The Luv Doc

Dear Luv Doc,
I just realized my shopping list for this week is small sandwich bags and chocolate syrup. Do I need to get a life? (At least I don't have a cat!) Talking about looking: How do I meet that smokin' hot girl in your "date locally" ad? She tops (and I mean that metaphorically) all the real life gurrls!
– JorgeGeorge

Dear JorgeGeorge, if you are fortunate enough to be in a place and time where you have ready access to plastic bags and chocolate syrup, you already have a magnificent life. May you never know what it’s like to go without. Do you have any idea what it’s like to make chocolate syrup from scratch?

First you have to hump it down to southern Mexico – someplace like Chiapas, which is sort of the Mexican treasure trail down to Guatemala – and pick a bunch of cacao pods. You will then need to machete them open so you can get at the beans. Once the beans are out of the pod, you let them ferment and then let them dry for five to 14 days, during which time you might die from malaria, a coral snake bite, or being beheaded by the Zetas – because what the fuck are you doing in Chiapas with a machete? You don’t even look like Danny Trejo.

When the beans are dried, you need to grind them up, pulverize them into a powder, and put the powder into a small sandwich bag. Why? Because you are going to need to hike over to Veracruz and harvest some vanilla beans and chop some sugar cane. Yes, chocolate syrup involves a lot of goddamned machete work – and I am not just talking about fending off carloads full of drug-crazed Zetas.

You can probably see where this scenario leads: You dead and headless, or on the business end of a dairy cow in Jalisco. As for the plastic sandwich bags, well, let’s just say they’re a goddamned miracle that routinely gets wasted on shitty PB& J sandwiches, schwag pot, and gummy bears. Yes, they’re a scourge on the environment, but probably less of a scourge than if the dinosaurs that provided that fossil fuel had not actually become extinct. Imagine if Tranny Rexes still roamed the earth. My guess is that plastic bags and chocolate syrup would be the least of your problems, so be grateful.

So maybe you won’t ever get to meet that superhot East Coast model who portrays a real-life Austin girl on our website, but that doesn’t mean you live in an estrogen vacuum. Get offline, go out amongst the people, and try really hard not to be a douche bag. There is a reasonable chance you will meet a real-life Austin girl who blows your socks off. She might even be into plastic bags and chocolate syrup, but take it slow, that’s like fourth or fifth date kind of kink.