5 Dates for the Mutually Weird: Installment #1.

By the hammer of Thor... it's been nearly a year since my last post! Where did all the time go?

So much has happened in the past year. Nephews being born, 21st birthdays, 21st birthday vomit, Darth Vader Halloween costumes, flings with giant biochem majors, Christmas, New Year's, The Hobbit's release date, finishing the Eragon books, unemployment, .gif battles, graduations, 22nd birthday vomit, Pinterest till I poop, working in Yellowstone, Batman movies, Batman movie theater shootings, presidential primaries, exploding lady parts with internal bleeding (yes, my own), crappy boyfriends, awesome new boyfriends, and delightfully skanktastic celebrity marriages... and that's just the tip of the skankberg.

Pictured: aforementioned skankberg. Alias Courtney Stodden.

In any case, lots has been going on.

But rather than give my sure-to-be-predictable opinion on Jailbait Vaginaface (pictured above), I'll go for a more relatable topic today.

In light of the "awesome new boyfriends" part, awesome new boyfriend (who will be known henceforth as "Boyfriend") indirectly inspired me to write a new blog post. For those couples out there who feel that they just aren't appealing to their weird side in their relationship, never fear; I practically have a Ph.D. in that shit. As a wise doctor once said, “We are all a little weird and life is a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” And, as we all know, mutual weirdness is all you need.

To pander to every great relationship's need for mutual weirdness, you have to dig deeper than just dinner and a movie, flowers and chocolates... even pizza and video games is standard date material these days. In this post I've compiled just a handful of some of my favorite date ideas, the first of which can be attributed to Boyfriend, who, I've delightedly discovered, is every bit as weird as I am.

Here's the first 5. 

More to come!

1. Give blood together.

Giving blood together may sound unusual, perhaps morbid, but doesn't it also sound... well, kind of cute? You're stuck in a scary office or blood van or back alley together with needles in your arms, providing some anonymous future internal bleeding victim with the necessary blood to transfuse them back to health. What could be more romantic than that?


Plus, at the end, they give you blood cookies. An all-around win if you ask me.

2. Go camping in the backyard.

While your backyard campout may not be as ethnic as the one shown, that doesn't mean it has to be any less fun. For those of us who can't always get away to go camping for real, why not do it in your backyard?

And then, once you get that out of your system, you can go camping in your backyard!

In any case, even though it's true that your campout will probably look less like this:

And more like this:

What's important is that you're doing it together. Roasting marshmallows, drinking beer, watching the half-a-dozen stars you can barely make out through all the light pollution... what's not to love?

3. Go ice-skating.

Pictured: the last time I went ice-skating.

When you picture an ice-skating trip (no pun intended), one of several scenarios might come to mind. A romantic, glowing, Christmas-lit Rockefeller Plaza full of wobbly, giggling couples wearing Santa hats? A secluded subalpine lake, covered in a dusting of powdery snow, from which you and your sweet thang can hold hands and watch the glorious Austrian sunset?

Fat chance.

Unless you're willing to travel to Norway or some shit, this is probably the closest approximation of your romantic ice-skating experience this winter:

Most of those people aren't even ice-skating.
They're just standing there yelling for their lost children.

So I say, rather than subject yourself to a bustling outdoor ice rink full of snot-nosed kids and wobbly parents whose perpetually windmilling arms give you no more than a six-inch turning radius on any side, why not go in the summertime?

Indoor ice rinks are open year-round, and depending on the day, they're often nearly empty. It's a fun way to enjoy the ice-skating experience together, without constantly worrying about head-on collisions with strangers. Plus, afterwards, you can go get ice cream! Then you can properly enjoy the unwashed masses in their natural summertime habitat.

4. Go to a roller rink.

Tacky stage lights, sweet 90s music, jarring multi-colored patterned carpeting, roller skates with neon green wheels... and a disco ball? Are you feeling nostalgic yet?

If you're my age, you remember the days of the roller-skating field trips. You and your whole class would go to the roller rink, usually located in the most grungy part of town, strap on a too-big pair of rollerblades, and do the hokey-pokey and the chicken dance and try not to be the kid who fell down the most.

Now, in roller skates, while it's true that I fantasize that I look like this:

When really I look something like this:

There's no denying that a trip to the roller rink with your sweet thang will unlock childhood memories, impulses, junk food cravings, dancing skills, and skinned knees that you can then share and laugh about later when you're icing your head and/or genitals.

5. Go bowling.

Not unlike the roller rink, there's a 90s feeling you get at the bowling alley that you can't find many places nowadays. Colorfully laced shoes, big neon balls, tacky floor patterns... all that good shit.

But there's one crucial difference between the roller rink and the bowling alley: at the bowling alley, you can drink.

In fact, no trip to the bowling alley is complete without a few pitchers... and, of course, a designated driver. (I'm growing up!)

Delicious brew, sweet kicks, tasty jams, and a little healthy competition? Sounds like a recipe for good old down-to-earth romance if you ask me.

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So, on that note, so ends the first installment of several installments of dates for the mutually weird. Tune in next week (or, at the rate I'm going, next century) for more ideas! In the meantime, keep it spicy.

Boyfriend, Thy Name is School.

I have been in a steady relationship for a long time now. Over the past four years it's gotten pretty serious. However, although it's always been something of an emotional rollercoaster (forgive the cliché), I've begun to notice that lately, our relationship has taken on a sort of "downward spiral" motif.

Folks, I'd like to introduce you to my boyfriend. His name is School. And he is an abusive tool.

Poetry achieved.

Below is a checklist of 10 items I have established as irrefutable signs your boyfriend is also an abusive tool.

The unfortunate truth to this checklist is that for me, each and every shitty god-forsaken item is followed closely by a resounding "check!"... If anyone has any recommendations for counseling, I welcome them.

And by "recommendations for counseling," I really mean "favorite creative ways to drink vodka."

Your boyfriend is probably abusive if:

1. He makes you feel stupid.
2. He makes you feel suffocated or stifled.
3. He doesn't allow you to hang out with your friends.
4. He intentionally disrupts your sleep pattern in order to better control you.
5. He keeps you around by repeatedly and expertly manipulating you into thinking you still love him.
6. He occasionally rewards your good behavior with small surprises, giving you hope for the future, only to immediately revert to his previous pain-causing douchebaggery.
7. He constantly reminds you how disappointed in you he is.
8. He gets extremely jealous of others, purposely making it difficult to maintain any other relationships at the same time.
9. He drives you to drink.
   
   And last but not least:
   
   
10. He is so expertly manipulative that despite numbers 1-9, your family seems to love him; the only question they ever seem to ask you is "How's School?"