Are you serious?

When I first started this site, I did so on the basis of two self-imposed rules: 1) this would not be a venting/therapeutic/raging blog and 2) this would not be a daily journal or "dear diary" type blog. But the events that I have experienced over the past two days - that may make this post appear vengeful - are simply too blog-able for me not to share with my audience. Not only was I dying to tell people about the sheer humor and ridiculousness of what went down, but since I have received snide comments from the passive-aggressive person involved, he has lost any sympathy he may have wished to get from me, not to mention the slightest respect and decency from me NOT to expose his immaturity on the internet. Clearly, brother didn't know who he was dealing with. Am I being as childish? Probably, but this is too damn amusing.

I went on a date with a guy about two weeks ago. I really hate to date complete strangers but he was a little persistent and he seemed normal so I thought I'd give him a shot. At best, a relationship comes out of it, at worst, a casual acquaintance, right? To break him down to stats and numbers as most guys seem to do with girls is not my style, but I will do it only for brevity: he wasn't bad looking - probably a "7," he had an okay government job, he was well-traveled, kinda nerdy and wanting to pursue more schooling, BUT, as I later learned, his personality was a flat zero (in my humble opinion). We went to a shisha lounge for dinner and drinks on a week night. We talked for a bit and as much as I tried, there was no chemistry and really no common interests except for travel. I noticed he was a bit socially awkward, not comfortable with himself at all, and his poor attempts to joke got no more than a couple pity-chuckles. He simply wasn't a good match for me. I offered to pay but he insisted on paying, noting when the bill arrived "ooh! $100? That's so cheap!" We ended the night on a friendly note - no kiss, no hand-holding, no touching, nothing but a goodbye-hug. And I talked to him a couple times on the phone and online to see if maybe I was dismissing him too quickly. Nope, still zero personality.

For two weeks, I stalled seeing him. I didn't answer his calls. I was kind of hoping he'd get a hint. But I was still torn and my damn conscience got to me: should I give him another try? Maybe he was on an off night? Am I being too superficial? But by this week, I seriously was dreading another evening with him and I decided that wasn't fair to him at all. Why waste his time (or mine)? Since he anticipated meeting up again this week, I contacted him on Tuesday to give him only what I would expect from someone who just wasn't into me - the straightforward truth - and THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATION IN HISTORY went as follows:

me: hey ____, i need to be upfront with you about something and i don't want to lead you on or string you along but at this point i just feel like this isn't going anywhere. i'm sorry, but i don't want to be disingenuous, and you deserve better.
him: *silence*
me: uh, hello? are you there?
him: yes.
me: umm. ok, well i mean it when i say you deserve better. i don't think it's right for you to get anything less than what you give...and i just feel like i wouldn't return the sentiment.
him: *pause* i see.
me: does that make sense?
him: *pause* well, rejection never makes sense.
me: i wish you didn't look at it as rejection. either something works or it doesn't. you can't force it, ya know?
him: yeah well i suppose everyone now is looking for the best. it's just hard to believe the stuff you're saying when i hear the same speech all the time.
me: *nervous twitching* um...well...i can't speak for anyone but myself...
him: so what is it about me that you don't like? you know, i just try to look for the good in people.
me: *anxiously shifting in my chair* uhh i'm not going to nitpick at you, it's not my place...i just can't explain chemistry...
him: yeah i don't really think chemistry exists. it's just an excuse for someone's uncertainty, indecision, lack of confidence and inability to take a chance. what ever happened to getting to know someone?
me: umm...yeah. ok well, i said my piece, i won't argue with you. good luck!! *dying inside*
him: i'm not arguing. i just want to talk about it. why didn't you just say something earlier?
me: umm, well we've only gone out once, and i wasn't sure but since i've gotten to talk to you....well...this is getting uncomfortable. i'm sorry. *pulling gun out of drawer...*

Skip to today. I get an email from Mr. Passive-Aggressive with the following:

"So you blow me off and now I have to pay off a hundred dollar credit card bill from going out. Gee, thanks. Seems like you used me for a good night out. Have a great weekend."

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. That is the funniest thing I've ever received. Wait - he thinks that was a good night out? Pobrecito. Wait - didn't he insist to pay? Poor guy - he went on a date and had to pay! My friend suggested I send him a pack of razors with a note saying "I think you'll make the right choice." Even that is too harsh by my standards. No seriously, what the hell did this guy expect? I really did feel bad at the beginning: maybe the dude has had a rough couple of months. Maybe he has seasonal depression. Maybe he is just really desperate for a girlfriend....then the snide comments came out followed by the brilliant email. Now all bets are off, sucker. Really, the email is frame-worthy.

Evidently, I shouldn't have called him to let him down in the first place. This guy thinks I should have done the trail-off method (not answer emails/calls, avoid him at all costs, and never talk to him again) and that I deserved the reaction I got. Guys really prefer to have a girl disappear completely rather than her tell him upfront that it won't work out? And I thought their's was the gender with balls. Suck it up. Don't get into the dating game if you can't handle the possibility of a girl not liking you or *gasp* the possibility that she might actually give you the truth of not liking you. It goes both ways, ladies.

The ice on my heart and soul will melt soon, I promise. Spring is coming.

Deep Thoughts

My all-time favorite old skit from Saturday Night Live was "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey." Sometimes, when I'm having trouble falling asleep, I try to come up with my own "deep thoughts." Don't worry about political incorrectness, randomness or crass taste of the jokes - I got them down. But the dark humor of it! I've come up with a couple of my own but I just can't pinpoint the same type of humor this Jack Handey guy did. He was brilliant.

While I'm tweaking my own "thoughts," here are some of the best SNL ones. I don't know if there is something inherently wrong with me but these crack me up every time:

"One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh no," I said, "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late."

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

"If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did."

"It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."

"If I ever get real rich, I hope I'm not real mean to poor people, like I am now."

"We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off and go fishing. But we wouldn't be laughing that evening when he'd come back with some whore he picked up in town."

"One thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse."

"To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography and the dancers hit each other."

"I hope that after I die, people will say of me: "That guy sure owed me a lot of money."

"For mad scientists who keep brains in jars, here's a tip: Why not add a slice of lemon to each jar, for freshness."

A St. Louis-style Holiday, Part I

There's one particular memory I have of spending holiday breaks in St. Louis over the years. During the winter breaks in high school, I hung out with kids of family friends in town, even though I didn't grow up in St. Louis. While most midwestern kids at that age were sniffing glue or sneaking beers from their parents' fridge, these kids had other means of entertainment. One night, probably after a late run to Wendy's, we piled into a station wagon, flying down a residential street laden with Christmas lights and nativity sets. I was sharing the backseat with 3 others, holding on to my fries and praying we'd get back home in one piece, when a couple of the guys talked of taking a baby Jesus from some poor bastard's yard. I looked on toward the brightly lit yards of the split-level homes and assumed my friends were bullshitting. Up to that point, the extent of mischief in my life was fawning over athletic celebrities and attempting to steal cinemax from the neighbor's cable. The next thing I knew, we screeched to a halt, one of the guys jumped out and ran straight for a nativity scene. I thought about how some Christian, Missourian Ma and Pa took the effort to set up a depiction of exactly how little baby Jesus was born, proudly displaying their Christmas pride to the neighborhood. And we were just a couple of teenagers looking for a good laugh. My friend grabbed the baby, a lamb, and bolted back to the car. Everyone was hooting and hollering, and meanwhile I was about to shit myself. We drove half a mile down the road and pulled over again to deposit the baby and lamb in someone else's yard. No fucking way. I started cracking up and nervously looking around to see if there were any witnesses. We sped out of dodge and some of the kids talked of hitting some churches to do the same thing but thank god their sensibility set in and they figured there would be surveillance or cops set up. At the moment, my sheltered ass was horrified - albeit amused - by the mischief I was involved in. But in retrospect, I crack up thinking about it and kind of wish I could go back to those reckless, innocent teenage adventures where we just didn't give a fuck.

"Boys only want one thing."

When I was about 15 or 16 y.o., I accompanied my dad to the dealership for an oil change for his car. To give you a visual, I was not a cutesie-tootsie teenager. I was slightly a non-conformist, in protest to the girls in my high school whose lives were consumed with dating half the school, wearing short skirts and getting weekly manicures and pedicures. Also, I think subconsciously I was protesting the stereotypical, superficial Persian girl. Instead I wore jeans and polo shirts or preppy sweaters, watched college basketball obsessively, and refused to date the male losers I had known since elementary school (ew, that's, like, incest). I barely wore any makeup, and my figure hadn't adopted much shape yet. Thanks to my wild mane of hair and darker skin, I still had some redeeming natural appeal, somehow?, at that age.

I was sitting in the dealership waiting room, glancing over the Car and Driver magazines, while my dad was chatting it up with an old friend outside. It was a typical, mangy car shop waiting room with uncomfortable metal chairs and coffee spots on the carpet. The hyper-masculinity of the entire place was making me uncomfortable, considering I was the only female creature on the lot. Then in walked a semi-attractive young mechanic in his greased-up jumpsuit. The scene couldn't have been better scripted. He looked about 18 or 19 y.o., dark hair, toned arms, cavalier attitude - typical for a guy that age - and eyeing me curiously as he wiped the oil from his hands with a rag. "I think your car is ready." Oh..um...thanks. I couldn't look him in the eye. I turned around and saw my dad still engaged in conversation outside. "So what's your name?" I swung around, panicked that he was still talking to me. "Are you thirsty?" he asked as he threw some coins into the soda machine. Um, sure. . . I couldn't believe an older boy was actually paying attention to me. He handed me a coke and started to talk to me about his job, trying to joke to get me to lighten up. I kept looking back to see if my dad was watching. He finally signaled to me that we were leaving. I smiled and thanked my cute friend for the soda (and secretly for the vote of confidence he had unknowingly given me). Coke in hand, I took upbeat strides to my dad's car and got in. We were but a mile away from the dealership when my dad looked at my cherished soda:

"Vhere deed you gett coke?" From the waiting room...a guy at the dealership just bought me one. "VHHAT?" Next thing I knew, the car was pulled over and my dad was pulling a U-ey in the middle of a crowded street. My dad's thick black eyebrows were arched real high, the way they get when he's PISSED. His perfectly parted mustache - one that has earned him quite a rep - began to twitch. Oh shit, that's bad. He switched over to Farsi: "Who gave it to you? The mechanic??? The nerve!! Who does he think he is?? What was he saying to you?" I was trying to reason with him: Dad. It's just a soda. He just gave me an extra one...no biggie. "No beegie?? Shadi, let me tell you sumteeng..." And then he told me something that has, unfortunately, stayed with me.

"A man does not offer you something unless he wants something else in return. A gift, a drink, a ride, anything. If you take it, he will expect you to repay him."

Damn. I felt the air knocked out of me. You mean, he. . .wants. . SEX?! Just from buying me a coke? I was confused. We pulled back into the dealership, my dad grabbed the soda can, and beelined toward the waiting room where the poor unsuspecting kid still was, not realizing the wrath my father would bring with him. I couldn't hear anything but I saw my dad's arms flailing around and he was clearly yelling. Probably in Farsi, even. He stomped back to the car, mumbling in Farsi under his breath. I glanced back through the window at the defeated kid who was just as confused as I was. That was the first of many "I'm a man and I know how they think" lessons I got from my dad, and to this day it still echoes in my head. Not as strictly, of course. His traditional, old school influences have waned a bit over the years.

But I swear that is why I could never allow myself to accept a drink from a stranger. Blame the mustached, expressive Iranian man in my life who only wanted to protect his daughter in an unknown land.

A Joke on a Cloudy Day

For some reason, I felt my audience would especially appreciate this:

A Muslim was seated next to an Australian on a flight from London to Melbourne in Australia. After the plane was airborne, drinks orders were taken. The Aussie asked for a rum and coke, which was brought and placed before him. The flight attendant then asked the Muslim if he would like a drink.

He replied in disgust, "I'd rather be savagely raped by a dozen whores than to let alcohol touch my lips."

The Aussie handed his drink back to the attendant and said, "Me too. I didn't know we had a choice."