Apocalypse Soon

What the heck, here's another screed from the past, somewhere around June of 2008. A buddy of mine emailed out a link, to which another buddy replied, "I LOVE THAT GUY'S SHIRT!" This is what I came up with.

Okay -- I'd already looked at this video, had my little chuckle, and moved on with my life. Then, love is professed for the guy's shirt. Any of you who know me know that fashion and it's applications are not the first things I notice, so I had no idea what this guy's shirt looked like. Curiosity got the better of me, and I had to know what incited the gushing and the caps-lock. I took another look at the video, and yes, I agree, that is a most fetching outfit that dude has on, especially if this is 1982.

However -- as I mentioned above, fashion is not usually enough to hold my focus, and as I'd already seen this particular video, my gnat-like attention span kicked in and my eyes started to wander. So, this guy has apparently done other humorous videos that were housed on the same site. You don't say? I clicked on a couple of them, and one of them was a vignette entitled, 'How To Break Up With A Chubby Girlfriend,' and it basically was three minutes of all the worst things you could do in that situation, but funny. (Well, funny-ish.) It was on this innocuous page, however, that I learned two things -- one, that the apocalypse is imminent, and two, however it happens, we have no need to fear that it will be because the computers rise up and take over (a la The Matrix or The Terminator).

There were Google ads on the page, and I am now confident that computers will never take over the world for this reason -- they have no sense of humour and they take everything too literally. The name of the page included the words 'Break-Up' and 'Chubby,' so the Google ads featured sites aimed at people who were breaking up with chubby people, not understanding that the people who land on a humour site are rarely actually looking for advice. However -- while we are safe from the wrath of ones and zeroes, the end is nigh, because there were not one, but two ads promising that you could, 'Get Your Ex Back In As Little As 2 Days.' (There was also an ad for those who wished to 'Find Local Gay Chubby Men Near You,' and I must admit I could not click on the link, and the main reason was that I did not want the URL http://www.gaychubbydating.com/ to show up in my browsing history. I live alone, no-one would care, I could just clear the history right away, for crying out loud, but no, I dared not click. I don't know what it says about me that the fact that they were chubby and gay was much more daunting than if they were just one or the other.)

I clicked on these two Get Your Ex Back links, and the first one left me awed. Definitely aimed at men only, and written as if women and relationships were roughly as complicated as VCR repair. For the low low price of $47, you can learn:

• The quick 2-step formula to stop all arguments and show your ex that you have a happy future together. (Page 92)
• How to make her laugh with you, and have her appreciate you again. Here's why it works... give your ex the proper kind of teasing and make her laugh, and she'll be psychologically unable to dislike you anymore. (Page 72), and my personal favourite.
• The 5-step Seduction System that takes you from having an 'innocent' cup of coffee with your ex-girlfriend... to having her moan 'I want you inside me now' as she drags you to bed... in just one evening! (Page 88)

The second link was a little less gender-specific, a bargain at $29.95, and a little more concerned with the whole world being happy and in love as opposed to just guys gettin' to do it with whomever they pleased, but still, it was also close to unbearably slimy. The oddest section is where they list the predicaments that their program offers remedies for. There are the standard, 'Still together, your spouse is cheating,' and 'Still together, fights have driven you and your spouse apart,' but that was only the tip of the iceberg. They also offer to help you with the slightly less common problems of, 'Separated but your spouse won't ever make time for a date,' 'Together but one person has a terminal disease,' and what has to be the granddaddy of relationship hurdles, 'You were sentenced to prison for ten years.'

I admit, I have come to rely on the internet for far too much of my everyday life (entertainment, knowledge, communication, what-have-you), but this seems to be asking a bit much.