As my last post said, I went to a housewarming party last night. Nothing strange there, just your average get together, a few friends, a few beers, lots of chatter. It got strange when, due to a mainly male party population, the conversation turned a little raunchy. We’re men, we do that. We like to talk about disgusting or rude subjects. I’m sure that every woman in the world has overheard these conversations at some point and shaken her head in disbelief.

Last night, the tables were turned. There we were, speaking your average level of male bullshit, when a quiet voice from the girl’s side of the party said, “My boyfriend slept with a midget.” Stated as pure fact, no story to go with it, no real link to the conversation we were already having. Just, ” My boyfriend slept with a midget.”

To say it piqued our collective male interests would be an understatement. In an instant every guy there was staring at her, pleading for the details. Because, that single statement was a Gold Medal, Judges Choice, People’s Vote winning entry in the almost exclusively male game of story telling one-upmanship. We all do it, all the time. Any story told is a challenge to take it one step further. Each subsequent story gets another white lie closer to the ultimate ending, which is where everyone calls “Bullshit” on the story. It’s a man thing.

But this story floored us all. You see we had no come back to midget sex. In fact, we had no knowledge of the subject apart from the wonders of internet pornography, and even then it wouldn’t really be considered as knowledge. We begged her for details. How did he meet her? What position? What did he say it was like? She became the centre of attention for a good ten minutes as we lavished in every erotic, comedic, and politically incorrect detail. It instantly became a story that will be told at every party. In fact, every party will now be compared against that story. It won’t be a great night until someone has attempted to beat the “Sex with a midget” story.

Is there a moral behind all of this? I really don’t know. I guess I just wanted to have the best story today.

Actually, no, there is a moral. Ladies, we know that you have seen, or done, or heard of things that are guaranteed to at least place highly in the Bullshit Challenge. Next time you see the game in play, join in, we don’t mind new competitors. You will probably win and then you become a legend.

By now I am sure that any regular readers will be aware of my relationship nightmares. In fact it’s something I have almost exclusively blogged about over the last few months. What can I say? I say what’s on my mind, and relationships have been on my mind.

Well, today it got even more intriguing. We had a dance concert at the theatre today. Not an uncommon occurrence for this time of year. So, there I am standing on the stage, attempting to get through the blinding hangover and lack of sleep caused by a friend’s house warming party that finished in the wee hours, when a face from my past stepped out of the wings. (It’s all wonderfully theatrical, isn’t it?)

There standing in front of me was Karina, the first girl I ever kissed. At the tender age of seven, I had lived next door to this girl and her family in a town called Madang in Papua New Guinea. We had played together every day, went to the same school, basically we were best friends as kids.

One afternoon, while, and I can’t believe I’m admitting this, playing with her dolls (what can I say, even at that age I knew it was better to do what the woman wants), we kissed. Of course, before we did, we had to hide in a cupboard. The last thing we wanted was to be caught!

Six years ago I moved to Brisbane to study and she contacted me out of the blue. She had visited my mother and Mum had given her my number. We went out fairly regularly, just hanging out as friends. She had a boyfriend, I was single. That sucked.

Over the next  five or six months we spent a lot of time together. I fell for her, she still had a boyfriend. Things just weren’t working out in my favour. Then another girl that I knew expressed an interest in me. We started dating and not one week after that relationship began Karina called me and told me that she was single. GAH!!!

Not long after that I moved away for work. Whenever I was in town I called her to catch up, but by then she had a new boyfriend.

I think I had a shot back then. She was gorgeous, I was timid. That has always been my problem.

Anyway, I’ve got her number again. She has mine. If she has a boyfriend this time, I think I might just scream.

All in all, it was a great day.

It seems that I have become the target of comment spammers. In fact, in the past three days I have received over 180 spam comments. Most of these are getting caught by my spam blocker Akismet but a few are sneaking through. Unfortunately, even though I can delete the comments, once a comment gets through it seems to increase the rate that they turn up.

To attempt to reduce and control this shit from turning up on my blog, I am switching to moderated comments, at least until the spam flood stops. Hopefully this won’t affect too many people.

If anyone knows some relatively foolproof methods to stop spam on Wordpress blogs, I’d love to hear about it.