"La Bouche made my computer freeze!"

So this is what it's come to? My time management skills are so bad that I actually had to set aside time to do things I want to do. You would think that having a flexible work schedule means you can sit around and watch YouTube videos all day, but the reality of it is that you have to be even more disciplined than your office-bound counterparts or you'll never get anything done.

What's really sad is that I probably won't even stick to this for as long as it took to make it.

Oh, and Sunday night? Right on schedule.

***

UPDATE: It's not even two days later and already I've had to make an adjustment to the schedule. For some reason, it never occurred to me that back-to-back nights of studying French for a couple of hours at a stretch might be too much for anyone no matter how badly they want to learn the language.

"I'm so good in bed I can just lay there."

I recently had a conversation with my sister's boyfriend about putting a guy in the friend zone.

We were dissecting why I felt the need to dash this gentleman's romantic dream that was probably no more than a desire to get me drunk and take advantage of me, when Donna's man asked, "Was he not aggressive enough?"

It was then that I realized men and women have wildly different ideas about what it takes to make a love connection happen between two people.

Men, as it turns out, are completely delusional. You guys actually believe that you can charm the pants off any girl you want as long as you have enough confidence. In the past, when my male friends made obscene comments about hot girls they saw, I used to think they were just dreaming out loud. Now I know better. Apparently, all guys are told at some point in their lives that even if a girl is way, way out of your league, she'll still let you stick it in her if you're funny enough. This explains why most comedians are hideously ugly. They got the memo and they are really taking it to heart.

Let me just clear this up right now. Having a great personality will get you to a certain point, but if she's not attracted to you, it ain't gonna happen.

If you have a crush on a girl and she put you in the friend zone, it's not because you didn't make your intentions known. It's not because you were too nice. It's not because you didn't make her laugh. It's because she didn't find you fuckable.

Pick-up artists will insist that you can always turn it around if you know what you're doing. After all, most of them aren't particularly handsome, or wealthy, or anything special. Yet they manage to get laid all the time because they never wait too long to close the deal. While I will agree that there is a window of opportunity for avoiding the friend zone by letting a girl know you're interested early on, I will also say that in order for any guy to take advantage of this window, the girl had to have been 50/50 about fucking him in the first place. You don't have to look like James Franco or have tons of cash, but if you're decent in either area and you don't act like a pussy every time you see her, then yes, you do have a shot. If, on the other hand, you're an Average Joe and you show zero personality the first, say, three times you see this girl, then you, my dear, have just bought yourself a one-way ticket to the friend zone. In this instance the pick-up artists would be right. You had a chance, and you blew it.

There are a couple of things, however, that the pick-up artists forgot to mention.

First, pick-up tactics only work in situations where the guy is totally average. Average looks, average income, average achievement. The girl he likes is on the fence until he overpowers her with his irresistible manliness, pushing her over the edge and making her want him. That's all good and well for the average guy, but those rules don't apply to anyone else. If a man is gorgeous, he'll get laid. If he's rich, he'll get laid. If he's famous, he'll get laid. A dude that possesses all three traits - the trifecta of female desire - can talk about cloud shapes all day and women will still gladly jump in his bed. But a dude that weighs 500 pounds, works as a cashier at McDonald's, owes thousands of dollars in gambling debt, and lives in his mother's basement is not getting laid no matter how witty and clever he is.

Second, and more importantly, what any female considers "average" changes from chick to chick. The hotter  the girl, the higher the bar.* You might be a 7 in your Weight Watchers meetings, but where you rank on Natalie Portman's scale is most likely going to be totally different. There will be times during your quest for love when you never stood a chance to begin with. I wish more guys would realize this and move on rather than embarrass themselves trying to get with a supermodel because some so-called dating expert told them it was possible.

If you're the type of guy that can get almost any woman he wants, chances are you have a pretty face, or a fat paycheck, or both. A rocking personality definitely helps, but it does not guarantee that you'll get anywhere. If you are an attractive rich guy who constantly finds himself in the friend zone, then you need to reexamine your interactions with women because you are definitely doing something wrong. Or maybe you're just gay and haven't come out yet, which is fine and actually makes more sense. If you assess yourself honestly and conclude that you are indeed average to the women you are interested in, then you should be successful at least half the time as long as you put in a little effort. For the rest of you, know that there's very little you can do to change the mind of a woman that never wanted to screw you in the first place. Think of it this way: the level of rejection you experience is directly related to the level of approach you used. Use an aggressive approach, and she'll turn you down. Use a soft approach, and she'll put you in the friend zone. If you want to avoid both outcomes, I suggest you find a way to make yourself above average in her eyes.

*I'd like to point out that smarter girls also have higher standards for the men they date, but it's been my experience that most guys - I said most! - don't give two shits about a girl's intelligence.

"You look remarkably good for a guy with a busted face."

It really cracks me up when, every so often, I see an announcement from someone on Facebook that they had just gotten through trimming the fat from their friends list. I got the update, so obviously I made the cut, right? Here's my question: exactly what criteria are you using to determine who gets to stay and who has to go? Because I'm looking at your page and you still have like 800 friends. Boy, do I feel special.

"Being a huge dick and having one are not the same thing, unfortunately."

So I finally figured out why so many of my friends are getting on my nerves. There are various components to the answer, including the fact that I can be a total bitch at times, but we'll leave that one off to the side for now. If we assume that I'm talking about a day when I am not PMS-ing, would those same people still annoy me?

The answer is that they most likely would. Today I had an epiphany during which I realized that I have become a repository for people's dirty secrets. Cheating, addiction, daddy issues, money issues, green-card marriages, depraved sexual acts, inappropriate work relationships, listening to REO Speedwagon on Spotify - you name it, I've heard it. For some reason, people feel comfortable telling me things that they normally wouldn't share with anyone else. Even if a person has other friends they are close to, I alone have been given access to the cesspool of horrific information they are guarding. I guess it makes sense why this would be the case: I listen, I don't judge, and I don't tell. Why wouldn't people dump all their secrets on me?

I don't have a problem with what someone has done in the past or what they are going through right now. No one is perfect, and I'm certainly no angel. What I do have a problem with is the way a person's behavior changes once they feel close to you.

You see, developing a friendship with someone is a lot like dating. You meet, you feel a good vibe, you hang out, you talk. In the beginning stages your new friend only shows you their good side. The more you get to know them, the more good things you discover until you reach a point where you truly value the relationship you have with this person. He or she is now your friend.

Once you move past a certain point of intimacy, your new friend will reveal some not-so-flattering facts that they've kept hidden from the public. If you're not weirded out by this information, then the friendship is real. You are now homies, friends for life. Nothing can rip you apart.

What troubles me about learning my friends' secrets is not the secrets themselves, but how comfortable these people feel when they are around me now that I know all their secrets. Comfortable to the point where common courtesy becomes a thing of the past. These close friends will start taking me for granted, asking for favors that they never dared to ask before, flaking out on plans, forgetting their wallets when we do go out, and exhibiting other forms of selfish and annoying behavior. They seem to believe that since I don't judge them for the mistakes they made before we met, I won't judge them for acting like an asshole now that we're friends.

I don't know where you people learned that it's okay to be a douche bag after you've grown close to someone, but please unlearn it. Remember how you used to not brag about every instance of getting hit on by a member of the opposite sex? Or how you used to pretend to give a shit when I had something to say? Or how you used to actually show up when we made plans? Where did that person go? Can we please go back to the time before you unloaded all your sins on me like I'm some priest at a confessional, so you can go back to being that cool, fun, interesting person I met and became friends with? Keep your secrets, I don't need them. What I need is a nice fucking person to hang out with.

I completely understand why some folks have a fear of intimacy. If you never get too close to anyone, it's much harder for anyone to feel okay about treating you like dirt, or asking you to do things that you don't want to do, or expecting you to listen every time they give a speech about how awesome they are. That last one absolutely kills me. It may not seem like a big deal, but it happens so often that the person isn't even aware of it, and I haven't quite figured out how to tell them to shut the fuck up.

Maybe that's why our society encourages extraversion. Lots of people to hang out with, plans every weekend, and everybody is on their best behavior. A casual acquaintance probably won't get wasted and puke in your car as you drive them home and talk your ear off about the hottie they met at the bar while you sponge their vomit off your upholstery, but a good friend definitely will.

Of course, it's just as likely that everyone I know is annoying the shit out of me simply because I'm a total bitch.

"The worst thing about living in such a big city is that the walk of shame is a very long walk."

I love it when you peel an orange and the skin comes off in one piece. Today I spiral-peeled my orange, so when I lay the rind out flat it looks like an S.

So I'm sitting at my desk, eating this orange, listening to Bill Burr's Monday Morning podcast and laughing my ass off while staring at my computer pretending to work - which is totally unnecessary since I work from home now, so who exactly am I lying to? - when I was struck with the most awesome idea for an April Fool's Day joke.

What if I super-glued the orange peel back together and left it out for someone to find? You know those community fruit baskets in the office kitchen with bananas and apples for the taking? Or the occasional catered lunch at work where you feel compelled to eat the food because it's free even though it tastes like shit, and you're hoping it's at least healthy because the catering service threw in a plate of fruit? I would give anything to leave this empty orange among some real fruit and stick around to see what happens when someone grabs it and it gently deflates in their hand. There would be an immediate outburst of "What the fuck?" as the victim inspects my handiwork with that bewildered scrunch on their face, followed by a disapproving eye roll when they realize that they'd been punked. They would turn to whoever else is in the kitchen and say, "Really? Who would do this?" Meanwhile I'm standing by the sink in absolute stitches, trying my best but failing miserably to not give myself away.

I laughed so hard at the thought of this that I actually had to pause Bill Burr because I didn't want to miss anything he was saying. He's a pretty funny guy. I wonder what he would think of my orange-peel prank. He'd probably do a 15-minute rant on how dumb it is and how anyone who thinks this is funny must be stupid, and I'd laugh along like an idiot anyway because his delivery is awesome and he speaks the truth.

But anyway, back to the orange. The thing is, I can't play this joke on anyone as I have neither roommates nor coworkers. I enjoy the solitude for the most part because, let's face it, people bother me. There are days when I feel like everybody I know has conspired to be as irritating as possible and are taking bets on who will be the first to get slapped. It is probably in everyone's best interest that I am insulated from the world.

But there are some days that I do feel the pain of loneliness, and today, April 1, 2013, is one of those days. I have no one to prank.

Since I can't play this joke on anybody, and I'm not cruel enough to give an empty orange to a bum, I thought I'd share the idea with my blog readers (if there are still any out there). Peel an orange, eat the contents, glue the rind back together, leave it out for someone to find, and let me know how it goes. Don't forget to have your camera ready.