Just wanted to wish all you loyal readers a Happy Thanksgiving/Christmas Kickoff Day!

Longtime readers of the blog will remember one of my first posts about why I chose to become an English Major. At the time I was accused of merely trying to make myself feel better about the fact that I am destined for a life of culture and poverty as a result of my major decision. Well, I have come across some new information that might make a believer out of the rest of you.

Dave Barry on College

I came across this and was concerned about the ramifications. Alledgedly, under the Freedom of Information Act, driver’s license information has been made available by state motor vehicle offices via a central database. Check for yourself in the database here. Please post your response to this disturbing development in Uncle Sam’s continued infringement upon our privacy in the name of security.

I first started using four years ago. I was just out of high school, a freshman in college, just beginning to experiment with my newfound independence. Some of the other kids were doing it and it looked like fun. Pretty soon I was doing it too and doing it all: AIM, MSN, Yahoo, all of them. I would spend hours juggling digital conversations, some of them happy, some of them sad, some witty, some a little too early in the morning to be witty. I got the the point where I could carry on four or five convos at a time without breaking a sweat. And then there was the contact lists. I think that I had an IM address for everybody I met over a 9 month period. It was pretty much my popularity index. I felt a connection with the world around me, so long as that world was the cramped little boxes I would type my conversations into.

Just like any addiction, IM addiction has its dangers. For instance, I was laying on my bed in my dorm room after throwing out my back while carrying a 27-inch TV into somebody else’s room. As a lay in my pain-induced haze, a group of kids busted into my room. The ringleader called me out, saying that someone had been trashing him over IM and that a mutual friend of ours had identified the offending address as mine. Through a series of events too strange and wonderful to mention, disaster was averted and the gentleman left me to suffer in peace. Such are the hazards of being deep in the IM world.

These types of experiences haven’t deterred me, though. I still allow my life to be run by the little MSN man on my toolbar. There are less and less of us these days, but we’re still hanging tough and engaging in pixelated interaction.

Now for what I really wanted to write about.
*Warning- Classified Chat Acronyms*
I think that my favorite part of the IM scene is the fully little acronyms that every IM savvy conversant knows. A few of my favorites:

LOL-laughing out loud
TTYL- Talk to you later
BRB- Be right back
NP- No problem
GTG- Got to go
IANAL- I am not a lawyer

Again, this is just a few. Of course, this begs the question what is to keep people from turning anything and everything into an acronym? I mean, really, in the most extreme case, you could try to have an entire conversation just typing the first letter of every word. Sure, this completely eradicates any possiblity of true communication, but maybe it will start a new revolution in IM-ing. It could be some kind of game, trying to decipher what your friends are saying. So…
IGPLAIPT,SIGTGTBBIHWT.IKTTPIPL,BMSOFWPWLAI.LMKIYDTATFVTI.

I have been told that I talk in my sleep, and I believe it. I have no doubt that my nocturnal sayings are as witty as they are unintelligible, but I have met my match. My current roommates had a previous roommate named Nate who was quite verbose in his slumber. They recorded him using a voice-activated recorder and posted the compiled recordings on the internet for the enjoyment of all. Having listened to these recordings, I would dearly love to know what was going on in his head. On second thought, maybe I should just run away.

Make your own decision. Check out Nate at Night.

The subtle dynamics of parkinglotdom have once again been impressed upon my mind. I perfected a new move today, actually, which is what brings this to mind. I rolled into the lot with about 15 minutes until class started, only to be greeted by a handful of fellow parking lot sharks circling the lot waiting to pounce on the first available spot. Rather than patrolling the lot aimlessly like my fellow sharks, I backed into a faculty reserved spot to eat my beef and potato burritos from Taco Bell (they can’t ticket you while you’re in the car) and I waited… Needless to say, my patience was rewarded and I got a spot. But this got me thinking about how the girl whose spot I took felt about the whole situation.

I imagine that every person walking into that lot to get into their car would have one of a couple of reactions. First, there’s the paranoid reaction. You’re walking to your car and suddenly you realize that you’re being followed. You dodge between some parked vehicles to lose them, but no matter what you do, there’s another one right there behind you. You make your way to your car almost in a panic, and you fumble with your keys, trying to get inside as quickly as possible to make the nightmare end. There’s no question in your cramped, neurotic mind. They’re out to get you (or at least your spot). You look out your rearview mirror and see them sitting there, silent, waiting… You pull out of the parking lot, swearing to yourself that from now on you’re walking to school. Creepy.

The other possibility is that you walk into the lot and stop with a smug, satisfied smile on your face. You look at the cars circling and realize that you have the ability to grant a parking space to some poor, desperate soul. And you also have the ability to deny it. The heady pleasure of the awesome power you hold over the lives of your fellow students almost makes you dizzy. Then you realize that you’re hungry and you’ve been on campus all day. You get in your car and pull out, and yet you still feel a sense of superiority over the driver that pulls into the spot you just vacated. You smirk knowing that if it wasn’t for your magnanimity, they would still be circling the lot aimlessly. “I am a good person” you think to yourself as you drive away. You can’t wait until you get to leave the lot after school tomorrow.

I had to do a double take when I read the headline for this story. Such delicious irony is far too rare in the world around us, making this story truly noteworthy.
You probably don’t have to read the article, the title says it all…
Actress Breaks Arm Performing Song ‘I’m an Accident Waiting to Happen’