Valentine's Day

(image courtesy of Wreck on Her)

Whoever saw this coming from a mile away, please raise your hand (Okay, okay, I see you all).

So, anyway... Valentine's Day, eh? You know the drill. If you have a significant other you make plans for dinner and buy each other gifts of all sorts and the guy buys the girl flowers, blah blah blah. If you're single, you whine and moan all day about how dumb of a holiday it is, but that you're really okay with being single (admit it. you're miserable (seriously, you wouldn't be mentioning it otherwise)). Or, you can be like me and, using your experiences of good and bad Valentine's Days, just exploit the day for the sake of a blog entry!

80% of the people who hate Valentine's Day are single (or something around there). It's a correlation that simply can't be ignored. It's almost a matter of fact that if you're single, you hate Valentine's Day, because all this day does is slap you in the face and make you even more aware of what you don't have (think St. Patrick's Day without having access to beer (or if you're a recovering alcoholic)). The days leading up to it, you become acutely aware of every hand-holding couple walking down the sidewalk. You're jealous of them for what they have and what you don't, so Valentine's Day becomes a manifestation of everything that you want but don't have. Admit it, if you were magically together with the person you liked, you would be all over Valentine's Day and doing everything you possibly can to make it the best day possible for whoever your crush is.

Of course, not all people who hate Valentine's Day are single. I recently just spoke to a good friend of mine who has a boyfriend and was complaining about this day existing. In her case, she condemned this holiday because it commercializes love. It's something that shouldn't have to have a day for. You should pay attention to your significant other without having a day to force you to do so. Also, the events leading up to/the day itself can be stressful. It's a whole ordeal trying to figure out what you're significant other's expectations are, what they would even like, trying to make dinner reservations, eating in an overcrowded restaurant for mediocre cuisine, overcrowded shopping places, traffic, spending more money than you actually have, etc etc.

However, even though I'm currently single, I'm still throwing my support completely behind Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day reminds us all of what's most important in life: love. I'm not just talking about the love that you share with your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse- whatever, but with your family and your friends. To quote a certain Morrie from Tuesday's With Morrie, "The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in." Or, to quote a certain Dumbeldore, "Love wins. Love always wins."

Even if you're single, you can still have a lovely Valentine's day. I called my parents and grandparents to wish them a happy Valentine's day and we had lovely conversations (plus I got into a whole debate with my mom about digital vs film photography. don't even get me started...), and they really appreciated that I called them and was thinking of them today.

Sure, you may not have a significant other, but that's just one person. There's plenty of other people who you love and appreciate, and I see Valentine's Day as a reminder to cherish all that we actually do have instead of what we currently lack. Or, rather, Valentine's Day is a reminder of how everyone should act every day. And who knows? Maybe seeing all of these people together on V-Day is the kick in the ass someone needs to finally make a move and try to get a girlfriend. And if that doesn't happen, BIG DEAL, it's not the end of the world.

So don't hate on Valentine's day, because doing so defeats the purpose of the day itself. Be positive, and look at all that you do have and quit being so down on yourself. There's always someone out there who does love you. Let it in and give it out.

FINAL VERDICT: JUSTIFIABLE

Chat Roulette

I was holding out on partaking in the madness that is Chat Roulette for the longest time. I've heard the stories ( If you have never taken an anatomy course...) , I've heard all the urban legends (Jonas Brothers are on it?), and I SWORE I would never do it. Ever. I would not stoop to that level of boredom, and I held myself to a higher standard than to go to such a website.

Then comes along last night. A crowd of 6 of us were at Corey Abramson's house watching"Undeclared" (great TV show, btw) when suddenly, everyone became obsessed with the idea of going on Chat Roulette. At this point it was only 10:00, and I wasn't about ready to go home, so I had no choice but to join in. I feel like this is something that, instead of going over the details of what the site is like, I just need to recount my experience to determine whether or not it's justifiable.

The details of my first foray into Chat Roulette are a little hazy. I do remember that the first person we were connected to was a girl touching herself (the stories are true. please trust me), and then from then on out it was a jumbled mass of awkward loners, penises ("I'm asian and mine's bigger than yours"- Ziggy Gamble), groups of bros at parties, uncircumcised penises, people dressed up in costumes, boobs (" TITS OR GTFO!"- Corey), 13-16-year-olds who were way to young to be on such a site, ball sacs ("Excuse me, good sir, could you lift them up for us?" -Corey), awkward loners dressed up in costumes, flaccid penises ("What is WRONG with that? Is it supposed to be that shape?" - Devon Letko)... you get the idea.

Midnight rolled around before we knew it, and that's when we had to start keeping it down because of Corey's roommate trying to sleep. That hardly meant anything to me, however. I came straight home and got on right away (immediately becoming one of the previously mentioned "awkward loners", but I was okay with this).

How chat roulette works is that you get matched up with a stranger on a video chat, and you can either 'next' them, or they will 'next' you, and you get matched up with someone new. If you don't 'next' each other, you can talk to the person, chat with them, whatever. My strategy consisted of this: don't 'next' anyone unless they're over 40 or there's some sort of nudity. That way, I would be forced to talk with people I wouldn't normally talk to (because everyone has something to offer, right?).

And the things you learn about people can be fascinating. One of the people I came across had a webcam showing what was apparently a girl that hung herself. I was freaking out for a little bit, but I decided to hang around and see if there was anything that could be done. After sitting there staring at the screen for a couple of minutes, someone typed "Heeeeellllllp Meeeee", and then proceeded to have a full conversation with me. Apparently there's this "my cam" place where you can have your webcam show whatever image you want. I was one of the only people to not 'next' this person, and they were doing it just to gauge people's reactions to the image. Crazy stuff.

Also, people are incredibly honest with you (why wouldn't they be? you'll never see them again, you know?). I learned that people who don't know me think I'm either 1) Gay ( i think my pink headband did me in there. or maybe not, who knows?) 2. A bro (because long hair makes me a bro? or my thermal I was wearing?) 3. A tool (again, i think it was the headband) 4. cute (but I got called gay more, but whatever), and 5. a jew (my hair? Or they're just being wise guys. either way, I'm okay with that.) I even got called a gypsy by a pair of girls from Missouri (but I do believe they meant that in the nicest way possible.)

I was having a hard time deciding when to stop. It was getting late ( it was around 2:30), but I wanted to have one more good encounter with someone. I get connected with a crowd of 4 or 5 people. They ask me where I'm from. I say Philly. They say they're from Philly too. They ask where I go to school. I say Temple. THEY FREAK OUT! They show me their Temple sweatshirts they're wearing and are going crazy (I'll admit, I kind of went crazy too) that, of all the people on the site, we were connected with someone literally blocks away from each other. They were in 1300, and we started talking about our majors and where they were trying to live next year, with them asking me if Bouvier was a nice street, etc. On that note, I decided to quit it.

Is chat roulette a dirty web-site? Unquestionably. But look at what it does offer aside from the nudity: a chance for you to talk to people you normally never would, making random connections with people nearby you, a chance to learn more about yourself, a chance to learn more about how other people's minds work, and a place to go to quell your boredom to name a few things. I'm by no means praising what some people do on this website (you have to take the good with the bad in all aspects of life, no?), but as far as the benefits that it presents to you? I'm willing to admit I was wrong for judging chat roulette so harshly, although it's definitely more fun with the more people you have with you. Would I recommend this site to my mom? Hell no. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I do believe, however, that it is a site of some sort of value and not just total garbage.

FINAL VERDICT: JUSTIFIABLE

Uggs

Hokay, so I remember when these things became popular like, what? In 2003? And I, like everyone else thought, "Man, there's no possible way these things are going to be sticking around."

Well now it's 2010, AND THEY'RE STILL EVERYWHERE!!!!!

I was walking the equivalent of one block to meet a friend for coffee yesterday when I noticed something: 50 percent of all girls were wearing boots of some kind (this is no exaggeration folks), and I'm just talking Ugg boot variety. As if the original Uggs aren't a monstrosity enough, there's also the fuzzy variety, the high fuzzy ones, and even combat boots to name a few others. I want to say that all of these are equally bad, but I notice a trend that the more fur/fuzziness I see on a pair, the longer the image is burned into my retinas.

I'll be honest, I don't like Uggs. But let's be realistic here: a lot of people don't. Apparently they're extremely comfortable, so that makes them okay. So I can understand that people would want to wear them when it's really cold out, maybe with a pair of jeans or something, but when I see them paired with dresses, or, what Juliana and I were seeing a lot of yesterday, with ONLY LEGGINGS FOR PANTS (Oh god, the horror...), it's just so typically... college for lack of a better term. I mean, c'mon people, can't you show a little bit more creativity and not look like the most stereotypical college biddy as you possibly can?

Also, if you're not wearing pants, you're obviously not that cold, so why are you wearing Uggs? If you can go out in public pantsless in the middle of January, which is exactly what these girls were doing if they were wearing leggings for pants (I told you, it's literally burned into my retinas), you should be able to wear some normal footwear without suffering from some degree of hypothermia. Look, I'm not the fashion police by any means, nor am I trying to be, but it's a given that no matter what you wear them with, YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT (times 50 if you're wearing them with just leggings. God, why do people do that?).

So this is another time where I'm going to have to be split on an issue to the tiniest degree imaginable (after all, most rules have exceptions. Keep that in mind going forward with this blog. I want to give a clear cut "justifiable" or "unjustifiable" at the end, but don't think it's written in stone; it's just what I think of the topic at hand most of the time). I'll give the people who wear Uggs only when it's cold out and with a pair of jeans some leeway and say they're justifiable (and I'm even hesitant to do that, but I'm going to post this before I change my mind), but as far as the girls who match their mini-skirts, sundresses, or freaking just leggings (seeing this convinces me that there is no God) with Uggs, or something resembling their feet impaling a pair of shaggy dogs: totally unjustifiable.

FINAL VERDICT: UNJUSTIFIABLE

Sleep Suits

(image courtesy of blogitecture)

It has been brought to my attention, in lieu of the whole sleeping security guard thing, that there is actually a suit that people can wear that can allow them to sleep wherever they so desire (thank you for making me aware of this subject, Corey Abramson). To clarify: No, the security guard mentioned in the previous post was not wearing a sleep suit. If he was, that would have instantly made his actions unjustifiable, as then he would have had the full intention of sleeping on the job. But this sleep suit raises the question itself: What the hell are these things and are they justifiable?

According to blogitecture, these suits were inspired by Buckminster Fuller's (I wish my name was Buckminster) practice of Dymaxion Sleeping. Dymaxion Sleeping, in a nut shell, is when you take four 30-minute maps during the span of 24 hours rather than the typical 8 hour sleep schedule normal people engage in. Dymaxion Sleeping is dubbed more efficient (well no shit, Sherlock, you're only asleep for 2 hours a day instead of 8), but there is lacking a sort of "ritual" prior to going to bed. There's no huge ordeal of getting ready for bed when you're only sleeping a half hour at a time.

Enter the Sleep Suit. The Dymaxion Sleeper's dream ( heh heh. Sleeper's dream. Get it? Do you even dream when you're only asleep for 30 minutes? I digress...). Before the sleep suit, when these people tried to get ready for bed, their preparation to get ready to settle into a bed took about as long as the sleep itself. What people are saying about this sleep suit is that it provides Dymaxion Sleepers with a mini-ritual by putting this eye-sore of a suit on (instead of brushing your teeth, flossing, getting into pajamas, etc), while allowing them the flexibility of being able to sleep wherever they wanted. Instead of going home or crashing at a friend's place every 4 hours, just slip this bad boy on and you're good to go wherever, whenever.

A lot of research went into this thing, too. They even went as far as to test in in four , count 'em, FOUR positions to determine whether the material was sufficient: laying down face up, laying down face down, laying down sideways, and sitting at a desk. Once they figured out where the most support was needed, they produced these suits, patent pending of course.

Honestly, my first reaction if I saw someone laying in the middle of a grass patch on campus somewhere would be to give them a swift kick to the head. I don't care what that suit is made out of, it sure as hell wont supply the wearer with much cushioning as far as a roundhouse kick to the face from yours truly is concerned. Come on people! There is some sort of natural reason that, as humans, we sleep for long periods of time. This Dymaxion Sleeping, while it does sound like it has its benefits, does not sound like anything at all healthy. Can you imagine operating on only 2 hours of sleep a day? There's no possible way that's healthier for you than a full night's sleep, as it's not your natural sleep cycle! Isn't it essential for us to have our sleep cycles the way they are in order to get our daily dose of R.E.M. sleep? Taking 30 minute naps would not allow our bodies to get to this point in the sleep cycle. I don't like the sounds of it.

HOWEVER! This sleep-cycle talk has nothing to do with the subject of justification: the sleep suit. The sleep-suit is just a great enabler, encouraging people to partake in Dymaxion Sleeping. These sleep suits probably are only going to be used to by Dymaxion Sleeping enthusiasts, as a normal sleeper would have no good reason to own one of these, much less use one. I just don't see the point of these sleep suits. Imagine you're a college student at, say, Temple University, and you want to take a 30 minute nap between classes. What kind of a position are you putting yourself in here? You trap yourself in this cocoon to take your nap, so you're vulnerable to about anything imaginable. You're stuff could be stolen, you could be kidnapped, I mean, come on! You can't get up to run away because you'll be all tangled up in your goddamned sleep suit! The only stuff that would be safe is what's in your pants pockets, because there's no chance whoever is harassing you can work their way through the suit to your pocketries (yeah, that's a word now).

Ok, I'm aware people don't usually get robbed in broad daylight on the middle of a college campus, but as the sleep suit works as an enabler for Dymaxion Sleepers, it also acts as an enabler for pranksters. I mean really, I even said myself the first thing I would do if I saw one of these is kick whoever was in it. All it does is draw attention to yourself, and you're asleep. That can't be a good combination. So when it comes down to it, the sleep suit is downright UNJUSTIFIABLE. That is all.

VERDICT: UNJUSTIFIABLE

Passed Out Security Guards

Anyone that goes to Temple University has seen these security guard stands all over campus/ a couple of blocks off campus. I vividly remember during an open house that I came to while I was still in high school that these security stations were a major selling point; it was a point that my tour guide made sure that we were all very well aware of: "Temple University takes their student's safety extremely seriously."

Well, that's great for Temple University and all, but what my tour guide failed to mention was that maybe the guard in the stand couldn't care less about your safety. I was walking home from a friend's house late the other night, and this particular stand caught my eye. It was not because the security guard was doing something ridiculously crazy, rather, he was doing nothing at all. His head was cradled on his shoulder, eyes shut, whatever. I walked back and forth several times in front of the stand to see if it was just his way of keeping a close eye on things, but needless to say, this particular security guard was sound asleep.

Now I am not aware of the fate of this security man. For all I know, he very well could have been dead. If that was the case, then the rest of this is kind of rendered null and void. But let's, for argument's sake, speculate that he was, in fact, asleep on the job. Is this justifiable?

If I had to rate the job of a security guard on a boring scale from 1-10, with 10 being the most boring, I would give it a 12. These people really got the short end of the stick. Imagine: you have to sit awake in a stand at god-fosaken hours (I'm talking like 3-6), with NO HEAT (or if you're reading this in the heart of summer, NO AC aside from a crummy little fan), and you're not allowed to listen to music or read anything to pass the time (How do I know this? Have you ever seen a security guard with earbuds in or a book in hand? No. Would any normal person willingly sit in these little shanties with absolutely nothing to do? Please...).

However, I digress. The boring-ness of this job does not change the fact that what a security guard does is very important. They... sit there... and if they see anything, they call the cops... even though after they call the cops it'll probably be too late for them to do anything... so... wait, what is it these people do exactly? Sure, they watch out for any sort of shady business, but for what purpose? Is it the mere presence of a probable watchful eye that keeps some shady business from occurring? If that's the case, then regardless of whether or not a security guard is asleep, there's still that "potential eye on things" factor. The person who might commit some sort of crime may not be aware of whether or not a security guard is awake or not, but they're still wary to do anything because of the mere presence of a security force. Even if they were aware of a security guard catching some z's, how many people would think, "Oh man! Now's my chance to get away with something!"?

In the grand scheme of things, there are bigger fish to fry than worrying about a security guard being asleep on the job. The guard could have had a long day working at their other job, a rough night due to some sort of argument, the list is endless. If something extremely serious were to happen, such as some sort of shooting, I'm sure that the sudden GUN SHOT would wake a guy up! Any loud out-of-the-ordinary noise would startle the guard and he'll go about his business. It's not much different from how a wide-awake security guard would handle a situation like that. More than likely, a wide awake security guard is day-dreaming or zoning out to some extent, and then something happens that causes them to pay attention and do their job. Same can be said for passed-out security guards. They're just initially in different states of consciousness is what it boils down to. This doesn't change the outcome of the crime that is committed in front of them.

So is it justifiable for this particular security guard, or any security guard, to fall asleep while he's supposed to be keeping an eye on things. ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIABLE. Now this is where I get mugged in front of a sleeping security guard...

VERDICT: JUSTIFIABLE