Writer Vixen Explains It All

How to Torment a Telemarketer

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I hardly ever answer my home phone anymore. Gave it up years ago, like a bad habit.

Ninety percent of the calls I get at that number are from telemarketers. This is how I  know that the National Do Not Call Registry is a big joke. And leading up to an election (like the past six weeks) at least 20 percent of the telemarketing calls to my home number are pre-recorded campaign pitches. Yes, I'm on a first-name basis with all of my senators and congressional reps, plus a couple of big-name celebrities. I'm all a-flutter.

So my home phone is basically reserved for outgoing calls. I assign special ring tones to my friends' numbers — they all have my cell number anyway — and when my home phone rings with a regular tone I know to ignore it. 

But I'm thinking of changing my ways. 

This awesome, short video demonstrates how to drive telemarketers absolutely insane using only a simple, three-letter word. No profanity or yelling involved (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view).

This is the most productive minute and 20 seconds I've spent in the past month. Gotta go — my phone's ringing! 

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Twittering vixenish things @WriterVixen.

Photo Credit: Should I Take the Call or Not? by Chris Pirillo under a Creative Commons license.

Happy Valentine's Day

Wishing everyone a fabulous day of love and indulgence! ;)

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Photo courtesy of Sephora.

Twittering vixenish things @WriterVixen

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun

Obviously, life's better when we're having fun. So why is it so difficult to remember to just enjoy our daily lives instead of scheduling our fun for the upcoming weekend or that evening out with friends?

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. But this irresistible, animated vid is so in sync with my own natural philosophy that it's inspired me to create more fun in my life in 2010.

To sum up:

• Be flagrantly yourself! (My favorite principle.)

• Embrace selfishness. (It's a good thing.)

• Break the rules. 

• Take chances.

• Lighten up.

• Simplify.

• Slow down.

• Start something.

Happy Friday everyone! Enjoy your weekend. ;)

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Twittering vixenish things @WriterVixen

TMI

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People are always telling me more than I want to know. This happens so frequently that I wonder if my face somehow sets up an expectation of sympathy and understanding that my personality can’t deliver on.

Waiting in line is a particularly hazardous undertaking. The bank, the post office and the grocery store offer endless opportunities to trip a TMI land mine. Like people in movie theaters who forget that they’re not sitting in their living rooms—where they apparently take phone calls during movies and talk back to the screen—something about standing still somehow causes people to forget the concept of social boundaries and prompts them to indiscriminately share their personal lives.

Or maybe it’s just something about standing in proximity to me. Clearly inspired by my utter lack of interest, strangers constantly launch into long-winded stories about their marriages, their relationships, their sex lives (or lack thereof), their aches and pains, their political opinions, their mothers.

What Do Women Want?

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“The great question that I have not yet been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is, What does a woman want?” —Sigmund Freud

A century has passed and Freud’s famous query still echoes. Men ponder it in terms of what women want in a man (of course) and they’re pretty sure it’s confidence, honesty and communication.

Dell thinks women want laptops in pretty colors wrapped up with calorie counters and cooking videos masquerading as “tech tips.”

Google claims there are over 13,000,000 answers to the question, “What do women want?”

Honestly, so much ado over such a simple thing! It will take me 10 seconds to explain it all. Are you ready?

HERE'S WHAT WOMEN WANT

We want

What we want

When we want it.

Come on . . . you kinda knew that, right? This knowledge has been passed down since the time of the Round Table. The knights, not the pizza.