Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

Yahoo! Tonight is Pub Quiz night! I just love the idea of helping our collective intellectuality (like that word?) along with a little al-ky-hal.

Reminds me of the beer manufacturer who advertises "Drink Responsibly." I mean, really, if drinking improved our sense of responsibility, wedding chapels in Vegas would go right out of business as would the day-after divorce lawyers down the hall and to the left.

Speaking of useless information, Saturday was Cinco de Mayo, and we celebrated by making lists. That's right, lists. We listed out the top five things we look for when on the prowl. We started off sensibly - heartbeat and penis. We drank a little more wine and thought about it, then added good job, sense of humor, nice teeth. After a few drinks, some self-examination, and a little copying, our lists had grown significantly, and included even more valuable stuff like white, not white. No one bothered with gentle, kind or understanding. I mean, does anyone really expect to find "penis" and "understanding" together? In a useful format?

Then we exchanged lists and went clubbing. The goal was to be each other's "wingman" and find the guy on the list for whomever we partnered with for this little exercise. By the end of the evening, two of the five people in our group had split (the two with cars, by the way), and the remaining three were not thinking about lists any longer. And, even though we were without transportation, we were strangely not thinking about that, either. I blame the music; it drummed all sensibility out of our heads. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the rounds of Buttery Nipples.

Seriously, who makes a list that includes things like "Has been employed at the same job for over a year," then goes to a club to meet such a man? I mean, you're on a dancefloor, music pounding, and you're gonna lean forward and shout, "So, what do you do for a living?" Yeah, no. All he's gonna hear is, "So do you swing?"

Needless to say, the lists did not come out. Well, two of the lists did not come out; the third list did. It was used to scribble a phone number on (with lipstick, mind you), then was shoved into the hands of a man who likely has none of the qualifications jotted on the other side. He dialed the number in less than 30 minutes. It was the shade of lipstick that did it, I'm sure - CFM red. Like Linda's nails!

I definitely think it was a worthwhile exercise, however, and I think we should repeat the endeavor. I am willing to bet that, if we did this for 6 weeks straight, each week the list would get shorter until Week Five found us right back where we started from with "heartbeat" and "penis," and Week Six listed only one of those.