Today I was out on the boat with my good friend Voni. We decided to go to the sandbar since the weather was nice and we wanted to do some relaxing and snorkeling. I tend not to go to the parts of the Sandbar where all the other boats go, since silence is solitudes favorite mistress after all. There was only one other boat within ear shot, the same one that I’d seen at the same spot last week. A powered catamaran with an eclectic group of tourists on board.

As we dropped anchor, they were preparing to leave. Unlike the last time I’d seen the boat leave, the captain decided today to break out his guitar and sing a song or two for his passengers on deck.  He put on a descent act and between the two songs made note to his passengers that there were four couples on board celebrating their honeymoon. Two couples had made the voyage from as far as Japan, and the other two I assume were mainland Americans.

On an otherwise unremarkable (at least to me in my current life) Thursday, I had casually decided to spend the sunny hours of the day doing what I do often, hanging out on the boat with a friend at the sandbar. Today, on that single catamaran alone, eight people had chosen this activity as one of the few things they would do on what most couples assume will be the best week of their lives. Their best week of their lives were spent doing what I do on an average Thursday? Can this be real?

I obviously spent some time thinking over this conundrum of epic proportions and decided to vocalize it to Voni. She had heard the captains speech about the honeymooners, but hadn’t thought about the situation quite like I had. We didn’t talk much about it at the time, but I’m sure in the days to come we will. I did happen to mention that I felt I had done nothing to deserve this, and she made some remark about how I was ‘blessed’ (a term I love to despise). My only retort was something to the effect that we should all revel in the random chaos that led me, in this universe, to be there at the sandbar with her at that moment, for us a Thursday and for others less than one hundred feet away their honeymoon.

Life isn’t fair. I get that. I’m fortunate/lucky/blessed/victim-of-chance/whatever-you-fate-loving-star-reading-cosmic-circumstance-tea-leaf-reading lunatics want to call it. I get that too. I can’t appreciate my situation in this life because I can’t remember all my previous lives where I endlessly dedicated myself to bettering the world, karmic amnesia. Sure, I can even get that too. I’ll accept it all (or none of it, but this isn’t where my current dilemma lies). It’s where do I go from here?

I don’t mean geographically. The sandbar is great, it’s beautiful. I’m in Hawaii after all (but it’s Oahu, it’s not Kauai or Maui), so forgetting the beauty that immediately surrounds you at all times would be a trying task for anyone but the blind. I know there are more beautiful places on this earth, I’ve been there. If I wanted to live there, I would. I don’t mean that any honeymoons I may have will have to be ‘better’ or ‘more’ than a visit to the beloved sandbar of Kaneohe bay.  Maybe it’s the romantic in me, but a week on the couch with the one you love can be just as rewarding (“Tell me that after you’ve been married for X number of years” you say. HAR HAR, “I’m sorry you decided to spend forever with someone who you didn’t feel that way about, everyone makes mistakes, I’m sorry you made that mistake. Yes I know a divorce attorney” I say. I digress).

What I mean is, if I decided to have goals/dreams (and for those of you who don’t know, I don’t), what could I possibly expect them to be? I live in paradise. I have a roof over my head. I have the only job I’ve ever wanted. I have every material possession I want (and I want less of what I have). I used to think I didn’t want to have goals/dreams because they limited people and a side-effect was a disconnection with life as it was passing (keep your eyes on the prize, and you forget your supposed to be enjoying the experience). Nowadays I’m more inclined to think that if I actually fabricated goals/dreams for myself they’d border on absurdity.

I know I’ve burned through twice my allotted quota of proverbial metaphors, but if you’ll permit me this final attempt I’ll be able to end this post confident that at least one of them will make sense. I’m not sure the last time I’ve had this much trouble articulating my thoughts on paper or out loud, unfortunately this isn’t a rarity lately (maybe I’m getting old). We are in uncharted waters, with no nautical navigation charts, no GPS or depth-finders here. We march to the beat of a different drum, and we don’t know what to do when our drummer quits? Different drum drummers are hard to come by. They don’t frequent craigslist or myspace (remember, they drum the beats on a different drum). If we are so lucky that we find a stand-in, what happens if we don’t like their beat? What happens if we can’t figure out how to march to it? Or worse, what happens if we figure it out just fine, but we aren’t sure about where we are marching to?

Two sites I troll frequently are Facebook and Craigslist. Two very different sites. Two somewhat different target audiences. Two treasure troves of women.

Now it wouldn’t be a fair apples to apples comparrison if we just pitted the women found on Facebook with those found on Craigslist.  Afterall, Facebook is more commonly used to keep in touch with friends and Craigslist is more commonly used to be touched by strangers. However, comparing the women of Facebook ads to the women of Craigslist personals seems fair, since the personals are ads in their own right.

I conveniently have been accumulating screen caps of Facebook ads for singles sites over the last week or two just in case something like this blog post happened to come up, and have formulated them into a collage for your review:

Foxes of Facebook

Overall a 7.  I know, I’m being generous.  Yes that is an internationally known Victoria’s Secret Angel on the top left by the name of Adriana Lima, and apparently her and Marko Jaric split because she has a profile on singlesnet.com (I didn’t click the ad so I can’t verify this, but it’s an advertisement on the internet so it must be true). The gist of Facebook ad girls is that they all have a bunch of eye make-up (that they know how to apply rather well), with the exception of the one in the top right corner who clearly knows how to have fun (and would also be at home in a rabbit warren).

And now I present you with the cream of the Craigslist crop:

Cream of the Craigslist Crop

Overall a 9. I know, you think I’m being too generous. No she is not an internationally acclaimed super model, but they grow old, gain weight, get their own t.v. shows, and go crazy.  No she is not so good at putting on her eye make-up, or hasn’t ever heard of it, but eye make-up washes off.  If my decision isn’t obvious to you, you didn’t look hard enough.  Notice the date stamp on her pictures.  She is from the future.  How can you go wrong with someone who already knows how the next 5 years or so pan out?  Plus, if she is like most people, she is using a picture of her younger, brighter, and more youth filled days, so she probably knows what happens in year 6 and 7.

Knowing the future can bring you happiness that underwear models could never even hope to. So look for love on Craigslist, not on the advertisements that show-up while you are clicking around Facebook. Or, stick to the real world, if you dare.

Craigslist is always a comedy goldmine.  If you don’t regularly check out your local Craigslist personals section, I guarantee you you’ll have some serious laughs in under 5 minutes.  If for some reason your local area does not deliver, then check out the Hawaii personals.  Since I’m a maths guy, one recent post that really created a cackle was this:

You Can Never Have Too Many Friends

Take note of both her age (in the title of the post), and how long she has been out of ‘the dating scene’.  Unless she considers breast feeding with her mother part of the ‘dating scene’, then clearly she didn’t proofread her post.  If she did proofread her post, and she counts that action, then she’s posting in the wrong section of the personals anyway (that’s what w4w is for hun).

Another place that never fails to deliver some joy is the infamous Facebook ads.  Unlike a Craigslist personal ad, these cost money, so you’d think some proofreading would go into it, especially when the ad only has twenty-five words in it.

The IRS can due what ever they want!

And finally, this ad, for this shirt was right up my no pants alley:

With A Shirt Like This, Who Needs Pants?