Sexting, apparently, is a new trend in teen texting, which involves trading dirty messages and nude or sexually explicit photos. “It’s like flirting and just having a little fun,” say teens. Wow, how did we get here from college-ruled notes saying “check here if you like me”–?

Now, I don’t wanna judge — that’s what the comments below are for — because, as Jezebel points out “Early adolescents are going to test the boundaries of their sexuality and sexual expression whether their parents — or school districts — like it or not.” Furthermore, if something is truly bad, teens will probably learn their lesson themselves, Degrassi-style. Or by watching Degrassi, like we did back in my day.

Now if there were to be a Sexting episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation, it should probably touch on the following points: (Are you listening, Canada?)

1. Girls: Don’t trust a teenage boy — any teenage boy — with a nude picture of yourself. Like, duh. And before you hit send on that message, imagine the picture being shared among the entire sleazy school administration, because that will happen. Plus, if you’re caught, you will be suspended from the cheerleading squad for being a slut, while the boys who passed the picture around will simply get off, in both senses of the phrase.
2. Boys: You can be prosecuted under child-pornography laws. ‘Nuff said.
3. Parents: Don’t buy your teen a phone with a camera.
4. Mia: Call me!

Last month I remarked in my post about status-starved Japanese girls that I’d love to be “New York-married” (my friend Kristyn’s phrase for having a live-in boy/girlfriend) so that I could go halfsies on the rent for my one-bedroom flat.

But I’d better never find myself New York-divorced, lest I wind up having to reconfigure that 1br into a “cozy 2br share!” like some no-longer-couples are being forced to do, says this AP story from last week. It’s the economy, snookums!

“With the recession and the collapse of the housing market, more and more couples who have broken up are continuing to live under the same roof, according to judges and divorce lawyers. Some are waiting for housing prices to rebound; some are trying to get back on their feet financially.”

And some, I suppose, are Netflixing a movie or two to help find a thread of black humor in the whole sucky sitch. And watching them from their half of the couch.

When the going gets tough, the tough get creative!

Irony, which wasn’t killed by 9/11 after all, seemed to finally be on it’s way out of fashion, rendered unnecessary in an Obama-led world of responsible government and new puppies. But Ignorance also had a big win on November 4 — in the form of California’s Proposition 8 (“Prop H8”), banning same-sex marriage — and where there is Ignorance there is the Irony used by satirists to protest it (which generally goes over the head of the ignorant).

Before Thanksgiving the Ivy League gave us a Prop H8 protest that only the 99th percentile could appreciate: In an effort to call out the unfairness of putting a minority’s rights to a public vote in a constitutional democracy, deadpan students at Princeton pushed for their own prop 8 that would keep Freshman from walking on campus sidewalks, in order to “protect our definition of what walking on sidewalks is.”

NOW a star-studded cast — including Jack Black, Maya Rudolph and Dr. Horrible himself — has mounted “Prop 8 – The Musical” at FunnyOrDie.com:

9-year-old Alec Greven has written a new dating guide titled “How To Talk To Girls.” Take it from me, though, it is much easier to charm the ladies when you are an adorable 9-year-old. (I’m just bitter because a fourth-grader has more game than me!)

In a rugrats-to-riches story sure to cool the heart of every writer on this blog, Greven’s guide started as a $3 pamphlet, which was a hit at his school’s book fair, and ended up at HarperCollins, which released it to an innocence-starved nation last week.

But how’s the advice? Pretty solid. The New York Post relates:

“Pretty girls are like cars that need a lot of oil.”

He advises, “The best choice for most boys is a regular girl. Remember, some pretty girls are coldhearted when it comes to boys. Don’t let them get to you.”

True. And this Breakup Girl-esque pearl:

the best way to approach a girl is to keep it to a simple “hi.”

A 9-year-old writing about relationships just underscores what Lynn has always told me: Most dating advice is common sense; It’s just that the advice-seekers can’t access that part of their brain in their hormone-addled / douchebag-laden / games-weary / heart-flattened / rejection-paralyzed state and need to hear it from someone else. Here’s something Greven wrote that I think Lynn told me once, word-for-word: “comb your hair and don’t wear sweats.”

So where does this precocious kid go from here? He’s now writing a children’s book about Watergate! Hmmm. Take it from me, Alec, that won’t impress the ladies.

For more, check out BuzzFeed.

According to PNC’s “Christmas Price Index” which tracks the cost of all the items from the “The Twelve Days Of Christmas” song, true love will cost you $86,609 this year, up almost 11 percent.

Golden rings, French hens and geese-a-laying are down, but maids-a-milking and swans-a-swimming are way up in cost. Lords, pipers, and drummers kept pace with inflation, only up 3 percent.

Venerable news organizations taking Christmas carols seriously: priceless.

(Source: the AP’s Dan Nephin, via AmericaBlog)

Reasons why it’s not that surprising that I teared up at Cody Linley‘s Dancing with the Stars departure Tuesday night:

1. It felt like a breakup. Or rather, two breakups in one: No more Cody and Julianne cutting it up while cutting a rug like the king and queen of the prom; no more, in my wildly dancing imagination, of our weekly threesomes.

2. Hey, I cried when Boner Stabone bid adieu to bestie Mike Seaver on Growing Pains. (I distinctly remember dashing to my bedroom to hide my tears from my family.) I also cried when Garfield said goodbye to his mother in “Garfield on the Town.” Yes, I have a problem.

3. Or do I? According to this recent study (sponsored by me, you’d think) about the health benefits of crying, it’s not a problem at all, which is great news for me.

Almost nine out of ten participants in the study reported improved moods post-weeping, and researchers found that emotional tears (as opposed to emotion-neutral, chopping-onions tears) contain stress-related hormones. So when we cry over stressful situations, such as a breakup, we really are “crying it out.”

Unfortunately, by “we,” I mean mostly women. The report states that men cry an average of seven times per year. For women, it’s a whopping 47 times per year. Also: men who cry out of sadness were “more positively rated” by women, while women’s sad tears made them less attractive to men.

For the record, Cody cried in a previous episode of DWTS while declaring his (platonic?) love for Julianne, so I know he’s the right man-boy for me.

Finally! It took a lawsuit, but still.

BG has immense patience for most “picky” daters. (“Picky?” About the person you want to spend your life with?) But for picky eaters, less so.

And now this:

You know what’s a turnoff? Men who are picky eaters. I’m not saying it’s fun in women, either, but I haven’t had to live as intimately with women for a while now. So it was kind of shocking to learn that Barack Obama, our dashing president-crush-elect, is apparently rife with food neuroses. Since the campaign post-mortems started coming out last week, we’ve learned that the President-elect has weird aversions, hang-ups, odd pancake behaviors and a strong abstemious streak — none of which his wife, Michelle, seems to share. As a woman who’s lived with picky men, I can relate. As a voter, I feel somewhat blindsided.

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Last week was a bad one for certain Japanese women and the men who love to buy them drinks. Two stories described the downmarket vibe in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills* (it’s always the “Hills“) section, a new-money, work/play development where local gals could heretofore count on snagging a Western banker for the night, if not a lifetime. But thanks to the death/ailing of Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, two firms that kept offices there, the Roppongi meat market has become a bear market.

“The well-rehearsed choreography of girls coming in from the suburbs in their finery, tasting the good life, then snagging an investment banker to prolong the party is yesterday’s dance,” death-knells the London Times, which narrowed in on one particular bar whose website copy serves up such irony-tinis as “I will not chase after the fickleness of time” and “I will not be captured by the sense of values that bind my thoughts.”

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LiLo and SaRo to get engaged in Paris?

Felicitacions!

Then, we imagine, it’s off to Le Connecticut?