Way back when I was first married, my ex and I impulsively decided to go ring shopping while driving past the maul (no typo, I call them mauls for they maul you with savings!).  We walked into the Kay Jewelers at Montgomery Maul (no longer there BTW) and spent a few minutes looking at rings.  When we decided we needed help, we were promptly and most decisively ignored by the staff.  As we were one of two couples in the place, they had to use some pretty strong jutsu to ignore us.  After many minutes of unsucessful attempts to get anyone’s attention, we left and headed to another store.  I can’t recall the name, but again, we were most verily ignored.  Brushed off if you will.

This was a clear case of ageism.

Normally, whenever we were treated poorly, I used to attribute it to racism.  We were a mixed couple, I’m Asian and she was a tall Caucasion blond.  But in this case, I suspect it had more to do with what we were wearing than our skin color.  When I go to the maul, I dress like a proper geek should.  Ultraman t-shirt, pants with zippers.  Clearly not someone who appears to have large amounts of cash.  But here’s the thing.  When a young couple walks into your jewelery store, chances are they’re there to purchase something.  They may not look like much, but it’s a good bet that they have money to spend.  It might not be for an engagement ring.  It could be for a necklace or some earings.  Either way, couples don’t window shop for jewelery.  You can’t drag a guy into a jewelery store unless he’s buying something.

I actually had a decent wad of cash to spend on an engagement ring.  Someone at that Kay Jewelers could have made a decent commission.  Instead, they earned nothing but my enmity and bad publicity because I talk shit about them every time a friend says they’re thinking about buying jewelery which is usually about the time they’ve saved huge cashola to spend on an engagement ring.  We took our business to Mervis who treated us like kings and sold us a higher quality diamond for less than we would have paid for Kay Jewelers.

Idiots.

I’d like to report that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me now.  But when my current wife and I decided to go ring shopping, we were met with a few cold shoulders.  The fuck is wrong with these people?  By now, I would have thought that these old fucks running these stores would realize that geeks have geeky jobs which in turn hand out geeky fat paychecks.  We did find a place that treated us very well from our first step through the door and we bought my wife’s engagement ring and both our wedding bands from them.   And we’d buy more from them if Audrey actually wore jewelery.

So there you go.  When ring shopping, be wary of anti-geek shop owners.  Don’t give them your money.  They don’t deserve it.  No matter how fancy or upscale the store is, you deserve respect because dammit, you’re gonna buy something shiny and expensive!

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By now, you’ve probably seen the above. Very entertaining. Almost hypnotic with those stripes.

Clearly, the guy is taking video of his girlfriend without her knowing. Now she knows. And while she was apparently fairly pissed off when she first discovered her boyfriend’s indiscretion, she’s now quite comfortable with her fifteen minutes of fame.

Although part of me thankful that he posted the video (now I know Wii fit has a sexy hula hoop game! Maybe my ass will look that hot after hours of Wii), part of me also wonders if maybe our lives in this digital era are a little over exposed. Playing Wii Fit in a t-shirt and undies is something you do in private. It’s certainly not as private as having sex, but it’s not meant for the rest of the world. And yet, even these tiny little moments are exposed to the world.

This is the age of user generated content. We all have opinions. We all do crazy things. And we can all share our ideas in ways never before possible. The crazy thing? There’s an audience! Everyone wants to know what everyone else thinks or says or does. In some ways, it’s a little voyeuristic. But in some way, we all seem to be fascinated with the lives of other people no matter how random or mundane.

In previous generations, posting such a video would have been a one way ticket to single town. These days, hell, even a sex tape might not be enough to break up over.

Anyway, back to gawking at the hula game.

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I hope you all had a great Memorial Day Weekend.

What’s the geekiest gift you’ve either given to your honey bunny or received from said honey bunny?

For my birthday this year, my wife sewed me a custom plushy color variation of Edwardo from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Instead of purple, she made a cuddly blue version. He’s pocket sized and could probably go with me everywhere I go, but he stays at home guarding the house from sneaky, foul, tricksy hobbitses. Cute plushy and body guard all in one! Best gift ever!

For my part, when we first started dating, I got a photo print of a digital painting I made for her of Sanrio’s Unico swimming like a dumb ass in hungry shark infested waters. Nothing says love like fanart from an obscure anime movie.  I also once did a silly music video for her birthday which I shall now unleash here:

So, what’s the geekiest gift you’ve given or received for loves?

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I have pondered this question for a while and have asked many of my friends where they stand.  Opinions are more mixed than I thought they’d be.  I’d like to know where you, dear Spwug readers, weigh in.  So here goes.

If you make with the hot nookie with a holodeck program, are you cheating?

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Movies are probably the last thing you want to judge in terms of realistic portrayals of just about anything. But let’s do it anyway.

In Star War II: Attack of a Meandering Plot, a conflicted and horribly emo Anakin Skywalker massacres an entire village of sand people, women, children, all of them. He runs home and confesses his crimes to Padme who, in what can only be described as a monumental leap in logic, comforts him. There, there, that’s my little mass murderer. Not only that, she later elopes with him and has hot Jedi relations.

The women I have met in my life time would have slapped the shit out Anakin and called the Jedi Council to take his murdering ass into custody. Love can forgive many things, cheating, leaving the toilet seat up, watching professional wrestling. But mass murder is usually a line that love cannot cross.

Or can it?

There are countless stories of serial killers and murderers setting love letters from women who, despite knowing the full horrors of their crimes, want to marry them. Some women marry murderers while they’re still in prison! Having no real data to work from, I suspect that the actual numbers of women who fall in love with convicted killers is infinitesimally small. But the phenomenon exists and quite frankly, baffles the shit out of me.

Does love make you monumentally stupid or is it just so powerful that you are able to delude yourself into forgiving even mass murder?  A little of both, maybe?

Let’s step back from the mass murderers for a second.  We’ve all had friends with significant others who, in our heart of hearts, we knew were totally wrong for our friends.  And no matter how intelligent our friend may be, he or she is still able to overlook the faults of that significant other.  Hell, you’ve probably been in a horrible relationship yourself without knowing.

So back to Padme.  As baffling as her actions were, I could almost imagine a situation where she could forgive or maybe just overlook Anakin’s killing spree.  I’m sure in her right mind, she would have seen Anakin as a dangerous child.  In absolute love mode, all she could see was a hurt and confused child who just lost his mother.  I’m glad Padme starts to actually come to her senses in the third movie.  A little too late, unfortunately.  In real life, sometimes we too realize too late that love has blinded us stupid.

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Had this jam stuck in my head, Shai’s “If I Ever Fall in Love” (obviously, not Shai in the video). So let’s talk about friends and lovers.

There’s a movie coming out, Made of Honor, where Mc Dreamy’s best gal pal gets engaged. Only then does he realize that he loves her and not just in a platonic friend way. You probably don’t need to suffer through the film to predict that he’ll eventually close the deal and get with his friend. What a home wrecker.

I’ve actually witnessed similar scenarios with my friends. All of a sudden one will realize the other is the one and random acts of dating break out! It’s so darn sweet. And no one is very surprised because everyone else knew they were perfect for each other.

On the other hand, for me personally, it’s never ended well. The two times I professed my love for someone who started as a friend were disastrous. One time I right out blurted “I’m in love with you” and things went from awkward to get the fuck away from me in a matter of weeks. The other time I planted one right on her lips. Never knew you could un-kiss someone but there she was, un-kissing me. That too ended fairly poorly.

I suspect it takes a much lighter touch than just blurting it out or face attacking to break out of the “Friend Zone.” You Friend Zone is the area you place your friends. You rarely see them as dating material let alone potential lovers. If you find most of the time you spend with your friend is in the company of other friends, you’re deep in the Zone.

But all is not lost! Since you’re in the Zone already, it’s not that unusual to ask your friend to hang out with just you, sort of like a disguise date. Go on enough of these disguise dates, you may start to emerge from the Zone without your friend really realizing it. Unfortunately, this may backfire and put you into the “Sibling I Never Had Zone.” Then you’re totally screwed.

If you’re crush has gotten to the point where you just have to make a move or you’re going to explode, you must be willing to sacrifice your friendship. If you succeed in wooing your friends, the benefits are obvious. There will be much rejoicing and laughter. If you fail, you may loose your close friend forever.  There will be much pain and sadness. And if you never try, you’ll never know.  There will be much Friend Zone.

Still, if you ever fall in love again, it might be good to make sure the lady is a friend.  Doesn’t have to be your best friend.  But you should probably get along as friends first before you go in with the face sucking.

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I never understood why men give women flowers or why, in turn, the ladies seem to love them so much.  In my mind, which may be twisted beyond reality, the gift of flowers is the gift of death.

They’re grown for their beauty.  And right when they reach their peak, they’re cut from their lifeline and given as gifts only to die a few days later.  It’s freaking creepy.  Sure, they make a nice bouquet.  But it’s a bouquet of impending unnatural death.  Far better to leave them on the vine to live their life cycle as intended.

I never give flowers because that sick image of wilting death haunts me when I pass by a florist.  Potted plants?  Now that’s a gift!  Potted plants have their own little home and will live as long as you take proper care of them.  It’s just like a relationship, beautiful and full of life when you take proper care, wilting and dying if you ignore it.  What a perfect living metaphor for a relationship.  Of course, you could just suck at taking care of plants in which case, don’t read too much into it.

So I know I’m probably alone on this, but why do the ladies love flowers so much?

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A friend of mine recently broke of her engagement which, as bad as it sucks, is much better than a tedious divorce.  But it got me thinking.  Why is there so much divorce in this country?  Why aren’t more people smart like my friend and breaking things off before it gets messy?

When it comes time to get married, you better look before you leap.  If there is anything about your partner that you don’t think you can live with, don’t get married.  You may find that you get really riled up when your partner forgets your birthday or leaves the toilet seat up.  If you can live with that, you’re doing pretty good.  But if you find that repeat offenses piss you off more and more, there’s probably something under the surface that you’re not connecting with.  Your partner may not respect your family or your religious beliefs or maybe you just don’t communicate well with each other.  These are major issues that can really undermine a relationship.

Here’s the problem.  You can’t change your partner.

People don’t change unless they change themselves.  And if they can’t perceive what it is about themselves that annoys you so,  you’re out of luck.  Even if you tell them what annoys you so, they still may not understand.  So you can either choose to live with it or break it off.  For some reason, a lot of people seem to think they can live with whatever annoys them.  They may think that love conquers all and that eventually, their partner will change.  Sorry.  That’s just not how it works.

Marriage doesn’t fix things that are broken.  It just makes them break more.

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So you’re out to dinner with your lady or your man and the bill comes. Who pays?

Chivalry typically dictates that the man pay.  Always.  But this isn’t the middle ages.  And there’s a generation of women who are offended if a man holds open a door for them.

So how does the geek community feel about who pays?  Are geeks more old school and expect the men to always pay?  Or are geeks more enlightened and demand equality in absolutely everything?  Or is it a combination, the man is expected to pay in the beginning but things even out once the relationship starts?

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Spring is upon us and love is in the air! So, how shall us geeks celebrate the great out doors?

Typically, we do our best geekery indoors. Our computers live there, our televisions live there, our game consoles live there, our comics live there. Besides driving to the store for geek fuel (teh fudz) or the occasional family barbecue, why would we go outside?

Society for Creative Anachronism!

Nothing says “I love you” more than beating on each other with large, foam-padded weapons. Right?

I’ve only dabbled in this form of geekery so my experience might not be typical. A group of my friends get together every year to set out on a quest. The Dungeon Master spends a few days to create a scenario depending on how many are going to participate. Then he gives everyone their role and they set out to a park to reenact the scenario. Everyone is outfitted with foam padded PVC weapons and foam padded arrows. The game starts and the beatings commence!

Okay, so that doesn’t sound all that romantic. But it’s something geeky that you can do outdoors with your sweetie!  And there is a connection between violence and sex.  So after a hard day of kicking the crap out of each other, there could be some extra action at home.

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