OK, Stupid, I Mean, Cupid (Part Two)

In Part One I ended the post by mentioning that I’d gone through all of the profile setup and personality evaluation at OK Cupid, and was ready to take a look at what the search for matches would find.
The results?
Well, my question is “What part of ‘I don’t like pets…at all’ and ‘I don’t want kids, whether they exist now or in some potential future’ do you not understand?”
I don’t care if the other person matches me perfectly in every other regard: someone who mentions her cats early and often in her profile is not an 89% match for me.
I know that seems silly and shallow and too picky or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that my strong opposition to owning/violent allergies to pets is going to be a major problem in any potential relationship with a pet owner. And not just from my perspective.
Look, I don’t like pets. I think they’re a waste of time and money. I can’t see any way in which they could add enough value to my life to make up for all that they would take away from it. I understand that this makes me some kind of weird iconoclast or heartless monster who has horrible slimy worms where his soul ought to be, because only some demon from the pit could not love those cute widdle fuzzy wuzzy darlings, and I’ve come to terms with that. I’m not telling you not to own pets if you want to, or not to love your pets, or not to think that they’re worth any amount of money, time, or effort. Pets make you happy. Huzzah, and go you. You want to be the crazy cat person with 100 cats, all named after the characters in Little Women, I’m not going to stop you, tell you that you shouldn’t, or even judge you in any meaningful way. Some people like the smell of potpourri or scented candles, some people like the smell of cat piss. Different strokes and blah blah blah.
I’ve ranted about pets here in the past – with a lot more venom than I really intended; it was meant to be funny but came off as vitriolic, spiteful, and just plain mean, and I sort of regret most of what I said – and it actually cost me a friendship (even if it was a virtual friendship that was already pretty tenuous and wasn’t really adding anything to either of our lives), so I’m not trying to repeat those points now, just trying to give some perspective on my view of why pets are such an obstacle to any potential relationship.
See, I know that people love their pets. I get that. I’ve personally loved pets that I’ve had in the past, but I kind of view it as a phase that I grew out of. The idea of a boy and his dog is a pervasive one in many societies, and not without cause. But I’m not a boy anymore, and I just don’t feel the need for the kind of companionship that a dog, or any kind of pet, can offer.
So people love their pets, and while it’s a feeling I don’t share, I can understand it, and I get how important it can be.
I used to own a 1989 Mazda MX 6. I loved that car. However, from the perspective of an objective observer it could easily be seen as having been far more trouble than it was worth. It had all kinds of mechanical and electrical problems, such as a tendency to get stuck in gear. The driver side window, once rolled down, couldn’t be rolled back up without cracking open the control panel and arcing an electrical spark across a wire. Somewhere along the line the passenger side door stopped opening. The moon roof constantly popped open. I sunk thousands of dollars into repairing the transmission multiple times, replacing the tires, and even replacing the gas tank. Huge pain in the ass, and clearly not worth the trouble.
But I still loved that car, and to this day I miss it.
So as I say, I understand loving something that may very well have more cons than pros.
Which leads back to the pet problem when it comes to relationships.
In order for me to be romantically involved with someone who owns a pet, there are a couple of ways it could go.
While I don’t have any personal interest in owning a pet, I could deal with the presence of one – I’d probably never love it, but I could tolerate it – if not for my severe allergies, which would mean that I would have to just suffer with the itchiness and congestion, as most over the counter allergy medications serve only to lessen the effects of exposure to pet dander, not eliminate them.
Or, alternatively, I could dump a bunch of time, bother, and money into seeing an allergist to receive treatment to, eventually, overcome the allergy. In theory, at least.
What I couldn’t do is ask the person in question to give up her pet, because, as I say, I do understand the perspective of someone who loves a pet. It would be unfair for me to ask that, and I would have difficulty accepting the offer (which I don’t imagine would be forthcoming; I don’t like my odds in a Jon vs. pet competition).
And it would be unfair of someone to ask me to suffer through the allergic reactions or the expense and investment of time involved in being treated for the allergies, which, for the most part aren’t an issue for me in my curren daily life.
I suppose you could argue that by eliminating/lessening the allergic reaction I’d be improving my life, but at present those allergies don’t have all that much of an impact on my life, so I can’t really see that as making an improvement to my life. Besides, the allergies aren’t the biggest problem – though they are a big problem – because the most insurmountable one is that even if they didn’t make me sneeze and itch, I still wouldn’t much care for animals, and my grudging, reluctant acceptance of their existence probably wouldn’t be good enough for someone who does love animals.
Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe I could meet someone who I’m so crazy about that I could put up with the sneezing and the hives. Maybe I could meet someone so crazy about me that she’d happily find a new home for her beloved pet.
But that’s an awful lot of maybes, and it seems easier to me to just avoid the issue entirely.
Except that, you know, it’s apparently impossible to avoid because evidently every damn available woman in the world has a dog or a cat.
*Sigh*
And then there’s the whole kid thing…
Anyway, while my musings on my experience with this latest online dating service – and the perils and pitfalls of dating for me in general – has gone on too long already, it occurs to me that there should be a Part Three, or at least something of an epilogue, so come back tomorrow for that.

OK, Stupid, I Mean, Cupid (Part One)

I was supposed to get my annual review done this afternoon, but my boss was too busy so it’s been put off until Monday.
I suspect it will go something like, “You suck. You should pay us a bonus for the privilege of working here.”
Okay, probably not. I’m assuming it will go pretty well…unless my boss has been harboring secret complaints and has just been lying to me when she’s said that I’m doing well and makes complimentary remarks about my performance.
A while back in a Slacktivist comment thread a couple of people had positive things to say about an online dating service called OK Cupid, mentioning that they’d met some really interesting people through the site, despite the fact that, on paper – or rather, on LCD or CRT – they might not necessarily come across as “catches” from the average person’s perspective, and, best of all, it’s totally free.
So I thought about it and decided to take a look.
Initially I wasn’t terribly impressed, but that was mostly due to technical issues.
As I wanted to look around a little before registering and going through the pain in the ass process of creating a profile, I clicked on the “Not ready to join? Search for singles” link that would allow me to get a representative sample before committing to signing up.
This resulted in the expected behavior, taking me to a page on which I could enter my search criteria. However, clicking on the “Update Matches” button did not result in the expected behavior. In fact, it resulted in one of three things:

In Internet Explorer clicking the button did absolutely nothing
or
It caused the browser to totally lock up
In Firefox, it caused my entire system to completely lock up

I decided that perhaps it was a sign (I’m sure some people would say that yes, it was a sign to switch to Linux/Mac. I think you know my canned response to that.) that I should just forget the whole thing.
After all, I’m really not all that desperate.
I mean, yeah, from one perspective, I am. Obviously nothing I’ve done over the years (which is only slightly more than nothing) has helped me land a girlfriend, so in that sense, yes, I’m desperate, as I don’t have a lot of options available to me.
But in another sense, while I do get lonely on occasion, and it seems to me that having sex again sometime before I die – preferably while I’m still young enough to remember doing so – would be awfully nice, and sure, emotional and physical intimacy is often made of win, but being alone hasn’t killed me so far, and overall I’m relatively content with my life as is.
Besides, I go through phases with regard to the whole relationship/dating thing that range from reallyfuckingdesperate to ambivalent, and honestly, of late I’ve been leaning more towards the ambivalent end of the spectrum.
The other day when I was talking to my mother she mentioned that my nephew Jeremy was opining that having a girlfriend hasn’t really lived up to his expectations. “I didn’t know you had to be doing stuff all the time,” he said.
Right now, I’m with you, kid.
After all, while there are obvious advantages to being in a relationship, being on your own has a lot to offer as well, even if it’s the kind of action-free bachelorhood that many would consider an utter waste of being single that I exemplify.
I can go where I want whenever I want (that I don’t want to go anywhere is neither here nor there), spend my money however I feel like, watch what I want, listen to what I want, eat what I want, and I never have to deal with someone else’s various dramas, or put up with this sort of nonsense:



So sometimes I think that maybe I’m better off the way things are*.
But on the other hand – [tasteless joke about what the other hand is doing redacted] – there is that whole sex thing, which doesn’t respond to well-reasoned arguments in favor of the status quo, and considering that I don’t have many options, so I decided to take another look at the site and see if there was a way to get around the technical difficulties.
(As an aside, I will admit that – out of simple curiosity, I swear, and no, I’m not protesting too much – I did browse through the “Erotic Services” section of Craigslist. I had no intention of actually seeking out those services, as I’m too cheap and prefer to spend my money on non-erotic electronic devices, and with the way The Universe works I would either A. End up getting arrested in some sort of vice sting or B. End up getting robbed and/or murdered. Oh yeah, and also because it’s “wrong.” I mean, of course the fact that it’s “wrong” would be a major obstacle. I did look at the “Casual Encounters” section as well, but my BS Meter prevented me from taking any of that too seriously.)
I decided that maybe if I signed up I’d be able to actually search without crashing my browser and/or computer, and, since it was free, there was no real harm.
So I went through the bullshit hassle of creating a profile and went through over a thousand questions, including personality tests like the one I posted the results from earlier, and looked to see what sort of matches their personality-matching algorithm could come up with.
I’ve decided to split this up into two entries, as the whole story ended up being far too long for one post. Come back tomorrow for Part Two.

*Beyond the advantages of flying solo, there’s also the rustiness factor. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a relationship that I’m not sure I’d know how to be in one anymore.
Fiona Apple has a song called “The Way Things Are” that, while not wholly applicable to my life, has some lines that are pretty much dead-on if we assume that the “you” refers to The Universe, Fate, Life, or whatever, rather than, as is the case in the song, an actual person with whom she once had a relationship:

I wouldn’t know what to do with another chance
If you gave it to me
I couldn’t take the embrace of a real romance
It’d race right through me
I’m much better off the way things are
Much, much better off, better by far, by far
I wouldn’t know what to say to a gentle voice
It’d roll right past me
And if you chalk it up you’ll see
I don’t really have a choice
So don’t even ask me
I’m much better off, the way things are
Much, much better off, better by far

Outcast Genius

Your result for The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test...

Outcast Genius

65 % Nerd, 61% Geek, 57% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in all three, earning you the title of: Outcast Genius.

Outcast geniuses usually are bright enough to understand what society wants of them, and they just don't care! They are highly intelligent and passionate about the things they know are *truly* important in the world. Typically, this does not include sports, cars or make-up, but it can on occasion (and if it does then they know more than all of their friends combined in that subject).

Outcast geniuses can be very lonely, due to their being outcast from most normal groups and too smart for the room among many other types of dorks and geeks, but they can also be the types to eventually rule the world, ala Bill Gates, the prototypical Outcast Genius.

Congratulations!

Take The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test at HelloQuizzy

Confessions Of A Cube Dweller

I never thought I would miss my cube, but this week I haven't spent much time there, and I've found that I kind of did miss it.
Monday I was off, so naturally I didn't spend any time in it.
Yesterday afternoon our SVP had an "All Hands" meeting, so that took up most of the day (and ran late, leading to an irritating hour-long drive home in rush hour traffic).
This morning our VP held an "All Hands" meeting of his own - at 7 AM, which was lots of fun.
The early morning meeting was for the benefit of the people working the overnight shift.
A second meeting was held in the afternoon for the benefit of the people working the swing shift.
At our VP's request some of us were required to attend both meetings for the purposes of mingling with those employees we don't encounter too often.
So, yeah, spending the afternoon sitting through a meeting that I'd already sat through early in the morning made sitting in my cube seem infinitely preferable.
That's pretty much all that's been going on. TV shows have been piling up on my DVR, as I've been going to bed early, so I've got a bunch of stuff to watch.
I suppose I should get to it.

Quick Shot

First of all, happy birthday to my niece Jourdan, who is 22 today.
Second of all...well, there really isn't a second of all.
Too lazy, tired, and I have too much shit to do to write a proper post.
Maybe tomorrow.

Paying Attention: You'e Doing It Wrong

One of the (theoretical) reasons I took today off was to get my emissions inspection done on my car.
Whenever you renew your vehicle registration in VA, you need to get the inspection done. It's one of the many things that makes car ownership in VA a pain, along with having to pay personal property tax on your car (and pay for a sticker that shows that you paid your property tax), getting an annual safety inspection done (and paying for a sticker that proves that you had your safety inspection done), and being required to have front and back license plates.
That last bit isn't a big deal, but in Michigan only a back plate is required, and it's been that way for years, so it's a mildly irritating deviation from what I'm accustomed to.
In Arizona, after you turn 25, your driver's license is valid until you turn 65, which is awesome, but here in VA, like in most places, it has to be renewed every four years. The one good thing that VA has as far as being a vehicle owner, though, is that you can choose to renew your vehicle for two years at a time.
This is why, when I took a look at my registration renewal form last night, I was annoyed to see that, for some reason, I was ineligible for a two-year renewal this time around.
I figured it must be some limited-time thing, and that after your car reaches a certain age it has to be renewed annually. This led to a lot of swearing and, "That was the only thing you did right when it comes to owning a car! Way to suck, Virginia!"
After my rant, though, I noticed something else written in bold, all-caps: EMISSIONS INSPECTION IS NOT REQ'D FOR THIS RENEWAL.
Oh.
...
Okay then.
I guess it would have helped if I'd looked at the form a little more carefully back when I got it.
So I pretty much took the day off for nothing.
But you know, I'm okay with that.

Funny You Should Ask. You Didn't Ask? Then I Guess It's Not Funny

Why yes, I was too lazy to post anything yesterday. Why do you ask?
You certainly didn't miss much, as any post I would have made would have been about the infinitely aggravating task of going grocery shopping, or rather, of venturing out into the world at all.
I was totally on edge even before I got to any of the stores, as the amount of traffic, and the sheer stupidity of the people on the road, were through the roof.
Once I actually got to Super Target and the continuation of the traffic nightmare that was the overflowing parking lot I was even less equipped to deal with the crying babies, the people just standing in the aisles with their carts turned sideways, the people trying their best to have high speed cart collisions, and the old people who moved at a snail-like pace - literally; I could see the slime trails - until they were presented with their opportunities to get in front of me, at which point they transformed into the Flash and zipped ahead of me, returning, of course, to their natural crawl once in position.
So, yeah. That's what you missed.
I haven't done much today. Not even the laundry, as I'm home tomorrow and have decided to put the task off until then.
I met with David, we worked out our deal, and, per the deal, that's the last I'll say about it.
I came home, sat around for a while, and decided to take a nap. Just as I was dozing off the phone rang, and the person who'd dialed the wrong number realized that he or she had done so and hung up just as I'd struggled out of bed and picked up the phone.
I believe there's some sort of big sporting event going on now. I think I'll take this time to not watch it.
Maybe I'll post something a little more worthwhile, like a standard drawing of a half-naked celebrity or something, in a future post.