Cougars have been all over the news. Not the four legged kind. The 40+ female kind prowling the darkness of the night in search of the their prey. The 25-30 year old hard bodied pool boy role playing the part of the 30k a year millionaire douche-bag. Polo sleeves rolled up. Phony bank statement in back pocket. Tribal tattoo and a cheat card for local gangster rapper signs in the other pocket. In all the hubbub about Cougars I began to wonder to myself. What ever happened to the good old fashioned Gold Digger? The 20-30 year old hot bodied secretary by day, stripper by night, sharing and apartment with 4 roomies, three rented dresses and looking for all the sweetness us 45-55 year old sugar-daddies have to offer. Have they gone out of style? Maybe they have seen the episode of Sex And The City where the 70 year old shows his bare butt. It has scared them all off. My home of Dallas, Texas was once the gold-digging capital of the world but now seems to have shifted to the big games of Cougars. I thought all was lost until I read this article(pdf) in Glamour Magazine. (Real Men Read Glamour).

The article is about this lady name Jennifer Binder. She is talking about her thoughts and experiences in having dated the multi-millionaire “ultimate big shot”, disgraced former Enron big wig, Jeff Skilling, who has been convicted of numerous crimes related to the Enron collapse and is currently serving a federal 24-year, 4-month prison sentence. As I read the article, it occurred to me that this Binder lady was really Ashley Dupre and Eliot Spitzer five years removed. I am not saying that Jennifer was a “call girl” in the literal sense of the word but there are some analogies to be made here. If you could read between the lines what your really had was “THE GOLDIGGERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY”

I have been able to successfully decipher the galactic meaning of this article. I am going to translate it for everyone by outlining what she says and giving my “take” as to the “galactic” meaning for all the other “GDITs” (Gold Diggers In Training). Here are her quotes from the article and what she was really saying after applying my Star Trek Universal Translator:

Binder: “Jeff did indeed fly me to England for our first date; later he bought me jewelry and even helped with the down-payment on my house”

Galactic Translation: I am a professional gold-digger. I have no other means of support. I would not even look at you twice unless you had a “Gulfstream” waiting to whisk me off to an exotic location that went over one ocean or the other before we landed.

Binder: “that (the money) really blinded me to the age difference…”

Galactic Translation: Unlike Cougars, professional Gold Diggers have no age requirements. If you are 90 years old and still breathing, I’m all yours if that Gulfstream is fueled and ready. If you’re a trust fund baby, I will “babysit” you until you are old enough to appreciate Cougars.

Binder: “Greed is not good for a relationship”

Galactic Translation: Lots of money will kill a relationship if you no longer have it.

Binder: “If it seems like has something to hide, he has something to hide”

Galactic Translation: If you pay for my condo; seed my bank account; buy my Lexus and fly me to London every week for dinner, I don’t care if you are hiding eight ex-wives, five illegitimate children and are a registered sex offender.

Binder: “When friends don’t have anything nice to say about your boyfriend, listen”

Galactic Translation: If he is doing all of the above, WHO NEED FRIENDS!

Binder: “You really can learn from every experience”

Galactic Translation: When you have your next billionaire ‘”mark” in your sites, and he is about to be indicted for anything or pass away from old age, get as many assets as possible including the jet, transferred to your name before he goes to jail or dies.

There you have it. There is no longer any need to take Dramamine every night to combat pole swinging motion sickness. Follow the simple rules above and the world of rich geezers and insider trading felons is yours for the taking.

ABOUT BRIAN CUBAN

Every now and then, when I am bored, I scan wall posts of some of my Facebook friends. It can be a pretty good gauge of what people are doing for fun in your town. It is also a daily soap opera of “Days Of Our Lives” proportions. People expose their personal lives and inner most secrets to a level that would make people blush in the real world. The other day I was scanning posts and came across the following post on the “Facebook Wall” of one of my friends.

This was a wall post on the profile of a female Facebook friend posting on the public wall of another Facebook friend.

“So evidently there is this new pick up line that guys are using it goes like this: ” hey so i would like to see you again” Me? Yeah you! Want my number or do you have Facebook I can find you on there? I laughed! That was the worst pick up line! it is sad that social networking has denigrated into chickenshit dating! How sad! What is ths world is coming to? WTF! “

Doesn’t her statement pretty much sum up Generation Y dating? For much of my dating life we did not even have cell phones. You had to ask for a home number. You took the risk of nosy parents, brothers and sisters answering the phone. You had to be on your game from minute one. How in the world did our parents get by? Isn’t it amazing we are even here? God forbid we should actually have to look someone in the eye when asking them out.

Now we are not even asking for phone number. We are asking for email addresses. We are asking for Facebook and Myspace pages. We are “texting our way to love” We are advertising to the entire social networking world that we are on the market. We have started and ended and relationships on these same sites. We used to break up in restaurants so there would not be a scene. Now we find out for the first time when we see our boyfriend or girlfriend’s Facebook relationship status suddenly set to “single and looking” We try to contact them(on Facebook of course) and find we are now “blocked”. Relationship death by Facebook at its best. I would bet that within the 18-30 crowd there are almost as many relationships started and ended by text, email and social networking announcements than by an actual phone call. God forbid you have the guts to actually meet someone in person and talk about a future or lack thereof.

In my day, if you met a girl in a bar and she thought you were a total geek loser, the phone number she gave you was actually the phone number to Blockbuster Video. (I rented a lot of movies) For Generation X you got a phone number from The Rejection Hotline.(see video below) They have pre-recorded “rejection phone numbers to cover just about any scenario.

Today, your blow-off is a girl giving you an address to her Facebook or MySpace page entitled:

“SALLIE’S MYSPACE PAGE DEDICATED TO THE TOTAL LOSER GEEKS SHE MEETS IN BARS”

When are we going to start seeing “wiki” personals and social networking sites where everyone who knows you basically creates your profile. Would you have the guts to turn your social page into a “wiki” and let the masses collaborate on what your page should say? A social wikipieda not geared at the facts of your life but at who you really are.

We have gone from “Dear John Letters” to “Dear John Phone Numbers” to “Dear John Texts” to” Dear John social networking pages.

I am definitely not naming my kid John. The odds are against him meeting someone right off the bat.

Welcome to dating in the Wiki world.

©2008 Brian Cuban

So I came across this “anti-dating” web site called DontDateHimGirl.com

It is a site for scorned women to post about guys that have cheated on them, who are married, lied to them, etc. I admit I first went to the site to see if I was on it! Not that I think I am a liar or cheater. I think the general consensus would be that I am a nice guy (with some dissenters am sure) BUT in 7 out of 10 relationships that end for any reason, someone is going to be pissed and find a justification to blame the other person to bolster their self-worth. The next things you know either your photo is up on Don’t Date Him or you’re accosted by a camera crew from the television show CHEATERS in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Why is it you never see the Cheaters camera crew waiting outside of Nordstrom’s or Neiman Marcus??

I of course went straight to the Dallas, Texas listings. In my single career in Dallas, I have known many, 30k millionaires, Mack daddies, serial daters, cheaters, schmoozer’s losers, boozers, druggers, muggers etc. There definitely was an entertainment value to seeing if any of them were listed on the site…. I know some guys that I would list myself just to protect unsuspecting female Dallasites…… Here are some of the examples of what I found in the Dallas listings….

• 1. Joseph L. Austin “Joe”- “Drives a Mercedes and still lives at home with his parents and sister. Not marriage or boyfriend material”

There are a ton of listing complaining that a particular guy had given a girl herpes or some other STD. Others complaining of being married, two timing, and just being an asshole in general

In any event, not that I expected to be but I am proud to say that I my mug was not on the website. Of course since they do not verify anything, I could claim to be women and put up negative posts about all the guys I know in town just to eliminate the competition. I’m out on the town, see a guy talking to a girl I like, get that guy’s name, throw it up on Don’t Date Him, tell the girl he is up there and the next thing you know he can’t even pay for a date. Those would be some serious “guerilla dating” tactics but I wouldn’t put it past guys or girls in this town or in any other town for that matter.

I then put my lawyer’s hat on and thought about it from that perspective. There is already case law out there about posting defamatory remarks on web sites and bulletin boards but I wonder if Don’t Date Him is bringing in any click-through advertiser dollars. I would certainly argue that if they put my photo up, negative comments and all, they are using my likeness to make money without my permission and I want a piece of the pie!

As to the posts themselves, you can check it out for yourselves and I will probably get some flak for this but the majority of hard luck guy stories said just as much about the sheer stupidity, immaturity and gullibility of the women involved as it did about the alleged sliminess of the guys.

The owner of the site was in fact sued by Pittsburgh Attorney Todd Hollis with regards to posts about him on the site by a couple different women, one of the posts being that he allegedly carried a sexually transmitted disease. He denies that he does. The owner of the site claimed that she should not be liable for the posts of others. The lawsuit has since been dismissed based on improper venue. That has not stopped the aggrieved men from firing salvos. There is actually a web site out there trying to collect victims for class action. Good luck with all that or in other words….GET A LIFE!

When a defamatory remark is posted on an internet web site, you have basically three possible parties who can be potentially sued 1. The person who posted the remark; 2) the owner of the web site; and 3) the Internet Service Provider (ISP) who hosts the web site. The ISP issue is easy. They are for the most post immune from suits relating to the posting of defamatory remarks on web sites they host.

So when Internet America or Southwestern Bell hosts the web site “BrianCubansaScumbag.com”, It is a web site for everyone who hates Brian Cuban to post nasty things about him. So assuming there were nasty, defamatory posts about me on this site, I cannot sue Internet America or Southwestern Bell. This protection to an ISP is generally provided under Title 47 of the U.S. Code

So we know we cannot sue the ISP, what about the person running the web site? All he did was put up the site. He did not post any defamatory comments…. He is probably also protected. In 1996 Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, part of which has been stuck down but for the most part is still intact. This Act could in fact provide protection to the owner of the site. Where issues arise is when the site is made aware of defamatory comments and fails to remove them.

What’s the bottom line?

Quit having affairs and lying to women and use a condom!

I know for many guy and women in this town that is like asking them to walk on water or actually be a responsible adult so in the alternative “Reputation Endangered” men are going to probably have to track down the girls who put up the posts if they want to collect. My reaction to that? If you put as much energy into being a productive member of society as you do scamming women, our little corner of Texas would be a much better place to live and socialize…. You know who you are…..

What is my general “dating take” on this? My take is more on the sad state of human affairs when we are going to sites like this to be entertained off the misery, inadequacy and humiliation of others. I am talking about myself here because I went to the site! I am proud to say however that I have not read the obituaries in a while…….But hey, turn to any television station for your dose of reality television and you will get the same thing. For that matter go to CNN, TMZ, or Perez-Hilton for the same thing…..That’s Entertainment Baby! Gag!!!!

If your date is going out with nine other women, really works at Jack in the Box and drives a Pinto and he gave you herpes ,spend more time examining your mate selection process and the due diligence and your attitudes on safe-sex , less time trying to feel better about yourself by posting goofy shit on idiotic web sites….

I don’t expect to see my name up there but if I ever do, they will hear from my attorneys not to take my picture down as everyone is entitled to their opinion but to get my cut of the profits…….

In the wake of former New York governor Elliot Spitzer‘s revelations about his secret occupation providing charitable support to Ashley Alexandra Dupre, now truly a “Girl Gone Wild” and other high priced hookers who have lost their sugar daddies, there has been a lot being written on the subject of infidelity and monogamy.

The blogosphere ramped up the subject even one more notch when newly sworn in Governor David A. Paterson and his wife both admitted that they had both strayed during a rough patch in their marriage.

This morning, I was watching The Today Show. They were doing a segment on infidelity and monogamy. There were several guests of very high academic credentials. There were several interesting points made:

• 1. 1 out of 4 people know someone that has strayed. Is that all? I would think the actual number is higher, especially in light of the stat that 1 in 5 adults in monogamous relationships have cheated. Keep in mind that these are just the ones that admit they have….

• 2. Monogamy goes against a billion years of evolution. There is a basic biological drive to have more than one mate. We forget that we are animals on this planet as thousands of other species who have the same drive which is to reproduce. The point was made that it is our ability to reason and define a moral code that separates us from the pack. We are however using that reason to fight against the drive of evolution….

• 3. Males are more likely to cheat. Why? Because we can…. Biologically we are better “equipped” than women to have sex more frequently. When you combine that with the basic drive, the male needs all the reason and moral code he can get……

There is an interesting survey entitled “Many Cheat For A Thrill, More Stay True For Love” click on the link to check it out…

Finally, do you know the only creature on this planet that is monogamous for life?

Answer: THE FLATWORM!

MORAL OF STORY?

When your spouse or significant other tells you “YOU ARE LOWER THAN A WORM”, she knows what she is talking about….