Eric Northman

For me the term seems fairly accurate. It's not a lifestyle. It's just something I do for fun occasionally and most terms and descriptions of 'us' are pretty negative and derogatory. Hobbyist seems fairly innocuous and I think if you were to look back you'd see that it arose precisely to have a term to call ourselves that doesn't make us sound like like criminal perverts. As has been said above, you're welcome to come up with a better term but I, for one, prefer having a little code that we use here that won't be part of the general vernacular.

Fun story. I was actually in Waterloo when all that Gillian Jacobs stuff went down. We went to the rallies and were getting quite rowdy. The police were trying to keep order and the crowd was hemming them in, rocking their squad cars, etc. Lots of topless women around. Great fun for a young guy at the time.

I get that a lot of guys are jerks but sometimes you ladies seem to get pretty prickly about perceived offenses. Perhaps this gentleman was not asking for a discount on his first session but was curious to know if there could be a discount if you and he happened to establish a regular relationship. I know discounts are a huge taboo/turn off but then again, you ladies also love to have regulars and it's absolutely not unprecedented in the business world to provide loyalty rewards to valued customers. I've definitely heard of arrangements where one pays for a number of sessions up front at a slightly better rate. Say normal rate is 220 but if you buy 5 in advance it costs $1000 so $200 each. Good deal for everyone. You get money up front and he gets to know his next 5 sessions are locked in at a good rate. Anyway, none of my business how y'all run yo' bidness but I sometimes feel like some of you are so ready to be offended that innocent (albeit ignorant) questions from guys who perhaps don't know any better get you all pissed off. I suppose in this profession it's better to be safe than sorry but I'll tell you, this thread definitely can make you feel like you're walking on eggshells.

Yeah, it COULD be coincidence but I'm inclined to suspect much more sinister explanations. Funny thing happened again just yesterday. Wife had sent me some information from work on some very specific home renovation materials. Searched for it and mailed from her work computer. Later in the evening, she's looking at her Facebook and calls me over. "Hey, these are those things I was looking at when I was at work. How the heck are they showing up in my Facebook timeline?" I ask her if she uses Facebook at work and she says no. I ask, "Never?" and she says that she may have logged in at some point in the past. So yeah, it's using tracking cookies and doing sneaky shit that's breaking browser security. Count on it. http://lifehacker.com/5843969/facebook-is-tracking-your-every-move-on-the-web-heres-how-to-stop-it Consider that SO many websites have little 'like' buttons and what not for Facebook and friends. Every one of those can notice that you've arrived and report back to FB that you've been there.

I remember something (cartoon? TV Show?) where two CIA officers were talking. First officer: "It used to be so much work to gather all this information on people. Trailing them, stealing documents, hacking their computers. Who knew people would just give it all to us without asking?" Second officer: "Yep. Facebook is definitely the most successful program we've ever run." So to clarify for those who feel I shouldn't be surprised, the reason I'm surprised is this. I work in high-tech and I'm pretty familiar with how all this stuff works and I was being VERY careful to keep my identities separate. Not to the extent of using TOR but still, pretty careful. As far as I know, there is no 'legal' mechanism by which Facebook could have gotten that info. By legal I mean, "based on the rules of how browsers operate" as far as cookies and other information. So that means either they're doing something very sneaky under the covers or they have some VERY clever correlation/inference type data mining going on to link seemingly unrelated data together. Either way, it creeps me out. Fuck Zuckerberg.

So wanna hear a strange story? I'm pretty careful to keep my hobby and 'real' personas separate. Separate emails, phones, always use incognito browsing mode, etc. Should be no real link between them. I have a Facebook profile as my 'real' self but because of privacy concerns, there is almost literally nothing on it. No friends other than my wife, no photo, data, anything. I use it for a few sports related groups and that's it. Every now and then Facebook sends messages saying, "Hey, do you know these people?" Mostly they're people that the wife knows, sometimes it's based on searches I did while logged in, sometimes it's just hilariously random. Well, the other day, I got one of these and thought to myself, "hey, she totally looks familiar". Well I clicked on her profile and what do you know? It's someone I've seen before from here. And there she is, real name, pics of her on vacation with family and kids, etc. So one of two things has happened. Either Facebook is using some form of shady data mining bullshit, reading cookies, bypassing incognito mode, whatever or it's just a wild coincidence. Considering her and I have nothing in common other than the one encounter, I'm inclined to distrust 'coincidence' as an explanation but man, I can't imagine what kind of connect the dots games are being played out behind the scenes. Keep your identities guarded my friends. Someone got outed to me and I wasn't even trying. Imagine if someone was actually stalking you?

I just saw Stacy again and it seems like each time we meet it gets better. She is warm and sweet and sexy and we just seem to click on every level. I don't know what else to tell you. I wish I could keep her for myself but you guys would be totally missing out if you didn't go see her. What are you waiting for?

I saw her a few months back. Not sure why I didn't leave a reco since I usually do. Must have forgotten. She's lovely, gives great service, fantastic body, pretty good location although a bit far from downtown. All in all, I had a great time.

I would make an argument that the main reason for offering any sort of discount is to increase volume. Ladies set prices such that they are achieving close to their desired volume. When a lady offers a 'special', I imagine it would usually be to increase volume. Another reason for specials is to attract new clientele. This is where the notion of targeted advertisement (student rates, seniors discount) can be used to cherry-pick the demographic of clientele you wish to attract. The general consensus around here seems to be that young men tend to be more problematic than older ones so there's really no motivation for a student discount. They neither wish to increase the volume of young men visiting or attract young men as new clientele. Based on the general preference for older and regular clients I could potentially see motivation for a seniors discount but again, as others have pointed out, logistic concerns abound. Certainly the notion of discounts for regulars could be used as a way to both establish and keep regular clients if that's what someone would like to do. Doesn't devalue the ladies service but rather serves as a 'loyalty rewards program' to show regular clients that they are appreciated.

The only 'discount' I've ever heard of offered by an SP (aside from promotional prices) is the notion of a 'retainer' type arrangement whereby you pay for a bunch of sessions in advance but get a premium rate. So if the normal rate was $250 an hour, she might say "Pay for 5 sessions in advance and I'll charge $220/hr". Not sure how viable that is in general but I could see where a well trusted and established provider might offer something like that to valued regulars.

Signed and tweeted. Elections should be won, not stolen.

You have to do that intermittently...if you do it constantly how will you go to the bathroom? :-P

Ooh, one other thing that was interesting on a slightly related note. There was a study done where it was found that fasting before chemotherapy prevented a significant amount of white blood cell loss. Additional Comments: Agreed but I definitely got used to it. I don't mind food, cooking or thinking about it when fasting at all anymore. True enough. We tend to only eat dinner together so it's not as big a problem for me. For a long time I just did two fasts per week which was pretty easy to map into my lifestyle.

Well, I certainly wouldn't postulate that any given thing works for all people. Keep in mind, however, I'm talking about a very specific method of fasting, not starving oneself. There is a fair bit of science and research behind this dating back to the 50s. Humans never evolved to eat constantly and would have spent much of the time in a fasting state so our bodies can clearly handle it. Big difference between the starving state which happens after multiple days or weeks of little or no food vs. a short term fast. In any event, this is not opinion or conjecture but rather something that works for a great many people and has solid research behind it. I'm just sharing it because it works for me and has seemed to work for a number of people to whom I've recommended it.

In case any of you struggle with your weight, I thought I'd share something that works for me. I think it's becoming more popular lately but as someone who's been doing it for going on 4 years, I have a bit of experience. As we all know, dieting and losing weight is hard. Many (all?) diets seem to work initially but are hard to maintain, leading to cycles of yo-yo weight gain. Around 4 years ago I was reading up on the health benefits of calorie restriction and I thought I'd give it a try. Over the course of about 3 months I lost 25 pounds and now, almost 4 years later, I've continually been within about a 5 pound range of that target weight. The nicest thing about it is that I've not had any difficulty and have never needed to give up any of the foods I like to eat. There is a beginners guide that gives a lot more information but the summary is, the benefits are much greater than simple weight loss. There are health and longevity effects as well such as improved insulin sensitivity and potentially lower cancer risk. In fact, the National Institute of Health says, "Caloric restriction (CR) is the only experimental nongenetic paradigm known to increase lifespan." That's right, the ONLY proven way to live longer. My current schedule is alternate day fasting. There are lots of ways to do it and I've done quite a few variations over the years but this is the one I've settled on and found easiest. It works like this. Every second day, I skip breakfast and lunch. That's it. 24 hour fast ever 48 hours. So you think, "Not eating for 24 hours? That sounds really hard." Well, it's not EASY but it gets easier the more you do it. Compare that to dieting. You have to stop eating particular foods or count points or some other type of discipline. Long term. All the time. It gets harder and harder. You start to crave carbs. Or a juicy steak. Or you slip up and forget to count your points. With this method, I simply don't eat. It's actually easier because all of a sudden, there's a few meals a week I don't have to think about. Don't need to buy or cook anything; don't need to plan or shop. Just don't eat. So now I'm thinner and have more energy and generally feel healthier than I ever have. I try to eat well on my feeding days but you know what? If I feel like pigging out on a poutine, I don't beat myself up because I know I've got headroom and besides, I'll just be fasting the next day anyway. It's so easy that I even do it on vacations. No more coming back from the all-inclusive 10 pounds up and hating yourself. Anyway, long story short, if you struggle with your weight or simply want to try to be healthier, consider intermittent fasting. It's working for me.