Since none of you are brave enough, I’ll be the one to admit it: I have no idea what an RSS feed is. Or was.

RSS feed is a term for something that I know exists online. It’s been around for decades. It’s a legacy part of the internet and something to do with blogs. Beyond that, I know nothing. What the hell is an RSS feed?

I’m purposely not going to look anything up while writing this, but I’ll guess based on context that it has something to do with organizing blogs you subscribe to so you can read them all in one place. I may have read this somewhere years ago, but I barely remember. I don’t know who provides the service, how it works, or how it looks.

Now I don’t even know if my definition is right, but if it is, why are RSS feeds never talked about? Ever? They seem like they might actually be useful. Blogs are still very popular, even if they’ve changed or evolved over time. Yet, I have never once heard anybody my age refer to an RSS feed in any context, for any reason. I doubt most people my age have even heard of them and could probably not guess correctly if their lives depended on it.

Maybe they’re obsolete this decade? Even so, other classic internet properties like MySpace, Hotmail, and AOL keywords are discussed every now and then. There’s at least some nostalgia for nearly every bygone internet tool. But I’ve never heard any discussion about an RSS feed, even by avid blog readers.

What the HELL are they?? I SPEND EVERY WAKING MOMENT OF MY LIFE ONLINE! ✍︎

Eleven years later, my experience at the University of Florida is still eating sh — well, I think you get what this blog is about by now.

The miniseries is back for one final installment! In the first chapter, I talked about how my college classes were mostly underwhelming and functionally useless (bad). Then, I shared my journey through navigating the school’s oddly bankrupt clubs and activities (worse).

But this may be my favorite segment yet.

It’s hard to put into words, but there was one intangible quality about the University of Florida that ruined any chance of salvaging my experience. It was something so annoying and so pervasive that it made the genuine pursuit of a serious education impossible. I found it difficult to type any of this, as I’m shaking and sweating as I think about it. Just kidding. I’m laughing.

Everyone at the University of Florida was DERANGEDLY OBSESSED WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA.

You think Donald Trump leads a cult? He’d shoot his daughter in the middle of Fifth Avenue for a chance to spend five minutes with Albert Gator.

I can’t help but smile, harkening back to the ridiculousness of it all. Picture it: GATOR EVERYTHING. Everywhere. All the time. All 55,000 students except me donned orange, blue, or both colors in every outfit, every day of their lives. Gator polos, Gator t-shirts, Gator jerseys, Gator sorority shorts, Gator flip flops, Gator caps, Gator wraparound sunglasses. On every person of every gender. All bags, bikes, and books were covered with Gator stickers, pins, and patches without exception.

Everyone’s dorm room? Plastered – Gator football or volleyball or basketball posters. A Gator head clock or “Parking for Gator Fans Only” novelty sign. Orange and blue Gator bedsheets and pillowcases. Gator doormats, drinkware, towels, and koozies.

I’m not talking about an odd duck fanatic here or there. This was EVERYBODY. Every single dorm. Every single apartment. The only contrast between them was the level of derangement. Freshmen, super seniors, professors, janitors, bus drivers, and all 250,000 Alachua County residents were tripping themselves to orgasm over showing UF pride.

I don’t normally have a problem with showing some school spirit or displaying team colors. This, emphatically, was NOT that.

The Gator Nation was a GD cult.

It wasn’t just the visual aesthetics, either. Professors, staff, and student leaders incorporated the colors, mascots, logos, building names, traditions, and inside jokes into lessons, exams, ice breakers, and general conversation. Gators this, Tim Tebow that. Word problems about the football team and quiz questions about the history of the campus. I understand that for tens of thousands of students, the school itself was a grand unifier. . . but I’d have rather not been unified at all. NOBODY TALKED ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.

They say the derogatory term “NPC” is used too often, but in this case, everyone on campus was indeed a non-player character. They mindlessly went about their little Gator days, working their little Gator jobs, wearing their little Gator uniforms, eating their little Gator dining hall meals. They listened exclusively to either “Levels” by Avicii or “Tongue Tied” by Grouplove without a thought in their empty little heads (but hey, at least there were two unique choices when it came to music).

What mystified me most about this behavior was just how quickly the entire freshman class was indoctrinated. It’s not like they came to obsess over their school after, say, getting to know their professors and coursework, or finding a favorite activity and making friends. Everybody swore allegiance to the orange and blue on day one, with no thought or hesitation. The school was never expected to do anything in its own right to win its students over, and anyone who dared to show apprehension (me) was immediately outcast.

So Gator Nation was a cult, and every cult needs a brainwashing operation. In Gainesville, that brainwashing came in the form of Gator football tailgates.

Before anyone gets up in arms, I’m not saying I have a problem with football or tailgates, ordinarily. It was the psychotic culture around them that was disgraceful.

If it was a Saturday home game, a football tailgate was – quite literally – the ONLY activity going on all day, anywhere in Gainesville. Period. The city shut down completely in compliance with the Gator football dictatorship. Restaurants and businesses even in the outskirts of town were still completely devoted to the Church of the Swamp.

If you didn’t go to the game, you might as well have stayed in bed for the rest of the day or killed yourself. There was no chance you would be left with anything else to do.

By not going to the game, you were declaring to the world that you were a loner, a hermit, a loser with no friends. You were resigning yourself to never meeting anyone, to being excluded from every party and every conversation from then on, and even to being left out of class discussions in next Monday’s marketing lecture.

On the bright side, it may seem like the entire student body would have been united with the same Saturday activity. But because there were so many tailgates happening everywhere concurrently, it’s not like you’d be around anyone you knew. You’d find yourself at some random dorm lawn with that one kid you had a single conversation with in American history and a dozen obnoxious, fratty, tryhard, drunks in matching Tebow jerseys doing keg stands, screaming “let’s go!” and clapping at nothing. Unlike a party, where you could at least disappear to play with the dog, there was nowhere to hide at a Gator tailgate.

And that was all just before the game.

Once you were in the stadium, you were absolutely fucked. Sorry.

Four hours in the deadly, summer Florida humidity in the middle of the day. Jammed shoulder to shoulder with thousands of sweaty bodies, screaming out cult chants with no rhyme or reason. Too far away from the field to follow any gameplay, not that you’d want to. The cult chants? They were fun. Just kidding, they were absolutely stupid.

We were expected to bellow outdated chants at the top of our lungs with our brains turned off. We were never formally taught them, but of course, all the NPCs knew them by heart.

“WE ARE THE BOYS FROM OLD FLORIDA. . .” they roared as they swayed.

“TWO BITS, FOUR BITS, SIX BITS, A DOLLAR….” they screeched as they did the arm chomp gang sign.

“COME ON GATORS, GET UP AND GO!” they finished, exploding with perverted pleasure.

When the game was over, it wasn’t really over, of course. UF dominated almost every game for several seasons, and so the partying, screaming, drinking, and showboating continued deep into the night and the days that followed.

Now. . . perhaps it’s a little unfair to judge a maniacal display of pride when it’s connected to something as arousing as a football game; even non-sports fans could conceivably get swept up in the spirit. As embarrassing as a Gator gameday was, at least those displays were. . . understood? Expected?

By far, the most chilling example of deranged obsession came when I saw how my fellow classmates described themselves in a simple, introductory web design course.

We were learning HTML and CSS to build websites. Our professor had us go to a computer lab and show off what we’d learned with a personal website (clearly a useful lesson, just look at where you are). The sites were supposed to show off our personalities through their design and content.

I kid you not — more than half of the students in the class built websites that were solely ABOUT their love of the university. They were all orange and blue and decorated with photos of said student doing a Gator chomp or posing somewhere on campus. A bio would be like, “My name’s Sally, I’m 21, I go to UF, and I love being a Gator. In my spare time, I enjoy going to GatorNights or Orange & Brew, where I watch Gator football. I BLEED BLUE AND ORANGE!”

Many students had absolutely no other descriptors about themselves. How could a class full of college students have nothing else to say outside of pledging allegiance to the place they sit through PowerPoints?

Did no one there like talking about. . . movies? Music? Current events? Other hobbies? Anything not born and bred on the streets of Gainesville, Florida? (Actually, I take that back. Anyone who did like these things were arrogant and pretentious hipsters about them.)

I couldn’t help but draw a connection between my brain-dead classmates and another particular type of youngster: the overzealous, often-homeschooled child you may meet at a particular event, like on a cruise or at a religious retreat, who makes that event their entire personality overnight. You look at their social media and find that all of their friends are the people you both just met together. You cringe a bit and think. . . oh, I better be nice to this kid, this is all they have.

This was all they had! I am still utterly perplexed at how so many of my peers seemingly had ZERO identity outside of their UF enrollment. Weren’t these people not yet Gators just a few short years prior? Who were they in high school? Were they raving fanatics over their own high school mascot, or were they simping for UF even then?

Man, loving the University of Florida must be the most embarrassing parasocial relationship there is. You fawn over an institution that has no idea you exist and pledge your entire identity to an experience that does as little as possible to reward you back.

You think I’m exaggerating? Tell me what, specifically, UF offered that made them worth selling out your identity. A campus full of Subway restaurants? Dorms that felt like prisons? The same on-campus arts and craft activities every week? 100 percent humidity every waking moment of the day? Students that have not yet developed self-realization?

Were lecture courses that did not actually prepare you for a career worth bowing down for? What about the clubs that did absolutely nothing, if they ever did meet?

Don’t say anything about friendships, clubs, or parties. It’s not like the school was responsible for those.

You think you couldn’t have earned your exact same degree, met the exact same people, gone to the exact same events, had the exact same inside jokes, and wasted the exact same four years at FSU, Georgia, UCF, or anywhere else in the country?

Again, I don’t have a problem with school spirit, or with a university trying to make their students feel welcome. If you’re attending a school, you’re obviously likely to become a fan of theirs and want to wear their colors and decorate your living space to match.

But the school should EARN IT, dammit. You don’t just indoctrinate freshmen to bow down and glorify the institution from day one JUST BECAUSE. It’s a business: students pay money to get educational credits. Stop acting like there’s some kind of divinity at play just because some professor taught them about Pavlov’s dogs or supply and demand.

THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IS A CULT, and Sundries reported it first! ✍︎

P.S. Remember the Harlem shake? I think it was one of the worst viral trends of the 2010s, and like everyone else, UF put out their own attempt. As per the unwritten rules of the trend, after 30 seconds of the song, the video is supposed to end. Of course, the vain and insatiable Gators making the video couldn’t leave well enough alone, tacking on an additional 30 seconds of the crowd chanting and chomping and cheering just because. The video comments are full of more brainwashed zombies exalting the “epic” nature of the stunt. It really is the perfect encapsulation of the workings of the cult.

Special thanks to Ashley D'Achille and Dede D'Achille.

I’m trying to solve a mystery.

In elementary school, my fellow students and I had to take several years of Spanish. They were exactly like any language classes you’d take in school, albeit tailored for children. There was a fair amount of English spoken, but also many instances where we were called upon and asked to give an answer in Spanish.

As it was Miami, the class was full of Hispanic kids, but in the 90s, there were also a fair amount of gringos.

These white kids were called upon to answer in Spanish, too, just like anyone else. Their accents weren’t perfect, but they were still expected to try. “Dónde está la biblioteca?”, out of the mouth of my Jewish friend, for example, may have ended up sounding more like, “DOHN-day ay-STAH la BEEB-lee-oh-tay-cah?”

And therein lies the mystery. Were the white kids enunciating their Spanish like this because they were just not putting in effort to say the words accurately, or were they sincerely unable to procure a better Hispanic accent?

What I mean is, if Todd said, “MAY YAH-moh Todd,” in a very flat, “white bread” accent, was he actually, truly unable to verbalize “me llamo” as naturally as a native Spanish speaker, or was he just employing a jaded fourth grader’s brand of protest – not trying?

See, most kids in my elementary school didn’t like taking Spanish, even the native speakers. It was nerdy, the teachers were earnest, and despite the foreign language, the lessons were still somewhat babyish. You’d look like a huge dork if you put on a “thick” accent when answering a question, and it was mentally and physically “tough” to keep one going. My class period wasn’t for the native speakers, but we still downplayed our accented answers to sound as casual as possible.

I had grown up concluding that all of these kids were actually able to speak in perfect Hispanic accents if they wanted to. . . but that they simply didn’t want to.

But then, as I continued to take Spanish in later years, I found that both high school and college classmates still struggled with their accents. I’d be in a Spanish II “honors” course at my university and find that well-meaning, respectful, motivated students gave thorough, correct answers. . . whilst never shifting out of their American dialects.

This couldn’t still be a product of lazy effort. . . could it? These high-achieving students would surely be giving their best attempts. Were they really just unable to produce a natural accent at all? And why?

I wish that my own experience could inform the mystery, but I grew up living right on the cusp. I did not speak Spanish, but I heard enough of my abuelos’ accents to be able to imitate them on the spot. For me, answering a question in Spanish and using a proper accent were one in the same. I would’ve never looked at a calendar on Wednesday and said, “OY ays me-YAIR-coh-lays,” as it would’ve seemed both incorrect and more difficult than pronouncing the words “properly.”

So was that little bit of Spanish-speaking influence enough for me to effectively have been “immersed” in it? Or was I just a good imitator? Was this the skill of a linguist, or an actor?

It just seems wild to me that vocal utterances I find so easy to imitate could’ve been so impossible for my peers to make. I know that that is one of the most essential truths of being a native speaker of one language and not another, but I am not talking about an adult Japanese speaker trying to learn English. I’m talking about school-aged children in Miami attempting to imitate a commonly-heard accent when they can already say the words mostly correct.

So, which is it? Were my classmates being lazy, or were they truly unable to master their Hispanic accents?

Unfortunately, the mystery seems unsolvable, as I am not in contact with any of those classmates anymore. Come to think of it, almost everybody I know these days can speak Spanish, at least at a beginner’s level. Or, they’re a good enough actor or imitator to pick up the accent. I literally do not know anybody who does not either speak Spanish, have some kind of connection to acting, or both. I have no way to get to the bottom of this.

I can’t solve the mystery. . . CAN YOU? ✍︎

After a run of multiple airplane trips with the mostly-acceptable JetBlue, I’ve recently been cursed with several flights stuck in the back of an economy middle seat on United Airlines. Yeah, the recovery has been slow and steady.

Whereas JetBlue was halfway decent, United was and is awful all around — take your pick among tight and cramped seats, a lack of power outlets in half the cabin (despite those seats costing just as much as those with power), a slow and lackadaisical refreshments service with questionable choices, the confusing boarding process where the monitors run several minutes behind the announced group number — and I could go on. But what stood out to me most was a single little message buried in the menu of their entertainment options.

(As an aside, I love how United attempts to spin their lack of seatback entertainment screens as a feature. They provide a catalog of movies and TV shows, but you must bring your own device to watch them on. They call it “United Private Screening.” It’s very similar to when restaurants ask you to bring your own table, chair, and silverware to a restaurant and call it Taco Bell “private dining.”)

When you browse United’s movie and TV offerings, you’ll see that they actually carry many mature- and R-rated titles. They’re free and seemingly available to anyone onboard, as there don’t seem to be any parental restrictions in the portal. And the content isn’t edited or censored, either.

Apparently accounting for this, the following disclaimer appears at the bottom of United’s entertainment website:

Can your screen be seen?

Please be mindful of those around you when watching content on your personal device or a seatback screen. Whether watching our programming or your own, please try to make sure that any children seated near you aren't able to see scenes with violence or adult themes.

Oh, sure. Right on that. So am I paid by the hour or per child? Do you need my direct deposit information?

Or, is this not my job?

Yeah? I think we’re getting closer. . .

You’re right! Not my job!

If they’re my own children, then my parenting is simply none of United’s business. They’ll see whatever the hell I want them to see. Otherwise, it is NOT MY JOB to shield, protect, block, or spare someone else’s random children from all of the blood, breasts, violence, sex, cursing, swearing, stabbing, shooting, slurping, and spooning the United Airlines library has to offer.

What am I supposed to do, balance the device in my hands and hold my forearms on either side of it like I’m cradling a football? Place it on the tray table and drape two sweaters on either side like I’m ducking under the dark cloth of an antique camera? Am I supposed to maintain this position for the entirety of Kill Bill, or just the few-and-far-between violent parts?

What if I’m in an aisle seat near the lavatory? Do I have to be on guard for the entire flight to make sure the children waiting in line don’t sneak peeks over my shoulder? Or am I only responsible for the children with paid seats in my line of sight? And does that extend to the row behind me and on the opposite side of the plane, at a diagonal?

Come to think of it, the kid in the next row looks to be in middle school. Am I off the hook to throw on a PG-13 movie? Oh wait, he might only be 13. Does that mean a TV-14 show is illicit?

How does United Airlines feel about cleavage? Anyone But You has a ton of it. Are young women merely frolicking on the beach in bikinis considered an “adult theme”? Should I judge the appropriateness of this movie differently based on whether someone in it is showing “a little” or “a lot” of cleavage? What if the child being exposed to it next to me is a girl? Are bare breasts on a man okay? What if they’re bigger than the women’s?

There are also plenty of movies in the Private Screening library that feature drinking and drug use. Do I have to confirm the age of every individual on screen? What if the actor is 21 but the character is supposed to be younger? What if the character is 21 but the actor isn’t? Presumably, watching one drink with dinner is okay, but how many drinks should I allow before cutting the child off?

If the children spying on my movie come from a US state where marijuana is legal, does that mean they’re free to see pot smoking on screen? Or is that only if the characters in the movie themselves are situated in a legalized state? What if my flight has originated from one? Or is currently flying over one? What if it’s medical?

Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie with the closed captions on. Do I now have to make sure the dialogue is clean, too? Does a talking head giving a detailed, gruesome description of a murder constitute violence — if a child only reads about it? Does any of this change based on whether the content is from United’s catalog, or if I’m watching my own media?

Here’s a better answer: if you don’t want children onboard seeing content with violence or adult themes. . . don’t carry content with violence or adult themes! And widen your fucking seats so I can lay my head down on the tray table without the person in front of me reclining their seat directly into my skull. ✍︎

Souvenir stores are eating shit. Actually, I’m gonna drop that bit.

Most big-city souvenir stores carry exactly the same inventory: keychains, magnets. . . mugs, postcards. . . mini license plates featuring every white name in the baby book. . . t-shirts emblazoned with everything from “FBI: Female Body Inspector” to “I’m Not Gay, But $20 is $20.” Occasionally, they may carry items people wish to purchase.

From this brief description, you already know exactly the kind of store I’m talking about.

But despite the fact that almost all of these businesses look completely identical on the inside, they’re also the ones most likely to absolutely FORBID photography of the merchandise.

“NO PHOTO. NO VIDEO. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED,” they may say, in large signs posted all over the store.

Uh, why?

What exactly are they trying to protect here? What intellectual property rights govern a plastic “#1 Nephew” trophy that has an extra bit of flaking-off molding attached to the bottom of the cup where it meets its stand?

Why the rush to censor a set of colored pens that are half-empty from being used to scrawl teenagers’ Instagram handles in the corners of the test pads of paper?

Again, all of these stores are the same, with only regional differences depending on the city they call home. You can google photos of any random souvenir store right now, even. So why the hell is L.A. Fame on Hollywood Boulevard so stringent on making sure there’s no evidence of their displays on the historical record?

I wouldn’t be surprised if souvenir stores are engaged in seedy, illegal operations that they want to keep secret. . . but nobody cares. No one’s trying to expose clandestine operations while on spring break with their parents.

And while I have taken photos of items in souvenir stores before, I’ve never once looked back on them. No one else will, either. But the overly-sensitive signage gives off a very desperate and paranoid look. ✍︎

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

This quote, uttered by – who else? – green puppet Yoda, is often heralded as one of the most inspiring, uplifting, life-affirming, genuine, beautiful quotes ever uttered in the modern lexicon. It’s transcended its original role in Star Wars to be shared widely by people of all ages, at home, at school, by coaches, at work, and anywhere else you can possibly think of.

It’s succinct, beautiful, erudite.

Do I need to tell you what it means? I guess the little Muppet was trying to say that if you do something, actually achieve the goal 100 percent. . . or not at all. Don’t make an “attempt” at doing it – actually do do it. Completely and perfectly.

Okay, so. . . how does this help anyone? If somebody wants to do something, they aren’t machines. It’s not like they can employ zeros and ones to simply “choose” for the desired objective to be completed, mathematically at will.

We know that much.

In order for a desired task to “get” done by a human person, they do need to TRY to do it. Whether the task is perfectly routine or absurdly difficult, that doesn’t mean “trying” isn’t involved.

If Yoda meant for Luke to “do,” as in, “don’t half-ass it,” well then, just say that. You do have to TRY as the first step in COMPLETING what’s desired.

Let’s just consider the intention then, and disregard the accuracy of the words. Surely there’s nothing wrong with simply encouraging someone to reach a goal they’ve set. Using such powerful and coercive language may prove more inspiring than merely “suggesting” someone reach the goal.

Except when you consider that Yoda is effectively shaming whoever hears his quote. He is taking an honest valiant effort that does not succeed — and equating it with doing nothing altogether. If you give it your best shot and fail, it’s as if you didn’t make the attempt. After all, it’s do or do not, right there in the quote. There is no try.

By Yoda’s wisdom, getting started, being a novice, making marginal improvements, taking a failing risk, or even getting 99 percent of what was intended is just as bad as doing nothing.

So. . . go ahead and idolize this quote, if you want. I am not inspired by it. Personally, I haven’t even seen Star Wars, so maybe this entire argument is brought up at some point in the movie and I’m not even aware of it. Wouldn’t that be funny, if they just stopped The Empire Strikes Back cold right in the middle just to hash out this argument? And then attributed it to me? ✍︎

Netflix’s Solitaire mobile game is eating shit.

Netflix makes mobile games, apparently, and one of them is of the classic solo card game, Solitaire. I’ve been playing it constantly.

While the app itself is designed rather well, there is one curious component that doesn’t really make sense. Or else, it would make sense if it wasn’t a flat-out, pointless, cheap lie.

Netflix’s Solitaire has a “multiplayer” mode which supposedly pairs you up with another real-life player, live. You both play through the same game to see who wins the deal first. You each can see the other’s score as the game goes on, and at the end, you’ll see a screen summarizing who won and how each of you performed. It sounds simple enough.

Except that this multiplayer mode is completely, entirely, utterly fake.

The app doesn’t disclose this anywhere, but over my many weeks of playing, I’ve been able to conclude quite confidently that every instance of playing against a “live player” somewhere in the world is really against a bot.

Apparently, having an unsophisticated program make basic moves and slapping it with a random first name is enough to convince the hordes of existing players that they’re having a real-life social engagement with someone. It’s sickening.

I first grew suspicious when I noticed that every time I selected a new multiplayer game, I was immediately paired up with a waiting player. I never had to “hold” for even a single second to sync up the start times; the games would always begin immediately following the same standard three-second countdown. When a game ends, I can start a new one immediately and have another player available without needing to wait even one second.

How could these be real people? Sure, mobile games may be popular, but what are the chances that I’d be able to find a willing, available Solitaire player at ANY second of ANY hour of ANY day? Without even waiting a few seconds? Especially when you consider the fact that this game is only available to active Netflix subscribers. With an estimated 238-or-so million users, that whittles down the possibilities considerably. From there, you have to think about how many of those users even know about Netflix’s mobile games, how many of them have Solitaire installed, how many of them are actively using the game at any one time, how many of THEM are looking for a multiplayer game (rather than just playing alone), and finally – how many of those very few active multiplayers are looking to start a new game within the three second countdown of my requested game starting!

Can someone do the math on that? Because I think it may be close to zero.

I could end the argument right there, but I’ve observed several other clues demonstrating the multiplayer hoax that I obviously must share.

Every player I’ve matched with – and this is after hundreds of games – has had a username consisting of, simply, a first name. The platform allows you to use an array of letters and numbers to make a username, yet nobody I’ve ever played against has made their username anything other than a single first name. No numbers, descriptors, dictionary words, abbreviations, or random mashing of letters. In a world where we’re all used to crafting social media handles with various characters, it’s unfathomable that I wouldn’t have encountered even one person with something else as their username. Personally, I go by “Anonymous,” and it stands to reason there may be others who would similarly want privacy when playing in an outlet that can (supposedly) match you up with anybody.

As if that wasn’t enough, I have also never played against anyone who willingly gave up and left the game early – not once. In Solitaire, it’s common to play yourself into a corner where there are no moves left and you must end the game. This happens to me all the time. When I’m in a multiplayer game, stuck and out of moves, and I see the opposing “player’s” score still increasing, I’ll often quit the game. It isn’t out of a lack of sportsmanship – there are sometimes literally no more moves to make. And yet, whenever I’m beating my opponent badly, they sit there and still play until the end.

Now, you may argue that perhaps the game’s design has it so that you simply aren’t informed of players who have bowed out early, and if they’re gone, you’re just set to keep playing through the game until you inevitably win or leave it yourself. I doubt that, as the app usually has you play a series of three or four games against the same player in succession. If any of them had quit early, you wouldn’t be able to play the next games in the series with them, and yet I always do.

But what really clinched it for me was a series of games I played a few weeks ago against one particular other user, let’s call him Darren. I played a game against Darren, I won, and I immediately started the next one. I beat him again, and immediately started a third one. When I beat him the third time, I put my phone down for a bit. I went and did something else, and when I went back to Solitaire several minutes later and started a new multiplayer game, my opponent was still Darren! What in the world are the chances that the same user would be ready to start three games immediately but then also put their phone down at the same time and then also come back, ready to play, at the exact same time, too?

Even if it was another Darren, what are the chances that the very next player available would also be named Darren?

Remember, the app never keeps a user waiting for a new player for even a few seconds, so it’s not like Darren was sitting there trying to start the next game that whole time – he’d have been paired with someone else. More likely, the app’s connection hadn’t refreshed when I put my phone down, and so the bot named Darren hadn’t updated.

In the time I’ve been working on this entry, I’ve started numerous more multiplayer games for research. Every single one started immediately.

Why does every single thing have to be a lie? Why is there constant misrepresentation in every facet of everything in life? Why does a simple card game app need to deceive its audience? What is to be gained? Is it even worth it? Is any of it worth it? Would it really have been so horrible just to label the multiplayer gameplay as playing against “the computer,” which electronic games have done for decades? Did someone sit there and program little first names to represent these other players, and what were they thinking as they did so? How does anyone expect anyone else to be honest about anything when we can’t even be honest about completely trivial, unimportant matters like this? ✍︎

***

Follow-up, months later:

Wow, I am so stupid. Throughout this entire investigation, I neglected to try ONE SIMPLE TRICK to confirm once and for all that the Solitaire app is a fraud. I can't believe it took me this long to think of it: AIRPLANE MODE. I just took a flight and played Solitaire at 35,000 feet, where there was no wifi or service of any kind. The multiplayer games began and ended without any issue, and I even set a game down and picked it up 20 minutes later with my "opponent" still waiting. Not that anyone was arguing with me before, but what do those nonexistent people have to say now?

Ten years later, my experience at the University of Florida is still eating shit.

In this miniseries, I’m looking back at different tenets of my college tenure, one decade after graduation. In the first installment, I wrote about the classes and how they impacted my career (spoiler, they didn’t).

This time, I’m delving into the facet of college that inspired me to start this series in the first place — a bizarre series of disappointments so perplexing, I’m not entirely sure they weren’t all part of a huge gaslighting attempt against me. I’m talking, of course, about all of my clubs, activities, and extracurriculars.

I want to begin with the following disclaimer: yes, I am biased against UF. Yes, I’m well aware that I sound like the boy who cried wolf as I levy these complaints. But I need you to understand something: when I say that nearly every club, activity, organization, or other assembly of people at the school did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING — I mean it, from the very essence of my bones. Other than convening in a room and talking about plans that would never happen, these groups did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

(For the naysayers, I will acknowledge that, once in a blue moon, some organizations either hosted or participated in social events. But they were supplementary to the supposed intention; that is, no one deliberately started the clubs just to have an excuse to plan parties or happy hours.)

The biggest association I joined was the Reitz Union Board Entertainment (RUB) Bands Committee, which pitched itself as the club that organized all of the musical acts that would play on campus. Presumably, its members were responsible for discovering or contacting musicians and organizing concerts. We were led to believe that, as members, we would have a direct hand in choosing the acts, and as a reward for our efforts in planning and working the concerts, we’d be able to get front-row seats or even meet the artists.

Needless to say, none of that happened. While RUB was a large organization that did successfully plan some big campus concerts, we members did not have a say in any of it. Club meetings consisted of sitting around a table and pitching musical acts, themes, or other ideas. . . only for the club presidents to shoot down every suggestion and go through with whatever the staff advisor planned instead. None of our suggestions ever made it past this talking stage.

Our only participation with concerts was doing the grunt work — checking tickets, giving wristbands, cleaning up. . . you know, the labor that, in the real world, people would be PAID to do. I don’t consider this a club activity, because everyone involved would’ve rather simply attended the shows as fans without needing to also work an unpaid shift. We were not guaranteed tickets, and we did not meet or greet anyone. Plus, if we didn’t sign up for a minimum number of shifts and attend a certain number of meetings each semester, we would be dismissed from the club altogether. (Yes, crazily, the club was willing to give up unpaid volunteer labor just because participants weren’t voluntarily laboring unpaid enough.)

So, essentially, RUB was a club for those willing to work concerts for free without being able to even enjoy them. What a great value proposition. Meanwhile, the biggest, most popular concerts were orchestrated by a different organization altogether, and their members did receive the perks we all had expected. And that club catered solely to Greek and extroverted students, so for us, it was a non-starter.

(I only stayed in RUB because my friends loved to gossip and complain about everything with me. That’s why I do anything.)

Another fun fact in the RUB club lore: one semester, a friend of mine wasn’t able to make the minimum number of club meetings, and she was dismissed. At the same time, she had single-handedly designed all of the graphics and posters for the club, for free, just because she wanted to help. We complained to the leadership about this injustice, but they didn’t care. Meanwhile, the rest of us contributed nothing to the cause, and stayed.

Another club member attended the very first meeting, but was never seen again. Everybody thought she had simply dropped out until she decided to randomly show up for the end-of-the-year party. She acted like everyone knew and loved her and that she had been around the whole time as she pillaged the food. Because traditional attendance wasn’t taken at the party, our presidents didn’t even notice she was there.

Oh, and the whole foundation of the club was shallow and pretentious: interviews to join were based on nothing beyond how broad and obscure your very-specific college indie rock music taste was. If you liked other music, like that of top 40 radio, you weren’t selected. Your ability to actually organize or be helpful with events was irrelevant.

Ahem, moving on.

As a big softie for the planet, I also wanted to join an ambitious, active, environmental club. The first three or four I contacted were completely inactive or else didn’t answer — par for the course when it came to UF, unfortunately.

But eventually, I found IDEAS, which seemed to be a standard environmental club focusing on recycling, sustainability, climate change, and other typical green topics. It seemed fine. I wasn’t picky.

Of course, this club turned out to be precisely the letdown I expected. With every meeting, we’d sit at classroom desks while the club president reviewed what we talked about last time, followed by planning for what we’d like to do next time. There was occasionally an icebreaker or a speaker or short video presented. Many people in the club hooked up with each other. Nothing was ever actually DONE.

When you think of an environmental club, you may think of planting trees, picking up trash, starting a garden, or protesting something. We never did any of those things even once.

Actually, there was one laughably pointless service activity we tried to implement: a “recycling fairy,” wherein someone would don a fairy costume, find someone on campus recycling something, and reward them with a reusable water bottle.

The idea was talked about for months, and then we finally tried it out. Our president threw a plastic bottle in the middle of a busy walkway as the rest of us hid in nearby bushes. Several students almost tripped on the obstruction before someone finally tossed it in the nearby recycling bin. Our president, wearing a frilly pink tutu and a tiara, ambushed the student and presented her with the reusable water bottle. The student stared at her in utter confusion. Lost on everybody was the irony that our president needed to first partake in littering herself for the recycling moment to happen.

This entire experiment was carried out exactly one (1) time. We never did anything like it again.

Other than that, IDEAS threw a couple of parties and a camping trip. . . but even those were merely products of friends in the club going and planning their own events separately. Fun as they may have been, they were not specifically club events open to any member. And nothing “green” happened there.

My next experience was one I covered extensively on my old blog. Membership in the Delta Epsilon Iota “academic honor society” was a scam in the truest sense of the word. DEI charged a membership fee of $70 to do absolutely nothing. The organization did NOTHING WHATSOEVER. I’m as serious as a heart attack. You’d show up, they’d talk extensively about what the club “could” do for community service for an hour, and then NOTHING WOULD EVER HAPPEN. The club’s leaders would name-check many events that sounded respectable, but they were just activities other organizations were planning that the leaders wanted to piggyback on or attend as guests. The club’s advisors and other adult leadership repeatedly stressed the “excellence,” “determination,” and “ambition” of its members in empty speeches. Then we were dismissed until the next meeting where it’d all be repeated again.

Famously, DEI was also the club that “participated” in UF’s Dance Marathon, an all-night event to raise money for cancer research. The leaders bragged about how great it turned out. But as I wrote about in my old blog, I actually attended the event (in an attempt to win an iPad) while NONE OF THE LEADERS DID. THE CLUB DID NOT CONTRIBUTE TO THE EVENT IN ANY CAPACITY.

Over my tenure, there were a few other clubs I only had a passing involvement in. Ad Society, the networking group for advertising majors, was nothing but a forum for students to kiss the ass of every single speaker brought in, desperate for jobs.

Then there was the student theater program, which was run competently enough. . . but only staged the most pretentious, self-indulgent work, where every story contained “dark and depressing” subject matter like alcoholic fathers, pill-addicted mothers, and people having mental breakdowns, threatening everyone onstage with guns.

I actually did participate in a couple of their shows, and they were completely and utterly forgettable. The audience was scant, the cast didn’t speak to each other much, and no bonds were formed. When the shows ended, I never heard from any of them again.

In fact, these clubs made very few lasting bonds or memories at all. I’m not saying I didn’t have fun or make friends at the time, but most of it was utterly anonymous and forgettable. I struggle to recall any specific days spent with these people, which is an anomaly in my otherwise uncanny memory.

As I reflect, how does any of this impact me now? With college classes, I acknowledge that I did learn something, even if the lessons were entirely unrelated to my career. With the clubs, there’s really no debate — these efforts were utterly useless, period. Young adulthood is already full of shitty jobs and pointless, unproductive hangouts. I didn’t need more of that when I was genuinely trying to participate in something.

As an adult, I’ve joined volunteer organizations and they’ve all been quite the opposite of the college club experience: they have a mission and people meet intentionally, for the stated purpose. Everyone is so busy and selective with their time that naturally, they only invest in activities that deliver as they promise. If anything, I’ve wanted more of the casual hanging out and doing nothing that college provided, and my friends don’t. College clubs and activities were pointless, added nothing to my days, contributed nothing, prepared me for nothing, and in no way reflected what life would be like to come.

The only thing more pointless than my four years spent at the University of Florida were your four minutes spent reading this. See you next week! ✍︎

The kinds of things I think about while waiting in line to be served. . . are eating shit? (Okay, they're not all gonna be slam dunks.)

The other day, I went to a museum that was serving complimentary tea on one of its floors.

At the serving table, there were no other items being offered — just a simple cup of tea. You’d approach, the person working there would ask if you’d like a cup of tea. If you said yes, she’d ask if you wanted lemon or sugar, then fix the cup for you. There wasn’t much more to it than that.

First, my partner approached. The server asked if she wanted a cup of tea, she said yes, told the server how she took it, and then accepted the cup.

I was next. She asked me if I wanted a cup of tea, I said yes, told her how I took it, she made it, and I accepted the cup.

As I moved to walk away, I heard the server addressing a gentleman waiting in line behind me.

“Would you like a cup of tea as well?”

He said yes. You’d think this was a complete nonissue, but I was stuck on her question.

Why “as well”?

Sure, this man may have wanted a cup of tea, but he was clearly not with my party in any way. Adding “as well” seemed odd. To me, saying “as well” almost acts as a unifier, linking whatever order she just took previously with her current question.

For the man to fully make sense of “as well,” and answer accurately, he would have needed to be paying attention to the server as she talked to ME, wouldn't he? Only then could he agree or not. Otherwise, the “as well” means nothing, doesn’t it? And why would he have been expected to be listening to someone else ask for tea?

It’s not enough to just make an assumption and reduce her question to, “Would you like a cup of tea?” by itself. What if, just before the man behind me stepped up to the table, the server had explained to me that they had run out of tea and had replaced the jug with a furniture polish called “Tee,” and I had accepted it? As unlikely as that may have been, if it HAD been the case, her then asking the man, “Would you like a cup of Tee as well?” would seem to absolve her of any necessity to explain herself. But if she had left out "as well" and asked him only, “Would you like a cup of Tee?”, she'd still be on the hook to clarify.

If I were that man, I would not have felt comfortable answering her question. It’s invasive and presumptive to imply that I should have been randomly listening to whatever back-and-forth order was happening in line before me. Yet by NOT listening, she is effectively asking me to make a choice without all of the information.

What’s the solution? If I clarified by repeating her question, “Would I like a cup of tea?” — worded just like that — it could’ve been assumed I just didn’t hear her, not that I was asking for more information. There, the logic is a bit murkier: was my clarifying question, without the use of “as well,” completely eschewing her use of the words, or were they still implied?

We just don’t know — and in today’s fast-paced, breakneck, reckless world, we can’t afford to have our nation’s children take the risk.

***

Another time, I was waiting in line to order food from a taco food truck. I noticed that while the truck had a very extensive menu, no prices were listed anywhere. There were none on the display board, none on the paper pamphlets, and while their website listed all of the same menu items, it didn’t list prices, either.

The only reference to a dollar amount anywhere was under the listing of quesadillas: it said there was a $2 charge to add chicken or beef to the standard cheese quesadilla. Simple enough.

But. . . oddly, that didn’t make sense to me. I’m happy to be informed that there’s an extra charge to add meat to a dish, but how is that useful when you don’t know the price of the dish in the first place? How does one incorporate the new knowledge of this addition into the overall financial picture when there’s no information about what it’s being added to? What if the cheese quesadilla is already $100,000?

I may be on the fence about ordering an addition of meat, and the extra charge could push me over — or not. What if the quesadilla by itself is $9, and I have only $10 to spend?

A few prices missing here or there can be forgiven, but this taco truck had no prices on anything — food, drinks. . . even its souvenir t-shirt and cap were without a known cost. What’s more, the truck was parked alongside other vendors at a food market, where prices were all over the map between restaurants. There was absolutely NO reference point to infer how much my meal would cost. I don’t even eat meat!

Of course, because nobody else notices, cares, or takes action about anything, dozens of people were cycling through the long line throughout the day. They presumably paid whatever they were charged without question (like drones), and I was one of them. ✍︎

Ten years later, my experience at the University of Florida is still eating shit.

I graduated from college ten years ago. If you read my old blog at all, you’d know that I characterize my time there as, more or less, an absolute nightmare in every conceivable way. To put it lightly.

In honor of the dubious anniversary, I thought I’d look back on some of the most prominent aspects of college and see if my complaints still hold up. You know, it’s possible my opinion has changed with ten years of hindsight. By that I mean it’s possible I’ll realize I was being too nice.

I want to start with the classes. As a journalism major, I actually found them to be mostly fine. While I had individual complaints here and there, they were nothing out of the ordinary for any college class: too much work, too much reading, subjects too difficult, professors not interesting enough. Overall, though, my studies themselves were probably the least offensive aspect of the whole college experience. They certainly weren’t life-changing, and you’ll never see a Dead Poets Society made after any of my professors, but they all did perfectly serviceable jobs teaching perfectly typical university material.

Hold on, though — UF educators and advisors, don’t congratulate yourselves just yet. I know you are. The school still earns a big, fundamental demerit from me for one important reason: they did not allow me to take all the classes I actually wanted.

I understand there may be differing points of view on this. Some people see their college experience as a degree-earning exercise, priding themselves on moving through the system quickly and winning the diploma with the least time, energy, and investment required. That’s fine for them. I think UF would mostly agree with that approach.

But I beg to differ. I think that while it makes sense to focus a college education on earning some kind of degree, it’s actually none of the school’s business what I spend my time doing so long as they are being paid for it. How profound and revolutionary: wanting to spend my experience learning about the subjects that I actually cared about. As an undeclared major, that was theater, music, and everything up and down the roster of humanities.

I tried to mix and match a random, directionless schedule – and my advisors HATED it. When I sought their required approval to take an introductory music theory course, they stared at me like I had seven heads.

Are you a music major?   No.
Are you considering becoming a music major?   No.
Then why do you want to take music theory?   Because I want to learn music theory.
Well, you can’t.

It’s not like I was taking someone’s spot (they didn’t check). I wasn’t intruding on some secret society of advanced educational techniques. It was a single, basic, beginner, freshman-level course to learn about musical scales and the staff. I was paying an institution to learn things, but they dictated what, when, and how much.

(Eventually, I was able to take a few of the kinds of classes I really wanted, but only when I lied and misled advisors into thinking I was considering becoming a major of whichever field they were a part of.)

After years of dicking around, I settled on the journalism track and figured I’d try to find the fun parts of that instead. After all, the classes were decent and the professors were capable enough.

What I couldn’t predict, unfortunately, was just how embarrassingly ill-equipped UF would leave me to start a career in journalism. You know, the whole point of being there?

I thought I had made the right compromise: I had traded my formless, directionless, pitiful undeclared major for a strict degree path dead set on churning out a worker bee. And yet, none of it translated to finding work in any conceivable way.

I work in the industry now, yes. But I do so despite UF’s education, not because of it. My college experience has been absolutely irrelevant to my career thereafter. In fact, it simply never comes up. It’s as meaningful to my work as my preschool education.

Yes, the courses were mostly informative and taught competently. No, memorizing textbook facts and figures does not lead to gainful employment.

I graduated without ever once reporting anything, interviewing anybody, writing or fact checking a news story, editing copy, studying or analyzing current news, working with photos, video, or other media relating to journalism, researching anything, or working in or around a newsroom environment. EVER. There were no labs, projects, fieldwork, or anything more elaborate than half-assed group PowerPoint presentations. The most we did was learn “about” journalism, the same way anyone could learn “about” any topic by reading a book or watching a YouTube video.

My degree was technically in “telecommunication,” under the journalism umbrella. No, I don’t know what the degree encompasses. I couldn't even tell you what the word means.

It’s not that I wasn’t applying myself fully or that I’ve forgotten the lessons. I was a straight-A student who barely missed a class in four years. And for my trouble, I graduated knowing NOTHING about working in the real world.

The classes in my degree track were lecture-based. ALL of them. There were no hands-on activities, no internship-type opportunities, nothing to approximate any kind of real-world journalism career at all. The professors would present material, you’d take notes, and at the end you’d sit for final exams. Maybe write a research paper or two. Nothing else. These classes were not prerequisites for anything further, they were the entirety of the major. We did not MAKE or PRODUCE or EXPERIENCE or CONNECT WITH anything — news-related or not.

I’d excuse even all of this if these lecture classes were somehow groundbreaking or thought-provoking in some unique way. They weren’t.

Complementing the journalism coursework were all the typical subjects, like history, English, economics, and science. But I also had three different social media classes whose only goal was to teach us (millennials) how to use Twitter. There was the politics discussion section that exalted our intelligence by quizzing us on the president’s name. The Spanish class whose online portal was broken three-quarters of the time. An astronomy class that never once had us look at the real night sky! An anthropology class where we were constantly made to play ridiculous games that did not tie into any course material. There was a sociology professor who would constantly show the class a photo of a baby and ask for commentary about it — while we all stayed absolutely silent. I had a semester spent watching a woman drone on and on about middle management three times a week. Oh, and there was the time I wasted an entire summer taking a single writing class that turned out to already be covered by my AP credit.

Nobody should pay for an education like this. This is like, NBC sitcom-level college antics.

Of course, I’m not complaining about easy courses or strange professors; every college has them. Everyone’s experienced wacko people doing weird stuff. But this is ALL there was. There was never a point where I transitioned over to the “real” classes, the “real” journalism I had signed up for. Never a moment where I thought, "Oh, this is what I'm here to learn!"

So why should I have moved across the state and paid thousands of dollars a semester to sit in a classroom and be lectured at? What’s the point of pursuing a diploma when a YouTube video or podcast can cover all of the same lessons, and beyond, in a more entertaining way, for free, anytime I want? Just say you went to any school you want, nobody checks. Any replacement-level university can teach textbook material and test students on it. Community college can do that. High school can do that. An app can do that. None of that leads to being employable in an actual career.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me you have a research university that is 150 years old, attended by tens of thousands of students, attracting professors from all over the world, calling itself the “flagship” Florida school — “the Harvard of the South.” You’d think that when dozens of journalism Ph. Ds are convening in one place to imbue their lives’ work upon eager students, they might have had a little more to offer than the same curriculum you can get from the University of Phoenix. Like, maybe, you know, working in actual news production in ANY capacity. Maybe putting together some kind of portfolio that could’ve helped me get ANY job. I work in radio now — while UF only got a student-led radio station a few years after I graduated. Just pathetic.

This is the point where the vultures will emerge from the woodwork to tell me that I should’ve “taken initiative,” “reached out to people,” “been proactive,” “worked harder,” or been more “competitive” or “ambitious.” No. Those are specific personality traits of a certain type-A personality that not everyone possesses. Forcing them on others is insensitive at best and ableism at worst. People without those type-A traits are already at a disadvantage in job prospects; they shouldn’t be shut out of a career opportunity because they “only” did exactly what was expected of them and nothing more.

I attended the school, passed the classes, earned high grades, paid attention, and did everything asked of me. I’m not saying that should guarantee me a Peabody Award, but if I’m paying the money and showing up and following the degree track exactly as directed, I think it’s the school’s responsibility to give me one iota of a chance to get a foot in the door. ANYWHERE.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the classes. They were whatever, I don’t remember or care anymore. ✍︎

P.S. If you want to know more about any of this, I documented a lot of it as it happened in Nonsense Report. Go visit, you'd be its first reader in a decade!

Translating names from English to Spanish is eating shit.

I was but only a small child when I first pondered this, annoyed and perplexed by my elementary school Spanish teachers’ practice of translating students’ names.

Instead of calling every student by their true and legal name, my teachers would often translate them to a Spanish equivalent. Michael became “Miguel.” Danielle was called “Daniela.” Peter was rechristened “Pedro.” They never explained it, either — they simply referred to the children by a different name, if there was one, and left them to put two and two together.

Of course, my teachers didn’t invent these translations. Around the world, it’s accepted that many common, non-Hispanic first names have Spanish-language equivalents. People use them. My subsequent Spanish teachers did, too. Other languages do the same thing. Even the Pope’s name is translated, appearing slightly differently in dozens of languages.

Now, some people might be genuinely welcoming of the translation, freely using their new names when speaking the second language. Others may not, preferring to only use their legal, Christian name in all situations. Still others may hold no opinion. Regardless, here’s the thing: those “translated” names aren’t those individuals’ names. They may be similarly-spelled and closely-pronounced, but that shouldn’t be enough to conclude that those names ARE their names, albeit in another language.

“Elizabeth” could be translated to “Isabel,” “Elisávet,” “Elizabetta,” or even “Liisa,” in other languages. Forget the historical origin of the word from which the name is derived — is someone who was born identifying with the name “Isabel” supposed to simply accept that their name is “also” Elizabeth?

If my name is Michael, that is so because those particular letters and sounds come together to make the name. Not other letters and sounds that may be close. Whether or not there is historical precedence (other people also named Michael being referred to by a translated version of it, whether or not they consented) is irrelevant. Similarly, whether or not the Spanish dictionary documents “Miguel” as the official translation of “Michael” is irrelevant.

“Miguel” may be Michael’s equivalent, but who’s to say that MY name is actually “Michael,” as per the name you’re thinking of? Who’s to say that my name isn’t just a homograph, spelled and pronounced the same (like “bat,” flying, and “bat,” baseball)? My “Michael” could just be a coincidence of spelling and sounds, not a continuation of the cultural namesake, as the rest of the world sees it.

If my parents named me Michael, it could be for a variety of reasons. They may have just liked THOSE particular letters in THAT order. They may WANT the “c,” “h,” and “a,” as part of the identity of the name, intentionally. They may have wanted to identify me with the long i sound in PARTICULAR. Maybe they liked the strong “cull” ending, on purpose. Altering or removing any of these elements may, in fact, undermine the purpose and meaning of the name bestowed upon me.

This isn’t a knock against Spanish, or its speakers, or the speakers of any language at all. Actually, the reverse is just as undesirable: I wouldn’t want someone named Pablo, Maria, or Juan being apathetically renamed “Paul,” “Mary,” or “John,” either. That would seem just as disrespectful.

Of course, If someone is giving their best (or even, not best) attempt to pronounce someone’s name, and the translated version is what happens to come out, I don’t think they’d be offended. I certainly wouldn’t be. But at the same time, I don’t think the commonly-used translations should automatically be accepted as THE official, documented, be-all end-all equivalents of their names.

Think about how strongly someone named Kirsten feels about being accidentally called “Kristen.” That one-letter difference is important, and we all try to respect
that. . . but at the same time, someone named Guillermo is supposed to unflinchingly answer to “William” without a second thought?

THEY AREN’T THE SAME NAME! Just call people the exact combination of mouth utterances that they themselves have chosen! ✍︎

Using military time for no reason is eating shit.

I've known several people throughout my life who, curiously, have their phones or watches set to the "24-hour clock," or military time, all the time.

These were people living and working in the United States, who by their own admission had no international business going on. They weren't traveling out of the country. They weren't keeping up with international friends. Presumably, their calendar appointments and other day-to-day commitments were planned with respect to the 12-hour clock. And yet. . . they just lived by military time, every day of their lives.

You may see them, too. Looking around you. They're everywhere. Bagging our groceries, delivering our morning milk, actively serving in branches of the military.

WHY?

Not only do I not understand what is gained by looking at the time this way, how does one benefit by not having instantaneous feedback to the clock the rest of society uses?

I actually asked ChatGPT to weigh in. But none of its suggestions seemed to apply, at least in the cases I'm thinking about:

First, it posited that the choice was about clarity and precision — that not needing to discern between A.M. and P.M. saves ambiguity. But in day to day life, when does one check the time and not immediately know whether it's day or night? And if one is prone to confusing the two, how would the added step of needing to convert the 24-hour time reading to the 12-hour clock NOT be any less confusing? So, no.

Then, it offered the international communication angle, but as I said, there was no international communication going on, per my friends' own admissions. Next.

Its next possibility was, simply, "consistency and efficiency." I'm not sure how this warranted its own separate suggestion, but ChatGPT thought that perhaps it was easier to not have to constantly convert between military time and conventional time. Okay, but...? If anything, using military time demands MORE conversion, as those of us who don't use it are NEVER converting between the two. None of the people I've known who do use it worked in any fields that necessitated it.

Lastly, ChatGPT concluded that it may just be a matter of personal preference. Well, I'll buy that. BUT WHY?

I have my own theory: for Americans, there may have been a time when having your phone constantly set to military time seemed cool, because it implied you were jet-setting so often that you just never got around to resetting it back. Sure. But this would've been more plausible during college, right around the time everybody "went to Europe once" and came back calling it "Ethpaña" and smoking a pack a day. Not as much with the individuals I'm thinking about.

The people I knew who had their phones set to military time were distinctly not showing off. They were not flashy; they weren't trying to impress anyone, even less so with this strange method. They just. . . inexplicably wanted their phones to display wonky timekeeping. Just because.

WHY DIDN'T I JUST ASK THEM ABOUT IT MYSELF? Well, do you know how awkward that would've been? To admit that I was even LOOKING that closely at their phones in the first place (why? Why was I looking?) and then to imply that I'm finding fault with it? No. Actually, one friend did offer her own explanation, once: she "just liked it."

There you have it, folks. She just liked it. Even advanced artificial intelligence can't come up with a better reason. ✍︎

YOU are eating shit! And YOU are eating shit! And YOU are eating shit!

Sigh. . . it looks like I'm gonna have to take this one, since no one else will.

It shouldn't be my responsibility to do this, but here goes: we need to all, collectively, cease and desist quoting Oprah's "you get a car!" announcement.

Okay? It's not funny. It's not funny now, it wasn't funny then. It may have been. . .
eh. . . cute?. . . when it was parodied for the very first time. And perhaps for a week after. Then, suddenly, it was dead.

This was almost twenty years ago. Entire graduating high school classes have come and gone with no memory of it happening!

So I guess I'm obligated to explain it, for posterity. Oprah Winfrey was known for sending audiences of her eponymous daytime talk show home with gifts and prizes.

On the show's season premiere in 2004, Oprah gifted everyone in the audience a brand new Pontiac G6 sedan. She had stagehands give everyone in the audience a gift box, and when they opened them, each box revealed a set of keys. As the audience went absolutely nuts screaming and jumping up and down, Oprah pointed around at individual people and said, "You get a car!" eight times, and then, "Everybody gets a car!" several times after that.

The atmosphere on the show continued to be crazy, but that's the gist of it for the purposes of my complaint.

I'm not here to attack Oprah herself or that segment of the show; this is only about the rest of the world's insistence on quoting it for two decades after the episode aired. ENOUGH ALREADY!

Any time anyone tells a story involving people obtaining giveaways, or describes situations when something is distributed widely, or even when anyone says "you get a. . ." about anything, they can't help but then shift it into parodying Oprah — if not with her theatrics, then with the words at bare minimum. It isn't funny.

And what's worse, the quote has become so ubiquitous, the routine so familiar that many people aren't even attempting humor when they say it. They just. . . say it. Absentmindedly. It's exactly like saying "that rhymes" when rhyming words, or the "try saying that five times fast" after saying a tongue twister, as I alluded to in another entry here.

It's annoying. It's played out. It's cringe. It's pointless. It's a waste of time.

So, I think we all need to come together, Beatles-style, and put this thing to bed. We can do that, can't we? We're better than this.

Now, quick-witted, insightful readers may be tripping over themselves to point out how this makes me an utter hypocrite. I knowingly repeat the same "unfunny" phrases over and over for years, even when others beg me to stop. Don't worry, I hear you. But here's the thing. I'm me, and you all aren't. ✍︎

A meme about pineapple on pizza is eating shit.

I feel a compulsion to write about societal nuisances that upset me, but that I also feel the rest of the world hasn't noticed. Sometimes, my research brings me to the world of internet memes and youth culture. And sometimes, those memes originate from high schoolers.

I understand that the optics of "going after" a high schooler aren't great, especially when said high schooler was simply trying to be funny for her friends — not become a piece of internet mythology. I mean, who doesn't look back at their high school selves and cringe? But in this case, the offense is so annoying, so overly pretentious about its perceived humor, that I simply cannot ignore it.

There's this meme, okay, and it's a photo of a page in a high school yearbook, featuring an alt-looking girl with a cunning smile. Opposite her photo is her senior quote: "If you like pineapple slices on pizza, I hope you like pineapple slices on your children's graves because you're weak, your bloodline is weak, and you will not survive the winter."

There are only two possible reactions to this meme, love or revulsion. I am not going to paste or link to it to avoid any iota of controversy, but you can google the description and find dozens of uploads of the photo. It circulates the internet with esteem and adoration; people treat this girl's "epic" senior quote as though it's a "mic drop" moment. Well, it isn't. If anything, it's "epically" lame. . . "bro."

First of all, there's the whole "pineapple on pizza" thing. The entire internet is absolutely fascinated with the "debate" over whether pineapple is an appropriate topping for pizza or not — and has been for years now. Rather than accepting that some people like some kinds of foods and some don't, online society has elevated the opinion on this one food preference to some kind of matter of life and death. Alright, we get it. Pineapple is sweet and pizza is savory and some people don't like that combination! Pineapple on pizza used to not be a thing, really, but now it is, and some people are surprised and disgusted by that! Others love it! Enough. Most of the adults in the room got over this a long time ago.

(Plus, I'd be remiss not to mention how everyone brings it up at completely irrelevant and unnecessary times: the pineapple-on-pizza opinion is quite literally one of the most common dating app bio topics. People all around the country, of all genders, waste fleeting first impressions on their own pineapple-on-pizza viewpoints, rather than saying literally anything else about themselves. It's a waste of the limited time and space.)

And here, from the outset, this high schooler is wasting her own limited time and space on a joke senior quote — to perpetuate a very tired, pointless, unfunny meme.

But the real magic kicker, what separates this offense from any other similar joke and why this meme is emphatically eating shit, is the absolutely excessive, embarrassing, medieval fantasy-inspired threat she makes. I know it's a joke, and only supposed to be a joke, but even taking that into account, it's cringe. And it's sad, because humor evolves so quickly nowadays that the inclusion of an entire bloodline is almost necessary for audiences to find it even the faintest bit funny.

Let's examine the quote literally, why don't we. This random young woman is speaking as if she is a Game of Thrones character. From high atop a pedestal, she declares that by virtue of simply enjoying one pizza topping, you and all of your descendants will die (and presumably within the year).

Yes, I know it's a joke. But logically, how does this work? As the quote is immortalized in a high school yearbook, it tracks that the speaker is probably addressing other high schoolers — most of whom would not yet have a bloodline of their own. She mentions the reader's children's graves, so, can we conclude that while these readers will die, they'll grow up enough to have children of their own, first? Then, those children will die too, even if they themselves are against pineapple on pizza, just like her?

Plus, it's reasonable to assume that if the reader is indeed a pineapple-on-pizza-enjoyer, they didn't just start eating it yesterday. Presumably, they've survived multiple winters of their life with the dietary preference already. So, employing the logic, the pineapple aficionados will have children (who will then die, and they themselves will also die), but not yet. Because they've made it this far in one piece. The debilitating food preference that will devastate multiple generations of a family must evidently take a while to kick in.

Even taking all of this at face value, when you envision some kind of high fantasy scenario in which an entire bloodline is too weak to survive a harsh winter, you probably imagine a shared genetic shortcoming, a mental deficiency, or physical weakness that, well, actively impedes the family from overcoming hunger, the elements, or a complex survival scenario. Simply enjoying pineapple on pizza doesn't really seem to measure up to the grandeur implied by such a circumstance.

Well that's the joke, you argue. But still, shouldn't there be some truth to it? By what means does liking pineapple on pizza lead to the deaths of an entire bloodline over a winter? Especially in this day and age of heating and insulation, ample food, medical care, and other protection? So the bloodline likes pineapple on their pizza — so what? They're not eating pizza for every meal. Nobody even said they're choosing pineapple as a topping every time they eat pizza.

And once again, I know it's a joke. But please enlighten me as to how a high schooler who has already survived at least some winters enjoying pineapple on pizza will, in this reality, continue surviving long enough to have children — but then will die? And then the children and grandchildren will also die, regardless of which side of the debate they fall on? AND WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK IT'S SO FUNNY?

You know, I think I ought to try calls to action in order to foster more engagement on my blog. So here's one: in the comments, why don't you tell me why every opinion I have is 100% correct and every opinion the rest of the world has is 100% wrong? ✍︎

Blogging about the latest trivialities in my life is eating shit. And so is a smoke detector battery that nobody hears or changes.

You may have noticed that I haven't updated in a while. You’d be correct. When your readership hovers right around zero, there’s not much impetus to take the time and write. But it's also because I've been sitting on a draft of one story for the better half of the year, unsure of exactly how to tell it.

It’s not that the story is difficult or unusual; namely, it’s the opposite. My story idea is an almost exact stereotype of every entry in this canon. I describe a ridiculous problem nobody else notices and my futile attempts to have it fixed. Nobody in power or authority cares. I get upset, talk about how insane everybody is. Eventually, the problem disappears and/or society just lives with it, all the worse for wear.

At first, I was just going to tell that story directly, content to document exactly what happened even if it turned out to be yet another cookie-cutter volume in a collection of identical experiences.

But then I stopped, and scrapped it.

I thought to myself, am I really going to keep writing this? The same thing, over and over?

After more than a decade of this, do I even have any outrage left in me to draw from?

Some artists do like making the same kind of work every time they create. And in turn, some people enjoy familiar art that follows the same beats, every time — myself included. I’m not really an artist, but I have been consistently making something. For a while, that something has mostly been iterations of the same story.

But is that all this is? Is this all it will ever amount to? Maybe I should do more than just archive these experiences, wholesale. Maybe I shouldn't just document every incident that happens with no curation. It's not exactly motivating to see tweets featuring stories similar to mine, written in 30 seconds and condensed into two sentences, that then go megaviral. If I am going to eat shit for another 14 years with no readers, maybe I should at least grow, learn, and change through the experience.

Then again. . .

The fact that people all over this country, in all positions of society, in all matters of circumstance, keep on acting this same way, for years. . . well, maybe the frequency of the stories says more about our world than any individual incident ever could. Maybe someday I can look back and surmise purpose with this compilation of stories, as a unit, that I can’t from any one.

Whatever. I’ll just tell you what happened. No one’s even reading this.

***

I moved into a new apartment earlier this year, and within earshot of my bedroom window was a smoke detector with a low battery. Anyone familiar with a low-battery smoke detector knows the high-pitched chirp it makes, constantly. The steady, intermittent squeak rang out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it was especially noticeable at night. This persisted for months.

The sound seemed to come from the exterior of the building, and not in anyone’s private space, so I wasn’t sure who exactly was responsible for it. I called my property manager. They had no idea what I was talking about. Eventually they sent someone out to check on it, and that person couldn’t find anything. They couldn’t even hear it.

I then walked around the block a bit and seemed to pinpoint the smoke detector to the next building over, rather than mine. I tried their property manager (whose number I only knew because they have it plastered uglily on the front of the building). While slightly more understanding than my own manager, she was also cheerfully unaware of the problem.

As I described the persistent chirping, perplexed that it could’ve gone on for months with no action, she reacted with a line I could've written myself: "Nobody has ever reported this to us before!"

Of course they hadn’t. Of course a building full of dozens of families hadn’t noticed a steady, high-pitched piercing sound every 30 seconds for every night of their lives. . . for a year or more, probably. Or hadn’t bothered to do anything about it. That tracks perfectly with every blogging story I’ve ever told. I mean, need I even continue?

It took a few weeks of back and forth, calling and emailing the neighboring property manager until they finally came out and silenced the sound. (In 2008, that part alone would have warranted pages of writing. Now, it’s not even notable.)

As of now, there is no smoke detector chirping. Except it comes back every once in a while, then stops, then comes back, then stops again at irregular intervals.

Nobody knows why, and nobody cares.

***

That was the story. And instead of telling it just like that, I had a whole draft written where I described every leg of it in excruciating detail, summoning outrage, and connecting it back to previous times this has happened. I really put on a show.

But again, why?

I've shown how little anybody cares through my stories of customer service, interpersonal relations, and advertising. Clearly, I don't care about telling them, since I go months without writing. So, why continue with a blog? If all I'm doing is archiving, why not jot down a few bullet points or write a few tweets and be done with it?

Who is any of this for? ✍︎

Groaning about turbulence is eating shit.

Chances are, if you’ve flown on a commercial airplane, you’ve experienced turbulence. Nobody likes the sudden, violent shaking or thrusting of a plane thousands of feet in the air, but it actually isn’t as dangerous or chaotic as it seems. I once looked it up! :) Turbulence is something that, for the crew, is completely routine and manageable.

Being rocked around in your seat is annoying, but the only thing more annoying than turbulence is the overdramatic reactions the other passengers always have toward it.

Whenever I’ve sat through turbulence, it seems like instead of simply dealing with the bumps until they pass, everybody around me starts moaning, groaning, and making other unsavory vocalizations to express their worry, fear, or irritation as loudly as possible. And I’m not just talking about the natural reactions we all might have to an unexpected stimulus (“ow!” “whoa!” etc). People on airplanes seem to be overdoing their reactions specifically to get attention and protest the situation.

“HEY!” (yelled out), “Whoa!” (exaggeratedly), “Come on!”, and “Jesus Christ!” everyone shrieks, after just a little bit of shaking. Like — okay, we get it. It’s startling. You know the pilot can’t hear you, right? Everyone acts as though going through turbulence is a deliberate, careless choice the pilot makes, as if they’re recklessly driving. What do they expect? That the crew is going to hear their cries, be disappointed and hurt, and relay those feelings back to the pilot? That the pilot will say, “oh, sorry, didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” and magically start flying smoothly? Calm the hell down.

Keep in mind that no pilots or flight crew will hear your griping, but wannabe writer boys with rarely-updated blogs will. ✍︎

A couple of months ago, I took a domestic flight on JetBlue. Remember when everyone loved them? Neither do I.

I took my seat, and as part of my usual settling routine, I tried to connect to the plane’s wifi, even though I wasn’t sure whether there was anything you could do with it without paying.

Please don’t even get me started on all the trials and tribulations of trying to use wifi on an airplane.

[pure silence]

Anyway, connecting to a plane’s wifi starts pretty similarly to connecting to wifi anywhere else. You go into settings and see that the wifi network is within range, and you select it. If you have the password, this part is usually easy.

But then comes the utterly baffling second step, which is a total crapshoot almost every time: you pray that the second popup screen welcoming you to the network decides to show, because without it, you land in some kind of purgatory where you are not connected to any internet, but also not disconnected from the network. Sometimes the popup shows, sometimes it doesn’t. There’s no rhyme or reason as to why. If it doesn’t generate on its own, you have to magically conjure it.

When it comes to airplane wifi, you stand a 0.00001% chance of that popup generating, and a 0.00002% chance of being able to manually summon it.

On this flight, I was able to connect to JetBlue’s wifi network as described in the first step, but I absolutely could not generate that second window. I couldn’t actually log in and use the internet.

I tried disconnecting and reconnecting, navigating to various websites, using different apps, and exploring every menu in the JetBlue app, mostly out of a screens addiction and inability to sit still. Eventually, I concluded that the wifi was simply broken, as it has been on about 90% of JetBlue flights I’ve taken.

But an hour into the flight, I randomly noticed a curious clue that would prove crucial to my predicament and alter the course of my flight forever. The NAPKIN the flight attendant gave me for my drink — yes, an insignificant bit of soggy, ripped, crumpled up paper — contained a QR code that seemed to imply a method to connect to wifi. I scanned it, and only then did my phone generate that second popup that granted me access to the internet.

This was the only method to connect. BY SCANNING A QR CODE ON A NAPKIN. This was never communicated anywhere, be it by the crew, the JetBlue app, a seat placard, or anywhere else. The QR code itself was also not found anywhere EXCEPT on the napkin. And it wasn’t found on EVERY napkin. Of course, everybody else on the plane was too absentminded, unconscious, or busy groaning about turbulence to have even a shred of an inkling of something being amiss. And I know for a fact that this problem has not been resolved, probably never will be, and will never be noticed again by anybody but me. ✍︎

Not knowing the rules of bowling is eating shit.

I usually hate “I don’t know who needs to hear this” declarations, but I have one.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but in a normal game of bowling, if you hit a spare on the tenth and final frame, the game is not over. You get one more roll. If you bowl a strike on that tenth frame, the game, again, is not over. You get two more rolls.

If your tenth frame ends without a strike or a spare, only then is your game over.

It has always been this way. Ever since I first went bowling as a little kid, all through the years of birthday parties, school field trips, summer camp outings, vacations with family in town. . . this has always been how traditional ten-pin bowling is played. The rules haven’t changed at any point since I’ve been alive. Little kids play this game, and little kids inevitably learn these rules. I’m no “expert” at bowling, either. I just. . . remember how the game is played?

And yet, every single time I have EVER bowled, be it with family, friends, classmates, or even complete strangers, there are always MULTIPLE people who seem absolutely bewildered to learn that the last frame of the game sometimes plays differently than the previous turns. And I really don’t know exactly who needs to hear this, because the phenomenon transcends age, athletic ability, intelligence, and bowling frequency.

Family members will bowl a spare on their last frame of the game, only to stare at the overhead screen, turn back to look at the rest of us waiting for them, turn forward and stare at the lane, and look up at the screen again, absolutely mystified by what they’re discovering. Somehow their turn isn’t over yet! Of course, someone like me (not always me!) is forced to explain it to them.

It doesn’t matter how many times they’ve bowled over their many years of life, somehow this “quirk” of the rules absolutely does not stick with people. The rule isn't difficult to understand: in the game, bowling a spare adds 10 to your score plus whatever you get on your next roll. Bowling a strike adds 10 plus the sum of your next two rolls. So, if you bowl a strike or spare to finish the game, you need one or two more rolls to acquire those points to add on to your score. There is nothing mystifying about it. Why adults can have the ability to work and drive cars and take care of children and pay bills, but not simply remember a couple of simple rules to a game they have played hundreds of times, is so beyond me that if infinite universes exist, there is still no universe wherein I understand this.

Oh wait, I do know, it’s actually because everyone on the planet continues to be stupid, day in, day out. Just kidding! Surely. ✍︎

Wishing you learned how to do your taxes in high school is eating shit.

We just passed Tax Day, and every year around this time, people hem and haw about how they don’t know anything about taxes and how they wish they had been taught how to do them in school. Like clockwork.

Young people seem frustrated, appalled, and even resentful that there was no dedicated time in high school for an instructor to “teach” the class how to file taxes. “We took years of USELESS algebra,” they say, “but there was no time to learn something we’d actually need to know as an adult?”

YEAH. . . RIGHT. Taxes are definitely confusing, but how exactly do you propose someone go about teaching an entire class of high schoolers how to fill out random paperwork in a way that would be at all meaningful to them? Especially when most of them — even those who are already working — are still being claimed as dependents, and may continue to be for YEARS?

Does anyone really believe that even though students sleep, eat, talk, and stare at their phones every other school day of the year, they would’ve woken up and given their undivided attention on the day dedicated to learning TAXES? Above all else? And they would’ve retained it, five or ten years later? REALLY?

Not to mention, what do you think the tax lesson would look like? The actual filling out of the tax forms themselves are not what’s difficult. There are many free programs with modern interfaces that tell you exactly what to enter where — and often they can even import documents and fill out the forms themselves.

Sure, that all can be very tedious, and I wish there was less of it to do. But that doesn't change the fact that there isn’t anything to teach. I’d argue that the most complicated part of doing taxes is making sure you account for all of the different forms, transactions, and other activity they’ll ask about. There is absolutely no way to TEACH that. There isn’t anything TO teach.

You think a teenager is going to be starting to file and suddenly remember what a goddamn 1099-B form is? I see those forms every single year and still have no idea what they are before looking them up, which takes two seconds.

Think about it, even if high school had a tax lesson every single day of every year from ages 14 to 18, how would this make tax preparation go faster? You'd still need to collect all of the documents and enter in the numbers where they belong. You'd still need to look up information that pertains to your specific circumstances, so. . . how much time and energy would've been saved? WHAT WOULD'VE BEEN THE POINT? ✍︎

Yelling out "let's go!" all the time is eating shit.

Nowadays, I often hear people yell, “LET’S GO!” as an exclamation of triumph. When an athlete makes their play, for example, they don’t merely smile or clap their hands, pump a fist or call out a simple, “yeah!” as they may have in generations past. They scream “LET’S GO!” specifically, and they often repeat it again and again, looking around at their teammates.

“LET’S GO!” as they pound their chests, “LET’S GO!” as they dance around the court or field. “LET’S GO! LET’S GO! LET’S GO!” howled as they finish the feat, overcome with emotion and pride as they celebrate their achievement.

It’s not just athletes; laypeople do this too as they commemorate everyday accomplishments. But why say, “let’s go” when the effort has already been completed?

“Let’s go”. . . and do what? The imperative “let’s [let us] go” implies that something is to be started. “Let’s” go forth. “Let’s go” and begin working. Not, “let’s rest” or “let’s stop” now that we’ve accomplished what we’ve set out to do. Seemingly, every common contemporary utterance of the phrase “let’s go” is backwards: it’s timed to when the action or undertaking in question has already been successfully done.

Based on absolutely nothing, I’d wager that this modern use of the phrase is a result of the neverending “storylines” in sports and athletic advertising. Every athlete with recognition is a brand imbued with a storyline — wherein they’re constantly expected to be pursuing the next accomplishment, even when they themselves aren’t vocal about it. As such, even if one particular sporting event is over for the day, the athlete’s overall “journey” never ends. They’re almost obligated to yell out, “let’s go!” as they make the final play, to signal that this is just the first in a series of other triumphs still to come. God forbid the coaches, teammates, and fans think they’ve grown complacent with only that one particular accomplishment.

Of course, it’s not like everyday people on the street think about the “storylines” of their own lives when they imitate the behavior. We are simply dumb apes who mimic the social cues and slang of celebrities presented to us. It’s trickled down enough that people will exclaim “let’s go!” at the mere reception of new information. So say someone learns some exciting news — “let’s go!” I’ve even seen videos where people introduce and say a fact about themselves and then add in a “let’s go” to that (no other content follows the declaration). ✍︎

P.S. Another common phrase never employed properly? “I’m done.” People seem to dramatically exclaim, “I’m done,” as a way of shutting down an argument or fight — but then continue fighting! If you’re going to announce that you’re done, you shouldn’t then tack on further comments. How about that.

Adding profanity to make a clean joke entertaining is eating shit.

I don’t know why I remembered this, but I did.

In fact, I’ve remembered this for about a decade, probably because of how stupid it was.

Many years ago, in a hazy, distant time and otherworldly consciousness, I was standing in a crowd, waiting for a punk show to start. I was at some dive bar, probably in Gainesville, Florida, and probably alone. I don’t remember the year. I don’t remember the bar. I don’t remember the band.

The doors had just opened. Soon, the act came out and started setting gear and tuning up. The frontman was downstage, adjusting the microphone stand and tuning his guitar. He decided to break the ice with some crowd work.

“Anyone know a joke?” he called out to the audience.

At first, people murmured and chuckled sheepishly like they usually do while trying to gauge the seriousness of the request. Bands often address the crowd directly or indirectly and it isn’t always clear if their questions are rhetorical.

But he asked again. “Come on, anyone got a good joke?”

That’s when some completely random, nameless, faceless, anonymous person without an identity answered him.

“What did the zero say to the eight?” she yelled out.

I sighed, not because I have anything against simple, youthful jokes and not because I think I’m above telling or hearing them. I cringed at the prospect of her telling this tired joke in particular. It seemed utterly uninspired given the weight of the guitarist’s request, the golden opportunity to have her voice heard, and the heft of the crowd giving her attention. Anybody there could have yelled out anything, but she fancied herself to be the strongest candidate to take the reins, shout the loudest, and offer this joke.

I knew the punchline (“nice belt”) ever since I heard the joke as a child, but apparently the frontman wasn’t familiar with it.

“What did the. . . zero. . . say to the. . . eight?” he repeated, not really following. “Like numbers? I don’t know, what did it say?”

The girl paused for a gleeful moment before triumphantly calling back, “Nice belt, asshole!”

Nice belt — asshole?

What? Why?

The punchline was "nice belt", period. Not asshole. There was no asshole. There never was an asshole. Why “asshole”? Why did she say that? There was absolutely no aggression in this children’s joke, either stated or implied. Why did she need to add “asshole” to a joke that was not only clean, but already complete without it? Given what we knew about the number characters, there’d be no reason for either of them to speak that way to the other.

The frontman emitted a half-hearted laugh, never once looking up from his plucking. “Nice belt. . . asshole. . .” he echoed, smiling sheepishly, clearly trying to remain polite in the face of the obvious rigmarole he helped perpetuate.

Then he quickly moved on, made a bit more small talk, and the band started their set.

Did this girl throw in the ungodly profanity because she felt the audience of this punk show needed something edgier than what her joke could offer? Did she think her reinterpretation would seem punker-than-thou and thus accepted by the community? It’s reasonable to aspire to that, but if so, why settle for that joke in the first place?

Was her wordsmithery the product of a last second maneuver, because as she felt the punchline coming off her lips, she knew in the moment the joke had completely, utterly flopped? Did she figure she could think quickly and salvage her doomed opportunity with a half-hearted appeal to punk folk’s apparently-simple minds? That they’d be gratified with any and all inappropriate language?

See, my problem with this whole GD incident is that there is already dissonance between how the general, non-punk public characterizes the punk subculture. Normal people see punks as any combination of violent, irrationally angry, rude, irresponsible, immature, and spreading “negative” values (whatever those are). . . etc. But anyone who’s spent even one second around the punk world would know it’s actually anything but that: it’s inclusive, progressive, morally responsible, humane, supportive of mental health, and championing the underdog all the time. So while a short interaction like this may not exactly be changing the course of history, it does inject an unnecessarily aggressive, immature, and thoughtless bit of tension into a scene that wholly did not need nor want it.

Anyway, I will give one million dollars in cash to anybody reading this who was at the show where this took place. You don’t even have to prove it. But you have to be telling the truth. ✍︎

Jokes about dinosaurs with little arms are eating shit.

There was a short time when society thought it was absolutely hilarious that Tyrannosaurus rex, the dinosaur, had very short front arms.

Though dinosaurs have been popular with children for generations, this observation about T. rex limbs seemed to have never been made prior to a decade ago.

Once it was, you couldn’t escape it. Children’s movies, internet memes, museum exhibits, TV commercials, graphic T-shirts. . . creators were practically tripping over themselves to throw in a joke anywhere and everywhere about little T. rex arms. What a crazy juxtaposition: the ferocious, fearsome carnivorous dinosaur — rendered harmless, and even adorable, by its inability to reach, grab, or hug with its miniature appendages! What a novel, whimsical insight! And one that should keep being made over and over! God forbid Blue Sky Studios think of something else to joke about, they may have actually stayed in business!

Pretend, for a moment, that you’re over the age of three. Was this observation ever actually funny? Do these children’s movie trailer jokes or Facebook memes shared by grandparents really elicit genuine laughter?

I realize that there is a big market for animal humor (“doggos”, Grumpy Cat, “trash pandas” as a nickname for raccoons, honey badgers, the blobfish, etc.). . . but as hamfisted as all of that is, at least it cycles around a bit. You don’t hear about any one of these animals for too long before a new one pops up. But the entertainment world was REALLY pushing the T. rex nonstop for a few years there, as if the species’ anatomy was only just discovered. It also came during a time when memes were commonplace in mainstream culture, but culture itself wasn't varied enough to be able to escape them.

What’s more, none of the vehicles pushing T. rex arms seemed to add anything new to the discussion. They all laid out the same setup quite plainly: there was a dinosaur. With little arms. And the punchline? That its arms were too small, in a comically inconvenient way. Period. No further character development. No other layers to the joke. I mean, even children can and do appreciate complex, layered jokes.

It’s just not funny. The T. rex has small arms, we get it. Isn't humor supposed to be the subversion of expectations?

And that’s the crux of these blog entries; we KNOW things aren’t funny and yet people mindlessly consume it all anyway. No one cares or does anything to dismantle the system. This sentence is funnier than the concept of T. rex having little arms. Yes, that one. Now, I’m tired. ✍︎

Wearing a T-shirt with a Dr Pepper slogan on it is eating shit.

In the early to mid 2000s, you couldn’t go to a mall, high school, or social event without seeing someone wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, “I’m a Pepper.”

Most popular with teenage girls, the T-shirt was a Dr Pepper-branded graphic tee, much like those found in Abercrombie & Fitch or Old Navy. But. . . it was referencing the Dr Pepper brand of cola. The shirts were usually red, white, or pink, with the words “I’m a Pepper“ heathered or worn away to make the garment look vintage.

The expression was nothing more than one of Dr Pepper's slogans — literally an advertisement. Apparently, in the 1970s, there were Dr Pepper commercials where a man sang about being “a pepper,” meaning that he was a devotee of the cola. There isn’t much more to it than that (but I also don’t care to find out any more, even if there is).

For some inexplicable reason, it became trendy for teenage girls to advertise a slogan that was only in use decades before they born. Nobody knew why then, and nobody knows why now.

I always liked Dr Pepper, but I don't remember the soft drink ever being particularly popular. It was not a fad. It was not a trend. “I’m a Pepper” didn’t mean anything: slang, innuendo, or otherwise. Nobody talked about Dr Pepper for any reason unless they happened to be discussing soda already. Quite simply, liking Dr Pepper was not a thing, even ironically. But 20 years ago, tens of thousands of people wore that specific T-shirt all the time. Of all the graphic tees advertising a real-life brand, I’d wager that this particular Dr Pepper rag was even more common than any clothing promoting Coca-Cola or Pepsi, two soda brands that were obviously much more commonplace.

Nobody talked about the shirt as a fashion choice, either. People just. . . wore it, without further comment or analysis. Nobody complimented it; nobody insulted it. I think most people figured the phrase had some hidden meaning they simply didn’t understand, but because the shirt was always so ubiquitous, they were too embarrassed to ask what.

How many people knew this was a Dr Pepper-branded t-shirt in the first place? I imagine many shoppers must’ve seen the shirt folded in a stack on a table at a Gap store and picked it up, just because it was available. How many noticed the Dr Pepper logo underneath the slogan? Did they think “I’m a Pepper” was just a cute, flirty, meaningless phrase? Did being a “pepper” mean something in their minds (like. . . a “hot tamale,” maybe??)?

This phenomenon may have started among teenage girls, but it didn’t stay that way. After a few years of the fashion cycle trickling down, you’d see men, women, and others of all ages — anyone gunning for a casual, no-frills, no-personality look — proudly strutting their stuff. Whether dressed up cute for a date, thrown on lazily as pajamas for a trip to the airport, or styled in countless morning-to-evening looks between school, the mall, or the movies, in the 2000s. . . everyone was, indeed, a pepper.

Then, the trend was gone almost as quickly as it started, with the Captain America logo tee swiftly taking its place.

Why? Why that? Why then? Why that shirt? Why that style? Why Dr Pepper? Why Captain America? Why was it never formally acknowledged? Why are you still reading this? ✍︎

Disclaiming that a theatrical performance contains a disclaimer is eating shit.

Even if you didn't grow up involved in theater, you might be familiar with Thespians, the drama club for middle and high school students. Thousands of members of the International Thespian Society gather every year to watch each other perform monologues, scenes, songs, and other works, competing against fellow schools.

Theoretically, student actors can perform anything they'd like at Thespian festivals, and that often includes works with adult language, sexual situations, violence, or themes of drug and alcohol abuse. The judges don't have a problem with this, presumably as long as it's all done maturely and with respect to the source material.

Like any competition, there are standards and practices participants follow. All Thespian performers start by standing before the audience, introducing their school and the name of the piece. Florida Thespians' official guidelines also state that, before they begin, students must disclose if their performances include any inappropriate material. When I was in school, every performer I would see seemed to abide by this.

But the guidelines don't give strict instruction on how the disclaimer must be worded. Interestingly, students all across the county, city, and state conformed to one consistent phrase. No matter their age or where they were from, actors would always announce the offensive content in the exact same way: they’d say the piece "contains an asterisk" for language. Or that it "contains an asterisk" for drug abuse, or rape, or whatever the offense was. Every risque performance, whether scene, song, or pantomime, would be introduced to the audience as "containing an asterisk.”

Year after year, Thespian pieces continued to be announced with this syntax. They never simply "contained language" or "contained sexual situations." It was always containing “an asterisk” for said content. This was so for the highest-awarded large group musical songs all the way down to a freshman’s first contrasting monologues.

Why? An asterisk already indicates that the piece contains some sort of inappropriate material, in and of itself. It’d be like if a table of contents in a book included itself in the listing. When taken literally, the students are saying, "we are telling you that our piece contains an indicator. The indicator references that the piece contains some sort of inappropriate material. And that the inappropriate material just so happens to be language.”

Just say what it is! "The piece contains language." That's it!

I never heard a single teacher or judge ever question, notice, or correct this language, and if one did, it clearly didn’t catch on. We’re talking about a competition where rules are so strict that a group would be disqualified if the piece ran one second over. It’s a system so sophisticated that scene actors would be required to present a printed copy of the play to each judge just to prove their work was from a real publication. With such elaborate rules, you’d think verbiage might count for something. Could I go up and say whatever the hell I want and still get a perfect superior rating?

You could argue that in the grand scheme of things, none of this matters at all. And you’d be wrong. ✍︎

Signs are, in many ways, eating shit.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about signs and signage. The world is full of different signs, but nobody ever thinks about them except me.

After a lifetime of reading signs, I’ve come to notice something. The signs associated with shops and businesses have become more and more inaccurate or unreliable over the years. Whereas signs once used to directly inform readers of specific, unwavering information, nowadays they seem to stretch the truth, outright lie, or else provide incomplete or incomprehensible claims.

I suppose that in olden times, if you were passing by a place of business, the store proprietor was the one who made and erected the sign. There’d be little doubt that they’d engrave exactly the message they intended to communicate. Nowadays, with a store’s property owner, business owner, day-to-day manager, and designer of the outside signage being completely different people who may not have even met, there’s a lot more room for error and stupid decisions.

Here are some incidents that have stood out to me:

• Plenty of restaurants and other businesses adorn their front windows with a bright, neon sign saying, “OPEN.” It’s a sight so common, it doesn’t need explaining. But nowadays, I’ve noticed that MANY places keep that open sign glowing 24 hours a day, regardless of whether or not they are currently doing business. In the middle of the night, long after the store has closed for the day, their open sign will remain brightly lit and flashing. What’s the point of having it, then? Don’t tell me that it’s to signify that the store is merely “in business” (that it hasn’t closed forever). That was never what an open sign was supposed to indicate. After all, people will generally assume that a shop is open until some proof otherwise, especially if that shop has customers entering and exiting it, merchandise and fixtures visible through the windows, and cars parked around it. And after hours, they’ll still assume it. OPEN SIGNS MEAN THAT THE BUSINESS IS OPEN DURING THE TIMES THE SIGN IS ON. I am not dumb, and I have pulled into the parking lots of various different places over the years only to be fooled by this.

• Have you ever noticed how the restaurants that describe themselves as “world famous” are always small, mom and pop diners on the side of a highway, usually in a quiet, rural part of the country? They’re always “world famous” for a certain fare, like ribs, crab cakes, or lemonade, even though most of the “world” couldn’t fathom they existed.

I have nothing against the wholesome sentiment of a kitschy, folksy, “world famous” sign; it’s a nice, fun bit of decoration. But of course, Wok and Roll off I-4 in Orlando does not have “world famous” General Tso’s chicken, and everyone knows it.

Have any of these restaurant owners thought about the implications of starting off potential relationships with such a bald-faced lie? As lighthearted as the sentiment may be, that is precisely what they’re doing. This deception is often the first piece of information the customers discover after the name. If the restaurant isn’t McDonald’s, it’s not world famous.

I’m willing to bet, again, that no one cares. (Do you see a pattern with this blog? [hold for applause]) But imagine starting a romantic relationship with some kind of lie. Even if you and your partner live a happy life together, you’ll always have that dishonesty at the back of your mind. A restaurant’s customers could dine there happily hundreds of times, but the owner can’t ever be sure that they weren’t influenced at least slightly through believing they were eating “world famous” dishes when they NEVER were. Is this lie a risk worth taking?

• An advertisement that essentially says, “we caught you looking, and so your customers will look, too” is not clever. Everyone thinks they’re so cool when they put out an ad like this, even though it’s been done hundreds of times already. We get it. Yep, you caught us. I’m reading the ad. You know what I’m not doing? Following up in any way. There are also thousands of ads like this that I’ve either read and immediately forgotten (even subconsciously) or were completely irrelevant to me. So no, your work isn’t done just because you proved the copy reached my optic nerves.

• The Amtrak trains traveling along the northeast corridor of the country have similar electronic signage at every station. These signs depict such messages as when the next train will arrive, its number, and its destination. When the sign means to inform customers that a particular train has departed, it doesn’t say so very clearly. It doesn't say "train departed," it says, “GATE CLOSED.” And nothing else.

  Gate closed? If I’m trying to catch that train, how does that message communicate anything to me? What does it actually mean? If I'm rushing to catch the ride, I'm looking for something like "now boarding," "train departed," or "not your turn yet." You know, an accurate description of what I need to know. Is the train still there, or not? If the gate is closed. . . open it? The sign "GATE CLOSED" doesn’t really convey information, seeing as how the “gates” are usually just open areas on the side of the tracks that anyone can position themselves on whenever they want. It’s the doors that close, not the gates.

  If it’s too late to board, say so. If the train has departed, say so. Don’t sidestep that responsibility with weasel words.

Unfortunately, nobody really does anything about any of these fraudulent or faulty signs, most likely because it’s too much effort for the average passerby to take on. I mean, imagine anyone actually noticing or caring about any of this in the first place. But then factor in having to track down who created the sign, who approved it, who is responsible for its content, and who intakes feedback for changes. Then there’s taking the time to actually voice the complaint, track and follow up on the case, see that any necessary changes are indeed made, and a dozen other steps. I’m the only one who would do that, and even I wouldn’t do that.

BONUS: Earlier this year, I was in an airport bathroom, and the toilet had one of those dual-function handles that could be pushed up or down depending on the amount of water desired. At this point, I trust that we understand each other, with no further description necessary.

On a small plaque above the handle was a sign. There was an image demonstrating which direction to flush for which purpose, with the following message in microscopic print:

“By installing this water-saving handle with dual-function flush, this facility has demonstrated its commitment to protect and preserve the environment. For the system to work, we need your help. Please take a look at the diagram above and push the handle in the direction which best suits your needs. With your assistance, we can do our part to conserve this precious resource.”

It’s a fucking TOILET HANDLE.

If you made it all the way here, you have problems. ✍︎

Back in the early 2000s, I remember exactly what I was doing almost every Tuesday and Wednesday night of my little preteen life. I was watching American Idol, just like every other God forsaken soul in the country.

Back then, it aired Tuesdays at 8 pm for the performance episode, and Wednesdays at 9 pm for the results show. Both nights ended at 10 pm, and because Fox has never had a 10 pm hour of programming, as soon as Idol was done, the local news began.

And I mean that literally: the very moment the show was over, that local news jingle BOMBARDED our family room with such force that the picture frames on the wall would often shake, crash to the floor, and shatter. So, even if my sister and I weren’t actually staying up to watch, we got a pretty good idea of what the nightly headlines were from the deafening promotional billboard.

I watched a lot of American Idol then and consequently, ended up sticking around for a lot of the top news stories at the beginning of the hour. And now, all these years later, I clearly remember them, for one reason.

Approximately 75 percent of the time, the leading story was exactly the same every Tuesday and Wednesday night. Can you guess what it was?

Keep in mind, this was in 2002, 2003, and 2004. What was the country up to back then? What may have made the news?

If you guessed anything relating to terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the 2004 presidential election. . . you’re wrong!

According to my local news station, after every airing of American Idol, the top, most important, most urgent, above-the-fold, leading story of the night was always THE RESULTS OF THE EPISODE OF AMERICAN IDOL WE JUST FINISHED WATCHING!

Rather than tell us anything about the world, or war, or politics, or business, or even, maybe, other pop culture. . . WSVN’s 7 News graced us with the privilege of discovering who got voted off, who performed what songs and how well, and other twists and turns that everyone LITERALLY JUST SAW HAPPEN MINUTES EARLIER ON THE SHOW.

And I understand the need for lead-ins, hooks to keep people tuned in to the news rather than immediately shutting off the TV and going to bed. But for the lead story every Tuesday and Wednesday night for an entire season of Idol, year after year?! This wasn’t exactly NBC’s Must See TV. This wasn’t even some kind of wrap-up show like you see now where people sit around and recap the episode as a vehicle for more entertainment.

It was. . . the local news. The same local news in Miami that ran every single night at 10 pm and continues to run to this day. And though I’ve seen the way news programs gradually degrade into pure fluff as time goes on, this was the early 2000s! It was a time when most people still actually needed a dedicated nightly news source! During the turbulent Bush years! And it was at 10 pm, beating the other Big Three networks to the punch by a whole hour!

How could channel 7’s journalists (while I could put journalists in quotes here, I won't; I call myself a journalist even though I do much less with news than they do) rationalize this? (Or, maybe they didn’t try to rationalize it and were looking for nothing more than the big advertising bucks.) Just, WHY? We just watched the show! This was the grand plan, draw in more eyeballs this way than with hard news? They’ve had the same advertisers week after week, year after year, regardless of what the news cycle has looked like. BELIEVE ME — I’ve watched.

It’s like, damn it! There were some good kids out there watching TV, staying up and waiting to hear the local news tell them something important about the world! Little Miami kids that may have been inspired to, I don’t know, become reporters! I could’ve been one of them! Look at what I write instead! This nonsense! ✍︎

Arbitrary car commercial copy is eating shit.

I just saw a car commercial featuring a voiceover that said, "Introducing the first-ever Kia Seltos."

The ad was completely normal, boring, and utterly forgettable. . . save for that line. That phrase stuck out to me. The "first-ever" Kia Seltos. What is that supposed to mean? "Seltos" is something they just made up. It has no inherent significance. Why should I care that this is Kia's "first-ever" Seltos? Seltos doesn't mean anything. What is it, some kind of bastardization of some vaguely Greek word? First Seltos or millionth Seltos, a car company can add or drop product names whenever they feel like it. Who gives a shit that this is the "first" one?

I could understand if the line was, for example, "introducing Kia's first-ever. . ." something else, like their first-ever pickup truck, or their first-ever electric vehicle, or their first-ever barrel of urine. These descriptors might at least provide the average layperson some new information about Kia, a vehicle brand I'm assuming most people rarely think about.

But no, this is Kia's "first-ever" Seltos and nothing more, as if the Seltos trademark exists as its own independent, ethereal concept and they just happened to be the genius company to summon it into existence for the first time. This is what they spent airtime conveying to me so I could apparently give them some free advertising for you. ✍︎

"Healthy" chips are eating shit.

Why does every brand of “healthy” chip think they’re going to be the ones to change snacking forever?

You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re often made by small mom and pop operations. They have friendly-looking packaging. They’re “natural,” or made “with” vegetables, they’re “baked” instead of fried, and they might “contain protein.”

Now, I happen to like these chips. Not because I actually believe they’re any healthier than a bag of Lay’s — I just happen to like the “complex” flavor of the quinoa, pea, flax, or what have you. Plus, whatever, supporting a small brand rather than PepsiCo.

But every single family chip brand has that exact same shtick going on on the back of the bag. In the top-left corner, there’s always a letter to you, the consumer, from the family behind the brand, and they always have the exact same story. The family grew up working on their farm and served their homemade chips to friends. Then they decided they wanted to share their “better” chip with the world. Now, they’re growing their humble business in order to "change snacking forever, one chip at a time."

Well? Has it happened?

Because. . . it’s certainly been a long time now, hasn’t it? Probably more than a couple of decades since the first wave of these new-age snacks hit grocery store shelves. And there’s dozens of them doing it.

Has snacking changed? I don’t know, it kinda seems like the majority of the country eats just as unhealthily as ever, doesn’t it?

You’d have thought that if any one of these brands actually managed to REVOLUTIONIZE SNACKING FOREVER. . . we may have heard something about it. If someone created a salty snack that was indeed as beneficial as biting into a carrot stick or raw broccoli floret but also as delicious as junk food, it would make international news.

But no, there is no such snack. Nothing’s changed, and this is coming from a fan. At most, we may have created some confections that are just marginally better for you: less ingredients overall, less oil, less fat. But those metrics are hardly important to anyone, and those who do benefit from these health claims probably aren't reaching for a bag of chips in the first place. These chips are not healthier in any real-world sense of the term.

So what happened? It seems like the family farms only got two of the essential steps down. They started with a vegetable — that was good. They took a chickpea, beet, green bean, or pea — some interesting, healthy vegetable that the average person wouldn’t have seen made into a snack before. And they succeeded on the other end, as the result usually tastes delicious. It’s just the middle step, the keeping it healthy like the vegetable from which it was derived. . . that part didn’t quite happen.

See, the same way any fly-by-night rental car agency can “take a reservation” (but not hold it), any food scientist can also “take a vegetable” and do all kinds of things to it behind the scenes and give you an end product that tastes good. But somewhere during the baking process, they can also do something to that vegetable that makes it not really a vegetable anymore. And analogous to the rental car agency “holding” the reservation, it’s the HOLDING the nutrition that matters. Anyone can just TAKE them.

I wouldn’t even care about any of this if it weren’t for that damn letter on the back of the bag! The promise that this one would be the one, the chip that would change snacking forever!

If you’re a snack brand and you want to revolutionize snacking forever, go ahead and do it! I'll be the first in line. But don’t go and make the promise if you’re not actually going to do it! It’s not like a vegetable can’t be turned into something snackable, you’re just not doing it. Why not? Maybe you're afraid the end result would taste a little “weird.” Like, “health food store” weird. Instead, you’d rather they taste conventional enough to sell en masse to the general public, not sacrifice taste so that they can stay nutritious. So, that burden is on you. Save the inspirational, revolutionary, impassioned message for the family farm that comes along and actually changes snacking forever. ✍︎

Lazy, unfunny jokes are eating shit.

Everyone’s heard this old trope about a dad going out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never coming back. The child waits there, thinking Dad will return from the store any minute now, even as decades pass. (In some tellings, the father goes out for milk instead.) Either way, the stories are the same: the hypothetical father really just used the story as a cover to abandon the family.

For some reason, this is still a thing. People think it’s funny. And not just “smile-in-your-head-in-acknowledgment-while-remaining-stone-faced” funny — legitimately funny. Online, I still see it mentioned and joked about to this day.

Now, if you haven’t seen or heard it before, I can understand your confusion. Why should this random scenario come up over and over again enough to be anything? Well, you usually see people reference it when somebody shares something about their dad. For example, imagine somebody posting a sweet old photo of her smiling dad, picking her up and giving her a big hug when she was a little girl. In response, people leave comments happily talking about their own childhood memories, until someone jokes, “I’m still waiting for my dad to come home from getting cigarettes!” Someone else might add on to it, “I’m right here, son! I’ll be home soon!” or "I'm never coming back because I hate you." Or from another, “I’m waiting, too!” Everyone laughs and votes up the unexpected (but, now, expected) comments, trying to one-up each other with ever more outlandish fake stories.

Cool. But. . . it isn’t actually funny. . .? Are people really entertained by this?

And no, I’m not arguing against the story from any kind of moral perspective. It just isn’t funny. Where’s the joke? Is it that the kid stayed waiting for Dad for decades? I don’t see where the humor is coming from. This could, perhaps, be the setup to some larger amusing story, but it never is. People just meme this simple scenario, nothing further, and find it hilarious.

Even though I admit I’m much more critical of comedy than the average person, I can usually understand what makes something funny for others even if I don’t like it. But this. . . this isn’t anything? It’s not even that it isn’t funny as much as it is the lack of any thing. It’s a very vague setup that is not relatable for most people and doesn’t go anywhere.

What’s most surprising is that we’re not finding this story buried in old comedy routines from decades ago. It’s not like the story is being told by a kindly old lady whose sense of humor is from another era. This is what the harshest, least-forgiving audience in the world (the mainstream internet, particularly Reddit and other social media) is using as humor to entertain more of the harshest, least-forgiving audience in the world! They eat it up! This audience, who regularly consumes and critiques some of the best comedy in the world, is also in STITCHES when someone rehashes the same tired, pointless nonsense, over and over again like clockwork.

What the absolute HELL is wrong with everyone? ✍︎

Bouncers asking for identification are eating shit.

Whenever you go to a bar, club, or other age-restricted entertainment venue, you can count on being asked for your identification by a bouncer. At least, there may have been a time when this was true — by which I mean, a time when you were actually asked, verbally.

Nowadays, it seems like whenever you approach the door to one of these facilities, instead of asking to see your identification out loud, the bouncer or guard is more inclined to silently hold up their thumb and index finger horizontally to form a rectangular shape. They don't say a word, they just hold the gesture until you grasp the meaning of this arbitrarily made-up sign language.

Most people I know have been out often enough to know what this means, but why is it assumed? You see some random guy, dressed in all black or other street clothes, standing outside of the bar. He's often not even looking directly at you as he flashes an arbitrary hand signal in your direction. Wouldn't the typical person be a bit confused by this? Should the average Joe be expected to be able to comprehend what's happening, especially in a dimly-lit environment where any attempts to slow down and make sense of the situation will lead to said person being swiftly and thoroughly ridiculed? Are we so impersonal, so rushed and hurried to get through the doldrums of our lives that we're not able to actually communicate our objectives like human beings? Just once I'd like to walk up to the door of the bar and have the bouncer state in a loud, clear voice their name, their role with the establishment, and what they require of me before I can enter. If it's too noisy for me to discern all of that, they can simply speak up.

Other times, there's been no communication at all. I've walked toward the door of a bar and seen a few individuals loitering around outside, but no obvious security. Because the guys stay talking to each other without looking up at me, I've simply proceeded on in. . . only to be stopped by a sudden outstretched arm jutted out in my path like a tollbooth boom barrier.

Insulted at the idea of having someone try to hold me back like I'm a wandering child, I look up and know exactly what I'm going to see. It's one of those guys I thought was just loitering around, and he doesn't stop chatting with his buddies even as he continues to hold his arm out. Finally, he looks down at me with an expression that says, "Yeah, nice try buddy, you think you're slick?" — even though I was not trying to get away with anything. As I'm fumbling to whip out my ID as quickly as possible to end the interaction, he silently holds up his two fingers in that rectangular shape. ✍︎

Special thanks to Ashley D'Achille.

"Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity."

That phrase is eating shit.

You've undoubtedly heard this nugget of wisdom before. People love to whip out this quote in Twitter debates and political news comment sections, using it as a handy zinger the moment anybody repeats an action or advocates for a policy that has failed in the past.

It's spread around so much that people take it as gospel, even misattributing it to Albert Einstein on occasion. Nobody has ever stopped to question it, ever.

You know what doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is actually the definition of? Practice. That is, quite literally, the definition of practice. How do you get better at doing anything if you don't do it over and over?

Some may nitpick and argue that each time you practice an activity, you're not carrying it out exactly the same way as before. You're improving a little bit each time, and presumably doing it slightly differently. Thus, it doesn't truly qualify as doing "the same thing" over and over again. That's ridiculous. Any time you do anything at all, you're not doing it exactly the same way as a previous time. Where do you draw the line over what constitutes doing the "same" thing over and over versus doing a marginally different, but mostly same thing over and over?

Now, what's interesting about the quote is that the complete opposite declaration appears to actually be more valid:

"Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result is the definition of insanity."

Doesn't that make more sense? There are so many variations to the way one action can play out. Doing the same thing repeatedly, no matter what it is, will almost always have a different result. Think about a random example I just found on Quora — chipping away at a boulder. The first time you do it, you still have a mostly intact boulder. The thousandth time, you've probably reduced it to rubble. You're doing the same thing over and over again. You're expecting different results.

Or what about a company running the same advertisements for many months? They should almost definitely expect a different result after doing the same thing over and over again. It's why they do it. They start an ad campaign, and at first it's fresh and new, so people take notice and talk about it. They are interested in the product and they buy it. But how about after several weeks? The ads didn't change. The placement didn't change. For all intents and purposes, the company is "doing the same thing over and over again" by keeping the exact same advertising going. But it is almost assured that the results of the advertising will be different after all that time. Either the product will become a staple in people's minds or they'll begin to move on from it.

You might do the same thing, or make the same choice, but encounter a different result because you did it at a better time. It might affect different people than it originally did. The circumstances change. Life changes! Why are you insane for trying something repeatedly, when the world around you changes all the time from moment to moment?

And what about that — insanity. This is supposed to be the definition of insanity? Really, full-blooded insanity? Disregard the fact that "insanity" is a legal term with no medical or clinical usage. Even if you take the quote at face value, acknowledging that doing the same thing over and over is insane behavior, why is it the definition of insanity rather than just a characteristic of it?

I don't you know about you, but when I think about the concrete definition of insanity, in its colloquial usage, I'm more likened to think about somebody doing absolutely ridiculous things with no rhyme or reason. I picture somebody who isn't making sense of what they are saying or doing, even in their own mind. I don't associate insanity with bad reasoning; I associate it with the lack of reasoning at all. Someone merely doing the same thing over and over, no matter what kind of result they expect, may be stupid, ignorant, wrong. . . but insane? How? How would it show the subject to be mentally unstable, simply because they didn't see the result they expected?

Sometimes trying things repeatedly does lead to the intended result. A-doih. ✍︎

Caring about the reach of a social media post is eating shit.

A few years ago, I worked a side job at a music lessons studio. I sat at the front desk, managing people’s bookings and answering questions.

I was also in charge of the brand’s very sparse, bare-bones social media presence. On staff with me were Mike, a fellow front desk laborer, and Ingrid, the unofficial marketing and PR person.

On Mike’s birthday, I took to the studio’s Facebook to wish him a public happy birthday in a text post. It was just for fun, and ultimately very low stakes: there were just a few hundred followers at the time and no one in charge had ever cared about the content of these accounts. The overall tone of the studio’s social media was light and conversational, so this simple, silly happy birthday greeting fit the brand identity perfectly. There was nothing controversial about it.

The next day, I went back to Facebook, curious about how well the post had performed. I also wanted to know if Mike had seen it.

Only. . . my message was gone, and its place was a new, completely unrelated happy birthday post that I had not written. I looked at the studio’s analytics and discovered that Ingrid, who rarely partook in any day-to-day social media tasks, was the author of the new greeting.

Now, there was nothing wrong with her birthday post; it was similar to mine but a little more sweet and friendly, matching her personality. Alongside it was a photo of Mike at a drum set.

At first, I wasn’t upset, just confused. Did my own birthday greeting not save? Was it flagged and taken down for some reason? Did I accidentally tag the wrong Mike? I couldn’t figure out what was so different about our two versions that would warrant taking the time to log in, delete mine, and craft a new one.

The next time I saw Ingrid, we somehow got to talking about it, and she cheerfully remarked that she loved my idea to wish Mike happy birthday. But, she said, she replaced mine because “posts with photos do better.”

Hmm. Posts with photos do better.

Well, fine, I thought. That made sense.

But then I thought about it some more. Sure, posts with photos might “do better,” as in, they may garner more interaction with the page’s followers — but why the hell did it matter? I mean, who cared? This was a one-time happy birthday wish on a small business Facebook page followed by fewer than a thousand people. What level of performance were we really aspiring to? Nothing we ever published garnered more than ten interactions, ever. In fact, the studio’s social media was typically silent unless I was the one running it that shift.

The final time I saw my original happy birthday post before it was deleted, there were maybe four interactions on it: three likes and one comment. At the time I saw Ingrid’s, there were at most ten interactions. . . probably, I don’t know, seven likes and three comments.

Now, this may seem like a big jump, but to what ultimate goal? The only people who would see the studio’s social media were people that already followed it and were most likely already customers. I may not have a degree in consumer behavior, but I am willing to bet the studio’s clientele weren’t swayed into purchasing additional drum lessons and/or band rehearsal space just because the studio wished one of their employees happy birthday.

Even if you’re thinking strictly mathematically, considering all work done on the clock as an expense and every pair of eyeballs on a post as potential business, this was still a pointless move. Ingrid took paid time and effort to delete my post when she could’ve kept it up while contributing a post about something else entirely. She could’ve modified mine without deleting it so that the original interactions were maintained. Or, better yet, she could’ve posted a birthday message on a different platform, like Twitter, in order to reach a completely different group of followers for twice the impact.

By deleting my happy birthday message but immediately following it up with another post communicating the same thing, Ingrid took the risk of alienating some of the studio’s eagle-eyed followers; she may have inadvertently led them to believe that our studio was just spamming messages willy-nilly with no curation process at all. I’m not well-versed in risk assessment, but I wonder if this action would risk losing followers at a rate greater than increasing interaction from the happy birthday post itself.

What’s more, the pain and suffering I went through is immeasurable. My ego was bruised irrevocably and my future social media posts from then on out were affected. I could no longer be as confident in my abilities.

​

By the way, all of this took place more than six years ago. ✍︎

Stopping yourself midsentence to point out rhyming words and tongue twisters is eating shit.

We're all adults, right? We're all of sound body and mind. Together, we have a mostly respectable education.

So why do we still need to say, "try saying that five times fast!" when we encounter a tongue twister in reading or speaking?

We all know they're there. We all know they happen. Sometimes when you're reading aloud or saying something quickly, you get to a string of words that are tricky to say together. You might stumble or pause for a second, but then you slow down and read them properly.

And yet to this day, we adults have all silently agreed to this asinine ritual whenever we come across a tongue twister. We must stop our speech cold and literally say out loud, "try saying that five times fast." Or three times. Or ten times. We must acknowledge that we have discovered a tongue twister.

Who are we speaking to? Why does this need to be said? Is anybody supposed to react or take further action upon hearing this? We get it, it's a tongue twister.

The only worse practice I can think of is the tongue twister's sister phrase, the choice descriptor when a speaker encounters two rhyming words: "hey, that rhymes!"

Yep. Words rhyme. That happens sometimes. By virtue of being a participant in language and communication, we know this already. You don't need to say it. If you're not literally in or speaking to those in kindergarten, there is nothing to gain by pointing this out.

In fact, worse than hearing someone point out the presence of a tongue twister or a rhyme in speech is the feigned politeness we're "supposed" to have to it. Right? When someone says, "try saying that five times fast" or "hey, that rhymes," we all feel that we're supposed to give a small smile, or a little chuckle, or some other sort of audible reaction.

At least, it seemed like we used to be expected to. As years have gone on, I sense that people have grown so tired of going through this tired song and dance that they don't even pretend to react anymore. We just leave our tongue-twisted orator or newfound poet hanging.

With your help, I hope we can show further and further disinterest until the pointless and irritating custom is permanently abandoned. ✍︎

We need to talk about the Charmin bears. They're eating shit.

[Hold for gratuitous applause as I make my long-awaited return to blogging after a six-year absence.]

So, we need to talk about the Charmin bears. Charmin has been advertising on TV using cartoon anthropomorphic bears as mascots for decades, and now I need to complain about them.

For the longest time, there was nothing notable about these ads. In the world of Charmin, some wild bears needed to make caca, but they didn’t have toilet paper. Then they discovered Charmin toilet paper and noticed how soft and strong it felt, and they used it and were happy. As far as commercials go, these spots were tame and mostly tolerable. More importantly, they didn’t spend too long actually talking about the intricacies and usage of toilet paper. They communicated a few key points about the product and moved on. Oh, and they also weren’t annoying.

But gradually, Charmin modernized the bears. . . and soon their computer-animated descendants became absolutely obsessed with toilet paper to the point of delirium.

At this point, the bears do not seem to have lives outside of defecating. Each spot features one of two bear families: an all-blue clan captivated by Charmin’s ultra soft variety, and a parallel red crew that gets off to the ultra strength. They talk about the bathroom, contemplate their inevitable trips to the bathroom, and detail trials and tribulations upon using said bathroom. The mothers are constantly micromanaging their cubs’ excretions by reminding them to not use too much toilet paper. Each ad culminates with the entire bear family singing, dancing, or rapping about their devotion to the brand.

Now if they had stopped here, I might not have an argument. Commercials like that come close to a line, but don’t exactly cross it. These ads made us think about the toilet paper, the toilet paper’s qualities, how it differentiated itself from competing brands, and how it performed under some basic tests. Fine. That moves product. (Don’t get me wrong, all of these ads are annoying as hell, but they aren’t particularly off-putting or gross, even considering the bathroom setting.) But unfortunately, Charmin didn’t stop there.

Soon, the bear families started to reference “pieces left behind,” “skid marks,” a song and dance about a “clean heinie,” and even the implication that using Charmin toilet paper keeps your underwear “clean” when it otherwise wouldn’t be. Rather than keep the narrative to the product itself, Charmin felt the need to “expand” the narrative into discussions about the actual WASTE that was previously only alluded to.

Why? Why do we need this? Why does the world need this? I just don’t see the need. We all know what toilet paper does, we all understand the issues that arise in that department. We know what can go wrong in there, and hopefully we’ve been handling it all our lives without too much trouble. Did we need to bring these private musings into the living room? Charmin was already doing its job: it had recognizable mascots, they were a household name, no doubt brand awareness was strong. Why did we then need to be subjected to these cartoons singing and dancing. . . to the literal concept of feces? Feces theoretically outside the toilet where it belongs? And while we’re settling in to watch America’s Got Talent? Nobody asked for this. We as a civilized people do not need to turn on our televisions to hear cartoon bears singing about pieces of toilet paper sticking to one’s buttocks!

It’s crazy when you realize that none of this NEEDS to exist in the world in the first place. The entire lore and mythology of the Charmin bears isn’t one of the world’s inherent evils; it is merely the product of office workers like you or me going to work one day and needing to come up with something to earn a paycheck! One day, those same people were like, “We need some new copy where they actually reference the doodoo.”

But before that, the national slate of ads were only talking about the strength and softness of the toilet paper, the bigger rolls, the superior quality to competitors. Was all of this not successful enough for Procter & Gamble to build a campaign on? I mean, I understand the need to refresh marketing tactics after years of running them, but did introducing these specific concepts around feces effectively elevate market share or brand recognition in a way that couldn’t have been done with other editorial choices? And by how much?

The worst part of all is how the bears sort of playfully wink at the audience, as if to say, “aren’t we cute? Aren’t we a fun, relatable American family (who just so happen to be bears)? We’re just trying to get through the day and enjoy our time in the bathroom, too! I’m a busy mom trying to make sure my rambunctious kids have clean heinies! My husband is an idiot! We’re just like you!”

I’m sure they THINK we’re sitting there giggling, smiling, and nodding along. We’re not. We’re tired, we have a lot of other shit to deal with. We’re just trying to settle in and forget our lives watching America’s Got Talent. We do not need to be lulled into a peaceful stupor only to be bombarded with conversation about someone not wanting to touch underwear with feces in or around it.

Imagine doctors, professors, or Nobel Prize laureates settling in for a little television treat, perhaps their one night a week when they’re free enough to do so, and being subjected to advertisements where cartoons teach them how to better wipe themselves with toilet paper. JUST IMAGINE IT.

Now, why did I spend more than six hours writing this. . .? ✍︎