John’s “10 Easy Ways to Become an Elitist Ass”

This doesn’t need much preface. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Music. The first thing you should do when trying to become a music snob, is decide which music you don’t like. First, pick a genre that is largely unpopular, (like country, or rap) then completely discredit any music that belongs within 7 or 8 degrees of separation with that genre. You will be left with about ten bands. Research them religiously on LastFM, Pandora, or Wikipedia.

2. Study Wikipedia with a passion. This is your eBible. General superficial knowledge is key to winning menial debates and belittling peers with superior (broad) knowledge. Key categories of study should be topical, intellectual, and cultural. Directors, authors, artists, musicians, films, etc. are all good places to start. Make sure you hit the broad category too; heights of obscure buildings, medical conditions, superhero biographies, and the travel speed of the Japanese Shinkansen (bullet train) in mph AND kph. That way, you can cream your idiot friend in the next debate about the half life of Einsteinium.

3. Debating skills. If you haven’t properly armed yourself (see #2) to argue the topic at hand, the only thing that will save the day is sheer confidence and authority. Use absolutes like “I’m 100% sure”, or “I promise you” when you deliver your lines. These absolutes work well combined with a raised voice and emphatic arm movements. Also claim you posses unusual experience or bizarre talents, and use statistics whenever possible. i.e. “I PROMISE you there isn’t enough friction on the rock ledge in the beginning of Mission Impossible 2 for Tom Cruise to warrant not using climbing gear. When I went rock climbing in the Sierra Nevadas, 97% of all the rocks were coated in a fine grain called “granulum”. You should look it up.”

4. Call movies films. This one is quick and easy, but be careful, there is a difference between the two. A Movie is box office BS that rates no higher than a 59% (certified fresh) on RottenTomatoes.com, or gets lower than a 50 on Metacritic. Other exceptions: Any independent film, is indeed a film. For a challenge, try debating the “film” status of certified BS movies like “Watchmen”. THERE I SAID IT.

5. Pretend you liked things before they were popular. Then tell everyone about how this was the case. Make sure you don’t still like it when it does become popular, or else you’re just a bandwagon loser. Also, make relentless fun of bandwagon losers.

6. Become vegan.

7. Create your own fads, and then try to convince everyone else they’re actually catching on. Designate cadmium the shade-of-yellow of the month. You don’t have to go overboard and only wear cadmium yellow, but whenever you see yellow, just mention it in a side comment. “Oh I like that yellow. I hear its the shade-of-yellow-of-the-month. I read it in [highly acclaimed critical art] magazine.”

8. Get in the habit of doing small easy things that carry out a huge, hopefully political message. Like recycling. Recycling takes little to no effort, but says “I care about the environment even though I drive a SUV, wear fur, and eat copious amounts of red meat” in one little convenient action. Even better, every time you see someone throw an aluminum can away in the garbage you can ask them “Oh, by the way do you recycle?” or even better “Did you know theres more aluminum in the tab of a can, than in the entire can itself?”. (see #2)

9. Have wide and generalized blanketed hates of specific things. I’ll give an example. “I hate all people who brush their teeth before they eat breakfast”. You don’t even need to have a reason, although generally the more irrational the reason the more of an elitist ass you seem like. This just shows that you’re unique because you can’t stand an entire group of individuals based one specific thing. Idiosyncrasies are hip. My personal favorite: “I hate people like you”

and lastly…

10. Write a blog. Or in my case an Internet Journal.

-John

Almost Natural

A red sparrow was lying on the sidewalk in front of my building this morning; it must’ve flown into a window. It dawned on me that this was the only wild animal I had seen in months, and it wasn’t even alive. My affects are sincere.

Perhaps my heart is defrosting just in time for spring~

The Ex-Network

I’ve cultivated a fine group of facebook friends.  Deleted some, added some others.  Even coaxed some people that I creepily messaged/stalked through various means to e-friend me.  I’m quite proud of my friends list.   Then the invention of networks came about, where you could have access to someones profile by merely living in the same city/region as them.  Suddenly there was a whole new frontier of profile stalking one had access too; and a great resource of new e-friends.

While accumulating all these new friends, I quickly realized that a fair amount had fallen to the wayside.  That cute girl you met freshman year (who you instantly friended when you got back to your dorm room) no longer even makes eye contact with you when you see her on campus.  She is always conveniently getting a text message or running late to a class in the opposite direction.

That guy you had math class with, who practically did your worksheets for you, who you have to give the obligatory wave to every time you see him.  If by some catastrophe you actually strike up a conversation with him, all you can talk about is badly you did in that class, and how the weather is so nice/bad/warm/cold/rainy/great.

While all of these friendships are strange, there is none stranger than the friends whom I would like to say belong to the “Ex-Network”.  The Ex-Network are people that fall into the following categories: Are friends of an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend, or are one of your friends ex-girlfriends/boyfriends.  Basically you’re lugging an entire group of facebook friends around that you have absolutely nothing in common with.  The only reason you’re still friends with people in this network is because you either want to maintain the impression that you’re a “nice guy”, or because your ex’s friends are really hot.  Either way, you’ve reconciled and moved on from your ex, but still must carry around the baggage of her/his friends.  So be forewarned, when thinking you want to enter an e-relationship with one of your friends’ girlfriends/boyfriends.  They  may just end up in the dreaded Ex-Network.

The Used Bookstore

The Setting: The street I work on. Its really old Boston, and theres a lot of cool artsy industries. Picture old brick, big windows, and cobblestone. I’m kidding about the cobblestone but its that kinda feel. Theres a lot of print shops and divey restaurants and whatnot.

The Scene: The search for a good book. I’m suddenly consuming books at quite a speed. Especially since I spend so much time commuting and eating lunch alone. I spot a sweet looking used bookstore that I had never noticed before. I enter.

Immediately on the right is this rack of what seems to be used romance novels. The first book on the rack catches my eye; the cover illustration depicts two men, in a warm embrace. I smile to myself, and shrug this off reasoning that a used bookstore should have boatloads of second-rate literature.

I was looking for some good fiction, and pass by rows of medical journals, magazines, special interest, and non-fiction. I thrust ahead, spelunking further into the murky reeking caverns of this used bookstore. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by many images of meticulously shaven, oily, hard-bodied men.

The Revelation: This is a gay bookstore, filled with literature written on the topic of homosexuality.

There was gay fiction. Gay non-fiction. Magazines. DVDs. Gay calendars, with big honkin gay photographs, for every gay month of the year (all twelve of them).

So I was caught waaaay off guard, but wanting to be respectful, I wasn’t going to just make a big scene and be like “WHOOOOAAAA! THIS PLACE IS GAY!” while bolting for the door. After all, there were a handful of affluent looking businessmen browsing through the movie section. And yes, I met eyes with no less than one of them. Immediately after my situation dawns on me, my next thought is, Okay, which section can I go to, to look as NOT-gay as possible? I panic.

This is how I end up in the gender studies section, flipping through a picturebook titled, Am I Gay? The Homosexual Condition.

Mission failed. Big time. Like, fiery crash and lots of collateral damage failure. Dead babies. On top of that, I was wearing my skinny jeans I bought in Japan, and a tight turtleneck sweater. Who knows, I might’ve had a rainbow cape stashed in my satchel.

After what seemed like 3 hours of avoiding anyones gaze, I check my watch and make for the door. As I exit the store I’m just praying no one sees me walking out of there. I curiously check the front of the store to see if there is any indication of the horrors inside. I look up and see a small rainbow flag, three stories up.

I’ll admit, at least its discreet.

Ran into my old college friend Sam at homecoming and we got talking. I happened to drop a plug for my website, where one could find news, arts, and travel plans. If anything, you could read up on my personal experiences with the derelict and homeless. Sam proceeded to tell me this great idea he had called “Dime a Question” or something along those lines. Basically you ask a bum ten questions, that all ramp up in difficulty, and give the person a dime for every one they got right. It starts off with a “What is your name?”, and ends with like, some serious physics questions. One could make their own homebrew version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, except you’d only have to spend like 5 bucks to make it. Regardless, I was pretty amazed that there were people out there with similar ideas concerning the homeless.

It was great to see everyone down at homecoming. Next summer is when I’ll be doing a lot of work on the site in preparation for my trip, but keep checking back every now and then if you’re curious~

-John

The Root of All Evil;Pertaining to Friendship pt. 2

This is actually a follow-up to a comment made about the previous post (see below). It got long so I threw it in a new post:

The mysteriously tagged “Shanestever” writes:

I recently spent two solid weeks living with the pickiest eater I’ve ever known. I’ve tried to form generalizations about picky eaters from that experience, but I kept hitting dead ends with my logic. See, some picky eaters make their choices without taking health or nutrition into consideration.
“I don’t eat cheese,” he’ll say.
“Why not?”
“It’s a texture thing.”

A texture thing, eh? Cheese, which takes on a wide variety of textures and flavours?

The most solid generalization I currently have is that notoriously picky eaters choose to be this way because it MAKES THEM SPECIAL. It probably started when they were children, but they held onto it through high school, and then it became one of their idiosyncrasies. In other words, they no longer define their pickiness; their pickiness defines THEM. And they’ve grown comfortable with that.

Yeah thats a good observation. Being exposed to a broad range of foods as a kid is important, so you don’t grow up to be a picky bastard. Also that reminds me how we define people somewhat based on their palate. Come the first dinner date, its “Where would you like to go to dinner? Are there any types of food you ‘don’t do‘? At this point, all you know about your date is their name, phone number, and all of their dietary needs, allergies, tastes, and details.

People who don’t eat broad and general food groups frustrate me. If its something more specific like red onions or chicken liver, I can handle that. Some people out there just chop off entire blocks of the food pyramid just because they don’t like one or two of its constituents.

Cheese is a good example. Theres many types of cheese, and while I wouldn’t say I love to chow down on limburger every meal, I love a nice spread of brie on some crackers. Theres a lot of types of cheese, with different flavors. Score one for Shanestever.

My roommate Chris (hello Chris) doesn’t like seafood. I hate Chris with a fiery passion, purely because of his distaste of seafood. Chris is an example of someone who won’t lay a finger on lobster bisque because he “doesn’t like seafood”. Granted, I’ve grown up eating lots of high quality seafood. My first lobster leg was when I was two years old. I’ve tried everything from that green crap inside of crustaceans, and raw shrimp, to scallops wrapped in bacon, and fishsticks. There is such a huge range of foods that can be classified as “seafood” that its literally a lifestyle choice to say “I don’t eat seafood” (one that I frown upon!). It’s like deciding to be a vegetarian because you don’t like the taste of beef. Or a meatatarian because you don’t like the taste of tomato.

Some people develop gag reflexes to certain flavors, especially if they’ve been associated with vomiting in the past. This I can respect to an extent. For Eitan is Jacks Daniels. For Chris its seafood. For me, it is pickled milkweed pods. Milkweed pods grow on the milkweed plant (!) which is poisonous. For you nature lovers out there; Monarch caterpillars feed solely on milkweed and then pupate into the brightly colored, and fairly poisonous Monarch butterfly. Predators stay away from eating the Monarch because it makes them vom. If you harvest the pods in early summer, and boil them enough, you can actually detoxify them enough to eat. After pickling, they taste somewhat like pickles with a light bitter lavendar aftertaste. Good stuff! Unfortunately, if they’re not boiled for long enough you just get pretty sick and vom everywhere. Thats what happened.

While I’m certain this reflex is 100% mental, its just hard for me to cram my plate full of freshly pickled milkweed pods at parties and the buffet tables of wedding receptions. But for seafood, cheese, or carbohydrates, get over yourself and enjoy some of the finer flavors in life.

-John

The Root of All Evil;Pertaining to Friendship

So get this, you and your friends are sitting around trying to make dinner plans. No one wants to be decisive, so you take the plunge and say, “Well, I’m down for anything. Sushi, Indian…I’d even be down for McDonalds.” This is when that friend contorts his face in disgust, chiming in with “Ughh, god, anything but McDonalds.”

Everyone has one of those friends. If you can’t immediately name which one of your friends is that friend, its probably you.

Also, not only did you completely shut down a kind-hearted attempt at a resolution of the problem at hand, you didn’t suggest an alternative. You are a bastard.

But you aren’t really a bastard, right? You have a admirable social conscious and fantastic morals! You’re a stand-up model citizen, in every possible way except you’re just too damn picky when it comes to eating out on a budget.

The point: I’d say picky eaters are results of a healthy upbringing, complete with nutrients and a balanced diet. Most of the pickiest eaters I know were raised in an environment where they were prepared three home cooked meals a day. I’d say its a loose belief that having a parent that can cook hearty, wholesome meals is somewhat indicative of a socially healthy (as opposed to physically healthy) upbringing. You know, those same friends that have insanely overly-loving maternal moms who showers them with kisses, praise, and three-bean casserole. Thus, all these people raised in ideal domestic situations just become bastards who won’t touch fast food.

On the other end; I, for one was blessed with a blazing Asian metabolism. I grew up in a very loving family but my parents never cooked so we would order out a lot, or get pre-prepared meals at the grocery. I note this as a common exception, as I had a good upbringing but have no standards when it comes to meal decisions.

Except the Chili’s on West End in Nashville Tennessee. That place is certified garbage. Never eat there, even if its “free”.

-John

Debate Over

A while ago I sat down at dinner with an acquaintance, and a music debate started. I said it was hard for me to respect crappy bands like “Fallout Boy”, if they haven’t been around for at least ten years or so.

(DISCLAIMER: Don’t get all hissy if Fallout Boy is your favorite band, and they have in fact, been around for more than ten years. I’ve never listened to a song of theirs, and they could be great, talented musicians, although I sincerely doubt that)

I was then interrupted by my acquaintance; “Thats actually one of the only bands I like.”

His stock drops by 28%.

I go on to describe there are good examples of undeniably good bands out there, for example Radiohead, that have worked hard for many years before they were popularized. A general common trend I see when broadly defining influential and uniquely popular bands.

He then corrects me by saying that Radiohead must not be that popular, because he has never heard of them.

His stock plummets by another 70%, debate is over, the circuits in my brain short out and explode in tiny mushroom clouds originating from my scalp. Also, steam shoots out of my ears.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

-John

The Homess Survey Project

So I feel like I’ve been being a little unfair to the homeless, and maybe I’ve misrepresented my personality a little bit. In college, there were times when I was asked for money, and instead of shouting at them I asked them to do me a small favor. Basically I said I’d give them a dollar if I could take their portrait. Most were all for it; I mean thats a dollar for no more than five minutes of work. In the end, I got some good photos of the local homeless folk, and put them to work for a few minutes.
So I decided to create a survey. Whenever I’m approached and asked for money, I will first deny their request…but then ask them if they’d like to take a ten question survey for a dollar. Most likely I’ll have to reassure them that the questions are simple, I’m not working for the police. Say I’m an art student or something like that…people get suspicious when you start asking questions but if its for the sake of art, it becomes okay. At the end of it all, I’ve given them money on my terms, which I’m totally okay with, and I’ve gotten the answers to ten, very special questions.
What are the questions, you may wonder? I’m not sure yet, but here are a few examples of the quality of questions I’m looking for:
-What is your name?
-How long have you lived here?
-How old are you?
-What is your favorite color?
-What made you approach me, for money?
-Do you prefer cats or dogs?
-How much money do you make every day?
-Coke or Pepsi?

etc.
I want to emphasize that they do not have to tell the truth for any of the answers. I just want the data. After a few surveys, I can start creating profiles for all of these homeless dudes! How awesome is that? I can collec them like trading cards. Maybe I’ll ask them if I can take their picture for another dollar, and upload them onto the site.
Which reminds me, if there are any questions that you’ve always had about homeless people, feel free to suggest questions for my survey.
The only hard part is most the homeless people around south station know to avoid me like the plague. Also I have to start carrying around lots of singles.

-John

Projects

So, I love projects.  My definition of a project is basically a repeatable experiment, that I can do every day without much hassle.  I’d say the only difference between my projects and an experiment is that my projects don’t necessarily have results, or even the intention of getting results.  I basically do these things for the sake of routine, and collecting data is some repeatable fashion.  Sometimes I find the purpose of a project only after months of its daily execution. Some examples:

Subway Games.  One of my projects is taking note of individuals on the subway.  I make sure to sit in the exact same car every morning, and nearly the exact same seat.  Some of you may remember my “subway games” entry, a few months ago.  I’m fascinated by the feelings of attachment brought about between strangers, based on a similar commuting routine.  Since my last entry, I’ve started to go to work at around 9:30AM; a time when a much larger crowd tends to surf the subways.  Thus, theres a lot more routine and a lot more regulars.  Fun stuff, for me.

Sky Observation.  Whenever I exit the subway near my apartment after work, I look straight up at the sky and note the cloud cover, the amount of daylight, the color of the sky, and approx what time it is.  I’m not sure why I’m doing this; no profound results yet.

Dream Logs.  Although I’ve recently been slacking at it, I used to be very good at taking dream logs.  Basically keeping an open journal with a pencil by my bed and writing down every detail I could possibly remember whenever I wake up.  This is hard though, because recalling your dreams and jotting down paragraphs requires you to be somewhat awake, and its easy to get lazy and just fall back to sleep.  Dream logs are an awesome inspiration for lyrics and art though.

The Homeless.  As you probably all are aware, my interactions and interest in the homeless is one of my larger more all-encompassing projects.  I’m actually going to wrap this up in anticipation of my next entry, which will be all about the newest project I plan on undertaking:  “The Paid, Homeless Beggar Survey”

-John