date machine : facebook

Date Machine: Who Am I and Why Am I Here? or Let’s Keep in Touch

amboabe — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:08:00 GMT

I didn’t want my last post to be a formal goodbye so I’m going to do all that formal housekeeping here, in my second to last post. My name is Michael Thomsen.

“Amboabe” was a dumb nickname I gave myself in Madagascar. After an extended rant about something marginal and self-reflexive my friend S, who was a fellow volunteer, said “I hear you barking, big dog.” Madagascar is a country defined, in large part, by taboos and there are a lot centered on dogs. Dogs are considered filthy. It’s taboo in many areas to bring a dog into your house. It’s taboo to feed a dog the same food that humans would eat. It’s taboo to refer to another person as a dog in any way.

Dogs are mangy and opportunistic lurkers, crawling through the filthy back alleys on a never-ending search for food and shelter. They’re turned away and cursed at every turn. Children amuse themselves by beating dogs with sticks or throwing rocks at them, giggling when they evoke a pathetic yelp.

“Amboabe” is a literal translation of “big dog.” Once I got to know people in my village, I would make joking reference to myself as “amboabe” to see how far I could bend the taboos. When I told Bernadiny, the tank-like nurse at the clinic where I spent most of my days, she scowled and said I was dirty. “That’s not alright,” she told me. “People can’t be dogs. That’s bad.”

I made a point to laugh and make joking faces whenever I said it, but it was always received with headshakes and clucking disdain. After my first year, I noticed people had started calling me by the name. “Where is the big dog?” they would ask my neighbors when someone was looking for me. “Are you coming on the vaccine drive… big dog?”

The scorn was still present, but I could see the lips pointing upwards just a little bit every time they said it. Bernadiny started calling me Amboabe regularly, shaking her head at how ridiculous it was. There was no one else in town who could have been called a dog, much less request it. It was stupid. Absurd. Wrong. She would shake her head, as if she couldn’t believe what she was doing, and then laugh to herself when she saw what an joy it was for me to hear her say it.

Nothing happened when the taboo was broken. There wasn’t any ugly incident, the gendarmes didn’t storm the clinic, and god didn’t strike anyone down for blaspheming the human spirit. We laughed, and shook our heads. It was so stupid. “Beeg dug,” she would say in her broken high school English. “Eka, izay ty anarako,” I would tell her. That’s my name.

I write for a website called IGN.com. I freelance for them now, but when I was in San Francisco I was an associate editor. I wrote about video games and music. Before that I lived in LA and wrote for a smaller video game website called Nintendo World Report and had a day job at a big game company called Activision (the people that make Guitar Hero). I wrote a couple screenplays and came pretty close to raising $500,000 to direct one I wrote about kids in high school. It didn’t really come together and then I got offered the job in San Francisco.

If you want to read other stuff I’ve written, you can Google me. It’s not hard to find. Here are a few links just in case. Hopefully you’ll recognize the voice, even if the terms might seem a bit foreign. If you aren’t moved by my writing here I don’t know if any of this other stuff will change your mind. But it’s me, I wrote it.

Editorial: The Case for Six Days in Fallujah
*and here's a short video interview I did for ABC about the game.

Contrarian Corner: Mirror’s Edge

Animal Collective: Meriweather Post Pavilion Review

Writing for Date Machine has been one of the most consistently difficult things I’ve done over the last year, and this has been one of the toughest years I’ve had. It started with my grandfather dying, and ended with the possibility of my mother dying. In between, the love of my life moved across the country to live with another man, I got an STD, I feel into a depression and lost twenty pounds.

But I wanted to write. And so I would come home after work every night and sit at my desk for three or four hours trying to come up with something that would be worth reading; something honest, entertaining, and worth returning to. I tried to do it five days a week, after twelve hours in another office, and in between directing, producing, and editing a short film, and working on some other freelance writing jobs.

It’s been great to do it with Zeitgeisty and Airheadgenius. It probably doesn’t seem like much of a trick from your end, but on my end it’s been consistently frightening. It’s easy to be honest and unapologetic with your friends and people you care about, but it’s a separate thing to do it out loud and in public. It’s really hard to spend hours sharing something vulnerable and intimate and indemnifying, only to hit publish and face an anonymous swell of readers eager to evaluate, convict, and issue sentence.

We’ve fought amongst ourselves, and the end has been no different than the beginning in that respect; but I’m thankful to have written alongside them. It was always a little less daunting to climb out on the rhetorical limb when I’d see each of them taking their own risks everyday. Whatever I’ve written here, it would have been less without their camaraderie.

I’m also glad that you’ve been here, reading all of this. I’ve tried to give what I could of myself in every post. I’ve also asked for you to give me your time, and your energy in reading all these little stories and thoughts. It may not seem like it given how self-absorbed much of this must read, but I appreciate that time and energy more than you may expect. Whether you liked what I wrote or loathed it, you still gave me a hearing and that’s the most any writer could ever ask of any reader.

If you want to stay in contact, I’m on Facebook. Find me if you want to. If you’re in New York, buy me a drink. If you’re not send me a note.

Tomorrow afternoon will be my last post. I’ll try and finish in the same way I started, with some red meat. I’m kind of scared to write it, but I’ll be talking about everything that’s happened since I moved to New York.

See you then.

Previous Posts:

Date Machine: How to Pick Up Women

Date Machine: Women at 30, or the Scent of the Medicine Cabinet

Date Machine: My Friend's Girlfriend is my Girlfriend

Love Machine: Dating Someone with a Handicap

Date Machine: How to Pick Up a Nurse at the HIV Clinic

Date Machine: Full Disclosure

Sex Machine: The Bare Minimum

Date Machine: The Seductive Art of Dancing

Sex Machine: Becoming A Virgin Again

Sex Machine: Come On My Face

Sex Machine: Because I Can

Love Machine: Am I Romantic Enough?

Sex Machine: Picking Up Women in Gay Bars

Sex Machine: Diary of a Sperm Donor

Date Machine: Long Distance Lovers

Sex Machine: A Revised History of Whores

Date Machine: Moving to New York in Pictures

Date Machine: Old Love Letters, or Things That Got Thrown Away in the Move

Sex Machine: Talking About Sex With Your Parents

Love Machine: Willing to Relocate

Date Machine: an old 'CRUSH', reaches out!!...TRANSCRIPT included...plus throb..

zeitgeisty — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:36:00 GMT

Yesterday I received a facebook friend request from some woman I didn’t recognize at all.

For a minute, I thought she might possibly have been some chick I knew around 8 years ago that I met through the internet. They both had similarly ‘crispy’ hair. Still, upon further examination I realized it couldn’t be her. Lately, I’ve been reticent to accept any more friends through Facebook, as I think I’m going to delete my account soon. I just feel there’s something a tad silly about someone my age having one of these things. It just feels superfluous. Anyway, I responded to her request by asking who she was, and she replied that she was someone I had had a crush on in college. I don’t know… there was something so irritating about her that I reverted to my college era asshole persona and well.. you can see the results.. The following is the transcript of the exchange.

ZEITGEISTY:

Do I know you?

CRUSH:

Yes! We went to college together...my friend laura dated your brother. we are going wayyy back here.

Z:

Right.. so how do I know you?

C:

Well, we hung out ever day for a year, you had a crush on me. But you don't have to remember me...you seem so reluctant!

Z:

Sorry, my memory isn't that bad... I remember who I hung out with back then, and there's just no way we hung out 'every day for a year'... I also remember all my crushes, and I can't even place your name or face at all...

I know my brother went out with some chick named Laura from ramapo or something, but I never hung out with her...

C:

Whatever. Yes, we sat everyday at lunch that year. You do have a bad memory. You actually begged me to break up with the guy, paul, I was seeing.

I was only interested in saying hi and seeing how you were. But really, i'm wasting too much effort on nothing.

Z:

jeez... delusional.

C:

Ask your brother...his memory may be better than yours :)

Z:

You weren't one of those chicks that lived in Nyack that was friends with Craig were you?

Seriously, I wasn't friends with Laura I thought she was an idiot and never hung out with her... I know I hung out in the cafeteria a lot, but there were always a lot of people around...

Don't mean to be a jerk, but I didn't know you... I don't know who 'paul' is..etc.. To tell you the truth that whole time at college was excuciatingly lame, so maybe I just blocked a lot of it out... even still, I do remember my friends and my crushes.

C:

Well, amazingly, I don't have the odd habit of remembering the name of someone I never knew, and making up a dilusional set of circumstances to go along with the name.

We were friends. I did not know the person you are refering to, and I lived in New City.

I apologise for sending a friendly hello. I hope your life is great and wish you well.

Z:

Sorry, my brother doesn't recall you either... Obviously YOU knew me, hence the reason you searched my name after practically 20 years...but I was pretty well known in Rockland back then, so..

Either way, I thank you deeply, deeply, deeply for your well wishes, and I hope your life is filled with purpose, whimsy and surprise...

C:

I personally hated college too, which is why you, your brother and a few people stuck on my mind...you made my year there tolerable. It was fun. And I did not randomly just think of you. With my own son applying for college soon he was asking me about my college days, therefore that was the reason I was reminiscing. Again, I apologize for disrupting your day.

One more thing. I can assure you i was not a twin groupie who knew OF you. We talked and laughed every day. If you have a problem with your selective memory you should not take it out on ordinary folk just dropping in to say hi.

Z:

I wasn't taking it out on you, I just didn't recall you... Since receiving your note, I've tried to strain my memory of those days... If we're talking Laura, then it mustve been like 1990... The people I knew back then were D. Kaufman, abd D. Grashow... also some chick named Cristina who always wore a wig.. had a friend J. Kranzberg.. and some really boring blonde guy that was always prattling on endlessly about nothing... That's who I remember from the table...

Anyway I'm glad I helped make your year there more bearable, wish someone couldve done the same for me!

C:

Yes, Cristina was always shooting up in the bathroom. And no worries, I have no problem being forgetable, lol! You just might have given me a complex about saying hi to other long ago friends...hopefully I have not imagined them all! ...Just kidding. have a great day.

Z:

ok.. cheers!

A few hours passed, and I started to feel bad. Perhaps I was too harsh, after all maybe she was just trying to reach out to someone she considered an old friend. Who cares if I couldn’t remember her, I could’ve been a bit more civil…Then I remembered those days, and I thought…fuck it.

Ahh that collosal forehead.. that vacant look... that raccoon perched atop her peanut shaped noggin.. Rihanna

Snark and ass

plan b and the contingency fuck

spit or swallow

women are cruel

older women

Psychology of the female orgasm

Does HAIR matter?

SEX TIPS for DUMMIES

Patterns in relationships

Love in the time of recession

The MIA phenomenon

Getting nailed with a strap-on

Why smart people can't get laid

Going through old e-mail - revisiting past babes

How I picked up the babes on the internet

If you're hot then it's ok?

Handjobs in Hungary

Striving for consistently decent sex

one year anniversary

bachmann turns my stomach overdrive

dream date

i love ya but i don't like ya

how i met my girlfriend

date with a transvestite - blogger doodle

sex with ichat

the myth of the bad boy

blind leading the blind

facebook 25 responses

how wet do you get?

my lame attempts at voyeurism

Celebrity relationships

my soundtrack for a broken heart

Shaniqua

100 posts!

Choking on desperation

I'm not an ASIAN fetishist

Wouldjarather

junk in 'da trunk : the ASS file

Fun with dating confessions

Stay away from my nipples!

wouldjarather?

didjaever?

Are all women gay?

She was an ex nazi but she had spectacular jugs

new years resolutions

bloggerdoodle

are moustaches sexy?

the last 4 people i fucked slipped my mind

the indie girl in my office has knowledge of my bowel movements

merry xmas

twas the night before xmas

fuckability VS beauty

RELATIONSHIPS under stress.. Can true PASSION last?...

blogger doodle

Dancin'.. does it get you hot?

Telling the truth in relationships

How much sex is enough?

The end of jealousy for me

Get that Zeitgeisty look!

Blogger Doodles

Rate THEIR pick-up lines

Older babe alert

blogger doodles

Obligatory posting on cyber-sex

the importance of finding true sexual compatibility

Will you just take my penis in your hand already?

Snark and ass

blogger doodles

5 things I'm thankful for

licking ass and taking names

Snarky and assinine responses

Blogger doodles

The Origins of my cold, black heart

relationship dealbreakers

The different kinds of vaginas

bloggerdoodles

Snarky dating confessions responses

Blogger doodles

I wanna bang your friend

Show me your jugs

translations

Blogger doodles

Is there an expiration date on passion?

translations

bloggerdoodles

crazy pants

used to be cool - zeitgeisty on MTV

hurting for a squirting - the female ejaculation file

translations...

blogger doodles 3

the gardener and the rose

We fart therefore we are

TRANSLATIONS

Blogger doodles 2

My most cringeworthy moments with women

Are you a sociopath part 2

Are you a sociopath part 1

translations...

blogger doodles

The worst sex of my life

The sex and the city movie was lame

commitment phobia is a myth

Translations...

TYPES

Do.. do women really suck in bed?

The odd disconnect between profile photos and reality

50 sexual expereiences I've never had

Dating COnfessions translations

I'm a breast man... the JUGS file

John McCain makes my peepee go limp

Video blog - 'The word on the steet' - the nature of attraction.

My dating confessions TRANSLATIONS

My internet dating advice

What we want vs. What we need and the power balance between man and women

All Porn SUCKS!!

The night PAULINA and I discussed sex

How important are someone's politics when choosing a patrner?

Nerve Confessions: It's all about the looks stupid!

Sex with someone I love - The MASTURBATION file

The Greatest Online Dating story - The PERSONALS file

'But baby I HAVE to put a profile up, it's required!!' - The GIRLFRIEND file

BITE ME! - Snark.

My first kiss...a remembrance of thing past

Feel the paste in you face - The FACIAL file

Talk dirty to me!!

I abstain! The fear to fuck

The unvarnished TRUTH about dating on the internet.

BITE ME!!!

Pontifications on the bangin' of ass - The ANAL file

The brass ring

Sex Machine: It's Not Cheating If...? A Reader Survey

spjv840 — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:50:00 GMT

Yesterday while trying to make my boss millions, I got interrupted by an msn message from the guy I wrote about before who I had hooked up with via Facebook. The one with the fiance. Apparently, they broke up a while ago. Good for him, she looked like an absolute witch, but that's not the point. He kept going on about how he and I were meant to be together, how he had wanted me since high school and that should count for something, he says. He also went on asking me constantly if I was really happy - he would not take my "Yes" for an answer.

Finally I told him that I had zero intention of ever seeing him again (unless it's strictly as friends, and even then), let alone cheating on my boyfriend with him, or anyone, for that matter. Then he came out with this gem:

"It's not cheating if it's with someone you're supposed to be with"

Oh really? This is news to me! Anyone else feel this way? So according to him, he didn't cheat on his fiance when he boned me back in July 2007, because we were "MEANT TO BE TOGETHER". Ok, I'm meant to be with Jason Statham and Johnny Depp, will I be cheating on anyone if I bone all of them? Apparently not!

Readers, put down the turkey leg and tell me, what are your thoughts? When is cheating "not" cheating and when is it?

Recent posts: Nerve Confessions: Sometimes The Truth Hurts
Date Machine: Hooking up Via Facebook
Nerve Confessions: Celebrity Threesomes
Nerve Confessions: The Man Edition
Sex Machine: Your First Time - A Reader Survey
Love Machine: I'm Not The Marrying Kind...or Am I

Date Machine: Hooking Up Via Facebook and A Reader Survey

spjv840 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:04:00 GMT

I don't know what the attraction is with Facebook. Yeah, it's a great way to meet up with old friends, although mostly it's a lot of "Let's get together sometime!" that never seems to follow through. I've had old high school classmates requesting to be friends - I say classmates because using the term "friend" would be an asbolute lie. Just because I borrowed a pencil from you in geography class in seventh grade doesn't necessarily warrant a dire need to be added to my friend's list.

Back when I first discovered Facebook, one of the first people I added was this guy I used to have a big crush on back in seventh grade. I was never too sure of what his feelings were for me back at the time since basically he treated me like crap and we were, what, 13 years-old? But it was consistent. Why go through the trouble of picking on someone so much if you hate them? Fast forward about ten years. Dude starts sending me messages on Facebook, mentioing wanting to get together for a beer or three and of course, he mentions his fiance. Why married/taken men are always so eager to bed me, I will never know - most likely because their partners are uptight b*tches, but that's not important.

After a couple weeks of flirty messages and confessions of how much he liked me in high school and how he always thought we would get married (what!?), one night during a rough patch with his fiance, who had kicked him out - he taxi'd it over to my place where we split a bottle of wine and a few beers. A few hours later we were doing the nasty in my small single-sized bed. It wasn't the greatest of sex because I'm pretty sure he was feeling guilty about boning his hot high-school crush while still technically another girl's guy. He crashed out at my place for the weekend, before returning to his thin-lipped fiance with his tail between his legs. A few weeks later I got another message from him wanting to see me again, but I had moved on to greener pastures.

The green pastures just happened to be another Facebook hook up, although one that never should have happened. This one also happened to be another high school friend, although not ever a crush or possible bed partner - this was just another party friend from back in the day. We agreed to meet up one night when a bunch of us were getting together to watch a friend's band show and have a few brews for old time's sake (at least that was MY intention). After having consumed one too many beers (me) and one too many rum-in-cokes (him) we ended up making out in the cemetary on the way back to his place.

Of course, it was a huge mistake. The sex was sloppy and he was basically the kind of guy who lays back, arms behind his head and expects the woman to do all the work. After an unsuccessful go at it, we eventually passed out, his arm draped over me. When I woke up the next morning, I was still fuzzy around the edges and feeling the effects of the night before - yet we went on to have slightly improved morning sex. He came - I did not. I was then treated to the proof of my mistake when he proudly got out of bed, buck ass naked and continued to walk around and I realized he was a lot more hairer than I cared for, his ass was saggy and he had devloped quite the gut since the night before.

I can honestly say that I have not been satisfied by my Facebook hook ups.

Fellow Nerve readers/writers -

Have you had successful facebook hook ups?

Were they with strangers or old high school classmates/friends?

Would you do it again or have you learned your lesson?

Recent posts: Nerve Confessions: Celebrity Threesomes
Nerve Confessions: The Man Edition
Sex Machine: Your First Time
Love Machine: I'm Not The Marrying Kind..Or Am I?
Nerve Confessions: The Karma's A Bitch Edition
Sex Machine: Oral Sex Do's and Don'ts

Love Machine: How I Date on the Internet

amboabe — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:42:00 GMT

Dating on the internet is both impossible and absurdly easy. As Zetgeisty noted, it's the simplest way in the world to create the illusion of a social life for yourself. It's something that's fundamentally unfulfilling because it makes something unquantifiable fit into a query boxes. Even in the best of circumstances, there is always a vague sense of disappointment when you meet someone you've been talking to on a dating site.

All the time and energy spent exchanging emails and phone calls in the buildup to going on a date can be fun and alluring, but it's tantamount to shadowboxing. It's two strangers talking to themselves willfully consenting to let the other to use the vagaries of their lives as a psychic swank rag. When you finally get to meet in real life and realize that the magically sensitive and charming person who was such a delight in your inbox on Tuesday mornings has now become a slouching mouth-breather with just a few too many freckles, how can you not feel disappointed? I've accumulated some simple tactics you can use to stop delegating the ups and downs of your romantic life to relative strangers over the internet.

First, the most positive change you can make is to stop spending so much time and energy on the pre-date emailing sessions. Everyone starts over from scratch the very second they lay eyes on somebody for the first time. If you see someone you like in the papyrus scroll of names and faces, say hello. If they say hello back, ask them out. You don't have to hear about their grandparents, or their job, or the great summer they spent in India their junior year of college. You don't have to go out of your way to make the other person feel charmed or comfortable. It's enough to just say to someone that you find them interesting or attractive. If they feel the same about you, then great! Meet up in person and find out if there's something real to it. The worst thing you could do is spend a week emailing about nothing because you don't want to jump the gun and appear to eager or desperate.

Another huge trap to doing anything social on the internet is that it can become a surrogate way of living. You can get just as stuck living a fantasy life on a personals site as you can wasting hours on Facebook. If you don't have a specific reason to log on, don't. You don't need to see who's emailed you or winked at you everyday, especially if you're just going to ask them for coffee next anyway. The internet should enhance your life, not become an addicting distraction. Finally, for every internet date you have, go on a real one. This sounds harder than it is. You'll be much happier and satisfied in the long run if your time with internet dating is just something you do on the side, rather than the desperate obsession that becomes an umbilicum to the life you've always wanted to live.

Go live that life now. Try sending someone a friend request in real life. Send someone a wink in the coffee shop tomorrow morning. Say, "Hello, I think you've got cool hair," to someone's face. Don't think about your life in terms of rejection. Think about it in terms of having a good time with yourself. Go forth and amuse yourself, and don't apologize for doing it in the company of others. Some will be charmed and want to walk with you a while down the road, others won't. Fun is divinity, it's total honesty, and it's a kind of blind commitment to the people you're surrounded; it can be inordinately attractive. So go talk to someone in public that you're attracted to for whatever reason, and say something that is meant primarily for your own amusement. See if they play along. Most will. Then when you return home at the end of the day and see some random person in your inbox it might be easier to have a little perspective about it all. They're probably going to be ugly anyway.

Celebrity Confession: In Which Kevin Spacey Bangs Ass

Sex Machine: Zeitgeisty's Ass Bangin'

Sex Machine: Rate My Blowjobs

Intimacy; or A Trip To The Dentist

Crying in Public: My Cubicle

The McCain Date