are you kidding me with this? – A Series of Very Bad Decisions

In which we discuss total incompetence

Picture it: Newport Beach, last Saturday (I’m watching a Golden Girls marathon right now so forgive me for channeling Sophia).

Anyway:

You’re hanging out in a bar with your good friend when a random dude and his friend approach you. Eventually random dude tells you that he wants to take you on a date that week (as long as you’re not under 30, because he doesn’t date women under 30). Okay, cool. Sounds great.

The next day you get a “nice to meet you” text but nothing else. Okay, so maybe the date isn’t happening. No big deal. You’re slightly curious as to why he would even text you to begin with if he either 1) didn’t remember you as you suspected he wouldn’t or 2) decided thanks but no thanks. But you should probably check your curiosity at the door.

The day after THAT, at 7:15 pm, you get another text asking if you want to come over THAT night for pizza and a movie. For a first date. At a total stranger’s apartment. Yeah, that sounds like a plan, broseph. So, you decide to just not even dignify that question with a response by literally not responding.

Two days later, you get another text from random dude asking why he didn’t hear from you and you’re all, “because that is NOT the way to ask someone out on a date,” all up on your soapbox of Please Put in the Slightest Modicum of Effort, I’m Begging You.

Random dude tries again and you agree to go out the next night. He’ll call you when he’s done golfing. Except that no, no he won’t. Which brings me to my original question of what was even the point of the FIRST text. Just don’t text me.

So you find yourself sitting there waiting for your phone to ring and then realize that you don’t want to be in THAT PLACE, so you just block him and move on (to write a fictitious blog about this hypothetical situation).

In which we discuss stage 5 clingers

…disclaimer brought to you by Phoebe Buffay – “now I can’t stress this point too strongly…this story isn’t real”:

You have a friend. Your friend is not so good at the dating. It seems her only options are, “beating heart ripped out of chest” or “running away from stage 5 clingers.”

But, she’s been Mopey McMoperson for a fucking year over a douchelord who is an emotional sadist, so you tell her to get back out there and try her luck, because the path to ever lasting love does not involve watching Netflix at 4 am.

So, she gets online. Right away, she is matched with a guy who seems polite and normal. Their first date consists of beers at a sports bar.

Her date is nice but seems overly enthused. Which she is not used to, really, so she thinks it is weird he’s overly affectionate, like how when he gets up to go to the bathroom less than 45 minutes into the date kisses her as he gets up from the table.

But, as we’ve already determined, your friend is inept, so maybe that’s normal? She’s not sure. It’s also weird that he seems so gung ho over her when he hasn’t asked her many questions about herself, so maybe he’d just be that excited over a plant. Who knows.

At the end of the date, Mr. Seemingly-Normal-Until-the-Other-Shoe-Drops-But-We’ll-Get-to-That asks her to go home with him but she politely declines because it’s not like they were dry humping at the table and she gave him any indication that the evening was headed in that direction.

But they DO plan a second date, and he tells her that he will make her dinner at his place which in RETROSPECT was not a good idea.

As date number two approaches, your friend begins to get more nervous, as is par for the course with her, because she scares easily when people genuinely like her. But, she goes and tries to have a positive attitude but in the millisecond that she sees him when he comes to retrieve her from the parking lot she’s all, “yeah, no” and then spends most of the date pretty much like this:

Now, it is important to mention that she wanted to be honest with this guy so told him that she wasn’t sure what she was looking for but that she was still struggling with feelings for her ex because I guess it is easier to be honest when you have nothing invested and maybe being honest up front is the better way to go. But HIS response was something along the lines of, “well, I am ready to commit to you exclusively right now…or we can just have sex.” Pause for reaction.

Now, at this point she’s regretting that they aren’t in public so she can’t just peace the fuck out and at some point must have agreed that they could still hang out and see what happens because when she gets home (two hours later, which seemed like at least eight) he has texted her to tell her that she is going to LOVE what he is planning and where he is taking her later on in the week. She is confused – she thought she meant hanging out in a causal sense like hanging out without expectations or whatnot and he’s in a completely different chapter planning surprise dates that she is not comfortable with.

So, the next day she decides to rip off the band-aid and just tell him that she can’t see him anymore. She sends this via text because that is allowed after only two dates and no exchange of last names, correct?

He doesn’t immediately respond, so she feels like she is in the clear and is relieved. Just disappearing without explanation is kind of shitty and as much as it sucks, even over text, to tell someone you don’t want to see them anymore, she felt like she did the right thing.

But nope – spoke too soon. The responses start coming in. First a text: why, what’s up? Followed by another one: I was really hoping you wouldn’t tell me this over text. Followed by a phone call. Immediately followed by another phone call AND voice mail. (And that, my friends, is an A+ in How to Get Blocked 101)

Which okay – come on, dude. Really? First of all, I cannot tell you how many dudes have disappeared on me (I mean YOUR FRIEND) after we’d (they’d) been through more than two dates, second of all this all seems a little excessive considering she was upfront about her feelings and third of all, there are surely people reading this who feel like in the below GIF your friend is clearly Rachel and they are everyone else and this depicts them trying to get her to make reasonably logical decisions in general when it comes to dating (like maybe don’t go to a dude’s apartment on the second date because it might unleash the Stage 5).

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And your friend is all

ANYWAY. This entirely made up story is just another in the endless “dating sucks” stories we see on a daily basis. Fun times.

An open letter to cell phone companies (not to be taken TOO seriously)

Dear All Phone Companies,

This was originally going to be an open letter to T-Mobile until I realized this completely hypothetical scenario that has nothing to do with my current situation also involves AT&T, so maybe this is an every phone company type of request, but I digress.

It is a known fact among my friends that after a certain hour and/or number of glasses of wine, I should not be allowed to text certain people. It is also a known fact that sometimes I do stupid shit, I mean, HELLO, the name of this blog says it all.

Anyhoo. Smartphones now have features that allow people to block certain phone numbers. Sometimes, it’s easy to do. For example, the guy you went on one date with who you told more than once, “thanks but no thanks”, but he keeps texting you and you’re all, “Maybe Espanol would be more clear” but blocking is just easier and you can just do it and not even give it a second thought.

Other times though – not as easy. You find yourself forced to block someone because you are knocked on your ass in love with them, while you are their placeholder, and after what you thought was a breakthrough evening of amazingness they break up with you over text three days later and your friend is all maybe you should block him because I mean, really:

Then, because knowledge is power but not really, you decide that you want to know what happens if you block someone and then they try to text you. So, while discussing this over drinks, you block your very nice willing-to-humor-you friend, have her text you, and then unblock her. On her end, it appears the text goes through. On your end, you don’t receive it, so then you unblock her and immediately the text she tried to send you comes through. And you react to that brilliant plan:

So then you’re all, WHY DID I DO THAT? And by “that” of course I mean take the time to learn the intricacies of blocking/unblocking people in your phone. And this, phone companies, leads me to question number one.

WHY THE TAKESIES-BACKSIES?

This ability to unblock people – can you get rid of it? Once you block a person, can’t it be permanent so you don’t in your mind fabricate texts begging for your forgiveness that never actually happened but if there was no unblock option you’d never know this vs. caving and seeing a whopping two texts over the span of two months (side note: WTF). And then you hop back on the dating merry-go-round for another ride on the “this is the best and worst thing ever at the same goddamn time” horse and none of this would be an issue if blocks could be permanent! Screw will power!

This leads me to my second question/issue, and that is with factory resets. What if you had to do one over the weekend, and low and behold, these also remove all blocks because it wipes the phone so when you blocked this person for a second time after feeling emotionally abandoned in a Hooters parking lot, not only does it unblock them FOR you, but any attempted texts just flitter off to wherever these texts go. No, seriously. Where do they go? Because now not only did you lose the opportunity to see the maybe fictitious maybe not text(s) by unblocking him right before the reset, but now you have NO IDEA what he has attempted to text you, if anything, and when you had the choice to not know that was one thing, but it is QUITE ANOTHER to lose that power against your will because for some reason your Galaxy S5 decided to just not work and a reset was your only option.

Which leads me to my third and final issue. If you happened to text this now unblocked person and then realized not only that you didn’t know if you just responded to something like, “I hate you, never text me again,” with, “isn’t Jay Cutler the WORST?” but that apparently you haven’t hit your threshold for torture because you decide it would be a good idea to download a recent phone bill and see if blocked numbers still show up as incoming texts. Fun fact. They do. So now you decide that you’re done because you don’t want to count how many times he tried to text you and you wouldn’t be able to see the content anyways AND he didn’t respond to your lame attempt at starting a conversation because on Sunday you really just MISSED him and when your friend tells you to try and not go to the bad place of worst case scenarios, you’re all:

So this was just a REALLY long-winded way of asking for three things, phone companies of America:

1) For blocks to be permanent

2) For factory resets to somehow keep blocks intact (I mean, we’ve sent people to space, this can’t be harder than that)

3) For blocked incoming texts to NOT show up on phone bills because REALLY??? It technically wasn’t incoming if I never saw it. And furthermore if I didn’t have unlimited texting, would I have to pay for that? Does this even make sense?

Thanks for your consideration.

xoxox,

Halfway there

How in the hell are we already halfway done with 2014? I legitimately do not understand. This year is flying, more so than any recent ones that I can remember.

May was a hard month for me. Well, actually in April I was awarded the honor of being Dumbass of the Century when I started seeing B3 again, and then stopped, and then started, and didn’t tell anyone, because of course the sign of a good relationship is when you can’t tell anyone about it because they will be all

And you’re like

Even though they have EVERY RIGHT TO JUDGE YOU BECAUSE MY GOD. And as you write this, you’re all, “oh and B-T-DUBS, he was SUPPOSED to take me out last week for my birthday but instead all I got were texts about the NHL playoffs, which I don’t give a fuck about, so you know what buddy, you can BITE ME.”

But May wasn’t hard for that reason alone, May was hard because at the end of April I got hit in the eye with a softball while attempting (badly) to play in the outfield, and it broke my eye socket, and I had to have very painful surgery and looked like the Bride of Chucky for most of the month. On the bright side, I had a solid dose of Vicodin and was able to dull the pain. But I missed a lot of work and stressed about that because it essentially boiled down to missing work because I can’t catch a fucking softball.

So now, I’m trying to regroup because I’ve been scared to do things like go to the gym and put on eye makeup.

It is truly amazing how much your life can change in a day/month/year.

In which we discuss online dating

One of my friends is on OKCupid, and has really weathered some absolute bullshit because she’s a trooper, and I’ve just listened to her stories over G-Chat, vowing never again to test the waters of online dating.

Well, today she received two messages that just speak for themselves in terms of WTF. First, we have bachelor #1:

Okay first of all, the grammatical errors. Your vs. you’re is one of the most common yet infuriating grammatical errors that will automatically eliminate you from her and my dating pool. If that makes us snooty bitches, then so be it.

Second of all, who is he kidding with the 300 pounds comment? I mean, sure it was said in jest, but if my friend were even ten pounds heavier than her picture (she’s not) I am sure he’d run for the nearest cliff.

Bachelor #2 sent her something that was EERILY similar:

Both of them with the weight and the teeth and the misuse of your/you’re. Are these the messages we’re sending now? I don’t even know how to do this anymore but isn’t there a way to be witty without being offensive?

I really wonder what goes in to sending messages like this. Of course I’ve sent many a first message I thought was witty in which I was brutally rebuffed, so who knows. It’s obviously an exact science that involves a certain amount of cleavage and teeth.

But these are two very similar messages from two different people. So originality is out the window. No wonder shows like I Wanna Marry “Harry” exist. What else is there to do?