Google Poem: More than one way?

* if you think the only way to get laid is by drugging someone in order to sleep with you, that is rape and you need to be locked up

* best way to get laid is put her on her stomach, take down that panty shield, and poke until she makes sounds

* Perhaps the best way to get laid is to lead a life worth living.

* Fastest way to get laid is to know what artist your gurl likes most and buy all their albums! You have no idea how many times I have to listen to Chris Brown or Justin Timberlake!

* The best way to get laid is to put on some slow jazz music.

* The best way to get laid is without having to use a pickup line; weed out the sober ones who still have their morals intact!

* I am thinking that the easist way to get laid is to hit the club

* It's a truism worthy of Yogi Berra to say that the best way to get laid is to lose your virginity.

* many neanderthals believe that the best way to get laid is to just get her drunk. Don’t get me wrong; that is a fantastic idea if you’ve been married or in a long-term relationship and she is just not in the mood very often

* an easy way to get laid is baking tasty shit for people who think that stuff is hard. ...

* And the best way to get laid is to pretend to be someone else who is cooler than yourself.

* the only way to get laid is… to be rich!

* I was obviously wrong, and the only way to get laid is by emotional manipulation. I have found, from personal experience, that virginity leads to feelings of shame, rage, frustration, inadequacy, isolation, alienation, ...

* a dude in his underwear sitting in his mom's and dad's basement decides the best way to get laid is to lie (this is actually true) so he puts up an improbable Craigslist post trolling for some 15 year old choke job chicken head

* Look at the 40 Year Old Virgin and similar movies, where the sexually-inexperienced male is advised by his “wiser”, more experienced friend(s) that the best way to get laid is to look for the drunkest girl at the party ...

* Seems to me that the way to get laid is to dress up in a hilarious Disney character costume. This also means that you will get to handle celebrity tits.

* Û² So a kid is ~Censored~ and the only way to get laid is to go to ²Û. Û² this ultra school of ~Censored~ kids and here the first thing that ²Û. Û² happens to him is getting rapped by the principal who is g3y and has ²Û ...

* Arabs want sex just as much as Westerners but they are taught that it is dirty and the only “respectable” way to get laid is to get married.

* This brought upon me an epiphany: The easiest way to get laid is to feed off a woman’s jealousy.

* The best way to get laid is to fake confidence and don't listen too much.

[NSFW Disney Photoshop]

RNDP 22: Could Television be the Answer?

Pearl Jam fan, Raino, blogged a list of pick-up lines this week. The lines do not yet appear to have been field-tested, but they show promise. Here are several:

5) Is there a mirror in yer pants? cuz I can see myself in em.

6) If you was a tree & I was a Squirrel, I'd store my nuts in yer hole.

7) You might not be the best lookin girl here, but beauty's only a light switch away.

8) I know I'm not no Fred Flintstone, but I bet I can make yer bed-rock.

Like I said, they show promise. But, at more than 2 years old, they're not new, and no matter how effective, potentially offensive pickup lines are not revolutionary. So while they could be a component of the Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP), they're not going to be the foundation.

This may not be the case for the recommendations coming from two young university researchers, Magpie and Jake. While they probably consider themselves to be more scholars of hooking up than of dating, I believe they have stumbled on something significant. As Magpie reports, the secret is: Television.

In What to Take to University (to Get Laid at University), Jake tells students going off to live in a university residence, "All you need is downloaded TV, a heavy duvet and a mattress topper."

It is of course assumed that all university students have laptops that will play the downloaded TV shows. The mattress topper makes the standard dormitory bed soft and comfortable, the duvet makes for a cozy bed that a person wouldn't want to leave.

In What to Take to University (to Get Laid at University) II, Jake suggests an Ikea mood-setting lamp, but I suspect that's just icing on the cake.

I don't believe Magpie and Jake are even on the same continent, but Magpie is completely on board with the television paradigm. In How to Get Laid (an Introduction), she takes Jake's work further and advises on what to expect from a man based on the show he invites his prospects to see.

Battlestar Galactica Guy: If he likes BSG, he's a keeper. I can't imagine hooking up to BSG (okay, I've done it) because it's just so fuckingintenseandgoodzomfg!!!!! that I'd get distracted. But I supposed a guy who likes BSG is Godly, so do him, do him fast.

Kudoes to both of these young scholars. They are out there researching these important topics and doing their own fieldwork. Magpie has even developed a set of instructions for women who would like to watch television shows with a man without sex taking place. ("1. Do NOT go under the blankets.")

Here is Jake's summary:

So to recap, have a comfy bed, and invite people over to watch TV/movies. At the very least how she behaves, whether she agrees to get under the covers/lie next to you etc, is a litmus test for what chances there are of anything else happening, and at the luckiest the spooning will lead to much more and you'll end up having to wash those sheets even sooner than you expected!

RNDP 19: Dating Schema and Spectacular Efforts

In my quest for the RNDP, I not only googled the search phrase "dating paradigm", I also googled "dating schema".

If you are unfamiliar with the academic term "schema", you are in luck because the first hit for "dating schema" is an article titled "Schema Theory (drawn from D’Andrade 1995)" that expains the term and includes an excerpt on dating to help explain it.

Dorothy Holland and Debra Skinner (1987) studied the US undergraduate dating schema. They describe the "taken-for-granted world of male/female relations" from the perspective of a female undergraduate as follows:

"… a male earns the admiration and affection of a female by treating her well. Intimacy is a result of this process. The female allows herself to become emotionally closer, perhaps as a friend, perhaps as a lover, perhaps as a fiancee, to those attractive males who make a sufficient effort to win her affection. Besides closeness and intimacy, the process of forming a relationship also has to do with prestige. When a male is attracted to a female and tries to earn her affection by good treatment, her attractiveness is validated and she gains prestige in her social group. For his part, the male gains prestige among his peers when he receives admiration and affection from and gains intimacy with females.

Normally, prestigious males are attracted to and establish close relations with prestigious females, and vice versa. Sometimes, however, a male can succeed in winning the affection of a female whose prestige is higher than his own. However, the more attractive she is, the more he must compensate for his lack of prestige by spectacular efforts to treat her well. Correspondingly, females sometimes do form close relationships with males who have higher prestige than they do. When the male is more attractive or has higher prestige than the female, she often must compensate by giving her affection to him without his doing anything to earn it." (1987:101-102)

Within this simplified and idealized world, one set of problematic males is termed jerks, nerds, turkeys, and asses. These are men who are undesirable and don’t know it. They are unattractive (physically or otherwise) and don’t or can’t make up for it with higher cost gifts and other exchange items. Furthermore, they are too dumb to "take a hint," and therefore have to be rejected in such direct ways that the women have to be repeatedly unpleasant, which is stressful for the women. To understand what one of these college women means when she calls a man a jerk we need to understand the (women’s) dating schema.

RNDP: Campaigns

A few years back, I did a little door-to-door canvassing for a politician I thought would represent me better than the fellow who'd been holding the job. On election night, all the campaign workers gathered in a basement bar downtown.

The bad news came at 11 pm. The incumbent had won, our candidate was about to give the concession speech. Nothing to do but drink to dull the grief we felt. Half an hour later, startling news! It had been a mistake! With some late reporting polls and a some digits switched the way they were supposed to be, our candidate was the winner! The incumbent had to give his concession speech.

My friend Sue sidled up to me. "Dwarfie, if you were looking to get laid, this would be a good time to approach someone." Of course, a man of the world like myself doesn't need to rely on cheap emotional manipulation to make a love connection, but a man of the world also opens the door when opportunity knocks.

What does this have to do with the RNDP? The RNDP is about getting lucky. According to the ancient Roman philosopher, Seneca, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And according to Thomas Edison, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work." To get this opportunity, you will have to prepare with some campaign work.

Choosing a Party - should you cross-volunteer?

Choosing the party to support may be tricky if you are a female NDPer or a male Tory. It is a well known fact that there are more women volunteers with the NDP and more men with the Conservatives. The ratio for the Greens and the Liberals depends a lot on the specific candidate.

If you are male and Conservative, unless you are some sort of alpha male (obviously you believe you are or you wouldn't be a Tory, but try to be objective for once), check out the ratios in the other parties. You may want to cross-volunteer. It's not morally wrong because you know that your actions aren't going to make a difference to your candidate anyway. The Greens have social policies you believe in and if they save the environment, you'll have somewhere to go hunting. If the Liberals get in, they'll wind up doing pretty much the same thing your party was going to do anyway, and if you're connected with them, you've got better long-term prospects for a patronage appointment. The NDP haven't got much you can support with a straight face, but if you hook up with an NDP woman, you may find that your passionate arguments about pretty much everything can lead to the fun kind of passion when it's just the two of you.

If you are female and NDP, especially if your candidate has no chance of winning, either help the Greens send a message about the environment, or help the Liberals keep Harper out. I won't suggest faking conservatism because the constant taste of vomit at the back of your mouth would ruin any chance of a dating initiative. Of course, if you are female and NDP, there is little chance that you could actually support another political party solely in order to find someone to date. So, volunteer for the NDP. With any luck, you'll score a cute cross-volunteering Tory. Maybe you can convert him.

Volunteer effectively:

1. One volunteer shift will be enough to get you on the invite list for the election night party.
2. Door-to-Door canvassing is generally done in teams. Involves lots of walking. It can be challenging to get yourself partnered with someone you'd want to be partnered with. Mixed teams are preferred by campaign managers to show the diversity of support for the candidate. This is not good for you if you are looking for a same sex relationship with someone your age, but if you're a middle-aged woman who likes young Latinos, you might be in luck.
   
3. In the movies, they make it look like they need lots of envelopes stuffed in campaign offices. Sadly, they don't. It's sad because envelope stuffing is a perfect occupation for scouting and chatting with prospects.
4. What they actually need at the campaign office is telephone volunteers. This is an activity that lets you chat with people you can't see about whether you can count on their support, put a sign on their lawn or in their window, and get a donation. Low dating opportunity, but it gets you in to the election night party and it's not quite as bad as telemarketing because you're mostly calling your candidate's supporters.

Here's hoping the best for you on October 14th!

Centretowners can volunteer for:

• Liberal: Penny Collenette
• NDP: Paul Dewar
• ReformConservative: Brian McGarry
• Green: Jen Hunter
  

[Sorry fringe candidates, your volunteers are scarier than you are.]

A Dating Paradigm for the ADD

Revolutionary new dating paradigms are all very well, but I can't help noticing that the Short Guy is taking a darned long time to reach the punchline. And he says I tell shaggy dog stories! In these ADD times, the only worthwhile solutions come in ten second soundbites. And the Elgin Street Irregulars are all over Attention Deficit Disorder, because... Ooh! Look! Shiny object!

Now, where was I? Uh, yeah... instant dating paradigms. We're not talking about high-speed dating - that's something else entirely. As an example of what I mean, Michael Pollan in the New York Times recently managed to reduce the complexities of good nutrition to three stunningly simple sentences: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That would probably even work for me. If cats count as vegetables.

So what we seek here is a way to measure dating suitability in a nanosecond. The less time you waste in deciding if the person before you is suitable, the more quickly you may proceed toward the decided charms of lolling and fubbing. Normally, the Irregulars would be all over formulating something like this, but, hey, it's sweltering out and we're feeling dopey. Conveniently, somebody's already done the work for us. Mira Kirshenbaum, a relationship therapist who seems to have a nice sideline in self-help books has just released a feel-good opus entitled When Good People Have Affairs, which according to this week's Maclean's is a book "for the decent person who made a mistake and got themselves into a complicated, messy, and dangerous situation."

Sort of off our chosen topic, because an affair presupposes a relationship already, which means that you've already figured out the... Ooh! Look! Shiny object!... However, a short paragraph toward the end of the review describes how Kirshenbaum attempts to do for dating, what Pollan did for food. Here's what she says to look for:

• Not stupid.
• Not crazy.
• Not wierd.
• Not mean.
• Not ugly.
• Not smelly.

Roughly twice the word count of Pollan's dictum, yes. But dating's roughly twice as complicated as food.

RNDP 9: Inhale

Another reason to postpone a shower?While others are off on solo projects and secret projects with artists from other labels, it looks like I am once again carrying this blog. Fortunately, there is a mountain of material in the quest for an RNDP.

We learn of another new dating paradigm in Welcome to Do Land:

Gifted1: dumb! :-/ you've never heard of IWannaGetChemicalChemical.com? it's a pretty incredible new dating paradigm, they can match you up based on chemistry. they use science.

Karlito: i hear that it's a rip off. my cousin used it and he went on three dates with guys before he realized that he's not gay. n-e-wayz, that's not an issue for me anymore, i am pure mind. i am free of the entanglements of the corrupt fleshy matrix of the world.

4D Analysis: It looks like the folks behind IWannaGetChemicalChemical.com didn't get their venture capital funding. However, there is an outfit called ScientificMatch.com that seem to offer the same service and it seems there is real science behind it. Several studies on pheromones (the most famous of these being the smelly sweatshirt study) have led researchers to conclude that women (who are not taking the birth control pill) are more attracted to the scent of men who share low histocompatibility with them. Histocompatibility is highest when two people have exactly the same immune system genes in the major histocompatibility complex.

In other words, women are more attracted to men who are immune to a different set of diseases than they are. This makes evolutionary sense to the researchers because:

1. A child resulting from the match would have a broader protection to diseases; and
2. The more different the genes in the histocompatibility complex, the more likely that other genes are different, therefore the lower the chance of harmful recessives combining.
   

But what about women taking oral contraceptives? It seems they are more attracted to the scent of men with similar histocompatibility, and not attracted or even repulsed by the scent of men with different histocompatibility.

Maybe it is because the pill tricks the woman's body into believing she is pregnant. Perhaps women have evolved to prefer when they are pregnant having male relatives nearby who will protect the offspring because of their common genetic heritage.

Some eyebrow raising questions:

• Is this what is up with women who don't want sex when they go on the pill? Their men just don't smell right any more?
  
• Should women on the pill stay away from their cousins if they don't want to get into a family scandal?
  
• What about women who are on the pill when they meet a guy they like? Say they decide to have a child together and she goes off the pill. Is she going to find his smell no longer pleasant and attractive?

Next: We'll spend some more time on this smell issue. There is a lot of research to delve into. Some of it done here in Canada and even on our friend Megan.

FLASHFLASHFLASH!!!!!

Uh oh. Suddenly, Shania Twain is single again... and 4th Dwarf is a die-hard country music fan. When in his cups, he's been known to publicly bemoan the fact that Canada's Country Music Cutie In Incredibly Abbreviated Outfits ever got married. He always said it should've been her bed his moonboots were under. Fourteen years ago, and the shock still feels just like yesterday to him. She broke Dwarfie's heart. Oh, sure, he says he burned all of her CDs, but on certain dark nights, the sound of her digitally-enhanced voice could still be heard seeping beneath the door of his grotto, singing harmony to loud tormented wails. It was all very embarrassing.

What effect this earth shattering news will have on his revolutionary new dating paradigm research is anybody's guess. Will Dwarf's hope rise, phoenix--like? I dunno. But I bet this'll probably be interestin'...

RNDP 5: Smiling at Strangers

In 2006, 29-year-old Alice Brome found the nerve to ask out a man that smiled at her in a restaurant and in doing so, she discovered a new dating paradigm: "I don’t have to wait to be asked I can go after the man I want directly."

On their date, she found that "he was insipidly narcissistic and just plain boring". Showing that she is a true pioneer of science, she continued with her new paradigm and asked out two more strangers. In one case, the man was married and declined. With the other, she reported having two fun dates, a third date planned and being at "that point of either becoming friends or moving on to something a little more serious."

Sadly, I can find no further reports from Ms Brome. Those of you who are pessimists may conclude that something terrible occurred on the third date. I prefer to think that our intrepid researcher found herself in love and chose to protect the privacy of her new partner by not writing about the relationship.

4d Analysis: Brome's new paradigm has one element that explicitly differentiates it from her old paradigm: She is asking out men rather than waiting for a man to ask her out. What is not so clear is whether her old paradigm included going on dates with complete strangers. Whether it did or not, her new paradigm clearly allows it. In this paradigm:

1. She is explicitly choosing the men because she likes the way they look^[1] and they smile in a way that implies they like the way she looks too; and
   
2. She may be unconsciously or implicitly relying on the location where she encounters these men for an assurance that they are in an appropriate socio-economic group for her and will have personality and character traits that appeal to her.^[2]
   
   

   Strangers In The Night - Sinatra (Final Fantasy 8 video)
   Uploaded by MimicheLaCrapule
   
   

Her anecdotal report suffers from the main problem with research in this field: the small non-random sample makes it impossible for us to draw general conclusions. However, it does demonstrate that while her paradigm can result in a boring date, it can also result in a fun date.

This leads to a formula I have developed for assessing the Expected Value of a Date (EVD) for someone using this paradigm:

EVD= P_b × A_b + P_f × A_f

_Where:

• P_b = the probability of winding up on a boring date
• P_f = the probability of the date being fun = (1 - P_b)
• A_b = the subjective measurement of how awful the boring date would be
• A_f = the subjective measurement of how fun a fun date would be (in units that are inverse and proportional to the units of A_b)

These variables will change depending on the individuals involved, but I think you'll see that we can use some general norms to arrive at a basic assessment for the paradigm.

Let's assume that the date will be boring if the man has narcissist personality disorder, Asperger's syndrome, or is an accountant.

Narcissists: 1% of the population have NPD, but perhaps 75% of those with NPD are men. So lets say 1.25% of men have NPD. [Wikipedia]

Asperger's: It's hard to get a handle on the prevalence of Asperger's, let's go with a high estimate of 0.4%. [Wikipedia again]

Accountants: It's danged hard to find out how many accountants there are in Canada. At least I couldn't find out in the five minutes I spent looking. But I found out how many Canadians were employed in "Finance, insurance, real estate and leasing" and in "Professional, scientific and technical services" in 2007: 1,060,400 + 1,136,900 out of 16,866,400 employed = 13%. [Statscan]

Making the unlikely assumption that there is no overlap in these groups, we arrive at a total of 14.7% for P_b and a corresponding 85.3% for P_f or that it will be a fun date.

Now, how bad is a boring date? Let's set an evening at home watching CSI and Law and Order as 1 fun unit (Fu) while an evening at home with nothing on but reruns is 0 Fu. Can we say that a boring date is -1 Fu? And the average fun date is 2 Fu?

If so we get:

EVD = 14.7% × -1 Fu + 85.3% × 2 = 1.56 Fu

This means that a woman who uses Brome's paradigm regularly can expect over the long run to have evenings that are noticeably better than watching new episodes of CSI and Law and Order.

This is an important finding, but the quest must continue because we have not yet settled whether fun should be a focus of dating and we don't know the likelihood that dates with smiling attractive strangers will lead to deeper relationships.

____________________________

^[1] We should not assume that Ms Brome is shallow. Liking someone's looks can go well beyond appreciating their high cheekbones and low waist-to-hip ratio. It is also about noticing whether they have kind smiles for their friends and the serving staff, how often they laugh instead of frown, whether they have an artful sense of style or a lack of vanity, and much, much more.

^[2] This is why Aggie avoids Big Crab's Daddy Shack.

RNDP 4: The Feng Shui Dating Coach

Our next stop on the quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP) takes us to Best Life Services where we meet dating coach Katherin Scott who offers a "new dating paradigm that yields an abundance of fun, positive, and promising dates". On her own website, Making Love Work 4U, she says she coaches "Singles to attract true love and keep it... forever!"

To get you to this new paradigm she offers the following services:

• Individual Coaching: One-on-one sessions, usually by phone, to help you get clarity on your romantic goals and create an action plan for achieving them
• Special Activities: Gain dating confidence through dances, socials, and speed dating events as well as seminars on topics including body language, weight loss, and how to attract your life partner
• Attracting Love with Feng Shui: Applying Feng Shui principles to create an energy flow in your home environment that attracts romance and lasting love

Feng Shui? Weight loss? Speed Dating? This isn't a new paradigm, it's 90s new age mixed with 80s marketing.

But let's dig a little deeper. She has a Q&A page on Making Love Work. It's light on dating talk but it does have this:

Q: Where exactly can I meet a great guy? I've looked everywhere and I'm exhausted.

A: It seems to me that you're looking for the perfect place to meet the perfect man. Actually, anyplace is the perfect place to meet a perfect man. (My dad used to say "Love is geographical. Wherever you go, you can find love!")

My guess is that you're not getting good results because of the WAY you're dating. Recognize you are the constant in this equation. Therefore, you must change YOU -- and the way you're going about dating. Take the time to evaluate your dating history and patterns.

Remember, the definition of dating is - spending time with multiple people for the purpose of having fun. Sounds like you aren't having fun. Stop doing what you're doing - and do something different. Change your approach and your attitude.

Scott's answer makes several things clear. The key lies in her "definition of dating" as "spending time with multiple people for the purpose of having fun". While there is no definition of dating that satisfies everyone, it is generally agreed that dating can take place when there is only one other person involved; and while everyone would likely agree that having fun is to be pursued on a date, the usual purpose of dating is to see if the two people can develop their relationship further.

I think what Scott means is that for her the paradigm, or ultimate example, of dating involves having fun while spending time with multiple people (presumably consecutively rather than concurrently). I assume that what makes her paradigm "new" for her clients is that she helps them analyze their old patterns and become someone who has fun.

Judging by another page on her website, she uses a battery of personality assessment tools like Meyers-Briggs, along with the standard life coaching technique of asking open-ended questions that force you to come to the conclusions she has made for how you should change your life.

Should dating be about having fun? In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Wentworth realizes he is in love with Anne after she calmly saves the day when everyone else is all in a dither over the silly Musgrave girl's concussion. I have a pirate friend who tells me that before he met his wife, he would deliberately create situations of stress to see how the women he dated handled a crisis. For example, one relationship ended when his girlfriend took it badly that he had locked his keys in the car at a mall parking lot. Oddly enough, he says he never tried the stress test with the woman he married.

4D Analysis: Katherin Scott's new dating paradigm involves mystical crap that cannot be supported and has an emphasis on life coaching that makes me skeptical, but her website has given us a number of points to keep in mind in the quest for an RNDP:

• Should a dating paradigm focus on finding the one perfect person? or should it focus on finding multiple people who might be fun?
• Do people who have not found dating fun need to change themselves first?
• Should dating be fun?

By the end of this series, we should have the answers to these and other questions.

P.S. Stacey, although it means more work for me, thank you for providing a copy of the "Hooking Up" article. Zoom forwarded it along to me just like you figured she would. If anyone else wants to send me email, I'm at gmail.com. fourth.dwarf

P.P.S. To the person who dropped a copy at my door of I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris who I understand exposes the "Seven Habits of Highly Defective Dating" and offers a realistic outline of how to have a biblical vision of marriage, I am really not sure if I'll be offering thanks or not.

RNDP 3: Monty's New Dating Paradigm

Monty of Much Ado About Monty... is the third link Google gave me in the quest for a revolutionary new dating paradigm. He is also my favourite of them all. I thought about saving Monty for later, but today really is the day to showcase him.

Just over a year ago, Monty was finding that his dating strategy using Gaydar (eHarmony for non-straights) wasn't working and so he came up with a new plan in a post called Changing tactics...:

I've decided to stop dating a bunch of new guys each week and instead, focus on the guys I've already met. ... I am not dating-with-relationship as the goal, but rather it's more about making friends with the guys I have met. If a relationship is going to happen, it will happen in its own time (and most likely when I least expect it). No use trying to force it - I just need to relax and enjoy the company of these guys!

...Naturally, Monty can't completely change his spots and so to keep things interesting, I'm allowing myself one new guy per week. So, whilst I haven't jumped off the Gaydar merry-go-round completely, I'm at least slowing it down to a more manageable pace. And I'm liking this!

Two weeks later, Monty gave an update in My New Dating Paradigm...:

I've been rabbiting on about my New Dating Paradigm over the last couple of weeks and as everyone is aware, I've not been so successful in sticking to it.

...now, instead of a hard and fast rule of ONE newbie per week, it shall simply be my goal to date only one newbie per week. That way, if I do end up with two or even three newbies in a week, I'll be simply exceeding my goal...

I must say however, that I have succeeded in slowing down the dating merry-go-round and so the NDP is achieving its purpose. I'm having more 2nd, 3rd, 4th dates etc which is much more fun! And I'm getting to know these guys better and becoming friends with them. Life is so much less stressful and I'm definitely not feeling as fatigued as I was when on the merry-go-round. Yay!

Now it is a full year later. How did Monty's new dating paradigm work out? Today his post is titled: The L-Word...

And NO, I'm not becoming a Lesbian! The L-Word I'm referring to is THAT one...yes, dear readers, LOVE!

...it's only since I've been out - 22 months and counting - that I've been open to the idea of a relationship ergo LOVE. And as you, my dear readers, are aware, since then I've certainly been out there trying to find Mr Right - and finding lots of Mr Right Nows (and the odd Mr Oh-What-the-Hell-Were-You-Thinking-Of)! That is, until I met McBrad. Ahhh, the gorgeous McBrad.
...
And so last weekend, we were lying in bed talking - proper serious talking, the relationship kinda stuff - and it just came out - naturally and honestly and soberly! And boy, did it feel good! McBrad obviously liked it and definitely showed me how much he liked it - WOW!!! But I was really happy that I did hold out until I was ready for it. (Not that he pressured me or anything - that was the really nice thing. He wanted me to know how he felt and was happy to wait until I could respond) And now, I just want to keep telling him! I don't of course - don't want to overdo it, but it's just such a liberating thing! I love McBrad!!! And I want eveyone to know! Wahooooo! :-)

4d Analysis: Monty's "old" dating paradigm was to see 3 or 4 new people every week. The "new" dating paradigm was to see 1 or 2 new people every week along with 1 or 2 that he'd been out with before. The new dating paradigm clearly worked for him.

As he is just one person and self-selected rather than randomly selected, we have no statistical confidence that his NDP would work for others. On the other hand, he has demonstrated that his paradigm can work for at least one person. We have no such proof from the authors who brought us the "Feminists in the Office without Chivalry" and "Hooking Up" paradigms.

RNDP 2: Hooking Up?

Google's next hit in our quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP) is an article called Sexuality, Reproduction and Menopause : Editorial: the new sex in ... Although we cannot see the article because it is behind a pay wall, Google tells us that it says:

The new dating paradigm is to get together casually, called “hooking up,” a term that defines a lack of commitment or expectations other than sex and ...

4d Analysis: Unfortunately, I blew my research funds on a bottle of tequila and couldn't afford to buy this article. They might be on to something, but isn't "hooking up" what fuck buddies did in the 80s and what free-love hippies did in the 60s? In other words, not new?

RNDP 1: Feminists in the Office without Chivalry

The first place Google takes us in our quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP) is Gradspot.com where a writer named Gritz tells us that the new dating paradigm is to look for career-oriented women at the office and forget about chivalry.

Paradigm Shift #1: The office is the new bar

As Rosenbloom explains, “Those who follow the evolution of the workplace romance say the stigma may be fading because the line between business and personal life is blurring among younger workers. They are working longer hours. Their workplaces encourage collaboration. And, of course, most single people are in the work force.”

Paradigm Shift #2: Feminists are the new hot girls

...A “career-oriented” women—too often used as a descriptive shorthand for a feminist—is now more acceptable than ever....

Paradigm Shift #3: Chivalry is dead

Fourth Dwarf Analysis:

It appears Gritz and the writer Stephanie Rosenbloom have spent little time in the workplace and possibly less time dating. The only "new" thing in this 3-part paradigm shift is the throw-away line that "chivalry is dead". People have always hooked up wherever they happen to meet. Feminists have always been the hottest women. If chivalry is dead, based on the comments we've seen about how it's appreciated when guys pay for dinner, fellows who revive chivalry are well appreciated.

It could be that Gritz is suggesting that women should stop looking for chivalry in the men they are dating. Unfortunately, Gritz has given us no basis following this suggestion, but we'll explore the idea in future postings.

Quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm™ - Introduction

Several weeks ago, I told you all how to get down to kissing at the movies, and a bunch of you turned it into a silly discussion on paying for meals and assessing personal characteristics. Near the end of this discussion, Zoom suggested that "The world needs a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm™."

Does it? I almost replied, Isn't what I've suggested good enough? Get yourself next to a snoggable someone in a dark place and try out your moves! It might not be revolutionary or new, but it works.

However, many of you are not willing to accept my expertise in this area and maybe it's my fault for not giving you enough reason to. So, I have embarked on a quest to find a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP). (I won't be trademarking it as Zoom suggested because I believe in freely sharing the wealth of my intellectual property.)

Step 1: Go to Google.

A search for "Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm" only gets 1 hit. (Of course, by the time you are reading this, it'll be 2 hits, and far more if you're only getting around to reading this after I've finished this series and the world catches on to the brilliance of the RNDP). The lack of other hits is a sign that nobody else has found a revolutionary new dating paradigm and may even be evidence that Zoom is right that the world needs one.

A search on "Revolutionary Dating Paradigm" gets the answer "No results found for "Revolutionary Dating Paradigm". (Not anymore of course, but how about I stop writing these parenthetical disclaimers and we just take it as understood that every time I describe a search, this posting and any posting that quotes it will be on Google if you try the search yourself.)

However, when we try "New Dating Paradigm", we start to get somewhere: 15 hits.

Step 2: Literature Review

I have examined each of the sites with references to a new dating paradigm and I am happy to report that while a couple are useless for our purposes, there is some valuable work taking place out there on the World Wide Web. There are relationship scholars who are using their formidable skills on this topic and even some who are doing crucial fieldwork at their own risk and expense.

Investigating the work of these scholars has taken me on a wide-ranging adventure. I've combed through scientific articles, Wikipedia entries, the urban dictionary, and many other sources.

In addition to looking for new dating paradigms, I've also investigated new dating schemas, and new dating methods. (Did you know that to tell how old bones are, radiocarbon dating is out and now they're measuring the amount of radiation that has been absorbed by the sand that is found with the bones?)

Step 3: Report back on the new paradigms

In upcoming posts, I will be looking at sites that describe a "new dating paradigm" and reporting on what we can learn from them.

Step 4: Report back on further work

Following these posts, I'll be exploring schemas, methods and other research avenues that have been suggested in the paradigm research.

Step 5: Conclusion: The Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm

That's right - a conclusion. This series will end with an answer. Not a suggestion that further research needs to be done and a request for more funding. You'll be getting your paradigm.