A bloke in Melbourne, Australia who loves beer, dudes, metal music and falling over. RAD!

After a chaotic month of relationship changes and moving into a new apartment, I’d finally unpacked all my possessions and was sitting down with a nice cold beer. Ahh, I thought to myself. Finally a chance to relax and unwind.

That’s when I noticed an oozing puddle of water creeping from underneath my bedroom door, like the protagonist from a 50’s horror film. Believing this to be rather odd, I hesitantly opened the door. My stomach fell when I realised my washing machine had flooded and destroyed my entire apartment with ankle-deep water. After I’d opened the door, it began gushing throughout the entire house.

I won’t lie to you. At that point, the damage looked so impossible to clean up, I strongly considered walking out of the house and… okay, so I didn’t have a very good Step Two in that plan. But I did learn a lot of things very quickly – like mentioning to your mum that you’ve got a “plumbing problem” means she’ll initially assume you’re suffering from a urinary tract infection.

In case you ever find yourself with a flooded washing machine as well, here’s 10 steps to follow to manage everything quickly and easily:

Step 1: Quickly unplug any electricals which may be susceptible to the water. In particular, check for things like power boards which may be sitting on the floor. Gaffa tape electrical plugs to the walls if you don’t have anywhere to put them very easily. Oh yeah, and turn off the bloody washing machine taps, if you haven’t already done so.

Step 2: Call a mate. Everything becomes much more manageable when you’ve got a close bud helping you out. You’ll probably completely lose your wobbly voice and overflow into sobbing when you call someone (THIS MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAPPENED TO ME), but it helps to have someone helping you – especially if the damage is pretty bad. My ex was a bloody good sport and came over to help, in my case.

Step 3: Sandbag the flow of water as best you can. Create a border of towels, clothing, soft toys, anything at hand which is washable and absorbent. Don’t worry about dirtying everything up, you can wash it all later. If those advertisements for sanitary pads are to believed, throwing a single Stayfree pad into the water should see all the water absorbed within seconds. That said, I didn’t have any feminine hygiene products on hand at the time, so I can’t guarantee how well this works.

Step 4: Move anything else off the ground out of the water. You should be pleasantly surprised to find that the water damage isn’t that bad. Think about it – how many of your possessions do you actually store on the ground? Hopefully most of your stuff is located on shelves and off the carpet. That said, now’s the time to move everything out of the damage area and get ready to clean up.

Step 5: Apologise to your downstairs neighbour in advance. If you do have neighbours, suck it up, go downstairs and let them know what’s going on. They will have water seeping through their light fittings or ceiling, and it’s better you reach out in advance to apologise rather than them get upset and visit you. The elderly may believe they’ve been cursed with an indoor thunderstorm, and you don’t want that on your conscience. They’ll appreciate the warning and may even offer to help clean up the mess.

Step 6: Turn off the bloody heater! If you’ve used a heater to try to dry out any of the water, don’t. Especially if you’ve got wood parquetry flooring. I will show you why later in the post.

Step 7: Clean up the water as best you can. Unsurprisingly, you can’t use your vacuum cleaner to hoover up the water – sounds obvious, but a dumbarse mate of mine shorted out his vacuum trying to do this. Hopefully, by this stage, your friend has arrived to help you out. The water cleanup will be painstakingly slow: it’s probably shallow enough that scooping it up with a container is too difficult. The best method we found was to use towels to absorb as much water as we could, then wring it out into a bucket. Seemed quicker than a mop, anyway. Again, if you have a Stayfree pad at hand, use that instead to instantly clean up the water.

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How does this sound as a sitcom premise?

A group of men spend their weeks desperately prowling around bars and clubs attempting to pick up women. But this isn’t just any group of men! They spend their spare time desperately studying up on misogynistic methods of scoring women with berko science, then disguise it in socially acceptable teachings! Their ultimate quest is endless va-jay-jay with little regard for the feelings or wellbeing of the women involved. HILARITY ENSUES!

It would make a great sitcom premise, but it’s actually true. This is the world of the “pickup artist”, and I didn’t believe it was for real at first glance, either.

Apparently these walking petri dishes of STDs spend their time desperately studying tips and tactics on bedding women, in an endless juvenile quest to dominate the minds of women. It’s pack rape mentality made socially acceptable!

The most prominent member of the seduction community is known as Mystery (not his name by deed poll, I’m wagering). That’s him pictured above, in the smoldering and sensual furry top hat. His Wikipedia article lists some of his known pickup artist terms and concepts:

The 3-second Rule: If you see a girl you are interested in, you must approach her within three seconds or you will over-think things and create too much approach anxiety. (In other words, no fatties or uglies!)

Neg: A backhanded compliment intended to snub a potential mate (“target”), telegraph a lack of interest (“false disqualification”), or encourage the target to prove her worth (“qualify”). (Because misogyny is totally awesome!)

Peacocking: Dressing to stand out, or to have an item of clothing or an accessory that looks interesting, allowing the girl to comment on it if she is interested in starting a conversation with you. (Peacocking is actually quite handy, as it clearly flags fuckwits in a crowd who have spent money on “pickup artist training”).

It gets better!

Some pickup artists in the community write up “Lay Reports” (“LRs”) detailing their experiences with women which they share on Internet forums for constructive criticism, or to serve as examples for others.

It sounds like these guys truly believe they’re racking up Xbox Achievement points with every poor lady they inexplicably manage to score. Bizarre. Has anyone actually come across a suspected pickup artist in Australia? I’m praying this is a phenomenon that’s restricted to the US for now.

Of course, it’d all never work in the gay community, and nor does it need to. You-know-what is virtually the homo handshake. Conversation comes afterwards!

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