Dear Amritsar,
I find that picking up women is a snap. Literally. I walk up to attractive women I don't know and snap my fingers in front of their eyes. Those who don't slap me and walk away are candidates for the next phase of my seduction technique: I punch them in the kidneys. I'm not sure why a woman's kidneys are such a portal to erotic bliss. If you punch a woman in the spleen, she pepper sprays you. If you punch a woman in the elbow, she head butts you. If you punch a woman in the back of the head, she asks for an autograph. I know - I have done the experiments and have the restraining orders to prove it!
Personally, I have no idea what the attraction is. I mean, if a woman I didn't know walked up to me and punched me in the kidneys, I'd go screaming to the cops. Screaming like a little girl. Maybe it has something to do with a Paleolithic genetic predisposition of women to be dominated by men. Maybe the women who respond to it have low self-esteem thanks to a series of bad relationships. Maybe they were just too surprised to protest.
I can't say that I give the question much thought.
As you might imagine, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Russia which set off the Doomsday Machine that covered the surface of the Earth with a deadly radioactive shroud put a crimp in my romantic endeavours. There are 10 women for every man in the deep mine shafts where the survivors now live; they don't need to be seduced.
I thought that I might travel to other mine shafts to teach the men there how to pick up women, but that hasn't turned out quite the way I had hoped. The guards at the entrance of Shaft 2372 wouldn't let me in; they said that if there was to be any kidney punching to be done, they would be the ones who would do it. The guards at the entrance of Shaft 6901 were women. When I started to show one of them my seduction technique, she broke my finger! Now, how am I supposed to attract women? My left hand has no jabbing power! I didn't even see the guards at Shaft 7852: they fired a warning shot before I could get close enough to explain what I was doing there!
This is driving me out of my mind! Can you think of any way that I can use my pickup skills in my new home environment?
Julien Noir-A-Rouge
Hey, Babe,
You, sir, are a bad, bad man. Despicable, even. How were you ever chosen to be one of the survivors who went down into the mines?My dad was a General in the US Navy.
Julien Noir-A-Rouge
Hey, Babe,
Who says the military doesn't have a sense of humour?I wouldn't know - I never made it through the academy. Somebody complained about sexual harassment a week after I got there, and that was the end of my military career. So, about my little problem...?
Julien Noir-A-Rouge
Hey, Babe,
It sounds to me like you have a terminal case of Twilight Zoneitis, a disease where the future punishes people who have accumulated too much bad karma. You know, like when Burgess Meredith broke his glasses or Carmen Miranda ended up on a planet that couldn't grow fruit. That sort of thing.
The bad news is that there is no known cure for Twilight Zoneitis; once you have contracted it, you have to spend the rest of your life in a state of heightened irony. The good news is that if you learn from this experience, you may be able to earn enough positive karmic life experiences to avoid this fate again. The bad news is that this could take seven or eight lifetimes. The good news is that if your victims gloat at your fate, it will cause some bad karma for them.
If periodic reboots have taught us nothing else, they have made clear that if they mess too much with fate, nobody can avoid coming down with chronic Twilight Zoneitis. I wish I could be sorry for your luck, but, instead, I'll suggest that you dress warmly. Those underground tunnels can be awfully cold in the winter, and we wouldn't want you to catch your death before your time. Death is a cheap way to avoid an ironic fate.
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: While it is publishing tradition to rip the covers off returned books so that they cannot be sold by others at a loss, people who work in book warehouses should not attempt to do this with ebooks. Unless the company can afford to buy you a new ereader every few days, in which case rip away.