Sorry, Asshole. That's private.

Me making final purchases, big box store.

Cashier=C Me=M

C: And may I have your email address in order to send you our weekly deals?
M: Sure! You first.
C: Excuse me?
M: I said "You first."
C: I don't understand, m'am.
M: Share and share alike, I want your email address for my email address.
C: But I am wanting it for the Store records.
M: No problem! You first.
C: But ... I can't give out my personal Email.
M: Then why are you asking for mine?

Now- how many of you, especially females, just instantly blab out your phone number, email address or personal address upon request by anyone halfway officious looking, like the pimply faced 18 year old behind the counter with a store name pin on his blue vest?

This is a good occasion to practice saying 'No, thank you' or 'That's private' to requests for personal information. The situation may be totally innocuous- the store totally innocent- but do you know who is standing in line with you within hearing? And what do you know of the kid asking for the information? Rapists and creeps usually do work somewhere and usually at places that don't pay top rates or do police checks on their cashiers.

How I handled the Bloviating Blowhard on the plane. (3 posts down)

First, after he got loud enough to override my headphones, I leaned over and said "Excuse me, you are loud enough for the entire plane to hear you, would you mind keeping your voice down?"

He apologized- which I ignored. Don't freaking apologize for being an idiot after someone calls you on it when you are old enough to know better.

When we got off to switch planes he spotted and approached my husband and I, at which time my husband blatantly took his picture. When he came near me I put my hand out at arms reach and loudly said, "Do Not Speak With Me."

If he had approached closer I was lined up and prepared to kick him in the groin. That is just how creepy this guy was.

I then stepped away while my husband berated him for speaking so rudely about his girlfriend to everyone within hearing and breaking the law by publicly exposing her medical condition.

There you go, asshole, you wanted publicity and you got it. I only wish the pic were clearer.

So ladies, moral of the story. It is time to get tough with yourselves- and with others. Stop feeling the need to put yourself out there in personal information, dress, lifestyle, emotions etc. Screw the utter stupidity of current social 'norms' and learn to only share yourself, your essence, with those whom are carefully chosen.

Learn to say "NO- Thats Private."

Don't play the IDIOT (Intimate Divulgence Instantly On Tap) game with anyone- ever.

Your privacy is the last thing you really own. It is the only thing that keeps you strong and keeps you from being a vulnerable target of the many cretins out there - on or off the net. Familiarity does breed contempt - that is an absolute truism that everyone needs to be more aware of. The more lightly you treat your personal privacy the more it harms you and, potentially, those around you.

Intimacy on Demand: The Ted Bundy Effect

But you see, Ol' Ted knew something about a lot of women that most people rarely think about. This is that females respond to something I call 'intimacy on demand'. He wrote that he could not have done what he did if not for this feminine aspect.

Here is an acronym for you:

IDIOT -Intimate Divulgence Instantly On Tap

Part of the problem is that women are trained to be the communicators- from birth, while boys are taught to be the 'strong, silent' type. Also women respond more readily to doing as they are told in order to 'get along' and not make waves. Altogether this has translated to making women more vulnerable and weaker in every way imaginable.

The technology age hasn't helped - with MySpace, Facebook and other 'social sites' giving people permission (and encouragement) to vomit out everything from details about their last abortion to their friends STD. It's turned into a three ring tech circus with the overriding theme of SHOW US YR TITS! And of course, those who do then rise to a higher social status within this strata of sublime stupidity. Apparently people even become addicted to living this false, ego-boosting reality show featuring them and need assistance to quit.

This stupidity at it's core allows everything from stores asking for your personal email address upon purchase of product - to the Girls Gone Wild guys connning totally unknown females into jumping drunkenly into a van to disrobe and get it on with other girls. Every one of those women have painted a big bulls-eye on themselves as the type of female who would be vulnerable to the Ted Bundys of the world.

I know this will piss a lot of people off - but the MySpace/Facebook account creation is actually the first seriously stupid step most people make in unnecessarily exposing their lives to the world at large. Even if you keep it 'private', it is not private to anyone working for these companies or half way decent kiddy hackers. And once you are out there - you are out there for good. I can find internet records of sites going back to 1996-97 in about 2 clicks of a mouse.

Despite constant warning news about stalkers killing people they have found on SS (Social Sites or Sublime Stupidity - take your pick) or people being defrauded or robbed, everyone is still out there insanely blabbing the most intimate details of their lives, locations, vacations, sex lives, family, etc.

It is well known in psychiatric medicine that cyberstalkers and rapists feed on personal information to expand their feeling of power over their victims. More information on this can be found here.

I'll give a few conversational examples on how to return to reality, next post.

A gold star from Ted Bundy

The other day we were flying from Dante's 8th circle of Hell to Dante's 9th circle of Hell (Dallas to Las Vegas) and we hopped in the front seats as usual. My husband and I have long legs and it's helpful to have a bit more leg room than that afforded to a bull in a stockyard kill box.

Aannd a drunk jumped into the third seat on the aisle. He wasn't drunk when he loaded on- but as he loaded up on Jack and Coke things went swiftly downhill. That is, he started talking. Mostly to the two stewardesses trapped in the jumpseat. But he was merrily and loudly verbal to anyone who would even barely glance his way.

My hubby and were watching a movie on the laptop when this gab-fest started. The movie has great music, so we had the volume up pretty high (using split earphones) and still this bloviating blabbermouth overrode the movie volume.

Now I have no objection to polite, standard stranger chat (Hi how are you having a nice day blah blah) but this blabbing behemoth immediately started telling all within earshot (the whole plane) about how his girlfriend was a 'nutcase' and had been in the loony bin and how he just had to fly to Vegas to gamble and drink a bit to get away from her because she was stalking him... And about how his sister was the only one who knew where he was going and how he hadn't had a drink in 50 (count'em) 50 days and on and on and on. Of course in trying to impress these stews he had to tell them about how he was 50 something and his girlfriend was 38.

After he got a bit drunker he slipped up and told the stews that his girlfriend was a nurse... Oops. Last I heard you lost your nursing license if you had mental problems so bad that you were institutionalized.

But the thing that really got to me was this: all of the very personal information this guy was vomiting out seemed to have one purpose- to elicit very personal information from the two stews. It's the "elicit sympathy and then give info to get info ploy" -and it worked.

By the end of the flight he had actually discovered:

1. the neighborhoods the stews lived in
2. number, age and sexes of their children
3. what schools and colleges the children attended
4. majors and/or fields of study of the children
5. years of future graduation
6. one of the stews real last names and addresses (off the drivers license that she revealed when she flipped open her wallet to show this creep her kids picture.
7. marital status of the stews
8. their work/flight schedules

A past expert at the ''elicit sympathy and then give info to get info ploy'' was the charmingly chatty serial killer Ted Bundy.

Ol' Ted would probably give this guy a gold star.