That Irritating Thing That Men & Women Do

By Bryan Cain-Jackson

I know what you’re thinking… That irritating thing that men and women do; the question you’re probably asking right now is which one? There are so many, right? Yes, there are. However, there is one that’s in mind at the moment. It’s just like a plague, it happens far too often.

Okay, here is the list of symptoms for both men and women:

• Happy relationship
• Things are going great; you fit their view of perfection to the tee…
• Living life on cloud nine 
• You’ve met the folks, it’s serious now
• You’ve had your first intimate moment and things are still consistently good
• Suspicions are raised
• Questions are asked
• Phone calls and texts go unanswered 

Not always in this order…

Then my friends… Comes the diagnosis

“I think we should see other people."

It may not be said in quite these words, but folks, this unfortunately is what’s being said in so many words.

I know that you will eventually go through your head and try to figure this thing out. What went wrong? When? How? Where? What did I say? OH MY GOODNESS!!!! WHATEVER IT IS I’M SORRY!!! PLEASE FORGIVE ME EVEN THOUGH I KNOW NOT WHAT I AM APOLOGIZING FOR!

Well, this is for the good men and women who have all become known only as…

“The one who got away.”

It’s because you were so good to them, they thought you were just too good to be true. You know what I’m talking about, I know you do.

Why does this happen?

To get the answer to this question there are many possible answers and of course they’ll be different from one person to the next. My theory is it will depend very strongly on what type of person they might attract or used of dating. Here’s a small example.

Scenario: Great, romantic guy and beautiful, strong woman. This guy fits her type to the tee according to what she tells her friends. Her friends congratulate her on finding this man who is also someone they consider to be very good looking.

The two finally have their first night of intimacy; she tells her friend that she has gotten exactly what she wanted from the experience. He calls the next day. This is not something she is used to, so she becomes alarmed. He already got what he wanted, what else could he possibly want? Now, she doesn’t know what to expect from him and this can be a very scary thing to anyone. She expected him not to call back because that is what she is used to.

After a time there is a good possibility that this woman may try to or actually go back to dating the type of guy that she is used to dating if she’s not used to dating a guy who knows how to treat her.

This would probably have been a man that didn’t treat her with the respect that she deserves or mistreated in different ways.

Men and women do this kind of thing all the time. I can’t count how many lady friends I have that keep making the same mistakes multiple times!!! It’s ridiculous! Why?

I believe it’s because we are all scared of the unknown and what we don’t understand. What makes matters worse is that the entertainment world has conditioned us to believe that someone good for us might not exist.

Many women are exposed to this in the form of the media’s over glorification of “the bad boy.” The reality is that women should start raising their standards. Your standards are a direct reflection of how you view yourself. If you settle for a lousy man, you can’t possibly think that highly of yourself. It’s a reality, face it. You should know what type of woman you are, know yourself, and respect yourself. If you do, you shouldn’t find yourself settling for less than what you deserve.

Men glorify women who are more of a certain type, more shapely and docile. Guys! Listen up! You do not need a woman who is submissive to you; this does not say that you are any more or less of a man. We are men and that is reflective in the way that we treat our women, how hard we work, and whether or not we are supporting our children. Yes, we should still be supporting our children if we are not with their mothers.

There are precious few people out there who will step up and embrace the fear of what comes with being treated well for the first time. Stop allowing yourself to be treated as though you are less than special.

Everyone is truly special in their own way. Many men and many women constantly get mistreated all the time because they treat their significant other with the love and respect that they are deserving of. That person may not think they are deserving of it because they never got it. That is not up to you to fix, they must find this out for themselves. Everyone deserves to be loved.

The next time you find someone who treats you differently in the best kind of way, don’t ridicule it, and don’t run from it. Embrace it. You’ll never know if you’ll ever have the opportunity to be treated that way again, and you could live to regret how you treated that person. Have faith, not everyone has a motive, sometimes they just want to give you something that you never had before, something that you deserve… Love. This last part might sound a bit sugary for some people’s taste, but hey… To me, it makes sense.



Let's see what your thoughts are on this topic, please share

Celebrity Antics: Latest Profit Craze?

By Bryan Cain-Jackson



Let’s say for instance that the mail man is having an affair with his boss’s cousin’s best friend’s former roommate. *Laughs* Extreme, I know, but this is my example, folks! Do you think anyone is going to give a rat’s rear end about his goings on? I can tell you for sure that is going to be a negative, ghost rider. A fat negative! At the end of the day, no one really cares.


So, if this is the case. Then why are celebrities doing these things every day if no one is supposed to care?



Well, it’s painfully obvious that we all care. That’s why The National Enquirer is still in business, as well as the Globe and any other trash that can be found conveniently at your local grocery store check stands. That leaves the why though. It seems pretty obvious that with the events that have been taking place in the eyes of the media with celebrities in recent years; they are cashing in! Oh, yes folks! They are cashing in on the free publicity. With the internet at the peak of its power fueled by social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, they don’t have to pay a dime to cash in. They just sit back, humiliate themselves, air out some dirty laundry and they get a check. Pretty cool, huh? For them, not for us because we buy those magazines, we watch those shows about them. They gain some extra cash (as though they actually need it) and we lose a few hours of our lives. Some of this is actually so bad for us to be exposing ourselves to, that it can be compared to putting your brain on a skillet. No joke, my friends! Did Michael Jackson really sleep in an oxygen chamber? Uh, I don’t know. But that’s been a while ago. Let’s take a look at some of the more recent examples that have successfully generated a profit for one or all the people involved with all the public craziness.

In 2007, R&B artist Ray J. and coming out of nowhere socialite Kim Kardashian made a sex tape that supposedly fell in to the hands of the public “accidentally.” So much of an accident that this was, both have had immense popularity in their careers since this had been discovered. Kim Kardashian and her family have become moguls in the world of celebrity and business even at one point rumored to be getting their own prepaid debit card. Uh-oh Russell Simmons, look out. On the bed, it’s a bug, signs of something more sinister, it’s Kim Kardashian. Yes, friends, it is Kim, with buns of steel that are questionably real. I must say I think this worked out quite well for them both. The sad thing is that Ray J. was already talented and in my opinion needed no such boost. But, hey, it worked for Paris Hilton and Tom Sizemore right? So why couldn’t it work for Ray and Kim? Both Paris and Kim come from the lives of having silver spoons in their mouths, why not have sex with another celebrity on tape to further that fortune? If only it worked for us regular folks like that, right? Too bad, so sad… Moving on…


Well, unfortunately folks if I continue to go on with this blog chronicling the “misfortunes” that resulted in fortunes earned for celebrities, then it will become a blog solely about the Hiltons and the Kardashians and all the men they run through every year, so we’ll skip to the latest craze that seems to be generating some serious dough.

Charlie Sheen, or as he is better known “Two and a Half Men.” The reason why I say that’s his name is because he is the show, without him it will fail hard. CBS please don’t even go back to trying to get a replacement. It seems that since Charlie has supposedly drugged himself into a complete stupor, he first established that he is living in a house of love with his two adult film stars for girlfriends and small children, and shortly thereafter established that he needs cash because he is cash poor. Most of Charlie’s assets are tied into investments that cannot be tapped into. So what has Charlie done? He has decided to be the smart celebrity scandal story out there. By capitalizing on what the world views as his off the wall and questionably insane behavior, he is now making more money by taking his shtick on the road than he ever would have working on his hit sitcom.


There are some of us out there that have expressed sympathies for Jamie Foxx having a camera phone picture leak, Taylor Swift getting dissed on stage by Kanye West, Mel Gibson for being accused of putting hands on a woman. I am sorry but I have no sympathy for these people. They are making money off the fact that we the voyeuristic public will always look into the lives of the so called elite that in all actuality no longer exists in the wonderful world of Hollywood. For elite and glamour, go back 50 years when people had sense… At least in the eyes of the public they did. To me, the behavior of stars today makes absolutely no sense at all; Even less, the cash that they make as a result.


Share your thoughts, do you think this is all for profit? Do you feel sympathy for any of these celebrities in scandal? Tell me what you think.

Remembering Elizabeth Taylor

By Bryan Cain-Jackson

The face of beauty and glamour in the limelight will be forever changing from generation to generation.  Each and every single one will recognize the quintessential picture of glamour, Elizabeth Taylor; the last star from the glitzy old Hollywood studio system died yesterday of heart failure at the age of 79.

Blogs and articles all over the world will focus on the movie star, as well as her multiple marriages two of which being to Richard Burton.  I would like to talk about Liz the woman and friend.  Was she a friend to me?  Yes, but not in the personal sense.  She was a friend to any movie buff who had the chance to watch her grace the screen with her mass sex appeal, proper and delicate speaking voice, and her ability to captivate with just a simple glance.  There I go, talking about Elizabeth Taylor the movie star.  This is the woman who brought us memorable performances in “Cat on a Tin Roof,” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?”  Liz was so much more than the sum of her beauty and stardom.  Of those who knew her personally, other movie stars and regular folks like us will describe her devotion to her friends as everlasting.

To my knowledge, I cannot ever think of a single word written about Liz that talks about how truly great of a friend she has been to so many people.  Amongst her most memorable acts of friendship to many, Liz helped raise nearly $400 million for research into a cure for AIDS.  It was a passion she held dear in her later years.  She cultivated a number of particularly close friendships with uniquely iconic people known and remembered to the world.  Coincidentally, all of these icons left us much too soon.

Among those friends was James Dean.  Liz and James were very close, she was his confidant and they had an immense understanding of each other.  He trusted her with life details that he would not entrust to anyone else.  Liz repeatedly pleaded with him not to race in the Porsche that he eventually suffered a fatal accident in on September 30, 1955.  He was 24.

 On May 12, 1956, Liz’s best friend movie star Montgomery Clift crashed his car into a telephone pole leaving a party held at her house.  Liz raced to his side and pulled a tooth out of his throat to prevent him from choking to death.  Clift suffered injuries so severe that he would eventually need to have reconstructive plastic surgery.  He was never the same after the surgery; his classic movie star looks were permanently marred.  He turned to alcohol and painkillers; as a result his career was on the rocks.  Liz got him jobs, stood up for him to studio heads and even offered to insure him with her own money when studios would not for liability purposes.  Clift would confide only in Liz until his final day, he died of heart failure in 1966.  He was 46 years old.

Liz’s closest friendship was to pop icon, Michael Jackson.  It was Liz who first introduced the world to a crowning phrase that she herself bestowed upon Michael; the world would later adopt this name for him as well.  Thanks to Liz, Michael Jackson would forever be known as The King of Pop.  Jackson led a turbulent life before the public.  The insecurity he had about himself showed in the seemingly endless cosmetic surgeries he underwent.  The fact that he chose to live his life as a child had him being targeted for multiple claims of child molestation.  It was often said by Michael that Liz was the only person in the whole world who understood him.  She stuck by his side and fought to defend him vigorously against claims that she believed were outrageous and unbelievable.  Though the circumstances surrounding Michael’s death are unclear, it is apparent that he died of a drug overdose in 2009.  He was 50.  Those close to Liz say they believed this event put her in a deep state of depression.

Elizabeth Taylor:  Movie star, friend to all.

She will be remembered by movie goers all over the world; she will be known as the everlasting face of Hollywood at its most glamorous.  To me, this makes perfect sense.

Wal-Mart: Secret Guilty Pleasure?

By Bryan Cain-Jackson


I recently visited the newest addition to the reign of Wal-Mart superstores.  One just opened on the main beat and drag where I live.  As I drove by the newest gargantuan, a familiar feeling came over me… a feeling of curiosity.  You know what I mean?  I can liken the curiosity to that of when onlookers in traffic rubber their necks towards a car accident along California’s Interstate 80 during the busy bay area commute.  I gave in to the lure, and parked my car.  Is it just me?  Or is it that these massive parking lots tend to make one feel smaller and rather insignificant in Wal-Mart's grander scheme of things?  Well, folks... thus begins my journey.

Upon entering the store, ironically I was not greeted by the greeter but instead awakened to the unnatural light meant to lower my melatonin levels.  I was supposed to wake up and feel excited because the new Wal-Mart had finally arrived.  In my journey through the aisles, it seemed as though the merchandise displays were more greeting than anyone who works there.  I wandered aimlessly through the aisles, looking of despair.  This was the new place to shop.  This was what happened to the music store, the toy store, the garden shop, and just about any other specialty store that I remembered growing up with.  No longer were we concerned with finding a store that dedicated itself solely to the things that we love, we are now interested only in mega stores that serve as a one stop shop.  I continued to walk down the aisles; passing employee after employee, not one of them greeted me as I walked by.  I stopped to look at yet another greeting merchandise display and the only employee that made eye contact with me told me that I was in his way, I stepped aside as he lumbered by with a big box in hand.  I had enough.  I walked once again, but no longer was it aimlessly.  It was a walk with a mission; a mission to find the exit…

After 35 minutes, I finally exited the store and had just found my car, it suddenly dawned on me to ask a question.  Have you ever wondered what is attributed to Wal-Mart’s stupendous success?  Maybe it's the customer service.  Nah!  Can it be the convenient locations?  I want to go with a no on that one.  I don't think that people concern themselves with the distance involved in a trip to Wal-Mart.  After all, with the pennies in savings that are thrown at each customer, they might make up for it, even though they've probably used a lot of gas to get there.  Better yet, it's more likely attributed to the fact that Wal-Mart coins itself as the place with "Always Lower Prices" and that you should "Save Money and Live Better."  I don't know about that.  Is going to Wal-Mart truly living better?  If it is, then why are we always in a hurry to go in there?  Why just grab a mop and some cleaning stuff and call it a day?  When I go to Target, I often run into people that I know.  We end up standing there and conversing for quite some time with minutes flying by and neither of us being any the wiser to the passage of time.  Yet, when I have stepped into a Wal-Mart and ran into somebody, I've immediately told them, "Hey, I'm in hurry, good to see you, make sure you Facebook me."  This is all said while being in transit, not stopping for a second to breathe.  Could it be that subconsciously some feel that even being in Wal-Mart can be eroding to their image?  I can buy that.  Many won't even admit that they've bought their TV or their great looking hat at Wal-Mart. 

"Hey, where did you get that?" 

"Oh, uh, Target.  Yeah, man.  Target.  That's the ticket."

Perhaps this could be linked to our inner desire to appear more prestigious to those around us, especially those we know, grew up with, and maybe even had a slight high school rivalry with.  Personally, I prefer Target 10-1 over Wal-Mart.  The stores are much cleaner; the employees seem happier and much more willing and able to help you with what you are looking for and even ring your purchases up with a slight sense of delight at the cash register.  If this is truly the case and not just my own personal perception then why does Target do less business and is dwarfed in size by Wal-Mart?  When you go into a Wal-Mart, almost no one is willing to help you and they give you the impression via body language and tone of voice that you are actually inconveniencing them.  Inconvenience to them?  For real??  How could that be when we are paying their paychecks every year?  According to Business Insider, as of October 2010 Wal-Mart is the largest overall employer and the absolute biggest employer in 25 states.  Stay tuned folks, with what they pay their employees it could explain why customer service is not their motto, and even on a larger scale it could be contributing to a poverty stricken America.  I have many good friends that have taken jobs at Wal-Mart.  They either have other jobs, under the table "hustles," or still require government assistance of some kind.  Business Insider also stated another interesting fact, each week, more than one-third of the U.S. population shops at Wal-Mart.  I'm told by friends/Wal-Mart employees that many of these purchases are more than what they make in a month and hefting up to even larger sums during the Christmas shopping season.  Come to think of it, not only are these interesting facts, they are actually kind of scary as well.  It smells like when you put all this together it might be an attempt at world domination folks.  Maybe their board of directors consists of a few familiar sounding characters named Pinky, Brain, Mr. Burns, and Stewie Griffin. 

Here's the long and the short of it, folks.  I believe in and am very much a lover of people.  It just grinds my gears to see that we as the consumer public that mega conglomerates such as Wal-Mart rely on do not treat us with the respect that we deserve.  Great service and cleanly, well kept stores are important.  As consumers spend millions of dollars every year at locations of this mega retailer, there is no evidence that care is taken in each of these customers.  What I see instead is an arrogance that feels like we are privileged to have this store to go to and that we will go there no matter what the conditions are and how we are treated.  There is always another place to go, folks.  What was once on top and revered will eventually fall the way of another company if mistakes are not corrected soon enough.  Just look at what happened to GM, they are often referred to as the Dick Cheney of companies.  Folks, be the responsible and intelligent consumers that I know each and every single one of you are and are capable of being and take care and pride in yourselves.  Tell yourselves the next time you step into a Wal-Mart or any other store for that matter and demand good customer service because that is what you are truly paying for.  If you get anything that you feel is less, remind yourself that you deserve the best that there is for whatever the money that you are spending.  When you enter Wal-Mart with only the intention of buying a few rolls of paper towels for that Sunday barbecue at Uncle Chris's house and you suddenly realize as you are getting bad service, your paper towels mission has become a $400 spending spree.  Stop and ask yourself:  Does this make sense?