Dear Amritsar,
So, nuclear Armageddon. I probably would have paid more attention, but I had a calculus final a couple of days later, and I didn’t know if school would allow us to take an end of the world day, so I kept studying. Imagine how bummed out I was when the school was closed for good – along with the army, police, fire department and Saks!
I was really gonna miss Saks.
Also, Timmy Battleaderer had asked me to go to the prom with him, and I didn’t know if I should accept or hold out in case Mary-Jo Krapotkin was killed in a freak dung beetle infestation and Billy Bobbloggins was suddenly free to choose somebody else. As it happened, Timmy and Billy died in the nuclear conflagration, but I hear a freak dung beetle is menacing Cincinnati, so, umm, yeah. That.
The point is that I was a little distracted when the big one dropped, okay?
Fortunately, the Internet still works (thank you, Rand Corporation!). Electricity is spottier than Timmy’s face (sorry, I’m just being honest – he has a good personality, though, and that counts for something…with some people…), but I live in a part of the city powered mostly by wind turbines and spit, so I’m good.
One afternoon, being a little bored from pillaging the local grocery store for supplies, I went on the dating site GadzooskTM (the “TM” seems a little pointless now, since there probably aren’t enough members of the development team alive to enforce its use – I guess I have a nostalgic streak in me, even if it is only for two and a half weeks ago). It took me a few days to sort through profiles that hadn’t been active since the end of World War Last, but, finally, I found an active account: Eddie Gruyere.
According to his GadzooskTM profile picture, Eddie’s eyes were so blue, you would swear you could see octopuses in them. His cheekbones were so high, city council must have given him a special permit to build them, and his skin was so smooth his cuteness made kittens jealous. And, he was still breathing! How perfect is that?
I know, I know. Too perfect. Nobody survived the big nuclear…snit intact. I, for example, have thumbs that are twice their normal size. This would probably make hitchhiking easier (a good thing, considering Eddie lives on the other side of the ocean), but it would make things difficult if Eddie had traditional ideas of appropriate appendagicity.
But, umm, yeah, so, first things first: am I just kidding myself that Eddie could look anything like his GadzooskTM profile picture at this point in human history?
Marcy Umbilichorus
Hey, Babe,
I always thought Stanley Kubrick was a little too hard on the Rand Corporation, not that that opinion is of any use to you now.
Yes, your friend’s profile picture is probably a fake. I’ll bet his eyes are the colour of TV screens turned to a dead station, and his face has all of the solidity of a Dali watch. So, what else is new? People have been sweetening their profile pictures on dating Web site since dinosaurs ruled the Internet (especially if by “sweetening” you mean “substituting better”). Now, at least they have a really, really, really, really good reason for doing it.
But, does that even matter? You know how some women will say, “I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man on Earth!”? Well, in your universe, that joke is not funny any more. For all you know, he could well be the last man on the Earth. And, wouldn’t you feel silly if humanity became extinct because you couldn’t bring yourself to look past somebody’s impossibly perfect profile picture? Or, whatever mutations, missing limbs or scars the impossibly prefect profile picture may be hiding.
Besides, all you have to do is ask him to meet you on Scrype and see for yourself if he’s worth repopulating the Earth with.
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: My goodness (which is prodigious, by the way, so much so that I have no need to brag about it – sometimes the brag just comes out without any volition on my part), but teenage girls are such drama queens! And, although I’ve never met you, I feel that I should point out that that long hairdo does not flatter your face, the sack you’re wearing does not flatter your figure and you really should do something about your whiny voice – it’s a sound that would put a jet engine struggling against a hurricane to shame! Please don’t take offense, dear: I’m just being honest.