UPDATE 9/20/2011: I’ve slightly modified the contest “rules.” See below.

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As you’re likely by now aware, I am an unemployed writer. Also, being a relative newcomer to Los Angeles, I know very few people here, most of whom are employed. As such I spend the vast majority of my time sitting at home by myself. This, I can say from experience, puts one on the fast track to insanity. To make matters worse, science has proven that each Italian BMT one eats alone at Subway is the mental health equivalent of moving oneself into the carpool lane on the expressway to bat shit. So no more of that for me! I want to buy you lunch.

Yes, you. Every week, I want to take someone to lunch, to counteract the effects of the above and to maybe make that person slightly happier than they would be otherwise. If you want to have lunch with me, simply tweet me with the hashtag #SethBuyMeLunch. Every week I’ll pick someone, randomly or otherwise, to have lunch with and pick up the tab. We will do this in a public place, for protection in case either of us are lunatics.

To make this a little more interesting, here are a few rules that I’ll enforce or not enforce depending on how things go:

1. The window for eligible tweeting each week is between 12am Monday and 12am Tuesday. Don’t forget to include the hashtag: #SethBuyMeLunch.
2. You must be available for lunch the week you tweet me. (UPDATED: After further consideration, this rule is now more of a preference.) Because I have nothing on my schedule between now and Thanksgiving, we’ll find a time that works for you.
3. I’ll meet you in a neighborhood of your choosing anywhere in the LA metro area, but not necessarily at a restaurant of your choosing. I am, after all, very poor, and I can’t have unscrupulous people trying to use me for a free lunch at Providence.
4. You need to agree to have the lunch documented by photographs, post-lunch blog recap, or otherwise.

That’s really it. Tweet me. Let’s have lunch.

• Note: your lunch may vary from lunch pictured and may not involve silverware and may be eaten in a parking lot from the hood of a car.