Thursday, March 24, 2011

Five Date Ideas Nerds Will Love

Stolen from the Editor's Desk: There are a lot of opinion columns, write-in articles, and advice articles in the greater medium of the written word. Virtually none of these advisors are particularly qualified, either. There's nothing to stop them from giving bad advice. Except me. Stolen from the Editor's Desk involves me taking some sort of advice column and tearing it a new one, all for your sake. Bad advice, meet the nerdery.

Another gem I found on MSN's lifestyle page. Found here and written by Bethany Heitman, the article is titled "Five Date Ideas Men Will Love" and originally comes from Cosmopolitan. Like many similar pieces, it is authoritatively written by a metrosexual man tempered by long years of experience in a dedicated marriage that was the product of an involved dating courtship.

A man named Bethany.

The sage dating tips guaranteed to engage your man? Gambling, cooking, driving, massaging, and drinking.

You know what? This is a great set of dating ideas. I don't have any additional suggestions.

Gamblin'? Hell's yeah, the nerdery loves gamblin'. Shootin' dices, craps, the whole thing. I poker, too. When I'm done cleanin' the house up in poker with straight flushes and royal houses, my lady and I always grab a swank necklace. For me, of course.

Cookin'? Well, sure the nerdery does cookin'. My lady always gets all bothered watchin' me sweat up a storm over a sweet pot o' noodles in the kitchen. It's just how we roll, chief.

And drivin' is just about what the nerdery does best, except for everything. Ha. But seriously, cars are hot. That's why The Fast and The Furious is so fast and furious, pal. Truth.

When the nerdery gets tired out after doin' like...a million atomic crunches and nuclear squats, his lady can't keep her hands off him. She wants it bad, but I gotta think of myself, because I have wicked bad cramps like I just ate a philly cheese, a coffee, and a couple of bran muffins. You know how it is. So I get the lady to give me a nice massage while I grunt through the mad knots in my washboard. But it's still a nice night.

And the nerdery is all about the drinkin'. It's not like I hae a dizeas er anythin', we just drink socially. Like when we're sittin' at home and she starts talkin' at me, I gotta have a drink. That's just makes a nice evenin'.

Yeah, I can't recommend any of those dates, Bethany. It's okay, the situation just isn't the nerdery's type, I guess. For those of you who want to please your nerd, however, I have a few alternative dating suggestions:

1) Browse a bookstore.
This might sound like a punch-line, but it's not. You're a punch-line, you face. Try just walking through a bookstore or video store with just the intent to browse. Don't go in expecting to buy anything, just have fun picking up random things off the shelf, looking at it and talking about your impressions. You'll certainly learn a bit about your mate from the discussions about first impressions and reading preferences, and you may even learn a bit about yourself. It also helps give you gift ideas for the next time you find yourself having a conniption on the eve of some special day.

2) Play a game together.
This isn't just a bit of nerd bread. Really. Alright, maybe a little. But it's a great way to remind each other that you really are friends at the core of your relationship. It can also be a fun way to get together with friends who aren't able or willing to go out as much as when you were all younger. And if you need to work out a little spouse-rage, it's always fun to forge a token alliance and then back-stab your wife to take over her home-system early in the game. Right?

3) Rewrite something.
I'm not talking about a homework assignment or anything arduous. This is just a neat sort of discussion to have with your loved ones. After watching a movie, reading a book, or something similar, talk about how you would've done things differently. This can be a fun chance to roast a really lame movie, such as  one which is named after monsters that barely features into the plot and the climax falls like slab of lamb meat on a gyro spit.

Hmmm...gyros...I should get some gyros this weekend.

Anyway, rewriting can just be a fun way of going over what you find entertaining, what your expectations are going into a movie or reading a book, and whether you really appreciated the differences between your expectations and what you got. Another boon for knowing how to give gifts and be generally considerate for each other.

4) Listen to his ramblings.
The nerdery loves to talk. And it makes me all kinds of happy when I really know the wife is listening. How do I know she's really listening, as in enjoying my rants and not just waiting for me to finish? She gives me further fodder. 'Oh really? So do you hate Jerry Bruckheimer or J.J. Abrams more?' That, coupled with her mousey Ca-maybe-ian smirk lets me know that she's enjoying the conversation, even if I do happen to be frothing at the mouth.

5) Involve yourself in his hobbies.
This is a big one. I don't know a single nerd who doesn't want his wife to play games with him. Maybe he doesn't want you sitting in on game--but that's probably because you just watch and make him and his friends feel weird. But if you are going to involve yourself in his hobbies, make them your own, he will love it, and you guys can spend a lot more quality time together without really trying.

But if you do get into his hobbies, and happen to become a similarly talented--if somewhat more fastidious--miniature painter than him, you should help him paint his miniatures consistently. When you choose to help out for a little while, doing a quality job of satisfying his painting expectations, and then leave him hanging, staring at a box full of one-third painted zombies, he begins to feel an over-powering nerd-rage. He can't resume painting models you already started--that would be abominable, violating their heritage--and so they sit there, abandoned with uneven blotches of forgotten strokes, waiting for their mistress to return. Paint his frakking miniatures, lady! (I love you)



So anyways, that's the skinny on how to treat your nerd to a nice date. Like it or lump it, we're just a bunch of nerds, standing in front of a collective of the world's scary girls, asking them to love us. So love us.

*Fist shakes* Love us!

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