Thoughts On The Infant Invasion

2011 is the year I buy onesies in bulk. The year of diaper cakes. The year I finally get to feel up all of my friends bellies. The year I try not to freak out over the baby invasion upon my shores.

This is not the first time that the infant army has crawled towards me but the procreation waves that crested when I was a young adult never felt threatening. Many of my acquaintances did me the favor of having kids really early so that I in no way had to question my life choices. I was perfectly comfortable with my decision not to have children in my early 20s so that I could focus on the really important things like watching The Gilmore Girls and developing a finely honed appreciation for cheeses. I knew that there was plenty of time for babies. But this new onslaught of birthing hangs like that picture of Uncle Sam pointing menacingly at me promising that I too must now go to war.

Last month I turned 33 cementing the fact that if I ever become a mother it will be at a later age than when my own mother birthed her first child (me). “Mom was 32 when she had me.” was always my internal mantra -- translation: “No need to worry! You’re not old yet! The eggs are fine!!!!” I’m officially past due on my #1 excuse for being fancy free and childless..... now what?

The problem is that when you’re 23 and thinking about having a baby you have no idea what you’re doing. You think babies are cute and obviously you’ll love it and everything will be awesome. At 33 you’re almost too well informed to ever consider actually having a child. Occasionally it will not be cute. You will not always love it. Everything will not be awesome. When you’re a knocked up 16 year old and MTV is at your door with a herd of video cameras everyone knows that this baby is going to ruin you life. When you’re 33 and staring at the cute designer jeans that you’ll never fit into ever again you have to absorb the knowledge that this baby is going to ruin your life all by yourself

The project manager in me is obviously freaking out. After all, I’m late! Worse than that If I don’t have a baby in the next say.... 3 years? NO BABIES FOR ME. What biology doesn’t understand is that I need more time. More time to sleep until 10am. More time to enjoy my (by no means perfect but still totally nice and mostly flat) stomach. And someone else I know? Someone with half the ingredients needed for baby making tucked away somewhere in his corpus? That dude needs a lot more time.

I can’t blame G for putting things off. I know exactly how trying to get pregnant is going to go. That is going to be an awesome time for my baby daddy. “Better get it up and do your job or I will take you off this project!” (ROMANCE!!!!!) Secondly, God is for sure going to fuck with me. He’ll be all “Oh-ho-ho! Look who wants a baby inside her NOW. Why it’s Lil Miss ‘Please God do not let me get pregnant!’ Oh how the tides have turned!” And so then it’ll be at least 3 exhausting months of freaking out and reversing all of those prayers and spiritually eating my words.

It does not help that everyone makes babies sound like demon spawn. In addition to obvious crap that sucks like never sleeping and touching someone else’s poop apparently moms can also look forward to boobs that hurt so much that you cry for hours, weeks of depression caused by hormones up and leaving you without warning and never ever looking hot ever again because your whole body is stretched out and ugly. It’s hard to look at that list and think “sign me up!”

I’ve always taken warnings at face value. “Drugs are bad.” So I didn’t do drugs. “Sex will ruin your life.” So I was a virgin until 24. “Babies are hard.” So here I am. I’m sure all of the parents out there and the entire Christian Right is thrilled to see me lumping children in with drugs and sex but you have to admit that I have a point -- all three seem to offer unconditional love but often they just make you their slave.

So do I want a baby? Too many people never really ask themselves that question. Thanks to biology or society or poetry we just assume that love->marriage->baby in a baby carriage. When love can just as easily point to trips around the world or a shared appreciation for bourbon or leisurely weekend mornings sans a soundtrack of Dora the Explorer. I suppose after these paragraphs of whining it seems like I must want (or at least deserve) to be childless, but truthfully I have always loved children. I don’t get bored talking about the milestones of month 4. I sometimes watch Sesame Street all by myself. I’ve always clicked with kids, always wanted at least one of my own someday. But the idea that “someday” is almost here has me suddenly indecisive. So I weigh the options, consider the risks, hem, haw, but it never feels like I come any closer to confidence. Even the most well researched act of procreation will still require a leap of faith. Can someone give me a push?

It's a Shame About Juliana

On Friday night I boarded a time machine back to 1994 care of Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield live in concert. Back in high school I felt like Hatfield was the only person who understood my pain. Every song she sang about low self esteem and boys who don’t ever like you enough seemed crafted for the kind of sorrow unique to 16 year old girls. Juliana and I were kindred mopers (despite the fact that she was living the dream of a successful music career and I was no where near cool enough to have a boyfriend with a drug problem.).

But that was 17 years ago and today the main draw for Hatfield/Dando was not the music (though I enjoyed rocking out the It’s a Shame About Ray as much as the next 33 year old living in deep denial about the passage of time). The point of the show was nostalgia topped with voyeurism. Dando and Hatfield were probably the power couple of college radio right before radio became completely obsolete. I say probably because back in 1993 we didn’t have gossip blogs so no one really knows the extent of their relationship which is great because instead of boring facts we can all make up salacious stories.

Here’s what we “know”. Dando and Hatfield dated for some portion of the 1990s but it didn’t work out most likely because he was very much in love with drugs. This did not stop Hatfield from pining for him for decades. Eventually Dando (in a drug fueled stupor?) married some supermodel but she apparently has only so much tolerance for crack smoking and last year they divorced. Dando presumably thought to himself, “Whatever loser, that one girl Juliana will always love me. Also it has been about 15 years since I even tried to make any cash and I am totally out of beer money.” Then he called up Hatfield and asked her to go on a tour and obviously she has not bothered to go to any therapy in the last 20 years because she agreed.

I owed it to my Hatfield obsessed former self to pay the totally affordable $15 ticket price for this concert and I owed it to my train wreck fascinated current self to cover the ridiculous ticket fees (which were actually not so bad since the concert venue used reasonable ticketweb not EVIL Ticket Master).

Friday’s show was everything I had hoped and feared. They played all of the awkward autobiographical songs that each wrote about the other and the audience squirmed and raised their eyebrows with glee over sharing the inside joke live and in person. (If you subscribe to my made up history (and I think most fans do) it is possible that every song that Hatfield ever wrote was about Dando. Evan? Duh. Choose Drugs? Obviously. Everybody Love me but You? Cool Rock Boy? Her entire discography is like an all Dando heartbreak-fest.)

Juliana spent the interim between each tune bemoaning how bad her songs were compared to Evan’s which predictably resulted in the audience yelling out We Love Yous. Whether this behavior was all an extremely elaborate contrivance to transport the whole room back to the self hatred of high school is unclear but it was certainly effective. Eventually Hatfield sang Evan (“Evan, I just love you I guess”), stole the set list and walked off stage in a (fake?) huff while Evan himself stuck around for a few more tunes. If they were acting the scene was superb if they weren’t it was insane.

It turns out that I am no longer charmed by prolonged wallowing any more than drug addiction. The tragic flaws that I once found painfully endearing now just seem like false depth. I love the girl I was at 16 but I am so glad not to be her any longer and perhaps I hate my 16 year old self just enough to take it all out on Hatfield. Not being the girl who mopes over guys and feels inferior is a point of pride and if Hatfield hasn’t grown up with me I’m angry at her for wasting the last two decades of her life. Its bad enough to have spent all of your 20s mooning over a boy who literally chooses drugs over you but to extend that into a life long depression brings out my eye rolling. At least Evan can blame the drugs -- what’s her excuse?

Of course maybe it was all an act. Concert as performance art taken to the extreme? BRAVO. Standing in the audience I was transported. I felt uncomfortable and angry and embarrassed in a way I have not since high school. I was judgmental like only a teenager can be. And now I’m exercising my own self obsessed navel grazing by basically journalling the whole experience. Viva 1994.

Visualizing Facebook Relationships

(click through for larger (though still not really large enough) version)

I don't know why I felt compelled to do this but now that it is done I feel a strange peace.

In Defense of Geeks (Again)

I went to see the fabulous movie The Social Network last Sunday night. I saw the film in Canada (which I like to believe is bedbug free) with a group of 4 friends and our reviews were all positive -- go see the film, it’s great. But after the movie reviews were over a quintessential question emerged: Is Mark Zuckerberg a jerk?

Before we begin the debate: a brief disclaimer: This is not an essay about Mark Zuckerberg the person because I’ve never met him. This is an essay about Mark Zuckerberg the movie character because that dude sat in the back row of my Analysis of Algorithms class, I’ve been on scads of awkward first dates with him, and some days... he is me.

He is not, apparently, my friends (all of whom found him repulsive and annoying). I was shocked because I thought I had mostly self selected a group of super nerds to hang out with. They all work in software, all save one are active Settlers of Catan players. And yet -- Mark haters all of them. It seems that, despite their own geek cred, each had been burned by the surly geek before and was ready to banish him from their lives. As I pondered how my friends were not like me it slowly became clear that back in 1993 I was the only true nerd of the group. All of them had dates for prom, one was a cheerleader, even the most nerd-core among the bunch had to admit that she was a bit of a campus queen in high school. There is no chance that any of these people would have talked to me in 9th grade. For my friends, and for everyone out there who thinks Mark Zuckerberg is a huge asshole, welcome to another edition of what is basically an ongoing series on this blog defending the geeks of the world.

When you’re a smart eight year old and everyone is mean to you at soccer practice your dad will tell you to forget about those kids because you’re so much smarter then them. One day, they’ll see. If you’re anything like me this little grain of pride and spite can sustain you through being pants-ed in the cafeteria, cystic acne, and a Homecoming dance where all of your friends refused to hang out with you because you arrived dateless. But even for the most patient geek waiting for fate to deliver on the “I’ll Show Them!” promise can be tedious.

Enter the young Zuckerberg. He’s annoying. He’s awkward. He’s bitter. But this nerd is not messing around waiting for fate to prove his tormentors wrong. He’s making things happen. He’s doing the geek equivalent of kicking ass and taking names. Mark Zuckerberg is the Terminator of computer hacking and the Robocop of staying up all night drinking Jolt Cola and laying down punishing lines of C++. Action heroes have never spoken to me but I think what I felt while watching The Social Network was the same catharsis that others find in exploding cars and sniper fire. The good guys were winning and they had no shame.

Yes, Mark is kind of a jerk. We never see a young Zuckerberg in 7th grade getting tossed into a locker but I don’t think it’s overly presumptuous to assume that taking his share of noogies and wedgies is at least partially responsible for his persistent attitude problem. I also don’t need to see him lying on a shrink’s couch to accept the implied Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis. I’m not at all surprised that the smart kid was tormented to the point of feeling a need to prove his self worth. I’m glad his weapon of choice was lines of code and not a gun. Despite his abrasive exterior I can’t bring myself to dislike Mark in the role of rags to riches geek superhero.

(Incidentally while I can’t bring myself to hate Zuckerberg I can almost bring myself to hate Sean Parker. But not totally, because even if he is the jerk that the movie makes him out to be he’s still a smart jerk and he’s still right -- he brought down the (evil) record industry. He also won by somehow convincing studio heads to cast Justin Timberlake to play him despite the fact that no one has ever accused Parker of bringing sexy back, not even a nerd fetishist like myself.)

Can anyone really blame a guy for screwing the Winklevie of the world? They’re not only good looking, popular and arrogant but they’re rich! Isn’t screwing them every geek’s dream? It has certainly been mine. There are a lot of stupid jerks in positions of power many of whom have prospered by hiding their idiocy and mean-spirtedness behind toothy grins and firm handshakes. As a former geek who somehow managed to (mostly?) grow out of her awkward stage I wouldn’t mind cutting some slack to the smart jerks (especially the smart jerks with a genetic disorder that at least partially accounts for their jerkiness).

The other day I received the following blog comment (on this post): “You are an idiot and your blog is sooo boring and shows you are not so smart but think you are because you like computers and ironic t-shirts.” It’s true. I think I’m so smart. And sometimes I think this excuses me from being a jerk. Just like Mark Zuckerberg seems to think that being smart and successful somehow excuses him from being a complete asshole to his friend Eduardo. Obviously, we’re both wrong. I think the most revealing scene in The Social Network is when Eduardo’s lawyer tries to make a point about the $18,000 plus an additional $1000 that Eduardo had invested in The Facebook after which Mark makes a huge todo out of checking this simple math. Mark can only see the lawyer as a tormentor and his only tool for dealing with a tormentor is to make a show of just how smart he is and how stupid she is. The scene is funny because for a moment it feels like this is another instance of the geeks winning. The scene is sad because Mark can’t hold back his flippant response even if it means further distancing himself from his only friend.

There are a lot of reason why I didn’t grow up to be Mark Zuckerberg. Firstly, I’m not smart enough. Most importantly I don’t have Asperger’s Syndrome. And I’m also not 19 years old anymore, neither is Mark. Perhaps we were both huge jerks at the end of adolescence but hopefully adulthood will let us set aside our bitterness and find sympathy for our tormentors (both real and perceived). Hopefully, as adults, we’ll overcome the disorder or personality trait that keeps us from expressing gratitude and love. After all, we won. We have cool jobs, we go on fabulous trips, we can do lots of complicated math problems. Hopefully we’re both much happier than we were freshman year of college.There’s not much to be gained by being a sore winner.

Rocking the Suburbs

Long ago in a lifetime far far away I owned a car. It was a cute used 97 black Jetta that I did not name because I am not the car naming type. I did, however, place a small sticker on the rear window proclaiming, “I am a fucking genius” because I am the arrogant geek type; also the tempting fate type who worried from time to time about the irony of someone spotting that sticker among the mangled wreckage of my cute car and (slightly less cute) blood soaked body. Luckily, I avoided that chagrined fate, but just barely. As everyone knows, cars are killing machines. But when you’re living in the Silicon Valley they are a necessary evil without which one could not attend concerts with the cool kids in San Francisco or, you know, get to work. All the same I mostly hated my car.

The worst part about owning a car is the constant fear that it will break down and cost at least $700 to fix (at the time $700 was basically all of the money I could muster if I sold my computer equipment and every single pair of shoes in my closet). The Jetta was theoretically reliable and really didn’t break down hardly at all but you wouldn’t know that from the status of the check engine light. That little bitch was blaring orange and angry for at least 50% of the time that I owned the car. It would snap on at the first sign of reduced tire pressure, the second you were due for an oil change or any time the car got a little chilly. It goes without saying (though I didn’t realize this until months after purchasing the vehicle) that the Jetta is a product made exclusively for bitchy high maintenance sorority girls and it seems the car itself was programmed to adopt the personality of its target customer. I think once or twice the check engine light came on specifically to request that I pour a little Smirnoff Ice on the engine block.

(A brief aside. Expert advice from my genius mechanic brother whose phone would ring every time I saw a flicker of orange on my dash: “For year and years people went without a check engine light and everything was mostly fine. If you don’t hear a noise or have problems driving stop calling me. Its fine.”)

The second worst thing about owning a car is having to park the beast. I suppose this is mostly a non-issue in the country and suburbs but in the San Francisco Bay Area it is a nightmare. You drive around and around the same blocks only to eventually find a spot and then spend 30-40 minutes cursing yourself for proving the “women can’t parallel park” theory thus personally setting back feminism about 75 years. Then, you get out of the car and walk up and down the street 4 times reading every little bit of signage looking for any indication that this is actually a legal spot which is near impossible to believe because certainly if it were legal someone would have parked here already. The rest of the evening is divided equally between the following thoughts, “Gee I wonder if my car has been towed yet,” and “Golly, I imagine my stereo has certainly been stolen by now.”

When I decided to move to New York City I shed a tear as I waved goodbye to uncrowded beaches and fresh produce in February and friends and family but was practically gleeful as I bid bon voyage to the world of cars. I greeted the subway with a grin and have been happily riding all over creation for a mere $2.25 ever since. People in NY complain endlessly about the subway (“not enough trains at 2am.” “crazy expectation that I ride a shuttle bus instead of a train.” “$2.25! That’s insane! I could buy half a bagel for that!” ) but this is mostly because complaining is fun and because, frankly, New Yorkers have no idea how good they have it. I would consider the subway a crazy gift from god even at $5 a ride (but don’t tell that to the MTA).

My one fear about going carless was lost car trip opportunities but I figured that with the amount of money I’d save by not paying for a car or insurance or repairs or parking tickets I could certainly afford to rent a car to drive out of the city from time to time but obviously this rarely ever actually happens. I’m just too cheap. Could I afford the occasional weekend car rental? Sure. But do I really need to spend that money? Couldn’t I just have Fresh Direct deliver my case of $7 wine and vat of nonfat greek yogurt and spend the weekend making Pinot Noir smoothies instead of breathing in the great outdoors? After all, that plan is cheaper AND I don’t have to worry about convincing my boyfriend, Geoff, to be my designated driver. So I mostly stay carless but on the happy occasion when a Chevy Aveo or some other subpar approximation of an automobile should happen upon my curb it is blissful in ways that non New Yorkers should rightfully giggle over.

Just a few weeks ago Geoff was suddenly in possession of a company car for 12 whole hours. He immediately contacted me with the happy news that we could go to Target (!!) or Ikea (!!!) or EVEN a real fucking grocery store (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Glee. Visions of 5 foot wide aisles and bins full to the brim with bulk oatmeal danced in my head. We hightailed it to Fairway which is about 2 miles from our house but somehow also about 8000 miles from a subway station. We bought lots of heavy things that we possibly did not need because we had A CAR, so why not?

Even here in Gotham a car is freedom. You can go anywhere, carry anything. At the jangle of keys my mind reels with the possibility of adventure; and yet the only adventure I come up with is a trip to Target. This is obviously a sort of sad commentary on my own imagination. I blame a childhood of unfulfilled dreams of hanging out at the mall just like every other kid in America.

I grew up in one of the smallest places one can live and moved to the largest and somehow the one place where Bishop California and New York City intersect is in the lack of access to big box stores. As a guilty liberal I of course enjoy snobbishly sauntering down Park Slope’s 5th Avenue (dodging baby carriages all the way) to do my shopping in a myriad of tiny independently owned stores but there is still some magic to the idea of buying milk and goulashes and potting soil all under one roof. The bounty of it all is undeniably appealing even if it’s carbon footprint and forced march towards homogeny should make me turn up my nose. (That last sentence is the pinnacle of hoity-toity blogging, I should quit right now either in embarrassment or because I will never be able to top this moment.).

The suburbs have been maligned to a point where by now we all know that we’re supposed to hate them. And I do! Mostly! I hate getting stuck on the median of some crappy frontage road somewhere between the Hampton Inn that my company stuck me at and the shopping center where my only access to dinner lives simply because suburban road planners never seem to considered the possibility that I would want to walk between two establishments located within 500 feet of one another. I hate that my eventual dinner will certainly be smothered in cheese-food and available unchanged from Mobile Alabama to Enfield Connecticut to Farmers Branch Texas. I hate the repetitive “Home Depot, Walmart, Panera Bread, Best Buy, Home Depot, Walmart....” pattern of the freeway off ramps from town to town to town. But oh, secretly, I love the excess. What can I say? Deep down beyond the part of me that’s a small town daughter of hippies and way past the part that’s a New Yorker, down there, I am still an American. Bring on the super sized vat of butter substitute.

Strangely enough for all my excitement over pushing a gigantic cart through a gigantic store full of so much stuff I often come out almost empty handed. I am forever standing outside of Costco with only three items (toilet paper, black beans and dry pasta) in my rented trunk because really, how could I ever eat my way through a dozen boxes of Mac and Cheese? And in the mean time where would I store them? And even standing in front of a shelf full of low prices I’m still often too cheap to make many purchases, it’s like I stand there thinking, “Oh sure, $5 is probably a good deal for a headband with a huge silk flower glued to it but think how great it would be if headbands were FREE!” And then I go home.

The big box stores, for all of their excess, never seem to stock what I’m looking for. And so at the end of every visit there is a panic moment when I wonder if there is something I missed, something I need, because who knows when I’ll have a car again. So I muse about if I need towels, after all, they’re a fabulous deal, and towels don’t go bad, perhaps I should have a few in reserve? Not to get too melancholy here but one has to wonder what exactly I’m shopping for. If not headbands or towels or Mac and Cheese then must I assume that I’m living the big American cliche -- forever looking to fill a hole unfillable by wheels of cheese or 12 packs of socks?

The truth about the subway is that it goes almost everywhere. Almost. And almost is really everywhere you need to go. It goes to all of the cool concert venues and to offices and playgrounds and beaches and farmers markets and to my house. But every time I reach the end of the line and stare off into the distance or sneak a look at Google Maps and realize just how small my little New York City world is the American in me, car hater or not, yearns for the open road. The truth about the open road, these days at least, is that it mostly goes to places you don’t need at all.

The Bedbugs Are Coming! The Bedbugs Are Coming!

There’s a classic sci fi movie from back when movies came only in 2 colors called Them. In this flick sent straight out of my nightmares giant ant aliens land on earth and begin seeking revenge for all of the delicious picnics that their earthling brothers and sisters were never invited to. They rampage buildings, eat people and (I think) fashion giant magnifying glasses to give all 8 year old boys a taste of their own medicine. It’s some scary shit. Anyway, everyone in New York City is now basically living through this cinematic nightmare in real live living color. In the Broadway version of this little masterpiece the part of the giant alien ants is being played by Cimex lectularius aka the devil’s insect minion aka the common bedbug.

For those of you not living in the NYC let me catch you up on what’s going down. Basically bedbugs be raping everybody up in here. They’re in our movie theaters, our tourist traps, our douche-y clothing stores our fanciest pantie palaces, nothing is sacred. So far (as far as I know) they have yet to infiltrate Casa de Babble probably mostly because I am freaking the fuck out all of the time. I give furniture and mattresses left on the street a 5 foot berth, I get my nose right up against hotel sheet and stare down the thread count looking for little black or red dots. I pretty much will not go to the movies anymore and I spend every taxi ride thinking about the colonies likely lurking beneath the Naugahyde.

It used to be that my evening routine went something like this: start to fall asleep in front of tivoed episodes of Toddlers in Tiaras (sweet dreams!), drag myself up off of the couch, brush teeth, wash face, say my bet hedging prayers, run through a few OCD games to lull my mind to sleep and Zzzzz. But now somewhere between OCD and snoozeville I’ve inserted 45 minutes of fun called “OH MY FUCKING GOD IS THAT A BED BUG ON MY ANKLE?” Turns out that when you lie completely still mentally scanning your skin for signs of creepy crawlies it is very easy for every spare thread/dead skin cell/air molecule to feel like the stab of bug fangs.

Worse then this is how my home has been turned into a battle ground. My enemy? Each and every bug-sized bit sticking to my bare feet, caught behind my ear or glued to the sweaty back of my knee. Each stray breadcrumb, missing ball of earwax or lonely grain of salt is suddenly a potential threat. Saturday night I had to get up from watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to turn on a light and examine a small black flotsam of suspicion for signs of buginess. It came away still unidentified but too misshapen and flat to be a bug. I remain on guard. Before bed last night, while peering over my shoulder and into a full length mirror to examine my back for bites, I noticed that I have enough moles back there to warrant a visit to dermatologist, unfortunately I can’t make an appointment because what if the doc finds a bedbug bite somewhere on my person? Certainly the embarrassment alone is scarier than skin cancer.

I know that if an infestation breaks out in my house life is pretty much over.

Like other species of bloodsucking vampires, bedbugs are basically immortal. They can go a year without feeding. They can withstand temperatures down to -26 F and up to 115. They are resistant to pretty much all legal pesticides. Luckily, they do not sparkle in the sunlight or have exceptionally well tussled hair or the future of the human species would be doomed.

So here’s what happens when all of your worst nightmares come true and you spot a fat little blood filled insect wobbling across your pillow. First you freak out and cry a lot. Then you call every exterminator in the city who will tell you two things:

1. Bedbugs are basically impossible to get rid of.
2. They will happily charge you thousands of dollars and try their best

So of course you give them all of your money. Then you find out that you have to throw away everything you own because it is actually owned by bedbugs (possession being at least 9/10th of Mother Nature’s law). Eventually you have to come out to friends and family about your infestation and understandably they all disown you rather than risk catching your gross bedbugs. You should probably get a therapist to deal with this traumatic life experience but you have no money and realistically there ain’t no shrink willing to risk bedbugs taking over his couch. So, basically then you commit suicide. The end.

Long time readers of this blog will remember that I make one exception in my greenie hippy rules for living and that my friends is for bug killin’. And in the case of the bedbug I am pretty much willing to get cancer if it will rid my fair city of this nightmare. You heard me right folks: It’s time to bring back the DDT. Back in the 40s they DDT bombed the bedbugs almost out of existence which raised morale in the country just enough to motivate us to take on the Nazis. Then the pesticide went and killed a bunch of bald eagles and I couldn't much blame the hippies for getting it banned until now. Obviously these are dire circumstances.

Baring the (I suppose unlikely) re-legalization of DDT we’re all getting “The Bugz” (might as well give them a hip name in preparation, “Nah honey that ain’t herpes, I gotz The Bugz!”) So maybe the thing to do is look on the bright side -- bedbugs can’t be all bad, right? Firstly there’s the obvious weight loss benefit -- they say "a pint’s a pound the world round" regardless of if the pint ends up in a blood bank or a bedbug tummy. Then there’s the mystical bloodsucker angle, given the love-fest this country is having with vampires you’d think a real life bloodsucking creature could get a little respect. Lastly there’s the orgy factor -- regardless of your own personal studdliness a colony of bedbugs is surely the highest number of individuals that have ever been in your bed at one time. Own it hot stuff; You’re having a menage-a-google every night. Though given the following video of bedbug sex perhaps the orgy wouldn’t be as awesome as I originally thought.

This Just In: Pants on Fire all Over the Internet

I basically have a PHD in online dating. I’ve been on crazyblinddates (and TV). I’ve been on actual crazy blind dates. I’ve met winners and losers and lots of blog fodder. I met guys on IRC (old school!), on Spark Match, on craigslist, on Nerve, on OkCupid, on Facebook, etc (and never on eHarmony or Match because I am a cheap snob). And now I’ve gone and shacked up with a dude I met online and we don’t even bother to lie about how we met (Go ahead. Judge us! We’ll be over here making googly eyes so we probably won’t even notice.). I am a big fan of online dating mostly because it takes an activity (meeting people) that once required one to put on pants and be nice and makes it happily catty and pantsless! If online dating were a charity I would donate money every year. If it were a presidential candidate I would volunteer to work on its campaign and then pretend to be the father of its love child. If there were an "easy A" graduate class on it I would teach it. I know what I’m talking about. So trust me when I say that you’re doing it wrong.

Or if you don’t trust me; trust the data. I absolutely love the OkTrends pieces where the OkCupid people analyze their tons of online dating data to find out exactly how we are all screwing ourselves (instead of the people we could be meeting on their site!). The latest and greatest of these pieces is about the lies that people tell in their online profiles. All of the expected transgressions are there -- I’m taller! I’m richer! I’m bisexual-er! (?!?) Now, obviously we should stop lying because that is exactly how one ends up burning in hell but maybe also because one will get caught and then one will probably not get laid. In the article, the author muses a bit about how exactly the liars expect to get away with their lies once a relationship moves from screen to real life but I would contend that no one needs to get away with anything.

Most people have no idea what it is they want.

I am constantly hearing girls say stupid shit about how they would not ever ever never ever date a boy who is under 6 feet tall. Similarly, many boys seem to have an arbitrary body weight that they fear no date should be allowed to exceed. Some of these folks are just assholes. But I think most of them are ok people who suffer from two much more common problems:

• Belief that physical appearance matters way more than it actually does.
• Belief that they know what “tall” and “not fat” look like in number form.

I’m not saying that being physically attracted to someone is unimportant. You need to want to bang your significant other -- but (lucky for the future of the human race and evidenced by over population problem) I think most of us are actually willing to bang a lot more people then we’d like to admit. (Sluts!) And more importantly, I don’t think most of us have any idea what 6 feet or 135 pounds looks like on a real life body. Allowing yourself to draw a hard line between 5’11” and 6’0” means not going out on dates with a lot of guys that might be just right for you. You can continue pretending that there is no way you could ever want to have sex with a body that weighs 140 or measures 5'11” but don’t expect sympathy when you die alone. In the end, there is only one person responsible for your self-imposed limits. (And if you really can’t find someone in the 5’11” category attractive no matter what, then perhaps you really are an asshole! You can stop reading now!).

When you slowly get to know someone (through work or mutual friends or anywhere but the internet) you often learn to like them long before you think about if you like them like them. But online dating takes away this opportunity, instead you’re supposed to decide if you could ever fall in love with a collection of extremely self-edited snippets (most of which often aren't even the right snippets!). A smart boy won’t admit in his profile a love for Frito pie, old broken down trains and the smell of the top your head but its often exactly those quirks that make you want to bed him on date 3 or 35 or 310.

We’d all do well to accept these facts: You will never be given enough online dating factoids to determine if you could fall in love with someone. You might not fully understand just how flexible most of your deal-breakers really are.

But most people won’t admit either of these things (even to themselves) and so it pays to lie. It's very possible that claiming you’re 2 inches taller or 10 pounds lighter or 20K wealthier is going to get you on an actual date where you get the opportunity to prove that your jokes and astute observations and ability to order wine without embarrassing yourself can more than make up for stature and bank account. Just hope when you show up at the bar your date isn’t holding a copy of your profile in one hand and a measuring tape in the other. The lucky thing about love (or even about a really hard crush) is that it forgives a lot of transgressions.

Maybe I’m not cynical enough (this is the first time in all history that this possibility has ever been considered). I’m assuming that most people engaged in online dating would like to meet someone and fall in love and live happily ever after until they have a baby and realize that evolution totally tricked them into a life of green oozing feces and 3am screaming. (Surprise!). Obviously some people are trolling the Internet for amusement or a quick lay and probably some even larger number of people aren't ready to do much more then casually flirt (be it over a barstool or a computer monitor). But for the lovey-dovey mushheads out there (Put your hearts on your sleeve! Holla!) maybe go out with a shortie or a poor guy now and then. And go ahead and keep lying; it doesn’t matter.