Are Men really Dogs?

Time and time again I have had conversations with women where we get together and bash men. Going through our experiences and agreeing with each other that men are horrible little creatures. However, I am really beginning to wonder if men are really dogs? Or is it that we as women allow men to treat us any which way they please? Honestly, can a man really do anything to us that we do not want him to do? How many times have we had dealings with a man who is no good, yet for some strange reason we ignore the signs and continue to allow this man deeper and deeper into our lives.

Recently I received a call from an individual that I have known for a number of years. We have always had a flirtatious thing going but nothing more than talk. We exchanged the new communication number of choice, blackberry pins. That should have been the first red flag. Anyways so a few weeks go by and we communicate via BBIM and everything is good. Minding my own business Mr. Man starts to tell me that he likes me and he wants to see me, telling me we could meet for breakfast or lunch. That was a first for me because those are both daytime activities and I was wondering why not dinner. Well a breakfast date for me is out of the question because I usually leave home at 8 to get to work for 8 if you catch my drift. By lunchtime I am usually swamped doing things so I usually don’t get to leave the office. We finally agreed that we would go out for drinks. After all of the talk he gave me he stood me up, which I have no problem with because I was home in comfort.

The thing that irritates me the most about this guy is that his excuse for not coming was that he was sleeping. The following day when I told him that I was not pleased he could not understand why I was upset. Apparently I was just supposed to be cool with being stood up. Subsequently, yes I continued speaking to him via BBIM no doubt, he told me he wanted to check me home. The concept of men “checking” me at home is a little pet peeve of mine for a number of reasons. Most often when men visit you at home they come empty handed. The woman then has to entertain the man by providing drinks and food. In other words it is a great way to freeload. Additionally, no one sees us together so it is a wonderful trick for womanizing men. Now nothing is wrong with staying in, but doing so in the beginning of the relationship is definitely not good because it sets a precedent.

Based on this scenario, are men really dogs? I honestly don’t think so. At this stage it is totally up to me whether or not I continue to interact with this man and what our level of interaction would be. If I continue to “date” him and then in a few months he is still up to these tricks I would have no one to blame but myself. In which case he wouldn’t be a dog, he would be a smart man and I would be a damn fool.

What do you think? Are men really dogs?

Strange Happenings

I am awake at 1:00 a.m. in the morning. This is normal for me because I usually go to bed early and then get up at these hours like a jumbie. In moving around my house I noticed that there was some abnormal vehicular activity on my street. Some people may say that I am a maco, others may say I am damn fas, however I consider myself to be hyper observant. Just as I was about to call the police I saw blue flashing lights, but I was still a bit uneasy. So I continued to pace around the house. Next thing my gate bell rings, I look out and see police. It was the kind of police I like too, the ones that breastfed on dasheen and look like they could buss somebody ass. The officers told me they would like to come in to check the premises and I quickly obliged. The officer who stood with me while his colleagues checked the premises explained that there was an incident on the highway involving a stolen vehicle and the suspects shot at the police. He asked me if I saw anything unusual, so I explained that I was going to call the police earlier. The officers completed the search then instructed me to lock up and proceeded down the street to continue the search.

This incident led me to a broadcast I received from some fool earlier that same night. “Big exercise in curepe on the main road side at least 40 cops searching cars .” As civilians we are not privy to the rationale behind the operations of law enforcement agencies. Why would we want to assist criminals by sending these types of messages? Some of us have persons on our Facebook and BBM accounts that we barely know and it is difficult to control where this information ends up. When we circulate these stupid messages we make the work of the officers futile. This is something that i have written about before in a post entitled “Aiding and Abetting the Criminal Element” so I will not babble on because my feelings are still the same.

I must say that I found the officers to be quite polite considering the circumstances and I was really impressed with the way they operated overall. I just hope that the officers were either able to apprehend the suspects or to at least survive the night without injury.

Aiding and Abetting the Criminal Element

I received a message via Blackberry Instant Messenger recently that was quite disturbing. I had previously spoken about this application concerning matters of the heart. Now I want to address matters relating to crime. It has become popular now for people to send broadcasts messages via BBIM. These messages range from stolen items to fete and club promotions to protest on the Beetham. My issue is when the messages involve the activities of the police. The message I received and I quote “Police road block on the bus route by aranguez savanah”. It is a quote so I had to spell Arranguez and Savannah wrong. The average citizen usually does not know the reason for a road block simply because the police do not need to indicate the purpose of a road block. Even if the road block is routine and they are not looking for anybody in particular the point is to catch people who break the law. That is the job of the police which would assist in them achieving their mandate of protecting and serving. Why would you want to alert people of this activity? Is it that we as Trinidadians are friendly with criminals and we want to help them avoid the police?

There are several implications of this activity that we often do not consider. The first is that supposed there is a rapist driving along his merry way. This person has gone undetected for several years, however his insurance happens to be expired. Stopped in the seemingly innocent road block he is apprehended and taken to the station where he is charged and his fingerprints taken. These fingerprints then happen to match a series of rapes in East Trinidad. Would the rapist have been caught if he was alerted to the road block in advance? Now don’t in your mind say this scenario is farfetched because the point is that we should not circulate this type of information as the only people who benefit from this are law breakers. We do not know where this information would end up. We do not know the motives of many of the people around us. The police already have a difficult time staying ahead of criminals who do not have rules, regulations and laws that govern their operations. Please I am begging everybody to be responsible in the information that we disseminate. Once the information leaves us we have no control over where it would end up. Finally people should question the type of friends they have that would benefit from receiving a message of that nature and possible have a chat with the person about their illegal behaviour or distance themselves from the person.

Needless to say the person who sent me the message to me got an earful. Admittedly she was not aware of the implication of transmitting the message. So my friends fix the ME in criME and stop making the work of the police more difficult.

Blackberry Instant Messenger is the Death of Traditional Romance

Forgive me if I am old, but I grew up in the age prior to cellphones. Cellphones became popular after I left secondary school. Recently thanks to Bmobile and Digicel the Blackberry has become the cellphone of choice for the masses. BBIM is an application that facilitates blackberry to blackberry messaging at no additional cost as long as both devices have a data plan. So for the last three years while I had five people in my BBIM contact list I now have about thirty. It has now become a trend when you meet a new guy to exchange pins instead of phone numbers. While this may be the modern thing to do, I think it takes away from the romance of a new encounter. Dating has actually been reduced to random disjointed messages. This is annoying on several levels. First Bmobile has proven itself to be probably the most unreliable mobile network in the universe hence there is no guarantee that the messages would be delivered in a timely manner, if even delivered at all. Secondly it allows womanizing men to carry on multiple conversations with various members of their harem. Therefore you no longer have the undivided attention of this man while chatting with him or in person because he is constantly tied to his phone. Third, men no longer feel the need to even pay for a phone call to make contact. And do not be fooled ladies the savings from these calls would not be seen in an improvement in the quality of dates. Finally, BBIM makes people think it is ok to message you all hours of the day or night. As opposed to a call where you would have to think about what the person may or may not be doing prior to placing the call. There is a reason that Machel did not sing “BBIM me anytime you want” and Jah Cure certainly did not sing “If you need a lover BBIM me”. That being said the next man to pick up the phone and call me I feel I will instantly fall in love simply because it has been so long. How has BBIM affected your dating life? Do you prefer dating life with or without BBIM?