INTERNET BLIND DATE No. 3 OF 2008: GO!

(Oh god oh god I'm going to die.)

I'm going to be David Bowie!

good luck!!!

make sure you listen and not do all the talking.

and then pull her close at the end of the date and kiss her once, softly.

You see! WOMEN THINK ABOUT DAVID BOWIE ALL THE TIME!

This is a brilliant plan... I'll just do a bit of "Space Oddity", and... better skip "Suffragette City", I'm not sure I stand behind the sentiments of that one... and... I can say "I don't believe in modern love"... and... OH GOD WHY AM I BLANKING ON DAVID BOWIE LYRICS!?

Okay, okay, I have a plan for getting through it, but it involves Bing Crosby being at the bar. Just hope for my sake that Bing Crosby is at that bar.

Awkward! We were scheduled to meet at a bar, but when I arrived, the bar's fire alarm had started going off mysteriously, and nobody there new how to stop it. So we did not stay there -- we wandered around the neighborhood, and she said a few things, and I was making a lot of half-hearted quasi-sardonic comments agreeing with her. We ended up at a McDonalds, where we were accosted by a homeless man. Eventually, the homeless man got into a fight with one of the other patrons of the establishment and left, at which point it was tacitly decided that this whole thing was Not Working Out. I was pretty upstaged by the homeless man. I hope she didn't decide to date him.

I am beginning to realize that I don't know how to start a conversation with a stranger. I know what I'm about, I know what my friends are about, I don't really know what a stranger is about. So I'm always waiting fifteen or thirty seconds, saying "what do you do?", waiting again, saying "so, what do you do when that's not happening", another awkward pause, "anyway -- I've been breaking glass in your room again." And they don't really know how to take that.

I almost think I'm better off monopolizing the conversation a bit -- especially when the person I'm talking to is not forthcoming. In this case, she seemed to expect me to direct the conversation. Or maybe I just need to date someone who ALSO tends to talk incessantly, so I don't need to worry about curbing that impulse, because we balance each other out.

I'm bad at this.