{"id":3483,"date":"2011-11-08T22:42:50","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T03:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/?p=3483"},"modified":"2011-11-08T22:42:50","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T03:42:50","slug":"i-am-a-bad-citizen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/08\/i-am-a-bad-citizen\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am a Bad Citizen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t vote today. Instead, I drove to Carrboro because I thought Oprah Winfrey might find me my soul mate. There&#8217;s a lot that&#8217;s stupid about that statement.<\/p>\n<p>What happens is, I get an email from a friend mid-day that says the Oprah Winfrey Network is developing a dating show, and they&#8217;re accepting applications from 2:00 to 5:00 at this restaurant in Carrboro. I&#8217;ve been ruminating on the fact that I&#8217;m technically a spinster, and I don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;m thinking, &#8220;Nothing else has worked, so maybe I try a little reality television&#8230;?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So I get there, and they hand me a 27-page form to fill out. Twenty-seven pages. And they tell me a producer will be putting together a little bit of footage. I start filling out the form, but the first page says &#8220;YOUR TOWN: CARRBORO&#8221; and asks for my address. And I&#8217;m thinking, <em>my<\/em> town is Bull City, y&#8217;all, so I shuffle over to the hostess and say, &#8220;Do I have to be a resident of Carrboro to do this?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She says, &#8220;Hmm&#8230; I don&#8217;t know&#8230; Do you love Carrboro?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And I go, &#8220;Sure.&#8221; But really I&#8217;m thinking, it&#8217;s aight. I mean, there&#8217;s some good restaurants and a gargantuan dog park I used to go to all the time when I worked in Chapel Hill, and it&#8217;s walkable. But it&#8217;s no Durham.<\/p>\n<p>And as I keep filling out this tome, it becomes clear that this is just the audition for the town. Questions like, <em>What makes your town unique?<\/em>\u00a0and <em>Who is the town gossip?<\/em>\u00a0and <em>Where do people go on dates in your town?<\/em>\u00a0The network wants to find a town in which to make love happen. They&#8217;ll accomplish this goal by shipping in various matchmakers and dispatching them amongst the participants.<\/p>\n<p>The producer asks if I&#8217;m ready for my on-camera interview, and truth be told, at this point, I&#8217;m having some reservations about the whole deal. But I&#8217;d driven all the way over there and even applied mascara and lipstick on a <em>Tuesday<\/em>, in the <em>middle of the afternoon<\/em>, and OK, whatever.<\/p>\n<p><em>What&#8217;s your type?<\/em>\u00a0I don&#8217;t really have a type, I say, but funny, smart, preferably stronger than me.<\/p>\n<p><em>Have you tried online dating?<\/em>\u00a0Ahem. Yes. Yes I have.<\/p>\n<p><em>What does love mean to you?<\/em>\u00a0It means fighting for each other and for the two of you as a couple.\u00a0Platitudes platitudes.<\/p>\n<p><em>What would you bring to a relationship?<\/em>\u00a0Blah stupid loyalty blah fun blah.<\/p>\n<p>I drove away feeling perturbed and disappointed in myself and discouraged. So then I went to CrossFit and lifted heavy things over my head, and I felt better. PR on my push press: 110 pounds.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m still an asshole for not voting though.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t vote today. Instead, I drove to Carrboro because I thought Oprah Winfrey might find me my soul mate. There&#8217;s a lot that&#8217;s stupid about that statement. What happens is, I get an email from a friend mid-day that says the Oprah Winfrey Network is developing a dating show, and they&#8217;re accepting applications from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/08\/i-am-a-bad-citizen\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I Am a Bad Citizen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating","category-liftin-heavy-objects-over-ma-head"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3483"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3489,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions\/3489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}