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Unless you work in p0rn or are a stripper we generally recommend not making out with a coworker. In fact that workplace romances are strictly frowned upon by the Edukatorz. Mixing business with pleasure generally has disastrous results in our experience. Yeah, yeah we all have one or two friends who’ve managed to make it work with a coworker (or an underling), but they usually don’t work.

If you have to make out with a coworker (and you don’t want to get slapped with a sexual harassment suit), follow these tips. And whatever you do, do not make out with your coworker at the company picnic and/or holiday party.

1) Get to Know Your Coworker

Work is no place to find a booty call or one night stand. Besides the liability issues, you don’t want to have to see your booty call on a regular basis. If you want to make out with a coworker you have to be prepared to date him/her. Try to have lunch with your coworker on a regular basis and see if you actually like him/her. This is a case where you definitely want to use the slow game method.

2) After Work Happy Hour

Don’t hit on your coworker at work, that’s skeevy, but you can kinda hit on him/her at an after work happy hour. After work happy hour is the perfect place to unwind a little and get to know your coworker outside of the office. Don’t push too hard though, since s/he is still your coworker and chances are you’re going to be around other coworkers. This is the time for light flirtation.

3) Invite Them Out

Only invite your coworker out to do something if you are already friends with him/her and only if you’re sure you’re on the same wavelength. And even if you’re sure, don’t make it a date, make it a plan to hang out or something like that. Invite them to a concert, an art opening or to go hang out at a farmers market – basically anything non-threatening. If you think they’re into you make a move, but if not back off…at least you’ll still have a lunch buddy at work.

Marion Barry - former mayor of DC and current Councilmember. He can get reelected, but Mayor Fenty can't.

As you (may) know, the East Coast half of the Edukatorz lives in the fair District of Columbia. Yesterday we had our primary election, but since it’s virtually impossible to get elected as a Republican in DC (except for the non-Democratic seats on the City Council that’s mandated by law) the primary is the de facto election. The current mayor, Adrian Fenty, lost by a lot. It’s kind of strange that he lost because by all accounts he was doing a good job: public schools were doing better, food carts were deregulated and government in general was less corrupt and more responsive.  If the city is doing so awesome why wouldn’t the mayor be reelected? This is a city that will reelect a crack-head (no, literally a crack-head) to public office. Instead of going into nitty gritty we’ll give you the easy three ways to lose a mayoral race in DC, feel free to apply to other cities or elections if you too would like to lose a race.
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Meh, we’re late, shocking. Check out this awesome video from The Grand Spectacular (via Boing Boing). We’re going to go ahead and say The Grand Spectacular is doing it right.

Seriously, we can talk about beers forever. There’s just so many ways to combine yeast and grains into delicious fermented foaminess. Some of these ways have hundreds of years of tradition, methods honed literally as a sacred art form.

Then we get beers like Steam Beer. Steam beer is a mid-19th century invention that arose during the California gold rush as as on-the-fly “holy crap we need beer – what do we have on hand that will allow us to make beer?” sort of a thing. It was originally considered, well, bad. And kinda bootleg.

Then Anchor Steam Brewing Company (which has a pretty extensive, if forgiveably slanted, history of Steam Beer on their website) revived the method and began selling “Anchor Steam Beer” as a San Francisco tradition. Their brew is tasty and refreshing on a hot day, and has been a pretty unique brew on the scene. This brew and others that have cropped up using similar style are known in modern brewing parlance as “California common beer.”

The basic components which define a beer as a steam beer is a lager yeast brewed as an ale (we’ve talked about the differences before). When gold rush towns were cropping up in California, they were booming so quickly that there wasn’t any infrastructure to speak of, and commodities like ice were impossible to get. So they brewed the lager yeast, which they could get their hands on, as an ale – that is to say, at high temperatures, due to lack of ice.

Since Anchor Steam’s brewery is located here in San Francisco, I think I’m going to have to follow up on this post after a visit there.

(via mobilehornet.com)

Cell phones and smart phones are awesome and we don’t know what we’d do without them*, but alas they are not waterproof yet (GET ON THAT ENGINEERS). We’ve gotten various phones over the years wet in a variety of pedestrian and odd ways. Fortunately we didn’t have to go out and get a new phone every time we got it wet.

Take it Apart

Take the battery and SIM card out of your phone. You don’t want to fry anything so it’s important to minimize the amount of battery and water contact. Also, it’s pretty likely that the SIM card will survive it’s unexpected bath if taken out of the phone immediately.

Don’t Use a Hair Dryer

You want to remove the water from your phone, but you don’t want to fry it. Under no circumstances are you to use a hair dryer, microwave, oven or anything that produces heat to dry your phone. Instead get some compressed air or a shop vac and try to remove the water that way.

Put it in Rice

You want to dry out your phone as quickly as possible so put it in a bowl of raw rice overnight and it’ll dry out your phone. It is important you wait until the next morning or an equivalent amount of time for your phone to completely dry out.

See if it Works

Put it back together and see if your phone works again.

*No really. It’s hard for me to think back to pre-cell phone times.

You know what I mean. When dudes get dude-ish and start talking about sex, there comes the point in the conversation where everyone gets to arguing about their favorite “type” of sex: European vacation bar bathroom sex, “I love you” sex, shower sex, “thank god I’m not pregnant sex,” “oh my god I’m pregnant sex,” anniversary sex, make up sex… and then there’s break up sex.

When people refer to breakup sex, they’re generally referring to one last good (or somewhat violent but hot, or reminiscent) time in the sack before you turn your back on a  long-term (or at least semi-legitimate) relationship. It’s like the silver lining during the thunderstorm of breakups; if you get good breakup sex, it’s not all bad.

The problem is that things are very rarely that simple. What you might refer to as “breakup sex” at the time is almost never what breakup sex is meant to be. That is to say, breakup sex should only ever be what it is: one last good time before parting ways. And if it’s that straightforward, and both parties are that comfortable with it, chances are it’s not the last time, even if you’re no longer dating.

What is often mistakenly referred to as breakup sex more often falls into one of three categories: angry makeup sex, vengeance sex, or dysfunctional from the start sex. These categories are confused so often because they have the same starting point.

What’s the starting point? You already know. That crazy girlfriend who hates your best friend since elementary school threw out your fourth grade yearbook. You knew you should never have dated a Chad, he’s totally never been your type, and of course there he is on facebook doing body shots off some blonde chick. And so on. The fight where it just seems like there’s no solution and it’s done.

And after some serious yelling, and possibly shoe-throwing, you get down and dirty on the couch. It’s hot, it’s slightly violent, it’s a struggle for dominance, and somewhere in there you need to recognize it for what it really is.

Dysfunctional from the start: It was always about the sex anyway. What were you doing getting your emotions involved to the point where you could get that heated? Get out now. But you know, if you see him/her at the club with another chick/dude… may as well “fight” it out.

Vengeance sex: You’ve been done. You hate this motherf*cker. You want to give him blue balls/her whatever the female equivalent is and walk away. This one is pretty easy to identify.

Angry makeup sex: You end up sweaty and cuddling up like some puke-worthy romantic comedy and honestly can’t remember why you’re fighting. Once you recover from the emotional rollercoaster of the last 24 hours or so, you’ll talk it out. Best case scenario.

Seriously, unless one party is moving to China for a sick job as a secret agent and the other has to stay in Russia for similar reasons, and you both totally respect that, breakup sex is never just breakup sex. Next time, think about what’s really going on; it’ll save you stress later.

Our intrepid Bunsen is currently MIA so you’ll have to wait for your hit of Frisco Friday. We’re going old school and doing another Hipster Friday. It’s Labor Day weekend and the entire nation is having end of summer parties. Hipsters are no different, though the end of summer is more poignant for them. It represents the end of frolicking in the park doing nothing, bbq’s and jorts. It’s also a sad reminder their childhood is over and there’s no going back to school for them; the end of summer is no longer the end of carefree days like it once was, but a stark reminder of their adulthood and adult responsibilities that they ignore. Anyway, this is how you throw a Hipster Labor Day Party.

1) BBQ, Duh

I’m pretty sure you get your citizenship taken away if you don’t BBQ or at least picnic on Labor Day. Obviously you have to bbq like a hipster. Make sure to stock up on PBR, end of summer tunes (we recommend Best Coast and the Wavves).

2) Celebrate Labor History

This can actually go two ways. Most hipsters are not actually smart or knowledgeable, but like to think they are so they won’t actually connect Labor Day with celebrating the labor movement. The ones who are smart or knowledgeable are probably smug assholes about celebrating the labor movement. Placate both and make sure to drink only union- made beer. Fortunately PBR is Union made so you’re in the clear.

3) Dress Code

Everyone has to be in jorts or a sundress, gender doesn’t matter. This isn’t negotiable.

The Edukatorz read the Internet daily (and not just TGRIOnline and Twitter), so we come upon a lot of crap, including this Wall Street Journal blogpost about living cheaply in a new city.* It’s clearly written by a marketing zombie and anyone with half a brain cell pretty much knows the ‘advice’ they’ve spewing off. With Fall approaching it seems like many are off moving to new cities so it seems appropriate to give some tips living cheaply in a new town or any town really.

1) Find a Neighborhood Bar

We realize not drinking is simply out of the question so we humbly suggest finding a neighborhood watering hole. Not only is it a great way to meet new people and make friends, but if you befriend the bartender a lot of those drinks are going to slide off the bill. Bonus points if you can find a neighborhood bar with wi-fi so you don’t have to pay for the Internet either.

2) Use the Interwebs**

Well use the Internet for more than just Twitter/FB, pr0n, Edukatorz and GChat. While hanging out at the neighborhood bar is awesome, you can’t do it all the time (well you can…) so you’ll have to figure out other things to do. If you don’t want to be antisocial in your off time we recommend finding a few local blogs that advertise events and read them. In any big city (and some smaller ones) there are bound to be at least a few free or inexpensive events.

3) Don’t be Boring

Look, you don’t have to spend money to have a good time or at least very little of it. Boring people are bored and bored people spend a lot of money on crap. Find a hobby or volunteer. At the very least go to the library and check out some books so you’ll be interesting. If you’re really strapped for cash you can still go to DJ nights and shows with small covers, just go sober that night or drink at home/your neighborhood watering hole. Whatever it is you’re in to, there’s a chance it can be done inexpensively, just figure out what it is you dig.

4) Eat Well

Eating out all the time is a huge drain on the old budget so we recommend finding Farmers Markets and small ethnic grocery stores to buy your food from. Not only do they have a better selection than crappy grocery stores and corner stores, but they’re often cheaper if you shop smart. If you make friends with a Farmer they’ll often throw in an extra tomato here and there. You can even finagle you’re way into a job at the Farmers Market and get paid while getting discount produce.

* We generally hate all MSM ‘advice’ and culture stories we read, but we just can’t quit them.
** While this is similar to #5 on their list, our point is to not be lame about it.