I've been acting like a douchey college guy lately. For one thing, I like Bob Marley now.

I meet a lot of people around here who are always smiling and never laughing. Those guys make me nervous. It's not a grin, or a smirk, or a leer. It isn't smug, or sheepish, or wry, or conspiratorial. It isn't anything. It's like a mask, like their faces are just shaped like that. I imagine them standing over a corpse, holding a smoking pistol, smiling like that.

So that's over the top. They're mostly just quiet math kids, harmless and humorless. But still, it's unnerving. When I say something funny, you laugh, dammit.

I got asked on a date this week, which was a first for me, as far as I can remember. It was fascinating to see the struggle from the outside. Not that she had a particularly hard time, but she phrased it very carefully, so as not to be misunderstood: "...was wondering if you would like to go with me to the such and such, as-my-date."

Of course, I would love to accompany you to the such and such on Friday at 7 pm as-your-date. I have never been conscious of being someone's date. She bought the tickets, she's going to pick me up and everything; I don't have to think about it at all until it happens. It's fantastic. More girls should ask me out.

I've got a couple date ideas now, but I haven't had opportunity to try them out. Submitted for your approval:

1. I liked the idea of a girl making up her story, so I think I want to build a date around that. We ask each other all those boring first-date questions, but we make up the answers. I think I could learn more about a girl from her fantasies than her reality. But it's a high-stakes game; there's the possibility that even her fantasies are boring, and then what can you do? Answer:

2. Stealth Kite. Buy a kite from the store, tear off the sail, and replace it with cellophane. Then you use some kind of thick, dark yarn instead of the line it comes with; the idea being that when you fly it, it looks like the string just goes up into the sky, not connected to anything. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make; maybe I should try it on my own first.

Alternately, you could buy those little thin glow sticks and tape them to the skeleton of the kite, and fly it at night. I wonder if they'd be bright enough.

Well I'm sorry but I'm not interested in gold mines, oil wells, shipping or real estate.

I really don't want to ask you what your major is. I don't care where you're from, or what you like to do for fun, or how many brothers and sisters you have, or what you want to be when you grow up. But I'm so accustomed to struggling through conversations with people with no discernible personality that I don't know what else to ask you.

We need some secret sign, to identify each other. Tell me you want to be a masked vigilante when you grow up. Tell me you were raised on a leper colony in the South Pacific. Tell me your life's ambition is to break the world record for tallest tower of Jenga blocks. It's okay if you're a nursing or elementary-education major just like every other girl in this school; just lie to me for a minute.

And when I tell you what I want to do with my life, don't look at me like I'm a jerk for wanting to do something real and then ask if I wouldn't be better off majoring in Business Management. I'm going to keep a list of the names of all those idiot girls, and in twenty years I will write them a letter from Mogadishu or Nepal that will make them loathe the balding, swelling, disgustingly practical marketing executives and middle-managers and accountants they married. They will watch them scream at the TV during Monday Night Football, and quietly contemplate murder.

And to the pretty blonde at the frozen yogurt shop: it's okay to be friendly while you ring me up. I'm sure you get lame passes from BYU guys all the time, and I can tell by your body language and demeanor that you really, really don't want anything to do with me--which is fine, I get that--but you can make eye contact with me, and I will smile and say thank you, and pay for the frozen yogurt, and that will be it.

--Kevin