Fool Face

Firstly, as if you’d want to share your chocolate with anyone but you get what I mean! Bank holidays are a little easier than the festive holidays as these are the ones we’re just meant to get so pissed we can’t remember them right? well, that used to be the case anyway.

On to the subject in hand anyway; free dating sites. In previous blogs I’ve warbled on about the lack of quality eye candy available on these sites but hadn’t yet been brave enough to sign up to one and speak to any of these lovely people. In agreement with a male friend of mine, we both signed up, created our profiles and approving each others, set about our task of finding someone who would be at least some of the following;

1. relatively attractive.
2. Able to use the English language properly.
3. Not awaiting a court appearance.
4. All of their marbles present.
5. Someone we might want to meet in real life.

Not a particularly difficult challenge we thought. seeing as there were 100s of people signed up we thought the odds would be steeped in our favour. Oh how wrong we could be.

Here’s some stats for you.

I have been signed up for just over one week. In that space of time I have had 237 men contact me (I am not trying to be big headed here) and out of those 237 I have almost had to force myself to reply to 4 in the name of research.

Out of TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN.

That is 1.69% of men out there that are even worth replying to.

Shall I stop bothering to shave my legs now then yeah?

My male counterpart has had about as much luck. he has received the awesome sum of ZERO. That’s nothing, not even a bite. He’s a good looking lad, he’s funny, dresses well, sociable and can even spell. If he’d message me I would have proposed marriage after the barrage of utter ludicrous non sense from his predecessors.

Neither of us were being extremely picky, it was an experiment after all, we weren’t looking for our life long partners (although that would have been a decent result) but we’d signed up to prove a point that the world is changing and we are all courting online. Massive failure.

The four chaps I’ve been chatting with have been interesting, although four has now become two after one asked me to join him for a threesome about ten messages in and the other asked me if I took it up the arse. Not quite pre-first-date chit chat if you ask me.

Out of the remaining two, one of them turned out to know people I did and I’m still unconvinced if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. he was on my wave length, good looking but unfortunately still into necking a load of pharmaceutical products and not sleeping for days, so I doubt he’d be wanting to join me on a jaunt to the garden centre at the weekend. Shame though because he was almost funny.

The other chap is really good at banter, even managing to deal with my brutally sarcastic nature. He’s educated, doesn’t use text speak and even has a MacBook (don’t think I could date a PC user ha!) he manages to keep the conversation flowing and has things to say that don’t have me recoiling into the fetal position in sheer horror .

One thing though, he did give me his phone number and asked me to text him after only a day of messaging. this seemed extremely eager to me or am I being a prude? I’ve not text him I’d like to add, I’m not even completely persuaded I want to see him yet. what happens if he’s a human version of Shrek? There’s only one picture of him on this site, is that suspicious?

Back to the plight of my male compadre. From the amount of messages I’ve received and I’m not blonde, big boobed or look like a porn star (on a good day) I’m guessing the girls that do have these attributes are getting well in excess of 300 messages a week. How is it possible for the good guys to stand out from the rest of the muppets?

We are still in the process of working this out, tinkering with his opening lines, adapting his profile and revisiting which pictures to upload. Determined to crack this we’ve so far reached these conclusions;

1. you need a better opening line than “hi, how are you?” or worse still “hi ow R u?”
2. you need to show you’ve taken a second to actually read their profile rather than just stare at their tits (even if you have).
3. Your pictures need to be clear, you need to look buff and you can’t look cheesy.
4. Comedy works on some, on others it goes over their head. Again check profile for hints of their IQ.
5. Persistence it seems is the key. the site we’ve been on states that only 1 in 3 messages are read let alone replied to. It’s tough out there!!

This challenge continues and I’ll keep you updated with its progress and you never know we both might find someone who’s not a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.

Failing that, we’ll go back to the good old real way of dating.

One woman, one man on an unconvinced journey through internet dating.

Oh crikey I almost forgot a highlight for me. I received a message from a 26 year old woman, attractive woman at that, in Walsall telling me she thought I was pretty. thank you very much I said to her and repaid the compliment tentatively.

You can probably guess what’s coming next; I try to be polite, general chit chat then she brings up threesomes… here we go. So firstly “Am I into girls?” I reply that they aren’t really my thing, I’d dabbled as most ladies have but I’d prefer to stick to the meat and two veg. She doesn’t give up though, moves onto the tactic of trying to trip me into a dirty conversation that would make me so horny I’d turn kitty licker in an instant.

I’ve got to admit I was finding it flipping hilarious and probably wound her up a bit. That flew back in my face when she went into detail about a spit roast shit fest she’d had at the weekend. MY EYES!

Moral of the story there, don’t reply, quickly move to the block button and remain happily naive about the crazy ass bitches that divulge way too much information to strangers.

It’s going to put me off roast pork for months.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — one week down, one week to go. So far, I would give these 2010 Winter Olympics a grade of: Wow, I sure expected better, eh?

To be sure, the past seven days have been a medley of great eye candy, startling tragedy and stunning performances. Apolo Anton Ohno keeps posing for pictures on the podium in speedskating, winning his all-time record seventh Winter Games medal in a race Saturday night. we also have been enjoying the U.S. downhill slashers, medal-winning skiers Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller. The upside-down snowboarder, Shaun White, also has lived up to gold-medal expectations.

However, there have also been too many wrong Olympic turns, mainly by the games’ organizers themselves. and the wrong turn that has most mystified me — and probably always will — is the torch photo-op blooper.

I have covered 11 Olympics. they have taken place in 11 different cities around the world. At each one, fans and athletes and everyday civilians all want the same thing: to pose for a picture with the Olympic flame.

But for almost a week, the large Olympic cauldron along the downtown waterfront was hidden behind an 8-foot-tall chain-link fence covered with opaque plastic featuring Winter Games graphics.

Not cool. Not cool at all. People flocked by the thousands, hoping to snap a photo of themselves and the fire. instead, they got a shot of themselves with the opaque plastic, the flame

barely licking over the top of the fence.

“We can’t see it!” one little girl said last weekend as I walked by the area. “Mommy, why can’t we see it?”

Mommy had no answer. I had no answer. Wayne Gretzky, who lit the cauldron, had no answer. But in response to the criticism, by late last week, Olympic organizers had built a temporary viewing platform. Also, a plexiglass wall had replaced the opaque fencing. But why did the goof happen in the first place?

Dave Cobb answered that question Saturday. He is the deputy CEO of the Games. His explanation, basically, was that in typical Canadian fashion, the Winter Games officials were thinking much too politely in locating the cauldron — by worrying too much about what will happen in the future.

“Our primary concern was postgames, because that cauldron will sit where it is for decades,” Ross said. “We wanted it in the right place.”

The problem was, during these games and not in the future, the cauldron location adjoins the International Broadcast Center where all the international Olympic telecasts originate. The area had to be made safe. So the security experts ordered the fence be built. Nobody else foresaw the consequences.

In other words, the right Canadian red mitten didn’t know what the left Canadian mitten was doing. Frankly, there’s been a lot of that going around here.

I am well-aware that organizing an Olympics is not at all like organizing a trip for a youth soccer team. As Cobb says, there are “thousands and thousands of moving parts.” what has stunned me is how many of those parts have been going “clunk.”

First, though, let’s cut to the chase: these are not the worst Olympics ever. Not even close.

In case anyone has forgotten, at the 1972 Munich Games there were 11 athletes from Israel murdered by terrorists. that pretty much raises — or lowers — the “worst ever” bar until further notice. and let’s hope we never get that notice.

These probably aren’t the worst Winter Games, either. The glow left over from the U.S. hockey team’s triumph at Lake Placid in 1980 tended to obscure the fact that the transportation system for those games was a total failure, and thousands of spectators were left stranded at venues when buses didn’t show up. and, of course, the bribery scandal of the 2002 Salt Lake Games lives in infamy.

That said, there have been way too many screw-ups here, beyond the torch cluelessness, for any proud Canadian to defend:

The mottled ice crisis. This took place at the long-track speedskating venue. Organizers are touting these as the “greenest games ever,” so they ordered up an electric ice-resurfacing machine at the Richmond Olympic Oval rather than the traditional propane-fueled Zamboni. But the electric machine malfunctioned and caused ice damage that delayed competition, requiring an old-school propane machine to be trucked in from Calgary. what, they didn’t have a backup just down the street?

The mucky-mounds-of-hay calamity. It happened at the Cypress Mountain venue. This is the infamous snow-deficient spot at a low-level elevation — lower than Mount Diablo or Mount Hamilton in the Bay Area — where spectators were supposed to stand on mounds of 1,000-pound hay bales covered with snow. But when the white stuff melted, the hay bales disintegrated into sloppy goo. Result: some 28,000 fans were told that their tickets could no longer be used and were given refunds. This has cost Olympic organizers $1.5 million, not to mention the loss of good will from angry spectators. But seriously now: Hay bales?

The good-guys-turned-into-bad-boys catastrophe. On Friday, it was announced that 11 security officers were sent home for unspecified “improper behavior.” they should have been required to drive home on the malfunctioning Zambonis.

The cranky-bus annoyance. there have been transportation issues here, too, with a shortage of buses that created long lines for spectators to ride to and from far-flung venues. Cobb’s explanation: some of the buses hired by the Vancouver Olympic Committee were of “insufficient quality” and couldn’t be utilized. So let me get this straight “… no one inspected the buses six months ago?

The cross-country crackup. a Slovenian ski competitor fell into a gully Wednesday on a section of the cross-country course that her country’s officials called “not safe” as they filed a protest. The skier suffered four broken ribs and a collapsed lung. The response from Tim Gayda, the games’ venue chief: “No one felt there could be a crash on that site.” Well, guess that clears things up.

The luge sadness. no laughs about this one. The Georgian luge athlete killed during a practice run Feb. 12 has been on the minds of everyone here. But the local organizers and the luge officials still can’t get their stories straight about who is most responsible for building a $100 million luge track that plainly had some glitches. and it still blows my mind that the officials couldn’t delay the competition for a day to make certain of the proper adjustments for the track. I won’t ever forget the anxiety in the eyes of the lugers whom I interviewed that day.

Of course, as is always the case at any Olympics, there has been a lot of positivity to enjoy, as well. For the most part, the athletes’ performances have been phenomenal. and the United States, leading the medal count, is doing far better than expected.

And those upbeat developments, as always, will keep bringing us back for more. already, a group in the Lake Tahoe/Reno area is assembling an effort to land the 2022 Winter Games for that region. I hope they are here, taking notes.

Saturday afternoon, the throngs surrounding the torch seemed content with the new plexiglass setup. happy faces all around. Lots of photos being taken.

But over the next eight days, we’ll see how the complete picture develops.

Contact mark Purdy at mpurdy@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5092.