Cassy Fiano hit on MSN’s latest bit of relationship-related “advice for men” douchebaggery; fortunately, since MSN is equal-opportunity as far as screwing people’s lives up the ass (sort of like their parent company), this means I get to provide the male perspective on MSN’s contrapuntal douchestickery (because there has to be a stick to go with the bag, no?):

5 dates no guy wants to go on

Hiking
Hiking is an activity many men look forward to with the same relish they take in reading Aristotle in the original Greek, receiving a prostate exam, or attending a Celine Dion concert. The way we see it, nature is way overrated. How many flowers can you smell? How many sunsets can you ooh and ahh over? How many coyotes can you worry about being in the vicinity? Plus, there’s no access to the Internet or email. No TV sports. Bugs everywhere. What about any of this spells fun? Unless you look at fun as the first three letters of funeral.

You want your shot of nature? Invite us to the beach at sunset. Take a blanket and a six-pack, make out for half an hour, then head home so we can get back to civilization. That’s enough nature to hold us for the next three months.

Okay, first off, I love hiking.  I’m not kidding.  In fact, I prefer hiking far above going to the beach - seriously, there’s only so much sand you can look at, y’know?  Besides, a blanket and a six-pack?  Really?  If you can’t make out in the woods, you clearly aren’t thinking creatively enough about your surroundings.  I mean, pollination happens in the woods.  Pollination!  We’re talking the birds and the bees, people!  Focus!

Opera
If given the choice of how to spend a Friday or Saturday night, what guy wouldn’t vote for putting on some uncomfortable formal clothing after spending a couple of hundred dollars for tickets, then another hefty chunk for parking, all to hear overly-costumed and overly-made-up folks belting out tunes that don’t have a beat and don’t rhyme, in a language only U.N. translators can understand? Exactly. And yet we still get the evil look from girlfriends when we try to stay awake during Madame Butterfly by playing a video game on our cell phones.

If we must do something cultural and uplifting, at least make it ballet, where the women are in shape, wearing form-revealing clothing and moving their bodies in ways that cause us to imagine them with us in a variety of other non-dance situations. It ain’t Dancing With the Stars, but it sure beats counting down the seconds ’til it’s over when the fat lady sings.

All right - given a choice between opera and ballet, I’d much rather watch opera.  Most ballet women aren’t that cute.  Yes, they’re wearing form fitting outfits, and, yes, they’re built like sticks.  Great.  Too bad there’s French music in the background… I mean, the t is silent, for God’s sake.  Silent consonants are the mark of the beast!

Travel
If my extensive online-dating experience has taught me nothing else, it’s that, at least according to their dating profiles, the one thing every woman most enjoys is travelling. Yes, they all want to get out of the country and see the world, explore other cultures, become enriched and broaden their horizons. These are all noble and worthy pursuits. Men, however, view travel slightly differently. We even spell it differently. We spell it this way: t$r$a$v$e$l. We also view it as time away from our jobs. This will virtually guarantee that not only will a huge stack of work be waiting for us upon our return (and that our bosses will find out the business runs just fine without our being there), but we’ll no doubt come down with some exotic disease and need to be treated in a culture where doctors are still playing catch-up with the wonders of Medieval medicine.

Got the travel bug, ladies? That’s why God created National Geographic. We’ll gladly treat you to a subscription.

All right - if you’re so attached to your job that you’re not willing to get out of the house, you don’t need a girlfriend.  You might want to looking at getting a therapist, or perhaps moving to Japan and gaining employment with a nice, paternalistic keiretsu.  At least you won’t have to be so insecure with your job that you’re firmly convinced that leaving your desk for more than a weekend will lead to a trip to the unemployment line.  Oh, but that would involve travel.  Apparently, whoever wrote this article has never heard of a road trip.

(PS:  Some of us are actually good enough at our jobs to not have to worry about losing our jobs when we skip town for a while.  If you’re not, that’s your problem… and, with any luck, it’ll be ours once we take your job from the stupid gasbaggy waste of carbon that you call your “self”.)

(PPS:  There are some women out there whose idea of travel is “Let’s go to insert expensive urban area here and go to the most expensive stores and restaurants and blow your savings!”  They will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.  Oh, and any woman who travels with her boyfriend so she can work in an extravagant version of the next item into her life should be flogged painfully and repeatedly… with a thick wooden stick.  Oak is good, or possibly hickory.  Pine is too soft.)

Clothes shopping
This is how men view clothes shopping: You get to follow your sweetie from store to store with the added bonus of holding her purse as she tries on one dress, blouse, or pair of shoes after another, while you struggle to convince her that each garment does not, in fact, make her butt look big. (Even the shoes!) Occasionally you meet the eyes of another girl’s boyfriend there against his will, and the look you give each other is as though you’re both begging, “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY NOW!”

You want to try on clothes? Great, we’re OK with that. Just not in the mall. And we don’t care if you try to sweeten the offer with cappuccino and doing some clothes shopping for us. Instead, here’s what we would be interested in: We’ll light candles, put on some mood music, pour some wine, and you can give us a private fashion show. Oh, sure, it won’t be nearly the same without the neon lights, price tags, and judgmental stares from other women who think we’re perverts as we wait for you to emerge from the dressing room. But it’ll be close enough for us.

Okay, yeah, I’m largely agreeing with this one.  Clothes shopping is not a date.  This would be like taking a girl to the auto parts store to shop gasket sealers.  Pass.

Relationship workshops
Naturally, we men are going to want to avoid the mistakes we made in our past relationships, and we’re not averse to keeping our current romantic relationship as perfectly tuned up as our cars. But that doesn’t mean we welcome the prospect of attending the “Enhancing Couples’ Intimacy Workshop” or “The Two of You: Closer than Ever! Seminar” to which you’re so determined to drag us. It’s bad enough our intimacy needs enhancing; must we now attempt to jump-start it in a face-to-face with other romantic losers? We’d rather get up at 5 a.m. Sunday morning to join you on a bird-watching walk. We’d rather get in touch with our feelings and cry about what we never got to tell our fathers. We’d rather attend a taping of Ellen.

You want to enhance our intimacy? We’re all for it. Hold our hands, kiss us passionately, give us a massage, get naked with us—you’ll be stunned at the intensity of intimacy enhancement. In fact, let’s start right now. After all, we went hiking with you; it’s your turn to do something we enjoy. Hey, where are you going? Oh, come on, it’ll be fun!

What woman in their right mind would even think this was a good idea?  Seriously, raise your hands - go ahead, I won’t bite.  I’ve yet to meet a single woman that ever said, “Hey, y’know what?  I’m going to take my boyfriend to a relationship workshop!  We’re going to love it!”  No, if they’re saying “relationship workshop”, it’s because they think the relationship needs some serious help… or, at the very least, that they’re trying to scare the guy enough to convince him to free her up so she can hit on that hot stud across the bar.

The moral of the story?  MSN’s idea of dating advice is almost as useful as Microsoft’s idea of an operating system - bloated and horribly wrong.

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