Poor Mojo's Newswire

Friend of mine sells houses. Her job involves a lot of conversation with customers, and doing her job well means conversing with them in a way that reassures them and makes them feel comfortable. Occasionally, those conversations take a turn that makes her uncomfortable, suddenly switching into a category we might describe as white people talking to white people when they’re sure there’s no one but white people around. She’s had clients blurt out some appalling things, hateful, ignorant, infuriating statements about African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, gays … you name it. In another context, a non-work setting, their comments would likely have prompted a sharp rebuke from my friend, likely something withering, pointed and laced with just the right amount of profanity. But that sort of response isn’t an option in the context of her work, where she’s required to keep her cool, to be unfailingly polite, friendly and cheerful. In that context, she’s developed some various other ways of responding. One trick she sometimes uses is to talk about food. That doesn’t apply in every case, but it works pretty well, for example, for transforming the dynamic of a conversation in which some client has expressed their fear, unease, or flat-out, bald-faced, xenophobic hate in response to the number of South Asian immigrants in our area. My friend acts as though she completely missed the unambiguous animosity of her client’s comment and begins to gush, with cheerful enthusiasm, about the many excellent Indian restaurants in the area and about her one client — lovely woman, a biochemist — who gave her a family recipe for naan bread. Have you ever had naan? I mean the real stuff not store-bought it’s delicious you have to try it I could give you that recipe if you want I’ll bring it Thursday or samosas have you ever had really good samosas? . . .

People really, truly want to know how to be better lovers, understand what their partner wants, and how to be more attractive to their crush object. People are starving for this information. It’s why they read the columns, at least in part. I can’t be the only person who, at 18, read these kinds of things ravenously, only to be left bloated and disappointed. It’s like giving candy to a starving person: hell yes it will taste good and it might even make them feel full, but it won’t actually nourish them. And it doesn’t. You can’t REALLY meet a guy in the grocery store, and you can’t really turn on any woman, at any time, with ANY fancy sex trick. If you want to know how to meet a guy or how to make a woman want you, don’t ask a journalist. They don’t know any more than you do. Why would they? Then again, you can ask me but you won’t particularly like the answers because they are not entertaining; they involve you doing stuff you don’t want to do. What you really want to know is how to meet a man without having to sieve through dozens of people you’re not interested in, without having to depart your comfort zone, without risking rejection. And what you really want to know is how to turn on a woman with something that turns YOU on, rather than with empathy, consideration, and affection.

A Russian man who tried to rob a hair salon ended up as the victim when the female shop owner overpowered him, tied him up naked and then used him as a sex slave for three days. Viktor Jasinski, 32, admitted to police that he had gone to the salon in Meshchovsk, Russia, with the intention of robbing it. But the tables were turned dramatically when he found himself overcome by owner Olga Zajac, 28, who happened to be a black belt in karate. She allegedly floored the would-be robber with a single kick. Then, in a scene reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, police say Zajac dragged the semi-conscious Jasinski to a back room of the salon and tied him up with a hair dryer cable. She allegedly stripped him naked and, for the next three days, used him as a sex slave to 'teach him a lesson' - force feeding him Viagra to keep the lesson going.