leaves you feeling all warm and lovey.
• Knocked Up - A slightly vulgar and hilarious take on the rom com, this one will have you laughing you ass off.
• The 40 Year Old Virgin - As a card carrying geek, this one has a special place in my heart.  I was cringing the entire time he was packing up his Star Wars toys.  Geek tragedy!

And that should take you to about nap time.

It’s a decent enough start. What films would you add to your list of staying-in-to-snuggle-cause-the-weather-is-absolute-shite movies?

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An essential skill for couples to enjoy a long healthy life together is the art of fighting without fighting. This goes back to the assertion that communication is the foundation of a lasting relationship. Learning how to fight is part of open communication.

The trick is to express yourself openly and honestly to your significant other. If you don’t like something, don’t want to do something, feel negatively about something, speak up. Don’t make your significant other guess because no matter how well you two match with each other, he or she is not you. Ultimately, you’re the only one who knows how to say just what’s on your mind. Guessing games and passive aggressiveness can only lead to the type of fighting that will damage your relationship. Say what you mean and don’t be afraid of saying something your significant other disagrees with.

Try not to take things personally. Just because your significant other disagrees or may not want to do something doesn’t mean they don’t love you anymore. Being together doesn’t mean that you now automatically do and like the same things. Sure, try new things with each other, at least once. But if you find that you really don’t enjoy going to the smoky and loud karaoke bar, just say so.

Money matters always plague couples. These are usually the arguments that can break the strongest bonds. There’s no good solution for that, but again, your must speak openly and keep an open mind. Certainly, discuss major purchases before just heading to the store. If the flat screen shows up and you haven’t talked about it first, well, that’s going to be a problem.

Healthy fighting can actually help build a stronger relationship.  Remember to be honest, open minded, and not to take things too personally.

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Breaking up sucks. Even if it’s the best possible thing that could happen to you, breaking up is no kind of fun.

There are two general ways to handle the break up. There’s the cold break where you cut off your ex from your life entirely, then there’s the sort of warm break where you’re not dating but you still can tolerate hanging out with each other. Then there’s the break up with benefits where you still snog, but don’t really communicate with each other much beyond the physical intimacy. So we’ll just ignore that one for now.

I’m mostly familiar with the cold break seeing as how divorce is pretty damn cold.  We never had kids and there wasn’t a splitting of assets so there was no immediate need to try to keep in contact with each other, I felt it best to cut my ex off entirely.  Sometimes I wonder if this was the most healthy approach to take.  Clearly, I harbor some measure of animosity towards my ex.  After all, she was the one who left me.  Gradually, that’s grown to a good measure of indifference.  But I wonder if there wasn’t a better way to handle the split.

I’ve always been impressed with people who are still friends with their exes.  They somehow manage to recall the happy times spent together and either move past the reasons for their split or joke about them.  They’ve clearly hurt each other in the past, but they’ve managed to move on and get passed that.

Certainly no good can come from holding a long standing grudge against someone.  Holding on to such anger can manifest itself in health problems and added stress.  And often times the target of your acrimony may not feel as strongly as you.  You may end up doing yourself more harm than good.  By the same token, attempting to keep in contact with someone who merely reminds you of the pain and bitterness of your break up can be equally as damaging.

So, gentle readers, how do you handle break ups?

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When you initially get together with your new love, you can’t imagine ever being apart. It’s taken you this long to get together, why would you want to be anywhere else? However, eventually you will need to come up for air. You need some space between you both.

Before you got together, you each had your separate lives. Your new found relationship doesn’t necessarily herald the end of your previous you. After all, that’s the you that your significant other fell in love with. Make an effort to stay connected with your pre-relationship self. Make a point to call your friends and hang out with them. Certainly bring your significant other along to meet them, but also have the courage to hang out without your significant other. Encourage your significant other to do the same.

It’s far too easy to get sucked into the relationship black hole, but that’s not always healthy for you two. You may not believe it, but if you stay in the same place with the same person for a long enough time, you will start to get on each other’s nerves. Little quirks that seemed cute before will start to annoy the ever loving shit out of you! Reconnecting with your previous life can help stave off the ill effects of the relationship black hole.

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The first in our series of articles from what would have been our next print issue. Here, with more of his ranty stylings, is an article from our very own Angry Zen Master. -Neomera

The morning of September 11, 2001, I sat in my living room starring unblinkingly at the television. I had just seen the second tower fall live on CNN and I needed someone to explain just what the hell was going on. My mind could not perceive such horrors let alone process seeing it all happen in real time. I needed more information. And for the next few hours, for the next few days, CNN streamed information into my brain meats faster than I could absorb.

The September 11 attacks really put news organizations on the front page. Never before had the twenty-four hour news cycle been so challenged with keeping a frightened, angry, and hurt public as informed as humanly possible. They did their best to stream information to the public as quickly and efficiently as possible without tainting stories with spin or punditry.

The twenty-four hour news cycle was working, keeping the public well armed with raw information. Thusly armed, we gradually recovered from our initial fears.

It’s now more than six years later and when I turn on CNN, I’m subjected to uninterrupted coverage of OJ Simpson’s pre-trial hearing, Miss Teen South Carolina’s gaff when asked a geography question, Britney’s latest public humiliation, Tay Zonday singing about Cherry Chocolate Rain. The same twenty-four hour news cycle that calmed a terrified people is now filling hours with sensationalist tabloid fluff. They’ve traded journalism for entertainment.

Cable network news is all about ratings. They will do anything to appear to be relevant. There’s no better example than CNN’s YouTube Presidential candidate debates. On paper, it certainly seemed like a good idea. Young people complain all the time that Presidential candidates and politicians are truly out of touch, that they don’t care about the issues that are important to the average citizen, that they’ve sold our government out to special interests. What better way to prove these conceptions wrong than by giving the public the opportunity to address the candidates themselves. Sure, that’s a winner of an idea.

I have never witnessed so many softball questions at any sort of debate ever. Instead of taking the candidates to task for the failures of the past six years, the questions presented the candidates the perfect opportunity to reiterate all their campaign rhetoric. There was no real debate, no real discussion, no real information. CNN might as well have aired three hours of campaign ads.

The twenty-four hour news cycle has completely destroyed news journalism. Gone are the days of in-depth investigative reporting. Objectivism has given way to opinion pieces, punditry, and ultimately, sensationalism. The latest hit on YouTube is given as much air time as Bush’s insistence that Iran is still pursuing nuclear weapons. It’s nearly impossible to take the cable news networks seriously.

These days, I can’t help but smirk every time I hear James Earl Jones recite CNN’s tagline, “The most trusted name in news.” It should read, “The most trusted name in tabloid news entertainment.”

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A friend of mine recently got engaged after dating for only two weeks. I tell people this and they get this horrified look. “Isn’t that… well… a bit hasty?”

My response is always, “When you know, you know.” Besides, I’m certainly not one to judge.

Look at it this way. Life is terribly short. You may life to be a hundred and smoke cigars and eat nothing but plantains fried in bacon fat. Or you could get hit by a car in an hour and die on the street. When you find “The One,” you want to spend the rest of your life with that person. You can’t imagine life without the other. So what the hell are you waiting for? Grab hold and fill each day with new found joy!

Of course, there’s that other side of you, that practical side, that will want to put on the brakes. You’ve probably been hurt before. Badly. It’s always bad. You probably gave your all to someone who really didn’t appreciate you. And you probably felt like an idiot when they tossed your heart aside like so much junk. You want to give your all to your new beloved, but you can’t help that nagging feeling that if it all goes to hell, it’s going to hurt terribly, maybe even worse than before. Besides, statistically, marriage in America is a crap shoot. 50% of our marriages fall to the scourge of divorce. And there’s no perfect formula for a happy and stable marriage. It’s a risk that your practical side may not want to take.

Your heart or your mind. Which side do you listen to? Your heart says NOW! Your mind says wait.

I say go with your heart.  Your mind can rationalize all sorts of very practical and sensible reasons why you shouldn’t just jump in head first and get engaged after only two weeks.  But at the end of the day, love is a matter of the heart.

Listen to your heart.  Sure, you might get burned and things may go horribly wrong.  And you’ll get through all that and come out much stronger and wiser.  Things will work out one way or another.  And if you made the right choice and things go better than you expected, you will have a rich fulfilling future to look forward to!  You’ll always regret not trying.  You’ll never regret jumping in like a fool, even if it ends poorly.

Good luck and may you all experience geeky love in the new year!

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It’s almost inevitable. Every holiday season, sneakily nestled within the piles and piles of loot bought for you by people who actually know you and still like you will inevitably lurk a gift that no one in their right mind would ever, eeeeeeeeever want.  Typically, this is a clothing item of some sort from an aunt or an uncle who feels obligated to send you something because you were small and cute once and they choose to remember you that way for all eternity.  So, let us come up with some creative solutions to deal with unwanted holiday swag.

If your unwanted gift is an item of clothing, wear it for a day, especially if it’s particularly gaudy.  It’ll make for a nice conversation piece with your friends and co-workers especially if it doesn’t match your personal style.  Who knows, you could get such a laugh out of it, you just might keep the offending article.  If you really really can’t stand it, donate it as part of a clothing drive.  Someone out there can surely use a horribly colored sweater.  And you can always exchange it at the store.  Aunts and uncles are usually smart about clothing gifts.  They know you’ll probably hate it so they usually send along the gift receipt.

If your gift is a DVD that you never ever wanted to watch on purpose ever (say, Showgirls), you’re in luck.  Hang on to the offending film and host a shitty movie party with a bunch of your friends.  Grab some nachos, crack open a six pack, and spend some time with your friends lambasting the cinematic travesty unfolding before your eyes.  And of course, you can always return it.

Those are usually the two types of unwanted swag that show up at my door every holiday.  If you find that your offending gift falls outside of these two categories, my suggestion is to always use it first before you return, donate, or mangle it.  You can get a lot of enjoyment out of a completely useless gift!

Happy holidays!  I hope you all have a great time with your friends and families!

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I never dated online, but I’m sure if I was single, I’d be all up in that e-Harmony Love You Long Time site.  I generally hate bars and don’t like the music they play at the dance clubs.  Online would be the place for me.

In this day and age of widespread digital video, I think it would be almost essential for these dating sites to offer video hosting.  Video is all around us.  We can grab video on our digital cameras, our phones, our laptops.  We’re all plugged in and we’re all filming each other doing really crazy shit.

Video profiles would allow potential daters an added dimension in meeting each other for the first time.  A lot of things can get mis-communicated or misunderstood in emails and text, especially when you’re trying to date someone.  Much of the underlying meaning in our real life conversations come from tonal inflections, facial expressions, body language, not just the words we use.  These are difficult to translate through just text.  Video profiles and Q&A vlogs would give users a better understanding of their potential date than text on a screen.

Of course, the idea is not without flaw.  Some of us are horribly camera shy.  In person, you might be a freaking mac daddy!  But if you’re afraid of looking like an idiot on video, your video profile will not represent the real you.  Still, I think it would be a nice idea to see some of these dating sites implement.

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Did you all survive the holidays?  Did you resist the temptation of Black Friday?  Did you succumb to the new buying trend of Online Black Monday?

So instead of the usual rantings and advice, I shall share a brief personal account of my holiday dinner and how I utterly failed to make things any easier for the significat others that were brought into the fold.

My cousins on my mom’s side are both women and brought their boyfriends over for the Turkey Day feasting.  Although my cousins’ parents have met both gents before, this was their first introduction to the rest of the extended family.  Not the best idea in the world, but if you want to spend time with your SO on the holidays, sometimes you have to drag them to the family dinner.

In certain circumstances, I shy away from meeting new people.  Actually, in most circumstances, I shy away from new people.  Conventions and artist alleys are a different story.  But get me out of my very small comfort zone, you won’t even notice my shy ass.  As such, I absolutely failed to make my initiative saving throw to potentially deliver these two gents from a totally awkward and suck filled dinner.

When you typically meet the SO of one of your relatives, “Oh hi, and what do you do?” is usually a good starter question.  You don’t really care, and I suppose somewhere in the back of their mind they know this, but at least you’re putting up the front and giving them an in.  From there, the conversation usually focuses on jobs and future plans and things of that nature that, quite honestly, don’t mean all that much to a geek.  So I never bothered asking either of them what they did.  They, in turn, also failed their initiative saving throw and spent the evening mumbling things to my cousins under their breaths so as to not disturb the awkward silence of the dinner table.  It was… quite dull.

If I were to give advice to myself, I’d probably say something along the lines of “It’s your duty as a family insider to make the evening more bearable for your guests.  Even if you don’t care, you must make every effort to engage the new people in conversation.  People are always willing to talk and complain about their vocations.  Start with jobs.  Ask how they met your cousins.  And just see how it goes from there.”  It’s pretty sound advice and if I brought my “A” game, I might have attempted some form of pro-active interaction.

I acquired quite a bit of fail at Turkey Death Day dinner.  But I don’t feel too bad.  Meeting people is a two way street.  I didn’t make it easy for them and they didn’t care to make it easy for me.  We’re both at fault and I can live with that.

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