Grand Ma (rnier)

How can spending all night chugging something so very close to orange Listerine make your mouth taste so terrible in the morning?

Hot Pockets

On the packaging for Hot Pockets, there are directions for how to cook one. Then, there is a separate number for if you wish to cook both at the same time. This should, I think, be preceded with, "Do you hate yourself?" Maybe microwaves should have a "I hate myself" button that will perfectly cook two Hot Pockets.

I'm not made of money

Other things that I'm not made of:

• Ceramics
• American Flags
• Sawdust
• Dreams
• Plastic
• Rainbows
• Jet Fuel
• Legos
• Denim

What is a Blog?

So, I just found an unfinished post on here from two years ago titled "What is a Blog?" There was nothing there but the title. I have no idea what I was going to say, but it amused me, so I decided to publish it. I'm pretty sure, though, that there's no way that a personal blog post titled "What is a Blog?" can possibly be anything but douchey, masturbatory drivel.

And I'm pretty sure that I just heaped some evidence on my argument. Bam.

Things Facebook Has Taught Me

It turns out, I might not be a paragon of paying attention. I know who more than half of my Facebook friends actually are, but only just. I got a request from a guy recently and thought, man, this guy doesn't look at all familiar. He was at Clemson when I was, but that's all we've got in common. I accepted the request, because that's what I generally do. A couple of weeks later it comes to me: I lived with him. Roommates for a full school year. Damn.

A Pickup Line

Hey, baby. Wanna see if your phone and my charger are compatible?

Fired.

Whenever some prominent douchebag at a company I work for gets fired, I can't help but speculate as to what they do from there, where their life goes. I wonder if they'll have a full-scale breakdown and become a hairy, gray, dirty drunk on the street screaming about how important they once were. Or maybe, and this is my favorite possibility, the shock of the change sets their ship on a new trajectory. They see how much their sense of self has been hinging on that bullshit job and the bullshit money and the bullshit, meaningless power of the position. They search for their own power, power that is intrinsically their own. This search is a spiritual awakening, they turn to Buddhism, then eventually find the enlightenment behind the religion and become something that surpasses ceremony: they find Faith, they find themselves, and they discover, most of all, the importance of their fellow man. They wear white, flowy cotton shirts, beards, and a mala. They smile softly, speak little, and never try to impose their will upon others.

Here is what generally happens. I see them in a local deli about a year after "So-and-So just got fired!" is first whispered in my ear, and see that they are a year older and still a douchebag.

Pandora Ads

I'm really disappointed with the ads on Pandora. I think that these things could be really, really well targeted with a little bit of thought and care. I mean, really, there's more possibility for targeting there than even Facebook, if you think about it. On Facebook they know a lot of words about you, but on Pandora they know not only what kind of music you like to listen to, but what you're in the mood for RIGHT NOW. They know algorithms (although I'm pretty sure that their algorithm has a sense of humor and likes to fuck with me), so why is it that, when I'm listening to a station that you made for me based on my immediate desire to listen to Talib Kweli and Saul Williams, you try to sell me tickets to a Dave Mathews concert? Seriously? This is the conclusion you draw from my listening habits?

Pursuit of Happiness

Sometimes, when I hear the phrase "pursuit of happiness," the image in my head is of a pursuit of happiness through the woods like a wolf on a doe. I am on all fours in the chase, the wind in my hair. Eventually I catch it, and I bring happiness down with only my strength, and my wits, and my teeth. It is bloody glory as I gorge on my well-earned feast of happiness.

Dancing LongLegs

I was trimming some hedges earlier, listening to the music, as the kids do these days. Daft Punk was playing. I noticed as I trimmed that there were about ten Daddy LongLegs that had been disturbed by my cutting in the hedge, and they were moving around, back and forth along the hedge. Around the World was playing at the time, and it looked like they were dancing to the music.

If you look closely enough at the world, drugs are redundant.

Putting Rumors to Rest

I would like to put the nasty rumors to rest.

Of course I'm not amassing an army of merciless undead robotic terrors to take over the world and create a dystopia with days of universal quality health care, police who protect your rights rather than violate them, healthy food that's actually affordable to those who need it, a simple and sufficient federal college grant system, reasonable drug laws, and copious clean energy while the nights are filled with the silent screams of rent souls as my nightmare servants feed on the essences of the content.

I'm not sure how these rumors were started, but they're completely false. My experiments are completely benign in intent and method. I have no dream that we can bring Heaven to Earth with the low price of just a little Hell coming with it. That would be ridiculous.

Allergies

I am not, despite my drunken insistence to the contrary, "literally allergic to your fucking face."  Whatever I said, I did not "actually break out into Goddamn hives just from seeing your smarmy mug come into the room."  The itching was mostly feigned.  While I do not always welcome your company, I think that, for safety's sake, it's important to come clean regarding any medical condition that I might have claimed, last night or any other.  Jaegermeister does, as I insisted, make me vomit, but this likely more an issue of taste than "because my more highly evolved body rejects horrible poisons that this low-rent corpse you call your body is willing to accept."

On a related note, I do not have any firsthand knowledge of your mother's felatio skills, and she did not give me any sexually transmitted diseases, much less a variety of them.  I did, however, once make out with her at a PTA function, for which I will not apologize.  As we discussed last night, I feel that I cannot be blamed for "her whorish ways."

Facebook again.

It's safe to assume that Facebook will be using these "I'm a fan of" things to algorithmically pigeonhole everyone on the site for ad targeting. I imagine a checkbox list

• 'I'm selling ironic sweatervests, so I'll check the boxes for "craft hipsters," "indierock snobs," and "geek chic kids."'
• 'I'm selling Chinese character tattoos, so I'll check the boxes for "tuner nerds" and "white-guy blues fratties."'
• 'I'm selling pocket-sized Kierkegaard books, so I'll check the box for "unemployed pseudo-intellectuals who foolishly think that they can manage to defy the Empire's pigeonholing algorithm." Man, that's specific. Hrm, better check "secret furries," too.'

Head Over Heels

The TV guide thing described the movie as being about a woman falling in love with a man who may or may not be a murderer, as though this is somehow any different from every other love story.  Do we ever really know that the person we're with isn't a murderer?  I could have sworn that mystery and discovery of another person is a major component of romance.

I think that maybe I've been misunderstanding love this whole time.  Or maybe just movies.

I really can't believe that I have 271 "friends" on Facebook.  I'm fairly confident that I don't know 271 people.  I'm absolutely certain that I don't like that many.  Probably not much more than 30 or 40, most likely.  And that's counting dogs and babies, who rarely have Facebook accounts.  Of course, you are obviously one of the people that I like.