Hi. Hey. Hi. Hi. Hello. Hey.

Hi there. So, I went to grad school for three years and just finished in December. Let’s say that’s the only reason I haven’t been writing at all, and that sloth and inertia didn’t play any part. Cool? Cool.

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A few years ago, my roommate Petunia gave in to her grandma’s repeated suggestions and signed up for an online dating site. I decided to do it too, for moral support—though the buddy system doesn’t really work on the internet. Unlike when you persuade your friend to come with you to a party, you can’t just stand in a corner and talk only to each other.

Petunia was willing to pay for a membership to one of the classier sites. I was not, and I ended up on Plenty of Fish for free. I can affirm that this is not the skeeviest dating site possible, though. I know this because of the other sites that advertise in its sidebar. Here are some helpful screenshots to prove that I am not making these up:

For some reason these sites do not advertise the number of lasting relationships they have enabled.

Plenty of Fish allows you to craft a description of yourself, thoughtfully answer questions and prompts about your personality, provide information on your interests and the qualities you are seeking in a match, and then receive insistent messages from people who have read none of these things.

I was not prepared for this attention, and at first I applied the same flawed strategy I had used for college mail. After taking the PSAT in high school, I received mail from a number of colleges that had no immediate appeal or connection to my future plans.

They all included a tear-off postcard to send in for further information, and it seemed reasonable to collect as much information as possible before making such a big decision. Even if the initial pamphlet looked unpromising, how could I be sure from first impressions that I wasn’t passing up the perfect opportunity?

I eventually compared notes with friends and realized my mistake. Unfortunately, I did not learn the lesson in a lasting way.

When it came to online dating, I initially assumed that it was only proper to reply to everyone who sent me a message—especially those who wrote more than just “Hi.” That’s how I got myself into the following mess:

This sounded to me like a reasonable and fairly self-aware request. Also, I had one clear reason in mind, and it was something he should be able to fix pretty easily in order to improve his future prospects. Providing this sort of advice—when someone specifically asks for it—is clearly the kindest and most helpful thing to do, right?

To my surprise, he did not appear to consider this a helpful response.

By this point, I still had not begun to suspect that he was not actually interested in my suggestions for improving his approach. I helpfully tried to explain.

Having learned a lot about the norms of online dating messages from this exchange, I then wisely…repeated almost exactly the same conversation with a different guy the next week. Optimism and stupidity often share surface characteristics.

In the end, I deleted my profile after reaching my limit for people coming on way, way too strong.

Whatever approach Petunia took worked noticeably better. She steered clear of Well-Meaning Pedantry traps and managed to avoid the fecally inclined, and I got to be part of her wedding last summer.

As for me, I'm thinking of starting my own site:

Extra credit:

Thoughts on the supply of fish.

Have I mentioned that I enjoy being good at things?

The human brain has some impressive mechanisms for revising unpleasant memories. That’s how I manage to try V-8 again every couple of years.

This same phenomenon also dulled my recollections of middle and high school P.E. enough for me to take a volleyball class one semester in college.

The early days of class, however, showed several areas in which both my memory and my technique could use improvement.

After a few sessions on basic skills, the instructor broke us into teams for in-class tournaments. He asked us for team names to fill out his roster, and my group quickly ceded our naming rights to the one member who seemed excited about it.

We changed teams every couple of weeks after that, but for some reason the coach stopped asking us to make up our own names.

As the course progressed, our positive, encouraging instructor did everything he could to help us all improve our individual skill levels. It wasn’t his fault that my existing level was in the negative numbers. He also had the perfect attitude for an intro-level course, which he shared with us at least once a week.

(I don’t think I’m the only one who heard the subtext to his start-of-class pep talks, though.)

The semester went on with very little change, save for rising frustration levels on all sides. In between missing the ball, ducking the ball, and miscommunicating with my more skilled teammates, I started feeling compelled to defend my personal worth. I wanted to stop the game and declare, “There are things I’m good at, I promise!”

By the end of the term, though, thanks to the coach’s superhuman patience, I had transformed into a person whose overhand serves cleared the net at least 15% of the time. I may even have discovered one of those non-athletic lessons that ragtag kids learn in sports movies: I’m trying to hold on to that feeling of utter and ridiculous volleyball helplessness to reflect on in moments when it’s my turn to be shocked by someone else’s colossal incompetence.

Of course, that kind of thinking can lead perilously down the slippery slope toward self-betterment. Thank goodness I’ve developed a workaround.

Kerrville Folk Festival 2013

I recently returned from the Kerrville Folk Festival in the Texas Hill Country, which I attend pretty much annually. I’ve mentioned it a couple of times before.

It’s a phenomenon that’s not very easy to explain to people who aren’t already familiar with it. This time I tried a new variation on my standard description.

I got a new response, too.

This was a fair question, as I had left out an important part: I love aging hippies. All my festival friends are aging hippies. I’m afraid of the ones in my age group, who are much more cool and tan and alternative than I am.

It’s intimidating.

Generally, the previous generation suits me a lot better.

I’m not sure how I managed to become simultaneously forty-five and eight years old, but there you have it.

Come to think of it, I know exactly how this happened. It’s clearly caused by the genetic material inherited from my two favorite aging hippies.

Thanks, guys.

The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough

My Intro to Linguistic Analysis professor explained that older dialects of English used to pronounce the “k” and “gh” sounds in words such as “knight.” We sadly lost them over time, and their absence hit Dr. Pangolin hard. He spoke of these sounds as if remembering them fondly from his own youth in the twelfth century.

His nostalgia reminded me of the fading words my friend Wendy and I had sworn to preserve in middle school, at a noticeable cost to our already tenuous social standing.

Outside of Dr. Pangolin’s class, though, I reverted to the impoverished modern pronunciations of “knee” and “know” and “Knott’s Berry Farm.” Then, two years later, I learned the hard way that she who forgets her history is doomed.

I needed to speak with a Student Activities administrator about arrangements for a campus organization, and not offending her would have been a really good way to start. Brimming with responsibility and foresight, I visited the department ahead of time to determine her office hours and pick up a business card.

Everything was going swimmingly until I arrived for my appointment the next day, loudly wielding my knowledge of contemporary pronunciation.

Dr. Pangolin would have been deli-gh-ted.

Extra Credit: Further lessons courtesy of Dr. Seuss and Desi Arnaz (from about 2:45).

I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves

In the tenth grade, my Great Books teacher mentioned that she enjoyed telling ridiculous stories to extremely gullible people.

Hoping to provide her with more material, I promptly explained why songs get stuck in your head: Certain radio frequencies resonate well with human tissue, and those snippets of music get trapped inside your skull and bounce around on their way through the air from the local soft rock station.

My teacher was so enthralled with this new piece of scientific knowledge that I felt bad having to suggest that maybe she should reconsider throwing around the phrase “gullible people.”

I can hardly blame her, though. The mysterious force of song-head-sticking is not to be trifled with. My roommate recognized its devastating contagious properties and finally declared that I am not allowed to tell her what’s lodged in my head if there is a chance she knows the tune. One of my friends at work is bound by a similar domestic edict, so she and I started inflicting the brain virus on each other instead.

Of course, music carries other dangers aside from relentless repetitions of “Hey Mickey.”

A few months ago, just before the office radio rolled over to non-stop Christmas music, the awesome power of classic hits suddenly moved me to dance while sitting at my keyboard.

The woman at the next desk did not heed the call of the same muse. She did, however, notice my arrhythmic jerks and strained humming and spring into action.

Next time, though, I know just how to explain the situation: