The art of shutting yourself up

Okay so this is beyond random. But it's one of those days. Quick question, how can a person get better at shutting themselves up? Is it even possible? I have one of those personalities that's not easily controlled, not easily silenced and easy to overflow at the mouth, if u get my drift. Is it possible to morph into a woman of few words when it counts the most? I think it's a valuable tool to have and unfortunately, that tool completely missed my box set cuz I dont have it anywhere in sight.

*sigh*

The piranha pool of dating...how does it work?

I am not a dater. I dont do it. Never have. If things work out forever and ever with my current relationship of four years, then i'll never have to. To me, dating is like having the frequent sensation that you have to take a bowel movement, but everytime you try absolutely nothing comes out but gas. I hate it. Its pointless, a waste of time and irritates the hell out of me.

But that's just me.

I know some people are serial daters. They could spend 90% of life mixing and mingling and bouncing from one saturday night special to the next all while stocking up on contraceptives and liquor along the way. And I also know that no, all serial daters aren't whores, therefore all daters are not actually having sex with everyone they go out on a date with. They just truly love to meet new people and pray to God not to be bored to death. Well I just don't have the inclination to gather up contact info of various people, spend the energy to get all glammed up and go out...only to be disappointed. Not saying that i'll be disappointed every single time. But according to what many of you on the dating market are saying (and according to me not being the easiest person to entertain), I'm pretty sure most of my dating experiences would be astronomical disappointments for various reasons: bad breath, bad looks, bad convo, bad sense of humor, bad sense of style, bad manners, bad odor, bad chemistry, just all bad.

Sooo i've been able to forego casual dating for most of my life and i'm happy about it. I'm not saying i've never been out on a date before. Yeah, i've been picked up, handed flowers and taken out...but never by a complete stranger who I didn't even know whether or not I ever wanted to see them again in my life. This is how it always seemed to go for me:

1.Someone I already knew as a friend OR someone i didnt know personally but saw out and about shows interest in me.

2. If i'm interested back, we'd exchange numbers and spend the next few days running up phone bills.

3. If i like what i hear over the phone, I agree to go out on the illustrious "1st date".

4. That 1st date leads to a 2nd, and then a 3rd and then bam! Relationship.

Clean cut and dry. No awkward dates with someone I had zero chemistry with. For damn sure no blind dates. No dates with someone I can never see myself being with...at least for a few months. And that's how i liked it. All of this going out meeting random people at the club/mall/on the corner every other night only to be turned off when I actuallly attempt to hold a conversation with them is for the birds.

So how does the dating game work for you?

Multiple Personality Disorder...is this a joke?

Back when I thought I was sane enough to go into the field of Psychology, I was always intrigued by the amount of mental disorders that are documented by the American Mental Health Association. Of course the more commonly known cases are Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder and what have you. But I found Multiple Personality Disorder to be the most interesting because...well...the thought of one person having live-in visitors inhabiting their body, coming and going as they please is just highly entertaining. And scary, to say the least. Think about it, you have a friend name Candace who you love going out with and y'all are chillin one day at a restaurant and you go to talk to her and she looks at you as if you've lost your mind, sayin that she doesn't know you and demands you stop caliing her Candace because her name is Shawanda. What do you do? Play along? Get up quickly and walk away?

Well Showtime has braved the topic of Multiple Personality Disorder with a new series, United States of Tara. It's about a mother of two teenagers/wife of one husband (she's married to the man Carrie Bradshaw should have married, Aidan, from Sex and The City for those who had enough sense to follow that show) who is often taken over by her "alters". It works like this. Her given name is Tara and she has this family filled with your typical confusion, especially when u have a 16 year old drama-queen daughter and a 14 yr old know-it-all son. But things get even more complicated whenever Tara gets stressed out because she automatically retreats into herself, unleashing one of her 3 alter-egos, T (a 16 year old nympho who loves wearing jeans that show off her nasty looking thong), Buck (a trailer park trashy type man who loves flirting with trailer park trashy bar waitresses) and Alice (a June Cleaver/Mommy Dearest wannabe). When one of these alters take over, Tara is completely powerless and doesn't remember anything once she snaps back, leaving her vulnerable and capable of doing God knows what while she's under the alters control.

The show is funny as hell and I now have two whole reasons to watch Showtime. (The L Word is still number 1) But i'm still not sure if I buy into the whole multiple personality thing. I mean I know the brain is a very intricate feature and yes, if it's chemically imbalanced you can become wacked out beyond belief, but damn. I just don't know how I could handle being four people in one. I have a hard enough time dealing with myself! I can only imagine what my alters would be like. I know one of them would be a white girl named Becky. I know it. lol.

Bush's final letter to Obama

HA!!!