A random note from drunkenness

I went to enter a note into my phone and found this:

“I don't know how to put this, but, a small person came briskly walking by, tripped, recovered, and a following individual exclaimed to me: safety first!”

“I slowly turned around to write this.”


…I can only assume that by ‘small person’ I meant ‘midget’, and by ‘tripped’ I meant ‘fell the fuck down’.

...I can also only assume that by ‘slowly turned around to write this’ I meant ‘I couldn’t help myself from laughing and had to make a note of the hilarity I’ve just witnessed because I’m alone and have no one else to verbally express myself to’, and, ‘I’m also probably drunk at the moment’.

_

Follow on Twitter!
-
Follow the feed!
_

Facebook is a drug, not a hobby

“I need a hobby other than Facebook” was a search hit yesterday. It’s nice to see other people also have trouble finding hobbies. It’s comforting to know I’m not the only one.

Although, I’m not sure that “Facebook” counted as a hobby in the first place… An addiction? Yes. Hobby? Probably no.

Good for you, “I need a hobby other than Facebook” searcher – the first step toward recovery is to recognize you have a problem. And taking the step to search the internet for something other than Facebook is commendable. Congratulations on beginning your journey.

For the rest of us? The slow-drip access to Facebook content from our smartphones throughout the day provide the juice that keeps us going, rather than having to fiend on the social media site for hours on end late into the evenings.

Maybe that’s what “I need a hobby other than Facebook” searcher needs – a smartphone to inject Facebook throughout the day instead of all at once after normal operating hours.

_

Lol’ing your way through life

I don’t ‘lol’. I more or less refuse. Primarily on the basis that it means, literally, that I’m laughing out loud. It also means, literally, that you’re laughing out loud when you type it as well. Are you aware of that?

I rarely laugh out loud, but if I do, chances are there’s someone I’m conversing with in real-life who is standing near me or on the phone with me and there was something that genuinely made me create a laughing sound from my mouth. Do some things seem funny enough to make me ‘lol’ and type it? Sure. Do they always? No. That’s just insane. Please read further.

I don’t type ‘lol’ because that would mean I’m laughing out loud, quite literally. Unlike probably 98% of the population, when I ‘lol’ I’m actually laughing. And you’re probably not laughing out loud when you type it. So stop. Please. No one laughs out loud after every seemingly funny text that comes across their eyes. Or email. Or instant message. It’s just not right to fake it that much. And it’s not right to go changing the meaning of ‘laughing out loud’ from “I’m actually laughing with some sound” to “I’m not making any sound, but my thought is that it’s funny.”

So stop.

Please.

Thank you.

_

Goodbye, World; Hello, More World.

I went home for lunch on Tuesday to see if my new toy had arrived. It hadn’t, so I proceeded to sit down for lunch when all of a sudden I heard a diesel engine pull up. I looked out the door and saw FedExMan in his truck, blasting dance music, sitting there looking at me inside as I looked out at him. After a moment or two of an awkward “looking at each other”, he turned off his truck, grabbed the package out of the back, and I walked outside to sign for it.

I ate lunch, went back to work, opened the package, set up my new Droid X, and promptly flung myself into the next age of cell phone computing, all while saying “Goodbye, World; Hello, More World.”

Since then, I basically haven’t put the phone down for more than the time needed to sleep.

I’m not sure how long this is going to last, but it’s not looking good for “real people” right now…

_

We need to communicate, interact, and embrace.

On the way to work this morning, I had a flashing thought as I saw a middle-age woman turn the corner in her SUV while chatting on the phone:

Humans have an intrinsic desire to communicate.

Cell phones have brought us together in a communicative way. Now, of course, there is the other side of the argument as well: cell phones are causing us to be enclosed within ourselves and within our own little world, even when we’re in the middle of a crowd… essentially forcing us apart from those around us; the building of a virtual wall, if you will.

While the cell phone (as well as the Internet, PC and the like) has increased our worldwide communication, our ability to communicate, and will keep us communicating in ways that were never before possible, at the same time we are losing the “human touch” of communication.

I think that we all long for that “human touch” sometimes, and find that we often times seek it through the technology around us… only to find that it’s not there. Yes we’re fulfilling our need to communicate with one another, albeit verbally, but we’re missing the “human touch” of communication, the full form of communication – the kind of communication that you can feel.

Technology has done wonders for mankind and will certainly continue along that path, but to what cost? It may be a stretch, but think about the possibility of the person tens or hundreds of years from now who turns on a screen within their home, has everything at their fingertips, and never has to leave home… Science-fiction entertainment or not, this person is still a hermit. Someone who does not interact with society (and some would argue that screen-to-screen or voice-to-voice only communication is not interaction with society) is probably not the type of people we long to become. The science and technology is exciting; the thought of this as reality is not.

I think we need to be careful, not cautious, of the implications of technology. Yet, I am in no way suggesting that we stop or hinder technological development out of fear that we may lose touch with society and grab on to an artificial world; I am simply saying, like Ms. Amy has proposed, that we put down our phones, interact with the world around us, embrace technology, but also embrace those around us.

Imagine the world we may create if we simply embraced those around us…

_

Is That a Parade, and The Secret V

I like a good parade. I haven’t been to a parade in a long time and really want to get back out into that scene. If only parades were more abundant… we need more parades in our streets. Much like carnivals, circuses, fairs and the like, parades have a sense of adventure, mystique, and excitement about them. They’re made of candy, sugar, funnel cake, and charcoal. If I could, I would wrap a parade in a package and sell it under the brand name Francine – that’s how great a parade can be (and no, I haven’t met anyone named Francine… so that brand name might be a stretch).

My phone continues to annoy me, but seems to be lasting since the last two crashed within a week. I wanted it to break again, but I’m coping for now. Whenever I send a text it seems to continue on and type the letter V on the screen, without me typing the letter V, and even if the last letter I typed was a W. I’m calling it The Secret V because no one knows about it, well, not until now at least. Before this, no one knew about it but me, thus making it a secret. What keeps it interesting is that The Secret V comes and goes; you never know when it’s going to pop up.

What can we learn from these? Go to the next parade or any exciting function of the sort that you can find: have some fun and enjoy the treats. Also, and no less important, watch out for your own Secret V’s… they mostly go unnoticed.

_