"You might as well just print 'I'm a loser who anticipates rejection' on them."

Losers anticipate rejection .... maybe.

But people who can deal with it in an adult manner are definitely not losers. And that's the whole problem with this card thing. Be it a witty pickup line or just an honest 'I like you. Call me at ###-####', the card is just a method for avoiding face to face communication and the more often than not rejection that comes with it.

Once the face to face works out, no cute lines on cards are needed. Just the name and phone number. A business card might do (if you don't mind a call on your work line). A personal card has an aura of 'I do this pick up thing often enough that I need to order 500 cards at a time'. A bar coaster and a pen works just fine.

I mourn the death of the traditional chat-up line, if only because they tend to lead to moments of hilarity for spectators when used when drunk. For example, before mobile phones when people still used callboxes, my friend liked the idea of giving someone her phone number and a coin, saying 'Here's 20p - give me a call'. But she got so hammered that when someone caught her eye in the pub, she forgot the phone number part and just staggered up to him, pressed 20p in his hand and said, '...Here's 20p' then ran away because she didn't know what to say next.

If she'd had cards, none of her friends would have been able to enjoy this anecdote in subsequent years. Cards are sterile and boring. Long live drunken inadvisability.

"Wow, that would intrigue me. If I were a Vulcan. With Asperger's syndrome." - Mistress M, I do love your columns and think you're witty, charming and devastatingly beautiful. However, adding that 'Asperger's Syndrome' line? Thank you for making a petty generalization. Aspies tend to have trouble interpreting other people's emotions, but we're not all super-IQ'd unfeeling Vulcans. Even I can appreciate that a card is not an emotionally-correct way to express emotion. It's offensive that you lump all Aspies into the same concept (although we tend to share a spectrum of those symptoms, we are not all the same in how they're expressed). We Aspies come in peace...we're oddly enough, from a planet very like yours - but you do things differently there.