Buy a Ring and Give This Dude a Break

 [via How Now Brown Pau]

If you’re looking for an engagement ring, you may want to check out

this eBay auction for a couple of reasons. For starters, it’s a pretty

nice, understated and elegant ring:

Engagement ring for sale -- see

  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4997762829.

More importantly, the guy who’s selling it could stand to have a

little good fortune. Here’s an excerpt from his story, taken straight from his auction

page…

Since we had been ring shopping before, I knew I had picked out the

exact type of ring that she wanted and I thought she would be thrilled.

I thought she would finally be happy that we were officially going to

get married.

However, she seemed troubled and after asking her a few questions, she

blurted out that she was upset about the ring. She was upset that the

ring wasn’t from tiffany’s and was only 1 ct. instead of 2. I told her

I had planned on getting 2 cts but I couldn’t afford it. She then

accused me of putting a price on our relationship and couldn’t believe

that I did not get a 2 ct stone. She was pissed.

Yee-ouch. The full story, in all its painful detail, is on the eBay auction page.

I once had a girlfriend who secretly referred to me as “the Bank of

Joey”, so I have a rough idea of how this poor guy’s feeling. If you’re

in the market for engagement blingery, give this guy’s auction a look, won’t you?

Best "Star Wars" T-Shirt Ever

Billegible has created what has to be the best Star Wars T-shirt ever. It says “Geektease” on the front, and this on the back:

Photo: T-shirt -- 'She promised me Star Wars, but all I got was sex'.

Categories
It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Speed Dating Gets Specialized

Chris recently posted this picture taken somewhere in my neighbourhood on a file-sharing site…

Photo: 'Vegetarian Speed Dating' poster.

Fressen

— the location of the vegetarian speed dating night — is a vegetarian

restaurant on Queen Street West, not far from my house. Speaking as a

happy eater of meat, I like the food there; it’s good enough to change

vegetarian dining from sanctimonious misery to a tasty and satisfying

side-dish-only meal. Fressen is also German for “eat”, or more

specifically, “eat heartily” or “gorge”. Not without some frickin’ meat, bubby.

I once dated a vegetarian and often took her here. In between bites of

their delicious portobello “steak”, I’d tease her — a biology major in

college — by reminding her that evolution would never have happened

without carnivores: “After all, it doesn’t take much brains to sneak up

on a carrot.”

Scary Personal Ad of the Week

While writing the previous posting, I mentioned The Onion and decided to give it a quick. The Onion runs dating ads, and here was this week’s featured single:

Photo: Scary personal af from 'The Onion'.

Mention of both Joy Division (who edged out The Smiths as Manchester’s most depressed 80’s band) and Crispin Hellion Glover in his dating profile? Ladies, what are you waiting for?

Categories
It Happened to Me

Overheard at the Bank Today

In the age of ATMs and internet banking, there are few reasons for me

to drop by my bank branch, but talking to a manager about a line of

credit and mortgages is still — thankfully — a high-touch

“face-to-face” kind of thing.

While flipping through The Economist (the issue with oil as the cover story) in an easy chair in the waiting area, I overheard two suits by the ATMs:

Suit 1: “I gotta stop watching porn, man. If I keep watching it, I’ll never be able to have normal sex again.”

Suit 2: “Yeah. I know what you mean.”


I was reminded of the old article from The Onion titled Romantic Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested and I wondered: do people who watch too many “chick flicks” and “romantic comedies” get turned off normal dating?


Here’s a recent posting from MetaFilter that’s related:

(all links safe for work) Some

once hypothesized that as pornography became more accessible and more

mainstream, men in turn would become uncontrollable, ravenous sexual

beasts. I always thought this myself: a man will see something in porn

that a real woman won’t give him—Internet porn now caters in a click to

every fetish you can imagine—and he will find a way to get it.

 

My ex-girlfriend, observant and intelligent beyond her years, always

used to tell me the opposite: it wouldn’t turn men into beasts, having

their way with every woman they saw. No, it would turn them away from

women completely, libidos and their ability to connect with real

females weakened by the hardcore acts and impossible bodies that only

porn stars could give them. The porn would crave some intrinsic desire,

but leave both people in the couple lonelier and less fulfulled.

 

Now I think she was absolutely right.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Lovely Weekend

I had a lovely weekend with Wendy — hanging out with Wendy’s friends on Friday night, going to Rachel Barenblat’s and Ethan Zuckerman’s gorgeous house in the Berkshires

on Saturday and dinner at Wendy’s parents’ house on Sunday (where I

gorged on Wendy’s mom’s delicious coffee cake, for which I must atone

at the gym this evening.)

Details later. Hope your weekend was just as fun!

Categories
It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Slouching Towards Yuppiedom

If my life were a Winnie the Pooh

book (the A.A. Milne version, not the Disney version), the subtitle for

the current chapter would be “In Which the Accordion Guy and the

Redhead Search for a House”.

Unfortunately, Sunday open houses all take place at the same time —

between 2 and 4 in the afternoon. That limits the number of places we

can see today, so I’m taking Wendy on a walking tour of some

neighbourhoods to give her a better “feel” for them, which should be

helpful since she’s not from around here.

See you folks at Kickass Karaoke later tonight!