Dear i, who put you in charge anyway?  iBlasted by the iPod sitting on my desk, my curiosity wanders through the iWorld filled with iTunes illuminating the screens of iPads. Once there, I find my interest bordering around the i itself- the lone vertical line that defies the accepted guidelines of proper nouns which insist upon an upper case presence at the forefront of all words of its kind.

An i for an I.  Intriguing, or rather intriguing. Wearing his dotted cap with pride, The i continues his journey annexing techno-jungle this and techno-jungle that.  Who are you i, and how did you come to pioneer contemporary sleek-looking, white technology?  Thus, I further my investigation into disclosing Sir i.

Results, courtesy of a fellow intellect Dennis Lloyd who asked iLounge, the iQuery home base: “What does the “i” in iPod stand for?“: 

1. It is okay to wear the same pair of jeans all week. No one is going to notice.

2. Washing whites and darks together is possible as long as you don’t mind the occasional mysterious spot on your white shirt.

3. It is not possible to get from the top bunk to the floor without climbing down the frame of the bed, unless you want to injure yourself.

4. It is always necessary to check if the bench in the shower stall is dry before putting your clothes on it.

5. Mysterious loud ringing noises that occur in the wee hours of the morning are not your roommate’s alarm clock. That would be the fire alarm; you are having a fire drill. Yes, in the rain. 

I am a smart girl. I mean, academically I’ve always done very well. I even skipped 11th grade and graduated early. But I just can’t seem to do one thing: pass my driver’s test. I’m 18, I just finished my freshman year in college, and I have yet to pass my driver’s test. I have no clue what is wrong with me, all of my friends had cars when they were 16 and 17, and in high school. And here I am, about to be a sophomore in college, and I can’t legally drive a car. I can drive, don’t get me wrong. I have driven plenty of cars, [all with someone over 21 in the passenger's seat] and I can get around. But when it comes to the test, I just fail miserably. And when I say fail miserably, I mean I haven’t even gotten through the whole test yet, because every time, I have done something that disqualifies me.

I’ve taken the test 3 times already.

Typically I rant about things that I dislike. Today I’m inclined to take things in a different direction. Since it’s my birthday I’m going to ramble on instead about something I’m rather fond of. Crazy girls.

By all accounts I’m the “New York City” of the dating world. Give me your manic depressive. Your bi-polar. Your slicers. Your dicers. Your trichotillmaniac’s (hair eaters). I’ll take them all.

Some assume that my affinity for the crazy has something to do with me being a psychology major. They are foolishly mistaken. I don’t want to fix you. To the contrary, I’m content with you just the way you are. Would you like me to give you a few reasons why?  I’d be more than happy to oblige. 

It all started at the Houston Xanga Meet last month. Krysten and I had acquired a couple of Pinocchio toys,  the Shrek version of Pinocchio, and impulsively gave them to a couple of people present. One of the recipients looked at the little toy and said, “This looks like Grampy!”

If only we could be in the shoes, jeans, jacket and life of Ash Ketchum, life would be a breeze. There would certainly be no heinous need to pick something from a bottomless hole of numerous possibilities. For Ash Ketchum however, he simply chooses the one thing he can always depend on whatever, whenever and wherever the situation is: his little mouse friend, because believe me, which other Pokemon would he possibly by obliged to choose, I say NONE. On the contrary, things are not as simple as that for me. Everyday we are given choices to make, choices to decide on and choices to ignore from the moment we reached the age of reason to the day thatl we die (perhaps ironically because of a choice we made, such as eating that one extra cancer-giving Mcdonald’s hamburger 20 years ago, our life could have went on for another 2 weeks …possibly). 

An intentional friend may exclaim to me how lucky I am to have limitless possibilities in the decisions I make in life and that I should be happy, I disagree; I find a life full of choices to be a suffering one.

We’re all familiar with Darwin and his theory of Natural Selection. But did you know that he had a sub-theory called “the healthy mate theory?”

A female peacock doesn’t just choose the most brightly colored male peacock because he looks pretty. She chooses him because his vibrant colors and plentiful feathers signify a sign of health, which is important when it comes to reproduction. Female house finches do the same thing – a male with bright colors is healthy, strong (as strong as finches can be), and likely to live a long life. In some species, bright colors and detailed ornamentation suggest a “low parasite load.” Who wants to mate with someone/something that is infested with parasites? 

The healthy mate theory applies to early humans as well – the women would choose the strongest and (most of the time) loudest men because this signified health and confidence.  You know, those with the biggest clubs and most impressive caves. 

The Personal Search & Customizable Home Page updates we announced last week are now in expanded beta – available to all Xangans!

To try it out, just visit your account settings page:

• http://www.xanga.com/private/editaccount.aspx

And change your “Your Home” setting to “New Private Home Beta”

We’ve also: 

Let me be the first to say that it’s okay.  It is.  It’s okay. Whatever your problems and issues are, it’s all okay, even when they’re not really okay; we’ll just say they are.

It’s especially okay if you have soft feelings, and criticism from strangers makes you fold up like a bad lawnchair.  It happens to many of us the day we learn that freedom is speech is a double-edged sword and not a one-way street.  

Hear me out in this one.

Whenever I think of both the women who complain about the nice guy, and the ones who talk about them, I wonder if the girls are aware they might be using the wrong terms for what they want. To me, I think that the man that they are really looking for is a good man, not a nice guy.