A Little Too Social

I know man is a social creature. Without everyone else around us, most of us could not survive in any capacity. We each have our place as cogs in the great machine of our society, but there are times when the social aspect can be left aside without any detriment to the greater social order. Yet, there are people out there who simply cannot handle saying nothing to someone. They must make some level of small talk or ... well, I don't know. Their shotgun collar will explode or something.

We just want to cure your introversion. We love you.

In my life, I have come to identify these always-talkers, and occasionally take active steps to avoid them if I not in a talking mood. Most of the time, this is not possible, but when I have control, I take it. This is because most of the time the "conversations" occur, they are completely pointless, and only occurring to make some noise and keep their collars in check (cause they go off if there is silence for 60 seconds, I suppose). Surely, you've had this conversation:

"Hey, how are you doing?"
"Good, you?"
"Doing good. Thanks."

Move along. You never tell the truth in the response because let's face it, the person doesn't actually want to have a discussion with you. They just want to hear their voice to make sure it still functions. Perhaps I should launch into an actual discussion over my life and its various catastrophes, but I'm sure all my various spy capers and hacking escapades would turn their heads and besides, most of it is classified, like the time that I [REDACTED].

When do these conversations occur? Well, one of the weirdest is passing in the hall. It is literally only a few seconds in seeing each other. Read that conversation above and that's about as much time as you have before they're gone. Another is the break room, which is expected, but usually, I only in there for a refill on the water or if I'm particularly desperate, more Dr. Pepper while I sneer at the Diet Mountain Dew (ugh...). You know that story though. Again, though, it's literally and in and out for me while they do much the same thing while refilling coffee or whatever.

A more amusing one is in the elevator. The reason this is amusing is because I've ridden with one of the people with one of those sound-detecting shotgun collars with people from other floors on the way up. They will wait until the extra person leaves before they hit me with the obligatory conversation during the few seconds between the last person's floor and ours. And I was hoping for silence.

If only this were possible in my world.

The most awkward place this occurs? At the urinals in the bathroom. Not kidding. Men generally go to the bathroom alone, and there is a rule that no one talks about anything in there. You do your business and move on. I'm okay with the occasional discussion around the sinks during the hand washing phase (some of you may be unfamiliar with that piece), but while waiting for nature to work its way out, silence is the preferred option. Yet, there are a few guys out there who will inevitably strike up a conversation while you're standing there far beyond just what I have above. Like, they want to chat. Really.

So as to not be that terrible person I've mentioned before, I participate in their conversation. But seriously, it isn't necessary to chat over the urinals.

I know some people thrive on it, and I try to be gracious, but some of us relish that gold of silence, and really enjoy being alone with our thoughts. Conversely, we also like to fill our time with meaningful activities which includes meaningful conversations, so that banal three-liner needs to be abolished entirely. If you want to start a conversation, please do. I welcome originality, creative thoughts, and by all means, prove me wrong on something. And maybe I'm partly at fault for giving the non-answer, but when you only give me 3 seconds before you're out of my life, I'd rather you not say anything.

Images from Saw III and Doctor Who: The Vampires of Venice.

Skylanders Vs. Disney

A few months back I wrote about the next generation of Playstation vs. Xbox and how backwards compatibility should have worked its way into the systems. Here we have another choice before us in regards to the swappable games that are coming to the table this year. A couple years back, Skylanders swept the world and parents groaned at 32 characters priced at $10 each. The next year, they introduced Giants priced at $15 each along with a new set of characters. As such, a fortune was spent on these things.

Disney has decided, as Disney tends to do, to use this tech and make their own swappable game called Disney Infinity, which takes their extensive catalog of characters and makes them into figurines you can play with in their game. It's going up against Skylanders 3, called Swap Force, which takes that tech a step further by allowing certain characters to have mix and match arms and legs. The catch for this is that the new Skylanders games takes a new portal. It might or might not take the old characters (probably will), but that means for all intents and purposes, we (who did purchase the last two games) will be starting over since our old portal won't work on the new game.

With Giants, the old portal worked, and the game functioned as a sort of upgrade to the first one, so we just got the game with the included Giant but no portal, and simply built up the collection while using our old Skylanders. Now, with the need to start over, we're leaning toward the Disney game for its familiarity and just having a new game to play instead of a rehash of an old one. And since Skylanders was expensive to play, we will likely go with only one of the games since we'll want all of the characters. However, unlike the way we did the Skylanders, where everyone got whatever characters they wanted (meaning we have multiples of several characters) and maintained their one character, we're only going to get one set of characters for everyone to use. Cuts down on that expense and the question of who wants what. We see one we don't have, and we'll pick it up.

Will we get the Skylanders Swap Force eventually? I couldn't say at this point. We're kind of over it and looking forward the allure of the Disney version of the figurine game.

Terrible

You know how sometimes you look at horoscopes and numerological studies and that sort of thing, and they usually tell you something you want to see, and you nod thoughtfully and say, "yeah, that's me." Most of the time, these things are geared to our conceit and we always agree because the good and bad could apply to facets of anyone. So, when I saw one about superheroes, I was amused. My birth month gave me a Superman theme of goodness and truth and justice, which does actually fit me very well. Then it went on to the con side where it indicated extreme conceit and condescension which also fits me very well. Unfortunately, sometimes.

Sometimes, I do think I'm a rather terrible person, and it's always in retrospect because I never consider what I'm doing in the moment. I am actually a genius when it comes to intelligence. I think I'm kind of stupid sometimes, to be honest, but from a scientific perspective, I would be considered very, very intelligent in that I learn quickly and easily and can regurgitate most of what I take in (that'd be knowledge, not food, though I imagine I could be skilled at regurgitating food as well). This intelligence makes me very conceited and gives me a bit of a complex in that I know exactly how much smarter than you I am.

Admittedly, I do try to keep it under control when I help people so that they understand the concepts I'm trying to put forth, but a lot of the time, they come away feeling stupid, and people being how they are, it's my fault they feel stupid. Now, it isn't my fault they aren't smart to comprehend the concepts I'm giving them, but I'm the one in the hot seat for teaching complex math to someone who can barely find the numbers on a calculator (cal-cu-what? Go back to eating your glue.).

At my work place, people tend to take ownership of problems they deal with, and they get remarkably possessive about it. I don't care. If someone handles something sent to me, I scoff and shake my head at their impatience since the world won't fall down if it doesn't happen yesterday. In one such instance, I saw an email string where there was a problem, it got passed to other people because I had left for the day already, and then it got "solved" (using the term loosely since it was only resolved because it took long enough to get someone else on it that the only issue was a lack of patience to let something finish). This morning, someone on that string felt the need to ask me about it even though they knew it was fixed. I flat out said that I wasn't sure what she would want me to tell her about it since I had also read the email where it was done, and nothing more to do. I didn't know anything about it. I probably had "that face" that told her she was an idiot. I didn't mean to, but it really was a stupid question. Customer service will say there are no such things as stupid questions, but I assure you there are. If you ask the counter high schooler at McDonalds if they serve pasta, that qualifies as a stupid question. A) McDonalds isn't an Italian restaurant and B) if the answer were yes, I wouldn't recommend it because McDonalds is not an Italian restaurant.

On the flip side of terrible, I have some Star Wars cups on my desk, and in those Star Wars cups are some candy canes. These candy canes came out around Christmas a couple years back and have some images on the wrappers from the Star Wars series, The Clone Wars. I'm not a huge candy person, so my eating any candy at all is very, very slow (except perhaps Jelly Babies, which are scrumptious). Why do I keep these candy canes on my desk? To remind me of how terrible I can be sometimes, and how that affects people. Every time I look at them, I recall being in Wal-Mart with the Queen and her pointing how a box of these candy canes to me. I do like Star Wars, and I have been known to collect knick knacks related to the series, so her doing this is perfectly in line with me. Now, I have a tendency to think about cost more than desire, so in order to dissuade any notion of me wanting to buy this item, I derided the commercialism of the product and silliness of them only putting images on the wrappers when they're just candy canes.

Then I got them for Christmas.

You see, the Queen had already purchased said candy canes since I have an affinity for Star Wars, as I said. She told me this while fighting back the tears since she wasn't aware I would completely hate them, which I don't. I carried them around in my lunch bag for awhile, and then they sat on my desk at home before I finally packed them up and have them with me at work in those cups. Thinking about the situation even now hurts me. These rather innocuous items show me not only that she loves and thinks of me, but also that I am a terrible idiot sometimes and need to consider my words carefully because words can hurt.

I wasn't sure how this post would turn out, and it's gone down a rather depressing path, so I'll end it with this. Humanity is a social creature. Even the most antisocial of us need other people in our lives to achieve any level of happiness. I'm introverted by nature, and I can go enormous lengths of time without talking to anyone. In fact, most people think I hate them because I don't say anything, but the thing is that I get my socializing from both my friend at work (I believe I referred to him as The Mixer or something before) and from my family at home. I don't need much of anything else, but that does not negate anyone's status as a person. Some people need more than others, and I try to accept that.

It doesn't change the fact, however, that most of the time, I really do come off as a terrible person whether I mean to or not.

Stream of Consciousness

You know the coolest part about writing in a blog pretty consistently. You can actually get off your brain anything that is bugging you, and you can say pretty much anything you want about it. Add to that in a semi-anonymous environment such as this is, as long as I am mostly careful with references, I can say whatever I want with minimal repercussions, provided I avoid the following topics and references (LIST REDACTED BY MGMT).

Whew, I'm glad I got that off my chest. Seriously, though, it has brightened my mood and made my outlook so much ...  you know, the same as what it was before, but it's far easier to delude myself into the positive what with having "talked" about it in a manner that you read and not hear. I can also pretend I am funny, which is fun in and of itself. Naturally, everyone on the internet is a comedian (or comedienne, in case you happen to be female - I'd hate to offend (see list above)), so everyone thinks they're quite funny in every circumstance.

Example? Oh, there are so many. Yes, so very many examples that I could give if only my memory went back far enough to list them all. Oh, you'd love such a list. Yup. Sorry, it ain't happening. This one time... no, I got nothing. But if I did, you'd find it hilarious.

Yeah. Hilarious.

...

Wankel rotary engine. That's funny, right? The trouble with stream of consciousness is the amount of rocks and fish poop you come across.

You Talking To Me?

People are funny. Absolutely conceited so very much of the time. You can see this "all about me" attitude when someone posts something on Facebook, and before they know it, everyone is wondering they are the target of the offhanded comment about "those people." "Is he talking about me?" the person wonders, and usually, when I see something like that going on, I have to say that if you did something that would warrant such a comment, then yeah, probably. If the comment wasn't directed at you before, then it certainly is now (you know, since you wanted it that way).

Really, there is a solid test to determine whether any given applies to you. I know, you'll be all "but what if I did something that I didn't know about," and to that I'll ask that I speak to another one of your personalities that wasn't blacked out at the time of the incident.

The test is, "Did I do something that would lead to this comment?" Real simple. If yes, then apologize for your actions, then explain why you thought it applied to you, allow the ire of the person you wronged (and didn't know you wronged them) to cool down to the point that you can apologize for the now completely new sin you committed against them, and hopefully you can either reconcile that relationship or you have learned from the experience that unless someone directly tells you that you've done something against them, to simply leave it alone (or apologize when it happens).

This has been a public service announcement from a disinterested party who just wants everyone to relax and not take everything so darn personal all the time. Seriously, it isn't all about you.

For The Downtrodden Race

It stinks to be the underdog, you know? There are classes of people who are always on top, and others who always seem to be on the bottom of society, no matter what they do. It is important to always respect those who are not born or allowed to retain the benefits some of us have on this earth. After all, change is not always welcomed, and it is not always beneficial. Sometimes, change comes and it can rip one's life apart sending them into a life they never intended or welcomed, and without choice, they can end up hated by people who once loved them.

I'm speaking, of course, of the Fempiror race, who are who they are because they were forced into that life by some errant rebel who injected them with some kind of serum that changed their person to this other life that most of them never wanted. They aren't freaks. They are misunderstood. They don't want to be hurt by the sun. They don't want cold skin. They don't want to live a long life and be ridiculously strong. Actually, many of them dig that last part, but what they don't want is to be driven out of polite society just because they're different.

The Fempiror are of all colors and nationalities, and many of them are very old. As a result, they understand the world's take on them, and accept their sub-life. Many of them have formed their own communities only associating with other Fempiror since too many times, they've been hurt by those they call "regular humans."

They don't deserve this. Only by cross-contamination of blood can you become a Fempiror, so you need not fear their presence or think they will hurt you or make you become like them (unless they are really angry and think they can some kind of vendetta against humanity, in which case, you'll want to avoid them). Seriously, most of them are fine, upstanding people just trying to make their way in the universe.

Hug a Fempiror today. Show them you care.

This has been a paid advertisement by the Council for Fempiror Equality.

Popular People

You know, I recently went over a shameless list of search terms and while looking over trends, I noticed how Miley Cyrus actually popped up a lot in several trending lists. Actress, musical artist, people (did you know she was a person?), and teen pop artist. I never watched her show, Hannah Montana, though I do have the misfortunate of recalling her father, Billy Ray Cyrus's tune, Achy Breaky Heart. I much prefer the Weird Al knock-off, Achy Break Song, where he begs not to ever play that song again.

One thing I will admit, however, based on what I do know about young Miley is that she actually does have some singing chops. I've listened to quite a few of her songs, and it isn't bad. Her older stuff is fairly bubble gum, but some of the more recent is quite passable. I also found it interesting that she is more popular than everyone's favorite teen punching bag, Justin Bieber, at least as a search result. And of course, a big search engine welcome to Cory Monteith of Glee fame, which is another show I've never watch, but I totally clicked on his name to find a Wikipedia article written in his honor.

Hm, it says he's Canadian. That's not remotely interesting.

Naturally, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are right near the top of the list what with that new royal English baby they got going on. Prince William being the second in line to the rather pointless throne of England behind his father. I watched an Animaniacs episode once that had Prince Charles, William's father who was married to the illustrious Princess Diana (I bet he felt so lucky to get with someone so popular), as a character, and at one point, Yakko (probably) asked him, "Who died and made you king?" to which the downtrodden Prince Charles replied with a sniffle, "Nobody." Laughed out loud every time. I still laugh out loud at that. Well, I'm not laughing right now, since I would distract the people around me, but if I were alone and actually watching the episode instead of merely replying it in my head, I would probably laugh...every time. That's a probable chance of an every time laugh right there.

It is worth noting that Kate out trends William in the search. That'll show him. I'm not sure what it'll show him, but it just will(iam).

And before I drop this shameless post, I'll just shout out to Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump. No reason, really. Just thought I'd include them because I can. As someone in charge of one aspect of my life makes clear, when you're in charge, you can do what you want. Happy Sunday.

Shades of Grey

If you know anything about religion, you probably know that Christians can be a very confusing group of people. Some of them of radical one way or the other either loving or hating everyone, and it seems there is a massive effort to convert the world into their way of thinking. I've been a Christian all my life, and I've gone through quite a few phases of the process of growing within my faith. Through all of this, I've found that a Christian lifestyle is not as black and white as people want it to be. When you actually look at what Jesus did and how he lived, he would go two directions at once that seemed both contradictory but in perfect harmony with what he taught.

For instance, he said to go into all the world and teach the gospel., but he also said if someone won't listen, let them go. No where did he say to scream in that person's face to make them hear the truth. He knew the truth, and he knew that someone has to be receptive, and if they won't listen, there is no need to waste time with that individual. He encouraged the following of the law during his time on earth, but the leaders felt he broke the law all the time. In actuality, Jesus knew the law so well that he knew how to follow the law while simultaneously pissing off the establishment. Did not sin, but showed the Man up.

In our modern world, a common phrase is to love the sinner but hate the sin. This is a concept that most people cannot wrap their head around since it involves accepting someone for who they are regardless of what they do while simultaneously acknowledging that you don't approve of what they do. However, in order to fully live this, it goes quite a bit further than that. It is a matter of accepting that person and who they are whether you agree or not while allowing them to come to their own decisions. If their decisions don't agree with yours, you have to accept this as their own truth because even if they are biblically wrong, you have to ask what Jesus would do. Jesus would let them walk.

It is ok to wish people would come to know the truth of the gospel. It is ok to want them to believe. But it is not ok to forcefeed them or declare their wrongdoings. If you think about your average toddler who won't eat (parents, you know this all too well if your child survived the single digits), if you stand over the child and command that every bite must be eaten, what happens? Nothing. That's what. Three little, non-eating princesses later, I can tell you that the food remains on the plate, tears are had, hair is pulled, fits are thrown, doors are slammed, and once you finally decide to come back out of your room to the child who wonders what just happened, the food remains uneaten as they ask if they can play now. A few swigs of Brandy later, you go ahead and agree while you contemplate whether to just eat their food or throw it to the dog.

People are the same way with the truth. No matter what you do, everyone has their own truth. It is said that perception is reality, and if someone perceives the Christian to be a total nutjob, then guess what? You're a nutjob, and no one will listen to a word you have to say.

How to approach this little problem? With the greatest of subtlety. Jesus spoke to large groups of people without addressing very many individuals. Those he spoke to were receptive to him, and those he rebuked publicly had originally started the conversation. They asked. He answered. What Jesus never did (feel free to correct if I'm wrong here) is walk up to a random stranger, declare their sins without any prompting, and tell them exactly where they were going to go without the truth and his help. Instead, when he declared the truth to a group of his closest followers, most of them left. His apostles wanted to go after them, but he told them to let them go because His truth is a hard one.

Truth is hard. Truth will set you free, but acknowledging any truth is extremely difficult because we don't want to accept it, especially if it makes us look bad. Whatever sins we think people have, we have to understand that their life is their decision, and only by living the Christian lifestyle can we ever hope to influence anyone. We can stand up for the truth when confronted, but we should not condemn anyone (that's anyone) unless they specifically ask us for our help, and even then, they should not receive condemnation but love and guidance.

The greatest commands in the Bible, according to Jesus, are to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength," and to "love your neighbor as yourself." In approaching anyone, we have to first decide whether we want to be treated the way we intend to treat someone else. We should also decide whether Jesus would act how we intend to act based on the accounts we have.

Keeping this in mind, go into the world.