How to Get Girls in a Post-Dating Society, Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

Don't Wear the Pants*

First of all, if your name is something boring and respectable, adopt some kooky nickname, like... Mookie. That will be her first whiff of your utter manliness. Once that's settled, do everything you can to make her the man in this situation. Go ahead and ask her out to dinner, but when she accepts, twist it around so that she was somehow the one to ask you out. The key here is mixed messages. Tell her you'll make the arrangements, but by that you mean you'll give her some options. When she expresses confidence in your ability to plan the date, ask what kind of food she likes -- but when she answers you, don't just select a restaurant like some kind of patriarchal dictator! Give her some choices anyway. Whatever you do, don't make a decision. What if something goes wrong? You want to make sure it's her fault. If the whole business of planning the date takes fewer than three days, you're doing it wrong. This is best achieved by conducting the entire conversation through texting. (Bonus points for using ellipses to end every... single... message...)

Afterward, when if she indicates that she is not interested in a second date, deny that the first one was even a date.

Shame Her Into It

The goal here is to show the woman what a problem she is, in order to present yourself as a solution. Just watch how Felix does it. (Pro tip: Pay attention to his exquisite use of filler.)

"Blah blah blah how old are you? Blah blah blah you're single right?" Now step it up a notch: "Blah blah blah I know it's hard, being a single woman in this society..." (Show how understanding you are by offering your sympathy -- nay, empathy -- for how pathetic she is. Trust me, she will be shocked.) "...blah blah especially getting older..." (Never mind that you are just as single, and older than she is, and not a woman at all. Having a vagina is practically a disability -- one that you are totally qualified to represent because blah blah.) "...blah blah social status..." (Remember, "marital status" is synonymous with "social status," so choose the latter for the sake of clarity.) At this point, if she's not falling for you -- she never will.

*Figuratively speaking, I mean. If you're chasing women without wearing pants, this lesson is too advanced for you.

This is a ridiculous and embarrassing problem.

My current roommate is my mom (and for the record, this is not like last time when I moved in to her place; we actually got a place together). When I lived with her before, it was horrible because my mom is a hoarder and all her crap was everywhere. And she would get mad at me for being too loud at night and freak out when I had people over without telling her (even though I did tell her but she forgot... but I digress).

This time, she has to put up with my art and my fruit-bowl-made-of-chopsticks, and maybe she thinks this is payback time because I find myself nagging her to be quiet after 10 p.m., and clean up your mess, and no more friends over until you finish your chores. You keep on like this, Mom, and you'll be grounded till you're sixty-five.

I could use a few of those NOPE cards, though.

I played this game Exploding Kittens over the holidays, and despite its promising exterior ("A Card Game For People Who Are Into Kittens And Explosions And Laser Beams And Sometimes Goats"), I unfortunately cannot recommend.

The whole point of the game is to avoid death by kitten explosion. To do this, one must play nonsensical cards (Don A Portable Cheetah Butt, Take Your Friends Beard-Sailing On Your Beard Boat, etc.) that allow one to draw more cards, reverse cards, shuffle cards, peek at cards, decline further cardplay, or if you're lucky, die.

If I wanted to be assaulted by constant chaos, take a bunch of actions that only keep me going around in circles, and be in survival mode all the while, I could just keep on with my actual life. I don't need a game to rub it in.

Happy new year!

Ask Me About My Colon

I'm doing some Christmas shopping and can't find what I'm looking for, so I select a Squatty Potty instead and unashamedly carry it around the store. What do I care? It's not like someone's going to stop me and be all, "What's that?"

So then of course some guy stops me and asks, "What's that?" I matter-of-factly tell him it's a Squatty Potty. It's supposed to be good for digestion. "Does it work?" Are we really having this conversation, stranger? I pretend like I'm not familiar with the product and tell him my friend says it's life-changing, which she does. We get into a ridiculously in-depth conversation about how it straightens out the colon to achieve the desired results. I get the sense he wants to continue the conversation, but I am heading to the register. Please let this not be a new pick-up strategy.

The Bed Bath & Beyond self-serve gift wrap station is all out of big bags, so I ingeniously put two square boxes together to make the most giant box. It takes forever to assemble this and then cover it in yards of paper, but in the end it is a most glorious presentation! The staff probably think I'm making a big show of gift-wrapping to hide that I really bought it for myself.

Then I remember that I walked a mile to the store, so I walk home carrying a massive package on my head and on my side and on my other side, and when I get home my arms are so sore I almost can't pick up a glass of water (that I quickly down after all the exercise I just did).

See how my mutant box dwarfs the other gifts, and verily the tree itself!

Merry Christmas.

Eligible Bachelors Click Here For Free Gift!

Actual sentence said to me at Thanksgiving: "Do you want to be included in the couples' gift exchange?" Why... am I a couple now? Oh no, that's right, I'm the only one of the six siblings not part of a couple. Of course I said yes, because otherwise on Christmas I will have fewer significant others and fewer presents than everyone else.

So now I have fewer than thirty days to get a boyfriend and proceed to convince him that it's not too soon to meet my family. This should be a piece of cake.

On the other hand, if I participate in the couples' gift exchange as a single, I don't have to share my present... win-win.

Severe sleep deprivation + PMS = just stay in a padded room

Being sleep-deprived is like being drunk and hungover at the same time. I am probably not okay to drive and I have a terrible headache. Then add PMS into the mix and I am really a danger to myself and society.

Why is sleep so hard...

It's kind of hard to concentrate after getting shot to death.

My workplace's idea of a scary Halloween celebration was to have a "violent actor" training while in costume. I decided against strapping a weapon to my pirate thigh on this particular day.

This was no earthquake drill -- we spent almost two and a half hours on this training. First we listened to a presentation, during which we were asked how we might become aware of the presence of an active shooter. Gunshots, people screaming, people running, people bleeding, etc. Duh. Then we watched a video of a dramatized mass shooting (during which some colleagues were already crying), and then we tried to survive our own drill. Just go back to work as usual. In about ten to fifteen minutes, someone's going to come to kill you. Good luck. It's just like a haunted corn maze except that you're trying to do mail merge while waiting for psychos.

Of course no one could focus after that, so instead we discussed our options. Should we run? Do we hide? Would scissors make an effective weapon?

When the alarm went off, though, we had seconds to shut the blinds (because somehow that took higher priority than locking or at least shutting the door that was propped open), but before I could take a single step -- BANG, BANG, BANG BANG BANG (actually a guy yelling "BANG") -- my whole office was eliminated. I thought back to that dumb question the officer asked us and added one more answer: You might become aware of an active shooter when you see him in the doorway and your colleague next to you just got shot and the gun is pointed at you. I think I was casualty number three out of forty. And in real life the alarm would not even have sounded yet because we would have been the reason for the alarm. You never think you're going to be first.

We had a debriefing and then I was still supposed to work another hour. Right.

I found the training useful for people who are not first, and I can see why they left the fourth possibility -- dying -- out of the training. That's what we're trying to avoid. But if you're first...goodbye. It just seemed absurd, not only because of the costumes, but because we even have to do this at all. It's likely enough that someone's going to randomly kill us that we need to do something about it, so let's practice running and hiding and fighting. (And dying.) And then let's keep teaching people English as a second language and doing mail merge to improve their lives. Not that I have a better solution.

Oh hello crazed shooter, just a moment while I refer to my pocket guide...

I know I've said this before, but... I don't think I get paid enough.