If, for some reason, you've been living in the seams of my grandmother's house dress for the last five years, I have something to teach you: the world wide web is full of friends. You don't even have to know someone in reality to be friends with them on the Internet! The web is also full of pervs. Sometimes someone can be both a friend and a pervert.


Have you facebooked Paul Reubens yet?.... Why the hell not?

I'm in the habit of accepting any Facebook friend request I receive. As an old-timer, I've lived through the Great Friend Drive of 2004 (aka the founding of Facebook.com). I've experienced the mad rush to accumulate a decent number of online social network pals, the kind of desperation that leads one to friend request that weird Communist girl who brought her parents along to a naked party in college and had no qualms about her dad ogling fellow students' nubile bodies , or the ex-boyfriend who told you your boobs were too bouncy and thus unattractive during intercourse. I feel your pain, newbies.

So, as a direct result of my empathetic nature, I have many new friends from the Philippines, Mexico, and India.

R., my most recent international friend, uses a picture of the late Bollywood hunk Raj Kapoor for his profile picture.


This profile picture conveys the following messages to your loyal Facebook readers/friends: 1.) I can sing and dance 2.) I died in 1988 and 3.) Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and The Olive Tree is my fav book ever.

When R. friend requested me on June 4th, he included a slight neg in his accompanying message.

June 4th, 2008 7:58am

Hello Lauren

You look sexy and nice. Would you like to be friends? Your the girl on right side?

R.


At the time, this was my Facebook picture:

The girl on the right is my sister. I responded "Yes" anyhow. This is what the Internet is for--pretend.

Over the next few weeks, R. proceeded to inundate my notification box with a variety of sexual quiz invitations.

Quiz: What kind of lover are you?

Quiz: What's your favorite position?

Quiz: Are you sexually compatible with your partner?

Quiz: Do you like it up the ass?

(One of these is made-up, but seriously, who writes these things?)

I was beginning to regret friending R. He posted "Hello sexxy" on my wall. I deleted it immediately.

But then I noticed R.'s status messages. Rather than cliched sexual come-ons, his status messages were filled with inspiring, motivational words, the kind one finds in Des'ree songs:

R. is: you've got to be wise in life.

R. is: believing in true love.

R. is: loving his friends.

But recently R. started down a dark public announcement path:

R. is: feeeling lonely.

R. is: not understanding.

R. is: scared.

R. is feeeling so lonely.

The last reiteration of R.'s loneliness was posted late Sunday night. I was alone myself, with both my housemates out of town and no one to intercept my idle chatter. An hour before, around midnight, I had realized I was sitting on the living room floor in just my oversized "MATH MASTERS" t-shirt, clipping my toenails, and intoning "Wall-EEEEEEE" to myself. That realization will make anyone reach out for late night contact.

I messaged R.


June 29, 2008 12:45am
Hey R.

I've been noticing your Facebook status messages are kind of sad lately. Hope everything is okay!

Lauren


The response:

June 30, 2008 5:17am

My chia pet died! Stay good, sexy.


And that's what friends are for.

A Brief Nothing On Affection Under The Diress Of Shit Colliding.

My astrophysicist sister brought her new astrophysicist boyfriend into town this weekend. Contrary to my initial stereotypical conception that an astrophysicist would be formed out of matter akin to Rick Moranis, I was pleasantly surprised to find that her new boyf was HOT. So hot, in fact, nearing the end of the night my sister was forced to issue a warning: "Laur, you keep staring at him inappropriately--STOP IT!" They held hands all day and told me about how a meteor was going to crash into the Earth and wipe us all out soon. Ah, young love! In the face of existential crisis! They said they were probably going to try to go into space together someday. Her boyfriend said time travel would be attainable in this century, my sister scoffed. Stay sweet, you kids.

Adorable, elderly lesbian partners (okay, at this point probably just cuddle partners) make history by getting married yesterday in San Francisco by....Will Arnett?

"My wierd your fate" (love dad II)

PR: HAPPY (soon to be) FATHER'S DAY!

(attached)



I remember when you were just a baby and you peed on me five minutes after you were born. I'm going to get this framed for your office!


Dad: nice looking guy your with. thanks for the picture. i think i still have a rash from the liquid you deposited on me when you were borne. love dad

PR: EWWWWWWWWW What is with you and rash jokes these days? Also that is not how you spell "born" unless you're referring to the Bourne Identity. Can this spelling lesson be your present?

Dad: borne is the german spelling. love dad

PR: No it's not! False teacher!

Dad: actually for fathers day will you learn how to speak Bark so you can tell us why annie keeps having diherrea. love dad

PR: Dude, you are SO WEIRD. love daughter

Dad: hee hee. my wierd your fate. love dad

When Your Co-Worker Plays Meatloaf.....(aka Reason #1394 I am saddened by my recent desk change near the Ad Sales Dept.)

On 6/6/08 11:03 AM, PERFECT RATIO wrote:

Omg, the woman next to me is playing I Would Do Anything For Love— like without headphones.

WHY AD SALES???!

On 6/6/08 11:05 AM, SQUIDZ wrote:

THE MEATLOAF SONG??? She’s the one that has that really bad “an emergency on your part” poster, right?


On 6/6/08 11:06 AM, PERFECT RATIO wrote:

Um, YES. Should I ask her: “So what wouldn’t you do?”

Subtle?


On 6/6/08 11:07 AM, SQUIDZ wrote:

YES. PAY YOU $10!


On 6/6/08 11:15 AM, PERFECT RATIO wrote:

AHAHAHAHAHAAHAH- omg. That was the BEST.

Me: So what wouldn’t you do?

Her: What?

Me: Like the song? (gesture to her ‘pooter blaring Meatloaf)

Her: Oh! (laughs, then thinks SERIOUSLY about this). I guess I wouldn’t move out of New York!

Me: (omg, she does not get it.) Ha. (forced laugh).

Her: What wouldn’t you do?

Me: (thinking: can I say ‘ PLAY MEATLOAF AT WORK?’) Really say: I can’t really think of anything I wouldn’t do. Maybe stuff involving toilet fetishes.

Her: Hmmm. (turns away SO QUICKLY)


THAT DID NOT GO AS PLANNED!

Ode to the Average Girl

With your extra fifteen pounds! With your dead-end strands! With your glowing self-contentment and asymmetrical features!

Walter Kirn wants to eff the bejesus out of your average-looking vag.

As an average girl, I'll admit I find it fucking tempting to love this article. I mean how great is it? A man who bypasses the thin gorgeous girls at the bar and goes straight to the "unnoticables"! He likes girls like me! He appreciates us. He finds us beautiful...kind of? Except for our body parts are ugly? We're the ones with the big, clunky hands content to bask in the limelight of gorgeous friends. I mean this intro is kind of one long anecdote on negging straight out of The Game. You want to sleep with me despite my ugly hands? Uh, THANKS Mystery.

That’s when the pretty one, who’s tired of standing around with nothing to do but check out her look-alikes and estimate her own rank in the evening’s pageant, wanders off to use the bathroom. I don’t really notice; I like her friend. Her friend has hands that are too big for her wrists, and when she gestures with them to make a point, I’m mesmerized by their power, their vitality. I’d like to hold them, to feel them on my back. I bet they’re warm—much warmer than the pretty one’s, which are small and slender but look icy.

Kirn goes for the slightly overweight, big-nosed chicks because he immediately assumes they have a sense of contentment and happiness that beautiful chicks don't. While the pretty girl he dated in college had "facial expressions that were harder and more anxious, particularly at mealtimes" the girl he dated next-- "round as an apple" Maura --is too happy with life to waste time dieting. So Maura is awesome. Great. She also happens to be chubby and have bad facial features apparently.

But the gist of this dude's argument is like one of those LSAT questions where they ask you why the logic is incorrect. Par example:

"If a person from group A loves puppies more than a person from Group B, then all the people in A love puppies more than all the people in Group B."

Like, duh, not every pretty girl is a crazy dieter with no personality who hates herself. And not every average girl is a happy, above-beauty-standards-pressure, fried- chicken-ordering Goddess. I can think of average looking girls in college who were awesome and funny, but threw up every meal, and I can think of gorgeous girls who were awesome and funny, and fuck them, can eat anything they want and do.

Point being, an "average girl" fetish is not a particularly enlightened sexual position.

Also, Kirn talks about his attraction to Tilda Swanson as an example of how strong and cool the non-beautiful are--WTF? The woman is GORGEOUS in a very typical perfect skin, six feet tall, beautiful feature kind of way.