Ficlets

Here’s an entirely hilarious article in the New York Times about people whose budding relationships founder because of what one person thought of the other person’s apartment:

Then there is Bob Strauss, 46, who writes dating advice for match.com and has a real stuffed baby seal in his apartment. He didn’t whack the seal on its silky little head, it’s a family piece inherited from a rich aunt and uncle in Miami.

It is displayed along with Mr. Strauss’s South Park and Sonic the Hedgehog figurines and Lego collection.

“It’s provocative,” he adds. “I like going out with tough, smart, aggressive, challenging type people. It’s fine with me if they want to argue about it; I don’t want to blandify my apartment to make myself generically acceptable.”

Maybe it’s not the apartment; maybe it’s realizing that you’re dating a 46-year-old man who plays with Sonic the Hedgehog dolls. Seriously, however, the article is chock-a-block full, not only of useful advice on apartment warning signs, is full of interesting bit that are worth mining for amusing ficlet material. But you single Ficleteers will have to write them; I’ve been married for a dozen years and – trust me – I totally lost the interior decorating battle here in the Scalzi household. Although rightly so, since I will share an actual conversation I had with my then-just-barely-girlfriend when she first visited my bachelor apartment:

Krissy (looking around): Why don’t you have any art on your walls?

Me (shrugging): I don’t spend any time staring at my walls.

Yeah, I deserved to lose that particular battle.