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Everything you know about a date before meeting her for the first time has only been imagined in your head. Yes, there are profile photos and shit written about people, but 1. How accurately do these represent the person most of the time? and 2. If you’re a guy, how much of this stuff do you actually read in the first place? If you’re a guy, for example, you always, always, look at all of their pics before doing anything else. This is not advice I’m giving, this is just what men do when looking at a woman’s profile. Always. If you get a random message from some guy you’ve never talked to before, and he says he likes your profile, he is talking about your photos. I promise you.

If, however, you have chatted a little, then maybe he’ll test the waters a bit and read the first few words of the first sentence that you wrote about yourself. Mathematically speaking, you must chat with a man 972 times before he actually reads your entire profile. That is just science. And math.

If you’re a woman looking at a man’s profile, you are also drawn to look at his pics first. However, you peruse the ‘lettery’ part of the profile before deciding to chat with him. This does not mean that women are smarter than men, or vice versa. It only means that men need more of an instant gratification and the woman’s brain isn’t wired to send electronic impulses to the genitalia before anything else.

I think that it would be a great idea for JDate do adopt a more progressive type of dating service. By this, I mean that all female profiles should have room for 100 photos and no written information, and all male profiles should display one photo and an Anna Karenina amount of written information. I think that this would make everyone’s lives a little easier, and help improve match efficiency. Women, are you tired of incredibly short profiles that are loaded with tons of shirtless bathroom pics? Men, are you tired of profiles with words in them? I think so.

What happens when the thing you exclusively write about no longer exists? This problem happened today, and I am writing through it the best I can.

I can’t, nor do I want to, detail the specifics. However, you should know that the job I’ve currently had for the past six months, and which has already been incredibly stressful, was, and is, put into jeopardy today. None of the reasons why it was put into jeopardy were my fault. Believe me, if they were, I would admit it here. I’ve said many horrible things here, and most of them have been about myself. I don’t know why I’m trying to convince you that this isn’t my fault. First, you probably don’t care. Second, you’re probably not reading this. Third, there’s always the off chance that my boss is an avid JBlog reader, though I have reasons to believe she’s not. For example, she doesn’t give me pointers on how many days I should wait before calling a date that you think went well but weren’t sure anymore.

So, I’m leaving work, and everything gets blurry. I start stressing about how I’ll be able to pay for gas for a car that I guess I won’t need to use anymore in the first place.

Now I’m sitting here, dreading a first date I have tomorrow. I have to go out and be friendly and pleasant and charming while at the same time have the burden of losing my job in my head. It’s a good thing there’s beer, because I’m way too young to start heroin again.

The night before this year’s Valentine’s Day is turning out to be exactly like the ones ten to fifteen years ago. I spent the night scrambling to drugstores looking for cheap candy that I can give out to people so that they will like me. Though last decade, they were aimed at girls in my classes, and this year, they are aimed at making my five-year-old students like me, the thought is the same. I can be a horrible person all the time, but somehow if I give people a tiny amount of chocolate one time a year, they will just like me so much.

I actually ended up at the exact same Walgreens I spent Valentine’s Eve, 2002. Though this time I also had to buy anti-anxiety prescription drugs, everything else was the same: deodorant, orange juice, and a shitload of chocolate. I think that I need to reevaluate my life every ten years, return to the same Walgreens, and buy Valentine chocolates for a brand new demographic of people. Maybe on Valentine’s Eve, 2022, I will re-return to Walgreens to buy Valentine candies for all of the people who live under the freeway with me. I will find love somewhere!

I am the most passive-aggressive person of all time. That is just a really nice way of saying that I’m a wimp. I avoid confrontation whenever possible. When somebody cuts me off on the freeway, I speed up until I’m next to them, and then I give them a thumbs up. I have to assume that they know that I’m being sarcastic. Of course, they have no idea that my thumbs up has a dark secret. The sarcastic thumbs up is the home-schooled sibling of the middle finger.

Today, I had to go to my cable provider’s store because they apparently required customers to pick up an adapter or else the cable would not work. They, of course, did not warn us of this until they turned the cable off yesterday. When I walked in, there were two separate and very long lines of people. The woman who greeted me asked what I needed. With a huge grin and a loud, overtly-friendly voice, I said, “Hi! I’m looking to wait in the longest line possible!” The woman just laughed figuring I was just being friendly. After I waited in the thirty-minute line to pick up the thing so that I can use the thing that I’m already paying for, I got to the front of the line. The man at the computer asked what he could do for me. “Hi! I would like to be able to watch the cable that I’m already paying for!” He repeated what I had said as if nobody had ever complained to him before. Unlike the woman at the front, he knew that I was not being affable. He also knew that I didn’t have the balls to just be openly angry like a normal person. Still, he was a professional. He asked how many adapters I needed. I asked what the minimum was before I had to pay for them. He said it was two. “Two then.” When he gave them to me, I said, “Great! So this should work until the cable crashes again, right?” He tried his best to not roll his eyes and smile. While walking out the door, I found the same greeter lady and said, very loudly, “Gee whiz, this is all so convenient! Thank you!” “You’re very welcome, sir!” she answered. Still oblivious.

I hope that once I’m in a relationship, I will have grown enough balls to tell my girlfriend how I really feel. Up until right now, I haven’t been able to do that. I pretend to be happy-go-lucky and just agree with everything. Of course, I don’t want to be mean to anybody, I just want the courage to state my opinion. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck giving thumbs up to the end of liberty.

Sometimes I am so unmotivated to write anything that I decide to think of a nonsensical title, and then write the post based on the title alone. Here, ‘alone’ refers to the fact that I am going to write this by myself, without a girl, or anybody, by my side.

Literally, this title refers to the fact that when I got to the gym today, my stomach hurt so badly that, once on the elliptical machine, I could actually feel my stomach breaking up into little pieces. I had to get off so I could run to the bathroom to vomit, but not before making sure that everybody in the gym noticed me running.

Figuratively, I guess this title could be used for a post about my longtime overdue reunion with my ex-girlfriend once we’re both dead and fall short of heaven because of both my religion and the fact that she is a terrible person. This, of course, sounds good initially because of the long period that I wanted her back that lasted from puberty to about now. But this is hell, and nothing here is what it seems. In hell, I will be forced to re-live that one time, while dating her, that I found a then-recent photo of her with her arm around another man. Then, she will desperately try to explain to me that that was her cousin, but not before I realize that she doesn’t have a cousin because her parents are both only children. I better live forever.

What is wrong with going to a bar alone because it makes you happy? Aside from the many things that probably are actually wrong with that, I like doing it.

Whenever I convince a date to go to that horrible bar that I love, I always get there a few hours early. This is not just because I’m obsessively early for everything due to a decade-long superstition about acquiring a fatal hardening-of-the-skin disorder that I once saw in a made-for-TV movie starring Dana Delaney. It’s also because I love going to bars alone.

It’s so great. There’s no pressure to talk to anybody, yet I am welcome to if I want. The bartender knows exactly what I want because she asks me every time, even if my last order was just five minutes ago. Despite the short-term memory of the nice woman whose only job is to have a long-term memory, this is the only place I am truly happy. It’s usually Friday, and I now know why so many people in education are alcoholics. Alcohol can make you feel things that temporarily erase the other bad things you felt earlier in the week.

The one, and very big, drawback to arriving to a date at a bar hours early is that by the time your date arrives, you are already blisteringly drunk. I already talked about this in “Dating Drunk”, but I don’t think I can emphasize enough how big of a deal this is. This could potentially kill a date, or yourself, if you go overboard with the drinking. You will remember the date, but it won’t matter because you will have to go back to your soul-crushing job on Monday.

I think my predilection for not using phones and refusing to answer emails out of indolence has caused anybody who at one point was thinking of befriending me to rethink their choices in lifelong platonic companionships.

Any non-sexual relationship that I have made with any woman since I was a teenager has been crushed by either my laziness or by the fact that I eventually become attracted to any woman that I spend an inordinate amount of time with and with whom I am not related. Of course, this excludes doctors, McDonald’s® employees, and most dental hygienists.

Anyway, I think I am beginning to sense the repercussions of not ever answering my phone or replying to email. I am starting to feel more isolated. However, on the rare occasions that I do answer an email, bad things happen. For example, I answered my cousin’s email last week, and two days later, I overslept past my alarm by ten minutes. This is not just coincidence, nor is it my beaten, obsessive mind trying to find relationships in unrelated, everyday occurrences. Now, I feel that I am on the brink of really losing people.

I have to make a call.

After being on JDate for a long enough time, I can’t help but be cynical about every single profile I read. The phrase, “I’m a down to earth girl” may have one time had a meaning. This meaning was probably really nice and pleasant and implied only good things. Today, however, that phrase means absolutely nothing. It’s also annoying. What is ‘down to earth’? Of course, it’s not supposed to be taken literally. Or is it?

Okay, assuming it has nothing to do with a woman’s gravitational force and its relationship with the earth, what else is left? I suppose it implies friendliness. Down to earth. It could mean that you are able to cut through the bull. You don’t deal with superficialities. You’re not just skin deep. You’re a straight shooter. Oh no! I can’t even describe a cliché without using another cliché!

Alright, so I can’t really describe why I hate ‘down to earth’, and I don’t really know why I hate it. But I do. I hate it so much. I’m assuming that since you decided to describe yourself without simply posting a promiscuous picture with no words that you’re ‘down to earth’. Actually, all you have to do is write words. Any words at all. And any man will automatically assume that you are down to earth. It is completely implied. Don’t worry. Also, I’m not speaking for myself, but some men enjoy women who are not down to earth. Some men like aesthetics and pageantry. They seek an old-fashioned courtship, aside from the fact they are hypocrites because they are seeking it on the internet. Guys are just horrible.

There will probably come a point, during your online JDate dating adventure, when you grow somewhat tired. It’s past 2 am. You’ve been at your computer for eight hours straight. You’ve been chatting with girls, reading the hilarious and sometimes touching JBlog, and doing other ancillary JDate-related activities like reading JMag or playing the JGames or using the JCalculator.

The television has been on for hours, but you hadn’t realized that it’s still on until you finally notice that the conversation you’ve been having via instant message with a nice, Jewish girl in Milwaukee is a word-for-word replica of the Insanity Workout informercial that’s been playing since Comedy Central stopped its nighttime programming at midnight. “So you’re saying that all I have to do is run in place uphill as fast as I can for five hours a day, and I will lose five pounds in just one year?” I ask her. “Who are you?” she replies.

Okay so the point that I’m trying to make here is that it’s late and you’re tired. Though chatting online with nice women is fun, sometimes you need to go out. Since it’s the middle of the night, ‘going out’ could simply mean using the restroom or getting more soda. Really, though, I think that women can sense the fact that you’ve been on the computer for a third of a day, and that you do this on a regular basis. Women are born with an innate sense of, well, sense. That’s why, though JDate is great, you should go out sometimes. Or buy a book about dating. Or both.

I have spent my life trying to find a practical answer to this riddle, and finally came across a viable answer. And the answer is that there is no answer as this is a self-nullifying prophecy. Put simply, if you are trying to check out a good-looking woman without yourself looking creepy by looking at her, you are already inherently creepy for having that thought in the first place. Any man who is not at all creepy would never look at a stranger more than once. Therefore, any man who looks at a woman is creepy. We are so screwed. Well, I guess technically we’re not at all screwed.

Do you think that if you walk past a woman and don’t look back at her that she will think you’re this super great guy? Do you think that that guy across the street who saw you checking her out from behind is actually god in disguise? Are you legally blind? If you answered ‘no’ to any of the previous questions, god bless you. You’re the reason that douchebags still exist and the only hope for humanity’s future, as the nicer, more shy guys have much less of a chance of procreating.

There is a very thin line between self-confidence and arrogance. How do men who are perfect balance the two? How do you notice a girl, let her know that you’re noticing her, and simultaneously let her know that you’re not some creepy guy who notices girls even though that’s exactly what you just did? I guess I will never know.