Wait, what's the bitching for? If ever there was a category made for you, it's "Other." Or are you holding out for "Eternal Other"?

Ogged has been otherized.

What are you doing on eHarmony, anyway? It's full of creepy old guys looking to get married to young girls and have lots of kids in the immediate future. You don't want to be associated with that.

Oh, quit complaining and just be proud of being Mexican already.

I wasn't using real info, I just wanted to see the questions. Also, someone closely associated with this site met his/her spouse on eharmony.

I think Axis of Evil nationalities are banned from the service. We can't let them have access to our women.

P.S. I'm of the belief Ogged is Iranian, I could be wrong.

someone closely associated with this site
creepy old guys

"."

The breakdown is for fetishists. Those are the fetishists categories.

I have some friends who met on Match.com.

Of course, I have some clients who met there too.

I was disappointed once to find out that a personal profile that listed languages spoken as Urdu and English was, in fact, of a native English speaker who had no idea where Urdu was spoken. Just thought it sounded funny.

Jake

Dont hate on old men who want young women. You'll be there soon.

Wait a sec, eHarmony has TV ads? I need to stay in more. I've only ever heard the radio ones.

7: Not wrong, exactly, but beside the point.

11: And if people don't hate on me, I will be sorely disappointed.

Eharmony's very annoying tv ads.

Excellent, SB.

15: Huh. Not terribly annoying (of course I only watched it twice), sort of harmless and vaguely sweet.

No identifiably interracial couples, I'll note.

I hope you gave them a fake email address. Some friends and I filled out the survey one night when we were drunk and curious whether we would be in that 10% that gets rated as "you aren't good enough for the site/you're creepy/resign yourself to dying alone" and they won't fucking leave me alone. Unsubscribe! Unsubscribe, dammit!

I hope you gave them a fake email address

It's the same (Mexican named!) address I use to sign up for all these dating sites.

Actually, it seems to be more a judgemental "you aren't religious/virtuous enough" than "you're creepy". Screening for the first is obnoxious, the second less so.

Becks just wanted to say that she is EHarmony Approved!

(Caused some confusion when I was emailing with No Sandals.)

I don't get what the problem is. There's an "other" category, right?

Thanks, whitey. There's always an "other" category, but their enumerated categories make no sense.

Thanks, ogged.

In other news, I urge you all not to pour boiling water on your hands.

I'm not that dumb and insensitive, Xerxes. This was my favorite post in quite some time.

Their enumerated categories make perfect sense. They have the Asian nations most represented among middle-to-upper-class Americans, and kept the Asian/Pacific Islander so that white guys and Vietnamese, Thai, and Filipina women can still get together. Yes, the Arab thing excludes a lot of other Middle Eastern peoples, but what Persian mother is going to be happy at the prospect of her son on eHarmony anyway? I bet that the Pakistani population is also small enough that they felt it didn't warrant inclusion.

How are you typing, SB?

What did you expect from a site that advertises that it'll help you meet your "soulmate"?

Besides, the people who will get bent out of shape over the list of ethnicities are all on Nerve, OKCupid, or possibly Match.com, anyway. Gotta know your target market.

that is to say, ;^))))p*

Unfogged consensus: you're just looking for something to be upset about, Ogged.

most represented among middle-to-upper-class Americans

That's what I was figuring: they probably have a pretty good sense of their market. But I'm still outraged, dammit.

33: To find out that Whitey doesn't want you? I can't believe this is news.

For you, Ogged.

I'm most outraged on behalf of Bangladeshis. If it's not global warming, it's fucking eharmony.

You should update your Nerve profile to say that you tried eHarmony but couldn't accept the inability to designate yourself as Persian, and thank god for people who understand the complexities involved. I predict at least 25% more emails.

I don't actually have profiles up on any of these sites, Jake.

identifiably interracial couples

Some of those who may choose the "other" category can probably make a couple interracial all by themselves.

Whoa? No Nerve, no Match, no OKCupid? What else is there? MySpace?

How are you typing, SB?

My hand ("hands" was to coordinate with the second person plural) is mostly better now, but for a while I was flying solo. By which I mean, typing one-handed.

The other big ones that I can think of are Plenty Of Fish and Yahoo personals.

38

he sticks with the full frontal view

40: What do you think this blog is for?

ogged's actually married, guys. he does all this just for us.

link to a previous discussion

Everything is a put-on. Nothing is a put-on. Boil my hands.

I have to admit that I'm fairly impressed by the young folk's comfort at using things like Nerve, CL, etc.

Some of those who may choose the "other" category can probably make a couple interracial all by themselves.

Indeed. But as noted above, I think this is all about eHarmony knowing its market.

Btw, does anybody know whether it is only old East Coast cities that still have defined neighborhoods where there tend to be more interracial couples? I am wondering whether this persists into the Midwest and West.

Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble;
Fingers burn and comment double.

Whither your blog, eb?

What's with the third degree?

I just always assumed that Ogged was BitchPhd's bf.

My curiosity bubbled over.

Third-degree burn. From BOILING.

boilpwned

51: Whither s/b wither - I got tired of it. If I post again I'll probably start up at another url. I seem to be treating blogs like physical spaces, moving from one to another, giving each with a slightly different character while still carrying over a few things from the earlier ones.

with

Gotcha.

Meanwhile, moving from one physical place to another is such a pain.

FWIW, I met my wife on eHarmony. People have varying levels of success with it, but I think that you really have to be committed to the idea of meeting your life partner and doing the work (ugh) to see if you're truly compatible.

Happily, we are. But only enough to the point that sometimes I wonder if indeed the good Dr. Warren's algorithm was all wrong for us. How did I get to be the neat one in a relationship? That's all wrong.

61: Dude, if it works, it works. That's great.

I think 'other' would be kinda sexy, in a mysterious sort of way, ogged.

Froz, would you please email me immediately? I need a favor.

God, she's insatiable.

i know somebody who got rejected by eharmony. it was completely deserved.

53: He is, but see 65--the man just can't keep up.

still have defined neighborhoods where there tend to be more interracial couples

I don't know about defined neighborhoods, but there is evidence that racial steering still takes place. (Note: I have not read the article.) Judging from the experience of a couple I know when they bought a house a few years ago (in the West), it's probably not a coincidence that there's another interracial couple across the street from them.

64: Oops, email is bitchphd at yahoo.

I took the test to see if it would kick me out. It did.

Apparently the thirteen thousand questions* intended to determine if a woman thinks she is obliged to be submissive weeded me out.

I used a fake email address though. From the Becks example I am glad I did.

* the test goes on longer than an undergraduate education, for anyone who hasn't taken it.

God, she's insatiable

Sigh. Happens all the time.

37, 25% of 0 is still 0.

If eHarmony's quiz only weeds out 10%, then they must be testing for signs of teh gay.

Thanks, Tim. It's gotten to the point where I don't really think about how I met her. She's great and potentially even perfect for me.

As for the test, it's painfully long. I seem to recall it taking 45 minutes and I'm a fast test taker. Matter of fact, the entire process (pre-test, paying, using the software) is pretty painful and offers a pretty significant barrier to entry itself.

Supposedly, the test is designed to pick out people who lie (amongst other things) I seem to recall in some article (USNWR?) that there's a question "True or false: I read all the information that comes with my prescriptions". A 'true' answer flags you for suspicion, 'cause nobody actually does that.

I also recall being asked my height -- I wondered if they sent me only candidates who were as tall or shorter than I.

EHarmony only matches women with taller men.

Then I'm with ogged -- fuck you, eHarmony.

And there's Arab but no Middle-Eastern? Turks, Kurds, Iranians, Armenians are...what? White?

Duh, yeah. Just ask any of 'em from the Old Country. You degenerate nth generation types don't count.

Aaaah. Thanks, Becks. Now I'm wondering if there's some really tall chick that I'm SUPPOSED to be with.

One more thing: my experience is a bit old (>3 years), but I think that if you sign up and they do their initial search, it'll pop up with nothing. So, so, so depressing. Then, you'll log in the next day and you'll have matches.

Man, the hideous things I am finding out about myself tonight! Until this evening I assumed that everyone failed that test, because no one I know has passed it.

I'm going to have to have a bunch more people take it, just to see what happens.

Speaking of height, it's really amazing (to me) how important it is to most of the women on craigslist.

re: 79

We've discussed it before, I believe. And also the wierd standard for what counts as 'short' [which is roughly analogous to some of the less realistic male desiderata vis a vis body shapes, weight, etc.].

Yeah, I think I vaguely remember that. It's just pretty striking to see how many women write things like "I'm 5'7 and I like to wear heels, so you better be over 6 feet!!!"

I definitely remember Tia once describing me as "tall," which was also surprising since I'm really not.

Sometimes I wonder (being one of these guys) if there are those who are just disadvantaged in the dating/marriage game in modern America and who are getting hooked up by the internet. It seems like there are those folks who have bf/gfs all through middle school, high school and college and then boom, they're married. They don't need the internet.

The short, geeky, nerdy, well, you just have to wait. (And wait and wait and wait.)

Here.

I've been described as short, which is amsuing/annoying as I'm 5ft 10.

But yeah, a lot of girls will say things like 'Average or a bit taller than average' and then when asked, it'll turn out they mean '6ft 2'-ish. Which is about as realistic as 'I'd like my girlfriend to be average weight, you know, around 115lbs'.

I'm also about 5'10"; I've never been described as "short," but I've only rarely been described as "tall" either. Both sound sort of odd as descriptions of me.

It's all relative. I have a bunch of friends who are in the 6'2"-6'4" range, and the ones who are 5'11" always complain about feeling short.

But I support the rights of people to have unrealistic standards. Encourage it, even.

I've never been described as "short,"

You're not missing out on anything, but if you think you are, I'm sure Labs would be willing to remedy the deficiency.

Don't worry, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not being short.

I see that Ogged couldn't be bothered to stand up for the Kurds, ethnofascist.

I did once get into a correspondence with the London Borough of Camden on the subject of their wildly eccentric racial impact monitoring forms - the guy who (initially) responded to my emails could not come up with any remotely convincing reason why it might have been thought that Greek Cypriots would be differentially impacted compared to Turkish Cypriots by the positioning of a speedbump in Arlington Road.

I've never been described as "short,"

I've often been described as "lacking in girth", which I really don't understand as I have a 35 inch waist.

I apologise unreservedly for #90 - it appears that Ogged did stand up for the Kurds, the bloody tokenist.

Hey, I used to know someone who used to tick "Chinese" and "African" on all those forms despite being neither.

sorry, pretend I never said #90 or #92, the good old Wikipedia article "Ethnic Minorities In Iran" has come up trumps for me ...

I see Ogged couldn't be bothered to stand up for the Baluchis, bloody ethnofascist

I see Ogged couldn't be bothered to stand up for the Azeris, bloody ethnofascist

I see Ogged couldn't be bothered to stand up for the Assyrians, bloody ethnofascist

I see Ogged couldn't be bothered to stand up for the Bakhtiaris, bloody ethnofascist

I see Ogged couldn't be bothered to stand up for the Qashqai, bloody ethnofascist

I see Ogged couldn't be bothered to stand up for the Gilakis and/or Mazandaranis, bloody ethnofascist

sorry, that's what I meant to say first time.

Despite never having done any of them, I am in favor of internet dating, speed dating, and all of the other new-fangled ways to meet people.

You have the opportunity to meet people you never would have meet.

If some of the experiences are stupid (eharmony) or biased, you cannot get too bent about it. So is dating without the use of the computer.

There are probably statistics out there, but we tend to meet those with similar interests and cultural backgrounds. I simply wouldnt have interacted with a Phelps-obsessed, lifeguard-stalking, intern-bashing Iranian without the internet.

I once filled in a monitoring form on a job application which had some varieties of Asian and Afro-Caribbean, Irish, White, Other. That pissed me off.

From the link in 74:

The older and more educated a person is - particularly the woman - the harder she is to match, Warren says.

Yeah, fuck you twice over, eHarmony.

97:

Is that really Eharmony's fault?

Sometimes, this website makes me very sad.

100!

I agree with 98.

I definitely remember Tia once describing me as "tall," which was also surprising since I'm really not.

Often muddled thinkers use the word "tall" to mean "thin. Sometimes "thin and taller than I am".

94: D^2 didn't bother to stick up for the Lur. He'll live to regret this.

Asian and Afro-Caribbean, Irish, White, Other

I wanted to write an article about the entire class of Irish social workers and civil servants in London who had basically built their entire careers on the premis that the Irish were a downtrodden and low-achieving ethnic minority, and how they coped with the very rapid decline of the helping-the-poor-and-feckless-Oirish industry. The presence of "Irish" on those forms is basically an anachronism, albeit one that still has a sizeable producer group lobby in favour of its maintenance.

103: there was an article in the Irish Times the other day (behind their stupid paywall here) which mentioned that (a) many many people who could tick "Irish" on these forms actually don't, as they're one of the more integrated groups in British society (b) if anything the Irish are underrepresented in the poorer sectors of UK society. People like this are a disappearing phenomenon.

Money isn't everything. They're still lazy and dirty, like the supposed Welsh.

I actually live in a street that was an Irish ghetto as recently as the 1970s, complete with three families to a room, "Irish twins" in the local schools, sons turning up for each others' court appearances and all the other sitcom features and Exile cliches. There was an exhibition at our local museum a while back which had some clippings from the local paper in the 50s, where the local magistrate sternly admonished a youth who'd been let off with a caution for affray to "Try To Be As Un-Irish As Possible". There are still a couple of lovely old boys in the pubs (and more distressingly, on the streets) who remember those days ...

103: On the subject of minorities you're surprised to learn ever needed help in the first place, I remember being confused when I read All the President's Men and one of the dirty tricks discussed was the "canuck letter". One of Nixon's people made it look like one of Nixon's rivals had used the term, which cost him big when New Hampshire were offended. Possibly the only time I've heard the word "canuck" is in comic books starring Wolverine, and yet, apparently, it was an actual ethnic slur, at least in the northeast U.S. Who knew?

This is funny because two of my grandparents were Quebecois.

My friend from Calgary uses "Canuck", though not in a derogatory voice.

Also isn't there some Canajun sports team called the Canucks?

Here in Minnesota there's a scattering of French surnames, most of which must trace back to before statehood (1859 I think). There's no ethnic consciousness to speak of (except that supposedly there are still French speakers in one county up north), but one time when I asked someone about their name they got a little touchy, as if it was a sore point. Basically they're a local version of redneck, more or less indistinguishable from other old redneck families.

Some sports team

I'm most outraged on behalf of Bangladeshis.

#36 gets it exactly right. If it isn't fucking George Harrison, it's Neil Clark Warren. The Bangladeshis can't catch a break.

97: I'd speculate that this is perhaps because the more life-experience and education a woman has, the more she knows what she wants and the less willing she is to settle for anything less.

But that may just be self-serving analysis.

My head is in a bit of a spin at the revealed knowledge of the existence of a CAP, and at his or her #99. It makes me want to apologize for the boorishness of my compatriots. Please don't forsake us, CAP!

(Actually a way better acronym for that handle: CAP'n.)

113:

Good points. The point that older, more educated women are harder to match does not necessarily mean that they are less desirable. It could also mean that they are unwilling to be with an uneducated man.

All of this is fine for me. It simply means that there is a glut of educated women in their 40s and above. Ogged and his ilk can have all the 22 year old girls they want.

Not all crackers are stupid !!

Let us log off, you and I
When eharmony tells us to buzz off and die
Like an ethnic, otherized or called disabled

Warren actually comes off a little better than I expected in this interview.

He got 212 matches, she got five - testament to the fact that Eharmony has 60% women and 40% male members. The older and more educated a person is - particularly the woman - the harder she is to match, Warren says

Surely Di is right about some of this, and also people's preferences, in the aggragate, height, fertility, etc., may bemuse us but people are entitled to them.

It's not eHarmony's fault, in one sense. Presumably they're just giving the men in search of young, submissive wives who aren't intellectually threatening what they want; just filling a bit of the demand. Nerve and other places don't have that same picket-fence vibe, so part of it is, if you're not looking for the picket fence vibe, don't try for eHarmony.

On the other hand, gah, who wants to be guy responsible for perpetuating a bunch of sexist bullshit? And of course it's their fault; the algorithm for the test didn't fall down from on high. Market share, schmarket share.

My score:

1 salon personals account, $10 spent
1 jdate account, never activated

15 women contacted
1 immediate response resulting in a fun date resulting in a new friend
1 polite decline
12 no response at all
1 interested response, followed by mysterious silence, followed after a month by the revelation that the service was hiding our emails from one another, followed by three weeks of thwarted attempts to meet, followed by currently very happy relationship.

I learned quickly that you call salon personals "nerve personals" 'cuz it's cooler.

Cala:

Is that really the issue? Or is it simply that there are more older educated women on these sites and not enough educated men?

There was a speed dating session in Richmond where the women spots filled up immediately, but they had to hunt for men.

Those are supply/demand issues, not sexist/submissive issues.

Yeah, I don't get the eHarmony hating. It's not like the company is a dating licensing board; you're allowed to date around without its prior approval. They provide a service; it's not the only such service.

It is hard to find a fit for "bald, not very ambitious, pudgy, lives with mom."

Or, so I've been told.

In the article, Warren says he and his wife divided over Bush/Gore, although it didn't threaten their marriage. Care to guess who was whose preference?

Yea, but who can ever agree on hairy, scary movies.

123: Tim, the "just change the channel" rule confounds the task of hating in an open society.

hating is so enjoyable sometimes though.

Last night, I was listening to Everclear. "I will be hating you for Christmas!"

Anomalous experiences like Wrongshore's lead everyone astray, just as the odd lottery winner makes everyone think that they can win.

followed after a month by the revelation that the service was hiding our emails from one another

Er, why? Was this a technical snafu, or were they actually deliberately attempting to reduce their own success rate?

Hey, you gotta play to win, John.

Emerson:
Everyone can win! You just have to define what a win is.

Personally, I think people should be proud of a 5 year marriage.

123: Sure, and that's why it's not a huge deal, since I don't think I've said that I'm not allowed to date without eHarmony's approval. But I do think the excuse "we're just filling a market share" only goes so far. It's not like being profitable entails that you're morally acceptable.

Good lord, who doesn't read all of the information that comes with their prescription medications?

And drive the speed limit!

and yet, apparently, it was an actual ethnic slur, at least in the northeast U.S. Who knew?

People of French-Canadian background in New England remain quite aware of this. Trust me.

124 -- Entire sitcoms have been written on that premise.

eharmony only found one match for me, and it was a guy who clearly stated in his description that he dislikes reading. He went on about it: he just doesn't like to read, he doesn't get it, he just doesn't find it interesting.

Given that I'm a grad student in literature (which did come up somewhere in the questions), that sunk any hope I'd had in the site's schmancy match-up system.

But what's unacceptable about it? This is one of the areas where I find myself most sympathetic to conservatives. We're talking about a service intended to help people in the most intimate, private, and meaningful areas of their lives, and there seems to be some sense in which people are not content to say, "OK, not for me," but also want to say, "And not for you either, if you're a good person." And suddenly I can see why conservatives think that it's not so much that they're trying to kill America as it has been constituted under 100+ years of basically liberal rule as that we keep pursuing them as they keep retreating. If the conduct were really outrageous, perhaps I could make sense of it. But it's not, really. And women who wear gingham granny dresses and the men who love them get lonely, too.

130: New business model. You pay it money to prevent you from contacting people who are interested in you. Frustration is built into all successful consumer interactions, but that was taking it a bit far.

I guess it must have been a technical snafu. I wrote her one letter, got an interested response. I wrote her a second, waited a week, nothing, wrote her a third. Two weeks later, she writes back, "Did I scare you off?" I did some fiddling* -- pressed the "Show all messages from this user" -- and it brought up a note I'd never seen, with her phone number.

*Go for it.

I wrote her a second, waited a week, nothing, wrote her a third.

Pussy.

140: Initial response must have been truly impressive for you to go to all that trouble. Congratulations.

136: Not all of us, apparently.

Pussy.

Your studious avoidance of the appearance of pussyhood has resulted in dates, has it?

I answer to a higher calling.

Funny wins every time.

Wrongshore is just a funny dude. He clearly made her laugh.

She probably said, "He is still married, old, living with his mom, smokes, dislikes sex, is a drug addict who won't share his drugs, reads nothing but porn. But, DAMN, he makes me laugh. I should date him!"

What Ogged meant was that Wrongshore should have sent the question to the Mineshaft and waited for instructions.

142: Yes ... also, if you look at my record, it's not like I had a lot else going on. While I was coming up goose eggs, I started asking women for their phone numbers IRL. I got a lot of phone numbers from women who didn't call me back.

(Somewhat pwned by SB in 144)

I answer to a higher calling.

You should at least take holy orders and get the credit.

The old Bridgeplate would have known that 141 is a joke; has the new Bridgeplate seen this not-very-sympathetic Slate diary about the writer's stay at a monastery?

I hadn't. I stopped reading Slate around the time they redid the site to be uglier and harder to navigate.

Was slate pretty at one time?

The younger, prettier Slate.

151: me too. This format is really irritating.

Whereas I am sad at this thread, Mrs. Closely Associated Person reports that she is pissed off at it.

This thread is going to get it now.

143: Age and exact locale may have something to do with it. It was only a little over 10 years ago that the "Frenchie" character was driven off of Maine radio due to protests, for instance. And as the original comment pointed out, the Canuck letter was a major political scandal. I heard the term used as a slur in college, myself, though I'd say I haven't much since then.

She probably said, "He is still married, old, living with his mom, smokes, dislikes sex, is a drug addict who won't share his drugs, reads nothing but porn. But, DAMN, he makes me laugh. I should date him!"

You act like there's something wrong with that.

I do appreciate not being able to click on any of the current day's article links at Slate when using Firefox (although I can get to most of them by the expanding top-left sidebar thing). I thought Slate wasn't affiliated with Microsoft anymore.

Hmm, more details about Megan's mysterious crush.

Of course, who could blame other New Englanders, living as they did with the fear that we'd rise up and join our frères to the north, then secede and make everyone worship the Pope. Even the Irish couldn't threaten that.

155: Seriously? Why? It seems relatively anodyne. Unless, of course Mrs. CAP is Bangladeshi.

Mmm. I am confused by CAP. I don't like to offend, but I'm not getting it.

In "Travels With Charley" Steinbeck describes hanging out with some poverty-stricken migrant workers who come across the border for a few months, live in shoddy accomodations and pick crops while being victimized by prejudice and an inability to get the police to act on their behalf. They were French Canadians, picking potatoes.

Because it makes it sound like the people who use eharmony are reactionary and unthinking. Which is totally true! Take that, Person! Wooo!!

Like what Tim said in 139? I can see that as an objection, but I can't see getting either sad or pissed about it.

Aren't there some dirty Canuck workers in Farmer Boy? The bit where they carve up the ice for the icehouse?

This country was built by mail-order brides. I don't think that we should jettison a major part of our national tradition for no good reason.

I'm sure that Natasha, who is completely devoted to me, will completely agree if she ever learns English, or if I learn Ukrainian or Armenian or whatever language it is that she speaks.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers isn't about mail order brides, but if you want insight into the powerful, no-nonsense American culture of 60 years ago or so, you should read the synopsis.

I think 3, 70, and 120 are porbably the offending comments.

157: True. I'm a prime target for that slur "by the numbers," so to speak, but in practice, not so much. I've lived almost all my life in Vermont... but I'm only 24, and both my parents were born out of state. Two grandparents were from Quebec and their first language was French... but they were both very assimilated, as far as I know. I speak French... but not with a Canadian accent.

169: Oh, fair enough. Yeah, I could see that.

For more on the oppression of French Canadians, read White Niggers of America. They don't do hunger strikes and bombings anymore, but the resentment is still there.

Vermont periodically votes to break with the US on town meeting day, but there's always the threat that a newly-independent country with a large French-Canadian population might be subsumed into Quebec by Anchluss.

I grew up there too, Cyrus. Where in Vermont are you?

The old Bridgeplate would have known that 141 is a joke

I knew it was a joke, old chap. I'm just trying to raise the cost of making it.

The old Bridgeplate wouldn't have done that, I suppose; but sic transit bridgeplatica.

Nice try, Newplate, but if it's a joke, one might convincingly argue that it raises the cost of making such a comment in earnest.

Middlebury, at the moment. Where did you grow up?

The town of Sutton Junction, Quebec, right across the border from Vermont, may have been founded by a Revolutionary War draft-dodger ancestor of mine. It was originally named "Emerson".

So, basically, Ogged = CAP = EHarmony Employee??!?!

Wow. It all makes sense now.

Y'all are making me feel guilty for marrying more or less within my own ethnic group.

176: Charlotte. My mom has since moved to the Northeast Kingdom (Hardwick and Craftsbury).

Y'all are making me feel guilty for marrying more or less within my own ethnic group.

Indeed. You could have married an African village for only 60 cents per day.

if it's a joke, one might convincingly argue that it raises the cost of making such a comment in earnest.

I said I knew it was a joke, that is, a prompt for lolz. I didn't say you weren't kidding. This blog is only slightly less opposed to the pussification of the Western male than Kim Dutoit.

This blog is only slightly less opposed

RESOLVED: This blog is chock-full of Sensitive, New-Aged Guys.

I mean really, besides w-lfs-n, who?

"RESOLVED: This blog is chock-full of Sensitive, New-Aged Guys."

When I turn 40, does that make me "new-aged"?

They don't do hunger strikes and bombings anymore, but the resentment is still there.

The last mill my grandmother and father worked in closed after a bombing there. No one was ever caught. The ATMs in the town there offer English and French as the language options, which is always a kick.

I don't like to offend, but I'm not getting it.

Obviously, CAP is Dr. Warren. And Mrs. CAP is Bangladeshi. Or maybe CAP is really Paul McCartney.

I mean really, besides w-lfs-n, who?

No, w-lfs-n is sui generis. I put it to you that what you see as DuToititude is in fact the passion of the SNAG who daily enacts decency, civility, fairmindedness prompted not by force except it be force of his own conscience.

Hang on, is "DuToit" a pun?

I thought it was "Kim" that was the funny part.

181: I laughed.

"Kim" is a man's name in Britain, like "Whitney", "Leslie", and "Bernice".

Kim and Lee are the most neutral names, and Kim Lee would be the most neutral person. Any race or gender.

Lee Kim would seem Korean or Chinese, though.

John Wayne was christened "Marion," but grew up preferring his nickname "Daisy."

"Kim", by the author of "Gunga Din".

"Beverly" is a man's name in some areas, though the only one I've ever heard of was Republican Party functionary and pervert.

John Wayne was a fag.

"Beverly" is also a man in The Man Who Came to Dinner. A very, very effeminate man.

My sister was named after my grandfather. His name is a boy's name in Wales but a girl's name here. Of course the most recent of his ancestors to actually live in Wales was about five generations earlier, so he did get made fun of.

John Wayne was a fag.

He was, too, you boys. I installed two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood, and he come to the door in a dress.

His name is a boy's name in Wales but a girl's name here.

Elspeth?

pwned.

Robin?

Llewellyn?

I like Robin as a man's name.

203: Me too; it's my favorite nickname for Robert. I also like all those girly nicknames for Alexander.

"Elspeth" is just a variant of Elizabeth, no?

I don't think "Llewellyn" has ever been common in the US, for boys or girls.

any more guesses?

Llareggub?

I have a cousin who changed his name from Lindsay to a more 'manly' name as he was embarrassed by it.

But Sue Ellen is pretty common. (And Lou Ellen also surprisingly so.)

Lou Ellen is what I had in mind. Hmm... maybe some variant of Gwen/Gwion? Gwynfardd, perhaps.

Robyn is my favorite (male) musician's name. One of his former bandmates, also male, is named Kimberly. Neither of them is Welsh but both are British.

OT: Hey you guys want to know what is really good? Liverwurst and cucumber on sour rye bread, that's what.

(the "but" in 210 might not be serving any useful purpose.)

I was verbally introduced to a Fionnuala, probably the first time I've ever met someone and had absolutely no idea how to spell her name.

Finn-oo-lah?

re: 213

Gaelic names are like that in general.

Mhairi looks not too bad written down, but you'd never connect the spelling with the pronunciation unless you already knew.

Nobody seems to have followed up on the footnote to Wrongshore's 140.

There's no room for Celts on eharmony.

98: 120 partly covered it, but what bugs me the most about eHarmony is not just that they say that educated women are hardest to match, but that they claim that their matching is backed by Science. The implication is that social science is free of bias and that smart, mature women are scientifically proven to be unmarriageable. Yes, there are cultural biases involved when people choose partners, but at the same time winnie's 70 leaves me little doubt that the biases in eHarmony's matching go beyond that.

It's kind of the dating website equivalent of that lame Newsweek story in the '80s claiming that Science proves that women over 40 are more likely to die in a terrorist attack that get hitched. If you're in that demographic, having a rough time of dating, it has to hurt to be told that it's not just the day-to-day sexist BS you deal with, it's actual Science that makes you objectively unsuitable for a long-term relationship.

Disclaimer: some of this is ex recto since I've never used a dating website -- not because I have anything against the idea, or that I think that women who have had success with eHarmony are all submissive little gingham-dressed dupes, but that I was taken before these sites became big business.

re: 217

That's all right. They are too busy gazing majestically out over heather-clad hillsides to fill out the forms.

218:

But who is biased? the men picking women or the women picking the men? Isnt an older more educated woman going to be more selective?

Do you guys still paint yourself blue? That's a custom I could endorse.

My sister was named after my grandfather. His name is a boy's name in Wales but a girl's name here.

I could be your sister. I'll bet she gets a lot of mail addressed to Mr. Hername, especially mail related to manly pursuits such as wine, sports journalism or home ownership.

Conversely, my grandfather had a man's name that started becoming a very common name for little girls around the time he died. We all kind of wish he'd lived long enough to see the trend because of the conniptions he'd no doubt throw over it.

I could be your sister. I'll bet she gets a lot of mail addressed to Mr. Hername, especially mail related to manly pursuits such as wine, sports journalism or home ownership.

No, no, the idea of her name belonging to a boy is very odd these days in the US.

(it's Mere/dith)

220: I'm under every impression that the "older" and "more educated" are (in many cases) pulling against each other in determining the woman's level of selectivity.

As far as who is biased, I'm not sure I even undersand the question as worded, but I think there's a lot more middle-aged men rejecting available similarly-aged women than the reverse. But that could be a false impression. But it's certainly held true for most of the limited sample of people I know.

218, 220: Yeah, I'm still sticking to the idea that "harder to match" means "more selective" and not "less desirable." Kind of like how when you're 19 you'll happily swig Boone's, but in your mid-30's you'd rather hold out for that exclusive stuff they serve in Will's commune.

Do you guys still paint yourself blue?

I thought those were Picts.

I'm not sure I even undersand the question as worded, but I think there's a lot more middle-aged men rejecting available similarly-aged women than the reverse.

If that's true--and I'm pretty suspicious of it--I would think it might be that said middle-aged men want to have kids, and their chances are better with younger women.

224a I can't figure out what you are saying here -- pulling against each other how?

227 -- That's not a bad theory, though it would have to narrow the field to "younger but not too young." I'd think for guys wanting kids, the ideal market is the woman approaching 40 with a loudly ticking clock. The added advantage there is that the more loudly the clock starts ticking, the less selective said woman will become.

220: No clue. But if the stats here are any indication, smart women aren't as tough to marry off as Warren implies, and the ones who are having a hard go of it don't need to hear any more people telling them that if only they were less independent they'd have a husband.

Maybe I am jaded, but I always viewed the "men don't want a smart, educated woman" as being similar to "women don't want a nice guy."

I suspect that all of the dating sites would indicate that men have it easier than women in all categories.

I just signed my divorce papers. It's easier than it looked at first, and suckier than expected. My wife had a man's name, but not one in much circulation outside of The Third Man.

It seems to me that people who get irritated by social statistics like the "greater chance of being hit by lightening" (which was false, IIRC) thing or similar are those that it is least likely to be true about. The vast majority of the country's population does not look much like the Unfogged population, and I suspect that statistics start looking fairly different when you break groups out by education, income, location, penis size, etc.

Sorry and congrats, Wrongshore. But it sounds like you've found a nice chickie and moved on.

223: Huh. My name is almost as unusual for American men to have as your sister's, yet I magically morphed to a Mr. on all the mortgage come-ons I've gotten since I refinanced. I could also do without the sample issues of creepy lad mags.

Thanks, and there is that. Plus it only took me 84 comments' time. I'll report back in 6 months when the court approves.

232 -- any man with your ex-wife's name will be in for a lot of teasing in this country and day and age.

Congrats Wrongshore. It is sucky and a pain in the ass. But it gets better.

New hovertext--w-lfs-n or further evidence that SB has greater access than previously suspected?

228: by pulling against each other all I meant was that in this case more education often tends to make more selective and older often tends to make less selective.

Thanks, will. Your merrily suspended disbelief in the institution of marriage gives tonic and perspective.

Also...guess what?

Woot! I was waiting for July to post about that. What can you reveal?

can someone googleproof the name in 223 please? I don't know what I was thinking.

I'll pay pal you $50 if you answer "Mooooooo" to any question.

Now I feel bad about 3; it was merely intended as the setup for a joke at Ogged's expense. eHarmony has a well-defined market, which they seem to describe pretty well with their soulmate stuff.

I suspect that all of the dating sites would indicate that men have it easier than women in all categories.

I don't see any particular reason to think that dating sites would be much different than the world at large.

240 Ah, gotcha now. That makes sense, though I'm not sure how true it is. Maybe older just makes mor conflicted -- torn between "I'll take anybody at this point," and "Well, except hi. And him. And definitely not HIM"

I suspect you'd have to dig pretty fucking deep into google's search results before 223 would show up as a result for any word contained therein.

In the interest of maintaining anonymity, I will tell folks over e-mail. Alas, I was not able to get Alex to address me by my nom du unfogged. I realize that crimps the style hereabouts, but it was either that or not say which person I was.

246: I think the thought process you just described is exactly the stereotypical older and more educated pulling against each other that I was talking about.

Wrongshore, just tell some witty anecdote about Unfogged in that opening bit where the contestant's tell Alex a witty anecdote about themselves.

I've always thought that the under 40 crowd was more desperate than the over 40.

227 - From the thing I linked in 74:

25% of men older than 50 say they only want to be set up with "fertile" women - that is, younger women in their 20s and 30s

249 -- This thought process applies to older guys, too, right?

That's from eHarmony's literature. Something about that rubs me the wrong way -- I can understand the desire of a man in his 50s wanting to have kids but I wouldn't want the descriptor "fertile" or "not fertile" applied to me.

Have you ever tried to tell another person about Unfogged? "I spend a lot of time on this blog when people expect me to be working ... no, not reading the posts so much as making fun of other people in the comments ... no, I've never actually met any of them ... where are you going?" Imagine that the person backing away in fear is actually, say, America.

I have enough ways of making an ass of myself without dragging you people into it.

247, yes but if you combine it with "named after my grandfather", which is something that sets her apart and we've referred to before...

Answer MOOOOOOO in a Sean Connery accent@!!!

I can just imagine their source code, with a candidate.isFertile() function.

253: I would think so. And it's of course just a generalization.

Wrongshore, don't tell anybody in email -- that would spoil the fun of the open thread dedicated to figuring out which one of the contestants it you.

Does EHarmony rate men and women differently based on their income or financial assets?

I suspect that the guys in 252 will largely end up disappointed. But then again, we clearly know people for whom is_fertile() will return "Yes, but not forever, so hurry your ass up already!" And it helps more or less everyone if people who are interested can find each other.

I can just imagine their source code, with a candidate.isFertile() function.

Takes me back to intro. physics, with "fres/hly impre/gnated" elephants traveling at relativistic speed.

Actually, slol, they're only Picts right up until before they paint themselves. After that they've been dePicted.

I haven't read their questionnaire, but surely "Are you fertile? [yes] [no] [maybe]" isn't a question, is it? They're probably just getting at this through age cutoffs.

isFertile()
is_fertile()

Fight!

Actually, I taped a month and a half ago. No "Mooo", but I did squeak at one point. And I called Alex "sir" a lot. And no, I'm not going to tell you how many shows I was on or how I did.

265 - That's why it's a function and not a flag in the database. Duh.

266: The result

Becks doesn't want to be thought of as "fertile", but admits that she wants her crescent plowed. Flip-flopper!

The right spellings are "isfertile()", "fertile?" or "fertile-p", depending on language, obviously.

Could someone googleproof the part of 263 between the quote marks?

Googlefight knows nothing. Quality over quantity. Python for the win!

Now that I think of it, actually, it would make sense if the Picts were so called because of their painty ways. Was that name given them by the Romans or is it autochthonous, does anyone know?

269 is a flawed adjudicator since Google is not case-sensitive.

If you're saying that you're on tonight, I predict that you won your first game.

Your mom's not case-sensitive. The result was 102 to 8 and you have to nitpick.

Rather than age, can we talk about how people apparently lie about their height on these sites? There's no way to keep this a secret beyond the first meeting. What can they hope to accomplish? Other than get flirty email, I guess.

SB, "f*****y-i*********d" is about the most innocuous google you can find, having to do with lumber treatment and such.

Not so quick, Jake. Quo' PEP 8, Python Style Guides:

Function names should be lowercase, with words separated by underscores as necessary to improve readability.

mixedCase is allowed only in contexts where that's already the prevailing style (e.g. threading.py), to retain backwards compatibility.

You're searching in the wrong place. isFertile vs is_fertile. Result: The former for functions, the latter for variables.

Done and done, SB.

Hey is this where I come to complain about the variable naming conventions of my company? And about the laxity with which they (imperfect as they assuredly are) are followed?

can we talk about how people apparently lie about their height on these sites?

Really? Drastically so, or fibbing an extra inch or two?

I broked it.

True. One of our engineers actually defended writing excessively terse code with no comments on the grounds that he wanted to match the existing style for that particular file.

We were so impressed by his audacity that we let it slide.

Go for it, clownman.

can we talk about how people apparently lie about their height on these sites? There's no way to keep this a secret beyond the first meeting. What can they hope to accomplish?

The concept of "getting a foot in the door" comes to mind.

Schemey languages seem so civilized.

Thanks, Ben.

287: I suppose, but selecting for people who will not want to talk to you once they learn the truth and driving away those who would be interested in the truth seems like a poor strategy.

If you need a whole foot, then it's probably a lost cause anyway.

I am somewhat turned off to lisp-family languages by the efforts of Paul Graham, who's intelligence and luck are exceeded only by his pomposity and overgeneralization from his own experience.

go for it, clownman

Thanks, young Ben. Actually just mentioning that I had complaints with the conventions seems to have satisfied my need to vent. The short version is, everything including function names should be all lower case with underscores and no Polish notation, except globally scoped variables which are to be named in camel case without underscores. Most bizarrely, mutex handles are the only exception to the no Polish notation rule, they have to begin with mlock or if they are global, with "Mlock".

re: 273

Wikipedia says:

The name by which the Picts called themselves is unknown. The Greek word Πικτοί (Latin Picti) first appears in a panegyric written by Eumenius in AD 297 and is taken to mean "painted or tattooed people" (Latin pingere "paint"). The Gaels of Ireland and Dál Riata called the Picts Cruithne

Which gels with my half-remembered school history stuff which may have vaguely touched on the pre-Malcolm history of Scotland.

Does Graham know the difference between a contraction and a possessive relative pronoun? Point in his favor if so.

"Mlock" is a good rival for "Banff".

"banff" would actually be really nice as a Polish prefix.

I'm sure that he does. His intelligence is difficult to exceed, after all.

Byte array ... uh ... I'm lost.

Wikipaedia lets me know that I have been confusing the adjectives, "Polish" and "Hungarian".

290: On the other hand, if you don't want to deal with someone so shallow that a harmless lie would outweigh e-mail exchanges that have gone well so far, claiming to be taller than you are might be the best way to handle it.

They're probably just getting at [fertility] through age cutoffs.

That and the question about whether you have breeding hips.

Other questions from EHarmony:

1. Do you agree to lose any pregnancy weight within 3 weeks? (except the breasts)

2. Women: Have you had fewer than 2 sexual partners?

3. Men: Have you had fewer than 20 sexual partners?

(alternate version uses "less than" based on educational responses.)

The problem with the height discussion is that it's all guys talking. The lady commenters should help out the celibate males here with tips on lying about their height.

How much can they get away with? Is it less important if despite the lie he's at least as tall as you? Instant deal breaker if the lie takes him from shorter than to greater than your height?

Karparthy? That dreadful Hungarian?

No, Simonyi.

303: Are you making that up? It is some wack shit.

Polish notation is what HP calculators use, right?

I think hungarian notation is a blight upon the field of software engineering, left over from the days when compilers were slow and dumb. But on the other hand, Simyoni went to the space station, which is kinda cool.

308a: yes. 308b: agreed on both points.

If I could get rid of one homonymic pair, it would be Polish and polish. That one gets me everytime.

Lots of men, maybe even most, IME, overstate their height by an inch or two. I wouldn't even call that a negative, just normal puffery. But I don't care that much about it.

I'm thinking these data sets, such-and-such percentage of older men say they want x, etc., would be good starting points for social-science research. Possibly by in-depth interviews?

I'd be interested in whether fertile should be taken straight, as a desire for children, or as a proxy for other qualities, for instance.

, overstate their height by an inch or two.

Yeah, "height."

When one has experience claiming that a certain organ comprises anywhere from 10% to 50% more inches than it actually does, one sees it as trivial to add a mere two inches to something (oneself) that already comprises 60-some inches. A drop in the bucket, so to speak.

More Women questions:

"How do you act when you have your period?"

"Do you feel that the men in your office are paid more than you?"

Men:

"Do you allow your female friends to walk home alone in the dark?"

"Do you open doors for women?"

"Do you believe in asking a woman's father for permission to marry her?"

other qualities

damp.

313/314: ask your gay friends about "AOL Inches".

311:

How do you know?

I think I routinely understate my height. Or at least the height I tell everyone I am is one inch less than the height that doctors consistently tell me I am when they measure me. But I'm convinced the doctors are overstating my height, for instance they don't always make me take off my shoes, which seems completely invalid. And I'm concerned that if I say I am the height that doctors measure me to be, someone will call bullshit and whip out a tape measure and measure me, I'll come up short and then everyone will think I was just lying as some sort of false puffery. I figure there's less risk of this happening if I just understate my height at the outset.

Having typed all that out, I acknowledge that it sounds sort of crazy.

I don't care about height, largely because everyone's tall to me, so I can't help you guys on this one. Maybe some of the other womenfolk will have something more useful to share.

319: Especially with your shoes.

everyone's tall to me

Ever since that accident with the transmogrifier?

The women in my family are all less than 5 feet. However, saying that to a very short woman, rather than encouraging familiarity, seemss sort of creepy.

321: A stilted man paradoxically walks taller than his unstilted counterparts.

Brock, it just seems that if someone turned over that particular stone a swarm of other neuroses would crawl out.

311: Just taking your Estimate a little further, do you think the tendency to overstate height is constant, or tends to diminish the taller the man?

Answer the question for "height, yeah right" only if you want, I'm actually only interested in the overt.

You people answer questions about height?

When someone asks, I just tell them what kind of car I drive.

what kind of car I drive

Is this intended as a euphemism for "my sexual preference"?

Wait, will, are those real questions from EHarmony in 303 and the other one?

329:

Gosh, I hope not.

"Is this intended as a euphemism for "my sexual preference"?"

No Clown, but when someone asks you how much you weigh, you should respond by grinding your hips against your hand, and saying "Me love you long time."

Unless it is your mother.

231

"I suspect that all of the dating sites would indicate that men have it easier than women in all categories."

I doubt it, I suspect young women are better off than young men and that the situation reverses for older women and older men.

330: Fooled me. Heh. There's no readiness like readiness to believe the worst.

Ever since that accident with the transmogrifier?

I really need to learn to ignore it when bottles have signs that say DRINK ME on them. Maybe after I've learned to ignore advice from Apo.

Polish notation is what HP calculators use, right?

I used an HP from middle school through college and loved RPN. But now, working on a computer all day I have no reason to carry around a calculator.

This makes me realize, however, that I do use the default windows calculator often enough to hate it. If anyone knows of a freeware calc app that has a stack and uses RPN it would make me very happy.

326: Probably diminishes for really tall guys (like, I doubt Labs claims to be taller than he is), but I run into guys who are already fairly tall - 6'0" or so - who claim to be an inch or two taller.

So at some level of tall enough, disappears. But doesn't diminish gradually. A sawtooth, not a curve?

This is all impression, expectation, estimation. But you think like this as much as I do, so I thought it a fair question to sharpen the impression.

336: You're talking about ogged, right? I knew it!

335, the only one I use is dc but if you don't already use it you can probably find your own. Wikipedia links to many RPN calculators from its page on the subject.

Thanks. I realized, as I was posting, that there are a bunch I can find with google, but the real question is whether anyone has used and likes them.

Wikipedia seems like a sufficiently reliable source.

Is there a windows port of dc?

Has anyone used XCALC? That looks like the most promising Windows version on the wikipedia page.

Google also turns up Excalibur

336

Part of this may be due to the natural shrinkage as you age. If you used to be 6'3" it is natural to go on saying you are 6'3" even if you are now 6'2".

343: Nah, I noticed this in high school when I was responsible for ordering graduation robes, which are sized on height. I just took the forms, rather than editing them, but there were a whole bunch of 17-18 year old guys graduating in robes that were closer to floor length than ankle length.

Aging doesn't even count as puffery -- I'd call my father honest claiming to be 6'2", because I've seen him be that height, even if he's a bit shorter now.

341 -- It is pretty easy to install Cygwin on a windows machine, and voila! dc! and many other useful tools!

A friend of mine met a guy on a dating site who'd shaved ten years off his real age. When she found out the truth he explained that he felt much younger than he actually was, so the only way to meet compatible women was to lie about it. She dumped him.

I tend to subtract a year and add an inch. But I feel guilty about it.

Were I to date, I'd at 2" in both places and subtract 11 years. That would be the only right thing to do.

Don't do either one. It's really dumb and makes you come off as insecure and self-absorbed.

349: says the woman who has driven almost all the men she's had sex with to apologize for their inadequacy

I am insecure and self-absorbed, of course. Also, if you don't lie to people they think that you don't care about them.

350: Driven, ST? Unkind.

When she found out the truth he explained that he felt much younger than he actually was, so the only way to meet compatible women was to lie about it. She dumped him.

If he got her into bed first, then it was totally worth it.

353: That's what I'm saying, though, is that you may feel younger than you are, but showing up a decade older than you say will not get you laid. It might just get you met. It was always my strategy to post slightly unflattering pictures, etc., so that all my dates would say, "Oh, damn, you're a lot prettier than I expected" and then have sex with me.

354: This is a good strategy.

I can pass for a mere 49.

I can pass for a mere 49.

49 what?

218 sounds like that "hooked up" or "knocked up" or whatever book you all feminists were talking about recently.

353: I'm pretty sure she did sleep with him first, but I don't think he thought it was worth it. Apparently he really was looking for love, and expected my friend to understand and sympathise with what he'd done.

as a 49er. Gold and red.

if that how he really felt, it hardly seems like lying.

Did I really write "don't think he thought"? Urgh.

49 on a scale of 50.

354: The one at Unfogged/Flickr is too pretty for that strategy. I like honest, unflattering self-portraits, like the late Reynolds' ones you've probably studied.

Apparently he really was looking for love, and expected my friend to understand and sympathise with what he'd done.

But if he'd been honest, she probably never would have gone out with him. At least the lie got him some sex.

He might also have gotten sex if he had been honest, too—maybe even with someone who, though his age, also felt ten years younger.

Tips for the ladies.

"All of you must be acquainted with at least one woman who is a guy magnet...So, what does she have that the rest of you don't? Hint: Think effective body language, positive nonverbal and verbal communication, healthy self-esteem, and an ability and willingness to assertively use these to make the right connection."

He might also have gotten sex if he had been honest, too--maybe even with someone who, though his age, also felt ten years younger.

Yeah, "might". Lying is tried and true.

Okay, gswift, what kinds of lies will get me laid?

"Of course I can see myself marrying a girl like you."

Teo, the point isn't to know the lies in the abstract. The point is to say them directly to girls. As long as you are talking to real live girls, you might as well be your own self, because I know you are charming and I have read that you are attractive enough. Don't bother with lies. Just talk to them.

"I've never done anything like this before."

"When I have kids, I want it to be with someone like you."

"No, I'm not an undercover cop."

371: I know, I'm just needling gswift.

372: I said lies.

"I always read all the information that comes with my prescriptions."

374 speaks volumes about ben.

I have read that you are attractive enough

There are pictures, you know.

I'm telling you, go after those religious chicks. Have you seen those "abstinence only" studies? The jesus freaks really dig oral and anal.

Do they dig Jews?

Maybe that's where the lying comes in.

Now you're getting it.

Go forth young man, and tap some ass.

367: My understanding is that "guy magnets" are attractive enough (not model-beutiful), cheerful, friendly, and above all, approachable and accepting. They also have to have a knack for blowing off jerks without making them mad. being a guy magnet would not be an unmixed blessing.

Chick magnets are confident, etc.

Probably telling women how to be guy-magnets is about as futile as telling guys that they should be confident.

78: Winna, eHarmony rejected me too. I may have said that I read through the prescription drug explanation, but I think it's because I acknowledged that I can be moody.

I thought that my self-awareness would merit bonus points. I mean, a lot of people are moody. Those of us who know it can figure out how to avoid taking it out on other people, but I guess that eHarmony doesn't appreciate this fact.

I was in my 20's when I filed it out.

I used to say that I was 5'3", but it turns out that I'm 5'2 1/2".