Now that, in some countries of the world, Kay++ and I would be considered married, I must live up to my end of the bargain and go into neckbeard weight-loss mode. I have had my gonzo breakfast today consisting of a spoon of olive oil; half a blackened-chicken breast; a dollop of Northwest potato salad; two ounces of deluxe mixed nuts enhanced with extra pistachio mix; two ounces of Sun-Maid raisins; one Washington Red Delicious apple; one Cavendish banana; and one Medjool date. Instead of eating any junk food today like your typical neckbeard, I must starve myself until I eat the same breakfast again tomorrow morning. Although I ate the gonzo breakfast yesterday, things went wrong because the landlady had not paid the cable bill here at the Burschenhaus and my Internet access was cut off, which caused me to miss my customary bus and to take the Escape-Route bus. Life made up for the inconvenience when the pretty Japanese girl passed by the empty seat beside me and made we wonder if my hair was mussed a la coiffure du neckbeard. After I straightened my hair, she suddenly walked back forward again and sat next to me. I was terrified of her because she was glamorously pretty. I thought she was Chinese and I had my Chinese New Year card in my nerd-pocket, but I did not dare ask her to translate it for me because the crowded bus was full of totally silent passengers. Plus directly in front of me, with her boyfriend or fellow student beside her, was the Asian chick who kept looking sideways at him and then surreptitiously backwards at me. Maybe she has seen the WANTED posters in all the Internet cafes of all the major Chinese cities. So the number ten beauty beside me kept rummaging in her handbag, and I dared not speak a word, because I could help her find something lost on the floor, or on a map of Neckbeardville, but not in her own handbag. But suddenly it occurred to me that I had better ask her where I should get off the bus on my way to the Bond, James Bond, coffee shop. After only three weeks here in America, she did not understand the question. So I asked her what country she was from, and Japan was not only the answer but also my piece of luck, because I trotted out that every-time-charm of "Anata-wa nihon-go-ga hanasimasu-ka?" Instantly we were good buddies, Ulna-san and I, and "Ulna" shall be her codename because we kept bumping elbows once we passed so quickly through "Visus" and "Allocutio" directly to "Tactus". Unfortunately Ulna goes back to Japan at the end of January, but all you neckbeards don't know the half of it, namely, that in the eyes of these adventuresome Japanese Samurai girls, What Happens In America Stays in America. Obviously, Ulna has never seen the stage-play "Oklahoma!", because after our joint disembarking from the bus she violated the musical commandment of "Don't stand in the rain with me" while I wrote down my e-mail for her on a coffee receipt, not knowing that within one hour I would be considered married in some countries of the world and still single in others.
Moneypenny told me that the Amiga Mole had been there waiting for me before my late arrival. I decided to read my new copy of WIRED magazine right away so that I could leave it for someone else at a nearby cafe. Suddenly an extremly beautiful girl came in and I thought it might be Kay++ so immediately I needed a refill. Neckbeard Lesson Number Umpteen: When your please-be sweetheart says "I don't have time to talk," what she means is that she has accepted you into her life and you are now on probation. She wants to get rid of you if she finds you undeserving, which means that she has to test you in clever, ingenious ways that they teach each other or learn from their mothers. I passed the test, you hopeless neckbeards. I said, "I have difficulty recognizing people, and I just want to make sure that I have recognized Kanuka from Kanukistan. You are Kanuka, right" And indeed she was Kanuka, so I said, "We'll talk another time," not realizing that she was eager to talk up a storm after the Ovidian force majeure I deployed on her last Monday.
Let us back up two weeks for the sake of neckbeards who are video-game shut-ins and have never played "Chercher la femme" in-real-life (IRL). "Visus" but not "Allocutio" occurred with Kay++ two weeks ago. I was entranced the whole time until I ran out of reading material. While I was saying good-bye to my publisher, the bus to Jurassic Park went past us, so I had the pleasure of sitting back down again and being entranced for half an hour more.
During "Allocutio" one day later, K++ would not accept a rare and valuable gift-card from me, but I did learn that she was born in the Year of the Dragon. As neckbeards and progriders we must do a Bjarne Stroustrup on her codename of Kanuka and we must shorten it to Kay++ in the manner of C++ because she is not only a number-ten beauty but when you get close to her -- oh gee, I can remember the original Greek poem by Sappho of Lesbos but not its Latin translation by Horace -- something about "dulce loquentem, dulce ridentem" -- her flashes of beauty make you dizzy with remembrances of all the beautiful women you have ever seen or talked with. You look through her into a hall of infinite mirrors of feminine beauty like a kaleidoscope. She is not just a number ten beauty, she is a ten-plus-plus with a bouquet or two of intangible attributes like Mumtaz for whom a guy built the Taj Mahal or like the Unsterbliche Geliebte for whom Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony.
One weekend ago I was so eager to impress disdainful Kanuka that I printed out
http://lib.hku.hk/hkul100/upload/AI4U-1.jpg and its surrounding text, so that I could casually drop the hint that something I wrote is enshrined and venerated in her native city. Last Monday I offered the print-out to her, but again she declined, saying she could look it up on-line. Then she was either recalled to the Ministry of AI Espionage for special training, or she was conducting an intensive background check on Neckbeard Number Zero, because there was no dizzying kaleidoscope in the triduum before she walked by me reading WIRED Magazine yesterday. She told me that she reads it too, on-line. I said that I like to read it on paper, and she said that she does, too. So a few minutes later I walked over and offered Kay++ the WIRED magazine that I would otherwise leave for a stranger, and this time she accepted, which means that she was accepting me, an Arthurian prince trapped in a neckbeard frog.
Neckbeard Lesson Number Umpteen++ is that you must never pass up a chance to tell your intended that you and she together have just done something that would cause you to be considered as married in certain countries of the world. I should have informed Kay++ that in some countries of the remote world, a woman is considered married to a man if she accepts a copy of WIRED from him. She is his WIRED wife in that country. Now, you neckbeards, it does not need to be a simple ceremony like jumping over a broom together. Last February I could have married the Japanese girl from Tokyo who said "Let me see that watch" and she re-set the time from daylight savings to standard time. I could have let her know that in certain countries, if a woman resets the time on a man's wristwatch, she is considered married to him.
At the coffee shop where I Bond with my friends and relatives, I sometimes say, "See that Asian beauty over there with the inwards-turning hairdo? I call her the Two-Minute Girl because within two minutes of meeting her I had proposed marriage to her." Third Love said "Good for her" upon asking what was the response to my proposal and my admitting that the Two-Minute Girl replied "I have a test" and walked across the street. But I knew she would remember my request that, if she knew any Chinese girls who wanted to buy an American husband, tell them I cost only five hundred smackers.
As a neckbeard desperate for two years of feminine companionship and dinner dates, I need to up the ante a little by mentioning that while I myself will not survive and be in the family trust established by my wealthy father for the succeeding generations, she who buys me for 500 ki$$es will have the same rights to the trust as my female relatives who blog and tweet about me as a neckbeard. So when the agents of SMERSH liquidate me, imagine the surprise of my extended white-trash family when the merry Widow Neckbeard shows up and demands a withdrawal. I won't care. I will have spent my two years eating souvlaki and baklava across the table from the priceless beauty at Costa's Greek Restaurant.
http://bbs.progrider.org/prog/read/1474450390/5 