Hamlet on Facebook

A while back I sent McSweeney's Internet tendency a submission which, unfortunately, was not accepted (for reasons I can only attribute to  poor taste). The benefit to this is that I now can post this here, for you, dear reader.

Without further ado, I give you the soliloquy of Hamlet, as adapted for modern times.

To click, or not to click- that is the question
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to ignore
The breasts and gossip of the outrageously fortunate
Or to read of the sea of their troubles
And by indulging, generate revenue. To stare, to think
No more, and by reading we end
The heartache, the constant daily drudge
That office life is made of. ‘Tis a bliss
Devoutly to be wished. To zone out, yes,
To gaze – perchance to dream, yes, that is the hope
For in that celebrity gossip rag what dreams may come
When I shuffle off this mortal deadline
Gives me pause ere I e-mail my boss.
There’s no respect I hold for the lives
Of those who bear the whips and scorns of Baldwin,
Th’ oppressive boar, the proud lout’s contumely,
Or report the  pangs of Anniston’s most recent love,
And, yet, my click increases their income.
It does even their occupation support
At no apparent loss to me. Who would grudge
The weary life of a journalist, who grunts
And sweats to uncover, to celebrities’ dread,
The undiscovered secrets of who sleeps with whom,
And no voyage to the E.R. unnoticed,
Puzzling which ill drugs did dispatch
Ms. Lohan to a rehab center we should not know of.
But  conscience does make cowards of us all,
And the unexpected visit from my boss,
Tarnishes the luster of the link,
Turning my mouse away ere with a click,
I turn the link a dark purple the rest of the day.
And thus, fair work project, I return to thee!
Be all my procrastinations so fruitless.

Recipe for an Existential Crisis, vol. 1

I've had several occasions these past few weeks in which I questioned some major life decisions I've made. The sinking feeling that comes from suspecting that you've squandered precious years of your life only to end up in your current situation is really a special blend of dread, despair, worthlessness and self pity that is not easy to achieve. In order to share this remarkable feeling, I'll have a series of recipes you can try to recreate that fever pitch of existential angst. Without further ado, here is the first installment in Recipes for an Existential Crisis.

Ingredients: A stack of papers, desk, a cold room, sad country music, one or two indifferent students.
Prep time: 1.5 years.
Serve with: Career uncertainty.

1) Become a teacher.
 I can't give advice on how to do this because I'm not sure how it happened to me.

2) Teach a subject as clearly as you possibly can and give a mid-year exam that half of your class will bomb.
This is easier than it sounds. Heck, I can do it.

3) Grade them while sitting alone in a relatively cold room and listening to Townes van Zandt (or any other country blues songwriter) sing the blues.
If you can add in some unrelated emotional turmoil as a garnish to this and choose a song that matches the feeling well, your Existential Crisis will have a personalized, unique touch that others may find hard to immitate!

4) Question what the point of teaching the material if your students weren't going to pay attention, anyway was. 
If you are having trouble finding appropriate questions, try starting with "What's the point, I'm not telling them anything that's not in the textbook anyway," or "Would it have made a difference if I had simply read 50 Shades of Gray out loud instead of lecturing?" and go from there.

5) Let that uncertainty spiral into an Existential Crisis! Enjoy!*

*step six is to blog about it

How to Deal With Bike Problems

Note that this flow chart does not work for brake issues

Yes, I would Like to Eat My Cake

People often accuse me of wanting to have my cake and eat it, too. I used to accept this as a criticism until I actually thought of how I relate to cake.

I don't know about you, but when someone hands me a piece of cake, the first thing I think about doing with it is eating it. Then, I eat it.* I'm pretty sure it's a normal thought process, and it goes like this: "Ah! Cake! My cake! I'll eat it." Generally, I find this pretty satisfying. As a matter of fact, this isn't something I explicitly think about; it's just my normal reaction to having cake.
*This takes place whether or not I have a fork, if you were wondering.

How I feel about having and eating cake

How society apparently feels about having and eating cake

Which is why I'm confused when people tell me that I want to have my cake and eat it, too, as if it were a bad thing. "You can't have your cake and eat it, too," I'm told in the same voice that you might scold a dog who is wandering around under the dinner table alternating between humping diner's legs or making puppy eyes to get a piece of beef. But really, if I can't have it and eat it, what's the point of having it in the first place? What am I supposed to do, just sit around and let it get stale*? If I were to list the top ten uses of cake, I'm pretty sure number one would be "good for eating."
*Unless it's a twinkie, in which case I could just let it sit around and... be a twinkie, I guess.

This list took longer than I thought it would take.

So in short, I plan on unapologetically desiring to have and eat cake.

Great Balls of Fire

I was blessed enough to get to spend a few days in Hood River, Oregon. More precisely, I suppose I should say around Hood River - there was a good deal of camping in the woods, far away from anything resembling a town. I spent the night of August 11 around Bulo Point, i.e. some really dark woods on a hill, following the recommendation of someone I met in a bar (classic Brendan move, by the way. Taking the advice of strangers in bars is probably what will kill me).

If you want to feel really small without taking hallucinogens, go out to someplace with zero light pollution when there's a meteor shower, go to sleep, wake up at 2 in the morning, crawl out of your tent, think about how far you are from other people, then stare at the sky for a while until you get cold. It worked for me.
Anyway, I started thinking about that argument against the existence of God that says humans can't be that important because we are so tiny in comparison to the rest of the universe that to think we play any special role in the plans of an omnipotent being is foolish. From there, I pondered on how those tiny flecks of glitter in the sky are actually flaming balls of gas undergoing constant nuclear fusion, and hey, that's pretty cool.

Flashback to all those times my mother shouted at me for sticking magnifying glasses between (mostly) flammable objects and the sun. I'm an admitted and unrepentant pyromaniac. Do not ask me for a light if you like your eyebrows. 

There I was, watching the twinkling of violent explosions light years away, thinking "Cool. Fire!" And then I had another thought. "I really like the idea of a God who makes gigantic glowing orbs of destruction and energy and flame for fun." Because if I were an omnipotent being, I'm pretty sure I would make those, too, and I'd never get bored of the things, so I'd make sure they lasted a long time, and I'd also keep churning'em out in giant fire factories so I'd never run out. Unlike humans. I'd probably get bored of those after a few thousand years and stop making the things. 

I initially meant this to be a comforting post, but now I realize that the conclusion to draw is that either there is no God, or if there is, he and I think alike, and I'm not entirely sure which one is more terrifying.

The most terrifying Venn Diagram I have made yet

Why I Will Be Blogging More

So I got a tablet that allows me to draw and share venn diagrams easily.  This has lots of ramifications,  one of which is that I will be trying to blog more again. Prepare yourselves!

Grid paper at no extra cost!

Today's Grammatical Invention

I will be the first to admit it; I abuse and over-use semicolons. But really, I can't help it; they are far and away my favorite punctuation mark. I'm pretty sure if I had to, I could go on like this for a whole blog post; fortunately, I don't have to, and I recognize that it will become annoying by that last sentence*. The point is, I love semi-colons and use them as often as a proctologist pokes two of them.**
*Unfortunately, I don't care.
**see what I did there?

Earlier today, I ran into a problem I had never had with a semi-colon; it didn't convey the excitement I wanted expressed in the first sentence, and the second sentence only warranted a period. I was in the jaws of a grammatical dilemma. I decided to stop whatever I was doing* so that I could make the world a better place by meeting its recently found need for a new gem of punctuation mark. You're all welcome. Except if you're a grammar fascist, in which case I mean your welcome.
*which, apparently, wasn't that exciting, as evidenced by the fact that I forgot about it two minutes later.

First off, there has to be a good name. I call it the "exclamacolon." That sounds catchy, and relatively self descriptive. True, Exclamacolon does sound like it could be some weird, painful step in a juice cleanse, but until I hear a better name, I'm sticking with that.

Second, I'm going to start work on designing one. For the time being, it will just be an exclamation point before a semi-colon, but someday, you'll all recognize it just like you recognize the ampersand, tilda, the dash (as opposed to the hyphen), guillemets*, you know, all the useful punctuation you use in ever-day life.
*bonus points to you if you actually know what all of these are

Most importantly, I'm going to start using it. I think I've figured out how to use it. My trick is to start with something exciting or dangerous, something you wouldn't expect. That's the first half of the conjoined sentence. The second half is the letdown -- you know, the part that reminds you just how boring the conversation really is. In short, using these may actually make people hate you.

Here are some examples of situations you could use an exclamacolon:

1) Jeff fell down the well!; Lassie would have gone for help, but she was eating grass.

2) When I was in eighth grade, I was elected class president!; then, the administration found out how I rigged the vote.*

3) I can't believe you're arresting me for this!; honestly, Officer, I had no idea you were even watching me.*

4) I eat shits like you for breakfast!; at the same time, you should know that I frequently exaggerate my dietary habits.*

5) I beat the stuffing out of a tiger once!; the owners of the toy store were really angry and tried to get me to pay for it, though.*

*all things I may have actually said as two sentences before inventing the exlamacolon.

You are now free to become the most popular, innovative writer of the 21st century!; all I ask is that you credit me for inspiring you to write just so you could have an excuse to use the exclamacolon.