Try to *Avoid* Saying Sad Things to Your Friend

One of the best things about having a blog is looking to see what search terms are driving traffic to your site. I think you're supposed to use that to gear your writing to an ever-growing audience for ad revenue purposes, but as this blog makes exactly no money whatsoever, I just use it to amuse myself. The main takeaways so far are that a lot of people loathe Gmail's "consider including" feature, but even more people loathe the Wizometer. This is particularly impressive when you consider the fact that the Gmail feature affects people all over the world and the Wizometer is specific to a local news station in Atlanta. And STILL more people hate the Wizometer! Are you listening, 11Alive? KILL THE WIZOMETER, PLEASE.

I digress.

Every now and again people find me using search terms that completely mystify me. I don't know why you would search for these things, and I really don't understand why Google thought you might need to read my blog, based on that search. But there were two recent searches that made me feel, well, guilty. I guess it's not my fault that Google led this hapless searcher to such a useless page, but I still feel that I've failed him or her by not providing the answers he or she clearly needed. I don't want to be responsible for the failure of a relationship, and if that searcher ever comes back, I want him or her to come away with something helpful. So here you go, searcher person! Say these things to your friend!

"Nice Things to Say to Your Friend"

• You look nice today!
• What zit?
• I bet nobody even notices.
• I only noticed because you pointed it out!
• It's AWESOME that you got cast in a Neil LaBute play!
• Look, somebody's gonna win the Nobel Prize for Literature - why not you?
• Here's $50.
• Your mother doesn't know what she's talking about.
• You're the wind beneath my wings.
• I already ordered a pitcher of margaritas.
• I would never have guessed this building was a converted Federal Prison building. Ooh, you have a fireplace!
• You're so right.
• Surprise! I submitted your name to "Extreme Home Makeover" and they picked you!

"Sad Things to Say to Your Friend"

• Justin Bieber has a girlfriend.
• I'm gonna need that $50 back.
• She says they're out of tequila.
• Your date had to cancel.
• Road trip! I packed carrots and lite beer!
• Surprise! I submitted your name to "Intervention"!
• They aren't gonna do another series of Peep Show*.

*This is just an example; they totally are gonna do another series of Peep Show. Don't cry.

File-a-Friend: For All Your Friend-Filing Needs

OH MY GOD HOW HARD DO I LOVE GOOGLE+ RIGHT NOW?!?! Let me count the ways...

Just kidding, there's only one: Filing human beings is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Or with just your shirt off. Seriously, I had no idea that I wanted to do this with the various people in my life, but it turns out I very much DID want to do this. On Facebook, it's difficult to file people. It can be done, but it's time-consuming. And then, when I want to say something, I can either share it with everyone I've ever met, or spend an absurd amount of time deciding who gets to see what.

The root of the problem is - and you may have gathered this by now - I'm a human being. And as such, I have a variety of friends, interests, and even emotions! Sometimes I feel sad. Sometimes I feel happy. Sometimes I feel drunk. Sometimes I feel...nope, that pretty much covers it. When I feel sad, I want to share with friends who will be gentle and sympathetic. As below:

When I feel happy, I want to share with friends who will be happy with me and say nice things. As below:

When I feel drunk, I want to share with friends on whom I have so much dirt that I don't have to worry about them EVER telling anyone about that thing I said while drunk, as I would be mortified. As below:

But what usually happens is more like this: I feel sad and want to share with gentle/sympathetic people. Being too lazy to go through all 200 (rough estimate) of my friends and identify those people, I post to everyone and assume humanity will sort itself out. And I am gravely mistaken, as below:

I feel happy and want to share with happy/nice people. Being too lazy to go through all 3,000 (rough estimate) of my friends and identify those people, I post to everyone and assume humanity will sort itself out. And I am gravely mistaken, as below:

I feel drunk and want to share with people on my Mutual Assured Destruction List so I know it won't come back to haunt me. Being too drunk to go through both of my friends and identify the one who won't rat me out, I post to everyone and assume humanity will sort itself out. And I am gravely mistaken, as below:

So this never goes well for me. Ever. The alternative, as mentioned above, is to hand-pick which friends get to read a particular bit of news. This process is painful and annoying and, most importantly, I don't trust Facebook to work right half the time, so there isn't much point. The option I go with most of the time is just keeping my trap shut altogether. That's fine as far as it goes, but surely it defeats the purpose of social networking when I can't say ANYTHING without fear of attracting all the wrong attention?

Also, if I keep writing blog posts like this one, I won't have any FB friends left. And then I'll have to move permanently to Google+.

But that will be fine because Google+ has completely circumvented this problem by creating "Circles"! Circles are genius, and their creation method is even better. Google gives you a page with little pictures of all your friends (sorry - no good way to screenshot that without outing my friends, and I'd like to keep some of them), and then it gives you little circles to drop them into! You can put the same friend in multiple Circles if you want, they never find out the names of the Circles you've put them in (my previous experience with FB is that it does show the names of your little friend groupings), and then you can choose which Circles get which news! Brilliant! Tell your Yoga class about clearing your throat chakra WITHOUT inviting the mockery of some drunk asshole you knew in high school! Show your family a thousand cute pics of your cat without having your new boyfriend find out that you dress Mr. Biggles up like an old-timey barber! Circles = privacy, and it's about time we got a little more of that!

Circles also give you (er, me) a maniacal feeling of power. I can already tell that my current Circles, politely named "Friends", "Acquaintances", "Family", "Improv", etc. will soon be replaced or joined by Circles with names like "Jerks with whom I'm obligated to socialize", "Evil Incarnate", "Stalkers", and "Barnacles". And then I will lose hours and hours of my life in the practice of avenging real or perceived wrongs by moving people from Circle to Circle. Like: "Yeah, you WERE my friend! But a gift card to Bass Pro Shops? For my birthday? Welcome to the Barnacles Circle, jerkface." Even now I only know 12 people on Google+, and I am already far too enamored of staring at their little faces, pondering which file fits each one best.

It's a sickness. I hope I never get well. I'll see you all on Google+...but I'll never tell you which Circle you're in. MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Post-Posting Final Thought: Why is it that Google is so good at recognizing my need to keep certain people out of certain Circles, but they STILL don't understand that the "Consider Including" crap in Gmail is literally the stoooooooopidest thing since snack packs of Oreos?

Take a Whack at the Paiñ-ata!

I have a two problems:
1. Like so many 21st century Americans, I suffer from periodic bouts of depression
2. I can't stand to drink hard liquor straight up

These may seem unrelated, but let me tell you they are not. And I inadvertently proved it during my most recent episode, when I got into a habit of trying to dull my sadness with an evening drink. My poison? Margaritas. Therein lies the conflict. I'll explain...

Let's say you're an angsty, artsy type, prone to bouts of horrific depression. Your friends probably know this about you and keep an eye out for the warning signs. As a result, when you get near rock bottom, you might have an exchange like this:
YOU: What's the point? I don't even care anymore. I've got a fifth of JD, and that's what I'm having for dinner.
YOUR FRIEND: A fifth of JD?!?! For dinner? That's it, I'm coming over!

But when I get near rock bottom, it looks more like this:
ME: What's the point? I don't even care anymore. I'm already on my third margarita.
MY FRIENDS: Rock on!! Three margaritas before 2pm? You're livin' it UP!
ME: I guess. If you call this living. I think I'll double the tequila in the next one.
MY FRIENDS: HELL YEAH!!

A margarita just doesn't work as a cry for help. If you're drinking something light brown that burns your throat on the way down, that's the universal sign for "I NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO". If you're drinking something dayglo green that tastes like a lime Jolly Rancher, it's the universal sign for "I NEED TWO BACKUP DANCERS AND A KARAOKE MACHINE".

Not only that, but you can't cry into a margarita because the tiny umbrella deflects most of the tears. Even if you manage to get one or two in there, all you did was save yourself some money on salt. At the end of the day, it's the liquid equivalent of bringing up the rear of a conga line to "Hot Hot Hot" at a funeral - it looks ridiculous. I might as well get myself some crazy straws to complete the effect.

Lucky for me, my depressions never last more than a week or two, and if I have to be bad at something, "being an alcoholic" is one of the things I'd most like to suck at. So...win! The only downside is that I look utterly ridiculous for two weeks. But that's really not so different from my non-depressive state.

Serious Part Real Quick-Like, Though:
I've had these little bouts of depression off and on for twenty years now. I'm lucky that they aren't so bad that I require medication or have to put my life on hold - I manage to keep working, improvising, and blogging in spite of the temporary chemical imbalance in my brain/salt imbalance in my margaritas. But there are a lot of people who have it way worse than I do, and if you're one of them, please please please make sure you ask for help when you need it. Just do what I do when my friends mistake my Margarita Depress-tival for a Fiesta-val: pick someone whose last birthday cost you at least twenty bucks and send them an email that says "LITTLE HELP HERE?" in the subject line. Then tell them what it is that you need - a chat over dinner, a quick phone call, a sleepover party, five rides on the Dahlonega Mine Train at Six Flags, help finding a therapist...or even help figuring out what you need! That's what friends, family, some coworkers, and all suicide prevention hotline workers are for ;)

Oh, and I don't really endorse self-medication with alcohol. Just so we're clear.

Bad Showers/Flood Warning

Today, my friend Tom started a new occasional series called "Design Whine" on his blog. Apparently, he'll be using it to complain [even more than he already does] about poorly designed products or websites. With a name like "Design Whine", it definitely does what it says on the tin. The inaugural post was about the shower door at his CTO's house, which (SPOILER ALERT) he finds to be tremendously inconvenient. (NOTE: You probably have no knowledge of/opinions about your coworkers' showers, but Tom's one of those crazy entrepreneurial types that are always sleeping at each other's homes between marathon 100-hour coding sessions and making widgets. Or "using the list". Or whatever it is that they do. I'd better get paid for this ringing endorsement.)

Anyway!

Tom makes some solid points about his knob-less shower door woes. And I have some experience with infuriating bathing-related ingress/egress situations myself, though I didn't have the presence of mind to document the after-effects of their horribleness. Meet the shower in my dad's (former) flat in London:

Dun-dun-DUNNNNNNNNN!

There are 4 compelling reasons why this is the worst shower ever. I'll break it down for you:

#1: The door, or lack thereof. 

You're welcome for the helpful turquoise outlining.

The area outlined in this picture is the door. It's not the front half of the door, or one pane of the door, it is the ENTIRE door. Note how it helpfully ends about halfway across the tub. Handy! 

#2: The hinges on the door. 

For the life of me, I don't know why there are hinges on the half-door at all. You'd have to be 4 feet wide to need to open the half-door. Nonetheless, the hinges are there. Not only are they there, but they are conveniently designed such that the dripping wet door swings right out over the bath mat, tile, and toilet! Not that this would be noticeable, with so much water pooled on the floor anyway, what with half the shower being completely open and everything. Still. 

#3: The mirror.

Because what's more fun than getting to see all of your hideous imperfections displayed like you were Figure 2-A in a high school anatomy textbook while you bathe? NOTHING THAT'S WHAT! I've never seen a mirror *in* a shower before. There is a very good reason for that, let me tell you. Then again, I guess the mirror was really good if you happened to be on a diet. It's a guaranteed appetite-killer for all but the most dedicated narcissists.  

#4: The Great Wall of China Tub.

For the purposes of illustration, I'm going to use the *other* perspective here...

Listed measurements are a rough estimate

As you can see, the edge of the tub was roughly the same height as the bottom of the sink basin. I think we can all agree that that is unnecessarily high, especially given the fact that the base of the tub (not pictured) is only one or two inches higher than the bathroom floor. All this is bad enough, but when you factor in the huge puddle of water that forms at that end of the room (since there's basically no door), the whole experience of exiting the shower becomes a topsy turvy Slip 'n Slide from hell.

In conclusion, Tom, I sympathize with your horrific "trapped in the shower" ordeal, and I hope you get it resolved soon. And though this is a contest no one would want to win, I'm pretty sure I just did. In the immortal words of Teen Witch's Polly, Top That. (Look how funky I am!)