Section Gee! Advice, Humor, Comics, Horoscope, Kids : Off-Kilter : So You Want to Score in Love Land? Just Read Between the Pickup Lines
Dating Game Bureau: Now that school season is here, we’ve been besieged with letters from college students who write: “Mr. Kilter, as a 41-year-old bachelor, you obviously know the secret to finding lasting romance with the opposite sex. Can you help me? I want to ask out this cute sophomore in my advanced stapling class, but I don’t know how to break the ice.”
Here at Off-K, we’re always happy to assist, although we’re alarmed that so many readers sent us the exact same letter. Anyway, the secret to dating is a great pickup line. For math majors, you can’t go wrong with, “Hey, baby, what’s your sine and cosine?”
Otherwise, try one of these sure-fire openings from iVillage.com, which recently conducted a search for quality pickup lines:
* “Can you help me find my puppy? I think he went into this cheap motel room.”
* “I may not be Fred Flintstone, but I’ll bet I can make your bed rock.”
* “If you were a new hamburger at McDonalds, you would be McGorgeous.”
* “I’m an earth sign, you’re a water sign. Let’s make mud.”
Alarming Trends Advisory: The sheet music to Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” is selling extremely well to high school marching bands, according to Hal Leonard Music.
Off-Kilter Encyclopedia: The world record for most collard greens eaten by one human in 30 minutes is 7 1/2 pounds.
Missed Opportunities Bureau: We should have gone to medical school. According to Prime Time Plus, a New Jersey company specializing in offbeat medical promotions, pharmaceutical companies regularly ply physicians with cool giveaways, including chocolate blood-pressure gauges, custom Swiss Army knives that feature a 2-inch blade to perform emergency tracheotomies (very useful when someone is choking on mass quantities of collard greens) and buckets of popcorn emblazoned with the name of a painkiller.
P.O. Box Kilter: In response to our August report on the Norwegian dolphin accused of trying to rape a man, reader Christy Edwards says she’s not surprised: “Several years ago, I participated in one of those ‘dolphin encounters’ at a hotel in Hawaii. They specifically told us not to touch anywhere near the dolphin’s ‘paraphernalia’ because the animals are apparently easily aroused and not concerned about race, creed, gender or species.”
This brings us back to our original point: Dolphins wouldn’t have these problems if they’d just develop some decent pickup lines.
Bumper Sticker Patrol: “If you lived in your car, you’d be home by now.”
Quotables: Karen Hopkin, creator of the Studmuffins of Science wall calendar, on why she stopped producing them after two years: “I ran out of material. There are only 18 attractive scientists in the known world.”
Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Bartender Poisons Nine Customers Because They Never Tipped Her!” (Weekly World News)
According to WWN, waiters and waitresses across the land have rallied to the accused’s defense, calling her actions “justifiable homicide.”
Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service, Thad Whitley. Off-Kilter’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that reading Off-Kilter may be hazardous to your mental health.