It’s Thursday and in most big cities, it’s dance club night.  If you’re like me and suffer from acute employment, you are going out.  While out, you may find yourself grinding away at the pelvis of strange, yet attractive, women.  The good news is, according to a recent survey, this is an acceptable way to […]

61% of readers who voted in our ideal home poll chose “Downtown/Urban Loft”.  But what loft based lifestyle is most suitable for you?
Take the urban lifestyle quiz and find out.

“Postindustrial Urbanite” sums me up perfectly, with the exception of “Are not pack rats..” Hey, I’m working on it.  Dammit.
Find your own ideal urban lifestyle here, […]

Happy Brainstorming has an introductory tutorial on vocal training.  Starting out with an example about the impact speech plays on social interaction, it continues exploring various techniques.  The article includes exercises as well as demonstrations of engaging speech.
You may want to be in a room by yourself when you try this.  If you start yelling […]

“Congruence” defined:

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”
-Mahatma Gandhi
via Celestial Seasonings tea box
Technorati Tags: how to be congruent, pua, inner peace, zen, buddhism, nlp, neil strauss

An article published last week by Live Science argues that not only can your personality change, but it probably should.  As an advocate of personal growth  I subscribe to this belief whole heartedly.  However, researcher Carol Dweck goes further by illustrating cases in which personality changes display isolated performance advancements.
Dweck and her colleagues have shown […]

There are a lot of crazy ’spontaneous comedy’ tools out on the web.  The Tashian translator gave me hours of enjoyment when I first discovered it (still does, actually).  Now, the mad geniuses over at the Outer Court Google blog have come up with a simple recipe for internet induced laughs.

I’m using a Google wildcard […]

I am currently sifting through real estate ads and scrutinizing lenders as I evaluate whether home ownership is the best move for me.  While many factors come into play when making a decision as big as this, I am looking for factual, concrete answers to persuade me which direction to go.  In the middle of […]

Giving up your car is easier than you think, but a bit of planning will help make the transition a lot smoother.

Although an entire article could be dedicated to the actual sale of your car, that’s not the intention of this series. I would recommend Craigslist as your best bet, although an ex of […]

We recently received the full line of fragrances from Tommy Bahama and while we’ve been out field testing the seductive power of the scents, we did push forward a review of their St Barts soap on a rope. Well, the Tommy Bahama folks want to return the favor to Urban Monarch readers. They […]

 
Hopefully by the time this post drops all of you will be sipping your first cocktail (myself included), so I’ll keep this short.
Enjoy your holiday weekend.  We’re glad to have you as readers. 
To all the fallen servicemen and women who’ve helped keep America free for this long, thank you; our gratitude is great.

This is a clip of a 20 year old girl playing electric violin on top of the blackeyed peas while dancing.  While I think there are a lot better songs to be chosen than BEP, I can’t help but be awed by this clip.

Several years ago my sister surprised me at Christmas with a George Foreman Grill.  At the time I was both living in an apartment with a TINY, almost unusable kitchen, as well as beginning to get into healthier eating habits.  The grill turned out to be the the perfect gift for both these reasons.  It […]

I love Puma.  Almost as much as I love Onitsuka Tiger.  Actually I had a dream about Onitsukas last night, but my dreams are none of your business.  When searching for vegan shoes, there are two options.  Hit the stores and trust that they have merchandised their products correctly, or hit the manufacturer and ask […]

Test your knowledge with 8 simple, true / false questions.  No cheating, unlike 46% of you do on your girlfriends .

Jot down the answers to the following eight questions:
1. When in love, both sexes have the same approach to anger and the same means of handling it.
TRUE ( ) FALSE ( )
2. Aggression is […]

A recent survey compared sexual frequency and nationality.  The Greeks came out on top with Brazilians tagging in at a close second.  The frequency however is not representative of birth rate.  While the Greeks engaged in weekly sex, the Brazilians had almost twice the babies.
Looks like Cash will be headed to olive country.  Also, I […]

I’ve always been a good reader.  By ‘good’ I mean quick and efficent.  When interested in the material (aka motivated by it) I finish books fast and typically remember key points, characters and plot lines for years.
This is fine for fiction, but over the last year and a half I’ve been doing massive amounts of […]

I am on the cusp of another 3 month vacation and with a mere 3 days separating me and a life that must resemble heaven, I am clawing at my mouse. Amongst other more ambitious activities, I plan on embarking on such noble tasks as late morning breakfasts, afternoons in the park, and general […]

When not snapping pulitzer prize caliber photos in the back alleys of Denver or matching wits against chess supercomputers, UM friend Brian spends his time discovering sites like Passive Agressive Notes. 
Thankfully, he shares the goods.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you’ve no doubt seen the likes of the “Your mom doesn’t work here, CLEAN […]

Often I find myself scrambling for words to mean nothing.  Not being satisfied with terms such as ‘dull’ or ‘flat’, I’ve turned to my friends for advice on more colorful language.  From which I’ve collected three new adjectives: Vacuous, Vapid, and Insipid.
While the definitions are similar, I’ve isolated the key differences:

Vacuous - lacking content
Vapid - […]

I haven’t driven a car in over 6 months. I could not be happier. As any regular Urban Monarch reader knows; I don’t live in some massive metropolis where public transportation is a natural alternative to the automobile either. I live in Denver. In Colorado, public transportation has been somewhat of an after thought, and […]

I am a little more than tired of hearing about The Secret.  Looking up Amazon’s best seller list the other day to see how ol’ Timothy Ferris’ recent info-project-product is doing, there it is still, The Secret, peddling possibilities to the masses.  Thankfully, I’m not the only one bored by this.  Slate Magazine has published […]