February 14, 2008

Sermon To Be Extra-Boring On Sunday

Next, they'll move on to Extreme Unction!

Church to Explain Meaning of Marriage to NJ Catholics [KYW 1060]

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September 18, 2007

Hot New Trends In Spying

A story in Saturday's New York Times detailed the new hot trend in divorce: Installing tracking software on your spouse's PC in order to catch him or her cheating. Most likely, both spouses do this, and then sue each other into oblivion for ever and ever. Some lady even had a tracking device placed on her SUV!

Here, in the capital of litigation, there are quite a few couples who have done this. Here's the best one:

Most of these stories do not end amicably. This year, a technology consultant from the Philadelphia area, who did not want his name used because he has a teenage son, strongly suspected his wife was having an affair. Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program called PC Pandora on her computer, a laptop he had purchased.

The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites she visited and the instant messages she was sending. Since the program captured her passwords, the husband was also able to get access to and print all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous year.

What he discovered ended his marriage. For 11 months, he said, she had been seeing another man — the parent of one of their son’s classmates at a private school outside Philadelphia. The husband said they were not only arranging meetings but also posting explicit photos of themselves on the Web and soliciting sex with other couples.

Awesome! But what did they do after Club Kama Sutra closed?

Tell-All PCs and Phones Transforming Divorce [NYT]

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July 10, 2007

In Trenton, Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number

The Trenton Thunder is known for a couple things. Yeah, they're a Yankees minor league team, so when Yanks players are on rehab assignments, they sometimes pitch in Trenton. (Roger Clemens did earlier this year.) They also have a golden retriever as a bat, uh, dog. He had a bobblehead of himself this year.

But whatever aphrodisiac the Trenton Thunder have (or possibly has), they might want to start bottling it up and selling it; it might be a more lucrative than minor league baseball. So far this year, a whopping 11 couples have gotten engaged at Thunder games, a team record. (This stat is, sadly, not in the new SABR Baseball List and Record Book.) It's unclear if these couples all first met at a Trenton Thunder game and are picking a cute place to get engaged or if they're just yahoos who get engaged at a baseball game.

But one thing is clear: There was a little near-Lolita action going on in at least one of the new happy engaged couples.

The latest engagement took place Thursday for Jessica Margerum, 20, of Bristol Township, who goes by Jessyka, and Michael Birbeck, 26, of Falls Township. As the big question appeared on the scoreboard, Michael lowered to one knee, and Jessica's screams alerted the fans around them.

The pair became friends four to five years ago, but waited to date until Margerum finished high school. Birbeck, a youth minister at First Presbyterian Church of Levittown, felt it was inappropriate to date a member of his youth group. Spending more time together, they realized they were meant for a deeper connection.

Congratulations, Jessica Jessyka! Your future husband wanted you from the time he first laid eyes on you when you were 15.

Love hits a home run at Thunder games [Bucks County Courier Times]

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May 18, 2007

Preacher Who Proposes At Chain Restaurant Somehow Manages To Get Married Three Times

A Philadelphia preacher is accused of marrying three women at the same time; two of his wives have filed criminal charges against him. Meanwhile, I can't even get a date.

The preacher, Ricardo Sampson, would spend time with his different wives at the different churches he preached at. None of them supposedly knew about the others, incredibly. (In religious polygamy, don't the wives usually know each other? Does Warren Jeffs read this blog and can he shed some light on the situation?)

It's easy to see how Sampson was able to marry his three wives. He's just too smooth with his proposals:

According to marriage licenses the three women showed NBC 10, Ricardo Sampson married Robin Sampson Dec. 5, 1992; Donna Sampson, July 18, 1997; and Jackie Sampson May 20, 2006.

"Oh, he proposed to me at Friday's on Valentine’s Day," Robin Sampson said.

If she turned down his Friday's proposal, Sampson was slated to attempt to woo Robin at the Olive Garden.

3 Women Learn They Married Same Man [NBC 10]

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March 26, 2007

'Marley & Me' Times Four

Lisa Scottoline, the lawyer turned author turned Inquirer columnist, has realized on just her second column how to get the readers to keep coming back. That's right: Dogs.

But Scottoline doesn't have just one dog, a la John Grogan. No, she's already way ahead of that:

Have you noticed that, too? It's not just me, is it? I'm not sure when it started happening, but all of the people who used to have a family dog now have family dogs. I have a full herd - three golden retrievers and one Pembroke Welsh corgi, who rules us all.

Scottoline then moves on to a discussion of whether the more dogs one has, the more likely one is to get divorced, full of charts and graphs and discussions with experts. Ha ha, just kidding!

Instead she shares an anecdote from a reading she did and says her dogs sleep on the side of the bed her husband used to. Ha ha! No, that part I'm serious about.

Chick Wit | Shedding husbands, collecting lots of shedding dogs [Inquirer]

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August 23, 2006

If You Want To Be Happy For The Rest Of Your Life, Never Trust Forbes When Choosing A Wife

I've been trying to get my head around this pseudo-advice column from Forbes with the snappy title, "Don't Marry Career Women."

There are, really, too many questions about it to ask in one post, but I'll try a few: Who approved this article? What search terms did they use to find the excellent stock photography in the slideshow? Is the writer of this piece ever going to get laid again? If your wife works as well, why is your house more likely to be messy -- wouldn't the extra cash allow you to hire a maid? Who goes to Forbes for dating advice? Isn't that like going to Maxim for in-depth geopolitical commentary?

And that's just a sampling of what's going on in my head. But, really, the best part -- besides the slideshow, which you should watch -- is the article's closing paragraph:

A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married.

So, after an article where the writer has confused correlation with causation, he warns us not to confuse correlation with causation. Thanks, Forbes.

Update, 6-ish: The article appears to have been taken down, furthering speculation that the staff of The Onion hacked into Forbes.com and put up that article.

Don't Marry Career Women [Forbes via Gawker]
The tele-vision version starred Sandra Bullock [14th Windiest State]

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January 23, 2006

Blogicized: Dream a little dream

• You know you spend too much time in the city when you start having dreams about SEPTA. [The Trouble with Spikol]

• In a non-dream situation, here's a story about being stuck in the bathroom when the doorknob fell off. This happened to me once. MacGyver-like, however, I managed to jimmy the lock open with a Q-tip. No, really. [Starting a Landslide in My Ego]

• When two people in, say, a marriage both work they earn, on average, twice what one person earns! Who knew? CJR investigates. [Slacktivist]

• And, finally, here's some commentary on the Philadelphia murder rate, though this is a novel of a piece, so be sure to grab a Snickers or something beforehand. [Classical Values]

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