I don't want to ruin the friendship

I was thinking about something that came up in the life of one of my girlfriend’s friend. One of the age old clichés that girls give guys, “I wouldn’t want to ruin a good friendship” is complete poppycock. Poppycock, I say! There is no circumstance that this statement would be true. The girl is either lying to him, and that she is really, quite simply, not attracted to him, or lying to herself, and is afraid of what would happen if she said yes. If she really valued the friendship, she would tell him the truth and actively ensure the friendship would not be ruined afterwards. If he cannot accept that, then he was lying to himself and was not really invested in the friendship, but rather a convoluted courtship and reached an unfortunate failure.

I have been lucky enough to experience one go the good way and one go the bad way. The difference is how we reacted to the admission. In both cases, it was I who wanted more. The good one happened earlier in my life, and fortunately for me, the friendship was important enough to her not to allow something like my romantic interest keep us from being friends; today, she is one of my closest. I don’t really understand what happened with the other. All I can figure is that I was not important enough for her to put in similar effort, and we are not part of each other’s lives, and it still bothers me, even though this happened some time ago. The fact that I have endured the first of these, though, proves that expression of romantic interest need not doom an actual platonic relationship.

The honest expression of emotion, however easy for me to write here, is not easy to actually commit to in practice. There is an established fear of rejection in all of us, and this is clearly a manifestation of that, which is counterintuitive, because the person doing the rejecting in this case is being pursued. But the real reason for hesitation is obscured, and when that happens, the friendship is being held back anyway. Like every healthy relationship, platonic, romantic or otherwise, honest communication is critical.

That idea is antithetical to the desired outcome of relationships, anyway; if someone is worth your friendship, they ought to be worth your better friendship, right? If they are worth a romantic relationship, they ought to be your friend, too. That is a definite success that my girlfriend and I have experienced, even if the achievement of that was realized in a roundabout way. To a degree, she could be a character in this story, with a very positive outcome.

The point is, though, that a friendship is not ruined by the expression of one party wanting more. It is ruined by the negative reactions of the parties involved. The object of desire can handle it perfectly and the desirer can e a crackpot and result in tragedy just as easily as the desired can turn awkward. Or there can be a combination of both. Or neither, and growth can occur. It’s all choice, and I hope my girlfriend’s friend makes a better one than the second girl in my story and I did.

iTunes? More like iSuck! No wait, that came out wrong...

Apple has done a great jo cornering the market on cool. Their gadgets and computers and cell phones are what it is to be cool in electronics right now. Kind of like Chevy Chase was for that brief year in 1975. If Apple made a toilet, hipsters would line up to do something like mix trendy drinks in them while listening to Vampire Weekend. What do hipsters drink? Zima? Do they still make that anymore?

I considered getting a Mac, because while no hipster, I am a marketing sheep. My interest in the iPhone is well documented and while I ended up not getting either one (the cost of a Macintosh computer made me want to vomit in my mouth), I did buy an iTouch. It is pretty phenomenal, actually, and proably the coolest thing I am likely to buy for some time, even though I am Paul McCartney tickets. It feels a little anxiety inducing to spend as much as he wants to his play his violin shaped bass, but it is getting better all the time.

My only complaint on the magnificent iPod (and is a growing complaint) is that usint iTunes, the software rudder that steers the entire iFleet, is a horrendously flamty experience. I don't know how everyone doesn't bring this up when talking about Apple products. So much of the Apple lineup is considered cool and accessible and what not (we used a Power ac in the Film Clu in college and it made me get all tingly inside -- sadly, they made me write on the social and technological equivalent of stone tablets), but iTunes, their ambassador the PC World, is like the equivalent of having Joe Biden deliver a speech when Barack Obama is sitting down next to him eating M&Ms.

The interface is not intuitive, it is not fast and it is not flexible while pretty much all of the qualities Apple wants us to think of when we think of them. The corporation has a very vertical organization, maintaining a sort of autocratic control of their products and software, which is delightfully ironic coming from a company that made an ad identifying its competition with Big Brother.

The default synchronization operation is to copy every music file I own to the 'Pod (what is with the iEverything anyway? I nGaeilge is the only place I've seen capital letters show up in the middle of the words...) How any people really want every mp3 they have on his or her player? I am not exactly Lester Bangs or Cameron Crowe, but all of ine doesn't fit and some of my music (gasp!) is kind of crappy (Sugar Sugar by the Archies? Really?) or at least not all of it is everyday material. It is a giant resource hog, too, and unless this is some cheeky, trendy form of self-sabotage, I don't get what their problem is. They also make a huge nagging production out of updating the version and make you couple it with Quicktime. If I wanted to be nagged about my music and movies, I'd have Jewish parents. (Jewish moms still nag, right?) As I am switching from one computer to a new one, my podcast schedule is really screwed up and it has not been obvious how to correct it and it took like 3 hours to fix my playlist because, I can only suspect, someone was mean to Apple founder Steve Jobs as a child and did this to get back him.

This is all particularly baffling because the iTouch itself is so completely the opposite. It took me like two seconds to do figure out how to do awesome stuff on it. I'm pretty sure I just found an app to make it a functional Star Trek phaser. My question is this: What's your deal, Apple? Did you decide "Hey, let's make like 90% of our stuff really cool, and the remaining 10%, the most critical 10% that the gadgets and things can't run without, the technological equivalent of gargling malt vinegar." I feel like we're getting a Steve Job on this.

I am such a nerd

Hey everyone, I am typing this from my brand new desktop computer. I built it myself! As if writing this blog didn't make me nerdy enough. I am still trying to fill in all the gaps and what not of doing all the software loads from scratch and copying my writing and music collection over, and I am also trying to think of a way not to make this sound like a 13 year old girl's livejournal.

Oh, I have it. My parents had no faith that I could accomplish this task. While the only hiccups so far tthat I have run into are that I bought a fan I didn't need and I haven't sorted out my S/PDIF to HDMI issues so I am silently blogging right now, neither my mom nor my dad really expected that I would end up with a working computer at the end of my little purchase. Surely I am not the only one of you who gets this treatment.

Engineering has had a strange effect on the way they handle me. This task of building computers, routinely handled ably by 15 year olds, is one of those things that their skepticism will not permit them to think I am capale of, even though I do in fact have a master's degree in a technical field. It's not like I'm trying to pick out a tie for a suit, am I right?

God Bless America

I write this as I am watching what might be the greatest television spectacle in all of sports. Before, I thought it was the Super Bowl or New Year's Day or possibly the opening weekend of March Madness. (I, myself, am partial to the New Year's Day bowls, as I feel like it is football's birthday gift to me.) I was wrong, all this time. The greatest television spectacle in all of sports is the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. If you doubt me, you have not watched it.

There is so much drama involved in this, so many story lines, so many jokes. I watch a good deal of football, some basketball, and even less of the other insignificant sports, so I see the coverage and interview cliches that athletes have to endure from reporters, like, "How did you prepare for this?" or "What's on your mind as you get ready?" none of which tells us anything about anything. Watching Erin Andrews ask Sam Bradford about how he's feeling after beating Texas Tech means nothing to me; clearly he's happy, and going to say that he's thinking about the next game. Who cares.

That all changes in competitive eating. I want to know what these people are thinking. I want to know what kind of human being looks at a hot dog and things, "You know, Nathan's hot dogs are tasty, and two are pretty good. But what if I ate 40 of them?" I want to know what someone who holds the title of World Asparagus Eating Champion does to prepare for a match. I want to know who this guy's heroes were growing up. I don't want to know what this guy's pee smells like afterward.

The announcers take this seriously, and I would have it no other way. They discussed the different eating techniques and broke them down in the same way that Bobby Knight might describe a 3-2 zone. (There are Solomon Methods, Tokyo Methods, and some other shake named after a guy.) It is incredible.

There are also women involved. What would you do if met a reasonably attractive girl, started flirting with her, and then when you ask what she does, she says, "I am a competitive eater. I ate 11 pounds of cheesecake in my last contest." And she weighs 105 pounds. What is the next move? Do you think, "Holy crap, that's incredible?" or "I will never be able to afford dinner with this woman." I don't know how these people don't weigh 400 pounds.

There is no doubt that this sport could only come from the nation that values individual liberty and thumbs its nose at past convention to the point that says, "Gluttony is how we roll, hombres." We created the Constitution, flight, the nuclear reactor and the shamwow. We can do anything. Happy Fourth of July everyone, and do something to celebrate individual liberty and defy convention today. Eat 68 hot dogs.

Yes, I need them all.

I went grocery shopping today, which is probably my favorite form of shopping. I do like liquor shopping too, but I don't drink it fast enough to really need to go very often, so it's not really the same. You can consume the purchase from the grocery store for breakfast without being Charlie Sheen.

As you read in a previous entry (or better have!) I have taken to going to Sams. But not today. I was thinking about an item I needed, though, and how strange it is to buy them in bulk. Somethings work out fine when you buy a thousand of them, like ziploc baggies or Teddy grahams. There are a few things that are not quite as seemly. At least, that's the impression that I get.

I am thinking, of course, of toilet paper. Is it just me, or is there some sort of weird stigma for someone carrying around a giant package of toilet paper? When you see someone, particularly a guy, carrying a 64 roll package of bathroom tissue, isn't your first immediate thought, "Wow, he must like tacos." Women, particularly middle aged women, get a little bit of a pass because they tend to be buying for families more often than men, and is probably dealing with children who are [probably] boys and don't know how to take care of themselves.

What other things can you think of that might be better served being bought from Publix rather than Sams? I say tacos.

I am kind of ridiculous

You know how when you play video games and something absurdly improbably happens and you yell, "Yeah right!" or "That would not happen!" or, my favorite (borrowed from Arrested Development), "Come on!" I find myself doing that mostly when I play football games. I like football a lot, and for some reason, I think that my players would never fumble or throw interceptions, even though I watch enough football to know that everyone fumbles sometimes and throws interceptions sometimes. USC lost to Oregon State, Penn State lost to Iowa and Duke almost made a bowl. In fact, until this season, Duke's last ACC win was Clemson, and to overcome that, they had to hire David Cutcliffe who is kind of a badass.

For those of you who are reading this and snoring by now (who am I kidding? all of my readers are nerds, right?) the point of all this is that while making pork chops recently, I spilled some flour on my kitchen counter. Pork chops are delicious and wildly underrated. I realized that I found myself yelling at real life in very much the same way that I yell at my Xbox. The flour fell, I said, "You're kidding." And then, somehow, my baking soda fell behind it. I legitimately yelled, "Come on!" at nobody. I had valueless white powder all over my counter top and I was doing psychologically worse than yelling an a computer.

I was a little bit comforted, and that's when I knew there was a problem. I would rather my insane yelling at video games be consistent with my normal behavior than an aberration restricted to virtual sports and just yell at nothing than just accept this quirk. At least I had pork chops, right?

Check out my hook while the DJ revolves it

I made a shocking discovery recently, and I don't know what I should do about it. No, it isn't anything that requires penicillin. I was sitting out on my patio while reading a magazine that if you saw me read it would make me look thoughtful, intelligent and worldly all while not at all appearing pretentious. However, Georgia in June is, to be charitable, kind of warm. But, of course, I was reared in the Sunshine State, so think of Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch. Was that one of the Disney stories that was racist?

However, I still elected to have a tasty glass of ice water with me out there. I was challenged to meet the medical requirements of 2 liters a day, and I am trying to meet it. It also helps to alleviate the sweating. It also helps at work when it's really boring trying to drink really fast and the results of drinking really fast helps to occupy the time.

The thing that I noticed was, that after a little while in the Georgia sun, the ice in the ice water will, of course, melt. I don't know how much you remember from chemistry, but when you add things to water, the water gets less watery and more what you put in it. However, my ice cubes taste bad. It's hard to describe, but it's a sort of stale and terrible. It didn't always taste like this. What went wrong? Is there anything I can do about this, or does that red Georgia clay turn into gross in ice cubes? I'm counting on you, internet!

A grain of an argument

My girlfriend and I recently had an argument. Naturally, she could not be more wrong, and as far as I know, she has no blog with three readers to dispute my claims. She made the heinous suggestion that wild rice is the worst rice. The only way this could be more wrong would be if the claim at hand were to say that the Temple of Doom is the best Indiana Jones movie. Everyone knows that Raiders is best, followed closely by Last Crusade. We will just ignore that stupid one with that kid with the weird name. (Similarly, Empire > Jedi > New Hope, ignoring that stupid new trilogy.)

Here's the skinny on rice: Yellow is the best. Yellow rice is the America of rice. No one denies this. It is flavored with saffron, of course, which is superexpensive. Every time I eat yellow rice it's like I am eating gold in every bite. That is incredible, and untouchable by anything else that rice has to offer. Next, though, is wild rice. Wild rice is Great Britain. She is implying that it is like Cameroon. No way. That's like white rice that you cook too long and it's like a paste.

White rice and I have had our problems, though. It is kind of bland and I don't have a rice cooker so I would make a poor Asian and when you boil it, the rice water that spills over the pot is really gross. How much superexpensive herb is involved with white rice? None. Step up your game, white rice. At least the Thais put jasmine in theirs to make it taste like something. White rice is the Cameroon of rice. At its best, it is really just a vehicle to put other things on. Lots of upside there. You can make gumbo with yellow rice, I'm sure, and it would be glorious.

Broccoli cheddar rice is Germany. It has no glaring weaknesses, brings a lot to the table, and doesn't try to be something it's not. You're not putting sweet and sour meatballs on it, but if you have it next to roast beef you are having a heck of a meal right there. I haven't had brown rice in like 35 years so I don't really have anything to say about it.

The moral of the story, though, is that wild rice is great and those that disagree need to be convinced. I would suggest you help convince in the comments section, but I don't think she reads the comments. Or the posts.

That line is there for a reason

I drive home from work pretty much every day that I drive there. Yesterday was an exception, because I worked my first 12 hour shift. It was just as awesome as you think it would be. Part of my commute includes time on an expressway, which, as you are probably aware, involves retard drivers and on ramps. There are retard drivers on every sort of road, but on expressways, they move faster. Which is good news for everyone.

As speed magnifies dumbassery on the road, the on ramps are the portals by which that behavior is applied to the efficient expressways we all know and love from the tangle of back roads and pedestrians. Stupid things, of course, happen in town, too, so do not think I am trying to minimize that. It is just that I do not drive in town every day, so that is not something that irritates me on quite as regular a basis.

Have you ever been entering the highway and not quite reach the driving lane out of the acceleration lane and behind somebody else, when the jerk behinds you departs the acceleration lane early and pulls around you into the driving lane? That guy deserves, at a minimum, to have his tires slashed. There's that wide triangle shaped strip that (while I'm not traffic signage expert) probably means, "Don't do that, jerkface." Not only that, but that guy cuts me off as I try to pass that slowpoke in front of me.

That sucks, too. When you get stuck in a line of people behind a guy holding everyone up; they cannot be sure that it's not you. I feel like I need to hold up a sign saying, "It's not me! Let me out of this prison! I won't slow you down!" Then again, I am occasionally guilty of that practice. There are certain crimes on the road that are more serious than others. Vehicular manslaughter, for instance. I, however, will fly into a rage when the guy behind me departs prematurely out of the acceleration lane. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

I am just like you, only giant

Charlotte, NC -- Do you like the dateline? I think I will try it out when I travel. I am in Charlotte for a wedding of a person I don't know, but that's not really relevant to the post. Free food for a weekend is pretty excellent, though. So far only one sporadic reader friend of mine got married and invited me; the rest of you disgusting, unmarriable people need to get it into gear, because who doesn't like free stuff? I will invite you to my wedding when (if) it ever happens. I even promise to write about it and give you free advertising! With a dateline! Spread the word to your friends, and that many more people will hear about how your aunt is loud and the open bar was great.

The prompt for me to write today, though, was that I decided to join Sam's Club this morning, but that was back in Augusta. That place is a strange experience. You can spend a lot of money on junk you don't need and that you might get sick of before you reasonably consume it all. I bought a box of granola bars and it comes with thirty (30) packs of them, for $7. The normal one at the grocery store comes with six (6), for like $2.50. My tastes could change before I eat the last one. I also bought Honey Nut Cheerios, even though I have mixed feelings about cereal. It was like half price, so I am ok-er with it.

More interesting was the sort of shoppers you see there. You see old people who are thrifty to comic absurdity, a lot of moms with 3 teenage boys (or fat girls) who need an endless supply of cokes and mallomars (I actually didn't see any mallomars, but I think it's a funny word), and restauranteurs (hopefully bbqers, another class whose ranks I have recently joined). It kind of blows me away that small restaurants can go get their cooking supplies from the same place that soccer moms get their diet cokes and old people get their oddly large tins of metamucil. For some reason, I thought that there was some secret cabal of restaurant stuff that provides plates and ketchup to cafes and steakhouses with all their needs, painfully unavailable to us mere mortals. Between that and Hell's Kitchen, it doesn't seem like there is any reason I could not open a pretty kickass restaurant myself. I think it would be a gastropub. Maybe even in Charlotte?