I have learned a lot about what women go through from being friends with them, both on- and off-line, so I thought I’d give you a little insight into what it’s like to be a guy.
See picture of stickers for “Phoebe’s Cupcakes”
Subconsciously think of Phoebe Cates
Boobs!
BOOM! That’s all it takes.
Usually steps 1 and 2 are completely optional. There’s just no telling when boobs are going to pop into your brain when you’re a (hetero) guy.
I am sick and tired of every damn restaurant in town and everything they have to offer
In my defense, there are only like six (if you don’t count fast food/pizza places) and we’ve been here 6+ years.
Of those six, about three of them are not “chains” (and none of your fancy Red Lobster/Olive Garden/Applebee’s either… our “big” restaurant is a Bob Evans. Yes, really).
Some of you obviously like to cook, and almost all of you like to eat.
So I’d like to hear you favorite recipe(s). They don’t have to be super fancy, anything above “This is how you make PB&J” is welcome :-)
CatPaint is an immersive and multi-sensory experience, wherein you can put adorable cats on top of your photos. Also, they mew. With just a few touches, you can take a photo, cover it with cats, and send it off to your friends and family.
To get started, simply pull out the litter-box drawer to select a kitty, then tap anywhere to place it. Should you misplace a kitten, just gently shake your iPhone or iPod Touch like an Etch-a-Sketch to Undo. Shake a little and one cat will disappear, shake a bunch and clear all the cats and start again.
Download it now to ensure that your life becomes even more pathetic than it already is, pathetic cat person who read this far without rolling your eyes at the patheticness of the cat people.
As you may have seen my Twitter account now has access to the new retweet feature.
The first (and, in all likelihood, last) post that I ever retweeted was this one from @superfantastic:
My nephew gets candy for going pee pee on the potty. I went pee pee on the potty and I didn’t get anything. Being a grown up is bullshit.
I chose to retweet this largely as an experiment. It’s a good candidate for retweeting, because it made me laugh, but at 137 characters, it is too long for a “traditional” retweet.
RT @superfantastic: My nephew gets candy for going pee pee on the potty. I went pee pee on the potty and I didn’t get anything. Being a grown up is bullshit.
is 17 characters too long, which usually leads people to start “abbreviating” things, like so:
RT @superfantastic: My nephew got candy for peeing on the potty. I pee on the potty and I didn’t get anything. Being a grown up is bullshit.
140 characters, but I’ve mangled it. Those who have seen mangled retweets know that it is usually a lot worse:
RT @superfantastic: My nephew pee on da potty, got candy. I pee on the potty & I didnt get nothin. Being a grown up is bullshit // TRUE DAT
With the hard limit of 140 characters, adding the “RT @username” almost always led to truncating.
Now there’s no need for truncating.
This is especially true of some “bots” which retweet and often mangle/truncate a joke, cutting off the punchline.
“But…”
The biggest complaints I’ve seen about the new Retweet format comes down are:
Can’t add your own comment
The icon of the original person will show up in your friends’ timelines.
The second point famously led Justine Bateman to go over the batshit crazy cliff, claiming that someone had hacked into her Twitter account or some such nonsense.
Personally, I like the fact that people can’t edit it. I’ve had tweets edited to where they no longer said what I had said.
The icon thing… well, people will get used to it. Twitter clients will have to figure out a way to show you who retweeted it.
But my hope is that this will make people pause and think “Do I want to retweet this? Is this going to confuse people? Maybe I should skip it…”
There Are Benefits
1) You’ll only see one retweet per tweet in your timeline.
Imagine you follow Sam, Joe, Sally, and Jane.
Sam posts something to Twitter which Joe, Sally, and Jane all retweet. You will only see the first retweet. (Unfortunately you will still see it even if you already follow Sam.)
Under the old method, you might see it four times. Now you shouldn’t see it more than once. This is a good thing.
2) If someone stars a retweet, the star goes to the original person.
This gives really popular people the ability to retweet lesser-known people and give them exposure. Their icons will show up in others’ timelines, and stars will be given out accordingly. (Of course most webcocks want people with 100 followers to retweet them instead of the other way around.)
3) Delete the head and the tail disappears
A few months ago there was a “missing child” alert which went out through Twitter and which was retweeted widely. The child (teenager) was then found.
If the new method of retweeting is used, the parent could then delete the original “Missing!” report and all of the retweets would disappear too. I consider this a good thing also.
(You can also choose to “un-retweet” something, but of course if people have already seen it, it’s a little late.)
4) You can now turn off retweets
Let me say that again
You can now turn off retweets
There’s good news and bad news here. First the good news: Got someone you follow who retweets too much? Before you would have had to unfollow them. Now you can simply go to their Twitter page and click the Retweet icon next to the “Following” (see picture, above).
The bad news? You have to do this for each person. You can’t set a global preference to never see retweets. That should be an option, IMO, but it isn’t. (Yet?)
If you hated retweets before this, the new feature won’t change your mind
Personally I don’t care for retweets, but they’re apparently here to stay. Twitter saw that and tried to make them work better. They are responding to the way that people use the site. The fact that I don’t like that people use it this way is unfortunate, but I’m in the minority of Twitter users overall.
To say that “no one asked for this” is wrong, because every time someone retweeted someone else, they said (in effect) this is a habit of Twitter users.
Overall, I think it’s hard to argue that this isn’t an improvement. Yes, it will take some time before people get used to seeing strangers in their timelines, but my guess is that it won’t take long. I doubt people who didn’t retweet before will start retweeting now, and since you can turn them off now, you can previously follow people who did retweet too much beforehand.
Summary?
I still don’t like retweets in general, but I like the changes that Twitter made.
2 For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues.
3 They beset me with words of hate, and attack me without cause.
4 In return for my love they accuse me, even while I make prayer for them.
5 So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
6 They say, “Appoint a wicked man against him; let an accuser stand on his right.
7 When he is tried, let him be found guilty; let his prayer be counted as sin.
8 May his days be few; may another seize his position.
9 May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow.
Verse 9 makes it clear that this is a death-wish.
Verse 5 makes it clear that “they” (the ones who are wishing for the death of the speaker) are rewarding good with evil (i.e. they are fucking bastards).
Verse 7 makes it clear that not all prayers are good prayers and that some of them might be counted as sin.
Of course there was also the words of the Apostle Paul who wrote:
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.
But that usually only gets mentioned by right-wing nutjobs when a Republican is in office.
Me: “It’s raining, you should wear your raincoat.”
Him: (looking outside) “It’s not raining”
Me: “It’s not raining at the moment, but you see how everything is wet?”
Him: “But it’s not raining now…”
Me: “Yes that’s true. I checked the forecast and it’s going to rain again later. Bring your raincoat.”
Him: “My raincoat doesn’t fit in my backpack.”
Me: “Put it on your body.”
Him: “But when I get to school I’ll have to take it off.”
Me: “Put it in your locker.”
Him: “But it might get confused with [person he shares the locker with]. I don’t mind getting wet.”
Me: “You know what, do whatever you want.”
(He gets this from his mother.)
This is the pain in the ass part of being a parent. Especially at this age, I could easily make him wear a jacket, either by putting it on him, or by yelling at him. Or by telling him how “disappointed” I am that he’s being so stubborn about this for no good reason.
He would hate hearing that he’s disappointed either of us.
At the same time, I know he’s trying to assert some independence and as annoying as that can be (especially when it’s over something goofy like this) he’s testing his wings. On the other side, I don’t want him to start becoming argumentative over every little thing. Now if it was 32ºF and he wanted to go out in shorts and flipflops, I’d be more insistent. But I think it’s important to let him have some of these decisions, even when I disagree with him.
