KEEN WORDS OF ADVICE

My friends are, generally speaking, as supportive and understanding as I would want them to be.  But unfortunately they're also likely to proffer advice.
I like advice.  I give it really well.
Lousy at hearing it, though.


FIND SOMEONE!

The instructive words on rectifying my current state (bachelorhood) almost always seem to specify going where the female of the species congregates, and, as if by magic, getting into a conversation with the most intelligent specimen there, whereupon surely many dates, lunch, and a long happy life will follow.

Suggestions have included universities, bars, and shopping districts.

As well as courses in basket weaving, or poetry writing.


Aside from the absurdity of the enterprise ("the hunting of the snark") are the places proposed as likely environments (i.e.: universities, bars, shopping districts). 
Universities are where you find many overly sensitive mediocre minds with strong yet unsupported opinions, surrounded by frustration, intellectual dimness, rutting college athletes, bongs, bafflement, and exceptionally bad pizza.  The only time I've ever met someone who was worth dating at a university was when I took the same class as she did.  On her recommendation.
She was, in fact, the person I was already seeing at the time.  If there had been any chance of my "finding someone" at a university, she certainly would have NOT suggested it.
The pizza at SF State back then was quite horrid, by the way.
I do not know if it still is.
Bars, of course, are even worse. That's were you go to spend an hour being suboptimumly social at best, dawdling over a cocktail while smoking.  Bars are a good place for assiduously ignoring sports on television in early evening, while observing rush hour traffic thinning on Pine Street and dusk descending. 
Bars are NOT prime gathering spots.
Shopping districts are ab initio ridiculous.  Folks who flock in vast herds in the shopping districts have no interests in other people at that time, and are experiencing a feeding frenzy besides. 
Women who shop for fun are in a cannibalistic state.
Do not bother them.  They are the Borg.


In some ways I actually like bachelorhood. 
It would be nice to find someone (female) to share it, but I despair of women.
The snark which must be hunted is a shy creature, and does not hang out with others.
Her response to a friendly "hi come here often wanna share some pizza" would almost certainly be to viciously clout me upside the head with a heavy book by Henry James.
While wondering how and why anyone climbed to the top of the tree where she was hiding with her copy of The Bostonians, coffee, and an HP or Dell lap top. 
Actually, now that I think about it, she'd probably smash me on the head repeatedly with that volume, in hopes that I would lose my grip and tumble to the ground.
Splat.  And whimper.

I'm rather fond of my head, and do not want it dented.
Readers of Henry James might disagree.

So no.  Hanging around universities, bars, and the shopping districts, in hopes of "meeting girls", is a perversion I shall not engage upon.


On the other hand, placing a large cardboard box propped up with a stick (to which a long string is attached) on the ground under a tree is something I can very well see myself doing.
Of course, there's a BOOK on the ground under the box.........
Yes, this seems both workable and brilliant.
There's a good chance of success!

It's a big comfortable box.




Are there any young ladies out there who read Henry James?

I'd be keen to hear your opinion of this plan.





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