How does he do that?

I have a music-related question that has been making me itchy and irritable: How the eff can Van Morrison write a song like The Way That Young Lovers Do that takes at least three or four listens before it barely begins to sound rhythmic and appealing?

If I were writing a song, I would write it based on what sounds good to me immediately. So I would end up writing songs with simple, immediately apparent rhythms. In other words, shit.

I wonder if "The Way That Young Lovers Do" sounds good to anyone after a single listen. Even to him. That’s not to say that it sounds bad at first, just messy. And that’s not to say that it sounds good to everyone after enough listens — a lot of people are simply unable to get past Van’s voice, and that’s understandable. But the thing about songs that take longer to “get” is that they typically stay interesting a million times longer. That’s been the case with 88% of Van’s songs I’ve listened to.

My only conclusion is that Van Morrison knows a heck of a lot more about music than I do. That’s not much of a conclusion given that the man is on album number 40-something, but my point is that he must hear music in a way that I cannot fathom, or at least understand it well enough to be able to anticipate what will eventually be interesting and stay interesting.

That’s probably what separates great musicians or painters or writers or office managers or salespeople or center fielders or tailbacks or name-your-profession-here from merely good ones: They have senses for what they’re doing in ways that the average person cannot fathom, or at least a depth of understanding that allows them to anticipate results miles ahead of the field.

That seems pretty obvious. But it still makes me itchy.

where is She?

Here's tonight's Carolyn Hax attempt. I'm pretty sure this will be the one she finally responds to.

***

Oh Carolyn,

When will I ever find the Right Woman?

I’m pretty sure the latest one just wants my sex. They all do.

Why can’t she respect me for who I am as a man and as a fleshy soul?

I may not be perfect. I may sometimes tuck my sweatshirt into my pants. I may have the posture of a beached fish. But dammit that doesn’t make me a sex object. And it doesn’t make me unlovable.

I would crawl across mountains for the right girl. Or at least let her borrow my coupons to go see that documentary about the guy who climbs mountains.

I’d give her my heart, my fleshy soul, my coupons, and if she wasn’t a fatty, my sex.

So where is She?

-- Disgruntled Sex Object (with love and coupons to spare)

Fresh-startism

Part of Oliver Burkeman's latest post, slightly revised:

The idea of a pristine fresh start is enticing. Whose life is so perfect they don’t think they’d make a better job of it the second time around? How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found, published in 1997, contains instructions for committing what its author Doug Richmond calls “pseudocide”: faking your own death and starting again, unencumbered by the disappointments of the past.

The awkward truth, though, is that a similar, if less extreme, addiction to “fresh starts” underlies much of what we do. Self-improvement undertakings rest on the unspoken assumption that, by sheer force of will, we can cut ourselves free from unwanted personality traits once and for all. But fresh-startism seeps throughout private and public life. It’s the promise of most politicians campaigning for election, and of managers unveiling strategic plans to overhaul ailing companies.

The concept of the fresh start suggests a very bizarre notion of the self. It implies that you can “stand back” from your personality characteristics, nominate some of them for change, then set to work. But, obviously, we are those characteristics; they define us. The self doing the work is the self being acted upon. This needn’t mean change is impossible – clearly, it isn’t – but it makes things vastly more complicated. It means we’re inescapably implicated in what we’re trying to leave behind, and it makes the idea of a fresh start highly suspect. Start Where You Are is the title of three different books on happiness, but the real point isn’t that you ought to start where you are; it’s that you have no option: you are where you are.

To put it less delicately, you suck, and you're probably going to continue to suck. Deal with it.

However, I think there is an important difference between sucking at certain traits (e.g., social astuteness) and sucking at certain routines (e.g., eating Bojangles after your workout) and sucking at certain skills (e.g., drawing ponies).

With skills, with any effort, you can't help but to improve.

Routines, by definition, are less easy (and sometimes very hard) to change, because that's what makes them routines.

And with undesirable traits, well, you're probably better off learning to stop considering them undesirable, because you suck, and you are probably going to continue to suck.

(I'm not sure the skills / routines / traits distinction is the best one, but it seems clear that some kind of distinction is necessary.)

You (don't) give me butterflies, babe

I think I might keep sending emails to Carolyn Hax until she responds to one, or until I run out of questions, or until she blocks several of my email addresses. Here’s tonight’s. The question buried within here is legitimate, so please respond if you have thoughts.

***

Dearest sweet Carolyn,

Should I expect to experience butterflies with people I meet online? Is it a bad sign if I don’t?

Context: The last two women I was in a relationship with started as friends, and then I fell for them — madly so. We’re talking the type of infatuation where I could hardly think about anything else, whether they were in the room or not. We’re talking the type of infatuation where witnessing something as mundane and ordinary as a sneeze could make me melt. My assumption, perhaps a consequence of the country I was raised in, is that this sort of infatuation – what we call being “in love” – is a healthy and even important way to start a relationship. It is the explosion that starts the engine. Or something.

But with those feelings long since past, and with those relationships failed, and with most of my hours spent surrounded by a bunch of dudes and married people, it’s onto online dating. The thing is, it’s hard for me to understand how I even could feel a similar level of infatuation (or “spark” or “chemistry” or “clickability” or what-have-you) for someone whom, to this point, I knew only through an online profile and brief written messages. I don’t understand how it’s possible for my brain to conclude this person is deserving of my infatuation when it’s still trying to figure out who the eff this person is: their preferred communication style, what makes them chuckle, how they interact with other people, their intentions, their hopes, dreams, fears, and ambitions. All that nasty stuff.

This is not to say that I don’t find them attractive or impressive or likeable. I have sincerely enjoyed the company of some of these online daters, but it’s quite a distance from that all-consuming sort of lustfulness. I go home thinking more about the date than the girl. My brain devotes some rational thought to whether the girl might be a good match but it fixates more on the ambiguities of the encounter — what those little gestures, or absence of gestures, might suggest, and whether I should have let her pay when she asked, and whether it might have been a bit too early to mention that I’m not wearing any underpants.

Point being that I find myself unable to fall for someone in more than an artificial sense when I’m still trying to figure out who they are, and who I am, and what I’m doing with my giant mess of a life, and why Carolyn Hax won’t respond to my messages.

In conclusion, I just want a definitive answer to whether infatuation matters. And if so, when I should expect it. And if not, whether I should have my marriage arranged.

-- Carolyn’s #1 fan without underpants

Mmm, romance(?)

I just submitted the thing below to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax, who will probably never answer it. And so I toss it to you, my friends and acquaintances and trolls, because you always have useful things to say.

***

Carolyn,

How do I know whether I like someone or just like to be liked? I need a good rule of thumb, or something.

Oh, and I have a weirdly related question: How do I know whether a woman is too good for me? I need a good rule of thumb for that, too.

For context, for the past few weeks I have been going on dates with three women I met online. They are super impressive people with so much intelligence and wit that it seems unreasonable for a guy like me to be associating with them. And they’re attractive to boot.

Of the three, I have an early favorite, but I am worried about having her as a favorite because she seems better than me in every way. Most disturbing is that she beats me in all the things I thought I was not bad at: She can own me in any intellectual debate, including ones in my own field; she can out-write me; I’m pretty sure any objective critic would say that she would win the taste-in-the-arts battle; and I used to think I was wise for a 20-something, until I met her. Despite all that, for some mysterious reason, she continues to agree to go on dates with me, which probably means she’s also way kinder than me.

Although I have a favorite, right now I don’t want to stop dating any of the women. Partially that’s because I don’t know them well enough / they don’t know me well enough to make any final decisions, but I also have this lingering suspicion that my motivation is more to find someone who likes me than to find someone I like. I’m wondering whether I might be keeping my “options” open just to hedge against rejection and bask in the feeling of possibly-being-liked. And the thought makes me feel kind of grimy.

But motivations are enigmatic creatures, and I’m wondering what advice you can offer about revealing my motivations to me. Then again, maybe I’m thinking about this in a completely wrong way, and in that case I’ve set you up perfectly to work your magic.

-- A guy who wishes he could come up with a clever pseudonym.

My sister is comely

At last night’s wedding I heard a frat boy say over a microphone that my sister is “hot.” Under ordinary circumstances, this probably would’ve made me more than a little agitated, but last night I couldn’t deny it: My sister is hot. But I’d prefer we use the term “beautiful.”

Which leads me to my first observation. I’m not much of a crier, but when Dad walked my beautiful sister down the aisle, I had to do everything in my power to prevent the pool of water collecting in my eyes from swelling to a point that it overflowed down my face. Think about baseball, I told myself. It’s not so much that I didn’t want to be seen crying in public; it’s that I had to deliver a speech in 2 minutes.

But that’s not the observation. The observation is that I don’t know what kind of tears these were. I used to think of crying as being the result of intense happiness or sadness or anger or frustration or awe or what-have-you, but I was not crying for any of those reasons, I don’t think. I don’t even know how to describe what I was feeling because it was such a jumbled bag, but I’m pretty sure the wetness in my eyes could not be fairly attributed to any one emotion or three emotions. Instead, it was the result of seeing two of the most important people in my life whom I love very much in a peak moment in their lives, with my dad, the most genuinely sweet man I know, walking his precious and now smoking hot daughter, whom not long ago he was cradling in one arm as he worked on his Master’s thesis with the other, down the brick aisle toward matrimony. These were tears of metaphor.

(I needed another couple of tissues as I thought about that.)

The night before the wedding, I slept as I usually do, like a baby who had a couple of beers. But it was a major struggle to fall asleep after the wedding, even though this time I actually had beer in me. There was so much activity and so much emotion from the night that my brain was racing to try to assimilate it all. It had more important things to do than sleep.

When people ask me about the wedding I’ll probably mention the fact that unlike as predicted there was not a single raindrop, and that the sun even peeked out just in time for the ceremony. I might also mention the band who effectively covered everything from AC/DC to Madonna, with you sometimes having to look up to make sure that it wasn’t really Madonna. Or I might mention the key lime and chocolate raspberry cupcakes, the squirrel that fell onto someone’s white-clothed table, and the narrowly-averted drunken toast disasters.

What will be harder to express is the general perfection of the night.

###

Bonus story: You’re trying to get *who* to dance?

As demeanors go, mine tends to be pretty straight-laced and monotone, some might even say boring. But people seem to think there is this crazy wild side of me just waiting to be let out if I only get enough alcohol in me. That explains why a number of people had it as a goal to get me on the dance floor. My sister upped the ante by assigning it as a job to one of her bridesmaids to “get Justin to dance.” I don’t know if you’ve ever been tasked with getting a person who is equal parts boring and stubborn to dance, but this is no easy assignment.

It’s true that I loosen up with a sufficient amount of beer, but if there is an outgoing partier suppressed somewhere deep within me, then it has yet to show itself — even to me. I want to be clear that my boringness in no ways means that I “play it safe.” I am relatively tolerant of risk – my speech was comparing marriage to dogs, after all – but as best as I can tell, whatever “Wild” is housed deep within me is not going to be freed by alcohol or by other people wanting me to. Singing and dancing, to my puritanical self, are activities best kept private — at least if you sing or dance like me. No amount of beer or peer pressure is going to change that opinion. And I’m okay with that.

The thing is, I don't come from a family of great dancers. I’m okay with that, too. I have no problem with other people awkwardly dancing, and in fact, I encourage it. I’ve said before that when I am Patriarch Justin, I am going to order that my family hold an annual dance party at which I will not dance, but will look on with a smile. In most areas of life I prefer participating over spectating, but this is not one of them.

So did they succeed in getting me to dance? Yes and no. I danced for half of two songs with three of the women most important to me: My sister, Mom, and my other big “sister,” Iris (the bridesmaid with the tough assignment). But these were slow dances. It ended up being a win-win because they felt accomplished for getting me on the dance floor, not realizing that I am totally fine with slow dancing, which to me is basically an elongated hug with some slightly-rhythmic shuffling of feet. I can handle that.

The Wild, though, is yet to be discovered.

Life is meaningless, but at least we’ve got our irony

It’s easy to forget, in the wake of the various thudding political and cultural broadsides it’s provoked, that irony ever had anything to do with subtlety. Most commentators and critics have comfortably equated the ironic mood with a smirking refusal to feel anything much beyond jaded pop-culture connoisseurship.

But irony remains a supple, indispensable literary device, squaring comically misguided human desires and aspirations smartly against their messier worldly outcomes. Put another way, the antithesis of irony, the great idiom of unintended consequences, is not earnestness or sincerity, as is now so widely assumed, but tragedy—the blank hand of fate remorselessly stamping out consequences, blithely oblivious to our own puny intentions. Since it highlights the folly of our longings against the indifference of the cosmos, irony is one of the only ways to register a feeble protest against this state of affairs while keeping something like a smile on one’s face.

--Chris Lehmann quoted in The Big Book of Irony

See also: How philosophy is like humor

I think, though, the best defense of irony/humor/mockery was made succinctly by Robert Lanham:

Irony has more resonance than reason.

That doesn’t make irony/humor/mockery good, however. It’s morally neutral. Here’s Judith Shulevitz:

Irony is not for anything. It has no higher purpose. It is a perspective on the world, one that takes advantage of distance and some weirdly skewed point of view to see everyday things—pomposity, convention, higher purposes, and the earnest advancement of points like this one—as ridiculous or sad or just somehow other than what they usually seem. It’s a lens that is morally neutral, deployed for evil as easily as for good.

I’d quibble and say that irony/humor/mockery tends toward "goodness" because it’s hard to make funnies out of something that is reasonable or non-absurd. But don’t take my word for it; take Scott Adams's.

You silly Universe, you

If I were an impartial evaluator evaluating the Universe, I might ding Her on some of Her design choices. For example, I think you’ll agree that these common dilemmas are not exactly efficient:

-- Is that girl flirting with me, or mocking me?

-- Is she crying, or laughing?

-- Do I feel nervous, or in love?

-- Are those lions fighting, or mating?

-- Do these clothes make me look fashionable, or like an old man on a fishing trip?

-- Mmm, do I smell apple cider in here, or did Grandpa fart?

Then there are the more subtle but equally as troubling dilemmas:

-- Is she optimistic, or insane?

-- Is she realistic, or depressed?

-- Is she ambitious, or unaware of her mortality?

Nor are humans the only creatures susceptible to such absurdities. I imagine that a polar bear, for example, probably views his afternoon snack of seal pup as simultaneously delicious and adorable. “You’re so cute I could just eat you up.” Oh wait.

I don’t know what to conclude from all this except that if there is a God or Great Universal Force or what-have-you, then She apparently has an abundant appreciation of absurdity (and words that begin with the letter ‘A’.)

I hope She’s amused.

Not working vs. *failing* to work

The slacker in effect combines procrastination and boredom into a single experience, under the rubric of evasion. Procrastination, like boredom, involves a stall between first-order desires and second-order desires: both want to want to do something, but find they do not. They are stuck. The difference between them lies only in how they experience this stall, either as a burden of always putting things off (procrastination) or as a burden of not being excited (boredom).

The idler, by contrast, experiences no conflict or stall between desires and desires about those desires. He understands that not working and failing to work are conditions that lie poles apart, and the genius of idling is not its avoidance of work but rather its construction of a value system entirely independent of work.

-- Mark Kingwell in the introduction to The Idler’s Glossary, slightly revised. See also: What, after all, is work?

"My Superpower Is Being Alone Forever"

Last night the last of my online dating accounts was terminated, officially ending my foray into online dating. Well, sort of. I am still dating people that I “met” online, but I am no longer online searching for dates. I wish I could give you some nice, profound reason for deciding to pull the plug, but I can’t. I just felt ready to be done. (Actually, I’ve had that feeling for weeks, and I had stopped browsing profiles a while ago, but I kept my account open so I could continue some chats.)

I was considering writing a big summary/wrap-up of my experiences, but then I saw Joe Berkowitz and Joanna Neborsky’s article in The Awl called “My Super Power Is Being Alone Forever” and oh my goodness I cannot imagine a better 1,700 word summary than the one they gave. I’m sure it must’ve been one heck of a painstaking writing process because to wrap everything they did into one coherent (ish) article – and to do it as hilariously and beautifully as they did – is super impressive.

Below I highlight some quotes and add my perspective.

***

The Blemish of Singleness

When you’ve been single for longer than a pregnancy term, the people who love you start to get concerned. They begin to wonder whether you’ll ever impregnate anyone.

I begin to wonder about that myself.

It does feel like there is a real gap-in-resume problem if you’ve been single for too long, especially if you’re getting old like me.

This factor may be a stronger motivator to get involved with online dating than we care to admit, but it’s not like we need the motivation. I am convinced that the problem dating sites are (badly) trying to solve is the biggest one we cats in developed countries face.

---

Marketplace of Undesirables

These websites constitute some sort of Matrix of Loneliness, connecting romantic undesirables and allowing them to mingle badly.

It’s true that there are romantic undesirables aplenty, but there are also a surprising number of romantic desirables. As the authors write later, “Everyone has a friend who is so charismatic, brilliant or good-looking that the idea of him or her trolling OKCupid is mind-boggling. I am haunted by those friends.”

I can attest that the caliber of some of these women is mind-boggling. At least in my area, the “quality” of the women is certainly not the problem.

---

The Kingdom of Anonymity

With infinite choice comes infinite opportunities to judge. The more options that exist, the pickier you become. Scrolling through profile after profile, I am transformed into an imperial king, surveying his goodly townsfolk from a balcony on high. Those with minor perceived flaws are summarily dismissed (“Next!”) because surely someone closer to the Hellenic ideal is just around the corner. Anyone cute might be cast aside for the smallest breach of taste: a penchant for saying things like “I love life and I love to laugh” or self-identifying as “witty." Yet even when I genuinely find myself attracted to someone, I'll still react with skepticism. What’s the catch? What dark and terrible secret causes her to resort to this thing I am also doing? After scanning closely for red flags and finally deigning her regally worthy, I dispatch a message. But then the truth reveals itself: the king is not her type and also he is not really a king.

Personally, I’ve never felt as spectacularly anonymous as I have as an online dater, united with everyone else on the site in that we all have a reason to be there.

That first quote is the best characterization of online dating that I’ve read.

Re: the second quote, I wouldn’t say that I felt spectacularly anonymous since in my area the selection of active users was not overwhelming. Plus, with everyone trying with all their might to put on their best Look-At-Me-I’m-Different face, I didn’t get the sense that all “options” were the same, except in their attempt to be different. Which I suppose is the most disturbing kind of sameness.

I certainly have never felt quite so much like a co-op display in a Barnes & Noble, as the authors put it. I felt plunged into an overtly commoditizing mating market, but a weird one where people are reluctant to admit they are looking for romance instead of just “new friends.”

---

Judging Based on Covers

Dating profiles reveal more about how you see yourself than how you really are, and more about how you want to be seen than how you will be.

Exactly. Here is the rest of the brilliant paragraph that led up to that sentence:

Putting together a dating profile means performing a self-autopsy and reassembling the pieces into Sexy Robocop. You save what’s worth salvaging and shield the damaged parts with reinforced metal. You strive to find the middle ground between showing you have nothing to hide, and just showing off. You carefully curate your interests as if they were co-op displays in a Barnes & Noble, reveling in the understated complexity of liking both Nicki Minaj and My Bloody Valentine. Your picture gallery broadcasts a series of defensive messages: “See? Other females aren’t afraid of me.” “See? I go to museums sometimes and mimic sculpture-poses because Culture.” “See? I’ve been to a Halloween party so obviously I don’t spend much time alone, crying to The Cure’s Disintegration LP and drinking wine from a can.”

Even if the incentives to be showy and falsely attractive magically disappeared, there is still a real problem of self-knowledge. We don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. It’d be interesting to see a dating site where friends/family were required to build the profile for the dater. Then again, I’m not sure that’d give us a more accurate picture than a self-summary because I’m sure that my grandma, for example, would’ve been not un-misleading with her “such a sweet boy” commentary.

And perhaps more importantly, we don’t know what we want in a partner or in a relationship as well as we think we do. At least I don’t. (I apologize for the royal we’s.) So even in a magical world where 400 word online profiles perfectly represent the person, we’ve (ahem, I’ve) still got problems.



---

Taking it (Un)Seriously

The only way for me to do this without ending up in an existential tailspin is to not take it too seriously. … If I never get my hopes up, nobody can accuse me of being too invested in the outcome. That way, when we actually do end up liking each other, it will feel more like something that just sort of happened—rather than the result of actively engaging in an organized simulacrum of human mating rituals. "Whoops, I seem to have tripped over my laptop and subsequently bumped into you on the Internet!”

I don’t think this is unique to online dating. This is the classic conundrum of romance: Finding a balance between taking the bumping-into-someone / let’s-just-have-fun-with-it approach vs. actually being invested in the outcome and actually letting yourself get interested in a girl. Go too far with the latter and you’re bound to lose mental stability, and too far with the former and then what’s really the point? Detached amusement? If you manage to emotionally detach yourself, then congratulations, your pride is safe!, but I regret to inform you that you are now a spectator in your own life.

The trouble with online dating is knowing when it makes sense to start being interested in a girl. Does it make any sense to fall in Like with a girl based only on the attributes presented in her profile and the brief messages you’ve exchanged? Almost certainly not. But can it happen anyway? Embarrassingly, yes.

But then there are the added complications of transitioning from knowing someone’s online persona to knowing their in-person persona, of having/expecting a “Spark” with someone you’ve just met, of trusting them when you know none of the same people, and all the while staying within social conventions that are, at best, nebulous.

---

Knowing What You Want

The disappointment of not being chosen, however, is almost preferable to the Fellini-style ennui of manufacturing chemistry with someone whose interests map well to yours while every moment becoming less certain whether that’s what you even want.

I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing – probably some of both, but mostly bad – but it seems that the biggest effect online dating has had on me is making me feel 90% less confident that I know what I want, not just in a woman or in a relationship, but in general. I am already a pretty opinions-weakly-held type of guy, so to push me more in that direction risks eventually turning me into one big amorphous blob of directionlessness.

---

The Uncomfortable Feeling of Having Met Online

I can rationalize about Internet dating for days. I can think up reasons for why the way my grandparents met is outmoded. But I don’t want any woman to think she was my last resort, and I don’t want to imagine that I was hers. When we say, “I’m so glad we found each other,” I don’t want it to refer to the way we had to find each other like hidden files in a hard-drive search.

The more that romance feels like an Amazon shopping experience, the more difficult it will be to remember that I am with a capital-P Person and not an exchangeable commodity. (Related post from April.)

###

Do I regret doing online dating? Has it been a failure?

To be determined, I’d say, but I think the answer to both is probably not.

It’s not terribly unlikely that a romance will come out of this, but even if it doesn’t, I suspect I’ll at least have a couple of new friends.

I feel pretty sure that I don’t want to do it again, but then again, if I stay single for five or six pregnancy terms, then I might feel compelled to hop back on eHarmony and start interviewing wife candidates.

Dog encounters fox, learns how to deal with uncertainty

As best as I can tell, my dog Khan has three basic needs:

1. Protect the fort
2. Understand the world
3. Snooze

Last night he found all three of those needs challenged when a fox appeared in the yard.

The fox scurried about haphazardly, but weirdly systematically, never straying far from the bedroom window where Khan was stationed. The fox’s process was simple: Sniff, pounce, chew. Sniff, pounce, chew. Every few seconds she would do this, frantically almost, in a race against daylight. Given the rate at which she was going and given her tiny stature – somewhere between a wiener dog and a house cat (but with a big fluffy tail and a tiny, adorable face) – I figured she must’ve been eating crickets and other modestly sized insects.

Khan, though, was paralyzed with confusion. He had no idea what this creature was or what the heck this rapid-fire sniff, pounce, chew action was all about. And he especially didn’t know what to do with himself. Was this a situation like with neighbor dog Sherlock where his presumed responsibility was more or less to holler, “Quit pooping on my lawn! I’ll fight you, punk.”? Or was this more of a neighbor dog Lady situation: “Oh please oh please come closer so I can smell your crotch and make frustrated noises at you”? Or was this more of the disinterested-aggressive approach like he takes with moles: “I smell you down there. When I get you I’m going to shake you so hard and so fast that you’ll fly 15 feet then just land there, belly up, stunned and wheezing. And then I’ll sniff you once and be done with you.”?

Maybe because these all seemed like viable options, he elected to do none of the above, and instead just sat there paralyzed in confusion staring at the fox and sniffing in her direction, hoping her odor would give him some clues.

Over an hour later, at around 3:40 AM, Khan started pawing at me to wake up. This was unusual. Me being a ruthlessly stubborn sleeper, Khan has learned not to even try. He knows that he gets up when I want to get up, not the other way around.

But this time he was persistent enough and aggressive enough that it worked. I rubbed my eye sockets, put on some shorts, and wandered outside with Khan, making sure there would be no trouble with Miss Fox.

Miss Fox was nowhere to be found. But her scent evidently lingered because Khan sniffed around with fury.

Khan’s confusion was turning into frustration and maybe anger. He was visibly distraught. I just wanted to give the poor guy a hug. But just moments ago a strange creature was doing strange things in His Yard! This could have been a Threat! Or it could have been a Love! This was no time for hugs, he silently told me.

After much fury and much frustration, Khan did the only thing he knew to do: He peed. All over the place. And then called it a night.

When we came back inside Khan still seemed distressed. He was huffy. He cuddled almost angrily.

From the window we noticed some movement along the treeline. It was the fox again. Sniffing, pouncing, and chewing. Khan unleashed a hilariously loud sigh.

A little time passed during which Khan must’ve had some Great Internal Realization. For no apparent reason, and with the fox scampering around now mere paces apart from him, in areas of the lawn fresh with his pee, Khan settled in, wrapped himself into a furry ball, and snoozed as deeply as I’ve seen him snooze. God I’d like to know what he knew. It was inspirational. All that frustration and anger and confusion vacuumed out in one big silent and non-sensical whoosh.

But then, witnessing what I just did, this dog suddenly and mysteriously in a peaceful slumber, I couldn’t sleep. I needed to know what he knew.

How I should end every post

I nearly posted thousands of words tonight about the many complications with finding/attracting/selecting someone to shack up with. It was a rambling bunch of nonsense. Even more so than usual.

But I liked the way it ended, because I think it tells you everything you need to know:

So we toss up our hands and say to Emotion, “lead us.” As if it were a choice.

The bottom line: Reality is complicated.

There is tragedy and comedy in how we spend our days trying to solve reality’s problems.

There is also tragedy and comedy in writing about it – as if detachedly – on one’s blog.

What, after all, is work?

In the introduction to The Idler's Glossary, Mark Kingwell spends a few paragraphs dismantling the arguments for Productivity-As-Virtue. Here is the first bit, slightly revised:

The work-ethic condemnation of idleness as unproductive is familiar; it is rooted in the even older notion that morose idleness is sinful, an insult to God’s grace. The shared idea in both secular and religious versions of the condemnation is that if one is not engaged in some useful occupation – if one is not working for gain of some sort, whether money or status or progress in the soul’s journey – then one is committing a kind of failure: to self, to community, to supreme being, or to all three.

The presuppositions of this view have been comprehensively dismantled by many philosophers by noting just how unfulfilling and stupid most work actually is.

What, after all, is work?

“Work is of two kinds,” Bertrand Russell notes: “first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics.”

Confessional

In How Did You Get This Number, Sloane Crosley hilariously describes her experience confessing for the first time.

Standing in line was not unlike being at a bank, lining up between slack velvet ropes:

Of course, confessing in Notre Dame is not quite the same thing as confessing in your standard red velvet phone booth to the Almighty. This sin-purging line was fifteen people deep and at least half an hour long. And what it led to was not a curtain but a très large and très see-through glass office between two of the ancient pillars. From the outside, you could make out the backs of sinners’ heads, bowing through a checklist of bad habits. It reminded me of the open cubicles of street-level bank branches in Manhattan, financial pet store windows. I am consistently impressed by their inhabitants’ ability to keep their attention focused on their clients and their staplers so neatly aligned with their tape dispensers. Perhaps priests were able to do the same with God, lay him out on the desk and staple him into each wayward soul.

Then there’s the question of what to confess about:

Do you begin with the time you stole a package of sparkly pipe cleaners from your second-grade art class and kept them in the bottom of your closet for two years, eventually throwing them out because you felt so guilty? Do you mention the lying, the drinking, the cheating, the gambling, the masturbation, the schadenfreude, the disrespecting of your parents, the disrespecting of other people’s parents, the doing of the drugs, the shoplifting of the gum, the coveting of worldly goods, the advantage-taking, the responsibility-foisting, that time you had a hangnail on your toe so you stuck your foot in your mouth and you bit it off like a monkey? Or is that all kind of a given by now?

And then there’s the feeling that results:

I felt good, relieved, which is pretty much the equivalent of feeling good in organized religion. Relief. You’re alive. God doesn’t hate you. Your livestock is healthy. No one gave you boils today.

Marriage is a lot like... getting a dog?

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but for my latest attempt at a "reading" for my sister's wedding, I wrote the thing below, loosely adapting it from Taylor Mali's poem called "Falling in love is like getting a dog."

This is fresh out of my brain and clearly needs work, so I would appreciate it if you would bust out your inner copy editor and offer some suggestions, general or specific. Comments can be left below the post or sent to justinwehr@gmail.com.

***

I imagine that, in a few ways, getting married is kind of like getting a dog.

Marriage makes messes.
Marriage leaves you little surprises here and there.
Marriage needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to say to marriage, “Don't you ever do that again!”
But, of course, it will.

Marriage is a big responsibility.
Marriage is harder than you might expect.
Marriage, at times, requires as much patience as you can muster.
Marriage means that you don’t always get what you want.

Marriage needs exercise.
Marriage thrives on long walks.
But sometimes it will run you around the block
and pull you in several different directions at once.

Marriage makes funny noises
and not-so-funny smells.

Marriage will make you laugh.
Marriage will make you cry.
Marriage will teach you how to live.

Marriage knows not to dwell on the past
or to worry too much about the future.

Marriage knows that the solution to most of the world’s problems is naps.

Marriage knows that good lives are built around good routines.
But it also knows that sometimes the best option is to chuck it all and jump in a lake.

In the end, marriage is probably too complicated
to be compared to a dog.

But marriage might be like a dog in one important way:

Despite all the messes and sacrifices and not-so-funny smells,
Those with a good marriage never question for a minute whether it is worth it.
And that’s because if you care for it, and if you pay attention to it,
It will, in return, give you love.

Marriage is a lot like...

My sister’s wedding is 16 days away(!), and I’m supposed to be standing up and saying stuff. A “reading” is what they’re calling it, except that they are trusting me to write my own material. I already made one shitty attempt at a writing, but I realize now that it was way too heavy and David Foster Wallace-y for what they are going for.

I could really use your help, because as you might have deduced from my struggles with online dating, I don’t actually know a lot about this marriage business. In particular, I need help with one of two things:

(1) What good, non-cheesy standard readings do you know that wouldn’t make me vomit as I read them? (For reference, any synonyms of “eternal love” or “everlasting bliss” or “you complete me” are likely to induce regurgitation.)

(2) If I can’t find a good standard reading, then my back up plan is to compile a list of marital-related metaphors, similes, aphorisms, and such things. Please help me find some good’nes! They can be any combination of bizarre, funny, and profound.

As examples, below are some I found/wrote today. Most of these will be too risky and bizarre and pessimistic for the occasion, but maybe they’ll give you an idea of what I’m looking for.

If the comments section is not for you, please feel free to use email: justinwehr@gmail.com

---

Marriage changes everything. Suddenly, you’re in bed with a relative.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

Love is blind, marriage is the eye-opener.

Marriage is like professional wrestling: Both are full-contact sports requiring a ring.

Marriage is nature’s way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.

Marriage is like a three-legged race: It’s hard enough when you’re facing the same direction.

Marriage is like a hot bath. After a while, it’s not so hot.

Marriage is like a tractor trailer: Although it’s battered by forces inside and out, if it’s built well, and if regular reinforcements are provided, who’s to say it can’t keep truckin’?

Marriage is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: It’s not the sexiest thing in the world, but if you get the ingredients and the proportions just right, and if you’re hungry for it, it can be enduringly delicious.

Marriage is also like pizza: Something to do with spreading pepperoni around a foundation. I didn’t get that one.

Marriage is nothing like a cucumber. I don’t know why it would be. That doesn’t make any sense.

The formula for a happy marriage is the same as for living in California: When you find a fault, don't dwell on it.

The formula for a happy marriage is the same as for being a happy grandpa or dog: Most problems are solved by naps.

Your marriage is in trouble if your wife says, “You’re only interested in one thing,” and you can’t remember what it is.

Marriage is like running a marathon: Not so much for the sweat and the struggle but because there sure is a lot of dirty laundry to clean up.

Marriage is like the changing of the seasons. Just kidding, no it isn’t, because you’re stuck with this person for the whole year, plus some.

Marriage is like a beautiful North Carolina day in late September with all the family and friends gathered around a young couple in love. Actually, don’t shoot the messenger, but it’s probably more like all the crap leading up to it. But if you’re lucky, and if you’re patient, and if you work really hard, there’ll be more days like this.

Marriage is kind of like listening to Bob Dylan: If you just have it on as background noise, you’ll be annoyed by the twangyness. But if you really pay attention – if you listen carefully – you’ll find it beautiful and delicate and worth every minute.

Marriage is like letting your little brother speak at your wedding: No one is sure what to expect, everyone is a bit nervous, but in the end, although it was more than a little goofy, it was totally worth it. Maybe.

High School: Summarized

Preferred intervention: human hand
Source of common terror: retina
Wish: to never know unhappiness again

Most likely to succeed: the perpetual starting over

Recurrent fantasy: trickling between his legs
Abstraction: leaves out too much

Mantra: no one has been hurt, no one has been killed

It's bad form of me to take selections from a short poem, but I just did it. (Sue me.) The above come from C.D. Wright's "Autographs."

Its conclusion is perfection:

P.S.: have a wonderful summer and a wonderful life

Get your postmodernism out of my face

Because it's ruining my irony:

Pity poor irony. Irony used to be a rebellious stance, a way of looking at an orderly world through a cracked mirror, a way of busting balloons filled with pompous hot air. But what does one do when irony becomes the norm? When there is no orderly world to mock? When everyone wants to be Groucho and no one is willing to play Margaret Dumont? You end up with a world in which everyone wants to be the hippest one in the room, in which comedy becomes so superior and distant it seldom stoops to being funny. A world in which irreverence itself becomes meaningless, because nothing is revered. A world like the one we’re in now.

A quote from Phoef Sutton in The Big Book of Irony.

Pardon my recent crudeness (but blame it on my ex)

The other day my mom gently pointed out that I have been using more crude language on this blog lately. It was not accusatory; it was more of a subtle appeal to my conscience via an oh-I-just-noticed observation the way that skillful mothers do.

But she’s right. Righter than I realized. I know because I just got done nerdily analyzing it. Here are the stats:



What I find most interesting about this is the gradual but dramatic increase in frequency in the months after breaking up with my ex-girlfriend, who in our nearly 3.5 years together I caught using maybe 3 naughty words, max. For context, this is the type of girl who will run and hide in embarrassment if you catch her mid-fart. (She probably just ran and hid in embarrassment after reading that last sentence.) It’s not that she is morally opposed to crude language, I don’t think, it’s just not her jam.

The reason why I was interested in looking at these data was that I thought it might make a good, informal test of a hypothesis I wrote about in a post called “Why it’s important to like (not just love) your partner”:

When you like someone -- that is, when you want to be emotionally close to them -- you stake out complementary roles unconsciously. You literally change your preferences to accommodate the other person.

Drum roll for the results, please:

In the months we were together, I used about one naughty word for every 100 posts. In the months since, I’ve been using them at a rate twenty-fucking-one times that! (I used that last one just for ironic dramatic effect.)

Unfortunately, I can’t show you my cursing frequency before we started dating because I wasn’t blogging then. But I assure you, in my college days, I cursed with the regularity of a wounded pirate. So I wouldn’t say my recent bout of cursing is “unusual” as much as my 3.5 year lapse of it was.

The shift has been almost completely unconscious. I vaguely remember cursing less when I was with her, but not because I got chewed out or because I felt morally obligated to be unoffensive. I think I just naturally and painlessly adapted to her preferred communication style.

Given these results, plus the observations of what happened with my sleeping routine post-break up, I feel comfortable declaring this hypothesis confirmed.

This has important implications for the silly little algorithms that online dating sites try to match us with, because there’s something kind of screwy about trying to match people based on tastes and preferences if tastes and preferences are a function of who you like and who you surround yourself with.

But I’ll save that rant for another post.

A blogger on his blogging

If you’re like me, you’re curious about how sausage gets made. I am a sucker for things like “writers on writing” or “comedians on comedy” or “philosophers on philosophy.” So today I offer you this: A blogger on his blogging. (A pretty lousy substitute, I’ll admit, but it’ll do.)


Why I got into it

Dude, that was like three years ago. I don’t really remember. It was something like this: There were some blogs that had a big influence on me back in my late college days (Newmark’s Door, Freakonomics, and Marginal Revolution) and so I started reading lots and lots of them—to the point that I was reading so much that I felt I needed an outlet – or at least a storage closet – for all the stuff that was inspiring me.

---

Most readers are probably already bored, so to save precious pixel space, I’m putting the rest of the post below the fold.

Sarcasm is hard (to do over the Internet)

It occurs to me that if you are not good at detecting sarcasm or if I am not good at relaying sarcasm, then holy smokes you must think I’m an interesting person. Just to use examples from the past few posts, if my sarcasm was not relayed successfully, then you must think that I am the type of guy who submits resumes to potential dates, who believes that Art Garfunkel is the key to nirvana, who considered joining a monastery after a close encounter with a thunderbolt, whose idea of a “wild night” involves videos about sentient meat, and who has a disease of music.

I’d read that guy’s blog, too. Sadly, though, I’m not that interesting. The truth is, I drive the most vanilla car that has ever been produced (a 2004 tan Honda Civic), I live in a grandmotherly brick ranch that looks like it came out of a 1950’s assembly line, I work in an office where if I lean back and tilt my neck just right I can kind of see out a window, I wear corduroy pants most days, and I take a lot of naps.

If anything is interesting about me, it is my use of sarcasm. If you take that away from me, then I’ll be just another suburban whitie.

I’ve wondered multiple times if I should stop using it because 80% of the confusion and complaints surrounding things I write have to do with undetected sarcasm.

The problem with sarcasm is twofold: (1) Most of it sucks because it’s snarky, and (2) the rest of it sucks because it often goes undetected.

I’m not opposed to snarkiness when a good dose of mockery it is called for (Oliver Burkeman is really good at this), but mockery is a powerful weapon that should not be left in the hands of amateurs. That’s why I prefer most of my sarcasm to be the subtler, non-mocking variety.

There are ways that I could make my sarcasm more easily detectable. For example, I could turn it into the snarky variety by adding a “yeah, pfft” in front of it (as in “yeah, pfft, that’s original.”). But if I do that, then I am officially a dick. Alternatively, I could point out in parentheses when a sarcastic statement has just been made, but that would ruin the fun because 40% of the joy in sarcasm is wondering, briefly, whether this guy might be serious. The other thing I don’t like about labeling a statement as sarcasm is that it completely negates it, and most of the time there are partial truths within the statement that I don’t want to be negated.

My solution, then, is to do nothing, and to apologize when people think that the forces driving me are boobs and fatties. That works for me because there aren’t a ton of people reading this blog. Where this really becomes a problem is for people like Scott Adams, who is to my mind the Internet’s most skillful purveyor of half-serious statements but is widely read enough that any mildly controversial remark will inevitably result in backlash in some corner of the Internet.

This is a serious problem because if the backlash is sufficiently persistent or large (and some of it has been quite large), then Scott will be forced, or at least seriously encouraged, to tone down his stuff. To be less interesting.

Scott’s current attempt at a workaround seems to be this disclaimer at the top of some of the more controversial posts:

Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.

This disclaimer might help to preempt some shitstorms, or on the other hand it might encourage some by making it seem as if he’s looking for a fight. I wish there were a better solution. I haven’t a clue what it would be.

I’m just hoping to Gaga that Scott finds a serviceable solution, because the Internet needs him. And the Internet needs sarcasm.

Pfft, that’s original

It frustrates me that I haven’t figured out a quick way to defend against the “pfft, that’s original” criticism. It seems to be a conversation ender on par with “There’s no chemistry between us.” I mean how do you respond to that? “Yeah-huh”?

With enough time, I might be able to build a defense around the theory that there is not really such a thing as original thought—that the best we can do is combine old ideas in new ways. I could further elaborate that that’s nothing to be ashamed of because the essence of creativity and of thought more generally is combining old ideas in new ways—that that is literally what a thought is. Old ideas are just the raw materials with which we create “progress.”

But I’m boring myself with that defense. Plus, it seems unlikely that someone who invokes the “pfft, that’s original” criticism would be amenable to a philosophical theory of (un)originality.

The only way to fight mockery is with mockery. If someone puts up a sign saying “God hates homosexuals,” the best defense is not to reason with them about their god’s views, but rather to put up a sign next to it that says, “God hates signs.”

(That’s an important point, and I hope to write more on it soon.)

I haven’t been able to figure out a good way to mock the “pfft, that’s original” criticism. You could try something like, “Pfft, that criticism is original,” but it lacks a certain bite. And we so badly need a good, quick defense against this crap.

Using originality as a basis to judge the value of an idea just really scrunches my undies, especially when there is no reason why originality should matter. If we’re talking about a business idea, fine, you may have a point there (but I still doubt it), but if we’re talking about experiences, theories, or insights, then you better back the eff off. I don’t care how “old” the idea is if it is expressed or presented in a way that inspires me.

That’s why I think it might be more important to consume good writing (or film or speech or whatever) than it is to consume good [“new”] ideas.

How to talk with kids, er people

Per A.J. Jacobs’s recommendation, I picked up a little How To manual called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk which he called the best marriage advice book he ever read. As you might deduce from the title, it wasn’t meant as a marriage advice book, but A.J. says that the techniques in this book are so brilliant that he uses them in every human interaction he can, no matter the age of the conversant.

I concur that the book is pretty good stuff, not because the techniques are revolutionary, but because it is really effective at pointing out all the things you’re doing wrong and then offering simple ways to correct it.

For example, there are the seven common ways that well-intentioned people try to be helpful:

I. Denial of Feelings: “There’s no reason to be so upset. It’s foolish to feel that way. You’re probably just tired and blowing the whole thing out of proportion. It can’t be as bad as you make it out to be. Come on, smile… You look so nice when you smile.”

II. The Philosophical Response: “Look, life is like that. Things don’t always turn out the way we want. You have to learn to take things in stride. In this world nothing is perfect.”

III. Advice: “You know what I think you should do? Tomorrow morning go straight to your boss’s office and say, ‘Look, I was wrong.’ Then sit right down and finish that piece of work you neglected today. Don’t get trapped by those little emergencies that come up. And if you’re smart and you want to keep that job of yours, you’ll make sure nothing like that ever happens again.”

IV. Questions: “What exactly were those emergencies you had that would cause you to forget a special request from your boss?”
“Didn’t you realized he’d be angry if you didn’t get to it immediately?”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“Why didn’t you follow him when he left the room and try to explain again?”

V. Defense of the Other Person: “I can understand your boss’s reaction. He’s probably under terrible pressure. You’re lucky he doesn’t lose his temper more often.”

VI. Pity: “Oh you poor thing. That is terrible! I feel so sorry for you, I could just cry.”

VII. Amateur Psychoanalysis: “Has it ever occurred to you that the real reason you’re so upset by this is because your employer represents a father figure in your life? As a child you probably worried about displeasing your father, and when your boss scolded you, it brought back your early fears of rejection. Isn’t that true?”

I’m guilty of having tried all of these. It’s a simple thing, but now that they’ve been laid out like this, I can easily see their suckiness.

When I’m upset or hurting, the last thing I want to hear is advice, philosophy, psychology, or the other fellow’s point of view. That kind of talk only makes me feel worse than before. Pity leaves me feeling pitiful; questions put me on the defensive; and most infuriating of all is to hear that I have no reason to feel what I’m feeling.

But let someone really listen, let someone acknowledge my pain and give me a chance to talk more about what’s troubling me and I begin to feel less upset, less confused, and more able to cope with my feelings and my problems.

The better response, the authors say, goes something like this:

Boy, that sounds like a rough experience. To be subjected to an attack like that in front of other people, especially after having been under so much pressure, must have been pretty hard to take!

The trouble is that the language of empathy does not come naturally to us, and probably especially to us dudes, who often fancy ourselves as problem-solving missiles. I’m reminded of the Chuck Close principle that we are far too concerned with problem solving and not nearly concerned enough with problem creation. That’s a little too abstract and philosophical for what the authors are going for, however, which is that people – including kids – don’t need your stinking help except maybe to assist them in thinking through their own thoughts. And you’re especially not doing them any good by dismissing their complaints.

The authors offer four ways to be less sucky in helping people deal with their problems and feelings:

1. Listen with full attention, quietly and attentively.

2. Acknowledge their feelings with a word. “Oh… Mmm… I see…”

3. Give the feeling a name. “That sounds frustrating!”

4. Give the child his or her wishes in fantasy. “I wish I could make the banana ripe for you right now!”

A.J. explains how this worked with a frustrated stranger:

My first time trying it on a grown-up was one morning at the deli. I was standing behind a guy who was trying unsuccessfully to make a call on his cell.

“Oh come on! I can’t get a signal in here? Dammit. This is New York.”

He looked at me.

“No signal?” I say. “Here in New York?” (Repeat what they say.)
“It’s not like we’re in goddamn Wisconsin.”
“Mmmm.” (Listen. Make soothing noises.)
“We’re not in a farm. It’s New York, for God’s sake,” he said.
“That’s frustrating,” I say. (Label their emotions.)

He calmed down.

A.J. offers one qualifier, though, and that is to conceal your sources. In other words, don’t let people know that you’re using conversational principles gleaned from a book about how to talk with children. He relates an experience with his wife:

Any time I see an adult tantrum brewing, I go right to my guidelines. Like tonight, when I gave our nanny our Netflix DVD of Man on Wire for the night.

“You lent it to Michelle without asking me?”
“I lent it to Michelle.” (Repeating.) “I’m sorry.”
“I was going to watch it tonight.”
“You were going to watch it? Tonight?”
“I’d planned this out for a couple of days.”
“Mmm.”
“This is the second time you’ve done this.”
“I can see how that would be really annoying.”

She paused.

“Do not talk to me like you talk to the boys.”

Damn. She figured it out? Was I too obvious?

“Don’t talk to you like I talk to the boys?” I asked.
“The tone. It’s the one you use with Jasper.”
“That must be frustrating.”
“Stop it!”

***

For my own reference (and for yours, if you want), I have laid out all the book's guidelines below the fold.

Applying for girlfriends

I submitted a cover letter to a girl, attached a resume, and was accepted for an interview. The only thing I didn’t include was phone numbers of ex-girlfriends she could call as reference checks. Maybe that was my mistake.

The interview was strange, because she kind of let me do the interviewing, or at least didn’t object to answering my questions. I wasn’t prepared to be conducting any interviews, so I interrogated her with the first questions that came to mind. Maybe that was my mistake.

Her answers to my questions were satisfactory, but it didn’t really matter because *she* wasn’t the candidate, I later realized.

I sincerely enjoyed the conversation with this girl but in hindsight I realize that’s probably because it was so Justin-skewed. The types of things I like to talk about are interesting to maybe 0.2% of the population and are appropriate for about 0.00000000002% of first dates.

I won’t get too deep into particulars, but you can take my word for it that if you were a fly on the wall, you would’ve been amused, if only for the impressive displays of sheer incompetence. I should probably start charging admission to eavesdroppers.

For example, at one point, although I was a bit aggressive in leading the conversation, she did manage to sneak in a question about my 5 year plans. I took that as an opportunity to discuss the philosophy of pursuing goals.

Probably that was my mistake.

In my defense, I am new to this whole dating business. I’ve had 2.5 serious or semi-serious girlfriends in my “adult” (quotes for irony) life, and they each started as a friend. So I’ve never done dating in any formal sense. My strategy has always been to win over hearts via the brute, persistent force of familiarity. I have no flippin’ clue how I am going to succeed in this dating game because although the attributes on my resume are sufficient to be called in for interviews, it’s going to take much more than an interview for a girl to be able to see through my eccentricities to the beautiful, delicate little core that lies deep within my loveable heart.

I’m starting to wonder whether it might be unethical for me to apply for girlfriends. In a lot of ways, I’m just not fit for one. It’s bad enough to waste the time of these poor girls who don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, but if I manage to convince one that I am actually boyfriend-material, well then they have to face the consequences of that, and I have to face the moral consequences of allowing them to face the consequences of that.

Needless to say, and lucky for her, I was not called back for a second interview.

It’s cool, though. Who needs broads?

(I am now accepting hugs.)

***

This vague post will be as specific as I get about my interactions with girls I meet online or offline, or anyone else for that matter. I made the executive decision awhile ago that I will not write publicly about the particulars of my interactions—for obvious reasons. Namely, that these are *real people* I’m dealing with.

The thing about dating, though – at least so far – is that it seems every bit as dehumanizing as a job interview. I mean you’re there in the flesh, two vaporous transient consciousnesses in an incidental universe, talking about weather patterns or whatnot, all the while knowing that every adjective and eyebrow movement is being unconsciously scrutinized in what will ultimately be a Yes/No judgment.

I think it is to my huge disadvantage that I am aware I am playing that game.