This is not a love letter

Okay, so I got temporarily removed from the Real World there for a bit, but am back again and must get onto that Facebook e-mail... I was surprised and amazed by The BFF this morning when he suddenly, quite vociferously over a gentle cup of coffee, told me that I must get back to writing. He wanted to read the (cheesiest of cheesy) story I'm trying very hard to write for my course. This was surprising in that he's never shown an iota of interest before. I denied him the pain of it though.

So, back to my Stalkbook mail. Let me set the scene. When I first put myself on Stalkbook and I was in that initial flush of new Stalkbook love... You know the one, before you start despising the forty three application requests challenging you to compare your IQ to Britney Spears' etc. My best friend, K, who lives in Sydney, and I joined My Aquarium - an application which gave you a fish tank into which you could put all manner of water creatures, kindly bequeathed on you by loving Stalkbook buddies worldwide. Our mission quickly morphed into seeing how full we could make our tanks before they burst or the poor creatures ran out of air. For the record, you can fill a tank with 23 octopi, 4 whales, 102 starfish, 23 goldfish, 45 frilly feral fish (etc), no problem!

Needless to say, the novelty of My Aquarium wore off once we realised the thing would never burst, releasing hundreds of (possibly feral) sea creatures into the pages of Stalkbook... I had, admittedly forgotten about it until I received this mail last week:

We have decided to focus on something more exciting. My Aquarium's name and functionality will be changed next week to SpeedDate, a fun way to meet new people. Data entered into the original app won't be used anymore. Feel free to check it out.

Thanks,
My Aquarium

Hysterical. The aquarium people have given up on fish and moved onto dating. And they're assuming we all want to too. A letter formed in my head:

Dear My Aquarium Speed Daters,

Thank you so much for your e-mail last week. First I feel I must apologise profusely for neglecting my (rather full) aquarium after losing interest in it completely sometime last year. It's just that, well, I got bored whenI realised it'd never burst from over-fullness. Sorry to be so blatant, but my mother has always said one should be completely honest, no matter what. Another thing she taught us, though, was to tend to our pets carefully, so I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't say anything to her about the complete neglect I have shown to all my watery friends.

But back to the point - while I think it's very kind of you to take such an interest in my love life, I'm not sure I'm interested in Stalkbook Speed-dating really. In fact, honestly, I'm completely not. I'm fascinated, though, in how you made the connection between aquariums and dating. Please let me know.

In the meantime, I'd prefer not to move from virtual table to virtual table having five-minute virtual conversations with virtual people so that I can find my virtual match and, presumably, eventually land up getting virtually married, having two virtual children, and living happily ever after in a virtual house with a virtual white picket fence. As nice as that sounds, of course. Unless... there's something virtually enticing about it. Like maybe being able to make the ones who are virtually not worth spending time with burst, by giving them too many virtual peanuts and virtual whisky. Just a thought.

Thanks for caring though, it's very sweet of you, really. Please remove me from your mailing list immediately, I get enough bloody spam already, ta.

Lots of (non-speed-dating) love,
Shiny x

Or is this a sign?