The Loneliness of the Long Distance Wall Post

A while back, I was on FML (or possibly it was TFLN... or some other affiliated website about how fucked up your life is bullshit) and I saw one post where a guy was informed that his girl friend was pregnant via a facebook wall post. After the initial horror I felt at this news bombshell being handed down so whimsically via a wall post, I stepped back to think about not only the negative aspects of this type of information being handled via a social networking site, but also the positive ones as well. Now, before I go any further, I am not going to address the inherent argument about the isolating/embracing of communication between human beings via the web, nor am I (hopefully) going to touch upon any type of discussion about the intelligence of the woman in question relaying this information to some poor sap on Facebook, and the trauma that he might have sustained. Also, I do not plan to broach the subject of him being so devastated by this information that he had to get it off his chest via the world wide web with some twitter like website that limits the amounts of characters that can be used in each post. Instead, this blog will focus on the positive/negative aspects of getting personal info, much like this, via the Internet.

Positive: No longer do we have to make those awkward phone calls to our loved/hated/inconsequential ones that clutter our life. Instead, of calling to say that Aunt Suzy died, why not make it a facebook status, so you can receive false sympathy from "friends" and a shit ton of "likes" underneath your statement.

Also, in the same vein, you could just as easily post your sympathies on a person's wall, leaving "sincere" well-wishes like "if you need to talk, call me" when you know they don't have you phone number, and even if they do happen to have it, you can screen your calls, so you make sure that you don't have to talk to them. I know some might find this is cold hearted, but really, have you ever had to deal with someone crying inconsolably on your phone? If you have, you know this is a positive, not a negative, statement.

Even better, in this day and age, where we've all heard that "we didn't know we were in a relationship, until we saw it on facebook," why not break up with a person by denying/removing their relationship status to you, then writing something extremely nasty upon their wall (like for example, calling into question a person's ability to perform in the boudoir) and finally deleting your friendship (and possibly editing your profile, so you're invisible to them). Isn't this the easier way to break up with someone? No longer do you need to have that final awkward conversation, where things might be said that can no longer be taken back.

Another positive aspect is that the things that used to be private are now open for the world to see. And while the people involved might not like the fact that I now know personal details of their lives, I, on the other hand, am able to gossip about them, and creep around their profile page at my own leisure, without having to call someone to get the scoop. As you can see, for me at least, it's the not having to call aspect that I enjoy most about this growing technological age... because I don't usually like talking to people on the phone; I would much rather get a text or meet a person somewhere. However, now I don't even have to do that, I am able to find out both good and bad news, as well as gossip and judge from the comfort of my living room in nothing but a t-shirt and my boxers while watching A Golden Girls marathon on TV.

Of course there is a negative side to all of this. Yet, while I walked away just a moment ago to organize my thoughts, I just can't seem to come up with any... okay here's one. Sadly, Facebook might tip your hand to your significant other, making for difficult conversations... for example, you've already confirmed a new relationship without first breaking up with your previous partner. So better management of personal details becomes a must have for this new day and age.

Lastly, having to figure out how to take all personal possessions from a partner's home might become difficult as you don't want to raise suspicions before you drop the proverbial shoe... also on that same note, if anyone knows how to conceal a microwave under a pair of jeans, please let me know.

Gone Fishin'

It's been a while since I've done this thing... so let's see how rusty I've become in my blogging hiatus.

Let's start from the beginning and go forward... I was born a poor black man. Ahem, sorry. I've been busy with school, teaching, trying to find a thesis chair and life in general. However, I have been able to check most of those items off my list now, and am still relatively relaxing in my vacational comfort while I await for the new semester.

I got straight A's this semester, so that seems like as good a place to start as any, and one of the many reasons why I have had this long stretch of non-blogging. Also, the teaching went well it appears, but I haven't seen the reviews yet, so I'll wait and comment upon that later. The chair has also been found (I'm going to be working with Deborah Armintor this semester and plan to finish off the thesis in the summer time), and lastly life has been really good, just busy.

So, now that we're all caught up, let's start with a funny topic. I figured, why try to let you all catch up with my life, and also why try to write about everything I've done while away? That would take forever, and by the time I finished writing about the past, new stuff would already have happened that I would then have to write about, which I would also be compelled to write about, creating a Cartesian circle of continually trying to catch up, yet always wanting to stay fresh with my post. So instead, I'm going to just jump ahead into the present, and hopefully allude and talk about the past when things arise that are stimulating and apparent to any story that I might tell. However, regardless of this fact, I plan to stop talking about myself for the rest of this blog and do something that I promised Amanda I would do a while back, that is, talk about the genre that is Chuck Norris.

Now, Amanda was talking to me a while back, and she and I were discussing the ideas of a concept. That is, how it is formed, why it functions, and lastly, what's its purpose. And I said that many different things could be considered concepts, and that these concepts form into genres over time. Inexplicably, I somehow got onto the topic of Chuck Norris and how he no longer is an actor but actually a concept, one that has funny jokes that make absolutely no sense, but nonetheless, I still laugh at. Amanda then went on to say that she has never understood the Chuck Norris joke, and that, that particular craze seemed to pass her by without her getting onto the bandwagon. So, I decided that I would write a blog to help her better understand Chuck Norrise- regardless of the fact that she probably doesn't care about the topic and will probably find me talking about her in this way to be particularly pandering to both her and also the Great one that is Chuck Norris.

Now, we all know the history of Chuck Norris... dynamic movie star... crossed over into TV... made the television show, Walker, Texas Ranger. So, I'm not going to reconstruct old news. Instead, I want to talk about the phenomenon that became Chuck Norris after he reached cult status with the jokes that are so corny a cow might die if told enough of them without also being administered drugs to keep them healthy. With such awful jokes as: "What was going through the minds of Chuck Norris' victims before they died? His shoe." Chuck Norris has cemented his role as genre, instead of man. How? you ask. I plan to explain this to you.

No longer does a person in this society care about the man - Chuck Norris, flesh and blood American hero - instead all we care about is the ability to use the man as a punchline that creates a homogenizing within a group. With the loss of the man, but the recognition of the name, the man became meaningless, but the name remains in the pop-cultural memory, allowing for a sudden outburst of laughter with the association of the ridiculous and the normative. With this association, the myth of Chuck Norris was created, allowing for a subversion of norm and a creation of the fiction. What I mean by this is that once the jokes started taking place - and kudos to whomever created the first classic joke like: There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live - Chuck Norris the man lost all his value in this society, but his name remained behind and still has an resonance with the public.

With the loss of value, Chuck Norris' name has been inserted with a new value, one that I have created meaning for, along with every other person who has ever made a crack, joke, pun or side remark hoping for a cheap laugh at the hero's expense. And because of these cheap, dirty remarks, the value of the man has decreased, but the name has greatly increased. And because of the association of the cheap with the authoratian - meaning the regal acting skills that Chuck Norris possesses - the laughter have remained while the man has diminished.

But, now the questions which begs to be answered: how long will these laughs continue? Who knows really, but how good is the joke? The fact that one, such as I, can still elicit a modicum of a guffaw means that cheap comedians will still implement them in a situation. All we can hope for is that the myth will die eventually, and in the dying breaths, like a phoenix, society will remember the hard-hitting roles that Chuck Norris has tackled in his day; roles like Silent Rage, SideKicks and Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection, and hopefully forget the awful jokes that have now dogged his twilighted acting years. With the loss of value of the man, the name has also lost all "true" meaning within a society, and has instead been inserted with new meaning, and, sadly, this new meaning is a punchline. However, in the end, we must remember one thing, and one thing only, You can't spell God without Chuck Norris... at least in Chuck Norris' dictionary.