The Weird Mystery of Random Friends

Mysteries.

Weird Mysteries.

They happen. Here's one: So I'm scrolling through my facebook friend's list and I start to see a bunch of random names. Then I click on the names or profile pictures to see who these strange "new" friends are. Then I see the picture. Generally it involves a wedding dress, possibly some cake being stuffed into someone's mouth, and generally under their "relationship status" it says they are married to some guy with the same last name.

My theory:

These people have some taboo predilections. Marrying someone with the same last name? I mean, I won't outright call it incest, but I'm not going to say it isn't. And why on earth are we friends? I did know someone named Talika Rosen, but I DO NOT know a Talika Fairchild. Actually, come to think of it, I do not know ANY Talika. AAAAaaah! (I never know how to write that so that it comes out as a blood-curdling scream and not a refreshing sound you make when you just pop open a cold beverage).

Here's another strange discovery. While I seem to be gaining all of these "new" friends, the number of overall friends does not increase. AND...if that weren't enough, some of my "old" friends have seemingly disappeared.

My theory:

These "new" friends are probably aliens, cyborgs, or alien cyborgs who have used some voodoo magic to tap into my facebook friends list. They are probably also body snatchers and have taken my "old" friends to some weird, sketchy, alien laboratory to harness the power of their names (and consequently their souls).

Sounds reasonable.

There are never enough tow trucks.

They love each other so much.

Probably not too hard to force that cake down.

"Random guy next to groom tries to distract him with cake while he runs off with bride"

Happy Fourth of July!: Independence vs. Dependence

Happy fourth of July! I hope you all are enjoying, or planning on enjoying some delicious BBQ with friends and family, then watching some fireworks somewhere (maybe even lighting of few of your own). But, let's not forget that while those things are fun, tasty, etc., they are not what this day is all about. This day is about independence. It is about freedom. It is about making a choice to believe in the unlimited capacity of the human spirit.

This is not dependence day. We do not need the government to provide us with internet, healthcare, retirement benefits, or anything but the opportunity to get those things ourselves. Tell me - was the iphone created because some lawmaker appropriated funds to some government entity and told them to create the world's coolest phone? Tell me - did the best computers in the world come about because of the government? Tell me - Did we become the largest, most innovative economy in the world because of government regulation and intervention? No. It was because of freedom. It was because our forefathers believed that private individuals live happiest and produce the most when they are not tethered to an oppressive government. That is why we separated from England!

In America everyone can be great. We encourage, and offer the opportunity from the bottom up, not top down. Stifling success to spread wealth and make everyone equal just lowers the quality of life and possibilities for everyone. However, letting people be free to innovate, create, be self-motivated, responsible, and allowing them to believe in themselves will make everyone prosperous. It has for 230 plus years. Let's maintain that trend.

God Bless America! Happy Birthday Lady Liberty!

Facebook Friends: 1000 dollars to a lucky friend

As of this moment I have 996 facebook "friends". So, I have decided to create a new game to encourage more meaningless online social networking interaction with people I hardly know. If I get 1000 friends today (that means four more for you math majors), one lucky friend will get one thousand dollars and my personal recognition of their existence and my congratulations for being my online friend on their wall. Should be exciting. If you're not my friend yet, it seems it might finally become profitable. Good luck facebookers!

A Tribute to Funny

Ok, this show is from BBC3 called Man Stroke Woman. Some of the skits are great, and these three are prime. I quote the first one all the time when I want to communicate the itchiness of my jumpers and/or want to trivialize my emotions.



I'm also doing a social experiment and seeing what kind of random stuff I can write in between these videos.



Swiss Bacon Classic. Melancholy dwarfs. Edible chocolate friends. (Insert non-food item here)



This is more or less what will happen when I run into women who I used to date in the future.

You may be thinking, wait a second, he didn't really write anything today. This blog post seems like a cop out. And to that I would say: "You are correct."

All she wanted was lemonade

Her name was Carol. She was just like any of us. She woke up every morning and put one pant leg on at a time, and ate a lackluster breakfast. She would sing in the shower. She loved sipping hot chocolate on a cold winter day. And, she loved a cool, refreshing glass of lemonade on those hot summer days.

It was this love for lemonade that did her in. 

It was mid July. Carol had gone out to her garden to do some weeding. After vigorously arguing her case with a rather stubborn dandelion and losing, she came back inside, her brow dotted with large beads of sweat. As she entered the house she thought to herself, "It sure would be nice to have a glass of lemonade." So, she went to the kitchen. On the counter was a glass of opaque liquid with what looked to be lemonade pulp at the bottom. Parched and worn, she reached for it and glugged it down. It was perhaps the strangest lemonade she had ever had. The pulp seemed to have a life of its own. 

Everything became clearer as her nephew Tommy came in from another room and screamed, "MY SEA MONKEYS! YOU KILLED MY SEA MONKEYS!" As little Tommy began bawling, Carol had the sudden urge to vomit.

But, swallowing sea monkeys* and upsetting her nephew was not all she had done. She also incurred the wrath of PETA. After Carol's story was made headline news, due to her lawsuit suing the sea monkey company for her horrible new chronic abdominal troubles, PETA wanted in. 

"Those sea monkeys were kept in a cramped, poorly oxygenated glass for days, and it was only a matter of time before someone drank them or they boiled in the a cloud of their own excrement," said Suzanne Zibilsky of PETA. "We will pursue this case to the fullest extent we can. Sea monkeys are just like you and me. They can feel, and taste, and even know how to swim. Yet, they have become second class life forms. We value all life." Carol and Tommy have both received court summons on behalf of the sea monkeys' remaining living relatives in conjunction with PETA.

People have been protesting for the past several months on Carol's lawn, even going so far as to trample her garden. Looking at the bright side Carol said, "Well, at least I don't have to pull out that dandelion. It's dead. Probably in the same place as those blessed sea monkeys."

* Sea monkeys are brine shrimp (very intelligent Brine Shrimp, that are basically aquatic Tamarin monkeys (the cute ones that help old people read books, and the same kind featured on the TV series "Friends")

Facebook, girls, and my friend "Phil"

Well, I have a whole list of topics to write about for the next few days, but when I showed the list to my brother he said, "Meh." 

So I asked what I should write about. He said, "Girls." With no further elaboration, I really didn't see myself writing anything worthwhile today.

However, I will make this as interesting as possible. Let's start off with a hypothetical situation in which a "friend of mine" might find himself currently. Let's call him Phil. 

So Phil is interested in this girl. He's only spoken to her on one occasion, and has only seen her in passing since then. Phil is an avid baseball fan and decided to watch a certain game on Sunday night instead of going to a function that would have helped him see this girl again. Thinking that perhaps another week would go by without him having an opportunity to get her number, he did something he finds quite tacky. Phil and this girl are friends on facebook. So, he writes her a note to the effect that he wanted to talk to her, watched baseball instead of going to the function, wanted her number, knew he could get it through other means, but wanted to get it from her (even if it were through facebook, which is regrettably lame). 

He sent the message Sunday evening. It is now tuesday. He has no desire to do a follow-up without a response, but still sees her from time to time in passing. 

What should he do?

Here are my thoughts. First off Phil, you're an idiot. You shouldn't have told her that you saw the game instead of going to the function. But even before that, if you know where she lives you should have gone over to her house and asked her out, used that as a pretext to get her number and voila! But, seeing that we can't do anything about what is past, you will have to a) wait for her response and if you don't get one, just pretend it never happened, or just say someone took over your facebook account or b) talk to her the next time you see her and ask her for her number (but don't bring up the facebook thing. If she does, just pretend that you don't know what she's talking about). If it works out, you got lucky. If not, well, my first comment stands.

PS - Enjoy this picture:

You Aren't REALLY Listening.

Let me start off by making a glittering general statement and blanket coverall assumption like I have done so many times:

We all think we're pretty clear communicators.

Here's the reality:

We aren't.

Even the best of communicators struggle in some of the seemingly simplest situations. For great examples look at people's close relationships: Good friends and family. And what are the two things that make those situations hard? 

For one we don't just communicate with our words. We communicate with metamessages. For those of you who don't know what a metamessage is, it's the message we send to someone behind what we say. It can come in the form on inflection, body language, facial expressions, or implicit positions that the other party supposedly already knows about. And, it's obvious to see why that would tend to complicate things more often in a close relationship. Your close friends and family know you. They know your tendencies, opinions, attitudes, etc. And, while you might think that would help them understand you better, often times it just gets in the way with what you really want to say.

The second problem is intrinsically related to the first. Instead of focusing on what you're saying, or even allowing you to speak, a close friend or family member will "interpret" using what they believe you want to say, or what they believe you are thinking. This means that they take a position on what you've said before you've said it, or if you've said it, they aren't hearing what you said, but what they think you wanted to say.

So, having identified the problem in this part of the blog post you might expect me to give a remedy. Well, I don't have one. I could blather on about how we should temper our use of preconceived notions about close friends and family so we actually hear them, instead of hearing what we think they are saying, but there's no clean cut way to do that. I'm sure we're all going to run into brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandparents, in-laws, and friends who will not let us say our piece, and when we do say it, they will have thought we meant something else. That's just life. But, perhaps if you've found yourself with this problem, you can refer them to this post so they can at least identify that what they are doing, and maybe give you a fair shake. 

That being said. It's not just their problem. It's yours too. And mine.

PS - I sure hope my brother reads this.

I'm inflammatory

It was Sunday. I was en route to a dinner with friends, and my friend Bob* was on his cell phone. I overhead him saying, "Oh, yeah. I know. Well Michael's right here, you want to talk to him? Ok."

So I get the phone. It is Bob's and my mutual friend Georgina*. We dispense with pleasantries, then I say, "I read your blog all the time." To which she replies, "I read yours sometimes, but it's really inflammatory." Then she said, "Come to think of it, you're pretty inflammatory, and I don't know why I'm saying this, but yeah." So I said, "Could it be because we're on the phone and you can't say it to my face?" To which she said, "I think that proves my point. I don't think I could say it to your face."

So I'm inflammatory. I get that. In some ways that is fair. Everything I touch burns. It's a general statement, but it could easily be agreed upon by more than one person I'm sure. So not long after the phone call, I thought of how I could maintain my newly discovered 'inflammatory' status. Well, the most obvious thing is to react adversely and take the opposite position on anything and everything anyone around me says, and then do all that is humanly possible to get a rise out of them. But I think it would probably be even more fun to be literal. I could let out my inner 'Pyro' and burn things. Now that would be fun.

But before I indulge in either of those possible methods, I would like to break down my own psyche for the average reader. I am a student of political science, philosophy, and I love good arguments (not screaming contests, but methodically logical/sometimes flawed discourse), and debate. For example, to this point in college I have taken three parliamentary and world debate classes, and I am currently taking a class on Alexis de Tocqueville and another class on the philosophy of the social sciences. What that entails is a lot of reading, digestion of information, and then a careful, logical, analysis, often followed by discussion in class. Now this discussion is not heated. I in fact find it quite easy to detach my emotions and biases to look at the merits of the arguments. Philosophically I like to deconstruct arguments and poke holes in them, putting forth my best critiques not to detract from the other side, but to understand it better. If I do not put forth a good argument, I expect my fellow students will find its flaws and help reconstruct or negate it thoroughly. Again, it's hardly personal. In order to get the best feedback and counter-arguments, I have found that I need to put forth a good, well-conceived argument of my own. 

Now here's the problem. With this mindset, often times I take umbrage with friends, colleagues, and family members when they put forth weak arguments. I sometimes unwittingly offend, because I'm trying to understand their argument, and so I question, and even brashly challenge their line of reasoning. But instead of getting it handed to me, and hearing a good argument in return, as I would with my political science/debate/philosophy student colleagues, I get a flustered response and often times extremely bothered friends or family members.

So I am a confrontational person. I know I should let more things go, and remove myself from the philosopher/debater mindset sometimes. But, for now I think I'll just light things on fire, and apologize with a bucket of icy water.

*note: real names not used to protect the people who think I'm inflammatory

Always Leaving

The truth is, not matter how long you stay, no matter where you go, or what you do, everybody leaves. They leave when they graduate from high school, college, when they change jobs, when they go into witness protection, and when they're on the run from the law. Everybody leaves. And it can be sad, and it can be happy, and it can be bittersweet. But even those people who stick around in the same town their whole life leave.  It begins with life and ends with death. "Easy come, easy go, a little high, a little low...any way the wind blows" as Queen says, and I'm sure Pocahontas from the Disney animated feature would agree.

And in my case I can't wait to leave sometimes, and other times I wish I could stay forever. Well, in Provo it has never been the latter. I will not really miss the place. Sure I'll miss some friends, but the place has been anything but cool. I've had some good memories, good times, and enjoyed myself on occasion, but to be honest, most of the good friends I've made here at school have been from Pennsylvania, Idaho, California, Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia, and even my home state Massachusetts.  But I find it odd that while in Utah I'm chillin' with out-of-staters like myself. It must be a sign. I have a higher calling. When I leave here I will shed no tears, but rather put on a smile, and throw a huge rager.  Then I'm out.

Keep Friends Close, Enemies Closer

You know that saying that goes: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer"? Well, recently I thought about a certain Presidential candidate and his idea of international diplomacy. Some of you may already be aware. Barack Obama has agreed to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba without preconditions. And, on top of that, he refuses to re-visit Iraq to reassess the situation, and refuses to meet with General Petreaus. You might see the strange logic in this. Or, perhaps you think this is a stroke of genius.


Of course it's genius people. We legitimize regimes that do not pay attention to international sanctions and agreements with the highest form of diplomacy available: a Presidential visit. And, then we slap our own people in the face. Our ally Iraq, Maliki's government and our troops clearly are less worthy of being spoken to than a man who denies the Holocaust, or another man who has already tested nuclear weapons right near our ally Japan. Obama has got this one right. He's keeping his enemies close like bosom buddies, and keeping his friends at arm's length.

But, perhaps there is another option. Maybe, keep your friends close, and talk to your enemies when they start obeying international law....just a thought.