Even if he's a lover, not a fighter, there are going to be plenty of times when any guy will find himself in a situation where an easy solution isn't possible. Whether it's with your girl, with your parents, or with your co-workers, how you deal with people is important and can seriously affect how they (and others) will treat you.

We looked at Lee Raffel's book "I Hate Conflict: Seven Steps to Resolving Differences With Anyone in Your Life" to find out how to deal with impossible impasses. "It isn't conflict itself that is the issue, but rather the way we perceive and manage it," writes Raffel. "Conflict can be a catalyst, the energy source that gives you an opportunity to deepen your relationships, to clarify your priorities, and to bring more ease and joy to your life."

We've boiled down Raffel's seven steps below.

1. Speak politely; common courtesies count. Okay, you're pissed that your girlfriend is not getting your point, and that she would disagree with you when you're so clearly right -- but it's better not to get sarcastic and start making fun her bad breath. "Trusted relationships are destroyed when you complacently believe 'I can say and do whatever I want to do and get away with it,'" writes Raffel. "An aggressive defense is not a viable way to address your conflicted concerns."

2. Swallow your pride, and admit your mistakes. Sometimes you've just got to suck it up -- if you're wrong, then admit it and move on. Defending a point where you were at fault isn't going to get you anywhere. (E.g., When someone asks you if you were sleeping with the White House intern, it's best not to try to redefine the word "is.") Still, you don't have to over-admit. What happens in Vegas can stay in Vegas.

More tips after the jump for conquering conflicts, after the jump.

Companies are cutting staff and increasingly having employees pull long hours to pick up the slack. This leads to barely having time to watch what's on your TiVo, the girlfriend complaining that she never sees you, and feeling extremely stressed out all the time.

Dude, even if the economy's bad, that's no way to live. So we consulted office guru Stanley Bing's recent book "Executricks, or How to Retire While You're Still Working," for a little guidance on how to chill work life out a little while still seeming indispensable and at the top of your game.

Bing's book is aimed largely at aging executives who have started to dream of Palm Beach before they get to retirement age, but a lot of the lessons can be applied to pretty much anyone sick of sacrificing everything they've got to the grind of cubicle life.

The core "executricks" include delegating work to other people and then taking credit for the product; getting people accustomed to your working in multiple places, so that they don't notice when you're absent; and figuring out ways to expand your expense account without looking like you're abusing your authority.

After the jump, check out a few of Bing's other choice bits of wisdom for cubicle culture.

Navigating the relationship with your boss can be a treacherous game. On the one hand, you need to be on good terms in order to work together effectively and want him to think that you're the kind of guy who deserves to move up the corporate ladder. On the other hand, you've got a working relationship to maintain, and it's going to be awkward if one of you wants to hang out every night and play Wii.

Greg Bennett, National Practice Director of Sales, Marketing & C-Level Search for the Mergis Group, says that having a boss who wants to be friends with you isn't really such a bad thing. "With the economy flipping up and down, it's probably not bad to have a decent relationship with your boss," says Bennett. "So if you mean 'friend' as in someone you'd want to go to a game with or go out to dinner with once in a while, that's probably not a bad level of relationship to have with your boss."

He also says that sometimes "friend" can get a little too close. "You start asking How close is too close? when you begin crossing that line where your boss starts to get into that very selective list of 'close friends' or you get into his."

After the jump, Bennett gives some tips on being tight, but not too tight with your boss.

The saying is "Live fast, die young," but for some speed demons the race lasts a little longer in life.

A 71-year-old rollerblader from the British town of Southport has been relieved of his wheels by police who say he has been skating recklessly and endangering pedestrians. Geoff Dornan, who is a retired youth worker, has denied the charges in court, and now has several Facebook groups devoted to him (some with over 2,000 members). Videotapes in court showed the retiree whizzing in and out among pedestrians, but he contends that because of his skills they were never in danger.

Dornan, bereft of his skates, says that the confiscation has actually been affecting his health. "In the months during which I have been unjustly deprived of my blades, I was shocked to discover how swiftly the health of someone of my age can deteriorate." He says he's had back trouble as a result of not being able to skate.

The case has adjourned until later this month, but we're going to have to agree with the Facebook user who commented, "This guy should be applauded, not prosecuted." See another picture of the "silver skater" after the jump.

From the very first time he takes a soccer ball to the groin in first-grade gym class, a guy knows that there are few agonies greater than an assault on the family jewels. But as we grow older, we have to learn to live in a world where at any moment we could be subjected to the excruciating torture of an unexpected nut injury.

Sometimes, however, even the sweetest-looking significant other can turn on you, as one man found out last weekend. Job Donkor, 23, was at home at 4 a.m. when his ex-girlfriend, 19-year-old University of Colorado sophomore Chalie Simon (left) showed up, became angry when he tried to kick her out and allegedly "grabbed his testicles and squeezed hard."

"Yeah, it hurt a lot," Donkor said to police, who arrested Simon on charges of assault, trespass and domestic violence.

While this looks to be an isolated incident, we here at Asylum want to advise caution to anyone out there who values his sack: Ball-crushing women are out there -- and sometimes they hide beneath benign exteriors. Beware, and check out our gallery of hottie mug shots for potential offenders.

Bo may know baseball and football, but banking? Right now, it seems like no one knows that game.

With so many banks going under these days, it's interesting to see one familiar face getting into the money-management game -- former two-sport pro athlete Bo Jackson. Jackson is one of 20 investors who has teamed up with Miami Dolphin Ronnie Brown to start the new Burr Ridge Bank in Illinois.

The bank opened in the middle of last month and is backed by $3.1 million from its investors -- $550,000 of which came from Bo.

Oddly, the mini bio about the bank's organizers doesn't cite Bo's sporting past. It only notes his position as co-founder of N'Genuity Enterprises, "a supplier of high-quality protein-based food products," and his co-ownership of Bo Jackson Elite Sports training facilities. Even more surprising is that they also make no mention how much his likeness ruled in Super Tecmo Bowl.

With the huge growth of online music downloads, fans have been finding fewer and fewer reasons to buy CDs. (Liner notes just aren't doing it for people these days.)

But drummer Josh Freese (formerly of Nine Inch Nails, Guns n' Roses and Devo) has some offers to go along with his new solo album "Since '72" that may net him a little extra cash. Along with the album, he is offering (for various prices) such perks as a "five-minute thank you phone call"; a T-shirt and a lunch date to PF Changs or the Cheesecake Factory; or, for $10,000, his car.

One fan can go for the ultimate Freese album package, which costs a cool $75,000. For this hefty sum you, of course, get a signed edition of his album, but you can also: go on tour with Freese; have him play with your band; employ him as an assistant/cabana boy for a week; go for a limo ride to Tijuana so he can "show you how it's done"; get a five-song EP written about you; participate in a trapeze lesson with a bunch of ex-NINers; get treated to a lasagna; and "take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool's Lamborghini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while."

We like the bands Freese has been in, but $75K is a lot of money for an unknown quantity. Just because you like the way a guy hits the sticks doesn't mean you want to take a trapeze lesson with him. And just how good is this lasagna?

For a full list of Freese's album offers, click here.

The venerable game of beer pong is a staple at most college campuses -- a quick ticket to the kind of glory that can only come from drunkenly tossing a ping-pong ball into a red plastic cup.

But beer pong could be nearly as dangerous as unprotected sex in terms of spreading diseases, according to a recent article in the University of Massachusetts' student newspaper -- which links the rise of herpes on campus to the popularity of beer pong. Because the game involves multiple people drinking from the same cups, the herpes virus -- which can be transmitted via saliva -- can be spread to everyone who is playing through the course of a game. The virus is up 230 percent since 2007 in people between ages 17 and 21.

The Centers for Disease Control recommends filling the cups with water for the game -- and drinking from non-shared cups -- as a way of decreasing the danger, but a UMass sophomore makes the point that such play "takes away from the spirit of the game."

We're all for purity in sports, but if we're going to drink so much we end up with a sexually transmitted disease, we'd at least like it to be the result of something more fun than swallowing our frat buddy's backwash.

Of course, getting herpes isn't the only consequence of excessive drunkenness. You could also find yourself highlighted in our shamings gallery after the jump.

In a scenario at least as enjoyable as that motion picture, a smuggler was caught in Australia on Friday after attempting to transport a stash of reptiles in his suitcase en route to Bangkok. The X-ray image below pretty much tells the tale -- cops saw some slithering and confiscated the bag. Inside it were "24 shingleback lizards, 16 bluetongue lizards, three black-headed pythons and an endangered albino carpet python."



The carpet python is a particularly rare snake (with less than 100 left in the world), and the smuggler's entire haul could have netted him somewhere in the neighborhood of $130,000, police say. The smuggler is currently out on bail, but he could do as many as 10 years behind bars for attempting to export native animals without a permit.

While we're glad that airport security is at least effective enough to spot some pythons in a suitcase, we wonder what would have happened if he'd kept the snakes on his person. After all, it wasn't too long ago that a woman was able to conceal a sedated chimp in her clothing on an international flight.

While he was in office, the fate of the world was resting in George W. Bush's hands. Now, a little more than a month after he left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he's joking about using those hands for something a little less taxing -- greeting shoppers at a Dallas department store.

President Bush showed up at Elliott's Hardware, near his new home in Dallas, over the weekend, saying that he was there to apply for a job, which had been offered to him in a February 5 newspaper ad from Elliott's in the Dallas Morning News. While Bush's bid for employment was in jest, he did spend about an hour browsing the aisles and purchasing batteries, flashlights and WD-40 after being presented with an employee shirt and "W" name tag.

We're sure the ex-President would do a great job an Elliott's greeter, although we do wonder how a 29 percent approval rating in the White House translates into talking up hammers, flashlights and band saws.