YOU'VE GOT MALE

With Christmas quickly approaching, the age old question appears once again ... what do you get for the woman who has everything? Well, almost everything....

With all the experimentation I have been doing on the blind date thing, my friends must have decided to get me the one thing in my life I was lacking ... a new man. Every day last week my email box was inundated with photos and profiles of searching men, compliments of two of my friends who were out there like obsessed little task masters scanning the Internet for lonely and available dating material.

It was my fault, really. Ever since I told them the details of my blind dates from the Table For Two dating service, they were sure that this holiday season Santa would be bringing us all some nice, big surprises that could slip easily in and out of any hot chimney.

It all began when we investigated the Love@aol personals. They have thousands of photo personals of men in our specified age groups and pretty detailed vital stats. The three of us, huddled around my laptop, were on a mission. Considering the fact that we all three have VERY different tastes, we figured that it would be pretty easy to find some that at least one of us would like....

--All the no-neck, massive, buff ones who stand under 5'10" would go to Janice. --The blonde ones with ear length, straight Buster Brown hairstyles that surf, snowboard and liked to be "trained" would go to Lauren. --And I had my eyes peeled for the tall, dark and big nosed ones. Nerdy types wearing birth control glasses a definite bonus!

We clicked through quite a few before we found any we liked. Then, if one physically fit one of our preferences, we continued to their profile. This is where even the attractive ones could be tossed aside. For example, Janice saw a meathead that she thought was really cute. I think she was mostly impressed by the fact that he was just about as wide as he was tall with bulging muscles. But as soon as we started to read his info we noticed his handle was 9inof69just4U. It gets worse. In the "What I'm looking for" section he mentioned that he was looking for a hot woman, single or married, who swallows and lives for back door love.

NEXT!!!!!

Lauren saw several who fit her surferboy taste; however, most were just a tad unambitious, or as it read in the ad...

Job/ Employment: Prefer not to say
Income: Under 20,000 a year
Education: Prefer not to say
Drinks: Often
Smokes: Prefer not to say [must smoke the illegal stuff]
Hobbies: Playstation, Cable television and baking.

This was turning out to be more challenging than we had originally thought.

If they looked good in the photo, they turned out to be smokers (something none of us would date) or gun-toting, homophobic, woman-hating Bush supporters.

"Here's one that looks like your type!" they said to me. I saw the photo, and they were right, he was great looking. On to the profile...

Job/ Employment: Software development [Nice! A true nerd!]
Education: College Graduate
Drinks: Socially (WHEW! Not a wino!)
Smokes: No

And just when I was ready to email him, I came to this part...

Height: Prefer not to say

"Oh no. He's a shrimp," I said. "Don't jump to conclusions!" "It's true. If he was anything over 5'10" he would prefer TO say. He's a shrimp, a midget."

"Maybe it's time for you to get over this height thing. Why do men have to be over 6' when you are only 5'6"?" Janice, the one who doesn't care if they are chesthigh, asked.

"You are asking me to either lower my standards or lower my heels and I'm sorry, I can do neither."

After about another hour we all found some promising potentials and devised clever responses that were subtle enough to keep us from looking desperate, but spicy enough to get their undivided attention. And, just to make sure we didn't miss out on anyone who is single but not brave enough to have an ad, we decided to put ads in of our own. Janice is "Looking for Mr. Universe." Lauren is "Seeking beach boy with a brain." And, after careful consideration, I came up with "Sexy adventure columnist seeks subjects" for myself. Now, before you men rush to your computers to respond to our experiment in online shopping, just remember everything you say and do will be used against you in next week's Siren Chat.