Something About Stuff

according to new* studies, one in five divorces involve facebook.

how long is it going to be before psychologists finally update the DSM-IV? the very fact they have not altered their theories based on the extreme changes caused by the internet is one of the many things that gets them called a pseudoscience all the time.

"hey! let's all hang out at a cafe so we can get on our laptops and iphones and blackberries and text the friends that didn't come to see what they're up to rather than having a conversation with the people in front of us!"

am i the only one who feels slightly alarmed that this is considered normal and acceptable behavior?


once, when i was a little kid, my dad proved to me that i was lying by dipping my finger in a glass of water and then taking the water's temperature. i didn't think i was lying, but he had proof and i couldn't argue with that.

i wasn't lying and he was bullshitting a six year-old, but there was no way i could prove him wrong. and it wasn't about whether or not he was right-- it was about the fact he was my dad and he demanded respect as an authority figure.

nowadays, kids can yahoo answers the crap out of their parents' stories and come back and be like "wtf, mate?"

the internet, whether it's full of fact or fiction, has caused a break in the old school form of respect for our elders in that way.

back to facebook and relationships, though-- why can't you be in an "It's Complicated" relationship with more than one person? facebook won't allow it. wouldn't the fact it's complicated [enough to mention] indicate that there is more than one person involved? even if it's not implied, it certainly is a great possibility. i would expect that if facebook was negative-minded enough to list "It's Complicated" as a relationship option, they would be smart enough to allow us to be complicated with a few people.


that kind of puts the "oh, we're on and off" relationships to shame and makes you wonder what's so complicated about a relationship that only involves one other human.

i was talking with a forty-eight year-old woman who was very worried that she would have a difficult time reentering the dating scene. she'd been out of it for twenty-three years-- on account of her recently ended marriage-- and now has no idea where to start.

their divorce, for the record, was not one of the 20% caused by facebook.

"just know that people google you," i told her, "it's 2010. everyone googles everyone."

"that's where he found that picture of me!" she shouted, "i couldn't figure out how this new guy found that picture."

"i think digital today makes a lot of it harder," i said, "besides the fact everyone can go private investigator on you and find out all your best secrets before you have a chance to charm them with those secrets yourself, most people don't leave the house without something plugged into their ears. you can't even talk to someone on the street half the time."

one interesting thing the internet has altered is that older generations have a new respect for their youngins. i like talking with people double my age because i feel like we're trading information that couldn't be gotten on the internet with half the fun or success. and i don't care if it's fact or not-- it's opinion and it's interesting.

"you would like my daughter," she said.

i wasn't too sure where that came from, but figured maybe her daughter was also a fan of talking to strangers and felt cornered by how increasingly hard that continues to become.

"but you would have to like blondes," she continued, "do you go for blondes?"

"they tend to get me in trouble," i said.

that may not be exactly true, but if i were to name my least favorite ex-girlfriends... well, they're all blondes.

"she has a great ass, though," she told me as she fumbled for her blackberry, "let me see if i can find a picture."

i tried briefly to start her talking about her divorce again in hopes to get away from the opportunity to stare at her daughter's ass. but it didn't work.

"see," she showed me a low-angle shot of her daughter rock-climbing, "look at that ass!"

"yeah," i said, completely unaroused by the situation, "i should really climb more often."

"are you single?" she asked, ignoring my attempt to change the subject.

"well," i said,"it's complicated."

it's not. but that worked.

*may actually be old.

A Christmas Song Worth Listening To

Are you getting sick of the same dozen uninspiring Christmas songs played on loop for a month and a half? I know I am. And so, I'd like to share something that I think more suitably encompasses my feelings each and every Christmas season. Funny, witty and brilliant, I give you Tim Minchin.

For My Future Child

i'm not the oldest in my family, but i've always imagined it to be strange. the first child is witnessing parents learning to be parents, and they get what may be an experimental attempt very similar to a first-year teacher.

or, in the case that your parents are teachers, it's probably exactly like a first-year teacher.

either way, the first child is when expectations begin. by the third or fourth kid, there can't be too many surprises. though i may be entirely wrong there.

for my first kid, i'd like to tell them useful, life-related facts, that seemed to miss my ears growing up.

the problem is when we think of what we'll tell our children, we think of it all as a philosophy. we transform the question into, "how do i want my children to turn out?" which can't be answered and wasn't the question. there are things i could tell my kid in hopes to mold them into a certain type-- but that may or may not work and isn't the point.

there are certain things we need to tell our kids. these things are not about philosophy, and they're not about controlling someone's personality. they're just facts.

i would tell them one on certain birthdays.

on their third birthday: bees sting. if insects still exist in the future, and my kids like playing with them as much as i did, i'm going to need to let them know that bees sting. i don't remember being warned that this was something i might need to know as an amateur entomologist-- and if i was, it was certainly not made clear that bees can still sting you after they've died, or that bees will sting you if you touch them in any way, even if you weren't trying to capture it, and even if it was an accident.


then, maybe when the kid has grown a few years, i'd like to hit them with another juicy birthday-fact: there are brothers and sisters who are born on the same date, and look exactly the same-- right down to their god damn fingerprints-- they're called twins.

i don't know if i'm the only one who was never introduced to twins as a kid. i mean, at what logical time would a parent bring up a discussion of twins unless the kid had first seen a pair of twins? my first elementary school had no twins and therefore i had no reason to ask how they were possible, and my parents had no reason to concoct a colorful explanation.

i met a series of twins at my second elementary school in the fifth grade. and the only thing more bewildering than the concept of what seemed to be living clones, was that all twins had the same birthday. i couldn't imagine the coincidence or the magic necessary to pull off such a stunt. to be honest, i think i might have been scared.


i want to tell my kid before they see twins, because otherwise it is a horribly mind-blowing experience.

on their seventh birthday, i would want them to know a little bit about persimmons. this may not sound useful, but i did learn a few days ago that it is very useful. the fact is simple: persimmons shaped like tomatoes can be eaten raw, the ones shaped like acorns have to be cooked.


i'm tempted to say "try it." if you have never experienced eating the wrong type of persimmon. one bite felt like it had immediately dried my entire mouth of saliva, coated it with a thin sandy-paste, sucked my cheek-skin inward, and managed to taste bitter all at once. it was a horrible surprise-- like thinking you're about to drink a guinness and finding out it's actually a sam adams black.

sometime in my kid's early teen-life, i would like them to know something that no one ever told me. this is a life-changing piece of information so amazing i sometimes wonder if it was intentionally never told to me.

you don't have to separate your color laundry from your whites unless this is the first time you're washing the clothes.

some people will argue this and that about maintaining the integrity of the colored clothes, and how it is actually very important to separate the laundry loads-- but i don't envision a spawn of me and someone crazy enough to marry me growing up to be one of those people.

do you know how much better i became at doing laundry when i finally realized that clothes do not turn pink because of a red sock like they do in the movies? i mean, they can-- and i would definitely let my kid know this, too-- but only if the sock is new and has never been washed.

but somewhere later in my child's teenage life, they will inevitably want nothing to do with me and my trivia. so i don't think i need to plan out any special facts for those years yet.

and then on their eighteenth birthday, i'll tell them the last fact; the most important one:

you have super-powers.

not because i think they'll have super-powers, but because i think it could be good comedy if my eighteen year-old child believes it on even the smallest of levels. i'd like to see what happens next.


i think sometime around their twenty-third, or twenty-eighth, they'll come back and thank me. or argue with me-- which would be okay, too.

***

i absolutely hate what they did to the asterisk.

of the punctuation marks, it was arguably my child-life favorite and still would be if it weren't for my discovery of the interrobang or the change in meaning of the asterisk. it was my favorite because it seemed to have no clear meaning or purpose-- it was the last of a magical kind.

the asterisk was just a series of intersecting lines that resulted in a star-shaped glyph left to make sentences prettier if you didn't mind breaking some grammatical rules. the asterisk was the class clown of punctuation marks-- it followed just enough guidelines to be allowed to cause double the trouble.

in novels, sometimes, i'd find three asterisks strung together to symbolize a time-lapse, or to bookend a quasi-tangent thought. sometimes the chapter would reach a point in which the character went to sleep, three asterisks, then the next morning. it was like the three little stars stood for whatever that character was dreaming about. and it was still magical.

but now, oh now, the asterisk is added to the ends of catch-phrases and amazing italic words with the same semi-dishonest mentality of a happy face spider. now, the asterisks means "we're lying, and here's how!"

you come across these gym advertisements scattered with lovely words like "FREE!" or "COMPLIMENTARY" and they're always followed by their trustworthy friend, the asterisk. on the other side of the ad, at the very bottom, the asterisk is back to say, "BUT NOT REALLY FREE OR COMPLIMENTARY, ACTUALLY!"

i hate that they did this to my favorite punctuation mark.

somewhere in the nineties, there must've been so many lawsuits. i was probably busy making worlds in sandboxes or catching bees, while lawyers were arguing about how they could prevent mcdonalds for being sued for serving hot coffee to dumb patrons. or how plastic bags, things smaller than six inches, or anything fun, might best be presented as a toy-- just not a toy for kids who might choke to death.

the asterisk was ruined.

i miss the days when wrapping your head in a plastic bag and suffocating before your parents cared to notice was just called "natural selection" and not "a ten million dollar lawsuit." the days when there weren't disclaimers for opinions, or warnings that ice cream is cold, and wet floors are slippery.

i miss when the asterisk was still magical, is all.

p.s. here's a fun fact: according to lysol's asterisk, there are many things the disinfectant can kill. one of them is herpes. true fact.

seems like they might want to have another asterisk informing users that spraying lysol on their genitals will not cure herpes and may actually cause further damage. you know, to avoid ten million dollar lawsuits.

So You Want to Be a Writer - Advice to Aspiring Wordsmiths

I came across this article in The Atlantic that I feel I should pass on. It's a short read, but it provides some good discussion, asks the right questions and offers up some practical advice to all of us in our journey towards publication.

Tell me what you think? :)

Host the 83rd Academy Awards

Anne Hathaway

On November 29, 2010, it was announced that Anne Hathaway
and James Franco would host the 83rd Academy Awards.

Also, Together with actor Denzel Washington, Anne Hathaway hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway on December 11, 2010.

Host the 83rd Academy Awards

Anne Hathaway

On November 29, 2010, it was announced that Anne Hathaway
and James Franco would host the 83rd Academy Awards.

Also, Together with actor Denzel Washington, Anne Hathaway hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway on December 11, 2010.