Whenever I’m attempting to enter a friend’s car, I’m constantly lifting the door handle at the precise moment my friend is unlocking the car. If you’ve never enjoyed the luxury of this special humiliation, what happens is that the door’s lock mechanism is undermined and you must ask the driver to re-unclock the car. You can imagine my embarrassment when I repeat this error twice or more in succession. “Goddamnit, Eric!” my driver will finally yell. “Do you even want to go get ice cream?”

That’s why I have the policy of not locking my car: so that my passenger doesn’t suffer this humiliation. The last thing I need in my Dodge Intrepid is drama, which is why I’ve also done away with “shotgun.” You can forget about yelling “shotgun” if you’re walking to my car—I simply won’t hear of it. People who yell “shotgun” when I’m driving go right in the trunk. Shotgun rules have been the source of countless arguments in my lifetime, arguments that are second in ferocity only to those over beer pong rules, and I don’t need the aggravation. There’s a time and a place for yelling “shotgun,” and that time and place is in the eleventh grade when you’re headed to Best Buy to play with the keyboards because you’re in the eleventh grade and have absolutely nothing better to do with your freetime.

I have developed a new technique for when you’re trying to attract a person’s attention at the bar. Most people order their prospective mate a drink, which is fine—if you want to play that tired little game of cat and mouse. If however you actually want to leave an impression, consider having your waitress send them over something to snack on. From across the bar you will be treated to the following scene: there will be a confused conversation between the waitress and the girl you fancy, followed by the waitress gesturing toward your table. Signal with your index finger or a thumbs up that the food is indeed for her to enjoy.

For the rest of the night the girl will be eyeing you—with a look of trepidation, maybe, but at least now she knows you’re not just kidding around. Not every food item works equally well, so if it’s available on the menu, play it safe and order her chili cheese fries. Regular cheese fries will do in a pinch, but you’re really not going to get anywhere without the chili. There is something special about the way people eat chili cheese fries when they are bewildered out of their mind. The best food to order them is a large bowl of soup, especially when there’s an entire group of girls. Instruct your waitress to place the soup in the center of their table with a single spoon. This doubles as a fun gambling game to play with your friends: Who will take the spoon and begin eating the soup? Will they ask the waitress for more spoons? Whatever they decide to do, I’m pretty sure that this is considered checkmate. You may now approach the girl of your choice and receive your make out session.

Look about you: eKarjala has become a veritable blog. The timing is right–open-source software scripts like WordPress allow one to take advantage of PHP functionality without actually learning PHP, and hosting has become relatively cheap. You will notice that I’ve kept the lazy, minimalist look. Search is limited to blogified entries and is completely useless: what are you searching for, exactly? Still, pretty neat. RSS feeds are available if you understand what an RSS feed is. I decided not to include the option to organize my updates by categorization, because pretty much all of my updates are the very same category: whining like a girl.

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