A perfect Spring day in Montreal. I know how that feels, even though it was February when I was in Montreal: some experiences transcend time and space.
via The Manolo
My perfect day wouldn’t have the cigarettes, but it would sub in a great used bookstore instead. A used bookstore with no funny smell and a really handsome shopkeeper.
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Well naturally a love theory called the Flaw-O-Matic would originate from New York. Ronald Perelman gets all the hotties he can handle…there’s obviously some complicated yet brutal math going on behind the false eyelashes and toupees.
They found that a 5-foot-8 man was just as successful in getting dates as a 6-footer if he made more money — precisely $146,000 a year more. For a 5-foot-2 man, the number was $277,000…
Customers of online dating services typically end up going out with fewer than 1 percent of the people whose profiles they study online. But something very different happens at a speed-dating event. The average participant makes a match with at least 1 in 10 of the people they meet; some studies have found the average is 2 or 3 out of 10. Women are still pickier than men, and in some speed-dating experiments they still prefer affluent, well-educated men, but the preference is less strong — and in some other studies they don’t discriminate at all by income or social status.
What happens to speed daters’ Flaw-O-Matics? The people at these events realize that there aren’t an infinite number of possibilities. If they want to get anything out of the evening, they have to settle for less than perfection. They also can’t help noticing that they have competition, and that their ideal partner just might prefer someone else.
Well imagine that! Almost like in real life (oops, sorry, TMI, do not adjust your blogs, I’ll just go back to listening to Nine Inch Nails, nothing to see here).
Also, here’s a related Mister Science podcast on the Science of Speed Dating, including whether or not to choose a porn name for your tag or play it straight, so to speak.
So, distilled, the deal is that speed dating is far more likely to result in a date or three than Internet dating, even if you’re short or poor. The article doesn’t talk about the women much because, I suppose, that would be contentious what with the “there are no ugly women, only lazy ones” quotations and The Swan and the ever-popular Sex and the City myth that with fabulous hair and a good stylist even Secretariat could pull a man.
The true secret is towards the end of the article; it turns out being generally genial is probably the key to my problem in this department. Seems people don’t want to date people who are friendly to everyone; they want to feel that you’re being nice to them as an exception to your normal routine, which presumably includes blasting members of the opposite sex with the deadly laser beams from your eyes, cracking them across the face with your taloned hand and kneeing them in the groin by way of hello. Okay, so back to standard greeting procedures for me then.
The New York dating scene; it’s a jungle out there! Or at least downtown Tokyo, circa 1954.
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Like air guitar, but with sex.
Yes, this is safe for work but not for dignity. Watch and enjoy…or go fetal with sympathetic embarassment, as these all-too-obvious virgins compete for the glory (?) of being named Best Air Sexer. Surely here is captured the Zeta Male‘s finest moment; my particular favorite is the one who mimes turning the pages.
From Japanorama, via Japan Probe.
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Yo, baby got back!
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from the Archive. This won me a nice little book prize from Two Dollar Radio, which is frankly the only glory this Vancouverite has ever gotten out of the Manhattan literary establishment, aside from the glories of Gawker commenter status.
I should have known it was going to be a long night when he asked me if I minded going out “after rush hour, when the bus fare goes down.”
He was tall. He was handsome. He was fit. He was educated, intelligent, in law school.
He was in love with Rebecca.
How do I know this? He told me. At length.
In the restaurant, he insisted on ordering a particular dessert wine with the main course. Bewildered, I wondered if it was some new foodie fad. No, he said, it was because it was called “Sweet Rebecca,” and that was his ex-girlfriend’s name.
She dropped him. She was cruel, and sweet, and had hair like golden silk, or so I was informed. When not explaining how perfect she had been, he spent many a long, silent moment staring into the glass and murmuring “Sweet Rebecca.”
At one point he pulled out a ten-dollar bill and showed me the family resemblance to John A. MacDonald, to which I could only reply, “Yes, one of Canada’s truly great alcoholics.” It was a little too late to impress me by then. And he’d drunk most of the wine, although I could have used a Martini or four, myself.
On the way home, he borrowed bus fare; I never intended to see him again, however decorative he may have been, but at a dollar seventy-five to get rid of him it was a steal. On the long, no, endless ride home, he had one more golden memory for me. Halfway home, he slowly removed his ski gloves and proceeded, methodically, to pick his nose.
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raincoaster 