Friday, October 14, 2005

I know... it's a shock. A new blog. As I sit here wondering what the best way is to waste the next 45 minutes or so before dinner I contemplated many options. Read a magazine? Finish my book? Homework? Game online? Download more music? Facebook? Myspace? And then I thought to myself... hmmm it's definitely been awhile since I blogged. And that was that. The decision was made. I commited the next 45 minutes of my life to blogging and thus this post began. The spark of creation.

Now, since I was in this contemplative mood I thought I'd contemplate some more... what to write about? I could just fill you in on the last few months of my life... which I'll probably summarize in a latter paragraph though there are no promises... actually I probably won't summarize it... it would be too long of a summary to be considered a summary... more like an... ehhh, I'm stuck, I don't what it would be more like... just a too long summary. Or I could explain my thoughts on some random occurance that happened to me... but then I'd have to think of one good enough to share. I could talk about things that annoy me, like colored contacts for instance... I'm always up for complaining. I could of course make up a story too, which, if I did, would certainly start with "Once upon a time in a land far, far away..." and then gradually become less cliche. I could... ehhh that's enough. Summarizing this last paragraph, my options for topics were abundant and yet I could not reach a conclusion. So, as I always seem to be doing nowadays, I decided just to start writing and see what came out... and then I crossed a bridge I didn't know I crossed until I crossed. And that may sound confusing but it's quoted (more or less) from a much better writer than me and so I will leave it in because he's famous, I'm not, so it must be good, and I like to plagarize people who write good... errr, well... I've quoted the same writer dude twice already. Anyways... what was I saying? Oh yeah, the bridge bit. So, translation of the confusing bridge metaphor... it hit me what I should write about when I started writing and I didn't realize it hit me until umm... after it hit me? Okay, maybe that wasn't less confusing. I give up. I'm a math major I don't need to write good... err, well.

And, again, as always is the case, I don't get started on my actual topic until I've already written 5.5 hundred sentences. No use wasting more words on that though, let's get to the topic of choice. Wasting time. I'm not going to get all philosophical here, becuase if you remember, it is my goal to graduate Wheaton without ever having to take a philosophy course, but why do we consider little activities we do as a waste of time? You may "waste time" by going online... but face it, you WANT to be online during that time. If not, you'd be doing something else. We should never waste time... but always be doing something we want to be doing... even if it's just sitting down relaxing, or doing work so you don't have to stress about it later (weaker example I know, but I had to throw it in there so as to avoid anomalies... idk what that word even means... I don't think it makes sense here but that's okay). Wait... this isn't even where I wanted to go with this. Scratch this paragraph.

What I really wanted to talk about was how much people really DO waste their time by going on facebook and myspace... the two hotspots for college students. Now remember, any dissing I do here is totally fair because I am 100% one of these people who spends too much time on myspace and facebook.... I'm admitting my faults. Now that that's over I can continue. If you think about it, both programs are absolutely absurd. If you're one of the select few remaining people left who know not about myspace and facebook I shall write up a brief summary of them for you. They're these programs where you type all this silly information about you like your favorite movies, books, interests, etc. etc. and of course, pictures. If you don't include pictures you basically broke the first rule of facebook etiquette and are condemned to having a question mark as your picture. Rules you say? Oh there are definite, unspoken rules. Let's stay with the pictures for a moment. You can't include any pictures of you with your friends because it's impossible for new people to know which one is you... it's especially unacceptable if your friends are hotter than you. This is misleading. Staying with the hotness factor, you should only put in pictures that make you look at least 8 times more attractive than you really are... you will be more popular online. It is also a cardinal rule to change your photo rather frequently so as to avoid boredom and to encourage your friends to check out your profile to see if you made any other changes. Perhaps the largest rule though is that if someone leaves you a comment, you need to comment back or else they will hold a grudge against you until you do. It is perfectly acceptable to have 379 friends at your school even if you've never met them all... the number is what's important. And by the way, "poking" is soooooo 2004. I could go on and on with these rules here, but it's better to learn them through experience.

How many hours do we waste on these sites? Editing them, looking up our friends, commenting, hating "friends" for not commenting to us, checking out new groups to join, who likes the same music as you... the list is endless of what we come up with to waste our time on these sites. I mean it's virtually an online yearbook, complete with "signatures" which accurately measure how popular we are in comparison to our classmates. It's funny how much time we spend on these two sites... and almost everyone agrees. Yet, here we are, addicted to myspace and facebook. Always wanting to add more friends, post more comments, change your "about me" section, and check out how "popular" your friends are. I have no clever way to end this so this is going to be THE MOST abrupt ending I've ever had yet. I know you're waiting for a conclusion to tie it all together, but frankly my 45 minutes are up and I'm done writing.