Pic of the week: lady parts

Happy Wednesday, y’all (yes, I am in fact from New Jersey, but I’ve been having myself a little Friday Night Lights marathon). Before we get to this week’s pictorial treat, a progress update: no, I have not been on or booked a date since my last post where I made a Gone With the Wind style proclamation to do so in November. But I still have 2+ weeks to go. And I’m not worried. At all. Especially because fine specimens such as this one keep popping up on my Okc homepage (I’m honestly not sure if this is considered NSFW. I certainly wouldn’t open it while my boss was in the room). Just a fair warning, this gentleman is in a costume, and that costume is…you guessed it…. a vagina. Behold:

vag

You’d think I would have some funny quips to make about this, but honestly it’s just too easy. What is there to say that’s not like, Jay Leno-level obvious? I did find it hilarious to think about all the trouble this dude must have gone to to purchase this costume. Like, he presumably had to Google ‘vagina costume’ (which I actually did, in the privacy of my apartment, with VERY mixed results), pay probably $29,95 plus shipping and handling, and then wait patiently for a package from crazycostumes.com or wherever. Which contained a giant hooha. Something about that whole process makes me LOL more than the costume itself.

Oh, and before I forget, at L’s behest I need to update you all on one more thing. Remember last week when I told you all that J (who dumped me in a bar) messaged me randomly last m0nth? L predicted he was going to ask me to go out again, and I said in my post that she was wrong. WELP, I am officially issuing a retraction because J messaged me AGAIN and asked me to get a drink with him earlier this week. L was right, and she’d like you all to know it. Here is what happened on Gchat when I informed her of this development:

L: OMG I KNEW IT
GOD I KNOW EVERYTHING
i have to scream about how right i was for 5 minutes before i talk to you
L: you SAID in your post i was wrong and please issue a correction
So there you have it. You were right, L. You are a brilliant genius, but obviously I knew that already. I also would like to share with you, readers, that I decided to say yes to a drink with J. I assure you I am NOT interested in him romantically in any way, shape or form. But 1. all of this weird contact has made me curious about what he wants/what his deal is, and 2. the last time J saw me I was fighting back tears and exiting a bar, humiliated. So the idea of regaining a little bit of that dignity by being my fabulous, charming, breezy self is highly appealing to me. Plus I’m bored this week with literally nothing else on my agenda but working/binge watching Eric and Tami Taylor for hours on end. So it’s happening, and I will of course let you all know how it goes.
Clear eyes/full hearts/can’t lose.
Update: this little treat was brought to my attention and clearly needed to be shared with the world…

Can’t get a date. Seriously.

Oh hey there, all you friends out in cyberland. Remember me? Founder of the very blog you’re reading? Single person who recently pledged to blog more often? It may not have escaped your notice that directly after I made that claim, I pulled an Irish exit and disappeared for over a month. I swear, I didn’t even realize I was gone that long. In my mind it had been like, two weeks since I’d posted something. Then I jumped on the blog to read L’s most recent post and out of curiosity, scrolled down to read the last thing I wrote. Ummmmm that was on October 2nd. It’s November 8th. What. The. FUCK???

How can I explain this time warp/my absence? I have no excuse. I haven’t been in jail, or in LA developing the pilot to my TV show (I hear Amy Poehler is really busy shooting Parks and Rec at the moment), or doing anything else remotely exciting or interesting. I’ve been slogging my way through fall and experiencing the worst writer’s block since my paper on Madame Bovary was due in 12th grade AP English. Meanwhile L and D, the best co-bloggers EVER, have been keeping you boos entertained and cheerfully carrying my dead weight while gently prodding me to get my shit together and post something, ANYTHING, and I’ve just been like….yeahhhhh. Sorry, girls. I’ll get around to that…soon.

But seriously. This is a blog about dating. I’m not writing federal grant proposals. I’m not defending my thesis on astrophysics. So what the hell is wrong with me? As it turns out, a few things. First, I think I took the H thing harder than I’d like to admit. I’m not trying to sound dramatic; I’m fine. I promise, I’m not going to cry (lucky for you guys I’m not drinking red wine while writing this. Yet.) But honestly after everything went down, thinking or talking about dating has just not been a fun experience.

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Second, it’s been a soul crushingly unsuccessful month of attempting to get back in the saddle. As in I’m currently batting .000. As in, I have not managed to go on ONE first date since I ended it with H. I’ve had string of inexplicably bizarre, boring, and just all around awful interactions with men I don’t even like. So when I say writer’s block, I mean yes, I’m having a hard time putting my thoughts into words, but mostly I just mean I literally cannot seem to obtain new subject matter to share with you fine people.

Since I have no new dates to tell you about, I thought I’d give you the next best thing… October Okc highlights! Here’s the roundup:

  • Mr. Mensa sent me two more incredibly boring messages and managed to fit one more name drop before (predictably) disappearing. For a dude with a self reported crazy high IQ, he was really lacking in social intelligence.
  • I messaged back and forth with a guy who eventually gave me his phone # and asked me to text him. Which I did. Later that night, I received this response:  

wrong number 1

Shit, I thought. I typed his number in wrong. But I double checked and nope, it was right. So I responded.wrong number 2

I thought to myself, this is one of three things: 1. a really bad elaborate joke on his part, 2. a bizarre way for him to ditch me, or 3. an honest mistake. So I messaged him:

wrong number

My bad? That’s it? Am I just being cranky, or is that the most humorless response to this scenario ever? What kind of person wouldn’t take the opportunity to respond with something like ‘hahaha so sorry, can’t believe I gave you the wrong number.’ Or, ‘this is amazing, what did the other person say? Do you have a date with them now instead?’ Or even just, ‘WOW I can’t remember my own phone #…embarrassing’. Something, ANYTHING that indicates you have a sense or humor/actual pulse and aren’t, in fact, the most boring person on the face of this earth. UGH. Needless to say the conversation petered out, and that was that.

  • I briefly messaged back and forth with a guy who earned the nickname Don Draper for what I discovered to be his wildly antiquated, Mad Men era views on gender roles. I should have been suspicious when he asked me wayyyyy too many questions about whether I liked to cook. Then, when I casually mentioned I wasn’t into football, he replied with something to the tune of: “Well that’s fine, I like my women to be women and only have girly hobbies anyway.” Oh good, so glad we cleared that up. Hey Don, would you also like “your woman” to grab you a whiskey neat and your pipe and slippers on her way into the kitchen to bake you a pie? F*ck off, Draper*.

https://i0.wp.com/i.imgur.com/QrSQr.jpg

*Actually this guy WISHED he was 1/10th as hot as Jon Hamm. A more appropriate nickname would have been Pete Campbell, and even that would have been a stretch.

jeff martin

Ummmm what? Seriously. I thought, what the hell does this dude want? Because he must want SOMETHING, right? Right. So I responded in the most vague, neutral way possible, basically like ‘hey back, hope you’re well!’ purely out of curiosity. J then proceeded to send me a series of messages on the following topics:

    • His job, which is going great (he has a new boss)
    • His ROMANTIC LIFE… he was seeing someone but they recently broke it off because they wanted different things (???)
    • Our infamous public break up of last year. Totally out of the blue, J apologized for “how that went down” and said I deserved better. I mean, truth, I totally did, but what the hell is this guy telling me this NOW for? Is he in AA and this is the part where he apologizes to everyone he’s ever wronged? I’m over it, J. I know I trashed you on my blog, but that was for funsies/entertainment value. I promise, I’m. Over. It.

I officially do not understand men. What possessed this guy to reach out to me out of the blue and tell me his deepest darkest secrets? L was positive that he was going to ask me out again but I said no, I think he’s literally just lonely and wants someone to talk to, and clearly I was right. In the beginning I had been vaguely responding to these messages, again more out of curiosity than anything else, but it got to the point where I was like okay thattttt’s enough of that and just stopped responding.

So there you have it, friends. My October on Okcupid. This parade of freak show interactions combined with someone who I really liked saying ‘no thanks’ to exclusively dating me, well.. it messed with me. I uttered the infamous single girl words: “what’s wrong with me?” probably 15-20 times. ….A day. (To be fair, this phrase is so commonly used among the three of us that our autobiography will likely be titled: “What’s Wrong With Me? The LSD Story”.

I just felt like, and I still feel like, in order to really be over the H mess, I need a new first date. Even a bad one. Even a COMICALLY bad one. And I can’t even make a bad one happen! It’s now been FIVE MONTHS since my last first date (with H). It’s gotten to the point where by the time it does happen I’m afraid I’ll forget everything I’ve ever learned about online dating and act like a complete lunatic.

selena meyer

More importantly, I have a dating blog. I have loyal readers (okay, I have family and friends. Egomania: in check!) who come here for a laugh and to read about, you know, dates. With actual men. So is this it? Is this where I throw my dignity down the toilet and hop on Craigslist personals? Or worse, Tinder?

Not today, dear readers. Not today. Instead, I’m going to pull a Scarlett O’Hara and tell you all right now:

scarlett

I WILL go on a first date in the month of November. Not because I need to be dating someone to be a happy, successful human, or because I’m desperate for male attention or a boyfriend, or anything like that. But this inability to get a date has become a thing now, and it’s bugging me, and I need to shake it off and move on. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that actually having something to write about is going to help with my “writer’s block”.

Wish me luck!

The Points System

If you read L’s sports blogger post earlier this week you already know that LSD are huge fans of the show The League. The three of us have been binge watching the new season on Netflix simultaneously, LOLing at Ruxin’s antics, drooling over Pete, and being grossed out by Rafi.

Sorry to suddenly turn this into a 100% League themed blog (lest you all get the idea that I actually like football, because incidentally I hate it) but a plot line in one of the episodes caught my attention. Pete, the scruffy, adorable ne’er do well, tells the guys about a “points system” that he’s devised for picking up players off the waiver wire (real talk, I had no idea what that even was before I watched the show), and how it also works in the dating world. Basically Pete assigns players (or women) who are left after the draft (or who are single) points for their positive and negative attributes, and then makes a decision based on their final score. I swear I searched for half an hour for a Youtube clip of this damn scene but had no luck whatsoever. The best I could muster was an Amazon Video free preview clip of the scene that they won’t allow me to embed into this post. #bloggingfail. If you care, here it is. According to Pete:

“Those who are left, myself included, have a ton of baggage. Maybe it’s a bad hamstring. Maybe she’s got daddy issues. The system allows me to ferret it all out and make the right pick.”

Please know that Pete also claims women older than 28 qualify as the female equivalent of leftovers from the draft. Well thanks, Pete/writers for The League. I’ll be turning 29 in less than three months, so that makes me feel faaaaannntastic. 

megryan_crying

But Pete claims this is also one of the reasons the point system is so useful: the older we get, the less time we have to BS around with someone who’s not right for us. He shows the other guys how efficiently his system works by using it on a strange woman in a bar. It’s simple arithmetic: add points for the positives, subtract for the negatives, and make a call based on their final score. In the end, the joke is on Pete, because a girl who he goes out with and really likes uses the points system on him and decides he doesn’t measure up. Pete ends up with a -7 score, and no second date.

I would be lying if I said this concept didn’t intrigue me a bit. The thing is, I think it’s something that most single people are already unofficially doing in our heads. Here are some examples of things that I subconsciously keep track of. I have assigned each item a numerical value of importance using the Pete Eckhart system:

  • Taller than me: +1
  • Over 6 feet tall: +2
  • Has all his hair: +1
  • Good job and/or advanced degree: +3
  • Funny/makes me laugh: +3
  • Friendly/good conversationalist: +3
  • Good taste in music: +2
  • Lives in the city: +1
  • Poor grammar/spelling: -1
  • Bad at making plans: -2
  • Egotistical/takes himself too seriously: -3
  • Politically conservative: -2
  • Looks at his phone a lot during our date: -2
  • Texts every five seconds: -2
  • Alludes to past relationships/baggage/mommy issues/inability to commit early on: -4
  • Bad tipper: -2
  • Likes Dave Matthews Band: -1

Now, pretty much all of these categories could be used across the board on any date, but sometimes things come up that are more…individualized. Here are two examples of positives and negatives that were specific to a certain guy:

  • A the DJ owned his own successful business: +2
  • J who dumped me in a crowded bar loved…wait for it….DISNEY WORLD: -4. I’m sorry, but I am terrified of grown ass adults without kids who go to Disney World every year. I’m sure dissing the happiest place on Earth makes me sound like a crotchety bitch–don’t get me wrong, I love a good Disney movie, and the two times I went to Disney (when I was a kid and our senior trip in high school) were a blast. But I don’t get adults who voluntarily and repeatedly visit an amusement park in ORLANDO, FLORIDA when they could be traveling to…basically anywhere else.

Please know that in typical foot-in-mouth S fashion, I went on this exact rant in front of J before I knew this about him. He got really quiet for a second and then replied (in a super serious tone): “My whole family goes to Disney once a year. We’re actually going again over Christmas.”

Whooooooooopsieeeeee

Awkward-Disney-1

(I have no idea who these people are, btdubs. I googled ‘awkward family Disney World pics’ and this family came up. Clearly they’re about as pleased with my Disney trash talking as J was).

So yeah. I secretly kind of believe that whole exchange was the real reason  J dumped me but let’s be honest, it wasn’t meant to be anyway. Mama is not about to spend her Christmas in line for the “It’s a Small World” ride.

Annywayyy…. sorry for that tangent! Back to the topic at hand. Last night, in the name of Stucu research, I took the points system for a spin on someone I’ve been messaging but haven’t gone out with yet. Here’s what his breakdown looks like (remember, I haven’t met this dude):

  • lives in the city: +1
  • lawyer who seems to like his job: +3
  • Politically liberal: +2
  • Over 6 feet tall: +2
  • Excellent spelling and grammar: +1
  • Asks good questions/acts interested: +2
  • Sort of funny: +1
  • Disappeared in the middle of our messaging and then returned weeks later apologizing and claiming he had been “really busy”: -4
  • STILL taking his sweet ass time to make plans (too many messages): -2
  • MENTIONED TWICE THAT HE’S IN MENSA: ……5? Yes, -5 is fair.

That last one….I just can’t. Am I the only one who finds that to be incredibly lame and gross? It’s like adults who still talk about their SAT score: CALM DOWN. You’re really smart. I get it. I actually originally thought this was grounds for dismissal because ew, eyeroll…

30-Rock-111

but when I did the math, this guy (also a J) squeaked by with a +1. If he doesn’t fall off the face of the Earth (again), I may still give him a shot because 1. he has a positive point value and I want to test this theory and 2. there’s a fairly good chance that he’d show up to our date wearing this:

score big mensa

and legitimately attempt to test my IQ. Which let’s face it, would make for some fanfuckingtastic blog fodder.

One final note on the points system: while I think it’s fun, efficient, and maybe useful to a point, it’s also super arbitrary: how much is something like sense of humor really “worth” to me in relation to say, height? I’m not sure quantifying it is that helpful an exercise. Especially because I also think it discounts a huge part of what’s important in finding a match, and that’s chemistry. Sure, I can assign points to ‘makes me laugh’ and ‘good conversationalist’, but that doesn’t entirely cover it. L and I were recently discussing this: there is that intangible connection/compatibility/attraction that you just have with some people and you don’t with others, period. And having done the online dating thing for a while now, I honestly believe in chemistry more than ever. Maybe it’s the format of getting to know someone before actually meeting them… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out with a guy who was nice and cool enough over email and who I was excited to meet, and then it just fell totally flat in person.

Also, I think it’s much harder to find that intangible connection than it is to come across many of the things on my “list” (with the exception of ‘good at making plans’ and ‘over 6 feet tall’. Tall dudes who can plan an outing, holler at me!). For instance, K would have done well on the points system, but I just wasn’t feeling it with him. No chemistry. Meanwhile, with other dudes that would get a mediocre score at best, my chemistry has been off the charts. I think the key (and what makes it so hard to meet someone awesome) is to find a combination of both.

So, dear readers, what do you think of Pete Eckhart’s points system? Is it unromantic BS, or do you think there’s actually something to it? If you’re single, have you ever weighed the pluses and minuses of a date or do you just go with your gut?

Also, while we’re at it, should I give Mensa dude a chance or get rid of him? (rest assured I’ll still make my own decision, but I’m curious to hear what you guys think):