Advice to America's Youth

Read books.

Which books? Good ones?

How do you figure out which one's are good? Read enough books and you'll start to get a sense about the whole thing - or maybe you don't figure it out so much, but it doesn't really matter. Just read.

Please, Please No!

....Sarah Palin may be edging closer to a 2012 presidential run, telling Fox News "I would give it a shot" if the American people think she's "the one"....




Shes not.






I know that there was lots of insincere joking about this if Bush got elected, but let me make it clear that I am very very serious. I swear that if Sarah Palin becomes President of the United States of America, I will leave for some other place.

Be Nice

It really makes sense to be nice.

Yes, I admit that being crude or snobby or cruel or gossipy or snide or irreverent can earn you a cheap laugh and affirming sneer-smiles of your friends who are also in on the joke. But that doesn't mean its the right way to be.

Being nice is hard sometimes (especially in comparison to how easy it is to be mean) but there are two very good reasons for it. The first is that you have your own flaws. By harping on those of others you are inviting attacks on yourself. Perhaps one reason people feel it is OK to make fun of others is that they are not in tune with their own failings; imagine you and your secret inadequacies are the brunt of joke. Secondly, being nice even though crassness would seem to fit builds a culture of trust, openness and respect. You there, the 23 year old! You may not care about those values now, but I've been to the future and you are sorely mistaken.


So the next time a good zinger pops into your head, put down the fastball and throw a complement instead.

Haha

I put "haha" at the end of lots of things I write. Emails, facebook comments, tweets. I do this, for the most part, because I am worried people will be offended or put off if I seemed very serious. We all know how hard it is to convey inflection through text; better that the reader think I am joking than they get their feelings hurt because they misconstrue.

Actually, it upsets me that I feel the need to qualify my statements like this. It angers me that I feel people don't know how to not be offend by something they read on the internet because they most likely don't understand what the writer means. It makes me frustrated that I feel ashamed to write with heavy wording.Mostly, it makes me sad that I notice this "Haha" trend so astutely because this fact indicates that I communicate through a screen way more than I should.

Haha

Hidden from the News Feed

The ability to hide certain people or certain types of updates (I'm looking at you FarmVille) from one's Facebook Newsfeed is great - it allows you to customize your FB experience. Yet, there is a big downside.

I feel that it's sort of unfair that once someone is hidden they are never seen again by the hider. Oh how I loath the notion that my wondrous and insightful status updates never reach the multitudes because of my past youthful indiscretions (spamming my status with stupid inside jokes and unauthorized and inadvertent Texas Hold accomplishments). I know better now - my statuses are pure gold but you may never see them because you could so easily block me forever.

I say that 4 times a year, for 2 days at a time, EVERYONE you have ever blocked shows up on your feed - a re-audition of sorts. Then, if you find something really valuable, you can UNBLOCK them. If after the trial period, you take no action then everyone is returned to the blocked list.


The worst part of the whole mess is that I will never know that you blocked me. I might spout untold wisdom with you in particular in mind and never will you see it.

StalkButton

There should be a stalk button on facebook and twitter for people who you want to know about but don't want them to know you are browsing their profile. In true narcissistic, generation ME fashion, facebook would, a month later, come out with the ability to see how many people have stalkbuttoned you without giving away their identity.

Lebron

The best possible way this LeBronocalypse could possibly end is with him walking up to the mic, silently sitting down for a a few seconds, leaning over, and nonchalantly saying: "Cleveland, I'm coming back" and then getting up and starting to leave before bending back over and adding: "And I'm gonna take less money so we can sign more players." Walking away behind the curtain to the sound of screaming reporters, he will be become the leader,the legend, the hero, and the superstar that he wants to be.

Anything less, and we will all look back and remember it as the exact moment when sports stars could never again be role models for our children.

Kiwi

It turns out that you can eat the skin of the kiwi. Instead of pealing it before eating the flesh, just dig right in. This seemed really weird to me at first, but now it is normal... a testiment to how our brains adapt to new information.

Recently I bought 10 kiwis and have been taking one on the bus each morning. Halfway into the ride I pull out my kiwi, twirl it around a bit to ensure that everyone sees it and is paying attention, and then I take a huge bite out of it like it's nothing special. Knowing that this was REALLY weird the first time I saw it, I am sure that I am blowing strangers' minds every morning. I'd like to think that I single handedly make their day more interesting and inspire them to try something out of the ordinary.

Changing lives 1 kiwi at a time.



Jock of the day: 25 Pullups, pushups, situps, and squats before a shower make me feel really good.

Point of the Day: Dropped Pull in on the last point of the '07 Club Finals

LGBT

Lets Get Beyond Titles.




Joke of the Day: Knock Knock... Who's there? "I Eat Mop". I Eat Mop Who? HAHAHAHAHA

Game of the Day: 2008 Regional Final Arizona v Colorado.
By the way, there were only 2 bids to natties that year and Zona could have taken their foot off the gas when they realized Colorado was gonna win. They could have rested their studs. But they didn't; they went hard the whole time, lost, and then beat Santa Barbara in the back-door game to go. That's ballsy. That's respect for the opponent. That's confidence in yourself. That 08 Arizona team had more class than any I have ever seen.

P.S. - Even if you don't watch the whole clip, at least watch 13:20 for a perfectly run trick D.

"Business" World

In the business world, if you are sleeping more than 5 hours per night, you are falling behind.

- Donald Trump


Screw you Donald Trump. Screw you, "Business World". 5 hours of sleep and then back to the rat race? Is that really want? I'll pass.


Joke of the Day: I bought a box of animal crackers and it said to not eat it if the seal is broken. I opened it up and sure enough...

Earth Day

There have certainly been many campaigns imploring individuals to "go green". I like Fox's new "Green it, Mean It!" slogan because, well, it rhymes. But has that worked? Really? after all those campaigns, is the crisis averted? No. Despite all these, we still have a BIG problem. Hm. Maybe, contrary to what Walmart says, the "small steps you take to help the Earth" don't make a lick of difference in the face of the monumental problem our planet faces. I am so sick of the "if each person turned off the lights when they left the room, we could save enough energy to power a neighborhood for a week." Its not that this is wrong, but making the emphasis individual change distracts us. Change must be societal and top-down!


Worldwide, an estimated 15 billion coffee trees are grown on 100,000 km² (39,000 sq mi) of some of the most fertile land that exists anywhere on earth. They are labor and resource intensive and they produce NO edible calories while motivating people to cut down rain forest to make way for more. So what should we do? Have an ad campaign imploring us to drink less coffee? Fuck no! We should rip out all the world's coffee trees and plant real FOOD. That's how to actually deal with the problem, that's how to feed the billions of people in the world that live on less than 700 calories a day! Sounds like too big of a project? Sound unreasonable? Well there just isn't going to be a convent solution to the huge fucking problems we face! Global crises don't get fixed by actions that are convenient.


Joke of the Day: Our obsession and fascination with "Celebrity culture" when there are so many more important things in life.

Fuck You, Advertisers! Part 2!

Advertisers know that the population is so over-saturated with propaganda (of all kinds). They realize the only way to be effective is to make their commercials funny or ridiculous. They don't even make them funny regarding the product most of the time. In large part, the gimmick is stupid and unrelated. What happened to marketing the merits of your product?

Oh, I know: if advertisers talked about the real, actual benefits of their product, the population would realize how this product, like most everything else sold to the general public these days, is unnecessary, vain, and frivolous. Consumers don't buy products anymore, they buy marketing campaigns.




Joke of the Day: So this guy goes to the store and buys a jug of milk, a loaf of bread and some baloney. He gets up to the cashier and the girl behind the counter says, "you must be single." To which the guy replies, "how do you know that?" The girl answers, "because you're ugly."

Tax Day and a Bonus!

The American tax system is pretty messed up. I don't have any income and its still pretty confusing. The forms.... oh God the forms! Its a system that is cobbled together instead of concise. I understand that the government wants to use the Tax Code to incentivise certain behavior, but this practice (as opposed to using the Tax Code just to fund the operation of the government) leads to a very confusing system.There are people who's only job is to try to understand what the tax law really says!

I honestly think that the fact that people make money on helping people file their returns is messed up.

I'm just upset with the fact that I can't figure it out in the 5 minutes I have between class.


Joke of the day:
A guy walks into a butcher's shop and points to some beef hanging from the rafters. He says to the butcher " I bet you $100 that you can't jump up and touch that meat". The butcher declines saying " No thanks, the steaks are too high."

Fuck You, Advertisers!

Speedstick Stainguard and Axe Dry Antiperspirant commercials which show people being offended by a guy's armpits make me understand what it is like to being "shamed" into buying a product. They make me partially understand the plight of a women when advertising makes her feel like her body is inadequate without a certain product (makeup, shampoo,cloths...). It is a horrible thing to be self-conscious of your own body. The $19-billion /year cosmetics industry sits jauntily on the advertiser's ability to make women feel that they need a product (many products, that is. Have you looked at the myriad of tiny creams and colors and tools in your girlfriend's bathroom drawer?) to be normal.


To those in the world of business that cultivate and then prey on this fear of one's own body - to those who turn a profit by making the masses think they cannot fit in without buying something first - I say FUCK YOU!!! You are as much the reason for the problems in our country as anything else.

You See the Old Way Wasn't Working, So It's On Us

Those who cannot forget the past are condemned to repeat it. The problem with some methods of remembering history - history of very large events and very minor day-to-day procedure, is that it turns into a sort of worship for the way things were done in the past. Yes, there are valuable things history can teach us, but we should be aware of falling into the trap of thinking there is one best way to do something - the way it was done before. There are new possibilities all around us if we would just stop and think without the blinders of (likely embellished) collective nostalgia.

The Fosbury Flop didn't come from reading a book about high jump legends.