In which I feel better about myself (and come up with a new unit of measurement).

My record of failure with women is long and rich enough that ascribing it to just one or two root causes would be facile and denial-riffic, but I'm fairly confident that my inability to leave good voice-mail messages is a contributing factor. When you're calling a woman whose phone number you've just recently procured, that first voice-mail message is like a 30-second sales pitch that has to be delivered every bit as carefully as any political campaign ad, because even the slightest misstep or false note can convince her that she doesn't really need to call you back. And given that it's just you talking, as opposed to an actual conversation between the two of you, you're kind of on the spot. That pressure has caused me to make just about every mistake in the book when it comes to leaving messages -- i.e. rambling along with unnecessary information, desperate tone, coming up with bad ideas for things to do, awkward attempts at self-deprecating humor, and the like; basically, it's kind of like a 30-second version of this blog, only not funny.

But not even on my worst, crankiest, and/or most nervous day have I ever been as godawful as this guy (no video, audio SFW, though not SFFIH, or Safe For Faith In Humanity):



There are actually two explanations for this behavior, with the first and most obvious being that, as the title of the YouTube suggests, this guy is simply a titanic douche. Such a douche, in fact, that the sheer intensity of his douchiness could theoretically be harnessed to provide an alternate energy source, which of course would be a great boon in this era of $4-a-gallon gas; maybe you'd attach his douche-spew to a turbine and take advantage of it hydroelectric-style, or maybe you'd simply use the energy from his ego to heat water and harness the kinetic energy from the resulting steam, more like a nuclear power plant. I'm not a scientist so I don't know which of those would be more efficient. But either way, in theory the douchewattage (DW) from these two phone messages alone would be considerable. If, say, a popped collar creates 1 DW of energy, and ownership of a Hummer H2 is 1,000 DW (or 1 kilodouchewatt), then these messages combined would create something on the order of 500 kDW.

The other explanation, though, is that he's straight-up mentally ill -- which, if the info on the YouTube page is true and this guy is indeed the now-infamous "Dimitri," might actually be more accurate.

Either way, I'm feeling a lot better about myself today.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)