A date, sans cleavage

Oh, yes, we have ourselves another Date Lab doozy. Scene: Jewish law student Amory (who says she could be a model) and Jewish doctor Noah (who says he was once a professional cook) get together to do it up right:

Noah: Everything was easy, but we didn't settle into the "Wow, I feel like I've known you for ages" rhythm. Then when the waitress came, I ordered for us. It's an old-fashioned thing to do, for the guy to order.

Really? You don't say.

Amory: Then in the middle of dinner, he gets a text message from some nurse and goes, "Yeah, it's one of the perks of my job." Some guys think that if they talk about other girls, it'll make you think, He's such a stud ...

Well, he is. Duh.

Amory: ... Of course, he monopolized the conversation and totally excluded me. And he asked why I wasn't showing any cleavage.

Well, why weren't you?

Noah: It was totally within context at the time, but I can't remember how.

Right. You're an outrage who's never getting a date again. At least not in Our Nation's Capital.

A pile of crap

The most-emailed story on The New York Times' Web site today was headlined, "Saying Yes to Mess:"

"An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat 'office landscapes') and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts.

It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands." [Emphasis added]

My friend Shawn, who, I estimate, is neater than 97.9 percent of the population, was a bit outraged:

"This is just sour grapes from some lazy motherfuckers. 'They are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.' Really? Humorless, inflexible, bored prigs. Interesting. Eat a dick.

The best is when people claim that they can find anything in their piles. This is a lie. But this claim keeps being made because no one ever makes them prove it. Well, I'm calling their bullshit. Oh, you can find anything in your office, even blindfolded, Mr. Springer. Hmmm, where's that Chili's receipt for the tater poppers you plan on deducting from your taxes because it was a 'lunch meeting?' No, please, go ahead, The New York Times gives me all the time I need to work on these re-fucking-diculous puff pieces. I'll just move these loose Legos and bag of cat litter from this chair, have a seat and watch you dig through all your piles, inspecting every slip of paper until you pull out the right one. Please proceed. Asshole."

I think an important question to ask in this debate is how much time the messy people spend accumulating, looking for and moving around all their crap. Does it equal the time neat people spend keeping things neat? I think it's likely that it's the messy, clutter-lovers who have too much time on their hands.

Mr. Springer claims he can't clean up his piles of crap because he can't expend "the emotional energy it would take to sort through all the stuff.” What crap, indeed.

And the proof is that there is at least one show on television, "Clean Sweep," that hopes to teach all viewers of The Learning Channel what to do with the piles of stuff they keep around because they might need it at some imaginary future date. One whole cable television show dedicated to this cause. Clutter, clutter, clutter. It's an outrage and a fire hazard.

The definition of a dipshit in a vacuum

Finally, after weeks of blah, blah dates between people who seemed to like each other and had nothing interesting or offensive to say beyond that, Date Lab has given us an outrage. So says 31-year-old Brad Robinson, who works in corporate governance:

"I didn't go on this date in a vacuum; I am dating other women. ... I'd give the date a solid 4. I'll take into account whether or not I get along with other people better, but I probably will call her."

But, probably to our utter surprise:

"I never heard from him," reports [Brad's date.] "It's a little bizarre." Brad didn't respond to [The Post's] multiple e-mails and calls.

For some reason, Brad seems to think that even though he admitted he's a dipshit in The Washington Post, which has a rather large circulation, he still is not dating in a vacuum. Me thinks not anymore.

More than a year in the life of my car, part deux

So friends, here is the verdict: My nearly 19-year-old car is running again thanks to the tow-man and my best friend/roommate, who somehow teamed up to push it out of its parallel-parking spot. The one pop-up light that was stuck down has now been permanently screwed into the upright position. The other one's fuse was fixed. So we're left with the same result — a car that looks like it's winking.

But, it doesn't have a functioning blower motor. A blower motor, for you non-mechanical types, is the thing that makes your AC/heat/defroster work. It's the last two that are really of concern to me, and I'm sure, to the car when there is a frozen layer of ice on it. It costs $270 for a new blower motor. And that's what we call a $270 last straw. So, I said, Mr. Mechanic (actually, his name is Benny. Isn't that cute?), give me my diamond-in-the-rough car and its new battery back, blower motor be damned.

And so I drove, and I was mere blocks from my home beginning to look for an open spot to squeeze into when a police car's lights seemed to be pulling me over. Only, in my neighborhood, there's nowhere to pull over. This was only the second time in my entire 26-and-three-quarters years that I've been pulled over. The first time, I was so scared, I pulled over too fast, clipped the curb and popped my tire. This time, I just sat there, unsure of where to go and what to do. After about a minute and a half, I started to think maybe I hadn't been pulled over and I was just confused. Confusion is not very unlike me. So I started to get out of the car, which didn't go over so well, because everybody in the world except for me knows that you're not supposed to get out of the car when you're pulled over. Because, duh, I could have my Glock all ready to go.

Eventually, a cop sauntered up and asked me for the stuff, which I had all prepared. He informed me that my left brake light was out. I acted surprised. Then he asked about the big hole in the middle of my dashboard. I told him that someone bashed my window in and stole the stereo that used to fill the hole. He ran my tags, found out I wasn't a criminal, and sauntered back to give me my stuff. Then he asked about the big hole in the middle of my dashboard. I wanted to ask him if he had just been hit over the head by one of the crack-dealing hoodlums in my neighborhood. But I repeated the Great Window-Bashing, Stereo-Stealing Story of 2005.

It has since been pointed out to me that all of my car problems can be blamed on one person: David Hasselhoff. It was his old show, the one I used to love, "Knight Rider," that is likely responsible for the short-lived popularity of pop-up lights. I'm glad I have another reason to be outraged at David Hasselhoff, as well as the engineer who made it all happen.

More than a year in the life of my car

I wish I had an actual before picture of my car, but I don't. Neither do I have an after one, because all the digital cameras in my house are broken. It is a 1989 Nissan 240SX. It took me several weeks to learn that. Now, whenever anyone asks what kind of car I have, I recite it like I have memorized it for a test: 1989. Nissan. 240. SX.

It's clear that the main problem with my car is that it's 18-years-old. I'm 26. I was nine when my car was new.

Despite its age, it was practically perfect when I bought it more than a year and a half ago. For two weeks afterward, people stopped me in parking lots to tell me how pristine and amazing it looked. I assume these people knew something about cars.

Come week three, I parked it in a convenience store parking lot at noon. I went inside for five minutes and I think I bought a Subway sandwich (veggie, wheat, cheese, everything except hot peppers). When I came out, my perfect trunk was popped open and the back smashed in. Hit and run. No witnesses in broad daylight. Right.

It was a sign of things to come. I'll skip over the hassle that is the District of Columbia's Car-Registering Train of Hell. Let me just say that the conductor's "computers" twice said that my brakes were not working at all. And yet, by some miracle, I had managed to bring my car to a complete stop in front of the inspecting station. In fact, it stopped many times in the slowly creeping line.

Then, one day not so many days later, I happened upon my beloved with its passenger side window smashed to smitherines and the car's only redeeming quality — its radio and CD player — ripped out. The cop who came to take my report shrugged and said, "This is a bad neighborhood. You should move." Yeah, thanks buddy.

When I finally did get D.C. plates instead of living a life of crime, I forgot to put the sticker on my windshield that in all normal municipalities goes on the back license plate. Two hours later, I had a ticket for $100.

At some point, I parked on the street near my office, opened the door slightly and reached over to the passenger seat to get my bag. My foot nudged the door and it swung open just as another car was grazing past. The car was occupied by a nice old lady. One day, I found a note on my car in a parking lot from someone saying they had nudged my bumper and left their phone number. I crumpled it up and threw it in the back seat. A couple times, my car just hasn't turned on, which typically costs me $400 a non-turn-on.

Recently, I caught a bunch of hoodlums (The use of the word is not an overdramatization. A U.S. Secret Service officer who patrols the neighborhood confirmed that they are crack-dealing gang members.) sitting on my car. I instructed them to remove their bodies from my roof. A few weeks later, one of the retractable headlights, which had been stuck up due to what I can only imagine is some electricity problem, became stuck down.

A few months ago, a 12-passenger van I was waiting behind on a one-way street decided to back into me. My retractable lights popped up for a second and my once-pristine hood was slightly bent. Luckily, the 12-passenger van's insurance company sent me a check for the entire worth of the car no questions asked. So, it wasn't all bad.

The crack-cocaine hoodlums also apparently had fun with my radio attenae, which thanks to the window-smashers is of no use to me now, except that everytime I close my trunk, it catches the attenae. It's sort of fun to watch it spring back up.

And, as I always say, this is what AAA is for. Plus, all in all, it's good for Benny, my mechanic. He's great, and will soon be figuring out how to make my lights retract and unretract, as well as how to make the heat, air-conditioning and fan work again.

And, just by coincidence, I tried to start the car yesterday and exactly nothing happened. No lights of any kind, no 18-year-old engine coughing. Just silence, as if the key in the ignition was meant to be a decoration, rather than a tool to turn the car on and make it move.

Let me just say that the engineer who decided retractable headlights were a cool idea is an outrage.

Hopefully we will evolve past this, too

Please see today's outrage at America vs. The World.

A Brit sex tape wasn't necessary, but old bones are

So get this — evangelical church leaders in Kenya are trying to persuade the museum in that country that holds the world's oldest human and pre-human specimens not to put them on display.

Seen together, the fossils basically constitute pretty hardy evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. And evangelicals aren't into all that, especially the whole ape idea.

Those church people are an outrage if only because the theory of evolution explains the existence of Britney Spears and gives us hope that one day we will evolve past her kind, and that she will be replaced with someone slightly more inclined toward classier fashion choices.