Tao of Bachelorhood

I was just thinking about what I was doing the last time the National League won an All-Star Game: I was working for a major corporation for the first time in my life, and had just built my first site on that new Web thingy everyone was buzzing about. Ahh, static, handwritten HTML. In that spirit, here’s another grab bag from across the Internet:

• And They Say Women Don’t Understand: What We Learned When We Infiltrated a ‘Pickup Artist’ Seminar was that pickup artists are “exploitative”…of the guys paying for the seminar.

Closing time at Barney's.

• Adventures in Passive Aggression: ASK DR. MARCIA: Let the (dating) games begin illustrates how, when you don’t do what you say you’ll do, it makes a woman think twice about that second date. It also illustrates how she won’t actually tell you that. [DailyRecord.com]

• That Explains Stuart Smalley: in Self-help ‘makes you feel worse’ researchers found that positive affirmations actually make depressed people more depressed. On the other hand, if those people were to do something about it… [BBC.co.uk]

• You’ll Regret It in the Morning: Upscale Stores Hope Spirits Boost Sales, the story goes, and details how upscale designers are using the same technique to try and sell men an overpriced suit that frat brothers have long used to get girls into their rooms: kegger. [Newsweek]

• Let Darwin Handle It: Why do men take such dumb risks? misses the most obvious point: modern medicine and free public healthcare make it possible to surgically repair morons who fall off the roof of the car they’re “surfing.” If they were instead left by the side of the road to die, there’d be far less of it. [Canada.com]

• You Gotta Have Skills: Men who look good on the dance floor make the fittest mates, claim scientists. Mr. Bean? Unattractive to women? Get out of town! [The London Telegraph]

• After All That Work to Finally Get Them Called “Potato Chips”: Pringles facing crunch time while Procter & Gamble bought Zirh and Art of Shaving. Good news for men and their waistlines. [Associated Press]

• Every So Often I Agree With Gawker: Oh, The Things We Could Demolish Today has me hoping the Mariners will start returning my calls, so I can set up Axe Body Spray Demolition Night. [Deadspin]

Update – This Just In:

• Not Only That, He Broke the First Rule: Police: ‘Fight Club’ inspired NYC Starbucks blast tells us that 17-year-old kids who watch Fight Club don’t bother to read their IMDB trivia: it’s well-known that there’s a Starbucks cup in every scene of Fight Club, but the Starbucks logo is notably absent from the store that’s bombed in the movie. It could have been a Peet’s.