COMEDY AT THE GEORGE.
FREE TO B3TANS!
(PERSONALITY HORSE Graham Tapes - free download album - coming soon, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 14:28, 3 replies)

In B4 /talk
www.b3ta.com/questions/weirdos/
LOLOLOLOL QOTW IS RECYCLING IDEAS CLOSE IT NOW LOLOLOLOL
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 14:13, 3 replies)

Blind date
I was preparing to return to the UK after several months in the US. On the last night I had dinner with some friends, including a rather lovey-dovey couple who thought it was their mission to fix up any single people they met. Sure enough, they asked if they could pass my email address on to a woman who they thought I'd get on with.

So, we began emailing, and somewhat surprisingly, it was fun. She was smart, educated, funny and interesting.

As an experiment, I'd suggested that we didn't exchange pictures at first. I thought it would be interesting to see where it went without having a clue about how the other looked. For a while, that was fine. But then it began to get a little flirty, and I started to think that I really needed to know what I might be getting myself into (arf) here. We'd been mailing for a couple of months, so I suggested that it was time to do photos.

Oh dear. Now I had a problem. She was HUGE! Now, I'm no stick insect myself, so I'm not going to look down on someone who isn't a perfect size 8 or whatever, but this woman was wider than she was tall. So how on earth do I respond to the picture? I genuinely liked her, and wanted to carry on mailing, but romance was never going to be on the cards. What do I say?

This was a Friday. I decided to mull it over for the weekend, and blame drink and drugs for not replying sooner. This turned out to be the right thing to do, because on Monday morning I met the woman who is now Mrs Moon Monkey. So I had the perfect excuse for a) not replying immediately, and b) drawing a line on any future flirting.

She went on to become my best friend on that side of the Atlantic. So the annoying couple did actually get it right.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 14:11, 2 replies)

I have met hundreds of people "off the internet"
They were all sweaty, fat, male, virgins.
( Peej, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 14:09, 3 replies)

Unexpected consequences
Found a website that required me to supply a lot of very specific information about myself - real name, where I live, what I'd been doing with my life and stuff like that. Got a nice email from a girl named Julie* who asked if we could meet. Great, I thought.

Found the address on time, knocked on the door and I was invited in. Bugger me - she's got two of her male friends there too - I guess she wanted to play it safe. Had a good chat for about an hour and all three of them seemed to like me as I got invited back.

Now I see her and her mates almost on a daily basis. Also, for some reason, the company that owns the building we meet in pays a substantial amount of monies into my bank account every month.

I really have no idea how things turned out like they did.

*Name changed to protect the fictitious.
( P-MONKE We're all fucked, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 14:05, 5 replies)

uhhhhh
We even have t-shirts and hoodies - god help us.



Bigger version here: BIG

The only unfortunate thing about this is that our lovely Mushroom was too ill to attend this one, so you'll have to imagine him in spirit.
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:53, 70 replies)

I'm shoe-horning this in a bit, I know.
And I have already posted it to links anyway, but this is my very good friend Michelle, who I first met online on an improv forum 8 years ago.

abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/19/south-parks-mr-hanky-as-rectal-cancer-mascot/

Not all internet people are just meeting to hook up, and not all of them are sweaty handed virgins. Some are just good, good people.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:49, 7 replies)

Met three men...
on OKCupid. One was a hairy, chain smoking, smelly troll, one I shagged in about 10 minutes of meeting, ( a delicious thing, still mates) and I married the third.

No I tell a lie; there was a fourth, the primary school teaching tranvestite who texted me that he didn't want to see me again as I was weird. Am sitting here, so proud!

So I suppose it was some game of flee, freak out, shag, marry.
(Odinsdottir wants to tell you about her cats, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:41, 1 reply)

How I gained a stalker
I have a website relating to a hobby, which means that I get emails from like-minded people all over the world, seeking further information. I try to reply to them all. But I was slightly wary of one which ended

"...Oh, and by the way, I see you on the train sometimes."

In the end I did meet him, and he turned out *not* to be mad axe-wielding maniac, thankfully. But I'm still rather disturbed by the fact that, having seen one small and rather out-of-date photo, he made the connnection with a random bloke on a train...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:37, 1 reply)

bloody welsh drummers...
We needed a new drummer. We put an ad on line. Narrowed down the options and selected a Welsh drummer of all things. He commuted to practise 3 times a week for over a year (it was an hour and half each way). He was a good drummer, an ok fella. We played many gigs.

Then after a year he suddenly realised he had to drive quite a bit to get here and back. So he left. Via email. (This was my main issue with him leaving, how had it taken him over a year to realise this? His dad bought him his car and paid for the petrol, they were well off, he didn't have a day job... not a care in the world)

His excuse for packing all his drums up after what turned out to be his last meeting with us, with hindsight, was pretty poor.

"I've gotta meet a mate in, er, Manchester coz he's shooting a video".

Not heard from him since. Ah well.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:33, 1 reply)

Grauniad Soulmates
My first attempt at internet dating. LeggyLizzie or some such handle and I corresponded pleasantly. She looked more than a tad pleasing, and didn't have the wearing internet dating habit of giving herself a handle to describe herself (e.g. LeggyLiz, BustyBabs, etc.) and then posting only head & shoulders photos, so the viewer could tell that she did actually have nice legs rather than wobbly spinning-top shaped bags of cellulite.

She seemed to reciprocate, so we swapped phone numbers and had several fun conversations. She was very posh - like a young Joanna Lumley to talk to. This is no bad thing. Anyway, we agreed to meet the following Saturday morning at 10am and hang out during the day, with no pressure. She lived in London, I in Swindon (!) so it would be a day out for me even if the date went bad. So I trundled into Paddington, got the Tube to Kensington (where she had "one of her flats") and rang her, as agreed, on her mobile once I got there.

She was surprised that I rang. Almost as surprised as I was that her first words were "Oh, was that today? I'll be a bit late - I've just woken up. I'm staying with friends in Wimbledon - let's meet up for lunch later once I've got my shit together." I was in a good mood, and that part of West London isn't the worst place to have to kill a couple of hours, so I mooched around Kensington, Hyde Park, Bayswater etc. - forgoing food 'cos we'd be eating later.

Much later, as it turned out. At about 2.30pm, she phoned to say she was back at home and for me to come over. She gave me the address so I headed over there and rang the bell. She buzzed me up into a rather impressive looking Victorian building in Kensington High Street, into a small flat with lots of dark wood panelling and antique furniture. She was not without cash, then. When she let me in, she was in the middle of an argument with her tenant because he'd left a hot mug of tea on the dining table and left a white ring on it. This was preoccupying her so much that she decided that she'd just have to phone the John Lewis furniture department to find out if they had anything to get rid of such marks.

Not later on, right there and then. So I'm standing around like a lemon while she phones John Lewis, asks for the furniture department, tries to explain the problem to someone who (it sounds like) doesn't speak English as a first language, gets frustrated after 15 minutes (yes, that long) and asks to speak to the department manager, and starts again at the beginning with him or her. At about the point where she's holding for the manager, I'm so bored (but still optimistic I might get to see the legs in person) that I phoned my mum to ask her how best to get rid of white marks from dark wood. She suggested cigar ash would do the trick.

I suggested this to Liz, who then cut short her (by now almost hour-long) conversation with every member of staff at the local John Lewis branch, and decided that we must now go out and buy cigars to make ash to get the stain out. And maybe have a spot of lunch and actually talk to one another. She was so polite and apologetic for the so far disastrous date, and her legs really were rather fab - believe it or not, she'd changed out of her jeans into a skirt in front of me while clamping her phone to her ear with her shoulder to free her hands. Again, no bad thing.

So we ventured out into Kensington High St. It's now about 4 pm, and I was getting seriously hungry, so this is another Good Thing. Trouble is, as we walk down the street, she loudly expounds on how the area is going to the dogs since all the fucking Arabs moved in and it was nothing like as nice an area as it looked. I did jokingly (well, half-jokingly) ask her to keep her voice down, to which she replied "oh don't worry, none of them speak any English anyway". From the way the frowns and scowls of passers-by timed with the more outrageous casual racism of her rantings, I think most of the locals understood colloquial English rather well, but we soon found a tobacconist and got her the packet of Hamlets she was after.

Then, finally, her thoughts turned to "We should eat - you must be famished". Er, yes please. "Right, follow me". Where did we go on this sunny spring metropolitan afternoon? A curry house. Where she ordered a starter and main course, as did I. Then, when the starter arrived, she cancelled her main because, as she said "I had lunch in Wimbledon before I left".

It wasn't a disaster - she was good company all the while, despite being a disorganised solipsistic bigot - but after "lunch" I decided to go home. We parted on good terms, but didn't stay in touch afterwards. (I think she thought I wasn't Bohemian enough.)

It didn't put me off internet dating - I met the future Mrs Shinyshinyscalp on Soulmates (after many more dates with other women I met online, none quite as oddly memorable as this one).
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:32, 4 replies)

not me but my flatmate
however, i laughed at this story so i am stealing it.

my flatmate is infuriatingly hot. the kind of girl who wanders around moaning that her size DD boobs don't fit in her size 6 dress. she even managed to turn a gay client of mine. she's from new york, and back when she was still living there, she decided to try online dating. now you'd have thought that you would be thrilled if you were meeting someone from a dating website and they turned out to be fucking smoking hot. but apparently not...

so she exchanged a few emails with a guy, and eventually they met up for coffee.

him: well you don't look like your photos.

her: no?

him: no. not at all.

her: in what way?

him: you just don't look like your photos.

her: right. well. this is what i look like. you got a problem with that?

him: no.

[pause]

him: you just don't look like your photos.

[pause]

him: you weren't wearing that sweater in your photos.

[exit her]
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:31, 29 replies)

Met la Signora Tumbleweed
via Are You Interested or Zoosk or somesuch blx on Faceache around July 2009. Met face-to-face in the September. Moved to Italy March 2010. Still here. On best behaviour - most of the time - in case she kicks me out and I have to go back to England.
(barbedwiretumbleweed Fast 'n' Bulbous!, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:25, 2 replies)

Not exactly meeting someone but waving at them instead.
On my way into the bus station on the bus I noticed that one of the roads was shut and there were coppers everywhere. I grabbed my phone and did a twitter search for Bradford to see if anyone had tweeted what was going on and if I'd need to get off the bus and walk the rest of the way to work. I had about 8 minutes before the bus would leave the station so I had plenty of time to find out.
As I'm reading down the page I notice someone had tweeted that they were having lunch sat by the window of a restaurant I was about to pass. On the spur of the moment I replied to this strangers tweet and said that I was about to pass there on my bus. She replied back asking the bus number so I told her and when I passed the restaurant she was stood at the window waving at my bus my a crazy lady. Of course I waved back like the lunatic that I am and then tweeted my thanks and told her to enjoy her lunch, she replied with her thanks and a "lol" and that was it!
It was really surreal but it still makes me smile.
( Mrs. Spatum, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:23, Reply)

I will never go to a bash again, that's for sure.

( Roota zweeeeeoooooowm, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:23, 8 replies)

First "Skeptics in the Pub"...
...I met Dr*T, who opined that meeting people from the internet is like a superhero convention. You only realise who people are once they tell you their chosen names.

Hello, I'm Billy O'Dwyer. Who? "The SpinMaster". Oh, right, I know you!
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:23, Reply)

I met a girl off the internet once...
Imagine my surprise when she turned out to have short white hair and long black curly teeth!


Quick and dirty, you love it
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:15, Reply)

You can only pick two.
I've discovered through my numerous meetings with people from t'internet, both planned and coincidental, that 99% of the time they turn out to be only ever two of the following

1 - Single
2 - Mentally stable
3 - Attractive

I've yet to meet someone who has all three of this point and yes, I include myself.
(Official Sarc, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:12, 2 replies)

A few...
It always ends up one of two ways:

1. They've lied about their photo (or ages) and it's awkward drinks for 30 minutes until you both get bored and leave.

2. You hook up.

12 years on the great interweb and to date have had only one friend who I met from the internet last more than a year.
(Helo, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:07, 8 replies)

1998 called, they'd like their question back
now that the Internet is no longer solely populated by mad axe murderers.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 13:01, 13 replies)

I refuse to meet anyone from the internet on the basis
that there are, in total, just 137 internet users in the entire world.

I am one of them, and I like me, but the other 136 are just fat, sweaty men in stained jogging bottoms and cheese greased chins with one hand on their flacid, pale, stinking cock and the other flicking between their multiple user accounts.

It's true, honest.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:57, 6 replies)

Yes
sucked my first cock so I suppose it went well (or badly) depending on your view point.

I've grown out of it now though. Much prefer a cup of tea.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:57, Reply)

Internet + girls + weird charisma = win.

Many Accords were snorted.

Happy days.
(Monchberter Can't go wrong with Doom, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:53, Reply)

I met you the other day but you didnt know who I was
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:50, 1 reply)

I don't want to meet any of the people below this post.

(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:49, 2 replies)

blah blah
Met girl on internet, chatted got on, met up, turned out she was a dog. Next
oh honda accord of justice and massive drugs
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:49, 2 replies)

lol

( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:48, 3 replies)

cunt

( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:48, Reply)

1st

It's a bit of a shame I don't roast peas really, as I did a post the other day explaining all the lully people I met at B3ta bashes and wotnot.

That would've fitted quite well here...sort of.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:47, 9 replies)