Collaring Some Observations

After two consecutive sad, gloomy and joyless posts, it’s time for some non-melancholy observations!

- I know this is going to sound really vain, but I recently Google’d a sentence out of one of my postings and when it came up on Google, I got really excited and proud! For some reason it feels like a major life accomplishment.

- I don’t know if this is a product of getting older or what, but I hate the fact that I am a more emotional person now than I was 3 years ago. I was watching Nine Innings From Ground Zero on HBO this morning when I was getting ready for work and eating Cocoa-Puffs, and it almost made me cry! Seriously it did. What the hell is wrong with me? And last week I was watching this 9/11 show on the National Geographic Channel and I almost cried that time, too. I don’t understand where all this emotion is coming from?! Has this type of transformation happened to anyone else or am I turning into a pansy? I need to know.

- What’s the deal with Texans and their obsession with their state flag? They put that freakin’ flag on everything and anything possible. Does any other state have a bigger love affair with their flag than the state of Texas?

(Do most people, besides Texans, even know what their state flag looks like?)

- Speaking of states, I saw a commercial the other day that suggested Mississippi is the hardest state to spell. I’d have to respectfully disagree. I would say Massachusetts (I needed spell check to get that right) is by far the hardest, followed by Pennsylvania (easy to confuse s-y-l combination) and then maybe Connecticut, Illinois or Tennessee. I would think Mississippi is easier than all of those states to spell.

- Yesterday I was eating a bag of the new cheesier Nacho-cheese Doritos and the color of these new and improved Doritos can best be described as “radioactive orange.”

- Speaking of food, I hate chop-sticks. I think they’re stupid - besides giving you something to play with while you wait for your food. Other than that, they are outdated and less effective than silverware, so why the heck do we still use them? Actually, I think I know why, because there is some weird romantic attachment to chop-sticks. Give it up, people. You still use all the other modern conveniences of dining, stop unnecessarily clinging to archaic eating utensils.

- Why do we teach little kids to call trains choo-choo trains? We don’t call automobiles, frooom-frooom cars or planes errrrr-errrre airplanes – it seems strange to teach kids to label locomotives in such a descriptive fashion. Not to mention the eventual disappoint the child will experience boarding a train that doesn’t go choo-choo (since most don’t anymore) or the confusion of stepping onto a Monorail at Disneyland.

- Attention all men! The flipping-up of your collar thing makes you look really stupid. And it’s just not me talking here, I have yet to meet a women who is a fan of this recent style trend. Next to white men getting both of their ears pierced, this is one of my least favorite fashion trends of the last 10 years. It has to go, so please stop. Please. You look ridiculous, like those two guys from the Bacardi commercials.

- And finally, the topic of cell-phone etiquette has been written about time and time again, so I am not going soapbox over an already saturated topic. But it’s hilarious how when in a social setting, i.e. – a bar or a restaurant, people can’t sit alone. If you and a friend are out, and your friend leaves to go to the bathroom, you have to pull out your cell-phone and text message someone, or check the time, or play a game on your phone or call someone, or check your voicemail. Happens all the time, you just have to do it. It’s almost like you are a loser if you are sitting by yourself, not having some sort of social interaction (or the appearance of a social interaction) – and the cell phone makes you look popular and wanted.

It’s a very similar phenomenon to when two people are sitting together, and one gets a phone call, and the other person inevitably pulls-out their cell-phone and calls someone or checks their voicemail or text messages someone. Certainly you can’t look like the unwanted or lonely person in the group, either.

And the best part of this law is that it doesn’t only apply to groups of two. If two people in a group of three are on their phones, you know what that third person will be doing before long.

For the record, women are far guiltier of this then men.