#21

Congratulations to anyone who has trudged through this blog from the beginning. I have been worried that some people have taken some of the entries a bit too seriously, and indeed Hermit did say in a recent email that he found the blog a bit depressing to begin with until he picked-up on the general tone of things. Some entries are serious but as a general rule if I'm complaining about brain problems or my ill fated exploits, it is probably my Marvinesque humour intended to entertain rather than depress. Marvinesque? Well Barkfoot's comments at the bottom of #1 were quite appropriate in saying it's just the diodes down my left side, because of course Marvin is the far from gruntled android in the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. My favorite piece of actual Marvin humour is the part where he is asked why he has his head in a bucket of water to which he replied, something along the lines of: "Because it's easier to feel retched with your head in a bucket of water". To make the tone of my blog easier to get a handle on, I suppose I should have used emoticons, I think I may have forced myself to put in one or two but mainly my blog is devoid of them because I've never gotten used to using 'em ...they were a bit before my time you see.... and if I start using smiley faces now it would only make what has gone before look all the more serious by comparison. The only emoticon, of a kind, we had in my day, sonny, was the sign for sarcasm, which was an exclamation mark in brackets...but I have stopped using that now because what with all emoticons being pictorial in nature I dread to think what it could be misinterpreted as. What is very definitely before my time are emails without any punctuation in, at all... nor with capital letters at the start of sentences or for proper nouns, or anything... it's just all in capitals (or all in lower case if that's what the ol' caps lock was up-to at the time). Quite a culture shock to someone like me who even types his text messages in mixed case, fully punctuated. Not easy to read either for folk like me with brain problems. Actually I don't think I've had more than a couple of emails like that, but where you do see a lot of it is on internet forums...is it because people are posting to the forum from their mobile phone... is it because they are embracing a new enlightened unencumbered way of out-poring streams of pure human consciousness... or is it because they are morons? It seems to be only perpetrated by people below about twenty though ...and since women of that age are way too young for me it means that at least I don't have to encounter such literary mush, along with any potential embarrassing miss-understandings it might cause, when taking my occasional stab at using computer dating websites. I don't like taking more than an occasional stab at a dating site since you don't want to be rejected any more than once a fortnight do you?... if you were to put some real time into it you could be easily be rejected 10 times a week and if you were a shallow impulsive communicator (perhaps of the unpunctuating variety) I'm sure you could increase that number to 50 times a week. That could slightly take the edge off your confidence and general chirpy nature. Even just my low activity use of dating sites during my annual rutting season can really feel like you're wading through mud because supply and demand (for want of a more romantic or even raunchy expression) is totally totally out of whack:- any woman can put an ad on one of those sites without a photo, without anything special (probably even without punctuation) and get 10 unsolicited replies within three days... but if you're an average looking bloke with a photo and plenty of interesting description you're annual inbox of unsolicited messages will be exactly bloody zero. This is not totally to womens' advantage though as the demand seems to go to their heads and they become so unbelievably picky that they rarely find anyone meeting all of their many unrealistic criteria. How do I know woman have many unrealistic criteria?...because they sometimes list them all on their page! It really can be a depressing human version of a cattle market. Something has gone wrong somewhere. Considering the unbalanced supply and demand it's all the more surprising that woman, of say 40, may well send you a photo that is ten years old. 'OK', you might say, 'I bet the blokes do that too'. Well maybe many do, but I do not, so very naively I didn't expect women to either, which makes my introduction to this practice, one ill fated date of mine, all the more flabbergasting for me. Due to my brain problems (mental slowness), when it's not appropriate to show my disappointment, like when opening a disappointing Christmas present, I can usually hold back the accompanying facial expression... this is because, when I am considering something, it takes so long for nerve impulses to reach the muscles on my face that I can usually intercept and cancel the neurological signals before they have even left my brain. But after many favorable emails and chat room chats with one woman and receiving additional, unsuspectedly carbon-datable, photos of her:- when I actually met her her face-to-face on that ill fated date, I could not prevent the sheer shock I experienced from showing on my face, for she looked considerably considerably older than I expected. My face started with the initial quizzing facial expression of 'Who are you?' quickly morphing to: 'No it can't be.' and onto: 'No... it really is you, isn't it?' I'm pretty sure even my jaw dropped. Well, take it from me, that has to be one of the most effective ways of starting-off a date somewhat badly. I felt bad about it to begin with but it really wasn't my fault considering the data I had available, and the annoying fact was the deceit was unnecessary because she looked more attractive at forty than thirty really.... although I figured that mentioning she used to look a bit on the plain side but had greatly improved with age, would not really rescue the situation. I dunno...women hey, for some reason they just don't like back-handed complements. The date continued, painfully. And the next day, to really take the biscuit, came the verdict laden email from her which said: she did not fancy me. She did not fancy me? Me, who had sent an up-to-date photo, showing balding head in full view and all other possible put-offs openly declared days in advance? Time for me to make an exception and use an emoticon I think :-( Good night.