Chapter 16
June 13, 2010

Ask Amritsar: The Eternal Question [ARNS]

Dear Amritsar,

I was, like, out with this man? You know? On a date? Once? Fairfax Farfuegneugin? He took me to La Scalia - where they only serve Italian cuisine based on the text of 18th century recipes? You know, where the dishes are based on the original intent of the 18th century chefs? Anyway, like, he was such a gentleman? And, so good looking? Things were going so well, when, what do you think he did? He got a call on his cell phone? So, he took it out and started talking business on it in the restaurant?

Only, that was okay, okay? It gave me the chance to sneak out my Blackberry? You know, to check out his Facebook profile? Well! It turned out he worked at the Internet Tahitian Buffet and Wine Bar! You know, around the corner from the Barchevsky Launderama? I’ve got nothing against an honest day’s labour? But, how am I supposed to raise children on a...waiter’s salary?

Needless to say, that was our one and only date?

A couple of weeks later, I met another man on the "I Hate Twilight And All The Harm It Is Doing To Our Culture, Hate It, Hate It! HATE IT!" discussion board. He seemed - oh, by that time I had dropped the Valley Girl Speech Affectation. Not only had my parents threatened to disown me if I didn’t, but, frankly, even I had started to find it annoying.

As I was saying, I was really getting along with this man, Bertram Blitherington, on the discussion board. So, I did what any woman who wants to know more about a man these days does: I checked a variety of social media for clues. Wow. The pictures of him on Flickr were gorgeous! The hobbies he listed on MySpace were similar to mine. His tweets were witty and clever. I thought maybe, just maybe, he could be the one.

Then, I found his name on the Dippy Diaperheads Web site. I didn’t even have to use a specialized search engine - just a simple Google search, and there it was! Dippy Diaperheads...they wear diapers on their heads. They’re sort of like Green Bay Packers fans, except instead of cheese hats, they wear diapers. A quick search of the site and, sure enough, I found pictures of Bertram that he didn’t feel comfortable sharing with Flickr.

Needless to say, I never did meet him IRL.

Och, thayn, just las’ week, ah was sittin’ in Café Con Letch, Eh? playin’ with Skout, a new programme fer mah cellphone that uses wireless networks ta look fer people whose profile matches what yer a lookin’ fer and sends a message ta yer phone if, using GPS, it finds somebody in yer vicinity. (By this time, as ya can probably ken, ah had converted ta bein’ Scottish.) Ah was just about ta give up on romance technology when it sent meh tha name o’ Bob. Just Bob. Tha software seemed ta think we would be a good match, although it wouldn’a tell me why.

Usin’ Gelato, ah found that Bob Dobbs of South Fork on Tine was no on any social networks. Not Facebook. Not LinkedIn. Not MahSpace. It couldn’a tell meh what he was listenin’ to on Last.FM or watchin’ on Hulu or NetFlix. No images of him on Flickr. No hits on any of tha major search engines.

Ooh. A man of mystery.

Ah hate mystery.

Ah have a friend at the FBI who occasionally lets me use their database. (Ah’m not a’gonna name mah friend fer reasons o’ national and job security.) Usin’ tha credit card table, Ah noticed that Bob lahked ta travel. Coordinatin; tha’ information with information in tha unsolved criminal investigations table, Ah found a correlation between his movements and tha theft of major jewels (most notoriously, tha pink panther, tha puce puma and tha charcoal cheetah). Bob has been arrested fer grand larceny. Mah friend got credit for tha collar and Ah got another broken heart.

Oh, Amritsar, am I ever going to find my one true love?

Hey, Babe,

Have you ever considered becoming a nun? Really. I understand that some religious organizations are open to the use of new technologies.

Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service’s sex, love and technology columnist in care of this publication. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: None of what she knows has anything to do with Twitter, so, please, stop asking.

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