The Nelson Pulpit

"We have got to fix you up tonight if it's the last thing we do."



We hadn't been in Edward Moran's for five, maybe 10 minutes, before Joe
said that, and the look in his eye suggested that he meant it. After
all, the place was packed to the rafters, the on-the-prowl-men to
women-with-low-standards ratio looked fairly promising, and the young
ladies -- even by my admittedly tepid standards -- were fairly lovely.

I was sitting there, enjoying beers with Joe, Erfe and Tom -- three
co-workers who had come with me to the bar to revel in the ash heap of
my past. We had spent the evening talking baseball, joking about work,
trading barbs and witticisms. And now the talk had turned -- as it
often
does when you stick four guys in a nightspot and fill them full of beer
-- to love and the many forms it takes, particularly the forms it takes
at a when you're just leaving work and the bar you happen to stop at
for
beers is crawling with lovely women.

"Look at her!" Joe would exclaim every few minutes or so, whenever a
lass within shouting distance of attractive nature would walk by our
table. That would set in motion a fixed chain of events: me, craning my
neck to see, Erfe, whipping his head around at Mach 3 to catch a
glimpse, and Tom -- all 6-foot-2-inches of him -- jumping up on his
chair to get a better view. A couple cycles of this and we had soon
scared away all of the women in Moran's as well as many of the men and
a
good deal of the cocktail waitresses.

-----

At the heart of the problem is I just don't have an opening line. If
you
think about approaching a woman in a bar not as having a conversation
with a fellow human being who has the same hopes and fears and dreams
as
yourself but rather as a sales pitch, then -- as every good salesman
will tell you -- you need a distinctive opener. Something to get your
foot in the door, to keep your would-be consort at easy and to divert
her attention from the evil desires lurking in the blackest recesses of
your heart.

Trouble is, I can't do any of that. I can stride right on up to a girl
intent on firing off some clever witticism that will sweep her off her
feet, of saying something dark and alluring that seals my reputation as
one mysterious cat. But just as I'm about to speak, I have something of
an out-of-body experience. I see myself -- my puffy, awkward,
disheveled
self -- trying to chat up some flaxen-haired, ruby-lipped young lady,
and realizing the futility of it all, I'm reduced to spouting off a
stream of inanities.

----------------
Which brings us to October 7th.

Ahem. It's not one of my better months.

First of all, I've decided to remove myself from the dating scene. The
so-called "ShaunHog Day" has come and passed, and found wanting. While
I'll not refuse many advances that may come my way, and all dates and
offers outstanding, are still valid. I'm going to stop throwing hooks
in
the water. I still have one date pending, and after that, it's the
quiet monk-life for me. Oh, and gaming on saturday nights.

But, that's not bad news, trust me.

Today on the 8th of October, I was laid off, again.

And while this is something I've gotten used too, and even expected
this
time. It's yet again, a better thing than remaining employed in where I
was. The good news is I've gotten paid just a day before I got laid
off.

As I said, it's not a surprise, after the re-org, I figured it out in 5
minutes. Hell, a rhesus monkey could tell. The only pride I have is to
say that I wasn't the first to get removed.

I hope your October is filled with pagan bliss and other semi-naughty
stuff.

Shaun Nelson -- Bastard Operator From Hell