Ten Foolproof Tips for A Fun Double Date

If Ron’s taught a network of Google Homes and Amazon Alexas to converse in some ghastly neo-language, and these Homes and Alexas have transfixed the gaze of Marcel_ Proust in eldritch fashion, then practice avoidance of all that by planning a double date!

One: If quaternary and even quinary love interests remain ill-enthused in the months proceeding your child’s birth, shoot for the moon by pitching that most rejective of mistresses, Mariana Sicoli. Pitch not your own mediocre merits, but the chance to meet a Dupont big-wig who is no stranger to the marketing space.

Two: Stick to topics of common interest! How rude if you and Ron discussed nothing but automatic feature extraction’s time-frequency representation of time while Mariana and her expectedly-dumpy colleague simply stared at their napkins? How exhausting if Mariana and Stacey spent half the evening issuing marketing buzzwords as life advice, there in the franchise candlelight of Il Fornello, as they in fact did?

Three: If old Visigoth Ron plays footsy with Mariana then grieve the munificence of things past.

Four: Should substance-abusiveness inflame your humors, order your triple gin and sodas discretely from the bar. Request them in a water glass lest you make the table uncomfortable as they sip their single beers or single wines while leaving large portions of their single wines infuriatingly unfinished.

Five: Don’t seem overeager! This shouldn’t be a problem if your date is Stacey Keats. However, if Ronald Majthenyi is reading Mariana’s palm with the affect of a swami, then maybe he could be perceived as overeager, unless of course he is some suave stinking wizard who always comes off as looking pretty slick.

Six: If Mariana replies to your attempts at Autostereogrammatic reintegration by saying, “You belong on Reddit’s iAmVerySmart board, Dave, fool, ” Stacey will try to reduce the tension by reading from r/funny’s vacuum of immutable insipidity. Do not cite the wildly-superior 4chan’s curation of a news story headlined: “Obese American passenger forces Taiwanese flight attendant to wipe his butt on plane”25 and sub-headlined: “As she wiped, the passenger allegedly moaned in pleasure and urged her on, saying, ‘deeper, deeper!’” Do not speculate upon the stewardess’ emotional valence upon hearing that first moan, when any hope the man was in genuine anal distress must have been 25 (Linder, Obese American passenger forces Taiwanese flight attendant to wipe his butt on plane, 2019) abandoned, as this duty-bound airline professional realized she’d been relegated to fetishized ‘wipe whore. ’

Seven: Do not repeat the “wipe whore” line as an increasingly-transgressive callback. If Mariana asks, “What are you even talking about?” don’t be bated into reading from Wikipedia: "A callback, in terms of comedy, is a joke that refers to one previously told in the set. It is also known as an internal allusion, a literary device that helps give structure to the piece of writing."

Eight: Do not flirt with the other person’s date by asking Mariana if she knows that ' stound' is sometimes defined as

“a sudden pang of grief when a loss is remembered, ” and this must be the etymology of ' astound, ' wherein one is panged, suddenly, by remembering an autostereogrammatic breakthrough, for example, or an incestuous dalliance with the brothers Pete and Paul.

Nine: Act the big man by footing the bill! If Ron noshed on ziplocked elk from his briefcase, ordering only a single high-sulfite mineral water, while Mariana, to the best of your understanding, doesn’t eat food per se, and Stacey ordered only fried pickle spears, this will cost a mere $26 more than your $78 bar tab.

Ten: Avoid emotional outbursts! Do not recite an Ode on Melancholy. Do not remind Mariana that she may well be the last person ever to witness what is decent in you again. Do not mention the anamnesis coaxed, the epiphanic third element found, the axiomatics of Julia Jordan texted. Nor yet should you discuss concerns of your own dwindling sex appeal, of sisterly reconciliation in dreams, of the Kerouacian experience of feeling your heart break every time a beautiful woman passes in the opposite direction. Don’t ask Mariana to tell the Paul and Pete story again. Don’t do any of these things with tears brimming eyelid edges. For if you do, Ron will ask with the 80s sitcom-satirizing faux-triteness so favoured by the world’s marketers, “Would you get a load of this guy?” evoking a big cathartic laugh from the uncomfortable women desperate for a life preserver of normative behaviour.