Hasta La Gadget!

In its bid to get a leg up on the other three nationwide carriers T-Mobile has kicked off yet another promotion. Recently the company started a promotion which promises a year’s worth of LTE data for those who convince their friends to switch from their current carriers to Magenta. The latest promotion is aimed at those subscribers who are using T-Mobile Simple Starter plans, for just an additional $5 per month the carrier will offer them quadruple LTE data.

T-Mobile announced the Simple Starter plan back in May. Apart from offering unlimited talk and text it gives subscribers 500MB of LTE data for $40 per month. Starting September 3rd, these customers can get 2GB of LTE data for just $5 extra per month.

John Legere, the president and CEO of T-Mobile, claims that “people who use loads of data use T-Mobile.” He also criticized the other nationwide carriers for charging overage and other fees when people use more data on their networks. Legere cited Verizon’s $50 plan, “use just on gig more data, and the price jumps to $65. It’s crazy,” he says.

The carrier has pointed out though that this promotion is being run for a limited time, so if you’re interested in 2GB LTE data on your $40 T-Mobile plan, it would be best to add the extra data for just $5 per month before the promotion ends.

T-Mobile Offers Quadruple LTE Data On Simple Starter Plans

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Let’s face it, theres a special kind of agony reserved for those of us with a dwindling cell phone battery. We estimate the precious moments that remain, and some of us desperately try to make the most of them by turning the phone off, or setting it to airplane mode, it never works, and to our horror, we finish out the rest of the day phones-less.

Sure, there are back-up chargers out there, but they’re just another thing to carry, but now a new startup company called Q Designs is making a wearable self contained charging device that you might actually want to wear. In the form of a (fairly thick) but still rather attractive, 1.8 ounce bangle bracelet. This stylish bangle simply unhooks to reveal the charging connection, and it can charge your dying phone to about 60 percent of its capacity. Phew!

So if you’d like to stop worrying about your battery life, the Q Bracelet might be for you. The Q Bracelet is available for both your Android or iOS devices, and includes a Micro-USB or Apple Lightening connector. QDesigns is currently taking pre-orders for 79 bucks, but the bracelet will eventually be retailing for around 20 dollars more if you wait. QBracelet is available in polished, or matte silver, polished gold, and brushed, or matte black in sizes S,M and L and it is for both men, and women. Shipping in mid December.
[ The QBracelet – the Snazzy Charger you’ll Want to Wear! copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Reader No Oral writes:

I’ve been married for five years, and gradually, my wife stopped performing oral sex on me. I feel like this was a bait and switch because she used to love doing this. I’ve asked her to do it, and she says she’s not in the mood, or some other excuse. What should I do?

some men think you’d have better luck finding me than finding a woman who gives oral sex long term
zombiefun.com

Dear NO,

Well your question was brief so I think you’re a practical, no-nonsense kind of dude. I will be to the point as well.

1. When women are in a new relationship their sex drive dramatically increases, hormonally.

2. When their sex drive is up and/or they are very aroused, they are less inhibited. So that’s when you get all the oral sex.

3. As the relationship continues, their sex drive tanks. (I’m coining the word monotogamy for this boredom in monogamous relationships. Good, right?)

4. Thus they no longer want to do the stuff they used to want to do, like oral sex.

5. For tips on how to get her sex drive back up and why she should go down on you even though she wouldn’t pick it over a trip to the dentist, see my article here.

Here are some other tips, this time to help you communicate more effectively:

1. Be direct. Say that you miss oral sex and you’re sad and angry that she won’t do it.

2. Go as deep as you can into the underlying feelings here. I know you miss oral sex but do you also miss her WANTING to give you oral sex, i.e. do you miss her finding you so sexy and attractive that she felt aroused by you? Do you miss her wanting to make you happy, with oral sex and in general? If you can state this, she may understand your perspective better.

3. Think deeply about your own contribution to this issue. She may feel that you are dismissive of her feelings, and continue to pressure her without caring that she no longer enjoys this activity. Do you badger her, nag her, make snide remarks? This will all make her feel distant and that she is only a source of sexual gratification to you, like a Real Doll. Maybe you’re one of those head-pushers. DON’T BE A HEAD PUSHER. (If you don’t know how to get her to realize you want oral sex without head pushing, here are two key points: 1. She is not stupid and she knows, even if you’re in a coma and your dog just died, you want oral sex, and 2. ASK HER what you can do besides head pushing as a signal. If she likes head pushing though, keep on keeping on.) If you have been engaging in these sorts of behaviors, and realize how you’ve been making things worse, a heartfelt apology may make her more willing to examine her own part in the problem.

4. Is she happy within the marriage otherwise? Are you connecting with her, talking on a deep level, taking her out on dates? Ask her openly if she feels happy with you. If she feels bitter, resentful, lonely, or any other negative emotion more often than not within the marriage, she is going to feel completely put off by the idea of sex with you, of any variety, especially something she may not like as much as regular sex. If this is the case, seek couples counseling, stat.

5. If it turns out she says she is happy in the marriage, but just hates oral sex more than the Westboro Baptist Church hates liberals, you must DETACH EMOTIONALLY from this outcome. She doesn’t not love you. She doesn’t love oral sex within monogamy. If she were married to anyone else, including Brad Pitt, she still wouldn’t be giving him head after a few years. This emotional detachment will allow you to view this issue as a problem for THE TEAM (your marriage = a team, ideally) and think of ways to solve this issue without acting rude, passive aggressive, and personally attacked by your wife’s oral sex aversion.

6. Relatedly, you must realize that the lack of sex drive I am talking about is no joke. Going down on you, as handsome a devil as you may be, is probably in the best case scenario, a boring neutral activity for her, e.g. laundry, and in the worst case scenario, something as vile to imagine as eating a live grasshopper (DON’T HATE MAIL ME IF YOU LOVE TO EAT LIVE BUGS. I’M COOL WITH THIS. IT’S AN ANALOGY.) So, if she’s going to do this, then it’s ONLY because she loves you. So, be nice about it. What if someone told you to eat a live grasshopper to save your marriage? Or a pile of dirt, or whatever you find repugnant, and the argument for you doing so was that, when brainwashed in an earlier phase of life by a Bug Eating Cult, you did it happily? (Bug Eating Cult here is analogous to being crazed with new relationship hormones.) You can read more about low libido in couples in the book Wanting Sex Again: How to Rediscover Your Desire and Heal a Sexless Marriage by Laurie Watson.

7. You should empathize and validate your wife’s perspective, by saying things like, “I know you really don’t want to do this anymore. So I know I’m asking you to go outside your comfort zone.” Also, make sure you ask her curious, not attacking, questions to assess the extent of her aversion, so that you can better understand and empathize with her feelings. Ask, “So, on a scale from 1 of eating a grasshopper, to 10 of you can’t live without it, how do you feel about going down on me?”

8. Don’t get sucked in to the unhelpful mind set of she has to WANT to give you oral sex. You cannot make anyone want anything. But, we are working on having her DO it, not WANT TO DO it.

9. Try to problem solve together. Tell her you know she doesn’t like it, but it’s still very important to you that she tries it, and that Dr. Psych Mom says she should try it after she is already excited, not before. (She is going to tell you, F Dr. Psych Mom. But stay strong.) The worst thing you can do here is try to put your penis in her face when she is not excited at all. Thus, oral sex shouldn’t be foreplay anymore. Try oral sex halfway through sex, when she is excited. In general, when women are not feeling much sexual desire, a good thing to try is stopping and starting sexual activity, exactly as is recommended to address premature ejaculation in men. Women often best respond to gradually building sexual stimulation, that starts and stops in a more teasing way (see Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy and a lot of erotica for women). If she is more excited, her inhibitions will loosen, and she may find it easier and even pleasurable to go down on you (analogy: eating grasshopper when you’re drunk).

10. Adjust your expectations. Expecting oral sex three times a week is setting yourself and your marriage, and your wife, up to fail. How about 1-2 times a month? That would be lovely.

So, you’re asking, A. what happened to this being a brief answer, and B. what if she still won’t do it? Well, sorry about the first. I got aHEAD of myself. Ha ha! Moving on. If your wife still says no to oral sex, and no to couples counseling to address deeper issues as well, then it’s your call here. If you do not want to be in the relationship without either oral sex or more sex or better sex or whatever, be direct. Do not be passive aggressive, stay in the relationship and be bitter and resentful, or, worst, be unfaithful. It makes sense to me that if this is important to you, and you used to get it from her, then you would currently still want it from her. If you are trying your best to be a supportive and loving partner to her, and communicate lovingly and directly, and offer to go to counseling, and she still cannot try and suck it up, no pun intended (well I guess it was half intended) and give you oral sex every so often, with a semblance of enthusiasm, I would say she is not terribly committed to your happiness.

Till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Hopes Your Partner Can Get Out Of Her Own Head And Give You Some Head (this topic is rife for puns, I apologize).

For more tips on sex and relationships, visit Dr. Psych Mom on her blog, Facebook, or Twitter.

Yesterday, it happened again: While attempting to make breakfast, the kitchen transformed into a stage for my latest unintended slapstick routine.

It all devolved so quickly: While changing out the coffee grounds in my Keurig machine, the filter slipped through my fingers, unleashing a smattering of grounds to the floor. As I got down to mop them up with a paper towel, the oil that I’d been pre-cooking in the pan for eggs started sizzling. I left my coffee-cleaning duty to pour eggs into the pan; they immediately crackled and darkened, leaving a waft of smoke in their wake. As I madly waved away the plumes, I felt the remaining coffee grounds crunch beneath my feet. Meanwhile, the slice of bread in the toaster was quickly growing cold.

Burnt eggs, stale toast, a floor covered in coffee grounds and stinking billows of smoke . . . all before 9 a.m. Welcome to my life as a domestic disaster.

I should say now that I believe I have many good qualities: I’m kind to others, I work hard, I’m a master of puns, I can usually sing in key. It’s just that domesticity, in any manifestation, is not on my list of winning qualities. I can’t cook, I don’t garden, and I’ve never delineated my laundry into piles by color. I don’t throw those weird laundry sheet things into the dryer, and I can’t put on a fitted sheet without it slipping from place, leaving me cursing the bed corner as if it could hear me. (In fact, I just had to Google the correct name for “the sheet that goes on bottom.”)

I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a superbly tended-to home where both my mom and stepdad were so tidy, they would try to clear my plates away before I was done eating; a home where, if I removed something from the fridge, it was immediately returned before I could even use it. Their obsession with a perfect home both coddled me and, perhaps, inspired a rebellion. (There’s also the fact that I have a curious lack of smell–which prevents me from, say, noticing the stench of rotting food in the fridge–and that I’m just generally really laid-back.)

For a long time, this flaw hasn’t posed much of a problem; making my way through a series of apartments, the bare minimum of domesticity (do dishes, do laundry) has served me, more or less, just fine.

But recently, I moved into a house — like, an actual three-bedroom house — with my boyfriend. And suddenly, I’ve been feeling both distinctly out of place and deeply anxious about my conventional failings as a woman.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been gently reminded to hold the new toilet flusher down longer (for reasons you can imagine); to clean out the coffee filter more carefully, so as to avoid grounds scattering on the floor; and to put dishes on the right side of the sink rather than the left, in order to easily get rid of food scraps in the disposal. I hadn’t even noticed that the toilet wasn’t flushing all the way, or that I was littering our sparkling new floor with some regularity. And since when do we have a garbage disposal?!

There was a time when I owned this domestic haplessness in relationships as something distinctive, even charming. After all, I’ve never nagged my partners because I can honestly never think of anything to nag about. “You want to watch The Sopranos and open up a six-pack instead of do the laundry tonight? Me too! In fact, I already have two cold PBRs cracked open and the PirateBay queued up; that overflowing basket of dirty clothes can wait.”

I think I’m a pretty fun girl to have around. 

Yet on some level, despite my progressive ideals, I’ve always feared that my domestic inadequacies will prevent any man from wanting a real future with me — when there are, presumably, Martha Stewart minions just waiting in the wings. That anxiety, once latent, has started to plague me. I wonder if my exes are all dating apron-clad domestic wunderkinds who know how to cook a pot roast until it’s tender. Do they marvel at how bad the cuisine was when they dated me — and all I “cooked” for them was my “specialty” of pasta with cheddar cheese microwave-melted on top, which they dutifully choked down? 

I worry that my partner will one day come home to a smearing of peanut butter on the counter, a bowl of microwaved frozen shrimp for dinner, and a stinking balled-up towel on the floor, and decide right then and there to head back to OKCupid, where he will promptly search the terms “cooking,” “cleaning” and “not a total sh*t-show.”

And the thing is, I don’t think it’s entirely unfair to expect more from me. My boyfriend, after all, knows how to cook, clean and garden, but can also fix the dresser drawers when they’ve slid off the hinges, kill giant spiders as I cower in the other room, and reboot the Internet connection when it crashes. And anytime I see him tooling around with a wrench, or rejiggering the router with his sleeves rolled up, I turn into a proto-cavewoman, practically panting with feminine appreciation for his masculine ways. Don’t I owe him a bit of conventional femininity in return?

For this reason — but more so because I really do care about this new home of mine–I’m trying to be better at this whole domestic thing. I will hold down that flusher for five full seconds. I will dispose of food on the right-hand side of the sink. Maybe I’ll even go crazy and buy a box of dryer sheets. But I’ll also have to make peace with the fact that I’ll never be a domestic goddess, spatula and Windex in hand, ready to cook a pot roast until it falls off the bone. (Or whatever it’s supposed to do.)

And maybe that’s OK; after all, in my opinion, that pasta with cheddar cheese microwave-melted on top actually tastes pretty damn good.

This story first appeared at Ravishly.com, an alternative news+culture women’s website.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell faced sharp questions Monday from prosecutors about details of his personal finances at his public corruption trial.

As the trial entered its fifth week, prosecutors began their cross-examination of McDonnell. He and his wife, Maureen, are charged with providing special favors to a wealthy businessman, former Star Scientific Inc. CEO Jonnie Williams, in exchange for more than $165,000 in gifts and loans while McDonnell was in office. The pointed questions prompted long pauses and lengthy explanations from McDonnell, who was admonished by the judge to just “answer the question” when he tried to offer a detailed response of why he disagreed with a question that implied that a joint real-estate venture he owned with his sister was in financial trouble.

The money issues are key because prosecutors have said McDonnell’s financial desperation is what prompted him to accept cash and gifts from Williams. McDonnell says he considered Williams a friend and that he had been making steady progress in reducing his family’s debt even without Williams’ help.

Prosecutor Michael Dry asked McDonnell about a series of emails from staffers in which they speculated that Maureen McDonnell was drawn to Williams because “he’s loaded.” McDonnell, after initially demurring, said he didn’t believe his wife was drawn to Williams for his money.

“Money? That wasn’t the reason for friendship, no,” McDonnell said. But asked whether his wife had a long history of making inappropriate financial requests of friends and family, McDonnell agreed.

The cross-examination began with McDonnell acknowledging that he knew Williams had loaned him and his wife $120,000 and provided numerous expensive gifts, including $15,000 to pay for catering at the wedding of the McDonnells’ daughter, personal vacations in Cape Cod and Smith Mountain Lake, and golf outings.

During three days on the stand in direct examination, McDonnell had downplayed his knowledge about some of the gifts, saying he did not learn about them until after the fact or that they had been arranged by his wife.

For example, McDonnell said he did not know at the time that Williams spent $20,000 on designer clothing for Maureen McDonnell on a Manhattan shopping spree. Dry asked McDonnell if he was testifying that, despite his knowledge of his wife’s inappropriate financial requests and Williams’ lavish spending on other occasions, it never occurred to him that Williams might pick up the tab.

“That’s exactly what I’m testifying to, yes,” McDonnell said.

Earlier Monday, McDonnell was questioned by his wife’s lawyer, and said Maureen McDonnell never asked him to do anything to help Williams’ business ventures.

Bob McDonnell also acknowledged that he had dealt with his wife’s angry outbursts for years and didn’t do enough to help staffers cope. Eventually, he said, Maureen McDonnell agreed to counseling and medication.

He said he did not think his wife’s anger directed at him was warranted and called her grievances overblown.

“They were always about little things,” he testified.

He said his wife rejected marital counseling because she was afraid it would become public.

The state of the McDonnells’ marriage has been another big issue at trial; the defense has suggested they could not have conspired in a gifts-for-favors scheme because they were barely talking to each other.