28.3.12

Thee Archives of Failure, Episode 1: OkStupid



I found this one laying around from a Cupid session a few years ago. It’s probably the quickest I’ve ever shit the bed, and I’m still not sure why it went awry. I thought I had this one sewn the fuck up, but after one e-mail I get bowled over with the dreaded Tumbleweed of Silence.
Tell me if you can see what went wrong. Names have been changed to protect… well, no one. I just thought these names better fit the piece. Enjoy!


GraspingAtStraws0243:
A Cliff Claven-type who throws gang signs (what set you claimin'?!), has an insanely specific spirit animal (would it break the bond if it were eying a pineapple?), and subscribes to the cult of the Oxford comma. Psh, ladies like you are a dime a dozen [as he swoons, biting his bottom lip].

OutOfYourLeagueXOXO:
I knew I was a big old fat cliche. Bummer. Will change status to more exotic things like "I like shopping!" and "puppies are cute!".

GraspingAtStraws0243:
That wins the Best Message Ever award? Sheesh, I apologize for all the men before me that have set the bar so low.
As a gentleman and a smart ass I feel it my duty to offer up some sort of reparations for this failure on the part of my gender. These days reparations typically come in the form of a drink, usually of the "adult" variety, but that is flexible.
To be sure that this isn't some crafty ruse to get you to go out on a date with me, I can just leave ten dollars with your name attached to it at the bar of your choice.
However, if you chose to accept this payment in person, face to face, I can offer tips to make your profile not so big, fat, and cliche-ridden. We can "pimp" your profile, if you will (Secret tip #1: Be sure to mention that your iPHONE is one of the six things you couldn't do without. Guys like to know that for about 40% of your time together your face will be softly underlit by the romantic glow of the screen).
Mull over this offer, ma'am, and get back to me at your leisure.
Have yourself a lovely day and a beautiful evening.
Yours in sincerity and shame,
daniel q. [ampersand] alyosius jones junior, jr. esq XII

Now before you say “You may have gone ‘too much, too soon, sir'”, anyone who knows me knows that this verbose and idiotic response is so fucking Me that I could copyright it and not a court in the land would blink. So I’m just being me here and… oh… oh yeah, OK. I see. Now that I’ve typed it out I can see the problem. The brutally reflective surface of Text on Screen just cleared this up for me.
Alright, so I’m a jackass. Either I need a serious Personality Overhaul or I need to just learn to love the Tenga Flip Hole. If the thing had a neck I could bury my face in and a body to spoon I’d be cool with it, but it lacks these necessary elements.
Shit…

20.3.12

Bulleit Kentucky Whiskey Bourbon Review




I’m not gonna get fancy with this one. Here is my first reaction:
“Soap? Bourbon?
Soap…? Bourbon…?
Soap. Definitely soap.”
Yes, it has a quick, up front, hit ‘em in the nose taste of soap that disappears almost immediately. If your tongue blinked, you could easily miss it. But my tongue did not blink, and once I noticed the soapy taste, that was that. Much like walking in and seeing your mom eating your dad’s ass, things can never go back to normal after that information is processed. (Don’t get me wrong, it’d be reassuring to know that after all these years your parents were still getting freaky, but at the same time, it’s something you don’t really want to know… you know? Man, talk about a double-edged sword.)
I’ve ordered Bulleit this a few times in bars before this Quest for Flavour started. Since I hadn’t refined my pallet at all and I wasn’t doing any sort of side-by-side comparisons (and I was probably drunk) I didn’t really notice the flavor. It was just whiskey to me. I got it cuz I felt the need to branch out and the orange label popping off the amber liquids appealed to my color fetish. Also, ordering “a bullet, neat” sounds kinda badass.
While I still love the way the bottle looks, I’ll just stick with drinking Palmolive since it’s cheaper than this AND it softens hands while cleaning dishes.

18.3.12

Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey Review



I can review this whiskey with one word, a word that I’m guessing the last three dates I’ve been on could review my presence and performance on said dates.
“Meh”. (All blame falls on me, this I realize. Self-inflicted, Sensible wounds make for bad company).
As in, it wasn’t great, it didn’t suck, it was nothing to write home about, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (-1- being “like talking to a box of dead squirrels”, -10- being “we finger-blasted each other in the back of an El Camino (yeah you read that right, she got to the second knuckle on me too), and -5- being “the greeter at Wal-Mart seemed pleasant enough”) it came in at a solid 4.2.
Much like those last three dates, the taste of this whisky caused nothing spectacular to happen in anyone’s mouth. If I walked into the bar and saw this sitting there, lonely on a stool reading a shitty paperback, and after a quick but thorough inspection I found that no one named Jameson or Maker’s was in the room, I’d sit down and have a stilted conversation with Tullamore. We’d start talking about the weather within about ten minutes, which is always a bad sign on a date, I’d pretend I had to pee after eleven and go bomb the bathroom with whatever pen happened to be laying around (hypothetically speaking, of course. People who do that in real life are dicks), then I’d make a casual-ish exit and never go back to the bar again just so as to avoid having to repeat the experience.
To summarize, you could do a lot better (easily) and you could do a lot worse (equally simple). At about $26 a bottle, save yourself eight bucks and go the Kilbeggan route.
Simply put, there is no secret magic in this bottle. Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see here.

17.3.12

Half-Dreamscape # Monsieur Satan, 16. 2. 2012


It’s about 3 AM and I half wake up to murmurings outside my window, which considering where I live isn’t anything strange. I’ve heard fights, puking, promises of hard sex, breaking glass, screeching tires, laughter, screaming, cars bumping other cars in sloppy attempts at parallel parking, and a whole slew of other things that make living here so fun.
But right now is different. It’s unnaturally still out. Even my asshole upstairs neighbor who likes to listen to Metallica at this hour is mum.
The murmurings are rising and falling, and they’ve got a phlegmatic hue that makes my gag reflex activate (my only weakness, mucous-based sounds and sights). The cadence tells me that words are being spoken, and it’s clearly a monologue as it keeps on going and I can just feel that there is only one person (?) out there. Like the atmosphere isn’t impacted enough for two people. You know what I mean, like when you walk into a room and you can tell that someone is there? Not for any reason other than you can feel it in the air, as if the molecules are pressed together a little too tight for just you to be there.
Anyhoo, I can’t make out the words but the sounds are accented in a way that makes me think it’s French. Not that I can tell if it’s a language at all, but the syllables are hitting in ways that just feel French.
So apparently I have some sort of phlegmatic, French-speaking demon outside of my window. There was no way I was going to look, so I just stayed in bed wondering if it was going to sense, in the way that I did, that I was alert and aware of whatever incantation was happening outside my window.
And that made me casually realize that the sad little chain on my door that is supposed to make me feel secure wasn’t going to stop anyone, or anything, from getting in here if it, they, s/he wanted to.