Just for Fun: 10 Things Men Know about Women

I found this on chickencrap.com this morning and had a good chuckle. Enjoy:

Things men know on chickencrap.com.

posted by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

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Cosmopolitan Magazine: Sometimes the Truth Hurts

I Stumbled Upon this last night and got a real kick out of it. For those of you who don’t know, Cosmopolitan is a dreadful women’s magazine that panders to. . . hmm, how can I word this without seeming harsh? I can’t. It panders to braindead, oversexed, materialistic, gold digging (is that redundant?), narcissistic, “career gals.” The magazine is beyond superficial–expect for the occasional article on “What You Need to Know About HPV,” etc. and targets the lowest common denominator.

If you’re girlfriend reads Cosmo you may want to flip through it. The relationship advice this mag/rag dishes out will probably explain a lot about your relationship. This illustration is by sandossu via Flickr and Incredimazing:

COSMOPOLITAN: Sometimes the truth hurts.

posted by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

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10 Warning Signs You’re Dating or Married to a Female Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Many people can’t fathom what’s taking place in Iran. However, men who are married to women with Narcissistic Personality Disorder or traits experience the same control techniques as the Iranian citizens on a daily basis. Instead of being machined gunned to death in the streets of Tehran, they suffer death by a thousand cuts in their 3BR, 2BA homes behind closed doors.

Are you dating or married to the female equivalent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Are you subjected to regular “mah-mood” swings in which you must go along with her whims and demands? Here are 10 warning signs that you’re with a controlling, abusive, narcissistic, delusional lunatic, much like the Supreme Leader.

1. Puts the “dic[k]” in dictator. Is it her way or the highway? Do you have to capitulate or else?

2. If you oppose me or challenge me in anyway, I can’t guarantee your safety. Do you have a secret hiding place you hole up in like Mousavi when things get really bad? The den? The basement? A panic room? Curling up in the fetal position under your desk?

3. The revolution will NOT be televised. Does she pre-empt or try to squash any attempt at self-care or independence you make? Does she undermine you at every turn? Deny reality, the facts and events? Does she threaten you, implicitly or explicitly, not to tell anyone what goes on between the two of you?

4. No contact with the outside world. No friends allowed. No family allowed. No third parties with dissenting opinions are tolerated. She effectively cuts you off from friends and family who would come to your aid.

5. La, la, la, la. I can’t hear you. Do your protests for humane treatment, basic kindness and fairness fall on deaf ears? Does she conveniently forget or deny the times you’ve actually expressed your hurt feelings and twist it around on you?

6. Mind over matter. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she rigidly and dogmatically insists on her distorted view, denying reality. It doesn’t matter if you have physical evidence to say otherwise—video and audio tapes, eye witnesses—she still asserts her version of reality is the accurate one.

7. Gets others to do her dirty work for her. Ahmadinejad isn’t out there clubbing people in the streets; he has his ninjas out there doing it for him because, like most narcissistic bullies, Mahmoud is a coward. Likewise, if you stand up for yourself or finally try to assert your independence by breaking up with or divorcing her, she will enlist others to rally around her and destroy you. For example, attorneys, court evaluators, the police (i.e., make false abuse allegations) friends and family. She’ll try to “defeat” you through deprivation of money and other resources and begins a smear campaign to undermine your credibility.

8. Brainwashes the young to create loyal followers. She systematically turns your children against you, portraying herself as the benevolent and wronged parental figure who’s the one that “really” loves them and is the only one who will take care of them. Although, when they become teenagers and young adults and follow the natural impulse to rebel, her response will be as swift and merciless as it was to you.

9. Speaking in fundamentalist tongue that no one understands but her. No matter how hard you try to make sense of her behaviors, the things she says and her accusations and rationalizations; you can’t. It’s all emotional gibberish based on her warped fear of losing control and exposure of her crazy behaviors. If you scratch just below the surface of her “facts,” they fall apart.

10. The Supreme Leader is infallible. Enough said. She’s right. She’s always right. End of story.

by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

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I provide confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. My practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit Services and Products for professional inquiries.

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Photo credit:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in drag on FreeFrankWarner.

Financial Fraud by Wall Street and Mortgage Lenders: Ignorance and Stupidity Are No Excuse

It’s not my fault. I didn’t know what I was doing. My boss made me do it. I didn’t realize it was wrong. Everybody else was doing it. Nobody told me. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.

Now that the white collar criminals who perpetrated the mortgage crisis by deliberately giving loans to unqualified buyers and defrauding the country are on the brink of state and federal prosecution, they’re pleading “stupidity and ignorance.” According to the New York Times:

The question behind any cases brought against Wall Street will boil down to this: Was the worst economic crisis in decades caused by law-breaking or some terrible, but noncriminal, mix of greed, naïveté and blunders? The challenge for the Obama administration will be to prove that it was the former, said Michael F. Buchanan, a partner at Jenner & Block and a former United States attorney in New Jersey. “We punish people for intentional misconduct, we don’t punish them for stupidity or innocent mistakes,” he said. “If you’re a prosecutor, you want evidence that shows real dishonesty. You want something that shows that these people were doing something wrong, and they knew it.”

Really?! People receive speeding tickets when they don’t know they’re over the speed limit. For example, they’re preoccupied and don’t realize they’re going too fast or they miss a sign that the speed limit dropped from 65mph to 50mph. Should their tickets be forgiven because of ignorance? I wish.

Stupidity and ignorance are no excuse, hence, ignoratia juris non excusat (ignorance of the law does not excuse). Stupidity and ignorance do not exempt you from accountability and consequences, it just makes you a dumb crook. You’re still responsible for your actions. Even if you were just “following orders” because you were afraid of your boss, you’re complicit. Higher ups who encouraged these behaviors are doubly responsible for encouraging criminal business practices. If executives claim they were “unaware” of what was going on in their organizations, that makes them criminally negligent.

People who took out the bad mortgages with no thought of the morrow are just as culpable. Borrowers were scammed. Banks offered them a deal that was too good to be true. Banks preyed on people’s fantasies of McMansions, borrowers fell for it hook, line and sinker and now they’re paying for it.

A few years ago, a friend and I were in midtown Manhattan with our suitcases on our way to Penn Station. A man approached us and asked if we were interested in buying a “seriously discounted all inclusive day pass to a luxury spa” for $100. My friend and I  knew what was going on and asked very detailed questions about the spa, products, etc. With each question asked, he became irritated and tried to make us feel like stupid hicks because we didn’t recognize what a “great opportunity” (to be fleeced) he was offering us. We kept grilling him until he spotted two other women with suitcases and moved on. I called after him, “Good luck finding another mark!”

Even though we knew better, we both had an initial flash of excitement at the thought of having a day at the spa for next to nothing—until our brains resumed control over our ids. Had we fallen for his scam, we each would’ve been out $100 with little recourse—even if the police caught him. No one would have given us our money back. Unfair? Yes, but we would’ve learned a lesson about being gullible; it’s survival of the mentally fittest. I have the same view of people who signed on for mortgages that were beyond their means. They fell for a much bigger scam with a far more expensive lesson.

According to the same NYT article:

That nearly all of the banking industry acted the same, possibly reckless, way could actually help any executive who lands in court, lawyers said. The herdlike behavior suggested that bankers were competing for business using widely shared assumptions, rather than trying to get away with a crime. It would be hard to prove that anyone broke the rules, these lawyers said, since regulations in the riskiest parts of the mortgage industry were so lax.

Ahh, the “But Everybody Else Was Doing It” defense. Are you f**king kidding me?! Are these adult executives or 14-year olds who were caught drinking beer in their friend’s basement?

Narcissistic, predatory bullies believe they’re exempt from the rules by which the rest of us abide. They know what they’re doing is wrong; they just don’t care. In terms of psychological development, the narcissistic mentality is that of a 6-year old, which explains the childlike lame excusess they’re using to exonerate themselves from their indefensible behaviors. They’re not sorry for what they did; they’re sorry that they’ve been caught and are being exposed.

This as an example of a group of abusive, predatory bullies who saw an opportunity to go after financially vulnerable, gullible people who wanted the good life, but no means to attain it. They offered them a risky, “Get-a-House-Quick” scheme and the pigeons wanted to believe everything would work out in the end.

When reality hit the fan, the bankers blamed the victims and then hit the government up for money. The same government who should have been protecting its citizens instead of enabling corporate malfeasance.

The NYT continues:

One defense lawyer said he expected to argue that either his clients did not understand the financial instruments they were marketing, or were not warned of the dangers by underlings. “We’ll all sing the stupidity song,” said the lawyer, who said he feared that speaking publicly by name would deter potential clients. “We’ll all sing the ‘These guys never told me’ song.“

This is financial abuse on a grand scale. These people knew what they were doing. Once one bank made big profits off these practices and got away with it, the rest of the banks followed suit in a predatory feeding frenzy.

The mortgage lenders need to be held accountable for their corrupt practices and the people who fell for their scams need to deal with the consequences of their gullibility and wishful thinking. Every scam is a dance between predator and prey. People who took out the loans were willing victims. Harsh, but true.

By Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Private Consultation and Coaching

I provide confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. My practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit Services and Products for professional inquiries.

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If you find the information I provide free of charge helpful and valuable here on Shrink4Men, please consider making a donation via PayPal to help me maintain the site.

Photo Credits:

Attorney General Eric J. Holder, Jr. by European Press Photo Agency.

Shark Feeding Frenzy on Animal Pictures Archive.

Bill Maher, the Snuggie, Extenze and the American Psyche

Do you know what the Snuggie is? I wouldn’t have known if we hadn’t watched A Fistful of Dollars on AMC a few weeks ago on a cold and snowy Saturday night. Almost better than the camp of Sergio Leone‘s spaghetti western classic, were the array of “you’ve gotta be kidding me” commercials.

Standouts include Extenze penis “enhancement” capsules and the Snuggie, which is a blanket with sleeves that, “leaves your hands free to use the remote and have a snack” (or perhaps another activity if you’re also an Extenze customer). In addition to these fine products, there were advertisements for bankruptcy and foreclosure attorneys, credit card attorneys, no exercise required weight loss pills, and cash for your old gold, jewels, and coins, “Mail us your jewelry and we’ll send you a check.” I repeat, you’ve got to be kidding me.

At first, we laughed so hard we nearly choked on our beers. Then we tried to figure out who the AMC programmers think their target audience is and hoped that we weren’t among them. Apparently, AMC’s target audience is broke, overweight, lazy, gullible and suffering from a collective case of erectile dysfunction and inadequacy issues.

If advertisements are a barometer for our fears, dreams, needs, and desires, then the roster of commercials AMC and other cable networks serve up is pretty alarming. These ads symbolize our wish for quick and easy fixes to complex problems in the forms of “natural” supplements and lawyers who can “get money for you.”

Enter Real Time with Bill Maher. I’ve been a fan of Maher‘s for years. During his New Rules segment this week he mentioned the Snuggie—yes, the Snuggie. My first thought was, “I wonder if Bill was at home getting stoned watching Eastwood like we were at home having a few beers? Hey, maybe we are the target audience!” But then I listened to what Bill had to say:

He’s spot on in this closing monologue. However, the Snuggie isn’t like a giant bib. It’s like a giant baby bunting that represents our childish, unrealistic  desires to be taken care of and to have some parental authority figure handle life’s issues while we nurse and entertain ourselves.

It’s time for us to step up, to be accountable for our choices and to quit blaming others for our problems. It’s time to stop waiting for a grown-up to come along and “make it all better” and become the grown-ups. We have to be the ones to make it better and stop outsourcing our personal responsibilities. Enough already.

by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Private Consultation and Coaching

I provide confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. My practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit Services and Products for professional inquiries.

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If you find the information I provide free of charge helpful and valuable here on Shrink4Men, please consider making a donation via PayPal to help me maintain the site.

Photo credit:

Man baby on sucksorrules.