Dummes tun

If you use Facebook (and--believe me--I'm not in any way encouraging anyone to do so), you know it has that feature common to most post-LJ social networks whereby it recommends Friends based on some inscrutable algorithm which heavily weights who's on your flist already. Because the balance of my Facebook Friends are bears and the bear community is almost comically incestuous (probably two degrees of separation at most), most of the suggestions are bears as well. Now I'm pretty strict about not friending or accepting requests from anyone I haven't met IRL. Others clearly are not so discriminating, and seemingly add any cute face which comes along[*]. Together those tendencies help account for how I can forty mutual friends or more with people I've never met, seen, or heard of before.

Every now and then, though, one of these guys gets into my head and I have trouble shaking him loose. This one German guy, who I was sure I'd seen around town, got in there and persisted even after I'd taken the extraordinary step of asking a mutual friend about him only to have him described as "really dumb". More recently I ran into him at a bear picnic, but avoiding saying too much because I was sure I'd end up stumbling over myself trying too hard to impress him. (I don't know what other people would single out as my most annoying trait, but that one's high on my list.)

So imagine my face yesterday evening when I go to answer the door to find German Bear ascending the stairs and asking, "Is dis where de party iss?" (I'm still a little unclear on how he ended up here; gopower is the only plausible link, but he seemed to deny it when I went to thank him later.) Even more surprising, it wasn't his boyfriend in tow but another big guy with a foreign accent, one I don't remember seeing around. And though I wouldn't say I hit it off with him exactly, he certainly turned out to be the more interesting and engaging of the two.

If you've been here, you know what our liquor collection is like and you know how much fun I have showing it off. I take the number of bottles left out after a cocktail night as rough indicator of its success. Last night, it was fourteen. Surprise Bear was Italian (and stunned that I knew where Basilicata is; "I like to look at maps," I said by way of explanation), so in his honour I broke out monshu's grappa, which he duly sampled. He also informed me of his preferences regarding our various amari, and I found they accorded well with those of me and the Old Man. German Bear is from Hesse, so I brought out an old bottle of Apfelwein (and did my best to conceal my disgust when he revealed he only liked drinking it mixed with Fanta). The Papacy came up, so I showed off our copy of the board game Vatican, and we had a bit of informed disputation about the role of the Pope in Italian politics while most of the party (dumb Hessian included) looked on.

I'm not really sure if either of them will be back, but right now I'm still riding high on a successful evening, so I'm not bovvered. My anti-reflux medication is doing well and it was my first day off antibiotics so I treated myself to two Negronis. (I had to: I fucked up the first one by using Letherbee's instead of Bombay.) The crowd at Touché was sparse, but peppered with friendly faces and I managed not to stay out outrageously late (though still a bit later than I should've) and it'll be a heavy week at work, but as my reward I've got Market Days at the end of it. I expect the highlight for me will be a big bear party in gopower's building, but you never know what else might turn up.


[*] Incidentally, I found the best way to combat the temptation is click and go to their page. Quite a lot of people look cuter in a thumbnail than they do full-screen. (It's similar to the effect of spotting someone from a distance--your brain seems predisposed to fill in the details it can't make out in such a way as to make strangers more attractive.) And seeing some typical entries is almost guaranteed to confirm that they are less interesting than you might've hoped.