1. Date a guy who’s rude to waitstaff.

2. Wear trends for the sheer fact that they’re trendy. Figure out what you like and what works on your body type first! 

Some of the joys of technology in being able to bring people together with the convenience in text messaging. For me, it’s done the opposite. Some of you may find the following texts from my mother hilarious, but I cover my face in embarrassment with each text–some more random than others. 

Mom: I deposited all the loose change you had. $43.50. You are a rich man now.
Me: Yessss… 

This past year I moved my college studies to California, where I was introduced to “Ginger Jokes.”

Originally from the east coast of the United States, I didn’t understand what the fuss was about. I know and see plenty of people with red hair up and down the Atlantic coast and well into the Mid-West, and don’t find it in the slightest way odd or amusing. It is simply part of the norm. However, as I began my studies and continued watching my favorite shows, most of which are written and produced in Southern California, I realized that there is a very different opinion of red-heads or “gingers” out west. 

One of my fondest memories from childhood is hearing “Pop Goes the Weasel” playing outside my window in the summer and screaming, “ICE CREAM MAN!!!!!!!!!” before grabbing whatever money I could find and running out to greet this magical singing truck of goodies.

What I realize now, as I walk by the ice cream man strategically placed outside the neighborhood playground, is that this invokes happiness in children as they learn eating habits like ice cream=holy grail. These children, as adults like me, have learned to equate this happy memory with ice cream. And the ice cream man capitializes on that.

I feel like I do this too while working at Bruster’s ice cream.

1. Personal Search and Customizable Private Pages are almost here!

Marc and Justin have been hard at work, and the new customizable private pages with personal search are almost ready!

We’re hoping to make it available on a beta basis in the next week or two.  Let us know if you’re interested in participating!  We’ve been using it in house, and it’s getting raves, although admittedly from a biased crew.  

Hopefully you guys will love it as much as we do!

Maybe I dwell on things way too much, but I still have much to get off my chest. I cannot believe how many ignorant people make it into college today, and have the nerve to be so confident in their ignorance. Hello! America is not the only existing country in the world!

Today during my Women Studies class discussion, I may have gotten a little more heated than I should’ve.   A lot of times I am very opinionated in class, but this discussion brought something else out of me. A group from the class was doing a presentation on beauty in other cultures. Cool, I thought. I always am fascinated about cultures’ fashions, and was glad a group was reaching out of the boundaries from the United States. 

My friend is dating this guy and she knows its not going anywhere, but she settles and says well it’s not like i am dating anyone else right now.   We are comfortable and I will hang out with him for now. 

This is the most flawed logic ever, I tell her.

I heard a quote from John Mayer on the radio saying that he was considering deleting his Twitter account because he wanted to remove his need for external validation.  Hearing this made me realize that a major purpose of social networking sites, and the reason why they are so popular, is that they fill our need for external validation. Even make it grow, especially in the internet generation where fame is more achievable than ever.

Before Facebook or Twitter, we didn’t have a need to post summaries of our days, our favorite song lyrics, or our deepest secrets on the internet in 140 characters or less and expect a comment or two or ten.

It’s the same reason we blog here on Xanga. If your site is public, it’s likely you crave comments. Even those of you who say you write for yourselves; You could ”write for yourself” just as easily in a journal with a lock and key. The point of a public blog is the comments (and the discussions they create). And those comments give us external validation.

But this brings up another topic: 

Amidst all the ill-privacy bashing and negativity surrounding Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, at least we can say that at the end of the day (will there ever be an end to Facebook’s days?) one good thing came out of the craze: the unification of its users.

Angry Facebook users are uniting against Facebook’s new privacy (or lack there of) settings and this time they’re hoping to poke right through the entire system, jab it all the way down to its final disintegration.