IDEATRON see what gabe thinks.

MYSPACE

Where do I begin? Ah, a flimsy metaphor.

Using Myspace was kind of like puff painting a shirt. In premise, you could do something cool and creative, but in practice it was an uncontrollable mess that never turned out the way you wanted, and no matter how hard you tried, you always made something ultimately as horrible as the next guy.

Spoiler: From here on, puff paint wins

But you know what I liked about puff painted shirts? Other people’s puff painted shirts never played Maroon 5 when I looked at them. When I squeezed my puff paint bottles, no advertisements for High School Musical 2 nor temptations to learn my death date by taking a quiz came out. Just paint. And while it would be quite an inappropriate venue, my puff painted shirts never so much as gave an opportunity for my acquaintances to announce uncomfortably personal things upon them. I never once woke up to find my puff painted shirt had been modified with a collar, a police badge, 3 pockets, some fringe, 14 extra sleeves and no more neck hole. People need neck holes. My puff painted shirts never required me to email a picture of myself to verify my identity just to put them in a different drawer. And most importantly, when I decided the puff painted shirt’s life was over, by God, I sent that demon into a pyre the flames of which show mercy on no shirt. And thus it ceased to be.

And you know what I liked about Myspace? Telling Tom to set his servers on fire.

Because it is an affront to human civilization, and shirts, myspace = no.

VERBAL VAMPIRISM

If you say an idea and someone kills it, then resurrects it to serve their own dark purposes a couple of days later, they’re a verbal vampire. Once an idea turns vampiric, there is almost no way to re-kill it. Ironically, vampire ideas are the ONLY ideas that see the light of day.

Because immortality is truly a curse, verbal vampirism = no.

TRASHCAN FORCEFIELDS

It seems like about 40% of the things I try to throw away miss. I am not good at basketball, but I would be if I was 50 feet tall, which is the approximate proportion of me to the average trashcan. I should not miss this much, but somehow my garbage often hits the rim of the can, or goes into the can (victory) only to impact another object and ricochet to no-man’s land (defeat). And throwing away sheets of paper? God, I must have about a 4% win rate in this arena. I am convinced there is no reliable way to throw or drop a sheet of paper into a trashcan successfully. Just try your best and prepare to be infuriated.

There’s only one way to explain this phenomena, and trashcan forcefields = no.

WHAT YOU MEAN/WHAT YOU’RE SAYIN’

Sometimes your conversation partner gets lost in his or her own world. You want to understand why she had to break the cat’s leg to save it; or how he ended the engagement because she was just, like, pissing him off all the time; or how the hundreds of other invisible, parallel dimensions totally explain ghosts, dreams, UFOs, religion, consciousness, and like, all that stuff, no, seriously, it’s like, totally possible, he saw it on Discovery; but… it’s complicated. Just remember, moments like this are what make you a great friend, because you know what he/she’s sayin’.

Now, if I may be bold, please consider my opinion: Anytime someone asks, “Know what I’m sayin’?” or “Know what I mean?”, they know you probably don’t, because even they know what they just said was impossible to follow. Simply reply, “No yeah totally,” and move on.

Because there is no possible way I could: what you mean/what you’re sayin’ = no.

APPLAUSE AS SELF EXPRESSION

Though I paid to see the above pictured comedian perform, it was the behavior of the crowd that captured my fancy last night. Sporadically through the evening, what should have been applause for the entertainer’s act was stealthily replaced by announcements of some audience members’ predictable personalities.

When he made a joke about religion, for example, atheists laughed a little extra hard… not because it was a little extra funny, but because they’re atheists. And what better way to come out of the nihilist closet than at a comedy show? When he joked about forgetting the Pope’s real name, 15 people with a theology inferiority complex actually screamed at the stage “Joseph (Whatever)!!!” As a result, we all knew just how much NPR these people really listen to. And upon his simple mention of Apple, a few hundred people started actually cheering. It wasn’t a joke. It was even a sentence yet. But apparently it WAS an opportunity for Apple users to momentarily steal the show and tell a captive audience, “Wooooooooo!” (translation: I like Apple). And the jokes with obscure references… sigh. I wanted to eat glass every time 3 people laughed excessively hard so everyone around them would think, “I wish I hadn’t dropped out of grad school so I could get that joke too.”

The problem with this kind of behavior is that it annoys me. The somewhat less important problem is that it’s parasitic to the performance and it’s disgustingly self-serving. Applause and laughter are primal, instinctive responses. It’s what a comedian goes for and it’s what we owe the good ones. When it’s calculated and used for trivial personal showoffery, it metaphorically fills our stomachs with glass.

Because it’s not your show: applause as self expression = no.

GETTING IT WRONG

There’s nothing quite like conceiving a big, clever, ego-affirming, and ultimately wrong idea. My advice: never get so confident about your work that you’re numb to the punch of obviousness in your golden grill. Do some research before you invest in an idea, or at least before you present it, or FOR GOD’S SAKE PLEASE AT LEAST before you go live. As my eagle-eyed and thoroughly professional friend Dave Snowball pointed out, sometimes even infallible juggernauts like Dell get it horribly, excruciatingly, hilariously wrong. Because Benjamin Franklin was not a president: getting it wrong = no.

RARE BACTERIA

I literally do not have the energy to wax entertaining on this issue. For placing a red-hot light bulb in the brain of a living human being, for moving said light bulb to said human being’s throat and exploding it, for granting said human being coherence for no more than 6 hours per day, for forcing said human being to perform a surreal midnight medicine ritual for a fortnight, for afflicting said human being with a lengthy list of bizarre symptoms (including an inexplicable and fortunately temporary blue foot), and for keeping said human being from updating his or her blog: rare bacteria = no.

8-SIDED SNOWFLAKES

Once and for all: 8-sided snowflakes DO NOT EXIST. Every naturally-formed snowflake has 6 sides. The 8-sided ones we see this time of year are decorations made by some clever designer who didn’t research their subject matter before contributing to the ruination of humanity’s understanding of basic sixfold symmetry. For looking really dumb: 8-sided snowflakes = no.

LOOSE ENDS

Ever have the guy you thought you left for dead in the desert show up at your front door three days later with a chainsaw and a cricket bat? Whoops! I’m talking about loose ends, and metaphorically speaking, they need to be tied up before they unravel. One good-intentioned “I’ll get to that later” can lead to the demise of just about anything you enjoy, including your life. For forcing me to keep tabs like a TrapperKeeper®, I judge: loose ends = no.

COLD WATER

It’s that time of year, when it’s probably cold out. The indoors is my sanctuary from Evil Jacques Froçst, so I would prefer to forgo his icy handshake when I am trying to wash my hands. Until further notice, or mandatory 6 month review, I hereby decree: cold water = no.