My Online Dating Saga - What's the Deal?

There are some features on these dating sites that don't quite make sense to me. One site actually has a "stalker" function. This is supposed to be a good thing? If I wanted stalkers, I'd find some hunky wackos to go out with. And what about those compatibility tests, to match values, interests, preferred sexual positions and favorite fetishes? Supposedly the higher the match percentage, the better. If I wanted a male me, I'd just have sex with myself. Oh wait, I do that already.

Based on the match percentage, the site informs me, "We think you would get along well with this person." Why not just be honest and say, "We don't have a f*cking clue who you'd get along with, but our guess is as good as yours, so just go with it."

And what is the purpose of a "wink?" Basically, that means the guy is too much of a wuss to actually email me - kinda like those construction guys who yell and make pseudo-f*ck-me gestures at female pedestrians out for their morning bagels. And then there's the "favorites" function. Translated, it means, "I'm not interested enough to actually send you a message right now, but I'll save you for later in case I'm not having much luck getting laid sometime in the near future."

My Online Dating Saga - Opening Line Don'ts

I've been doing the online dating thing for awhile, and though I've met some interesting guys, I've had much better luck with getting writing material than with the actual dating part.

There are some common-sense unwritten rules that many would-be daters don't seem to grasp. Here are some pointers for the marginally, and not-so-marginally, clueless:

Chances are, you won't get much of a response if you email a potential date with these opening lines:

"Nice rack. Want to chat?"

"Yummy." How do you really respond to that? "Thanks?"

"I'm looking for someone to f*ck. Could it be you?" Subtlety isn't exactly your strong suit, is it?

"I'd love to twist you around like a pretzel." I'm not even sure what that means, unless the guy has a fetish for contortionists. Sounds more painful than erotic.

"I'm looking for an angel like you to make peace my lonely nights." Okay, obviously English isn't his first language, but still pretty hokey. And obviously a mass email that he sent to probably 50 women, hoping to hit the jackpot.

One guy just IM'd me with a photo of his dick (iphones do come in handy, don't they?). A dick-and-run, as it were.

More to come....

Daylight savings time haiku

Clocks go back today
Boss shows up an hour early
Genius he is not

Say What?

There are some phrases and buzzwords that have sprung up in the last few years that I find immensely irritating, and I sincerely hope they will soon meet their collective demise:

"Have a good one." One what? Night on the town? Drive home in gridlock? Orgasm?

"Skilled at multitasking." Does that refer to those people who drive while shaving their legs, eating breakfast and talking on their cell? Or maybe someone who does threesomes.

"It's all good." Is it really? Tell that to the guy who lost his job and his health insurance a year ago and is preparing to stake his territory in the alley behind his soon-to-be-ex-house.

"Think outside the box." But how big is that box, anyway? And does anyone actually know what's in it? If not, then how could anyone know if they're thinking outside it or not? I guess if you get thrown in jail for being unpatriotic, you know you were thinking outside the box.

"Wellness." Come on. Can we all just agree to put that word out of its misery? Can anyone really tell me how that word is different than "health?" I dare you.

Halloween Haiku

It's trick-or-treat time
got treats - hand sanitizers
now that is scary

Birthday Haiku

I'm liking this haiku thing. Here's a few I wrote for a friend's 50th birthday:

So you're fifty now
You can start to forget that
What was I saying?

Half a century
Sounds depressing, doesn't it?
Depends on which half

The older you get
The less you will care about
Who thinks you're a bitch

Fifty brings freedom
To really be who you are
And not give a crap

The Parent Trap - the Dark Side

Okay, does anyone else find the whole concept of "The Parent Trap" profoundly disturbing?? Maybe it's because I lost my father when I was eight, but I find the whole idea kind of warped. You've got two parents who each not only effectively abandon one of their children, but keep two sisters - twins, yet - separated without telling them that the other one even exists. I'd like to write an alternate version of the story entitled "The Parent Trap - the Dark Side. Separated in infancy and left without conscious knowledge of their loss, the twins develop severe attachment disorder and become serial killers." I could see it as an SNL episode....

Actually, writing alternate versions of films could be interesting. How about "Saving Private Ryan" as a romantic comedy. Or "Godfather II - The Musical."

Or how about incongruent screen couples: Vanessa Redgrave and Pauly Shore. Or Emma Thompson and Sylvester Stallone. Judi Dench and Woody Allen. These are the things I think about when I can't sleep at two in the morning....

FUN WITH GOD

I have always found religious rituals somewhat bizarre. The bar mitzvah – Now there's an interesting tradition. "Today, you are a man. Yesterday, you got in trouble for giving someone a wedgie in gym class, but today you're a man. If a 20-year-old woman tried to have sex with you she'd get arrested, but you're a man." I guess when the custom first started people only lived to about 35, so 13 was a grown-up. You got toilet-trained, threw spitballs, had wet dreams, tried drugs, got married, had kids, found a gray hair in your crotch and died.

The bar mitzvah's kind of like a one-man show. You've got your props, the Torah and shofar, which is made out of a ram's horn (and when you're talking about 13-year-old boys, any kind of "horn" is apropos). Your relatives are stagehands; they hop on and off stage to help with the props. This is to make sure no one dozes off for too long. "Wake up Grandpa, it's your turn to unwrap the Torah." The kid stands up on stage and recites prayers for two hours. As long as he's up there, why not have him tell some jokes? "A priest, a rabbi and a nun were sitting in a boat..." The kid sings in a foreign language, kind of like an opera in Hebrew. As long as he has to sing, why not do some tunes from Fiddler on the Roof? Or maybe a Barbara Streisand number. Why does religion have to be so serious, anyway? Have fun with it. Priests should all wear big red clown noses. You go to church, have a few laughs, you get a balloon animal on the way out.

I give Catholics a lot of credit. How do they keep track of all those saints? How do they decide who becomes a saint? I guess if you suffer enough, you can be a saint. In that case, all Jews should be saints, since we're good at suffering. Suffering's our thing. Yeah, Saint Goldfarb, patron saint of PMS. I think they should have a patron saint of hospital food. Saint Barf.

By the way, what does it really mean to take the Lord's name in vain? You stand in front of the mirror and go, "Goddamn, I'm good-looking."

Religion does have its good points. The lure of heaven is certainly tempting. Heaven is like the prize dangling there at the end of the endurance contest. You enter the contest, you jump over all these hurdles, and if you don't kill anyone along the way you get the prize.

But it's a mystery prize. No one really knows what the prize is. What if it turns out to be like those holiday gifts from your aunt, like bunny slippers? Can you pretend to like it? Sure, you can fool your aunt, but if there is a God of some sort, he or she is probably less gullible.

Some people say whatever you want heaven to be, that's what it is for you. My idea of heaven would be the men I wanted to sleep with but couldn't, all lined up next to a six-foot-tall hot fudge sundae. Now that's heaven.

Virgin Mugger

A couple of years ago I was coming home from a Steve Almond reading (if you don't know who he is, check him out - he's hilarious, not to mention very cute) and was about to put the key in my front door when I heard a voice behind me. I thought it was a neighbor - I turned around, and some guy was standing behind me on my front porch. He said, "Give me your purse and you won't get hurt." I said, "What?" He repeated himself. I stared at him, thinking, I'm not giving this asshole my purse, and trying to decide if I should just screech in his face and scare the shit out of him. He said, "I'm not kidding." He had no visible weapon of any kind, he wasn't touching me or trying to grab the purse, and he was so amiable about the whole thing that I didn't feel particularly threatened. If he was high on anything, it was probably weed, he was so mellow. I said, "I don't even have any cash," which happened to be true (I had thirteen cents in my wallet). He just stood there and looked at me like, shit, what now? I then yelled at him, "Get the hell out of here!" and he left. Didn't even run; just kind of sauntered away. He was probably the most lame-ass mugger I've ever heard of. I can't help but be grateful that, if I had to have an attempted robbery experience, I was lucky enough to have one with someone who was such a model of gentility. Was he a mugging virgin? Perhaps. Maybe just a Cambridge native. I speculate that maybe that one unsuccessful mugging attempt caused him to re-evaluate his life path and decide to go to college after all and follow his dream to become a marine biologist. But probably not.

Phone Therapy

Hello. Welcome to Phone Therapy. If you're depressed, press one. If you're trying to work through childhood traumas, press two. If you have multiple personality disorder, press three and four. If you have an eating disorder, press pound. You have pressed two, working through childhood traumas. If this is correct, press star. If you are the adult child of an alcoholic parent, press two. If you are the adult child of a parent addicted to twelve-step programs, press three. If you are the adult child of a Republican, press four. If you are the adult child of sixties love children who named you after a plant, press five. You have pressed five. If you are a woman who loves too much, press one. If you are a woman who reads too much about women who love too much, press two. You have pressed one. If you are drawn to men who are emotionally unavailable, press two. If you prone to affairs with married men, press three. If you want to have an affair with a married man, hang up and call 555-2123. If you remember why the hell you called in the first place, hold on and someone will be with you shortly. Have a wonderful day.

Is That a Squirrel on Your Head, or Are You Happy to See Me?

The toupee was invented in 1572, when bald Prince Comb-over slid across the floor and injured himself while attempting a headstand. At this crucial turning point in history, men decided (apparently oblivious to most women's attraction to elongated foreheads) that even bad hair was better than no hair. The first toupee was made out of pig whiskers. However, this was not only excruciatingly uncomfortable, but had the unfortunate consequence of causing the men who wore these hairpieces to snort at inopportune moments.

Cat hair was the next material to be attempted, but this was abandoned after the wearers began coughing up hairballs on the carpet. After the cat hairpieces lost their popularity, hairmakers graduated to dog hair. Regrettably, not only did the wearers develop a flea problem but also a rather disconcerting penchant for fire hydrants.

From dog hair, toupee-makers resorted to synthetic materials such as polyethylene, which they shaped with scissors and fitted onto the scalp. However, this material was quite flammable, and gentlemen's heads frequently ignited when they attempted to light their dates' cigarettes.

The next attempt was with polyester fibers similar to those used in carpets, which were also shaped with scissors – hence the term, "cutting a rug." Dust mites made these hairpieces unbearably itchy, and the rug shampoo used to clean them caused any real hair underneath to turn green and fall out.

Hair artists, as wig makers preferred to be called, then went through several other materials, including dyed plant leaves. Not only did these hairpieces look incredibly ludicrous, but the men wearing them developed a fear of cats, as the animals would often pounce on their heads and chew the leaves.

Subsequently, the practice of using real human hair was developed by a funeral director. Sadly, the wearers of these toupees often took on the characteristics of what later became known through popular films as the "living dead," much to the consternation of their loved ones.

At this point, bald men began the horrifying practice of flinging their side hairs across their scalps, as if this were fooling anybody. Unfortunately, this practice is still used today, for some unfathomable reason. Hairpieces, however, have been perfected to the point where one almost can't see the seams, although occasionally one may be compelled to ask the wearer, "Is that your real hair, or did an otter die on your head?"

Garbled Apostrophes

I find garbled apostrophe usage extremely irksome. "Your" is NOT the same as "you're." To illustrate, if I may: if you write "you're an asshole," you are calling someone an asshole, but if you say "your asshole" you are, in fact, directly referring to their actual asshole. Notice I said "their," which is possessive, and means the asshole in question belongs exclusively to them; rather than "there," which refers to a place their asshole might be, somewhere in the vicinity. Of course, technically "his" or "her" asshole would be correct, unless I were referring to a collective asshole.

I realize that, although most of us learned grammar and spelling in elementary school, not all of us retain all that info after a certain point. I suppose it depends on the kind of info your brain tends to keep, and the kind it discards. I learned algebra years ago too, but now I couldn't calculate an equation for all the hunks in Hollywood. And for some reason, my brain has hung onto grammar and basic sentence structure, but I find myself needing spellcheck more than I used to. Spelling is apparently one of the first things to go after 40 or so, soon to be joined by one's lips. We seem to lose our lips after 40. Where do they go? Do they get swallowed up by our teeth? Perhaps they go to that mysterious place where lost underwear goes. Somewhere in an alternate universe, there are all these young body parts floating around with someone's boxer shorts.

Barbie Envy

Do we still aspire to Barbie? To be blonde, svelte, perfect, with a tall dark man with thick hair and a perfectly muscled body by our side? Barbie manufacturers have come up with revised versions of the original Barbie, that more accurately reflect the current reality of most women’s lives. Barbie can now be found in various sizes, shapes and ethnicities, and wearing business attire.

I say they haven’t gone far enough. How about PMS Barbie – Barbie with her hormones run amok? Or Bleary-Eyed Barbie – at six in the morning after a night on the town. Or how about Erotically Challenged Barbie – just not interested anymore. Or her alterego, Nympho Barbie. Then of course, there’s Self-Validated Barbie, who doesn’t need a man to feel good about herself.

Do little boys aspire to G.I. Joe? Personally, I think perfect-looking men are boring as hell. Why a kid would want to play with a Hollywood-handsome action hero is beyond me. I think GI Joe should have a beer belly or a few long hairs flung over his balding scalp (not that I find either of these attributes particularly alluring, but at least they're real).

Of course, little boys don’t tend to obsess about how their hair compares to Aqua-Man’s, or care if their ass is bigger than Superman’s. But still, I would think that a chubby pre-pubescent boy with braces and glasses would feel some sense of inferiority when faced with the physical perfection of Batman. Even his sidekick is good-looking in a vanilla-Republican kind of way.

As far as inanimate role-models go, the glorious imperfections of a Barbie with a crooked nose and a bit of cellulite co-habiting with a bald Ken sporting a few acne scars would certainly be a refreshing sight. They could be marketed as “Reality Barbie and Ken,” and have their own show on NBC. I wonder what their ratings would be like.

HOLIDAY HAIKU

HOLIDAY HAIKU

Holiday snowflakes
Ice clings to silver flagpoles
The dog’s tongue is stuck.

Hanukkah Harry
Brings gefilte fish and socks
Dad faints from the smell.


Holiday spirit
Scents of pine and cinnamon
Cat barfs on the rug.


Scent of Christmas pine
Angels, stars dance on branches
Why big shiny balls?


Santa Claus legend
Endomorph delivers gifts
What’s with the reindeer?


Christmas lights dangling
The kids short-circuit the wires
Oops - the house goes dark.

JOB INTERVIEW DON'TS

When the employer says, "Tell me about yourself"...
...tell him about how your divorce has made you a more spiritual person.

When the interviewer asks you about weaknesses...
...tell her you need to be jump-started in the morning.

When asked why you left your previous job...
...say your supervisor caught you loading office printers into the trunk of your car.

When asked how you handle stress...
...say you tend to hold it in until you explode.

When the employer asks you for an example of your problem-solving abilities...
...tell him you figured out how to sleep with your eyes open to appear awake during staff meetings.

When asked what you know about the organization...
...say, "I heard you have a lot of hot men who work here."

When the interviewer asks you why there's a 3-year gap on your resume...
...tell her you're going to plead the fifth on that one.

When asked about your greatest strengths...
...say you can bend your pinkie finger back 180 degrees.

When asked where you want to be five years from now...
...respond, "On a yacht in the middle of the South Pacific."

When the interviewer asks, "Why should I hire you?"
...answer, "Why indeed?"

When the employer asks you what you enjoyed the most about a previous job...
...say, "The Friday morning doughnuts."

When asked what questions you have...
...say, "Who was that cute guy we passed on the way to your office?"