Strength in Numbers

I base a lot of what I do on what I observe other people doing. That's pretty much how you learn everything when you're a kid--by watching your parents, or older siblings, or kids on the playground. But even now I still try to keep an eye out for what others are doing, because chances are if I'm the only one doing something a certain way...and everyone else is doing something another way...I'm probably wrong. And I hate being wrong.

It's a really sinking feeling when you look around and find that you're all alone, either physically or in action, or emotion or I'll just stop trying to explain it and launch into examples.

When I was at school there was a certain time of night that no one on campus was out walking. Usually a Friday night after dinner time, but before everyone went out for the night. And every once in awhile I would have to walk across campus at that time to get to a friend's dorm. On the 8 minute walk I literally wouldn't walk past a single other human being. And it would make me really paranoid. Did I not get some really important reverse 911 text that a mad man is loose on campus and I should be indoors? Is everyone at some really awesome concert that I didn't know about?

Mom? Dad? ...Uncle Frank?

Also at school when you were taking a test, it was a terrible feeling when everyone started to get out of their seat at the same time and pass in the test, but meanwhile you still had half of the test left. Or later when you'd talk to people about the test and they'd say, "I didn't think that was bad at all!" and you were thinking "I'm pretty sure I would have escaped that test with more dignity had I left the whole thing blank. And written my name as Donald Duck."

I know I've mentioned going online for medical issues in an earlier post, but I'm going to talk about online posts again, because for some reason they have the ability to really make or break me. The other day I was at the gym and all the good treadmills were taken. I had to run on this scary tank-looking treadmill called the Woodway. I've run on it a decent amount of times before, and finally, running on it the other day, I came to the conclusion that I actually hate it. It is SO much harder for me to run at the same speed on that thing than it is on a normal treadmill. I was sucking wind.

So I went home, got on my laptop and started searching for reviews of this treadmill...because it's not good enough that just I hate it. Everyone else has to hate it too. Then I'll feel better.

EVERYONE loves this stinking treadmill. It's a tiny slice of heaven in the gym. The world's best athletes train on this treadmill. If you buy one, it lasts FOREVER. "Best purchase I've ever made!" -Said everyone on every forum I could find.

What the hell??

I'm sure there's something to be said for being confident in your own decisions, blah blah blah, blaze your own trail...but blazing your own trail gets dangerous when there's only one person there to put out the fire.

"Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason."
-Jerry Seinfeld

Party Like It's 2012

Considering I haven't heard much about it lately, I'm assuming that we've all come to the general consensus that the world isn't going to end on December 21, 2012. I'm glad that the hype around it has died down, but it still really bugs me that there was ever hype around it at all.

If you don't know much about this 12/21/12 phenomenon it's ok, because honestly I don't either. So you're no worse off than I am (rejoice or panic accordingly). I think all you really need to know is that the Mayans were allegedly a really smart and advanced society and they stopped tracking their calendar on December 21, 2012. This automatically means the world is ending.

I'm sure there's a few other details in there that made the story a lot more compelling and scary. Maybe Nostradamus predicted it too or something? I don't really know.

But the bottom line is that if we can't even predict the weather for a single town tomorrow, I'm pretty confident that no one can predict the end of the entire world thousands of years in advance.

People are always trying to convince others that they have the exact right idea about the way things work. How many different life philosophies have you heard?

And they all conflict. "You only live once" but "Life is fragile" "In the grand scheme of things nothing matters!" but "The wings of a single butterfly beating thousands of miles away can change the course of life as we know it." ...or however that one goes.

Science is the exact same way. The world was absolutely flat until it was round. Babies should always be put to sleep on their backs until they must always be put in creepy straitjackets. Sinus infections could only be cured by antibiotics until the antibiotics did nothing to help sinus infections.

No one wants to admit that something they've done a lot of work and research for is only probably true. But honestly, life is a pretty complicated thing if you look at it scientifically. The fact that any of us could ever understand the ways of the body, the world, or the universe thoroughly and completely is pretty ridiculous.

We're only human, and a lot of things are going to be beyond our comprehension. We've made a lot of great advances over the years, don't get me wrong...but it's pretty presumptuous of us to think we could predict the end of something as complicated as the world. Those Mayans sure were arrogant! (I say that jokingly...I have never met a Mayan but I'm sure they're really great people.)


"When they discover the center of the universe, many people will be disappointed to discover they are not it."
-Bernard Bailey

"To be yourself is all that you can do"

It's an unrealistic expectation that we have as humans that others will be or become what we want them to be.

I could get all depressing on you and talk about relationships but I'm not going to. I want to talk about random acquaintances, or maybe even strangers.

Has anyone ever tried to tell you that the tattooed punk who's only friends with stoners is actually completely straightedge? "I know his eyes are always bloodshot, but it's just because he's crying over all the injustice in society."

Or the complete jerk who works in the cafeteria, believe it or not, sends his entire paycheck to overseas orphanages.

People love a good irony. Sometimes to the extent that I think they create the irony themselves.

I'm more than suspicious when you try to get me to believe something that goes against all evidence and reason.

Like when someone tries to tell me, "No no, they're actually SUCH a nice person when you get to know them."

Look...an actual nice person would be nice to anyone, even if they didn't know them. Is that not what being nice means? If someone is a dick to everyone except for the people who are useful to them...that's not nice.

Just because it would wrap up into a neat little story does not mean that the crappy person you work with is actually a saint behind closed, locked and soldered doors.

What I'm about to say may sound a little serious, but just know that ultimately I'm saying that people should be who they are, and true to what they feel. So bear with me.

There can be such things as mean people. And we don't always have to give them excuses. For every person who acts like a complete ass because their parents divorced when they were 11 are 10 more people who aren't an ass because their parents divorced when they were 11.

You may have a million reasons as to why you are the way you are...but that doesn't mean that you aren't really what you are. Follow?

Someone may have what they think is a perfectly good reason to treat people like crap. That's fine. But they shouldn't get to call themselves "a nice person who was dealt a bad hand." In reality, they still treat people like crap. And that's not nice.

Find another adjective people!

We are who we are, and it is very difficult to be any other way...regardless of how lovely the story would be if we could be a different version of ourselves.

Not everyone has to be nice, not everyone has to be straightedge, not everyone has to give their entire paycheck to charity. The world would be boring and kind of creepy if everyone were nice, or endlessly giving.

By all means, every day you should try to be the best person you can be. I can't and won't fault you for that. But I still may not call you nice.


"I am what I am, you could like it or love it"
-50 Cent
...This post needed a little light-hearted pick-me-up from Fiddy.

A-HA!

When I was a little kid, the way I viewed the world was skewed, blurred, and glossed over. There were many things I didn't know the meaning of. There were other things I thought I knew the meaning of but was wrong. And there were even more things I was sure I would never ever know the meaning of.

I'm 23 years old and I still have an "A-HA!" or an "ooOOhh!" moment weekly, if not more. All the sudden, even when I'm least expecting it, some small piece of knowledge will fall into place and I'll understand the world--or at least my world as I know it--a little better.

This includes things I never even realized that I didn't understand too. For example, the other day I realized something that literally got me to say "Oh my God!" out loud, to just myself in my car. The office supply store, Staples, has a double meaning. Not only are staples one of the many kinds of office supplies, BUT a "staple" is also something we deem to be necessary, like how a black dress can be a staple of a woman's wardrobe. Mind. Blown.

Looking back at my childhood (even to just as recently as say, last week) I'll share a few of my "A-HA!" moments...

When I was in the 2nd grade, my brother was in 7th. Since 8th graders were at the high school at the time, they were allowed to play on high school sports teams. At the dinner table one night, my brother mentioned that when he got into the 8th grade, he wanted to join the cross country team. Having never heard of the sport before, I thought this meant that you ran across the entire country. I didn't quite take the time to work out the logistics in my head, such as how they would attend school, or the fact that it would be a few thousand miles of running if they actually ran across the country. But, if you know me, you know that I'm quite attached to my brother, so I blurted out, "YOU CAN'T DO CROSS COUNTRY WE'LL NEVER SEE YOU!"

...Now, I may have been dumb enough to think cross country meant a Massachusetts-to-California run, but I was NOT dumb enough to miss the confusion on my family's face.

Almost immediately I realized my mistake and quickly smoothed it over, mumbling something about how practice would be really long. ...Luckily I kept that one a pretty quiet A-HA! (more like a-haaa) moment, and if my family reads this blog this may be the first time they hear that story.

Anytime I watch movies that I used to watch as a kid, I have an A-HA! moment. I didn't understand a freaking thing that went on in any movie I watched as a kid. I saw Beethoven for the first time in maybe, 15 years? a couple months ago on TV. I remembered who the bad guys were, and I remembered specific things that happened--the obnoxious man and woman being dragged through the yard by Beethoven, the little girl falling in the pool, the mean doctor pretending he was attacked...but I didn't have a clue why ANY of that stuff happened. Andd now that I understand Beethoven, one more piece in the puzzle of the world falls into place!

Remember seeing your parents do chores/errands/calculations that seemed so confusing? And you swore you would never understand how to do it? Now, things like driving a car, or paying bills, or remembering how to get to all of your friends' houses, or down the Cape, seem really simple. There may not have been one specific moment where you learned it all, but you figured it out gradually along the way. Maybe you barely even noticed it, but one day you paid your first bill. Or filled out your first tax form.

I think when I was little I assumed that when I became an independent member of society, living away from my parents and on my own, my picture of the world would be crystal clear. That's how I thought all adults saw the world. But now that I'm actually technically an adult and still don't understand things like health insurance or how to check the oil in my car, I'm starting to think that maybe the world will always be a little blurry to me. At least some parts of it. But that's ok, because if everything were clear, I would really miss those A-HA! or a-haaa! moments.



"I always thought that, um, dogs, laid eggs. And I learned something today!"
-Peter Griffin, Family Guy

Say what?

Since I've recently been hung up on language quirks (refer to previous post), ever noticed that how we say something is often just as important as what we're saying? You can say a lot with inflection, pauses, rhythm etc. Sometimes how we say something even trumps what it is we're saying in importance. This happens every time I call Reese's Pieces "reese's peecees." I sacrifice saying the word "pieces" correctly to get the rhyme.

Also, something similar happens when I say the pledge of allegiance. The meaning is essentially butchered because I say it in such a weird way. Is this how you were taught too?

I pledge allegiance,

to the flag,

of the United. States. of America.

And to the republic for which it stands.

One nation.

Under God.

Indivisible.

With liberty 

and justice...

for all.

Did the whole country learn to say this paragraph with the same pauses? It makes absolutely no sense when you break it up the way I was taught. "And to the republic" sounds like the beginning of a whole new idea.

"And to the republic for which it stands--I would like to say thank you for being the reason 'it' stands."

But we're all about breaking up sentences/words for the sake of a rhythm or flow, or taking a breath, or whatever you want to call it.

How about just about every Katy Perry song ever? Girl can't say more than one syllable without taking a break.

"Cal-ih-forn-ia girls" "Kiss. Me. Kih-kih-kih-kiss-me." "T! G! I! F!" "You. Make. Me. Feel like I'm livin' a teen-age dream."

Or just take a few past/present summer hits..."We gon' light. it. up. like it's dyn-o-mite." "Star. Ships. We're meant to fly. Hands. Up. And touch the sky." "I'm at a payyyphoneee"

...Ok so that last one didn't apply. I just wanted to get it stuck in your head. SUCKAHH!

"You put the wrong emphASis on the wrong syllABle"

-Someone from some movie that was probably terrible except for this one quote that I still remember years later.

...I looked it up. It's View from the Top with Gwyneth Paltrow and Mike Myers...anyone? anyone at all? Nope. Ok.

[Insert Cliché Here]

Language is an extremely easy tool to misuse. We use it so often that we often dilute how potent it can really be. When I talk, and when I listen to other people talk, I come across a lot of filler. Sometimes the filler is sort of necessary. It can get you from point A to point B in a conversation. But a lot of times the filler is just for our own comfort, and quite often has no meaning at all. Or is actually just plain incorrect to use.

It drives me insane when I find myself wrapping up intelligent conversations with a completely unintelligent canned closing remark.

"Ohh well...can't win 'em all!'

...Can you really not win them all? Plenty of teams have had undefeated seasons...haven't they won them all?

"It is what it is."

Why wouldn't it be what it is? Otherwise it would be something else. And then it wouldn't be it at all.

"...But what can ya do?"

If no one can do anything about this then why the hell did we just talk about it for 20 minutes?


I also cringe at myself when I'm ending a phone call and I say, "alrightyy..."


Why do I say that?? Did I get that from Ace Ventura? That's just awful. I feel better about myself when I say "Okie Dokie." Not by much...but at least a little bit better. At least I'm not absent-mindedly quoting Jim Carrey with that one.

One of my biggest pet peeves for years has been when people use the phrase "No offense..." as if it is some sort of free pass to say something really offensive.

"No offense but you're a total bitch."

Wow, I would totally be pissed about that BUT you told me you didn't mean it offensively. So that's ok...I guess?

Honestly, if you're on the giving-end of a "no offense but..." statement, just save yourself some time and skip those two words. Because you really do mean to offend the other person. If you didn't, you wouldn't be calling them a bitch even with the wimpy pre-cursor.

It's really difficult to avoid all of these filler phrases once you've picked up the habit. I know because I've been trying to distance myself from "alrighty" for quite some time now, to no avail.


Alrighty, time to wrap this up!




"Einhorn is Finkle! Finkle is Einhorn! Einhorn is a man! ...OH MY GOD!! Einhorn is a Man!"
-Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey), Ace Ventura Pet Detective

In an ideal world...

In day-to-day life there are lots of little things that make me think, "This would be way better if it were just a little different." ...I just tried 7 times to explain myself further and every time I sounded even more idiotic than usual. So I'm just going to cut right to the examples today.

When I watch The Biggest Loser, I always wonder why they send the person/team who loses the least amount of weight home. I mean, I know the show is a competition, but it makes me sad because the people who lost the least amount of weight are the people who need the most help! But they just get sent home! What the show should do is send the people who get kicked off to a much more brutal weight loss reality show. Kind of like a deeper circle of hell. Tough love people...tough love!


Speaking of fat, how much better would we all look if fat shifting were a possibility? It's my fat...I should be able to choose where it goes.


(Side note, video style):

Moving on...When people try on my glasses they always say, "Woahhh is this how things look to you when you're not wearing glasses??" And I always think, "Probably not...but it totally should work that way."


When I go to restaurants and I'm trying to decide what I want, it would be really helpful if the pictures of the food on the menu were actual pictures of real food cooked in that restaurant. I already know that I can't trust anything I see on those pictures so they barely even exist in my mind. I just skip right over them because I know they're there to trick me. And I don't like being tricked.


Sometimes when I make a purchase from a vending machine, I make a terrible mistake. Either the wrong drink comes out, or you accidentally press the wrong letter/number combo and end up with a Sky Bar or something gross and I feel like there should be some way to return these things and try again. Or like, can I get a preview of what I'm ordering before it just drops from the machine? Chances are, if I'm getting something from a vending machine, I'm pretty desperate for it, so I'd really like to make sure it's the right product.


Now that it's time to wrap this up, I still don't have anything intelligent to say about it. I'm really heavily relying on the examples today and hoping you guys identify with at least one.




Every year, 10-13 people die in tragic vending machine accidents.
-A fact that, I am almost positive, is entirely fabricated. But I bet you've heard it before.