How To Use The Power of Your Mind...

...to get a woman into bed (a satire)

Find ‘Em: Guys, as they say in Hollywood, it’s all in the casting. If you pick the wrong woman, you’re done for. How do you know if you’ve picked the wrong one? If she gives you her phone number, she’s the right one. If she doesn’t, you made a mistake and picked the wrong woman. See, it’s that simple.

Fone ‘Em: Here are some methods for using the power of your mind to obtain a phone number:

1. Don’t stare at her breasts while you talk to her--show her you’ve got class. This unnerves women and catches them off guard.

2. Be polite.

3. Be funny. Here is an example of an appropriate joke: “A guy walks into a bar”...etc, followed by a punch line. Here is an example of an inappropriate joke: “If I told you that you had a nice body”...etc, followed by plucky sexual innuendo. These jokes don’t work, and more importantly, you can’t play your class-card anymore, thus putting her on guard.

4. Ask. You’ve got to get her phone number. It is very difficult to call a woman if you don't have her phone number. Therefore, the most important thing to remember is to ask. If you don’t ask, you won’t get her number. If you don't get her number, you can't call her. Concentrate. Stay focussed. Use the power of your mind.

5. Phone her and ask her out on a date.

Follow ‘Em: While dating her, be nice and attentive. Don’t put your needs before hers. If you’ve picked the right woman then you will fall in love with her (remember it’s all in the casting, dawg). If this has happened, chances are she’ll fall in love with you (unless you’ve picked the wrong person. As I said, you will know that you have made a mistake and picked the wrong person if she rejects you.)

Have Intercourse With ‘Em: What are you waiting for? You’ve just used the power of your mind to get a woman into bed. Enjoy! Are you proud? You should be.

33 Days Before The 4th of July, I Looked Out My Office Window and Thought of This...

There were lives before us, lived mostly by men who chipped stone and died under falling steel and clouds of soot. There were men in railcars driving steam engines across a country still new with possibilities. At the front of each train men and women in formal attire rode in luxury. In the rear cars there were men and women in simple clothing crammed on wooden seats, aching, staring with sore eyes at passing buffalo. They would make their fortunes in the west. They would send money to their loved ones who would see those buffalo in luxury.

Bridges made impossible fords over absurd distances. Canals cut unthinkable gullies through the hills, and the awesome tops of steamships were visible from our backyards. They built a city on quicksand. They build a city in the dessert.

We were new and nothing to an old, cynical and sophisticated world--a backwoods sociopolitical experiment doomed to fail. But we rose giant-like through clouds of soot and falling steel. And they looked the other way. We strode faster and rose taller, and still they looked the other way.

And we grew. And we grow. And we are Colossus. They can’t look anywhere without seeing us. But hands that move in opposite directions burden our enormous shoulders. One hand trembles with inconsistency and fear. It acts and reacts with violence. It digs deeply into the earth without regret.

While the other, like a magician’s hand, still waves itself over hats thought useless, and produces genius, grabbed round the ears and displayed triumphantly to the world. Some look away as if blinded, while others run toward it.

They run like men and women rumbling west on railcars through the buffalo. They stare like children at the tops of steamships. They dream of rising tall enough to caress those burdened shoulders. They dream of those two hands coming together. They dream of greatness without folly, and magic without slight-of-hand.