So I’m on a couple of pickup artist email lists — I always mean to mine them for posts here but somehow never get around to even looking at the emails that pile up in my inbox.
Today, I looked. Because how could you not look at an email that opens like this:
There’s so much to unpack here. We’ve got prehensile breasts trying to wiggle their way to freedom. We’ve got a woman in a grocery store who flirts with men by literally grabbing all the vaguely phallic vegetables a dude has in his cart. (Also, why was this dude shopping with a pickup guru? Does he only buy phallic vegetables, in hopes of attracting grabby women with prehensile breasts?)
And then we have a pickup artist trying to convince us that he’s got some magical phrase — available only to those who give him their credit card number — that will enable men to lure grocery-grabbing women into having sex.
I’m pretty sure that if a woman is literally grabbing your penis-shaped produce in a grocery store, either you have wandered onto the set of a porn film, or, you know, she likes you and you don’t actually need a “money line” to magically win her over. All you have to do is decide if you like her too, and if you do, suggest getting something to eat, or drink, or pretty much anything that involves hanging out more. It’s not that complicated. Women aren’t locks to be picked.
I’m also pretty sure that someone who writes sentences like this
… isn’t someone you want to rely on as your own personal Cyrano de Bergerac.
Uh. Yeah. If she’s literally fondling your root vegetables, I’m pretty sure you could get away with a pickup line on the order of “nice shoes- wanna fuck?”
I don’t know if I would trust a woman with prehensile breasts. Isn’t that associated with vagina dentata?
If your penis resembles a carrot, you should probably get your liver checked out. That doesn’t sound healthy.
Am I the only one who is reminded of the old Bill Hicks routine on “why Penthouse Forum Letters are fake”‘? Just me? Okay then…
OR she could be working the register, in which case she would be obliged to take everything out of the cart. Doesn’t mean she’s into you, even if she’s … checking you out.
Ba dum tss
http://static.fjcdn.com/comments/Ba+dum+tish+_6f699575d5d07e65400a5b836b919754.jpg
I think the guy who just paid for his groceries and left didn’t feel like having sex with her for any number of reasons. Not that PUAs or whoever would understand that.
I assumed she was just the checker and PUA read all this sexual tension into the exchange in front of him at check-out? Also, I’ve been flirted with by checkers before. And I’ve never slept with them. Because that’s like, not how grocery stores work?
Holy incoherency, Batman! It’s like he randomly chopped up three or four sentences and then threw the phrases back together in no discernible order.
Regarding flirting with checkers? I feel the same way there as I do when the idea of pursuing flirting bartenders or waitresses: Namely it is incredibly difficult to tell where the “being pleasant” (in the case of restaurant workers trying to get tips) ends and “actual interest” begins and you don’t go for relationships because it puts everyone in a really awkward position if there isn’t interest.
Falconer, a++ pun and also that was my thought. Also, what if dude whose carrots were being grabbed was gay? Or tired? Or not interested? PUAs seem to think men will always want to have sex with anything presenting as a female human.
Is that NLP? Is he trying to hypnotize us with a confusion induction?
Yeah, from reading that, I assumed it was the check out line. In which she didn’t have a choice but to grab the groceries… And as someone who has worked check out (not in a grocery store, but still), no matter what witty or suggestive thing you can think of, we’ve heard it 17 times that day… I can only imagine what a grocery checkout person gets, especially when dudes like this buy vaguely phallic veggies.
I also assumed this was the checkout line, because otherwise it wouldn’t make much sense for the guy to just leave without going “Hey! Why are you grabbing at my vegetables???” So, yeah. Not really reading any sexy connotations at all.
I’m seriously confused by this “money line”. It says “if only HE used this money line…” like it’s a surefire pickup line that will get him laid, but the explanation is a line that “SHE ever talks about.” I’m assuming it’s referring to the line PUAs should use when women complain about dudes staring at their breasts, but that doesn’t make sense either, because it’s implied grocery store guy should’ve said it, but cucumber-groping lady *isn’t* complaining about dudes staring at her breasts, so it’d be out of the blue and way creepy if he said a line tailored for that somewhat specific context…seriously, what does it all mean?????
Um, yeah. Don’t compare your junk to your produce when hitting on grocery store cashiers, kids. Actually, don’t hit on grocery store cashiers at all.
Ah he probably did mean the cashier.
By money line, do they mean, “Pay us money for this terrible pun to use when talking to a woman who is just trying to do her job and literally cannot choose whether or not to deal with your shit”?
Putting phallic foods in your cart so that you can pretend the cashier is flirting with you when she picks them up totally sounds like something these guys would do.
Maybe “money line” is just another term for checkout line, eg, instead of standing in the regular money line, he should have chosen the money line where the cashier chatters incessantly about her breasts.
I can totally see some PUA guru advising men to buy phallic groceries as a way of meeting women. “Fill your cart with salami and bananas, then pick a female cashier…” It must get exhausting, treating every single interaction as an chance for sex and feeling like a failure if it doesn’t happen.
Spoiler alert: the money line to get someone’s number is “can I have your number?” that’s it. It’s easy. I’ll give it to you for free!
Just don’t be a douche if/when they say no.
Speaking of cyrano. http://oglaf.com/cyrano/
I flirt with the cute French barista in the mornings. So far no shenanigans have ensued, but I’ll keep you up to date. Especially if he start fondling my coffee cups.
*starts
The “Money Line” quote is grammatically horrendous but I am pretty sure he’s referring to something the woman might say that would be a strong indicator of interest. Essentially every time she makes reference to an attractive body part it means she wants you…even if that’s complaining about how men objectify her boobs. I could kinda understand if there was a nod a wink and a giggle, but really this seems to be part of a particularly aggressive form of wishful thinking and delusions of self grandeur that these “alpha males” aspire to. Of course she wants to ride your pogo shtick! She’s a female! You’re the ultra awesome uber alpha male! She made eye contact! She clearly knows what sex is! It’s just biology! You can’t argue with evo-psych! /end sarcasm
I’m reminded of a gaming related webcomic making fun of the infamous “Dead or Alive” volleyball game. In it the girls are having fun playing, drawn with with breasts of a similar size and shape as the balls (unfortunately only a slight exaggeration compared to the game). By the second panel the breasts are wobbling more and more and girls realize something is wrong. In the final panel the breasts rip free of their ribcages and fly into the distance yelling “I’m free! I’m free!”
Oh, I dunno, November before last, I was shopping for Thanksgiving and couldn’t find any celery. I contemplated filching some unattended produce, but then a nice stocker brought out a half dozen more boxes of it. I really wasn’t looking for a date!
Oh damn! I had no idea other women were using my pick up moves! Gees! I guess I’ll just have to start walking around topless with a sign that says “got root vegetables? I’ve got what you’re looking for!”.
I’m just picturing the reverse now, man walks up to woman’s cart, starts groping all the melons/oranges/tomatos/plums/etc. Just sounds creepy to me. And a clear violation of shopping etiquette.
If a woman was groping phallic items in my shopping cart I’d either assume it was some sort of hidden camera prank going on youtube, or maybe it’s time to call store management.
When I first skimmed the article I just saw the “Her breasts were struggling to escape her shirt, as she grabbed his cucumber and carrots…” and I thought it must be from an erotic short story about a woman with sentient breasts and a man with 1 large penis and several smaller ones. Would have made more sense.
Has anyone really been as far as even decided to use more money line to do look more like breasts?
“Her breasts were struggling to escape her shirt, as she grabbed his cucumber and carrots…”
Here’s how I imagine the sitation: he took the last vegetables and she really, really wanted to make that salad… kinda like this:
http://www.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/gdkgjdsfjdklv32myflutco.jpg
I couldn’t make sense of anything in the above newsletter. I’ve read some pretty dire fan-fic that wasn’t as badly-written as that.
Her boobs must be really determined… I don’t know any lady with unruly breasts who doesn’t keep them securely holstered at all times.
And I, too, read the “cucumber” to mean a large penis, and the “carrots” to mean at least two other, smaller auxiliary penises.
But I guess this was one of those rare situations where a PUA used the words “cucumber” and “carrots” in the literal sense, and all this takes place in a green-grocer’s?
Still a weird choice of word for her to “grab” them – that suggests urgency, but it’s not a sexy motion. No grabby hands near the phallic objects, please.
But nonetheless, we’re meant to infer that she would have readily given this man her phone number AND had a “wild night of sex” with him, if only he had asked her using a specific combination of words?
Why do these women only want to do sex the same way (wildly), that same night, with no other kinds of interaction involved? Like, not even a coffee-date first, or a movie? Why must she wait for some PUA to initiate in order to make this happen? Or why just give him her phone number and rely on him to call her instead of agreeing a time and a place right there and then?
I think the bit about the money line could just be in need of some punctuation.
Answers on a postcard as to what the “money line” might be…
PUA: “Well, what do you expect by failing to properly secure and muzzle your unruly breasts, you wh*re? Let’s fuck!”
@QuantumInc
I know EXACTLY the webcomic you’re thinking of and I thought of it too! Here it is (can’t embed the image):
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20061025
I kind of wish that breasts were prehensile. I could get a lot more done if I had two more useful appendages.
I’ve also got a garden bed right now that is chock full of carrots in all sorts of sizes and colors. I think I might have the vegetable version of the cock carousel right in my own back yard.
@Tyra Lith, @sunnysombrera Are these alternate versions of Tommy Knockers?
David Futrelle
This has got to be one of strangest things I’ve ever read.
@Tessa:
I did work a register at a grocery store, about 15 years ago. I was a guy, so I didn’t get the oh-so-clever come ons, but there was plenty I heard over and over and over again, and a few things I only heard once, like, “You want ID? Here’s my concealed carry permit. That good enough?” and the guy who paid with a $20 and then claimed he’d given me a $100 bill.
@Spindrift:
My first thought was, “‘Carrots?!’ What kind of balls did this guy have?”
@Flying Mouse:
I don’t have breasts, but I do have two toddlers, and I could use an extra pair of hands. Throw in another set, and Beloved and I can each have one.
I wished this morning, not for the first time or last, that I was Multiple Man. There’s a guy who gets chores done fast.
Cucumbers aren’t root vegetables. They’re gourds. Like zucchini or pumpkin.
For that matter, if it resembles a cucumber, you should be going straight to the ER–gangrene can spread if not properly treated.
*******
Because I’ve got the ability to read and translate Shitty Writer (seriously, I must have some weird karma from previous lives), I actually get the last line. He’s suggesting that there’s a single line that works no matter how the woman in question is comporting herself, with respect to her breasts. The claim is that it works just as well if the woman is wearing a low-cut top and literally bouncing her heels to make her bosom jiggle, OR if she’s in a loose-fitting sweatshirt, pinching the bridge of her nose and grumbling about yet another asshole making cheesy references to her breasts. So long as the subject, explicit or implicit, is “boobs”, This One Line will unlock her vagina like the thieves’ cave parting for someone talking about grain.
The notion of a single line for all contexts is, of course, utterly asinine. Of the portion of Manospherism that isn’t directly about hatred of women, I think ninety percent is a complete inability to appreciate the importance of context.
Oh, good. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that.
@ej:
Coincidentally, I’m having meat & two veg for lunch. I very much doubt anybody would find meatloaf a flattering comparison to their STALWART MEMBER, though.
“Her breasts were struggling to escape her shirt, as she grabbed his cucumber and carrots…”
I… huh? Am I reading a bad erotic fanfiction here? (This is what I get for reading a LOT of bad erotica, to be honest.)
The “money line” is probably the one that is guaranteed to “pay off” with sex, though it’s hard to be sure since the writer refused to use English syntax.
Oh Tyra, I don’t want to live in a world that has such monsters in’t!
@Falconer – It’s laundry day at the House of Mouse. I’m now wistfully thinking of how quickly I could fold if these darned things would just pitch in and help a little bit.
Hey, blockquote monster, good to see ya!
I very much doubt anybody would find meatloaf a flattering comparison to their STALWART MEMBER, though.
Flattening, maybe.
@Flying Mouse:
From an outside perspective, they do seem to get in the way a lot.
This has been done before, only with celery. So it’s not as bizarre as it might at first appear. (Okay, so it is as bizarre as it appears…darn it, now I’m hungry and lunchtime is still an hour away, drat.)
@Flying Mouse:
I totally agree. And if they could bite like Tyra Lith’s up there, even better!
@friday jones: not even if they could scare PUAs away? I think that would be a practical feature 😀
I think Ancillary Penis comes after Ancillary Mercy.
True story my mum tells occasionally. Someone she knew was a much more confident person than she ever was. We’re talking 1940s here, so we’re talking panties exactly like those in that image. They were walking on North Terrace, one of the city’s main streets but with lots of trees and lawns, and the elastic in her knickers failed. Panties collapsed around her feet, she stepped neatly out of them, gracefully bent her knees and picked them up and into her bag all in one graceful movement. No fuss. No worry. Never skipped a beat.