Believe me, I hear ya. It would be the ... uh ... whaddathey call it? Coupe de gravy? Ya, that. You know what Cosplay is, right? That’s when adults dress up like Japanese cartoon or videogame characters because ... I don’t know why they do it, but I saw it on the web.

Obviously, it’s not something you can just bring up in conversation. Like, “Hey baby, howabout for Christmas I get you a Chun Li costume? You know, you could wear your hair up in buns, and then, uh, THIGHS.” No.

No friend, this requires subtlety. As you can see from this Excel spreadsheet I whipped up, my 32-step “Get my hot girlfriend into Cosplay” plan begins this week and culminates in next Spring’s AnimeCon ’03, where I hope to have her stuffed into a “Kasumi” costume from Dead or Alive 3 so tight that it requires tacky-glue just to keep her from popping out of that thing. All those fat guys dressed up as Sailor Moon are gonna FREAK.

Anyways, step one is for me to leave my copy of the official Xbox magazine open to the right page on my coffee table after class today. You have to help me with step four, which is to make sure I get a copy of Dead or Alive 3 for Christmas -- here’s the money, keep the change, I’ll act surprised. I’ll also need your help with step 21, where you need to plant the blue and white robe at the thrift store on the day I’ll convince her that we need to go there to buy a lamp -- “Wow honey, look at this! It looks just like something Kasumi might wear. You should try it on.”

Sure, this plan’s a lot of work. Six months of planning and plotting, actually. But, two words my friend: va-zoom. That’s all I’m saying. Va-zoom.