London Calling…

If there is anything I have learned about New York since arriving here 2 and a half months ago, it is that of all places in america, this city must be the most accurately portrayed on tv. Seinfeld, Sex and the City, you name it and if its about New York then there are people and places and situations exactly like the ones you are seeing every Tuesday at 8 on Fox. With the possible exception of anything about vampires. But I can’t rule it out.

Consider then for a moment, how often women in these shows are approached by random guys, how casually people are asked out on dates, and how the dating scene in general is intrisically connected to lets face it, motherfucking _everything_. Then consider how goddamn annoying this must be, if you are female and under the age of 50.

Perhaps I am being biased, perhaps I have just had ridiculous experiences, or perhaps its just manhattan. I am fully prepared to believe any and all of those things. But so far, my understanding of the process of dating in New York is as follows.

If you are male:

Go to a bar. Any bar.

Check for women sitting alone at the bar. If there aren’t any, go to a different bar and repeat this step.

Pick a female at the bar and order a drink beside her Ask if there is anyone sitting there, or if she is waiting for someone. If she says no, sit down, and commence politely asking questions.

Once you have established her name, the next step is to ask what she does for a living. If you are a penniless bum this establishes whether she is a good catch, if you are an investment banker this is to establish that she is not after your money. Or if you a particularly repellent and weird investment banker, that she is after your money and so might remain interested even when you turn out to be a sleazy asshole.

Anticipate the reciprocal question and answer in as impressive a fashion as possible. For example, if you fix the air-conditioning for the offices of the hedge fund across the street, you can say you work at Lehmann Brothers as an engineer. This is all entirely acceptable and routine exaggeration that no woman could blame you for.

Show off your knowledge of everything as much as possible. Feel free to wax lyrical about rennaissance art, experimental blues, tuscan cooking, how much you enjoy long term relationships and like to cuddle, how wonderful it would be to find your soulmate. Or if you are intellectually challenged, just allude to your sexual prowess. Women love it when men advertise in this blatant, embarassing and pretentious fashion.

If you are black, from Brooklyn, and have a dead-end job and no college education then you are probaby hitting on a white girl in manhattan (in fact its probably me, since 90% of the guys who hit on me match this description), so hint about how your penis is almost certainly superior to your target’s previous experiences. White girls are always impressed by that. Make sure to drop ‘you know what they say…’ into the conversation. It’s so subtle it is practically subconscious.

Offer to buy her a drink if you think there may be a return on your investment. Remember, you may need to try this with quite a few women before hitting the jackpot, buying all of them a drink might cut the evening short due to lack of funds.

Flatter her as much as you can manage, use any excuse to tell her how wonderful and intelligent she is, despite the fact that you know nothing about her whatsoever. Use the word “sexy” prolifically. Explain how she is everything in the list of incredibly vague and shallow things you look for in a woman.

When you have managed to converse in this fashion with a woman without being ignored or slapped for a full 45 minutes, you can try asking for her number, or a date. However the longer the conversation continues, the more chance you have of obtaining these, so hold off for as long as you can.

Regardless of the outcome, do not devote the entire evening to one chick unless you think you are going to score right now! Calmly and politely take your leave before the end of the evening, with or without her contact details. If you do not have them by now then clearly she has been too foolish to know what she is missing.

Repeat the procedure with the next girl you find, everyone knows two dates are better than one. You are hedging, all clever people do that. If you want to protect your initial investment, you might even take the precaution of conducting the second sortie in another bar, but this is usually considered overcautious.

If you are female:

Go to a bar. Any bar.

Sit at the bar, and order something. a drink, food, whatever.

Wait for approximately 180 seconds

‘The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.’

Albert Einstein (Washington DC, Einstein’s monument)

Every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty‘

JD Rockefeller (Rockefeller Centre)

I don’t care about politics. Really. I don’t care about them at home because very few irish politicians seem to me to be any different from any other irish politicians, and I don’t care about them in other countries because there is nothing I can do about them. Most of all I don’t care about them because I don’t really understand them except on the most basic level, and I have never cared to try. I vote when it is in my power to do so, based upon the knowledge and understanding I have, because I believe one should exercise an opinion when called upon to do so. But I would never be involved in a campaign unless it was for a cause, not a politician, and the effort I would put into making my decision would be less then an hour’s background reading in the vast majority of circumstances

But if you live in a city in america it is almost impossible not to have an opinion on the election. If you don’t have one, you need to make one up, because you will be asked about it anyway. And for the first time, I find myself giving a shit. Not a massive stinky floater of a shit or anything, but certainly a medium sized turd. I actually think it might make a difference to the US and the world who gets elected this time.

So though it is entirely irrelevent, my non-existent vote goes to Barack Hussein Obama. May he somehow find a use for it.