Eharmony Mishap Take 2

For those of you just joining us, you will probably want to get caught up by reading this, and possibly this.

So, it is well documented that I am not the best of online boyfriends.  I guess if you don’t really know me than you will think I am crazy, or just an asshole.  Either might be true. 

This next example of eharmony tomfoolery is they last adventure I had with that site.  After this occurrence, luckily, my three month trial period ran out, and I was too distraught to continue on.  I instead opted back to my life of hoping random sluts walked up to me in bars and raped me.  Not the best plan, but it has it’s occasional successes.

I was still trying ot juggle about fifteen girls through email.  By now I had become really bored with the whole process and would pick random ones to tell them the exact opposite of what I would normally say.  I refer to it as the George Castanza plan. 

This worked well enough.  I would usually get dumped almost immediately, but every so often it would last a few weeks.  I am not sure if these are the girls who usually look for dicks to date, but it is really fun to be the dick for a spell, especially with the anonymity of the internet.  My favorite example of the George Castanza plan: 

Eharmony Girl:  “My best friend is my cat...do you like cats?” Me:  “I LOVE cats!  Unfortunately, however, the court says I can’t come within 100 feet of one.  I don’t think anything is illegal if the animal is enjoying it as much as I am.”

That one resulted in a lack of response and a polite send-off about a week later, with the stated reason, “I just want to focus on other people.” I thought it was very mature of her.

It was around this time that I actually moved beyond the realm of email and actually started to talk to several on the phone.  Wow!  These girls really have voices.  Girls voices.  But man, they would not shut up.

It is like pulling teeth for me to talk on the phone with someone I don’t know.  I usually get pretty paranoid about saying something that will make me look crazy; as in, “I like to have sex with cats.” See that is an online response only.  I have to know you for a few weeks before I start saying shit like that in person.

One of the girls I was talking to lived in Columbus, Ohio.  She was in graduate school for entomology.  For those of you not good at trivia, that is the study of insects.  I thought that sounded pretty cool.  I mean, a girl who will be playing with bugs all day has got to be interesting.  What could possibly be wrong with a a person who wants to dedicate their life to the study of wood grubs?  Maybe a face only a wood grub could love.

We talk several times a week for a few months.  She was really cool and it did not seem too difficult to keep a conversation going.  Not only that, she was cool with me just saying, “look, I am so tired of talking on the phone, can I let you go?”

I would pretend to be interested in her getting her finger bitten while sticking it in to some dark hole and she would pretend to be enthralled when I likened it to when I stuck my finger in a homeless guy’s asshole.  I swear, something in there clamped onto my finger.  You know in the movie Alien?  When the little mouth would come out of the Alien’s bigger mouth?  I kept expecting that to come out of this guy’s asshole.  Yes, she liked that story also...I was beginning to be smitten.

As with all things in life, there came a time to either shit or get off the pot.  We decided to meet.  I was about to be driving from Mississippi to my next work destination, Philadelphia, PA.  I surveyed my map and realized, with a small detour, Columbus, OH., was on the way.  We set a date.  I would call from my hotel when I arrived and she would meet me out.  I requested someplace without bugs.  She requested someplace without assholes.  We both agreed that we would try our best.

The big day came and I drove like mad to get all the way to Columbus with a modicum of time remaining to get freshened up.  I checked into the hotel, hopped into the shower, shaved, and splashed a dash of cologne on my balls.  Better safe than sorry, plus they like to smell good on occasion.

She shows up, and boy howdy, the apprehension in the air is so thick you can spread it on a bagel.  It is pretty obvious, by her reaction, that she was expecting someone better looking, and I was actually relieved, because, man, she was ugly.  I would have felt really guilty if she seemed to be into me. 

The night was very awkward, all the magic of our phone conversations was gone.  All that was left was a quiet meal at some Somalian restaurant.  Apparently the Somalian culture does not usually allow men and woman to eat together, but they will make exceptions when non-Somalians come into their restaurant; otherwise the men eat in the main dining area and the women eat in the back room.  I kept laughing internally about the thought of me stopping the waiter and complaining there was a female at my table.  At this point, I did not think she would agree with this being funny, and the waiter might not even realize she was female. 

We ate dinner and drove back to the hotel.  I can safely say we were probably both dreading the goodbye.  She probably was worried I was going to invite her into my room and I was worried she would not leave fast enough for me to make the nine o’clock movie at the theater across the street.  Luckily for both of us, it ended quickly and painlessly.  Before the car stopped, I had the door opened and one foot out.  I don’t think she even came to a complete stop, she was so eager for me to go.  I said goodnight and promised to call, she just said goodbye. 

I made it to the nine o’clock movie.  The next day I continued on to Philadelphia.  I finally felt so guilty about finding her so unattractive and decided to call her.  I had no idea what to say, the whole ordeal went so badly.  After putting it off and putting it off, I called, but she did not answer.  She never called back, so I never pressed the issue.  I am satisfied that we both were mutually repulsed so therefore, it was a successful breakup. 

In retrospect, I want to say she looked like a bug, but that might just be the entomology connection.  Hopefully she doesn’t remember me looking like a homeless guy’s asshole.

•   Comments(7)    Posted by killer on 12/12 at 12:03 AM
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Work Induced Laziness

I am seriously going to post more eharmony mishaps, but I have been getting my ass worked off at my job, which is not the norm, so it is throwing my off my writing routine. 

If everyone would just take a second to think of Liz in Chicago, possibly spraining her vagina.

Now, doesn’t everyone feel better?

Hopefully I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.

•   Comments(3)    Posted by killer on 12/11 at 12:24 AM
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Eharmony Mishaps take 1

My Email May Have Caused An Amber Alert

If you don’t understand how eharmony generally works read the preview first.

I had been sending out communications like a mad man.  I was receiving about five a day and I would immediately “begin communications”.  I think you just basically sent them a notice saying you would like to begin the process and they could look over your crap and decide if they consented.  The eharmony dude said, “begin communications with as many as possible to better your chances.” So I did.  I did not really care what their profile said, they all basically said the same thing, so I would go forth in hopes of spreading my seed amongst the masses. 

It got very confusing because I had probably twenty different open communications in various levels.  Some would just be stupid pre-processed questions and others would be free for all emails.  I soon was forgetting who I had told what story to and I was extremely paranoid about saying the same thing over and over again to some chick.  I would find my self going back and reading every piece of previous communication to refresh myself on what this person did for a living and where they were located.  (I also made the mistake of not narrowing down my applicant pool.  I picked “anywhere” in the US, since I moved around for my job so much.)

After a short time I got bored with telling the same damn stories about myself and shit, so I started to just cut and paste the first several emails.  I would ad lib a few lines to make it seem more personal, but basically I was treating the eharmony experience more like a job, instead of an opportunity to pick up loose women.

One girl in particular seemed to stand out from the rest.  She answered the stock questions with unique answers instead of the usual banality I had come to expect.  We moved to the next phase of questions which we made up ourselves.  The ones she sent were actually funny and clever so I made up a few that I thought were nice, including one that would become a standard I asked everyone.  “When I become President of the U.S., will you write a tell-all book describing all my strange quirks and shortcomings?”

Her answer really surprised me, “Since I work in the publishing industry and my hobby is manual typesetting, yes, I would definitely write that book.”

“Manual typesetting”?!?  I don’t even know what that is.  Is she using an old Ben Franklin era printing press to print a local newsletter or something?  It seemed so bizarre I had to know more.  At this point I figured she was just fucking with me.  I mean who the hell is a manual typesetter enthusiast?  We mutually agreed to open communication to email.

We sent a few goofy emails back and forth, very simple, just trying to be funny and feel out the other for sense of humor and the sort.  I thought I had a good feel for her personality. 

I was apparently wrong.  She sent me a longer email joking around about online dating and how difficult it is to find someone who shared her passion for manual typesetting.  There she was bringing up that crazy shit again.  I was in a festive (meaning drunk) mood when I read it and decided to fire back a response.  Often times I can start writing a nice peaceful response but then my imagination starts to run wild and the whole thing will fly off the tracks into a bizarre tangent that only I and maybe someone like Liz would find funny. 

Below is the email that I sent in response to her troubling woes of failing to locate a fellow typesetting enthusiast.  In my defense, I really thought she was just joking about that whole thing.

I can appreciate your love of typesetting.  I have long been contemplating a career change. I like to cut letters out of newspapers and magazines and glue them to a piece of paper to use for correspondence.  It is time consuming, but gratifying.  I think this hobby has gotten a lot of bad press in our society by being associated with just the criminal element, but it is a misunderstood art form.  Say you want to write grandma a letter, but your writing hand has been damaged while enjoying a game of lawn darts, well you could call me up and dictate your message; I would then choose the appropriate letter and design, put it all together real nice and send it off for you. 

There is a lot more to this than people think.  You can’t just grab any cut out letter randomly, a good bit of planning is needed.  It would just look awful if you were to use a bold Comic Sans T next to a small italicized Hebrew O.  It’s also not a good idea just to cut up and glue together an entire sentence of lower case Times Roman, any damn word processor could do that.

I think I am really on to something here.  The largest portion of my business would probably be kidnappers.  I can’t imagine how hard it is to keep a person restrained and quiet while trying to cut out all those letters, apply the glue, AND get them all into the right order.  You don’t want to come across as an amateur by misspelling ransom, or worse yet, if you don’t glue it well enough and a few of the zeros fall off, suddenly all your hard work is for nothing when you open the bag of money and it only contains $1000 instead of $100000.  I’m pretty sure these guys would be lining up for my services. 
I bet I could even advertise in some trade magazines like Kidnappers Digest or something along those lines.

In case you haven’t seen it coming yet, she gave me the nuclear option.  I hit send and within the hour she had ended all communication with no explanation, reply, or fare thee well. 

I’m not sure if she misunderstood and thought that I actually was kidnapping people, or maybe SHE had been kidnapped at some point in her life.  Possibly she really was a huge manual typesetting enthusiast and was greatly offended by my making light of her passion.  Regardless she had heard all she needed to hear.  I learned that my sense of humor is not appreciated by the general public. 

•   Comments(9)    Posted by killer on 12/07 at 12:35 AM
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The Eharmony Mishaps Preview

A few years back, in a fit of desperation, I signed up for eharmony.  Now, this ain’t cheap.  It might only be a few bucks a month for a woman to join, but for guys it is like a hundred a month or some shit like that.  I did a special three month trial special for around 125. 

I enjoyed the incredibly long survey.  I was meant to build a fool-proof match for me.  The problem is, like most people, the answers you WANT to be true are not always what IS true. 

The most glaring problem is the infamous, “How important are looks?” They ask every question repeatedly in different forms to see if you are being honest, but this question is misleading.  Many people like to say looks don’t matter, but honestly they do.  They should give you pictures of people and say, “is this person attractive to you?”

Or better yet, they should offer a category that is listed, “It is important for me to date a hot chick that does not mind dating an ugly guy.” I know these women are out there, because I see them at the mall with ugly guys all the time.  Maybe those guys used to be better looking, or possibly the girl is on a mercy date that raged out of control, but I have seen it with my own eyes.

After you fill out the survey, complete with lies about not caring what people look like, you are immediately sent the first round of matches.  Eharmony recommends starting the communication process with EVERY one.  That way you increase your odds.  The problem is there are several stages of communication to meander through and they will send a dozen or more matches every day. Before long I was baiting about twenty desperate girls at a time.

First you can look at their survey summary.  Everyone, at least the ones I was matched with, all sounded exactly alike.  Funny, friendly, out-going, out-doorsy, open minded, etc., etc.  Then you could agree to ask each other five stock questions, and answer their questions.  Then you could ask five questions you write yourself.  Then you get to send a list of “must haves” and “must nots”.  If you are still hanging on you can finally opt to send open email correspondence through a safe eharmony account.  During this entire process there is what I refer to as the nuclear option, you could push a button and dump the other person without ever having to explain why.  (I was openly nuked once, but I probably deserved it) There was also what I like to call the super-desperate/slut option, you could just skip all the stupid fore play and go straight to open communication.  (I was convinced to do that once, but soon had to gnaw my own arm off to break free, also the only time I attempted the nuclear option.)

During my three month trial run I gave out my personal email address maybe ten times, talked to five on the phone and met one in person.  I learned a few important things about myself: My sense of humor does not always translate well in email (I am pretty sure I scared the shit out of a girl), I despise talking on the phone, A bad first date can feel like a life time, and most importantly, If they won’t show you a picture...abort.

This is sort of a teaser post.  I wanted to get the explanation of online dating out of the way for those of you who have never had the misfortune of trying it out.  If you do ever give it a whirl, be brutally honest in the survey. 
Tomorrow, barring a freak accident, I will tell post the first story.  Tentatively titled:  Note to Self:  My Email Might Have Caused An Amber Alert

•   Comments(7)    Posted by killer on 12/06 at 12:16 AM
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