Monthly Archives: August 2012

Mailbag Monday: Seren-DUPE-ity

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mailbagWelcome to Mailbag Monday. This week’s topic has to do with staying on the right side of the searching-single-lady morality line. 3, 2, 1, and action:

Dear Nerdy Romantic,

“Is it unethical to cause a minor traffic accident in an attempt to meet the really cute guy in the truck behind you?”

This is a prime example of what I like to call Seren-DUPE-ity — a situation in which every step to meeting a guy is pre-designed and plotted by you. He along with friends, family, future offspring, and whomever else you had to pay off along the way — however — know the experience as FATE.

It was, as they say, “in the cards” …. EXCEPT that you stacked the deck.

It was, as they say, “destiny” … EXCEPT that you snuck up behind Cupid as he was preening his wing feathers, knocked him out cold, stole his bow, and shot an arrow “straight through your lover’s heart” all by your lonesome.

oh no you di'intNow, I had to be really careful not to answer this reader’s question too soon. My knee jerk response was,

“Girlll! You gotta check your head before you wreck his flat-bed.”

But, then I thought about it some more and considered all the possible crazy acts of manipulation a woman could do to snag the man of her (lucid) dreams. Many hours and countless disturbing Google images of sexually cannibalistic black-widow spiders eating the heads off their male lovers later — here’s what I came up with:

Commence: Dance of Chart Joy

  • X axis: Act of manipulation
  • Y axis: Correlating degree of cray-cray

* Color blocking coincides with Department of Homeland Security threat levels

** Full definition of each act of manipulation beneath chart

*** Click on chart for larger image

Mis-FAKE-N Identity: Good, clean, taradiddling. Goes like:

  • You spot a cute guy in the Large Breed dog-food section of the grocery store. You walk up to him and say,

“Brock [or any other macho-sounding guy’s name] is that you? Oh my God! It’s been so long. What are you doing in [your city]?”

  • Not Brock:

“The bad news is: I’m not Brock. The good news is: I would love to have dinner with you tomorrow night after I get done tagging sharks.”

*****************

Amelie: Like the movie, this involves adorable, doe-eyed acts of winsome capers. Probably includes any of the following accessories:

  • Bottle rockets, a trail of bread crumbs, garden gnomes, a Dutch windmill, decoder rings, 2 Speak-&-Spells, and one old curmudgeon neighbor made of glass.

*****************

Brake Slam: (THE ORIGINAL ACT IN QUESTION)

  • You’re stuck in non-moving “Carmageddon” like traffic. Little old-ladies with walkers strapped to the backs of giant land sloths pass you by in mocking laughter. In your rear-view mirror, you see that the guy in the truck directly behind you is uber-hot. So, at the next 3-inch roll forward, you tap on your brakes. His front bumper crushes your license plate and takes out a taillight, or 2.
  • You get out. He gets out. You smile. He smiles. You exchange insurance information and phone numbers.
  • You get back in your car. Your phone rings. It’s him. You spend the remaining 3 “rush” hours sharing your life stories and planning the details of your “second date” (the 1st of many inside jokes!)

******************

Nanny 1: Goes like:

  • He’s a handsome widow left to raise his angelic 3-year old daughter on his own.
  • You answer his ad for a live-in “domestic assistant.”
  • 1 healing year later, you have managed to restore the beauty of his home, and also repair the hole in his heart.

******************

Roofie 1: You slip a date-rape drug into his drink and take him home to “make love.”

******************

Stalkholm Syndrome:  Goes like:

  • Abduct him from the parking garage at his work
  • Hold him hostage in your IKEA-built, GORM storage solution wine cellar
  • Several months pass. He fully processes all 5 emotional stages of captivity.
  • You are no longer his prison guard; You are his salvation

*******************

Roofie 2: 9 months after slipping him a mickie, you knock on his door and introduce him to his newborn son/daughter.

*******************

Nanny 2:

  • He’s a happily married man with 2 young kids.
  • You answer his ad for a live-in “domestic assistant.”
  • 1 week later, you cut the brake lines to his wife’s car.

*******************

Bunny stew: Fatal Attraction.

The End

So, in the grand scheme (ing) of things, the reader’s act of seren-DUPE-ity really isn’t that bad. Is it the “right” side of the searching-single-lady morality line? Well, on the chart, it sits just above the “WILY” category of cray-cray.

Threat level: “Low” to “Guarded.”

If green/blue means GO for you, then I say GO — and be sure to invite me to the wedding… OR character testimony at the civil court lawsuit, as the case may be.

As You Wiiiiiiiiiiiishhh… (Dear John… Part Deux)

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Over the last few days, I’ve received several (okay, 2 to be exact) requests for “real-life” examples of the first-date-dud “Dear John” letter from my previous post.

Well, in the 3 enduring words from the farm boy-turned-pirate we all know and (true) love:

Here is the original template:

To _____,

Start off with a neutral compliment regarding his/her choice of outfit, restaurant, movie (date activity in general), and/or personal hygiene, etc…

Quick transition into but, however, even still, shockingly l I do not see us being romantically compatible. Further explanation is up to you.

(Do NOT suggest being friends. That will only leave the door open to hope. You must kill hope.)

Express luck in their future dating endeavors so as re-establish the complete and total massacre of hope.

Sincerely,

Proper Name (no nicknames. Too familiar. Gives hope a fighting chance)

___________________________________________________________________________

And, now for the actual letters:

(1)

To ___

I’m so glad you suggested the new coffee shop near Piedmont Park for our first date.

When you said you were “close to your family,” however, I didn’t realize that meant your mother would be joining us. Too much, too early, I’m afraid.

I hope you and Gladys find that perfect partner soon AND please tell her to send me that delicious sounding Kugel recipe first chance she gets.

Nicole

**********************

(2)

To ____

Can I just say “WOW!?” That is literally the first time I’ve ever seen a bicycle with beer koozies welded to the handle bars!

When you said you were a “people person,” I didn’t realize, however, that meant you were a 45 year old man with 3 room/Steely Dan cover band-mates. A bit crowded for me, I’m afraid.

Best of luck in your romantic future,

Nicole

**********************

(3)

To ____,

I won’t beat around the bush. I didn’t realize that online picture of you dressed up as a warlock was NOT for Halloween.

I’m so flattered that you and your coven have chosen me as your “fourth” to “call the corners.”

But, as the ole’ Groucho Marx saying goes, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as its member.”

Many happy Solstices,

Nicole

**********************

(4)

To ____,

Thank you for opening my eyes to the disturbing amount of uneaten food that gets tossed in our city trash cans everyday.

I also didn’t realize when you said you were an “outdoorsy” guy — that meant you lived in the park and slept on an inflatable playground bounce house.

I hate squirrels. This will never work,

Nicole

**********************

(5)

To _____,

High praises for getting us a table at Woodfire Grill. I’ve wanted to eat there for years!

However, I completely lost my appetite when I realized the “FBI agent” part of your profile meant “Firm Believer In Christ” who thinks that I, as a Jewish person, am fated to burn in the fiery pits of hell lest I give my soul over to the Messiah.

Hey jacktard. They call us the “Chosen” people for a reason.

Mazel Tov,

Nicole

**********************

(6)

To _____,

So, by “great listener,” you really mean, “loves the sound of my own voice.”

Good luck with that,

Nicole  

**********************

(7)

To _____

You had me at your Ed Hardy t-shirt.

And then you lost me when — as I was ordering the chocolate mousse cake for dessert — you said Penelope Cruz used to be a “hot hottie” before she had a baby.

But don’t worry. I know it was only your teensy weensy eensy dick talking.

Nicole

**********************

(8)

To _____,

Lovely cologne you wore last night. What was that intoxicating aroma? Cedar Nettles?

Anyway, when you said you were “an adventurous guy who thinks outside the box” — I didn’t know that meant you liked to pee on women during sex.

This is a judgment-free zone, but I myself am more of a separation of church and state kind of gal — if you get my drift.

You should really try OK Cupid,

Nicole

Peeing Calvin

Dear John… or Joe, or Jack, or whatever your name is,

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Sorry for the Mailbag Monday delay, folks. I had a dear friend come into town last night and instead of opening up my digital post box to answer your burning questions…

… I opened a bottle of Bulleit Bourbon and babbled on about how Walter White of Breaking Bad has done to my moral compass what a Pit Bull does to a peanut butter Kong Stuff’N toy. Thank AND You for that.

kong stuff'nSo, now that I’m back on track, let’s begin:

Dear Nerdy Romantic,

“I started an account with a popular online dating site a few months ago. So far, so… blah! Several dates but no chemistry, at least from where I was sitting. But each time, the man sent me a follow-up email or text to schedule our next date. I never returned the messages, and eventually he (they) got the picture and stopped contacting me. Is this a totally douche bag thing to do?”

Make no mistake: This is NOT the “Just Let Me Know” debate of 2012 all over again. The 2 scenarios couldn’t be more different. Basically, the “JLMK” (trademark pending!) post was about a date that without question knocked the socks off, rumpled the locks on both parties involved. There were 4 eyes smizing, 4 pupils dilating, 4 legs shifting ever closer under 1 table shrinking, 5 hours passing like 5 minutes, and 2 sets of shoulders bobbing from 2 laughs blending into 1 synchronized blissed-out buzz.

What we’re talking about here is the first date dud. No sparks. No chemistry. No connection. The conversation falls flatter than matzah bread, and as you sit there watching the other person’s mouth move up and down, the muffled voice inside your own head cries out:

“Dear God when is this hostage crisis going to end so I can go home, tear off this pair of tummy taming Spanx, slip into my red flannel footsie pajamas, open a family size bag of Pirates Booty, and fall asleep watching ‘Legends of the Fall’ for the 15th time?”

So — is it REALLY necessary to let that person know that said first date was also the last?

To which I say, YES! To not do so is the luxury of likee alone. But I have been the LIKER. Oh yes, I have been the liker. Totally oblivious to the mushroom-cloud-sized-signs that HE is not into me: The incessant shifting in his seat; the regular “Wow! Look at the time” remarks when it was only 1:30… in the afternoon; the sudden emergency-have-to-leave-now- phone call; the snoring…

And yet I still drove home all googly-eyed, humming the Partridge Family’s “I think I Love you,” and wondering if when push comes to shove, will I really stick to my promise to keep my last name.

WHAT I WOULD HAVE GIVEN right then and there for someone to have walked me up that hilltop of delusion and tell me to “look at the bunnies” while putting a cap right in the back of my foolish fantasy.

So now, immediately after any first-date flop, I send an obligatory email: short, simple, straightforward. No room for doubt “Dear John,” for the sake of decency, non-douchebaggery, and future match.KARMA.

Basic template below:

To _____,

Start off with a neutral compliment regarding his/her choice of outfit, restaurant, movie (date activity in general), and/or personal hygiene, etc…

Quick transition into but, however, even still, shockingly I do not see us being romantically compatible. Further explanation is up to you.

(Do NOT suggest being friends. That will only leave the door open to hope. You must kill hope.)

Express luck in his/her future dating endeavors so as re-establish the complete and total massacre of hope.

Sincerely,

Proper name (no nicknames. Too familiar. Gives hope a fighting chance)

Text in the City Part 2

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Gratefully, I’m not alone. This IM-tercourse is a growing phenomenon in our cyberspace replacing real physical space culture. Urban Dictionary.com now defines the hookup that literally has to be hooked up to a cell phone charger as a “Textationship.”

textationshipNot surprisingly, at the 2-week no-face-time itch, my coworker also decided to end things with Balki — who, as it turns out, really is “Mr. Big” in this “Text in the City.” To wit: A short time after kicking Balki to the virtual curb, my coworker ran into a friend at a party who described meeting an all-too-familiar “great guy” — one who sends hilarious texts but can never seem to get together in person. (Hint: It was Balki)

So, Balki the cell-phone boyfriend, you smooth keypad operator, if you’re out there in the world wide webosphere, this is my homage to our 2-week textationship. Thanks for the MEME-ories!

(The creation of this video would not be possible without the help of the following:

Video Technician: Ohki Komoto

Director of photography: http://theirreverentcouponer.tumblr.com/

Music: Sigur Ros “Hoppipolla”

Cat: Poppycock Artemis Schmute the III)

Text in the City Part I

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A few weeks ago I was carpooling with my office mate to work. She and I are both active in the match.community and so our hour-long commute regularly flies by with entertaining/horrifying tales of online profiles distorting reality:

  • By “middle age,” he meant that he knows who Methuselah was… personally.
  • By “separated” he meant his wife thinks he’s at a Bible study meeting.
  • By “male” he meant the “Crying Game,” only backwards.

But this time, instead of the usual “who let the circus sideshow out” grimace on my coworker’s face, she was, dare I say, smiling.

 “What’s with the grin?” I asked, dying of suspense.

To which she replied, “I actually think I may have met a really great guy.”

 “This, I have to hear.”

And so she went on to describe this super attractive, hilarious, intelligent, ambitious, did I mention hilarious 30-something man who truly seems to be the Honey to her Graham, the wig to her wam.

“This is so amazing. When are you guys going out next?” I pried.

“Well, that’s the thing,” she shifted. “We’ve never actually met in person. But we talk all the time; he texts me like 7 times a day just to check in and see how things are going.”

Suddenly, I felt as if I had been mowed down by the green goblin semi in Maximum Overdrive.

Maximum Overdrive

Green Goblin Semi

“What’s wrong,” she asked nervously.

“His name,” I hesitated. “His name doesn’t happen to be [Here I will use an alias to protect the innocent] Balki Bartokomous, does it?”

perfect strangers

Balki Bartokomous

She: “Yes!”

Me: “No.”

She: “Yes!!”

Me: “Nooooooooo!” (This went on for a while until I finally explained HOW I knew the WHO she was talking about)

A few months earlier, I too had met Balki Bartokomous on the same online dating site. I “winked.” He “winked” back. I emailed. He emailed back. We exchanged digits. And then, my cell phone lit up like the night sky on the Fourth of July.

It was like nothing I had ever known before. All hours of the day, a cute “Good Morning” prompt at 8AM, and a silly “Sleep Tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” at midnight — then in between, a steady stream of funny, engaging, entertaining, and affectionate bulletins. At first, the sound of my phone’s incoming message alert was like a sweet, chirping cartoon songbird flying into my window and tying yellow ribbons in my hair with its adorable cartoon beak.

But, after 2 weeks of him shirking every suggestion I made for us to actually meet in person with one apologetic “I have to work late” excuse after another — those melodic cartoon songbirds became the shrieking raven, nevermore.

As much as it hurt, I had to pull the plug on our unreal-ationship. Because after all the Carpal tunnel thumb cramps, and all the countless hours of him Wink Face Emoticoning sweet nothings in my ear, we would forever be but – WAIT FOR IT – “Perfect Strangers.”   

Mailbag Monday

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Shabazz! I’ve decided to designate the first day of each new week as “Mailbag Mondays” — the day I reach into my digital postbox and address a randomly-picked comment. (By “random,” I mean intentionally chosen for strongest audience appeal.)

mailbagI fished today’s comment out of the “Spam” folder – which I’m beginning to realize is WordPress’s way of shielding me from any negative feedback. But I say any publicity is good publicity. So without further adoodley-do:

The comment is in response to my August 10 post “Dumbroll, Please.” Said reader writes:

“Honestly, if you had received those “clever” emails from a guy, would YOU have responded? They don’t sound real enough to bother. They sound like a chat bot wrote them. …They are not stupid enough to answer!”

There’s a lot going on here so I’m just going to dive right into the main argument of – “Would you have responded?”

My “Honest” answer: ABSO-FRUITLY!, and without question. Have you not read my blog? Any guy that is going to nab my attention is going to do so via his sense of humor.

WORDPLAY is my FOREPLAY! Commuter folding bikes and puns do to me what sports cars and rippling biceps do to the Jersey Shore girls. You show me your glue gun and backlog of Tiger Beat magazines and I’ll show you mine. You stimulate my brain, and you stimulate everything else.

Across the board, the guys who have won me over in their emails fit into this “clever” category, with several of them actually evolving from digital pen pals to dating partners. One guy — who I believe to this day is the secret love child of Macgyver and Martha Stewart — emailed a miniature box likeness of me constructed out of cardboard paper and pipe cleaners.

On our third date, we made a small army of these 3-dimensional figurines and went around town, leaving them on random door steps with sweet messages like, “You put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop”  — AND — “Work your cares away, down at Fraggle Rock!”

Another guy introduced me to the strange and fantastic craze of Mexican Pointy Shoes:

mexican pointy shoesHe and I spent a full week in back-and-forth emails brainstorming everyday activities confounded by said shoes. Partial list reprinted here:

Playing hacky sack, running a 3-legged race, playing the piano, pole-vaulting, bobbing for apples, walking on stilts, decorating the top of an Xmas tree, trying to slide down the chimney as Santa, scuba diving with flippers, playing hide and seek, using an airplane bathroom, walking a tight rope, lying inside a magic saw-in-half box, rowing a boat, walking up a mall escalator, trying to get off a moving sidewalk, being buried in sand on the beach,  blowing up a balloon, climbing a tree, mounting a horse…

So the answer is YES! I would respond to those kinds of “clever” emails.  I have responded to those kinds of “clever” emails. And I will continue to respond to them.

An important CAVEAT:  There is a very fine line between charmingly corny and criminally creepy. I have received my fair share of match.com messages that motivated me to foster a Rottweiler and take up Krav Maga. 2 particular examples:

  • “Hey gorgeous. I’m in town for the weekend from New York. Staying at the W Hotel. Come by and lets listen to the Cure in my hotel, room 343.”
  • “I think I saw you in the produce department at Publix. I was the one in handcuffs being escorted out of the back by the store cop. Where will you be in 9 months to a year?”

Dumbroll, Please!

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When I first jumped down this crazy rabbit hole called online dating, a close girlfriend who had a good 5 months running start ahead of me offered this shiny gem of wisdom for the coming journey:

“Guys do NOT like a clever girl. Don’t be the one to initiate contact. Wait for them to “wink” or email. Then, play dumb until you actually seal a date.”

Hearing this from her – a drop-dead gorgeous, double PHD grad student in anthropology and medicine – was not “like” the Mad Hatter spouting jabberwocky gibberish to Alice. It was exactly that. I rejected her advice on moral principle, and ventured into the digital wonderland alone, determined to fight off an army of suitors taken in by my pun-tastic, “CLEVER” self.

ONE-plus year into this, I’m beginning to think my burbled jubjub friend was onto something.

The proof, as they say, is in the single, JELL-O pudding cup Saturday night watching “Dawson’s Creek” reruns.

Also, the first set of emails below — ones that fall into the (alleged) “clever” category — are actual messages I sent to match.com guys that received NO, nil, nada response:

1. To guy who says he like “haiku’s” in his profile. I write:

             “Strike a match-dot-com/

             Hark, my baggy pantaloons/

             Stop, drop, rock AND roll.”

             Nico

********************

2. To nature guy who likes camping and sleeping under the stars, I write:

 “Up here in a friend’s North GA-cabin and I just saw a tailless squirrel! Do you think the ghost of Daniel Boone needed a new hat? Or maybe the critter brought a nut to a knife fight. Any thoughts?”

Nico

*********************

3. To high school grammar teacher:

“I’d like to see your dangling participle.”

**********************

4. To random guy who popped up in my Daily recommendations:

 “I think we might have a lot in common. I too enjoy the ‘little things in life.’ Flea circuses, pet sea-monkeys, anti-matter.”

***********************

5. To hipster-looking dude with mustache:

 “I’m curious. It’s a warm, sunny afternoon. Do you prefer to:

a.      Ride your bike to the farmers market and enjoy a hearty lunch in the park.

b.      Stay inside your cold studio and watch “Death Bed, the Bed that Eats.”

c.    Climb to the top of a weather tower to gather evidence as to why ‘global warming’ is actually the result of covert, Soviet climate controlled experiments.”

**************************

6. To guy who said he’s “fresh off the Quaker commune”  I write:

 “So, now that you live in the big city, how are you adjusting to life with electricity and pre-shucked corn?”

 Nico

**************************

7. To other random guy who popped up in my Daily recommendations:

 “I think we might get along. You wrote that you’re looking for a woman who’s ‘beauty will bring you to your knees.’ And well, I’m a midget.”

 AND NOW — the next list includes those emails I sent 1 – only AFTER receiving a wink or message, and 2 -that got an immediate response and invitation to go out from the guy:

  1. Hey. I like your pecks. You look like you could lift a Porsche over your head with just your mind.
  2. Hey, the new Bourne movie is sooooo rad! You look rad too.
  3. Hey, I like your bathroom mirror shot. It really captures your angular jaw line.
  4. Hey, I’m a former nun just released from the convent in search of a new God to worship.
  5. Hey, since when did Ryan Gosling have a younger, hotter brother?
  6. Hey, are you a terrorist because those are some serious weapons of mass destruction.
  7. Hey, I have a really low tolerance for alcohol.

There is no moral to this story. There is only amoral.

The Meetup that spawned a revolution… or, not

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Enough was enough. My fear of choking to death all alone in my apartment — only to be found 9 days later after my cat had eaten my face off and the stench of my decomposing body finally forces my next-door neighbor to call 911 — had reached a point where I started cutting my food into tiny, baby-sized bites.

poppycock the cat

Tastes Like Chicken!

I owed it to myself and all social retards like me to create a safe place to come together and revel in all the dorky entertainment we could find. So, I crawled out of my hermit shell and organized the “Nerdy Romantics” Meetup. Here is the survey for qualifying members:

If you can answer YES to the following questions, this Meet Up is for you:

1. Are you single or single-ish (i.e. still claim ‘0’ dependents on your W4) WHILE all of your closest friends have either joined the rat race, moved away, gotten married, and/or squeezed out a litter of rugrats — SO that on the off chance you do, in fact, get together, their minds are preoccupied by thoughts of breast pumps and butt paste AND not the new, hip farm-to-table bistro?

2. Are you newish to the city and find that your coworkers or classmates are not people you’d want to meet in a dark alley behind a convenient store — all the while, the already established circle of friends are about as easy to penetrate as the Heathers?

3. Have you tried event planning sites but find most of them host activities far outside the city and at peak traffic hours during the weekdays?

4. Has your Match Dot-Com Bubble burst?

5. Are you somebody who doesn’t mind going out to a movie or dinner alone, but is finding it harder and harder to appreciate other interests without the company of others? Examples:

  • You can’t feasibly run a three-legged race with your shin tied to a crash-test dummy.
  • Going white-water rafting with just yourself makes for a death-defying uneven weight distribution.
  • And finally, nothing is sadder than getting stuck in mid-air after trying to ride a see-saw solo. Take it from me!

6. Are you someone who prefers backyard bocce ball games to smoke-filled bars – AND — picking apples in North Georgia to picking off squirrels with your sawed off shotgun?

7. Have your past four weekends included watching re-runs of Downton Abbey in search of rare, historically inaccurate idioms?

8. Are you one “Teach Yourself to Crochet” You Tube video away from eating cat food out of the can and reviving your old Angus Macgyver Fan Club?

9. Do you go on “The” Facebook primarily to play Scrabble? Do you still wear “Sneakers”? And, did you use the phrase “Bob’s your uncle” recently in casual conversation?

10. Are you tired of coming to the realization that cutting your cookbook recipes down to accommodate ONE single serving turns Rachel Ray’s tuna casserole into a baboon’s ASS-erole?baboon ass

In less than 2 months, Nerd Rom’s have grown to 225 members. Yet, in the 2 events I actually organized, only 1 other person actually attended, and that was my already-existing friend, who I bribed with free cookies to go.