Social Entropy: The Eventual Heat Death of My Ability to Talk To People

God, that's a long-ass title.

There are many things I don't fully understand. Among them lies a good ninety percent of physics, and firmly nestled within that region lies entropy, and the related supposition the heat death of the universe. Without asking anyone to read those (lord knows I can't stomach anything that dense), the long and short of it is that some very smart people have taken the property of heat distributing evenly within a system and taken it to the mind-blowing, horrifying extreme, that is, they've decided it means we're all going to die and the universe will become a very static, very cold place.

Now, I've never given two shits about any apocalypse theory, mostly because the scientists keep slapping calmingly large numbers on them, and I can't be bothered to worry about the fate of my great-great-great-great-hyperion-super-grandchildren (and the rapture and all those like it make me laugh). The point of that whole entropy bit then, in addition to providing me with what I believe is the longest title to date, is to note that systems have a tendency to reach equilibrium, in which everything has already been distributed and there's no more reactions to go bang! and make a bunch of high schoolers care about science for however short a time period.

I was thinking about this, and Facebook. And therein lies the connection. Facebook is the cancer that is killing my ability to hold conversations.

Think about it. A conversation can, if you're of a pocket-protector-wearing sort of mentality, be related to entropy. One person has information that the other lacks (unbalanced system). The information is shared (reaction, the spreading of heat, entropy), and the people are, with regards to that information, equal (balanced system). So to put it in less dense terms, conversations are fueled by an unequal spread of information, and the conversations themselves are the rectification of that.

Now, look at Facebook. With a few clicks, you can bring yourself up to date on the approximated life of (in my case) /hundreds/ of people, at least some of whom you interact with regularly. Suddenly, they don't need to tell you anything. They're removed from the equation. They have nothing to say to you, because any news they may have had is old news by the time they're talking to you.

So while before, you could greet a person and swap stories of all the chicks you heard Anthony was banging, now it's redundant, as you both read Anthony's hilarious statuses about his furious intercourse (because it's a great word, that's why) with not only your mother, but your sister as well. Sure, there are other conversational options, but it's hard to keep an exchange solely abstract. The human experience relies pretty heavily on (shocker) experiences, and anything that takes away from the proper enjoyment of them (read: gloating after the fact) is something that we ought to tread carefully with, to say the least. Because if the men in lab coats are to be believed, if we don't, we'll eventually stop talking forever and freeze to death.

Or something. (What was that about arguments from analogy being inherently flawed?)

Of course, I might as well title this post a lesson in hypocrisy and self-contradiction, because I'll acknowledge here that a) I still use Facebook in spite of this and b) there are other things to discuss (though like I said, they're not a full replacement).

So what say you, readers? Am I blowing this out of proportion? Should we kill Mark Zuckerberg? Will anyone even fucking read this?

Answer at least some of those, with any luck, in the comments.

P.S. Still totally on hiatus, this just felt like it needed to be said.

On the Lack of Things to Write About

Maybe that's ironic. The lack of inspiration is a source of inspiration? I'm hard-pressed to call it either way.

But whatever. I'd /really/ like to write again, but I've barely got the time now, and with my joining track soon, I'll have even less time soon. I thought I'd explain, then, why I'm on vacation.

Look at my old posts. If they were music, they'd be punk. They're about discontent, anger, and (in some cases) depression. I've run out of things to be angry about, you see. "But wait," my inner cynic sings, "there's no end of things to be mildly angry about." Well that's true, sourceoflikehalfmyproblems, (that's his full name) I've stopped coming into contact with them. Not fully, of course, but I no longer find "oh em gee I luv mah gurlzzz" at the top of my Facebook feed, formspring has been beaten back to the unholy depths of hell (from my perspective, anyway), and I've stopped taking calls from my psychotic fucking exes.

Of course I still run into the fucking hipsters, casuals, zealots, and Shannon occasionally, but not enough that I can get past my self-mandated fuckhuge post length.

And yes, there are plenty of funny things to write about yet, but I wrote a post about some crap on facebook or another lately, was about to post it, and then realized it was a complete rehash of earlier facebook posts. Such things happen when you write really long posts, but that puts me at a disadvantage now, because, as I've noted to everyone each time it's brought up, I'm all juiced out.

I might do guest posts from time to time on Justin's blog, though, that'd be pretty neat. He's great, by the way, check it out.

That aside, I'm on vacation for, well, assume forever, because it's gonna be a while.

An Explanation

Or two, or maybe three, depending on how this goes.

First, the last post wasn't going to be a short-ass little thing. I was going to re-write an impromptu speech I gave to several women in the wee hours of the morning as part of a long campaign to get them shirtless. It didn't work. However, as I was writing it, I got up to say something to Chris, and Conor and Justin grabbed my laptop, wrote the last three words of the last post, and published it. I suppose that's my fault. I sort of explained it on facebook, my bad.

Anyway. 

I've been gone for a few weeks, and it seems almost no one had any idea where or why. Contrary to some rumors, NASA did not, in fact, seize me and put me together with several attractive women as part of a mission to bring hawtness to the stars, but instead I was staffing (volunteer-style) at Wente Scout Reservation. 

So how'd it go? Well, I was disrespected, disliked, liked, still not respected, trusted, hit on, slapped in the face by strokes of luck and my ability to take advantage of them, and, in the end, given something which many of my contemporaries only dream of. But I'll get to that later. Maybe.

Look, I was a CIT. That meant I was the lowest staff position there, and so, fittingly, I got the shit jobs. Like gate duty. Gate duty is the hellish spawn of safety and customer service, which meant that I, respectively, was hated by everyone and hated everyone. I mean, my job was to make sure a bunch of twelve year olds didn't forget their tags when entering the waterfront, to make sure they put them up, and to make sure they took them down again. I also had to deal with them whining as they showed up half an hour early and whined as they were forced to stay outside. 

I was nicknamed 'Sunshine' by one camper, because I was sick for literally all but four days of my experience, and I had to get up before the sun did. As a result, I was cheery and pleasant all day. Also, my tongue is bleeding from all the sarcasm. Seriously, though, Sunshine. I sort of wanted it to stick. I did get to be a lifeguard, though, and some of the scouts weren't half bad. I was respected by them, because we staff have a magical freaking aura making us magical and amazing because of our job. It's neat. 

Some of the highlights of my trip include whitewater kayaking, jumping off a thirty-foot rock into the water, twice, screaming, swimming in a lake at one AM, shooting archery, shirtless, at two, making out, doing other things I can't discuss, doing other, even dirtier things that I /really/ shouldn't even mention, riding in vans, playing with butterfly knives, going to drive in movie theaters, playing love doctor again, and wearing seven pairs of boxers for three weeks without doing laundry once. I had four shirts the entire time, as well.  Also, there are only three sentences in this paragraph.

I also gained a friend with benefits, lost one, lost the other, gained one back, gained another, and forgot the other as I left knowing they were totally okay with me doing so. (I lost the other one, too, for good reason.)

I got into Magic cards, as well. It's a fun game. I had my love of techno and dubstep rekindled, and I spent three weeks gaining an amazing tan and more memories than I could have thought possible. Weirdly enough, I also had two out of body experiences, both of which lasted less than a second and make me think of Fight Club every time I remember them. Which reminds me, me and a guy roughed around, and he could barely touch me. Martial Arts training rocks. 

So that's where I was for three weeks. I love you all. Comments, questions, flames for doing a journal post?

Go nuts, people.

On the Injustice of the Word 'Slut'

I'm a fairly opinionated man, it's true. I'll be the first to admit I feel strongly about things I care about (lol, redundancy), and one of those things is sexuality.

One of my biggest problem is derp derp derp

Dear Readers,

Happy July 11th!

It's not July 11th? I'll just leave this up until I'm right, then. 

P.S. Props if you know what this is from. Read that for a while.

Again, I Should Be Doing Math-Related Things

I'm really bad at the studying bit, apparently.

To the point:

"Copy this into your status and see what people rate you ;(1)Crazy (2)Wish we went out(3) Talkative(4) Sarcastic (5) Love-able (6)Sexy (7)Strong (8)Dumb (9)Spoiled (10)Mouthy (11)Wild (12)Goofy (13)Funny (14)Awesome (15)Amazing (16) Beautiful (17)Cute (18)Drama queen (19) Best-friend (20)Want to get to know you better. Rate me(:"

Halley, one of my favorite (read: few) readers, sent me This fucking hilarious article recently, and since then I've been thinking about how awesome it was, and how in the hell it could've possibly reminded her of my terrible writings. God, the writer is a comedic genius. And when I saw the crap posing as the second paragraph on my facebook homepage today, I thought, "Shit, look, another way to not study!"

So here I am. And in light of the fact I've re-read To the Contrary, Anon like, fifteen times this week, I'm going to rock out a point-by point rebuttal of that cliche crap.

Before I go any farther, you should know that despite my death-grip-strength embrace of technology, I'm sort of old fashioned in some ways. I still use proper grammar, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of abbreviations in everyday speech, and I hate talking about anything of importance in any other medium than face-to-face. So know that that'll be one of the biggest problems I have with this from the start.

[(1)Crazy] Alright, insanity. Thing is, they don't mean crazy as in schizo'; they mean crazy as in the kind of crazy guys talk about when they say it as a part of their ideal girl, that is, some high amounts of energy whenever they want it. So criminal misuse of one term, check.

[(2)Wish we went out] Oh, shit. This is sooooo too early in the list. Remember a fucking paragraph ago, when I said you shouldn't say anything of importance in any other medium than face to face? Well, shit. You're so fucking wimpy you're telling someone you like them via fucking FACEBOOK COMMENT. God, you suck so hard you could keep up with your mother.

[(3) Talkative] I think you're talkative. What the fuck do you say to that? You can't turn that into a joke, it's just a kind way of saying you never shut the fuck up. And like those douchebags on formspring, you're probably just as bad. God, I hate formspring. And idiots who emulate it on facebook.

[(4) Sarcastic] I absolutely love this one. It's definitely not an opening for a long-ass conversation where everyone is sarcastic and it's so horribly unfunny that I can't even rock out the four or five sentences I usually put down.

[(5) Love-able] I could write this bit entirely about that goddamn hyphen. Why do you need it? What's wrong with writing loveable? For that matter, why are you writing it in the first place? Why can't you say you want to ask them out, it's halfway to the same thing only this is slightly more acceptable for the rejected creeper that follows around the kind of whore who posts this as their status to say, even though it's still creepier than fuck.

[(6)Sexy] Okay, here's where the whore-dom really takes over. Sexy? Really? If you're asking people if you're sexy, chances are you're a whore. No seriously, you /never/ see non-whores do this. Except jokingly, and even then it's kind of whore-ish. Fucking whores, they were supposed to stay on formspring.

[(7)Strong] Man whores need not ask. They already take fourteen steroids and go to the gym and think they're so fucking boss. Or they're asking about it emotionally, which probably means they're the kind of guy who wears shirts that he hates to be 'ironic' (which it isn't), and plays bass in a band which is, like, 'totally about to get a record deal because my uncle knows this one guy...', and in which he does backup vocals for the songs he co-wrote about how much he hates his fast-food job which he's stuck in because he failed high-school because he didn't try because he was 'too special' for school, and 'no one understood' and... fuck, you get the point. Emo hipsters. I hate them, and they're the kind of person who would ask this.

[(8)Dumb] You post this on facebook. Where people who are your 'friends' can reply. Why would any of your friends say you're dumb? I mean, if you're posting this, no shit you are, but if they're your friend, they probably are too.

[(9)Spoiled] You have the time and money to invest in a computer to have a facebook... you're upper middle class or at least middle middle... (true middle?) You could be well-adjusted, but you're probably the kind of whore who cries when she gets the wrong flavor latte at fucking starbucks with her parents' credit card.

[(10)Mouthy] Didn't we already go over talkative? Unless this only means you use your mouth frequently, which, if you're posting this, you do.

[(11)Wild] There is absolutely no chance that anyone with a facebook is in any way fucking awesome enough to be truly wild... present company excepted, no shit.

[(12)Goofy] No. You're a whore. Whores are /not/ goofy. Similarly, goofy is not a whore.

[(13)Funny] No, you're not. I promise you this. If you were, you wouldn't be posting some [whore-esque] chain status, you'd post something witty. And probably referencing a modern issue. And no, that one shitty joke you made about being hungover does /not/ count.

[(14)Awesome] Whores are only awesome in bed, and even then, only before you count how many STDs you get from her. Fuck, man, if you're awesome you know it, I promise you. You're just awesome like that.

[(15)Amazing] Why be so goddamn redundant? See the paragraph before this one.

[(16) Beautiful] You're not. Insecure girls are, at best, mildly attractive. But girls who obsess over the b-word wear too much fucking makeup.

[(17)Cute] While there are /some/ differences between this and sixteen, I'll note that only intelligent, non-whorish individuals can appreciate it. It's like asking a duck to do your homework, it all ends up in court.

Wait, what?

[(18)Drama queen] You're posting this. You're insecure as to your image. You no doubt go out of your way to preserve one, which means you take too much interest in school events and how people perceive acts at said school events, but you think you're a unique butterfly, so to prove it to yourself, you do crazy shit, but it's all pointless because by now, you're such a drama queen other drama queens resent you for it.

[(19) Best-friend] So, hyphen, we meet AFUCKINGGAIN. Does anyone ever really need to say this? It's blatantly obvious, even to whores like you.

[(20)Want to get to know you better.] No, you don't, you want to get close so you can smell their hair like a fucking stalker does. I promise you, the only person to comment this would be a stalker. You're making an opening for freaks here. What the fuck?

In summary: only whores post this. Don't be a whore, [but still score], rock on, and comment like a motherfucker.

And anyone who posts numbers will get lolz, then their throat slit.

"Jessica, harden your nipples. We're going to battle!"