Which president would you date?

My roommate and I have been watching The Presidents, a History Channel DVD set we got from the library that provides a 15-minute biography on each of the presidents. Droll, you say? Not if you play the Which-president-would-I-date? game. So far, my judgment has been very poor on this subject.

When Andrew Jackson started making appearances during the first few presidents' biographies, I was a little starstruck. He was the Defender of New Orleans against the French, he fought off the Indians and the Brits in Florida and claimed her for the United States against the Spaniards...and he had awesome hair (How did he get such big hair in an age before hair products?). I announced my crush to my history-buff friend David, who immediately cried "Folly." David said that I had not chosen wisely--Andrew Jackson was practically guilty of genocide. Thousands of Indians died when Jackson had them uprooted and sent on The Trail of Tears.

David was right. The next night I watched Andrew Jackson's biography. He was a crazy man. He let the U.S. Bank--the bank that prints U.S. currency--die just because its supporters were his enemies. He courted and wed a married woman. He disagreed with a Supreme Court ruling--the ruling that allowed the Cherokee Indians in Georgia to stay on their land--so he ignored it and sent the Indians packing anyway.

This was an unwisely placed crush.

You might notice a crush theme in my postings. All I can say is that the crushes are getting progressively less realistic: first my neighbor, then famous writers, then a dead guy.

Naomi's Field Guide to Coffeehouse First Dates

Signs that you are witnessing a first-date-in-progress at your local coffeehouse:

1. It's late on a Saturday afternoon, and the two arrive separately. Scratch that. If it's a guy and a girl at a coffeehouse late on a Saturday afternoon, it's probably a first date.

2. When the two in question meet, they hug. Briefly.

3. The couple sits far from the other patrons.

4. The two appear similar in age, style, socioeconomic status and attractiveness.

5. The guy doesn't drink straight black coffee. He drinks a slightly girlier drink, like a cappuccino.

6. The snippets of conversation you catch include sound bytes like, "I lived for two years in Dallas..."

7. Animated conversation seems to be followed by brief, intense pauses that are broken with comments about the weather or the drinks they're each drinking.


**If you identify two or more of the above signs, you are most likely witnessing a first date.

Hunter gatherers, angst and the economic crisis

This economic crisis has explained a great mystery to me: why our hunter-gatherer forefathers had so little angst.

If you were worried about putting food on your table (literally), probably you didn't have time to worry about what the people in the next hut were saying about you or why your buddy from many moons ago de-friended you at your favorite prehistoric social-networking site.

(Actually, who am I kidding? I'm sure gossip was alive and strong among the hunter gatherers...assuming they were linguistically advanced enough to talk.)

You see, I've found that worrying about putting food on my table (or realistically, paying medical bills and funding my imminent post-graduate-and-unemployed lifestyle) is very freeing. I spend less time psychoanalyzing myself. And I think we can all agree that the less psychoanalyzing going on in the world, the better.