I Take Issue With The Word Sweet

To me, “You’re so sweet” implies:

1. nice, benign, pleasant, mundanely pleasant.

2. unexciting, sugary, weak, harmless, no edge, edge-less.

3. no threat, threat-less, dull as dishrag.

4. someone who spends her afternoons folding miniature stars from fluorescent colour papers, pouring them into a jar and decorating it with a pink ribbon so that she can give it to her little boyfriend on their 3rd month anniversary.

5. tiny smiles, agreeable, acquiescent, yes yes yes all the time.

6. eyes peeking out under thick bangs.

7. domestic, fluffy pink slippers, fluffy pink T-shirts

8. naïve, innocent, young, child-like, angelic

9. halo hugging skull

10. doormat, pink fluffy doormat

11. prim, proper, knee-length gingham skirt, ponytail, pink cardigan buttoned to the chin

12. scrunchie

13. crying at soppy movies

14. happily ever after

Most people consider "sweet" to be a compliment. Am I peculiar because I seem to take it as an unintended insult?

What’s the difference between a man and a chimpanzee?

sock monkey #2
Originally uploaded by flyingfish77.

One is hairy, smells and scratches his arse. The other is a chimpanzee.

Hahahaha!! I’m sorry. This is juvenile but I couldn’t resist.

WANT is a Four Letter Word

d70_2005_1022b
Originally uploaded by 8pril.

I know what I want, yet I don’t know what I want. I know what I should want. I am perplexed because many a time, what I should want does not coincide with what I truly want.

I am at odds also because there are many reasons why I cannot have what I want - what I want may not be unrealistic, unreasonable and not entirely good for me – in which case, I may have to tweak a little what I want so that what I want becomes what I can have. What is the point of having a list of wants that simply cannot be met?

Therefore, it is necessary to attach another criterion to my list: what I want and can have. Some people may carelessly term it as settling for less. Is it? Maybe. I do not know.

Is it better to hang on to desires that will never be met (and enjoy the enviable reputation of being an idealist, a dreamer, one with remarkably high standards and expectations) or would it be better to trade them for desires that can be met? They would then, by default, become less ideal, less lofty, less perfect.

I might have to contend with wearing the label ‘pragmatist’ – not too awful a predicament but not too grand either.

Is it better to have grand ideals and have everything fall short (because they are next to impossible to meet by anyone or anything) or is it better to have realistic down-to-earth expectations and increase your chances of meeting them? I do not know. An idealist would opt for the former while a pragmatist would go with the latter.

I guess the answer lies in our inherent natures. Perhaps the question is not what I want and what I should want or what I should not want. Perhaps the true question is whether I am ultimately an idealist or a pragmatist; and whatever it is I identify myself to be, am I content being that way?

Complication, Thy Name is Cake

Straberry Sponge Cake
Originally uploaded by Kaippally.

Why do I complicate things? Is it due to my unacknowledged fear of facing reality? Do I hide behind a façade of abstruse explanations and cleverly formulated rationalizations so that it appears as if I have a valid reason for behaving the way I do? Do I complicate matters to flabbergast other people (who usually have no idea in hell what I’m jabbering about anyway), make myself look all deep or purely to inject some entertainment value in my life?

Just got into a lengthy (read pointless) discussion with Him over the issue of cake, after which I completely pissed him off. While I won’t indulge in the gory details of our discussion, suffice to say that it wasn’t actually about cake. It was about the significance of cake.

It was hard to carry on such a conversation, especially when he wouldn’t keep quiet and kept interjecting with, “What are you talking about??” in a tone which first hinted of curiosity, then bewilderment, then incredulity, eventually morphing into impatience, sarcasm and finally, downright annoyance.

I cannot lie. I felt slight stirrings of satisfaction in me when I heard him starting to buckle under his gargantuan effort to stay sane while trying to understand my ramblings, be the bigger person and give into my ridiculous whims.

It’s strange. I feel like I’ve succeeded whenever I confuse and/or annoy somebody. Why does this seem to give me greater dissatisfaction than say, actually coming to a mutual compromise and chalking up some progress?

I know what he’s thinking right now. He’s thinking that I’ve gone completely nuts. He’s also wondering what in the world I mean by cake – is it a code for some other confectionary? He’s trying to figure out how to handle these vile mood swings of mine. He’s formulating a strategy for the next time I decide to go berserk on him. He’s thinking next time, when she gets like this again, I’m going to just ignore her until she starts to talk some sense ... or being a typical man, he’s probably wondering if he should have cake for dessert.

Give Me Skinny or Give Me Death

a over-priced figurine thing i saw in the expensive shop side of town. skinny husband, fat wife [my future marriage condition possibly??]
Originally uploaded by ansy.

I am a lousy conformist, that’s what I am. Despite my self-righteous diatribes about standing up for my principles and being the unwavering Rock of Gibraltar when it comes to staying put in the face of popular opinion, I confess that I’m secretly feeble-minded.

Exhibit A: I can rant for hours about how skinniness does not equate beauty but at the same time, I fret whenever I feel the waistband of my jeans cut into a lump of flesh that seemed to have developed overnight. A slight bulge is enough to send me into a wild tailspin. My mind is instantly deluged with desperate schemes to lose the excess flab – from eating a raisin a day to working the treadmill for two hours a day until I lose the weight or drop dead (whichever decides to come first).

I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed because I feel happy when people come up to me and say, “Oh my god. You’ve lost weight!” I nonchalantly reply, “No lah, it’s just that I look thinner in the dark with these strobe lights.”

I’m ashamed to admit that it thrills me to hear, “Aiya, where got fat? You’re so blardey skinny!” Of course, no one can accuse me of being a stick insect but this thrills me none the less.

Or the common, “Fine. You show me exactly where your flab is. Show me!”, after which I proceed to pinch about a bucket of lard from the folds of my stomach. They then go, “Aiya, that’s what you call flab? I’ll show you what real flab is!”

I don’t think you want to know how the rest of the story goes (not unless you’re bulimic and wretching is something you enjoy). Besides, this is irrevelant to my point.

My point is, I’m weak. I cave into the opinion of the masses. I may proclaim that beauty lies within, that physical beauty fades but true beauty lasts forever and all that jazz, but I have left out the fine print: beauty lies within... for other people; physical beauty fades but true beauty lasts forever... for other people. Not for me.

Give me long, slim legs and silky long hair and flawless skin and a knockout figure. Give me a brilliant white smile, sparkling eyes and a 24-inch waist. Give me a swanlike neck, delicate ankles and a behind that can stop traffic.

Of course, charisma, intelligence and confidence are important. I’m not denying that. I want those things too. I work hard at those things. But losing a few points of my IQ will never be as enormous a catastrophe as, say, newly discovered orange peel on my butt.

So because I’m weak, I shall continue going to the gym in hopes that I will one day be the proud owner of a body that resembles Halle Berry’s. Because I’m not strong enough to tell the world to “Put a sock in it! A little pudge never hurt anyone!!”, I’ll continue to stand sideways in front of the mirror and spin into a panic at every little bit of protruding flesh. Because I’m weak, I will resist the mad urge to devour that last piece of chocolate mud pie. Because I don’t have the guts to go through life with excess weight and not give a rat’s arse what people think.

A Case For Workaholism

getmorecoffee2
Originally uploaded by blinkingline.

Being a workaholic has its advantages.

Always appearing to be busy, you are therefore seen as contributing greatly to something (even if it's contributing in some way to the aesthetic value of dog food packaging).

You have the luxury of burying your soul, the very essence of your being, under loads and loads of ... that's right: work.

You have an instant, ready-made excuse for anything unpleasant that might crop up: "Congratulations on winning the first prize at the International Parakeet Talent Convention. I wish I could make it to the ceremony but I've got a mountain of paperwork to wade through, man." Now, this lame excuse would only work if you were known to be a workaholic. It would never work if your friend knew that you sped home at five sharp every evening to watch reruns of Mork and Mindy.

The same applies to concocting an alibi for a heinous crime like say, murder, for example. "I was in the office writing a contact report at precisely the same time Mrs Pang was being sliced into giant-sized cubes and turned into carrot soup." Again, this would only be plausible if you were known to be an obsessive, compulsive workaholic.

Workaholism is also great because it gives you an identity. It allows you to identify with workaholics all over the world - it's not all that different from alcoholics, druggies, sexaholics and a whole other bunch of holics. When you have such an identity, it carves you your very own space in this mixed-up world. In a world where war, famine and misery are rife, you can push everything aside, stand up tall and proud and declare, "I work, goddammit!!!"

You will never be lost (mostly because you're always in the office), you will never ponder over the purpose of life (it is to write insanely long emails and draft out boring quotations) and you will always know who the most important people in your life are (the ones who dole out your paycheck).

Whenever life spins out of control or goes out of its way to bite you in the ass, you can languish in the comfort of knowing that with work, you will always have consistency. Rest in the knowledge that no matter what happens, it will always suck. You can count on it to always suck. It will rarely get better or worse (hey, when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, you know it's pretty much a done deal).

Ahhhh ... workaholism is a thing of true beauty. And the best part is, anyone can be a workaholic. Unlike snooty country clubs, it doesn't matter how much money you make, how expensive your set of golf clubs is or how many BMWs you own. It doesn't matter what race, age or gender you are. Workaholism does not discriminate. All you need to earn your way in is the ability to stare at the computer for 12 straight hours without blinking and have an all-consuming (and therefore, unnatural) fervent passion for pie charts.

There. I have made my case for workaholism. Now all that's left for me to do is to actually become a workaholic. So far, I fear that success has eluded me - especially since I just spent the last fifteen minutes blubbering about the virtues of workaholism instead of doing any real ... you know ... work.

Everybody go "Ohmmm..."

Can we truly control our minds? Why does it often feel as though our minds have a mind of their own? Why do we obsess over things we’d rather not be thinking about?

People would tell you that when you want to stop thinking about something, all you gotta do is think about something else … but aren’t you then thinking of not wanting to think of it, and therefore, indirectly thinking about it anyway?

Are we merely in some sort of tug of war – our conscious selves kicking and dragging the subconscious through the mud? Why the hell can’t they ever get along?

This raises an interesting question: if every one of us houses two different wills within us, does that mean that, in a planet of 6 billion folks, there are actually 12 billion wills at work? With all the ridiculous fighting going on, I think it’s hardly necessary for us to be fighting within ourselves on top of everything else.

But with so many wills at work, which one is truly reflective of what I want? The conscious? The subconscious? Which is superior to the other? Which is right / wrong? True / false? And let’s not bring God into the equation (ie. His will is good and perfect and timely, blah blah blah) because we aren’t always made privy to His will now, are we?

Me? Morbid?!

"Daisy daisy, give me your answer do"
Originally uploaded by Spiralz.

I've been accused of being morbid (yes, all you people - you know who you are). I was actually gunning for deep and profound but obviously, that backfired. In retrospect, I suppose I have been a tad morbid, so in order to counter the impression that I have made, I will now wax lyrical about bright, happy and cheery things like ...

... pretty daisies, little puppies, chocolate chip cookies, teddy bears, sugar doughnuts, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens ....

Ah, I have been liberated from the shackles of morbidity ... rainbows, sunny skies, chirpy birds ... Thanks guys, I really should've done this sooner. Now if you'll excuse me, I think the Brady Bunch is back on ...

Revelations of a Hot Potato: The final OLA

The love potato
Originally uploaded by Edwinek.

9.00am:
Someone flicks on the light switch. Loud groans are heard throughout the office. To keep office interior as dim and romantic as possible, we shut the blinds and keep lights to a minimum. We are accused of being vampires but we don't bat an eyelash. Dark and silent, office begins to vaguely resemble the inside of a hearse.

9.10am:
Willow (in whiny voice): Play something.
Jess Je (hereafter known as JJ): Can I play The Bongo-Bong Song?

Known for her strange penchant for songs like Last Christmas, The Bongo-Bong Song and other hypnotic tunes, we have learned and know better than to give JJ free reign when it comes to music selection.

Willow: Absolutely not. Let's play some jazz.
Self-proclaimed goddess (hereafter known as SPG): I know. We can play Maroon 5!
Willow (thrilled): Yes yes.
SPG: Okay, okay, we'll play it over and over and over again then. [Loud cheers all around]

9.30am:
Songs About Jane is playing repeatedly in the background. We become immersed in our work. We spend the better portion of the morning arguing over topics such as the ugliest celebrity of the week, most annoying talk show host, how in the world Mario could quit American Idol and which reality show contestant we'd like to see crushed under the wheels of a cement mixer.

10.30am:
Bear Bear (hereafter known as BB) makes her usual departure for a movie review. We plunge into our habitual rounds of "What movie you going to see?" and "Will you be back soon?" and "Do they have McDonald's where you're going?", after which BB warns us not to mess with her Legolas/Orlando Bloom poster. We nod, wide-eyed.

BB: Lay even a cuticle on it and you will not live to see your grandchildren. Got it?

11.00am:
We hatch a diabolical scheme to dethrone Legolas anyway by replacing him with a humongous poster of Smeagol. We snicker conspiratorially.

SPG: Why are we doing this again?
Willow: We're doing this to get BB all worked up.
SPG: Oh ya. That's right.
Willow: You should really stop the smoking.
SPG: Why?
Willow: Because your memory's beginning to resemble a pile of sludge.
SPG: Oh ya.

SPG: [silence] By the way, what's the date today again?

11.30am:
The Bongo-Bong Song is playing despite our protests. JJ smiles and nods her head to the beat. She is happy.

12.00pm:
Lunch time - always a time of great, yet fruitless, debate. Discussion revolves around where to eat and what to eat ... which is silly because we always end up in Batai where we spend half the time hovering over other people's tables and giving them the evil eye until they surrender their kway teow soup and scramble back to their cars. The rest of the time is spent grumbling over how bloody hot it is and how we should really look for other places for lunch.

1.00pm:
Back in the office, we engage in a lively debate over the big Question Of The Week, which usually includes harbouring fantasies of becoming Brad Pitt's masseuse, fighting the urge to make prank calls to people in other countries and becoming the sex kitten of a filthy rich man.

1.30pm:
We source for content and images from the Net, which lapses occasionally into bouts of playing computer games and checking out websites where people post pictures of themselves in their underwear and masquerade as their pets [note: Doc must never know this].

2.30pm:
BB returns and sees that Legolas has, since her absence, morphed into Smeagol. She is understandably upset. We get real scared and promise never to do it again. She responds by taking out her Tamagotchi and talking tenderly to it. We are puzzled but know better than to push our luck.

3.30pm:
Reading aloud and laughing at contest entries sent in by readers. We make a game of trying to figure out who are deranged and who are not. We decide they're all losers and suggest that we keep the prizes for ourselves and our grandmothers.

5.00pm:
Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Willow: What time you guys planning to leave today?
JJ: I don't know. What time you leaving?
SPG: It depends. What time you leaving?
Willow: I'll leave when you leave.
BB: I'll leave when she leaves.
SPG: [pregnant pause] What are we talking about again?

Pringle with an M is spotted walking towards the door. We indulge in our customary nudge-nudge-wink-wink, "Where are you going? You're wearing orange ... who's the lucky guy, woo-hoo!". We do this every evening in hopes of boosting our collective chances of a real date.

We eventually go home. But some of us sneak back into the office in the middle of the night with our sleeping bag and Ribena bottle. Since we're always connected, we wanna see who else is impersonating their hamster.

Giving The Ol' Bucket A Kick

Baby Bunny
Originally uploaded by jonathangrubb.

Thought about death this morning. No. I didn't dash out the front door for a truckload of Panadol or arsenic or a Backstreet Boys CD (apparently, listening to it for a straight 24 hours can and will kill you). I merely contemplated the idea of death. The concept of it. Death meaning to slip into nothingness. To be free from all constraints of life. To be free from worries, expectations, restrictions.

I was fumbling around for my car keys when I suddenly wondered what it would be like to just be ... nothing. Of course, mundane trivialities such as how I would die, how long it would take and how it would physically feel did not make as much as a dent in my ruffled brain. No. Only that it would be pure heaven to not have to deal with the banalities to which I am currently shackled.

Then another thought crossed my mind: If I were dead / nothing / free from life, I wouldn't be able to enjoy the freedom that I now have, would I? Especially since I have now become zilch. I would be free, yes, but I would be too dead to enjoy it. To be free and to be able to savour freedom, I would have to be alive. But to be alive is to not be free. Talk about a no-win situation.

People say death is the coward's way out. I beg to differ. While running away from your problems may seem like an unforgivable act of cowardice, I think this simply refers to defecting to another state or country. Because let's face it, wherever you go, there you are. You can never truly run away from life. As long as you're alive, that is.

But dying isn't running away to another country. You are moving from a state of being to, well ... not being. From existing to ... no longer existing. In this case, there's nothing cowardly about it because the journey to death (some people like to call this suicide) is hardly a cushiony one. And to make the conscious decision to take this journey, despite it being fraught with peril, pain, blood, gore and a slim chance that you might make it out (god forbid) alive and thus, wind up even more miserable than when you first started, I think that takes a handsome amount of guts.

Guts play an even bigger role when you consider folks who decide to off themselves even when they believe in the afterlife. When they believe that this earthly life isn't all that there is. That there's life after death. Which means suicide is wrong. Which means you'll most probably end up in hell being licked by flames and having your eyeballs gouged out with a pitchfork and being subjected to all sorts of things that are very, very ... painful. Which means that death is not exactly a way out of your problems. Rather, it is the beginning of a whole new set of problems that will, unlike your sordid life, last for eternity. Because you cannot kill yourself once you're in the bowels of hell. Hmm. You don't get any more from-the-boiling-pot-into-the-frying-pan than this now, do you?

The big cosmic prank

Why does it seem, at times, that life is out to get us? I’m aware that spouting such sentiments makes me sound like the poster girl for paranoia but bear with me: Is life really out to get us? Is this what life’s all about? A huge cosmic setup whose primary goal is to get us?

Why are we given this human nature and expected to fight against it tooth and nail in order to be deemed upright and acceptable? Why are characteristics such as greed, selfishness and lust built into us when giving into these very impulses is tantamount to committing a grievous sin? Why do we spend a big chunk of our lives at loggerheads with traits that appear to be as natural to us as breathing, eating and sleeping? Why are we condemned when we are unable to overcome the very traits with which we were born through not fault or choice of our own?

When put this way, does it not seem that we are hopeless saps attempting to fight a battle we can never realistically win? The more interesting question might be: why do we even bother trying?

We try because of expectations, I suppose. Expectations from the people around us. We’re expected to do the right thing (which is tough sometimes because what’s really ‘right’ anyway?), feel a certain way and not feel a certain way, say certain things and not say certain things, do certain things and never, ever do certain things. Should we have the audacity to flippantly dismiss these expectations, we will certainly suffer the consequences …

Till Death Do Us Part

3263822_1
Originally uploaded by Goodknight.

I'll be brutally honest and confess that I do not understand nor appreciate the concept, the pressure and the hoopla surrounding marriage. Spoke to a friend of mine who claimed that the only valid reason for sentencing yourself to a lifetime of "till death do us part" is kids. If you want kids, it helps for the government to know who made them - at least on paper. It's simply a way of keeping track of where these kids come from. What other conceivable reason can there be for the institution of marriage?

At the risk of sounding hopelessly unromantic and cynical, I must first defend myself by stating that this argument was not bred out of bitterness or cynicism or anything of that sort. To a large extent, I feel that marriage is a concept imposed upon us by society and religion. Because of social pressures and expectations, people are putting on their running shoes and making a mad dash for the altar. I suppose you can argue that no, they do it because they are fueled by love. Well, that statement is flawed because I would take that to mean that every single person who gets hitched does it because they have found The One, and we all know that is simply not true.

Truth be told, at this point in my life, marriage holds little allure for me. If I were to jump onto the bandwagon, it would - to a considerable extent - be because of what society expects of me (society being mother, grandmother and family relatives whose favourite question never rings too far from, "So, found anyone yet?").

I have wondered if I am talking like this simply because I have not found The One. Perhaps once I find The One, I'd be singing a different tune. Perhaps once The One appears in my life, I'd be happily traipsing through every bridal store in town, checking out the gaudy selections of sequined evening gowns and haggling over the price of fruitcake takeaway for the guests. Perhaps when I find The One, my brain will be polluted with nothing but thoughts of screaming pink-faced babies, soiled diapers and the Teletubbies theme song. Perhaps when He comes into my life, I will miraculously rediscover new meaning to my life and find no greater fulfillment than handpicking lint off his clothing and watching him down a gallon of beer in a single masculine gulp. Perhaps.

But since I haven't experienced even the most infinitesimal urge to do these things, it is safe to conclude that I haven't met The One. For now, anyway.

So my point remains: why get married? Doesn't the concept go against every natural human instinct? Forgive me but aren't we humans neophiliacs by nature? Don't we crave the new and exciting? Don't we live by the credo that variety is the spice of life? I mean, we get restless when sitting through a half-hour TV drama, relentlessly channel surfing just to see what else is on. We have about five hundred million different ice-cream flavours. We get sick and tired of the cute little outfit we bought just a week ago. We hop from job to job in scarily rapid succession. Is it just me or is it a tad ludicrous to expect a race this fickle to commit to one single person for the rest of their lives? In essence, what we're doing is swearing to commit ourselves to a lifetime of sameness, of non-variety. A pretty big step especially since most of us can't even stick to the same cellular phone for more than a year.

In this sense, isn't marriage (to put it crudely) similar to buying an electronic gadget? Isn't it a natural human instinct to exchange the current - and therefore, older and crummier - model for something better when the latter comes along? Of course, you can argue that it's utterly ridiculous to compare a spouse to say, a really fancy digital camera with enough features to make grown men salivate. But are the two really all that different? The same impulses kick in, don't they?

So isn't that what marriage really is? Simply a way to make sure we don't give in to what is, at the end of the day, our most basic, natural impulse? Because they know (I confess I have no idea who "they" is) that, left to our own devises, we'd be changing models faster than you can say "in sickness and in health". So, in order to thwart what we would, under very natural circumstances, be very likely to do, they (I confess I still have no idea who "they" is) trap us in this unnatural state where we suffer great bouts of guilt the second we entertain the merest idea of being - dare I say it - bored.

And to think we spend our entire lives attempting to claw our way into such a situation? Scheming and plotting to gain entry into this seemingly hallowed institution? To think that the perceived success or failure of your entire existence can be extricated from your answer to the million dollar question, "You getting married yet?" Is this all that really matters? That you have a rock on your finger and you have somebody to microwave that frozen pizza for?

"Sure she's traveled around the world on a makeshift boat three times and was part of the team that fashioned a sphinx out of chopsticks but does she have a husband to cook and clean for? No!"

The strange thing is, despite how some of us might feel about marriage, we inevitably play right into the whole fiasco. Marriage is like men - you can't live with it, can't live without it (at least you have the knowledge that your family will do everything short of rushing headlong into an elephant stampede to make sure the curse of non-marriage never befalls you). We still want it. For all sorts of reasons. Of course, there are the elite few who would find more fulfillment being chained to a cement mixer than joining the ranks of the ol' ball and chain contingent, but they're a different story all together.

Social conditioning runs deeper than anyone thinks. We've been so psyched into thinking that life is meaningless and purposeless unless we have someone to wake up next to that to be happy is to be married. Even when we may disagree with practically everything we've been brought up to think, we still find ourselves being swept up in the current of popular opinion. To still be single after a certain age is like having the word "loser" stamped across your forehead. The only upside to this predicament is that it saves you the trouble of having to explain why you're still unmarried (which is a good thing since people usually act as if you've just announced that you're planning to dissect a puppy).

Which brings up an interesting point: why in the world do we have to somehow defend ourselves for not being caught up in the ecstatic throes of matrimony? Why is the following question to "are you married?" always "but why?" I think a more fitting scenario would go something like this:

"Are you married?"
"Why yes, I am." Smug smile.
"But why?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"But why are you married?"

Befuddled silence while trying to ascertain true intent of interrogator. Based on previous experience, an answer in the affirmative usually signified the end of the conversation and they would move on to other intellectually challenging topics such as why the tablecloths don't match the upholstery.

"Well, because I love him."
"Uh huh." A glaring lack of conviction can be heard.
"I really do. Besides, we've been dating for eight years and our families were bugging us and we weren't getting any younger and we had these coupons..."
"Uh huh."

When people are interrogated on why they are unmarried, it implies that being unmarried is an unnatural state and being married is whereas we have already pointed out that it very clearly isn't. So what gives? Perhaps it's a numbers game - two are more intimidating than one. It goes without saying that when a married couple (therefore, two people - unless it's one of those bizarre, unorthodox-type marriages) is pitted against a poor, defenseless singleton (one), the duo usually wins. Or perhaps the married couple is floundering in the paralytic state of ennui so badly that anything - even (or especially) the merciless ribbing of an unarmed unmarried individual - can be touted as amusement.

"Are you married?"
"No."
"Why in the world not?"
"Well, I haven't met anyone whom I'd want to touch with a ten-foot pole much less take an oath to spend eternity with."
"Really?" There's so much incredulity that you might as well have told her you were planning to surgically remove your uterus.
"Yes. Really."