Away Messages

So, what's the chochma behind away messages? Are away messages intended to provide amusement for all those maniacal away-message-checkers out there? (You know who you are) Or are they merely meant to give information about a person's current whereabouts or contact information? I subscribe to the former. I have rarely, if ever, put my phone number or location in an away message, not because I don't want people to know where I am or how to reach me, but because even if people don't know where I am, they can still reach me in the same way they would if they knew exactly where I was. Just as an aside, why is it that people insist on knowing every minute detail of other people's lives? I don't mean that people are nosy. This is better left to an example. When I call someone on the phone, aside from maybe "How are you?" or "What's up?" the first question I ask him or her will inevitably be, "Where are you?" I really couldn't say why I need to know. It will have little or no impact on the remainder of the conversation. It could be that I really don't like talking on the phone and would prefer to speak in person, in which case I'd be asking for their whereabouts just on the off chance that they're in the neighborhood. But I don't think that's it. Whatever, who cares? Oh, for those of you who were paying attention I had a little SNAFU earlier with pronoun/antecedent agreement. I just don't feel like going back to fix it. That's just my little way of sticking it to the man. Power to the people.

A Couple of Things

Remember how when we were in high school, and we used to talk about girls all the time, often in inappropriate ways? That's just the way we did things, because we were teenage guys. Then we all went off to Israel and supposedly became frum and decided not to talk about girls for, at the VERY least, several minutes right when we got back. And now, we talk about girls all the time, again. It's essentially the same thing, minus the inappropriate comments (usually). Has anything really changed?

And now for something completely different. Apparently, our good buddies at http://www.facebook.com have decided to add blogging onto their website. Now, I've mentioned my lack of coolty at least once on here, and in an effort to be even more self-effacing, here I go again. For most people, blogging is probably not a very cool thing. That's what made it perfect for me. However, now that you can blog on facebook, it must be EXTREMELY cool, because the proverbial "they" have decided that anything facebook does is automatically cool. I'm trying to determine whether or not I can continue blogging, especially if I will be forced, by the laws of coolty, to import my blog onto my facebook profile. I think over the next couple of days I'll look at other people's profiles and see how these faceblogs look and then reach a decision.

Finally, for something completely serious, I mentioned to a friend of mine that I had started a blog. I told him that I needed a place to jot down my random musings. He then asked me a very sharp question; he wanted to know why I needed to make my random musings available to the public. I told him I'd get back to him in a few days with a response and then post it up here. I decided that I don't need people to read my blog. However, if even one person reads this and gets some entertainment or maybe even (gulp) some inspiration, then it will all be worth it. At the very least, every time my ego gets the better of me, I can always look on here and come back down to Earth. With this in mind, and in the proper grammatical mindset, I go, boldly, where 49,661 people have gone before.

That Guy

So, you know how sometimes people say things like, "Don't be that guy!" Well, I was just "that guy." I was paying to go over the George Washington Bridge, and I gave the nice lady $6. I then sat there for about 30 seconds waiting for change. "Schmutter, don't be that guy." I've spent a good portion of my life trying to NOT be that guy, but I was tonight. I feel like I've failed some of you out there. Next time you see me, flick my ear.

Normal

So, a friend told me today that I'm too normal to have a blog. Just shows to go you how normal my friends are.
So, last night, I caught a few minutes of a show on the History Channel called "Exodus: Decoded," in which the archaeologists and historians attempt to scientifically explain the events that took place in Egypt during the time of the exodus. Fascinating show. They even managed to explain the death of the firstborn plague by claiming that an abundance of Carbon Dioxide gas, which had been building up in the Nile (which also turned it red), was released into the air, and since CO2 is heavier than air, it stayed close to the ground, which is where the first born sons usually slept. The younger children, who did not have a place of honor in the family often slept on roofs, so they were spared. All this G-d-type stuff being explained by science got my thinking, not for the first time, about belief in Him. You ever get the feeling in certain situations that G-d is trying to pull a fast one on you? Ever gone through an event, and pointed your finger towards the sky and thought, "nice one, Big Guy." Well, I have. Yes, really. It can be rewarding to try to find G-d in everything that happens and everything you do.

Important Things

I've decided not to post anything about my personal life on here. This is partially because most people probably don't really care about my personal life. But mostly because of something I saw on an episode of "Will and Grace," a television show which I never watch, although gay jokes are very funny. Anyway, on this particular episode, Will comes to the realization that he wants Grace to call him to tell him the little, unimportant details of her life, because those are the things that he really wants to hear, which makes them actually important. I think that the fine folk of the National Broadcasting Company hit the nail right on the head. So, I'm just going to keep posting my random thoughts, so that one day I can look back and conclude, along with my faithful readers, that I am, indeed, quite hopelessly insane.

Things that should not be allowed

This list is very long, but for now I'll just post these things:
1. Closing the lower level on the George Washington Bridge and only having two lanes open on the upper roadway. Closing west 178th street between Broadway and Ft. Washington is bad too.
2. When ESPN has little league baseball and ESPN2 has women's basketball at the same time.

When I think of more things that should not be allowed, you'll see them.

Cross

I read a lot of fantasy books, and I'm quite upset that I haven't updated my vocabulary to include words that should only appear in fantasy books, such as "cross." And I don't mean like "cross the street," but more like, "If you keep flicking my ear I'm going to become cross." I'll keep posting up some more words I need to be using more often.
Oh, also in my last post I thanked the Brothers Chaps for use of their material. I neglected to mention that in the title of my previous post, "Credit, where credit's dew," the spelling of the word "do" appears as it did in Strong Bad e-mail #94 entitled "Video Games," in which Mr. Bad describes various games in which he'd be likely to appear. One of them, a MUD game (multi-user domain, for those of you who are cooler than I am) features a man who wanders around a dungeon typing in commands. One of the questions on the screen is "What wouldst thou dew?" Just so I don't have to keep doing it, let's just say thanks to the Brothers Chaps and to www.hrwiki.org for all they have done for me and all they will continue to do, enriching our lives, providing us with laughter, and wasting countless hours that should be devoted to learning Torah. This Cold One's for you.

Credit, where credit is dew.

Just so everyone knows that I'm not nearly as funny as the funniest people in the world, aka the Brothers Chaps, I'd like to give them credit for the description of my blog. In Strong Bad e-mail #63 entitled, "Fingers," Our esteemed Mr. Bad corrects the e-mailer, Lee Conrad, when he types "Costume Place." "Palace, Lee. I think you mean costume palace." Thanks also to http://www.hrwiki.org/ for the exact transcript.

Blog-tastic

I'm so smart and have so many brilliant ideas at the same time that I decided I needed somewhere to jot them down other than in an IM window. Isn't that a brilliant idea? More brilliance to follow.