Monday, October 15, 2007

And the pedulum swings. I don't know how to spell pendulum


Yeah! What goes up must come down. And vice versa, apparantly.
The wallowing is over for now. That's the point of wallowing, you know, just to take some time out for girly feelings and then wake up and feel better. I should probably do another dating review because I actually have good things to report, but I'll wait until I have some sort of train wreck story because the entertainment value goes way up every time I strike out. You're welcome.

Tonight I feel like taking the pulse of America. How are you, everybody? How many of you read this? Are any of you boys? I sure hope not.
I have an actual question. Feel free to answer through comments or any more creative means you have at your disposal.

If you were to retire right now, what would you do with your time?
I think I would do the following: The numbers are jacked because I changed my mind a lot and I'm lazy.
1) Travel
1) Freelance graphic design
2) Flowers
3) Catering
4) Watch other people's babies. I know some of you are laughing at this right now, but I have a Favorite Aunt trophy to reclaim every year and it's getting dusty.
5) Make my own babies. Heh heh. Sorry, Mom, if you read this
7) Write THE book
8) Become a scriptorian. Scripturian? Centurion?
9) All those good Mormony things everybody seems to do, like refurbish furniture, sew drapes, can stuff, make pie (I don't even really like pie. I would make it so I could have those cinnamon sugar crusty pie crust things), make children, frame pictures and own a real set of sheets.
10) Racquetball. It's been way too long.

So there you go. Answer at will. Love you forever, hope you never die.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Wally the Walrus


I am wallowing.

I would do another dating review but I just don't have it in me tonight. I'm too busy trying to figure out what it is we learn by being shot down time and time and time again. Humility, yes. Patience, probably. Bowing out gracefully, perhaps. I think I could learn all of those things by, say, losing a tennis match. Or a political debate. What is it about love--that most personal of things you take personally--that must be learned almost entirely through pain?

"Life is pain, Highness. Anybody who tells you differently is selling something." Good glory--Is that true? Am I really supposed to believe the Dread Pirate Roberts?

Alas, don't fear. I'm not the most heartbroken I've been. Suffice it to say I've experienced far, far worse but I've also been 'experiencing' for far too long so I'm tired. Literally exhausted.

Depressing post, anyone? Enjoy!

P.S. Lohra's blog only confirms this one. Read it and weep.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Intro: I thought I was done writing papers...but I got this assignment at work. Please let me know what you think and if I can honestly present this to my co-workers.

Hypothesis: I believe that we are losing the ability to communicate face to face because technology (ie email, text messaging, chatting, etc) limits our ability to interpret, creates a delay in response, and creates a mask under which we operate differently than we would in person.

Email, chatting, and text messaging has taken the place of many necessary steps in communication in offices and relationships. Instead of printing, copying, delivering, and explaining documents, pictures and any other message, one can compose an email and attach anything needed. Announcements are made, invitations extended, and any sort of rantings and ravings are expressed through electronic means, which eliminates the need to form the typical thoughts and verbal responses necessary in actual conversation. As a result, one can remain up to speed on anything without seeing the people they’re emailing, sometimes never meeting them at all. Opinions are formed based solely on personal interpretations of somebody else’s writing, without the aid of facial expressions, tone, body language, and overall delivery of the message. This leaves room for misinterpretation and a tendency for everything to be colored by one’s own voice and bias. The ability to judge an audience and respond accordingly is damaged when the audience is not actually present.

In addition to removing the personal feel from conversation, technological advances have ‘helped’ our communication by giving us time to think. The delay involved in electronic communication is inevitable, no matter how fast it goes. We can take as much time as we need to think of a response and make it better—Whether better means more witty, less scathing, more scathing, better researched, well-worded, etc. While some may argue that this has helped communication, I argue that it has done so only on an electronic level and only serves to further eliminate emotion from messages—or add it to them, whichever the case may be—Emotion that otherwise would be a genuine part of our conversations. Take away the technology and regular talking may be difficult. No delete button on our speech may hurt us sometimes, but it also makes us more real. We need to develop the ability to censor/express ourselves as needed in daily conversation.

The mask of technology has much to do with the points expressed above. The delay, coupled with the knowledge that the person receiving the message can’t actually see you, creates an atmosphere of bravery that isn’t present in face-to-face conversation. This is best exhibited by teenage girls, who now have the guts to flirt shamelessly with boys they wouldn’t even dare look at, all because a text message removes them from the embarrassment of interfacing. Sadly, I am stuck in the unfortunate position of dating in this technological age without the benefit of claiming the immaturity of a teenager…so I am not immune to the technological mask, as much as I may wish for the days of good old fashioned conversation (stutters and red faces and all). The reason this emboldening of people through electronic means is dangerous is because, like it or not, at some point we will end up face to face (at least until we figure out how to have e-families and robot employees) and we will be reduced to bumbling idiots, clamoring for the nearest cell phone so we can say what we really feel.