rlavell Women here leave much to be desired. Unless someone wants to prove me wrong. - September 22, 2011 add/view comments (0)

Colleges and Universities

Recommend this profile to your Facebook friends.

**Status Update**

In August, I relocated to Colorado from Seattle for a yearlong journalism fellowship. Like every city I've lived in, I'm on BP and other social networking sites in search of the cool black people, friends of both sexes (but not necessarily sex with both sexes), sources and professional contacts. So if you're in Colorado and I pop up in your page log and/or send you a message, that's likely why.

I'm on BP, and have been literally almost a third of my life, because I love people and find them interesting. My fascination of people has led me from my hometown of St. Louis to Chicago back to St. Louis to Springfield, Illinois and, now, to Seattle, Wash. I'm a freelance journalist -- formerly a full-time newspaper reporter -- so your story tips and donations of cash and/or canned goods will be appreciated.

People I like to meet include: Colleagues in the field of journalism. Creative types. People who give a hell about what's going on in the world. Progressive types. Folks who are smarter than me. People who are funnier than me. Sexy brainy women. Brainy brothas. Gays. Straights. Hindus. Muslims. Christians. Members of weird religions I never heard of (WTF is a Methodist--really?). Sports fans. Political junkies and policy wonks (transportation funding reform, anyone?). Anybody who can confirm that Transylvannia actually exists (I think they made it up, personally). Anyone willing to humor me.

One of the things I find most amusing about BP, and life in general, is peoples' oblivion to their own ridiculous hypocrisy. What follows are a few observations and my suggestions for how you can avoid such pitfalls. I'm not judging or condescending -- no one's perfect, least of all me.

So if you...

--Start your page off with a bunch of negativity, do's and dont's, etc. right up front, realize that it's a put off to me personally, but more importantly, it'll only attract negativity.

--Don't have pic of yourself, citing that the Web is full of psychos and potential rapists, please don't post photographs of your children, nephews, and nieces.

--Write on your page that you can't write your life story in a box so you're not going to try, it's just intellectually lazy. The point is not to tell your life story it's to say something that gives folks a window into your personality.

--Just have a one line personal message that says "Hey, if you want to know anything hit me up," and a couple of photos, people have no basis for sending you substative note.

--Profess to be intelligent, want an intelligent mate, or engage in intelligent conversation, do me a favor and look up the word "intelligent," -- any dictionary will do -- and copy that spelling exactly. Trace it if you have to. Because if I see the word "intellegent" on one more page, I'm going to find out where you went to grammar school, and burn the place down because they obviously failed you along with the rest of civil society.

--Demand that people meet a number of shallow preqrequisites just in order to send you a note, get the hell over yourself.

--Are an adult, you may not have songs sung by, or pics of, child-aged celebrities on your page. That means you 35 year-olds with "Ms. Pretty [Vagina]" or "Halle Berry" (which admitedly is a fun song, but still) blaring really need to get yourselves together.

--Have either your instant message or email information listed on your page, don't be angry, annoyed, or confused when you receive a random IM or email. Think of it another way, if I rent an airplane to skywrite "For hot man-on-man sex, call R.L. at 314-555-LMNOP," I have no one to be angry with but myself when a bunch of dude-smoochers start calling my cell phone.

--Insist that certain groups -- the too old, the too young, boys, lesbians, hAteRrzzz, et. al. -- immediately leave your page...you know they're gonna keep reading, right?

--Claim that "Above of all else, Jesus Christ is #1 in my life," go ahead and move that to the top of your page. You can't list everything you like you like in the opposite sex and what you want done to you in the bedroom and how often, that Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Friday 1, 2, 3 are your favorite movies, and you're feeling that new Gucci Mane, then say God comes first in your life.

--Have anything receiving heavy airplay on urban radio playing on your page, that's not your jam. It's everybody's jam.

--Go out of your way to misspell stuff, you're wasting your time. While I can understand dropping (or, droppin') dipthongs -- ie the g's off the ends of words -- and taking other shortcuts, it takes a lot of extra time to go through and replace all your e's with 3's, or using the longer "mah" as opposed to "my" etc.

--Say you're a lover music, you may not subsequently enumerate all the genres of music you do not like. "I love all types of music except rap, rock, classical, and country" = "I love all types of Italian food except spaghetti, lasagna, linguini, and fettucine."

--Display a lack of understanding of basic grammar (e.g. the difference between to, too, and two), know that I am judging you -- and that goes double for those of you with one semester or more of higher education experience.

--Have to say that you're very unique, complex, intelligent, or freaky, you most likely are not.-

--Want to agree, disagree, cuss me out, point out my shortcomings (there are a LOT, so you might wanna grab a calculator), I'm rlavell77 on Yahoo and AOL Instant Messengers. Feel free to say hello, just so long as you're not soliciting sex or money or bodily organs -- at least not right off the bat. I typically won't donate a kidney until I've known you a week.

Peace.