Car Attacked By Turkey

So I never post, but this story was so funny that I had to share.

I was on my way to the Farmer's Market this morning. Since we live about 2 miles from the Shops at Ithaca Mall, I planned to drive down in my new purple Honda Fit, which I've had for only 2 months.

As I approached the car, I saw some blemishes in the reflect on the side. There were these tiny scratches on the door. Scratches near the door handle are expected but why were there so many on the door itself? I wondered how I got them (Did I park to close to someone? Did someone key my car? Has my mother been wearing chain mail when she walks past the car?) As I opened the door, I realized there was a distinct thunking sound coming from the car. Surprised, I looked around and realized it was coming from other side of the car as the door was shaking on the inside.

Wondering "what the heck?!" I tossed my stuff inside and began marching around the car, hoping to put an end to this bizarre mystery. Suddenly it occurred to me that this was really strange and I had no idea what was causing this sound. On top of it, there was this weird warbling sound in addition the repeated thunking. As I turned the corner, I found a full grown turkey less than 3 feet away from me attacking its reflection.

I don't know if you've ever seen a turkey in real life, but they're bigger than you expect (about the size of a dog or a large toddler). I mean, waist-high and probably a few feet wide with its wings and feathers fluffed up in attack mode. In shock, I screamed like a crazy woman, causing it equal terror and to retreat into my backyard.

As I examined the car, I have found tiny, pecked scratches all over the car at about the height of this stupid bird. This about the dumbest car problem I have ever experienced and I've only owned my own car for less than 2 months. I suspect he has been doing this for a week since it was not like this when I moved Susan to Amherst.

Car Talk Recommendations:

Well, it seems that the Car Talk folks have already addressed this question last year. This man in NJ seems to have this problem with his shiny blue Prius, but on a larger magnitude (a whole flock). Their solution: buy a camo cover for his car.

Seems that turkeys have a propensity towards the color blue (and I thought I was safe with purple). One major difference is that I don't live THAT far out in the boonies, so a camo cover for my car seems utterly stupid.

Other People Terrorized By Turkeys:

• This Driver
• This Cop
• Another Honda Victim
• Many others on youtube

I guess it's time I get a camo net for my car and call my insurance agent to see if this falls under acts of God. Otherwise, it's going to be a great Thanksgiving the next time I see this turkey.

Assignment 2 - Tiny Things

This is Week 2 of my writing class. See this previous post for the details of how they are structured.

Spark: "Tiny Things" - Zee's friend went to a Valen-TINY party the theme of which was small things (such as mini cupcakes, tiny cookies, etc.).

My Take: Tiny things that have a big impact

It's the point of the winter where everything i own is fuzzy. The small gray pills grown on my gloves ,coat and scarf like the tiny denizens of cloth villages. The journey begins each fall when I have such lofty hopes of keeping these things pristine. I march into TJ Maxx the day I've finally caved and admitted the reality of frozen fingers and wind-whipped faces. I guy some brand-named out wear: gauntlets, chain mail and a helmet. They are my implements of war against oncoming winter. Living in the northeast, I know that it is an annual battle that always drags on to the point where I consider surrender by either hibernating, limiting my ventures beyond the borders of my apartment, and considering exile in San Diego.

Every day a battle wages, costing the souls of a million snowflakes, whose lives are fast and furious as they careen out of their snow cloud motherland and straight into my face like a legion of kamikaze pilots. I feel no sympathy for them as I wield a plastic sword to scrape the troop build up off the windshield.

"There always more where that came from," my boyfriend says to me as he ejects a small wet army from his boots, climbing into his Honda equivalent of a humvee.

"My God man. 4-6 inches? We'll have to retreat to home base," he orders upon hearing the weather report.

"Washington is buried," he explains to me solemnly, gravity in his voice. "They're calling it the SNOW-POCALYPSE now."

"Thank God it's not us," I reply as we retreat back to homebase.

Day 43: Each day becomes more weary. Low morale starts to set in and the fibers of my coat, hat, and scarf look uneasy. They've warped and curled. They look like they need a shave.

Day 74: My mother hands me a bag.

"I've got you one too," she says excitedly. I reach into the bag. She's been telling me of this secret weapon she found at Big Lots for only $3.00. She's been wearing it for weeks around her own neck.

"It's the ultimate weapon. The best scarf I've ever had," she explains. "I've worn it all winter long."

As I pull it out, I realize that I don't have the heart to tell her it's actually a blanket.

New Writing Class: Assignment 1 - What Stuff Says About You

So I started a writing class this winter to help me get back into writing consistently since I've basically abandoned this blog for the past few months. For the next few months, I'll be posting assignments created during the class.

Here's how each class is structured:

1. Zee, director and program coordinator the Emma's Writing Center, introduces everyone in case there are new members to the class.
   
2. The first 5 minutes are devoted to getting settled in with a bit of meditation (it's really a nice moment of silence to help clear your mind).
3. Then Zee provides a "spark" or idea on which to write. These range from physical objects placed in the center of the room, a technique such as short poems or list-making, or a general topic on which to build upon. Sparks usually involve a multitude of different ideas, and the overall point is to inspire some kind of writing.
   
4. Members then spend 40-45 min writing on the spark. Writing can be in any form: poems, essays, fictional stories, stream of consciousness writing, etc. Anything is acceptable.
   
5. The remaining hour is spent reading your work out loud. (I had no idea exactly how terrifying this was until I first did it. Zee has explained that it's part of finding your voice and being comfortable with sharing it).

All in all, it's a lot of fun.

Assignment 1: What Stuff Says About You
In the center of the room, there is a table full of objects such as a camera, a picture frame, a fan, and other knick knacks. I thought of the immense clutter in my parents' house.


I called home from a rest stop in Ohio on I-90 to let them know that I would be arriving late, probably around 2:00am. My sister picked up.

"So don't wait up for us. I know Mom's probably worried, but I'll be there tonight. Just tell her to go to sleep and we'll talk in the morning. I'll try not to wake the cat either haha."

Brown Sugar, our cat, was better known as just "Kitty" since my Taiwanese parents never adopted the Western idea of naming animals. It took a lot of convincing just to let us keep him. That is, I simply brought one home one day and offered no other recourse.

"Well... It's funny that you mentioned Kitty. Cause... he's not here anymore." Susan explained.

"What do you mean?"

"So the doctor told mom that she shouldn't be handling anything with a lot of bacteria such as cleaning cat litter. I guess chemo will wear her down. And so Dad just got rid of him. I mean I came home one day and Kitty was gone! Dad said that he gave him to a family who has other cats," she stammered.

"But our cat is 15 years old!" My cell phone was tucked uncomfortably under my chin and I had finally given up on cleaning the smashed insects off of the windshield. It was futile.

"I KNOW! And I didn't even get to say good bye. I've been begging Dad to let us know where he is so that I can make sure he's ok. I mean he didn't even ASK us. He just took him... and he was gone," her voice was choking into a whimper. I could tell she was crying quietly.

"We'll talk about it when I get home. I can't believe this."

I always hated coming home. I was going to grad school in Chicago and lived in a condo on the 25th floor of a high rise that faced the lake and the city. Coming home made me realize exactly how antithetical the life I wanted to live was in comparison to the life I HAD lived in the cramped, dark, dusty, cluttered, crumbling house of my parents.

In Chicago, my apartment was relatively immaculate give or take a few overgrowths of printed articles and books. The wall to wall windows facing the Chicago skyline let in so much light that it was often difficult to nap in the living room. Since neither my boyfriend at the time and I were gainfully employed, it was easy to keep things clean. Our small smattering of IKEA furniture provided a minimalist and modern look. Sometimes I wondered if we overshot and made it look empty.

At home there were piles of boxes from floor to ceiling, lining the walls of every room. The area that was once our porch was converted into an unheated storage area due to an architectural whim of my father. It was now completely full of boxes, surplus that could not fit in the equally congested garage. These boxes were the coffins of hundreds of abandoned things, ranging from ancient video tapes (Oh, I had forgotten about Beta) to childhood toys some of which weren't even ours. Not only was our father a decorated garage sale bargain hunter, he was also a pathological hoarder.

In his old age, my father's skin had grown increasingly brown while his hair shockingly white. It's as if he aspires to be the visual stereotype of the ancient philosophers depicted in Chinese soap operas. He follows suit and periodically spit out a brutally obvious observation. My favorite was: "It is always good to learn new things."

He would tell this to me and my sister every time we did something remotely related to academics or learning, especially when it involved some new technology. He said it when I first showed him how to program a remote (that I had figured out on my own). He said it when I introduced him to AOL Online and email. He said it when I finished Middle School. He said it when I graduated high school. He said it when I started going to college. Then he began saying it whenever I came home during breaks as if to encourage me to go back. By the time I started graduate school, I had developed a thorough resentment of this particular adage.

In the case of bargain hunting, it was always: "A good businessman always knows how to bargain." I remember him telling this to me as a child as we walked up a stranger's driveway, having pulled over on a quiet country road. There was a squat woman wearing a Tweety Bird t-shirt, fanning herself with a newspaper as she sat in a lawn chair. The table next to her held a spread of knick knacks and unwanted dishware. My father tried to haggle the cost of a 25 cent mug down to 5 cents. I think we ended up buying 2 mugs for 50 cents.

The porch was filled with the remnants of a pink 80's childhood, including a dilapidated Barbie townhouse that now sagged severely on one side; its plastic columns strained to bear the weight of several underwatered, yellowing plants. There were roller skates, sized 8 and 9, that were far too big for my sister and I's feet, but yet my father still felt that they were a great acquisition and encouraged us to try wearing these accoutrements of a past time, which to us were past its prime. There were used boxing gloves that survived a brief tenure inside our house due to an unfortunate maiden voyage on my 5-year-old sister's hands straight into my father's face.

As I entered the porch, I understood that part of my role here was not only to help my mother during her treatments, but to evict these items from their graveyard. It was all I could do in my cat's memory.

Written on January 30th, 2010.

Facebook Ads Are Making Me Insecure

I love Facebook. It's been good to me for years. We've had problems in the past, but overall, it's easy to use and pleasant on the eyes. It also keeps me connected to people who I never see with out all the commitment of phone calls, emails, or visits.

Aside from allowing be to be socially lazy, I've decided that FB's ad algorithm is starting to irritate me. Irritate me worse than my nutty Aunt Esther. Here are a few examples:

Don't Worry Anne, You're Not Fat. You Just Need to Diet and Exercise -
This is famously quoted by my mother, who's well-known for picking holes into my self-esteem. I've come to the age where I'm a bit hardier about taking flack from her and my aunts about my weight, but to hear it from Facebook too? Thanks a lot. Jerks. It's bad enough that I have a hoard of Asian women from a 3rd world country with weight standards set in the 1960's on my back about this. Way to salt the wound.




Are you self-conscious about your face? Because you should be.
As if an acne-afflicted adolescence wasn't enough to scar you for life, either emotionally or physically, there's nothing like an ad campaign tailored to your age group and gender to make you feel good about yourself. I have my aunts hocking bars of Clinique SEVERE Acne Prevention Soap at me, my mother claiming that I'll be lucky to find someone who'll look beyond my ugly mug, and random family friends pushing Acutane so that I may one day have a shot at happiness. Fabulous. Good thing I have the hide and complexion of a rhino to survive these criticisms.


Will you ever get married? We're concerned that you're getting old.
So the other day my mother tells me about how my father is growing concerned that I will never marry as I am "getting a little old." In fact, my tactful mother has mentioned how she's always thought of me as "difficult to marry." What I don't get is that I've always been in monogamous relationships, the last one being 5 years long. That said, they're hoping that my current relationship will work out, as shown by their zeal to accept my boyfriend into our "group" ("family" is such a strong word), often showering him with gifts and unwanted money. To my credit, I wouldn't say that I'm THAT low on the marry-ability scale, but they're my parents and thus have bizarre standards. My aunts on the other hand have been forthright about what they want, stating: "It's nice that you want to get an education, but the real reason why you're in college is for your Mrs degree. Don't get the PhD or you'll never get married." To escape all this, I check Facebook to see who some of my real friends are and low and behold, I get a slew of engagement ring ads. So thanks Facebook for nagging me just as much as my traditional family members.

For the Dudes in House, Check Out the Asian Ladies
I don't have photo evidence of this one, but I've heard this happen to more than one source. Those being both my current boyfriend and an ex of mine. Apparently, thank to having dated me, they receive ads to "Chat with Single Asian Ladies," "Find Interracial Relationships," and "Search for Asian Singles Now." So, not only is Facebook singling me out for my gender, it's targeting the guys I date on the basis of my race. I'm not sure where this falls on the scale of morality, but I feel like it's crossing a lot of personal boundaries for me. Thus, on one hand, they're targeting ads to make me concerned about getting married, while on the other, they're pitching new ways to replace me in my current and past relationships. Thanks for nothing.

See this Feministing post on the same topic: Hands Off My Self-Esteem (Thanks Half Awake)

UPDATE:

Picture of Racially Targeted Ads


















I'm not sure what this means, but I don't like it.

Odd Similarities

Odd Similarities between Current Boyfriend and Ex:

• Names start with a "J"
  
• Are the same height
  
• Born in late September (birthdays 9 days apart)
  
• Drive Hondas
• Studied Chemical Engineering (like my dad... oh god)
  
• Own the same Olympus camera with sliding manual shutter opening mechanism (received from their mothers)
• Have mother's maiden names as middle names
  
• Were addicted to MUDs in high school
  
• Really liked the game Portal

Odd Similarities Between Me and Current Boyfriend's Ex:

• Come from Taiwanese immigrant families
• Father was a motel/hotel owner
• Have "Ann" in our first names
  
• Born in mid-May (birthdays 5 days apart)

Are we all just archetypes (geek vs. 2nd gen)? Is there some greater meaning to all of this?

The important thing is that we're happy. But, it's funny to reflect on these things. Funny in the head that is.

Once Upon an MTV Made Mattress

So one day a few weeks ago, my little sister, Susan, stops by at my apartment dressed like she had stepped out of an 80's dance movie scene. She explained that her acting company, Running to Places, a local group of Ithaca-area star high school actors, was doing something special but couldn't explain because it was top secret.

Afterward, she was allowed to explain that they had staged another "audition" for their production of Once Upon A Mattress for MTV's Made. Apparently, a girl from Ithaca High School had been chosen for the show. For those of you not familiar with Made, it is a "reality" show where they have a camera crew follow a high school student for 6 weeks while they attempt to reach an ambitious personal goal, usually involving the pursuit of something glamorous (think Little Miss Sunshine or the Karate Kid). The IHS girl was intent on starting her acting/dance career and trained with the director of Running to Places for the audition. Of course the girl gets in and is assigned to be my sister's understudy for her 3 line speaking role as "Lady Henrietta."

Opening Night
After a hellish (which I have now accepted as normal) day at work, I arrive just in time to see the curtains open. Having been in a middle school production of the show as "Lady Lucille," a character similar to my sister's, I was pretty sure I knew what to expect. The execution of the show was fantastic, the dancing coordinated, and the acting actually believable and well cast. However, I was shocked by the suggestive material during the play that, despite actually performing the thing, I had somehow missed the real meaning of. It was similar to watching "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" or "SpaceBalls" as an adult, finally understanding raunchy jokes that were missed by adolescent ears.

Nostalgia - Back in the Day
As I watched, I had fond memories of doing the show. My friend Kaitlin, who is now touring the nation in a children's theater group, was Princess Winifred. My friend Erika, a music teacher in Cambridge who's due in February with her first child, the queen. Puneet, now in medical school, Prince Dauntless. I even remembered how Emily, who works as a Martian photographer (no joke) with the Rovers at Cornell, drew the T-Shirt(as depicted above). I became giddy when I saw the shirt, but then realized that it was 12 years ago. That's the age of an adolescent child, an entire cycle of the Chinese zodiac calendar, and a song by Christian Rap artist T-Bone.

I think it was during this play that I concocted the idea of the "sniper bunny," a vigilante rabbit that sits in the rafters waiting for one of the young cast members to start goofing off, an event which would prolong rehearsals, and snipe them with a tranquilizer dart, sending them into a gentle sleep. I explained this theory to my friend Rachael, as I would often develop elaborate hypothetical schemes to address certain issues in my life (in this case, young 5 &6th graders). In hindsight, I'm glad I never actually told this to an adult, who might have gotten me suspended from school, given the Zero Tolerance policy. I guess some people find shooting children funny and others don't. Even if I meant tranquilizers.

Raunchy! Oh God, Protect the Parents!
The other point I'd like to make was that the content was not only baudy, but an interesting perspective on male-female relations. That is, Princess Fred is strong, but not too strong. The women are only interested in marriage, and the men in lust. I mean, a main component of the King's character is that he chases the chamber maids. The Minstrel comments, "Don't worry, one day he'll catch one," which I'm sure they meant it as: "One day, he'll get a girl who loves him or reciprocates his attention." However, my initial reaction was "Aaaaahhh! They are making a rape joke! What are they teaching children?!" In all fairness, the musical was written in 1959, where this stuff must have caused riots and it was pretty audacious to acknowledge sex. Susan also noted the implications of sex in the lyrics (ex: "And it's been God knows how long since!" and "Nobody's getting any... younger!"), all of which made me almost as uncomfortable as the time my mom wanted to come with us to see the Sex and The City Movie. (If you've seen the movie, you know at which scene my mom jumped and covered her eyes, then my sister's, then mine.)

My 15 Seconds of Fame
Resisting the temptation to cover my mother's eyes and ears, I was able to avoid all eye contact with her and thoroughly enjoyed the show. During intermission, I walked with my mother to the bathroom. As we exited the auditorium, I asked if she remembered the show I was in. The second we passed through the auditorium doors, she said "Of course, I remember!" with the excitement of a proud mother. "But these guys are REALLY good!" At that moment, I realized the MTV Made cameras were filming just outside the door, as I adjusted a fallen bra strap.

Of course, I gawked at the camera with a deer-in-headlights expression with my arm stuck partially down my shirt, and quicly ran off. I wasn't that offended by my mother's comment, as I really felt that these guys were awesome and at a more appropriate age where the delivery of the jokes wasn't as forced or contrived. Besides, she's apt to make these statements anyhow ("Don't worry Annie, you're not fat. You just need to exercise!) and so I saw it as water off my back.

As we arrived in the bathroom, it occurred to me that now, somewhere in the annals of footage from the shooting of this production, there is an outtake of my mother jabbing me slightly in my self-esteem while I am apparently reaching into my shirt. A brilliant moment of vulnerability, captured forever in film.

Toilet Paper Kills Pandas

Soo while working a horrifically boring data entry position at Cornell, I happened to stumble upon an odd announcement in the ladies bathroom. Unfortunately, I was not able to snap a picture in time before the poster was removed, but I thought the content was so hilarious that I had to share.

A Cornell organization known as "CARE" which stands for "Center for Animal Resources and Education" had supposedly made the following announcement:

According to recent research published in the Journal of Environmental Studies, the consumption of American toilet paper leads to the deaths of 7-8 pandas in China every year. If enough concern is raised on campus, there will be a petition circulated to remove all toilet paper from all Cornell Facilities. Please write your comments in the space below:

In the "space below" were comments such as: "Are you fucking crazy?!" and "Who cares?". These were written using the pencil hanging from a string, taped to the poster. I thought of writing: "Fuck the pandas, I'd rather wipe!" or the nerdier phrase "Correlation does not equal causation!" but never got around to it. When I saw it the next day, the poster had been removed and upon the string with the pencil was a roll of toilet paper.

I love subtlety in humor.

Cats are a Girl's Best Friend?

During this spell of unemployment and affliction of the common cold, I came upon this NYT article about men and cats. The author claims that it is becoming socially acceptable for straight men to love cats rather than the archetypal pet dog (aka. MAN's best friend). I guess I didn't realize that this was an odd phenomenon.

It hasn't been since Desmond Morris' Catwatching have I really contemplated the gendered aspect of pet ownership. Morris mentions that far more women have taken to cats than men, partially due to qualities of their gender.

It makes sense that people would select pets based on their own personalities, but at that point in my life (about 6th grade or so) I hadn't realized the connection between women and cats and equally men with dogs. With images of Catwoman and Nekojin in mind, my youth became biased against dogs with their associations with masculinity. However, I've come around and now fully appreciate dogs as pets that provide the pack/family relationships that cats don't really give you. Don't get me wrong, I loved my cat, Brown Sugar (AKA "Kitty" because in Taiwanese/Chinese homes, you don't really need to name your pet). But, he was kind of anti-social and not as friendly as some dogs I've met. However, there are friendly cats out there, just as there are anti-social dogs. In fact, my Aunt Esther's cat, Snow White (RIP) was super friendly and would actually respond to its name.

What the author does not state in the NYT article, but does imply, is that it is that it is becoming socially acceptable for SINGLE straight men to like cats, and base their life choices around the love for their feline companions. That is, men seeking women (which btw, if you haven't checked out missed connections of m4w or w4m, you are missing a whole page of hilarity in your life). I guess the implication is that a single woman with a cat/cats is still attractive, but men are not.

The distinction is that if a couple has a cat, this would be more acceptable because the presence of the woman mitigates the feminizing aspect of the cat or simply explains its presence in the household (i.e. obviously the cat belongs to Mindy, Steve is a man's man). I don't believe this explanation is necessary for a couple owning a dog (i.e. obviously the dog belongs to Steve, Mindy is far too girly).

Whatever the case, I think I appreciate guys with cats. I mean hell, man or woman, if you can take care of another being in a supportive and healthy way, props to you. I'm not talking about the college student who gets a cat to get rid of mice in their apartment, forgets to feed it or change its litter, lets it poop in the sink, and then relies on another roommate's charity to care for it out of the kindness of their heart.

In fact, this video on an Engineer's Guide to Cats has reinspired my appreciation. In the meanwhile, because I seem to only become seriously involved with men who are allergic to everything, I am hoping to get one of these hypoallergenic cats. Fingers crossed.

Consumer Whoredom of the Week: Junk-Kicking Tea Tree Toothpicks

Emily noted that I had not yet posted a Consumer Whoredom of the week. So here it is!

Thursday Plantations Tea Tree Australian Chewing Sticks
After high recommendations from my friend Emily, I tried out the tea tree tooth picks to help me quit smoking last year. Unfortunately, I had just moved to Chicago and my access to them was a bit limited. I weened myself off smoking and had quit for about 4 months. However, social desires brought me back to the old smokies. Anyway, I moved back to Ithaca since and I've been trying out the toothpicks at the Oasis on Buffalo. The brand is called Preserve: Flavored Toothpicks. The small cylindrical container was easy to carry around and pretty useful design-wise. I tried the "Cinnamint" flavor but I found it to be lacking in zest. That is, it tasted more like a piece of balsa wood with vaguely minty/cinnamon-y flavor.

Em recommended the Thursday Plantations Tea Tree Chewing Sticks over the Preserve brand. The rectangular box is simple but also less aesthetically interesting. On a practical level, the compact Preserve container has a smaller "disaster" if it opens in your bag, holding only 35 toothpicks compared to Thursday Plantations' 100. But, for what they lack in design, Thursday Plantations toothpicks make up in taste. They are definitely have a "Kick-You-In-The-Junk" flavor, as Emily described. I think if you know Emily, it's an auspicious occasion when she uses mildly profane language.

Cost: $3.50

Where Found: Greenstar (Not the little hippie co-op, the big one)

Pros: A Great Substitute for Gum and/or Cigarettes... helping to satisfy that oral fixation. It's the Altoids of the toothpick market.

Cons: Splinters - yeah, you know what happens when you chew a toothpick? It breaks down into soggy wooden fibers. Just be conscious of how much you salivate/chew, and you'll avoid swallowing any wood.

Consumer Whore Index: 1 Pair of Panties out of 5 - It's cheap and fun!

The Local Effect of Online Dating and Blind Dates

Ok, so I've made some recent forays into online dating using OkCupid. The website is awesome in that it's full of silly quizzes such as The Dating Persona Test, The Nerd/Geek/ or Dork Test or the What Type of Man Turns You On Test (classy, no?). Anyway, besides providing endless hours of question answering, it actually draws interesting matches based on questions that you answer and actually explains the statistics behind the analysis (see FAQ for all of its mathematical glory).

Fears of Online Dating:
Anyway, I recently got into an argument with my Aunt Esther about online dating (see previous post below - note that my "complaints" are all sarcastic in some way). Despite her other misconceptions about the internet, one major point she keeps rehashing is the need to distrust everything, especially dating. My mother once told me to be careful when applying to jobs online because she saw something on Court TV where a girl was lured into a fake place of business under the premise of a job interview. The point is, you obviously can't trust everyone on the internet, the same as you can't trust everyone you meet. However, it's much easier to lie on the internet. That said, you should exercise some free thinking and exercise some discretion when making decision based on information from a questionable source. I explained to her that dating on the internet was not that different from meeting a matchmaker (such was common in traditional Taiwanese culture) and having her match you with potential spouses based on her knowledge of you two. So yes, the matchmaker may be more likely to reject seriously bad candidates, but then again for the right price she may be willing to risk her reputation to do this.

The way they used to do this is through good old-fashioned letter-writing. I explained to my aunt that, hypothetically, you could still lie in these letters the way you could lie on the internet. She retorted that the man on the internet could have AIDS and never tell you. Then you could marry a dying man and that you would die too. I tried to explain diplomatically (aside from the fact that her example would be highly unlikely, that HIV is controllable through medication, or that you might not have jumped into such a marriage without asking some questions) that this could also happen with the matchmaker situation as well. Oddly enough, my father agreed with me and said that it was the new future of dating and marriage.

Online Dating in a Small Town:
However, what I did not anticipate was the fact that dating on the internet in a small town becomes a relatively complicated task (dating on its own is a complicated task even without the internet). Every once in a while, I spot someone that I've seen on the website. It's not so bad until you realize that you may have shot them down. I'm not here to kiss and tell, but its local complications mean that there can be a consequence to your online activities whereas in a larger locality that anonymity can be maintained.

Perceptions Based on Your Profile Name:
That or you remember their moniker, their profile name (i.e. The Manimal - who actually seems pretty nice and geeky despite the machismo of his name), or some obscure fact (i.e. - "Ohhh right, he's the man child and has issues about his ex in his profile"). I spoke to a friend who was told by her friend in HR that it's no longer socially appropriate to have a moniker in your email. In fact, every time they were hiring, her friend would just throw those resumes out. She adopted a new email with her full name, as many of my other friends have, showing a new professional and honest face to the internet world. However, there is something to be said about using a moniker as an "avatar," much like a video game. That is, you have the ability to craft your image and personality with relative freedom. Obviously, someone might catch you in the lie, but then again... it might be to your advantage.

To illustrate, I received Ghengis Khunt as my dating persona. Ok, I was offended at first. When my friend recommended the site to me, he told me about the funny dating personas. So my friends took it and got names such as the Window Shopper and theNymph. I get Ghengis Khunt, complete with diagram of an angry female reproductive system. I took it again and received the same thing. But after thinking it over a few days... I embraced the title. Yeah I can be quite brutal. On a more academic note, I read an article about how Muslim women are using agency to become the models of femininity that Islam prescribes. It's a stretch, but on some level, I think that I have become more confident and picky about my relationships. As "Ghengis," I've become much more honest about my feelings so that I can help anticipate potential problems. I've almost become desensitized to shooting people down online (as the non-face-to-face interaction allows me to be braver about my opinions). I mean hell, I've got to live up to the name. And yes, I know, you don't have to respond to each message, but I feel like it's nice to give a response if they seem genuine. However, I'm still working on this technique with actual live interactions.

Why Mention Race?
I note very clearly in my profile that I'm not interested in guys with "Asian Fetishes" AKA "Yellow Fever". But after perusing several profiles, I realize that a lot of people never recognize their own race in their profiles and it makes sense. One of the profile sections asks: What Do People Notice First About You? I answered: "I'm Asian... well no friggin shit." So here I am willing to point it out as if you couldn't assess it from my pictures. However, that said, I make a point that I am not a stereotype. I'm upfront about this because of my experiences on MySpace. I have received an odd number of sexual solicitations from guys who either tend to have many Asian female "friends" or those who mention it directly (Ex: "I've always had a had a sexual fantasy of getting it on with an Asian Beauty. Interested?"). In fact, I am still considering turning this into a legitimate audit study where I assess the number of "friend requests" and hook-up themed messages based on race.

Anyway, what I don't understand are the guys who respond to my OKCupid profile and make references to the "submissive lotus blossom" archetype. For example, someone asked me if I was shy because he once knew an Asian girl who looked just like me (Insert: Eye Roll) and was meek and too shy to do anything with him. This does not seem to make sense as I make it pretty apparent in my profile that I am not.

Meeting Matches:
In this town, I've already run into some of my matches before (as well as the profiles of friends). You make the assessment and then go out and put yourself on a limb. It could go anywhere. I've only gone out twice, but I'd say I've had good luck. The profiles have not to be too divorced from reality (or in reality not divorced at all - haha). In any case, this still doesn't save you from the occasional bad date, but it does leave room for some good ones.

Worst Blind Date Ever (Stolen from Digg)