Hint: laziness can explain everything

Some people have it in their heads that I was in the greater New York City area for three weeks based on instant messaging, my twitter shenanigans, and this particular blog entry. Lies and misinformation, all of it.

I was actually in an undisclosed location operating undercover for an undisclosed organization, performing heroic acts of jackassery.

Here I am documenting a recent rash of vandalism thought to be perpetrated by a resident gang of militant Atari enthusiasts:




... and infiltrating a seedy establishment that dispenses warm Bud Lite and Trader Joe's organic tortilla chips to minors:




... and recording the horrid conditions in which respectable pole dancers must practice their noble craft:



And of course, the obligatory jump shot, courtesy of the hotel room I broke into so I could raid its minibar:



I especially enjoy the look that Ted appears to be giving me from within the TV. His demeanor and expression may look blank, but he's really thinking: bitch you crazy.

All in all, I can tell you that my mission was a rousing success. I am awaiting my payment of nipple tassels and Funyuns, and hopefully there will be more work for me in the future.



In other news, an anonymous friend of mine has finally gotten her period after a fun-filled exasperated 8 days. I may possess neither a uterus nor a vagina, but I feel like if you are still a virgin and the closest contact to semen that your cho-cha has had is wading in the shallow end of the municipal pool, you probably don't need to worry about being pregnant.

Something wonted this way comes

Internet sucks in Manhattan. I need to find a free wifi hot spot, ASAP.

I keep forgetting to bring my camera. I've traipsed through the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side so far, but will likely repeat those ventures just to get pictures. And when I say pictures, I mean highly pretentious photography taken under the assumption that I know what I'm doing and that my yuppie tourist camera is capable of greatness.

Stay tuned.

Someone staged a jocund purge

Instead of going to bed at 4AM, which is really not as bad as it sounds (by my standards nowadays; I don't sleep, I nap), I stayed awake to further the minimalistic objectives of slimming down my Facebook account. My reasoning wasn't based on anything but a general sense of discomfort toward the "social networking" tool. It really has become nothing short of the new MySpace. Sure, there are less ads (for now at least), and one could argue that the average user is much different than the average user of MySpace, but for me, the web app has run it course. So why wouldn't I just deactivate my account completely?

Well, I'm getting to that.

Just before the winter holidays, I pared away the bulk of my "profile" and all of its limbs, removing every single application that I could remove. I removed every field in my personal, education, and work information that I could, leaving only my contact information. I disabled all the reporting on my account that Facebook does... no more notifications to my friends whenever I post to someone's wall, or RSVP to an event, or get tagged in a photo. Finally, I restricted the entirety of my profile to confirmed friends, with the sole exception of my photo (people have to know it's me when they go to add me, right?).

I completed all of this with a minimum of weariness and anxiety. It was mainly just a bunch of emotionless pointing-and-clicking. TopFriends? Terrible application, good bye. FriendshipWheel? You are the weakest link. OregonTrail? Good times, but hit the road. I thought nothing of it afterward. But the next step wouldn't be so forgiving, and I knew it.

I was to trim down my friends list.

I approached my task this morning in a methodical way. I would go through my entire list and attempt to qualify an individual against these specific criteria.

1. Would this person recognize me? Recognition would only count in the present day; I'm sure I look different now than I did in high school, when I had long hair, or even during the period in between.
2. Do I have any outstanding commitments to this person?
   
3. Can I recall a memorable story about this person, memorable enough with which to reminisce over tea or cocktails?
4. Have we shared a conversation, via any medium, in the past 6 months?
5. (Perhaps the simplest, yet most complicated of them all) Is this person really a friend?
   

In a lot of ways, that last one functioned as a form of "veto power". But I knew immediately that I would have to wield that exception carefully, or else my original intent would be compromised. In the end, anyone left on the list would have to be completely defensible. So slowly my hefty list of 500 began to melt down.

The first two passes through the list were relatively easy. I was able to quickly discern if someone was an obvious candidate for The Burning Place. The majority of those culled first were people I had met once (and only once) at a party, or a conference, or in passing somehow. The remainder were random people that I honestly didn't recognize.

After that, I was left with just over 200 people. And so came the difficult task of enforcing criterion #3 and (to a lesser extent) criterion #4. Gone went some found lost friends, gone went some old college classmates. Gone went the bulk of my high school peers, and it dawned on me that many of whom I had never really considered friends anyway, even during high school. With this realization, I obtained my second wind. 180, 165, 150: all of them folks that I had reasoned as being more than mere acquaintances.

By this point, I had identified a group of people who would not see the The Burning Place, at least not today. But this still left me with a group of about 20 people who I couldn't quite confirm and couldn't quite deny. In short, I was having difficulty applying criterion #5. Some of them I still talk to sparingly, but most not. Most of them were really close friends at some point, some not. And every single one of them I consider to be influential and consequently important to my life. But therein lied the problem. They were important to my life story, but not in my life. In the end, I was fighting a battle between the sentimental and the practical, and since the name of the game was practicality, I ultimately removed all of them.

Those were some of the hardest button clicks I've ever made. But it was all a fascinating lesson in identifying those who are truly important to you, even if they're no longer your "friend".

It occurs to me that I may be being just a tad be melodramatic. Perhaps. But I think that anyone would have a similar experience if they tried to do this.


In any case, this step 2 of 3, and step 3 should be better. I still have to go through all my tagged photos and dignify myself, for lack of better terminology.

Step 1. Tiresome, tedious.
Step 2. Emotional, striking.
Step 3. Embarrassing, hilarious, memorable, pathetic, downright weird, etc. etc.

To quote a tactless man

Years from now, when I think back on this inauguration day, these are the things I will remember.

*jazzhands* SASHA!
"Non-believers"
"Mr. Pelosi" (hilarity has been since rescinded upon realization that Nancy did not keep her maiden name)
the eerie absence of the word "God" from the majority of the proceedings
Yo-Yo Ma breakin' it down
a sense of utter unity and a remarkable schism between the religious and secular

As Thomas said to me as we drove to lunch afterward, I'll reserve judgment until some real action occurs. I had asked what happened to the separation of church and state via facebook status, and Rusty replied that today was a "step forward for minorities" and a "step backward for non-Christians". So why does it feel like no one is winning?

Bereft in my stilted repose

They say that sometimes you don't recognize greatness until it has passed.

Wow. I was so caught up in the craziness of Winter Conference that I didn't fully comprehend the gravity of what was going on around me. I was frantically making copies of an agenda for legislation without realizing that I was making copies for the first AIESEC US legislation in years. I was counting MCP election ballots without realizing that this right and privilege was denied for nearly a decade.. I was working closely with Missy, an amazing individual who I will probably never work with again. The same thing goes for nearly everyone else on the conference team. Fuck, I didn't get to know the PAI as well as I could have either.


Wow. What a way to usher in 2009.