Listening In?
It’s Friday! Time for a Caption Contest.
Guess what the stalker or random passer-by hiding behind the rock is saying in this comic… or maybe just say what he should be saying.
Keep it clean, keep it funny!
Caption This!
I have removed the text from Keith’s balloon in this panel from a bad old comic in the public domain. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write the caption, and either be:
Given the awful writing in the original comic, these two things are not necessarily different.
Your reward? Notoriety and the knowledge that you probably made somebody shoot milk out their nose laughing.
Yet again, I had to explain to my coworkers why I was giggling hysterically in the middle of the workday, lest they think I’m insane and decide to call some nice young men in plain white coats to take me away.
Actually, they may already know I’m crazy.
In this case, it really wasn’t my fault. Someone found a 1962 textbook, likely intended for a high school health or sex ed class, called "When You Marry," and scanned and posted it online. Thoughtfully, the scanner also added her own comments on the wacky text.
Warning: The original text is very, very far from being politically correct, given that it addresses such hot topics as interracial marriage (in terms which were then acceptable and are now incredibly offensive) and correct behavior for wives. And the text of the comments is decidedly irreverent. If you’re easily offended, you will be offended by it.
But here it is: "When You Marry." The author is planning to do weekly updates, which I for one certainly look forward to.
And here’s a bonus link, in case you thought your own office’s hijinks were funny.
I’ve gotten several, uh, interesting responses to the dating advice featured on this blog yesterday, so I thought I would share them too:
From my insane, gifted friend Adam:
From my knowledge of movies, this is best done by breaking into a full-scale musical number with everyone else in the bar doing backup. So, you may need to arrange some choreography. And, let’s face it, if the full scale production number doesn’t work, well, maybe you can date someone in the chorus.
I have written you a song for the purpose.
I’m sexy, I’m smart
I’m a real work of art
My wiles beguiles because am… myself.
I seduce men with ease
By being willing to please
And sometimes I ask me, why, self?
The answer appears,
After a few beers
That my wiles beguiles because I am…
Angela Jolie!
(Take off glasses, shake out hair, jump cut to new actress.)
And finally, from a colleague:
"You have an inner hussy, I can tell."
Quite a few people have given me some fairly dubious advice that can loosely be called "dating advice" over the years and I would like to share some of it with you.
Now normally, I avoid talking about my personal life here, unless it’s weird, funny, or weird and funny. So I will strip these of all context and omit the names to protect the guilty. You know who you are.
"Just be yourself."
This is perpetrated by every public school I’ve ever been to, and unfortunately, it is only true for the handful of people who 1. are gorgeous and 2. have no bad habits, such as scraping one’s teeth on one’s fork, talking at the theater, or breathing.
Usefulness: 0 out of 5 hearts. Who the heck else would you be? Angelina Jolie already exists anyway.
Hilarity: 0 out of 5 hearts.
"Use your feminine wiles."
This only works if you have, in fact, wiles. I was behind the door when the wiles were handed out. In fact, I’m not even sure I was behind the door in the right building where the wiles were handed out.
Usefulness: 2 out of 5 hearts. This may work for women who have, in fact, got wiles.
Hilarity: 5 out of 5 hearts. I giggled for days over this.
"Oh, just seduce someone."
Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? You want me to do what?
Usefulness: 1 out of 5 hearts. This may work for someone who isn’t me.
Hilarity: 4 out of 5 hearts.
So now I have to ask: What’s the funniest or least useful dating advice you’ve ever been given?
It’s too early to worry about becoming the neighborhood’s semi-official Crazy Cat Lady.
The rational part of my brain reminds me of this, and the fact that I’m only 28, at every opportunity. Unfortunately, the irrational part, the one that’s seeing my brother — and my cousin, and apparently every other person I’ve known ever — get married, is still shrieking "OMG you’re gonna die alone! ALONE! And then YOUR CATS WILL EAT YOU!!!!!"
I think I watch too much TV.
It reminds me of another quote from High Fidelity (the movie is highly quotable):
We were frightened of being left alone for the rest of our lives. Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of 26, and we were of that disposition.
I’m not the only one. Some others in the increasingly small pool of friends who aren’t already married are worried.
So let me play the rational side of my brain out today and say: don’t worry so much. Senior citizens get married. You’ve got time. Just take it easy.
Also: Do not buy any cats.
My April Fool’s Day prank succeeded remarkably well, especially considering it was an afterthought and took me about 15 minutes to do.
I couldn’t believe how many people really believed I was engaged to be married to a Russian computer programmer. The nice thing about it was the kind comments everyone made. I had so many congratulations and positive comments!
Of course, then they got to the bottom of the post and wanted to strangle me, but hey, nobody’s perfect. It was pretty fun to read the reactions on the comments thread too.
So, just to set the record straight: No polar bears have been sighted in North Dakota, and I am still quite, quite single.
Happy April Fool’s Day, and many thanks to Beth and her post on Lagniappe, which inspired the whole thing.
I don’t really have five reasons, I just notice that magazines and the Internet are full of these "love life" type articles that are usually in the form of lists.
You know. 5 ways to find out if he loves you. 10 ways to keep him happy. 3 gifts that’ll drive her wild.
What I do have is this article on Yahoo! that asks "Is Dating Harder For Smart People?"
The article is highly skeptical about dating being difficult for those of us who are smart, and I have to say I’d need an awful lot of hard data before I’d say it is more difficult for smart people to date.
I know a lot of smart people and many of them do date, or don’t date anymore because they’re married.
Of course, linked off that page was this page, asking people to "Give Geeks a Chance." Like most of these things, it’s addressed to women, and only talks about giving male geeks a chance. It includes a picture of Jack Black, who in the movies, ends up with Gwyneth Paltrow or Kate Winslow.
Sometimes I wonder why I never see any girl geeks in movies. No, it doesn’t count when a woman is amazingly gorgeous but people don’t notice until she takes her glasses off. I don’t see any nerdy girls ending up with attractive men in the movies; maybe I’m just not watching the right movies.
While nerdy guys often seem to get the gorgeous women, nerdy girls are at best, the best friends of the heroine (who is gorgeous).
I would love to be proven wrong on this, so please, show me an instance where a nerdy girl ends up with an amazingly attractive guy, in a movie.
In the tradition of silly blog lists, I’ve been thinking of a few things that really aren’t that romantic, when you think about them.
