Doing it for the LOLz

I must confess to a serious blogging omission over the last few months. I realise that you guys don't expect any kind of detailed exposition of my life, but I figure that you probably do want to know about anything funny or foolish or awkward that I have been engaged in during my travels. On that front, there is a pretty significant story that I probably should have told you earlier, but for a variety of reasons it never happened.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't mean to conceal this story from you all, but it's a difficult situation to explain, and will be especially hard to capture in writing. I will do my best, but please be understanding. This story builds on a number of themes that have developed during my time in Canada, so I'll link those in for people who haven't read the back catalogue. So here goes:

I have, for some months now, been involved in a kind of awkward false romance with Maud's Hot Sister.

It all started in early February, when I found myself suddenly single in the sausage convention that is Rossland during winter. My housemates instantly recognised the opportunity this presented for hilarious housemate gossip and meddling, and set about trying to find me a lady to woo. I have never been one for wooing the ladies, and my misgivings about potential Rossland romance were amplified by the fact that there are no single women in Rossland, and even if they were, I would have been a long way down the system of single-Rossland-man seniority.

So I hit upon a diabolical plan to stave off any uninvited dating "assistance" from my housemates, while turning the awkwardness of the whole situation away from me and onto someone else. Fortunately, the perfect candidate had recently been presented to me in the form of my french housemate Maud's sister Marie. A few days after Marie ended her visit to Rossland to return to her home in Squamish, near Vancouver, I declared my undying love for her, dubbing her "Maud's Hot Sister". In one fell swoop I had neutralised any housemate meddling and made a hilarious joke that would make Maud uncomfortable.

And that blissful situation lasted for all of a few days. I had made a number of errors of judgement in formulating my plan. First, I had overlooked the unstoppable strength of the impulse to meddle in the romantic lives of one's housemates. Second, I had misjudged just how canny Maud would be at turning my joke against me. Before I knew it, my professed desire for Maud's Hot Sister had been communicated to said sister, by Maud, via text message.

This seemed wierd, but reasonably innocuous at the time. How wrong I was. This was, in fact, the first shaking of the tracks that implies the imminent arrival of the freight train of doom. To my relief, Maud's Hot Sister's reply was baffled and not particularly interested. But Maud wasn't about to let this golden opportunity in housemate meddling go begging.

Before I knew it, Maud commenced a concerted campaign of remote text message wooing on my behalf with her Hot Sister. Maud's Hot Sister's replies changed tone. She made objections like "I only like Latino men" or "He has to be able to dance". Realising that my defense from uninvited dating assistance was under threat, I made up increasingly ludicrous answers to her questions. I was half Costa-Rican, I spoke Spanish, I was an excellent dancer, My name was actually Juan, etc. I even sent her a picture of a long haired, well muscled, shirtless Latino man emerging from the sea with a signed invitation to dance written in Spanish that I found in an online phrasebook (this was, incidentally, the first and hopefully only time that I have google image searched "Hot Latino Men" at work). At some point in this process, my other housemates realised that rather than being an obstacle to Rossland based meddling, this was in fact a shining opportunity to engage in relationship meddling via text message. I continued to up the ante, assuming that at any moment Maud would reach a limit on how involved she was willing to get in her sister's love life. Eventually, I reasoned, she would no longer want to be a text message intermediary between her sister and her supposedly besotted housemate.

It was only when the questions from Marie (the Hot Sister) became disturbingly lewd that I realised that this was another substantial error of judgement. Maud faithfully relayed these questions and, I have a horrible suspicion, even fabricated answers when I strenuously refused to respond.

At this point, it became obvious to all parties involved that I had completely lost control of this joke.

But I am not the kind of man who turns around in the face of adversity. I had created an awkward joke, and it was now my responsibility to see it to its natural conclusion. The fact that my creation had turned against me was no reason to let down the people who now looked to me for LOLz.

The reason I'm writing all this now, is because I'm in a MacDonalds in Chilliwack, just outside Vancouver, on my way to Squamish, to see my housemates Robi, Fleur and Maud one last time before they back to Europe. And they are staying with Maud's Hot Sister, who I have been assured via text message, is ready and waiting.

Some new friends I made climbing at Skaha have given me a pineapple for good luck, and I've spent part of my day scouring thrift stores for a white suit to wear when I take Maud's Hot Sister out for dinner. Somehow I have settled on taking Marie out to dinner in a white suit as a kind of talisman that will see me safely through to the other side of this joke, although I'm somewhat terrified of what will happen even if I do find a white suit and manage to go ahead with the plan.

Wish me luck, friends. I am your ever faithful servant of the LOLz.

Oh - and sorry, but there's no time for proofreading or putting those links in right now, I just found a paralysis tick on my back, and I should probably leave the MacDonalds before I take my shirt off and try to get it off.