Let's Talk ABOUT the Bathroom

Ah, the ladies room. There are exactly 8 things you're allowed to do in there:
1. Use the potty
2. WASH YOUR HANDS
3. Do yo' hurrrrr
4. Dance
5. Sob uncontrollably
6. Transport yourself to the Ministry of Magic
7. Steal TP
8. Sleep it off

You'll note (OH YES YOU WILL) that "have a long, involved, whispered conversation in the corner" is not on that list. Furthermore, you'll note (OH YES YOU WILL) that the items on this list would make for some incredibly bad background noise for your precious conversation, if you were dumb enough to try and have a conversation in there. And yet. AND YET! There are women in this world who take their private pow-wows directly to the ladies room! WHY? Actually, you know what? I don't care why. "Why" is not the point. The point is that it's WRONG WRONG WRONG. When you insist on having your little chit-chat in the potty room, it means that everyone who comes in for one of 8 perfectly legitimate reasons has completely lost her anonymity from the moment she walks in the door. Because as she walks by, you and your interlocutor are gonna glare at her like she's interrupting, like she has no right to come and pee where you are TRYING to have a conversation. And then she gets to try to do whatever she needed do knowing you are judging her the whole time.

I don't tolerate that crap, and you shouldn't either. But the problem is that most offices still refuse to designate a Bathroom Enforcer, so when you try to evict the chattering class's potty party, you get slapped with the old "YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY HERE!" nonsense. Don't waste your time. Here's what you do instead:
1. Make eye contact with your foes as you walk in; they need to know you are aware of them and their foul, foul nonsense.
2. Enter the stall even if you only came in to do numbers 2-4.
3. Close the door.
4. Lick your inner elbow
5. Stick your open mouth on your inner elbow and blow, thereby making the loudest, wettest, nastiest fart noise you can.
6. Wait for the Talkative Tinas to beat a revolted retreat.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

For the record: YES, I do this. And you should too. Making gross noises in the stall is not shameful; it is arguably THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BATHROOM. But standing in a restroom to have a conversation? That is shameful. And it needs to stop immediately. Stay strong, people.

How To...Say What You Mean

Lately I find that more and more people seem to be talking just to get attention, or to start a conversation without explicitly showing that they want a conversation to start. This irks me; if you want to start a conversation with someone, just say, "Oh, I was meaning to tell you..." or "Guess what!" or "Do you have a minute?" Because when you just start talking and wait for the appropriate person to join in and say exactly what you want them to say, it's inefficient, and it may not even yield the desired result! I'll give you an example...

WRONG WAY:
Person A: Gosh, I really shouldn't eat this entire sheet cake.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH, I REALLY SHOULDN'T EAT THIS ENTIRE SHEET CAKE.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH I REALLY SH-
Person B: Oh, are you on a diet?
Person A: Yeah. It's this new diet I saw on TV...

RIGHT WAY:
Person A: Gosh, I really shouldn't eat this entire sheet cake.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH, I REALLY SHOULDN'T EAT THIS ENTIRE SHEET CAKE.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH I REALLY SHOULDN'T EAT THIS ENTIRE SHEET CAKE!
(pause)
Person A: GOSH I REALLY SH-
Person B: (shoots Person A in the head)

I Refuse to Not Be Apprehensive About the As-Yet Unmade Changes to Facebook

I know what you're thinking: "Another social media post?!?!" Well, YES, in fact. It is another social media post. Thanks for asking!

Part the First: I am Allowed to be Displeased

When f8 happened in late September, all the super hip in-the-knowsters popped up on Facebook, Twitter, G+...everywhere saying the same thing: "Uh-oh! They're making changes to Facebook! All the whiny ignoramii are going to complain! It's a FREE service! You don't get to complain about a FREE service!"

Pardon my French, but you're talking out your organic gluten-free naturally-sweetened with agave bean sprout cookie hole, you accursed hipster! Put on your argument-parsing skinnyjeans, cuz this just got real.

Point #1: Facebook makes changes/people complain.
Well, quite. People don't like change. It's just a fact. How would you feel if Bon Iver announced they were taking Britney Spears on as lead singer and going in a "new direction"? Pret-ty unhappy, I should guess. Still, congratulations on making a massively unoriginal observation about one of the most basic aspects of human nature.

Point #2: You can't complain about a free service.
Really? Because WELCOME TO AMERICA. I can complain about whatever the I want, and you can't stop me! Since when can we not complain about anything we didn't pay for? Have you ever heard of PBS? The selection of books at the local library? Or "the weather"? We're professional complainers and we're not about to stop now. More to the point, though, we do pay for Facebook with our personal data. And that is why we are allowed to raise holy hell about "real-time apps".

Part the Second: Go Ahead, Tell Me EVERYTHING.

Since I started blogging, I've come to realize that my personal interest in maintaining a modicum of privacy makes me unusual, at least among bloggers. I try to write things that are funny and true (insofar as my opinion is true-ly my opinion), but I'm never going to use this space to tell you allllllll about my job, or my personal relationships, or my bodily functions. And yet I have found that other (often more successful) bloggers make regular post-fodder of the sordid details of their sex lives, the minute-by-minute report of their run on a treadmill(!), or the "inside story" of what went on at the widget factory today. But even those people could easily be lying through their teeth. The woman who blogs anonymously about her filthy dirty sex with a string of rich, gorgeous men may very well be a fat man in his mother's basement. That treadmill run may never have taken place! And NOBODY KNOWS WHAT A WIDGET IS*!

*As it happens, this statement is not true after all

But that's the beauty of the internet - you can control your own brand! Put forth the image you want to portray! As long as you aren't doing so in a private chatroom with an underage correspondent, no harm no foul. But Facebook is about to DESTROY IT.

Let's say your Facebook profile currently looks like this:

Billy Bob McLaughlin
Male
Single
Interested in:
Women
Interests:
Music, Movies, Reading, Rock Climbing, Gaming, Car Repair
Favorite Books:
The Bible, Anything by Stephen King, Catch-22, Watership Down, Bridges of Madison County
Favorite Movies:
The Help, Forrest Gump, Das Boot, Rudy, Die Hard, Transformers
Favorite Music:
Radiohead, Bon Iver, The Shins, Coldplay, Kings of Convenience, James Taylor
Inspired By:
Jesus, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama

C'mon, that's a pretty well-tailored profile. It's undersood that this is not a comprehensive list of EVERY little bit of entertainment you've ever consumed and/or enjoyed, but you've been allowed to curate it so that it reflects a certain image of you. And there's nothing wrong with that! This profile doesn't tell me everything there is to know about you, but it tells me that you're culturally literate, have a variety of interests, and are basically a normal person.

But with the new breed of "real-time apps", these days are gone. Now you won't just tell us what you want us to think you like; we're going to be privy to EXACTLY what you choose to do with your time, all the time. Like so:

Billy Bob McLaughlin
Male
Single
Interested in:
Women
---------------------------------------------------------------
Netflix, 1:15pm:
Billy Bob just watched 5 minutes of "Ho-Down in Hooter Hollow"

Kindle, 1:20pm:
Billy Bob is reading Vehicle Maintenance for Dummies

Kindle, 1:25pm:
Billy Bob just highlighted the following passage in Vehicle Maintenance for Dummies: "You have to manually retract the caliper piston" and added the following notation: "?!?!?!?"

Spotify, 2:00pm:
Billy Bob is listening to "You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman)"

Amazon, 2:05pm:
Billy Bob has just purchased 2 tubes of NARS lipstick and a blonde wig

Netflix, 2:30pm:
Billy Bob just watched the same 5 minutes of "Ho-Down in Hooter Hollow"

Kindle, 2:35pm:
Billy Bob just downloaded a sample chapter of "How to Tell if You're Addicted to Porn"

Netflix, 2:37pm:
Billy Bob just watched 5 minutes of "Ho-Down in Hooter Hollow"

Foursquare, 3:15pm:
Billy Bob arrived for his 3:30pm appointment at North Fulton Hemorrhoid Specialists and unlocked a $5 coupon for his next Egregious Hemorrhoid Treatment!

Wells Fargo, 3:57pm:
Billy Bob has just overdrawn his checking account while attempting to pay a $450 charge at North Fulton Hemorrhoid Specialists :(

Amazon.com, 4:06pm:
Billy Bob used Amazon's new medical subscription service to arrange monthly delivery of a case of Preparation-H direct to his door!

Netflix, 4:15pm:
Billy Bob just watched 5 minutes of "Ho-Down in Hooter Hollow". AGAIN.

You take my point. There's nothing wrong with sharing as long as it's optional; linking other sites/apps to Facebook (by doing something as seemingly innocuous as clicking "Use Facebook to log in!") and letting them automatically broadcast my life from that moment forward is...not OK.

And lastly, a note to everyone who will inevitably say that Billy Bob should simply stop doing things he doesn't want other people to know about, I say this: If the choice is "stop watching porn" or "stop using Facebook", which option do you think will be most popular? Exactly.

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.