Before the days  of texting and emailing, “XOXO” was an affectionate farewell scribbled at the end of long love letters, or birthday cards from parents and close friends.

Now, mere acquaintances and even strangers are sending out hugs and kisses in emails, texts, tweets, and wall posts.  The term has taken on many meanings, from a coquettish wink to a casual gesture suggesting friendliness or warmth. Bosses and lovers have signed notes to me with “xo,” or “xe” (a kiss artfully accompanying a first initial), and therein lies the expression’s charming ambiguity.

Even when the context is clear, it can still be hard to deduce whether a cyber kiss is loaded or not. Is it gauche to sign business emails with “xoxo,” or is it just a way of keeping up with the times and creeping out your co-workers?

- Lizzie Crocker

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While riding on the Amtrak from New York to Boston I had a charming encounter with a creeper. The businessman sitting opposite me at the communal table suddenly turned his laptop screen toward me with a grin and showed me a picture of myself on the Teen Vogue website. “You stalked me,” I said, as he pointed to my name written on my ticket stub.

In the modern age, instead of simply saying “hello” to the passenger riding next to you on the train like in the olden days of Edith Wharton, people just sneakily Google each other on their laptops or Blackberrys.

The mysterious creeper was forty years old and one week away from finally marrying his girlfriend of five years. He said that some guys just spend their whole lives being bachelors, living “the high life,” and going on trips with whichever girl they’re dating at the time … “some girl they met on the train, for example.” But in the end, when you’re old and senile, “Who’s going to tell you when you’re supposed to take your prostate medication?” Maybe it’s better to commit than to meet strange girls on trains.

- Haley Hogan

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Today my sister and I went to get tested for HIV at the local free clinic. Lately we’ve been spending a lot of time going through all our earthly possessions and donating all our crap to Goodwill.

Getting an AIDS test and getting rid of old clothes are parallel in so many ways:

1.  People avoid weeding through their wardrobes. / People avoid taking STD tests.

2.  Going through your closet forces you to reflect on your past fashion choices and cringe. / An AIDS test forces you to reflect on your latest sexual partners and cringe.

3.  The types of random, disheveled creepers at the Goodwill Store are similar to the ones lurking in the waiting room at the free clinic.

So get it over with already: get tested and stopped hoarding all your ill-fitting jeans.

- Haley Hogan

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Match.com is a great place to meet men and women. A friend of mine has been cruising the realm of internet dating, and he has come across some unexpectedly bizarre conditions.

Example A: an email response from his prospective date read as follows:

> Hi Jack,
>
> How are you? I’d like to go for tea sounds good. Before we
> meet I should let you know I’m transgendered. Hopefully it’s
> not too much a shock.
>
> Let me know if your still interested.
>
> P

So there you have it. I always assumed there would be a box that you would fill out for “Male,” “Female,” and “Other,” but it looks like sometimes with online arrangements, you never know what you’re gonna get.

- Haley Hogan

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The 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, or “The Barefoot Bandit,” led a luxe life on the run, because apparently juvie and halfway houses didn’t suit his taste for the finer things. He burgled homes, stole cars and big boats, and even hijacked a bunch of planes, though he was never trained in the technicalities of flight. He’s not exactly what you would call a “Princess in Flight,” but more of a “Pimp in Training.”

But every holiday has its expiration date, and perhaps Colton took too big of a bite out of life, a bit like the Greek demigod, Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell too his death: Colton flew 1,000 miles to the Bahamas, made a crash landing, burgled several island homes, and was finally arrested.

On the other hand, the Barefoot Bandit is becoming an icon for today’s youth. He’s an absolute hit on the Facebook, and all the cool kids are wearing shirts that say, “Run, Colton, Run!”

- Haley Hogan

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In the art world, Larry Rivers is praised as one of the grandfather’s of the Pop Art movement. But in his daughter’s eyes, Larry Rivers is also a pervert who began filming her nude when she was eleven — and continued to document her and her sister’s development through puberty over the next five years in a series he entitled “Growing.”

Engaging the girls in conversation about their budding breasts, Rivers allegedly accused them of being “uptight” and called them “bad daughters” when they expressed any unease. NYU recently purchased the films from the Larry Rivers Foundation, but the daughters feel that their father’s films are “child pornography” and would like them back.

Some fans of Rivers may interpret his intent to hone in on his daughters’ genitals as a platonic study of the female body. But those of us who aren’t delusional know that any man who makes overtly sexual films of his daughters and labels them “art” is a creeper to the core.

- Lizzie Crocker

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On a trip to Sweden I got to experience the exceptional tradition of the Swedish summer solstice holiday, Midsummer. The celebrations begin with adorable Swedish children dancing around a Maypole-like structure resembling a cock and balls. The day continues with feasting, drinking (copious amounts of schnapps), and singing traditional erotic songs.

Since it’s never dark in the summer in Sweden, the drinking sort of just continues indefinitely, and inevitably devolves into running naked through the forest and skinny-dipping in a freezing lake.

The best part of Midsummer is that each girl gathers up a bouquet of seven different flowers and places it underneath her pillow, so that she can dream about her future husband. I didn’t have any dreams that night, which is just as well since Leonardo DiCaprio is probably not available to star in dreams.

- Haley Hogan

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So it’s been all a buzz in the news that there are these hot Russian ladies in Manhattan who are in trouble with the law–not for being drugged up models or high class escorts but for being secret agents.

But while “Anna Chapman” and “Cynthia Murphy” weren’t informing the Russian government, they were profiting from the beauties of capitalist America: Cynthia was an MBA student at Columbia who cozied up to professors and the future CEOs of big American corporations; Anna loved the luxe Downtown nightclubs, the posh Uptown society events, and the semi-elderly American millionaires.

Anna says of the perks of living in a free country, “Over here, it is easy to meet successful people. In Moscow, it is practically impossible because you have to be as successful as they are . . . here you can meet successful people on the street and go have dinner with them.” Talk about a real New York City creeper.

- Haley Hogan

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While interviewing for a “Booking Editor” position at a start-up magazine last week, I was thrown into a model casting to test my skills. One by one, over thirty male and female models pranced — or crept — into the casting room; several were giddy and outwardly confident, but most were unable to mask their diffidence.

The male models were classic mimbos plucked from an Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly, boasting interests like “surfing, skateboarding, and working out at the gym.” The girls were predominantly waifish, Eastern European imports with delicately sculpted features, wide eyes, and knobby limbs – a collective of frightened deer in headlights – who claimed to “dance” or “play tennis” in their spare time. The twisted theme of the fashion spread was something along the lines of, “A Futuristic Family: The Dominatrix Mother and her Sexually Abused Children.”

Not surprisingly, the Creative Director turned his nose up at the mimbos (their golden-retriever-like affects didn’t fit the mold) and squirmed in excitement over the excessively thin, vulnerable looking Russian and Swedish sylphs. But it’s important that the Booking Editor maintain an air of insouciance in order to intimidate the frail, young models (though they already seemed starved of self-esteem to me).

- Lizzie Crocker

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