Friday, May 19, 2006

Does Chemistry Require Chemicals?

Not if you’re a sucker for pain.

People survive amazing disasters. The earthquake victim is pulled alive from the rubble. The driver walks away scratch-free from a crumpled auto. A woman endures a first date with a cologne-soaked, emotional baggage-laden, mid-level marketing executive.
Luck plays into the equation, but you can increase your chances of surviving an unpleasant first encounter. An ounce of prevention is worth a six-month stay in a sanitarium.

The following are tips for surviving that first date with me. Read them as if your life depended on it.

Assemble a first date disaster kit. The following items are essential:

A quart of mouth wash and eight-feet of Listerine Strips.

A moral compass.

A pin to deflate that ego.

Shin guards. Crotch guards. The works.


No expectations.

The pictures you have of me are neither ten years old, nor have they been airbrushed to oblivion, or came with a recently purchased wallet. You need not expect somebody six inches shorter or 40 pounds heavier -- or both. However, I am highly capable of over-eating or over-dieting within a short span of days. DON'T PANIC. Focus on the positive.

I do not possess a striking resemblance to the suspects you've seen on "Cops," but you might want to seek information for conversation starters: "Is there a story behind that scar?" Or, "Do you braid your nose hair for religious reasons?" With luck, the evening will fly by before you get to UFOs and Elvis pilgrimages.


Familiarize yourself with all exits.

This may come in very handy halfway through dinner (in a good or bad way). We can both create a diversion and sneak out the nearest door without anyone suspecting a thing. Everything else that happens after that need not be mentioned here and requires reader’s discretion and parental guidance.


Practice your "pretend" listening skills.

The most essential survival dating skill is the ability to appear as though you are listening. Remember to nod and blink. Do not linger your attention to another woman across the room unless it is your mother who doesn’t speak a word of English. If it isn’t your Mom, or any legal female member of your family, be sure to wear a helmet, shin guards, crotch guards and protective vest to avoid battery and injury on any part of your body. (Refer to disaster kit)

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'Ain at 16:23

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...Continued

And then there is Father’s Day. Another scam thrust upon us by capitalism to further pry our wallets open? Only if you’re a cynic. Just another holiday that greeting card companies invented to extort money from the public? No, it’s not. In fact, when the idea of a Father’s Day was first invented, Father’s Day cards didn’t even exist. So I guess we don’t really have an excuse now not to buy our dads a gift on this day.

How are you going to honour your dad this year? Are you getting him a card for Father’s Day? Maybe you should think twice about that. When was the last time you saw your dad reach into his special box full of memorabilia to reminisce about the past? Never, because there is no such box. Thinking about getting your dad another tie? What is a necktie but a reminder to each father of his youthful ambitions he abandoned and the world of servitude in which he now resides? For the love of your father, put the tie down, and back away from the rack. Fathers, who are the adult version of little boys with a tad more responsibility, want the adult version of a Tonka truck not a decorative noose or 12 stanzas in beautiful calligraphy telling him how much he means to you. A father wants something that will remind him of the reckless, devil may care youth he abandoned when he gladly accepted the obligation to put your needs ahead of his.

The main thing to ask yourself when considering a Father’s Day gift is “Who does my father think he is?” Does he envision himself as a weekend Hell’s Angel? Is he always rambling on about how “someday the snowy peak of Everest will bow down before him.” Does he picture himself on horseback in the old west uttering lines of dialogue like “I reckon so.” Once you determine this information, the ideal Father’s Day gift is not far away no matter what the harebrained masculine delusion is.

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'Ain at 15:43

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Thursday, May 11, 2006

Seasonal reflections

Contrary to popular belief, Mother's Day was not conceived and fine-tuned in the boardroom of Hallmark. The earliest tributes to mothers date back to the annual spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and to the offerings ancient Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele.

However, today, what should be a pleasant experience between mother and children has turned into an exemplification of the worst traits of man. Allow me to refresh your memory through my personal experiences –

First, there are the obligatory cards. Don’t deny it - you wait until it’s actually Mother’s Day to buy the card, and by that time all the real Mother’s Day cards are gone, so you have to settle for some lame, no-name humour card that has a picture of what looks like a female on it. Mom knows you bought the card just before visiting. She saw you park at the parking lot to fill it out. Strike One.

Next comes what to get her for Mother’s Day. You have no clue. She has a million cookbooks and enough serving trays to feed the army with, so you settle on a cheap box of bath soaps, never minding the fact that Mom hasn’t taken an actual bath since the day you were born. Strike Two.

And lastly, there’s the whole bit about taking Mom out for brunch on Mother’s Day. This, in theory, is a wonderful idea, but the problem is that every other person and his or her mother is trying to do the same thing at exactly the same time. Restaurants that are normally wonderful and cheery become wastelands barren of courtesy, respect, and humanity. You’ll have overworked servers, overworked hosts(esses), overworked chefs, and worse, stressed out patrons trying to bully their way into getting their mothers the next open table. So Mom ends up having to bail you out of jail because of that fight you picked to get the window table, and so, once again, another Mother’s Day is ruined. Strike Three.

That however, is hypothetical – I never really did end up in a jail cell.

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'Ain at 16:45

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